Cleanliness is next

Surely only a lunatic would put whitish tiles on the floor of the bathroom.

A bathroom, I might add, which has sink, bath and bidet all in a tasteful blue which is virtually impossible to keep looking clean. And there is no outside source of light.

And we have a visitor immanent.

Veiled references to the Augean Stables have prompted me to mount an all out searching campaign against the dust lurking in hidden corners in my bathroom. In the course of removing said dust I have discovered certain empty containers which, in spite of the floor being level, have rolled to said hidden corners and waited until now to reveal themselves.

I have of course (naturally) cleaned my bathroom on a regular basis. It is therefore an undeniable conclusion to draw that empty bathroom containers have an intelligent, independent, malicious existence as soon as they have been deposited in the bathroom bin.

I think my resentment about the whole process comes from taking down the shower curtains. The cheap IKEA curtains are matched by the cheap plastic rings attaching them to the rail.

Each time they are taken down at least two of the rings snap. The spare packet that I bought has been denuded and I am left with empty spaces which, to me, indicate an undergraduate style of living. I am past that, so a gratuitous trip to that haven of Scandinavian design to ensure my readmission to adult living might be called for.

I decided to cannibalize the remnants of the shower curtain left in the flat before we arrived. We try and use as little as possible of the poor quality rubbish left as bits and pieces to justify the term ‘furnished’ when we rented the flat!

Talking of flats, a family replete with a mass of two children, one of whom cannot write in complete sentences has now moved in diagonally opposite us.

Time to start looking in thieving agents’ windows!

More books!

The absolute rubbish that I am reading at the moment is an absolute delight.

The Sony e-book reader (to which all praise) encourages the mean and mendicant to search web sites for free e-books to fill what used to be regarded as industrial quantities of memory with books that one doesn’t really want to read.

I now have a vast selection of classic texts that I have quoted from but not read waiting in the electronic darkness of the machine for those quiet hours when I decide that I should fill the classical gaps in my reading experience.

At the moment however I have read one science fiction book which I would never have the bare faced anti intellectual audacity to flaunt in ‘real’ book life. I’ve also read a fantasy book which was better written but as each chapter slipped by I could sense time passing which I could not easily justify. I suppose that some of this high academic pose was undermined by the avidity with which I devoured these tomes.

I have used this reading device so much that I have actually managed to exhaust the battery. Now the e-book reader is sold with the advertising information that you could read War and Peace three times before the battery becomes exhausted. I started to add up the pages and realised that I had indeed read my way through a veritable electronic forest of pages.

As is always the way with electronic devices, the real problems appear when you cut corners with the technical ways of treating the device. This one decided to have a hissy fit when it was being recharged. Basically all you have to do to recharge the device is plug it into the computer. It then uses the USB port to charge. You must, however, take care with how and when you take the device from the machine.

Those of us who have had things like ipods refuse point blank to work after they have been untimely ripped from the parent device are usually reasonably careful about clicking on the little ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ icon to ensure a safe unlinking.

Sometimes, in spite of painstaking attention to detail and being punctilious in the clicking on the correct device designation the notice that it is OK to remove hardware is an out and out lie.

So it was with the device after it had been left on overnight to ensure a full recharge.

Horror piled on horror as the bloody thing refused to work. Then refused to turn off. Then to shut down. Then to reset. This then exhausted the full repertoire of my approaches to recalcitrant electronic devices.

After a frustrating number of long moments I discovered that there are advantages to knowing an electrician with an instinctive understanding of the ways of things with screens and buttons.

It is now back in working order and is quietly taking its charge like a good little device.

I must hunt for more bad books to fill my days with the forbidden delights of stylistically inept, badly structured, self indulgent verbiage.

Sound familiar?

Give me the sun

After an uneasy night’s sleep I can still feel the effects of the liquid meal on Saturday. It is certainly a sign of the times when I can’t shrug off the effects of overindulgence. Or is it called growing up?

It’s something of a grey day today and I trust that it is not a sign that the weather is going to change just at the point that my cousin Judith comes to visit. Castelldefels it at its best when it is experienced out of doors. Like any other sea side resort it is somewhat disappointing if you have to start looking for sheltered amusements.

It is perhaps significant that the local newsagent has a carousel of postcards, most of which have sights from Barcelona on them. Apart from the beach I do not think that there is very much of architectural interest in Castelldefels. Anything with a touch of history has been ruthlessly pulled down to make way for more flats and holiday homes. In the making of money from the Mediterranean Sea coast the Catalans have been anything other than sentimental in their preservation of the natural environment.

This works both ways of course. Left to its own devices the long beach which stretches in front of our flat would not look as it does. Its flawless expanse is carefully nurtured by massive machinery which sifts and moves and cleans the sand in its nocturnal wanderings along the shore. Squads of fluorescent yellow jacketed workers scour the sand to remove the more glaring debris of tourists and various vehicles of doubtful efficacy patrol the strand. This is what is necessary when you lack the sort of cleansing tide which sweeps the beaches in Britain. On the other hand we have sun!

At present we are fighting a losing battle with mosquitoes. We are living in a state of siege with doors carefully closed and spray liberally used to discourage our winged visitors from drinking their fill, but still the cry is they come in battalions armed (if I may mix my quotations) smirking at our chemical dissuasions and supping where they please. I am convinced that a substantial proportion of my blood must be composed of whatever these pesky insects inject to make their chosen liquor flow more easily!

We are taking further steps. I don’t know what it’s doing to the insects, but it’s making our lives virtually unbreathable!

And I’ve got another Spanish lesson tomorrow.

A long day's journey into sobriety

The calm before the storm.

‘Hope springs eternal’ might be naïf motto but it keeps me on course. Monday should be the day when my flock of CVs alight in their various roosting places on the educational perches of Barcelona international schools. It is also the day when the denunciation of The School That Sacked Me should begin to take effect with the arrival of the police to drag off The Owner to her well deserved incarceration.

Realistically I suppose that I will have to be satisfied by a single inconsequential phone call to The Owner by the boys in blue and a long silence from the schools.

However waiting is good exercise in delayed gratification and to those with imagination it’s full of possibilities; possibilities that reality limits in its tiresomely quotidian way!

I have taken today in a more than leisurely way as I am recovering from the meal I had yesterday. The food was exceptional and served on a succession of extraordinary plates and very attractively arranged. The devil, as is so often the case, was in the drinking: red wine and an excellent bottle of Cava.

Time for reflection.

Close music

The inevitability of traffic jams on the Littoral into Barcelona ensures that on an Opera day I am in the city well in advance of the performance.

This also, of course, allows me to meander my feckless way through shops and then pride myself in not buying the latest gadget with flashing lights. Sometimes.

Rain was an unwelcome feature of this visit to the opera; but it was a sort of half-hearted type of precipitation and one which hardly justified my parading about the Ramblas with my umbrella embellished with weather orientated quotations from Shakespeare.

