Shaking Heads At Europe And Hand It To The Americans

The United Kingdom`s bizarre love affair with the United States of America continues. Once described as the US` aircraft carrier, the UK sits off the European mainland as a very small nation indeed when broken up into its constituent parts, which is what the British government in London keep trying to do, of course. Democratic moves towards an independent Welsh national Assembly, and Scottish Parliament, with the Irish still trying to broker a Union with the North that would take Ireland away from England, would leave the English nation as one of the tiniest on Earth. Across the `pond` of the Atlantic ocean is the United States of America, and South America as the nearest largest land mass off the West coast of England, whereas the European mainland is accessible readily; through ports like Bruges in Belgium and Calais in France. For some bizarre reason, defying logical explanation, the English seem to think that socio-economic security is derivable from an obscure belief in shaking hands across the water with the Americans, whereas it`s possible to walk across Europe to Alaska, which is the 50th of the United States of America, making friends as one goes: `I`ll ask her.`

 Although the Russian Federation is between the European Union and shaking hands with the United States of America, I`d rather be brave than drown; swimming across the Atlantic ocean in the vague hope that the Americans would throw me a lifebelt. Although the general feeling in the UK was that the Russians were beaten by the United States of America, the Russian withdrawal from Europe in the late 1980s, after being the occupying military force subsequent to the defeat of Adolf Hitler`s German Empire in 1945, ultimately resulted in conflict between Christian and Moslem nationalists, leading to Yugoslavia becoming the independent states of Bosnia Herzegovina (1995); Croatia (1991-5); Macedonia (1991-2001); Kosovo (1998-9); Montenegro (2006); Serbia (1992-5), and Slovenia (1991).

 President ‘Vlad’ Putin militarily reasserted control of Chechnya in the Caucasus, so maintaining Russia`s 'gate to the East' (1999-2009), and indicating what would be Russia`s response to breakaway Moslem Bashkir and Tartar movements in the Black Sea`s Crimea, and the ostensibly Moslem states of Bashkortastan (38%), with Ufa as its capital city, and Tartostan (34%), with its capital, Kazan, in the Ural mountains by the side of the river Volga, after the Wilayah-al-Qawqaz declared Chechnya an Independent state of Iraq in the Levant (ISIL).

 From the Gulf wars with Iraq, the rebel Syrian and Iraqi caliphate of Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi emerged. ISIL claimed territories for Islam as far West as Northern Spain, during and after the 2011 collapse of the North African nations of Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, when heads of state, Hosni Mubarak, Colonel Gadaffi, and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali were deposed amid ISIL-inspired moves for change. There were political shifts in Bahrain, after 'Bloody Thursday’ on February 17, 2011, when police attacked sleeping protestors at Pearl Roundabout in the capital, Manama. In ISIL-beset Syria, Bashar al-Assad clung to power, and Yemen was at war with Saudi Arabia by 2015; as Al Qaeda took hold of Yemeni cities in the south.

 Russia`s harmonized Moslem and Christian populations suggest its role as a potential global savior, but Europe and America`s war of attrition with her has been going on at least since Alaska`s sale to the US by the Russians on March 30, 1867. As that tip of Canada facing Europe, where Canada is that part of North America`s unified land mass separated from the United States of America by a transcontinental national boundary, Alaska represents the remaining hope for rapprochement between futanarian Moslem women, that is, women with penis of their own, and the West. Covered in public, Western culture`s displays of standardized nude women are offensive to the four wife marriages of futanarian Moslems. On the West Coast of Canada is the city of Vancouver, and across the national boundary with the United States of America, is the West coast city of Seattle, while the capital of the movie industry epitomizing Western culture, civilization and art, is Hollywood, `Babylon`, Los Angeles, further along the West Coast in the United States: `Mystery, Babylon the great, mother of harlots and of the abominations of the Earth.` (Rev: 17. 5)

 Babylon is a monster, because she accepts her womb slavery to war, which is why ancient Babylon lies in Iraq, where fallen Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, could see her ruins from his Summer palace at Hillah, before the March 2003 invasion by the US army, and his execution on December 30, 2006, for supporting Al Qaeda, that is, ISIL's terrorist group, led by Saudi Arabia’s Osama Ben Laden, and operating out of Afghanistan under the auspices of the notoriously misogynist Taliban regime there. Al Qaeda's hijacking of civil airliners to crash into the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, together with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and reversed by the US army in 1991, was sufficient for US President, George W. Bush, to make the decision to depose Saddam Hussein. However, 'Babylon' is the name given to the modern district of Hollywood, city of Los Angeles, California state, on the West coast of the United States, where World Trade Center was released as a major film in 2006. In Babylon, U.S.A., even if futanarian Moslem women were free to go to Hollywood and change the big picture there, it`d be easier to incorporate the futanarian Moslem and Christian Republics of the Russian Federation into the European Union, and travel by bus to the United States, than to explain the withdrawn English, who might have to be open to futanarian imagery, rather than simply get rid. English interference, and withdrawal, is how Moslem Pakistan came to be separated from Hindu India, and is what England came to be recognized for in the several wars it fought alongside the Americans, when the British Empire began to collapse, and after the United States` dough boys arrived in 1917 to rescue England from the German Empire`s enslaving of Europe, which was still a part of Germany`s agenda when the United States began sending troops in 1941.

 The English are used to offloading, which is why they want to get rid of Wales and Scotland, and the responsibilities they`ve accreted over Ireland during their period of Empire. The European Union is something to join as a member state of a larger international group of self-helping nations, rather than an aspect of Empire to be offloaded, which is how the British approached their vestiges of Empire, and the Commonwealth of economically co-operating nations that replaced it, which included North America`s Canada, the second largest country in the world after Russia. Consequently, even the heart of the British Commonwealth is across the national boundary between the United States of America`s Alaska, which is opposite unbending Russia. The English in the UK would either have to make friends with Europe in order to speak with the British in Canada, that is, the second largest country in the world, after the undefeated Republics of Moslem and Christian Russia, or dig an escape tunnel underneath the Atlantic ocean: `I`ll ask her.` At the moment the Russians have more chance of being friends with the Americans than the English, because Alaska is the 50th of the United States attached to Russia,1 which has approved a Bering Strait crossing that would afford the unbeaten Russians the possibility of shaking hands with the British that the English so palpably don`t want, and that their obsession with leaving the European Union so obviates as a possibility for their own people, through rail links between London and New York, that it looks like national suicide: `Alaska some other time.`

1 Longbottom, Wil, Mailonline, `London to New York by rail? Russia 'approves' £60bn Bering Strait tunnel`, Thursday, May 28, 2015, 5 AM, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2028891/East-West-rail-link-step-closer-Russia-approves-60bn-Bering-Strait-tunnel.html .

Cost Of Living Survey, Pseudi Yarubeer

After Bullitz language skull `headhunted` me in accordance with the British head chuck occasion system, whereby those who showed any sign of having the intellectual wherewithal to escape wage slavery were consigned to be wasted, like basketballs in wastepaper baskets, I signed a contract to be their Local Manager of Instruction (ILM) in Riyals, Pseudi Yarubeer (`ilm` meaning `the wisdom of those with heads`, amongst the Yarubusout people there). After rejecting twice as much dosh to be installed as `Bean` of studies at the Konk Pseud Universe City (SUK), so named because of their Oil, whose noses on wheels permitted its slaves to run off from its spy tin face’s monocular vision of a return to what had just passed it on the motorway to more of the same, I arrived in the Yarubusout city of Riyals to attend a medical identical to that which I`d had in Harley Street, London, before I left Europe. In Riyals it was 180 SAR (30 GBP), but in London I`d paid 600 GBP, and Mr Sherriff, director of Bullitz, refused to reimburse, despite Mrs Ickbals of Rich Gent`s visa processing informing me that Bullitz paid medical costs for those they employed, and Bullitz had flown me several thousand miles by modern day magic carpet (Flyinass Airlines) to sit in a glassed in cubicle next to the stud`nts` toilet so everyone could marvel at Pseudi openness.

 There was always an opening for a diligent teacher at Bullitz, I observed. I`d arrived as `This one,` which was what The Sherriff unerringly referred to me as in introductions, and apparently was the definitive article for all native speakers of English language when one or other of us was the subject of discussion. `I`ll leave you with this one,` I yawned breezily as Gorp, `The American`, became the focus of Mr Sherriff`s attention, after I`d refused point blank to countenance the idea of sharing a room and a goldfish bowl with a cousin from the continent across the pond. The oily richness of Sheikh Al Capone hadn’t evidently extended to providing enough remuneration for non-homosexual ELT teachers from the Western hemisphere to pay for a single hotel bed out of the sum allocated as accommodation allowance by Riyals` Bullitz:

`Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,
Up stairs and down stairs in his night-gown …`1

 Inured to the exotic sight of the male Yarubean in its white thob, which is the garment they wear that makes them all look like `Wee Willie Winkie`, in his nightgown from Western literature`s The Golden Treasury Of Children`s Nursery Rhymes (c. 1806-), I`d developed the opinion that Yarubeer was there to teach an infant how to wash its hands before going to bed. I preferred a solitary goldfish bowl at Bullitz, where I could be seen splendidly isolated by thob path room, that is, the path to the bathroom where one washes one`s hands before retiring. Obviously cheaply too, so that the homosexuals have an opportunity to bunk in with you. I thanked God for `The Sherriff`. At least the bathroom was policed so that no one could sleep with you without washing their hands. Topical, I thought, with ISIS, the Independent State of Iraq in Syria, rebelling against President Bashar Assad, whose family name, `Wahash` meant `beast`. Obviously, `the beast` of Revelation was still trying to wahash its hands of the hole thing, but ISIS was having none of it.

 Indeed, Egypt wise, the mythology of Isis, the mother goddess, is pertinent. Having been dismembered, her brother Osiris was given a new penis by Isis, which suggests the old one had fallen apart, because he hadn`t been washing his hands properly. Obviously, `Wahash`, the `beast`, was being berated heavily by ISIS for failing to maintain adequate plumbing, which wasn`t altogether a wild hypothesis. If tanks and guns are translated as penis contaminated by that rejection of the love of women known as homosexuality in men`s sterile preference for whatever might pass for social intercourse between such alien minds as they`re possessed of. Indeed, Osiris was dismembered by his evil brother, Set, which translates in the toilet humor of Egypt John socio-history as a dynastical struggle for power, and so ISIS`  telepathic brain controllers’ attempts to remove `Wahash`, `the beast`, from the path room, where he was washing his hands of the hole thing, had political antecedents relating to the need for government leaders, in this case Bashar Assad of Syria, to maintain civil life without recourse to tanks and guns.

 Terrorism has its devotees, as English language teaching professionals are aware. Spending 600 GBP on visa processing costs and a medical to discover that 30 GBP will do the same job in Riyals when a Pseudi residence permit is the prize, that is, the iqama, suggests to the perspicacious that the journeyman teacher is being terrorized into paying for permission to work for a slaver by unscrupulous agents at home and in the Muddle East; especially if the educator is being encouraged by false promises of reimbursement for costs associated with getting to the country of employment. `This one` enjoyed the usual delusory three days in a hotel, Drr Rump, with the bill expectantly placed in his hands by the hotel management, who spoke Yarupric, while the teacher`s hunted expression revealed his lack of certainty over Bullitz`s inevitable reimbursement. The teacher`s hunted expression did reveal absolute knowledge concerning the mafiosa, who`d doubtless be employed by the Drr Rump hotel to pursue him headlong about the ways and byways of Riyals; if Bullitz didn`t settle the matter satisfactorily with the requisite wad of cash.

 Bullitz had fiendishly devised an online training program for `This one` lasting thirty days, but after an inexplicable administrative delay, and finally logging on around the 11th August, `This one` was ordered to complete the online training by the 18th, because Practicum would be performed by `This one` that morning, with the Pre-Reading necessary for the Bullitz Method to be fully ensconced in the bonce of the performing teacher attached as a downloadable .doc to an e-mail the evening before. Dutifully, `This one` arrived at Bullitz and gave the requisite demonstration of the Bullitz Method to a class of his peers with five minute preparation time, `I`m with the Bin Laden company,` said the examiner. Sweating profusely, and checking his heart periodically, `This one` managed to give a performance of the Bullitz Method sufficient to allow him to teach several of Bullitz`s levels to groups of stud`nts from the famous HARPIC company that makes toilet cleaning detergents for the bathrooms in Riyals.

 Called ‘students’ in English, the unappetizing sight of previously bagged women, in the garment they call a ‘burkha’, and which they wear in outrageous displays of taunting towards the car nibblers, who drive in to MacDonald’s, and other fast food emporiums of that ilk, for a bag of buns and some meat in the sandwich, has caused Yours Truly to rename the students, ‘stud’nts’, because they’d rather the teacher didn’t husband the livestock. Yarubusout prayer time, of course, demanded absolute cultural sensitivity from the teacher, while stud`nts, staff, and ancillary workers hurled themselves upon the carpet at every available opportunity to stress the desirability of the educator`s converting to the `Slammer, and becoming a Muzzlem in order to keep his job and maintain a standard of income allowing him to put his kids’ skull thru and pay the mortgage. Sweating profusely in the murderous dog day aternoons, where the Muttawahs enforced prayer times five hours a day to make sure their Muzzlem people remained muzzled, the teacher sought refuge at the reception desk, where the Fillupyournose (with coke) Yarubean ‘houseboys’, were employed to put more emphasis upon the native English speaking teacher`s distance from their own more helpful homeland.

 The importing of recreational drugs is punishable by death in Pseudi Yarubeer, which is a sure sign that the Fillupyournose are doing a lot. `Better the TEFL your nose,` I observed to the receptionist, Gnomey, who responded sniffily, `This one is Level 2.’ `No,` I agreed, `Level 5.` Bullitz had explained that HARPIC had their own levels of stud`nt achievement, while Bullitz had theirs, which meant that HARPIC`s Level 2 was Bullitz Level 4, although my HARPIC Level 2 stud`nts were Bullitz Level 5, because they`d advanced further since they were given to me as Level 2 HARPIC stud`nts. From my vantage point in the glass bowl by the bathroom, wearing the MP3 player that the SUK would call me an `orange` for listening to, because they rather wanted to block my years in the style of Shah Jehan who, according to the 8^th century collection of folktales known as 1001 Nights, beheaded his wife for allegedly listening to the sound of his brother`s wheels going around instead of his, I surmised that the HARPIC stud`nts would reach a level of proficiency commensurate with their efforts, and the MP3 would be replaced by the juice of the electric chair: `Woman is the Chew of the world,` I observed to no one in particular. `Yes’, no one paused, ‘and she`s a marriage to an orange.`

 At the SUK I`d been observed by one of the wild bearded self-proclaimed religious police, the Muttawahs who, having put the women in burkhas, are the berks who bark at them to kneel and pray for hours; at Fajr (dawn), Zuhr (noon), Asr (afternoon), Maghrib (twilight), and Isha (night): `Bums in the air; haven`t got a prayer!` The SUK’s Muttawah accused me of listening to the MP3 player poking out of the top pocket of my shirt. Making a note of it on his observation sheet, the wild-eyed loner at the gates of oblivion had filed his report with the administration. Assured that, if I accepted a verbal rebuke for listening to the MP3 player, nothing further would transpire, I cheerfully admitted that the MP3 player had been `On`, even though I hadn`t had the headphones attached to my lug nuts, so imagine my surprise when I received a written warning to the effect that I`d been caught listening to music in Pseudi Yarubeer. Sweating profusely, I checked the airport regulations to uncover whether or not I was courting the death penalty by importing Abba vidz. By the end of the semester, I`d been branded as an `orange` by the SUK, that is, suspected as being sympathetic towards the Chews, who were destined to be liquidated in the liquidizer as oranges that didn`t want to be greens, and so learn from the Yarubeans.

With catch up work to do the next semester, if I was to qualify as a `green`, who`re a type of Yarubeern djinn (qareen), that is, a `tempter`, which every Yarubean has, the Muzzlem administration brought up the little matter of the MP3 debacle, and I was downgraded to `red`, with no possibility for appeal, because the wildly bedraggled hairy Muttawahs of theirs had been tempted by their qareens (traditionally spiders) to erroneously descry music in my pocket. I didn`t mind. I didn`t want to be bearded so. The beards were always queuing at the barbers to please their spiders, which were their djinn growth, and I didn`t want to be given the qareen light for a BBQ at MacDonald`s with the burkhas. I`d be red, I determined, and dance awkwardly in an embarrassing way, rather than be categorized as an orange Chew singing to be liquidated.

 Historians view the Muddle Eastern culture of the Muzzlems in the `Slammer as a refusal to leave the Muddle Ages, and the sight of hundreds of Wee Willie Winkies trying to frighten the teacher like ghosts does suggest that head chuck occasional methods are somewhat outdated there. The Gran (6. 10 - 6. 30 p.m), dictated by the angels, according to the `Slammeric tradition, to the Brafit M’mumhad, contains much of the Old Mendedtoaster of the Chews and the New Mendedtoaster of She`sis, because he didn’t belong to anyone else but his mother, the Virgin Mary, who’d allegedly planned his Resurrection and Ascension to heaven, that is, popping up to heaven after being, ‘A bit browned off.’ Also containing the `hadith`, that is, the sayings of the Brafit M’mumhad to the Muzzlem adherents, their Gran was transcribed in just a little more than twenty minutes after She`sis Crushed, which placed it firmly in the Muddle Ages in terms of its origins. The Yarubean men in white think of themselves as real, while the women in their black burkha one-piece coveralls, from which only their eyes are visible in public, are treated as if they aren`t visible at all by men, who`re taught not to see the women as anything other than darkling shades, which means the culture depicts itself as a ghost of the past with a ‘black dog’ alongside it silently demanding explanation, because it`s muzzled in misogyny:

‘Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told,

A big-legged woman ain’t got no soul.’2

 The ancient Greeks believed that the dead became shades in a place they called Hades, while the Crushteen paedophile belief was in heaven for those who shared in the spirit of God, and Hades or hell was for those shades who didn`t. Of course medical science would have to be kept at a level equivalent to crossing one’s fingers, so that no one lived for long, and then there’d always be a fresh crop of child slaves, but that’s why they were called Crushteen paedophiles. The Muzzlem distinction between men who wear white, and women who wear black, was an attempt by the `Slammer to define men as innately a part of heaven, while women wore shades. Because women produced children to be consumed in warfare; for example, between Bashar Assad`s Syria and ISIS, they were cannibals, while men were the parasites upon the human host. Moreover, the Yarubeans believe that they`re tempted by their qareen, that is, their spiders, whereas the evidence suggests that they are. Led Zeppelin’s ‘big-legged woman’ is the spider they worship, according to the Satanist rock group:

‘From the door comes Satan's daughter.

And it only goes to show, you know.’3

 The distinction between holy spirits and damned shades without a light bulb is a head chuck occasion system`s methodology, that is, no light from the bulb to show the human how to escape from its host womb slaver. She`sis` fate as the host at the `Last Supper`, before his crucifixion by the Rumuns, illustrates this. Born from the host womb of his mother, the Virgin Mary, She`sis offered `bread and wine` as symbols of his `body and blood`, transformed by the host womb of his mother, to his disciples, because food is what futanarian humanity was bred for. She’sis offer to help women escape from being milked by his producer, before his cross appearance as the mouse trapped, appears in the church service of Crushteenity as the `bread and wine` of transubstantiation. In this ritual, the `body and blood` of the petitioner is transformed into She`sis’ by the power of the spirit, and through the wine from the priest’s communion cup together with a wafer. She’sis was betrayed by his disciple, Chewedass, to the Rumuns, who nailed him to the cross on the hill of Calvary outside Jerusalem, and tortured him to death there, because She’sis was caught with a woman, ‘Leave her alone.’ (Mk: 14. 6) Chewedass wanted She’sis to reject the human host in favor of parasitism, that is, women who espouse death for their children in favor of cannibalism. His teaching was that humans weren’t mice to be caught by a gamer with a mousetrap. Like the English language teaching professional, She`sis was a teacher, while the Muzzlem system of ‘dog day afternoon’ Mutawahs doesn`t want burkha`d women, so has already wolfed down their futanarian species` penis. Distinguishing between men`s spirits and women`s shades, that is, parasitism and cannibalism, is descriptive. However, it isn`t educative.

 The Pseudization program is to replace foreign workers with Pseudis, which means Pseudis are parasites upon those who can perform those tasks they need to be performed, because their society would collapse if they weren`t. The system for companies is orange, green, and red for those who employ too many foreigners, that is, green denotes Pseudization, where parasitism upon foreign workers doesn`t occur. However, `orange` indicates a level of parasitism co-existing with Pseudization, that is, in terms of the metaphor, the Pseudis haven`t yet eaten the orange to replace it with a Pseudi worker, and so parasitism remains. The Pseudi solution is to replace the Crushteen paedophile with the Muzzlem, and so `This one` was an `orange` at the SUK eaten by the Muttawah, because he wasn’t muzzled, and so was able to observe that an MP3 player wasn`t the `Slammer to those Muzzlems who wanted his job as an English language teacher, and the ELT pro imprisoned.

 The unspoken assumption by the Pseudi employer and stud`nts is that the foreign English language teaching professional needs the cash badly enough to throw himself down upon the carpet with the rest of the Muzzlem adherents in the `Slammer and convert to the Gran and Allah, which is the name for God amongst the `Slammeric faithful, that is, wage slavery will convert the unbeliever and so less is more in terms of budgeting and payment. `This one` paid for a single hotel room for 3000 SAR (500 GBP) a month, while it cost 300 GBP to fly to London and back from Buttapes, ‘ALL BUTT APES’, Hungry, where `This one` resided, to attend a visa processing and medical at a total cost in London, including visa, of 900 GBP, before   it was even possible to countenance the possibility of getting to Riyals. Consequently, the initial month`s salary from Bullitz of 13, 000 SAR disappeared immediately in non-reimbursed visa processing costs; flights to and from London, and the initial month`s hotel bill. Encouraged to believe in the three month probation period, teachers are prepared to invest, but employers who can persuade teachers to pay all of the initial costs, and fees with false promises of reimbursement, don`t feel they have to honor the probation period, because they`ve nothing invested in it; apart from what amounts to an extended job interview. Consequently, a teacher can spend upwards of 1000 GBP to be told they`re surplus to requirements after a few days, and reducing the length of the training program to a few days facilitates the early exit of the teacher. If he shows no signs of accepting the telepathic commands to convert to the `Slammer, and so being in a `green` meant with everybody.

 Politeness is a useful defensive tool, because it assists the employee desirous of more lolly in his bank account to defer immediate conversion to the `Slammer. Consequently, the native English speaking ELT professional needs must deploy a huge degree of personable flexibility in order to avoid conflict with employers, and stud`nts whose sole objective is to get rid of him as soon as it becomes evident that the teacher isn`t so poverty stricken as to seek conversion to Allah and chuck himself onto the carpet with the rest of the spiders shortly after arriving.

 Although Bullitz seems an exaggerated distortion of a well known language skull`s identity, Bullitz Riyals tried to kill me. Without knowing that I don`t live in London, or somewhere else a little less expensive in Britain, the assumption is that it costs me several thousand pounds a month to live. I`d have to bow and convert to the `Slammer in order to pass probation as a soon-to-be-released prisoner of the system (the stud`nts call Riyals `The Prison`), if I was to make enough money to live in Britain, where the cost of living is 90% greater than it is in Buttapes, Hungry, or other places in Eastern Europe, and the rest of the world. Although the public are used to scams from the movies made in Hollywood, ‘Babylon’, such as The Sting (1973), starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, where the criminal is `stung` by a gang of predatory revengers seeking redress for wrongs done to them, like those Marvel comic book heroes made into the film, Batman and Robin (1997), slave labor kills the professional man. With PhDs in Appled Linguistics, professors from the United States of America, and the other Western democracies, go to Pseudi Yarubeer, after decades in their respective head chuck occasion systems, with enough brainpower to earn enough money to pay their way. The Pseudis and their `Slammeric lackeys force their prison camp laborers to bow low to them on their carpets, or else they`ll sack `em and ruin their lives, which of course is why their women, formerly sacked when young, are burkhas at MacDonald`s.

