This an old, old, OLD post and is way out of date.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

I also heard on the radio that they’re holding a world-record attempt in the City’s Market Square this afternoon to get as many people dressed up as zombies together in one place as possible.

They should have thought this one through better. If they’d have held it in Stapleford (classy: lots of pairs of trainers thrown over the phone lines) they’d have been guaranteed to smash the record just by announcing it – and it would have been real zombies, not just fancy dress.

I was driving through Stapleford town centre last week with a pupil when we had to stop. Someone had cleverly removed a set of barriers around building work on the pavement and reassembled them in the middle of the road. Oh, how funny it was. How we all laughed… especially the Police car which came roaring through on a call, where the Policeman had to get out and throw them out of the way before they could continue.

This is in addition to the time a few months ago when the same birth defects were running into the middle of the road to force cars to stop. Or the time a few weeks later when other defects – about 18 years old, so probably the parents of the younger defects responsible for the barriers – were having a fight outside the pub to impress the girls (and they did seem to be impressed, it must be said).

On the way back from a lesson today I was listening to the radio. Today’s Big News is that drinking alcohol during pregnancy may lead to children who are less naughty and less likely to suffer from ADHD, etc.

Of course, this story flies in the face of the one a few months ago, which concluded that even walking within 100 metres of a pub any time during pregnancy could result in miscarriage and global warming.

Once again, it was left to a ‘man in the street’ to enlighten us on this:

“Well, I drank while I was carrying both of mine and it didn’t have any effect.”

I think it’s safe to say that this woman’s mother must have alternated between alcoholism and teetotalism, handled Uranium, drilled into asbestos-laden walls, used hard drugs, mud-wrestled, smoked, eaten bacon, drank coffee/Red Bull/Diet Cola, used artifical sweeteners, etc. whilst carrying her.

But obviously, it had no effect.

After that run of passes a couple of weeks ago I haven’t had anyone go to test until today. So congratulations to NP for passing with 3 faults. He was well chuffed on the way back – happy ex-pupils are what makes this job really worthwhile.