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Monday, May 10, 2010

Everything has a price


In spite of the fact that I actually gained a free period I felt exhausted at the end of the day. The “gained” free was spent marking and the “gained” free was also busily generating more marking for me as it was (surprise, surprise) an examination. As we have just finished one set of examinations we are now building up to the next set. It’s what we do. We have to keep in mind that term ends for the pupils on the twenty-somethingth of June so we must be careful to ensure that we have to time to fit in yet another forest of wasted paper on which the kids can scribble.

Perhaps my world weary cynicism may be explained by the fact that the weather today has been glorious: I have been able to observe it through windows as I stayed indoors with the clients. The Third Floor was calling but I was constrained to stay indoors and teach unwilling children in Barcelona instead of soaking up the rays in Castelldefels.

Tiredness seems to be informing the attitudes of many of my colleagues and I think we are all ready to call it a day and settle down to the hard work of enjoying a couple of months holiday. It is just unfortunate that this attitude has come a month early! This term and this year seem to have dragged their way along and we all want to be shot of them.

However, this is not to be for some considerable time: there are some six weeks to go before we can rid ourselves of the kids and start preparing for the next year.

My mood is not lighted to find that The School That Sacked Me has appointed a woefully inadequate person as the headteacher. I was informed of this development in a socked mobile message from One Who Knows. It has galvanized us to take the next steps to getting something done about this travesty of an educational institution. We have to believe that doing the same thing again and again will eventually have some effect on the people whose job it is to have some control on these places!

The mosquitoes seem to be taking their first tentative sips of my fine vintage Group A rh positive, and given the amount of rain that we have had there are plenty of little pools of water in which their larvae can breed and flourish. Being ever hopeful I have bought a plug in high pitch sound maker which is supposed to be intolerable to the flying pests and inaudible to me. I think that one has to have faith and impenetrable skin for this to work properly.

I listen (via my very wonderful internet radio) to the Comic Opera posturing that is taking the place of authentic political activity in the UK. With Brown’s “statesman-like” statement of his intention to resign and the democratic impetus of the Lib-Dems forcing the hapless Clegg to open negotiations with Labour I can no longer take what is happening with any degree of seriousness.

Surely no one in their right minds would want to be in power to preside over the most Draconian austerity measures that will have to be implemented when the full extent of the economic crisis finally is accepted by the blinkered majority of the British population? Perhaps the lust for power blinds the politicians to the practical responsibilities that will come when they actually take power.

Let the Whitehall Farce continue, though I think that there should be a stage erected in Trafalgar Square and the politicians should be forced to make their entrances and exits on a stage which Brian Rix made famous. Then they could all come on through one door and hide in cupboards and exit stage right pursued by a bear!

I was reading in The Week that in Belgium (a country invented by the British to annoy the French) it took them nine months after the last election to agree a coalition. That should give us something to think about! We would soon be looking back on the interminable General Election Campaign as a sort of Golden Age!

Enough! I hope my temper will be better tomorrow!

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