The permanently exhausted feeling has stopped, that goodness, but today’s trip was rather hard work. It was 55 adult literacy students from Tenerife, mostly in their 60s and older, and as excited as kids (which was great). Now I’m only supposed to have 25 people in a group, max, but I did the sensible thing and said two groups. But after an hour’s drive, loads of them needed the toilet, and there’s only one ladies’ and one gents’ in the telescope, so it took for-bleeding-ever. Then there was the stairs and the dodgy knees, which was pretty slow too. Then they all
started passing me their cameras to take a photo of me-and-the-telescope. I loved the enthusiasm, but that also took for-bleeding-ever. Then I had to struggle to make myself heard, although most of them were fascinated when I finally got into my spiel.
And then they all wanted their photos taken with me. Flattering, but time consuming.
And then I had to do it all again with the second group. Exhausting, but I couldn’t help liking them. I take my hat off to anyone who goes back to education after retiring. And most of these people were doing it for the first time, since they never got the chance as kids. One of them had finally learned to write his own full name at the age of seventy-four!
