‘Tis the season to be jolly,
Lots of reason for acts of folly,
Turkey and ham, Brandy and wine,
Presents so wham, Gifts so fine,
T-shirts and socks, Handcreams and clocks.

Family and friends gather round,
United in blood by ties that bound,
Celebrate whats Yours…Ours…Mine,
Those past times, those past Father Times,
We remember where our loyalties lie.

To you and yours. Cheers everyone!!

The most damning thing I can say about my old school is that the teachers simply didn’t care about the pupils they were teaching. Obstensibly, it should have been a good school; it was in a middle-class area and the student body was probably 66% middle-class and 33% working class. My friends hate me using the word ‘class’ but sometimes it’s a good shorthand. In this situation, one would expect the expectation/entitlement of one class to interact with the hunger of the other class. It should have been ripe for everyone to feed off each other and encourage the students towards higher education and/or entrenpeneurship.

Here’s some examples. Only the first one is likely to have changed.

• The students were graded into A1, A2, B1, B2 classes. Imagine being in the B2 class! I was in the A1 class and therefore was taught latin. There was a computer room but only the B1 and B2 classes were allowed to use them…
• I was a cheeky sod (still am)and I always questioned everything (still do). Being ‘disruptive‘, my parents were called in by the Geography teacher. My mother takes no prisoners and, soon enough, herself and the teacher got into it. Her final position was that I only had to do Geography for 40 mins a day whereas he had to do it for 8 hours a day. Whose commitment was likely to be wanting? He had no answer to that!
• We were trained to be office drones. The CAO forms (University application forms) were never handed out, never discussed, even though I think our civics teacher wrote a mass-market book on the subject. As well as the computer rooms, there was also an art room but again only the B1/B2 classes got to use them.
• It’s sorta funny now but, on a Friday, both the teachers and the students used to take off their ties, go to the local pub, and drink beer!!

I could go on but I’d only get twisted and bitter!!

Thanks to my parent’s support, I did go on to higher education in the end and have travelled halfway around the world using my qualifications. In a strange quirk of fate, I’ve ended up back in my old neighbourhood. But there’s no way I’d send my children (t.b.a.) to my old school.

If I did have children, I’d definitely send them to a Northside school. But I’d want it to have a good mix of Irish and foreign* children with an emphasis on mixing the academic and the creative. *Not sure what the PC term is for ‘foreign’ but I think a cultural mix can only be good.

So ends the rant lesson.

For those who are non-religious/non-Catholics, it meant that he’d been shagging anything that moved and had fathered several children by several different women in a very short timespan.

Sometimes I’m ashamed to be Irish. Well, actually, sometimes I’m ashamed of the Irish…

I don’t know if they flipped a coin but the decision probably had something to do with the paperwork and the midwife’s teabreak. Having said that, the indecision…the midnight hour…the workaday Friday versus the leisurely Saturday probably explains a lot…about who isadubis.

China has been forced to mull the possibility of allowing double-barrelled surnames – a break with the ancient tradition that citizens adopt one of a hundred single character surnames…

…In fact, other less common surnames bring the official total of permitted surnames to 161, but this doesn’t do much to offset the fact that there are now 93 million Wangs in China – closely followed by 92 million Lis – something which is causing the authorities a bit of a problem.

Best comment was by Simon Holt who wrote: “Looking through the Beijing phone-book must give thousands of Wong numbers“. Well, it was a new one to me!

Only joking but you heard it here first. I just wanted to highlight justwhisperz photo’s on flickr. She, and she=teenager, only has 50+ photos in flickr but they’re exceptional. I’ve fav’d one and made 3 comments after one visit.

Here’s two extracts…

So now, about the photograph. If you look on his fingernails, you can see some of the legacy of that treatment. On each of his fingernails there is a strong white line which is gradually being forced upwards by new, healthy nail beneath.

Underneath that line should be a cancer free man, if the doctors are right.

It reminds me of the time when, as a child, our GP (family physician) made a housecall because I was ill. Doctors did housecalls in those days but he also lived three doors down from us so it wasn’t really a stretch for him! I must have been going through the boys hate girls phase because when he rolled up my sleeve for an injection, what profound statement did he find written in biro on my arm? Yes, you’ve guessed it – ‘I hate grils‘!

Turns out I did like girls afterall but I did turn vegetarian a few years later. Nowadays, I hate grilled rashers and sausages. Either there’s a hint of dyslexia in me or I was able to predict the future even when I was a little boy!!

Take care, don’t fall in love

via thinking out loud‘s ouch post.

So I return the call.

You know you’re in trouble when your mother tries to set you up with her hairdresser. “Lovely woman, very friendly, separated, 10 year child … and she’s my (i.e., her) neighbour“.

Guess what I’m doing Sunday.