Do you vacuum your coffee machine? (And other questions)

Well hello… as I’ll be posting this in the first quarter of the year, I feel I can still refer to myself as a blogger. An ‘occasional, whenever I can be bothered’ blogger but a writer of digital words nonetheless.

But as you know, I’m also an educator and that requires asking many questions and answering them in an appropriate way, regardless of how ridiculous they might seem.

I went on a 10 mile walk the other weekend. There were a lot of snowdrops!

As you lovely readers know (at least those who’ve stuck by me for several years now), I do enjoy the odd random ramble too and this post is such.

Because, in a year of becoming very acquainted with the daily banality of life, I realised my mundane existence might be a little less weird than yours, or vice versa.

To be fair, I’m banking on the vice versa, especially when I pose the question:

DO YOU VACUUM YOUR COFFEE MACHINE?

The Shoehorn Review

Never mind reaching for the feather duster to clear away the cobwebs, it’s more likely that I need to bust out some WD40 to crank up the internal gears of the keyboard.

It’s been a while! Over four months, apparently (WordPress helpfully pointed out my lack of writing achievement a few days ago. But at the time, consuming mince pies was more of a priority).

And I can’t say I have much of an excuse for my absence, except an acute case of ‘Couldnotbebothereditis‘. It’s fair to say I’ve experienced one of my most intense terms at school since qualifying, which has left me drained at times. However, I’ve still managed to do other things, just that picking up the lappy hasn’t floated my boat.

So, I thought I would do a quick round-up of what I’ve been up to since August – because I suspect you’re all falling over yourselves to know… 😉 Also commonly known as ‘shoehorning a post in before the end of the year‘!

A SIMple Life

The school summer holidays; Forty plus days of no work and having time to catch up on lost sleep, half-read books and to get out exploring.

But despite being in the midst of a storm as I type, which has brought some much needed rain, for weeks the whole of the country has experienced soaring temperatures which has seen me retreat to a darkened room faster than a vampire evading a crispy death!

I don’t do hot.

So I’ve found myself (among other, cooling, lets-not-use-much-energy activities) returning to video games. I’ve always considered myself a gamer – not a proper one, with a multi-platform set-up, a swivel chair and my own Twitch channel. More that I’m someone who likes to dabble in different games, dip a toe in and move on to something else when I can’t conquer a level.

You know, like every other hobby I’ve ever had. 😉

Stale Mate with a Bishop

No, this isn’t a post about chess – although I can set up the board in the correct order, know a couple of terms and that the horsey knight moves in an ‘L’ shape, I’ve never learned to play. It requires more effort and brain power than you all know I’m capable of!

Instead, this post is about my encounters with clergy last week, when our school had a visit from a VIP. We’ve been waiting for his holy presence for some time – it was arranged, then cancelled due to having some more ecclesiastical duties to perform.

But eventually, the day came for us to entertain Dr. John Sentamu – who is no ordinary bishop but the Archbishop of York. Second in command to the Canterbury chap and a very important person!

I’m bringin’ blogging back, (yeah!)

Well hello there! How the heck is everyone? I’m hoping you all enjoyed the holiday period, whether you celebrated or not, ate copious amounts of cheese (like I did) or just treated it like any other day of the week.

And here we are, on the last day of 2017 and I’ve decided that after my hiatus – which was wonderful in all honesty, not having to think about posting or feeling forced to update social media just for the sake of it – that I’m coming back!

If you’ll have me… (*crosses fingers and toes).