The Songstone

Exam resit week for the employees. The 'excellent' have passed and gone; the 'no-hopers' who cannot pass have also gone; I am left with the middling rump, who can still pass if they get off their Blackberries and do some work. The class is now fragmented, with the students  all  having different modules to get through, which means more work for yours truly in preparing separate materials for them. In the midst of the hurly-burly comes a call from the bank. "Mr. Simon, sir? It's X here from Al Khaliji." "Yes, yes, what do you want?" "Mr. Simon, sir, your new card is ready. Are you free to come to the bank to pick it up? "No, I'm busy. Call me at 1 o'clock." (fawning) "Yes, Mr. Simon, sir." 1pm : "Mr. Simon, sir?" "Yes, I have no time to come to the bank." "Where are you, sir?" I tell him. "So I will come there at 2 o'clock to give you the card. Is that OK for you, Mr. Simo

For the land claimers by Gerrard Winstanley You noble Diggers all, stand up now, stand up now, You noble Diggers all, stand up now, The wast land to maintain, seeing Cavaliers by name Your digging does maintain, and persons all defame Stand up now, stand up now.  Your houses they pull down, stand up now, stand up now,  Your houses they pull down, stand up now.  Your houses they pull down to fright your men in town  But the gentry must come down, and the poor shall wear the crown.  Stand up now, Diggers all.  With spades and hoes and plowes, stand up now, stand up now  With spades and hoes and plowes stand up now,  Your freedom to uphold, seeing Cavaliers are bold  To kill you if they could, and rights from you to hold.  Stand up now, Diggers all.  Theire self-will is theire law, stand up now, stand up now,  Theire self-will is theire law, stand up now.  Since tyranny came in they count it now no sin  To make a gaol a gin, to starve poor men therein.  Stand up now, Diggers all

The Swill is a journalist, of a sort, best known for stuffing his face on an expense account and writing about it. In a long and unvaried career he has managed to offend the Welsh - "loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls", the English - "a lumpen and louty, coarse, unsubtle, beady-eyed, beefy-bummed herd", the Manx - "hopeless, inbred mouth-breathers known as Bennies" and Clare Balding - "a dyke on a bike".  Our hero has been married twice (once to a Tory MP), shot a baboon whom he wasn't married to and is an alcoholic. Worryingly, he has also sired four children and, like Hitler, is a failed artist. Restaurant reviews don't interest me; restaurant reviewers still less, and in the normal way of things the Swill's vapid meanderings would have passed me by, but when a man who makes a small fortune from modest talent has the cheek to call expats in the Gulf    " parasites a

Getting my students off their Blackberries and iphones is a never-ending struggle. I've given them an utterly fascinating exercise on memo-writing and what do you know? Half the ingrates are surreptitiously tapping away, hoping I won't notice. Sometimes I pretend not to, but it amazes me how wedded they are to the wretched things. I have visions of them waking up in a cold sweat at 3am, anxious in case they've missed the latest tweet. Anyway, during a break yesterday I heard an appalling screaming coming from a student's phone. I looked up; naturally it was Abdullah .  "What on earth is that noise?" I said testily. "Nothing, teacher, just a video of a girl." I looked askance. "Surely you're not watching naughty videos again, Abdullah? There's a time and a place you know." He looked chastened. "Oh no, teacher. It's not that. This is a girl being buried alive." "What?" "In Iran," he said helpfully.

I could give you a list of the cognitive associations that led me to choose these three clips, in this order, but I shan't: with thanks to John Wells : and from the 2nd Red Scare :

There we were, last class of the day, and I've made the students work like slaves for four hours. Time to ease up a bit, so we sit round in a circle and they tell some anecdotes. Abdullah, who owns six Arabian geldings, and has a penchant for taking photos of his innumerable Filipina girlfriends, regaled us with this story, which I shall share with you. "Fifteen years ago a friend of mine, who was 14 at the time, drove out into the desert with a guy who had promised to let him drive his pickup. He was a beautiful boy: long hair, smooth face, and the guy wanted to fuck him. "No, no," said my friend, but the guy was drunk on whiskey and had a gun and his way. When he stopped the pickup to have a pee my friend grabbed the gun and shot him five times, then ran over the body. He came back to Doha in the pickup and with some of his friends went back, drove the body to a remote spot and buried it in the sand, throwing the whiskey bottle into the grave with a curse. Unfo