Only three days!

THURSDAY 28th APRIL

 

Getting up at 6.30 am and getting held up in a traffic jam on the motorway really means that things are back to what is laughingly called normality.

The long stretch of time from now to the end of the presentation evening some time in the evening or, unhappy thought, night - when it will finally end, is something which does not bear too much careful scrutiny.  That way lies madness.  And there is still a day to go to the weekend.

The one things that is crystal clear is that it is inconceivable that we have only been back in school for a single day, but one look at the date and I can see, in spite of what I feel, that it is true.  Gran Canaria seems like a holiday that I had years ago rather than ending a couple of days ago!  Still, I should be used to the Telescoping Teacher Holiday Syndrome by now – I have, after all a certain amount of experience.

The fall-out from the match last night continues today, partly at my instigation by using the topic as the one for my Current Affairs class where the clash between Barça/Real Madrid is also seen as the clash between Catalonia/Spain.  We talked more about football than politics, but both were covered and at least some quiet people spoke as they felt that football was safer ground than other more technical topics I have chosen!  I shall pass over the idea of my talking with confidence about football with the quiet discretion that it deserves and say no more!

The cases have finally been cleared away and things are now in places where I will never find them again – that, surely is what unpacking is all about.

Yet again I am trying to find a way to bring some sort of order to the mass of transformers and leads which clutter the rear of my reading chair like a mass of writhing multi-coloured spaghetti.  I think a Way Ahead is to Put Things Away when they have been used.  But as a realistic approach to the problem it seems just too farfetched to be practical.

The Family is going to descend this weekend and we shall have to think about doing something with Toni’s Mum, as Sunday is Mother’s Day in Spain.

But back to the present and the fact that school is out and I am still here, waiting for later this evening when the Event starts.  At the moment a past student is in the staff room selling a book that I assume he has written and he is now engaged in writing what are presumably fulsome dedications in each volume he sells.  It passes the time!

FRIDAY 29th APRIL

 

Up at 6.30 am, a quick sneer at the "lead" story on the Today programme and off to school with the weather threatening rain.

Rain which belted down on the way back home yesterday after the Literary Prize giving was finally over.  For the survivors of the ceremony there was a buffet with a legendary lethal cocktail – but a bite of food and a drink are not enough to bribe me to stay in school for an moment longer than the thirteen (13) hours I had already been there!

Today, as another test of professional fortitude there was a school celebration of Jocs Florals to replace the St Jordi celebrations which were in the holiday.  So, taking up the two (2) “free” periods I had today I had to sit in the hall with the equivalent of Year 9 for a two hour extravaganza of boredom as further prizes were given out and we were treated to various “performances” from the pupils.  I now have solid teaching until the end of the day.

We may only have been back for three days but already we have done a longer working week than you would get Monday to Friday in teaching in the UK.  But I am not one to complain!

The only bright spot in this grey day is that this is, at least, my “early” finish – 25 minutes later than the end of a normal day in the UK!  But, as I say, never a bitter word crosses my placid lips!

Apart from the first lesson, not much today has been what can be called normal.  Lessons have not really settled down after the complete disruption of the prize giving this morning.  In a way that is fine by me, as it has meant a far less stressful series of lessons than I would otherwise have.

Even the last lesson of the day which is with my 1ESO has been changed to a “private reading” lesson – which is, of course my idea of heaven.  Unfortunately I finished the school book which has just been sent to us in the spare time I had before the prize giving.

 

The novel was “Unique” by Alison Allen-Gray.  This novel is set in the near future takes as its central idea the concept and indeed the reality of cloning.  It rapidly becomes obvious that the central character in the novel is himself a clone and the action of the book is how, when and why he wants to find out the “truth” about his birth.

At first glance the book seemed to be aimed at an older readership than we would find useful but closer inspection showed that the general level of language was not too advanced and the general standard of knowledge necessary to follow fully what the novel was concerned with was also not too high.

With themes of parental abuse, drunkenness, self-worth, scientific irresponsibility, Cambridge, university life, ambition, self knowledge and all the rest of the themes which litter any self-respecting children’s book!

It is clearly written and there is a relatively straightforward narrative.  It uses present day concerns in a sensitive way and gives pause for thought.  I enjoyed reading it and found it fairly compulsive, though I was also conscious of “teaching opportunities” throughout while reading!         I suppose that is an occupational hazard – at least I have stopped noting extracts from books which might make decent comprehension passages!

I was going to let the “event” of the day in Britain go without remark: the most appropriate response to the disgusting display of obsequious adulation of a thoroughly discredited family by a grovelling population glorying in their humiliation by a Greco-Germanic junta – but then I listened to the BBC World Service.

 

What I heard was an interview with a so-called Prince of Serbia (!) commenting on “royal” marriage to commoners!  One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry when nonentities with obsolete fripperies of titles make pronouncements about what they consider “common.”  To me it brings to the fore the basic dangers of a concept of royalty which strikes at the heart of democratic meritocracy.

Anyway, I have managed to avoid all but the most fragmentary glimpses of this unnecessary extravaganza.  I have been a “lone lorst soul” in my school where, in spite of previous cynicism on the part of my colleagues, I was what appeared to be the single representative of the republican sensibility in the place!

One ploughs a lonely furrow sometimes!