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Thursday, May 19, 2011

Day after bloody day!



Each extra day in this impossibly long year takes a conscious effort to get through: twelve more days of the month to go and then the downward slide through June to the blessed relief of the two months of holiday until harsh reality strikes again and it’s September!

The lethargy of staff and pupils, which is now bone-deep, is glossed over by a febrile day-to-day activity which uses the ever-present threat of preparing/writing/sitting/marking exams as a noxious educational stimulant.

And before anyone shakes their head in a gesture of weary disbelief at such sybaritic self-indulgence and work-shyness let them be aware of the half term holidays of those denizens of the Sceptered Isle; and the two weeks for Christmas and Easter; and the fact that there are only two weeks to be worked in July before the Brits join us in our collective relaxation.  Count up the days and our two months becomes more of a perceived advantage than a real one.

Still, the summer is the time when we get one of our notorious “extra” pays.  I have discovered that this “extra” pay is tax-free which I suppose is one reason to acquiesce to the notion of “extra” in spite of my obvious desire to have the money spread over the twelve months as a boost to the ordinary pay rather than have these mysterious “extras” given at Christmas and summer.

My tax is still under construction and I am hoping that my Union dues will be taken into consideration in cutting down the monstrous sum of €73 that I have to pay.

When last getting money from the hole-in-the-wall in my bank I was a little started to see that an extra icon had added itself to the menu of choices that I could make on the introductory screen – the tax symbol.  Presumably I could click on that and my tax would be paid.  An innovation which I did not take advantage of, as I feel there is a little more fight left in me yet!

Though not, apparently in the court case about the government cutting our pay by 5%.  State teachers have had their pay cut by at least 5% and the government decided to apply the same cut to those grant aided schools. 

The cut is more complex in our case as the government funds the teachers in the primary and the secondary sections of the school but not the nursery and sixth form – these areas are funded by the foundation which runs the school.  There is therefore a widely ranging difference of “deductions” from colleagues’ salaries depending on the number of lessons taught in each section.

The school decided to make up the deductions pending a court case against the government.  Which has been lost.  At the moment we do not know what is going to happen to our wages next year.  And I seem to be the only one to be sincerely concerned!  Unbelievable!

Given the fact that much of Spain is being deluged by vicious rainfall I suppose that I shouldn’t complain about the indifferent cloudy sunshine that we were gifted today.  The pool was a little cooler than yesterday, but still acceptable as long as one didn’t linger in one’s lengths!

The application form for seats for the opera still has not been completed and it must be done before early June if I am to have a chance of getting the seats at the price that I am prepared to pay.

Culture calls!


Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Nice things!

I have to admit that the pool was somewhat cooler than yesterday, the sun having disappeared fitfully as soon as I took to the road to come home. 

Needless to say the weather had been glorious all the time that I was stuck in school and it was only during a so-called library duty that I was able to sit on the terrace (no child venturing into my demesne) and emulate Akhanarten and pay my respects to the Aten undisturbed by any professional duties.

I used a free period to complete my reading of “Beacon for Change” by Barry Turner and my recommendation stays firmly positive.  I am now looking forward to the next book on the subject that I have ordered, “The Autobiography of a Nation” – it will have to be very well written to match the Turner book.

As if to reward me for my dispatch in getting the book read the various Betjeman CDs were waiting for me.  I now have, as far as I can tell, the whole set of the collaborations between Betjeman and Parker. 

From anyone other than Betjeman some of the “lyrics” would be unbearably twee and looking though some of the poems they read almost like pastiches of his style.  Get a dumpty-dum rhythm going; mention a district of London and a local firm; add a cute neologism and you are away! 

I do like his poems though and I am looking forward to revisiting the “songs” in “Betjeman Banana Blush” – the first of the Parker collaboration and one which I listened to in delighted astonishment when I first heard it.  Perhaps it is caviar to the general - or pure self-indulgence.  

Who cares I am going to immerse myself in an orgy of English whimsy.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Reading is best!


A second dip in the pool.

There was still sunshine covering more than half the pool when I got back home and it was hardly an effort to discard my school clothes and march resolutely towards the water.

Swimming in the pool at the moment is to immerse oneself in a shining mote filled universe.  The pine pollen is caught in suspension and illuminated by the sun so that one swims through a myriad pinpricks of gold.  It reminded me of my times in East Moors Steel Works in Cardiff when the air glittered with coal dust, fragments of black diamonds in the sunshine.

I’m not sure what I feel like swimming in the progenative dust of pullulating pines but it is certainly refreshing after the sweaty proximity of too many pupils and anyway I always have a shower after swimming!

Waiting for me at home was one of the many books that I have ordered in an untrammelled spate of book buying over the internet.

The one which has arrived first is “Beacon for Change – How the 1951 Festival of Britain shaped the modern age” by Barry Turner.

The Festival of Britain has always been one of my enthusiasms because it falls in the so-called Age of Austerity which stretches in Britain from 1945 to 1954 and the end of rationing.  I think part of my fascination can be traced back to the effect of a Penguin book called “Age of Austerity” edited by Michael Sissons and Philip French which had a series of engaging readable essays on this period in British history.  This is a book I unhesitatingly recommend, as indeed is the Turner book I am reading now.
“Beacon for Change” takes an unashamedly personal view of the period and the exhibition and produces something which is as gripping as a novel.

