Translate

Monday, January 18, 2010

Rainy ruminations


On this cold, wet, dismal day I have to admit that making an effort and coming to school was not in my Top 50 Things To Do. In fact it wasn’t in my top 1000, but let it pass.

The sodden roads with patches of standing water did not, of course, deter motorists from travelling at their normal speeds and cyclists of the motoring kind from performing their death inviting manoeuvres on slippery roads. I have now got into the mode of thinking where the motorcyclists only excite my fear that they will cause accidents and make me late; I am long past worrying about their lives!

It is very difficult to believe that only one week of term has passed as it now seems that I have been here for most of my natural life. United Nations Day is much less than a year away (well, nine months and a bit) but October seems impossibly distant at the moment and I’m not sure at what point you are allowed to go ‘stir-crazy’ at the thought of escape.

I understand that I will have to inform the pensions people that I intend to retire otherwise they will assume that I am quite happy to go on in genteel poverty while gnashing my teeth. This is something else that I will have to find out about and it will give me an opportunity to enquire about something ‘real’!

Unfortunately the other ‘real’ element in the general thankfulness about this United Nations Day is working out just how much I will get and whether it is sufficient to continue my hedonistic (!) life style that the untold riches (!) that I get from teaching in my present job has made me accustomed to.

Looking back on the financial arrangements that have obtained in my past life I realise that wealth (relative) or poverty (real) have had no real effect on the way that I live my life. Long, as they say, might it continue!

The first lesson in school is now over and the complete lack of enthusiasm which characterised my lackadaisical steps towards the classroom has not noticeably improved. It is one of those grey Monday days when all you can see is an unbroken succession of teaching days stretching ahead into the distant future. And that means a week. I have no adequate word to describe the seemingly endless period of time which remains to me in the profession.

I will have to take the term nice thing by nice thing!

With any luck the next wine tasting will be at the end of this month in a fortnight. I shall look forward to gleaning information about the districts whose produce we are going to taste and reproducing them for the group of gourmets (!) who will be making sophisticated notes on what hits their palettes!

Next month Ceri and Dianne are arriving and, although I will be teaching, they will be here over a weekend so I will have an opportunity to see them for an extended period and get down to the serious business of chatting.

That should get me through to March when the weather starts improving and I can look forward to the Easter holidays.

And then it is only a hop skip and a jump to start thinking about the summer.

Well, it’s a strategy and I only hope it works!

No comments: