Compulsory Valentine's Day Post

This time last year I was taking my new students, Corey, Braydon, Natasha and Vincent to the Sunshine  Library to celebrate the start of the National Year Of Reading, which the school supported by giving me a budget of $3700 ($625 of which was taken off me later that year to pay for a site licence that the school had always paid before, leaving me broke for the last term). However, it was a wonderful afternoon and the kids had a great time. Vincent has since left us for a private school, where they made him cut off the little quiff of hair that distinguished him so delightfully. Corey has his first job in the supermarket next to home. I remember being touched that when John Marsden gave out copies of his books, Corey took one for a Marsden-loving friend who couldn't make it to the launch and had it signed. Well, I have a book for Corey that he requested, the sequel to George Ivanoff's Gamer's Quest. Natasha and Braydon are still turning up to Book Club and yesterday I showed Natasha how to find Project Gutenberg and free books - she wants to read Peter Pan and has an iPod.

Today is very different. I've had to abandon my darling students for a day and attend a stop work rally instead, because the man born to wealth and privilege doesn't think they're important.

Sigh! Because it IS Valentine's Day, here's the compulsory bit. I'm rereading Wuthering Heights and Pride And Prejudice. I know which of the two heroes I'D rather marry: the one who's up himself but learns. I'd rather have someone I could be happy with than someone who made me and everyone else miserable and then mourned my death.

Anyone else think that Cathy and Heathcliff are arseholes who deserve each other?