When In Slovakia

It's been a while since I've posted anything here about anything at all but today feels like the right time to do it.

So, when it comes to the production of wine, the outcome has been pretty decent. I'm not suggesting for one second that this wine is pure or would be considered by wine connoisseurs to be anything worthy or fame or recognition, but for us it's a really pleasing result to what was a hell of a lot of hard work.

The white wine is generally not transparent. Only one demijohn contains clear liquid and the other two are cloudy for some reason. Perhaps it's because we didn't 'rack' them. This was a new word for me but basically it means siphoning from one container to another while trying to avoid getting tipsy in the process. Sucking from the pipe is necessary to get the liquid moving and sometimes it takes a few attempts and a few mouthfuls of wine as well.

One of the wines that we took was a bit smelly. It had a smelly egg smell but tasted fine. Supposedly it happens when there isn't enough aeration or it can be from having too much sulphur in the wine.

The red came out pretty well and is the most satisfactory one as it involved more work and there's something very majestic about seeing this juice of the gods flowing from bottle to glass.

The general feedback we've had has been pretty good which has also been very pleasing as we are certainly not objective at all.

The experience has been a very good one and while the grape vines are still asleep, I'm looking forward to the time when they burst into life and so will begin
another season of battling with the natural elements in order to give them the chance to produce this special fruit.

Wine Time

This is just a short one to show a bit of the process of making wine. We've been pretty lucky that we have a decent harvest but now we have to use it.

We are very lucky that all the equipment is already there and just needs some cleaning.

Picking the grapes is not the hard part, removing the good ones from the vines is.








First we crush them in a mill type device and then it's time for pressing to drain as much juice as you can from the grapes.

The juice is so good that I was tempted not to bottle it at all but to enjoy the delights of freshly pressed grape juice.

We disinfected the demijohn with sulphur, which should not be breathed in. Unfortunately we got a bit of it and were coughing for afterwards.

The juice is then poured into the demijohn and now we wait, for a couple of days at least until it's time to relocate the juice to another demijohn and leave the sediment behind.

It's a fascinating process and there's still a lot to learn but I'm eager.

Harvest Time

Strawberries have come and gone but there's lots more to pick and gorge on.
Now is the time when fruits such as cherries, raspberries, currants are all ready to be picked. We also have two courgettes and I have to say that eating a barbecued one the other night was possibly one of the tastiest experiences of my life. I am really looking forward to harvesting tomatoes, peppers and grapes. The latter is going fine but we are both stressed about all the diseases we have been warned about. We are still using an ecological spray consisting of iodine, soap, milk and water. Fingers crossed ...

There's still lots of work to do especially as temperatures are now in the mid to late 30s. It's just so hard to do any work when it is so scorching hot. The shower in the picture below is a great way to cool down and what could be more natural than washing outdoors?

Watering is the main thing as the earth is extremely dry. We need some rain but not vicious storms. It's amazing how much more I focus on the weather now that plants are dependent on me and on nature.

The Good and the Bad

The Bad

Slugs are eating their way through lots of the things we have planted. They have eaten our pumpkins, courgettes and nearly all of our cucumbers. Desperate attempts to save one last pumpkin sadly failed despite going round at night and rounding up as many slugs as we could. Below is just one portion of snails just before they got boiled.

The Good

Flowers are blooming and it's strawberry season. I don't have a picture yet but there are so many strawberries that we are finding it hard to think of ways to eat them and preserve the ones we can't possibly eat. We are in the process of making jam and have been enjoying smoothies the last few days but there are so many there that we may have to just restrict our diet to strawberries for the next while. Radish has been picked, the salads are growing well and we have finally planted the tomatoes that we had been growing at home. The vineyard is proving to be a challenge. We have pruned the shoots and branches without grapes and are carefully monitoring them for diseases as this seems to be a big problem here. Fingers crossed.

Some Sunday Musings

The Pages

The pages are blank waiting to be destroyed, their innocence taken away. Right now, that’s only a thought, a distant idea that might or might not happen. It doesn’t really matter if it does or not. There’s no shame either way.

         This morning I woke up and had a number of powerful images in my mind from strange dreams during the night. I was living in an enormous house except that it was too big. The dimensions were so unrealistic that attempting to put it into words is a waste of time. That’s why I won’t write about it here. It will remain in my mind until it’s lost like all those other fleeting thoughts that get pushed out and replaced by the most current and engaging ideas.

