Something lovely about Thursday night – there seems to be a ‘Nearly there!’ party on the pavement outside every London pub, with young people in their 20s and early 30s knocking back enormous glasses of white wine – every glass a third of a bottle no doubt.\u00a0 Long term damage of no account when it’s a warmish autumn evening and there’s only a day of\u00a0the weekly grind to go.
\nTonight, for me, an actual embassy party – up a couple of steps from a London street\u00a0and you are in a foreign land, with people jabbering in a foreign language and a rather fierce lady complaining about the loos to 4 men –\u00a0 to see the launch of a teacher’s pack all about their country for use in schools.\u00a0 The pack seemed to\u00a0 do everything on its own – teacher input?\u00a0 perhaps they don’t anymore.\u00a0 One Pupil Task – the pack even set the homeworks – \u00a0was “Define the word ‘sustainable’ ” and you think, ‘How long could that possibly take?\u00a0 Long enough to be a task?’
\nMet a primary teacher who told me in her school there was no class with more than 30 pupils because of the ‘cast iron contract between the authority and the NUT.’\u00a0 Is that how such things are decided?\u00a0 Asked about admissions and appeals – her school doesn’t have such things, ‘We’re full.\u00a0 And we’re always full because we’ve had two outstanding judgements from Ofsted.’\u00a0 So why no clamour at the gates, with pupils being turned away and parents appealing?\u00a0 ‘Because we’re full.’\u00a0 Right.
\nYesterday to the HMC conference in Liverpool, and a glimpse of Roger McGough, and his so-true poem, ‘The Wrong Bed.’\u00a0 Worth the trip for that needle-sharp comment on us all – ‘Life is like a hospital ward and we are always in the wrong bed.’\u00a0 And a line that said something like, ‘Soul would always be happier anywhere rather than here.’\u00a0 And, ‘We did not make our beds, and we do lie in them.’\u00a0 Still wondering if he intended a pun there.
\nTrip blighted by leaving coat on train.\u00a0 And lo! they found it, but it will cost me a trip to Euston and \u00a35 to reclaim it.\u00a0\u00a0If I don’t, in 90 days they will burn it.\u00a0 Why not give it to a charity shop?\u00a0 How wasteful of them.\u00a0 And stupid of me.
\nSadly, discovered when I realised not wearing the coat that I wasn’t even wearing a suit – in the dark, or the haste, or the new glasses being less strong than I thought – that I had, to coin a phrase, put on the wrong trousers..
\nThere’s probably a story there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Something lovely about Thursday night – there seems to be a ‘Nearly there!’ party on the pavement outside every London pub, with young people in their 20s and early 30s knocking back enormous glasses of white wine – every glass a third of a bottle no doubt.\u00a0 Long term damage of no account when it’s\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}