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Sep. 18th, 2006 10:13 pmHavant & Waterlooville will be at home to Team Bath in the FA Cup on the 30th. As my season ticket only counts for league games - I have to pay full price for cup ties - my mother tried to persuade me to give that game a miss and do the Alverstoke Michaelmas Fayre with her that day. She told me she'd heard Rebecca, daughter of a councillor and an old crush of mine, will be coming over from Southsea (where she now lives) for the fayre. With a quick enquiry to Rebecca's mum I found out she's still happily married, so I'm going to the football.
Went back tonight to my old FE college for the first time since I left in 1989, to begin my CLAIT course. The place is almost unrecognisable now compared to how it was when I was an A-level student. It's all very smart new decor in blue and white, with silver signs marking the way to all the different departments, and cola, tea and chocolate machines in the canteen - we never had any of that.
I arrived in the foyer at 6.45 as requested; most of my fellow students were already there, together with the British Sign Language and 10 Finger Touch Typing students, but nobody said more than hello to anyone else, apart from two girls who already knew each other. At 6.57 all the CLAIT students except one were there, so Joan, our tutor, led us all up a staircase I'd trodden many times in the 80s* to the IT suite.
(* For seven years, in fact. This building was my secondary school, then straight after I left school it became the FE college, so I spent seven consecutive years in the same place.)
There were about 16 of us, of all different age groups, and all women except for me and a tall thin youth. Joan went over the list of students, asking us all to make ourselves known - when I raised my hand to acknowledge my name, she started to say "You're the only..." "There are two of us," I replied, and Joan turned, saw the other guy, said sorry to him and looked down the list to find his name, Richard. A middle-aged Pamela and a young Nicola, when asked by Joan, said they liked to be called Pam and Nicky; next was a middle-aged Elizabeth who, unprompted, proclaimed herself to be a Liz. Joan reminded them they'd have to put their full names on their assignments.
Intros over with, Joan gave us a brief, informal introductory talk about the course, gave us the title of the course book which she strongly recommends - she said everyone who's used the book has passed all the units, while everyone without it has only passed some - and went over the health and safety regulations about keyboard use, for avoiding RSI.
We spent the rest of the session doing exercises using Microsoft Word. I found it easy enough, as I've typed Word documents tons of times, but I was very basic before tonight so did learn some things I hadn't known before. My one hiccup came when, as this week we were all using the same username, when a lady saved her version of the document we were typing, as she used the same document name as me she overwrote my version! Joan told us to all add our initials to the document name then. We did Cut, Copy and Paste, and Joan said she didn't like Cut, as when you've cut something you can get sidetracked and do something else and so lose the text completely before you've pasted it. She recommended highlighting the text and moving it with the little white box instead.
We were meant to print the exercises as we did them, but the printer stubbornly refused to work, so Joan issued us all with floppy disks, told us to save our work on them instead and collected them all at the end of the session for marking.
My fellow students seem a pleasant bunch, though we didn't have a chance to get to know each other today but we are promised a ten-minute coffee break from next week onwards.
Went back tonight to my old FE college for the first time since I left in 1989, to begin my CLAIT course. The place is almost unrecognisable now compared to how it was when I was an A-level student. It's all very smart new decor in blue and white, with silver signs marking the way to all the different departments, and cola, tea and chocolate machines in the canteen - we never had any of that.
I arrived in the foyer at 6.45 as requested; most of my fellow students were already there, together with the British Sign Language and 10 Finger Touch Typing students, but nobody said more than hello to anyone else, apart from two girls who already knew each other. At 6.57 all the CLAIT students except one were there, so Joan, our tutor, led us all up a staircase I'd trodden many times in the 80s* to the IT suite.
(* For seven years, in fact. This building was my secondary school, then straight after I left school it became the FE college, so I spent seven consecutive years in the same place.)
There were about 16 of us, of all different age groups, and all women except for me and a tall thin youth. Joan went over the list of students, asking us all to make ourselves known - when I raised my hand to acknowledge my name, she started to say "You're the only..." "There are two of us," I replied, and Joan turned, saw the other guy, said sorry to him and looked down the list to find his name, Richard. A middle-aged Pamela and a young Nicola, when asked by Joan, said they liked to be called Pam and Nicky; next was a middle-aged Elizabeth who, unprompted, proclaimed herself to be a Liz. Joan reminded them they'd have to put their full names on their assignments.
Intros over with, Joan gave us a brief, informal introductory talk about the course, gave us the title of the course book which she strongly recommends - she said everyone who's used the book has passed all the units, while everyone without it has only passed some - and went over the health and safety regulations about keyboard use, for avoiding RSI.
We spent the rest of the session doing exercises using Microsoft Word. I found it easy enough, as I've typed Word documents tons of times, but I was very basic before tonight so did learn some things I hadn't known before. My one hiccup came when, as this week we were all using the same username, when a lady saved her version of the document we were typing, as she used the same document name as me she overwrote my version! Joan told us to all add our initials to the document name then. We did Cut, Copy and Paste, and Joan said she didn't like Cut, as when you've cut something you can get sidetracked and do something else and so lose the text completely before you've pasted it. She recommended highlighting the text and moving it with the little white box instead.
We were meant to print the exercises as we did them, but the printer stubbornly refused to work, so Joan issued us all with floppy disks, told us to save our work on them instead and collected them all at the end of the session for marking.
My fellow students seem a pleasant bunch, though we didn't have a chance to get to know each other today but we are promised a ten-minute coffee break from next week onwards.
