Occasional Tales

Mutual exclusivity. I know why Vlad suddenly upped sticks and went, and he didn’t depart with his child bride. We got a replacement fairly promptly, but Colonel Blimp was rarely around this term because he was still wearing his original hat as well as his new one. I’m very much on the fence about him. He loves using social media for announcements, but I think this is the wrong platform on which to do that because I regard such messages as trivial even when they’re important. He’s started forcing AP methods on us even though that’s nothing to do with us, and we have our own way of doing things. In fact, he’s forcing us to reduplicate systems we already have in place. I’m probably going to be HoD by default rather than by design. As I said in my previous post, this is not that important a role, but it seems to be regarded as only fit for the fittest and finest. An HoD is merely a teacher with a few extra duties. Frankly, I don’t want another Dmitry; I don’t want to have to dea...

A few days ago. Term finally ended last Tuesday, but not until we were made to remain at school all day in one final vindictive gesture which appears to have come from the school. I had class first two periods and nothing to do after that. It wasn’t without incident. Lincoln Green, having had a few to many, had had an accident the night before, and although he turned up at school, he promptly turned round and went home. A hospital check pronounced him fit to travel, but he did have a nasty bump on the side of his head. There were also problems with contract abuse as the school tried to misinterpret the word “term” to deny departing teachers the rest of their housing allowance. The contract will change next year as a money-saving exercise which, in truth, makes sense, since most departing teachers leave as soon as possible and yet would still be getting money for nothing. Unlike previous years, we weren’t given next year’s timetable, although I believe Dmitry has seen it....

Hotel China. The latest wheeze is that we may here almost to the middle of July. Why? Well, it seems that some muppet in the Local Education Authority possibly thinks that terms should be a certain number of weeks in length regardless of the fact that the year is still 365 days. The first term was ridiculously long, not ending till the 6th of February. Because the Spring Festival is based on the quirks of the lunar calendar, second terms can often be quite short, and this year the second term is even shorter than usual. Nonetheless, by the end of June we will still have done the same number of days that we always do. No time will have been lost, and quite why we’d still have to be here till the 10th of July, I can’t begin to say. There’s also a good chance that none of our pupils would even be here, or so few that classes would’ve become a monstrous joke. We’re hearing mixed reports from other centres. Teachers at two nearby schools would be departing in June, but at on...

Day off; day on. I thought, for a moment, that someone here had seen some sense. Friday has been cancelled, which is a relief because that’s my other worst day with endless classes in the afternoon. I had thought that someone was finally recognising that this term has dragged on and on and on, and had been made worse by the eight-day week after New Year. I also thought (but as a weak jest) that we’d have to come in on Saturday because we couldn’t possibly have (unofficial) time off without it being stolen off us. It turns out my feeble joke wasn’t a joke. Although most of us are off on Saturday, the main school is coming in on Sunday. It seemed that the shoots of humanity might be beginning to sprout, but someone poured weedkiller on them; and pissed on them; and ground the remains into the dirt. On the other hand, we’re not going to be teaching until the 20th. I’m waiting to be informed that we’ll have to be back in a day early. The term is ending messily. A whole bunc...

Passing through. Well, here I am again. Two months have passed since the last entry. August in Chengdu continued to be grey and wet with rare sightings of sunshine. Unfortunately, sunshine often coincides with a hint of blue sky rather than actual blue sky because there's often a thin layer of cloud or pollution which admits sunlight, but not much else. When I saw some pictures of bright sunshine and clear blue skies in Beijing just recently, I realised how much I'd been missing such things. We went to Pudong (near Shanghai) for the usual start-of-term conference only to find that returning teachers didn't have to attend the first day, which meant that I was able to go into Shanghai for the first time ever and look round. But because I thought I was going to be stuck in a hotel for three days, I didn't bother to take my camera with me. Of course, the weather was absolutely ideal for taking photographs. And then it was back to school. This term held no surprises. The cla...