Paradise Settee

I’m still in Leicester! Furthermore, I’m being held here against my will…

By sofas.

Earlier today I purged the house of 99% of my worldy possessions, with the help of my aunt, her fella, and their Volvo.  Sofa so good. I, myself, was also supposed to accompany this menagerie of people and objects back up to York.

However, there are also two awesome leather sofas in my house. They were given to us by our lettings agency when they saw that our lounge was furnished with a lone deckchair, and a beanbag which bled little white bobbles every time someone sat on it, and the resulting spike in Lounging Quality (scientific term) sent my housemates and I into levels of comfort previously limited to only the wildest of furniture fantasies.

And so the issue arises of what to do with these big lumps of ex-cow, now that I’m moving. I couldn’t leave them for the next tenants to take advantage of, after all – that would just be wrong – but neither do I yet have anywhere in York to relocate them to. A solution for now is that I’m going to have to stay in Leicester ’til Monday, and rent out some storage space to stick them in until the time comes where I will either need them to furnish my new place, or take them to market and trade them for magic beans.

To protect the sofa’s identity, an actor has been used in this recreation

Much Mochage

Free wifi cafés are wonderful places. Let us take a moment to appreciate their gracious offer of potentially limitless internet access (so long as you sip your iced mocha really, really slowly).

I think I wrote my best piece of poetic writing ever yesterday, while on the train to Leicester (successfully managing to get the connecting train from Derby, natch).  The tale of a forbidden love between one man and his zombie sweetheart, entitled ‘There’s Plenty of Room in my Heart’ (in reference to the Dawn of the Dead line, “When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth”), it’s a deadly serious piece…

Other than that, a T-shirt that I’d ordered online arrived, which was good… However, over the  duration of the day I had to fend off two people who wanted to buy it off me, and one who wanted to do a straight shirt-swap, right in the middle of the train. Hands off!

For those curious, the T-shirt says this:

*Chuckles*

Anyhow, this is the beginning of my last week here in Leicester, and it feels very strange. After six years, the time to move on seems to be approaching with all the serene patience of a speeding freight train, so I’d better stop writing, drain the 1cm of mocha I’ve been carefully maintaining for the last half-hour, and start packing!

Hm, lots of train-centric things seem to happen to me. Wow. To paraphrase Kim Pine, right now, if my life had a face, I would punch it. I would punch my life in the face.

One Night in Derby – Part 2

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I wandered lonely as a cloud, along the Derby streets

As if I’d fallen from the sky, shaken free by techno beats

(If you will remember, I had left the warmth of Fusion,

With three hours still to go before the night reached its conclusion…)

 

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Salvation came in the shape of a bar which was named the Flaming Fox

Referring, I supposed, to the barmaid, whose smile could have melted rocks

I settled myself at the edge of the room, and got out my notebook

Figuring I would do some work, make the most of my bad luck

 

But it wasn’t long before I was approached by one of the in-house bouncers

Who’d seen me writing in a book, and had come looking for some answers

“Are you an inspector or something?” He asked me, to my surprise

“No,” I responded, then instantly thought of many better replies

 

About ten minutes later, it was the barmaid who ambled over

And we chatted nonsense for a while, me glad that I was sober

She went away for a few minutes more, and then, upon returning

She turned my head and kissed me, leaving my cheeks fairly burning

 

“Keep up the good work,” she said with a grin, and slinked back to the bar

While I smiled like a lunatic – best moment of the night by far!

‘On par with Zeppelin Dude at the least’, I thought, and began to wonder

If any other strangeness would emerge from out of the thunder

 

Lo and behold, the night indeed had one more thing in store

Blasts of cold wind filled the room, and a midget walked through the door

He wandered round the room a bit, and passed me once or twice

So on his third pass I said “Hello”, trying to be nice

 

He said hello back and so I made polite conversation

Feeling rather sorry for his slight air of desperation

However this backfired when he asked me “So… wanna come back to mine?”

I managed to say, with contained shock, that I’d have to decline

 

After that he turned away and left without a word

Just as the dreaded call ‘It’s closing time!’ was heard

Thusly did I head out again into the Derby night

And trudged back to the station, which was a very gloomy sight

 

The only passenger was I, on a train so quiet and dead

That never so eager have I been, to see my single bed

And when finally I did get home, at around half-past seven

The cloudy grey of Leicester dawn looked like the plains of heaven

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—————–

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So that, then, is the story, of what happened on that night

Of shocks and laughs and oddities, and the occasional fright

But should I ever find myself once more stranded in that hell?

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I think I’ll do the sensible thing, and find a good hotel.

