Well, CSI New Your series 3 BIG CLIFFHANGER episode has ground to a halt so I thought I might as well write something.  Incidentally, I have seen the 1st episode of series 4 so I am able to keep a tally of which characters are definitely going to survive the threshold of the series, so no big shocks for me. 

 
So, anyway, Paris.  Well it all started on the bus.  Not the the Eurostar is beyond my means (at least not the discount tickets), but it's as if something forces me to surrender myself to the dirtbag way of travelling.  But perhaps with the Eurotunnel fire it can be put down to astute premonition rather than imbecilic public transport masochism.  What, a mere 2 hours from a station 10 minutes down the road, oh no.  Let me take the crawling slow bus that departs from a station many a tube station away.  Give me 7 to 9 hours of uncomfortable seating.

That said the journey wasn't so bad.  Got to go on the boat as well which was not so great at midnight as there was not much to see.  No one got pulled off the bus for having dodgy papers for a change so there were no impediments to the journey.  It was so smooth that we arrived at the bus station in Paris at 5.30 instead of the predicted 6.15 and had to wait for a bloke in a van to come and open the station.  Galliani station was not as bad as I remembered.  In fact only on the way back did I see a sole tramp sprawled and comatose in the entrance.  I then embarked on the journey to Chinatown, opting for the metro after the helpful information booth woman who initially ignored me told me there wasn't a direct bus to my destination.  And so I went, kicking myself along the way for failing to produce a sentence of French without unwittingly adding some element of Chinese.  C'est loin ma?  Twat.

So I got off at a once familiar intersection only to be confronted by a personage who, whilst begging, would not fit too comfortably into the common description of beggar.  Rape victim?  Who knows.  Confrontational and unnervingly bilingual as she was I made a sharp exit in the wrong direction.  But I got to my friends place eventually, a tiny room seemingly barely lived in for the few years she'd been there.  Visually, she was barely changed for the long years since our last meeting, apart from the startling cuts and bruises which covered her head to foot.  Ideologically she had made a U-turn.  While we sat, her on the bed and me entwined in a grey sleeping bag on a grubby mattress on the floor and caught up with the events of the last few years, and I heard the stories of how and why.  As for the bruises, it wasn't quite as bad as I had concluded at first sight, but after the events of the morning and the slight feeling of strangeness from our long period of estrangement I was gripped by the old Parisian feeling, the suffocating fear that I'm sliding towards something ominous.  It was partly that which spurred me to leave 5 years ago.

Sleep got me first, and a few hours later we got up and walked around Chinatown.  Paris Chinatown is really something else.  Back when I lived up in the 18th I visited the 13th and instantly was captivated.  It's exotic, it's Chinese, but certainly not China.  Like La Defence, it has the air of a 1970s vision of the future.  It's got looming tower blocks and Chinesy Vietnamesey Frenchy shops.  It's got an underground warren-like Asian shopping mall which emerges into the most surreal tableau in Paris, a cluster of low shops topped with thick concete pagoda style roofs, guarded by  a station of tower blocks, and as a final touch a retro brown tower block composed of 3 cubes stands in the middle distance.  Around the high streets the air at times is thick with the pungent smell of durian from the Chinese stores.  People speak Cantonese, or French and I can't quite get over seeing perfect French coming from Chinese lips, or strong espressos being consumed by the Chinese.  Over in China people boggled at my coffee habit, only attempting the stuff themselves if it was heavily diluted and laced with milk (powder) and sugar.

Presently we went and sat under the tower we used to stay in all those years ago, passing by the metal fence upon which I sat 5 years ago pondering the Chinese unknown into which I was soon to jet off into.  That was a warm summer night and the wind blew strongly.  I hardly followed the conversation.  The next time I was in the company of one of the conversation members was the following year, my first return from China, his funeral.  Cause of death- self induced, no accident.  But in China all of that felt so far away.

