Grovelling about in refuse bins!
A sad illustration of the true state of affairs during a crisis! Late last night at the end of our street someone from our block of flats was taking out the bags from the skip and rummaging through them. Sad. Disgusting.
Me!
I blame the Spanish government.
Qualifications from Britain have to be ‘recognized’ by the government in Madrid. It is not enough that the school in which you work is shown the original certificates for degree and PGCE, they have to be ‘seen’ by the authorities, stamped authenticated and generally photocopied and become part of an extended bureaucratic paper chase.
All credit to the Teaching Council for Wales and Swansea University for getting the proof that I am actually a teacher and actually have a degree to me with exemplary dispatch: from telephone request to document in Catalonia only a single week!
David, from The School of the Short Sojourn helped me fill out the crucial form, checked through the photocopies I had amassed, photocopied more and sent me on my way to the department of government in Barcelona I needed to visit to get everything stamped and started on its long journey into the inner sanctums of the education ministry in Madrid.
I relied on my tom-tom to get me there. It did. Eventually.
Driving through Barcelona is a nightmare. The city has enthusiastically adopted the traffic light as a direct weapon against the motorist. Their positioning creates maximum entropy and the minimum of activity. The traffic jams thus created give almost unlimited opportunities for the verminous plague of ‘drivers’ (I use that word in its loosest possible sense) who choose the motorbike or scooter as their suicidal weapon of choice.
The bike riders were numerous and numbskulled.
They wove in and out of traffic as if they were merely moving pixels on the screen display of a computer program. Bike riders in Barcelona ride as if they had the manoeuvrability of a particularly lithe limbo dancer combined with the longevity of a giant tortoise and the invulnerability of James Bond.
My sympathy for the number of plaster encased youngsters you see in the streets of Catalonia has long since evaporated as they represent the visible sign of some sort of justified physical retribution for their insane driving. After my experiences this afternoon I think that I will start aiming for them!
Believe me you become hyper sensitive to motorised Tinkerbells who think that they are winsome emanations of delight, weaving patterns of fairy dust around you as you try and find your way through the centre of a city trying to follow ambiguous instructions from the preternaturally calm voice of a GPS.
By the time The Voice told me that I was approaching my destination on my right I was a little irritated and wished with passionate intensity that I had scythes attached to the hub caps of my car.
I was of course sent to the wrong building from the right building and then my documents were looked at by someone who had never processed this type before. The number of questions raised by the over anxious nubie about what I had given in was too mind-bendingly and inconsequentially trivial to grace with typing space and I therefore assumed that they would mean the kiss of death to my hopes for getting the documents on the move. Astonishingly all objections were (eventually) brushed aside by the official guiding my neophyte Jobsworth’s attempt to send me back for another try!
So a day productively spent.
This was a day which started just after midnight with my searching the rubbish for the academic transcript which, in an excess of tidying, I had thrown away.
Unlike Squidge who would probably have been dragged away by the police for interfering with the quiet repose of the rubbish, I found our uncollected bag in double quick time. The bag opened, I saw the rolled up envelope and was able to rescue the transcript – a little moist and a little piquant, but whole and usable.
Better, as they say, lucky than rich.
I am working towards both.
A sad illustration of the true state of affairs during a crisis! Late last night at the end of our street someone from our block of flats was taking out the bags from the skip and rummaging through them. Sad. Disgusting.
Me!
I blame the Spanish government.
Qualifications from Britain have to be ‘recognized’ by the government in Madrid. It is not enough that the school in which you work is shown the original certificates for degree and PGCE, they have to be ‘seen’ by the authorities, stamped authenticated and generally photocopied and become part of an extended bureaucratic paper chase.
All credit to the Teaching Council for Wales and Swansea University for getting the proof that I am actually a teacher and actually have a degree to me with exemplary dispatch: from telephone request to document in Catalonia only a single week!
David, from The School of the Short Sojourn helped me fill out the crucial form, checked through the photocopies I had amassed, photocopied more and sent me on my way to the department of government in Barcelona I needed to visit to get everything stamped and started on its long journey into the inner sanctums of the education ministry in Madrid.
I relied on my tom-tom to get me there. It did. Eventually.
Driving through Barcelona is a nightmare. The city has enthusiastically adopted the traffic light as a direct weapon against the motorist. Their positioning creates maximum entropy and the minimum of activity. The traffic jams thus created give almost unlimited opportunities for the verminous plague of ‘drivers’ (I use that word in its loosest possible sense) who choose the motorbike or scooter as their suicidal weapon of choice.
The bike riders were numerous and numbskulled.
They wove in and out of traffic as if they were merely moving pixels on the screen display of a computer program. Bike riders in Barcelona ride as if they had the manoeuvrability of a particularly lithe limbo dancer combined with the longevity of a giant tortoise and the invulnerability of James Bond.
My sympathy for the number of plaster encased youngsters you see in the streets of Catalonia has long since evaporated as they represent the visible sign of some sort of justified physical retribution for their insane driving. After my experiences this afternoon I think that I will start aiming for them!
Believe me you become hyper sensitive to motorised Tinkerbells who think that they are winsome emanations of delight, weaving patterns of fairy dust around you as you try and find your way through the centre of a city trying to follow ambiguous instructions from the preternaturally calm voice of a GPS.
By the time The Voice told me that I was approaching my destination on my right I was a little irritated and wished with passionate intensity that I had scythes attached to the hub caps of my car.
I was of course sent to the wrong building from the right building and then my documents were looked at by someone who had never processed this type before. The number of questions raised by the over anxious nubie about what I had given in was too mind-bendingly and inconsequentially trivial to grace with typing space and I therefore assumed that they would mean the kiss of death to my hopes for getting the documents on the move. Astonishingly all objections were (eventually) brushed aside by the official guiding my neophyte Jobsworth’s attempt to send me back for another try!
So a day productively spent.
This was a day which started just after midnight with my searching the rubbish for the academic transcript which, in an excess of tidying, I had thrown away.
Unlike Squidge who would probably have been dragged away by the police for interfering with the quiet repose of the rubbish, I found our uncollected bag in double quick time. The bag opened, I saw the rolled up envelope and was able to rescue the transcript – a little moist and a little piquant, but whole and usable.
Better, as they say, lucky than rich.
I am working towards both.
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