Restoring Faith!

Two days and it feels like a career!

That is one thing about a new school; it has a way of creeping into your soul in double quick time and making you feel that you have been working there for eternity.

Each day that I turn up I am greeted with delight by my colleagues. This is partly because they are decent folk and concerned about how I am settling it, but it is mainly because I was not there they would have to do cover for the teacher who is absent. Whatever the reason, it is always gratifying to be welcomed!

I was unable to get rid of Haydn’s ticket for the opera this evening as he wasn’t up to the trip this time – but we do hope to see him in the summer when we will be able to make the much heralded visit to the Gaudi church that is so problematic for me.

The opera in question was ‘L’incoronazione di Poppea’ by Claudio Monteverdi in the Liceu which was a co-production with the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and Welsh National Opera in Cardiff. In fact I had seen this production in Cardiff some time ago in the totally uncongenial surroundings of the New Theatre. Hadyn had been fortunate in seeing the production in the Millennium Centre where I am sure the production got the space that it needed to succeed.

Some of the extraordinary scenic effects I remembered, but the production seems to have matured somewhat since I last saw it and I was amazed at how coherent and fluid the scenes were and how far they added to the dramatic effect of the opera rather than being a series of unrelated set pieces which is what I remember.

The performance today was one to remember. It easily gets into my top ten productions of opera that I have ever seen. The singing of the principals was superb throughout and even the minor roles were never less than adequately sung.

Poppea (Miah Persson) was luscious in every possible sense: her singing was a delight and her physical presence was sultry bordering on pornographic! She filled her costumes and paraded them to every advantage. Her pairing with Nerone (Sarah Connolly) was electric. Connolly’s voice was authoritative, subtle and precise. The shade and tone that she was able to produce was extraordinary. An exemplary performance with every scene with Persson being a delight.

Seneca (Franz-Josef Selig) was not only a good stage presence but also a brilliant singer where the solidity of his performance was matched by the thrilling profundity of his vocal range.

Ottone (Jordi Domènech) a replacement for Carlos Mena who was indisposed, was a lyrical counter tenor and a gifted comic actor who fitting into a complex production with ease.

Ottavia (Malte Beaumont) and Drusilla (Ruth Rosique) were effectively sung and proficiently acted with Ottavia’s leave taking of Rome a particularly effective moment.

The Orquestra Barroca del Gran Theatre del Liceu with Harry Bicket as the conductor had a rousing reception as well they deserved as their playing throughout the opera was excellent.

Direction by David Alden was constantly interesting and added dimensions to the narrative. ‘L’incoronazione di Poppea’ is really a thoroughly nasty opera with the self seeking vicious couple getting their own way by killing and banishing the opposition and ending the opera by singing a meltingly beautiful love duet!

The tragi-comedy of the piece was more than brought out by the use of costume, backdrops, lighting and stage business. There are too many brilliant images to highlight from a sparkling production but one has to mention the extraordinary sight of Poppea wearing a sheer, slashed leathery looking dress climbing up a wall to spread-eagle herself against the flat; the chandelier illuminated Bridget-Reilly like backdrop in the final scene; the absurd Tin-Tin like schoolboy disciples of Seneca; the rumbustious antics of the minor characters; the revolving, free moving glass doors with Love on top . . . and so it goes on with image fighting with image but all adding to the effect of coherent fun with a sharp edge of immanent chaos.

This was the sort of production which answers the criticisms which question the spending of so much money on an opera.

If you can: see it.

I’m considering going again!

He is The One!

It is not often that one can walk around a school and be met with admiring glances from one’s colleagues and be regarded as a creature of myth made real.

I have been greeted by teachers who I am prepared to swear that I have never seen before whom have said, “You have been here before: you are The Supply Teacher Who Went Before He Started!”

With a modest smile and demurely downcast eyes I had to admit that I was he. My last visit to the school was extremely brief as the headteacher was overruled by the directora who thundered that no supply teacher was necessary and I was to go. So, before Toni had risen from bed I was back home and out of a job!

This time at least, I have made it through the day and even managed to survive a Year 12 lesson on the development of Germany after 1848. My knowledge of the detail of the development of German after 1848 and before the 1930s is, I must admit a little sketchy - rather like my knowledge of either (or indeed both) of Einstein’s theories of relativity. One has a hazy idea of the general thrust and can quote a few facts but one wouldn’t like to explain them to a perky, questioning group of students!

I have been able to get away with a few light, throwaway references to the recently discovered (for me) Erfut Union of 1849 and the appealingly named (though equally abstruse) Capitulation of Olmütz.

I have survived by leading a very general discussion about the state of the states of Europe at the start of the nineteenth century and I am praying that the text books will give me something in the way of facts to bolster up the unsupported verbiage that I have tried to pass off as teaching!

The staff is very welcoming and supportive and the pupils seem to be lively and ready to learn.

The only real problem is whether I have anything to teach them!

I might also add the fact that I am now the Acting Head of History in the School – because I am the only history teacher there!

Who would have thought it!

Words, words, words.

Tomorrow the new challenge.

Well enough of that depressing thought let me dwell with more interest and happiness on what we had for lunch.

The whole family descended on Castelldefels to partake of calçots – the onion/leek like delicacy which is eaten messily. Clothing is usually protected by a paper bib of some sort so that the charcoal deposits on the stems which are stripped away before consumption do not transfer themselves to expensive raiment.

Three cars went off in procession to the same restaurant which we went to last year in Gava and we were met by a building site. The restaurant is no more so the partaking of the seasonal delicacy had to be postponed to another time.

The alternative was a restaurant at the end of our road which does a special menu which satisfies even the most demanding appetite. The quality of the place can be gauged by the fact that Zidane was eating there the last time we went.

So while I should have been reading history books with a desperation born of the fact that tomorrow I will have to be teaching something about which I know what a reasonably well informed person knows rather than a dedicated specialist teacher, I was instead relishing the various courses which were brought out for our delectation. I might mention the lubina cooked in salt which was an absolute delight.

Having digested my meal, I will now retire to my bed to worry about what the morrow may bring.

And I might add that I now know more about the abortive Erfut Union of 1849 (exactly!) than I have ever known in my life before.

I have a feeling that the next fortnight as a history teacher is going to be full of exciting discoveries, many of which I am going to make only hours before the pupils!

As well, it keeps one on ones toes!

At least!

Re-branding

Never let it be said that I did not have the capacity to reinvent myself!

On Monday the person who turns the key in my car will be a newly created, raring to go, fully informed History Teacher!

It’s not that I haven’t taught history before. Who can forget those formative years in Llanedeyrn High School when I was involved in the delivery of Foundation Year Studies? This year 7 course amalgamated English, History, Geography and Religious Instruction into one vast worksheet driven Juggernaut. History did pretty well out of this conglomeration of subjects and we ploughed our way through Ancient Civilizations.

When I was teaching the course, by great good fortune Marks and Spencer actually produced a lavishly illustrated and very informative book covering all the requisite civilizations that we needed.