 Although Pseudi Yarubeer is an extreme instance of the ELT professional enslaved, it`s the same story everywhere else. Working in the war zone of Livya after Gadaffi`s overthrow in 2011 for supporting terrorism, I was held at gunpoint for whatever was in my pocket, and the local language skull hadn`t yet provided me with a key to the house I was sharing with the other teachers, because it was a `perk` and they require conversion to the `Slammer before they’d begin treating the teacher as human. In Khartoum, Sudan, local Yarubean backed Muzzlem military units trained their jeep mounted machine guns on me in 2008 as they zoomed down the street on the way to deal with insurgent black Muzzlem West African rebels during their civil war. The family at home wasn`t going to have bread on the table if the professor of Appled Linguistics arrived home in a bag full of holes. The air conditioning at the Al Forats petroleum company`s training center in Terrosaur, Syria, was so evil smelling in 2003 that, at the end of contract (EOC), I spent a day in a hotel in Damascus vomiting and thinking I`d die. Each day the house in which I was staying was woken up at 4.00 am by the Meringue in the square calling the faithful to prayer at the local temple of mosquito worship, the Mosque, where the mosquito was deemed the best approximation to the leech that was man by the devotees of their Gran, and so Allah was worshipped as a mosquito:  ‘We created man …  [as] an alaqah … leech …’ (‘The Believers’, 23: 12-14) As the English teachers lived in that house over there, the local Meringue was convinced that, if he made a row in the early morning, the whole bunch of us would be hurling ourselves downstairs and groveling about on the carpet looking to become better leeches.

 As the English have a similar concept in no bless a leech, which derives from the dead language of the Rumuns, Latin, from their Imperial occupation beginning in 55 B.C., and the subsequent leech lords of an Anglo-Saxon surf society, the Briti government`s training for English language teachers presupposed ELT professionals as gung-ho jingoistic baboons, who`d die for their country overseas as a matter of form. This was derived from a falsely romantic English public skull vision of conditioned individuals accepting a behavioralist philosophy more appropriate to that of the animals in Frenchman Pierre Boulle`s 1963 novel, La Planète Des Singes (Planet Of The Apes), than intelligent humans. 1000 US $ a month wasn`t going to pay any mortgage, so I found myself sleeping in a skip outside Binns’ department store in Konk`s Town-Upon-’Ull, after my tour of duty in Khartoum, Sudan. The English system for ELT professionals is that they`re not expected to own property or have families, but live as part of an intelligence gathering network. As the United States` Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sent operatives to live `buried lives` in places like Cuba, before the US disaster at `the Bay of Pigs`, when they attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro in 1961 by military means, and after the deposing of the US backed Shah of Iran in 1979, and the coming to power of the `Slammeric fundamentalist rulership in the person of Ayatollah Khomeini. In simple terms, the UK`s policy with regard to educated people in the Humanities was to train them as ELT experts, and treat them as disposable adjuncts to their global aspirations as leech lords.

 Without asking the ELT professionals if they wanted to sacrifice their lives for Great Britain, the patriotic flag wavers just assume that they won`t mind being sacrificed - and sacrifice `em. Briti film director, Dayvid Lean, made the biographical movie of poet, T.E. Lawrence`s life, Lawrence Of Yarubeer (1962), starring Pete Rot `Oole in Hollywood, ‘Babylon’, as a celebration of a `Brit` in World War I (1914-18) asked to do a job of intelligence work for a country seeking to prevent German Imperialism from spreading from Europe to the Muddle East, but ELT teachers are sacrificed, rather than asked: ‘Do you want to sacrifice yourself?’ Modern communications means that governments no longer ask their citizens; they manipulate. Consequently, ELT professionals with qualifications in linguistics that boggle the mind, and where the local Crushteen paedophile hoodwinking mafiosa want A-B-C English, find they`re heads chucked regularly out onto the streets to sleep in a skip outside Debenhams in Cleethorpes, because governments have failed to regulate ELT providers. In simple terms, the onus is on the provider to provide teachers who can juggle; play the saxophone; ride a unicycle; provide simultaneous translation, and fly about the classroom singing the `Hallelujah chorus` from Handel`s ‘Messiah’: all at the same time. While the hidden agenda is that the provider works for `The Man`, who wants the ELT `pro` to pump clientele like HARPIC for favors and preferment in thob path room. Consequently, the ELT worker is the whore of the Muddle East prettifying the mafiosa language provider`s aim of pumping the clients, who come for cream and a bum to the skull.

 `Bunburying` is the term used by Algernon, the ingenious friend of the ingénue, Earnest, in The Importance Of Being Earnest (1895): Oscar Wilde`s comic play about ‘secret affairs’4. ELT professionals exude their charm, and personality, upon the clientele in the language provider`s belief that they’re unearthing a bone, and then it`s a burkha  in a sack on a ‘dog day afternoon’ for the professor in Appled Linguistics, who’s dodged the Muttawahs and the Muzzlems in order to ‘give a dog a bone’, as it were: ‘I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may go down into the country whenever I choose.’4 The language teaching requirement to be applied is `A-B-C`, that is, to get the cream bone it’s necessaryto avoid being carpeted. Although the Briti government sent ELT professionals across the globe to look for ‘Bunbury’, as the elite brown nosers prepared to get the cream without giving themselves prostrate cancer, they discovered that the carpeting their Muzzlem hosts gave them wasn’t to censure their efforts as ELT teachers, but rather the already creamed bums, who were there praying to be delicious.

 The Sherriff put the ticket for the flight home to Buttapes, ‘WHERE THEY LIVE’, into my hands, and I asked for an e-mail to be sent with the web address on it for the boarding pass to be printed by me, `Why do you want an e-mail? I don`t understand.` The Sherriff began to get angry with the polite white stetsoned ELT pro, who now thought he could see a `black hat` beginning to appear on The Sherriff`s furrowed brow. Having bought a printer at the local Riyals Galeria on Abbadaziz street for 400 SAR (65 GBP) to facilitate the performance of my administrative responsibilities, I thought it a bit rich to ask, ‘Why?’ I wanted to know how I was going to print my boarding cards? I explained that I needed the e-mail to click on the web address to change my seats, if I didn`t like them, as well as print my boarding cards; to facilitate my trip. I`d kept the receipt for the printer; so I wouldn`t have problems going through customs. Even so, customs managed to drop the printer, and break it, and go through my luggage to find and break the clasp of my Busynessmen`s Gosh Hell Fellowship (BGHF) badge as the `Slammeric extremists cocked a final snoot at the Crushteen teacher, who`d traveled thousands of miles from Europe at his own expense to be vilified as someone who wouldn`t accept being carpeted by criminals, who wanted some buns and an occasional head to chuck.

 I finally obtained a promise that the flight ticket back to Buttapes` Fairy Head airport, Hungry, ‘WHERE THE APES’ BUTTS ARE RECORDED THERE’, would be e-mailed to me, although The Sherriff had suggested I type in the web address for the airline company, E-Gypped John’s, by copying it from the printed ticket, and he had become angry enough to demand an explanation as to why I wanted an e-mail sent to my laptop, rather than copy the web address for E-Gypped from the printout, `Because I don`t want to,` I won. Arriving at Bullitz, I was installed as ILM, without a desk top computer, and had to complete the Bullitz online training program on my own Compaq CQ58 laptop within a week before the Practicum at which I met the representative of the Bullitz branch of the Bin Laden company, and had to buy a printer, because the security was so tight around the photocopier (access code, 5-4-3-2-1), I just knew I`d have to fling myself on the carpet and beg Allah to let me use it. If I didn`t provide my own Panasonic KX - MB1500 printer-copier-scanner and fax-machine as well.

 Arriving at the airport, I discovered The Sherriff had pulled another fast one with Bullitz`s backing. Going through the check-in unconcernedly, I was turned away by passport control, because I needed an iqama, that is, a residence permit with my photo on it, to leave Pseudi Yarubeer. A ‘nig’ armor’s  protection ran out when I did, which was why The Sherriff and Bullitz had asked me to attend a medical costing 180 SAR (30 GBP). That was how you got it. Pretending to be non-plussed at not having given `This one` the protection of an iqama, subsequent to a successful medical, The Sherriff began demanding of me, `Why do you need an iqama?` `Because I need an iqama to leave, according to the passport control at the airport,` I reiterated for the umpteenth time. `Why?` Sherriff stuck to the guns of his `original sin`, which was that he`d identified me as someone he thought I was, that is, he believed that he could make me think in the way that he thought I should, which is the basis of Muzzlemen’s terrorist activity affording the protection of an iqama in exchange for abasement in servitude. The suggestion that I was confusing, in an attempt to confuse me, terminated when The Sherriff slipped the iqama to me as I went through passport control a second time a few days later. He`d told me I must go at 5.00 pm, although my flight wasn`t till 10.30 pm, because he had to speak with the airport police about my iqama with me present. However, even though the E-Gypped John’s flight was delayed until almost 1.00 am, there was no sign that anyone at the airport - other than The Sherriff - wanted me to be with them. I surmised The Sherriff had had the iqama since he gave me back my passport after the medical, because that`s why language skulls return the passport - with the iqama - to signify the status of a slave who accepts the protection of the `Slammer, and the Muzzlem people of their Gran, who they believe was a spider that emerged from a box in Me car, and who no one should escape.

 In Riyals my debit cards went missing after The Sherriff had asked for details of my bank account with the Erste bank in Buttapes, Hungry, ‘WHERE THE BUTTS ARE TAPED’, showing the transaction I`d had with Rich Gent`s visa processing, and medical at a cost to me of 600 GBP Euros plus 300 GBP flights, which  Mrs Ickballs had told me would be reimbursed by Bullitz. I`d forwarded a copy of my bank statement to The Sherriff, and shortly thereafter my debit cards went missing. As is usual with European banks, they send new debit cards to your address in Europe, so I was left in the hands of The Sherriff, and a Bullitz advance by increments as I eked out taxi fare and food consumption, while awaiting the end of the first month`s salary payment, which eventually surfaced at 6, 000 SAR (1000 GBP), and was enough to cover the first and second month`s hotel room bill. Although it wasn`t enough to cover a week in which I hadn`t taxi fare for Uncle Tom's cab, and so had to walk almost four miles each day in the blistering heat of Riyals, because I worked early (8-30-2.00 pm) and late shifts (6.00-9.00 pm), with an afternoon break at the hotel. The Bullitz scenario had been planned to present me as the gunfighter to The Sherriff`s Gary Cooper in High Noon (1952), with only Bullitz awaiting me at journey`s end. `This one` had worked for nothing as a wage slave, while living in terror of The Sherrif’s`Slammeric extremism at Bullitz.

 Osama, `Bin-a-Bad` Laden, was a Pseudi Yarubean, who engineered the Al Qaeda hijacking of civil airliners to mount a terrorist attack from his Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan upon the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, when his terror group crashed planes into the Twin Towers to precipitate war with the United States amid  global `Slammeric extremist terrorism, I reflected wordlessly, and the words of the examiner at my Practicum came back to haunt me, `I`m with the Bin Laden company.` I`d let it go, because I was an employee, and the `dummy` lesson required that I ask the dummy stud`nts, ‘What company do you wank for?’ `Bin-a-Bad` Laden was the Pseudi that virtually reinvented terror, and the Pseudis are reinventing it still. The city of Me car is the spiritual center of the `Slammer and, during Rubabum, the fasting month that follows The Hedge, that is, the pilgrimage to the temple of Amaninabra, who founded the `Slammer through his son, `E`smale, and Chewedaism through his son, I-pod, foreigners are told not to eat or drink publicly, while it isn`t ever polite to use the left hand when eating or drinking, or anything else either, because the Muzzlems are experts at cock-handedness. No one is allowed to look at a woman`s eyes, if they`re not members of her immediate family, because Muzzlems practice terror religiously, and their muzzled women, and the rifle muzzles of their right-handed husbanders, are everywhere in evidence.

 The Indian Kashmiri writer, Salmon Budgie, living in London under an assumed name, had a death sentence, or `fatwad`, imposed upon him by the oil rich Iranian Ayatollahs for writing the novel, Those Satanical Gerbils, which centered upon a few lines from `The Star`, Sura 53 of the Gran, that had been excised over the generations, because they related to the Me car goddesses, Allat, Uzza and Manat, and the actual reality of the possibility of sexual reproduction between women in the `Slammer, where marriages with four wives make it easier for `futanarian` women with their own penis` semen to have sex together, `Do you have sons, while God has these as daughters?` (l. 21) Salmon Budgie`s novel was banned, and himself put under threat of a death sentence being carried out upon him by the fatwads, because Muzzlem misogyny and terrorism is an institution, and the Muttawahs, who are the `Slammer`s unofficial religious police, are its experts in fundamentalist civil terror, while the notoriously misogynist Afghan Taliban trained Al Qaeda, led by Osama `Bin-a-Bad` Laden, were the governmental extremist edge to the scimitar it wields against civilian populations that disagree fundamentally in non-`Slammeric nations. When the district manager for Bullitz arrived to urge me on to greater efforts with the stud`nts, and warn me not to spend money on advanced payments for hotel rooms (500 GBP if you pay monthly, and 750 GBP if you pay daily), when I said I`d had my debit cards stolen he screamed, `Liar!’  He demanded that I go to the police; presumably to surrender to the torturers. I demurred, like a coward, because I didn`t want my teeth pulled out with pliers by several armed thugs, who I don`t want to shoot, and haven`t a weapon anyway.

 I was in Dalek, Pseudi Yarubeer, on September 11, 2001, instructing male army helicopter nurses for the North West Legged Forces Hospital (NWLFH), so that they would be able to speak English with the Americans and their allies during the ‘Vlad’ Putin-inspired Golf war that would occur after 9/11, and the subsequent `Crazy Golf` March, 2003, American invasion of Al Qaeda`s supporter in Iraq, dictator Saddam Hussein, who`d offered to run courses there for Osama `Bin-a-Bad` Laden`s terrorist group, and so the allies would depose and execute him on 30 December, 2006. ‘Vlad’ was believed to have been for Laden, that is, ‘Bin-a-Bad’, so Putin had putatively pasted a Golf poster of the Twin Towers onto the wall of the Dalek training center, which I asked to be removed before 9/11, because Pseudi Yarubeer, in the person of their proxy, Osama `Bin-a-Bad` Laden, had been responsible for the terrorist attack, and I didn`t want my efforts with the helicopter nurses mocked. `Bin-a-Bad’ had missed an ‘easy Putin ‘, as it were, when it was planes that should have gone through, but they hit the uprights. As the Chechnyan war with ISIL had ended in 1996, and the Rushon Secret Service were accused of restarting it after its former head, Putin, became President on August 16, 1999, 9/11 could have been part of the ‘Crazy Golf’ war designed to keep Putin in power.

 As the Chechnyan war didn’t end until 2009, and the subsequent pipe bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013 was attributed to Chechnyans, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the ‘Crazy Golf’ war was won by Putin. As the planes that were crashed into the WTC by Al Qaeda were hijacked at Boston, Logan, William F. Nolan’s 1967 novel, Logan’s Run, was the inspiration. In the science fiction yarn, Logan is a ‘runner’ attempting to flee a society with so-scarce economic resources that everyone is condemned to die before their 21^st year. The planners of 9/11 expected to divert so much of the Earth’s resources into war that the expected happiness of a technological future would be stillborn, although Putin would remain holed out.

 Mysteriously, the `wifi` internet connection at the Ol’ Man`s Zeal hotel in Riyals couldn`t be made to function from my laptop, before the 5. 00 pm appointment at Dalek’s Konk Abbadaziz airport terminal 3 for departures by E-Gypped John with The Sherriff and an iqama, so `This one` wasn`t able to print the boarding cards, or change his seat online, which meant that `This one` had to sit where Bullitz had told him to all the way to Buttapes, ‘WHERE THE BUTTS ARE VIDEOED’, and a stopover at ‘Gyp, Cairo, for much of September 19th, 2014, before flying onwards. Consequently, Bullitz had effectively decided who I`d sit alongside on the plane, which added to the flavor of Muddle Eastern terror. I was pointedly asked to close the coffin lid of the eye of the windowed plane I sat looking out of as `fatwad` was secretly declared upon me by a Muzzlem seat companion. In Cairo my MP3 Walkman was examined as if it were a death ray pointed at the customs officers, with myself expected to sweat profusely and gibber and blubber like an idiot while removing the back of the plastic cover to show the terrorists the AAA battery that powered the dangerous audibility of the music machine banned in Pseudi Yarubeer as anti- `Slammeric unpleasantness.

 I was reminded of lunatic bus conductors in Wide-Open-Beaver, Yorkshire, where I`d bought my first Japanese Sony Walkman for 86. 97 GBP in 1978, before I met members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and sundry Iranian revolutionaries at ‘Ull Collage of Further Head Chuck Occasions (H.C.F.H.C.O), where the nascent Muddle Eastern terrorist organizations amongst the stud`nt body were feigning an interest in obtaining a Higher Chuck Diploma (HCD) in Marine Engineering preparatory to Al Qaeda`s hijacking planes at Boston, Logan airport, Massachusetts, and crashing them into tall buildings in New York. Clearly a `take` on the 1975 movie, Logan`s Run, wherein the people were directed by Michael Anderson to run to avoid being killed for being too old to run fast enough, I mightn`t have been asked to run a Marathon from Wide-Open-Beaver to ‘Ull and back each day, but the English terrorist bus conductors would stalk the passengers on their way to Collage from Wide-Open-Beaver like deranged maniacs. Detecting tinny sounds they either imagined or didn`t, they threatened to chuck your head off the bus; if they thought they could hear anything apart from the surly speechless passengers wheezing and grunting on their way to wheeze and grunt someplace else in the Forum Boarium of the public transported system on planet Earth. The Forum Boarium, of course, was the place in ancient Rome where the animals were driven to slaughter, like the airline passengers prodded through customs on their way to and fro across the planet, before they die of exhaustion. Eyes rolling back into their heads, they’d moo piteously at the heavens, while the passport controllers demanded to see their luggage ticket, or they wouldn`t get that big yellow suitcase on the carousel at the point of destination.

 In Cairo I was asked to surrender my passport by a controller temporarily, which meant a profusely sweating passenger arriving at Le Passage hotel for a few sleepless hours abed, before returning to departures to see if the passport was still usable, or had it been spirited away by terrorists keen to deploy it in some hairy airport siege? Like in the movie Raid On Entebbe (1977), where actor, Yaphet Kotto, has the role of the self-styled `King of Scotland`, Idi Amin, the Ugandan President, who`d pretended to be negotiating with the hostage takers, while the passengers were being chucked out of the plane with holes in their heads, before the Chews arrived in a 4th July display of `bloody oranges`, and stormed the aircraft to rescue the remainder of the captives. A fraught few hours later, after dealing with an airport staff, who directed me mercilessly away from the check-in desk for E-Gypped John’s flight to Buttapes, ‘WHERE THE APES ARE TAPED’, I finally found myself going up the steps to the plane and another mystery occupant in the next seat I hadn`t planned to sit with. I conjectured that Bullitz language skull had taken great pains to ensure that I wouldn`t be able to sit elsewhere. Even to the point of having the hotel staff at the Ol’ Man`s Zeal disconnect the `wifi` to make it unusable when I wanted to print the boarding cards and change my seats on the airplane using the printer I`d bought to deal with Bullitz`s incalculably devious machinations to thwart my being able to perform my duties as ILM. Before deciding I was `unsuitable`, but not unqualified for the job, presumably because I`d brought my own laptop, I’d taken and passed the online exam in the Bullitz Method to prepare me for the dummies in the classroom. To me it looked like a Briti citizen had been kidnapped by a terrorist group, and their life made hell for `forty days`, and `forty nights in the wilderness` (Matt: 4. 2), like She`sis I’d supposed, before the tempter, Satan, offered him the Earth, `If you will bow down and worship me.` (Matt: 4. 9) And possibly target my family for ransom as well.

1 Miller, William `Wee Willie Winkie` in Whistle-binkie: Stories For The Fireside, 1841.

2 Jones, John Paul, Jimmy Page, and Robert Plant `Black Dog’, Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin IV, Atlantic, 1971.

3 Page, Jimmy, and Robert Plant ‘Houses Of The Holy’, Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti, Swan Song, 1975.

4 Aynesworth, Allan as Algernon Moncrief in the first performance of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, St James's Theatre,  London, February 14, 1895.

Collaborative Writing

The use of small group and pair work is supported by two major theories of language learning: the psycholinguistic theory of interaction, based largely on the work of Long (1983; 1996), and the sociocultural theory of mind, Vygotsky (1978). Both theories emphasise the importance of interaction for learning. However, whereas the psycholinguistic theory focuses on interaction, the sociocultural theory emphasises the importance of a particular kind of interaction, that of collaboration. (Donato, 2004)

Although literature on language pedagogy encourages pair work, students are reluctant, particularly with grammar-focused tasks. Noemy Storch’s (2007) study compared pairs and individuals in editing tasks. The study was conducted in four ESL classes. Class A was paired and class B individual. In C and D students were given the choice. Analysis showed no significant difference between accuracy of tasks completed individually and those completed in pairs. Transcribed pairs’ talk showed deliberation over language and grammar didn’t result in measurable improvement, whereas small groups’ language usage was quantitatively greater than that of teacher-led activities; although qualitative measurements aren’t discussed. (Long and Porter, 1985)

Small group and pair work, particularly in second language learning, according to Vygotsky (1978), mirrors social interactions between individuals in society. The more able, by providing assistance termed `scaffolding`, helps the learner achieve their potential.

`Peer scaffolding` occurs in group/pair work (Donato,1994; Storch, 2002; Aljaafreh and Lantolf, 1994). Learners participate in interactive activities, co-constructing knowledge, supported by the communicative approach. Studies of ‘collective scaffolding’ by Donato (1998; 1994) and Storch (2002; 2005) reveal a process of learners pooling linguistic resources to resolve language-related problems.

Working collaboratively learners create `dialogue` (Swain, 2000). `Collaborative dialogue` is co-construction of language knowledge, and is consolidative (Swain and Lapkin, 1998).

The use of small group/pair work in writing is limited in ELT. Found in the beginning (brainstorming), and the final, `peer review`, stage, which raises students’ awareness of audience considerations (Leki, 1993), and develops analytical, critical, reading and writing skills (Nystrand & Brandt, 1989).

The drawback is focus on product rather than process. When students are asked to `peer review`, focus is on error at sentence and word level (Lockhart & Ng, 1995; Nelson & Carson, 1998; Villamil & de Guerrero, 1996). The writing becomes an `object` while the writer’s text remains subjective and non-interactive with the reader. (Hirvela, 1999)

Wells, Chang & Maher (1990) argue students should write collaboratively, the singular text/plural authors approach (Ede and Lunsford 1990) assisting students` competency in content, structure, and language. Keys (1994) argues it fosters reflective thinking, especially if learners are making their ideas explicable. Storch (2002) shows that, in the process of co-authoring, learners consider not only language but discourse.

Although pair and group work are common in language classrooms, few have investigated the benefits of students’ jointly written texts.

