Thursday 17th December, 2015                  0100

I can’t say my mood has been particularly bright today and Anthony has not relayed anything to me so I now wonder if he has quit as my assistant. I will find out later today no doubt.

The events of late may be partially of my own making due purely to ignorance but surely do not merit such fallout. As I am always telling my students, everybody makes mistakes. This is a shitstorm and to be honest I am now starting to think that perhaps I really don’t want to fight to stay here anyway. It this is the way five and a half years of giving my all to the school is rewarded then perhaps I do need to move on. I am way past the age where employers can treat me like a green apprentice and I have six more years before I reach the stage where I won’t need an employer any more.

It saddens me that this place, which I have loved working at for all this time, is so short-sighted as to not value age and life experience. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if they find themselves looking to fill every single foreign teacher position next term.

Tomorrow I am going to cancel my other Santa appearances (I am not reneging on the hospital one though - somehow I think the school would have a heart attack if the city TV station reported I pulled out - but the Chizhou Grinch has now stuffed it for loads of kids. I cannot take the risk of the Dean finding photos online (yes I would be in fancy dress but who the hell else here has a belly my size?).

It is unbelievable that while the Chinese teachers have weekly Wednesday meetings the hospital thing was never brought up, leave alone with the ex dean and her deputy. I asked Anthony to express my apologies for the heinous crime of borrowing a classroom at a weekend and that naturally I thought she was fully aware of what was happening, given that the City Foreign Affairs Bureau was involved. Even the lady from the latter is speechless at the new dean’s reaction so if a Chinese official can’t understand it what chance do I have?

I have to accept my time here is more limited than I hoped and start to look for somewhere less ageist. Firstly I need to update and revamp my CV but Nanning is the target. Not cold in the winter. If not there, then anywhere that accepts that turning sixty doesn’t mean you are going to drop dead the following day (I might of course!) and you are not immediately senile. They have people on campus in their sixties, seventies and eighties collecting the rubbish and I don’t see them being told to piss off.

Harbin and Shenyang are almost confirmed to be cancelled which is a shame but I will need every yuan I have if I am to decamp.