Every week there was a ‘Key Lesson’ which was taken by each teacher in turn and delivered to half of the year group. My greatest achievement in one of these lessons was to read out to the pupils part of a document from ancient Ur in your actual ancient Mesopotamian! This was very well received and there was no one there to take exception to my pronunciation! As indeed there hadn’t been for a considerable number of thousands of years!

This teaching however is a little more serious: there are two A Level classes for Years 12 and 13 and a Year 11 class working their way towards the public examinations. Some of the classes’ topics are on fairly safe ground: Victorian Britain and The Civil War - the British war of course, not the Spanish!

At the same time as I start in my new, new school Hadyn will be arriving for his visit, then the week after Ceri and Dianne and the court case.

Why is it that circumstances always conspire to add levels of interest to situations which are already interesting enough?

Rhetorical.

Creation is not easy

“Was it worth it?”

A key question and one which got me an honest answer.

An hour spent in the company of a lady who had set up her own school in a Catalan spa town in a most imposing Modernista house was revealing and informative.

The efforts to establish the school seem to have been accompanied by a whole series of experiences involving expense and frustration. She suggested that one should allow four years (4!) to get the paperwork done! She spoke of regulations as if they were self replicating viruses which were able to mutate at will to the detriment of honest hard working school establishers.

She spoke of vast and endless expense (four flights of marble stairs had to be replaced because the original features were a few centimetres too narrow) and the soul destroying hunt for finance.

But, in answer to my question, she was very glad that she had made the effort and she was enthusiastic about the future development of her school.

We covered a lot of ground and her comments have given me much food for thought.

The mobile phone call I had half way through our conversation was perhaps compensation for the journey up to the school.

In what is rapidly becoming a vastly irritating tradition, my tom-tom gave up the ghost just as I was about to leave familiar territory and venture into motorways new. I vaguely remembered the Directora telling me to come off the ronda de dalt and head for Vic. This was little enough information to go on as I had no idea where on the ring road I should expect to see a helpful sign.

After following my instincts on one or two forks in the motorway I felt, as I seemed to be heading straight for snow covered hills, that I should ask for help. I took the first turn off from a motorway disturbingly signposted to ‘France’ and found myself in a service station. The waiter in the café was both helpful and encouraging and suggested that I simply go through the toll and carry straight on. His vague indication of a couple of kilometres was woefully out and it meant that I drove ever deeper into Catalonia with a sinking feeling and a diminishing amount of time to get to my destination.

A sign above the motorway with my destination on it gave me a momentary lift but after an inordinate number of kilometres I assumed that I had missed the turning and was heading who knew where.

If you’ve read the start then you will have realised that I did in fact get there. I drove into the much larger than expected spa town and saw a teacher marshalling pupils along a road, stopped and asked her for the school and discovered that I was on a parallel road. Of course getting onto that road necessitated a circuitous approach, but I found a free parking space adjacent to the school.

The mobile phone call was from another school asking if I would consider doing supply for a history teacher. Teaching up to A Level. A later phone call revealed that the history courses which are being taught in the school all seem to be more like the background to current affairs than the ‘real’ stuff of history and an in depth study of the Paleologi and the development of Byzantium. Anything pre 1916 is, I assume regarded as Ancient History and having no relevance for modern pupils.

One of the modules is on the Civil Rights Movement in America – so Paul is going to find himself sending a quantity of the notes that I know he has tucked away somewhere as a monument to his one time calling as a history teacher (sic.)!

There is a meeting tomorrow to discuss the possibility of my being able to take over this timetable. As I have been asked to bring all documentation, bank details and certificates and as the person I spoke to on the phone has been taking the classes herself and ‘wants out’ I think that as long as I turn out to be a carbon based life form I have a good chance of being employed.

The problem comes with what happens during half term when I am expecting visitors.

Well, we shall see.

We shall see.

Slow grinding mills

It gives me no pleasure to report that chaos is facing The School That Sacked Me.

What a glaring example of mendacity that statement is! I rejoice in anything approaching mild discomfort for that institution, so that real, dyed in the walkout disaster fills me with exultation. I am getting my delight in as soon as possible because promising situations in that place have a tendency to ‘go with the money’ and fizzle out under the pressure of financial manipulation and threat that are second nature to The Owner.

Tomorrow (after my struggle with Spanish verbs in the second lesson of the week) I visit a school on the other side of Barcelona to see how an institution which parades its accreditation with the requisite bodies and values its teaching staff managed to set itself up. And keep itself going! I am looking forward not only to making some useful contacts but also acquiring practical knowledge. I wonder when was the last time that I had occasion to write something like that!

Teaching friends in the UK continue to send me gloating emails cataloguing the days off school they are enjoying because of snow. My only response after lunch this afternoon was to lie out on the balcony with my shirt off. In the sun, I might add.

To be absolutely truthful the experience reminded me of the times that I went to Gran Canaria in the winter time to acquire the January tan that provoked such bitter comments from my colleagues in school. Winter in the UK is high season in Gran Canaria with hotel prices to match; this meant that time on the beach could be worked out at so much per minute, and it was time that could not be wasted!

I must admit that there were times that I lay on my ‘sun’ bed on the beach at Maspalomas when the weather was not as clement as I could have wished. Once indeed I lay there in the rain with gritted teeth and an unshakable faith that the sun would justify all. And, to be fair, it did. Eventually. I was surrounded by other Northern European ‘sun’ bathers who were as dogged as I in their determination to believe in the essential sun soaked nature of the damp beach that they were on!

The breeze was the real killer. The sun may have been shining but the slightest breeze made lying on a beach divested of clothing something of a trying experience. And sometimes ‘breeze’ was a total misnomer for the howling gale which threatened to rip one from one’s sun bed and to sand blast one into the bargain. The physical pain I could take as long as the buffeting by the beach did not remove the outward and visible sign of expensively acquired patina!

This afternoon the shirt went back on when the frisky sea breezes became a little too insistent to ignore. But the point was made: snow in UK while sunbathing in Castelldefels.

Ah!

Silence in court!

I have been summonsed to appear before a judge.

I suppose that you are waiting for some sort of lightly witty explanation for that opening sentence leading into a digressive foray among foreign mores.

But it is actually and strictly true.

This afternoon an official notification on a folded and stapled piece of A4 with my name and street and no house number on it was (worryingly and accurately) deposited in my mail box. This informed me that I would have to present myself in the offices of the Justice Department in connection with a case.

It would have been fair to say that I was somewhat bemused and eager to experience another facet of the rich life of Catalonia.

Toni could elucidate little from the fairly brief communication and merely asked me if I had committed a murder of which he was unaware. Hastening to assure him that my homicidal tendencies had been kept well within check for the past few months or so, I decided to visit the offices indicated on the headed notepaper and try and discover more.

Consumed as I was with the usual middle class ‘guilt-acceptance syndrome’ which is the typical response to any official communication from legal authorities, I worried my way through a convincing and instantly generated list of possible ‘crimes’ of which I could be guilty. And worried more about the ones that I couldn’t think of but of which I was undoubtedly guilty.