I am someone who possesses a Festival crown, bought for me I hastily add, by one of our Leeds neighbours who ventured down into the smoke and came back with something for the baby for him to treasure.  I have a very hazy memory of the Battersea Fun Fair, but I no longer know if it is mine or something which I have reconstructed from photographs and old film.  I remember shocking a teacher by recognizing and naming the Skylon in a photograph when the poor old festival was all but forgotten.

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Talking of Skylon, I remember something on the radio a year or so back that suggested that the thing might be lying in the Thames somewhere and that we should find, retrieve and re-construct the illuminated exclamation mark.  I wholeheartedly subscribe to such a wanton use of scarce money!  I was always in favour of doing it to mark the 2012 Olympics in London and act as a symbol, but other more vulgar counsel prevailed!

I went to the exhibition in the Victoria and Albert some years ago and revelled in the amount of memorabilia and the photographs I had never seen before.  It was a delight!  And I still have the catalogue.

The Turner book gives an historical account, but it is filled with well-chosen quotations and anecdotes which enliven the narrative.  I have read the first 170 pages in the page turning way in which I usually read my guilty pleasures of science fiction or fantasy and have had to tell myself to go to bed because, as ever, I am teaching tomorrow!

More books should be on the way!

Monday, May 16, 2011

Here we go again


A new week and a meeting after school.

I had thought that SMART targets was something I had left behind in the UK but no, phoenix-like they have raised themselves from the dust of the school and reasserted themselves as the latest in educational technology.

As far as I can tell our school has no tradition of assessment, evaluation or professional development – but, after a secret conclave of twelve just persons who have slaved away in isolation from the people they are going to effect with their decisions we have now been presented with a document which is going to be implemented next month which outlines the evaluation procedures for the next couple of years.


It is a case of “Instant Ethos”: from nothing to a fully-fledged system which could have been downloaded from any British school’s website.  The interesting aspects of any system of evaluation or professional development are things like the time allowed for the initial interviews to happen; the personal agreement which determines the scope and direction of the observation; the resources available to make any further professional development real.  I don’t think that any of the above is in place in our school.  I fear that this system of evaluation is more a box ticking exercise than anything real.

But what will be real is the influence that this new system has on the professional lives of the teachers that are bound up in the “practicality” which follows from the theoretical guff with which the process was launched.

There is nothing worse than someone saying, “I have seen all this before!” but I have and I know the consequences of an ill prepared, or worse, ill-resourced evaluation system.

Just another factor to take into account in my response to this school.

On the other hand the month is marching on to its close and we are getting ever nearer to the last teaching month of the year.

As something to keep us going I have suggested a Chocolate Week where each member of the English Department makes a chocolate confection in turn for a week.  I have discovered an excellent sounding recipe for chocolate brownies in The Week and so I am prepared for my contribution.  It will be interesting to see how my colleagues respond!

The examination season, in one of its periodic spasms, has now gripped the school and left me with marking to do which is soul-destroying tedium.  And these exams are but a taster for the end of year examinations which are yet to come.  Sometimes the end of June seems a very long way away.

A very long way away.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Justice!


In the post-Eurovision 2011 world we need to be a little tighter on our definitions and a little stricter concerning out-moded views on democracy.

Firstly, there seems to be a certain slackness about what scraps of land are being allowed to call themselves countries.  A name does not a country make, especially when Monty Python names like “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” are being countenanced!

I would like to offer my services to help the next Eurovision contest which is to be held in the country of the un-spellable and the city of the un-knownable.
Real countries are those:
1              Which have fought an official war with or against the British.
2              Which are or have been colonies, ex-colonies or dependencies of the Commonwealth (see 1 above).
3              Which have country names of three words or fewer including the definite article
4              Have been in existence for at least 21 years and have therefore come of age.
5              Which have a population of more than five million and all votes to be scaled according to population.
6              Which give their votes using the English language and do not have ludicrously dramatic pauses before announcing the higher points awarded to their immediate geographical neighbours.
7              Which are not in the Balkans
8              Which are not bloody fragments torn from the old USSR
9              Which have armies of more than a regiment
10            Which have the minimum of three of the following artists in their national or regional collections: Monet, Turner, Goya, Cezanne, Titian, Van Gogh, William Blake, Rothko, Canaletto, Magritte, Richard Wilson, Van Eyck, Constable, Rubens, Ter Borsch and Hockney.
11         Which recognize and implement Gay Rights as, given the make-up of the audience in the Eurovision Contest the reporter on the World Service of the BBC said there could be a real possibility that the hall might be at least half empty if there are problems.
12         Which sing in English and do not have folk dancers, folk costumes or folk instruments in their performances.

If these simple, humane and liberal rules were to be applied then I think that we could look forward to an intensely satisfying and civilized contest next year.
The rain hammered down last night and now at midday there is bright sunshine – I suppose I should make the most of it before it disappears!

