Bartop teacher

Mum has hired me to teach English to her son on my days off - though she will not pay me in money, but alcohol.

I will turn up at her shop in the early evening, and spend the first two hours teaching young Som, who is aged 12, and attends the neighbourhood school.

Then Mum will give me a bottle of whisky, which I will drink until my usual finishing time of 4am or so. I am sure it will taste that much better when I know it is free.

Precise terms of the deal have yet to be agreed. I assume she will give me my usual full bottle, not half bottle; and it will be the brand of Thai whisky which I normally drink, not some cheap, nasty concoction of lao kao (white liquor), which she also sells at her shop.

We have already held two trial lessons, and they worked well. We sit facing each other over the bar. Usually, I start drinking as soon as I arrive. On the first night, Mum asked Som to move my bottle of whisky down the table, so I would stay sober for at least as long as the lesson lasted.

Young Som is an attentive student, with an inquiring mind. He does not really want to be there, I can tell, but is growing more resigned to the fact that his mother wants him to learn.

I use things sitting around the bar as props. The other night, I asked him to watch me open my whisky bottle, and pour a new glass. Then I asked him to describe to me in English what happened.

I gave him the words. We discussed which ones were verbs, nouns, pronouns, and why we need them.

To my dismay, Som's teachers have not yet taught him how to build sentences. The farang at his school teach only the senior classes, and Som is still in the final year of primary school. So what have they been teaching him all this time?

I had to ask.

'Have you seen any of his English textbooks?' I asked his mother.

'They are basic. They teach them about contrasts, like black and white, hot and cold,' she said.

Building sentences, then, is a big stretch. But it is not before time, as he can't speak unless he has this skill.

His vocabulary is reasonable, though he can rarely remember words when he wants them. His reading ability and pronunciation are also okay, though he is intimidated by big words.

He knows about full stops, but not how to use them. He also knows about commas, but does not know why we bother with them in English, as Thai does not use them.

I am having to take a renewed interest in Thai grammar words, as I need them to tell Som what to do. I praise him often when he gets things right, as he often does, despite the lousy instruction he has been given to date.

Thankfully, his teachers have taught him how to write. He has a tidy hand - much nicer than mine, as I barely pick up a pen these days.

His mother asks me to set him homework. Last night I asked him to come back with a sentence telling me how he does the ironing.

I gave him a sample sentence first: 'I unfold the ironing board, put it up, iron clothes, then put it away again.'

That's way too advanced, as Som does not yet know how to link ideas in a sentence (the word, 'and' was a mystery). Nor does he know about time words such as 'then' and 'after', which help us order events.

However, I want to get him interested in words, to give him a feeling for how we use them in everyday speech. Apart from that, we have to start somewhere.

When we get hungry, we order khao mun gai (chicken on rice) from a stall across the road. If we fancy Esan food, we can order that instead, from the stall next to it. We have done this a couple of times already, as both Som and I like to eat.

The other night, when I turned up, he had just ordered food. He ordered a curry dish, with not one plate of rice, but two.

'Is your Dad eating as well?' I asked.

Som's Dad was minding the shop, while Mum was at home catching up on sleep.

'No. They are for me,' he said.

The next night, when I arrived, Som was there again, only this time it was my turn to order food, as I had not eaten before I left home.

'How many dishes do you eat each meal?' he asked.

At first I misheard. I thought he wanted to know how many meals I eat each day.

'I eat four of five times a day. I don't eat much each time, but I eat often,' I said.

'No, I mean how many plates of food do you eat at each meal?'

I should have known. I eat just the one, but young Som - a large boy for his age - was feeling hungry again.

Our first 'formal' bartop lesson is on Monday.