The Bluestocking Inn, cocktails and cocoa and all

[DeanElderberry]

Opening soon in a salubrious location.

And thanks to the miraculous qualities, although we will indeed have

One-steps and two-steps and the divil knows what new steps
We know that we never would be dull again, bedad
We'll have wine, porter and lemonade.
We'll have cocktails and cocoa and all
We'll have champagnes tonight
But NO real pains next morning
Tonight when we dance at the Bluestocking Ball

slight apologies to Frank Harte

The latter. Barely any markable content.
They should be evaluating a range of things, comparing and contrasting, and then using that information to justify their choice from within the range. This student has it arse about face and has chosen the thing first and then just talked about that.

And the essay is half the length it should be too.

When I was doing O level music, our teacher sent the four of us who were doing it off to discuss an essay topic (while he worked with the CSE pupils), then write the essay as our homework. The essay title was:
The organ fugues of Bach are academic and boring - discuss”.

We were clearly supposed to demonstrate why the fugues weren’t academic or boring, had a collective rush of blood to the head and decided that we would argue that, yes, Bach’s organ fugues are academic and boring. We had fully formed arguments, and examples, and that was the conclusion of our essays. Our music teacher was unimpressed!

@AuntieMsDamsonCrumble - it is really quite pungent, but I eat Baron Bigod which can knock my kids out at 20 paces, so strong food smells are ok.

Pop it in boiling water for 20 seconds and it's utterly tamed. It's funny how that works.

He may have been unimpressed, but I'm impressed!

All alliums are moderated by cooking, I guess, and improved imo.

Hmmmm...
Knowing we have some etymologists here, would you think that use of the word "uptaken" in a website (quoted as a reference in the essay I'm currently marking) is a marker of a fondness for archaic word forms (as apparently it is) or a sign of poor literacy?

I'd say that they searched for synonyms of something? Absorption?

Yes, I hadn't considered that option. Quite possibly - Roget does like throwing every possible word at one!

Maybe I’m tired but I’m not sure I’d have noticed anything amiss with it

That's fair enough. Marking is always an excuse to unleash my pedantic side.

Done! Phew. That's been hanging over me for a couple of weeks.

Oh we ♥️ Baron Bigod in our house! Not always easy to get hold of.

Oh, fellow Baron Bigod fans!
It turns up at local shows, and I tend to bring some home.
I know exactly where the dairy is, but's a bit far to visit just to buy cheese.

I'm planning on going to a big plant fair with a friend in a couple of months... There were flogging it there last year.

At least when you have really bad pieces turn up in the marking pile it occasionally contains things that make you laugh. I used to mark O level Eng Lit when O levels existed. One year there was a question about Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" asking candidates to discuss the importance of dramatic tension in the play. A very mediocre candidate wrote an essay which just about scraped a pass mark and finished with the glorious sentence "In conclusion dramatic tension is very important in The Crucible because without it, it would be a very boring play."

And I will never forget the candidate (who did not pass) who wrote an essay about the character of Viola in Twelfth Night. It was about one page long, just going into the second page, contained very little of merit, and at the end he obviously remembered that his teacher had told him he should always put quotations into his essays (I imagine his teacher would have mentioned that the quotations should be there to support points he made, but he had made very few) and he hastily scrawled at the end, "One quotation that is relevant to this is 'there will be no rich tea biscuits and ale'".

I had one student who described rail transport as "an utterly delightful mode of travel" in an exam. Considering she was writing about transporting fresh produce, I suspect the fruit and veg don't find it terribly delightful.

I once had to do an essay for my modern history module, we had to review a biography of an historical figure.

I chose a book about Lenin. (I have no idea why)

It was when i was living in Canada.

It was a positively boring tome, so I read the leaf, the first chapter, randomly selected a middle bit and the last two pages.

I got an A !!!!

🤣

I remember being assigned a Heinrich Böll novel, and it was so boring that I managed to put together an essay on how much skill it took for Böll to write something that seemed so terrible. I think I got away with it.

The other thing I remember fondly is the law tutor who usefully advised, if you can't remember that it's Beamish v Featherstonehaugh (1934) or whatever the name of the case may be, just write "there is a precedent case where it was decided that xyz" and you'll get credit for understanding the reasoning even if you've forgotten the actual case.

In 1983, the SQA issued a set of exemplar folio pieces in order to give teachers an idea of what was expected for each grade for the new Standard Grade English exam. The previous exam - "O" Grade - had only been aimed at "academic" pupils. For the new exam, the highest grade was a "1"; lowest was a "6". A fail (at that time) was "7".

I was a student teacher at the time and attended an in-service day with my placement school, a west of Scotland boys' Catholic school.

The course leader was not amused when the teachers at my school awarded a Grade 1 to a piece which was clearly a 6.

At that time, the board issued a booklet with prompts including photographs to support the weaker candidates. In order to get a 1, the suggested length was 600-800 words. A 6 had to have at least 100 words. I recall that you were given an hour and 15 minutes. (The 15 minutes was planning time.)

The prompt for the piece in question had a picture of the actor Richard Beckinsale sitting on steps. The accompanying written prompt was along the lines of: "This young man looks really sad. Think about what might have made him sad..."

The exemplar just had 100 words of content and no more. The tale of woe explained that the young man had lost his job, had only 6 months to live and - on top of everything else, his football team (Rangers) had just been beaten 6 nil by Hibs.

The piece ended as follows.

"I know," said the young man. "I'll go down the job centre tomorrow." Then he says "Why bother. I mean who's going to employ a Rangers supporter with only 6 months to live?"

I am so glad you said that about Heinrich Böll. When I was around 16 or 17 my best friend knew I loved reading and was searching for a book to give me. There was a huge pile of Böll's latest book and so many people were buying copies, he decided to get one for me. As he died in 1985 and was a Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, I assume it was around the time of his death - yes, I'm 57.

It was so dull! I had no idea why people liked him so much. I suspect he reads well in the original German and his work doesn't always survive translation.

I do like The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, but I prefer the fillum.

I have been so busy the last few days.

• Saw my DM on Thursday,
• was given a day's work for Monday,
• Practise knitting for the Woolly Hugs blanket
• Actually knitting one of four squares (photo tomorrow)
• Preparing CVs and statements for two roles before tomorrow evening which has taken a lot of my time so far,
• helping DSD with her PIP application today,
• finalising job applications tomorrow
• setting out some planning diagrams for Monday,
• consulting on Monday,
• interview on Tuesday,
• Sofa guy on Tuesday
• London on Wednesday for a committee meeting for a large charity I volunteer for
• Feedback call with a recruiter who's annoyed I said I didn't feel supported by her
• Preparing for another role with a deadline of Sunday.

When do I get time to come on here and say hello to everyone and catch up on the trending threads?!

Around midnight apparently!

The first initial square for the blanket.