The ownership of a car is incompatible with a guilt free life. Even the most law abiding of citizens cannot drive for more than a few minutes without breaking more than a couple of the regulations which define motoring. Let alone taxes local and national and insurance.

The visit to the legal offices offered the information that my presence in the courts was necessary for me to receive information in connection with my denunciation of The Owner of The School That Sacked Me when she refused to divulge the total amount of money collected for the Readathon for Burma and what had happened to the money raised.

The arrogant, ignorant and deeply unprofessional (if you can be unprofessional with a complete lack of professional qualifications) woman has allowed a simple request for information to develop into this court case! No parent, child or teacher in the school has been informed of what has happened to the money. Her paranoia is such a deeply ingrained part of her dysfunctional ‘personality’ that even positive information that any other school would be proud to publicize cannot be released because it would obviously be a sign of weakness! Sad, bad woman!

It would be an absolute delight if she was present, but I fear that her usual attitude to courts and legal action is that they are slight irritations like the occasional blackhead and she feels that she can well afford to ignore them. If I have anything to do with it (and I do) this blackhead is going to turn into a very nasty suppurating boil, possibly turning gangrenous and with the involvement of the Atlanta Infectious Disease Center leading to quarantine, amputation and eventual . . .

I think I rather let that image run away with me, but surely taking a simile and treating it like a metaphor and giving it its head is one of the joys of writing.

And I believe in sympathetic magic!

Whatever comes next . . .

La Liga may well be the finest football league in the world but now that Something Has Been Done to the television aerial the number of truly awful television channels we can get has exponentially increased. The practical result of this multiplicity of mediocrity is that at every moment of the day it is possible to see (or be subjected to) unlimited programming which contains ball sports or programming which contains illustrated commentaries on ball sports or Spanish discussions i.e. everyone speaking or shouting at once.

Enough is, as they say, enough.

“Whenever I hear talk of football, I reach for my ipod,” as Bruce Forsythe never said. However, if he had said it, it would have been excellent advice. Advice which, in spite of its non utterance, I followed.

Plugged into my ipod I was indeed safe from the deadening effect of football orientated audio information but, alas, not safe from the ipod itself.

I started listening to what I had been listening to the last time I used the thing – Mozart. This segued into a jolly wind band version of Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana’ and then into ‘La Boheme.’ There were two random extracts from the opera and then the third was the final scene.

Mimi was singing her last and fading, sotto voce into death and I therefore prepared myself for the tear jerking finale in which I bow to the demands of the music and weep. I was jerked back to mundane reality by hearing not Rodolfo’s anguished spoken questions and the overwhelming orchestral climax but rather Bob and Marcia singing ‘To be Young Gifted and Black.’

I will admit that this juxtaposition does give one a rather special perspective on the opera but it also comes as a major dislocation in one’s listening expectations!

This is one of the serendipitous effects of choosing the ‘songs’ setting on the ipod which treats all the tracks on the machine as equal and orders them solely on alphabetical principles. Another example of unlikely alphabetical sequencing after the interrupted opera has been my hearing the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band followed by Stravinsky. I have yet to work out what the iTunes program considers the alphabetical key in the many pieces of information contained in the title of a classical track!

At least it makes the silence at the end of each piece of music a more interesting experience while I brace myself for what might come next!

I am a little more settled now that I have had an excellent menu del dia in the re-opened Cel Blau – our local corner restaurant. Tortilla, paella and an excellent merluza in a Basque sauce which included chopped spring onions, asparagus and hard boiled egg. I loved it, Toni less so.

The meal also compensated to some extent for the poor weather where the natural inclination of the climate in this area is fighting against the damp and dull tendency that has been with us for the past few days. I was downcast (pathetic fallacy linked to the weather) until I saw pictures of the rest of Europe. The sight of the dome of St Paul’s and the statue of Churchill in Parliament Square covered with snow made me recognize the weak sunshine illuminating the balcony as a major advantage to life in Castelldefels!

The search for work continues with another school coming within the scope of my sights. Never a dull moment!

It is at times when you want to replace light bulbs that you miss Tesco. The number of different types of bulbs that are used in this flat is frankly bewildering and our local Carrefour doesn’t stock them all. Four shops later I have finally managed to round up a representative selection and am now well placed to restore light to any corner of the flat which should slip into darkness. But I could have done it in one in Pengam Green.

I will have to explore other alternatives and switch allegiances. But before that I obviously need an intensive period of shopping to evaluate the contestants!

Changing views?

The chaos which has come to Madrid with heavy snowfalls makes me a little more jocose about the rather dull weather here in Castelldefels.

I am conscious that Hadyn is expecting something rather warmer and sun orientated when he arrives in a little over a week’s time, but there are always concerts and galleries to take away the sting of contrary weather.

I am (sort of) looking forward to my first visit actually inside the unfinished approximation of what Gaudi had in mind for La Sagrada Familla. Perhaps physical proximity and admiration of the detail of the construction will change my rather jaundiced view of this structure. Great and interesting building it certainly is and as a distant iconic outline silhouetted against the Barcelona skyline it is one of my favourite reference points but ‘up close’ is a very different thing.

I do not think that it is possible to build a Gaudi building without Gaudi. Gaudi’s way of building was to modify the building as it progressed. Gaudi was prepared to give his workers their head to change his ideas and have a major input as far as the appearance of the building was concerned – but he was there to authorize and to oversee the project. Without him it cannot be a true Gaudi building.

In the past great churches and cathedrals have taken long periods to construct – certainly more than a single lifetime. Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona is certainly an exception taking only 50 years to complete, but most of the buildings were collaborative and are none the worse for that. Gaudi’s building I maintain is and should be an exception. My approach would have been to have stopped the building at Gaudi’s death; roofed over what was there with a transparent structure and made the most of it.

I am not sure how well people know what is going to be built on the site. The largest tower has still to be constructed, complete with giant cross, and the whole profile of the church will change dramatically. I think there are plans for the cross to be illuminated and that will brand it as a Christian building.

At the moment it looks like some petrified organic underwater feature, something natural and startling. At a distance it is not obviously Christian, while retaining the clear suggestion of a church with steeples. It is easy for the building’s outline to stand as a symbol for the city without overt religious overtones. In detail, as Gaudi clearly intended, its religious significance reflects the pietistic devotion that characterized Gaudi’s life and dedication to ‘his’ church. The giant cross will be exclusive and make the church into something less of an icon and symbol, in my view.

On the other hand some experts have said that the entire church will be complete in twenty to thirty years. Whatever I think about its projected development there is something exciting in hoping that I will still be alive to see it in its finished state. Whatever that is!

With any luck!

Reading and walking

I am trying, without success, to wean myself from my dedication to my e-book reader.
I am now fully addicted to obscure out of copyright pot boilers by otherwise famous writers. My predilection for P G Wodehouse writing now takes in stuff that he wrote which is only one step above The Famous Five. I am reading writing from the first decade of the twentieth century which has odd racist allusions which shock by their very casualness. I am beginning to read everything (including modern writing) which now appears to me to be merely a variety of Boys’ Own Paper writing!

