Mistletoe's Musings

Yes here we are watching the Spanish football on a slow night with the Interwebz. Athletic Bilbao have beaten Valladolid 2 - 0 unfortunately scoring both goals in the first half before the coverage started in the second half. My man Llorente scored a perfectly reasonable goal in the bit I saw but was deemed offside. I finally figured out why I like him so much: he looks and plays like a young, fit Niall Quinn, who is of course my hero of all time. Poor lad got taken off after that. The Spanish have so many good forwards he may not even make it to the World Cup. I wish we had him.

So here's something soothing that I saw on Thursday. I wanted to post the Sir Thomas Allan version because I know him, but the sound was poor and the production, from Salzburg Festival of all places, drab. So here's somebody else singing the nicest bit in Act 1:




I am having to post in html again as lj is playing silly buggers. Pah

Yes, it is his feast day today; St Hilary of Poitiers that is and traditionally the coldest day of the year. Well, he failed to deliver this year, but there has been black ice outside which resulted in a deal of difficulty for people tryong to get up the little incline at the end of my road. One chap faffed about for a while and then abandoned his car. It's still there. After that was a little flurry of snow which resulted in a very strange phenomenon I have not seen at that time of day before. It looked like frost was forming on cars and roofs. One house has a completely straight vertical line of white down the end 10 inches of tiles. Weird.

Here's the saint. I didn't bother to read why he was saintified but he was known as the Hammer of the Arians. Bop. Is he responsible for Hilary Term at University too? Probably.

Well that's Halloween over and Bonfire Night this Wednesday to come. After that Christmas and my birthday. I'll have to find that countdown thing again to jolly me up. This year my age matches the year I was born. Is that significant? 2008 has certainly been a year of landmarks all over the place. Let's hope it's a landmark year in American politics too.

Finally did some marking today and re-discovered that I am a good teacher. The Year 7 has two top sets. I was teaching both but that was too time consuming so I have one and a share. The one I teach has done significantly better in the half-term assessment than the one I have once a week. I think that proves something. And no, I didn't cheat!

This weekend's word is moak which means foggy. Normally that would be a good word for November. but not this year. So far it has been mostly wet, worse than mizzle but not as bad as dreech.

Quiz has arrived and I got one wrong. That'll teach me not to watch The West Wing. So I'll have another go this month. They have decided to carry on in the new year but make it a much more on-line orientated quiz with no pictures and as they call it 'brain burning.' Hmmm. Ouch?

Readying myself for a trip to the dentist's later so I had Marks & Spencer's beef stroganoff for lunch and have to say I was a tad disappointed. The onions were too crunchy, the meat was a bit tough and there were no mushrooms.

Tesco's was better quality but too salty. Will continue my quest.