Victory!

I'm not long back from our 10's tournament. We ended up winning the plate competition, which wasn't a bad effort. It's nice to finish the season with some silverware, even if it was only the plate... I can't actually take any credit for the win, I didn't play the semi or final due to a really tight achilles tendon which made it painful to run. My poor old right eye was in the wars again... I had only just recovered from the black eye I got last match, & today I got cut just under the eye. It's nice to see the back of the rugby season, & now I can focus on touch.

I'm looking forward to a nice chilled evening. I don't have any work to do, so can relax & read the Sunday paper. Will gets back late tonight, he has been in Amsterdam attending a big Korfball tournament since Thursday night. It will be nice to have him back :-)

What a week!

This week has been really hard work, mostly because I've been doing a life-guard qualification that lets me take kids (or anyone for that matter) into the school pool. Over here you need a 'ticket' ie. qualification for anything, there is so much red tape & everyone is scared of potential libel action. It's a far cry from the good old days of St Peters when I used to take kids swimming, & the school pool was never actually locked. Us on-site tutors had some great midnight swims under the stars! Aahhh, the memories...

Anyway, we had training from 6-10pm on Monday & Thursday night, then the assessment which took a couple of hours on Friday night. We had a theory test, then CPR, then the pool stuff which included land-based rescues (chucking ropes, reach poles etc.) & water-based rescues (contact & non-contact tows, rescue breathing in the water etc.). Then it was my least favourite bit which was a 3m dive to the bottom of the pool to bring up a 'body' in the form of a submersible manikin. The last test, the 'initiative rescue' was the scariest because you had to take control of a class of kids & start them off as for a swimming lesson. Then you had to react to a situation as it unfolded in front of you. I was quite lucky with mine, I just had a student get cramp. He was in the shallow end so it was very straight-forward to get him safely out of the water & then deal with the cramp. Anyway, I passed, so I guess it was all worth it. On the Tuesday I had touch rugby training, Wednesday was normal rugby training, then Friday night straight after my assessment I had a formal dinner to attend, so it made for a very busy week!

This morning I got a nice lie-in, my tennis activity this term is second session so doesn't start till 11:40am which is very civilised... It's really enjoyable, I've got the loveliest group of boys, & the numbers are good so I can usually manage to have bit of a hit. The weather today was glorious, you wouldn't think it was still April! After tennis I sat in the garden for a couple of hours getting the only school-work I had to do this weekend out of the way. I was in a singlet & shorts so it's not too bad doing work when you can work on your tan at the same time! I then spent a few very enjoyable hours pottering around my garden. I planted up my 5 hanging baskets, so they should be looking good in a few weeks. I know I've said it before, but I really do love the growing season in the UK. It's much more impressive than spring back home. My sunflowers are coming along well, I had to thin them into separate troughs today. They are one of my favourite flowers, so happy...

The photo above is one that Will took during our defeat to Wimbledon last match. I'm number 1 & prop during the scrums, but stand in at hooker for the line-outs. Tomorrow we've got our last rugby for the year; a 10's tournament at Camberly. It's going to be hard work if the weather is anything like it was today. The grounds are really hard at the moment as well as we haven't had any decent rain for ages. No doubt I'll be a bit battered & bruised by the end of the day... My black-eye from the last match has only just disappeared! I'll be quite glad to see the back of the rugby season, & can't wait for our first touch game on Wednesday.

Next week at school should be far less busy than the last, then we've got exeat (where all the boarders have to go home, so no Saturday activities) to look forward to in the weekend. It happens to be the May Day bank holiday, so we also get the Monday off. A large group of us from school are attending the Reading Beer festival on the Saturday. We've all managed to get free VIP tickets by doing the real-ale trail which I talked about earlier. We'll probably go on the Saturday, about 2pm, so it promises to be a great afternoon/evening. There is over 400 ales to sample, so we'll be doing well if we try them all! No doubt you'll hear all about it in my next post.

First week back...

Gidday,

Well, I've managed to survive my first week back at school. It's always bit of a shock to the system after a nice holiday! It was fairly painless, a teacher only day Monday afternoon to ease back into things, then lessons as usual from Tuesday. This is my favourite term by far (& not only because it's the shortest!). The sun is shining & it just lifts everyones spirits. After 2 terms of coaching rugby, my games & activities are also a bit more relaxed this term. I'm taking 2 sessions of softball a week, & have tennis on a Saturday morning. My GCSE class (year 11) have finished the syllabus & are just doing lots of revision & past papers. I lose them at half-term which is now only 5 weeks away. After my 1 week half-term holiday I've only got 3 & a half weeks until the end of term! We really do finish stupidly early this year, 28th June which is a clear 3 or so weeks earlier than state schools. Apologies to my brother, & anyone else reading this from the State sector, I'm really not trying to rub it in! Honest!!!

