Friday 13 May 2011

No Restrepo for the wicked

I haven't really said much about the work I'm doing at the moment. well, I'm back in the warm bosom of the University of York, teaching their first year students which end of a trowel to use and how to draw different kinds of mud to a quasi-scientific level. These skills are the kind they will need when they are deciding which bag of Tesco value frozen sausages they should buy (pork flavour with added sawdust or beef flavour with 50% chicken lips) since they won't be able to afford any other kind of food with the pittance that 'professional' field archaeologists are paid. Most of them have come through the clearing system, which basically means that they wanted to study history but as they didn't get the grades they ended up studying the hand maiden of History, Archaeology. Of the ten in my group only two actually wanted to do archaeology as a degree. One of whom has had the worst attendance of the group. I ask you.


If you're not careful, this is how you'll end up...

Having said that, my group are the best for attendance this year out of the whole site (four other groups of ten). But I have habitually had at least one missing each day. She has been missing so consistently that I believe she doesn't even exist. Even the University staff proper have no idea who she is. Maybe she was a phantom name that was invented in order to make the others look good. The rest of the group are your usual students, it's a bit like the Breakfast Club, the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, the criminal, the serial killer, the train driver, the pornographer, high priestess of Satan, the turkey farmer. You know, the usual kind of people. Two of the girls seem to show up either hungover from the night before or still drunk, having got home at about 5am after kissing boys and getting sick down their tops in the Willow. One of them, let's call her Lowrie, was telling me about the Afro-Caribbean Society that she was secretary of when she was at school. The membership was low. It consisted of three people: two blondes and a Jew. These two keep complaining whenever I drop the 'C-Bomb', which is pretty much every other word when they are not working hard enough, which is all the time.


'YOU WORK NOW!'

These are not the only problems I have to deal with, there is another student, let's call this one Myles, who turned up last Monday painted blue. He also goes around singing the Rebbecca Black song 'Friday' until all you want to do it pound his miserable head into the ground. But he's so bloody happy and nice all the time it would be like kicking a puppy. He wrote an article for the official blog that mentioned me. Read it here.


Idiot

Anyway, that's enough of that shit. Tomorrow is the best day in the calender! It's the Eurovision Song Contest! I've been invited to two parties, one in Sheffield and one in Iceland. Can you guess which one I might go to? Well, I would, but I can't afford the plane fair to Reykjavik, so Sheffield will have to do instead. As Norway have already been kicked out at the semi finals it looks like I'll have to back my home from home, Ireland and Jedward:


Finally, I got hold of my old bear skin rug. I think it looks boss in the front room: