Entry #14: Searching Through Dumpsters.

This is kind of a funny story that seemed like a miracle to us when it happened. It happened quite a while ago, and I've been meaning to write about it for quite some time now. Remember back when the World Cup of Rugby was on? Oh right, nevermind...since you're all happily sitting way on the other side of the ocean I'm sure that you weren't bombarded with the constant reminders of its existence as we were over here in England. It was kind of a big deal over here, actually make that a very large deal, especially when the England squad started doing well and made it all the way to the final game.
At the last minute Dave and I walked over to one of the many bars along Broad Street for the semi-final game against France. It was after we had spent the day in Stratford-upon-Avon, and we stood among the many others in the Irish pub and watched as England won the game. "Au revoir, mes amis!" the DJ yelled as everyone simultaneously burst into a rousing rendition of "sweet chariot". The next weekend we made plans to catch the game with another teacher friend and her roommates. We were all set to go and meet her until we started looking for our IDs.
There is this stupid thing here called Council Tax. It is like a property tax on a house, except everybody has to pay it, even if they're like us and are renting an apartment. And it is quite a hefty sum as well. So when we got our first bill we noticed a section that alluded to the possibility of getting a discount if you were poor enough. Being quite poor ourselves, we did some further investigating.
After filling out a twenty page form, we were ready to claim our rebate. Dave had to walk it, along with every piece of identification, marriage certificate, and lease agreement in our possession, to the office, which was ridiculously far away. Apparently they thought it would be a good idea not to have an office in, you know, the downtown area of the city. After a walk into the suburbs, Dave returned, telling me that they wouldn't accept the forms because the address of our letting agent on our contract for the apartment was no longer current.
Anyway, back to the rugby night...we couldn't find our IDs. Where were they last? In the envelope along with every other official document we owned that Dave had taken to the Council tax office. Where was the envelope? We couldn't find it anywhere. I knew right away where it must be. That afternoon we had walked over to the TESCO, which has the closest recycling facilities to our apartment, and dumped a load of paper and cardboard into the bins. It was an awful realization.
We took our passports to the pub, which miraculously we still had, and watched as England lost to the South African team. Everyone was heading over to another place that did cheap drinks, but we declined. When they asked why, we told them that we were going to search through a dumpster. They looked at us with wide eyes, laughed a little bit, then realized we were serious and wished us luck.
The dumpsters are on a back street that isn't very well lit, and there are about ten of them in a row. We had no idea which one we had dumped our stuff into earlier that afternoon. So we started randomly pulling stuff out onto the sidewalk. We were at it for a good fifteen minutes, no closer to finding anything, when we saw some lights flashing. A police car pulled over beside us and he rolled down his window.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" He said to us, in a no-nonsense kind of way. We walked over and tried to explain that our whole lives were somewhere in one of the dumpsters. I think as soon as he realized that we weren't drunk, we were in the clear. "I think you'll be very lucky to find anything" he said and drove off, so we continued our search.
Shortly after that I found an item that belonged to us - a Tropicana carton! We got excited - we had found something at least! We were on the right path. It wasn't long after that Dave started pulling out some of our newspapers and finally our envelope containing all of our precious information. We started cheering, quite loudly, actually wishing there was someone else on that street to share the good news with. I sent a text to Mel. Dave made me promise to never tell his mother what had happened, how we had almost thrown away various forms of identification and contracts into the garbage.
...but I guess she was going to find out one way or another, right?

Entry #13: A Day in the Life of Mrs. Supply-Teacher.

The following story, although based on true events, is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual names, characters, places, and incidents is entirely coincidental.

Mrs. Supply-Teacher wakes up to her alarm clock at 7:00 am and drags herself out of bed. She gets ready with both the purpose of somebody going to work, and the feeling of someone who is only pretending. She sits down on the couch with her mobile phone beside her and stares at it, forcing herself to want it to ring, although in the back of her mind she’d rather it didn’t. This feeling is unbearable, she thinks to herself, and every morning it’s the same. The feeling of not knowing whether the silence of the early morning is about to be broken by the news of a day of work , or if she will sit there for the next hour, then get changed out of her work clothes, put her lunch in the fridge, and look out at a long day stretching ahead of her.

More often than not, the call never comes. At 8:05 she wonders whether she would even like to receive a call anymore, and debates with the moral consequences of just switching off the phone and deciding her fate for herself. A call after 8:05 would mean mad rushing to get out the door as quickly as possible, finding out which bus to take and where to take it from, and arriving at the school after the students have already come in for the morning and magically knowing exactly what it is you’re supposed to be doing. However, another day of work is another day of pay, and how can she turn down a day of pay? Most days, she does just end up switching off the phone.