         So why am I sitting in front of these blank pages? The answer to that is a mystery to me and I’d be grateful if you could enlighten me. Do I think I can produce something extraordinary which is better than anything ever written before? Do I? Of course I do but it’s not happening today and this is why I’ve chosen to write in this way than in that way.

         When I was a child I had a typewriter. Remember them? An error could not be corrected as easy as nowadays. It scarred the page. Typing was not as smooth as it is on this keyboard. Each letter punched the page and left a bruise on its white skin. It was very satisfying to see my work on a page rather than on a screen. It was something I could touch and smell. I didn’t like typing too much. It took a lot of energy to punch in these letters on the white page. Ink was more precious than it is now and the ribbon had a horrible tendency to become knotted in itself. There were some days when I spent more time trying to regulate this machine than actually getting it to perform my will.

         There is also handwriting of course. I keep my black journal at home. It’s not a moleskine unfortunately but a cheap imitation. Sometimes I think if I had a moleskine I’d write a lot more. Wishful thinking? Perhaps but it’s easier to make excuses than to take responsibility for the lack of output I produce on the lined pages in my notebook which is not a moleskine.

         Keeping a diary was always a good habit but reading back what I’d written was not an enjoyable experience. It was better to simply write what was on my mind and forget about it. It felt good to release these words onto the page and never look at them again. Occasionally I tore up the pages and threw them out into the bin. These were not words I wanted to share and besides who would even want to read them? They were confessions, outbursts of anger or frustration, records of the day and musings. They were not interesting. It was a form of therapy with a psychiatrist who was very good at listening but not so effective at giving advice. That didn’t matter though. What was important was that the words got out and didn’t remain inside where they did no good at all.

         Now where was I? Oh yes, the pages are in front of me again. I have thought about a whole range of prompts such as taking an object in the room and writing about it but I’ve done that too many times. Have you tried the one where you close your eyes, open a book on a random page, point at a word on the page and use that as your inspiration? It’s not bad but I’m not in the mood for that. There’s also the one where you think of a memory and recall it in your own words. Not a bad one that. It’s usually easier to write about what you know than you don’t. Another one I like is the one where you take a picture and use that as a prompt. It is a good one if you have a good imagination but today there’s not much going on in my mind. It’s having an off day and there’s not much I can do about that except stare at the page or just continue what I’m doing now. At least I’m writing something. I don’t have to share it or even save it. I can do what I want with it and no one need know about it. Now, that’s a very liberating thought, isn’t it?

Nanowrimo Winner

It's all over. I have finally managed to reach the target of 50,000 words. I am writing about this not to bask in the glory of this achievement (well perhaps a little) but to highlight what a good idea having a target is for a writer. Feeling a part of an online community is something that does help to motivate. It's also amazing how many words can accumulate when you work steadily on an idea.

It wasn't easy. There were many days when I sat in front of my computer and started falling asleep but had to wake myself up in order to complete the daily target which was around 1,600 words. For most of this month I played catch up as there were two days when I wrote nothing. Last night I felt a little possessed by some sort of writing demon and wrote ferociously until I finished it.

Now, I feel like more hours have been added to my day. A big weight has been taken off me and I no longer have to write to keep guilty thoughts at bay. The editing is next and the ironic thing is that this will involve reducing what I have written. Redundant sections will be chopped, language will be strictly scrutinised and deleted if deemed unnecessary.

The hardest part is then knowing what to do with this finished work. Do I send it to publishers, self-publish, post it here or do nothing? Writers have it harder than musicians in many ways as they have to find a way to share their work and of course it takes more effort and willingness on behalf of potential readers than listeners. If anyone has any ideas on this matter, please comment or write to me. I am thinking of taking a DIY approach but am not sure yet just how that will look.

Nanowrimo - Nearing The End

My head is sore today from writing or perhaps the change in weather which is slowly breaking down my immune system. The good news is that I have fulfilled my quota of words but the bad news is that if I keep going at this rate, I will finish on December 2nd.

I'm at 32,2116 words which I think is not bad at all and I still have some ideas to help me stretch out my story. That's the funny thing about my current writing. When I finish the 50,000 quote required to be a Nanowrimo winner, my first task will be to go back over my story again and begin the editing process where I will probably delete a good chunk of the work which took a great deal of effort to create.

I am enjoying being under pressure to write and sometimes I wonder if I could maintain this every day. The most satisfying thing is how quickly words build up when you maintain a regular writing practice. Doing this would be tough but think of all I would write. I guess this is what full-time writers do. They have their times for writing every day and their times for resting like any other job.

