What goes around comes around

"I love seeing a teacher out of school, it’s like seeing a dog walking on its hind legs." Janis-Mean Girls.

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that when I was at school I wasn’t exactly what you’d call a model student. I had an absolute pigsty of a locker and kept it that way so it would tick off my house tutor. I drew all over my student planner and there was no room to write in it due to all the magazine clippings, train tickets and random garbage I had stuck in it. Our school was very strict when it came to school uniform so I would wear my hair in all these crazy hairstyles and wear bright green ribbons in it when it was a birthday of some random X-Files character. Teacher baiting was a subject I excelled at and a particular favourite pastime of my friends and I was making up nicknames for our teachers. I didn’t particularly care if they found out their respective names even if they were unsavoury. I was fourteen, I had a big mouth and I wasn’t afraid to use it. Oh yeah they were the days.

Over ten years down the track and oh how the picture changes. I’m now teaching more obnoxious, fouler mouthed, more violent mini versions of myself (even if they are taller than me) and I don’t like what I see. Now that the shoe is on the other foot I realise how my poor teachers must have just been pulling their hair out with me. So I may as well say it now, to all my teachers wherever you may be… I’m Sorry, (and don’t worry the next generation is definitely getting their revenge on me).

Even though I've been there it never ceases to perplex me how students have this weird obsession with their teachers’ personal lives. As Mark and I live in the same town as our kids we can’t help but be surrounded by them when we don’t want them to be (ie. as soon as we walk out of the school gates). They love seeing us walking down the street, catching the bus, doing our grocery shopping, sitting in the cinema and their personal favourite, seeing us at the local watering hole. It’s just bizarre when you see their eager little faces all lit up like they’ve just won the lottery when they see not one, not two but SEVEN members of teaching staff all out on the town together. A couple of the kids have figured out where we live and we’ve even been victims of that long loved game of knock and run (or knock and go ginger as it’s called here- what the?!). We hear the doorbell ring; we answer the intercom only to hear raucous giggling, heavy breathing or the sound of footsteps scuttling away. I’ve just got to laugh as it feels not that long ago that I was Janis from Mean Girls loving the fact that I just saw a dog walking on its hind legs.

Stop buying your glasses at St. Vinnies kids...

The kids at school all think I look like Cindy-Lou from the Grinch. My Year 9's have even started calling me Miss Cindy. Oh well, at least they aren't swearing at me- it's all about the small victories.

A Little Bit Britain- Part 2

Due to popular demand we will continue adding our observations to 'A Little Bit Britain'.

· Babies having babies- Britain has the largest number of unmarried teenage mums than any country in the world (me thinks most of these are living in Hastings);
· Carpeted bathrooms- ewwww, these are just so wrong and our place has one too;
· Porno Newspapers- Australia has its trashy tabloid newspapers too but nothing will prepare you for the tabloids here. Full frontal nudity on Page 3!!! No wonder the children here are the way they are.

Bonfire Night Part Two

As mentioned people in England love nothing more than making a giant effigy and then setting fire to them on a huge bonfire. Most people go to a couple of bonfire nights but those who are totally hardcore will go to every bonfire running in the county (and then some). On November the 4th the town of Lewes was having their bonfire night and according to the locals, Lewes Bonfire night is the mother of them all. It’s so famous that people travel from all over the U.K. and Europe to see it.

So it was a bit of a last minute decision that we took the one-hour train ride over the Lewes. To be honest with you were really weren’t very prepared for what the evening had in store for us (and weren’t exactly prepared for the weather either- brrrrr). As soon as we walked off Lewes station we were greeted by dozens of police ferrying us off down the street to watch the procession. We were shocked to see that the procession had already begun and I was panicking that we wouldn’t be able to see as in some places the crowd was ten people deep. Luckily we managed to find a good spot to watch the festivities from.

Burning Crosses- As you do

The procession was incredible and made the one we had a Hastings look like a couple of kids waving fiery sticks. There were huge floats of Condoleeza Rice (in a American flag bikini); The Pope; Guy Fawkes; and even Steve Irwin. As the float of Guy Fawkes went past the crowd booed and hissed and shouted "burn him, burn him" it was so primal and very, very creepy. Several marching bands played and it was quite amazing hearing the mood of the crowd change and begin singing, "God save the Queen" and "It’s a long way to Tipperary" in unison.

