Every damn day!

I am still not attuned to the time: it took my mobile to wake me at the appropriate moment this morning.  It usually takes only a single day for me to hear the terminally annoying “tune” that my alarm plays and then the automatic protection systems of my body take over and I wake within a few minutes of the alarm time and am usually able to turn the damn thing off before it offends my sense of what is right!

This morning after scrabbling at the screen to stop the noise, I eventually prised myself away from the blandishments of the Today programme on Radio 4 and set off in bright sunshine for the Place of Torment.

Traffic was heavy but moving, when I joined the second motorway that I have to take to get to my school everything stopped.  And for the next 45 minutes I was stuck in a traffic jam, the second in two days.

As I sat and fumed in my generally immobile car listening to a selection of the 50 greatest Romantic tunes (I have no shame as far as my driving listening collection is concerned and as I had completed my listening to the 50 greatest children’s tunes) I considered the true worth of my job.

A daily traffic jam of that magnitude and high frustration quotient would not, in my view be adequately compensated for by the measly wages that I am paid – and it would be rather fine to walk away from a job claiming that the transportation problems were intolerable and my continued presence could only be guaranteed by moving the school considerably closer to Castelldefels!

It is a little worrying that I am having these thoughts a few days into term when the kids haven’t even arrived yet!

Today was a little less intolerable with the three meetings that I had being of a more practical nature than the others we have endured.  I even did a little cardboard box of books opening and counting the volumes therein: just like the old days!

The delight of returning home (I eschew the provided lunch in school as though ‘twere a rabid dog, it would after all mean my staying there when I could leave) evaporated when an open window indicated that our truly repulsive neighbours were still, stubbornly rejecting our oft voiced plea for them to leave as summer is now officially at an end.

We trust that the will finally leave at the end of this week: I’m not sure that we could stand their raucous presence for any longer.

We have a real fear that the French woman who brings her brats to the pool and allows them to scream for hours without making any attempt whatsoever to fling them into the water as a way of shutting them up is actually living in one of the houses permanently rather than simply renting it for the summer.  This would be a disaster which I cannot easily contemplate at the moment.  So I won’t.

The BBC Music Magazine (to which all praise) has a cover disc of Liszt this month and a great deal of writing suggesting that Liszt is a scandalously underappreciated composer of genius and we should all be ashamed of ourselves for not knowing and promoting more of his music.  I therefore copied the disc on to my Machine and listened to “Mazeppa” for the first time in years an thoroughly enjoyed the playing of the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda and was thus emboldened to listen to the rest.

“Totentanz: Paraphrase on Dies Irae, S126” where the orchestra was conducted by Leo Hussain and joined by pianist Martin Roscoe was remarkable in the quality of the variations and anyway I am a bit of a sucker when it comes to plays on the Dies Irae – I put it all down to listening to the Music for Pleasure version of Berlioz’s “Symphony Fantastique” at an impressionable age!

One of the other pieces of music on the disc was “Symphonic Poem No. 11” which had a much more suggestive title as “The Battle of the Huns” – irresistible!

I have to get down to my homework for the Opera season soon and find versions of the operas that I don’t know.  For the first time I am prepared to consider downloads rather than actual discs.  My experience in going to Cardiff and being unable to find any discs with the music of André Grétry has been a salutary experience for me. 

There will have to be more searching for the tracks in the more obscure operas which will at least give me a sense of achievement when I finally get to see them!