In Catalonia you are discouraged from shaving in the bath because you use more water than if you shaved in the sink and managed the water with more economy. This would be fine if the process of getting up was at a more civilized time in the day. As it is, rising before dawn, necessitates closed eyes otherwise the sheer horror of such early rising would leave one paralyzed with disgust at a way of life which demands such demeaning actions from a thinking human being.
The truly unfortunate thing about a shaving cut (or slice in my case) is the distressingly copious amounts of blood which gush forth. Staring morosely at the mirror (such things force one to open one’s eyes) you feel yourself to be a poor and pallid reflection of the noble Homer as you vainly press quantities of toilet paper to the apparently gaping wound and watch it turn bloodily soggy!
In the way of these things (even god is not that cruel) the bleeding always stops just before you finish your cup of tea and start off for work. The only thing you have to remember is to dispose of the sanguinary scraps of unsightly paper before you leave.
Not being directed related to His Majesty the late Tsar of All the Russias the chunk of missing flesh has now been most satisfactorily compensated for by normal coagulation and the healing process will continue until tomorrow morning when my wielding of the stubble scythe will rake over old wounds and start the bleeding afresh!
My electric razor, which would be the solution to the problem, has become positively skittish in the way it approaches the cutting of extraneous hairs. As indeed has the battery which although placed firmly in the charger seems to have developed a taste for electricity from a different venue than my house. Its performance is distinctly episodic and wayward and not something with which I can easily cope in the dark moments of consciousness early in the morning.
The latest examination is just being completed as I type and in a rush of organizational efficiency I have not only created a file for the results, but I have also put the necessary computational thingies into Excel that will count up the marks and convert them into a figure out of ten. Such preparation was made more attractive because the paper looks relatively easy to mark. This is always a thought which is a hostage to fortune and there will be difficulties engendered by the kids that make the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone look like Janet and John Book 1!
I did indeed speak too soon. The paper was a horrific drag to mark and the black despair that only markers know settled firmly in the middle of my drooping shoulders and yet another massacre of the English Language was acted out in front of my palsied fingers as I fought the good fight for intelligibility by wealding my red pen with reckless contempt!
We live a life or irony. I have been smugly watching my colleagues over the past couple of days as they struggle to finish marking the vast paper waste of the mock examinations that we have been inflicting on the kids.
My portion of this examination jamboree was to mark the ‘Reading’ section which meant that I had to do the job that normally would have been done by an optical scanner. Nice to feel that the full extent of my professional experience is being utilized by my present school!
I regard such demeaning mechanical tasks as a challenge. I try and discover the most time and effort efficient way to get the bloody job done. I made myself a template and got down to the tedious task of getting the pages of little ticks and crosses out of the way. Working like a proverbial Trojan I got class after class out of the way and I soon had completed my section. I even helped a colleague with his marking.
Completed - as I thought.
Writing in the results on the school list I soon discovered that one whole section had managed to elude my dripping fountain pen. Today, after school, therefore I was stuck to the staff table frantically marking.
Marking, knowing that I had yet another class of papers to mark from an examination taken earlier in the day. There is another examination tomorrow and a further examination on Friday. It’s a great life if you don’t weaken!
The only thing keeping me going (apart from the insultingly low salary) is the fond hope that there will be a slackening in the teaching load when droves of our kids leave for the slopes.
Meanwhile I am packing an extra red pen for the struggle ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment