Skip to main content

GREAT TEFL WASTERS I HAVE KNOWN

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.

Comments

Ms Scarlet said…
Oh to be blessed with an ardent lord...
Sorry, I know very little about the Welsh... I know very little about football... but the words 'ardent lord' struck a bell. I'm sure Mrs P will be able to do the German executives...
Apologies for time wasting...
Sx
Gadjo Dilo said…
An Arsenal kit? It doesn't sound that offensive - Arsene Wenger era, I'm presuming. (Wasn't there also a dragon called Idris? Or was that only on Ivor the Engine?)

I'm sure she will, Scarlet, I'm sure she will.
Mrs Pouncer said…
Where are all the ardent lords when you need them? I am currently bemoaning this very state of affairs in my own dear comments box.
Anyhoo, German execs I can take or leave (remember, I had to sit next to the German CEO of a pharmaceutical company at the Fat Duck. That was the night I was obliged to eat snail porridge and egg and bacon sorbet). No, it's the French Diplomat for me. You know, the one Special Brew Man introduced. The one who looks like Sean Connery with a good tan; faultless French 'n German, his dad was a member of the occupying army. You KNOW. Surely you READ that post. I pored over it late into the night. One of the greatest TEFL timewasters I have ever known.
No Good Boyo said…
The head of our family is Uncle Idris. He lives on chicken & chips, wears Brylcreem and bloodstained clothing, and has run two businesses into the ground. His wife had the same maiden name as Mother of Boyo but, unusually for our part of Wales, happens to be a different person.

Our local mountain, Cader Idris, is named after an idle giant who had nothing better to do than lounge around on the Harlech Dome. Spend Midsummer Eve up there and you return a poet, madman or not at all. Colin Jones got hypothermia, but then he was out by one day.

This TELF Idris sounds like a fine ambassador for our nation. More, please.
Tom Crapper said…
But ... why were the German executives in full Arsenal kit? Surely they should have been wearing Werder Bremen outfits, or some such similar kit?

Yours in confusion,

Tom Crapper
M C Ward said…
Ms Blue - I too know little about association football, but I do know my primitive tribal bloodletting.

Gadj - It was pre-Wenger as I recall. George Graham was at he bridge I believe.

Mrs P - meet Boyo's Uncle Idris - Uncle Idris, this is Mrs Pouncer.

Boyo - are you sure they aren't one and the same? The similarities are uncanny. It's good to know your roots.

Mr Crapper - fine work in spotting my deliberate ambiguity. I can tell you're from the regiment.
Gyppo Byard said…
TEFL and football. A depressing combination, since one finds many in foreign parts whose knowledge of Britain is apparently informed only by watching 'premier league' games on their wood-burning TVs.

Whatever a premier league game is.

I once got in a taxi at Jakarta airport and struck up a conversation with the driver. "Where are you from?" he asked me. "England" I replied disingenuously. [It's a simple answer that raises fewer eyebrows than telling the tangled truth. Besides, I was born in England and live here now so that's close enough.]
"What city?" he probed further.
"Reading."
"Oh! You've just been promoted to the premier league, haven't you?" he said brightly, and thence delivered a soliloquy about Reading FC, while I muttered "Yeah", "Right", "Is that so?" and so forth. Javanese has a word for this - ngegongi -"to punctuate the other's monologue from time to time as a gong punctuates a piece of gamelan music."
There is a best seller in that post title or similar...keep going with this series...

My Dad´s into bird watching, me? Well I´m into Tefl wasters:)

Popular posts from this blog

NO MORE A-CUSSIN'

In an effort to rid himself of the habit of using foul language at the slightest provocation , a Facebook chum recently asked for suggestions for harmless expressions he could use in front of his Gran and her bingo clique during moments of high stress, astonishment and/or extreme disappointment. I weighed in with, " Crikey! " and, " Great Scott! " Please feel free to add your suggestions, and help to make the world a tiny bit less like a trucker's stopover in Eindhoven .

DON'T WORREH - BE HAPPEH

One of the things that has drawn me to admire, and at times gingerly adopt, the tenets of buddhism (a label I deride, incidentally, as to me it is less a relijurn and more a box of wise psychological tools - the allen key set of spiritualism, if you like) is the fact that, unlike other religions, it expressly forbids anger in all its forms . It seems to me that any move in this direction can only be a wise one for humankind. Imagine how many fewer high school massacres, suicide bombings, street stabbings, drunken beatings and tit-for-tat violence there would be if we could just learn to chill out , stop taking life so seriously and exercise a little patience at critical moments . As Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, " Anger obscures your mind and makes your life unhappy. Anger can cause physical harm and even endanger your life. When you are angry, you are certainly unhappy and may be afraid, and you may also cause fear and unhappiness in others. Anger can make you destructive... The pain...

GREAT TEFL WASTERS I HAVE KNOWN - JASON

Continuing my occasional series on Great TEFL Wasters, allow me to cast my mind back to Jason, a typically chirpy Londoner I met whilst teaching in Italy. As with most London lads, he fancied himself as a bit of a player , with just fashionably long curly hair and a cocky patter that veritably flowed off the tongue. He was unique in that, during the whole time I knew him, I only ever heard him employ one adjective for a myriad of situations - the brilliantly versatile " unnatural ". When I once pointed out a rather fetching female to him in a nightclub, he whined, "Cor, strike me, that's unnatural, innit?" Another time, I invited him to stop in a bar for a coffee , to which he responded, "Coffee? Nah, I don't drink coffee, mate, it's unnatural, innit, coffee?" His profuse perspiration I'd noted on a not particularly hot day was explained away with, "Yeah, I've always sweated a lot, it's unnatural, innit?" And so it went...