I am reading L R Stevenson’s ‘Travels with a Donkey’ which I first read donkey’s years ago and only remember his description of hitting the donkey across the face with a stick out of sheer frustration with the animal’s disinclination to move. This time round there are references to language, culture, description and history which I am sure I simply ignored the last time which I am able to appreciate now.

Stevenson appears to be an odd traveller both prepared for what he is likely to find and also something of an innocent in his peregrinations. He is as comfortable in lyrical passages in praise of nature as he is in low comedy in his battles with Modestine - the donkey. He dwells on the fate of the Protestants and Roman Catholics in Pont de Montvert in the early eighteenth century and draws lessons from that bloody confrontation, “the persecution on the one hand, the febrile enthusiasm on the other are almost equally difficult to understand in these quiet modern days.” Those “quiet modern days” were in 1879 - the year of Rorke’s Drift and the Zulu Wars, so obviously a different sort of “quiet” from the one I understand!

Stevenson talks about having a “sleeping-sack” (sleeping bag) “constructed” a “child of my invention” which looked like “a sort of long roll or sausage, green waterproof cart-cloth without and blue sheep’s fur within” – is this one of the first descriptions of a sleeping bag to be used by ‘serious’ travellers who go hiking in little explored territory for fun? 'Travels with a Donkey' has been described as one of the first accounts of someone going on a hiking holiday for fun. For me the words ‘hiking’ and ‘fun’ do not go together naturally, but in reading Stevenson’s account I am able to link the words from the comfort of my sofa at the cost of someone else’s discomfort!

Talking of discomfort today has been one of my periodic days of vague illness. I still seem to preserve the habits of school and limit these days to the weekend when I can ‘take to my bed’ with a clear conscience and sleep off any discomfort. It took till 4 pm but I then arose (fully refreshed) and gratefully ate the bocadillo prepared for me.

At least I’m not hiking!

It's not the giving . . .

Some presents are clearly double edged.

My mother made a clear distinction (which she explained very lucidly early in my life) between a ‘present’ for the house and a gift for her. Something for the kitchen was regarded as having general utility and could not therefore be regarded as a disinterested ‘present’ but rather as something from which the giver hoped to gain by its being used by the recipient. My mother was not fooled by such things.

I was a quick learner and soon understood the cross-over value of flowers. This was a ‘public’ gift which was always appreciated personally. Although flowers were seen by everybody, the fact that my mother trimmed, arranged and cared for them made them particularly hers. This was allowed. I now think that the logic of the gift represented by flowers could also be extended to raw ingredients which could be transformed by one’s parent into tasty meals. I know, intuitively that however logical my thought it would never have been accepted as a parallel by my mother!

Children, of course, are constantly given ‘improving’ gifts: toys which have the imprimatur of some educational manufacturer so that the donor can pay a lot of money to have the warm feeling that he is doing good while being nice. But kids always know when they are being taught, they can sniff out hidden education and they will play with the box that the gift came in rather than something which is overtly wholesome and improving!

Alcohol gives by the sip and takes by the bottle; clothes mask yet define; perfume asserts to fade and gadgets titillate to frustrate. The positive always points relentlessly to the negative while transience and obsolescence swallow meaning. As Flanders and Swann so delicately put it, “That’s entropy man!”

There are some gifts which transcend the tug down to oblivion. The tea caddy in the form of The Oxford English Dictionary given by Ceri and Dianne (when the world was yet young) still contains my tea bags today. And the thought of anything else is simply unthinkable. Only total destruction involving catastrophic metal fatigue will stop it being my caddy of choice! This caddy falls into that small and select group of items where replacement is simply not considered shame and necessity forces: colanders, tea towels, nail brushes and wallets.

Just compare that list with: mobile phones, computers, watches and decent Rioja and you will see the difference! In the latter list change is part of the process of use; in the former it is amazing how something like a fraying piece of cloth to dry dishes can be unconsciously considered an essential unchanging part of ordinary life!

Be truthful, when was the last time that you replaced a tea towel or colander or nail brush or wallet? However broken, frayed, blunted or old they simply ‘are.’

The other type of gift is one which is only made – literally – by you the recipient. Not the conventional self assembly aspect, but more the active continuing participation of the giftee: something like a diary. A diary is only so much scrap paper until the owner transforms it into a coherent book. Personally, I never got beyond January (usually the first week in January) before the scrap paper aspect of the book took over its more normal function.

The present which is provoking these ruminations is in the ‘diary’ category of gift. Our recent efforts in forcing perfectly good and happy acrylic paint from the security of its tube and onto the chaotic surface of a canvas have been noted by certain sections of the family. We are now the proud possessors of giant canvasses with an intimidatingly large surface area to cover in coloured stains.

Toni, with growing enthusiasm, is producing small canvases at an alarming rate and he has made a start on the pencil outline for his magnum opus. I have thought about what I might do and have even gone to the unheard of lengths of sketching out my ideas.

The sheer whiteness of the canvas and the immensity of its open space make the idea of producing a mark on its virginal expanse appear like a violation. Especially with my wayward artistic ability. However, the progress of what I can only term the ‘rival’ picture is prompting me into attempting some sort of response.

The pencil is poised: I have nothing to loose but my self respect.

Let battle commence!

Throw away!

Grovelling about in refuse bins!

A sad illustration of the true state of affairs during a crisis! Late last night at the end of our street someone from our block of flats was taking out the bags from the skip and rummaging through them. Sad. Disgusting.

Me!

I blame the Spanish government.

Qualifications from Britain have to be ‘recognized’ by the government in Madrid. It is not enough that the school in which you work is shown the original certificates for degree and PGCE, they have to be ‘seen’ by the authorities, stamped authenticated and generally photocopied and become part of an extended bureaucratic paper chase.

All credit to the Teaching Council for Wales and Swansea University for getting the proof that I am actually a teacher and actually have a degree to me with exemplary dispatch: from telephone request to document in Catalonia only a single week!

David, from The School of the Short Sojourn helped me fill out the crucial form, checked through the photocopies I had amassed, photocopied more and sent me on my way to the department of government in Barcelona I needed to visit to get everything stamped and started on its long journey into the inner sanctums of the education ministry in Madrid.

I relied on my tom-tom to get me there. It did. Eventually.

Driving through Barcelona is a nightmare. The city has enthusiastically adopted the traffic light as a direct weapon against the motorist. Their positioning creates maximum entropy and the minimum of activity. The traffic jams thus created give almost unlimited opportunities for the verminous plague of ‘drivers’ (I use that word in its loosest possible sense) who choose the motorbike or scooter as their suicidal weapon of choice.

The bike riders were numerous and numbskulled.

They wove in and out of traffic as if they were merely moving pixels on the screen display of a computer program. Bike riders in Barcelona ride as if they had the manoeuvrability of a particularly lithe limbo dancer combined with the longevity of a giant tortoise and the invulnerability of James Bond.

My sympathy for the number of plaster encased youngsters you see in the streets of Catalonia has long since evaporated as they represent the visible sign of some sort of justified physical retribution for their insane driving. After my experiences this afternoon I think that I will start aiming for them!

