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Lo Barnechea, Santiago de Chile. 15.00.

Today has been a bit more of an admin day. One of my activities for next week fell through, so I spent a fair part of this morning re-arranging my plans with a couple of other agencies to keep my itinerary as close to the original as possible. It hasn’t been easy. I’ve been leaning heavily on AI, not as a lesson planner, but as a travel agent, and I have to be honest, I fear for the travel industry. ChatGPT and Copilot may need gentle nudging and correcting as they work, but they do a phenomenal job at trawling the net for deals, dates and travellers’ tales from TripAdvisor, Reddit and beyond.

I’m not the biggest fan of AI, but as an impartial entity to bounce ideas off, it’s an absolute doozy. It has really helped me to streamline my plans, keeping them within a very reasonable budget – especially important as my choice of location is not exactly famous for being a budget destination. I do often have to correct its mistakes, which is why I would caution any students of mine from meddling with it unless it’s on terms they understand – good advice for just about anything unknown – but as a rule it does a pretty good job at doing the heavy lifting.

I genuinely can’t wait – I’m practically chomping at the bit here – but I promised to keep it a secret, so I will leave just the smallest of clues in this post in case you want to hazard a guess at my intentions.

I’m currently sitting in the English office, listening in on the weekly department meeting on debating strategies and what constitutes a suitable number of poems within the Language A anthology. On my left, the windows open out onto the hill country around Manquehue, where I saw no fewer than sixteen condors circling shortly before lunch. That makes three days out of three this week where I’ve seen the titans of the Andean skies from my office. Normally it’s just the diucas and mockingbirds that pop in for a lookaround once the kids have gone back inside for the third hour of the day. On my right, the windows open out onto the enormity of the Andes to the north, still wearing a wintry mantle of snow. Further down the hill – just out of sight beyond the classroom blocks – are the school’s sports pitches. Our kids play rugby against the backdrop of a nineteenth-century clock tower and the Southwestern Railway. These kids have the towering heights of the Andes all around them. These are just the foothills: somewhere beyond stands the fearsome Cerro Plomo, reaching some 17,861 feet into the sky.

Upon reflection, by journey’s end, I will have spent an astonishing two months south of the equator this year. The last time I was this far south I was tracking mountain gorillas in the impenetrable cloud forests of Bwindi on the Congolese border.

I remember being of the opinion that Chile was a destination I was only prepared to visit thanks to some generous financial assistance with the flights, considering it otherwise a prohibitively expensive destination. I see now just how wrong I was. Not about the money – Chile is easily one of the more expensive South American countries – but about how much there is to see and to do.

I’m now genuinely considering coming back someday to pick up the things that I missed: Chiloé, Conguilio, Punta Arenas, San Pedro de Atacama and so much more besides. There’s simply too much to see here, even when you have five weeks to play around with, and for a naturalist like me, the fact that it pales in comparison to its megadiverse neighbour, Peru, means very little when a casual glance out gives you one of the most spectacular birds of prey on the planet.

Two weeks from now, I will be back home, a brief pit stop on the island before duty calls me to Athens for one last dance. I had a brief moment of nostalgia for it today when I popped in to help a colleague set up a game of Just a Minute to give her students a boost with their listening skills in debating. I love that game to bits – and the BBC Radio show from which I have poached it.

Two days remain. Let’s do this! BB x

Loose Ends

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Las Condes, Santiago de Chile. 17.14.

It’s getting to that stage of my time in Chile where I’m starting to take advantage of every moment remaining. Over the last few weeks I’ve gotten quite used to the sight of the Andes, the caracaras that seem to be constantly somewhere on the horizon and the wheezy call and response of the characterful meadowlarks. But soon I’ll have to say goodbye. So, while the weather holds at least, I’ll try to get out after work and soak up as much of that view as I can.

After a productive day spent exploring Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry (specifically Quickdraw, Demeter, Shooting Stars and Delilah) and hanging out with the Senior English team, I popped in to grab my camera and went straight back up the road to Observatory Hill (Cerro Calán). It was smoggy and overcast on my way up, but by the time I reached the summit, the sun had found a breach in the cloud line near the horizon and came shining through – just in time to light up the meadowlarks that were scrambling about the summit.