First things first, only another ten days to go and a little less than 18,000 words to write.

A Novel in One Month

November 1st. Today is the first day of Nanowrimo, an online writing project I have signed up to do for the second time. It means that every day of this month I have to write in order to reach the target of 50,000 words. It's a massive amount to write and I feel daunted by it to say the least but my plan is to take it one day at a time.

On the website they advise you to tell everyone you know that you are taking part in this which is why I am writing here. I want to exclaim loud and clear that in one month's time I will have a collection of 50,000 words. The logic behind this is that the more people you tell, the greater the feeling of failure if you don't complete the word count. The last time around I told students, friends and felt like walking up to strangers to tell them,  'Yes, I am taking part in Nanowrimo and I will write a novel / a large collection of words in one month.'

Right now, I have no idea if these words will form something coherent and interesting or not. That is the beauty of the project. Participants are encouraged to simply write and write without editing. This comes later. Now it's all about writing and filling blank pages with words.

Who Needs a Map?

The stereotype regarding men not using maps is unfortunately true for me. I don't like maps and prefer to get lost and then find my way again (not only in a spiritual sense).

Yesterday is a perfect example. I had a lesson on a street I'd never been to before which was the first warning. Before leaving home I did check the address online and made a mental note of a street beginning with the letter 's' that I had to cross before taking a right at a street name ending with 'eho'.

To my mind I was well-prepared so out I went.

Of course you can imagine what happened. I found one street beginning with the 's' I was looking for but it didn't lead me to the street name ending in 'eho'.

I don't have a smart phone and of course I hadn't taken my map with me. Time was ticking and the last thing I needed was to be late for the first lesson with this student. Thankfully people are quite helpful in Bratislava but unfortunately the street I was looking for didn't seem to be popular. After asking many people, including one who even checked on her smart phone while nervously looking up in anticipation of her bus (mental note -  don't ask people for directions at bus stops), I decided to walk in the direction I instinctively guessed it was.

The problem now is that I may not learn my lesson because I found the street without a map and was even early for the lesson. All the stress soon faded once I spotted the street name which matched to the one on the student's business card. All the anxiety was forgotten replaced by manly pride.

On The Move / Initial Observations

Moving is always tough for me. It amazes me that people can move once a year or even more and not lose their minds. I guess I have mixed feelings about it. I admire and am confused by these people.

It's funny how often people look at me and think I'm one of these travellers who can't stay put in one place for too long. When I tell them it's not true, I usually get the feeling that they are not convinced.

Ireland 22 or so years and Poland for nearly 8 years and that's it. Okay so I have spent at least one month a year in Oxford for the last four years but that has been for work purposes and usually out of necessity.

Now it's Bratislava. It's not so different from Kraków in some ways but very different in others. Initial observations are that there are less small shops and markets to buy fruit and veg than in Kraków. This is a bit disappointing as I feel I am being forced to use Tesco a little too often. The architecture here has more remnants from the communist / socialist past whereas in Kraków, there have been many attempts to remove these traces of history. People are generally friendlier here and are willing to help if they can. In Kraków I often found people to be a mixed bag, sometimes friendly and sometimes they looked and behave as if they hated every human on Earth including themselves.

I'm digressing here though, although my heading has allowed for this. It's strange to move again. I'm starting from the bottom again but this time with experience of what it means to live in a totally different place and know no one. It's still weird and fitting in seems like a big task. I do have to remind myself that I haven't even been here one week and yet in some ways it feels like I've been here much longer.

Brown Bread

Above you can see my first solo attempt to bake bread. It was a very proud moment for me to slowly take the bread tray out of the oven and inhale the wonderful aroma signifying the completion of my efforts. Baking bread has been something that I have felt I should do for such a long time and I don't know what has stopped me from doing so.

What surprised me was how long it took to prepare but the satisfaction of slicing it and eating it for breakfast (it wasn't savoured unfortunately as I slept in and was nearly late for work) the following day was worth it. In the recipe, it said 20 minutes preparation time, and this was true but I missed the information giving the whole time needed. It was so long that my private lessons had to be interrupted slightly while I moved onto the next stage of the process much to the interest of my private students.

