Leaving at the end of work it only took me five minutes to go the few hundred yards to the slip road to the motorway and thence to freedom. Five minutes, believe you me, is absolutely nothing, especially bearing in mind the total selfish chaos which characterized the morning arrival at school.
Parents always act as though the school has only one pupil: their offspring. It therefore makes no difference if they single, double or even triple park. It is as nothing to park on a zebra crossing; to park across three parking spaces; to block entrances; to stop exits; to throw doors open into oncoming traffic; to back, walk or run out into the road; to fail to indicate; to stop suddenly – to do any damn thing they please, because they are the school.
We teachers of course know that this is fallacious thinking: we are the school. The parents and their fecundity are merely the means to facilitate our continuing existence.
The motorways to school were reasonable (for city motorways) and I found myself grumpily reassessing the time which would allow me to sleep and get to school when I hit the slip road off the motorway to my place of work. That is to say I didn’t hit the slip road for a considerable period of time as I was held up in a scarcely moving line of traffic waiting to join the cheerful chaos of the roundabout where what seem to be hundreds of lines of traffic meet.
Spanish drivers are not given to flashing their lights to encourage hard pressed car owners to join their lane of traffic. Flashing lights are a sign of impatience and hatred. I have known drivers speed up in the inside lane to stop me joining it even though immediately after I have insinuated my way there they join the outside lane!
The roundabout is our own version of L’Etoile we may not have a triumphal arch but by god we do have bloody minded drivers who merely point their vehicles in the direction they intend to take and then press the accelerator.
The real problem is that the exit I need is one lane wide and sometimes I seem to be the only driver who actually sees that there is not room for two cars. People who are in the lane for going left suddenly decide that they want to go right and cut across my path and go down another slip road to a motorway.
By the time I have negotiated the roundabout the road then lurches upwards in a one in one gradient at which point there is a set of traffic lights. When you finally get a green you then have to contend with drivers cutting across you again as they disappear down yet another slip road to a motorway.
By the time you have negotiated the obstacle course of parents decanting their kids with unseemly languidity kissing their progeny as if they were consigning them to an unspecified stretch in the Chateau d’If and finally found a parking space you are in no fit condition to teach. This is par for the course with most professionals!
So I was not looking forward to the departure from school. Well, that’s stupid, of course I was looking forward to it, the long wait in an unmoving caravan of little emperors being ferried back home in expensive cars was what I was not looking forward to.
But the traffic was “moving” – obviously five minutes for a couple of hundred yards is not quick but for us this period of time indicate a formula 1 type acceleration away from the place. And here is where it is remarkable.
The reason for our speed of egress was that the crossing was controlled by the police. Yes, police actually speeding up the traffic. A unique experience. I even forgave them their predilection for whistles; I even waved my thanks as I sailed serenely down the slip road and sped home. It won’t last of course.
Once home and changed we rushed to the beach and there, despite grim looks and prim warnings, I charged (walked tentatively) into the rolling waves which were churning up the sand and spoiling the neat manicured appearance of the beach. After being tumbled about by waves which really were quite rough I lay on the beach and the brisk breeze ensure that powdered sand coated every crevice. One is prepared to put up with a damn sight more than that to lie on the beach in September!
Tomorrow reality really does kick in with the first of the 8.15 am starts, but it does mean that I go home early and miss the end of school rush.
Early arrival home and, in spite of the shower we have just had and the clouds which I can see in the sky, the possibility of another swim in the sea and a more tranquil number of lengths in the pool.
It a way of life!
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