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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

And the waves roll on.


A thoroughly muggy day with only a little sunshine managing to make its way through the haze as I sit on the balcony watching the waves – I am a touch typist after all!

Today has been a generally good day for reasons which are not entirely clear to me. The teaching has gone well, although that can mean that I have merely been encouraged to digress in a shamelessly self indulgent way rather than achieving the learning objectives that I should have.

Without making much of an effort I can recall talking about trawler fishing; the paintings of David Hockney; canal lock gates; the Eurovision Song Contest; a kitchen fish slice; dogs fouling public places; misleading statistics; contour lines and expired passports.

What I can’t quite recall is where the English grammar fitted in!

A colleague has been driving herself to nervous exhaustion by putting on not one, but four little plays during this week. They have been worked on over a period of some months, but only using a single lesson a week in the ‘Drama’ lesson. Another colleague, with selfless dedication has produced photographic slide backdrops for each production and managed lights and sound.

The end result of today’s play was, as I told my colleague, “worth doing.” I hope she does not think that I am damning with faint praise, but as I have read through the play and attended a run through I was able to follow the action: I am not sure quite what those seeing this production for the first time will take away for it, apart from a vague unease that they have been subjected to a philosophically alienated piece of surrealism. The delivery of the words by the actors was done in a clipped sort of Pakistani style and the speed of delivery made clarity a bit hit and miss. All in all good fun!

I gobbled down my lunch under the impression that I was on duty. I was wrong. As I am a denizen of both buildings I was able to hide my humiliation of being a day out by taking a cup of tea, an orange and a book (that last bit sounds like a grotesque reworking of the Rubiat of Omar Kyam) and sit out on the balcony in solitary splendor!

Collection of my prescriptions meant that I could justifiably leave early in the last period of the day when I have a free and thus miss the unbelievable traffic jams that occur when the rich come to collect their offspring.

Now for a bowl of my fruit salad which is just on the point of fermentation!

And, of course, a cup of tea!

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