Stll an age to go!

Sleep did not pay any sort of extended visit to me last night with the result that the world’s most irritating alarm tone saw a resentful and unbelieving arm reach out for the blessed silence that a finger on the illuminated screen would bring.

Unfortunately I was not able to sink back into the luxury of even partial oblivion as the road situation of Barcelona necessitates a strict timetable being adhered to in the mornings.

As if to mock my unrested soul the standard of driving along the motorway to school was refreshingly appalling.  I use the adjective advisedly as the sheer awfulness of it all meant that any approach other than self-defensive alertness would have been tantamount to suicide.  Drivers (male: under 25) risked mayhem to gain a single car space.  One driver (male: under 25) had obviously recently graduated from a motorcycle as he drove the car as if it were a slim, manoeuvrable two-wheeled vehicle rather than a squat, space eating car.  Watching the insanely reckless movements of this idiot left me open mouthed with a mixture of horror and terror.  As he was not alone in treating the crowded motorway as if it were empty, you can imagine the somewhat unsettled state of mind I was in by the time I exited the motorway.

 

To exit the motorway is to change one type of madness for another.  The roundabout which greets one at the top of the slip road is the whirling vortex for a number of roads and all cars (with of course the signal exception of mine) drive as if god-given pathways through the mayhem had been cleared specifically for them.  Keeping to your lane is a hair-raising and soul fluttering experience.

School, by the time you have ascended the virtually perpendicular hill, appears like a haven of tranquillity and sanity.  After a cup of tea life does not seem as woefully random as it did on the drive up.

Classes waiting to be taught soon bring any tranquillity back to a general sense of fatalistic unreality – very much like the scenery in the surrealistically anthropomorphic landscape creations of Yves Tanguey.  In Week 13 of this awful term, believe you me; I know what it is to be in one of those canvases!

I have various mantras to get me through sleep deprived, school depressed feelings of desolation.  The one I choose to recite to myself now is, “When in doubt – spend!”

The trek along the beach in Gran Canaria (five working days away) necessitates the carrying of various elements in the sun worshiper’s catalogue for the satisfaction of the body from the brain outwards.  The collapsible backpack that I once owned has now faded into the general area of the “unbought” and, to quote Winnie-the-Pooh, the more I looked for it the more it wasn’t there.  It therefore needs to be “rebought” and that means calling into a supermarket on my way home and a little retail therapy always gives me a jolt out of work-induced lethargy.

The time approaches when, in the real world, there might be a pause for lunch.  Here it is merely the time for another lesson.  By the time lunch is actually finished I would welcome a short siesta – but there are two more lessons to be taught before escape can be contemplated.

It’s a hard old life, but the days are counting down!

In spite of temptations I still have not read any of the other eight volumes of the Bradstetter detective novels.  The only thing which can stand in my way to complete the plan of reading them on the beach is the weight of the volume itself.  As I understand it the packing of the suitcase is going to be of scientific exactness so that any extra will bump the case up to the next stage of expense in the ever-escalating costs of a Ryanair flight!

The continuing crisis in Spain continues to amuse.  At least it would amuse if it wasn’t something in which I am involved.  The latest laughable attempt to save money and persecute teachers has taken the form of the threat of more hours worked for less pay in schools.  As usual the history of Trade Unionism provides us with a lesson, “Not a minute on the day, not a penny off the pay” was the slogan of miners in the 1926 General Strike when they were of course hung out to dry.  Which also provides a lesson for the success of action against government.

Because of the appalling standards of educational achievement in Spanish schools there was a governmental initiative to increase the number of hours worked by teachers - the infamous “sixth hour”. 

As far as I can work out the government is “speaking” about changing the system so that in some schools, oddly, they are going to end up working extra hours for no extra pay.  The situation is confused, but I think the fact that we work every hour god sent (and a few extra) including the fact that we are discouraged from leaving the premises at any time until the end of school means that we are technically available for lessons or cover or something for more than the number of hours that are being suggested.

In other schools you only have to be in the school for the hours that you are teaching; in our school you are only allowed time off if you have had an early start at 8.15 am and, as that is 30 minutes before the normal start of school you are allowed to take a half hour at the beginning or end of the day if you have a “free” period at that time.

After a 5% cut in teachers’ wages last year (made good it has to be said by our saintly school) one can imagine anything from this panicking government.  Sooner or later (probably later) even the supine Spanish teachers must surely take some sort of action to protect their already eroded situation.  Not in our school, of course, naturally – but elsewhere, surely?

 

There is absolutely no feeling of end of term in the school.  None.  We gave our sixth form an examination today; tomorrow the 3ESO have to produce a test letter – and so it goes on.  Nothing to suggest that we are coming to the end of an almost un-enduringly long and tedious term.

