by It’s been a pretty big week on the work front – 34 hours of lessons. On Thursday night I told my student how to spell “unnecessary”, eventually giving up on the whole alphabet lark and just typing it into the chat. I warned him that even native speakers struggle with that word. Then the next morning (yesterday) I watched the BBC and saw a big headline about unneccessary emails, with an unnecessary third set of double letters. (Double C makes no sense there. English spelling isn’t totally illogical.) Yesterday I had a lesson with a kid, and one of the exercises featured a girl called Layla. An unusual name, he said. Yes, I said, but it’s a famous song. And of course the song featured on Musicorama last night. Coincidences happen more often than you think, so even if you get two coincidences on one day, it isn’t all that coincidental.
My last lesson yesterday was with a new guy. He’s in his thirties. He said he used to be a professional poker player, and was happy to talk about his exploits at the tables, online and live. (He wasn’t hesitant in talking about his exploits outside poker, either. I’ve had a few students like that now.) I told him about my poker history, which while profitable, probably sounded pathetic to him. Avoiding hold ’em, the only real game in town? Only playing two tables at a time? (He said he could manage 16.)
On Thursday my brother called me from his new four-bedroom house, and gave me a mini tour. They’ve done pretty well to afford it. He gave me their rather long address. British addresses amuse me somehow. With most names or numbers, short is desirable. The number plate “V8” would cost a helluva lot more than something like V807 WGA. My online name “plutoman” wouldn’t be as much fun if it had a load of extra numbers or letters tacked on the end. But in the UK, there’s a certain cachet to having unnecessary words or even whole lines in your address. Stuff like “Rear of Willoughby Hall” or “Garrington Green, Long Langley Lane”. Is it the green or the lane? Make up your mind! If you have a short address, your residence is clearly deficient in some way. The address of my dive in Peterborough was something close to “7 St John’s Road, Peterborough” followed by the post code. That was it.
My brother told me that our cousin (based in Wellington, and a month younger than me) had split up with his wife. I went to their wedding in February 2012. They’ve since had two daughters, so that’s pretty sad. I don’t think there was anyone else involved; I’m guessing the issue is that my cousin has never graduated from the “lad” phase. The two kids didn’t do much to stop his drinking and partying. A key moment, I think, was when he travelled from Wellington to Barcelona to see Liverpool play in the Champions League final. (I don’t know if he actually saw the match.)
In a recent episode of Musicorama there was a song by Abba called The Visitors, from the album of the same name. It came out in 1981, just like my brother, so it was at the end of Abba. I’d never heard the song before, and it’s quite different from any of their earlier (and more commercially successful) stuff. There are bits of Jean Michel Jarre (’77), bits of Walk Like an Egyptian by the Bangles (’86), and elements of New Wave or whatever you call that early eighties sound. It’s a great song.
I was supposed to play tennis this afternoon, following my three lessons, but the rain put paid to that. I should be able to play tomorrow though.