According to Storch, when she asked students to write in pairs, they were reluctant. She asked students for a short text composition as the basis for a study. They were given a choice to write in pairs (18) or individually (5). Comparing pairs to individuals, fluency was measured in terms of the total number of words while accuracy and complexity was based on T-unit count and clause analysis. (As defined by Kellogg W. Hunt (1964), the T-unit is the smallest word group that can be considered a grammatical sentence, regardless of punctuation.1 Researchers use it as an index of syntactic complexity.) Individuals took 10 to 15 minutes, and pairs an average of 22 minutes.

The study found pairs` texts were shorter but better with more complex sentences. The average was 112 words, and individuals 137. Pairs were more accurate (0.07 mean error), and individuals (0.09). Most errors related to verb tense, use of articles and prepositions, and omission of sentence elements (in the subject position). Pairs` average length of T-unit (defined by Hunt as `main clause` and `subordinate clauses`, 1996, p.735) was 16 words, compared to 12 for individuals. Pairs` T-units were not only longer but averaged almost two clauses.

Individual writers produced overly detailed texts, restating information, rather than deductions based on the given chart. Pairs` texts were clear because they’d deduced their findings from the chart. All the pairs deliberated throughout, in line with Cumming’s (1989) observation that students` use `think aloud protocols` to generate ideas before linguistic formulations. Most of pairs collaborated by completing each other’s ideas, offering alternative suggestions, and feedback. This is `collective scaffolding`.

Collaboration afforded feedback, which explains the greater grammatical accuracy and complexity than individual writers. (Storch and Wigglesworth, 2007) Nelson & Carson (1998) report peers’ feedback isn’t respected and don’t pay attention to it. McCarthey and McMahon (1992) observe that this is because peers have no power over the text, which is owned by the author. In collaborative writing, students are receptive to peer revision because a text, commonly held, loosens proprietary feeling. Individuals are clearly more independent and don’t want to be mean `mouthpieces`, which can be a disadvantage of peer revision. Moreover, writing is an individual activity and students still have to write themselves. (Reither and Vipond (1989, p.855)

1 As defined by Kellogg W. Hunt (1964), the T-unit is the smallest word group that can be considered a grammatical sentence, regardless of punctuation. Researchers use it as an index of syntactic complexity.

Bibliography

Aljaafreh, A., and Lantolf, J. P. `Negative Feedback as Regulation and Second Language Learning in the Zone of Proximal Development`, Modern Language Journal, Vol. 78, # 4, 1994, pp. 465–483.

Donato, R. `Collective Scaffolding in Second Language Learning` in J. P. Lantolf & G. Appel (eds.) Vygotskian Approaches to Second Language Research, 1994, pp. 33–56.

Long, M. `The Role of the Linguistic Environment in Second Language Acquisition` in William, R., and Bhatia, T. (eds.) Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, San Diego: Academic Press, 1996, pp. 413–468.

Long, M. and Porter, P. `Group Work: Interlanguage Talk and Classroom Second Language Acquisition`, TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 19, # 2, 1985, pp. 207– 228.

Reither, J. A., and Vipond, D. `Writing Collaboration`, College English, # 51, 1989, pp. 855-67.

Storch, Neomy `Collaborative Writing: Product, Process and Students’ Reflections`, Journal of Second Language Writing, Vol. 14, # 3, 2005, pp. 153-173.

Storch, N. `Investigating the Merits of Pair Work on a Text Editing Task in ESL Classes`, Language Teaching Research, Vol. 11, # 2, 2007, pp. 143-161.

Storch, N., and Wigglesworth, G. Writing Tasks and the Effects of Collaboration` in M. Pillar (ed.) InvestigatingTasks in Formal Language Settings , 2007, pp. 157-177.

Swain, M. `The Output Hypothesis and Beyond: Mediating Acquisition Through Collaborative Dialogue` in J. Lantolf (ed.) Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning, OUP, 2000, pp. 97–114.

Swain, M., and Lapkin, S. `Interaction and Second Language Learning: Two Adolescent French Immersion Students Working Together`, Modern Language Journal, 82, 1998, pp. 320-337.

Vygotsky, Lev Semyonovich Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, 1978.

Wells, G., Chang, G. L., and Maher, A. `Creating Classroom Communities of Literate Thinkers` in S. Sharan (ed.) Cooperative Learning: Theory and Research, New York: Praeger, 1990 .

Teaching English Vocabulary

Teaching vocabulary is important, and more than presenting and introducing. Knowing words isn`t memorizing. What students need is meaning in context and how words are used through correct instruction, which is vocabulary selection, word knowledge, and the inculcation of learning techniques. Vocabulary is needed for expressing meaning and using receptive (listening and reading) and productive (speaking and writing) skills. It isn`t a memory test, that is, a word list teachers prepare as a syllabus, which is good and useful as a temporary technique for exams, but not for learning a foreign language. To teach students what words mean and how they are used, they must be presented together in context. Words do not exist on their own but live together and depend upon each other.

 Correct instruction involves vocabulary selection, word knowledge and methodological technique. In the past, teachers selected and presented vocabulary from concrete to abstract. Words like door, window, desk, etc., which are concrete, were taught at beginning levels, while words like honest, beauty, etc., which are abstract, were taught at advanced levels, because not physically representable in the learning/teaching environment and so are more difficult to explain. Now experts suggest teachers decide upon words taught on the basis of frequency in the `target language` (Harmer). Most commonly used words should be taught first. How often, and where, words occur is derivable from computer-enhanced frequency counts in vocabulary employed (Nation) by native speakers of the `target language`.

Teachers can decide which useful words should be taught on the basis of semantics, where the more useful word covers more things than one with a specific meaning. The word `book` has wider usage, for example; `to book a room`, that is, arrange to pay for to stay at a hotel, or to `bring to book`, in the sense of `punish the culprit`. Criteria other than frequency and coverage include language needs, (Nation), availability and familiarity, regularity and ease of learning, and learning burden. When conveying meaning, teachers should teach a word may have more than one meaning when used in different contexts, for example, `book` has at least twelve; eight as a noun, two as a verb, and three when used with prepositions as phrasal verbs; ` I booked my ticket three days ago,` (Harmer) and `I booked him for speeding,` etc. Students should be involved in discovering words` meanings themselves and encouraged to make efforts to understand. When students are involved in discovering meaning, they tend not to forget what they`ve learned, and subsequently express themselves more fluently. When a single word has various meanings, the teacher should decide which is to be taught, that is, the necessary from the more frequent. Students are motivated by facilitating teachers, and will build stores of words important for them to communicate.

Teachers can help build a store of words from which students can select to express themselves. If a learner can handle grammar correctly, they can`t express themselves fluently without a stored memory of words to select from. Teachers must tailor vocabulary syllabi, according to learners needs (Nation), so work can be directed toward useful words that give useful skills. Unless learning vocabulary processes are clear, easy and interesting, students become bored, tired, and disinterested. Nation suggests teachers convey meaning by demonstration or pictures (objects, cut out figures, gesture, performing an action, photographs, blackboard drawings or diagrams, and pictures from books), or by verbal explanation (analytical definition, putting words in defining contexts, and translating into the foreigner`s own language).

 Students should know words' meanings, when used in metaphor and idiom, and when to choose the right word. The word `hiss` describes the noise snakes make, but is metaphorical (Harmer) if used to describe the way people speak: `Don`t sit there! That seat`s for someone more important than you!` she hissed. The verb `run` has the present participle `running`, which can be used as an adjective, while `run` can be a noun. Familiarity with metaphor and idiom helps students in writing and speaking. Parts of speech are often taught separately, because they occur in disparate sentence patterns (Nation), but if meanings associated with the word `run`, for example, are linked already in the minds of the learners, metaphor and idiom work to the advantage of the educator.

 Presentation, and discovery is a technique and activity the teacher can use. Celce-Muria recommends to every teacher the methodological approach of conveyed meaning (1), checked understanding (2), and consolidation (3). Items are presented, then exercises test the students grasp of meaning. Students deepen their understanding through use and creative problem-solving activities. Conveyance of meaning is by means of `realia`; for example, pens, rulers, and balls. When it`s impossible to bring the object, such as cars or animals, teachers can show pictures. Concepts like running, walking, or eating are easy to present using mime, action and gesture. At more advanced levels, teachers use word relations (synonyms or antonyms), definitions, explanations, examples, anecdotes, contexts and word roots and affixes. Explaining the item, `guided tour` (Celce-Murcia), the class can be asked to imagine a museum or an art gallery where a group of people listen to someone explaining a picture. The `guide` goes from one picture to the next and the people follow the `tour` of the exhibits. When the lesson becomes interesting and useful, students become more motivated. After meaning is conveyed, learners comprehension is checked through exercises. Celce-Murcia suggests different kinds of activities such as `gap-fill` exercises, where students have sentences, or short passages with missing words and, if they understand the context, they can know the probable missing words; for example, in the matching up a verb (V) with an appropriate noun (N) activity:

(V) answer, (N) house, (V) blow, (N) picture, (V) build, (N) phone, (V) cook, (N) meal, (V) draw, (N) song, (V) drive, (N) television, (V) fasten, (N) seatbelt, (V) read, (N) car, (V) sing, (N) nose, (V) switch on, (N) magazine.

 To ensure students can use words properly and fluently, consolidation imposes problem-solving tasks, values` clarifications, writing a story, or dialogue, a discussion, or role-play. In this way, students become more confident in expression given the opportunity to independently activate their minds in working themselves with the words.

Bibliography

Celce-Murcia, M. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, Los Angeles: Heinle & Heinle.

Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching, New York: Longman.

Nation, I. S. P. Teaching and Learning Vocabulary, New York: Harper & Row.

The Use of Team Teaching and its Effect on EFL Students' Proficiency in English

Having taken a Bell-Obeikan International Placement Test, six EFL students classes (each comprising 20 EFL students) from the King Saud University`s Preparatory Year Diploma program, Riyadh, were first year level two (three male, three female). Two (one male, one female) taught by a team of local teachers ( non-native), two by native speakers; and two by a `mixed` pairing of native and non-native. In accordance with Saudi tradition, female classes were taught by females, and male classes were taught by males.  Statistically, there was no significant interaction effect between the method of teaching and the students' gender in terms of the students' achieving in the English language proficiency test. Participants' scores were at α <0.05 (F= 3.32, P= 0.0399) in favor of the mixed method.

 In the last decade, English language classrooms responding to the impact of English as a global language (Nunan, 2003), require team teaching, that is, foreign and local English teachers working together. Bringing foreign teachers from English-speaking countries to co-teach with local English teachers at the university first year level in Saudi Arabia is educational policy. In the last three years, the process has become a strategy for authentic language input. Native speakers facilitate cross-cultural communication, enhance students’ English ability, and promote local English teachers’ professional development (Nunan, 2003).

 Team teaching, as a form of teacher collaboration, is in education at all levels. Co-teaching (Cook & Friend, 1996; Walther-Thomas et al., 1996; Roth & Tobin, 2001), cooperative teaching (Bauwen & Hourcade, 1995) and team teaching (Welch & Sheridan, 1995; Sandholtz, 2000) are synonyms. The main components are two educators, instruction, learners, and common settings.

 Operational definitions result in varying amounts of collaboration and professional development, but team teaching itself is definable as allocation of teaching responsibilities; planning as a team, but with individual instruction; cooperative planning, instruction and evaluation of learning experiences (Sandholtz, 2000).

Team teaching improves the quality of teaching and learning in schools (Knezevic & Scholl, 1996; Smylie, 1995; Talbert & McLaughlin, 1993). Teaming, compared to teachers’ open discussion in regular meetings, is a collaborative practice requiring closer involvement with teammates’ work; such as peer coaching and interdisciplinary teaming. Teachers help each other and improve teaching practice by observing each other in the classroom, designing curricula, and/or teaching together. This makes intellectual, social, and emotional demands supportive of their motivation (Little, 2003).

 Saudi Arabia has a short  history (2007-) in team teaching. Since 2007, the Ministry of Higher Education`s preparatory year programs focused on English language. A minimum of eighty percent of teachers must be native speakers, and all work in pairs.

 According to Bondy and Ross (1998) and George and Davis-Wiley (2000) team teaching`s essential elements are clearly defined and respectful relationships; agreement on methods of instruction, discipline, supervision of classroom aides and curriculum; planning, teaching, and assessing students together (Abdallah, 2009).

 Yanamandram and Noble (2006) examined students experiences and perceptions about two models of team teaching in Australia. Data collected from 440 undergraduate students found the majority liked the concept of learning through interest in - and exposure to - teamed ‘experts’, but learning was hindered if the team failed to link adequately.

 Collaboration contributes to students'  learning progress (Durkin and Shergill, 2000). According to second and foreign  language researchers (Tsai, 2007; Calderón, 1995, 1999; Tajino & Tajino, 2000; Tajino & Walker, 1998) teachers exchange ideas and cultural values, interact with and learn from one another. They observe how their colleagues teach, reflect upon and examine their own teaching practices, and improve.

 In second language education in countries like the United States and Britain, team teaching is implemented at school level to provide authentic language input and culture, incorporate language and content instruction (Crandall, 1998; O'Loughlin, 2003), and integrate language minority and ESL students into mainstream classrooms (Becker, 2001; Coltrane, 2002; Creese, 2005; de Jong, 1996). A team of different linguistic, cultural, and educational background, better responds to students’ needs. This provides more opportunities to use the target language, learn more about diverse intercultural values, and foster positive attitudes towards communicating with native speakers (Carless, 2004, 2006; Luk, 2001; Meerman, 2003; Tajino & Tajino, 2000; Tajino & Walker, 1998).

 In 2007, universities in Saudi Arabia started employing native English speakers to teach 20 hours per week to first year university students in cooperation with non-natives to upgrade English education. Team teaching`s primary concern is the sharing of experiences, and co-generative dialoguing. They take collective responsibility to improve and enhance students` learning.

 The term `team teachers`, in this study, refers to shared teaching responsibilities; in planning lessons, in-class instruction, and follow-up work. According to policy, native speakers have English as their first language, and are from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, England, and Canada.  Non-natives are Saudi or from Arab countries.

 In language education team teaching is implemented to collaborate between ESL and mainstream teachers and integrate ESL students into the `mainstream` socially and academically (Becker, 2001; Creese, 2005). In contrast, traditional teaching isolates ESL learners from peers and mainstream curricula. Through team teaching students acquire English through meaningful content, and interactions with a native speaker (Tsai, 2007; Becker, 2001; Coltrane, 2002; O'Loughlin, 2003). In the ESL/mainstream team teaching model, teachers plan lessons together and decide on the roles they should play in class. Bailey, Curtis, and Nunan (2001) suggest `team teaching is [the] ... natural format for content-based instruction` (p. 183), which has increasingly been used (Thai 2007 and Kaspar, 2000). Bailey et al. (2001) identify five forms based on degrees of collaboration; direct content, team content, subsidiary content, supplementary content, and adjunct models (p. 182-183). Team content, subsidiary content, and supplementary content models typically involve the co-working of what might be termed `language and content` teachers in the same classroom. Team teaching`s `natural format` increases students’ motivation to learn a language through variations in language input (Crandall, 1998 and Grabe & Stoller, 1997).

 English for academic purposes (EAP) and foreign language instruction have similar needs. In EAP team teaching enables students to obtain content-specific information, and receive support when encountering difficulties (Todd 2003). A native teacher and another, who shares the mother tongue and learning experiences of students, and can handle and explain cultural and analytic components of the target language, helps students acquire knowledge of the language and skills in using it (Davison, 2006).

 Team teaching promotes bilingual students, but Creese (2005) showed ESL teachers were marginalized, having a supplementary role, addressing small groups as parts of classes in three schools she investigated. According to Creese (2005), subject and ESL teachers rarely developed `cooperative fully fledged teaching partnerships` (p. 202). Previous literature (Shibley, 2006) shows students benefit from knowledge in a team. It works well for the student, the practice teacher, the team, and service users (Davison, 2006).

 There are four types of team teaching. Traditional in which both teachers share the instruction of content and skills; supportive in which one teacher focuses on content while the other teacher conducts follow-up activities or works on skill building; parallel instruction where students are divided into groups and each teacher provides instruction in the same content/skills to his or her group, and differentiated instruction, where students are divided into groups on the basis of learning needs, with each teacher providing instruction based on his or her group's needs.  This requires dividing a class by ability to provide enrichment activities to the high ability group and extra support to the lower functioning group (Tonks, 2005). All previous studies compared team and individual teaching. The purpose here is to study the effect of the different forms (Creese, 2005 and Durkin & Shergill, 2000).

 English is considered important because it`s the universal communicator, especially as the language of scientific research, technology, and business. English language ability offers students career opportunities. In spite of this, high school graduate students are often very weak in English language, because of teachers and teaching methods in secondary schools. Team teaching could provide a solution.

 Because of the importance of English language, preparatory year programs, which main concern is teaching English, are established in Saudi Arabian Universities. These aim at the service of society, and ultimately the achievement of national goals and interests (Cf. the program for English Language Skills Program at the King Saud University, 2009-). Students are subjected to intensive language training for two semesters with an average twenty hours a week (i.e. six hundred hours in two semesters). The program aims to develop the students' competence in English and provide them with language skills they need in their academic and professional lives.

 Although the program focuses on General English (communication) during the first semester, it moves in the second semester into English for Academic purposes; concentrating on reading and academic writing. During this period, students study English for Specific Purposes according to their academic disciplines. The students also start preparing for the global standard examinations (IELTS/TOFEL and PET), and finally sit them.

 The program objectives are that students` advance in English language skills and linguistic competence; effectively communicate in English (written and spoken);acquire basic academic skills and ways of learning for academic success; prepare for international standard linguistic competence examinations (IELTS/TOFEL and  PET) in order to (at least) meet the minimum requirements.

 The English-language programs are provided by British and American companies like Bell International and Kaplan in Partnerships with University of Cambridge University Press and Pearson Longman, who develop curriculum and materials for Preparatory Year Programs in line with local culture and norms.

 Before the start of the academic year, there is a placement test to determine the level of  the students so they are placed in an appropriate level of study, according to their abilities and language skills. The placement tests are online based, computer based, or paper based tests. Based on results, students are divided into six levels (1-6).

 The intensive English language program aims to develop students’ competence in the `four skills`: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Attention is given to grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. An integrated skills approach is intended to improve students` accuracy and fluency (Usher, 2012).

 The teaching staff is employed to be experienced and dynamic. Eighty percent use English as their first language. Academically and professionally qualified, no less than 40%  hold a masters and/or PhD in addition to Cambridge English language teaching (CELTA and DELTA) certificates and diplomas.

 Students` gender was one of the variables in the study because, in Saudi Arabia, male students have more freedom (to work, and socialize) than females. Consequently, they have more contact with native speakers, which assists their progress. All the students were Science majors.

 The difficulties of team teaching include lack of time to plan and run individual lessons, and so poor communication between teamed teachers. Consequently, as part of their daily schedule and load, teams were given an hour a day to meet and discuss.

 Each team had to prepare their lesson and lesson plans and to carry out the activities of the lesson together. The same material was used for the three groups. The study was carried out during the second semester of the academic year 2008/2009 and lasted 15 weeks. The textbook was Interchange 2, together with ESP material for Science major students, and PET test preparation.

 Bell International Placement test is a standardized test of Cambridge University1 and its validity and reliability are established. Used several times, the researcher gave it to a number of EFL professors, managers, coordinators, and teachers in the English Language program to verify its suitability. They evaluated its clarity and relevance. All agreed the test valid and reliable.

 By the end of week 15, and to assess the students' proficiency in English, all participants sat the Cambridge PET. The speaking part of the test continued over three days while the other parts (listening, reading and writing) were completed in one day. After correcting papers, according to the Cambridge marking system, students' marks were given out of 100% in accordance with the Saudi system. Then the results were sent to the students' college.

 Students' results in the PET test were analyzed, using the SAS software. Means, standard deviations, the ANOVA test, and the effect size equation were used to find out whether there were significant differences among students' results due to the teaching method and/or students' gender.

 Table 1 shows the averages of the three groups were almost the same, and not gender determined. That males and females have different learning styles, and so require different teaching approaches, was outside the study`s purview. Table 2 shows differences among the mean scores of the students of the three groups after analysis. The non-native team`s mean score is 60.43 with a standard deviation of 7.37; the native team teaching`s mean score is 61.60 with a standard deviation of 7.22; and the mean score of the mixed team is 64.98 with a standard deviation of 9.62.

 There was no statistically significant correspondence between the method of teaching and the students' gender, and no significant difference between the mean scores of male and female students. The mean for males was 61.83 and females 62.83.  However, post analysis results show a statistically significant difference among participants' scores due to teaching method at α <0.05 (F= 3.32, P= 0.0399) in favour of mixed, that is, one native and one non-native, team teachers. There`s no significant difference between the team teaching method of native and non-native teachers.

In spite of the difficulties, such as preparation and training, finding time for team discussion, and the need for many-sided support from teachers, school administrators and parents, team teaching is a proven method.

 Government sponsors, Saudi Exchange and Teaching Program (SET) attracts the necessary Assistant English Instructors (AEI), and the use of mixed team teaching allows a wider variety of instructional models than in a single teacher classroom (Tonks, 2005). Native speakers increase learner motivation, by encouraging socializing, promoting cross-cultural understanding, enabling more effective presentation of language content (especially dialogues), increasing learner participation, leading to the production of effective educational materials (Benoit  and Haugh, 2001), and providing on-the job training for Saudi instructors of English. Teachers who share the students` culture understand their background, which is further enabling.

Teachers were asked, `Is it better to teach a class with two native speaking teachers, or one native and one non-native?` Answers varied. Mixed teachers complement each other. Non-native speakers are excellent in teaching grammar. In some cases perfect. Native speakers have a wider vocabulary, authentic accent and knowledge of idiom. Native speakers can be of assistance if need arises. Many  students are frustrated by non-native accents. Pronunciation is the key to English, something non-natives struggle at. Non-natives have more understanding of students` difficulties because of their own approach to learnt English. Students also gain experience of differing accents. Teaching with a second native speaker is preferred due to cultural similarities,  better understanding of one another; similar background, and no contradictions in grammar and pronunciation. In mixed teaching there`s a more integrated understanding between students and teachers.

 Co-operation increases contact and reduces psychological stress because it facilitates cross-cultural communication (Abdallah, 2009). According to Honigsfeld and Dove (2008) co-teaching is `inclusive` and so more accommodative of the needs of diverse English language learners and, of no less importance, exposes native speakers to students from our culture.

 In conclusion, a mixed team better responds to students’ needs. The model provides students with more opportunities to use the target language, learn more about intercultural values, and foster positive attitudes towards communicating with native speakers. Differences in cultural background, and learnt teaching strategy, expose team teachers to being challenged by students based on comparisons in class. Mixed teaming promotes collaboration and mutual assistance to improve their concept of teaching strategy and class management.

 Cooperation serves communication. Mixed teaming provides a communicative model in the target language. Through parallel or differentiated instruction, learners receive more personal instruction time. Because learners are taught by more than one teacher, there is an increased chance of an instructional style conducive to an individual`s learning capacity (Goetz, 2000).

The study recommends investigating the effect of team teaching on students’ proficiency in each of the four language skills (listening, reading, speaking, and writing), e.g., by means of the Cambridge PET test, and also an investigation of the effect of mixed team teaching in school education.

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Carless, David R (2004) JET and EPIK: Comparative Perspectives, Paper presented at the KOTESOL, Busan, Korea.