I did so, however, in a spirit of education, allowing the passers-by to appreciate the superiority of our national playwright in comparison with the Spanish equivalent - Lope de Vega!

I was early enough at the Liceu to have a coffee and cake in the café and was gifted a fragrant vision in gold.

A lady, too ancient to be flattered with the appellation of “a certain age”, sat at the next table in a cloud of expensive perfume and glittering with precious metal at cuff, throat and ear. Her jacket of shimmering yellow satin with irrepressible ruffs led the eye to her wide sided glasses where the expanse of white served to show up the gold detailing which even extended to the age defying golden highlight in her age defying hair.

Her mobile was frankly disappointing but the wrist that supported it was encircled with a watch that was swamped with sparkling diamonds and the bag which received the phone after her piercing voice had subsided was a burning fantasy of sequined gold.

Such a character was always going to outshine the characters on the stage for the opera but before I could make any comparisons I was early enough to join the serious opera goers for a pre-performance talk. Which was in Catalan.

I have become a grand master in looking vaguely intelligent when listening to fast speaking Spaniards and Catalans. I must admit that I did not do my homework for the opera for which I had paid a surprisingly large amount for a seat. ‘Tiefland’ by Eugen d’Albert based on a stage play ‘Terra Baixa’ by Àngel Guimerà was all unknown territory to me, a territory which was unlikely to be illuminated much by a discourse in Catalan.

By dint of concentration and guesswork I managed to gain that the play was about mountains and lowlands; shepherds and Romanticism; that it was a modern version set in an office; a love triangle; something about a wolf; Glasgow and Barcelona were mentioned. I wasn’t a great deal more informed and I rushed to get a programme and read the short synopsis given in English and French.

‘Terra Baixa’ turned out to be something of a staple in past years of traditional Spanish and especially Catalan theatre: the story of true love developing and winning out against the machinations of a wicked character set in the ‘good’ mountains and the ‘bad’ lowlands. The mentioning of a wolf I learned was a reference to the last lines of the opera when the baddie had been despatched by the hero and hero and his girl were able to leave for the mountains and goodness.

I was prepared for the opening scene which revealed four glass cases which contained four human characters.

Stage left was a bank of scientific equipment complete with flashing lights, while stage right was a sort of dentist’s chair which was linked to the characters in the cases with a scientist wearing an interactive glove to make contact with the human specimens in the cases.

We were therefore presented with a concept of virtual reality in which people were being conditioned to behave in certain ways. This idea was fine and an interesting slant on a very traditional story, but it was not sustained throughout the action of the opera and was only reintroduced in the final moments to give a short of enforced coherence to the directorial view.

The majority of the action was confined to the art deco ‘office’ of a bread mill. We could see the sliced product slowly going by on a short conveyer belt throughout the action of the opera. Presumably we were supposed to make the link from the processed bread to the processed people.

Frankly all I saw was a fairly vapid melodrama indifferently acted and unimpressively sung. Musically I found the piece undistinguished even if d’Albert was born in Glasgow and is reputed to have written the overture to one of Sullivan’s operas!

The hero, Tommaso, was sung by Alfred Reiter. The role calls for a Helden tenor and I felt that he lacked the consistent power and definition that was necessary. His heroine, Marta, sung by Petra Maria Schnitzer was the undoubted star of the evening and gave a powerful performance with a voice that was compelling. The other roles were sung adequately but the insistence by the director, Matthias Hartmann, that the piece is not a ‘realistic’ one does not excuse the two dimensional acting which accompanied the music.

As my seat was in the fourth row of the stalls (did I mention how much it cost?) my new black and gold opera glasses were a little redundant! It did allow me to experience the orchestra at close quarters and I think that they, and their conductor, Michael Boder were more than creditable.

Is it truly shallow of me to admit that I enjoyed the Indian meal afterwards without reservation?

Who cares!

Shades of the prison house . . .

The deed is done!

The police have taken down my denunciation of The Owner regarding her refusal to divulge any details of the Readathon.

This time it was the right policemen and after a hesitation about what could be done we were ushered into a small room where details were taken down.

I know it is a truism that as you grow older the police look younger and younger

but the selection we saw didn’t even look as though they had made it to the sixth form. If it had turned out that Y11 were having a work experience stint in the place I would not have been surprised.

At one point we were joined by our interviewing policeman’s boss wearing plain clothes who looked, if anything, even younger than his subordinate. At this point my translator (one of the lady parents from The School That Sacked Me) hissed sotto voce, “Another pin up!” Whatever their apparent or real ages and their physical attributes they were very helpful and even threw in one or two words of English to keep me happy. The basic denunciation was written and augmented with a cutting detail from the boss, typed, printed, photocopied and stamped.

Now the waiting to see if efficient administration ever translates itself into satisfying action. If necessary I am prepared to supply a Black Maria to take her away!

If nothing else I now have two typed pages of official Catalan to add to the file.

In The Magnificent Ambersons the narrator says, “Something had happened. A thing which, years ago, had been the eagerest hope of many, many good citizens of the town, and now it had come at last; George Amberson Mainafer had got his comeuppance.”

These words came to mind as I visited the local tobacco shop to post a series of letters. Given the way with ‘Johnny Foreigner’ the need to go to a tobacconist for stamps is not regarded as strange and I have come to accept these quaint customs. The letters winging their way to the four corners of Barcelona all contain my CV and are addressed to the various headteachers of educational establishments which might be able to use my pedagogical accomplishments.

I feel it churlish to laze with indolent ease gazing out from the balcony, glass and e-book reader in hand and ignore the effects of the financial crisis which seems purpose made to wipe out all my savings; thus giving the lie to the pernicious doctrine of delayed gratification so beloved of the middle classes.

Why scrimp and save when criminally inept bankers play fast and loose with money which they don’t have and leave the bourgeoisie gnashing their teeth with impotent rage as they see that Bernard Shaw’s ‘undeserving poor’ have had the right idea all along. When you’ve got it spend it at once otherwise you’ll gain nothing and lose everything.

Now there may be some who say that I have followed the spend it all when you have it assiduously throughout my life and that the only time I saved was when the money was ripped from my salary at source so it was taken away to safety before I could get my sticky fingers on it.

I refuse such base reflections on my preparedness for unemployment with scorn but little ready cash!

I have, therefore resorted to the touting of my CV and am steeled to find that far from urging me to join their establishments I may well be greeted with stony silence and a complete lack of response.

I am, however, shallow enough to take the attempt for the reality and retire to my balcony in the warmth of the October sunshine and feel that I have done my best and wash away any feelings of guilt with a glass of Rioja!

On the new school front our ‘founding fathers’ impulses have been stymied by the lack of a suitable site. Our trawling through the illustrated parades of lies which constitute the web sites of estate agents in this area (any area?) is a soul destroying exercise, but sooner or later we are bound to find something which will be a reasonable base for our little enterprise.

