Sunday detention

Sunday wasn’t really a Sunday for me this past weekend – given that it’s a business day in predominately-Islamic Egypt. As a result, rather enjoying a day of rest, I found myself in the office.

How to stop feeling sorry-for-myself, especially when faced with a succession of cheerful tweets about folks’ fun on their days off in the UK and US? Partly, the cynical tactic: thinking of the money I was earning and the fun I could have spending it if, as I’m contemplating, I head off to South-East Asia over the Christmas period.

That still didn’t work, so more creative tactics were called for. Over the morning coffee break, I moved into schoolmaster mode. This was no longer a training course, but a weekend detention; the delegates no longer senior managers but a room full of boarding school girls. Their friends and classmates would be enjoying a lie-in, before wandering into the local town later for a weekly taste of freedom. Yet this group? Up at the usual early hour; in their neatly-ironed (and especially carefully-inspected) uniforms; copying page upon page by hand from the dullest books in the library, each wondering whether her name was on the list of those worst-offenders who’d be called into the headmaster’s study at the end of the morning to be caned.

Frankly, it didn’t really work: as soon as I walked back into the classroom to be faced by a nearly-all-male group of middle-aged senior managers from across north Africa, the fantasy was unsustainable. But it did rather bring a smile to my face for a few moments…

2 thoughts on “Sunday detention

  • 30 September, 2011 at 11:30 pm
    Permalink

    Thanks to God, I was never sent to boarding school. I had my Sundays, to wander down to the local church youth group (at about 10:30am) in my jeans and t-shirt to discover the meaning of life – whilst looking around at the choir and congregation at all the girls who (in my mind at the time) must have deserved a sound spanking.
    Some Sunday costumes highlighted their bottoms more than they must have realised.
    Even some of the choirgirls had that hump showing under their cassocks.

    Is any of this a problem? Check out Isaiah 53:5
    I am not daring to try another link to one of my favourite pop/rock bands.

    Reply
  • 2 October, 2011 at 1:18 pm
    Permalink

    Just a thought Abel. Did Julius Caeser, or Marc Anthony, ever spank Cleopatra? Maybe you’ll find the answer on the Rosetta Stone, in the British Museum.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *