Joke 745

Cartoon by Dave Walker

An English public school was forced to raise its fees.  The headmaster decided that the simplest way was to implement an across the board 7% increase per annum.  Unfortunately, when the secretary typed the letter, she missed out a crucial ‘n’ in the last word of the letter, consequently, it read thus:

Dear Parent

Due to increased building costs, I have decided reluctantly to raise the fees by 7% per anum.

About a week later, one concerned parent replied, saying:

Dear Headmaster

I regret your increase in fees, but I would like to continue paying through the nose as before.

***

This is alleged to be the message that a School staff in the Worcester area voted unanimously to record on their school telephone answering machine.

It came about because they implemented a policy requiring students and Parents to be responsible for their children’s absences and missing homework.

The school and teachers are now being threatened with legal action by some parents who want their children’s failing marks changed to passing marks – even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the term and did not complete enough schoolwork to pass their various key stages.

The Message:

Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school.  In order to assist you in connecting to the right member of staff, please listen to all the options before making a selection:

• To lie about why your child is absent - Press 1
• To make excuses for why your child did not do his/her work - Press 2
• To complain about what we do - Press 3
• To swear at staff members - Press 4
• To ask why you didn’t get information that was already enclosed in your Newsletter and several letters posted to you - Press 5
• If you want us to bring up your child - Press 6
• If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone - Press 7
• To complain about school lunches - Press 8
• To complain about bus transport - Press 9
• If you realize this is the real world, and your child must be accountable and responsible for their own behaviour, class work, homework and that it’s not the teachers’ fault for your child’s lack of effort: Hang up and have a really wonderful day!

From Will & Guy.

 

 

Joke 436

 

These are not really jokes, but they are amusing all the same.  They come courtesy of my dear friend Vivinfrance.  Enjoy!

In the English language newspaper Connexion in December there was a list of the howlers of baccalaureat (Bac-a-laugh-a-lot) candidates.

• A square is a rectangle with one side a bit shorter
• The 100 Years War lasted from 1914 to 1918
• Napoleon was his grandfather’s nephew
• The Normandy landings took place in England
• The Maginot Line was built to keep out an invasion of German tourists
• Plankton was an old Greek philosopher
• The Egyptians transformed dead people into mummies so as to keep them alive
• The Armistice is a war which ends each year on November 11
• China is the country with the biggest population: one billion per square kilometre
• Dolmens were kind of bus shelters every 100 metres
• To make eggs, the hen has to be fermented by the cockerel
• In the Roman circus, the radiators ate the lions to make people laugh
• The successor of Lenin was Stallone
• Asphyxia is a heart attack while breathing electric current
• It is forbidden to arrest someone in their absence
• When the hunting season is closed, it is strictly forbidden to open it.
• In the Middle Ages, fire made smoke.
• Children are often born young.

A Brief Explanation Of English Schools

Cover of School Daze

I wrote a post, School Daze, about Spud’s last days at school (until he goes back for two more years in September).  It was understandably a little confusing for non-Brits, as Janie pointed out, so here’s a brief explanation:

Children start school the year they turn five, in Reception, presumably named because it is the first time they are received into school.  I think it is the equivalent of the American kindergarten, but many schools don’t even have gartens, kinder or otherwise, especially in the inner cities.

Next come Years One and Two, ages six to seven, known as the Infants.

Years Three to Six – eight to eleven – are known as the Juniors.

We have infant schools and junior schools and infant and junior schools, which are known as Primary Schools.

High School follows at eleven, turning twelve, starting in Year Seven, to Year Eleven at sixteen.

It is legal to leave school at sixteen and go out to work or on to College or Sixth Form.  College is not varsity, it is for further studies aged seventeen-eighteen. Colleges – also known as Sixth Form Colleges – are separate institutions which only teach that age group.

Some high schools have sixth forms, but most state schools in Stockport do not have a sixth form.  State schools are public schools, not to be confused with schools known as public schools, which are private schools.

