Something to do

Well, one day down and only three to go.  Though that “only” does not see so insignificant as it might suggest!

My continuing and thoroughly tedious story of low level but mildly decapitating illness has now driven me to a further consultation with the doctor.  This visit was made into a necessity after the depressing day of relentless teaching and a lunchtime duty – oh yes, and a meeting at the end of lunchtime as well.

I called into the doctors after school and asked for an appointment which, surprisingly I was given for ten past six in the evening.

I returned to the surgery after a swift visit home and I was seen first!  Some things do happen properly.

I am now the proud possessor of two inhalers which are going to give me medication for the next month.  It has been decided that my little cough be upgraded to bronchitis with my next appointment being on Friday to see what progress I have made.  At no point in the consultation did I hear the suggestion that “time off” might be part of the treatment.  There is no justice in this harsh world!

My mild inconvenience is as nothing when compared to what is probably about to happen in school.

The government has been suggesting and hinting about their response to the crisis with regard to the teaching profession.  As our school is substantially supported by grants from the Generalitat we are probably going to part of the way in which this bankrupt country is going to try and extricate itself from some of the financial chaos which its own mismanagement has created.

Teachers have already been subject to something like a 5% cut in salary which our own school made up from the Foundation funds so that no teacher had a reduction.  Any further reduction will probably not be compensated for by Foundation funds and working out the exact proportions of money to be reduced will be difficult.

The school will be presented with an incredibly difficult problem because they will not want to reduce the salary of any one teacher, but if the funds are not available from the government then some sort of discrimination will be difficult to avoid.

I am expecting that our “extra” pay will be delayed or perhaps even reduced.  Speculation is rife within my own brain, but my colleagues seem strangely subdued in their expectations.  Wednesday should illuminate some of the darker corners of the government’s financial mind – if indeed it has anything approaching a coherent plan about what to do.

It is typical of management that such important information is to be relayed to the workers on the day before a holiday.  How well I remember such tactics being used with boring regularity in Britain.  Nothing changes.

But I do at least hope that the drugs that I now have in an unholy cocktail will do something to shift the mucus soaked cough ridden ill health which I find so tedious at the moment.