work.

Bluh. Back at work. I've had a week and a half off, hence no entries for a while. Well, we managed a few days down in Devon - Kingsteignton, to be exact. Which was nice, but I could have done with a few more days of it: By the time I'd wound down from the stress of driving all the way there, it was time to come back. I'll post some piccies later. Driving there only confirmed to me what arseholes Audi drivers are. Is there any rational explanation for their need to tailgate you on a motorway, aggressively push other cars to the side of the road, and be general all round dickheads? As a cyclist, I hate them (and don't start me on FUCKING Volvo users - smug beardy middle class, daily mail reading bunch of knobshafts): as a driver, I find them despicable.

And another thing....it's six months since I gave up smoking!

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.

Of pyramids and Shakespeare

I was watching an interesting bit on BBC News earlier on, about a new exhibit at the British Museum . It's a 3D representation of a complete Egyptian mummy that underwent a CAT scan, so the archaeologists didn't have to undo the thing to peek inside. I have an abiding fascination with old things, so it'll be an exhibit I'll see next time I'm in the Smoke. One 'curious feature' discovered was a strange serpentine figure on the skull. As the newsreader chirpily put it, 'Stargate fans, take note!'
Another thing I love is science fiction, so you can imagine that I love Stargate. It is total rubbish, but it makes perfect sunday afternoon viewing, post lunch: Being slightly pissed on a decent bottle of red wine, whilst watching some guys running around pyramids. With spaceships and explosions. Bliss. (And you get Time Team afterwards as well). OK, OK, it is rather sad, butb there you go. We all need something to do on a sunday afternoon...
As I said, Stargate is enjoyable, but absolute tosh. The pyramids were not built with alien technology, the Egyptians did not have access to strange devices, forgotten Ancient Knowledge, or stargates. They did have access to rock, mud, primitive cranes, a decent knowledge of geometric principles and architecture, slaves and whips. That was enough to build the pyramids. But of course, many people don't want to believe that. And why?
For the same reason that some people don't want to believe that Shakespeare wrote his plays. Last week saw the 400th anniversary of the death of Edward de Vere, a nob who some say was the real author of such plays as Hamlet, King Lear, and Henry V. Oh, and The Tempest, which was written after 1604. Hmmm...Likewise, some say that Francis Bacon wrote them, or Ben Jonson. Anyone but Shakespeare.
And why?
Because it isn't romantic enough. According to these people, the Egyptians can't have built the pyramids because they're, well, the pyramids. Shakespeare can't have written the plays because they're, um, his plays. That someone can create something staggering, an artifice or a piece of literature in a way that has never been done before, seems incredulous to such people, and people who don't want to credit the evidence of their own eyes tend to be credulous, and grasp at any passing straw instead. So, in their opinion, the pyramids must have had alien intervention because of their size and alignment to certain stars. The plays must have been written by a nobleman, because lords and such were erudite and well-travelled, unlike lowly Stratford schoolmasters.
What they forget are two things: First, that even the most ordinary of us, by putting our minds to what we really want, are capable of achieving the apparently miraculous; and second, that others have what they have in abundance, namely an imagination.

Thwarted.

A great word, that. Try getting students to pronounce it, and get ready to run from the incoming phlegm tide...
...but it describes yesterday quite well. I had intended, it being sunday and having just been paid, to spend the afternoon and evening in the garden, doing nothing but languish in the sun, eat mezes and barbecued things, and drink glass after glass of milk white, ice-cold raki, while chatting and laughing with my wife, and not worrying about a thing for a few blissful hours.
Fat Fucking Chance.
It pissed down all afternoon; Nur got up, then went out for FOUR HOURS, leaving me stuck at home, then spent the rest of the day, first gardening, then watching a video! All whilst my son was becoming increasingly bored and restful and kicking up a stink. And then, just to wrap it up, she began going on about our money problems at 10 o'clock in the evening after I'd dosed myself up on raki! I couldn't take it; I just decided to go upstairs and curl up into a ball, and sleep the righteous sleep of the distilled-grape-and anise blessed.
...and was promptly disturbed by screeching, yelling and fighting from some arseholes on the street at about 2 in the morning. I drifted into a vague sleep afterwards, only to dream vividly about places in my own dream 'metaworld'. These are places that I frequently visit in the night, and to which I ascribe symbolic ideas, moods, worries etc. Last night, I was in the City of Antiquities, a dusty and morose place somewhere hot. I was walking up and down a marble paved street, looking up to a museum with a gaping roof and large windows, stuffed with busts and statues, and opposite was a small, rock cut tomb (empty), reminiscent of a Lycian grave. I was thinking of stealing one of the statues, though God knows why. Later, the dream faded, and I was in a busy city street, first going through a series of deserted underground shops, then upwards through narrow alleys. Then I realised I was dreaming, and decided to try to fly. I only got a couple of feet off the ground, and caught sight of myself in a mirror (arms outstretched, a small pair of white wings flapping lazily) before I woke up.

I can't hear a f*****g thing...

What can I say?
Alright, we were robbed of the goal at the end of full time, but I can just about accept that.
England looked increasingly tired and lacklustre, and seemed to lack focus after Rooney left. That too is understandable.
Portugal played a great game. Good for them.
What I do not understand is this...

Which idiot thought it would be a good idea to let David Bowie referee the game?

What next? Sting (with Rod Stewart and Bryan Adams on the sidelines) in the semis? Jarvis Cocker for the final?

The kind of day at work that I like - one where I don't have to teach anyone, but can indulge in creating wierd and wacky new materials to use in class. Who the bloody hell am I kidding? 'Wierd and wacky', indeed. By and large, Materials for ESL students are worthy, uncontroversial and dull. One of my profession's Prime Directives is, 'Don't Panic/Offend/In any way Enrage/Engage the interest of the Punter', so it means that sex, drugs and politics are off the menu. What the Hell else is there to talk about? I'd just love to do a vocabulary lesson based around a good ol' saturday night out in the UK. Let's see, which lexical items could we use?....
To drop a tab
Score some drugs/E's/Dope etc (well, you should cover all possible collocations)
Blingin' and Bling bling
To get arseholed
To get jiggy
and so forth, and so on.
What I have actually done is design a course for the summer school programme, for which I now have to book a series of outings, and design an interview protocol to follow up on students' research assignments.
What Fun.
The football - well, what can you say? Good, but it would have been better to have been down the pub watching it rather than stuck at home. More than made up for, however, by the presence of a bottle of raki, from which I had a few glasses accompanied by some beyaz peynir, haydari, salata, ekmek, kofte ve bulgur pilavi. Yum!

