A corner that is forever England

Wherever in the world that English is ‘taught as a foreign language’ there’s a phenomenon called ‘English corner’. It’s a gathering, outside of school hours (and, often out of school entirely) where keen students can come together and talk, you guessed it, English. The other day Bick and I got invited up to the local university to be guests at one. It was quite exciting to begin with: we were treated like pop stars and literally mobbed by about a hundred students – happily, mostly girls which was nice. An hour and a half followed having more or less the same conversation about whether I like China, what London’s like (“Is it really foggy all the time?”) and (sorry, Winston Churchill, Wellington, William Shakespeare, et al) David Beckham.