Steve Irwin

The parade went on for over 4 hours with the 5 Major bonfire societies all competing with each other. The costumes were also really unbelievable and just some of the amazing costumes on display were: Pirates; Vikings; period costumes through the ages; soldiers; monsters; grim reapers; Indians; Chiefs; animals and many more that I can’t even begin to describe. It was such a great spectacle seeing the fire twirlers and fireworks going on during the procession. One of the absolutely mental parts was when they were firing the cannons as they were being wheeled up the street. It sounded like bombs all going off. Hmmm, that’s safe.

At the conclusion of the procession, the massive crowd (I was told later that there were over 100,000 people there) went to the numerous bonfire sites. We decided to bypass the bonfires as everyone was pretty drunk and stupid and we were very tired (we watched the fireworks display from the train platform though). It would have been something to see the floats all getting burnt but you had to pay to even get into the sites. Walking back to the station was comparable to walking through a battlefield; there were broken bottles, heaps of rubbish and burning torches on the ground that you had to step around and over. We walked past the paramedic’s office which was completely overflowing with people.

In hindsight it probably wasn’t the safest place to spend a Saturday night as several other teachers told me on Monday that loads of arrests were made and several people had gotten seriously burnt from the fire and the fireworks. But we made it safely back to Hastings to deal with the bigger fireworks at school on Monday.

These people are teaching your children

Just so that you don't think we've imagined our new friends here are some pictures:

MATT - Our British social secretary. Teachs IT and PE.

Matt and Mark

LINDSAY - English
JAMIE - Maths and French;

Karen, Lindsay and Jamie

STEPH - English;
STEVE - Science.

Steve and Steph

MARK W: Maths and IT.

Jean (Mark W's wife), Mark W and Steph

I see dead people...

I don’t quite get what the deal is here but I’ve found the British to be absolutely obsessed with ghosts. Every place you go to has some sort of ghost story attributed to it. Even our hometown of Hastings has ghost tours around it in the evenings. At first I thought that it must be because everything is so old and being so old by default places have seen a lot of death. But it can’t be just the age of the places as strangely our school has got one (and it was built in the1940s).

The ghost story of our school revolves around the large clock tower that dominates the school. Currently the clock is broken and the cost to repair it is £20000 but apparently it’s not worth the money. The reasons why there is a ghost in the tower are sketchy at best (I reckon it was a murdered teacher- ha, ha, ha). Anyway, every time the clock gets fixed it breaks down soon after…. The spooky part is that the three clock faces always break down with the same times on their faces (12.00; 4.15; and some other time I can’t remember).

Back onto the national obsession of ghosts were the Halloween celebrations. In Australia Halloween comes and goes without much of a blip on the social calendar (except for maybe a few dodgy decorations in shop windows). Here Halloween is massive and unfortunately for us Halloween fell on a Tuesday so our kids were just jumping off the walls (quite literally and very Exorcist-like). All they could talk about was going out and trick or treating (even the Year 11’s).

While we were sitting at home on Tuesday evening (with the doorbell turned off to prevent Trick or Treaters- how bah humbug of us) we heard the distinctive noise of drumming coming up the street. We looked out the window to see a procession of ghouls, ghosts, zombies and demons marching with their drums. It was actually quite eerie as it was dark and the lighting in our street is Ye Olde lampposts. The funny thing is that I must be becoming a bit British too as I see (brain) dead people five times a week.

DAY 8- Sunday, Isle of Wight

Last day of holidays. (Sigh....) So much to see so little time and where to start?So we decided to start with the zoo. Which was really cool. I don't think I've ever been that close to some seriously big cats. I could have reached out and touched them! For some reason though I didn't really feel like sticking my fingers through the fence. It was kind of strange actually as they had a sign on the monkey cage saying "Caution Lemurs can bite!"but nothing on any other cages. Another fearsome trek, this time by foot and we were off to see the Romans. Supposedly the Isle of Wight was quite big in Roman times. Declared itself a seperate state and all that. Anyway, the guy's house we visited was obviously doing quite well for himself because he'd had the floor of each room turned into a mosaic. After that there was no putting it off any longer. It was time to take the long trek home andit was loooooong. We arrived back in Hastings around 10 as the train line was having maintenance done.

DAY 7- Saturday, Isle of Wight

Still for some reason we decided to ditch the bikes the next day and opted for a more familiar method of travel, buses. Just riding around in the bus was something. The country was wonderful, rolling greens, cute little villages and of course all around us the ocean. By the time we got to our final destination the bikes were well and truly forgotten, even if the bruises weren’t. And what was our final destination? The Needles.

