Journal Entries
Anonymous Christmas Cards
Posted Dec 25, 2009
I read in this weeks Daily Mail 'Weekend' magazine an anecdote by John Thomson (who is he 
): One thing I used to do at Christmas was send my parents cards from fictitious people, which is a great game to play. From Stan and Edie - and they'd go. 'I don't think we know who they are, who are they?' And I'd say, 'I don't know, did you meet them on holiday?'
Well, I think we've just fallen victim to this scam as we've received a card from Gail, Paul and Family'. Neither I nor Mrs BigAl know who they are!
...
. In writing this I've just realised who they are . My son got married this year and they're my Daughter-in-Law's parents. 
.
Discuss this Journal entry [11]
Latest reply: Dec 25, 2009
Literature mentions of h2g2
Posted Aug 7, 2009
I know there's a proper convo thread for this but I can't find it.
Anyway, I just noticed that parts of my Entry on 'Comets as Harbiongers of Momentous Events' was almost exactly paraphrased in an 'Answers to Correspondents' in the Daily Mail on 5th August, 2009 
. H2G2 wasn't mentioned though!
Discuss this Journal entry [7]
Latest reply: Aug 7, 2009
Time to tgive up chemistry teaching?
Posted Jul 2, 2009
Got made redundant from my F.E. lectureship in September, primarily due to:
*College abandoning (temporarily, it turned out) the Foundaion Degree course I was teaching on.
* Only one student signing up to do the 'Chemistry' component of Access to H.E. and so the College deciding not to run the course for one person.
College therefore offered me a re-negotiated contract of 0.4f.t.e. which I could n't afford, as the round trip is 100 miles, and so I was renting a flat in the area
I was fortnunate enough to get a 5 month maternity cover contract at one of the top schools in the country w.r.t. League Tables. However,m while was there (January-May) the 5th Form and 6th Form were doing practically nothing but practice past papers. This isn't teaching! When I tried to organise a practical session for the 6th Form I was asked whether 'This is necessary to pass the exam? If not, perhaps we could just do the theory'.
Since then I've been doing Supply Teaching through various agencies. This is a bit thin (very thin!) on the ground due to GCSE and GCE students being on study leave or in exams, and therefore schools being able to re-deploy their existing staff.
For example, last week I only had 3 days of 'supply' and this week, 1.5.
Hence I've been filling in the gaps with Private Hire driving. The advantage of this is that, if a Supply Agency haven't 'phoned me by 0830, I can ring the Privte Hire co. and ask if there's a car available for me to drive. One als9 meets some very interesting people.
Yesterday I conveyed a woman who turned out to be a Consultant Architect, currently contracted to design new schools. One new school she's designing, the H/Science says he doesn't want a chemistry lab as the pupils don't do experiments. He just wants to be able tio do short, quick demonstrations 
.... and I naively thought that chemistry is quintessentially a PRACTICAL science .
Discuss this Journal entry [9]
Latest reply: Jul 2, 2009
'bye folks
Posted May 27, 2009
I've decided to 'Elvis'.
Those who know me the best will know that this is not a sudden decision but it something I've been considering for some months.
Apart from a number of things that irritate me, I also feel that I spend too long on the site at the expense of other things that I could/should be doing
.
A
Discuss this Journal entry [22]
Latest reply: May 27, 2009
BigAl Patron Saint of Left Handers Keeper of the Glowing Pickle and Monobrows
Researcher U723247
Write an Entry
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."