A ramble about my day... Strap yourselves in.
Today I am suitably annoyed. I missed BOTH my instrumental lessons. Both. For the first two periods today (there are six BTW) we had a surprise incursion with a few people coming over to talk about bullying.
Some of the stuff the guy said was quite eye-opening (also some stuff we had all heard before), he had obviously been quite traumatised as a child. For the first four years of high school he had been bullied very often by multiple people for no reason whatsoever. It was a Catholic boys school.
I don't know why, but I often hear reports of people being bullied when going to those schools. My uncle for instance, is now schitzophrenic, and once referred to his classmates as 'Catholic barstards'. I understand they teased him and his brother Peter quite a bit because they could not speak English. In Peter it led to Heroin addiction, but he has miraculously managed to turn his life around. Robert my other uncle was quite affected, indirectly from the bullying.
So ...the guy that came over talked about bullying. Thus I missed my first music lesson. The lecture poured over into recess, giving me no time to get back to my piano teacher and tell her why I couldn't go. The next few lessons passed. Lunchtime started and I suddenly remembered about a meeting I had to go to, to do with an extra curricular thing I'm doing.
It's called the Night of the Notables and to be honest, it's pretty cheesy. You dress up as your chosen Notable and give food appropriate for the time period, and present multimedia, text etc. It was a close run thing to do Tolkien, but I thought he was already the subject of too many of my projects and I would REALLY look like a nerd. ;)
So I have decided (a while ago now) to act as the one and only Sir Winston Churchill. I fail to think of a more inspiring Brit. His speeches really lift my senses and make me feel determined, even now. Unlike some great leaders, and Hitler, who shout and rage and if written on paper say nothing really important or sensical, Churchill's speeches sound better on paper than they do when he said them, in my opinion.
"Never in the field of human conflict, was so much owed, by so many, to so few."
"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!"
"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
"You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."
"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.' "
A cool WC site: here
Where was I? Oh, so I couldn't get to my piano teacher at lunchtime... so I now had two more periods left in the day and completely forgot about another music lesson (clarinet) I was meant to go to. Gah! I had to make up some lousy excuse... And I found that my piano teacher went home early so I couldn't even give her a proper apology!!
Ah well, better now.
Some of the stuff the guy said was quite eye-opening (also some stuff we had all heard before), he had obviously been quite traumatised as a child. For the first four years of high school he had been bullied very often by multiple people for no reason whatsoever. It was a Catholic boys school.
I don't know why, but I often hear reports of people being bullied when going to those schools. My uncle for instance, is now schitzophrenic, and once referred to his classmates as 'Catholic barstards'. I understand they teased him and his brother Peter quite a bit because they could not speak English. In Peter it led to Heroin addiction, but he has miraculously managed to turn his life around. Robert my other uncle was quite affected, indirectly from the bullying.
So ...the guy that came over talked about bullying. Thus I missed my first music lesson. The lecture poured over into recess, giving me no time to get back to my piano teacher and tell her why I couldn't go. The next few lessons passed. Lunchtime started and I suddenly remembered about a meeting I had to go to, to do with an extra curricular thing I'm doing.
It's called the Night of the Notables and to be honest, it's pretty cheesy. You dress up as your chosen Notable and give food appropriate for the time period, and present multimedia, text etc. It was a close run thing to do Tolkien, but I thought he was already the subject of too many of my projects and I would REALLY look like a nerd. ;)
So I have decided (a while ago now) to act as the one and only Sir Winston Churchill. I fail to think of a more inspiring Brit. His speeches really lift my senses and make me feel determined, even now. Unlike some great leaders, and Hitler, who shout and rage and if written on paper say nothing really important or sensical, Churchill's speeches sound better on paper than they do when he said them, in my opinion.
"Never in the field of human conflict, was so much owed, by so many, to so few."
"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!"
"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
"You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival."
"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.' "
A cool WC site: here
Where was I? Oh, so I couldn't get to my piano teacher at lunchtime... so I now had two more periods left in the day and completely forgot about another music lesson (clarinet) I was meant to go to. Gah! I had to make up some lousy excuse... And I found that my piano teacher went home early so I couldn't even give her a proper apology!!
Ah well, better now.