It gives me no pleasure to report that chaos is facing The School That Sacked Me.
What a glaring example of mendacity that statement is! I rejoice in anything approaching mild discomfort for that institution, so that real, dyed in the walkout disaster fills me with exultation. I am getting my delight in as soon as possible because promising situations in that place have a tendency to ‘go with the money’ and fizzle out under the pressure of financial manipulation and threat that are second nature to The Owner.
Tomorrow (after my struggle with Spanish verbs in the second lesson of the week) I visit a school on the other side of Barcelona to see how an institution which parades its accreditation with the requisite bodies and values its teaching staff managed to set itself up. And keep itself going! I am looking forward not only to making some useful contacts but also acquiring practical knowledge. I wonder when was the last time that I had occasion to write something like that!
Teaching friends in the UK continue to send me gloating emails cataloguing the days off school they are enjoying because of snow.
My only response after lunch this afternoon was to lie out on the balcony with my shirt off. In the sun, I might add.
To be absolutely truthful the experience reminded me of the times that I went to Gran Canaria in the winter time to acquire the January tan that provoked such bitter comments from my colleagues in school. Winter in the UK is high season in Gran Canaria with hotel prices to match; this meant that time on the beach could be worked out at so much per minute, and it was time that could not be wasted!
I must admit that there were times that I lay on my ‘sun’ bed on the beach at Maspalomas when the weather was not as clement as I could have wished. Once indeed I lay there in the rain with gritted teeth and an unshakable faith that the sun would justify all. And, to be fair, it did. Eventually. I was surrounded by other Northern European ‘sun’ bathers who were as dogged as I in their determination to believe in the essential sun soaked nature of the damp beach that they were on!
The breeze was the real killer. The sun may have been shining but the slightest breeze made lying on a beach divested of clothing something of a trying experience. And sometimes ‘breeze’ was a total misnomer for the howling gale which threatened to rip one from one’s sun bed and to sand blast one into the bargain. The physical pain I could take as long as the buffeting by the beach did not remove the outward and visible sign of expensively acquired patina!
This afternoon the shirt went back on when the frisky sea breezes became a little too insistent to ignore. But the point was made: snow in UK while sunbathing in Castelldefels.
Ah!
What a glaring example of mendacity that statement is! I rejoice in anything approaching mild discomfort for that institution, so that real, dyed in the walkout disaster fills me with exultation. I am getting my delight in as soon as possible because promising situations in that place have a tendency to ‘go with the money’ and fizzle out under the pressure of financial manipulation and threat that are second nature to The Owner.
Tomorrow (after my struggle with Spanish verbs in the second lesson of the week) I visit a school on the other side of Barcelona to see how an institution which parades its accreditation with the requisite bodies and values its teaching staff managed to set itself up. And keep itself going! I am looking forward not only to making some useful contacts but also acquiring practical knowledge. I wonder when was the last time that I had occasion to write something like that!
Teaching friends in the UK continue to send me gloating emails cataloguing the days off school they are enjoying because of snow.
My only response after lunch this afternoon was to lie out on the balcony with my shirt off. In the sun, I might add.To be absolutely truthful the experience reminded me of the times that I went to Gran Canaria in the winter time to acquire the January tan that provoked such bitter comments from my colleagues in school. Winter in the UK is high season in Gran Canaria with hotel prices to match; this meant that time on the beach could be worked out at so much per minute, and it was time that could not be wasted!
I must admit that there were times that I lay on my ‘sun’ bed on the beach at Maspalomas when the weather was not as clement as I could have wished. Once indeed I lay there in the rain with gritted teeth and an unshakable faith that the sun would justify all. And, to be fair, it did. Eventually. I was surrounded by other Northern European ‘sun’ bathers who were as dogged as I in their determination to believe in the essential sun soaked nature of the damp beach that they were on!
The breeze was the real killer. The sun may have been shining but the slightest breeze made lying on a beach divested of clothing something of a trying experience. And sometimes ‘breeze’ was a total misnomer for the howling gale which threatened to rip one from one’s sun bed and to sand blast one into the bargain. The physical pain I could take as long as the buffeting by the beach did not remove the outward and visible sign of expensively acquired patina!
This afternoon the shirt went back on when the frisky sea breezes became a little too insistent to ignore. But the point was made: snow in UK while sunbathing in Castelldefels.
Ah!
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