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Angela, Creese (2005) Teacher Collaboration and Talk in Multilingual Classrooms, Frankfurt, UK: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

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George, Marshall A.; Davis-Wiley, Patricia (2000) `Team Teaching A Graduate Course: Case Study: A Clinical Research Course`, College Teaching, 48(2), pp. 75-80.

Goetz, Karin and E. Gallery  (2000) `Perspectives on Team Teaching`, EGallery. University of Calgary. Retrieved on  9 August, 2009, https://www.ucalgary.ca/~egallery/goetz.html .

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https://hltmag.co.uk/apr14/mart06.htm

The ELT Interview: with Crazy Bob

ELT: Well, it's a great pleasure for us to get to finally talk to you Dr Robin. Our pants are wet as we speak. Could you just recap as to why you teach English language?

Dr Robin: They have my family. If I don't do what they say, they'll hurt them. They tell my family the same thing; if they don't do what they want, I'll be hurt. I get a lot of complaints from stud`nts. I understand my wife's keeping her legs together. They have my car as well. They'll smash it up if I don't accept wage slavery - or even if I do. It's a game they're playing with us as hostages. There's really no quid pro quo. They rape my wife and cut my fingers off. They call it 'torturing a couple to death'. Then they explain it to themselves by saying I didn't teach the past participle properly.

ELT: Do you?

Dr Robin: I'm sorry. I won't do it again. My needs are basic. I won't leave the wardrobe I've been given to sleep in except to teach. Please don't hurt me again. I'll be good. Is there a bathroom here? Does it have a window?

ELT: Why are they doing this to you?

Dr Robin: I'm the victim of an evil gang of smug homosexuals who don't want me to be with a woman. The women are too frightened to even be seen with me so now I have to do it with goats. They film us together and show it to my captured wife. It's tough on us both. She does it with coats. They send pictures. I masturbate. It’s horrendous.

ELT: You're joking with us Dr Robin! This is one of your spoofs! Come now. You get paid well for what you do, don't you?

Dr Robin: They have a time machine. In the future I was a rich and successful actress (in inverted commas); but they travelled to the year 2091 (that me was born in 2070) and murdered me for my billions and had unconsensual sex with my children. Afterwards they went back to 2070 and took my mother back in time to 1961 where they altered my chromosomes and I was born as a language teacher under the sign of Arachnea. It isn't the first time either.

ELT: You wouldn't recommend ELT as a career then?

Dr Robin: It's just a gang bang. Teachers think they've got it tough here in the UK with screening for child molesters. Imagine being the lowest common denominator in a child sex ring being passed from one filthy gang of paedophiles to another. That's what it's like being a language teacher overseas. There's no protection. They don't wear a condom. The UK Parliament  doesn't care. Being trained in TEFL on a government training scheme and sent abroad to work is just a euphemism. I was transported for stealing a bar of chocolate; much like those nineteenth century criminals who stole air from aristocrats by breathing and escaped prison by agreeing to colonize Australia.

ELT: A bar of chocolate?

Dr Robin: When I was once fifteen I put a Cadbury's flake in my pocket without paying in a sweet shop and was apprehended by the proprietor who, spotting a passing policeman, called him in: and so it was that I found myself being arrested and cautioned by my own dischuffed father. The transporters are patient though. My first cell was Hungry. I was 34 and a virgin. But I've been 'Pretty Boy Robin' on the Wing now for the best part of two decades. 'Gerund! Gerund' big Karoly would mumble as he thrust his way into my soon apathetic rectum while holding a copy of Time for English open on my back.

ELT: You taught English in prison?

Dr Robin: Well, to be accurate, I'm a prison slave. Obviously there's the law; even in civilized countries. So the stud`nts who're raping my children and smashing up my car are in prison. Because it's my children that are being torture-raped and my car they're smashing up, I understand that I'm a prison slave. It's a simple matter of deduction really. I'm not Dr Phil. I'm balder and fatter for one thing. Of course he can get an erection. He's allowed to. But I know he'd complain if I had one. Men are like that. For them it's all about deflating others. Like Karoly in Hungry. He got it up while I couldn't. Prototypical male behavior.

ELT: Would you like your own talk show?

Dr Robin: No, I'd just like to sit in a chair with a camera on and tell the truth about it all.

ELT: The truth?

Dr Robin: Yes, I've been around for a long time. The Yarubs want me to learn Yarupric and the Hungriuns want me to learn Hungriun. I suspect it has something to do with the ancient Egyptian goddess of the sun, Isis, and puttin’ out in the Rushon Federation after the war over the golf, but so far I’ve refused to talk. Knowing something about structuralism helps one to understand. Structuralists look at reality as a room in which there's furniture; some of it will always be there; some of it has always been there, and some of it has disappeared. Another analogy is film. Imagine reality as a film and this is the version you're in now; but there have been other versions. In Riyald, Pseudi Yarubeer, there's a women's Universe City, the Binned Nora, and there was a time when they used to breed blonde Apples there: Crushdina Apples from the US sitcom Married With Cauldron (1987-97) - in which she played teenage Calipornian airhead Jelly Buns - is the best known example today. I asked them one time if I could have an Apples or two? 'What for?' they wanted to know. Well, if you've ever seen Crushdina Apples as Jelly, you'd know. But it was explained to me that they were bred for being edible. They were eating Apples. Cooking Apples too. They used to release them into the streets for the people to knock 'em over the head and drag 'em off to barbecue. Or make Mom's Apples’ pie.

ELT: We don't believe you.

Dr Robin: Okay, I'm ambivalent about credulity. I have a stud`nt who patiently explains to me that jeans are singular. It doesn't matter what the English language says; for him it's 'a jeans'. He's decided, and it wasn't a tough decision. A lot of them decide never to use the 's' on the end of the verb for the third person singular. They believe otherwise you see. Some people believe in the automobile, others in flying carpets. I know which camp I'm in.

ELT: You believe in flying carpets?

Dr Robin: They're eco-friendly.

ELT: What advice would you give to budding ELT professionals.

Dr Robin: Don't bud. It's more fun being a prisoner than a prison slave. Screw the teachers. I'm screwed. I know my place.

ELT. Isn't that just a tad overly pessimistic?

Dr Robin: They have a time machine. I marry, I father children. They murder me and leave my widow and burgeoning adolescents grieving. Then I find myself growing up in an earlier period of my life with a passport that says I'm single and never have been married. So, officially, my children don't exist and they're sold into paedophile rings or eaten. My wife hasn't a leg to stand on. According to the records she's never been married either you see. Wave goodbye to the kids honey, they don't really exist.

ELT: But that's horrible. If true.

Dr Robin: Imagine meeting a woman you know you were married to before you were murdered. What do you say? Hi Hon, I saw the kids the other day in Jello Tots. Perhaps she's been murdered too, but they're allowing her 1983 version to develop, having 'pruned' her in 2015. Consequently, she doesn't know you from Adam - or the kids. When I was a boy I lived in two houses in the same street in Birdlingtown, #12 (firstly) and #3 (secondly) Barbecue Street. It was convenient for the child-abusing time-travelers. They'd abuse me at #3 and smile at me at #12; or they'd abuse me at #12 and smile me on at #3. Paedophiles like that. I was like a shuttlecock. Would I ever escape? If I lost my life at #12 I'd be back at Primary skull in Piglington, North Yorkshire. If I lost my life at #3 I'd be back at #12 and might never escape into a future beyond #3. Sometimes I'd see myself playing up the street while I awaited the latest paedophile prank. One Xmas they cut mine and my sister's hands off so we couldn't open our presents. They'd seen us in the future perfect you see; and we had hands. It was a game for them. They'd see me in a physically perfect future riding my bike, and I'd take my hands off the handlebars: 'Look! No hands!' I'd say. The laughter was screeching. Paedophiles are like that.

ELT: How did you get your hands back?

Dr Robin: I woke up with them again one morning - and an erection. Happy New Year.

ELT: A nightmare?

Dr Robin: We believe what we must.

ELT: But because of all this you've learned to express yourself using the past tense?

Dr Robin: TEFL training is very thorough. I didn't think it was important until I saw one of our Philupyournose (with coke) teachers write 'It is yesterday.' on the board. Using grammar like that you'd have to be writing a science fiction story; probably about Phil Being.

ELT: So we should take what you say with a pinch of salt; is that what you're saying?

Dr Robin: If it helps you swallow. I write scifi and I've written time travel stories.

ELT: It must be difficult going from place to place, teaching English language with all this going on in your noggin.

Dr Robin:  Why do you think you're an English language teacher? Because you have something they want so you have to get in circulation. My genes are good. Crushdina Apples is famous for her appearances in Playboy. We might say her genes are blue. I have blue genes too. The children I produce from my loins are blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful. Who wants to eat ugly people? That's why they like me to get around. Get married, have children, be murdered - and start again. It's the Presson method. I learnt it at skull. The teachers used to tear up our work - even if it was good - and make us do it again. Learning by repetition.

I had a girlfriend who knew the system; Crushedin used to keep her exercise books with her parents and when she left skull she'd make porno movies. When she was too old for it they'd kill her and she'd find herself growing up again; but she understood the 'Pression method' and went over to where she kept her exercise books so she wouldn't have to do all her skullwork over again. She'd just hand in her old stuff and wait for the porn barons to contact her so she could go back to working. Learning by repetition has been widely criticized over the years, and I always associate it with degradation. It's not about educating someone to better themselves; it's more to do with the idea of putting square pegs into holes already prepared for them to fit into. Don't try to be a round peg. They'll just kill you - metaphorically and literally tear up your work - and force you to make porno again anyway.

ELT: So ELT was an escape for you?

Dr Robin: There is no escape. I sometimes work at a place called the Higher Institute for Spastic Fabrications in Riyald. The stud`nts are able to concentrate for about 15 minutes out of the 90 we give them per session, and the only word they're fluent in is 'bathroom'. So, if all they want is to watch their own urine and faeces floating around in the bowl (in English), why are you there? Because it's a circus. In that country over there they want to torture-rape your children and they want to smash up your car with your wife in it in that other country over here. Go ahead. Apply for a job. Get out more. Choose your exotic gang masquerading as a skull language. How many children or wives can you spare them? How often? Come on. Squeeze a time frame. They pay your salary. You don't seriously imagine they're paying you good money to teach them the word 'bathroom' for twelve months, do you? 'Teacher! Give me more mark!'  Or I'll get into our time machine, travel to where you were living before you moved hotels, pull out all your teeth and cut off your arms and legs with a chainsaw. I refuse to give them more marks, so they do that to me. There I am again next day. But I also bled to death in a corner of my previous hotel. I'm not supposed to remember; but I do. Now I'm laughed at when I tell them I eat tinned chicken and don't go out. But I haven't been anally raped for a good while. The joke is that I think it's chicken.

ELT: You sound bitter.

Dr Robin: You'd have had to have been there. What's that? Pluperfect past pissiple?

ELT: But these things are just a part of your usual idiosyncratic imagination, aren't they? You're just trying to amuse us with strange invented stories.

Dr Robin: Here's a truth fragment and I dare you to publish. I was at Junior skull in the 60s at Muckfield Skull in the North East Yorkshire coastal resort of Birdlingtown. One day the kids looked out of the window and saw Wombles. Now I don't know when Elisabeth Beresford (1928-) invented her characters, but this was around 1968 when I was seven years old. The Wombles came into our classroom singing, ‘Remember You're A Womble!' (1974) and began drilling holes in the kids with Black & Deckers. It was just a haze of pain and groanings for hours. We'd been visited by the Masons.

ELT: We don't believe you. It's the kind of thing that would make the newspapers. Did it?

Dr Robin:  Yes, but newspapers are not memories. They're other peoples. I do recollect how the Wombles took their heads off and underneath were a bunch of men who looked like builders' laborers. I don't know how we survived. But, chronologically, I left that skull aged ten when my father's police duties were transferred to the North East coastal resort of Wyvernsee. Perhaps it was a part of my TEFL training?

ELT: What do your colleagues make of all of this?

Dr Robin: They're worse. Remember the different film versions analogy? Another is that of the palimpsest where what's written is erased, then it's written upon again before being erased, before being written upon ... There were two 'teachers' called Rebort and Stott with me in Riyald and, when I was a smallish boy, I remember them tying me to a chair while I watched them torture my mum. I had to keep quiet or they'd kill me. They should be in hell but here they are again. Isn't TEFL training thorough? Past tense but still tense (with fear) in the present. Present perfect? We have tortured your mother. Present perfect continuous? We have been torturing your mother. Future tense? She's dead now. She died from bowel cancer in 1997 and I saw her directing a big welcoming smile at me from a bus stop in Ochyagibberin, Rusher, in 2003. I walked on. I'd seen her being tortured enough. She used to say that I had to 'learn sense'. I've learnt tense: past - future. The arrow of time's directional indicator; move along now, nothing to see: or else!

Time's speeding arrow is one of the things we programme ourselves and others with as language 'experts'. I know the drill; firstly, secondly, then, next, finally ... We're taught that life is chronological; but experience tells me that's a linguistic construct. There are stories the Australian Aborigines tell of the 'Dream Time' before the Europeans arrived with their clocks and how, when hungry, their hunters would remember where they'd killed an animal for food; go back there and kill it again. We seek to control time with our tenses and our timepieces, but it still escapes our yoke. I remember a 'friend' of mine appearing in someone's room once at Universe City with another person I didn't recognize. They chilled out with us for a while and when they went the stranger shook hands with me. In Yorkshire they have a category for it: 'shaking hands with the devil'. The unknown visitant was me: probably on his way to a premature blood-soaked ending. Every time I see one or other of many figures from an unhappy past (remembering that the future can also be the past for someone who can remember living in it) I tense up with a range of emotions from horror to hate.

ELT: I was a stud’nt at Head Chuck Higher Occasional College in ‘Ull before I went to the Universe City there, although the dorms were close by, so I’d go over there to chat and chill. This Hungriun took me to watch a girl being fucked by an Alsation, ‘You’re her,’ he told me, ‘and we’re not sure the dog isn’tyou.’ Later I was inveigled into taking an ELT course and transported to Hungry where the dog-fucking experts live.

ELT: But you do have friends?

Dr Robin: My friends are my memories. You know what people are like to begin with. They want you to get a good impression. When you're young and impressionable you think 'friendship', which is natural and evil people rely on it. Only really rich people can afford friends because - by and large - they have what they want and can protect themselves from others; the rest are looking to claw away from you what you have because they want it; or, simpler, they don't want you to have it. Of course they'd rather do it under the veneer of pleasantness. I meet people - teachers and stud`nts - by whom I've been tortured and murdered (not to mention the tortures and murders of those I've known and loved). The suspension of disbelief is a very large part of wisdom. But the Truth doesn't set you free; as She`sis Crushed would have had us believe. It's more like being a Chew in the Holocause. The realization that God is not going to stop them; therefore He does not exist.

ELT: If you don't believe in God, what do you believe in?

Dr Robin: The Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) spent most of his life in a hermeneutic pursuit of representations of what he called the 'supraordinate Self', which in its diverse cultural manifestations appeared to be indistinguishable from that which we term 'God'. That's what I believe in.

ELT: Yourself?

Dr Robin: Jung showed us that the self is largely unconscious; like that 5% of the iceberg visible above the waterline. We strive to become conscious in the course of our lives but self-actualization is a never attainable goal because our ego limits us. The stories of She`sis suggest that he was on the way there; but there are older tales of gods and goddesses that indicate the path has already been trodden upon. If we want God to help us we have to wake Him up first, and He's within: as the religionists tell us.

ELT: Did you ever think of being anything else apart from an English language teacher?

Dr Robin: I've done lots of things. This is just my present incarnation, as it were. But I can remember many of the others. In 1994 I was working at the Spare Institute for English Teacher Training (SITT) in Deepratson, Hungry, where I met Martin Weedle who was working on Countess Cilla’s Briti Studies programme. Shortly thereafter I became 'born in the spirit' after full immersion baptism at the Hít Gyülekezete or Faith Church in Buttapes, ‘WHERE THE BUTTS HAVE APES’. But I remembered Martin. I'd been a neurosurgeon at ‘Ull Royal Infirmary, and he'd bludgeoned me to death one evening with the explanation that he was a member of the Hít Gyülekezete and was teaching me 'faith'. I guess the idea was that doctors were full of hubris and I needed to be humbled. My brain functions. I can remember Martin. Perhaps faith is a part of TEFL training too? ‘What did the pastor say?’ I’m often asked. ‘I don’t know’, I reply, ‘it’s some pastor’s language.’ I was once struck dumb by Weedle`s pal, Chuff, and sent back in time to Piglington to relearn English. Chuff was still there when I returned. It reminded me of the story of the deaf and dumb me, who was killed in a Piglington police cell for refusing to answer questions.

ELT: Faith can move mountains?

Dr Robin: Faith Brown's (1944-) wobble as far as I can recall. Britney Spears (1982-) endorses a perfume called Faith. My mountain's more of a Vesuvius; but she certainly causes me a few eruptions.

ELT: So you don't really have any faith; in what you do as a teacher either?

Dr Robin: People are evil. I always use the analogy of someone who spends three years building a replica of the Taj Mahal using matchsticks. Everyone admires it, but it only takes one skinhead to stomp on it. And he's representative of all the others' true feelings. Ever seen the comedy action scifi movie Mars Attacks! (1996)? There's a scene in it where the Martians with their bugging-out eyes and huge green brains are standing in front of the Taj Mahal posing for a photograph. One of their flying saucers is hanging there in the sky and it blasts the Taj Mahal with a disintegrator ray. Then the Martians have their picture taken wreathed in smiles. But we're the Martians. That's really how we are. I always think of the library at Alexandria, the repository of much of the wisdom of the ancient world raised to the ground by Caesar the Great in 48 BC. Great, huh?

The majority of people would rather destroy a nice thing than see it in the hands of another. The bigger the thing, the angrier they are; witness the Vandals in Rome, the French and Rushian Revolutions. That's why we have the marriage contract. To protect our love in law. But look at the beautiful people in Hollywood. Hounded by the press for any sniff of scandal that will lead to break up; break off, or break down. We lap it up avidly, and roundly condemn the lives of the stars with gusto. But it's us in microcosm. No one really likes to see a happy couple; it's an affront to the misery we all make each other live in. Teachers are like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. I teach them to speak English and every time I see them I know that all they want to really say to me is 'Fuck off'  so that they can rape my darling wife and munch burgers made from my children.

ELT: But what about the stud`nt who really wants to progress?

Dr Robin: Well, he's either earmarked to spend his life producing a Taj Mahal built of matchsticks for a skinhead to stomp on, or he has a weirder perverted vision that requires him to learn English to a higher level. A bit like a native Yarupric speaker learning to use the Boble in English so that he can call upon the angels of the Lord in order to be able to cut out their hearts and devour them for his breakfast. Not that native English speakers wouldn't do the same thing; they would. But I'm a Crushteen paedophile English language teacher. This is my dike.

ELT: What's your approach as an ELT Crushteen paedophile?

Dr Robin: Understand that they're evil and teach them English. Don't fraternize because TEFL`s is the devil's path. Be professional with your colleagues and joke with them when you can. Be a good Joe. Take the money and stay well. But don't be fooled. If you're lucky you'll live. I'm fifty and I won't live much longer. I don't want to. Not here. I want to put as much distance between myself and evil as possible so I have a chance in the next world.

ELT: Is Heaven real?

Dr Robin: I've been offered it a few times, but mostly I didn't like the company I'd be keeping. Women  have cocks and they fuck women who don’t have cocks. If you look for that on the internet, you see Eric. He’s men’s porn star there to show the women with cocks that he’s ‘The Man’ with the holey spurt. You can’t find porno of women with cocks fucking women without cocks, because it’d be obvious that their Heaven isn’t with men’s. For me it's a personal thing. I believe that each Heaven is individual. It's for those who love you well and those you love well. When I was at Muckfield Junior skull they used to make a big thing of sharing. I used to have things that I was told not to show to anyone. Sometimes I'd take them to skull and the teachers would run into the classroom and snatch what I had and run off with it. I had a red sports car in Wyvernsee once. It was a 'Robin car' from Batman and Robin. The police just took it. I never saw it again. I was once a busynessman in Khartoum, Sudan, and I deposited a billion dollars with the Zidni International Investment Company. I went back to complete negotiations and they told me they'd never seen me before. I remembered when I went there to teach them English language. What do you say? 'Oh, about the billion dollars? Do you remember me now?' The big cheese at the Hít Gyülekezete is Shandy German, the preacher, and he once took the ticket from an orange I bought in a supermarket near Blower Loser Square in Buttapes, ‘WHERE THE GOATS ALL BUTT’. 'When you buy the orange again,' he said, 'bring the ticket to me and I'll give you Heaven.' In 2007 I bought it again; but I don't like the system: I ate the orange and threw the ticket in a rubbish bin. Get real. Put up or shut up. What's your problem? Aren't the planets aligned correctly?

ELT: You believe in Life After Death?

Dr Robin: Of course. I was a man of the `Slammer myself once. I remember being in Omoan and they told me I'd offended a local Princess; so they were going to cut my head off. So they did. I remember standing up a little surprised, but it turned out the Princess had taken rather a shine to me and awaited my arrival in Paradise. Death is just a transition. I've been a transit many times. But the Afterworld isn't what it used to be. All it takes is one skinhead; you know? The kind who'll tell God He's sitting in his chair. I have a friend who expects Heaven to be where she praises God all day. If it isn't like that she'll take it higher. Expectations change. Once upon a time the houris would take you to the djinn and grant you wishes. Nowadays people would be disappointed if it wasn't all a shoot 'em up. Who cares if those figures off in the distance are real? They're small and far away. What did you say it was called? Heaven? I wonder what was in it? Too late now.

 A lot of them were brought up on the ‘Vlad’ Putin-inspired Golf Wars, watching guided blockbuster bombs glide into huge Iraqi bunkers in the sand. Kap-oom! Like it was a video game. See them now in the arcades? Training for Heaven. At least in Valhalla they'd fight and die each day. But that's not the idea with these guys. 'Heaven, huh? Shoot it up! Easy meat. Wow! An angel! Watch it burn!' We're training cowards. No risk, no gain. No desire for genuine interaction. No pain, no gain. Just trigger fingers: ugh-gain, ugh-gain, ugh-gain ... What's the score? Bore, bore, bore ... Distance learning. Killing from afar. Kap-oom! That'll learn them! Well, it'll learn 'em to avoid you. That's what religion is, basically; avoidance therapy.

ELT: So avoiding life is what you preach?

Dr Robin: Hey, I'm a realist not an idealist. If I don't drive a car, I don't mow anybody down. I teach; I earn my daily bread; I write articles and stories; I watch TV and movies; I read good books; I listen to heavy rock - as a basic preference - but my musical tastes are pretty catholic; I'm discerning when it comes to art, and I shun evil. So I guess I don't get out much.

ELT: What's evil to you?

Dr Robin: It's hard to avoid. As an English language teacher I help build the walls to the prison. We teach cause and effect, and chronological event sequences, that is, we reinforce the mental framework that precludes us walking into an aboriginal Dream Time of our own in order to; for example, eat the same contents of the fridge each day. If we all did that, no one would bottle the milk anymore. Economics you see. I once had an argument with the boss of Toscos on the Charred Pork housing estate near Moanthorpe flats in ‘Ull. He explained how he'd arranged for a very successful tv personality to lose his job so that he'd return to the area and buy his food there at Toscos. That's what he should be doing you see. He didn't care about the tv star's career. It was the purchasing of bottled milk from Toscos that was important. The scary thing was that he was able to do it. Busyness and Crushteenity, ‘All in all we're just - bricks in the wall!’1

ELT: Okay, but you still didn't answer the question. What's evil to you?