Private schools and grammar schools – which are fee-paying high schools, apart from those grammar schools which are not fee-paying high schools – usually do have a sixth form.

The term, Sixth Form comes from the days when high schools were known as Secondary Schools and had First Year to Fifth Year instead of Year Seven to Year Eleven.

Secondary schools were known at one time as Secondary Moderns or Comprehensive Schools.  Secondary Moderns were not comprehensive in their teaching and Comprehensives were ultra-modern until pupils trashed them.

We now also have Academies, which are privately sponsored state schools, but I don’t want to confuse you so forget about them.  Everyone else does.

Sixth Forms consist of Lower Sixth and Upper Sixth.  Despite there being seven years of secondary schooling (two optional), there is no Seventh form – not even when there was no Year Seven.

The Scots have a different system - and probably the Welsh and Northern Irish, as well.

An important point to remember: the Northern Irish are British as well as Irish, and not just Irish like the Irish.  The English are British and the Welsh are sometimes Welsh and sometimes Welsh and British.  The Scots are a law unto themselves and tend not to worry about British law, preferring Scots law, because we – the English, who are British like the Scots – will never take away their freedom.

I hope this helps.

*

*

School Daze

Spud is now on study leave

Spud starts his GCSEs next week; his first exam is on Thursday.  He plans to stick to his school day at home, from nine to four, having the same breaks, lunch period, and so on.  The advantage is that he gets an extra hour in bed, waking at eight instead of 6:45.  He is serious and determined to do well in his exams.

When he started grammar school five years ago, aged eleven, it was pretty scary for him.  He was one of only four pupils from his primary school to win full bursaries, and the only boy.  The girls were put into a class together but he was on his own.  Many of the children had come up from the prep school and known each other for years, and he felt isolated.  He wasn’t happy in that first week, and the Hub found him crying over his maths homework, because he couldn’t do it.

Being a mother, I was all for panicking, pulling him out, and putting him in the local high school.  The Hub is made of sterner stuff and simply sat with Spud each night, helping him with the homework when he was struggling, and sitting on me to stop my hysteria.

We are all glad he did, because Spud has enjoyed the last five years; loves his school; is popular with pupils and staff; and is looking forward to two years of Sixth Form…especially Leaving Day, when the pupils play pranks to celebrate leaving.  Some of the previous years’ pranks have included:

• Locking the school gates so parents couldn’t get out for an hour after dropping off their children
• Letting three chickens loose in the school but labelling them 1, 2 & 4
• Filling the head’s room to bursting with balloons
• Painting a helipad on a tiny building’s roof
• Displaying underwear around the school
• Putting up TILF posters (work it out)
• Selling the school on eBay.  The buyer turned up on Leavers’ Day to seal the deal, much to the surprise of the Board of Governors

An education is a wonderful thing.

Joke 353

On the first day of college, the Dean addressed the students:

“The female dormitory is out-of-bounds for all male students, and the male dormitory to the female students. Anybody caught breaking this rule will be fined $20 the first time. The second time you will be fined $60. A third time will cost you a fine of $180. Are there any questions?”

A male student inquired, “How much for a season pass?”

Joke 312

Jacob put his hand up in class.

“Yes, Jacob, what is it?” asked the teacher.

“I don’t want to worry you, Miss, but my Dad said if I don’t get better marks, someone is going to get a hiding.”

Cheeky Boy!

Image via Wikipedia

Spud was in his English class.  Someone had never heard of the word ‘pail’.  The teacher explained it was a bucket as in,

Jack and Jill
went up the hill
to fetch a pail of water.

As she paused, Spud interjected,

Instead they found whiskey,
got a bit frisky
and now they have a daughter.

That’s my boy!

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What A Star!

The Thinker

Spud just phoned with his GCSE results (just six; he is in Year 10.  More next year):

• Three A*s
• One A
• Two Bs

One of the Bs was for Classics and he is disappointed – so has decided to re-sit it.

