Failure in the exams in our school comes with the delight of a ‘recuperation’ examination. The period from the time of failure to the taking of the recuperation examination is supposed to be filled with frantic revision.

Not so the children in our school. One boy failure has offered me (only half jokingly) money to pass him and the others all look for extenuating circumstances to explain their failure: lack of effort, of course, is not one of the elements which they take into account.

One boy has asked to see his examination papers and I have given them to him and also given him a print out of his marks in the elements of the examination so that he can see clearly where he has lost the majority of the marks that he should have gained. Unsurprisingly the highest mark deficit is in those sections in which he had to use a word or phrase in a sentence to show that he understood its meaning.

As this examination was ‘English as a Foreign Language’ the use of vocabulary is an essential component and to gain good marks there is a simple matter of hard learning to be completed before success can be achieved. This is not rocket science, but to this boy the concept of hard work is anathema. Instead what he looks for are mark anomalies and is prepared to argue the toss on each and every mark, sometimes even questioning my use of English! This takes the concept of blasphemy to a level not achieved since his Infernal Majesty had that insulting chat with the Galilean carpenter’s son in the wilderness!

It shows what a corrupt place I consider this school to be that I took the precaution of photocopying the boy’s examination paper before I gave it to him. There have been instances of subtle transmogrification of disastrous examination papers so that they rise from the intellectual ashes of idiocy into the balmier regions of mediocrity. It will be interesting to compare the ‘before’ and ‘after’ if he tries to increase his terrible marks! Or perhaps I am being simply too suspicious.

Today is Marc’s first birthday. He has made remarkable progress in all areas of his development and remains a disturbingly advanced small person. He still looks at me in an oddly unsettling way and so I have bought him a squeezable caterpillar with illuminated cheeks as a peace offering. I thought that its incongruity and surrealistic potential might hold him back for a few seconds.

As we have to go up to Terrassa for a Family Meal this is going to throw our whole schedule out of kilter in the packing department and I will be able to use this lacuna as a weapon against Toni when we reach the point of total hysteria and recrimination closer to the 26th June.

Another unsettled day in school where everything appears to be waiting for something else to happen. The days are clearly running out for the pupils and the atmosphere is almost unbearably fin de siècle and decadent – but without the sensual excess! Day staggers into day and the dissolution of the timetable conveys itself to the work ethic of the staff. The kids are 80% on holiday and the days remaining are an intolerable burden. We only have to make it to the 22nd of June and then the proximity of Sant Juan (a day noted for the Catalans to throw off their usual restraint and behave like the British) means that the summer has started in earnest and, to put it another way, I will shortly be out of work.

In spite of my best insinuations, suggestions and doe eyed inarticulate pleadings I will not be employed by the school for the two summer months and I will have a new contract in September. I do not think that I actually qualify for the governmental handouts which are common at this time of year as many (unscrupulous) firms and organizations take advantage of the social security system and sack their workers for July and August and then re-employ them in September!

I am not relying on the government for any help over the summer period but I am expecting my aval to be given back to me. This money is now the constant topic of conversation at home and our low expectations of The Owner have almost driven us into the arms of a Voodoo Witch Doctor to aid our cause!

Meanwhile I have to draw out another sum of money from the hole in the wall to attempt to get the cash amount for the deposit. Such things pass the time as school continues is slow imploding progress towards the end of the school term.

The Black Hole approaches.

I would have money!

Given the absurd opening hours of my appalling bank (BBVA) I can never actually get to it when it is open until the summer holidays. One problem of this customer-hostile attitude was solved when I had an unexpected holiday and was actually able to get to collect a replacement card at last, but other problems remain.

The most pressing one concerns how to get the deposit for the new flat to the estate agents. They do not have the facilities for the use of a card and everything has to be done with cash. God knows my opinion of estate agents is not high, but their insistence on cash brings all my deepest suspicions to the surface. I have also worked out that it is probably impossible for me to withdraw sufficient funds from the hole-in-the-wall because there is a weekly limit to the amount you can take out.

To those of you who think that the simple writing of a cheque would suffice I would merely point out that I am in Spain and not Britain.

In Spain cheques exist, but not in handy book form for mere customers to use. If you want a cheque you have to go to the bank (impossible given my working hours) and ask the manager to write a cheque which he will sign and then charge you for the experience! So far in Spain I have had one cheque written and the cost of it made me determine never to repeat it. This is a real problem and I think that it is something that the estate agent should work out and I think that I will say so!

We have had a very expensive quote from one group of movers, but I am hoping Toni’s telephoning today will bring the rougher end of the profession into play and the prices may well be more reasonable.

The living room of the flat is now looking like a storage facility and I am beginning to hate the aroma of mouldering cardboard. We are now down to our last boxes and Toni has assured me that he will pack the china today.

His plan is that we live for the next ten days using plastic plates and cutlery with all the decent stuff carefully packed in boxes. Plastic plates and cups I can take, but not plastic mugs for tea. There are limits. And I must have quality cutlery too. And this is rapidly sounding like the Betjeman poem about middle class pretention!

The expensive money from Britain should be in my Spanish bank account today so that means that El Corte Ingles. I know that you can get cheaper elsewhere but the reputation of the shop means that you also get peace of mind about quality and after sales service. Our experience with the ‘keen price’ Miró store does not encourage us to look only at the price tag before we buy!

The acres of time that we thought that we had are rapidly disappearing and I am getting more panicky with what needs to be done. Perhaps I am even enjoying the panic; perhaps I should try a little more reality!

We have now returned from Gava where we have bought the more obvious bits and pieces to tart up the flat in preparation for the handover.

A valuable suggestion from Ian was that we take photos of the flat before we hand it over and further that we get the Owner to sign that they represent the accurate appearance of the flat at the point of handover so that nothing can be done after we have left. Such precautions give you some idea of the lack of trust that we feel for the estate agents and the person who owns the flat!

The chamfering we have to do has to be done reasonably quickly because time is running out and terrifyingly major things have not been done.

This evening the packing of the ‘Office’ and the wearing of contact lenses so that the sweat doesn’t interfere with the work rate – always thinking of the most efficient way to get a horrible job done!

So I’ll get on with it!

The school in limbo

Today external examinations and lists flying around as if there was no tomorrow.

Pupils had to remember to bring their identity cards for this examination and, of course, a reasonably number of them have done no such thing. There are fall back positions today, but for the examination tomorrow (their written exam) they must have their cards or passports or I don’t know what will happen. This sort of reliance on identity cards is presumably what our so-called Labour government is looking forward to for us. I abominate the whole concept of an identity card: I should not have to prove who I am on a daily basis. Presumably the carrying of the card will become a legal necessity: in the USA it is the responsibility of the individual to have some form of identification at all times. Why, yet again are we slavishly following the discredited policies of the US?

Such musings are obviously the frustrated results of intellectual displacement activity. What I should be doing now is packing the china, or working out exactly how many Billy bookcases will fit in the new house, or getting the parking sorted out, or arranging the money for the deposit, or getting legal advice about what the Owner can insist on, or arranging the delivery of the electro-domestic white goods, or buying more boxes, or cleaning the flat, or buying paint or any one of a few hundred other activities which will be more productive in facilitating the change over and calming the incipient feelings of panic that I have left undone those things that I ought to have done.

My pressing need at the moment is for M&V (Muscle and Van) to assist with the sordid physical demands of the actual move. It has been suggested that I might like to lurk outside IKEA when I next go and accost the likely lads who themselves lurk outside flaunting their M&V credentials seeking who they might devour. The only thing I have to do is get a telephone number and Toni will do the rest. It is worth a try, especially as I have to call in to IKEA this afternoon to get more boxes.
I am sure that there are other things going on in the world, but I do not recognize their significance when compared to my move to the house. All pales into triviality when compared with The Move. I now understand why an entire book of the bible was given over to the inexplicable wanderings of disgruntled Egyptian workers each one looking for an eastern des res!

