merry xmas!

Happy christmas to all and sundry! I know it's only the 22nd, but what the H. For the limited number of readers of this blog, can I ask you to look at purely creative, my blog for creative stuff? If you like it, can you please let me know and pas it on? there's nothing there yet, but I'll be adding a doodleboard on it soon for my photos, sketches and pictures. These will be relatively low-res stuff: If you want them, they'll be copiable, but if you want originals, they'll cost! Art, ideally, should be free. However, ideals aren't gonna pay my rent, sadly. The writing I will be posting on it is all copyright. Of course, I won't be able to do anything if you decide to quote any of the poetry ad hoc, or quote it, and quite rightly. The sketches and the prose however are a different thing. Performances of any sketches will have to be with my express permission, or I'll come round your house, rip your right leg off and beat you to death with the wet end. Comments are most welcome.

Tuesday.

Not Friday.

we love santa!

I wanted to be Aragorn, but all I got was a bloody hobbit...

Congratulations! You're Merry!


Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
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Laughed my head off!

I just got this from the Fortean Times....enjoy!
ON THIS DAY
15 December. In 1980 members of the Truth Tabernacle Church in Burlington, North Carolina, staged a mock trial, charging 'Satan Claus' on ten counts, including child abuse, impersonation of St Nicholas, Baal idolatry and falsification of Christ's birthday. He was found guilty and habged in effigy. In 1989 a huge effigy of Father Christmas was made with conscientious attention to detail for one of Tokyo's largest deparment stores. The staff were delighted, but got their western festivals confused. Father Christmas was put on the roof and crucified.

Five days till end of term....still no money!

A thought just flicked by.....Saddam looked like a really dishevelled guy auditioning to be Santa in some godawful shopping mall. Perhaps that should be part of his punishment: Consigned to a dire grotto every xmas, with really bad jingly nusic and elves nipping out for fag breaks every five minutes, while children sit on his knee, punching him.

Still no money...I went into a bank on saturday to ask about a loan, but it's not looking hopeful. The bastards are happy to dig a hole for you to get into, but not so useful when it comes to being hauled out. I really am in deep financial shit. Perhaps I could have done more to alleviate the situation, I don't know, but it seems that this bloody country has somehow got it in for me. Every time I thought things were starting to look brighter, then bang! Whack! Ka-pow! I get hit for another bill, and I have to piss money. If Anyone has advice, I really will be grateful for it.

rejoice? rejoice?

Just to get my two pennorth in of comment re Saddam's capture. I suppose you can best sum up my feelings on the subject as grim satisfaction. I am sure most Iraqis will probably be pretty pleased he's been taken....it brings an end to many uncertain months. I, for one, will most certainly not feel the euphoric pleasure in the circles of power in London and Washington. Where are the WMDs? Where are they? The reasons for the war have yet to be justified. Besides which, a tyrant may have been toppled, but the motives and execution of the war are still illegal, no matter which way it's painted. Then there are the American companies doing to Iraq what is little more than state-sanctioned plundering, an act in defiance of the Geneva Convention. If George Bush really believes in freedom and not money, he'd do best to get out ASAP, job done. As for Tony Blair: For Christ's Sake, just bloody resign, would you? Just go.

money....the extreme lack thereof.

I am feeling utterly depressed. I don't have a single penny to my name, despite working like a dog for the last three years. What the Hell has gone wrong? I brought my family back to the UK in the hope of giving them a better life, and have struggled with debt and destitution ever since. I took out a loan a couple of years back in the vain hope that that would alleviate things, but it has been a vile, rotting albatross corpse round my neck. I face a festive season with no cheer, followed by the hounding of companies, baying for my money. I am on the brink of losing my house, my possessions and probably my family. What can I do? what the Hell can I do? I've been declined a consolidation loan by a few companies now....apparently, 'poor credit'. Well, that didn't stop them offering it to me before, did it? I've had to rely on credit cards just to get through the last few months, and just when it seemed that things were about to get brighter, wham! Another demand, then another and another. I can't seem to escape. If there is anyone out there, anyone, with advice or about fifteen thousand pounds to spare, please, please email me: pjgallantry@hotmail.com. Advice will be most deeply appreciated.

the unbearable lightness of blogging

It is only when one has spent hour after hour of meaningless trudging round shops, looking for ideal gifts, that one is faced with the essential unknowability of another person.......who knows, maybe they will like that feng shui toilet holder after all?

In a fog.

crappy bloody Wednesdays. Hate the sodding things. I was saddened to find out, via friendsreunited, that my first ever girlfriend had died, apparently of leukemia. I only went out with her for four or five weeks, but still....death doesn't affect me as much as it used to. When I heard of deaths before, in particular my peers, it would quite often freak me, but that was because of the senseless or arbitrary way they died. In particular, the deaths of Johnny Barratt (car crash), Trent Whitehouse (murder), Fiona McKenzie (suicide) and Debbie McNeill (carbon monoxide poisoning in a small Istanbul flat) stick in my mind. Young death is horrid. The death of my grandfather, however, was a different matter. He slipped easily into shadow after a long, healthy life. In his final week he lost all sense of time and space, and would as easily converse to someone who had been long dead as talk with me, or be in his native Fort William as be in his nursing home. When it comes to my time (which I hope is a long way off!), I would hope to go as he did: seeing the world for the waking dream it is, and sliding gently away from it, off to new adventures.

evening.

I feel knackered. I still have two more hours of class to get through, and I'm doing grammar. arrrgh. I feel like having a pint and a cigarette instead, but I'm trying to resist the urge. I haven't smoked for two days now, and I want to continue. I want to give up. Physiologically speaking, I should be over the worst, as the nicotine should have entirely evacuated my system by now, and oxygen levels in my blood should be rising significantly. It's just the mental itch of it.....there's a string of time, with beads of desire on it, desire to have a fag, that is....just got to get over each bead at a time.

Something I didn't mention earlier on; I hardly slept at all last night. I notice that this always occurs whenever I don't smoke or drink. I kind of fitfully slept. Continually interrupted by weird dreams. Oh well, shit happens.

lunch.

What's going on with the blog? It's doing all sorts of strange things.

Further to earlier:
Money making schemes.
I could set up a website dedicated to all those Chinese students out there who need a personal statement for their UCAS forms but who can't be arsed/haven't bothered doing enough English to do one. 50 pounds a shot? sounds good?
Another website project: If you remember, Fay Weldon was paid a wodge of cash a few years ago by a jewellery company to write a novel featuring their products. Well, why not advertise via the web for people who want to feature in a novel? 5 quid, say, gets a mention, 10 a mention and description, 50 gets dialogue, 500 a minor role 2 thousand gets a major protagonist. good? bad?

Tuesday!

Oh well, only another 11 shopping days or so to go till xmas...doesn't matter, I don't have any money anyway.....I seriously need to find strange new ways to make wonga. I have creditors baying for my cash left, right and centre...bastards. That's the way it's been ever since we moved back to the UK -there is always some parasitic sod after money. I have tried to curb my expenditure to the best of my ability, yet I'm still haemorraghing cash. What the fuck can I do? A part time job is a possibility, but how long will I be able to work seven days a week? Besides, I really resent not being able to spend time with my family. I hardly saw my own father as a child: I'm damned if I'm going to do the same thing to my son. There's no money in EFL, unless you're John and Liz Soars; So what now?

Illness.

Feel horrible today. I didn't feel too bad when I woke up, but I've got progressively worse over the day. Feel very woozy indeed. This has nothing to with getting pissed yesterday. It's genuine illness. bluhhhhhhhhhhhh.

We had a birthday celebration yesterday, for Sam, my aunt Sandy's hubby. He's 70 in a few days' time. sprung it on him as a surprise, and got as many of our relatives as was possible to come: My mum and sister, alastair and carole, ann and roger, steve, dan and niamh, alison and john, and even margot and adrian from darkest essex. Much wine was drunk. When we got back home at about 9.00 last night, I immediately fell into a deep sleep on the sofa, and stayed there till 1.30, the second time I've done that this week.

my five year old limbless attack ferret could do better than that!

So you think you can paint better than Pablo? try out this website.

On another note, I notice that the readership for this blog has increased dramatically. I am, as Queen Victoria once said after accidentally walking into Lord Palmerston's bedroom after a hard night on the gin, absolutely fucking staggered. Thank you all!

purity...

Your Ultimate Purity Score Is...
Category	Your Score	Average
Self-Lovin'	55% Explored the pleasures of the flesh	65%
Shamelessness	76.2% Has yet to see self in mirror	79.3%
Sex Drive	73.7% A fool for love, but not always	77.7%
Straightness	8.9% Knows the other body type like a map	44.9%
Gayness	100%	83.3%
Fucking Sick	94.7% Refreshingly normal	89.9%
You are 68.03% pure Average Score: 72.6%
Take The Ultimate Purity Test and see how you match up!

for the record, the lower the purity score, the dirtier/straighter/gayer/outright pervy you are.

Hvaet!

Enough is enough. I am bored of myself; I am tired of the tired face that stares back at me in the mirror in the morning; I am weary of letting life happen to me. It is high time I started happening to life. I'm tearing away the bushel, and I'm going to let my light shine for once. I have spent too, too long being the usher to others, of thinking of doing rather than doing the deed. There are too many amazing, wonderful and fantastic things in this world to let me worry about the everyday dullness. Now is MY time to shine. Watch me......

still monday...

It's now 1.48 in the afternoon and it's still raining. I have a class in an hour, and I'm still racking my brains as to what I'll do to them tomorrow afternoon. I have to make some semblance of an effort, as I'm being observed. I am also trying to avoid smoking. I do need to give up: Fortunately, I'm not a heavy smoker - perhaps ten or so a day - but it's high time to jack it in. I'm nearly 36, and I've been smoking since I was 16 - way more than half my life. Assuming that my intake has been more or less constant over that period, it means that I have smoked over 73,000 cigarettes at a total cost (by today's standard) of approximately �17,200!!!! Jeezuz. That would buy me a three-bed summer house in the southwest of Turkey. If only I'd known.......
Going back to a previous blog entry about drinking, what about the cost to me of that? I'd say I proabably spend �40 a week, minimum, on booze. Since I have been frequenting pubs since the age of 16 as well, that would mean I have spent at least �41,500 over the same period. Oh deary, deary me..........

