... are coming up for the weekend.
Hopefully it'll help to break up the term for them a bit. We're not planning anything other than a chance for everyone to relax a bit, until it gets to Sunday afternoon and we have to sit through the England/Germany match, that is!
LILY & ROSE
Here are some photos of Lily & Rose. There are a few from the first time we saw them when they were just 4 weeks old. They would fit on your hand at this age and didn't look much like westies!
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Mixed up confusion subterranean work sick blues nothing better to do will anyone read it rant (pt 1)
ReplyDeleteAfter that thought provoking debate on “listless” and it’s antonym, you might like to consider that hoary old chestnut and huge bugbear of mine, subj/verb agreement during the World Cup (or indeed at any time on the BBC) Actually I thought you might have picked up on Alan Shearer’s new word “toughicult” the other afternoon and had a rant in the general direction of the inadequate TV footy pundits - Lee Dixon and Roy Hodgson being the notable exceptions.
It’s been a big bugbear of mine since an OfStEd inspection in 1999 when I picked up more than my fair share of mental scars which continue to affect me even today. I’m sure I’ve said on more than one occasion that I was observed as a head with a 0.8 teaching commitment for 75% of the 3 days. Middle school colleagues were still managing to escape even a few minutes of contact with the current plague. My feckless link adviser – who’s name escapes me for the moment – weeks afterwards said I should have made a complaint. (In actual fact the useless article failed to make contact during any of the many weeks leading up to this second inspection of mine and for weeks after the report came out – turned out she’d been busy in Horton Grange which was due to be inspected a matter of days before us and insisted she didn’t know we were due. I think that was an untruth and in truth I wondered who she thought I should complain about? Her?)
(Pt 2)
ReplyDeleteAnyway I digress (and not for the last time, I suspect).The RgI was an Oxford English graduate who, as my luck would have it, was a personal friend of the poet who’s poem I was intending to use during the first of 3 observed full literacy lessons – I kid ye not. The NLS was still in its infancy and clearly set out what should be taught about adjectives. A veritable minefield! I agonised over each and every word so that when some little darling shouted out, for example, “some” I would be able to reply correctly “Well done Danny boy, that is actually what we call a quantitative adjective....but what I’m looking for here is a superlative adjective......can you see it? There’s only one....and its very near the beginning!”. To which Dannyboy would immediately reply “yonder”......”Er yes....it is an adjective.....good boy....that’s excellent..........I forget which sort of adjective at the moment...but I’ll check it out at breaktime and get back to you. You caught me out there Danny....just shows we teachers don’t know everything......wow you’re cleverer that me this lesson” (you little swine....I wanted to continue)
So....you get my drift? I over prepared because this geezer had introduced himself and his own qualifications at an early stage in the process and for the first time I was one of those employees for whom I was responsible and by definition “head” teacher. As it turned out he was a jolly decent chap who’s guiding principle as RgI (he told us at a pre inspection meeting), was “Would I want my own son to be educated in this school?” ...a question I asked him to answer as he left at 7.30pm on the final evening of inspection. Anyway I digress yet again. The point is (at last)... we spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the English language and his growing despair at its misuse and apparent “dumbing” down by people who really should know better. He began to reel off the names of various educationists, committees and working parties he’d sat on since he began teaching (which was only about 7 years!!!!!) I was suitably impressed of course (probably more out of relief than anything else) even though I’d heard of none of them until he mentioned he’d met with John Humphries and discussed the “crusade” that he (Humphries)had been embarking on regarding amongst other things – wait for it – subject verb agreement.
(Pt3)
ReplyDeleteSurely then, “England is a team. England is on the attack again”. Doesn’t roll off the tongue does it? And none of the commentators use it. But it does agree? Don’t you? Commentators, not even Mark (I’m a jester) ‘Lawro’ Lawrenson would never dream of saying “South Africa are a beautiful country.” It is very interesting to see when it is and isn’t used correctly and who gets it wrong BBC news? These things used to matter to me (bug me) because of that OfStEd inspection 11 years ago when every “t” was crossed and each “i”, dotted.
As an addendum to the experience I wrote to the RgI much later after seeing the redoubtable Mr Humphries on a TV “Test the Nation” type quiz show, who, when asked a particular question by the show’s host, replied “Well....” he smarmily drawled “there are a number of them!”
Oops! The champion of the English language.....on National television! Of course no one really cares do they? Perhaps it has become one of those accepted and acceptable inaccuracies.
I don’t care now either....but that bastard (the jolly decent chap)didn’t half put me through the mill worrying about getting it right in February 1999.
Oh and in case you’re wondering. The answer to the RgI's question was
You sound just like my father, Dannymatt!
ReplyDeleteHe had a command of the English language that was quite simply extraordinary and I will always be thankful that I benefited from his tuition.
There are many aspects of our misuse of English that irritate me, probably too many to list - but the one that really gets to me, and everyone does it, is the use of 'different to...' It's NOT different to, it's different FROM and nobody ever gets it right.