Too much excitement...

Phew - life has been rather 'interesting' - read 'ever so slightly challenging but it's all right really' - recently.

Fog has provided those flying locally with the usual provocations: delayed landings, delayed take-offs, late arrivals, or no flying at all. Pilots and planes stuck in various parts of the Bailiwick, not necessarily together, as long waits eventually mean that a pilot cannot stay on duty any longer.
But fog is usual at this time of year - local residents understand it and are, for the most part, incredibly patient and tolerant of extended stays at the airport.

On Sunday, Richard had a 'foggy' day but managed to avoid getting stuck in Jersey. Monday dawned bright and clear. Tuesday was beautiful. Then this happened as Richard was flying from Alderney to Southampton.  Engine failure.
The Trislander has three engines: the problem one was the rear engine, mounted high up on the tail. After a loud bang, Richard looked in the rearview mirror (mounted on the Trislander for this purpose, NOT so that he can see if another plane is coming up behind him in the fast lane) and saw the cowling had come loose and was wide open, like a giant clam shell.  (This had the effect of acting like a giant brake!)  Richard immediately turned the plane round and returned to Alderney, where an emergency had been declared: the fire brigade had initiated their full emergency procedure, the ambulance was waiting on the tarmac and the Alderney lifeboat was put on alert in case the plane had to ditch in the open sea.  In the end, there was nothing at all for them to do: Richard greeted the crews with "Good practice for you guys," after he had landed the plane safely. No panic and no injuries, apart from a Trislander which now looks rather sorry for itself.

I'm intensely proud of my highly competent, capable husband who, to quote Aurigny's managing director, dealt with the situation in an 'exemplary fashion', so I shall quote from the Alderney Press: 'The pilot was wonderful - extremely calm and he just told us that there was a technical problem and we would be returning to Alderney. All passengers were very calm, there was no panic at all....The pilot was fantastic - the fact that he was so calm and in control made me feel that everything would be all right."

And I liked the comments from readers on the Guernsey Press website:
"Probably a piece of coal flew out of the furnace and hit the cowling...He had two other engines, what was the problem?"  Indeed!

I was just glad that he came to school and hauled me out of a meeting to tell me about it. Seeing him there in front of me was extremely reassuring...

After that, the other minor vexations aren't worth mentioning, apart from one. Pickle the Dog's predilection for removing the Christmas cards on display (yes, I know, but that's another story) and then eating the blu-tac which held them up is just a tad annoying...

No shortcuts

Ouch!  Just read a superb blog over at Proverbs31: There Are No Shortcuts To Anywhere Worth Going. Or, in other words, "Laziness leads to a sagging roof; idleness leads to a leaky house." Ecclesiastes 10:18 (NLT)
Ouch indeed. Wise words which cut sharp. I am not a lazy person but I still need this reminder to 'get my act together', get off the computer RIGHT NOW and start the long overdue cleaning I had promised myself would get done this morning. Instead, guess what I have been doing? Yes, restoring my soul with Proverbs 31 wisdom but there are indeed still no shortcuts to a (relatively) clean house!

It's a fine balance between working hard, getting needed rest and not beating up on ourselves when we get one or other wrong. So I tore myself away from the computer, tackled the cleaning and the other chores...and it feels good. A day spent wisely. Now a short wind-down before heading off for bed...rest.

Living a different life

Life is different now that Jonny and Cat have gone back to uni.
The house is quiet, texts and emails occasional as we all get busy.
Too busy, sometimes, to really miss each other with sharp pangs.
More like a dull ache.

Loss of their presence sits heavy, peering over my shoulder.

I live with this as my life is full of other people's lives.
Children I teach; their parents; my colleagues; my friends; my church family.

I live with this as my life is full of tasks.
Lessons to prepare, books to mark, courses to study, assignments to complete.
Housework and cooking work, walking the dog work, cycling to work. Shopping work.

I live with this presence, relieving the heaviness with the lightness of texts, emails and phone conversations.

The sky lightens.

Further reflections from New Wine

I usually go to New Wine, hopeful and expectant of a new touch from God.
My mind tells me that life is for living, that I cannot expect the miraculous every day.
My spirit longs for that to happen. I live in tension.

We talk a lot of ‘work/life balance’. As if life is somehow more meaningful, more spiritual than my work life.

But it’s more than that.

My balance, my tension, is not really between my work and the rest of my life.

It is between the humdrum and the ordinary.

It’s between living in this world, and the kingdom of God.

It is between who I am, and who I am meant to be.

It is between who I am, and who I am becoming.

Digressions and a working breakfast

We’ve had wonderful weather here for the last couple of weeks. Brilliant blue skies, sunshine so clear you can almost touch it, sparkling seas… sometimes rustling and playing, white caps tossing tiny heads, or occasionally as still and calm as a translucent mirror.

But today is different.

Today, the skies are clouded and frowning. Sprinkles of rain-mist tap my face as I walk outside. The wind is chill.