Happy Monday! :(

It is a horrible, wet, miserable, blasted vile day outside. I cycled into work this morning: got wet, but at least I got in. There is a certain pleasure in wheeling past a locked queue of cars...one of the bastards nearly got me with his door, though. It is now 10.30 ish, and I still have to do anything that remotely resembles work, even though I have plenty waiting for me. Clearing up the mounds of shit on my desk, for one thing. I am kind of cramped into one corner of it, piles of books and paper threatening to topple over. At least noone can see what I'm doing.
The weekend also was rather tedious. Did the shopping on Sat. planned to start buying Xmas goodies, but failed. Bought myself some shoes instead, as I'm in desperate need of them. Sloped out in the evening: ended up at The Purple Turtle, where I saw an old shoolmate. Talked drunkenly to him for several hours and found it strangely uplifting. Staggered home at some godforsaken hour.
Sunday: loafed around in dressing gown till gone one. Made a Turkish Breakfast of sorts: olives, white cheese, bit of meat, boiled egg, bread, honey and tea. mmmm. Also went out for a walk, a Sunday Habit that has lapsed somewhat since I got married. Walked along Hemdean Bottom, up to the ridge then up towards Emmer Green and back. Short walk, but refreshing.

fun with tagboards

Just something to do when trawling through other people's blogs....if you come across a tagboard, leave cryptic messages, such as 'your blog is a load of senseless drivel you tw*t', just to wind them up. Beware: the tagboards don't like swear words though.....

cheating bastards!

on a different note....I've been reading more of these crappy blogs by spoilt little Singaporean rich kidz who think they're sooo cool. In particular, two caught my eye: the little fuckers are preparing for some kind of English Lit exam, and were proudly boasting about how they were trawling the 'net for some essays so they could cheat their way through. Tosspots. I've had to deal with a few similar cases at the college, where Chinese students in this case thought they could just cut 'n' paste someone else's essay work and pass it off for their own. Hey you rich Singaporean Kidz! some advice!
1. we teachers have a special device for essay checking. It's called 'google'. all we do is tap in a randomly chosen sentence from the essay, and if it turns up, bingo! we have your balls on a plate!
2. If you ever, ever appear in one of my classes and try that kind of stunt with me, I will unilaterally declare independence in whichever classroom I happen to be in, in which, as chief executive, I shall declare torture legal, and introduce you to the terror that only a rolled-up cheated essay can inflict.

Thursday.

In theory, I rather like thursdays - I only teach one lesson, and that's not until the evening. In practice, however, it's a different story. I intend having a lie-in, but still get woken earlier than anyone else by the need to look after son and wife - get breakfast for former, then coax him into school uniform and make his lunch, while gently coaxing my wife from the fields of sleep without getting my arm ripped off. So, I'm still awake early. This is usually compounded with a mild hangover, as I treat myself to a bottle or so of good wine on Wednesday night, knowing I'm not getting to work early. A whole morning stretches before me: A whole morning to do new and wonderful things. A nd what do I end up doing? Watching daytime fucking TV. Before I know it, Kilroy's voice is saying something like ' Your husband? been kidnapped by aliens? nd then? Gang-probed? And liked it?' in that peculiar west-midlands inflection of his, and then I kind of come out of a strange trance-like state in time for the one o'clock news, nothing done, nothing achieved, and the washing-up festering just a little more in the kitchen. Oh well, bollocks to it all.

living in istanbul

quite a nice article about life in Istanbul by Maureen Freely in today's Guardian.

A recipe for you all.....

It's been months since I posted a recipe here, so here's a nice veggie one.

Fasulye Pilakisi

You need:
Green beans (string beans or similar)
A tin of tomatos or freshly crushed plum tomatoes
an onion
olive oil
salt sugar
1 clove garlic (optional)

heat olive oil in a saucepan. Finely dice the onion and cook gently until it caramelises. Add the tin of tomatoes. top and tail the green beans and add. add salt. top up with just enough warm water to cover the beans. simmer for an hour until most of the juice has evaporated. just before finishing, add a pinch of sugar. can be eaten hot or cold.
Afiyet olsun!

let's see if this pic works...

Mmmmmmurrrghhh

I resolutely felt like staying in bed this morning, and not coming to work.....a sure sign I must move on.

It has been pissing down all weekend. Apparently, we've had more rain in the last forty-eight hours than for the whole summer. Well, it's good for the garden, I suppose...

I went to Gilly's birthday party on Saturday night. She's a teacher-cum-opera singer with a mane of wild hair. The party was supposed to have a Robert Palmer theme, which was my fault. She'd been thinking of ways on livening it up when I drunkenly blurted out the idea in the pub. And did anyone come dressed in dodgy haircut and jacket with the arms rolled up, or with hair slicked back, bright lipstick and microscopic black dress? Did they fuck. Instead, we all lolled around in her kitchen diner, drinking too much. Which was fun.

Just added Ugur Akinci's blog on the side bar. It looks pretty interesting.

Is that all you've got?

Dear Australia,

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

HAHAHA.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.






HAHA BLOODY HA.

Thank you.

a picture of me.....

friday afternoon

I really cannot be arsed to teach this afternoon. that's all.

Kadir Gecesi

Friday. Tonight is the 'night of Power' in the Islamic calendar, the night when the Koran was revealed by Gabriel to Mohammed. It is a time when it is believed that a single prayer has the effect of a thousand, any single act of charity has greater strength, any act of contrition cleanses the soul. In the light of this, it makes yesterday's events even sadder. When I lived in Turkey, I always liked Ramazan, and not just for the delicious bread that's made then. Then was a quiet sense of celebration every evening, and a feeling of everyone coming home to be part of the family - that kind of sensation you get at christmas time, but extended for most of a month.
My wife phoned round most of her friends and family after the explosions. They were all OK, but two had lucky escapes. One girl actually works in the HSBC building on the first floor, facing the front. She was attending her mother's funeral yesterday, and so wasn't there- fortunately for her. Many of the most seriously injured and some of the dead worked on that floor. Another woman, sister to one of Nur's friends, was walking by the same building, and got slightly injured by flying glass. Again fortunately, she didn't require hospitalisation.
What has pissed me off this morning is the reaction of politicians, particularly Bush, Blair and Jack Straw. It is all generic platitude-mumbling. Read what they say: it could be a formulaic set of words for any given atrocity. You pricks started this: now find a way to finish it well.

the bombings today

I have changed my blog title for today because of the news that's just come through.
I heard about the bombings at lunchtime: I felt sorrow and anger. I know the area round the consulate really well, having spent many times in Taksim. I saw the list of the dead and injured in hurriyet. Most of them were Turkish names. And this was a strike against 'British interests'?
The bomb must have been huge, judging by the devastation by the gates. My mind is on all those poor guys who work in that crowded intersection in front of the consulate: the spices and snacks guy and the grocer who work the entrance to cicek pasaji nearby: the bloke who sold dreams of money with his national lottery tickets: the man and his apprentice boys who sweated and slaved from the middle of the night to the closing of the day making bread, pastries and cakes: the noise and joy of yorgo's wineshop, on the slope leading down to the main road: the taxi driver i always saw outside the consulate, sipping on a glass of tea and smoking, never seeming to go anywhere: the men who pushed great handbarrows up and down the slope of tepebasi, one day carrying rags, another trays of simit, yet another great bales of unknown things: the vendor of pens and bags and schoolbooks in the tiny shop on the corner: All the rush and hurl of life, running and trudging through that junction, slipping onto Istiklal caddesi, or into cicek pasaji, or down into one of a hundred miniature alleys. All of it ripped to pieces.
These bombings, and those of last week.....why? in the name of all that is holy, why? the people who've done this call themselves devout and pious Muslims. Is that why they attack innocent people during the Holy Month of Ramadan, and on the eve of one of the most important days in the Islamic calendar? One of the words that comes to mind to describe them is heretic. Make no mistakes, those who did this cannot be truly described as muslims. Where, in the Holy Qu'ran, does it give sanction to this kind of act?
I know I'm being disjointed and rambling, but that's how I feel. I love Istanbul dearly, even though I no longer live there. My mind and heart still drift back to it in moments of reverie, and I find myself once more walking down the sad bustle of Istiklal, or wandering through the Secret Maze of Old Istanbul, looking for the truth that pushed Emporer and Sultan to walk incognito in the same way. And now some bastard, in the name of a bastard truth, has done this. Leave my City! Leave my friends and the faces I know! Istanbul has survived worse than you, I know, and will carry on after you have been buried and forgotten.
I mourn for all those who have died today and those from last week. I mourn for all those families who have been affected by this. I mourn for the blow to this mournful and joyous, wild and sedate City.
Please do not view me as being on the side of Bush or Blair - far from it, I firmly believe that the way these two have behaved over the last two years has been nothing short of criminal, particularly in the way the war in Iraq has been prosecuted, which is in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention. Yet I cannot possibly be on the side of the dangerously misguided fools who did this. Blood should not be answered with blood, no matter how desperate one is.

wednesday.

I will be so glad when today is over and done with.

Yesss!

A long, dreary day, made longer by an attempted abstinence from fags and booze. I haven't slept properly for the last couple of nights now. This makes me somewhat worried. Am I so much of a boozer that I need alcohol to sleep?

does the title field work now? I wonder...

just trying something folks....hold on....

and i have the leather jacket and shades....

You are Neo, from "The Matrix." You
display a perfect fusion of heroism and
compassion.


What Matrix Persona Are You?
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jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzuz. I've just spent fifteen minutes reading the self-absorbed drivel of teenage singaporean rich kidz who think they're soooo cool. May I say something? Your English is shit. Now Fuck Off and die in a sweat shop, making me my trainers.

monday! It rises like a regular horror....I had to teach for another teacher this morning. A lesson as grim and grey as the weather outside.
I just found this site.....give it a try if you want to find out what your brand name is....

