Sleep did not pay any sort of extended visit to me last night with the result that the world’s most irritating alarm tone saw a resentful and unbelieving arm reach out for the blessed silence that a finger on the illuminated screen would bring.
Unfortunately I was not able to sink back into the luxury of even partial oblivion as the road situation of Barcelona necessitates a strict timetable being adhered to in the mornings.
As if to mock my unrested soul the standard of driving along the motorway to school was refreshingly appalling. I use the adjective advisedly as the sheer awfulness of it all meant that any approach other than self-defensive alertness would have been tantamount to suicide. Drivers (male: under 25) risked mayhem to gain a single car space. One driver (male: under 25) had obviously recently graduated from a motorcycle as he drove the car as if it were a slim, manoeuvrable two-wheeled vehicle rather than a squat, space eating car. Watching the insanely reckless movements of this idiot left me open mouthed with a mixture of horror and terror. As he was not alone in treating the crowded motorway as if it were empty, you can imagine the somewhat unsettled state of mind I was in by the time I exited the motorway.
To exit the motorway is to change one type of madness for another. The roundabout which greets one at the top of the slip road is the whirling vortex for a number of roads and all cars (with of course the signal exception of mine) drive as if god-given pathways through the mayhem had been cleared specifically for them. Keeping to your lane is a hair-raising and soul fluttering experience.
School, by the time you have ascended the virtually perpendicular hill, appears like a haven of tranquillity and sanity. After a cup of tea life does not seem as woefully random as it did on the drive up.
Classes waiting to be taught soon bring any tranquillity back to a general sense of fatalistic unreality – very much like the scenery in the surrealistically anthropomorphic landscape creations of Yves Tanguey. In Week 13 of this awful term, believe you me; I know what it is to be in one of those canvases!
I have various mantras to get me through sleep deprived, school depressed feelings of desolation. The one I choose to recite to myself now is, “When in doubt – spend!”
The trek along the beach in Gran Canaria (five working days away) necessitates the carrying of various elements in the sun worshiper’s catalogue for the satisfaction of the body from the brain outwards. The collapsible backpack that I once owned has now faded into the general area of the “unbought” and, to quote Winnie-the-Pooh, the more I looked for it the more it wasn’t there. It therefore needs to be “rebought” and that means calling into a supermarket on my way home and a little retail therapy always gives me a jolt out of work-induced lethargy.
The time approaches when, in the real world, there might be a pause for lunch. Here it is merely the time for another lesson. By the time lunch is actually finished I would welcome a short siesta – but there are two more lessons to be taught before escape can be contemplated.
It’s a hard old life, but the days are counting down!
In spite of temptations I still have not read any of the other eight volumes of the Bradstetter detective novels. The only thing which can stand in my way to complete the plan of reading them on the beach is the weight of the volume itself. As I understand it the packing of the suitcase is going to be of scientific exactness so that any extra will bump the case up to the next stage of expense in the ever-escalating costs of a Ryanair flight!
The continuing crisis in Spain continues to amuse. At least it would amuse if it wasn’t something in which I am involved. The latest laughable attempt to save money and persecute teachers has taken the form of the threat of more hours worked for less pay in schools. As usual the history of Trade Unionism provides us with a lesson, “Not a minute on the day, not a penny off the pay” was the slogan of miners in the 1926 General Strike when they were of course hung out to dry. Which also provides a lesson for the success of action against government.
Because of the appalling standards of educational achievement in Spanish schools there was a governmental initiative to increase the number of hours worked by teachers - the infamous “sixth hour”.
As far as I can work out the government is “speaking” about changing the system so that in some schools, oddly, they are going to end up working extra hours for no extra pay. The situation is confused, but I think the fact that we work every hour god sent (and a few extra) including the fact that we are discouraged from leaving the premises at any time until the end of school means that we are technically available for lessons or cover or something for more than the number of hours that are being suggested.
In other schools you only have to be in the school for the hours that you are teaching; in our school you are only allowed time off if you have had an early start at 8.15 am and, as that is 30 minutes before the normal start of school you are allowed to take a half hour at the beginning or end of the day if you have a “free” period at that time.
After a 5% cut in teachers’ wages last year (made good it has to be said by our saintly school) one can imagine anything from this panicking government. Sooner or later (probably later) even the supine Spanish teachers must surely take some sort of action to protect their already eroded situation. Not in our school, of course, naturally – but elsewhere, surely?
There is absolutely no feeling of end of term in the school. None. We gave our sixth form an examination today; tomorrow the 3ESO have to produce a test letter – and so it goes on. Nothing to suggest that we are coming to the end of an almost un-enduringly long and tedious term.
I have done my best to try and inject a certain degree of expectation into my weepingly sincere countdown to escape and the holidays – but the teachers in our school are seemingly programmed to teach, prepare and mark in a way which is foreign and unfeelingly unnecessary to a normal British teacher!
“Tired” and “jaded” are not the appropriate prompts to encourage pondering on my attitude towards my chosen profession and present location. But I do feel myself out of sympathy with the educational ethos and clients in my present school. I am aware that, at this time of crisis having a job gives a security which a frighteningly high percentage of the working population of Spain does not have. But . . .
We are getting ever nearer to the result of one of the most highly anticipated and closely fought competitions this year: the Teachers’ Section of the St Jordi’s Day Maths Department Photographic Competition of our school.
In the past a colleague and I have marvelled at the individualistic decisions made and the histrionic response of the winners. This year what can only be described as a concerted effort has been made by the English Department with no fewer than four members of the department submitting photographs. My own efforts were rushed and submitted at the hysterical insistence of a member of the maths department who said that no teachers had entered and I had to. I put together a small portfolio of four shots and hoped for the best.
The best, in my opinion, are two shots from two members of the department and I have pinned my hopes of breaking the stranglehold of the Old Guard on this important competition on a short of symmetrical dhows and another of the inside of the Pantheon in Rome. Of my own shots I will draw a discrete veil, though I have had some shocked approbation!
Three working days left to escape
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