Another glorious monday morning - and now the days will slowly but surely start to draw in once more.....there, that's made you feel happy and optimistic, hasn't it?
I don't know particularly why, but I don't have the incentive at present to write on a computer; I feel more like scrawling in a notepad, chucking out demented cartoons of whatnot and thingummyjigs. Hence I must needs force myself to write something, anything in order to keep me going.
We had a delighful workshop with Bradley Lightbody of Quiet Associates last week, on the joys of keeping a Scheme of Work for our respective classes. Myself and other teachers from my department took delight into laying into his absolute, over-idealised guff. Balls to it all! I spent virtually all of last week doing fatuous paperwork or someone else's job, rather than what I'm paid to do.
Saturday, and in the college again, for the FCE and CAE speaking exams, which went pretty well. Came back home, and Wife and I decided to crack open the bottle of champagne that's been languishing in the fridge for months. Nice. Then we got quite merrily pissed up yesterday round at my mum's.

bored and tired.

I had a tedious, tiresome day yesterday, and it looks like being pretty much a rerun today. Bluhh.

yes i said yes.

Man gets up, has breakfast, has a dump, goes out, wanders round a bit, goes to a funeral, pops into work, has lunch, pootles round all afternoon, has a wank on a beach, gets pissed, staggers into a whorehouse, has the late night munchies, goes home, pisses in the garden, kisses his wife's arse.

HAPPY BLOOMSDAY!

I should be working...

...but I can't be arsed right now, so I'll do an entry instead. Despite it being exams week, I can't help but feel that this is a time to relax, as I don't have to fret and fume over making lesson plans for now. Instead, I have the joy of paperwork to deal with: Preparations for the summer school prog, a 22-page course review and targets overhaul, marking a load of largely plagiarised asignments from my academic English course and tying up any loose ends from the classes that finished last week. And it is bloody boiling in my staffroom.
I felt in a grim mood for most of the weekend, partly due to my hayfever, mostly because of my ongoing money problems - which found me without any money in the bank at all, and none until June 25th. Basically, it means we're going to starve next week.
I took out my despair, anger and aggression on a long, hard bike ride. I cycled down the Thames Path as far as Hambleden Lock, dragging my bike over stile and fence, thumping over root and pothole, then up towards Aston, onto a footpath at Remenham Hill, back down to Henley, then home via Harpsden, Binfield Heath, Dunsden and Emmer Green. Turning off from Hambleden Lock, I came into a meadow covered in wild poppies, a tide of red nodding in the breeze; On the footpath at Remenham Hill, I walked through a weird forest of pines, where fine, dead branches reached almost to the ground, and the light was a subdued sepia; Further on, I stood in a hilltop field, looking down onto a broad sweep of the Thames Valley towards the Chilterns, and saw a red kite circling lazily, and heard the cuck-cuck-cuck of a pheasant.
And having seen all this, it came to me that there are harder things and worse things than my current predicament, and that I live in a glorious, beautiful place.

of dogs and water coolers....

Last night was, er, the last night for the evening classes, and so a good excuse to skive off the lesson and head for the pub, the Fisherman's Cottage. A gaggle of students, two of my colleagues and I went there and sat out in the garden over beer. We were trying to have a civilised conversation; Unfortunately, the pub's dog put paid to that. It's a mangy, one-eyed pit-bull cross, and it had a friend come to visit - another pit bull cross. They were obviously happy to see each other, as they took turns to bugger each other all round the garden for half an hour. It was rather disconcerting to try and understand what a student was saying whilst being distracted by a humping dog.

We had a meeting, as usual, this morning. One of my fellow teachers, Kathryn, who's only just returned from maternity leave, had a bit of a cough, so left the room to get some water. Quite reasonably, being staff, she went to the nearest staffroom to get a cup. Quite normally, this being Reading College, the people in the staffroom wouldn't let her have any, because 'you work for a different department'. Kathryn insisted, and finally the woman guarding the watercooler opened a cupboard, got out a plastic cup and filled it halfway, then grudingly gave it to her. And then waited for her to give the cup back.
As Kath said later, 'I'm so glad to return and find some things never change...'

bloody arses.

...I tell my academic English class to bring in their country comparison assignments so I can check them before they are handed in, and what happens? 'Oh, it's stuck in computer'.'I've done it, it doesn't need checking'. 'I forgot'. 'The dog's eaten it'. Oh well, they'll be sorry when I start handing out big fat zeroes.
One guy brought his. The introduction is cetainly dramatic, and full of amazing news: 'Two days ago, Mussolini was captured and shot by Italian partisans...'

Blimey.

Egad, it's hot

It is far too warm to be teaching this afternoon. Instead, I shall show a video to my students, and whisper 'sleep...sleep' into their ears until they succumb. In all honesty, I have nothing else to do with them; They've taken their exams, and I just have today and tomorrow with this particular class. Likewise my evening group - 2 more classes, then exam time. At least with them, I can go to the pub.
Spent the early part of the morning fiddling with my telescope, trying to view the transit of Venus. Managed to get a decent view of what appeared to be a small mole on an arse cheek.

crikey!

Someone I was at university with was in the Guardian's weekend supplement!It was an article about up-and-coming poets, and it took me two read throughs of the article to remember Deryn Rees-Jones; She read English at the same time as me, and as far as I can recall, was quiet and highly industrious and ended up with a First. I don't think I could have talked to her more than a couple of times, busy as I was living a life of boozed-up, party-lovin' Bohemianism.

Bad news over at Marcus' blog: He's been sacked by his Nazi Employers. My thoughts go out to you and Dao, mate.

Despite drugging myself up, hayfever is still making life horrible. Everything inside my head is itching and I feel like I'm looking at the world through cotton wool.

TV

Just a couple of random thoughts on television.
First, breakfast telly, the weather forecast, and the eternal sunlight that is the mind of Carol Kirkwood, the Scots presenter.
'Goooooooooooood Morning!! And it's absoluutely GORGEOUS today!!!!!'
You can actually hear the exclamation marks. Just how on earth does she manage to sound so bloody upbeat so early in the morning? It doesn't matter if it's blowing a gale with added snow - she's always insanely happy. She's probably been injected with caffeine and ecstacy before the show goes out. Just for once, it'd be nice to hear her say something along the lines of, 'Morning. Isn't it fucking shit weather today? I'm off for a fag.'

Next, Big Brother. I have watched only a couple of episodes of this so far, but I don't feel particularly tempted to watch more. It's ghastly in the same way that an impending accident is. C4 have clearly rounded up the biggest bunch of morons they could find. So far, it's just a group of people shouting at each other. None of them would recognise a cogent argument even if it coshed them viciously over the head.
And which preening idiot's idea was it to let Kitten in there? I know that editing does distort a person's character on reality shows, but so far Kitten appears to be badly in need of counselling; everything she does seems to be screaming 'HELP!!!!' Just calling herself 'Kitten' is sad enough.

Now what would be good would be to let Kitten take over Carol's job, and Carol to be slung into the BB house.

.

I feel dreary and miserable, partly because of my hayfever, which has flared intensely this year, partly from a sense of ennui engendered by staring at the pile of work on my desk that's demanding to be done, and partly from my terrible financial situation. Having money would be a nice thing; I don't mean much, just enough not to get freaked out about bills and worrying if the phone's going to get cut off, or be able to buy something nice for my wife and son, or even go out to the cinema or a restaurant now and then. That's all.

