Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me

Of course my preferred line would be, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango? But that would make no sense at all, if it ever did.

In rubbish weather girl mode, I can tell you that the weather yesterday was awful. Spectacularly so, I’m not even moaning, it was so dramatic. Purple grey storm clouds but only half the sky, the other half bright and clear. Sunshine, warmth, torrential rain and cold, each in rapid turn. The rain poured in through the ceiling at work, no amount of buckets bins and enormous plastic storage containers could save the carpet, ceiling tiles or I imagine, leaks into the floor below us. Students were sent home.

I’m now, and have been for a week or so, in full marking mode and appreciate any distracting, excitement on offer.

I find marking to be hard brain work, firstly, I make quick hand written notes, then I type up, then I self moderate, before it gets actually moderated and uploaded.

I’d like to give students my hand written notes which are necessarily to the point. I think they might appreciate the direct nature of the feedback. For instance my note might say…

Illustration, that face! WTF?

After it’s been through my professional filter, the text the student receives points out that work is needed to develop appropriate illustrative skills, it outlines the necessity of finding visual communication techniques to express their vision, along with hot tips on how this might be achieved. I’m not convinced the second version is really more effective but my bosses would disagree.

Then the thunder and lightning started. It makes me very excitable, and it makes me think of our mother. She hated it. She used to insist that we sit under the dining table, we’d draw, sew or do word puzzles. I remember painting on tissues. She made it seem fun, like she was doing it for me. I enjoyed it and didn’t realise for many years how odd this behaviour was and how it was fuelled by fear, but then her blitz experiences made sense of it all. She associated the sound of thunder and lightning flashes with bombs.

She was a young mum, dad, a soldier with the Royal Engineers, was away. One day while out shopping with baby Elvis, the air raid sirens sounded ahead of a daylight, Baedeker, bombing raid. She was right next to a public shelter, but decided not to use it, instead she ran the short distance home where she had a table shelter. A table shelter was like a dog cage with a solid metal top and legs. A house could fall down on you and you could be dug out, no good for a direct hit, but then nothing was. So she ran for her life, as she got to her front door the bombs started falling, she lost a grip on the pram trying to get the key in the lock. The baby carriage rolled down the steep path, down the steps. She ran to it, lay over it to protect her boy as a bomb took out two houses close by. The bomb shelter she chose not to use suffered a direct hit. It’s been a memorial park ever since in memory of the twenty eight neighbours who died there.

I’d probably not like thunder storms after that.

However, with no personal war trauma, and thunder memories of under table crafting, my Bohemian Rhapsody moment should read, thunderbolt and lightning very, very exciting me.