The Sixty-fourth Republic - good luck to those still gliding towards the holidays especially after euro final

[StaffRepFeistyClub]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement for school staff to let off steam.

Baiters, haters, goaders, and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

If you are NOT staff and just have a general education query please start your own thread.

Do not give the staffroom password to non-staff as it attracts the wrong sort of crowd.

Other requirements for staff room entry include the ability to find the staff room, the ability to find a clean mug in the staff room, knowledge of the photocopier codes, and the ability to sniff out where the booze is stashed - Thirsty Tuesdays, Fizz Fridays now in operation.

We are still waiting advice on chairs and masks but keep the windows open. You don’t have to upload LFT results during the holidays.Do not sit on the chairs and do wear a mask.

Today started shit, got worse and worse. Not covid; just twats.
I'm self medicating with Prosecco

We've already given out a box of tests for summer. But one box is only ~3 weeks worth.

Another bubble just popped at our place. That leaves only one - my year group! Do I win a prize?!
Just logged my LFD test result to see that finally they have allowed another person's details to be added to your account. Might save a bit of time logging results. Oh wait, we don't have to test in the holidays.....

Someone at my place nagged about a staff member who is also a parent taking their whole family to have a PCR test when one of their own children tested positive. Apparently this is irresponsible as colleague should just stay at home for 10 days and not affect anyone else. Seems to be the prevailing attitude on the Covid board too.

Sorry to hear @MrsHamlet. Sorry your work are twats.

They just want less people testing. I feel we’re back to keep the cash registers open over summer no matter what and deal with the fall out in autumn.

Another day in paradise.

Another bubble went down today. I suspect I'm going to be the last woman standing.

Several parents brought their 'self-isolating' offspring in from the various burst bubbles expecting to be provided with childcare because they needed to go to work. How can they not understand by now??

And obviously where there were siblings in other classes the self-isolators were also brought along to drop off/pick up.

Make. It. Stop.

My comment earlier about not counting contacts from sports day is now redundant because that yeargroup are now shut. Apparently quite a few who were sent home to isolate this morning did lfts when they got home and reported positives by lunchtime. So one whole yeargroup closed, and at least a third of all the other yeargroups isolating. A load of year 12 were pinged by the app this morning due to a contract outside of school on Sunday. I wonder where they all were on Sunday

@RuleWithAWoodenFoot area you of these free theatre shows on YouTube any good? theatreweekly.com/12-of-the-best-plays-and-musicals-you-can-watch-on-youtube-this-weekend/

Ignore ridiculous autocorrect

There's lots of others like Matilda
or Circe du Soleil

Are Y10 the worst hit year everywhere? Certainly the case at our place.

DS14 has delightful sunburn to the back of his legs after sports day. A pity he didn’t pay attention this morning when his sensible mum suggested, after recovering from the shock of realising that he was actually going to wear shorts outside the house of his own accord, that his unexposed legs could probably do with some suncream. “I’ll be fine!” he said

Just hope he survives the night without waking me up. What if he can’t bear his school trousers on tomorrow?!

It’s a while since I’ve had to deal with sunburn. Am trying to work out, if I do everything possible to cool it tonight, does that reduce the soreness tomorrow? Or doesn’t it work like that?

I burnt my legs in half term and despite always thinking after sun was the best thing, I think actually sudocrem was the most effective thing to cam it down. You have to put it on quite carefully as it drags but it really helped.

If you have natural yoghurt put a layer on his skin, let it dry for half an hour, add another layer on top and repeat for several layers and drying sessions then take a shower.

It's a bedouin trick - I did it once and when I took a shower the burnt skin just sort of washed off Underneath my skin was fine.

And drink lots of water.

Year 10 the worst here. They are the only year with non tutor group bubbles left in school now.

Sorry about your shit MrsH. Hope your ds is OK Jan. Honey stunning us all with more exotic stories.

You know what would improve my life? A night out with Honey and the rest of the republic. You don't make me think "twat"

Thanks. It’s now o bad it’s peeling off yet! We’ve done E45, calamine such I still have in the fridge from chickenpox days(!) and cold wet flannels.

honey exotic cures for sunburn are all very well, but you’ve left us dangling since, iirc, Saturday, in hope of the tale of the scuba diving ex!!!

Sorry to hear of shit days, MrsH, Harriet and anyone I've missed. DrM, fingers crossed for good news re. biopsy.

Rule, I did curve stitching with all of my classes on the last day, from Y7 up to Y12. It was amazing, fairly easy to set up (pencil, ruler and templates) and really calming! Had a Y7 child freak out about it but by the end of the class tell me how much more confident he felt with a pencil and ruler. Happy to share the files if you would like them? Worked well remotely too, I sent the templates out two days before the lesson and most managed to print them off.

