I didn't expect the . . .

I should have charged the camera before I went in search of the Hooded Christians. It always makes it less stressful if you have a fully charged battery.

I had left what I considered to be sufficient time to get to the church in the centre of Castelldefels, but I hadn’t reckoned on the same degree of parking overkill on Good Friday that you get on a normal day.

Luckily the informal chaos that characterises all carnivals ensured that this particular religious extravaganza was also late starting.

When I got to the exceedingly ugly modern church there was only a moderate crowd comprising casual passers by, women clutching poles with cones made of kitchen foil at the end enclosing candles, the odd person dressed in black with conical hat and mask, policemen and me.

The raucous sound of musical instruments emanated from the church which I entered and observed an enthusiastic crowd applauding the band which was accompanying a float of the crucified Christ which was being jogged about by unseen supporters hidden in the skirt of the idol.

When I left the church to join the swelling crowd I found that the procession was beginning to form

with a disturbingly androgynous banner bearer fronting candle bearing masked figures, including a child dressed in a mini version of his elders’ costumes.

And nothing happened. And then nothing happened again.

While nothing was happening officious gentlemen wielding silver topped staffs moved up and down the parade looking concerned.



It was rather touching to find that the hoodies had difficulty seeing out of their masks and they were constantly adjusting their hoods to try and find out where they were going. This practical difficulty made them seem a little less intimidating and more prosaic.

Eventually after much banging of drums the hoodies moved off and the first of the floats came into view. These were moved by a collection of lifters who were under the representation of the crucifixion and shuffled forwards with the float on their backs, or rather by straps on their shoulders attached to the inside of the bottom part of the structure. They moved in a rhythmical shuffle so that the structure swayed from side to side, indeed it almost came a cropper when the shufflers encountered a short steep slope leading down to the road.

But no disaster, the float leader was able to communicate with the unfortunates inside and avert an unseemly upset. On the front of the float there was a sort of door knocker which was used to indicated important instructions to the labourers.

The procession gradually formed with much to-ing and fro-ing and beating of drums.

As the battery in my camera ran out I eked out the electricity to allow me to take some pictures of each of the floats


in the growing darkness and the sinister gowned figures who accompanied them.

The floats looked substantial and must have been both heavy and also unwieldy to move. They must have been hard work because after about two hundred yards one float stopped and the skirt lifted and the carriers croaked for water

which was supplied by accompanying wives and mothers. At one point as the carriers attempted a gentle turn (a major undertaking when you are carrying Golgotha and the crucifixion on your backs) I could see the shuffling pairs of trainers poking out from the skirt of the float.

It reminded me of a wonderful series of films on British TV called ‘The Worst Films in the World’ which showed sci-fi films where The Alien Monster’s means of propulsion was indicated by the pairs of sneakers clearly visible beneath the latex.

Perhaps not the most pious thought to cross my mind as the labour of Christian devotion was being enacted in front of me, but probably in keeping with my sympathetically sceptical approach to Christianity.

The depictions on the floats were traditionally gory with the exception of the last image which was of the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God.

She was resplendent in sweeping gown and surrounded by a forest of candles and flowers, glittering with jewels and crowned with an impressive halo. What can one say about the veneration of Mary? I find it thoroughly distasteful and I could feel the itch of the iconoclast tingle in my fingers!

Altogether this was a bizarre manifestation of ‘other’ Christianity in Catalonia. The Catalans are really not into hooded processions, it seemed an import from another world.

This feeling was confirmed by the fact that, as I wandered about taking photos and watching the devotees I didn’t hear a single word of Catalan.

In the Church the notices were all in Castellano. I should imagine that the only Catalan speakers I saw during this procession were the policemen on duty and some lads playing basketball in an adjoining playground. It was perhaps significant that when the band acompanying one of the floats entered the church the tune they chose to play was the Spanish National Anthem!

Castelldefels and Catalonia generally has a large immigrant population: people attracted from other areas of Spain by the wealth and industrialization of the region. When they arrive here they are at an immediate disadvantage because of their inability to speak Catalan. If their children go to a state school they will be taught through the medium of Catalan – as far as I know there are no state schools which offer a full education through Castellano in Catalonia.

It should be stressed that all Catalans can speak or understand Spanish; they may choose to speak Catalan rather than Spanish, but they are all bilingual.

In my school’s parents’ evening, I was a little shocked at the attitude towards all things Catalan by foreign parents. There was a real resentment at the perceived arrogance of the Catalans and an almost racist distaste for the people they were living among.

The congregation in the Good Friday procession was a whole section of Castelldefels which was not Catalan. It put me in mind of a country within a country: people whose language and customs and expectations were different from those of the indigenous population. I know that I may be over reacting here, after all I had made a point of attending this procession precisely because I knew it would offend my sensibilities, so what I saw could well have been what I expected to see, thus fulfilling my expectations. But I did sense the ‘otherness’ of the experience and its public manifestation did have a touch of defiance.

Doesn’t necessarily bode well for the future easy relationship between Catalans and the other Spain.

Planning still hasn’t been done and time is running out!

You've got to laugh!

On Catalan television (TV3) there is a show called ‘Polònia’, it is a satirical show which uses actors made up to look like national and local politicians to make its points. It also ranges further afield – its portrayal of the Hitler Youth Pope is maniacal, pop eyed and thoroughly convincing. And very funny.

Its graphic keynote is Russian agit. prop. with Cyrillic typefaces and earnest young revolutionaries with a touch of early twentieth century futurist prints: very stylish.

I am now at the stage of integration that I can recognize some of the characters being portrayed: Zapatero the re-elected President of Spain and his defeated opponent from PP Rajoy; the President of the Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia the inexpert Catalan speaker José Montilla and a few of the other politcal leaders are all meticulously lampooned. They also have a very good vesion of Franco who is usually in monochrome!

The show is obviously hard hitting and sardonic but the language is Catalan and therefore out of my linguistic sphere. As my lingusitic sphere is one language I am reduced to watching the visual humour and gleaning the few words which are part of my foreign vocabularly. I still find it funny in spite of the fact that much of the humour is, of necessity linguistic.

A few of the impersonations are so good that one is inclined to switch reality and regard the ‘real’ characters as frauds. Which I suppose is part of the point of a satirical series. The link for the programme is http://www.tvcatalunya.com/programa/200164279/ though I’m not sure what a non Catalan foreigner living abroad might get from it! I heartily recommend it!

This is more than I can say for the rest of Catalan/Spanish television. If anyone in Britain resents paying a TV licence fee then I suggest that they come to sunny Spain for a while and watch what you get without one. A few twenty (20) minute advert breaks will soon show the licence to be cheap for what you get!

One thing that the Generalitat is paying for is a series of adverts about the number of deaths on the road, with over 2,700 in Spain in 2007 with statistics still being compiled. The Generalitat is concentrating on the Easter holiday period in the way in which Britain used to do years ago. I understand that Britain discontinued the holiday statistics because it was felt that the concentration was unreal and gave people a false sense of the gravity of the situation.

In Catalonia I think there was something like 330 deaths on the roads and I am amazed, after driving in the region, that there are so few. The imposition of an 80 kph limit on roads leading to Barcelona has (in my anecdotal experience) limited the speed of the majority of traffic, but the insanely reckless driving of all but a handful of motorcyclists and scooter drivers is still astonishing.

As far as I can tell, motorcyclists regard roads as having no markings which relate to them. Lane indications are solely for cars while motorcyclists can weave intricate patterns at high speed as if the roads were empty canvases for their circus-like artistic expertise. Their disregard for their human frailty is terrifying and they are allowed to continue their death embracing stupidity because of, as far as I can see, the almost complete absence of traffic police.

This evening I am determined to go to a church in Castelldefels which is supposed to have a procession which will ignite in me all my atheist protestant horror of the Spanish Inquisition. You don’t have to go to Seville to find Klan members wandering about with candles!

I shall take my camera.

And so it goes on!

Fewer coughs but not more happy.

My self pity is still at seasonally high levels and is exacerbated by any clouds blocking the shining vitamin D giver in the sky. And there were clouds in the sky this morning, though, to be fair after a very indifferent menu del dia the sun did indeed shine, and I immediately felt marginally better.