Why was it such a proud moment? Well, for me bread is a staple part of my diet. It is literally the foundation for so many of the things I eat - mainly toast and sandwiches and the different combinations that I put on top of them

So as for the preparation; getting the ingredients was pretty easy, kneading the bread for about 10 minutes was not so smooth on the wrists or on my patience especially given the limited space in my kitchen. As a whole the major requirement was patience, patience to do it correctly and to regularly check the recipe I found online. It is not a great virtue of mine but given the fact that I didn't literally have to wait and watch it slowly rise, it was not a problem.

So now that I have broken my baking bread virginity, I have promised myself not to go back to buying cheap, poor quality bread in the shop. That would be far too easy. This will involve a lot of planning in advance but if forced to have the option of bread or no bread, I know which one I will choose.

For those who are interested - Brown Bread Recipe

Spamming / Notifying

The reason for writing this is to try to get some ideas about what other people think about this and also to get something out there that has been on my mind.

As I play music quite often in the same city and organise an open mic, I regularly use Facebook as the means to promote these events. I regularly invite many people I know and some I don't really know at all or have never even spoken to but are somehow in my friend's list. In the past, the way to promote an event was to print fliers and posters and go around town sticking them up in various bars and cafes and other public areas, some of which came with the risk of getting fined by the police if caught in the act.

Nowadays, it seems that having many ‘likes’ on Facebook is the most effective way to get events across to people, but is this really the case? With so many acts out there using the same means to advertise their concerts and events, is this the best way to try to encourage people to get interested in your music? Word-of-mouth is obviously one of the more human and personal means to build up your popularity and share your music and indeed, this is the main source for me to find out what people are listening to and who I should go to see next.

So back to spamming. Does it work? A big part of me feels a small sense of guilt that I am annoying people by regularly inviting them to events when I don't know them so well or suspect that they don't want another invite on top of the countless others they have already received and have to filter through to plan their time effectively.  On the other hand, without a manager or promotion agency, if I don't do it, who will?

It would be great to hand all this over to someone else and just focus on playing and working on new material. It would be amazing to know that when I get to the venue everything is prepared and there is no need to worry about anything, but until that happens, it's back to spamming or perhaps I should think of it as simply ‘notifying’ people about upcoming gigs.

Writing From Experience Or Not?

It seems I haven't written in a long, long time and that is true. The last entry was in November last year. Since writing about the cycling tripI went on, I haven't had any travel adventures besides a trip home for the Christmas period. The lack of travel has brought a question to mind - is it necessary to experience in order to write and in my case, does traveling aid creativity?

A few years ago I took part in a Literature course in Dublin. There was a fantastic professor who had a wonderful knowledge of the subject and the ability to portray this in a very interesting manner. One of the books we looked at was Black List Section H by Francis Stuart, an Irish writer who went to Germany during World War II. He went there to experience the horrific events that were taking place at that time and to write about this. He even took up a post working for the Nazi regime. The professor proceeded to talk about the influence the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had on Francis Stuart. He explained that the philosopher used the Greek characters, Apollo and Dionysius to show the different ways of gaining inspiration. Apollo is the restrained one and represents creativity emanating from imagination alone whereas, Dionysius is excessive and reckless representing creativity from experience. 

The reaction from my classmates was very crtitical and they the majority stated that this was completely immoral. While I totally agree, I still find it interesting to read about what this Irish writer did in order to gain the experience to then write about it. There are some people with very imaginative minds who can conjure up stories and songs effortlessly but others need something to happen in order to write about it. 

I don't plan to go on any trips to dangerous war-torn countries but perhaps a trip of some sort would give me something to write about. 

English Teaching - Why Do We Do It?

As I have had a lot of contact with teachers who have been living in such far-flung places such as: Bolivia, Mexico, Kazakhstan etc, I have been trying to figure out what it is that makes an TEFL teacher.

The title of this post is a question I often ask myself. What is it that makes English teachers leave the countries of their birth to seek new challenges and experiences elsewhere? Most of the teachers I have met over the years have some sort of interest in the arts. I have met many musicians, photographers, writers and so on. It has given me reason to ask myself - are they looking for inspiration for their art?

I guess there are also the teachers who want to escape from something from the past, perhaps a dark secret, a break up, boredom and so on. Leaving gives them a chance to wipe the slate clean and start over in a location where they are unknown and have no baggage or past to taint their reputations. New people, new challenges, and perhaps a new leaf to turn over.

People often say to me 'You are so lucky. You can travel anywhere in the world.' While this is very true, do I really want to do this? Loneliness and a lack of belonging to anyone location is another aspect of the TEFL teacher that seems to be a challenge to deal with. You go 'home' and you don't feel good there, you go to another place and once again you have to try to find a way to feel connected to the society there. Some people I have met want to put a stop to this restlessness but find it impossible to do so. Language is a big barrier but culture can be equally so.

