The Kraut, the strippers and all the little children

A week of work - and indeed, WHAT a week! Getting out this lonely house and cramped little village has given me so much food for thought (and writing) that I feel I might explode with all the stories that've bombarded me every moment of my last 5 working days! Where on earth would I begin?!

Having hungered to write every evening, today was D-Day for letting my post-work exhaustion get the better of me. And so, here I am, back at the keyboard and blissfully happy! (A chubby glass of red wine would, however, make me ecstatically happy!!) Today's BlogPatrol statistics showed that one of today's six readers found my blog by typing: "names of strippers at teazers durbanville" into Google! Eish! This is what they discovered http://contemplating-my-navel.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html - but whether someone looking for the the names of strippers at a specific Northern Suburbs titty-bar would be inclined to read the actual blog entry is utterly dubious, let alone understand the 3+ syllable words!! A slightly twisted German found one of my other blog entries after searching for 'medical fetish'!! This reminds me of a Swiss-Italian colleague of mine at university - a giant and burly, bizarre sculptor who specialised in sculpting from stone and marble. One sultry windless night, on the slopes of Vredehoek in Cape Town, he regaled a handful of us with a sickening but somehow (I'm ashamed to admit) still intriguing story of a surgeon friend of his who just couldn't get it off, or get it up (ahem!) without his pretty nurse slicing open his poor, innocent scrotum - and then delicately stitching it back up again.
Gosh - and now I have a German hunting for medical fetishes on the Net on my blog!! Hopefully (and with a prayer attached) it was not the sort of information he ached for... (he -- or she! -- found my entry about 'Foodie Fetishes' that South Africans suffer from when living away. Wonder what he thought? Anyway, I'd far rather be a food-obsessed South African than a medical fetishist Kraut!!)

My eyelids are struggling to defy the inevitable law of gravity, my muscles are whining, like nagging, over-tired children: please, take us to bed... NOW!!!! But before I succumb to this delicious and long awaited eventuality, let me tell you a little about my week of work at a primary school in Kettering that first employed me for just a week of 'cover' - but have now asked me to please stay as long as I possibly can(proud wink)!
Branded a 'special measures' school, I had absolutely no idea WHAT I was letting myself in for when I emailed my agency straight back agreeing to take up the post - seeing only, kaching-kaching, money in the bank. Day one was manageable - the staff impressed me with their welcoming, co-operative team spirit (a wonderful surprise after my very chilly one day in another state-run primary school a few months ago!) The kids seemed ok - until the Monday, Day 2, when I found myself in a storm of pre-pubescent clawing and biting! Another incident had one writhing, twisting boy being physically restrained by the headmaster and another teacher while he screamed, red faced and fuming frantically, "I'll kill you! I'm gonna kill you!!"
Besides this constant threat of violent verbal and physical behaviour, there's the children who make your heart break for their lack of love and care at home. A little girl was caught stealing the others' lunches, after weeks of it disappearing - the school is going to press charges against the mother for neglect. She doesn't feed her child. Another little one is so stressed that she broke down in class saying, when pressed by my questioning, "But I've got so many problems, Miss Roberts... I don't know where to start."

Hmmm... as usual there is just so, so much I need to say. But I simply have to cut myself short here - I will have to write more on the weekend...
The long and the short of it, is that the two headmasters heard about how I was working with these more troubled children from the rest of the staff, and that they want me to run specialised, therapeutic art classes for these particularly 'special' children. Eight of them. I'll be able to design how the classes will be run - gives me an excuse to buy the art therapy textbooks I've been itching to buy for the last 10 years! So at long, long last I have found a very special spot which feels as if it was opened up just for me! BLESSED!!

Sorry this was such a short, squat bit of story - but I will be back on the weekend with a vengeance!