Firstly, sorry for not posting more frequently… the standard I set of one post per week has fallen by the wayside amidst manic work & other jollities.

Things are still going well – getting to see more of the island & the way things work here every week. Last weekend I went for lunch with a long-time reader of this blog (well, as long as it’s been going, anyway), the marvellous Lancastrian-in-chief who arrived a few weeks back to head the Lands department. As this is St Helena, we bumped into the Attorney General, who joined us for lunch & invited us for a tour of where he lives at Signals House – the place with the mast in the top right of this photo mercilessly plagiarised from Janet Butler.

To say the place has spectacular views is to say that Jeremy Clarkson’s recent unions faux pas was only a bit of a cock-up.

As Cockroach Corner seems to be one of the most popular segments of these blog posts, I’ll share the most recent cockroach-fuelled girlyman-scream incident. I was sitting at my desk, half-heartedly doing a bit of research for a lesson for next week, with Stargate playing on the other monitor. You may snort derisively at my geekiness. It happened to be the episode that had Mummy-esque scarab bugs that burrow under your skin and eat your brains at lightning speed, and all the lights were off, so I was typing by the light of the monitors. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a big bastard of a cockroach wander seemingly aimlessly (but I know better) towards me. Enter manly scream & rapid deployment of a cookbook that was sitting next to me. Apologised to the neighbours the next morning for any undue noise.

I’m not sure whether I’ve mentioned, incidentally, that cockroaches are called ‘cock-a-roaches’ here, which I like… it makes me think of cock-a-hoop.

So now for flu news, which I’d treated with that mixture of derision and amusement that people who aren’t sniffling along with the crowd enjoy – right up to the point where they catch it. St Helena flu had been described to me as being like man flu, in that it was a pretty unpleasant cold, but nowhere near actual flu. This seemed patently ridiculous, as attendance figures at school plummeted into the 80s, but I can now say with some confidence that it’s worse than most colds I’ve had – and being as I am not only a teacher coming in to contact with hundreds of snotty young things in the course of a day but that I use the same keyboards and mouses as they do – I’ve had a few.

I’ve been off school for two days now, nursing the void where my voice used to be. This hasn’t exactly been a laugh a minute, as I have felt genuinely rough, and don’t enjoy taking time off work at the best of times, but I do at least feel it was put to good use. After a significant amount of planning was done, I decided yesterday to devise a series of flashcards I could hold up if I made it in to work today. Included in the collection were:

• Yes
• No
• That’s a good question
• That’s a matter for debate

I’m not one for exaggeration, but to my addled mind yesterday this held the potential to be one of the most profound educational shifts of the 21^st century. On Monday I intend to take the collection, now widened to include different subject areas, ready to announce that we never have to speak to students again. Further examples:

History

Geography

Biology

Maths

Hell, we could even have guest appearances. The manifestly magnificent Michael Gove could weave some of his words of wisdom into the hearts and minds of our stars of tomorrow.

The cultural revolution referred to here resulted in thousands of teachers being killed and the Chinese state education system being closed for a decade, but it’s the sentiment that counts.

Coming up next time: gearing up for a 25° Christmas. Stop it. I can hear your envy.