I have done my best to try and inject a certain degree of expectation into my weepingly sincere countdown to escape and the holidays – but the teachers in our school are seemingly programmed to teach, prepare and mark in a way which is foreign and unfeelingly unnecessary to a normal British teacher!

“Tired” and “jaded” are not the appropriate prompts to encourage pondering on my attitude towards my chosen profession and present location.  But I do feel myself out of sympathy with the educational ethos and clients in my present school.  I am aware that, at this time of crisis having a job gives a security which a frighteningly high percentage of the working population of Spain does not have.  But . . .

We are getting ever nearer to the result of one of the most highly anticipated and closely fought competitions this year: the Teachers’ Section of the St Jordi’s Day Maths Department Photographic Competition of our school.

In the past a colleague and I have marvelled at the individualistic decisions made and the histrionic response of the winners.  This year what can only be described as a concerted effort has been made by the English Department with no fewer than four members of the department submitting photographs.  My own efforts were rushed and submitted at the hysterical insistence of a member of the maths department who said that no teachers had entered and I had to.  I put together a small portfolio of four shots and hoped for the best.

The best, in my opinion, are two shots from two members of the department and I have pinned my hopes of breaking the stranglehold of the Old Guard on this important competition on a short of symmetrical dhows and another of the inside of the Pantheon in Rome.  Of my own shots I will draw a discrete veil, though I have had some shocked approbation!

Three working days left to escape

All Praise to Ra

A hard day preparing for Gran Canaria.

That is lying in the sun so that the rays on the island by Africa will not come as a shock to my skin.  I take preparation for the holiday seriously!

As a concession to the crisis and general economic situation a single case is being taken and, indeed, is being packed even as I type.  Obviously not by me.  The idea of packing with more than a week to go to the actual holiday is something so outré that it doesn’t even make it into the area of ideas which I reject!

I have bought a new cabin case to fit in with the Stalinist requirements of Ryanair with whom we are travelling.  The large case, which is also new, has a clothing allowance of just 15 kilos: it is just as well that we are going to a hot place with a beach because anything colder and more formal would have necessitated a ruinous extra charge for more weight.

 

One only chooses Ryanair through necessity not preference.  Compared with that airline EasyJet looks like the luxury option!

Disturbingly, my prone preparation for Gran Canaria was a little unsettled by the realization that the Third Floor of the next house was also occupied.  Not only occupied but smoking!  It was fortuitous that my disgruntled departure was accompanied by the sinking of the sun!

Tomorrow sees the start of Week “Unbelievable” 13 of The Term That Would Not End.  Neither pupils nor teachers have any enthusiasm left for this final barrier to partial relief.  The two weeks Easter holidays sacrosanct in Britain is here truncated to a cruel seven working days and we will be back (surely not the nations cry) working in school a fortnight on Wednesday.  God, it seems even more horrific when you actually say it!

Still, we come back on the 27^th of April and we finish at the end of June.  The kids will have finished before then on the 20^th of June.  Then July and August gloriously free of kids, school and teachers!

We talk not of September.  And there is always a chance that I will not be invited back to teach in the next academic year.  One lives in hope!

Sleep makes some days shorter!

One cannot be living the appropriate life style when a “lie-in” until 10.30 am means that you have extended your time in bed by four hours when compared with a normal start!

As is usual in this canine bedevilled area the luxury of a lie-in is always tempered by the moronic mewling of the mongrels with which we are surrounded.  The crippled dog next door (not my fault I hasten to add, but if thoughts were followed by deeds then . . .) is as regular as an alarm clock.  It is one advantage to getting up early for school that I miss his aurora arousal of yaps (every second on the second) during the working week, but I am gifted his one trick performance when ever I get the chance to disregard the terminally irritating 6.30 melody which welcomes the start of each working day.

We are trying, and failing, to treat the barking which which we are surrounded like the ticking of a clock – something which the brain should be able to edit out of normal life.  Unfortunately, although their repertoire is severely limited, the various members of the chorus have their own particular howl, yelp, bark or scream and they do not (except at times of chaotic pandemonium) all perform at once.

It takes a Dracula to find the beauty in the howling of wolves, but even I can see a sort of majesty in the combined wail of a troupe of wolves compared to the Fred Karno’s Army of dog doggerel that assaults our ears during a normal day.

One almost wishes for the Transylvanian Count to pay a visit to our neighbourhood to slake his thirst on the various rat creatures confined bodily but not aurally by their uncaring human jailers.  Though thinking about it I am not sure that an unholy horde of vampire rat-dogs would be an improvement on the present degenerate crew.  Thinking about it again, vampires do not eat and drink, so at least there would be diminution in the unbelievable quantity of dog shit which graces our pavements!

In an uncharacteristic moment I decided to wash the car.  Admittedly I have gone through the last few months telling myself that a dusty car covered with bird droppings and lumps of congealed pine resin was a sure-fire way of ensuring the safety of a vehicle; a turn of for thieves.

