Every so often you realize you cannot stand your appalling colleagues any longer. You start scanning the Internet for jobs and leafing through atlases. You should, of course, be careful. Devious Directors of Studies paint rosy pictures of their schools and localities.

If a DOS describes the local town as quiet, this means there are no shops, but you might encounter the odd goat. Other codes include:

modern

there is a McDonald’s

busy

overcrowded slum with traffic jams

lively

daily battles between drug gangs

historical

the McDonald’s has been there since 1960

cosmopolitan

ethnic riots

peaceful

locals still talk about the bicycle accident (nobody hurt) of 1952

traditional

weekly stonings in the McDonald’s play area

important

bombing target in event of US-led humanitarian intervention

idyllic

has a tourist hotel too expensive for English teachers to drink in.

The salary on offer is a secret it would take Torquemada to extract. All a school will divulge is that it affords you a “comfortable lifestyle, compared to most of the local people”. So at least you will not have to join them scavenging through the city’s rubbish tips.

Another sensitive issue is security. DOSes scoff at the idea that the country is not safe. When you cite reports of religious fanatics conducting house-to-house searches for Westerners and disembowelling them, the DOS says this is journalistic exaggeration. You are not told that the school is advertising for teachers because the previous bunch were last seen burning rubber on the road to the airport.

Actually, most horror stories are about accommodation. Newcomers to the profession are not always prepared for a dilapidated, noisy, verminous, stinking, damp, poky, dangerously wired, barely furnished hovel squeezed between a superhighway, a glue factory and a mosque. Nor do you realize how strange most English teachers are until you have to live with them. Back home that man would be in some kind of secure institution. Here he is a Senior Teacher. Just keep your ears plugged and your bedroom door locked.

So should you take the job? My advice, on the whole, is yes. We English teachers are the unsung pioneers of the age, exploring the world’s dreariest places, spreading the present perfect to unenlightened regions. Wilfred Thesiger may have crossed the Empty Quarter by camel, but would he have survived a year teaching in Hafr al-Batin?