It is really rather hot. Normally, at this time of year, I would not be protesting. It is about the time that university exams finish and I would customarily be free to lounge about, sunning myself and hiding in cool bars, safe in the knowledge that, although Uni had finished, I had enough loan left to see me through another month without the inconvenience of having to get a job.

Not so this year. This year I am trapped in muggy mobiles with inattentive children, while the oppressive heat threatens to remove me of all my senses and I resort to throttling every last one of the ruffians, silencing the constant entreaties to go outside and the incessant bellyaching about how ‘it should be illegal’ forever.

I wouldn’t object to taking them outside, if the sight of some twigs and a bit of grass didn’t reduce them into frenzied hooligans. The urge to rip great handfuls of lawn up and throw them at each other, with intermittent sticks or rocks for good luck, is apparently too much to withstand. I let them get water whenever they need it. (The amount of people prone to giddiness seems to have increased beyond the figure one would expect, even taking into account the stifling weather) No ties are required in my lessons. Let collars hang loose, top buttons forsaken. Yet my good humour and affability is rewarded by, at best, apathy, or worse, their persistent and exasperating whining.

At least next week school is over and done with and I get to doss about at college for a few weeks, before returning home to doss around there. I have a nice couple of months off before I have to start work. Moreover, it is my birthday soon! I believe I am entirely justified in saying that five weeks is soon. Also on the upside I have decided that lesson planning is now entirely gratuitous, having submitted my RoD, (Record of Development- don’t get excited) and subsequently I find my evenings relatively unblemished for the first time in an age.

Unfortunately, the television in my room having migrated back to Colchester and the one in the lounge being buggered, I am reduced to playing solitaire and reading for amusement. Can you imagine? Oh, and at long last I have time to write this again, of course. I did manage to escape to a friend’s house to watch I Am Not an Animal last night and I will leave you with some small excerpts from last night’s and earlier episodes now…

“Love is something that celebrities have in a place called Lon-don….Love is having a boyfriend who hits you, then cries and promises never to do it again, except he does and you go to a safe house.

“No Hugh! We have no proof that this is eat as much as you want for £4.50 Buffet!”

“That’s Arabic. It’s from space.”

“I am not a monkey. I am from Islamic Jihad.”

“There’s no point trying to be something you’re not…like any good.”

“London is approximately 1.9 million miles away.... And you can add 300000 miles to that for road works.”