However, there is a limit before designer dirt on a car becomes simply filth – and I think that limit has been reached.

I have broken two nails trying to get the pine resin off; I will have to use something more like a solvent rather than the wash-and-wax liquid that I used to clean the car – or rather I will speculate about what might get the resin off while I gently allow the car to resume its protective covering of dust, pollen, sand and the other accretions that a car accumulates.

At the end of my admittedly cursory cleaning of the car I decided to sit outside and continue listening to the internet radio (Pure – the new one) which continued to work in the garden and provided the traditional Radio 4 accompaniment to such a mundane chore of car washing.

I realize that my reaction to noise must seem to be verging on the paranoid but sitting with me in the garden after cleaning would have shown the full horror of al fresco listening.

The dog next door was barking; the dog in the flats opposite was barking; the dogs next door but one were screaming; a distant dog barked basso profundo; a child was yelling with a shouting father; a birthday party was being conducted in flats adjacent to us – the only thing we didn’t have was a bloody jet flying over!  Sitting next to the radio which was on a shelf at ear level I couldn’t hear the commentary because of the ambient sound!  God rot the lot of them!

Meanwhile, as if my troubles were not enough, Barça have crawled back from being a goal down to a draw at a crucial point in the season with Real Madrid huffing and puffing in the background.  (Barça eventually won 3-1)  Thanks to the demands of the league, King’s Cup and the Champions League, Barça and Real Madrid are going to play each other three times in the next few weeks.  The tension is going to be unbearable!

 

I have now read four of the Brandstetter novels by Joseph Hansen: “Fadeout”, “Death Claims”, “Troublemaker”, “The Man Everyone Was Afraid Of”.  I have been warned by Stewart (on the advice of his mother, though not I suspect in relation to these particular novels) not to read them all at once.  I will therefore apply a self-denying ordinance and put the volume containing all twelve of the books aside to be placed in the case for Gran Canaria.  This leaves a novel a day for the holiday.  We shall see.

 

Toni is by no means well.  He does appear to be a little more healthy today but he is nowhere near 100% but the idea of a holiday is keeping him going too.

And my examinations are all marked and results are in the computer.  I am prepared for all the unexpected things that the last week of this interminable term might have to throw at me.  Fond hope!

Real life economics!

The whole PIG has now gone and we in Spain are waiting in trepidation for that porker to become plural! 

Portugal, as the latest nation to go (what was the phrase that was used so dismissively about Britain when we had to go to the IMF, ah yes, cap-in-hand) grovelling to the moneyed nations of the EU asking for unbelievable amounts of cash – behaving indeed as if they were a nation of bankers!

So Portugal, Ireland and Greece – the whole PIG – not noted for its adherence to strict financial rules but certainly noted for a more than flexible approach to tax gathering, have shown the financial depths that a whole chunk of Europe is plumbing at present.

And we in Spain are next.  But, say the experts, we are too large to go under, there is simply not enough money to bail us out if we go bottom up.  But will we need this money?

I listened in amazement to a piece on Radio 4 this morning which had a correspondent say that the reports on the banks (by the banks) and the austerity measures (by the government of Spain) are making a difference and that things seem to be better there than in the rest of the PIG.

The key word, of course, is “seem”.  There is 20% unemployed in this country, whatever that actually means.  What is more significant is there is something like 40% unemployment in the youth section of the working population.  40%!  This is a total disaster.  Half a generation is being raised without work; without contributions - without the hope of a pension!

The so-called economy of Spain with its fatal link with the chaos which is the construction industry is something which is not healthy to contemplate.

Sooner or later I assume that something approaching reality will be partially accepted by this country and then god knows what will happen!

I wonder if the euro will survive.  What will that do to the value of the pound?  I will probably have to work forever!

And as if to emphasise the full horror of working in Spain, I was greeted at just before 8 am this morning with the information that during my five period teaching day with a duty as well, I would be adding to a full day the supervision of an extra lesson for a colleague.

To say I was not pleased would be like saying that the burning of the library at Alexandria was a minor inconvenience to the development of western civilization.

I had formulated plans to use whatever spare time (in our eight period day) I had to complete the marking of the next examination paper I had to mark.

I loathe marking with a deeply held and personally sincere hatred, but that drives me to get it out of the way as soon as possible.  I was like a thing driven to get the papers out of the way and I did manage to finish them all today: something of an achievement!

The mere mention of Indian food this evening drove me (literally) to our localish restaurant for a take away.  Delicious!  From time to time a decent Indian meal is the only thing to hit the mark!

I shall repent tomorrow!

Soon the hours will be numbered!

The car temperature gauge read a most satisfying 34°C when I rushed out of school this afternoon to try and escape the parental rush.  Obviously the gauge settled down to a more reasonable temperature as soon as I was on the move, but it still read a most respectable 25°C.

Oddly I seemed to leave the decent weather back at the school on the hill and my drive west was characterised by interesting lighting effects, but by a gradual diminution in the strength of the sun.  By the time I got into Castelldefels itself I was driving through wispy puffs of what looked like smoke.  I am, alas, not wise in the ways of sea mists and I just resented the lack of sunshine!

 

By a manic effort of concentration I have managed to get the first set of examination papers marked and the results fed into the computer.

Tomorrow comes the second (delayed) examination and little time to get the back of this lot broken before the weekend.

Still, there is the whole of next week – though I am still not entirely clear about how normal the timetable is going to be during the lead up to the longed for release from durance vile which will finally happen on Friday the 15^th of April, and mark the end of the thirteenth week of term!

Keep on keeping on is the order of the day!

Put it down to fatigue!

Is it a comforting sign of residual professionalism that one can tell when one has been teaching appallingly badly?  I sincerely hope so because yesterday was a day when a short film could have been made about me entitled “How Not To Do It” in the teaching profession.

I was tired and resentful at the early start of the day and the heady descent to the depths of technical and intellectual incompetence culminated in truly awful Media Studies lessons which drew a long day to a sad end.

The day did not end with the end of lessons, as I had to write an exercise for one of the next series of examinations which are the icing on the cake of this glorious term!

This morning I was greeted by a serious faced colleague who told me that he had bad news; I was being searched for to take a substitution.  As I was not officially supposed to be in school at that time, indeed I was half an hour early for the official starting time of school, I immediately lost my temper.  As it happened I could have saved my energy as no one said anything to me and I didn’t say anything to any member of management who might have been able to do something about it!

I also had to work before my official start time anyway when the content of the exam for the 3ESO was discovered to use words and phrases that we had not said were in the exam.  In our school this gives rise to bitter recriminations which make Emil Zola’s “J’accuse” look like a gentle reprimand!

 

This meant that I had to write yet another exercise for the exam this time using “Phrases using the word ‘end.’”  Teaching English as a foreign language is a bit like finding that First Aid in English has come back from the grave and this time is it personal and grammatical.  If our kids are at a loose end they can find themselves ending up putting phrases on end and in the end producing passable English; which might help them make ends meet.  You see how sad I have become!

The poor kids of the 1ESO are, as I type, busily and neurotically filling in their examination papers.  This will be the first of the exams that I will have to mark before the end of term.  The second will be tomorrow and that will have to be out of the way well before the end of term.  I am sure as hell not taking with me on holiday!  Which I might add is in seven and a half days – and counting.

My new (Stewart recommended) book has arrived and, in spite of my determination to reserve this book for the sands of Grand Canaria, I have read the first of the twelve novels contained in the volume.

I do not blame my legendary lack of restraint for this indulgence, but rather the arrival of a new, and of course expensive, reading light.  This is a floor standing Alex light which, I am assured, is perfect for the more mature reader.  I have to say that it does what it say on the tin – or in this case on the elegantly expansive cardboard box in which it came.

I have been told that where I have placed it is (obviously) wrong and I confidently expect the writhing, seething, pullulating mass of wires which surround my chair (giving it the look of imperfectly formed nest) will have been “re-arranged” and “tidied”.  I dread the result!

I consider book lovers to form a distinct (and of course higher) branch on the evolutionary tree – but they can be difficult for the lesser breeds without the book to understand.

For a Book Lover it is essential for books to be within reach at all times and in all places.  The ideal is to have bookcases full to overflowing with tottering piles of books around which one has to navigate to get from place to place.  There should be a system ordering the arrangement of books which only the owner fully understands and even he is subject to surprise when hunting for a specific volume.  Books should be capable of charting a life with specific editions linked to developments in knowledge and income!  Books are the windows of the soul rather than eyes and a much more reliable guide to inner depths!

I have now read the second of Joseph Hansen’s Brandstetter novels (ten to go!) and am thoroughly enjoying them.

They seem to be plot heavy – but that is a function of the detective novel – with a satisfying complexity.  There are some self-conscious pieces of description which the writer obviously enjoyed writing and can sometimes be a little intrusive for the reader, but there are felicities of expression contained in these set pieces which make up for their being spotlighted.

The USP of these novels is that the central detective, in fact an insurance investigator, is gay – and in the two novels so far read homosexuality has played an important part in the plot: I hope that the sexual proclivities of the central characters does not become a predictable element in the explications of the narratives.

Brandstetter himself is developing nicely as a character as parts of his life are being expanded in the sub plot which is his personal life.  The loss of his long-term lover to cancer and his finding of a partner through the ramifications of a case have given a line of development which hopefully will be extended through the remaining novels.

