Join 10,450 readers (and counting!) Dear Reader, Happy (belated) ferragosto! I hope you enjoyed your day and that your surroundings were not overly crowded. I'm not misanthropic by any stretch of the imagination, but to this day, almost 100% of my ferragosti on this earth have included far too many people, far too many decibels in far too little space. I still treasure the memory of the one year I spent it in a semi-uninhabited village in the mountains. Me in my slightly embellished...
9 days ago • 8 min read
Join 10,450 readers (and counting!) Dear Reader, Can I start this newsletter with some absolutely mindblowing news? It's raining here! Not cats and dogs, as it were, but enough to make you notice. Did I manage to get drenched in the short walk to my car this morning? Yes, yes I did. Did I mind? Not too much, no, considering how hot it's been these past few months. Enjoy this song from 1930: "I Don't Mind Walking in the Rain (When I'm Walking in the Rain with You)". Maybe it will make you feel...
16 days ago • 8 min read
Join 10,450 readers (and counting!) Dear Reader, Was your inbox feeling a little lonely these past two months? Might it have missed me? If so, I hope I can assuage its concerns: I'm back! Now, you might be wondering something along the lines of: To which I can give a good explanation: I was training some future teachers - the best job in the world. The background to this is that for a long time in the last few years, I was unable to travel and work in person due to my dodgy health; so, now...
23 days ago • 6 min read
Join 10,450 readers (and counting!) Dear Reader, describing the last couple of weeks as "tumultuous" would probably be an understatement: between ongoing conflicts, please-don't-let-it-be-another-pandemic outbreaks and peacocks terrorising Italian towns, it is no wonder we sometimes feel like we. cannot. catch. a. break. Or if you prefer the passive form If it hadn't been for David Attenborough's 100th birthday, I'd probably like to forget the last couple of weeks. On this side of the pond,...
3 months ago • 6 min read
Join 10,450 readers (and counting!) Dear Reader, Do you ever get the sense that there is a mountain towering over you (it's a metaphorical mountain, of work) and that your ladder is never really going to be long enough for you to reach the top? I sometimes feel like the dad in the story Papa, please get the moon for me: he's being asked to go get the moon, but crucially, unlike me, he has a ladder long enough. Copyright Eric Carle So, while I wait for my ladder to magically grow a few metres...
4 months ago • 9 min read
Join 10,450 readers (and counting!) Dear Reader, In true Northern English form, let me greet you with a¹: How's it going? I don't know if you've missed me, but I've certainly missed you these past couple of weeks. I promise I haven't pulled a disappearing act; I just took a little time off for Easter and to cope with my impending house move. Speaking of which: does anybody look forward to house moves? I think I did at one point months ago, but now that it's getting close, it's feeling more...
5 months ago • 7 min read
Join 10,450 readers (and counting!) Dear Reader, Have you ever been hit like a ton of bricks by the realisation that all of a sudden, with no fair warning, lo and behold: you're old? Not to be overly dramatic (yeah, right...), but this happened to me this week. Let me back up a bit. This week I was finally, after months of relentless rain, enjoying a dry stroll through my university. No hair drying necessary at the end, daffodils blooming everywhere, sun shining, whimsical statues merging...
5 months ago • 6 min read
Join 10,450 readers (and counting!) Dear Reader, Was this past week the best week that the Earth has ever experienced? Not by a long stretch. But was it an average week? Also not. It was likely one of the most worrying, disconcerting and [enter properly negative adjective] ones ever. Which of course doesn't mean we give up; on the contrary, I believe that events like the ones we're living through make our role as teachers all the more important. We don't have all the answers and we can't...
6 months ago • 6 min read
Join 10,450 readers (and counting!) Dear Reader, I could intro my way into this email by telling you it's currently snowing here in England after it has rained literally (and I don't use the word literally lightly) every single day since the beginning of the year, in what Secret London has aptly called rainfall of Biblical proportion. I mean... you can't blame a girl for her increased consumption of hot chocolate However, I won't do that, of course. Instead, let me tell you I've received all...
6 months ago • 8 min read
Join 10,450 readers (and counting!) Dear Reader, There's an interesting expression I've been mulling over this week: a balancing act. Metaphorically speaking, a balancing act is a (challenging) situation in which you have to dedicate yourself roughly equally to two ore more things. Also known as being pulled in different directions, and in more extreme cases, being spread too thin, a balancing act requires you to, well, balance how you distribute your attention and energy. Why was I thinking...
7 months ago • 8 min read