Returning to last week, after walking round Chinatown we headed to nearby Biblioteque, another example of Parisian stark weirdness, and, as I found out,  riddled with design faults.  My friend pointed to the extra metal in the floor to prevent people slipping on the wet floor in the rain, the rotatable wooden panels in the windows to stop the sun frying people in the four glazed corner turrets.  Then there are the wires holding up the trees in the sunken centre portion, without which the imported tropical fauna would topple.  Nonetheless it is a stunning place, just ripe for a sequal of La Jetee.

Later that evening we went to her friend's squat, which was an incredible example of exactly what one imagines a idealised squat to be like (except for the lack of a bathroom) when you dream of running off and living in one as an adolescent, before you got such in the 9-5 mentality and dreamed of nice Ikea furniture.  It had everything you could need, and totally DIY.  The sheets were somewhat grey though, a unifying theme in squats as I observed in my limited experience over there.The host did all the construction herself, and then topped it all off with a home made cheese and spinach tart, if I remember correctly.  But i might not, because I was on holiday after all...

Some others were there, allowing me to put a face and context to some of the earlier stories.  We didn't leave that late, we had an old friend to see the following day, and a lot more chat to catch up on.  It was the early hours before we went to sleep, and the afternoon before we awoke.  But we got a lot done that day.  Stay tuned for our next exciting installment, featuring epic trawls across Paris, and hanging out with tramps on ring roads.  Now perhaps I can return to CSI and see how those unconvincing Irish mafia types are doing.

The last unfinished piece I wrote was of gloom and misery and long wet walks in dismal fields and dripping forests with only the dog and my angst to comfort me, lamenting the creeping demise of a summer that never happened and that I can barely remember due to the repetitive early mornings and exhausted evenings that a 'proper' job entails. I would probably still be in the grips of the slow tide of deep depression had I not received the huge slap in the face that Paris never fails to deliver me. What a wake up call. I feel like my brain has woken for the first time in a year or more.

In China when I was called on to deliver talks on 'how to adapt to life in China' to the confused, misguided and culture shocked new arrivals, one of my main points was that you had to let go of your principles. Don't fight back when you get pushed into the monkey routine to get some school a bit of publicity, don't scream about your rights to freedom when your school asks to be informed when you leave the city. Just do it, don't complain, enjoy it, use it for your own ends, find a way to weasel your own way. Surely you don't really feel good sitting alone in your apartment having won the battle of principles at the price of alienating the hand that feeds you? But take me back to the motherland and I don't realise I have turned into such a 'good', 'socially responsible', wide-eyed and obliging little poster child that I end up having completely sacrificed myself on the alter of my own principles. Get a job pay your taxes, be polite, smile and attend interviews, love your NHS and it's superbugs and complete absence of dentists and the wonderful welfare state that allows you to go and kiss the arses of some bored and over inflated little hitlers who assume that everyone who needs a little unemployment benefit, oh sorry, job seekers allowance, is a workshy good for nothing and a punch bag for their delusions of power. But a good citizen must just grit his or her wonky little English teeth and take it, because it's jolly better that we have these little wankers, isn't it? Maybe I would have felt a little better if I'd just called them all a bunch a fascist c***s. But maybe they would have just called the police, as I observed they enjoyed doing at the merest provocation.

England can be so depressing. Perhaps living in the disappointing reality of a free and democratic capitalist utopian delusion is just intrinsically depressing. When I had that job in summer, which was really a good job, in a nice place where employees and employers had a mutual respect for each other, i.e. the best thing someone who is condemned to be a teacher can get, just the plain fact of having to go there 5 days a week was enough to feel that I had no control over my own life. And is it all worth it? Pensions and mortgages, the promise of security?

