In The Bath

Some new crisis is stirring at Blandings Castle, and of course it's going to become more complicated than it should ever reasonably be... PG Wodehouse is a great bathtime companion on those long soaks enforced by whatever reasons plague you. In many ways, Wodehouse is the ideal author for any kind of relaxation, and even revives the most jaded of readers from that which ails them.

Oh, if only whole lives could be spent in the bath, soaking away from the rigours of worrying about PGCE interviews, thesis proofreading, and the nagging worries about how exactly one would try to mathematically model a growing orange. Oh, to have a grandly sized tub and a copy of 'Uncle Fred In Springtime' at hand, much like a decadent emperor from times long gone by. Perhaps not an emperor, for they were rarely nice men, but a minor functionary instead. Someone quite trivial in the scheme of things. How he would have possession of 'Uncle Fred In The Springtime' is an entirely different matter, best left for another day. Lawks, at least that's not a writeable story, or is it?! The impact of PG Wodehouse on Imperial Rome could be catastrophic!

There's reason to relax in the suds: A trip is brewing, a visit to somewhere new. The shadowy mass of the city of Exeter awaits with challenges galore, and for some reason it isn't quite scary yet. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, even if also half-witted and ever so slightly sleep-deprived. The next few days will have to be focussed on background reading of as yet unknown nature, but which will probably relate to the general pedagogy of teaching young children. The great advantage of working in a primary school is that you get to teach everything, everything! It's a great thing when you can focus on words and numbers, adding in touches of history and geography and science in general. As people bandy about the term 'mathematics specialist', it seems to become more and more of a trap, a new set of limits where limits were about to be discarded. It's strange, certainly strange.

No, let's not worry about it now, but instead sleep and prepare. Let 'Sherlock Holmes Faces Death' play, and 'Uncle Fred' wait to follow. The things we do to relax are pleasant indeed, and they don't all take place in the tub! Pour on more suds!

O.