Schnee von gestern.

My singing teacher is hereby awarded the medal of honour for extraordinary psychic abilities. In view of last night's post he was dead-on by choosing the following song for me today.

I know I'm a bit heavy on the youtube-link-posting side recently, but what the heck. You can't stop me and there's plenty more where those last songs came from, so you should be grateful if I'm only bothering you with one a day...

So here goes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyGaWk6LhJc&feature=related

...and one time, in band camp...

This time last year...
I had just passed the entrance exam for music. I had also just moved into the old part of town and into this flat under the roof where the water pipes squeal like strangled geese.
This time three years ago...
I had just been offered (and had accepted) my teaching job and thereby sealed the end of my Leipzig studenty care-free life and the beginning of something altogether new in a strange place - drama, baby.
This time four years ago...
I was virtually living in the university library putting the finishing touch to my thesis paper.
This time six years ago...
I had moved into my since much-mourned, cheap-but-roomy-with-lovely-view-and-neighbour first very own apartment.
This time seven years ago...
I returned from my year in Northern Ireland. (Is it really that long?)
This time eight years ago...
I was about to leave for my assistant teacher year in Northern Ireland.
This time ten years ago...
I was finishing my first semester in Leipzig. I was also very freshly single, made oh-so-many new friends and moved out of that no longer couply flat into the apartment me and my flatmates shared for the next four years. Think summer days and nights on balconies and lawns in the park, bottles of wine (and vodka) and a guitar or two... Am I romanticizing or was it really that idyllic?
This time eleven years ago...
I had finished school and was preparing to leave for Dublin and some au-pairing.
This time 16 years ago, to the day actually...
I got my first kiss.
* * *
I could go on and I'm sure there were tons of other stuff in between. Still, it's a strange time, the end of June. Always the end of something, the start of something else. Makes you wonder what's coming up next...
* * *
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ogVor9uZoo

* * *

...and it sure doesn't help the maudlin mood to have that strong smell of some neighbours' spliffs drifting in through my window - is it the year 2000 again?

Blowfish in a plastic bag.

At (and on) some stage during the last three days I was in turn

a spy,

a person spied-on,

a lover newly fallen in love,

a lover facing farewell,

several dancers,

one key of a piano,

different kinds of shellfish,

half a sea turtle,

half a jellyfish,

half a blowfish,

seaweed,

waves,

a tree,

a hippie,

a gold-digger,

a puppet,

a puppeteer,

a civil servant,

a worker on an assembly line,

an egg that was thrown against the wall,

a stock broker.

And I actually had a good time. Which is quite a revelation for me because I normally hate both all things sport-related and all kinds of activities where you're supposed to perform at someone else's will, coerced to join in a game, dance or competition and generally put on the spot. This trauma goes way back to kindergarten and one evil kindergarten teacher who made me take part in a game even though I was very obviously and purposefully hiding out in a hollow tree... Sad story indeed. (Thank goodness we now have a psychoanalyst in the family...)

Anyhow, it was a compulsory course - a cooperation between the sport university and the music department: "Acting, Movement and Music" - that was not only about to take up all my weekend but also took place at the sport university itself (me, anywhere near the sport university, the very thought!) at the back of beyond, so I prepared to be well and truly annoyed by anything they would make me do once I finally got there.

But oh, what a let-down! What a blow to my well-nurtured trauma: I had fun! I might have to consider giving it up altogether.

Now what?

* * *

P.S. Finally my in-depth knowledge of Finding Nemo, Being John Malkovitch, Spooks and every single sappy period drama paid off. It all adds up now. Just keep swimming!

* * *

P.P.S. Muscles I never knew I possessed are mocking me big time! So I better do some more Spooks-watching and not move a single one of them for the rest of the day. That'll show them...

A toast to absent friends.

Ein Ohrwurm der letzten Tage. Und erstaunlicherweise ist doch noch immer nicht alles auf youtube zu finden, zumindest nicht im Original... Gestatten Sie, Herr Mey, dass ich Sie zitiere...

