Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Particle Genesis

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“According to astronomical measurements, the matter described by the Standard Model that makes up the stars, planets and ultimately us, only accounts for a tiny fraction of the universe. We appear to be a thin layer of froth, floating on top of an invisible ocean of dark matter and dark energy, about which we know […]

London

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I wandered around Leicester Square with a Haagen Daas ice cream cone in one hand and my suitcase in the other. People looked at me. I looked at the sky. I was taking a holiday. On Saturday morning I had taken the 11:55 to Kings Cross to spend the weekend with my aunt, cousin and […]

This week

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We did the heart dissections. A revelation. I rang home about the positive progress of a student, and the next day when he arrived in my lesson, he thanked me very seriously for calling his parents. Then he informed the class that his father was so happy about this phone-call that he bought him the […]

Hearts and flowers

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I teach some of the biggest, toughest, meanest looking boys in town. They are big, but they are not mean at all, and I’m finding that they are not all that tough either, underneath all that thorny exterior. They are a bunch of softies. I promised them that if they behaved well in our lessons […]

Dust whirling

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When I wrote this last week, “though they roar like breakers on a beach, God will silence them,” I was thinking about the waves of unfamiliar students pouring through my doors, whom I was supposed to manage and instruct. And He did silence them, well, most of them, the rest we are jointly working on. […]