The Summer (with a capital S) is assuredly here.  I have thrown caution, and most of my clothes, to the winds and thrown myself into the pool.  This is the traditional way in which Summer (with a capital S) arrives in Castelldefels.  To be truthful it was not as horrific an experience as I expected it to be.  After the initial shock has worn off I considered it within a degree of the perfect temperature for swimming - possibly not for lounging about in the water though.

Because of pullulating nature in our area it was necessary to break through a positive crust of pollen deposited over the water in the pool by the randy pine trees in the immediate vicinity.  Having broken the ice, as it were, I confidently expect other residents to follow.

Unfortunately our vile part-time neighbours seem to have taken up residence for their annual visit.  We expect them some time in May for their summer stint, but not usually this early.  They have the consideration of deaf cockroaches for the sensibilities of their neighbours and play loud music at all times of the day and night; argue vociferously and vilely with their recalcitrant daughter and they smoke. 

Their only redeeming feature is that they are only here for the summer and Easter week.  Their going in September is marked by our drinking the best Cava in the finest of cut glass.  Unfortunately it also coincides with the start of school, so it is not a time of unmixed joy.

As we did not go out for lunch today, we are going out to dinner and I will try to forget that I have to get up at 6.30 am for an 8.15 start in Barcelona.

Ugh!

But, on the other hand, we have reached the “tipping point” of the month of May and June is the last month of the year.  All things come to an end.

Eventually.


Saturday, May 14, 2011

A normal Saturday



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One has to count one’s blessings: we had sun this morning and into the afternoon and we had been promised rain.  I even had time to stretch out and take what rays I could.

Apart from the extraordinary feat of going to El Corte Ingles with The Family and spending nothing – not even on parking, the day has been largely uneventful.

This is of course essential when the evening is going to take all the accumulated energy that I possess to get me through the annual humiliation of Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest.  Watching the songs is the easy part.  It is the voting.  It is always the voting.
I always end up shouting at the television; demanding that we leave the EU; send gunboats to those countries that have coasts; bomb the ones which are landlocked; withdraw aid; get the International Court of Justice activated – in fact all the usual over-reaction that is traditional when watching the end part of the Eurovision Song Contest.

So far Denmark has produced something that could be popular; the Balkans are producing their usual rubbish but given the spread of voters that means nothing; Britain’s effort seemed uninspired and under-sung; Germany has the same singer as last year; most of the songs are absolute rubbish and the real star of the show is the light show.

The backgrounds to the songs are amazing and easily the most impressive that I have ever seen in this contest – but in a song contest if the single element that deserves comment is the set then there is something radically wrong!

We have listened to all the songs and we have both decided that the winner is Denmark!  Also in the running are: Hungary, Switzerland, Moldova, Romania and Spain (Toni’s choice) and Sweden, Slovenia, Russia and the UK (My choice).  I am quite calm at the moment.  The voting is about to begin.

We were of course wrong, or “wrong” because the patchwork nature of modern Europe has too many pretend countries with colonial attitudes.  No-one votes for the songs and even the worn jokes of national prejudices shown by the awards of the 12 points are wearing a little thin.

This year the last.  We should stop paying for this fiasco and make the Balkans pay for everything.



Friday, May 13, 2011

Taxing times!


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THURSDAY 12th MAY 2011

Doing my tax has taken two of us all our free periods today.  My colleague Frank has a horror story to tell of an innocent tax mistake; bravely admitted because he is fundamentally honest costing him thousands of euros.  Since that soul searing time he has been paranoid about filling in his tax form and is constantly bragging about how easy it actually is on line.

Not, of course in my case.

Frank is, however, indomitable when it comes to wrestling with websites of fractal complexity and thinks nothing of tracking down his electronic quarry through a series of pop-ups that leave me breathless.

He was not happy and he began a litany of complaints which always ended with “I don’t know why this is happening; it never happens with me.”
Frank assured me that far from having to pay €71 to the bloodsucking, rapacious bastards who feed on the innocent flesh of sanctified tax payers, I would, by contrast be in receipt of money which had been wrongly torn from my fragile pay packet.

Attempt after attempt was made to plough our way through screen after screen of incomprehensibility and slowly, painfully and very tediously we eventually managed to add information to my tax statement that meant that far from paying €71 to the tax authorities I would only pay €73!  A net increase in my contributions of some €2!
My state of mind was not markedly improved by listening to all (and I mean all) my colleagues delightedly swapping stories about the size of the payouts that they got from the tax people and also the speed with which they were delivered.  “I got €1,800!” chortled one, while another said, “Between my wife and I we managed to get almost €4000!”  Oh how I laughed!  I have yet to find a single, solitary teacher who has actually paid the tax people money rather than having been in receipt of a swift, fat cheque.  But at least I am not bitter.  Not at all.

And this afternoon to Terrassa.  I have taken advice, yet again about how to get there from here in Barcelona.  I vividly remember my first months in this country when every journey from Terrassa to Castelldefels was an adventure and no two adventures were the same.