We continue to live in hope!

Why do we do it?

Wrong police and the wrong time.

Sometimes I do love the sheer bureaucratic idiocy of the country in which I live!

Today was the day when the visit to the police could be delayed no further and the denunciation was to be made official.

The School That Sacked Me has refused through letter, email, telephone call and direct enquiry to respond with any information about what has happened to the money raised for the Burma disaster fund last June.

Any reasonable person (let alone me!) would assume that the militant silence was covering something not to the credit of the school. I have decided to assume the worst and let the police sort it out.

Armed with copies of my eloquently insulting emails and a summary of the details of the ‘case’ and accompanied by my ‘translator’ I went into the local police station. Alas ‘police’ doesn’t mean ‘police’ because I had gone to the police but I needed the ‘police.’ Luckily armed with a translator and a map we were able to drive a short distance and find the correct building which housed the correct type of police.

Our enquiries produced a child dressed in a police uniform who informed us that we had found the right type of ‘police’ but we had not found the right type of ‘time’ to see the right type of ‘police.’

It would be better, we were told, if we could come back in an hour of so, or tomorrow even.

It would appear that crime of a certain sort cannot take place officially between the hours of one and three in this part of Spain – even with the right sort of ‘police.’

We are rescheduled for tomorrow so that I keep my word of getting the denunciation in this week. I can only guess at the way that the ‘police’ will go about getting the information and my translator said that they probably wouldn’t let me know what they did or didn’t do – and there I no likelihood of The School That Sacked Me ever (and I mean EVER) contacting me again. I will have to live in hope that my spies in the camp will be able to enlighten me if any police activity is seen.

I am told that the atmosphere in The School That Sacked Me can be cut with a knife and that it has reached new levels of negativity.

You have to have worked in the place to realise just how horrific that idea is and how essentially improbable any further descent into a deeper hell of professional managerial chaos that already exists can possibly be achieved.

I can’t help feeling that some idiot savant mathematician would have had a field day with the way we sat in the pharmacy waiting area the day before yesterday.

For we people with repeat prescriptions the trek to the pharmacy is monthly where, on presentation of one’s health card (see previous blogs for the epic story of getting the bloody thing) the recipient taps away on a computer and produces the necessary prescriptions for a month’s worth of drugs.

For the summer one is given prescriptions for two months to allow for holiday absence to cover the time when you might need to get more away from the source. Although there are now indications that the two monthly supply will become normal. Who knows, no one tells us anything!

Anyway: seating. Once or twice I have just gone to the door of the pharmacy and walked in. I understand now that was extraordinary luck. The normal procedure is to sit and wait in the open corridor of fixed chairs which stretch the entire length of the corridor.

Where people sit on the thirty or forty chairs is obviously governed by the Higher Mathematics and not logic. I have learned over time that the correct approach to finding a seat starts with approaching the immediate vicinity of the pharmacist’s room and then asking, ¿Último? in a generally vague interrogatory way and then waiting for someone to raise their hand to indicate that they are the last.

That is the signal to sit down. Logically, if there is a spare place next to the person who has put up their hand then that is where you should sit. But nobody does this. Nobody. Why?

The arrangement of chairs means that at least half of the people cannot see the other half and since the entrance to the pharmacy is at the end of the corridor people have to keep turning round to check that they take up their turn.

Logically again, all you have to do is ensure that you can see the person who was last when you came in when you are sitting down. But people don’t do that either. Why not?

It gives the whole area an air of suppressed panic as each person becomes paranoid about missing their turn. I do not jest: I was there once when someone tried to get in early – there was very nearly a riot and one woman commented loudly and at length on the evil nature of mankind and the ‘pusher-in’ in particular for the whole duration of her continued wait. To my horror I was drawn into the general conversation by a man on my right to whose question I responded with a rueful smile and a sardonic “¡Hombre!” which seemed to satisfy him and the rest.

Some people merely give up when they see the number of people waiting and slope off in the hope of a more limited queue on their return. Some sit a long way off as if there should be a sort of cordon sanitaire between them and the ordinary waiters. Some sit and look as though they are waiting for a doctor behind another of the doors in the corridor. And most of us must do some sort of evaluative computation and sit where we will.

For the record I sat three rows in front of the ‘last’ person with my back to her. Other spaces were available. I wonder what went through my mind.

While I was waiting my mind was taken up with the latest Saki book on my e-book reader.

Never let it be said that I failed to utilise any spare moments with cultural improvement!

A Class Act

Thank god for the French.

This heartfelt commendation is based on the fact that the two French ladies in my English class are much worse than I am: one of them does little more than speak French with a hopeful look as though, both Spanish and French being Romance languages, no one will notice that she is speaking one rather than the other.

As is usual in these classes I launched myself on a sentence of amazingly ambitious complexity with no real vista of a successful conclusion tempting me to a coherent full stop.

This is where being an English speaker is a distinct advantage because a muttered repetition of the word that you need in English usually prompts a few people to rush in to supply the Spanish version.

If you were say, Serbo-Croat or whatever the benighted Balkans is calling itself this week, it wouldn’t matter how many times you barked your glotally stopped language (if such a thing is possible) you would be none the wiser. Everyone in Spain wants to improve their English and I don’t even have to open my mouth before people start speaking to me in English!

My first words in Spanish merely confirm my listener’s suspicions and then I have a battle royal to keep the conversation in my target language. But at least I make the effort, and god knows it is an effort, to speak in Spanish. I only hope that the lessons I am taking now will stimulate me to do the hard learning which is the necessary evil to make merely sitting in a class something real in my linguistic development.

I have homework to do before the next lesson on Thursday: I have asked Irene to phone and nag me to ensure that I am doing the work necessary to gain some sort of fluency. I have been told that, with real application, there is no reason why I should not be ineffectually fluent with simple conversations in six months. That gives me until February to achieve this goal.

God help. And that is sincere!

Although in strictly factual terms I am now living where I would have gone on holiday if I had been in Wales, we feel that we deserve a vacation somewhere else. I would look forward to restarting our short excursions to cities that are served by cheap airways.

I realise that this is not carbon friendly, but I look on travel as culturally essential and therefore carbon neutral. There is also the Angel of Immanent Depression whose extending wings seem to cast a shadow over the future of cheap flights so we need to take advantage of them until el crisis and the tyrannical force of political correctness denies such country hopping to us members of the hoi poli leaving it the preserve only of the rich and concerned politicians.

Were I to say that the temperature of the sea was warmer than that of our swimming pool; I fear that I would not have the instinctive sympathy of many of my readers.

Yet I have to report that after lounging on the beach with my ever present e-book reader the exigencies of the human frame dictated that I would have to return to the flat or venture in to the sea. The weather was fine with a scattering of cloud and a persistent sea breeze, but not withal unpleasant.

I am aware that there are those of my acquaintance who would not fling themselves into the foaming brine unless the temperatures were able to fuse sand into shimmering sheets of glass; others who venture not into the salty shallows unless they can see steam rising from the waves; others who have listened once to my assessment of the welcoming nature of the waters and never trusted my word again, but I aver that the sea today was surprisingly humane and I was able to bob about evincing little gurgles of pleasure. The gurgles came from the fact that the waves were anything but considerate and, although our Mediterranean crests break but a couple of meters from the sea bed it is remarkable how much casual power they pack. It is also amazing how much sand in suspension they manage to transfer from their watery structure and onto (or rather into) one’s skin and crevices.

I had a shower before I went into the swimming pool, had a swim and then had a further shower in the flat when I had finished – and I still I have a faintly opalescent gleam from the residual grains!

I am rapidly getting to the stage where I am feeling like a character in one of H M Bateman’s cartoons in ‘The Man Who . . .’ series. I am ‘The Man Who Wore Shorts in October.’ It doesn’t matter how many times I point out that the weather is fine and it’s warm; there seems to be a timetable which is rigidly adhered to and, according to this calendar summer is over and long trousers are essential.

Although I will bow to public opinion and decorum for my visit to the Liceu tomorrow for the opera I think that I still have a month of showing the leg in Castelldefels.

Unless the authorities get to me first!

Does maths help?

I can’t help feeling that some idiot savant mathematician would have had a field day with the way we sat in the pharmacy waiting area today.

For we people with repeat prescriptions the trek to the pharmacy is monthly where, on presentation of one’s health card (see previous blogs for the epic story of getting the bloody thing) the recipient taps away on a computer and produces the necessary prescriptions for a month’s worth of drugs.

For the summer one is given prescriptions for two months to allow for holiday absence to cover the time when you might need to get more away from the source. Although there are now indications that the two monthly supply will become normal. Who knows, no one tells us anything!

Anyway: seating. Once or twice I have just gone to the door of the pharmacy and walked in. I understand now that was extraordinary luck. The normal procedure is to sit and wait in the open corridor of fixed chairs which stretch the entire length of the corridor.

Where people sit on the thirty or forty chairs is obviously governed by the Higher Mathematics and not logic. I have learned over time that the correct approach to finding a seat starts with approaching the immediate vicinity of the pharmacist’s room and then asking, ¿Último? in a generally vague interrogatory way and then waiting for someone to raise their hand to indicate that they are the last.

That is the signal to sit down. Logically, if there is a spare place next to the person who has put up their hand then that is where you should sit. But nobody does this. Nobody. Why?

The arrangement of chairs means that at least half of the people cannot see the other half and since the entrance to the pharmacy is at the end of the corridor people have to keep turning round to check that they take up their turn.

Logically again, all you have to do is ensure that you can see the person who was last when you came in when you are sitting down. But people don’t do that either. Why not?

It gives the whole area an air of suppressed panic as each person becomes paranoid about missing their turn. I do not jest: I was there once when someone tried to get in early – there was very nearly a riot and one woman commented loudly and at length on the evil nature of mankind and the ‘pusher-in’ in particular for the whole duration of her continued wait. To my horror I was drawn into the general conversation by a man on my right to whose question I responded with a rueful smile and a sardonic “¡Hombre!” which seemed to satisfy him and the rest.

Some people merely give up when they see the number of people waiting and slope off in the hope of a more limited queue on their return. Some sit a long way off as if there should be a sort of cordon sanitaire between them and the ordinary waiters. Some sit and look as though they are waiting for a doctor behind another of the doors in the corridor. And most of us must do some sort of evaluative computation and sit where we will.

For the record I sat three rows in front of the ‘last’ person with my back to her. Other spaces were available. I wonder what went through my mind.

While I was waiting my mind was taken up with the latest Saki book on my e-book reader.

Never let it be said that I failed to utilise any spare moments without cultural improvement!

A forward step?

An excellent conversation (and dinner) last night with two parents from The School That Sacked Me. A great deal of bitterness was expressed about how the school was ‘run’ but also a great deal of sense for any future action which could result in the formation of an alternative institution to replace a school which is clearly not meeting the needs of pupils, parents and teachers alike.

I think that a lack of any site is holding us back and preventing us from formulating a convincing financial projection and plan for immediate action. I think that the likelihood of any reasonable location will focus all our minds and take us to the next stage.

The possible time scale is also of critical importance. The formation of another school in Garaf is something which does not appear to be demonstrably nearer and I have spoken to people who doubt the actual credentials of those who purport to be about to found it. For a relatively small area in Catalonia and for something which is so clearly needed and ‘easy’ to provide, there seems to be more speculation, intrigue and mendacity than found in one of the murderously inclined courts in Renaissance Italy.

However, the offer of informed help in our project was gratefully received last night and I think that we have made two intelligently resourceful allies. Even though it was meant ironically and used for humorous effect, I think that I will go with Voltaire’s sentiments and believe that all is for the best in this best possible of all worlds. Self deception can go no further!

I continue to enjoy my regime of electronic self indulgence by re-reading favourite books. It is a disturbing fact that the ‘heroes’ of virtually all the works that I have read are self opinionated, overtly sophisticated, elegant and linguistically aphoristic, self regarding young men. All of them trying in their own ways to out do Emlyn Williams in his langorous portrayal of Caligula in I Claudius,

the great unfinished film of 1937 directed by Josef Von Sternberg. Characters like Clovis and Reginald of Saki’s short stories; PSmith of the P G Wodehouse novels and Satan from Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book I.

Thinking about it, I’m not sure that I can claim Satan as a youngster, but his specious and elegant speeches would not be out of place in the mouth of Clovis.

It is only a matter of time before I start re-reading the Portrait of Dorian Gray or The Importance of Being Earnest to get back to the Ur Aesthetic Young Man of Wilde. Though in Dorian Gray it is Lord Henry Wotton rather than the young eponymous hero who has all the best lines.

And then perhaps I should read something a little healthier.

Or not.

Location! Price! Location!

Doom, gloom and crisis are finally reflecting itself in lower prices for property, even in this area.

This does not mean to say that the houses and flats become any more affordable because their prices are starting from ridiculous levels.

The price of an average three bedroom semi in Cardiff will get you an undistinguished one bedroom flat near the sea here; near, not next to!

The pundits have said that those in work and who have bought and paid for their own homes should be able to see through this crisis with something approaching equanimity. As I fall into neither of those categories, it gives me pause for thought!

I am not, you understand, pleading poverty (as a recent purchaser of a Sony e-book reader inter alia I am not sure that I could get away with it) but the lack of a regular income does focus the mind.

To this end I will, finally, have to send my CV to all and sundry in the hope that there will be a response – even if that response comes from the city of Barcelona.

