6.

Thursday 19^th May: "Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast”

Romeo & Juliet 2.iii

When examining in classrooms around the country, you get an opportunity to see the various types of poster displayed on classroom walls. Some are home-made, crudely-drawn affairs, but all the more homely for it, and others are bought. With the bought ones, there’s a tendency to help teach English words/phrases with ‘cute’ animals. The picture to the right is one such example teaching opposites, although I’ve taken the words out. Your task is to guess what opposites are being taught. Don’t look till you’ve guessed, but the full poster with answers is at the bottom of this blog.

As well as spoken English, there are some written gems as well. Here a phrase taken from one portfolio about rules and regulations when travelling by aeroplane:

“When the passengers get in a plane, they must have civilised behaviour so they can’t run, smoke and scream... If the people break these rules they will not fly or they will be scolded... I love travelling by safety plane”. Thoughts shared by us all, I’m sure. Good to see that amongst things counted as uncivilised behaviour are running, smoking and screaming. There’s hope for the world yet. And now the obligatory examining picture with annonymised report, green pen, portfolios and cakes.

Some days examining are pleasant and marking portfolios really breaks up the day marvellously. Today I had quite a heavy day of full interviewing and I didn’t realise how much it’s taken it out of me until I’d reached for the emergency mini-bar bottle of beer and put on some Noel Coward to take me to my ‘happy place’. Not every day requires such automatic reactions, thankfully.The hotel I’ve been staying in here in Verona has been a little bit of a treat. Apart from the beauty of free internet (many hotels out here charge around 15 euros a day), the room on the large size, although not a suite, the room has its own small terrace (pictured), which makes for a perfect sport for drying washing, doing a spot of marking/paper work or having a beer. Just got to watch out for those malicious mosquitoes – they love a bit of the juicy British blood.

In the early evenings, apart from spending time recovering from exams with beer and negronis, I’ve been strolling round teh city of Verona itself. The centre is really quite small and can be traversed corner to corner in about ½ an hour (or a full hour if going at Italian walking pace).

Amongst the places visited are Castle Vechio (built but the last of the ruling Della Scala family, to protect themselves from the locals), which you see behind me, and the Roman Theatre, built in the 1^st century.

The good news about the theatre is that despite being pulled apart, built on and forgotten about, it’s now been excavated and is being used again as a performance space. The bad news is that as it’s being used a performance space, all the architectural features are under plywood boards and can’t be seen. I’m sure there’s a third way there somewhere.

Finally, if you guessed 'happy' and 'sad' for the monkeys, you get one point. If you got the rather harder 'up' and 'down' for the lions, I'll give you three points. I'd have gone for 'heavy' and 'light' myself. As for what the cow's doing in the bottom left, well, that's just the artist gone a bit off-the-rails, I think.