Pig Sty Avenue

During the last one , I was apparently craving all aspects of British culture, good and bad.  This time, I'm developing a worrying interest in afternoon TV, especially Doctors, and beginning to plan a sub-tropical monsoon climate balcony. Plans for the zero maintenance wildlife garden having now been abandoned, I can take the borage, evening primrose and tobacco plant seeds.  Teasel won't work in containers, I'm guessing, so I'll give them to The Old Man for the allotment.  I've also found a packet of lavender seeds.  I'll want culinary herbs, the Scarborough Four, plus basil, oregano and coriander. These seeds may all be available on the other side of Visa Limbo, I don't know.  There's a garden centre not far away, and here's a map:

Got my visa, got my eticket. Almost on my way now, back to Yorkshire puddings, pubs, cricket, ASBOs, rain, a Guardian I can hold in my hand to read, chavs, churches, cheddar cheese, repossessions, Radio 4 without the internet, University libraries, staffordshire bull terriers, cleavages, people complaining about the rain, buses, trains, working mens' clubs, starlings, pig-ignorant shop assistants, eye-contact barmaids, wine with dinner, Newsnight Review followed by Jools Holland... Well, you get the picture. I don't usually get homesick, but the last couple of weeks have been hard on the nerves, and I need some of my own culture to soothe them. I still love Libya, but we're at a mature stage in our relationship, and can go off and do our own things for a while. What I've learnt: don't take a job until you've checked out the company, back to front. It's easy for your prospective managers to make airy promises and talk bollocks. What counts is their prof...

I managed to get another few hundred words done on the Learner Attitude research. It's sort-of planned out mentally now. It will be done by the deadline of 15th August. The next Module is an optional one. I was thinking of Teacher Education, but now I'm more inclined to Educational Management. The inspiration for this will be the all the things I've learned from watching utter wankers "manage" teachers and learners. And I've seen a few of them: incapable of listening; absorbed in unjustified self-importance; unable to think ahead and take control; sitting in endless meetings, talking shite and achieving nothing. Not that I'm bitter, or anything, oh no, as I stare at the suitcases that have been packed for two weeks.

After telling me Wednesday, management now blithely deny saying that, and are talking about Thursday or even Friday. No, no, no - as Amy Winehouse would no doubt say. I suggested in rather strong terms that they were not obliged to accept the word of their man-who-deals-with-visas (and gets paid for it) that this "is a two day process", just like that. More meetings, more meetings arranged for tomorrow. IF my passport can be retrieved from the ministry in the morning, early, I could go tomorrow. But that's unlikely. Wednesday, though... I have made promises.

I had intended to spend the morning on the 'phone cajoling and threatening (c&t) in order to get onto a flight later today, or at least tomorrow, rather than the Wednesday being suggested by management. But all the c&t of yesterday has left me emotionally drained. Going to the Embassy seems to have smartened things up somewhat, I doubt that more input from me will have any effect. No doubt management regard me as a pain-in-the-arse to be gotten away asap, and any thoughts I have that my departure will be delayed out of spite are, perhaps, paranoid. And I really don't want to arrive for this new job in a state of high anxiety. My hapless colleagues there will perhaps be feeling that way, my sustained late arrival causing them all sorts of headaches. I need to arrive able to calmly soothe the fevered brows and sort out any problems, (I'm refusing to call them "challenges"). So, I doubt the departure will be today. Fingers crossed the c&t of yeste...

This morning I nearly lost the plot when one of the "managers" told me he understood I'd get my visa by the end of the week, but that it was out of his hands. I phoned the British Embassy in Tripoli and they seem to have stirred things up somewhat. Phone calls were made and my passport is now said to be in the appropriate Government department to get its rubber stamp. The bastard manager is saying that I won't get out until Wednesday - if the will were there I could be away tomorrow, but I'm still partly in the hands of petulant incompetents. At least Wednesday is there as an end date. I might just save the job that's withering on the vine in England. At least I've been able to say to them, "Thursday at the latest". Maybe before. Maybe tomorrow or the next day.

