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Full time?

Pic of the week 27/9/20

So Covid’s making a comeback and, consequently, I’ve made a big decision.

I’ve blown full-time on my refereeing, at least for the time being.

I don’t fear contracting the virus whilst taking charge of a fixture – its quite easy to keep oneself socially distanced and being outdoors I feel pretty safe, but what concerns me is getting a subsequent call from track and trace to say that someone at a game I have refereed has tested positive and that therefore I need to self-isolate for 14 days.

I don’t want to have to do that as it would drive me mad, plus I would feel I was letting down everyone at school. So I fulfilled my commitment to referee today, but other than school games, that’s it for the time being. I’m limiting my exposure to the world to work and home.  I think that is now how things will be until Spring.

On a more cheery note, the pic above shows my pumpkins nicely turning orange. The leaves are  (have!) turning into crisps, it’ll soon be time to harvest them. I have enjoyed watching them grow. With the leaves now a shadow of their former magnificence, the chard plants are once again beginning to thrive, it will be interesting to see how long they last through winter.

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Life rolls on …

Pic of the week 20/9/20

Nothing major to report this week, but nevertheless an important week, a week in which work (sort of) got back to normal.

By the end of the teaching week I think I had come to grips with the “new normal” way of teaching. I’d got my classes all set up on One Note and we (both students and I) were beginning to become familiar with how we will work from now on.  Normally, by the end of week one in September some semblance of normality has returned, this year it took an extra week, but I’d go as far as to say that I am now enjoying work again.  I’m even beginning to “see” more people (colleagues) at work and enjoying a chat with them. This does remain a challenge – one of the great things about working at Millfield is the huge range of people I work with, and now we are all bubbled (I think, for staff, silo-ed might be a better word) those daily random encounters just aren’t happening. To help overcome this, at break time and lunch time, when I can, I’m leaving my room and just going for a wander around campus to see who I bump into.

On Wednesday evening, after my Spanish lesson, Becky, Sam & I raced up to Windmill Hill to try and grab a glimpse of the setting sun. It was lovely to go back up there – but did make us question how we found the time for our Boris walks during lock down.

 

 

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Ankle

Pic of the week 13/9/20

I came home on Saturday to find Sam mewling with pain and generally feeling sorry for himself.

The night before he had been staying with pals and they went on a night time (drunken) ramble and Sam fell over some logs and hurt his ankle. It was heavily swollen and he couldn’t weight bear.

Fearing it may be broken, this morning Sophie took him to Bridgwater A&E, where they diagnosied a sprain and sent him home. He can now walk gingerly on both feet, although he’s not going in to work until Friday. (He now needs to use his “time off” to focus on his physics  revision.)

The first week of term is over, and its been a tough start working in a socially distanced school. The pupils aren’t really socially distancing, teaching is harder (than normal) – its been a tiring start to the year. I hope we all begin to settle into some sort of normalcy soon, I don’t think the demands of last week are sustainable.  Normally, a day or two into term rhythms and routines are established, but that is yet to be the case.  An “interesting” term awaits, I think.

 

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Back to school!

Pic of the week 6/9/20

So the long summer holidays are over and its back to (physical) school for the first time since late March.

This last week has been INSET week and I’ve been in on most days, but it was Thursday and Friday that were the official INSET days. It was good to be back and see so many people in one day! On Thursday evening, sat on my sofa, I felt exhausted, in part because I’d “done” a full day, but I suspect it was also because of the many social interactions I had during the day.

However, things are very different from September ’19, staff wise we are “bubbling” in the department which is fine, and understandable, but it will be a shame to not so easily see friends and colleagues from other deprtments. We’ll also be teaching much more “electronically” (rather than using paper), and lunch times etc will be different.

The picture above shows me “suited and booted” as on Friday I had to record a short piece to camera for the Year 10 assembly, no more physical assemblies for now. I’ve enjoyed loafing around in shorts and a T-Shirt for six months, but it was good to be “looking good” in suit and tie again.

As predicted, I didn’t run as much in August, as I have done plenty of refereeing, and have swum 4 times, but still managed 115 Kms