Mayday 2021 1845

Cooking a proper dinner tonight – steak, egg, chips and fried onions. The onions will be blackened. My mother always screwed up onions and burnt them on the rare occasion we had steak and I developed a taste for “caramelised”. Not dissimilar to the acquired taste I got at Conway when at breakfast they only served margarine. Not Flora, real margarine. I developed a liking for it on toast with orange marmalade.

Anyway, first day of a supposed five day holiday which in reality for the students is just the one day (Monday) seeing as we had extra classes last Sunday and will also have the coming Saturday. As I don't teach on Monday I am not in fact getting any holiday at all! Again.

I just bought some leg of pork from around the corner to transform into ham, the first time in almost a year. Interestingly, I discovered they have a mincer! So now when I want mince I can simply go there instead of all the way to BHG.

In the morning Jody and I are going to Starbucks for breakfast. She has long wanted to do so and I thought why not? Seems they actually do offer breakfast fare along with overpriced coffee. Adriana has been nagging for me to “hang out” with her or I won't see her for a very long time. I have agreed to have lunch, probably on Monday, and she will bring her private student who refuses to learn English. The parents pay Adriana to teach her but she is struggling to get the kid (a high school student) to engage. I suppose my job – besides paying for lunch – is to convince the little madam that learning English is something that just might be a good idea.

Our water will be off from 0800-1800 tomorrow for repairs. I thank small mercies that here Brenda tells me in advance so I can fill the kettle and a bucket. She told me on Thursday and I moaned as to why they couldn't do it tomorrow (Friday) when I wasn't here. She immediately emailed back in a panic to say I hadn't sent her a travel advice – which city was I going to???

I informed her I taught all day on Friday on main campus.