My task is to try and limit my reading so that my intention of taking it on holiday is not negated by my having read all 1200 pages before I go!

Meanwhile, the marking of the examination papers will be something to limit my reading possibilities.

In yet another example of the way in which the children in the school seem to have a power which is out of all proportion to what I regard as normal or professional, an examination has been postponed for a day because the kiddiewinks would otherwise have had two examinations on the same day.  Something not to be contemplated and certainly something which has never, ever happened to me in my academic life.  One wonders what world these pampered children think that they are living in!  I keep telling myself that I don’t really care about what they do in the school – but I do!  Sometimes I have to bring to the front of my mind the sage advice of my colleague, “Remember Stephen, you are not in Britain!”  How true!  How true!

At times, when engrossed in the second novel, “Death Claims” by Joseph Hansen, I dragged my eyes away from the printed page when prompted by the squawks of excitement from Toni as the Barcelona game in the Champions League produced a profusion of goals and an almost certain progression to the next stage and even Manchester have secured a good goal to nil lead in Chelsea’s ground, which promises well for their progression too.  It would be good to have a British team (if only in name rather than in terms of players) in the final in Wembley.  I can’t believe that I am writing such things.  Where will it end!  The wind might change and I could actually start enjoying football!  Perish the thought!

I have already started reading the third novel. 

I am indeed an addict.

Still counting!

So, we begin the twelfth week of this appalling term, where time does actually seem to have stopped!

I am drained of enthusiasm and think of the next ten working days with unalloyed horror.

Right!  That has got that out of the way; now I can get on with the normal day to day resentments of working in a school!

My Internet radios take it in turns to be skittish when it comes to performing without multiple key pressings and sotto voce curses.  I am sure that the basic cause of all dissatisfaction is the varying strength of the Wi-Fi signal which seems to be variable, to put it mildly.

In a house whose structure is of reinforced concrete there are bound to be some areas which are pretty well shielded and restrict access to the signal from the router in the living room.  This I accept.  What is difficult to accept is the seemingly arbitrary distribution of areas where the signal penetrates.  The whole point of the last purchase of a portable Internet radio was to allow me to have Radio 4 where ‘ere I walked.

This has not been quite as simple as I had hoped and I will have to draw a ‘map of availability’ colouring in a floor plan of the house to show those areas where the civilizing influence of Radio 4 reaches and those ‘dark places’ beyond the pale!

In the way of equilibrium in this place I have discovered that I have gained a free period but have lost it by taking the class of a colleague: surely the lord giveth and the lord taketh away!  Still, this is a class which I have not had as a class for two years and it is nice to see them all again.

It also, of course gives me an opportunity to use The Machine, knowing that the “audience” that I have will fully appreciate the quality of the product that they see in front of them, their eyes attracted by the hard cold light of the white logo tantalizingly out of reach!

I am amazed that the kudos I still get from owning The Machine continues, in spite of the fact that time, the new computer’s foe, has worked against its unique position in the gadget world.  The MacBook Air is no longer alone in the field of metallic sleekness; there are pretenders to its throne and I think it is only the illuminated Apple logo which keeps its reputation alive.  Whatever!  It is the only time that I have been in the vanguard and held my position for so long!  At what cost!

The old feelings of separation are still there as I have found constant problems with the connectivity of The Machine with the school system - and the linking of The Machine to any of our printers has been impossible.  It reminds me of my first “real” computer, which was a Mackintosh, and that was constantly out of sync with everything else in the school which used the PC environment. 

I remember with real bitterness the number of times I believed colleague or advertisements which claimed that a particular program was compatible with Mackintosh as well as PC.  It was never, never true – though I persisted with a child like devotion to the Mackintosh and continued to believe what I was told for years longer than I should have!

I have now returned to the faith, though I am using a suite of programs which have been adapted from Windows and, for the first time in my experience, they actually do work as well on the Mac as in their normal PC environment!

I am still waiting for Publisher to be added to my programs though that may be still some time in the future.  I live in hope that a grateful school will see fit to get it for me!  Fond hope!

Today was the sort of day where one felt that evil persons with stirrup pumps spent most of the time busily draining teachers of any dregs of enthusiasm that they might once have had some time in early September last year!

This term is at least four weeks too long; and believe you me that shows in the attitude of staff and pupils.

The sooner educational establishments break the absurd tyranny of adjusting terms to match the arbitrary date of Easter the better.  The fact that people’s futures are decided by the date of the first full moon after the Passover is ludicrous.  This idiotic anachronism determines, year-by-year, the arrangement of terms which has a real effect on the performance of students – and rarely to their advantage!

In spite of intellectual and physical prostration I mustered enough residual energy to go out and have a burger in the excellent café near the old flat.  A couple of glasses of wine later and the evening seems to have gone!

Nine working days left to escape!