Komm, gieß mein Glas noch einmal ein
mit jenem billigen, roten Wein.
(In ihm ist jene Zeit noch wach.)
Heut trink ich meinen Freunden nach.
* * *
Mit diesem Glas denk ich zurück
an euch, mit denen ich ein Stück
auf meinem Weg gegangen bin.
Mit diesem Glas trink ich im Sinn
nach Süden, Osten, West und Nord
und find euch in Gedanken dort,
wo immer ihr zuhause seid.
Seh die Gesichter nach der Zeit
in meinem Glas vorüberziehn.
Verschwommene Fotografien,
die sich wirr aneinanderreihn.
Und ein paar Namen fallen mir ein.
Und ein paar Namen fallen mir ein...
* * *
...Kenn ich nicht alle Namen mehr,
so kenn ich die Gesichter doch
und ich erinnere mich noch
und widme euch nicht weniger Raum
- geschrieben haben wir uns kaum.
Denn eigentlich ging keiner fort,
in einer Geste, einem Wort,
in irgendeiner Redensart
lebt ihr in meiner Gegenwart,
lebt ihr in meiner Gegenwart...

Hard knock life.

And then there was this Porsche driver earlier who had to brake sharply at every speed bump, change back down into first gear, creep across the bump very gingerly, accelerate like mad straight behind it (because, after all, what's a Porsche for?) only to brake even harder at the next one 100m onwards, change back into first gear etc.

I almost pitied him...

Lost in translation.

Don't even try to put that last post through your translator, Eoin! It so so so won't work!

But here's a post exclusively for you, so that you don't feel like you're missing out.

Long German story cut short in English:

Went to a concert, needed to go to the loo afterwards, waited for 500-people-queue to dissolve, then tried to go again, evil bouncer didn't let me, said it was closed for after-concert-party, for which I proffered valid ticket, which he declined and made me go the long way round to queue at the main entrance instead. Told him "Ah, power's a wonderful thing, isn't it!" Then went to queue at the main entrance. Beaten but morally victorious.

Sorry, the short version isn't remotely witty...

:D

Moralische Siegerin.

Samstag nach dem Wise-Guys-Konzert.

(An dieser Stelle wäre ein Traktat über den Durchschnittsdeutschen, seinen Fetisch für bunte Anoraks und seine zwangsläufige und völlig überproportionale Anwesenheit auf Wise-Guys-Konzerten angebracht.)

Samstag nach dem Wise-Guys-Konzert und vor der sagenumwobenen After-Show-Party.

(Also bitte: Bei so einer schlecht englisch benannten Veranstaltung einer deutschen A-capella-Gruppe MUSS man schließlich dabei sein!).

Wie dem auch sei und genug der Klammern:

Das Konzert war draußen im Kölner Tanzbrunnen, das After-Show-Gedöns im Theater auf dem gleichen Gelände. Ich möchte auf's Klo, aber das wollen ungefähr 500 andere Frauen auch, deshalb warte ich den großen Ansturm ab und versuche es zehn Minuten später nochmal. Jetzt stehen da zwei wichtig aussehende Kleiderschränke und verwehren mir den Zutritt.

"Nein, hier ist jetzt zu."

Eine klare Falschaussage, denn die Tür steht sperrangelweit offen.

"Hier ist jetzt nur noch für After-Show-Party!"

Ich verkneife mir, ihn ob seiner feinen Syntax zu loben und halte ihm stattdessen stolz mein After-Show-Party-Ticket hin. Aber das wäre natürlich zu einfach!

"Nein, da müssen Sie sich da vorne (am Haupteingang) anstellen, und dann von drinnen aus auf's Klo!"

...???... Währenddessen hat der andere Kleiderschrank Mitleid mit mir und will mich durchwinken. Just als ich im Vorbeihuschen begriffen bin, vereitelt aber natürlich Kleiderschrank 1 den Putsch seines (zweifelsohne rangniederen) Kollegen.

"Mensch, nu lass das Mädsche doch durch, die muss doch!"

- "Nein, da musse andersrum gehn!"

