A Little Dot.

Water Music.

Well, here I am one day before leaving. Tomorrow I hope to leave in the very early hours so I will not be here tomorrow morning and until I arrive at a spot with WIFI I will not be able to post a blog. 

I hope that you will continue to read when I am able once again to post.  These last few days and maybe even the last two weeks I have  been doing a considerable amount of reflection. My early days as a butcher, my time at university then my work as a minister and chaplain and finally may days as a teacher.

I am now retired and able to just up sticks and head off to see places new and meet new people. I always laugh when I watch and listen to retired people on quiz shows who always seem to have to define themselves by what they were and not what they are. I wonder what I would say I was if I had to define myself? I hear myself screaming at them, "No you are not a retired teacher you are just retired." In fairness I suppose they are correct. But being retired does make you redundant. It merely makes you something else. 

During my reflections on my teaching I smiled so often at the many laughs I had with students. Of course I wound them up it was all part of the teaching process. I always loved when we had a new intake of fresh young students new to being in higher education. 

My first meeting with them often involved in a getting to know each other. The students all came from different schools so did not always know each other.

So one of my first lesson was, tell me something that you found exciting. it was surprising what they came up with.

On one such lesson one of the lads asked if he could show us what it was that he found exciting in the last few weeks. He said he wanted to show it because he was not exactly sure how to tell it. 

So with a marker pen, he made a small dot on the whiteboard and stood back to look at it, saying nothing. 

Puzzled, I asked him what it was, because it looked like a full stop. 

"It is a full stop, or a Period," he said.

"So what is so exciting about that?"

I don't really know,"  he said,  "but last week my sister said she was missing one. My mum fainted, my dad almost had a heart attack, and the boy next door left to join the army."

All pretty exciting over just one missed full stop if you ask me.  

Hope you have a great weekend and I am back on soon wifi permitting.