This isn't cold feet... It's more a case of frozen limbs...

You know when you decide to do something, you put the wheels in motion and get all excited about the next step that you've manufactured for yourself in life's path? You start daydreaming about how good it's going to be, how good you're going to be and how it's going to shape you for years and years to come. And then one niggling doubt creeps in and the dream's over.

You start wondering whether it's going to be as good as you first thought; whether you're going to be as good at it as you thought you might be initially; and above all, you question whether you're ready.

Am I ready to go through the paces of the part of life commonly termed as "growing up and settling down"? Am I ready to have to prove myself in ways other than academic? Am I ready to grow up? Am I mature enough to go through training and then hold down a job? Have I reached the stage where I'm ready to "settle down" should the opportunity arise?

Who knows. All I know is that I'm questioning whether I've manufactured the right next step for myself. This isn't nerves or cold feet.

This is downright fear.

Full Throttle Ahead

It appears I'm taking steps in the right direction. The future may not be orange, but it's most certainly bright.

What am I talking about, you say? I speak of the next chapter in my life, once my time as an assistant comes to an end. It took me long enough to decide to apply for teacher training, and it took even longer to arrange an interview. But arranged it I did, and offered a place I was.

Then came the hardest part: accepting the place. I heard last Tuesday that I'd been accepted at my first choice training provider. And it took me until yesterday (a whole 8 days later) to make a firm acceptance. All the forms have been filled in and sent. And now it's down to one key element: organisation; it's key so that I can breeze into my new life in Angleterre du nord come September. This is going to be hard. Not only am I pretty much incapable of organising myself more than a few days in advance, there's the disadvantage that not much help is provided to aid me throughout the process. Nope: it's all down to me.

So as I embark on the first step towards the aforementioned organisation, namely getting all my crap sorted so everything is in order, just do one thing for me:

Make sure I'm doing it!!

New beginnings

After some stern words from my loyal readership, I've decided to come back to the fray and try blogging a bit more often. Part of me stopped for fear that I was a little too negative in my blog, my most popular label is 'moan' taking poll position with 10 out a possible 18 entries. Rather depressing, don't you think?

Trying to be positive is painful. My creative juices flow when I'm in a bad mood. In fact, I do most things best when I'm in a bad mood: psychoanalysis, anyone? I wonder what it says about me, about my personality, about everyone that knows me... Jack shit, most probably, but it would be interesting to see what Jack Shit came up with...

Truth of the matter is, I only blogged when something or someone was getting on my tits. My lack of blog action is not down to me being more tolerant, or my not being pissed off so much - that's no different to what it was two months ago - it's actually a result of me being continually annoyed. Nothing's changed, and I didn't want to inflict my negative vibes on everyone who reads this...

Excuses out of the way, the bottom of the barrel reason is that I've been too damn lazy. Or preoccupied elsewhere. The past two months has panned out roughly as follows:

• continuing my assistantship
• trip home to visit friends and family
• trip to London to see a show and make a bit of a tit of myself in front of one of the stars
• back to France to carry on with the assistantship
• being told mind-numbingly irrelevant things by flatmate (who thinks I don't understand much of what she says, hence the need to demonstrate that broccoli isn't cauliflower)
• just about sorting out where I go once this is all over

And so you see, nothing much has happened since I last posted on my high-brow, controversial, reader attracting blog. And even less has happened that's been worth writing about.

Now that I'm back though, I'll try and hang around to answer any niggling queries anyone may have...

A sign of the times

Maybe I'm getting old. Or maybe I'm just irritable. Or even plain impatient.

I speak of the mentality of the kids I teach. Particularly the one older pupil that I give private lessons to. I guess the kids at school are young enough to ask questions that annoy me. But my private student doesn't seem to use common sense or his initiative at all.

Yesterday's lesson was a prime example: I set him an exercise, and he wrote something that was wrong and crossed it out to correct himself. He turned to me and asked if it mattered that he had crossed out an answer on the page. Bear in mind that these lessons are essentially informal, in that I pretty much decide on the spot what areas are going to be covered in the hour that I'm paid to take charge of this boy. Now also consider that this boy comes along to my flat, uses my paper (because he 'forgets' to bring an exercise book/pad of paper of his own every week), and my pens to write with, and he asks if it matters that there's a crossing out on the page. I'm all for neat work, but come on! There is a rather large grey area when it comes to how one gauges neatness.

So the kid isn't big on making his own decisions. Not exactly a big deal, you may think. But then there's the frustration of him being reluctant to actually think for himself during this hour that he is with me.

I set him something to gauge what he knows and doesn't know, and explain that he just has to give it a go so that I don't tell him something that he already knows - what's the point of that? But because I term some things differently to the text book he uses at school, he assumes he's never done it. And for the record, I usually do the first one as an example to show him, so he can see what he has to do.

So I leave him to it while I go potter about with coffee/coke/juice etc. I come back, he tells me he's finished, and he's not even attempted it half the time, prompting a conversation (in French) along the lines of:

Him: I'm not sure I'll get it right.
Me: You pay me to tell you if you've got it right or not. And if not, I'll explain it to you so that you know in future.
Him: But I'm not sure.
Me: Try. You learn more like that, than from being told what to do with you having made no effort.