We are so proud of him - whatever the results, he worked hard to get them, and that’s what matters.

I Live And Learn

Image via Wikipedia

Following the photography ‘course’, I have another workshop today; something about committees.  I have no idea what I’ll be doing but it sounded like it might be useful for my cv, so I signed up.

I love taking workshops and courses and increasing my knowledge.  My ideal holiday would be a week of summer school.  I don’t think my family would be so keen on it.  However, if we took a games console with us, they wouldn’t notice.

Between 1997 and now I have taken three-and-a-half A Levels, an honours degree, three computer courses, two writing courses, one job course, countless poetry workshops and many skills workshops.  There hasn’t been one I didn’t enjoy, though the year of the Open University English Language course bummed me out a little.

I also have extensive volunteer experience: you need someone to make tea, paste worksheets into books, wipe the poo from the bottom of a child’s shoe and take money at the door?  I’m your man. 

None of this is doing me any good in my job search.  Employers naturally prefer the recently redundant but up-to-date skills-wise to the eager to learn and willing to turn her hand to anything but hasn’t had paid employment for twenty-one years novice.

It’s probably just as well: if I had a job, I’d miss today’s committee thing and the free lunch beforehand. 

I’ve signed up for seven more workshops so far this year; who has time to work?

Mothers, Don’t Try To Educate Your Children

I love to laugh but sometimes I can’t, like when I read this story over on Parentdish. 

A homeless woman living in a van used a friend’s address to enrol her six-year-old son in school.  She faces – wait for it – twenty years in jail.  Truly, wanting to educate your child despite your circumstances is a heinous crime.

But it’s understandable, as the Mayor tells us

McDowell is no angel, having been arrested last year for possession of marijuana and having served 18 months in prison for robbery and weapons charges.

“This is not a poor, picked-upon homeless person,” he tells the newspaper. “This is an ex-con, and somehow the city of Norwalk is made into the ogre in this. She has a checkered past at best.”

That’s okay then: she’s a bad person.  Forget that she has no record of child abuse or child abandonment and is trying to do the best for her son; lock her up for life, put her son into state care, and justice is served.

My dear readers, I am sure you are as appalled by this story as I am.  Please email Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia’s office and tell him so, and blog about it yourself.  A woman shouldn’t be imprisoned for doing her duty.

Here’s Norwalk’s website: http://www.norwalkct.org/index.aspx?nid=131

And the Mayor’s contact details:  http://www.norwalkct.org/forms.aspx?FID=90

I’ve Learned A New Word

Image by EclecticBlogs via Flickr

Not a swear word, you’ll be glad to hear: 

pogonip

If that’s not a fantastic word, then I don’t know what is.

It came from Dictionary.com: sign up for free and receive an email every day, giving you a new word.  I love Dictionary.com for two reasons: for all the new words I learn; and for all the words it sends me that I already know, so I can pretend I’m really smart that day.

Pogonip is defined as An ice fog that forms in the mountain valleys of the western U.S.  It’s from the Shoshone word for ‘thunder-fog’.  Don’t you love a language that even has the term ‘thunder-fog’?

If you like learning new words, check out my South Africa blog; today I talk about biltong and dorps.

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You may recall a while back I promised you a photo of the most beautiful toddler in the world; well here it is:

 

Just for good measure, here’s one of him with his parents.  You can see he gets his good looks from his mother:

Daddy is the Hub’s nephew and also the perpetrator of many a joke against me, including a fart machine before they were popular, and telling me they had taken the word ‘gullible’ out of the dictionary.  I showed him my own dictionary but he pointed out that it was an old copy; I eventually believed him.  I have no defence, even if it was back in my what’s the internet? days; I guess I’m just…what’s the word?  Let me check Dictionary.com.

This photo is my revenge for his latest trick.  Do you remember my wooden leg post?  You may also remember I had a response from a Shirley Bumtruffle: he confessed the other day that she ’twas indeed he.  I suspected someone else altogether; he had me completely bumtruffled.