I veer between an extreme interest in doing my job well, and not caring about it at all.
Oh sod it, I'm just in need of a good moan right now.

drunken creativity.

We�re off to mum�s in a bit, for (hopefully) a barbecue. The weather, typically for a bank holiday weekend, looks as though it�s going to piss down. My back is slightly sore, a result of bending over a breadboard for the last hour, making stuffed vine leaves.

Which idiot invented these bloody things?

Now, I absolutely love dolmas, but they are tiresome in the extreme to make. Just doing the rice properly takes over an hour. Then preparing the leaves, filling them, painstakingly rolling them and stacking all carefully in a pan before cooking for 45 minutes. Then they go in a flash.

The only person who could possibly have invented these was a bloke.

A very pissed bloke. Let�s face it, it�s the kind of food, like banana and marmite sandwiches, which only the terminally drunk could have invented. Picture the scene: Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus get home (very late of course), tanked up on retsina and ouzo.
Agamemnon: Gods, I�m pissed!
Menelaus: What you got to eat, Odysseus mate? I�m starving!
Odysseus: Well, there�s some rice, few pine nuts, currants�that�s about it.
Agamemnon: what, no bread? What we gonna eat with that, then?
Menelaus: �ere, how about these, then eh? (waves a bunch of vine leaves at Odysseus)
Odysseus: you can�t eat them!
Agamemnon: Yes, you can � go on, I dare you!

And the rest was history.

Indeed, when you look at some of the stuff we eat � snails, oysters, sheep�s brain, Ginster�s pasties � they can only be the result of drunken bets long, long ago.

mapledurham house, still owned by the Blount family: as Mike put it, 'I wonder if they have a daughter?' 

more students: meng wen, judy (qiaodan hu),meng zhang: ke zhang, my Cambridge candidate, is taking the photo 

some of my ifp students: (l-r) roy, ming, zeng, edward 

from front, then l - r: simon, mary, chrissy and mike, colleagues 

bangor pier, 1989 

more exam shit.

Giving an exam tonight; the listening and speaking sections of the CAE. Let's see how badly they do. I am feeling severely stressed at the moment because of the sheer amount of work on my plate as well as all the money crap on the domestic front. Right now, I feel I could just walk out on everything & disappear. I am also organising a sodding outing for the students, for which I haven't had the time or, to be perfectly frank, the inclination to get really ready. Nevertheless, it shall go ahead tomorrow. whoopee.

wednesday once more..

..and halfway through. I'm wracking my brains for cunning ways to stretch the materials I've got for this afternoon's lesson. It's going to be bloody boring anyway; It's the joy of academic reading...
quote for today:
'The hail bounced off the pavement like maggots being fried in hot grease.' - from a selection of GCSE essays, sent to me by one of my students.

an old photo of mine, but a good one; this shows Glaslyn from the summit of Snowdon. 

a few things re work

I had my fortnightly programme leader meeting with the boss yesterday. I found out that, rather than being able to do the DELTA course I've been after for the past few years, I will have to do a certificate in Education, so that I comply with FENTO standards. A certificate in Education basically means that you have at least a vague idea of what a classroom is. It's just another piece of crappy bureaucracy and a waste of time, space and money. the upshot is that it probably means I won't be able to do DELTA for at least another year. Bollocks.
Student quotes for today:
'I am champion of glof.'
'As a result, it will be cause secondly to be mind unfortunately.'
If anyone can work out what the hell the last one's about, please feel free to mail/comment.

Now he's invading my dreams!

Horrible, horrible, horrible!
That's all I can say about the dream I had last night. It was all quite pleasant; I was in my garden, chilling out with a beer and relaxing with a book, when all of a sudden Mr.Chimpy fuckwit himself appeared - George W. Bush! The bastard was walking round my garden, smirking his monkey smirk. I started yelling at the twat - 'Fuck off, you wanker! Just fuck off!' - then woke up.
Now that is scary!

On a more pleasant note, I must say that I like the new photoblog option.

angus and his gran 

lets see of this photohosting works then.... 

monday yet again

...I'm not posting as often as I'd like here, but then I'm v. busy at work right now; Exams are coming, everyone's getting stressed out, and I'm on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The money situation is atrocious. If there's anyone out there that can help me, please do so! I've somehow managed to survive on �17 this week. I am also in the throes of hayfever, which has left me feeling stuffy headed and brainless.
And the handlebars on my bicycle decided to part company from the rest of the bike. While I was riding it.
I nearly went into the bloody river.
Oh well, another great start to the week.

just recovering from a hangover

....occasioned by sitting in the garden yesterday afternoon, eating sis kofte and mezes, listening to Turkish music, and drinking a shedload of raki. And wine and beer. It was an absolutely beautiful day yesterday - not bad today either. The hawthorns overhanging the garden are in full bloom: their, to put it mildly, heady perfume overarches all the other smells. Nur wrinkled her nose when she smelt it.
'Paul, it stinks of shit out here!'
'It's just the hawthorn.'
It doesn't smell of shit at all; If anything, it smells like sex, that combination of sweat and saliva and come. Whether this is incredibly erotic or nauseating is pretty much down to how you view it.

Hmmm....Friday....

The weather's far too nice for this teaching mularkey. I'm going to escape from here as soon as bloody possible.

A day by the sea.

On May Day, the family went down to Mudeford in Dorset, with the express purpose of getting on a boat, going out to sea and tossing my grandfather over the side � or rather, gently scattering him into the English Channel. It was a piss-miserable day leaving Reading; The rain belted down, the wind alternately whispered and howled, big black clouds swaggered and bowled through the sky. Mum, Nur, Angus and I headed south in the former�s car, travelling roads I haven�t been down since I was about twelve. Past Stratfield Saye and The Jekyll and Hyde, past the octagonal house at Chineham, then through Basingstoke rapidly, where the sun decided to join us in brief intervals. We hit the M3, going almost to Southampton before turning off onto the M27, then into the New Forest, where I saw the peculiar three-storey house that always announced to me, when I was a child, that we were nearly at the beach. Finally, we arrived at Mudeford at about 10.15, where we found the rest of my family already gathered. The cloud had gathered again, and gobbets of rain fell intermittently. A small boat was ferrying people to Hengistbury Head; The younger members of the family were fishing for crabs; The car park was full of dour-looking families, penned into their vehicles by the weather. Yachts filled the bay, scudding along on the wind, sails gleaming, a busy spin of colour. A fisherman was stacking some lobster creels, and a small caf�, the type that smells of egg sandwiches, milky coffee and hot vinegar, was packed. Despite the occasion, everyone in the family seemed to be in a happy, almost festive mood. We were making fun of Gary, my cousin Lisa�s husband, because he gets violent seasickness and wouldn�t be joining us on the boat; Their two children were busy hauling crabs out of the sea, while Angus looked on; The men chatted about golf.
We got on our boat, a twin hulled open deck aluminium ferry, at about 11.00, and headed towards the open sea. The sun was struggling to get through the clouds and briefly made the wave crests shine like old pewter. A jetski roared past, and a fishing boat heading towards shore. We made jokes about throwing up or falling in the water, while I busied myself with trying to write a poem (still writing it). I have written something each time one of my relatives has died � whether they�re any good or not, only time will tell. Finally, we got a mile offshore. Law dictates that human remains may not be disposed of further towards the shore than that, apparently. The skipper cut the engines and turned the boat so that it faced the land again. He opened a gangway door, so that dad, when he let the ashes go, could be nearer the surface of the water. We all went silent. Dad got the urn and knelt carefully by the lapping water. There were no prayers.
�Right, It�s time,� said dad. �This is where Dad wanted to be, and he�d be happy to see us all here. As I pour him into the water, just keep a favourite thought of him in your head.�
He took off the lid, upended the urn. A stream of ash, a flow of what had once been bone and teeth and hair and nails and viscera and heart and brains and a loving, happy smile and glittering eyes, poured straight into the sea and down. I had a sudden feeling of the great depth and volume of the water and the swirl of dust that had been Grandad glittering and curling through it, like cream on black coffee or the arm of a galaxy against the blackness, falling and gleaming until it reached the bed. A sudden, brief wail went up from the women, an intake of breath and the sound of crying and sniffing.
�Bye, Dad.�
My father had said it almost to himself; I just about caught him saying it, and saw a few tears.
We threw flowers over the side of the boat � roses, sprays of heather � then watched in silence as the boat gently turned on the current, before the engines were cranked up again.
As if to complete the sombre moment, a seagull appeared and wheeled over the spot, then it began to rain.
It rained bloody hard. We all got sodding soaked.

