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For the last several weeks one of my classes has been working on a project that their regular teacher suggested that they do with me and we have me working on developing some photostories.

This week was pencilled in as the week the photos get taken, ready for me to turn them into photostories over the holidays, ready for display at the back of the class.  Last week I had reminded the class to bring in all props that they were going to need for the lesson and asked them the things they were going to need to bring in in an effort to get them to plan ahead and work out who was bringing what – this also led to me explaining to one group that an ending of students being shot in school was an ‘unsuitable’ ending and would they be so kind as to rewrite it. (The end result of which was casting me as an “asshole” so that the bullies and the bullied had a common enemy to fight.)

So we start taking the photos and I am trying to explain that we need to do this quickly as we only have forty minutes to do all four stories, in the end we only managed three and so I have told the other group we will do it straight back after the holidays.

Now the props list for different groups included items like rope, a skateboard, handcuffs, a phone, etc but one item wasn’t mentioned to me in advance, or rather it had but in passing as one of the groups featured a dog in their story and I had commented on how that might be a little impractical, as we had to do the story during a lesson.

But the kids are geniuses and solved the problem and had arranged for the mother of one of them to come in for the lesson with the dog so that the one photo that it appeared in could be taken.  Naturally it caused disruption as the kid could barely hold the dog back and all the other kids thought it was cute, etc and so I was glad when I managed to get the photo done and the dog back off the premises, as I am guessing that dogs aren’t really meant to be brought into school.

The evidence for a detective story.

I almost wish I was dyslexic as it would make German numbers easier for me as I cannot quite get the hang of reversing the numbers when you talk about them and whilst I may rattle on in German, numbers do slow me down.

It’s not as if it that hard; they just say things like four and twenty, instead of twenty four, but for some reason I seem to trip up on this far too easily.  Earlier today I was on a bus and I was asked what bus route it was by an older man and was it the thirty three, thirty four, one hundred or the one hundred and one.  It was the thirty-four and I know the German for thirty-four it’s vierunddreißig, but could I get the words out of my mouth?

Then later I wound up playing bingo and although it was done in both English and German, the German numbers were called first and so for speed I tried to use the German numbers and most of the time I was fine, but I did make some schoolboy errors mixing my numbers up.

The other disappointment was the lack of bingo calls, as although cheesy and clichéd, that for me is a part of the whole bingo package after all it adds a bit of audience participation when things like ‘legs’ eleven are called and every one is supposed to wolf whistle.

That said thinking about it I can see why bingo calls don’t exist in Germany, as after twenty all numbers end in the same sound ‘-ig’ and so the rhymes would soon become boring – another reason why the numbers should be round the English way, it would mean the Germans could have bingo calls.

I can remember when I was at school the problems that teachers had with technology, in particular whenever they wanted to show a video to the class, you knew it would take ten minutes and a student to get it working.

I don’t understand why teachers have this problem after all they are not stupid, I imagine that most have TVs at home and they have probably used the TVs in lessons before, but it seems to be a universal constant that teachers can’t use TVs – and judging by today the same is true for assistant teachers as well.

I have used the TVs at the school before and I know enough to know that I will never get the projector to work so I stick with the TV, however today I had to use I room I hadn’t used before and so I go in and go to switch everything on and I can kind of see the picture, but with lots of interference – cue me pressing buttons trying to work out the problem and getting nowhere fast, compound this with students trying to be helpful in German and me trying to explain that I know that the problem isn’t certain things.

This lasted for a few minutes and then a student made the actually helpful suggestion that no one was using the normal viewing room as they had waited for me outside of it and no one had gone in (despite a teacher having booked it – the reason I was in the room I was in), so giving up I sent them to that room to wait whilst I got the keys for that room.

So I get them in the technology is familiar and I put the DVD in and switch on the TV and…

NOTHING!

Okay, as I know there are a few switches that can be played around with I check that they are all where they should be and they are in the right positions to play DVDs and not videos.  Time to get more technical is everything plugged in to the right things (by this point the students are making more ‘helpful’ suggestions) and following wires I discovered the problem, somehow the TV had been disconnected from the system so that all the TV would show was the static my class had been watching whilst I had been trying to make it work.