This morning the call comes. The disgruntled male voice on the other end tells her that he needs her to go to a school for a day, but not that day, a day that is actually not until the following week. He never asks if she would be available for a certain day, he tells. She smiles thinly and says that she will be there, hangs up the phone, and is at least thankful that she has some time to figure out where the school is, plan her route accordingly, and be able to arrive well in advance to look over the day’s plans and prepare herself.

This forward thinking doesn’t always prove to be all that helpful. On her day of work, Mrs. Supply-Teacher arrives at the school early and is ushered in by the secretary to a Year 2 classroom, although she had been told she would be teaching a Year 5 class. After looking around for a good twenty minutes, she can find no indication that the regular classroom teacher had any idea they would be absent that day. Although he must have, since they called her about this placement over a week ago. There’s no note for her, no plan of the day, not even a schedule of when the students come in or what subjects start when. All she can find is a chart hanging on the wall that has all the days of the week along one side and all the subjects along the other. Written in the small 3cm x 3 cm box is one sentence. The one for maths reads: “Students will learn number bonds for 100”. Mrs. Supply-Teacher reads it over a few times. This is literally all the direction she is given to fill an hour long maths lesson. She takes the “planning” over to the other Year 2 teacher, hoping that they can fill her in.

She finds the other teacher to be helpful and she explains to her what the classes will be doing that day. The great thing is that every class in the same year should be doing the same thing on the same day, so the other teacher walks her through the lesson, and even makes up a schedule of the day for her to follow. Despite her help, however, Mrs. Supply-Teacher is still left wondering how she will fill all the time in the day with what she has been given.

At exactly two minutes to nine o’clock, all the teachers file down the hall and out into the playground. One is carrying one of those old school bells, and as she rings it, signals the start of the day. There are no bells at this school, so teachers have to keep an eye on the clock and know exactly when to release students. The students dash to their designated queues and stand silently waiting for their teacher to come collect them and head inside for another school day.

Coats are hung on hooks that line a small vestibule beside the doors, called the cloakroom. All the students head through the gymnasium to get to their classrooms, as the wide hallway actually doubles as the gymnasium. They pile into the classroom, and take a seat on the carpet at the front of the room. Even year sixes sit on the carpet. Attendance is taken – the register – on the computer and submitted electronically, as all the students respond not with the usual “here” but with “Hello, I hope you have a nice day”. The class starts to get a little bit noisy as Mrs. Supply-Teacher stumbles through their many names, so she makes an announcement: “Right. I’m looking for children who are sitting really nicely that I can move over to the happy side”. This is a form of classroom management that she has seen in every school she has been in so far. Immediately, the keeners cross their legs, sit up straight and put one finger to their lips, the universal sign among British schoolchildren that they are ready and listening. The teacher makes her way over to a whiteboard with all the students’ names stuck along a vertical line going down the middle and starts moving names to go under the big yellow happy face. Any students still being unruly are moved over to the side with the sad face, despite their protests.

The questions invariably begin. “Where are you from? Are you from America?” They all start asking. Mrs. Supply-teacher decides to play her favourite game – having them all make a guess at what country she comes from. Some guesses are surprising: “Australia? New Zealand? South Africa? Wales!” but some always guess correctly. If she has some time to kill, which she usually does, this leads into a short talk about what it’s like back in Canada and answering all the questions that follow. When there is a globe or a world map in the classroom, she asks if anyone knows where Canada is, to which one student always replies that it is in America. She says that at the end of the day, all the children who are on the happy side will receive a special prize that she has brought with her all the way from Canada. She keeps a stash of Canadian pennies and pins of the Canadian flag in her bag.

The first order of the day is the school assembly. Instead of the usual singing of the national anthem and school announcements over the PA system that she is used to back in Canada, all the children file out into the hall/gymnasium. Here, the students listen to any announcements given by the teachers, and are lead in rousing renditions of songs that are unknown to Mrs. Supply-Teacher, who watches and reads along with the words. All of them have an underlying theme of having a great day, behaving well, and making the most of everything, although there is another interesting theme that is shocking to a teacher from Canada. Most of the songs openly talk about God, with one even directly mentioning the day on which the Lord Jesus shall return to Earth. She bewilderedly sneaks a glance at the smattering of Muslim students in the crowd, who are singing along with everyone else. The teacher who is leading the assembly then leads the students in a corporate prayer.