Didn’t last: the attempts at organization and getting the Catalan workers to jump to our flat to sort a variety of things out has collapsed in a mixture of faulty communication and ineptitude. Far be it from me to apportion blame, but when I start having Spanish lessons seriously – linguistically watch out!

We creep towards Easter and, amazingly the church in the central square in Castelldefels was open! I went inside to refresh my memory of the remarkable modern wall paintings executed with panache and startling perspective. My contemplation of these images was disturbed by the noisy ministrations being lavished on one of the gorier tableau in one of the side chapels. The polychrome crucified Christ was lying recumbent on newly laundered brocade and to my sharpened protestant eyes I suspected that Jesus was being prepared to go walkabout in celebration of the season.

Catalonia is not noted for the fervency of its ecclesiastical devotions – presumably a folk memory of the criminal complicity of some of the clergy with the Nationalist cause in the Civil War supported by some unbelievably vitriolic polemic from Bishops frothing at the mouth lingers on. You have to go much further south to find those sinister processions where ‘holy’ images are paraded by what looks like Klan members.

It was therefore with some surprise that I saw a photograph inside the church porch door which seemed to suggest that some similar fraternity was active in Castelldefels. Now that is something I wouldn’t mind seeing.

I always make a point of going to a church of some sort on Good Friday so I shall take my camera with me to record any suspicious manifestations of hooded holiness.

I have, at last, found what appears to be the perfect electronic pocket bilingual dictionary. I do of course (or course, naturally) have a few electronic dictionaries already. They are, after all, gadgets within the meaning of the act and therefore Objects of Desire. But the ones I have suffer from various defects: they are too bulky; too exhaustive; too complex; too fiddly and too old.

This one is small and has features not found on the others that I have. It’s a Franklin machine and automatically senses the language you are using. It gives a choice of part of speech for your word and offers easy access declensions for verbs. With only a two line display it does not offer meanings, but with its speed and comprehensive word bank it is an excellent easily portable quick reference.

I only hope that now that I have it I use it! And I do hope that that exclamation mark is not as ironic as it looks! Or that one.

As I type Barça are doing their best to go out of La Copa del Rey. So far it has been a depressing performance which has lacked determination and passion. Ronaldhinio is not playing of course; he probably has a pimple on his forehead or some other debilitating injury. His apparent lack of professionalism seems to be affecting the team. Having just typed that Barça has scored again! Eto’o, who seemed to have forgotten how to do it! One more goal and Barça are through to the semi finals.

One can only hope!

Don't hold your breath: they're out.

Work Ethic Enlivens!

In spite of feeling bloody awful this morning and an uneasy return to bed after taking Toni to work, where I spent my time not concentrating on getting better but worrying about the things I wasn’t doing, I managed to get some ticks on my task list!

By way of doing the worst first I paid a visit to my loathed bank. There were a few reasons for doing this unpleasant duty quite apart from an inbuilt perverted Puritan desire to fell the pain for the greater good. I needed to get my bank book printed. This is supposedly done automatically when you insert your book into the cash machine. Needless to say it did not work for me. I have to give it to one of the serfs who work in that disgraceful institution and they feed it into one of their tame machines which actually do work.

This time my visit to the bank was notable for the fact that I couldn’t even get into the bloody place!

Because of the justified hatred of the users of BBVA the workers are protected by a sophisticated entrance where reinforced sliding glass doors open to allow a single person into a cubicle with another pair of sliding doors which only open when the first set close. When I entered this cordon sanitaire I was told by a pre-recorded voice that I was carrying metal and therefore could not pass. I was told to place any forbidden articles into the half dozen lockers provided on the human side of the barrier. They were all in use of course, so no entry.

Eventually someone came out and vacated a locker which I used. I could then proceed to the end of the large, unmoving queue.

I was not best pleased. And my patience soon wore out.

Placed at strategic intervals along the queue were desks with were sparsely staffed. One minute of waiting and I decided to play the helpless foreigner card.

To be fair (and it is a Herculean effort to do so) the service I then had was excellent and I managed to complete two intended tasks and one which I hadn’t thought of! Which, of course, just shows how bad a bank it really is if it is capable of such good service in this instance and has been signally unable to match that in all the other times that I have had to avail myself of their services. Nothing like a little Jesuitical reasoning to bolster a prejudice!

My telephoning today (usually a high point of enjoyable stress during a holiday when everything has to be done NOW!) has been just as stressful if less productive.

The Spanish calls went nowhere: pious resolutions but no concrete action. I also had to make some UK calls and felt much more at home as I felt that old frustration build as a recorded voice gave me a series of choices, ever more refined, before I got to a human. At least I feel that I have made some progress there, though as this is connected with the repair or replacement of a machine whose immediate replacement I have already bought, there is a sense that I am spending time claiming something I don’t really need. Always useful to have a spare I suppose! Work in progress.

The important work that I need to complete before the beginning of term is the planning - which is the life blood of the school in which I work. ‘Life blood’ is perhaps a misleading description except as a metaphor. Blood is essential for humans, but planning in the detail which is demanded by The Owner is more like makeup – looks good but is only of superficial utility!

Another visit to Bluespace to rescue my ties.

My affectation in school is always to wear a tie, but not to do it up. A memory of my time in UK - but with a twist. Pathetic really, but that’s me.

I even managed to enquire about Spanish lessons.

Truly a day well spent. And now Toni has a short holiday too taking us through to Easter Monday.

All we want is decent weather!

What a way to spend your holiday!

What better way to start Day 2 of your holiday by visiting the doctor?

That may be a rhetorical question, but I can think of plenty of answers which do not include a tete a tete with a medical man. He reassured me that I was in fact ill and offered little in the form of medicament except for the reassuring information that I would probably be feeling a little better in three or four days – or, to put in another way, by the effective end of my holiday I could be feeling not quite ready to go back to work!

In what I could describe as an ironic twist of fate on the day that I decided to call it day with my old PDA and buy a new one I found a faded piece of paper which had the extended guarantee for the old one!

PC World is PC City in Spain, but they are the same company, so I assumed that there would be no problem in getting my old PDA repaired or replaced.

Wrong.

For reasons which I still don’t fully understand I had a sort of business account with PC World in the UK. I even had my own company, whose name I have forgotten. This fact has proved to be inconvenient to say the least and at one time involved six people in the PC City store on the Ramblas in Barcelona in high level discussions about my case. Eventually they decided that Higher Authorities in Madrid would have to be consulted and I would be phoned before 2.00 pm that day.

Needless to say this has not happened. I now believe that for a Catalan to say that s/he will phone you back is merely a polite form of saying that, probably, your concern will not be ignored in perpetuity. Probably.

I am now waiting for two phone calls which in my case I have not had. To be fair our answering machine is problematic and merely emits high pitched tones rather than coherent speech. There was a message left, but I assume that the female English instructions reduced our callers to impotent inarticulacy.

Having indulged myself in an orgy of self pity bewailing my inopportune illness today, I resolve to be more active tomorrow.

My list of tasks has (as usual) been deleted in my usual fumbling efforts to get my new PDA up and running. I am still trying to find Microsoft Reader which is supposedly bundled with the machine. Such games of hide and seek the program are old friends to someone who has owned Hp PDAs for as long as I have: it will be there somewhere. It’s just a tedious matter of searching. And trusting.

Talking of trust: put not your trust in machinery with the trademark ‘Taurus.’ I have only seen it in Spain and it appears to be the cheap big store brand and one that should be avoided like the plague.

Our dishwasher is Taurus and has duly failed to function. I have had to wash dishes by hand! Humiliating! Irritating and Debased! I do not invest in machinery to do the tasks myself. God knows there is enough heartache in loading and unloading the bloody machine without its not working! I am beginning to understand Andrew’s insistence that there is a ‘correct’ way of loading items into the dishwasher and any irregularities should be treated as if they are revolutionary acts directly related to the destruction of civilization as we know it!

Tomorrow, illness or no illness, things to do.

I will make another list!

R&R - if only!

Holiday!