Barcelona, like any other major city, is a nightmare to get to in the mornings and most schools have a stubborn habit (born of fatuous historical example) of starting their instruction in the early hours of the day. I do not think that I am prepared to sit, fuming, in some almighty traffic jam before I throw away my intellect and self respect on the self satisfied scions of the wealthy middle classes. Unless they pay me!

I think that it would be interesting to sample the educational provision outside The School That Sacked Me and discover if that institution is the exception or merely the most pernicious example of a general malaise.

On the other hand I do have Spanish lessons twice a week in the mornings which would be interrupted by the intrusion of professional work into my otherwise expansive existence.

One is ever be-set by problems!

Summer thoughts?

The last remnants of the hut have gone from the beach – it is as if it has never been. The beach is now truly ours again. The weather is bright, but noticeably colder than it has been and that is the reason that our ‘fine weather’ neighbours have now departed.

I have to say that the actual weather would not disgrace a good summer day in Wales, but, as the increasing amount of clothing affected by the natives would demonstrate, summer is over!

The weekend will mark a week since the last email to The School That Sacked Me and I have, of course, received no reply. I wonder how one approaches the police to investigate suspected fraud? Well, on Monday I am going to find out.

In my dealings with Authority (with a capital A) in Spain there is a sort of farcical element inherent in the pseudo communication that takes place. It is probably more fitting to a workaday 1950s British film comedy than anything else. I see myself as a sort of amalgam of Terry Thomas,

Peter Sellars and Alastair Sim when it comes to taking on the force of Spanish bureaucracy. I will have to see if my sense of humour survives the contact.

I continue to read electronic versions of books that no one else really wants to read. I have downloaded books by Stephen Leacock, the famous Canadian humorist. I remember that John the Maths teacher in Llanishen always thought very highly of him and in the last couple of days I have been reading a whole series of short stories by a range of writers that John enjoyed: Bramah, Saki and Wodehouse. I have not yet been able to find a free download of short stories by Maugham – but it’s only a matter of time and exhausting searching through thousands of electronic sites!

I keep thinking of books of mine which are still locked up in storage that I have missed during the past year or so and then trying to find them on the web as a free download. It’s one way to remind myself of the delights still waiting to be unpacked.

It’s still not the same as the real thing, and like the machine as much as I do, it’s not like a real book!

The declension of learning

Listening to an explanation of Spanish Verbs can be a taxing experience; listening to the explanation in a foreign language is closer to torture. At a certain point in this morning’s Spanish lesson I felt panic born of incomprehension begin to sweep away what little confidence I had about my presence there.

Needless to say I weathered such uncharacteristically realistic assessments of my linguistic ability and by the end of the two hours (without a break) of relentless Spanish teaching I was bubbling with belief in my ability to communicate. Somehow.

The amount of learning that I have to complete before the next lesson is daunting, if not impossible, but this is the month when I am going to make a more than determined effort to try and understand the use of the two different verbs that the Spanish have for ‘to be.’ If I get anywhere with that conundrum then I will assay to comprehend the differences which distinguish the use of the words ‘bien’ and ‘bueno’.

The Sony e-book reader continues to give pleasure, not only because it is easy to read, but also because it affords me the opportunity to be ever more pretentious in the growing selection of books which I am able to put into its memory. There are now 162 books which, on just one electronic page in the index range from The Koran to Macbeth by way of Voltaire, Wilfred Owen and William Harrison Ainsworth’s “Old Saint Paul’s!” And there is still room left for more. Now that I have discovered http://manybooks.net/authors.php as a website the number of books available for download has expanded interestingly. Of that web site I have to say that it offers what it says in its title!

I have yet to buy any of the books which comprise my electronic library but I keep telling myself there is a whole wealth of past literature in English that I haven’t touched, that’s out of copyright and available in electronic form.

I suppose the real triumph will be when I actually download a book in Spanish. And enjoy reading it! I think that is some time away!

Meanwhile there is my dinner next Saturday with very disaffected parents of a child in The School That Sacked Me to consider. Who knows this might afford us some worthwhile leads or thoughts towards a lead which might get us started on the real preparations for setting up an alternative.

You can see how my optimism keeps me going!

And the sun in which I lounged this afternoon!

Keep on rolling

Not only but also. Another morning up with the lark. This could be habit forming.

Alas, the reason was a faulty fear of missing a Spanish lesson so I found myself with more time for a leisurely cup of tea before the repairing of the tyres of the car.

Spanish roads have their little peculiarities. In a sea side resort like Castelldefels debased zebra crossings are scattered around like used Hershey bar wrappers and they are treated as safe, sacred ways with high protective walls by pedestrians and as a sort of moving shooting gallery by motorists.

Here in Castelldefels the absurd number of crossings on the main road would ensure a complete lack of road parking in the UK as each ‘real’ zebra crossing has markings on either side to ensure that there is no parking near the crossing so that pedestrians are clearly seen by motorists.

Not here.

Cars are parked right up to the actual markings of the crossing and often on the crossing itself. Pedestrians stride out from between parked cars with the absolute security of inviolability because they have walked the first few hidden steps on the crossing and therefore have divine protection for the rest of the open space to the other side of the road. Half (at least) of pedestrians do not look to left or right before they make their crossing and less than half (much less) actually shows any gratitude.

What mystifies me is that these suicidal pedestrians are probably drivers as well.

One only has to drive on Spanish roads for minutes to realize that the suicidal tendencies of pedestrians are matched by the homicidal tendencies of those behind the wheel.

Is the schizoid character of the Spanish so complete that they do not realize that the road user is a complete human being and the two sides comprising driver and walker inhabit the same body?

Spanish roads are also enlivened by all sorts of street furniture together with bollards and narrowings and twists and turns and blind corners and sharp impossible bends and . . . well, what I am trying to say is that it wasn’t my fault.

The street down to the main road from the motorway is relatively uneventful apart from a thoroughly dangerous feeder road to the right and a worrying turning to the left. Oh yes and a left turning blocked off with bollards with a high kerb on the right.

A momentary lapse of concentration and the high kerb did for me and took out one tyre and damaged another. With perspiration and a certain amount of high language I changed a wheel and then started hunting for a place to replace the tyre.

Unlike Cardiff I do not know where to go for the little occasional things which make life just that little bit more complex and expensive. I eventually ended up in the dealer’s garage, but only the very rich and the very lazy have mundane jobs on their cars done by the dealership.

From the dealership I was directed to Gavá and a half remembered visual memory guided me to one of the ‘while you wait’ garages.

My waiting was made a positive pleasure not only by my fairly ostentatious use of my new Sony e-book reader, but also because the cost was substantially lower than I expected. All things work together for good is this best of all possible worlds.

As I have now threatened The School That Sacked Me with the arrival of the police to ascertain exactly what has happened to money collected for charity months ago, I am trying to find a companion to translate for me in an official capacity.

