In which I up the excitement stakes in my life

So, having spent the morning with the Year 11 Maths (calculator paper) - yep, I know how to live dangerously, I did actually write a short thesis on the incidence of twitching legs that spread across the hall in a sort of Mexican wave whilst I was there - so at lunchtime I went to the park.

And there I watched part of a bowls match which, by invigilator standards at least, was pretty exciting.  There were even little rounds of applause at particularly skilful shots.  When they'd finished one match, one woman got out what looked like a rather wide Zimmer frame and started to walk across the green.  I wondered whether she was using that to sort of spread the load so as not to damage the green by digging holes in it.  Turned out it was a mechanism to scoop up all the bowls and get them to the far side, ready for the next match.

Then my friend R came along and we walked back to school.  She's Spanish and she told me about a trip she'd had to Plymouth (she'd gone to get revenge on Drake for the Spanish Armada thing - no, not really) and she'd seen these people playing bowls (see, ties in with the Drake thing) but they were all old, and moving really slowly, and all dressed in white.  Being Spanish she'd never seen anything like this before and she was convinced they'd all escaped from a local care home or hospital.

I wonder what she'd make of Morris men.

Toilet or bin - you choose.

Me:  R. (younger son, aged 15)?   What are those white things down the toilet?

R:  Marshmallows.

Me:  ?

R:  I came home and had too many in my mouth so I spat them out down the toilet.

Me:  Well now you can fish them out again.

R:  Where shall I put them?

Me:  In the bin.






See.  I'm in control.  Now where did I put my bins?

(There then followed a discussion as to why glasses are called bins.  Feel free to contribute your own opinion on this.)

Do I look that gullible?

The Co-op is doing really well on its special offers:

Potato salad - 78p

Or 2 for £2.

Hard to choose, eh?

Oops, I've done it again!

In the days when MIL was compos mentis we often used to visit on Sundays, have lunch, come home again, and then in the evening I would cook a light meal.  Sometimes this was macaroni cheese. 

About, say, twenty years ago I did this - except one day I mistakenly used icing sugar instead of cornflour to thicken the cheese sauce.  It was completely inedible, of course, and since then I've been very careful about which one I use.  (I should say at this point that I buy them both loose and they live in very similar looking jars.)

Tonight I managed a similar feat.

A standard last minute dessert - only the OH usually has dessert - is a meringue nest with fruit (in this case raspberries out of the freezer) and cream. 

I tasted the raspberries which were a bit tart, so I added some icing sugar and served it up.

So what was wrong?

Clearly after x o'clock at night I cannot tell the difference between a jar containing icing sugar and one containing salt.

I am currently not that popular.

Men with funny haircuts

In order of world domination (see how many you know, answers in the comments box):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What comes around, goes around - the theory of relativity in a musical context

I was talking to Little John yesterday.  He has a record shop, well half of it's on the pavement outside, and he was standing out in the sun.  We discussed the demise of CDs and the rise of interest in cassettes.  He was saying that vinyl was still going strong although the youngsters had to ask how you could skip to the next track, and had difficulty with the concept that you turned the record over to play the other side.

He then went on to tell me of a friend of his who was selling record carrying cases online. 
One potential customer had queried whether the 12" cases would be big enough for his records as they were 33⅓".  Oh, how we laughed, especially as his 45" records were going to be even smaller!

 

The exciting life of an exam invigilator

I've done the register of all the students - 62, a smallish size crowd today.  Not that I'm counting or anything.  It's only five past nine.

I've read the AS English Language paper, all 16 pages (okay, the last two were blank).  Not that I'm counting or anything.  It's only ten past nine.

I've counted all the students with glasses (six, since you ask) and those who are left-handed (ten) and I'm sure that the students taking Probability and Statistics  could compute the Pearson correlation coefficient of those (I've no idea what that is).  It's only quarter past nine.

I could count the number of ceiling tiles or the number of brackets holding the pipes to the wall - but that would be nerdy.

I could compute the number of squares there are in the cricket nets - but then I might lose count part way through  -  too risky.

Thing is  -  I'm going to be here till eleven-thirty  -  so I better think of something.