Shall we all ...

I've just come in from a walk, still able to see where I was going at 5.30pm - which has to be A Good Thing. The cloud that has lain over us for the past few days has vanished, which helps, and when I came upstairs to dump outdoor clothes I saw the moon. It's now riding higher in a black sky, but at the moment of spotting it, it was emerging from a flat line of cloud above the hills to the north and it was simply spectacular. I lack the equipment and the know-how (to say nothing of the tripod) to take a close-up moon shot, but this sight of it emerging over the Firth will do for me - and therefore for you, though I've done it before.

The walk itself was somewhat marred by political discourse - the second such conversation I've found myself lured into today. I don't think I've the energy left to convince any doubters; the current frustrations are so wearing that I'm tempted just to be, to vote, to go out on the streets if necessary - but not to beat my head against the brick walls of fear, apprehension or prejudice. 

The best bit of the day - apart from the moonrise - was the chance to teach my older granddaughter a bit of English techniques of close reading and answering questions - what in the old days we used to call Interpretation but which now goes under the acronym RUAE (Reading for Understanding Analysis and Evaluation) - I actually had to look it up! It's strange how this is such a vital part of the English course that is often neglected at the teaching stage - and, even more disturbingly, at the setting of the questions. It's so difficult for pupils when they're faced with an ambiguous question which they can't find an answer to - not because they're stupid, but because it's not clear what is being asked. Can you tell this is another of the bees in my capacious bonnet? I had to tell Catriona that I wasn't always good at this, and recounted how, on a wet summer holiday in Arran when I was perhaps 13, my father (also an English teacher) would make up Interpretation tests using passages from the Glasgow Herald, which I would then have to complete before I could escape. I never failed one of these tests again.

All this, of course, drives home how much I miss teaching - though I have to say the online version of it is horribly tiring. I also miss frivolity. Are old people expected to be endlessly serious? Now the whole world is grown serious, I crave the moments of nonsense that class teaching - and the staffroom - could be relied on to throw up. 

Shall we all just howl at the moon?