Tree thieves!

Who would have thought that there is an illicit market in pine cones?

Yesterday Toni phoned the police about a suspicious gang of disreputable characters looking with some unsettling significance into our neighbours’ houses. Toni stationed himself at the kitchen window which gives an excellent view of the road and stared pointedly at the miscreants – and they stared back.

Toni noted that one of them was holding a large stick which he was thrusting through the fence into our immediate neighbour’s garden.

In cases such as these you then have to take the next step and pick up a phone and speak into it as if you are phoning the relevant authorities. Even this tried and tested method of stopping those lesser breeds without the law failed to have any effect. The gentlemen with the obsession for empty houses continued to show an unhealthy interest and even started jumping over the fence so Toni actually and in reality phoned the police.

They arrived within five minutes, by which time one of the men who had jumped over the fence was shinning up the nearest tree to knock the pine cones to the ground.

Toni overheard the whole of the conversation between the man and the police and it turned out that he was collecting cones for selling on to a dealer. The police dealt very leniently with the man and merely cautioned him not to climb into houses when he didn’t have authority.

Of course this incident has given Toni free reign to set up an observation camera trained on the front gate. When I came home he was sitting watching TV and casting glances at a small monitor which had a fuzzy picture of the entrance to the house. By the weekend I fully expect a whole series of monitors to be blinking into life giving a 360 degree view of the surrounding neighbourhood and giving us the illusion of safety! While Toni himself will be looking like the man in the headquarters of ‘The Man from UNCLE’!

The weather continues absurdly fine with everyone wondering just what reparation we are going to have to make when the powers that be decide that we have had enough sunlight to last us for the rest of the year!

It is almost unbearably frustrating for me to see fine weather through the windows of the classroom and have to be on the wrong side of the glass!

I have realized that I am getting up in the dark and, if I call in for food before I get home, I am returning to the house in the twilight or positive darkness as well. This is not good and it makes me tetchy.

I have started reading my new book on the Civil War (the one in Britain not in Spain) and am amazed at how interesting the writer has made the details of the subject. I must admit that I rather relish pondering the deep theological problems that the Calvinist idea of predestination poses for any reasonably thoughtful Christian.

The idea of the ‘Elect’ as a specific group of people saved from the moment that they were born from the horrors of Hell by a God who presumably made an arbitrary decision at some indeterminate time in the past on their status, is strangely bizarre – even for theologians. The fact that these people do not know who they are and nothing that they can do can possibly influence their eventual destination is unsettling.

It is, of course a reduction to absurdity to consider just ‘when’ god decided to make or allow evil to exist and the theological twisting and turning which encompasses the minutiae of theological speculation is almost (please note the word) endlessly fascinating.

It has to be remembered of course that theology is not merely a spiritual exercise but is also the reason for deaths unnumbered for holding the ‘wrong’ view on say the divinity of Christ at the ‘wrong’ moment. Theology was life and death at the time of the Civil War and continues to be an important way of exterminating our fellow creatures.

The book, whose title and author I continue to forget is going to be gruelling and exhausting read, but I think one that will be rewarding. I only wish the print was a little larger. I am almost tempted to find out how much the hardback copy would be and assume that the type is larger there. I could always give the paperback version to an eager colleague who has promised me a history book from his library to read.

So far the ‘one in/one out’ approach to my library is working as I have been able to loan two books from the Davies United Nations Day Bequest to colleagues in school, thus making space for at least two extra books. The book loaned by Clarrie has also gone out to a pupil in school so that means that I can accept three more volumes into my collection. One new book is my copy of the commonplace book which I happened to see brought in by an ex-teacher. My excited gabbling has produced my own copy for which an appreciative email has been sent to the author.

The Worst Bank in the World has managed to bugger up my payments to BlueSpace which is still attached to my old bank account and therefore there is not sufficient money to pay for the storage charges. That is something that I will have to sort out NOW. And I have done so, even if Spanish people on the phone seem to talk at double the speed which they do normally.

I now realize that the payment for the road tolls is also linked to a moneyless account in BBVA (spit!) so yet more work will need to be done! I think it is probably better that everything is in one bank account or I am constantly going to have nasty surprises when I least want them.

Unfortunately this means that I am going to have to have a new radio device for getting through the tolls and I will have to return the one that I have to the bank which issued it. Talking of the Worst Bank in the World I have yet to write the Doomsday Letter explaining all the negative actions that the bank has taken in misusing my account.

Tonight I will have to write the examination paper that has taken second place to a couple of books, television, food, sleeping and anything else that wasn’t actually writing the damn thing.

Two of my classes of older children have been taken up with ‘study’ which is just about as quiet as you can get any class of Spanish students. The only time you have absolute silence in when you make them sit a test then they snap into the default mode for this school and get down to it.

It is almost comical how they accept the examination ethos of the place and assume the right devotional stance when they are confronted by a paper with questions on it and space in which they have to write.

However talkative they are in ‘real life’ when a sheet of examination paper is placed in front of them they become the most monastic group of Trappists that any beleaguered teacher could hope for!

Yesterday after a hectic lesson of finishing off odds and sods of exercises that were necessary for the approaching exams, the kids were allowed a period of study. They were hyper and, as it was the last lesson of a very full day, a little less inclined to knuckle down to the hard work that (even if I don’t do it myself) I do expect my kids to do.

One of my constant pleas to the older kids in the equivalent of my sixth form is that, “You really must listen!” This is something of a fond hope in a Spanish classroom, but it doesn’t stop me trying. One kid actually repeated my little mantra as if it was the substance of a rap song and that got me thinking.

After settling the kids down and getting them to do some self-motivated work I then got down to the real effort involved in writing a song (with chorus) based on the theme of “You Really Must Listen” One line of the chorus was composed entirely of the word, “Hush!” This word the kids find endlessly fascinating.

I completed the song by the end of the lesson and was writing out a fair copy when the bell went. One lad waited until I had finished and then took away the finished lyric with excited little squawks of pleasure. It was pounced upon by other members of the class and they then tried to set it to music.

I am become a legend in my own lesson time!

I was greeted in class today by a couple of the kids actually singing the song to the tune of, “I feel it in my fingers; I feel it in my toes.” Sometimes I think that I allow things to get out of hand.

I still can’t wait to leave the school. It does have its plusses but they aren’t positive enough and the whole experience is certainly not accompanied by sufficient cash to make it worth the effort.

On the other hand . . .

Memories of Times Past

It was my own fault. I should have changed the contact lens when I felt a slight discomfort. But I merely adopted the hardened contact lens wearers’ motto of ‘Blink and Bear It’ and went downstairs. And it was late. And what are tears for if not to wash out pesky dust specs from contact lenses?

Driving to work got a little more painful and so the tried and tested procedure of squeezing the lid of the offending eye, raising the contact lens from the surface of the eye and thus allowing any mote to slip away courtesy of the tear ducts doing their job was applied.

And the contact lens slipped to the side.

This is not a tragedy – even when driving half blind in early morning traffic on a busy Barcelona motorway. It is, however a serious inconvenience. I was effectively half blind with dawn still a way away and cars weaving around as if they were taking part in some sort of transport version of a festive maypole dance!

There was no real opportunity to stop so I tried a past technique from my hard contact lens days and looked in the direction of where I thought the lens was. This sometimes has the effect of easing the lens back onto the centre of the eye. Not in this case!

My squinting attempts to regain sight resulted in the lens getting more scrunched up so I had to remove it. Every contact lens wearer has been told not to do what every contact lens wearer does in these circumstances: we pop the lens into the mouth.