Friday rolls round again...hurrah! The OFSTED inspection is over, now the witch hunt begins. Our department came out of it well, but apparently the college as a whole has had what has been termed as 'mixed results', for which read 'bloody awful'. Fat Freddie McCrindle is probablt eating some of the faculty managers as I write. It has been a very stressful two weeks, not only on the professional side of things, but also the personal. I have felt deeply introspective over this time: I look around at what I am, where I've been and what I'm going to, and I feel deeply disturbed. Once more, I seem to be on a cusp. Looking ahead, my options don't appear too bright as I am. As I must be, well, it doesn't look appealing: middle age, middle of the road, middle bloody nothing, then death. wow. My finances are a mess, I am in shambolic shape, I'm wandering round, following an uncertain flag wavering here and there across the landscape of my life. I need focus: some definite target, a way forward. I both envy and cannot comprehend those who are focused on a single path in their lives. How do they exist? How can they blot out any consideration for all the amazing and terrible things around them and walk a single bright, burning strand?

Another knackering day

I am bloody knackered. I've just spent six sodden hours wandering round the beautiful and decidedly cold city of Winchester with a group of students. I still need to teach for a further two hours. Then cycle home. In the rain. Then make dinner. Then get up and do it all over again tomorrow. Calling someone, somewhere: please, please give me a job that involves lots of sunshine and hanging round bars.

Oh, the joy of mondays.... I now need to plan my entire week's output of lessons, which bodes to be fun...This includes taking a group of students to Winchester tomorrow, to gape at old stuff. whoo-hoo.
After classes on Friday, I and several others went to the Fisherman's Cottage for a few drinks. The inspectors deemed our department to be 'good', which is more than can be said for a lot of the college. I got far too drunk than is good for me. Indeed, this seems to be happening more often these days. It's not a question of how much I drink, but rather the effect: My behaviour appears to be much more pratlike. That, or the part of my brain that governs social behaviour is a lot more alert at an advanced level of drinking than it used to be, and therefore I'm more aware of the chaos I'm causing.
The weekend saw me feeling bleak and tense, especially after spending a rather dire sunday afternoon with some friends of Nur. Don't get me wrong, they're very nice people, but they're boring as, well, a wet sunday afternoon. Conversation was dominated by talk of cars and houses, as per usual. I could feel my brain withering and atrophying over the course of two and a half hours. Back home, I made mince pies, then roast lamb on a bed of leek and carrot tagliatelle, with dijon mustard potato puree and a red wine gravy....yum!

mmmnnnnnaargh. bad sinus headache. we're halfway through our OFSTED inspection, and everyone is half dead from stress. I am severely in need of a good drink or seven.

I was the object of possibly the most misdirected piece of racist abuse ever the other day. I was going home on the bus, chatting with a couple of people in Turkish, when this snotty little fourteen year old sidled down from the top deck, sniggering. He pressed the bell, then, just before getting off, turned to us and said, 'you fuckin black bastards. why don't you fuck off home to your fucking trees, you bunch of coons?'. Honestly, those were his precise words. Hell, I'm whiter than he was. I gave the little cunt a mouthful of invective back, but shit, was I angry. I still am. Just because I was using a different language....what the fuck are such little pricks taught?

God, I feel tired. Tired and ill: had the snuffles all week. I look awful: I caught sight of myself in a shop window as I came to work this afternoon. The face of a haunted, frustrated man. I feel stuck - trapped by everything about me, but most especially by myself. There is an explosion pent up within me, a desire to yell, shout, kick out and live, but I can't seem to find a way forward. each time it comes to making a decision, I go into agonies of doubt about whether it is the right thing to do or not, and by the time I've sort of made a decision, the time and opportunity have passed by. Why am I like this still?

5.40 in the evening. I feel knackered, but I've still got another 3 hours plus to go before I can weave home on my bike, avoiding the traffic. If there is any justice in this world, the fire alarm will go off mid-lesson, and I can escape to a pub or something. Actually, scratch the pub: I just need to curl up in a bed and sleep for a good twelve hours. Lesson today: not too bad, actually, tho the class screwed up at lunchtime. For some reason, they stopped listening, and I had to curtail the exercise and let them eat.

my throat is dying. I'm teaching all day and my voice could go at any minute. Oh well, back to EFL miming. It is today that marks exactly ten years since my first ever lesson. I was bricking myself before it: I hid in the bogs, staring at myself in the mirror, telling myself, 'I can do this! I can!' In the end, it went ok: No-one tried killing me. Well, not that week, anyway.

Ahhhhhhhh, Friday. Just finished class: exam techniques in writing. Piece of piss.

God, some drivel doesn't half get written on these blogs, and I'm painfully aware I'm one of the contributors. It's taken me the better part of two hours to get the OFSTED paperwork done for our up and coming inspection: I still have several more hours ahead of me, plus I must fake a load of lesson plans to give the impression of being an honest, paperwork-minded, conscientious teacher rather than the brilliant but bureaucratically errant firebrand I actually am. If I must teach, let me teach, for God's sake, rather than drown me in paper. Well, let's see how this evening goes.....

Only another four hours to go before I cycle home. I missed the action at the college this morning: Apparently, two gangs of Asians squared up to each other outside the main gates and all Hell broke loose. A few people ended up in hospital with hammer wounds. Honestly, what is the fucking point? I hate the gang mentality: The commonwealth of the lowest denominator. Groups of people who are metaphorically dragging their knuckles in the dust.

Nur started her ESOL course yesterday evening: I don't think she was entirely impressed by it. However, she came home and talked solidly for an hour about it, non-stop. She also had the cheek to be offended by the fact that I hadn't cooked anything for her. This is the person who, over all the years I have done evening classes, has never, not once, even bothered to put something in the microwave for me.

Lunchtime. I must plot a credible 3 hours' worth of lesson for the mong class now. Hmmm....

Halfway through the week.....I want to sleep..........

My word, I do seem to be writing a lot in here today....probably cos I'm not working...Two teachers just stormed and humphed their way in to the staffroom, annoyed at having to do a v. busy placement testing session, and not even of putative studentsn for our department. I have to consider what to do now for the evening class.....probably something straight from the book again....how professional, I hear some tightass EFLer mutter. Sod it, mate, I've had a long day. Besides, I got all my class through their CAE last year doing pretty much the same thing. So there.

What Egyptian Deity are you? go to:the quiz!

5.34 in the evening. just finished class, only the evening lot ahead of me now. God, Tuesdays are so long. And, after slogging my guts out over a hot lesson, I must cycle home and (almost certainly) cook for myself. My wife makes great soup on rare occasions, but I can count on the fingers of one arse the number of times I've come home to a hot meal. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I expect to be waited on hand and foot, it'd just be nice, every now and then, to come home and not have to do more stuff. Actually, the cycling home isn't too bad. It sure beats using the car, especially in the morning, and I'm starting to see the emergence of long-buried muscles in my legs and stomach.

Lunchtime. A quick chance to write up and look busy. I need to put something together for this afternoon...... I have half an hour to do it in....people faffing round the office....bollocks to it all.

just had the first half of the lesson. One of the students, a new face who turned up yesterday having unilaterally transferred himself from another class, spent the entire hour and a half either asleep or banging his head against the table. Oh, the stresses of English grammar...

mnnggh. Drank a bottle and a half of good red wine last night, went to bed at 1.30, arose at 6.15. I do this far too often to be good for me. Now I must teach from 9.00 until 9.00, a full fucking twelve hours. well, 8 and a half in the classroom. Six and a half of those hours are with the same fucking class! I just love Tuesdays.....

One of the things that gives me joy in this job is the weird variety of western names that the Chinese students give themselves. I often wonder why: I dislike using them, as it strikes me as a kind of colonialisation of the person. Then again, maybe they dislike having their real names mashed out of all recognition in the mouths of their teachers. Some of them have had names given to them by British, Australian and, in particular, American teachers back in China. These instructors clearly take a deeply sadistic pleasure in giving them, as evinced by some of the following examples:
Fanny (who rapidly changed her name to Judy after finding out its slang UK meaning)
Monty ( a name not used in anger since about WWII)
Branch
Clementine
Jet
Ames
Patty
Stimpy (yeah, I wonder if he had a friend named Ren?!)
Woodstock
and two of my favourites:
Nemesis (a thin, weedy kid with really big glasses)
Turbo (Small, rotund, very slow with a dead hedgehog for a haircut)

bluhhhh. Monday.
I ahve been trying to plan my entire week's lessons this morning, but to no avail. I can't get my head round it.
I had a miserable weekend, by and large. Friday evening's freedom from no.1 son degenerated into a pointless, silly argument. Not my fault: it seems I can't do anything right these days. I really don't know what my wife wants from me. If I do something, it's wrong. If I don't do something, it's wrong too. We seem to be caught in this hideous cycle of annoyance and recrimination. I hate it.

Hurrah! The end of the lesson!
I just read some guy's blog just before signing of for the day. Dear oh dear. It was very redneck. I won't honour it with a link. Just suffice to say that, while purporting to be the true American voice, it flies in the face of every principle of the American constitution. Hey, pal, just listen to this. The right to free speech does not mean that only the voice of the loudest must be heard. Stop calling me 'weasel'. Stop calling me 'Commie'. stop objectifying me. I am a human, like you, yet seemingly unlike you, I can bear to listen to others' voices without stopping my ears or turning away.

Friday! Just one lesson to go. My mum is taking No.1 & only son off our hands tonight, so wife & I can go out together and get pissed up. Or maybe just stay in and have copious sex all round the house. Or maybe go out, get drunk and have a shag. or something.
Just had a faculty meeting: Not many of us there. Two were off on a BASELT freebie, one at an aunt's funeral. The two ESOL teachers, Elaine and Rachel, were screeching and clucking like a pair of hysterical chickens. They wind each other up into paroxysms of worry. Thank Christ I don't share a staffroom with the buggers. Right, time for some work.

grrrr....students running back and forth, waving visa extension applications in my face, screaming 'You gi me attendan recor!' and now I have to go and teach some of them...oh joy....

half past two on a lazy thursday afternoon....I'm writing up the blog to give the impression to my fellow instructors that I'm engaged in profitable labour. I actually have a shitload of stuff to do, but I am, as ever, seeking to avoid it. The story of my life, that is.
We have an OFSTED inspection coming up, and everyone at management level is bricking themselves. Not only have new mousemats and post it notes been ordered, but projectors, computers and screens have been shoved in every classroom, along with orders to use them or else. It would be nice if half the bastards worked, or didn't fall on heads. Again, it is an example of senior management being obsessed with image, not substance. They see people as things, units to process or be used, and that's a sad failing in an academic (ha!) institution.
Right, that's enough of a rant for now, time to do some work. Or not.

and another thing....I mentioned in an earlier post how we got some new post it notes covered in fuckwit slogans. The slogans - fine. But the fucking notes do not fulfill their function. In short, they do not stick. This is, it seems to me, a fine example of the management attitude at the college - produce something flash that doesn't actually do the job it is designed for. Fuckwits.

Halfway through the lesson. Just had the buggers listening to something about living in Sweden, just to prove that there is somewhere more depressing than Reading. Halfway through, the Ninja Dunce staggered in. I told him to piss off until the break. His face was in a bad way: It looked like someone had kicked seven shades of Hell out of him. Good.

Oh dear God in Heaven. I'm stuck in a staffroom full of whinging teachers. No wonder I'm depressed. I'm not feeling quite as pissed off with teaching as I was yesterday, but that is about to change as I'm going into my Wednesday Afternoon mong class. It's full of depressed Chinese, not speaking to each other. Oh well, only another 3 hours, 30 minutes to go....

....and there it is. It is now ten years to the day that I accepted my first teaching post. I got a phone call from some snide guy with an faux-American accent offering me the job: My future boss, as it turned out. I nearly refused it, but then decided to take the leap. After I got off the phone, I almost bricked it. I felt a wild surge of elation and fear. Then I went to the pub. What followed over the following twelve days before I left was a mad whirl of packing, buying tickets, and trying to do some research as to exactly where the hell i was going in Turkey. I hadn't a clue as to what I was letting myself in for, nor did I speak a word of Turkish.
Well, that was a day where I changed my life. But now? I'm back in Reading and I'm still a teacher, and I am fed up to the back teeth with both. I need to make the leap once more. trouble is, it's harder this time: I've got a wife and a son to think of too. If I screw up, then mthey come into free fall with me.

I'ved been having some very weird dreams recently. Sunday night, I dreamt I was playing with an elephant as though it was a dog, then last night, I was told I had to go back to primary school, into my son'd class. Everyone was very nice about it, and somewhat embarrassed..apparently, it was some kind of bureaucratic error. I'm sure there's some weird significance to all this, but I'm buggered as to what it may be.

D'oh! I intended trying to get all the work I needed to do done by this time, but I've fucked up once again. The best laid plans of mice and men..............

Ahhh, a new week! I cycled through the grim and forbidding rear gates of work today, looked up at the creaky fifties brickwork, and thought 'Oh, bugger this. I must find another job!' I look around at some of the sad, downtrodden faces of people who've been working here for years and get a terrible premonition of myself: Balding, overweight, miserable and old.........ewww!
I had a nasty bout of existential angst on saturday. In Tesco's. By the frozen food section. I just began thinking, like, what's the bloody point? All I do is work, spend the money, work etc.etc. I don't live.
We had guests around yesterday. I sweated over making a load of food (Mucver [courgette patties], haydari, green beans in tomato,garlic and olive oil, chicken in a carignan, thyme and mushroom sauce, rice), they came in a whirlwind and departed almost as fast. Pleasant as they were, it all felt a little disappointing, as if they'd all come to a restaurant.

feel strangely dopey today, not in the mood to do anything.......I've got a class at 7 - the advanced group, all 6 of them. woo-hoo. My feeling of ennui is gradually increasing as the tenth anniversary of my first ever EFL lesson approaches. Fuck it. Fuck it all.
We were given new mousemats at work today. They are plastered in slogans, like 'Valuing the individual', 'Innovation and responsiveness', 'working together and with partners'(huh?), 'Avoiding properly constructed sentences', 'strength through joy', 'ein reich, ein volk, ein fuhrer'. Ok, I made the last three up. I had an image of our Glorious Leader, shouting out these meaningless phrases in his office while wearing a Benito Mussolini uniform and gesticulating wildly. Only desperate fuckwits need to plaster this kind of meaningless, pseudo-dynamic drivel everywhere. We also have post-its with more of the same shit.

It's now 3.43. I must frantically devise something to keep my afternoon class happy for the next hour and forty minutes. Perhaps scrabble with electric cattle prods. At least the ninja fuckwit hasn't turned up. Whenever he does, the atmosphere in the class becomes pervaded with the smell of fear, which is not a nice thing to inhale on a wednesday afternoon.
Anyone got some lucky lottery numbers they want to wing my way?

Mnnnurrrghhh. Drinking a bottle of good quality australian wine and going to bed at 2.30 in the morning is not a good idea when one has to be up at 6.30. I do this far too often for my own good.
Grimbo got into contact with me yesterday. He's trying to escape the vilnesses of teaching, and has applied for a job as a hotel receptionist. He asked me to be his referee, and make up something along the lines of how he was both a teacher and a receptionist when we worked together. The image of him smiling cheesily behind a front desk wafted through my mind, and fortunately disappeared. Some things are too terrible to behold :)
I must now return to bloody class and give my darling students something to do while I fall asleep.

Hmm. I don't seem to be writing in here as often as I could. So far today, I've successfully managed to avoid doing anything that could be construed as real work. Just sat around, pretending to create lessons for the week ahead. Evening classes start again tomorrow (groan)....another year of cajoling tired professionals to write essays. what fun.

Dear God in Heaven,
Thank Christ I've managed to attract the attention of all the God botherers by my cunning use of the first sentence, and advertising it on google et al. I'm working on an article I'm going to post here, titled 'the fifth crusade', through which we're living right now folks! If you are easily offended by a portrayal of George W as a red-assed baboon, please continue to read this blog. you need to be converted. If you wish to remain a redneck, non-redneck lynching, hogeating, wifebeating,childmolesting sack of wank, please go, fuck off and die.
Apparently, Georgie boy's coming to London Town. hee hee hee hee. Boy, do we have a surprise for the fucker. I ahte to spoil it, but I suggest he reads up on the treatment the average briton has been doling out to David Blaine over the past week or so.......just imagine what's in store for the chimp-in-chief.......

september 11th.....two years ago, it was a warm day in Reading. I'd just started at the college on a fulltime basis, and I cycled up to my local for a pint before going home. That's when I heard about it.
here's a question....how many people have died since then through military action? when will george w. be sated?

Slumped over cigarettes after a hard morning of enrolment, we have reached the conclusion that we should get the fuck out of this job. My tenth anniversary of being a teacher is rapidly approaching.....run away! I must run away!

Mmwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!
Back to the grind.
I'm just cleaning out my desk for the beginning of the onslaught of new chinese students....another year of banging on at the old grammar beckons..........Oh for fucks sake.
Ten years before the whiteboard, man and boy...........somebody help me!!!!!

urgggg....far too long since i've blogged....blame it on les vacances..anyway....
On having a holiday in Reading

