Countdowns are beginning

Things are constantly in motion. You are in motion at the moment, spinning on a planet that's spinning around a star that spinning in a galaxy and that's the kind of thing that make a person nervous.

This might go some way to explaining why I'm feeling a little stretched out at the moment, like I know the finish line is coming up but I can't see it yet. I don't think it's helping that the people around me are making ready to leave. My whole world currently feels like half past four on a Friday afternoon back in school, when you could feel the tension in the room. The clock would actually start to melt a little from the intensity of the gazes of the students. The energy in the room would be palpable, nervous energy wound tight and expressing itself in little scraping noises as students started preemptively pushing their chairs back.

I miss school, actually, which was why it was weird to see tweets from the school that took me in for my Sixth Form studies. The teachers haven't changed. The buildings are the same, even the ones that went up in 1965 "temporarily". They're still there. I rather suspect that if I'm not careful, my career will be like those buildings - falling into something "temporarily" and then staying there for fifty years before collapsing on someone and being condemned and retired.

That metaphor got away from me a little.

I spoke to my French tutor back in Aberdeen today, just to ask when we'll get marks back for our essays. The response I got was a sort of sighing acceptance that being in chilled out France had not rubbed off on me too much, and that they'd be marked when they were marked. Fair enough. Facebook updates and tweets from people at uni, the possibility of working with incredible people at the Gaudie, in Centre Stage, in AUSA - all of these things are driving me crazy with excitement but once again it's the finishing line I can't quite see. I'm getting into Limbo, neither Here nor There, but I'll be out soon enough.

I've booked - I say booked, I mean tried to book - tickets for +Derren Brown in August, but the wicked website isn't taking my money. I'd normally be pleased, but I like Derren. I went to his Svengali tour, and that freaked the bejeesus out of me before I even got there, because he engaged with me on Twitter. And I'm kind of a fangirl for this guy. I know, you're surprised, but the man can convince people to take payment in paper. Not paper money, actual paper. Check it out below.

Absolutely worth a watch.

In addition I've got some storyboards done - stickmen ahoy - and doodled some experimental dialogue. I'm really rather liking this malarkey, and I think I'm going to bash together a video about memory, taken from the book of the illusionist above. We'll see. It'll keep my mind off the finishing line for a while, in any case.

The students have all been warned about the test on Tuesday, which prompted some of them to come in and ask in French if they could have some practise material to take on a coach to Amsterdam where they're definitely going to study it. I said sure; it's only photocopied material and to be quite honest at this point getting totally stoned and trying to absorb the knowledge by eating the paper is about the only hope these kids have got.

I found out how to solve cryptic crossword clues, and while I am still as far from being able to solve them as Pluto is from being recognised as a planet, it feels good to know there's a system. I also learned that the Independent's quick crossword is a lot easier than the Guardian's. It was a bit of a slow day.

In recognition of this fact, the Internet threw all the distractions it could at me, including three charming internships and a job, all of which I want, all of which I absolutely must not take. To see why not, please see above for the metaphor.

I also learned - and this will be important for literally none of you, and yet I tell you anyway because I met the man and he's awesome - that +Stephen Waddington got elected President of the CIPR. Congratulations to that man. Johnny Walker black label on the rocks for everyone.

Finally, more teaching. Pushed C into the preterite (pronunciation of which is, for some reason, utterly beyond me) and she's swimming like a trooper, though every time I correct her because the verb she's using doesn't just take -ed but instead changes either:

• vowel 
• spelling
• pronunciation (read/read)
• some combination of the above

she looks so disapproving I cannot help but laugh. She scowls a bit more at that. B, on the other hand, has made huge leaps with his written work, which at the beginning was incredibly ambitious and utterly awful, and is now ambitious in line with his ability and has only small errors. And that makes me quite unnaturally happy.

Teaching. Might be something I'm actually good at.

Alright folks. Winding up here as I'm back to obscenely verbose blogs. Have a good weekend; I'm going to see a French translation of The Importance of being Earnest, because it's one of my favourite plays. Very excited. If it's brilliant I'll be dragging students back with me to see it and of course I'll be writing about it here.

Oh - and it looks like the slow route of invasion has beaten the quick route. The front page of Libération on Tuesday:

Apparently they're taking lessons from Cole Porter. You get points if you're on the Internet
and know who Cole Porter is. And aren't Sheila, because that's an unfair advantage.

Doing what I love

Sometimes you just have a day. You know it's going to be a day before you even wake up. Your body tries its best to stop you waking up because it knows, it knows that when you do, it's all going to turn to crap.

This was one of those days, only worse, because my body actually kicked me out of bed before I needed to. I woke up at 6.30, freezing cold, because the heating system in my flat turns itself off at around 5. This has happened three times in three days, and for the life of me I have absolutely no idea why. Ever since I got rid of my duvet, the evil genie that apparently lives in the radiator has decided to knock off at 5am.

I couldn't get warm in bed. I couldn't get back to sleep because I was cold and apparently wide awake, so I had a shower instead and then some coffee. The luxurious pace with which I broke my fast should have told me of the heapings of crap that were soon to land on me, but no. I was lulled, like a fool, into the sense of smug self-security that envelops a chap when he thinks he is ahead of his schedule.

I arrived at work a couple of minutes early, perfumed, fresh, rascally handsome. Today was a full day, but I felt prepared to face it. I was full of nutella and home-brewed coffee. My first task was the pilot light of the deep-sea fish of a day I would shortly encounter. I had to pull up some statistics for my colleague regarding memberships: who's paying, who paid last year but hasn't yet, how many of the new graduates are ponying up the cash…it was a task that she told me I needn't rush, that would take a couple of hours. 

Imagine her surprise, and the smug look on my face - vile, isn't it - when I returned the document to her twenty minutes. It wasn't a magic trick, but it may as well have been from the look on her face - but then, an awful lot of magic is knowing something the other person doesn't know. In this case, it was knowing that all of the characteristics my colleague needed could easily be identified by "IF GREATER THAN" and "IF LESS THAN" formulae.

In any case, with this task completed ahead of schedule, I thought I could relax - but instead, a huge ginger Belgian came roaring into my life. I do mean roaring;  he has a laugh that most of the school can hear. Once his hair goes white I can see him making a pretty penny as a Santa lookalike. It was for this gentleman that I had recorded the Mind-Mapping video, and he was exceedingly happy with it.

Except one part. One little part, that would only take me ten minutes to sort out.

The man knows me. It was only a small thing, and I was confident it would take no more than twenty (he knows me, and that means he knows how to flatter me) so, with time to spare, I agreed to sort it out there and then. I set myself up in my office, sat myself down, and made sure I was handsome. I was. I am.

I started the recording. I opened my mouth.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

A chainsaw makes a noise that, if unexpected, is one of the most terrifying in the world. I leaped out of my skin and hung to the ceiling by my fingertips, like a bloody and disgusting Spider-Man. The noise stopped. I crawled down and re-installed myself. Hair a little wild, but otherwise ready to begin again. I took a perfunctory glance out of the window. Nothing.

I started the recording.

RRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrr!!

Motherfu-

And this continued for twenty minutes. Every time I started recording my mysterious tormenter turned his or her chainsaw back on. Every time. If I ever meet the despicable animal who was doing this to me, I'm going to do absolutely nothing because they have a chainsaw. I'm not a total imbecile.

