The earth moved for me

That was fun to be part of the disaster up the road in Iran and Pakistan. There I was giving the class the most mild of bollockings, for that is what it mildly was, when the floor started moving, tables vibrating. Very weird. As I thought it was just me and feared another seizure was coming on I rode with it not least as I am a professional educator as my Yankistani colleagues are wont to say. While the floor was wobbling and furniture rumbling I continued said soft-toned bollcking-lite to some of my lovely but  lazy students. It is all that is occasionally needed as they are brought up to respect their teachers and they have the added bonus of Allah on their side but that is another story those off us working in the Middle East know all about.

Mid-bollocking however  Manic Muna, as she is fondly known, a lovely local colleague and source for local culture, came into my room and asked me quaveringly whether the earth had moved for me. She was visibly scared  and then asked the girls now relieved at the relief from their bollocking if they too had felt something, which of course they had but were too timid to say anything for fear of speaking over a teacher which can never be done here.  This was done first in English, then in Arabic and what ensued was some Richter scale madness as, in a fraction of  a micro-second, they had all gleaned from Muna and their dumb phones (set to panic mode) that they had been in a level 7.8 quake and we were all going to die.

Fortunately, being British and working in a world of excitable foreigners it  is beholden upon me to wield ruthlessly the cold wet fish of hard reality  which was drawn from my desk drawer in which it is kept for such occasions, and liberally slapped in copious blubbering faces including that of dear Muna who I escorted back to her class from which her students had decided to flee in a Hollywood style screaming girly panic and that was just the boys. One look to mine - honed over many years of dealing with semi-house trained feral Year 9s called Jordan - left them sitting more soberly realising that, as the our media might have said say, a minor tremor had occurred in a far off excitable place, no Britons involved.

I shall now be marketing the t-shirt below in a range of colours and fabrics with the extremely  annoying but catchy  slogan as below, could be my way out of teaching...