For the rest of the journey I had to concentrate on not swallowing the lens as I had active hopes that I would be able to reinsert it when I was finally able to stop.

Reinsertion was not a success and I thanked whatever gods there were that I had remembered to put a spare pair of glasses in the car in case of just such an emergency.

So, for one day only, I hope, I am back to glasses and the response of the kids is as if I have come to school wearing a revolving, flashing bow tie. Presumably their reactions will be just as marked when I come in tomorrow wearing contact lenses again!

I am sitting by an open window in the ‘library’ as I have to do a break time duty supervising kids who want to work and the heat of the sun is (almost) forcing me to move away. Even for Spain the temperatures we have been getting in what ought to be the autumn are not normal. Insects are still flying and biting and grass is still growing. Colleagues are complaining that they are having to mow the lawn again when it should be quiescent for the autumn sleep! Apart from the fact that I am in school and not lying on the balcony of the third floor in my house, I, of course, am loving it.

I see from the news that there is a respectable amount of water falling in the places where you would expect it to be deposited: the north west of Spain and the Pyrenees so I feel perfectly justified in wallowing in the heat and the steady stream of sunshine that graces this land!

The idea of visiting the UK this Christmas is growing on me and I think that the price will not be too expensive. I am able to travel outside normal tourist times, especially in January when my holiday is somewhat longer than the British equivalent. I must do my sums!

I am attempting to get Spanish lessons. Irene has suggested someone and they are attempting to get in touch with me. In the usual way living as we are in a period when personal communication has never been easier, we are not coinciding and a series of missed calls indicates effort if not success!

One of my colleagues is sitting opposite me as I type and attempting to do her English homework translating a passage about cast off clothes of the famous. From time to time she is asking me to translate into Spanish various words which I am having to render in my usual circumlocution as phrases and dumb show! This if nothing else indicates how much I need to take further Spanish lessons! With any luck I will have made contact with the teacher today and my twice weekly lessons can commence.

There is no justification for my having put off the lessons since I came to work in this school as the school itself will pay something towards the cost. I have to admit that it is sheer laziness and the real fear of all the hard work that is involved in trying to get new words to stick in my brain – and then the even harder work to retrieve them when needed!

My attending Spanish lessons is made all the harder by people who actually speak Spanish telling me that my Spanish is quite good. The evidence for this judgement and assessment is, to say the least, flimsy. My Spanish is ignorance fuelled by hysteria and conversations result in exhaustion of all parties involved. I will know that I have achieved some degree of fluency when I have a conversation in Spanish and there is nothing remarkable about it whatsoever and both parties walk away from the dialogue as refreshed as when they started it!

Fond hope!

Meals and distant thoughts

Yet another restaurant to cross off the list of acceptable places to eat in Castelldefels! Considering our humble location is basically a tourist resort, it is astonishing how many places do not cater for the tourists on whom they depend.

Take for instance our experience Sunday lunch time. We went into a restaurant we hadn’t tried before. It was fairly full and our appearance created panic. We were looked at with what can only be described as unease and someone took two chairs from the entrance and disappeared upstairs. A serious looking girl then poured two glasses of beer, picked up two cans of Coke and grasping cutlery and paper place mats and absent mindedly ushered us up stairs.

We were given menus and then ignored.

Eventually our order was taken and then we were ignored. Our drinks eventually arrived. And then we were ignored.

Our choices were not complex: a simple anchovy salad followed by spaghetti with tomato sauce. Hardly haute cuisine! We waited so long for the salad that I suggested that we ask for the bill and merely pay for the drinks.

As soon as we intimated that we were leaving as if by magic our salad then appeared and was eaten. And then we were ignored.

And so on. For almost the first time since we have been here we left the exact cost of the meal and not a single cent more.

The name of the restaurant was Quebracho on the Paseo Maritim 184. We will not be going back!

The weather this morning was good enough for a little light sunbathing. It was the sort of ‘precarious’ sunbathing where the slightest breeze reminded you at once that it was November rather than the summer; but the sun was hot and it was quite something to be stretched out wearing only a pair of shorts in the middle of November!

Instead of doing the work that I should have done this weekend I read ‘The Girl Who Played with Fire’ and so I had that uncomfortable weight of guilt which is so often the teacher’s lot on a Sunday afternoon going on to evening. It is the sort of disabling guilt which does not allow you to do the work that you should have done in spite of the fact that there is enough time for you to be getting on with something which might just do its bit to assuage some of the negative feelings that inaction has given rise to!

After so many years in our noble profession a ‘comfortable’ Sunday evening seems almost like an oxymoron! And then there is the delight of a Monday morning when you discover that nothing that you thought that you needed to do was actually necessary to have been done. So to speak! And is that the appropriate verb formation? No doubt Stewart will let me know.

Gran Canaria looks impossibly expensive for part of the Christmas holidays so we are looking around for something a little more realistic.

At the moment we are thinking of flying to Alicante and spending some time in Benidorm – out of season a rather fine place to be. And it will give us a chance to see Brian and Hilary with any luck! No sooner thought than done! Benidorm for My Saint’s Day. Everyone take clear note!

If things work out then it will be possible to fit in a trip to the UK as well! Who knows! It is an almost criminal shame that I have not checked out the rebuilt city centre shopping area which now includes the only John Lewis Partnership in Wales!

To say nothing of visiting friends and relations!

And Matalan – a store whose reputation has risen to mythic proportions in Terrassa where it is talked of with longing sighs!

I have always found that a stern look can quell the incipient hysteria that usually greets my attempts to illustrate points I am making with apposite drawings executed with élan, panache and other French words I can’t remember, as I work my artistic magic on the whiteboard.

In our unutterably tedious text books (which are treated as infallible sacred books by the pupils) we had reached a Unit which listed the appendage nomenclature of various animals: horn, fin, flipper, wing, claw, paw etc.

In order to make these mere words come, as it were, alive (or sear them into the memory as the kids might say) I created with the aid of a mere board marker a series of dazzling sketches of various animals which, when I had completed them, looked as though they were the product of a mind raised on Breughel, Dalí and Bosch. I have to admit that my elephant looked a trifle alien and my rhinoceros looked like the emanation of a nightmare, but my lion looked positively playful and my tortoise - well, professional!

I could tell (being a professional and experienced teacher) that each new monster added to my growing zoo of horror was eagerly anticipated by my class and their appreciation seemed to necessitate some more permanent form of remembrance than just their fallible memories.

Modern pupils have added a further dimension of horror to their laughter as I found out when I turned around after adding a particularly fine bird to the menagerie. As I turned towards the class every (every!) pupil had taken out and aimed a mobile phone at the whiteboard! For all I know my drawings are now the talk of YouTube or the currency of laughter on Face Book!

One of my colleagues was most disgruntled to find out that the title of Worst Drawing by a Teacher might now be snatched away from her by an upstart Welshman!

The whole experience has given me pause for thought. The fact that all of my pupils had mobile phones capable of taking photos and that all of them used them as almost a reflex action was disconcerting. It is, it has to be said, a gross invasion of privacy and, even if I didn’t really mind on this occasion, it does suggest that there might be others when it would not be appropriate and does one then confiscate all mobile phones and delete all offending images? We work towards nightmare!

Mobile phones, with all their photographic and communication possibilities are seen as essential by pupils. They see them in the same light as their pens and pencils – life without them is unthinkable. They use them in the same way as they would chat: they are an absolutely normal form of talking. For me the mobile phone is ‘other’ and, were I to forget to take it to school for the day, it would not be something which unduly worried me. For the kids it would be like tearing out a tongue!

