An interesting day
A telephone chat with the teacher that I am replacing in my present school revealed that it is likely that he will be absent until at least the end of this month.
This is fine and dandy as far as my presence in the school is concerned but the indication that my present contract will be extended by at least a further week coincided with a telephone call from my last school in Barcelona offering me the prospect of work until June. And in the subject area of English rather than History!
Although my contract in my present school is only for a fortnight, I do feel something of a moral obligation to stay for a further week in the expectation of the return of the normal teacher. I can then segue into the job in the Barcelona school in a particularly seamless and satisfying way!
I have retained the workbook from the Barcelona school and, as all the classes will be exactly the same it will be useful to carry on when I take up the position.
Tomorrow will get the response from the Barcelona school about whether they will fall in with the plan to allow me to stay on in Castelldefels – in a purely political and professional sense I would prefer to stay on for the week. We shall see.
The memory of the opera from last night came back to me at odd times during the day and little rushes of pleasure. Although the love duet at the end of the opera is justly famous (whoever wrote it) I also like Arnalta’s lullaby to Poppea in Act II – a song which is ravishingly beautiful whatever character or voice sings it. The situation in which it is sung is slightly odd, after all Poppea has been lulled to sleep by a self-seekingly cynical servant and Poppea’s sleep is about to be interrupted by a cross dressed axe wealding ex-lover who will only be prevented from his homicide by a junior god with a penchant for protecting an unscrupulous philosopher-killing empress-banishing adventuress. It is, as you can see, a strange narrative in the opera. This narrative was brilliantly illustrated and expanded by scenery, costumes and acting. I liked it!
I have now been teaching for three days and am totally exhausted. How, in the name of the living god, do people manage this day after day week after week? Well, I am likely to find out in the ensuing months and June seems an awfully long way away!
History seems to require a lot of learning and I now know more about the Treaty of Versailles than any reasonable person should ever be expected to admit. Not only am I on terms of almost indecent familiarity with treaties which have tripped off my tongue in the past but allegedly important ones which I think I should probably have heard of.
I refer, of course to those subsidiary (yet surely crucial) treaties of St Germain, Neuilly, Trianon and Sèvres of 1919 and 1920 which did such important things with the map of the world that we are still living with the effects. In the few weeks that I have left in my role as Head of History (sic.) I expect to fill up my bag of ‘significant’ facts with which I can amaze and bore people for years to come.
You have been warned!
A telephone chat with the teacher that I am replacing in my present school revealed that it is likely that he will be absent until at least the end of this month.
This is fine and dandy as far as my presence in the school is concerned but the indication that my present contract will be extended by at least a further week coincided with a telephone call from my last school in Barcelona offering me the prospect of work until June. And in the subject area of English rather than History!
Although my contract in my present school is only for a fortnight, I do feel something of a moral obligation to stay for a further week in the expectation of the return of the normal teacher. I can then segue into the job in the Barcelona school in a particularly seamless and satisfying way!
I have retained the workbook from the Barcelona school and, as all the classes will be exactly the same it will be useful to carry on when I take up the position.
Tomorrow will get the response from the Barcelona school about whether they will fall in with the plan to allow me to stay on in Castelldefels – in a purely political and professional sense I would prefer to stay on for the week. We shall see.
The memory of the opera from last night came back to me at odd times during the day and little rushes of pleasure. Although the love duet at the end of the opera is justly famous (whoever wrote it) I also like Arnalta’s lullaby to Poppea in Act II – a song which is ravishingly beautiful whatever character or voice sings it. The situation in which it is sung is slightly odd, after all Poppea has been lulled to sleep by a self-seekingly cynical servant and Poppea’s sleep is about to be interrupted by a cross dressed axe wealding ex-lover who will only be prevented from his homicide by a junior god with a penchant for protecting an unscrupulous philosopher-killing empress-banishing adventuress. It is, as you can see, a strange narrative in the opera. This narrative was brilliantly illustrated and expanded by scenery, costumes and acting. I liked it!
I have now been teaching for three days and am totally exhausted. How, in the name of the living god, do people manage this day after day week after week? Well, I am likely to find out in the ensuing months and June seems an awfully long way away!
History seems to require a lot of learning and I now know more about the Treaty of Versailles than any reasonable person should ever be expected to admit. Not only am I on terms of almost indecent familiarity with treaties which have tripped off my tongue in the past but allegedly important ones which I think I should probably have heard of.
I refer, of course to those subsidiary (yet surely crucial) treaties of St Germain, Neuilly, Trianon and Sèvres of 1919 and 1920 which did such important things with the map of the world that we are still living with the effects. In the few weeks that I have left in my role as Head of History (sic.) I expect to fill up my bag of ‘significant’ facts with which I can amaze and bore people for years to come.
You have been warned!
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