My (perfectly justifiable) misery about school yesterday was augmented today by a traffic jam which met me almost as soon as I got onto the motorway on my way to the place. With gritted teeth and thumping my elbow onto the ledge just above the internal door handle (I find it helps) I made my way forward at a halting pace.
My mood was not improved by the realization that I would be taking a 4ESO class for an absent colleague the work for which I had in my bag. The only advantage to all of this was that the class started twenty minutes later than the class that I should have been taking, so my latish arrival after an hour on the road would make no difference.
I arrived in school to find the usual chaos in progress. I should never have been given the class for the absent colleague; the class did not start twenty minutes later; my normal class was waiting etc etc etc. Nothing changes!
And, to cap it all off, the 2ESO class that I should have taken after my normal class have all been packed off to a technological museum in Terrassa! And I haven’t been taken for a substitution – which is what this school calls a ‘cover’ lesson or what Llanedeyrn High School called more interestingly ‘drag.’ I value such unexpected pleasures and it makes me think that the world is not entirely bad.
Talking of badness; there is talk of adjusting holidays. In my experience any ‘adjustment’ by the management is always to the detriment of the workers (cf. Baker Days). The present plan, which seems to have been worked out with the government and a few friendly, cowed unions, is that a new holiday be instituted in late February or early March and the week given to teachers be added on to the end of the present summer term. This will mean taking up precious days off July!
The only time that the meeting (about which I still do not want to talk) came alive is when right at the end the directora started talking about the movement of the holidays. Everyone (except for me) had something to say about that, while I was trying to work out exactly what had been said. I needn’t have worried, asking others the next day I found that fluent Spanish and Catalan speakers didn’t seem to know the details either! No doubt we shall hear rumblings of plans and ideas and then suddenly be presented with a fait accompli! It is the way of things.
As we are part of the private education system (although partially funded by the Generalitat) we do not have to do what the public system does. I think the plan is that we somehow make up the time by a combination of not taking the holiday and working more in the days that we have next September (assuming that I am still here) when we prepare for the next influx of students.
The hell with it all! Let my mind dwell on more congenial aspects of my life.
I have made a desultory start on the arrangement of my books into some sort of coherent order. This is not easy as there is insufficient shelf space still and I have not grasped the nettle of book destruction to ensure useful space for books that I actually want to keep.
The key to my future plans of book coherence lies in Shakespeare.
My collection of The Bard’s books is exhaustive and I have multiple copies of the plays in old and new editions. I have notes from every publisher under the sun and academic tomes of intimidating learning. What I have to ask myself is if I will ever use them again.
Obviously I need copies of the texts, but the notes? And how many copies do I actually need. In the past I kept a further text of a Shakespeare play if its introduction looked half way decent. But today with limited shelving resources I have to be firm.
That last sentence looks as if I actually have a definite intention, though the number of times that I have said the same sort of thing in writing shows just how facile it is to say something and how difficult it is to make it a reality! But I do think that I am getting the necessary psychological strength to do something – even if it is only to put the Books In Question into a box and put the box Elsewhere!
The way that I am approaching the gargantuan task of getting my books in order is to approach the almost overwhelming prospect book case by bookcase. I sort the books into category and then literature by century. Eventually I will have the bookcases with their elements in some sort of order and then I will be able to begin the tit-for-tat approach off moving the books. I have realized that, once the books are in bookcase order I will have to measure the length of shelf space each section takes up so that I can eventually decide where things can fit.
My aim is that by the end of the summer I should have my books in order. And then perhaps I can find the copy of Froth on the Daydream” by Boris Vian that I have promised to loan to one of my colleagues. Then, at last, I will know another human being who has read the novel! But where the novel actually is in the morass of my collection is not immediately apparent. I hope it will eventually emerge, as it were!
Meanwhile Ceri and Dianne will be here tomorrow and although for the next two days I will only be able to see them in the evening at least we will have the weekend together.
Roll on a decent meal in opulent surroundings with congenial company.
I have just been told that I have lost another free period because of absence. There is an instant equilibrium in this bloody place anything you gain is actively seen as something which must be taken away from you at the earliest possible moment. It is at times like this that my plans for the end of the summer term seem more fixed and more final!
