I can’t do a Thursday because I have signed up for ecology – did I ever mention that I have a secret ambition to be a scientist with a deep knowledge of slimey things and plants?  Well this is the course that will fulfill this ambition.  I have already spent a weekend in a river getting bugs in a net and counting them and have had a chemistry lesson on the nature of water.  Did you know that no-one can bear to drink REALLY pure water? The other students are very worried about their assignments but I am keeping this firmly at the back of my mind.

More when I have been to my next classes.

We spent quite a while on money (or the future lack of it) but a lot longer on some of the things you try to put to the back of your mind eg how will you stand living cheek by jowl with your beloved 24/7 .  People were quite varied with lots going on working part time or in slightly different way almost all determined to get fit and get thin.

Hand outs – a great big pack were excellent and trainers very competent if not sparky. But should there have been more active planning or is this a mistake?

Alongside this Latin continues with some progress being made.  U3A are speeding through a really hard book while I trail behind with my beginners OU course but I am stopping full time work soon so you will hear less excuses and more accounts of my application to assignments and essays.

I was pleased with my pomander which now hangs in our window giving a “prepared for Christmas” message which is quite misleading.

However, things went downhill after that – a series of family crises, absence of partner meaning increased domestic duties and so on meant I completely forgot about Tai Chi and the Fairy – I was reminded in the village that I had not turned up and I had to cancel Italian and German.  Having missed two weeks of German I feel a strong reluctance to reappear which I am fighting hard.  You can easily see that if things aren’t quite right a few life events could  get you off track.

Having done my French homework and woken up filled with resolve I was disappointed to find the usual house in darkness and no clue as to a re-arranged location when I went off to my class.  I wonder if the tutor has been ill and no-one has access to her lists – most of the class know each other and could link up but I come from a bit further away.  I will find out at Latin tomorrow I hope.  On that front I am feeling cheerful – I have done two bits of the proper homework and although the largest task is too challenging I have a real sense of progress.

I am taking the camera to flower arranging tonight so watch this space for some cool pomanders tomorrow.

The tutor was great, she fixed up my oasis in no time and lent me scissors and gave me some greenery and clear instructions as to what to do with it.  I must admit my heart sank when I heard it was table decorations as the last time I tried this I ended up in tears. However, she was so sure I would be OK and so encouraging that soon I was whamming my leaves in with aplomb.  The next stage was clearly demonstrated and off we went with the flowers. I had to seek a bit of guidance at this stage which was helpfully given. You can see the results in the picture .  I was pretty pleased and as the tutor said for a first go it was fine and it didn’t look a total outcast in the gathering together of the class arrangments for joint inspection.

This class is a foreign country for me and I was well out of my depth but all the same feel quite encouraged- we had very clear instructions about what to bring for next week – with plenty of scope for individual choice and a couple of further examples of table centres thrown in.  Excellent class with a mixed bunch of people very focused on what they were doing.  I have bought some special scissors and have my eye on some greenery for my long and low arrangement already.

We sat in a community centre in deep countryside and were taught a whole new vocabulary as well as how to do bottoms, different borders and so on.  Very hard to grasp but with endless repetition we got to a good point.  This is the most addictive thing I’ve done and the tutor was really patient as well as inspiring us with the work we saw around us and his conversation.  Everyone got great attention and the biscuits (about which I am fast becoming an expert) were good.  It cost £105 for two days, including materials and you had two great baskets at the end.  I call it good value for money. 

Here are the baskets I made!

The other students were women but this was unusual as men like this too.  What do you think of the baskets?

On the course there was a lot of talk about previous courses people had attended at local colleges and what their problems had been.  Money wasn’t at all the issue.  It was all about group size, access to equipment and quality of tutors.  Some fun remarks about the Colleges’ quality systems too  – eg “they looked at all the paperwork but no-one looked at our pictures”.