In der Tat, das musste ich. Und ich klopfe mir hiermit symbolisch dafür auf die Schulter, dass ich Kleiderschrank 1 im Weggehen zumindest noch "Mann, Macht ist schon was Tolles, ne?!" zu denken gegeben habe. Wobei, das mit dem Denken...

P.S. Erkenntnis Nr. 1: Früher war alles besser. Das greift leider auch für Wise-Guys-Konzerte und hat so gar nichts mit dem bösen Türsteher zu tun.

Erkenntnis Nr. 2: Die Nach-Vorne-Sicht durch einen Hünen wird nicht dadurch verbessert, dass er sich ein quengelndes Kind auf die Schultern setzt.

Ohren auf bei der Mantra-Wahl.

Eigentlich wollte ich jetzt eine ordentliche Tirade loslassen darüber, wie unglaublich nervig doch Zeugniskonferenzen sein können und wie unglaublich egoistisch einige Kollegen, die da glauben, dass sie immer die "schlimmsten" Sitzenbleiber mit voller Absicht zugeschoben bekommen nur damit der Vorgänger sie los ist, und wie unglaublich belämmert doch das Tippen, Korrekturlesen, Ausdrucken, Fehlerentdecken, nochmal Tippen, nochmal Drucken etc. von Zeugnissen macht, bis man irgendwann mit einer völligen Mattscheibe unglaublich schlecht gelaunt nach acht Stunden nach Hause fährt.

Aber dann ist mir das Lied von Vyvienne Long zugeflogen und mit dem passenden Ohrwurm fällt das Schlecht-gelaunt-sein doch gleich erheblich schwerer...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PqKm1qTDt0&feature=related

My happy thought for today: what a beautiful colour the wings of the swifts flying above my window are, when the evening sun hits them!

Hope springs eternal.

Things I should do today:
Tidy my flat and clear away last week’s or so mess.
Do the washing-up.
Take down the trash.
Do my laundry.
Get dressed before taking the laundry down to the basement.
Put away last week’s dry laundry.
Practice the piano and my part of that duet.
Write that bloody paper.
Go outside and realize that the rain has stopped.
Talk to people.
Cook myself dinner.

Things I have done today so far:
Slept til noon.
Considered doing everything on my to-do list (briefly).
Checked my mail and facebook accounts.
Had a large cappucchino, a dozen strawberries and half a bag of caramel sweets.
Considered doing everything on my to-do list some more.
Watched the Juliette-Binoche/Ralph-Fiennes-version of Wuthering Heights.
Read some other people’s blogs, one of them on how to discipline yourself to write. (See? And here I am, writing.)
Wondered why nobody writes a blog on how to discipline yourself to do everything else.

But hey, it’s not even 4pm! Plenty of time to get everything done, right? Maybe I’ll start with something easy, like cooking dinner. Or maybe I'll just very quickly check my mails again before that? Or maybe mess about with this blog some more? Or... Ah, go on, have another strawberry!

Puzzled.

The old lady on the second floor across the street has in her living room only one folding chair, one small table and one orange seventies-style table-lamp. The walls and floor tiles are naked and white. The phone socket is empty. There she sits every day and reads or does crossword puzzles.

Is this some kind of extreme minimalist lifestyle or is she just incredibly poor? No, don't answer that.

Count to ten.

This morning I felt like I was a good teacher. (The fact that I care to even mention that might give you an inkling how very seldom I actually feel that way.) I undertook an experiment and I still can’t quite believe it worked. Most of my colleagues would probably think me crazy but here goes:
I watched a film with my Third Years. So what you say? It was a film in English, a film set in Belfast (so all you got to hear were Northern Irish accents), a film that didn’t have German subtitles, only English ones. Now let this sink in. Most of my pupils have very low reading skills, an attention span shorter than the average music clip, and don’t even get me started on their English…