God rot them all!
My mood was not improved by the realization that I would be taking a 4ESO class for an absent colleague the work for which I had in my bag. The only advantage to all of this was that the class started twenty minutes later than the class that I should have been taking, so my latish arrival after an hour on the road would make no difference.
I arrived in school to find the usual chaos in progress. I should never have been given the class for the absent colleague; the class did not start twenty minutes later; my normal class was waiting etc etc etc. Nothing changes!
And, to cap it all off, the 2ESO class that I should have taken after my normal class have all been packed off to a technological museum in Terrassa! And I haven’t been taken for a substitution – which is what this school calls a ‘cover’ lesson or what Llanedeyrn High School called more interestingly ‘drag.’ I value such unexpected pleasures and it makes me think that the world is not entirely bad.
Talking of badness; there is talk of adjusting holidays. In my experience any ‘adjustment’ by the management is always to the detriment of the workers (cf. Baker Days). The present plan, which seems to have been worked out with the government and a few friendly, cowed unions, is that a new holiday be instituted in late February or early March and the week given to teachers be added on to the end of the present summer term. This will mean taking up precious days off July!
The only time that the meeting (about which I still do not want to talk) came alive is when right at the end the directora started talking about the movement of the holidays. Everyone (except for me) had something to say about that, while I was trying to work out exactly what had been said. I needn’t have worried, asking others the next day I found that fluent Spanish and Catalan speakers didn’t seem to know the details either! No doubt we shall hear rumblings of plans and ideas and then suddenly be presented with a fait accompli! It is the way of things.
As we are part of the private education system (although partially funded by the Generalitat) we do not have to do what the public system does. I think the plan is that we somehow make up the time by a combination of not taking the holiday and working more in the days that we have next September (assuming that I am still here) when we prepare for the next influx of students.
The hell with it all! Let my mind dwell on more congenial aspects of my life.
I have made a desultory start on the arrangement of my books into some sort of coherent order. This is not easy as there is insufficient shelf space still and I have not grasped the nettle of book destruction to ensure useful space for books that I actually want to keep.
The key to my future plans of book coherence lies in Shakespeare.
My collection of The Bard’s books is exhaustive and I have multiple copies of the plays in old and new editions. I have notes from every publisher under the sun and academic tomes of intimidating learning. What I have to ask myself is if I will ever use them again.
Obviously I need copies of the texts, but the notes? And how many copies do I actually need. In the past I kept a further text of a Shakespeare play if its introduction looked half way decent. But today with limited shelving resources I have to be firm.
That last sentence looks as if I actually have a definite intention, though the number of times that I have said the same sort of thing in writing shows just how facile it is to say something and how difficult it is to make it a reality! But I do think that I am getting the necessary psychological strength to do something – even if it is only to put the Books In Question into a box and put the box Elsewhere!
The way that I am approaching the gargantuan task of getting my books in order is to approach the almost overwhelming prospect book case by bookcase. I sort the books into category and then literature by century. Eventually I will have the bookcases with their elements in some sort of order and then I will be able to begin the tit-for-tat approach off moving the books. I have realized that, once the books are in bookcase order I will have to measure the length of shelf space each section takes up so that I can eventually decide where things can fit.
My aim is that by the end of the summer I should have my books in order. And then perhaps I can find the copy of Froth on the Daydream” by Boris Vian that I have promised to loan to one of my colleagues. Then, at last, I will know another human being who has read the novel! But where the novel actually is in the morass of my collection is not immediately apparent. I hope it will eventually emerge, as it were!
Meanwhile Ceri and Dianne will be here tomorrow and although for the next two days I will only be able to see them in the evening at least we will have the weekend together.
Roll on a decent meal in opulent surroundings with congenial company.
I have just been told that I have lost another free period because of absence. There is an instant equilibrium in this bloody place anything you gain is actively seen as something which must be taken away from you at the earliest possible moment. It is at times like this that my plans for the end of the summer term seem more fixed and more final!
God rot them all!
No comments:
Post a Comment