Private and Public tutoring. Rain stopped sex! LOL

Monday 20^th October.

When I was at Dad’s this weekend (just passed), for some reason  - probably connected to my OCD – I decided to clean out one of my chests of drawers. I wanted to see what delights I had lurking in there, you know the sort of thing. I found some items of clothing I hadn’t worn for ages but I could still get into them! In one of the drawers I found a whole load of Derwentwater Ferry timetables. There was a whole stack of these folded A4 leaflets dating back from 2013 all the way to 1993! That means I must have been collecting them since I was six. I know they are mine and not the ones Dad gets every year and pins to the notice board in the kitchen as none of them had pin holes in them!

This discovery got me thinking… Have I always been as obsessive? The drawers themselves have the clothes inside arranged by colour. Is that normal? Looking at the books on the big bookshelf in my room, I know that  inside each one is an “ex-libris” stamp (which Dad bought for me when I was about 8) and every book has a number and the date I bought it (or acquired it some other way) written inside the cover. The number refers to its place in my collection and the date is self-explanatory. Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact the books are arranged alphabetically by author, and then by date of publication in that sub-section. Again, this could be worrying.

I asked the Lollster, who was watching all this with amused disinterest from the sofa bed, if I was weird for doing stuff like this. She asked if I wanted the truth or a white lie. I asked for the truth. She said it was weird. But weird in a charming and cute and non-threatening or worrying way. She thought it was unbelievably quirky but in a way which comes from a place where quirk is wonderful and the commonplace is boring and dullsville extra-ordinaire! She bet that my brother didn’t do anything like this and if he found out about it he would say it proved what an odd-ball I was. This was so the answer I wanted to hear. Plus it shows what a handle she has on my family. She was even prepared to bet that if she checked my Dad’s study she would find a pattern repeated in there but probably exaggerated to the nth degree.

We sneaked in an looked. He has a filing system for his CDs and books which is even more OCD than mine. They are arranged by their titles alone, both books and CDs. So unless you know the title of the CD (or book) you are looking for, you are absolutely stumped. I thought this was even barmier than my system. Laura was inclined to agree.

[Later that weekend we asked Dad why he had his books and CDs arranged the way he did. His reply was very surprising. He told us he had done it when he and Mum first moved in together as a way to annoy her. She could never remember the titles of LPs (in those days) or books and therefore found Dad’s system aggravating in the extreme. He said it was worth having to rack your own brains to find what you wanted if it meant Mum was annoyed. The trouble with Dad is you can’t always tell if he is serious or joking so we resolved to ask my Mum about it when we saw her on Friday night at the theatre. (One of the many troubles with Dad, I should have said… LOL)]

Back to Monday:

This morning, continuing my desire for order and control we were up with the larks as usual and straight into the usual routine. After the walk, swim and breakfast we went into work early so I could get on with my prep for Thursday. I spent a lot of the morning on that and part of the time discussing, with Felice, which document to tackle next from our cache.  We have been trying to tackle them systematically but today decided to just go for one at random. We grabbed a passing gaggle of undergraduates and asked them to choose a document from a selection we had laid out on Felice’s desk. They thought we were messing about at first, but once we explained what and why to them they finally settled on our next choice. (Hope it proves interesting.)

This afternoon just flew by and we seemed to be heading home almost as soon as we’d arrived. Having a free night, as it were, we decided to catch up with the backlog of TV programmes we’d set up to record over the weekend. Dr who, not bad; The Code episodes 3 & 4 much better although the emphasis on Canberra as the film location was a bit depressing; it is one of the most boring places in the whole of Australia.  I think the show and its premise were quite good although it doesn’t hold a candle to the Wallander made by Yellow Bird. That has to be my all time favourite.

Tuesday 21^st October.

A full day at Uni of both of us and I thought I managed to get masses done with the random choice of document. Initially it is an inventory, I think, but on the back someone has written a proper, real letter! I was hoping there would be a clue to the person who wrote it but there was none at all. Still, it was a change from the repetitive lists we have unearthed so far. TBH, without a context they are almost meaningless.

Olivia’s English session went much better than last time and she actually said she thought she understood something tonight! That has to be a result. Laura’s Trevor used the study tonight and Olivia and I worked at the kitchen table. Livvy’s Mum kept everyone supplied with a seemingly endless supply of mugs of tea. It brought home to us how useful it would be to have a second toilet installed somewhere. But where? However, the number of times that there are more than two of us in the house means the expense wouldn’t really be justified, would it?

We do actually have another loo, the row of houses all have an outside closet. Ours is in a block of four just as you come under the archway to the back garden. In the past century each house had internal sanitation installed and so the outside toilets have all become extra sheds. In mine there is my old bike from my Cambridge days. I will probably never use it up here, though, as it is way too hilly. I would be knackered within minutes.

Because we used the full span of hours we got paid the full whack tonight (£50 each) woo hoo! Laura is convinced that it beats working in the restaurant but she does miss the banter among the staff and customers. She is convinced she will lose weight because of it, though, as there is no Dominic at hand to tempt her with morsels of what has been cooked. She claims to have put on weight since last September. I told her if she thought that she must have put it on in her head! This led to a brief cushion fight followed by a rather impromptu session by the cunning linguists on the kitchen table.

Wednesday October 22^nd

We had a call from Mum this morning asking if we fancied coming round to hers for our meal tonight. We had to explain about our tutoring and the fact that Laura’s 6^th former would here at our at 7pm. She said that was no problem, she would bring the meat and potato pie round to us and we could scoff it there instead. I sort of expected farmer John to be included in the invite but he wasn’t mentioned at all.

