At least I'm not up to my neck!

Today I checked the other cars: a paucity of poo! It therefore follows that the pigeons are being deliberately spiteful. Perhaps it is something about the particular shade of blue in which my car is painted that attracts their deposits, or perhaps it is a race memory of some real or imagined wrong inflicted on the feathered tribe at some time in the past. I cannot be the only human to refer to pigeons as “flying rats!”

Once again I ply my way to school with the anal accretions of (surely) more than one bird. I have actually taken some steps towards coping with this daily assault and have filled a five litre water bottle with tap water ready to be taken to the car so that the most objectionable filth can be washed away before the trying journey on the motorways. The bottle however, remains firmly at the top of the stairs and seems glued to the floor and has not made the simple journey to the boot of my vehicle.

I cannot really be expected to remember such trivia when the possible purchase of a new camera is taking up virtually every waking moment! I have now reached the point of comparing prices in the UK and Spain which surely must mean that some sort of financial decision is at hand. I think that I will call into Alcampo and a sort of displacement activity pseudo shopping around sort of way to give the spurious justification that is all I need to spend money which I do not really possess! Then I can call in Gavá and go back to MediaMarkt and wallow in the sheer gadget heaven which is that wonderful institution!

Toni is, at present, deeply immersed in his own gadget as he researches the capabilities of the Wii that he has taken to like a duck to water. The programs and games for this machine seem to be of immense cost and I have yet to be truly impressed by the quality of the graphics of these games. I am sure that Toni will find something to impress and then I will be ritually humiliated as I demonstrate my seemingly endless capacity for ineptitude when it comes to “playing” with the computer.

I tend to think that this shows an innate Puritanism in my nature and I consider the computer to be a machine for working on (if I may paraphrase Le Corbusier’s dictum) and the playing of games on it seems unnecessarily frivolous. I still remember with something approaching panic the fiasco of the settlements that I created using early versions of Sims when comparing them with the mighty cities with extraordinary edifices that Paul Squared managed to build. I don’t think I ever managed to establish a working water supply to any of my places and traffic always had a marked reluctance to use any of the roads that I laid out!

The fact that I have been beaten in Wii basketball by a two year old is a hurt which will take a considerable time to heal! I know that sooner or later a version of FIFA Football will be inflicted on me. The complexity of that game means that poor old Wales in my inexpert hands is going to be devastated when the Spanish team beats them by a margin which will go down in the annals of football humiliation!

I have however noticed that there is a Wii version of Trivial Pursuit which might be a way to salvage something from the wreckage of my attempts to get to terms with the activities of the young and technological!

It is another fine day with the sun shining brightly in a slightly hazy sky. I am trying to think of a reason to sit outside and allow the sun to soak into my skin. I know from past experience that taking marking out into the heat of the middle of the day is mere window dressing as I turn my face in mute adoration towards my favourite star. The only action on the marking front is to allow the edges of the kids’ papers to curl slightly at the edges!

And, come to think of it, why do I need some spurious reason? It is enough that I want to. Which also goes for the camera!

Dangerous reasoning!

Life is worth living!

Another glorious day!

Some might say that because of the victory of Barça in the league last night, but for me, as always, it is connected with the weather. This winter has reawakened all my latent phobias about rain and cloudy days so I regard each dawning day which shows the sun peeking above the horizon much as Saint Augustine regarded his son Adeodatus!

The Family arrived yesterday and stayed to watch the game. Watch was not the easiest thing to do as the match was (shamefully) not broadcast on terrestrial television. Instead we had to make do with a poor computer feed from god knows where and another of the party listening to the match on a radio through headphones.

This meant that from time to time there was an unearthly scream from the radio listener which was soon followed by general delight from the computer watchers as they figured out what was happening from the execrable quality picture at which they were gazing. From time to time the computer feed broke so there was general hysteria until it was restored.

The eventual result in Camp Nou was, as it turned out, irrelevant, as Real Madrid only managed a draw against Malaga and they had to win to stand any chance at all of the Championship.

The result was most satisfactory and a ready chilled bottle of Cava was opened and drunk with, even more satisfactorily the majority of that sparkling liquid going down my throat as the Catalans did what they usually do after a few sips – stop drinking!

There were the usual explosions around us as rockets and fireworks were let off and then the party settled down to watch the festivities in the stadium as each member of the team delivered a few words including, this time, a sober Messi!

It says something for the quality of both of the top two teams that the final position in the league was only decided on the last game of the season. Obviously, from my selfish point of view, the right team won, but both have played superb football during the season. Though don’t tell any Barça fan that I said so!

The equivalent of our second year sixth has now gone and the extra frees that their departure give are wonderfully welcome. This is particularly shown during the examination season which (as I may have mentioned before) seems to extend seamlessly from the beginning of the year right through to the end of it. If the next examinations which are only a couple of weeks away (as they are always) follow the pattern of the last ones then we will have our exams, collect in the papers and then suddenly be informed that all the results for all of the examinations will have to be entered on the computer system by the next day. There will be the usual tense panic and then we will gear up for the next onslaught.

The weather is cruelly tempting with bright sunlight bouncing off surfaces and sending tendrils of heat into the staff room urging us to ignore all the academic work and frolic outside. It is only by a considerable effort of will that I remain at my post!

Yesterday I read a PD James novel “An unsuitable job for a woman.” This is an excellent read and concerns the first case of Cordelia Gray after the death of her partner in the business of private investigation. James’s most famous creation Dalgliesh only appears as a point of reference in the action of the novel, a fount of sayings that Cordelia’s partner Bernie came out with, and only appears in person at the end of the novel.

This was a more than professional story with interest and intrigue all along the way. The characters were rounded enough for one to care and the central detective was interestingly presented.

It says much for the speed of technology that although the novel was published in 1972 it reads almost as an historical period piece – so much of what we take for granted in the technological landscape has become common only in the eighties and beyond! Whatever, I thoroughly recommend the novel, especially as a beach read for the summer.