Believe me you become hyper sensitive to motorised Tinkerbells who think that they are winsome emanations of delight, weaving patterns of fairy dust around you as you try and find your way through the centre of a city trying to follow ambiguous instructions from the preternaturally calm voice of a GPS.

By the time The Voice told me that I was approaching my destination on my right I was a little irritated and wished with passionate intensity that I had scythes attached to the hub caps of my car.

I was of course sent to the wrong building from the right building and then my documents were looked at by someone who had never processed this type before. The number of questions raised by the over anxious nubie about what I had given in was too mind-bendingly and inconsequentially trivial to grace with typing space and I therefore assumed that they would mean the kiss of death to my hopes for getting the documents on the move. Astonishingly all objections were (eventually) brushed aside by the official guiding my neophyte Jobsworth’s attempt to send me back for another try!

So a day productively spent.

This was a day which started just after midnight with my searching the rubbish for the academic transcript which, in an excess of tidying, I had thrown away.

Unlike Squidge who would probably have been dragged away by the police for interfering with the quiet repose of the rubbish, I found our uncollected bag in double quick time. The bag opened, I saw the rolled up envelope and was able to rescue the transcript – a little moist and a little piquant, but whole and usable.

Better, as they say, lucky than rich.

I am working towards both.

The Power of Art!

At a time of economic meltdown, galloping unemployment, social unrest and growing chaos around the world it is always pleasant to see that art can play its part in making things just that little bit worse.

I have been reading about the latest piece of Euro Art Work to be unveiled in Brussels. This is ‘Entropia’ by David Cerny which has been installed in the foyer of the European Council in Brussels to mark the Czech assumption of the EU Presidency.

This eight tonne sculpture takes the form of a massive rectangle of blue tubing from which (rather in the manner of the plastic parts of an Airfix model kit) arty representations of the individual member countries are fixed.

The ‘explanatory’ catalogue for the installation issued by the Czechs has been hurriedly withdrawn (though it is still available on line if you know where to look) and apologies have been issued right, left and centre for the real and perceived insults that the sculpture has been seen to offer.

Cerny, the artist, has told infuriated observers that it was all meant as a bit of a joke. It turns out that the Czech government has thought that they were commissioning a range of artists from individual EU states but in fact it was an elaborate hoax by Cerny. He and a few collaborators made all the bits and wrote the ludicrous catalogue as well.

When you consider the play on stereotypes by which each country outline is represented you wonder just how Cerny got away with it until it was installed and too late.

Sweden is represented by an IKEA flatpack; Bulgaria by a Turkish toilet; Ireland by fur covered bagpipes; Romania by a kitsch looking Dracula fairground attraction; Spain by a lump of concrete and Britain – well, Britain isn’t there. This is supposed to be a visual representation of the scepticism about membership of the EU for which we are notorious! The description of the artistic motivation for the lack of anything in the installation representing Britain could be reprinted verbatim in Pseuds’ Corner in Private Eye. I might add that the element representing the Czech nation consists of an LED strip relaying quotations from the speeches of their disturbed leader!

I do urge you to find the catalogue and giggle your way through the pretentious artistic psycho babble with which it is filled and have a look at the individual elements of the countries. After looking at them you might begin to wonder if the EU hasn’t been given a more uncomfortably accurate depiction of the heterogeneous rag bag of absurdly pompous countries that make up the organization than any ponderous academic study emerging through the filter of civil servants and national prejudice could possibly do!

As in the best traditions of a Brueghel painting there are so many little details which tantalize and titillate: the sexually suggestive footballers of Italy; the drowned minarets of Holland; the endlessly circulating cars of Germany; the group of priests mimicking the Iwo Jima flag raising but with the Rainbow flag of the Gay movement for Poland – it goes on and on and you can imagine national representatives howling with rage!

The fact that Cerny has managed to get his installation up and running (there are moving, flashing and sounding parts) is a triumph. Elaborate hoax and naughtily irreverent it might well be but such a scintillating example of wicked humour in the heart of serious Europe is worth its weight in gold. And to cap it all Cerny said that he was influenced by Monty Python's Flying Circus in producing this work of art! Who needs a representation of the country when the idea behind it all is so gloriously British!

The recriminations, explanations, accusations and condemnations which this installation has and will provoke must all, surely, be regarded as a continuing part of the work itself. Just as with Christo’s ‘wrapping’ projects (my particular favourite was the ‘Curtain across the valley’) the ‘art’ is as much in the efforts to get the work done (Christo actually got a bank to finance the curtain) as in the actual object itself (the curtain only survived for a very short time.) In the best sense of the word the object becomes a sequence of events in which we can all participate.

If nothing else it will allow us to chuckle at the way that a resourceful joker got his hands on substantial public funds and managed through sheer face to erect a symbol of punctured pretension in a symbol of stuffy seriousness.

I like it. A lot.

Tomorrow, after my second Spanish lesson of the week - (No! For the love of God! Not more verbs!) – I return to The School of My Brief Sojourn to take advantage of the offer of help to get my qualifications sorted out. The trick in these instances of approaching Spanish bureaucracy is to get all possible documents together to forestall any nit picking on the part of the officials. The man who has kindly offered to help has arranged numbers of these accreditations and so I should be in a safe pair of hands.

The only distasteful aspect of the process is that I might have to go to a notario (for whose existence I can see no possible justification) and spend quantities of money for those ciphers to tell me that the documents I am showing are indeed documents. I will need to keep my temper as I pay a fee for no reason whatsoever to people whose only qualifications for their ‘legal’ jobs are that they know how to put ‘official’ stamps on a piece of paper. My fervent hope (a teacher’s prayer) is that they will be subject to nights of sleepless anxiety for the grasping futility of their existence.

One can only hope!

Reflections

My time in my present school has come to an end with the return to health of the teacher whose place I took short term.

An early blood test and a two hour Spanish lesson replaced my classes this morning, but even this excitement does not compensate for the loss of what could be a lucrative and satisfying job.

I will wait with barely concealed impatience to see what the future holds. After all, when I first went to the school, it only took two days before they called me back to replace a teacher. I therefore expect a phone call by Thursday at the latest!

I was told that the teacher was returning at the start of my last lesson on Monday afternoon by the head of the secondary section of the school and the directora and, after many gratifying expressions of their satisfaction with my time with them I went back to complete my final lesson.

The pupils in the class were a little suspicious and, as they have done virtually every time that I have taken them asked if I would be teaching them the next day. The reaction when I told them that it was the last time that I would take them provoked an outcry.

I had to tread a perilously thin professional line in dealing with the storm of questions and unprompted comments which the situation provoked and it was only with real difficulty that we got back to the work that we should have been doing.

In a previous class when we were looking at a letter of application for a job in a Summer Camp when one of the pupils wittily suggested that I write one to the school for a permanent job. When I pointed out that there was no job another pupils said, “We can get rid of her. We got rid of a maths teacher.” It was a chilling moment which I passed over with a laugh and got back to the task in hand.

