On cheese, rain and word limits

“Look at that” said Papi this morning as I emerged from my bedroom and reported to the kitchen for breakfast “she brought some English weather for us to try”.
Sure enough, it was pouring outside. And not the provencal kind of buckets of water on your head pouring, but the genuine English in between kind of thing. Which actually makes Papi happy, as he had been complaining about the dryness of last few months (he just wanted to tease me, cause I brought some English cheese for him to try and has a hard time getting over the fact that he really liked it). I was the one unimpressed, as it mainly destroyed my pastis on the balcony fantasy.
Oh well. I’ve decided that since the situation outside was very unappealing and that my local friends were not banging on the door desperate to see me, I would finish off the bloody assignment. And I did. And I’m, once again, around 500 words over the limit. And, yet again, I am fantasising about various painful kinds of torture I could inflict on the person who came up with such silly word limits in the first place. Which, I’m afraid, won’t make those excess 500 words just disappear.

Red shoes

I think I’ve discovered the secret of red shoes.
You wear them, and whatever was troubling you is necessarily forgotten because of the growing sensation of burning in your soles.
Although I don’t know how David Bowie could have possibly known that.

Aix en vacances

Travelling to places you used to belong to is a messy business. On one hand, you’re thrilled to see all the people and places you have been missing so much, but on the other hand you’re disheartened by the realisation that they are moving on without you, and, even worse, regardless of you.
I found my map of Aix unchanged and changed in the same time. I had a coffee on Cours Mirabeau in Belle Epoque with their rude waiters. I went to Papeterie Michel and felt the same urge to buy most of their stocks. I drove past my old boulangerie and the park where I used to jog. And I missed them not being mine anymore.
But what really got me was talking to my adoptive grandparents over home made dinner and explaining how I was subscribed to Iceland and the local Chinese, which made me think about cooking in my little kitchen corner at Roc Fleuri. It made me really want my life back.
I still think that leaving was the right thing to do. I have a constant mantra in my head, listing reasons why. But I had a great life here. Which makes me think, that what I really need to do, is get a proper life back in Brum.
But for now, I’ll put on my red shoes and dance the blues.

(not)working when I should be (not)working

Yesterday night I set my alarm clock as usual. It rang at 6.20 as usual. I turned it off and went back to sleep. That was a moment of sheer happiness.
It’s spring holiday, ladies and gentleman, no more early mornings for two weeks.
In three days I will be in France, on a cheese, bread and wine diet. Although I have to say that for some reason I am persuaded that in a few days I will start missing work. I know it’s not quite sane, but on the other hand, it is a solid proof that I am meant to be a teacher. But for now, idleness is bliss. Not that I’m capable of being idle. There’s always something that needs doing anyway. Thank God lunch with Naomi forces me to get out of the house, otherwise I just might spend the whole day… working.

'I'm so going to take it home and play with it'

I was all set for pretending I have a life last night. Plans were made, body was forced into a state of hyperactivity guaranteeing that it would not give in to an overwhelming tiredness and general desire of pillow and Dog. Shower was taken, face was put on, teaching gear was left home as was the teaching persona. I was determined to forget about being a teacher for one night and make the most of it.
Unfortunately, The One Up There (also known as TOUT, the ones among you speaking French will appreciate the implications of the acronym) had decided otherwise.
The Friday Rush Hour Blues has as much to do with jazz as I have with molecular biology. The guitarist looked as if he was in a carefully maintained state of suffering for his art, which could be explained – at least to some extent – by the fact that his guitar was something like two sizes too big for him. Must have been heavy, bless the poor little lad. Michael and Bill (Shakespeare, no, I’m not kidding), two nice gentleman befriended at the Symphony Hall over discussing the fairness of saving seats for others and promises to keep an eye on their walking sticks, retreated gracefully in the middle of a piece and half way through their pints claiming that they’d had ‘enough of that’.
Afterwards I was supposed to go for a curry with a Potentially Shaggable Friend of a Friend but the said PSFF cancelled on me because of stomach problems. So I went home, not so much disappointed as glad I could go to bed. At 8 pm. How sad is that.
Yet, once home, I was faced with Tone (my flatmate and landlord) and a visiting friend of his in a very advanced state of drunkenness – they were very cute in it, bless them, if you don’t count the visiting friend peeing all over the downstairs loo and insisting on sleeping in my bed (‘I will knock on your door when we come back’). He didn’t (from what I understood he met some bird when they were out and didn’t sleep here at all) so I did get a good night’s sleep but once again – how sad is that: there was a part of me that was sort of disappointed.
Then, to crown my sorry attempts on having a life this weekend, I overslept for ski jumping.
And now it’s time to start working again. Oh well.
But before I do – here’s the highlight of last night:
‘I’m so going to take it home and play with it’
said Naomi about her carefully assembled Kinder Surprise toy shark.

Miss, miss, that's not right!

Year 7 German. (Year 7 is the first year of secondary school here, they are around 11-12 years old). We’ve been reviewing numbers and they were learning to give me their telephone numbers. At one point, I count down from 5 to 1, which is a signal for them that they have 5 seconds to finish their conversations and be silent. I get to one, silence falls. And then this little bugger goes: “Miss, miss, that’s not right, now that we know ‘nul’ you should be counting down to zero!”
Gave him two bravo stamps for that.
Made my day, little bugger.
Otherwise, I go from being high on teaching, to I totally suck, through various stages of content and discontent plus usually a stage of ‘I can’t take anymore, I’m too tired’ something like 5 times a day. It can’t possibly be sane.