While I was slowly going mad inside the space of my own mind, I got a text - an unknown number. Unknown numbers always make me nervous, because I don't give out my number very much, but it was a woman who wanted to know if I could tutor her son. Sure, I said, when?

Tonight.

I warned her that I'd not be there until around 7.15; she told me it wouldn't be a problem. I hate such short notice, but a job is a job - and, speaking of jobs, it was time to get filming for the second video project of the day. There's a rather large announcement coming up in the next week, but due to various staff/national holidays, we've not had any time to prepare the online release, which will involve a video in Spanish. So that's how we two hours today: recording a three minute speech. How does one spend two hours recording a three minute speech?

Well, we did it by recording it a number of times and struggling with lighting issues, noise issues, and battery life issues. And pronunciation issues. And people-ignoring-signs-and-wandering-in-and-not-leaving issues, which were the absolute worst. In any case, we got it done, and for the next two-and-a-half hours Meyling, Sophie and I pieced together the takes to form a glorious, flowing draft. We had merely to add transitions, credits, and movement. Exhausted, we agreed to reconvene tomorrow at 8am to complete the project.

That completed, I took a whole half an hour to set up meeting the next day and chat to my colleague about work that I needed to take over from her while she jaunts off back to Blighty. Having added her items to my work schedule (and gained a new respect for the woman, she does a lot of work I didn't know about) it was to my French lesson, where I tried not to get irritated by the notion of the "traditional family," which at best is rose-tinted and at worst bigotry masquerading as "but we've always done this."Perhaps I was overreacting, but the one place in France where I've heard people using the phrase "traditional family" most was on the marches to deny the right to a family to homosexual couples. Perhaps I Pavlov'd myself again and I'm reacting to a slight that is unintended. All the same, I wonder how the class would feel if they had to describe the "traditional family" in the terms they reserve for non-"traditional" families: monoparental, recomposed (recomposé) and homosexual families versus "traditional" gives a linguistic bias (in my opinion) to the word we recognise and feel comfortable with."Hetero families" is as clinical a term as "recomposé," so why not use it?

As a result there was a slightly tense moment when I was asked what a family that is composed of a previously married father, a previously married mother, and kids from both previous relationships and the current is called. I said "a family." Because that's what it is. The day she has to say "I'm in a hetero relationship" rather than just "I'm in a relationship" is the day she has the right to label other people's families.

Sorry, that become something of a rant. I'll try to get back to the funny.

Mid-lesson I got a call from Sophie to say that the man at the top of her chain of command didn't like the video and that we'd redo the whole thing tomorrow, in one go. I have to say I'm a little relieved that our early morning meeting has been cancelled, but at the same time the fact that we wasted several hours in post-production was a knife to the kidneys of my soul. In any case, it was time to haul ass out to St. German to meet my new student, H, whose English is quite frustratingly good/bad. What I mean by this is that he has a solid to excellent grip on all English tenses and can use them comfortably and with ease, but then says "childrens" and "mens". Which is heartbreaking.

I finished that lesson at quarter past 8. I took a bus, and wrote most of this blog on the way. Since getting home I've replied to more emails and eaten half a kilo of ravioli, and I'm pretty okay with that.

Tomorrow promises to be just as exciting as today was. Oh - and I found out the name of the person who'll be replacing me. If it's you, and you read the blog, why not send me a message?

In the meantime, here's a sneaky picture from today's shoot. Hip height, so I apologise for the quality. 

As always, thanks for reading.

Midweek madness

Having a Wednesday off is weird. Having a Wednesday off with no sign of work until Monday is quite frankly bizarre, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. However, it has allowed me to do plenty of work around the flat, a few more paragraphs of the year abroad project, and some campaigning. Campaigning from behind a desk, several thousand miles from the electorate - it's tricky.

However. Progress has been made, and I've even started planning what my parents are going to be taking home when they arrive in July - it's a long way off, but there's no harm in being prepared. I think my marble chess set, 500-page cocktail bible and cast-iron griddle can probably go. (Please take my advice: look at what you've packed for your year abroad and then get rid of everything that you know you're not going to use more than once a week.)

The afternoon was given over tutoring once more; I keep forgetting C is very young and only a beginner because she's rocking the present tense like a natural while B is struggling a little with the present perfect and the past perfect, because they're kind of hard to explain and it seems his teacher's not done the greatest of jobs. Still; me to the rescue - appropriate, since the current topic is superheroes. We managed a debate on why Superman is, in fact, the worst superhero and unique in terms of "secret identities." For more on this train of thought, see David Carradine in Kill Bill Vol.2. Or just see below.

With a few more pennies added to my pocket and some homework meted out - I am a very mean tutor -  I decided to skip the bus and walk home. The weather was warm and close, and the dark clouds overhead hinted at rain. They managed to pass without pouring on me, and the stroll home was fantastic - I bought the soundtrack to The Great Gatsby (here: Gatsby le Magnifique, which I like far better as a title) as I was walking and streamed it direct to my earholes from the internet via my phone, because technology has made magic completely obsolete. 

I (still) cannot get over how completely off-the-wall mad it is that we can actually do that.

Since I got home, it's been pootling, reading, and cleaning. With all this free time to procrastinate, it would be a crime to waste it...

High Tea, High Hat, Cymbal, Scat

Today I am more glad than ever I am not making a video blog, because I sound as husky as a husky who smokes a forty-pack a day. This is because I have been getting very excited about English, services we offer in the mediatheque, and switching from French to English with only the occasional missed step.

Today was inauguration day for my new mediatheque (which won't be mine in a mere two months time) and so we cracked out about 400 scones, 8 kilos of jam and enough clotted cream to fill a fridge. We also brought forth tea in 4 varieties; Darjeeling, Ceylon, Breakfast and, of course, Earl Grey. I also managed to find a site where the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games was hosted, and so the beautiful words of Jerusalem, Danny Boy and Flow'r of Scotland floated over the heads of my cheerfully babbling students; babbling, from Babel; the many different languages weaving a fabric of community.

All shared over scones and tea. My job gets better every day.

It was all over too soon, in fact, and before long I was back in my French class, where we had great fun with French text language. It's a mess, and I can't stand it, but I confess I over-reacted a little when a fellow student said it would mean that kids wouldn't be learning "proper language skills".

I don't agree. Some very smart people I know use text language, and it's representative of a fascinating look into the way a mind works. The spelling is literal, brief, saving space and time. It requires thinking in a certain way, and when you think the way another mind thinks, you're a little closer to them as a person. There are no "proper language skills," language is a continually evolving hydra. If you try squashing one part of it, it'll simply spring up again somewhere else. Teach "proper language skills", sure, but then realise that people will break them. From Shakespeare to Dizzy Rascal, the "rules" can be broken. Let's be jazz musicians, and learn the rules just to break them.

Ella Fitzgerald, ladies and gentlemen:

Shakespeare and Company

Well. It seem I really love books.

Today was a long day. It started at half past seven, as usual - I can't remember the last time I had a long lie in - and after ablutions and dressing (black shirt, burgundy tie, navy suit since you asked) I made my way to A's house for some more English tutoring. Having seen his syllabus, I'm going to need to brush up on some maths along with some biology, so that'll be really interesting. Evolution is up next, so there's a lot for me to read there - I'm currently reading The Science of Discworld III and it turns out almost everything I thought I knew about evolution is wrong, so I need to get refreshed.