At the end of this birthday party, I simply want to get back to my bed as directly and simply as possible and not go on another magical mystery tour of the more well lit tunnels in Catalonia.  The trick is remembering that I live in the direction of Tarragona and heading south rather than to strange places in the hinterland of this country!

Someone has just spoilt my day by saying that the weekend is going to be wet.  This is totally unacceptable.  The terraced on the Third Floor is notoriously underused, but even I draw the line at pretending that lack of sun and biting winds are no obstacle to tanning!

FRIDAY 13th MAY 2011

The trip up to Terrassa was uneventful, apart from the usual fear that I am going in the wrong direction and am going to find myself on a motorway where the only turn off is 60 kilometres in the wrong direction.  As it turned out it was a delightfully uneventful journey up and I even had time to call into the Chinese shop near Toni’s mum’s flat to find the bits and pieces that I needed (key rings and dice if you are wondering) and still appear to have made excellent time in getting from the school to the town.

A teacher never stops being a teacher, no matter what the situation and who the potential pupils might be.  And sometimes, outside the classroom, one has an effect. 

Take, for example, Toni’s mum.

Time was when arrival would be greeted with a familial kiss and an exchange of pleasantries but not the essential ingredient without which no British meeting is complete.  Today, almost as soon as it I plonked myself on the sofa I was offered an all-important drink.

And not just of tea, coffee or coke, but the all-important chilled red wine.  Bottle opened I asked if Toni’s mum was going to accompany me in a glass.  This heretical thought was dismissed out of hand, but the heresy did not last and even she succumbed to a small, one might say token, smidgeon of wine.  This is a major breakthrough in urging a Catalan at least to pay lip service (sip service?) to a very British way of saying “Hello!”

Being the sort of woman that she is, she has, of course, left most of her smidgeon and gone into the kitchen to cook and prepare for her own birthday party.  My much larger smidgeon waits to be consumed!

The television, a join effort, was duly presented to a more than content mother and when we left it was still being programmed to delighted squeaks of joy as each new station was added to the list.

The highlight of the party was the birthday cake which, as is now becoming traditional, baked by Toni’s sister.  The slightly odd thing about these sugar, chocolate and cream confections is that they are produced by someone who has been on a strict and highly effective diet.  There is the making of a short story there I think!

The drive back was noticeably shortened by the adoption of the New Route – this time the right turning off the motorway being chosen did make a difference.
Signposting on Spanish roads is abysmal with no consistency about where a signpost should be put: sometimes they are way before the turning; sometimes on the turning, and sometimes just after.  The importance of the turning is sometimes completely at variance with the unobtrusive and self-effacing indication of direction which you only notice subconsciously after you have passed it.  At night time this is even worse and sometimes the obscurity of night is enhanced by overhanging vegetation.

And don’t assume that your GPS will help.  The Spanish change, altar and rearrange roads in a whipstitch and, unless you have an almost daily up-dating service you are constantly going to asked by the nice lady to turn into dead ends, or go the wrong way down a one-way system or be asked with increasing desperation to “turn around when you can” as according to the maps you are driving in the middle of countryside as the new road is not recognized.

The New Route however is better and cuts a little time off the journey – and coming back at night with an early start the next day every minute counts.

I was tired. 

I can remember a time when I would go from school to meeting to cultural event with a game of squash pushed in along the line and then get smashed out of my head and be bright and cheerful the next day.  Now I can see a real and personal significance to the concept of the siesta!  The years are obviously mounting up!

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I was greeted on my return by a satisfyingly large amount of mail which included the CD “The Sound of Poetry” - an extraordinary disc which has been masterminded by Mike Read who has induced various singers ranging from Sir Cliff Richard to David Grant and The London Community Gospel Choir to give their rendition of his musical versions of the poems of Sir John Betjeman.  I understand that the David Essex version of “Myfanwy” was a “hit” single.  Marc Almond singing “Narcissus” was interesting and created an other-worldly effect as I was listening driving along through Barcelona rush hour traffic on my way to school.  I can’t wait to hear Gene Pitney, Leo Sayer, The Rodolfus Choir, Donovan, Captain Sensible and The Eton College Chapel Choir sing their contributions!  Some things simply transcend camp and go into another universe.
I have also ordered a replacement copy of Betjeman Banana Blush which is the result of another musical collaboration this time between Jim Parker and Betjeman and I think it’s the one where Betjeman attempts a gloriously inept American accent while Parker’s tinklingly attractive music plays in the background.  An absolute must.  I have also ordered the other discs to replace my LPs that were produced in that collaboration.  Sheer indulgence.  Perhaps it might also be the time to order a collected Betjeman poems. 
Amazon here I come!  Indeed came, as Betjeman’s collected poems are winging their way to me even as I type.  Or at least they are paid for!

I have a sneaking suspicion that I already own such a book somewhere in the maelstrom that is my library – it is exactly the sort of thing that my Favourite Aunt Bet would have sent me.  I always think to myself that a copy of a book merely means that you have the facility to make someone else happy by passing it on!  And that is the only way that I would give away one of my books.

Though I do have in my possession a book which has been passed on from owner to owner for about a century – and who knows it might even have been over a longer period of time.

