No regrets Coyote, we just come from such different sets of circumstance (Joni Mitchell)

Life at the moment has been about work work and more work for both SWMBO and me.

Apart from an interlude of chain sawing up a Wattle that had blown down in a gust of wind on Sunday afternoon, I spent the last weekend marking and writing reports for my senior classes while Jacky put in extra shifts at Hastings Hospital. I also had my one-Sunday-night-chapel-service-a-term to go to!

I managed to get it all done but at what cost?

Well blogging for a start. The posts on this blog have slowed to a veritable trickle this year. While I manage to do two music related blogs a week on Goo Goo G'Joob this is a dramatic decline from when I was in the Middle East. 

What else? Well the time SWMBO and I spend together is also a casualty of our increased workloads. It's a necessary fact of life - we all have to pay bills and eat stuff.

Of course things are relative. I do remember a time when I was busier. When I was Principal at Stratford High School I had many late nights at school during the week, sport on Saturday (including taking a football team) and prep and marking on Sunday (I taught one class of English then).

After that experience SWMBO and went to work in the Middle East. My work finished at 2pm each day with zero marking or other commitments on the weekend. SWMBO didn't work. Bliss. But an unreal bliss and a bliss that couldn't last.

Being a teacher has always been demanding and I am not surprised that my life has become once again centred around school things.  This weekend was a doozy though because the balance was missing, and I am cream-crackered this week as a result.

Thank goodness for that Wattle. You can't always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need (to paraphrase Mick Jagger).

I was sitting in the A.R.T. room doing report comments and Jacky came in yelling stuff (I forget exactly what but along the lines of, "Oh my God, the Wattle").

I, of course, did the Wattle routine from Monty Python (part of the Bruce's skit below)!

This here's the wattle,
The emblem of our land.
You can stick it in a bottle;
You can hold it in your hand.
Amen!


 

And then I looked up to see the tree snapped off, leaving a big hole in the area by our house. Doh.

Oh dear, how sad. Nevermind.

At least SWMBO and I got to spend some quality time together cutting the thing up and turfing it over the fence before I headed off to school for chapel.

Funny old world innit.

Love and peace - Wozza