However, on the positive side some things have been achieved: the car finally has leather-covered seats and a new CD-player (as promised by the dealer when we bought it) and Noi and I now have library cards again after a hiatus in our membership of some three years. In truth I still have a few books on my shelves that I need to read so resuming our visits was hardly a necessity but I couldn't help but feel there was something wrong with the world when I didn't have a library to go to. We allowed our membership to lapse over the three years I spent in my previous school due to the impossibility of establishing a routine that gave us the chance to go there regularly, so that doesn't exactly reflect well on that job - especially considering the fact that the building is only a ten minute walk away.
On the reading front, I completed Roddy Doyle's The Snapper yesterday and have now moved on to the last of the Barrytown trilogy, The Van. The dialogue is so well done, the rhythms perfect. This is prose of great economy - spare, yet nuanced. Poor Noi had to put up with me reading a whole slab of dialogue out to her, concerning the twins' decision that their dancing lessons are stupid and that they are not going to perform in the competition for which their mother has been sewing sequins to their outfits, in the middle of a shopping centre.
Also I've got a bit of work done, setting a test and planning a few lessons - so it's not all been beer and skittles, I'm afraid. The test draws on the end of one of the many novels of an extremely famous writer with a brilliant ear for the vernacular in which that ear for dialogue has transformed itself to tin, and cheap tin at that. I'd not be likely to read it out anywhere, but I think our Year 3 students will be able to say what they need to say about it without too much trouble.
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