A week ago when I came to London on the bus, a young woman sitting behind me started a loud phone conversation with a friend which quickly went into great depth about her recurrent cervical cancer, and the prospective removal of 'what's left of her cervix'. As if that was not bad enough, she went on to inform her friend and the passengers seated in the front half of the bus that she at least has learned not to have unprotected one night stands anymore, though we can be reassured that she hasn't had one since the first occurance of her cancer. Talk about airing your dirty linen in public. She went on to assure us that she is 'very positive' about everything, and went on to detail a job she is applying for, it's terms and conditions and salary, before going on to go on about reflooring a kitchen, holidays and so on, until the bus mercifully pulled in to Victoria coach station. I had stopped trying to force myself to feel sympathy for her and understanding for her rather bizarre public broadcast about half an hour earlier, instead concentrating on repressing the urge to scream. Didn't want to do anything antisocial and offend anyone, did I? Sharing my sentiment, a man across the aisle hissed 'thank god' loudly as she hung up, causing a middle aged man a couple of rows in front to collapse into snickers. That girl is the epitome of the English delusion. So liberal, so bold to speak out about her promiscuity, and her adventures in gynecology, so positive, and what a work ethic, eh? I don't want that to be me. If I get (would say 'got' but it's not that impossible) cancer, especially of the female specific varieties, I would not want to be happy happy cheery cheery positive and dress up for job interviews. The last thing I'd want to do is spend my 9-5s in some bloody primary school being patient with potentailly knife wielding small brats.

But before going to Paris, I just tried to ignore the screaming nihilism that has been encroaching and consuming my psyche since I have been back on this dreary isle, being so admired for my ability to work ever so hard in underpaid jobs to support myself while I better myself through my overpriced masters degree, and still happily pay 25% of my 120 or so quid a week into the purse of this great nation.

After arriving in Paris, I still argued my ever so reasonable and responsible points and principles to a friend who has metamorphosed into a hard line anarchist since we last met several years ago. And as ever no one's viewpoints were changed by mere debate. But over a few days my perspective changed slightly. I doubt I'd ever be an anarchist, but thinking back to when I was broke, had a shamelessly shit job and no place of my own back in Paris' China town all those years ago, I was better off than I have been in London, and I'm not talking about financially. I'd put that short year's experience as being on par in terms of enjoyment and enrichment as living in the rural countryside of China, except perhaps it was less warm and fuzzily rewarding yet less stressful than China. And arguably less healthy.

And thus this is the fruit of the huge existential crisis I had yesterday after a sleepless night on my beloved Eurolines coach, a crisis that crystalized the thoughts that had been churning around my head in those few tiring, intense and intoxicating days spent over the channel, and it's all presented to you in one of those boring bog-standard angsty blog entries that are the staple of the so-called blogsphere. What you really want to know is what the hell did I get up to in Paris, non? All* may well be revealed, if I feel motivated, interspersed with more shit amateur philosophy over the next few days when I don't have to steal moments on the computers of others.

*with of course the obligatory self censorship. I may change my principles but I'll always be spinelessly conservative, at least in print.

It may surprise you to discover that it wasn't me who said the above words, rather it was a colleague in the English school who has been forced to return to the UK for good for some undisclosed reasons.  Three of us were having a discussion about how crap it is to return to the old motherland after living abroad, with them noting that each time you return it is less enjoyable (so I had a good solution in China, just not returning for years on end, so then you get some novelty when you do go back).  anyhow, teacher B asks teacher A whether she is getting used to being back, now she knows it's indefinite, and she said very bluntly, "well, no.  It just gets worse actually".

It's worth noting.  Sometimes you start getting into a routine and thinking everything is ok here, start thinking about one day getting a mortgage, having a place for all your stuff and so on, but now and then you really have these moments when you think, well, hangabout a sec, this is all crap?  What kind of life is this compared to the one I had before?  I find living in England comparable to being in a relationship with some sappy loser, it's when you get out that you''re shocked to realise you were merely in a poor delusion of contentment.  Right now I'm lucidly delusional.

NB that's on the life in England front.  Boyfriend front is non-delusionally peachy.  Surprisingly.

It's not impossible I'm still miffed about my current situation.  While work is no longer making me totally knackered, I have virtually surrendered my life to it.  Even when I'm not marking or preparing stuff, it still looms on the horizon and lurks in my mind.  I still can't get over the fact that in this modern world of ours in which we are always looking for technology to improve our lives and labour-save, we are entirely missing the point.  We don't need stuff to make everything in life quicker and more convenient- we need more time to do it in.  Two day weekends, indeed.  What a concept.

Pardon me, I'm just bitter due to the stark realisation that my lifelong ambition to have a job I enjoy will probably never come to fruition.  Might be due to the fact that you can't get a job reading books, watching CSI and studying Chinese.  Humbug.