So 'why do we do it'? I don't know. Perhaps it is a form of escape, the desire for new experiences, the need to learn something new, the lack of other options available or a mixture of all of these factors. Are we fortunate to be able to use something given to us from birth as the means to travel and have new experiences? I think so, but there are also negatives that balance this good fortune and give cause for complaint and even frustration.

A New Start

So, another new year is approaching and this time I am quietly optimistic. I used to consider September 1st the beginning of the year. Now, it is sometime in the middle of October as this is when there is a new start in the teaching world and mine. January 1st has never had much of a strong meaning for me.

Despite this, plans are starting to form in my head. Resolutions have never really worked for me so I don't really spend much energy on them but plans are things that I do look forward to. Some involve the anticipation of hard work and graft, hours of mind racking and head scratching to create the finished product. Travel, on the other hand, simply involves budgetary plans but this does not make it easier in any way. It does make the long days of preparation, running around town and teaching worthwhile though and adds another worthwhile incentive to that of basic survival.

Regarding the eve of the new year, I plan to follow the pattern of previous eve's by relaxing. No fireworks, no over indulgence in champagne of other forms of booze, no dancing on tables, no mulitple countdowns which lead to a big anti-climax and most of all no big plans. I will save those for the rest of the year. 

Native Confusion

The term 'Native Speaker' is one that has worked in my favour since my arrival into Poland approximately four years ago. At first I thought it sounded like the name of a someone in a cult or something else quite suspicious and being addressed by this title was often the source of amusement and discomfort, I was never able to decide what feelings it produced.
On the one hand, it meant being able to teach English with a qualification given to me courtesy of my upbringing but on the other hand, it often led to school management expecting me to be the ideal candidate to work with students on their speaking skills. This is often more difficult than teacher grammar, a area which I have grown to enjoy teaching and it is a bit insulting as it is not really teaching in my opinion but practicing speaking. For me a teacher should be able to practice all the skills and not just specialise in one.
Having been here for some time and having come to grips with the Polish language relatively well, it is now hard to be a 'Native Speaker' who is expected not to use or understand for that matter any Polish in the classroom. I should not translate or react to Polish even if there are sly comments aimed at me by students who think they have the upper hand with which to impress the others in the class.
It is a pickle and I had a big test yesterday with a new group of teenagers. I pretended to be a 'Native Speaker' in the true sense of the word but at times I really wanted to shout out that 'I can help you!', 'I understand!' - but I could not. Thankfully, there were no insults hurled at me to defend myself against and to betray my progression from being a 'Native Speaker' to being whatever it is I now am.

Back to School

'Back to School'

The words that mean the end of the summer and the end of the holidays. These are the words that prophesize the oncoming doom which awaits children and teenagers throughout the country. As a child signs similar to those above annually sank my spirits and the search for new pens, copybooks and the bland grey uniform was always an affair of bribery for my mother.

'After we get try on those trousers, we'll go for an ice-cream' or 'Just one more shop and then we can go home' are some examples of the tactics used in my case.
Even the thought of meeting all my school buddies didn't raise my spirits for two reasons;

1. Those friends I liked from school I saw outside of school and
2. There were so many things you had to beware of from so called 'friends.

Stealing pencil cases was one and while you were hopelessly trying to retrieve this essential by running around the classroom, your bag and everything in it was soon going in another direction. The worst thing of all is that your efforts to get back your belongings were often scorned by the teacher.
'Sit down and stop disrupting the class' shouted the teacher while smug grins were discerned on the faces of your 'friends'.
Checking the seat before you sat on it was always a good way to provide landing on a piece of chewing gum or something sharper and it was always necessary to be on the lookout for flying objects such as paper ball, sandwiches and metal pointed compasses. So you can see why returning to this environment was not a pleasing prospect.

Nowadays I'm on the other side of the desk and the prospect is still not as pleasing. Okay, the groups I have are smaller than 30, I haven't been attacked or bullied by students (yet). I also have the power of language over my students which can be a powerful weapon, but my nerves still tingle before stepping up in front of a group for the first time trying to convince them that I mean business before 'Mr Soanes' is soon replaced by 'Phil' and the routine kicks in like before.

The words 'Back to School' still unnerve me but at least I still have a month to prepare for this return.