Some years ago I set myself a little project comparing the way two newspapers, 'The Guardian' and 'The Sun', handled education news stories over the course of a month.  I decided to do this some time in advance, and considered that the single best month would be September as schools go back for the new school year.

Everything was fine initially, with education stories appearing in both papers at the rate of 2 or 3 a day.  But the year I was doing this was 2001 and, as anybody old enough to remember knows only too well, on the 11th September 2001 an atrocity occurred which completely dominated newspapers for some considerable time afterwards.

One of many things I like about the school at which I teach is that the senior members of staff post a sign outside their offices indicating what book they are currently reading.  One reason for liking this is that it sends out positive messages to pupils – we want you to read and enjoy reading and look, we read as well!  Another reason is that it gives a good topic for conversation when meeting them casually, ideally if I’ve read the book myself, but one can always use a bit of imagination in the discussion if not.

So, after a long year back school teaching, the summer holiday is upon us - at the time of writing 2 weeks in with 4 more weeks still to go.  I have to be honest, the last few weeks of term were very much a case of getting through to the end, the (by UK standards) unusually hot weather continuing for some considerable time didn't help matters, very few fans or air conditioning units to be found!

The first week I spent catching up with some reading, largely arising from the Holocaust, a blog post coming but not quite ready yet - visiting the dentist and the optician, this kind of thing.

So, I woke up on Thursday morning, checked my smart phone – England had lost against Croatia.  If this doesn’t sound a bit strange, I’m sorry that I didn't feeling sorry because I feel that as a patriotic Brit I ought to at least a bit.  But my indifference to all things football took priority over my patriotism, I have to be honest.

So, facing up to the day ahead at school, how to play this?  Having made no secret of my feelings towards football over the last couple of weeks, and having indicated that I’d be looking to see if any organist needed a deputy for Sunday evening, I felt that the time was right to play it cool.

I think I can safely say that I have never understood football from any point of view.  I have no memory, when at school, of ever being taught how to play, it was just assumed that we knew.  Which I didn't.  Particularly, with 21 people already chasing after the ball, I had no idea what it was that I was supposed to do as person number 22.  So, I was the one person at school who cheered when the weather was bad and we did cross country instead.  I mean, running through a park, that I can do, maybe not very fast, but at least I know what I'm supposed to be doing.

I was talking recently to a retired biology teacher, who told of one of his abiding memories from his teaching days.  He had in his class a girl who was not the brightest but worked hard and with enjoyment.  Both teacher and pupil were delighted when, in an end of year test, she achieved the highest mark in the class, a huge achievement arising from great determination and resilience.

Alas, his story did not finish there.  The girl went home and told her parents of the test score.  To which her mother replied, “Yes, that’s because you know so much about sex.

A couple of years before I went to Tanzania there was a knock on my door one day and standing there was a mobile fish monger.  Fish were caught, went pretty well into their freezer, came frozen to my door so could go straight to my freezer.  So not quite as good as going straight from the sea to the oven but a jolly good second best given that I live about an hour's drive from the coast.  He operated pretty well like a shop, so I could buy what I wanted in the quantities I wanted from the selection provided.

Recently I was on the lower deck of a double decker bus.  As is usual in the UK, there was space about 1/2 way back for a wheel chair on one side and a baby's push chair on the other.  I was sitting on a seat on the second row behind the gap for the wheelchair.

So, the bus filled up.  A mother brought a baby in a pushchair so that filled that space.  Then an elderly woman came on with a shopping trolley and sat in front of me, immediately behind the gap for the wheel chair, putting her shopping trolley against the other seat.

The idea that aid workers working on the field should be paying locals for sex, or making aid conditional upon sexual favours, is, of course, abhorrent, and cuts against all principles of development, empowerment, independence, and so on.