Pardon me for not writing for a while, I'm in hell.  Over year ago I deliberated over whether I should return to England and decided that at the very least it would end the deliberation and show me if things really are better abroad.  I was feeling the gnaw of the English work ethic telling me that if my work wasn't making me suffer, I wasn't really achieving anything.  Well, I've found that you can suffer AND not achieve anything, unless deepening wrinkles can count as an achievement.  Worse still, when you are in England with nowt to your name, your lack of achievement of anything in significant life is really highlighted by the high fliers that surround you.

Recent news.  I got out of London.  It's the summer, I'm half way through my MA and I got a comparatively good job.  What makes it only comparatively good is that it is still ESL teaching.  Is this my karma for giving my teachers a hard time at school?  I was always a firm believer in the the old adage 'those who can, do.  Those who can't, teach'.  Serves me right, eh?  But putting aside my disrespect for my own 'profession', I'm at a good school, with real teachers, not just scruffy backpacker types.  Salary is much more favourable than the London jobs, and the commute is negligible. However the responsibilities are tenfold and I have spent about four extra-curricular hours today on marking and preparing.  After all these years of avoiding a serious teaching position (especially of low level learners) I find myself still on the lower ranks of the learning curve.

Being back in the quite westcountry is alright though.  It's nice to see some birds that aren't pigeons and to completely avoid public transport.  Note that that doesn't mean I can drive or anything- oh no, I haven't even got a license to my name-, I just walk to avoid it.  One unexpected disadvantage though is that instead of getting waited on hand and foot at home, I find the tables turned. After dragging myself back home yesterday, feeling ready for a kip, I was instead greeted with a request to cook dinner.  for six.  And I mean people, not o'clock.

Anyway, it's six minutes until my self-imposed bedtime.  I'll try and do something interesting to write about in the near future, but don't hold your breath.

It's been raining every day for god knows how many days.  I can't keep track of the time anymore it’s just one day after another, crawling ever closer to 2009, the year I can get away.  Now it's the Easter 'holiday' I managed to get encumbered by even more work.  My working day is a sandwich of early mornings and late evenings, with 2 days a week having an extra slice in the middle.  The other day I was in a wooden panelled board-room with my a sharp-suited student discussing the content of his lessons and the books to use, and suddenly I remembered those evenings long long ago and far far away when C used to come over and teach me Chinese, and even though now I'm the teacher and the bug-ridded apartment overlooking a field has been replaced by wooden walls and an expansive table under the gaze of dignified framed paintings separated by reinforced glass over the dark streets of central London, it all felt strangely the same.

Before getting lost in nostalgia, another thing I wanted to mention was a great achievement I've made in my working life.  After being one of those people who foolishly always did my best in my job, whatever it was, for whatever thankless company that usually didn't give a toss about the customers, clients, staff, or anything other than their profits, I finally realised I have achieved detachment.  Perhaps somewhere along the line I learned that you only need to put into the company as much as they put into you.  It’s extremely liberating to be free of the burden of caring about your job.

We had a meeting at the school I work at part time- that of highly strung teachers and low pay- about the teachers' pay.  A couple of months since the last meeting and there were several new teachers present and several old ones long gone.  Everyone had been hoping for a pay rise, but the meeting suggested otherwise, mainly due to the fact that the school has failed a recent inspection which would have allowed it to get accreditation and thus the right to issue certificates worth somewhat more than the paper they're printed on.  The principle that the school shares with several others shoehorned his bald pate and big belly into the tiny staffroom and broke the news.  It seems there may be pay rises, marginal ones, and they will be negotiated on an individual basis.  I suppose this means that many of the other teachers will still not get past the £7 ph mark.  The best part was where he said that the school will start paying teachers' for preparation time.  We waited with bated breath.

