Feburary

Agh February a time for Valentines Day....a time for love and unfortunately at Barnard castle school, its a time for the barney run. What is that? You might ask, well it is when the kids take part in a run around the school and fields to race and raise money for charity. It has been happening since the school existed and though a great tradition, I can not find a person who enjoys it. First there are barney run practices which means 4-5 on a Wednesday teachers must volunteer to stand out in a random field in the dark and make sure kids are running, I'm always the first hand to go up. Then there is the Barney bash which the whole school takes part in. The point is that the kids run to get a time to qualify for the run so the houses will select their best runners. Well these kids are no idiots some of them will walk, crawl, deliberately throw themselves on the ground to get out of running the actual run. The senior boys run is 2 miles longer then anyone else’s and on the senior bash I had the pleasure of standing next to a sewage plant ( no lie) the smell was so bad one kid puked. Now that would have been fine but as I was walking to my post I noticed I was in the middle of a field, no not just any field but one with about 100 sheep. Some of you may remember my incident last year where sheep chased me up a hill... it was one of the most terrifying experiences in my life and needless to say I did not want to walk through that field. Despite what many teachers at the school say.. "don't be ridiculous Marcy sheep don't chase you...They run the other way" well they do and I did get chased, It was horrible and I would avoid sheep for the rest of my life if I could but when you live in a town where there is more sheep then people it is kind of inevitable.
So you stand in this field cheering children on, saying well done, you can do it, as they run by probably thinking shut up you stupid lazy yank, your not running. And then the rain... Just when you think it couldn't possibly get any worse your feet go numb and the it starts to rain, snow, even hail if you’re lucky. Ahh a great tradition and a great end to another term... I am thankfully now dry, on a coach for a 24 hour ride to Kitzbuhel, Austria where we will be skiing for the week and drinking Weis beer. Another run gone, lig.