So I’m here at school, trying to catch up. I have reports to write, an inbox which is bulging so much it is in real danger of physically splitting, a desk piled high with papers and files. And that’s after tidying and sorting out before I left on Friday… whoops, that was yesterday. Less than 24 hours ago.

What am I doing? None of that, obviously. Catching up on my blog. It’s important.

It’s important to stop and reflect. To take that deep breath and review where life has gone in the last couple of weeks and where it is heading off to next. I’m only talking the next 14 days or so.

It’s important.

My morning was a precious oasis of catch up time, too. Every month I love to host a breakfast for working ladies in our church – whose lives are too busy Monday to Friday to go to home groups or other socials but who crave more time with God and His people than they get on a Sunday. We feast together, chat together, laugh together and focus on God’s word together. I lead, we all share. A good friend has caught the vision and comes early with gifts of food, helps me prepare, welcomes everyone. The breakfast is open to all the church, but typically there are about 10 of us and we all fit comfortably around my big table. There are some old, some new faces; friendships are forged, renewed, deepened. We take time out to reflect on our working lives: on how God sustains us in and through our work, and on how we can return that favour – to our colleagues.

I talked this morning about prayer. And digression.

This is DIGRESSION. A breath of fresh air before I dive into work. And it is SO welcome!

Busy

My days seem so full that, when I look back, a day seems as long as a week. I can hardly believe that so much can happen. I feel both like the child who says, when asked what she did at school, answers 'Nothing,' and yet the lines of the poem are also true: A day to childhood seems a year, a year like passing ages.

Today was an example.

Today, I...
ordered 40 clipboards.
edited an article for our school magazine.
scanned some children's work.
received an invitation to an awards ceremony.
issued invitations to the same ceremony to a group of children from gardening club.
marked English, History, Geography and maths.
attended a staff meeting.
worked on a cross-curricular day which one of the teaching assistants and I are organising in a couple of weeks.
tried to borrow a tent for the same day.
emailed our PSHE advisor about changes to the curriculum.
set a date for a publicity event for our new school garden.
emailed the headmaster of our link school in a remote area of Tanzania.
emailed a parent about an absent child.
met with another parent, concerned about her son missing some lessons.
discussed a discipline issue with a boy.
laughed over a small boy's antics: in his haste to get to lunch on time, he catapulted out of the changing rooms, tie loosely around his neck but completely separate from his shirt collar, shirt untucked, hair awry after a hurried change, just avoiding cannoning into a wall.


and TAUGHT SOME LESSONS!

and checked my diary through very carefully - so much happening in the next few weeks.

Not like today, then.

2 sleeps, 5 sleeps

Cat comes home on Friday afternoon, Jonny on Monday. I can't wait!

Both begin work next week so hopefully they will have a few days at least of wind-down before they start. They return to the same place every time: both companies they work for are delighted to have them back again. Jonny even has a bursary to help towards his uni costs.

God has been so faithful to them both.

Priorities

Until yesterday, I hadn't been on here for a while. So when I clicked that little arrow/triangle thing next to the bar that shows a website URL, www.mamampira.blogspot.com was way down the drop down list which emerged.

It was interesting to see what this little laptop had been looking at.

First was my school email. There is so much going on in the last few weeks of term that I look at the school electronic calendar and check my school email from home as well. I need to be prepared: sometimes, 'stuff' happens at school and I don't manage to look first thing in the morning – usually when there really IS something urgent I should have known about.

Then was the University of East Anglia website. Ah ha, Cat has been using my computer to check up on her course work marks and exam results. (Pity I can't check up on that one as well – she's out now, so I can't ask her and satisfy my curiosity.)

I'm glad to see that www.biblegateway.com comes before www.jerseymet.gov.je . At least I have my priorities right – a God forecast (looking to see what God is saying) before the weather forecast.

Then there was www.thisisguernsey.com/ecycle . Our wonderful website for recycling unwanted items. Only been going a year or so, and 8000 items recycled. I'm hunting for unusual containers to put herbs into, so I trawl it frequently. Nothing much has come up, but I could have collected, for free, a 22foot yacht, a wireless router, a children's climbing frame, a new car tyre, a set of gym weights, kitchen units, deck chairs, light fittings and any number of furniture and furnishing items.

Then there was my hotmail address. I've had it for years but don't use it much now, so I check it infrequently. Now, it's a quick reference for messages I'm sent on www.facebook.com as well. That was the next one down.

After that, the list becomes quite garbled. Amazon and Boots (shopping). A website which helps sort out router problems (we've been having difficulty getting online). Google – I'm surprised that wasn't further up the list. I just love finding out information in seconds.

Lastly – www.magicseaweed.com, set at the Guernsey page. Instant surfing news: how good the surf is expected to be and when, the height and frequency of the waves, tide times… everything you need to know.

Interesting to see my life in terms of websites most frequently visited. It's not a true reflection – just of my relationships and activities through my laptop.

