Welcome!
Yip, just when you thought it was safe I’m going to thrill with my ramblings from home…
Actually, today (Tues 24th March) I was in a meeting with cluster head teachers. We sat very far away from each other and shouted a lot. That part of the meeting was amusing! Three hours into discussions…Not so funny!
After work I got out the Nerf tennis ball launcher and made Bailey (my poodle) run up and down the back garden chasing after the tennis balls. He is now lying flat out on the top landing. I chased after him a bit as I have to get my daily exercise too. I will be lying on the couch later!
To cheer my Mum and Dad up ( they are socially isolating ) I bought them a toadstool bubble maker – it is amazing. It throws out loads of bubbles. Mum got a call from her neighbour as the neighbour’s garden was full of bubbles too! I will be bringing the bubble maker into school when we reopen – it is excellent! You will love it!
Yes – it was so good I got one for myself too!
Yesterday (Wednesday25th) I took my dog Bailey and a bag of poo for a walk. You read correctly! Why is it that when you take your dog out for a walk it does a poo near the start of the walk and there is no bin until the end of the walk?
We had a lovely walk by the River Nith just me, the dog and the bag of poo!
Being home early from work (as I only have to go downstairs) I had time to wash my filthy car. So now it is looking all sparkly clean.
I missed my appointment at the hairdressers because of the Lockdown so as well as all my grey roots showing (stress not age!!) I will soon have to have a go at cutting my own fringe – this has NOT gone well in the past. I think my hairdresser Karen is quite scared about how she will have to rescue some hair disasters when we get back to normal. Be assured, I will post any hair disaster pics immediately.
Yesterday (Thursday 26th March) my sister started a Whatsapp group with some of the customers from our Hairdressers so that we can all keep in touch. I think it might really be so that we can compare how bad our hairdos get while we are working from home. When I was younger (5 or 6 years ago :-)) my mum used to give me a haircut called a Paige boy – it was supposed to look like Purdey from the Avengers (ask your grandads) but it looked like she had put a bowl on my head and cut around it. Nice!!
Although that wasn’t the worst experience I had with my mum cutting my hair. I had decided as a teenager (4 or 5 years ago:-)) that I wanted short hair and mum decided that she could cut it cheaper than the hairdresser. So she plugged in my dad’s shaver and attacked the back of my head. Let’s just say I had a very short and smooth do at the back. Luckily, scarves were a real fashion item at that time even in the height of Summer.
Today Miss Stapleton and I were at NWCC Childcare Hub. Our day started at 7am (and that’s really 6am if the clocks hadn’t gone forward yesterday!). We did the Joe Wicks workout…he likes lunging a lot. He dressed it up as fencing and Thor and Spiderman but we were still lunging a lot. After a short lie down (joking) we headed out to the MUGA for a cool down walk about. I asked the kids at the hub to make a Doodlegram about themselves that they could add to their school blogs later. They were also watching the Minions movie. There were a real mix of kids visiting for the day aged between 3 and 13 years old. Miss Stapleton and I went off shift at 11am, Miss Pattie came in at 11am to take over with some new staff. The hub is open until 8pm tonight.
Today (Tuesday 31st) I have been mainly talking.
Talking on the telephone.
Talking to parents (nice to catch up with some folks today).
Talking to pupils (good to hear you are getting on well at home and not missing school in the slightest :-).
Talking to head teachers (trying to get organised for childcare at the Hubs).
Talking to the central team – who want to know how we’re all doing.
Talking to teachers from Holywood and beyond.
Talking to friends.
And finally, talking to family…
…What else have I been doing today?
I don’t want to talk about it!!
Last night (Tuesday 31st) I went to get my mum and dad some essential shopping. What a strange experience going to the supermarket is now becoming. Last night it got a wee bit stranger…
As I was leaving the supermarket in my car, the car in front turned right and suddenly there was an explosion of cards, receipts and money. Some flew over the roof of my car, some went under the wheels, some flew across the road and landed on the pavement.