After teaching, A's father suggested that I carry on tutoring A even when I go home, via Skype, and they'll set up a wire transfer and keep paying me. The idea is very tempting, especially as it'll mean I'll only need to work four hours a week to manage my budget, rather than the twenty I've currently got planned. However, I'm not sure how well I can tutor via the internet, so I might need to do a trial run first. If you tutor online, what programs do you use? Are there any you recommend?

After tutoring I headed home and dropped in on my friend Adeline, who's as cute as a button and as innocent as the driven snow (and almost as dangerous). She'd agreed to come with me on a journey to the centre of Paris to find Shakespeare and Company, an English-language bookstore. We strolled down to the station at about 2 and caught the RER into town, popping up at Chatelet-les-Halles. From there it's a short walk south to the Seine, over the bridge, and into what could be described as the literature quarter. I didn't take my camera. I'm still kicking myself.

I failed at finding Shakespeare & Co on the first try, so instead we went to Gilbert Jeune, which is one bookstore with many different storefronts spread around the Place de Saint Michel. I confess at this point that I went back into full-on teacher mode. I spoke at length about Saint Michel and Satan, calling attention to the figures that form the fountain in the Place. I gathered a small crowd with my ramblings. The crowd dispersed when I realised they were there and became rather self-aware, and with a motion worthy of Schrödinger they disappeared. Going into the bookstore I was in my element, plucking books from every corner and gleefully exclaiming at the prices. My glee was turned all the way up to eleven when the manager told me that, if I were to spend more than x amount, he would give me a ten percent discount. Nothing makes me happier than books; nothing but books that cost even less. Let me teach Shakespeare for the rest of my life and I shall be content. Let me help students explore my language always and pay me only enough to survive and I will be content always.

After that outpouring of excitement (and an interesting flirtation with a goddess from the Egyptian pantheon called Isis) Adeline and I grabbed a seat outside Notre Dame and listened to the bells. They start off sounding like a mere cacophany, but as you listen you start to hear the tune and the counterpoint; it shifts and moves and is glorious. The bells are new and shiny and recently blessed, and while I can't speak for the blessing the newly cast tongues sing gloriously. The technical term for bellringing, by the way, is campanology.

Outside Notre Dame we met Arrash, another student at school, who told us about the concert happening at Notre Dame on Wednesday. He was going, and was kind enough to ask if we'd like to go too. Adeline and I were quick to agree; she is both musical and Christian and, while I am neither, I have a deep-seated appreciation for both in their more beautiful forms. The tickets were 20€ each; a little pricey, but I strongly suspect it's going to be worth it.

From Notre Dame, we said goodbye to Arrash and Adeline navigated us to Shakespeare and Co, where I managed to form another small crowd - not such a sensible idea in the tiny little space of the shop. I couldn't help it; we found the Shakespeare section and, since Adeline has trouble with Shakespearean English - heck, even I used to have trouble with Shakespearean English - I went through some of the more famous speeches with her. We gathered a little audience, although part of that might have just been onlookers concerned for my health when I talked about how everyone wants to just kill themselves although, as I said at the time, they weren't my words but Hamlet's. (Not Shakespeare's; ascribing an opinion to Shakespeare because he wrote it is akin to ascribing paedophilia to Nabokov because one of his characters was one. Idiotic.)

I snapped some pictures of books I'd like to add to the library. Do you agree with my choices? I've obviously missed a lot, so what would you suggest? Thoughts in the comments below or to my twitter as always please.

 Any you violently disagree with? Still let me know, although gently please. I like these books and your opinion matters to me.

After that glorious jaunt, and while I say jaunt I mean hours (we finally came out, blinking in the still-strong sunlight, at 7) and strolled about, looking for somewhere to eat. We found a gorgeous little bistro and got stuck in to soupe oignon gratinée, malgré du canard, tarte, sorbet and an excellent wine from the Alsace region.

Fuller and happier and utterly content in the company of a friend we made our way gently homeward. A gorgeous stroll through the still-warm night and we are home, and just about ready to collapse. Tomorrow there will be more tutoring and some work on my year abroad project and blog. And planning on how to spend my budget.

Life is just too great right now.

Dissonance

I'm writing even as updates appear in the left hand corner of my screen about some explosions that have occurred near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It's really quite weird to even consider writing about my day when these events are happening, but happening they are, and they are happening half a world away from me. I can't change that, though I'd like to, so rather than sitting here twiddling my thumbs I'm going to say only this:

1. Donating blood is easy. You can do it anywhere. I recently did it here in France and was only a little afraid I'd be misunderstood and have my entire body accidentally drained.
2. Donating a little cash is even easier and even less painful. Consider giving a couple of quid/dollars/huge rocks with holes in (delete as applicable) a month and feeling smug for saving someone's life.

Easy peasy. Please do one of those two things before reading on, or at least do it simultaneously. If you're giving blood then with any luck my prose will cause you more pain than the needle and thus distract you. Onwards.

My morning was beautiful. The sun is shining, the air is warm, and rather than leaving my skin behind when I arose I was instead a rather nice light tan colour. The wonders of my Spanish heritage, which turn up only when I'm under attack from ultraviolet rays sent through space. Or sunlight, if you prefer. I installed myself in my new office, brought my computer down, and plugged everything in. There is a curious satisfaction to currently connecting all the bits and pieces of a computer; everything fits together perfectly.

My morning was taken up with a thirteen-page read through of the third chapter from the book I'm proofreading. No sign of chapter two, as I'm sure you noticed. Where that is nobody knows, but we're certain it exists somewhere. This chapter was a lot easier, and finding out the history of the place in which I live is really very interesting.

My afternoon was all about unpacking. At this point the sneaking suspicion grew on me that books multiply in ways we cannot be certain of; while I cannot prove it, I am sure that we now have more books than we did when I boxed them away. I stood looking at shelves heaving with books, and then the pile of books still to be unpacked, and could not work out how to recombine the two in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Several hours later, and with filthy hands, one of my students turned up to tell me that nobody would be coming to class today, as they all had project work or were on vacation. While a warning of more than ten minutes would have been more useful, and would have better allowed me to plan my free hour, these kids are really busy and the mere fact they sent an envoy was very good of them.

So I upped and I left and managed to read a little more Machiavelli before supping on soup and going off to my private student, who is as charming as ever. The evening was so barmy we sat outside in the heat and sipped beer and talked. I keep saying this, but there is nothing as brilliant as looking back at how a student used to be, and how they are now, and realising the leaps and bounds they've made. Fantastic.

Home; no greasy take-away meal for me today (though my stomach, being naught but a dumb animal, protests at the indignity). The awful events in Boston are still unfolding so I'm going to stop here and just restate that giving a pint of blood will impact your life only so far as some of your lifetime will not be spent doing precisely what you want. Please, please do it. If you can spare a little wonga too then fantastic, but blood is absolutely more important. 

I can't say it without saying cheesy, but if you save a life with your own damn blood, that makes you a superhero. 

Go forth and be a superhero.

Suit up!

