It's late on sunday night, I have classes tomorrow, I feel vaguely ill, yet still I have to write something, mainly because I haven't done anything about it for a while. Over on my ELT blog, I'll be writing about the English UK Teachers' Conference in a bit more detail: Suffice it to say, I did a bloody good job of it, and succeeded in getting people talking about my ideas. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay for the whole thing, as I got a dreadful migraine and had to get out of the place.
I blame the migraine on the stress of doing the presentation, although to be honest it could be a whole gamut of things right now, mainly focusing on the banks and why they are such twats. The halifax have been chasing Nur for a non-existent debt, and I'm afraid to say that I have been phoning them up and sounding exactly like the sort of jumped-up idiot I've always hoped to avoid becoming, threatening this, that and the other to the sod on the other end of the line. In fact, banking call centres have for some reason become a bane to me over the last month or so. To add to my current state of general irritation and incipient apoplexy, we have observations going on next week.
And yet, at the same time, it all somehow doesn't matter. Don't ask me why: It's just this feeling I have that in some obscure way that I don't really understand or even see exactly, everything's turned a corner and is about to get better. Maybe it's because I'm on the verge of being forty and giving up.

God, I'm knackered. I haven't been sleeping particularly well for the last couple of weeks, but I'm damned if I know why. Just general stress, I suppose. It's not helped by snoring either - I've actually managed to wake myself up a couple of times.
Had a pleasant weekend: Invited Ruth and Harriet, a couple of work colleagues, plus their spouses over for an early-ish dinner. Nur made up an absolutely enormous spread, after I'd suggested some meals and she decided to make the lot - Haydari, Sigara Boregi, Acili Ezme, Zeytinyagli pirasa, vine leaves, tavuk kalamar, Hasanpasa kofte, taze fasulye - the full works. A good time had by all, followed by fireworks and sharing out baby clothes that Sean had grown out of.
We also now have a larder full of food that will need to be demolished.

what a banker!

Sodding banks. Or rather, I should say, sodding call centres located in exotic climes, employing local people because it's cheaper than paying some miserable scouser to sneer at you donw the end of the telephone line. To explain: In the past few years, I've had some difficulties with my credit card payments, to which end I've been diligently paying a fixed,interest-free amount regularly. Recently, they sent me a letter saying that my credit card rights had been reinstated, and that I would get a new one in the post. This duly came, late, followed by a letter with my credit card pin number. During lunch yesterday, I was passing the bank and decided to give the crad a try, just to make sure it was working. I put it in the Hole in The Wall, punched in my numbers, and the bloody machine swallowed it and told me to phone a particular number. This I did, after copious swearing: after all, it was a brand new card. After explaining to the call centre employee that I didn't know my card number because it was a new card, he passed me to another centre, where I explained the situation again. The operative took my bank account details, then promised me that another card would be sent out within five days.
It was only later, when I was in a supermarket, that I found out that the stupid ARSEHOLE had cancelled my bank debit card, not my credit card!
Cue, then, an hour of incresingly angry phone conversations, punctuated by a call centre operative giving me a phone number that redirected me back to her call centre! And, apparently: a) I will have to grin and bear it about my bank debit card and b)my new card and my credit account have been cancelled, meaning that should I want it, I will need to re-apply, even though they have just re-issued the bloody thing in the first place!
Needless to say, I am not what you could call a bobtail in a felicitous mood.
Apart from that, Halloween went rather nicely.