Welcome back and I hope that you had as good a half-term as I did. Today, some praise, then some food for thought.

• Shoot The Damn Dog A Memoir Of Depression

Shoot the Damn Dog is a critically acclaimed memoir, written by Sally Brampton about her fight with depression. The following post contains a collection of the best Shoot The Damn Dog quotes that we found the most touching and relatable. Depression is a deadly disease. Especially since sufferers are stigmatized in public. Sadly a wild dog something wolflike invaded in the middle of the night and one by one killed all 5 Rabbits. The next morning I saw the dog/part wolf munching on the dead rabbits and hare. ( The WolfDog killed all 5 rabbits and eaten one.) We arrested or captured the wild dog. My bro's said we should shoot it so that it may never kill any animal.

Shoot the Damn Dog 作者: Sally Brampton 出版社: W.W. 副标题: A Memoir of Depression 出版年: 2008-06-17 页数: 326 定价: USD 23.95 装帧: Hardcover ISBN: 784. 'Love' is an odd word to describe a book that is as utterly heart-wrenching as 'Shoot the Damn Dog.' Sally Brampton's experience of severe depression is raw, agonising and, in parts, pessimistic. It's not an easy read, but I did love it. Her experiences are refreshingly honest and, in the pits of depression, honesty is not only something you need, but it is something rarely given.

First, the praise, and I want to start by congratulating all those involved in the Year 10 Play, The Christmas Truce, which took place just before half-term. It was a superb show, beautifully set here in Great Hall, with wonderful staging, lighting and sound, and very strongly performed by an excellent cast. Sometimes a play relies very strongly on one stand-out performance, but A Christmas Truce was not like that: this was an ensemble piece, and the whole cast worked tirelessly to create the world of the play. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I want therefore to congratulate all those involved in it – both staff and pupils, whether on stage or behind the scenes – and my thanks also to the director, Mr Hancock. And many congratulations also to all those who took part in the Foundation Concert on the Thursday night before we broke for half-term, down at St Faith’s – an uplifting evening of very high quality, both from our solo performers and from the ensembles and the combined Choir.

In sport, we had some exciting and challenging fixtures in the week leading up to half term. In Netball, the 1st and 3rd Girls took on St Mary’s with the 1st VII running out comprehensive victors 41-27 and the 3rd VII hanging on by a single score to win 18-17. The U15s, 2nd and 4th teams took on The Perse and the performance of the day came from the U15A girls who took a thrilling contest against a very strong side 17-13. Moulton Netball and Hockey produced their performances of the term against Barnardiston Hall. We were unbeaten on the day with both Netball sides winning their matches and the A, B and C Hockey boys winning well against their opponents. The standout performance however came from the Moulton D boys who bounced back from an 8-0 defeat the week earlier to hang on for a brilliant draw. All the Moulton sides should feel very proud of their levels of improvement and their attitude in training.

Second, some advice and food for thought. One of the joys of working at The Leys, and probably of working in education, full stop, is that one is surrounded by colleagues who are interested in books. I get so many book recommendations from colleagues and one I have been particularly enjoying recently was recommended to me by Mr Dunn. Called “Shoot the Damn Dog”, it is a memoir written by the late journalist and editor, Sally Brampton, about her struggles with, and recovery from, depression. Not a cheery subject, I grant you, but an important one, and a book replete with wisdom about mental health and the human condition in general. It is also littered with quotations from other writers, and so it was whilst reading this book that I recently came across this one, from the German literary giant, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe is quoted in Sally Brampton’s book as having said this: “Whatever you think you can do, or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.”

It is a great thought, one which urges us to seize the moment, and one which counters that innate human tendency to procrastinate. It’s a quotation upon which every one of us should reflect, and I am not just thinking about heroic or earth-shattering events: climbing Everest, discovering the cure for cancer or establishing the first human colony on Mars. Perhaps especially at this time of the academic year, I am particularly thinking those of you with public examinations in just a few weeks’ time. You see, there is a long-standing myth that if you revise hard over the Easter holiday, everything will be OK in the summer. It is a dangerous thought and from my experience, if that means you put off the process of committing yourself to high-quality revision – or high-quality anything, to be honest – then the net effect will be to increase your stress levels and reduce the effectiveness of your eventual performance. I know Mr Crosfield said something similar before half-term, and indeed I said the same to a select few of you, too, but let me say it again: the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that it is the second half of this term which is crucial as the revision process begins. That doesn’t mean that those of you in other years don’t need to work hard also, and Goethe’s quotation makes that clear, too; rather, I am making the point that engaged, meaningful revision, which is about actively consolidating your understanding by engaging intelligently with the material (rather than simply staring glumly at a textbook or leafing your way glaze-eyed through a lever arch file full of notes), cannot be left until the Easter holiday. If you start now, and create a sense of positive momentum at the outset of your revision process, you will feel calmer, more in control, you will feel less as if you are banking on Easter as some sort of last chance saloon in which all the pieces of the jigsaw simply have to fall into place. Instead, start that process now, take the pressure off your Easter, so that what you do over Easter will be based on solid revision foundations which have been put into place this term. As Goethe said it, so much more powerfully and succinctly than I could: “action has magic, grace and power in it”. So, at the start of this second half of term, welcome back: get stuck in, and have a great second half of term. I challenge each of you to think about how those words might apply to you and, as Goethe said: “whatever you think you can do, or believe you can do, begin it”.

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Shoot The Damn Dog A Memoir Of Depression