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Sunday, December 18, 2011

Coughing Continues


FRIDAY 16TH DECEMBER 2011
Arriving home to a new-cameraless house is a dispiriting experience.  I checked again in my emails and ascertained that the item had been “handed over to carriers” in Spain five days previously.  Five days is surely enough to deliver one small package!

Toni, as usual, suggested a practical course of action: phoning the company.  Unable to find the details on Amazon’s “complete” list of carriers but the Internet, as ever, provided the dire news that the carrier is one with which I have had similar unsatisfactory experiences before.

After trying various telephone numbers we were at last able to find out that, yes, the item was in the carrier’s Castelldefels office and of course they had left a note informing us that they had attempted to deliver the package.  And if there was no note then it was perhaps the large letter box on the pillar of the front gate, just under the “B” of the torre of the house, was impossible to see by the hard working deliverer.  Or, if we didn’t like that obviously false excuse then it was Amazon’s fault.

As our past experience of this carrier is that its operatives are a little less than honest and scrupulous in their deliveries – casually throwing packages with fragile contents over the front wall and leaving notes (!) for non-response when people have been at home.  We always end up trying to find a parking space in the congested area around the office in the centre of Castelldefels.  I feel the futility of making a fuss when I am there and the desire to get my hands on the package always outweighs the expression of frustration that I should make as a response to the incompetence that they constantly show.

The end result of the telephone calls was that we went in person to pick up the goodies and then had a meal in a corner restaurant that we had tried (and dismissed) once before.  In an exceptional demonstration of magnanimity we decided to give it a second chance.

We had a series of tapas including a very cold and oddly tasting Russian Salad and a thoroughly delicious Pulpo Gallego served traditionally on a wooden round accompanied by some potatoes cooked in the Gallician style.  All this was washed down with a more than decent Rioja diluted by Casera to make it seem reasonable and positively abstemious!  It was quite pricey at €45 but I think we can let it re-join the list of the favoured establishments that we sometime patronize.  Though the expense may limit our attendance.

The worst thing about gaining a gadget in the short term is the amount of time necessary for the battery of the damn thing to charge.  The tiny red light on my camera stubbornly refused to extinguish itself in spite of my constant trips to the kitchen where the machine was soaking up power from one of the three pin sockets that take British plugs.

I did eventually get my hands on the little beauty and it is a delight.  It is small, as befits a device that is now in direct competition with mobile phones.  The improvement of the mobile phone as a picture taking machine has compromised the utility of a separate camera and therefore the newest cameras have to contend with increasingly sophisticated gadgets like the i-phone 4 (S) which offers a whole suite of editing possibilities as well as the computer facilities – not to mention a phone!

My new Samsung looks more like a phone than a camera and it is only when the thing is switched on the lens emerges that its single function is made clear.

Its touch screen and icon led capabilities have only been tentatively explored by me at the moment but, as I have brought it to school, I took advantage of a high vantage point and a particularly spectacular dawn to take my first “proper” photograph!

The USP of this camera is the fact that it has a screen which can be tilted to 180° which, I am reliably informed, facilitates the taking of accurate, well centred low level and over-the-head shots.  There is also a satisfyingly large number of icons which allow the image to be played with.  I do have another camera which is larger and bulkier which does the same sort of thing, but this one appears to be better, more sophisticated and a damn sight smaller. 

The real test, of course, will be with my on-going attempt to take a satisfactory fireworks photograph.  With dawn safely on the memory card can pyrotechnics be far behind?  I am itching to try every aspect of the machine out, but I am constrained by the presence of colleagues to keep it to myself – as I rather expected I would have to.  I am, however, going to flaunt it in my Current Affairs class under the specious topic of “Gadgets – do we need them?”

Well, I did get to show off my camera and the discussion was interesting, at least it passed the time and that is one thing which has been dragging throughout this week which started with the horror of consecutive meetings on the first two days after school.  I don’t think we as a staff have actually recovered from those yet.  It will take a holiday just to get back to normal.

Next week is, at last, the final week of term – just another four days until Thursday and then release!  This final week was not made any more tolerable by Paul 1 phoning up to let me know that he had just broken up for the holidays!

SATURDAY 17TH DECEMBER 2011

The feeling of wellness was further away today.  In spite of the pills and lotions that I have gulped down I am feeling still below par.  This is clearly not fair and I am becoming more and more worried as soon I am going to be ill in my own time.  It is one thing to be unwell during the weekend, it is quite another to be misfiring on one or more cylinders during a proper holiday.

We did manage to go out for an excellent lunch and I did manage to take some photographs, though putting them in the body of an email seems to be something which is simply too difficult to accomplish.  I have even been on You Tube to get the advice of the under tens who seem to command authority on that benighted site.  Nothing works.

A generally miserable day and early to bed in the hope that the morrow will dawn bright and that I might follow it.

SUNDAY 18TH DECEMBER 2011

A lie in but still no real improvement.  I think that another visit to the Quack is called for, certainly before Christmas and the general cessation of activity which that festival entails.

I have noticed that the engine in my car is racing when I accelerate.  I have no idea what this means except that I am sure that it entails my throwing large sums of money at surly mechanics.  I hate spending money on a car when you have already bought the bloody thing almost as much as I resent buying cleaning fluid: necessary but hardly interesting.

Toni and I are now snuffling and coughing in a demented way that reminds me of the more harmonious sections of that extended joke of an opera I went to see recently - Le Grand Macabre.  The way we are both feeling at the moment do chime in with the more noisy end-of-the-world manifestations that clumsy piece tinkered with.

The only clearly positive thing that has happened today is that Barça have won the title of World Champion Club Side.  This is good is two ways: not only because Barça have won, but also because Real Madrid have not.  I await with pleasurable anticipation the snarlingly petty whinings of the coach of Real Madrid who I think has a genuine gift for comedy in the manner of Max Wall!

Tomorrow is the start of the final week of term which will be truncated by the fact that we finish on the 22nd of December and therefore Friday will be the start of our holidays.

There is almost a tangible fear in our place that this last week may descend into some sort of Saturnalian orgy of education-free enjoyment for the kids so tests, timed essays and photocopies of extra work are being marshalled so that no element of jollity informs our woefully extended days.

The last day of term is always a struggle.  I can remember the admonishments of successive headteachers who were firm believer in the “teach until the end” theory of pupil containment – mainly of course because they were not the ones doing the teaching.

I think that even we do “something” on the last day of term with kids exchanging “Secret Santa” presents; a football tournament, and even a film.  I will, of course have other duties (cough allowing) and will see to keep as great a distance as possible between me and pupils en mass.  I also have a free period during the last period of the day and I am damned if I am going to give that up to help some dreary concession to the season.  I cannot wait for the moment of release and I shall ritually kick the dust off my feet until next year.

Four more days!

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