The pupils in the school are clever and articulate, they also have a very real sense of what they want and most of them are convinced that what they want will be translated into reality with very little trouble. One is tempted to say that they represent a youthful embodiment of the expectation of privilege which comes when you are paying large sums of money for a private education. Not only do they know what they want, but they also expect it.

Although I have not gone out of my way to create it, the permanent teacher is going to have a negative welcome when she returns to work. I do not envy her having to cope with class after class filled with sullen resentment at best and articulate dismissal at worst.

I suppose that I should also remember the remarkable resilience or pupils and their even more remarkable ability to forget. What appears to be major at the beginning of the week is very old news by the end of it!

A rather more pressing problem concerns verbs.

My Spanish class this morning was almost entirely incomprehensible to me as we (apparently) ranged our way through tenses as exotic as ‘pretérito perfecto simple’ to ‘pretérito pluscuamperfecto’ - and don’t get me started on the Spanish predilection for the ‘modo subjuntivo.’

I suppose it would be a help if I was anything approaching confident in description and use of these tenses in English before I embarked on the stormy waters of complex utterances in a foreign tongue. But that sort of logical preparation would be breaking the habit of a lifetime in far too many areas of experience to enumerate to try a new approach this late in my bumbling approach to life!

I can only hope that by Thursday our teacher will fall back on something a little easier, though a cursory glance at the page which she has indicated as our next foray into Spanish looks, to put it mildly, verb heavy. The topic is the ‘kitchen’ and if I understood her correctly she is expecting us to write a description of how we would prepare a typical national dish. I somehow don’t think that my suggestion of “Buy a ready meal from Tesco’s” translated into Spanish is quite what she has in mind!

I must officially record my thanks to The Teaching Council of Wales and the University of Wales Swansea for providing (within a week) the documentation necessary for my teaching qualifications to be recognized by the Spanish Government. I am particularly impressed with Swansea for producing an Academic Transcript of my degree. It is impressive to think that my precise marks from my degree papers are still somewhere in the system thirty-five years after gaining the qualification!

It is instructive to learn that my highest mark was in the History of Art in my first year and in my final papers my lowest mark was in Chaucer. I should explain. Our Chaucer paper was not just on Chaucer but also on a number of his ‘contemporaries’ who produced such shudderingly awful Early Middle English poems as ‘The Pearl’ and (in spite of what others may say) the equally dreadful ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.’ I think I speak for a number of my fellow students when I say that while we gave Chaucer his due and read many of the stories in ‘The Canterbury Tales’ his ‘contemporaries’ did not receive equal treatment. I may have bought the books, but I cannot say with hand on heart that I read them all the way to the end! Life, I reasoned, was not long enough to worry my way through a poem whose first line (of two and a half thousand lines) starts:

“Sißen ße sege and ße assaut / watz sesed at Troye”

and to be frank doesn’t get much better.

We had to sit the Chaucer paper on a Saturday afternoon just before ‘Doctor Who’ and, while I was writing my answers I had the constant fear that I was going to miss the latest episode of the not to be missed series. I had spent Friday night building sandcastles on Swansea beach with friends in a state of hysterical horror at my sheer unpreparedness for the coming ordeal which I reiterated to my unresponsive colleagues who were not sitting the exam the next day.

The paper itself was of legendary and absurd awfulness comprising ‘translation’ questions drawn from obscure ‘unseen’ pre fourteenth century documents; set texts and the Works of Chaucer. Then, to finish there were three academic essays on various texts that we had to complete. Only the students who were taking this period as their ‘special’ paper ever completed the exam – the rest of us staggered out of the examination hall in various states of shell shock. It took me virtually the whole of the episode of Doctor Who before I had regained my equanimity!

It is also gratifying to discover that my best papers were my special option paper on Modern Literature (don’t get the wrong idea - we started with Dostoyevsky, so not that sort of ‘Modern’) and Drama.

I am particularly pleased about the mark in Drama paper because it provoked a conversation with one of my tutors that I still don’t really understand. Before the results came out I was stopped by Doctor Worthen and the following exchange took place:

Dr W: You answered a question on Brecht didn’t you?
Me: Yes.
Dr W: You quoted from ‘Baal’ didn’t you?
Me: Yes.
Dr W: No one else did. That just about sums up your answer.
Me: !

I still maintain the ambiguity of Dr W’s comments was a cruel impetus to self doubt in the trying times before the degree results have came out. As the results day drew nearer I spent most of my time trying to think of a form of words to soften the blow when I had to tell my parents that I had failed or been awarded a ‘pass’ degree instead of the ‘honours’ degree that I had been attempting to get!

It was oddly ironic that, when the results were finally posted (and I was more than happy with my results) the only person who actually did fail honours and get a ‘pass’ degree actually received an honour!

In the degree ceremony (conducted in a mixture of Welsh and Latin with random English so no one knew what was going on) the graduates in each class of degree were ‘done’ together. So, in English the two firsts in my year were ‘done’ first; then the dozen two ones; the forty two twos and then, finally, in splendid isolation and looking as though he were receiving a signal honour, the single ‘pass’ graduate!

Happy Days!

Turning and turning

A colleague told me that she had a book confiscated by another colleague because he felt that what she was reading was morally corrupting and absolute rubbish.

As she was reading Jeremy Clarkson one does feel that such Draconian literary censorship is at least partially justified, but I have spent most of my life trying to find ways to implement my personal motto of “Quisquam est melior quam nusquam.” This is a literal Latin translation of “Anything is better than nothing.”

At this point I await an arch e-mail from Stewart who, with perfectly chosen ironic condescension will point out that the Latin is obviously illiterate, grotesquely barbaric and meaningless. Even I can see that the repetition of ‘quam’ three times is visually inelegant, so there must be another way of saying it.

So, the “Quisquam est melior quam nusquam” approach would aver that reading Clarkson is much to be preferred to not reading at all. I know that there is a literary snobbery that claims that reading books is a higher creative experience than, say, reading a film It so happens that I am quite comfortable with that as most of my professional life and leisure time has been taken up with The Book in whatever guise it presents itself.

The ‘guise’ ranges from those intimidating works of world importance which have introductions longer than the text they introduce to those books whose essential cheapness in thought as well as production is reflected not only in the gritty tactile woodchip on which they are printed but also in the lurid, shocking cover images which bear no relation to the content.

I still think that my approach when I was in school was the ‘soundest’ when it came to reading. I used to wander around with three books. The first was a copy of a novel by Agatha Christie or P G Wodehouse; the second was a (preferably) thin book from the Penguin Modern Classics series, and the third was a ‘real’ Classic.

The Agatha Christie or Wodehouse was for sheer pleasure and self indulgence and was therefore carefully hidden from public view so that any pretensions to intellectual respectability could be maintained.

The Penguin Modern Classic book was chosen for its front cover – usually a brilliantly chosen modern painting – and for the kudos that reading modern (and therefore difficult) novels could bring. My first brushes with Jean Genet, Boris Vian, Jean Cocteau, Cyril Connolly, Alain Fournier, Collette, Orwell, Zamyatin, Karp, Mann, all came from this excellent series. The kudos could only be extracted from the casual view of teachers because they were the only ones who knew anything about what you were reading.

