Monday 2nd January, 2017                             1900

Oh dear God!

Remind me in future that if I have time and things to do, don’t leave them to the last minute!

Two lots of laundry, changed the bed, swept and mopped the floors, washed the dishes and knocked up some homemade burger patties. I am certain many of those reading could probably do all these things with ease and very quickly but not this poor soul. It was the bed and floors what did for him, officer!

It could have been worse, I might have been stupid enough to leave it until tomorrow morning. This way I get cheeseburgers for dinner and should someone be hungry after the train, I can rustle something up in quick order. If I bake a loaf of bread whilst I am testing the students I can also serve a late breakfast on Wednesday - I have (American rubbish) bacon, plenty of bangers and  all I need to remember to buy are more eggs and tomatoes to grill. Not that I shall be making a habit of cooking except in the evenings. If she wants breakfast after that (or lunch for that matter) there are plenty of stalls two minutes away. I walk past them every time I get the early school bus.

Wednesday 4th                               1520

A very tiring day yesterday. I tested the students who turned up. Two didn’t and quite possibly will expect me to do them tomorrow. They can expect on.

Instead of finding a cheap noodle place to eat, I invited Suzy and Fiona to the Japanese restaurant on condition we went in search of a dual USB lead to enable me to back up my laptop to the external hard drive. Completely fruitless but the dinner was good, although I had to put another 500y on the card. Not so bad seeing as I still have 438y on it, which will do two or three trips with Alice if we have time. She had to change her return ticket from 14th to 13th so in fact by next Monday we will in fact have just four full days together. It’s amazing how ten days can be gobbled up so easily.

The two girls came with me to the station and of course for the first time in my experience, the train simply had to be delayed, although thankfully only by 7 minutes. She wasn’t hungry but did ask for a glass of wine to help her sleep and then she cluttered off to the land of nod before midnight.

I feel guilty today because she was raring to go sightseeing and I wasn’t. I just wanted to go shopping then out for an early dinner seeing as we both have an early start tomorrow. The class had better turn up. Anyway, Suzy has promised she will take her to visit the touristy places. My legs don’t do that sort of mileage.

Thanks to an Italian working in her hometown of Wuhu, she has guessed where we are going at the weekend and because I wanted her to order train tickets on her phone before they sold out, she also now knows she is taking her first flight. I’m not best pleased at the train times, the alternatives were a 3 hour wait or a 90 minute one. With the airport being “dry” I would have much preferred the shorter wait  but daren’t risk not leaving enough time - flights and hotel are prepaid and non-refundable if we miss it. What I will do though is check in but remain downstairs smoking and imbibing (I’ll take a little bottle I can dump when empty) until a bit later.

I was going to cook lasagne tonight but again changed my mind. Instead we are off to Buddy’s for a hotdog or burger shortly. Feeding is now planned up until Sunday night then next week I will have to cook properly - I can’t afford restaurants every night!