Tuesday 9th May. 2017                       0030

Thought I would do this before bedtime.

Happy to report that for the first time this term I felt awake all day at school. Ok my roast dinner was largely untouched on Sunday night (understandable the way my belly had been) but I did take some chicken legs in for my lunch.

Having been waiting for two weeks following my questions as to A) does the school want me to stay another year and B) questions I had concerning whether I would stay anyway, I finally was told yes, if I wanted to remain I could.

Well that’s fine but other things need to be considered. Salary increase (there always is one after a year and I confirmed there would be one before I joined, I simply don’t know how much). Other minor considerations were asked and yet in a fortnight during which I knew the French teacher had been asked to stay, I had heard nothing.

Not unnaturally, I began to suspect that maybe I should be putting my name out to agencies yet again.

Brenda had told me she was in Beijing on business and Mr Zhang (director of foreign affairs) was away, could I wait. Well how long are they gone for?? So I took the bull by the horns, I had waited long enough and asked again. I think Brenda got a little annoyed, judging by her reply. She is not on business as she had said, she is training. For that read “in prison” as she is limited to internet and phone time.

Well pardon me for wanting answers when every bloody year I have to go through the “do I have a job or should I find another one” scenario. Fine for her, she has a job for life unless she farts in church.

I do however now know that yes, if I want to stay I have a job. I know that I will still be teaching at my little campus - I really do like it now. I also know that the Cyprus Masters degree programme will continue, which is great but if only they would listen to me and lengthen it beyond one term.

For the second time though I also was informed that “not everyone was satisfied but it is hard to satisfy everyone”. Now that pissed me off. Always the anonymous “they” or “not everyone”. So far all I have done is respond that if “they” are the students then tough, they accept my discipline (which is so strict it involves not sodding talking to each other when I am and not playing games on their phones) and of it is faculty then why has nobody spoken to me about it? I am getting to the stage where although such remarks do hit home (and why wouldn’t they?) I am beginning to care not a jot. If people cannot be straight with me their opinions are worthless. The results I achieve are.

I will stay here but I am not telling them so until my questions are all answered. I don’t expect to get everything I have asked for (otherwise it will hardly have been a negotiation) but it would be awfully nice (as Sgt Wilson would say) to know what the pay is going to be.

I am going to kill the second Monday class. I thought I had made a mistake in my little notebook because for some reason they were a unit behind the other two Monday classes. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why. I repeatedly asked them how that could be and not a bloody soul offered an explanation. It was only on the bus home that I realised I had had a senior moment, or as the fashionable term is nowadays, an Alzheimers Aberration or a Dementia Doolally. That’s the make-up class I cancelled in order to fly to Xi’an!!! The buggers! Mind you, if that’s the way they think then just maybe (well, probably, no maybe about it) I may never have to make up that lesson at all. But I’m still going to give them hell next week.

So tonight, despite having had some chicken for lunch I was ravenous. Something to do with having deposited half my body weight in the loo over the weekend. For the first time in my life I not only had but MADE bubble and squeak. I used last night’s leftover cabbage and carrot, made some mash and fried it using butter and had fried eggs on top. Never again will I throw away the day before’s vegetables! Ok, hardly gourmet but quick and easy and hell, did it fill a space! Never tried it? Do so!

Oh and happy birthday and Merchant Navy Retirement Day to me!

Please, don’t bother posting salutations, many of those reading possibly number among those trying to forget how many birthdays have passed. I doubt you all still get five pound notes tucked inside birthday cards (if you still even get them) any more. Just another day but at least one on which I do not have to work.