But I very much wanted them to see this movie. There had been a unit in their student books about Ireland, but I felt they hadn’t really made a connection, that those pretty travel brochure pictures had passed them by without leaving much of an impression. And since Northern Ireland was completely ignored in their book, I thought well, if you want something done…
Alright, I admit I think the mention of bombings and shootings during the Troubles grabbed their attention but nonetheless. They watched the film, or rather the first half of it (by the way, a thing called “The Mighty Celt” with Robert Carlisle and Gillian Anderson) in silence and concentration and were totally okay with the fact that they didn’t get half of the dialogues’ content. Nothing short of a miracle. Sure, we had discussed before how you can try to understand situations just by watching people’s faces and gestures and by listening to their tone of voice. And sure, I gave them little bits of information along the way or stopped the film for a minute to explain something important to the plot. But still, there had been a good chance straight from the beginning that half of them wouldn’t be able to “allow” those gaps and to settle into the film at all but would very subtly inform me of their discontent.
So this story hasn’t got much of a punch line. I’m just so proud of my Third Years (and a tiny little bit - or rather a wee bit - of myself) and wanted to high-five someone all day. Nine days out of ten they drive me round the bend, but somehow tenth days like today…well!

Oh no, the poor puppy!

Today’s German Yahoo! “most popular” news headlines read:

U.S prisoner dies after heat exposure in outdoor cage
Child flushes puppy down the toilet by accident
Missing boy found after fifty years
Private beach party on Sylt went out of control
Experts: Air-France plane crashed suddenly into the sea
Queen gives thumbs-up for vegetable patch outside Buckingham Palace
Why we drink so much tomato juice on airplanes

By popular demand, not a word on the Middle East, economics, politics or anything truly close to home.
Jesus, are we shallow, naïve, cynical or what?

Handbook.

The rule, as they say, is simple: Write every day.

Every day.

...Well, that's that done. Tick.

Today I...

• got up at six am, had a shower and breakfast, then had a second shower cycling to school.
• caused a virtual bloodshed with a Fourth Year English test. Or rather, they did, feigning surprise at the fact that the test was on today at all.
• did some serious skipping, running and ball-dribbling together with the rest of the staff in front of all our students (at the annual Sixth Year farewell teacher-mockery, though admittedly a huge improvement to last year's karaoke).
• almost missed the tram on account of not being able to cross at a red light because of a police car in sight.
• got puddle-soaked by a passing car while waiting at said red traffic light.
• watched a man who actually did miss the train. And two who managed to catch it.
• helped a woman on the train find her mobile in her fantastic, new, 28 extra-inside-pockets Crumpler bag (Phoning her did the trick. Good girl scout, me!).
• spent happy 90 minutes watching 1970's music clips by Bowie, Pink Floyd, Ike & Tina, Julie Driscoll and others as part of my "popular music" class. I can only recommend it. Cheered me up big time.
• watched 4 police officers (two men, two women) pretending to direct the traffic at a big junction where the lights were broken. They were so busy flirting over their walkie-talkies they caused a major traffic jam.
• bought five apt-for-school tops on my way home. Now I am worried I have jinxed the whole new-contract thing and might never need them.
• am about to cook myself a proper dinner for a change: vegetable curry with naan bread.
• happened upon some background meaning of this here nursery rhyme ("Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row.") and was quite disillusioned by what I found. Apparently, it alludes to Bloody Mary (the queen, not the drink, alas) and the garden to a growing graveyard - since Catholic Mary had taken to beheading Protestants, remember? This source said that silver bells back then were thumbscrews and cockle shells some other highly inventive instrument of torture (mention of genitals, ugh) and maids another word for the newly introduced guillotine (so much less messy than the techniques before). ...and here I was conjuring up romantic images of tinkling bells and shells found on a beach, toying with using them as labels for my music- or holiday-related blogs... Well, I refuse to give up my interpretation of the rhyme. And anyhow, wikipedia comes up with at least three other possible readings, so I will simply choose to ignore this hermeneutic mess and go on as before. As my friend W. Whitman used to say: "Do I contradict myself? - Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes."
  

Oh, and how was your day?

Staff motivation.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon in the playground, celebrating my nephew's birthday, no complaints there. Just take ten under-four-year-olds, 15 adults, far too many cakes, coffee, juice, balloons, a very steady drizzle and stir.

