No one likes having a cold. Your nose becomes a sore gooey tap and ceases to perform its normal functions: breathing, smelling and stopping your glasses falling down your face. Okay, I'm exagerating, it can still manage the last one, just.
Teaching with a cold is really bad. I didn't realise the rubbishness of my voice until I tried saying good morning to someone and all I could manage for 'kuh mhoornik', which I swear is Dutch.
My classes noticed my frailty and gave the metaphorical knife a good old twist - I'm sure they were enjoying it. My normally quite nice year tens were a pain in the neck with a few of the girls unable to shut up. I really get baffled by this. I tell them quite clearly: 'unless you can keep quiet when I'm explaining this I'll have to put you in detention.' Two seconds later and 'then he said that she'd said...' and so on. So you put them in detention and they act all shocked. They must have the memory span of a goldfish. There really is no other logical explanation.
And generally my other classes were hopeless. It must have been because of the rain today - they can't cope with changes in weather conditions. Or maybe because it was after a bank holiday weekend. Or maybe because it was a day of the week ending in 'day'. Who knows.
