Read My Lips

So there we go. Number 8 - Read To Children was accomplished this morning when - along with a couple of other...well, oddballs, frankly...I walked into my own primary school, as a volunteer reader.

What this turned out to involve was not so much "Now listen and hark and attend to me, O My Best Beloved..." to a bunch of rapt-eyed ragamuffins, as around a campfire - not in fact, so much "reading to children" as "getting a procession of children, in a room, ro read to me, with occasional correction and explanation."

Bizarrely, given the pre-established facts that 1) I don't particularly like kids, and 2) they have an innate ability to make me freakin' nervous by their general unpredictability, I really enjoyed that. Hearing kids read - mainly 10 year olds today - at their difffering levels of ability, and offering an occasional steer, an occasional explanation (things like "detective" and in one particularly poignant, chair-shifting bit of mime, the word "perched") was staggeringly rewarding. In the words of comedian Mark Thomas, "I wanted to take them home...but...there's laws..."

So that'll become a regular bit of what Wednesdays are all about now, at least for a while.

Updates on a couple of other fronts - weighed in yesterday at 17st 11.75 - so, up two pounds from the week before, and a pound and a half from where I started! Humph...

Have just made enquiries by email about a local-ish dance class that I fancy taking, though as it happens I'm enquiring halfway through a term, so that might not happen till the new year. Unfortunately, classes are on a Wednesday night, which will class somewhat with any moves to rejoin the Dowlais Male Choir (who rehearse on Sunday and Wednesday nights). Good thing I have a year to get all this accomplished, really!

Yesterday was also a bit of a slap in the face in terms of the "support local coffee shops, rather than chains" objective too. Having sat in a local coffee shop most of Saturday and worked on the laptop, I went to do the same again, having plenty of work to get on with.
I was halfway through my first latte, when a member of staff came up to me.
"I've been asked to tell you you can't stay here," she said.
"What?" I asked, somewhat frothily.
"With the laptop. Can't stay here all day with the laptop. People need the table," she explained.
I looked around - the place was half empty. It wasn't like I was freeloading - I tend to spend around £20 a day on coffee, if not more, during these days of working.
"Then people can have the table," I said, packing up, downing a latte with all the dignity I could muster (ever tried downing a hot frothy latte in one? Not advisable if you want to stand on your dignity and stalk out, let me tell you. Learn from me).

So that's that option knackered. There are still a couple of local coffee shops to try - one has free wifi and couches and an apparent invitation to stay all day, but unfortunately, they have absolutely lousy coffee. The other has good coffee, but I have yet to test their patience with people who want to stay and work and drink a lot of coffee, being all impertinently...present, and so on. Might give them a try later this week or early next. The point, I think, being that in my imaginary hair-flicking piety and good causiness, it didn't ever occur to me that maybe local coffee shops wouldn't want to be supported by an allegedly recovering Starbucks addict. Humph...

Oh and the Floydathon continues. Album 3 done, so I'm a tenth of the way to the finish line on that one. Of course, just when you think you might be making progress, they slap a double live album in your way. Floyd #4 is called Ummagumma, and is basically all the longest and most tedious bits of the first three albums, played live, along with a couple of new tracks, each of which have at least three parts to them. Shoot me. Shoot me now...