Today is a test.
Not of the kids but rather of simple justice. According to my timetable and the delightful loss of two classes, I should gain two free periods today. But already there are mutterings that things will not turn out as expected.
In spite of the loss of the classes it would appear that today (when I have a gained free) the kids are actually going to turn up. One down, one to go!
Or not. I have now been told that the kids will not be there but they might be somewhere later and we might have to do something. This is situation absolutely bloody normal for the school: mild, unsettling chaos reigns supreme! Until it develops into full, in-your-face panic. Which it will!
In spite of the unsettled weather yesterday I did stagger off to the pool at the end of the day. Needless to say I was the only one in the pool yet again and made the most of the space by meandering my way from one end of the pool to the other lit by the fitful light of an often cloud-obscured sun.
The smug self-satisfaction of having done something healthy stayed with me throughout the evening. An evening which I spent very pleasantly going out for some sort of augmented burger (to hell with health!) in our favourite fast-ish food place in the centre of the beach part of Castelldefels and then back to the “Autobiography of a Nation: The 1951 Festival of Britain” written by Becky Conekin.
This is obviously the book form of a PhD thesis and it is heavily footnoted in the best academic tradition. It wears its historical and cultural methodology on its sleeve and is a bracing change from the easy narrative approach of Barry Turner in his “Beacon for Change: How the 1951 Festival of Britain Shaped the Modern Age” – though it is interesting that both authors chose the same pictures for their covers: a night scene of the Dome of Discovery and the charismatic icon of Skylon.
Skylon was an innovative engineering construction of startling elegance which, more than anything else characterized the whole festival – and which was summarily destroyed by the incoming Conservative government in a spiteful gesture of petty party politics to get rid of the taste of the Labour extravaganza of Modernist egalitarianism mixed with Utopian hope on the South Bank. A piece of cultural vandalism for which I will never forgive the Tories. So there.
And while we are on about the evil of the Conservative party, I still remember, with sharp vividness Heath (ugh!) imposing admission charges for our National Museums. I don’t forget and I don’t forgive. Though the campaign against museum charges did produce one of the great posters of my youth – a copy of which is safely preserved here in Spain. Somewhere in the house!
Skylon fascinated me as a child when I saw pictures of the Festival of Britain in a book called, I think, “50 Glorious Years” and published (to my shame) by Express Newspapers.
Although, thinking about it, one could always partially justify the Express because it published Giles cartoons which were obviously a Good Thing. However good Giles was, and he was and remains one of my favourite cartoonists, he could never fully compensate for the truly repulsive column of John Junor whose sickening diatribes I read with horrified disbelief every week in the Sunday Express. “Home Truths: life around my father” by Penny Junor, his daughter, published by HarperCollins, 367pp, £18.99 ISBN 0007102135 - which Peregrine Worsthorne describes as “not only the story of a deeply unpleasant, philistine and hypocritical man but also of a deeply unpleasant, philistine and hypocritical newspaper” – makes it sound like a book to get to redress the anger he caused me in my impressionable youth!
Skylon has remained at the back (and front) of my mind ever since I saw pictures of it. I was delighted to hear that there is a movement to get Skylon rebuilt. You too can vote for its location at http://www.voteforskylon.com/then.php It still looks good, and will look wonderful, especially at night.
I wanted it to be rebuilt for the Olympics in London as near to the original site as possible but, like the good middle class person that I am, I am prepared to experience delayed gratification as long as it gets re-built somewhere!
I have lost a “real” free period because I gained a “gained” one. The logic behind this escapes me, but at least I kept one of the “gained” ones.
The weather continues to be skittish and, at the moment it is heavily overcast and not at all what one would expect from June in Catalonia.
I have been given a financial tip to tie up money for a period of time so that I do not get my spendthrift hands on it. My bank, which is La Caixa is trying to raise one and a half billion euros to establish itself as a full working bank. To do this they are offering what looks like very seductive interest rates with the conversion of half the money invested into shares in the bank at the end of eighteen months with the rest of the money continuing to earn a handsome interest rate. It does look as though it is worth a flutter.
But I can’t get to the bank to do anything about it. Which, in the long run, may be a good thing as the money will still be available for frivolous purchases of worthy books and attractively metallic gadgets. We will see. I could, I suppose assay the telephone of a way of getting to my bank manager but his English is rudimentary and the concepts of getting things done too advanced for my Spanish. Though it did seem capable of getting some bonds from the Generalitat when they needed money as well.
The situation in FIFA has now gone beyond a farce with the tin pot dictator acclaimed and allowed to continue his questionable stewardship of a multi billion pound organization. Blatter seems to think himself the equivalent of a Head of State, presumably it is only a matter of time before he demands to be addressed as “Your Excellency” or something even more elevated.
His shocking intention to make the voting for the siting of the World Cup involve all the members of FIFA and open corruption to include all the delegates rather than the few chosen sticky-fingered individuals on the executive committee is breathtaking in its audacity and laughable lack of concern for the state of the sport.
The behavior of the FA has been questionable to say the least. They cannot suddenly adopt a high moral tone when they were the ones castigating investigative journalists for bringing forward the allegations of bribery before the fiasco of the failed English bid for the World Cup. The whole catalogue of their mistakes and missed opportunities has meant that their ignoble rejection at the meeting of FIFA was totally predictable. If ever there was a case for decimation then the governing bodies of most of the important sports in the world make a convincing case for it to be put into practice at once!
Where are numerate Roman generals with a sense of honour and a high cliff when you need them?
No comments:
Post a Comment