After a very nice start to the day me and the whole family went out to the Durham Woods River Walk. The River Wear was raised up a little but the water was very clear indicating some of the snow that had occurred in the Upper Northern Pennines was melting already. Very nice and a superb backdrop to the lovely Little Grebe diving up and down amongst the reeds on the far side of the bank. The sporty Durham Students were out and about today and it was nice to see a lot of male and female freshfaced youngsters being eagerly boisterous and competing. I don't do any sport but I think it is a very good thing and over the years have offered various activities such as Judo to the boys but they never wanted to do that sort of thing they were more interested in skateboarding and hiking. Good lads!

Onward into the gorge which curves around Durham Cathedral and we had a good look at the vertical rockface which drops straight into the River Wear in only a 50 m section the other parts of the gorge have been quarried back over the centuries to provide stone for the Cathedral as well as local buildings. Very interesting. Just beneath Prebend Bridge weir there were a pair of Goosanders roosting on the water minding their own business with a bit of preening here and there but away from them was a juvenile Goosander hunting very vigourously. Must be going through a growth spurt!

Biscuit break was on our usual perch right in the centre of the Market Square underneath the statue but when we nipped over to Tesco's to get some treats for this evening Fiona's eye was caught by a gorgeous market stall full of very attractive clothing for what I would say would be young female students but the Fur Cape she saw really caught her eye and she had that eminently attractive fixed look of "I would like this please" so she tried it on and looked absolutely beautiful, very twee, and is going to wear it at the Butterknowle Open Mike night tomorrow. My wife's occasional compulsions are very attractive and she looked lovely.

Under a brightening sky walking into a milky setting sun amongst the clouds we made our way back to Shincliffe. We were quite lively today which was nice and Fiona was feeling better so when we got back and saw the latest Leonard Cohen CD plonked on our doormat we were very happy and immediately got everything in and went and crashed out to have a listen to it. It was lovely music thoughtful, mature and very musically sophisticated but in a simplistic way. That man just gets better with age and I sincerely hope that with whatever talent I have I can follow in his footsteps. A lovely afternoon out.

Well, another Saturday morning with my usual early start because I cannot sleep in, in the morning. I've done some singing practice and an hour of mathematics but I am not sure whether it is worth doing much more mathematics in the formal, practising and keeping up for teaching kids sense because the more I write and type using my remaining good hand the sorer it gets. Last week I looked up about RSI for about the thousandth time and realised that I should take care with my attempts to "cure" my problem because whether I like it or not typing and writing whilst giving me RSI over the years also seems to leave my grip a bit weaker and a certain sort of weird numbness comes into the hand as well. It restores itself usually by the next morning but it is a tiny bit worrying because I only have one good hand and arm! Absolutely nothing else gives me this problem which slightly amazes me because I am so fit being able to throw myself around a lot of miles in the hills and mountains in the North. In fact I like throwing myself around the hills!

It truly makes me wonder but the simple fact is even if I do not go and be a Mathematics Teacher there are plenty of jobs working with Mentally Handicapped people in the North East. There is even all sorts of part-time work which is understandable because most unemployed people will not be able to take it up because their benefits will cease and also most of the jobs require a car. Because of Fiona's pension I can do any job I want to part or full-time. There was one as a housekeeper for the RSPB Reserve at Saltholme on Teeside that I would quite enjoy because it is an amazing place to be and there is a good team of full-time workers, part-time and volunteers.

It is quite strange because there is a lot of unemployment and it is rising but the same jobs with mentally handicapped people keep coming up again and again and I wonder if there is a cultural and understanding barrier to working with mentally handicapped people in the North East. Right from my time working pretty much full time in Juniper Communities a home for mentally handicapped people in York from 1983 on until 1986 when I attended York University, I found working with mentally handicapped people rewarding, good fun and just downright interesting. It is strange when I think about it because if I go for one of these jobs and I think I should because I have no good reason to be in the house any more, our lads have all the skills and more that they will need to wend their way through the world and the training of them that I have to deploy now as a father is more to do with general advice and influence rather than having to be there with them. With Fiona due to retire certainly by the end of this year she can take Miles down to the RKade skate park three times a week and besides this is only going to occur for another 18 months and then he will be either working as a Secondary School teacher or doing his Ph.D. in mathematics so he can teach in a University. Good lad.

