No Arms
Six year old Daniel had a bad dream last night and came in to check if I still had both my arms. In his dream I had lost one, and he was very anxious to make sure they were both still there!
A few weeks ago in the market there was a man begging for money. He had only one arm and a terrible hole in his head with awful scarring. That must have been where Daniel’s dream came from.
Braless
We went down to the beach and had a swim. Nason’s ball drifted out to sea, blown along by the wind. I stopped him from going after it and quickly changed into my bathing suit and swam out myself.
My stroke has improved and I’m becoming quite a fast swimmer. However, after about five minutes I realised there was no chance I would catch the ball, so I let it go. Within minutes it had drifted far out to sea.
When I swam back to shore I realised that, in my hurry to get in the water, I had forgotten to take off my bra. Not only that, but I had somehow put the bottom of my bikini on with the leg hole around my waist! I had to laugh at the sight I must have made.
Puppet Show
At a summer school Lewis performed in a puppet show and was very good. At the very end, however, a bigger boy—about fourteen—snatched his puppet monkey away and finished the performance himself, completely spoiling Lewis’s final moment. Lewis was very upset and burst into tears.
I was furious and asked the children’s teacher for the boy’s name. She was a very sweet, polite seventy-year-old English lady and at first said she didn’t know for sure.
“Bollocks,” I said.
She got the message and admitted that she did know the boy and would speak to him.
The next morning she came to tell me there had been a misunderstanding and that the boy hadn’t meant to snatch the monkey or take over the ending.
“Bollocks,” I said again—this time a little louder. A very useful word bollocks!
After an awkward silence she tentatively suggested that perhaps I might like to speak to the boy myself. That was exactly what I wanted.
At break time she brought him to me: a tall, gangly fourteen-year-old wearing a peaked cap, smirking as if he couldn’t care less what anyone thought.
I explained that sometimes we do things that cause offence to others, and it is important that we understand the consequences of our actions.
“For instance,” I said, “if I knocked your hat off—”
At that point I gave his cap a sharp smack and sent it flying off his head.
“You might find that offensive,” I continued, “and if you did, I hope you or someone else would tell me.”
The smug expression disappeared from his face and he backed up against the wall. By the end of our conversation I think he took the matter a little more seriously.
Sometimes you need a little shock to get someone’s attention.
To be honest, I was so angry that if he had kept up his ‘couldn’t-care-less’ attitude I was within inches of head-butting him. Perhaps children sense these things.
What happens if we die?
A couple of days ago Daniel asked me again what would happen if Vessal and I both died. I reassured him that his Granny and Granda from Northern Ireland would fly out and take him back to Portrush to live with them.
He looked much happier and, when he remembered how close he would be to all his cousins, he positively beamed his happiness.
Then, he added apologetically, “But I shall miss you!”
I had to laugh—the rascal.
Tenderness
It may seem crazy to some people what we are doing here on this Greek island, but I wouldn’t exchange my life for anyone else’s.
Since we came here, when I pray I sometimes feel an indescribable tenderness welling up inside me that brings tears to my eyes and makes me feel very close to God. It was never like this before, and I am deeply grateful for such sweet moments.
Failing Greek Lessons
Greek class was tough. I had asked one of my Greek friends to do my homework so all I had to do was read it out.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t read her handwriting. It was dreadful. Talk about bad luck.
The teacher had been away on holiday the previous week, so I told her it was an Irish tradition for teachers who go on holiday to bring back a sweet cake for their students. I only said it in mischief—but blow me down, she brought a cake to class that evening!
It obviously pays to be bad sometimes.
Flying Persian Carpets
I spent two hours today hunting for our Persian carpet in the neighbours’ gardens. I clean the carpets with soapy water and a brush, then hang them over the balcony railings to dry. Sometimes they blow off into the gardens below.
Vessal hates this, as the local dogs immediately pee on them.
Anyway, while secretly searching the gardens for this carpet—which had been missing for days—I enlisted Nason to help. After looking around for a while he came upstairs to inform me that the carpet had been in our back corridor the entire time.
I had spent days hunting for a carpet that wasn’t missing.
I’m definitely cracking up.
Squashed insects
The other day I drove all the way to school on my scooter, taught for four hours, and returned home to find an insect squashed flat on my forehead.
My only concern was whether I had collided with it on the way to school or on the way back.
The thought that I might have taught four hours of classes with a large insect plastered across my forehead is quite amusing.