Is it possible to have a holiday while at home? This is my last week before I return to the beginning of another academic year, placing students, teaching, marking, filling in forms and all the usual dross facing a lecturer. Also, due to having chosen a worthy job, I�m broke and cannot get away. Still, today I have dropped my son off at the Summer Holiday Club ( a British Phenomenon that is always duller an experience than it sounds), and I have myself to myself. So, what shall I do on my holiday at home?
Firstly, let me take the concept of place. I am not particularly a beach lover. After a few minutes of toasting, I become edgy and bored. My holiday reading palls, the screeching of children playing irks, I get covered in sand and I slowly feel paranoia rising in me at the idea of leaving any valuables (no matter how actually worthless they are) behind while I take a dip. Eventually, I want to head off somewhere, usually the nearest bar, where I will sit for the remainder of my holiday. I am sure I am not alone. No, part of the attraction of going somewhere is in the going itself, the idea of travelling to some new and hopefully exotic location. However, after arriving at the new, exotic location, one cannot help noticing that it rapidly becomes just the same, except with crappier TV and higher prices. A cheaper, happier holiday can be accomplished by changing not our location, but our concept of where we are now. To an inhabitant of Bali, he or she is just in same old, boring old Bali: to this person, Reading is a town of unimagined wonder: The Oracle shopping centre! The joy that is the pedestrianised Broad Street! The bars! The night clubs! The Purple Turtle! Reading Museum, with its unique copy of the Bayeaux Tapestry! The promenade along the Thames! Now, our Balinese tourist, presuming he or she is a shopping-mad alcoholic with an appreciation of local history, will find enough to amuse him/herself for a week in Reading. Why, then, cannot I imagine myself as that person? Instead of seeing the ordinary everyday around me, why can�t I look with a fresh eye? Our ideas of �here� and �there� are, after all, only concepts relating to familiarity and strangeness. �Reading� is as much a concept as a place, and, like God, it has many names: Slough, for example. Or Basingstoke. Or even, God forbid, Swindon. In other words, the place of the familiar. I lived in Istanbul for many years during the nineties, and visitors from England would comment on how strange and exotic everything was, whereas I had plodded the same streets, eaten the same food, been tossed from side to side in the back of the same taxis for so long that I found it hard to see their point of view. So, by changing my point of view, I should be able to view Reading as a wonderful choice of holiday location. Here, however, there is a problem: I must view Reading not as a literal, real place, but as an imagined construct, or as some kind of fable. After all, when we book our holidays, we are buying a kind of dream, are we not? I need to see my home town as a travel brochure might present it. Dreams, though, have a tough time against reality. Just as the thought of my luxury holiday villa does not square up to the brute reality of cockroaches in the kitchen and workmen next door while the German family across the road are colonising the beach, so this �fantasy� Reading doesn�t square up to what I know about the IDR, or Whitley, or the evils of the school run. In order to successfully holiday here requires a triumph of imagination over reality.
Next, let me look at routine. A holiday is not merely an escape from place, it is a release from the daily round of chores and work. Well, I am not at work, so that�s one part accomplished. Now I look at my location. I stare with a desperate eye at the noisome condition of my bedroom. I look into my son�s room and grind my teeth at the mountain of crap within. I stagger downstairs to gain some fresh air and am greeted by a mound of ironing and the washing up. And, being the relatively fastidious person I am, I start clearing up. In other words, I replace one pattern of work with another. This is, of course, the phenomenon well-known to writers as displacement activity � rather than get on with the task in hand, do another in order to produce the illusion of progress. So, instead of getting on with my holiday and savouring the delights of King�s Meadow, I drag myself back into routine and thereby back into reality: My dream Reading fades and leaves not a wrack behind, and all I am left with is the burbling of Two-Ten FM. And a pile of laundry. One of my students once asked me, �Why do you English drink so much?�, to which I gave the rather glib answer, �Well, if you lived on a cold, wet, muddy, fogbound, brown and grey little island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, you�d want a drink too�. It was, in a way, the expected answer, as well as being an excellent example of the second conditional, but it was not exactly right. Of all the peoples of Europe, the English are probably the most straitjacketed by rules, laws and routines, more so than even the Germans. We work the longest hours for the poorest pay, relatively speaking, and we obey even the flimsiest commandment. We quail at the face of authority, then give it the finger when its back is turned. Our commitment to EU rulings, for example, is amazing: we moan about Brussels bureaucracy, yet meekly accept that our cheese must be packaged in bombproof plastic and kept in chilled cabinets of precise dimensions and temperature, while our French neighbours cheerfully store their Brie in full sunlight until it develops legs and tries to run away. No, we English drink so much on holiday because we can. We have no moral arbiter hanging over our shoulder, nagging us to behave in such and such a manner. We can drink our backsides off and our guts inside out. And this is, apparently, fun.
It is not the prospect of entering a bar and staying there for two weeks that is really enjoyable however as much as it is the sense of release and the feeling of empowerment that brings. The majority of us feel trapped by our routines: any release is bound to be immensely liberating. So, in order to enjoy my holiday, I must imagine myself not only as being in some strange, exotic land, but also as being the master of my own time and able to do exactly as I please.
Thirdly, let me touch on accommodation and food. Who, after a fortnight of binge drinking, shouting at locals and being burnt lobster red, has not headed home and not reached his or her own bed without a deep sigh of satisfaction? Rapidly followed, it must be said, by a sense of impending doom at the prospect of returning to work and routine. If I were to make my fantasy holiday in Reading as realistic as fantasy allows, I should decamp and move into the Renaissance Hotel in the town centre, or the Holiday Inn, which at least has a view over water (the River Thames, in this case). But why, when I can heave that happy sigh every night? Why should I put up with the lurking fear of hotel maids riffling through my bags, when I can do that perfectly well myself, or at a stretch arrange for my wife to do it? Why bags even? The fact is, one�s home makes a potentially ideal place to have a holiday in, except for the two facts mentioned above: Its familiarity as a location, and the sense of routine all homes have. Therefore, not only must I imagine myself as being in a strange new town and master of my own time, I must also now view my own home as the stuff of fantasy, laundry and all.
When the English go on holiday, they have two possible reactions to local food: either they will try everything going, or they will eat only sausage, egg and chips for the entire duration of their stay. The former reaction is most likely to be found in those who will enjoy their holiday more. In both cases, food poisoning is more cheerfully put up with than it would be �at home�, as watching someone go green is felt to enhance the holiday experience. There is another reaction to eating abroad, and that is to eat where the locals do. It is felt that this is somewhat more worthy. There is also the subfeeling that the locals would not possibly want to poison themselves. If I were to do this in Reading, I would largely end up dining in MacDonald�s, and I have too much respect for my body to do such a terrible thing to it. I must assume that I have come on a luxury self-catering holiday instead. I must thereby convince myself that the ingredients I have chosen from Tesco�s are instead the finest, freshest local produce available, from which I shall make sumptuous feasts. I understand the vegetable oil is extra virgin, and the microwave chips are handcut.
So, in summation, in order to have a holiday in Reading (or Slough, or Basingstoke, or, God Forbid, Swindon), I must first imagine this place as an area of unrivalled exotica: That I can go and do what I want, when I want: That I am staying in one of the finest holiday villas available, and dining on the choicest handpicked foods. In other words, I am on someone else�s holiday, and that I have imagined myself as someone other than I am. With all these criteria considered, two questions arise:
Being someone other than who I am, can I really say that I am enjoying my sojourn in Reading?
And:
Being someone other than who I am, a someone who finds my home town fascinating, the different pace of life invigorating, the accommodation and service wonderful, and the food delicious: Can I stay like this please?

That way, each day becomes a holiday. Our destination is irrelevant, as what we most often need is a holiday from ourselves.

August 2003

Actually, I've just recalculated how much I've drunk.......the wine bottle mountain actually stands at 1,942 metres, and thats a conservative estimate.

Oh my, back at work.............and it's 35 degrees outside......
I've spent the last week not doing much apart from drinking vast amounts of booze. This is a bad thing, as my liver specialist might say, if I had such a thing. A liver specialist that is, not a liver. In fact, I suspect that unhappy organ buggered off long ago. I once calculated how much I'd drunk since the age of eighteen. I reckon I've drunk the equivalent of a bottle of wine every day since 1986. If you stacked all the bottles end on end, they'd reach a height roughly equivalent to that of Ben Nevis.....I'm aiming for Mont Blanc......

seven bottles of wine, four ales and several pints............I feel shit!

My last day at college for a week and a half. Oh yes.
Had some good news about one of my classes yesterday. A group of studes I'd entered into the PET exam all passed, five of them with merits! Now, PET isn't the hardest English exam in the world, but it gave me a warm glow to get a whole group through. Now I just need to wait and see how my CAE and IFP groups go........can I get a 100% pass rate this year? Let's see.

I'm not feeling terribly active today - actually, there's not a huge amount for me to do before I hand over the summer school activities to another teacher. That's nice. Looks like I'll just have to lounge around here till the evening, then go home and get drunk or something. Or look round for a new job. I was at a ball on saturday evening: My wife's company bash. I was sat next to a woman who does corporate training - like teaching, but miles easier. I found out how much she's on - five hundred quid a day. Five bloody hundred sodding quid! A bloody day! that means she earns what I do in two months! Cow.

Friday! Hurrah!
I am sooooooooooooooo bloody sick of marking academic English stuff. Still, the course is reaching its end. I'm pleased with my students though - honestly, if it hadn't been for them, I'd have been off to another job before now. They've all got decent offers from good universities, even great ones. One girl has an offer to do law at SOAS, which is fantastic.
Talking of jobs, I put on my application for Curriculum Manager yesterday. I don't think I'll get it: There's one other candidate who, it seems to me, is a shoe-in for the post. Oh well, no harm in trying. I must say, however, that I'm totally frustrated with struggling to make ends meet and catch up with what I was earning (in real terms) four years ago in Istanbul. Bluh. Hell, what can a teacher do? My profession earns no respect in other spheres. I'm not asking to have a million dollar a year job, just something that'll allow me to live comfortably and pay off all my damn debts. And lounge on a hammock, drinking.
Oh well, back to marking.......enjoy your weekend!

I'm feeling bloody knackered. Setting up and running the efl summer programme in the space of less than a week has been a complete sod. I've been running round all day, booking trips and trying to find people willing to accompany the studes. Bluh. That, and my Academic English class - presentations today: the sodding laptop and computer went up the spout, so I spent a merry half hour finding a room with functional equipment. Then the presentations were so boring that I actually started to fall asleep. Thank god it's nearly the end of the day.

Ahh! The blogging screen's changed yet again! An improvement, however....
A v. quick blog - it's high time I gave another recipe to you all. Hre's one you can try on the barbecue with a glass of raki (or ouzo, if you must go downmarket :) )
Sis Kofte
for this, you will need:
250gr mince
half large onion
1 thick slice bread (preferably dry)
small bunch of flat leaf parsley (or coriander for a spicier effect)
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chilli flakes
3/4 tsp coriander powder
a dab of cinnamon
salt pepper
grate the onion. Using a blender, whizz up the bread(remove crusts!) and parsley. place all in a bowl. Add mince. Add herbs. Knead everything together for at least five minutes. If possible, leave overnight to let all the flavours blend. Now take your mixture, and take a moderate handful. take a large, flat-bladed kebab skewer. These hold the meat far better than a thin skewer. push the mixture to the midlle of the blade, then work it outwards towards each end. repeat with another skewer until you've finished the mix. Cook under a medium high (160-170 degree) grill, or on a barbie. Total cooking time: about 5-8 minutes. Taste: delicious. serve with a really fresh green salad, pitta bread and bulgur wheat. savour with raki. best eaten outdoors on a warm night. Afiyet olsun.

The fun and games continue. I found out on Monday that I was programme leader for the summer school. Seeing as we had our first students appear for it that very day, I was, to say the least, somewhat taken aback. Mike, the temporary Curriculum Manager, had muttered something about summer school back in March, then had promptly forgotten about it. So, now I have to organise testing, classes, schedules and teachers within a week, plus organise a roster of social activities and find the money to do so. Oh joy. It's such fun being dumped in the shit at the last minute, isn't it? Grrrr......
Yesterday was a ghastly one. I had to attend a meeting regarding observation of classes ahead of November's OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) visit. Dull, dull,dull, dull. The trainer was a softly spoken Ulsterman with the magnificently camp name of Bradley Lightborn. It lasted all day. You know how long meetings drain you of your very life essence. I then chaired a meeting of my son's after school club in the evening, which provided comparatively light entertainment.

