quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

....or should that be (in bad latin) quis spectatoriet ipsos spectatores? it seems that OFSTED inspectors just want us to feel their pain; Read this report by the beeb.

Abu Ghraib - under new management, but service as usual....

The scenes of torture of Iraqi prisoners by US troops in Abu Ghraib prison - well, just plain fucking disgusting. How do the Americans expect to control the country with shit like that going on? And what the Hell is this about 'Private Contractors' being used to 'interrogate' prisoners?
I understand that the soldiers who were acting as guards had received no training in their duties and that the chain of command was screwed up, with the 'contractors' having virtual carte blanche to do as they pleased. In other words, this was a consequence of the very Bushian maxim of 'by any means necessary'.
Please, please, let John Kerry win the presidential election this year - let's not have this regime of evil muppet chimps any longer.

Turkish Goodies!

A new shop has opened in Cemetery Junction - a Turkish one! Called Osman Bey; It sells RAKI. Means I don't have to traipse up to London or Istanbul to get some, then. Hurrah!

more fun and games.

To the Crescent Road site this morning, for an Audience with Lee Nicholls, the director of the college: The theme? 'Our OFSTED report, why we're crap and what we're going to do about it', or something like that, anyway. Despite the inspection highlighting that Leadership and Management were poor, it seemed that it would be down to us poor groundlings to take the flak and implement the Post Inspection Action Plan. Moreover, there was nothing in Lee's shiny Powerpoint presentation to indicate what, if any, changes were to be made to the management. One thing caused a rumble of discontent and disbelief; Our Leader wants us to have OFSTED standard observations of lessons on a weekly basis! Bloody ridiculous and unworkable; OTL observers would be doing nothing but observe and feed back instead of teaching themselves. One person, a bitter and twisted lecturer who's been with the college since about 1847, piped up, or rather, ranted at Lee for 5 minutes; I don't think it was because of the plan in particular, it was just an opportunity for a shout.

themes...

...just something I'm stringing together at the mo. Marcus, over here, mentioned trying to do a themed week a while back which went awry. This got me to think of creating an EFL theme directory. Basically, a list of themes with possible associated grammar and vocab areas etc. Let's see how it goes.

A test! Thank God for that!

Giving an exam in a few minutes - good! An opportunity to read a newspaper uninterrupted for an hour and a half. The only bugger is having to mark the sodding things afterwards.

the apparent sameness of everything....

....why do all the female presenters on BBC Breakfast have identical hair and clothes? It's all very Stepford Wives - ish.

for want of a better word....arse!

The title has absolutely nothing to do with the content. I feel discontented, restless, edgy and depressed. Not suicidally so, but an undercurrent of ennui, angst and other foreign words is rumbling through me. Making lists of plans is all very well, but it's nothing without acheiving something. The workload is inexorably increasing at work: The amount of bloody bureaucracy in this place is ridiculous - the end result of poor management. Despite the beancounters, I'm strangely enjoying my classes at the moment.

lunchtime.

just wolfing down something before the afternoon onslaught. The arrival of more bills this morning; More depression. How the hell am I going to pay for them?

how many social workers does it take to change a lightbulb?

...four, apparently. An recent advert depicted a social worker changing an elderly man's lightbulb, thus preventing him havinmg a panic attack due to being left in the dark. Cue Hackney council's Health and Safety executive (I believe it was Hackney; It may have been another London Borough). They stated that, in order to change said lightbulb, you would need one person to change it, another to hold the stepladder steady (a stepladder is requisite to avoid back injuries), one more to turn the light switch on and off as required, and one more to comfort the elderly person being looked after by the original social worker, just in case he/she felt distressed or alarmed by the lighbulb changing event!
a caring, sharing society is a fine and good thing, but this is just bollocks.

feel free....

...to comment!.......or rather you will be able to if I can get this bloody haloscan thingy to work!

