That Monday feeling!

It’s only the second official time, but I have to admit that it gets better each time. I learned in school that there was something called ‘economics’ and that within this exciting view of reality, there was something called ‘eventually diminishing returns.’ I also seem to remember that I understood what that meant and I was also able to think of examples to illustrate this phenomenon which was not a direct take on what Professor Nevin wrote in his explanatory text book.

My hazy recollection does extend to producing a paraphrase of something like, “the more you do something the less pleasure you get from it” which should mean that every time you experience something, repetition lessens your appreciation.

Doesn’t work like that with not going to school. Each time a term starts and I’m not there, the little thrill of pleasure warms you through. Talking with Hadyn (who said nice things about my photograph of the frost fringed rose) today he mentioned that, in spite of his extended divorce from the noble profession, on Sunday evening and Monday morning he felt a pang of panic. Though I suppose that little feeling of discomfort is more than compensated for by the realization that the reality does not have to be faced!

I have to admit, though, that the actual process of teaching is something that I do miss. Reading through the Dickens I did feel the need for a class with whom to discuss the work. I have always found that discussion is the most efficient method of developing my thought, especially when you can utilize the thoughts of others in a class, and through the processes of highlighting, selecting, paraphrasing, questioning and extrapolation, being able to extend meaning in and from a literary text. I suppose in some ways that it is a form of intellectual laziness that I have an expectation that my outline of meaning will be developed by the contributions of pupils: without their stimulus (especially their ‘stupid’ comments, which more often than not indicate a more positive line of thought for me) and their response. Their questioning often prompted me to a closer explanation of meaning than I had previously thought possible. Long live pupils teaching their teachers!

I have collected my copy of ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ from my very wonderful branch library in Rumney (to which all praise!) and am looking forward to revisiting all the characters, especially, following on from what I have not be doing today (ah pedagogy!) Mr Squeers: an example to us all!

Before I start on ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ I will finish the book which Aunt Bet sent to me for Christmas, C J Sansom’s ‘Winter in Madrid’. The ‘Daily Express’ (!) described the book as a mixture of Sebastian Faulks and Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It appears to be a sort of detective love story. It’s most interesting aspect (and I expect the reason that Aunt Bet bought it for me) is that, as the title suggests, it is set in Madrid and, more especially, during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

I have read the first 100 or so pages and the research for the novel is rather obvious with one or two too many telling details displayed for our delectation, but the narrative force of the novel is building up with the major characters being brought together to work out their childhood/adult frustrations and loves. It is the backdrop of a ravaged city which is of real interest and I have to say that Sansom has produced a compelling picture of the city so that it almost becomes like another character.

I always find reading about The Spanish Civil War fascinatingly depressing. I think about what I could offer to the Republican side to give them an advantage against the vile apologies for human aspiration that the triple horrors of World War Two were: Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. For the sake of this argument I will leave my detestation of Winston Churchill to one side and agree that even his monstrousness is outweighed by the sheer inhumanity of the aforementioned trio!

Was there any information which could have made the Republican side more effective, have given them the edge in the inhumanly vicious fighting which characterised the conflict in Spain? From my reading any useful information which I could have given the Republican side would have been used as a football between the Communists and Anarchists. And I imagine that my one concrete suggestion or plea that the Republican Government send their gold supplies virtually anywhere (Mexico for choice) but to Russia would have me characterised as a fascist by the Communists or a bourgeois revisionist by everyone else: no matter what, I’d have been up against a wall and shot before I could explain a tenth of what, inevitably, was going to happen. As I say, it’s frustrating and the British response to what went on in Spain before, during and after the war was little short of disgusting. We were prepared to do virtually anything to ensure that Franco stayed out of the European War and his anti-communism suited us (or at least the Americans) at the end of the war and well into the Cold War. It is one of the great crimes of the second half of the twentieth century that we allowed El Caudillo to die in his bed: albeit bit by bit, amputated limb by limb, but it wasn’t enough. Not enough for that vicious dictator to ‘die a Christian’ encompassed by Mother Church. Sickening! But far more sickening was the attitude of the west that allowed that friend of dead dictators to survive into the seventies.

You can see the sort of attitude with which I am reading Sansom’s novel: ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ will be a positive relief!