Freckles & Doubt

ah, Dear Little Students. This afternoon's gem: cannot log onto the student database, because she's forgotten her login details, therefore massive panic about submitting a curriuclum change form by today's deadline. Is emailing me from her university email, which... uses exactly the same username and password as the student database. I have gently pointed this out.

The advertised deadline for this curriculum process was 4pm today, which means that for the last 45 minutes my email has been dinging quietly at intervals as last-minute submissions hit the database and it alerts me to the need to go and process them. Yay.

I console myself, and hopefully you, with pictorial evidence of Pandora's successful domination of Codsworth.



When I was at school I was very fond of the Professor Branestawm books, by Norman Hunter - about an absent-minded inventor with five pairs of spectacles and a tendency to improbable and frequently histrionic inventions. (I cherish in particular the malfunctioning knitting machine which tried to knit a clockwork train. I've always wanted to try). The books had a rather charming line in offbeat and rather slapstick comedy - the earlier editions had illustrations by Heath Robinson. One mad adventure has the professor inventing a baby-burping machine, which runs predictably amok in the children's ward, until the machine is halted in its rampages by a Matron described as "considerably on the large side", who slips in some vitamin ointment and sits down on it, whereupon the machine "gave an agonised squeal, and went flat". I have had, shall we say, those particular phrases revolving gently around my cerebellum since the first time I caught Pandora smugly posed as above. She is also, alas, somewhat on the large size. Perhaps it's fortunate that Codsworth is actually already flat.

I am charmed enough by Codsworth that he's busy vaccuming again, although strictly speaking only certain parts of the house need it. (He is doing so without benefit of top hat, alas, as he knocks it off when he goes under furniture. I think I need a bowler hat decal of some sort). A few minutes ago I wandered into the living room to find no visual evidence of Codsworth but the sofa whirring busily to itself, interspersed with intervals of maddened chirping, demonstrating that (a) in defiance of probability Codsworth actually fits under the sofa, making that bit of floor probably the cleanest it's been ever, and (b) the inevitable under-sofa stash of cat toys includes that chirping cricket slightly maliciously gifted to me by philip&jo when they couldn't take Theodora continuously playing with it. I have also discovered that, if not strictly supervised, Codsworth attempts to eat electrical cable, which I can't see going well for anyone concerned.

On a similarly slightly robotic theme: I think this orchestral arrangement of "All Star" is being played by a music programme rather than an actual orchestra, giving it a faintly mechanical quality, but it still severely rocks.