Nothing changes!

The heat last night meant that in spite of the predation of mosquitoes the window was left open. This also meant that we were regaled with the brittle forced laugh of the teenage girl next door as she showed her delight at the mawkish posturing of the males with which she surrounds herself in the pool. Her high pitched expressions of delight were punctuated by even higher pitched squeals of faux displeasure as a few drops of water touched her skin when the males went into their clumsy mating displays.

The one positive virtue this girl has is that she refuses to surface and face the world at any time before the clear afternoon. This sometimes has the negative effect of prompting her parents, especially her father, to trumpetings of displeasure and repeated howlings of her name as they try to get her up!

We have not, yet, had the farcical accompaniments of breaking crockery and slammed doors which we had last year, including what we sincerely believe to be a thrown hi-fi system during one incandescent row!

Poor weather is starting to close in around us in the rest of Spain which is fine by me as it is restocking the reservoirs that supply us with water! This attitude may appear on the surface to be a tad selfish – but it works for me!

The simple tasks for the summer are running out and I will soon have to contemplate starting on one of the more significant ones. I am trying not to panic as I realize that one thirtieth of my holiday has already gone, never to be recalled – no, wait, my calculations have been faulty; there are 31 days each in July and August, so I have only used up 2/62nd or 1/31st: much better!

Spain has just made it to the semi final to the accompaniment of car horns and the explosion of fireworks. They now play Germany in the semi finals and I know who I will be supporting!

I have re-read “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and other stories” by F Scott Fitzgerald with a view to using the stories for our equivalent of the sixth form because at the moment we are using “The Great Gatsby” which would not be my choice of book to give to students whose first language is not English. I have suggested the stories as a possible replacement, but I thought I ought to re-read them since I read them god-knows-how-many-years-ago in a Penguin Modern Classics edition which cost me three shillings and sixpence! Which does actually give you some idea of the length of time!

On one level I thoroughly enjoyed reading these stories, surprised by how much of them I actually remembered and delighting in Fitzgerald’s style and content. He doesn’t do happiness very well, but I do enjoy the misery that he writes. I think it is a function of being an English teacher that we, as a breed, much prefer to teach death and unhappiness than anything cheerful. I always cite Blake as my defence: which would you rather read “The Songs of Innocence” with their insipid “little lambs” etc or “The Songs of Experience” with running blood and “mind forg’d manacles” - no contest I think!

But how would non-native English speakers respond to them? And are they of sufficient quality to encourage the effort which would undoubtedly be necessary for an understanding of their content and meaning? I think the answer to those questions is probably yes. But I will give it some more thought until I make a recommendation. It will also give me time to find out if the edition that I know is actually still published!

I count the reading of the book as completing my task for the day. So there.

I have also reread a short book by Penelope Fitzgerald called “The bookshop” a beautifully crafted novella about a woman trying to open a bookshop in an enclosed East Anglian coastal town. It is a desperately sad (I suppose) picture of a narrow minded claustrophobic society not making too much effort to come to terms with a new sort of society. Although essentially depressing it has moments of humour and farcical moments of true nobility. It is short and sparse but what is there has a muscularity which gives the narrative a real drive. It’s a book worth reading. But not one for my kids I think. Pity.

This Sunday was an indication of what the rest of the weekends in the summer are going to be like. Parking was chaos and two cars parked across the gate to our drive. There are marked out parking spaces on one side or our road and clearly no real room on the other side. What visitors do is park their cars on the pavement making it impossible for pedestrians to pass and blocking us from our houses.

Toni has suggested taking a philosophical view of this inconsideration as there is nothing we can do about it and it is not worth the heartache of trying to keep obviously selfish pigs from doing in the right thing!

Driving into the centre of the playa area of Castelldefels on Sunday evening was a horrendous experience as not only had drivers and pedestrians obviously left their consideration at home, they also appeared to have left any clear ideas about their owns self preservation there too. Peop0le wandered backwards into the road, they strolled across the road ignoring crossings; drivers meandered from lane to lane; indication was confined to my car and U turns and reversing into the main road was common.

I had to summon all my reason to tell myself that Castelldefels is a seaside town and has an overwhelming number of visitors who come here without really knowing where they are going and, when they get here they find that there are no parking spaces within what must be a largely crippled car driving population‘s idea of “walking distance” of the beach.

They therefore park on crossings, corners, pavements, driveways and generally squeeze themselves into any space that they deem available no matter how bizarre and/or dangerous it might be.

Monday saw me trying to take advantage of the “No VAT” day in MediaMarkt. I am attempting to change my GPS for a slim and over-featured replacement. My only fear is that any machine bought in this country might have an American voice for the English directions. I will not be able to stand that. I need a British woman’s voice to guide me: in the more turbulent roads of central Barcelona you need the calm assurance of some sort of Julie Andrews prim RP voice to put a tinge of normality on what can be totally surrealistic motoring on Spanish roads.

The maps that came with my present GPS are now totally out of date and the cost of updating them is almost as much as a new machine, so I am taking the advantage of almost necessity to get a better unit. The one that I am after tells you all sorts of things which my present one does not and also gives you a “real” view of difficult junctions where a simple “Keep left!” is simply not sufficient given the sometimes fractal roads that we have here.

The Family arrived at lunch time and we all went to the local restaurant for a meal. Excellent value, though the service was not so good – though it wasn’t the fault of the waiter. At the end we had excellent value again and I saw a colleague who was surrounded by her family as well – we arranged to meet for a beer when we were not quite to encumbered!

Tomorrow the lesson with My Pupil, but I think that I shall make a day of it in Barcelona and add a little culture to the occasion. I will be able to tick off one or two more of my tasks and I feel that buying a wireless printer at an 18% discount allows me to tick one for today.