The suspense was tangible as he told us that after researching the situation at other schools, we would be getting similar remuneration; for teachers working 6 hour days; 15 mins of paid preparation time per day (i.e. probably less than 2 pounds for most of them), and those who are doing 9 hours per day get a whopping half hour of paid prep time.  Let me just clarify that the hours per day means teaching hours, so those doing 9 hour days are actually doing 3 3-hour classes per day, and the 15 or 30 min breaks (I've no idea how long the between lesson breaks are there as I only do 6 hours a week) between the classes are unpaid, which means working around 10 hour days.  So with the increase, the sorry lot are basically getting paid for photocopying time and not much beside.

I almost laughed when he announced the pathetic increase (which, of course I will not get to partake in as I do a 3 hour day).  To have teachers working 9 hours per day with a pitiful wage (note that the big guy spoke of wages, not salaries), and expecting them to prepare their lessons for free, it suddenly became crystal clear to me that the school don't even expect semi decent lesson or god forbid a lesson plan.  At the same time it was equally clear that I bloody love working there.  It is devoid of pressure.  I give them smiles, mind my manners, never make a complaint (indeed I have little to complain about), and the bosses seem happy with me.  Sometimes I don't fill in the lesson records I'm supposed to, and I never go to the meetings or trainings unless I happen to be there.  When these errors are noticed I just laugh awkwardly, roll my eyes at my own foolishness as I proclaim I forgot, and as everyone knows that I juggle several jobs and studies, they all can understand.  Ha.  I don't need to do much work on lesson planning as I am now a (comparatively) 'experienced' EFL teacher and have about 50 activities and approaches for teaching any text (pity my EFL prescriptive grammar it crap though).  Neither did I need to stress about my lesson observation a few weeks ago.  I did a perfectly satisfactory job, and the students were happy as they seem to like me, I was happy as I like them, and the head who was observing was satisfied.  Some time later I had the observation review with the head who gave some praise and reeled out suggested improvements with all the EFL jargon about intonation drills and concept checking questions and blah blah, and I listened intently and thanked her sincerely for the suggestions.  I got a written up version of the review and an overall score of 3.7 out of 5.  Satisfactory, wouldn't you say?

So I don't give a sod about the pay increase, or lack thereof.  God forbid if they gave me a decent wage I might feel obliged to be more than miss average.  Still, I think it wasn't a very wise move on their part.  The school has a really high turnover of teachers, and the teachers seem generally dissatisfied with, well, just about everything there.  If only the belly could have just said that they'd done some research and decided to reward the teachers for their hard work by paying them slightly more than average for preparation time, that may have calmed the angry mob.  I'm sure they could afford to squeeze out a few more pennies, and it would have been much more effective than the hollow over-praise he gave to the teachers for their teaching abilities.

All the above was a rather lengthy digression from the main point of today's post.  Following the title, I wanted to write about something that happened earlier in the week when I went to the bank.  I was just depositing a cheque, when the assistant looked over the screen and asked me if I was employed.  Thinking that I was about to get another ear-bending about the account I am technically 10 years too old to have for tax reasons, usually followed by the description of some lengthy procedure that must be embarked on in order to change the account type, I muttered that I was working, then quickly added I was working part time, hoping to deflect his attention from the potential tax fraud the account would allow me to commit.  I had 17p in there that is potentially escaping tax, according to the last lecture.  However, the assistant seemed satisfied. 

"And can we do anything else for you today Miss Whatwhat...a loan perhaps?"

"No thanks" I spluttered, wondering what had happened to the 'global credit crunch' that I keep reading about in low quality free newspapers.

"A credit card perhaps?"

"Hmm..that might be nice" I said, remembering how I was denied one before going to China after the bank saw though my story that I was currently working freelance (to explain the abrupt termination of salary going into the kitty), and deemed the £4000 p.a. that I was due to be on in China not enough to be credit-worthy.

After agreeing to that, I was whisked into a private room by a 12 year old bank manger with acne, who, after taking all of 10 seconds to change the account type of the offending kiddy bank account, told me I would be getting a 'very generous' limit of £2700 on the credit card, with a 'very good' 13% (or something) interest rate.  Christ alive, what are these people thinking?  I don't even own £2,700, why the hell would they let me borrow that much, and why the hell would I want to buy something and then pay more interest on it.  All my sale-rack scouring and buy-one-get-one freeing would be rather unjustified if I had to pay more money on what I'd already bought.  If I pass the credit check (which I suspect I might not) I'm going to only use the little plastic wretch if I really have to.  I have developed a rather irrational fear of debt recently, viewing it as the shackles that could bind me to this miserable rainy island.