It was clear that the owner of the car in front had sat his/ her wallet on the roof of the car while they got organised. And then got in and drove off – forgetting that their wallet was still on the roof.
Full marks to the wallet it managed to hang on to the roof as the car travelled around the car park and up to the traffic lights. It was only as the car pulled away and took a corner that it lost it’s grip and slid off.
I have to say the owner of the wallet had a lot of stuff (there’s that word again P5-7) in their wallet – it was an impressive explosion across the road!
What did we do?
We had to keep driving as there were cars directly behind. I flashed my lights repeatedly at the car in front to try to make them aware that there was a problem but they didn’t notice. We called the Police and told them about the incident and the number plate of the vehicle.
I hope they got their wallet (and all the contents) back.
This put me in mind of the last time I was involved in a forgot it was on the roof – sliding off incident.
It was a slightly damp day as the teachers drove away from school and as we arrived at the big by-pass roundabout near Lincluden we saw Mrs Thomson (the P2 teacher and an extremely nice lady) running back and forward dodging traffic. Concerned we all pulled onto the verge to see what had occurred.
Mrs Thomson had placed her school planning folder on the roof of her car while she got her bags of marking and resources organised into the car. Then harassed by a stressful day at school full of misbehaving pupils (she didn’t work at Holywood where all of the children behave fantastically!) she climbed wearily into her car and started for home.
Being better than a wallet her substantial planning folder clung on for dear life all the way to the by pass roundabout ( it held on for 4 corners and a mini roundabout!). As she burled around the roundabout the folder swung out into the air, crashed to the ground and exploded. 500 sheets of A4 paper went up into the air like confetti before landing on cars, buses and the road itself.
Rather than doing the sensible thing – going home, letting the local Police know and putting the kettle on – she decided she had to collect the planning or the head teacher would be cross (please note: I was the P1 teacher at this time not the grumpy head teacher!).
Rather than doing the sensible thing – we all decided to help her. And so we carefully helped her pick up her soggy worksheets (remember it was a damp day) from between the traffic on the roundabout. Some motorists gave us a helping hand and it turned into a wee social event.
Mrs Thomson took her damp planning home to dry out. Well most of them, as we couldn’t rescue the planning sheets that had landed on cars. Who knows where they ended up?!
We’re back…BUT we’re not back in school.
Supermarkets have become the strangest places to visit. Last week my shopping trip took me nearly two hours by the time I had:
swabbed down my trolley,
joined the queue outside,
phoned family and friends while waiting in the queue,
hand sanitised,
been given instructions about the one way system,
missed items and had to go back to the start,
missed items and decided I could do with out them,
joined the queue to pay,
slowly pushed the trolley through the alcohol aisle (product placement!) ,
and stood 2 metres away and watched someone else have to pack my shopping.
A huge thank you to all the people working in the supermarkets!
Please note: do not decide as you are passing (using the one way system) to buy your mum a de-stress banana. Causes too much hilarity at the check out – You have been warned!
Sorry for not getting some more tall tales up last week – things got very busy towards the end of the week. My sister has been on the phone to nudge me along as reading Miss Dale’s Tall Tales apparently helps to send her off to sleep peacefully each night!
Today (Monday 27th April) I want to ponder the soothing qualities that a really good cup of tea can offer.
I am very fussy about my teabags (me?! Fussy?!? Surely not?!?). When travelling abroad and when I go in my camper, I always make sure that I have a good stock of tea bags. I like a fair trade teabag – unbleached paper! This ensures that my excessive tea drinking is supporting tea farmers and they are earning a fair price for their tea. The unbleached bag is better for the planet and means that composting my teabags is good for my garden too.
I do like to harp on about a good cup of tea ( me?! Harp on ?! Surely not?!) and have now converted the Holywood staff room to a place of fair trade teabags with unbleached bags.
My sister had recommended bulk buying my teabags and had directed me to a website which would save me 50% of the supermarket price if I bought 1100 teabags. We get through a lot of tea at Holywood so I thought it was a great deal. Half for home and half for the school staff room. They arrived the week before lock down. I now have a massive amount of teabags to get through at home. Although, I am currently trying to convert the Childcare Hub to fair trade teabags with unbleached bags!
