Sometimes it’s almost pretty here

Outside, it is dark and it is raining and everyone is driving home through the centre of the village. The beams of the headlights shine through the rain and the raindrops glow and the cold air blusters about and it is pretty.

On Mondays we drive along the road beyond the school that is on a ridge and you can see for miles and all the fields glow golden and the light is beautiful and there are no houses and it is pretty.

On Fridays we go past the fields and through the woven trees you can see glimpses of the fields where there are rabbits and the light filters through the green leaf screens to the road and the windows are open and the dusk blows in and the music is there and it is pretty.

Yesterday I was by the wood in the field and I stopped and I turned round and it was silent and the field stretched back behind me and it could have been miles from anywhere and it was pretty.

I reached the end of the wood and looked out at the house nestled in the hill and at the broken-down fence and thought of how it looked in the snow like it was from a fairytale and it was pretty both times.

In winter in the mornings I get to school and the sun is rising and I get off the bus and look out at the clouds and they are glowing pink and yellow and every day I take a picture and my friends laugh but I know they don’t mean it because they know the clouds are pretty too.

Exercise advice from the BBC

How to make school sports enjoyable:

• Talk to the teacher concerned on the quiet, if you can, and explain what’s bothering you. Teachers are there to encourage you into doing more than you think you can. If you really can’t, then say so. Clearly whoever wrote this article has never tried getting hold of a PE teacher. You might as well go for the Holy Grail – it’d be a damned sight easier, and it’s probably more rewarding when you get it.
• If a particular sport or activity is a nightmare, ask if there’s something else you could do instead. Come up with some suggestions so it’s clear you’re being helpful rather than just trying to get out of it. Where are these schools and how can I get in one? I’ve never heard of a school where you have a choice. Here, in years 10 & 11, you do get some choice (you get to pick 1st and 2nd choices from a list), but even then, you’re assigned something and that’s it. Saying ‘I don’t want to’ won’t get anyone anywhere.
• If you’re worried about what you look like, talk to your teacher. Ask if it’s possible to wear tracksuit bottoms or baggy clothing if you’re worried about your weight, for example. Have they failed to notice that most schools in this country have uniforms and that applies to PE as well? You don’t get a choice.
• If periods are a problem, talk to the teacher (or a female teacher if your PE teacher is male). Exercise often helps with period pain once you start, but if they’re particularly bad, ask to sit out. Ask to sit out my arse. You need a note, sometimes more than one note, and often they’ll ring your parents anyway to check that they really did write the note.

With sports in schools the way they are now, no government is going to get people interested in sports who don’t have an interest already. Being forced out into the freezing cold in shorts and t-shirts to play games is not enjoyable for many people and marshalling everyone into it serves no purpose at all.

Overpackaged food

One thing that really gets my goat is overpackaged food. Walk into any supermarket and you’ll see packaging atrocities: who the hell decided that a coconut or a pepper needs to be shrinkwrapped?!

Anyway, I was quite pleased today to see that Asda have changed their dip packaging. In the past, they’ve sold their dips how other supermarkets do: a plastic pot with a cardboard sleeve. The sleeve has all the information on (type of dip, best before etc.) and the pot is blank.

Now, everything is printed on the pot. Not only does this dispense with the superfluous cardboard sleeve, it means that the date is actually on the dip (hooray!) and that you can tell what kind of dip it is without faffing about trying to guess which cardboard sleeves match up to which dips.

Now all that has to happen is for someone to stop wrapping the bloody coconuts.