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Tuesday, October 06, 2009

It's the paper not the content!


Spanish organizations love paper. If they don’t have what they consider enough then they will photocopy until the ‘file’ becomes respectable. No matter how ineffectual an institution may be, no organization will fall down on the national standards of paper production. Even The School That Sacked Me produced voluminous wads of paperwork to cover (or illustrate) their complete lack of caring.

My school is not so callous but what they did today constitutes mental cruelty in its most blatant form.

My contract has changed: I was on a temporary contract now my contract is permanent. Even though my employment from one academic year to another was seamless, the school did, in effect sack me at the end of June and reemployment at the beginning of September.

Today I had the paperwork for that dismissal with all the accompanying figures which, for a moment made me believe that four thousand Euros had been paid into my account. This would have been a good thing.

Alas! This is just a case of the paperwork from three months ago finally catching up with me. The money has already been paid in the form of my normal salary for June and the various sums of money which have to be paid when someone leaves service. No one who I know has the slightest idea of how these sums of money are arrived at, but the result of these sums saw me through July as well.

August and September were the cruel months when no pay appeared in my dwindling bank account and the sum now seems even more derisory when I have had a false dawn of financial viability with the envelope handed to me this morning with the ancient paperwork promising thousands! Reality is a cruel friend!

I felt so rotten at the end of yesterday that I called in to El Corte Ingles on the strength of a half understood advert on the classical radio station I listen to on the way to and from school. The shop appeared to be singularly free of special offers but, lo and behold, there in a miniscule section of the music department was the promised view of Opera goodies all at 50% reduction.

I freely admit that I went a bit mad and ended up buying things which, with calmer reflection I might possibly have passed by. The majority of discs that I have bought seem to be highlights from the opera rather than full works – and I suspect that they are reworked analogue versions, but at half price they will do to while away the time that I am stuck in traffic jams on the way to work and the time that I am in a world of my own on the way back!

I have bought another version of ‘Orfeo’ which is a direct fault of Jim, a fellow student in Swansea University, who asked to play records on my record player that he had been given to listen to by his tutor. The first playing of the ‘overture’ to ‘Orfeo’ captivated me and I refused to let him take the records out of my room. I now agree with Robert that this opera is nothing like as good as The Coronation of Poppea – but Orfeo retains a special place in my affections. And at €18 for an Archiv version of the opera is was not something which I was going to pass by!

I am no absolutely sure what, exactly I have bought, except it was a lot and will take me weeks to listen to.

My first choice of disc was completely at random as I took the first one my hand closed on out of the bag and put it on the car system. I can remember hearing ‘The Elixir of Love’ a few times in a WNO performance with Arthur Davis (I think) as the juve lead. The quack doctor was played (or rather overplayed) by a series of character singers and I have a dim recollection of the basic plot. The rather depressing fact about my listening to the music which belted out of the speakers was that I had no real recollection of the music at all. The quality of tunefulness in the opera is such that everything sounds vaguely familiar but nothing that I could whistle with confidence until towards the end of the CD and the aria 'Una furtiva lagrima' when familiarity bounced back into my musical memory!


I do whistle along with the music. I’m alone in the car so I can do things like that without exciting my passengers to open rebellion. You should hear me yell along to Nielsen symphonies accompanied by OTT conducting movements to the confusion and distraction of passing drivers!

Even if the music is not familiar (though I know that I have heard it) the cast is spectacular and the recording crisp and expressive. There is what appears (on first sight) to be something like a cartoon version of the storyline and a listening guide too. If nothing else they will be good for my Spanish!

I am half planning to call in today (I feel just as bad) and buy the rest of the discs by way of compensation for my struggles today.

But I probably won’t.

Especially as the extra money I thought that I had was but a chimera born of a delayed paper chase!

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