Wherein a Narrative Law kicks our Hero in the genitals

Tuesday is the worst day of the week. I know I’m flying in the face of received knowledge here on the Internet, but bear with me. The title of this post will become clearer, too, as you move to the conclusion of this piece.
Mondays are excellent. I like Mondays. You’re chilled and relaxed from the weekend; you’ve got exciting projects lined up and you feel like you can take on the world. You got up early, had plenty of time for breakfast, and a run, and your shower was hot.
Wednesdays are the midweek point; the hard slog is over and the end is in sight. In fact, you say as you work through the boring minutiae of your day, you’ve already had lunch and that means the day is half done, so now you’re just past the halfway, and it’s all downhill from here.
Thursday is the starter to the main course that is your weekend, enough to summon saliva to your lips as you contemplate the decadence with which you will spend your free time (or, indeed, the IKEA furniture that you’ve not had a chance to put together yet).
And finally Friday, the way you shiver in antici-

-pation, and watch the clock, and probably bum off a little bit early. And then enjoy yourself all weekend.

Tuesday, on the other hand, is the worst day of the week. The buzz has worn off, the projects that you were hoping would be exciting are, in fact, the same boring projects you do day in, day out, and the rest of the week stretches out in front of you, as limp and dull and insipid as the off-white walls in your cubicle cell.

That having been said, I had a pretty good Tuesday. I finally finished a translation work that’s been hanging over my head for too long, I finalised details for the upcoming dinner, I played Scrabble with my students and found a chess partner, and my brother is doing me a huge favour out of the goodness of his heart.

Here’s a picture of him kindly not looking handsome so that I look better. First and only time in our lives.

Since then he’s found a lovely girlfriend, a seriously decent job, and gained several inches in height on me. And a better dress sense. And he’s in Hong Kong.

Bastard.

On the other hand, there’s a chilli bubbling away behind me, rice gently cooking, I have money and warmth and I’m teaching a language I love in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

So looks like Tuesdays aren’t all bad.

And now the meaning behind the title of this piece becomes clear, because having written that, I added a little pinch of spice, checked my rice, turned around and found that my laptop had crashed and lost every word that I had typed. I have just retyped this blog post, and in doing so forgot the rice and over-spiced the chilli. By over-spiced I mean my eyes are boiling in their sockets from the fumes wafting around my flat. This the narrative rule that states that when a Hero's life appears to be defying all the odds and going well when by all rights it should be going badly, it is just about to go hideously.

Alternatively known as a Hope Spot, for you trope-spotters.

So I take it back. Tuesday can get stuffed.

Talking about my generation

Brilliantly, hilariously stressful day today, with phone going off left right and centre. It started badly, which should have been evident to anyone who read my optimistic post about getting up early every day being good for you. There is absolutely no way Fortune, that arrant whore, would let me get away with something like that. I woke up late, found every other mother’s son (and daughter) had used every drop of hot water, scrubbed myself in cold water and ran to my office.

Let me be clear here for a second. While I run every evening, and I try to keep my stamina up, and I watch what I eat, I do not enjoy running in the slightest. It makes one sweaty, it makes a mess of one’s hair, and if there is ice on the ground then you will hit it and you will have that sphincter-tightening moment when you totally lose control of your own limbs.

And that is not cool, and since I am not a cool guy, I take every effort to fool everyone in the world that I am a cool guy. And flailing like a scarecrow whose arms are attached by rubber bands is not what cool guys do.

So after the judges awarded their scores (turns out I’m not going to the Winter Games) my day proper began. Last minute guests are turning up for the dinner – I previously mentioned how the French view deadlines – and, simultaneously, the event organiser at the Palais du Luxembourg is asking for final numbers. My abilities, while magnificent and impressive, do not stretch to telling the future, and so there have been an awful lot of very terse conversations in French. As it happens, these are very much like terse conversations in English, only with slightly shorter pauses and foreign words.

My oral class this evening put together a song by Tom Lehrer, and I encouraged them to sing it. This, despite being almost the same age as these students and knowing full-well the acute onset of embarrassment that comes with being asked to sing at all, let alone a verse with no rhythm markers in a language that is not one’s own. I still had them singing it, because once one gets over the primary hurdle of embarrassment together, everyone feels more at ease. I am the walrus, and I weigh two tons.

Finally, my evening lesson. A student who has made huge progress in the past 8 weeks but still insists on focussing on her faults and errors. It’s agonising to watch her agonise over them, but we looked over the notes and I tried to show her how far she’s come. I think the volume alone may have convinced her; 18 sides on out first lesson compared to the five we made today (and most of that taken up with an amusing tangent on the evolution of Asian languages).

I confess, I’m still stunned every single time a French person pulls out a chequebook to pay for things in the supermarket. I would love to know what the draw is; I’m pretty sure nobody of my generation could write a cheque because there’s simply no need. We use chip and PIN. Not PIN number, which was an interesting discussion from today – PIN stands for Personal Identification Number, so PIN number is redundant. Like ATM machine. I learnt that from a student, which I thought was pretty brilliant. I know, I’m learning from them, they’re learning from me.

Last thought. Play Scrabble in English with a French set. Weighted enormously in our favour. Just a quick heads up.

Where our hero does normal Sunday things, and frets that they're not exciting enough to be blogged about

            Weekends have been a little weird for me since I arrived, because I agreed early on to tutor in the mornings on both Saturday and Sunday. You’ve already met my student and we’ve already spoken of him, little more needs to be said of him for today save that his animated Vesuvius is off-the-charts cool and rather blows my experiments with baking soda and vinegar out of the water.

