»6th January 2010

Snow Day

First blog update of the new decade. We've officially entered the future and have promptly been brought to a halt by snow.

There had been some snow overnight on Tuesday morning which was enough to stop one member of staff who had to use the motorway coming in. It was snowing when I got in and got progressively heavier as the morning marched on.

It had been announced sometime during or after break that there was going to be a 'snow review' mini staff meeting type thing at 12:15. I joked frequently about the 'snow review', 'yep, still snowing.' ███ ██████ and ████ ████ were debating the best way to get back to Gomersal if the roads were icy. There was a creeping sense of anticipation for getting sent home.

I made the rather staged joke about 'They all said that man who opened the taxi rank with dog sleds was mad.' Ho ho ho. Much hilarity? ██ █ appearred and not realising ███ █████ had her daughter █████ with her off school said 'shite' a lot and then apologised. The plans for the afternoon were set out, teachers with difficult journeys would go home first and then as parents picked up the children, classes would be condensed down and staff could disappear away. After the meeting I hung around uselessly in the staff room for a while before going to find ██ ████. He was in ████ ██████'s class and I asked whether I needed to be around and he said just to wait around. I said that it wasn't a problem for me because I was just walking in anyway.

I was sent home at about 1:40 once the combined Year 4 class had reached the size to be able to combine it with the remainders of the Year 3 class. The plan was for phone calls to be made at around 7:30 to say whether the school was open or not. The weather report did not look very promising, only predicting snow after 16:00 for tuesday. I was expecting to have to be taking a call at 7:30 only to be told I had to come in as usual anyway.

I had been getting nowhere near enough sleep since starting back on Monday, going to bed at sometime between 3:30 and 4:00 for a couple of nights in a row. With the looming threat of a phone call at 7:30 and the prospect of struggling to stay awake through the busiest day of the week, I started the process for going to bed (i.e. a gigantic bowle of cereals and an episode of The Wire) at 11:30 and was knocking the TV off at quarter to one instead of quarter to four.

6th January 2010

Got the call from ██ ████ at about 7:15. No school. He said he'd ring up the same time tomorrow as well. Went back to bed and got up at two.



Looked on Facebook. The majority of the home page was status updates celebrating the snow or complaining about the snow with only a few of the usual photo albums of 50 practically identical photos of that night out last week.

Went to Post Office to photocopy driving license counter part. Posted this. Went to Morrisons: Got one of the 'premium' tuna/sweetcorn sandwiches for £1.50, it was basically the same as the £1 one but with too much mayonaise; a small bottle of Innocent Apple/Kiwi/Lime smoothie for £1.75--ovepriced; and a new Pritt Stick. Went to Lidl and splurged on the specials aisle (stationery this week) got a laminator, loads of post-it notes, the last remaining 40x60cm stretched canvas, and loads of other stuff like noodles and cans of Pepsi. Decided I had way too much stuff to carry back on my own so rang for Dad. It all totalled £48 :S

At the moment I'm paying close attention to weather reports and have left offerings at the shrines of Freyr, Aesir and Hod. If needs be I will enact Operation: Call Out, my secret plan to sabotage the school boiler.

Extar, over, out.

TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!