Well as of 3o'clock yesterday, I am essentially unemployed. And it feels good.

The main thing that teaching has taught me this year is that I don't want to spend another year of my life doing something that makes me miserable. And that children can be very very annoying. I'm planning on going back to my school reunion this year and aplogising to my teachers.

So what to do next? Technically due to the fact that teacher's pay is spread over the year, the taxpayer owes me one more pay packet before I am entirely destitute. Which is a bit of a relief as I have only rather floomy ideas as to what I'm going to do now. The current plan is to apply for an MA in Special Effects and general exploding, which sounds like fun. Unfortuately the course starts in January and I won't know until the end of September whether I'm on the course, or need to get a real job for a bit. And getting on the course won't be particularly easy - they only take 8 people a year, and there were at least thirty at the open day I went to, lots of whom had already done degrees in film and things.


It will all be fine.

Probably.

But I don't care, because I don't have to teach grumpy little bastards any more!

And the next time is 36.

Eurgh.

Well I've got two and a half weeks left of my horrible horrible children who won't shut up about the fact that it is hot. I'm aware that it's bloody hot. I'd be perfectly happy to make it hotter by shoving a bunsen burner up your arse you tiny whining bastard, but that might get me in a bit of trouble, and I'm quite proud of the fact that I've almost made it through a whole year of being a real live teacher and haven't yet been sued.

The day was a bit shit at the beginning, but perked up as soon as I left work - I went to pick up a package from the magic post place, and it was a box of joyous crap from Luxembourg, including a delightful wind up jiggly tropical fish which I am slightly too excited about. The best bit was when I was wandering out of the post place clutching my hard won brown paper parcel, and there was a lady trying to balance a huge tray of plants on the back of her bike. I was just about to ask her if she needed a hand, when she said, noticing my interest,

"They're a bunch of courgette plants - we're trying to get rid of them. Would you like some?"

And so as well as my glorious box of junk I have two surprise big green courgette plants, which will hopefully turn into food. Life is lovely sometimes.

I'm off to set up a bed in the garden as it's too flipping hot inside.

Nighty night x

I graduated today. It was very very very dull. There was a man who talked for a very long time and then we had to shake some chap's hand.

After that there was drinking and a home-made air cannon we filled with periodic table confetti. That was less boring.

I'm slightly worried that I am now responsible for a considerable number of children's education.

Rosie, Ben and I just spent the last twenty-five minutes paralytic with laughter about Uranus jokes.

I went downstairs yesterday morning to find a nice brown envelope on the doormat with my name on. I opened it, partly out of the novelty of it being brown. I'm bored with white envelopes. Inside I found a Very Bad Letter. It said this:

You are hereby summoned to the Cambridge Magistrates' Court on Thursday 6th December 2007 at 13:30.

This was Not Good. Reading it through, it turned out I was supposed to go because I hadn't paid my council tax.

Which I had.

Cue running around the house trying to find the reciept the chap gave me, failing, getting Rosie out of bed to find her 'I'm a student' letter, panicking, flapping arms, panicking, realising I was late for school and cycling like a mad being to get there only mildly late and only nearly getting run over once and then panicking a little more for good measure.

I was able to escape school during a free period to go to college to get my 'I'm a student' letter, then the bank to discover that they hadn't actually cashed my tax cheque, and finally to Hobson House, land of council tax, where I had to stand in a line for a very long time. The lady looked at my letter, then typed some stuff onto her computer, looked at the letter again, and then wandered off for quite possibly a tea break. She came back roughly four days later to say that everything was fine and they'd cancelled the court charges.

"Do you need me to give you a cheque for the bit I did have to pay?" I asked, wary of getting another Letter of Doom.

She went a bit quiet.

"No, it's ok. We've got your cheque."

And that was it. I went back to school.

So they actually hadn't been arsed to cash my cheque, and instead sent me a court summons (which shifted my stress levels to nuclear). I don't like the council any more. They smell.

Reports of my demise have been somewhat exaggerated. My phone was in purgatory for a while (I left it on a train and had to rescue it from Royston station) but I'm still around. Which is good.