The ‘real’ Classics were the ones which got you instant credit because even if people hadn’t read them they had heard of them and knew that they ought to have read them. Penguin again was my guide and they had The English Library which included people like Dickens, Bronte, Austen, Fielding, Trollope, Walpole and Shelley (Mrs) and all the poets. There was also the World Classics series which had Tolstoy, Dante, Chaucer and their august like.

So, in my view to restrict oneself to one type of ‘improving’ literature is a ridiculous form of pleasure denying philistianism. When you want to lose yourself in the elegantly nasty witticisms of Clovis as written by Saki, or marvel at the inhuman ingenuity of Jeeves or read paper thin characters mouth their way through intriguing murder mysteries – you are probably not in the mood for Proust or Pushkin. Or indeed vice versa.

The more you read, the more you discover that some Classics (by no means all!) have that designation because they are jolly good reads. In the same way some books which are dismissed by the cognoscenti as unworthy of anything more than a half glace can turn out to be fascinating.

And I for one fail to find anything unpleasant in self indulgence.

Within certain wide limits. As defined by me.

I did my marking yesterday, and with that work orientated credit I don’t really have to justify devouring ‘Was it Murder?’ by James Hilton (the author of ‘Lost Horizons’) as if it were a guilty pleasure, like a cream cake.

Anyway given the general level of vocabulary the novel contained, the odd Latin quotation, passing references to a shared general knowledge which is anything but common, fair characterization, firm structure and a reasonably challenging plot the book qualifies to join the ‘safe pair of hands’ designation and therefore certainly not be deemed a waste of time.

So, “Quisquam est melior quam nusquam” covers my present reading and all other goodies lurking in my e-book reader. With almost 400 volumes (and room for many more) in the device I can relax with the knowledge that there is a text for all moods from the frivolous to the furtive; from the profound to the preposterous and certainly from the essential to the easy read.

As Kipling wrote about the ways of making tribal laws, so also with ways of reading and what you might and should read:

There are nine and sixty ways
Of constructing tribal lays
And every single one of them is right.

Turn the page! Any page!

Blow winds!

Yesterday the whole of Spain was issued with a bad weather warning.

Most of the warnings were about gales with especially attention directed towards those parts of the country which have an Atlantic Coastline. Madrid in the centre was not exempted and was told it could expect high winds.

Here on the Mediterranean Coast we are usually more sheltered but the wind has been howling around the flat all night. This morning the wind has blurred the beach which has now become a giant three dimensional abrasion zone where any unfortunate walking along stands a good chance of being flayed. The sea, usually so placid, has become a reasonable looking maelstrom with the wind producing the most artistic of effects as it whips away the foam at the top of the multitude of waves which have suddenly appeared in our little lake.

And, of course, the sun is shining.

There are a few picturesque clouds to add interest to an otherwise featureless blue sky but they are not so intrusive as to block the beaming vitamin D being offered to those hardy enough to venture outside. I, with the achievement of a week’s teaching behind me, scorned the elements and strode out onto the balcony. I took two photos and then strode back in and made myself a cup of tea. After all, adventure should be met with reward!

At some time during this weekend I will have to complete the marking which has now fallen to my lot. It will be revealing to see if I get any of it done today or, as is the way with so many of we benighted educationalists, I leave it to Sunday. Thus will I reinforce the concept of the Sunday Afternoon Dread when the teacher suddenly realizes that time is running out to get the work done before the ziggurat of teaching starts rolling relentlessly forward on Monday morning.

The meal last night was excellent with lots of little starters and a healthy and delicious piece of fish for the main course – but, as usual the company and the conversation made the meal.

As I type I am surrounded by the sounds of things falling on exposed balconies or being dragged across the tiles by the wind. The double glazing is bulging with the force of the blast and doors are rattling in response to the insidious drafts that have managed to worm their way through invisible gaps. But the sun keeps shining through it all! Bless!

Next month approaches with its promise of guests to stay. Hadyn has expressed the desire to go and see inside Gaudí’s masterpiece the Templo Expiatório da Sagrada Família. I first saw this on the way to Tossa de Mar on my first foreign holiday when I was seven. The nearest I have got to it since then was on a tourist bus trip with the Pauls when the vehicle drove slowly past it. I prefer to view it as a distant landmark, an iconic silhouette against the bright sky of Barcelona rather than as a building which repaid close inspection. However, it will be an experience to see what the detail of this remarkable building is like.

I think I will buy a book!

The arrival of Ceri and Dianne is eagerly awaited by Toni (and indeed by me) because he is determined to show Ceri his latest works of art. Ceri will need all his diplomacy and old teaching skills in offering a response to these artifacts. And there is the added horror for him of looking at my internationally acclaimed view of Sitges (augmented by much use of Photoshop in its reproduction) and if that fails to knock his equilibrium then there is the naked threat of my incomprehensible rendition of a beachscene for him to ‘appreciate.’ Dianne and I will revert to type and go in search of a cake shop and giggle our way through some sort of cream infused sugary confection. A sugar rush will always compensate for any negativity about creativity!

Bring it on!

It's more than the food.

I am now the proud possessor of a Watford football club scarf.

I found the thing waiting on my desk when I came to take one of my classes today. One of my pupils who a couple of days ago admitted to supporting the club bashfully said that it was a gift and he had plenty more! This is all a legacy from a training camp that the pupil (you will notice that I am not using his name; my legendary inability to learn names in my classes continues) said that he had attended with Watford. Once you have played with that team you are obviously infected for life!

My overweening pride has now reached critical mass as class after class begged me to stay on and teach in the school permanently. There is, as I keep telling them, no job available for me. The looks on the faces of the pupils do not bode well for the reception of their normal teacher on her return! God help.

If I am asked to summarize my response to the school after a week there I would say that we had asparagus for lunch today. I do respond to such civilized touches in the otherwise feral world of education!

Monday is guaranteed as an extra day but then everything is dependent on what the doctor says about the teacher that I am replacing. My time there could extend into the middle of the week or my sojourn there could end on Monday afternoon. We will see.

And now out to dinner with both solid and liquid delights. I certainly feel that I have earned the right to sample the latter!

Some time over the weekend I have to complete my first tranches of marking. One of the groups of papers is a test on the passive in English. I had no idea that our grammar was so organized and that there were so many tidy rules to govern the writing of forms of English that we never think about in Britain. An eleven year old in this school has a greater knowledge of English grammar than most of the English teachers in most secondary schools! It is not only intimidating but downright frightening when some chit of a child starts talking about the past continuous perfect tense with a confidence bordering on ownership.

There is one girl in my youngest group who has a way of saying my name (all children refer to the teachers by their first names) and looking at me which makes me doubt all grammatical knowledge that I profess to possess. I shall filter all my future pronouncements by a flick of the eyes seeking her approbation before I have the temerity to continue any exegesis I care to make in the field of English grammar!

Keep thinking of the asparagus!

Another day?

What a long week!

I have rarely been as tired as I feel today and there is yet another day to go before the justified relaxation of the weekend! The teaching is not taxing in some ways but it is demanding. The pupils in my present temporary placement are eager and articulate so their needs are rather different from the sometimes resentful participants in education that I have dealt with in the past.

