jobs

I'm in Ireland for Christmas and my mother, an avid reader of what remains of this once-grand old blog, reminded me that I kinda left everyone on a bit of a cliffhanger with my last post. She's labouring under the delusion that anyone cares all that much, but in the event that anyone does, here goes:

I'm writing a book.

Yes, a book! One of those thick papery things on your bookshelf, written by people who had enough words in their head and enough belief in the importance of those words to convince someone to pay them to write it.

My book's not quite like that though. Although it is in some ways. It'll be thick and papery for sure. And some people might put it on a bookshelf. And while the words in it are mostly mine, they're also not really. You see, I am writing someone else's story. It's the story of a professional footballer and I am ghostwriting his autobiography. Exciting! And, also fun. Being a full-time writer is very close to the perfect job for me - I get to work from home, I don't have to deal with people and I decide my own hours. I know, I know, I had all of those luxuries in my previous jobs too. But they didn't involve writing a book!

So the reason for my panic was the fact that I was flying to Stoke to spend a whole weekend with this guy, interviewing him and pretty much finding out absolutely everything there was to know about him. Luckily, he's one of the friendliest and most down-to-earth people I have ever met, and I had a jolly good time. We both agree that the book should be more about his early life rather than his time as a footballer - footy autobiographies are ten a penny these days, and all a bit crap. So there'll be lots of focus on his time growing up in a dangerous suburb of Paris. There's something there for everyone, not just footy fans! So buy it please when it comes out!

Since my return from Stoke, I've been busy turning 60,000 words of interview transcripts into a book. I think I'm a little under halfway through now, and I am still very much enjoying the process. I'm finding wells of motivation that I never knew existed, as I positively spring out of bed at 0700 every morning to get working on it. I expect to be finished by mid-February at the latest, and it remains to be seen what will happen after that - another book? A return to translation? I would be more than content with either.

So there you go.

As of last Friday, I am no longer the BCUK support dude.

The time had come to focus on other things. Writing. Translating. World domination, etc. As much as I was loathe to admit it, that was never going to happen from BCUK HQ.

For almost six years I was the guy on the other end, answering all of those questions that needed urgent answering. You wouldn't believe the things I got called. Nazi popped up a couple of times. All sorts of hilarious German stereotypes were thrown my way. I never had the heart to inform how wide of the mark they were. People just need to let stuff out - they are bloggers after all. We're not a group of people well-practiced in holding our tongues with only a computer screen to be offended - well, sections of us anyway. Luckily, online insults in my direction make ducks' backs look like sponges.

And there were the crisis moments. The Private Posts Problem. Tag-gate. Christ, the tags. The Arab Spring seemed tame in comparison to that. The ability to formulate diplomatic emails came in very handy there, as BCUK violently ripped bloggers' first-borns from their mother's arms, and stomped on their heads in front of them. Exaggeration? Seems appropriate.

But then, there were those who were unfailingly polite, pleasant and a pleasure to deal with. People who understood that in order to have a problem solved, it helps to not deliberately make new ones. A please and a thank you actually really, really did make a difference to my day. For those of you who said them (and both you and I know who you are), it's my turn now: thank you. I really mean it.

And to BCUK. I wouldn't still be in Berlin without this job, one that provided me with a desperately needed first payslip six months after making the move. The cupboard wasn't bare by that point; there just wasn't a cupboard. I don't want to think about what would have become of me had Vasco not seen my ad for English lessons and just given me a call. Serendipitous in extremis. Gratitude too.

Hmm, the future? No Dice Magazine, I hope. We're on Issue 2 and it's selling healthily. I've started working on Issue 3. People are starting to not ask me to repeat my name or publication when I introduce myself. That's got to be a good thing. Failing that, there will always be German words that need to be turned into English words. I enjoy that a lot too.

So, that's that. Whoever he/she may be, go easy on the next support dude, eh?

