Ronnie Robaco was born in Berkshire , in 1956 he fell into an early confusion about his childhood when having a dream as a boy one summer holiday while reading " Five go to smugglers top" by Eneid Blyton, and the fact that he grew up in the North of England in a pit village ,until he left at the tender age of eighteen years to educate himself in a sort of half Candide, half Tom Jones but orchestrated by moog synth jazz sort of a way ,with a lot of the Bohemian lifestyle thrown in ! At 29 years of age and after what his northern parents would have called a right carry on Ronnie found himself, not totally by choise, on his first TEFL contract. Ronnie is a comedian and an academic, a philosipher, Christian, Muslim and an Athiest ! He was born blind of the world as we all are, he was nurtured in the world as we all are with no answers other than those given to him by supposed experts. There is no point making out life has a point or is a journey to anywhere in particular, Not until like Sartre we’re on our deathbeds, anyway. Through a magnifiying glass we see the small and make the small larger but through experience we see the world for what it is and see that it is even smaller than we thought. Until ofcourse we take the first step into eternity" Don't say goodbye, say masalama ! " Ronnie Robaco's fearfull but relentless journey through the world of teaching English as a foreign or second language !!! .Who is Ronnie Robaco ? Well here is his tale, our eponymous hero’s interaction with the journey of life may or may not be to everyone’s taste. The Arabs say “ Life is sweet but if you understand it .” Whether anyone one really understands anything is a point for some considerable discussion but what Ronnie wanted to understand and failed to realize himself was the very nature of time itself , all the clues were there it was just that poor Ronnie, like so many of us ,could not see wood for trees. We must start somewhere in the middle as most things in life are about the middle, middle age, middle of the road, middle class and so on and so forth therefore most appropriately Ron’s story tells of The Middle-East. It must be almost 10.30 pm ,GMT +3, Gulf time and Ronnie is racing along the highway in his newly rented Toyota Yaris, shaking somewhat erratically and occasionally flashing full beam as he tries to figure out where he is, where he is heading and how he got there in the first place ! In fact he is miles out of his way and just about to head straight into an evacuation area where he will be frisked by police, reprimanded for not having the correct papers for travel in this zone and asked to turn back and return from whence he came. Heading in the reverse direction and now shaking even more frantically due to the lack of road light and any sign of a street lamp he now manages to turn up a complete miss turn onto a half built road that literally leads him nowhere but to the end of a sand mound of unbuilt road. Ronnie now in a complete panic and sweating profusely manages the most erratic of three point turns and heads back again , this time finally finding a light leading to a highway, which he takes and then after five minutes driving on the lit road pulls over to ask directions.
"Salamyings and Hiaks alley coom and all that old boy, by the way like your kilt, one piece design eh, very snazzy. Not so sure about the black tennis head band though, do you always put a table cloth under that? Eh ha ha. I appear to have lost my way I'm afraid, could you point me in the direction of the Industrial city!?"
As you have probably deduced by now Ronnie has the diplomatic skills of Genghis Khan and to no surprise finds himself spending the night at a roadside Hotel, sipping an overpriced mango juice from the mini bar before nodding off until the next morning when he finally manages to get onto the correct road and make his approach to the city. As he drives in his eye catches the main roundabout in the centre of which stands a large clock .The time is 1.20 pm, just gone lunch time and after all the fuss Ron is feeling a little peckish. He somehow arrives safely at his new College and makes his way to meet the new staff.
"May I introduce myself, Professor Ronnie Robaco, PhD, Applied Linguistics, Salamings and Hiakings and all that and very pleased to meet you indeed I'm sure, apologies for the slightly late arrival, had a few problems with the local highways. I say, I could murder a mezzah with stuffed vine leaves and perhaps a splash of Saudi Champagne, if there is any chance? The Dean smiled sympathetically and guided him to the buffet where Ron as usual made a complete fool of himself trying to keep his food on the plate sitting cross legged on the floor and spilling most of the Saudi Champagne over the Head of the English Language Department. It was supposed to be a swan song contract for Ron he had been on the TEFL road for coming up to 24 years and long story short might have had a few pounds put away for a rainy day if he hadn't suddenly at the age of 36 decided to get married ,have two children and more recently there was the most unfortunate business of his investment portfolio which he had personally selected in Bank shares and the UK property market. It had not been all beer and skittles for poor old Ron and he had overcome many a tight situation to maintain an often shunned and isolated existence on the edges of sanity. It is of the tales of these situations that our story will unfold and so, before the details of that swan song contract come out, please my dear reader be patient and let me take you back just a little further, just a little further to the previous summer, when Ron had been squeezing in a working visit to South East England.? Ronnie slowly half opened his eyes and through staggering head pain on top of the usual aches and pains tried to focus and remember his name, date of birth and current location. Blooming Camel's pooh ...he was still Director of the Summer school in Dogham, England. He was relieved at least that after the attack on himself from one of his teaching staff the previous night at dinner he was in one piece and that he could push on. Grabbing his usual tatty pants and T Shirt he made his way out towards breakfast but was shocked to find the main corridor doors locked and barred, his heart missed a beat, was he as free as he had first anticipated on re-gaining consciousness? It was the same place wasn't it?