Never let it said that I am closed to new experiences.  I am now an experienced flashmob member!

Today saw Castelldefels’ participation in an international day of the book for kids.  My friend Caroline is involved in Inter-Libros (a charity which recycles books in Spanish and sends them to needy parts of Chile) and the cash raised in the fiesta is going to fund the rebuilding of a library in Chile.

 

A part of the celebrations was to be the first flashmob in Castelldefels.  This was done in a very decorous fashion.  The signal for the start was the striking of the midday bell of the church in the centre of Castelldefels.  On the stage which had been set up in front of the church one person started reading a children’s story in Catalan over the loudspeaker system, then it was taken up in English, then in French and lastly in Spanish.  Or possibly the Spanish and Catalan may have been in the other order.  One has to be politically sensitive in these parts!

When all four languages had had their amplified seconds of prominence it was the turn of the rest of us.

Throughout the crowds around the stalls which made up the fiesta “sleepers” were stationed who on a given sign from the stage opened books of their own and started reading in whatever language was most congenial.

We were told to read in a “loud voice” and I took them at their word and read the opening page of “The House at Pooh Corner” in a characteristically stentorian voice.  In English.

Two English ladies came up to me afterwards and asked about the book I had read from.  When I said it was Winnie-the-Pooh one of them said that it was a classic and one of her favourites and, when she saw my Methuen paperback (3s 6d or 17½p) she exclaimed about the “Classic” edition – which I suppose means that it used Shepard’s illustrations rather than the new better known American versions!

It was actually quite a moving experience reading in public in a confusion of voices and it was especially gratifying to see the number of books in raised hands when we were all asked to show our books at the end of the short reading.

I couldn’t stay very long in the fiesta because The Family was due to arrive.  And arrive they did and almost immediately we went out to lunch in our “local” restaurant by the sea.  Although the menu del dia is substantially more expensive at the weekends (€17) than it is during the week (€13) I have to say that the meal that I had was well worth it.

The arroz caldoso is a rice based fish stew which was eventful and delicious.  I had merluza marinera which turned out to be a large lump of slightly smoked white fish with two very large prawns and a fish sauce.  To finish off I had tarta whisky – which is an odd choice for me, as I don’t like whisky, but I enjoy the flavour in this particular cake which has whisky and cream poured over it.

Wine, water, bread and gaseosa were all included and I did not begrudge the extra euro for the coffee with ice at the end of the meal.

Tomorrow sees the unbearably long slog which is going to be the last two weeks of this impossibly interminable term.  At least after Monday we will be down to single figures of working days!

Time passes.

What's new?

As promised today has been glorious and I even managed to keep my natural British desperation at bay and not resent the amount of time away from the sun taken up by having lunch.

That meal was taken in a new restaurant which we hadn’t noticed before opposite one of our favourite eating places which was filled by hordes of the retired today.

 

Although I cannot say that both of us were brought up on a strict regimen of Kim’s Memory Game, we do take some note of our surroundings, as therefore this “new” restaurant was something of a shock.  Encouragingly it had signs encouraging me to believe that there might be a decent drink of bitter there as well.

The meal cost €13 for two courses with either a sweet or coffee to finish.  My starter of scrambled eggs with mushrooms and asparagus was excellent – and what a difference fresh ingredients make to a simple dish!  The second course was cod au gratin with a small mound of vegetables julienne – delicious.  As is usual in Spain, the sweet was the weakest course: a custard tart with strawberries in gelatine, acceptable but little more.

The beer was more problematic.  It appeared that they had various “real” beers on tap, but it soon transpired that the only one which was of interest to me was the Murphy’s Red which is some sort of Irish bitter.  It was and, served in a long, elegant and fluted glass which contained far less than a pint, it was a taste of home – in a way!

All in all a decent meal with only the long delayed return of our change marring an otherwise enjoyable occasion.  I cannot imagine what was going through the minds of the waiters if they thought for a single solitary second that they were getting a tip of €10!  This is Catalonia, such things simply do not happen!

I have spent the rest of the afternoon lying out on the balcony of the Third Floor pretending to read.  The new electronic e-book was to hand but not turned on.  I am, after all, duty bound to do some groundwork for the holiday in Gran Canaria!

Tomorrow: The Family!  And the chance to see the Parisian photographs of various Disney characters looking apprehensive at the determined approach of two young Catalans!

I have been informed that the brightness of today is unlikely to be matched by the gloom of tomorrow: perhaps I might turn on the e-book!

Time marches on!

After today I can allow myself to start the countdown to Gran Canaria in terms of days rather than weeks and, if I only include working days then it is only just into double figures and after Monday it will be down to single figures.  By such arithmetical means do we keep our sanity!

