Exam week and Поехали!

Michael Gove promises challenging exam changes. BBC Link

Poor Abigail and year 10 and 11 have been revising and studying for their GCSE exams. I feel for her when you consider that she is only 14 years old!

I myself have also had my final GCSE Italian exam and I really admire all students young  and old who are currently swotting, cramming and generally stressing out!

And yet again the government are saying that the exams are too easy!

Yuri Gagarin

Поехали!

A very beautiful quote by one of my childhood heroes came to my attention today in my U3a Russian class.

Облетев Землю в корабле-спутнике, я увидел, как прекрасна наша планета. Люди, будем хранить и приумножать эту красоту, а не разрушать её!

• Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!        

Thought provoking!      This then reminded me of the moon landing conspiracy theories and political rumours.'Allegedly' Gagarin was asked by the Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev  'Did you see God?Yuri Gagarin was reported to have said,' Yes I did'. he was then ordered no to tell anyone.

At a time when we are apparently all under surveillance,

[BBC News story regarding CIA surveillance programmes] 

Jason Bourne

 I have decided to watch the excellent 'Bourne Identity' and the trilogy of films, 'Bourne Supremacy and 'Bourne Ultimatum'.

Goodness knows, my childhood world of 'George Orwell's Big Brother' and Space travel is now reality.Or is it all a conspiracy?
And maybe Sir Richard Branson works for the CIA? 

Beam me up Scotty!

A fishing week with ducks everywhere!

Me at the middlesbrough 5k.

      MIDDLESBROUGH 5K RUN

Beaten by a duck!!

I was beaten by a Duck! But it is the taking part that is important, after all!! At least I achieved my PB!

It has been a week of Ducks and fishing.

If you compare the two photographs, I would suggest that the duck looks a lot healthier than I !

However, it is a long journey to full fitness at my age!!

But we are on the way.

Mallard duckling

The whole point of going fishing is to be outdoors and see all sorts of wildlife such as this gorgeous little Mallard Duckling!

The fishing season has started with a really good day ,my friend and colleague Mark and I had a great day catching lots of fish!

It helps when you are catching superb Carp, such as this specimen.

Happy as a lark! 

Prince Philip is in the news again this week, when asked how he was, the Queen simply answered, "I don't know yet he has just gone into hospital ". BBC Link
Another interesting Royal story this week is that our future King William has DNA links in India.

Prince Phillip the Duke of |Edinburgh

Possibly the most famous statesman of my lifetime is also in the news, Nelson Mandela is very ill at the moment and of course this is a major headline in the UK this week.
NEWS LINK

A cookery week.

A week off work!
It started great! A bit of fishing, tidying the garden, then the rain started!
It seemed like the rest of the country was dry and warm, but here! I should start to build an Ark!

The Ashes 

England beat New Zealand in good preparation for the Ashes and our football team managed a draw 1-1 against Ireland, this in preparation for the game Sunday against Brazil, a miracle is needed to beat Brazil in Rio de Janeiro.

Jamie Oliver Website.

If anything or anyone would inspire me back into catering it is Jamie Oliver. We went for our lunch in York on Wednesday and it is simply perfect! Wonderful innovative dishes with excellent service and impeccable surroundings!

No golf tomorrow, unless a new sport Aqua Golf is invented!

So as it is still raining today, I have spent the day in the kitchen, creating a mess and some reasonable curries and a Chilli.

FOOD BANK RELIANCE IN THE UK TRIPLES!
On the subject of food and cookery, our government has released figures, suggesting that people in the UK are relying on Food parcels, as during the War, I reckon that a simpler action would be to teach people how to cook!

A sad week and a good week.

It is a sad week in the UK.
A young soldier was killed , whilst off duty in England.
The murderer was a crazed Extremist.
I feel for the soldier's family and friends.

Lee Rigby British soldier murdered in London.
LINK TO BBC Story.

On a happier note, I ran my second Park Run of this year and 'Smashed!' last week's time. It looks like the ' no pain, no gain' training regime is showing some profit.

When I am training in the gym, I usually listen to my i Pod.
I decided to put my i Pod on 'Shuffle' which means that it chooses random tracks and plays them one after another.
After about 20 minutes, I began to realise what the inside of my head must look like!
The first track was in Russian, the second in Spanish, then some classical music, then a track by the Rolling Stones, then some Northern Soul, then more Russian followed by some Italian!
Is there any wonder that I often say that ' my head is in a shed!

We have the Whit Bank Holiday this week and Abigail is off school. This means lots of spending money and shopping!
It's also a good week for gardening! We have had a couple of lovely days and my leeks are coming on great!

The football season is finally over with a German team , Bayern Munich winning the Champion's league. 
At least one German team lost at Wembley!!
Crystal Palace won the biggest prize in British football by beating Watford in the Championship Play Off final and acquiring a place in the Premiership. 
Here's hoping my team Middlesbrough can do better next season!

