Last week, my work based teaching started up.
This week, I returned to primary school and I became a student as well.
I can remember the sense of anticipation this time last year when I stepped into a Primary School classroom for the first time. Now, of course, I know what to expect. Except that the teacher was off sick and there I was with a room full of year twos and a teaching assistant. So, you do what's expected of you and get stuck in.
It was exhausting, exhilarating, challenging and I loved every minute of it.
So I could have done with a lie down when I'd finished but, instead, I travelled Wigan-wards to attend Colin's final service as a parish priest. For me, the most moving part of the service was just before Communion was taken when, having blessed the host and the wine, Colin was, for the last time, alone with his god as the day-to-day representative of his flock.
We Quakers talk of the necessary taking up of responsibilities and of the necessity of laying them down again when the time is right. To watch a lifetime's service relinquished in those few moments brought a gasp to my throat and tears to my eyes.
Come Wednesday afternoon, I left work early having booked a couple of hours' holiday and took the train up to Bootle. There I attended my first session at Hugh Baird College. Last year, I gained a PTLLS (Preparing to Teach in the Life-Long Learning Sector) qualification. Since I am not going to be studying to become a teacher this year, I thought that I would keep my hand in by gaining the next qualification up - CTLLS (Certificate in Teaching in the Life-Long Learning Sector). I'm also going to be taking an extra module which will, in effect, give me half of a PGCE.
I have come in on the second session because a number of people have dropped out owing to their being unable to gain funding. I'm paying for myself so there is no such problem there. We lost a proportion of this session to sorting out registrations and form filling but I now have an official student card.
There was not a lot of content in the rest of the session. I did however learn that, because I had already gained a PTLLS qualification, I did not need to do the first two assignments. I have decided to do the first assignment at least in order to test myself against these new standards. I want to know where I stand.
Ross and I are also looking to the future. We don't want to and ourselves in penury but it seems sensible for us to take out a modest loan against our house in order to tide us over during the transitional period of the next couple of years.
So, I had an initial meeting about money with a Building Society. And they seem delighted to lend us the sum that I have in mind. Repayment is scheduled over nine years which will take me to age 66 and, though I fully expect to work at least that long, I would also hope to pay the loan off well before then.
Ross and I have discussed a moderate and reasonable amount; we know how much we can afford to repay each month without cutting out all pleasure let alone food and warmth. The Building Society is a mutual society rather than a quasi-bank; they would consider themselves to be conservative in their loans policy.
I was completely shocked when I was told that I could borrow the best part of £100,000 against the value of my house. We haven't. The amount we have asked for doesn't even approach that sum. If we had, we could not have afforded to eat.
If this is a conservative loans policy, then the financial sector of this country has learnt nothing.
Or were they simply saying that, provided that they could cover themselves by repossessing my house, they really didn't care how imprudent I was being. And in so saying, reminding us all of the central cynicism of all contemporary corporate financial dealings.