Jesus is coming - look busy!

One of my students wears a black wristband with the initials �WWJD� on it. I spotted this while we were doing some listening exercises.
�What�s that?� I asked.
�It�s a wristband�, said Edward.
�Yes, I can see that, I mean what are the initials for?�
Tony piped up, smiling.
�He�s a Christian. It�s for �What Would Jesus Do?��
What would Jesus do, indeed. I had images of Him wondering through the college canteen, picking over the various articles of what is laughingly called �food� there. What would He do? Go for the ploughman�s lunch, only �2.99. That and a slush puppy. Now he�s in a language exam: What will He do? That�s right, get every answer correct, seeing as He�s omniscient! My, but he�d be an annoyingly smug bugger to teach�.
Asking, in any given situation, what Jesus would do seems to me a bit of a no-brainer, in that He would either do nothing, as stuff would just happen around Him anyway, or, to be trite, be meek and mild. Or rather, Meek and Mild. Aggressively Meek.

stupid coincidence.

I've just found out that Carl, my work colleague who sits opposite me, was at the same Marillion gig at Milton Keynes Bowl as I was back in 1986. And now we are reduced to the same miserable circumstances, working in this college.

Holy Camels!

....I found out yesterday that one of my students is the niece of no less than that new frenna freedom, Colonel Gadaffi! I mentioned this to my evening class; One of them said, 'If she's his niece, why the Hell is she coming to Reading College?'
Why, indeed.
Now, it'd be extremely funny if he ever popped in for a visit....

Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?

....the army's 'robust denial', that is, of Brits torturing someone. This row will probably rumble on for a while, but I think I'll have to side with the army on this one. As a photographer myself, & in particular someone who's done shots for theatre productions, I have to say that the shots are just too sharp and seem too staged, in particular the one of the soldier 'kicking'. Also, the blood doesn't look convincing at all. That's not to say that it isn't a recreation of a real incident however; It's just that the photos don't convince me. And the timing was remarkably apt...

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.

Far too nice.

the weather, that is. It's a beautiful day outside, and I'm stuck doing academic English for the whole of it. I'm also still feeling wiped out. I don't know, it's as if I have no energy whatsoever to do anything. I feel like sleeping, but at the same time, I don't. Oh, I'm just blabbing. Bollocks to it all.

Shit! It's only Tuesday!

...and I'm already knackered. Have spent the entire day with the nice but dim class, visiting Oxford. At least we had nice weather for it, and it went fairly well. Did all the usual tourist stuff, and threw in what I could remember about the city's history etc. Traipsed for bloody miles,though: My feet are stiff as buggery now. And I have another 2 hours of teaching ahead of me, before cycling home, getting myself some dinner, then collapsing into an exhausted heap on the floor.

My dreams of smoking are becoming more vivid. Last night, I could even smell the smoke, and I thought to myself,'Shit, there goes that resolution'. In waking life, however, I'm still nobly resisting. In fact, the only time I ever get a faint craving now is after I've drunk a couple of pints or a couple of glasses of wine, but it's a feeble affair. So why am I dreaming of cigarettes? As far as I can work out, it's some kind of anxiety dream, which (let's face it) is hardly surprising, considering my situation. And I'm generally aware of the folly of my situation.

Two depressing quotations.

'There is no such thing as society' - Margaret Thatcher, 1981

'We are all middle-class now' - Tony Blair, 1998

survived.

We had Angus' birthday party on saturday. He invited 15 or 16 of his closest friends. What joy - a house full of 5-6 year olds. Well, Angus enjoyed it anyway. And it was only 2 hours. here's a question, though: Why are young children so flatulent?

Blacker and blacker...

My home phone got cut off yesterday. i've got no money to pay for the fucking bill, which stands at well over �200, thanks to my darling wife, who has not paid for a fucking thing for the last six months, expecting me to pull money out of thin air to cover everything, and I've got other bills to pay that I can't, plus the fucking expense of hosting a party for a gang of caterwauling 6 year olds, I haven't got a decent pair of trousers to wear, my shoe leather is wearing thin, the screaming bout of eczema has still not succumbed to treatment, I feel ill and exhausted, every motherfucker is whining at me to do something for them, the levels of bureaucracy involved in my job have now attained idiotic levels, and now what?

My students, these people I sweat for, who I help to get their personal statemenmts just right, or to understand precisely how the grammar or structure work, complain about me.

I have seemed 'angry', and 'upset'. I 'am not helping them enough'.

You mean I'm not my usual, bubbly self? I push myself as hard as I can in class to be entertaining, to make the subject lively and thought-provoking and useful.

This is the first time I have been criticised for my teaching since early on in my teaching career.

What a bunch of fucking ingrates. Total fucking cunts. Whiny bunch of pock-marked, sag-shouldered, dreary-minded, dull-witted, knuckle-dragging fuckwits.

Fuck them all. Fuck all the bastards screaming for money, fuck all the demands for a piece of me, fuck every fucking one.

only a few more hours.

Then i can go home. i have done absolutely fuck all this afternoon. I can't be arsed to mark these bloddy exams, or the essays I got from my advanced class on Tuesday. Instead, I've helped one of my fellow teachers, opera singer, teacher, and all-round party person Gill Tunley, design an invite for a night out next thursday. She wanted to embellish it with a boring picture of an italian restaurant or a slice of pizza or something, but I suggested this. Then this one, and also this. In the end we did all three versions.

A day when...