However, it really shows how I have come up in the world since those sorry JSA days.  I'm now worthy of loads and credit cards, and even courtesy from the staff at the bank.  I am being welcomed into the warm embrace of debt culture.  Thanks, dear bank, but that’s one club I don't want to be a member of.

Apologies for not writing for so long but I now have a life barely worth recording.  The best I can say about it is that it passes the time.  The start of the week occupied by being jam packed with lectures (and working in the evening), and the latter part of the week having to work in the afternoons (as well as the evening).  Then Saturday, after having worked in the morning, I crash.  I feel terrible, ill even, but I don't know whether my ailment is caused by exhaustion or sheer monotony.  It would be nice to think I could now live the high life but what I do earn barely keeps me breaking even in this overpriced hellhole, and the tax man is going to be wringing me out when the time comes.  How annoying that the salaries we earn (only pride is preventing me from using the more apt term 'wages') are shown before tax so, yet our rent is a figure that is unbending.  If only the rent was 115 per week minus 22% tax, then the figure would be more manageable.

Let me change the subject.  I am doing little more than articulating what probably plagues the minds of millions in my sorry situation.  Boring.

One good source for entertainment these days is the school I work in on a mercifully part time basis.  The people who work there are generally nice.  A couple of studenty types, many non-native speakers teaching English and a couple of those ELT cretins that give the EFL profession that it may or may not deserve.  So, an ok bunch, but I'm helluva glad I don't have to go there every day, they are mostly strung out to snapping point.  Don't like the books, don't like the rooms, don't like like where the staff room is don't like this don't like that.  I quite like the fact that there is a staff room as my other work involves me lurking around outside on street corners if I arrive early.  The school has free instant coffee too.  The other day when I went in, there was an intense discussion in the staffroom. One of the staff wants to quit (they probably all do) due to the low pay rate.  Frankly I don't blame them as what they get is little above minimum wage with no pay for preparation time.  Somehow I manged to get on a higher pay rate than all, including one who has been in ELT for 10 years.  Though to have been in this business for so long is weird in itself, and to be working in such a school with that level of experience is simply bleak.  I think he may have moved onto better things now though as I haven't seen him for a while.

Anyhow, back to the  heated discussion.  I noticed there was an new presence, a typical odd boy of the type that epitomises EFL.  With less than a month in that school he was already vocalizing his opinion, and his opinion is that everyone doing this kind of job should be getting at least 20 quid an hour.  The mind boggles.  Has he not looked around and seen that most jobs actually involve somewhat more than the ability to speak English and a piece of paper obtained following a 5 week training course?

Don't get me wrong, I do actually give a sod about helping the students learn English, but I don't kid myself this is a real serious profession.  It's not rocket science.  Ironic that here I am, neck deep in EFL when I came here to escape it.  Thankfully my private students make it seem more worthwhile.

But before I wind up this dull muttering, let me just add that I had a brief conversation with Mr20 p.h. about student loans.  He thinks the whole loan-debt-mounting interest thing is ok because all you have to do is earn below the payback rate for your whole working life and you'll eventually get the slate wiped clean.  He's almost my age and is quite happily planning to spend his life scraping around like this.  Admittedly I will probably the one who ends up never earning enough to pay it back, but at least I aspire to have some decent income one day, and hopefully not as an EFL teacher.

Technically I could be in bed now, no work tomorrow or formidable assignments to hand in next week.  As of 12 o'clock this afternoon I started my weekly 1.5 holiday that my jobs afford me. 

Maybe I had already wailed about the horrendous assignment I had to do.  5000 words following a course that consisted basically of the teacher reading stuff out of 1 grammar book to us. Over the Xmas holiday I read several books and spend a lot of time mulling over whether I would a. fail the module (thus probably my MA) or b. give into the temptation to drop out.  But I surmounted the exponential learning curve and wrote the bastard, all 5000 words of it, and the result...will probably not get me failed.  That's enough.

