Notes from the TEFL Graveyard

Oh, the rain. Falling on my head like a new emotion, it overwhelms everything in its path, including the fragile “drainage” systems. Cats and toddlers float by in the gutters. Thirty-nine more days and nights of this, and we'll be boarding the animals. So yesterday there's this huge storm, just as I'm leaving for my half-hour drive to work. Water's entering our living room through the light fittings, the doorbell, the electrical sockets . The walls are stained like the front of a cachaceiro's unwashed strides after a two-for-the-price-of-one all-day session. I have to go and teach English to people I know won't bother to venture out. I feel bilious and curse the day I learned to read and write . Ten minutes down the road I get this garbled phone call from the school, which I struggle to understand against the thunder of raindrops on my windscreen. “...don't have to come...” the secretary bellows, at which, needing to hear no more, I make a graceful han...

According to behindthename.com, the Welsh name Idris means "ardent lord" , and nothing could be more appropriate. Though I never met him personally on his trail-blazing summer passage through sunny Bournemouth, his all-to-brief career left its mark on many, including rope marks in many cases. The Ardent Lord's speciality was putting Scandinavian teenagers to the sword , "with ropes and everything", as he used to slobber on the many mornings after. Always displaying an unpredictable fashion sense, Idris was evenually fired for turning up to a Business English class with a group of inevitably disapproving German executives in full Arsenal kit . We can only assume that the school owner was a Tottenham Hotspur supporter.