Black Tuesday. Rant.

Dark morning, overcast, humid as hell suddenly and sleepy from too many car alarms. Bus muggy, arrived late.

Assembly on 'Community Service'. Two minutes in the room was collectively entering hypnosis. I could only concentrate by sweepstake betting with the person next to me on which kid would fall asleep/lose consciousness first. Turns out it was a dead heat between the girl in Year 9 and EVERYONE ELSE IN THE ROOM.

I swear I could feel my heart rate slowing.

So, man wth microphone rambles on for TWENTY FIVE MINUTES, ruining the chance that ANYONE would ever want to do ANYTHING for the community again. Spanish collegue leans over: 'Are you understanding this?' I shake my head. She looks jealous, 'Enjoy that.'

It takes a certain arrogance to be THAT DULL for that long. And I'm free Lesson 1. Or I was. 15 minutes left, barely enough time to do anything useful. Curse Community Idiot.

Lesson 2 in Library, destroyed by loud irritating class whose teacher wouldn't even tell her students to be shut up.

Lesson 3 and 4, dull, though mostly my fault. Lesson 3 I had a teacher observing. She taught them last year. There are 24 of them, and clearly it would be impossible not to greet and kiss EVERYBODY before you enter the room; that would be just rude. Glad I planned for an hour and wrote a tightly timed lesson. Lesson 4 taught in dark, dank room with brown curtains like an old woman's hair.

Lunch. First 30 mins, stopped in to Admin. Found out our flat has 'fallen through'. Wonderful. Landlord has apparently sniffed that some English speakers are renting and uped the rent by 20%. Boludo!

Arrive late for lunch: food cold, maximum possible noise in the canteen. One empty table, thank the Lord: I can sit on my own like a loser and relax without having to talk and silently fume about the flat. About to enjoy my food, I look up and the originator of this disasterous day - the Community Service guy - takes a place. And he speaks English. So I get the ENTIRE torturous assembly for a second time, and, though I would have thought this impossible to believe this morning, it is even more dull in English.

Lesson 5: Primary. The little monkeys are trying on their outfits for the school play today. So obviously their Mummies have all come to look at them. Every time I look up during the lesson there's another Mummy at the window asking if they can just borrow little Manuelito for a momentito. Rolling subs of a lesson. Only the town orphan makes it through the lesson uninterrupted.

Spanish meeting. One hour: at no point are their less than two people speaking, at no point is anyone speaking English. Which is fine, but made my response to the question, 'Doug, what do you think?' slightly monosyllabic.

Toys out the pram, I phone for a remise (taxi) to bring the day to a close.

End of Black Tuesday, end of rant.