Bear in mind that this term is thirteen weeks long without any significant break.  The only break that some colleagues have had is a week with a group of kids on holiday!  At least I had two long weekends and only part-time meetings for the other three days of the Fiasco Week.  Three months of a solid school term is a ridiculous concept - and an even worse reality!

 

Disturbingly, I am informed by a knowledgeable Scot of my acquaintance that Gran Canaria has taken on a worryingly lush-green persuasion.  This is usually indicative of an unnecessary profusion of water which is totally contrary to my requirements for a satisfactorily arid holiday.  I do not fly to an island off the coast of Africa to be surrounded by a profusion of succulent grass!

I reassure myself with the knowledge that each day into April is a day nearer to the security of the summer and that in Gran Canaria sun is usually so dependable that even the most paranoid Briton can usually dispense with the nervous early-morning daily ritual of twitching aside the curtains to check that the sun is performing as ordered.

The holiday is rapidly approaching a mythic status in my mind becoming a future cornucopia of rest, relaxation and delight.  In short it is now the only way to get through the next term with anything like a simulacrum of intelligence and personality left inside the hollow form of the teacher shapes that we inhabit!

I am now stuck in the library with, unusually, kids!  At this point on a Friday I am usually left alone in glorious isolation and can stare at the sun on the balcony with impunity.  Now there are kids catching up on lost work and there are three members of staff in here!

I am about to start on my second three period stretch without a break in two days: this timetable is a positive delight – but only when seen from the perspective of the weekend when it is behind you, and emphatically not on a Sunday when it is all before you.

It is true that for teachers the traditional low point of our lives is late afternoon on a Sunday when the reality of the following day and consequent week cannot be ignored.  It is the time to do frantic work for the morrow or feel guilty about not doing work.  There is no escape from the inevitable feelings of dread and or guilt which deadens even further a typically dead day!

To celebrate the end of the week (ten working days to go to Gran Canaria!) we went to Sitges to pick up my long delayed repair of my glasses.  As I have now replaced everything in the glasses apart from the lenses the shop I go to gave me a 25% discount and so I “only” paid €60 for a thin piece of metal forming the replacement nose piece!

At least dinner in our “usual” restaurant was better value for money!

Time to ponder

Moral, social and personal dilemmas are diverting when they are the stuff of narrative in novels, but they are very different when they leap from the pages of a story and intrude in the reality of ordinary life - if reality it is!

It is always difficult to find the right degree of separation from problems to allow one the luxury of cool perspective; though perhaps such distance is a disadvantage rather than an aid to action.

Distance, also, lends anything but enchantment to the view, but distance also is a physical reality.

Enough!  Moping is no substitute for action and a firm belief (although often wrong) in “Anything Is Better Than Nothing” allows for a satisfyingly limited approach!

The sun, as usual emerged as soon as I got to school and seeing the shadows playing on the screen of the computer as my fingers dance on the keys is not conducive to tranquillity while waiting for a lesson to start: the call of the sand and the sea and a good book is hard to resist!

I have ordered a reading lamp from Amazon.  This is a direct result of the “one-click” evil that Amazon encourages.  This cuts down the so-called hard work of Internet buying to a single click on the mouse.

A single little click and money is magically drained from my account and, who knows, something nice may or may not turn up in a week or so!  Probably not actually turning up, because, as far as I can tell the delivery companies only deliver slips of paper to the addresses telling people that they were unable to make contact and therefore etc.  As I have seen one of these pieces of paper with a time and date after the time I found it!  No wonder I am cynical!

After putting the clocks forward the extra hour of light that we have in the evening really makes a difference.  I am sure that I went back to the UK to live I would probably develop SAD immediately!  Though I have noticed that the Daylight Lamps are now very much cheaper than they used to be!  Which is more than can be said for the lamp that I have just bought.  Why is it that everything I touch turns to gratifyingly large expense!

I have now officially given up trying to find a reasonably priced copy of any of the Dave Brandstetter novels of Joseph Hansen as recommended by Stewart.  I thought in my touchingly naive way that I would download an electronic version: as if!  I attempted to get Amazon to send me a very reasonably priced second hand copy but they refused point blank to send such cheap things to “my location” and I have resorted to buying one on-line at full price - which should arrive just in time to accompany me on my trip to Gran Canaria - which I might add will start in a little over two weeks and a few days.

It is a little disconcerting to discover that I have ordered the omnibus edition of all twelve novels that are apparently in miniscule print and spread over 1,200 pages.  Should keep me quiet for a while!  Even if incipient blindness (for all sorts of reasons) may well follow!

As part of my continuing flight from socialism I am now “looking in to private health insurance”: never a day goes by but I seem to drift that little bit further away from my political inheritance!  I haven’t even kept up my right to vote in British elections or claimed my right to vote in local elections in this country.  Such political indolence!  Though looking at the political situation in my home country I think that I would have a hard time justifying my long-standing political allegiance and voting for the only other party likely to form a majority government is something which I cannot countenance.

