Although cold there is always the sun to encourage one to believe that summer is not too far away. This is self- delusion of a high order, but the weather over the past few weeks has been unusually and suspiciously mild and has blunted the horror of distant holidays somewhat.
The drive to school in the gloom is still bloody; the behaviour of motorists suicidal; the parking of parents unconscionable and the teaching day far too long but . . . and here I pause for some sort of overwhelmingly positive aspect of life to strike me . . . and I remember the drive home from work yesterday and the ludicrously impressive sunset dusting the hills and the invigorating sight of the sea on the last part of my journey so that I tell myself to grow up and enjoy the country of choice that I was determined to live in.
As far as the weather is concerned we are having, what in British terms for this time of the year, could be considered to be a heat wave. I think that, in some ways it is inadequate compensation for the dreadful weather that we had last year at the same time. I was wandering around demanding compensation from the Generalitat for not providing me with the sultry climes that I had come to expect from the area in which I live.
The Union meeting gets ever closer and this time there will be an extra person there who will be my contact for the future. I am struggling to think of ways in which anything real and positive will emerge from the meeting, but I fear that it will mostly be plaintive mewling about the lack of fibre in the modern trade unionist!
And I have to get to the place as well. I have been on the journey from my school to the centre of the city on a number of occasions and no two have been the same. In spite of a GPS the road repairers of Barcelona go out of their way to ensure that the street on which you should have turned down has suddenly become a “No entry” and you have to drive on and double guess your way through a maze of one-way streets hoping that your essential belief that you are generally going in the right direction is going to hold good until you get there.
I have decided to make my GPS think that I am going to the Hard Rock Café because the underground car park entrance is near it: your direction of travel is essential in this city because it will define how you approach your destination.
The Union meeting is now over and I have been introduced to the gentleman who is most directly concerned with the unionization of our particular area of education.
Most of the meeting was discussing with Steve the best way to involve more colleagues in the union. We did work out some strategies; time will tell if they are anything more than a vain attempt to get things moving. As I keep telling myself “Anything is Better than Nothing” so I will have to preserve my long-suffering optimism and carry on carrying on.
Another early start tomorrow, but there again, it brings the weekend nearer!
As part of my continuing spend-thriftness I ventured into the sales (or rather “sales”) in Barcelona and in spite of lean pickings I did manage to find one or two CDs to add to The Machine. I know that no one with any pretentions to electronic maturity actually buys CDs nowadays, but I continue to be virtually unique in having all the actual CDs to go with the music that I have on my computer! Selective morality is a wonderful thing!
I did make one purchase which I am very pleased with: “Le Royaume Oublié: La croisade contre les Albigeois. La tragédie Cathare” which takes the form of a hardback book about The Albigensian Crusade with three CDs charting the history of this shameful episode in the history of the Roman Catholic church in contemporary music. It is a bizarrely fascinating and musically quirky compilation and I am thoroughly enjoying it. So far my favourite musical item has been a series of fanfares and battle calls dating from the period at the start of the “Crusade” in 1209.
My other purchases were massive boxed sets of Dvorak and Grieg because they were exceptional value with each CD being less than €1! The ones that I have listened to so far have been the Cathar disks which cost considerably more than €1 each, but in another way they were even cheaper because I bought the three items on a “buy two and get the third free” offer – but that concept only works if you buy into my individualistic approach to economics!
It works for me!
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