There is surely no harm in starting a holiday with a recitation of good intentions.

I am about to write a list of tasks on Day 1 which will be completed by Day 8.

Some of the things I have to do would have been a delight in the UK: complaints and taking things back. How many times have I drawn a blank sheet of A4 towards my eager pen so that the details of yet another battle between consumer and heartless supplier could be commenced?

Ah! The memory reaches back to the heady days of the sagas of such things as the installation of the window blinds; the battle over the lost cheque and bankers’ lies; the threats by the powers that be connected to the television licence; the replacement of the wave drenched PDA; the shrinking number of pages in a history magazine and the exploitation inherent in a chemistry set. All great battles in their different ways and all of them produced some memorable letters!

But in Catalonia I am at a grave disadvantage; like cholesterol blocking a vein my rudimentary grasp of Spanish restricts the flow of articulate bourgeois indignation and instead I am reduced to the level of mere canaille – the illiterate and incoherent are claiming me for their own as, like some caricature Colonel Blimp I bluster and fluster in front of impassive shop assistants!

The dishwasher is malfunctioning (in Catalan); my piano is still not working (in German) and my PDA has to be returned (in Spanish). Those three items of linguistic confrontation are daunting in themselves without considering the rest of what I hope to achieve within a little week.

The planning which my school demands is little short of insanity but the entire staff (with one shining exception) seems to be able to manage it without nervous breakdowns. My one attempt was farcical with my being unable to put the words into their digital boxes let alone think of convincing words in the first place. One day of this respite from insanity will have to be spent trying to work the programs with which I am supposed to be entirely at ease!

Bluespace also has to be revisited in order to rescue more of my ties. It is perhaps, fitting that this visit should take place during Holy Week as I find my journey to this cold, heartless depository a true via dolorosa as I gaze with unfeigned pity at all my exiled books!

As the shops don’t open until ten or half past it means that I have time for another cup of tea and a continued read of ‘Against Nature’ before I have to start by round of duties.

Yesterday was not good because of having to Take To My Bed, the cold/cough/sore throat draining me of energy. The meant however that I got up at four thirty this morning being driven out of bed by its sheer lack of comfort. I don’t know what it is about the bed, but if you stay in it for too long then a kaleidoscope of pain blossoms on your spine and makes any further attempt at sleep or rest impossible.

So it’s nine a.m. and I feel as though I have lived through most of a day!

Never let it be said that I didn’t manage to get value for money in terms of time in my holidays!

The Gland Slam and other things of less importance!

I herewith eat my own words.

My defeatist cynicism on the success of Wales’ opening game in the Six Nations Championship was completely unnecessary as the splendid result in the Millennium Stadium this evening magnificently demonstrates.

Who would have thought that The Grand Slam would come to a team whose performance in the World Cup was so woeful! Well done Wales!

Meanwhile, euphoria in Wales does not help misery in Catalonia!

The traditional way to start a teacher’s holiday: streaming cold, cough and generally unwell.

Some things never change – though I think that contact with a whole range of new exotic childhood illnesses may perhaps be some explanation for my incapacity.

The one thing that my body will have to understand is that it does not have the freedom to snuffle its way through to wellness utilizing the expansive holidays that characterise the educational system of Wales. My Easter holiday is a miserly week plus a day rather than the expanse of the fortnight to which I have become accustomed!

The other horror which concentrates the mind is that the summer term has no half term. And with this Owner, no settled end to the summer term either! When the present inmates of the institution were invited to sign their contacts in September of last year, the more astute among them discovered that there was no date for the end of the year!

When this ‘interesting’ anomaly was discovered and questioned a rather grudging date of early July was given. This has been extended to a possible 13th of July, but we are going into the last term of the year with no real idea of when the end date will be.

I think that the Owner has been hearing about sessions of the British parliament where some sittings have been recorded as taking place on a single day, but in reality the unbroken gathering of MPs has extended over a greater period of time. Perhaps her idea is to have the 4th of July (another end date bandied about by the unfortunates who work in the school) extended by a week. It makes movies like ‘The Lost Weekend’ look like momentary lapses compare with the spatial rearrangement that she is proposing!

It says something for my indiscriminate Renaissance Man attributes and most of my books being in durance vile in Bluespace that my present reading is centred on two books: Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf’s ‘The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook (ISBN 0-679-74944-6) and Huysmans’ ‘Against Nature’ (too old for an ISBN number, but published by Penguin for 6/- in 1968 and therefore read by me first when I was 17!) Perhaps that was the right age for Huysmans, we will see!

‘Politically Correct’ (which, as this fascinating little book points out has “become co-opted by the enemies of language reform as a label with which to belittle the multicultural movement, is alas itself no longer ‘politically correct’”) is one of those reads which you think will be idea loo material. It is, but it is the sort of loo reading that a wishy-washy liberal like me feels is slightly condescending and right wing. It is, therefore a guilty pleasure. Or at least it should be, but this book transcends the easy, snide remark (usually, though not always) and as you flick through with an attitude which is alternately amused, shocked, angered and bewildered you find that you are beginning to see reason behind apparent madness.

“Methinks he doth protest too much” has been the way forward for many worthwhile causes which have had to suffer ridicule until their value has been appreciated. From slavery to the overloading of ships; from votes for women to maternity leave; from sick leave to homosexual rights – all these ‘causes’ have been dismissed as ludicrous concerns until society (or at least enlightened thinkers) have recognised that there is a case to be answered. In the course of their various campaigns overstatement has been one of the ways in which the voice of the oppressed has been heard. The human animal is not necessarily convinced by reason, but can always be swayed by emotion – the play on the sleep of reason!

One of the interesting linguistic developments I have witnessed in my time in education has been the addressing of the leader of the meeting. When I was a pupil in Cardiff High School for Boys we were taught that when we were referring to both sexes then the singular pronoun used should be masculine, so, for example, ‘Everyone should send his friend a card at Christmas? Would have been unexceptional in my school – or correct!

In spite of, or because of the inherently sexist teaching I received and also because I believed that Barbara Castle could be Prime Minister, my feminist credentials were good. Good, that is for the times in which I was living in a provincial city in the sixties!

In school we were taught to refer to the chair of a meeting as The Chairman irrespective of sex. In a more enlightened moment we were taught to say ‘Madam Chairman? Then we were given ‘Madam Chair’ and then, finally ‘Chair.’ Not a difficult progression, but one that took some twenty years to be generally accepted.

On the M4 toll on the Severn Crossing bridge the payment kiosks are referred to a ‘Manned’ it is surely a small change, but a significant one to change that to ‘Staffed.’ A change worth making.

I will not spoil the delights of reading the higher reaches of insanity loving catalogued in ‘Politically Correct’ except to say that you begin to doubt your own sanity when you read of some of the inanity perpetrated by academics in search of publication!

Read it and find out for yourselves!

Check your food!

Come with me as I take you back to the moral squalor of Renaissance Italy and the paranoia of life under the Borgias! Experience the terror as you realise that every friendly face could mask the reality of a sneering villain! Shun shadows that could hide the glint of the stiletto waiting to sheath itself in your spine! Let your imagination rip and you could be there!

Or just pop along to our school where paranoia is as ordinary as deadly nightshade!

Toni’s seemingly cynical advice to “trust no-one” seems to be no more than a blindingly obvious precaution as we teachers slip numbed towards the end of term.

Wheels within wheels turn slowly as plots fester and suspicion hardens. Mixed metaphors rear upwards with the diabolical ease of succulent chocolates as we all look around and echo That Woman’s cry of “Is he one of us!” (Please excuse the sexist pronoun but you know how few women made it into the target area of significance in her regime.)

Spies (real and imagined) abound and any conversation is viewed as suspicious.

It all puts me in mind of G K Chesterton’s delightful book, ‘The Man Who Was Thursday’ where a man is infiltrated into a dangerous spy ring only (eventually) to discover that everyone else is an infiltrator too!

Which is not to say that something is not going on. Our school is superficially fine: teachers teach and children learn – it does what it says on the tin. But all the structures and the methods used to ensure that those structures work are rotten to the core. The central malaise means that to step outside your classroom is to enter a world where the structured normality of your teaching space is suddenly a distant planet in another star system in a parallel universe.