I am gaining what information I can about what the Owner is legally allowed to do in terms of keeping my money. We have virtually given up seeing any of the two month’s rent that we put in as a deposit but we are going to fight like hell to ensure that we get the aval back. The infernal simile is well chosen as we are going to resort (if necessary) to union subsidized legal help. Desperate ills require desperate remedies and the money from the aval is already ear marked for filling the new house with those little essentials which make life worth living. Like beds for example!

This should be a period of unalloyed delight for me with constant trawling through shop after shop with the fully justified mission of ‘buying stuff for the house.’ This is not the case because the supply of money to make such an enticing prospect reality is being withheld by the almost comic-book, evil, tight-fistedness of the Owner!

I am still waiting for my expensive money to arrive from the UK. When that money was earned it was 70p for each € and now I am too depressed to ask the people in First Direct to give me the exact exchange rate because I automatically work out how much I am loosing with every transaction.

That way lies madness.

I am now starting to read the short stories of Henry Lawson the ‘master Australian story teller.’

Time will tell.

Tome by tome

To say that all my books are packed would be to tempt fortune. A true bibliophile ensures that ‘fixes’ of his particular drug of choice are everywhere within his living space.

I have taken the books out of the loo; I have ensured that the books in the study are packed; I have remembered the large books in the hideous unit by the television; I have taken the books from the little drawer in the spare room (which I have only just remembered) and I await the other hordes that I inevitably will find.

Boxing the books has brought many volumes back to my attention which, through indolence, indifference and school work have languished in my tactile attention. Handling all of my books as I pack them has meant that, being merely human, I have had to settle down from time to time and take a furtive glance through the pages.

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs never fails to refresh my Atheist Anglican inspired anti-Popery as I read again of the multitudinous crimes against innocent Protestants by bloodthirsty Roman Catholics. It truly is a wonderful book of Tales of Torture to Bolster Bigots. My old and precious edition is replete with particularly gruesome engravings of the more revolting ways in which people were ‘taken off.’

I was also taken by a book which contained a series of short stories written by my good self each one of which was ‘inspired’ by a random couple of lines taken from Meic Stephens’ book of Welsh quotations. There is no pretention like Rees pretention! You will notice that I have said nothing about their quality: a nice ambiguity.

Tom Baker’s ‘children’s’ book had a quick glance of amused recognition and it was impossible to pack the Book of Sports’ Quotations without a quick look. Generally I have been quite good and packed rather than peeked. I am relaxed enough to think that in a few short weeks time I will have ALL my books around me. Some of these I have not seen for three years so I am looking forward a grand reunion!

There is also the idle speculation as to what else might be packed with the books that are in Bluspace.

Towards the end of the packing by Pickfords things became a little tense. As with my previous move, extra personnel from headquarters had been drafted into help with a packing that was running dangerously behind schedule. As was also the case on the previous occasion the Manager appeared and reorganized the packing directives, rejecting with contempt the ‘packing by shelf’ approach that had been adopted up to that point and telling them to pack anything that fitted into the boxes. So I expect to find many forgotten items that have been lurking quietly in their Bluspace prison.

It looks as though we are going to be sleeping on camp beds and sitting on dining chairs for some time into the future. The purchase of a sofa is so replete with problems that it might be safer to lounge like oriental despots on cushions than plump (!) for one particular piece of furniture.

El Corte Ingles was shut today so I could not visit and consider the Triple Purchase (on 12 months interest free credit) of fridge, dish washer and washing machine. When you add it all up and divide by 12 the reasonable nature of the monthly payment almost makes you add a few more small (but essential) items to the list. But I haven’t.

Time to pen a list of everything that needs to be done. It’s a pity that school intrudes upon the more urgent necessities of window shopping and planning how quickly to set out my books!

But it does.

Long Fridays are bad for the health

Friday 12th June 2009

Somehow the magic of teaching does not reach into the late, late afternoon when the class that you are taking has spent the day in front of their expensive laptops doing the Lord only knows what.

I have made one exploratory journey into the far recesses of the classroom but I am obviously not fast enough to catch the miscreants looking at thoroughly unsuitable websites. I can comfort myself with the thought that, if there was anything which should have been restricted from view then the school should have bought an expensive enough program to ensure that it was stopped. I truly think that this is one of those not-my-job type situations.

The day started with me in a thoroughly relaxed mode. My marking was done and all my results were safely lurking in the electronic innards of my wonderful little computer. My feelings of quiet calm were soon rudely shattered.

The Catalonia wide computer intranet was slow to the point of stasis. Any attempt to gain access was frustrated by the sheer plodding nothingness of anything happening. It reminded me of the bad old days when I had my trusty (ironic) Sinclair QL. Those were the days in which a page of A4 could take up to 45 seconds to save to the infamous ‘micro drives’ – if indeed it saved at all!

The programs on the QL were wonderful but the hardware which drove them was well below the expectations of the program writers and processes could take an inordinate time to complete.

I well remember typing my way through some sequence or other on the QL and realising at some point that I had made a fatal mistake and then had the pleasure of watching screen after screen inexorably change following my earlier instructions.

It was one of those times when you speak to inanimate objects. “Please!” I pleaded to the ever changing screen, “Don’t do this!” But, like so many inanimate objects in my experience it seemed to have little fellow feeling when it came to human needs.

The intranet today was not attuned to professional requests so what should have been a fairly simple mechanical process turned into something akin to nightmare.

Needless to say, in the way that these things happen, everything was sorted out but with maximum wear and tear to my nerves!

And I lost a free period. And to make it worse, a free period at the time when I am usually allowed home early as ‘payment’ for my starting early two days a week. I soon discovered that this early departure was a privilege and not (emphatically not) a right.

Friday 12th June continued

Talking of my permanent contract (what else would have kept me quiescent when faced with such clear injustice) I have, at last, picked up an important communication from the ministry of education in Madrid.

After working in no fewer than three schools in the Barcelona area in what can only be described as a professional capacity, I have now received the official certificate from the ministry which allows me to work as a teacher in schools in Spain! If you think that the tenses in the preceding paragraph do not make logical sense, then I can only say that you have not worked in Spain!

People have been amazed that the process of rubber stamping my full documentation of qualifications etc. has only taken four months. One person in the school has been waiting for two years for the official notification to be given: she had a letter after six months telling her that things were ‘not in order’ and she has heard nothing since.

Saturday 13th June 2009
Disaster!

IKEA has run out of the handy sized cardboard boxes and will not have a new stock for another two weeks.

This means that the neat wall of identical boxes which I have been assiduously building in the middle of the living room will now have its symmetry broken by strange shapes. I have been driven to go back to Bluspace (the prison of my books) and get some of their highly expensive boxes to pack the larger books. I am afraid that I will have to go further down market and go begging in our supermarkets – there is still all the china to pack!

It is likely that the new contract for the new ‘house’ will be signed on Friday the 26th of June and we will not have to be out of our present flat until the 30th so that gives us a reasonable time to transfer the ‘stuff.’ But there is so much of it that I am inclined to hire in muscle and a van. I only hope that the small ads or the Catalan equivalent will turn up trumps.

Today is Toni’s name day which has been celebrated in Terrassa at a rather good fish restaurant. Its USP is a rather fetching rubbish bin in the centre of the table. Actually it is stainless steel and countersunk, and is a totally sensible solution for what to do with all the shells and exo-skeletons from the various creatures that we consumed. They also have personal beer pumps – but not on our table!

The two youngest members of our group aged one and three respectively were frightening throughout, especially the one year old whose look of total knowledge thoroughly unsettles me. He also seems fixated on me and totters towards me with what I can only describe as a maniacal gleam in his eye. I am punctiliously polite to him at all times: my eye is towards the future – he is after all only going to get more knowing!