The wife buggered off to Eastbourne on Saturday. I�d woken up early, coaxed her gently from sleep, or rather tried to. Eventually got her up by inserting sticks of dynamite under the bed. I suggested going down to the coast for the day.
�Oh no�, she said, �It�ll be cold there�.
Fair enough.
An hour later, her friend Hava called.
�Some Turkish girls are getting together and making Turkish food in Eastbourne. Let�s go!�
And so off she went. I dropped her off at the train station, then got Angus� stuff ready to leave him at his Gran�s. Left him there, then I was left in blissful peace for a Saturday night. I decided to go up to the old watering hole, the White Horse. I saw Julian (old chum) up there. After a few beers, and not much going on, we decided to go back to his gaff to carry on drinking. He lives in a brand new flat overlooking the broad sweep of the Thames Valley and Sonning Eye. It is utterly spotless, apart from having underwear draped over the radiators. This I found surprising: I�d expected the homely chaos of a bachelor, certainly where Jules was concerned.
�Nope, mate�, he said, �I like it just like this. Immaculate�.
It wasn�t the only change I noticed in my old mucker. He�s changed thoroughly.
Opinions? Well,
�Thatcher was right. Fuck Tony. The whole country�s going down the pan, mate. Asylum seekers and Guardian readers? Hah!�, and so on and so forth.
Not so much opinions as leader articles for the Sun or the Daily Mail.
I found it saddening, in many ways. Of course, we haven�t really been in the same social group for ages, but I never really reckoned on someone who was a radical in his teens and early twenties doing such a volte-face. Still, he is an old friend, someone I�ve known for nearly thirty years, and we decided not to talk politics and just get drunk instead, which was fine. I eventually staggered home at about three

oh for a glass of ice cold raki and some meze and a seat by the marmara sea....

Urgggg.......................
I either need more beer, or fried dead crunchy things and a pint of sweet tea.

Well well well, a new design for blogger......hmmmmmmm..... I'm not sure I like it yet. I was going to post a piece on some of my favourite writers, but I'll do that later, when I have more time. At present, I have a class due in an hour and a half.....pre-intermediate Chinese.....a scintillating afternoon of crap English awaits.....I also have a hangover. I sauntered up to my old drinking hole, the White Horse in Emmer Green last night. saw an old chum, Julian, and his brother Steve, plus a few other people. Got sucked into a conversation re languages, learning, etymology and other such balls. Then I went home via Grove Road, Surley Row and Shipnell's farm, staggering along a bridleway under a warm, rustling night, fell through the front door and had a couple more beers. Didn't get to bed until 2.30.

Another thing: I feel as if I am stagnant. I haven't read, learned, or done anything new in so long. I reflected sadly on this yesterday, when I was trawling the net for Turkish languages. I found a site that linked to sites in Tatar, Uygur, Tajik, Azeri, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and others. I read through the sites, encountering little difficulty in understanding them, and thinking that I hadn't done anything like this in ages. Why have I stagnated?

Another dull day at college....
Actually, it�s not too bad. Come the summer, come fewer encounters with students. It gives one time to catch up on paperwork, mark essays a month overdue, file bits of paper, complete reports, plan for the next month�s worth of lessons, and sit around on my arse, worrying about money. When I came in this morning, I had a smoke and watched the junior hodcarriers learn their trade. It galled me to think that these little bastards, come leaving college, will probably be earning at least as much as me. For humping bricks around building sites. Here I am, 35, university degree, ten years an EFL lecturer, two of those running a language school with 2000 students, and now stuck on �19,500 a year, failing to juggle a mortgage, credit cards, schooling for my son, debts and loans. Where the fuck did I go wrong? OK, in the grand scheme of things, I�m not doing badly, but compared to what I could be doing, I�m really fucked over. I should have dashed my brains against a wall early on, and lived a contented life hodding bricks, reading the Sun, and ignored the Glamour of Future Great Things.
Well, beating myself up over it isn�t going to alter my situation. The question is, what do I do? I need help: I need someone to help haul me out of this tiresome mire and back into the light. The truth is, I�m afraid. I have responsibilities that I feel I can�t control, and that is the worst thing. I can�t control the necessary circumstances in my life. That wouldn�t have been bad ten years ago, as a single guy, but now, with son, wife, house, car and life, I really don�t know what to do. The juggernaut of debts, requirements, demands and wants is thumping closer through the mad crowd, rolling ever nearer to crush me. And yes, I know I�m not alone, yet I feel that way. I look for an escape route, but the mad crowd, which consists of all the things I need to do, doesn�t let me out, it merely presses harder and harder, suffocating me. The juggernaut looms: soon it will roll over me, squeezing me out of existence.

Help me, anyone. Please. I need money and I don't know what to do......Please, for God's sake, help.

Jolly good, wot! Anyone for tennis? That'll be ten ponies, guv. You're the epitome of everything that is english. Yey :) Hoist that Union Jack!

How British are you?

this quiz was made by alanna

Ty Mawr, Highdown wood, Scott Close and Surley Row, Emmer Green, Balmore hill, Caversham, The Purple Turtle

Is Homer Simpson the greatest ever American? the British public seem to think so....read this story.

The wolf is not so much at the door as rummaging through the cupboards in the kitchen, looking for baked beans. He'll be lucky, I can't even afford those.

No joy here. None at all. I am utterly at the end of my tether. I ahve worked and worked and worked, and still I'm going nowhere. For the last ten years, I have been a teacher, helping others to get on with their lives, and what for? Nothing. I am utterly destitute. I don't have a penny to my name. I owe money to the bank, to credit cards, to the loan company, to every other bastard who has hounded me for money for the last three years, all because I need to support my wife and son. I can't even afford to feed them this week. It's my wedding anniversary next week, but no money even for a card.

The only conclusion I can reach is that I must reach my own conclusion. My wife and son would be better off If I died. Of natural causes, of course.

Ah, summer's here, and with it sore eyes and running nose. Fortunately, my hay fever lasts only for a few weeks. It's my last CAE class tonight, so no more working evenings, until September at least.

Bluhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Haven't posted much recently. V. busy with exams at the mo', plus I haven't really been that arsed. Now I have to give an Academic English lesson. the students are becoming more and more depressed as time drags on. They'll start dying off soon, with any luck.

I'm feeling depressed. I've been browsing through the jobs section today, looking for something new. All of them seem to want either someone younger than me, or someone with slightly more experience than me. I AM STUCK. I had a complete fuck up of a lesson this afternoon. I was doing some work with process writing with my Academic English crew, and I had the bright idea of using the Honda 'cog' ad - you know, bits of car banging against other bits in wonderful sychrony - as I thought it would make for a good bit of writing about processes - how the ad works, how the ad was made etc. Proudly clutching my DVD plus equipment, I go into class, plonk it on, and voila - nothing. The bloody machinery is on the blink. An hour of cursing and kicking ensued. visits to the IT dept and the library finally found me grabbing hold of a DVD player, which sullenly refused to work until I had threatened to pour treacle over its circuit board. And did my students appreciate all this? Did they fuck.........That's why I need a new bloody job. I have now taught at every level of EFL and pretty much every variety of course: standard classes, housewives' specials, academic stuff, exam bloody practice, Polish workmen, every bloody thing. I need a new challenge!!!!! I'M BORED!!

Dear friends far and near,
Please enjoy a taste of the sanctimonious kitschy bollocks I sometimes get sent......
This is from someone called Tasha, from a site called heartwings.
Dear Friends Near and Far,

Heartwings says, "From moment to moment the pleasure of the present moment may change, yet it always remains joyous to the heart."

The subject of this week's Newsletter is Transformation

Spring clothes the outdoors with beauty. The miracle of transformation that brings us from bare branches to the tender colors of emerging leaves takes my breath away and brings joy to my heart. The older I become, the more poignant Spring seems to me to be.

My neighbor was working in her garden. On this lovely Spring day, as I crossed the lawn to speak with her, I was caught in a rain of apple blossom petals. A light breeze sprinkled both me and the grass with pink abandon. I felt both sad and happy at the same time. Even as I admired them, I regretted the fallen petals.

If only it were possible to halt their diffusion, to keep them on the tree. Yet there is no fruit without the sacrifice of the petals. In order for something to be born, something else must die. The blossoms that drift across the landscape are tomorrow's fruit. The green leaves that clothe the branches now are next Spring's compost. Spring must be enjoyed in the moment, for it cannot be captured or prolonged.

This day reminds me to embrace the present moment in all its beauty. It also whispers that whatever I lose as the moment passes will be replaced by something as fine if not finer. I am comforted by the thought that while the blossoms of Spring perfume the air, as they become applesauce, the apples of Fall will fill my home with another fine scent.

May you enjoy the blossoming landscape and find pleasure in each present moment of the Spring.

Blessings and Best Regards, Tasha Halpert



Hmmmmmmmmm.........pass the sick bucket, someone. Pleeeeaaseeeeee.

Oh, bugger it all.

I'm stuck for inspiration. I've been faffing around all morning, wondering what to do with my students this afternoon, apart from torturing them with electrodes. Nothing comes to mind. I hate these low ebbs of creativity. Sure, I can photocopy something out of a book, but duh. It's dull. A dull class = bored students, and bored students learn bugger all. Also, I find that this strange sense of inspirational idleness makes me feel down.

feel shit. I didn't sleep at all last night.

I must, I must, I must improve my blog.......or rather, I should write more. In an idle moment or ten, I browsed other blogs here, and felt strangely heartened by all the teenagers scribbling their hearts out. All the 'life is wonderful, I watched a tree full of rain and nearly cried for joy' stuff, all the ' I hate xxx. I love xxx. I will die' stuff, all the 'I am a great poet, just noone knows yet' stuff.....just goes to show, we all go through it. Hey kids, here's a tip I wish I'd learned sooner: everyone is afraid, even the shiny-toothed Beautiful Ones - all you need to do is work out exactly what it is that they're afraid of. then you'll have the buggers over a barrel and the world will start to make more sense. That, or have a doctor regularly drain you of excess hormones.

