Move on up?... (Maybe...)

Dear Diary,

One of the first days I was around at the luthier's he stuck on Craig Charles' funk hour on the radio and Move On Up by Curtis Mayfield came on (one of my all time favourite songs). You can see and hear me playing it here (I am playing the keyboard, and certainly not singing). Anyway, among the many jobs I have applied for recently, there was one that popped up may be suitable, providing I can keep it together, act strictly professionally, and put the work in.

It's teacher training, to be a teacher in schools. I predicted some half a dozen years ago that "I will probably end up teaching in some school in the back woods province." This may well be how things turn out. I ought to look on this as a positive thing, it is, after all, better than working where I am now. I love studying, and am an excellent teacher (or so my one and only Latin student claims - my ex-fianceé). We learn by teaching. I would prefer not to teach modern history, but that is what I will probably end up doing (for in the Dark Ages the eternal classical tradition has no place), that is, if I get this job.

I once bought a Chaldee and Hebrew lexicon from a little antique bookshop in Bath. It falls open on the page which reads the definitions for the words "positive attitude" and "to become" and "a teacher". That same day I bought the Oxford Book of Latin Verse, which falls open on a page in its introduction which reads words to the effect that a patriotic historian is a good historian. This is not strictly true, for all historians nowadays are supposed to be world historians. However, there is no denying that the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography only shows one side (the positive side) of Great Britian's former men and women of note. For example, look up the entry from General Redvers Buller there, then compare that to the (unfavourable) entry in Brewer's Dictionary of British and Irish Rogues Villains and Eccentrics. The two read like chalk and cheese.

In any case, these signs from the gods (if signs they are) indicate that so long as I maintain a positive mental attitude, and remain a patriot (which I still am, in spite of my growing disillusionment with the state of education in Great Britain generally), I may yet become a teacher. Moreover, it will be a job I enjoy, and I may yet be of more service to this once great nation of ours, in a higher capacity than the basest slave that ever there were in the history of the British Empire.

Max.