8ighty 9ine (God I hate that...)

To be called unfashionable is fair enough, but when it is by a guy that wore a Hawaiian shirt that bespoke of nan curtains and pizza toppings it's beyond the pale. I mean come on, seriously, recall that shirt you had in Bolton. It looked like a horse had ejaculated over Magnum P.I.

Please give me more details regarding my allegedly bad shirt and tie combination, and I will issue a swift and thorough rebuke. Perhaps the exact link that was sent, the colours, the reasons for the alleged faux pas.

By the way, this afternoon I have to go to a local Junior High School as an envoy for my High School and sit on a gondola with a Vice Principal and ten 14 year olds as they tell me in English about the city. Normally a bit of tossing around on the river would be welcomed, but today is bastard cold with alternating rain and snow. What would I rather be doing? Here is a very quick list, off the top of my head:

- Playing Literati online
- Bowling ten games at the local alley
- Sorting out the new apartment with Yo-chan
- Watching One Foot in the Grave
- Browsing the 100yen shop
- Working on my silent movie adaptation of Dr No.
- Chatting in Engrish to the saucy girls in my various classes (to wit, "Two phones" Keiko, "Sultry" Sakura, "Short Skirt" Aoi, "Miki the Minx", "Daaamnnn!" Miho, "Turn me on desu!" Tomomi, "Meggy Mori in all her glory", "Teehee!" Ryoko, "Tiny Anna", "7 year" Ichiko and "Cheeky faced" Eiko.

Eiiighty Seven!

I have to hold you right there and defend my tie - I only have a handful of them, and none are as you described. The manifestation of a drug-fuelled meeting of minds twixt Annis and Berry? You cad! I am going to buy a pair of 18th Century gloves purely to enable me to slap you across the face with them!

Yeah, the DaVinci Code.. a decent book, and rather a page turner. I'm really not that excited about the film however, as Tom Hanks is possibly the worst possible match for the lead character I could think of. Were it to be a film about Cakers in a chip shop he would be ideal. I just can't see him bringing the lead character to life, great actor though he may be.

Well... I am currently sat at work, at a little after 5.30pm. I am usually on the bus on the way to the train station at this time, but today I have to hang on until 6ish to make a phone call to a school in Canada. Fair enough. The trouble is, the teacher that asked me to do this has lost the paper with all the info on, including the phone number and what he wants me to ask. Sometimes I feel incredibly like Michael Douglas in Black Rain...

Apologies are due, as your pressie is still not yet winging its way to Blighty. I can imagine you sat in a fetid bedsit in Caistor, shouting "I want my pressie! I want my pressie!" before someone off camera throws a nan-wrapped box at you, and big dancing presents appear to the sound of ducks quacking..

Five and Eighty

Cocker-ney English... now there would be a thing to try. I can almost hear the kids now.. "oh ko! it's the bleeding filth desu!" Superb!

Now now what's all this about my tie? I can't remember which picture or video you saw, but I can assure you that Mr Wood-esque it wasn't. It was undoubtedly a stylish reimagining of the Milanese Prerequisite...

I watched The Two Towers again last night.. by far the best of the three say I. A monster of a film, particularly in the scenes involving Saruman and the massive army he builds, and when the King of Rohan says "The horn of Helm Hammerhand will sound again in the Deep" (clenchfist!). Just as The Godfather II and The Empire Strikes Back are considered superior to what came before and after, so it is with The Two Towers.

I have to go and teach in a few minutes... before I go, I've been trying to remember to refer you to a book I'm reading at the moment - Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Great stuff so far, better than The Davinci Code (I think). Ok, tschuB.

' 83 (Octopussy, Rocky 3, The A Team)

So what profession are you in now then? Something that involves pitting yourselves against chavs and lurking around the market "like a pervert.. yes, lurking around like some sort of pervert" (copyright, Mrs Hall, Hartismere and Debenham Sixth Form 1996). Are you by any chance a kind of a Norfolk version of Del Boy, with a suitcase of hooky gear and a shit van?

Well, today is a very easy day for me... I only have to teach 2 classes and they are both full of beans and inquisitive. The Koean and Taiwanese girls in the second class are wonderfully saucy and are experts at pushing the envelope, collecting purikura (short for "print club", meaning little photo stickers from garish machines) and the eating of green tea ice cream. The kids in the first class are a little more mischievous but really want to learn English.. unfortunately, during a previous class teaching them about commands, one of the girls came up with "turn me on!" so now they all shout it at me whenever they see me. Thank God there is no one in this school other than me capable of understanding the implied meaning...

School life here is utterly different to Hartismere. Ballantyne's rule about standing before she came in would be seen as rather lacklustre here, as teachers here walk in the room, shout "staaaand!" then "attentioooon!" and finally "bow!" and woe betide any scallywag that doesn't do it. Personally I don't do this, although the class leaders of some of the classes I teach do it automatically. Another difference is the amount of extra curricular activities. Here, if you are in a sports team, you do that sport before and after school almost every day of the year (and literally everyday of the year if you are in a prestigious club like tennis or golf). It was announced yesterday that a number of the students in my department not affiliated with clubs would be taking part in the "Christmas Volunteer" program (which, I assume, is where they will spend their precious winter holiday picking up litter and generally doing menial shit around the city, not that they have any real choice in the matter).

Can you imagine what would have happened if they had said to us, back in the December of 95, "by the way lads, you're in the Christmas volunteer program, so report to the front office every day at 8am and walk around wearing a big ribbon stabbing rubbish with a pointed stick." It wouldn't have been pretty..

Incidentally, next Friday will be a huge day. The CEO of Microsoft (that is, the man one step down from Chairman Bill Gates) is coming to our school, and I have to prepare a written history of the school and generally be on hand to create a good impression. It's in every sense a huge deal and is possibly the most important moment in the school's long history of important moments (due to the potential for partnerships and business associations in the future). Here's hoping I don't go all Allan Partridge and make him smell a big cheese on a fork...