The prospect of a Galician themed lunch saw me tootling up to Terrassa this afternoon.
The pulpo was the tastiest and the tenderest that I have ever tasted and that was only one element in the meal. Vast dishes of prawns, clams and mussels washed down with a delicious Galician white wine leading to an authentic Tarta Santiago from the actual location and good old dependable Cava. It is always a delight when the end result of a cultural holiday by a friend culminates in a meal! I have suggested that she now visits other areas of Spain noted for the culinary excellence!
I have now produced a sheet giving all the information that any reasonable school can possibly need to ensure that my hard earned money gets into my rapidly emptying bank account. As this information is in the form of cabbalistic strings of numbers most Spanish bureaucratic folk subside into delighted quiescence when they see them. After a period of contemplation they might actually do something and get the money transferred. I live in hope – even if a single week’s wages in Catalonia is a little less spectacular than it would be if I were doing the same thing in Britain.
The re-entry to a centre of academe allows me to power up my tiny laptop which was bought to make the transportation of a machine to wok a little less greedy of space in my school case. The Asus laptop is little bigger than a reasonable sized textbook and although its memory is limited it should be a useful augmented notebook to use in school.
My spatulate fingers make speed typing something of a harrowing experience on the keys and the lack of a decent shift key on the right hand side is a constant irritation. Indeed this is so much of an irritation that, were I to get a permanent job, I think that I would consider getting a better computer with a more conventional keyboard layout.
This is of course an almost completely specious cavil, but it will give me the opportunity to buy another gadget with all the opportunities for delightful wandering through acres of electronic goodies in a pseudo consumer survey sort of way before I eventually spend my hard earned euros on the best value offer I can find.
At present such expenditure is out of the question and, in the immortal words of my mother during a previous time of straitened circumstances, “No more mushrooms!” My poor mother was haunted for the rest of her life by this spontaneous suggestion for financial austerity because my father and I used the phrase on various occasions to her disadvantage. What made it worth repeating was that my mother would inevitably try and voice some sort of explanation for her poignant phrase which would result in peals of laughter from my father and me.
To be fair there was something that my father said that would reduce my mother and me to instant hysteria every time and his infuriated exasperation at what he called our ‘idiocy’ all the more sweet.
Every family has its ‘touch papers’ when a word, phase, picture or personality produces a reaction inexplicable to outsiders: those clearly unfunny jokes that only work if you are united by common DNA!
I am at present looking through my files and extracting any which seem to have some general utility for a person coming into a school not knowing anything of what he might be teaching.
I remember David in Llanishen having a whole briefcase full of ‘instant class quieters’: printed sheets which could be distributed and bring a semblance of order to a class which had no work to be going on with. The fact that my classes will not be composed of native English speakers is a limiting factor for much of the material that I still have lurking on recently unfrequented areas on my computer. Still, a few extracts, a few poems, a few pictures and a piece of chalk and who could ask for more!
I am sure that Monday evening will see me with much more sense of direction.
Or despair!
The pulpo was the tastiest and the tenderest that I have ever tasted and that was only one element in the meal. Vast dishes of prawns, clams and mussels washed down with a delicious Galician white wine leading to an authentic Tarta Santiago from the actual location and good old dependable Cava. It is always a delight when the end result of a cultural holiday by a friend culminates in a meal! I have suggested that she now visits other areas of Spain noted for the culinary excellence!
I have now produced a sheet giving all the information that any reasonable school can possibly need to ensure that my hard earned money gets into my rapidly emptying bank account. As this information is in the form of cabbalistic strings of numbers most Spanish bureaucratic folk subside into delighted quiescence when they see them. After a period of contemplation they might actually do something and get the money transferred. I live in hope – even if a single week’s wages in Catalonia is a little less spectacular than it would be if I were doing the same thing in Britain.
The re-entry to a centre of academe allows me to power up my tiny laptop which was bought to make the transportation of a machine to wok a little less greedy of space in my school case. The Asus laptop is little bigger than a reasonable sized textbook and although its memory is limited it should be a useful augmented notebook to use in school.
My spatulate fingers make speed typing something of a harrowing experience on the keys and the lack of a decent shift key on the right hand side is a constant irritation. Indeed this is so much of an irritation that, were I to get a permanent job, I think that I would consider getting a better computer with a more conventional keyboard layout.
This is of course an almost completely specious cavil, but it will give me the opportunity to buy another gadget with all the opportunities for delightful wandering through acres of electronic goodies in a pseudo consumer survey sort of way before I eventually spend my hard earned euros on the best value offer I can find.
At present such expenditure is out of the question and, in the immortal words of my mother during a previous time of straitened circumstances, “No more mushrooms!” My poor mother was haunted for the rest of her life by this spontaneous suggestion for financial austerity because my father and I used the phrase on various occasions to her disadvantage. What made it worth repeating was that my mother would inevitably try and voice some sort of explanation for her poignant phrase which would result in peals of laughter from my father and me.
To be fair there was something that my father said that would reduce my mother and me to instant hysteria every time and his infuriated exasperation at what he called our ‘idiocy’ all the more sweet.
Every family has its ‘touch papers’ when a word, phase, picture or personality produces a reaction inexplicable to outsiders: those clearly unfunny jokes that only work if you are united by common DNA!
I am at present looking through my files and extracting any which seem to have some general utility for a person coming into a school not knowing anything of what he might be teaching.
I remember David in Llanishen having a whole briefcase full of ‘instant class quieters’: printed sheets which could be distributed and bring a semblance of order to a class which had no work to be going on with. The fact that my classes will not be composed of native English speakers is a limiting factor for much of the material that I still have lurking on recently unfrequented areas on my computer. Still, a few extracts, a few poems, a few pictures and a piece of chalk and who could ask for more!
I am sure that Monday evening will see me with much more sense of direction.
Or despair!
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