High School: The Best Days of Our Lives?

 

Figure in jeans and grey shoes holding a backpack in front of a brick wall, with the text 'High school: the best days of our lives?'

High school days are the best days of your lives…

How often did you hear that nonsense line uttered when you were a teenager, eh?

Someone put a picture up on Facebook the other day of a staff photo from my former high school. According to the silver lettering embossed on the frame, it’s from 1999. I would have been sixteen at the time, and these were the teachers I saw every single day, week in, and week out.

I am shocked by how few of them I remember.

There are two or three I am still in touch with – friends of my parents, or parents of my friends – who I could comfortably stand in the street and make conversation with. There are probably another dozen or so who I either liked or disliked a lot, and their names are still easy enough to call up in my mind.

But then there’s the rest. A nameless mass of smiles and suits, made up of individuals who may or may not have once stood before me in a classroom and imparted their knowledge on noble gases, imperfect participles, and quadratic equations.

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A Life in Lists

spiralbound notebook

I read a grand wee post over at Me, Mine and Other Bits yesterday about making lists.

I have always been a list-maker. When I was very young, and didn’t actually have anything important to write down, I’d just make lists of things like 10 favourite colours, or 20 tastiest foods, or 30 best Premiership footballers.

(I have dozens of notebooks full of that kind of list, which I must dig out one day because I’m sure they’ll give me a chuckle).

But at university, and then at work, list writing started to become more important, and now as a mother and wife it is how I keep on top of EVERYTHING.

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We’re All Going on a Job Hunt…

I mentioned in a post last week that we’d done our application for DorkySon’s reception place. With that task out of the way, I’ve had to turn my attention to the other big thing that I knew this year would bring.

Job-hunting.

*weeps quietly*

As the start of school will mean that DorkySon will be in someone else’s care for five full days a week, rather than just the three mornings that he currently spends in nursery, the time has come for me to find some kind of gainful employment. Continue reading

Enough Food If…

IF campaign launch Somerset House

There is nothing more powerful than feeling like you are part of a movement

Last night – standing outside Somerset House, with several brilliant bloggers tweeting away beside me, and Bill Nighy on stage in front of me talking passionately about land grabs and tax dodging and poverty as a form of slavery – I started to get that tiny tingle in my toes. It wasn’t just the cold. It was the feeling of excitement, anticipation and empowerment that comes when you start to believe that change is possible.

What IF we were the generation that could put an end to world hunger?

More than 100 charities believe that it is possible, and they’ve joined forces to launch the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign.

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New Shoes

Clarks Boys Stomposaurus

Every so often, something unexpected will really take my breath away as it reminds me how much DorkySon is growing up.

It’s not usually something big or significant that startles me into that realisation. We have dispensed with naps and nappies, with a minimum of fuss. Sippy cups and sleep suits are a thing of the past, and I haven’t shed a tear over either. But this weekend I had one of those moments where I stopped and looked at my boy, shaking my head in disbelief. Wow.

DorkySon needed new shoes. Continue reading