Taxing times!

THURSDAY 12th MAY 2011

Doing my tax has taken two of us all our free periods today.  My colleague Frank has a horror story to tell of an innocent tax mistake; bravely admitted because he is fundamentally honest costing him thousands of euros.  Since that soul searing time he has been paranoid about filling in his tax form and is constantly bragging about how easy it actually is on line.

Not, of course in my case.

Frank is, however, indomitable when it comes to wrestling with websites of fractal complexity and thinks nothing of tracking down his electronic quarry through a series of pop-ups that leave me breathless.

He was not happy and he began a litany of complaints which always ended with “I don’t know why this is happening; it never happens with me.”

Frank assured me that far from having to pay €71 to the bloodsucking, rapacious bastards who feed on the innocent flesh of sanctified tax payers, I would, by contrast be in receipt of money which had been wrongly torn from my fragile pay packet.

Attempt after attempt was made to plough our way through screen after screen of incomprehensibility and slowly, painfully and very tediously we eventually managed to add information to my tax statement that meant that far from paying €71 to the tax authorities I would only pay €73!  A net increase in my contributions of some €2!

My state of mind was not markedly improved by listening to all (and I mean all) my colleagues delightedly swapping stories about the size of the payouts that they got from the tax people and also the speed with which they were delivered.  “I got €1,800!” chortled one, while another said, “Between my wife and I we managed to get almost €4000!”  Oh how I laughed!  I have yet to find a single, solitary teacher who has actually paid the tax people money rather than having been in receipt of a swift, fat cheque.  But at least I am not bitter.  Not at all.

And this afternoon to Terrassa.  I have taken advice, yet again about how to get there from here in Barcelona.  I vividly remember my first months in this country when every journey from Terrassa to Castelldefels was an adventure and no two adventures were the same.

At the end of this birthday party, I simply want to get back to my bed as directly and simply as possible and not go on another magical mystery tour of the more well lit tunnels in Catalonia.  The trick is remembering that I live in the direction of Tarragona and heading south rather than to strange places in the hinterland of this country!

Someone has just spoilt my day by saying that the weekend is going to be wet.  This is totally unacceptable.  The terraced on the Third Floor is notoriously underused, but even I draw the line at pretending that lack of sun and biting winds are no obstacle to tanning!

FRIDAY 13th MAY 2011

The trip up to Terrassa was uneventful, apart from the usual fear that I am going in the wrong direction and am going to find myself on a motorway where the only turn off is 60 kilometres in the wrong direction.  As it turned out it was a delightfully uneventful journey up and I even had time to call into the Chinese shop near Toni’s mum’s flat to find the bits and pieces that I needed (key rings and dice if you are wondering) and still appear to have made excellent time in getting from the school to the town.

A teacher never stops being a teacher, no matter what the situation and who the potential pupils might be.  And sometimes, outside the classroom, one has an effect. 

Take, for example, Toni’s mum.

Time was when arrival would be greeted with a familial kiss and an exchange of pleasantries but not the essential ingredient without which no British meeting is complete.  Today, almost as soon as it I plonked myself on the sofa I was offered an all-important drink.

And not just of tea, coffee or coke, but the all-important chilled red wine.  Bottle opened I asked if Toni’s mum was going to accompany me in a glass.  This heretical thought was dismissed out of hand, but the heresy did not last and even she succumbed to a small, one might say token, smidgeon of wine.  This is a major breakthrough in urging a Catalan at least to pay lip service (sip service?) to a very British way of saying “Hello!”

Being the sort of woman that she is, she has, of course, left most of her smidgeon and gone into the kitchen to cook and prepare for her own birthday party.  My much larger smidgeon waits to be consumed!

The television, a join effort, was duly presented to a more than content mother and when we left it was still being programmed to delighted squeaks of joy as each new station was added to the list.

The highlight of the party was the birthday cake which, as is now becoming traditional, baked by Toni’s sister.  The slightly odd thing about these sugar, chocolate and cream confections is that they are produced by someone who has been on a strict and highly effective diet.  There is the making of a short story there I think!

The drive back was noticeably shortened by the adoption of the New Route – this time the right turning off the motorway being chosen did make a difference.

Signposting on Spanish roads is abysmal with no consistency about where a signpost should be put: sometimes they are way before the turning; sometimes on the turning, and sometimes just after.  The importance of the turning is sometimes completely at variance with the unobtrusive and self-effacing indication of direction which you only notice subconsciously after you have passed it.  At night time this is even worse and sometimes the obscurity of night is enhanced by overhanging vegetation.

