Writing and writing.

Today I completed or polished:

• A translation 
• A poem (my own. Not very good.)
• The writing exercise from yesterday, which gives me all weekend to polish further.
• And I printed off tickets to go and see my uni chum in Le Havre tomorrow, although because I'm apparently unable to stop tormenting myself the train leaves at 0808 and I will have to leave here an hour before.

Year abroad. You'll do things.

My new office is being installed, which is brilliant. My current office is directly above it, which is a little bit less brilliant. Nevertheless, the judicious application of headphones and a dose of The Piano Guys (if you don't know who they are, here's my favourite piece of theirs. Guaranteed shivers.)

I'd love for there to be more to talk about, but aside from my usual Friday students, there's not much to say. C, who is nervous until she gets over it and then talks at quite a pace and B, her brother, who's slower but pays more attention. I think both are excellent for their stage; C's still getting the hang of the language and I want her to talk more so she has a better feel for it while B needs to knuckle down and get the grammar and complicated bits solid, now that his spoken English is at a good level. I saw an advert for the The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on the way to the bus stop and almost decided to see it - but this week has been hard, and I've got to be up early.

So this will have to suffice for tonight. I'll try to write tomorrow but, if not, meet me here on Sunday. 

Tantalising

I am exceedingly pleased with today's progress. French class was back up to full strength which meant I didn't have to answer every question. My supervisor has come back - she was away due to some personal matters, of which it is not my place to talk. And I've literally just finished Thursday's homework, so tomorrow afternoon will be dedicated to researching how best to teach two small children English. My mother has already given me spades of useful advice, so I strongly suspect that tomorrow after about 3.30 I shall be sticking, cutting, and writing in big letters with pens that are both colourful and highly addictive, if one gets one's nose too close to them.

I was up nice and early to watch my internet slow down to the approximate speed of a snail in treacle, and so instead I cracked on with the French work that I have just completed. If you have a desire to see a small and - most likely - badly written insight into my imagination, you may find it just here. If you don't speak French, I'm afraid it will be mostly useless, but if five people ask for it in English I shall gather the energy and do so.

This morning was actually full of false starts, now I think about it, because when I got in I sat in the office for a good hour by myself waiting for my supervisors, both of whom live out of town, to come in. As my door to door commute is about five minutes, including checking-myself-out-in-the-windows time, I didn't know that the road into town was absolutely blocked. So I kicked my heels for an hour with nothing to do; one of the dangers of working too efficiently. It leaves one with nothing on which one can work independently.

After lunch my colleague and I coached one of the administrative staff who's a main point of call for all international students and therefore has a pressing need to improve her English. We were interrupted several times, which was really good - it gave us a chance to see her in full flow with students. Remember that we have students who come from Russia, China, Iran...all over the world, and they bring a distinctly different cultural flavour - and English accent. Our colleague dealt with everything beautifully, and it was a real joy to watch her use phrases we'd literally just taught her.

The French class, as I say, was much better, and everyone seemed really energised. Perhaps the break that some of my classmates had taken had recharged their batteries. In any case, it's great to be back, though I think my teacher was less than overjoyed with the two page essay I turned in. I have absolutely got to learn how to edit.

A brief goodbye to my colleagues and classmates and I am home, having passed by the bank to drop off my hard-earned money. The BDE is having a party on Thursday in an ice bar, and three different students have insisted I come. The paranoid part of me has gone full Ackbar:

But the paranoid part of me can get stuffed. I'm excited about chilling with the students.

If that joke caught you by surprise then you have not read enough of this blog.

Oh, yesterday I asked you a question and nobody got the answer right. This is proof that I am making links that are far too far-fetched, even for the great minds who read this. The answer, by the way, was Lancelot, because a golf bag is where one keeps one's clubs. Lancelot is another name for the knave, or the Jack, of Clubs. Like all riddles it's annoyingly simple once you get it, and like all riddle-setters I am a smug twerp whose hat you'd pinch if you saw him.

It won't make me less smug, but at least you'll have a nice hat.

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.

In which our hero discovers writing is hard

Today has been absolutely full of writing things. If using one's brain burnt calories, then I'd have the perfect excuse for the slice of coconut cake I had with lunch. As far as I can tell, it doesn't, and I don't.

This morning I liaised with an Association member who needed a rewrite of her MBA application letter. It was a complete rewrite, and at certain points I wondered what she hoped to gain from submitting a letter written in good English but having an interview in which she would struggle. Still, ours is not to reason why; I raised the question but she waved it away, assuring me that she could converse fluently in English if necessary. I was not reassured, mostly due to the fact that we spent two hours rewriting and spoke only in French. I also edited an article for our quarterly review by a super-hilarious guy who was pleased that safety was the number one concern for companies, "especially those working in remote offices where local workers have little or no education and no concern for the own health." Yup, those funny foreign people, they have no sense of self preservation because they're not really human beings. Git. In the same article he wrote about how the West is the best because we have democracy. Double git.

