Sun and sounds

Try as I might I find that I cannot resist kicking countries when they are down.

This morning, after having been woken by the moronic barking of the worthless cur sustained by the ministrations of the lunatic next door at the sensitive time of 6.00 am I decided to make the best of a bad job and get up.

As I usually gain consciousness at 6.30 any disturbance at that time is the difference between dozing for a few extra minutes or being rudely woken fully.  I was fully woken by the piercingly monotonous yelp of the mindless beast so I was ready to face the day without the three hour lie in that I had yesterday – getting up at the luxuriously late hour of 9.30 am!

The view from the bathroom window is of trees surrounding what we fondly think of as the House of the Mafia.  A glimpse of the trees is important because the direction in which they are lying means that they are striped with sunshine if the sun has indeed risen.  The stripes were there, so it was a fine day.

Just how fine a day was revealed when I went up to the Third Floor and was able to lay out in the morning sunshine and pretend (with no effort at all) that it wasn’t September but a much more congenial day in the “free” months before the start of school!  God bless Catalonia.  Yesterday dull; today glorious!

Monday should mean the start of Toni’s physio and he seems to be getting steadily more mobile.  Perhaps a couple of weeks will see him walking normally.  With any luck.

Tomorrow also sees the departure of the Head of English in our school to Canada to bring back the group of our pupils who have been living with Canadian families for the first month of the term.

In spite of this being more than a three-day absence known about in advance there has been no attempt whatsoever to find a supply teacher to take the place of our colleague.  This means that classes will be collapsed and lessons taken by colleagues in school.  This course of action has been readily accepted by colleagues who actually take pride in the fact that we are “covering her absence internally” and asking for only one or two periods to be covered by colleagues outside the department. 

I, of course take no pride in this form of action at all.  I am disgusted at the supine way in which such unprofessionalism is embraced and point out on every occasion that what we are actually doing is denying a colleague work at a time of crisis when people are crying out for employment.  As we are also being paid at 2009 rates the eagerness to please an indifferent management is pathetically astonishing.

I can’t help thinking that some sort of crisis point is going to be reached when we have our first Saturday (!) morning meeting.  We are in school for eight hours a day; they think nothing of having two-hour meandering meetings after school – and in spite of that they schedule meetings at the weekend!  For sheer impudence it takes the breath away.

The opera season opens for me next month.  If there are any clashes between opera and brain-sucking meetings, I know which event will take precedence in my life!

My favourite paintings in Ceri’s exhibition have not been sold: the waterfall – a dark painting but dramatic and delicate at the same time with the rush of water giving a dynamism which is in strong contrast to the delicacy of the few slim trees at the head of the falls.  The other painting is one of convoluted tree roots which have an anthropomorphic feel.  The left hand part of the composition reminds me of a three-toed sloth the “wrong” way up with the snout of the creature pushing towards the very edge of the picture frame.  The left “leg” of the roots is a sensuous and sinuous vaguely female member seemingly menaced by an exposed creeping root emanating from the hunched and twisted muscle of root on the right.

The paintings are at present in the Albany Gallery as part of Ceri's private show and may be viewed at 

http://www.albanygallery.com/index.php?page=5&p=4

The right hand section is like the gnarled skin of some sort of prehistoric monster with the addition of part of a wire fence giving a Surrealistic touch of the mundane – though the mundane here given a disturbing force.  In the background is a bosky mountainside whose steepness forces the creature more into the foreground as it seems to make a slow ungainly progress out of the frame.

I think that this painting is a tour de force and its large size 42 ins by 43 ins must make a considerable impact on the viewers.

I do not think that it is an easy picture as the subject matter is unsettling and I am not sure that it would be a natural part of most living rooms, but it is a picture which demands attention.  I think that its size and treatment of nature would make it a perfect item to join a national collection either in the National Library of Wales or (where there are considerably more people to see it) in the Gallery of the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff.  Where the National Library isn’t.  I think that the roots make a natural and appropriate gallery picture and the National Museum should snap it up!

Darkness has descended and I should do some marking, though the stuff that I have brought home is not the work that needs to be given back to students tomorrow.

I have decided to get up each day as if I had an early start and get into school early.  Traffic builds up very quickly and the later one leaves travelling into the city the more problematic the journey becomes.  Early morning traffic is lighter, parking is easier and it does give me time to get the day organized.  As I am teaching right to the end of the day on three days of the week it does mean that the days are very long – and on days with meetings it simply does not bear thinking about.

Tuesday is such a day when a little group of enthusiastic teachers meet to discuss the format of a project based learning element in the year’s calendar.  As this involves Suzanne I will give it my best shot – but it better not last longer than the scheduled hour!  Which means that I will have been in school for just under ten hours when I finally get away. 

God help!