The old longing for a new camera is come upon me again. I thought that I had banished such longings but, alas, I feel the tug of gadget acquisition beginning to exert its mesmeric influence. The machine that I am hankering after is a Canon sureshot SX210SI – or something. I do not want to get too specific about its designation because that is a step nearer to its purchase! I am tempted by the x14 optical zoom and the 14.1 megapixels and the fact that the whole camera will fit in a pocket with ease. The only problem, of course, is the price!

As always!

It's in the air!

Even if the yellow film of what I took to airborne powdered sand turns out not to be what I thought but some form of pollen – it proves nothing. After all I noticed this powdery deposit days ago and there were not any of the effects that I had this lunchtime.

Swollen eyes and plentiful tears! A typical allergic reaction – though as I was sitting by the side of the sea, one does wonder quite what I could have been so instantly allergic to.

For reasons best left unsaid we went to town and after our initial intentions had been frustrated by bureaucracy we found ourselves outside a book shop. Needless to say I was the only one who went in and, to my delight, I found a cut price book on the Catalan painter Isidre Nonell (1873-1911) who is probably best known for his atmospheric and bold paintings of gypsies.

The book is interesting giving more background information that I have had previously and also provides reproductions of his drawings. I was particularly struck by a double page spread of a painting called La Chata (1906) which shows the head and shoulders of a gypsy woman lying on a piece of furniture. It is a dark and brooding picture with very free brushwork in such an expressionistic style that at normal arm’s length the pictured appears abstract. I was so impressed with this picture that I looked at the back to find out where it was. It was in a gallery where I must have seen it a few times before: the Gallery of the Abbey of Montserrat.

I have the Josep C. Laplana book of the collection in Montserrat and I looked up La Chata. In this book the picture is much, much lighter, the reproduction is smaller and the abstract quality seems to have evaporated into what appears to be a fairly ordinary painting!

Other reproductions in the book which I have just bought are all darker than the reproductions in the Montserrat volume. A deep, dark red dress in one book becomes an orange dress in the other. And I can’t remember which one is more accurate!

I suppose that those people who are interested in art are usually more familiar with reproductions than the actual work of art on the walls of galleries. Much of my, no, the vast majority of my knowledge of art is based on reproductions of doubtful accuracy. I remember once getting together all the reproductions that I had in various books of a painting by Turner of a ship in a storm. The variety of colours in these pictures that purported to be accurate reproductions of the same painting were astonishing in their variety. Even in so-called quality art books the variation is bewildering.

But why stop at colour? Reproductions may be of part of a much larger piece, as for example in winged altarpieces where a single panel may achieve a quite different value when seen in isolation rather than as part of an entire altar backdrop. Size is often indicated but, if I’m truthful, rarely read, so three or four paintings which are presented as the same size on the page can often be widely different. Part of a fresco may be presented as a single coherent painting; paintings on curved surfaces may be presented as flat. Perhaps, as always it is a case of “let the reader beware!”

No matter how flawed, I gain an immense amount of pleasure from looking at paintings not only in books but also in galleries when I find out that some of my firmly held beliefs about individual paintings are tested by the reality of looking at the canvases or panels when they are actually in front of me.

Vive la différence!

I'm wet enough already!

Friday 14th May 2010

Roll of thunder, hear my cry!

The day has dawned (if you can call it that) with thunder and lightning and torrential rain. I must bear in mind that I did have the opportunity when I arrived in Castelldefels after escaping the rain in Barcelona yesterday evening, to lie out on the Third Floor listening all the while to the latest manoeuvring of our coalition government.

The confusion surrounding the 5% extra majority that it will take of dissolution of parliament was wrongly reported as the margin needed for a successful vote of no confidence. Outraged armour proper was paraded by disgruntled politicians on the radio waves until a prosaic correspondent explained what the 5% actually meant. I can see that this is protection for the Lib-Dems to try and stop the Conservatives calling an election without any reference to their coalition partners. This may be convenient for them but it does not fit in with the workings of parliament. They seem to think that as a coalition they can dispense with the niceties of ordinary parliamentary procedure on the basis that two parties are working together! I think that this attitude is going to be a fruitful source of outrage!

The 5% (how that figure seems to haunt the present government) cut that ministers took in their wages as almost the first decision that they made, reflects what has been done in Spain. The government here has announced a 5% cut in the salary of civil servants and a pay freeze for next year. VAT has been increased by 2% and we can only hope that this is seen by the money markets as a real effort to make some dent in the truly horrific budget deficit that Spain has run up as a result of their delirious Spend! Spend! Spend! response when they found themselves suddenly possessing a very hard currency!

Saturday 15th May 2010

I finally got up today after some thirteen or fourteen hours of sleep: never let it be said that teaching doesn’t take it out of you.

No sooner had I risen than the telephone rang and I recognized the voice of my Turkish friend Kerem. We have known each other for over 23 years and we seem to meet irregularly so we have a lot to catch up on.

Find the hotel where he and his girlfriend we staying was not easy as my GPS seems to regard any road laid in the last decade as something unrecognizable and strange and She Who Must Be Obeyed starts rapping out “Recalculating!” with ever increasing rapidity and you, the driver, start to think that you might just resort to the old and tried method of finding strange places by simply asking a passer-by!

Even when after a number of exploratory twists and turns the Voice said “Arriving at destination on right!” there was no clear indication of an hotel. Retracing my steps and squinting I did make out a bright blue prefabricated building and there they were!

A walk, a lunch and a chat later and they were both off to explore Barcelona further and take a chance on finding a good restaurant for dinner. As Kerem is trying to find a job back in Turkey from his present position in Chicago there is a chance that our next meeting may not be so long delayed!

There is nothing which is quite so delightful as sitting outside a café next to the sea with a cold beer, convivial company and a progression of people passing before you at whom, this being a Mediterranean country, you can stare!

Tomorrow promises to be fine therefore, please direct all communications to the Third Floor!

It's just one damned thing after another!

Wednesday 12th May 2010

There are few things more depressing than to get into your car just before the start of another day of toil and not to be able to see out of the passenger side window because of the gastric effusions of various forms of winged open sewers.

