Long Weekend of Goodness

 I feel an increasing sense of joy and excitement as the Long weekend approaches.

Long weekends are good, chiefly for two reasons:

1. They are 'Long'. 3 days. Woot.

2. They are 'weekends'. As in days where I don't have to go to work.

A long weekend is good. A sunny long weekend better. I am hoping for predominantly good weather. I'll cope with rain if I have to, as indoors not-working is pretty good too.

If I can just get my junior exams marked by the end of today the weekend should be mostly fine of wretched marking. Heh heh.

Marquee of Doom

 I will have to admit to being somewhat melodramatic in my title. The marquee was not so much an object of doom but it did prove to add some unnecessary pain, suffering and chaos in my day.

What is a marquee doing at school?

Well, school is having a reunion of seemingly monstrous proportions this long weekend. There is an open day at the school on Friday where former students may wander around and snoop in classrooms, to make matters more interesting this is coinciding with junior exams. I sense a stay-at-home-with-imaginary-flu Friday coming on.

Today was chaotic enough.

This afternoon a massive marquee was erected between C and D block. This meant that staff could not park in their usual carparks and worse still those of us (like me) who teach in a classroom that looks out of the area had diabolical afternoon lessons. It was pretty noisy but I figured the kids would get bored with staring out the window after a while. After all how interesting or exciting can it be to watch people hit pegs with hammers for an hour? What I didn't realise was that it only had to be more interesting than my English lesson and apparently, for the majority of students, it was captivating.

I have no idea as to why they have put it up so early. I could see the gleam in the students' eyes when they saw the purest white fabric of the marquee. They are simply gagging to get out there and jump on it/graffiti it/set fire to it.

My worst fears were confirmed when student X came into class and saw the marquee through the window. He frantically started rummaging through his bag. He then asked if he could leave class because he had lost his lighter. I said no and that he wasn't supposed have a lighter anyway. He replied that it was OK because he wasn't going to use it for smoking. Hmm.

I cannot imagine that the marquee shall survive the night without becoming besmirched or violated in some way, it certainly won't make it to the weekend without some significant damage.

However, surely people would realise what a target for vandalism it is? I wonder if there is some sort of alarm or security on it.