I don’t know quite how it happened, but I seem to have ended up with the classic nuclear family, 2.2 children (which we’ve rounded up to 3), though we are a bit stuck on the .4 of a dog. We did have 2 rabbits, which may well equate to .4 of a dog, but these got eaten by one of the local cats, of which there are a surfeit. Maybe we should round up the .4 for a dog to 1 whole one as well, which might also help rectify the cat surplus. And then there’s me as the bread winner, and the mother of my children looks after the children. And we live in a suburban terraced house. How very 1950’s.
I didn’t intend life to be this way, when I was younger I kind of pictured myself in a Californian commune getting in contact with my inner man, or, failing that, other peoples inner women, but that’s not how life has panned out. So, what of it? Well, the thing is, this life is financially completely incompatible with being a new teacher. Of all the other new teachers I know, the vast majority are pretty much straight out of college, and of those that are a bit older and have children, only one is the sole bread winner, and she lives a long way from London. Of the others, both parents work, and invariably the other half earns the lions share.
So I have done the only sensible thing, taken a job where I can earn several times what I would as a teacher and look to improve the bank balance until life as a teacher is sustainable, and hopefully this is an ambition realisable in the relatively near term. I didn’t spend the year doing training and earning nothing for no reason.
However, life back in the city is not without its amusements, though I don’t think this is the place to share them (I can feel a new blog coming on), so until the time I start looking for teaching jobs (and I fear doing something else for a while will make this already hard task a lot, lot tougher), I am signing off. Although I hate to end by mis-quoting Arnie (or, at least him in Terminator), I will be back.