Busyness revisited

I haven't written on here for a while. Jonny came home, then it seemed we were on a helter-skelter of activity, rushing on and on from one day to the next.

The usual hectic getting Jonny off – but he’s now out in Tanzania, with his ‘brothers’ who he has known since before he – and they – were born. They’re planning a camel safari, setting off in a couple of days. It’s quiet here.

Meanwhile, school has kicked off big time. Reports to be done – hundreds of comments – with ten days notice; speech day prizes to be decided and organized; work to be finished off as activity week – and end of term – approaches; gardening club demanded weeding, planting and watering; appraisal time with the head…

Social functions added in meant that I was out almost every night last week. So busy I can’t remember what I was doing without looking at my diary!

Yet it was all GOOD. Good to celebrate the children’s achievements in their end of term reports; good to award prizes for outstanding effort, work and – best of all – progress; good to have fun and laughter with friends.

I am so grateful to God for all His goodness, even when I am so busy I hardly have time to draw breath. But now, in a spare few minutes, I can catch up. That’s good, too.

Observed

Yesterday one of my lessons was observed by the headteacher – part of a yearly appraisal of my performance, a system called performance management.

Great title. Every lesson is a managed performance. An observed lesson is just the same, but more so.

You always prepare hard for one of these – write up a detailed lesson plan rather than keeping the ideas thrown around in your head. We have lesson objectives, learning intentions, criteria for success, learning outcomes, introduction, plenary, resources, key vocabulary… whoa, I haven't finished yet – cross-curricular links, differentiating for high and low achievers, and links to the national curriculum. Phew – I might as well play Who Wants to be a Jargonaire?

This lesson was less straightforward than most. The subject: PSHE and Citizenship. The letters stand for Personal, Social, Health and Emotional education. I'm the coordinator. The job seems incredibly huge and never-ending: start looking into one area and you have three more to consider before you can blink. Training days are fascinating but you never feel as if you return 'trained' – just with a longer 'to-do' list.

Yet teaching about life is absolutely fascinating, because I'm teaching people about people, rather than about rivers, or long multiplication, or clauses, or… the other building blocks of education.

My lesson, planned in detail, ran away with itself. The preliminary discussion threw up a comment from one boy which I was supposed to extract, after all the various carefully planned activities to draw the pupils out and develop their thinking, in the plenary at the end of the lesson. I felt like a sailing boat in uncertain winds – constantly adjusting my sails, changing tack, altering course while still trying to keep everything safe and dry.

But life is messy. I can try to manage a lesson carefully, but, as long as we all stay afloat, we're bound to be thrown around and get wet.

The bell went before we had even begun to scratch the surface of our topic: embarrassment. Now how embarrassing is that, as a teacher, to teach to the bell without drawing the lesson to a satisfactory conclusion, making sure that the pupils know what they have learnt from the discussions and activities?

It didn't matter. Chaotic though the lesson seemed to be, I knew it was good. The children's eyes had been opened, their hearts touched, their thoughts spurred awake. That's teaching.

Something different - a work poem

Meetings or Teaching?

Meetings that go on, on and on
Are dreadfully boring, you know.
It’s amazing how awfully long
They can last and then cause endless woe.

I’m so bored as I sit here and fret
I’d so like to up sticks and go
Please, isn’t it time to be off yet?
Won’t someone say, so I may know?

The sun’s shining down on the grass
The flowers smell exquisitely sweet.
Oh how slowly the time’s going past
I’m dying for something to eat.

I could rush out and jump on my bike
And whizz down the hill fast and quick
I could put on my shoes for a hike
And find an ice lolly to lick.

I could go out for a coffee with friends
I could go for a swim at the beach
I’ve got quite a few letters to send
I’d really just much rather teach.

I could even get on with my marking;
Assessment for learning and stuff
Put energy into preparing:
My lessons should not be too tough.

Cause I’m really just thrilled to be teaching
I get such a buzz from the class
There’s nothing to beat that great feeling
You get from the questions they ask…

The pleasure you have when they ‘get it’
The laughter, the jokes and the fun
Seeing them smart in P.E. kit
When all of the written work’s done.

So am I just wasting my life
In a meeting that won’t ever end?
Let's put all these teachers to teaching
Some children - how's that for a trend?

Weather wonders

What a difference the weather makes.

Yesterday we woke up to grey which quickly turned to rain. It seemed to rain most of the day. The sea still looked spectacular: white foam on a backdrop of greys.

Cycling home was interesting: I tend to whizz too fast, so had a 'skiddy moment' coming down one hill. Fortunately, I didn't panic and jam the brakes on even more but managed to control the bike without coming off it. (I didn't think my nose would be too impressed by a close encounter with wet tarmac.)

Today it is bright sunshine, sparkling sea, and the children I teach are in a much better mood. They're doing great work, creating a simple story book for younger children.

Some of the art work is outstandingly good.

It's great to feel so good about the weather, work, the world... Thank you Lord!