Teaching in France — 2013/14, Part 4

Opening of November blog

I spent a few days back in London over my lycée’s half term in order to attend an interview and have my soul split into a thousand horcruxes.

I flew back on British Airways to Lyon, back into it all, back into all of it.

Toilet skid marks, clogged shower plugs and unwashed stacks of dishes didn’t make for the most welcoming start to my half-term return to Monistrol. Claudia seemingly gets off on these practical jokes whilst I can assure her that playing clean-up boy to her domestic indulgences is not on my bucket list. I had planned on reading Morrissey’s autobiography that evening, which I had bought from WHSmith in Heathrow, and had hoped to follow his advice and stop pandering life’s complexities when the leather so clearly runs smooth on the passenger seat. Instead I cleaned the skid marks and reduced the tower of dishes. Neither dreams nor nightmares came that night, but something told me that Leslie Grantham was still roaming webcam forums in a Captain Hook costume, and that was tough to take.

The French government has recently moved to take my car off the road. Such has been the rubber-induced abrasion of their motorways that they have resolved to manufacture some curious speeding fines. I discovered them in my staff room pigeonhole and gave them a good look-over before putting them down, raising my eyebrows and forgetting all about them. They couldn’t really have been for me. If the government shall cowardly issue these penalties then I shall bravely imagine there lives another Caspar in my village and this has all been one great misunderstanding. As it stands though, in neither dream nor nightmare, I will have to pay a shameful amount for these fines. I know the camera in question, and I know it to be a mischievous little fucker and one that surely switches position at night. Before this year is through, I plan to don a balaclava and vandalise it beyond function.

Teaching this week was what it was. Lessons were fulfilling at points and less fulfilling at others. We continued our work on the theme of “Myths and Heroes”, studying Churchill speeches, talking about the heroic life of Ira Hayes and pondering weighty song lyrics that I’d brought in. Last Wednesday in my period before lunch, I was supposed to have fifteen students but thirty turned up. The extra fifteen kids had come to me in order to escape a test that had been set for the same period. They had chosen instead to claim timetable confusion and squeeze into my conversation class without their teacher’s knowledge, who was now waiting in an empty classroom elsewhere. I respect the games that students play. I remember missing a good percentage of my own Latin classes in sixth form and I recall how Mr Coyle, somewhat of a genuine tosser, would actually chase me around school. The effort, the brains and the creativity I put into skipping class is something that tested me day in, day out. Who was I to tell on these kids? I let them stay and we had a manic hour doing mock orals, which ended up being rewarding to both pupil and pedagogue.

(Missing Image — ‘Students studying the song “The boy with the thorn in his side”’)

Sometime during the week, the British government sent me free money. This was the Erasmus Grant. The Erasmus Grant is a sign that whatever your misgivings about Britain being a ruthless Tory machine, there still exists a remnant of financial support which is intransitive, which doesn’t expect something from something and which supports the idea of experience for experience’s sake. And that’s only a good thing. I suspect the government may have just forgotten to cut it. Being male, I knew it was only a matter of time before this money had to be spent and before my grant had to be Amazon’s profit. Once justified in my mind, I bought some Nikon camera equipment because I think I believe there is a story to be told about Monistrol-sur-Loire, its surrounding area and how there exists a way of life here that is neither romantic nor unromantic, a way of life that continues for the sake of continuing, quite naïve to the dramatic nature around it and even more naïve to the city’s possibilities afar. Monistrol is one of these small towns/large villages where people just live in the present, but even that sounds far too poetic. Rather, people just live here. It might be an interesting story.

Considering I don’t have any friends here in Monistrol-Sur-Loire, I’ve been quite sociable recently. I discovered there are actually two other assistants in Monistrol teaching at a middle school nearby. I went for a drink with one of them on a very quiet Tuesday night whereupon the bartender shut up shop and locked us in. Along with two other punters, he let us smoke inside and we engaged in some good quality conversation about homosexuality, rugby and basque France. On Wednesday I had a haircut and that was nice. I think you know you’re in a good place when you can walk into a coiffeur and having never been there before, they know you want a 2 on the sides, weight off the top but length kept and somewhere between a blend and a step.

Short of friends, mountains and rivers become non-obstacles. Even with the burden of speeding fines put to the back of my mind, I cautiously drove the A89 to Clermont-Ferrand, abusing the tarmac lazily this time (who said prose couldn’t rhyme!). I visited my friend Zoe there and got to hang out with the other assistants who are mega safe. The two nights out were fun. I like Americans and there are plenty to be chatted to in CF. One was good friends with Blake Griffin from university, so we attempted to leave some messages on the basketball player’s phone. I enjoyed that. I got chatting to a French person who said she liked British people because they are eccentric. That’s fair enough, but I know on a personal level that eccentricity is just an elaborate excuse for a short-attention span. I lit an eccentric fart on fire and they took their drink elsewhere. Clermont-Ferrand is just a really good city with a large student population and everything is within walking distance. It does the job and it does more than the job. And as Rick Stein would say: “I just think that’s absolutely fantastic.” I like my friends there and I think having friends is a good thing.

(Missing image of drunk French teenagers — ‘And no, I didn’t spontaneously go out in Hull! This really is sophisticated France where the kids wear war paint and drive their heads through crates!’)

My parents came to Lyon for the weekend. This was my first proper stay in Lyon. Lyon is a very attractive city and is held as the second capital of France, but has just recently been overtaken in population by the ever vibrant, ever fertile Marseille. It is attractive because two huge rivers cut through it: the Saone and the Rhone. This has provided an opportunity for many old bridges to be constructed. Real estate is shunned to industrial spaces on the outskirts and so it is the beautiful residential buildings with their mutely coloured balustrades that reaffirm Gallic superiority of taste and it’s the food markets over the bridges and along the riverfronts that reaffirm Gallic superiority in the other type of taste. Lyon is actually known to be France’s capital of cuisine.

With my parents, whose feet never once hurried through museums, I discovered in galleries and exhibitions Lyon’s silk heritage, art status and cinematic output. I know Lyon has an underbelly, because the road where I normally park my car for free in order to take covoiturage trips is prowled by fire-breathing prostitutes, baying at windows. This time, it was nice to just taste the icing of the city.

So, life goes on. I’m in the process of shooting this documentary and the French are now issuing 07 numbers because they have run out of 06 numbers. How funny is that? It’s funny because for such a huge thing, it’s a simple, uncomplicated solution. I’ll continue with boxing, I’ll continue with the trips and I’ll continue with trying to let experience happen. All the while this goes on, America as a political state burns on the international stage, the world growing quite frustrated with their government’s hypocritical stance in every facet of global life. It just seems sad to have Obama, once a young idealist embroiled into something as seemingly insincere as holding Presidential office.

I listened to Common’s 2005 album “Be” whilst writing this. In my opinion, it would rank in the top 10 hip-hop albums of the noughties. Soulful, true, organic and produced by a younger Kanye West and the deified J Dilla, it is beautiful and needs to be worshipped.

(Missing image of Clermont Ferrand cathedral— ‘Clermont Ferrand cathedral in evening’)

(Missing image of Mike Kobayashi — ‘My main man Mike giving it what for. He works for Nasa and is teaching out here in France as a needed break’)

(Missing image of little kid — ‘The only certainty in my life. In exchange for basic French tuition via Skype, Rupert offers logical solutions to my emotional cul-de-sacs’)