The working week - Thursday

On Thursday mornings I give a private lesson at a small renovation company in Aumale. That’s west Brussels. Anderlecht. From Montgomery at 8.15 the metro is a human sardine can. At Arts-Loi it bursts open and sardines fly everywhere. Once we’re beyond De Brouckere there are enough free seats that I can sit and let the numbness of morning wear off. I’ve tried reading during the morning commute, but the words sink like quicksand. I just stare instead; out the window, at my bag, into the dark eyes of a woman sitting alone.
When it leaves Gare De L’Ouest the metro emerges above ground for a few brief moments before burrowing into the next station. I always think how pleasant this glimpse of daylight must be for the driver, the man or woman who’s just spent thirty minutes under ground in the blackness. One Thursday in February, after days and days of grayness and rain, the morning was clear blue and sunshine, so bright it strained my eyes.

I’m always early. On the way to the office there’s a bakery where I buy two croissants. While I queue I look at the cakes behind the counter. More than two dozen. Elegant dessert cakes the width of a dinner plate, their decorations of fruit carefully arranged and glistening. The croissants are crispy and warm and I have to lick the flakes of pastry from my fingers as I walk. Narrow streets, nameless shops, the threat of dog shit, the traffic thronging.

The lesson is with the boss of the company and his assistant. He’s Belgian, she’s from Hungary, but has lived in Brussels most of her life so she speaks French fluently. The office is just two floors, with a big garage next door. When I arrive the secretary is making coffee for me. She used to put a biscuit with it, but I never ate it so she stopped. She has a little dog called Jacques who always comes to the door to meet me. I love Jacques. I scratch behind his ears and he sniffs me intently because I smell of the dog we have at home.

The two of them have the lowest level of all the students I have. In traditional TEFL speak I’d say it’s pre-intermediate. In terms of grammar means they can activate the past simple and the present continuous for current actions. The good thing about this level is that progress, though slow, is easily measured. I also love the atmosphere of the lesson. The two of them niggle and tease each other and sometimes have fits of laughter over their shortcomings in speaking. The boss is all winks and smiles.

When the lesson ends at 10.30 I head straight back to the metro. Minutes are precious. No time to waste. While I wait I stare at the huge mosaic that covers the walls of the station. It’s black and white images of Brussels from Second World War and the present day blended together in a way I find mesmerising.

Destination: CLL Crainhem. It’s about 25 minutes, and while I travel I prepare for the literature class I have at half one. This involves re-reading our current book and preparing talking points. I love literature (my degree was in American literature with creative writing) so it’s one of my favourite courses. At least it is most of the time. When you’re reading a shit book it’s a bit of a drag, and the book we’re reading at the moment is as shite as they come: Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje. He’s the man who wrote The English Patient. It’s hard to describe why I hate this book. First of all it’s two different stories that are linked in some bullshit way. One is about a family in northern California. Father has two daughters and a young man to help on his farm, boy starts shagging one daughter, father finds out and beats boy with stool, boy runs off and becomes illicit poker player, gets into trouble and then is beaten up again and loses his memory. Or does he? Who knows. What I do know is that it’s all told with a wishy-washy pseudo-poetic style that I find infuriating. And if I had a penny for every time he completes an analogy with the words ‘as if’ I’d be a millionaire. Here’s an example: “It’s as if her energy and sensuality have been drawn from the air surrounding her.” For the old women in the class it’s all very lovey-dovey. For me it’s nauseating.

I usually arrive at in the teacher’s room at about 11.30, just as the French courses are finishing and the teachers are piling in to have their lunch and prepare for the next lessons in an hour and a half. It can be a bit of a madhouse. I usually escape to one of the empty classrooms and finish preparing.

The literature class is at the university des aines, a special department of the UCL just for pensioners. When I arrive there’s usually a woman cleaning the classroom after the previous lesson. I try not to get in her way. While she vacuums I have to rearrange the desks into a rectangle for our round-table discussion. The women convene in the reception downstairs, chatting away with all the energy and enthusiasm you’d expect. Around 1.25pm they come up to the classroom and the lesson begins.

Although their English is by no means perfect, they still do very well with books that would be difficult to discuss even for a native speaker. For me the lesson is a dream. It makes me feel that my degree in American literature and creative writing was worthwhile and not just three years of idle daydreaming and weed smoking.

Straight after the literature class is another dream come true: current events. For this lesson I distribute an article, which the students then read and prepare to discuss for the next lesson. Topics range from the EU to Israel, from drugs to Belgian politics. There are 13 in the class, and sometimes the discussion can get a tad disorganised. Everyone speaks at once and no one’s quite sure what’s going on. For the most part, though, it’s very fun, and as I always tell the students, I’d rather have lots of people talking at once than nobody saying anything, as is sometimes the case with, for example, a class of teenagers.

Once, during a discussion of monarchies, I asked the group what they thought of Leopold II. Some people have protested against the fact that he was responsible for the murder and mutilation of thousands of Congolese, and yet is still venerated in Belgian culture. I pointed out that some people have compared him to Stalin and Hitler. The pensioners (all Belgian) scoffed at this. Without him we wouldn’t have Parc Cinquaintnaire or Avenue Tervuren or any other grand architectural wonders of Brussels, they said. And besides, back then everyone mistreated the people they colonised.

From the UCL campus at Alma I have to head straight back to Crainhem for my final lesson of the day at 5pm. It’s with the employees of UCL. In my class they’re all research students. At the beginning I asked them to explain what they do. In near-faultless English they gave an explanation that I did not understand at all. Something about cancer.

The lesson finishes at half six. I spend a bit of time preparing Friday’s lessons, and then I head home.