Où allons-nous mettre la fosse aux ours?

After yesterday's day off Clay and I turned at site this morning, drove in through the gateway and was confronted with the addition to the site car park of a Gypsy camp. Not just your common-or-garden type Gypsies either, oh no, but French Gypsies. Most likely of Algerian extraction. I assumed it was Karma coming round to slap me on the ass. The site is situated right next to the Park and Ride into York, there being a bus slip way running part way down the duel carriage way to allow buses access to the station. Commoners in cars have to go to the end of the road, do a full revolution on the round-about and then enter site. The bus slip road shaves off having to go around the round-about (and in Clay's case missing the exit and driving half way to Leeds...) On the approach to said bus route, Clay had been goading me about going up the slip road, saying Ali had said it was OK, that I was any kind of man then I'd go up it as well. He said that it was a test of masculinity to have such flagrant disregard for law and order. How could I look myself in the mirror each morning knowing that I'd wimped out of such a simple test of manhood? With this burning in my ears I took the exit up the slip road onto site. The only day I break the law in such a manner and the site is populated by Algerian (presumably) Gypsies, coincidence? I think not... Karma, I tells thee. Not only have they invaded our car park but they appear to have been using the grassy area in front of the site hut as a toilet, Cath and Daryl having to spade human faeces off the floor before anyone else got there. Apparently they'll only be there for three days so that's three days of spading shit up ahead of us...

'You're only here for three days? No Problem...'

Speaking of cars, I managed to get mine through its MOT today. It had failed previously on the parking brake, which for a 17 year old car is pretty good going. But this is the last day of a long tale of anguish. I had been looking forward to this job as it was just down the road and would only take about fifteen minutes to get to site (ten by using the bus slip road...), this meant that I would be able to lie in until about eight o'clock. The usual time I am on site for any other job. Relative bliss... But fate has turned against me it would seem. Clay and I have been having MOTs and mechanics looking at our respective cars most mornings and always at unreasonable times. In fact we have both been back and forth to the MOT place so many times in these past two weeks that the guys there probably think we work there. Mind you they still get uppity when I asked if I could leave my car there for the day while I was at work, well how else would I be able to pay for the MOT? They chuntered and muttered about not having parking spaces, but the ten parking spaces in front of the place were as empty at five o'clock as they were when I dropped the car off in the morning...

'Sorry, we're really pushed for space today, you'll have to park on the road...'

LULZ at work today, I was talking to Abi about The Plato Papers and how a future society decimated by an unknown tragedy had begun to base their knowledge of the past on fragments of Charles Dickens books. She asked if they had electricity in Charles Dickens' time, then quickly corrected herself, they had gas lamps. Yes I said they had gas lamps. Oh no, says she, No hair straighteners!

 Getting Charles' hair sorted in the morning was a full time job...

Not much else to tell you, expect last night was the last night of my Teacher Training course and I had to give a class. I taught the rest of the class how to lay out a grid square. The other micro-teaches that were being given were how to pot herbs properly, how to spot signs of abuse and the best one, how to make gloop. Gloop consists of corn flour and water and is the maddest thing I've ever seen. It basically stays solid in the tray you mix it in, until you pick it up when something reacts and it turns liquid again. It was literally blowing my fucking mind and it kept the five of us who stayed behind entertained for ages.

Gloop, kids and adults love it so!