Which can be a little wearing. Something will eventually have to give and I only hope that it isn’t me!

Why should it be? I have survived a whole term of teaching, or at least what I think is covered by that term, in a school where the ordinary has been skewed some distance away from the generally accepted norms.

What have I achieved in my sojourn in the institution since January? I could leave that as a rhetorical question or I could attempt to find some sort of answer. After all this is the first time in my life that I have taught pupils so young! I really should be able to itemize a whole range of educational insights and professional achievements from such an extended period of time.

If we go on what is new for me; what is challenging; what is extraordinary then I would have to single out yesterday.

I held my first parental consultation in Spanish!

God alone knows what I said to the woman about her daughter but the proof of my competence in my adopted language was that she left smiling.

Although thinking about that, the smile could have been the quiet delight of a parent listening to the semi literate ravings of a teacher trying to communicate insights abut the communication difficulties of her daughter in Tarzan-like attempts at language!

I will have to look for the arched eyebrow of superiority when I next meet her!

What's the tragedy today, Jim?

Failed planning paled into insignificance after a hastily called meeting of the primary school staff this morning.

What, you might ask was the meeting about.

Was it perchance some complex decision about the ramifications of the implementation of some tricky part of the curriculum? Perhaps it was concerned with an aspect of pupil safety? Parental involvement in the forthcoming Parents’ Evening might have been the crucial aspect demanding our immediate attention.

Get real.

Teachers, parents, kids? Who cares? Certainly not the powers that be in our place. No, this meeting was concerned with something far more important than any professional irritations.

Our head dinner lady had threatened to resign!

Now that is something to get the administration into overdrive!

What had prompted this ultimatum? The selfishness of teachers.

Let me explain. The canteen is on the ground floor together with the foetal section of the school. Primary is on the first floor and secondary on the second. The staff room is located on the first floor as seen from the playground (The Patio) but at road level from the main entrance (confusingly.)

Teachers are served their meals in large, ugly, grey, plastic, compartmentalised troughs with a lid. These have to be carried upstairs by individual members of staff where the cold meal (after all our duties it is inevitable that the food is frigid) can be eaten in the staff room.

Our every caring dinner lady decided that these were boxes too far. She would no longer put meals in them. Obviously, as a dinner lady far outranks any mere teacher in our place Something Had To Be Done.

The Primary meeting was told (no discussion) that from now on teaching staff would eat with the kids. A separate table possibly, but with the kids none the less. So, having taught all morning, you have a meal with the kids then you go out to the playground to supervise them.

We were told that in the Never Never Land of something called ‘Next Year’ there would be a utopian existence for teachers where all the lunchtime supervision would be done by Others. Though obviously such pampered namby-pamby sybaritic teachers, lounging in their staff room kid free for a brief break would have correspondingly lower salaries.

Oh, and by the way, we were told, anyone who had said that they were ‘undecided’ about whether they wanted to continue their productive career in the school next year would be considered as dangerously subversive recidivists and treated with horror and contempt. Actually that last bit was my gloss on what was actually said as their interpretation of ‘undecided’ was not coming back.

So, for the second great year the secondary section of our Great School looks as though it is going to resign en mass!

I might also point out that such high handed carelessness in the management of already disgruntled staff does not bode well for the forthcoming double inspection to discover if our school is ready for accreditation. If it wasn’t actually going to happen you would just laugh all of this off as a bad joke.

As wild horses would not induce me to eat with the kids (in my last school I didn’t even go into the dining hall to get food from the canteen to eat in the staff room) I decided to stop taking the food from the school at once.

As soon as my interminable thirty minutes of supervision of kids whose manipulation of knife and fork looked as though they were auditioning for an extra’s role in some rustic medieval banquet, I flounced out of the school and went into the sports’ centre which is next to our place.

As a gesture of revolutionary solidarity and a solid blow against the power of the autocrat of our administration I decided to have the menu del dia.

When I am making a gesture I don’t count the cost. This actually turned out to be about €11 including a bottle of beer and a cortado.

Much refreshed I walked back to the school and, if I had not stopped to chat with a colleague in the foetus section of the school I would have timed my reappearance to collect my class with an almost military precision.

No sooner inside the school than I discovered that the ‘hard pressed’ dinner lady had actually shouted at one of my colleagues in front of teachers, other staff and pupils. Fully to understand the basis of this disagreement you would have to be a member of staff of the school. Suffice to say that a loud mouthed boor acted with characteristic discourtesy towards a colleague marked for her professionalism, poise and politeness.

What, in a real school, would have resulted in a written warning and a demand for a full written apology will instead result in nothing - because the dinner lady is a close associate of The Owner and therefore the dinner lady’s word, however inaccurate, will be taken above that of any bunch of teachers.

And there are still two days left before the holiday!

It just gets worse!

A day that starts with a vomit, takes in a Parents’ Open Morning, a truly repulsive lunch, loss of a free period and ends with a meeting is not good.

It turns out that it was much, much worse than ‘not good.’

Everything hinges on planning.

Our school runs on a level of detailed planning which makes any space flight look like an impromptu jaunt. The evidence of planning has to be completed on computer and emailed to the powers that be. On a weekly basis and a termly basis.

It is the stuff of fantasy and I have been protected heretofore by the kind ministrations of my two colleagues who have been in post since last September. They are frighteningly efficient and effortlessly glide from idea to computer to plan. They have included me in their documentation and I have lived a life of easy and delight. As far as that is possible in our other worldly institution.

All this has changed and now I am immersed in the gnomic struggles not only with an unfriendly program on the computer, but also with an unyielding web site and a simple lack of experience in what I should be doing. And I am failing to produce the simplest aspect of the gargantuan task which is eventually something which falls apart because no week is exactly as we expect it to be.

I will have to swallow my pride and creep to my colleagues and be giving pitying instruction so that I can stagger along in their eloquent electronic footsteps!

Something has to be sent to management by Friday. No pressure then!

I will throw myself on their mercy and giggle nervously – that sometimes works.

This has not been the sort of day to mark with a white stone. Only the thought of the holiday makes it all somehow worthwhile!

Time is an illusion!

When is the end of term not the end of term?

Answer? When you work in a private school in Sitges.

I have already been informed that the term ‘summer holidays’ which I saw on a school calendar in the staff room only means summer holidays for the kids. Our end of term is a week later. Perhaps.

Today, in just one incident in the array of unbelievability which characterises any day working in this extraordinary institution, we were told that the fabled ‘Summer Gold’ (or payment for the summer holidays as it is sometimes known) would only be paid to those who had worked a full year in the institution. The key is ‘a full year.’ When the term ended has varied from the 30th of June, to the 4th of July to (The horror! The horror!) the 13th of July today. It is fantastic (in the true sense of the word) that we are still discussing the date of the end of the summer term two terms into the year!

The way that The Owner seems to be working is that she will extend the summer term and bring forward the opening date of the Autumn term so that we will end up having a long weekend as our summer holiday!

My serious belief is that The Owner is starting a series of Machiavellian ploys to avoid paying any holiday pay to anyone at all. Wait, the use of the adjective ‘Machiavellian’ suggests an element of subtlety that is certainly not present in any dealings that I have had with Her Infernal Highness!

On a more personal basis, consider the following.

We teachers in Years 3 and 4 decided to have a Book Exchange as part of a practical implementation of our ideas on recycling which in turn has been part of a unit of work on pollution and sustainability. The idea of the Book Exchange, which was suggested by my colleague in our year, was that students would bring in books of which they had tired and be given a voucher which they could then use to claim a new book. I designed a voucher to by used by the kids and put the page of voucher blanks in the tray to be photocopied.

This innocent looking page was spotted by The Owner and taken into her office because she did not know anything about this revolutionary, earth changing idea. Did she have the basic courtesy to inform me that she had, unilaterally decided to put an embargo on part of my teaching material? Did she have the simple common sense to ask me to give her further details about this more imaginative working of the curriculum? Did she bother to say ‘Well done for thinking of another way of involving the kids in an active aspect of their curriculum? Did she buggery!

