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! ...

Devil, Thomas Theodor Heine When I look at the joy and delight in my daughter’s face, as she bounds around the living room like a small elephant, galloping around the house, giggling endlessly, calling me ‘daddichka’, my heart simultaneously melts and breaks. A question bounces around in my head: what on earth have I done? Why on earth did we bring a child into this world? Into such a cruel, nasty world?  Confessions, revelations and yet, perhaps, nothing new: This and my previous blog from 2009-present, in no particular order: existentialist crises…fatherhood…fatherhood in an age of anxiety…wistful peregrinations…tales of sordid shenanigans and flirting with barmaids and waitresses…students and their antics…teaching…travelling…love and romance…philosophy…reading…reading…more reading…quotations…bugbears and pet hates…Ways of Escape…the future…optimism v pessimism…sports…gambling…investing…weddings…buying flats…heartbreak…anguish…angst…technology…being a Luddite…medical experiments…...

My daughter has reached that magical age where she constantly asks ‘why?’ to just about everything. Why can’t I stick my fingers in that electrical socket? Why do the birds sing every morning? Why does the Gruffalo have a wart on his nose? Why do you read books without pictures, daddy? Kids are insatiably curious. ‘Daddy, why are bad people trying to hurt people in Ukraine?’ How do I explain the concept of pure, unadulterated evil and cruelty and megalomania emanating from the most despicable person in the world and the most reviled, loathsome nation in the world, from inflicting untold misery and devastation on our beloved home?  How do I explain what’s going on right now and how we may not be able to return to our home, and to our new, long-awaited, finally-completed flat that we've only recently moved into, and how do I explain to her that she might not see her kindergarten friends again? Two weeks ago I made one of the most agonising and gut-wrenching decisions of my life. I to...

Two of my greatest pleasures in life: reading obituaries and profound quotations. When Donald Rumsfeld - twice American Secretary of Defense, among other roles – recently died at the age of 88, I couldn’t help but genuflect to his epic quotation: ‘[A]s we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.’ For any students of English out there, that’s much less convoluted than it first appears. Leaving politics aside – I don’t get into matters political here – Rumsfeld came under vicious attack for this seemingly mealy-mouthed statement. But I have always found it to be brilliant and full of wisdom. He uttered it in 2002; in 2010 the book Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb came out, and many of us now refer to Black Swan events almost willy nilly when something unexpected occurs. Or, rather, ...

Let me tell you a little bit about setting goals. Let me also tell you a little bit about process versus product. I dislike goals. I don’t have any, for the most part. But I’m content and generally feel like I am developing, both personally and professionally. I know this may seem to be a contrarian idea, but let me explain. Let’s look at this from the point of view of teaching a language. You’re learning English, for example. There’s no question that goal setting can increase your extrinsic motivation (you want to emigrate, get a particular exam result, you need it for a job opportunity, etc) but at the same time it may affect your intrinsic motivation: doing it for pleasure and enjoying the process. The reality is, there might be things we have to do in terms of goal setting but we shouldn’t lose sight of the beauty of doing things for pure pleasure if we feel it aids in our growth. There are dangers to having too narrow a focus so I always try to keep an open mind. Goals can often i...

Notes from my notebook, circa early 21st century Thoughts pop into your head at the most unlikely times: in the middle of the night (not so unlikely, actually), while working out, in the shower, on the toilet, walking down the road, playing with your child, right after your cat has settled in comfortably on your lap and your notebook is out of reach. Whatever the time, no matter, you’re all-too-often not in a position to get your thoughts down somewhere. And then when it comes time to sitting and writing… …your mind goes blank. The thoughts get lost. From an otherwise unremarkable article, this opening sentence: ‘A bleak fact of writing is that honing sentences is often far easier than honing the thoughts they convey. A corollary fact is that polished, elegant prose serves as a useful, if not always intentional, hiding place for half-baked ideas.’ (The Literature of the Pandemic Is Already Here, The Atlantic ) The more I write, the more I want to write, the mor...