There is a whole area of privacy concerns which has not really been tackled about the use of mobile phones in places like schools. I can see personal freedom concerns on both sides of phone use: allowing them in schools and banning them. Most schools have some sort of fudged policy which says that kids can have phones but if they are seen then they will be confiscated until the end of the day. In our school this does not seem to be the common and consistent approach of colleagues.

The whole incident of my ‘individualistic’ drawings, though funny and conducted with good humour throughout has made me think. It is another of those areas of modern life where the thought of how to approach the use of the phone is nowhere near its accepted importance in young people’s lives.

Meanwhile my artistic endeavours live in an electronic world over which I have no control and in which god knows how far they have spread.

Perhaps I should have signed the whiteboard and then unscrewed it from the wall and stored it so that I could capitalize on the increased value of the work of art as its fame spreads!

Another lost opportunity!

My efforts to resist reading the second volume of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy “The Girl Who Played with Fire” came to nothing as I ploughed my way through the 600 odd pages of the paperback version that I have.

It is compulsive reading and its length allows a satisfying development of characters and events.

I have decided that it is basically a ‘super-hero’ or ‘super-heroine’ book as we relax with the character of Lisbeth Salander as she sets the world to rights or sets it topsy-turvy with her individualistic approach to what is right and wrong. By the end of volume one in this trilogy she has ceased to be a human character and has become something like a force of nature: nothing can stop her when she has decided that something needs to be done.

Her ‘super skill’ is computer hacking; she has trained with a professional boxer; she has a photographic memory; her hobby is high level mathematics; she is immensely rich; she has psychological problems which are strengths and weaknesses for her; she is bi-sexual and so on. Hardly your run of the mill heroine.

Larsson’s writing is functional: he tells you what you need to know so that the action can proceed. His writing is unobtrusive – this novel is one of action and the writing is the means by which he tells you what is happening so that you can follow the relentless narrative thrust of the book. There are few longueurs in this book and it is inevitable that you get caught up in the sometimes frenetic action.

I shall wait for the third volume to come to me rather than buy it. I am not sure if that says anything about my response to the books, but I can certainly wait for the next episode in Lisbeth Salander’s eventful life!

I can feel the sun shining on the back of my nick so it might be time to go to the third floor and see if it is in any way possible to sit out and listen with sympathetic resignation to the weather forecast on Radio 4!

Eating and Reading

Another tapa surprise when we went out into Castelldefels town: an exquisite concoction of scallops and prawns on a savoury slice of potato. And a pint of lager. There always has to be an element of vulgarity! The little bar that we frequent is nothing to write home about – it even allows smoking by setting out ashtrays on every table and we cwtch ourselves away in a corner praying that we will be unmolested by noxious fumes. The menu is limited and basic but it has little jewels of gastronomic delight which makes a visit worthwhile.

What To Do At Christmas has now become a pressing problem for me because I feel that to waste the expanse of time that we have would be criminal irresponsibility. Unfortunately Christmas is hardly low season for travel so you don’t really get true value for money. On the other hand lazing on a beach and swimming in the sea has its attractions!

The weather was not perfect while taking the kids sailing so I decided to remain staunchly indoors and read in the little office for those connected with administration of the School of Sailing. It was a delight to see that the lady working opposite me was looking with passionate intensity at a book called ‘That’s English!’ which made me think of the end of Loony Tunes with the stuttering ‘Th-th-th-that’s All Folks!’ and the book probably has about as much relationship to the way that people actually speak English in the English Speaking World as some of the books that we use.

My ‘Kids’ Choice’ Book taken from the cupboard was ‘Moves Make the Man’ by Bruce Brooks. This was a more than competent book which traced the relationship between a black kid (yes the colour is significant in the novel) and a strange white boy who obviously has real and profound problems.

The connecting narrative element is the use of basketball and it was comfortingly complex with few concessions to those who knew little or nothing about the game. I felt the same way as I did when reading Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain or Moby Dick – there was a point in the use of technical language. Although Brooks is not at the level of the other two writers he produces a satisfyingly mature analysis of a young boy’s attempts to understand a different view of life.

The voice of the narrator is that of the black basket playing boy and it was gratifying to see that few concessions were made to his ability: he was straight A's in most of his subjects.

While problems of race are touched on, it is not the main driving force of the novel. It gives piquancy to the prose and a slant which h makes it all the more interesting to read.

The central concern is of how young people come to form their world views – especially if there are difficult circumstances to deal with at formative stages in a person’s development. There is humour and there is insight: it is well worth a read.

Though, I have to say that when I was reading I wondered how many kids would actually want to read this where the action is perhaps more psychological than actual – though there are plenty of memorable incidents to keep people happy. It is a mature book which I think will be better appreciated by those who are more mature. Let alone thinking about kids reading these books in a foreign language.

Talking of our books the words that the unfortunate kids were expected to know from this morning’s lesson included “anew” and “unbeknownst” - I kid you not!

Cloud has covered the skies over Barcelona and, although the weekend forecast is not too depressing I am beginning to doubt that it will be sunbathing weather on the third floor balcony in the house in Castelldefels!

What does the future hold?

I am now wearing a jacket; but still in short sleeved shirts. I refuse to give in to the growing realization that comes with colder nights that autumn is well and truly here. It is still possible to ignore the actual month during some days when the sun shines and the pollution over Barcelona blends blues and purples in a most artistic way and the memory of the summer seems not so distant. But reality must be faced: this is the period when we have to have some rain otherwise there will be problems during the summer.

My arrangement with god is that I have no objection to bucketfuls of rain drenching the Pyrenees on a regular basis as long as Castelldefels stays dry. In this way all the necessary reservoirs can be filled to overflowing while preserving an area of arid delight for me!

The question of holidays at Christmas time is becoming more pressing with clear wants meeting emotional ties: it is something that will take a deal more thought – even if each day’s delay will add more to the final cost.

The excitement of my flu injection was raised to a new level of delight by the nurse (a chit of a boy who has given me stern lectures over the past year or so) taking my blood pressure and pronouncing it acceptable. Given the White Coat Syndrome that regularly affects my readings this was especially gratifying news. It does however knock into a cocked hat my fondly held belief that stress brought on by my continuing in my present school was causing my readings to go off the scale. I am obviously made of sterner stuff than I originally thought!

By way of a present Pablo (the nurse) gave me an extra anti tetanus injection as a little gift. I told him that I had my last injection for tetanus twenty years ago, but in fact, as Toni reminded me, I had a booster injection for our trip to Mexico. Ah well, I’m sure it won’t do any harm. Probably.

Talk of founding schools is still very much in the air and a phone call from Jennifer has raised the stakes again with her belief that there might be money from the Middle East available to invest in an institution in Spain. I now have a default position which I adopt when I hear of such things and that includes my actually seeing some money rather than listening to pious platitudes about possible intentions.

As far as I can see the only way that I am going to get money out of education in Catalonia is by staying in the job that I have at present. I will keep listening to others as their ideas come and go; but I will draw a regular wage from my position in post!

I would seriously consider a job with the BSB but that looks increasingly unlikely to present itself for my acceptance. It would be worth it alone for the lack of a testing journey to work each morning!

This afternoon is my time to accompany the PE teacher and 3ESO kids as they go sailing.

Never a dull moment.

It's magic!

There are some things that you do that, having done them, you wonder how you managed before you had done them. Sometimes they are fairly small things, tasks that take little effort but give amazing results.

Like cleaning the car windscreen.

Living as we do in the midst of pine trees we are grateful for the shade that they give in summer, but they also distribute another aspect of their growth as well: resin. At first I assumed that someone with a lot of time on their hands and a wilful nastiness on their brains had been dripping gum on the car. It took a while for the resinous deposits and the proximity of the car to the trees to link up in my mind, but when it did I felt relief that I could blame nature rather than a vicious neighbour but did not immediately start cleaning the windscreen.

