Technological Terrors!

Having, as I thought circumspectly, bought a half terabyte external hard drive to back up my computer, it was with something approaching total panic that I saw nothing but a blue screen when I attempted to load up Word this evening.  It was with a stomach churning, sickening recognition that I realised that this was the first time that I had attempted to use the computer since the “backup”.

Nothing daunted (absolute lie) I tried again.  And again.  And again.  And Word would not load.  Then Excel would not load.  To say that I was disconcerted would be a massive understatement.  It is at this time that you realise quite how much of your life is consigned to an invisible disc somewhere in the sleek interior of a Mac machine.  A Mac machine – they don’t have bugs, they don’t go wrong.

My faith returned.  I knew what I had to do.  And I did it.

Once restarted the machine worked perfectly.  I now view the “external” non-Mac hard disc with aversion bordering on loathing.  So much, I say to myself, for trying to be sensible!

Or perhaps it is what I have to do each time I back up.  This was, after all, the first back up that I have done since I bought the machine and it did say that there were more than 650,000 files to copy!  What the hell have I been doing over the past couple of years!

Anyway, all things appear to be well and I will not do it again in a hurry.  Though again it must be done if the cost of the bloody thing is to be justified.  Work in progress.

Tomorrow it will just one month to the day to the end of my time in Education.  Or at least in The School on the Hill.  My replacements are “in place” – two ladies one of who will be back from maternity leave and taking up a part time timetable and the other new lady who will take up the lessons left.  There will be, I am glad to say, no place for me even if I should have some sort of brainstorm and plead to keep my place.  My place is gone.  Well and truly gone.  There is no way back.  Thank god!

My illness of yesterday vanished during the night (an early night) and I felt bright and bushy eyed – or at least as bright and busy eyed as getting up at half past six in the morning allows you to be.  Nothing irritates Toni more than my ability to shake off illness in 24 hours which linger in him for tedious days and sometimes weeks!  Anyway I was fit enough to fill the entire “long” day with a mixture of teaching and marking.  Delight.

My Drama classes are moving towards a confidently predicted chaotic close.  We have a few weeks of single hour lessons a week to produce a dramatic production which is going to be filmed and edited.  Costumes, make-up, props, script and sound effects have all been considered and of my four groups (taking in the whole of the first year in secondary – all two classes of them) are at wildly different stages of unpreparedness.  In spite of the chaos, I am quietly confident that something will come out of this anarchy.  I can’t wait to see the results.  All of which will be captured for posterity on my iPad or the school camera!  Well, this chaos is more artistically productive than most of the rest of my quotidian teaching under the stern dictatorship of the textbook!

What the hell!  Tomorrow I start counting the days and that cannot be bad.

And tomorrow too one of my periodic visits to the Liceu to sit in my Upper Level seat and count the days that I descend to a better view in the stalls next year.  I ought to go down and find my seat and see exactly where it is and check out the sight lines, but I am not sure that I still have the exact coordinates!

I am trying to push from my mind the actual cost of this move from my present position to the solidity of the ground in that Temple of the Middle Classes!

Toni is studying furiously as his examination is now days away: two days, nine hours to be precise.  And counting.

My own exam is in the far distant future – or September, as it is sometime known.  And before that, some time next month, the results from my first exam.  I also have to think about what I am going to do next year: art or creative writing.  I am still inclining to creative writing at the moment, but I could well change my mind.  I will see how this course is panning out and then make my decision.

The first assignment for the present course is rapidly approaching and I have to admit that I am beginning to see possibilities in the title.  My self-indulgent reading so far has managed to change my perceptions entirely! 

Which is good going considering it is officially only week two of the course!