You like grief, I like grief, and no one does grief like… Mr. Godleman?
Possibly. Anyway, enjoy!
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!
Tony Benn
Anyway, there was a bit of a debate at the end when I pressed Benn on his insistence on the national state. Globalisation, I put forward, was a good thing because it offered workers in poorer countries a new opportunity for employment and wealth. And, if the world could be a fairer place with universal standards of wages and health and safety, Benn agrees in the end. He’s also a technologist – which is pleasing, because I agree entirely with Benn on this – our future depends on technology going forward.
On a totally different note, I’m super-excited (as a Microsoft blog would say) to promote RV Blog – Nic’s re-launched network of eager bloggers. Check it out, and stay up to date with the feed on the right.
The good news: AS exams are now over and I have a week off
The better news: Unit 2 of Physics went well! Reasonably confident about that paper, and was quite lucky in the questions they set. There were quite a few electricity calculations which I can generally do, so I’m happy about that.
The bad news: the final paper was a complete and utter unmitigated disaster. And in case you think I’m over-reacting, consider that even Hiten complained of a lack of time, and Robert decided 10 minutes in to junk Solid Materials and do Astrophysics instead! When someone does a module we haven’t been taught at all, you know things are bad. I’m sure he’ll do better than I did too. Annnnd I made exactly the same mistake I did waaay back in Unit 1 in January. Ouch.
Physics is broken down thusly:
Unit 1 – 30% – I’ve got a B in that (might retake)
Unit 2 – 30% – Reasonably confident about that paper?
Unit 3 – [20% – Practical exam which went OK &
20% – Solid Materials disaster]
So judging on that… I have absolutely no idea how I’ll do. Oh well. Happy end-of-AS to all.
Helen on It’s (waiting) time.: “Fabulous news, congratulations to you both! X” Jun 8, 21:51