I took a nice early lunch today with my colleagues; a strange situation where I got to experience three English people sitting with a Colombian person and speaking French as the lingua franca. It's really exciting that there are still small pockets and combinations of people where English is not necessarily the only way in which to communicate.

My early lunch was because I had a French class at 13h30, and although several of my fellow students were missing the six of us had a very interesting lesson. We did a mini-test, a micro version of the full TFI that we'll be taking before long. Apparently the TFI is not as well known as the TOEIC/TOEFL, so I'll have to give some sort of addendum to it. The test did not go as well as expected, and I've now got a long list of grammar points on which I have to focus.

A good lesson though; a test is a great way to see where weaknesses are and saves me having to go through an entire grammar book getting frustrated with practising the things I already know. Now I can target my learning. It doesn't sound like fun, but it's the lesser of two evils - if you know you've got to study then rather than studying more, study smarter.

I've my post-apocalyptic French essay to write now and then to relax I'm going to write some more; I managed two acceptable sketches and then had to give up. This writing malarkey is tough.

A picture to close from my friend Meg, because it's funny in sort of not funny way at all. I can appreciate the pun but simultaneously be kind of horrified that it's an ad.

"Even I've been accused of penny-pinching. But I paid Penny off"

Sexual harassment in the workplace. Now it can sell conference calls.

Equality! Equality everywhere!

France voted for it, and so did the British. Marriage for everyone.

I'm sure I needn't tell you why this is an awesome step forward for equality, nor why those who believe that their god wants them to stop it are completely wrong. If I read "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" once more I'm going to give up on you all and go and live on an island where nobody speaks English.

My pitch went quite well today; I say quite because while the idea was praised I wasn't actually told I could go ahead - it's frustrating to be told your idea is good but they want to wait a while. However, while I wait I'm going to get busy writing: Newsjack, a sketch show pays for sketch submissions from the general public. If you'd like to know more, then click here, but remember that every sketch is up against mine. And you can't beat me.

This morning has been crazy hectic, with three translations and a crash course in QR codes I gave to my out of office colleague via the telephone. My three translations were down to one and I was starting to relax and try to research where I could watch the debate later when, without any warning, a part-time associate of the school dropped a seven-page business school application in my lap. Spanish being her first language, French her second, and English her third, this is a challenge of epic proportions. Words floundered weakly in the swollen rushwater of sentences that ran on and endlessly on, commas dotted throughout as though a member of the NRA, drunk on moonshine, distilled from rats, had filled a shotgun with them - commas, not rats - and blasted merrily away at the offending sentence.

So that took up a couple of hours and two strong coffees. In a bid to not eat as much I'm drinking more coffee, but I've found that one can buy bags of little dark chocolate squares to dip in coffee and, well, long story short I'm back at square one.

Lunchtime came, and a guy called Rufus came to see me. He's studying a mix of business and management for a specific field, and following my sort-of-comprehension of derivate markets yesterday we talked about that. As it's the area in which he wants to end up we managed to do a lot of work in industry specific jargon and had an interesting debate about nationalisation vs privitisation. As we left, I to lunch and he back to lessons, he told me he wanted to learn about how to inject humour into his English. Public speaking, he said, is easier if you can make your audience laugh.

"You're right," I said. "The most important thing about comedy is - "

I broke off, walked ten paces along the corridor, and whirled round.

"- timing."

I winked and did the old double-finger-pistol-shot. He wasn't there any more, but I did it anyway. If someone had walked in at that exact moment, it would have been hilarious. That's what timing means, and why it's so hard to get right. It almost always happens by accident. There has never been a documented case of planned comedy amusing anyone, this blog being a perfect case in point.

My afternoon was given over to some interesting coaching sessions and learning of the many, many administrative hurdles that foreign students are asked to leap through to be allowed to study here. It seems counter-productive, but then this is a country where the parliament stayed in session for a solid week to debate gay marriage. Over the course of three days - Friday to Sunday - 240 000 words were said, a third of the Bible or almost half of War and Peace. At one point a right-wing speaker was compared to Bree Van de Kamp of Wisteria Lane and the session almost had to be adjourned, such was the violence with which this insult was received. They stayed overnight. Dedication. Take note, British politicos.

I've started reading Finance and the Good Society, which promises to be a challenge as I suspect it's going to try convincing me that unregulated financial capitalism is a good thing, rather than a really clever way of making rich people quite a lot richer than they already are. So far the author has pointed the blame squarely at uneducated people, so I'm sure we're going to get along famously.

Sketch writing will commence now. Ah, the life of a penniless writer. (Actually, if I moved to Canada, I could be just that...)