Phil and I played very hastily arranged music for a wedding on Saturday - it was surprisingly good given that we'd only really had a couple of hours practising together. Unfortunately I was in the early stages of what I assumed was the Cold Of Dooom, which mum had been taken out by a couple of days earlier. I decided it would be a very stupid idea to drive if it had the same effect on me (sudden-onset feverishness) and so took the train instead, leaving behind my massive harp in favour of borrowing Phil's dinky one.

There was lots of booze and a very silly priest and they played Widor's Toccatta as the recessional (mmmmm). There were also millions of jovial scottish people and a cheesy disco. I made Phil dance. He can, you know, if reluctantly.  Although Phil's dad dances like the distilled essence of all dad-dancing everywhere. It was most entertaining to watch.

I then missed the cake rehearsal entirely due to hopelessness and still being in the middle of nowhere. Sorry chaps. Lunch was nice though. We then went back to Phil's and wrote very random tunes, which was pleasing. A Voles medley is somewhere in the pipeline.

And the cold seems to be going away with no sign of death, which is pleasing.

Hurrah! I have taken my final final and am now completely free! The exam itself was not a horrible as I had  thought, and I at least managed to write something plausible for most of the sections, so I think I've at least got my 2:2 in it. Woo!

There were then many drunken barbecuings on Queens backs which was lovely and sunny and carefree, and crazy dancing to Austin Powersish music in the evening. All in all, a pretty near perfect day.

The world is good.

Does anyone know of an easy way to create an avi (or other movie format - I'm not fussy) file by taking frames from an OpenGL rendering?

• I had my last-ever-but-one exam yesterday, and it was not as bad as I thought it would be. Which was awesome. No idea how well I did, but I managed to answer all the questions I needed to to at least some extent. Very pleasing. It seems my "last-minute-panic-and-cover-the-living-room-in-over-200-pages-of-hastily-written-notes" method worked.

• We bought a barbecue and I spent 2 merry hours assembling it until I noticed they'd given us a wrong set of legs and you can't fit the wheels on. It stands up anyway so I don't care.

• We had a barbecue with the other house and we made fish and burgers and chicken and sausages and washed it down with lots and lots of cider. This was highly pleasing. Phil talked very loudly about poo.

• My project works! I found the the stupid mistake and now it makes big beautiful swirly patterns and I like it again

EDIT: And I've got a conditional offer on the PGCE place! *cue small victory dance in the middle of the kitchen.* Their standards are lower than I thought!
(Although apparently I have to wait for another letter to find out what the conditions actually are (please not a 2:1, please not a 2:1...). Grrr. )

I'm a bit perplexed as to where term disappeared to. I was at the beginning, and then mad plays and foolishness and marvellous things happened and now it's the end. Which is a little worrying as I'm floundering with my project (does anyone know lots about electromagnetic fields and is prepared to explain things in nice small words?) and have exams on the first day back. Aargh. At the moment, I'll probably get a 2:1/1st in Information theory, and a fail in Astrophysics and Medical Physics. Bother. It's getting to that point again where I seriously consider trying to build a time machine instead of working.

On a good note, it's mum's birthday on Saturday so the Harris clan are off to see Spamalot, which will make me very happy.

Mum came round this weekend and we made a front garden! We chopped the bottom off the big bush of death and now it's a marvellous witchy wonky tree, and I'm busy shovelling piles of slate stuff all over the plants we put in. It actually looks a lot like a garden, rather than a scrappy patch of yuck.

In the little scrotty courtyard bit we got a bunch of pots and now we've got a blueberry and a greengage tree and a tiny little bay bush and an alpine strawberry, and I've planted garlic and shallots in big tubs. I'm also growing a bunch of herbs and stuff from seeds on the windowsill and am getting very impatient for them to stop being boring. We got some seeds for these amazing black and red chili peppers, so I've got them in a pot as well.

Plants make me happy. Plants you can eat make me far happier than should really be allowed. I'm off to watch my not-quite-seedlings-yet.

I'm sorry, Kieth, it's not you, it's me.

Lately I've been feeling we haven't been going anywhere. You're never there for me when I need you, and our interests just aren't the same any more. I'm afraid I've found someone else. Steve is really nice, and he can give me what I need. Plus I just can't get over the fact that you look like a garden gnome.