And don’t assume that your GPS will help.  The Spanish change, altar and rearrange roads in a whipstitch and, unless you have an almost daily up-dating service you are constantly going to asked by the nice lady to turn into dead ends, or go the wrong way down a one-way system or be asked with increasing desperation to “turn around when you can” as according to the maps you are driving in the middle of countryside as the new road is not recognized.

The New Route however is better and cuts a little time off the journey – and coming back at night with an early start the next day every minute counts.

I was tired. 

I can remember a time when I would go from school to meeting to cultural event with a game of squash pushed in along the line and then get smashed out of my head and be bright and cheerful the next day.  Now I can see a real and personal significance to the concept of the siesta!  The years are obviously mounting up!

I was greeted on my return by a satisfyingly large amount of mail which included the CD “The Sound of Poetry” - an extraordinary disc which has been masterminded by Mike Read who has induced various singers ranging from Sir Cliff Richard to David Grant and The London Community Gospel Choir to give their rendition of his musical versions of the poems of Sir John Betjeman.  I understand that the David Essex version of “Myfanwy” was a “hit” single.  Marc Almond singing “Narcissus” was interesting and created an other-worldly effect as I was listening driving along through Barcelona rush hour traffic on my way to school.  I can’t wait to hear Gene Pitney, Leo Sayer, The Rodolfus Choir, Donovan, Captain Sensible and The Eton College Chapel Choir sing their contributions!  Some things simply transcend camp and go into another universe.

I have also ordered a replacement copy of Betjeman Banana Blush which is the result of another musical collaboration this time between Jim Parker and Betjeman and I think it’s the one where Betjeman attempts a gloriously inept American accent while Parker’s tinklingly attractive music plays in the background.  An absolute must.  I have also ordered the other discs to replace my LPs that were produced in that collaboration.  Sheer indulgence.  Perhaps it might also be the time to order a collected Betjeman poems. 

Amazon here I come!  Indeed came, as Betjeman’s collected poems are winging their way to me even as I type.  Or at least they are paid for!

I have a sneaking suspicion that I already own such a book somewhere in the maelstrom that is my library – it is exactly the sort of thing that my Favourite Aunt Bet would have sent me.  I always think to myself that a copy of a book merely means that you have the facility to make someone else happy by passing it on!  And that is the only way that I would give away one of my books.

Though I do have in my possession a book which has been passed on from owner to owner for about a century – and who knows it might even have been over a longer period of time.

I own an old copy (published in the same year as the first edition 1704) of Swift’s “Tale of a Tub” and “Battle of the Books” – it even has a typographical error in the famous passage “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own”.  This book was given to Frank Thompson, my first Head of English in Kettering Boys School by a member of an old Northamptonshire family and, after I discovered it lurking among un-regarded books in a cupboard in my classroom, he gave it to me.  Perhaps it is the sort of book that I should pass on to a receptive sort of person.

The only trouble is that I don’t know any in my immediate vicinity.  To them it would merely be an odd 300-year-old book.  They would not get the thrill that I did from feeling the impression of the type and reading something that a contemporary of Swift would have handled.  I must admit that I didn’t find the works in this volume in any way remarkable when I read them in the nasty Everyman edition with small print and no notes, but I suddenly found them to be witty and delicious when they were in an edition of 1704!

The tactile experience of a book is something which cannot be captured in an electronic format.  Sometimes it doesn’t really matter and the electronic versions are infinitely preferable to some paperbacks that I have where the ink is smudgy or the print tiny on poor quality paper or where the pages are stained or falling out.  The ability to adjust print size is something which is of inestimable value and with the new technology the electronic page can look exactly like a crisp page of bright white paper but it is not the same.  

Not the same at all.

But I have nailed my colours to the electronic mast and I possess four electronic book readers (apart from computers) of which the Kindle is the easiest to use and the most useful.  I have yet to pay for a single downloaded book, but I am sure that the time will come.

I did actually try to download the electronic Kindle form of The Collected Poems of John Betjeman but it was only available in the UK – perhaps they think that Sir John’s style simply doesn’t travel!

The weekend is going to be awful with rain on Saturday and heavier rain on Sunday.

To compensate for this disaster I am going to buy a shredder and get rid of some of the extraneous papers that I seem to have accumulated and which are cluttering up boxes on the Third Floor.

Each to his own sad pleasures!