Wheeldon on tour

I'd just like to get one point across. I am a fairly placid kinda guy.

It's just every now and then, when I'm driving my van I get a little peeved. Some people percieve this as road rage. That's not the case, not at all. I don't get angry in queues of traffic. It's just when some people fail to stick to basic rules of the highway code, like using indicators to signal a change in direction, especially at roundabouts, I can get a bit tetchy. Choice phrases include words like 'chuff-monkey'. It's not road rage, it's idiot rage. Stupid or incompetant people on the road really get my goat
So people, think of my blood pressure and remember the rules of the road.

Having returned to the tour after the half term break, we find ourselves back in the North West. Before the holiday we had a really good response from Liverpool schools. As we head into the Rugby League heartland towns, there has been such a poor uptake that we only working 1.5 days this week.

Don't panic though, we're off to the right side of the Pennines next week.

On another topic, we staying in a nice hotel with a pool, gym and sauna. I went for a swim on my first evening. The pool was lit by some mood lighting which changed colour every few seconds. As I swam with my goggles on, doing an approximation of front crawl, I found it very hard to see and almost collided with other swimmers. Come on folks, who thinks, "Let's make a pool with lighting so poor that people will bump into each other"???

That being said, I'm off there again now........

Having spent the last week in a Holiday Inn Express, the home of the cheese-print, I was planning on the revivial of the Carbon Cheeseprint. Sadly this hotel gave out cheese in very large portions. It was about as fat as my thumb but 3 times longer. I could barely finish it.
Having been waiting for 4 weeks for some cheese, then they overface me. It was a very sad day for me....

Fresh from my recent literary appearance on a national radio show, I spent the week in the Adelphi hotel in Liverpool. You might remember it was on a TV show a few years back. Our team had a few opinions about it.

1. It was like the Shining. No really. One of my colleagues had to sleep with the bathroom light on for her first night.

2. My bedroom window was
a) frosted - like a bathroom window
b) had that wire running through it like at school.
c) was double glazed with two totally separate panes of glass
d) unable to be opened
e) didn't look outside, just onto a service staircase!

3. It had a lift with a sense of humour. Once I got on it at floor 5, on my way to the ground floor, it took me down to floor 1. Stopped, opened the doors, nobody got on. It then went back up to floor 6 to let more people on. Then it complained about being overloaded. Went back down to 5! Then it went to 2 then to G.

Delayed and insulted! By a freakin' lift.

I thought I'd share this tale with you...

Last week I went to watch a football game. We won, everyone was happy. I went to the loo before the walk back to the car.

I'm casually having a wee when a small boy stands next to me at the urinal. He's carrying a bottle of pop, which he needs to put down so he can pee. He places it under the urinal (not the cleanest place!) but as he bends down he almost interrupts my stream with his head. I shuffle a bit away from him, but realise my wee is splashing back a bit. Onto the kids hair. He's totally unaware....

Parents: warn your children about the dangers of going under public urinals. It's your duty!!

It struck me the other day that the world is a very different place at Christmas now than it was 15/20 years ago. Back then places shut for Christmas, people spent time with their friends and families. This was partially because nothing else was open for them to do!!
We survived that hardship of having the shops shut for 3 days. That's why there was always a rush to get enough food to last you and your guests, because you had to wait until 27th December to re-stock your cupboard.
A large swathe of the country worked in offices or factories and had a week off, or close to it. So you could spend time with your family because most of them were off work.
Nowadays, shops barely have time to close their doors on Christmas Eve before they re-open with their sale on. And we, the consumers desparate for a bargain are banging on the door, phoning the hotline and buying on the web, just so we can buy the tat we didn't want 3 days earlier.
A recent article on the BBC website stated that what most kids want is a more time with their families at Christmas.
Now all the factories, mines and mills have closed, everybody works in the 'service' industry, where you work all the hours god sends.
Well now the only way you can spend time with your family at Christmas now is to see them behind the counter at your local department store being haranged by an irate middle aged women wanting to return a half-arsed gift without a receipt.

