Not much to report

It's been light on the news front in the last ten days. I haven't given much thought as to what I'll do when this job finishes, nor have I looked at flats. My landladies are selling the place I'm living in; I don't know whether I'll be able to stay there and for how long.

I played tennis on Monday night. In Superman's absence I had to play at number one in our team and I was up against it from the start. After losing the first set 6-1 I needed to change the game but lacked the necessary weapons, so I chose to slow the game down, a tactic that brought me three games in the second set. The doubles was a bit closer - 6-3 6-4 - and if we'd decided to stay back from the first point, rather than play "proper" doubles at the net (where we couldn't compete), we might have had a chance. As a team we were well beaten, five matches to one. I've now lost seven of my last eight matches in all competitions. As is usually the case, it was a struggle to get to sleep after tennis, and just as big a struggle to stay awake the next day.

I've given my last maths lessons of the year - my two 16-year-old students had their exams on Monday. I rang them up to see how it all went. Contrary to what I might have expected, the boy was quite happy with his performance while the girl was a bit disappointed with hers. I've noticed girls have a tendency to play down their efforts in exams, so that might have something to do with it. But also this NCEA system can put too much emphasis on a single question, to the point where a student can know with certainty that they won't get Excellence or Merit just because of what happened on one question. It sounds like this is what happened to her.

The Rocky Horror Show is currently on in Auckland. I'd quite like to go, but as it's only on for another week or so, I doubt I will. I did ask Julie - it seemed her kind of thing - but she isn't able to go. Richard O'Brien wrote the musical. In the early nineties he presented The Crystal Maze which I used to watch religiously every Thursday night. The show was very cleverly designed; O'Brien's wit and intelligence (and the fact that the was totally barking) helped make it very popular back in the day.