Working, that’s where, at the Queens Park \ UCL Summer School for Year 6s and 7s that I went on all those many years ago. As … what’s the job title again?… ‘assistant workers’ Tara and I are partly responsible for making sure no one gets lost, or killed whilst crossing the road, or missing a name badge etc. Hey, it’s fun, and we get paid too, of course 
So it’ll be a short blog then, since I have to get up in the morning, although I wanted to tantalise you by mentioning that I wrote a script today featuring (in order of appearance) a teacher, Philippa, Nath, Nic, Josie, Lucy, Andy, Lou and Abid. It includes the words washing, leotard and burnt.
Oh no wait! I know what I should mention… Pirates of the Caribbean 2, which I saw on the weekend. Look, the only reason anyone really sees this is because they love Johnny Depp, no matter what their gender or sexual orientation, and that’s fine. That’s good. I love Johnny Depp and he is going to marry me. But the truth is, this film was just not up there with the original. Most annoyingly, they didn’t even really bother to give it an ending, and before you shout that they’re doing a big setup piece for the next film, that shouldn’t matter! Dear Hollywood, it is not acceptable to produce a film as a big trailer for the next film. If you want to tell a story, get on and tell it. If you want to make money, at least take Keira Knightley out of a half-hearted disguise as a boy but without even trying to change her voice. I’m not really down on this film – I’m actually quite easy to please and this was certainly loads of fun to watch, but it just wasn’t it. Sorry guys.
(Oh and, between you and me, the highlight of my week has been eavesdropping on a conversation between Year 7 boys discussing what an orgasm was. Lovely 
)
Here’s what happened.
Parents News
Well, they only went and printed the entire e-mail 
including my customary ‘Hurrah!’ at the end. So… yes… now everyone can see my mental split between wanting to (as GCSE English would put it) ‘write for different audiences’ and my reluctance to actually go to the whole hog and do so. Thanks, Queens Park
Today was technically the final day of school, although it’s less of a technicality for Katie who just had her final day at primary school ever ever ever! Us older kids headed down to Camden where I was led to vent my fury at the utterly rubbish Silverlink service that collapsed for us on the way back, and my joy at discovering they would be scrapped from next year and taken into the warm heart of Transport for London, who actually know how to run a transport service. Yay! Silverlink, you suck and will not be missed. At all.
Robert would like to drum up linkage to his Taekwondo Club – mainly to attract Google’s precious PageRank goodness (hehe, I feel dirty). So there, I linked, aren’t I nice. Oh and Nic, Josie and Lucy are back from the shed in Wales. Wombat!
I have so totally decided to steal someone else’s style of formatting text because it’s a rather gorgeous way of writing and they’re not here to object, hehe.
We’ve rather decided to give up on school with all the lessons now either cancelled or at least pretending to be. Today was the sexy Sixth Form Hampstead Heath pic-a-nic (OK, sorry, picnic) which was terrifying for a moment as the teachers managed to outnumber the students. Still, it was nice to dip your feet in the lake during the continuing hotter than the hottest hot heatwave.
*(That’s Katie, for those not in the know)
Yes, it’s past midnight and I shouldn’t be up, but it is truly Katie’s 11th birthday today. Huzzah! Ah, I remember being that age. Even more so since it was the ‘Welcome to QPCS’ evening tonight which I tagged along to for nostalgia reasons. My dad and I invented a new (snowy) Canadian town – Happenmattersmattersnow – out of all the words that were exclamation marked on the back of the PTFA leaflet. Say it out loud joyously!
I bought Katie’s present at the Bull Ring in Birmingham cause that’s where I was all weekend, happily invited to Lucy’s dad’s 50th birthday party as documented by the ever-wonderful Josie here – who now becomes my most seen Birmingham person ever with a grand total of 5 occasions! Oh and congrats for running the Sport Relief mile, something Joshua did back here in Lon to the Don too.
Incidentally, in the morning at Lucy’s house we found surely on of the funniest books ever made: a Brit’s guide to Disney World Florida. With such helpful advice such as ‘if your kids want to eat chicken nuggets solid for 2 weeks, let them. It won’t kill them and will make mealtimes easier for you!’ and ‘if you’re tempted to doctor your receipts to avoid export tax, don’t, it’s illegal’. OK well it was amusing at the time
We’ve had months of headlines about the dangers of MySpace, Bebo and the other social networking websites. The US Government has been making regulatory noises, the media boiling and bubbling cases of toil and trouble online, and schools all too eager to write home warning of their perils. The schools irritate me the most, actually, with their brazenly populist appeal to parents attempting to score a few easy brownie points by saying ‘We blocked Bebo’ as if it had been a gigantic struggle.
How curious, therefore, to see the following on BBC News today. As part of an effort to deter bullies in schools, children will be able to vote on the worst offenders in their school via a website.
“Bully Beater is part of the School Poll service used to gauge children’s opinions on a number of subjects. It lists all pupils in a school alphabetically, allowing their peers to rank them on a bullying scale.”
(Emphasis mine)
Oh good! So anyone with access to this website would have a list of every single pupil in the school. Will there be logins? Sure. Aren’t there logins to Bebo and Myspace too?
On a much better note, Yahoo and Windows Live Messengers have now linked up, as long promised. That’ll be more scary online people to talk to then… 
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