It is interesting, I like to think I can think things through and get my life more or less right which I have done pretty much since the 1980s but I find it a little bit challenging at the moment which is weird because in the 1980s I never had what I have now, a lovely wife and family and complete financial security , but this situation is more to do with living in the way that I want to within the physical constraints of my handicap, the RSI that I suffer from and just struggling to get a job like everybody else! I also have a strong desire to keep my music skills up which I have neglected to the point that my harmonica playing is declining. I started the correct practice routine yesterday of going through all 12 keys and doing jazz studies and that is the remedy and I do not have to do a lot of practice so my harmonica should keep going.

But I wonder what for? The simple fact is I cannot find anybody to play with and when I have played with some guitarists in the north-east they are just absolutely scared stiff because it goes against their sense of the guitar player always has to sound the best right? I think that is not the best foundation for becoming a really good player it is really best to just do one's best and not have some weird local personal assumption that because you are standing there with an instrument called a guitar you might be anywhere remotely near as good as the greats like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. I can play most of the stuff the top harmonica players play as well as having an original sound based on my general quirkiness! I guess I just have a different approach to a lot of the musicians that I know because I want to play with my own musical voice and something original rather than the copycat approach which I hear so often with north-east musicians.

It is a vexed question I guess which comes down to personal style and possibly explains why I don't get playing with anybody! Total respect to all musicians that I know but please don't whinge on about wanting to make it or desiring attention if you are not prepared to practice and play in an extraordinary way that captures peoples attention. One thing I liked about playing in York Irish Sessions was that there were a handful of absolutely brilliant musicians who could not care less that they were technically and musically extremely good. In many respects they were the musicians I respected the most. On the other hand at the other end of the talent pool the Button Hole Jam who love music but do not take it too seriously I absolutely love their approach and sound as well and not only that, considering their age every time I hear them they sound different, tighter and definitely on some sort of improving curve. Good stuff and it goes to show that no matter how old you are if you just love the music and are prepared to put the practice in and they certainly do you do get better. It humbles me sometimes because I am not putting in the practice at the moment and according to the good old law of "no practice no good" I am losing my skills.

Anyway, the end of public introspection. Doesn't that sound like so much twaddle! But, I feel I have clarified some things to myself and am looking forward to a great day!

Well, in winter, windblown lower Northern Pennines weather me and the family had a great little walk around the Durham Woods and the River Wear near Durham City. It was to blowy for birds today so I spent time looking at how the valley that approaches Durham City had been formed helped considerably by the reading that I had been doing last night. A netbook is really handy for doing late-night reading propped up in bed! It turns out that whilst I have been doing a lot of geology reading for quite a while it has taken getting into the geo-diversity document produced by Durham County Council to really understand what is going on with the geology in places that I walk locally. The expression "incised meander" hit me like an express train last night because I realised that river meanders such as those on the River Ouse going through York wander all over the place and have done for a long time because they are cutting through and riding over the soft movable glacial till. However, the approach of the River Wear towards and going through Durham City and beyond right down to Sunderland is an "incised meander" the difference being that after the last glacial ice retreated the River Wear cut right through the glacial till to the bedrock which made the flow go even faster and so even more cutting down and erosion took place the channel being made deeper in the process. That is why Durham Cathedral is on a promontory that has a striking resemblance to some of the same geological structures in the grand Canyon and indeed produced in exactly the same way the only difference being is that the grand Canyon looks the way it does because over about 50 million years it was raised up to about a mile above sea level so any water that fell on it would quite vigourously go trundling off any slope existing on the plateau which is what it is. Mega interesting stuff.

Fiona was feeling fit and feisty today so we walked quite briskly and biscuit break was in Durham Cathedral near the cafe alongside the quadrangle which was very pleasant. As we walked through the Cathedral the winter sun was beaming through the high West Windows and it looked transcendental and beautiful. When we walked through the town there were not many people about which was quite unusual for a Saturday . Strange to see so few students. By the end of the walk Fiona was pretty knackered so when we got back home she trundled straight off to crash out and I went into making tea mode and whilst the pasta is cooking away I'm knocking up my travel blog of the walks that I do around the area. We are having an earlier tea tonight because Fiona and I want to see a program on BBC 4 this evening about how the Amazon area of South America had a lot more people living in it several centuries ago and there is evidence of widespread farming. This blows a big hole of course in the idea that the Amazon is and has been always a pristine forest. It will be interesting to see what evidence they show for this as well as their interpretation. I should have a good evening later on reading up about this because the netbook is very handy for late-night reading when crashed out in bed!

