Saturday 11^th April, 2020 1400

Yesterday, despite her not wishing to, Jody went to campus. There was a meeting of all the teachers. Well, I put my hand up and she changed that to Chinese teachers! Not that I particularly want to go to their interminable and to my mind pointless meetings but I felt the point should be made.

To date the meetings have been conducted by way of online conferences so I suspected this one may just be a trifle different. Apparently it was still the usual prevarication and time wasting that always goes on but when she returned she had a little nugget for me.

May the 11^th students will return to campus. But only the seniors, the ones who are graduating this term. Ok, so when are the freshmen and sophomores coming back? After the summer holidays! So I will be teaching from home the rest of the term? Yes.

I have had nothing officially as yet (what's new, the foreign teachers normally have to find out from the students anyway?) but she's not what I'd call a prankster so I am minded to believe her.

Now, don't get me wrong. I checked my timetable earlier and to my amazement discovered I am actually dealing with eleven classes now! Ok, some of them I only have every second week but that now elevates the student numbers to nearer 400 than 300. That would explain why, after I cleared my “To Be Done” special marking email folder yesterday, hoping to leave two classes to mark over the weekend, I now have three! Seeing as I am taking today “off” that means all day tomorrow working and bang goes my free Monday morning and afternoon.

When I said don't get me wrong it was because I am not whingeing. In fact despite the hugely increased workload I am actually quite getting used to this working from home lark. I get to decide not only my hours but my days. I have cut them down as to the length of essays and recordings and my speed reading has improved no end!

Having already come up with a plan for the end of term essays, I now find myself faced with another dilemma. How in the hell do I test the oral students in such a way that they can't cheat? At this moment I am clueless. My normal procedure is one on one and I spring an unannounced topic so they have to think on their trotters. Well, that's not going to be possible. I can't go live video chat with them even if they had Skype, which most of them don't. Say, three hundred students at a conservative eight minutes each plus a rushed two minutes to evaluate each one? Three thousand minutes is fifty solid hours and also I would need to conduct the tests according to the rota. That is never going to happen even if they offer me money!

So my quandary is how to not only prevent them from cheating (because they will have plenty of time to think about what would under normal circumstances be an impromptu thing) and conferring with classmates. The latter is easily solved. I can compile a list of questions totalling 35 and whatever their student number is decides their question. Plus classes do not speak to each other. I have decided I cannot get impromptu responses and as I typed I just came up with probably the best solution. On the day of their exam they need to visit the Mirror website. Ok I know! Trouble is, so few UK papers aren't blocked in China!

According to their student number, they respond to whatever article. Number one gets the headline, two gets Boris and the poor sods further down the list get the Beckhams sharing precious photos of family isolation in their mansion which is the size of Lichtenstein or Rita Ora (who the hell is she?) flashing her arse in her back garden. So far though, it's the best I could come up with so at least they don't have too long to cheat (entries will need to be in my inbox on the day of the paper and I will set a time per class). The entire exercise is going to be a waste of time of course whatever I do!

So we have been to BHG for the monthly necessities. I believe some UK police forces would have issued me with a fine for buying non-essential goods – which I would most certainly NOT have paid. Three boxes of wine is more of an essential to someone of my persuasion than a bloody tin of baked beans! If the police in the UK make a habit of that load of ball bearings then they will get short shrift in equally short order I am sure. They'll be saying tobacco products are non-essential next.

Someone is napping right now and will be woken soon. Nearly time to go and get my swag of non-essential cigars! And then Metro for sweet treats, a litre of cream (going to make smoked salmon and dauphinoise potato bake tomorrow) and then Burger King! I will lay odds she won't have more than nuggets (she caved and had three day old rice fried with some veg earlier) so it may be time for me to check out the King Fish burger, as long as she can explain I want a slice of cheese in it. Waiting for her to try it first is like waiting for an appointment with a UK GP.