Meanwhile there is more time to ponder on the sheer mechanics of getting from one flat to another dwelling. We are still thinking that the 13th of the month is nowhere near the 26th of the month and so we have plenty of time to get everything organized. I know that this is false and in real terms we have only one more clear weekend before things have to start happening.

I think that I will set aside a small part of tomorrow to a planning session to try and work out a realistic timetable towards the move.

It’s better than packing anyway!

Ends and ends

Horror of horrors! I appear to have left my power lead for my small computer in school. In my defence I have to say that the day has been filled with hectic marking to fit into the timetable of deadlines which have to be met.

When I mentioned that the hysteria seems to have been fairly artificially manufactured by arbitrary dates for examinations placed unnaturally near to deadlines my head of department said, “Welcome to Spanish marking!” And that seemed to end the discussion!

In the way of these things, all of my finished marks are on the small computer which now has less than 13% of its power supply left in the battery. My attempts to use a selection of leads that I have acquired over the years to act as a substitute have been in vain. This may be unsurprising in a normal household, but in mine with a jealously horded selection of leads stretching back into the early history of the popular computer, it would be reasonable to assume that at least one of the bloody things would fit.

Reasonable, but wrong.

Not only do I have all the leads salvaged from myriads of electrical items which have succumbed to planned obsolescence and gone to the great silent pits of the city landfill, but I also have a selection of multi-headed gadgets which I bought believing the advertising claims that they would eliminate the need for individual power units.

These claims were of course lies so that I now have these mouldering among the serpentine mass of leads which look too useful to throw away.

Essentially, I will have to pray that I have left the lead on a staff room table and I will be able to pick it up first thing tomorrow morning and get my electrical supplies directed to my hungry gadget.

Meanwhile I have returned to my laptop and the luxury of an almost normal keyboard and the expansiveness of full sized keys.

I stayed in school until six o’clock this evening because I had all my final marking spread about me and I knew that if I moved from where I was sitting the impulse to finish would disappear with every step towards the car.

My sense of martyrdom was increased by the high powered discussion in Catalan which was conducted within painful earshot of my solitary marking purdah. I think that the suppressed desire to scream “Shut up and go you harridans!” actually gave an adrenaline boost to my marking which became ever more hysterical as the discussion pushed the volume ever higher.

The sheer bliss of their departure made the continuation of the marking almost appear to be a pleasure. The pitying glances of the cleaning ladies added to my sense of heroic martyrdom and allowed the final pages to be marked with an almost saintly detachment!

Tomorrow the final arrangements which mark the termination of the examination season will be enacted and next week we should have a rather more sane five days.

The pupils go around the 23rd of June and, if the marking had allowed me to have any other coherent thoughts, I might have speculated about what is going to fill up the time until the kids leave.

Some time ago I drafted out a series of ideas based on a school decided theme which was supposed to fill up some of the dead time at the end of the exams. This has been used today and was (as far as I was aware) supposed to fill in the academic action for the next week. I think that tomorrow I might well discover that the ‘ideas’ are exhausted and the ‘little pitchers’ of the pupils will be gaping waiting to be filled up!

As I type, boxes are waiting to be filled. One and a half bookcases have been emptied: three and a half others are waiting to have their contents packed.

There is always something!

Days pass.

Not only have I packed 17 boxes full of my books but also I have done all the marking to which I have access. Virtue can go no further!

The intensity of the marking fury that has taken over the school is now almost comical as teachers frantically evaluate against an inexorable timetable which demands that papers are marked over a very short period of time.

I have now marked the papers of four out of my five classes and the last set is waiting for me in the staff room of building one.

As time has gone on I have become much more Draconian in my demands for Real English and my exuberant red crosses march across many sanguine sheets of attempts to maul the majesty of the English Language.

If anyone is going to commit a linguistic crime against the language of Shakespeare, Milton and A A Milne then it is most definitely going to be me rather than some foreign neophyte. At least my infelicities are committed with malice of forethought and not because phrasal verbs are incomprehensible obstacles to communication!

On the packing front, more perfectly sized IKEA boxes have been purchased (at vast expense) and the filled ones are now forming a familiar island of lightish brown in the centre of the room. Even with my cruelly depleted selection of books in the flat, it is probably going to take some sixty boxes to contain the fragments of a proper library that I have had to sulk over during the past two years.

I suppose that my bubbling enthusiasm to see my books again sounds precious and affected but only to those who are not touched by the bibliophilic addiction that has gripped me for as long as I can remember.

The physical proximity of my books is important as are the different characters that the individual volumes possess. The feel of a book; the way it sits in your hand; the texture of the paper; the sounds, the susurration of the pages; the smell of mustiness, of newness – a books is a sensual object, a physical presence, something which is graspable yet intangible at the same time.

I have never managed to get over the sheer value of most of my books. What they offer is often ludicrously out of proportion to the paltry sums that I have paid for them. I remember a series of Wordsworth Classics which offered Classic texts in paperback for one pound. ‘Wuthering Heights’ or ‘Emma’ or ‘Great Expectations’ or ‘Lord Jim’ or ‘The Just So Stories’ or ‘The Warden’ for a quid! You couldn’t get a packet of crisps on a Ryanair flight for that!

When Ruskin said that “If a book is worth reading it is worth buying” he meant that every book that is worthy of being read should become a familiar possession. A book which is not merely a text, but is a familiar companion; something you know your way around and which (as it is yours) you can be free to annotate and use as a ‘partner’ in debate. I rarely annotate as I still maintain a stuffy reverence for the printed word which sees my scrawl on a pristine page as little less than sacrilege rather than a continuing dialogue with the author!

I am even looking forward to the torture of constructing a whole phalanx of ‘Billy’ bookcases to house the freed captives from the prison of Bluspace.

The time is rapidly approaching when the Bluspace Thousands will at last come home!

Roll on!

To do the impossible . . .

Utilizing all available windows of opportunity afforded by the chaotic timetable of the examination ravaged institution in which I work, a reasonable amount of marking was completed today.

It is all mounting up and I do not see how it is all going to be completed by the school imposed deadline when all the results have to be fed into the computer. In the deathless words of one colleague, “No matter how unreal it all looks, it will be done because it has to be done and there is no alternative to it not being done.” I bow to the inevitability of such cogently expressed logic and feel strangely calm.

To those of you who aver that I could be marking now rather than typing, I merely adduce the experience of teaching and state that to do something unpalatable you have to prepare by doing something you want to do. Or you could merely look on this as some form of displacement activity – which I would maintain is what I was saying in the first place!

At its best all that can be heard in the staff rooms is the swish of stapled pages being turned over and the scratch of pens on margins. I said “at its best” because that is not what usually happens.

There are distinct differences between the staff room in Building 1 and that in Building 4. Building 1 is the original starting point of the school: the elegant town house on the hill built in the traditional form of a masia. Along the first floor side of the building with the spectacular view of Barcelona are located the Directora’s room; the ‘library’ and the staff room. The ‘library’ was, presumably, at one time the dining room with the two other rooms created by folding glass doors. These doors are still there, but are now regarded as permanent fixtures rather than temporary.

Building 1’s staff room has elegant wood panelling and some remarkable floor-to-ceiling glass fronted cupboards. The usual debris of teaching drags the room down to the mundane but if you look you can still see the faded glory that was once the basis for the house.

The atmosphere here is restrained and with the access to the balcony, civilized.

By contrast the harsh modernity of the staff room in Building 4 seems to encourage a more aggressive tension where the only wood is found in the commodious chipboard lockers that are provided for staff. Here the phone never ceases to ring and pupils to knock on the door. The photocopier is in another room and the provision of computers is laughably inadequate. But it’s the talking that is most difficult to cope with.