Ronnie headed for the nearest fire escape and made his way back to the resources office and after checking he really was in the right place and after checking the clock, his trusty clock, ( the clock that never ever let him down, come rain or shine, County nor Country, National or International location, the clock would tell the truth). He noticed the doors had been locked from the outside, he opened them and made his way back to breakfast. One shock after another, the next few moments were to bring the greatest shock of all, there at the breakfast table at the far side of the dining room was his attacker, hair shaved shorter than prior the assault but none the less, sitting, eating breakfast as if nothing had happened. Ronnie gulped and almost swallowed his own tongue, he felt his legs giving way under him and he stopped dead in his tracks and went into a dream............a day dream back to his childhood days in Pangbourne , playing in the garden with his older sister, who it has to be said was very very intelligent (but never did get married) Hot summer afternoons in the Gazebo scanning Enid Bytom stories and drinking glass after glass of sugared ribena until he needed the bathroom so badly he would soil himself and his Father would punish him by hanging him upside down in the tree house with a piece of of knotted rope for half an hour until so much blood rushed to his head he would lose consciousness and wake up in bed the next morning with Nanny sat beside him looking very concerned .or was that all wrong , wrong, wrong ! Was it really something more like this..........? There was more smoke in the back bar than in any Chinese opium den, Japanese brothel or even public house in the early 1970's in UK. It was 1975 and electricity had not been invented, well perhaps it had but it was only ever used in North East England to boot up black and while cathode ray oscilloscopes, long playing record players and a strange, huge and weird object called a “hair dryer.” Ron sat crying into his beer in the back bar of The Burnt Hotel lost in the North East of England, where even before mass immigration in the 90’s created total loss of any English identity and the creation of the national language of UK as a cross between Tagalog and Romanian, 98% of the population could barely utter three or four words of the English Language comprehendibly and anyone who owned a shower fitting was regarded as upper middle class. The tears fell copiously as he wept like a little baby because he could not afford hard contact lenses and he had been cursed with a restricted code of language( in the sense that Bernstein implied in his theory of restricted codes of language 197* something !) Young Ronnie had just squeezed two A levels in English and History which gave him the opportunity to matriculate on the B.ed program and travel to the Home Cunties ,( where all the cunts lived!) to embark upon an illustrious education alongside other hopefuls and it has to be said mostly middle class tarts whose parents could not quite afford to send them to finishing school in Lausanne but to save the pennies had opted for Scrotum house or was it Balls Cottage, one or the other in the hope that their non too brilliant off spring could scrape out a Teacher’s Certificate and while away the rest of their lives in Primary Education somewhere close to Pokingham or Fartham.
It was a sure thing that although Ron had all the best of intentions in that he wished to get his degree in Drama and English and then become a famous actor, preferably in TV situation comedy, it was obvious to everyone but Ron himself( who already carried with him what he regarded to be a remarkable time piece, which had it’s own second hand and could also be battery operated in emergency!) that living a lifestyle of changing girlfriend every week, sleeping on the common room floor most nights too incapable to make it back to digs and scraping though lectures on what was mostly native wit, was not really the recipe for success, even though Jonny Rotten and Keith Richards might have accomplished this. By the end of his third and final year poor Ronnie found himself more than challenged by Shakespearian Tragedy, indeed his whole life seemed like a tragedy and although he felt he had mastered all of the comedies and indeed knew Malvolio off by heart, and had also mastered the Friar in Romeo and Juliet, not just the words but also the figure (thanks to amount of beer consumed in the student common room bar every evening,) and had even passed his teaching practice and Professional studies with a B- no less and gained an invitation to study for honors the following year, without the Shakespeare exam, he was going nowhere. Sadly the British University system had a long way to go before seeing the light of the American modular means of study, whereby if was quite possible to either do nothing or to completely fail an entire semester and still graduate with Honors. It seemed to Ron this was the nature of how we came by such generation upon generation of invigorating US Presidents! After three attempts and when he refused to come back the following year to study Drama for honors and not Psychology which was his chosen option for a fourth year, Drama Faculty finally took the hump and sent Ronnie down without his degree, threw him out of his accommodation and left him for dead in a bedsit in Watford over medicated on valium and John Smiths bitter with only one pair of corduroy trousers, badly in debt, a huge chip on both shoulders and with almost the worst winter in history to get through without any support other than defrauding the DHS and the occasional bout of shop lifting. At least the shop lifting was fun, being chased half way around Twatford by the M and S store detectives with a 10lb XMas Turkey and half a dozen bottles of Moet Chardon bashing against each other in a back pack until finally loosing the tail by dashing between fast moving cars on the bypass to relative safely of the underground station to become lost in the crowd. Until, by 1982 he realized he could get advanced standing from the Open University and finally finish his degree by distance learning.