Today started earlier than expected. I was so surprised I lay in bed, feeling suddenly and totally wide awake, for five minutes. It was a bizarre experience. Has anybody else experienced it? Sudden, total wakefulness from utter dreamless sleep in a heartbeat.

This morning passed without event. A little filing, a little correspondance, one compliment from an lady who was in the group with whom I went to the Dalì exposition - very calm. In fact, exceedingly so, and I took to the corridors to find out why all was peace. I soon found the source of the silence; several companies from the energy industry were giving talks and although I could make neither head nor tail of it, the rooms were packed to the rafters. This merely affirms that I am not cut out to be an engineer.

My lunchtime was busy, as students hustled in and out, asking for corrections to CVs and interview practice before their one-on-one sessions with recruiters tomorrow. A growling, squelching rumble told me that lunchtime had passed. I threw students from my door, promising to be back once I'd appeased my stomach.

Once I'd appeased it (with so much glorious food, I have genuinely no idea how I'm going to survive next year) I was back to work on a translation, interrupted at irregular intervals by students looking for help and silly students.

Now silly students are a tiny bugbear in my otherwise flawless life and job. Silly students are students who, having been told something once, keep coming back to you to check. Not that they've understood, mark me, but that you've understood. They want to be certain that you know what you're doing.

And it is frustrating me.

Tiny bugbear. Tiny.

I was interrupted again at 4, at which point I may have silently pointed a finger at the door and prayed for the ability to explode things. Nothing happened. While my latent superpowers developed I barked "Come in!" at the door. It swung tentatively open and my conversation class, their ranks swollen by two more keen students, peered in. They wanted to know if they could start early and I, unable to resist students eager to learn, leapt from my seat and began at once. We covered economics, politics and taxation before moving onto my map. I've talked before about my map. I've grown slightly used to it, but it still pleases me to see how unsettled students are by it.

Starting early meant finishing early, and with great pleasure I strolled home. The only problem with living so close to work is that it's not much of a stroll home, and I was home almost before I started.

Interview has been moved to an hour later tomorrow. I'm taking final advice from Barney:

You bet Barney. You bet.

As busy as a...?

Frantically busy today, which is just the way I like my life. A small equation to write into Excel tomorrow should result in the completion of the week-long statistics project and mark the commencement of the writing about the statistics project. The details are still being completed, but it's mostly good news - there are more women than ever in petroleum engineering - the ratio this year being 1:3 - and almost all are earning more than 40,000€ per year one year after graduation. It is a good time, to be in oil.

Alright, so that's hardly news, but it looks pretty good as a bell curve.

There was a panicked flurry of writing and translation this morning as my colleague in the marketing department summoned me to give her prose a once-over; an easy job as she is extremely proficient. A small change later, we thought we were done. We high-fived. This was a weird experience, not being an American or, indeed, at all sporty, but I did it anyway. We were sadly mistaken, however, as the ping of an email arriving gave us more work to do and a deadline that approached like a glacier; its movement was indiscernible until you looked up and it saw that it had got half an hour closer.

That done, and my brain having used many millions of calories, my stomach cried out. The noises it made are called borborygmi, a fact I share with you because I know you've always wondered, and so with haste and with my colleague I made my way to the canteen. We will say nothing of lunch, save only that figs should be left out of food. Forever. Figs should not be allowed in kitchens. Chefs should not smoke, spit, or have figs near food.

I am intolerant only of intolerance. And figs.

And lactose, but that's actually a real thing.

The afternoon was a steady buzz of activity; I start English lessons again next week so I'm going to be planning like crazy once again. Researching things to talk about, finding movie clips, all good fun. There is nothing better than re-greeting old students and meeting new ones. I'll also be running grammar classes and plan on producing an entire semester-plan over the weekend because organisation is my watchword.

I'm also going to Rouen over the weekend. Watch how I juggle these things. You will be astonished.

Now I have to go and, you know, juggle, so here for you is a trailer kindly shared with me by an absent friend. Joss Whedon only went and did Much Ado About Nothing.

Just a heads up - if you join my English class and this comes out in France, we will be going to see it.

Also: dat beat.

Freedom!

Upsides and downsides. A informed me today that he could be absent for the next two to three weeks, which gives me either a) lie-in time or b) exploring time. I've amassed a few pennies from the extra hours I do, so I'm pretty tempted to take the latter option and do some exploring - Rouen is a mere hour away by train and is pretty gorgeous, judging from my friend Adeline's trip. That blog in Mandarin Chinese and English, because as well as knowing beautiful people I know some seriously smart ones too.

In fact, from here I'm looking at loads of different trips and directions - I could head south towards the glorious (and, according to my French teacher, exceedingly expensive) town of Nice or north towards Rouen or even Normandy. Paris is gorgeous, but I've all of France to discover - and a new appreciation for the fact that in Scotland there are a hundred beautiful little corners that are waiting for me.

I've started re-reading The Great Gatsby after seeing a very exciting new trailer for it. If you've not read Gatsby, then please go and do so - if you have any sort of electronic reading device then it will not cost you more than a euro. Or a pound, if that's what you use. I can't say how much it would cost you in dollars, but I can't imagine it'll be very much. In any case, buy it and read it immediately. It's a story about people, about mystery, about striving to be something other than one is. According to the French, it's the 46th best book of the 20th century. I couldn't be that specific, but I would say it is an incredible work of the English language and well worth a read.

The rest of my day has been taken up by writing, laundry, and dishes, that trio of chores that take up my time. I despise the latter two for taking time from the first, which is why several students found me in the laundry room tapping away at this laptop. I'm working on a few things, but nothing that's yet worthy of publication.

In all, then, not as exciting a day as you'd hoped, but rather filled with the minutiae of the things that must be done, the little responsibilities one must look to if one wishes to stop drinking straight from the tap and start using a glass like a person in France in the 21st century. Who has access to several glasses.

I like writing and I hate doing dishes. But I need to eat and I can't eat off what I write. Still, buying plastic cups, plates and cutlery is getting more tempting by the minute.

Final request: if you love France and know where I should go, leave me a comment. I'd love to know what you think.

The land of fairytales

There was no blog yesterday due to a migraine that sat right behind my left eye and threatened to pop it clean out of its socket. That may not actually be how migraines work - I'm no Dr House - but that's certainly how it felt, and I went to bed with a heavy heart. The next day I was due to go to Disney, but with pain that severe I knew I'd have to cancel - and bringing two friends down from Le Havre and then abandoning them would have been awfully rude. Thankfully, with my alarm (summer storm today, completely surreal but very pleasant to wake to) came clarity and renewed vigour; energy, not agony, coursed through my brain. I had breakfast, I got dressed, and I checked the weather.

"Ressentie" means "feels like". "-10ºC" means "You ought to wear a coat, dumbass"

I confess a small problem of mine is that I sometimes overestimate my tolerance for things. These things include, but are not limited to, alcohol, cheese and the cold. As a result, I put an undershirt on, buttoned another over the top, threw on a suit jacket and attached a gift to it and made my way into the cold. The bus arrive quickly, and although it felt nippy, I assumed it would warm up - the sun would shine, the cloud would burn off, and Disneyland would twinkle and sparkle in the light.

Being wrong once is bad luck. Being wrong twice is indicative, but being wrong three times is a good sign that you are not as smart a cookie as you'd like to think. The short version, for those who believe that brevity is the soul of wit, it was exceedingly cold and, despite having got back 90 minutes ago, I have only just regained sufficient fine motor ability to tap this out.

