Peter

When I was six years old, I had a friend called Peter Williams. Neither of us were sociable with other children - we didn't often play the strange playground games called 'war' or 'firing squad', we hated the weekly games of 'football', and neither said much in lessons. He was four years old, chubby, had a permanant sniffle, and I think he wore spectacles.

The teachers didn't like it one bit that I sat on the ground having minimalist conversations with someone two years my junior. They seemed offended by the notion. They said it was the age gap, but it could easily have been the quiet talking, or the sitting down instead of running around shouting.

Perhaps if we'd hung upside down from the climbing frame like the more adventurous children, that would have been a crime they could deal with. They never tierd of lecturing offenders that it was unsafe. Cirtainly if we'd pulled the girls pigtails and run away they would have known what to do about us.

Maybe teachers just don't trust quiet children.
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H has a stinking cold. I had rather hoped to take him out for a good indian meal as a 'goodbye' before he went off on holiday. But now he's got a temporary job so he's not going, and a horrible cold so he's not up to an evening out.

His temporary job involves teaching english to a hoarde of italian teenagers. In my years at the university, I've seen this hoarde of 40 to 60 11-19 year-olds as an annual happening. Some of the same faces turn up each year. This year, H is employed to teach 10-15 of them.

Linguistics is hardly his field - ironically, it's one of mine. But he'll manage. I just won't see him for another week.
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Tonight's background television, courtesy of Simon M's videotape, is a documentary on scientology, a Dispatches 'probe' on social workers after the Cleveland scandal, Tariq Ali interviewing Edward Said, and an episode of the Bill.

Tonight's 'work out' movie is The Serpent and the Rainbow, at the end of the same tape. This is where I attempt to keep my heart rate above 100 with some constant but gentle aerobics, performed with light weights in front of the television. Keep a bottle of water handy, and try to lose a pound or two.