Post Military Mutiny

 It wasn't a coup, it was a military mutiny.  It has been a strange time.  The school closed several times and we switched seamlessly to on line.  No snow days for us anymore!  As an art teacher, online teaching is pretty much a disaster!

Many of you worried about us but the fiasco of British politics at present takes some beating.  The UK looks ridiculous.  Although behind the jokes and incredulous laughter, real people will be facing real hardship this winter...

I went to Paris for a training workshop (IBDP Visual Arts Cat.1).  It was touch and go re flights right up until the day before.  The roads were clear to the airport and security nervously tight.  I forget just how lovely Paris is.  The workshop was intensive but in between, I took myself off for some Paris Power Walks.  We had an afternoon tasked with choosing images from an Alice Neel exhibition (for potential teaching tasks) at the Pompidou and I couldn't resist going to the top and taking in the skyline.  Oh, and I ate and ate and ate.  

On my return, Mr. P and I celebrated 24 years of marriage with a meal out.  The next day we celebrated 25 years of meeting.  It made the school announcements and people congratulated us, in wonder it seemed.  The young ones cannot believe that 25 years of marriage even exists and the older ones kind of rolled their eyes, nodding in a knowing fashion.  Nodding at what?  I quite like him.  We both speculated at the long ness and shortness of the time.  

For our second evening of celebrations we went to the Korean restaurant again.  A small gecko ran across the table and sprung and clambered all over Luke.  Hearing our hysterical laughter the waiter came in to defend us with an electric bat.  The consequences might've been interesting but luckily Luke caught it and released it through a window.  Little guy nearly got toasted.  We had profuse apology and a free salad.  

We have been here long enough now to start eating street food.  It started with some fresh street donut type things.  The lady has 2 big covered metal mixing bowls.  We now know, after the event, that one is sweet and the other is salty.   She scooped tidy amounts from her bowl and dropped them in boiling oil.  This would be why, after battering out some poor French, we ended up being offered a hot spicy sauce.  We negotiated the price and then carried the salty donuts home to cover in sugar.  Nice but strange and next time, we will negotiate pointing at the bowl on the left.

The next street food experience was impromptu bravado.  There is a kiosk outside our street bar that sells lamb kebabs in baguettes with salad.  How many kebabs?  Err, 6 each please.  He looked thrilled, so this was probably the wrong answer.  It was delicious and satisfied my need to only be eating street food at present that has been freshly cooked in boiling oil.  We haven't come unstuck yet but we have form from past travel.  We took our prize food and sat in the bar-beers and kebab.

Tomorrow we start French lessons.  School will pay £300 each in the first year.   3 of us have been dragging our feet for a while now and have narrowed it down to 30 minutes on a Friday.  I know we will regret it if we don't but a general group reluctance kept drifting over us.  Or maybe that was just me post military mutiny.  I keep ducking out in favour of yoga lessons with Didi.

I am rubbish at yoga.  Is this even a thing?  Can you be rubbish at yoga?  Most teachers seem to believe me to be capable of more flexibility than I demonstrate.  The heat helps the stretching.  So many knocks and bumps over the years has left its mark.

The rainy season is over now.  We leave the compound to walk to school and can taste the orange dust after 5 minutes.  The dust is mainly the mud from last month.  It seems to slowly be shifting off the road and clogging up the drainage ditches.  I am guessing we will need to wear masks and sunglasses soon.  It is heading towards winter here and if this is cool, summer will be interesting.  

The mango tress outside of our house are flowering.  Although we were expecting something extravagant and blousy.  Large billowy orange blossom or something. Surely they won't grow out of those tiny things/?   Also, akee.   We have akee trees.  Having grown up thinking akee grew in cans, the real stuff is delicious!  

Home felt a long way away recently.  Not because of politics but because Chloe had come off her motorbike.  Several phone calls later and we knew that enough people were supporting her.  The crunched bike remains still need sorting at some point but she is OK.