Resumed!

The time since I last wrote is something like the missing and blank pages in Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy” – they are there through deliberate decision and have a communicative power which printed pages can not convey.  Or I might just have been a touch lazy and slumped into my bed without committing my thoughts to back lighted screen!

I have visited the Opera and seen “Il bubero di buon cuore” (“The Good-Hearted Curmudgeon”) by Vincent Martín i Soler with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte from a play by Carlo Goldoni and first performed in 1786 and first performed in the Liceu in 2012 and more than likely it will now slip back into its well-deserved obscurity.

The promise of the overture was not sustained by the rest of the opera.  The overture was lively and inventive and the rest of the music was not able to save a ridiculous storyline with too much recitative.  I found myself dropping off during the first half and, while the second half was better it was not enough to convince me of the worth of this relic.

The singers were fine and the orchestra was conducted by local legend Jordi Savall who is the undisputed king of period music in Barcelona, but still not enough to compel interest.

It was ironic that it was during this unspectacular performance that we were informed of the dire straits that the Liceu is in at the moment.  Grants have been cut with the result that the production of one full opera has been cancelled with other dance and music events falling to the financial axe as well.  The Crisis begins to hit the middle classes!

We season ticket holders have been presented with a few options.  We can have a refund; put the money to a subscription next season; spend the money (plus 10%) in the Liceu shop, or donate the money to the Liceu Foundation.  The last option is, of course, out of the question – and I don’t think that an extra 10% on Liceu prices gets near the profit margins they already have so I think that an interest free loan towards the cost of the next season is as far to charity as I feel like going!

The cold financial climate is matched by the weather.  The bitterly cold winds from the north have swept through Spain and we have been shivering in seasonal, but unwelcome chilliness.  I think that I must have adopted the responses of Catalonia as I have been complaining of the cold when the temperature has been a healthy 3°C and which has further risen to 7 or 8°C by the time I have got to school.  As I listen to the Today Programme first thing in the mornings I am aware of the temperatures that I would be experiencing at home and I tell myself to be grateful.

We have had snow!  Not, admittedly in Castelldefels, but rather in the mountain fastness of my teaching establishment.  The kids went wild with their first sight of snowflakes and gleefully told me that they would have to go home at once.

As the flakes drifted lazily down promptly to dissolve on the wet surface of the ground I disabused my less than enthusiastic educates about the likelihood of their departure.  Admittedly, in our minds was the snow of two years ago when the precipitation was of such an unusual ferocity that the entire traffic system of Barcelona was reduced to chaos and it took me over two hours to get home.  And that was as nothing to the five hours that it took one of my colleagues!

With the awful prospect of being stuck in school in all Catalonia minds, the whole of the country reverted to their comfort zone of complete panic.

While the British contingent was reduced to helpless laughter and eyebrows raised to a height previously thought impossible without some of the instruments of torture dear to the hearts of the Spanish Inquisition, the school started to implode.

With class teachers dashing from place to place, tannoyed announcements making the school sound like a copy of a Second World War Spitfighter squadron being scrambled, secretaries trying to cope with the flood of telephone messages from parents – the only thing that was missing as kids were frantically dispatched to the safety of their homes was the snow.  Which had stopped.  And with a clearing sky looked as though it was not going to start again.

But the evacuation went on and went on so efficiently that, as one colleague remarked the “school was emptied more efficiently and quickly than for a fire drill”!

So, within a remarkably short period of time we teachers were left in that educational nirvana known as a pupil-less school.

I was lucky that I was in Building 4.  Our Glorious Leader came in and told us we were free to go home!  Not so the teachers in Building 1 who only discovered our departure some time later and who, when appealing to the less than glorious leader of the other building were told to stay!  Their mutinous mutterings did eventually get them away, but only an hour after us!

The celebratory meal that Toni and I had to welcome the (lack of) snow sending me home was the only unsatisfactory element in a delightful day.  For the first time our restaurant of choice produced a poor main course – but we put that down to experience and I was in too high spirits at the unexpected break that nothing could dampen.

The next day, in spite of dire forecasts we had nothing but cold sunshine – but the break was appreciated and the Friday that we returned, for me at least, was a less than strenuous day with tests and films and an early departure.

The spirit of my mother loomed large on Saturday with a trip into Barcelona to see Irene.  Our meetings are few and far between nowadays as Irene’s teaching commitments are unsocial and so our usual way of staying in touch is via email.

Yesterday was, however a good face-to-face in one of the larger Barcelona shopping centres.

Our first act was to have a cup of coffee (tea in my case – I never learn) and start the chatting and gossip.  By the time our dregs had dried we were ready to “go shopping” – a phrase which well deserves its speech marks for both of us.

I did have a thin justification for shopping, as I “needed” some spices not held in our local supermarkets and also a coffee thingy by Bodum.

What I actually bought were two deliciously elegant Cava glasses with endless stems and cruelly etiolated tulip shaped business ends.  Simple and yet decadent!  And they had 30% off in the sales, so there.  In the same shop I bought a small two-cup Chinese clear glass teapot (full price) and six dried tea bombs (more than full price) whose price was more than worth it when an open -mouthed Toni watched the tea bomb expand into a sort of flower arrangement as boiling water was added.  The almost clear water that was the “tea” I eventually drank made up the most expensive cuppa I have ever had.  I am sure that she already has one, but I couldn’t help thinking that the teapot and bombs would be the almost perfect present for Clarrie!  She’d love it.

Next week the school will be unnaturally empty, as my colleagues have taken our raw material off on trips.  My 2BXT will still be there on Monday.  Which is just as well as they have an examination written with my own hands which tests the vocabulary they have come across during their so-called reading.  Writing sentences into which the kids have to fill in the gaps with words that they have learned in class is one of the few exercises that I enjoy producing.  You can imagine the sort of sentences that I write!

My plan for next week is to get stuck into the task of producing a sort of reference book for my Making Sense of Modern Art – for which I have made some unnecessarily large purchases of wonderful art books.  I fear though, that devious minds have laboured well into the night to ensure that I do not have the freedom necessary to work alone and that I might be drawn into collaborative exercises that will fritter away time in other less productive directions.

We will see.