Funfare for the Common Man

Waiting patiently Interlude 7: One year later 13 February 2023: our darling little girl’s 5th birthday. 13 February 2022: our little girl’s 4th birthday party, a surreal experience overshadowed by the decision we – I? – had just made the day before to leave the next day, my daughter and I. (note to students: this is not a terribly good sentence; please don’t write like this) If you’re a parent, you’ll know the cliché very well: Where has the time gone? They grow up so fast. We left Kyiv on Valentine’s Day, with a return ticket for mid-March. We were leaving as a precaution, though precaution hardly captures how agonising a decision it was. An accidental career Late March 2022, Vienna: I sit here on a glorious sunshiny spring morning in Stadtpark, one of Central Europe’s most picturesque parks, with birds chirping, fountains in full flow, couples promenading hand-in-hand, the distant strains of a busker adding a jazz soundtrack to the setting. Ah, the life of an English teacher abroad! ...

Part IV on my Reflections of 10 years of Teaching: How students annoy us If you missed parts I, II and III, you can easily find them on the right of this page, from April, May and July. What started out as a monthly series of ‘this time 10 years ago’ teaching reflections has hit a lengthy hiatus – at least I’m consistently optimistic even if I can’t deliver on my promises. Forgive me – I’ve been busy. But this has turned out to me one of my most pondered-over, drawn-out posts. I started writing this almost 3 months ago. I wrote a draft and put it aside, to be polished up a day or two later. But then I remembered one or two more ideas and then put off adding them for a week or two. And then I thought of more…and more…and then it started to get out of control and I could barely stop myself. I’ve probably updated this, re-ordered some of the points, added a few, deleted a couple…I don’t know, about 9-10 times now. I’d make a lousy journalist – I’m undisciplined,...