Early Risers.

[Rugd1022]

A'noon all,

 

Comedy comes in many styles and flavours and we all have our favourites and despite being born a bit too late in the '60s I'm a big Goons fan, in fact pretty much anything that Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan did always hits the sweet spot for me. There's a very strong element of old fashioned English sillyness running through them which also goes right through the Pythons, the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, The Beatles and The Goodies, they all knew each other and shared the same sense of surreallism mixed with a touch of music hall humour, and just the right amount of general taking the mick out of themselves.

 

My favourite Python sketch is completely devoid of Norwegian Blue parrots but is equally silly....!

 

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by Rugd1022

[Danemouth]

Sorry folks but I found Mony Python completely unfunny

 

Dave

[Joseph_Pestell]

2 hours ago, Tony_S said:

Whereas a degree in PPE following an education at public school is exactly the  broad background for running the country. 
I am one of those people who did go from school to university and then another one for teacher training and then on to my first teaching job. In my first job the headteacher did say he didn’t like employing graduates as he preferred people from teacher training colleges but he had no choice about employing me and a colleague as he desperately needed a couple of science teachers. The third new member of staff joining the science department that year failed his probation and became a milkman. 

 

Science is probably the hardest subject for a rookie teacher or even an experienced one. So much scope for misbehaviour on the pupils' part.

[Tony_S]

17 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Science is probably the hardest subject for a rookie teacher or even an experienced one. So much scope for misbehaviour on the pupils' part.

I would have found teaching French to be harder.

[polybear]

30 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

In my first job the headteacher did say he didn’t like employing graduates as he preferred people from teacher training colleges but he had no choice about employing me ......

 

Nothing like feeling wanted there then.....

 

In other news:

Bear has finished  the first part of decorative plinth below the wall cupboard adjacent to the F/F.  Not exactly difficult, since the plinth moulding is basically rectangular in section and therefore very easy to clamp securely in the sliding mitre saw.  Not so the cornice moulding though, which was a right pig to clamp accurately and without damage:

 

 

 

[TheSignalEngineer]

Pizzaingdown and a few rumbles. Walk was walked just as the first rumbles started over Kinder. Think I may take the opportunity to do the shopping, and if the precipitation persists some unmentionable pursuits may have to be undertaken.

[polybear]

2 hours ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

He also told us how police speed guns were using a Doppler radar system to measure speeds. In the lab he got us to produce a toy for telling whether an object was moving towards or away from you.  He then drew up on the board a theoretical layout for a device to measure incoming frequency then set it to confuse the machine into thinking you were doing anything from going away to approaching at supersonic speed.

 

 

It's possible to buy gadgets to screw up speed guns and give a nonsense answer; however there have been driver's who've been caught in the past and prosecuted - and sent down for it, as in prison time.  The courts regard it as "perverting the course of justice" - and Judges really, really don't like that.

[New Haven Neil]

Chuckinitdarn again, 16mm so far, garden is watered anyway.

 

I seem to have emptied my piggy bank on a new Royal Enfield (bike, not gun).   Just a little 350 Meteor (inappropriate name, it is certainly not fast!) cruiser that makes riding with the various broken bits of my skeleton easier.  Cheap as chips for what it is, their quality has taken a leap into the 21st century, it's nothing like the old Indian Enfield Bullets, which could be, er, of dubious quality.

 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Science is probably the hardest subject for a rookie teacher or even an experienced one. So much scope for misbehaviour on the pupils' part.

 

Having direct experience, I'd say that one factor is the environment of the typical science lab. One can have a hard time with a group of Year 8s then see them being little angels sitting on low plastic chairs at little tables in a carpeted English classroom.

 

It's the stools wot do it!

Edited July 28, 2021 by Compound2632
Typo corrected.

[The Lurker]

4 hours ago, Tony_S said:

I am one of those people who did go from school to university and then another one for teacher training and then on to my first teaching job. 

it has to be said my Mum did something similar although it was before degrees were given for teaching at teacher training college. I can't comment on her teaching as she never taught me formally, having given up when my younger sister came along, and then going back when we were both at secondary school.

 

I was really more surprised that the people I referred to not only went back to where they had grown up but to the same school. I've ended up about 25 miles from where I grew up (apart from a year in Singapore) after a decade in the midlands; but it is anathema to Mrs Lurker who moved around many times in her childhood and lives near none of those places...Coventry/Nuneaton are about the nearest!

 

Teaching was one of those things that came up for me on the old 1980s career systems; probably one of those "what the hell do we suggest to someone who wants to read history at uni" type suggestions....I imagined teaching myself (well-behaved, academic, interested, but a tendency to arse around) and decided I wouldn't want to spend all day teaching people like me, never mind people I perceived as badly behaved and/or thick. So that was teaching ruled out.  

