Monday Oct 6th
Our morning routine was in full swing this morning, we’d
walked the dog, been for a swim and were in the middle of breakfast, when we
were Skyped by Felice. She apologised for not being there and told us she would
definitely be back by Wednesday, Thursday at the latest. I took this
information with a pinch of salt (actually a fill salt cellar would probably
have been more appropriate) and said that I would pass on her message to our
supervisor. Apparently she has already e-mailed her but wanted me to double
check she’d got the message. She does presume a hell of a lot sometimes.
Today is one of our dual days, University in the morning
and XXX & Y in the afternoon. We drove in using Laura’s car and used my
dedicated parking space with a note in the window in case of any jobsworths
being stupid. I even called into the faculty support department and explained
about the second car and they said they’d get a sticker for the windscreen to
me asap.
I am still in a bit of a panic about my lecture on
Thursday. I know I shouldn’t as I have the subject in my head backwards,
forwards, upside down and sideways, but you can’t help but worry, can you? Well,
I do anyway.
Earlier in the year we signed up for a student / pupil
tutoring scheme. Some time in June, if I remember correctly, when we came back
we had an e-mail from the person organising the whole thing to see if we were
still interested, we said we were. Tomorrow I am receiving my first pupil, a
secondary schoolgirl called Olivia. She is doing work on Macbeth and I was
matched to her using our profiles. I will be paid for this at the amazing rate
of £25 per hour. That is pretty good, isn’t it? It was Laura who spotted the
notice and thought it could be a good way of getting out of working at Dominic’s
restaurant. She enjoys what she does and is very much appreciated by the
customers and staff but she finds it very tiring. She is now a bit miffed that
I have got a client tomorrow and another on Thursday while she has nobody.
The scheme means we will be meeting the same person over
a period of time depending on what their parents have signed up for. Tomorrow’s
young lady is finding her English Lit. a bit of a struggle so I will be helping
her with that all the way up to her GCSE exams. The girl (Jenny-Leigh) on
Thursday just wants her grammatical skills honing. She is looking for an A at A
Level and her folks think that a bit of extra help could push her into that
grade. Both of them will be coming to
our house and there will always be a parental duenna present. We hadn’t heard
for ages because of the CRB checks we have had to have done. We filed all the
relevant forms with our applications but obviously the checking machinery is a
bit creaky!
Laura is expecting to have quite a few more than the two
I have been allocated, being a Maths undergraduate, she is being treated like
the Holy Grail. Or at least that’s what they told her at our interviews.
The aforementioned Maths Wizard drove herself down to the
restaurant tonight, she is going to prepare the ground with Dominic for when
she has to give her notice in. It was weird just being at home when she came
in. I had walked Callie and everything so we could just jump into the shower
and then tumble into bed.
Tuesday 7th October.
We told Sarah about our new tutoring jobs and she thought
it was a great idea and a better use of our brains than at present. I think she
was being ironic. She did suggest that we should put a card in the display in
the pool’s advert section to try and get more clients that way. So we have
done. English and Maths Tuition to GCSE and A Level offered by University
Students… etc etc we’ll have to see if we get any takers. Laura said we’ll end
up with a load of perverts replying (oh she of little faith). We did put my old
mobile phone number on the card as our contact number, just in case. I keep
this old one in my car, fully charged and paid up (it’s on PAYG tariff now) so
that will reduce the pervert risk a bit.
Today was a full Uni day and we spent the time at our
respective tasks for the morning, had lunch together and then went back to our
work again in the afternoon. Nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary happened
at all.
My pupil, Olivia (and her Mum) arrived at just before
7.30. We went to the study room (my attic) which Olivia declared as being
really cool. She is not at all what I expected. She looks absolutely gorgeous
(she was very made up) and has the longest hair I have seen for ages. She said
she used to be able to sit on it but it was getting unmanageable at that length
so she had it cut to its present length, three quarters of the way down her
back.
