A day to savour!

There is something about a crisp, bright Sunday morning when one is sitting next to the radiator with a strong cup of tea which inspires the soul to expressions of contentment which can only be augmented in felicity by the unprompted remembrance that Monday to Wednesday of next week is a holiday!



The virus infested bedclothes of the past few days have been consigned to the most unrelenting cycle of the washing machine as a sure and certain sign than (a few chesty coughs notwithstanding) my illness has been officially written off.


I consider it positively unprofessional to be unwell during a holiday and these three days will be the last gasp of sanity until the welcome escape of dead time around the end of the year.


For Spanish teachers there is then a truly horrific period of educational slog until the partial relief of Easter which is only a staging post along the via dolorosa which leads to the sunny days of July and August.


Ah, in writing it is but four short paragraphs from a short holiday in December to the glorious months of summer release – in reality it is half a year! Perhaps this is one time when one should adopt the stance of the pessimist and say that the year is “half gone” – though for that to be true one has to “borrow” the months of July and August of 2010 and add them to September to make the maths come out right! Which seems OK to me!


This has been a thoroughly gray day only enlivened by my continued reading of my telephone. I have now completed the Baroness Orczy novel which was, of course, completely forgettable and which displayed a thoroughly reprehensible degree of sympathy for Capet’s Widow or Marie Antoinette as she is more readily known.


I do remember reading the first of the Baroness’s novels when I was an impressionable youth and in those dim and distant days I did have a sneaking sympathy for the Royalists (Wrong but Romantic) and who could not fail to be moved by the figure of The Scarlet Pimpernel!


Them days is long gone and now I feel nothing but repulsion towards that haughty Austrian who thought it would be good fun to dress up in costly silks and brocades to play the part of a milkmaid, taking specially cleaned cows to a parlour fitted out with porcelain by Meissen while the majority of the population of the country she and her like were sucking dry were starving.


And even if she didn’t actually say, “Let them eat cake!” she deserves to be remembered by that startling piece of simple incomprehension and we need to remember that there are plenty more like her in the world today.


Talking of out of touch autocratic, unelected dictators the members of FIFA have come in for the same amount of vituperation that is usually reserved for those making snide remarks about our gallant boys fighting in whatever piece of left over business from our wrecked empire happens to touch the news.


I do think though that the unholy trinity of the luminaries of FIFA, Russia and Qatar together and then having Marie Antoinette join their oligarchic (at best) group would inject simplicity and guilelessness into a thoroughly disreputable group.


I am sure that it would be very revealing to follow the paper chase of expenses that have ensured that the “FIFA” World Cup has gone to two countries where democracy is a hollow concept – but this is sounding more and more like sour grapes and I should merely take the opportunity of wishing Russia and Qatar all the very best of what I am sure will turn out to be a poisoned chalice for the both of them. Salut!


A flattening glass of Cava from lunch is an indication of the reason that I did no academic work today. Tomorrow however, if I can drag myself away from the library on the telephone there is work to be done.


Probably.