The Lesson For The Day

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There is nothing like being in a gathering where you are the only person who does not have fluency in the language being used in fast, idiomatic exchanges to encourage you to focus on “unconsidered trifles” (and yes, I did look it up, and I thought it was from another play than the one I first thought of, shame on me!) and then to play around with the levels of irony that you can find in and around your place setting at the dinner table.

One such “trifle” was a bottle top (so to speak), from a bottle of Cava given to me because I was British because we obviously know everything there is to know about alcohol from its manufacture, through bottle opening, to astonishing consumption.  

All the Catalans that I know are, generally speaking, moderate in their drinking habits to the point of squeamishness.  Therefore, my ability to consume more than a single glass of Cava is regarded with something approaching pitying awe - though those last two words sound like an example of oxymoron, but let it pass.  The point is that I am deferred to on matters alcoholic, especially in matters Cava-ic, so I always open the bottles.

I have to admit that I am something of an expert now and pride myself on the efficient removal of all but the most recalcitrant of corks with the minimum of sound.  There are no ‘pops’ when I uncork a bottle of Cava, merely the merest of susurrations - if that!

As I am sure that any ful kno (and I am not prepared to give the source of that deathless quotation based on the Satchmo Principle) under the foil covering the cork is a round metal disc that stops the wire holding the cork in place cutting into the cork itself.  Usually these discs have some sort of design on them and have actually become collectors’ pieces!  Sad buggers, says the grown man who still collects British Commemorative First Day Covers!  You can buy specially designed folders with special pouched plastic sheets to display your treasures!  Says the man who has tens of filled folders with pouched plastic sheets to display his FDCs.

Anyway, a colleague in The School on the Hill in Barcelona once told me that her sister-in-law collected such things and that she would be grateful if I could keep my eye open when a bottle was un-corked and, if I remained sober enough, remember to keep the illustrated disc.  I dutifully collected the discs that I drank through, as it were, and in spite of the fact that my colleague’s husband now owns a restaurant and therefore is an unending supply of little discs, I still look and almost automatically put the discs into my pocket.  And then months later throw them away.  It’s a sort of domestic rite of passage.

The one illustrated above, however, caught my interest because of its innate preachiness.

I always maintain that I was virtually unique in the teaching profession by actually listening to each and every school assembly to which I went.  I mean really listening.  Elsewhere I have noted the extraordinary “quality” of what I heard.  The content ranged from the recited (from a printed book of assembly suggestions), through out-and-out gibberish, to one exceptional Christian assembly in which the basic tenets of religion were comprehensively rejected!   

No matter what was said, there was little to no reaction because people did not listen.  Never mind the kids who adopted the defensive ‘closed ears’ syndrome in an assembly situation, but also the adult teachers who I noted were able to look with empty eyes at the speaker on the stage while at the same time giving a vague impression of being emotionally engaged in what was being said.  One of the tricks to maintain sanity!

There were good assemblies in which well-chosen examples were linked to the kids' lives that, if only they had been listening, would have edified them.  But they were in the minority.

My favourite assembly speaker was, I have to admit, one of the worst.  He was a great aficionado of the “While listening to the radio this morning . . .” and the “On my way to school today I noticed” school of assembly giving.  Whatever he talked about in his free-flowing stream of consciousness, the delivery of the punch line of his words was always the same.  The content may have been conflict in Africa, or charity in India, or the perils of drug taking, or the need to plan your studies, but the punch-line, the denouement, the didactic thrust was always, “Don’t drop litter!”   

His greatest moment came when his topic appeared to be (nothing was ever clear cut) something to do with female hygiene!  Just the way to start the day!  After ten or so minutes of acute embarrassment wondering what the hell the point was that he was trying to make in his indelicate meanderings, we finally to to the  clear, concise and gloriously out of place summary: “Don’t drop litter!”

I couldn’t help thinking of him as I looked at the disc, while speedy Catalan flowed around me: “Sin ALCOHOL”, and I wondered just what he would have produced from such a ready-made stimulus for a student audience!  Perhaps he would have remarked the sinuous, sensuous, swash capital ‘S’ taking up so much of the space, spreading itself on the pristine white as though owning it, literally crowning the bottle!  And then the prosaic sans serif of ALCOHOL in small capitals: the capitals representing the importance of the substance, but the size a reference to the insidious nature of the product: no frills, just threat; there, yet at the same time almost inconspicuous beneath the flamboyance of Sin!  And so on, until the peroration and the exhortation to be tidy!

The real irony, of course is that interpretation only works in English, not in Spanish!

In Spanish the word for ‘sin’ is ‘pecado’ - which we retain in English in the word ‘peccadillo’ meaning a little sin.  Interestingly, though probably only to me, the word ‘peccable’ meaning open to sin, also exists, but this word is more commonly used as its negative as in ‘impeccable’ and therefore forms a part of the select group of words which include ‘gruntled’, 'whelm', ‘kempt’, ‘couth’, ‘ruly’, ‘corrigible’ and ‘wieldy’.

Anyway, in English the Spanish word ‘sin’ means 'without’, so the bottle top disc was actually from a bottle of semi-sec (ugh!) Cava-like liquid, without alcohol!  It tasted, I couldn’t resist it, as disgusting as you might imagine.

I suppose, if you were feeling in the right mood of mischievousness, you could work out a whole ‘assembly’ in which the revolting taste of the drink without alcohol, linked to the free forming and sheer exuberance of the word ‘sin’ and the solid reassurance of the black capitals of the word ALCOHOL are a direct encouragement to sybaritic excess.

But, please to remember, Don’t Drop Litter, and dispose of the metal disc in a container for recycling!

Now, go and learn! 

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