Present perfect

Oh Lord above,
who hath, in thy infinite kindness,
bestowed upon our fair city of Astana,
in our beloved country of the fermented milk of the mare
and verily unto the meat of her bottom,
the blessed coldness of minus 35.
And thus hath moved your agent here on Earth,
to issue a decree
that all places of instruction be closed,
and rest be given to the instructors therein,
We beseech thee, almighty Father,
that thy graciousness be extended another day,
and another day,
and another,
e'en unto the weekend.
For thine is the snow, the wind and the skiving,
for ever and ever, or at least until Friday,
Amen.

It worked, and I've had a doss of a week. School's been closed because of the cold, but I went in for half of today to help plan a special public lesson the English Department's doing about "ecological problems." They mean environmental ones but one doesn't want to be awkward three weeks in.

I'd been told that I'd be working with Hira. I couldn't place her; Kazakh names are difficult to remember. Lidia introduced me to her. "Hello!" I said. Black straight hair to just below her shoulders with a parting slightly set to the left, black top with black sequins, undone black jacket, tight black trousers and little black boots with a blocked one-inch heel, and most of all, her dark green eyes.

We went downstairs into, for me, a hitherto undiscovered staff room. Some tall grey metal lockers, a couple of tables, and a tempting sofa made for horizontal Anglo-Kazakh snogging.

She talked volubly, and the notes she made were a mess. Both endeared her to me: conscientiousness at work makes me uneasy. In the canteen, Svetlana, the other English teacher, had had a younging haircut and was wearing a groovy orange short-sleeved dress.

Nice Other Teacher came in with an excellent and unusual ensemble of a straight calf-length dress with black squares of various sizes on a grey ground, with a long-sleeved light open jacket of the same pattern. It was clashing enough to avoid being a twin-set but harmonious enough to have my grateful eyes roaming over it in a way that I hope was inoffensively brief, yet noticed.

She doesn't speak much English, but from little more than a foot away, she stopped and looked straight at me. "Hello," she said. "Hello, I smiled back. "How are you?" Lidia's already told me she's single. The day was starting to feel like a set-up for flirting.

Until misery guts Soviet maths teacher turned up, refusing to make this the day when she broke her silence towards me. I am going to grind her into a "good morning" with relentless manners; then once I've done that, make her jealous with my flirting with Hira, Svetlana, and Nice Other Teacher and make her crispy cuntflaps unstiffen for the first time in years.

While I was there, I ran off a few photocopies of something to teach the present perfect. I reckon that Keith acquiring a tash has landed him in a form of the present perfect that he's been longing to tell people about for years.