There is intensity in the sort of teaching which takes place in the English department of the school which is a reflection of the complete commitment of the head of department in the day to day progress of the subject. The grammar based emphasis of the text books used lends itself to an exercise led, examination tested approach which is easier to structure and control.

As my presence in the school represents more of a holding operation for the classes without a teacher rather than a well integrated approach with the rest of the department, I have been encouraged to play to my strengths and take a more expansive approach to my classes.

Meanwhile, on other fronts in my Barcelona experience, lunch today provided by the school canteen comprised fideuá, mussels, salad, chicken and various sweets. I had my meal and, rather daringly, accompanied it with a half glass of red from the pitcher of wine placed on the staff table. By way of reparation for this culinary largesse I had to do lunch time duty.

This evening I need to look through ‘Catcher in the rye’ which is the novel chosen by the previous teacher as the reader for two of my classes and which I have not read for an embarrassing number of years.

This is one of those times when I need my books – though I should not whimper and scratch at storage room doors but instead I should look for my raw teaching material from my e-book reader. I have suggested short stories to the head of department; perhaps I should print out one of them and present it as a little gift to the department.

I think that I will use Saki for the experiment. ‘Sredni Vashtar’ is a story which usually works and I know that the electronic bones of that story are lurking among the electrons which make up my computer.

Time for work!

Vaulting ambition!

There is, I swear a built-in self-destruct button in the human animal.

Having been in my present school for a lengthy two days and being subject to overweening pride, I decided to take a different route to work today. And was promptly confronted by a traffic jam!

Even though I was starting work at the obscenely early time of 8.15 am I had left a substantial number of minutes as a buffer by starting off on my journey in what looked like the middle of the night. I was therefore only mildly extremely worried by the seemingly unending, stationary line of traffic whose blinking red tail lights seemed to mock my impatience.

In what seemed like hours but was in fact just a few minutes I passed the bottle neck and was soon trundling on my way to the hills of Barcelona. And I had time to have a cup of tea before I took my first class.

The lady whose place I am taking has been to the doctor and now is definitely going to be away for the rest of the week and until at least next Monday.

The members of staff are very accepting and open; the characters among the teachers are beginning to emerge. A firm (generally incoherent) friendship has been established between the female PE teacher and me. She was the person who was sent to drag me away from a class where I had failed to hear the bell or siren and was happily teaching on well into my next period. “Can you run!” she urged me as I was making my sedate way down the various flights of steps to my class. “Yes I can,” I replied, “but I choose not to.” On the basis of that scintillating badinage she now refers to me as ‘mi amigo Estevan.’

It was a sunny day today and so I walked out onto the extensive balcony which runs outside the staff room in the hold house which was the place where the original school was established. In spite of some extraneous trees the view is astonishing taking in the whole of the city and looking down towards the sea. I am making the most of it before my brief tenure of this job is relinquished to its normal teacher!

The Head of Department asked me about book suggestions today so I was able to produce a critically annotated list for her perusal. The computers in the staffroom in the Old Building are directly linked to the photocopier which is also in the staffroom. To a teacher the meaning contained in the previous sentence will suggest the whole ethos of the school and the way that teachers operate there!

I am still trying to work out what staff the school actually has. Because of the fragmented and vertically differentiated layout of the school campus there are staff rooms in each building. I am beginning to recognize some faces and link them to a particular location but various other people just seem to come and go.

During the last period I was reading through a book which is published each year by the school in which the winning entries in a short story competition form the content. There were two Spanish teachers who I had never seen before. They were busily consuming the chocolates that a French teacher had brought into the school to celebrate her birthday.

After about ten minutes or so a young casually dressed motorcyclist came in, took off his helmet and made himself a cup of coffee after greeting all the other members of staff. He chatted, joined the other teachers in eating the chocolates, helped himself to one of the little pastries a tray of which had appeared for no apparent reason and then left.

Who was he? And who was his mate? They are obviously part of the scene here, though I can’t explain in what way they fit in.

It all gives me something about which to speculate.

The hardened worker!

Two days and exhaustion has taken on a whole new meaning!

Getting to the school in the mornings with all the rush hour traffic is, I have discovered, taking little more time than getting to the previous school in Sitges. One accident, however, and chaos will reign over the whole of northern Barcelona and I could be within shouting distance of the school and hours away by car!

It seems as if it might be at least possible that the teacher that I am replacing is back in the classroom on Thursday. This does not please me as I was booked (as it were) for a week, but on the more practical side I have at least managed to get inside a real school and be part of the staff for a few days.

The kids continue to reel.

One of my colleagues said that the pupils had told her in shocked tones that “He made jokes!” It was difficult to work out from her description whether that was positive or deeply negative!

I now have the keys to the school. This is feat that I have not managed to repeat since I last had the keys of and educational institution when I was given the keys of The English Department in Swansea University when I was a student!

In an odd lapse of reality the Head of Department took me through my timetable and pointed out the times and the rooms that I would be expected to lock next week – when I won’t be there. I take this as another positive sign!

The pupils continue to please and one class offered that temptation to inexperienced teachers of an invitation to stay and teach them permanently. Alas! I know only too well the juvenile welcome given to the new at the expense of the established – fickle swine, the young! Also there is no job at the school at present. I can’t help feeling that the lack of a place is a limiting factor in my future employment!

Tomorrow sees my first lesson at the grotesquely early time of 8.15 am. I assume that this start (which is twice a week for me) is part of a way of giving some sort of flexibility to the timetable. This is of course (with the exception of two days this week) of only theoretical interest to me. What the future holds may change that attitude.

As far as the lessons are concerned there is for me an almost palpable sense of relief in talking about my subject again and replaying all those little tricks of the trade to get pupils responding. Stewart has just sent me an email in which he says that, “you and I both know that when one is on a roll, there is nothing more satisfying than a class that, come four o'clock, knows more (and better) than it did at nine this morning.” That, I know is the feeling that I have been missing and this school is allowing me the luxury of experiencing it again.

Meanwhile my e-book reader (which was much admired by a colleague this morning) continues to provide odd reading. The novel I am devouring at present is one by Somerset Maugham called ‘The Magician’ and unless I had seen the author’s name on the page I would never have put writer and work together.

The subject concerns a splendid young couple who fall foul of an exotic gross eccentric who poses as (and might actually be) a magician. I have to say that it reads like a Dennis Wheatley novel – not that I consider it any the worse for that. I well remember reading ‘The Haunting of Toby Jug’ in bed at night when fairly young, resting the book on the pillow and eventually reading with the focussed attention of the very scared and not wanting to stop reading because that would mean turning round to put the lights out. And who knew what might be lurking there!

This is a perfect example of a book which one should never re-read. What chance is there that I can retexture my innocent horror from a book like that with my hardened cynicism built on the analysis of a tranche of novels since then? It is better to allow the book to live on as an experience in my memory than to sharpen the appreciation of it by reading through it again.

And anyway, I’m not sure it’s out of copyright for me to download.