When I found out what she had done, filled with righteous anger and with the frenzy of fury about me – I wrote an internal memo.

Now I am sure that there are some among you who will say that the writing of an internal memo (on the correct note paper) is a rather tame response. You have to understand that in the Never-Never World that is our normal working environment, the writing of a memo on the correct notepaper is the equivalent of a direct assault!

But not as satisfying!

Tomorrow is an ‘Open Morning’ when parents will be allowed, nay encouraged, to wander around and be with their kids in the classroom while I attempt to teach them something.

The fact that this ‘Open Morning’ takes place during the time when the kids should be having their Spanish and Catalan lessons means that we have to do something extra and a something extra which can be interrupted at any time by parents asking something or other. At least it is only for an hour.

Then the parents’ evening is the day after tomorrow.

My life is just one long sequence of delights!

Change?

Today is the general election which will decide who is going to be president of Spain.

A suitably dull day for what to my monoglot ears has been something of a lacklustre campaign.

As my Spanish is rudimentary, to say the least, you might think that I would be in no position to say anything about a campaign which is, by necessity waged more in words than in anything else. That would, of course, be to underestimate my overweening pride in being able to navigate my way though an entire language by judicious use of the single word ‘si!

So, from the point of view of someone who rarely understands what is going on, let me pontificate.

Zapatero easily seems to claim the role of the ‘experienced filled with gravitas’ style of political leadership while his opponent Rajoy with his rather irritating lisping sententiousness (how the hell can I tell?) has the more harrying approach of the man out of power attacking what his opponent has actually done or not done.

In Catalonia Rajoy and his party (PP) have played the language card and emphasised the difficulties facing Spanish speaking people who come to live and work in Catalonia. For the children there is little Spanish education: their education in state schools is through the medium of Catalan. The language question is deeply political (as it is in Wales, for example) but in Catalonia it is fair to say that the language of the region is Catalan in a way in which it is not in Wales. Catalan is the language of the majority and it the language of choice in all aspects of Catalan life. Monoglot Spanish speakers are made to feel that they are not speaking the language of the country. PP has traded on residual resentment and seems to have ignited a national discussion about the position of Catalonia and the other autonomous regions.

There seems to be a natural resentment about Catalonia because of its perceived difference and status in Spain. Catalans do not necessarily help their full integration into Spanish society by their aloofness and distain for other parts of the country. Catalans also regard other regions as sucking necessary finance from their own concerns.

All of this means that there is political capital to be made from criticising aspects of Catalan ways of doing things – and is being made! We will just have to see if has been enough for Rajoy to snatch the presidency. There are more voters outside Catalonia than inside it, so the decision will be made in spite of Catalan voters.

Time will tell.

So much for jabs!

A couple of days of self pitying cold symptoms and I shun the typewriter. There’s an archaic word for you!

As I have been feeling sorry for myself (it’s a job only I can do with the requisite sincerity) I have neglected my writing. Part of that neglect was also immersing myself in a book.

I would like to say that my choice of literature was uplifting and intellectually respectable. But it wasn’t.

My choice of reading matter was a chance encounter with one of the books donated by past staff to the reading shelf in the staff room: ‘Eldest’ by Christopher Paolini.

This is the second volume of his ‘Inheritance’ trilogy, of which ‘Eregon’ was the first volume. This book has already been turned into a film with Jeremy Irons emulating Alex Guinness and acting as if he was in a much better film.

It comes as no surprise to find out that the author was home schooled and started writing the first volume when he graduated from High School at the age of fifteen. That sounds very arch and knowing and is a wilful acceptance of a stereotypical assumption that anyone home schooled will, of necessity, turn to fantasy worlds to fill in the lack of socialisation stemming from a lack of peer group contact.

There again, what the hell do I know about the realities of Christopher Paolini’s life? I should just go with what I’ve read in this volume.

So. The content of this narrative will not come as a surprise to anyone who has read any other fantasy books. Take a cast which includes elves, dwarfs, dragons, magic, humans and a scattering of semi humans and then you place them in a chosen-one-aiding-the-final-battle-against-evil sort of scenario and that’s what the book is about.

As someone once said that there were only seven basic plots (“The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories” by Christopher Booker – thank you internet where a casual comment can be footnoted in a couple of seconds!) I suppose that it would be unfair for castigating a novel which uses a fairly hackneyed structure. It would be far fairer to assess how Paolini uses the framework to tell his story.

And it isn’t, in my view, very good.

His archaisms in his writing of speech are cringe makingly irritating and he simply doesn’t not have the authority in his narrative thrust to enable a reader to ‘roll with the punch’ of some lazy formulation and get on with the story.

His descriptions are weak and, while he undoubtedly creates some pretty pictures his prose does not rise to the necessary heights for set pieces which promise much but deliver little. The promised battle that is the thrust of much of the volume is a woeful let down when it finally occurs.

It is an amusing, though not very taxing literary game to list all the sources that are shamelessly stitched together to create this tale: from The Star Wars saga, though Lord of the Rings to The Old Testament no epic is left unplucked!

Tolkien’s genius was to choose a central character for the Lord of the Rings who was tangentially human; incorporating all our flaws while remaining visually and morally ‘other’ – close and distant at the same time. There is none of that subtlety in this epic wannabe.

Having said all that: I enjoyed reading it, but at the same time I would only recommend it for those who are enthusiasts of the genre. And adolescent boys. Or is that a tautology?

Nice portrait of a dragon on the front cover, courtesy of John Jude Palencar. Whose surname, now I think about it, resembles the honorific title of some long lost elfin King in the fabled country of Çleñdälé? It looks so much more convincing with bits around the letters doesn’t it?

Whatever.

I shall return the volume to the staff shelf on Monday rather than place it firmly among my other books.

That must tell you something about my reaction to the book!

The hand of the law

My days are numbered. I wait in fear and trembling for the soft thud of envelope hitting the floor. Justice will prevail.

A flash of light while speeding my way toward the opera. Sudden realizations that this stretch of road alone in all the roads of Catalonia has your typical boy racer (of all ages) meekly submit to the newly imposed speed limit of 80 km an hour. Yet I ignored the uncharacteristically moderate behaviour and recklessly exceeded the limit by 10 km an hour!

I suppose that some of the preceding writing indulges in a degree of poetic licence. My letters (eventually) find their way into our post box which is on the inside surface of the garden wall of the flat. I would have to have hearing at the level of acuity of a highly strung bat to hear my post arrive! Especially as the post is delivered as a lump of correspondence which falls through the central letterbox only to fall to the ground because the box is broken and it has no back.

Someone, something, sometime then sorts the letters and puts ours in our little box. Our box has a plastic window so that you can tell when there is mail. That at least is the theory. I don’t think that anyone has cleaned this little window since the box was first placed there. If the little window was cleaned it would be easier to see if there was any mail.

And here you get to one of those stupid problems that human flesh is heir to. Which one among us can not say that we have left undone those things that we ought to have done (and there is no health in us) [think of the Prayer Book] There are some things that we ought to do that would take virtually no effort; would be done in the twinkling of an eye – yet we omit to do them.

Usually they are tiny cleaning jobs: the gunge around the base of taps; the casually glimpsed smudge on a window or mirror; the slightly grubby light switch; the crystallised sugar on a sugar spoon; the gunge in grooves that bedevil surrounds of sinks and cookers; the dust that accumulates on the base of standard lights and inside open ornamental bowls. I hope that all of this is striking some sort of resonant chord with someone out there and it is not my personal paranoia that is being illustrated!

Cleaning the little window in our mail box is one of those jobs. Every time you look into the murky plastic you make a resolution to clean it. It doesn’t work with a thumb brush – I know, I’ve tried. I would have to bring a paper towel down and do it properly. And, if I am truthful, the floor of the box could do with a clean too. But by the time that I have walked up the stairs to the flat the intention has gone and the preparation to ensure a thorough job is just too much of a fag to bother with.

So, ever since we first arrived in the flat, this has been one job that has been waiting to be completed.

How shameful! How slothful! How typical!

On a more self pitying note I have to tell you that the efficacy of the anti-flu jab has now worn off. I have not had a cold throughout the ostensible winter in Catalonia I have felt, like Miss Flite, that there has been a cold somewhere in the room. I have, however kept the damn thing at bay until the last couple of days. I have felt thoroughly rotten today and yesterday but, as is my wont, I have had to do without sympathy because I don’t seem ill. “What?” asked one of my colleagues today, “always happy, Stephen?” If you exude bonhomie then it is unlikely that you are going to score highly on the sympathy-for-the-miserable scale. I must remember to look more morose. On principle!

Today has been the day that my class (augmented by extraneous bodies from another class whose teacher is on a skiing trip with pupils at a resort where there is no snow) has completed the production of their models of the sculpture suitable to go in the centre of roundabouts.

I have to admit that you will never know the reality of the phrase “needy children” until you have been the teacher in charge of a class of primary school pupils hell bent on constructing a model of anything using cardboard, paper, plastacine, tooth picks, lolly sticks, sellotape, coloured paper, photocopies, felt tipped pens, elastic bands, straws, tissue paper, silver paper, clear plastic sheet, pencils, ink pens, rulers, glue and paper clips.

After a while the words that make up your name appear meaningless as seemingly countless mouths mouth it. In an act of sheer self protection I have insisted that all the kids have to use ‘may I’ rather than ‘can I’ before they get anything. This allows me a few precious seconds to refocus on the next of the faces demanding attention. They remind me of nothing more than a nest full of young birds that, as soon as the parent bird appears, turn toward the parent and squawk with gaping mouths towards their provider.

I can now, fully, understand the frenetic life of the dealers on the floor of the stock exchange who appear to be communicating with the entire population of the place all at the same time. Any primary school class in full creative flow producing some artistic artefact would reduce the hardy denizens of the stock market floor to gibbering wrecks in double quick time!

And we did science experiments as well. Though not during the same lesson – that really would have been a living hell!

We are now working our way towards a book exchange. The idea is simple. The pupils bring in those books which they feel that they have outgrown or no longer want and exchange them for similar books that their friends have brought in.

A simple and unremarkable idea you might think. But no. Our kids are already developing the proclivities which have allowed their parents the financial freedom to send their kids to a fee paying school. The idea of exchanging a book ‘for ever’ was greeted with horror. When I think about my books, my kids seemed to be saying, the emphasis is on the personal possessive pronoun (or adjective) (or whatever) what I have I keep. My books they seem to be saying are, by definition, not anyone else’s.

Tomorrow we are designing posters for this (traumatic) event. I will not hold my breath to see how many books turn up!

Meanwhile I have to design the vouchers which will be issued to each child for the books that they bring in, which in turn will allow each child to claim another book.

We live in a materialistic society.

Meat is murder! Sometimes.

My new found vegetarianism (in school only) is having mixed results.

The Dinner Lady is frankly sceptical; not about my particular case, but about the possibility of anyone being truly vegetarian. In a country where meat eating is second nature true vegetarians are something of a rarity. One of my colleagues recounted her experiences of explaining that she was a vegetarian (real) in Catalonia and was therefore offered chicken and fish as alternatives! One person said that they had gone out to a restaurant and asked for the vegetarian alternative for one of their number and was told that the restaurant didn’t really have one, but they could have a smaller portion of the meat instead “if that was alright!” Bless!

Today’s offering in my box was tepid lentil soup and completely tasteless veggie burgers. The only saving grace was the salad (of which I had more) and a piece of fruit. The bread was OK as well! Not inspiring, but I still consider that I am doing better than my carnivorous colleagues.

It puts me in mind of my new found vegetarianism in college which was ignominiously suspended because, as someone pointed out with completely unnecessary logic, I was eating the meat too. Pedant!

As an English teacher I should be gratified at the way that my colleagues are evincing a new found enthusiasm for practical criticism. Never before has so much attention been paid to so few, yet significant words. There have been discussions about nuances of meaning about individual words and phrases and there has also been deep and academic interest into the various editions and versions of texts under consideration.

The texts in question are the various versions of the contracts that bind us in adamantine chains of servitude to the dictates of capricious wage payers.

The phrase most often heard is “what if?” and then a speculative rumination about how to get the full amount of what we are worth is weighed against how we will be frustrated in this laudable aspiration.

Everything hinges on how and when people have to give in their resignations. We have been asked to indicate our intentions as far as continuing in employment in the school for next year. The deadline for responses is the first of April which is absurdly early when considered in the light of what would be required in Britain. International Schools work to different time scales, but even so, few of my colleagues are prepared to reveal their hands at this early stage. The situation is tense and endlessly interesting!

Talking of interesting: the end of term is, it would appear, a ‘moveable feast.’

I took, take and will take the end of term to be indicated on the school calendar as ‘summer holiday.’ Not, I think you will agree an unreasonable assumption. Wrong!

There is an extra week at the end of June, stretching into July. The kids will not be there, but it is an opportunity for us to tidy (acceptable) and clean! (Not acceptable.) I am perhaps being a little previous here and cleaning may only be taking down displays, but I fear that something much more thorough is actually involved.

In my darker moments I assume that it another little trick of The Owner to get us so infuriated that we all walk out so that she doesn’t have to pay us for the summer holidays. In my more paranoid moments I also wonder about the fact that I started in January and will not therefore have completed a full year by the time of the summer holidays. What will her attitude be towards my extended lazing about at her expense? Time, as they say, will tell.

I think that things are heating up not only in terms of the climate but also in terms of the attitudes of my colleagues.

Easter could yet be a turning point.

Family Life

Today was not the day to develop a runny nose.

This evening saw me set off with Buddhist calm into the extended traffic jam which is the coast road into Barcelona. My destination was the Gran Theatre del Liceu for a performance of ‘Elektra’ by Richard Strauss.

Almost as soon as I found my seat – wait, that’s not true. I have tried to work out the cabbalistic complexity which is the seat location as printed on the ticket but I have constantly failed. The most that I have achieved is to be in the general area of where my seat might be. Then the red Nehru jacketed workers, using a knowledge passed down through generations, usher you to your seat.

This was the best seat in which I have sat: the front row of the second tier with an expanse of red plush on which to rest my programme. If I had had time to buy one!

I really should have done my homework and not relied on a WNO performances of god knows how many years ago. I can remember the safety curtain with Electra written in blood on it and a hapless Electra swinging disconsolately around the fragment of a colossal statue of Agamemnon.

This production opened with a faded and rotting classical façade with a few small slight showing through the wall, when this was flown the thrust of the production was vividly presented by showing the changing room with flashing insect-o-cuter for a collection of what looked like German concentration camp female guards. The main set of the opera was the palace which had faded grandeur with classical detail filled in with corrugated iron sheets and a Napoleonic chaise longue vying with oil drums for attention.

This was a society driven by paranoia and life and death being indistinguishable one from the other.

The singing throughout and the orchestral playing were equally superb. Total authority and intense drama characterised the production both dramatically and musically.

But back to my nose.

Almost as soon as I had finally found my seat, settled back and waited for the lights to dim it was as if a tap had been turned on inside my olfactory system. I was intensely aware of the proximity of the lady on my right and I leaned towards the empty seat on my left. Subtle drawing of my hand across my face in a gesture which I felt expressed Straussian angst and Wargnerian loftiness, but which was actually designed to stem the flood, did nothing of the sort.

A desperate (but contained) rummage in my pocket managed to unearth a minute fragment of tissue which had to absorb above its surface area for much of the performance.

It being sod’s law of course, ‘Electra’ is a one act opera and is therefore performed in its entirety without a break.

While the massed flow of mucus rushed to obey the laws of gravity I also developed a cough. My desperate attempts to suppress the urge to cough brought quite literal tears to my eyes which coursed down my fact to join forces with . . . well you get the idea.

The fragment of tissue gradually disintegrated as did my composure.

The fact that I was able to appreciate the music at all is a direct reflection of my determination to get value for money for my vastly expensive seat!

My enjoyment was more than shared with the less fluid members of the audience who shouted their appreciation at the final curtain. Flowers rained down on the singers, some bouquets hitting the stage with solid thuds. When Clytemnestra took her bow aficionados in the gods threw handfuls of leaflets down onto the stage!

This is a production not to miss. Whether you know the music or not, the sheer drama of the piece will keep you transfixed.

I feel that this exemplification of Greek family life is trying to tell me something about the present state of education in my school, but I am too tired to work out the detail of the lesson.

Perhaps tomorrow.

Pondering the wind!

Castelldefels was packed today.

It was as if there was something going on that I didn’t know about. A holiday, a fiesta proclaimed to all the world, but kept a secret from me so that the influx of people determined to enjoy themselves could come as a nice surprise to me!

The generally rotten weather of the past few days has given way to better. Not wonderful, but better. The sun is shining fitfully and, as long as you are within the shine of that distant star then you can convince yourself that it is early summer.

Once walk into the shadow and you can easily convince yourself that winter is not yet over! Having said that I was wearing a short sleeved shirt today. I was, of course alone in affecting this form of dress, all the other inhabitants of Catalonia being firmly and snugly tucked up in their full winter wear!

There was also a sharp wind which whipped up the sand on the beach into fast moving clouds. The shape of the beach, or at least its profile, has been altered by the work which has been done near to the first line of flats. I have no idea what they are up to, but they are quite flamboyant with the number of earth (sand) movers and the general chaos they have caused. They have made major inroads (almost literally) into the partially grass covered dune which is just outside the exit from our flats on to the beach.

The wind and the clouds of sand were doing their best to transform the man made incursions into something far more natural. Give the wind a few more days and the profile will look as though it has been caused by wind erosion over the centuries!

The wind brings out the surfers in force. Not those namby-pamby board surfers, but rather those more showy wind surfers who use the curved kites to give them speed and height. The velocity that one of the guys (? Difficult to tell) managed to achieve on his board is usually only matched by those infinitely irritating motorised ski bikes or whatever they are called. Cutting through the waves at that speed must be exhilarating and I am quite prepared to leave the feeling that these intrepid or stupid (depending on your point of view) sportspeople get to my imagination rather than my experience.

I regard them as a sort of moving landscape feature that makes my contemplation of the sea and surrounding areas more interesting.

As television overload makes the ordinary unacceptably boring in short measure so people, with what I can only describe as a death wish, pander to our jaded appetites and produce ‘sports’ which stay just this side of the suicidal.

I suppose that all skiing is a form of going down a mountain side, but on conventional ski slopes there is usually a covering of snow and chasms and ledges and rocks usually indicate that you are falling off a cliff rather than engaging in sporting activity.

Now, of course, there is a sort of skiing which looks to me like falling and it is a very well organized (or state funded) television company which doesn’t resort to gratuitous pictures of some idiot jumping from a helicopter onto a pinnacle summit and then skiing and falling his way to the bottom.

I suppose my shouted advice to the rescuers scrambling towards the crumpled figure that they “leave him (it really is usually a him) there to die,” is a little unfeeling and unworthy of a member of one of the caring professions!

When you have sat on a Turkish beach and tried to explain the way to play squash to a frankly disbelieving Turk, you begin to realise that your sport and perhaps all sport is innately ridiculous. I did try and explain badminton to the same Turk but after my description of squash I think he regarded me as some sort of Baron Munchausen figure! You can get injured in these sports – one of my squash partners smashed a ball into my eye – but generally the greatest damage to the system is done by the drinks in the bar after the game!

With potholing, sky diving, extreme skiing and the like the risks are fairly obvious. If anything goes wrong in potholing then people have to put their lives at risk to rescue the ‘sportsmen’ and the rescue services are generally funded by the public.

I suppose that this is a ‘slippery slope’ argument. The same could be said for those who deliberately adopt a life style where food, drink and drugs play a significantly adverse part in the health of the participant.

How boring, the argument goes, it would all be if we all played safe. I’m not sure just what potholing has given to the world, discounting nice pictures of stalagmites and stalactites. Does hang gliding really do anything to further our understanding of aerodynamics and apart from giving plastic and other surgeons bodies on which to improve technique does extreme skiing add to the wealth of human happiness?

Mind you, can’t think of much that squash has given to civilization either, and don’t get me started on the ridiculous claims of MCC bores for their tedious game.

To sum up: everyone should swim.

Job done!

Training!

As far as I am aware, this is the first time in my life that I have spent Saint David’s Day outside my country! Apart, that is, for a few times in England.

I am the only Welsh teacher in my school – that in itself must be something of a record. Where else do you get a school where the teaching is in English where there are not at least a couple of Welsh teachers? I am assuming that in English speaking countries you can count people of Welsh descent as fulfilling the necessary quota!

There were no plans for an Eisteddfod and I did not feel inclined to try and institute one, but I felt that such an auspicious day (even if March the first was on a Saturday) could not be allowed to pass by the benighted pupils of our school.

On Friday (the nearest school day) my classroom was bedecked with full colour Welsh flags, depictions of leeks and daffodils and outlines of the country. My English class were treated to a potted version of the Saint’s life complete with sceptical version of the Magic Mountain incident in his life.

It appears that Saint David was preaching to an outdoor congregation, some of whom had difficulty in seeing him. Cue the miraculous: the ground beneath David’s feet rose up and, lo and behold, all could now feast their eyes on the holy man! One cynic among he commentators that I read through on line described this as one of the most redundant miracles ever performed given the mountainous nature of Wales and that fact that David could merely (and probably did) just walk up the nearest slope to give everyone a good view!

Still, the pupils seemed quite amiable about accepting, with equanimity, the impossible and expressed delight when I distributed outline versions of the Welsh flag for them to colour in. I also gave them drawings of the saint himself and they were even more delighted to hear that they could colour this in with any colours they liked as opposed to the restricted palette of red, white and green for the flag.

In one of the even lower age classes than the one I teach there is a Welsh boy. This lad knows he is Welsh but he didn’t know where in Wales he was born when I questioned him. Still, his mother cooked some Welsh cakes and his class teacher allowed him to bring some to me.

The frantic and pathetic pleading of my class meant that I broke up the Welsh cakes and distributed them around the class like some sort of Celtic priest distributing communion bread! This went down, literally and metaphorically, very well.

If I am still here next year (teaching in Sitges I mean, not in Castelldefels) then I will have to do something more, even if March the first is on a Sunday in 2009.

When did I last buy something nice?

Perhaps I should have written that word as ‘nice’ because it is a quotation. Whenever I ventured into town with a certain number of items to buy for my mother, she would often say to my departing back, “. . . and anything else nice that you see.” Which being interpreted meant, “If you see anything that you and I (and not your father) would recognize as interesting and which it would be crime to leave on the shelf at that price - then buy it.”

When you have been trained (as I have) by a mother who sometimes regarded shopping as a vocation rather than a chore, then you begin to develop which may be termed a Value Instinct.

A Value Instinct is the ability to be able buy, with assurance, something that Others might say you don’t really need. And not feel guilty about it.

My mother started my training young and I often accompanied her on shopping Expeditions (I use the capital letter with some reason) which were far closer to Campaigns (I use the capital letter with some justification) as she moved around town with the confidence of a cross between a general and a guerrilla fighter.

When I was old enough to wander around town by myself, so that I too could handle, assess and deliberate upon articles that I had absolutely no intention of buying (the sign of a true shopper) my mother always insisted that our later rendezvous point was the Wedgwood concession near the entrance on the ground floor in Howells. This was, of course, before the irresistible rise of the perfume concessions which have now swept away all other opposition and reign supreme in the prime sites of department stores at the ground floor entrances. Have you any idea how great the turnover of over priced pungent liquids actually is? I was once told (some years ago) how much the perfume department in Debenham’s in the St David’s Centre in Cardiff made in one week, and I was speechless with frustrated envy and horror.

Wedgwood has had a not inconsiderable effect on my life. My mother liked jasper ware and that took care of a fair number of birthday and Christmas presents before she tired of it. Wedgwood is my default setting of choice for china and glass.

I have to admit that sometimes this preference is not a good thing as, for example, when I priced a fairly simple dinner service in white with a metallic trim and was told that it was two thousand pounds!

As the assistant had worked quite hard pricing all the individual items that I deemed essential for a basic dinner service (one surely needs two gravy boats?) I thought that my look of horrified amazement at this price was hardly an adequate recompense for her attention. Thinking quickly I stuttered out a panicky question, “Can you use it in the microwave?” The answer was delivered in a stern voice and with a steely gaze.

“No sir, that would adversely affect the platinum.”

That gave me the escape route that I needed and mumbling my thanks I told her that anything I bought would have to be microwave safe, and I hastily beat a retreat from a place where my budget did not give me admission!

The dinner service that I eventually bought was dishwasher safe, microwave safe, oven proof, freezer proof and insured for twelve months against breakages!

And it was Wedgwood.

Like riding a bicycle, some things remain with you for life!

Hearing is not convincing

It comes to something that the highlight of my week was winning the ‘Best Kept Classroom’ award!

To the absolute delight of my class the scrap of card outlining our success was handed over in the only assembly of the week this afternoon.

I am now noted for my ability to transform dull certificates to things of wonder by lavish use of garish border strips and glitter pens. Take it from me the reality is even worse than you can imagine. It proceeds from the suppressed imagination of a primary teacher manqué that I must have been for most of my educational career! Perhaps it’s best not to go there; some fugitive thoughts are better left running than being tied down and considered!

I have recently been trying to remember the last time that I read a book. I barely remember what they look like, let alone remember what they feel like and what they contain. In a foreign country there are strategies for obtaining reading material; you just need to think before you panic.

In the staff room there is a shelf devoted to novels in English. I have to say that they reflect the gender imbalance that is inherent in teaching. The titles are not encouraging and I’ve never heard of the authors. Not a good start, but also offering the possibility of an unexpected delight.

You could also buy English books, though I have to say that they are far less ‘available’ than I would have expected. Even in Barcelona they are no as readily apparent as I would have hoped.

The last way is to buy them from the internet, though I have to admit that I have only bought one book using this method since I have been in Spain.

What I really miss is the cheap book shop. With books in English! We have a cheap quality book shop in Castelldefels, but, apart from a couple of cheap art books, it does not satisfy.

It is perhaps all for the good as all the shelves that I have are at present occupied with ‘essential’ books. Each new compact volume in the Great Artists of Catalonia series poses a new storage problem. There are some jejune and callow commentators who might say that the ‘problem’ could be solved by my taking some books back to Bluespace and the cold, heartless prison where the rest of my books languish.

I was hoping for a job in Secondary so that I could justify releasing the rest of The Bluespace Thousands and bringing back the exiles into the warmth of human contact. The school in Castelldefels has stymied that plan, so the Siberian banishment of my volumes continues.

Virtually every day, and sometimes more than once during the day, I think of books that I want to dip into. Hearing of the success of ‘No Country for Old Men’ made me think of other Yeats poems that I wanted to look through – without the hassle of having to bring them all up on the internet.

There is something inhuman about reading a poem on a screen, let alone a poem magicked from improbable pixels floating around the web. Unless I have the comfort of the hard reality of cool, flat, smooth pages to caress then an essential aspect of the reading experience is lost.

I always used to wonder when listening to Desert Island Disks about the veracity of certain musicians who were on the programme. Ray Plomley, the only authentic voice of the programme, used to ask the guests, after they had chosen their eight records if they would rather have the scores of the music rather than a performance. When some of them replied that they would rather have the scores I always assumed that they were showing off and they couldn’t possibly ‘hear’ the music from rows of funny shapes symbols on the page.

It was only much later when I imagined being given the opportunity to respond to the ‘which eight gramophone records would you choose to have with you’ that I thought about how I would respond if, instead of music, the recordings were of poems.

Suddenly the ‘pretentious’ musicians’ requests for scores became more understandable. Imagine the poem from which the film title ‘No Country for Old Men’ is taken being recited by your favourite actor or personality. Imagine the dark velvet of Burton’s voice sonorously telling the verses of ‘Sailing to Byzantium’: an initial delight at such voluptuous indulgence hearing Yeats’ poem read by Our Richard would soon degenerate into irritation and then revulsion at the unchanging nature of the delivery. Far, far better to have the words and then begin to imagine the perfect rendition in your head than hear a performance which is, but its very nature, static.

There are some lines in poetry which I have never even come close to saying in a way which I find even remotely satisfactory.

One such phrase is the rather bewildering “silence in the echo.”

Never been able to get that one right.

And that’s from a poem I wrote myself, so I really should know how to say it!

The clock is ticking!

Do you know how to turn your fog lights on?

This was a pressing problem while ducking in and out of tunnels and in and out of patches of fairly thick mist on the way to work. As usual there were the suicidal and homicidal drivers who rushed past as if the sun were shining in a clear sky! I’d like to say that such idiotic driving were the exclusive preserve of Catalan drivers but, alas driving in Wales in fog will show that the general IQ level of a considerable minority of drivers is slightly lower than your average pebble.

I eventually twiddled the right sort of stalk protruding from the steering wheel and found a reassuring image light up. I have no idea whether I have front and back fog lights; further jiggling of the stalk only succeeded in turning off the little logo

My second day as a vegetarian in school: today rice, salad, omelette with an indescribable milk confection which tasted wholly artificial in spite of the assurance that it was 85% milk. I suppose that the other 15% allowed the manufacturer to pack in every E number known to European artificial additive experts!

Illness and injury has reduced the staff in the school to crisis levels and two threatened resignations in the science department of the secondary section of the school were they to happen tomorrow, would reduce us to a state beyond chaos.

I can hardly wait!

The weather continues to be far below expectations. I await the return of the sun with anxious impatience.

We are looking around for another flat because we are still reeling from the buying of a new bloody tap for the landlord. A Mercedes driving multi property owning person too tight to replace an old faulty tap in one of his own properties!

We have a hard life.

As you can tell, I’m not really into writing this evening – things are waiting to happen.

Wait and see!

The Good Life is Good for You!

Tired and drained? Why not try a lobster paella with a sturdy house vino tinto and a mediocre crema catalana?

It worked for me! There is nothing like a good meal (even with a putrid postre) to take your mind away from the day to day problems of life and get them on to something more useful and productive!

In school: injury, illness and accident seem to be claiming a higher and higher percentage of the teaching population. There seems to be no ‘fall back’ plan to ensure that pupils continue to be taught apart from the ‘can you ask your friend if he will give a hand?’ sort of approach. When I asked about agencies for supply teachers for International Schools I was met with blank looks – there is obviously a niche in the market waiting to be filled with work for desperate teachers who thought that Catalonia was a cheap place to live and are now having to find a job to pay the rent.

Next week is Ski Week and one of my colleagues is joining the kids (for the après ski as far as I can tell) and to care for the casualties as they merrily fracture the necessary bones to make Ski Week a success.

As only a few of the kids are going on the trip, others who are going to be left behind in school are going to take the week off: I only hope that a substantial portion of my class is going to do the same! Isn’t private education a wonderful thing!

Talking of wonderful things; from casual gossip around the usually deserted staffroom I understand that events such as ‘parents evening’ and ‘open mornings’ are about to occur. I have no idea what form these occasions take, but, from my experience of they way in which this school does everything they promise to be outré and other worldly. I await with wide eyed innocence the surrealistic phantasmagoria that such ordinary events must surely generate. At least they will be near Easter so that there can be a degree of recovery and revitalisation for the succeeding term!

I have heard nothing from the school in Castelldefels and today was the date by which people were supposed to have been informed if they had made the short list for interview.

I don’t know whether to be depressed, elated, mystified, angry or phlegmatic about this apparent rejection. My CV read like a description of an amalgam of Kent Clark, RAB Butler and Roald Dahl with a few minor sporting details thrown in. I suppose, if I am truthful, that my secondary career seems like a distant twisted dark dream rather than a concrete reality on which to build a career in a new country, but still, I mean, even so, what are my rivals going to have in their CVs which will equal mine? Apart, of course, from a rather more immediate contact with the target pupils. And a rather more immediate date of emerging into the rat race!

We shall see.

Especially as I already have an hour’s experience of working in the Castelldefels institution already!