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I had a lesson booked with a pupil this afternoon. I’d texted him in the week to make sure he was OK for it, and got no reply. I texted again this afternoon about 30 minutes before I was due to pick him up. I get a phone call a few minutes later…

Me: Hello?

Him: Oh. Hello. How are you doing?

Me: Fine thanks. You?

Him: Yeah, great. Um. I’ve moved house, did you know that?

Me: Erm. No. For me to know that, you have to tell me, and you didn’t.

Why aren’t guns legal over here? They’d come in handy sometimes.

Friday (yesterday) was the annual Children In Need Appeal Day run by the BBC.

One of my pupils today raised some money by having that part of his body normally hidden in his trousers waxed! But he hadn’t gone as far as his friend, who’d had a full body wax (including his nether regions). Apparently, my pupil paid £25 for his friend’s eyebrows to be waxed, too.

In case anyone hasn’t clicked, we’re talking hair removal here.

I told him the story of a girl I once knew. She had plucked her eyebrows completely out when she was younger (don’t ask me why: it was something I had never understood even when she told me). But they’d never grown back and she now had to paint them on (I think girls would probably call it something else, but ‘painting them on’ just about covers it).

He can’t wait to tell his friend.

Driving back from a lesson I noticed a hot-air balloon flying quite low over the city. It was swinging back and forth quite significantly like a pendulum.

Seeing how windy it is today I don’t envy those onboard when they come to land!

You know, I’ve never wanted to go up in one of those things. The idea of landing – even on a warm, still day – doesn’t exactly appeal to me. From what I understand, landing is pretty much hit and miss at the best of times. With weather like today’s I can fairly say that going up in one is well down my list of priorities.

In a previous post about the downside to this job I mentioned a pupil who had an unexplained strop on her lesson last week.

Well, her next lesson was on 9th (Sunday). On 3rd Nov I texted her and asked if she was all right (her lesson on 2nd Nov was where she’d had the strop). No reply . I texted again on 6th Nov and asked if we were still on for Sunday. No reply . I texted again on 8th Nov and asked if were still on for the following day. I get the reply: ‘ I think so ‘.

Bearing in mind her lesson is at 8pm on the Sunday, I get a text message at 4pm Sunday afternoon saying: ‘ I can’t make my driving lesson later. Sorry ‘.

I decided to have a look back over her record for the last few months. Here’s what it looks like:

• Sun, 9/11 – 8pm lesson ( cancelled at 4pm)
• Sun, 2/11 – 8pm lesson (has a strop near the end)
• Sun, 26/10 – 8pm lesson ( cancelled with under 10 hours notice due to hangover)
• Sun 19/10 – 8pm lesson OK
• Sun 12/10 – 8pm lesson OK
• Sun 5/10 – 8pm lesson ( cancelled with under 3 hours notice due to hangover, I think)
• Sun 28/9 – 8pm lesson OK
• Sun 21/9 – 8pm lesson OK
• Sun 14/9 – 8pm lesson ( cancelled same day – no reason)
• Sun 7/9 – 8pm lesson OK
• Fri 29/8 – 12pm lesson OK
• Sun 24/8 – 8pm lesson ( cancelled same day – no reason)
• Sun 17/8 – 8pm lesson OK
• Sun 20/7 – 8pm lesson ( cancelled with under 6 hours notice – no reason)
• Sun 13/7 – 8pm lesson OK
• Sun 6/7 – 8pm lesson OK
• Tue 24/6 – 8pm lesson OK
• Thu 19/6 – 8pm lesson OK
• Sun 15/6 – 8pm lesson ( cancelled same day – no reason)

If I go further back there are more cancellations. There was at least one other strop in there somewhere, too, where she got in the car already upset. There were a couple where she could hardly keep her eyes open (on one, she had the remnants of a hangover at 8pm). I asked her repeatedly to give me more notice, and I warned her several times about the dangers of being tired or drinking before driving.

I’ve been tolerant because her late lesson isn’t usually required by anyone else, although it has lost me work a couple of times. But in all, her behaviour has cost me a total of more than £160 in income alone, plus the lost work and fuel – not to mention the inconvenience.

She has nothing pre-booked in my diary now, and if she calls next week to ask where I am I’m afraid I’m going to politely tell her to find another instructor. Enough is enough.

This an old, old, OLD post and is way out of date.

