Green and Grey

Green and grey, the colours of our uniform at grammar school.

Green and grey, the Shore Pine and Douglas Fir trees in the angry rain.

Green and grey day.

Grey because the friend of ours who is ill, but we thought would have a couple of years, has taken a turn for the worse. Those of us who pray, pray, those of us who don't, do whatever they do and we all fret.

Green because my three weeks of wearing green face paint at work has started. Our first performance went well I felt. Alex was nervous, I could tell, but he played a good Griswald. We have written into the play that he has tricked Witch Hazel into thinking he is a girl, he shares the secret with the kids and tells them not to tell me. But they are BURSTING to. Halfway through some of them couldn't hold in the knowledge any longer, so then I had to pretend not to believe them and then close them down, but it was funny.

I received a lame reply from the college tutor I complained to about her students smoking pot while I was teaching Kindergarten kids. She seemed to have missed the point. She asked whether we had 'no smoking' signs up.
Clean up the Anglo Saxon and this was basically my reply or at least, this is the reply I would liked to have sent.

'Of course we have no smoking signs you fuckwit, it's a peat bog, aren't your students supposed to be studying the environment ? A carelessly discarded fag butt in a peat bog can burn out of sight and uncontrollably for weeks and can travel under the surface until it comes up a few yards from houses. But that isn't even the point. I shouldn't have to put signs up saying 'don't break the law' that surely is taken as read?'

Yes, I know, fag butt.

I apologise to the sensitive for this, but it's raining hard at the moment. No, that's not it. It's just that in the rain, Sikhs, who seem to be much given to riding bicycles around here - for which may their God and mine bless them - wear special plastic covers on top of their turbans. It makes me smile.

Albert Schweitzer I am not -well, fairly obviously, it seems he died seven days before my eighth birthday. Today, however, I did think about him when I was forced to cut a living creature in half because it was disappearing down the throats of two snakes at the same time.
This bothered me and probably stupidly. In nature, this would have happened naturally and possibly with greater carnage. But as it was at my hand, it bothered me.

The choices and pain felt by greater beings than I however, is something I consider when thinking about history.
In spite of having reservations about Jonathon Rhys Meyers as King Henry, I do adore the choice of fellow Irish actor Maria Doyle Kennedy as Catherine of Aragon. I think she is superb in the part.
I have always admired Catherine of Aragon, and yet there was something necessary about her suffering in that without it, we would never have had the magnificent Elizabeth the First.

And it's not a great leap from the forces of history to traffic control in Portsmouth. Oh wait, yes it is. Well never mind.
Portsmouth is apparently leading the nation in reducing the speed limit in residential areas to 20 mph in order to reduce road deaths by two thirds. The country is considering following this fine example. One difference of course, is that in Portsmouth, it's rare for anyone to be ever able to drive over 20mph. When I cycled from one end of the city to the other, I would go past all of my colleagues in their cars. They were constantly telling me this, however, few of them took to their bikes.