I asked her, what about John? She gave a huge sigh and said why did she have such smart Alec children? Yes, could she bring him round too? Would we mind? I thought it was hilarious that Mum was asking my permission to bring her date round to my house! She was fine with the fact that Sally’s Mum would be there as well and maybe would rather wait with me in the lounge instead of up in the study with Laura and her daughter. That was OK too.

Mrs B,at work found the idea that my Mum was asking me for permission to bring her beau was funny too. She asked Laura if I was a right little madam when I was a girl for my Mother to be in awe of me. Laura began to make up silly stories of me scaring the whole of the village as child and bending them to my will. Mrs B said something that I thought was really sweet and quite astute. It went along the lines of: “Do you know, I have only known you for a short while compared to Miss Jay here but, it seems to me you are so like each other. Are you sure you aren’t secretly related somehow?”

Loll said it was just an example of great minds thinking alike. I replied that I thought it was more a case of fools seldom differ. Mrs Briggs simply said, “I rest my case.”

She is really great is Mrs B. I am so glad I was able to wangle some time back at XXX & Y to fit in with my PhD.

We found Mum, Farmer John and Callie already ensconced at the kitchen table when we arrived home. They were busy reading the newspapers (we get The Times and The i delivered daily – having a subscription to each). Farmer J asked, in a tone that sounded quite disbelieving, if it was true what my Mum had said about me being able to do the Times crossword in about 15 minutes. I nodded. He asked, quite kindly this time, if I would care to give him a demonstration. (If he had said “Prove it!” I was quite ready to swear at him and refuse, even if it would rouse Mum’s anger.)

What he didn’t know was that I had done Felice’s copy this morning whilst waiting in her office for her to reappear from wherever she had wandered off to. I read each clue out, pretended to ponder for a moment then said the answer and wrote it in. The whole process took me about 8 minutes. Laura said, “Don’t you hate a show off?” So I whacked with a cushion. This time we forbore the ensuing fight and reconciliation on the table top, it might not have gone down all that well. (Yes, that was intentional!)

I love Mum’s meat and potato pie. Mine is made using her instructions but somehow it never quite tastes the same. We cracked open one of the last of Uncle Hilmar’s Dornfelders to go with it and John did the usual comment (which most people make on tasting Dornfelder for the first time), “Goodness me, what kind of grape is this?” I explained about Hilmar, Reinhardt, Cochem and Neustadt and the vineyards. He was impressed. Mum contributed by saying it was lovely along the Rhine and the visits to Germany were things she missed after the divorce (is that the right thing to be saying when you are with a new bloke, Mum? I was trying to telepathically tell her).

Laura vanished up to the study with Sally at 7pm and we sat in my lounge having a good old gossip with Sal’s Mum, for a couple of hours. You can’t beat having a chin wag about everything and anything once in a while. I am not sure what Farmer John made of it, especially as we cackled and squawked and laughed and generally behaved like a set of school girls for two hours. We did try to include him in the fray but he couldn’t keep up and he had no shared reference points either.

At 9 all four of them left and the house fell silent and calm again. As I closed the door after seeing them all off I gave Laura a huge smackerooni and when we had finished she said, “Mmmm….. Nice. What was that for?” I told her it was because I just loved her. She suggested we take Callie for a walk immediately so we could get up to naughty things together in the woods. (She has taken to al fresco sex in a big way.) We did this but were denied by the weather. We had just walked up, past the last bungalow before the wood, as the sky decided to lighten its moisture content on us and all of North Sheffield. We spent ages sheltering under a pair of beech trees at the entrance to the wood proper, which afforded some shelter but the rain obviously didn’t look like abating so we bit the bullet and retraced our steps (the quickest way back home from this point). We were as drenched as we had been last Friday in Cumbria when we got back.

We used the shower as the setting for our playtime instead of the woods which had the added bonus of being able to walk a mere few yards to tumble into bed. Here we continued for quite a while listening to the rain batter against the bedroom window as we did.

Thursday 23^rd Oct.

Today was our normal, usual, half and half day with the double tutoring session in the evening; except for the reality of my second tutorial / lecture session at Uni this morning that is. I was all prepped up and ready to go well before the event, as usual. And, as usual I had the deepest, hollow, doom feeling in the pit of my stomach before walking into the room to get started. I don't know why. It went like a dream (again) they were attentive, amused and asked sensible questions during the  Q & A. 

Felice dragged me and Loll down to Lokanta for a celebratory lunch. If I can get past the horrible feeling before I start, I think I could enjoy what I am doing. I wonder if everyone feels like I do before hand or is it because I am a newbie?

 Jenny-Leigh and Bobbi’s parents decided it would be better all round if they just abandoned their daughters to our care and came to collect them at 9 pm. That made sense to me and Laura. I had the study tonight, Laura had the dining table. Amusingly, afterwards we both said that the girls are much better than they or their parents think when they had left, but we don’t mind the lucrative cash we are making. Loll had a bit of a panic and asked if we ought to declare this extra income. I wasn’t sure what we needed to do, so we both resolved to ask the co-ordinator of the whole thing at Uni in the morning.

One thing which did surprise us though was the fact Mrs B isn’t going to see the Woman in Black or the Halle this weekend. We had mentioned it in passing as we were leaving tonight and she told us she was spending a weekend away in North Wales. I can’t wait to get the gossip. She doesn’t normally do things like this at all.

To add insult to injury, after last night’s almost bonking in the woods debacle, when I took the woofie (on my own) round the circuit tonight, the sky was a clear as anything over my head. Are the gods trying to give me a message? LOL