I'm alive

Where to start? That's the thing about blogging, when you post every day you can get stuck with not knowing what to say. Stop blogging for a couple of weeks and suddenly you have loads to say but have no idea how to say it. Of course, once you get out of the habit of blogging it also becomes a major task to actually start again. There have been moments over the last week that I have sat down at the computer, thought about blogging and then, drifted off to do something else instead. But, I'm home alone, got myself a couple of hours, and rather than sit around missing Maria I thought I'd occupy my mind and try to put the last couple of weeks in order. However, as this is me, the order might not be in actual time order, just as things occur to me!

I am old. It is official. No matter how young I might feel in my mind, no matter how much I behave like a teenager, no matter how I actually look (people tell me that I don't look my age), my body is old and bits of it are starting to fail. As I type this post I have the screen on large print and my right ankle is wrapped into a support bandage (the two things aren't totally connected!). My eyesight has been giving me problems for the last six months or so. I have had difficulty in reading small print but, because I am vain (and have also been a bit "not nice" to speccy-four-eyed-people in my past) I have ignored the problem, hoping it will go away. It hasn't! In fact it has become noticeably worse.

The school, bless their cotton socks, decided to fire someone. Surprisingly to you, gentle reader, it was not Israel. Nancy got it mostly correct in her comment. This is his first year of teaching (he had sort of lied in his application, turned classroom moments into whole teaching jobs). Although he lied, some of the blame should fall on the school for not checking his references or his CV fully. Also, once I did some serious checking on what happens in the rest of his lessons, it appears that the man is shit-scared of me! Going through the students' books, looking through their exam results (the children sit exams every month), when I am not in the classroom, it appears that he is doing his job. However, the minute I come near him - he freaks. It seems that I am a very scary man or, at least, I am a powerful force that affects and effects him. We sat, we talked, he cried, I promised to help, he promised to learn and then the school sacked the 6th Grade teacher instead!

I have ended up teaching English to the 6th Grade. Their English is appalling, and I realise that you are probably thinking but Will, they are Mexican, however let's start with their basic grammar. They don't know how to use a full stop (period to you) - not just in English but also in Spanish. In theory they have been studying English, talking English, being immersed in English for the 3-to-6 years that they have been at the school but, somehow, they appear to have got through their schooling career without being able to converse in English. Think really clichéd Mexican gardener in any Hollywood film and you have a standard that they fail to achieve. At the moment I am having to get them to write all their work on alternate lines, this is so that I can write underneath what they actually meant to put. And then my eyes gave out totally. My own handwriting has become blurry, anything long distance is blurry, the whole world has become a blur. My eyes are tired, I have headaches, I have become physically exhausted. I get home from work and crawl into bed.

My glasses are in the post! I failed my eye exam spectacularly and in 7-9 working days my new glasses will arrive. I am now, officially, old and I am a speccy-four-eyes!

For the last two/three weeks I have been working flat out. I have been tired and a little depressed. I needed something to take me out of all this. Yesterday, with half an hour of the school day to go, the 5th grade boys challenged the 5th grade girls to a football (soccer) match. It was Friday afternoon and from my room I could hear goal after goal being scored for the boys' team. Putting down my pen I wandered out onto the playground and joined in (playing for the girls' team). For 26 minutes it was wonderful. All my worries disappeared, I ran around, played some football, enjoyed myself. The girls' team started to score goals, everyone was having fun until there was a desperate goal-mouth scramble. As the ball fell towards the ground I lifted my right leg back and kicked...the ground!

I limped out of school and by the time I got home my ankle had swollen to the thickness of my thigh. This morning it has settled down again. It isn't broken, just very badly sprained. Now I am hobbling around the flat like an old man. I am old.

So, I am still alive. I am still very much in love. I am (mainly) very happy. However, I am a lot older than the last time I posted!

Comments

[Alan]

I know what you mean (the blogging thing, not the age thing, that is).

I'm not sure whether that is good or bad about Israel, at the moment I'm going with good.

As to the speccy-four-eyes thing. Contact lenses Will, contact lenses!

Glad to see you're bloggin again, you were in danger of becomming me! Scary thought that!

[Blue Witch]

I know those feelings.
They only get worse, just to depress you more ;)

[Croila]

"Of course, once you get out of the habit of blogging it also becomes a major task to actually start again." Oh I'm with you there. It's terrible. At least you wrote something quite coherent after a break. I just posted a bag of shite five minutes ago!

You can still resist being a speccy-four-eyes, you know. I got specs at the age of 25, and optician after optician has told me to wear them ALWAYS in front of tvs, computer screens, or whilst reading books. That is utter bollocks, because the only time I feel I need my specs is if I'm incredibly tired and sitting at a computer. That means I only wear them maybe once every three or four months. That means that my prescription now is precisely the same as it was three years ago. If I wore them as often as I've been told to, GUARANTEED my eyes would be much, much worse now and I'd have to spend a fortune on keeping on getting stronger glasses.

The moral of the story, of course, is to resist being a speccy-four-eyes to the utmost of your ability and only wear the damn things when it's totally unavoidable!