Crimes Against Humanity

SATURDAY 26^TH NOVEMBER 2011

In yet another first in my exciting life, I am typing this while sitting in the passenger seat of my car outside the front gate of the school on a Saturday morning.

As I might have mentioned in passing, my cretinous school has decided that the 40 hours that we spend in the place is insufficient time to arrange a pointless meeting, so, in their infinite stupidity they have arranged a meeting for Saturday morning.

As I am programmed to wake up to be ready to leap from my bed at 6.30 am to miss the horrendous traffic that I could encounter each day, it was a luxury for me to lie-in for an extra thirty minutes because of the later start of the PM (Pointless Meeting).

When I arrived – not having been held up by non-existent traffic - I was hailed by a colleague from her car, who informed me that everything was locked up and we would not be able to get in, and, further if we made any attempt we would probably set off the alarm.

So, we are now sitting in our respective cars, pondering on the futility of promptitude!  Our other colleagues are obviously timing it so that they arrive on time rather that in time.  It would be a perfect example of the difference of those phrasal verbs which we are, at present, teaching to 3ESO.

The temperature is 9C and, although the sun is shining it is cold and now the Powers That Be have arrived to open up the school properly.  I shall give them time to unlock everything and then I will waltz in later to make my cup of tea.

To soften the blow of actually being in school on a Saturday we have been provided with croissants.  Croissants!  As if a fat infused piece of bread can compensate for being in school on a Saturday!  Just in case anyone is labouring under the delusion that it can, I state, emphatically, that it can’t.  Ever!

The Blitz Spirit is now imbuing the staff with the same rugged, self-satisfied determination that made the chirpy Cockneys smile in times of crisis as their city was bombed to smithereens around them.  Lack of imagination I call it!

I am now in the meeting and have managed to separate myself from the rest of the participants telling the Chair that my computer is running out of power.  I am therefore seated behind the talkers and attached to a power source.  I have also lost the will to live.

All my colleagues seem to have put the fact that this meeting is being held on a Saturday behind them and are all enjoying the sound of their own voices.  As they are all speaking in Spanish or Catalan – I do not share their enjoyment.  Not that I would even if I could perfectly understand the trivia that they are mouthing.

We have now been here for an hour and a quarter and we are still on the first class in 1BXT.  This is disaster beyond feeling.  And they do not shut up!  And they all speak at once!  This is almost perfect torture!

The meeting lasted for three and a quarter hours.  Three and a quarter hours!  On a Saturday morning!  There are some cultural differences that, try as you might, you cannot understand or forgive.

We went out to lunch almost as soon as my simmering self had returned to Castelldefels.  I had an excellent fideua starter and a mediocre piece of fish for the main with a healthy finish with fresh melon.  All washed down with vino tinto y Casera.  Toni now has indigestion to add to his flu and bad knee, so his meal was a little more circumspect and morose.

To try and lighten my mood of resentment we went to Alcampo to buy a book.  The fact that Toni fell in with this plan perhaps indicates the level of disgruntlement that I was still feeling!

No buyable books caught my eye, but we did do two pieces of Christmas shopping – in late November: a feat not matched since the days when I used to spend a year buying the contents of Rhys and Gwen’s Christmas stockings!

SUNDAY 27^TH NOVEMBER 2011

The day started well with clear blue skies, but they have soon clouded over and we are now back to that strange default position of Catalan weather of being “brightly dull”.  The other default position of course is that the curs next door (canine rather than human, but there again . . . ) have started their usual morning bay with the crippled dog doing his usual “on the second every second” yelp which is perfectly judged by the mangy beast to set neighbours’ nerves on edge.

An uneasy quiet has descended on the menagerie next door.  One can take no pleasure in the silence because one is constantly waiting for it to be broken.  Where O where are hardpad and distempter when you need them!

After the totally unjustifiable stealing of a weekend morning from teachers who had already been in school for 41·25 hours our thoughts turn, inevitably to the nearest holidays. 

The actual Christmas holidays seem hopelessly distant so we have turned our expectant gaze towards the second week in December which will take us into a bizarre week when we have a sort of week’s holiday but we have to come in on the Wednesday and Friday! 

This sort of idiocy is par for the course and we are praying that students, and more importantly students’ parents treat what I call “Stupid Week” with the contempt that it deserves and stay away for all five days. 

It does seem, to any normal person, like an open invitation to truancy, but our parents are notoriously given to the flinging of their precious dears at us at every opportunity in order to transfer the responsibility for their care, so it is almost guaranteed that there will be just a sufficient number of pupils to ruin our two days of possible peace!  After all school only run efficiently and pleasantly when there are no students in them!

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I have been delving into the pleasures of literature that is “life + 70 years” copyright expired.

My latest indulgence was an offering by S S Van Dine called “The ‘Canary´Murder Case.  This is set in America in New York and, in an not exactly original way, has an wealthy amateur detective as the main intellectual character. 

Vane, as he is called, is a remarkable construction much given to a cod English use of the apostrophe and a way of speaking which is overwhelmingly camp.  He is “artistic” and litters his speech with an array of references to high art.  French and Latin phrases abound and casual references to the Classics pepper his drawling observations. 

The novel, no Detective Story, was written in 1927 and gives something of a sepia tinted view of a completely different way of life.  This is something more than pulp, but not much more.  I loved it!  And have downloaded a variety of other works by The Master all of which start with the definite article and end with “Murder Case”.  S S Van Dine now has the largest number of individual works in one of my virtual libraries!  Not many English Teachers with a shred of intellectual vanity left in their souls can say that!

At least reading these books drives from my mind the hurt of the lost weekend morning!