We had quite a day yesterday. First off, we went to visit a school, to see the Headmistress about a project we want to set up. Unfortunately she wasn't present due to a bereavement, so we were told to come back later.
We went to the office, to find out the power was off, and was going to be off all day. This meant I couldn't teach my final session of the Web design course, so we put it off until the next day (Saturday.)
I never did report back on the outcome of my first trip to a tailor. The results were, shall we say disappointing...
The suit fitted me in no way whatsoever. The waist was way too big, the shoulders were a Dynasty-like horror show and the lapels bowed out weirdly when the suit was buttoned up. It's weird, because the outfit that Heather had made fitted her perfectly. He's obviously a good tailor, but suits clearly aren't his thing. I had the suit adjusted a couple of times, but it wasn't salvageable.
We went to Limbe today to attend a remberance day memorial service held by the British High Commision at the War graves in the botanical gardens. We were invited by the High Commision because we'd registered our presence her in Cameroon with them.
Last week I began teaching the three week Introduction to Web Design course that I've written for Hint. I've had a few moments of blank faces, some students with heavy eyelids, and one half-hour powercut, but all in all it's going pretty well so far.
No, I haven't finally got amongst the goals big-style (I wish), well done to Wayne 'Shrek' Rooney for doing just that though. That showed 'em - the boy is awesome (sorry man, he's 21 now you know ).
No, my hat trick is of a different nature. Last week, my knee healed up properly, so on Sunday I played with my knee uncovered for the first time in I-don't-know-how-long. So ten minutes into the first half - you guessed it: got all over-excited, lunging tackle and scr-aaape. Excatly the same point as before, not quite as deep, but bigger, and quite a bit of blood!
During my quick beer after football on Thursday, the guys were eating snake again. They offered me some, which of course I accepted. I had my own portion this time, unlike before when I only tried a bit. The snake was served in three-inch portions, in the same spicy sauce as before, very nice, and served with a bread roll. I was watching everyone else keenly to work out how to eat it. It's mostly like eating ribs, because a snake is basically one long ribcage, I've discovered. I didn't eat the skin because it seemed too tough, and at first I thought no one else was either.
I've had a tricky time taking showers lately (maybe that's why the programming's not going so well?) The shower always has to be coaxed into working, and for the last few weeks, I've had to shower with one leg up on the side of the bath, to prevent my scabby knee getting wet (I'm I painting an appealling picture here?).
This week, the water pressure has been up and down, so trying to get yourself quicky wet, to get over the shock of the cold water has been tricky, especially with trying to keep my knee dry.
I think I need to chill out a bit. In other news, I've heard that Bears take a dump in the woods.
I think sometimes I expect too much. I don't mean that in a "what would you say are your major faults?" - "Well. I can be a bit of a perfectionist..." sort of way. I'm not a perfectionist. It's just that I often expect to be able to do something, naively thinking it will be easy, charge headlong into something, then swing from cheerful expectation to boiling rage before you can say "script error: call to a non-object on line 36".
I had an interesting conversation with a few HINT employees and regulars yesterday. I was wearing shorts, partly because it's getting warmer, but mostly to air my knee, which I've scraped again (good and proper this time, it's been almost two weeks and it hasn't dried out, there's quite a deep gouge in the middle - yummy...)
They wanted to know how I'd scraped my knee, and I said I'd scraped it playing football. We then got on to how on Sunday morning, Heather goes to church and I go to football. Have established that I don't go to church on Sunday, Beatrice asked me
Blimey, that last post was a bit soppy... Let's talk about football, grrr...
England: 0 - Macedonia: 0
Yeah, actually, let's not...
How about beer and meat? On Friday we took a walk up the hill to the Clark's Quarter, where they serve some excellent beer and meat. On the way we passed a white girl, which is a fairly rare occurance. She just looked at us deadpan and said 'whiteman': as succinct an expression of shared experience as I've ever encountered.