Today I woke up at 6.45. I normally get up at about this time but today was difficult because i did not get much sleep the night before. Our band was playing in Leicester supporting the Crimea. Because I needed sleep and still had lessons to plan (particularly for my mutant bottom set of year nines) I came back with Will the minute after our set had finished. However, I'd left my keys at home that morning and could not get in the flat. I had to wait for Joe to get back well after midnight. Before leaving for work, I washed and cleaned my teeth. I had run out of deoderant though.

This fortnight at school has been particularly stressful because last week, the head of the department was off on compassionate leave, meaning I had to prepare and take several of her lessons and this week the whole department were all on a field trip in Portugal. I was promised I could go on this but that was a lie to try and get me to take a job in a school where the following thing can happen. This was the particular highlight of the last few days - we had to evacuate a class from a room, leaving one kid in there and quickly locking him in. A diabetic boy was doing his insulin and somehow one nutcase got his blood on a pencil and started chasing people around the room with it. Someone else took exception to this and pushed the freak away, so he decided to try and kill him. Literally. Because my room adjoins the one where this kicked off, I was summoned for my locking skills. It was very exciting and a bit amusing, but only because nobody died or was injured. The kid somehow escaped and took off when we sent one of senior management in.

Why am I doing this job?

My first lesson should have been one of the year 8 classes I teach for both RS and geography. I see a lot of them and although I like most of the kids individually, as a class they can be hard work. As a result, when we got a student teacher in, I persuaded our head of department to give her that class for geography. This has halved the time I have to teach them. I still have to be in the classroom to help out but it has made things bit easier for me. It's pretty classic that I now have partial responsibility for educating a new teacher too.

Because I had no time to prepare my lessons last night, I put The Day After Tomorrow on for the bottom set year nine because we have been doing about global warming. They all piled in in their usual unruly fashion and the minute they saw I had the projector set up, they sat down and stared at the front of the class. Because of this, I didn't feel the need to enrage anyone by demanding they take their coats off so I put the DVD on and set up at the back of the class. Then one of the deputy heads came in and is now apparently unhappy at how I'm not following behaviour rules regarding school uniform and coats. Whatever.

I had a religious studies class later on in the day. It was about Jesus and his miracles and I told the class the story about how a tramp once came up to me and explained that he was the second coming of Jesus. Because he had only just been resurrected, he had no cash and understanding of modern society so could I please lend him some change. I told him if he did a miracle I would. He told me he could down his bottle of white lightning in one go. I told him I was thinking more along the lines of curing my dodgy eyesight or turning something into gold. He did not deliver so neither did I - if he was really Jesus then he wouldn't need money for food or alcohol as he can multiply bread and turn water into wine. If he wasn't, he desrves nothing for breaking the ninth commandment. This got us onto having a class discussion about how a skeptic would explain Jesus' miracles. For example being a time traveller who used future technology. I can feel my first parental complaint about blasphemy coming any day now. The class also started an impromptu football chant about the son of God that went "bang, bang, bangbangbang, bangbangbangbag JESUS!". It was a good lesson.

After school I sat at my desk and contemplated life and the impending half term for a good hour. Other teachers were going on about getting straight home to get "rat arsed" and "cunted". I'm a professional, so my evening had been planned around Austin Stevens. I had been looking forward to his programme all week. It is honestly the greatest thing I have ever seen on TV and it has become a Friday night ritual. He is like Steve Irwin but without any caution and with more things going wrong. This man is loose cannonery at it's most extreme.

He does this a lot

At home, to reward myself for the stress of this past week, I had a kebab meal 1 for dinner. It was very greasy and very tasty. It had chips, a kebab and a can of fruit fanta all for £3.50. I wish I could eat this every night. We brought them back to the flat just in time for Austin Stevens. Today, he was on a mission to the jungles of Costa Rica to photgraph the deadly pit viper. Here is the programme synopsis from the animal planet website...

An extremely venomous pit viper found in diverse tropical American habitats, from cultivated lands to forests, the lancehead pit viper has a broad, triangular head and is gray or brown, marked by a series of black-edged diamonds often bordered in a lighter color. The lancehead pit viper is usually about one to two meters long. Its bite can be fatal to humans.

What this fails to mention is Austin swinging out into a pond on a vine and ambushing a water snake, Austin diving from his raft seconds before it went over a waterfall with all his gear in it and Austin's epic fight with the biggest pit viper he has even seen. It was three times larger than he expected. Austin doesn't scare easily but he was sure nervous when he nearly lost his face to a toxic snake bite. That programme started at 8pm and I did not leave the setee until I went to bed after midnight. I slept a few times and watched a programme called Prison Break. Someone got their toes chopped off.