Day of Shame

I set the alarm for an hour later than usual and enjoyed my lie-in through, as it were, gritted teeth until I got up at 7.30 am to get ready for school.

I dressed in jeans, pseudo American college t-shirt and trainers.  After a cup of tea I rejected the trainers as not casual enough (and they were uncomfortable) and put on a pair of sandals after, of course, taking off my socks – I would not want to be taken for a German!

The net effect of my dressing in this way was to emphasise my feeling that a Saturday was no day for a meeting and therefore I was dressed as obviously casually as I could be as my mark of disgust.

The Powers That Be had visited a high class bakery for us when we arrived, but I cannot be bought by a cruddy croissant and I made myself a cup of Earl Grey tea in my individual filter machine and sat, or rather paced around muttering obscenities and general bewailing my state.  I was joined in this sullen activity by one of my colleagues who was, remarkably, even more pissed-off than I!  Who would have believed it possible?

I ostentatiously stomped off to the meeting room so that I was there for the scheduled start of the meeting which did not, of course, start at the scheduled time.

The meeting was like all meetings in this school, a form of ritualized torture.  The practical value of these meetings is practically nil – but that does not stop us from spending three hours of a Saturday morning wasting our time.

I had to say something as every teacher had to comment on their classes, and I was even thanked for my contribution by the directora afterwards!

My angry colleague was out of school as soon as the meeting ended and beat me to his car!

It was only The Great C Major blaring through the speakers that kept me on the straight and narrow driving home.  To insert a CD one presses a button and the whole of the GPS does a sort of glissade to reveal the disc slit: very ostentatious and yet elegant!

Lunch was in our favourite restaurant in Sitges and was the excellent (if unspectacular) value that it always is.  The wine tasted watered though and, as it came in an open bottle, one has one’s suspicions!

I had a siesta when we got back to Castelldefels and then decided to go to El Corte Ingles to buy a new pillow as I am missing by old (and I mean old) feather pillow which was finally put to sleep after my consecutive bouts of illness during the winter.  I was beginning to feel that the pillow was beginning to develop a life of its own which was rapidly becoming inimical to my own survival!  I therefore purchased some sort of artificial equivalent which was supposed to have all the characteristics of the real thing.  Not true.

I tried out a variety of pillows and eventually settled on the one that I thought was best.  I then made a big mistake.  I asked the price.

I returned to Castelldefels without the pillow which, to my absolute horror, turned out to be over €200!  Even I have my limits.  And I could, in no way, count a mere pillow as a gadget!

The evening has been taken up with updating my GPS and establishing a base for the information on the computer.  According to the instructions I can use this to control my IPod.  Something I can try out tomorrow.

When The Family are arriving too.  A day full of incident is promised.