Bulgaria with Noodles

As I think I mentioned in my last Gardening Bore, the melons have been very good this year. Some of them have been a bit small, but they are absolutely delicious and of course they are also 100% organic, with none of the dreadful chemicals that many growers seem to use. However, the most amazing success has been the tomatoes. I cannot take most of the credit for them, as Irena was the one who planted them and then took care of them, although I did do my bit too, putting in the wooden stakes to support the mature plants and watering them every other day. The cucumbers have also been excellent and prolific this year. They are delicious and wonderfully crunchy. Once or twice we have not watered them quite as often as we should have done, so a few of the cucumbers were a bit bitter. Plums are a very Bulgarian thing. They are everywhere in the countryside, but for some reason we still decided to grow some of our own. I am so glad that we did! Irena's homemade plum jam is super yummy wit...

I have just been watching this inaccurate, misleading and dishonest YouTube video and it made me absolutely furious! What a load of utter garbage! Yes, you might want to retire in the Algarve or in the South of France, but most sensible people will want to avoid such ridiculously expensive places. (Why not retire in Monaco or Switzerland, if you are an utter idiot and you have money to burn?) I know lots of Brits who have retired to Bulgaria, but of course Bulgaria is not even mentioned in this silly video.  What does "poverty" really mean? About 25% of all pensioners in the UK are supposed to live "below the poverty line". Well, yes, you can always believe the government's statistics, if you want to. I would say that "poverty" is worrying all the time about money, so that you never really enjoy your life. Even if you do have a holiday or buy a new pair of shoes, you are always wondering if you will be able to afford to do things like that next year. I...

This is probably going to be my last blog post about Windlesham House School, aka WHS, where I was teaching for three years. Looking at some of these photos, I wonder why I was in a hurry to leave the place. After I moved into the stable block, I had a large apartment all to myself.   Well, yes, there definitely were some very sweet and lovely children and I also had some interesting colleagues, some of whom became my friends. So why did I leave? Well, there were several different reasons, I suppose, but one of them was that I just did not really like or trust Charles and Elizabeth-Anne Malden. WHS was a bit too liberal, relaxed and "let it all hang out" for a prep school. Another factor was that I had the opportunity to be an Information Technology co-ordinator, something that I had never done before and a career move that fitted in with my interest in computers.  Okay, that is enough about me and my departure from Windlesham. It is time to have some nice photos of the child...

T here is a happy land Far, far away, Where they have bread and jam Three times a day. Oh, how the angels yell When they hear the dinner bell… Yes, I can still remember some of the lyrics from Peter Nixon’s superb production, Say Goodbye to Satchwell Road .  Unlike The Rocking Horse Winner , this was a play for children, about children and with children. Its central theme, the evacuation of children from London during the Second World War, was perhaps a bit too close to the bone for some pupils at a boarding school, but this did mean that the boys and girls in the cast could understand and relate to the play. As usual, Peter had written the play himself and I suspect incorporated a lot of material from the WW2 era. There was a strange mixture of humour and sadness, hope and despair.  Perhaps in some ways this mirrored the reality of leaving your home and moving to the countryside, a heart-wrenching transition that also brought new opportunities and unusual experi...

In many ways, I think that I learned much more about what I would call "the theory and practice of Education" during my fairly short time at Windlesham than I did during my PGCE course. Why was that, I wonder? Well, my own curiosity and determination had a lot to do with it. At WHS, I set my mind on learning more about teaching, the actual practice rather than the more abstract stuff they dish out to you at teacher training college. When you are doing it every day, then you want to have what actually works with real children, rather than the vague things you might waffle about in an essay or hear in a boring lecture.  Another reason why I learned a lot more about the science or the art (or the craft?) of teaching was that at WHS I did not have to take any sports or games sessions in the afternoons. Joy of joys! Yes, I did have to do some sort of activities with the children, but that was not really a problem at all, as it meant that I could do things like my Robot Club and  T...

Although there were plenty of things that I did not like about teaching at Windlesham House School, there were definitely some positives as well. In many ways, I learned much more about the art (or science?) of  Education at Windlesham than I did during my PGCE course. Part of the reason for this was that WHS attracted (and probably still does attract) some very talented teachers, one of whom was my boss, the Head of English, Peter Nixon. He is the chap with the beard, on the left. Peter's production of William the Bigamist was simply brilliant, just like any other play he has ever been involved with. Peter wrote it himself, basing it (of course) on Richmal Crompton's Just William books.   I have often wondered why Peter's productions are so good. His attention to detail has a lot to do with it, but he also has a special talent for casting, choosing just the right boy or girl for that particular role. Peter also manages to get the most wonderfully appropriate facial express...

On the whole, I did not really enjoy teaching at Windlesham House School. Duty weekends were a killer and the general lack of discipline made teaching at WHS pretty "challenging", to use that word headmasters often employ when they want the staff to do something that is not so pleasant.  As a teacher, I thought that Windlesham was too liberal and too trendy, a sort of rather upmarket (and much more expensive) Summerhill.  However, there definitely were some good things about WHS and one of them was my Threes class, better known as the Flumps. I really enjoyed teaching the Flumps and they really were a lovely and charming collection of children.  In the summer term, we had a very enjoyable class trip to Seaworld and Chichester, followed by a barbecue in the back garden of my flat in the stable block. At the end of the summer term, there was a strong tradition at Windlesham of putting on class plays in the school’s grounds. The parents seemed to like these al fresco dram...