Bristol again last night. This is becoming a habit… Last minute thing of course, following an email that arrived from Ben at Rough Trade half way through lesson 5. He asked if I’d be interested in seeing Jeffrey Lewis play in a church crypt in Bristol. Of course I was, and thankfully C is a fan too, at least of the ‘rubber skeleton song’ which had been on a mix tape I made for when she first started her job of driving around Somerset aiding schools, like some Strategy Super Hero.

Unfortunately the drive up kind of sucked, and after an appalling performance by a band called Lost Collar (whom we later dubbed the Underachieving Year 9 Boys) that was full of embarrassing twee shit, I was starting to wish I’d never come, or at least that if I had I’d just got the train and gone myself, and hmmm, for the first time in my life pretty much I kinda thought maybe I should learn to drive then at least I coulda driven up myself and not made C suffer through all this…

But then Jeffrey Lewis and his band came on, and they truly ruled. They opened with a performance of ‘Arrow’ that was like the Velvets, Galaxie 500 and Jonathan Richman all rolled into one. I mean, imagine that! And then Jeffrey was solo for a while and did some amazing songs with just his guitar and his wicked sense of humour, interspersed with an in progress lecture on the history of Communism accompanied by his terrific drawings. It was like seeing a walking Powerpoint presentation only way more enjoyable and entertaining than that sounds. Really. Plus he finished up with the ‘rubber skeleton song’ (real title ‘back when I was 4’, of course), followed by another lecture accompanied by drawings of ‘I saw a hippie girl on 8th Avenue’. It was magic.

The drive home was much better and we stopped for gas and swedgers. C bought these new Kitkats that are yoghurt and lemon flavour and they were, uh, interesting. I was really tired and I kept thinking about school things, like blogs and stuff.

I did an experiment yesterday in a GCSE photo class, and got one student set up with a Blogger account, and did a test post and a test comment from me, and it all seemed to work very smoothly, so I’m kind of looking forward to getting that set up soon and to start using it. The only slight problem is image embedding in Blogger blogs, which isn’t really very straightforward. Well, I mean it is when you know a bit about what everything is doing, but I imagine in a class situation some kids will just never get it… Hmmm.

Anyway, enough of that. It’s ten past 11 in the Boston and it’s pretty mobbed. I don’t think I was ever here at this time on a Saturday before. I’m usually in and out by half ten or so, but this morning I didn’t get up til late (well, 9 is late for me) so it’s kind of interesting to be in amongst the typical Saturday shopping crowd. On the way home I need to pick up a DVD for Monday’s year 8 lessons. Something like Monsters Inc or Godzilla, I dunno… just in an attempt to make an interesting way into the whole project and to avoid the disaster of last week. And last week WAS an unmitigated disaster, it has to be said. But my strategies are in place now, at least in my head, so we shall see what we shall see.

Comments

[Marino]

Having recently passed my driving test, I recommend it - I never thought i'd say it, but there, I did.

The spaces from town to town, in the words of the song, really do look good from the front seat of my 1984 Nissan Sunny.

One day I might be really bold and drive down to Exeter!