I went all the way to Patagonia for pumas and took a boat out into the Pacific to see an albatross, but the meadowlarks have been a feature wherever I’ve gone. For me, they’re probably the bird of Chile – after all, national bird or not, I’ve seen condors in Peru, albeit perhaps not as frequently as I have here.

If I had more time – and the weather were kinder – I’d head south again in search of the chucao, a smart little Chilean speciality, and try my luck in search of the Magellanic woodpeckers that reside within the forests of Chiloe. I’d also try to track down the elusive tucúquere, the largest of the owls of Chile, that has thus far eluded me. I suspect I’ll be absolutely knackered when I return from my final adventure next week, but if the sun decides to make a very overdue return, I might make one last jaunt out to Batuco, a wetland reserve to the north of the city, in the hope that I might find the burrowing owls that live around the lake.

Until then, I’m quite content to watch the meadowlarks bousting about.

When the sun can be seen, Santiago experiences an incredible second sunset. The dying embers of dusk catches the peaks of the mountains and showers them in golden light, before they fade to an imperial grey against the iron skies beyond. Then, just when you think it’s over, the mountains erupt in an incredible crimson light. I’m not sure what triggers that second burst of light. Maybe it’s the sun hitting the Pacific, or some trick of the clouds. Either way, it’s breathtaking.

As I walked back down the road toward Avenida Charles Hamilton, the clouds became a mirrored beach, like so much stippled sand. To the north, the triangular summit of Cerro Manquehue rose into the ether like a child’s drawing. It’s been the eternal backdrop of my stay here in Santiago, visible from both my home in Las Condes and my office in Craighouse on the other side of the mountain.

Before I came here, Manquehue was just the name of a Chilean Catholic community who I met once in Durham, many years ago. Now it’s one of my favourite waymarkers in the Valle Central.

Tomorrow brings an observation – one of my last – and a planning session with the Deputy Head for a fully-fledged 90-minute lesson of my own on Thursday. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were testing me. It almost feels like a job interview.

I saw a fox near the car park as I left today – a gold and silver vixen, rooting around the trees just beyond the fence. These culpeos are a lot closer to wolves and jackals than they are to true foxes, but nature clearly likes the design of the fox, because the culpeo and its cousin the chilla have both evolved to fill that niche.

I’ll take that as a good sign. Nothing that beautiful could be anything else. BB x

818

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Las Condes, Santiago de Chile. 19.50.

Week two started slow today. A couple of meetings and a non-starter quest for a functioning laptop meant that I spent the day working on my books, which was a lovely way to spend the day productively – as well as a reminder to myself that I am technically on holiday – albeit perhaps not as exchange-heavy as it could have been. I have bigger events coming up this week, though, and I suspect it will be the last week of my exchange when it really feels like I have a fully functioning timetable.

There are always so many birds around campus. The nest boxes the students have put up all over the school site for their CAS project obviously help, but it’s not just the charming little rufous-crowned sparrows that make the place feel so friendly. The mockingbirds are always perched somewhere, every time I look up I see a caracara of some description hanging in the air, and just before break this morning I know I saw the faraway silhouette of a condor circling the heights of Manquehue.

It’s the meadowlarks that are currently lending some extra charm to the place, if I had to choose a standout. I first got to know these characterful creatures in snowy Patagonia, but it turns out they’re just as common up here around Santiago, hopping about in the car park and sitting quite fearlessly on the school fence, singing their hearts out as the Year 7s play some kind of tag game just feet away.

My BIRDA app tells me my total count of species I’ve seen so far is up to 818 after this weekend’s exploits. Even I have to admit that’s getting to be a dizzying figure, and well over three hundred of that total are birds I have seen in the last five months. I’m not a professional lister like many seasoned birdwatchers, chasing a particular total on my life, year or patch list, but it’s fun having an app where you can log it all, and in so doing learn something about the sheer diversity of species you have found – and, consequently, discovering what is still left out there to see.

I probably could have seen more species if I’d paid through the nose for that Abra Málaga trip, but I wasn’t really after that kind of number-obsessive behaviour. One albatross would have been magical enough on yesterday’s boat trip, and I was blessed with four different kinds. It does not pay to go out into the wild with great expectations. Nature provides on its own terms.

Not too much to report for now, but keeping my writer’s block at bay with regular note taking. And it does seem to be working! BB x

Middle Years

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Lo Barnechea, Santiago de Chile. 15.05.

Today’s lesson observations were largely spent with a friendly Spanish teacher called Mario. The Middle Years Programme or MYP – the IB’s equivalent of Years 6 to 9 – follows a really interesting programme at this time of year. Or at least that’s how I see it!

All of the classes in 6° (Year 6) are currently working on a triptych project centred around haikus, so that they can get used to how syllables work in context. The students have free choice as to what to write their haikus about, provided it concerns an aspect of Japanese culture. As for the range of ideas in the classroom…! Sakura trees, Matsumoto Castle, Mount Fuji, the origins of sushi, Tokugawa Ieyasu… The creativity and ambition of these IB-trained children is truly astounding.

In 7° (Year 8), the students are working on their organisational and presentational skills through a marketing project. Not only do they have to create the product, they have to design the marketing poster, complete with a functional slogan and all the trappings of a street-side ad, right down to the contact details and the disclaimers. Once they’ve created their project, they have to explain their product and why they have designed their ad the way they have, commenting on their own use of language and where they got their sources. It strikes me as an incredibly mature way to handle a Year 8 language class. I must find out what ours do – I’d be surprised if it is as high-brow. Or maybe I’m just bowled over by the full body of the IB, having only touched the tail of the beast before.

In 8°, the students have an even more ambitious task ahead of them: an anthology of Chilean poets (sans Neruda), from which they have to select two poems by different poets and compare them, analysing the stylistic features at work in each one. We definitely did this in English when I was growing up, but not in that kind of detail, not at that age. It reminds me of how far ahead Spain’s Lengua castellana course was of my own English syllabus, as it took me two years to reach the material I had covered during my year out in Spain (which is effectively three, as I was held back a year when I moved out in order to help me acclimatise). I can’t vouch for the quality of their work as it’s still being marked, but they seemed about as keen on poetry as your average English kid is – which is to say, not in the slightest.

It’s a shame, how universally unpopular poetry seems to be. I guess it’s because of the difficulty spike when compared to a humdrum comprehension text: all the best poets do love to weave a lot of clever imagery and references that require major unpacking to properly appreciate. I’ve always been of the opinion that the best toolkit for handling poetry is a serious arsenal of general knowledge, but with that too on the wane in the age of instant information, I can’t see poetry becoming anything more than a niche interest among the global student body.

Well. Not unless I have anything to do with it, anyway. BB x

Time Warp

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Las Condes, Santiago de Chile. 19.13.

As I expected, when I arrived at school this morning, a plan for whatever it was I was supposed to do out here had yet to materialise. I think part of that is because they didn’t really know what they were working with: whether I was here to observe, to gain teaching experience, or perhaps even to help out in Maths (god forbid!). When they realised that I could not only speak Spanish but had been teaching for eight years already, that changed the game quite a bit… Really, you’d have thought this kind of thing would have been communicated ages ago! But, like I said, it was not altogether unexpected – I knew this exchange was going to be a bit ersatz until I found my feet, given how little information I had to work with before setting out.

Anyway…! What a school. What an incredible institution! I’ve been teaching the IB Diploma for the best part of five years now, but to see a school system where it is not just an additional pathway but the culmination of a five year programme… It almost seems ridiculous to offer the standalone diploma without the run-up of the MYP.

Craighouse sits at the very top of the extremely well-to-do suburb of Lo Barnechea, which is a step-up from the already smart Las Condes. It seems the higher up the mountainside you go, the higher up the societal ladder you climb, too. Mock Tudor houses with half-timbered facades. Americanesque mansions with illuminated porches and Spanish haciendas. The drive up to school from Las Condes felt like orienting one’s way through a bougie estate agent’s catalogue.

The school itself? An absolute dream of an establishment. Making rooms for scientific inquiry… Inquiry centres, which are glorified libraries with all the bells and whistles… Gyms and sports facilities that would make even my sportier students salivate… And when the clouds clear, the snowy peaks of the Andes all around them. How lucky these kids are!

