Friday 11th March, 2016                 0500

Oh yes, very, very late but there is a reason - 6 nations is on this weekend and if the internet is fast enough I will stay awake to watch the games. I can’t wait for China to make it 7 nations and then it will be at a sensible time once in a while!

Chinese whispers.

As a westerner I couldn’t give a monkey’s droppings for them; something that seemed to shock Anthony a month ago because as a Chinese he saw it as career-threatening were it to happen to him; but my view is different. Ask me if the rumours are true (and God knows there have been some hilarious ones about me that have circulated on campus over the past 6 years) and I will either laugh at their absurdity or say they are true. None as yet have had a grain of truth.

The problem is that the people who should be taking some salt to work - the senior faculty (who should really have their faculties examined) - sometimes hear the rumours and concern themselves and call me to account for my actions. Well I say actions but of course I have no idea what they are talking about. The riding my bike every day to pay prostitutes in west street is one risible instance, the taking of wives in classes another.

Now though it has become a little uncomfortable. One of my new freshman students (I have had them for two weeks precisely) has told Joan that everyone thinks she is shacking up with me in hotels, together with all the implications that has of course.

To me it is yet another Chinese whisper to be endured but for her of course the inference is that she has had sexual relations with me. Well I am fair game because I know how to defend myself but I now find myself incensed that her reputation is being sullied simply because of her friendship with me. She is a student and I am a teacher and there are lines not to be crossed. Whilst it is flattering that people think a fat bloke shortly to be sixty is capable of seducing a 20 year old girl when he is not wealthy, it pains me that she has been put in this position when nothing untoward has occurred.

Perhaps this latest rumour - and yes, I was young once and believed rumours about my teachers at HMS Conway which were patently false - will reach the powers and perhaps I will be called to explain. Fine. It won’t be the first time that people who should know me better after 6 years have half believed a student murmur. If it does the ones I will blame will be the senior faculty for still being children in their forties and fifties and for not having trust in my integrity.

And this is just when I was coming to terms with having to leave. Nothing has been said officially yet of course but if it is then by God I will be ready with a 64 gun broadside.

I just feel guilty that Joan has been dragged into something innocent and an alleged scandal has been invented. That is what makes me angry, not MY reputation. If it is dragged through the mud then so be it but as long as I know it is flawless that is all that matters. Joan on the other hand is young and of course it has affected her.

This rumour is different in that it affects another and not just me. That’s why I am angry. Yes, pick on me, for God’s sake, my shoulders are wider than most but leave my friends alone. Joan is a special friend and I have had four among the students here - Kiki, Joanna, Yvonne and Joan. That’s a crime? We are up to no good?

Maybe, just maybe, my having to leave here is for the best.