Lesbo pash on Emily Blunt? Guilty!

Monday February 9^th.

Déjà vu, it’s happened before,

Déjà vu, it’ll happen once more,

You can’t be sure of when,

But it’s déjà vu, it’ll happen again!

Today’s déjà vu was another newtmageddon! I can’t believe it. What were the silly buggers thinking, coming out while it is so cold and wintry? They are supposed to say somewhere warm and damp, not venture on to the public highway and risk getting squished by passing cars! OK, it was only a mini-newtmageddon compared to last year’s carnage – there were just three dead [common] newts but that is three too many. There were also two flattened toads, too. What was it about last night’s weather that made them decide to be so reckless? I know I am stupid and foolish, but it makes me cry when these beautiful little creatures end up under a car’s wheels. It also begs the question how can newts get run over on such a quiet road? Do the local motorists deliberately drive up there in the hope of committing newticide? It is a very under-used road really. I am stunned, still, hours after the event. Maybe I need to get a life?

Sarah was shocked that I was shocked. She thought newts were horrible. I asked her if she’d ever seen one close up and she had to admit she was mixing them up with the lizards she had seen in Spain which frightened her. (How can you be frightened of a lizard?) She couldn’t get her head round the fact that I actually picked up live ones who were stranded on the road and moved them to the verge to avoid squishing. The most I have moved in a single night is about twelve! I think they are wonderful, oh dear, I am sounding rather like Gussie Finknottle from the Jeeves and Wooster stories!

Our two part day at work went pretty much as it usually does. Mrs B offered her opinion of Tony – she thought if he was genuine, he would be a great BF for my Mum. These sort of echo my thoughts, I guess. Why am I suspicious of Mum’s men? It seems a bit like a role reversal in a way. Laura thinks I am just being naturally protective of her and it’s nothing to fret about. She is right.

Trevor was on time and his usual stereotypical self. If I didn’t know he lacked an imagination (you can’t help but notice after talking with him for a while) I would think his studied machismo was just an act to try and wind us up. I sincerely hope he isn’t representative of the men out there. Some of my personal tutees are just as insensitive and emotionally retarded too. Worrying, isn’t it?

Tuesday Feb 10^th

A full day at Uni and I got masses done without interference or restraint from anyone. I also managed to drink my way through fifteen mugs of tea. Do you know that after a while it just flows straight through you? I would drink a mugful and a few minutes later I’d be trooping down to the ladies to empty the tank. Perhaps my body had become a super-saturated solution! At lunch, with Loll, Feli and a couple of others of our acquaintance I was told it was a psychological reflex, not a physical one. Once my mind thinks I need to pee I won’t be happy until I have, despite the fact that my bladder can take half as much again after I think I want to go. I need to resist the temptation to go immediately and by doing that I will eventually break the cycle. I said maybe I shouldn’t drink so much tea.

It was weird having Sally and Olivia on the same day. (We have done it a couple of times in the past, but now Sally has agreed to a permanent move.) We decided that the fairest way to sort out who would use the study was to flip a coin for it this time and then just alternate after that. Sally won so Olivia and I sat in the kitchen while her Mum surfed the net on her tablet in our lounge.

Her last written piece of work for class was excellent. She has, at last, seen the benefit of using a plan before putting her thoughts onto paper. The results were clear to see. I was so impressed with her I went through to tell her Mum that the piece she’d brought was probably the best she had ever written for me in the few months we’ve been working together. Her Mum was as chuffed as I was. If she can keep this up I can’t see any reason why she can’t get the A grade she wants.

Olivia was still about doubtful. She was worried that it was just ordinary, it wasn’t exciting or “Wowy” her word. I told her that the examiners were not looking for the next JK Rowling or whoever, they realised that a 16 year old isn’t going to be writing a best seller. What they want is as close to technical perfection that they can get. The piece she gave me was punctuated properly, had no spelling or grammatical errors and had a feeling of truth about it. I usually use a pencil to go through her work with her, underlining things which are awkward, clumsy or wrong, tonight’s piece had no pencil at all (apart from a missed capital letter).

I told her off. I said that if she continued like this she’d be doing me out of a job. This made her smile but at the same time her eyes welled up. I asked her what was the matter and she said she enjoyed my lessons and thought she had made progress but she was worried that she had no idea what she wanted to do after her GCSEs. She hasn’t a career goal in her head and her careers adviser at school wasn’t helpful at all. (I know the feeling. Ours were only interested in getting us to Oxbridge!) I told her if she felt like she needed to think about the subjects she most enjoyed at GCSE and do them at A Level. That’s basically what I did, my A Levels were Eng Lit, History, Geology, Chemistry and Latin.