My week

I am trying to get fit at the moment, going to the gym, cycling and on Saturday morning I competed in my 3rd. park run. This is a 5k race/run in a local park, Stewart's Park in Middlesbrough.
We have them all over the UK, all ages can compete and you can track your times and results through the use of a Bar code that you are issued when you register with Park Run.

It was absolutley 'chucking it down' ! I was completely soaked to the skin , when I finished and not surprisingly I had completed my worst time of 41.42.  But this has made me more determined  to do better in next weeks Park Run!

The cricket season is well under way now with England playing in a test match against New Zealand. Cricket is usually associated with summer!

Saturday night Christine and I went to Whitby on the train. We went to a 'Soul night' , this interestingly enough, is on the same night as the Eurovision Song Contest. A comment was made on the radio about how British music is and was much more influenced by American music than European.

THE BEST! SONG EVER WRITTEN 

PERFORMED BY

THE BEST GROUP IN THE WORLD!

MY GIRL

 THE TEMPTATIONS.

I can honestly say that my own musical influences are from  Tamla Motown and Soul music and not from the Eurovision song contest!

Molly pretending to be a 'Leek' in my allotment.

I spent most of Sunday in my garden and as you can see I was helped by my dog Molly.

 [Molly is a Jack Russell]

My week

A busy weekend! I spent most of the afternoon on Friday in the garden. I have a small allotment, where I am trying to grow some vegetables. I have a greenhouse and I have planted all sorts of  vegetables and flowers.
I have also planted some Russian seeds which I smuggled back from Kostroma!
I hope to grow giant pumpkins and courgettes.
I spent Saturday afternoon in a Safety boat on Scaling Dam  , where Abigail and I are members of the Sailing club. It was freezing! I am so glad that I was not sailing!

Roberto Martinez and Wigan Athletic celebrating their F.A. Cup win.

Saturday was also the F.A. Cup final and the underdogs Wigan Athletic beat the rich club! Manchester City, Excellent!

Sunday, Abigail decided that she wanted to go to the gym, so we went on the morning and I cooked lunch as Christine was at work.
Watched a film called, ' the Impossible' about the Tsunami last night. Very sad.
Monday and back to work.
I have a French class on a Monday evening and we are working hard with French grammar.

Roberto Martinez Manager of Wigan Athletic, looking quite miserable!

Tuesday.
Talk about ups and downs!
Wigan Athletic F.A. Cup winners have now been relegated!

My week

This is the first post of a weekly review of my life in England for my students, colleagues and friends in Russia, France, Spain and wherever else you may be!!.

So what's happened in the last week?
Last weekend was a long weekend, because Monday was a Bank Holiday.
Most of the UK would be spending time in the garden or stuck in traffic jams on their way to the seaside!
The weather was great, quite hot for May.
Saturday was a busy day, ironing followed by tidying the garden , then a couple of hours fishing!
Sunday was a family day, Nanna, Grandad, Aunty and nephews all together for lunch, followed by a walk by the sea.
Bank Holiday Monday had the usual Car boot Sale, hundreds of people including me! All searching for a bargain, I found a couple of pieces of excellent fishing equipment, so of course I had to go fishing on the evening to test them out!

Back to work on Tuesday for a short week. Taught German on Tuesday night, planning my visit to Germany at the end of June.

Wednesday saw the  opening of Parliament, our Queen makes a speech  and there is a lot of pageantry and tradition.

Our Prime Minister is in Russia talking to President Putin, no doubt discussing the terrible situation in Syria.
My friends tell me that it was Victory day in Russia and it is also a Bank Holiday.

Jim Platt

I was lucky last week to meet a hero of mine.

Former Middlesbrough and Northern Ireland goalkeeper, Jim Platt.

Kostroma Town Hall April 2013

I love flags, here I am in Kostroma Town Hall during the visit to Russia.

Modern English Writers

If we look at modern English writers, it is difficult to know where to start.
However, I will start with my Dad's era, he was born in 1926.
Therefore he would have read, Enid Blyton as a child, he would have known about the Famous Five and Noddy. He would have also read the Wizard of Oz written by L.Frank Baum.

Most of his friends would have read Biggles written by W.C. Johns. At school , texts and readers would include, Dick and Jane, by William S. Gray and Zena Sharp.

Looking at my own childhood , I read books such as, A Kestrel for a Knave, written by Barry Hines.
We studied 'Animal Farm' by George Orwell and 1984 by the same author.
A really big influence on my reading and that of my brothers had to be comics. We bought hundreds of them, Batman, Superman, Spideman, Captain America, to name but a few.
I also read Tolkien, the Hobbit was a favourite and it is now a major film, along with the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I like to read books by Charles Dickens and I would say that one of my favourite books and films of all time is, Greatest Expectations.
We also read and watched stories such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, this frightened the life out of me, but we would always watch the Frankenstein movies from behind the chair!
Books such as the Railway children by Edith Nesbit and My friend Flicker by Mary O'Hara were also very popular.

