July was a bit hectic. If I’d had ten minutes to spare I would’ve written some description of what I was doing here, but ten minutes never came up. As it was I spent the entire month working for a summer school in Berkshire – teaching, supervising, running activities, making films, editing films, making the school website and the miriad other tasks that have left me, three days after the end of it all, still fairly shattered. Still, it was definitely the best teaching job I’ve ever had and I’m already planning to attempt a return next year, just before the olympics.
I did have two days off in the middle of all the organised chaos, but these were used up in the most efficient way possible – two train trips down to Brighton to go to Duncan & Amelia’s “Hag-do” and wedding. The first of these was very cool indeed, and went without major incident until I was shepherded onto the wrong train in Reading station and ended up somewhere near Salisbury, 2 hours late for work.
The wedding itself didn’t go so well from my end, co-inciding as it did with the fist monsoon I’ve seen in the UK. After a morning marching kids through sheets of driving rain I arrived at Reading station to find they’d had a power cut and nobody knew what few trains were coming in. The direct route being flooded and impassable I improvised instead a route through London, Clapham and Gatwick, which got me there, albeit 5 hours later than I would have liked. Fortunately Brighton’s micro-climate seemed to have protected it from the chaos that was gripping the country and I was in time for cake. D&A looked very cool indeed and I got to see about eight people I haven’t seen since I left Scumhampton in 2002. As the meal was ending we played TV themes on kazoos most of the way back to Charlie’s house, looked at photos of us all where we looked both very young and very thin, then went on to the party, which had a more people I hadn’t seen for a while and (best of all) a free bar. It was a good night.
Proper fun over I had another two weeks of work, though no complaints there really. Now I’m making a quick tour of the most essential relatives to say ‘hi’ and collect birthday presents, then off to Prague again.