I’m messing with the templates again, trying to find one I really like. Nothing too gaudy, but that last one was just too minimal for what I really want (after a while, anyway).

I still like ‘minimal’, so I’m going with this one for a while to see how it goes.

I noticed when I was searching through the available WordPress templates that they are rated with up to 5 stars. ‘Ah. This should help find a good one’, I thought. No such luck!

You can see what kind of person rates these things. Templates like this one, or any professional-looking ones with no pretty pictures or gaudy colours? Three stars tops. Any template mentioning Hallowe’en, Christmas, puppies and kittens, or which has ugly, distracting pictures – pumpkins, Santa, etc. – in the background (and which obscure the text in many cases)? Five stars. I can feel my screen almost exploding as thousands of sad people are hammering away on the ‘rate it’ button!

Obviously, this is an old, old post. Arsenal (2023) doesn’t do the boasting thing.

Well, I’m back into football again after our excellent win over Manchester Utd yesterday.

I can’t believe some of the rubbish being printed about Arsene Wenger. It isn’t his fault the team sometimes plays like a bunch of morons. We know what they’re capable of, so when they don’t match up to that it is their fault – not Wenger’s.

If only they can now stop boasting about how they’re going to tear a new orifice for teams they’re going to play, only to get humiliated. Far better to let the football do the talking: it’s a lot more eloquent than the players.

I wonder if it is too much to hope for, that tonight is the last night of bonfires and fireworks?

Every night since November 1st (that was last Saturday) there have been fireworks going off in large numbers. On November 5th itself, they were still going off at 3am in sufficient numbers to suggest it was organised. I mean, what kind of person is still letting fireworks off at that time in the morning? Other than hoodies, of course.

EDIT: I guess not. Even in Sunday’s torrential rain there were some idiots having bonfire shows.

Monday this week, another test. The pupil is dyslexic and has been unsuccessful with her driving previously – people just didn’t understand that she learns differently as a result of her dyslexia (as an aside, all dyslexics are different and you have to find the right buttons to press).

She passed with 9 driver faults (that’s seven in a row now) and was over the moon. She never thought she’d pass her test. So well done PL, and enjoy your driving (I got a text from her today warning me she was going to be out and about!)

On a lesson tonight with a pupil. She’s only taking 1 hour at a time and not every week (a lot of late nights and hangovers resulting in cancellations). She’s been a slow learner, mainly because she is so negative about everything.

Today we were covering roundabouts (she hates doing manoeuvres), and we had to do a reverse around a corner to turn around and go back the opposite way. I asked her to do it, and she said “I don’t know what I’m doing”. After a few questions it became clear she knew exactly what to do. She got round perfectly, and then said “that’s the worst one I’ve ever done.”

The thing was, I’d just got goosepimples down my neck because it was the best one she’d ever done. It would easily have passed on the test. I told her so.

So we’re back on the roundabouts and everything is going pretty well. While we were stopped she said “I get worried when I’m on them and don’t know what I’m doing”. So I pointed out this is part of learning, and that she’s handling them better than many pupils, who often can’t stay in lane to begin with (all the correct confidence building stuff as well).

Now, I haven’t got a clue what happened, but all of a sudden – about 15 minutes before the end of the lesson, and ages after what I’ve described above – she went quiet. By now we’re just driving normally, having finished with the roundabouts, and she’d been chatting away happily. She’d done absolutely nothing wrong. I asked her what was the matter and she said “I’m concentrating”. This didn’t make sense – difficult to put into words, but knowing her and her tendency to just ‘fall asleep’, as the saying goes, it just didn’t. As we drove further I knew something was seriously the matter. I ended up having to change gears and brake at lights/junctions for her. The lesson was effectively over and I just had to make sure we didn’t hit anything: at one point near to her house I thought she was deliberately trying to!

When we got close to home she said she wanted to stop short to go to a friend’s house. She couldn’t get out of the car quick enough because she was nearly in tears.

She’s done this once before (something had happened in her private life but she wouldn’t say what), but it just ruins your day. You start wondering if it is something you’ve said or done! She assured me it wasn’t (last time, and this one) but she won’t tell me what it was that just triggered it without anything obvious taking place.

Another test today, and another pass – that’s six on the trot – with just 4 driver faults. Well done to CP, and I hope you get that car by Christmas as you said.