 

I Lost My Littlest Potato

I had a scary couple of hours yesterday, thinking I’d misplaced my youngest child. 

Picture the scene: a dark and icy night.  Greedy Christmas shoppers intent on ignoring the married mother of two in her lonely pound shop/post office corner vigil.  A grumpy husband.  A lost teenager.

Spud finishes school at ten-to-four and gets home at five, having taken two buses.  One bus stops in Stockport town centre.  We were in the town centre around that time, so I sent a text to ask if he wanted a lift home.  Ever polite, the answer was no thanks (he’s polite but he might as well have stabbed me through the heart with that capital N he didn’t use).

We were in the pound shop at  four-twenty when my phone went and it was Spud, who did want a lift after all.  The line was terrible but I told him we were at the pound shop near the post office and I thought he had heard me.  He hadn’t.  We waited forty minutes outside the shop and he was a no-show.  I made the Hub wait in the car because he’d already used up that day’s good hour, plus, he could see all the way up the road to the bus station on the horizon, and would see him coming.  The Hub had come out without his phone so we had a little code going: he would put on the car lights when Spud appeared, like something out of a gangster movie; especially with me keeping watch on the corner above him.

Once I had become a human icicle and the Hub had been in and out of the car several times to fume at me (he was mad at Spud but I was closer), we decided Spud must have misread ‘stkprt’ for ‘edgly’ (no capitals for me either but that’s because I can’t use my phone properly: a lack of ability rather than a lack of will) and drove up to our next-most-used shopping centre.  Stockport is not so big that you can’t walk around it in twenty minutes and he had been missing for twice that.

I’d better explain at this point that mobile phones are absolutely bloody useless in a crisis, particularly if Spud’s is faulty, mine has no credit and the Hub’s was lying at home soaking up the central heating and sipping a tequila.  I sent increasingly panicky texts to Spud, as well as repeated calls.  He couldn’t answer because his phone switched off every time he tried.  He managed to ring me at one point and my first question was ‘Where are you?’  If he had only said where he was instead of ‘Looking for you,’ he wouldn’t have been cut off at ‘I’m near – ‘.  That was around four-forty and he kept radio silence from then on.

The Hub and I drove to Edgeley at about five and he drove around the outside while I ran around the inside, but there was no sign of our kidnapped baby.  We drove home, just in case Spud had the good sense to get the bus back.  He wasn’t there, so I stayed while the Hub went back to Stockport.  He traipsed around the town in a kitchen triangle manoeuvre (sink-stove-fridge/pound shop-pound shop-pound shop) but no joy.  He came home again; I forget why because by this time I had my boy lying in a dark Stockport corner, stabbed for his mobile phone (ha!  muggers!  see what you get for your pains!  a phone that doesn’t work).  By this time Spud had been missing for ninety minutes and could have caught at least two buses home; I was wondering if I ought to tidy up for the police; the Hub came in; we discussed our next move; he left; the door went minutes later, and there they both were.  The Hub had seen him coming from the bus stop.  Turns out one bus hadn’t come at all and the next was late; but of course, he couldn’t tell us.

After a choking hug from me, the inevitable humdinger of an argument broke out, with me yelling at the Hub yelling at Spud yelling at both of us.  One plate of egg & chips and a stiff mug of tea later, and harmony was restored.

Something I have never done is lose one of my children.  I stick to the adage, keep your enemies close and your children closer.  That’s it, I’m afraid: until Spud gets a new phone he’s going to be home schooled.  No more anxiety, and I’ll save on the bus fare.

Flaky Mothers Of The World, Unite!

I have long been suspected of being a flaky mother:

Riding your little scooter up and down the path?  Wear these skateboarding knee pads, elbow pads, thick sweater and pants and a helmet or you don’t go.

First day of high school?  Let me walk you to the bus stop in case there are any paedophiles or fast cars lurking to take you from me.