And talking of blind prejudice, when is That Woman going to do the decent thing and strong-arm her way into the Great Grocery Shop in the Sky?  The newspaper that hides her wax image from sight is beginning to yellow with age and I have a reoccurring fear that it will spontaneously ignite and deny me the personal pleasure of starting the conflagration to consume her.

Another pet hate concerns the so-called royal house of Windsor and the rapidly advancing wedding.  Even in Spain we are regaled with information and pictures of this couple: as if they matter in any sense more than a youngish couple getting hitched.  The sooner we ditch the whole of this imported family and become a republic the better.  It says something for the extent of my loathing of what this family represents (with the possible exceptions of the odious Duke (!) of Edinburgh and the self seeking Duke (!) of York the family does not possess enough personality for them to be cordially hated for the debased quality of their individual personalities) that I would cheerfully have seen That Woman be regaled by despots around the world as President of my country rather than the set of Germanic dwarfs who currently hold positions of prominence by virtue (!) of a dallying uncle and being born in the right bed!

One doesn’t want to keep harping on about injustice but today I teach five periods; have a substitution for one more; have a departmental meeting in a further one.  Making a Grand Total of seven (7) periods directed time in one day.  This is patently absurd, though I appear to be the only person saying it!  At least in the UK there were only five periods in a day and so what I am doing here would have been impossible there!  And our wages have been frozen this year as well!  It just goes on getting better!

But the sun is shining and, although slightly hazy, there are sharp shadows on the tiled floor of the staff room balcony – to which I will now repair and take a little of what our local star has to offer!

Spring is sprung!

The clocks are now firmly forward and I am getting up in the dark again.  There is something truly depressing about starting one’s day in darkness.  I know that this is the start of a short period of adjustment and that soon daylight will lighten my way to school so that I can illuminate the minds of my unfortunate charges!

And the evenings are lighter longer; so yesterday after having a snack “dinner” in town we were able to stroll back to the car after 8 pm in gently darkening sunshine.

The Most Expensive Tea and Coffee Shop in the World is an almost irresistible draw for me.  I am fascinated by the impedimenta of tea and coffee making where the shop seems to have cornered the market in excruciatingly expensive tea pots, cups, mugs and tea making equipment - which it sets out in alluring displays with small, carefully hidden price tags.

 

I presume that they make their money by potential customers handling the goods, finding the price tag and then immediately dropping the article in shocked disbelief – and then having to pay for the broken pieces.  I have grown wise to this and now only look at the price tag when the article is firmly and safely located on the display shelf so the only damage that I do is to other customers when I shy away from the pot or jug with a startled whiney of pain and collide with another potential dupe!

The tea, however, is delicious and well worth buying as long as you never look at the receipt and simply put the change you are given directly into you pocket without checking how much things cost.  To do otherwise is to court madness and despair!

Talking of M & D there are now two weeks and four days left to Grand Canaria.  Not, of course that I am counting.

I am not sitting in my accustomed place in the staff room of building 1 and am now located at the foot of the table around which colleagues work.  I am also facing the wall on which notices are placed and one in particular has caught my attention.  This is the one which lists those unfortunates who will have to do a substitution for a colleague.  I know that I gain a period tomorrow as the 3ESO are all out on a trip, but I also know, as sure as night follows day that I will gain precisely nothing.  Even from a distance of twenty feet I can see the rising curve of the “S” and the descender of the “p” which shows my name is among the damned condemned to another class.  Though thinking about it, it could just be normal paranoia there are, after all, other names with the same sort of outline as my own. 

Indeed that last statement is true!  It is not my name – but I still do not hold out any real belief that I will keep the period free: the school is too small and we never seem to have supply teachers so all the burden of any disruption in the staffing is carried by the staff.  The true pessimism of an experienced professional!

The New Device continues to cause problems, especially with the loading of electronic books.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason behind the skittish attitude that The New Device has towards acceptance or rejection.  The same format books loaded in exactly the same way do not have exactly the same response from The Device.  “The Girl of the Limberlost” – of book of which I have heard but do not necessarily want to read – has loaded without a problem, but “Queen Lucia” which I do want to read when I want to read it, refuses to form an essential part of my electronic library.

Music, however, which is usually a more difficult element because everything I have is tainted with the exclusivity of iTunes adheres to the electronic innards of The New Device with the enthusiasm of the blue rinsed ladies of a certain age for any public school educated leader of the party that opposed the foundation of the national health system!

I shall persevere as The New Device’s small size makes it ideal for the future holiday in the sun – which I might have mentioned is two weeks and four days away!

Dinner this evening was decided on an instant whim and comprised a delicious selection of the pinchos from the Basque restaurant in the centre of the playa of Castelldefels.

And now, time to subside!