The meatballs are nearly done. A very good day and it is nice that my beloved wife is feeling better.

Well yesterday was a good day. I did my second Teaching Observation day in a local secondary and I requested to be put in with all the tough classes and thats what they did . Very interesting and it is a good job that I have never seen teaching , in this country , as anything but a varied mixture of educationalist , social worker and policeman. I would say the policeman aspect was prominent yesterday but as always most of the kids were alright. Two of the kids got very stroppy and confrontational, and after the lesson the teacher said " I'm glad you were there, you really helped" which is nice but a real shame because no teacher should be put in the position where they are facing potential violence.This great teacher of mathematics was quite shaken afterwards. It got better in a later class where one of the young scholars had been excluded from her previous school for stabbing someone with a compass! Oh boy.

It got even better in the evening when I went up to Butterknowle to play at the Open Mike night and the welcome was as warm and friendly as ever and the music was great . All of Button Hole Jam were there and they've got even stronger in their playing so I had to be on my toes with the harmonica . Warbling with Klara Whiley with my countertenor voice was gorgeous as always and it was nice tootling with the rest of guys and Heather Dunn the keyboard player who was well on form.

We played a song of hers , a waltz and the words were lovely and very moving strapped onto a very nice melody. Good stuff . A fine lady called Heather Cummings had brought two of her brilliant pies and that was great . I asked her to show Fiona how to make such great pies and this could save our marriage because Fiona is now taking on some of the cooking . Its not so bad she knocked up the Iranian Rice last Friday and it was as good if not better than I do . She was following my recipe of course but she excelled and went beyond that. I'm being eased out of the pack useless, crippled , an old dog without a kennel!

Today Fiona was feeling well up to it so we got out to the Durham Woods's this afternoon with the lads. From the outset we had a good ongoing discussion about the role of the death penalty in our society and how death as an option is used in many walks of life for example the health service because society can just not afford to keep somebody going so will not provide the drugs to prolong life. Interesting discussion! In part, the discussion kept going because there were no birds to look at for about the first mile. We saw a couple of Goosanders keeping well away from our bank and they were well shadowed by the very low sun hanging over a faintly misty Weardale Saturday afternoon. I was amazed how low the River Wear had become as well as how clear it was.

We made our way up to the Centre of Durham to the marketplace where we go to a spot called the Perch which is where we have our biscuit break and this was a very nice stop with all the freshly faced students back and a general feeling of getting on in the low winter sunlight. On the way back crossing the Elvet Bridge we listened to an excellent busker we had heard before but his low gravelly voice is very compelling and totally authentic. His low funky blues are the real thing The Blues. Amen. Miles gave him a pound and it looked like he was doing very well which is nice because he is the real thing.

We were in very good humour today I think in part because my spirits were very buoyant from a good day yesterday and I must relate this weird experience I had yesterday on my Teaching Observation Placement because every time I was working with a female student I kept on saying "good boy", "Goodlad" even though it was a girl I was commenting on! I definitely have spent too much time with my lads and homeschooling them! The other great thing about yesterday was my youngest son Clifford, did his first Core 1 AS Mathematics exam and he went in beaming with optimism and when he got home yesterday he was still shining and he thinks he has done all right. Which he probably has going on the amount of work that he has done. Sticking with the school theme an interesting observation I made yesterday was that I knew anecdotally that the amount of work done by a homeschooled child taught in the formal way that I did it versus a State School child was about 3 to 1 and I definitely confirmed that yesterday which means that my lads when they were home educated were doing three times the amount of work per hour versus a state school child. That is quite interesting and whilst there is some justified criticism about private education it must never be taken away from the private sector that outside of the small class sizes and well resourced schools those kids do a lot more work both at school and with the homework. Doing plenty of work, as always, always pays off. Interesting stuff!