As the morning lessons get underway, Mrs. Supply-teacher does her best to stretch out the lesson about number bonds, trying to come up with dynamic ways to teach the students how to figure out what number and 35 makes 100. While she is standing there teaching in front of the class, two students get up off the floor and march over to her. In mid sentence, one loudly proclaims that the other student was hitting her. Mrs. Supply-Teacher stands there with her mouth open. The other student always replies the same way that every kid, no matter what age, replies in this situation: “No, I never!” This then leads to an argument and finger pointing, with additional input from other students still on the carpet. She wonders in what circumstance any teacher could allow students to think that it was permissible to just stand up while they were teaching and interrupt like this.

She then divides up the students to sit at tables based on their ability level for that subject, and goes about the confusing task of explaining to the highs, middles, and lows what their activity is for the remainder of the lesson. The lows have been given the mundane task of colouring in the matching numbers pairs that make 10. The highs have some much more complicated work to do with number lines and large numbers that they are finished within five minutes. The lows have barely gotten around to writing their name on their page. Some look up at her with innocent eyes and bluntly tell her that they don’t know how to read or write, and she believes them. Finally break time comes, also known as play time, never as recess. Students fight over who gets to carry out the box full of bananas that are provided by the school for break time every day.

After break, just like every morning, is literacy, which Mrs. Supply-Teacher also makes her way through as best as she can. She runs around trying to sort out all the ability groups, answering to a multitude of “Miss! Miss!” as the students try to get her attention. I’m a Mrs., she thinks in the back of her mind, but she knows that they even refer to male teachers as “Miss”, so she just goes along with it. They ask her where they should put their completed work, and she searches the room until she sees a red bin labeled “Completed Work” and tells them to put it in there. They look at her with wide eyes, as she has just instructed them to throw their work in the bin, which of course is the garbage. Finally it is lunch time. Actually, it is dinner time, as that is what the meal in the middle of the day is called in schools. The students line up according to who has a packed dinner, who is getting a school dinner, and who is home dinners. The dinner ladies come to collect them and take them away, leaving Mrs. Supply-Teacher to figure out what she is supposed to be doing for the rest of the day.

After dinner it turns out that the class has a PE lesson with another teacher. Mrs. Supply-Teacher’s task is to get them ready then make the switch, leading the other class who just had PE back to their classroom to get changed back into their school uniforms. The children collect their pump bags or kit bags, and as there are no change rooms, the girls begin undressing themselves in the classroom, while the boys stand out in the hall to get changed. Any younger and they would all be changing in the classroom together. Mrs. Supply-Teacher catches herself almost instructing them to take off their pants, which to a British kid means underwear, but thankfully remembers to use the proper term, trousers.

For the last lesson of the day, Mrs. Supply-Teacher is asked to move upstairs and teach a Year 6 class Science. Their science lesson for the day involves watching a DVD that is not nearly as exciting as Bill Nye, then being given a photocopied worksheet to literally copy, word for word, into their notebooks. She is surprised that she doesn’t have more problems, given the ridiculousness of the task. At the end of the day, all the Year sixes gather onto a carpet outside their classrooms and listen to a novel read by one of the other teachers. Then it is home time, and only if it is a Friday do the students leave with homework. Homework is a separate assignment given to them that day to be completed for Monday. Other than that work, they do not have to complete anything at home for the rest of the week.

After the children have left, Mrs. Supply-Teacher sets about the dreaded task of marking each and every thing that the students completed that day, which includes writing inane comments in the Year sixes notebooks about how well they were able to copy out the diagrams from the sheet. As she is leaving, the school is dark and the caretakers are the only other people about. She was paid well for the her day of work, but she feels so frazzled and exhausted, and has a new found appreciation for teachers do this for years or even make careers out of being supply teachers. She is eagerly awaiting the day when she can drop the “supply” from her name.

Entry #12: Festival Days

One of the more interesting parts of living in another country is being exposed to new and interesting festivals. Admittedly in England, many of the holidays are similar to those that we are familiar with, but many are also quite different. Over the course of the last two weeks, Birmingham has been festival central and with the Christmas season already beginning here (early, just like in Canada), the next two months promise to be equally memorable.

The festivals began here with a North American import, Halloween. Although Jenn’s English mother swears that the first Halloween she encountered was in Canada, the holiday is now widely celebrated across the pond as well. It seems that it was imported some time in the nineties and therefore its major purpose here is similar to its purpose in North America: rampant consumerism. I have never seen so many cheap, tacky Halloween items as I saw in October here. Not surprisingly, since drunken twenty somethings do it every weekend anyways, dressing up is a big thing and Jenn and I even got into the act by attending a fancy dress party as Antony and Cleopatra (in horribly inaccurate and homemade costumes I might point out).

