Day 6: Bank holiday

For those new to my blog; back in October last year, after being single for a looooong time (ten years to be precise.  You can read my reasons for that here), I met a lovely guy who I call The Boy for reasons of anonymity and because it makes me smile*. 

Just finding The Boy in the first place was something of a challenge, and then getting two socially awkward and shy people to declare their 'like' for each other presented a second challenge.  But next came the biggest challenge of all: in January, he moved to the Netherlands to work on his PhD for eight months.  Cue a great deal of travelling for both of us, as we embarked on a long distance relationship and fell in love while hundreds of miles apart.

So, this bank holiday (and the next, and the one after that) I will be wearing out my passport to visit him in Nijmegen.  I have my euros ready, my bag packed, and by the time you read this on Monday I will be very happily lazing in bed with the man who makes me happier than anything else in the world.

* It particularly makes me smile that some of my IRL friends who read this blog have taken to calling him The Boy in day-to-day conversation, rather than by his actual given name.

Day 5: Fit, healthy... and fat

Today's Blog Every Day In May topic was Fit & Healthy, which sort of ties in with a topic I've wanted to write about for a while: a follow-up to last year's post about the politics of fat. 

I enjoy quite a bit of thin privilege within the fat acceptance movement; wavering between a size 14 and an 18, I am able to fit into most straight-size ranges and have a whole host of fashion choices that women size 20+ don't.  However, relative thin privilige is all very well but there's no denying that, in the eyes of a society which values and promotes an extreme, size 0 version of skinny, I'm fat and, for the most part, that has been fine with me. 

I don't recall a time when I ever felt thin.  But I've worked hard to resist external messages about bodies, so I also find it hard to recall a time when not feeling or being thin has seemed like a big problem.  I have never dieted.  I have never limited my consumption of food.  I have never tried to exercise my way to thinness (which is not to say I don't exercise; I do and always have, because it feels good.  I just don't do it to lose weight). 

I've always considered my fat acceptance to be political; feminist in fact.  Have I always loved my body?  Hell no, but I've always felt that to diet, when I'm perfectly healthy, would be to fall for a lie which is, at its root, deeply misogynistic.  The lie that, if only you can attain the 'perfect body', all will be well.  The lie that encourages women to take up as little space as possible; to devote their time and energy to becoming thinner instead of, I dunno, doing something of actual value instead.  I've always maintained that if my body can do what I need it to do - if it is fit and healthy - then why deny myself?  A body can be unhealthy at any size.  Mine - with every part functioning well; with a recent full physical exam proving that I'm as healthy as can be; with its ability to work out in the gym or climb a mountain - is demonstrably healthy*. I thought I had this body positive, self-love thing down pat.

But just recently I look in the mirror at my body and I am sure it is bigger than before.  It wobbles.  It doesn't make me feel good to see it.  When I'm lying naked in bed with my boyfriend and he tells me I have a beautiful body, I can't help but give him the side-eye.  Can't he feel my belly, squashed up against his taut, muscular stomach?  How can he think that my hips, my back, my arms, with their excess flesh, are "beautiful"?

The always-wonderful Bethany at Arched Eyebrow wrote a fabulous post about fatphobia recently and included in it this great line: " it doesn’t matter how much work we do on ourselves, how high we drag ourselves up the ladder of self-love and confidence, we will always exist in this environment that hates our bodies."  When you live in a society that is constantly sending out messages about how the 'ideal' body looks, it's easy to internalise those messages without realising it.  I think I have briefly succumbed to society's fatphobia.  I need to start dragging myself back up that ladder of self-love again.

* Although I often wonder: if I was thin, would I feel the need to write that list. Would I need to 'prove' my health?

Day 4: Five blogs I love

I've banged on about my favourite blogs before - Make Do & Mend, Sarah Rooftops (sadly on hiatus at the moment; hurry back Sarah, we miss you!) Nekomentsu and Make, Do & Spend are my top reads - but here are five other great blogs...

1. Knitting On Trains has been a favourite for a while now.  Jess writes about her thrifty, crafty and bookish goings-on.

2. Helen - who blogs at Using My Loaf - and I long ago discovered that we have all sorts in common. Her posts always make me laugh and I love reading about the progress she and Rob are making with their home makeover and VW camper renovations. 

3. Distract Me Now Please would be on my list just for her brilliantly funny Shit My Family Says post, but the rest of the blog is fab too; a great mix of random musings and lifestyle stuff.

4. I discovered Foof And Faff after Elise commented on something here, and I now love looking at the photographs of her walks around the Scottish countryside and coastline and noseying at what she's wearing in her outfit posts.

