This morning I’m covering two writing classes for a colleague who has gone on a visa run to Penang. My thoughts are with him as I sit in the teacher’s room looking over his lesson plan sheet. Right now, he’ll be at Hat Yai station tucking into barbecued chicken on a skewer ( it’s all you can eat when you travel by train in Thailand). He’ll have no doubt had a restless night’s sleep, tossing and turning to the pitch and roll of the railway carriage but you can guarantee that the last thing on his mind will be whether my substitution of his writing lessons goes smoothly or not.

We have a system at the school where any teacher who goes on a visa run or buggers off to a tropical island for a month has to fill in a lesson substitution sheet. This invaluable piece of A4 size paper tells the substitution teacher the name and size of the class, the textbook to use, the page number to start on, and the work to cover. The theory is that the substitute teacher can just walk into the class unprepared and perhaps even a little pissed, turn to the lesson plan sheet and bingo - a blind man could teach the lesson - for all the notes and lesson plan have been carefully documented. Except today.

There is just one short sentence written in the ‘comments’ section. It simply says ‘give them conversation, see you Monday’. No page number, no instructions, no hint of what the class did in the last lesson - naff all. I am for want of a better expression - f*cked.

The first class is an advanced writing class. I ask them what they’ve been doing the past few weeks. Apparently Ajarn Mick (as the students call him) has spent most of the time telling the students about his favorite eating-places in the capital - the German beer-garden in Sukhumwit soi 7, the Rex Hotel coffee shop after 2.00am, and at the weekends, he’s quite partial to a few hours at the Siam Hotel on Petchburi Road. I change the subject quickly; it’s quite obvious that Mad Mick (as the teachers call him) has not spent much time on topic sentences and thesis statements.

The class is in for a treat today. I’m going to play them six pieces of music and I want them to let their imaginations run wild and write down what comes into their heads. Where are they? Who are they? What is the environment like? I start off with ‘Mars’ from the Planet Suite by Gustav Holst. As the cymbals crash and the drums beat louder ever louder, I tell the class that I feel like a gladiator marching to the stadium. Today I’m going to fight the most famous gladiator in the whole of Rome - a duel to the death. The crowd is cheering and mothers hold small children above their head so they can see their all-conquering hero. You get the idea.

I give the class something a little more mellow - a nice Spanish guitar concerto by John Williams. When I listen to it, it evokes images of hot passionate Senoritas. I can almost smell the camp-fires burning in the woods of deepest Cataluna and I can almost smell the paella drowned in olive oil and brimming with freshly caught mussels and squid. When I ask the class of 7 students what is brought to mind by the beautiful flamenco music, four of them all agree that it reminds them of window-shopping in the department store, two of them can’t think of anything to save their lives, and one has fallen asleep.

I decide to abandon the impromptu music lesson and get the students to ask me questions about my family (it never works but we keep trying). One of the students asks if my grandmother is still alive, to which I reply that she died about 15 years ago. After a slight pause, I decide to add a supplementary comment, ‘she’s still a good shag though’.

I’m only joking. I didn’t really say that. But I would have loved to. Anything, positively anything to just get one spark of reaction from that class. Just for me to see one inquisitive tilt of the head, one furrowed brow or one look of sheer horror and it would have been worth it.

The second writing class is a lower level of ability so I decide to not set them too taxing an assignment. The instructions are simple - draw a plan of your home or apartment and write a spatial description composition based on that plan. The students set about the task with admirable enthusiasm. As I wander around looking at the plans and sketches, it strikes me how many of the students live in palatial mansions and luxury condominiums. There are servant’s quarters, maid’s rooms, fruit orchards, wrought iron gates, and driveways with ample parking. Far removed from my own 4,000 baht a month studio apartment (read bed-sit) decorated by the devious Noi and featuring a plastic clothes rail with a blue and white striped nylon cover, a tiny balcony dominated by an overworked rice cooker, pink plastic shelving units and a poster by the bathroom door that depicts a toddler in a leather jacket and sunglasses and bears the timeless legend ‘Hey man I’m cool’. My devious Noi - the queen of tat!