Not only was the window plastered, but also the side of the car. This was unpleasant enough but I don’t know what precisely it is, but something in the diet of these foul fowls ensures that their dense droppings combine the qualities of quick drying cement and instant glue.

The monstrous amount of effluent was not touched by the effete wet-wipe with which I tried to clear the daylight stopping mess from the window. I had to resort to a heavy duty abrasive wheel cleaning ‘glove’ to try and get rid of it. Even a ‘glove’ guaranteed to get rid of ingrained dirt and grease from filthy wheels was inadequate in coping with the chunky filth. I had to use neat window cleaner and even then it resisted.

This is no way to start a day – though as if to compensate the usual Monza ride along the freaked out motorways was a little more sedate today and it was only at the last underpass that the usual traffic jams claimed my patience!

Admittedly the confluence of traffic at the roundabout was even more extraordinary than usual but these are the minor horrors that we have as part of our normal existence in getting to this place.

Thursday 13th May 2010

The trip up to Terrassa for Toni’s mum’s birthday celebrations was on clear motorways. Their very clarity emphasized just how horrific they could have been with the slightest disruption. I think that when you are an experienced driver you become depressingly fatalistic and see every road as a possible route to heart failure brought on by galloping frustration. It is sometimes just as stressful to go along a clear road as it is to be caught in a traffic jam: the active mind creates scenarios as you go and you shudder with a sense of prescience as you imagine what could (and is) going to be!

As soon as I reached the flat it started raining which soon developed into healthily sized hail. And I had left my umbrella in the car.

The birthday was the “and this is my bus pass” sort of occasion and the said pass was duly looked at and commented on. The photograph showed a somewhat startled mother as the information that a photograph was necessary for the production of the pass was almost immediately followed by a flash for the said image!

Toni has now returned and brought with him his birthday present of a Wii console. My greatest score in the basketball game (in which two year olds score comfortably towards double figures) was 1. This was an infinite improvement on my first attempt! I was told that the flick of my wrist was not expressive enough! I foresee hours of misery ahead as I try to emulate the gaming achievement of people a fraction of my age!

Kerem, my Turkish friend from my first visit to Turkey a considerable number of years ago, is about to visit Barcelona and I am looking forward to seeing him again. The last time we met was when he brought his wife (now history) to see me in Cardiff! A long time ago indeed!

I have recently undergone a Saint Anthony type temptation. I don’t think that we are told the exact type or form of temptation that the Saint had to undergo but painters through the ages have taken it to be an excuse for the painting of scantily clad ladies frolicking in the near vicinity of the stoical Saint who in most paintings is studiously ignoring their lascivious looks. Being made of much sterner stuff than your average lion loving desert haunting saint, I might, in similar circumstances, be able to turn aside from glistening bodies of writhing flesh, but might be unable to resist glistening bodies cast in the guise of gadgets!

Amazon, which keeps sending me e-mails in the manner of a modern day tempter spreading the riches of the world at my feet, has caught on to the fact that I have “a bit of a thing” with watches and cameras (not to mention computers) and it regularly deluges me with blandishments which include suggestive photographs of various type of machines all presented in alluring colour and with “one click ordering” only one convulsive movement away from being mine!

The latest sinful offering was a Canon camera with a large optical zoom and a more domestic price. I cannot, under any circumstances that I can reasonably bring to mind, justify buying another camera. I already have one or two (and possibly more) which quite adequately almost fill my needs. A bigger zoom would be indulgence of the purest form.

In a desperate attempt to limit my pointless expenditure I searched on the internet for information about the camera. The more information I acquired the more delightfully necessary it seemed to have it in my possession.

Then, suddenly, I noted a small discrepancy. I had been looking at the Canon SX200 but the reviews I was looking at were of the SX200SI. Further exploration showed that what Amazon was offering was an older model and that it had been superseded by the SX2010 which offered a greater zoom and more pixels. There was also the fact of a cashback offer from Canon of £30 which would bring it to within . . .

And the crisis passed.

Why is it that a desirable object with “must have” written all over it suddenly becomes tawdry and offensive when another and better product at only a little more suddenly hoves into view? And why do you not buy the better product? Because, suddenly, I want neither. Calm and financial sanity has been restored.

I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed not buying a new camera – probably got more pleasure (in the short term) than I would have managed to obtain from owning the actual object. Possibly.

The hail of yesterday in Terrassa has progressed today into sunny intervals with light rain and occasional cloud. The showers appear to be localized and if we have rain, it is warm rain at least!

Give me the sun!

Another day when it is a crying shame to be teaching indoors and not lazing about on the Third Floor.

But that is what teaching is, a constant series of opportunities lost while mouthing platitudes to the unresponsive. Away with it all!

In a major effort in which brain cells died right, left and centre I managed to get almost up to date with my marking. “Almost” is the nearest you ever get in this place where there is always something waiting to be marked, as odd papers from odder pupils appear and then disappear made heavier by the weight of red pen laid down on the language which has only a tangential relationship with English as she is spoke.

For some reason which doesn’t immediately suggest itself to me the driving as I was coming to work this morning was more than usually aggressive. By the time you actually arrive at the turn off on the motorway for the road which eventually gets you to the school you are sullenly shell-shocked and then almost immediately you find yourself in the approach road out of the tunnel leading to the roundabout. Up to five lanes of traffic attempt to get into two lanes while one or two other lanes are there for yet other streams of traffic to go straight on.

It is, as you can imagine absolute, unutterable chaos. People do not indicate as they try to change lanes they insinuate their way into your lane. If you driving a four-by-four then insinuation is not really their nature. People look straight forward and drive as if there was nothing in their way. I, of course, keep to the rules of the road and am constantly appalled by the sheer bloody-mindedness of my fellow road users.

There are “two” lanes around the roundabout: the inside one to go towards the centre of Barcelona and the other to go up the hill to my school. The norm is for the car on my left to carve me up and to add insult to injury by then turning right rather than going straight on. Over the months I have come to expect this discourtesy and I no longer scream with rage. This morning I barely tutted as cars around me attempted to create four lanes out of the two that actually existed. Added to all this you have to factor in the buses which ferry our privileged students to their places of learning, winding their way up steep gradients in streets which are almost comically too narrow for them.