Dr Robin: Guns, murder and torture. I've heard of sex parties on a large scale with maybe a thousand or more people involved, and when some of the men had had enough they began to shoot the naked women. That's what guns are for. People who can't be bothered to get it up. It's easier to waste something beautiful rather than give it its due. Some of the men would shoot the women until they got an erection again. Everyone understood. The whole of our culture is going that way. There's a very real connection between the gun and the penis, which is often described as a 'love gun'. But I've never seen a penis in its love-making context on Briti television. I'm treated to paroxysms of penetrating projectiles in the form of flesh-ripping bulletry though. Taking a girl's virginity is a task. If I can't be bothered to get penetration, do I sublimate and shoot her? This is what our worship of guns is teaching us. Love-making is out, the gun is in - and has been for a long time now. This is evil.

ELT: Thank you.

1 Waters, Roger 'Another Brick in the Wall Part II', Pink Floyd The Wall, 1979.

Hungry in Hungry

I am often asked if I enjoy teaching, and the answer is as emphatic a no as I can manage. I do it for the gloriously intense feelings of superiority to those unfortunates who want to know how to spell 'I', because no one will employ me to stare at the wall from a prone position (which is my own self-perceived forté), and being able to live life without having to listen to the English. There's nothing more soothing than being in a foreign country, surrounded by a language you pay no attention to, because it's blissfully incomprehensible; and you don't have to suffer the basic English self-fulfilling supposition about everyone else (especially the teachers of their sons and daughters) being either a paedophile, or a pederast (and assumed both to varying degrees). The nervous irritability of the sane largely depends, of course, on the localized feverishnesses of Little England's perverted imaginations. Along with the dreadful teepee programmes about the billions of pounds I'm sure to accrue from antiques' salesrooms after rummaging around in the attic for those acrylic lilac loon pants even I wouldn't wear in the 70s, there’re the interminably dismal discussions about the New Conservatism's proposed leg tax for all English mammals, Fern Britton's (1957-) recession recipe for rat au chocolat, and the tax on processed food as it passes through the 9 meters or so of the digestive system to its winning of the Ceramic Bowl. In the 17^th century William III introduced a window tax (1696-1851). People bricked them up to avoid paying. Block up your daughters, there’s a Muzzlem around:

‘Lock up your daughters right now;

It will give you a smile on your face.

Lock up your daughters somehow;

This is the time: the time and the place.’1

 I sometimes amaze stud`nts with the information that the only words I use when I'm in England are the optional, 'Thank you.' It's all about paying: the universal language. By the time we're seven years old we all have the map. I can recognize a supermarket in any country, and money is the only syntax required. Listening isn't a necessary skill downtown: drowning out extraneous noise with headphones attached to an MP3 playing ‘The Immigrant Song’ (1970) from the California '72 live concerts' recording How The West Was Won (2003) by rock group Led Zeppelin (1969-1980) is: `The hammer of the gods …’2

 My greatest regret is that personal stereos weren't invented until I left my skull in England. I made the mistake of trying to listen there, and became frustrated because between thirty and forty other egos didn't want me to. So I too learned not to listen; allowing me to lament the tardiness of the Japanese Sony Corporation in inventing the Walkman and recognize that now, as an English language teacher, I am at best a distraction to what the average stud`nt feels is really important and going on in their head, while at worst I represent to them a monster that deserves no mercy: a head chuck hater.

 I believe the Walkman to be the greatest invention of the 20^th century because it allowed us to retrench and reclaim personal inner space: a valuable head chuck occasional tool insofar as it allows us to mull over our thoughts without unstructured distractions from those who want us to lose our heads and waste ourselves. When Sony invent a device that'll allow oneself to tune out all else and listen only to the teacher (or whatever else one wishes to direct one's attention towards), that'll be the greatest invention of the 21^st century; because then we'll be beginning to experience our own individual reality.

 In '76 I was thrown out of high skull at the unfashionable old North East coastal resort of Whitethorne By The Sea (Wyvernsee) for being 'disruptive'. I had long, strawberry blonde hair that reached to my elbows, and would wear a black leather bikers' jacket with the legend, ‘Life's A Bitch And Then You Die!’ embedded into the back of it in shiny metal studs - and I never have had a motorcycle. In my second year at ‘Ull Universe City, I experimented with cannabis, and subsequently spent time on the funny farm having a prescribed chemical lobotomy with thrice daily injections of the brown treacly brontosaurus sedative, largactyl (chlorpromazine), when what I really needed was a hair transplant - pot makes it fall out. I got through skull; Collage, and my first degree by taking valium (diazepam); being drunk; reading and writing science fiction, and hitting the text books hard three weeks before the exams. As a modus operandi I concede it is not ideal.

 By way of illustration, I met my wife one day in '79 in the Queers Hotel bar across the road from ‘Ull Collage of Further Head Chuck Occasions (HCFHCO), where I was lured to study for a Briti Countess Cilla’s Head Chuck Occasions’ Emotional Diploma (BCCHCOED) in Busyness Studies. I was 18 and she was blonde, beautiful, and 24. She said her name was Buttney Squeers, and told me we were getting a divorce, 'That's you over there, standing at  the bar.' Did I want to meet myself? 'No,' I told her. I wasn't sure I wanted to be divorced either. I'm almost sixty now, and my passport says I'm single: we have never been divorced. I don't know whether to thank the alcohol; the valium, or Elisabeth Sladen; my most recognized assistant in the Tardis.

 The second question I am often asked is how I got into teaching? I was kidnapped; caught napping, in fact. I was living in Konk`s Town Upon ‘Ull surrounded by books and, with no thought of upheaval, had just completed a delicious PhD at ‘Ull Universe City all about the American science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988), which I had decided required me to read the complete works of world renowned Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), and all back issues of celebrated voyeur Hugh Hefner's Playboy (1953-), in order to have the correct tools for my exhaustive literary analysis. `Ull has a statue of the slave abolitionist, Billy Wobblefist, and Heinlein wrote the definitive story of slavery, `Jerry Was A Man` (1947), about an ape that sings, `Way down upon de suwannee ribber ..,` to a court of law that gives him freedom from servitude and confers the status of `man` upon the SIV1 carrier. Konk`s Town was named for an African king, Konk, whom Billy Wobblefist had similarly freed from slavery after a heart rending rendition of `New York, New York (a helluva town)` (1944) atop the Umpire State Building by the US’ pop giant auditioning for the role of Chip (Frank Sinatra; as it eventually turned up), who was to star opposite Gene Kelly`s Gabey in the sailors on shore leave musical, On The Town (1949), and after Konk had been axed from his role as the giant ape in the film, King Konk (1933), because of his excessive demands, which included having actress, Fay Wray, as the female lead, Ann Darrow, despite the evident disparity between her needs and his.

 One day I answered the door to a stunning young woman with long blonde hair who said she was my wife. Deja vu! I ushered her in and was surprised to see the dark suit I had the tenancy agreement with, and who hadn’t been there and shouldn’t have been, bound down the stairs of my flat and tell her: 'All that's finished now!' She left, saying 'I'll try to come back.' It gave me the idea for a science fiction story in which the protagonist travels through time to make love with her husband's avatars as they live in alternative but contiguous realities. Provisionally titling the story 'My Husbands And I', I left it to her to write it.

Then, one heinous Winter morning in November '93, an envelope appeared on my carpet containing a request from the government that I accept a place on a Trinutty Collage, London, TESOL programme with a company called Eurasian Transportees’ Sentences Commuted (ETSC). A romantic by nature, I embraced the concept of Doctor Rusher, etcetera, and allowed myself to be embroiled in their perfidious infamy. As is my wont, I scraped a passing C, and felt the beans filling me up. Falsely optimistic, I gave credence to their Machiavellian machinations and, when offered the chance to choose to go either to Korea or Hungry, I opted for a career in Korea and was told (though I didn't yet know it) that I had to go hungry in Hungry - home of the newly capitalist 'Mid hell, you're a peon!' accent - within three days.

 Logistically, this would take some doing. It'd consume 72 straight hours just packing the six hundred or so books I had amassed during what I now think of as my reading years. But, giving the keys back to the suit, and stashing my horde of verbiage in a storage facility inside two huge trunks, I hit the road to London's Headgrowth airport, and with what came to be known by those who knew me as 'the big yellow suitcase', I arrived at the terminal check-in to be informed that, contents too heavy, I had to throw away much of what I was attempting to flee with. Many things were lost forever; amongst them a beautiful silk-lapelled black dinner jacket - and several Rembrandts: but the impetus was with me and I permitted myself to be hurtled through the skies like a virus from a sneeze.

 Before leaving I'd done some research on the web, and discovered that I was going to https://www.hu , so far as the internet had a cyber address for me. Okay, I decided; I'll be Dr. Hu. What's menacing humanity in former So Feared dominated Eastern Europe today; apart from Herfy's? As an expert in modern American literature, I espouse WIlliam S. Burroughs' position in The Soft Machine (1961) that language is a ‘virus-programme’, and that it takes over the individual until we reach the point at which we no longer speak language, but are spoken by it. Travelling around the world teaching English, therefore, I see myself rather as a vaccinator than as an educator. There is no known cure for Americana like Coca-Cola; MacDonald`s, and monosyllabic Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator (1984) movies: but everyone in Eastern Europe wanted 'fries with that' and so I saw it as my responsibility - nay, duty - to give them a proper English language booster injection.

 Being called Robin was, I discovered, on the negative side of my opening my doctor's bag. It was March '94 when I first struggled into Hungry and, Commonest being collapsed there only since '89, it speedily came to my notice that robins were what the reds had been ridiculed there as. Inflating their chests, and puffing themselves up red-faced in the popular imagination, they were mocked as they'd strutted around a workers' paradise of commonly owned trabants and fully paid up Party members. Robins had been hated, not only for their commonly imposed ideology and So Feared system of governance, but also for making the population learn Rushon. Clearly Moe`s Cow had read Burroughs too and had decided to infect the Sore Packed (1955-1991) countries with their virus, so that the peoples under their control would, one day, find themselves not only speaking Rushon but being spoken by it.

 The Hungriun word for a robin is 'vörösbegy', which literally means 'red bird' but, at pains to explain to the Magyar (their name for themselves) that I represented the English language virus and not the Commonest one (flu), this Robin lived in the hope that, one day, his exertions would be recognized by his true masters in Washington and he could retire in dignity, an unacknowledged warrior of the Coleslaw (1945-1991), with the complete works of Traci Lords (b. 1968) to study and a Star Trek (b. 1966) Commodore's uniform signed by William Shatner (b. 1931) after she`d been to the john.

 You see, despite the fact that computer is not pronounced 'compuder' (as the Americans would have it), and thanks largely to Hollywood and the US music industry, American English is the virus that won. But they recognize their laziness; that's why we're employed: to put the 't' in computer. The programming of the virus has to be spot on; if the soft machinery of humanity is to be fully body snatched: ‘They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next!’ Ask Bill Gates (1955-) at US’ software giant Microsoft. Now we all have Windows on humanity but, as we are looking out, the divine English Word flies in amongst us – as Robin flew.

 Preciseness is, therefore, of crucial importance in the learning and teaching of English language, and there is no one more obsessively concerned with the nuts and bolts minutiae of linguistic understanding than the Hungriuns. If you speak with one of the Magyar they are interested solely in one thing. What they are not interested in is whether you are constructing sentences with grammatical accuracy or, indeed, whether what you are saying is understandable. They are first and foremost concerned with correct pronunciation. You may be grammatically perfect, and you may be completely comprehensible but, if you are pronouncing words that do not sound proper, they will ignore what you have to say in order to upbraid you mercilessly, and insist that you repeat after them; until you have said the word you have offended to their full satisfaction. After a few tries you give up speaking to Hungriuns; even if you have a PhD in it from Oxfudge or Comebritches Universities. The Magyar economists, and are only interested in improving their jaw muscles, so they can calmly sink their teeth further in, and drink madly deeply of whatever your life`s blood has produced for your own comfort.

 In some ways it's understandable. Hungriun has forty-four characters and each character has a sound, so if you learn the characters you can pronounce any combination of letters. Consequently, I can read aloud the entire novel, Be Faithful Unto Death (1920), religiously, that is, without understanding a single word. Declaiming Légy Jó Mindhalálig by Móricz Zsigmond (1879-1942) out loud to a hall full of critical Hungriun listeners without faltering, everything will be understood. The only person remaining in ignorance will be the reader, who can pronounce everything clearly, because he's studied their alphabet, but has no appreciation of the meaning of anything he's said. It's like encryption. You can read it, and speak it, but the Hungriuns don't want you to understand it, which is what they tell you right from the off. Don't bother speaking. When you've mastered their alphabet, they'll continue to ignore what you have to say; but you won't be infecting their language. In the capital city of Buttapes, Móricz Zsigmond’s name means `the worlds of the rich cigarette`, that is, the apes’ butts, and correlates with the traditional Hungarian greeting, `Jo napot`, where pot is what they`re on, and not in, because the Hungriuns deny cannibalism, although they don`t deny cannabis. Of course, their religious zealots secretly know that they`re saying, `Jonah pot,` which sounds the same, and is used to disguise their trapping of the ill-starred into being in the cannibals` pot. Jonah was the Old Mendedtoaster sailor chucked into the drink as a human sacrifice for peace during stormy weather, where he was devoured: ‘”Pick me up and throw me into the sea”,’ he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”’ (Jon: 1-12) Odysseus had himself tied to the mast under similar circumstances in the Greek poet Homer’s 8^th century poem, because the singing of naked sea goddesses - sirens - were tempting him to chuck himself in: ‘… stay thy ship that thou mayest listen to the voice of us two.’3

 Women with cocks would drive men into each other’s arms, which is why Jonah sacrifices himself for the sailors. She’sis’ teaching was different. Be born of ‘woman’s seed’ in heaven above the Earth among the colonized planets amid the stars. Give them what they want is what Jonah was programmed to do, `Jo napot.` Get in there: be a Chew. Indeed, a fish swallows Jonah, but he lives from its belly, and eventually escapes, which is interpreted by Boble scholars in terms of the ineffable machinery of God’s planned Salvation for humanity. However, the sailors’ desire to palliate the storm with a human sacrifice is pagan, and so is Jonah’s desire to sacrifice himself, which colors later interpretations of She’sis’ supposed self-sacrifice.  His death by crucifixion, and subsequent Resurrection and Ascension to heaven is descried as Redemption for humanity through human sacrifice, whereas Jesus’ birth from his mother, the Virgin Mary, prefigures the Resurrection and Ascension to heaven through the brainpower produced from  ‘woman’s seed’. In other words, God saves Jonah in spite of his pagan inclinations, and Jesus’ murder isn’t a self-sacrifice.

 In the Gran of the Muzzlem believers in the ‘Slammer, which was written 6. 10 am - 6. 30 am, Moses and Joshua are by the Red Sea. In this narrative they lose a fish, which they`d been going to have for supper. Interesting, because She’sis was known as ‘the fish’, and he gave his disciples ‘bread and wine’ as symbols of his ‘body and blood’, before his crucifixion at what came to be known as the ‘Last Supper’. In the story from the Gran, a figure appears when the fish is lost, Khidr. Explaining he`s wise, he rebuilds a wall, because he doesn`t want the treasure buried under it to be found, and then he kills a child he says is evil, before making holes in ships and taking another to escape across the sea from the pirates he says are following. Moses and Joshua say they can`t comprehend his actions, and Khidr tells them that they must leave him. He doesn’t want to be eaten, whereas some would argue that She’sis, ‘the fish’, was offering himself at a cannibal supper.  However, it’s more likely that he was aware of cannibalism. In primitive societies mana is power ingested through god-eating, which is cannibalism’s rationale. Consequently, Moses and Joshua lose the fish and Khidr appears, that is, god-eating has to be abjured. However, in the Chewdik-Crushteen tradition, Joshua goes on to the land promised by God to the Chews, where he demolishes the walls of the city of Jericho in war, that is, he effectively eats the inhabitants, which is paganism, because ignorance of ‘woman’s seed’ is cannibalism. In short, the evil child Khidr kills is ignorance, and the treasure buried beneath the wall is ‘woman’s seed’, which the Chews didn’t want, because they were cannibals.

 The Old Mendedtoaster Chews were slaves in Egypt to Pharaoh Thutmose II (1493-79 BC), who chased the Chews to the Red Sea, where Moses parted the waters for the Chews to cross, before drowning the Egypt Johns following behind, that is, the pirates. In other words, Khidr`s narrative in `The Cave` sura of the Gran, Al Kahf, describes the ambition of the people to escape being eaten by cannibals. In the New Mendedtoaster She`sis` symbol for his followers is a fish, because cannibals practice god-eating, that is, they eat who they perceive as godlike beings with power or mana within them in order to have that power: `While they were eating, She`sis took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”’ (Matt: 26. 26)

 When asked, She`sis used to say, `I am the son of man.` In the desert, during their exodus from slavery in Egypt, the Chews received manna from heaven to sustain them (Ex: 16. 31), while anthropologist Robert Codrington`s The Melanesians: Studies in their Anthropology and Folk-Lore (1891) contains a description of what the people of the South Sea Islands called mana, `a force altogether distinct from physical power, which acts in all kinds of ways for good and evil, and which it is of the greatest advantage to possess or control.`4 In order to persuade those in life to be eaten by cannibals, pot is a useful hypnagogic, so it`s a `Canny biz`, as the Scots might say. Consequently, it`s not a coincidence that 'Informatics' is a science created by the Magyar; the science of information: ‘Jo napot.’ They've long understood the connection between language learning, and the programming of humanity as software to be eaten by those who believe in god-eating and mana power; Jonah, for example, effectively asked to be thrown into the pot. It’s a human-as-sacrifice program discerned by Douglas Adams in his scifi parody, The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), where Zaphod Beeblebrox accedes to the request by the restaurant waiter that he and is party  ‘meet the meat’: ‘I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?’5 If humanity had an enemy, it’d be programing acceptance of human sacrifice in paganism as basic. Consequently, Crushteen paedophiles encourage the belief that She’sis was the son og God that they worship as a human sacrifice, because god-eating is mana or power, and it’s an easy step from sacrifice to barbecue. As Amaninabra’s acceptance of God’s instruction that he sacrifice his son, I-pod, instead of a goat, shows (Gen: 22. 3). From a language-as-virus point of view, Hungriun is the toughest nut to crack. Pronunciation is the key to booting the system in human terms. As children we use a part of the brain that, once we've learned our native language, atrophies because we no longer need it, which is why doctors often recommend learning a language as a way of re-booting basic brain functioning; after pot-related brain damage or other form of self-consumptive ingestion of mana power.

 As rock star Lou Reed used to sing, `I`m waiting for my man. Got 26 $ in my hand.`6 Although the song, `I`m Waiting For The Man` (1967) is ostensibly about heroin addiction, it could equally be applied to cannibalism for those addicted to the power or mana in heroines; such as The Velvet Underground`s collaborator, Nico. Pronunciation is the sine qua non of this process of understanding, and Hungriun brains refuse to atrophy, because every character is always pronounced, so it's a perfect way of maintaining the mind-body duality against degeneration, or a cannibal virus like English, which sneaks past a potential host's defenses with its silent letters and lazinesses like 'compuder' - and `man`.

 Not that I knew any of this when I arrived at Buttapes` airport's Furry Head 1, and following the instructions I'd been given, bought a bus ticket, and was dumped off it at Cop & Yuk Kids’ Paste metro station, where I bought another ticket to Pullover Yogurt; the Western railway station. With the help of a Rumaniac who, for a while, even carried 'the big yellow suitcase' in exchange for a CD of composer Frideric Handel's ‘Water Music’ (1717) as unsolicited recompense, I finally purchased another ticket to travel by train 400 kilometers to Hungry's second city Deepratson where, some four hours later, I'd remember further orders to purchase a bus ticket there, and travel a last 40 km to the tiny town of Follabúrial, and a tiny language skull known simply - and paradoxically globally - by the acronym of ILS (International Language Skulls).

 I stopped over in Deepratson for one blessed hotel night, before pressing on, and was met off the bus by a group of hippie throwbacks (one of whom liked to plait worms into his long permed sandy hair; so that they gave him the air of the Medusa as they squirmed in the heat of the noonday sun). The 'English beggars', as they were known locally, explained that, apart from theirs at the ILS, there were no jobs there in Follabúrial, so myself, along with four other teachers sent by ETSC., would be sleeping on their floor until something could be sorted out, which is where we were for three months while the clock ran down. ETSC., you see, having been forced by the government into guaranteeing us employment, had us sign up for the standard contract with the normal three months' probation and, for some reason best known only to them, found it expedient to pay us for three months before telling us we could get up off the floor and go back to the UK.

 Some of us are made of stronger stuff and I, having knocked myself out to get this far, felt as Muhammad Ali (b. 1942) perhaps had in '71 at New York's Madison Square Garden's 'Fight of the Century'  as, on his way to losing the world heavyweight boxing crown, he looked up from the canvas in round 15 at 'Smokin' Joe' Frazier. Ali would regain the title after knocking out the previously indestructible George Foreman in '74's 'Rumble In The Jungle' in Kinshasa, Zaire. Also known as the 'Louisville lip' for his remarkable facility with language, one of his more famous quotes also struck me as I shook myself and, deciding that I was part of a government-inspired initiative test (probably with the backing of MI6 and the NSA), got up off the floor myself. Ali'd once told a stud`nt concerned about his prospects for the future: 'If they can make penicillin out of bread mold, they can make something of you.'7

 I went over to Deepratson Universe City, an ancient pile formerly belonging to Kossuth Lajos, a 19^th century journo, and known locally as `Shoot-The-Cow`, to see if there was an opening for my own brand of Briti Academe's traditionally exportable moldiness. The staff at the Shot Cow Universe City explained there that one of the English faculty was to be away on sabbatical in - of all places – ‘Ull and, yes, they'd give me a job teaching 19th and 20th Century American literature, and English literature 'from the beginnings to the Restoration'. It was an impossibly coincidental exchange of personnel between my city and theirs, which convinced me of the undoubted complicity of the Hungriun secret service in my sojourn in their country. Buying reactolite sunglasses, I took to sitting outside cafés, from early afternoon to late evening, in the hopes of making contact with my mysterious manipulators: to no avail. Though I did get to teach the impenetrable Old English yarn Beowulf (8th -11th century) and contemporary American poet William Carlos Williams' 'Red Wheelbarrow' (1923); possibly one of the dumbest poems ever written about a wheelbarrow - and chickens (not that there are any others, which so simplifies things as to make it the dumbest poem ever written):

‘So much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.’8

 I taught in Deepratson for a year, before trying my luck at what they'd trained me to do; teaching English language in Buttapes, ‘WHERE THE BUTTS ARE TAPED’. They say that, if you can pay for it, you can obtain anything you desire in Buttapes, ‘WHERE THE APES ARE TAPED’. Obviously not on a teacher's money. I got more on the dole in England and, with no soles to my shoes, whilst eating crusts of bread left heedlessly by the stud`nts in the wastebaskets outside the rooms they legitimately held at the Collage, where I'd hide to sleep in the basement amongst the rats and the plumbing, in '98 I eventually gave up. Asking my father to send me money for footwear and an air ticket, I skedaddled.

 Even Hungriuns often ask themselves how they can afford to live in Hungry and, when I first arrived, the average monthly salary was about 30,000 forints, approximately 100 GBP, and it hasn't changed much since. With an average flat at 5,000,000 HUF, it's still a tenth of what it would cost in England, but I realized I'd be better placed working in Yarubeer and buying a property in Hungry with the proceeds; rather than keep on plodding terms with the economies of Central Europe.