And so he gives it a go. And eight times out of ten, he's bang on the mark.

So is it shyness? Laziness? A genuine fear of being wrong? Or maybe he's trying too hard and making it more complicated than it actually is? Whatever it is, I'm struggling to find a way to get him to work things out for himself. Why make it simply a lesson in English when I can teach him lifelong skills (namely multitasking) at the same time? Thinking and working are generally considered to go together anyway, aren't they?

It takes two to tango

The other night I watched Crash for what must be the fifth or sixth time since I bought it on DVD. I also saw it at the cinema when I was living in France two years ago as a late showing as it had won the Oscar for Best Picture.

What surprises me about the film is I find myself sympathising with different characters each time I watch it. There is something that makes me despise the subject content of the film, but at the same time, it is something that has been addressed with sensitivity and attention to both sides of the story. Look at the plotline on the part of Anthony/Peter. Anthony portrays himself as the typically opressed black man, expecting to be discriminated against because of his skin colour. Peter takes a more optimistic view, suggesting that Anthony is being oversensitive. When we are first introduced to these two characters, I'm inclined to sympathise with Peter rather than Anthony. Anthony is simply feeling sorry for himself and because of the history of black people, he simply lives up to the stereotypes associated with his race. Especially when he and Peter then carjack Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser's characters.

At this point the shoe is on the other foot. We are not sympathising at all with Anthony, and much less with Peter than before, until Sandra Bullock's near-monologue ranting about how as a white woman fearful of two black youths she feels the need to remain silent for fear of being labelled a racist should she cross the street or look the other way. This, in essence, totally backs up everything that Anthony has already said - particularly when Jean (Sandra Bullock) insists on the locks being changed yet again because the locksmith is not white. But he's not black either. And this really confuses me.

Where is the line drawn? When are the barriers constructed thanks to stereotypes going to be broken down? It is these persisting stereotypes that means the issue of racism persists. But one stereotypical image of racism is very very wrong: that which depicts a racist being white. A racist can just as easily be black. Just look at Anthony in 'Crash' and you'll see what I mean.

Broken suitcase, Broken faith

It's amazing how one little incident can put you off something for a while. After managing to hump my heavy suitcase on and off trains without so much as a relatively big knock, you'd think that big strong baggage handlers would manage to take care of it.

But, for the first time ever, I reclaimed a suitcase damaged to the extent that to use it again with an airline I will have to sign a liability disclaimer. Upon reporting the damage on my arrival in Nice last Friday, I was told that I have seven days to get someone in a suitcase-selling shop to sign and give me a certificate that my current suitcase is irreparable, and to buy a new one, then send the airline a bunch of paperwork, including said certificate.

Now, buying a new one is not a problem. I walk into the shop; I decide which one I want; I tell the man/woman; I pay for it; I take it home.

But how and where on earth do I get a certificate of irreparability? It's the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a while - I mean if it wasn't damaged, surely the man at the airport who I complained to would have been able to tell me "You're wrong there love, there's nowt wrong with it"?? The fact that he didn't (and he did inspect the damage) kind of presupposes that I'm not lying, does it not?

So now I'm in a quandary as to whether to bother pursuing a claim. The airline does point out that it's liability is limited and that I might be better off pursuing it through my own travel insurance instead. But for the sake of a suitcase, I'm not going to do that. What narks me is the principle that I can't take all my possessions on board with me, but by checking them in they're not safe. Granted, this has happened to hundreds of thousands of people over the past however-many-years-of-commercial-air-travel, but until it actually happens to you, it's hard to really imagine how much it actually pisses you off.

Needless to say, I'll be avoiding this airline at every opportunity in future.

And so it is...

...Just like they said it would be.

Well, almost. So I feel very much settled into my new (former) way of life. I even find myself smiling about things that would have seriously pissed me off this time last year. Although I'm frowning about things I've never had to worry about before (note previous post). But that aside, it's shaping up to be a pretty good end of year. I'm even starting to regret my haste in booking flights over the holidays. If I'd have hung in there a little longer, I may have done something a little different this year. But two weeks at home will not go amiss. Not by a long shot.

So today I was 'visited' as a means of seeing if I'm doing my job properly. Whilst receiving constructive criticism like a real trooper and taking on board suggestions to improve the structure of my lessons, I was not in the slightest amused at having the content of what I've been teaching questioned. And so I rather literally imploded in the staff room at school today, telling the woman (who I had never met before, despite her being my "main contact") very calmly (whilst going demented inside) that what I had taught is actually what we say in English. And in response she said "Well in the grammar books I teach with, it says this..."

Maybe it's just because of what I learnt about for the Linguistics part of my course at uni, but having something written down in black and white doesn't mean in any way that what you see is what you get. It could be that you never got nor never will get what is written before your eyes. How many times was there a mistake in a grammar book at school? Rules change. Not overnight, but they change. Stupid woman today was clearly ignorant of that fact.

And there we have it. The dampener to a good week. And that one lemon too many that could make this month really bitter.

Roll on the holidays. At least then I'll be with people who speak the way I do. And not from the rules they learnt in a book.