(Un)Happy Birthday...

I am not a happy bunny. I want sympathy. Lots of it...

First things first... it's my (*ahem*)th birthday, and I was due to go and work at a school to do some supply teaching. This could be considered good news, apart from the fact that the Agency seemed to think I'd need something along the lines of body armour, as the school was what they referred to as "challenging." I would quite have liked to turn down the work (I mean, why work on your birthday if you don't have to), but Summer is a thin time of year for supply, and there's no work at all during the holidays which are rapidly approaching...

I went to check my emails, and found that the cat had been sick on the keyboard... and the computer was making very strange noises. I cleaned the keyboard, checked the cat, but couldn't check my emails as the keyboard didn't work any more.

The school actually had a nice feel to it. ...unfortunately, I guess my day really got off to a bad start when I accidentally wrote on the interactive whiteboard with a normal whiteboard pen... (in my defence, someone had taped some notices up on it with sellotape, covering the word "Promethean") With a sinking feeling I tried to find a technician or science teacher so that I could confess my heinous crime. Luckily it had been a proper dry-wipe whiteboard marker, and the application of ethanol with cotton wool succeeded in restoring the board to its original state.

I did manage to avert a water-bomb incident (threatening children in a non-Catholic school isn't half as much fun as in a Catholic one... hellfire for all eternity just doesn't cut it!) and the rest of the day went reasonably well. Until the end of the last period.

Another teacher came in and informed me that she had come to relieve me, and that I should go down to reception. Cover teachers don't normally get covered, so I was a little confused. I also spent three minutes trying to work out what rules or regulations I had unwittingly infringed...

Reception directed me to some workmen, who were shuffling their feet and looking slightly guilty. They asked me to walk over to my car, as they had had a little accident, and they needed my details...

They had been cutting the grass on a verge outside the school, and a stone had been thrown up, and, you guessed it, smashed my driver window. The particular model of car isn't common, so Autoglass didn't have the glass in stock, but a perspex one could be fitted temporarily, if I could drive over to the nearest centre before someone or other went home...

I know, I know... "offer it up" !!