Where's the fire, Miss?

So I've been dead to the world whilst doing a couple of weeks teaching at a boys' boarding school. It's a weird experience being back in the teaching world and I'm glad to see that across the teaching spectrum, children are still essentially the same.

I was teaching a class today and the fire alarm went off. All members of the class immediately vanished at high speed. As I wandered vaguely into the corridor, someone tipped me off and I turned to see one of the new boys from my class clutching an armfull of teddies which he had grabbed from his bed in the event of there actually being a fire. Bless.

I managed through some confusion on my part to miss the first fifteen minutes of my afternoon lesson with my year 5 class and when I came up the stairs was stopped in my tracks by a loud stage whisper of "She's coming!" Any teacher worth their salt knows that once you hear this cry you should be prepared for something annoying to be going on in your classroom. (If you're a man and hear this, your class thinks you're gay. Just saying.)

Once I have steeled myself for the worst and entered the classroom, I'm surprised to see one of the boys (boy A) from my class there. (I don't know I have them, remember. Honestly, if I'm going to have to keep repeating myself, I'm not going to bother. Listen, will you?!) He says "I don't know where the others are, Miss..." I wander across the classroom to the timetable asking him where he should be, at which point he informs me about the lesson. Duh!

I'm not listening to his bizarre explanation because I have just noticed a bum sticking out from under my desk. I point at it and ask a question not many teachers have asked in the history of teaching. (Sadly) "Whose bum is that?" Child A addresses the bottom in question and says irritably "You were supposed to come out now!!" The bottom and the child attached to it emerge along with one of the other members of the class looking sheepish. I'm just about to sit at my desk when I realise we're missing a child here. Of course, he must be under the desk. I can hear strange thumping and banging noises. Eventually, the noise stops and a little voice from within says "Miss, my head's stuck behind the drawers. Child A pushed the chair in and I can't get out." I help him out and because I was so perplexed by their odd behaviour I just let it go and get on with the lesson. To their credit, they are unusually unfazed by this bizarre start to the lesson and we actually get some stuff done.

It's only at the end of the lesson that the hilarity of the situation dawns on me. At least three boys, sensing an amusing way to put me off teaching, wedge themselves under the desk. They're not tiny kids. The desk is quite small and old fashioned. They must have rushed underneath when I was a couple of minutes late and then got child A to push my chair in to hide them. They were crammed under there for 15 minutes. Then I come in and am just slightly bemused by them being there in the first place, not to mention why they're under my desk instead of at their tables. It was just a bit... sad. I think they were just a bit embarrased in the end. It was so lame, I couldn't even get angry. Jesus. Fifteen minutes! That takes some devotion to the cause. Good prank!

"Full of it" indeed...

So the other day, I saw this in the newspaper. Of course, I grabbed my trusty digital camera and snapped away because, quite frankly, no one would believe that a toy like this could exist.

Having dumped the plastic-haired, blatently gay Ken, Barbie has bought a new pet. You feed it "biscuits", it poos, Barbie picks it up with her 8 foot long poop scooper. Very posh. No plastic bag on groping hand for her!Thing is, the way your eye is drawn around the article does give a rather hideous view of what is actually happening. Observe...






...See? Words fail me on this picture. There must be something very wrong with this dog. As we all know, dogs are masters of the whole 'squat and gurn' technique. I've never known a sheer stream of pellets emerge from a dog's butt before. Sheep, yes.

And this was just about the point when it all becomes slightly disgusting.

So kiddies, as you can see, no animal shits on the floor on Barbie's watch, no siree. She'll make you eat that crap.... EAT IT!! And you'll like it!

Don't try and tell me this is going to be a big selling toy. (Boy I can't wait to see the advert on TV though!) Obviously I want one, but what kid will buy it? You just know you'll lose all those biscuits/poos within the first week, especially as they seem to come out Niagra Falls stylee. Not cool, Barbie. Not cool at all.

Just watch while I poke him with a stick...

I just had to say how sad I was to hear about Steve Irwin dying yesterday. I don't think I've enjoyed watching nature documentaries as much in my whole life as when I saw the 'Crocodile Hunter' for the first time about 7 years ago.

Oddly enough, it was the sound of my Dad shrieking (he never has before or since) that drew me into the room that day, where I found him bouncing up and down in his chair and pointing at the TV shouting, "Just look at this crazy bastard! Look what he's doing!!' There on the screen was the khaki-clad, bemulleted Mr Irwin. Holding some kind of spitting cobra by the tail, as it turned out... Obviously, I was an instant convert.

Since then, I have laughed my metaphorical ass off for many years while watching him harrass various animals, sometimes with a stick, sometimes without. Watching David Attenborough squatting and whispering some 400 metres away from the action just didn't seem the same. My personal favourite Irwin quote, amongst all the 'git on him Wes!' and 'Isn't she a BEAUTY!' business has to be from the episode where they were building new enclosures for crocs in India and putting them into their new homes. After the croc breaking its original stone enclosure with its head whilst being removed, the very grumpy reptile was refusing to go to the water and enjoying savaging the film crew much more.