That was all sometime long ago, but in the present our eponymous hero was still reeling from the almost first degree burns he had received from the shower fitting in the converted Barn in Dogham where he had been staying prior to his summer Director Position. How on earth any half reasonably curious landlady could set the shower temperatures of hot water to such a boiling degree as to almost scald the flesh of her guests from their taunted bodies. Ron made a mental note, no more barns conversions. The local train station was Graves View, in the County of Kunt, one of the Home Kunties ( and they don't call it that for nothing, ) dead as Nixon ! If you fancy doing your supermarket shopping in a disused quarry and don't mind hob knobbing it with the kunts, that is those that live in Kunt, then it's fine . Leaving on the train and thinking of who he could possibly blame for such a disastrous summer there suddenly sprang to Ron's mind a memory of a previous colleague ( there were a lot of them !) who had devised a theory of allocating blame to others in order to avoid being blamed oneself, he had named the theory, understandably.... The Theory of Grassing , this was and still is , The Theory of Grassing 1. A grass must always be 100% true, and must concern what someone said or did, i.e. it must be a fact, not an opinion. Remember a grass can itself be grassed up, and you never want to appear a liar, or all your future grasses will be ignored.2. Always grass down the chain of command, as well as up it. If everyone grasses everyone up and down the chain of command, this becomes a good thing, as a free exchange of information takes place. Grassing upwards only is technically known as the "Günter Grass", named in honor of the German who had such an unhealthy respect for authority, that he never undermined it by grassing his elders down to his subordinates.3. Never "under-grass" yourself by grassing someone to your immediate manager, when that someone is already grassing you to the manager's manager.4.When someone is grassing you up, don't speak- or you may inadvertently say something to grass yourself up too! 5. Grassing is always rewarded by senior management, and makes middle management fear you." The Field's "Theory of grassing" continues.. 6. The indirect grass. This involves relying on a middle-man to do the actual grassing, thereby giving some degree of anonymity to the original instigator of the grass. Not really recommended for precise targeting of individuals, as you inevitably lose control of the grass, its contact and the number of people who get to hear of it. A good technique for sowing chaos, however, so it is the "terrorist" grasser’s favorite method. Much used by The Field himself.
7. The open grass. Not really a grass at all, but a very powerful technique, if used appropriately. It involves the public denunciation of a person in front of a large audience. Much used in China during the Cultural Revolution, by Saddam Hussein on seizing power, and by Comrade R. Barnett, against "Dr" Michael Acting - Boles, in Bahrain in 1992. The open grass' chief advantage is its effect of shocking the audience as much as the victim.