I've also taken on another two students because their father called me when I was tired and freezing, and it was easier to just agree than to turn him down and then explain why. So my week now looks like this:

Not pictured: free time

So that's my week ahead. Frightening. But exciting! New students are younger still, 7 and 9 (I think, the connection was abysmal, if it turns out they're 70 and 90 it'll be interesting for a different set of reasons) so I can foresee this being a real challenge. I'm going to aim for 50-50 English-French teaching and will need to start looking at more detailed lesson plans to really hold small children's attention. If anyone has any advice, I'd really appreciate it.

So: my friends, it seems, slept incredibly badly - no more than five hours sleep between the pair of them. We had to make an emergency stop at Starbuck's before a brisk walk to the RER station Auber. The RER A goes pretty much directly through Paris East-West, and although it's faster than the Metro, it still took us around 45 minutes to get out to Marne-la-Valée and DisneyLand Resort Paris.

It started snowing on the way, big, thick, perfect flakes of snow. This was to become a recurrent theme.

We arrived and were at once struck by how cold it was. At no point did we swear, because Disney never has swearing. Even when lions are being thrown to their deaths by Jeremy Irons (warning: all the sads), and you'd think that at least merits an f-word. Minimum. So there was no swearing at all, all day, even when mentioning how extraordinarily, finger-blackening, blood-freezingly cold it was. We made a game effort and went around every part of the park, tagging the Teacups and Indiana Jones on the way round. We were hampered in our efforts to get onto the more exciting rides because other people were willing to stand in line for 80 minutes to get on them, and we don't have that sort of determination. We were all far too cold.

We broke for lunch in a gigantic theatre and half-watched several of the incredible shorts Disney/Pixar have made. If you've not seen them yet, then here's a lovely little one from Wall-E to get you started.

We all know that feeling.

In any case, by five in the afternoon we were just about ready to crash - trotting around on no sleep in the freezing cold had ground us steadily down, and we made for the train station. Before long we were zooming back through the snow, falling even heavier now, and dragging our weary selves into the station. I said goodbye to my friends, who looked as dead on their feet as me, and made my way by metro and then by bus back home.

The bus, being a bus sent by Satan, stopped half a mile from my flat. That's not far, but in the state of mind where all one wants to do is sit in the warm and drink tea that half mile stretched far, far ahead of me. And blew snow in my face.

In any case, I've made it home. My laundry is on, my alarm is set, and my 7-day week starts again in 10 hours, so if anyone needs me, I'll be the one passed out in bed and not snoring. 

I hope.

Too much to read

We have almost completely emptied the mediatheque now, and I had the misfortune of catching a glimpse of the outgoing piles of New Statesman, The Economist and New Scientist. And so now I have about two feet of reading material, the time for which I think I shall have to magic out of the aether.

I am, much like my mother, something of a hoarder. However, while she hoards things - plugs, cables, instruction manuals for equipment long since dismantled or disregarded - I hoard information. As a result, I have a room which could legitimately be the study of a professor of linguistics, statistics, or politics. It could even, at a pinch, serve as the flat of serial chef. (It should be noted that a cereal chef, although it sounds the same, is not. It's not even a real kind of chef.)

There is a chess set, in the middle of a game. A book of poems by an excellent poet of my acquaintance. A library covering titles from Why Does E=Mc2 to The Bartender's Bible (which is going to be an absolute nightmare to get home, I have not the first clue why I insisted on bringing it). A camera, a Kindle, five packs of cards and a shot glass complete the ensemble.

In any case, with the room nearly packed the question of where I shall be going has apparently only just reared its head, much to my consternation. It appears nobody knows where I am going, and I shall likely be shoved into a closet office in the back end of nowhere. However, a colleague has offered me space in her office and she's really nice - plus, it should lead to me speaking even more French than ever. Result.

My extra-curricular working week is now over, and I have to say it's cheering that even in the three weeks in which I've not seen C she's made a concerted effort to keep her English up to scratch. She'd written the story of The Three Musketeers in her own words and for the most part it was excellent; very few mistakes and lots of elaborate tense use. She still tends to use enormous sentences, a habit many French people form (and a habit which of which I am often guilty), so we worked on cutting them down and on coordinating conjunctions.

And now I'm home, and I've written, and I've realised I've nothing for breakfast. I work too hard. Anyone want to be my butler?

Oh, bonus question - which country literally means silver? No googling, and answers to @jonodrew

Beef stew bubbling on an open fire

So: I didn't write anything yesterday. I got an awful lot of flack for not writing anything yesterday. I'm gratified that I have such eager readers, and I enjoy writing more than anything, but please realise that I'm only human and sometimes I need a night off.

Last night was that night off, but let's start in the morning. The morning started badly; my colleague was somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half late and, since I have no key to the upstairs office, I instead went downstairs and continued to record the DVDs we have. Four hours of that later and I was just about ready to end it all, my very will to live reduced by the illogical way the pile of DVDs appeared to get no smaller. I seemed to be stuck in a parallel universe.

Lunchtime came and went, and that was just about the highlight of my day - a Portuguese student of startling vivacity and a regular in my little mediatheque came in at the same time as me and so we ate together. She speaks Portuguese, of course, as well as excellent English and is attacking her ignorance in French with vigour. She was curious about where I'd come from and what I did, and I likewise was curious about her - I see students so rarely and they all have such interesting stories. Nearly everyone does.

After lunch I lent her La Fille sur le Pont, a black and white French comedy/romance/drama that I really enjoyed. The copy we have is not subtitled so it may be a struggle, but I think she'll profit from it. If you've not seen then I'd highly recommend it. The trailer is just about the most wonderfully...French piece of film I think I've ever seen, and although the quality is abysmal, I hope you'll get a sense of it from the clip below.

If not, imdb has a great quality copy (that I can't stick in my blog) over here, although the voiceover adds a dimension of reality to the whole thing which is somehow disappointing.

The afternoon was given over to more of the same and I left feeling utterly drained and itching for a drink. The drink was to come, but first I had my two new students, who are 12 and 15 and shall be known as C and B. Teaching anything from basics is very difficult, but language more so - I learnt English through assimilation, and so I have a sense of what "feels" right. Going back to the start and trying to explain the tenses is difficult, and I almost wish we'd been taught the rules in school. In any case, it was a success, as it relied on me being able to explain in French, so I taught pretty much 50-50 French and English. All was understood and some small amount of progress has been made, and that makes me feel warm and fuzzy, like a blow-dried panda bear.

B, on the other hand, has a good level of English, so I've set him a writing task to see if his written measures up to his spoken. We talked a lot about past tense, and that seems solid, though as with many French students he wants to say have where we use be, in examples like j'ai quinze ans - I am fifteen (years old).

A minor blip, though, in an otherwise strong ability. I'm really excited about these kids; new challenges and new things to be taught.

And after? I headed into town for a games night. This was my night off; spent in the company of international people, with tapas on one side, pastis on the other and the whole gamut of humanity before me. People were playing go, from China, abalone from France, chess - which has taken a roundabout route from India, where it was called chaturanga in Sanskrit - and poker, which may have come from Germany or France but took off in the States.

