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.