Current mood:	drained
Current music:	Jon Parr: St Elmo's Fire

Lost (For) Words
I am not quite sure what to say, except that I should direct this here out of the limelight of all the well-deserved successes that are going on on bristolian_kam's friends list.

I very much need a break. That feels like such a statement of weakness, and the 'trap' has prevented me from speaking aloud. From the 'outside', there is occasionally a stigma directed towards any educational-related vocation about extensive holidays, or something of that sort - to speak of breaks is embarrassing. 'Inside', we know life goes on as normal, and so it is just unfathomable that I think of it at all. This said, we have started our nine weeks of summer - weeks when research would take precedence, but when we would conceivably be allowed some dispensation for a decent break. Those nine weeks for me are taken up with intensive French classes (that is, 9:00-15:00 with 2 extra hours of pronunciation classes per week and around 3 hours of homework per evening), and I have now just survived the first week. For the placement test, I landed the level B2 - Advanced Intermediate - which was very promising, but it has been difficult to follow. My level of spoken French is clearly much lower than the rest of the class; I have had to fight quite hard to keep my own spirits up. What also saps so heavily is distance, absence, lack of opportunity, lack of possibility. Every time I am snatching leisure time, I am feeling very heavy for it.

My last break, as I felt it, was Blackpool in September 2006, and even that had its difficulties, coming off the back of a second consecutive summer of 5 weeks of intensive summer school work. From that week in Blackpool, I started my Masters, which inevitably meant a few day-trips to Edinburgh as the grind started to set in. The late Autumn of 2006 was taken up by The Copt Hill, where I was given more and more hours as Christmas approached and staff continued to quit, until I ended up working around 13 of 15 days over the main festive period. I worked hard at my Masters, buoyed by the wonderful offer here, but with various problems in the background, it took a long, long summer of intensive grind to get the work completed. That done, there was a small window to prepare for moving abroad, with a preliminary visit required, and I arrived here beginning before my contract started as a goodwill gesture. A long 14 week semester of teaching, finding feet (and trying to find housing and so forth), ended on Friday 21st December. My 15 exam papers were due for marking on January 3rd, and a rushed 10 days at home felt anything but peaceful.

Into this year, following the January exam session, there is normally a quiet period until the semester starts in February, and I over-exerted here on a few levels: over-preparing a very dense Andrew Marvell seminar for semester 2 for one, and trying to bypass some mysterious stomach ailment that lingered for weeks. This last semester, February to May, has been hectic, juggling with a conference paper (and a 'reader' for preparation) at the start of April, a demanding (but rewarding) class, a review of two books, and then the living arrangements requiring regular flights back to London. Of the recent June/summer exam session, I had 3 students of my 12 taking assessment (due to the bizarre system here that allows students to delay their first attempt until the third exam session following the course), but I was also designated second-marker/second examiner for some of Professor Erne's classes, which took up week 1. I had the luxury of going home for week 2 - luxury which pales with the details. Since I cannot come home via Newcastle outside of Winter months, I have had to use a variety of different UK airports and train connections to make my way home on the odd occasion I've had the chance to go. This time around I was relatively fortunate to get an affordable combination via Edinburgh Airport. Still, the flight was over an hour late, leading to rush hour traffic for the airport shuttle bus, and 2 hours by train from there. Once home, there was a list of tasks for me to help with, including resurrecting my sisters' computer, and also my middle sister's spectacularly failed coursework essay. There was also an interview on my parents' behalf, and trips to the bank. The five nights went alarmingly quickly, and the route back to Geneva included a long train journey to Derby, and then onto East Midlands Airport. This, however, was struck with problems due to a 'Download' music festival which had happened over that weekend at Donnington Park. Derby Station and its surrounds was crammed with festival folk, and the ride out to the Airport was slowed by festival traffic and traffic control measures. The day of travel sparked the beginning of exam week 3. The morning after this night arrival a few of us spent the day painting an office; I had my year's progress review, which had scared the living daylights out of me; and then entertained some of my colleagues here at my new place, which was also quite nerve-wracking. The rest of that week was spent tracking and photocopying documents for the boss before a department meeting at the end of the week. That was the Friday before last, and the French started the following Monday at 8:25.

Last week, I think I felt the odd one out, which made it a bit harder rather than easier. I felt weak within the group, and with that, the sentiment stands out more within myself that I am not so much there because I want to be, but because I have to be. I envy those who chose to be here, and respect them for that. On Friday, we had a small debate; I couldn't say what I wanted to in French, and the teacher allowed a painful and awkward silence before allowing me to speak in English. Being lost for words, I was allowed to commit the sacrilege of speaking English. It was amusing enough, but reminded me of some less pleasant A-Level experiences.

So like school: the weekend flew by all too quickly. I had spent most of Sunday doing homework exercises. I set off today at 8:20 in my normal shirt and trousers, and got drenched by a heavy downpour. By 11am, it was roasting once again, and the 25 minute uphill walk home is a killer. The temperature reached a high of 33 last week. I know it can be higher elsewhere, but spending 5 1/2 hours a day of intensive French in those conditions feel all the heavier. Within this, something is terribly wrong. I have always thrived with effort, even where I have not liked something, and with that, I have almost always been in the kind of prime physical health where heat, walking and all wouldn't bother me too much. My nucleus is withering from a never-ending trail of work and commitments. After these French classes finish, we are straight into another exam session, where I expect the majority of my students from this Spring will be examined, and then into the new term. My next break, therefore, I think/hope will come at Christmas. More than that, however, I miss so much the people who breathe life into me. Possibilities for visits and so forth are so few and far between; I have had to sacrifice so much more to come here than I ever imagined, and the waves are carrying me onto different, older, wearier and sadder tides. It may sound foolish enough, but if I follow this allusion to my one of my favourite Disney efforts: Peter Pan. With the coil of friends around me, I became a kind of Tinkerbell: in flight, energetic, and ready to take the blast on the one hand; slightly paranoid, moody, and over-protective on the other. Following Hook's disguising a bomb as a present, and Tinkerbell taking the blast, Peter pleads for her light not to go out. Am am I fading Tinkerbell, or just a lost boy? I am just left to try, and to hope.

I was scuttling in with my eyes squinted and my head low with the rain this morning, but I stopped to notice that the Philosophes building, where most English teaching takes place, and where the English library (amongst others) is located, was cordoned off, and a plain notice about a fire was on the main door. I had to wait until I returned home to check email and find out more. This fire was a very serious one. As far as we have been told, most of the libraries in there have perished, as well as the main upstairs lecture theatre. We do not yet know the fate of the English library. It is one thing losing a hard drive and a certain amount of digital music on a personal level, and another to lose centuries worth of books. My heart already goes out to the German department, and whoever else has, and will be, affected. The thought of our library being lost is already too numbing to contemplate.