The staff room today has been reminiscent of the scriptorium of a monastery with all bothers (and sisters) industriously scratching away with their pens marking examinations – which in this school are definite obras de dios!
Two teaching lessons; two invigilation periods and then solid soul destroying marking to make up the rest of the day.
The worst part of the day, in a day full of worst parts, was the casual enquiry from a colleague about some examination papers that I vaguely remembered collecting last Friday. I knew where they ought to be and at the end of the day I went to get them. And got them I did. Admittedly in the second place I looked. But they are now safely in the pigeon hole where they should have been placed last Friday. Better late than never!
I have more than broken the back of the marking, but have been strangely (!) disinclined to complete it this evening. Instead we have gone out for a meal in our usual restaurant.
Before settling down for a meal I went into the Worst Bank in the World to see what had happened recently with my supposedly cancelled account.
When I last left the ‘bank’ I withdrew €50 from the surprising €57 that was still there. I had worked out how to ‘utilize’ the remaining money: use it to add to the credit on my mobile phone! Alas! When I put in my bank book to check on my dead account I found that bank charges – amazingly just enough to take all the remaining money – had brought my account to zero! True to the end, BBVA showed itself to be grasping, avaricious, unscrupulous, greedy, unprincipled, and a whole dictionary of unfavourable adjectives that I am too weary to type out!
‘Big Brother’ – which seems to be a permanent feature of Spanish television – has driven me to the third floor where I can contemplate what is still to be done to make the area fit for reasonable work.
I have been re-reading some of Isaac Azimov’s short stories and I am newly amazed at their easy facility and the incredibly dated feel that many of them have, given the advances in computer technology and personal communications. Say what you like about Azimov, he does write a competent story; not earth shattering perhaps, but always thought provoking. Reading the stories one after the other is a bit like eating rich chocolate creams: you get a little nauseous after a while! It was said of his writing that he had a book in every major section of the Dewy Decimal System. Sometimes his stories read like that as well!
Tomorrow the school system is back to normal and we have to start giving the examination papers back for the pupils.
In our school, where nothing is the fault of the pupils, their outraged demands for extra marks because of some perceived injustice in the teaching has to be heard to be believed. Never is the fact that they might not have done enough work ever adduced to explain their less than perfect performance!
Time for some soothing music: Mahler perhaps.
Two teaching lessons; two invigilation periods and then solid soul destroying marking to make up the rest of the day.
The worst part of the day, in a day full of worst parts, was the casual enquiry from a colleague about some examination papers that I vaguely remembered collecting last Friday. I knew where they ought to be and at the end of the day I went to get them. And got them I did. Admittedly in the second place I looked. But they are now safely in the pigeon hole where they should have been placed last Friday. Better late than never!
I have more than broken the back of the marking, but have been strangely (!) disinclined to complete it this evening. Instead we have gone out for a meal in our usual restaurant.
Before settling down for a meal I went into the Worst Bank in the World to see what had happened recently with my supposedly cancelled account.
When I last left the ‘bank’ I withdrew €50 from the surprising €57 that was still there. I had worked out how to ‘utilize’ the remaining money: use it to add to the credit on my mobile phone! Alas! When I put in my bank book to check on my dead account I found that bank charges – amazingly just enough to take all the remaining money – had brought my account to zero! True to the end, BBVA showed itself to be grasping, avaricious, unscrupulous, greedy, unprincipled, and a whole dictionary of unfavourable adjectives that I am too weary to type out!
‘Big Brother’ – which seems to be a permanent feature of Spanish television – has driven me to the third floor where I can contemplate what is still to be done to make the area fit for reasonable work.
I have been re-reading some of Isaac Azimov’s short stories and I am newly amazed at their easy facility and the incredibly dated feel that many of them have, given the advances in computer technology and personal communications. Say what you like about Azimov, he does write a competent story; not earth shattering perhaps, but always thought provoking. Reading the stories one after the other is a bit like eating rich chocolate creams: you get a little nauseous after a while! It was said of his writing that he had a book in every major section of the Dewy Decimal System. Sometimes his stories read like that as well!
Tomorrow the school system is back to normal and we have to start giving the examination papers back for the pupils.
In our school, where nothing is the fault of the pupils, their outraged demands for extra marks because of some perceived injustice in the teaching has to be heard to be believed. Never is the fact that they might not have done enough work ever adduced to explain their less than perfect performance!
Time for some soothing music: Mahler perhaps.
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