Days pass

This is how a day should end, not with a bang but a long drawn out suspiration of anticipation leading up to the time of escape.

It is always a

And that was where I finished typing the day before yesterday!  There is a bone weary emptiness of fatigue that only a teacher knows!  And that was me at the end of the day yesterday.  I didn’t even manage to drink a reviving cup of tea before the siren call of my bed was too alluring and I succumbed.

As is usual in a fractured week (we came back on Wednesday) the tiredness quotient is much higher than in a normal week.  I must emphasise that does not mean that I want fewer days’ holiday to ensure a Monday start, but it is a fact of scholastic life that a mid-week start means more than a week’s worth of fatigue waiting for you by the weekend!

This weekend I have a demonstration and a birthday party – both on the same day and so I am going to have to juggle things if the day is to work out satisfactorily for all concerned!

To lighten my mood I have sent away for a box of goodies from Amazon.  The CDs are there to fuel the cultural element in my daily treks to school and the books because they are books and I am not suddenly going to start rejecting the drug of choice that I have been taking all my life!  If I could find an effective hand-held dog barking repellent it would be the final detail which would make my life more complete and more importantly tranquil.

On the anti-animal front I shocked The Family by purchasing a power water pistol for use against the marauding cats who whip up our local dogs to frenzies of unbearable noise.  As many of our local canine pests are of rattish derivation the noises they make range from recognizable barks to other worldly creaks and squeaks so it is therefore imperative for these animals to have a relaxing environment so that they do not feel the need to use their vocal chords to signify to their uncaring owners that they have sighted a canine intruder – or whatever it is that produces the sounds by the inbred grotesques by which we are surrounded.

I have tested my new weapon, and from the kitchen window the kill-zone reaches to the furthest limits of our demesne.  I think that another loaded water pistol by the gate will allow me to soak the moggies if they ever (as they do) dare get into the back garden.  And cats, having grossly inflated ideas of their own significance, are quite prepared to move only a humiliatingly small distance away from a gesticulating owner and then sit and wash their paws.  When I have finished with them they will look as though the have been washing a bloody sight more than their paws!

And that was where I finished typing yesterday.

Today has dawned sunny with only the creak of some rat-dog to spoil the beauty of the sun.

Barcelona for the demonstration and then Terrassa for a birthday celebration.  Never a dull day for me!  Though tiring – always!

The meeting point for the demonstration was unknown to my GPS and so I had to guess my way there.  Driving down the Diagonal is always frustrating at the best of times but is especially intolerable when you are pressed for time.  I made a unilateral decision that the Jardins de Gracia where at the junction with the Diagonal and looked for a parking place near there. 

Amazingly the place I found, or rather waited for when I saw a driver leaving his place, was near a Gaudi house and therefore not something which one would have expected to have found.  It was very tight, but I made it (under pressure) with relative ease.  And even the parking charges were not excessive.

I asked a very helpful lady who walked me through the steps to getting my parking ticket to point me in the direction of the Jardins and after a couple of minutes walk I was there!

Our demonstration was relatively small and very middle class.  We were all teachers and their familiars and very select too.  I met Steve who was arranging the whole demo and he gave me a rakish red cap to wear.

When, eventually we were ready to set off I collected a red CCOO flag and was good to go.  When we were about to start I was ordered by Steve to hold the banner at the front of the march so, with red hat, red flag and red whistle I could well be on the news this evening looking mildly uncomfortable by resolutely holding my share of our Union banner!

We marched to the offices of the regulatory body and dumped symbolic sacks of the worry that anybody working in the educational sector has as a normal part of their professional life.

While the sacks were piled up against the entrance to the doors and during the speeches that were being made, in the best traditions of slapstick a charlady appeared and started throwing the sacks away while haranguing the organizers no doubt bringing up concepts of Health & Safety and things of that sort.  It added just that touch of farce to an otherwise important situation!

Toni has wrapped his sister’s birthday present and even bought his Mother’s Day flowers which were wrapped in the garden centre.  We are now ready to go to Terrassa and Toni is of course packing the portable computer which he uses to watch pay-for-view Barça games for free.

How I am going to stay awake for the next few hours I do not know and I will have to rely on the car’s memory of the way back to get me home!

And to top everything the Chief Scumbag has been seen next door.  This is disastrous as it means that the whole Family Scumbag must be getting ready for their intolerable summer stay. 

Horrible thought!

Let me push that to the back of my mind and look forward to the birthday party!