I own an old copy (published in the same year as the first edition 1704) of Swift’s “Tale of a Tub” and “Battle of the Books” – it even has a typographical error in the famous passage “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own”.  This book was given to Frank Thompson, my first Head of English in Kettering Boys School by a member of an old Northamptonshire family and, after I discovered it lurking among un-regarded books in a cupboard in my classroom, he gave it to me.  Perhaps it is the sort of book that I should pass on to a receptive sort of person.
The only trouble is that I don’t know any in my immediate vicinity.  To them it would merely be an odd 300-year-old book.  They would not get the thrill that I did from feeling the impression of the type and reading something that a contemporary of Swift would have handled.  I must admit that I didn’t find the works in this volume in any way remarkable when I read them in the nasty Everyman edition with small print and no notes, but I suddenly found them to be witty and delicious when they were in an edition of 1704!

The tactile experience of a book is something which cannot be captured in an electronic format.  Sometimes it doesn’t really matter and the electronic versions are infinitely preferable to some paperbacks that I have where the ink is smudgy or the print tiny on poor quality paper or where the pages are stained or falling out.  The ability to adjust print size is something which is of inestimable value and with the new technology the electronic page can look exactly like a crisp page of bright white paper but it is not the same.  

Not the same at all.

But I have nailed my colours to the electronic mast and I possess four electronic book readers (apart from computers) of which the Kindle is the easiest to use and the most useful.  I have yet to pay for a single downloaded book, but I am sure that the time will come.

I did actually try to download the electronic Kindle form of The Collected Poems of John Betjeman but it was only available in the UK – perhaps they think that Sir John’s style simply doesn’t travel!

The weekend is going to be awful with rain on Saturday and heavier rain on Sunday.

To compensate for this disaster I am going to buy a shredder and get rid of some of the extraneous papers that I seem to have accumulated and which are cluttering up boxes on the Third Floor.

Each to his own sad pleasures!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

School grumpiness - as always!


Catalan women speak on the in-breath.

I write this as my nerves are stretched to twanging point by the continuous parallel “conversations” of two of my colleagues who speak with that unendingly penetrating drone which makes all other work and thought impossible.  They have now gone outside the staffroom and still their voices wash over me like a tide of stinging nettles – and they have been joined by a third so now there is a on-going, three-way, simultaneous conversation.  Dear god!

However, the sun is shining and, even though I am incarcerated here for the day, it cheers the spirits.

However (Part II) my second “gained” free period from the disappearance of my second year sixth has been taken in examination supervision.  Admittedly this has taken the form of a “real” free period being taken for the supervision, with the understanding that I am “compensated” for this loss by the period with the sixth which is “free”.  Therefore I gain “nothing.”  So far 100% loss.

In secondary education the myth of the “easy summer” is the only thing that keeps us going.  The loss of classes and the consequent gain of non-contact periods that allow development of resources and sleeping etc. never really occur.  Every year something or other turns up to fill the space and the spacious expectations are always frustrated.  But just as surely, like devout Jews saying, “Next year in Jerusalem!” we teachers say, “Next year The Spaciousness!”
 
At least in Spain I do not have to kid myself that “This summer is going to be a repeat of the Summer of 1976” as we do have a reasonable chance of a sunny summer in Catalonia.  I still talk about the summer of ’76 - which is an astonishing 35 years ago!  Just goes to show the quality of August in the UK!

The next examination season is upon us.  Again.  The second year sixth have taken a risible examination the results of which will bear little relationship to their final grade.  I no longer question the ways of education in this country.  That way lies madness!

A colleague and I have to write an examination paper in the next couple of days and I think that we have both effectively put it to the back of our minds – and we can’t afford to do that as I have just realized.  Ah well, something to do in my “gained” free period tomorrow!

Tomorrow is Toni’s mum’s birthday so it is yet another trip up to Terrassa and this time the return will be on the new route but turning off before we get to Barcelona city.  I hope.  This time.

The evenings are getting longer and I was able to go to the Third Floor to catch some evening rays.  Delightful.
 
As opposed, of course to the scandal surrounding (yet again) the allegedly corrupt group of scoundrels who comprise the governing junta of FIFA.  The latest scandal would seem to indicate that over a quarter of the group of all too fallible humans who “gave” the World Cup to the mighty football nation of Qatar might have been persuaded to honour this somewhat surprising choice by very tangible inducements.

I do not see how, with honour, Sepp Blatter can refrain from doing the decent thing and resigning.  He has promised to do what he has never done in the past with other allegations, and that is investigate thoroughly and fearlessly.  Someone suggested that this could be FIFA’s Salt Lake City moment when a generally perceived to be blatantly corrupt organization has to do something to regain public confidence.  But this is the same Blatter in charge who has done little to nothing to in response to many other allegations about past snouts in the bucket, and the same Blatter who is (amazingly) not merely not resigning, but is also standing for re-election presumably to continue his, at best complacent and at worst connivingly corrupt administration. 

And look, his opponent for the capo di capo situation is none other than Mohamed Bin Hammam from, you’ve guessed it, the oil rich, dripping in money state of, gasp! Qatar!  It makes you sick.