....people are walking round with faces like slapped arses. I don't know, everyone seems to be in terminal miserable mood today, myself included. I do, however, feel bloody horrible: a combination of mild illness, a series of late nights and a bottle of wine last night, plus the background despair regarding my finances. I sloped into town this morning to get stuff for Angus' birthday party, taking place on saturday. He keeps inviting more and more children - God knows where we're going to put them. I think I'll get them doing the conga, snaking through one door and out the other in a perpetual circle. As they pass the food, I'll just hurl some at them and hope they swallow. Apparently, one of the children has a nut and lactose allergy, so I suppose I'll have to be careful and try not to kill him.

Musical?

My father has given me his classical guitar, having obviously decided that he's never going to master it. He's only had it for about twenty five years. Really, it's an ancient thing. He also gave me some 'How to..' Guide books for the thing, replete with songs like 'The streets of London' and Carpenters classics. Why he thinks I am going to pick it up, I don't know. It's not as if I've suddenly evinced a desire to be musical: The last instrument I blew in anger was a recorder at school, doing 'London's Burning' and 'Good King Wenceslas'. Badly. Nevertheless, I think I'll give it a go, simply for the challenge of doing it. And you never know, it might come in useful if I get kicked out of my house and have to start busking for a living.

tuesday afternoon

I have just been forced to go and buy myself a large coffee. My afternoon group are so ploddy that I almost fell asleep on them. I suspect they wouldn't have noticed if I had. Incidentally, this is only the eighth coffee I've had in over two years.

Now that's depressing....

....I have just found out, thanks to the education supplement of the Guardian, that Vicki Entwistle, who plays Janice Battersby in Coronation Street, is actually six months younger than me.

addendum.

One thing else to say regarding the whole giving up smoking thing. I have found that all my bad habits - smoking, drinking, throwing money at fruit machines, being a cynical bastard etc. - are all tangled up with each other, because of the way that certain behaviours reinforce each other. I go to the pub. I have a drink. I always smoke when I drink. I parch my thrat because of the smoke. I drink more. I smoke more. I get drunk....and so on, until I'm lying penniless in the gutter the next day, having caught some unspeakable disease and eaten a kebab from a converted ambulance along the way. Breaking the cycle is tricky, but once one bit has gone, other trends seem to follow.

On how not to smoke.

Marcus,
I was going to write a comment in your guestbook regarding the whole smoking thing, and giving up, or rather, not being a smoker anymore. There's some problem with it, so I'll write an open letter here instead. Maybe it'll help someone else too.

I must start by saying that I could, at any moment, choose to pick up a fag and take a long, good drag on the damn thing. However, I can equally choose to take a drag of nothing but clean air. How, you may ask, am I going about being a non-smoker, despite dreams where I'm puffing away? Well, I'm not entirely sure myself, but here are my scattered ideas on the topic.

Firstly, do not deal in negatives or abstracts. When we talk of 'giving up', of 'not doing something', we are immediately casting our actions into a negative light, into the sense of abstention. This negativeness, this absence, by its very nature, is impossible to define, and therefore hard to keep to. Instead, it should be regarded as something we choose to do, which is save money, breathe clean air, be fatter, or whatever; It should never be something we do not do. Likewise, abstract notions of being healthier, living longer, and regaining a sense of smell do not really stand up to the rushing sense of relief when you take a that first puff of nicotine. Being abstract, they lack the reality of the rush. You have to learn that the rush itself is also an illusion, albeit one with an immediate presence.

When you start to see it as this, you realise that the desire for a fag is an illusion. This in itself brings about interesting notions of what reality is anyway. After 24 hours, there is no more nicotine in your system - all that is left is a mental craving. Since the mind is nothing more than an evanescent dance of electrical impulses flowing along particular neural networks, it therefore follows that the craving is also an evanescent thing.

My first real craving came after 48 hours, then after 72, then a week, then a month. I'm still waiting for the next one. On each occasion I had a craving, however, I realised the impulse would pass after five minutes or so. I go and do something else until the impulse has gone.

Chewing gum, patches, plastic cigarettes etc are USELESS. They are, like the behaviour of craving a fag, illusions. All they do is reinforce behaviour - in this case, a bad habit. You are not merely attempting to leave smoking behind: You are also trying to divest yourself of a pattern of behaviour. Remember, also, that some bastard is making money out of you buying these products. Not only that, by buying them you are effectively saying to yourself 'I have no choice in this matter. I must rely on others to beat it.', thereby ensuring that, at some point, you will fail, and you fall into a cycle of smoking, giving up, smoking, giving up.

There is no such state as 'giving up'.

Likewise, always, always, always remember that we have the gift of choice. We are who we are, what we are and where we are because of our choices. You and I chose, at some stage, to smoke; Now, we choose to be people who have no need for the weed.

This is just stuff that's occurred to me, and I'm sure there are others who have written more eloquently on the subject, and I could ceratinly say a lot more. hope it's of use to you, anyway.

I just love Mondays!

Not. Especially when I have to cover some lead swinging git's class. Nice bunch of students, but very pissed off at having different teachers cover their lessons.

