Now is the time to run!

Just to vary the misery, the traffic jam was on the way home today rather than on the way to school.  Apparently a lorry smashed into a panel (whatever that is) on the motorway and there was flamboyant chaos.  Luckily I was on the other side of the motorway and could only sympathise with the miles of stuck motorists that I passed.

My glib assumption that everything would be cleared by the time I started off for home was woefully optimistic and within seconds of joining the motorway just outside my school I had decided to go home “by another way.”

This other way turned out to be a repetition of my chosen route of escape during the Great Snows of last year.  In bright sunshine and optimum conditions it proved to be just as congested as if frozen.  Two-lane roads interspersed with irritating roundabouts are not really the solution to increasing the flow of urban traffic.  And it didn’t flow.  I began to feel that I had made the wrong choice and I should have taken my chances on the motorway system that I know and love.

However, in the cold light of the unflinchingly consistent ticking (which it of course does not do) of my watch I was only about 15 minutes longer in getting home than on a clear run.  And I did have my 50 greatest chamber and vocal classical pieces to keep me company.

As I was on relative unfamiliar roads I found myself not in the optimum positions on two occasions and I had to do what I despise others for doing – cutting in.  I wonder if there is a convincing piece of body language that expresses to the driver that you have just cut up that “I would not normally do this but these are exceptional circumstances and I do not know this route.”  I think not.  You just come over to the drivers behind you as a typical “knob-head”.

I find it very soothing to the heated motorist temperament to execute the traditional index finger to thumb placed on the forehead and then the hand brought down in an arcing movement to indicate to a less-than-considerate driver that his grey matter is penile rather than perceptive.  I do this in total confidence because Toni informs me that no one in Catalonia knows what this sweeping gesture means!

As soon as I had passed the hated traffic blackspot which is also known as Sant Boi, my home motorway was blissfully clear with only the normal suicidal motorists speeding their way to certain oblivion.

I did not go directly home, but called into one of the few remaining cafés whose stamps I have yet to collect on the soon-to-end Ruta de Tapas.

This was another one café we have never been to and on the strength of the tapa I was given, will not call into again.  The cold beer was excellent (for a Spanish beer) in a glass whose frosted stem made the liquid look much more inviting than it tasted.

The Olympic Canal restaurant closed at 1.00 pm today so I will have to wait until tomorrow to get my final possible stamp.

The other restaurant that we visited together was a vegetarian one where Toni refused to eat anything and only grudgingly accepted the offer of an organic Coke.  Which came from Britain as it turned out!  And which he rather liked.

The tapa was one of the more interesting ones with sundried pepper on top of slices of cucumber resting on feta cheese with a homemade bread/cake base that was the best part.  It was generous and tasty and there is no way in which is it going to win!  And I am convinced that the white wine was non-alcoholic!

There are two days left in the countdown to the departure of The Scumbags.  This year there has been a truly unholy alliance between all the noisiest people who can use the pool.  If they do not go on Sunday I am not sure how I can face school with the prospect of coming home to the raucous chorus of insensitive noise-makers!

Good news!  Toni overheard one of the shouters telling the chief scumbag that he would come over to the house and repair something “when you have gone”!  And that was to be on Monday.  So the logic is that they will be gone on Sunday! 

Great happiness!

So starts the last weekend of relative freedom before the terrible reality of pupils in the class hits us!