Visit to the local Meat Market

After four years of going out in France I thought I had seen it all. But Jongleurs, where we went for Susanne's Hen Do last night made the meat markets I had seen in France seem really pleasant places. I genuinely didn’t think such a place could possibly exist. But it does.
It all started by a comedy act, which was really funny at points, but for me a good comedian is one that makes you laugh without explicit and crude references to body parts and physiological functions. The three we saw last night apparently did not judge themselves funny enough to be able to make people laugh without mentioning penises, faeces and using the f word as a comma. Oh well.
This came with the worst burger I have ever had in my entire life, it was a piece of cardboard with something inside pretending to be meat and failing miserably at it. Could you believe that there is such thing as tasteless onion? There is. I still ate it, cause I needed something to soak up the liquid that was pretending to be Sex on the Beach and also failing miserably at it (later I saw them make one, and well, it was vodka orange with a suspicion of some red juice that made the whole thing sort of pink).
Then, after the comedy act, there was dancing. And I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was meat market in all it’s glory, girls on the dance floor trying to look appealing and blokes cruising around, appreciating the goods. It was so obvious it was disgusting. At least in France they were discreet about it, even if no one was fooled. And I was regretting with all my heart having worn that skirt, I wished I had worn baggy trousers and a big t-shirt. Cause even if I wore what I wore in complete ignorance of the nature of the place I was going to, still wearing what I was, I was considered to be goods. And it probably didn’t help that I was looking around which undoubtedly got interpreted as making myself available while it was sheer curiosity and total bewilderment with what was going on around me.
Worse still, the place stank of what I could only tentatively identify as years of spilt beer, vomit and urine combined with unwashed bodies and drying sweat. It made me sick. Naomi said she could feel a whiff of something unpleasant in the bar area, but my smell being more acute than that of many people, I could smell it everywhere and the aroma in the bar area was literally contorting my insides.
The final straw was when my bum got pinched by one of the cruising clients (testing the goods, I presume, finding out if the meat was firm enough to suit his liking). It was around 11.30 and I realised that they were all still relatively sober – I decided not to wait to see what would happen as they became properly drunk and I fled. Don’t get me wrong, I still had fun. I was there with really interesting people I appreciate a lot, Susanne in her Gretel costume was absolutely fabulous, some of the comedy stuff was genuinely funny and my inner cultural anthropologist was very much fascinated with the phenomena around. But I'm never setting my foot in that place again.

When I least expected it...

I had a brilliant day (which is not something I can often say). In fact, it was so nice that it made me feel like spending my Friday night creating an activity/reading bank for the little monsters. I mean, when Vile Year 9 defies it’s reputation and is actually nice and co-operative, it is a special day. And they did today.
It’s amazing what even problematic kids can do when you give them the ownership and the responsibility for their own learning. We had a behaviour session on “Working Together” today. They made up classroom rules, they decided on consequences of breaking them and suddenly my detentions are no longer unfair and even the girl who called me a bitch the other day accepted hers without a word. But, of course, we will see how it works when we’ll go back to actually learning French.
And then, in the other year 9, there’s this girl, who loves languages so much that she’ll be taking a third one on next year and is so keen that I would have loved her even if she didn’t remind me so much of Muriel.
And in the Whole School Issues session I’ve got a Principal’s Merit Sticker! (now I know how it feels when I give a Merit Sticker to one of the kids… he, he…)

Weak spots and more villainess

How serious would it be if I had a weakness for one of my pupils? Cause I do, I seriously do. He gives me the cheek, I tell him off, he throws me a disarming grin, and I let it pass. I caught myself avoiding him when Vile Year 9 made me give them a class detention. I suppose it would be really bad if he was a problem kid. But he’s not. He actually works. And wants to learn. Which made me feel horrid when I had to enforce his detention along with all others. Which doesn’t make it more sane.
Speaking of which, what do you think about detentions? I tend to follow school policy and give them when deserved. But one other PGCE trainee told me all puffed-up that she has never given one in her life cause she doesn’t believe in detentions. And anyway, she never was in a situation where she would have to give one (read: you can’t control your students, I can, or even: guess kids don’t react well to you, what a lousy teacher). I don’t know, I’ve just remembered that detention I gave to a really disruptive kid in my first school, and it was an opportunity for us to talk, work things out and make them better. But how can you do that when you have dozens in detention every afternoon? I do. Vile Year 9 and now also Vile Year 8. I counted. Out of 15 lessons I teach in a week, I’m definitely not looking forward to at least 7. And there’s no telling if one of my Year 7 groups won’t turn out to be vile too. It all makes me so tired…

On cheese and cats

Everyone should have a Caz. Caz makes me talk and feeds me good stuff. There’s no one like Caz to make the world look like a much better place than it seemed before. And Didier was a very silly frog – he hid so that he wouldn’t go to London with me. I actually thought I had lost him but Will the Cat found him for me. Will the Cat slept over last night (Nicole’s room is being painted and he has no other bed than mine) and so this morning it was head bonks for me which made getting up much less horrid, especially while he timed it perfectly – 5 minutes before the alarm. A much better way of waking up, that goes without saying.
So I'm starting the week revived and positive. We shall see how long it will last.