The email I'd like to write

I've had such a bad week at work with literally hundreds of students coming to the examinations office to complain about the online submission website. When I ask them Have you read the instructions? Have you been to the training sessions? they look at me with vacant expressions as if I were speaking Greek. I know for a fact they have received texts and e-mails from their course administrators inviting them to do both things so they haven't got any excuses. However, they still complain. Why? Because they CAN. Because I'm nice to them, no matter how unbelievably thick they are or how unreasonable the complaint is. That's me, nice Maria.

For once, though, I'd like to be able to write exactly what I think. If I could, this is the e-mail I'd send...

Dear student,

Thanks for your email. I am really sorry you were not able to re-submit your assignment but it is not my fault if you are stupid. We asked you to read the instructions a month before the deadline (at least) and we have offered you training courses which you have systematically refused to attend.

Therefore, my friend, if the website does not accept your assignment then TOUGH!!!! Try again next term, maybe by then you will learn to listen to us.

Kind regards,

Me


Ooooh! That was liberating...

Easter in York

We spent Easter in York and I forgot to take my camera. How idiotic is that?

Old and new

Victorian roofs and chimneys and the skyscrapers in Canary Wharf. I love London.

Sunset from the attic

I hate going up that blasted hill, but as one of my housemates say, if we weren't on this hill we wouldn't have the breath-taking views. I guess he's right.

Still more metaphors

And this is the last lot...

The plan was simple, like my brother Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work. (My favourite one!)

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a student on 31p-a-pint night.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter."

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes justbefore it throws up.

It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.

The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Glenda Jackson MP in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Robin Cook MP, Leader of the House of Commons, in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the suspension of Keith Vaz MP.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a lamppost.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free cashpoint.

The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.

It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with their power tools.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a dustcart reversing.

She was as easy as the Daily Star crossword.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature British beef.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened.

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

More metaphors

Hope you enjoyed the GCSE metaphors, here's more.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left York at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the other from Peterborough at 4:19p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the full stop after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.

The red brick wall was the colour of a brick-red crayon.

Even in his last years, Grandpa had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

Bless'em

I found this in the Open University website, someone posted it in one of the blogs. I was bored at work and started reading it but with little hope since the OU blogs are usually rather uninteresting. How wrong I was... What follows is a collection of very funny metaphors taken from allegedly real GCSE exams. Personally, I think they are similes, not metaphors, but the point is they are funny. It's quite long, so I'll post it in installments.

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of Family Fortunes.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer.

She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the centre.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.