At The English Studio, we realise that we are not the only English School in London, but we do like to think that our centres are the best-value places to learn English and we also like to think that our English classes are the most enjoyable and useful in the capital.
However, you, dear students are not the only people to whom I am teaching English. My wife, Anastasia is Russian – and although her English is fluent, at proficiency level, she always insists that we have one English class every weekend.
There’s also a little man called John, who is the blindingly beautiful sunshine of our lives – and will be two years old on the fourth of August (sharing his birthday with Barack Obama!) Frustratingly for me, the first language my son will speak is Russian, because that is the language he hears all day from his mummy and his au pair, but it doesn’t stop me from trying to teach him basic English. At the moment he can say ‘five’ and can nearly say ‘bus’ – and for the moment I’m proud of that. He can also make a good stab at the syllabic rhythm of The Hokey Cokey, Manna Manna and Hugga Wugga – his favourite You Tube clips – which means that papa doesn’t get to enjoy his computer as much as he used to!
However, John also has a serious Oedipus complex and when he’s in the room I cannot hug or kiss or even hold my darling wife’s hand without him letting go an ear-splitting scream like that kid in The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass (Apologies to my German students if i got the spelling wrong!)
When he’s naughty, he’s really really naughty, but if he sees that I am angry and say ‘Kravat’ ( a phonetic approximation of the Russian word for bed) he rushes over and kisses me and, naturally , my heart melts.
The only problem is what I am beginning to call ‘The Oedipal Virus’. If he gets ill, I get ill and twice in the past month the poor little thing has had a chest infection, which he has passed on to me. Yesterday, we were both at home, feeling sorry for ourselves and coughing like consumptives.
His granny , my mum, recently told me, ‘ Michael, until you were two, you were never without a cold,’ and history (or genetics) seems to be repeating itself. So let’s hope that after the President’s birthday celebrations have finished, my susceptibility to my son’s ubergerms will have done so too. It’s good to be back!
Mike