Back to the plot ............Ronnie was to arrive in Khams Mishit , Saudi Arabia , to take up a teaching position which he had obtained due to a clerical error, having fallen asleep at the interview, held somewhere in the basement of St Bartholomew's Hospital in London. The very thin air of Khamis at 2,000 feet, made staying awake difficult even for youngsters fresh from their dodgy TEFL Training establishments. For Ronnie it was next to impossible. Left in his director's office he took out his new laptop and a Dummies Guide to Word book. He knew his novel had to have structure and purpose, even if his life did not. Here was an opportunity to make a fresh start, even if he lacked typing skills or even the most basic understanding of computers... At that moment there was a knock on the door, and Terry Collins, a former bit actor who had a minor role in the film Michael Collins, and had a remarkable though quite useless ability to make anagrams from anybody's name, introduced himself with a lengthy resume of his life story so far. As Ron's mind began to drift, he picked out two important pieces of information; First of all Terry asked if he was the new Director, but the lack of precision, which is a feature of the English Language made it impossible to determine without an understanding of context, whether that meant Ronnie or himself. The other information was much more important: Apparently, opposite the main gate of the military hospital, there was a pharmacy which sold Prozac without prescription. All the TEFL staff was on it, and Terry thought it would be a good idea if the Director was also oblivious to everything that was going on around him. "It's much easier to get through a contract when you're on this shit", he advised, guardedly.. Ronnie dreamt back to his school days .... He had had the worst possible attendance record at Comprehensive School, despite the fact that this was the year of the 3 Day Week. Nevertheless he saw himself as an academic and was always willing to try a new subject. Indeed he was the founder member of the Geology Class. This was an attempt by the principal to raise the comprehensive’s academic profile, and Ronnie had been the only student to volunteer for this class, which was taught by a university lecturer called Paul Lover, who made no attempt to dumb down his lectures for the benefit of the children. Ronnie never missed this class, and was particularly proud of his A++ grade in mineralogy. Unfortunately, as the nation’s electricity supply failed, the school couldn’t justify heating a classroom for one student, so others were soon incentivized into joining Geology. Unfortunately the new intake included some of the worst psychopaths in the school, obviously attracted by the promise of a brand new geology hammer, a lethal offensive weapon which they could now publically carry with impunity. This being a working class intake, ritualized violence, bullying and sexually inappropriate behavior soon became a feature of the curriculum. Field trips were a case in point. As the kids piled into the back of the van, Ronnie lingered outside. There was no point taking a seat until Richard Caper arrived, as he always liked to throw everyone out of the van, and take his seat opposite an arty tart called Tracey , who always wore miniskirts on fieldtrips, so that Caper could feel her thighs and make her journey to the quarry more exciting. Ronnie himself had a much less carefree time, seated as he was opposite Julie Gallagher, his former girlfriend from infant School, who had left to finish her elementary education in the city of Durham, but had now reappeared and been forcibly conscripted into Geology Class, where like all women, she had “unresolved issues concerning the past relationship”. The sight of the little slut carrying a geologist’s hammer, was always playing on Ronnie’s mind. He abhorred violence, but in Geology Class there was no getting away from it, so since the death of his primary school minder , Ronnie had adopted the Lord Byron strategy, making every effort to appear “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. In fact he soon realized that Byron had tried too hard, in a working class school it was enough to seem mad, for everyone to leave you alone. Unfortunately all strategies ultimately fail as there are no rules in life, and one day Geology Class decided to spend the whole afternoon sticking sellotape in Ronnie’s hair. It was Ronnie’s mistake to wash and comb it the previous night, and as a form of bullying it was not so much painful as totally bizarre and unexpected. Ronnie decided to concentrate on the lecture as best he could, and managed to get to 3.45 without reacting. Unfortunately just then, The Robot, a comatose kid who dressed like a 1950s public schoolboy in an age of flares and Paisley shirts, decided to cut himself a length of sellotape off the roll. Suddenly, without thinking, Ronnie grabbed the teacher’s metric ruler and lunged at The Robot. He aimed for the chest, but the unfortunate Robot ducked just far enough, for the ruler to go straight through his mouth, taking out his teeth. As the crunch echoed in slow-motion around the room, Ronnie realized his time at the comprehensive was over. There was no point worrying about what he had done, as his future played itself out in his mind. He would be taken to the principal’s office, his father would be called, and there would be talk of legal action. But the outcome could only be a move to a Comprehensive school , where Ronnie’s mastery of joined-up writing would make him a target, unless he quickly recruited another minder, something which might prove difficult if his pocket money was cut. As he sat contemplating the sale of his Robertson’s Golliwog collection, Ronnie thought he knew what would happen next, but he was wrong nothing happened, nothing at all. It was as if it had been a dream, and he had now woken up. Ronnie never did find out the reason, probably because there wasn’t one, but many years later, he visited Thomas Carlyle’s grave in Edinburgh, because Carlyle’s explanation was the only one which made any sense: there was no causality in life, no meaning or purpose, and just because the farmer’s wife brings food for the chickens every day, it does not follow that one day she will not come to wring their necks... Years later Ronnie was in Qatar and thought he knew he would be sacked and why. But yet again the totally unexpected happened, and his nemesis died in a car crash on his way to grass him....”As a teenager, Ronnie had trained as a concert pianist, though his first love was Jazz, nothing pleased him more than to sneak a Cadbury caramel into his piano seat , along with half a bottle of Vodka and kick shit out of the upright until his fingers could take no more !.....all in minor key, still he was also in the habit of pestering vicars into allowing him to play Bach fugues at funerals, since the only weddings now held in England were gay affairs, at which only 1980s disco music was allowed. Some vicars, indeed even some mullahs living on “multi-faith cohesion” grants, in Congregationalist Churches converted into mosques, acquiesced, but only on the condition that no members of the deceased’s family were present during the performance. Not that Ronnie played badly, far from it. The problem was that since the churches had introduced guitar strumming hippies into their services, the government’s Health & Safety Executive had quietly condemned every single Victorian organ in the country as a health risk. It was while he was up in the organ loft, that he heard a vicar tell a congregation of two the shocking story of how the great atheistic philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre , who had so convincingly argued that there was no meaning or purpose in life, had confessed on his deathbed to his girlfriend Simone de Beauvoir, that there was indeed a God and that he himself had been created for a purpose. Suddenly the memory came back of how Ronnie had once lost a job in Kuwait, thanks to Sartre, by voicing an opinion that there was no God. Why had he done that? He vaguely remembered Sartre actually saying that existentialism does not preclude the existence of God, but that was just the sort of guarded remark that a philosopher would make, and which Ronnie could never be bothered to read. Even so, what were these philosophers up to? Hadn’t Voltaire refused to renounce Satan on his deathbed, by arguing that this was no time to be making new enemies? Ronnie was about to reach for a volume of Proust’s A la Recherché d’un temps Perdue to get a grip on reality, when he heard that Sartre’s autobiography was actually a satire on Proust’s great novel. Ronnie quickly looked out of the window to check that his coffin was safely outside the church, and that he could start to play. It was definitely time for a change he thought, so instead of Chopin’s Funeral March, he began with the opening chords of the Revolutionary Etude, as a mark of respect to the three comrades he had worked with in 1992. Down in the church below, his lawyer and his accountant were already at work, fending off claims from a multicultural group of children, whose mothers had told them to claim kinship with Ronnie, now that he was dead. This is the wrong novel, he realized. This is how Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles begins...” Let's finally get on to the narrative of this tale as poor old Ron's mind is running amuck will all these memories and, or illusions of life, the time is now moved on up to 2009 and our TEFL'ing trouble maker is on yet another contract , still in the Middle East but this time in and on the wide open canvass of Dubai, U.A.E. We are now in the naughties ,approaching 2010 , times ,technology and the wrinkles on Ronnie's brow have certainly moved on. No longer are the USA or the British in control but due to the scrunch, the economic European and USA recession and even inflation and lower oil prices in the Mid -East......Lebanon have moved in an attempt coup of administration up town U.A.E.
The flight to Dubai out of UK had been badly delayed and Ron was sitting in Newcastle -upon -Toon International airport hiding half a bottle of cheap Russian vodka, adding large blasts every five minutes to his espresso coffee while pretending to read a WHSmith paperback. The gate was open and Ron staggered off in the appropriate direction. It was Ron's usual habit to promise himself not to order red wine because he knew he was going to spill it all over himself at some point during the six hours plus flight but once again he had circum and sure as shot within one hour into the flight he found himself waking up semi-conscious after the vodka and with a lap covered in Claret. Rest of the flight he spent watching the end of the new Batman movie and then disembarked to be greeted in Dubai by some enormous Lebanese women who pretended not to be shocked by the claret stains and offered him a cab on to the accommodation. The flat was furnished with IKEA, not too bad really but none of the bathroom lights worked and they had that familiar Arab smell ,lack of disinfectant and that horrendous hum from the AC units. Seemed like usual modus operands to Ronny and he collapsed leaving his s suitcase half in and out of the wardrobe. Next morning he didn't feel well at all, these hangovers were becoming just a little too much. He tried to get some company by knocking on the flat next door, another Lebanese women, half the size of the one last night but not really a looker, she turned out to be something to do with administration and her brother was staying with her which didn’t help matters, Ron scampered back to his own lair with a borrowed mug and spent the rest of the day in bed listening occasionally to Arabic tribal tunes more like hammering on a Chinese building site or which vaguely sounded like a cat being castrated without anesthetic. The joys of being back in the Middle-East thought Ron and he drifted away again into the mist of sleep.
