Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

Wistful reflections, petty glories.

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Location: The House of Usher, Brazil

I'm a flailing TEFL teacher who entered the profession over a decade ago to kill some time whilst I tried to find out what I really wanted to do. I like trying to write comedy (I once got to the semi-finals of a BBC Talent competition, ironically writing a sitcom based on TEFL), whilst trying to conquer genetically inherited procrastination... I am now based in Brazil, where I live with my wife and two chins.

Thursday 18 October 2007

LOOKING BACK IN ANGER

If those nice people at Sitemeter are to be believed, a BBC insider is regularly visiting my fun-packed long barrow. It reckon it must be the Head of TV Sitcoms, who found me after a Google Search on "BBC Talent Sitcom Entrants We Wrongly Rejected At The Semi-Final Stage". Let him weep into his vodka and tonic!

Remember Decca Records executive Dick Rowe's classic? "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein."

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9 Comments:

Blogger No Good Boyo said...

Sorry to disappoint, but the BBC insider is me. I work for the World Service's monitoring branch, the Reading-based Foreign Legion for Russian-language graduates, and regularly chuck away Corporation bandwidth in the lulls between juggling red-hot gobbets of news. I'll put in a word for you next time a bigwig comes to visit us yokels, though.

18 October 2007 at 22:56  
Blogger M C Ward said...

If I'm found lifeless on the railway tracks, this gobbet of news may well have been the straw that pushed me over the camel's edge. Nothing personal, though.

Incidentally NGB, without wishing to be a puerile pedant, I notice the photo on your Technorati profile differs from the snap on your Blogger ID. Which am I to use in my file on you?

18 October 2007 at 23:03  
Blogger M C Ward said...

And another thing - is that where our licence fee is going?

18 October 2007 at 23:04  
Blogger No Good Boyo said...

Don't do it, mun! All those Brazilians will be struck dumb without your efforts to teach them a proper language. My Techorati photo is the real me, and my Blogger ID is a cunning disguise, all designed to confuse our IT department here. Please tae your pic. And I'm delighted to say that the World Service isn't funded by the licence fee, but is kept going by taking your tax money off the Foreign Office, which would only spend it on blazers and Moroccan boys. We spend it on flying dozens of pinch-faced miseries around the world to bleat and gloat in front of scenes of tragedy. The licence fee will be going on this instead:

http://ollysonions.blogspot.com/2007/10/fears-for-torin-douglas-as-stories.html

19 October 2007 at 01:59  
Blogger M C Ward said...

You're right, of course. There's so much English yet to teach!

I think I'll use your Technorati pic, the one of you receiving the bum's rush in a saloon bar on The Mumbles.

19 October 2007 at 23:34  
Blogger No Good Boyo said...

Aaaactually, it's me taking a breather while ascending some steps in Amalfi while on holiday with Mrs Boyo. I was posing next to a sign saying "Casanova", and trying to look alluring yet approachable. I ended up looking like the also-ran in a police line-up. The bummest rush in Mumbles was having to escape the local Morlocks via the window in the gents of the Martha's Vineyard nightclub. Violent.

22 October 2007 at 18:49  
Blogger No Good Boyo said...

Correction, that was Cinderella's nightclub. Martha's was in town. Cinders, unlike it's gamine namesake, did not turn into a pumpkin at midnight, although most of its female denizens did.

23 October 2007 at 08:48  
Blogger M C Ward said...

I think I've been there - (Cinderella's, not Amalfi). I was run off by some local vamps, who claimed I bore an uncanny resemblance to David Duchovney. That was the only time in my life I've regretted not being able to imitate an American accent.

23 October 2007 at 17:29  
Blogger No Good Boyo said...

O Lord, that's the place. Some scary strumpet would dance at you with the comely chat-up line "Yew at the colledge? Ooooh, Can I call you professah?", all would go swimmingly, then the prop-forward boyfriend would detatch himself from the bar and pass glass of SA through your head unless you opted for the latrine exit. Happy days. I'm thinking of posting some Swansea memories soon, a few of them mine own. I hope I can count on your contribution, mc.

23 October 2007 at 19:12  

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