367 – I Am Not On Holiday, Part 1

Ondres beach. Nice, innit?

Wednesday 30th May, 2012

God I hate travelling. I especially hate it when it’s hot. So, on a very hot day I did some travelling, to a hot place. Brilliant. In fact I started by going thirty five miles north of my house, to then be driven all of those thirty five miles south again, to fly from Manchester airport to Biarritz airport (which, trust me, sounds considerably more glamorous than it turns out to be).

Bear in mind I’m travelling with twenty eight (mostly) idiotic students and I’m going to play the piano and things start to seem less rosy. In fact, I’ve packed twenty five essays, which I have to mark, followed by three lots of forty nine marks for performance work. This all has to be done, in between copious amounts of red wine before I get back. I’m also on strict instructions from Mrs. Faint to relax, which by the sounds of it isn’t likely to happen.

Anyway, I’m muddling my tenses. I’m writing this on Thursday afternoon, for no other reason than I’ve not blogged much recently and this is an excuse to do some, one a day until I’m back in Blighty, mostly to let you know a week in the south-west of France isn’t necessarily as exciting or as idyllic as you might imagine. The picture above is of the beach, which is about twenty minutes walk from where I write this. We arrived here in darkness and had no real sense of whether it was any good or not, but we went with it, it seemed fine, and the people who’ve brought us here fed us and gave us beer. I drank most of it. I retired early enough to avoid saying something I’d later regret. So, day one done.

Drinking done: Loads of beer, really quickly.

Marking done: Nothing at all.

Morale: Moderate to good.