Beakin' My Balls And Breakin' My Bells......

The original title of this blog was going to be: Death of baby animals - the reason for which will become clear later - but I thought that might put people off. And besides, I wanted to begin with a rant about this hellish Wednesday.

You know how it goes, it starts off small with the District line - for the third week in a row experiencing signal failures resulting in severely delayed services in and out of Earl's Court, meaning I have to set off earlier in order to make my first class. And then it's the first Toddler class - which has been broken about as long as the District line. Have you ever tried to teach a class of six under 2 and half, one of which has decided she now wants to cry and scream and snot all the way through her lessons? No? Well I highly recommend it especially if you have no patience and a penchant for throwing things. I of course have neither of these things and still I had a strong urge to walk out and never return. Breakin' my balls!

It doesn't help that the teachers are in and out, setting up activities around the room, as I'm trying to focus them and start an activity of my own. Scream-a-lot won't stop, she just wants to go to her teacher, but I need her to snap out of that otherwise this will be my Wednesday, every Wednesday. So I sit her on my knee whilst the other kids essentially run around with the instruments, not listening or doing anything remotely constructive, and start messing around with whatever else they can get their tiny little hands on. I've never been more certain of upping the age of my classes, as I was after that farce of a lesson.

But then just to break my spirit further, at my next school in the preschool class of all classes, one of the children destroys one of the instruments right in front of me, pulling the ringer out of the bell where it now hangs limply never to serve its purpose again - or maybe it will if I can find a way to re-spring a spring, if you get what I mean? Needless to say, my nice act dropped for a few minutes and my grumpy back up act took over. Hilariously though, the other children were telling off the child that had broken the bell, wanting to pretend to be the teacher. I felt like saying, here, you take over, please. I would quite happily have played the kid today and have someone else teach the little monsters.

Oh yeah, and one of the new kids, pinched me really hard. He literally pinched an inch of my slightly plump gut. Thanks for reminding me I need to work out, little savage.

So with broken balls, a broken spirit and a broken instrument, I make my way home, only to encounter crazy abusive guy on the train. He strolled in from the next carriage, slamming the door several times. It was the same sound the windows make on a bus when you open and close them, but of course there are no windows on the tube that open. So then he walked past loads of vacant seats to my part of the carriage and sat fairly quiet, just occasionally talking to himself. Then when he gets off, he starts effin' and jeffin' at another guy waiting to alight, getting right up in his face for no reason and storms off. Luckily the guy also getting off was clearly a) confused and b) placid enough to take a step back and just realise there was a problem there. Other people may have given a shove or a punch, but luckily I didn't have to witness a brawl, I might have started using instruments as weapons.

Okay, so Wednesday hasn't been particularly kind to me, but I did swing past the library and pick up some swag, all before arriving home to the wrong Veronica Mars Season 2 disc. Damn it. Disc 3 should have come yesterday but didn't, and guess what arrived today? Disc 4. Bugger. I need to find out what happens. Hellish, hellish, Wednesday. It just means we'll have to watch another Life Story episode.........

Which brings me nicely to my next rant. Anyone been watching the Grim Reaper's new series: Death of baby animals? Sorry, you might know it as: David Attenborough's: Life Story. Spoiler alert: loads of baby/adolescent animals die.

The first episode was harrowing, especially the kamikaze geese, and it was followed up with a dead Tiger in episode two, amongst other deaths. It is tempting to create a rather macabre drinking game out of it. Every time an animal dies, drink!

We love you David Attenborough, but you just keep killing off our favourite characters. You get us all attached and then, bam, they're gone. Oh, all the eaten baby birds still in their eggs. I feel I must clarify, it's not actually Mr Attenborough killing them off, it's their families, or their predators, but it's freakin' edge of your seat stuff, and more harrowing than half the horror films I've seen, I'm talking cushion cuddling, feet hiding the screen sort of viewing. High peril rating.

Still, it won't stop us watching more tonight - damn Veronica Mars disc 3 - and it won't stop A flapping over all the cute animals, until they're torn to pieces in front of him.

I hope your Wednesday's have been kinder to you than mine was. But, it did give me all this ammunition for a blog, which makes me slightly happier because I came home and wrote and now I'm going to continue to write some of my NaNoWriMo entry, and by the time A comes home, I might be in a fit state to socialise.

Here's hoping Thursday isn't quite as much of a bitch.

Rants