Enter four slightly-too-old-for-the-playground boys:

One of them, once he realized that he was way ahead of the others, shouted: "Last one at the swings is a fat pig!" Jaw- and eavesdropping, I kept watching him. Next, he was on one of the swings, his second-in-command on the other and he announced: "The one who gives me a push, gets to go next!" (In German: "Wer mir Schwung gibt, darf nach mir dran!") Which actually works marvelously in English, because I really did feel like pushing him - off the swings.

Ah, m'boy, you'll go far with that attitude! Some twenty years on and you will without a doubt be managing director of a big multinational. That, or head of the local mafia branch.

Same difference.

Stilbruch.

Es ist offiziell Sommer in Klein-Istanbul.
Unten auf der Straße stellen Dönerbudenbesitzer Stühle auf den dafür viel zu schmalen Gehweg, auf denen sie dann die meiste Zeit selbst sitzen. Sie und ihre Onkel, Väter, Cousins und Nachbarn. Wer keinen Logenplatz an der Dönerbude bekommen hat, vertreibt sich die Zeit in den ausschließlich türkisch-männlich frequentierten Wettbüros, Friseursalons und „Internetcafés“ (diesen notdürftig hergerichteten Erdgeschossräumen, in denen die Jungs und Männer ihre Freizeit mit Chatten, Ferngesprächen in die alte Heimat, Kartenspielen und Shisha-Rauchen bestreiten – soweit ich das durch die offenstehende Tür beurteilen kann). Und wem das nicht zusagt, der kann immer noch wortreich palavernd, in der zweiten Reihe parkend mysteriöse Dinge in Autos verladen.
Die Frauen sind währenddessen weitgehend unsichtbar. Gegen Abend tauchen sie aber manchmal doch auf. Meistens in der bekopftuchten Halbdutzendgruppe, die sich dann in einem mich ignorante Westeuropäerin wahnsinnig machenden Tempo (Tempo ist hier das falsche Wort) über den besagten viel zu engen Gehweg schiebt. Aber das behalte ich für mich - schließlich bin ich hier zu Gast - und übe täglich, mir den Schlender zu Eigen zu machen.
Jetzt, zur Mittagszeit, haben die Frauen aber eindeutig anderes zu tun. Schließlich müssen sie oben in ihrer Wohnung (un-) erreichbar sein, wenn ihre 2- bis 12-jährigen Kinder unten von der Straße „Anne!!! Anne!!!“ zu ihnen hochbrüllen.
Über all dem kreischen die Mauersegler und der Duft vom sonnenwarmen Holz der Dachbalken steigt mir in die Nase. Die Sonntagsglocken läuten. Dabei wäre ein Muezzin so viel authentischer...

Listen.

This is something I came across yesterday. Play it at full volume, close your eyes and enjoy the thunderstorm. Mind you, I hope this works. I have no idea how to insert links in here...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjbpwlqp5Qw&feature=channel

How do you make this come up as a pretty little youtube-screen? Well, nevermind.

Keep a lid on it!

I had some colleagues over for dinner the other day. One of them at some point asked me whether I’d had any trouble with rats so far since I’d moved into the old part of the town. (Way to go! What a topic to choose over spinach lasagne!) Me (furrowed brow, slightly taken aback): “Wh-what? Wh-why? Um, n-no?!” (more face-making)
Let me get this straight. I’ve seen my share of rats ever since I moved out of the sheltered, apparently rat-free smalltown world of my childhood. In front of one of my former appartments, there was a deserted site. For reasons best known to themselves, someone always placed open tins of cat food there. Why, the rats loved that, obviously. A circumstance that taught me that a hustle in the hedgerow on your way home is hardly ever just a spring clean for the may queen.
And the river Rhine is a great place to stumble across rats. Just go for a litlle stroll of an evening and there they all are, meeting their friends at the ferry landing place for their daily twilight chat…
But I digress.
The kind of rat-trouble my friend was aiming at was the rats-coming-out-of-your-toilet sort of trouble! Apparently, back in her student days, it was common knowledge that the pipes of these old buildings are very popular hiking sites amongst rats. And that you should always close the lid of your toilet whenever you go away for the weekend or on holiday. Now this was the part that really blew me! Because, what’s this supposed to mean? That the rats take turns to spy me out for weeks to establish when my flat/bathroom/toilet is most likely to be empty before they make their way up the pipes? And anyhow, wouldn’t they be able to lift the lid from below, giving each other a piggy-back?