The plan is coming together – slowly. For now, I’m going to be working with the Lenguaje department, helping to deliver Language and Comprehension classes. Ironically, in a school that teaches almost entirely in English, it’s the one department that is taught exclusively in Spanish. Bizarrely, they’ve hired in an English exchange teacher to help deliver the Spanish Language and Literature programme.

It is exactly what I wanted. It will be a challenge, I won’t deny that. But it is precisely what I was angling for. It is all part of the grand plan: teach Spanish, even to the Spaniards, until I am good enough to return to Spain and do the same over there. In Spain – at least in public schools – teachers of English are expected to be able to deliver Lengua Castellana as well. That’s like expecting our French teachers to be able to offer English Literature.

Of course, the British system doesn’t work like that at all – but then, why should it? Our entire curriculum fails to consider the importance of bilingualism, purely because of the cultural dominance of English on the world stage. If not English, which language would you choose? It would have to be one that your average teacher spoke well enough to capably deliver their subject, and that sole requirement kills the idea in one shot. Your average British teacher is simply not good enough at any foreign language to teach their core subject to the same standard as they would in their own, never mind finding one common foreign language at a national level. No – until another language reaches the same level of prestige as English, I don’t think it’s likely we’ll see that kind of programme over here.

But that’s ok. I plan to move abroad anyway. The more I see of this whole school IB approach, I have to admit, the more I like it. If I can only find a school in Spain where I can sink my teeth into a system like this one… Boy. That would be the dream. BB x

U-Turn

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14.02, The Flat.

In the blink of an eye, my second year at Taunton has come and gone. It’s been another hurricane season, I won’t deny that. A little easier than last year, perhaps – if only because of the repetitive nature of teaching the same course – but every bit as busy. Since September, I’ve taken my student Funk Band out to their first external gig, joined a band of my own, taken a team to the Oxford Schools Finals Day for the second year in a row and led a public speaking workshop in the form of a legal practice (which, of course, I am totally qualified for…). I have returned to Extremadura under iron skies, taken yet another school trip to Barcelona and travelled all the way to Peru in search of the Andean condor on one of the most amazing adventures of my life. I have not found Her – Somerset is proving a very dry place – but I have made some good friends at work, which is a positive. I haven’t exactly had much time to commit to the search, and I have also spent almost every day of my holidays on the road, which is terribly self-indulgent of me, but it is how I survive the manic 24/7 existence that is working in a boarding school.

True to form, my summer holidays are set to follow the same trend. After a few days’ reprieve – just about enough time to tidy the flat and pack – I will be traveling across the Atlantic again, bound this time for Chile, nearly 1,500km further south than where I left off in April. Please don’t get me wrong – this one isn’t a purely self-indulgent adventure. I’m off to work at a school out there in Chile’s capital, Santiago, for three weeks or so. As to what form that work may take, I am still completely in the dark. I imagine any rational human being might balk at the idea of being less than a week away from traveling to the other side of the planet at no small expense without so much as an address or even the vaguest idea of what to expect, but I’m at that stage of my life where I am entirely my own agent and any change is welcome. The alternative is a rather static Somerset summer, alternating between driving lessons and debilitating bouts of hayfever. With my timetable for the next academic year allowing some time for the former, I think I can allow myself to dodge the latter by switching seasons in a Spanish-speaking country.

I won’t be hiding under an austral snowstorm all summer. When my five weeks are up, I’ve a wedding to attend in Athens, which I have been looking forward to for a very long time. Once again, I’ve only planned the beginning. How I get home after four days in the Greek capital remains up in the air. Maybe I’ll find a quiet spot in Thessaloniki and soak up the Mediterranean sun while I work on my novel. Or maybe I’ll travel back home across Europe, seeing Romania like I planned years ago. I haven’t decided yet.

I really don’t know what the next two months will bring. At the very least, I hope they bring change, whatever that looks like. My boss would really like me to stop saying yes to everything. She means well, I know. But if I don’t say yes to things like this, my youth will slip through my fingers and I will find myself in the same job ten years from now, still hoping that She will appear. The apps don’t work – everyone is exhausted – so, like a good scientist, I have to go and do the fieldwork. I don’t expect to find Her in Chile (let’s be honest, at a distance of nearly twelve thousand kilometres, it would probably be better for me if I didn’t), but it can’t hurt to try – and along the way, it would be nice to make some new friends and learn something new. I have work to do, of course – this Spanish Language A: Literature course won’t write itself – but with several long flights on the cards, that shouldn’t be a problem. With one “buffer” week on either side of my placement, I should have plenty of time to explore.

