In Which I Roll up my Sleeves

Well, I’ve been wiping the dust off this thing and generally sweeping up a bit, replacing old tubes and so on, winding the cobwebs round a dried-out quill I found in the corner and feeding the fresher parts of the dead rats to the hedgehogs, with some vague idea of casting my thoughts into the ether once more.

Why, you may ask? And it’s a good question. One of the ways I keep body and soul together is, essentially, by teaching people to communicate. I teach them how to speak English, but at the higher levels it’s largely a question of training them to speak in public, to write transactional letters of different kinds, to use English in real life for important purposes. In other words, to communicate.

At these levels, the problems I encounter are more to do with poor communication skills than poor English skills. One of the things I impress upon them, and it’s surprising how hard this can be for young people to understand, is that when you open your mouth it’s quite useful to have something to say.

I have convinced myself I have, once more, things to say to the world (at least, to that very specific and select corner of it that drops by here.

There will be ranting, there will be sport, there will aperçu, there will be education and politics, there will be pedestrian philosophy and abject self-promotion. Oh, and there will be hedgehogs, naturally.