Oh, the joy of marking exams.....I can't be arsed doing this job any more, I really can't. I have now been an EFL teacher for ten years (tenth anniversary in August to be exact) and I am utterly tired of pulling the same rabbits from the same hat to the same gawping faces. Don't get me wrong, I like my students...mostly. I'm tired of the job, that's all. Also, I'm actually being paid less in real terms than I was earning four years ago, and then I was in a developing country with a crippled economy! The question is, what else can I do? I'm a teacher, so I have good person and time management skills, I need to keep to deadlines with things like classes, producing results, marking exams etc....I'm fluent in Turkish, can understand quite a bit of most Turkic dialects and languages, schoolboy at French, but I can analyse pretty much any language...Actually, I'm fairly confident that I could master most tongues that could be thrown at me.......I've been DOS of a large school, handling the needs of 2000 students and 30 fractious, highly intelligent English teachers, plus dealing with the little things that happen at a language school, like alcoholism, drug dependency, madness and suicide (and, no, I really am not joking here...)......I have excellent literacy skills, proofreading abilities.....I'm a good actor, and I have a damn good voice..................c'mon, there's got to be a job out there for me!

For any teachers who may be reading this....try this site - it's an internet classroom and it's free! I'm still getting the hang of it.

Oh well, back to work. I'm not actually teaching until this evening, but I've got a hell of lot of admin shite to do - stuff like photocopies, reports, exam prep and marking blah blah blah......The weekend was pleasant, spent digging the garden and visiting people. It is with a slow accretion of dread, like watching the sea come in over sandflats, that I realize that I'm increasingly turning into my parents. Why? I hate it. This steady process of homogenisation seems to come to us all. As long as I avoid wielding a moustache. Or baldness. Or Laura Ashley print frocks.
I took part in the National I.Q. test on Sunday night. Despite being drunk, I still scored 66 out of 70, giving me an I.Q. of 140 (on a scale out of 149). Yeah, right. So bloody what? Look at me, for God's sake. Brain the size of a small county town, and I'm earning less than a toothless beaver on a logging farm......right. Time to do some work.

Bluh. Hungover. Rain. Must eat LARD.....

Ah, Saturday......Mum's taken The Little Terror out for the afternoon, Wife is still sleeping at 2.00, and I have the leisure to do as I will. A couple of years ago, you might have found me in the pub at such a time, but I seem to have outgrown that. I find drinking in the afternoon generally makes me feel ill, unless I'm going to continue into the night. Instead, I'm continuing to rescue my book, The Joy of Raki, which my computer decided to eat one day a few months ago. when I've sorted it out, I'll be posting extracts on this site. Don't get to excited, now..........Have a nice weekend!

I haven't added anything in hte past week or so, as you may have noticed. Coming up....! God, politicians, egotism, quantum stuff, more raki and recipes, and of course, more ranting....keep happy people, the weekend starts tomorrow :))

I'm too tired to have anything much to say. my hand is wandering somnolently, like a tired crab across stones, over the keyboard, waiting for instructions as to where it should place its next weary foot

Yes, I know that we all waste our lives somewhat blogging away, but just look at this site.....Someone still fightin' the commie menace! Yeeeeeee - Hahhhhhhhhh! Reckon the ol' confederate flag ain't going down over your ranch just yet! Dear Pant -T: IT IS DEEPLY BORING. GO DRINK SOME BEER AND FIND SOMETHING TO PROCREATE WITH.

Well, I'm glad that I added a site monitor to my site to see how many people are visiting....thank you, all five of you. I hope you've enjoyed it so far. Now tell all your friends!

AHHH! It's far too nice to be stuck in the office! It's 26 bloody degrees centigrade and it's only April! I'm going down the pub.

Ooooooh, I'm feeling so bitter and twisted that I thought I'd inflict a poem on you all. This is actually a development of an idea I had years ago that I never fully worked out, and is very much a rough draft.


I made a god
Of tattered sticks and tattered rags
Of broken mirrors and plastic bags
I made a god
From holy books
And rotten wood
I made a god
Of Dollar bills
And Shopping tills
I made a god
From any trash
And my body, sold for cash
I made a god
Made like me
Made of shit surrounding me
Made of lies
Made of cries
Made of screams
Made of dreams
I made a story for my God
That told of His Holy Wrath
And of how he sent to me
Tattered sticks and tattered rags
Broken mirrors, plastic bags
Holy Books, rotten wood
Other things,
But all was Good.

More on kids� tv
Roly Poly Fucking Olie
�way up high/ in the roly poly sky/ is the little round planet/ of a really swell guy��
So begins the introduction to Roly Poly Olie, a CGI kids� cartoon, currently shown on channel 5 on British TV. Children like this. I most definitely do not. I can feel my teeth being worn down to stumps just thinking of this bastard programme. Why do I hate this show so much? Where do you want me to start?
For those who haven�t seen it, Roly Poly Olie is based around a shiny, happy family of rotund robots, who live in a jolly, rotund house with a variety of semi-sentient house objects, the majority of which are also round. The whole place looks like it�s been overdoing whatever the robot equivalent of cholesterol, burgers and lard is. Roly Poly Olie�s best friend is a token square robot. He has a smaller sister, who crawls around, burbling maniacally. Apart from mom and dad, he has an uncle who is no other than a robotic Elvis! There is also an elderly robot, purportedly his grandfather�.
The first reason I detest this show is its utterly false premise. Hold on, Paul, I hear you cry. Aren�t all children�s progs based on faintly absurd premises? Oh yes, I answer, but some are worse than others. This robotic twat�s family are not only robotic, they are retro robots. The background music and the dress (yes! Robots must, apparently, wear some kind of garment!) hark back to the late 40�s/early 50�s. Ah yes, back to the mythical Golden Age of America��Mom wears a pinafore, the better to do her household duties, Dad tinkers with stuff in the garage. Everyone smiles, everything�s going great, and everything is resolved happily in handy, ad-friendly chunks. Oh Fuck off. The token square robot (for which read token black kid) wouldn�t even have a look-in in the real mid-century America. He�d be strung up, or at best told to take a different bus. One episode features a robot in a fucking wheelchair! Please.
I could go on describing this programme�s many faults, but I won�t. Here�s just a plea to the idiots who make this kind of dross. Stop it. Now. Stop telling and selling children this comfortable myth, one that will only make them disappointed as they cast their eyes across their own families. As for the Elvis lookalike, all I can say is that you are a bunch of craven wankers for even inventing this character.

Crap joke for the day........
John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, decided that it was time to give his house a makeover. He pondered who to get in to do it, then contacted tv house pundit Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen. The dandy one arrived at the house the next day, dressed in leather trousers and lilac ruffed shirt, and began to enthuse about all the wonderful things he would do to transform it.
'Yeah, whatever, mate', snarled Mr. Rotten. 'Just don't do no lurid colours, right? I HATE lurid!'
John then went off for a well-deserved Sex Pistols reunion tour for a week, seeing the sights of such fabulous places as the Frinton tea rooms, The Guildford Corn exchange and Butlin's in Rhyl. On his return, Laurence stood beaming outside the transformed shack.
'I think you'll just LOVE what I've done!' he cooed, mincing into the hallway and ushering John in. 'Look!'
John stared around him in utter disbelief. The floor, the walls, the ceilings, all were painted a lurid pink-purple shade.
He grabbed Laurence by his florid lapels, then headbutted him.
'What did I tell you, mate, eh?', he screamed. 'No Fuschia! NO FUSCHIA! Nooooooooo Fuschia for meeee!'

GIVE ME A PRIESTLESS GOD RATHER THAN ALL THESE GODLESS PRIESTS!

More war news.....
I see, with a sinking feeling that Donald Ducksfeld's baleful eye has now fallen on Syria. For Christ's Sake, what is the matter with these wankers in the White House? Bush is a twat, but he's basically all these older men's Gimp. So, you think you're acting out some kind of Divine Will? No, you aren't. You're just terribly egotistical. I lived in a Muslim country for many years, and to be quite frank, I'd far rather trust a Muslim than some jumped-up neoimperialist servant of satan masquerading as a servant of God.

Back to the war,,,,
I feel utterly frustrated by the events in Iraq. Can anyone suggest what I can do to realistically help people there?

An indiscriminate list of friends
OK, so I haven�t written for a while. Blame it on the fact that Wife and Child are away. Actually, I�ve had a wonderfully slobbish couple of days: No one shouting me into wakefulness. Anyway, here�s a totally indiscriminate list of friends, past and present, that I will undoubtedly need to update regularly, plus the reasons I like these people. For those who are past friends, I really would like to get back in contact with you.
1. Nur, my wife, my life, the darling star of my heart.
2. Angus, my son, for whom I would spend the last bitter drop of my blood defending: with Nur, he constitutes the constellation of my world.
3. Duncan Sheckley, my Bro�. Dunx I�ve always regarded as my brother, ever since we met while selling car number plates.
4. Martin Heslop. Martingo!! Martin is the most patient, kindly, and among the most kind-hearted people I�ve ever had the privilege to meet. He put up with the most extravagant of my rants and rages while we shared a flat in Istanbul. My Best Man at my wedding.
5. Lynne Sutton. The Doctor. Currently healing the sick of Sydney. What can I say? A great laugh, and looking a lot more Kylie!
6. Peter Boylan. Currently sitting in my DOS seat at Dilko English. Peter, when he came to The Big Stan, was like a large, 50-year-old kid let loose in a sweet shop. He�s become an asset and a necessity to his company.
7. Graham Elton. Grimbo. We�ve argued, often viciously, but I�ve always liked him for his sheer, simple, life-affirming energy.
8. Marc(us) Powles. Made me laugh. I especially loved his drunken rant at a female member of English Centre, �If you were a bloke, I�d kick yer fuckin� cunt in!�. Other than that, a serious, dedicated radical and a fine poet.
9. Jo Richardson. Friend from Uni days.
10. Julian Cook. I�ve known Julian for nearly 30 years. We�ve gone our separate ways now, but I still remember our torpid days in the White Horse.
11. Mike Groves. My current (acting) boss. A thoroughly sound chap. Anyone who can drunkenly decide to stagger into the After Dark club can�t be bad.
12. Pete Mitchell. Sweetie Meatie Peatie! Hehh heehh hehhh heehhh hEEEEHHHhhhh heeehhhhh
13. Lee Hill. At the moment, he has squirreled himself away to write his magnum opus, which will surely be as good as we
expect.
14. Johnno. A strange one, this, as I don�t think it�s reciprocated. My mirror image.
15. Kevin McGuinness. Bejayzus, a foine bloke, to be sure an� begorrah��.J
16. Guy Elders � A Sound Bloke.
17. Andrew Pardue � where are you?
18. Jason Browning. Last seen at Ataturk airport.
19. John McManus. Still Goth after all these years�..
20. Tackle, AKA Alan Blastland. Free Terry Mandela!
21. Matt 'n' Dave. I always think of Matty and Dave as a single entity for some reason. Dave has recently transformed himself
into some kind of 'Matrix' uberman. Matty remains the same.
22. Fiona Woof. Currently doing theatrical stuff.
More to be added�����

Ahhhhh, the end of term!

