Pig Sty Avenue

It’s a right laugh, this. When I first started teaching ten years ago, leaners went from Beginner (no English) to Elementary (a bit) to Pre-Intermediate (getting there) to Intermdiate (lift off!) to Upper Intermediate (might reasonably try to get an English teacher out on a date) to Advanced. They might then think of the dizzy heights of a high IELTS score or a Proficiency exam. Either because the world’s become more complicated or because my understanding of it is more sophisticated, this will no longer do. There’s Skills for Life which ranges from Pre-Entry, through three Entry Levels and onto Level 2 (it goes beyond that, but after Level 2 you’re as near to a native speaker as makes no difference). And there are IELTS scores 0 to 9. And the Common European Framework: Three bands, A-C, each divided into two (why not just A-F I don’t know) and each has a friendly name (from “Breakthrough” to “Mastery”). ...And then City and Guilds International ESOL , from Prelimi...

Nik Peachey's blog is interesting - but I need more time to have a good shufty. And I love this English phonology guide which actually shows the external mouth movement. Teaching pronunciation can be great fun. One of the few times in life when you can usefully say to someone: read my lips! Or something.

India sniffs at Libyan gas.

The Bairn Birthday , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . Her second birthday. I've just gotten around to post-processing the photos.

Many's the would be efl teacher who've been lured by Nova's fancy website into going to Japan to have an adventure. You don't even need to have any teaching qulaifications, just an English medium education up to a degree. Friends who've taught in Japan tell me that nobody lasted long at Nova, but that it acted as a conduit into the wider efl Japanese sub-culture. No more: it seems to have gone tits-up . The teacher's are in a predicament . Skint, dodging the landlord, needing to borrow cash for your air-fare home from people you hardly know... Happy memories! EDIT: thanks to Michael for this link (from 2004) which give a straightforward view of working at Nova.

psychosis III , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . Get a head in your garden shed.

I hate the term "wishlist" . But it's a handy concept, nonetheless.

You couldn't say that South Tyneside has a lively blogosphere. So it's interesting to come across a new blog , almost accidentally, even it is from South Shields. I had a quick shufty. Here, I think that the person actually intended to say "say what you like, you silly shite..." but wasn't very good at texting. Mind you, Internet presence from the North East can be very uneven. Here's a story about a load of pictures of Reyrolles, which manages to NOT show any of them. Instead you get a web address (not a hyperlink) which if you copy and paste it sends you to probably THE most annoying site on the internet. Javascripts leaping up all over the page, pleas for hard cash, advertising, and an astonishingly unhelpful set of links to photos. Oh shit! Look at the time! The Sopranos!

...is how I'd describe South Tyneside council. The trees in Jarrow precinct have been there since the early 60s. They had plaques by them to tell you when they were planted by the children of various schools. Those kids could be grandparents now. It's an unlovely spot. The trees were all that prettified it. And now, after forty-something years, they've been chopped down and then uprooted. The plaques torn off clumsily by a mechanical digger, getting bent in the process. I don't know if there's a rationale, or plans to plant new trees. The old ones had been there most of my life, and their removal is unsettling.

...is what scientists had when asked to say what would be a safe amount of alcohol to put by in a week, and they came up with the good-old "21 units of alcohol for men and 14 for women, first introduced in 1987." Ha! In other words, they were just making it up. Which, of course, all boozers always suspected. Hands up: how many otherwise honest people have consistently lied to their doctor over the years about how much they soak up of a weekend? It's an aspect of managing our lives which we've given over to people in authority. Any boozer knows when they've drunk too much because the next day they feel like shit and/or their nearest and dearest isn't speaking to them. And if that's happening to you regularly, then you've got a problem. You don't really need a numpty in authority to tell you. Cheers!

The Italians have returned!

Every once in a way you get a reminder that canny auld Jarra hasn't really changed. Here's a family who had their monkey puzzle tree nicked out of their front "garden". Maybe it was a militant group of garden designers, taking direct action against dubious horticultural aesthetics. They are surprisingly expensive . Maybe there's a dearth of the buggers. And we should cash in by sowing some Araucaria araucana seeds at the allotment, and flogging them on a couple of years down the road, at a considerable profit, to numpties who watch those poxy "garden makeover" programmes on telly. Or something.

My old school is getting a makeover . I know a lot of people around there, the Deneside Club is where I had my first pint. Herself and I were talking about the possibility of maybe moving back there one day, and with that in mind we went home via Durham Drive the other day. Suddenly, The Bairn cried out in the back of the car, apropos of nothing, "Bad karma!". Hmm. Maybe we won't move there after all. This is Durham Drive, taken from Fellgate Metro station. Does look a bit dull, doesn't it? Maybe The Bairn's right.

Khadijateri gave me the link . It's a hazardous business , however. It was also a bit of a shock to see that "elegant" Janzur has its own website .

No matter what, it's going to take a little while to make it familiar.

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me." That's from the opening chapter of Moby Dick. Melville had it taped here. If you update the activities, and replace the phrase "get to sea" with ...

This is a note to myself to print off this article , read it and follow up the references. And whilst I'm on, I need to get a good look at Vygotsky's ideas, too. (That's him there). AND I'm going to be doing all that here. The academic blog is to be cast out into that cold hinterland where disused blogs go, only an occasional googled idea giving them life and human contact. Ditto Little Gwion . (Yes! It was me all the time!) It seems a waste to spread one's virtual life across cyberspace in three blogs when one will do. Or something.