It is hardly surprising that my morning cup of tea which I have as soon as I get into the staff room is sometimes accompanied by shaking hands and deep breathing!

One more lesson to go and even as I type clouds are fingering their way across the sky to ensure that by the time that I make my escape from this place the Third Floor will be in overcast dullness.

Shine on!

Everything has a price

In spite of the fact that I actually gained a free period I felt exhausted at the end of the day. The “gained” free was spent marking and the “gained” free was also busily generating more marking for me as it was (surprise, surprise) an examination. As we have just finished one set of examinations we are now building up to the next set. It’s what we do. We have to keep in mind that term ends for the pupils on the twenty-somethingth of June so we must be careful to ensure that we have to time to fit in yet another forest of wasted paper on which the kids can scribble.

Perhaps my world weary cynicism may be explained by the fact that the weather today has been glorious: I have been able to observe it through windows as I stayed indoors with the clients. The Third Floor was calling but I was constrained to stay indoors and teach unwilling children in Barcelona instead of soaking up the rays in Castelldefels.

Tiredness seems to be informing the attitudes of many of my colleagues and I think we are all ready to call it a day and settle down to the hard work of enjoying a couple of months holiday. It is just unfortunate that this attitude has come a month early! This term and this year seem to have dragged their way along and we all want to be shot of them.

However, this is not to be for some considerable time: there are some six weeks to go before we can rid ourselves of the kids and start preparing for the next year.

My mood is not lighted to find that The School That Sacked Me has appointed a woefully inadequate person as the headteacher. I was informed of this development in a socked mobile message from One Who Knows. It has galvanized us to take the next steps to getting something done about this travesty of an educational institution. We have to believe that doing the same thing again and again will eventually have some effect on the people whose job it is to have some control on these places!

The mosquitoes seem to be taking their first tentative sips of my fine vintage Group A rh positive, and given the amount of rain that we have had there are plenty of little pools of water in which their larvae can breed and flourish. Being ever hopeful I have bought a plug in high pitch sound maker which is supposed to be intolerable to the flying pests and inaudible to me. I think that one has to have faith and impenetrable skin for this to work properly.

I listen (via my very wonderful internet radio) to the Comic Opera posturing that is taking the place of authentic political activity in the UK. With Brown’s “statesman-like” statement of his intention to resign and the democratic impetus of the Lib-Dems forcing the hapless Clegg to open negotiations with Labour I can no longer take what is happening with any degree of seriousness.

Surely no one in their right minds would want to be in power to preside over the most Draconian austerity measures that will have to be implemented when the full extent of the economic crisis finally is accepted by the blinkered majority of the British population? Perhaps the lust for power blinds the politicians to the practical responsibilities that will come when they actually take power.

Let the Whitehall Farce continue, though I think that there should be a stage erected in Trafalgar Square and the politicians should be forced to make their entrances and exits on a stage which Brian Rix made famous. Then they could all come on through one door and hide in cupboards and exit stage right pursued by a bear!

I was reading in The Week that in Belgium (a country invented by the British to annoy the French) it took them nine months after the last election to agree a coalition. That should give us something to think about! We would soon be looking back on the interminable General Election Campaign as a sort of Golden Age!

Enough! I hope my temper will be better tomorrow!

The Important Things In Life

Tea stocks are perilously low and I am debating the exact logistics to help me decide whether or not to suffer our local supermarket on a Sunday morning.

The entire population of Castelldefels seems to pack itself into the nearest Carrefour and shop as if a super volcano had exploded and food for the next few years of global winter had to be collected. People pack their trolleys as if everything was free and meander round the store with evil intent as if they were all revived Boudicas with imaginary knives on the trolley wheels!

Then there is the waiting in the queue. I am now resigned to the fact that there will be people in front of me who should obviously have been strangled at birth. I know that when I go to the supermarket checkout there will be at least one if not more of the following idiots in the queue in front of me:

1 Slow un-packers
2 Slow packers
3 Parents who allow children to pack
4 Conversation makers
5 Clothes buyers (always a problem)
6 Price checkers
7 Goods exchangers
8 Out of date voucher givers
9 Credit card searchers
10 Exact money givers
11 General idiots.

I have often thought that a flame-thrower should be essential equipment for the discerning shopper!

Final preparations for the journey to Terrassa are now being made. Marking has been comprehensively ignored (I will, as tradition demands, worry about it later tonight) and put away. Now begins the Royal Hunt of the Power Lead for the camera.

Wish me luck!

Something for Nothing!

A small stage set up in a ludicrously picturesque courtyard with a backdrop composed of the rusticated stone of the Palau del Lloctinent was the setting for a free concert of ancient music this morning. This was one of a series set in three locations over two days. All free. This is part of the XXXIII Festival de Música Antiga de Barcelona.
We managed to do two concerts before lunch. The first was the Ensemble Estampes a trio which played music by Teleman, Marais and Rameau. The location was also a pedestrian thoroughfare so this incidental music was put to its right purpose as people wandered about and chatted as they went. It was still a delight, though there was a sense of unreality at the historical beauty of it all.

The second venue where the Trio Arethé played was, if anything, even more unreal set in the courtyard of the Pati Reial Académia de les Bones Lletres which looked like a Zefferelli set for Romeo and Juliet! The star of this trio was Juan Rodriguez who played the flauta de bec (superior recorder) as if he was possessed. Spurning a score he played round about a zillion notes in impossible sequences that were truly breathtaking. The music was of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and, not only did I thoroughly enjoy this programme but also I got just a tad browner as, unlike the natives, we sat in the sun!

Lunch was in a quick Wok type restaurant where your freshly made meal was served in one of those cardboard containers that one sees on American television series when the actors have a Chinese meal. Fresh, delicious and spicy – who could ask for more!