When I am confronted with marking then my attention span makes Homer Simpson look like Simon Stylites. I have never been noted for my inability to participate in a conversation but it is the Spanish version of conversation that defeats and depresses me.

Although it is a shameful generalization bordering on the racist I have to say that Spanish people do not listen. As they do not listen it therefore follows that they do not need to pause when someone else is talking. You therefore get all participants in a Spanish conversation talking at the same time. When you are in an enclosed modern space, bounded by glass metal and reflective surfaces, such a cacophony is almost unbearable. Add to this the need that Spanish people find to yell down telephones and a sort of audio hell is created in the very place where you need some silence to foster concentration.

One wouldn’t mind if the simultaneous conversations cut the talking time in half, but this, surprisingly does not occur! It is only the fact that my precious permanent contract is tantalizingly out of reach in the distant month of September that stays my mouth and hands from suggesting that interchange rather than overlay is the most expeditious way to facilitate communication!

I am sure that every day is going to provide some ‘New House Related Thought For The Day.’

Today’s thought concerns access to the house. The house has a large front gate covered with that sort of rough twig-like carpet which is used to restrict the hoi-polloi from gazing into the houses of those who dwell near the sea. The gate opens to reveal a driveway large enough to park a couple of cars.

Herein lies the problem. In Spain the mere fact that you have a gate and a driveway large enough to park a couple of cars does not mean that your average Spanish seaside visitor will not park across the entry to your property denying you access. This is quite legal if totally selfish. If you live within spitting distance of the beach then every (and I mean every) reasonable (and unreasonable) inch of pavement, road and gateway will be used.

The only way to ensure that you have access is to apply to the local government and have an official sigh erected on your gateway which ensures that no one will park there. This is not a service provided for nothing; it is something that will cost you. As a mere renter of the property I cannot get this sign, it has to be done by the proprietor. Another hurdle to be surmounted. I have at least found out what it should cost. One goes on from here.

I can no longer delay the categorical imperative: I have to mark.

Pray for me!

Tradition has a reason!

I can relax: I marked one question in one examination paper before I went to bed last night (Friday.) In the strange job-related psychology which operates in my mind this means that I will get a substantial part of the marking done. Said marking is now strewn along the sofa with the top of the red pen pointing ominously in my direction.

Many, many times have I fripped away a Friday evening in an orgy of self indulgence (drinking cups of tea and reading) and failed to complete the statutory single piece of marking that tradition demands and have therefore condemned myself to the ecstasy of a work-free weekend, but with the consequent penalty of the ‘Sunday Afternoon Agony.’

This is the period in the weekend when a frivolous teacher realizes that he has not completed work which has to be done by Monday morning. The realization that the work has to be done does not necessarily mean that the frivolous teacher will sigh a deep sigh and get on with it. Oh no! What it means is that the frivolous teacher will wallow in misery as he contemplates the omission and sinks ever deeper into depression as he does nothing about it and finally goes to bed with things undone which ought to be done.

At this point psychology stops and physiology takes over. At least in my case it does. When I go to bed, I go to sleep. I can have the weight of the world on my shoulders but when my head hits the pillow it becomes the sole possession of my mate Morpheus. I can wake up and the weight resumes its crushing position in an instant, but while asleep that is exactly what I do.

The Friday night token marking has become as much a ritual feature of my professional life as Nadal adjusting his underpants between shots just before he bounces his balls. And what a cheap comparison that was!

The marking of these ‘end of year’ scripts is but the first stage in the Byzantine process of obtaining a final mark and I foresee much discussion before the grade is placed in the computer. As the kids will have obtained these marks by cheating and mindless rote learning I fail to see the point in giving the marks extra credibility by discussing them as if they were anything more than crude indications of the pupils’ ‘educational’ worth.

Some of my colleagues have impassioned discussions about the awarding of a quarter of a mark. I usually sit and adopt an unnaturally quiescent attitude in these debates because, after long and deathly experience I know that this is a topic about which everyone has a point of view. A point of view, moreover, that they are eager to share. Because I consider the whole process of the way we test these kids to be fatally flawed I truly don’t care what the decision is. All I want is a decision (any decision) and I’ll mark to it. Such cynicism comes cheap: just look at my wages slip!

The sea is unusually rough today (for the Mediterranean that is) and I am typing this to the accompaniment of crashing waves.

It is one of my continuing photographic projects to get a decent photograph of our waves – or at least using Photoshop to fabricate one. With the rather domestic rollers that we get it is not easy, but if the waves continue to the end of my second mug of tea I might trudge down to the water’s edge and try again. Sometimes enlarging a tiny detail of our ‘mighty’ two foot waves makes it look as though I have been on holiday in Hawaii.

I live in hope!

Sunday 7th June 2009

The first boxes have been packed. The first steps on this particular Via Dolorosa have been taken!

I cannot recall any move I have made with pleasure: the process that is. The end result I have often enjoyed. With the possible exception of one particular move from Neuadd Lewis Jones back home to Hatherleigh Road.

Even though I had a single small room in my university hall of residence I managed to pack so much into it that the bottom lockable drawer of the in-built wardrobe which we allowed as vacation storage for some of the stuff was wholly inadequate and we had to move most of our belongings for each holiday.

I, unlike my friends (with the possible exception of Robert) prevaricated endlessly until the very last moment to pack. Packing always depressed me and it was only an adrenaline fuelled deadline and to the accompaniment of the insanely jolly music of Gluck and Grétry that my packing was ever finished.

On the eve of one departure we had all celebrated with more than usual enthusiasm and I had probably OD’d on my tipple of choice at the time – small sweet sherries – and in the morning I was very much the worse for wear and thoroughly disinclined to find solace in the mundane putting of one thing on top of another in a compact space. I was much more inclined (or rather reclined) to lie on my bed and contemplate the true wretchedness of the cruel world.

In this supine position I was visited, like a latter day Job, by a series of Stephen’s comforters, friends who bewailed my condition and prophesied calamity. Thinking about it, I was probably more like Samson, eyeless in Swansea on my bed with pains, being visited by waves of people designed to test my faith. Needless to say I failed all these tests, but nevertheless maintained what I thought was a sort of simple dignity in adversity by lying motionless with my eyes closed and only emitting small groans.

Eventually I was visited by Colin who tut-tutted about my condition, informed me in ringing tones that my father would soon be arriving to take me home and then, wonder of wonder, started to pack for me!

Through almost closed eyes I watched this paragon of friendship go about my packing with the methodical rigor that characterised his approach to life.

About half way through this heaven sent aid I realised that I was feeling much better, but I kept most mousey quiet in case Colin disappeared back into the world of fantasy!

I did not open my eyes fully and Colin completed my packing and, with a last harrumph of contempt at my sherry ravaged form vanished.

Unfortunately no matter how many small sweet sherries (ugh!) I might drink and no matter how still I might lie no Colin is going to fly in from New Zealand to help. One could see his moving to the antipodes as a direct response to the fear of a repetition of that experience!

Just how we are actually going to move all our stuff is something which we have only tentatively approached with vague gestures of casual thought probing possibilities – and wonder just whose cars we can press into use!

The boxes we used for our first pack were collected by me from IKEA. IKEA on a Saturday in Catalonia is not the place to which a reluctant shopper should be taken. So Toni stayed resolutely at home. Left to my own devices I looked at beds, tables and my beloved ‘Billy’ bookcases which are going to form a substantial part of a purchase in the near future to house my books which are soon to be released from their prison in Bluspace and at long last be on display again.

Although IKEA has many positive aspects you only have to ask any passing shopper and they will be eager to share their own horror stories about the store.

It rapidly becomes clear that they are many ‘worst points’ to the IKEA shopping experience. I know, from thankfully second hand experience, the true horror that attends the opening of an IKEA store. This is when hordes of design starved, money strapped people pour into the area and cause utter chaos in all aspects of the human and communication worlds.