5. I really enjoy looking at Mizhenka's photographs and am glad she's back blogging after a short break.

Day 3: A day in the life

Yesterday was the most boring of all possible days!  I swear my life is usually more interesting than this...

6.15am
My alarm goes off.  I press snooze.  It continues to go off, at 4 minute intervals, until about 6.35, when I finally wake up properly and drag myself out of bed... after checking Twitter, Whats App and Facebook on my phone, of course.

A quick wash, brush teeth, then make-up and hair.  I throw some clothes on - usually a dress and a cardigan - then pick up my laptop and lunch and get in the car.

7.15am
Arrive at school*.  Look at the huge pile of worksheets, marking, paperwork and general crap on my desk and want to cry.  I make sure my lessons for the day are all planned, then quickly check The Guardian website and my emails, before heading downstairs for a cup of tea, a breakfast bar, and a natter with colleagues.

* Insert obligatory rant about bloody Gove and his assertions that teachers don't work hard enough. I wonder if he's at his desk just after 7am every day?!

8.10am
The bells rings for the start of school.  I go and register my tutor group - sorting out letters from parents, helping them with homework, reading out notices and talking to the lads about their defeat at football last night - then start teaching lessons at 8.35am.

This morning Year 9 are getting ready for their GCSE Controlled Assessments, so even the naughty kids are calmer and more focused than usual; they recognise the fact that this assessment is pretty important.  Next, Year 8 are 'doing' Romeo & Juliet, which I love.  I possibly get slightly over-excited when talking about the balcony scene, but they don't seem to mind and produce some lovely work, writing a diary in character as Romeo. 

After breaktime my Year 6 class tackle a practice SATs paper with great effort, if not much actual ability.  It breaks my heart to see 10 year olds sitting silently in ranks, brows puckered as they try to figure out a long text about the Great Plague (way to keep kids engaged by using contemporary materials in English tests, QCA!).

Finally, after an hour of non-contact time in which I meet with a pupil and then mark books, Year 7 arrive high as kites and I have to send one boy out of the room to calm down.  Three children haven't done their homework so need sanctions; half of the class misunderstand the instructions (despite being told them verbally, shown a copy on the board and having a worksheet in front of them) and need to start again; after twenty minutes, one boy has managed to draw a single line in his book and has to be moved away from his friends so he can concentrate.  I keep most of the class behind - an extremely rare occurence for me, as I expect and generally receive excellent behaviour  - but we're all out of the classroom by 2.55pm.

Some days I'm lucky enough to be away from school just after 3pm (still an 8 hour day, bearing in mind my start time), but more often than not I'll have a meeting or lots of work to get on with, and so will stay at school until 4 or 5pm (if the meeting is a late one).  Today's a good one, and I manage to escape quickly.

4pm
Home, after taking some clothes back to GAP and buying a couple of things in Boots.  A quick shower and wash my hair, then I start packing my bag for a trip to visit my boyfriend in the Netherlands this weekend.

5pm
I sit on my laptop at the kitchen table to catch up on reading blogs and to write my own, while listening to the Steve Lamacq show on 6 Music.

7.30pm
I make dinner - reheated lasagne, from a batch I made last week - and sit down with a glass of wine and watch How I Met Your Mother while I eat, before relaxing with a book for a couple of hours before bed at 10pm.  After all, I'll be travelling for about 6 hours tomorrow, so I need my beauty sleep!

Day 2: Spring is here!

Photo via weheartit

This spring, I am looking forward to...

... spending this weekend with my lovely boy at his home in Nijmegen (in the Netherlands);
... the weather finally warming up - please?  Soon would be nice?
... finishing the make-over of my living room - photos coming soon;
... a visit from my dad;
... and a visit to my mum;
... seeing my friends Hannah and Darren, who are visiting Leicester from Norfolk soon;
... tackling the stack of books which is building up on my bedside table: next up, a choice between Christopher Brookmyre, Marian Keyes and Jeanette Winterson.  I'm nothing if not catholic in my tastes;
... my trip to Berlin with The Boy at half term;
... counting down to my birthday in June.

Day 1: Five lines

First day of the #BEDM challenge, and our instructions were to "introduce yourself or sum yourself up in five lines."  But because there's not much I haven't said about myself on here (I do love a good FAQ post, like this one, or this) I wanted to think of five things I haven't shared before.  So...

1. I secretly like parents’ evenings at school, because I always get told by at least one parent that I’m a brilliant teacher* – and what teacher doesn’t enjoy hearing that?!

