A cloudy morning. Heavy traffic. Sullen drivers. Resentful travellers. Bad driving. Another day in work.
Then turning the last corner to go to my accustomed parking space outside the main gate of the school I caught a glimpse of the panorama of Barcelona that our elevated position gives us. We see the whole of the city down to the Mediterranean and today the city was illuminated by the misty reflections of the cloud base bathed in the golden light of the rising sun. Cynic as I am I couldn’t actually refrain from a little squeak of delight! And then the expensive villas of the very, very rich closed around me and the vision was gone.
Now the sun is rapidly rising into the clear azure sky which makes one wonder if the tourist board of Barcelona has a celestial vacuum cleaner to make the skies flawless!
In spite of the fact that we only have two days holiday next week, there is a distinct end of term feel to the staff room. In one way this is good because it heightens the keen expectations of the holiday but the consequence of this wilful self delusion about what actually constitutes an ‘official’ (i.e. long) holiday is that we will have a very rude awakening when we suddenly have to start teaching midweek, And midweek next week! For me the horror is lessened because I can take the Thursday afternoon off as my final compensation for giving up my free periods on previous Thursday afternoon accompanying the PE teacher and our sailor kids to the Olympic Port.
When I mentioned on the bus going down to the port that I might be going to Sort she instantly reached for her bag asking me to get her a decimo. A decimo is the tenth part of a lottery number. You ay €20 and you have a tenth stake in one of the numbers entered in the lottery at Christmas time. To buy the entire number for yourself you have to pay €200 which gives you the whole number but of only one series. God alone knows how much it would cost to buy the number for all the available series. Some people do buy quantities of the same number and then distribute the tickets around the family so that the entire group can participate in the winnings.
After the draw for this massive lottery has been made the TV programmes show the winners: groups of customers at local bars spray each other with Cava as the tickets they bought over the counter come up; people are workplaces smirk at the camera and the entire workforce looks as though they are about to retire – well, you get the idea.
Our school has bought a number or selection of numbers and this seems counterproductive as a winning number will mean that a whole slew of teachers will suddenly leave with much festivity and jollifications. I know in Britain that some firms have actually taken out insurance to cover a syndicate in their organization winning a big prize and the employees leaving en mass. I wonder if our school has copied them.
Who knows who might be in the staff room next January!
Though I could make a shrewd guess!
Then turning the last corner to go to my accustomed parking space outside the main gate of the school I caught a glimpse of the panorama of Barcelona that our elevated position gives us. We see the whole of the city down to the Mediterranean and today the city was illuminated by the misty reflections of the cloud base bathed in the golden light of the rising sun. Cynic as I am I couldn’t actually refrain from a little squeak of delight! And then the expensive villas of the very, very rich closed around me and the vision was gone.
Now the sun is rapidly rising into the clear azure sky which makes one wonder if the tourist board of Barcelona has a celestial vacuum cleaner to make the skies flawless!
In spite of the fact that we only have two days holiday next week, there is a distinct end of term feel to the staff room. In one way this is good because it heightens the keen expectations of the holiday but the consequence of this wilful self delusion about what actually constitutes an ‘official’ (i.e. long) holiday is that we will have a very rude awakening when we suddenly have to start teaching midweek, And midweek next week! For me the horror is lessened because I can take the Thursday afternoon off as my final compensation for giving up my free periods on previous Thursday afternoon accompanying the PE teacher and our sailor kids to the Olympic Port.
When I mentioned on the bus going down to the port that I might be going to Sort she instantly reached for her bag asking me to get her a decimo. A decimo is the tenth part of a lottery number. You ay €20 and you have a tenth stake in one of the numbers entered in the lottery at Christmas time. To buy the entire number for yourself you have to pay €200 which gives you the whole number but of only one series. God alone knows how much it would cost to buy the number for all the available series. Some people do buy quantities of the same number and then distribute the tickets around the family so that the entire group can participate in the winnings.
After the draw for this massive lottery has been made the TV programmes show the winners: groups of customers at local bars spray each other with Cava as the tickets they bought over the counter come up; people are workplaces smirk at the camera and the entire workforce looks as though they are about to retire – well, you get the idea.
Our school has bought a number or selection of numbers and this seems counterproductive as a winning number will mean that a whole slew of teachers will suddenly leave with much festivity and jollifications. I know in Britain that some firms have actually taken out insurance to cover a syndicate in their organization winning a big prize and the employees leaving en mass. I wonder if our school has copied them.
Who knows who might be in the staff room next January!
Though I could make a shrewd guess!
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