Hot on the heels of Halloween came November, November, November the fifth and Bonfire Night. If you were like me and had any experience with this holiday in your own youth, you might know it as Guy Fawkes day where you make a Guy Fawkes (or papal) effigy and burn it in commemoration of the failed gunpowder plot of 1605. Although the historical background of this celebration intrigues me, no one in Britain seems to remember it. In fact years ago Guy Fawkes day became simply Bonfire Night when stadiums are filled, bonfires are light, fireworks are set off, and a good time is had by all. Since November the fifth doesn’t always fall on a weekend celebrations get spread out over the week preceding it. The week following Bonfire night includes the Hindu celebration of Divali in which more fireworks are set off. This meant for the better part of a week Jenn and I experienced the audio track of a war zone on a nightly basis. Divali is a big thing here as such a high proportion of the population is Indian. In fact in one of my supply teaching stops I got to help a year four class prepare for their Divali play and therefore got a little bit of background into what the festival is celebrating (if you're curious, it has to do with the Hindu heroes Rama and Sita).

Following this week or so of joyous and raucous celebration came a more somber and much more familiar holiday. Just like in Canada, Remembrance day is celebrated on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month. Unlike in Canada however, in this country it seems to be a much bigger and much more poignant affair. Jenn and I decided to attend the city’s Remembrance day service outside the war memorial in one of Birmingham’s main squares. The service was packed and as we arrived late, we didn’t have much of a view. From what we saw however, we could tell that this was something wholly different. The service included a parade of both veterans and active soldiers, a massive wreath laying, a full military band, a gun salute, five minutes of silence and countless prayers and appeals for both the living and the dead as well as calls for humanity to live in peace for all time. Many of you might say that these are all common occurrences in similar Remembrance Day ceremonies throughout Canada and you would be right, but there was something about this ceremony and the way it was celebrated that was wholly different from what we’ve ever experienced in our own land.

Firstly, the ceremony was far more religious than any public ceremony ever is in Canada. Religion, whether it be Christian, Hindu, Muslim or anything else, is an openly talked about, if not a flaunted thing over here. Religious Education is part of the school curriculum and is basically world religions and Christian Education rolled into one. The Birmingham Central Mosque, near one of my usual supply teaching schools, broadcasts calls to prayer throughout the neighbourhood. Jenn and I can still remember a time in Canadian when we had Christmas concerts and sang Christmas carols , but that time has past as Canada has become an increasingly secular country for better or for worse. They would never think of calling it a "seasonal concert" in this country, just as they don’t blink an eye when commemorating in schools the Muslim festival of Eid or the Hindu festival of Divali. This Remembrance Day ceremony was Anglican to the core, with the “Lord Jesus” invoked several times in pray, and even a recitation of the Lord's Prayer. I’m not saying in any way that this was somehow wrong, I’m just saying that until you're actually over here you can’t really understand just how religiously oriented England still is.

Although the religious aspect of the ceremony was different from most I’ve experienced in Canada, it was neither the only nor the biggest difference. By far the thing that shaped and set apart this ceremony, was that these people had actually experienced the wars they were commemorating. I’m not saying that the World Wars didn’t profoundly affect Canadian lives, but somehow it was different to be around people that could actually remember Birmingham being evacuated and London being bombed. These people weren’t just fighting for their Allies and the good of humanity, they were fighting for their own country and somehow the power of that permeated the somberness of the ceremony in a way I will never forget.

As the years push further and further away from the World Wars and fewer and fewer veterans remain among us, I fear that the Remembrance Day is sadly becoming a forgotten day. In my own life I have come to question the purpose of the day and the way we phrase our words of remembrance. I can still remember working for a German Canadian at the St. Lawrence Market on one Remembrance Day several years ago. I had the unfortunate task of dealing with a crying customer who wanted to take out his wrath on my boss for the events of the second World War. In that moment, I was struck by the fact that there are also many innocent Germans who were fighting for their own country regardless of their own political ideologies who also need to be remembered. In a time when wars, rightly or wrongly, are once again being fought seemingly by choice rather than necessity, it is also hard to trust in the bravado that Remembrance Day is all about making sure we live in peace forevermore. Sadly I feel this has often made me, and probably other young people like me, rather disillusioned to the whole concept of the day which in itself doesn’t solve any problems.

I took something away from this year's Remembrance Day ceremony. I took away a new hope and a new commitment to keep the day special in my heart and strive to see that the world does live up to those lofty claims of desiring peace and goodwill throughout the world. That may seem corny but sometimes I think the world just might be a better place if everyone was a little corny every once in a while.

