Now is a good time to walk out of my job.

I started work at 8.15 am (after getting up at 6.30 am) settling into the first of the five periods that I would be teaching, only to be told that I had to take another class.  This, of course would be impossible in the 5 period day that is common in the UK.  It means that, as I have a library duty as well, I will teach solidly, without a break from 9.45 am to 2.00 pm. 

I was going to put an exclamation mark at the end of that sentence, but I felt that such an understated piece of punctuation was the equivalent of litotes and I would rather the statement of horror is left bleakly with a mere full-stop to mark it.

I am going to check into this as I appear to be the only person in the school who has lost a free period today – and how easy it is to have free periods in a day which is absurdly overblown into a eight period length!  So, in effect the 25 period week in the UK becomes a possible 40 period week in our school.  Timetabling must be a dream!

Still, it is the weekend.  Though the weather forecast is anything but positive and encouraging.

I am almost down to the last of the Hansen novels and I think that I have developed a feel for his style of writing.  I shall miss not having another novel in the thick tome that has accompanied my leisure moments for the last few weeks.

My day of teaching shame was compounded by the last of the six lessons that I had to teach was a collapsed class as a colleague had to go to her child who had been injured in another school.  I was therefore frantically photocopying the answer sheets for a listening test which could be administered to the whole of a class rather than our smaller groups.  My day has been so awful that the situation almost makes one think of Constructive Dismissal!

There was only one way to salvage such a disastrous end to the week: spend!  And spend in El Corte Ingles.

So Toni’s birthday present is now bought, wrapped, bowed – and he has to wait until Sunday to get what he actually tried on in the shop!  Buying for others only has a limited ameliorative effect so I had to get something for myself; I am therefore the proud possessor of a new piece of luggage which at a satisfyingly stupid expense should meet all the requirements of even the most power crazed, nit-picking, fascist budget airline.  And it looks nice and sort of matches The Machine.

Tomorrow Barcelona and culture.