Sunday 6th March, 2016                              0450

This is getting ridiculous now. I got out of bed at midday yesterday yet still felt tired.

Having cleaned and shaved I received a text from an anonymous student who said they were a graduate and they would like to meet and talk with me. When? I asked. Tomorrow came the reply. So I said I would be in my office having a couple of beers after I had been to town yesterday, maybe we could meet then? Oh I am so lucky! Not me.

So I got back (only went for wine and digestive biscuits!) and sat waiting. An unexpected treat outside the “office” was an open air version of Chizhou Glastonbury which at first wasn’t bad (remember they were playing songs in Chinese and nothing at all like western music) but after an hour the singers had turned into alley cats on heat and all I wanted was a Colt 45.

However, the student (who I had suspected was male) turned up and it was a girl, Lucy. She has graduated but she is still here, her hometown is Anqing, and she passed the exam to study for an MA. And not just with any old score but enough to get her a place in Beijing Foreign Language university. You have to be pretty damned good to get anywhere in Beijing.

I didn’t know her from Eve but she has seen me out and about and quite how I have no idea but she had spoken to some of my students about me (how did she know I taught them when her major was unrelated?) and she informed me that they loved my classes. High praise indeed but I am certain that view is not held by 100% of my students, there will be some who have crossed swords with me and lost.

Anyway we spoke for nearly two hours, she very kindly but inadvisedly bought herself a bag of fried chicken at my suggestion and despite my telling her I was going to cook tonight (never did it the previous night) cottage pie or lazy mince’n’tatties, she bought a bag for me. She insisted I take it and it is still in the fridge. And no I didn’t cook, by the time I came home my appetite had gone so a few digestive biscuits have been my sustenance today.

What am I going to do tomorrow?

Well unless I want to waste all that mince it will be mince and potatoes or cottage pies as previously planned. I don’t actually need to go to town but I may anyway, you never know when you won’t be able to and will be glad of having done so.

Security are watching the bollards by the teaching areas like hawks. They pounce on me when I am dropping a student off or going to collect one, they seem to be petrified that as a foreigner (who naturally must be stupid) I am going to run the cones over and carry on as before. Nice guys that they are, it is quite apparent why they have graduated to this line of work. I am simply waiting to see if my interpretation of the Google translate turns out to be right and every means of transportation requires a permit and they try to stop me. The guards have done me no harm but others have lately and there will be hell to pay because if that happens then many people are at fault because yet again the foreigners have been ignored. And so, as a foreigner, I ignore anything I  haven’t been told officially - after all, without being illegal and using a VPN we can’t translate the school website, says he with a smirk.

Oh God, by the time I post this it will be 0530. It has to stop but only after the 6 nations. Tigger never cried last night so I let him in but I am not sure if I should this morning.