Another Rubicon to cross!

I knew that there was something not right when my appearance at the language school was hard on the heels of the portly caretaker. As he unlocked the school gates while giving me a quizzical look I attempted to explain that I was there for a lesson.

Now, at this point in my fluent exposition of my position using my personal form of Spanish I inflict on the unwary, I made something of a mistake. As you know I shun foreign verbs like poison and communicate via nouns, conjunctions, prepositions and the occasional adjective. My mistake, in talking to the caretaker was to suggest to him that I was there for English lessons.

An easy mistake to make I think: talking in English you find it easy to associate the lessons you need with a foreign language; when talking in Spanish the foreign language becomes English, et voila!

I have found that when I speak in a foreign language I expect the listener to understand what I mean rather than what I say. Thinking about it, I suppose that is what most people hope for!

I was told (on the basis of wanting English lessons) that the outline of the course would be held tomorrow and the lessons would start the day after. This bore no relationship to what I was told about my (admittedly Spanish) lessons’ dates.

I had determined to phone the school when I returned home and did so, loudly complaining that the dates I had been given for my lessons were all wrong.

When a fluent Spanish speaker phoned for me, he was informed by the caretaker that the only person who had turned up was “some German asking about English lessons.” In short, me!

I have had to eat a sort of humble pie and consider how faulty all my other conversations in Spanish have probably been. I would maintain that other conversations (however faulty) have all been grist to my linguistic mill as, apart from increasingly strained expressions on the part of my listeners, there was no deleterious consequence (leaving aside the mental deliquescence consequent upon hearing your language mangled) on my life.

Surely most of the world wanders about in blissful ignorance about what is being communicated and what is understood. And if you think for a moment that there is any consensus about such questions then try reading Wittgenstein or Saussure. Or there again, don’t: just look around at the state of the world as then tell me that the Human is pretty good at communicating!

That particular skill was not much in evidence in the Outline of the Course’ meeting for my Spanish (sic.) lessons this evening.

All manner and shape and age of person was scattered around the entrance to the school looking slightly out of place in the way that people do when they are starting a course in adult education. There was a disturbing number of people who appeared to want o learn Spanish and it appeared that the level of individual tuition we were about to receive was going to be limited to say the least.

Taking a seat in a very crowded classroom gave me an opportunity to survey my fellow students. In spite of squeaked protestations the person who had registered me decided on the strength of my semi-coherent ramblings in wayward Spanish that I was to be placed in Spanish II and not Spanish I. I instinctively knew that this was a Bad Thing. My feeling of horror was not lessened by hearing my putative fellow students conversing in fluent Spanish, reading Spanish newspapers and generally showing evidence of indecent familiarity with the Spanish language.

The barely audible introduction given sotto voce by the school director was in Spanish and with the chattering of the assembled crowds of learners I had to exert a level of concentration to hear and understand what he was saying which left me in an almost hysterical condition. I was working out how to demand demotion to another less demanding class when I realized that the crowded room contained students for all the courses; Information Technology, Catalan, English and a few other courses which I suspected were for the rabble of pimply youths which seemed to be there under duress. I relaxed a little.

The bumbling and gently ironic director (funny how you can tell these things even when you can’t speak the language) got things wrong, was corrected, pointed out tutors, pointed out the right tutors and generally indicated our right to eat the sparse buffet before lessons started tomorrow.

I left.

It appears that the Unit Head of Primary in The School That Sacked Me has resigned, citing the impossibility of working with The Owner as the crucial factor in her decision. She is the eighth to go in two years. In Britain the inability of a school to be able to retain senior staff at this level would trigger an immediate inspection and have the school put under Special Measures. The Owner’s horrific managerial response is to promote someone whose educational and personal skills are, to put it mildly, questionable. If there is any justice in the world (and I know just how naïf that belief is) we are looking at desperation tactics in an institution whose time has long since run out.

I am already working out ways to put my own bit of boot in – but with what I hope will be eloquence, post modern irony and wit.

A poniard is as effective as a broadsword; and just as satisfyingly bloody!