It is truly amazing how many minor obstacles to a clear view one can cope with. I suppose it is second nature to deal with such things if you are an experienced glasses wearer. Sometimes I clean my glasses as displacement activity and I am constantly amazed at the accretion of detritus that clear glass can attract and am equally amazed at how little it obstructs vision.

Today, however, setting off in the morning I was amazed at the detail of my surroundings that I could see through the newly cleaned windscreen. Admittedly it took a specially impregnated glass wipe and industrial strength insect remover to get rid of some of the more ingrained deposits, but shining and, more importantly, transparent what a view is afforded through the glass! A new world!

Today my long delayed flu jab will be delivered. It has fallen out that I will have to leave during my last period which is free, so I will have an early (for this school) end of the day – this will in part compensate for the extended day that I will have tomorrow when I accompany the PE teacher taking the kids sailing.

I am, with difficulty, restraining myself from starting the second volume in the Millennium trilogy. As with the first book this second volume is also hefty and I know that as soon as I start reading it everything else will take a poor second place and with examinations lurking around the corner I do have to make some effort to get a paper together.

The time to start this enterprise is now as I have a free period, though I have to say that making another cup of tea is far more alluring!

Slowly! Slowly!

My little poisoned seeds of discontent are beginning to sprout. The shoots are tentative; shyly seeking the light – but they are there.

Our school day has seven lessons in it. Some teachers start at 8.15 in the morning and the day ends at 4.45 in the afternoon. It therefore follows that there are seven periods in the day with a possible total of 35 periods in the week as opposed to the normal 25 in real schools. This means that timetabling is an absolute breeze and people are grateful (!) that they have at least one free period in their artificially extended day!

Having been in a school that taught in a 40 period week - which was converted in 20 double periods of subjects like English, Maths and Science. A proposal was to convert our timetable to a 25 period week with, it was stressed, ‘exactly the same teaching time’. In spite of my protestations that this conversion was actually a 25% increase in teaching opportunities, such qualifications fell on deaf ears and everyone thought that I was making a fuss over nothing until they had their new timetables and saw that they were actually seeing more pupils . . . Ah, well, they learned their lesson – a little too late but they are a little wiser now.

Except of course they are not. All things that were major outrages pale into tradition or normality in the course of time. And in the case of teachers a very short time indeed. It has always astonished me how quickly things are accepted. For example, I was very quickly the only person in school who persisted in writing in BAKER DAY when we had INSET in memory of the bastard who took days off our holidays in order to push forward his agenda and force teachers to come in and enjoy in-house entertainment in the name of education.

There is a weary acceptance on the part of my colleagues that things are not right, but they do not seem to have any idea about how things might be made better. My conversations about unionism have received mixed responses, but again the overwhelming impression is one of dogged acceptance that things cannot be better than they are.

We shall see. My teaching materials are so intensely boring and the type of English that I am teaching barely touches my imagination that I must have another ‘interest’ to keep my mind alive!

We are building up to another completely arbitrary period of testing in our school. The rote learning has started and all ‘knowledge’ stuffed into brains for the examination period will be jettisoned immediately after the papers have been sat.

It is my responsibility to write a test paper for one group of older kids and the head of English has kindly sent me some past papers to get me started! But the second volume in the Millennium series is waiting for me to crack its spine and that is a much more tempting proposition than printing out fairly pointless English grammar and vocabulary questions. Still, needs must when the devil drives.

I have recently discovered that the mythical ‘two extra pays’ are going to stay in the realms of myth for me until another year has passed. The logic behind these ‘bonus’ (!) payments is based on the length of time that you have been in the school. So, by December I will have worked in the school (according to my new contract) for four months. My bonus will be four times my monthly salary divided by 12. By June my summer bonus will be ten times my monthly salary divided by 10. By a year next Christmas my bonus will be an extra month’s pay. Such is the simple ‘system’ by which we work!

This does however mean that the extra sum of money that I was expecting for the Christmas season will not be there, or at least not quite in the quantity I was hoping for! But in the immortal words of Mehitabel brought to us by Don Marquis http://www.donmarquis.com/index.html:

wotthehell wotthehell

cage me and i d go frantic

my life is so romantic

capricious and corybantic

and i m toujours gai toujours gai

Always worth having a little jolt of reality from a regal cat!

The burdens of education

As usual the weekend was at least one day too short and I start a new week feeling jaded and resentful.

I am seriously looking at my finances to see if it is possible to ‘live of my own’ (as Tudor kings were constantly encouraged to do by their financially conservative subjects) and stagger my way to the next celebration of United Nations Day without having to struggle my way through suicidal congealed traffic and then teach the pampered scions of families who do not have to consider as many financial questions as we educational serfs who work for them.

My salary for this month did not cover the cost of living in the house with the attendant electricity, gas, water and tax charges. Last month I worked out exactly how much I was paid for each directed period of work and I shouldn’t have done it as my resentment reached new stratospheric levels. Admittedly it was my take home pay after taxes etc but it does make you think – and the thoughts are not at all positive.

The supine way in which we as a staff accept totally unreasonable working conditions and appalling pay is enough to make any reasonable union person weep, and I am getting to the end of my patience.

I suppose that, professionally (that’s a laugh in this place) I should work until the end of this term and, to be absolutely fair I should already have given in my notice if I go on the half term notice that is usual in the UK. As we don’t actually have a half term I do not feel that much responsibility. The school has no fall back plan to find teacher replacements and no system of supply teachers: perhaps they deserve to be plunged into chaos!

The couple of books that I read over the weekend showed me what I used to do in the heady days of my first arrival in Catalonia when the Euro was only 70p. Heady days indeed! And days to which I am eager to return!

I have done more sums and it turns out that my normal payment for my month’s work would indicate that I am getting a little more than the single digit insult for my time which, taken with other factors like the food and those mythical two ‘extra’ months’ salary in the year does make it worthwhile continuing my educational marathon in this place.

The view from where I am sitting is spectacular – even with the odd palm tree in the way. The sea is a band of gold and the breeze is whipping up the sand producing, at this distance, an orange haze along the coast. The air is clear (a rare occurrence over Barcelona) and the buildings have that sharp intensity which gives an almost surrealistic look. Out of the breeze the sun is hot and the wispy clouds which are curling their way across my view merely accentuate by contrast the delightful azure of the sky.

It is truly astonishing how a little period of sunshine can change my mood! It is as if I am pre-programmed to soothe as soon as our star shows its true refulgence.

Toni’s little foray into town to re-register his sim card (for reasons I do not fully understand) have knocked him back a bit. He is still coughing, but at least he doesn’t look as haggard as he did a few days ago.

I am turning my thoughts towards Christmas and wondering how expensive it would be to ‘go somewhere’ as this year we have a more than respectable period for the holiday. My default position is of course to go to that too-long-avoided island off the coast of Africa. I will never forget my first Christmas in Gran Canaria where I went from near freezing temperatures in Cardiff to swimming in the sea in Maspalomas in less than twelve hours from the point of unfreezing the lock of my car to go to the airport!

Christmas is fairly high season for Gran Canaria but it might be worth it just to top up my tan and to experience the Atlantic again!

A quick check shows that prices follow our holidays and what would have been a €49 flight one day before is translated into something three or four times as much as soon as the kids are let out to enjoy Christmas. This is problem that Toni relishes, trawling through the internet to find the bargains – though his desire to be with his family might restrict the true scope that our ‘extensive’ holidays might afford. It is a long time since we have been on holiday and, even though I keep telling myself that I now live in a place which I would have regarded as a perfectly acceptable holiday destination a couple of years ago, I do begin to long to get away somewhere and lie on a beach again.