Inside the store (given the serpentine progress that the true devotee is supposed to make in their pilgrimage through the shop) you are constantly impeded by gay couples blocking the aisles discussing the shape of a tea spoon or married couples with various degrees of child impedimenta avidly examining inexplicable pieces of plastic which obviously have their place in the domestic environment.

For me the worst, worst bit of the IKEA experience is knowing what you want and knowing where you need to go to get what you want. As soon as your progress becomes anything more than a sort of quiescent shuffle with eyes wide with wonder at the reasonably priced goodies on offer then the ‘Truman Show Effect’ comes into operation.

As you step purposefully forward towards your objective, at once and from all sides people and pushchairs appear and block your path. Any attempt to bypass the human obstacles will be countered by couples examining huge photographic pictures or long and complicated pieces of flatpack impeding any attempt to gain your destination.

You need the calm of a Buddhist sage on the verge of Nirvana to survive the frustration of the feeling that you are the only one on a specific mission in the Swedish stasis that affects the vast majority of shoppers in the store.

My more prosaic purchase this time was 20 cardboard boxes, beautifully designed which, from a flat template were quickly constructed into handy sized containers with an integral lid. I know that I should be getting boxes from local shops and supermarkets, but the IKEA offerings are so exquisitely designed that it would seem to be penny pinching vulgarity to allow them to languish in the store!

Tomorrow will see me purchasing 40 more IKEA boxes so that the great packing of the books in the flat can commence.

The news, being flashed to me via my internet radio, is grim. For the first time in the last 100 years or so, it is being predicted that the Conservatives are likely to take the popular vote in Wales. That is the sort of information that turns my stomach and makes me feel furious about the bone deep cowardice of MPs who are the sole culprits for the danger that they have brought to the whole system of parliamentary government of my country. If they had reformed the totally corrupt system of expenses (which they created, sustained, defended) and given themselves the salary that they needed to fulfil their jobs then this disgusting situation might not have occurred.

God rot them!

Variety makes the day

Just when you think that you have met the apogee of nastiness is when you find out that there is a further depth that you did not suspect. Like when you find out that Attila the Hun as well as etc etc also read Jeffrey Archer novels and thought they were great literature.

In much the same way the worst bank in the world I (aka BBVA) has refused to pay my rent because the regular payments were a day late because of a bank holiday. There is, of course enough money in my account to make the payment but the automated idiocy of the bank takes no account of any deviation from the norm.

It will be a positive pleasure to leave them. Which I trust will be soon – just as soon as they give me back my aval!

Rather than relieve me in an exam supervision, a teacher of French threw herself to the floor and had to be taken to hospital. The end result of which was that I was trapped in a history exam for two hours. Well, better than teaching!

As this was early leave I was able to visit the branch of El Corte Ingles which is fairly near the school and on my way home.

It is an extraordinary store built on the same lines as the Guggenheim in New York – though without the spiral. The circular floors of the store rise up three stories but leave a vast circular space in the middle. It does mean that you can see the contents of the entire store from any point on the circumference of the floor area. Also like the Guggenheim it presents the same frustration when you realize that your final destination is a vast circular distance away from your present location.

The service there was a delight. A be-suited gentleman who spoke English was found to assist me in any purchases that I might make and a further be-suited gentleman guided me around the best value selection of reputable name white goods that the store could present.

It was altogether a delightful experience and I had to restrain myself with some mental force from instantly agreeing to buy anything which was put before my gadget hungry eyes.

I have emerged with a list of their best offers which will have to be compared with the best that the internet can offer.

And then there is marking. Which has to be done – and I haven’t completed my single symbolic script to ensure that I get something done during the weekend.

I defy augury!

Possibly.

Changing times

In spite of the fact that I had the opportunity to have a lie in today but the built in alarm clock would not allow such indulgence and I got up at the normal time and got to school early – as usual.

What met me there was an air of controlled panic as the examination days proper began. The kids were wandering around with papers and books and looking vaguely worried as if the show of concern would compensate for the lack of real effort that they had made in their revision. The ethos of the school is work dominated so to wander around with text books studying is nothing out of the ordinary and is accepted by all.

As cheating is also an integral part of the ethos we have had to take certain precautions to try and check the natural propensity of the Catalans to re-jig the odds in their favour. We have produced the same examination paper but with the questions in a different order and on different pages so that there is an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ paper which has been distributed so that adjacent rows had a different paper.

For the whole of the examination I wandered up and down the classroom with a ‘meaningful’ expression redolent of suppressed suspicion playing around my usually jocose features. The end result, unless I have overlooked a form of cheating which is so sophisticated that it passed me by, is that I have invigilated the first totally honest examination in the history of the school! But perhaps I exaggerate.

The marking has now piled up and there is an inexorable timetable which demands that all of it is finished by the middle of next week because the results are an essential component in the complex mathematics which produces the final ‘mark out of ten’ which will be the magic figure placed on the computer record and will be summation of the effort made throughout the year.

On the ‘Home’ (with a capital ‘H’) front, I have now had some advice from a lecturer in the university about what to do when the owner turns nasty over the return of my (MY!) money in the iniquitous aval bancario and his refusal to hand back the further two months deposit that was given to him at the start of our renting of the flat.

The wife of the lecturer, who is one of my colleagues, also gave me the valuable information that my favourite shop is offering a credit card which will give twelve months interest free repayments. El Corte Ingles is not the shop of first resort when buying basic household equipment but it is unequalled in its delivery and after sales service and has an M&S approach to returns. It is the sort of place from which you would buy if someone else was paying.

But, to my ever accepting ears my colleague told me that the difference in price was minimal and the advantages enormous. It is certainly worth looking into and will fit in nicely with my proposed visit to the concert on Friday. This is the concert of the three line whip to listen to a friend of Hadyn’s in the performance of Carmina Burana.

To get the tickets I will have to brave one of the holes in the wall as they are linked into the ticket system of the hall and I will be able to choose price and seat. In theory! I will perhaps leave such technical niceties to the weekend when it will make a useful break to the orgy of marking which will have to take place!

Meanwhile the royal hunt of the cardboard boxes will have to start otherwise we will find out just how soon the end of the month can jump out at you!

This weekend will have to see the start of the packing otherwise we are going to be panicking later in the month. Perhaps nothing on earth can stop the panic which, surely, is an integral part of the moving experience – otherwise why would it be ranked with bereavement and childbirth as one of the most traumatic experiences of life?

Twenty two days to go and counting!

Consider the house for a moment

A long day today with the loss of a free period and therefore having to stay with the same class for two hours, the last hour of which was the last hour of the day. O Joy!

Our school day is extra long so that you have at least one free period every day. This is, of course, a sly redefinition of ‘free’: if you make the normal day extra long then of course you can appear to be generous with the free periods. I am not fooled by such obvious subterfuge but, as I still need to have a permanent contract I say nothing. Well, little. Well, little for me anyway.

I am having serious doubts about the whole nature of ‘education’ in the school. The courses that we teach as so test and text book led that application of knowledge in any meaningful way is limited to put it mildly. However, even for the distressingly small amount of money that this rich, rich school pays, it appears that I can be bought.

To be fair to the school they sort of look to me to provide a slightly different approach and be more literature based. But any deviation from the Sacred Texts of the deadly dull course books that we have is greeted with little less than panic by the kids. They talk to each other and any deviation from the path of text and test is grasped and used as an accusation. Any individual teacher led innovation which might lead to a perceived advantage for any class is used as the basis for an extended moan.

It is at this point that the excellent and level headed Head of English is invaluable. With her extensive experience she knows just how fleeting is the attention span of perceived injustice on the part of the students. There is, as she often points out, always something new to capture their attention! I truly think that her sensible approach is going to be the way that I survive in the place!

