We will remember them...

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the guns stopped firing.


Sounds such an innocent statement doesn't it? But at that point in time the carnage of the First World War finally stopped. In total between 20 and 40 million people died (according to Wikipedia), this is soldiers, and civilians from both sides. A whole generation was wiped out. This was the first of the "modern wars" and was all the more brutal for it, it led to the invention of all sorts of wonderful things, but cost millions of lives. at the time it was thought that it was the wars to end all wars, and never again would families live in fear of letter and telegrams.
In hindsight we know this isn't true, many more people have died in wars, that's why at 11.00 today we need to remember, not just the soldiers who fought in a war 90 years ago, but those who have fought in every conflict ever since.

(In case you're wondering why the poppy? After the carnage of the First World War over the fields of Flanders ended the first thing to start re-growing were poppies. )

p/hop

The sharp eyed among will notice that over in the side bar is a new widget (ps, does anyone know how to put a space back in between my posts and my sidebar, sometimes I know just enough html to be dangerous to myself!)
The fabulous Natalie over at The Yarn Yard has started this. she's persuaded a load of designers to offer up free patterns, in exchange you donate pennies/hour of pleasure, however much you want/can afford in recognition of the hours of pleasure knitting the pattern gave you. All the money raised goes to Médecins Sans Frontières UK, some of you will know that The Yarn Harlot has done so much fundraising for Médecins Sans Frontières under the name of Knitters Without Borders, it would be lovely if we could even do a tenth of much as she has for what is one of the few worthwhile charities I seem to come across.

Speaking of knitting, I shall love you and leave you, I need to get knitting if my Christmas presents are to be done in time.

Grey

The weather is very grey at the moment, if you look over at the side bar you will see I'm knitting something in colours to counteract this, definitely yarn to look at when you have a hangover! Also to counteract this are some photos from a couple of weeks ago when I was climbing in Wales, I've almost forgotten that the sky could be blue(ish!)



On another note, I was awoken at 11.30 last night by a slightly frantic housemate who had noticed water pouring through our living room ceiling. Turns out one of our taps had sprung a leak! After some attempts at a DIY fix we started playing hunt the stopcock to turn off the water. By this point water was starting short the light so we had to switch the fuse for the lights off. All the while we're trying to ring the landlord to find out what to do, with no response. She eventually rang us at 7.30 the next morning, and true to her word did indeed come round with someone and sort out the leak. Unfortunately the ceiling looks a little worse for wear... though it could have been worse, some night's the first we'd have known about it would have been the crash as the ceiling fell through!

It's nearly all over

Thank heavens, hopefully by this time tomorrow the American people will have exercised their democratic right and voted. I won't be sad to see the end of this, this election feels like it has gone on for ever. What I do find interesting though is how this election has captured the imagination of the kids at school. I put BBC news (it's stremed over the internet) on at school in registration today and they knew who all the candidates are even had opinion on who they wanted to win. I bet the same could not be said of politicians in our own country!

Anyway I must dash, I'm taking my rainbows for a night walk in the drizzle... we have sparklers though so all will be well!

why do we teach? Might be something to do with this!

I just got back from a week in mid wales with my parents and some friends. It was just what the doctor ordered, I feel ready to face the next 7 weeks. We got up to an awful lot, I'm going to put a few photos here, if you want to see more then feel fre to click on them to go to my flickr page. If you're beady eyed you'll also notice some progress with the Christmas knitting, not telling who for though!


The cottage had a hot tub... after some days it was very much needed, I've not done this much exercise in ages!

The scenery was beautiful, and the weather even obliged on occasion.


Though you can see from this picture how much it had rained... yes that is a bike nearly underwater.

Oh and it snowed... lots.. enough that we were wading thigh deep later in the day, that got boring pretty quickly so we cut that walk short. It's not meant to snow this much in October!


I also found when I uploaded these photos a couple more climbing shots from the last club trip away, I'll put those up soon!

One down, 5 to go

I have just completed my first half term as a teacher, 8 whole weeks of proper teaching, proper timetable, nobody looking over my shoulder teaching! We're just about to get the new batch of PGCE students in to school, I saw a copy of their timetable yesterday and gasped. I'd forgotten how little I used to teach. I remember all to well how tired it used to make me though!

I'm just off to the end of half term social with all the other science staff. I feel so lucky to be in such a wonderful department, I was chatting with my mentor today and she complemented me on well I was doing, how well I fitted in, and how organised I had been. it feels good to be told I'm doing a good job!

Anyway, the pub is calling!

Another year, another weekend in Wales...

A few selected photos from this weekend. Saturday was spent climbing, for which I have no photos.. hopefully my younger brother will put the ones he took up on Facebook soon. All the ones above are from sunday when the weather was mostly rainy and windy so we went to Dinorwic slate quarries just above Llanberis. The abandoned industrial setting is both bleak but in it's own way beautiful. Seeing the quarries when they were being fully worked before the age of true mechanization must have been amazing.

The tyre shot is what happens when a minibus tyre tries to argue with a rock and looses, luckily they're double wheeled so we made it to a car park before we even realised anything was wrong!

I'm keeping it short and sweet for this post, I'll be away on holiday for all of next week, if I don't squeeze in another post between now and then it will be because life has caught up with me again...

I'm off to unravel a sock heel that took me 2 hours to knit, because I was in denial about how large the heel needs to be on a mans sock.. this thing is child sized, why it took me so long to come to my sense I have no idea!