The Weather Project

Yesterday (Friday) was wet, windy and miserable. Just the right weather, then, to grab a train from Reading to London, then a tube from Paddington to King�s Cross, then another train to Cambridge, to attend a seminar on the Cambridge Advanced Exam in English. The rain chased me all the way from home, and only petered out as the train pulled into the station. It�s the first time I�ve ever been there. As we travelled, I wondered if the view out of the window would have been recognisable to the characters in E M Forster�s The Longest Journey. I managed to find my way without difficulty to the seminar, which proved to be fairly useful. It was also interesting enough for me to avoid falling asleep during it. The best bit was the video of a pair of clowns doing the speaking exam, one Swedish, one Swiss. They�d obviously been hoiked out of class and told to pretend to be doing the exam. The examiner (called the interlocutor � which, incidentally, I found out how to pronounce correctly � the stress falls on the �loc�) succeeded in looking like not just a miserable bastard but also mad as a hatful of stoats. Best bit was the dialogue between these two guys when doing task 3, which is basically talking about a set of pictures and ranking them in some way. It was like Sam Beckett on a really shit day. The examiner had asked them to look at pictures of various rescues, and what skills would be required for each, then which would be the most newsworthy. The dialogue went a bit like this:
Swiss: Well, this one, it shows, er, a helicopter.
Swede: Yes. We have these in my country.
Swiss: Me too, it�s pretty normal.
Swede: yes, it�s normal. There are lots of rescues.
Swiss: Yes.
Swede: And you need some skills for it..
Swiss:..skills, yes�..Then there is this�.ahhh�.
Swede: Ummmm�yes. What do you think?
Swiss: There�s a bird being cleaned
Swede: I think maybe it can be dirty.
Swiss: Yes, they�re cleaning it.
Swede: Yes, for this too you need many skills.
Swiss: Oh yes.
Et Cetera, Et Cetera. What amazed me was that after several minutes of frankly piss-poor communication, these two apparently passed! Gave me hope for my group, anyway.
On the way back, I discovered a shop selling Turkish goodies and bought some sucuk for Nur. I would have bought more stuff, but I didn�t have much money on me. Once on the train, I began plotting my way home, then realised that, as I had bought a cheap train ticket, I wouldn�t be able to cross London and get on a train home until after the rush hour. This meant that I�d have to kick my heels there for 45 minutes or so. I wondered what I could do with myself, then had a fantastic idea. I�d go and see The Weather Project at the Tate Modern. I�d been promising myself that I�d go and see this installation for the last six months, and now was a prime opportunity. Besides, it was my last chance: It�s being dismantled tomorrow. So, after I got to King�s Cross, I bought a single to Blackfriars, and plunged into the underground scrum of the rush hour. What always fascinates me about a typical tube train compartment is how it is a distillation of what London is: Its crabbiness, its diversity, its cosmopolitanism, its febrile, restless spirit, all rest within.
I got out at Blackfriars, then made my way to the embankment. By now, it was dark, and I saw in front of me the Millennium Bridge with all its lights shimmering. Indeed, all London was lit up in its finery. After all, it was a Friday night and time to play. Even the weather seemed suddenly milder. I reached the bridge, and saw St Pauls. A whole troop of people were crossing, either going towards the cathedral of God on the one side or the cathedral of Art on the other, but they were strangely silent, spirits crossing the river in some holy act or other. I reached the Tate, went in, and duly had my gob smacked by the Weather Project. It truly is a magnificent, and magnificently simple, installation. That a few lights, a bit of fake smoke, a screen and some mirrors can be so impressive is quite something. The fake sun (or rather, half-sun: The mirrors make it appear to be whole) hangs at one end of the turbine hall. There are mirrors on the roof, creating even greater depth. There is a bit of smoke and the air appears to shimmer. That�s it. But! The effect is incredible. The nearest this approaches to is when I first went into Aya Sofya in 1994. The latter will always beat any experience I have with things made by humans, but this experience was damn good. I stayed there about half and hour or so. There was quite a party atmosphere within. People were lying on the floor, staring up at their own reflections. Some were trying to spell out words with their bodies. Some people were basking in the glows of the fake sun, even though it was pretty cold. Couples hugged each other. A few people were asleep. One group were even having a champagne picnic. I stared up at the ceiling too, and saw myself, standing, small, a huge shadow cast behind me.
Afterwards, I walked back along the South Bank towards Waterloo. The weather was mild, and I enjoyed the parade of boats and buildings as I passed. I really, really need to bring Nur to London on a night like that. By the time I finally managed to get home, I was knackered.

I am in a vile, black mood.

Decisions, decisions....

I was doing a class with my nice but dim group yesterday. I was teaching the third conditional and grammar relating to hypothesising about the past, stuff like �If Kennedy hadn�t gone to Dallas, perhaps he wouldn�t have been assassinated�, as if my Chinese, Japanese and Korean students knew or cared who Kennedy was. One exercise was relating to what would or wouldn�t happen now if we had or had not done something in the past, e.g. I wouldn�t know Haruko now if I hadn�t come to the UK, et cetera. While they got on with the exercise, I reflected on the decisions I have made in life, and which ones have led me to be right here, right now. Not instinctive, make or break stuff, but hard thought out ones. Now, I could count on my decision to accept a full-time post at the college; going further back, there�s the conclusion that I had to return to the UK, or even further, becoming a teacher in the first place. I followed the skein of decisions backwards, a pale line into the past, and whichever angle I came from, I arrived in the same place.

I was just over eleven years old.

It was spring term at my primary school: In fact, it was almost certainly at this time of year, when warm sun struggles with blustery wind and sudden rain. We�re talking a quarter of a century ago, which is really rather scary. My parents, my teacher (Mr. Jenkins, who wore a green corduroy jacket, had greased back hair and a booming voice, and smelt strange) and I were gathered to make a decision on my future. I had the opportunity to go to Reading Grammar school, in the middle of town, or go to Highdown, the local comprehensive about 200 metres up the road from me. I had done well in my exams � in fact, I had one of the best exam records in the county. All I had to do was sit a simple test and go for a basic interview. My elders clearly all wanted me to go, but my parents said, �It�s your decision�. As ever, they trusted me with a degree of responsibility over myself.

I thought it over.

Before I tell you my decision, can you guess? And do you think my parents should have pressured me to go to Reading, which regularly appears in the top five of lists of best schools in the country? Perhaps they should have coerced me more, saying �This decision is ours. You�re going there.� Sure, I�d probably have resented them for making me do something, but on reflection I�d be grateful, no?

I made up my mind.

I plumped for Highdown, the local comprehensive.

My reasons?

First, it was local; I wouldn�t have to do any travelling. Secondly, I was familiar with the area and the people � most of my peers, the kids I�d grown up with, would be going there. I would know hardly anyone at Reading. Familiarity with a situation, no matter how bad, is a powerful incentive, rather than take a leap into the unknown.

The main reason, however, the one that I gave to my family, was this: Reading Grammar did sports on Saturday mornings. I hated sports, and I certainly hated the idea of travelling halfway across the town on a Saturday morning just to miserably knock a muddy football around.

Now, I think, what if? What if I�d gone, where would that have led me? Don�t get me wrong, dear reader: I don�t usually indulge in speculating about the past, or past regrets: the moment has gone for good, and there�s no use whining about it. But I�m pretty sure my life would have been spectacularly different had I gone there.

Then again, I wouldn�t have what I have now, namely my beautiful wife and my fantastic son. Or thousands of pounds worth of debt.

We are who, what, and where we are largely due to the choices and decisions that we make, not anyone else. I�m still an EFL teacher because I like the job and I�m familiar with it, despite my horrible financial circumstances. I know I have to make a transition, but to what? In effect, I am manipulating my own situation, and I have noone else to blame other than myself.

Freedom of choice is a great thing, but there are times when it might be better if others make the choices for you.

I like to think that, somewhere in an alternate universe, there is another me, speculating what would have happened had he chosen to go to Highdown.

I bet the bastard is loaded.

Top o the morning to ye an begorrah to be sure...and other such bollocks.

Happy St Patricks day. I have always found it somewhat ironic that a day devoted to one of the dourest, po-faced, sanctimonious, overly-pious and undoubtedly sober saints of christianity has been warped into one enormous excuse for a piss-up. Cue plastic paddies rolling in bars from Camden to LA. Cue huge profits for brewers. Cue stupid parades in New York where 'Irishmen' who are about as Irish as my cat wear green and wave at each other, then get drunk and caterwaul fake songs about the Old Country. What a load of fucking bollocks.
I am, as you may surmise, not in a very good mood today.

Mwaa-ha-ha-haaaa!

I am 81% Evil Genius

I am pure evil. I lie awake at night devising schemes of world domination, and I will not rest until all living souls bend to my will.

Take the Evil Genius Test at fuali.com

Right. that's the questionnaire out of the way....
By the way, returning to the roots of this blog, here's what I had for dinner last night, all of which, apart from the raki, I made myself.
Pilaf scented with cardomom and pepper
Sis Kofte , spiced up with chillis, pepper, cumin, turmeric and paprika
Coban Salatasi
Fresh coleslaw
home-baked pide bread
3 glasses raki
yum.

