've not really felt 'up for it' today.

This is partially because report writing season is upon us. These things have always been difficult, but have become more so in the past few years: now that the whole system is computerised it's impossible to scrawl a few lines of over-sized handwriting. Most people get through this by putting a large cut-and-paste generic thingy at the top of the rep, outlining what their set has (supposed to have) been doing over the previous term. Until recently, I'd resisted this, thinking that it gave reports an inhuman and listless feel. But even I've fallen for it this time round. There isn't time to handcraft a whole report for each kid. I also get the feeling that the Boss likes a generic section - it gives every report a comforting blandness.

And the state of the English! I know education has been in decline ever since we allowed Business Studies on the curriculum and Geography started to be taken seriously as an academic subject, but - honestly. Telf and I pinned a notice to the workroom wall the other day, explaining the difference between 'practice' and 'practise', because we were so sick of being asked. It's not just grammatical errors I'm talking about, either (Dave picked me up today for using 'the set have...', ho hum, even Homer nods, though not always to the extent that George-taught amateur grammarian DB can spot). I'm talking about grisly mixed metaphors, jargon, and, worst of all, stultifying dullness.

Actually, it's been a bad day for my English. Sue picked me up for correcting her use of the subjunctive. Only she was right and I was wrong. Bugger.

By three pm I'd been so thoroughly mind-raped by Microsoft Word that I wasn't at all interested in getting in a kayak. I was even less interested when I did get in and found that Mighty Midget Guesty had adjusted the foot rests during Games yesterday. Two mysteries: first, why was the bastard using my boat? And second, why on earth should he have moved them *further down the hull*? He's only five foot three, for fuck's sake. Perhaps he was using it as a submarine.

Wislon got on my tits, too. I really love Ben, for all his poshness. But he's been bullying Karena for trying to pinch kids out of choir for a play rehearsal. We old hands know that kid-poaching is a sensitive business of give-and-take. Unless the Games Department is involved, of course. They don't really do sensitivity. But poor Karena, for all her irritating thespish ways, does not know this. Nor did she know that Ben was himself pulling a fastie in ways too complicated to go into here. I fear that her production of 'Cat Girl' is going to be a fuck up. This is a terrible shame, as she's so keen to prove herself. She just let herself be talked into producing a show too early by Gary. She thought that, being a pro, she would find it easy. She forgot that she would be working with the worst sort of amateurs. She also forgot the old 'children and animals rule'. The first year girls, so far as I can work out, are both.

I think 'Under Milk Wood' might also be having a few problems. Furball is looking tres stressed today. More on that later in the week. There won't be a blog tomorrow, unless it's written very late. Telf and I are taking some sixth formers to see a stage version of 'The Third Man' at the Arts Centre in Darlo. What a great novel. What a great film.

....don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Yarm School they had brotherly love - they had twenty-five years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? Dave Boddy.