The Anatole France book of “Selected Stories” has now been read and I suspect that I have read this before; certainly I have read some of these before – the story “The Procurator of Judaea” is familiar and well anthologized. It is a pedestrian story only made memorable by the last line with its bitter irony. The rest of the stories were attempting an almost classic status as though they wanted to be instant parables, but I found them instantly forgettable. Perhaps in another fifteen years I will open the book again and wonder at the vague familiarity!

The weather, which today has been glorious, is set to return to its evil ways tomorrow and rain (a familiar phenomenon in this part of the world) we are told will fall. This means that the Celebration of the Three Birthdays will take place in Terrassa – to which I will have to take three chickens from our take-away as it is better than the one in Terrassa!

I have, of course, been listening to Radio 4 to find out what Machinations have been going on in the UK. I do not envy the Lib-Dems as they start their flirtation with the Conservatives in the expectation of voting reform and the future promise of real power. It is going to be impossible to wrap up their lust for government in high-sounding “what is good for the country” rhetoric and their alliance with the Conservative will result in their destruction. And rightly so.

Alternatively, any approach to Labour with Gordon Brown still in charge is equally fraught with danger for them. Soon the Labour Party will start its ritual disembowelment of everyone in sight as the traditional post-election-failure syndrome kicks in and in the flurry of indiscriminately wielded knives I am sure that party activists will not make any distinction between new-friend and foe as the blood begins to flow.

The talk of a Progressive Alliance of Labour, Lib-Dem, Plaid and the Scottish Nationalists, oh sorry, and the Green forming an almost-majority and trying to govern is straight out of a comic book – an adult horror slasher XXX rated comic book. Though I suppose it could be amusing to watch such a collection try and govern, as long as you don’t think about the realities of wages, incomes, pensions and investments and all the real things that keep people alive!

Talking of investments, I have been advised not to check on mine for a year or so if I want to keep the smile on my face. I have a feeling that the gains that I have made (taking my savings back to where they were three years ago) might well have been wiped out by the lack of confidence in just about everything that used to be regarded as a “safe and secure” way of looking after your money.

It is at times like this that I am told that I am lucky to have a job – though the only thing about my job that occupies my mind at the moment is the exact date for the start of the summer holidays!

And where is the summer?

Grab summer?

Learn, O my friends, from my experience. Let no-one tell you that a few random gleams of sunshine make a summer. Let no-one (lest of all yourself) encourage you to leap into an inviting outside pool thinking that the aforementioned shafts of light from our distant star will have warmed the water to any sort of acceptable level.

Suffice to say my entry into the icy depths of our pool was immediately followed by the expulsion of all oxygen from my lungs. It was like being punched all over the body by a you-sized and you-shaped pair of boxing gloves.

Did I immediately quit the gelid waters? Of course not! I am an experience swimmer in outdoor pools. Admittedly the one that I knew best was heated so that on a cold morning I would see wisps of steam rising encouragingly from the surface of the pool indicating to me (even with my limited grasp of science) that the water was warmer than the surrounding atmosphere.

Eventually the pain subsided and the stinging feeling of intense cold became merely uncomfortable and I even managed to swim and breathe at the same time. Eventually I became so accustomed to the cold (enough nerve endings had been destroyed) that I was even able to drape myself decorously over the submerged division between the main pool and the children’s pool as if it were the height of summer. It wasn’t and the, what shall I call it, “invigorating” effect of my brief submersion lasted for a considerable way into the evening.

By the time it came to going to bed the generally inclement weather had made it clear that the decision to jettison the duvet was premature!

Our poor weather is now becoming a national scandal and summer seems no nearer than it did weeks ago. By rights we should be enjoying the lowlands of the high temperatures that we can expect during summer, but this year has been a year of exceptions and we are getting restless!

Today is Election Day and I find myself being unable to come to a definite conclusion about what I want to happen in this election. Some things are, of course quite clear: the usual Conservative mutterings about the BBC and how its power and programming must be redirected are par for the course. Brown’s comments on immigration were depressing and the way that Clegg parades his wholesomeness reminds me of Coriolanus in the public square!

As we are an hour ahead of the UK, it means that the election results are going to be announced far too late for me to listen to them as the happen. I will have to go to bed and wake up to a different world!

At least Radio 4 is back on line after considerable technical manipulation to get it working. It is not just the turning on and off of equipment, it is the knowing when and how to do it that makes all the difference!

I have now finished reading “The Medusa Project - The Set Up” by Sophie McKenzie. This is a badly written pot boiler with a clunking plot and a ruthlessly rip-off central idea – that a scientist has created a gene which encourages the development of paranormal abilities in youngsters when they reach puberty.

At no point was I convinced by this book and the thought that there would be another four books each one narrated by one of the four teenagers with the Medusa gene in them was frankly depressing.

I read this book immediately after reading the Anthony Horowitz novel “Snakehead” and it merely emphasizes what a competent author Horowitz is.

Now for Anatole France’s stories. I know how to live!

Still dissolving!

Tuesday 4th May 2010
The delay in posting is because I actually left my computer in school plugged into the power! What an honest lot we all are! Still here!

The rain continues to pour down in completely unacceptable quantities and my mood sinks as well!

Driving on the motorways I am continually passed by people who obviously have not noticed that there is standing water and the danger of aquaplaning is high – and the motorcyclists behave as usual! It makes driving a breath-taking experience; though it does nothing for the general state of one’s nerves!

It has now been raining uninterruptedly for two days. I willed myself to see an almost imperceptible brightness over the hills that surround Barcelona while I was driving to school. I took this to be a positive sign that better weather was approaching, and I still believe this in spite of the newspaper promising me yet another day of rain. The only thing that we can look forward to is a day which is described as having heavy rain “showers” which does at least give one the hope that there might be some sort of intermission between the extended periods of dampness!

I have decided to throw a life time of shopping experience to the winds (or the rains) and buy all the birthday presents in El Corte Ingles and hope that they will not rip me off. The service in the store is so nice (that really is the only word that one can use) that it makes the high prices almost acceptable. Also, I have fooled myself enough to believe this, given the economic crisis that we are in it is more than likely that the prices in this prestigious store are keenly competitive and I will do no better elsewhere, even with extensive searching. I do honestly believe! Almost!

