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Things I have learned since leaving the classroom.

I know in my first post I set out a grand plan for what I am going to write about, but I want to slip this one in first.

Here are some things I have learned since leaving the classroom.

Parents are right when they complain about school traffic. It is as bad as they say it is. I have found that there are times of day that it is wise to stay off the roads if you live within, or want to get to somewhere within a mile of a school. Its not just primary schools, as I have been caught out visiting a supermarket close to a secondary school at home time. It seems that the children (sorry, young people) are too cool to have mum (or dad!) pick them up at the school gate but not too cool that they mind being collected from the Sainsbury's car park next door.

The flip side of this is that, if you time it just right, the supermarkets are almost completely deserted if you can find one that is not too close to a secondary school and get there at about 2:55pm. Mums (or dads!) will be otherwise engaged at this time, so you can scoot round without any problem.

I am still not a morning person. For all those years I thought that being tired from work the day before was why I struggled getting up in the mornings. It turns out I was wrong and if anything I have become less of a morning person of late. If it wasn't for my cats waking me up for their morning feed I don't know what I would do.

Old people eat out a lot. The power of the grey pound is particularly evident in garden centres.

It is liberating to not know what day of the week that it is. We all have those moments when we forget, but it is usually fleeting. I have now experienced significant periods of time when I have had completely no idea, apart from Sunday that is. There is always a different feeling about a Sunday.

Christmas shopping, in fact shopping in general, is much easier when it doesn't have to be squeezed in to a Saturday.

I think that being a teacher for so long has left me institutionalised. Even though I have been out of the classroom for around 4 months, I still dream about being at school. Thankfully the frequency of these dreams is reducing, but they still happen and I wonder if they will ever fully go away.

Holidays are not actually that much cheaper in term time than during school breaks. I should qualify that in saying that holidays I have looked at are not much cheaper, but I am not sure about more family-friendly ones.

There are three kinds of people who visit Charity Shops. The first group is people who need to for financial reasons, the second group is people who enjoy finding interesting objects (including collectors), and the third group is people who buy things with a view to selling them on eBay and making a profit. I am not kidding when I write that I have seen them with their phones checking the resale value before buying things.

I seem to have only a little more free time than I did when I was a headteacher. I guess one has to define free, as I have been spending a lot of time writing my book, but I thought I would have more jigsaws completed since I left work than I actually did. I think my two kittens are mostly to blame!

I don't miss the job. I miss the children, and some of the staff, but I am happy to be an ex-head teacher.

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