It was a really fantastic evening, and I'm already looking for ward to the next one.

Today has been my normal weekend student, A, with whom I'm exploring problems requiring linear functions to solve. Nothing too complex, but again I'm having difficulties in slowing him down. He answers the question before reading it, and it's causing no small amount of headaches. Does anyone have any advice on how to encourage students to slow down and consider their work more carefully? Comment below and I'll be eternally grateful.

For the rest of the afternoon I'm scaling Mount Dishes, another physics-defying construction which can never quite be utterly conquered. I've thrown together a stew too, which bubbles merrily behind me. I've crunchy, still-warm French bread to go with it, though I confess I'm starving myself for dinner and it's looking more and more likely I'll need to go back to the shops before long. The smell is intense.

Finally, and most importantly, my baby sister is 18 today. If 200 people say happy birthday to her, then something amazing will happen. She's on twitter. Go forth and wish her happiness.

Reflected sound, as of underground spirits

I write this listening to Le Roi Lion. Those readers with sharp eyes and quick brains will note that Roi bears a passing resemblance to the English royal, which in turn is linked to the latin rex - as in Tyrannosaurus Rex, which is a vile mongrel of a word, containing Greek, Latinised Greek, and Latin. It means Tyrant-Lizard-King, and is quite frankly overkill. Clearly there's some overcompensation going on for those tiny arms.

Some people may well have not noticed, but it's Valentine's Day today. I've written at length about this particular festival, and if you are interested in reading that soft and squishy part of me, then I invite you to click here for love.

Otherwise, we shall say no more about the subject.

I only did a little translating this morning - some coding that a much smarter person than I had created needed its user-facing language translated - and spent the rest of my time deleting the records of alumni who'd died. It's a weird thing to do, scrubbing away the evidence that they were alive, but there's not much point in the in the automated system continuing to send out birthday cards and invitations to dinner. All the same - once our bodies have died, all that's left is echoes, and here I was systematically destroying one of those echoes. As I said, odd.

Lunch was spectacular again; the quality of the food keeps improving and I'm incredibly pleased by that. I'm eating more fruit and veg than I've ever done so take note, prospective third year abroad-ers - your complexion will clear up, your body will tone itself naturally, and your mind will leap like a salmon in spawning season.

I kid. You're going to eat way too much good food and have to be rolled home like the delicious cheeses on which you've been gorging yourself. You could be taken up to Montmartre and released, and virile young French men and women would chase you.

Cheese chasing. It's a real thing.

Because if there's one universal language, it's stupidity. Personal favourite moment is at the end, when a guy going at full pace sees what can only be described as a brick outhouse disguised as a human standing with shoulder pointed forward. Going fast, it has been said, doesn't hurt at all. Stopping suddenly - that's the kicker. Poor guy, he absolutely collapses. With friends like these, who needs enemies. Or kidneys, apparently.

My afternoon has been spent further expanding the inventory and an hour lesson with my favourite economist, who's given me homework. This is the problem with teaching teachers, it becomes something of a stalemate. Half the lesson is given over to checking each other's work.

In any case, I've got something called The Ascent of Money, which sounds marvelous, and have an article authored by the man himself about whether OPEC is still a cartel.

My brain is expanding in exciting ways.

In other blog news: Mary-Lyne updated her blog en masse, a French phrase which means while at church, and it's viewable here. The riddles are fiendish.

Finally: this blog will likely hit 10,000 views -

.gif stolen from http://www.crushable.com/2012/05/10/entertainment/nbc-cancels-parks-and-recreation-30-rock-community-wtf-888/

over the next week, and it's Valentine's, and I normally despise writers who break the fourth wall but -

To every single reader, from Finland to France and from Canada to Australia, you reading this means a huge amount to me.

You know, even if the Finns could perhaps be doing a little more.

In which our hero feels trapped. Inside a whale.

Ah, last minute projects. I love the way they turn everything into an irritating distraction. The bird that tweets gently outside the window becomes a whirring dentist's drill. The click of a stapler across the room is as loud as gunshot and the kettle boiling behind one could not be more distracting unless it was poured down one's back.

The first last minute project came in the form of an urgent translation. My colleague had fed it through Google translate, which had spat out strings of nonsense - more of a reflection on the original author than on Google. He has the most gorgeous style in French, but translating that to English just makes for rambling paragraphs with no clear point. We tend to prefer slightly shorter sentences; at least in press releases. In our private writing we can ramble for ever; clauses tumbling over sub-clauses, meaning lost somewhere in the flotsam and jetsam of what resembles, but may in fact never be - for, in truth, what can ever be said to be - the ending or conclusion of that which we, having started, must now find within our means to end.

Awful. My very fingers cringed as I wrote that.

I am yet to find a satisfactory translation for responsable; it's the person responsible for something else and therefore changes according to context. Despite that minor headache I completed the project on time and made my way to my now very empty looking office. All that we're keeping and moving to the new language center has been boxed and put into storage and we've invited the staff to take anything they wish; video cassettes and coffee-table books full of pictures of rich people's gardens seem particularly popular. They have descended and picked the shelves clean. The room appears eery now. Empty shelves and huge spaces where tables and chairs once were. It's like being inside a whale skeleton. Disconcerting. Still, with the plan I've made to guide them, the room will soon be full of students again.

Lunch was fantastic; there's a chef on the staff who seems to absolutely love his job. He's got such enthusiasm, and loves talking about the food he's serving. On his recommendation I had a beef dish; swimming with sauce and apricots. It was fantastic and enormously stodgy, and I suspect it tasted better because I'd not had anything in my stomach for about twenty hours before that moment. A recent acquaintance told me that we measure love in loss, and I think she was right. My delicious lunch proved her poetry.

The afternoon saw me finishing off my technical drawing, and here it is in all its technicolour glory:

Some people think colours should be understated. None of those people are me.

This one was more of a push, but with half an hour to spare it was complete and three dimensional. With the spare half-hour I brushed up on last week's grammar points before my French lesson. The lesson was okay; we didn't learn anything new at all and one student tried to pick holes in the language. I don't understand why anyone does that; there are exceptions and things one simply has to learn in any language - aside perhaps from Esperanto - and complaining and nit picking does nothing but slow the class down. Be a clever-clogs after class.

Homeward after, homework done, but no pancakes consumed. I suspect that may well be tomorrow's enjoyable task. I've mentioned it before, but my mother bought me a crêpe pan and I've got it well seasoned now. It is a thing of beauty, and I cannot wait to get it home and onto a hob that doesn't slant.

In other blog news, my friend Alexandra went to Amsterdam, Kate imagined herself West Winging, and in unrelated news the zombie apocalypse is starting over in Montana.

Oh, and I literally just picked up another two hour teaching gig. Happy days.

A shameful confession

Today has, as I had hoped, been a very interesting day. I was up by 8 and out of the flat by 9, on my way to teach a lesson. I confess I took the bus; I ran a couple of miles last night far too quickly and my legs were not slow to reprimand me. The lesson that I had expected to run for three hours ran only for two, and this is where the day started to get a bit wonky.

Now last night I planned my route around my students; they live about three miles from each other and three miles from me; thus, a path from my flat to the first to the second and home is a natural triangle. I had one hour between the first and the second student and was looking forward to a genteel stroll with some music to listen to.