If one is a confirmed sunbather then memory is short and vitamin D constantly needs to be replenished!

And another little sip won't do us any harm!

It is perhaps fortunate, in oh so many ways, that my notes from the Champagne Tasting that I went to in Sitges last night seem to have been unfortunately misplaced. The paean to pretentiousness that comprised my increasingly sozzled thoughts alas are lost to posterity.

We had eights fizzy wines to taste including some well known names, two ‘growers’ Champagnes and one highly recommended Cava.

The group of tasters were mainly Brits with one American and everyone appeared to have a greater familiarity with Champagne than I! Not that you would have been able to tell that by my assertive comments thrown into the general discussion!

The evening started late and by the time of the last train back to Castelldefels was approaching we were barely half way through our bottles. And when I say ‘through’ our bottles that is exactly what I mean – there was little of the roll it round your mouth and spit it out rubbish at our table.

A few of our number had just driven down from France and they arrived bearing gifts of delicious French cheeses – though by this time we had gone on to the red wine and the Champagne was but a distant memory.

It is surely a caring hostess who not only takes your staying unexpected with aplomb but also provides contact lens fluid and a lens case to allow ones one day lenses to be used for a second day!

A most enjoyable experience! There were plans for a red wine tasting to which I hope that I am asked.

I have read the first volume in the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ is a massive book and is an enjoyable page turner.

This book comes so highly recommended that it almost has to be a disappointment when one reads it.

It is basically a detective story which takes as its main character an investigative financial journalist who has just lost a libel case against an obviously crooked financier. We expect a straightforward revenge story but the narrative is complicated by the involvement of a major Swedish Industrial Dynasty and a further mystery which needs to be sorted out there as well.

Our intrepid detective also gets his sidekick in the shape of the eponymous girl with the dragon tattoo who turns out to be a most unlikely security researcher and computer genius.

The story has massive scope while never losing sight of the narrative focus on making us guess how the various mysteries could be resolved.

The style of writing in this translation is unobtrusive with the emphasis on events and descriptions which press forward the story line. And this is a good story with some deeply shocking events and memorable incidents. At one point one of the characters says “Where do I get such metaphors from!” and I thought as I read it that this writing was clear rather than stylish. Nevertheless a damn good read.

I have been lax in the writing of my blog in the last few days, but I have been catching up on a rolling sleep debt. I actually stayed in bed until mid day on Saturday!

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold!

Such larks!

Terrassa was, as usual a festering bed of contagion. I refer of course to The Nephews who seem to harbour disease as naturally as Portsmouth does boats. This time the youngest was reported to have bronchitis and from the woeful appearance of Toni it was obvious that The Nephews has struck again.

Poor old Toni has not slept for three days and has now decided to go the doctor. The journey back from the party which, to be fair, was not quite the presentfest that I expected it to be, was punctuated by Toni’s world weary wracking coughs.

I of course was a point of terminal exhaustion as I had Gone a New Way to Terrassa cutting across various road systems from the school to join up, eventually and thankfully with a stretch of motorway that I recognized. It was however a nerve tightening experience as I passed new buildings and saw new vistas as I drove with that quiet manic determination of the very lost.

There were no comforting signs with Terrassa on them and, as is the usual way with Spanish motorways, many large blue signs which offered me destinations which were in contrary directions and also a way back to my starting point. You have to have a steely determination to press onwards in the fond hope that you are getting nearer to where you want to go.

I was encouraged by a view of the bizarre outline of Montserrat and, as I seemed to be heading for it I knew that the general direction I was taking was OK. While that might have been comforting for some, my experience has told me that you can get tantalizingly close to where you want to be with signs encouraging you to think that you are in the vicinity only to find that you have been directed onto a road whose characteristics are narrowness, windiness and whose tarmac is a haunt of inexplicable lumbering lorries.

Although there were several beguiling looking turn-offs I resisted the impulse to follow a likely looking sign and waited for the motorway to develop into something useful – which it did, so I was right.

Our arrival back in Castelldefels was anti-climactic as I was exhausted and Toni exhausted and ill.

I had made us both a delicious honey and lemon drink when there was a yalwp from our intercom system. This is not what we expect late at night and the mildly threatening nature of the interruption galvanized the shuddering bulk of Toni filled with self pity on the sofa to a dynamic what-the-hell-is-going-on sort of person. He did not deign to answer the importunate call of the intercom but instead looked out of the kitchen window which has an excellent view of the front gate.

What he saw was a scene comprising a police car and three standing policemen with an extra person. They wanted to ask us a few questions!

My normal middle class response to the police calling is of course horror and dread suffused with fundamental feelings of total guilt. Considering where I was these perfectly normal reactions were laced with a level of terror that these policemen were foreign and they had guns.

Toni was in his dressing gown and I still had my school clothes on as we marched out and unlocked the gate to reveal our next door neighbour looking small and vulnerable surrounded by no-nonsense looking policemen illuminated by the flashing blue light of the car.

It appeared that our neighbour (who is French he added irrelevantly) had been stopped by the police and was found not to be carrying any papers. This is the equivalent of spitting on the flag so he was escorted back to where he claimed to live. It turns out that he does not own the house; it belongs to a ‘friend’ and therefore he couldn’t prove that he lived there! The poor man looked wretched as we had to vouch for his actually living next door to us. He was writing his hands and apologising in a manner worth of a Dickensian character!

If I had been feeling less tired and Toni less ill I think that we would have spent the rest of the night in increasingly lurid speculation about the true circumstances of our hapless neighbour’s plight. As it was, I went to bed.

But I’m not quite as tired now and my mind is seething with various scenarios which I would not dare write about here!

I only hope that Toni’s visit to the doctor leaves him capable of coherent story fabrication when I get home for my half day today.

The joy of the open road!

There is a sort of equilibrium in my mornings. If there is sunshine then I can expect the traffic to be much worse than usual. Today was a glorious autumn morning; the air crystal clear; infinite blue skies and temperatures in the early morning above the highs for Cardiff – and interminable traffic jams. Just to make matters worse there seemed to be more than the usual contingent of those evil denizens of the road: motorcyclists.

My way of dealing with motorcyclists started as a joke. Why not, I maintained, just brush motorcycle accidents to the side of the road and leave them there. After months of driving on Catalan motorways, especially the ronda de dalt on my way to work, I no longer regard it as a joke. Their driving positively invites disaster and every time I see an accident with the tell-tale bike pushed to the hard shoulder my resentment and hatred towards the whole suicidal breed of bikers increases.

Bikers are one of those problems like Afghanistan or Ireland or Coca-Cola where you do not know where to start to try and sort it all out. So nothing is done. If I was the Catalan minister of transport I think I would sit in my office all day and cry, as I would have no idea how to set about doing something constructive with what I was supposed to be dealing with. The only concrete example of dealing with traffic in this part of the word is to put in multitudes of sleeping policemen and other assorted bumps in the road. Far from calming traffic thee only serve in infuriate drivers further so that the oddly (and dangerously) placed crossings are even less likely to restrict the homicidal tendencies of your average motorist in this area. This is of course aided and abetted by the pedestrian population who use the roads and pavements as if they were the same area and believe in a quite misplaced invulnerability when they stride out onto crossings with never a look to either side.

