and finally....

The Good News. Saddam Hussein has been given the death penalty.
The Bad News is that Beckham's going to take it....

well, that's next year's holiday sorted, then...

...but not this year's - actually, I have bugger all cash to afford one....unless there's some kindly soul out there with a couple of grand going spare..?
 We had a few Turkish friends over last night. They've come over here for five weeks to learn English and soak up (probably quite literally) the atmosphere. Impressed them with the food: Potato salad, a really good bit of melon, fresh off the vine tomatoes in a salad dressed with lime, olive oil and a dash of dijon mustard, kebabs and lumps of meat, plus one of my all time favourite foods, mercimek koftesi (lentil balls), for which, here's the recipe:
Mercimek Koftesi
You need:
1 cup (about 250 gr) red split lentils
1 cup (about 250 gr) fine bulgur wheat
water
salt
1 medium/large onion
2-3 spring onions
handful of flat leaf parsley
chilli paste
tomato puree
here we go...
wash lentils. place in pan with 3 - 4 cups water. boil until just cooked (the lentils fall to bits) - about 7 - 10 minutes. Add bulgur, boil briefly, then drop heat to lowest setting. Cook for 15 mins. Remove from heat, and give a stir with a wooden spoon after about 5 minutes - you should have a thick kind of paste mixture. n.b. keep the lid on the pan, otherwise the whole lot will dry out quickly. While leaving mixture to cool a bit, very finely dice the onion and the spring onion. separate the greens of the latter. Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a frying pan, then very gently cook the onion, taking care not to burn it. add spring onion, then the green parts about a minute before removing from heat. add onions to the mix, along with tomato puree and chili paste - you want enough of these two to make the whole take on a red colour: best to add the chili gradually. Also add chopped parsley. Mix thoroughly, then, using your hands, take the mix and make little sausage shaped patties and place on a plate to cool down. Once cool, stuff your face with as many as possible, because they won't last long once other people get their hands on them!
Afiyet Olsun!
edit
I forgot to say why next year's holiday was sorted. Our friends have a villa on Kinaliadasi, a small and v. exclusive island in the Marmara Sea - the ideal place to lounge on a hammock amidst the sea breezes, writing and sipping on raki.....

Music Lessons

Overheard in the corridor earlier on:
Prospective student to a tutor: So, with this music course, yeah, I can do any topic I like for the project?
Tutor: Yes.
Student: So can I do 'Disco Through The Ages'?
Tutor: What, disco as an,erm, movement? erm, well, I suppose so...

I can imagine it now....
1322. The Plague raged across Europe. Half the population were dying, while the other half were boogying to St. Vitus!

Hurrah!

My Malaysian Chum, Nat Oppenheim, has come back from a weekend jaunt in Istanbul, bringing RAKI in her wake - for me! I'll be feasting on stuffed vine leaves, karpuz and beyaz peynir tonight :)

Further to that article about Mrs. Bin Ladin I mentioned the other day (see below): It struck me how all zealots, whatever their faith may be, have several things in common. The first is their desire to be powerful; second, their overweening egos, that say they are utterly correct no matter what; and third they do not really believe in the righteousness of their respective gods, but rather believe in the righteousness of their faith in their gods. When such people pray, all they hear back are the whispers that eternally echo and circle round their closed, metallic minds.

my son on his sports day 

Later, much later...

..well, it's 3.35 to be precise. The Saudi visit went OK: A group of 10 trainee teachers at Reading Uni came along with their tutors. I showed them round the glories of the college, had tea and observed classes. They seemed v. happy with the whole thing. And I managed to squeeze money out of finanace for a couple of trips. And the potentially sub-normal stude wasn't, as it turned out - just a lazy bugger who'd studiously avoided studying any English at all before arriving here. So, this has been a bugger of a day, but it's turned out alright up till now.

the Saudis are coming!

A very quick post, which I shall edit later. I have a group of Saudi trainee teachers coming in, and have to show them round....I have also had dumped upon me some poor Chinese kid who seems to have extreme learning difficulties, with whose parents I would just LOVE to have serious words.....
Read an interesting article in The Grauniad yesterday, with the ex-wife of the brother of former black sabbath frontman and religious extremist Ozzie Bin Laden ("Sharon! There're fookin' infidels in the fookin' garden again!"). More on that later....

Not Happy. Not a bunny.

...I'm having one piss-of off a day so far......
Trying to organise this bloody summer school is turning into a far more serious headache than last year's. No one in finance or HR or the principal's office seems to know, understand or care whose responsibility it is to actually pay for trips for the students, even though the students have these damn excursions as part of their course; I can't book excursions until the last moment, as I don't know how many people I'm going to have in any given week, and consequently I have to wait till this time on a Monday (4.49 pm) before I can make a move. This little problem is compounded by Finance insisting on monies being raised at least 4 DAYS in advance, plus I need to get permission from various bosses (all of whom are on holiday) for the bloody trip to go ahead, said permission being granted a week in advance. OK, I could put the permission forms forward early, but they insist on having a list of the students (along with a risk assessment form so they can cover their miserable hides should their be some kind of litigation inducing accident) before they can give assent. And of course I don't know who'll be on it.....

Life - what Joy!

I have noticed that 'the joy of raki' is, when the word 'raki' is googled, the second site to appear on the list!

schadenfreude

the are times when the folly of our fellow humans warms the cockles of the heart....here's a story of texting and greed...

It's 4.39, and near the end of a very long day. I've been here since 8.00 this morning, organising the summer school, getting teachers to cover classes, arranging trips and posters and handbooks blah blah blah. So far, we have a grand total of six students for the class: this is six more than we were anticipating this time last week. I managed to extract from the International Ofiice Coordinator, at five o'clock last friday, the list of people expected to come, which meant I had to frantically prepare a load of junk after that. I was the last person left in the building, apart from the miserable porter, who goes round swinging his keys and rattling doors - something I'm sure is a typical behaviour of porters, janitors and doormen everywhere. Oh well, only 17 days to holiday time.
You know that most people grumble about teachers and holidays, thinking them lucky to have so much, to which the teachers riposte that they have to attend conferences, mark and prepare things etc? Well, let me tell you, we teachers are lying! Yes, we get 40 days' paid holiday each year, and we bugger off to exotic locations to get drunk off our asses! Ha ha ha!
I have, I must point out, made up one of the points above. We can never afford to go to exotic places: Instead, we just go to a different bar for the duration.

Nature.

While I was in my garden last night, a woodpecker landed by my hand! I don't know who was the more surprised. It took a look at me, then flew off to a safe distance.

The other day as well, I saw an enormous pike sunning itself in the shallows just downstream of Caversham weir. It was at least a metre long.