Steve then decided to 'rile him up' by grabbing the crocodile's tail in the hope of getting it in the water. The croc basically tried to eat him immediately and then slunk into its pool looking very smug while Steve ran vertically up a metal fence at around 40 mph. Very impressive. After he had climbed down covered in sweat and probably some other fluids, he sat by the fence and marvelled at the impressive might of the crocodile. Evidently the exitement had robbed him of the power of speech, because all he could stammer out repeatedly was "My GOD, THE POWER.... The...The...POWER...The power...." Needless to say, The Pook and myself have made this quote our own, and say it in full with broad Aussie accents whenever we see an impressive feat. (It's always good when a scrawny man is struggling with something heavy. )

Ah. Steve Irwin. You rocked!

The Cotton Buds of EVIL!!

Or if I was from the states – The Q Tips of EVIL!!

Uh. I’ve just seen Judy Finnegan gouging around in a nostril (hers) when she thought she wasn’t on camera. Come now Judy, you’re ALWAYS on camera.

I’m getting so fed up with my ear. After my previous visit to the doctor to get said ear sorted out, it still hadn’t cleared up and I woke up this morning with it aching horribly and my jaw was all gammy. It’s my Dad’s birthday today and so I had to go out to lunch with him, so appointments today would be tricky. I phoned the doctor to try and book an appointment for next week. A ridiculously over enthusiastic receptionist booked me in for 11.40 this morning almost before I had a chance to say anything. Thanks. That’s super efficient! Actually, I found the phone number on the internet and somehow managed to phone the sexual health clinic by accident. I realise now, in retrospect that my saying “Oh, sorry, I wanted the number for the surgery” might have sounded as though I was chickening out with some kind of personal wart problem. Stupid sexual health clinic…

I’d got booked in with this doctor I hadn’t heard of before. She had a name like a Bond villain, which I went around the house saying in my ‘exciting voice’. (Which I use to say ‘Doctor Evil’ and also ‘Cheesy peas’… for some reason) I’d love to tell you what it was, but in the light of what else I’m about to say about her, I probably shouldn’t.

So once again, I find myself in the surgery, wondering what everyone else has. My doctors' surgery used to have this numbered ticket thing and you had to wait for the buzzer by the doctors' names to go off like one of those horrendous bell alarm clocks. Now they’ve replaced it with yet another irritating system, which is at least a bit clearer. Your name pops up on one of those light box screen things, which I find slightly embarrassing. I, like everyone else, enjoy playing the ‘match the name to the person’ game. (And if I’m really bored, the ‘guess their aliment’ game) The appearance of a random name is sadly accompanied by a noise carefully geared to draw everyone’s attention and rouse dozing elderly people with hearing problems. It sounds like the bloody 3 minute warning. You’re feeling nervy enough as it is, knowing that a severe poking and prodding in one of your many cavities is headed this way. The last thing you need is a noise reminiscent of a fog-horn blast going off at 2 minute intervals hurling you from your plastic chair into an exciting martial arts fighting stance.

Finally with an ear-splitting blast it’s my turn and I do the ‘dead man walking’ bit down the massive long corridor to this woman’s door. I open the door and there’s a woman with a serious moustache sitting there. Now, I am a woman with a moustache. It’s very unattractive unless I spend time bleaching and trimming (and even then, it’s not the most appealing part of me.) Hers was only small. (Like Hitler’s, I’m afraid to say.) I reeled slightly but was able to cover it. She also had chronic dandruff (not on the moustache, thankfully). I felt really sorry for her, because in her job, she must have people like me coming in and doing double takes all day. It was a bit like going to a dentist who sports a mouthful of misshapen grotty teeth. I kept thinking, can’t she prescribe anything for that? Imagine if you went to the doctor to ask them if there was anything you could do about the excess hair on your upper lip and she turned out to be your GP. Would you make up some phantom ailment or just go for it whilst stammering ‘not that there’s anything wrong with a moustache, but it doesn’t really suit me…’

She turned out to be brilliant, despite the... you know… She peered into my ear using one of those strange mini cones with a light on the end and muttered something about ‘clear discharge’ which I think is what doctors say when you aren’t looking quite uncomfortable enough. After a couple of seconds with the cone poking seemingly into my very brain, she fixes me with a look and asks me if I use cotton buds. I do, but there’s something about the look that makes me want to lie, like when they used to ask me if I smoked and I would say ‘no….’ in a drawn out fashion. That’s an outright lie I usually saved for my father. I admitted my use of cotton buds and she beat me about the face and neck with the ear cone light until I cried and begged forgiveness at her feet. Well, not quite. But I did feel bad about my gouging habits and received a lecture about how cotton buds should be outlawed.

Anyway it turns out that when you stick a cotton bud in your ear and ‘wank’ it about (yes, my eyebrow rose at the use of that particular verb too, but she styled it out nicely) tiny cotton fibres are released and these have caused the infection within my ear. I have to use a wet flannel to poke about with instead and put cotton wool in my ear when I shower. I’m not sure of the difference between stuffing a cotton bud in your ear and stuffing cotton wool in your ear. She gave me some antifungal cream and sent me away. More potions, just what I need. It has to go in the fridge, so I look forward to seeing it on someone’s piece of toast one of these fine mornings. According to the doc, I have to put the cream on my finger and shove it as far into my ear as I can get it twice a day. You know, I can’t help thinking that it would work much better if I smeared it on a cotton bud first…