The fact that we had asparagus for lunch today in school should not be enough to dull my belief that I am not really ‘teaching’ in the way that I understand the word. I suppose that this high sounding qualification is somewhat lessened by the fact that I take the money at the end of the month – and will continue to do so, in spite of the horror that sometimes strikes me when I look at the grammar that I am supposed to be explaining to students who, I am sure, care and understand the concepts involved with much more sincerity and passion than I do!

Tomorrow the examinations in school begin in earnest and the deluge of marking starts. To counterbalance this horror there is the ever present delight of window shopping for the necessities of the empty house which is getting daily closer!

Never let it be said that I am not in touch with the important things of life!

And just how many exclamation marks have I used in this writing!

All change!

Never let it be said that I don’t try and find something interesting to start off a new month. Well, for me anyway.

We’re moving.

The deed has been done and a deposit has been put down as the start of paying out vast sums of money to get a new home.

We will be staying in Castelldefels, but moving further up the coast and be living almost in a line drawn from the bottom of the Olympic Canal to the sea. We will be on the second line from the sea but will still have a view from the top storey of the house.

For it is a house. With upstairs and everything. Even what could be a garden? In time.

The real horror now starts in packing everything up without the help of Pickfords. And we have no boxes. On the other hand we are only a short drive away from our new place.

Our struggle will be to get back all the money which is controlled by the owner and his appalling estate agents. We anticipate many occasions for outraged innocence to voice its disgust at the way that money works!

Meanwhile my one day holiday is over and reality in the form of school tomorrow looms.

Tomorrow is for measuring the rooms and (from my point of view) seeing how many bookcases can be fitted in.

I am not entirely sure that Toni’s view is exactly the same as mine!

Gather your belongings!

Up bright and early to find a new place to live.

Having decided that our Owner is little better than the Attila the Hun of flat management we are now determined to leave our present domicile and find something new.

My foray into the offices of the low life who masquerade as what is laughingly called estate agents resulted in the usual fairly dismissive attitude they adopt to anyone desperate enough to have to use their services. My Spanish which can rise to specific occasions in a fairly hysterical way browbeat the indifference of the people on the other side of the desk and they actually gave me some useful information!

While I was in yet another chair opposite yet another vaguely informative person who couldn’t use the printer I was phoned on my mobile by the second place I had gone into.

I must pause here.

You probably do not understand just how remarkable that is. This is Castelldefels where estate agents are definitely doing you a favour if they don’t actually throw you out of their shop for having the audacity to ask them to do something. When any Castelldefels estate agent says, “I will phone you later,” they could just have well have said, “I will raise a statue in pure gold of you, set in diamonds with platinum detailing with the London Symphony Orchestra playing your favourite bits of Philip Glass” for all the reality behind their statement.

It was therefore with something approaching terminal astonishment that I had a phone call from an estate agent within minutes of leaving the office offering me a viewing of a property in which I expressed an interest within a further twenty minutes!

And, by god, they (or rather she) were there!

We were quite taken with the place that we were shown. It was described as a ‘house’, but it would be fairer to describe it as a three storey raised terraced. It might be able to take my books and there was a little sun trap on the third floor. Seem perfect. All we need now is the money to facilitate the changeover.

Oh yes, and we have to get our money back from the owner and find out just how long notice we have to give to get out of the flat we are now in.

Never a dull moment – and for the first time for about two months it was sunny on the first day of the weekend.

Things are looking up!

Then the family arrived and we are now terminally exhausted!

We need to go to bed early because there is a lot to do tomorrow!

I did it with my little hatchet!

As the relentless exposé of The Daily Telegraph continues it is time for me to ‘come clean’ before the evidence is placed before the howling mob of the General Public.

I have to admit that in my professional past I did submit an expenses claim to the Welsh Joint Education Committee for some pieces of string. Of course, in the light of the recent publicity I apologize unreservedly and ask for consideration and forgiveness.

The fact that the string was used to tie up wrapped (oh, I claimed for the brown paper too!) marked examination papers which were then sent to the WJEC should in no way mitigate the disgraceful nature of my claim. So too the risible amount of money that I was paid for each script marked by me should have no bearing on the case. I done wrong! It’s a fair cop!

With my new internet radio I have been able to indulge in an orgy of Radio 4 listening and so have surfeited on MP’s expense claim horror stories. I am constantly reminded of the “7/84” Theatre Company which used to tour schools and art venues. The title came from the ‘fact’ that in Britain 7% of the population owned 84% of the wealth – leaving (just do the maths) 93% of us to enjoy the 16% of the rest of the wealth of the country!

The ‘moat cleaning’ and the ‘floating duck house’ sound like something from Wodehouse and remind us that the rich ruling classes have never really left the seats of government whatever we tell ourselves about living in a democratic meritocracy.

From the serene seclusion of my balcony it does actually look as though the whole parliamentary system is rapidly imploding. A commentator on Radio 4 expressed my fears in a rather neat progression which I can’t remember in exact detail but went something like, “The expenses scandal affects perception; perception affects voting; voting affects the parties; the parties affect life – so the expenses furore changes our life.”

I think that this whole affair has been produced by the cowardice of members of Parliament. It has been pointed out many times in the past that the salary of an MP is low for a legislator in a developed country. Instead of grasping the nettle and making the salary reasonable MPs have fudged the issue by boosting the expenses side (which up until these present days was hidden salary) at the cost of transparency in the major monthly payment.

I feel no sympathy for them; they are, after all, the architects of their own destruction. And perhaps that is what is needed – a wholesale winnowing of the present members of the House and, with new rules, a new start.

Cameron’s rather desperate appeal to anyone, even those outside the political fraternity to offer themselves for consideration as future parliamentary candidates comes with many dangers. Most governments who have appointed ministers from outside the usual parliamentary pool have found that such people rapidly become liabilities as they show themselves insensitive to the workings of the governmental system.

Perhaps we should have faith in the black flag of Anarchy and believe in the constructive aspects of that philosophy and hope that out of chaos a New Order will emerge: though history tells us that the “New Order” is usually heavily in quotation marks and totalitarian rather than humanitarian in flavour!

I remain optimistic (probably because the sun is shining) and will watch future developments with wary interest.

Roll on the European elections and god help us all!

There comes a point in every non-football-interested thinking person where you have simply had enough Barça!

That point has been reached by me. I have seen the two goals which won Barça the third of their cups this season played back from all directions and at all times of the day. I have watched part of the five hours of triumphal progress that the Barça team took in the open topped coach from the bottom of the Ramblas to Camp Nou. I have listened to the drunken statements that many in the team made to an adoring and full stadium. And enough is enough. I have been kept awake by the exuberant tooting of passing cars at all times of the night and by the explosion of fireworks. And enough is enough.

In my time in Catalonia I have talked more about football than I have ever done in the whole of the rest of my life. I have so far become infected with the football compu7lsion that I recognize members of the Barça team when they come out to play. I have opinions about the suitability of players. I make statements about the effect that Barça (mes que un club) has had on recent signings. I didn’t have a moment’s fellow feeling for Manchester United as a British club deserving my support. I am far gone.

But enough, already. From the response in Catalonia you would think that they had discovered a new source of free energy. Thank god the football season is limping to its end!

Meanwhile back to good, old fashioned fury.

The bloated plutocrat who owns our flat (as well as a much bigger one on the floor above us) decided (after a few days thought) not to give me back my aval.

The aval is six months’ rent (my money) put into a closed account (of my money) in the Worst Bank in the World (aka BBVA) which was a requirement of the BP (i.e. the Bloated Plutocrat) before we could rent the flat. This was stated to be necessary because I did not have a job and I wasn’t retired and on a pension.

Now that I have a permanent contract the owner has still refused to give me back my money. I have yet to find out what spurious reason he has given, but I doubt that it is going to be convincing enough to keep us paying the bastard money – so we will be looking for another flat.

