The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

The summer holidays have finally begun. I always find it a complicated time with mixed emotions. The biggest one is relief. It's so good knowing that you've overcome the challenges of the year and got to the end and now have six weeks to relax in. This year was a particularly challenging one with a difficult class, an inexperienced staff team and being short-staffed for much of it. I always find myself flagging after about five weeks of a term and this final one was nearly eight weeks long so it feels like a rest is well overdue. I think I've aged about five years since September. Weirdly though the challenging year has increased my self-confidence. I've had to step forward a lot more than in previous years, leading the class and supporting my less experience colleagues. It was really tough at times but I feel that I was genuinely successful at doing this. A long time ago I wrote here about astronaut Chris Hadfield. He says that in life you be a minus one, someon...

Football is not coming home but what a journey it was. I'm not into football. As a 26 year old Englishman I often feel I ought to be because it's almost expected. There are various issues with football. For me, sitting and watching anything for ninety minutes (and even longer if there's extra time) is hard work. I don't have the attention span. Then there's footballers themselves who are both incredibly stupid and cheat all the time. Coming from a family of hockey players this is incredibly frustrating- if you even tried to approach the umpire to argue a decision you would be sent to the sin bin in hockey. In football, referees are crowded by argumentative players and have to deal with players cheating by diving, wasting time and committing handball on a regular basis. I thought I'd write a little about following England through this world cup... Three Lions on the Shirt Fifty-Two Years of Hurt :S It all began on a Monday night when England played Tun...

I regularly find myself lacking self-worth and every now and then I do something so utterly ridiculous it can't help but take a knock. Indeed, the knock was literal this week. One evening I went to fill up my car with petrol. The local petrol station is quite small and there is little room between the pumps. I managed to squeeze my car into position but as I tried to get out I realised I was parked so that the driver's door was too close to the hose of the diesel pump. Somehow I managed to squeeze out of the narrowest of gaps. This was a mistake. I stood there awkwardly for a moment considering that I should move my car forward a little but now I was out of the car there was no way to avoid a tricky entry.  I filled up my car, where I look more stupid than most people. For some reason my petrol cap is really low down on the car to the point I have to bend over a little to reach it and the petrol hose is at exactly crotch level. But this humiliation is something I am at ...