Well, when we bounced home, Fiona and I went and crashed out listening to Leonard Cohen Live in London which was absolutely amazing and I am now sat here waiting for the Pasta to soften, the meatballs to cook and the sauce is well on its way totally encouraged by the amazing Mr Joe James' fresh Rosemary picked from the gardens of South Yorkshire last summer, Joes garden in other words. This is the last of Joes Rosemary and I will be really sorry to see it go because it has totally enhanced our tomato sauce as well as Persian Rice over the last few months: thank you Joe. A very nice and beautiful day and I thank God for my wonderful family and friends. Bless you all!

Today I did my first Teaching Observation at a local Secondary School. A very beautiful and interesting experience. I basically sat in amongst the class and assisted the teacher to clarify to the students some of the work they were doing. In my first lesson I seriously wondered what I was doing there not least because they were doing histograms and data-handling and it has been a very long time since I have done that part of GCSE. On the other four classes I participated in all of the subjects in mathematics were ones I was very strong in and and I really revelled in assisting the students understanding. Good buzz.

Because I get out and about in my own community and Fiona is a teacher in Darlington three students came up to me and asked if I was related to Mrs Saunders-Priem who had taught them at primary school, to which I said I was her husband and I was in the school as part of becoming a mathematics teacher. They thought that was cool! So do I! I then assisted a lad who appeared to have very little interest at all and it turned out he had seen me down in RKade skate park in Redcar so I related some of the maths he was doing to the latest developments in Rkade with it all being remodelled at the moment and he perked up a bit. After helping this lad for a while I then moved onto another young man who seemed even more disenchanted and then he said his name and I realised it was a kid that we took down to Rkade several times over five years ago. He gave me an interesting argument about why it was pointless doing equations because the variables can take on any value to which I countered with the whole point of doing the equations is because the variable can take on any value and that every computer game and programming in a car would fail completely if it did not have variables which could be assigned different types and values of data. That seemed to catch his attention and he did some work.

Many years ago when I did Teacher Training to be a Nursery and Infant teacher several of the teachers and Headteachers always said that I had "good manner with children" and I sometimes think I just relate the task to the big picture which may seem a very tenuous relationship but is actually quite important because education is vital not only for fame and prosperity but more importantly for the general well-being of society. My old skills came out today. It was not all good because I had some very informative discussions about the amount of keyboard input that I would have to do in order to be a teacher and it may be that there is just too much for my remaining good left-hand stricken with RSI but on the other hand I am so enamoured of getting into the classroom and running my own class that I am going to follow the advice of a friend of mine, Caroline Murphy who knows a lot about pharmaceuticals, and get down to my doctor to try out the very sophisticated and powerful range of anti-inflammatories that can be used. I cannot believe that for some reason I should not be in the classroom and it will be good for me, my family but most importantly of all it will be handy for a lot of kids to improve their maths skills which will help them to further their interests in vocational as well as academic qualifications. So, if you are godless beam some good thoughts my way please, and if you are godded say prayers that I can further my intention of becoming a mathematics teacher in the North East of England.

Last Thursday with Fiona we had a nice outing to Saltholme RSPB reserve in Teeside. We walked straight down to the Saltholme Hide and there did not appear to be much going on but fortunately there were two RSPB Wardens who soon pointed out a multitude of very interesting birds. Amongst a flock of Canada Geese were Bean Geese roosting quite contentedly amongst them. An absolutely lovely bird. It was a very windy day and there were big flocks of Widgeons all tucked in underneath the windward side of the lake nicely out of the wind although several of them took forays into the middle of the lake and sometimes were swamped by the mini waves which did not seem to bother them at all. One of the wardens jumped up very excitedly, always a good sign, because he had spotted the resident Marsh Harrier hunting around a kilometre away on the other side of the reserve. This was an amazing sight because the bird has at least a 4 foot wingspan but when hunting flies about a metre off the ground and sometimes when it spotted something it seemed to dip right into the ground when going into the drainage ditches over there and out of our site for a few seconds. Every few minutes it would shoot up into the air about 10 m and really scaring lots of the Lapwings and Seagulls into the air in huge flocks but they are too big for the Marsh Harrier to go for. We watch this bird for about 10 min which was quite amazing because it is known to be resident on the Reserve but once it has hunted it just spends all of its time amongst the reeds out of sight a pattern of behaviour common to all raptors. We had a nice chat with a woman Warden who used to be a lecturer at Sunderland University and gave us a useful insight into the pressures that older workers are put under because they are a lot more expensive than younger ones. She said that she had been put under various types of pressure for several years to leave as have others because she was too expensive compared to younger lecturers. There is something very bad going on in our economy at the moment and this is nothing really to do with the government it is just unprofessional and bad practice by public sector managers who no doubt will claim it comes from the spending cuts atmosphere but they do not have to do it. On the other hand and this was something that she accepted, believe it or not, it is good that younger people will be getting jobs in the University. There seems to be a clear contradiction at the moment between the government's desire for people to work longer but the public sector's desire to get rid of workers who are too old and expensive. Neither Labour or Tory governments have or will do anything about this just out of interest and it will be interesting to see how this develops over the years and will have a relevance to me with my attempts to go into the teaching profession as a 55-year-old but paradoxically because of my virtually non-existent work record over the last 19 years I will be deemed a cheaper worker! A cracking day out and Fiona was not too dizzy with her sinusitis. Oh, I must mention this, yet again we saw Black Tailed Godwits but this time feeding in a very shallow pond which was quite amazing because they quickly scoot along with their heads underwater snuffling up the food. A nice lunch time out for us as well!

