baby meet

This week I taught four kids' classes. Three of them were inaugural classes with a pre-school. This town is actually world-famous for its early childhood education programs (the Australian contingent are around town this week, but we get thousands of pilgrims a year coming to see the kids be all, you know, progressive) so I wanted to make a good impression. My co-teacher has never taught kids who don't speak English before, and I've never taught kids, so our goals for the first week were pretty much along the lines of 'Nobody falls over and starts crying--yay.' I am pleased to report that nobody fell over or started crying, that a few kids said 'hello,' and one precocious fella was repeating all the elements of 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes' back to us after we said them. They are fabulous kids. They just shine and shine with curiosity. And though I know some of my loyal readers do not share my love for the song Rock Lobster, I have to tell you that three-year-olds go sick for it. That, and Buzz Buzz Buzz by Jonathan Richman and Baby Meet by the Cruel Sea. I aspire to including a gross motor skills session (which is to say, jumping up and down to a selection of rock, blues and punk classics and yelling incoherently) in every lesson. I'm not sure my co-teacher will see my point of view on this one, but we can try.

I also had my second kids' reading group tonight. They were all supposed to read 'The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar' and Paul Jennings' 'Spaghetti Pig-out', and I had lots of great ideas for things to do with those stories, but they came to the school, ran straight for the puppets and started pitting them in duels to the death. I tried to interest them in the things I'd planned for about five minutes, and then ditched all that and decided to go with the puppets thing. In the two hours before their parents came to collect them they managed to put together a puppet play with backdrops, musical interludes, some striking comic moments, and, naturally, a puppet duel to the death. Plus, we had pizza.



Witch: Tell me again what you're going to do.
Brigand: I'm going to steal the queen and bring her back here.
Witch: And what will I do to you if you don't?
Brigand: You're going to... give me a prize?
Witch: No! I'm going to broke your bones and throw them in the castle lake and the fish will eat them!
Brigand: I will not fail!

On the morning before the first pre-school class I went up onto the school roof to drink my coffee and watch all the horizontal planes turn white. Parking lots, construction sites, the roof of the roller skating rink. The snow was falling all around and settling on my coat in patches. Everything felt clean. I remembered something my mum told me years ago, after she went to see a clairvoyant for fun, and asked about her kids, as mums do. 'She's in white. There's white all around. A lab researcher or something? No, not that. Oh, I've got it--she's going to work with kids.' Quoth I, over a tuna mornay dinner, in the ad breaks of the Jimeoin show, 'yeah right'.

merry thing and a happy whatsit

My Christmas was spent with Lily, who cooked beautifully; Den, who washed up; Den's housemate Frank (not his real name) the Mancunian electrician, who got me pished on Chrismas Eve, told me how much he missed his closeted boyfriend who was Christmassing with his oblivious family, complimented my boobs and warned me not to get between Den and Lil cuz they're sooch a nice couple (I get this a couple of times a year. It's flattering, really. A little tedious, after a decade of friendship, but flattering); and pseudonymous Frank's six-year-old, who received many, many presents that bleeped, flashed, and flew randomly at my ankles and acheing head. Little angel.

My new year's eve was spent at a rather posh house party (there were crudites) populated entirely by beautiful women. I felt prettier for being there, because I figured they had some kind of door policy.

The new year in quotes:

"I like Madonna because she's fucked her way to the top. And I don't care what anybody says: that's a form of emotional intelligence."

"What's so good about progress? There used to be cobblestones all along my street. Beautiful. And they make the cars go slow. Then they ripped up the cobblestones and put in speed bumps."

"What was up with the meatloaf scene?" (History of Violence at the Prince Charles: four pounds; Viggo Mortensen talking like a Philadelphia gangster: priceless.)

I also spent two days on Charing Cross Road buying a tremendous many secondhand paperbacks, including two Lawrence Sternes, a Rabelais and several chunky nineteenth-century epics. Hurrah.

And I went to see some Italian Renaissance paintings at the National Gallery, because I can't afford to see them in Italy.

And I spent a day in the British Museum with a grouse individual called Luke. I met him at one a.m. in a pool hall in Hackney called Efes Entertainment Centre. I generally assume that anyone I meet in a room with more than two pool tables wants to punch me, but he only wanted to rave about the Peloponnesian War and discuss the various knaveries of John Howard (he travelled to Australia last year and chose to engage with local current affairs rather than, say, eat big steaks and hug barstools at the Coogi Bay). His reward was to accompany me to the Enlightenment room and show me the astrolabes and the stuffed toucans and the apothecary chests with compartments for human skull bits and mummy fingers. Can you imagine seeing all these stuffed animals for the first time? No wonder they thought the platypus was a fake.

There were other meetings with lovely folk whom I saw just long enough to make me really miss them afterwards. Good luck at AFTRS, Macgregor. Pete, I hope the hat worked. Everybody else, in London and elsewhere, I wish you were here. Have a great 2006.