You may have stumbled on this blog by accident. It’s not too late to run.

Welcome! This is my blog.

I am not a taoist.

I am not a new age, bell-ringing, tree-hugging hippy.

I am old-aged, bellicose, tubthumping, heavy.

Some years ago, I tried to justify a pun, Tao Te(a) Ching, by relating each of the 81 chapters of the Taoist text to teaching. You can judge my efforts by clicking on Commentaries on TTC. Then you can condemn them.

More recently, I have tried to rewrite the Tao Te Ching as if Lao Tzu had been speaking to English Language Teachers. The fruits of this labour are to be found in Tao for Teachers. Be warned: the fruit might be bitter and indigestible. This is my fault, not Lao Tzu’s.

Even more recently, I have added another section to the blog. WTF?!? now aims to offer some insight into what I was thinking when I paraphrased the Old Master’s work. Quite where I go from here, I don’t know.

As my writing is obscure, self-aggrandising and impenetrable, I have tried to give the impression I made it this way intentionally. I did this by writing koans for the ELT world. These can be read in The Teacherless Class. As employers continue to demand ludicrously high qualifications from prospective employees, don’t be surprised if one day candidates for teaching jobs will have to provide answers to these koans.

I am a shamelessly big fan of Steve Peters and his book, The Chimp Paradox. I have bored people to tears and revealed just how up myself I really am by posting a sample of my verbose and pontificating Stone of Life in Chimp.

You wouldn’t know it, but I am my biggest fan. Can you imagine what my harshest critics must be saying?