In short, I don’t know how this ends. I don’t know how it middles either. But I do know how it starts. Since I’m going all the way to the far side of the world, I figured I could go a little further. Before my placement begins – the day after the FIFA World Cup Final – I will be indulging my inner Attenborough once again in the desolate wilds of Patagonia. After a little shopping around, I’ve found a respectable guide who will take me in search of one of Chile’s most magical creatures: the puma. I didn’t have any luck with the jaguars in Manu this Easter, so hopefully Patagonia will deliver.

I hadn’t planned on going back to South America so soon – but here we are. Life is full of u-turns, but they aren’t always as exciting as this. So here’s to the summer of ’26! BB x

Minor Adjustments

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The Flat, 21.56.

Two weeks from now – right now – I will be sitting somewhere in the transit lounge in Bogotá’s El Dorado International Airport, awaiting my connecting flight to Peru. That’s about 5,300 miles (or 8,500 kilometres) from home, which will be the furthest I have ever been from home by a long shot, beating both Kampala and a brief layover in Dallas last year – and, if things go to plan, I may well find myself even further afield before the year is out. I will also be a full five hours out of sync before I even reach my final destination, so I will need to be careful and try to acclimatise with an altered sleep schedule a few days in advance.

We are very much into the preparation phase now. I have arranged the last of my accommodations for the journey in Ollantaytambo, where I hope to end my Peruvian adventure in the peace and quiet of the Sacred Valley. I have ordered a new pair of sturdy Merrell hiking books to see me around the altiplano and beyond. I should do a preparatory pack this weekend to see if I can fit everything into my rucksack. I’m a light traveller, but the zoom lens is likely to be the largest and heaviest of the equipment I will be lugging around. The jury’s still out as to whether I should take a book with me or simply use up the last of my Audible subscription credits and download more audiobooks than I could possibly hope to finish in that time. I’m leaning toward the latter, if only because I’m not particularly good at leaving a good book behind.

I’ve been meaning to get out and about and keep practising with the lens, but my time is very limited. Last week I managed to escape for just over an hour on Friday afternoon while the sun was out, but between report-writing, lesson planning, taking my team to Oxford Schools on Saturday and being on duty almost all of Sunday, I haven’t had much luck. The Netherclay Community Wood isn’t too far from home, but it had rained a lot on Friday so I didn’t explore the woods too much, as the ground beneath my feet had become little better than a squelching quagmire. Little wonder, then, that there were so few walkers out and about.

I went looking for the water rail that I heard last week, but I didn’t see or hear it. I did disturb a kingfisher on the other side of the pond, though, and while the halcyon bird was much too fast for me, I did have more luck with a young cormorant in the momentary interlude when the winter sun deigned to show its face.

Having something incredible to look forward to always makes the Lent term – by far the hardest of all the school terms – a lot easier to bear. Last year, the knowledge that I would be spending all of three weeks in and around Spain was enough. This time, I have pushed the boat out so far that there is a very real danger that the tide will carry it away. And once it does, where will it take me? I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve caught myself exploring other destinations, other wildlife adventures, other places where I can run while I still have the light of life. This year it’s South America’s turn, but in the years to come, I would dearly like to see the rest of the world, now that the wanderlust has returned. I still harbour dreams of seeing the eerie saguaro stands of Sonora, but a number of other old ideas have started to rise to the surface, like bubbles beneath a frozen lake: KwaZulu-Natal, Kanha National Park, Svalbard and Borneo.

It may well be that in abandoning my search for Her, wherever she may be, and indulging in the thing that has always brought me the most joy, I am putting off the thing I want the most in life. It may also be that I find Her along the road. Either way, I am done waiting. The apps are drier than the Atacama these days and the conversations drier still. There is a world of light and life and joy out there and I can no longer ignore it. It is time for a change of scenery. BB x

Camino XXIV: The Road Not Taken

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Plaza Mayor, León. 21.03.