This topic leads on nicely to a future innovation in our school: teacher evaluation.  There is a meeting on Monday to discuss a document that we have not yet been given.  Presumably it will be published on Friday so we will have the weekend to consider and digest it.  All teacher evaluation, without exception, is a managerial tool to attack teachers.  The more the rhetoric is geared towards support for teachers the more you know the knives are out!

A system whose heart was probably in the right place had been instituted in my last British school but the reality, that is the allocation of time and resources to complete the evaluation were always the sticking point.

I shouldn’t pre-judge what might be suggested in the document that we do not have but it is almost irresistible and I can feel the arguments in response bubbling up from an indignant sense of betrayal.

I have undergone trial by General Inspection three times; departmental inspections innumerable; teacher appraisal ad nauseum and I am disinclined to take any more.

Mischievous voices have been raised suggesting that in the plan there will be a part where pupils will be given a voice to evaluate their teachers.
 
I wish that my response to any Catalan form of appraisal or evaluation could be like that of Spenser Tracy to the suggestion that he should take up method acting, “I’m too old, I’m too tired and I’m too talented to care.”  Two out of three of Mr Tracy’s assertions in my case are not quite enough to be completely dismissive, but, like Melville’s Bartleby, “I would prefer not to.” 
 
I do hope the text of the plan is in English.  I have every reason to suppose that it will be because I was asked for a suitable English translation of a Spanish phrase in the text.  The translation I suggested may give you some idea of the present status of the thing: “The process is on-going and has not yet completed its first cycle.”  A colleague overheard just my translation and laughed saying, “You are describing a plan which hasn’t happened aren’t you!” 

Weasel words are not as convincing as they used to be!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

It's a hard life!


I don’t know why I should feel bitter but I do.  In spite of my experience and my expectations I do.

I probably shouldn’t have crowed about the fact that I have “lost” my second year sixth class and perhaps the inverted commas tell you that any assumed gain is illusory.

Today was my first “gained” period.  And it was duly lost.  I had to cover for a colleague who is absent for the trifling reason that his house has been broken into!

But, even as the anger was rising, behold! a white knight in the form of the head of the sixth form game ambling to the rescue and has taken the class of talkative students (who I had painstakingly reduced to silence) for a discussion about their future studies next year.  I am all for that as long as it gives me extra time away from the students.

Which is hardly the mantra that a teacher should be reciting in what I sincerely hope is the midnight of his career!

Given next year and my supposed participation in the education of the pampered youth in our school, it might be the School of the Midnight Sun for a period but even the Midnight Sun sets eventually!

midnight_sun.jpg
I am no further forward in my applying for the season ticket for the opera and willingly embraced the preparations for the party which meant that I could not put pen to paper.  I am building myself up to attempt the form’s completion during the weekend when my approach can be lubricated by decent food and even more decent booze!

I can no longer ignore the fact that this is tax paying time.  The onus in Spain is very much on the taxpayer to make sure that the tax is paid and in my case the authorities certainly have not been enthusiastic in getting my forms to me.  One would imagine that such lack of interest on the part of the tax people would be welcomed, but I have been warned by Those That Know that I take such disinterestedness at my peril and it is very much in my interests to ensure that my tax is fully paid.

Last year I made a journey to the tax offices themselves and I ended up (after paying tax throughout the year) owing the tax people money.  Everyone, absolutely everyone I know gets some sort of tax rebate at the end of the financial year. but not, uniquely, me!  Even Toni has been informed that he is entitled to just under two euros as his rebate.

The form also asked him (I assume in a merely rhetorical sense) if he wanted his “rebate” to be donated to the treasury!  Even more amazingly the Roman Church in this country has wangled its way on to the tax form and you can tick a box if you want your rebate to be paid to Papists!  Sometimes a tingle exclamation mark seems somewhat inadequate.

I have more lively hopes for getting some money back this year, but that may merely be a sense of injustice talking!

At the moment the tax people seem to know that a version of me exists but not necessarily with my names in the right order.  They were right last year, but obviously twelve months have caused separation and confusion.  I can see that I will have to pay another visit to the circle of hell which houses the tax offices.  God help!

I have had to dig out my old tax forms and that necessitated a futile search through papers years old, which I no longer need to keep – I can feel an extra addition to the list of tasks for the summer itching to be written!



I don’t know why I should feel bitter but I do.  In spite of my experience and my expectations I do.

I probably shouldn’t have crowed about the fact that I have “lost” my second year sixth class and perhaps the inverted commas tell you that any assumed gain is illusory.

Today was my first “gained” period.  And it was duly lost.  I had to cover for a colleague who is absent for the trifling reason that his house has been broken into!

But, even as the anger was rising, behold! a white knight in the form of the head of the sixth form game ambling to the rescue and has taken the class of talkative students (who I had painstakingly reduced to silence) for a discussion about their future studies next year.  I am all for that as long as it gives me extra time away from the students.

Which is hardly the mantra that a teacher should be reciting in what I sincerely hope is the midnight of his career!

