Saturday 13th May, 2017                                      1220

I forgot to mention last time that whilst on the coach yesterday Janet sat across the aisle from me, picking my brains for suggestions or changes to the school website/leaders’ business cards etc. I was rather pleased at coming up with Pre-School Teacher Training College, which I sincerely hope they will use in place of their suggestion which was Early Education Children’s Teaching College. I did point out that their idea could conceivably suggest they were training the children and not the teachers!

After a while I felt I should broach the “not everyone is satisfied” comment that Brenda made. It was news to Janet. Without giving me any answers, she did explain that when my current students were told (their participation is not voluntary, something I would much prefer but doubtless I would probably end up with but a handful of pupils!) they were to take English lessons, many of them railed against it. Their reasons were that it was nothing to do with their degree, they weren’t going to be teaching it etc and all perfectly valid reasons for NOT learning it.

Very short-sighted in my view, English is always handy to be able to speak wherever in the world you are and whilst certainly the vast majority will never leave China even for a holiday, some will surely end up settling abroad and in any event they will from time to time encounter foreigners who will speak English as a second or third language. I now strongly suspect that the “dissatisfied” are in fact students. This unhappiness will doubtless have been expressed via the only medium they have, of the student scores they award their teachers. In that respect I am on a hiding to nothing because if they don’t want to be there, nothing I can do will prevent them from venting their displeasure in any way other than pillorying my competence as a teacher. I can only hope those that count are intelligent enough to realise this is what is happening.

Janet herself cannot understand why anyone wouldn’t jump at the chance to learn English, especially as it is for free - they are not being charged extra for my classes. I could understand if I was teaching chemistry or calculus which they would never ever use in real life…………

I was very sad last night to see Alison sent packing from Masterchef to leave the final three contestants. I had tipped her to win from the off but with her gone, I switched to Dr Saliha to triumph in the final cook-off, purely because she was outrageous and adventurous in her dishes.

In the mornings I always check the same websites in the same order and early on I get onto the news to see what’s happening in the world. I start with the BBC and, in order, next the Telegraph, Mirror, Mail and China Daily. The Mirror is a particularly annoying paper as there is scant news and everything is either shocking, harrowing, adorable or hilarious and they seem to think news of national importance is a dog that picked up a set of false teeth.

They also have another infuriating habit of spoiling popular soaps by revealing key storylines. Some of these soaps I am embarrassed to admit, I watch. So as these spoilers are almost always located in the side panel to the right I simply avoid looking.

Whilst I was downloading last night’s final, what was the first thing I saw in the Mirror? Saliha had won. Talk about furious.

But I have been thinking. Throughout the series there has been talk of deconstructed this and deconstructed that. Well logic surely says that if you deconstruct say, baklava, it means go back to the basic ingredients?? They do like to use fancy descriptions sometimes for simple things such as croutons or tomato soup!