Tomorrow marks the end of one Camino and the beginning of another. And not a moment too soon. I fear my social battery is at maximum capacity. I got the jitters after showing up late to the dinner the others had arranged at the Royal Tandoori, to find a crowd of fourteen.

Maybe it was the sudden shift from the intimate setting of my haircut the hour before to a busy table of English and Americans holding court over an Indian meal; or maybe it was the location of my Siege Perilous as the final invitee, squashed into the corner; or the fact that they’d started without me.

Whatever it was, I know now that my decision to leave the Camino Francés is a wise one. It’s a little shameful to admit, but I could use a break. I’m not proud of the fact that these social settings continue to throw me every so often, but I am getting better at hitting the escape button before it escalates.

On the walk into León this morning, Talia asked me a question that has genuinely had me thinking all day. I think it was something like this:

When did you decide not to pursue a career in biology?

At first it seemed a pretty straightforward question. My grades in Biology were never all that great, the competition at my school was just too much and it never occurred to me even once to study Biology (or Natural Sciences) at university.

But with a little context, I can see why she asked me that out of the blue – and I’m frankly amazed how much I’ve suppressed what is nothing less than a core memory that might once have changed the course of my life.

Audrey was using an app to identify some of the birds we’d seen since leaving Mansilla de las Mulas – I think it was Seek. I pointed out a few things I could hear: serins in the branches of a nearby tree, a booted eagle circling in a field, the bee-eaters we’d heard the day before.

I guess it was that quickfire succession of names that prompted Talia’s question. My answer was fairly improvised, but I think it checks out.

When did I decide not to pursue a career in biology? When I realised that it was never going to be about zoology – not under the British education system, anyway. That, and my mathematical ability was (and is), quite frankly, dismal.

I have various interests. I’m a musician. A linguist. A writer, an occasional poet and a Hispanist. A mimic. A Catholic. But before all of these things, I am a naturalist. Before I found my fluency in Spanish and French, I could already understand the calls of every bird in the British Isles and could tell you what most of them meant: warning, alarm, hunger and mating calls. It was, I suppose, the first language I ever learned.

I was just as obsessive with my childhood interest in dinosaurs: I had to know them all. Where they were found, why they were called what they were called. It wasn’t enough to know the famous ones, like the T-Rex and velociraptors – I had to dig deeper. One such precocious example that comes to mind was my decision to bring along a Eustreptospondylus drawing to Show and Tell at primary school. Doubtless an elephant would have sufficed, but why would I ever have settled for something as basic as that?

I still have discarded exercise books that my parents gave me where I logged all the species mentioned in wildlife documentaries. I always put down the title and locations covered, and I sometimes wrote the date, too. Others I used as scrapbooks, taping in feathers and sketching footprints and writing about when and where I found them.

You’d have thought that these might have been the early indicators of a scientist. Certainly, I wanted nothing more than to be a palaeontologist when I was a kid (which can be gently excused by the fact that the BBC’s peerless Walking with Dinosaurs documentary series came out just in time to capitalise on my five-year-old dinosaur obsession.

When I was a little older, I genuinely considered a career in conservation. I entertained the idea of a degree in Ornithology, or something similar, to allow me to put my fiendishly good memory for birds and their calls to use.

And then, suddenly, that dream died.

It was probably the maths that killed it. All the natural science degrees I explored required a basic level of mathematical competence and at the time I was struggling to scrape even a passing grade at GCSE. Chemistry, too – a lot of Zoology degrees suggested chemistry as an A Level, and chemistry was far too mathematical for me. Without maths, my conservation aspirations were dead in the water. That was that.

But there was another factor that pushed an old dream out of the nest: the slow decay of a child’s interest as the subject closest to his heart never even materialised in the subject that should have concerned it most intimately.

My memories of Biology center on two things: plant cells and sourdough bread. I was so excited when food chains and food webs came up, until I realised that, within the British curriculum, that was the one and only time that animals would be mentioned. Everything else was so cold, so clinical. Palisade walls and mytochondria. Genomes and inheritance, though usually in plants. The fact that I knew the names of every animal and bird in the British Isles (and most of Europe, for that matter) gave me no advantage whatsoever.

