Being flakey

Me, when it comes to physical exercise.

I missed soccer practice again last night as I needed to be home for a birthday parcel delivery. I haven’t actually been to soccer practice for about a month now and am feeling pretty guilty about this. Given my lack of teaching experience, the one thing I have going for me in this job is reliability. Therefore, when I start letting other teachers down and not turning up to things that I said I’d be at, I am effectively making myself redundant. There are several reasons for why I have been so flakey about attending the practice sessions, but I can’t really talk about them here without going into detail about my school. Needless to say, none of these things are a good excuse for my repeated absence and I will definitely be attending regularly again in the next few weeks, which coincidentally will also be when it starts to get warmer. Yes-that’s right-we are nearly on the other side of winter. In a month’s time, it will begin to warm up and we can look forward to the famous cherry blossom and that third season called “spring” that I’ve heard so much about.

Melody mentioned in her blog that she thinks her standard of written English has become more erratic since arriving here and I think that has happened to me too. It’s strange that writing English is a skill that you need to practice, even when you have been doing it for nearly 30 years. I started writing my first novel when I was still in the womb, by the way. It was awesome.

So, I finally got round to watching Before Sunrise again. My feelings towards this film have always been a little ambivalent. When I first saw it, I found Ethan Hawke’s character exceptionally irritating. At the same time, they were just so drippy and teenager-ey that I couldn’t get into it. So it was interesting that I found myself really liking it this time around. Whereas all the pretentious, self-obsessed conversations had annoyed me in the past, I actually found them quite endearing on this occasion. I think that the self-obsessed pretentiousness was probably included deliberately and that you’re not actually meant to take it all that seriously. I have Before Sunset lined up for later in the week and I suspect that it will be even more poignant now that I’ve warmed to the original incarnation of the characters.

This made me want to visit Vienna.

Teachers are dropping like flies today. One of my co-teachers has made it in despite having the flu. I always thought that if you had the flu, you basically had no choice but to miss work. People often say they have the flu when they just have a cold, but the flu totally knocks you out and incapacitates you, right? Well my co-worker definitely has the flu and yet, there she is, right in front of me. Now obviously, I work in the public sector in the UK and there is a very different (some would say permissive) attitude towards taking time off there. But if you have a situation where blatantly sick people are coming into school even though they can’t walk properly and keep semi-fainting, then that isn't good. What has been nice though is how much other colleagues have cared for this co-worker and made sure she is okay. People really look out for each other here. I have some mushroom soup in the freezer that I think I might lend her when I nip home at lunchtime.

Birthday plans have been made. It will be low-key. It will involve dinner and an overnight stay at Hattoji. It will not involve a woman (or a Time Lord) jumping out of a giant cake. I’m hoping it does involve cake in some form though.