Tuesdays. Not as bad as wednesdays.

...but still crap enough. I got into work at 8.15: I'll still be here at 9.00 tonight.
Here's a list of what I have to do today;
1) Compile a questionnaire for the evening class students, in order to produce an analysis of attitides to current classes and intentions for the future.
2) Devise a curriculum for evening sessions for the coming academic year - it needs to be more generic than exam-centred, but LSE funding is such that exams are crucial. However, most evening students, in my experience, aren't reallt arsed about gaining qualifications.
3) Alter the current course information that we hand out to prospective punters regarding the evening courses.
4) Do further research on gaining more qualifications, and see what my boss has to say about it.
5) Chase up HR to see if I have Faculty approval to go to a seminar on the Cambridge Advanced Exam on friday, and if they'll stump up for the price of a train ticket.
6) Do a bit of translation work for a student.
7) Mark work from several different classes, including written work from advanced students - always a real bugger to do.
8)Write up lesson plans for today's and tomorrow's classes, then produce materials, perhaps write up a powerpoint presentation, scout down appropriate books, and make sure I've got enough stuff to entertain the buggers.
9) Read up on some research regarding the IELTS exam.
10) Arrange a retake schedule for those students on my Academic english class who have failed any assignments.
11) The reason I do this job: teach my classes.
I'm sure there's other stuff to do as well, but that's all relatively trivial. Then there is the enormous onus of all my personal business to conduct.
Woo-hoo. Don't I live a full and glamorous life? And I only earn �22,000.

Infamy!Infamy! They've all got it infamy!

Happy Ides of March to you all.
Well, I didn;t go out and get drunk as a pig after all. I went out briefly, then came home and got drunk as a pig, stayed up all night and played backgammon on the net. Unsurprisingly, I felt fucking horrible on saturday. Nur got back safely that night, then slept for much of the night and the following day. I succeeded in doing bugger all.
This is not good. I really, really need to sort out my finances and what I'm going to do in the near and far future. Now that one chapter of this year has, so to speak, ended, perhaps I can concentrate on what I really need to do now. I hope so, anyway. the trouble is, I really need Nur to help me: I need to feel her support, just in everyday sort of stuff, to help me through.

have...

....a very nice weekend, one and all.

Nur comes back tomorrow. Good.
Angus is staying with his grandmother tonight. Excellent.
I am going out to get drunk as a pig tonight. Yay!

re: last post

Oops. missed France. Oh well.

nationalities i have taught

This looks better than a list.


create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Stupid joke.

A Chinese guy is on holiday in the UK. He's having a nice time, seeing all the sights and doing all the usual touristy stuff. One day, he notices he's a bit short on the old pounds and goes to the Bureau de Change. He's delighted when he sees the exchange rate: only nine yuan to the pound! He goes in, changes loads of money, comes out with a happy grin on his face and a bulging wallet. Off he goes to spend it all on tourist desirables, like plastic policemens hats, Olde Tea Shoppe toffees and so on.
A few days later, he realises he's low on funds again, so once more he heads off to the bureau de Change. This time however, the exchange rate isn't so good: He needs twenty-five yuan to get his mitts on a pound. Understandably annoyed, he demands to see the manager.
'What this?', he shouts. 'Few day ago, rate was nine yuan, one paun! Now this day, it twenty-fai yuan, one paun! What goin on here, eh?'
The manager shrugs his shoulders, and says, simply, 'Fluctuations, sir.'
Enraged, the Chinese tourist shouts, 'And Fluck you Engrish too!'




See? I told you it was stupid.

Thursday.

Nuff said, really. I went to the doctor regarding the eczema blotching up my body, and she gave me a prescription for various creams and salves to sort it out.
My Academic English Foundation class have just done their fourth assignment, namely doing presentations of graphs. Dear God in Heaven, it is hard to think of anything more life-destroyingly dull than having to sit in a darkened room while students trundle out pie charts of car ownership in the People's Republic of China, and drone on about 'great, very very big fructuations'. fifteen times.
And now for the evening class.

I'm still feeling strange, like I'm in some hinterland of the mind. This morning, as I woke, I felt a few moments of absolute despair when I summed up my current situation: Two recent bereavements, a sense of loneliness with Nur not being there, my ennui with my job, the sense that I might end up spending the next twenty years staring out of the same windows onto the same scene as I teach the same lesson to identikit students, and most of all, worst of all, our financial situation, which I haven't been able to do a thing with because of the past seven weeks of trauma. A spasm of suicidal desire went over me; How easy it would be to just reach for a bottle of pills and slip into a warm bath with a razor! But no, that's just another form of running away, of evading a situation rather than grapple with it and overcome it. It passed, but I just feel desolate at the moment.

Happy...

...no smoking day!

The funeral: Friday, March the Fifth.