I love being on holiday. Had a rush of guilt about dc missing out on so much this year, so have booked all sorts at the local sports centre. Today was badminton, tomorrow swimming. Made a start on UCAS reports too so productive overall!

The infection rates are making me nervous. Feel as if the government have washed their hands of it all.

Oh he was the world record holder for deepest trimix dive for a while at 202m I believe (records don't last long as there's always some big man with a death wish trying to beat them) but he was smart enough to go yep that will do me.

Anyway he trained me in technical diving and how to safely dive deep solo without a buddy and I got really into deep solo diving. We had a fab relationship till I went with him out of Egypt to the hell of Frankfurt where, imo, he was being sold pipe dreams about being a partner in setting up a resort in the canaries by a smarmy money is everything family who liked tossing the keys for the porsche at us when they couldn't be arsed to drive their own car home because they'd drank too much. We got stuck there and I found it utterly depressing and just missed my life in Sinai and being underwater and out of that whole corporate money obsessed world badly. I had to go.

They were indeed arseholes and he got away. He went on to become an expert in hyperbaric medicine, a renowned technical instructor trainer being flown all over the world to do courses and he was massively instrumental in saving those schoolboys who got trapped in a flooded network of underground caves in Thailand not long back. Before that he was a big part of helping identifying human remains after the tsunami in phuket. He was flemish and spoke at least 9 languages fluently, I kid you not, and is just one of those 'golden' people who everyone loves and opportunities fall at his feet - not that he doesn't work hard, study obsessively and make himself the best in his field always.

Lovely guy, we still talk sometimes. I was already an instructor but he taught me so much - way beyond what you could learn in books and went on to publish manuals etc.

It's incredible how many totally awesome men I broke up with over the years

How did I merit a special mention in a night out MrsH ? I kind of am fishing because where I am currently I don't exactly feel appreciated. Being informed, curious and proactive somehow seems to be taken as an act of aggression by some of my slt.

However I did get conned into writing and recording a song in a neighbours studio whilst there. It wasn't bad at all but turned out what he actually wanted was a genuine English sounded singer and lyrics to hack into techno track I sadly don't possess a recording of it but it apparently didn't do too badly in Germany.

I feel like I'm talking about someone else when I tell stories from my past.

I've been awol quite a bit because my sleep is all over the place and I've been trying to read at night rather than be on screens but it seems like my body just doesn't want much sleep at the minute and even if I get off to sleep I wake an hour or so later.

Can I pick brains? Has anyone holidayed somewhere in the uk where without it being crazy expensive you can stay right by water - be it the sea or lovely lakes that you're allowed and safe to swim in but isn't a million miles from civilisation and public transport? The not driving thing only really pees me off when it comes to thinking of ways to holiday in the UK.

honey all you exotic anecdotes might be a part of why you earned your special mention for a night out. I can't believe you broke up with amazing diver guy!!! And what a story about singing on a German techno hit. What was the song called? I assume you've tried looking for the song on Spotify or YouTube. I've found some very obscure stuff on there, and would love to listen to your original song (even if it is a techno track)

The Yorkshire coast is lovely, we've done caravan holidays there a couple of times. I can't remember roughly where you are in the country, as that might change where I suggest. We had a nice time in North Wales but can't remember how good the public transport links were. Our caravan park was right by the beach, but might have been a long walk from a train station.
Northumberland is fantastic, the beaches are gorgeous, but absolutely baltic rather chilly for swimming in for too long.
We've had nice holidays on the Dorset coast but I seem to remember a lot of seaweed and very pebbly beaches which put me off a bit (and it was more expensive than the same thing further North, probably because it's warmer)

"Make me believe" was my title but no idea what that translated to. Wish I had a recording of the original song I recorded - not too fussed by the dodgy German techno version.

We went on a climbing and camping trip by this gorgeous gorge and I went on a big hike on my own and found myself in this beautiful meadow and was lying in the grass and realised I couldn't stay. He was ready to come back to Egypt with me, suggested we could go work on liveaboards doing diving trips with high end customers etc but I couldn't bear the idea of me derailing, or being responsible for changing, his plans. So we travelled on a train back to his Mum's place in Antwerp and sat talking all night over a bottle of Jimmy Walker and talked and cried and then booked me a flight back to Egypt. It was a proper crying at the airport goodbye. I 'think' I did the right thing though. I can't live with feeling like I've made someone else go off their course.

I find just being responsible for my own ship safer, bar ds who I always say was the first person who, 'taught me to stay'. I may have some issues

I had a nice time on the Norfolk coast once with lovely beaches but it is such an a hole for getting there as a non driver.

We did lots of holidays to central France when I was a kid and there was this culture of making pseudo beaches around lakes pretty close to villages we stayed in. I wish we did more like that here.