As a teenager, the diaries of Adrian Mole written by Sue Townsend was very popular and still is!
I have recently revisited some of my favourite books of all time and they include the timeless, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stephenson . This story of pirates has of course become very popular today because of Captain Jack Sparrow and the Porates of the Caribbean with Jonny Depp.
I have also recently  read Moby Dick by Melville, this is quite a difficult book, but well worth the effort!
Today's writers are as famous as Dickens, J.K.Rowling and her Harry Potter books are known throughout the world and rightly so! They are wonderful stories, timeless and I am sure will become classics in their own right!
So what about today's writers?
The Boy in the striped trousers written by John Boyne is a very important text that is being read by young people as a text for study.
Twighlight by Stephenie Meyer is a huge hit both as a film and a text. It seems to have folowed in the footsteps of the class Dracula stories.
The Hunger games by Suzanne Collins is also typical of the trending idea of turning the book into a film and then a computer game.
The Life of Pi by Yanni Martel is without doubt one of my favourite books of all time along with the thought provoking The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night by Mark Haddon.

Kostroma April 11th. 2013

Россию я люблю тебя!

Спасибо вам всем моим замечательным студентам!!!!!!!!

Питер
 xxxxx

50 books to read .

Time to reflect on my reading again.
I have been reading some Russian novels. I have joined a reading group in Guisborough, which is for Russian literature.
We have read books about Catherine the Great, a really good story called 'the Concert Ticket' the writer is called Olga Grushin,  which reflects the times in Soviet Russia when people queued for anything and everything.
Fascinating!
Recently I have read some poetry by Ann Akhmatova, this was translated into English, I would prefer to understand her work in its original language Russian, maybe one day!
I have also read the last book written by Solzhenitsin 'Apricot Jam'.

At the moment I am reading a book called 'Happiness is Possible' . This is written by, Oleg Zaionchkovsky and is about life in Moscow.
Report to come!

Kostroma April 2013

Here I am again in Russia!
I sometimes have to shake my head to make it clear that I am here again!            
We arrived in Kostroma late Wednesday night after a long journey starting at 3:30
 am from home.

I am staying again with my Russian family, Max, Larissa and Katia.
Thursday was a busy day, we met the Mayor in the Town Hall in Kostroma, then we went to Gymasium number 1 to meet teachers and students. I was a judge at the annual language competition. The standard was excellent and it was a memorable visit.
In the late afternoon we met our students at the Kostroma Institute of Education, I have a wonderful class of 16/17 year olds.

Friday , we left the Institute at 8 am to go to Volgoresenchk. The wonderful Natalia was there to greet us at her school and we visited classes and then we were judges for a Limerick competition.
The students then took us to the music college where we watched a wonderful concert with dance and music
We then returned to Kostroma and to the Institute do Education.
Saturday
This is the third and last day of my English course. 

Cleveland Way Stage 1

http://youtu.be/VPg_sACZh9M

Cleveland Way Stage 1

HELMSLEY TO SUTTON BANK

The first stage of the 110 mile Cleveland Way on a freezing day  -1 degree!

Steven, Victoria and Millie at Helmsley Market Place for the start

Me and Victoria

Ironopolis

IRONOPOLIS

Where alchemists 

Were born

Below Cleveland's hills

A giant blue dragonfly

Across the Tees

Reminds us every night

We built the world

Every metropolis

Came from

Ironopolis

A poem by Ian Horn

Greatham Creek

Slavonian Grebe

Here are a few photos from a trip to Greatham Creek and Seal Sands on the North Tees Estuary.

It never ceases to amaze me how diverse and wonderful the wildlife is in this area of Chemical and Heavy Industry. Each time I have visited Saltholme, I have discovered another little hidden jewel among the pollution or at least the Power Station and Cooling towers.

Red Breasted |Merganzer

Shellduck

Little Grebe

Oystercatchers

RSB Saltholme

Saltholme Guided Tour today!.

Fantastic tour of a wonderful venue, thank you to the team of volunteers,

.

Fox last Sunday near to SealSands.

Lapwing

Snipe

Female Kestrel

Red Breasted Meganser

La credencial esta preparado

Busca al Moodle para la primera version de la credencial, y me puedes decir lo que piensas!

Sinking into the oblivion of confusion

Where will it all end?

I seem to be sinking into the oblivion of confusion! 

I am trying to cope with all of the demands related to my work and getting nowhere!

I seem to starting a task and then , getting waylaid and then going around in bloody circles!

Most of it of course, is related to the sodding bureaucracy that I need to adhere to!

Oh well that's my rant over with for now!