The funeral went as well as can be expected. The weather stayed fair. I drove my mum and Nur there, the vast fields of graves in Henley road cemetery. It was a busy day: funerals were being stacked in a holding pattern, and groups of mourners shuffled in one end of the chapel, out the other, and gawped at the floral tributes belonging to each of their dead. My relatives arrived carload by carload; Darren and Dean, Julie & Archie, Belinda & Julie, Jim, James, Mick, Lisa and Gary, Sophie, Vicki, Samantha; My dad�s cousins and other distant relations, the Gallantry diaspora; Plus various friends of my grandfather and our family. The hearse waited in line, then pulled up in front of the chapel, followed by a limousine carrying dad, Nan, and Aunts Penny, Sue and Julie. A respectful silence, punctuated by discreet sniffling, then we respectfully trooped into the chapel, a small place with a Victorian feel. The wall which contained the entrance to the furnace was wood panelled, the furnace door itself inscribed with the motto �Resurgam� (I will rise again?). The priest, or whatever he was, led us briskly and dryly through a half-hour service, punctuated by some of Grandad�s favourite songs, some prayers for the dead, and a hymn. It was all rather arid, until my dad, Penny and Sophie got up to say their bits, and left plenty shedding a tear. It was only when the priest said �and now we commit Harry�s body�, and a cheap blue curtain swished across to hide the coffin�s absolutely final journey, that I felt a surge of emotion. The final track played: Morecambe & Wise�s �Bring Me Sunshine�. Apparently, my aunts had considered �Always Look on The Bright Side Of Life� at first, but then thought about the next funeral party to come in after ours, and decided against it. We duly shuffled out, quick dry handshake with the priest, then a look at the flowers. Smiles broke out with the sunshine, which now began to dominate the sky. I caught up with a few relatives I hadn�t seen in a while, introduced (or re-introduced) them to Nur, said a few polite things. Then we all drove off to Twyford, to the Coach and Horses Inn. It had been a favourite watering hole of Grandad, who was often driven there to get pissed, then poured into a taxi several hours later. It�s definitely an �Olde-Worlde� kind of place, all blackened beams at head-breaking height, horse brasses and dodgy tiled floors. The last time I�d been there was about 1991, when dad had bought round after round of Carlsberg Special Brew, a drink I have hated since I chucked my guts up on it when I was fifteen. We got in, then Nur remembered to turn her mobile phone back on. Almost immediately, a message flashed up.
�I hate this,�she said to mum. �I�m always afraid it�ll be a bad message about my mum.�
�Well, look at it, anyway, we�re here if it�s bad,� said my mum.
She opened the inbox.
Here�s the message, translated into English:
Big Sister, we�ve given our mum to the earth. We lost her at five o�clock this morning. May Allah give us forbearance.
Fuck.
Dead and buried the same day as my granddad.
Nur collapsed, weeping and trembling in the corner. Of course, we knew the end was near; That�s why Nur had been in Turkey in the first place. It was just the strange, sad aptness of the day. Mum got her into the toilet, while several people offered to get her drinks. After the initial shock, however, she rallied, especially when she saw the reaction of my family. Within half an hour, we had arranged a flight back to Istanbul for her and pressed the money for it into her hand, then bought her enough Southern Comfort to keep her safely anaesthetized till she got back to Turkey. I, who was supposed to get pissed with them all, now given the duty of driver for the day, then sat back and watched my family get magnificently drunk, largely on very, very generous measures of gin and tonic. They laughed, they shouted, they wept, they embraced and said how much they loved each other, they sang badly, and again and again, they told Nur the same thing: We are with you no matter what. You are family, and we will do whatever you need. We stand together no matter what. We know you are brave, leaving your family so far away to come here with Paul, and that is a quality we admire almost above all others.
Detached by my sobriety as I was, I have never truly felt the sense of unity within my own clan with quite so much force as I did that day.
Towards four o�clock, we tumbled out of the pub, and headed for Sue and Jim�s place, where the drinking and eating carried on at a frantic pace. I eventually had to virtually carry mum and Nur to the car, which stank of gin. Mum was, amazingly, actually slurring her words, something I don�t think I�ve ever experienced before. I dropped her off, then got Nur to bed, she complaining of having a bad stomach. I�m not surprised; she�d drunk the best part of half a bottle of whisky. I collected Angus from a friend�s house, and, as we walked under a mild and starry sky along the bridlepath, I tried to explain to him that his grandmother had died and that his mum had to go back to Turkey again.
�Awww� was his only response.�You mean that You are going to look after me again?�
I got him some dinner, then he said he felt sleepy, and he went upstairs and fell asleep next to Nur, taking up the racer�s position, head up, legs flung like someone sprinting, one arm to the face, another behind, that seems so typical of him.
I went to the pub, and had a drink or five for Grandad.

grandfather at rest.

He was in a wicker coffin. Laid lightly over the top was a fine gauzy material, with a shimmering cross handstitched in gold. He was laid out in a white robe, a white girdle rope and a banded collar. His hands (white, grey) laid neatly, calmly over his stomach. His face: Lifelike, eyes closed, his brow slightly furrowed, as though he were thinking through a vexing question. The shape of his mouth was slightly strange. I think the undertakers had slightly overdone the packing, so that it now looked like he had a mouthful of food, or had been caught in mid-eructation. He looked dignified and determined, for all that. My first reaction was that he would open his eyes, put out a hand to me, speak to me in that wonderful warm Old Hampshire drawl and laugh, or, going into the realms of horror, grip my arm and deliver a terrible warning. But no, it was an empty house. I'm glad I've seen him one last time before we send him off tomorrow, but at the moment I'm all mixed up in my feelings: sorrow he's gone, happiness for his life and gentle death, genuine curiosity (part of the reason I wanted to see him in the chapel of rest), a strange fear. I don't know.

two things.

First, I got my new shed this morning. Now I just have to put it together.

Second, I went to see my grandfather at the chapel of rest. We're burying him tomorrow. I've seen plenty of bodies in my time, but not one of my my own family laid out before. Still trying to work out how I feel about it right now.

feel shit. i really, really don't want to teach today.

Back from the dead.

I just found a piece of writing by an old friend and flatmate of mine on Dave's ESL cafe. I emailed him straight away; He mailed back - which was an amazing occurence, as both he and I are lazy bastards when it comes to staying in contact, hence our not talking to each other for the past few years. There's something a little strange about rediscovering an old friend or contact after a long time, something of finding the dead come back to life. So what if we meet? It will be strange: A familiar face altered by time, circumstance and the abuse of alcohol. Our life experiences will be markedly different: will we actually have anything to say to each other?

Nationalities I have taught.

I was filling in a form earlier on, outlining my teaching experience, and the number of nationalities I've had in my class surprised me somewhat - and I'm not sure that I've even included all of them!
I have taught people from China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, Poland, Czech Republic, Turkey, France, Germany, Kazakhstan, Iran, Iraq, Greece, Italy, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Libya, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Thailand and the Phillipines.
Blimey.

Still not smoking.

Most of the cravings have gone away. It's only occasionally now, when I've had a beer, that I feel the odd urge. One bizarre side-effect, however, is that I've developed an eczema-like rash over one arm, my chest, and part of my back. I have eczema anyway (I was going to say, 'suffer', but that's bullshit - it's no great hardship. It'd be like saying Geri halliwel suffers from being ginger), but this is weird. Is my immune system playing silly buggers? it's only happened since I gave up, indeed only in the past 21/2 weeks. The only thing I can relate it to is not smoking, or possibly the weather, which has been cold and dry as a bone for about the same time.

Happy...

...St. David's Day, Wales, and happy birthday to my mum and to Nur's mum. Sadly, it looks like it will be the latter's last. Nur phoned her family up last night, and they said that she isn't even moving or eating any more and is permanently on oxygen. I suspect that she may not last even tonight. Ours is a despondent house at the moment: My grandfather, Nur's mum and her father, my dad's wife, our circumstances...it's as though there is some vile, evil, black mind pitted against us at the moment. I don't know where or to whom I can turn. For the sake of everyone around me, I must be strong, yet where is the strength for me? I went a bit mental on friday night, shouting my head off and kicking things - I don't know why: just needed to vent, I suppose.
I saw my grandmother and a few of my aunts on saturday afternoon. They were organising the funeral, and I found them well, considering. Angus had a beautiful thought.
'Dad, I know how we can talk with great grandad'
'How?'
'Well, we can blow up balloons and write messages on them and tie them on, then we let them go whoosh! in the air, then they go up, and great grandad, because he's up in the air, he can catch the messages and read them!'
'well, how does he answer?'
'He can't answer, he's dead, silly! But perhaps he can come in dreams'
The idea of letting go balloons with messages on seems like a charming thing to do - you let the message fly; then perhaps someone, anyone, might answer it.
Yesterday we had dinner with mum. Karen came round too, and like millions of people, we were stumped as to what to write on a little oblong of white card -the condolence card to go on a wreath. We didn't want anything glib, like 'sorely missed', or 'Now in Heaven' etc. I suggested 'Grandad, you were like a popular, fine red wine - frequently drunk', which made us both laugh like drains, but was a bit inappropriate. In the end, we settled for glib.