I had my last regular rugby game of the season last Sunday, & we lost 15-0 against Wimbledon which was bit of a bugger. We were missing a lot of regular team players though, so it was kind of expected... I got a beauty of a black eye, I'm wishing I had taken a photo of it to share with you all! I basically caught a boot in the face whilst I was on the ground. It swelled up with a decent sized egg straight away, but I iced it & was just left with what looked like spectacular crimson eye-shadow on 1 eye! It was really hot weather, about 25 degrees, & the ground was rock hard, so the match was pretty hard work. I'm a bit over rugby at the moment, the season seems to have gone on forever. We've just got a 10's tournament left next Sunday. I get a few months off, then pre-season training is scheduled to start on 4th July, which is the day I fly to South America for 5 weeks! Oh well, trekking the Inca trail at 4000m above sea-level has got to be quite hard work, so I'll hopefully return in pretty good shape! The touch rugby league starts in a couple of weeks so I'm really looking forward to that, although it won't be the same without you Rich!

Today was a really nice start to the weekend. The weather has been amazing (especially for this time of year) all week, & today was no exception. Nicola drove over in the early afternoon & we went to visit our friend Claire, who has just bought her first house in Reading. It's a lovely place, she has done well for herself. I've got a bit of marking to do tomorrow, but hopefully the weather will hold & I'll be able to do it sitting out in the garden. Speaking of the garden, it's going mad! Spring in the UK is fantastic, things start sprouting up all over the place. I've got a hop vine & I swear it's growing a couple of cm a day! I planted some giant sunflower seeds & they germinated after only 3 days. I had some spectacular ones last year, & this year promises to be even better.

Right, had better call it quits here. Sorry for the lack of pictures, my blog entries are never as interesting once I'm back at work... If you're really lucky I might start giving you some visual updates of my sunflower seedling progress!!! Keep in touch, it's always lovely to hear from you, even if it's just to say hi.

Cornwall

On Good Friday Will & I set of for 4 nights camping in Cornwall. We found a lovely camp site just 10 minutes walk out of Padstow, which is a little fishing village on the North Cornish coast. Padstow is known for being the stomping ground of Rick Stein, one of the UK's celebrity chefs. He has several restaurants and delis in the area. We couldn't afford to eat at his famous seafood restaurant (plus it was booked out all week) but we did have his fish & chips, which were divine. A lot of Saturday was spent lazing around in the glorious sunshine, it really was unseasonably warm for the UK at this time of the year! Later that afternoon we went for a drive along the coastal road towards Newquay, stopping at a couple of the bays to chill out, check out the surfers, & enjoy the sunset... On Sunday we were off to the Eden Project, www.edenproject.com. For those that haven't heard of it, it is quite difficult to describe. They have basically taken over an old quarry & built a couple of huge biomes. In one of the biomes they have created a tropical rain forest, & the other one is a temperate zone. The tropical biome was really hot & humid, an early taste of what it is going to be like trekking in Borneo next summer on my school trip! Being spring, they had a 'bulbmania' exhibition on which really was spectacular.

Monday was also very relaxed. After a lazy morning we went for bit of a wander along the South West Coastal Path. We found a nice grassy spot to read the newspaper & listen to NZ beat Ireland in the cricket on Will's portable radio.

We got back on Tuesday in time for me to play touch rugby that evening. Yesterday I had a great day in the garden, before rugby training that night. We have our last competition game for the season on Sunday against Wimbledon, but also have a 10's tournament on 29th May. I'm already looking forward to summer, with the weather we've been having lately it feels like it is well on its way... We have tickets to a couple of festivals this summer; Late June we are going to 'Hyde Park Calling' where Crowded House are playing, then near the end of August we are going to the Friday & Saturday of the Reading festival. Razorlight are headlining the Friday, & Red Hot Chili peppers on the Saturday. We've also got the Reading beer festival at the start of May. Over the last couple of weeks a group from school has been doing the 'Real Ale Trail' which basically involves visiting 12 local pubs & getting a sticker from each one. If you complete it you get free VIP entry to the festival. The big advantage is that you don't have to queue, we tried to go last year but the queue was 3 hours, so we gave up & did a pub crawl in town instead!

Not much holiday left for me... We've got a teachers only afternoon on Monday, then it's all go from Tuesday. The good news is, the next term is unbelievably short & we break up for summer on 28th June!

Pembrokeshire

On Sunday my friend Nicola & I took off for a couple of nights in Pembrokeshire on the South Wales coast. It was a lovely day & Nic was driving her very snazzy little Mazda convertible, so we had a great trip (about 3 & a half hours) cruising with the top down & listening to some cool sounds. OK, maybe we listened to Kenny Rogers quite a bit, but it was great for a sing-a-long! We were staying in a YHA hostel in Broad Haven which was pretty much right on the beach. The photo above shows the Broad Haven beach just after sunset. It was a lovely spot. Part of the dining room at the hostel was a conservatory, affording great views over the water. That afternoon we did a bit of exploring, walking along the beach & clambering over some rocks investigating the rock pools etc.

