...but I can't be arsed right now, so I'll do an entry instead. Despite it being exams week, I can't help but feel that this is a time to relax, as I don't have to fret and fume over making lesson plans for now. Instead, I have the joy of paperwork to deal with: Preparations for the summer school prog, a 22-page course review and targets overhaul, marking a load of largely plagiarised asignments from my academic English course and tying up any loose ends from the classes that finished last week. And it is bloody boiling in my staffroom.
I felt in a grim mood for most of the weekend, partly due to my hayfever, mostly because of my ongoing money problems - which found me without any money in the bank at all, and none until June 25th. Basically, it means we're going to starve next week.
I took out my despair, anger and aggression on a long, hard bike ride. I cycled down the Thames Path as far as Hambleden Lock, dragging my bike over stile and fence, thumping over root and pothole, then up towards Aston, onto a footpath at Remenham Hill, back down to Henley, then home via Harpsden, Binfield Heath, Dunsden and Emmer Green. Turning off from Hambleden Lock, I came into a meadow covered in wild poppies, a tide of red nodding in the breeze; On the footpath at Remenham Hill, I walked through a weird forest of pines, where fine, dead branches reached almost to the ground, and the light was a subdued sepia; Further on, I stood in a hilltop field, looking down onto a broad sweep of the Thames Valley towards the Chilterns, and saw a red kite circling lazily, and heard the cuck-cuck-cuck of a pheasant.
And having seen all this, it came to me that there are harder things and worse things than my current predicament, and that I live in a glorious, beautiful place.
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