Now, for some reason when I left my first student's house I thought it had been three hours, and not two, and so I made my way to the second student. It had started to snow lightly, but it wasn't settling - just melting and pouring past me in the gutter. I hunched myself into my nice warm coat and hustled a little; snow is lovely until you realise at 20 miles an hour the delicate little flakes become nature's own shuriken.

The extra turn of speed provided to me by the unbroken assault of snow shaved a quarter of an hour off my journey, and before I knew it I was buzzed through to the house. The students' mother looked surprised to see me and the family were just finished dinner; I felt a little embarrassed at having arrived fifteen minutes late but was assured it wasn't a problem.

As before, I had daughter and son for an hour each and daughter seemed exceedingly keen so, beneath her mother's disapproving eye, we headed through to the study. I'd set her a couple of short essay questions to expand her writing ability and it seems she has a similarly verbose style; I'm impressed with her ability but it really doesn't leave much for me to teach. Son came next and we talked about what he studied; I had him explain atoms, the free market, and David Beckham, so I'm pretty sure the poor guy'll be even more unwilling than usual to go back to school tomorrow. They both got new and exciting essay topics and I have to say I look forward to reading them next week.

Having concluded lessons I made my way back to the kitchen where students' mother asked if next time I could come closer to three, as it was very unfair on her to have come so early. I confess I was a little put out; I had been only 15 minutes early but, I thought to myself, she's the boss.

I was halfway down the road when I looked at my watch and saw, much to my surprise, that it was only four. I was not supposed to have finished teaching until five. Had my watch stopped? Had I only taught my students for half an hour? Had -

That was when it dawned on me. That was when I located my missing hour and re-viewed the past two in my head. Considered from the students' mother's point of view:

A relatively handsome man whom she has met only once turns up an hour and fifteen minutes early, gives weak platitudes in apology and then vanishes to the study for an hour with daughter.

I could not have been more mortified. A vampire in transit passed me by completely, thinking me by my complexion already dead. Utter, awful horror washed over me. She had not been impolite in her goodbyes, merely trying to reassure herself that the man whom she had invited into her house could tell the time and had more sense than to barge in when people were having lunch.

Were I not British the upper lip might have jolly well trembled. My visible composure could have shattered but, save for a certain clammy, pallid air around the face, I remained resolutely unshattered. It was only within that the storm broke, but broke it did with wailing and gnashing of the teeth.

In any case, I struggled home, the ice that had frosted my hair and crowned me the dark-haired prince of some winter realm now melting and running down my face like the manly tears I absolutely did not shed. The heat from internal shame boiled the water and before long I was steaming inside my own jacket like King Edward. Sorry, a King Edward.

Tonight is my last night of sketch writing (until I start again tomorrow) so I'm polishing and trying not to over-word-ify. A real thing and a real danger.

I've also got a very hot pan behind me and a well seasoned steak, so it looks like aside from the minor hiccup today has been a Good Day.

If you're interested in my sketches, and want to see what it looks like when I actually try to be funny, do please let me know. I'm always keen to get feedback.

Expo-langues!

Today I had the day off work to go to Expo-langues, the annual convention for those who teach languages. It was amazing to see so many languages under one roof; from Arabic to Urdu via Chinese, Spanish and Russian. I picked up one or two little things:

There were several leaflets about immersive intensive courses, which are really exciting, and also leaflets about prospective jobs - I had never realised the possibilities open to students of linguistics. I also picked up brochures for Masters programmes because it's good to keep one's options open, and compared to UK prices it doesn't seem a bad idea to look abroad for further educational possibilities. An extra language has opened up a whole other country to study in, and for me that's awesome.

The EU's languages and employment department had a big stall and was handing out free stuff as fast as it could - there might be a metaphor there - like rubbers, pens, umbrellas and DVDs. The DVD is actually excellent, and all the films can be seen online here. I'd really recommend Change Please, as it has a really cool premise and the ending is brilliant. Falling in Language is also very cute. 

I got a Russian lesson and a Japanese lesson for free, joined a tea ceremony at the Hanban stall and watched possibly the most awful playing of Much Ado About Nothing ever, although I could only sit through the latter for thirty minutes. With so much amazing stuff on offer, wasting one's time on sub-par interpretations of the Bard is futile. 

There was also a weird moment where either somebody was winding me up, or I've had my identity mistaken in a huge way. A lady on one of the stalls broke off in the middle of a conversation with a customer to wave and wink at me. Intrigued, I went over, where she asked the customer to excuse her, took me five paces over and asked why I hadn't called.

Somebody with spotless morals would, at this point, have admitted that they were not the person who hadn't called. 

I am not quite that person. I apologised, said I had lost her number, and now have a date.

Very surreal situation.

I also picked up another couple of contacts and made acquaintances, as well as meeting a man who can only be described as a mad genius. He genuinely believes that English can be taught in a week. Personally, I found the idea fascinating, although the man himself should stick to writing books and get someone else to do his PR - nobody trying to sell something should be made so furious by a request for proof. He rattled through the material, banged his board for emphasis, refused to speak in English despite me being English and him being English and at the end just turned and walked away. Very bizarre man. I'm going to share his video here, and I want you all to know that his accent has not improved an ounce nor has his presence become any more friendly.

Be that as it may, his idea seems to have some merit. Check it out for yourself.

How to make money and influence markets

Today has been an incredibly enlightening day. My crêpes progress magnificently and are getting thinner and more perfect all the time, and my pitch for tomorrow is almost ready. I updated the records of our magazine in preparation for its digitisation - hopefully members will be able to simply search for things they like and get articles from previous issues.

The afternoon was almost entirely given over to coaching. The first session was two professors who also interview prospective students, so I had to think on my feet to come up with answers that a geology student might give. They weren't very good but, in my defence, I have never studied geology. I know, I know. It rocks.

The following session was even better - one of my favourite lecturers, the head of the Economics department. He explained the derivatives market to me (if you're interested, I wrote about it over here) and lent me Inside Job, a film exploring the reasons behind the financial crash. It looks like fascinating watching, so I'm planning on kicking back and watching that tonight as my regular student is ill, poor lamb.

There's nothing much else to say about today; I've a French lesson tomorrow and some homework to finish off so to make up for the incredibly long blog from yesterday and the derivatives explanation I know you're reading, class is dismissed for the day.

Oh, but I think I'm in love with a Russian who said of my French-English transitions when I was helping our gardienne with a Chinese student: "You make them like a ballerina."

Nicest comparison ever. Especially as she is a ballerina. She knows what she's talking about.

The Age of Aquarius

January is drawing to a close, and work in the office is drying up. I'm casting around for a new project and have a little idea I've been kicking about for a while, so I might pitch that to my supervisor tomorrow. It involves filming and a multiplicity of languages, which are two of my favourite things. Fingers crossed I get permission and get the interest to make it happen.

Speaking of making things happen, my teaching colleague has outlined what she would like from a new and shiny "Language Hub" website. It looks like a three month job for someone who knows what they're doing and I don't know what I'm doing. I've not learnt HTML or CSS coding yet.

Yet.

The fact is, I like a challenge, and learning how to code will look fairly slick on my CV alongside a new website. Of course, to get the slick look she would like, I will have to squeeze money from the boss of bosses in a recession. It's going to be tricky, and I suspect I shall be stuck - without the money to make it shiny my colleague will be disappointed, but I can't imagine the funds being released at the moment. It's a puzzle.