WMD?  Keep your mobile switched on at school in case we are bombed and I need to get hold of you.

My kids never stood a chance, really, and these are just a few of my mistakes with Tory Boy; never mind what I did to poor Spud.

But today, something wonderful happened: Tory Boy phoned (no, that’s not it; especially as he yammered on for thirty minutes while my cereal milk went cold).  He told me that his philosophy lecturer threw a book across the classroom to illustrate a point and there was just one gasp of horror – Tory Boy’s.  He stayed afterwards to remonstrate with the tutor, and refused to accept ‘But it was an old book…’ as an excuse.  Now I know I was right to read to my babies in the womb.   

 

 

Tory Boy insisted on having his shirt signed rather than damage a book

 

I’m Moving To Japan

The jobs are much better there: according to the Johannesburg Star, Domino’s Pizza are offering a $31 thousand job – for just ONE hour of work.

My own job hunt can be classed as a waste of my time/disaster/providing employers with the giggle of the day.  Lucky I have my writing to fall back on.  Oh.  Um….

Spud seems to have similar working hours to the Japanese – he went back to school on Monday after a two week half-term break (when all the other schools got only one week), and he’s off tomorrow because of an inset day, giving him a three-day weekend.  Good job he has three hours of homework a night or he’ll never pass his GCSEs.

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Don’t forget to check out my new blog http://sapoems.wordpress.com/.  Go on; do it now.  You know I’m going to keep nagging until you do.

Back To School

I am one sad mother today: Spud has gone back to school.  It’s not that I miss him; what I’m going to miss is the sound of no alarm clock in the mornings.  Not that I get up late in the holidays – I can’t, I’m an early to bed early to rise kinda gal – but I like not waking up an hour before it’s due to go off, terrified that I’ll sleep so heavily I’ll sleep through it and Spud will be late for school and that will ruin his day his week his life and he won’t visit at Christmas and I’ll never see the grandchildren I don’t want.

 

Here he is, second left.

Incredibly, there was no drama: school mornings have always been a bit iffy with Spud.  His first day back after Christmas 2004 lasted just two hours.  I was called to collect him because he was so white they lost him when they handed out drawing paper, and he spent the week in bed.  When  he finally returned to school he was upset at being put on a table with a bunch of children he either disliked, who misbehaved, or who distracted him from his work.  At the age of nine he took school very seriously.  I had a word with his teacher and she moved him.  One of the advantages of being an obliging volunteer parent in school (that was the week I removed excrement from children’s shoes) was that teachers felt obliged to accommodate me; not that I wouldn’t complain anyway, if my boys were unhappy at school.  Or in their jobs, when they leave uni: you come and tell your Mum, son, and I’ll sort out those nasty customers/managers/villains/MPs.

I remember that school year quite vividly, paticularly Parent’s Evening.  He was given a glowing report, telling us – you don’t mind me boasting? – how mature and responsible he was and that he was in the top sets for everything and that he had a fabulous sense of humour.  One of his teachers had asked his class teacher to be sure to tell us that he was even funny in PE, although his class teacher wasn’t sure how.  We asked him about it afterwards and the only thing he could think of was that ‘I usually trump loudly when I do roly-polies.’

 

He was such a cutie pie at that age.  He would use the word ‘beep’ to replace swear words  eg, quoting from the original Italian Job: ‘You’re only supposed to blow the beepin’ doors off!’  He wanted to call his Dad ‘bugalugs’ as a term of affection the other night.  The Hub and I argued over this, because he says ‘bugalugs’ counts as swearing because it derives from the word ‘bugger,’ and I say it comes from having insects in your ears in Ye Olden Days, but, because the Hub was convinced it was swearing, we erred on the side of caution and consequently Spud was not allowed to use the word ‘bugalugs’, just in case. 

One day, he wanted to say to his father, ‘Are you all right, beepalugs?’ 

What he actually said was, ‘Are you all right, buggerbeep?’