I am working myself up to attempt the difficult cross-country manoeuvre that going from school to Terrassa is going to be. I have had instructions and I do possess a road atlas that I have never opened, but instead I am going to rely on my recognition of the road to guide my care to its destination. Relying of Catalan road signs is a recipe for disaster as they merely give a vague indication of where you might (or might not) be going. Catalans are masters of the unobtrusive sign for important turnings and also disguising major roads so that they look like side streets. You have to have your wits about you to drive in this area!

I fully intend to slop off early so that I can avoid the bulk of the parents who instantly clog all the roads in the vicinity as soon as the bell goes, double and sometimes triple parking so that their little darlings can fall exhausted onto the leather upholstery of the vehicle before being ferried to their next appointment.

Even if I get lost, I should have enough time to re-orientate myself before the festivities begin.

And I’m driving and it’s the middle of the week and I have to teach tomorrow so I won’t be able to drink. Sob!

Dinner saves the day

Life cannot be all bad when the evening meal that you rustle up consists of stuffed vine leaves; homemade stew; freshly baked bread; Greek yogurt topped by Greek honey with almonds; mature Cheddar; Chilean red. Thank god for Lidl!

On a sadder note I have to report that I felt something like genuine excitement at a discovery in an upmarket supermarket. Over the last few months I have been searching, in a desultory sort of way, for the latest form of toilet block.

I am sure that someone somewhere has written a thesis on the development of the toilet block from the pungent rings found in the loos of British pubs to the latest charming plastic cradles, one of which on sale in the supermarket is designed in the form of a yacht!

How many toilets that you have used recently have empty plastic frames lurking under the rims? Yellowing plastic bereft of its block looking like a safety cage for tiny cleaners: empty, but not discarded. Intention to purchase the block is usually frustrated by the inability to remember what make block actually fits. And let’s face it no one wants to be caught trying to squeeze a block of god knows what sort of chemicals into a plastic aperture that you have forgotten how to open. From personal experience I know that you end up with worryingly ‘fragrant’ fingers whose perfume stays with you for a distractingly long period of time. You keep checking on your hand as you half expect your fingers to start dissolving before your very eyes. So, empty the receptacle stays and the toilet bowl has to be content with the occasional squirt of whatever corrosive liquid lurks inside the bottle with the swan neck.

This being the case my latest purchase seems eminently sensible. This takes the form of a small plunger like applicator which leaves a round gel-like circle of material which adheres directly to the inside of the toilet itself! At a stroke the little plastic cage is redundant! So far the little cake of gel has lasted one day and for the bulk of that day I haven’t been here. I wait to be convinced that this is not yet another way of extracting a lot of money from my pocket for showy innovation. If nothing else it seems to follow the dictum that less is more!

I have now worn all the ties that I was given for United Nations Day (with the exception of the one that I thought at first glance was covered in cartoon ghosts but later realized was actually covered in depictions of condoms) and the kids are still bemused by the effortless succession of neckwear that I can produce. In Cardiff I utilized two large drawers in my grandparents’ commodious wardrobe so that each tie was taken from one, worn and then placed in the other. The system is a little more complicated in Castelldefels but the new system is almost in place to ensure that, with the exception of the Munch tie for the beginning of each term, there is no repetition during a school year.

I had a wholesale cull of ties before I moved and the more repulsive and dated examples of neck adornment were consigned to the bins. I am therefore not entirely sure that I have sufficient ties to last the year as I seem to remember that even with the full collection I was reduced to wearing my prefect’s tie (a tasteful black with small dragons) my house tie (a not so tasteful pink, black and silver creation) and my Caterpillar tie which was covered with small embroidered with small bulldozers! The latter did indeed draw incredulous comments from my colleagues so one can only speculate what it will provoke from the children in our school.

Tomorrow I shall wear a more conservative tie given to me by people who I will be with tomorrow evening for the name day of everyone called Carlos or Carles. I will be going straight from school and have taken advice about how to get to Terrassa from the different starting point of the school. As we are situated in northern Barcelona I should, in theory, be twenty minutes nearer to Terrassa than starting from Castelldefels. This logical assumption does not necessarily follow when my sense of direction and the layout of Spanish roads are taken into account. My attempts to take unauthorized short cuts have, in the past seen me motor my way in ever increasing circles until I hit something I know and then I am able to re-orientate myself and scurry along a known path, keeping to myself the peregrinations that I have made to get there. At least the presents are safely in the back of the car already so I cannot forget them.

This weekend I am going to start the Larsson books and my latest missive from Amazon has offered me a half price copy of the third volume that I am missing. The fates, it seems are conspiring to ensure that my reading pleasure is complete.

Roll on the weekend.

To shop is to live

The morning is just opening up. There are livid golden rifts in the clouds and dusty rays of light are illuminating the pink and purple haze which covers the city. The sky is growing to its deep azure and only the gentlest of breezes is moving the topmost branches of the surrounding trees.

And I really don’t want to be here.

For reasons which are never clear to me I was fairly late getting into the car. I do the same things in the same order each morning but the time it takes me to do these things mysteriously changes for unaccountable reasons.

I drove to school in a state of controlled fury and each idiot incursion into my lane as I was carved up by inexpert motoring butchers only increased my burning cold contempt.

I am working my way towards a response to my second pay slip as a person on a permanent contract. I haven’t had it yet, but if it is anything like my last then I will, in the words that are thrown at all politicians nowadays, “have to consider my position.” From my last pay packet I worked out that I was getting paid something under €9 for each teaching ‘opportunity’ that I had in school. For that sort of money I think that I would prefer to dip into what remains of my crisis ravaged savings than increase the profits of an institution which charges its pupils something like €800 a month for the privilege of attending the classes.

The sun has now broken out from the layer of cloud and is bathing me in its refulgent glory. And of course lessening my world weariness and money orientated gloom.

The sun has now gone in and my resentment has returned! God knows what I am going to be like by the end of the day!

We have another case of Gripe A and I really think that I should find out what the key number of cases is at which point an institution should close. My suggestion of “1” has been greeted with sympathy by my colleagues but bureaucratic silence. Such is life!

The staff room has just been visited by a man whom I have never seen before; it turns out that he is a past deputy head who has now retired. He greeted the science teacher who was constructing an examination paper and then presented her with a paperback book, the cover of which was taken up with a cross section of the trunk of a tree. The book was something which had had privately published and it consists of a series of headed thoughts, notes, quotations and oddities which he has culled from his reading over the years. I suppose in English we would call it a ‘Commonplace Book’ – the sort of thing that John Julius Norwich produces ever year at Christmastime.

My grandmother kept one. She was an omnivorous reader and I am sure that some of my addiction stems directly from her. I have a blue covered horizontal notebook which she used to dash down some of the interesting things she read. I have tried to follow in her footsteps but indolence or being lost in the narrative that I am reading usually means that I do not try too hard to find a pencil to mark the passages that intrigue me and then I am far too eager to start the next book to try and find them again in the one that I have just finished.

The deputy head’s book which I have only dipped into seems like a model which is worth following and perhaps I should make a New Year’s Resolution in November (it must be a new year somewhere in the world) and resolve to make an effort to keep my own Commonplace Book.

To be fair to me I have tried to regularize the snapping up of unconsidered trifles by the purchase of a photograph album into which I have stuck those items from newspapers etc which have caught my attention. All I have to do is write out what makes me pause and there is a commonplace book all waiting for a publisher to snap it up!

Yet another aspect of life with which school and the mundane efforts to earn a living interfere!

A visit to El corte ingles after school (a completely bloody day) and the presents for Carles and Carlos are now bought: a Toyota car which explodes into some sort of mechanical monster for the former and the third volume of the Millennium series for the latter. I have the first two volumes of this trilogy myself and am looking for a paperback version of the third, so it was ironic to buy it for Carlos. The gentleman who sold me the book in El corte ingles was the sort of reason I go there: suited, urbane and obsequious just this side of fawning – a delight and he spoke the sort of Spanish that I can understand.

