In Teacher Man, hopefully the last published glimpse on Frank McCourt's life story, there's a scene where high school pupils are asking their English teacher what he wants them to do. Does he really want them to talk about the poem they've just read? McCourt answers, as McCourt tells it, that he wants them to talk about anything at all "in the general neighborhood of the poem".

The same idea has crossed my mind many times in class during the past few weeks. As long as the discourse doesn't peter out completely, things are OK. For at least ten hours every week, I'm mostly trying to lure words out of first and second year students' mouths, and one cannot always be too strict about the quality and relevance of the words - even though we're at a university. Often the quality and relevance of my own words are questionable. We talk about literary texts, mostly. That's our job. Some of those texts are from 16th- or 17th-century Britain. Sometimes, quite often actually, the best way to induce discussion is to resort to the "general neighborhood" of the text.

In class, strange questions enter my mind. They are caused by the few hours of Milton followed by five of the Harlem Renaissance. Too many different contexts at the same time, especially when I've already gone through the materials several times and turned on the autopilot. How, for example, is it possible to adopt the role of the teacher with the wonderful music of Radiohead constantly running through my brain? In my best moments, when thoughts flow, I feel like humming to "Karma Police". In my worst moments, the key line from "Paranoid Android" loses its music. "When I am king you will be first against the wall".

Being human, I do learn. I don't think I'm quite as bad a teacher any more as I may have been four years ago. 17:07