How times have changed since the misery of the job centre, now employment barely gives me time to breathe.  Unfortunately most of the time is spent going to various jobs by foot bus or tube, preparing for work- whether it be lesson preparation of a quick memorization marathon of medical words from Chinese wikipedia, and getting tangled in these annoying things like 'meetings' and faxing invoices and various other unpaid work-related trials.  Work part-time/freelance and all these dull obligations are unpaid and threefold.  People tell me it's great that I'm not 'stuck in an office', but a bit of paper shuffling and pen pushing sounds like pure bliss compared to all this running around.

Thursday and Friday were good ones.  Work 12 - 5.30 in one job with but a 15 minute break in there, then speed across the city for another 6-8pm stint.  Doesn't sound so bad but it felt it, especially with mornings spent doing all the preparations for work and handing stuff in at uni and not time to eat.  On Friday I manged to squeeze out time to buy some food at about 11.50am but had no time to eat it until 8.30pm on the bus.  Sunday Sunday, the only day I can wear my normal cheapo clothes all day, oh sweet  joy.

During the week I was so busy that it got to the point that I had not one pair of undies left that had been worn for less that 2 days.  I had to schedule everything non urgent for the evenings after work and basic hygiene barely got a look in.  Yesterday after finishing my belated lunch on the bus I had to face the task of 'dumping' one of my 'boyfriend's.  That's not the kind of thing one wants to go through after the week I'd had, but I had to do it.  Poor kid didn't take it too well but he was fairly reasonable about it.  It was so heartbreaking, and more so as he has completely the wrong end of the stick about me.  He likes my creative side (what creative side!?!) and the fact that I just abandoned my life and went to China (what life was that?!?).  Furthermore, in an attempt to try and prove that the age difference doesn't matter, he seemed to embark on a tit-for-tat 'who's got the most life experience' contest with me.  Not really the best proof of your maturity level.  But I don't want to criticise him, he's a very lovely young man.  Young.

And as I walked home in along the dark streets thinking about the tasks I had to do before bed and the next morning's work, I saw a pub and wondered why, like the other ones I'd passed a few hours earlier, it seemed so busy in an era when pub patronage is sad to be on the decline.  Then I realised it was Friday night.

So while I'm at it, I'll tell you about the work I had on Wednesday morning.  It all started on Monday night, shortly after I'd finished work a lecturer, he of reading from a book at us all term fame, called me and told me there was someone who needed an interpreter, and a couple of calls later it was arranged.  The following morning I was whizzing towards zone 6, real uncharted territory.  I arrived early, which is another drawback of having lots of jobs, all the hanging around before work starts time is multiplied.  In fact, if you have a real workplace you can actually go and sit in your office or staff room rather than spending at least a cumulative hour each week lurking around corners and doorways sheltering from the rain and the rush of commuters heading homewards as you head workwards.  This time it was to my advantage though as I had enough time to visit a couple of shops and even score a bargain in the first sale I've had time to enter this season.

Then I spent a couple of hours in the citizens' advice bureau interpreting for a woman who was injured while at her exploitative job and was trying to get the most compensation possible for it.  It was quite sweet the way the tiny, well-wrapped lady clung to my arm afterwards as she led me to McDonalds, provided me with chicken wings then told me that she couldn't pay me anything until her case was settled, not even the 7 quid travelcard I needed to get there and back.  I'd actually expected that.  My years in China taught me that getting money in these situations is like climbing trees to catch fish, as the idiom goes.  However this kind of job isn't one I do for the money.  I just couldn't sit comfortably in my room knowing I could stepping out of my tiny job-uni-job-uni-job-job-job world and into someone else's life for a few hours.

The good news is that 3 out of 4 of my various official part time jobs are reliable in terms of pay.  A question mark still hangs over the 4th (and most regular).  I fear the invoice-style of remuneration.  Speaking of remuneration, I got a notification of payment for last month's interpreting.  17 whole pounds, coincidentally just after I got a letter demanding 17 pounds for NI contributions.  In the door and out the window.

I used to be rich you know.  Huh.