Some years ago, armed with little more than a teaching English as a foreign language (Tefl) certificate, I flew to Madrid. Upon arrival I hooked up with a Canadian teacher pal who showed me the pedagogical ropes. Pretty soon I got a job in a school, having turned up for the interview clean and sober, dangling my certificate and giving it lots of blarney. Within days I was teaching classes.
Within days, too, I was immersed in the famed Madrileno nightlife — albeit on a shoestring budget. I’d loaf around Plaza Mayor in the evenings drinking cheap beer, staying out until all hours. Myself and a crew of fellow teachers from a diversity of nations, true internationalists, would stumble through the streets like minstrels of old, chugging on booze, replenished at intervals from Chinese corner shops. Strangely, I always seemed to be the one who stayed out the latest, drank the most, and could remember the least from the nights before.
Needless to say when I fetched up at school on the following mornings, I was a far from edifying sight. Several of my students took it upon themselves to teach me the Spanish word for “hangover”.
The boss quickly began to see through my act. He sent an emissary to warn that my hangovers were a cause for concern, as was my straying from the syllabus to banter with the students. This, I was told, lacked professionalism.
One Saturday morning I arrived to work following a particularly hedonistic Friday night. The boss saw the problem, and told me he’d had an idea, involving me taking the students to a cafe next door for what he termed “breakfast English”. The plan was to give the students a feel for the language as it’s spoken, away from textbooks with their intricate grammar points.
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Obviously, I couldn’t object to the boss’s brainwave, so I led my charges to breakfast, knowing I would be dining in the last-chance cafe. We ordered the grub and the coffee and the students looked to me expectantly, waiting for their dishevelled teacher to do his thing. My thing at that point was trying to keep my hand steady as I lifted the coffee cup. My voice was hoarse and I had a smoker’s cough that could have woken Generalissimo Franco from his tomb.
Help was at hand, however, or rather it was in my coat pocket where a small bottle of whiskey nestled. I nipped out to the loo and took a long drag. Back at the table the conversation miraculously began to flow, and to this day I believe I gave the students real value for money with my — grammatically correct — palaver. One fellow commented: “You are your national stereotype.” He’d obviously been devouring the dictionary with relish.
Of course this “career” of mine couldn’t last. The emissary visited me again and this time I was given the revolver and a bottle of whiskey option. In my favour, many of the students expressed genuine sadness that I was leaving. Somehow I don’t think breakfast English ever made it on to that Spanish school’s curriculum.