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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Word and boot



In spite of the spirited searching by the elegant gentleman in El Corte Inglés he wasn’t able to make very much of my almost impossibly vague indication of the book that I wanted to give as my gift for Sant Jordí. I eventually gave up and looked for something else.

I ended up with two books and a small card. The comment inside the card is almost impossibly obsequious and translated by a friend of mine (!) into Catalan.

Most of the fun in this invisible friend thing is watching Johnny Foreigner trying to find out who gave the book. I am determined that mine is going to be anonymous and I am going to say nothing. I am not sure if the colleague who came round with the names knows who I have to buy for, but I will observe the response of my recipient and enjoy!

The Divine Joke continues with the weather being glorious while I am in school and this evening even extending to the drive home. By the time I had parked, however, the clouds had returned and gloom reigned!

Unsurprisingly we are now preparing examination papers for the new round in our favourite pastime. I am now regarded as the resident expert on the writing of sentences into which a missing word must be placed. I sometimes have to reign in my enthusiasm and remember that the poor (!) kids only know English as a foreign language and my wilder flights of fancy are not strictly appropriate! I do however try and slip through a few of my favourite prejudices with each tranche of sentences that I write!

As I type Barça are playing again, this time against the ‘divers’ of Milan. Although Barça scored first, Milan have just equalized in a scrappy game in which Barça are not playing well. They do, however, have an away goal. Messi is not playing up to his almost god-like capabilities and Toni has worked himself up into a state of electric tension where I am expecting the matches in a drawer in the kitchen to burst into flame!

The game has gone from bad to worse and Barça are now 3-1 down. This is not good.

It is at times like these that I remember that I have an extra free period tomorrow!




Barça have lost! This is a disaster! I have been listening to Toni so that I can sound knowledgeable tomorrow when I give my view of the unmitigated horror that was the match!

Tomorrow also sees our annual Sant Jordí bookshop open in the library. Last year this bookshop was a very useful source of new youth literature for me to sample. I hope that I am given an allowance to indulge my appetite for the printed word.

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