Computerised Billing

We recently left British Gas because of their high prices and inefficient customer services. We kept trying to get a final bill from them, and it didn't arrive, though several letters for our landlord did, which we forwarded on. About a week after Ali had phoned (again) to ask how much we owed and was told there was no ammount outstanding, we received a final demand threatening us with legal action, gas cut off etc. We phoned them up immediately and were told that 3 letters had been sent to us previously demanding payment, and refused to admit that they had been sent to the wrong person! Completely unhelpful and no chance of an apology. Anyhow, we paid the ammount straight away and asked for a receipt. We then got a bill for the ammount we had just paid a week later! I phoned up to confirm that it was a mistake, and asked again for a receipt. That was last week sometime.

Today, I found a British Gas letter on the doormat, and though 'ah, the receipt has finally arrived!'
No such luck. Its a bill - for £0.00!

I am just waiting to get a final demand from them. I reckon it will be easier to avoid all communication and just send them a cheque when that happens!

Good kid, Bad kid

As many of my friends and family will know, we recently went on the Atkins diet, after the doctor "politely" told me to lose weight. (Yes I know its controversial, but if done properly its not particularly unhealthy. We eat more veg and salad now than we did before.) Anyhow, we are starting to come off the diet now, having lost a lot of weight, in my case 10kg. A lot of people have noticed the difference, but I think the best compliment came from one of the students today.

He is the sweetest kid, special needs with fairly severe learning difficulties. (In the past it would have been acceptable to describe him as sweet but thick.) Anyway, he was looking up pictures of easter eggs for a project, and we got talking about chocolate. When I told him I couldn't eat it because I am on diet, he said "No you're not." I told him that I am, and his reply cheered me up a lot - with a puzzled expression he said "But you're not fat Miss..."

Unfortunately my good mood bubble was quickly burst by a kid in the next class, who asked me if I was a sumo wrestler. Needless to say she is likely to be severely chastised by the HOD who had to come in to tell them off for being too noisy. Other kids were also claiming I had starred in "Horny Housewives", but I didn't hear who started the rumour. That group will also be spoken to by the HOD. For the record these are year 9s, ie 14-15 yr olds.

*Sigh*

Retail therapy. Yes. With the money we don't have.

*Sigh*

Typical day at work

The clocks changed yesterday, which meant that I was essentially trying to go to bed an hour earlier and get up an hour earlier than usual, which totally screwed up my sleep pattern, and I ended up unable to get to sleep for ages. That meant I started the day totally exhausted, not helped by the fact that it was dark when I woke up whereas it has been getting lighter in the mornings the past few weeks.

Walked into the staffroom to see that the racks with the work for cover lessons were full already - always a bad sign. I sighed and thought, well at least they can't give me MORE than 5 periods of cover! When the cover list went up I noticed I only had 4 periods - great! Then Rae-anne noticed that they had given her a cover lesson when she was supposed to be teaching her own lesson. She had to rush off, so I went to see our manager, who put someone else down for it. I had assumed that since I was free I would get it, but I was lucky - Neris was also free and had less lessons than me.

Then, at break time, I found out that the list had changed AGAIN, and I had a cover after all. It really is quite depressing having gotten excite about the thought of a free, then having that taken away from you again.

The first couple of lessons weren't too bad, fairly chatty kids, but they mostly got on with the work set, so it wasn't too bad. The lessons started going down hill just before lunch, and now my throat is really sore from trying to get the last 2 classes to work quietly. Futile effort, in the end. The last group left the classroom in a mess, despite asking them to put everything away. It didn't help that the work they had been left was something they had all done before- make a poster about drugs. I changed it to a poster about alcohol, but they were still pretty disengaged and left their posters all over the place, mostly half done, some scribbled on or made into aeroplanes.

I had to do 3 incident slips today, I usually average 1-2 per week. One was a child simply being rude and accusing others of doing things I had clearly seen him do. Another was a case of "Pedantic Semantics", where he took my instruction to "sit on a chair" as literally as he could, and placed said chair on the desk... The third was a serious incident form; I had a few year 7 students in the classroom for a detention at break, when some year 8s tried to come in. Most of them left when I asked them to, but one girl stayed, saying that it was warmer in the classroom. I asked her again to leave, and she complied, but not before muttering some very rude things under her breath, and said quite clearly "up yours" with the accompanying gesture!

One has to wonder what goes on at home when such things are considered acceptable - I can assure you that when approached by the Senior Management Team, all 3 will try to protest their innocence. I regularly get told "You can't prove nuffin" when I tell someone off for behaviour!

I may work a slightly shorter day than some office jobs, but I bet most office workers don't get sworn at regularly, lose their voice and get home feeling breathless, wilted, emotionally, physically and mentally exhausted on a daily basis! They certainly don't pay me enough to fight with kids about actually getting the work done - getting them to sit down and shut up is hard enough!

For those of you who have never met British kids, lets just say that this article didn't surprise me : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/4850164.stm

Anyway, enough of that! I am going to find a snack and have a short nap before Ali gets home.

First Post!

Hi all, I am at home all day today, Ali is working in the bar, she has 2 jobs now to pay for her helicopter flying lessons, which are inordinately expensive!

Anyhow, I was trying to catch up with a few friends today, and got bored of writing the same type of things, especially since not much has changed in my life recently. I decided to start up a blog so I can tell people that not much has changed, and also to put down random ramblings that seem a bit pointless putting into an email, like when I get excited about buying new socks, or something!