Tricky day yesterday and this is from a message to a friend.

"Today I went down to York just to have a good walk round and do some serious thinking about my possible future as a mathematics teacher. I was wandering down towards Bootham Bar and I ran into Neil Grant a really good friend from the 1980s who also came to my wedding. You knew him well I believe as well and I had seen him at the Peace Festival last September but he did not have much time to talk but today we had lots of time. He is well but he gave me a really shocking bit of bad news. I do not know if you knew Simon Hoban I am sure you did but he died last November from as far as I can see some sort of heart related complaint which was long-standing but something he could have lived with for years in other words no one expected him to die from it any time soon. He was at a rave style party something he had been getting into with Jimmy over the past few years and he collapsed there. I do not know any other details. For quite a while I have been meaning to get in touch with Simon and Jim but felt slightly apprehensive because the last time I saw him in 1996 he seemed a bit annoyed with me that I had not been in touch and I did explain I was very preoccupied with raising my family and he accepted that and gave me his new address in Scotland but unfortunately I just lost it and you know how it goes things just drift as I say I was very preoccupied with family which I have been until recently to be quite honest. I had decided that this year I would get in touch and go and visit them in Scotland but now it is too late to see Simon. Crying out loud mate it just really hit me I was stood in the middle of the pavement whilst Neil was telling me all this just crying my eyes out with him hugging me and then I was asking for details and then I started crying again and then he was embracing me again. Oh boy. I do not think he expected that reaction from me but I actually knew Simon really well and I know it sounds a bit middle-class and twee but he really helped me at the University with my intellectual development and actually gave me added confidence in what I was doing especially when I said I didn't think I was doing very well when in actual fact according to the tutors and him I was. I also just felt really sad because I don't have any regrets from my years at York except one major one: I should have kept in touch with you and many other people and I feel that after I got married I just neglected my friends but I did find it hard to fit everybody in because me and Fiona, as I said to Neil today became some sort of centre of a bigger friendship network around the Stamford Bridge and Pocklington area which involved over 60 people. It was all new to me to be quite honest after all I was some sort of lowlife dosser doing voluntary work then I go to university get married and I seem to have some sort of respectability and was meeting all sorts of people who I had previously regarded as rather dubious in other words "normals". Neil was very surprised today at how different I had become but he was the same guy I used to know and he was very happy that I was thriving, prospering and would be getting into either maths teaching or working with mentally handicapped people again in the near future. When I see you in the next two or three weeks I will fill in the details verbally. I was in a total daze when I walked around York after Neil left me. I said prayers in the Minster and I started crying and I even had a weep when I walked around the University when I realised that I was actually walking round places I have walked around nearly 25 years ago with Simon and the many times that I had had lunch with him. I will truly miss him I really will and I am going to get in touch with Jimmy immediately by letter and then telephone. I spoke to Neil about this and he said they occasionally mentioned me and it was always positive if anything they had wondered why I hadn't got in touch over the years. He said Jim would welcome me contacting him. Sorry to break this to you my friend and in a way over the next few years I can imagine a bit more of this may appear. It just really hit me that I should have got in touch with them last year and not left it."

Moral of the story " Always say hello because you might not get the chance to say goodbye."