8:40 in the morning and two guys turn up to repair the nasty collapsing wall of our annex.
A little later Claire and I take a walk down to the village cemetary to check out possible family connections.
Way up in the sky two Euro-fighters are playing with their planes flipping them as if they were just paper darts.
So the scene is set for one of those unforgetable "Do you remember where you were when....." points in time.
We were researching the different graves to see if we could identify any ones with the Barnsdale name on them, as they were distant relatives that lived in our village in the 1800's or any of the previous owners of our house.
We were doing this to try to keep Claire's mind off the fact that she had to wait until next Tuesday to find out if she has passed her Degree. We were disturbed by Claires's mobile phone pinging in a text which is unusual in the village as we cannot normally get a signal. It alerted her to the fact that her exam results and course final pass / fail results had been published on the net. Well she urgently tried to get enough signal to get the website up on to her phone, it was really painfully sluggish and she had to stand in this cemetary with her hand in the air willing the signal on.
Finally the initial page uploaded then she had to do the same with the actual results page. There was another painful delay whilst she stood in this graveyard in desperate need to know if she had passed. Then it fully loaded....
and there it was, a pass, hooray! A 2:2 Degree with honors and Claire started to dance and hop right there which was perhaps, from an onlookers point of view a little odd, because it looked like she was dancing on someone's grave. It didn't help that we then hugged tight and now it gave the impression that after dancing on someone's grave she was unconsolably weeping over the same person. However there were no tears being shed just the normal expected rush of emotions as three and a half years worth of hard work culminate in this one moment of release.
After phoning her Mum we prepared to go back home and then very slowly almost totally on cue the two jet fighters dropped to just a few thousand feet and flew straight towards us, over our heads and away, a perfect 'fly by' for a perfect result. Claire was concerned that she was taking my 'thunder' from my birthday celebrations, but no, not at all, the truth is that it gave me the best birthday present of the day.
Claire will be the first to admit that she is dyslexic and was told by at least one teacher that she would never get to university if she couldn't spell Parliment. Well teacher, she still can't spell it but she still worked really hard DESPITE YOU and has not only been to University but has come out with a 2:2, so screw you!
The trouble is there are too many teachers that can only teach. Teaching in isolation does nothing, what a Student needs is inspiration and sadly there are far too few teachers who inspire which makes me wonder how much time is dedicated to this massively important skill at Teacher Training School.
You see I completely understand the challenge as I too am appaulling at spelling and I use the fantastic spell check system that comes as standard with most PCs but today I have ignored all the spell check prompts to show you how poor I am without it. You tell me how many of the miss spelt words meant that you didn't understand what I saying. I am dreadful at spelling but I can beat most of my family at scrabble, because I have the vocabulary but not neccessarilly the correct spelling. It is this handicap that Claire has struggled with too, getting marked down for spelling despite totally understanding the subject. She is a natural at empathy and very personable so she will make a fantastic Speech therapist, now all she has to do is try to get a job in this very tough climate. Good luck Claire, we love you.
Now back to me :)
We went to one of our favourite pub restaurants for both Claire's congratulatory meal and my Birthday meal. It is called The Pigs as it concentrates on Local Pork dishes and in conversation with Stephen I was reminded of my early days working with Butchers. Pigs supplied them with many of their pranks and if you are a vegitarian then I suggest you look away NOW.
You see in those days Butchers were the big guys in the shop, the Dons if you will and they generated an aura of fear to all those that entered their cutting rooms. They were the Lions waiting in their lair for the weak gazell cashier who inadvertantly wandered into their field thus becoming 'fair game'.
Mean trick #1
When cutting up the pigs they would cut off the ears keeping the bit of scalp in-between so the ears remained joined then if the butchers saw a cashier coming towards their room with a 'returned' product they would quickly all place the ears on their heads like hats. The cashier would walk into a room full of butchers all seemingly having grown piggy ears, naturally much grunting then followed and cashier left as quickly as possible.
Mean trick #2
A new butcher was also fair game and actually went through many initiations. I can remember that they always liked to get the apprentice to deal with the cists. Every now and again a pig would have, just like a human, a cist growing inside, sometimes green and sometimes yellow they vary in size from a pea to a small sprout. The guys, for they were always guys, explained to the new man that he needed training and so let him cut the cist out, except they told him that he needed to cut into it first. HE NEVER NEEDED TO CUT IN TO IT FIRST! As a matter of fact that was the last thing he should do as it would invariably burst shooting an eye-full of green or yellow gloop up towards the face. Disgusting.
Mean trick #3
Again if a poor cashier was coming up for a customer order they would purposely leave the item between two decapitated pigs heads which were positioned to look at her with their dead beady slit eyes as she approached.
Mean trick #4
(My favourite) This again would involve some prep-work and was probably the meanest of all. Firstly they would cut out a pigs eye, in its entirety and cleaned it up so it was clearly an eye ball. Then leaving it on the end of their block they would wait untill a cashier wandered away from the pack and entered their den. Then the butcher would discretely pick up the eye ball and start to fein a sneeze brewing, ah, ah, ah, then an almighty choooooooooo! In the very same nod of the head he would throw the eye ball down right in front of the cashier where it would stick (as it had a gloopy membrane) staring up at the girl, A really skilled protagonist could get the eye ball to stick to a wall! The Butcher would then follow this up with a wailing of pain screaming "my eye, my eye!" whilst firmly holding both hands over one of his eyes.
Reactions varied to this but most of the time there was a stunned shocked look on the victims face and just sometimes they got their 'reward' with the cashier running out of the room in hysterics.
Things are a lot more measured now and Supermarkets don't take in the carcasses and whilst it was really a form of bullying it was very funny. So to all those that know me hopefully you might understand why I am such a constant trickster and general pain as I was trained by the best!
Finally, as I said earlier, I have left all my spellings unchecked to demonstrate to you my and Claire's battle with Dyslexia even the bloody word itself is a challenge, I mean why choose such a hard word to spell for us poor blighters! So I have copied all the words that spell check has scolded me for and laid them out below, you may have seen more but these are very typical of the issues that we have. Yes, of course we try to learn them and over the years I have greatly improved but even having learned them just a week or so later the memory is confused and unsure again. So please those that judge a person because they cannot spell please take a look at the bigger picture, not how they spell but what it is they are actually saying then both you and the individual concerned can move on and add weave to the thick fabric that our separate threads create.
DYSLEXICS UNTIE!
(Sorry Dyslexics Unite!)
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