Ron thought it would be a good idea to have his hair styled and the following day was also a holiday so he headed off for the Rotana salon and after a couple of hours under various hair dying equipments and washer and dryers he emerged looking like a cross between Frankie Howard and a ginger nut biscuit, still pleasant enough way to spend the morning, time for lunch. Five star Hotel restaurants suited Ron down to the ground and he set about ordering a light Chinese delicacy accompanied of course by the statutary bottle of wine. Bit expensive but so what , usual to have a blow out at the beginning of a new contract. Ron was pleased to be waited on by a young Chinese girl who looked suitably numbed by her surroundings and 14 hour working day. He decided to try to make a little small talk and asked her where she was from. The girl replied quickly that she was from Shandong. Ron became excited and his mind flashed back to a previous contract there, remembering freezing temperatures of -25C, the need to drink half a bottle of 50 per cent proof Byjoe (local whisky designed to blind you in one swig) each day to keep from freezing, the local girls in the supermarkets and the karaoke bars. Before Ron started thinking to himself, he quickly threw in that Shandong was the birth place of Confucius. The girl looked blank, with no response, and despite repeating the name several times she was unable to make any identification with the ago old historical figure. Ron could not believe she knew nothing of the history or Shandong but put it down to the influences of communism , finished his meal and went back to his flat to sleep.
At the school Ron was in for a big shock, he had been hired to train up some of the local teachers and expected to be in an authoritative position but arrived beginning of term to find he was overseen by a 26 year old Lebanese girl with the title of Academic controller. She kept repeating to him that he would be “team teaching” in front of the members of teaching staff “taking the lead ” and never let him get a word in edgeways at meetings. Bad enough trying to communicatw with the women through the veil,Ron could see from the start that this was never going to work and given that it was Ramadan, through serious inquiry and a few tips from the concierge at the Rotana Hotel he managed to find a back street liquor store where he could get half a dozen bottles of vodka at a time without a permit and he set about spending the reduced working hours for Ramdan by retiring to the accommodation at midday and drinking solidly until midnight while watching rerun movies on MBC 2 and 4 and the occasional U.S.A. sitcom on Dubai 1. Seinfeld quickly became something of religious significance for Ron as it marked that time in the afternoon when he knew that all though he might not fell it specifically he would certainly be half unconscious and in no fit state to work any further than the bathroom .Even though all the light bulbs in there were still not working he didn’t care too much. So the Ramadan days drifted by one after the other, the mundane bus ride in with multiple pick ups on the way, the inevitable car accidents and pile ups from the local drivers, the total inability to get even a word in at any meeting. The constant repetition of the words “Team Teacher” and the shrieks of the Headmistress yelling at the terrified 5 year olds in assembly .Then one day came the Ede, Ron collected his salary, splashed out on some Ted Lepidus shirts and footwear at the mall and returning to work after the holiday heard that all Teacher trainers would be taking extra lessons to teach members of the English teacher staff each day and thus extending the working day until 4.00 pm, Ron promptly went sick, ran to the Rotana lounge ordered beers and the Dr to issue him with a sick note, his blood pressure had shot up to over 100 plus. Few days later Ronnie was called to meet the Head of the whole set up in Abu Dhabi, an American woman, thin , obnoxious, full of pretentious comment about how she could not have her Academic Controllers ,( who had saved and brought back to life the ailing school system in U.A.E.) overruled by visiting English Professors who smelt of drink on the bus blah, blah ,blah. The offer was ticket out or stop complaining about the internet service at school and get in line, Ron took the ticket. Ron had met an old Palestinian in the Rotan bar and invited him back to the flat to clean out the kitchen cupboards and fridge and pack up the remaining vodka all but one bottle Ron put in his suitcase and another he polished off so that by 3.30 am when Ron was picked up to travel to the airport his state of sensibility was shall we say, slightly impaired. Rough end of this showed when Ronnie bumped into an old school friend, turned millionaire at Dubai airport, who was travelling first class and tried to get Ron into the first class cabin but for the fact his minder was a little over enthusiastic to assure his employers safety and Ron found himself ushered down the first class stairs again and after something of a blur standing at the Hotel reservations desk back at the airport with a ticket for next departure the next day in his pocket, whatever thought Ron and before falling over with exhaustion checked into the Dubai Marriot.
