too much of a good thing .... or .... roll on january

i now remember what this feeling i've had for the last week or two is - it's the same feeling that regularly came over me and all my friends during the last two weeks of the summer holidays when we were at school - the restlessness caused by having too much time on our hands and becoming bored with all our leisure activities - a feeling which in the weeks leading up to the end of the final school term each year, we had forgotten and wouldn't have believed possible

this is the longest period of time i have ever been without work - my last working day in london was friday july 21st - so it's coming up to five months now since i was in front of a class of children

the last two or three weeks in london were dominated by our packing and moving activities - taking stuff home to norfolk and sending stuff on to singapore, then packing up what we had left, moving out of baker street and temporarily into andy and becky's house in tooting bec, which they'd kindly let us use while they were in new zealand - we also spent that time taking our leave of london and all our favourite places - three weeks filled with all the contradictory emotions that flood your mind as you leave a place in which you have been happy and, even though you are moving on to new experiences, you will be sorry to leave behind

this was the second time in just under two years i had experienced this, having taken leave of singapore in december 2004, although my melancholy as i wandered through the warm and humid late night streets savouring the atmosphere of the city i had lived in for nine years, was tempered by the thought that i would return there within a few years - the only uncertainty then was how long i would be away

so began our nomadic lifestyle - leaving heathrow, arriving in america, settling in, travelling around the country, making new friends, finding more time to devote to hobbies and pastimes, savouring the changing of the seasons from the balmy and at times humid summer to the stunningly beautiful autumn colours and the evenings darkening earlier every day accompanied by the familiar autumnal feeling of quietness and calm, the earthy autumn smell tinged with the slightly metallic one of approaching winter, the porches of the houses down tree-lined streets decorated with halloween pumpkins as leaves drifted down and settled on lawns and pavements, travelling to colorado and san francisco, our regular weekend drives out all over the states of kansas and missouri, the prolific amount of blogging i did in my two separate blogs (the light and dark versions, as i call them) - all these experiences exceeded my expectations of what i'd thought those three american months would have in store

it was only in the last couple of weeks in kansas city that i began feeling restless - bored is not the word i would use to describe the way i felt - we both knew that it was time to move on and that three months had been adequate

then the feeling subsided again as we arrived in sydney, spending time in a familiar city with friends we hadn't seen for over two years, the social occasions spent catching up with people, visiting familiar places, settling into a new routine, exploring the area around the north of the harbour bridge...

now i need to get back to work - i never thought that i'd ever say this in my adult life - the same way that it always surprised me in my childhood that i wanted to get back to school even before august bank holiday monday arrived

the last two years back in london have reminded me how much i enjoy my job - how much pleasure i get from being in a classroom and interacting with kids - the satisfaction of getting to know individual personalities and finding ways to motivate them, the challenge of creating a stimulating learning environment, revelling in the progress made by certain individuals over the year or worrying at the lack of progress in others, the organisational and administration aspects involved in planning, tracking and recording and enjoying the best feeling of all when, after a term of working with a group, you finally become their teacher and the classroom becomes their class - they identify themselves in those terms and you know they've settled in, they feel at ease in their environment and they like being where they are - they have gelled as your class - it's a feeling impossible to put into words but easily recognisable once you've got to that stage

despite teaching in a tough north-west london school with an above average number of difficult kids and all the discipline problems this entails, i look back over the four terms i spent there as enjoyable and rewarding, even though there were times when i was stressed out, overworked and frustrated by both my class and the weaknesses of the administration of the school - perhaps i wasn't there long enough to become as disillusioned with teaching in the uk as i was when i left for singapore in 1995 after my previous eight years of london school experience

so now here i am on the verge of resuming work back in singapore again and i can't wait to get back ... who would've thought it...