Even here in Castelldefels there is some effect from the crisis which means that flats are available and at what appears to be lower prices. We will have to see what is available and try and fine somewhere with enough room to take my books!

Every setback is also an opportunity.

Apparently.

What game?

The tension in Catalonia is almost palpable. I don’t know how many people are actually playing in the game this evening in Rome, but from the way that people are ac ting you would think that half the population were about the don the two coloured jersey and put their sporting reputations on the line.

I have been tricked into giving a prediction for the end result (1-1 and Barça win 5-4 on penalties) which I thought was merely a gesture, but which turns out to involve money. This is one of the things that you learn to avoid in the future, but you have to pay the price for in the present!

The kids are all hyper of course and I sincerely dread to think what they are going to be like win or lose tomorrow. Teaching is going to be a nightmare – and I’ve lost a free period when I will be covering the class of a science colleague teaching the dangers of alcohol abuse (sic.)

I still haven’t written the exam papers that I should have and I don’t think that there is much change of my doing it this evening.

I returned to the flat to find the area around the television bedecked with Barça flags and memorabilia and a Barça shirt lying over a chair. The Moreneta (the Madonna from Montserrat) has been given a good shake and pressed into service to bring whatever luck she can placed next to a Barça hat while the musical box which contained a Barça box has been opened so it can play its tinny version of the Barça anthem. I think that we have nailed our support colours to the mast. Sorry Manchester!

Even I am getting tense as we wait for the game to start! As is usual here the game has taken on a significance far in excess of the sporting meaning that would have been evident if Real Madrid had been the representative of Spain.

Barça is a club (or more than a club if you read their world famous motto) that prides itself that it is owned by its members. Its sporting tentacles reach into a vast number of sports and its place in the hearts of Catalans is secure. It will be interesting to see how many (if any) ‘Catalonia is not Spain’ banners are in evidence this evening.

The teams have just been announced and Barça has positioned itself to play its usual attacking game while Manchester seems to be relying on The Arrogant One as its sole striker with players like Rooney playing in semi-defence. Fergusson said that he learned a lot from the last defeat that he suffered from the hands of Barça and that probably means that he is going for defence. Personally I think that Manchester’s apparent tactics seem quite sensible to me and they could steal the match by relying on Barça’s notoriously wayward defence to allow them to sneak a goal.

But, there again, what the hell do I know about football? Reading through the preceding I can find no authentic trace of my voice in these concerns!

I better go out and buy a flag!

Is anything else going on?

The frenzy of The Game continues to increase. On Catalan television there is virtually non-stop coverage of the game which is not happening until tomorrow.

Various pupils in our school are going to Rome to watch the game (it is, after all, that sort of school) where the flights and tickets have been provided by relatives who own major enterprises in Catalonia.

It is hard not to feel a certain resentment about the monied ease which informs many of the pupils we have the privilege to teach. And yes, that was ironic.

In desperation, to try and get away from the relentless coverage I have delved deep into the murky depths of the internet radio and have, purely in self defence, listened to Radio 4, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 7 and The World Service. As the radio is a Roberts it is ridiculously easy to use and makes my other internet radio (you didn’t seriously think that this recent acquisition was my first did you?) looking like something from the late Middle Ages.

An internet radio offers you the world in sound – though you soon discover that it is strangely samey until you get to the good old BBC. Thousands of stations and so few worth listening to!

Talking of something ‘worth’ listening to I have now completed working my way through the 5 CDs of the ‘Anthology of English Folk’ which I bought in Andorra. I have been listening to the disks as I have been going to work and on the way to and back from the opera.

The disks mark an amazing journey from reasonably authentic sounding songs through a woeful degeneration through time to songs of such surpassing self indulgent pretentiousness that almost defied belief. One singer (who I hope was on strong drugs, because I wouldn’t like to think of a chemically undamaged mind producing what I was listening to) appeared to be making up the lyrics (and indeed the tune) as he went along. I would actually offer you a quotation from one of the songs but I refuse to listen to such rubbish again.

It seemed very unfair as I had just come out of a very disappointing production of ‘Fidelio’ and I could have done with something a little more uplifting.

The programme for the new opera season has arrived and the attempt to understand the various options has begun. As is the case with all opera houses the attempt to understand how to get the best value from the various offers is virtually impossible.

The one thing which is patently clear is the vast expense if I want to go to everything. As every opera company always seems to want to make its customers suffer I note with weary resignation that we are promised a performance of ‘Tristan and Isolde’ at almost 5 hours and a marginally shorter performance of ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ Just to keep me happy they have included a production of ‘The War Requiem’ and a selection of other events of popular appeal and things I’ve never heard of.

Whether I go to any of these is linked to whether the owner of our flat actually condescends to give me back the six months rent which is held in an infamous aval bancario which gives the opportunity for a variety of useless parasites to suck money from me for no apparent purpose. The owner has said that he needs to think about it. Think about giving me back my money! I can feel myself building up a head of outraged steam so I should, instead think of serene things to calm down my rage.

For a while.

Listen to the world!

A truly depressing start to the day with mist (at best) and muggy fog (at worst) with fewer people seemingly intent upon death by mangled metal as an accompaniment to the lunatic driving that is the usual journey of stressful intent to get to my school.

Some days, I have to say, are better than others but sometimes the pathetic fallacy takes over and drivers seem to take on the depression of the weather and steer as if they were eager to get to the other side of life!

I made it to school in good time to join in the growing hysteria which characterizes the spasmodic orgies of examinations that we have. These are even more important as they are end of year exams which count for double the value of the other exams during the year. The mark out of ten that pupils have at the end of the year is important, not only as an indication of how they have done but also because the marks if recorded officially and will form part of the final assessment of the school which will travel with the pupils through their lives. Eventually this mark will have a part to play on the pupils’ final assessment when they make their way to university.

The maths involved in this assessment is still beyond me so I do my bit and hope that everything will come out properly in the wash!

There is a definite ‘end of term’ feeling in school, but the real end of term is weeks away and I am growing uncomfortably aware that there is going to be a major reaction after the major exams are over. It will be interesting to see if this school is any more successful than any other school that I have attended in finding the way to square the circle and keep all the students on task until the final end of term.

When I come back in September it will still take me six months before I have completed a full year in the school and begun to understand the range of pressures that attend the normal school year. Something to look forward to!

To my great delight (and part5ial relief) my internet ordered Roberts internet radio arrived today. This is the Roberts WM-202 and, true to the reviews that I read, once plugged in and the internet key finally punched in, it did very much what it said on the box and offered me the radio stations that I wanted and also a range of the podcasts that interest me.

I have already listened to a version of Shaw’s ‘Major Barbara’ on some sort of American public service channel. I am ashamed to admit that it took me some minutes to work out what I was listening to. To my credit I had worked out the GBS bit relatively quickly, but the actual play took a little longer. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it as it was a serendipitous encounter – I wonder if I will ever find the internet station again!

Something to experiment with later!

A half lost day or not

Sometimes it’s nice to have a day when your body simply takes over and orders the agenda.

Yesterday was a case in point. The Family visited, we had lunch, I went to bed for a little siesta.

Then it was today!

This usually happens when I have something which is slightly or definitely suspect to eat. Where others would have stomach ache and messy illnesses my body responds by shutting down all other services and, with me safely comatose, sets about settling any gastric problems in its own way.

I must admit that I felt fine (if tired) when I went to have my little siesta, but I bow to the superior knowledge of by body’s systems and am therefore grateful that things have apparently been sorted out!

I was able to have an early morning cup of tea on the balcony and watch unsettled sunshine degenerate into a sort of sullen haze. I have watched the unsteady progress of a solitary drunk stagger about the beach, periodically fall to his knees and stretch out on the sand for a snooze and then stagger away only to return to the sand for a repeat performance. I suppose in his own way he is doing what I did yesterday, though without the excuse of alcohol in my case!