Well, the war seems to be winding down somewhat. Now let's see what kind of peace appears.....
I was reading the letters column in 'the Guardian' earlier on. Many were commenting on yesterday's front page photo of the feet of thise killed in the previous day's bombing. As I read, one thought came to me: At least we can see, and witness these dead. What of all those under Saddam's regime, all those feet of the dead, that were never seen? Yes, we can mourn those who have died in this war. What of those who went unremarked?
I remain angry about this war, or, more precisely, the pretexts and plans of those that instigated it. I still think Bush is a psychopath. I still think Donald Rumsfeld is a deeply scary human being. I still think that the US administration is not only illegal, but ignorant, bullish and dangerous.

You know those adverts that pop up on our blogspots? Well, I've just noticed that they appear, not by random, but by linking to key words in the text of the last blog entry. For example, my last blog entry regarded children and kid's t.v. Lo and behold, adverts pop up relating to kiddie's stuff. So, if I put any series of random words in, I should be able to influence what kind of advert appears on my blog. Let's try. Penile Enlargement. Barbie. Lard.

The weird world of kid's tv

I enjoy watching kid's tv in the mornings with my son. It reminds me of my own childhood. However, I can't help noticing how weird the world of children's tv programming actually is. Let me take one example for now, as I will return to this topic. It's 'The Busy World of Richard Scarry'. Many have grown up with his books and the cartoon series. This cartoon - 'The bloody weird world of Richard Scarry' might be more appropriate. It contains the cast of the books, including Lowly, who happens to be a jolly, talking earthworm. Quite apart from the fact of having an earthworm as a central protagonist, it's this annelid's actions that are strange. Here's one scenario: Lowly is playing with his friends in a field, when he decides to climb a tree. He falls out of the tree. He writhes on the floor, crying 'Owww! My leg! I think it's broken!'. We cut to a scene in a hospital. Lowly is in a wheelchair.
1) Worms do not climb trees.
2) Worms do not have legs.
3) The requirement for wheelchairs in the dark world of the average annelid is, we can safely assume, zero.
Planet Earth to Richard Scarry: Please, man, get a grip. Please.
Coming soon: Critique of Roly Poly Fucking Olie, rainbow, Mr. Benn and other classics.

I haven't posted much Raki Joy here recently, so it's high time I did. Let me begin by reiterating what a wonderful drink raki is. The scent of anise, the liquid silken feeling of it as you drink, the heightened flavours of food, the happy alcoholic haze you gently succumb to......and the really interesting hallucinations you get if you drink too much.
My first happy experience of drinking this stuff came in December, 1993, in the heart of Izmir. My colleagues, Guy and Luciano, and I were just packing in the lessons for the evening at our dodgy English school. A couple of Luciano's students asked us if we wanted to grab something to eat, so we went with them along the Kordon and down one of Alsancak's back streets until we came to an Ocakbasi. An ocakbasi is, essentially, a restaurant thrown around a large indoor barbecue. You can sit around the grill, watching your food being cooked, and keeping wonderfully warm on cold winter nights. The place was packed, because a Galatasaray-Fenerbache football match was on. We managed to grab a table in a corner, and were joined by the students' friends. They insisted on paying for everything, and insisted on us drinking raki. The food was basic, but excellent: Piyaz (bean salad), Kuzu sis and kofte, Coban salatasi, Haydari, and small bowls of leblebi. The place was hot and noisy and full of fag smoke and the cheers and groans of the men watching the football on the greasy tv perched high in the corner. But what a meal! Luciano was talking in English and Italian: Guy was rapping away in Turkish: I was practising my then limited Turkish with a couple of students, and using my limited French. Still others (there were twelve of us by now) were conversing in German, in Kurdish, in Farsi, in Arabic: A mad babel of languages swirled and dived around our table, fuelled by the food and the raki, a crazy communication that somehow made itself understood to all. Several of the students had been in prison for political reasons, and were cheerfully recounting being tortured: Two guys were merrily arguing about Marco Polo's Voyages, Ibn Batutta and the Seyahatnamesi: Others were talking comparative philosophy. For a few magical hours, I felt entirely entranced by this dinner table, which had all that you need for a good time: Good food, good tobacco, excellent conversation and raki.

Idiotic signs and packaging #1
Go to your local supermarket. Go to the freezer section. Pick up a box of McCain's Micro Chips. Go on, it won't harm you just picking up the package. The plastic wrap will prevent you turning into some zombie trailer slob. Read the packaging. Remember, these are chips, designed to be cooked in the microwave, but just chips (fries if you're American). Made of potato, containing perhaps salt and a bit of oil. That's all. Chips. And what does it say on the package? 'Made from real potato'. Really. 'Made from real potato'.
Dear God in Heaven.

Addendum to previous blog: The Socrates and Plato mentioned are, of course, Socrates O' Flaherty and Plato Jones, bar pundits from 'the Dog and Carcinoma' Public House, Dunfistin, Scotland.

Today's philosophical question, taken from one Socrates posed Plato in a little-known meeting in Athens:
HOW DO UGLY PEOPLE MANAGE TO BREED?

well, whoopy-doo, we're all winning the war y'all......fan-fucking-tastic. Hell, that oil's gonna be flowin an' Halliburton's gonna be makin' a grand profit....yee-fuckin-hah.
In one way, I'm glad that there appears to be a swift end to this sodding travesty - fewer deaths. In another, I'm scared - that psycopath Bush will be given legitamacy through force rather than votes. Ave Ceasar....Morituri te Salutant!
Well, at least there's one thing that the ol' Septics have got better at, and that's killing their own fucking side.
Message to U.S. high command: My neighbour's annoying the hell out of me. If I phone in and tell you there's an Iraqi tank in my neighbourhood, will you send round one of your nice tankbusters to blow the shit out of it? Actually, scrap that. You're more likely to hit me.........

Recipe time!
Well, actually, cocktail time. I'm sure most of you have heard of a Black Velvet: a mix of guiness and champagne. Well, this is what is probably best defined as the complete opposite of that. It was concocted one very drunk summer afternoon in Bangor, North Wales, in 1989.
Brown Velcro
Ingredients
One bottle Newcastle Brown Ale
One bottle pomagne, or any other very cheap fizzy wine.
With hungover, trembling hands, pour ingredients in equal measure into pint glasses. Mix with a heavily nicotine stained finger. Light a fag and feel the headache throb behind the eyes. Take a swig, then start cursing and swearing at the utterly foul taste. After this, you will be able to drink anything. Umbrella and cherry are optional.

Bluuurrggg......I've had a long slog of a day today. I don't mind giving exams, as I having been doing this week, it's just marking the bloody things. Why can't I have my own secretary to do that? The lesson this morning was a fairly half-baked affair. The joys of reading and summary writing.......I could see my students' eyes glaze over after about half an hour. They're a fairly hard working group, but you can only push out the material so far....we ended up chatting, about this and that, but university in particular: I stressing the need to keep their minds open, to experiment with their abilities, and above all, never be shy or afraid, the twin banes of my life.

Wednesday! A week and a half to go till the end of term. My wife and son are jetting off to Istanbul for a holiday with the relatives then, so I will have myself to myself for nine days. I know how it will go....for the weekend, I'll have the sheer bliss of not being woken up early - an extremely rare pleasure. I'll probably end up going out and getting horribly rat-arsed at least once. After a couple of days, I'll start missing them, and spend my days watching daytime tv instead of getting on with life. Indeed, my astounding ability to do absolutely nothing for days, even months, on end has been a sad defining feature of my life. Take heed, kids........I haven't done too badly with my days, but I am keenly aware that everything could be so much, much better. Fear nothing!

I have only one thing to say today.....urrrrgggg.

Reasons why the seventies were crap
1. Cheesecloth shirts
2. Flares
3. Far too much facial hair
4. Prawn cocktails
5. Perms for men
6. D.I.S.C.fucking O
7.Chunky gold jewellery
8. Having to do the Hokey-Cokey at family get togethers
9. Novelty records
10.folk singers, doing bollocks like 'all round my hat'. 'All off our tits' more like.

Oh God I feel pissed off.....All week I've had various letters demanding money from me. It's very depressing. I silently raged against the ovine mother's day shopping crowds. I snarled at the cost of a card that would normally be worth less than half its cover price were it being sold at a different time of year. I despaired at the trinkets, the trash, the overpriced blooms on sale. Some bastards are making money out of this, all right. First you create a want, then people believe it's a need...........:p

Guided by Divine Light?
It seems that my life has been influenced, for better or worse, by divine light. Let me explain....
My father's name is John. My mother's is Sheena.
My first girlfriend's name was Joanna.
I was hopelessly in love with girl named Jo while I was at university.
Many women who have had a profound effect on me have been called Joanne, Joanna, Jean or Gina.
My wife's name is Nur.
What's the connection?
Well, they all mean 'divine light'.
Either it's a coincidence or God is playing silly buggers.