I’m not sure exactly why they’re called the Needles, they’re just a couple of rocks in the middle of the ocean but hey it’s a big tourist site and they have sand. That’s right sand. I think what’s actually happened is that somehow all the sand in England has ended up on one single beach in the Isle of Wight. Not only have they got sand but also they’ve got it in any colour you want… black, red, yellow, blue-grey, orange and brown. Supposedly it was quite the thing for Victorian well-to-dos to travel to the Needles to collect a little glass jar of coloured sand. As you do.
The real highlight of the trip though was the glass blowing factory. We’re we got to watch the craftsmen blowing glass and explaining how they stretch it and shape it. It was pretty incredible and yes we did get suckered in. Now we just got to figure out how to transport a highly breakable glass vase to the other side of the earth. D’oh!

The coloured cliffs (looking somewhat less colourful with dodgy photo)

We also visited the sweet factory and bought more than a couple of lollies. Not that either of us particularly like hard lollies but oh well at least that stops us from eating too many at once.

DAY 6- Friday, Isle of Wight

I don’t know what possessed us to hire the bikes but we spent Friday of our so-called relaxing holiday cycling a 23km circuit on the island starting at Sandown and ending in Shanklin. I was filled with dread as soon as we wheeled out of the bike shop as I remembered that the last time I had ridden a bike was 8 years ago at a school camp (didn’t go that well back then either). But after a bit of a shaky start on my part we settled into the riding and I began to enjoy the trail. The track we were following was called the ‘Sunshine Trail’ as it gets the most hours of sunlight of any place in the UK.

One of the highlights for me was meeting Pierce Brosnan who was also cycling on the trail (he even said ‘hello’ to me) and I think I did well not to turn around and cycle after him. All I need now is to meet Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Ralph Fiennes and a couple of the Harry Potter kids (any will do I’m not fussy) before we head home and I’ll be a happy woman. We also did a little detour into a small town called Godshill, which could only be described as ‘cute’. It was full of (more) gorgeous thatched cottages and we also visited a 10th century church which is still being used today. The trail changed from fairly flat road to steep off road terrain and we cycled through mud, long grass, thistles and cowpats.

I think one of the most incredible things about England is all public walking tracks they have and even more amazing are that the tracks go through private property. As you’re walking through one property to another and as you reach the gate there will be a very polite sign saying ‘close the gate behind you so the stock doesn’t escape’. If you just went trolloping through someone’s farm in Australia they’d be after you with a big shotgun.

Although I must admit that we had a couple of issues on the trail- right at the end we managed to get lost and the public WALKING tracks ended up being violated with two stupid Australians on mountain bikes. Mark had to lift our bikes over numerous fences and carry them down steep stairs (I kept wondering where the farmer was with his shotgun) but other than that I think we did well and most importantly we had a really great time. Tour de France here we come!

Quick! Run! The farmer's coming

DAY 5- Thursday, Isle of Wight

Woke up at the horrible hour of 6am (and it was dark, and it was cold) to begin our travel to the Isle of Wight. Aunt Joan made a big fuss over us and drove us to the station and thus began our odyssey. Here is journey:

CAR- Luton to Luton Station;
TRAIN- Luton to London St. Pancras;
WALK- St. Pancras to Kings Cross Station;
WALK- Kings Cross to Kings Cross (Thameslink);
UNDERGROUND- Kings Cross Thameslink to Blackfriers Station;
UNDERGROUND- Blackfriers to Embankment Station;
UNDERGROUND- Embankment to Waterloo;
TRAIN- Waterloo to Portsmouth Harbour;
FERRY- Portsmouth to Ryde;
TRAIN- Ryde to Shanklin

Platform 9 and 3/4

Phew, we were so tired from all that sitting down that we were ready for a sleep but we couldn’t believe our luck when the sun came out just as we got to the hotel. That boost of Vitamin D gave us the energy to go for a walk into the Old Town and into the Shanklin Chine that was really beautiful. The thatched cottages of the Old Town were just so gorgeous. The thatching of the roofs had come alive and were covered in moss and grass- it was lovely and picturesque (very Lord of the Rings) but the inhabitants of those houses must just curse all the dampness that moss must bring. I dare say the neighbourhood Thatcher must rub his hands with glee everyday.

