General Natter Room

[Daisy]

Sounds great Dot. All the best to you.

[Courtenay]

Rob, I'm cheating a bit because it is a British school and so the work environment will be similar to what I know with the bonus of warm weather at the weekend. What's not to like?

Yeah, that is cheating a bit. But will the school be affected by Brexit — potential drop in students, for example?

[Rob Houghton]

I was wondering that...but didn't like to mention it! Hopefully it won't become more difficult to work in Europe after Brexit, too!

[Julie2owlsdene]

Let's not put a damper on Dot's good news for her, I'm sure she's gone into everything that she needs too.

[deepeabee]

Yeah, that is cheating a bit. But will the school be affected by Brexit — potential drop in students, for example?

I did ask about that at the interview and of course they didn't know themselves but they did say there were students from all over the world and many Spanish students whose parents wanted them to learn good English. At least I'll have 2 years there if it all turns pear shaped. Also, we aren't selling our house here so we have something to come back to if we need to.

[Courtenay]

Oh, that's good to know, Dot. I certainly wasn't trying to put a damper on your good news, just wondering about the obvious "elephant in the room" question — which I was sure you would have already asked about.

[Rob Houghton]

Yes - I was more curious than anything - who knows what's going to happen - but I certainly didn't mean to put a dampener on things - just thought its an interesting time to be going to work abroad.

Although its not my thing, as I said earlier, my teacher friend in Mexico has never regretted the move. He's doing a similar thing - teaching English to Mexican kids. He loves it, and I think he was happy to get away from much of the bureaucracy in our British schools - much less workload and paperwork and much more of doing what he loves - teaching!

[Wolfgang]

All the swallows have left the nest by now, but they're still spending their nights in our gateway.

[Wolfgang]

It seems the swallows are planning another nesting time, though they're testing an abandoned nest facing the opposite entry of the gateway this time.

[deepeabee]

It seems the swallows are planning another nesting time, though they're testing an abandoned nest facing the opposite entry of the gateway this time.

Maybe they just wanted a change of view.

[Chrissie777]

Once a month our dog receives his so-called BarkBox (it contains 3 squeaky toys based on a certain theme/topic and 3 bags with healthy sugar-free dog cookies). This month it has the Alice in Wonderland theme. One of the squeaky toys is the Cheshire Cat smile.

As I didn't grow up with "Alice in Wonderland", the first time ever I heard about the Cheshire Cat was in the 7th volume of the FFO & Dog, "Mystery of the Panomime Cat".
So I checked Wiki to find out more about that famous smile...and noticed that the EB book was not even listed among "Novels", so I just added it.
Because I didn't know where to post this, I put it here. Hope that's o.k..

If somebody could tell me more about the Cheshire Cat, I would be thrilled.

[Courtenay]

I haven't found anything better than the very informative Wikipedia page that you've edited to add the Blyton reference, Chrissie. There's another page here that explains that the saying "grinning like a Cheshire cat" is of unknown origin — it definitely didn't originate with Lewis Carroll, as others had used it before him, but nobody knows why Cheshire cats were said to grin in the first place!

[Wolfgang]

Perhaps Cheshire cats have a genetic defect which has the opposite effect compared with "grumpy cat"...

[Courtenay]

Perhaps Cheshire cats have a genetic defect which has the opposite effect compared with "grumpy cat"...

[Julie2owlsdene]

Coming from Cheshire myself, it is a safely guarded secret why our 'cats grin'. One I cannot divulge!