The college student website's got more inspirational crap on it. 'Do these people inspire you?' Yeah, right. Princess Diana has really inspired me to wrap myself round a concrete bollard at 80 m.p.h.........Honestly, it's crap. All along the corridors they have these 'inspirational' posters, exhorting the students to greater and better things; stuff like, 'success comes in cans, not cannots', or ' the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary'. Why don't they just go the whole hog and put up stuff like 'strength through joy' and 'ein volk, ein reich, ein college'? And yes, I know my German's crap, thank you very much.

I have far too much work to do.

recipe time!

It�s ages since I posted a recipe on here, so here you go. Be warned, however: It takes quite a while to do (partly because it�s better to produce in bulk) and the result disappear rapidly!

Yaprak dolmasi � stuffed vine leaves
For the stuffing (which you can use for stuff like peppers as well)
250 gr. Rice
one large onion (you can use 2 or 3 medium ones)
pine nuts � about 25 gr.
Small raisins � about 25 gr.
One tomato
Salt and pepper
A fistful of dill
2 tsp. Dried mint
olive oil

You also need about 60 youngish vine leaves. These must be have their stalks cut off and be parboiled for five minutes. Prepacked leaves just need to be boiled.

First, take your rice and blanch it by covering in hot water. Allow to cool, then drain, wash and drain again.

Very finely dice the onion. Heat up the olive oil � go on, be generous with it! Start cooking the onions in the oil. After a few minutes, add the pine nuts. Keep stirring � you don�t want your nuts to burn ;). Keep this up for at least ten minutes (some people do it for twenty). Next, add the rice and again stir this round and toast the rice for about ten minutes. Add salt and pepper. Now add your tomato: This should have been peeled and finely diced. Top up with just enough hot water to cover the mix. Drop to a low heat, cover and let cook for 15 minutes. After that, stir in the dill, mint and raisins, using a wooden spoon. Cover again, turn the heat off, and let the whole lot cook in its own steam for at least half an hour.

Now the fun bit. Take your vine leaves. If you don�t have a non-stick saucepan, make sure you cover the base of the pan with some spare leaves. Add a dollop (about half a tablespoonful) to the vine leaf at its base. Now fold the sides inwards to make a neat package, and wrap the leaf round the mixture tightly: Imagine you�re making a cigar. Pack them tightly in the pan � you can have more than one layer, by the way. Do this to all the leaves until your back hurts and you�re bored to death with the whole damn thing. Add lemon juice, or slices of lemon, and water (about half a pint should be enough). Put a small plate over the whole lot to keep the vine leaves in position and to stop them unravelling. Cover the pan, then bring it to a simmer. Drop the heat and cook for 45 mins � 1 hour or until all the water is absorbed.

Can be eaten hot or cold and absolutely bloody delicious. Hide from all but close friends and family, and even with them give grudgingly. Drink lots of raki. Enjoy.
Afiyet Olsun!

Back to the grind.

Ah, back to the quotidian. My phone is still cut off, and God knows how I'm going to pay for it to be reconnected again. being cut off, of course, meant that I haven't been able to blog for the last fortnight. Oh well, it gave me a chance to catch up on some reading, in this case Dante. Plus I scanned through a load of my old writing onto my computer. Jeez, I wrote some serious crap when I was at uni...
I spent the entire fortnight looking after Angus. Fortunately, the weather was good enough for him to play outside with one of the other munchkins in our neighbourhood. I also erected a shed in the garden. You never know, if the house gets repossessed, it might end up being our only shelter.

happy hols!

At last...the end of the week and the term. I'm going to have a two week holiday now, lurking in my house and building a shed and trying to sort out our dismal finances....since the phone's been cut off, I probably won't have a chance to update this blog, so happy holidays to one and all!

Almost the end of term.

I have been stuffing myself all day with various delicacies and titbits, courtesy of the ESOL department's end of term party. Wherever you find food and booze, especially booze, and especially when it's free, you will find ragged groups of EFL teachers, picking up scraps and sucking at bottles....
I have been working at nights of late, sitting at the bureau my dad brought over, and scrawling stuff in a notebook - -an attempt to kick-start the creative writing process once more. It is tempting to revisit old materials, but I am trying to resist that: I want to look forward, see where I can go. Once I've done something cogent and interesting, I'll paste it here. Till then, the usual drivel.