Given next year and my supposed participation in the education of the pampered youth in our school, it might be the School of the Midnight Sun for a period but even the Midnight Sun sets eventually!

I am no further forward in my applying for the season ticket for the opera and willingly embraced the preparations for the party which meant that I could not put pen to paper.  I am building myself up to attempt the form’s completion during the weekend when my approach can be lubricated by decent food and even more decent booze!

I can no longer ignore the fact that this is tax paying time.  The onus in Spain is very much on the taxpayer to make sure that the tax is paid and in my case the authorities certainly have not been enthusiastic in getting my forms to me.  One would imagine that such lack of interest on the part of the tax people would be welcomed, but I have been warned by Those That Know that I take such disinterestedness at my peril and it is very much in my interests to ensure that my tax is fully paid.

Last year I made a journey to the tax offices themselves and I ended up (after paying tax throughout the year) owing the tax people money.  Everyone, absolutely everyone I know gets some sort of tax rebate at the end of the financial year. but not, uniquely, me!  Even Toni has been informed that he is entitled to just under two euros as his rebate.

The form also asked him (I assume in a merely rhetorical sense) if he wanted his “rebate” to be donated to the treasury!  Even more amazingly the Roman Church in this country has wangled its way on to the tax form and you can tick a box if you want your rebate to be paid to Papists!  Sometimes a tingle exclamation mark seems somewhat inadequate.

I have more lively hopes for getting some money back this year, but that may merely be a sense of injustice talking!

At the moment the tax people seem to know that a version of me exists but not necessarily with my names in the right order.  They were right last year, but obviously twelve months have caused separation and confusion.  I can see that I will have to pay another visit to the circle of hell which houses the tax offices.  God help!

I have had to dig out my old tax forms and that necessitated a futile search through papers years old, which I no longer need to keep – I can feel an extra addition to the list of tasks for the summer itching to be written!


Monday, May 09, 2011

Culture is complex


There comes a time in most peoples’ lives when they realize that all the effort they put into their education is about to pay off.  A time comes when the full panoply of acquired knowledge has to be put to the test in a practical situation.  This is what you have been working towards!

I am now faced with such a situation.  A challenge.

Which subscription series should I choose for the next opera season in the Liceu?

If you think that this is a simple choice then I suggest that you start studying the 130 page long description of the forthcoming attractions and especially the pages devoted to how to choose your tickets.  And don’t get me started on how to fill in the application form!
The operas for the next season are (on the ticket I am likely to get) Scenes from Goethe’s Faust by Robert Schumann; Le Grand Macabre by Gyorgy Ligeti; Linda di Chamounix by Gaetano Donizetti; Il burbero di buon cuore (The Good Hearted Cermudgeon) by Vicent Martin i Soler; La Boheme by Giacomo Puccini;  Una tragedia florentina (Eine florentinische Tragodie) and El nan (Der Zwerg) by Alexander von Zemlinsky; Adriana Lecouvreur by Francesco Cilea and finally, Pelleas et Melisande by Claude Debussy.

There would seem to me to be a fair amount of work involved in that list where I have seen precisely one of the operas before and heard of one other!  Still, it is a challenge and that is to be relished.  I suppose.

Irene has talked about going to concerts in la Palau de la Musica, that Modernista extravaganza, and that might be light relief to the programme of operas!  Investigation is called for.
A long day and then preparation for Toni’s birthday celebrations – which went well with his collecting a respectable stash from the assembled guests!

The two small children factor means that we are now exhausted and reduced to half watching the remake of Shaft in Spanish.

Roll on bed time.

Sunday, May 08, 2011

Weekend Escape


SATURDAY 7th MAY 2011

Real Madrid is trouncing Sevilla to the accompaniment in Catalonia of lashing rain, thunder and lightning.  Barça were hoping for a humiliating defeat, but the other way round so that all they would have to do in their forthcoming match would be to draw and the Championship would be theirs.  Jollifications will have to wait for another week or so – and given Barça’s lamentable recent league performance, perhaps even longer!

Enough of this unnatural concern about football!

Barcelona this afternoon was sultry and very full.  The skies were trying their best to squeeze out a few drops of rain but we generally managed avoid the precipitation until after our lunch and visit to the exhibition.

Lunch was in the stylish restaurant near the Roman graveyard and the exhibition was at the bottom of the Ramblas in Arts Santa Monica and was “The End of Appearances” by Julio Vaquero.

santa.jpg
A series of largely monochrome large drawings on tracing paper of modern technology mixed with ornate wooden furniture.  The overall effect was one of otherworldly looking objects in a world seen through the medium of a spectrum other than that or normality.

To complement the drawings there were two installations of gold coloured furniture a bed, wardrobes, chest of drawers, a washing machine – all crumpled and with wax or solid oil oozing out of corners or gushing out of machines and all set on an undulating mound of black dust.  The usual sort of thing that parades itself as modern art nowadays.