On Monday we did a 20km or so walk along the Pembrokeshire coastal path from Broad Haven to Solva. Again we had glorious weather for walking, & it was really nice walking as well. The path goes mostly along the cliff tops, but does take you down to some lovely beaches along the way, so there was a bit of up & down involved. A few too many steps for my liking getting back up from some of the beaches! It was lovely & quiet, we had been walking for an hour or so before we saw any other people.
We conveniently came across a nice little cafe in Newgale at about half-12, so stopped & had lunch (bacon brie & cranberry panini washed down with a hot chocolate if you really want to know!). We made the mistake of sitting in some comfy old couches for lunch, so it was bit of an effort getting out of them & continuing our walk! Especially as we had a decent sized hill to tackle straight after lunch! The nice thing about coastal walking, as opposed to being up in the mountains, is that there is plenty of civilisation (pubs, cafes, toilets etc) along the way should you need it.

On the way to Solva we came across the greenest grass in the world! It really was fantastic, we just had to stop for a photo op...


It also gave me a chance to play around with a cool function on my camera where you can choose 1 colour, then have everything else black & white.

We got into Solva, which is a small town with a really pretty little harbour, just after 4pm & had a drink at the harbour inn to celebrate the end of our walk. We then had the mission of trying to get back to Broad Haven. There is a coastal service (called the puffin service, love it!) which serves the coastal path, but it was still on winter timetable, & hence, only ran on Tuesdays, Thursdays & Saturdays. Considering we were walking on a Monday, it didn't really help us! The friendly guy running the hostel said we would have to get a bus from Solva to Haverfordwest, & then get a taxi back out to Broad Haven. We get on the bus, & started talking to a guy who had also been out walking for the day. He was getting the bus back to his car, & said he lived in Milford Haven. Broad Haven was on the way there so he offered to drop us off on his way past. It worked out perfectly, & saved us £16 on a taxi fare...

That night there was another pretty sunset, & we had fish & chips, washed down with a good bottle of NZ sauvignon blanc, on the beach. A perfect end to a perfect day...

Tuesday morning we were up quite early to fit in another walk before the drive home. We did a really nice 2 & a half hour circular walk. It was on a peninsula so it meant we could park the car, do the walk round the peninsula, (out to Wooltrack point if anyone knows the area), then cut across some farmers fields to get back to the car. The weather wasn't as good as the previous day, less sunshine & higher winds, but it was great filling the lungs with more fresh air before the drive back, & the scenery was magnificent. We even had a go at a self-portrait!
We had a good trip back, then a couple of hours later I had a touch training/pick-up game. It was the first one for the season, held at Palmer park which is only 10 minutes or so from me. It is open to anyone playing in the Reading touch league, & we warm-up & do a few ball-handling drills first, before getting into a couple of games. It was great fun, we played until dark (about an hour & a half) & it is going to be on every Tuesday till the league begins on May 2nd. My team, the 'Try-Hards' is entered for our fourth year. We've got a title to defend after winning the mixed division 2 section last year! Bring it on!!!

At the moment I don't have anything planned for the rest of the holiday. Will gets 1 extra day either side of the stats, so it'll be nice to drag him off somewhere for a few days over Easter. My mission today is to have a look around last-minute.com & similar, & see what I can find...

Easter Holidays - Faust

Gidday,

School broke up on Wednesday, & the first couple of days of holiday I spent lying in, going to the gym, watching lots of the world cup cricket, & generally just chilling out. On Saturday night Will & I went into London to see a production of Goethe's 'Faust'.

It was amazing, as far as you can get from traditional theatre. It was staged over 5 floors of a disused warehouse, & the audience were free to wander at will & 'stumble' across the production. Everyone had to wear quite scary masks to differentiate them from the cast. To start off with you had to get in a lift & were let off at different floors. Will & I had to get off on the 2nd floor along with 3 others. It was really dark, & frankly quite terrifying! I barely let go of Will's hand all night!! There was this feeling that anyone could jump out of you at any time. It really was an amazing performance, when you did stumble across bits of the play being acted you could then choose to follow the main actors around the building if you wanted. They run through the whole performance twice, & we certainly took in a lot more the second time around.

The attention to detail on the set was amazing. It was set in the 1950's in America & 1 whole floor consisted of a bar, an American style diner, a motel complete with flashing neon, & a fully functioning cinema. You could sit on a bar-stool right next to members of the cast & a few lucky members of the audience were served drinks by the actor playing the barman. On other floors there were, amongst other things; a pine forest with 'snow' on the ground which crunched underfoot, a school classroom & locker-room, a corn field, a hay barn, a high school dance in full swing, old Faust's study & adjoining apothecary shop, long dark corridors lit only by candle & lined with Madonnas... Because everything was so dark & gloomy, & we were all wearing masks, all the other senses were heightened. The cinema smelt of pop-corn, the bar of stale booze, the pine forest of pine trees & so on. I know I'm raving on, but it really was the most amazing 'show' I've ever experienced. I'd recommend those in the UK to go see it, but it has actually finished running. We were lucky enough to get tickets to the last night. Below I've pasted a few links to reviews of the show, as they will describe things a lot better than me! I made the mistake of reading quite a few reviews before we saw the show, so was understandably a bit apprehensive about the whole thing!

http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/faust_1006.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/11/08/btfaust08.xml

http://www.curtainup.com/faustlond.html