We have to get our fun ...

What a foul day this turned out to be! Right now, just after 11pm, a fierce East wind is roaring intermittently outside the study window, as it will be in the bedroom only more so, because there's a large bay window, and it's raining, as it has been on and off for hours. I had fully intended to get out for some fresh air, but by the time I was ready to contemplate it I was easily put off. So I've been indoors all day, and I don't like it.

Today's fun inspired my rather sad Blip of Desperation - my poetry workshop this morning. The computer desktop shows all the three poems we've done so far, in their Keynote format (the Mac's PowerPoint) - I was attempting to bring some order to them by putting them in the same file. Today we did Philip Larkin's Church Going, a strangely elusive poem online because of copyright, though you can hear the poet and others reading it aloud. I don't know how often I've taught this to S5 classes, but it was interesting to have a "class" who didn't need to have the basic Christian and church references explained in detail the way my school students did. 

Quite apart from my enjoyment of teaching, two things emerged. One is that over the three weeks I can see people's memories being jogged, so that remembered terminology begins to surface - and that's rewarding. The other realisation was that I felt quite keyed up in the hour before I started, in a way I never ever was when going into countless classrooms. I suspect its closely related to lack of practice in having to do anything at all, along with a touch of the difficulty in getting started in the mornings.

I never mentioned, since I've been recounting a day spent indoors, the fact that for my January challenge (walk 100 miles in January) I walked a total of 135 miles, which seems absurd. What seems every stranger is that I covered 1.50 miles today, in my house, even though I feel I spent hours in front of the computer.

Anyone else find the 10 O'Clock news insufferably upbeat tonight?