[The Lurker]

24 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Having direct experience, I'd say that one factor is the environment of the typical science lab. One can have a hard time with a group of Year 8s then see them being little angels sitting on low plastic chairs at little tables in a carpeted English classroom.

 

It's the stools wot do it!

It's all the chance for making things explode, melting bics, spilling acid, running water through the bunsens, chopping things up that made science so much more fun...and a trial of teachers' behaviour management skills. Looking up rude words in the dictionary was about as far as you could get in English....

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, The Lurker said:

It's all the chance for making things explode, melting bics, spilling acid, running water through the bunsens, chopping things up that made science so much more fun...and a trial of teachers' behaviour management skills. Looking up rude words in the dictionary was about as far as you could get in English....

 

I have the impression that the science teacher's job was much easier in the days before one was obliged to release at the end of the lesson the same whole number of children as had come in at the beginning.

[Pacific231G]

Afteernoon all

In Hoover Building Land It's been chucking it down with added thunder effects for the past hour but now seems to have stopped- at least for now- and the street outrside is partially flooded again. I think the daily walk can be missed today - I did do the Hoover Building trolley slalom this morning- so I can now focus on writing and editing.  

 

I spent half my career producing TV programmes and "rich media" resources with educatonal purposes (mostly for adults) and have even been the Chair of Governors of a large FE College. However, apart from my short course "How to make programmes you can be proud of for budgets they should be ashamed of" for the producers' association and a few other such sessions, have managed to avoid actually doing any teaching. I have though worked with enough teachers and filmed in enough schools to appreciate just how heavy, and ever heavier, their workload really is. Straws and camels' backs come to mind. Part of the problem, and not only in education, has been too many governments led by peope who worship wealth and "B-Ark" passengers but really despise anyone who works in the public sector- which of course includes most teachers, medics and everyone else wihout whose dedication to something other than money we would have really rotten lives.  

 

On science, or at least chemistry, we made some films demonstrating the alkali metals and how increasingly enthusiastcally they respond to any contact with water. When I got the (very able) head of science who had been advising us to try these out with his students I was amused to see at least two of those normally deemed too dangerous to be demonstrated in the lab. being demonstrated by him live in the lab. I did though notice that the class in question was a pretty well behaved one. Our films did though include rubidium and caesium,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZY6d6jrq-0 

(This isn't actually our film but it was not dissimilar)

Edited July 28, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Joseph_Pestell]

54 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

Chuckinitdarn again, 16mm so far, garden is watered anyway.

 

I seem to have emptied my piggy bank on a new Royal Enfield (bike, not gun).   Just a little 350 Meteor (inappropriate name, it is certainly not fast!) cruiser that makes riding with the various broken bits of my skeleton easier.  Cheap as chips for what it is, their quality has taken a leap into the 21st century, it's nothing like the old Indian Enfield Bullets, which could be, er, of dubious quality.

 

 

I'm not a biker but I think that looks rather nice. Retro but not excessively so.

[Tony_S]

17 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I have the impression that the science teacher's job was much easier in the days before one was obliged to release at the end of the lesson the same whole number of children as had come in at the beginning.

It was sometimes possible to end up with more children if someone else’s naughty boys or girls were were sent to sit at the back of my classroom. 
The  greatest number of children who departed from my lab mid lesson were two separate incidents (different schools too) of mass hysteria. However I think the fastest exit was when flames shot out of all the sinks and I said “out now”.Only the local teenage arsonist stood there looking enthralled. It was nothing to do with him for once though. However I wasn’t there foe one quick exit. A lecturer from the Tech college was covering my class when I was ill and after a student complained his bag had been dropped out of the window, he followed it. This was not a ground floor room. The lecturer didn’t come back for another lesson either. I taught his daughter a few years later( at another school) and she told me about it. He had been a teenage soldier with Tito in Yugoslavia so had seen a few things in his time. 
Tony

[simontaylor484]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

It's possible to buy gadgets to screw up speed guns and give a nonsense answer; however there have been driver's who've been caught in the past and prosecuted - and sent down for it, as in prison time.  The courts regard it as "perverting the course of justice" - and Judges really, really don't like that.

I remember a few years ago a guy who was some sort of scientist i think bankrupted himself trying to challenge a £60 speeding ticket from a speed camera. The premise for his challenge was that the grid lines painted on the road were on a curve and therefore were not giving a true velocity. He went through various appeals and lost everything. 

[Adam88]

Is this the sort of thing which leads us to wonder about the way of the world?

 

University lecturer wins job back

 

It seems as though there was a requirement for staff here to acquire PhDs.  Had that been the case then I am sure many of us would have missed out on some very good teaching in the past.