My teachers were keen for me to go down the Chemistry route but I love Literature and History so I ended up applying to read Classics. Which is exactly what I did; despite it having no ‘market place’ value. She wanted to know what my parents thought about that. I explained that Dad was out of the picture by then but he was happy with anything which took me to University. Mum was still trying to persuade me not to go into teaching and was pleased that Classics didn’t look like a likely path into her profession. She needn’t have fretted, having seen the stress, worry and unbelievable work load she had as a school teacher there is no way on earth I am going to do anything like that at all, ever! She was an Assistant Head Teacher by the time I was in a position to understand these things and that made me even more certain. If someone so high up the food chain in her school could be under that much stress, what must it be like at the actual chalk-face? Mmm… Thanks but No Thanks!

Olivia thought this was good advice and, I hope, was a bit more cheered. It would be useful to know what her mother’s take on this is. I decided the best way to do that was to call her when Olivia would be at school, or something, so she wouldn’t be an eavesdropper to our conversation. She and Trev left just after nine and Lol and I shared a bottle of Hilmar’s Dornfelder as a reward for our efforts.

Wednesday Feb 11^th.

Our 100 lengths are going as fast as we were before our sojourn in Cumbria. We are now a good four or five minutes quicker than when we started again in mid January. This is where we have decided to stick, rather than push on for faster times or more lengths. Not that you’d notice if you were waiting for us, it just means we are taking a bit longer in the changing rooms than we used to. Callie gets left in the back of the car while we swim so we can’t be too dilatory for her sake. It’s also a way of getting the woofter dried off before we get back from our walk. Loll picks me up on the lane as I am making my way back home, which makes it simpler all round. The only downside of doing this is it makes the car boot a mess. I have to clean it out a least once a week and her boot bedding needs a wash on a weekly basis too.

Tonight we did the first of our midweek cinema trips. Laura’s choice this week. It was ‘Into The Woods’. I hadn’t realised it was musical! Durr! I really enjoyed it. I thought Emily Blunt was a revelation. I can’t recall seeing her act in anything before but I was really impressed by her. More so than by Meryl Streep who took the histrionics a bit far in my opinion (and why did she turn herself into a tar pool near the end? I didn’t get that at all!) What I did like was the way it changed from all cutesy Disney into more honest realism in the final quarter. I thought that was a very good touch. Laura kept whispering that I had a lezzie pash on Emily Blunt, which was a bit embarrassing. I should have kept my gob shut. I will have to remember to clear my tablet’s search history too. (Yes, I did, I googled her and looked at her pictures.)

The next film we have planned is my choice and its ‘Kingsmen’. I think it could be good as it is made by the people who made Kiss-Ass which I loved so much and has Colin Firth. What more can I say? Apart from, “Dive into the lake for me Colin!”

Thursday Feb 12^th.

One day before our silly expedition to Dad’s via Newcastle. Laura phoned her sisters to check that all was OK and that we’d meet them in the Theatre Royal foyer at 7pm. At the time we booked the tickets this seemed like a sensible thing to do but now I have checked google maps and had a few nights sleep to mull it over I realise we must be complete and total nutters. It’s about 130 miles and we will be hitting Newcastle at rush hour! The girls will be travelling almost as far from Maryport it’s about 90 miles to the car park by the theatre. All so that Laura’s nieces will see one of the best introductions to live ballet you can give them. The Nutcracker; performed by the Scottish Ballet. If I could chose the exact ballet to take them to then it would definitely be La Fille Mal Gardee, but as there are no productions of it in the north for a while this is a pretty good second choice.

Our work today was just as usual once more. Mrs B at Triple Ecks and Why was amazed by what we were going to be doing tomorrow. We are sneaking off from Uni at 3pm, having worked over lunch time. (Well, I will, Loll is going to go home, walk Callie then bring her back to Uni at 1.15 so she can kip in the back of the car and we will be able to head north pronto ballero!

Jenny-Leigh and Roberta thought we were mad. Roberta’s Dad said we should forget the afternoon and leave at lunchtime instead. We’ll sleep on that and make an executive decision tomorrow. J-L is getting stressed about her exams again. I am not sure why, she is doing pretty well on all the practice stuff we’ve done and in the preparation. Nerves I suppose.

When the two of them went their way home we finished off Tuesday night’s Dornfelder, watched our recording of Wolf Hall, and had a relatively early night. Fortifying ourselves for the whacky races tomorrow.