Changes in the Air?

As I have mentioned before, when I started the blog in May last year, I had no fixed purpose, although I was minded to write about what I felt about my football team, Charlton, especially the way they are perceived in the media, and then I started another theme: the weekly quiz that I and my friends go to. And last summer I wrote a bit about my trips to Scotland and matters arising. I had also thought that I could write about my job, English teaching, but as this might well have meant implicit criticism of my employers at times, I decided against it after Waterstones, the airport-fiction merchants, sacked one of their workers for making a mildly adverse comment about one of their more draconian "managers" on his blog.

But I never meant my blog to take centre stage in anyone's existence. There are blogs, which appear regularly every day, and which have huge followings (I myself follow about three) who are quick to protest should it not appear as expected. Mine was not, and is not, meant to be like that.

For instance, one night a few months ago after a quiz, my friend David mildly upbraided me for not mentioning a huge fire which had just destroyed a well-known Madrid landmark, but I replied that the news media had dealt with that, and the building had not played any kind of role in my life, and that therefore it had not even occurred to me that I would mention it in my blog.

All this is just a way of saying that, in what for me and for my colleagues is the most stressful fortnight of the whole year (getting new timetables/classrooms/levels and meeting up to eight new lots of students in the space of five or six days), keeping the blog going has not been a priority. I won't bore you with minute details of how I spent a whole morning digging around stacks of cheerfully discarded school paraphernalia which had been scattered on the floor of the spare room, where I chucked it in June, believing fondly, as I do every year, that at some point during the long vacation I would sit down, sift through it and arrange it so that all would be neat and tidy for the return to teaching in the autumn.

And fortunately Charlton, whose performances always have to provoke some kind of posting, however brief, are having a longish layoff on account of the internationals taking place right now, and the fact that their home game against Fulham has been selected by Sky to gladden everyone's hearts next Monday evening.

But last night I was having a beer with our friend Rory, one-time member of the team (the quiz team, that is, not Charlton), and he reproachfully pointed out that he had visited the page several times in the past fortnight but had read nothing new, and this made me realise that, pace Charlton Athletic, there are still a few things going on that I could write about.

These are mainly, though not entirely, quiz matters, as the timetables for the new academic year at the Centre, the change of quiz night from Monday to Thursday, and a forthcoming change in Spanish law, are starting to look as though they will have far-reaching consequences, for the team, and to some extent for the other teams, and maybe even for the pub. I'll keep you posted. Back soon.