-> I changed project supervisors today. Hurrah! No more bloody quartz phase transitions! Just making pretty pictures of electromagnetic fields. (And no more Kieth 'Well I'll be in on Tuesday from 11-12, oh you have a lecture then, well what about next Tuesday...' Priestley). Woot!

In other news, some c***-***-*-**********-***-hole stuck a normal key in my bike lock and broke it, so I've got to go and get it sawn off and buy a new lock. I hope it was the only key to their house and they have to sleep in a puddle. Of hobo wee.

snow snow snow snow snow!

We made snowballs.

Then we made a sno-tem pole (it started out as the world's biggest snowball, then we made a huge snowperson, then we decided he needed a hat, and then we realised that the hat would look better if it was another five or six feet taller, and suddenly we had created about thirteen feet of white semi-phallic marvellousness).

Then I made a small drowning snowman on the Cavendish lake.



Then the sno-tem pole was rugby-tackled into oblivion, so we turned the remains into a slide, which we proceeded to slide down in various graceful ways.



We then we dumped the giant snowball into the lake.



And then I had a physics lecture. Through which I sat, and dripped snow all over the floor. Good day.

Snow snow snow snow snow snow snow snow.

Hurrah! I finally got my arse in gear and bought some glasses. It's very exciting - far away things are now, like, visible and stuff. Am mightily  chuffed (although still think I look a bit silly).

Also we had a readthrough of the pickle play, which is marvellous, but only about twenty minutes long. Which is a bit of a problem, but ChrisJim appears to be adding in all sorts of mad bits of plot which we will work out at some point, and I get to be the Fonz, so am happy.

There was a readthrough of Babes, which the HoLE wrote, and it's apparently about the right length. Am greatly pleased. And Will likes the finale song. It's a good finale song. It has a llama in it.

We had Burns Night, which was relatively small as the haggis was only moderately sized, and there was much whisky and speeches and truly appalling scottish accents. I also discovered that about half the people there can't eat crannochan. So I had tons of cream-whisky-honey-oat-raspberry stuff to eat up by myself. Darn.

Nothing much else has happened, or at least I've probably forgotten something important. There was Rosie randomly tidying the world (or a significant garage based part of it at least) and us getting dad's old study furniture (as it doesn't fit in their new house), which is huge and amazing and made of old railway sleepers. And that's about it, methinks. Cool.

Oooh, and I've got some auditions for May Ballage. Any suggestions on harpy stuff that would sound good in an audition?

Have just arrived back home from Belgium. Was marvellous and full of Cath-based joy.

Brussels is not the most exciting place to visit in the world. After you've got over the architecture that looks rather like a mad cake-icer has been given free reign over a pile of plans and a handful of skilled stonemasons, there's not much else. I suppose that's what you get from a city that considers its cultural highlight to be a tiny statue of a boy peeing into a fountain. He could be arrested for doing that in England.

The reason to go to Brussels, assuming you don't know Cath, is the food. I am so full of moules and steak that my seams creak when I move. Mmmmm.

Have made several discoveries while in Belgium.

1.   When booking a holiday,  write down when you are going and when you are coming back. I only remembered I was going at all last Sunday when I saw Ben, and only realised I wasn't coming back this Sunday once we'd got on Eurostar.

2.   Brussels is made of H&M. There are millions of them. All on the same street. It was quite strange.

3.   H&M is useful for buying pants when your holiday ends up being twice as long as you had expected.

4.   My German is not very good, and also not very useful in Belgium.

5.   My French is worse.

6.   Flemish is the most entertaining language in the whole wide world. If it were an animal it would be small and furry and make 'oop' noises. Possibly some sort of miniature extremely rotund rodent.

7.    Everyone in Belgium can tell you're English just by looking. And they speak English at you. And then you try and speak French. And then they continue to speak English, in a slightly pitying way.

Essentially I had a marvellous time. There was lots of food, and beer, and food, and wandering, and Cath, and food, and food.


Food.

I found this on the internet and thought it was neat. It's apparently by J. J. Thomson, the chap who discovered the electron, to the tune of "My darling Clementine".

