Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

The splendid Gyppo Byard has kindly requested that I write six random things about myself. I note that the adjective "interesting" didn't feature, thankfully, so here goes: According to my late father's genealogical rummaging, I am (very) distantly related to Sir Francis Drake (or Sir Walter Raleigh , I forget which); I've suffered two bouts of severe clinical depression (the last 17 years ago) and used to suffer panic attacks. I regained my fragile sanity without recourse to professional help or drugs, partly by reading Free to Be Human by David Edwards, a personal friend with whom I have shared many a beery night over the years. In fact, it may have been the beery nights that cured me, who knows?; When I was a baby I used to hum songs from the hit parade in my cot, way before I could talk, leading my father to predict that I was some kind of musical genius . Later attempts to learn the violin at primary school proved his optimism spectacularly unfounded ; De...

We've just had to change our car, something that younger men in baseball hats tend to get misty-eyed about , but a situation I find somewhat galling. Cars are simply a drain on one's meagre income in my view, nowhere more so than in Brazil, where prices are inflated to ridiculous levels by government taxes, which go towards funding wealthy lifestyles for politicians and their huge extended families . One thing that has slightly reduced the financial abyss into which changing our vehicle has plunged us is the fact that our new motor runs on both petrol (gasoline (US)) and alcohol . At last I've found a use for the bottles of local "wine" I've received over the years. A litre of alcohol is 45% the price of a litre of petrol , so we'll definitely economise. However, engines use more alcohol than petrol to cover the same distance, meaning that we're filling up every two days, instead of every four as before . Normally I fill up at night after my classes, a...

Sunday finally saw the municipal elections put to bed for another four years, and frankly, not before time. I can now enjoy the sound of adolscents screaming on their way home from school, people being knocked off their motorcycles on the dangerous crossroads in front of our house and other assorted sounds of vibrant Brazilian culture without some nasty jingle insulting what passes for my intelligence and driving me, ears bleeding, towards the abyss. "More health! More education! More employment!" they warbled, "Vote with the heart!" - the last thing Brazil needs. Voting with the head would surely be more appropriate. The results were predictable - our man narrowly avoided election and the same old song continues. Ugly scenes were witnessed one evening last week when some of the winning candidate's thugs turned up at one of his rival's election rallies in the town square and started making threats and throwing beer over his supporters, one even trying to phy...