One day I may be on the telly programme with Greg Wallace where you Eat Well for Less. He’ll replace my fair trade teabags with unbleached bags for some cheaper saw dust filled bleached bags without telling me. I’ll fail to notice the difference and look very foolish in front of the nation.
It’s worth noting that these teabags are wrapped in silver foil for freshness. Packs of 40. Be warned that if you are carrying them in your suitcase you may be stopped by customs at the airport when they x-ray your luggage. Apparently, you have to be taken aside and spoken to on your own when you are carrying unlabelled packets…of tea in amongst your holiday wardrobe.
It was almost as bad as when my brother in law, while waiting in the customs line to get onto a ferry, realised that he still had a pocket full of dog biscuits as the sniffer dogs came closer. But that’s a different story…
Today (30th April) I want to talk about dust…
Phillip Pullman imagined a world where dust was potentially the enemy and where two factions fought over dust and its impact on people and the world. It was a word never to be mentioned in public; a word to be whispered…
Dust and I are currently pitting our wits against each other. This is the first time I have worked from home. It is also the longest I’ve ever been in my house during daylight hours. And what I want to know is…Where does all the dust in my house come from? Have I got an unlimited dust provision with some major dust producer that I’ve forgotten to cancel?
No sooner have I “Mr Sheened” (other polishes are available) a surface and turned away then I turn back seconds later to find the surface is no longer a clear shine but that a dull grey covering has settled on it once again. Dust is the ninja in my house. Silent. Stealthy. Lethal.
I’ve tried hoovering more often. I have tried opening windows to ensure we have fresh air blowing away the cobwebs. I have tried ignoring it – pretending that I can’t see the dust and that if ignored it might go away by itself. But it keeps coming back and if left gets thicker – like a waist line on lock down!
I said dust and I were currently locked in a battle. The latest update is that dust is winning. I may have to surrender!
I will interrupt my constant dusting cycle to discuss soup. As well as baking an extraordinary amount of cakes and biscuits people seem to be making tonnes of soup.
My Mum and Dad are making soup for all their neighbours. Minestrone being a firm favourite in the street. My Mum prides herself on making hearty soups, she judges the quality of her soups firstly on flavour, and then on it’s ability to hold a wooden spoon upright. It has to be thick. ‘Stick to your ribs’ soup. Her neighbour Jackie made her portion of soup last for two lunches and two dinners, by the time she had let the soup down a bit, she had enough for an army.
Mrs Roberts and I once made a pot of minestrone soup with the P1/2 class at Lincluden. We thinned the almost solid soup, slightly. Once all the children had had a cup we fed the next three classes. Then we thinned the soup slightly and fed the next three classes. Upon the third slight thinning we were able to provide a bowl of hearty soup for every member of staff at lunchtime. If memory serves correctly, there was still enough super thick soup for one or two parents to have a wee taste at the end of the day.
It was while in Belgium on a wee city break (remember them?!) that friends and I had a dangerous encounter with soup.
We were making our grocery purchases in the supermarket before going to our accommodation. Two out of three of us were vegetarian (I’ve just had a steak sandwich for dinner so I am the odd one out). We were buying fabulous cheeses, fresh baked bread, selecting fresh fruit and vegetables. We decided that a couple of tins of soup would be convenient and filling too.
Let’s be clear, none of us speak Flemish and at that time our French was more than a bit dodgy. We were basing our soup choices firmly in the ‘what is that picture on the tin?’, ‘Is that a picture of a carrot?’ and ‘that picture looks like a tomato’. We selected a tin – bright green in colour with loads of vegetables in the picture. We were confident…Smug almost at our ability to handle ourselves in a foreign supermarket.
After unpacking in our wee house we decided that soup would set us up before our cultural tour of the beer in the pubs. Without a second thought I whipped out the tin opener, popped open the top of the tin and poured the contents into a pot. Some nice little pink balls popped into the pot, they had been tucked amidst the plentiful veg.