The row between Martin Amis and Terry Eagleton certainly has entertainment value, but the remarks which started it are VERY disturbing. What Amis said, last year, was: "There's a definite urge - don't you have it? - to say, 'The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan." He later explained that he "was conversationally describing an urge - an urge that soon wore off." Now if I heard some twat in the pub blithering on like this I'd either have a big row with him, or on the basis of not throwing pearls before swine, ignore it. But Amis isn't just some-twat-in-the-pub, no matter how much he sounds like one: he's a very gifted author who enjoys considerable stature in the literary life of this country. He should k...

This is an interesting book . I have seen a more polemical analysis, but can't find the reference now.

It makes sense to have links, of course, Libya being only an hour away from Malta, and a couple of hours from Italy. And that's what these "co-operation talks" are partly about . Big business can never be happy with "pariah states" because it's difficult to sell them stuff. And the "migration", that's a thorny one. Libya has an open-door policy for all Africans who want to go to there to work. Standards of living are relatively high, but not as high as Europe, and I met a few black Africans who clearly saw Libya as a stop-over before crossing the Mediterranean. The EU big cheeses no doubt want to put a stop to that sort of malarkey. Globalisation! It's a laugh, isn't it?

Yes. I can. Early in the new year. Inshallah.

Thinking about prepping business English materials... Here are some topic areas: Marketing/Sales/Promotion Presentations Meetings and discussions Globalisation Production HR Transport Management Accounting and Finance Company structures and strategies Operations Communications: email; telephone English Social English And here are some links: The World Service: business English BBC Podcasts: The Bottom Line Business Daily Business Emporium Business English links from EnglishClub.com That's enough to be going on with, isn't it? Well, I could throw in this tit-bit, about reform of the Libyan banking system , if one is going to get all communicative and relevant...

I really must get around to buying this book . And this picture's brill, isn't it? I found it when googling "shock doctrine".

Whatever the Chancellor says later today, we're in for difficult times . In practical terms for those of us who labour, by hand or by brain, this means there'll be trouble getting more wages, and cutbacks in jobs and resources, especially in the public sector. You can probably put money on ESOL for adults coming off very badly against the NHS and mainstream education in the approaching scrambles for diminishing sacks of cash from central government. The latest rumour at our place is that everyone will have to re-apply for their own jobs, there'll be a subtly re-worded job description, which means they get less money, (if they are re-employed at all). And this was all thought out by some twat in a suit before the likelihood of any economic downturn began to show itself to a discerning proletariat. ESOL provision in English Further Education colleges seems to have reached a high water mark two or three years ago. The tide's beginning to run faster now, and won't eve...

Forsooth! Formerly Miss Kinks (if memory serves) and originally The County Hotel. Or was it? I like the way it's referred to here as a "drinking den" .

My mate works for Macmillan and put me on to this . Handy if you're considering a career shift, taking the Capitalists' Shilling.

Never heard of it. Until now . Several interesting ideas. We live and learn. It's not that straightforward - several plants seem to go by this name. Wants a bit of time to research it. Nymphaea Caerulea looks like the thing. It could be the source for Homer's Lotus Eaters . Nelumbo nucifera is related and has similar properties. I doubt that it would thrive this far north of the Nile, however. The Tyne's chilly in winter.

Twenty odd years ago, I would cycle into Town along the River, and listen to Grace Jones, The Smiths, and Tom Waits on a Walkman - which was then rather cutting edge. I aspire to do so again. Here's a link showing the route , plus a nice loop for Town based cyclists.

They make it sound quite good . But there are some nasty little shits living here.

Football's a great communication device. It crosses continents and cultures. You might think that you've got nothing in common with a conservative stay-at-home Muslim until you find that he's a big fan of Alan Shearer. So, I'm thinking, if students take an interest in our Premier League, then it's only good manners to reciprocate. The big cheeses in Libya are Ittihad , who are into the last 16 of the Arab Champions League . Which is nice. They are also going strong in the CAF Champions League.

As Paulie Walnuts said in The Sopranos. It got me thinking. As it happens, he's been working steadily , but you can see what Paulie means. It's like that with film and television actors: you don't see them in anything for a year or two, and you wonder if they're dead or perhaps on a lengthy charlie and booze session. Or maybe doing proper acting on the stage? Only appearing on the telly gives them meaning to us. That video with Paul Simon was on one of the cable music channels the other day. It always makes me smile. As for Paulie and the rest of the crew, the clock's ticking. Of course, America already knows how things finish, but we don't. My mate Ian was telling me about a friend of his, visiting the States a few weeks ago, flicking through the channels in his hotel bedroom, he hit on a repeat of THE final episode, just beginning. What a quandry! He watched it, as it goes, but kept shtum when he came home.

Despite being a horny-handed son of the Tyneside soil, and having some bolshevik tendencies to boot, I've always been a fan of the novels about rich English people in the 20s and 30s. Here's an interesting article about that milieu , with the names of several authors I haven't read.

...is what my students wrote on the scrolling marquee of the classroom pc on my last day there. I blogged about that here and got two rather irksome and thoroughly ignorant comments: people will read what they want into almost any text, for better or worse. I thought that post reflected the ambiguities of the country, and my own equally ambiguous feelings towards it. The first commentator was clearly unable to detect ambiguity and decided to take umbrage: if it's not unstinting praise, it must be fearsome criticism. The cunt probably prowls the blogosphere searching for things to take umbrage with. Anyway, for various reasons, I'm taking an interest in matters Libyan again. Foreign interest continues in the oil . Of course. And the regime is keeping a high diplomatic profile . This is the chair I used to sit in, in the garden at the house I shared in Zawiyah. It's empty, you'll notice, for now.