THE new job I have started came replete with the usual

nerves that fill anyone on their first day at work. But this

one had some extra.

It didn't involve picking fruit, fitting tyres or sleeping a

night shift away in a tool cupboard in a factory - like I'd

been paid to do in days gone by.

I was to teach English.

And I did.

I started imparting what grammar knowledge I have to the

shuffling classes of engineers, bosses, secretaries and

technicians; each one was determined to learn the language or

just pass an hour texting a friend and folding their arms at

me. The classes went well - but only in a general way. In the

kind of general way that I was still breathing and

fully-clothed when I ran to the car park at the end of the

shift. It's a multinational company and they have big hopes

that their people will clock in for work in six month's time

speaking perfect English - even with a Swansea twang and a

criminally high usage of the word 'mun'.

And I hope to get them there.

Some students were enthusiastic, some shy, some awfully

serious, some jovial and unintelligible, and others - always

grown men - like little boys who couldn't care less or who had

been forced to be paid generously to learn English during

company time.

But they are good, friendly and warm people the Chileans -

like us Welsh, but without the tattoos and bags of pasties.

I opened up the first class with a presentation about who I

was, where I was from and who was famous from down my way. The

pictures of Tom Jones and Sir Anthony Hopkins had them thinking

that us Welsh were hairy-chested, psychopathic killers - which

I admitted could be interpreted as true if you went for a pint

of Strongbow in Port Tennant or the ale houses along Gorseinon

High street.

The picture of love spoons had them perplexed for a moment

and the literal translation (cucharas de amor) had them imaging

erotic ritualistic goings-on in the terraced houses of the

valleys and the half-empty apartment blocks of SA1.

I told them it wasn't so.

They were just spoons with a unique, historic tradition. And

nowadays we buy them in Swansea Market, not carve them in the

woods as the Druids dance around us.

I explained that Catherine Zeta Jones was certainly not

American - she was my cousin! Not technically true but they

enjoyed the notion all the same.

And, in the famous words of Barry Manilow, 'I made it

through the rain'. But it was a tough week.

And the week in question has instilled in me a post-dated

sympathy for all those teachers whose path I've crossed in the

course of thirty years on the road to this moment in Santiago,

Chile, where I have finally started to earn a wage that I can

eat bread and milk with and realise how difficult it is to

control one's breathing and temper in the face of occasional

laconic Latino machismo. But it's been funny and I'm looking

forward to the next round of classes and bewildered

expressions.

I did recieve a modicum of feedback from my 'boss', Karen,

in human resources. 'Relax,' she said, 'the classes are good,

Jamie. Don't worry, you know. They say you are a good teacher.

You have a beautiful accent and you sound like the Queen of

England.'

I hope my friends in the Eastside don't read this.

I'd never be able to walk those streets again.