Day 1208 (Tuesday) 29th September 2020

 Day 1208 (Tuesday) 29th September 2020 

It was lovely and warm again and I had a bit of a lie because I’m working till 6pm in Monaco.  Badger had a lot of fun playing with our Super U shopping bags in the kitchen.

Huw went up to the big apartment to do a bit of gardening and I caught the train to  Monaco. It takes 25 minutes to walk from the platform to the WAG’s apartment who from  now on I’m going to call her highness. The lovely Pilipino house keeper let me in and the  concierge stopped me asking who I was there to see. I told him madame Marlene and he let  me in. Her name is pronounced Marlen but every time I say it or think it I can hear Boysie’s  voice talking about Marleeene in a strong cockney accent. When I got to the apartment the  housekeeper was in the kitchen, her highness was in her bedroom and Bradley was hiding  under a huge woolly blanket on the sofa. I couldn’t be bothered to cajole him into joining  me on the balcony so I just waited at the table on the balcony – I won and he finally joined  me. We looked at colours again and I introduced some vocabulary for clothes; I’ve realised  that as long as he has coloured pens or pencils in his hand his behaviour is almost tolerable.  I really shouldn’t be allowed to work with kids, I seriously dislike them. Her highness kept  me waiting while the housekeeper took Bradley back to school so I quickly managed to eat  my sandwiches while I waited. She seemed cheerful enough when she finally joined me and  we did some grammar looking at comparatives and superlatives (she is taller than him but  shorter than her – comparative; the Sahara is the largest desert in the world - superlative.)  She finished the exercises and then I brought out some cards to practise this grammar.  These cards have interesting questions such as ‘what is most exciting thing you have ever  done?’ what was the best day of your life so far?’ What were your best/worst subjects at  school? Etc etc. I have used these cards many times and until today they have never failed  to encourage speaking. She totally changed the subject and told me that she was very tired  and had two pimples. I tried to be sympathetic but I couldn’t be arsed to talk about two zits.  She was stroking her face and said that she had to go for a facial and that she’d had a  manicure and pedicure yesterday. She then stood up and said ‘I’m tired, I need to lie down  and walked back into the apartment. She didn’t even wait for me to put my things into my  bag! By the time I got to the hallway she was walking into her bedroom and just said  ‘Thursday” she didn’t even turn around to say goodbye; so you see why I now call her 

highness! Ah well I was still getting paid for being dismissed half an hour early and it was a  nice change to be able to saunter back to school instead of rushing. 

I had just under an hour before my next class so I went for a little wander around the streets  near the school – it appears that this area is dedicated to ridiculously fast, expensive cars.

This showroom only had Ferraris and Bentleys and I liked this photo because it looks like the  man is push starting a Ferrari – he isn’t he’s just opening the boot  

Only in Monaco can the palm trees grow as tall as a high-rise building

Natacha and all the other teachers were as welcoming as always and I was soon thoroughly  enjoying my class with the lovely Ukrainian student with a Welsh boyfriend from Swansea.  She told me that he’d really laughed a lot when she showed him my note about Joe’s ice  cream in Mumbles and rissole beans and chips. Today I wrote ‘the student pub crawl along  the Mumbles mile and jumping off the pier’, I am very confident that this will get a laugh  too. 

I had no break before the ‘juniors’ arrived; as Valeria left the three seven year olds arrived.  They are horribly noisy but fairly pleasant.

At 6pm on the dot we finished and packed up and their mothers were there to meet them.  The noise they made was incredible and when I told one of the mothers that I wanted to go  home she said, ‘are you sure you don’t want to come home with us?’ that made me laugh. My train was delayed by ten minutes and by the time I got home just before 7pm I was  pooped.