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The cabin crew of Cebu Pacific dance the safety demo!

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Silly and stupid warning labels companies put on products…

Little Ones Baby Lotion
Keep away from children

It’s official. I have, in fact , lost my mind. My faculties have become wayward, and my sense of propriety is gone forever. I have agreed to do a run.

Yes, you read it correctly, an actual run.

Now, let’s get this straight from the start. I am not built for running. Some people are born to be runners – they are whippet-thin with strong legs and lots of motivation and determination. I am none of those things.

All this came about when my beautiful (but obviously misguided!) niece was chatting with me on Facebook. She said that she wanted to take part in the Race for Life, but, as she’s under 16, she needs an adult to do it with her. (Fortunately she did not prefix the word ‘adult’ with the word ‘responsible’ so I was still eligible.) She said that she’d asked everyone, but no-one would do it with her. (aka, you’re my very last port of call, I am really scraping the barrel here) So, in a moment of complete and utter madness, I agreed to take part in a 5k race with her.

What was I thinking?!?!?

Actually, I’ll tell you the thoughts that went through my mind. Firstly, it’s my niece. I would do almost anything for this girl, as I completely adore both her and her brother. To be honest, I don’t think any teenagers in the world are as amazing as those two. Secondly, I’ve been trying to get fit (as you might have seen on some of my blogs since the new year) and this would be a really good idea. And thirdly, 5k isn’t that far really is it.

A day (and one sleepless night) later, my thoughts turned to these. Firstly, I still adore my niece, but she is one of the afore-mentioned whippet-thin, strong legged, motivated and determined people. Secondly, trying to get fit and being fit are in no way the same thing, and actually I still get a bit puffed out walking from the car park to my office. And thirdly, 5k is actually just over three miles, and that is a blooming long way!!!

So, having checked with my niece that she actually wants to run this race, and not walk (yes, walking was positively scoffed at and, naturally, she wishes to sprint the entire way) and that she definitely wants me to run with her (yes, she will “sacrifice her time” and do it with me – that is actually a direct quote there) I am now committed. Signed up, handed over the money, and have a fundraising page being created.

My only saving grace is that my amazing friend Fi also doing Race for Life, at a different venue this year. She is my motivating and commiserating buddy, and I have a feeling that she might just get me through this. So, I WILL go out training this week, and I WILL try and actually run (a bit!).

Wish me fitness (and a good oxygen supply!)

In the news this week – there has been a huge fire in the Indian city of Calcutta. It happened in Burrabazar – the city’s trading hub, and it took four days to bring the fire under control. Hundreds of fire fighters were involved in extinguishing the fire, and large amounts of property were destroyed by it.

Occording to the West Bengal state fire services minister, Pratim Chattopadhyay, the fire had been made worse by the huge quantity of fuel and other combustible material stored in the Nandaram and Kanshiram markets which were completely gutted by the four-day blaze. They have not seen a fire like this in recent memory, and one trader even died of heart failaure after learning that all his stock had been destroyed by the fire.

Thousands of people gathered in a busy section of the city to watch the fire fighters use ladders to rescue people that were trapped inside the building, which was 100 years old and housed both offices and residential dwellings. The police are investigating the fire, which is believed to have started in a lift.

The death toll was initially thought to have been seven, but this has now risen to 42, as more bodies have been recovered from the smoldering debris of the building. Dozens of people were hurt because of the fire, and it is feared that more people are missing. It is reported that many people were injured when they were forced to jump off higher floors in order to escape the smoke and flames. Initially, fire fighters were hindered by a lack of hydraulic ladders – these arrived some time after they reached the scene.

The Calcutta police chief, Mohan Chakrabarti, has accused the owner of the building of not observing fire regulations. However, local residents claim that the fire services took nearly an hour to arrive at the scene, which is among the deadliest in Calcutta in recent years. Fires in high-rise buildings in the city are fairly common – there have been at least 10 major incidents in the last two years, and electrical short circuits have been responsible for most of these. Investigations continue into the cause of this latest disaster.

I work in IT. In Dorset. This is quite appropriate!!

I have recently started teaching. Teaching ICT (that’s information and communication technology, in case you are not up on the latest academic acronyms) to 13 and 14 year olds.

Now, I have been teaching ICT to teaching staff since September. Teaching teachers is an interesting experience. They are all there because they are genuinely interested in what I have to tell them, and they have all requested this training, so they want to be there. This is a good start, and a huge advantage over teaching school pupils. However, teachers are notoriously bad pupils. They will sit there and giggle, chat, pass notes, poke each other, distract each other and generally do whatever they can to disrupt the lesson. I’m not sure that they do this on purpose, or whether it is simply an in-built response, a result of the conditioning they receive from spending their hours and days in classrooms surrounded by students who do exactly the same things.

I will give you an example of this that I was told about by one of the teaching staff. The school I work at is a boarding school, and during the summer months, they tend to hold a lot of barbecues, in order to keep the kids from being bored and causing havoc. Now, the powers that be in the school decided, in the spirit of health and safety madness, that all the staff who cook these barbecues needed to attend a barbecue safety lecture. I kid you not. So, the first session arrived, the teachers attended and havoc ensued. To start off with the instructor mentioned the word ‘baps’. Always funny, and even more so apparently if you are a teacher. When they then got onto the subject of using a temperature probe, I gather it all went downhill quite rapidly. Probes and baps – it is like a teacher’s idea of innuendo bingo heaven.

So, with this in mind, you will see what I am up against when I am delivering teaching sessions to the staff at work. They chat, they don’t listen, I then have to repeat myself and they claim that they didn’t hear, when I know darn well that they were really checking their emails, and not paying attention!

So, when faced with a classroom on 13 – 14 year olds, I actually don’t feel too bad. They do all the things that the teaching staff do. They chat, they giggle, they don’t pay attention, they check their emails when they should be working. However, the good thing with them is that I can tell them off, send them to the head of department for punishment, or put them into detention. Oh, the power. Generally, this doesn’t tend to work too well with the teaching staff though…