We managed without shopping on Boxing Day before. Are we now incapable of lasting two days without pissing our cash away? Bring back Christmas, put your wallets and purses away (at least until the 27th!)

As I'm on a short hiatus from the world of EduTouring, I'm doing a spot of supply teaching again.

Last week a girl in the 2nd set in Y11 asked me "Why isn't water in the periodic table?"

That's the periodic table of the elements!!!!!

These people will be doing vital jobs in the not too distant future. Save us....

Last week we went to find somewhere to eat. I'd earlier spotted a pub offering a warm welcome and a £3.99 carvery all day Mon - Sat.
So we pulled up in the car park and strolled in.
Being the master of observation and perception I immediately noticed something wasn't right. Perhaps it was the fact that there only 5 people in the entire pub, maybe it was the empty counter where the carvery should have been. But we asked the landlady if there was any food?
"No, you just missed it" she repLIED!
Steve said we should have a drink before moving on to the next pub and asked for a cider.
"Ooh, we've just run out."
How about a bag of crisps to tide us over?
"We sold the last one half an hour ago"

Perhaps not the best business model to copy, but I'm sure it'll work out.

Later in the week we drove to a hotel in a small village 3/4 of a mile off the main road. As we turned towards the village I noticed a pub advertising 'home-cooked food'. I made a mental note of this.
We decided to go for our dinner and asked the woman in reception if we could walk it. Yes she said, it wasn't too far. She was talking of different pub though!! We strolled to the local pub and had a pint and had a quick scan of the menu, but seeing as we'd decided to visit the pub on the main road, we left. A much longer and darker walk than we had anticipated lead us to the holy grail. We entered and my 6th sense tingled. Well, actually, it was my second sense - smell. The smell of paint. After a chat the barman whilst ordering a pint we found out the pub had only opened about 3 hours earlier. So we drank our pint and walked back to the 1st pub we visited.

I'm staying in a hotel where they don't believe cheese is a suitable breakfast food. So today I tried to do a cheeseless cheeseprint activity. It was partially successful, though I suspect the lack of cheese held some of them back.
Also, tomorrow I am being watched by a lady from HQ, so I reckon the cheeseprint may be put on hold until next week. I don't think my boss is ready for the whole cheeseprint innovation.

I've just been to Sainsburys to buy some cheese for my supper. Cheddar with Port. Cheesarific!

Today's school was a girls' grammar school. One of the first things I noticed as we unpacked the van was there were boys wandering around. Now call me an old pedant if you like, but I thought the idea of a girls' school was that there were no boys. I found out that the boys were in the sixth form. This strikes me as a cunning strategy on behalf on the boys in question. "I'll go to a girls' school to do my A-levels. There'll be loads of desperate girls there for me to hit on!" This might not be true....but it's clever nonetheless. Especially when there is a boys' grammar school about 2 miles away!!

Apparently there has been some discussion on the topic of CHEESEPRINTS, including the main topic of 'What the bloody hell is a cheeseprint?'. So to put the matter to bed once for all I have written, in conjunction with the good people at the OED, the ultimate guide to cheeseprints.

1. A carbon cheeseprint is similar to a carbon footprint, being not the amount of carbon dioxide (or equivalent gases) released by a persons lifestyle but by the lifecycle of a piece of cheese.

2. It's called a cheeseprint not a footprint because the average piece of cheese has not got a foot or feet. Thus it can't leave a footprint. Duh!

3. A cheeseprint of a standard piece of hotel grade cheese could consist of the carbon dioxide given off by tankers driving the milk to the cheesery, the emissions given off at power stations used to generate the electricity to make the cheese and to chill the cheese in a refridgerator and so on....

4. The cheeseprint was born when I found cheese on offer in a Holiday Inn Express and liberated it from its confines of a small bowl. Thus I devised the whole cheeseprint concept and retain all rights on use of the term 'cheeseprint'. So no stealing my idea. I know who you are!!

I hope this helps, if not, feel free to leave me feedback. Or not, whatever makes your life easier.