Entry #11: Shakespeare Country

The view was beautiful: a quiet river, large shady trees, seagulls of all descriptions, and best of all a theatre, framed on one side of the river bank. The skies were of course overcast and it was drizzling slightly but that didn’t seem to matter. For the first time since we arrived in Birmingham we were actually experiencing a little bit of English history and we were loving it.

We were in Stratford-upon-Avon, famed as the birthplace (and burial place) of William Shakespeare. Unlike most who have gone through the perils of Canadian high school English, I loved Shakespeare and therefore was happy to be in a place that honoured his legacy even if the honouring went a little to far sometimes (I mean honestly, what does Shakespeare have to do with a McDonald’s?). Stratford also holds a special place in our hearts because a stroll along the banks of the River Avon in Stratford, Ontario was the last stop I planned before proposing to Jenn on the side of highway #8. I was amazed too as I gazed out on Shakespeare’s city just how much the Canadian Stratford looked like this one. Having stood on the cliffs of the English Scarborough and missing the links to my home town and having walked through both Londons, I was surprised to find that a Canadian place actually looked like its English namesake.

Of course while in Stratford we went to see the Shakespearean sites. Shakespeare’s birthplace was a hub of tourist activity. The attached museum which detailed Willy’s most influential life did a great deal to dispel a lot of the rampant Shakespearean myths -- Like for instance the myth that he hated his wife because he gave her the second best bed in the house. Since the best bed would have been reserved for guests, Shakespeare was in fact giving her the bed they would have slept in together. The house itself was actually rather large for the time period a reminder that although Shakespeare came from humble beginnings in Stratford, they weren’t that humble. The most enjoyable part of the site however, may well have been the elaborate gardens attached to the house where most fruit trees, flowers, and herbs were labeled and in which Jenn and I spent an enjoyable twenty minutes. Of course no visit to a historic site could be complete without a visit to the gift shop to browse the countless overpriced and extremely useless nic-nacs.

Besides Shakespeare’s birthplace, we also visited the historic church in which he was buried. Although the burial itself isn’t overly thrilling (it’s just a plaque on the floor), the church itself was beautiful and we were serenaded as we toured by the church choir which was practicing for the service the next day. The other Shakespearean sites we declined to visit on the grounds that neither of us really cared where Shakespeare’s granddaughter happened to live as it probably made little or no impact on his life or more importantly, his writing.

We did find time however to thoroughly explore several of Stratford’s other beautiful amenities before catching the train back to the city including the lovely river and canal side walks and a wonderful butterfly farm that was worth every penny of the five pound admission price. The farm was a large greenhouse with the temperature and moisture content of a tropical rainforest and it was simply filled with wonderfully exotic butterflies. In addition to these winged beauties there were also exotic trees, caterpillars (of course), caged spiders, dangerous insects, tropical birds and even three iguanas that roamed the tree top heights of the dome. It reminded me of a miniature version of a zoo and left me feeling that same sense of awe I always experience when witnessing the wonders of nature.

Stratford was everything we thought it would be. It was beautiful, historic, and all wonderfully English. Despite being unable to see a play, when it was time to leave, we were still happy. We were happier still later that night at the pub when we witnessed England’s thrilling semi-final victory over France at the World Cup of Rugby. In the span of one day we had seen both England’s historic past and modern heroes honoured in their own uniquely English ways. Finally, after many weeks of waiting, we were experiencing what we mover here for, and I for one couldn’t have been happier.

Entry #10: The Perils of Supply Teaching

The life of the supply teacher (anywhere, but especially in Britain) is not an easy one. For the first five weeks of the school year Jenn and I received a collective three days of supply work. As you can imagine this was quite a frustrating period for us. Being a supply teacher means that you have to be on call every morning and when you are ready to work every morning but never receive a call to go, life can be quite unbearable. What is more three days of work in five weeks is just not enough to allow any family to survive. As the days ticked on therefore, we found our resources, meager to begin with, dwindling to next to nothing. Our emotions at the time oscilated between frustration, hope, despair, and desperation and we seriously considered just packing it all in and heading back to Canada.

That was of course until a few weeks ago. On a Wednesday morning I got a call at 8:30 to take a train to a nearby city (like going from Toronto to Mississauga) for a school that started at 8:50. Needless to say I was late, which of course meant I had no time to look over the plans for the day or mentally prepare for the daily grind of teaching small children. I got through it however and was even asked back the next day. Through a chance coincidence I was already working the next day so I deftly suggested they try my wife as she was available. This move turned into two and a half days of work for Jenn over the next couple of days. The school I worked at on Thursday ended up offering me a full-time maternity cover that starts it December and runs through July, news that brought us a great deal of hope for this year to come. As the school wanted to acclimatize me to the school culture as soon as possible, they called up both Friday and Monday morning with daily supply work. By Tuesday morning I had worked four straight days and was preparing myself to complete all the workday jobs I had neglected while working when another call came in at 8:20 for a school that was forty minutes away on the bus. In the span of one week we had gone from three days of work to ten and a half with a coming full-time job to boot. Needless to say it was quite a thrilling, hectic, and exhausting week.

Although elated to finally be able to pay the bills I can’t help but still dread the morning routine. Since we so rarely get jobs in advance, every morning we wake up unsure of whether it will be a long boring day at home or a last minute call telling us we have work. I wake first at around seven and begin to prepare for the day as if I was going to work. I shower, shave, dress, and then sit around waiting for a phone call. Sometimes the phone call does come and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s of course, usually at the moment when I’ve decided that our agency isn’t going to call and start planning what I’m going to do that day instead, that they do call. Often I’m told to go half way across the city in half an hour, an impossible feat at the best of times but a Herculean task when faced with the Birmingham bus system during rush hour. Late calls such as these, which I might point out are the only calls we get, are frustrating beyond belief as you can imagine. What might be worst than receiving the late morning call however, is getting all ready to go to work but never receiving a call at all. Let’s just say the morning routine is not my favourite part about being a supply teacher.

Supplying teaching in England also brings its own unique quirks as well. Although I’m unlikely to have a basketball thrown at me, or to be spit on (as my aunt has experienced in Canada) I am still faced with the normal bad behaviour that awaits any supply teacher in a new classroom. This type of bad behaviour is augmented by the poor planning that is often found in classrooms in this country. So much of what is taught in school here is regulated by the government that I’ve found most teachers don’t even bother to make a lesson plan beyond the daily learning objective, as I suppose they have to teach the same thing year after year. This, I suppose, is fine for teachers familiar with the system already but it leaves a poor Canadian supply teacher like myself a little lost as to how to turn one sentence on a piece of paper into an hour long lesson (especially when one tries to do it on the fly after arriving 20 minutes late). In addition to this interesting lack of planning, school work in British schools has a slightly different flavour than in Canada. Over here every last stitch of work done by the children is supposed to be marked daily and assessed for learning, this of course means long days for supply teachers who don’t have the luxury of taking marking home. It also means that no work that is assigned in class carries over into homework for the children as it has to be marked at the end of the day. This might seem like a good idea until you consider that this means that school children don’t have the natural motivation of not wanting to have homework to drive them to work hard in school nor do they have work to complete when they finish work in another subject early. This of course leads to many kids simply sitting around and talking in class without really accomplishing much other than driving their teachers crazy. As I said, teaching over here is a completely new ballgame.

We are stuck therefore I guess, between a desire to work to pay the bills, fund some traveling, and alleviate boredom, and a desire to stay at home to avoid the trials and tribulations of being a supply teacher at all costs. I guess yet again we can’t win but hopefully we will find a happy balance soon that will allow us to keep our sanity while providing hilarious stories which we can in turn pass on to you, … if we ever get the time that is.

Entry #9: Artsfest (September 14 - 16)

Music has been a part of my life since my earliest moments. As a kid I was surrounded by it. My sister and I both took piano lessons. My family had season’s tickets to the symphony. My dad had an extensive collection of classical music that he played regularly. In high school music became an even bigger part of my life as I played in the school band, had a music hall locker, and even was on the executive of the music council. My friends were similarly musically inclined and added to my musical education by introducing me to bands such as U2, Radiohead, and the Matthew Good Band. Near the end of high school I took up the guitar and that became the outlet of my musicality throughout university. Sadly music has become less and less a part of my life in recent times as a lack of money, not to mention inspiration, has meant that my music collection is largely the same now as it was in the first year of university. This past weekend however music once again took centre stage in my life and I was reminded of just how much I missed it.

Perhaps I should explain a bit. Every year in September, the city of Birmingham puts on Britain’s biggest free arts festival, unartistically dubbed “Artsfest”. Artsfest is an opportunity for the artistically inclined locals to put on a show and more importantly, for the general populous to have the arts exposed to them in a way that they seldom experience. All the arts are represented, with drama, film, music, painting and even fashion design on display. As Jenn and I are relatively artistically inclined ourselves, and free sounded just too good to pass up, we spent a good portion of our weekend touring the attractions. We watched a fashion show, learned how to salsa dance, and even were accosted by a theatre group performing an on the run addition of Peter Pan, but by far the thing that stood out to us the most was the music.

