Back to school

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 07 September 2008 15:56:18

This week saw the start of the new school term in England and Wales, so let's all reach for our hymn books and sing number 26:

Autumn days when the grass is jewelled,
And the silk inside a chestnut shell,
Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled,
All these things I know so well...*

Now, of course, this is all cobblers (when did you last see planes gathering to refuel in mid-air?) but it popped into my head the other day as I realised the summer was finally over. Every year, once my birthday and the August bank holiday have passed, I figure that's summer over and done with. And in the last few years, since I've been working in a job that revolves around the school terms, and where we're banned from taking leave in the last week of August and the first two weeks of September because they're our busiest times of the year, it's been even more apparent to me when autumn arrives. Which is just as well, given that the weather for the last six weeks here has resembled winter pretty much every day.

Anyway, those of you with long memories may remember, just before my life story blogging, I was talking about getting my confidence back up to start cycling again, for the first time since I was about 13. Well, I managed a little bit... and I must confess that, since then, a combination of laziness, lack of time and the atrocious weather have prevented me from doing any more. However, in the next couple of weeks I plan to change that.

You might remember there was another thing as well... a certain thing I felt God was challenging me to do, which I was slightly scared about but felt needed to be done. Well, I haven't done it yet, but I suspect that might happen in the next few weeks too. And I'm starting to feel much more confident about my ability to do it. Maybe one day I'll stop being all mysterious and actually tell you what it is...

Oh, and then there's the work stuff. I'm enjoying my job much more than usual at the minute, and coping a lot better with the busy period than I have done in the past. But I'm still not sure what I'm doing long term. I don't see myself just being an office monkey for another thirtysomething years (assuming there still is a retirement age by the time I get there) but there are so many other ideas that pop up about what I should look to do instead, and I don't seem to ever get round to putting some thought and effort into investigating whether I should take these ideas further or just let them go.

So that's where I'm at now, at the start of term. Maybe (if I remember) in about six weeks or so, when it's half term, I'll do myself a half term report card to see how I'm progressing with these things, and anything else that comes up. In the meantime, I'm off to look for silk inside chestnut shells. Laters.

*with thanks to whoever wrote it.