2. My happiest memories are all of festivals; something about the combination of music, sunshine, friends and cider.

3. I have an overactive imagination and always think the worst.  Mum visiting me and is 10 minutes later than she said she’d be?  Dead in a crash on the M1.  Boyfriend hasn’t replied to my messages?  Obviously doesn’t love me anymore.  Bus hasn’t arrived yet?  I’ll miss my train and therefore my plane.

4. When I was a child, I wanted to be a writer or an actor.  The one job I said I would never do, under any circumstances?  Yep, you’ve guessed it: teacher.

 

5. I'm a less picky eater than I used to be, but I retain a trinity of hated foodstuffs: mushrooms; vinegar; fruit as a garnish on (or in) savoury meals.

 

* I'm not claiming they're right, but it's nice to be told it regardless of whether it's true.

Blog every day in May...?

I signed up for Rosalilium's 'Blog Every Day In May' challenge with some trepidation.  I do feel that I need to regain my blogging mojo - my drafts folder is full of half-written posts that I can't seem to knock into shape - but I'm not convinced that blogging every day is the answer. 

Towards the end of 2012 I suddenly got a lot busier (two words - The Boy) and, as a result, started blogging a lot less.  But weirdly, I think the quality of my posts really improved once I began writing once or twice a week rather than feeling the pressure to post more often, and I have gained more new readers and followers in the past four months than I had in the previous two years of blogging.

I'm also not at all sure that I will be able to meet the challenge.  I'm away a lot in May (that 'B' word again!), plus it's a crazy month at work - with Year 6 SATs exams, lots of extra-curricular stuff to plan, and getting my Year 9 classes through their transition to GCSE - and fitting writing around that is going to be tough.

So, if I'm not convinced I'll manage it, why am I giving it a go?  Well, it sounds like a fun thing to take part in, and many of the topics that Elizabeth has come up with for the challenge have got me thinking.  I've already decided that if it gets to the point where I'm not enjoying it anymore, I'll give up.  But in the meantime, prepare for your Facebook, Twitter, and Bloglovin feeds to be jammed with posts from me!

April reads

Wow, I read a lot this month!  Still not quite as much as I would like, but a huge improvement on previous months.

Non-fiction

1. I can't recommend Girls To The Front enough.  It's a heartfelt, passionate and beautifully written account of the genesis of Riot Grrrl, focusing on the Olympia and Washington DC scenes but encompassing the stories of girls and women from all over the USA.  If you are at all interested in the 90s, in feminism, or in music history, then this is a great read.

2. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, Jeaneatte Winterson's autobiography, was this month's book group pick and I'm looking forward to discussing it in the pub tomorrow evening.  I loved this beautifully written, poetic account of Winterson's childhood and her adult struggles with her past and her adoption.  As much a paean to the power of literature to change lives as an autobiography, I especially enjoyed her musings on working class identity, the changing face of the North, and feminism. 

Fiction

3. Jennifer Weiner's novels are a cut above the usual 'chick lit' (urgh, what a horrible term that is) and deserve better than this horrible, fluffy cover.  Fly Away Home is the story of three women - senator's wife Sylvie and her daughters Lizzie and Diana - and how they cope when their lives all take courses they couldn't have predicted.

4. Another month, another Sookie Stackhouse novel.  I'd already read Deadlocked, and even though it's not the best in the series, these books are always good for a quick read.

5. The one novel that I read this month which could be considered 'worthy' literature, Life After Life has been praised to the rafters in the reviews pages and nominated for the Women's Prize (formerly the Orange Prize).  The conceit - of a baby who is reborn again and again, getting chance after chance at life - was an interesting one, and there were some wonderful touches of humour to be derived from Ursula's situation (I loved the chapters in which she kept on trying to avoid catching - and dying from - the Spanish flu in 1918).  I did feel my attention waver somewhat towards the end, but it's nevertheless a brilliant read which made me think about the effect that seemingly tiny actions can have on our lives.

6. Dying Fall is Griffiths' fifth novel featuring forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway.  I think it suffered somewhat for moving the action from her usual Norfolk to Lancashire, but it was a good page-turner with a typically far-fetched solution.

7. Dead Water wasn't one of Cleeves best; I found myself reading more out of duty to finish than any compulsion to find out whodunnit.

8. I didn't enjoy White Bones, a murder mystery set in Ireland, at all (and considering some of the trash I consider a good read, that's really saying something!).  Overly gory, ludicrously plotted; the only saving grace was the convincing characterisation.

Seen & heard: April

Seen...