Artsfest began on Friday night with a historically inspired concert in the abandoned remains of what was once a bustling railway station. The performance was inspired by Birmingham’s industrial past and featured the open air sounds of steam whistles, percussion and other train like noises. The performers stood on the old station platform behind giant barrel drums that were suspended over roaring fires. The performance space extended from one end of the platform to the other where a giant projection screen occasionally splashed the old station building with images of old trains. As if to backdrop this amazing display, the modern mainline ran just behind the “stage” meaning that real commuter trains flew past throughout the performance. It was a musical experience unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. It was loud and abrasive at times but also calm and beautiful and really did make one feel uncannily like they were standing in a railway station at the turn of the century. Unfortunately, being outdoors, it was also bitterly cold so we left before it even finished.

The next night, more prepared this time for the elements, we made our way to the city’s central square for a concert equally mesmerizing but for completely different reasons. The concert was called “Classical Fantasia” and featured the city’s symphony orchestra, ballet company, and opera stars in a combined show. The square was filled with people from all walks of life. Although it was apparent that some in the crowd were used to this type of entertainment, others just stopped and watched the performance on the big screens as they passed. Being that the square was on the street with the busiest nightlife in the city, this was a lot of people. Occasionally the performance was disturbed by talking children, passing young people, or even the nearby merchants selling bird calling devices much to the ire of the crowd, but all these disruptions merely added to the ambiance. As the orchestra played famous piece after famous piece I was struck by how fond my childhood memories of attending the symphony in Toronto had been. Towards the end of the show the music was accompanied by a spectacular light show that included blazing torches, fireworks, and other dazzling lights all alit perfectly in time with the music. Being that we were on the very edge of the crowd the fireworks were close enough we could smell them. Instead of the endless beat of a base drum to symbolize artillery fire in the 1812 overture we had actual explosions. Pomp and Circumstance was accompanied by fire torches which shot several meters in the air and illuminated the entire crowd. It was in a word: spectacular.

With the operatic sound of Carmen still playing in my head, we made our way to yet another musical event on Sunday. We were heading to see the Fillmore Gears, a band fronted by one of our new friends from TimePlan. Although we didn’t really know what to expect, I was quite excited as an indy rock concert like this one reminded me of the many Bobo the Guava King concerts I went to in high school in support of my friends. I was Bobo’s one true fan and often found myself at some dingy bar in downtown Toronto with few friends but those on stage. The concert was quite good and I was really impressive with Pete’s stage presence. It sounded professional to me, not like some high school band performance and there were quite a number of people who stopped in the square and watched. The stage was built into the cascading fountain in one of Birmingham’s main squares. As the band played several teenagers decided it would be fun to join the naked female statue (locally known as the “Floozie in the Jacuzzi”) and threw each other into the ice cold water. Jenn said: “that is why I don’t want to teach high school.”

Although these random musical wanderings might not seem like much, they brought back priceless childhood memories long forgotten over the years. I found that I missed music and am sad that I haven’t brought more of it with me to England. It also made me reflect on the importance of those symphony visits I found boring when I was a kid, as they’ve helped shaped my awareness of music and the world. Listening to the Fillmore Gears, I thought of my high school friends many of whom I haven’t seen in years and was sad that we have lost touch. Most importantly however, Artsfest provided us with something we have sorely been missing: free entertainment, and for that I am truly grateful.

Entry #8: Broke In Britain.

About a month ago now, I picked up a book off the shelf in the travel section at the public library. We had been spending quite a lot of time at the library, wandering up and down the aisles and finding books long on our “to-read” list that we had just never gotten around to reading. This one, though, I had never heard of before, and to my surprise I found myself checking it out and flying through the pages over the next few days.

While Dave and I would have always called ourselves pretty avid readers, since being in Birmingham, you could almost call us fanatics. We have both read more books in the past two months than we did in the past year combined, which could either impress you, or make you feel very sad for us. In our defense, being in the situation that we are in with no internet, television, or steady jobs, reading is one of our main forms of entertainment. In MY defense, Dave has read far more books than I have, and he even has a written out “Reading List” that he follows quite religiously - for a book to make it onto this revered list is no small feat. As far as I can tell, the requirements are simple – the book must either have made it onto a top 100 books of all time list, or be a piece of writing from or about classical Greece or Rome. He sticks to the reading list at all times, reading each book in order as it appears, and finds it very difficult to stray and read a book other than what is next on the list. Each book completed is like another country conquered, and he savours the act of crossing the title off the list within seconds of putting the book down. Never would a book like Broke through Britain have come across Dave’s path if it weren’t for his wife, who does things a little bit differently.