I managed to get a good morning's work with the SLA paper for the MA: wrote the introduction and an outline. It feels do-able. I've confronted the beast and he looked sheepishly at the carpet. And the Assistant Course Director from the job I should be doing in England sent me placement test results, and I was able to sort the students into classes. I heard from another University about pre-sessional work in August, too. These hopeful signs notwithstanding, I feel rather frazzled by the waiting. My colleagues here were going for a meal tonight but I made an excuse, feeling like Dead Man Walking. The people I should be working for, they've all been so kind and patient and pragmatic, I hate the thought of letting them down further, if this fandango goes on into next week. And, which I don't usually blog about, I'm missing Herself and The Bairn more intensely by the hour.

I was trying to avoid digging-out anything packed, but I'm going to have to find a novel to read, I'm nearly finished No Mean City . I have a copy of JG Ballard's Super Cannes in the suitcase, and I'll need to get it tonight. Which is piling weird on weird, because I'm living a Ballard novel here. Almost everything is packed: books, clothes, cameras. All that's left out is shoe polish and brushes, bathroom things. The clothes I intend to travel in are hanging up, ready to be put on once I get the call. My good suit is next to them, waiting to be the final item packed because I don't want it too creased when I go straight to the new job. This laptop will be hand luggage. And I have a shirt, a teeshirt, two pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks, a pair of tracksuit bottoms and an Arab nightshirt, which I cycle through, washing and drying the set that I'm not wearing. The best indicator of the passage of time is the need to go out and buy more shis...

Here's the weekend, so it won't be here before Sunday. I need to go into the office Sunday, and, as Tony Soprano would say "get my arms around this thing". I'll have 48 hours first, though, when nothing can happen, and I can get back to the MA. I had a dreadful meal tonight with Dan, who once ran an MA programme in Thailand, and got a big wake-up call from him. He reckons a lot of people fall by the wayside at this stage in their MA. Another thing I need to get my arms around. So I've unpacked some books. Tomorrow and Saturday, I need to bash out a thousand words or so, make a definite start with the limited resources I've got. But back to the dreadful meal, which was in a cafe restaurant which will serve as a metaphor for this trip to Libya. First time we went there, in a kind of suspended upper floor, it was really good. Clean, good service, good choice of food and the meal was very good. The next time, there was no vinegar in the condiment set...

"It's absurd. In other countries they look to see whether you have marijuana in your cigarette, here they'll look to see if you've got cigarette in your marijuana." Funny, I was thinking earlier how a big fat one would make this visa limbo easier to bear.

Desperately clinging to the job I should have already started by doing as much organising as I can remotely by email. It might work for a while, but sooner or later they're going to want me there. Fortunately, late arrivals and improvisation are factored into summer schools. Theoretically, I can still get there for the teachers' induction day on Thursday if the visa arrives first thing tomorrow, and I can get to the BA office in Tripoli to book the flight, and then get to the airport in time to check in. But that's the triumph of hope over expectation. I'm completely packed now. Even my FED2 is in its uneasy-open case, and then in bubble wrap in the middle of a suitcase. I'm working with a bare minimum of clothes, washing one set every day. Luckily, it's so hot in Libya they dry in an hour. This is a very strange situation. Character building. Or something.

Was going to go to Mass. Completely forgot. Was going to watch the Final of Euro '08 with my mate Dan, but told him I'd be working on my MA. Which I started, looking at the ten questionnaires I got back, assigning the students pseudonyms. These ten will form my sample now. It's not ideal. The initial idea for the research sprang from the radical difference in ability between two students from the same background, one of them a model learner, the other being a student from hell. But, student from hell, true to form, did not return his questionnaire: neither did any of his classmates, the perennial non-achievers. Which tells us something, perhaps. [Btw, for reference a few days down the road when I come back to this: the ten questionnaires are in the zippy pocket on the inside lid of the new suitcase]. I should have been collating test data for these ten, instead I spent some time on Flickr, set up a photo for later, packed some more, (down to the absolute minimum of ...