Funfare for the Common Man

‘That’s only part 1: stay tuned for part 2 once I’ve settled into my new flat.’ That was how I signed off on my last post, four months ago to the very day. I never got round to writing ‘autumnal reflections, part II’ as I had envisioned in my head. Most of those reflections have dissipated and my notes from the time are an incoherent mess. They can’t have been very profound reflections. I’ve got various lists I’ve made this year, the first dating back to 14 January 2013. I've updated them at various points, but I never really got round to checking off ‘emails’. Subsequent lists that appeared throughout the year – in March, June, August, November – all had the same ‘email’ bullet-point with the same names after it. If you’ve heard from me since 14 January 2013, consider yourself lucky. If you’ve heard from me since 1 September and you’re not a member of my family, you’re even luckier. I do hope, however, to dash off a few emails in the upcoming days. ...

Arbitrary, apropos thoughts of various goings-on I’ve got a lot of things on my mind, and because I have neither the attention span or concentration needed to actually concentrate on just one thing, I thought I’d share a few rants or observations that have been swilling around in my head over the past days and weeks. Pedantic alert: Notice I didn’t say ‘random’ thoughts – it would be so easy to call it that, but that would be just plain wrong and misleading. These thoughts are far from random: they’ve been carefully mulled over and considered and I’ve deliberately chosen them to share. Okay, enough of the pedantry, let’s get started. After 5 weeks in America, I’ve now been back in Kyiv nearly a month. For what it’s worth. Despite teaching, it still feels a bit like a summer holiday. Maybe it’s because there are only a few teachers around and it’s quite chill and calm: it’s probably the only time of the year when we can focus on purely teaching and nothing else. It’s a ...