Rat-quotes seem to abound these days:
Don’t feed the rats, don’t let them in…
Nachts schlafen die Ratten doch!
Denn das tollste Tier, das ich hatte, war eine flache Ratte...
Maybe I should open a self-help group with Duffy, Borchert and Van Dannen. And I’m sure there are more of us out there!

I seriously consider keeping a roll of extra strong sellotape next to my toilet and tape the lid down every night. And maybe I will tip-off the cat that always tries to climb in through my skilight, tell her to bide her time…

Rats!

Click ok to delete

- Was? Du weißt nicht, was Schulamt auf Englisch heißt?! Du weißt ja die einfachsten Sachen nicht!

– Nee, aber ich könnt dir sagen, was Leistenbruch heißt. Und Bindehautentzündung. Und Holunder. Und Graureiher. Und Marienverehrung.
Vielleicht sollte ich meine Festplatte wirklich mal defragmentieren.

Just for the record: hernia, conjunctivitis, elderberry, heron, mariolatry. Nur für den Fall, dass du mal in die Verlegenheit kommst. Wie war das noch: Stell dir vor, da kommt jemand auf der Kirmes auf dich zu und fragt „Was ist der verkürzte Doppeldominant-Sept-Non-Akkord auf der tiefalterierten Quinte von Fis-Dur?“ ...Ja, und dann stehste da!

Unterm Strich

Lieber Mann vom Schulamt!

Bist du die Spielchen nicht auch langsam leid? Jedes Jahr die gleiche Nummer, die gleiche Farce, dich und deine ach-so-kargen Vertretungsstellen im Marktwert zu steigern? Jedes Mal der gleiche Zermürbungskrieg. "Ja, raten Sie doch mal! Meinen Sie, wir verlängern Ihren Vertrag oder nicht? ... Ach, glauben Sie? Und über den Sommer möchten Sie womöglich auch noch bezahlt werden?! Hm, tja. Vielleicht, vielleicht auch nicht, nicht wahr? Sie dürfen gespannt bleiben. Wenn Sie versprechen mich die nächsten Wochen nicht öfter als dreimal täglich zu behelligen, lassen wir Sie vielleicht an der nächsten Verlosung teilnehmen!" Mal ehrlich, ist das nicht etwas unter deinem Niveau?

Nun. Offensichtlich nicht. Und da subtile Andeutungen an dich stets verschwendet sind, sag ich's jetzt mal, wie es ist: Ich durchschaue dich! Ich verstehe jetzt, warum du es nötig hast, dich und deine so wohl vergüteten (?) Stellen künstlich rar zu machen. Du weißt nämlich etwas, das ich erst jetzt herausgefunden habe: Wenn ich mich nicht von dir anstellen lasse, sondern brav zum Arbeitsamt wandere und die 60%-vom-Nettogehalt-Arbeitslosengeld plus Wohngeld beantrage, dann gehe ich am Ende mit genauso viel Kohle nach Hause wie wenn ich mich 14 Schulstunden die Woche des Nachwuchs unserer förderungswürdigen, bildungsfernen Schichten annehme! Ist das nicht unglaublich? Ich weiß für dich ist das ein alter Hut, den du wohlweißlich niemandem leihst, aber meine Güte, man wird jawohl mal die Kinnlade nach unten klappen dürfen ob dieser Erkenntnis!

Dennoch - und diese Einsicht ist für mich mindestens ebenso überraschend (und verstörend) wie wohl für dich, lieber Mann vom Schulamt - hätte ich gerne einen neuen Vertrag. Ja, ich würde mich gerne auch weiterhin mit den lieben Kleinen rumschlagen. Vielleicht bin ich da seltsam. Mir fallen auch keine stichhaltigen Argumente ein so auf die Schnelle. Wobei, das dürfte dir ja ohnehin egal sein - eine billige, willige, jederzeit kündbare Arbeitskraft mehr. Also: du hast gewonnen. Du sitzt am längeren Hebel. Herzlichen Glückwunsch. Bin ich jetzt bei der Verlosung dabei?

Mit angemessen devotem Gruß,

deine Frau B.

Not fair.

One of my pupils was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

And I'm riddled with guilt because I've never been nice to him. Well, one of the voices in my head says: How could you have been? Because, let's be honest, he's one of those students that try to make it particularly hard to love them. When I first started out as a teacher (without a clue or proper preparation for what I might find), he made me dread the English classes he was in. He was continually disruptive, loud, throwing things, shouting abuse at other pupils, impossible to talk with - or, as we say: advice-resistant.

He wasn't alone in that. They had a nice little gang going in that class who, quite simply, turned every lesson into a lesson for me in how not to react ever again, how not to lose control, how to establish silence, let alone a productive atmosphere. Most days I failed spectacularly. Anyhow, he was always in the middle of all disruptions, so we spent most of our time me breathing down his neck, giving out to him for doing this and not doing that and him testing me to see how far he could go before I'd explode again. As I said, early days, and I'd like to think I've got something more of a grip on things by now. Most days.

Then there's the other voice in my head. The one that says, early days or not, you should have known better. You should have paid better attention. You should have realized he couldn't help it. [Aside: Because none of them can. They're children, at the mercy of adults' whims or goodwill, thrown into a world that, for many of them, holds in store unemployment, poverty, domestic violence, estranged parents, lack of integration, lack of social stability...the list goes on and on. It's your job to give them structure. Something to rely on. And maybe teach them a thing or two along the way.] And you should have known. You should have guessed. More than that, you knew for a fact that something was wrong with him. He's been seeing social workers, doctors and psychologists for as long as you've known him. And they ran tests and yet more tests and came up with therapy and a lack of iron.

That was two years ago. I had lost sight of him since because I no longer teach that class (and, here's more guilt: am glad of it). Then yesterday I picked up his name in the staff room and asked his class teacher what was going on. So he told me. Things had gotten gradually worse over the last years. The boy's mood swings had become so extreme that he'd "explode" completely in class and then in turn be so exhausted he skived off early every day, went home and fell asleep for up to 6 hours straight. But since his GP seemed quite happy with his "lack of iron" diagnosis, nothing happened for ages. Up until last week. I don't know how the mother convinced the doctors and insisted on a CT scan. I only know that they got the results two days after the boy and his class came back from their class trip to the sea. And his teacher told me how the boy hadn't been sure whether he should go on the trip in the first place (what with all the anxiety and the state he was in), but that when the results were in he told his teacher "I'm glad I went and had this week of fun!"

He's a skinny, blond boy of just 15 and I feel I never did him justice. My heart goes out to him, standing chatting to his mates in the school yard, scrawnier than ever, eager to fit in. But I mustn't let it show. I mustn't be nicer to him than before because he doesn't want anyone to know. He never had much of a chance in the first place. And now maybe he has none at all.

End of dithering. Or not.

No better time to be starting a blog of your own than when you actually should be sweating over a by now three months overdue paper.

Nothing's decided yet: Will I be writing in English, it being the language I love and surround myself with by choice and also that of quite a few of my friends who wouldn't be able to follow me in German? Or should I write in German on account of it a) running less risk of "ah, how pretentious!"- shouts from my German friends, b) being the language of my every-day world and so naturally that of most anecdotes I might want to tell and c) being, why obviously, my mother tongue, the one I don't need a thesaurus for?

Well, I'll see, won't I? I shall very probably do pretty much what I like and switch from here to there depending on what I feel most comfortable with and you'll just have to put up with it or, well, not. At this point I am not so very much concerned with who's going to read any of this stuff. Although, no, that's a lie. I would very much like some people to read what I have to say and sincerely hope that I will have something worthwhile to say, and for you to read, every once in a while. But for now I am happy with just trying something new and seeing how it goes. And maybe getting away from surfing the net a little more...but oh, no, alas! I'm right in the middle of it!

See? Quite contrary, me.