She had been given the most stupid Shakepeare question I
have ever seen. “Explain how Shakespeare illustrates the problems facing
Jacobean women in Macbeth, with particular reference to Lady Macbeth.” This is
absolute bollox. The play isn’t about the problems facing women at all, whoever
set this is a compete arsehole. However, I bit my tongue and proceeded to
explain what the problems Jacobean women faced and then we looked for examples
from the play to back up these points. It is very tricky, to be honest, but we
found enough for about a 1500 word essay in the end and I think she got the
idea of how to make a point, back it up with a relevant quotation and then
explain the quotation and its relevance to the question.
She also took notes on the real reasons why Shakespeare
wrote Macbeth (which I told her) and she was going to try and use some of them
in her conclusion as evidence of more background study. She didn’t even know,
for example, that Macbeth was a real historical character from Scotland’s past.
We did almost two hours and I was paid, on the spot, £50.
I felt a bit guilty about taking it but Olivia’s Mum was delighted by what we
had done in the two hours and by how positive her daughter was about doing the
whole essay now. It seemed like money for jam, but I guess they were tapping
into my knowledge and the one to one approach meant a lot of it should be
understood and retained. I hope so.
Laura had driven herself again to Dom’s tonight, so we
had the same arrangement as yesterday, shower and sex immediately. I think it is
much better than the old way.
Wednesday October 8th.
Sarah was a impressed that I had begun tutoring already
and asked what Olivia’s Mum had done for the two hours. I explained she had
piggy backed her tablet on my wi-fi and used that and every half an hour or so
she had wandered down to the kitchen and made us all a cuppa. I went to the loo
so many times after they had left and was desperate for it when Callie and I
got back from our walk! At one point I seriously contemplated doing a Paula
Radcliffe but wearing jeans meant that would have been very awkward. I just
held it in and walked a bit faster.
Today was another Uni / Work split and I fully expected
our renegade Frenchwoman to be back in the fold. She wasn’t. I decided not to
tell anyone unless I was specifically asked. I mean, there may be a perfectly
valid and acceptable reason why she is now three weeks late. Know Feli though,
I bet the reason isn’t either reasonable or acceptable to the powers that be.
If I don’t tell them she’s not here, they may not discover it! Is that
dishonesty or loyalty? I am not sure. Would she do the same for me? I seriously
doubt if the idea would enter her head!
At work we spent an age discussing Tchaikovsky with Mrs
Briggs. She is coming to the concert on Saturday where the whole programme is
Tchaikovsky. She was of the opinion that his music was so melodic, lyrical and
(frankly) cheerful to be a sort of counter to his depression and melancholia
about his homosexuality.
I think she must have been reading the BBC Music magazine
again!
Back home I spent the evening putting the finishing
touches to my lecture for tomorrow. Laura, my guinea pig audience, thought I
was worrying unnecessarily – she says even she gets it and she is a mere
mathematician. I suppose she is right. I will just jump in with both feet and
see how it goes. I mean, what is the worst that can happen? I can put them
asleep. They could walk out. They could even start heckling (actually they
wouldn’t do that). They could listen politely and be secretly bored out of
their skin! That would be the worst, to be honest. Imagine getting a name for
being boring? That would be horrible.
Laura came with me to walk Callie and we were rewarded by
hearing the two barn owls again. We even got to the spot where I had seen them
before and waited but they stayed in the woods proper this time. As if Mother Nature
wanted to make up for the lack of owl sightings she did show us a fox trooping
across Lumb Lane and over the dry stone wall and then in Onesacre we spotted a
little owl on a fence post. Its eyes reflecting green light back in my torch beam.
Luckily Callie didn’t see the fox or I know she’d have been over the wall herself
and after it.
Thursday 9th October.
D-Day wasn’t as bad as I had feared. The students were
attentive and appreciative and none of them started snoring. The Head of
Faculty snook in to the back of the room, after I had got going, and stayed for
about twenty minutes. I am not sure if her leaving after that length of time
was a good sign or a bad one. The students all diligently scribbled away on
their papers and seemed interested especially when I gave then some copies of
the letters that I had on the interactive white board, which they could keep. I
showed them some of our documents, in the flesh (as it were) to whet their
appetites for the rest of the series. Their questions in the Q & A were
pretty intelligent and insightful and showed they had been listening and
thinking about the subject. Two got me completely flummoxed when they asked about
the science departments input on our papers and what there had been on the Paston
ones. I was forced to admit I had no
idea but I would find out. (It was a good job there were only about 25 of them
present or I would have exhausted my photocopy budget on this first lecture. As
it was, I had to promise three of them I would photocopy more of the hand outs
as I ran out!)
