Akemashite Omedeto!

Happy New Year. It feels a long time since Christmas and a bit pointless to send out any overly festive greetings. I'll just assume everyone enjoyed themselves as best they could. I doubt few could beat Bek spending it on a yacht in Sydney Harbour, although Rachel's Malaysian beach might just tie. I spent mine in Olde Guildford Towne, not a bad place, if you've got a penny or two to spend.





Much the same can be said of New York, where my mother, sister and I went for some Christmas shopping. In accordance with tradition, I mainly spent on myself (though not anywhere near enough) and we generally just trouped around baby shops cooing over the smallest babygrows we could get hold of (not so small in the U. S. of A, as you'd imagine). We did also have a helicopter tour of the city, dine in a revolving restaurant and watched the Producers (even non-musical fans should see it, honestly Angus!). I briefly lamented over Matthew Broderick's absence, but just couldn't picture him skipping around the stage with the same gusto as his replacement.

New York was fantastic: the sort of place you could live for a few years. I didn't see anywhere near as much as I'd have liked, although I flukily managed to take advantage of Target Fridays, when MOMA is free, and whizzed around there in twenty minutes, most of which were spent choosing postcards in the giftshop. I can't afford to collect fine art so gobble up photo album-sized replicas. Sad, ne?


I met my old student, Yuka, and got way too drunk as she snubbed Japanese food, but stayed true to her national identity by avoiding as much of the wine as she could, despite it being a hard-won prize. We were asked for ID, mainly because she's only just 21 and looks younger and I had to fight to convince the waitress I'm old enough to drink.




The encounter may have put me off New Yorkers. They seem to need to tell you off or teach you things. As I expected to get drunk with Yuka, I didn't take out my passport in case I lost it (sensible, you'd think) but the waitress at the restaurant patronisingly chided, 'this is New York, honey, you should always carry ID'. I told her I was almost 30 and hadn't imagined it would be a problem, but she had annoyingly stopped listening by then.

Yesterday I started at the prison. The was a shutdown, so no prisoners were allowed out and I missed my first class. It would have been great, had I not missed out on almost a whole night's sleep hoping it would go well. I taught the same lesson to the afternoon group, who didn't warm to me quite so well once they knew I wasn't hanging around to be their regular teacher. One still asked to switch to my morning class, but the others just grumbled that it was 'shit' and 'boring' and tried to shirk the work. Once I'd agreed, but said they had to do it anyway, they got on with it.

This morning I taught my real class. Only one has changed, so I knew what I was dealing with and they were all pleased to see me (except one who hadn't been released). They loved the lesson and I had to rein myself and them in when I was trying to demonstrate how to hold a balloon debate and they used me as an example. As nice as it would have been to stand and listen to men who haven't seen a woman for years say I'm good-looking, I really couldn't let it go on. The guy who should have been released also said I was a good, interesting teacher: this made the others balk far more than the other compliments, but mainly because they don't see it as flattering to be good at such a thing. Right, I'm off to find a suitable article in Viz for proof-reading.