The little patch of blue!

It is always a bracing educational challenge when you find yourself confronted with the loss of your free period on the penultimate day of school.  I find it brings out the best in me, especially when one has a meeting to look forward to after school which will spell out in detail just how much and when we are going to be paid less!

So while I ponder on my possible response to having money ripped from my paltry pay packet I can thank my lucky stars that I only have four periods today rather than the six of yesterday so the free period lost today only brought up my teaching time to a full working day in the UK.   Comparisons are odious and I must keep remembering the sage advice that so often drifts into my bemused mind as I observe the way that Catalonia works: “Remember Stephen, you are not in Britain.”

At lunchtime we had a speculative discussion about what the meeting this evening might hold.  I feel that an across the board reduction in wages when not everybody is directly affected in the same way is patently unfair.  The Byzantine way in which our wages are computed means that some teachers are paid entirely by the Foundation of our school, others entirely by the state and yet others (myself included) are paid by both.  The government is the institution reducing payment so some people should be entirely unaffected by what our political masters say and some only tangentially.  The situation is a mess, but I do not think that penalising those who are entitled to a full payment in the cause of a specious fairness is the right thing to do.

I am actually looking forward to this meeting – in spite of the fact that I do not expect to hear any good news from it.  What I am anticipating is the delight with which I will watch the way in which the school attempts to square the circle. 

Good luck to them! 

Except it is a little difficult to maintain a lofty and smilingly ironic detachment from the discussion when it is your own pay that is being talked about!

Toni has gone to Terrassa for a dramatic entertainment spread over two days in which his nephews are going to have starring parts, or at least they are going to be on stage and in the public view.  Alas!  I am teaching and have to be in school so I am unable to share the delight of seeing a five and a three year-old display their undoubted but nascent thespian skills.

I plan a therapeutic reading session after the meeting this evening.  God alone knows how long it will go on for, but I do know that everyone has something to say when it concerns the magic subject of income.  I trust that I will be able to slip out when the information has been given, and before the discussion about impossible things we might do starts!

The meeting was a damp squib!  True we were told that we would only be paid 80% of our “extra” payment this December, but we were given the partial expectation that we might get the other 20% in January.  This is 20% of a month’s salary as we are paid in fourteen instalments during the year with two instalments in December and June.  If we are to be paid back in January (we hope) then this is a very short term expedient to very little purpose by the government.  Much more serious is the threat of a further cut to salary in February of next year – but our meeting said nothing about that.  All is still speculation.

Meanwhile my cough remains, though I think it is gradually fading – or that may merely be wishful thinking!

I shall have an early night, because it is an early start for me tomorrow and at mid-day I will become magically transformed into the personification of the season.

As I went to lunch today I was hailed by Primary colleagues who asked me if I had seen my seat.  I had not.  And was a little disturbed to see an ornate armchair set up in a rather more public vestibule area than I would have liked.  It all seems to be very serious and getting slightly out of hand!

I am more than a little concerned at the escalation of what I thought was going to be a fleeting visit, a few ho  ho hos and away.

My Christmas ties (yes, I have more than one) have gone down a treat and it is sobering to consider that my person and my teaching may be soon forgotten but my ties will live on in legend!

Where is my puffer?  Live a little, say I!