Marking's End

Finished making exams today. Used up my last red pen. Now I can get on with really fun stuff.

Like gardening....

A Vision of Europe

Watched the Eurovision contest today. I couldn't tell the difference between the UK song and the one that won, but apparently most people around europe could. It occurs to me that the only way we can win now is if the UK becomes "un-united" and every region of the country enters their own song. Yorkshire could sing "On Ilkley Moor By Tat" and so on (I once heard that played on a train hooter by a particulary inventive driver as we came into Leeds station). The we all vote like mad for each other's entries...

Having said that, as a spectacle the event was huge success, the staging and the performances were wonderful. My favourite was the one with the angle grinders. Some director must have watched "Scrapheap Challenge", seen the show of sparks that you get when you cut through cast iron, and decided that they really should fit that into a song. Great stuff.

Making My Mark

Spent today either marking or attending meetings about exam marks. I measure my progress through the marking process in a unit called "red pens". Used up the first one today, at least one more to go.

Movie Mogul Meal

Got tea (chicken in white wine with mushrooms) out of the fridge to cook it. The instructions said:

"Remove cardboard sleeve and film."

Ever one to oblige I got out the tripod and camera......

Radiating Disapproval

Earlier this week I noticed that the radiator in the bathroom was not getting hot. This meant that when I got out of the shower the towel was not toasty warm. At my age this kind of thermal shock can be dangerous, so I thought I'd see what was wrong.

The radiator was mostly full of air. But I had answer, in the form of the special key which you can use to open the top and bleed the air out. (and I only took an hour to find it too - go me). The problem was that when I did the bleeding job (not swearing) not all the air would come out. Hmm. Strange. It was almost as if there was no water going in to the system. Now this is potentially dangerous. You can view the water in a heating system as the thing which cools down the boiler and stops it from bursting into flames/melting/exploding. All bad words.

So it was up into the loft to find out where the water was not coming from. The ball cock had got stuck. This means that no water was getting into the header tank, which consequently looked like all the reservoirs will look in 3 months if the weather man is to be believed. A quick waggle and a squirt of WD40 and everything was back to gurgling normality. I'm not sure if I should worry about where the water went in the first place......