This week I have been to a different school everyday. Although on Monday I didn't work, but got a phonecall asking me to interpret over the phone, which I did- for all of ten minutes. It works quite well.

Wednesday saw me in Bromsgrove, which is miles away, South of Birmingham, in Worcestershire. I was lead to believe it was going to be a 'trial day', in which I would be watched for the purpose of possibly appointing me as a history teacher, in fact, it was nothing of the sort. It was just 'general cover' and I had to teach geography, music, some history; which went very well as it was about Stalingrad, some maths and, finally, with a group of three we just sat in the library and discussed society's ills! I also had to take one class to the hall for an assembly all about 'dads'. It was cringeworthily, 'let's feel good about dads'. Some of the kids smothered laughs.

It was a good school, not dissimilar to Vandyke, with a definite middle class element- there was that sort of slightly mocking, haughtiness about some of the kids. In the rougher schools, you don't get that- you just get in-your-face abuse and kids demanding attention. I was at a rough primary school in Smethwick on Thursday and I had to tell this black girl in Year 6 to stop grabbing things from me. One boy lifted up a chair to hurl at someone, but, luckily didn't and I had to send him out. During the lunch-hour I spent a pleasant time in the company of one NQT (Newly Qualified Teacher), who was exactly like female, white, student teachers were like when I was an NQT, i.e. full of talk, bubbling over with a gushing waterfall of stories, opinions, nothing nasty, you understand, but just slightly naive, unexperienced. But that, of course, makes for fun and she was fun. She wasn't old and dry and cynical and tired. She wasn't good-looking, either, you way you kind of expect student, female, white teachers-in-the-making to be. Oh, ain't it all a great big shame! I came back from that school- funnily enough, named, 'Devonshire'- in a somewhat foul mood having dished out some anger back to the kids, myself. Smethwick, if you're thinking of going there (I know it's one of mum's would-be destinations) is a kind of bricks and mortar place, with that solid, reliable, but crumbling red brick which exists everywhere in Birmingham. There was a pub, which I saw when we had heavy snow, about a month earlier, when I first arrived there and it was called, The Crown & Anchor and it was closed. It reminded me of some of those photographs from that book, The East End, that you've got, which featured, before the redevelopment of London's Docks, crumbling, disintegrating, weed-riven pubs, but, nevertheless, you could kind of feel the sense that, once, not all that long ago, they were alive and kicking, with tarts and sailors and dockers, 'I don't care 'ow late it is, I'm not goin' 'ome, I'm not goin' 'ome, not goin' 'ome/I'm 'avin a wonderful time!' and 'Oh, my, what a rotten song, what a rotten song, what a rotten song/what a rotten singer, too-oo-oo!' Anyway, the evidence of this pub, in ruins, but, clearly, handsome in its time, filled me with a kind of wistfulness that I'm particulary partial to. Opposite the train station, which is an odd building in itself- it fits, at an angle, atop the railway line, with a set of stairs and a ticket office which lead down to platform 1, while a seperate stair-case, accessible only from the street is how you reach the other platform. Life seems to be, quite often, spent in these desolate, windy, cold places staring at the leafless, barren trees, and the spots of paper-bag, or plastic that lie amongst the leaves. I once saw a rat, moving through the detritus. I hoped it wasn't, but it was. Opposite the train station is a Gurdwarha. You don't know what that means, because you're not a supply teacher. A Gurdwarha is a Sikh temple. It is big and ugly. Brash, even. It has zero taste. It is made of shiny metal and has red flags adorning it, poining upwards and a kind of cupola or two at the top. At the rear of the building, I noticed, were even more of the red brick, but a lot newer- and this supplier of said brick must've been delighted by these Asians who built this temple, because the whole of the back of the building was a kind of hymn of praise to this red brick which is hideous enough without having to fill every available space with it. I was looling for the eye-balm, let alone the eye-sore, of which I had plenty (Dave talks about looking for the piece of wood. He can only see niggers). There is an entrance to the Gurdwarha, like a kind of alley, and, here, you can see where the Sikhs place their shoes before going further in. I must say, though, that I've been quite impressed by Sikhs- the few that I've met. Although, one sold me a dodgy CD at the market, today...

Tuesday. Tuesday!, is so far away it's no longer of this week- I was at another primary school. This time much closer to home. It was in Erdington. Another one of mum's hot favourite places on earth. Erdington, or this, particular part, not far from the Bingo hall, which might as well be a kind of English ladies' Gurdwarha it's so huge and ugly, is another desolate, bleak place, with houses, upon houses. You can tell you're in a rough neighbourhood when people start parking their cars on the grass verges outside the houses and so these grass verges become muddy, ugly-looking things with deep car tyre tread marks riven into them. It's a bit like what orcs might do to the elves' kingdom (Lorian) if they had half-a-chance. I was at this primary school in Erdington. I had to get this dreadful bus which Okcana always moans about- the 28. It was ram-packed to the ceiling almost with school kids and passes through some delightful areas of North Birmingham, but also passes not far away from us. When I got off the bus, I noticed a previous student of mine also get off, but I don't think he recognised me, or wouldn't have expected to encounter me there and so didn't look to recognise me. I/we found ourselves in this grey, misty urban place with a park veiled in the morning mist, still. I decided to walk through the park to try and reach my destination, because parks, even at that time are preferable to streets and houses and cars. It was one of those 'urban parks' with the compulsory lake with swans on it that just depresses me. Somewhere, someone thinks a lake with swans on it will redeem everything, but it somehow seems to underline the awfulness of places.

Anyway, thankfully, that school- 'Marsh Hill', it was called- was O.K. and the teachers there were great. Quite a surprise. I found them friendly and cooperative and I was half-expecting to be there for quite sometime. I was introduced as such, 'thi