Today I...

• got up at six am, had a shower and breakfast, then had a second shower cycling to school.
• caused a virtual bloodshed with a Fourth Year English test. Or rather, they did, feigning surprise at the fact that the test was on today at all.
• did some serious skipping, running and ball-dribbling together with the rest of the staff in front of all our students (at the annual Sixth Year farewell teacher-mockery, though admittedly a huge improvement to last year's karaoke).
• almost missed the tram on account of not being able to cross at a red light because of a police car in sight.
• got puddle-soaked by a passing car while waiting at said red traffic light.
• watched a man who actually did miss the train. And two who managed to catch it.
• helped a woman on the train find her mobile in her fantastic, new, 28 extra-inside-pockets Crumpler bag (Phoning her did the trick. Good girl scout, me!).
• spent happy 90 minutes watching 1970's music clips by Bowie, Pink Floyd, Ike & Tina, Julie Driscoll and others as part of my "popular music" class. I can only recommend it. Cheered me up big time.
• watched 4 police officers (two men, two women) pretending to direct the traffic at a big junction where the lights were broken. They were so busy flirting over their walkie-talkies they caused a major traffic jam.
• bought five apt-for-school tops on my way home. Now I am worried I have jinxed the whole new-contract thing and might never need them.
• am about to cook myself a proper dinner for a change: vegetable curry with naan bread.
• happened upon some background meaning of this here nursery rhyme ("Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row.") and was quite disillusioned by what I found. Apparently, it alludes to Bloody Mary (the queen, not the drink, alas) and the garden to a growing graveyard - since Catholic Mary had taken to beheading Protestants, remember? This source said that silver bells back then were thumbscrews and cockle shells some other highly inventive instrument of torture (mention of genitals, ugh) and maids another word for the newly introduced guillotine (so much less messy than the techniques before). ...and here I was conjuring up romantic images of tinkling bells and shells found on a beach, toying with using them as labels for my music- or holiday-related blogs... Well, I refuse to give up my interpretation of the rhyme. And anyhow, wikipedia comes up with at least three other possible readings, so I will simply choose to ignore this hermeneutic mess and go on as before. As my friend W. Whitman used to say: "Do I contradict myself? - Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes."
  

Oh, and how was your day?