Good with the Bad

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Wednesday was great, Thursday was awful.

Wednesday was the final day of my Spanish students. They're really switched on and receptive - actually fun to teach and I'll miss them. They got me a thank-you-and-farewell present - a box of posh chocs and a card, wih a message from each of them. One wrote best wishes to the "genial genius" (oh, modesty forbids), and another wrote "for the most eccentric englishman I've ever met".

I like that.

And so we spent our final day watching a particularly bad film version of War of the Worlds starring Tom Cruise, comparing national attitudes towards pets, and even learning a bit of English. Topped off with much taking of photos and swapping of email addresses.

And when I got home...my parents have bought another dog. This one is a ladie called Sadie, a four month old papillion - for eventual breeding with the two male papillions. Oh yeah, we've now got four dogs and they all sleep on the ends of our beds - something which apparently doesn't happen much in Spain.

Pics when (a) the camera's recharged, (b) there's some light and (c) the dogs stop jumping around long enough to photograph.

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Then came Thursday.

After two hours of sleep, I was "ready" to meet my new class. It's something of a jolt to switch from five laid-back Spanish teenagers to one up-tight middle-aged Turkish businessman. Not an unpleasant man, and certainly not a stupid one - just turgidly unimaginative.

Still, I wont have him for long, because I won't have a job next week. Unless they need someone to do sickness cover. Good, eh? Yes, that's what I thought.

Then in the afternoon an amazingly-camp-and-almost-certainly-gay-but-painfully-closeted African fellow, who unexpectedly embarked on a discussion of world politics. He cheerfully and intelligently talked about imperialism in Iraq, the client status of Israel, the futility of the PKK's Kurdish separatism...

...before suddenly going cold and twitchy at the mention of atheism. Maybe everyone's got their little "Panic" button - an issue that strips away all pretence of reason leaving only hostility. Most odd.

I think he should practice his English reading skills with this book.

I'm supposed to have fifteen students for the final lesson, only one of who turned up. The others smiled and said hello to me beforehand - before bunking off. The one who came is a possibly-mildly-autistic woman who lags literally half an hour behind the conversation, giggles at random intervals and confidently uses arcane linguistics terminology but can't apply basic linguistic rules.

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Bonus good-with-bad 1: I spent an hour fornicating against a brick wall tonight. But we were both too tired to "finish". And it was raining.

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Bonus good-with-bad 2: I've found a truly excellent way to save money. It's called "losing your wallet".

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