The little band of red dressed council workers have arrived to clean the beach; the first joggers are puffing their way along the paseo and the first hardy sun worshippers have offered themselves as sacrifices in the hope that the sun will make an unclouded appearance!

Captain Cat like I sit on the balcony and watch the little world of Castelldefels wake up to yet another ambiguous weekend: the glorious weekdays of sunshine compromised by the spiteful covering of cloud. Still, I Am in shorts and an open shirt so there is not much that I should be grumbling about and yesterday was 29ْ C, though humid.

The quality of the illumination from the hidden sun has now given my view a look of studio lighting, so that the chiringuito on the beach has the appearance of a set for a fashion shoot!

The first raucous cries of children communicating in frenzied screams in the hope that the sound will cover the vast distance of six feet between them have begun. The hamacas man has started setting out the two lines of sun beds as a sort of prayer offering. After all, the clue to the purpose of the beds is there in the first part of the word.

The prayer seems to be unanswered as the first planes into the airport seem to be dragging a heavier cloud cover in the wake of their roar and depositing them neatly over Castelldefels. The little patches of blue (known locally on this balcony as “Stephen’s Faith”) are gradually shrinking. Perhaps in such a lazily Roman Catholic country like this the aspirations of an Anglican atheist count for little.

Certainly the look of the beach now reminds me of one of those depressing days in November when Barry Island looks as though no sun has touched it for a millennium! But at least here in Castelldefels it’s still warm and the only sound is the breaking of waves and Toni calling for a cup of coffee!

Duty calls!

Stone culture

A day of double culture – as well as multiple teaching opportunities!

It has now been confirmed that my present contract ends at the end of June and my new (albeit permanent) contract starts in September. The summer months are therefore without pay. Although unfortunate, this is no more than I expected.

I do now have an official form of written confirmation from the school that I have a new contract and I hope to use this to force the thieving estate agents and the grasping owner to give me back my six months of rent which has been put in a form of criminal restraint known as an aval bancario.

This is ‘my’ bank (BBVA, aka The Worst Bank in the World) which is holding six months’ rent and charging me an arm and a leg for doing so. This form of ‘insurance’ for the owners is nothing short of a scandalous rip-off and should have been banned years ago, but there are far too many vested interests for it to be done easily. So, the outmoded sucking away of funds will go on happening. I do imagine that El Crisis must be making these unreasonable demands a little less easy to demand. I wait to see what happens.

I was able to revisit the Museu Monestir de Pedralbes which is a hop, skip and a jump from our school, but which is much more difficult to find if you are in the car.

Entry to this museum is (as I discovered when I said that I was a teacher and a Friend of MNAC) free to members of the profession.

The monastery church is only open in the mornings but the cloisters and the gallery are open until 5 pm so I was able to leave the hustle and bustle of our private school infested area and step back to the cloistered calm of a previous age.

The elegant columns which line the sides of the cloisters enclose an open courtyard with a central goldfish pool; a herb garden and various other pieces of architectural whimsy – or religious significance depending on your spiritual proclivities!

I was hoping to get some photos of the art works held by the monastery, but the gallery was closing by the time I got round to trying to get in. Good reason to plan another trip! The monastery is exactly the sort of calm location that everyone should have tucked away for use when times become a little crowded. Especially as teachers get in for free!

I went straight from my visit to the Monestir de Pedralbes to the centre of Barcelona. Straight is probably not the most honest word to use for the progress that I made trying to find the Plaça de Catalunya, but at least I drove past new bits of the city in my somewhat tortuous progress to my traditional parking spot.

Yet again I was dismayed and astonished (still!) at the dreadful attitude to driving, parking and overtaking which is demonstrated by so many of the drivers in the city.

Motor cyclists and scooter drivers are simply the scum of the earth and should be extirpated in a systematic and professional way by a governmental extermination squad, rather than waiting for the drivers themselves to winnow out their numbers by the homicidal and suicidal way in which they drive.

As I have mentioned before, my lip now curls in disgust whenever I see a young person on crutches or with limbs encased in plaster – these are reliable indications that the ostensible ‘victims’ are actually blatantly parading their self inflicted injuries gained from the idiotic way in which they have failed to thread their way through non-existent gaps in the traffic.

By the time I finally arrived at my destination I was more than ready for a self indulgent wander round my favourite second hand book shop and then have an overpriced, but more than acceptable menu del dia in one of the main thoroughfares of Barcelona.

All of the preceding was an attempt to delay talking about the opera that I went to see this evening.

‘Fidelio’ in the Gran Teatre del Liceu was directed by Jürgen Fimm around scenery designed by Robert Israel. I liked the scenery.

The opera was undersung by what I consider to be a second rate cast. Gabriele Fontana as Fidelio produced a, shall we say, mature voice with a most unpleasant vibrato. Her acting (like everyone else’s) was mannered, melodramatic and of course unconvincing. Her vibrato however faded to a mere irritation when compared with that employed by Ian Storey as Florestan. His vocal gymnastics reminded me of a two tone police siren.

Friedmann Röhlig as Rocco was acceptable and Elena Copons as Marzelline was positively enjoyable. Lucio Gallo, however in his presentation of Don Pizarro was positively awful. His wooden acting and unsteady vocal range bordered on the ludicrous.

‘Fidelio’ is a positive opera with true love and selfless devotion winning through in the end – perhaps not a convincing message for an age of cynical dismissal like ours. There were hints of a darker picture in the presentation of the narrative but they were not developed and were certainly not thought through.

The opening moments of the overture were depressing as the sound was lacking in resonance and reminded me of those dreadful recordings of Toscanini which sound as though they have been recorded in a shoe box. The sound quality also reminded me of the worst excesses of The New Theatre in Cardiff! Act II was better with a much warmer sound – perhaps it had something to do with the orientation of the seat I was in!

Musically Fidelio is a wonderful opera. I look forward to seeing another performance so that it can erase the memory of what I have seen and heard tonight!

At least I have seen a sufficient number of operas to be able to put it down to experience. An expensive experience though.

Roll on the next season!

Test 'til you drop!

Our examination production is now reaching a level of frenzy.

The one saving grace is that the head of English has solid common sense and doesn’t ask the impossible. She is a great believer in not re-inventing the wheel and always looks for the most reasonable way forward. It helps that her experience in the Cambridge exams is, to put it mildly, extensive. I have learned that her suggestions as I find my way through this first year are invariably sensible and agro lessening. I have warned her that under no circumstances is she ever to be ill!

My plans to revisit the monastery near the school were thwarted by my losing a free period right at the end of the day – and the only good thing about that was that the room which I had to use to take the lesson was delightfully air conditioned. The weather has been glorious, but is not the sort of climactic conditions which are conducive to pleasant teaching situations!

My contract situation seems to be clarifying itself, but not in a particularly useful way. It appears that my new contract will be from September (leaving the summer months without pay) and then I will have to complete a three month probationary period! This is not absolute yet, but I live in hope that something can be worked out to my financial advantage. But I have few realistic expectations. The school is supposed to be quite reasonable in the way that it treats it employees, but they don’t throw money around when they don’t have to! Although in British terms they are behaving in a way which is not acceptable, I have to keep telling myself that this is not Britain and I am teaching in a private school. Different country, different system, different expectations.

Toni has rearranged the balcony in expectation of our spending more time out there during the summer and very nice it looks too! The new position of the cacti is not the most advantageous for their continued growth, but their placement does give us a little more space.

I feel more and more strongly that I would like to get somewhere with more space and some sort of a garden. If that means being away from the first line of the sea – so be it!

I think that we should start looking with some intensity for a new place in the autumn.

At least I could then take my books out of durance vile.

Something to think about.