Invasion!

One of the advantages of having tile floors is that it is easier to clean up after calçots.

Eating calçots is a very un-British activity.  There is no clean and tidy way to eat them.  These are burnt over an open fire and are charred and it is necessary to strip away the burnt outside and get at the moist stem and heart of the vegetable.  Your hands get absolutely filthy and everything you touch (glass, cutlery, bread, bottles etc) gets equally filthy.

For me the dirtiness of the method of eating is an essential part of the experience and there is much to be said for the mutual wallowing in ashes and producing hands that would have had one sent away from the table at once in one’s youth!

The Cava, a superior brand, was well chilled and virtually everyone drank some of it: I must be having more of an effect on The Family than I thought possible.

Everything that could be disposable in the meal was and I have, long ago, given up my prejudice against plastic plates and cutlery when they have to be dealt with by me and mine!  Everything went into a large plastic bag at the end of the meal and we were still exhausted when we had finally cleared up!

Today has been great fun, but not relaxing and hardly the way to start a week in which two extra periods have to be coped with.  I now have five teaching period for four days of the week and on the only day on which I have “only” four I have an hour-long duty in the library.

I am getting progressively more unhappy with the way in which my teaching is being exploited.  I feel that I am being forced into a less and less professional stance given what is happening in education and the poor remuneration that it seems to merit.

If I am realistic then I know that I will moan but probably put up with whatever the powers that be decide to give to we teachers.  I don’t like it, but I fear that I will have to lump it.

I am equally sure that I will get progressively more optimistic as the days lengthen and the sun becomes more of a feature of the day.   Two visitors remarked on my “brownness” and I had only been sitting in the sun for about twenty minutes – this bodes well for the build up to the Great Release of July!

I should be doing some marking or preparation.  But I’m not going to do it.  So there.  Let the morrow bring what I will.  I will cope.