In the dusty lab’ratory,
’Mid the coils and wax and twine,
There the atoms in their glory,
Ionize and recombine.

Chorus: Oh my darlings! Oh my darlings!
Oh my darling ions mine!
You are lost and gone forever
When just once you recombine!

In a tube quite electrodeless,
They discharge around a line,
And the glow they leave behind them
Is quite corking for a time.
(chorus)

And with quite a small expansion,
1.8 or 1.9,
You can get a cloud delightful,
Which explains both snow and rain.
(chorus)

In the weird magnetic circuit
See how lovingly they twine,
As each ion describes a spiral
Round its own magnetic line.
(chorus)

Ultra-violet radiation
From the arc of glowing lime,
Soon discharges a conductor
If it’s charged with minus sign.
(chorus)

Alpha rays from radium bromide
Cause a zinc-blende screen to shine,
Set it glowing, clearly showing
Scintillations all the time.
(chorus)

Radium bromide emanation,
Rutherford did first divine,
Turns to helium, then Sir William
Got the spectrum every line.
(chorus)

I'm trying very hard to write a presentaion which explains complicated information theory through the medium of pretty powerpoint transition effects, but they're doing it again. The office I work in is somewhat eccentric, and they keep talking about fun things that distract me from work. At the moment we're reviving a conversation we had a while ago on extreme sports.

This http://www.zorbsouth.co.uk/index.htm is zorbing. It mostly involves getting inside a huge inflatable ball and rolling down hills. 

We have come to the following conclusions. 

1. We have invented a new extreme sport. Cat zorbing - where you fill the ball with half a dozen cats before rolling down the hill in it. It's probably not much fun though.

2. It would look really cool if you covered loads of people in LEDs and let them all zorb down a mountain in the dark.

3 . We are not normal.

I finally finished the plum crumble I made on Sunday. We'd used up all the small oven dishes, so it ended up larger than I had anticipated.

It was the size of a doormat.

It was so good.

You'd think after having eaten plumble every breakfast and  dinner for nearly four days, I'd get bored of it. But I haven't . Maybe I'll make another one. I'll need another two punnets of plums and another whole block of butter then...

Oh dear. This is why I wear big non-revealing jim-jams. When I go sleepwalking I don't realise I'm asleep - I can see everything that's happening, it's just there are peculiar things overlaid over the real world, and I bimble around for a bit being very confused by them.

When on holiday with the NH chaps I was sharing a room with Gill and, while asleep, decided there were amazing things going on outside - something to do with everyone playing around on Vespas or something (we were in Italy). So I decided to go out and play. The floor was covered with sleeping Voles for some reason - presumably you'd all flown over to say hi - so I stepped over everyone and got to the door. It wouldn't open. I tried again. It still didn't open. I saw some switches by the door and wondered why they would have an expensive button-operated door in a youth hostel. Oh well. I pressed the door-opening switch. For some reason, the light came on, so I pressed the switch again and apologised to everyone for waking them up. I tried a bit more to open the door, but eventually decided it was never going to work and went back to bed.

Gill had seen all of this, and hid the key every night from then on. I'm just glad the door was locked - I don't want to think what would have happened if I'd been able to get out - pyjama beclad Cat trying to ride an imaginary scooter around the streets of Salerno.

So last night it happened again. It's fairly rare, but very strange. I thought I heard something going on downstairs, so thought I should probably make sure the back door was locked. I traipsed down the stairs and into the kitchen - to discover a slug the size of a sofa cushion sitting in one of the chairs. It wasn't anthropomorphised or anything - it was just a huge slug with its antennae spplooping in and out of the top of its head. I backed out of the kitchen and tiptoed around the living room to get to the back door and locked it, then sprinted back to the stairs, looking back to see the slug, still there.

This morning I came down to find a slug about 1cm long on the floor in the kitchen. I took it outside on a dustpan. It probably came in on someone's shoes. 

Or maybe the giant slug left him there as a sign that it wasn't actually a dream at all...

Phil decided to pop around yesterday while we were having dinner and left a few props in our living room. It's almost impossible to get to the front window. The chaps having diner with us were rather confused.