Laura and I had lunch down at Lokanta as a mini
celebration.
I spent the rest of the day as puffed up as a male peacock.
I know I shouldn’t, but I felt really pleased with myself and happy that I had
done what I had always wanted to do. OK, to continue the bird images, one
swallow doesn’t make a summer but I was now no longer just a researcher. I have
crossed my Rubicon. I will stop blathering on, I could get tedious!
I texted Dad this afternoon and he phoned me back in my
office on my official phone! We chatted for what seemed like an eternity. I
gave him an almost blow by blow account of the hour and he sounded very chuffed
for his little girl. He actually asked when we were coming up next, as though
he missed me. (I may have misread that, obviously) but he did sound
disappointed when I said it wouldn’t be until the 17th. Perhaps I
imagined that bit. He sounded fascinated by the fact I was doing private
tutoring for GCSE pupils and wanted to know all about that. I could have sworn I had told him all
this, but it seems I hadn’t (I bet I did but he had forgotten). He also
informed me that my Brother was actually going to be going up and staying with
him and Louisa during the school’s half term week! Now that is news. He has
usually managed to go up to stay at Dad’s when Dad isn’t there. I reminded Dad
that my bedroom was off limits!
This evening Laura spent her fourth night on the trot at
the restaurant while I entertained Jenny-Leigh and her Mum. To look at J-L is a
fright. She has short dyed hair which is mainly blonde but has other, primary
colours mixed in. I have no idea what the original hair colour may be at all.
She has a pierced face, with eyebrow, nose and lip all bearing studs and
ironmongery of some description. She, too, was made up but hers was stark and
pale with black lipstick. If anything she is slimmer than Olivia and I suspect
without the fright-wig style hair and Goth make up she would be even prettier.
I expressed surprise that her school was tolerant of her
piercings, point to my nose and telling of the battle that caused. She
explained she wasn’t at school but sixth-from college and it laissez-faire
approach to most things was what was making her panic about her grades at A
Level. At first she had relished the freedom and lack of rigid discipline the
college offered but lately she was beginning to wonder if she was losing out
for not being in a more rigorous educational environment. I think she could
tell by my nose stud and multiple earrings that she had found a sympathetic ear
in one way but the fact that I was a PhD student meant I had academic rigour.
I think we hit it off quite well, really. She seemed as
clued up and tuned in as a lot of the undergraduates I meet on a daily basis. I
told her this too, which made her preen a bit more. When I asked about Dumfries
she became really animated and was sorry they’d moved down to England and she
couldn’t wait to get back home. If she is successful with her A Levels she is
hoping to go to Glasgow Uni to study Biological Science.
She is doing A Level Eng. Lang and had brought a couple
of past papers she was finding tricky. We worked through those for about an
hour and I think we made a lot of progress. She seemed much happier with what
she had done and what she needed to work on. Her Mum (typical Scot) said we
hadn’t done the two hours so did she have to pay for the two? I said no, I
would be fine with pro-rata. (It was J-L who had decided she was maxed out with
the Lang. and called it a day.) She tried to give me £37.50. I told her £35
would be fine. I think that go me brownie points.
As they were leaving I let slip I was Scots too. They didn’t
believe me because I talked like a BBC voice. I put on Mum’s accent and they
laughed and I explained about being born early, in Edinburgh. I should have
been born an Aries but Mum went into labour whilst at my Gran’s (Mum’s old home
town) in Hawick. This led to them asking if Dad was Scottish too, so I did Dad’s
accent and they laughed again.
It was strange the comparison between the two. Olivia at
15 is only 18 months younger than J-L but in terms of maturity J-L could have
been an undergraduate whilst Olivia seemed to still be a school girl. It would
be interesting to see how J-L scrubs up!
I recounted all this to Laura on her return from Dom’s.
She told me I should have insisted for the full hour’s payment even though we
had only done half of it. She may look like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth
but she is a tough cookie when she wants to be. Having her little love bump
licked makes her like putty in my hands though, as we practised a few minutes
later.
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