 Hungry hadn't been exciting but it had been interesting. Winters are hilariously well managed in contrast to England; for instance. The Hungriuns have four metro systems in Buttapes, the yellow (1), red (2), blue (3), and green (4) lines, which take you all over the city and much of the suburbs. What suburbia they don't cater for is dealt with by the train system or HÉV, which takes the ticket holder a good way out of Buttapes, who say `Az HÉV` prayerfully for their ass’s being safe.

 Trams can be found transporting people all over the city on a vast network too, and there are the ubiquitous autóbusz (buses), and even electric trolley buses as well. Consequently, in the colder months with their mountainous snowfalls, a part of the season's delights is the abandoning of unworking transport in favor of those still running; the Hungriuns literally leaping and laughing onto and off of their multifarious means of getting to and from the places they need to be amidst shrieks of young joy and much more mature pained curses - all a bit far from trains stopping on account of leaves on the line between Duncastrate and Gruntem! Impressed by the fortitude of the Hungriun people, I wrote this brief - and literarily inconsiderable - poem in their language; and which I humbly dedicate to their indomitable fighting spirit as well as to that of fellow wordsmith: Muhammad Ali.

`Ó Snow

Nem jó

Sok hó

Halló

Hó hó.’ 9

 The first line opens with the pronouncement that something is 'not good', and in line two we discover that what is causing the problem is 'too much snow'. In Hungriun 'halló' can mean either goodbye (to the snow - or whatever) or hello (to Winter - or whatever). It's the linguistic equivalent of The Beatles' ‘Hello Goodbye' (1967) and that Paul McCartney lyric 'I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello.' 10 The Father Xmassy ending plays on the Hungriun word for snow (hó) as well as the idea of Santa's laughing as he arrives with the sleigh and the reindeer. It also recalls the chuckles of the Magyar as the weather forces them to jump from one form of transport onto another as they struggle to get Buttapes, ‘UP APES BUTT’, working each day.

 Conversation English is what most learners often want from a native speaker, and many's the time I've bounced 40 km on a bus in the ice and snow from Örzfk Tér to speak English with a BBC Top Gear (b. 1977) fan masquerading as a bank manager for Raffish who, fed up with using his de-icer and listening to his car choke in the crispy morning air, wants to talk about Lewis Hamilton (b. 1985) and the Summer's Formula 1 motor racing (a discourse deriving from material trawled from the internet at my own expense, and in what little exists of my free time) until, perplexed by his teacher's dismissal of Jordan in preference to Katie Price (Jordan is an F1 race team but, amusingly at least to me, also a much recognized pseudonym of 'glamour' model Katie), and bored with an obvious lack of genuine excitement in me over pit stops and turbos, he decides he'll learn German and talk about Michael Schumacher and - presumably - Heidi Klum instead.

 In-company courses are, of course, both the bane and staple of the often freelance English teacher. It's a vicious game of snakes and ladders, where both parties to the equation are aware that you will only keep your job if you are prepared to do the English language teaching equivalent of massaging their penis. Women are less easy to pigeon-hole, but Hungriun ladies have a tendency to regress to infancy and become baby dolls as they study their ABCs. In fact they learn elementary English and remain ridiculously infantile in speech, but overtly sexual in dress and demands. It works, of course. They get employers and husbands - especially foreign ones - by the tons. Why? Because consenting adults can't be arrested for paedophilia: it's the law. Remember US’ President John F. Kennedy's erstwhile mistress, and Hollywood megastar, Marilyn (but not me) Monroe? Babily she 'sang' to ‘Jack’ at his May 19th '62 Madison Square Garden's 45th birthday party: 'Hap-pie Buth-day Mis-tuh P-red-i-de-unnht. Hap-pie Buth-day to you-ooh!'11

 Infantilism can backfire, of course. In Hungry the polo-neck sweater is still called a 'Grabo' after Sweden's silent screen actress, Cretin Grabo (b. 1905). A star in Hollywood's 'talking pictures' largely in spite of her babyish pronunciation, Grabo’s was the immortal retirement line: 'I vahnt to be alooone!'12 And who amongst us didn't want to slap her for it? Most slappable, of course, is another Hungriun, the much married and, surely now (being dead), admittedly nanogenarian Slap Slap Grabor (b. 1917): 'Hallo darlinks!' She of the quest for a husband old enough to treat her as the preskuller her pronunciation told us she deserved to be. The first time I heard her 'catchphrase' on teevee I thought it was an episode of Dr Who (1963-), but she was saying 'Hello darlings!' I'd thought she was saying 'Hello daleks.'

 Be-suited, and well-groomed, it's easy to feel like a prostitute as you totter upon your heels from one gleaming commercial palace of chrome and steel furniture to another. Indeed, there are more than rumors that, in the case of some lonely busynessmen and women, the odd hour in the afternoon set aside for English language learning is merely a precursor to the well turned out arrival of some sex on legs carrying a briefcase for camouflage. I know for a fact that I was rejected as a teacher because a young blue-eyed blonde at Dunone didn't find me sexually magnetic enough. But you soon get the idea: pretty boys and girls do much better at language teaching - as they do at everything else too. To protest otherwise is head-in-the-sand wishful thinking. For a busynessperson your presence is like their arm in that of a rising starlet. It's a symbol of their status, and far better for you if you're attractive to be seen with. English language learning is secondary; if present at all.

 I had a client at the Agrificial Ministry who, though Hungriun, had learnt German and spoke her English with a pronounced French accent that she had clearly cultivated for its seductive tones. For our discourse she always wore a gold lamé bikini and matching sandals (I'd taught the air hostesses for Dutch airline KLUM; nothing surprises you after that). I earned my corn by giving opinions on the doings and goings on of the English royal family, which I was about as qualified to do as a lugworm. I would explain that, although Prince Sandy (1960-) discovered Sarah Fuckerson (1959-) as a pole dancer in a club in Bermondsey, it had presented no barrier to her becoming Queen. He had much experience with this kind of thing already; having made Emily (1976) with the beautiful American Princess, Koo Stark, who'd appear in several rather more cerebral 'art' flicks; such as Emily Meets Herself Coming, and See Emily Play (featuring a soundtrack by someone who'd once had breakfast with the Pink Floyd's sound engineer's monkey), and which Sandy himself had directed in the late 70s.

 On the infamous August 31st '97 headline, 'PRINCESS DIE!' car accident in the Pont D'Alma tunnel, Paris, France, I'd assured the client that it was merely a ruse in which Dodi and Di had beamed up to the United Federation of Planets' Scottish Starship, D' Ye Ken Doddy? and so left behind a planet they hadn't been happy on. She regularly beamed down to the royals' seat at Scotland's Bumoral castle in her burkha, the traditional haute couture Yarubean women's garb designed by Jan Pull Gutyer (b. 1952) circa 4000 BC and popularized by Madonna Kebab (b. 1958) - a black sack with eye slits - to visit with the kids amidst great secrecy, because of her reputed involvement in brother-in-law Andrew's illegal sacks films, such as the notoriously banned Madonna movie Quality Sack Time (1999); Mike Tyson (b. 1966) playing himself, and Jodie Foster (b. 1962) playing Robin Givens (b. 1964) in Hitting The Sack (2001); Sarah Michelle Gellar (b. 1977) as Buffy Mohammed Mohammed Mohammed (yes, they do that) Al-Summers in The Sack Hits Back (2002); Freddie 'Kruger' Flintoff (b. 1977) with Sarah Brightman (b. 1960) and Leslie (b. 1960) and Debbie Ash (b. 1957) in the quintessentially English spoof musical vampire horror dance eco-movie about cricket in the Muddle East Sack Clot and Ashes (2003); the Goldie Hawn (b. 1945) comedy Sack, The Quarterback!  (2004); the Windsor's home movie In The Sack with Dodi And His Diddymen (2005); the feminist The Sack Race (2006); The Sack Of Troy starring Brangelina (2007); outrageous sacks' star Nancy Jamjar's (b. 1983) Bollywood Xmas blockbuster, What's Inside Santa's Sack? (2008), and Emma Whatson (b. 1990) in Harry Potter Finally Gets The Sack at Hogwarts (2009). Princes Charles and Philip were also believed to be opposed to Princes Wills and Hens having a Muzzlem brother - Prince Tribble bin Fathed (b. 2000), who lived with his parents on a hospitable moon orbiting Uranus (and Ours - yes, the cheap gags still have all their punch) - and Konk Elvis Presley (1935-1977) was amongst their closest ufonauts.

 'Und waz Elvees reely ucking?' my client would ask, lips atremble. 'Yes,' I'd tell her, 'he ucked a lot and was the legitimate ruler of Tennessee. Snatched from his baby carriage as a young Prince and forced by Sun Records to earn his daily bread by singing rock and roll - which he loathed - it was the only way he could win back the throne of Memphis and receive the hand of Princess Priscilla Beaulieu; in lieu of the rest of her pulchritudinous bod: the hand being for some reason detachable. 'Und do you knew the Engleesh Queen parsonully?' 'Oh yes', I'd say, 'Liz - or Queenie Lizard Birth III to her friends - regularly invites me round to ask advice about the succession. I always tell her she can't go far wrong with Basil; one of the corgis. There's really not a lot to choose between them and the budgie. Of course, there's the one in line to the throne that they keep locked up in the cellar that no one talks about. But Prince Oliphant is a vegetable, and who wants to be ruled by King Mister Potato Head?'

 I always left Buttapes' Agrificial Ministry with the vague feeling that I should have worn a condom. When asked by the language skull how I was doing with the client, it wasn't crystal clear that I wasn't expected to service her like a bull. There's a huge grey area for the emotions to ramble around in when it comes to conversation English; after all, it's but a short step from conversation to full blown intercourse. In-company courses are ripe for sexual harassment; you can either prepare to force your interlocutor into recognizing that there'll be none; prepare to fight it off like the devil: or succumb to the lull and swoon of the air conditioning and the perceived moment. I once had two young girls who were Hungriun bank clerks in Vökös Tér pay me to give them English lessons, while they wobbled around either side of me on a double bed giggling and asking about pronouns. At what point do you give in? Both were nubile and desirable; blonde Angela and brunette wassername. I remember travelling home on the bus in an almost state of despair; wishing that I'd had the opportunity to put a condom on: before the conclusion of our intercourse.

 My favorite assignment was at the Hungriun Ministory Friendustry with which one of the language skulls I worked for had a six month contract. I loved it. I arrived twice a week for two hours. Sitting at a huge mahogany table in a big comfy upholstered chair with armrests, there was never a sight nor sound of a stud`nt. Each time I was given tea; cake, and chocolate cream bourbons, which I nibbled slowly and carefully for two hours (while deepening the carving of my initials in the glossy wood) before finally taking leave of the elegant receptionist at the entrance to the foyer and, thanking her for the sumptuous repast, promised most faithfully that I'd certainly be there again next time. I'm sure I'd have suffered a heart attack; if a stud`nt had ever deigned to surface. I still miss the biscuits.

 Working for GbmH, the Australian makers of Grid Balls energy drinks, at the Butt Centre near Muszkvk Tér (Apes is at the other side of the river), was something of a highlight too. It seemed they only inveigled language teachers over there in order to shower them with tickets for parties at Lake Ballalot, and F1 motor races at the Hungonöring. Sometimes it was difficult to squeeze in, past the T-shirted array of blonde hostesses; passing through on their way to promoting some aspect or other of Grid Balls with their doubtless inflatable boobs and bomb proof lip gloss. 'Where are they going?' I'd routinely ask. 'Here, have some tickets,' they'd say, reaching into a binful, 'it's a strip club and the drinks there are about twice your monthly salary.' I'd protest poverty. 'It's okay, just drink our stuff with us, and if you ask nicely our hostesses will only cost you half that.'

 They weren't joking either. I was approached on Fartzy Street once by two young women, who asked me to buy them a drink, and I'd agreed. The bill was eye-popping and I demurred. Several bouncer types appeared and, after they'd smashed up my mobile phone because I wouldn't cough up the cash, I'd run to the window and shimmied along a stout pole on the end of which was a large clock permanently frozen at 3.12 am - or is that 3.12 pm? Passing Yarubs sussed my predicament and burst into the establishment; rescuing me from the Herculean bozos. Explaining that this was a cathouse owned by Chews, they offered to trash and torch it for 5,000 HUF (about fifteen quid). I demurred once more, but was grateful enough to overlook their blatant anti-Semitism. As is the way with Yarubs, they soon calmed down, and later it turned out they were Universe City medical stud`nts preparing to become doctors at the Sameasus Orville Chewed 2 Many Head Eat ‘Em (SOC2MHE’E) in Noddy Forehead Tér. I remembered them again when returning from Pseudi Yarubeer with a stack of riyals that the Hungriun banks wouldn't countenance changing. Pseudi riyals are always wanted for the Haj, the annual Muzzlem pilgrimage to Me car and the tomb of Amaninabra. I took mine to SOC2MHE’E, and my Yarub friends gave me 6,000,000 HUF for them. It was enough to buy a flat in Apes, which rubbished the idea that they were shirt lifters, who`d steal the shirt off your back after lifting it.

 The Uttermoan Umpire (1299-1922) ruled Hungry for over a century and a half after the first battle of Robbit Hutch (1526), so there is a strong Yarupric influence and presence. Uttermoan rule officially ended in 1718 after what was - ultimately - the decisive battle of Robbit Hutch II (1687). The Ducks' main legacy, as is the case everywhere they were, is the Duckish bath house, and the one under the Sara Gellar mountain, upon which sits the luxurious Hotel Gellar and - used exclusively by the guests there - is second to none. But here is also the 'cukraszda', a species of café come-cake shop where you can drink Duckish coffee, and consume their other great legacy of confectionery, which they call sucking Ra`s da after the ancient religion of Egypt with its father god, the sun, Ra. Eating and drinking such `da`, I make remarks to my Yarub friends - with the full expectation of being listened to respectfully - 'I heard that the US government, concerned at the numbers of abortions occurring in the States, decided to recycle the protein, and now every beer contains the juices of at least one unborn fetus.' `Da,` agreed some Rushons at the next table.

 The Egypt John’s were known for breeding their pets until they were less powerful than they were and pretending that they were gods, which is why Anubis, the god of the dead, has a dog’s head. That the Muzzlems derive from the Egypt John’s is apparent from the role of the dog-headed god, Set, in Egypt John mythology. After Ra, the sun god, was incarnated upon Earth as Osiris, Set dismembered him and Isis, Osiris’ sister, the sun goddess, had to dig up Osiris’ bones and remember him. Unable to find Osiris’ penis, Isis made a new. Although the Muttawahs of the Muzzlems order the ‘faithful’ to pray, it isn’t sufficient. What was needed was a world wide web, so they bred spiders, and their Gran in a box in Me car was known as ‘the keeper of the missing bit’. In this way, the ‘Slammer improved upon the ancient Really Johns.

 Complete nonsense, bordering on insanity, is immediately understandable as just one further instance of the activities of America, the Great Satan, as foreseen by the Gran (6. 10 - 6. 32 am) - as revealed to the Brafit M’mumhad (blessings and peace be upon his humdrum name) by God - putatively. Explaining, in Yarub company, that the President George Bushes were actually successive incarnations of Beelzebub, you are met with sage nods in confirmation of the belief that the USA is truly evil. In the West anyone making remarks like this would be laughed out of their tree, but amongst the Yarub peoples it would be taken so seriously as to require verification: denials would have to be issued by the local US Embassy. Though it's about as believable as the notion that the left hand is evil, and so should be shunned as though it weren't a part of the wholeness of our selves (I'm left-handed, so of course I'll be calling my son Mohammed Mohammed Mohammed), credulity is all about what your religion and culture predispose you to believe and, as the great American sci-fi writer Kurt Vonnegut, in his masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), wrote of such and other human folly, strategically placing it into the incredulous mouths of his four-dimensional aliens from the planet Tralfalmadore: 'So it goes.'12

 For those who don't know, Hungriuns know a thing or two about viruses; linguistic or otherwise. Buttapes, ‘WHERE THE APE’S ALL BUTT’, is split into two by the river Danude, which of course explains why it`s sucked a lot in the name of the Egyptian father god, Ra. The Danude flows through Buttapes, ‘WHERE THE BUTT’S ALL APE’, and is linked by several large bridges; the foremost of which is Hair Sherbert. Indeed, originally Buttapes, ‘WHERE THE TAPE’S ALL BUTT’, was two cities. Legend has it that, during the first rat borne bubonic plague of 1691, the bridges were blocked or pulled down; isolating the one side of the river from the other. The Butt hills, and their imposing castle (`fert` in Hungriun) - with its origins in 14th century Gothic - overlooking the Danude, survived almost intact; whereas the other - flat - half of the city, now with its own equally impressive Parliament (1896) with its Gothic-style façade, succumbed almost totally to the pestilence - hence the pithiness of its name, Apes.

 Unconscious of the symbolism I, witting carrier of the English language virus, had ensconced myself in Apes. The red light district was just up the street from where I was living in a basement flat at – numberless to protect the processor - Bérkocsis (one horse coach) etsc (street), and sometimes one of the ‘horse’ would offer to learn English in return for her favors. Yeah, I could just see their pimps going for that one. The only words in English they used were 'Complete sex?' Difficult to complete alone; certainly. And the Hungriun word for sex is 'szex', which sounds exactly the same, so they're not stretching themselves over it (no pun intended). But then they'd fall down with 'ĺt izer', meaning 'five thousand (fifteen quid)', so I guess I could've taught them to ask for money in English; if I hadn't been frightened of the clowns that ran them as well as of the clowns that might conceivably spread HIV and AIDS through them. Apes by name, Apes by nature? Shortly after I bought my flat, the EU directive ordered Hungry to clean up its act, and the whores left the streets to become agency directed. Now you have to make appointments in hotels by phone with regulated escort providers that have names like Love to Go, Girls to Go, and - okay, it's apocryphal - Go Like Trains. For me, it just represents the future of English language teaching in Buttapes; all pretence at conversation long since ditched in favor of a more straightforward intercourse: 'Complete sex? Five thousand forints. I'll accept plastic.'

Az nő

Ez nem nő

Ez a feleségem

Ez a hó nő

Ez a feleségem.

(English transl.)

The woman

That`s no woman,

That`s my wife.

That snow woman,

That`s my wife.

Notes:

1 Lea, Jimmy, and Noddy Holder `Lock Up Your Daughters’, Slade, Till Deaf Us Do Part, RCA, 1981.

2 Page, Jimmy, and Robert Plant ‘Immigrant Song’, Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin III, Atlantic, 1970.

3 Homer The Odyssey, Bk XII, l. 186.

4 Codrington, Robert Henry The Melanesians: Studies in Their Anthropology and Folk-Lore, New York: Clarendon Press, 1891, p. 118.

5 Adams, Douglas The Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Pan, 1979.

6 Reed, Lou `I`m Waiting For The Man`, The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground & Nico, 1967.

7 Ali, Muhammad in Clifton Fadiman and Andre Bernard (eds.) Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes, Little Brown Co., 2000.

8 Williams, William Carlos, ‘XXII’, Spring and All, New York: Contact Editions, 1923.

9 Usher, R. L. ‘Snow’, Humanizing Language Teaching, December 2017, Vol 19, 6, https://hltmag.co.uk/dec17/poem02.htm  .

10 Lennon, John, and Paul McCartney ‘Hello, Goodbye’, The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour, EMI, 1967.

11 Monroe, Marilyn Madison Square Garden III, May 19^th, 1962, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfQtfw8U06g .

12 Vonnegut Jr., Kurt Slaughterhouse-Five, London, Jonathan Cape, 1969, Chapter 2, Op. cit.

Poe faced in Poland

On the train in 2000 from Keleti Pályaudvar, the Eastern railway station in Budapest, to Warsaw in Poland where I`d accepted a post teaching English language and British History in English, I found myself in a railway carriage with a couple I remembered meeting before on the same journey but under different circumstances. I asked them what kind of books they liked to read and I was slightly taken aback to hear that the woman liked the grande guignol of Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849). It was what reminded me that we had met before. I didn`t let on and cooly I said I liked his poetry and especially Poe`s The Raven (1845). Dark romantic verses about lost love for one beyond the veil, a pathos reflected in the pining refrain from the beak of the poet`s tame bird - `Nevermore` will he see her. But, I said, I preferred William Shakespeare (1564-1616) to Poe.

The teaching of poetry is a useful tool for the language student to receive because it requires rhythm, rhyme, meter, and conciseness of purpose. Careful analysis of English speech by structuralists has shown that English speech is recognizable as a form of iambic pentameter; the form chosen by Shakespeare - acknowledged as one of the world`s greatest ever playwrights - as the clearest expression (though now archaic) of the pattern of spoken English. To find students who`re interested in poetry is, consequently, a dream for any English language teacher. It makes the task enjoyable and, by means of careful instruction, good English can be the result.

`Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never die but once.` (Julius Caesar II, ii, 32-37)

So it may be said of the student who is brave enough to try to write poems in another language. The immortal line - like the immortal bard - is eternal. What Shakespeare means here is `the pen is mightier than the sword`* and his works will live forever (unlike the cowards who don`t want life, the living, or even for the living to live) - although the character (Caesar) here accepts the fact of his own mortality because that`s what he`s been taught (like most of us before Christ`s redeeming of us) to believe. The student who tries to learn through the medium of poetic expression is, therefore, picking up the pen and not the sword as a defence against the evil that men do. This is valiant: but is it brave? It is bravery to live and not to conceive of dying - as Shakespeare actually does here. For him, cowards and the valiant are fools alike; all are cowards until they`re valiant: and then they`re dead. This is why the poet is immortal and those who espouse the pen are brave; to embrace life and the living of it.

I was remembering that, on that previous occasion on the train to Warsaw, I`d been invited into the home of my fellow travellers as an enthusiast who enjoyed the tales of Poe. I talked with them briefly again and they didn`t seem to remember me; so I was about to remind them of how I`d been their guest when I decided to ask a question instead: `Do you mind if I espouse some other kind of fiction?` The woman readily assented and I outlined my tale. The Prussian method of learning by rote is the one employed in Eastern Europe generally and I explained that I was on my way to Lębork Gimnazium to try to break the mould. I recalled how teachers at my school in Bridlington`s Moorfield at the North East coastal resort of Yorkshire would make us redo constantly as a way of reinforcing our self notions of worthlessness.

