6 Classes!

A glass of red wine; a can of John Smith Special and a glass and a half of Cava and I feel as if I have had a real session!  How times have changed!

Although there were only eight people in the little get together for United Nations Day, the fact that two of them were small children made the event feel like a full blown overcrowded party.  Their inability to stay still for more than a nano second; their conversation always at the level of shout; their complete disregard for the niceties of tidiness and cleanliness – all contributed to leaving Toni and myself prostrate with exhaustion at the end of the evening.  I can only conjecture (with horror) what it must be like to wake up day after day knowing that they are in the house and prepared for another full day’s excitement!

I have just been told that the meeting yesterday went on until 7.45, making the full meeting two and three-quarters hours long.  Another fifteen minutes and that would be the whole period of the passion of Christ on the Cross and, while I am not comparing the suffering with what He went through, it is not far short!  Thank god I had the selfish, self-centred sense of self-preservation to get out of that mind-rotting meeting when I was still reasonably compos mentis!

Today I have what would be impossible in Britain: six classes!  How right Mista Kurtz (he dead!) was in his view of the world!  I am not alone in this intolerable (yet tolerated) imposition.  There are enough teachers to form quite a sizeable club of unfortunates who have the same teaching load today.  I am more than half inclined to produce badges for us – just as I should have done during a past election when the slogan I wanted to emblazon on the pins was “Kill a Conservative for Christ”.  Alas, another missed opportunity!

As soon as the bell goes the teaching becomes a relentless succession of classes and it is only lunchtime that affords any respite at all.  Never mind, such a day of horror has its own small reward in actually reaching the end and still being reasonably sane!  Especially with the double hour with Year 9 at the end of the day!

All things come to an end, and so did the day.  And escape was at last possible.

The evening was spent pleasantly enough by reading a book which I was given electronically by a member of 2ESO who had chosen the book as the subject of his talk to the rest of the class.

                           

“Old Man’s War” by John Salzi is a sci.fi novel “in the tradition of Robert Heinlein” and it is an interesting idea competently worked out.  The central conceit is that when old people reach the age of 75 they can volunteer for the colonial space corps where they will be rejuvenated and given the bodies of twenty year olds.  It is a good forgettable read, but a compulsive page-turner.

Thursday the opera and Friday a blood test: such a varied life!