Sunday 29^th March, 2020 1315

So. Trump will have everyone in church for the 12^th and yet I read today the UK lockdown could last until June! It will be even longer if the covidiots don't stop congregating at seaside towns or having picnics! Their behaviour beggars belief and ultimately I feel will see the imposition of more draconian restrictions. Ah well.

But this made me think.

I believe some high schools in Guizhou opened a fortnight ago but have now had to close again because the students were getting ill. It is denied the virus is at fault but so far nobody has been able to tell me what, then, was to blame.

In the absence of any sign of our school reopening (office staff are to report for duty tomorrow but no news for teachers and students) I am wondering if we will be back at all this term.

I need to make contingency plans for the nightmare that examining and marking will present. The oral students present no problem but the newspaper reading classes who submit written essays pose a particular dilemma.

Many of them so far have been trying to cheat in their essays by finding something online, copying and pasting it and attempting to pass it off as their own work. When second year pupils submit flawless entries it is as plain as a pikestaff and accordingly they receive 0/10 – but they try the same again the following week! They will learn or find out the hard way.

So the challenge was to think of an almost foolproof test they can't cheat in. Nothing will be 100% but it is doubtful any of them live with a native speaker with exceptional ability in English but there's always the possibility they may Wechat with each other to compare but I can't stop that.

My genius idea? I will write my own newspaper article, into which I will insert numerous spelling, grammatical, contextual errors liberally sprinkled with inappropriate words or phrases. Their task will be to point out said errors and correct them. They will not know how many deliberate mistakes there are and each correctly identified and corrected one will earn points. If anyone can think of a better idea I am open to suggestions!

As predicted, I was slugged late in the week with bucketloads of homework and as a result I finally cleared the decks about an hour ago. Jody is on campus cleaning the office ready for tomorrow even though she's not supposed to be office staff this term and later we will meet downtown. There will ensue a trip to Metro (she goes through my teabags like a panda in a bamboo grove) for a few bits and she adores their freshly baked croissants. Then the treat of the week – a Whopper at BK!