My school was a specialist science school. Our Biology department was doing really exciting things with MS research, and it was one of my Biology teachers who was instrumental in sending me out to Uganda on my first ever teaching post. But somewhere along the way, my aspirations as a conservationist were slowly choked by the strangling vines of the British science curriculum. Zoology, palaeontology, anthropology, ornithology and even primatology were all areas I was desperate to explore, but as the years went by and Biology concerned itself less and less with the natural world and more and more with the minutiae of bacteria and cell structure, the less I cared for it.

It must have been around then that I first entertained the idea of becoming a teacher – once I realised I would never be good enough at two of my weakest subjects to survive to the point when Biology became Zoology. Fifteen years old and already carrying the shards of a shattered dream.

One way or another, I think I realised early on that there was little that a Zoology degree could teach me that I truly desired. I didn’t need to pursue a career in science to justify my greatest love. Knowing the names of every animal and bird gave me a sort of spiritual connection with each and every one of them – no scientific research could work a greater magic than that. Still, it’s interesting to think where my life could have gone if I’d really committed to that path.

Instead, here I am, gone thirty, walking the Camino with a head that twists so quickly when I see the silhouette of a kite or vulture that it’s a miracle I haven’t twisted my neck yet.

It’s hard to say what my experience would be like if I walked all the way to the end of the road with these wonderful people. I will never know, because I have made my choice. And I know it is the right choice. It will take me up into the mountains and back into the natural world, where I am and have always been at my happiest.

Here’s to that – to good health and happiness, and a significantly harder road ahead! BB x

Come and See

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The theme of the Commemoration Service and Prize-giving Ceremony today was Come and see. To that end, the school Chaplain chose John 1:35-51 – the one where Jesus calls together his first disciples. I think the message was intended to convey the importance of getting involved, because that’s something that our kids here really do more than anywhere else I’ve ever worked. But for me, it had a second layer. My disciples, as it were, had assembled for the first time, and delivered one of the best performances I’ve seen in thirteen years.

I have a funk band again. And I couldn’t be prouder of them.

There’s a very real danger of this entry sounding selfish. I admit it freely – it would be foolish of me to claim that my efforts with the school funk band have been entirely selfless. After all, I have wanted a funk band for thirteen years.

Ever since I left my funk band behind at the end of my schooldays, I have had a band-shaped void in my heart. Durham’s Northern Lights, African Singing and Drumming Society and the Gospel Choir were decent placeholders, as were the various choirs and house music ensembles that I’ve cobbled together over the years, but they’ve only ever been pale imitations of what I once had. The fear of cultural appropriation that came in the wake of the BLM movement put all my attempts on ice after 2020, and with the way the workload was piling up as I took on more responsibilities at work, I’d pretty much given up hope of ever giving back the magic… until a year ago, when I sent off a few job applications in a bid for some interview experience.

As soon as I heard that one of the schools I’d applied to had a functioning funk band, the die was cast. I had found what I was looking for. I would consider nowhere else.

I have always loved music. Perhaps the Spanish blood in my heart beats with its own tempo, or maybe it’s because I had two music teachers for parents. Either way, I’ve been making music since the moment I could bash a keyboard with my infant fists. School was a gauntlet of choirs, orchestras and musicals, but it wasn’t until I got involved with the Soul and Funk Band at the school over the road that I ever truly loved performing. My bandleader, a living legend by the name of Mr D, was in a very similar fix to the one I’m in now: he’d been in a band himself, found himself in teaching, and channeled his love for the music right at us, giving us one of the best experiences of my entire school career – and my life, come to think of it. If I have become a carbon copy of that man, it is not at all unintentional. When I was wrangling with teenage relationship troubles and other trivial affairs, he directed me to the microphone and gave me something to take my mind off all of the noise. I got my chance when one of the girls didn’t show up for her solo, and I took over one of the James Brown numbers. James was right: it felt good – so good. It turned me from a shy and reclusive wallflower into a confident vocalist, and eventually, the band’s frontman.

My first teaching post in Uganda set me on the path to being a teacher, heading up Public Speaking and Debating here has turned me into an orator, and Spain made me whole like nothing else could, but it was Mr D and the Soul & Funk Band that really made me the man I am today.

