Week Two - D'Job

Right lads, now it’s time to tackle the subject of d’job. After several months of working - oh sorry, did I say working? I meant slaving for Lush I decided I had improved my Italian enough and that the moment had arrived to get a proper job.

So I did.

I won’t say where I work, but I will say this – it rhymes with Shmitish Shminstitute. I don’t think that’s giving too much away.

So now I am a teacher and I have to say lads, when I am standing at that board, blackboard rubber-outer thing in hand, I truly feel at one with the universe.

I teach mostly adults, in groups and individually, then I also teach at a secondary school near my house. Lads it’s like a dream come true! I had been thinking for a while that I’d like to be a secondary school teacher over here but I also thought it might be one of those jobs where you think you might like it but then when you actually try it, it makes you want to launch yourself off the nearest tall building.

On my first day there I was shittin it. The night before I had one of my Oakwood sleeps. Me nerves were at me big time like. As I was walking down the corridor me heart was thumping in me ears – oh jaysus! The classroom was getting closer and closer…and me arse cheeks were getting clammier and clammier…

But then a magical thing happened. I walked in the door and a...a transformation came over me. I went into Teacher Mode. It was like an out of body experience. No joke now lads, I was actually in awe of my own sheer excellence.

I was in the lift then with their normal English teacher who is a lovely Italian lady and she said to me “You are brilliant! You have a gift.” My heart did a little dance. Hee hee!

The best thing about teaching though is having the privilege of hearing first hand the hilarious fuck-ups some of them do be making!

Now I of all people know that it in order to really speak another language it is necessary to make an arse of yourself regularly. Well I can see that I have passed this belief onto my students, who come out with the most fucking hilarious things I have ever heard in my life.

Idioms always provide the best laughs; this morning I was doing a conversation class with a fella and he was chatting away and then he said

“…and I mean I didn’t want him putting his leg in my mouth”,

and as usual my brain went through all the files of things he could possibly mean.

“You didn’t want him to kick you in the face you mean?”

“No, no! I meant I didn’t want him pushing my foot!”

“Wh…?”

“No, wait! I didn’t want him putting his finger in my…”

“Ok I’m going to stop you there, just open the book and find the idiom you want to say.”

Pulling my leg was the one he was after.

Then there’s the joy of correcting tests. The tests are the ones where you have a sentence and there’s a space in the sentence and you have to choose a, b or c to go into the space. This has had some hilarious results:

“I had to go to hospital when I sneezed my ankle”

“My back vomits when I spend too long sitting at the computer”

“I had a blister and then I fainted”

“At the end of the concert, everyone clapped their nose”

And then, my personal favourite: I was doing some weather vocabulary with a lovely lady and I told her what thunder was.

"Oh yeah, like the Elvis song!”

“Which one is that?”

“Love me Thunder!”

I love my job.