Not a film-watching month, April. I've not had the TV on very much as I've been in a reading mood: lots of early nights under the duvet with a good book, and fewer evenings spent on the sofa. But the two films I did see I really liked, and they have the lovely Jason Segel in common...

1. Jeff, Who Lives At Home was sweetly funny and diverting.  Jeff - played by Segel - leaves the house he shares with his mother to run an errand, and ends up on an often ill-fated quest to discover his destiny. 

2. When I was a very small child I loved The Muppet Show but was apparently terrified by the big muppet who lumbered on stage during the opening credits: I used to hide behind the sofa until he had gone.  I therefore adored the brilliant scene aping those credits in this modern reboot of The Muppets.  I'm a sucker for "Let's put on a show!"-type films at the best of times, and this is really a superlative example of the genre with a wonderful cast and some brilliant cameos (Feist!  Jack Black!  Dave Grohl!  Jim Parsons!).  The Oscar-winning music for the film was written by Flight Of The Conchords Bret McKenzie; I'm still humming Life's A Happy Song weeks later.

Heard...



1. I finally bought a copy of last May's Beach House album, Bloom, and promptly became utterly obsessed with it.  A bit early 90s-Cocteau Twins, Bloom is a lushly beautiful album.

2. I heard Bleached's single, Next Stop, on Steve Lamacq's 6 Music show, and liked the Riot Grrrl-crossed with Californian pop sound.  The album, Ride Your Heart, is 38 minutes of lovely guitar music; it's what you'd get if you threw Belly, Haim and some 60s girl group records into a pot and stirred.

3. The final female-fronted group this month.  I've liked Dressy Bessy since hearing their  song If You Should Try To Kiss Her on the soundtrack to long-forgotten film But I'm A Cheerleader but their albums are near-impossible to buy in the UK.  I found their third, Electrified, in a record store in San Francisco almost two years ago but hadn't listened to it much until this month, when I became a bit obsessed with it.  Again (do you see a theme emerging here?) they wouldn't sound out of place in a mid-90s playlist; Electrified and Side 2 would both be very at home on an early Veruca Salt album.

Lately...

 

DREAMING about the wonderful weekend I had in Paris, and hoping that the time passes quickly between now and my next trip... going to the Netherlands for May Day weekend.

WISHING that work stresses would disappear... not likely, I know; stress is kind of par for the course when you're a teacher (and bloody Gove is not making things any easier with his relentless barrage of criticism and dumb ideas).  But still, I would sometimes like to have a job I could just walk away from at 5pm.

FEELING incredibly tired (see above!), which means I'm not going to the gym as much, which I think then makes me feel even worse.  It's a vicious circle but I am so worn out at the moment, all I want to do is sleep, read and eat.

BUYING really silly amounts of clothes, which I then proceed to send back when they turn out to fit weirdly/be badly made.  Damn you internet shopping!  I'm excitedly waiting to receive this lovely floral top in the post tomorrow, but am betting that it too turns out to be a disappointment.

WEARING layers, but still always being too hot (if I wear my coat) or too cold (when I leave it at home).  I find dressing for spring and autumn incredibly difficult: I'm much happier in either properly cold or properly hot weather.

EATING homemade guacamole (using this recipe, amended slightly as there's really no need for 3 avocados and 4 chillies, trust me).  Shop-bought guacamole tends not to be vegan, so The Boy and I have got into the habit of whipping up a batch whenever we make Mexican food.  And now I'm so obsessed with its chilli-y, lime-y deliciousness that I make it about once a week.

READING a lot; and not just trashy crime fiction, which makes a change!  I finally feel like I'm getting my reading mojo back after months of not doing much reading at all.  Although I still haven't started on this month's book for my reading group, and the meeting is on Tuesday... oops. 

WATCHING Happy Endings, as E4 are showing season 2 every night.  Other than that, though, not very much.  I'm finding my ability to concentrate on anything longer than 30 minutes is severely compromised at the moment.

MAKING not very much at all, because I'm completely lacking motivation, but I want to get started on my long 'to-do' list.  I'm wondering if another Week of Making is in order, to get myself back into creative mode.

PLANNING all sorts of wedding-related things (not my own, calm down!).  I am being bridesmaid for my best friend, Cara, in August, and am starting to get excited about it.  Of course, we also have the hen do (in Brussels) to think about, and my fellow bridesmaid and I are starting to plan some fun surprises for the bride.  And as if that's not enough, The Boy's friend and bandmate is getting married in July, so we are full of plans for the trip to Macedonia for his nuptials.