So yes – I have recklessly pursued my lost band for thirteen years, and now that I’ve found one, I have done everything I can to turn an already gifted bunch of musicians into a powerhouse – like we were, when we were young, but even better. But it is not just a selfish nostalgic streak on my part. It is my way of giving back what I was given, all those years ago. And maybe, just maybe, along the way, I can do for some of these kids what Mr D did for me, and set them on the path to the happiest days of their lives. BB x

Set List:

+ Play that Funky Music (Wild Cherry)

+ September (Earth, Wind & Fire)

+ Doo Wop (That Thing) (Lauryn Hill)

Saying Yes, Saying No

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I had my probation meeting today. No, don’t worry, it’s nothing to worry about – just the first part of the “settling in” process of the new job. It’s always good to get constructive feedback on your teaching, and even better to get positive feedback from kids, colleagues and parents alike. Emails remain the bane of my existence, my beast to be slain, and I dare to say that, had I gone into the teaching profession a hundred years ago, before the days of instant communication, I might even have been an exemplary teacher.

Most of all, however, I can’t help but find it delightfully ironic that my main piece of constructive criticism was that I still have a tendency to “say yes to everything”. Saying yes was something of a New Year’s resolution, and it’s been a bloody good one, to be honest. So far “saying yes” has given me: a new job, a short-lived but precious romance with an American beauty, a string of adventures from Paris and Prague to Poland, the chance to teach French again after several years’ oblivion, the title of Head of Debating & Public Speaking and, finally, a well-intentioned caution.

In fact, probably the only thing I’ve said no to this term was tonight’s post-carols drinks with the staff, and that was only because I’d have missed my train if I’d delayed even a minute longer.

I guess that’s just as well. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more exhausted after a Christmas term. It’s been pretty full-on, even by my standards.

I’m off to Poland tomorrow. Polish is absolutely not one of the languages I claim as part of my arsenal, so communication is going to be a bit ropey – but, hey, that’s nothing new to me. It has nothing in common at all with any of the languages I speak, so learning has been slow… on top of everything else I’ve had on this term. Sometimes I have to take a step back and think about all the plates I’m spinning at work:

  • Teaching French and Spanish to Years 7-13 (spanning two different exam boards for GCSE as well as A Level and the IB)
  • Heading up the Debating & Public Speaking events and competitions
  • Living on-site as a boarding house deputy and working two overnight shifts a week
  • Volunteering with a local school
  • Tenoring in the Chapel Choir and staffing any and all music trips
  • Attending as many home fixtures as I can to support the boys

No small wonder I’ve had no time for a relationship or driving lessons this term…! The stress of the latter might just have broken me, if I’d managed to fit my lessons in anywhere at all into my crammed schedule – which is highly unlikely. I think the only reason I managed last year was because I was six years into the job and had taught most of the kids for years, so I could walk straight from my driving lesson into teaching Year 10 GCSE Spanish without batting an eyelid.

Most rational teachers would be practically collapsing into bed tonight after a term like this one. Instead, I’m lugging two rucksacks across the country to catch an early morning flight to Warsaw, so that I can spend the first four days of the Christmas holidays in some bleak corner of Eastern Europe searching for wolves (or traces of wolves). I blame all that time spent reading The Tiger this summer. I’d be tracking Siberian tigers if I could, but I’ve traveled across the world once already this year in search of a dream, so I’m settling for an adventure a little closer to home this time.

At least it’s meant I have something to say in return when my students tell me about their Christmas plans in India, Florida and/or the Maldives. “Wolf tracking” seems to fall under the banner of decidedly unusual responses to the question “any plans for the holidays?”.

Thunderstruck is playing in the one functioning ear of my earphones. The train is fifteen minutes late but racing to make up for lost time. I’ve fired off the usual end-of-term fusillade of messages to friends and family, bursting upon the surface of my WhatsApp in two-minute intervals like an underwater volcanic vent. Old habits die hard. Thunderstruck was the great gift of my American adventure, and it’s been a real mood-lifter ever since. Unsurprisingly, it’s my most played song on Spotify this year.

I think I’ll listen to it a couple times more as the train nears its destination. I could use a boost. BB x