            But aside from that journey – and I have to say, for all the protests of my body and despite the local gravitational field that exists over my bed and is four times stronger than gravity has any right to be, it is a fantastic stroll – I have been preoccupied with very little of anything at the moment. I’m sinking money into Amazon’s coffers at a quite incredible rate, and seem to be on a bit of a reluctant hero/magic theme, so well done to Amazon for spotting that and offering me more of my drug of choice. Honestly, if Amazon ever get into drugs, we’re all doomed.

           

“We saw you liked coffee, and thought you might like to try cocaine.”

“Why thank you Amazon. Say, this cocaine is brilligjsdkjhghhghhhhhh”

Today’s lesson dealt with prepositions and conjunctions, singularly unexciting particles of English but necessary. His teacher – or rather, whoever is setting his course as it is an online school – is an unbearable idiot, as evidenced by glaring errors of typography which I feel an English teacher ought to be able to spot. I’m terribly negative about it, but since it’s an online school it’s not as though the mistake has only been spotted once the textbook has been printed. It’s a webpage. Thirty seconds to fix. Surely.

Regardless. The boring work having been completed, we started in on the rather more exciting topic he has chosen for his descriptive essay. We talked about feelings and descriptions, how to communicate them, the difference between choppy sentences:

I raised my head. Something zipped past my left ear. I screamed. Dropped. My ear was on fire. Someone was shouting something. A face, close to mine.

And long sentences

I woke suddenly, the noonday sun slipping through the curtains and warming my face. The bed seemed unfamiliar but comfortable, and I lie back, idly wondering what the sound of running water meant for my immediate future. As though its occupant had heard my thought, the water stopped, and a door ahead of me opened wide, billowing with steam, the mouth to a fragrant and very pleasantly occupied Hell…

And so on. We practised them, and then I let him loose on his writing while I filled in an evaluation form. It bears striking resemblance to mine at his age, and although I know I keep saying it, it is mildly unsettling.

A genteel stroll back – though I almost lost my balance coming down a hill I’d negotiated with ease two hours earlier – meant a total of 6 miles strolled in a day. I could get used to having that sort of time to meander and amble, and listen to music. I should love to have The Lord of the Rings extended soundtrack, but it is unfortunately around £40 a go and unavailable on MP3 download, which to my mind is a frustratingly obvious way of extorting money from poor suckers like me. It’ll probably work, too; I’ve had Lord of the Rings on at work purely for the soundtrack because it’s fantastic. The extended issue DVDs might also go down a treat, just as soon as I get a huge television and some dolby surround sound. Because I'm kind of geeky like that.

This is next year, when I move back of course. I may also get a cat. A lot of my students have cats, and I find I rather like them. They affect disdain and yet are always there when one looks round. I still think their bottoms look like tea-towel holders, but such is life. One cannot have everything. I shall simply have to resist the desire to fill my cat with tea-towel.

Thus if you happen to be in Aberdeen and reading this, do let me know if you know of any nice little one-bed flats going in the area. I know I'm thinking about 9 months in advance, but I'd rather have it done. Let me know.

The necessary first post about Paris and tardiness.

I'm three months into my year abroad, over a quarter of the way through. I figured at this point I should probably start writing things down, because 

1. I am a linguistic Midas, and every word I type is golden.
2. The above is absolutely not true, but I’d quite like to think it is, and the only way to get to that point is by practise.
3. Also, some people I’ve met here may want to read about my experiences.

So a brief rundown to start with - I’m working in two distinctly different areas; teaching and office assisting. In the former, I work with a permanent member of staff to teach English; she has kindly given me the higher groups and, since I’m at a post-graduate school, all of these students have a fairly high level of English already. I teach three conversation classes - although teach is really too professional a word for what happens, which is mostly debate and games - and one TOEIC preparation class.

The TOEIC is a Test Of English for International Communication, and is apparently highly regarded here. I am English, and can confess that even though I am studying French, I had not heard of its French equivalent until a month ago. This, for me, demonstrates the vast gulf between European attitudes to language and the British attitude to the same. However; a problem, once recognised, can be overcome, and I plan to take the equivalent test of French next year as a sort of triumphant, nerdy climax to my year. My assault on Barad-Dûr, if you will, only with more preparation and, unfortunately, less Ian McKellen.

I’m staying in Rueil-Malmaison, and as well as letting me live in a cosy studio rent-free, I also draw a very comfortable wage. Rueil - as we locals call it - is about twenty minutes from La Défense by the excellent bus service, and from there the Arche de la Défense serves as a gateway to the La Ville Lumière; The City of Lights.

See also: the city of rude people, expensive everything, sheer madness on scooters, casual and vile misogyny, theft, and achingly cool and fashionable people by the truckload. If trucks were achingly cool. They certainly give off enough smoke. I’ve used achingly, by the by, because that’s the sensation it gives me as I see them. They are effortlessly cool. Parisians - on the whole - put so little effort into being so chic, so everything-I-wish-I-could-carry-off-but-can’t, that it makes me irrationally jealous and a little achy.

I’m sure you’ve had the same experience, whether it was for a state of mind - seeing old, still-happy couples - a thing, like a suit or a dress, a piece of jewellery or that person for whom you still hold a flame. That sentiment occurs to me when I see a Parisian smoking and lounging, or multiple Parisians smoking and drinking little coffees and speaking so quickly. I hope that other nationalities coming to the UK have that sentiment, but somehow I doubt it. Maybe I’m wrong. If I’m wrong, do say.

So in conclusion: Paris is expensive, over-hyped, full of rudeness and death-by-Vespa. And I am very seriously considering living here forever.