He didn’t have the volume I wanted in English and therefore tried to palm off the latest novel by Dan Brown on me which was. His enthusiasm rapidly modified itself into gentle contemptuous rejection when he gauged my reaction. I was trying to say that whatever its literary merit, The Da Vinci Code was a compulsive page turner – but as neither ‘compulsive’ nor ‘page’ nor ‘turner’ leaped into my conversational Spanish range my qualified praise for Dan Brown must have slipped beneath his linguistic radar.

I have cooked myself a form of stew with various interesting ingredients and I judge that it should now be about ready to be sampled.

Wish me luck.

It's what I do

Sunday afternoon: lying out on the third floor balcony in a pair of shorts soaking up the sun and listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme on Len Deighton via my Davies Donation wi-fi headphones. A perfect November (!) day.

I felt that such a languid approach to the afternoon was more than justified after the completion of various tasks in the morning.

There is surely nothing more satisfying than seeing the tick beside some of those irritating jobs that are only usually seen off during the first days of an extended holiday. Perhaps it was the lack of a half term break which is now showing itself in a half hearted attempt to persuade me that a weekend is almost as good as seven clear days of non teaching! Some hope!

So, armed with a small paint brush I finally touched up those smudges, scuff marks and smears that moving in to a new house produces with some frequency and in the most obviously visible places. In spite of the fact that as far as paint is concerned white is not white, the different shade of whiteness is certainly less obvious than the unsightly marks which are now more or less covered. I fear that close scrutiny will reveal the patchwork approach to the masking attempts but I am sure that everyone will be far too polite to mention anything. Far too polite.

There is something to be said for every wall and ceiling in our house being painted white: you don’t have to worry too much about the matching of some long forgotten shade of ‘Mystic Magnolia’ made only by Dulux in Aberdeen in 1997. The white you have bought may not be the white on the wall, but it’s certainly a damn sight closer a match than you’re likely to get with the shades of any other ‘colour.’

Not satisfied with this mammoth wall painting task (comparisons with Michelangelo came readily to mind) I also managed another task. I am not one to discard with any degree of complacency any gadget or gadget-like device. The pleasure of finding a pull-out computer keyboard attached to the underside of the desk was limited by the fact that it got in the way of my knees when I sat down. It actually took me a few months to realize that it had to go. It then took more months to get to the point where the screwdriver actually fitted into the Philips shaped hole in the screw: that point was reached today.

No wonder I needed the horizontal rest after so much activity!

The excitement for tomorrow will be to see how many of our charges have succumbed to the flu or The Flu.

I wonder if there is a limit to how far our penny-pinching educational establishment will collapse classes?

Lazy weekend?

A two hour lie-in this morning meant that I got up at half past eight. That is something to think about!

I am glad to say that I frittered away the time that I gained and finished off reading ‘Rules of the Road’ by Joan Bauer. This is a book that a purloined from a colleagues cupboard in school as she has amassed a class library of enticing titles to encourage her special English class to take an interest in literature and read a book by themselves. I have read a few of the volumes and I was picking about among the remnants to find something that I could take with me to the ‘sailing’ that our school does and where I am the ‘other’ teacher on alternate Thursday afternoons.

The cover, with its pink Cadillac and strap line of “A girl. A Car. A trip. A revelation . . .” was not particularly encouraging, but the pastel picture gave little indication of the muscularity of the writing.

Yes, this was a feel good book with a number of stock characters: girl from broken home with alcoholic dad and demanding younger sister, grandmother with Alzheimer’s and mother working as a Casualty nurse – just for starters! Add to that an unnatural (but fascinating) interest in selling shoes and big business chicanery with ancient founder of a shoe empire being sidelined by unworthy son and you really do have the ingredients for an interesting novel.

The girl heroine was satisfyingly sassy and there was just enough self conscious irony to make the whole thing believable. Well, probably not, come to think of it but who cares. A good read.

I have also read “Unseen Academicals” by Terry Pratchett. I simply couldn’t resist. I have spent the day drifting to the novel and back again in the spaciousness that comes with Toni being safely in Terrassa watching the dramatic cavorting of his nephews as they celebrate Al Souls Night (or afternoon in their case) and my refusal to go to a party this evening.

The only occasion on which I have left the house was to get some pollo a last from the restaurant on the motorway. I look on this weekend as a period of recovery from the week in school which has been made more difficult by the number of absences from kids and staff as the autumn period of illness strikes. We have collapsed classes and lost free periods and things have been unacceptably stressful as our place never considers hiring a supply teacher to take some of the strain.

It will be interesting to see what happens if the teacher illness rate rises. I think that there is a limit to what I am prepared to do for an institution which acts so nicely but pays so disgracefully!

Talking of disgrace, I had a strange conversation with a colleague about unions. He tells me that there are more union members than I would think in the place but that nothing much has been done to provide a focus for activity. He had been asked to consider becoming union rep. but he didn’t have the time to give as he was part time in the school. There are things that need to be addressed: facilities for members of staff: curriculum: timetable: supply – but there is not forum for discussion in the place. Meetings yes, but real discussion about things that matter no.

As term stretches on and seems to peter out in the far reaches of December, I am less and less likely to want to continue working in the place after United Nations Day in 2010. Perhaps this is just the end of October speaking, but I suspect not!

The Terry Pratchett book was a Terry Pratchett book. I found myself even becoming slightly annoyed by the smug predictability of the arch humour that characterizes his writing. His surrealistic approach to plot and his bizarre collection of freaks that people his narrative were annoying rather than amusing.

And then I settled into the comfortable rhythm of Pratchett’s style and I was captivated once again. Unbelievably “Unseen Academicals” is his 37th novel in the Discworld® Series (thus it is written in the inside covers of the book) and perhaps that ® show just how valuable the franchise has become.

This novel is about the Unseen University having to found a foot-the-ball team and play a match in order to retain money from a bequest which ensures the pointy hats (wizards) of Ankh-Morpork will continue to get their “one hundred and seven types of cheese, and more than seventy different varieties of pickles, chutneys and other tacklements” as the normal end to one of their traditional meals!

The story is quite up to his usual standard and the use of football as the motivating force gives some added humour. But this is one for people who already know Discworld® and are comfortable in its many insanities rather than for an unsuspecting reader coming to this strange world for the first time.

I have done none of those little jobs which look so good as you tick them off on a little list.

The one thing that I must manage is to get my phone working. My new phone with the touch screen which a child in school catching a glimpse of immediately said, “Oh, Juan in 3ESO has the next model up from that one.” Sometimes the thought of the Black Death singling out selected pupils is simply not enough! It does work and I have even discovered (by accident) the qwerty keyboard for making text messages just that little bit easier to send – and also allowing me, effortlessly, to add capital letters and apostrophes! I can’t get my computer to recognize it and thereby download pictures and music. It (and my computer) is supposed to have Bluetooth and I always assumed that they would find each other out merely by being on, but such simplistic views do not encourage electronic communication.

I’ll have to ask the kids!

It's all a game!

Today I weakened and took ‘The Final Empire’ into school with me and read it before the start of lessons, at lunchtime and in the free period that I lost.

That makes two free periods that I have lost this week. This in a week in which the English Department (against my better judgement) decided to collapse classes to cover the absence of the head of English rather than find that rarer-than-a-hen’s-tooth character in private schools in Spain: a supply teacher.

