Thursday 31 December 2009

Decades

The Seventies were the decade of me being an infant with me starting school around the beginning of the 1980's
The Eighties were the decade of childhood
The Nineties were the decade of education starting at secondary school in 1990 and ending in 1999 in Canterbury
The Naughties were the decade of work where I started at Kingswood on the first weekend in 2000
What will the dominant feature of the Teenies/ Tenties/ Tens be?

Tuesday 29 December 2009

Top joke of 2009

#1. Duck in a Bar
This duck walks into a bar, and asks the bartender, “Do you have any grapes"?

The bartender says, "No we only sell beer here". The duck leaves.

The next day the duck walks back into the bar and asks the bartender, "Do you have any grapes"?

The bartender says, "No I told you we only sell beer, and if you ask me again I'm going to nail your beak to the bar.” So the duck leaves.

The next day the duck walks back into the bar, and asks the bartender “Do you have any nails"? The bartender says "no".

The duck asks "Do you have any grapes"?

Wii

The single most hilarioous thing I have seen in a long time is the sight of Mum and Nick trying to canoe in rythm to beat the time trial and failing 60cm short. At the end it complimented Mum on her left habd turns and Nick on his right hand turns. Hopefully they were not doing these at the same time. It is interesting to see that Mum is great at table tennis and Nick at dogfighting (aerial not canine).

The rules of shopping

1. Go early or go late but don't arrive about 11.
2. If you see it, buy it
3. If you bought it stop looking at similar products
4. Know what you want before you arrive
5. Take every opportunity to sit down

Tuesday 22 December 2009

Snow

Been lovely - snowed on Thursday, easy to get to work on Friday, main roads clear, side roads are passable. No major snow for the last two days but cold enough to keep the snow around. Driving has been fun and I have a lot of gadgets to help out - traction control and ABS brakes make it more fun to get around.

Norwich City 4 lost to Norwich Ice ? by a lot of goals and are quite annoyed

The rules of the league state

1. Your best players should be reigsitered in first team and so on
2. You cannot play more than two first team players in the second team
3. If third team players are available the should be preferred to first team

Well we are not perfect but really try to stick to the rules and it is so irritating to turn up and find yourselves playing a team that is patently unfair. Sure it fits the letter of the law but not the spirit. When the opposition have three players that have been in our first team and are playing in the second division for this game it is clear that some of the paperwork maybe a bit awry. I play to compete and find it distasteful when my enjoyment is destroyed by playing people who are clearly better than us and should not be on the same court!

Not much of a write up of last weeks game from the opposition

Stingers seem to have two types of game at the moment – score lots of goals in the first half and be comfortably ahead only to let the lead slip in the second half and only just win the game, or, go behind early on and spend the rest of the game trying to catch up.

Stingers 2 fitted the first type and were 6-1 up at half time, only for Norwich City to come back to 6-5 pretty much straight away in the second half. Luckily it was a good week and Stingers 2 managed to keep ahead through the half, edging a bit further ahead towards the end winning 11-8.

Monday 14 December 2009

Norwich City 4 lost to Stingers 2 11:8

Well going 6-0 down is not the best preparation for doing well. Suffice to say after this we won 8-5 and if we had started well we might have got more than the 1 point for an honourable loss. Just felt that we were not playing cool ad calm korfball but rather trying to beat this physically and leaving ourselves open as well as a loss of concentration. We were also playing against Simon who whilst not being fast or a great pass and move player has a devastating long shot and I find the most difficult opponent in the league.

I scored three goals - 1 penalty (although I missed one as well), a running in shot where I wriggle through a small gap and another running shot slicing through the defence. One more match before Christmas.

Sunday 13 December 2009

X factor

The X factor seems to have taken over the world and I can't stand it. I have nothing against talent shows per se but for some reason this one annoys the heck out of me so I have decided to write down the reasons why.

1. The freak show element at the beginning whenever thousands of wannabees stand in front of the TV crews open their mouths and embarrass themselves while the nation howl in laughter at the poor unfortunate. In many ways it is the 19th Century freak show concept laughing at the strange and unusual. They never show the person returning home, confidence shredded, to see their reception from the people who had all told them that they could sing.

2. The blandness of it. One contestant did a Louis Armstrong song well but had none of the power or soul of the original (who could). Also all of the

3. The unfairness of it. There are bands out there playing pubs and clubs up and down the country who deserve it far more. They write their own songs and see what people like or hate. They roadie for themselves they attend endless band practices and X Factor makes life so much harder with time energy and money spent on promoting the contestants. Why not run an X Factor or singers or bands that have had at least two years experience of gigging. X factor is killing the grass roots as it seems to offer an easy way to the top.

4. The longevity of the winner is nothing. Sure they will have a number 1 single, then album. Then they will generally be forgotten before being wheeled out in some other reality show bitter and twisted.

5. The whole show is an advert for Simon Cowell products which stupid people spend money on. He owns the rights to the singers , the singles, the albums and the songs. His production company are responsible for the production getting paid millions. He makes money from the phone calls and the merchandise. ITV provide the advert to him making money. Clever but evil

6. Cheryl Cole.

Sunday 6 December 2009

OCR

The exam course I have marked is changing and this is its last year and the only people that will take the exam are resits mainly. The Principal Examiner has resigned to work on the new courses and they offer me the job. There are a few things still to sort liek how much they will pay me but the idea will be that I am in charge of the examiner, am responsible for setting what is/ is not acceptable mark and setting what mark equals each grade. It also involves going to a meeting in early August so no long trip away next summer.

A nice gentle slide into Christmas - if only

The kids are getting tired, the staff are getting tired and therefore it is important to make sure that the lessons are well planned as possible. So in the last two weeks we Yr 12 and Yr13 parents evening, Yr9 options evening and Yr9 reports. Talking for about three hours cotinuosly about options has already killed the throats of some staff and no doubt parents evening will have a similar effect. It is fair enough to have a parents evening in the run up to the January exams but the options proecess need to be complete by July and maybe could have waited.