The foyer was impressive, the bell boy effective. In the middle of a stagger towards the cash point to see if his new pin numbers could be registered Ron’s eye flashed over a pair of high stiletto heels, some very tight denim jeans, a trim waist and a Lebanese smile. Upstairs the hotel room was sumptuous, spacious and given a situation that it was necessary to while away 24 hours until the next flight , this place and situation were not too bad an option to escort the heels along with their occupant into the lift and through the Hotel room door. After removing a few thousand dirhams to stuff into the stilleto's strap ,Ron put his wallet in the safe locked it carefully, poured himself a brandy from the mini bar which hit the spot in seconds and relaxed. Twenty two hours ,at least two thousand pounds sterling or some 12, 000 dirhams and a lot of goings on later Ronnie fell into the limousine and headed for Dubai airport for a second attempt to get back to UK. As the limo pulled out of the Marriott he didn’t look back, there’s one thing great about the middle-east he thought and that’s getting out of it ! The flight back was cramped in economy and Ron was extremely hung over, couldn’t even manage to drink water, he spent most of the flight at the back of the plane talking to the stewards trying to get some sympathy in between service mumbling and grumbling about the scenario he had just been through and hopelessly seeking answers from those totally unqualified with any experience to give him good advice. He could see the eyes of the steward glazing over and he rambled on about how impossible it was to impart any learning in the middle east due to horrendous non-interest in anything whatsoever other than local cultural pastimes, the inability to think outside of the box. Then again why should there be any need to do this? Do Europeans think outside of their box ? Finally it was time to buckle in for landing and Ron made the journey back to his seat. The English air was cool and crisp on arrival and tasted sweet, feet on the ground in UK at last. Now to deal with the English licensing laws and hope that it is nearly 11.00 am or there will be no chance of a drink anywhere in the Country. Why couldn’t all flights be standardized to arrive at 10.45 am which would give 15 minutes to change some curretncy and get comfy in the pub ? It seemed like a reasonable request to Ron and this time he was somehow in luck as within minutes of completing his currency change the clock struck the magic hour of 11.00 am.Ron found the airport bar ordered a drink and immediately drifted off into the past. This was not an uncommon occurence for Ron, as there was so much to remember so much that had not quite seemed to fit inplace, it was as if by remembering he could in some way sort out all the jigsaw pieces and try to make the picture complete. The picture sadly had many gaps and large amounts of the landscape were totaally missing. By the time Ron had accepted the honour of Principal just two years later these missing expanses of missing colour would need to be brought into full view in his mind , as he would need to draw on all the experience hae had and more. His first duty as Principal was to write his own "self assessment report "............of the sort; School orientation and Parent's meeting were completed and included remarks from the Principal to the effect that as the first International High school in Maldives we have a committment to provide the very best in educational opportunities to all young Maldevians. Familiarisation with the International School campus and talking to the children on the "meet and greet" , monitoring during breaks and in observational walk about has given the opportunity for insight into what the children have expectation of and how far they have progressed in the understanding of International school policy based on an ethos of "self-discpline" and " self-motivated enrollment". The Principal has worked with and taken support from the Deputy Principal in all school matters most importantly meetings with Head of Department and Academic Staff in relation to all school policies currently in making. Executive Committee has had inorguration and first meeting which was adjurned and will re-convene to fully cover list of policies required to be endorsed and recommended to Rector.These policies will now be discussed one by members at further committee meetings to finalize policy statement by end of August 2010. The Principal has been involved in and listened very carefully in all official meetings and taken steps to maintain a good atmosphere and discipline around the school including cover of Head of Depatment teaching staff and taken necessary action to ensure ripple effect of school policy where necessary with Academic Staff individuals, paid due attention to all students questions , comments, remarks and requests and with follow up .Regarding Academic organisation of procedures all Departments Heados of Department have been given directive to observe and give feedback to teachers on formatted report, some of the departments have completed, it is expected the remaining departments should complete by end of week beginninh 18th July. All Standard operational procedures for discipline have been agreed with Deputy Principal and Heads of Department. Matters regarding clubs and activities are still in hand but were raised at first Executive Committee meeting. The School Learning System is now operational, the application of which is innovative in that students will preferably enroll themselves eventually by logging in online and will receive online reinforcement of all lesson materials given in class. "That should do it !" smirked PR (Principal Ron) and if it doesn't then they can all go and, well, let's move along as there is much to do and much to contend with , a Principal's days are long , sometimes lonely, mostly retiring but sometimes hectic but all seemed well enough, " I can tell you ! " chirped PR in his enimitable way , so what could possibly go wrong now ?
Monday morning and Principal Ron had been bombarded with sick leave requests, not one but five in as much as half an hour ! Head of Chemistry had taken a weeks leave to collect his family, a week later he had turned up back, on his own and when questioned couldn't even get his story straight giving one load of guff to the Deputy Princapal and another jolly load of rubbish to Ronnie. The Head of English had to go to Sri Lanka for five days to get her eyes checked and then failed to turn up also marked by an email saying she needed another three days off to recover from eye surgary ! This one rankling particularly with the Principal as he had been marking her register for a week and it meant yet another three days of sending in the office secretary to keep them seated while Ron sat nervously in his office with a bag of samosa and cafe' late'.