One Night in Derby – Part 1

A few entries back, I mentioned that there was a tale-in-waiting which deserved to have an entry dedicated to it. As it turns out, it needs more like two, so here’s part one of that story, dragged out of the dungeons of my memory, 100% true. To set the scene: I was travelling back to Leicester from York by train in horrendous weather, and arrived at the station of a small, grimy town called Derby, where I was to change trains to continue my journey…

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It was a dark and stormy night; I think you know the kind

I watched my connecting train depart… while I’d been left behind

And the story of what happened next I wrote out for you all

But the tale came out so long it would’ve filled the entire wall

So here instead are the events, rewritten in poetry form,

Of what can happen stranded in Derby, in the middle of a storm

Oh, and just one crucial point – to add to my bad luck –

My phone battery had up ‘n died (Yeah I know; I suck 😉 )

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———-

Time: 9:00 pm

At nine o clock I missed my train, the connection had been late

The next one? Half-past five AM; so now, I’m thinking ‘Great...”

Then I saw a pub nearby, and headed towards the lights

To be told: “Closing early, love. Sorry, it’s one of those nights!

You’d best head into town by foot – it’s only half an hour.”

Which was fine, ‘til five minutes in, the sky began to shower

So watch me leg it down Main Street, while folk in taxis gloat

(I’ll leave it up to you to guess, whether I had brought a coat.)

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10:00 pm

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Thankfully I soon found a bar, sporting a sign which said:

“SUNDAY NIGHT IS BAND NIGHT, SO COME IN AND ROCK YOUR HEAD!”

“Band night eh, that doesn’t sound bad,” I thought, with optimism

Then discovered that ignorance is bliss, faced with Nu Metal rhythm.

However there was entertainment to find, in braving these aural assaults

By talking snobbily with some guy, about each band’s musical faults.

He’d been a friend of Robert Plant; so I ensured that we shook hands

While he reminisced about Zeppelin – “So much better than these shitty bands…”

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12:00 am

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That place closed around midnight, so time for some more bar-hopping

But now I had to hurry it up, with the temperature rapidly dropping

And it seemed that a club called ‘Fusion’ was the only available place

So I lingered in its doorway, spine shaking along with the bass.

I was just minding my own business there, when one of the bouncers asked

If I was coming in or not, and I had to convince him fast;

I didn’t have much money left by now, and less desire to spend it here

So I explained myself and pointed out that the weather was quite severe

The doorman laughed at this and then, after talking to his mate,

Suggested I help out on the door – “Beats freezing, at any rate!”

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2:00 am

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So I became a Fusion bouncer – well, at least for a while

Until the nightclub had to close, and I continued on my trial.

Through rain and wind and metal and bass, so far I had survived

I could only hope to hold my ground, until the train arrived.

But there were strange things waiting to happen in the intermittant time

And they my friends, will be the subject, of the next entry’s rhyme…

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The Fall of Mr. M

This artist’s impression of the former French teacher known as ‘Mr. M’ was drawn at the peak of his career by some of his year 9 students. (Bless ’em)

The PGCE teacher training course I was on… Didn’t Work Out™ .

And so here I am: a half-digested excretion of the further education system, with time on my hands. I’ve tried washing the stuff off but  it seems to be sticking, so this is a good opportunity to bust out the old writin’ fingers once again; fragile, atrophied twiglets that they are after half a year of no use… Not to worry though – plenty of opportunity to practice, and this blog is getting back up and running!

If I had knocked out an entry over the past six months it would have been eye-strainingly awful. The PGCE course is a ravenous beast and time is its very favourite chow, as a result any entry would have been dull, rushed and full of me bitching about not getting any sleep.  However, I wouldn’t want you to think you’ve missed out on anything, so here’s a quick summary of my life since December:

December – Avatar rocks me ’till I’m blue in the face, then I go on my own journey to exotic climes: Thailand. I wage war upon the native curry and beer populations, prevent my cousin from stealing Thai babies as part of her nefarious scheme to gain citizenship, and, less entertainingly, witness a murder at a beach rave.

January – At university, learning new and exciting teaching super powers.

February – Teaching in a new school. Powers begin to wane. Kryptonite clearly present in the canteen meals.

March/April/May – Realise problem might not be Kryptonite. Failing to eat; to sleep; the course.

June – End of the line. Punctuate, and press life’s Enter key. Start new paragraph.

Total number of creative writing ideas : 0

Students who have learned French: 110

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The last little thing I can be proud of, at least. And now we’re up to date. To expand just a little, I was struggling to keep up with paperwork, and students weren’t getting enough learning out of the material I was presenting. Hard as I might try, I couldn’t seem to rectify these issues satisfactorily enough for the course supervisors, and with this being a 66% timetable, it was decided that with only 3 weeks to go of the course, a) I would not be able to make the necassary progress and b) even if I scraped through, it wouldn’t be beneficial for my health in the long run, and I’d probably not pass the NQT year anyway.  Joyous, right? If I can’t be a good teacher, then I don’t think I should be a teacher at all, so for better or worse, Mr. M the French Teacher is no more. Rising from the ashes… who knows?

Let’s find out, shall we?  😉