Changing Times

Driving into school today was a nightmare with the traffic jam (for no apparent reason) stretching for well over a mile.  School itself smells fragrantly of raw sewerage as the torrential rains have flooded something or other resulting in the roads being covered with stones and mud and the smell of shit over everything.

Nothing has been done to cover the absence of a colleague who has had a terrible bereavement and other people appear to be away.  There is a barely repressed sense of panic as the school staggers on only with the underpaid help of the teachers who are actually here.

OK, it’s not a normal day, but it does make you wonder, apart from the derisory pay, why, exactly I am here.  Although the staff is fine (if supine) the atmosphere is frenetic with a relentless emphasis on action and doing.  This is intensified by the moronic insistence on examining everything at all times.  A typical pupil in our school is one who wanders about with sheaves of paper in hand staring vaguely into space as he tries to commit to memory another mass of facts that have to be forced into the soggy mass where his brains used to be.  And be as soon forgotten as they dry out!

It comes to something when a major topic of conversation in my house is whether or not a Barça footballer is having a house built near us!  A corner plot one road up from us has been cleared and a plate glass and concrete construction has risen from the massive hole that they dug in the sand (all the houses in this area are built on sand) and is almost ready for occupation.

The key factor in the assumption about the next owner is the fact that the new swimming pool (clearly visible thanks to the low level fence around the property) has a mosaic picture of the Barça badge on the bottom.  Ergo, it is owned and being built by a Barça footballer.  My suggestion of a Barça supporter as being the likely owner was dismissed, as it is general knowledge that said famous footballer is having a new house built in Gavà – the town from which he hails.  In vain did I point out that the new build they were talking about was in Castelldefels.

To be fair, we do live on the very edge of Castelldefels: the end of our street is the end of the town.  Although there is absolutely nothing to indicate that this is so, careful study of the road nameplates on each street corner indicate that we merge seamlessly into Gavà.  It is a moot point whether or not the new build is actually in Gavà or Castelldefels.  As far as I am concerned it is definitely in Castelldefels and anyway, the whole build is far too open for a privacy-seeking footballer and, more importantly, I do not think it has a clear view of the sea.  What football player is going to live in a multi-million pound new house in a seaside resort with no view of the sea!

This discussion is displacement activity to stop my mind from dwelling on the morrow and the classes therein.

And the Certificate Ceremony which starts at 7 pm and is therefore too close to the end of school to make it worth my while going home and returning to school.  So tomorrow I will be in school for over twelve (count ‘em) hours.  Thinking too much about that leads to madness.  Better to concentrate on the fact that the weekend is near.

In a disturbing sign of disaffection I have cursorily worked out the number of weeks left in the year and I have started deducting holidays and the all too few saints’ days and odd holidays to try and make the number of weeks less horrific.

It is when I start working out the exact number of days that I will have reached the nadir of human hopelessness that for teachers may be in the middle of November or more usually in the grey days of February.  The countdown to the summer holidays starts immediately after the Easter holidays when it is acceptable to count the number of working hours that are left.

I have called into the municipal swimming pool to renew my entry card.  I proffered my bank card to pay for the extension for another year and was stoutly repelled by the counter lady who told me that I would need to give my bank details which are on my bank book rather than the card which is accepted everywhere else.  Why?  Who knows?  I suspect it is simply to remind me that I should never forget that I am in a foreign country!

Now all I need to do is make sure that my swim bag is filled with the paraphernalia to allow me to have a swim.  I can remember a time when that would have been a pair of bathers wrapped up in a towel.  How times have changed!

In the municipal pool you need to have a pair of bath shoes to get you from the changing rooms to the pool; you need to have a swim cap; I also wear goggles and earplugs.  Clothes need to be put in a locker for which you need to purchase a lock and key.  And of course you need an up to date card to get you in.  And soap and shampoo of course.  I can’t remember taking soap with me when I used to take the trolley down to The Empire Pool in the centre of Cardiff.  I certainly did not take the deodorant and aftershave which are normality itself nowadays.  So the swim bag is bursting at the seams with much more than a rolled up towel!

When and how did I become so high maintenance!

And when is the next holiday.