So after a room change and 15 minutes of faffing around I finally got it to work – at least unlike a couple of teachers I remember from my school days I didn’t have to ask a student to solve the problem.

Unfortunately that wasn’t my last problem of the lesson as when I locked everything up at the end of the lesson I managed to lock my keys in with the DVD player and so had to explain to another teacher why I needed to borrow their keys for a few minutes, still with a start to a day like this I knew that things could only improve.

If I say I will do something, I do it and so when I said a couple of weeks ago I go to Karaoke at the Irish Pub in a dress – regardless of the sensibilities of others I had to do it and so I did last night.

I wouldn’t call what I did “drag” as by my usual standards I wasn’t ‘dolled up’, I was pretty much just a man in a dress and the only embarrassment that I had in my appearance was the fact that I hadn’t had my legs waxed in advance – something that I would normally have done, but as I am supposed to be having my legs done for charity in a couple of weeks, I can’t have it done just yet.

As usual my look turned heads and I even managed to receive a few compliments about my distinctive look whilst I waited for what I was there for.  After all what other reasons are there to go to karaoke than to laugh at bad singers and be a bad singer yourself!

Unfortunately the beginning of the evening was disappointing because they didn’t have “It’s Raining Men”, despite it being in the song lists and I had to wait for a long time until I got to sing and when I finally did get to sing it was not one of my choices, but the choice of a friend who had put a song in for me and so I had to sing “Man, I Feel Like A Woman!” to remind him of his homeland Canada (there is some video footage of this sight, which I will try and get a copy of to put up on here.)  I don’t know quite how bad it sounded, but it seemed to go down well enough.

That kicked the night off for me and as I was supposed to be taking photos I took a few in between revisiting the stage to murder another song by a Canadian singer, Celine Dion, as I sang how I didn’t want to be “All By Myself”.

Being responsible and it being gone 2 in the morning I decided to go home as I had to be at school for 9, but they started playing, “It’s Raining Men” and so I ran back in my heels to steal a microphone and sing along.

Everybody has phobias, some are normal and some not so normal.  My step mother is scared of snakes to the point she doesn’t like seeing them on TV, my brother is scared of spiders and I don’t like swimming.

The great thing about phobias is that they don’t always make sense, after all my step mother knows that a snake on the TV cannot come near her, but she still doesn’t like it and snakes are a common phobia, the only reason my step mother’s phobia is so interesting is that it is so severe and of course as a kid I took advantage of this phobia by placing toy snakes in a variety of places for her to discover.

Some phobias however are a lot stranger, apparently some woman in the UK has a fear of peas and amongst other phobias mentioned are the fear of knees (genuphobia) and the fear of looking up (anablephobia).

I suspect my phobia sort of fits in the middle, as although I say I don’t like swimming, the swimming itself isn’t what bothers me and in fact I can swim for a while quite happily, but almost invariably after a while something goes wrong and I start hearing the Jaws theme tune in my head and all I can start thinking is, “Get out of the water! Get out of the water!” As a result of this I go from lazily swimming minding my own business to swimming as fast as I can with my arms and legs propelling me towards the edge of the pool – and that’s the weirdest thing about this phobia, it only affects me in swimming pools and not on the rare occasion that I swim in the sea.

Click here for a ‘30 Second Bunny Theatre’ recap of ‘Jaws’.

There have been various surveys over the years about which country like which and traditionally no one like France, for all kinds of reasons – but I suspect mostly for just being French.

This topic came up in school today as I was asked (and not for the first time) if all English people though the Germans were Nazis, as this student had spent time in America and had experienced a laughable level of ignorance (such as some people thinking Hitler was still alive apparently!)

As a result of this I decided to explain to him that the English don’t really have that much of a problem with the Germans, except maybe over sun beds when on holiday and as well as mentioning the surveys I mentioned one other piece of conclusive (at least for me) evidence: WAR.

After all think about it, when the British go to war with the Germans it lasts for five years and everyone joins in for the fun, but when we go to war with the French it’s just us and them and the wars get names like the ‘Hundred Years War’ which although not technically continuous does give some kind of sense of the enmity between the two countries.

Coincidentally I am doing a speech from Henry the Fifth tomorrow, from just before the battle at Harfleur which of course it set amidst the Hundred Years War.