sailing class

Picked up an email on the intranet during the week from Leisure Services inviting staff to an 'orientation' evening at Fairlop waters. Something about 'improving customer experience'! Wasn't quite sure how my maths 'customers' could benefit (how many landlubbers does it take to sink a dinghy?)but decided to tag along anyway.
There was about a dozen of us, very mixed bag. The Health & Fitness manager from RI, a couple of Finance people, some admin ladies from Leisure and Arts and The Director himself, looking suitably nautical in a navy tracksuit.
First of all we did Safety Orientation which was about Not Eating the Blue Green Algae and burrowing around in a dark container for bouyancy bits and splash tops. The ladies were disconcerted to discover we were mostly 'extra large' till we discovered they were child sizes (at least that's our excuse); then we did Paddle Orientation which meant getting in the Canadian canoes in pairs and paddling round the island in a stiff wind.
Then we all came back and it was time for Sailing Orientation. By now the wind is making whitetops on the lake, its getting dark and starting to rain. We look nervously at the line of little dinghys thrashing about at their moorings and are relieved when Mr Instructor Sir! pronounces it too windy for the Seaways and we should all go in the Bechstein 22 (?)
This has 3 masts and an engine and is big enough to take all of us with room to spare. He piles us all in, tells us to sit forard 'out of the way' and watch out for the boom, chugs us out unto the main lake then cuts the motor and we're sailing! Weeeeoooooo! Lots of squeaking and shrieking from the Finance ladies as we lean over into the wind. Me and The Director get to hold a sheet each from the jib and soon we're running down Canada geese and lee hoing with the best of them with Mr Instructor Sir! keeping a firm hold on the tiller and his chief mate Robbie standing on the deck at the front, presumably keeping an eye out for blue green algae.
The lights are on in the club house on the other side of the lake and Admin and Leisure want to stop off and see if the bar's open but it really is getting dark now so we do a last few near misses of the jetties and reedbeds and turn towards home.
It gets rather technical towards the end as Mr Instrutor Sir! and Robbie shout at each other from opposite ends of the boat about how to bring us in with the wind in 'that' quarter. We discover we're sailing under Lee, which isn;t good apparently. He's going to do a 270 off a broad reach and hopes to avoid a jibe (gosh, don't we all?) but we'd better all keep our HEADS DOWN! By now the nervous ladies from Finance are practically in the bottom of the boat, leaving me and The Director gamely hanging onto our sheets and Admin and Leisure ('DON'T stand up!') given the vital task of raising the centreboard. He guns the motor for the last few yards and we're back at the jetty.
After this we did Eating and Drinking Orientation which was very nice and went home. What a great way to spend an evening!

french class

I've joined a French class! Us tutors get a freebie course so I've joined post GCSE french. Only had one class but it seems about right. I could actually understand most of the written stuff and enjoyed practising my speaking and listening which is what I really want. I sat at a table with some other mum types and we worked our way nervously through je m'appelle and being mariee and des enfants and onto les professions. I managed professeur de mathematiques (which sounds much posher than numeracy tutor) but we came to a halt with one lady who was a development manager. We settled for manager de development in the end. If in doubt use Franglais.
The two other ladies both owned properties in France but complained that the local people couldn't understand them. I made suitably polite noises but as they both spoke with broad Dagenham type accents in both languages I wasn't actually surprised.
Anyway I'm full of enthusiasme and off to buy a book. One more thing on my life list finally getting underway.

England expects....

I went on a type of pilgrimage today, up to London to watch the re-enactment of Nelson's funeral flottilla on the Thames. I joined a large crowd waiting by Tower Bridge just across from HMS Belfast and got into conversation with another pilgrim, an older lady from Billericay who like me just wanted to do something to mark the occasion and remember Nelson and his 'few' who saved Britain from invasion as effectivily (and as sacrificially) as the RAF at the Battle of Britain.

We waited a long time in an increasingly cold wind but it was well worth it. There were about 50 boats altogether coming in a long line up from Greenwich and under Tower Bridge. What I liked was its motley nature: historic boats and ceremonial barges from the city livery companies, a couple of narrow boats, looking rather precarious on the choppy full tide of the Thames, various tugs and family motor boats and even what looked like a huge wooden single canoe. The tourist cruisers and passenger ferries joined in alongside as they came under Tower Bridge and they all headed off down towards Waterloo pier, like a football crowd heading home after a match.

The oared boats and livery barges came last. With the rising tide behind them they were doing a fair speed but as each one came out from under Tower Bridge they stopped and raised oars in salute. Then the guns on the Belfast opened up - wow! They fired something like a 20 gun salute, each blast a great punch of sound you felt in your gut and not just your ears. It made you wonder what it sounded like in a real sea battle with not just all Belfast's guns going but others too, and what about in Trafalgar with all the cannon going off. It's a wonder they weren't all deafened for life.

Afterwards with the sun out and a free afternoon ahead I followed them upriver: London Bridge and Southwark to Waterloo and then onto Westminster. The whole riverside city seemed to have spilled out in the sun to watch the show, almost every ship and quay had a party going on and the poor lunchtime joggers were having a hard time just getting through. The tide was one of the highest I've seen recently, lapping over the stairs by Cleopatra's needle and making the moored ships along the embankment look like they were riding on the wall. Maybe it's New Orleans in my mind but for the first time I think I really appreciated the huge amount of water that comes in on the Thames tide. Hmm. Sort of scary.

Ended up walking on all the way to Millbank and went to the Joshua Reynolds exhibition at Tate Britain. Usual long slog home on the tube. The girls and I went to the noodle bar for supper as there was no one else home and then a couple of hours of Rossini at choir practice.
All in all, a very nice day. Goodnight all.

back to work...

Oh dear! September dawns and it's back to work. I don't actually start teaching again till Monday but enrolment starts straight after the August bank holiday so I feel like I've been at it for three weeks already. Hence lack of blogs.
Actually it's not as bad as last year when I felt like I virtually lived at Redbridge Institute for a fortnight, just popping home occasionally to eat! But having failed our inspection back in the summer there have been a lot of new things to sort out, new procedures, new student records and so on, which all takes time to sort out. Being in maths I tend to consider it as a kind of equation: On the plus side we have some nice new interactive whiteboards - which actually work, shock! Minus- they're still not aligned properly so I'll have to reassure my 'mature' students that it's technology failing and not their eyesight. More plusses - we have three new/ish maths tutors, making 6 of us and are definitely a department now! Minuses -1) We will have to have proper Meetings instead of just chatting over the photocopier at lunchtimes 2) I'll have to organise them.
Actually interviewing is quite fun as I get the chance to reassure people that their maths is better than they thought and express my (very real) admiration for people who have been terrified by numbers all their life and have now decided to do something about it.
I see Adult basic skills as a genuine reflection of the gospel - setting people free of fears and limitations, allowing them to become more the people they were meant to be, raising the possibibility of change in stuck lives.