If you search for meaning in the publicity for the exhibition you find such things as,  In aesthetic freedom, painting speaks when form breaks down. And so it is that representation bleeds and flows when the referents suppurate gold and fat in transit of time that is light. And so it is that the painter sees and constructs the referent. Vaquero not only perceives and equates art and the real in a system of representation and expression but also, in an unexpected turn in the history of art, assaults the objects of the world by storm and transforms them into painting for the eye of the other.”  So now you know!

Thank god our conversation and the lunch we had was a little more comprehensible!
I have now completed reading the dozen novels that comprise the Dave Brandstetter series of books written by Joseph Hansen who died in 2004.  The novels were published between 1970 and 1991 and chart the professional successes of the American detective Dave Brandstetter who lives an eventful life as an insurance investigator checking out suspicious deaths before the company pays out.

The stories are tautly written and have satisfyingly complex plots enlivened by the period detail of life in a certain sector of society in Los Angeles and the surrounding area.

Dave Brandstetter was one of the first openly gay detectives and the novels trace an interesting (but never salacious) private life sub plot as a parallel to the investigations of his public life.  We see the successes and failures of his love life and we get to know his character through a series of constants that develop through the series.

The common framework of the narrative base of the novels include repeated references to his much married father and his last young surviving widow; the tri-partite home with its sleeping loft and the faint whiff of horses reminding one that the place is a reformed stable; the modern refrigerator housed in an ancient ice box; Max, Romeros and Dave’s corner table reserved for him in the restaurant on a permanent basis; the Jaguar; the Swiss gun; Dave’s fame, wealth and personal attractiveness to both sexes; Dave’s smoking and his love of quality single malt whiskey (sic); the fact that gays recognize each other instantly; the background of southern California and Los Angeles; highly worked paragraphs of description a la Steinbeck; philanthropy; high culture and Jazz; violence and the inevitable hard talking without which an American detective novel would never be complete.

Through the series of novels he gets older and his reactions slow down.  He smokes and drinks, in spite of advice and the deleterious effect it has on his life.  He has a keen mind and takes risks that keep the reader guessing outcomes. 

I am not convinced that the “gay” aspect is anything other than window dressing and am not convinced at how much would really change in the stories if Cecil the boyfriend was Cecily the girlfriend – not much I suspect, but that does not stop me recommending these novels wholeheartedly as excellent reads.  Try them.

SUNDAY 8th MAY 2011

As other people reach for cigarettes so I stretch out greedy hands towards CD collections of the Complete Symphonies of Carl Nielsen. 
To be fair to myself I cannot be expected to show restraint when my companion in Barcelona yesterday, Irene, buys the Complete Works of Beethoven.  She bought 85 CDs and my purchase was only for 3 onto which you can easily fit Symphony No 1; “The Four Temperaments”; “Sinfonia Expansiva”; “The Inextinguishable”; Symphony No 5 and finally “Sinfonia semplice” all played by the (appropriately enough) Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Michael SchØnwandt.

I am listening to what is perhaps the most immediate and friendly of his symphonies the second.  This recording is sympathetic and shows attention to detail in what seems to me to be an exuberant rendition.  It is certainly taken at a cracking pace and lacks the indulgence that some conductors exhibit when faced with the lushness of Nielsen’s sometime showy orchestration.  I look forward to the rest!

Tomorrow is Toni’s birthday with the inevitable descent of The Family.  We have been out to buy a variety of tapas to keep them happy while the birthday cake will be provided by Toni’s sister.  I only hope that I have the energy after a day in school that starts at 8.15 am with the equivalent of Year 9 to enjoy the festivities!

After a dull start the day brightened up and the afternoon was sunny.  We couldn’t face doing anything culinary so we went out to the Maritime for lunch.

This is, I suppose, our favourite restaurant and we have never forgotten how much we needed it when we first moved into the house.  We used to fall into the place and eat food like faded ghosts after yet another day of unpacking!

I had the menu del dia and had two starters instead of the first and second courses.  I chose to start with smoked salmon and followed that with arroz caldoso which is a substantial broth of meat, fish and shell fish with rice.  The sweet was tarta whisky and the whole lot was washed down with a more than respectable red wine.  This little lot was at the weekend inflated price of €17 – delicious!

I am counting down the days to the end of June.  Already my second year sixth have departed – although they will be back for a totally useless examination in English that they have to take for purposes of university entrance.  This sounds important, but for reasons that I will not go into it is a complete waste of time.  However, the most important thing is that they no longer figure on my timetable so it is able to shrink to what would be a full timetable in the UK – such is the parlous state of the profession in Spain!

As far as I can work out we have time for two complete sets of examinations between next week and the longed for exodus of the students on the 24th of June!  You have to admire the dedication to the cause of an institution that lives and dies in the Truth of Faith in Examinations and the Power of Temporary Memory Retention.  Makes no sense in terms of education, but what the hell!

Talking of temporary memory, I am beginning to forget how horrendous the last interminable term was.  As the sun shines more and we do not have to go to school and come home in the sunless hours we forget the true misery of the dark night of the soul that a long middle term without the leavening of occasional days off can be.

It says something that, while I am looking forward to the end of June and our two months off, I am just a keenly dreading next September.  Perhaps I should take the obvious lesson from that sort of response!

Meanwhile a birthday and the next working week.