Lift me Level

had a walk around the streets of Seville, around the streets near my hotel to be precise. Not much to report apart from all the oranges and the cycle tracks on the pavement. Thought pavements were for pedestrians but there are cycle lanes everywhere, don't they know that a bicycle travelling at 200km/hr can do as much damage as a car travelling at 30? Its all about momentum of course. If a very fat person is riding a bike then they would be lethal. Where I walked one had to cross a road about every 30m, wouldn't be much good for jogging, interval training would be the thing, sprinting between roads.
Was looking for shops but all I found was the hospital, obvious from all the people in white coats smoking outside. There was also a shop selling special shoes for people with one leg shorter than the other right across the road from the hospital. Quite convenient really, straight out of the hospital after the leg shortening operation and into the shop to buy a new shoe. Used to see loads of people with special built up shoes, wonder why you don't see so many these days? Probably due to financial cuts. People can't afford the shoes anymore so don't bother with the operation. Found the picture of the shoe on a website called "Lift me Level".

Strange Fruit

I'm in Spain again, Seville this time, staying in a faceless hotel somewhere out of town.
Breakfast was welcome since I hadn't eaten for ages, I just can't go into restaurants on my own except at breakfast. Had the usual sausage and bacon, ws ok except that the sausage wasn't cooked. No it wasn't one of those dried ones that's not suppose to be cooked it was a pink soft one that is definitely supposed to be.
Ended up with a selection of exotic fruits, one was a cherimoya or custard apple like in the pic except that one looks unripe (or mine was rotten). Very nice but very sweet. I wonder how many spoonfulls of sugar it contains. I haven't drunk coke since I saw that campaign with the pile of sugar. Maybe they should do the same for fruit, stop everyone eating it.

Computers on in the cockpit

Was interested to notice that the pilot had a laptop in front of him when I got on the plane to come to Barcelona. I thought it was strange that he was using a normal laptop like mine, peeped in to see what he was doing and glad to say he wasn't on facebook, I could imagine the entry.
Supposed to be flying this plane but decided to take a quick look at facebook instead
I hope he turned it off when the plane took off. What if the programme crashed or something.
The plane is delayed whilst updates are being made
When i went to leave the plane I walked past the air stewardess and said goodbye like you always do. I also said goodbye to some random person who happened to be standing waiting to leave their seat, thought she was a stewardess too, apparently not. Felt a bit silly.

De ja vu

Marking lab reports as usual which this takes a lot of time, not that I complain about having to do too much work its my fault really. If I can't tell why a student doesn't get a sensible result i like to play around with their data to find out what's wrong. I guess I like solving problems. Talking about problems I'm trying to restore the drivers door on my triumph spitfire, it's just impossible to get flat, quite a challenge though. Nice thing about car body repairs is that if you make a mistake you just sand it down and start again. I built a car once, it came in a kit and you had to bolt it together. It was called a spartan like the one in the picture.
Drove it down to the south of France with a friend for a holiday in the sun, first problem was that we wore out a set of tyres on the trip down there because the wheels weren't aligned properly. When we got to the coast we cruised along the seafront waving at all the French people impressed with my English car. Then I crashed.
Spent the rest of the week fixing the damage.
I think I've probably written this in an earlier blog entry. I haven't done that much in my life so I'm now having to repeat myself how sad. I guess that's what happens to teachers, we repeat just say the same things day in day out for the whole of our working lives

30 years of teaching

Came to an interesting conclusion today.
I the first years of teaching I spent all the time thinking about what I would say next.
After 10 years I started to think more about what the students were thinking.
after 20 years I knew what the students were thinking.
After 30 years I know what the students are thinking but sometimes don't know what I just said and occasionally write something random. I amuse myself by asking questions knowing the wrong answer students are going to give so that I can show them why the right answer is right and theirs is wrong.
Its a fun game.

Sleep reading

Just waiting as office installs on my other computer so thought I'd write a blog entry. Had a horrible dream last night. I was doing a Norwegian exam lying in a bunk bed, all the papers got in a mess and I couldn't find the question paper, I think I had to write an essay about "100% sure of meeting someone" but wasn't sure so had to hunt for the paper. Didn't find it but started to write anyway and ran out of time. Terrible how the trauma of exams can affect you for the rest of your life. I always read before going to sleep, never used to but started reading after I wrote a book, I have noticed that when I close my eyes I carry on reading for about 10 minutes (I'm not really reading of course since I have my eyes closed). Have asked around and no one else has had the same experience so it seems I'm a bit special. Can't think of much use for my hidden talent, maybe I could be employed to finish off unfinished books.

Get any bites?

Yesterday I went fishing for seatrout for the first time in ages. I always fish with a fly and this time I decided to fish from our little red boat. we bought the boat years ago to lend to people who rented our cabin out on the coast. I now realise that a 12 foot boat with a 4hp motor is not ideal for sea fishing. I can't stand using the motor because it makes so much noise so this year I'm not going to put it on, anyway I can almost row as fast, today I overtook a sailing boat. Fly-fishing is rather like hunting, you see the fish place the fly and hopefully reel the fish bites. Yesterday the conditions were perfect, as I drifted parallel to the bank a fish rolled over in between two clumps of sea weed, on the first drift it went for the fly but turned away at the last moment, on my second pass I got it, a 700g sea trout. It fought quite a bit and I didn't have a net so to get it in the boat I put my thumb in its mouth and slipped a finger round its gills. Guess what? It bit me. Today I took the landing net but as everyone knows when you have the net you never catch a fish.

Hartleys Jam

I must be turning into a dog, just went for a walk up the mountain and the most noticeable thing was the smell, it was just like that peach flavoured iced tea. I think it was a combination of juniper, fir trees and ferns. Why is iced tea invariably peach flavoured? Peaches aren't the first thing that comes to mind when you think of tea, lemon yes peaches no. Did someone come up with the idea out of nowhere or was it a result of market forces. Did they start producing all flavours and peach sold best. Reminds me of an old advert for Hartley's jam where a woman serving cream teas in a Devon cafe goes through the whole range of jam's available.
We've got strawberry and apricot, Rasberry..........
For years (even now) I would always recite the advert any time anyone asked what kind of Jam we had.