a long overdue update pt II

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cont form last post.


Weather

The weather has been pretty good until recently, the last three weeks have seen rain much more prominent. In fact it has rained for 12 of the last 14 days, and on Monday they broke their own national record. In hull on the east coast (i think) 4 inches of rain fell in 24hrs!! That was more rain in one day than ever before (well, ever meaning since records begun...thats ever enough for me.) The rain has also been late in the week, meaning groundsmen are having trouble providing cricket pitches, as opposed to wet, soggy, partially mown patches of slightly harder grass. We played on the worst cricket pitch i have ever seen when we played a way a couple of weeks ago.. When i bowled the opening ball of the match, it left a divot of almost half the depth of the ball!! People were falling over in the outfield trying to take off.
In between the days of rain, if there is any warmth, because of the ridiculous amounts of precipitation it get really humid. If it gets above 20 degrees this country becomes a sauna. I keep getting told that the weather would improve but when i was on weather dot com this morning there was nothing but rain and cloud for the seven day forecast so im not really holding my breath!
School
I think allerton grange’s motto might be “a true test of character”. It has been amazing. In my 2 months i have been sworn at more times than i could count, told i would get “sorted out” at least twice a week, ignored and disobeyed all day every day! Luckily the staff here have been awesome, they are good fun and have been very helpful. They have even taken lately to taking the piss out of me and sending me to classes and rooms im not meant to be in, giving me an uncomfortable confrontation with the actual classroom teacher when they turn up and find a strange man attempting to take their class! Ha ha....
We have been to the pub for lunch on Friday each week which is a good chance to play “who has the worst story of the week” ive won a couple of time, but in think that’s them trying to make sure my will to keep going is not broken to early in my career.
Class has been pretty good, as i have been put on here for the whole term now (until mid july) have been doing all my own planning and organising and my own duty and all those sort of things, so it has turned out to be a good thing for my CV. Hopefully the nerds here will write me a nice letter at the end of it also..

Other than the fact that i do get abused daily, the school has another problem, it fire alarms. The problem shows its face in two forms: first of all because students don’t have a great experience here (as all the abuse they give to teachers doesn’t go down that well!) they seem to think causing even further chaos is a good idea. Hence the plan for students (or former students of the school) to take a day off, then sneak into the school at various times and set off the fire alarm. This is always met with rapturous applause from the class and cheering as they race out of class o their collection points, then all have a competition how slowly they can return to their class.
The second is an even larger class problem. It relates to the weather. The school is very old and leaky and every time it rains, particularly when it rains hard, water leaks in. After water has leaked into the building, it seeps further into the electric, specifically the system that runs the fire alarm.
What this means in practical terms is that every time it chucks it down, the fire alarm goes off meaning i have 15 mins out of the buildings in the rain to stand around and get wet through. Great. I learnt my lesson the first time, after which i had attended class in A block (as far away form my office as you can get) in only my shirt, and left my coat on the back of the chair in my office. The fire alarm went off twice in that lesson and i was wearing a white shirt. Nice. The fire alarm has been off two further times in the wet, the last time having interrupted me writing this. Worse still as soon as we had all returned to our classes (student time, not teacher time) it stopped raining and the sun is desperately trying to show its face for the first time in almost a week.

Language
There are a few saying i have got from school that i never, ever want to hear again:
“Whatever sir, im not bovered” (yes bovered with v.)
“whatcha getting excited for sir”
“Misteeeeeeeer Kennnnneeeeeddddyyyyyyy” (wrestler saying.... always said at top of voice.)
“ehhhhhh” (students being twats)
And from outside of school:
“going down leg” (any umpire, after anytime i have hit the pad..)
“We’ll wait another half an hour and have another look then” (umpires believe pitches can dry form sopping wet in halfa...)
“And for the north of the country there will be rain”

Cricket:

Last but not least i have actually played cricket sometimes. We are going brilliantly and have managed to sneak up to 3rd on the ladder on the back of some fantastic smashing of some of the lower teams. Rossco and I have been bowling well at the beginning of the innings and at mid season find ourselves in the top few wicket takers in the comp. Our batting has improved also, competition legend Richard robinson has managed back to back tons for us and is average in a phenomenal 70 for the season, so batting around him has been quite easy.
Some memorable performances:
We travelled to esholt who were the top team at the time as we were just starting out rise up the ladder. We only managed to scrape together 120 and were a bit worried going in to the field. 16.5 overs later they had been bowled out, Rossco and I being the only bowlers used, he got 6 and i got 4 and they were bowled out for 60 odd. It was great fun, they certainly fell away after their first few wickets, and by the end they had given up meaning the last coupla wickets came very easily.
Twice we have played teams in the bottom two on the ladder and twice we have rolled them for 90 odd, in these performances we have shared all the wickets, rossco and i managing a few at the top then whoever of the rest of the bowlers comes on to bowl clean up the tail. It is a bit of a common story among second division teams that they rely a great deal on their top few batsmen, after you have four or five wickets you can usually run through a team and keep the runs down reasonably easily. Having said that some of the top few batsmen are very good, and two of the overseas player have had to go home as they have been selected for the Pakistan A training camp for thirteen weeks. This further weakens two of the bating lineups as they are not allowed to resign an overseas player.

The last performance of note was three weeks ago V middle of the table hartshead moor. Richard got a ton and we managed to compile 280, the biggest total of the year by a long way by us and an imposing total, we got the first wicket off them in the third or so and they seemed to give up, e then had them6 for 40 and bowled them out for about 90. This meant we got full bowling points and full batting points as well as winning the game means we got the whole hog, 20 points for the ladder, which is the first and only time that anyone can remember a KCC team getting the full points.


SO n conclusion to the passed 2 and a half thousand words, life is good, enjoying it but working hard, and being wetter and colder than i thought i would be. Looking forward to some holidays and site seeing.

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