DAY 4- Wednesday, Luton

Seeing it was raining and wasn’t the best day for an outing, Aunt Joan decided to take us Aunt Win and Aunt Betty out to a garden centre. As you do, I guess. Anyway we had a nice meal and it was great to meet up with Win and Betty. After that we finished off the day watching a documentary about Otters. All in all a very nice mellow day in the midst of what was to be a pretty busy holiday.

DAY 3- Tuesday, London

After a rather unfortunate event involving a lost address book we ended up having to stay in London an extra night. Monday afternoon we were due to set off for Luton but with no address, telephone numbers and unable to call Australia as home was in the wee hours of the morning we were doomed to stay in London. After several unsuccessful, frantic attempts to search our bags and try to find Mark’s great-aunts phone number on the Internet we booked a hotel (lastminute.com saved our lives) and prayed that Mark’s aunt wouldn’t worry that we’d been murdered.

We had to wait until Monday evening to ring Australia and then Tuesday morning to ring Mark’s aunt and I felt so guilty. But we got everything sorted and arranged to stay at Luton on Tuesday night. This meant that we basically had a day to spend in London. We spent the day walking through Hyde Park and feeding the wildlife (the squirrels were so cute) and we also walked around the gardens of Kensington Palace.

Peter Pan

Carrie: "A squirrel is just a rat in a cuter outfit"

Next on to Harrods… It was just amazing and I could understand that if you were stinking rich why you’d shop here. The Art Noveau ceilings, stained glass windows and tiled floors were amazing. While some things were so garish and tacky (Dodi and Diana memorial fountain in the Egyptian Room) it was so lush and opulent that you couldn’t help but have a good time. Problem is that I’ll always be a shop girl at heart and even though I’m not currently working in retail we went to visit the toy department. The toys were unbelievable; including a working child-size Jeep (a pinch at only £22000) and life sized stuffed toy animals (the life size elephant was incredible- I want one)!

We then caught the Underground to Luton which was quite an experience. The transport system in England is really quite impressive- massive sprawling labyrinths underneath the cities. But it ended up being quite a shemozzle- we caught no less than three trains just to get out of London! I know people really whinge about the trains here but we’ve always found them to be immaculately clean and comfortable. The English education system may be going to the dogs but the transport system is fantastic.

Got to Luton very tired but relieved to be there, it was nice having someone to spoil us and cook us dinner as well. It’s always nice to catch up with family but we were very surprised that the reputation of the school had travelled so far with Mark’s aunt knowing about its “issues”. Deary me.

Worst Job...

DAY 2- Monday, London

Rehash of our holidays...

Arrived in London the day before and like all good tourists set out at once for Buckingham Palace. Pity it was raining. Not only did we get thoroughly drenched but also all our bags got wet and we had to spend that night drying out our clothes with a hair dryer. Which may be why we left our address book behind when we left the next morning (D’oh)

The next day began with a quick trip to London’s other main attraction the bureaucracy. Which was not actually as bad as we were told it was going to be. Although they did split us up to interrogate us and I couldn’t remember when we got married (Double D’oh). Anyway we now have a NI number- Gee we’ve only been here for 2 months!

After that we were off to the Tower Bridge and then on to the Tower of London. There were a few other sites on the agenda too but it turns out the so-called “Tower” of London is actually more of a castle. We spent hours wandering around and ran out of time for anything else. They have a building (more like a bit vault) in the tower filled with the skeletons of old crowns. Did you know the royals used to have to hire the jewels to stick in their crowns for special events?

Meeting the locals

Bonfire Night

Well it's better late than never...

One of the highlights of our time so far has been the Hastings bonfire night. Which starts with a procession through the streets by local bonfire societies and finishes with fireworks on the beach and of course a bonfire.

The bonfire itself was massive made up of stacked pallets and the costumes of the bonfire societies had to be seen to be believed. This quiet little seaside town continues to keep surprising us. One minute the old town is full of antique dealers and Ye Olde English pubs and the next minute they unleash the freaks. (Including one of our fellow school teachers).
It was incredible hearing the drums coming through the streets that and the constant explosions of fireworks going off. Fireworks are legal here so every second kid had their pockets stuffed full of them.

The whole town was packed, with lines at every pub, toilet and chip shop. In fact we went into one fish and chip shop to be told that they had sold out of everything! The entire night we kept bumping into groups of our kids roaming the streets and the next day at school was full of “I saw you with Miss Manning at the bonfire night.” Teaching at Hastings is a bit like being a B grade celebrity – most people know who you are but don’t really want to talk to you or be seen with you.

Crazy photo of the parade