`But the principle applies also to the megastar,` I told my listener as I warmed to my newly self-imposed role of entertaining raconteur. `Britney Spears` Blackout (2007) album was once recorded where the Al-Jazeera International Academy now does its English language teaching business in Saudi Arabia`s Riyadh (`I won`t teach there for another decade` I mysteriously added), and it was performed by her on the rooftop of the Riyadh Gallery along Olaya Street many years before Britney Spears Mk. II, VII, XXVII (or whenever) was thought of. This is what is meant by `learning by repetition`, I announced to my interlocutor: `The artist and the performer of Blackout 2007 has repeated her efforts with all the angst and pressures attendant upon her first recording. But it is not self plagiarism,` I explicated in 19th Century styl-ee, `but slavery; by those who would have the artist repeat herself and her blackouts ad infinitum for the sake of obtaining filthy lucre for themselves. That Britney Spears is able to recognize the problem is clear from the title of the album Blackout,` I concluded, `and remembering is the key to her newest recording Circus (2008), which means the media circus that surrounds her and keeps her from true knowledge of herself while also being a euphemism for a spyring that, amongst the nations of the world, is known as `the circus`; a ring of evil that prevents those who are under its scrutiny from escaping its enslaving.`

I went on to explain that, although I had a penchant for the Dark Romance of Poe, I liked to write science fiction - and to teach it (I often employ the time-travel tale as a medium that allows students to play with tense). My audience didn`t fully comprehend me (or so I thought) and so I told them I wrote `Scientific Romance`, which is what scifi was termed earlier in its ascendancy as a genre. In `- All You Zombies -` (1944) by Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988), for example, the protagonist travels throughout time to discover that he is everyone:

`You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me - Jane - here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!`

`A revelation,` I expounded in the manner of Poe, `which tells us everything we need to know about the dungeons we inhabit and call schools. Who among us is being abused and murdered in the past or the future because of the gender we currently have? Are we being victimized for being hermaphroditic? For being female once, or for being male once? Is it the truth that we are both male and female (as it says in the Bible: Genesis 1:27: `Male and female He created them both`) and this is the reason for Heinlein`s character`s lament? Our true selves have been sundered by the evil - like a couple forced to divorce by evil circumstances manufactured by the evil themselves. It`s the first step to self-awareness and forthcoming self-hood. The knowledge that one`s sexuality is also other allows one to perceive that one`s dreams as a woman are memories and not deviations. It opens the window on genuine perceptions that can belie the sex-gap. If I`m a woman somewhen, I can even be My Wife too; or anyone in the past, present or future: the boundaries are gone and all is possible.`

Here are some Heinleinian rules of thumb composed by `Jane` which I recommend be given to the budding student of English tense and any would-be time-travel story writer:

`Never Do Yesterday What Should Be Done Tomorrow.
If at Last You Do Succeed, Never Try Again.
A Stitch in Time Saves Nine Billion.
A Paradox May Be Paradoctored.
It Is Earlier When You Think.`

Having gained permission of my travelling companion to write scifi, I began to muse and hit upon a new definition; stories in which other people were `written out`. `In this sense SF is akin to Poe,` I postulated; `in his dark fantasies reality is expanded to include the improbably macabre as well as the impossibly unusual. For example, in SF an alternative reality is created in which the world we are used to is expunged and the people we know from our everyday lives are, as it were, excluded from the events. It`s a little like a security blanket, or blanket security. Noone can get into your material - or yourself. One`s oeuvre becomes one`s invincible fortress.` Indeed SF has been called a power fantasy, but it would be more legitimate to describe it as a thin red line or a line drawn in the sand. This is my world and evil which I seek to exorcise through my work is held in abeyance and cannot gain admittance until I`m ready to submit my work to a bona fide source of output in which my demons are routed in the publisher`s process because they`re the ones the evil plagiarists seek to possess me with. `Plagiarism is then definable as a crime against God,` I went on; `the introduction of evil into the Garden and the attempted exclusion of the Author from his own oeuvre.`

`It is,` I petitioned them, `the life of the imagination that is the greatest gift we have and the intrusion of evil others into the secret places of our mind is what plagiarism is. The abusing of a soul through the tormenting of the divine medium of a creative consciousness is Satanism (whether we defer to God, Allah - or, in Hungary, where I like to live, Isten). The stealing of the products of one`s intellect is, therefore, a torture upon the artist as well as a foreshadowing of the intent of the thief - murder!`

`This is why the protection afforded to the stars of, for example, our Hollywood and Bollywood firmaments cannot be overly protective, and the development of young stars is preeminent. To steal from either source is to declare an intention to murder because the thieves don`t want their victims to be in a position to complain about their thievery. Plagiarism is not only theft but the declaration that the life of an artist or author of a work is valueless.`

`How many artistic lives have been snuffed out or truncated in order to promote the big lie?` I demanded of my hearers. `Here`s the truth,` I laid it bare for them; `human beings are immortal and the living continue into the future upon a hidden path. A very old Miley Cyrus (1992-) - perhaps now a Wise Old Woman retired from performing as Hannah Montana - may trust herself (now `repeated` in America as a teenager) to use her path. The new superstar is highly talented but, without knowledge of her own destiny, she will unknowingly repeat - and only a small part thereof - her Older Woman`s previous programme.`

`To understand this,` I went on undeterred by the frowns the unpersuaded are wont to turn upon the madman, `we would have to view people as software, and time as an illusion. The Australian Aborigines have a concept that fits. They call it Dream Time. Tribes would travel to a spot where they`d hunted before and kill and eat the same animal. Not the same type,` I emphasised the point, `but the very same animal. This means that we exist in futures tangental to our own existence. The Arabs call it Jennah or `the hidden` and we understand it as Paradise or Heaven. This is where our immortal selves reside; but the past contains our software, as it were. If it weren`t for an evil system,` I raised my voice, `we would be able to visit ourselves! In dreams we get an inkling but nightmares are an instance of what is being done to us - or has been done to us - in our past or future. The fact that we are not helped by ourselves in whatever present we inhabit means that evil is preventing us from realizing the truth,` I breathed deeper. `It`s a path upon which we are waylaid by footpads - our talents exploited, lives taken away, our possessions stolen. Then we`re left to remember what was (if we can) while we await their further acts of rapine and murder as we sit at our desks in the torturers` dungeons we call schools.` The train had reached their station and my fellow travellers charmingly left the compartment with much handshakings and kissings of the cheek. I could rest assured I had won my case.

At my Polish school in Lębork was awaiting me a further devotee of Poe, a pupil who said she favoured his Dark Romance over `all other kinds of fiction`. This was the kind of breakthrough I`d been looking for to test my newly formulated ideas. I`d given the students the task of writing poetry one morning and she`d composed a type of Petrarchan sonnet after I`d introduced the class to a few Greek poetic forms. It was the poem that saved her from an anonymous 2 rather than the 3 (from a highest mark of 5) we finally determined to be her final grade after she petitioned the headmistress. Maria, like all of the other pupils, was working towards what used to be called in the UK a `school leaving certificate`, and which is called in Poland the Matura. Maria`s poem had Hecate as a persona and ruin as a theme. She told me that the type of nature that figured in the poem was that of her `mother`. I began to form a Dark Romance about her. In my fantasy I was reminded of who she actually was. I`d known her before and she had an eponymous poem by which everyone who could remember would remember her, from before plagiarism and slavery. The sonnet, I decided, was about herself; she was her `mother` and the whole of the poetry - of which her efforts were merely a barely recollected fragment - had been given to me once in a small black volume called `The Hand of Black Maria`. An excellent work that I had come to know because of the reason the young girl was oftimes wooed: `The Land of Black Maria`

The refrain at the end of each stanza was `For the Hand of Black Maria` but Maria was a magnet for `the Prussian method`. She didn`t know who she was and, for those who don`t know who they are, lands and titles may as well not exist. Maria was a princess and a heroine in the poem I `remembered`; a `thumb` of Queen Elizabeth II (1926-). One who wooed Maria was, in fact, therefore wooing the British Crown! The unscrupulous would take her hand and keep her land and not tell her about it. Dastards! I mentally penned, now thoroughly esconced in my role as Dark Romantic.

I `remembered` how I`d been a pupil at Lębork school with Maria as a boy and I`d been told it was a `tradition` to go back there as a teacher and be properly `graduated`; but I hadn`t expected to find the same students I`d been with as a child - and there they all were! It was the Prussian method reified; the students were being repeated! Maria perhaps didn`t know her own story, and was struggling to grasp for poetry that would give meaning to her life in the sonnet she`d composed. Unconsciously she was plagiarising herself; gnawing at her own future. But if the slaver has the old collar, he doesn`t need a new one; the pupil kept in ignorance of his/her greatness increases the stranglehold of the Prussian method on past, present and future.

It`s the duty of the teacher - ELT or otherwise - to nurture what he can see of the burgeoning bud on the bough in the certainty that there will be future fruit. Learning by `rote` is like a loveless marriage; only the form remains. In the case of the ASLO Grammar school in Lębork the forms - like 3b - were repeated. But would there ever be a reappearance of the fruit? What I saw in the classroom were buds after the Fall. As a teacher I take it as my undaunted responsibility to give encouragement; to ensure that a blossoming is followed by a fruition and that the fruit is put back on the tree: and that is why Maria`s 2 out of 5 became a 3.

* Lytton, Edward Bulwer in Richlieu, first performance Covent Garden, London, 1839. The prophet of Islam, Mohammed (Blessings and Peace Be Upon His Name) said `The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr.`

The Further Adventures of Dr Rusher

The quest for giving stud`nts marks for nothing at all goes on apace. Firmly ensconced with the Jizzy Ra International Academy of Riyald, Pseudi Yarubeer, the candidates greeted the good doctor with the legend on framed vellum parchment ten feet high that management is 'Dully authorized to provide training in English language learning and award Certificates and Diplomas on behalf of Oxfudge Collage Briton.'

 Britt Ekland was the Swedish porn star that made the mainstream, The Wicker Man (1973), in which she’s seen from behind naked. Slapping the palms of her hands against the walls, her character Willow gyrates, and sings a song to get a Briton, actor Edward Woodward, who’s aroused behind his room’s  door. In the film about witchcraft, Woodward’s character, Neil Howie, is burned alive inside a wicker cage, symbolically, because women ride their own cocks, and men don’t want them to be a broom to sweep away their ashes, which is why he’s a policeman, so there aren’t any women’s cocks in the picture to disturb the Briti censor: ‘How a maid can milk a bull! And every stroke a bucketful.’1 What isn’t explicit is that Britt is presented in her nude scene as bum on a spit for a BBQ, which is what the censor is for. To prevent the subliminal message about animal husbandry, and ‘woman’s seed’ as meat for the slaughter, emerging into full consciousness amongst the sheep of the audience, before their being harvested by the alien enslaver in its wars against the ‘remnant’ of the human race upon the Earth, Britt has to be presented as sexually interested in the censor, whose approval rating corresponds to the butcher’s meat stamp of acceptable quality: ‘The dragon was wroth with the woman and went to make war upon the remnant of her seed.’ (Rev: 12. 17)

 After they brighten up and learn to spell, the stud’nts’ circling around the central issue of writing in English, which they resist like a fetish, and have developed into something resembling a fine art, stops. As it is in Buttapes, ‘WHERE THE BUTTS ARE ALL TAPED’, so it is in the Kondom’s Jizz, where English Diplomas are at stake. The concern is with bums on seats, and the stud`nts receive 20% of their final grade merely for attending, and leaving their `phones with the sim(eon) cards at the front during the exams. The great secret of working in language skulls is that the teacher is there solely to keep the stud`nts diverted from their onerous task. Language learning is not the main goal. Time to put the clown suit on, then? No, it isn`t necessary for the teacher to consciously inject humor into the humdrum world of participles and gerunds. Witness this usual display of incomprehension and incoherence between educator and pupil:

Stud: 'Teacher!'

Dr Rush: 'Yes.'

Stud: 'Bathroom!'

Dr Rush: 'I don't see the equivalence. I am not a washbasin.'

Stud: 'I go.'

Dr Rush: 'Where?'

Stud: Teacher! Go bathroom!'

Dr Rush: 'I refuse to go.'

Stud: 'Bathroom. Go.'

Dr Rush: 'I am not aware of the bathroom's capacity for movement.'

Stud: 'Can I go?'

Dr Rush: 'There is the door. There is no escape from the window.'

Stud: 'I can go bathroom?'

Dr Rush: 'You can go blue if you wish. I will not stop you. You are now at large within this institution.'

 The point, of course, is that, laughter aside, these are mainly company-paid customers for whom attendance means spending as much of the time as possible washing their hands; faces, and any other extremities they can find in the bathroom (feet in the hand basin is not a taboo). A teacher lurks outside the classrooms, when he has a spare minute or two, and collars my stud`nts emerging therefrom after being told they can go to the Ceramic Palace; as all winners of what I call the Eau De Toilette Bowl do: 'I caught this one leaving,' he berates me, 'get back in there!' he fumes, and the full-bladdered miscreant returns stoically to his seat, which of course is counterproductive from the Jizzy Ra Academy's point of view. The customer pays, and the customer should be able to leave the premises as - and when - he chooses. If not, he may stop paying and putting his bum on the seat (whether that of the WC, or that of the classroom). He may even, God forbid, begin to consider the concept of 20% for sitting on his bum as anathema to the learning concept, and demand that a final exam be the determiner of his standing in English language usage. What they're really paying for is the opportunity to take an examination. I, personally, only ever sent a head chuck occasional e-mail registering for the final three hours. And what an exam is in store for the Academy clientele! One stud`nt, when asked by a friend to explain what he learned in our hallowed halls, said he was being taught to draw a circle, 'The teacher says that, if I practice hard enough, one day I'll be able to make both ends meat,' he told him. A sample question will quickly allow us to clear up any obfuscation over this point:

Circle the correct answer

What time is it?

a) sometimes

b) a lemon

c) 3 o'clock

 We are, indeed, circling around the bugbear of writing. The answer here, naturally, is usually assessed as being 'sometimes'; as it’s almost never 3 o'clock when the stud`nt is sitting his exam. Although one stud`nt, taking an exam at 9.00 am refused to budge from his seat until 3.00 pm in order to answer this very question and was rewarded with extra marks for his studiousness by the Academy's Main Branch Supervisor (AMBS).

 Stud`nts may be able to obtain 25% of their final grade for this nonsense, and everyone pretends it to be a matter of great moment, so let's pass swiftly on with little remark other than to observe that, with 20% for sitting and 25% for circling, the stud`nt can obtain 45% without writing a single word in English thus far; or, indeed, opening any books either. I often have to demonstrate how to open a book to a stud`nt, who replies with a look of surprise on his countenance that is positively rewarding, and makes all those long tedious hours of putting on make up and the clown's suit with the red nose and big shoes worthwhile.

 Incidentally, one of the more bizarre things they do in Yarubeer is tell the stud`nts to call you by your first name prefixed by 'Mister'. Your family name is then redundant: it's like becoming an orphan. They then prefix the whole thing with 'teacher'. Upon being introduced to someone like former Briti Prime Minister Tommy Blur, I can only imagine the Pseudi Ambassador to England saying, 'Pleased to meet you Mister Tommy,' like some downtrodden character on the Tara estate in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind (1936). Teacher Mister Rusher, courtesy of Roger Hargreaves, who of course has the copyright on Mister (Mister Rush, etc.), likes to explain a few things; especially to those who’re under the illusion that, if they go to England, Queen Lizard Birth III - and others - will speak to them in the supermarket. 'I never speak when I'm in England,' I tell them. 'I read; write; listen to music on my mp3; use the internet; watch tv, and play video and computer games.' They laugh good naturedly, but I explain, 'I know where the supermarket is, and all I do in England is pay at the till and say "Thank you", which you never say by the way,' I say, 'it would probably take you half a day to get on the right bus for the post office.' I, in my turn, smile good naturedly, 'For you it's all about information but, when you know where the stop for the number 26 is, and you finally have the right change after being told by the driver to get off, because he won't change a tenner, and the shop proprietor won't either, unless you buy some tic-tacs, who's going to talk with you about past present continuous?'

 At Jizzy Ra we attempted to resolve this problem of communication with the project, which carries 20% of the final grade, and requires the stud`nt to talk for five minutes (in practice two) using PowerPoint images; whiteboards; smart boards; projectors; OHPs; handouts; cutouts (from magazines/newspapers); hand-painted miniatures; water colors; oil paintings, and all other multimedia applications; packages, and miracles of technology that they may feel is essential in order to illustrate the subject of their lengthy discourse, which is usually Taif (a city thereabouts), and requires neither communication nor a listener. Communication requires an interlocutor, and the only person paying attention is the examiner, who isn't listening for information, or interest, but only to hear if the material presented is coherent and understandable, which it never is. I often give my stud`nts the example of one of their number at a supermarket in England who, having mastered the art of interrogation, by the simple expedient of interrogating the teacher for twelve months, asks someone, 'Where are the biscuits?' Later he is himself asked, 'Where is the milk?' 'I am from Taif,' he explains patiently, and with the seemingly mandatory preternaturally black liquid eyes, 'Taif is a beautiful city ...'

 So, 65% of the final grade can be had, without either writing words in English; or demonstrating any skill whatsoever in communication. The stud`nt will also get 5% for homework, and 5% for participation, a boon for the intelligent teacher, who doesn't ask for either because he knows that, if he gives homework, the terrified stud`nt will not be seen the following day and, if asked to participate, the mortified stud`nt will similarly cease to place his buttocks on the chair: but isn't that the beauty of the attendance regulations? If the stud`nt doesn't attend, he can't participate; or do homework. We're onto a winner! We can deduct marks, and not have to justify our Machiavellian evil. The stud`nt will protest that he did all the homework, and participation required for the one hour out of sixty he was present, but the teacher can legitimately ignore his pleas and, going against the customary grain, award no marks at all; for doing nothing at all. I, of course, aware of the economic situation, and the precariousness of my position, always award 5% for homework, and 5% for participation. Snoring counts with me as participation farting too. Finding the classroom each day also weighs much with me. Clearly the stud`nt has done his homework. He has scoped out his daily route to excellence, and we have arrived at the magic 75% possible of attainment; without writing any words in English: the pass mark being 65%.

Not listening to the teacher is, of course, one of the great weapons in the armory of the clever stud`nt, and I can only assume that it is this that enables the candidates to successfully navigate the listening exam, and obtain a further 5% towards their final grade. No longer having to filter out the hated voice of their tormentor, their ears are drawn like magic and magnets to the sounds of the almost impenetrable Scottish burrs, and American twangings that I find incomprehensible. In fact, I spent almost three hours once trying to decipher what 'Indian earing' meant in the mouth of a South African. After giving up, I discovered five years later - with the help of a South African and a dictionary - that the man on the tape wasn't talking, as I had previously thought, about indigenous North American jewelry, but 'engineering'. Although credit where it's due! Any stud`nt able to pass their listening exam roundly deserves their 5%, and I can honestly say that it's the only 5%, out of the entire possible 80% so far attainable, that qualifies as legitimate. Here's a sample:

1. Where is John going? Listen.

Not John: 'Hi John. Are you going to the bus station?'

John: 'Hi, I'm going to the bus station.'

Not John: 'You're going to the bus station, huh?'

John: 'Yes, I'm going to the bus station. Do you know where the bus station is? Can you tell me the way to the bus station? I'm trying to find my way to the bus station. It's where I'm going. The BUS STATION?'

Not John: 'The bus station is right over there! There's the bus station. It's right there. The BUS STATION!'

John: 'Thanks. That's where I'm going. The bus station.'

Now circle the correct answer.

a) Harry Potter and the Magnanimous Gerbil

b) a large tree

c) the bus station

 I had a stud`nt who was convinced that John was going to Listen; but didn't know where that was. I myself often have had to get up at 5.00 am in the morning in Riyald; to be taken to some godforsaken spot that no one knows the whereabouts of except our driver. It amazes me when I look at the huge automobiles around us made by GMC. In this land of the gas guzzling SUBURBAN, where everyone can have four wives, and a car the size of a bus to drive them and the kids to the local Gallery. Yes, I was enthused at the plethora of such; until I discovered that here a gallery is another giant shopping mall, and not the Kondom's equivalence of the Tate Modern. The joke here is that, as we, far too far from merrily along in the stream of traffic congestion, go bouncing, jouncing and sweating in the sandstorms and 70 degree heat, the Jizzy Ra Academy is about to purchase even smaller vehicles, because the teachers don't arrive at their destination properly cooked. It fills me with positive amazement that our Academy provides us with cars that were clearly built circa 1934, for the munchkins in The Wizard of Oz, and that three of us teachers are supposed to bear them no ill will for making us share a back seat for upwards of two hours a day.

 It's akin in mystery to the pen shared by the three stud`nts. Unlike the one eye held in common ownership by the three Graeae of Greek mythology, and held hostage by the hero Perseus in exchange for disclosure of the whereabouts of the Gorgon, whose head he was to cut off in order for its petrifying properties to adorn the shield of the goddess Pallas Athene, it's obviously a plausible hypothesis that two more pens could be purchased. Perhaps it's a cultural thing. I told one stud`nt to go and get a pen, when he didn't have one, and proposed to share. I went off to do some photocopying, and found him and a classmate in the corridor. I could only assume that the classmate was there to carry him, and/or the pen, should he falter in his Herculean task. 'I'll send someone else to carry the pen,' I told them and went back to take the register.

 I have two Mohammad Alis in B3 at the Further Institute for Pottery Maintenance (FIPM). 'Mohammad Ali,' I poise with my pen over the register at stud`nt #4. 'Present,' he says. I pause. 'And who are you fighting next?' I ask to general hilarity. A minute later I come to stud`nt #15. 'Mohammad Ali,' I say. 'Present,' he says. I pause. 'When are you fighting Joe Frazier again?' I ask. It always brings my house down.

 It's at the FIPM that the Japanese 'technical advisers', in somewhat Bridge Over The River Kwai mode, and led by a kommandant who looks inauspiciously like the Emperor Hirohito, force the stud`nts to stand in the sun at the beginning of the day (7.15 am) and do karate exercises. Japan's fascination with gizmos has certainly caught the stud`nts’ imagination; even if learning to shoot your fist into the air, and scream 'Ha-yah!' in the mornings, doesn't. I spend most of my time in the classroom, holding my hands in front of my face to protect me from the sim(eon) cardholders; waving their hidden cameras in their mobile phones: amateur snuff movie makers. 'First money, then photographs!' I shout.

 We're told, of course, to be culturally sensitive when we come into the Kondom, which is why there is no usage of s/he. There are no female stud`nts with male teachers. All of the English language teaching books cover up the faces of the cartoon women (in case the stud`nts get excited) with what are supposed to be headscarves; but that look like someone has dumped yellow and pink candy floss on them. It's particularly useful when the text is asking, ‘What color hair do Marie and Liz have? Clearly the correct answer is 'peach and meringue'. However, in a way it’s preparation for seeing the stud`nts walk up to you hand-in-hand and say, ‘We are going to the bathroom together.’ Women do not work in Pseudi Yarubeer and, like Scheherezade, after shopping, are never visible. They wear a one-piece black coverall, like a sack, with a slit for the eyes. I guess going to the bathroom hand-in-hand with a man is a major culturally sensitive event in anyone's language, and even Soupçon Boil (please don't let them put her picture on the album sleeve) would look good to a young man; if she were visible. I just wave on the hand-holding young men in the direction of the door, and the toilet cubicles. Sometimes I only have three or four stud`nts in the classroom; out of around thirty. The rest are in the Ceramic Palace listening to Britney Spears’ half-time at the Bowl perfume ads - shaving their legs in the hand basins, and tweezing their eyebrows perhaps. I have no comment to make. Cultural sensitivity - like feminism, and being politically correct in the West - is a must in the Muddle East. They pay my wages; have all the oil, and declare fatwahs on writers. What more can I say? Lots:

`I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living;
So different now from what it seemed.
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.`1

 Stud`nts of the Academy can obtain 25% towards their final grade by taking an exam in reading and, wait for it, writing. It's possible to attain to 87.5% without doing any writing, which is what the stud`nts do - or rather don't. They do do the reading, however; here's a sample:

Dingo the jimblegrobbit spongled doobledly, jimming on his jignoodle while spongjobbling ettwarbly. 'Jinglespoonfully!' said Thrognardle the fnoor. 'Hibble becktwarts!' The djarbungle threeg jongled bagnorbally. 'Hobbly doof! Threep spardlejung. Hooble goofunt.' Jeeble snarfung grebt thrubwardle.

And more of the same. Here's a sample question.

How did the djarbungle threeg jongle?

a) the square of the hypotenuse

b) tight end

c) bagnorbally

 The example is extreme; but the essence has been preserved. I have seen stud`nts, who are unable to read a syllable, pass a reading exam at the Academy. It's only about recognition; see the word: know the answer. We don't need to know what a jarbungle threeg is, or understand how to conjugate the verb 'to jongle'. We only have to recognize that bagnorbally is in the text, and is adjectival.