My teaching day is more than half way through though, given the reckless rain, it doesn’t feel like it – and I have run out of my tea bags in this building. It just keeps on getting worse.

Last night was a meal and a meeting to discuss The Dream and to discuss further attempts to alert the authorities to the full horror that is The School That Sacked Me. We are compiling a dossier to present to the authorities – and a sorry story of unprofessional viciousness it is. It seems totally astonishing to me that an institution so markedly unfit for purpose on oh-so-many levels should still be functioning after the regular annual catastrophe of the end of the school year when the staff that do not leave in disgust are winnowed out by the completely unthinking, uncaring management. But, year after year it goes on! Perhaps, as we say to our deluded selves, this year will make the difference.

Wednesday 5th May 2010
The first shreds of blue in the sky and an actual diminution in the precipitation from same. Although I would not describe the weather as good, it is certainly better than it has been for the last few days.

I feel very smug as all presents have been bought and all are packed. A general distribution will take place during the weekend which, given the number of people who could be involved, might take place in Castelldefels – though I have a sneaking suspicion that it won’t.

Last night I read an Anthony Horowitz book called “Snakehead” which is one of the Alex Ryder books. This teenage spy has now had six adventures and, although the technology and science are twenty-first century they are basically a Boys’ Own Paper old-fashioned adventure story. The print is big and the pages turn easily and you can see the film which could be made from it. Its level of believability is zero, but I suppose that is not the point of a book like this. Undemanding and enjoyable.

I have now Been Into The Pool twice – probably just as well that I went in over the weekend as there has been no opportunity since to have anything like a civilized swim in the lashing, torrential rain to which we have been subjected. If the weather is only half way decent I promise myself another immersion when I get home – this is, after all, my early finish.

I called into the supermarket on my way home last night and, as I was unpacking the goods, I saw my next door neighbour making her bizarre way towards her house.

She wasn’t really bizarre but the sight of her leading her crippled dog in its little chariot is a little more than strange. The creature has his back legs strapped to a wheeled platform and his back paws protected with tape as they drag somewhat on the ground as he trundles along. So, there is a woman leading a creation from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch with me trying studiously to ignore her as her menagerie of mutts infuriates me by its incessant production of howls, yelps, yaps, barks and other extraneous noises.

She however made her way resolutely towards me and introduced herself as my neighbour saying that she had seen me many times and was delighted to meet me face to face. She also said that if there was anything she could do, I would only have to ask. My first thought was “destroy your dogs!” but I wasn’t sure what form of “obliterate” I would have to use in Spanish to make my meaning clear. In fact I was disarmed by her approach and put out of my mind that I had rung her door phone the previous night to try and get her to shut up the mournful and demented yelp of one of her dogs. There was a light on in the upstairs bedroom but no one came to answer the door.

Now, after this personal contact, I feel that my justified ire about her baying hounds has, in some way been compromised. Damn human politeness to hell! Which is also where I would like to see the dogs consigned!

I am now running out of the books which I acquired as a result of the Sant Jordi book shop and shall soon have recourse to the more intellectually demanding contents of the classics in my library which I have not read.

I did start a volume of short stories by Anatole France which appear to me to be beautifully written (as far as I can tell from the translation) but strangely irrelevant. I shall reserve further judgement until I am further into the volume.

Meanwhile I have the duty of making birthday cards ahead of me. The giving of cards is not the highly developed waste of money that it is in the UK, so I have had recourse to some blank cards and the collection of bits and pieces that I have acquired to produce “handmade” masterpieces. I think, at present, that I am partially stymied by the fact that I use Pritt to try and bring everything together and for some of the things that I try and stick Pritt does not have the ruthless adhesion that I require! Where is the solvent packed Bostic when you need it!

But first a swim!

And the rain it raineth every day!

As the rains lash down I contemplate a day which is going to stretch into the dim distance which is misty with the miasma of total boredom.

We are having one of our periodic meetings of interminable discussions about the progress (or lack of it) of the students in our charge. These meetings are supposed to be conducted in Spanish but it doesn’t take long before one member of staff uses Catalan and then everyone seems at home in it. Except me of course.

I suppose that over my career, if I cared to count up the number of hours that I have spent in meetings I would find that I have spent as much as (if not more than) a year in these simulacrums of hell. This is believable if you take the “teaching” week to be 25 hours long and the teaching year to consist of around 40 weeks. That is, after all “only” a thousand hours of meetings – and believe you me it seems a damned sight longer than that. And probably was!

The real question, of course, is what this millennium of meeting actually achieved. And the in the answer to that lies, I suspect, madness!

So, today, my worst working day; the rain descending viciously; the threatening prospect of a deadly dull meeting, and having to get three birthday presents – I am not a happy bunny.

As usual I shall take my relief escape route via a book. I started a rather ropey adventure story last night at home, but the quality of “young person” writing was not sufficient to keep me from my bed. I intend to find something more challenging from the books that I am supposed to read for school and plunge into one of those in an attempt to keep my sanity.

The next few weeks should see the start of the process which heralds the end of term. Gradually one loses classes and our absurd timetable becomes a little more humane.

This “breathing space” is not going to come quickly enough for me to use the time to contemplate what to buy for the crowd of people who, most inconsiderately, have their birthdays bunched at this time of the year.

I have a rough idea of what I want to get but I am also well aware that such foresight can be blasted into nothingness by the availability of what I want not being to hand when I am looking.

I am only confident about one present and the rest will have to rely on momentary inspiration. In Spain I am handicapped by the fact that my knowledge of the shops is not as encyclopaedic as it was at home and the easy reworking of plans is rather more problematical here than there. Still, there is always El Corte Ingles which is my every present help in time of trouble. And I do hope you noticed the pun in there!

It is now the evening. The rains are still lashing down and the drainage system of this country is naturally incapable of coping. One drives through the streets accompanied by picturesque sheets of water. The one advantage of this deluge is that it compensates for the fact that I usually park under pine trees. The same pine trees that are the haunt of gastrically liberated pigeons. Their droppings come with a generous measure of super glue which ensures that the mess adheres to the car with limpet-like strength. Luckily our rain in this part of the world is liberally polluted and so is able to counteract the effects of other parts of the so-called natural world!

