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Things that have happened lately that I have neglected to blog about… Hmmm. Let’s see… It got colder…

Seriously, I’ve watched “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” 13 times with my students (a palpable hit!) and have only 3 viewings to go…

Amusingly, I was chased down the street by a policeman last Tuesday morning (yes – CHASED!) and questioned as to the ownership of my bicycle AGAIN (that’s about 12 times since September). They like to claim it’s simply because I have “the wrong type of lock” but I think the fact I am white and have a big nose has something to do with it too. I think they think “Oh Jimminy! It’s a foreigner! He’s bound to be up to no good!” and then come galloping along in their excitement only to be met by my scowling face asking them “What’s your name and the name of your police station?” as I whip out my notebook and take down their details. Table-turning see. Role-reversal. Yeah. (Doesn’t work though).

Foolishly, I woke up late for my job at the clinic this Saturday (AGAIN!), jumped in a taxi and mailed K___-san to say I would be late. She then immediately replied, pointing out it was a national holiday and I had the day off anyway. So that felt a bit silly.

Nepotistically, I’ve put a link up in the blog-roll to Chris Cotter’s “Heads Up English!” – an English teaching resource site that looks pretty snappy.

Sadly, Luka’s bar Pagode is closing down on Saturday and you can read about that and about the final live music performance this Friday (Nov. 9th) and about a possible Pagode resurrection up in the mountains up on the sister-blog at Deep Kyoto.

Regrettably, tonight I managed to wind-up one of my (adult) students by being just plain rude. Thing is, I’m not naturally the most patient person (bad trait in a teacher I know) and he is one of my more mind-bogglingly obtuse students. He has a habit of sinking into his own little world, and staring at the page or the ceiling whilst muttering to himself in Japanese and holding up the class for twenty to thirty minutes at a time. After ten minutes of him doing this while his partner tried to get him to respond with endless unanswered questions I decided to intervene and spur him on a bit. Which was the right thing to do. But I was less than diplomatic in doing so. And I have to be dimplomatic. Because he is a customer. And for better or for worse, for the time being, that’s my job. Sigh. Oh well, I shall just try to be nicer next time and hope he forgives me…

And finally… to explain tonight’s title. There’s an amusing post by Neil Gaiman up on his website today on a press junket for the new Beowulf movie. He makes brief mention of two of the stars of the movie; Angelina Jolie (turns out – she’s a human being!) and Ray Winstone, who, quite delightfully, is very much Ray Winstone. And I’m not going to give you a link to that you lazy gits – just type in “Neil” on google and be totally awe-struck by the fact that he is the most popular Neil in the entire google-verse.

And there I was not blogging for the last couple of weeks because I thought I had nothing to blog about.