School was a rush of names and faces. Mark the boss, Marina, the manager who I’d met at the airport, and Graham, who I already knew from Riga. Then there were the two Nataliyas, both from Moldova, though one has a slightly superior role to the other. Dasha the runner, a man who doesn’t speak any English who sits out front all day and locks the classroom doors as soon as you’ve finished, Tanya the accountant, Irinya the assistant to the accountant and Lyuda who takes the students’ cash.
Into the teachers’ room there was Olga and Lena and Viktoriya. Elena the DOS was talking to a Michael the American (leading to an unsuccessful attempt to christen me Mike) and nearly everybody else was talking about football. There’s a Hartlepool fan from Hexham, a Shrewsbury fan from Wales and two first year teachers who follow Norwich City and Spurs. Straight after work we all went to the pub.
3 comments:
Hope you're settling in.
Ask the Shrews fan (if you would) whether he/she has ever been to Oswestry.
He has. In fact he spent a good five minutes telling me all about it. "Quite nice," he reckons, but going downhill fast now there's no train station and everyone shops out-of-town.
He did ask why you don't follow Shrewsbury.
Given the partisan nature of local rivalries, following Shrewsbury would have been (a bit) like being born in N17 and supporting Arsenal. With the exception that there is no Tottenham Hotspur - or indeed any team (The New Saints don't count) there.
I do check Shrews scores of course, as I do Wrexham, Hereford and Kidderminster, but that's about it.
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