Spain is a delightfully bureaucratic country with official forms to accuse and denounce. I am sure that there is something which can be photocopied and stamped and acted on – I just have to find out which one I have to fill in.

My pen is ready and sharpened!

Always time to read!

There is much to be said for forgetting that your Spanish lesson has been cancelled because it gives you more of the morning to enjoy having leapt out of bed to welcome the morn!

I must admit that it did take me until I was waiting to go into the school for my lesson before I remembered that the 30th of September was the day for a meting for members of staff in Barcelona. A whole morning gained.

I spent part of it sitting in glorious isolation having a cup of strong coffee (is there any other sort in Spain?) and a croissant thinking that this is what semi retirement is supposed to be all about!

The location of my semi retirement is in question. We have seen the house that we want (at a cost of €2.4m) and there is, therefore, the problem of how we raise the money. The obvious answer is to try the lottery with more passion and belief. It may not be much of a financial strategy but it is one you can work on!

My e-book continues to delight, though it is perhaps significant that in an electronic library that contains War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, The Authorized Version of the Bible and Wind in the Willows that I am actually reading Sherlock Holmes short stories!

I have yet to stray beyond the e-books that I have discovered that cost nothing to download and are 'World Classics' which have been electronically processed by worthy institutions for the betterment of humanity. I want rather more frivolous literature like Saki short stories,

P J Wodehouse novels and the nasty writing of Evelyn Waugh: you miss these things when you know that they are securely locked up in Bluespace awaiting release onto shelves in our new home (as soon as the numbers come up in the right order!)

I can see that the next few weeks are going to degenerate into an undignified scramble for web sites which offer free downloads of things that I actually want to read, rather than books which add cachet to one’s e-book reader but, alas, may only exist to take up space rather than be there for my delight!

I suppose this is no different from the crucial questions centring on the contents of the ipods of people who actually care about such things. We are constantly bombarded by politicians eager to prove their street cred (or whatever phrase is currently the correct way to say that) by laying out the tracks on their ipods as some sort of public shorthand way of showing their personalities via music. I must admit that the choice of china, glass and cutlery is much more revealing!

Book lovers always ignore social niceties when they are invited into a person’s home and let their eyes range over the books on display and start making all sorts of immediate character judgements. When there are no books visible in the main living area then one can feel oneself reaching for that small square of black silk.

Or am I just speaking for myself?

Writing and Reading

Today was the day I sent off the next instalment in my attempt to get the results of the Readathon from The School That Sacked Me. This charity event was held last term in the summer to aid the people of Burma after the disaster and, as far as I know, the money is still lurking in the drawer in which it was placed when it was handed in to the financial clerk before being paid to the charity.

I have sent emails, I have telephoned, I have asked and I have sent a letter asking for simple information. At every step I have been denied any scrap of an indication of what has happened to the money.

I have sent copies of my increasingly pointed emails to the regulatory bodies which deal with ‘British’ schools in Spain. I have involved the Unions in a watching brief observing the attitude of the school. I have exhausted my limited patience in expecting a professional response from that dysfunctional place.

The latest in a series of Unit Heads of Primary has been replaced: there have been nine Primary Heads in just over two years. Any school in the UK with a chronic inability to retain senior staff at this rate would have had a searching inspection and probably have been labelled a ‘failing school’ but this place just carries on carrying on in the disastrous way in which it has done for the last fourteen years! This is an intolerable situation for hard working teaching staff and hard done by pupils and parents.

My latest email has had an effect, but not because of the implied accusation of misappropriation of funds for charity, but rather in trying to find out how I found out. The paranoia which is ever present in that place always looks inward to find victims to blame, never outwards to try and respond to the observations of those who clearly point out the numbers of ways in which the school fails in its basic ethical and moral duties.

I have given them a month to respond and then I will go to the police because I can think of no one else who has the authority to ask the right questions.

My jumpiness waiting for the post to arrive this morning was rewarded by the arrival of my Sony e-book reader.

This wonderful gadget really is the size of a paperback and, after the usual battle royal to get any ‘simple’ gadget to work it now holds something like 160 books which include Paradise Lost, The Authorized Version of the Bible, Russian Classics and various other bits and pieces. The machine comes with a CD which contains 100 books, but the titles are not necessarily those which have an immediate commercial appeal. As I suspected Dickens, Poe, Balzac and other Great Writers who are out of copyright figure heavily and the only modern writers like Ben Elton who figure in the list are served by extracts with an injunction to purchase the whole book in its electronic form.

I, however, have revisited a site I used to fill my PDA with books and downloaded other classics to fill up the space available.

It is easy to use and the screen is not back lit so it can be read in bright sunlight as well as inside a room.

I know that pretension is in the contempt of the observer, but I have to admit that I sat at the edge of the sea after an excellent meal and read book one of Paradise Lost in the sunshine of a bright and blowsy day. And the screen was easily visible. So one of the problems in travelling to Britain is solved: I will have a range of reading matter for the plane and all is one small package!

The cost I hear you ask – don’t be vulgar!

Catalan cutlure

I woke to the thunderous sound of passing planes and the sad realization that my series of CDs in La Vanguardia devoted to Catalan music and Catalan music makers has come to an end.

That newspaper has served me well by providing (at a cost) a series of small paperback books on Catalan artists and a collection of musical CDs with an accompanying history of Catalan music. Alas, both of these worthy publications are in Catalan and therefore take a disproportionate effort on my part to try and fathom what the hell they are saying. I must say that, apart from some paragraphs of impenetrable complexity, I can usually get a ‘general feel’ of what the writer is going on about. Well, at least to my own satisfaction I have worked out some sort of meaning!

The glaring omission, of course, from my cultural explorations is literature. What is the point of learning about Catalan writers if I am going to be constantly frustrated in not being able to read them? Some Catalan books have been translated into English and more into Spanish, but I have to accept at this stage that all I will gain from this country’s literature is a series of names, rather than an experience of their work. I suppose it will be easier to learn about Spanish literature and I have sent for a Companion to Spanish Literature.

Spain, like Britain, is now a minority repository of literature in the old home language and there are many who say that the most exciting literature in Spanish now comes from South America rather than from Spain. It will be interesting to gain an overview of the history of the literature and perhaps hope to find something in translation to keep me going until that longed for day when I can read something in the original with pleasure rather than as a linguistic exercise.

I have just been reading through the free paper that is usually piled up in the bakery and found that I understood most of what it was saying. I think. I do like papers with lots of pictures and little writing. Spain does not have newspapers like the worst of the British tabloid press and most of them are worthy and wordy. I, however, would welcome a Spanish newspaper with the reading age of an averagely intelligent lower primary school student now with illustrations not only to rest the brain but also to suggest the vocabulary necessary to understand the story! The Sun would be about my linguistic level now on a good day, but Spain has nothing to offer me at that low level!

A quick trip to Sitges for lunch –mostly to show my face in a town which has to be the source of the raw pupil material for the school that we hope to found!

Sitges has a very different feel to Castelldefels. It is livelier with a greater concentration of the population constantly passing through the same public areas. Sitges is not divided in the same way as Castelldefels with two motorways dividing the town from the beach. Castelldefels is a town of uninspiring mediocrity in terms of architecture, and at least the old town in Sitges has a cramped charm which, together with the Modernista buildings of the wealthy Catalans returned from making their fortunes in South America (Los Americanos) make for a fascinating architectural mix.

But the prices of property ensure that we will not be moving there for the foreseeable future!

We do keep trying the lottery though!

City life

I do not consider my handwriting to be overly expansive, but the cursive sweep of my letters is more than my new fountain pen can cope with. This gave me an excellent excuse (not that I need one) to return to the shop in Barcelona to complain.

I was seduced by the name and the rather glamorous appearance of the pen and bought it without trying it first: a cardinal sin with fountain pens. And I paid the price. And I had lost the receipt. And I wasn’t absolutely certain where the shop was.

The streets off the Ramblas in Barcelona are a warren of winding, narrow passageways which branch in different directions and seem to have no coherence to their arrangement. They are filled with interesting little shops but, having found one, unless you take careful details, you will only find it again by mistake.

I had to remember where the ostensible target of my wandering was supposed to be and then try and work backwards and forwards about how I got there and got away again to try and locate on which section of my epic city crawls I had noticed the pen shop.

Much more by luck than judgement I went to it directly which has more to do with an innate guidance system than GPS!

Uncharacteristically the shop posed no problem about accepting my reservations about the pen’s quality and they offered to send it to the manufacturer. This usually means that I will not see the thing for the next six months.

My real reason for shifting my aching hip to Barcelona was to enjoy my newfound access to the gallery utilizing the extra escalator. Even with this and using ramps for access you still have to cope with 27 steps.

Another excellent meal in the reflective restaurant and on my exit from the gallery the discovery of another hidden escalator which will complete the descent without steps.

Then rain.

And the news from The School That Sacked Me continues to be extraordinary. All grist to the wheel!

Roll merrily on!

God knows it was difficult enough to get a hand on what was happening in the place when I was actually employed in The School That Sacked me; now that I have ‘left’ it is almost impossible.

The head of the primary section of the school had resigned; was sure of her job; was sacked. The only thing which is certain is that she is not coming back. This makes eight (count them – 8!) holders of her position who have ‘gone’ over the last two years. You should be able to guess what is coming next: “To lose one head of primary may be regarded as unfortunate, but to lose eight . . . “ etc etc.

In any reasonable educational system this school would now be under special measures. One can only hope that whatever powers there be take note of what is happening, has happened, will happen in this school and Do Something!

Meanwhile and much more importantly it was fine enough to have a menu del dia in the sun this lunchtime.

Talking to the café owner about weather in Britain after his traumatic visit to London when he only had one day of partial sunshine during his holiday was an added extra of pleasure!

My second lesson in Spanish was interesting with enforced conversations among we students and culminating in our being introduced to a story about some Japanese boy arriving in Barcelona to find his Spanish girlfriend and not being able to speak English. We were able to read the first short chapter, that is I read the first short chapter. There must be something about me which encourages teachers to volunteer me first!

I started reading with some degree of fatalism, but expectation that after a paragraph the onus would be moved to the next person. This did not happen and I had to read the whole lot. I’m sure that this was good for me - though I have to say that I trust the ‘ask Stephen first’ technique will lessen after this initial week!

Homework has been suggested by vague implication rather than stated as necessary for completion by the next lesson, but if I am serious about these lessons rather than the desultory amble that I made through those in Wales, then I need to ensure that I’ve completed the basic work and accepted the challenge of doing a little bit more. Brave words after only two lessons: be vigilante about what I’m saying (either directly or by omission) in a few months time!

Time, as they say, will tell!

More lessons!

I took out my Spanish workbook for its case yesterday. In itself a triumph. I opened it. Another triumph. I applied myself to my homework and painstakingly learned my new vocabulary.

Not a single word remains in my mind today.

Luckily the next lesson is tomorrow so I have another twenty-four hours to re-establish some sort of learning activity in my brain. As there are people in the class who are able to converse in Spanish with some facility I am going to have to exert myself just to sustain my level of mediocrity before I am left behind!

The fairly miserable weather we have had for the past two days seems to have brightened a tad today and the sun is shyly peeking out onto a damp world. The showers of yesterday have left Castelldefels fresher whereas in other parts of Spain the rain has resulted in rivers flowing down the streets. In one town the television actually showed someone in a wet suit swimming along the road!

I’m not sure that was a good plan as the water may have been caused by torrential downpours but the liquid in the streets will have been a syrup of the water from the heavens mixed with the rubbish on the street including dog mess and the contents of the sewers which will have filled up and spilled out through the covers to produce a toxic swimming pool for the fool hardly athlete.

Certain the rain storm outlet which spills on to the beach is not always the most fragrant of water sources, so I dread to think what bacteria were swimming with those people paddling in the floods!

This typing is, of course, displacement activity to avoid having to do the slog of learning that didn’t work yesterday. In effect I only have to learn a few words as most of the vocabulary list in Lesson One (as you might expect) consists of words that I know. The Spanish for shop window is new to me as is the extraordinary Spanish spelling of the English word chauffeur – chófer!

I have now prepared my little talk on Wales for the next Spanish lesson: perhaps I should make it a little more political and controversial; there is nothing worse than listening to a whole series of anodyne travelogues delivered in a stuttered, ungrammatical pastiche of a language. God knows I know: I’ve done it myself in a night class in Cardiff!

The most productive thing that I’ve done today is visit a neighbour diagonally upwards. Ian is a professional photographer and has recently bought the camera that I bought, the Canon power shot G9. He offered to talk me through the camera and some aspects of photography.

Sitting in front of his Apple and surrounded by the paraphernalia of his trade, from lenses and camera bodies to a massive digital printer, I was truly intimidated.

He talked through some of the photos that he had taken, both personal and professional and explained the circumstances and the tricks which he used to produce the images.

One which particularly took my fancy was of a breaking wave. It was taken just outside our block of apartments and was exactly the image that I have been trying with spectacular lack of success myself.

Ian pointed out that what I was looking at was actually the combination of five separate images including part of one photograph whose mirror image had been seamlessly joined to produce the perfect looking wave!

He then showed me how ‘easy’ it was to work with Photoshop (only some five or six hundred quid) and change images. He removed spots from a girl’s face; removed wrinkles; straightened her nose, widened her eyes; lightened her skin; brought the background into sharper focus – and that was only scratching at the surface at what he could do given time. The way that cars are shot commercially for catalogues and showroom displays was a revelation. Ian said that he images he took were based on the expectation that he would be manipulating them with Photoshop later. A series of photos that he took looked nothing when they were seen as a series, but when they were combined and selectively lightened and darkened the results were astonishing.

Even ‘ordinary’ looking shots turned out to be composites. The taking of the basic shot seems to be the start of the artistic process, not the end of it.

Rather disturbingly Ian has offered to take a series of shots that I think pass muster and then he will show me what he might do to them were they his.

A frightening prospect.

As well, the start of another learning process begins.

The torture begins!

Three Portuguese, one Russian, one Pakistani, two French, one Indian, one Indian, one Muslim indeterminate, and me.

The composition of my new Spanish (not English) class.

We have been given a substantial work book which has been photocopied and bound. We have been encouraged to participate in all activities of the centre. As far as I can see everything is free, and the cost of our course has merely been paying for the cost of the photocopied course book!

The first lesson was not intimidating and went over such basic ground as the sound of the Spanish alphabet and the way that Spanish deals with numbers. Such things are within my sphere of knowledge. We have also been urged to look at other pages of the book which deal with greetings and give a certain amount of new vocabulary. And the next lesson is the day after tomorrow. This is pressure!

I have made an assertion that I will do the homework: the first step is to get the workbook out of the case in which I put it when I left the first lesson.

That, indeed, will be a test.

Another Rubicon to cross!

I knew that there was something not right when my appearance at the language school was hard on the heels of the portly caretaker. As he unlocked the school gates while giving me a quizzical look I attempted to explain that I was there for a lesson.

Now, at this point in my fluent exposition of my position using my personal form of Spanish I inflict on the unwary, I made something of a mistake. As you know I shun foreign verbs like poison and communicate via nouns, conjunctions, prepositions and the occasional adjective. My mistake, in talking to the caretaker was to suggest to him that I was there for English lessons.

An easy mistake to make I think: talking in English you find it easy to associate the lessons you need with a foreign language; when talking in Spanish the foreign language becomes English, et voila!

I have found that when I speak in a foreign language I expect the listener to understand what I mean rather than what I say. Thinking about it, I suppose that is what most people hope for!

I was told (on the basis of wanting English lessons) that the outline of the course would be held tomorrow and the lessons would start the day after. This bore no relationship to what I was told about my (admittedly Spanish) lessons’ dates.

I had determined to phone the school when I returned home and did so, loudly complaining that the dates I had been given for my lessons were all wrong.

When a fluent Spanish speaker phoned for me, he was informed by the caretaker that the only person who had turned up was “some German asking about English lessons.” In short, me!

I have had to eat a sort of humble pie and consider how faulty all my other conversations in Spanish have probably been. I would maintain that other conversations (however faulty) have all been grist to my linguistic mill as, apart from increasingly strained expressions on the part of my listeners, there was no deleterious consequence (leaving aside the mental deliquescence consequent upon hearing your language mangled) on my life.

Surely most of the world wanders about in blissful ignorance about what is being communicated and what is understood. And if you think for a moment that there is any consensus about such questions then try reading Wittgenstein or Saussure. Or there again, don’t: just look around at the state of the world as then tell me that the Human is pretty good at communicating!

That particular skill was not much in evidence in the Outline of the Course’ meeting for my Spanish (sic.) lessons this evening.

All manner and shape and age of person was scattered around the entrance to the school looking slightly out of place in the way that people do when they are starting a course in adult education. There was a disturbing number of people who appeared to want o learn Spanish and it appeared that the level of individual tuition we were about to receive was going to be limited to say the least.

Taking a seat in a very crowded classroom gave me an opportunity to survey my fellow students. In spite of squeaked protestations the person who had registered me decided on the strength of my semi-coherent ramblings in wayward Spanish that I was to be placed in Spanish II and not Spanish I. I instinctively knew that this was a Bad Thing. My feeling of horror was not lessened by hearing my putative fellow students conversing in fluent Spanish, reading Spanish newspapers and generally showing evidence of indecent familiarity with the Spanish language.

The barely audible introduction given sotto voce by the school director was in Spanish and with the chattering of the assembled crowds of learners I had to exert a level of concentration to hear and understand what he was saying which left me in an almost hysterical condition. I was working out how to demand demotion to another less demanding class when I realized that the crowded room contained students for all the courses; Information Technology, Catalan, English and a few other courses which I suspected were for the rabble of pimply youths which seemed to be there under duress. I relaxed a little.

The bumbling and gently ironic director (funny how you can tell these things even when you can’t speak the language) got things wrong, was corrected, pointed out tutors, pointed out the right tutors and generally indicated our right to eat the sparse buffet before lessons started tomorrow.

I left.

It appears that the Unit Head of Primary in The School That Sacked Me has resigned, citing the impossibility of working with The Owner as the crucial factor in her decision. She is the eighth to go in two years. In Britain the inability of a school to be able to retain senior staff at this level would trigger an immediate inspection and have the school put under Special Measures. The Owner’s horrific managerial response is to promote someone whose educational and personal skills are, to put it mildly, questionable. If there is any justice in the world (and I know just how naïf that belief is) we are looking at desperation tactics in an institution whose time has long since run out.

I am already working out ways to put my own bit of boot in – but with what I hope will be eloquence, post modern irony and wit.

A poniard is as effective as a broadsword; and just as satisfyingly bloody!

Children and dogs

Children are not Labradors.

I have only the one approach to children under the age of three or four: treat them like dogs. Well, not ‘dogs’ qua dogs, but as that most majestic of selfish breeds Labradors. My method has always been to whip them up into frenzies and then walk away.

This always works: until it doesn’t.

The “doesn’t” part is when a stray hysterical childish hand destroys a lamp shade which is part of the flat and which, because of its age cannot be replaced. And it’s made of paper!

Thank god for super glue! In spite of its professed ineffectiveness on things like paper, it worked for me, it looks ok and that is all that matters as it’s part of the flat owner’s property and not ours!

Tomorrow is a momentous day – I start my Spanish Lessons. Two hours twice a week. I am trembling with terror at the mere thought of being thrust into a class with god knows who and at god knows what level. No teacher likes being taught and no teacher can abide not striving to do better than most. Why should I be any different? Oh God!

One books is going to have to come out of hibernation: the snappily entitled ‘501 Spanish Verbs’ this is indeed as boring as its title suggests and is, at the same time, utterly indispensable in attempting to communicate with some accuracy in Spanish.

For a year now I have attempted to make myself understood by using as few verbs as possible, probably sounding like a slightly affected and overdressed Tarzan. I have had conversations about history, religion, art and politics in all of which I must have come over linguistically as a well informed Neanderthal: whose manners were light years ahead of his command of Spanish!

This has to stop. I can no longer have dialogues with intelligent cultured people with my sounding like some sort of throwback to an antediluvian time in the genetic pool!

This time round I even promise to do my homework.

I have a feeling that rash statement will come back to haunt me.

Within days!