Although some people online have somehow had their suspicions that I actually am that (formerly?) famous foul-mouthed TEFL blacklisting anti-Semite from Brighton, I am most certainly not. “Foul-mouthed” was often true until my daughter first copied me, “from Brighton” is surprisingly close and we obviously both read far too much Private Eye, but how anyone growing up in the monocultural place that Sussex was when I was young (or, I’m guessing, a fair while before) could get a dislike for the people of Israel I really can’t imagine!

So, this post is not the confession it might seem like from the title – sorry. Instead, it is a bit of ruminating on how and why the TEFL blacklisting bit became true too. I’ll have to speak to my therapist before I will truly understand, but here are my first thoughts:

– Not having much of a personality of my own, I’ve always changed who I am to fit a gap in the market. There being enough positivity, networking, teaching ideas, anecdotes, musings on conferences and mentions of Dogme in the TEFL blogosphere already, I’ve left those things to those who do it much better than me. TEFL blacklisting was also done by those who were better at it than me, but now everyone else has found better things to do I seem to have made the subconscious decision to step into the breach.

– When I do come up with teaching ideas I’d like to write about, it always turns into a proper article

– One of those articles was supposed to be a guide to TEFL accreditation, but every bit of research threw up yet another thing worth a mention all on its own

– TEFL course providers and employers have made it so easy by putting lies, typos, bad English and such-like on their sites that I can just quote for an instant blog post

– I’ve always stood up to bullies, and so insults, threats and getting their friends round to gang up on me just goad me on

To summarise- it’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it. Not being the most inspiring, link friendly or positive of subjects, it’s probably at least partly responsible for my slip down the Onestopblogs rankings, but at least it keeps the blog ticking over. I haven’t had any temptation to make up imaginary friends to comment on my blog or to turn my feeling that last year’s Booker prize winner was overrated into a racist rant, so not too worried that the transformation into Sandy will go any further than that…