Tuesday 22nd December, 2015                0145

Well the competition went ahead at the Baihe hotel as planned, in front of about five hundred very noisy (and especially in the case of the children), excitable families. Muggins was given a lift to the venue and a meal John had ordered in for the helpers. Same as last time, polystyrene containers of rice accompanied by another with awful fatty, gristly pork, tofu and a few vegetables. Bloody awful and thank God I was expecting it and had a pizza waiting at home. Last year I ended up going to McDonald’s afterwards.

I sat for about an hour near the entrance while all and sundry came to have their picture taken with me and at a guess I would say I featured in well in excess of a thousand, hopefully treasured, memories for the future.

Then there was the contest/show, a mixture of speaking competitors, dancers and some awful thing they called “tv show host”. The latter only had four entries and the aim was to achieve as many spoken sentences in a minute as possible. I was unaware of this at the start and I had to ask the Chinese judge next to me what language it was in. English, she said. I never understood a single word the first boy “said” - he may as well have been speaking Martian. Sorry chap but if it’s unintelligible then nul points. For the following three the best I could do was award marks for the number of words I could actually make out. Idiotic contest.

Despite the deafening noise throughout the room we achieved a first for me in China. The winner of the speaking contest was a girl I had given the highest marks and clearly so had the other two judges. Normally the winner isn’t even my second choice, so well done to my fellow judges.

John the owner is upbeat but since starting dialysis his hue has altered perceptibly. Still a cheapskate though, for although I donated my time for free he had inveigled three of our students to come and be helpers for maybe four hours on the night and paid them the princely sum of 30y (£3) each! I’m not sure he would have paid for their taxi back had he not decided to despatch me with them rather than drive me back. Mind you, his driving terrifies me anyway.

So anyway, today (sorry, yesterday now) saw the start of final exams for my classes. Joan had given me the great news over the weekend that her exams would in fact be over just in time for us to take the winter trip to Harbin, Shenyang and Nanjing.

Except suddenly a lump of pigiron was thrown in the works - her part time job needed her on the 16th and 17th. Ok I said, tell them someone surprised you with a trip - what would they do if you were ill? She went away less than happy.

So today I asked her what the problem was. I am seriously not inventing this. Her boss knew that on the 15th she was free to go home, as were the other students she employs at her little weekend school. What did she do? Demand that they set all their students exams on 16th and 17th January. Luckily Joan hadn’t bought her train ticket home at that stage as she would have been up the creek otherwise because there are no tickets available for weeks from here to her hometown and it takes 9 hours by train so I shudder to think how long the bus takes.

But get this. Who’s her boss? Someone who already has a job, pays students a pittance and then screws their holidays. Someone who has stirred up so much shit for me this past week or so. No prizes for guessing. So it’s fine for her to hold a senior uni position AND run her own private school, yet not for me to utilise an empty classroom for an hour for a good cause or to do a charitable Santa gig for kids! I could attempt to describe my feelings for her in decent language (execrable, despicable etc) but I simply know it would descend to below-decks language ere long.

So as a result the entire winter trip has been cancelled because I can’t take the risk of going even on my own, I would be leaving two days before the official end of term and even though my work will be done by next Friday I can’t risk giving any further ammunition. I need to at least have until July to try and find another position and save enough to get me through, yes, Kevin has offered assistance financially  which was very much appreciated but I will do this on my own.

So thanks to my cherished gold membership status of a Chinese travel firm they only charged just over 50% of the flight tickets as penalty (only!!!) and I have lost about 1200y.

I am not sitting in Chizhou the entire spring festival licking my wounds though, we will go to Nanjing for four nights (must remember to change the litter tray and leave enough food for the cats and if they knock the heater over again - as they are fond of doing - then they will be chilly). I have booked an hotel near to Confucius Temple area and have already picked our eateries for the dinners. I really hope the hotel is what it says on the tin because I think Joan will love it and I couldn’t justify the prices at the western chain hotels. There’s no breakfast bar a reportedly appalling buffet for 10y apiece but close by she will be able to get morning nosh.

And three days for her to explore, I might even actually get to enter the war memorial museum this time.

We have a newly opened bullet train to Nanjing which cuts the time from 4.5 to 1.5 hours. No smoking but I can leap out at stops and grab some hasty puffs and I asked her to book first class seats for both of us there and for me back. At present the tickets are for separate carriages but when she collects them from the station hopefully she will be able to have them altered. If not we will have to hope a singleton is willing to change seats, She will leave from there to her hometown and being Chinese and parsimonious she booked herself the four hour train rather than the one hour fast train. For about 50y extra she could have taken the bullet but I have no say in it.

So thanks to her boss for her best efforts at destroying everything. She may have succeeded in ruining the best laid plans of mice, men and an OC and even dampened my spirits for a week but I am just that - an OC. I was bullied by the best years ago!

Wednesday 23rd                                  1700

This week I have been doing final (and in this case FINAL) exams for my students. There have been some emotions expressed but today they peaked. A couple of students informed me that they all looked forward to my class because it was so interesting and fun and all the other classes are boring. That warmed the cockles, if nothing else they will remember their fat foreign teacher as long as they live. Nancy however was overcome and dissolved into floods of tears. She even got me at it a little.

It’s freezing here today, the global warming and unseasonably warm winter weather has certainly bypassed us.

Tomorrow Dumpling’s class has invited me to go to their classroom at 1710. They are going to make dumplings for me but of course I am having to lend them my hotplate and a saucepan to cook them with! Christmas day of course there is the hospital thing, a liquidish lunch after, hopefully a chance of a siesta afterwards and then Andrei (who was granted his visa extension), Juliette, Joan and I will go for a Christmas dinner at Dong Rong.

On Saturday I have decided to hell with the Grinch, I WILL be Santa at the little school and I have also said I will go to the kindergarten after new years day. If the Grinch can run a business while in employment then I sure as hell can volunteer my time to make children happy.

This therefore will be my last entry before Christmas day because my life is about to become a trifle hectic for a few days. Ergo, I would like to wish all those who read this tripe a very merry Christmas and hope that wherever you are in the world and whoever you are with, it is a joyous time which will provide you with many happy memories to cherish.