I think one of the big reasons why summer reading lists aren't common is the issue of what do you do with new students? Are they exempt from the test, thereby pissing off the rest of the class? Or do they have to read two books right at the start of the year, which wouldn't be fair because the other students had all summer to do it?

I never figured out how schools work in the UK but in the US, you get a full three months off in the summer. I think it's significantly less in the UK. Wait...two months? That's what Google is suggesting. 1 July to 31 August. And only 10 weeks according to Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_vacation

That's disappointing. Ireland has three months.

I guess it's not a huge difference after all. Still, I went to summer school from the 8th grade to....man, I don't know. Probably the last year of university anyway. So I haven't had a summer off since I was 12 or so.

It's sort of pointless anyway. I heard that the tradition started to allow the kids to work on their family's farms but if that's the case, how can it be a world-wide phenomenon? I know that everyone had farms but they all had a system that relied on wide-scale seasonal child labour?

Speaking of farmers, I had to take a taxi to work because I missed the time change. My old phone (which I use for my alarm) isn't a smart phone so the time didn't update.

Then in that same week, I had a case about urine that caused me to nearly faint and the case got cancelled as a result.

It was also about syringes and catheters and really gross, detailed medical shit. But I think it was just the urine that caused this. It's like people who faint at blood. Urine must be my trigger.

I say that it's not the medical stuff because I did nothing but medical cases for years and many of them were gross but I never felt like passing out. I also did all those murder cases and I was fine with those too.

But I remember going to see a film with my ladyfriend and I passed out. It was Hunger, about IRA prisoners going on a hunger strike. And it was during a long scene where they were mopping urine back into the cells that I passed out. It wasn't particularly unpleasant but I just felt unwell and passed out.

So yeah, I think that's it.

I realised that my ladyfriend must be about 35. I thought she was younger than that but Hunger came out in 2008 and we were probably dating for at least two years by this time. One of the first films that we saw, she filled in a form asking our opinion on the film and she marked her age as "18-24". I suspect that she was on the upper end of that range.

So...yeah, I don't know. Older than I thought. She said that she's going to move here still but she's not doing it. I don't know what her living situation is. She says she lives with friends but for ten years? None of those friends ever moved in with boyfriends?

She may very well live with her parents. I never asked anything about her private life but whatever she told me, I was always skeptical. I didn't want to call her out for lying. I never went to where she lives and never asked to. It's a bit weird, I guess, but whatever. You alwayws need a little mystery in a relationship.

Back to toilet stuff, took a great diarrhea dump today. Stunk up the whole flat. It was probably the Chinese food. Also, passing out may have caused the diarrhea. Although, my dump previous to that was also diarrhea and that was pre-passing out. That one was also a bit bloody.

What else? I guess that's it. Oh wait. No. I remembered something else about MattM. He didn't care much for students and wasn't shy about expressing these sentiments. "Student!" was his usual go to. It was intended as an insult.

Pretty crazy. I sort of get it, I guess. Maybe? I don't know. Liberal students. Was that the complaint? Or rich students? The man was anti-education.