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Monday, March 24, 2008

Prison shades!



Last day of freedom!

The wind has dropped. The sun is shining. And the case with the papers for the attempt at planning is now at my feet, within easy reach. It may have taken a week, but the bag has now finally made it to my sphere of activity.

I had a tentative look at the Primary scheme for Maths yesterday on the internet and soon clacked my way to some other, safer part of the web!

I think that this coming term is going to be challenging in all sorts of ways. First and foremost the planning is going to be a hurdle at which I must o’er leap or else fall down, for in my way it lies. And don’t worry; I can’t be bothered to find other Macbeth quotations to cover all my worries about that place. There are two inspections immanent; reports will have to be written; we are indulging ourselves in SATs participation; there is the Moveable Feast which is the end of term; the school trip on which I am not going; payment for the summer holidays, and last but not least, supplies for my OHP. Oh, and at some point I have to do another assembly. And there is Culture Week.

When I first heard of this feature of the school year I had misgivings. Given the way the school operates, you should work on the assumption that any easy assumptions are probably wrong; including that one.

For me Culture Week suggests an orgy of literature, music, poetry and art. And science, I suppose. A celebration of the quirky and traditional, an opportunity to delve into the meaning of what being Catalan is all about.

But, given my experience of the school, based on my traumatic first term Culture Week could be something very different from my expectations!

I could well imagine that, with the emphasis on ‘culture’, we could all be issued with Petrie dishes and have to participate in a class competition to find out which group could cultivate the greatest quantity of saleable penicillin within the five day limit!

Or perhaps Culture Week might be more draconian with intensive Catalanization classes so that at the end we all come out dancing the sardana, eating fuet and supporting Barça!

The reality was, as usual, rather more prosaic and chaotic. The planning meeting did not go well with one of the Catalan teachers explaining the raison d’etre of the week in a fairly ambiguous way. The one central feature was the importance of a certain Señor Bolli (Mr Pen) who would come and judge the writing competitions! The rest of the week was an open invitation for suggestions for activities. In our half joking way the rest of the primary staff made suggestions for various artists in residence and practical activities, but the Catalan teacher only heard the jokes and not the suggestions and she abruptly left the meeting in tears.

When she was persuaded back by the head a few of us stayed on after the main meeting was over and discussed more concrete plans with her so that a rough outline of the week was soon filled with workable suggestions.

The one which most clearly affects me is that I think that we have all agreed to choose a country and present our classrooms as the distillation of that culture. My choice will obviously be Wales so I can see myself calling on the good offices of my friends back home to send various items to make the week a success.

I have already given the week some thought and have started to compile a list. Be warned!

We are about to go out and test just how complete a shut down of Catalonia Bank Holiday Monday actually is. In the UK it is sometimes hard to see the difference between a Bank Holiday and an ordinary day of trading, I wonder if it will be different here. Toni assures me that it will; I however have more faith in the mercantile and opportunistic nature of the Catalans and expect to find places open and ready to take my money.

Well, at least we found a restaurant. Deserting our usual place in Gavá we happened upon another restaurant to try.

We should have been warned by the walkway flanked with outsize candle flame shaped glass lights, the private gardens by the sea and the roving security officer, but I pressed on regardless and we were ushered to a table crisp with freshly ironed napery and fragrant with miniature roses.

Pepe Tejero Restaurant Les Marines seemed like the place that you go for celebrations rather than a casual meal, but we pressed on regardless and opened the menus. The prices were steep, but for the number of waiters wafting about and the view of the gardens from our seats we decided to stay.


We were brought a complimentary (Sic.) appetizer of a tiny glass full of asparagus soup and a small wedge of pâté. This is exactly the sort of thing that I like and when the house wine turned out to be an aromatic Rioja I was content to sit back, enjoy the food and worry about the expense at some other time.

My starter was mussels, but mussels served with grilled garlic mayonnaise and a tomato sauce with a sprig of parsley. Rich and delicious!

Our main course was fideos rubios: with the red colour from the prawns. This was also delicious. I much prefer the thinner pasta used here because I feel that it intensifies the flavour. Toni doesn’t agree, but he is wrong. So there.

The selection of postres was excellent, though I plumped for the Tarte de Santiago and asked for a glass of muscatel to accompany it.

The coffee was served with little cakes and provided an excellent end to a superb meal.

We ended up paying about £35 per person for the meal which I maintained (from a British standpoint was excellent value for money) while Toni maintained (from a Catalan standpoint) was the sort of price which would provoke a heart attack in his mother!

I will go back. Even if, as Toni says, I have to go alone!

I have now discovered, by actually open the case which contains the papers that I need to attempt my planning for tomorrow, that I have left them in school.

Perhaps it’s all for the best; I can now relax and enjoy the last hours of the holiday secure in the knowledge that I can do nothing more.

I will have to rely on the long held belief that things always appear worse than they turn out to be.

Roll on tomorrow!

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