Even the late' couldn't take the edge off the request for leave to go home for the event of "the 21st day after birth" of the English teacher's newborn, the request to go home with a bad headache from the other English teacher.(It seems the English department has been particularly badly hit with the need to evacuate the school , not much new there occured to Ron!) and not to mention the suicide in Malaysia of the sister in law of the Economicsa teacher, who had turned up in tears at 6.45 am not even giving the PR (Principal Ron) enough time to get himself past the morning "Meet and Greet" and into his office. The stress of it all landed Ronnie with two wacking great cold sores, herpes simplex D, nausiated constitution and a bill for $30 for the meds which Ronnie found ludicrous and wanted to bite the head off the pharmacist there and then or at very least deposit a herpes simplex ridden glob or saliva inot his eye ball in the hope he would end up with dentric ulceration and corneal errosion as a parting gift. "Work, work, work ! " , PR grumbled as he removed what seemed to be a bucket of sweat from his brow after his morning coastal perambulation of Marle' He might as well kick the bucket at this point, seems very llittle reason to work yourself up into a sweat every morning just to arrive home at dusk and fall into bed moaning and groaning all night like a scene from some ancient 1960's Hammer Hhorror movie. PR's office was open on two sides, one way a window into the administration office and straight ahead out onto the school courtyard. From position behind his desk Ron could mostly the see the main movements of the school, the DP (Deputy Principal ) arrived moments after PR, he was never far bahind him and Ronnie felt a further groan. Then as the sick and bereaved started to appear from the wood work, returned to toil there was al least a small sense of a lift, if they could muscle on then so could Ronnie. He wiped away another bead of perspiration dripping from the herpes simplex cold sore on his lip .A moment of Terrets Syndrome gripped him and then he resolved to put another kilo bag of sugar in the fermentation mix that evening. It was to take quite a time before PR reached that evening, there was an entire school day to get through, Statistics teacher was still unperforming despite two or three vistis from PR and the respective pep talks, executive committe wanted draft policy before they would condescend to discuss it for endorsement, which lengthened an already impossibly long process into a process which may still not be completed by the time Picasso paintings are devalued to $2 a throw. Deputy P was in denial over receipt of an email with all of his job list attached, thus giving him two days leave of work which put up PR's blood pressure no end and then news came of a 2.00 pm meeting with the Rector and Heads of Department. Experiences such as being locked up by the Iraqi and taken as prisioner of war and human shield on the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and no less then 11, ( not a dozen quite!) employment contracts in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had enabled Ron to lean how to listern, to listern even in the face of death, to attempt at all costs to avoid any confronatation, again even in the face of death and he had met with many an oritor, many a statesmen and many a spin Dr, but he was quite certain that The Rector held a good place in the top fifty or so of such who could spin out what amounted to no more than one sentence into ninty imutes plus, glued down in an over air conditioned back end classroom with the Vice Rector , the entire list of Heads of Department and the Deputy, all of them gripping at their chair legs and clenching their teeth in the hope of the eventuallyity that soon their ordeal might end .In bed again before 9.00 pm there was barely the strength to turn the light off, but the frementation bucket had been re-juiced.
The following day there was to be an executive committee meeting, there was to be a two day holiday to follow the weekend after a one day back to break it up. The Principal put his notes together and headed off for the meeting, clutching his laptop with revised policy ready for the projector when from out of the blue a second confidential letter was placed in his hand and his signature requested. " I can guess what this is !", thought Ron, another plot a foot another mad international detante into the waste paper basket, another ploy, another scheme, was there no end to the diithering jibes from these tribal terrorists .He opened the letter and read " Blar blar..I have studied your brief assesment report ." " Brief !" Yelled Ronnie out loud, fotrunately there was no one in the emeeting room yet " Succinct and to the point! " " You are expected to asses your perfomance in all areas specified in the descrpition." " Well, if I had done that all I would need to say is bloody excellent, magnifico and tip top !" spluttlered Ron. Fancy passing this on to him right before the excec meeting , he thought, typical, sceaming jibes !! Ronnie refused to read the rest ( or most of ) the letter with the exception of " The Principal is getting distanced from conceptual and and executive functions of the school and becoming increasingly irrelevant...." Not half as irrelevant as your jibes and mumblings, thought Ron. Exec committee trundled through block after block, discussions leading to confusion of policy with proceedure and Ron nearly ventured as much but thought it better to just let them have their say and get it minuted by the Deputy. This has all been a ploy to get me here to say a few things on TV at the opening ceremony and make it look good before they stick the local Deputy into this job on a quarter of the salary and make up a whole lot of guarbage about a lack of philosophical ethos. Seen it before in China, it's a low down trick but so is life !.