I sat in in a couple of coaching sessions today, which were really interesting. The professors in question teach a lot, so their level of English is fairly high already, and I was pleased to be able to bring some new ideas to the table. The Economics professor in particular seemed puzzled that I could talk about elasticity, consumer surplus and the free market but I quite like Economics. It helped a little that I'd spent a couple of hours on the phone to a friend refreshing my knowledge, but I quite like learning as much as I can about everything. He offered me the opportunity to sit in on a few of his classes and help with translations where needed, and I have to say I jumped at the opportunity - a bit more education in disparate fields is pretty much what I aim for in life. Petroleum Economics Management, come at me.

This evening's class was harder, because we're moving into areas where my student struggles a little more. She knows the rules, and when she talks slowly she's brilliant, but she has difficulty getting the ideas out and the frustration clearly bugs her. We let up after forty-five minutes and moved on to conversation, and for next week I've asked her to write a small text. It feels very strange giving someone older than me homework, but it's what I have to do.

A frantic email got me worried but it was just a friend excited about a prospective future job, so with the wind snatching at my clothes I rang her back and we chatted as I strolled home. It still blows my mind, backwater redneck that I am, that I can talk to someone an hour in the past and hundreds of miles away as though they were right next to me. Mind-boggling.

I've finally sorted out a present for my sister, thank goodness, and now I am going to memorise a forty line monologue in French.

And some people say I'm boring.

Sunday was brought to you today by innocent

If you've not tried innocent's fruit juices do it now. Right now. They are excellent. I've just drunk an entire bottle of orange juice. That stuff is amazing.

Sunday didn't start off so well; I woke up to pouring rain and on my run discovered that my shoes aren't as waterproof as they once were. They've also got more holes than I'm really comfortable with, the number of which is one. The one I insert my foot into. As a result, I've got to head to town tomorrow and buy some new shoes, and I'm feeling Kalenjis - they've got great reviews and they're less than 20€.  Absolute steal.

I met my two new students today, Clémence and Louis. Clémence watches a lot - a lot - of American programming, and this in tandem with her studies means she speaks excellent English. Her brother, Louis, is a little unsure of himself, but needn't be. The only problem with them is the more complicated English; it's hard to structure lessons around the little corners of their ignorance that still need illumination. I'm excited by the challenge though; coming up against barriers is useful because if I don't know where the problems are I can't work through them.

I'm writing this listening to Animal Farm on the BBC; it's absolutely brilliant and, since it's on the radio, available throughout the world. Those students of mine who read this blog should listen to it, especially if they have access to the book as well. If you can't see what Orwell meant by it, if the metaphor is not clear within ten minutes, then ask. But I suspect you will work it out.

My line learning is getting there; I've got most of the lines down, it's just stringing them together that's proving to be a little tricky. One more push this evening and I should be settled.

Helped a friend out with some Economics and it made me realise how much I miss it, although hearing that Clémence also studies Russian has made me want to take that up too. There are simply not enough free hours in the day. I need more time!

Unfortunately, a friend posted a clip on Facebook from 30 Rock, and now I'm doing nothing but wanting to be Alex Baldwin, and take up acting.

Dorian Gray was a full. He was young for years and wasted it on hedonism and opulence. If I could live forever...

Do I know any good painters? No reason...

The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

Work has blossomed like love - right when I'm in the middle of something else. My room plan is utterly complete with tables, shelves and other paraphernalia one finds in a library. It looks perfect and uncluttered, unlike my desk, which is straining under the repeated assault from translations in varying states of draft. Most of the actual resources one would expect to find have been moved to other parts of the building, and my office now needs a revolving door as students line up to ask the same question, apparently hoping that for them I shall leap out of my chair and say "YES! I sent everyone to another part of the building but YOU, random student whose acquaintance I have only just made! I have been waiting all day for YOU! Take the resources I have cunningly hidden! Go forth and learn!"

That does not happen very often.

However, I've also now got three translations to finish for tomorrow afternoon and two pieces of English work from students to check over, as well as learning some piece of theatre or sketch for my French class on Tuesday and writing a one-side piece on old people in Britain, which is going to be quite good fun now I think about it. Le boo and le hiss to the Tories.

I've also done all my laundry and met a chap from America who's come equipped with five sentences and assures me that it will be enough. The arrogance of anyone who goes to live in a foreign country and doesn't bother learning the language is so enormous that I never know whether to laugh or weep. Is getting by enough? I'd understand if he'd come for a week. But six months, on an English-only programme - what cultural benefit could he gain?

I don't know. Maybe a lot; maybe I'm being a language snob.

An urgent email punctuated an exciting 4.30 meeting; a friend of mine seeking help with revision who knows that flattery is the surest way to wrap me around son doigt. So at some point tomorrow I shall be dredging my brain for Economics information, which means tonight I'll need to go over my notes.

I'm still really energised from my French class, where I was helping the friendliest guy in the world. He struggles a bit with French but speaks fluent Spanish and English, so go figure, he's already way ahead of me. Class was huge fun, because we have a professor who, like me, loves tangents. We were reading a short article in which there was a Chinese name so I asked my friend Adeline how to pronounce it.

She did. We repeated it back. She shook her head and repeated it again. We tried it once more. Some of us got it, but the rest of us didn't, and it led to a good ten minute debate in very flowing French about languages and their roots and relative difficulties. The spelling rules of English (a phrase which is ironically demonstrative, as I had to rewrite it to avoid "English's"because I'm really not sure it's right) came up as a large hazard, but the Chinese way of writing a different character for every different word trumped it. Persian apparently lent the Arabic world their alphabet, but a few letters were lost on the way, and Russian, like its semi-automatic rifles, hasn't changed in years and sounds astonishing.

I also got the chance to share some very useless knowledge, courtesy of QI - we were discussing menu, a Middle-French word that cropped up in La Fontaine and in the article that we were reading today and means small or little. I have a theory that menu being a synonym for carte came from food served à la française - whereby every course would appear together as an enormous display of opulent and stupid power, since nobody could eat it all at once and so most of it would be cold before it could be eaten. Thus un menu, a little card displaying a smaller selection, could be offered to patrons who actually wanted to enjoy their meal.  Service à la française is no longer truly practiced because, as previously stated, wasteful and stupid. It still exists in the form of the buffet but is, hopefully, dying out.

It was surpassed by service à la Russe, which may be more familiar to you - I don't know how often you eat 14 course meals. At its most basic it is the form of service we know whereby food is served in courses, thus ensuring optimum temperature and avoiding melted ice cream and cold soup. In true Russian style, you are given an empty plate, and staff circulate and serve precisely as much as you wish - a host who serves you a full plate risks either seriously underestimating you, leaving you irritable, or overestimating you, leaving you insulted and unpleasantly bloated.

Bloating is acceptable among the upper classes, but insults - never.

Work - and love - is calling my name. I'll leave you with a beautiful Chinese poem.



Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

In a stone den was a poet called Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten lions.
He often went to the market to look for lions.
At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.


Or, in pinyin (the way of writing Chinese in Roman script):

Shī Shì shí shī shǐ


Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
Shì shì shì shì.


And she tells me English is difficult.