The meeting is, at long last, over. It was mind-bendingly tedious and, much as I was in Cardiff, I have become the focus of those wandering eyes in meetings which try and find a visual representation for how they feel. My meeting face is anything but poker-like and, as I was sitting opposite the two heads of secondary section of the school they ought to have found it unnerving to see someone so nakedly and sullenly uninterested in what was going on – as usual in Catalan, so my attempts to follow what was happening were frustrated yet again and added a further level of frustration and despair.

Tomorrow the buying of birthday presents and a play in El Corte Ingles: at least that is something to look forward to! Possibly!

The marking has ground to a halt because too many students are getting things wrong! The specific detail in which we have to teach reported speech is horrific. At least for me it is. I am now revisiting something which I last studied in detail when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister!

I have been following the election in Britain with growing despair. Good Old Gordon is having the sort of rotten luck that usually spells failure and, with utter dread, I watch the country be led towards voting for a situation in which Cameron will have some sort of power to decide the future. Dear God! And because the lib-dem leader does well on television he is now some sort of National Figure who is talking as if he is a serious candidate for office with his extensive experience of not having any meaningful national office apart from being the head of a wrecking party!

Since marking has taken prime position in my life over the last week, I have gorged myself on reading when I have had the opportunity!

I read “H.I.V.E” by Mark Walden which was one of the books that I acquired from the bookshop in the library to celebrate Sant Jordi.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was written in a way that you could see the film version of the text in your head. This is an action adventure story of a group of super criminals and specifically the school for budding criminals that the organization has founded. The pupils in this school are gifted in various criminal ways, but they are made attractive by there being a really nasty criminal who seems to make them acceptable by comparison.

This is a gadget filled, James Bond style narrative with clear set pieces which scream for computer generated graphics to make them work in the cinema. In one of those meaningless phrases, this “is what it is” but at that level it is a stimulating and vivid read.

The other books which I read over the weekend (after my marking I might add) are both books which I discovered in a cupboard when I was looking for a new set of books to give to my kids. I did find the sets of books that I needed by I also found a whole shelf of new untouched single copy books.

I am not made of the sort of stuff which means that I can ignore two books by Terry Pratchett. I have managed to stop myself buying them, but when I am gifted them in a locked cupboard then I take!

The first one I read was also the better of the two, “The Wee Free Men” which charts the development and adventures of a young girl who discovers that her grandmother was something more than a dedicated shepherd. The something extra is that she is a “Hag” or witch.

This is the sort of book into which you relax. You are, after the first couple of pages, in the hands of a master story teller with a wry comic talent to amuse.

Almost anything I say with take away from the delight with which the story is told and the humour which imbues the whole. This is not to say that there are not moments of pathos and perceptive comment on the human condition, but this is a modern fairy story with strength of narrative which should make this into a classic.

Which is not something that I would say for “The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents” which is as tricky as its convoluted title! This reads as if Pratchett was given the concept (rats eating from a wizards’ rubbish dump and becoming sentient and philosophical – as does a cat who eats one of the changed rats) and challenged to see if he could make a novel out of it.

I think that Pratchett is unable to write a bad book, but this one is less satisfying than others I have read.

The weather has not been perfect but I have been up to the third floor and been able to get a little frantic sunbathing in before the foul weather of next week hits.

Roll on the summer, whenever it feels like making an appearance!

Long days do end!

I am incandescently tired and have reached that point of exhaustion that one begins to suspect that there is another universe tucked away behind real life and which is only revealed when oblivion is almost claiming you.

Today is my lightest day but it has been filled by examination paper marking and putting results into the computer. We are also, allegedly, supposed to put comments into another computer to ensure that tutors have documentation for the endlessly tedious meetings that are a feature of our normal life.

I managed to get the marking that I have to do, done. There is yet another set of papers waiting for me – but I have the ineffable luxury of only having to get those done by Monday; that’s right, on the day of the meeting.

One of my colleagues was heard to sigh, “Almost at the end!” The ambiguity of the statement amused me.

The day ended with a prize giving which started twelve hours after I set out for school this morning. The ceremony was for the International Literary Prize that the school gives for stories in three languages. The ceremony ended with a group of ex-students performing in a pop group. After that there was a reception with cocktails and food, but I had had more than enough and all that I wanted was to go home.

As if to punish myself further I then listened to the last of the Prime Ministerial Debates. I do enjoy listening to politicians but I am not sure that I was in the right frame of mind to appreciate fully the writhing of the men who would be our leaders!

I don’t think that there was a clear “winner” but I thought that Brown impressed because he wasn’t as bad as I feared that he was going to be! Ah well, with the prospect of that odious creep Cameron being in any position of authority in Britain I feel glad that I am in Spain.

The particular part of Spain that I inhabit was in mourning this morning after the departure of Barça from the Champions League. One girl student admitted to me that she had cried at the end of the game! It is difficult to give an accurate impression of the passions that Barça arouses in this part of the world and I sometimes have to remind myself of the risks that I take when I make lightly dismissive comments about the “mere” game of football.

I shall go to bed and ponder on these things.

Timing is the key!

I have now checked through yet another examination and it is ready to be printed. The answers have been written out for the examiners and I am waiting for the next batch of scripts to come my way.

Of course, in the perverse way in which these things happen I have a non-contact period and no scripts to mark. When my non-contact period has expired then two more examinations will take place but I will have no more “free” time in our absurdly long day and there is the Barça game this evening. As usual everything is going to be packed into too little time.

Our campaign against The School That Sacked Me seems to have faltered yet again and the collection of evidence from various sources which was going to be the basis of a newspaper article has now faded away. I await more information to see why something which seems such an obvious next step has been abandoned. It is at times like these that one can understand why an institution so unfit for purpose that it is almost comical has managed to survive for so long. Initiatives seem to sink into the sand and disappear with monotonous regularity. One has to remember Steve’s injunction to keep going on because one day, no matter how repetitive the actions taken against the school may be, one day, for no apparent reason, suddenly effective and The Thing That Brings Her Down. By such self-deluding, but persuasive arguments do we keep our collective sanity! Or not!