As soon as I got back from the residential I had to plug back in to my revision and also prepare for the U3A French course.  Again just a few of us but it was really just the right level for me with chances to talk, to listen and to do some reading and writing for homework – albeit only a crossword.  The tutor asked me to stay behind so we could talk about if it was OK and we agreed it seemed to be about right.  I felt rusty but comfortable about finding my feet fairly quickly.  The 40p for coffee and biscuits (high quality) seemed amazing for what I seem likely to get out of it.

The exam was a shock to the system, rows of desks – just like school. I was lucky with two questions and less so with others but I wrote like a maniac all afternoon so fingers crossed. I am only hoping for a bare pass in view of my lackadaisical attitude. I have never really minded doing exams but I could see it could be intimidating.  I met some people who had been doing the same course as me but with a different tutor.  We agreed that the tutorials had been a bit too focused on passing the course rather than extending knowledge – perhaps it is hard for the OU to decide whether they are dealing with lust for knowledge or people’s need and desire for a degree.

Next morning – no rest for the wicked – it was Latin where I had been invited along to the more basic group so they could give me a course book and see if I wanted to join.  Three ladies and the tutor have been learning together for four years from scratch and were happily translating Horace’s Odes with aplomb.  I was very impressed and they have been having fun too with some trips to exhibitions, films from time to time alongside working through the “Reading Latin” which is apparently an OU course text.  It was great fun and I will be going again.  In the meantime I am hammering away at the beginners’ course I’ve been given.

Wednesday was Tai Chi with the fairy lady – lots of us this time and it doesn’t get any easier for me.  The fairy lady looks elegant but I feel elephantine.  She only adjusted my position once this week but I am afraid that it was unlikely to be because I have cracked the exercises – more likely she has given me up as a lost cause.  I did manage to pick up some cooking apples though – there is rather a glut in the village – so every cloud has a silver lining.

Thursday brings the double. Italian and German IN ONE DAY.  The Italian is a totally private class, five people paying six pounds a piece, and it is really great. It is all conducted in Italian including the grammar explanations so quite a stretch for me.  The students four women and one man all very keen and it meets every week so there is quite a bit of pace to it.  It is therefore a total contrast to the world’s slowest evening class which has to be our German.  When we arrived this week we got a new scheme of work and were told it was 12 weeks not 10 but our hearts sank when the tutor said we had done quite a bit and the main thing to do was to go over everything to make sure we had got it.  In the end we did manage to do a quite interesting bit on the family but this was small compensation for the boring revisiting of nationalities and jobs and the fact that we are not considered capable of being trusted with plurals or all the persons when conjugating a verb.

We think three of the students have now left which means there are four of us and you might imagine this would enable a cracking pace but far from it. Half term is here.  In the last language course from scratch I did in the first five weeks we covered hobbies, introductions present tense of common regular verbs, telling the time, numbers and more .  On this we have covered greetings and intrductions your job and nationality.  But grandmothers were a welcome addition so hope springs eternal.

Can’t stop must pack for basket weaving.

Next we were shown how to plant up our winter containers and what kind of thing might look good.  This included going round the glasshouses looking a the ones that had been done by students and staff which were an inspiration in terms of ideas.  Then we went to our benches, all provided with scissors, compost secateurs and gloves and got to work.  We could select plants from the greenhouse, see what they looked like keep or discard them, try again and so on – a real luxury compared with trying your best to think about what might look nice at the garden centre.

I planted my trough and took some things for another pot at home but if you didn’t want to shell out for plants you could plant a pot which would later be sold at the shop so you didn’t NEED to buy any thing on top of the course fee.  The other students were very varied, age range from early thirties to seventies and not the usual cut glass accents.  It was very satisfying and we all admired each other’s work, plants and effects and I think got more ideas that way.

Good value I’d say and on my points scale pretty high all round.

Then, after a lot of revision which is how I spend my time at present, I wondered if I could find some way of learning latin on the web.  I have found a great course run by the National Archive on medieval Latin that will start me off. In fact I have done lesson one and got 100% in the activity.  Fantastic! Carpe Diem as they say in Rome.