 And so to the writing! We are nothing; if not ambitious. Stud`nts constitutionally unable to use either the definite, or indefinite article, are routinely asked to write paragraphs of at least ten sentences about their family; where they work, or the excitements of Taif. 'I am stud`nt' they will begin. It's almost Shakespearian isn't it? Reminiscent of Herman Melville's opener in Moby Dick (1851) 'Call me `E`smale.' Alas, we deteriorate from here on in, and it's a rare stud`nt that amasses more than three marks out of a possible fifteen in his writing component. But they’re processed at Jizzy Ra on twelve monthly - or 'termly' as the Academy would have us say - certificated levels. Until, at level twelve, they again fail their writing exam, and obtain a Oxfudge Collage Briton Diploma with 87.5% and an ‘A’.

 Failure is deservedly blamed on the teacher. One of the supervisors took me to task one day for not using the Smart Board technology in a sparkly enough way. With a sweeping movement of the electronic pen, he demonstrated how one could fill the stud`nts with awe and amazement by producing veritable constellations of colored stars to highlight words and phrases. 'Now I am a magician!' he said. 'Well, if that's your fantasy,' I yawned. I call it, The Sound And The Fury Approach To Language Teaching. It's all about mesmerizing the stud`nt with loud discourses that are difficult to ignore, while covering the board in seemingly scientific formulas, and other indecipherable hieroglyphics that appear to communicate much; but actually signify nothing. The stud`nts applaud the magnificent performance of the suit at the board; but, when asked, have no idea what the lesson was about. I liken it to being a kid at skull who, when asked if he saw Star Wars, says 'Yeah. Wow!' Loves it, but has no idea of the plot (not that that matters in director George Lucas’ '77 space opera). It's the Zap! Whiz! Bang! skull of language imparting: cousin to Streetfighter II and with about as much relevance.

 On the other hand, it's not about failure. It's not possible to fail; as you've doubtless guessed: it's about satisfaction. A lot of the satisfaction derived by the stud`nts is from getting what they want. Or, as we in the trade understand it, getting the teacher where they want him. In Riyald, for example, a teacher has the same general status as the Philippino houseboy, which takes a professional teacher some time to get used to. He is used to being civil with stud`nts, and fails to understand that he`s expected to be servile. Bowing to an old beard, who was monitoring to make sure no one involved in the fatherly interactions smiled incontinently, I reverently intoned, 'My respects to your father.' Mentioning the older old boy, the younger old boy positively gleamed with incontinence; having encountered that thing he was there for: satisfaction. The humble teacher bolstering his job tenure by suggesting he might also moonlight as a masseur.

 Of course, it isn’t possible to ignore the socio-political aspects of being a teacher of Muzzlems, but relating a single anecdote will convey an impression of what’s encountered. Giving a conversation class to a group of stud`nts from the Foog and Droog Ministry (FDM), the talk turned to drinks and, after roundly condemning alcohol, and the drinkers thereof, in the strongest possible terms in order to continue depositing riyals in my bank account, this irreligious infidel began to talk about soft drinks; Spurt meaning something like 'djinn', and Grid Balls getting it's name from the drug taurine (bullocks) that is found in it: and so on. Then I asked about Cock Cola, 'What does Cock Cola mean in Yarupric? How does it translate?' 'It means there is no God,' was the reply In a nutshell! Muzzlems don`t hesitate to muzzle. Cock Cola is an American company, and so a branch of Satanism. The stud`nt probably believes it as an article of faith. It's a part of the popular myth that muzzles all other opinion.

 Crushteen paedophiles do the same, because they`ve accepted the Muzzlem principal. `She`sis saves!` they tell us. `How?` we ask. `Shut up!` they fulminate inexpressibly. It stands to reason, and it won`t sit down until everyone has accepted that it doesn`t need an explanation: it does. She`sis was the child of the Virgin Mary, who was crucified, that is, nailed to a cross of wood by agents of the Rumun Umpire working with the Chewish religious police, the Pharisees, as a `dissident` celibate preacher. She`sis was woman born only, and he taught, `Love your neighbor as you love yourself.` (Mk: 12. 31) A woman anointing She’sis’ feet with the expensive perfume, ‘spikenard’, was discovered by the disciple, Chewedass, whose spy canard was that the perfume should have been sold to raise money. She`sis` response was predictable: `Leave her alone.` (Mk: 14. 6) Chewedass betrayed She`sis for the same reason that the Yarubic terrorist group, Al Qaeda, hijacked civil airliners to crash into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York, because they wanted the smell of the burning buildings andflesh to reach heaven in the fashion of Muzzlem incense burners, Mabkhara, which would reawaken war and silence ‘woman’s seed’. If women didn’t ever reproduce, her perfume would forever be in the nostrils of her alien host womb enslavers, who wage war upon her human race. Chewedass wanted to be a perfume manufacturer, so She’sis, who was ‘woman’s seed’, was taken to the hill of Calvary outside the city of Jerusalem, and crucified as an animal, because that’s men’s opinion of women. For She`sis the woman was a `neighbor`, who was being prevented from sexually reproducing with her own futanarian species of `woman`s seed`, so his feet were nailed together symbolically at the ‘foot’ (futanarian) of the cross where the women had gathered, and so he was vouchsafed Resurrection and Ascension to heaven after his death by God, which is the reason for Crushteenity being able to say, `She`sis saves!` God wants the futanarian human species to resurrect and ascend to heaven through its own sexually reproduced brainpower to develop starships and colonize the planets: `You will crush the head of the serpent with your foot, but he will bruise your heel.` (Gen: 3.15) Woman`s `seed` will escape men`s, rather than that men tower over her testes; like the Colossus of Rhodes making sure the smell doesn’t leave:

‘Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

MOTHER OF EXILES.’2

 Ball-snorting, and ‘the statue of Liberty’ aside, ten years ago I was teaching in Pseudi Yarubeer's Dalek, a town most interesting, perhaps, for its curious placing of an ancient Lightning, as well as other Briti Air Force planes like huge plastic painted Airfix model kits, in the middle of traffic roundabouts that also often have captured military vehicles from wars with the Israelis as decorations. As an ELT instructor at the Konk Kalid Military City's North West Legged Forces Hospital (NWLFH) for the noses on wheels that cut off, and run where they can ‘spy tin’ each other’s face, while strolling around in the evening, and taking the air as I waited for the bus after a visit to the recreation center to borrow a few religious instruction videos from the variety available in the library, that is, Muzzlems Muzzle Some More, Sammy And Rosie Get AIDS, and Oral Hygiene With The Cock-Eaters, I was taken to the guard house by soldiers perturbed at my hovering at 7.00 pm outside the closed building where I worked. My abiding memory is of the strangeness of finding, in an environment notorious for its lack of pictorial representations of anything other than the tomb of Amaninabra, a 30×20 poster of the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Centre stuck to the wall of a training center otherwise bereft of imagery. Strange, because it was still there on 9/11. As was I. Rumors of applause amongst the hospital staff, as they watched the events unfold teevee-wise in the lounge, remained just that for me. However, the poster remains forever in my mind: a reproach for not comprehending the omen:

‘You must take communion. Drink the blood of Christ and eat his flesh. Only if he is within you can you defeat the son of the devil.’3

 America's invasion of Iraq is now enshrined in the Yarubean consciousness, a part of their myth of the U.S.A. , ‘The Great Satan’. That they're interested in learning English is also a myth. The male army nurses in Dalek explained that they needed English to work with the Americans after the 1990-1 Golf inspired by ‘Vlad’ Puttin’,  who was a podpolkovnik with the KGB until resigning in 1991 to become leader of Rushon. Like his namesake in Eastern Europe`s Wallachia, who was known as `the impaler` for his habit of impaling his enemies on stakes, the Rushon`s `Vlad` Puttin` had a stake in the Golf, because of his repression of Chechnya`s ISIL in the Eastern Caucasus of the formerly So Feared`s Muzzlem states. Wallachia`s Vlad Dracul (1428/31 -1476/7) was the inspiration for the vampire novel, Dracula (1895), by Bram Stoker, a blood-sucking leech, who could only be killed by a stake in the heart. Prince Vlad was a bit of a bugger to deal with too. It was hoped by the Muzzlems that Puttin`s stake in the Golf would prove fatal: `We created man … [as] an alaqah (leech).` - Gran, sura 23, Al Mu`minun, `The Believers`, 12-14. With only `TV` for children, that is, men and women as a single creature wearing each others` clothes as a male brained transvestite, `woman`s seed` remained unseen, and the Muzzlems had indeed created men as leeches; so preventing the human race from being heard.

 Pseudis have to have English for their work, but they're about as interested in us as we are in the mating habits of gadfly, which is problematical if you're in the habit of assuming a hegemony of the English language. We're told we should convert to the Muzzlem religion; not talk about politics; accept censorship from the media on sex and its themes, and refrain from listening to music. The Gran was written 600 years after She`sis` Ascension, which means the Muzzlems have had that long to muzzle the West. Crushteenity insists on the Boble as the basis of a morality of adultery, whereas it`s the human futanarian species of `woman`s seed` that`s adulterated, and the Muzzlem women, lying concealed beneath their burkhas throughout the Muddle East, is more indicative of the truth, that is, Crushteenity has been muzzled.

 Teachers are actively encouraged not to play the musical intro to the audio material that goes with the New Intochains course books featuring Toby Satan. I have a stud`nt who, no kidding, like a monkey in the 'see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil' pantheon, sits with his hands over his ears when the funky boogie-woogie vibes of the Intochains audio CD intro comes on. It’s neither rare, nor unusual, that they complain, or even leave upon hearing music, or discussions thereof, which makes it difficult when the hegemonically obsessive West insists on creating course units based on our perceptions of the beauties of jizz and hip-hop. No cherry or mauve headscarves to cover that lot up, eh?

 I spent half an hour explaining the United States of America`s `Thanksgiving` to some stud`nts. If you wanted to define the phrase, 'a pointless exercise', that would do it. Without being asked, one explains that Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November, and Independence Day in the U.S.A. is, of course, on the 4th of July. The book then wants us to cross examine our stud`nts on their 'special' days. 'Rubabum' is the inevitable reply. ‘Is it a holiday?’ I prompt. 'No, that's the Eat.' Further interrogation reveals that `the feast of Eat` comes after the fasting month of Rubabum, but it's impossible to say when that will be; because of the peculiarities of calculating by the phases of the moon. In short, the Yarupric peoples have no definite days for holiday time as we do in the West; so explaining ours is a bit like telling them that ham is pig: but that hamburgers originally came from Hamburg and are almost always beef. They don't eat pigs, because they are 'unclean' and forbidden (haraam) by ‘Mohamhed’s Gran, so why would they need to know the etymological derivations of the word 'ham', never mind 'bacon' and 'pork'? That’s their point of view; not the teacher's. ‘Xmas Day?’ I prompt. ‘Now you're not trying to introduce religion: are you?’ ‘No,’ I capitulate, ‘it's just another silly excuse to eat turkey: honest.’ 'Turkey [a man's name in the Mud Eats] does not want to be eaten!' I am reprimanded in harsh tones. 'And what is this problem with swine fever?' they ask gloatingly. The logic is that, because they don't have pigs, they won't have swine fever, and naturally all of us bacons will shortly die horribly. 'Do you know Allah?' they ask. Clearly Allah and swine fever are meant to be two halves of an equation that will kill, or cure. Fortunately, Ala is a girl's name in the ‘game’ of ‘piggy’ in the Muddle East, so I pretend confusion and, explaining that I knew her in Sudan, ask, ‘Can I have Ala’s ‘phone number?’ If no such is forthcoming, I say, ‘Repeat after me, ‘”Can I have Ala’s ‘phone number?”’

 Until English text books are devoid of Western culture, you won't find anyone genuinely satisfied in Yarubeer. There is a real hatred for what they perceive as us making them do. I had a stud`nt who, when asked to write a paragraph at level 5 about a painting by John Singleton Copley entitled The Shark (1778), complained that I wasn't helping him. 'Is this a good sentence?' he asked 'The boat water.' 'No,' I told him,'the boat is in the water.' Clearly, he was not impressed, 'The boat water’ is not good?' 'The boat is in the water is good,' I said, emphasizing for good measure. I always have problems with explaining the verb 'to be' ontologically and, as a rule, order them to buy a copy of Descartes, learn Latin, and decode cogito ergo sum. I guessed, from his silent sullenness, that he was happy with his understanding of the present simple in the sentence. Also with the preposition on account of the shark's medium being water, and their not likely to be seen flying above it. However, he hadn't liked my tone, and decided to stall on the definitive article, 'Why isn't it ‘a water’?' he’d decided to goad me beyond bearability. 'We use the definite article when we're clearly talking about something already identified, like the water in the picture.' I said this aloud, while fulminating silently, and juggling in a Prince Henry-esque fashion with the idea of giving sonority to words less carefully chosen,  ‘Our little Paki friend.’4 Goading is, of course, one of the great stud`nt entertainments. My favorite is the stud`nt who, when told Unit 15, exercise 7, keeps demanding of you the page number, as if it were a veritable impossibility to find it without a map; compass; team of sherpas, and a guide dog. I could see this ‘rag head’ didn't like my tone again. 'Write it for me,' he said. I duly wrote - 'Water boat is the in' - in his book. 'What is another good sentence?' he said. Clearly, it would go on until I understood I was a peon, and the paragraph was written. I refused, and was replaced in good order in that class by management desperate to keep a customer.

 Conversations with management can be quite illuminating. The simulacrum of happiness is at a premium in Yarubeer. After a usual three months’ ‘probationary period’, while it’s decided whether you’ll be a policeman, or imprisoned, an Egypt John teacher noticed my usually taciturn frown melting, 'That's the first time I've seen you smile,' he smiled. You don't understand how insulting that is unless you know that the Gran exhorts the faithful to smile - continuously if possible. Then they can be offended at you for laughing without permission, and kill you, which is why Crushteenity has become a Muzzlem religion. I was being criticized. 'Well, fuck you!' I thought. However, happiness is what management seek to find in their stud`nts. A representative explained to me that he didn't care how many units of the Intochains course book were covered; as long as the stud`nts were smiling inanely. The syllabus was of no importance, 'Just smile. Talk to them about their family. Get them to write a few sentences about their job,' he smiled on presently - and continuously.

 Working in Yarubeer is a bit like being gay, and you have to understand the culture to cope with that. It's almost a crime to be single. You're not allowed in the Kondom Tower, a glorified shopping mall, and where presumably they chop ‘em all, if you aren't with a family waving their sim(eon) card `phones. MacDonald’s is split into single male areas, and married burkhas. A family is conditioned to be offended if it isn't. They like to know who they`re eating. So, if you go to Yarubeer, be prepared for the shock that you are expected to share if single. It’s a punishment for not producing any burkhas for MacDonald`s, if you're prejudiced to see it that way. 'Why don't you share?' management wanted to know. I could live in a compound with the rest of the alcohol drinkers, and have a bar with a swimming pool with women to gawp at. So long as I was happy with a man to live with. Insulted? You bet. At the derisory accommodation allowance described as sufficient for 'all my living space and travel needs' for one thing. You don't want to explain that you're not homosexual, and thereby accuse their culture of being so. However, the phrase 'I'm not gay' readily springs to mind if a government in England tries to resolve its housing problem by forcing single males to cohabit. Riyald is split into married areas, and single areas. The stud`nts complain over it being 'hard'. Just how it is can only be guessed at. At least I'm not walking hand-in-hand with a man into the cheap hotel bathroom - or indeed the sunset.

1 Giovanni, Paul ‘Willow’s Song’, Rachel Verney, The Wicker Man soundtrack, Trunk , 1973.

2 Lazarus, Emma ‘The New Colossus’, 1883.

3 Troughton, Patrick as Father Brennan, The Omen, 20^th Century Fox, 1976.

4 Dejevsky, Mary ‘Prince Harry called a fellow soldier his 'little Paki friend', Independent, January 11th, 2009, Sunday, 1: 00 am,  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/prince-harry-called-a-fellow-soldier-his-little-paki-friend-1299804.html .

Magicians Or Teachers

There`s a concept of man in relation to the externality called 'Mu'. Everything that exists outside the individual is, potentially, a part of his/her 'Mu'; or, to put it another way, what appears in one's experiential domain is for us and, in a very real way, the creation of our minds, that is,  we get what is there, because our unconscious need supplies it for our development. According to the developmental psychology of Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), the archetype of the `Self`, corresponding in religious parlance to 'God', needs opportunities for personal growth and enrichment, which is where the educator becomes important as an interface between the child and its internal 'mission' from its `Self`.

 Usually a child`s taught the world is a difficult and dangerous place against which it and its parents need to protect it. The result is the child sees the outside world as a threatening, hostile, alien `thing` which is complicated by parents with problems of their own; child abuse, violence, psychoses, neuroses etc., possibly due to their own previous problematical educations including false conditioning and social maladaptation. On the other hand, if the growing infant is taught that, for example, the world is his/hers,  like a virtual reality film script to use the latest techspeak, in which the child can write his/herself, but because he/she is small and vulnerable, its parents will guide and care for it until it is sufficiently developed enough to access the medium, the child's relationship to, as it were, language is of a directly developmental or 'personal' one, that is, what happens to the child as it grows is aimed directly at him/her in terms of his/her development or progress.

 The use of archetypal symbolism/imagery in pediatrics begins here. It has a role to play in the developmental understanding of children with dysfunctionalities, who require pictoral rather than alphabetical representations in order to assist their understanding. The seminal instance of an image from the unconscious assisting the developing consciousness is German chemist, Friedrich August Kekulé`s 1865 discovery of the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day-dream of a snake seizing its own tail, which is a common symbol in many ancient cultures, and is known as the `Ouroboros` in Jungian developmental psychology, as it depicts the process whereby the individual grows through recognizing their own inferiority projected upon others and learning to `swallow`, that is, recognize a need to adapt and grow  through learning that the perceiver is inferior and not the perceived. Confusion can result in the educator being abused by the educated as the student perceives the teacher as inferior because he/she can`t `swallow`, that is, accept, the educator`s superiority. After Kekulé`s vision of the ourobouros, the helical structure of the benzine molecule appeared in his mind and he was able to model the molecule to further his work in chemistry. Using archetypal symbolism or imagery for English language learning could help the student grasp the subject more easily and open up the possibility for greater linguistic inventiveness.

 The use of Jungian archetypes and symbolic motifs in the analysis of the unconscious is widespread, but their role as a framework with which to enhance the level of consciousness is not. It is, for example, well known that the unconscious of a woman from Manchester may contain elements from symbolic systems as diverse as Egyptian mythological fragments and Tibetan mandalas, as well as images from the Judaeo-Christian tradition that constitute her background, but knowledge of the various symbol systems is the task of the language teacher interested in such archetypal material. The chakra system of energy points and their associated images in yoga and the pictorial representation of the `tree of life` as a map of the life of the body in Judaism are but two instances of cultural models available for the purpose of guiding a child's linguistic potential through imagination.

 The importance of the channelling of libido in ensuring developmental progress cannot be overemphasised. Consultation with experts in the field of pediatrics, particularly with regard to the linking of movement therapy with speech articulation, suggest that concentration upon correct body posture produces `adjusted` individuals at the expense of creative potential. In Kundalini yoga the third chakra in the vicinity of the solar plexus is described rather poetically as a `plenitude of jewels`, a reference to its sacred character, corresponding in psychological parlance to the wealth of psychic contents waiting to receive actualization in the psyche of the individual, and which might be described as the 'crown jewels', a suggestiveness derived from English vernacular`s referencing the source of male potency rising to a spiritual and intellectual dimension at the `crown` of the head, which is the lotus chakra in yoga.

 Tantric yoga is indicated as a useful form of therapy in assisting individuals who, for whatever reason, are unable to realise their blocked potential. Socio-economic conditioning tells them work, marriage, and the raising of a family (a situation associated with the third or solar plexus chakra in the Hindu system) should be the zenith of their aspirations, and is 'normal', whereas it`s `adjusted` to keep individuals from learning how to be free of reliance upon others, which is enslavement. Vested interests have a role to play too. Freemasonry`s goal is to keep the mass of people at a low level of consciousness, because easier to manipulate. Emphasis in Christianity upon logic as `Logos`, the `Word`, rather than Eros, channels libidic instinct into spirit and intellect, that is, technological endeavour, but at the expense of the brain's unmapped capacities (humans use only 10% of its potentiality), while Eros is an unmapped territory of the brain to be explored if an individual is to maximize intellectual and creative potential.

 In youth culture, recent experimental studies in the field of pediatrics suggest the use of symbolic structures and archetypal frameworks in the learner`s environment can be useful in producing a therapeutic relationship between the language learner and an alien and hostile world; particularly abroad. Results indicate the use of symbols in the externality as iconographical tools, just as one might 'click' on icons in a computer. By focusing one's energies upon a particular motif, effects can be produced upon the imagination of the individual psyche`s thought processes associated with that particular 'icon', to create a more creative, playful and harmonious learning relation between 'subject' and environment.

 There are far reaching possibilities with regard to future scenarios in connection with the concept of a symbolic externality. In theoretical physics there is a very famous experiment in which an electron gun is fired at a target. A camera placed next to the target records that each electron arrives as if travelling in a straight line. However, further observation reveals that, in spite of appearances, if the electrons are watched by technical apparatus at a point midway between gun and target, they show signs of deviating from the direct path and, as it were, choosing one amongst many alternative paths to the goal, that is, individuals who aren`t interfered with can choose from a plethora of possibilities within what the physicists describe as a 'probability wave', a notion that gave birth to the theory of parallel universes or multi-realities and which has some significance for us in our concerns with assisting students to levels of transcendent consciousness and higher levels of brain functioning. If language can be held to determine what reality human consciousness inhabits, it must also be possible for the language learner to translate themselves into a better alternative, which in fact is what many underprivileged foreigners strive for.

 The question of whether or not moving objects can be categorised as having the attributes of icons for learners of language is one which brings us into the areas of 'human hieroglyphics' familiar from Egyptian temples and, to take a rather less well known example, the Tarot deck of the seer in which the characters represent `the soul`s journey`. Derived from a pictorial Torah, that is, the Old Testament law of the Jews, the Tarot cards depict in hieroglyphic form twenty-two pathways, in reference to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. A 'hieroglyphics of human sexuality' might reveal other paths to unlock the future developmental functionality of the brain, which would explain why Indian temples celebrate the act of physical love in stone, but the concept of hieroglyphics relating to people`s characters, rather than alphabetical characters, is one that language teachers employ almost without thinking in role play, but which requires more serious thought and training methods.

 Ethical questions remain to be resolved: is it desirable for an individual's awakening libido to be channelled? The decision has to be for the individual, while the task of the developer or educator remains one of guidance as a facilitator of choices already made. The language teacher needs to stimulate and observe the creative imaginations of subjects, in relation to the available symbol maps; to ascertain what, if any, correlations exist between the 'maps and the territory' of the developing mind. The implementation of a program resulting from a perceived need for students to interact with the environment requires that creative interface which the teacher can be. The use of an archetypal methodology using visual stimuli and the careful monitoring of reactions to input can, perhaps, assist in facilitating development. Archetypal material within the framework of textbooks or computer programs, together with illustrations and diagrams etc., can act as catalysts for developmental impulses. Unlocking the individual's self-awareness and requirements in terms of growth, is discovering just what the person concerned wants from life, before using techniques like archetypal imaging to get them moving, while researchers continue to study the effects produced by archetypal imagery and `human hieroglyphics` upon the language learner.