Random thoughts about dreams, things educational, politicians and butterflies.

When I have anxiety dreams they are usually somehow related to education, to something going on in a classroom. It’s just over ten years since a classroom was my regular place to be for a good part of the year. So why do they figure so highly in my anxiety dreams? Come to that, why do I still have anxiety dreams in my low-stress life?

Last night’s anxiety dream went a step further. It must be thirty years since I taught GCSE Spanish but last night’s dream had me administering, or mal-administering, spoken exams. Everything that you could do wrong, I was doing it. i was failing to follow procedure for identifying the education centre and the students on the tape. People wandered in and out of the room where we were conducting the exams. Those people were suggesting answers to the candidates. Altogether a nightmare!

The content, spoken exams in a foreign language, is easy enough to explain as I hade been discussing it with my 16-year-old granddaughter who has, much to her surprise, just achieved a pass grade in GCSE Spanish. Why I should be having nightmares about it remains a mystery. Random stuff!

Here is a random thought about education. Boris Johnson’s parents must have paid a lot of money for him to go to Eton. I can’t help feeling they were sold short. He might have learnt some academic stuff but he does not seem to have learnt how to behave. A President or Prime Minister should know how to behave in a presidential or prime ministerial fashion. That includes not sitting like a slob with your foot on the coffee table during talks with your opposite number in some foreign country. Just a thought.

And here’s another one. Does it matter what a politician’s partner/spouse looks like? Come to that, does it matter what a politician looks like? Surely all that really matters is how they do the job they’re in office to complete. So Brazil’s President Bolsonara should not be publishing or endorsing rude comments about France’s President Macron’s wife. That has got nothing to do with their respective countries’ political situation. Once again, just a thought!

I can remember a time when you hardly heard about the spouse of a politician. The politicians just got on with the job. And in the end, that’s what is is, a job. Yes, they are in the public eye and don’t want their spouse to be an embarrassment but what that spouse looks like should not matter any more than what a librarian’s spouse looks like, for example.

Today has been the fourth day on the run to dawn fine and sunny. Well, actually yesterday dawned dull and misty but very soon turned into fine and sunny. Today, however, has seen the cloud move in over the afternoon. Yesterday we walked down the path to a local beauty spot, a path lined with buddleia bushes, which were full of butterflies. More than I have ever seen together outside a specific butterfly centre. I didn’t have my camera with me, or my phone, and so no photos were taken. Today I deliberately walked down the same path and saw a grand total of two butterflies, neither of which seemed prepared to preen itself for photos like yesterday’s crowd. And I wonder if this is an air pressure thing, the butterflies being aware of possible rain in the way and thus staying away.

It’s possible.

In the meantime I have a line full of washing in the garden and am keeping an eye out for the start of a downturn in the weather.

So it goes!