Usually my approach to selecting books is quite less complicated than Dave’s – I simply pick up a book I like the looks of or that I’ve heard about from someone, and I read it. If I like it, I keep reading it, and if I don’t like it, I stop. That’s all there is to it. I usually like reading travel books, and so I was intrigued to find this book while browsing in the Birmingham Central Library during one of our numerous visits. It was one of those books that I was actually sad that there wasn’t any more when I came to the end. I was so excited about it that Dave not only put it on his reading list, but it was actually the very next book that he read! Trust me, that’s saying a lot.

The tagline reads “One Man’s Penniless Odyssey”, which really does sum it all up. It is written by a man, Peter Mortimer, back in 1997. At the age of 54, he decided that he would like to try and walk 500 miles with no food, money, or prearranged shelter. He is a writer; however he didn’t want any pre-publicity or Michael Palin-esque video cameras alongside him; he simply wanted to walk from Plymouth to Edinburgh with a pen and paper, just to see if he could. He walked with a backpack and a friend’s dog, and relied every day on the generosity of strangers to feed him and house him for the night. He had no social agenda, no cause that he was walking for, no training, and no preconceived notions about what his travels would mean…he just decided to do it and hope that it all amounted to something in the end that he could write about.

It was almost like this book was sent to me to be able to think back on as the month progressed with all its ups and downs. September was a difficult one for us. School started the Wednesday of the first week of the month; Dave didn’t get his first day of work until the third week, and I didn’t get work until a week after that. In the month of September, we worked a total of three days, had just paid rent, and were watching as our bank account became increasingly empty. We discovered through other teachers that our recruitment agency, TimePlan, guarantees their primary/junior qualified teachers six days of work every two weeks; we are not primary qualified, and so can’t get this guarantee. There was barely enough work to go around, and so while other teachers worked three days a week, we waited for the crumbs from their tables. It finally came down to the point where we needed to work a certain number of days before our next paycheck or we flat out wouldn’t be able to pay for our next month of rent, let alone any other expenses.

It’s not that we came unprepared. At times we wondered if we should regret traveling around France and Italy this summer, but we realized that we shouldn’t. There were so many things that we didn’t expect. Monthly council tax payments was one of them – like a property tax in Canada, except the tenant pays it on top of their basic rental fee, and it is a fifth of what our monthly rent is. Another one was the 150 pound administrative fee we had to pay the agency that found us our apartment, as well as our first month of rent and a deposit.

Mortimer describes how he feels every time he enters larger towns or cities on his walk; on foot where everyone else arrived by car; watching as tourists bought food and melting ice cream with ease and went about enjoying the pleasures of life that only money can afford you. He realized that he was now an outsider, bound by his penniless state, and actually started to avoid major towns by walking miles out of his way to remain in the countryside, where people were more likely to offer him a meal anyway.

Walking through Birmingham in September was a lot like this. Where we live is quite a commercial center. People who walk the downtown streets look as though they’ve just stepped off the cover of a magazine or a catwalk; all the women carry multiple bags of shopping with the words PRIMARK printed on the sides. The main downtown core is closed to cars, the sidewalks and roads full of people at any time of day, and is lined with stores and restaurants. H&M, Boots, and Pret-a-Manger line the streets in multiples. There are three large malls – the Pallasades, the Pavillion, and the biggest of all, the Bull Ring – all within walking distance, and that actually all run into each other. Across the street from us is the ultra exclusive Mailbox – with Armani and Hugo Boss. It’s a shopper’s paradise. We could barely afford to buy anything but the essential foodstuffs. We were even holding out on buying mixing bowls and oven mitts – then Dave’s parents generously made a secretive trip to the Pound Store (that’s what the dollar store is called here!) one morning and donated some things for our bare kitchen.

I am not naïve enough not to realize that our money woes were nothing like what many newly married couples have to go through. We had a roof over our heads, we ate every day, and we technically had the prospect of more full time work in the near future, which we should be thankful for at least. In those weeks, money came to us in various generous and unexpected ways, and eventually we managed to start getting more days of work between us. The turning point was when Dave went in for an interview at a school and was hired to begin teaching full time starting at the beginning of December. Then we knew that all we had to do was make it until then, and we’d be fine. Hopefully this means that we won’t have to resort to the list of money making schemes that we actually wrote down during one of our more bored and silly moments. Although becoming world champion Settlers of Catan players or pioneering “Take Home Chef: Britain” might have made for better reading.