Assurances that we would not be used for cover have, of course, naturally been ignored. Sincere expressions of regret by management cut no bloody ice with me when my free time is being encroached on. What does it take to motivate this pleasant group of professionals to behave in a professional way? That was indeed a rhetorical question as I know from past experience the simple, human answer to this question. Everything takes time. And part of that time is going to be taken up with my contacting my union representative to discuss some of the ludicrous working practices that my school adopts to save money at professional expense.

When does my probationary period run out I wonder!

The book (all 650 pages of it) has been read and thoroughly enjoyed. The structure is complex without being demanding and the elements of the story are familiar, yet pleasingly arranged.

Brandon Sanderson, the author has been described as “the natural successor to Robert Jordan.” Who he? There is obviously a fantasy world of which we dabblers in the other fringes of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Harry Potter’ know little. The book is the first part of a trilogy and I shall look out for the other volumes.

I think I shall now move on to the first of the Larsson trilogy and save up the Terry Pratchett for a thoroughly self-indulgent wallow later.

Real Madrid were defeated 4-0 in a Copa del Rey match against a second division team last night. You can imagine the whoops of delight that emanated from the sofa as a rabid Barça fan squinted at the poor computer picture which was his only access to the game. This continued in school today where the Australian Humanities teacher who supports Madrid came in for a quantity of good humoured ribbing. Except there is no such thing as ‘good humoured ribbing’ when it comes to football in Spain! Support for your chosen football team is something deep and atavistic and my dilettante amusement about how seriously everyone takes it is condemned on all sides. Delicious!

So, it’s a choice between soul destroying marking and the first volume in the Larsson trilogy.

Choices! Choices!

Books are back!

I walked out of the meeting at the stated end time.

This was yet another revolutionary action taken by me in this strange school. My other anarchic actions include taking a chair out into the playground when I was on duty so that I could sit down and watch the kids rather than standing for an hour and taking time off in lieu. This marks me out as a dangerous radical seeking to destroy the foundations of educational society!

For some reason, not entirely clear to me, I have the keys for the entire school; a bunch of jangling metal that Joseph Marley would not have rejected to add to his burden of chains. I feel more than slightly Dickensian when I withdraw the gleaming mass of what looks like copulating keys from my briefcase.

I still have not calmed down from losing a free period yesterday after we spent last week planning (why oh why) how we could cover the head of English as she went off on her jolly to Canada. A few plaintive bleats for consideration as far as free periods were concerned were made in the meeting and we were assured that representations would be made, but that all planning might go out of the window is anyone was absent. And someone was absent. And all planning went out of the window.

It is situations like this that make all the union bones in my body ache. This school runs (as indeed do all schools) on the goodwill of the staff. This school more than most. There is no attempt, none whatsoever, to find supply teachers. My appearance last year must have been like a bolt from the blue when I came in to replace a teacher, but by the time I arrived the staff situation was rapidly reaching critical mass and Something Had To Be Done. It is not sufficient for a school to react when there is a slowly cooking disaster in course it should react when there is a perfectly ordinary situation which requires a supply teacher to take over the day to day teaching that needs to be done.

This school needs a union and it needs to be taken by the scruff of the neck and told that teachers are people too and should be considered professionals. The real trouble is that the school would probably say that they look after their teachers well, because people are nice and polite and colleagues always look after each other. But the pay is, to put it mildly, crap. The time table is a joke with a school day extending from 8.15 am to 4.45 pm. It is hardly surprising that in such a long day every teacher has at least one free period a day. Different groups of kids have different weeks with half days appearing in a bewildering sequence for different years. But the teachers’ day is the same. Not all teach more than one 8.15 start but a long day gives the timetabling staff a lot of spaces to play with.

I have now calmed down a little because the day has at last ended and home life has begun!

We went out to Castelldefels town to buy ONCE tickets and have a drink. This was soon augmented by snacks which in my case were tapa of patatas bravas and an extraordinary risotto with ceps and covered with a thick dusting of cheese. It was truly delicious and altogether an unexpected pleasure to find something so fine in an ordinary little bar in the centre of town!

I am at present reading one of the books which I was given to celebrate United Nations Day, ‘The Final Empire’ by Brandon Sanderson. I am just under half way through and it has been a positive delight to count up the clichés which abound in the book.

There is the Map at the front of the book with such places as the Canton of Orthodoxy Headquarters and Lake Luthadel with characters like Reen and Kelsier.

We have been introduced to the innocuous girl who has exceptional powers who is being helped by the man who survived the worst tortures of the Dark Lord. There are religions galore and Steel Inquisitors – and I love it all!

There is something very comforting in feeling yourself in a safe pair of writing hands and it is a good game when you can start counting up the literary influences as each new ‘twist’ to the plot is revealed! Again I want to emphasise how much I am enjoying the book; I actually left it at home today because I knew that I would be tempted to read it at inappropriate times if I took it to school.

Not only my enjoyment but also the realization that I have a Terry Pratchett (‘Unseen Academicals’) waiting for me is encouraging me to read with a certain amount of dispatch! Then there are the Larsson books and the volumes that the school purchased to coincide with the visit of the writer all waiting for me too.

Roll on the weekend.

The Dreadful Day!

In the true scheme of things, I should now be luxuriating in the knowledge that today was the first day of a week long holiday. Ah! Cruel fate that I should find myself a job in the vaccationless wastes of October, November and most of December that is the school term in Catalonia.

As my British friends fly back to a well earned holiday (or in Paul’s case drooling over the ways in which he is going to spend the king’s ransom that he will be paid in January) I have found myself back in school.

Not only back in school, but also losing the first free period that I had in the week and facing the prospect of the collapsed classes and re-jigged timetables that was the English Department’s response to the head of department having an absence of more than three days known in advance.

Years of union activism seem to have been lost in the fluffy, candyfloss way of thinking that my colleagues have about how to deal with professional situations in the working environment.

My bitterness is exacerbated by the knowledge that we are going to be subjected (are subjecting ourselves?) to the excruciatingly boring pointlessness of a Giant Meeting conducted in a mixture of Catalan and Castilliano which, even if I could understand the languages with ease and fluency would still be soul-destroyingly vapid. A system has been instigated to expedite the process of discussion of individual pupils, but I know, with the same certainty that comes when you check your lottery ticket, that nothing will change and there will be nothing to lighten the load.

The meeting (O God, I can barely contemplate it with anything other than infinite horror!) is scheduled to end or die or implode into an educational black hole at 7.30 pm. I am debating whether or not to walk out at this time pleading an Old War Wound or claiming the Fifth Amendment or citing the UN charter on torture.

Whatever happens this is going to be a long, long day and I am ready to lie down NOW! And it isn’t even lunch time yet.

There is no god.

Now it starts!

First things first: the dearth of cards has been addressed by witty effusions from Ceri and Dianne, the Pauls, Louise and Hadyn. So that’s all right.

Presents have showered themselves into my unresisting hands and I have delighted in the books, ties and perfumes that have come my way. Not to mention the grant aid to purchase a new (and much less shaming) mobile phone from Toni.

All of this happened after the journey to Reus and the belated return to Castelldefels and the eventual meal to celebrate United Nations Day.

A Terry Pratchett novel; a fantasy novel; ties too numerous to enumerate; clothing and the latest Nordic novel sequence together with a reversible belt added themselves to the accumulated loot of this more than satisfactory day.

The planning now starts for the momentous birthday which will take place on United Nations Day 2010. Be warned I look forward to a representative selection of acquaintances from the last six decades to join me in Castelldefels for the celebrations which are one would consider appropriate on the occasion on my putative collection of my bus pass!

365 days to think of excuses!