There was the summer cleaning toilets in a big Tesco shopping centre. That was a pretty shit. One inbred local threatened to sue me because he hit his bony, vacuous head on the hand dryer. Obviously, totally my fault.

Then there was the summer working as a 'porter' (for 'porter', read 'everybody's bitch') in a crappy hotel with enormous delusions of grandeur.

And the summer in a video store in Dublin, which also had tanning booths that people used for all sorts of unmentionably disgusting activities aside from slowly but surely giving themselves cancer and turning themselves bright orange.

Oh, and the university days spend delivering newspapers every Thursday. Actually, I quite liked that one, despite the fact that I was a good seven years older than all the spotty thirteen-year-olds who were my colleagues. I'm sure they must have made fun of me behind my (equally spotty) back.

As for the summer spend gardening, well, that was really great until I had an apocalyptic falling-out with my boss. That could have been bad, since he's my brother-in-law's brother. A rural Ireland version of the Montagues and Capulets looked briefly on the cards. All's good now though. Phew.

And how could I forget the music store on a Shop St. in Galway that pumped disgracefully bad music out into the streets in order to attract the punters? On occasion, I was just one more James Blunt song away from multiple homicides. My boss almost wouldn't let me quit to move to Berlin, as 'anyone can be a bloody English teacher'. I admired his brass neck in suggesting that a much more developed skill set was required to be a music store drone.

Suffice to say, I didn't stay very long in any of those jobs. I always had problems with my bosses and I found that Irish people love to throw their weight around when given a position of power. I buggered off to Berlin, and it took me a good six months to get a regular job. I started here in BCUK HQ on this day five years ago and I'm still here, which means I have been in this job about twenty times longer than I had ever stayed in a job before. I guess I must like it.

How could I not, though? My schedule is extremely flexible, my bosses and colleagues are great, I have met some truly incredible people through blog.co.uk, and there's a pretty decent Indian restaurant just downstairs.

So, here's to... erm, not the next five years, as that would be a little presumptuous, but to ongoing bloggery goodness. Hurrah!

I've made a big decision. I've decided to give up teaching, for a while at least. When I say give up, I mean mostly give up, as there are some parts of it that I don't want to let go of. I'll continue to do camps, because I really enjoy them. And I'll continue to teach my group of pensioners (whose wonderfulness I have blogged about here and here) because I love hanging out with them.

But that's it.

No more biking all over town to sit with uncooperative teenagers as we both count down the minutes to the end of the lesson. No more teaching students in my bedroom, so no more frantically stuffing stinky undies into a cupboard as a student traipses up the stairs. No more of the hated 'conversation' lessons, where students refuse to learn any grammar and I have to come up with ways to maintain a conversation for a couple of hours with someone I don't find interesting at all. I've always vowed to never do a job solely for money, and that's what teaching had become - enduring a couple of hours of uninspiring boredom for the promise of a couple of crinkly sheets of legal tender at the end.

Yep, it is pretty great to no longer be one of the masses of English teachers, floundering hopefully in an utterly saturated market. And even though I know I am a very good teacher, there is something of a stigma attached to this particular line of work.

It's seen as a soft touch, something that any idiot could do - after all, we already know the language, so we must be able to teach it, right? Well, no. Aside from the million different types of teaching, you need to know your subject inside out, you need the right personality, you need classroom management skills, you need to care about your students, you need the ability to clearly explain blurrily-defined concepts - basically, you need to lack the arrogance that makes you think you know everything already, because you don't.

This profession, while having many incredible teachers from whom one, be they students or fellow teachers, can learn massive amounts from, still gets defined by Gap-Year Dave, determined to finance his months of pissing around in what he perceives as the easiest way possible. Well, Gap-Year Dave, you're a twat and you're dragging us real teachers down into your twattery.

Well, except I'm not a teacher any more. So once Gap-Year Dave keeps his twatty nose out of the world of nerdy customer support dudes, translators and wannabe-writers, I'm safe to rebuild my reputation as a non-teacher.