We poked the pink ball with the spoon. It certainly didn’t look like any vegetable we had ever seen before. It was undoubtedly meat!
In vegetarian soup?! We were horrified. However, the story takes a turn for the worse – we grabbed the tin and attempted to translate to see where our mistake had been made.
Did it say du beouf? No.
Did it say porc? No.
Did it say poulet? No.
It said ‘cheval’ – yes readers, we had bought soup with little horse meatballs in. And that was why we all had long faces ( it had to be done!).
I was catching up on the new Picard series a few weeks ago – I can recommend it especially if you are a Star Trek Next Generation fan like me. It was like meeting up with old friends you hadn’t caught up with for a few years and then having adventures in space. As you do.
Yip, picture my home office:
I have my science tri-corder (from the original series-before I get complaints!).
my hand held phaser (set to stun) 
and my Starfleet badge
I’m all ready to go when one of the crew from the Starship Enterprise beam in needing a slightly out of the box head teacher (Worry not – I have not learned Klingon, I know that it is fiction… at least until science catches up!).
It put me in mind of my first year of teaching – a P5 class at Gretna. We had a fun year and learned a lot too – sound like a school you know?!
Teachers have to be very careful when working with children, they have to think about the influence they have. Our political and religious views should be left out of the classroom – we have to teach our pupils to have a broad view of the world and to develop their own skills, knowledge and views. We ask questions and start discussions to encourage our pupils to raise questions and challenge their own thinking.
However, there is no mention in the General Teaching Council Scotland professional conduct rules about persuading your pupils to become Trekkers – massive Star Trek fans!
First, I placed my full size Riker poster 
on the classroom display board and then labelled it clearly in German – we were learning German vocabulary for parts of the body!
Secondly, we were studying the solar system so for imaginative writing I played my class an episode of Star Trek and they wrote character descriptions and then a space adventure involving the crew.
Thirdly, as a class we decided for the Easter Assembly we would write and perform a Star trek play; we wrote a script about an Alien Race and an Easter Egg Hunt. We put as many egg jokes in as possible, “Eggcellent Mr Data, make it so!”, “Captain, where eggactly are we?” you get the idea 🙂
Then we had a ball designing our stage sets and props. We made a Star ship Enterprise out of a milk carton with a circle of card on top. Then to copy the titles of the ship blasting across the screen at warp speed we got one of the pupils to run back and forward while holding the ‘ship’ aloft. It was a truly beautiful thing! Especially when we added the theme music in.
The performance was a great success, it was Eggcellent!
But this is not where our tale ends, oh no!
And like all the best episodes (usually containing the Borg) I think this will have to be a two part storyline.
To be continued…
So… Last Friday I burnt the breakfast toast at the Emergency Childcare Hub. It is amazing how quickly a large space can fill with smoke. It is incredible how long that burnt smell can linger on… for hours and hours. A parent collecting their child at home time commented on the lingering aroma of burnt toast. Nice!
It put my in mind of the last time I had a burnt food incident…
It was during my days as a student, I worked for the summer at a small sandwich take away shop. Fillings such as ham and tomato, cheese savoury and a BLT were the favourites. Many preferred a rustic submarine baton to a Scottish roll or white bread. All good.
I was left in charge of the premises while the owners were on holiday for a few days near the end of the summer season. I had a list of jobs that had to be completed every evening after closing to ensure we were ready to meet customer’s sandwich needs the next day. One of these jobs was to boil a pan of eggs for the egg mayonnaise filling!
I arrived at the shop at 7 am the next morning. The door was burst open. I felt sick as I thought we had been broken into…
A small card was propped on the open till – it said ” the fire brigade axed your shop door in at 8.45 pm last night when a fire was called in. We found a pan of eggs still on the cooker. No fire damage, just lots of smoke. Please call the station when you get this note”
I was horrified. The owners had trusted me and on the second night I had nearly burnt their shop to the ground. The shop stank of heavily burnt egg. A really attractive smell for a sandwich shop. Mmmm delicious!