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It's the stools wot do it!

It was stools that were responsible for me becoming a computing and IT advisory teacher. 
One Friday the Head of Science sent a form over during afternoon registration. Any stool with a defect, described and illustrated on the form, was to be sent over to his lab. He would replace it with a safe one. Being a good chap I sent over 28 leaving 3 . Head of department comes over in an absolute rage wanting to know why I am being so difficult etc.  I said I was just following his instructions. I was irritated so I applied for every job in the Times Educational Supplement. On Monday morning the head of dept comes over and profusely apologises for his outburst. I said I appreciated that but I had applied for a few jobs and in the unlikely event of getting a reply I would see what happened. Surprisingly I did get interviewed and accepted thre computing and IT post. 

[simontaylor484]

Afternoon all 

 

Its rained on and off all Day so it's been rainy day jobs for me and my apprentice. We have been changing a couple of light switches that had broken. It's taken longer than expected due to some of the new switches being faulty i bought a trade pack from Screwfix and had some left 

[Joseph_Pestell]

3 hours ago, pH said:

The correct time to pick fruit, taking all factors into consideration, can be a pretty precise art.

 

The Okanagan is an area about 250 miles east of Vancouver which used to be a big fruit growing area. (Most of the orchards have now been ripped out and the ground given over to growing grapes for wine.) Peaches were a big crop, and a properly ripe Okanagan peach is still something special. But they have to be picked just before properly ripe to allow for the time needed to pack them and ship them to stores in the Vancouver area.

 

 

 

Depending what you mean by "ripe", it is very precise indeed.

 

The purpose of fruit is to protect the pip/stone until it is ready to procreate. That takes a fixed number of days (varying between varieties) from pollenation/fruit set. So, so long as you make a daily check, you can forecast the date at which they will be ripe. If you have poor weather, the fruit will not be so good at harvest date. But you don't gain much by leaving the fruit on the vine/tree any longer. It will tend to rot so that the pips can fall to the ground and fulfil their natural purpose.

 

By the same token, harvesting early can never work. The fruit will never attain ripeness and thus not taste right. It's a big problem now in Southern France (not this year) where if they leave grapes on the vine until properly ripe, there is too much sugar and wines at 15% and more. So they are picking early and that phenolic unripeness will result in some quite unpleasant flavours in the wine.

 

I was invited as Wessex Vineyards rep to join a group of Canadian winery owners when they visited Hattingley Valley a couple of years back. Very enjoyable, as indeed all my trips to HV. Some of them were from these new vineyards in The Okanagan which I had not known of.

[jamie92208]

57 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I have the impression that the science teacher's job was much easier in the days before one was obliged to release at the end of the lesson the same whole number of children as had come in at the beginning.

My late father was a chemistry teacher. He did once say at the dinner table that it was time that the lethal dosecof certain substances needed to be check so he planned to line up the 3rd form and give the 1st 1g, the second 2g etc . As far as I know he never put this plan into practice.  However as far as I know he was well liked and some of his former pupils turned up at his memorial service 30 years after he retired which said a lot to me.

 

Jamie

[simontaylor484]

Its got very humid here over the last half hour, the air cooler is back on. Thunderstorms are gathering by the look of the sky

[jonny777]

3 hours ago, Danemouth said:

Sorry folks but I found Mony Python completely unfunny

 

Dave

 

Same here. I used to watch it, and try my best to be amused; but most of it seemed completely puerile to me. 

 

Ministry of silly walks? Well I could do a silly walk, especially after breaking my leg; but no one laughed at me. My grandkids do silly walks when they have had too much sugar, but they get told off for being stupid. 

[Ian Abel]

HUMP Day...

 

Missed posting yesterday, nothing much to report from Monday or yesterday <sigh>

 

Today much of the same, the only thing of "interest" is the nasty weather we're experiencing.

Started off at 22 black as the ace-of-spades with thunder and lightening but not much rain, currently 26 and 87% humidity

Expected to reach 101F (37C) with a real-feel of 103F (39C) mid-afternoon...

 

Buqqered if I'm going out for anything - unless there's some demand! Mrs had to go out to a Dr. appointment, won't be a happy camper on her return I'm sure!

 

Carry on... (some of those were funny, but not ALL!)

[Gwiwer]

Two more villages from The Roamings of Rick 

 

Bourton on the Water wasn’t on our plan. Today’s plan was to meet friends from Cornwall “half way” in Glastonbury. We were already on the road when they cancelled - their driver has an eye infection.  We diverted to Bourton. 

 

Then Wytham just outside Oxford. Surprisingly sleepy sandwiched between two busy main roads