Dance yer socks off - Lundi, 12.03.07

Lundi 12.03.07 dance yer socks off

The Let’s Stop Nicola Smoking campaign is let out again today. She’s waiting for the bus, sitting on the tree stump and puffing away when a man in a car pulls up beside her, rolls down the window and gives her a lecture on the harm smoking does to your body. He tells her that he has sat down with his family many evenings to watch TV and together they have seen just how destructive smoking can be. I’ll have to rent that video. Or perhaps I just need to retune the TV. Nicotine thanks him for his advice and as he leaves a trail of smoke behind him she puffs harder and more deliberately on her smog stick.

My lesson plans for this week are centred around the national celebrations on an emerald island off the west coast of Europe. There are posters to prepare, projects to mount and decorate and dancing to perfect. Madame Caruge’s class spend the morning brightening up the two giant wooden boards to display their project work on Ireland. Its times like this when I miss Quark Xpress and when I yearn to express my artistic license. I’m itching to takeover and do some layout but it’s the kids’ work so I resist and instead give guidance, do spell-checks, write out headings, draw shamrocks and cast an eye over their work. Those who have nothing solid to show are given Irish stain-glass stencils to trace, colour and cut: a Leprechaun, a crock o’ gold, a Celtic pattern, shamrocks, the harp, the tri-colour, a high-cross and ‘Erin go bragh’ (Gaelic for: Ireland forever. French for: Irlande pour toujours).

Mr Duval’s class benefit from his energetic ways as we take to the yard to practise our Irish dancing; he tells me about his weekend water workouts when he likes to dive down to the depths and catch lobsters and strange fish. The kids have already spent the morning doing P.E so they’re sufficiently warmed up for such a spectacle. The rest of the time is spent cutting out cardboard shamrocks and designing by-lines for various projects: Fabriqués par les élèves de CM2 de Chateauboeuf A.

The younger classes are all waiting on the unveiling of their shamrocks… Madame Edragas’ pot has taken flight with five shoots while the others are struggling with only one or two healthy buds. If these plants don’t take to the Martiniquan climate at least we’ll always have a multitude of paper shamrocks to look at. We prepare for our shamrock corner by creating a sign using a cut-out of the word SHAMROCK. The children stick their many green shamrock leaves unto each character until the word shamrock has sprouted sufficiently. I do the same exercise using the word IRELAND. It’s a good way to help them practise their spelling skills and pronunciation. When each word has been completed I get children to take a character and form the chosen word. I then call out letters and each child raises their letter on their turn.

Madame de la Directrice calls me into her office and asks if there’s anything I need for our St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. I stress that I need the extra classroom as an exhibition room and that I’ll need the stereo system too. She notes this down on a scrap of paper which will probably be hidden under the heap of folders on her desk. I have a Post-it made out and I give it to her, making sure that she sticks it somewhere visible. Jossylene is sorting out a projector with the Circonscription. She may be my responsable and she may usually be clued-in but there’s no harm in calling her to check up on the whereabouts of this technology.

I take a private lesson with Line, one of the teachers in the school. She wants to improve her English so she can travel so I’ve created some scenarios for her involving booking flights and hotels. It’s a fun class and we get a few laughs as she books her tickets with AerLingus to Dublin for St. Patrick’s weekend and reserves a room in a Rasta hotel in Kingstown, Jamaica. As it happens we’re in the computer room for the lesson. I can’t help eyeing up the computer in the corner which is alive and kicking amidst its other crashed companions. Before Line locks up I get a chance to check my emails – the connection may be slow but at least it’s functioning.

Slow service is however, served up again in the Soup Bar. Nic and I meet there for a lunch of onion soup and mixed salad. We then head to the travel agents to get our Easter travel itinerary from Mylène before zipping around the hoard of clothes stores looking for matching green t-shirts for our pre-Paddy’s Day production.

We’ll be dancing our socks off this Wednesday in The Terminal Café as we’ve agreed to do an Irish dancing set – it’ll be a warm-up of sorts for the real celebrations. If anyone walked into our apartment and saw us practising these dances tonight they’d probably think we were exorcising rather than exercising; Fred only attended the matinee show yesterday! We do look a bit demented as we giggle and jiggle around the living room. We’re not so much Jean Butler as melted butter or sweaty Betty! The heat and action is so intense that not only do we dance our socks off but our bottoms and tops follow into a heap on the floor and we end up dancing in our underwear. We turn on the fan and turn off the lights giving us both air and coolness in an instant. Nic’s mum sent her a pair of Irish dancing pumps and we both wear them when practising our individual dances. I’m the hustler here as I never did Irish dancing as a child – ceilís in school or the Gaeltacht were my limit. The laced leather pumps are pain inducing. They look just like the slave sandals that are in fashion here. Nic comments that I scrunch up my face like a bull when I dance in them. The hard-soled shoes are a tad small for her too and her pinched toes are also mirrored in her pinched face. The shoes subsequently join the clothes heap and it’s not long until I leap into bed with my feet still throbbing from the soul-destroying sandals.