I went downstairs to the kitchen to investigate. Everything looked fine except for the pot which had the open shells of eggs fossilised to the bottom (it looked like the egg scene from Aliens – parents will know what I mean – not age appropriate for pupils!!).
Even if I steeped the pot there would be no saving it!
I called the owners and remarkably they were fine about the whole thing: “no one was hurt”; “no real damage done”; “these things happen to the best of us!”. They were clearly having a great holiday.
However, next door to the wee sandwich shop near the Royal Mile in Edinburgh was a wee cashmere (very posh and expensive wool) shop.
The smoke had permeated through the wall and all of their lovely cashmere scarves and jumpers now stank of very burnt egg. Apparently, this is not attractive to tourists.
The cashmere shop had to have a smoke damage sale and reduce the price of their scarves and jumpers. They also had to have the shop professionally cleaned.
I decided it would not be acceptable to pop in for a heavily discounted jumper or scarf. This might have been seen as chancing my luck!
January – We’re Back…
In childcare hubs and not with all of you guys. Stay safe and well at home – then we’ll get back together sooner!
Star Trek Part Two…
If you recall – we did an eggcellent performance of our Star Trek play for the whole school and thought that was the end of the Star Trek story. So imagine my surprise when I walked into the staff room a couple of days later and there was a flyer advertising the STAR TREK EXHIBITION in Edinburgh.
An exhibition of Star Trek memorabilia and props from the television series and the films had been collected together and was travelling around the UK. The only dates in Scotland were in Edinburgh and I think it only ran over one weekend.
I was considering booking myself a ticket for the Saturday and travelling up to Edinburgh when the head teacher came to see me. He handed me the leaflet and said “I think you should take your class to see this Exhibition!”.
Yes! It really did happen. I was going to the Star Trek Exhibition with my P5 class – the head teacher thought it was a good idea and it would count as a day at work. Unbelievable.
The bus journey to Edinburgh took hours – it’s a long way from Gretna!
We were all incredibly excited and then it turned out to be a bit rubbish – we were gutted. You weren’t allowed to touch anything. Nothing interactive. Then the class teacher (me!) got a row from the security guards for sitting in Captain Picard’s Chair on the bridge (Yes, I did say “Make it so” and point my finger!). The best part was the shop where we bought hologram stickers and Geordi La Forge visors.
When we returned to school we had a big discussion about how we could have put on a better Star Trek Exhibition. We designed lots of interactive activities like trying on Klingon masks and costumes, Captain’s chairs that you were allowed to sit on and operate things on the Bridge and a slide that took you around the exhibits. We created a big book with all our design ideas and sent it to the exhibition organisers along with a letter from the class telling them our views.
You might be surprised to find out that they never got back to us.
We built our own Star Trek Exhibition in the classroom. It had Captain Kirk’s chair – you could sit on it. It had light up switches and buzzers. We made character masks which you could try on. We made a full size crew member with a space where the head should be so that you could poke your head through and have your photo taken!
Our feedback from the children, staff and parents in the school was very positive!
Live long and prosper!!
Today I want to talk about snow…
I love living in Dumfries, it is a friendly place. The Doonhamers are a fabulous people. But they have no idea what real snow looks like!!
When I was at primary school you could guarantee at least three days a year off due to snow (I didn’t go to Holywood 🙂 and one for the boiler breaking down.
On a snow day, the snow would be at least 50 cm deep – yip a 1/2 metre of snow, thickly covering the ground. A thick blanket of the white stuff coating every surface it could reach. Off course, we couldn’t go to school, we had more important stuff to be doing…Sledging!
You can tell I’m from the posh part of Falkirk, as we had a bing at the bottom of our street. A bing is a heap or a pile made from mining or rubble waste. In this case it was from an old factory. The bing was massive – 4 or 5 times the size of the hill in the Holywood playground.
*Please note that a bing is not generally a safe place for playing but this was in a time before seat belts and health and safety. Yes, I am that old. I know…hard to believe!!
The bing was the perfect place for sledging. The thick snow would cover any rocky parts and you could safely sledge down without worrying about roads, fences or ditches.
Not many people had their own sledge – it was in the days before we imported lots of plastic things from around the world. Some kids had old metal trays from their kitchen. One kid had a spade with a broken handle. The best thing to use was an old piece of tarpaulin – it was slippy on the compacted snow (low friction!!), it could fit 5 or 6 kids on and it would spin around as it went down the hill. If we all ran and jumped on the tarp, giving it a push start, we could really get the speed up. Brilliant! We would be out for hours.
My mum is a big fan of sledging and even now has a small collection of sledges at home. One day she had a rummage in my Grandpa’s shed and came back from Moodiesburn with her childhood sledge. It had metal runners and a wooden slat seat but most importantly, it was long and you could get 4 or 5 kids seated on it at the one time.
As it had been in the shed for many years we cleaned up the sledge and waxed the runners to ensure that they would run smoothly across the snow. I remember the first run well, my brother and I took it to the top of the hill and my mum gave us a push start. It wasn’t that fast…
We took it back up and sat in in the tracks it had made in the snow on the first run – it went like a rocket! Then the neighbourhood kids piled on and that was us for hours. You only went home to eat and to defrost your gloves.
I watch the guys at Holywood sledging on the frost and hope that one day soon we’ll get a big load of snow as there’s nothing quite like a day sledging.
Tanith’s washing line on the blog made me think of my Grandpa Campbell. She had a bunnet hanging on her washing line in Scots. My Grandpa Campbell wore a tartan bunnet whenever he left the house. He was quite a man my Grandpa Campbell. I remember having a chat with him one day on the walk home from school – I was having trouble with a girl in class and he told me how to manage the situation. How to stand up for myself and be confident.
He was an early recycler – he would turn old car tyres inside out and paint them. He would plant them up and they would be dotted around the garden . Each year he would choose a colour scheme for the drainpipes of the house, the guttering and the tyre planters. Everything matched. He did enjoy painting!
My aunt let slip that she would really like a black car – black cars were cool and sporty. Unfortunately, she drove an orange Opel Kadett; there was nothing cool about an orange Opel Kadett, especially the estate version. My Aunt was out on a shopping trip one Saturday when my Grandpa Campbell decided that my aunt would have her wish for a black car. Armed with a tin of black gloss paint and a paint brush he headed out to the pavement. He spent the day sitting by the roadside hand painting the orange car turning the outside black.
I said my Grandpa enjoyed painting – I didn’t say he was good at it. Paint runs, drips and hairs from the paint brush all added to the glamour of the ‘new’ black car.
Needless to say my aunt was horrified when she returned from the shopping trip. Her black on the outside, orange on the inside car did not look cool at all!
It’s been a while…sorry about that! Hubs, classes and most importantly the guys still working at home!
We had a finger accident in the building last week and as it does it got all the children talking about every single accident they have ever had. We agreed that some of us are lucky to be here!
It put me in mind of my first day in the PE department at secondary school. The PE staff were calling names and trying to get to know us new first years.
As my name was called there was a short pause and then heads went together (pre covid!!) and the teachers had a wee discussion. Then one shouted ” Dale, any relation to Mark Dale?”
I considered fibbing for a moment as I knew where this conversation was heading but always tell the truth if you can…
“Yes, he’s my older brother.” I replied in the quiet voice of a small mouse.
A deep and collective sigh came from the PE teachers. ” We’ll have to check the school insurance policy to see if we’re covered to teach 2 Dales.” Exclaimed one of the teachers “Are you as accident prone as your brother?”
I shook my head and rapidly explained that no one was as accident prone as my brother.
And it was true, he was accident prone. In the three years at high school he had broken his arm, his collar bone, burst his nose open, broken at least three fingers and staved several more.
I could fully understand their concern – but proud to say that I never had an accident…
In school!!
