Almost the weekend!

The looks of envy continue to justify the exorbitant price that I paid for The Machine with new worshipers fawning and begging to touch its metallic case as t’were a religious icon – which in a way I suppose it is. 

I assume that this aura of veneration will eventually diminish as more pupils (and there are three already) possess The Machine and devalue its exclusivity.  How the kids have been able to swing such an expensive Christmas present is beyond my imagination, but that’s our school for you!

My trip to school was made a little more bearable as music from the thirteenth century continued to chronicle the Dominican (let us not forget) spearhead the genocidal slaughter of fellow Christians, albeit so-called heretics given the catch-all lack of definition in the papal encyclical that justified this disgrace. 

The music (on both sides) is excellent though not, I am bound to add, everyone’s cup of tea.

I have yet to start on the long slog that will get the CDs from the boxes onto my Machine.  Much of the music on the disks I already own, but they were such a good price that it would have been criminal neglect to have left them on the shelf. 

As a cautionary tale I might add that I went into the record shop as one of my first ports of call and saw a comprehensive box set of the music of Mendelssohn that I dithered about and, when I finally decided to buy it – it had gone!  The clear moral is to spend lots, spend regularly and spend now: it does, after all keep the capitalist system up and working and safeguards my dwindling savings!

It is all very well talking about high art and the more spiritual aspects of life in Catalonia, but there are more pressing prosaic factors to take into account as well.  Housework.

When I got home I resisted the appeal of the reclining chair and attempted to cut my way through the living grease that decorates the gas rings on the cooker.  It put up quite a fight and eventually I gave in: though to be fair to me it does shine a bit more than it did.  I used two different types of detergent and a great deal of elbow grease (the latter on the principle of like combating like Mr Jenner’s invention.

I was going to do some hoovering but that just seemed like one domestic chore too far.

Yet another early start tomorrow and at the end of the day Week 1 of the ten weeks of this term will be completed.

Sigh.