A colleague shared with us the fact that her husband tossed and turned throughout the night and when he finally woke from his troubled sleep he told her that he had had two nightmares and in both Barça had lost! She, being English, had comforted him by saying, “That is because you are Catalan, my love!” She explained that Catalans are only truly happy when they are wallowing in poignant misery flavoured with a distinct dash of injustice!

I have now taken the unprecedented step of purchasing a weekly ticket for the ONCE as a realistic step in my well argued financial planning strategy. This “cupon” gives me daily chances to win the lottery with the same number for each day. On the ordinary tickets there are special numbers at the start or end (or sometimes both) of your full number where, if you get the number, you get your money back. I am not quite sure how this works with mine and I may have to do some heavy duty reading of the small print on the back before I find out exactly how to play. This is going to be a one-off experiment unless I get my money back at least!

Tomorrow my school day is going to start at eight-fifteen in the morning and end at something like nine-thirty at night. This is going to be a day of considerable horror as, from 4.45pm to 7.00pm there is going to have to be some fairly frantic marking done if the fantasy deadlines self-imposed by our masochistic school are to be realized!

I have to say that the weekend has never looked so inviting!

Realistic goals?

The only reason I can approach my keyboard with anything other than despair is that I am on schedule!

With an effortless approach to chaos our school has decided that the entire week of examinations ends on Friday when all the results have to be tabulated on various computers and a comment on each child has to be added to the database.

On Thursday we have our annual Literary Prize evening and also on Thursday we have examinations. Which have to be marked and commented on by Friday. The panic on the faces of my colleagues – a sight to which I am well used by now – is beginning to grow.

What, you may ask, is the mystical significance of this Friday? What is it about this day which makes it essential that all the papers have to be marked and results posted? The answer, of course, is it has no significance whatsoever, apart from the significance given to it by the school. It is yet another example of self imposed panic which keeps us all going!

I have learnt that the only way that I can survive is to mark the bloody papers almost as soon as they have been sat. I mark like a thing possessed in a desperate attempt to keep abreast of the ever moving goalposts.

I have marked the first set of papers during which I totally lost the will to live and also lost the ability to spell the word “height” – which even now looks wrong to me. On the first dozen papers that I marked the word was spelt differently and wrongly on each one and, rather like with the word “because” on a set of papers in Cardiff, for a short period of time I lost the ability to spell the word with confidence!

Not only have I marked the papers but I have also entered them on my computer. They are all now nestled on the hard disc in Excel. I have, at long last, mastered the gnomic combinations of letters and numbers that transform a raw score in a square on Excel into a mark out of ten. Everything in this part of the word is expressed as a mark out of ten and, as far as the kids are concerned if it doesn’t have a mark out of ten then it is not worth bothering with.

So, it may be late at night, but I have got one set out of the way to allow space for the two sets that will drift into my frenzied fingers tomorrow. One set at least and both sets at best will have to be marked tomorrow so there is not the panic which can be expected when the next set on Thursday appears which will have to be marked on the same day because the scores have to be entered by Friday.

I pray to god that these examinations do not mean that we will have to have yet another of the interminable and incomprehensible meetings which drag their weary length along the best part of an evening after school.

That horror can creep into a forgotten corner of my brain and lurk quietly there until the end of the weekend when it can worry me to sleep on Sunday evening!

I have not had a single opportunity even to open the book which I am reading at present. Given the proclivities of our kids there is absolutely no opportunity to read or mark during an examination – all eyes have to be permanently skinned to limit the cheating which is endemic to an acceptable level.

Even when the kids look like little angels I am sure that there is a higher form of dissimulation that they are practicing to ensure that they can say that (as the immortal Tom Lehrer puts it) “no one’s work evades your eyes” in their attempts to get nearer to that elusive and magic “10”!

Meanwhile the forthcoming Barça game seems to take up the majority of broadcast time on the television we watch in this household. Barça have an uphill task to claw back the two oals that they need merely to draw level. If they just draw level then they will be able to rely on the "away goal" rule to let them progress, but that does depend on their not letting Inter score at all in Barcelona.

Perhaps I should stop now before those who know me voice their disbelief at my taking any interest at all in football - though I have to say that I have my own views about who Pep should be playing on Wednesday! Who would ever have thought it!

It should be an interesting game, though that doesn't even come close to expressing what the atmosphere is going to be like on the day.

God help!

The teachers' burden!

Tomorrow the next examination spasm starts erupting and I have spent the first part of this evening writing part of an exam which is due to be taken by the hapless fodder in my school on Wednesday. I should be used to this endlessly turning gyre; but I am not - and it is infinitely depressing to see yet another sheaf of dun coloured papers be disgorged from the photocopier and fed to the kids.

Not to speak of the marking!

First thing in the morning I was confronted by a lady on a mission who didn’t ask so much as state that I was her “invisible friend” when I admitted that I was a look of complete satisfaction passed over her face. Although she did like the books that I had chosen, she was far more relieved that she had at last discovered who had given them. Apparently she had discovered me by eliminating the whole of the rest of the staff! As I had stayed out of her way on Friday (as I was teaching elsewhere in the school) when the book was secretly given I was unfortunately unable to appreciate her increasingly frantic efforts to discover her benefactor: overtones of “Great Expectations”!

Toni has had an interview to work in reception in a block of apartments. Were he to get the job it would entail other duties of an odd job nature. All of this is in the hands of the gods and we will have to see what happens. He awaits a phone call!

Today has been one of the hottest days of the year and I have spent it indoors! Monday is my heaviest day with six periods needing my august presence and I had to write an exam paper in my so-called free period. It is at times like this that I remind myself that in the last British school in which I taught there were five periods in a day and not seven! Times change!

I am going to enjoy a brief read of the next book in line to be polished off and then the rest of the week will be taken up in the frenzied ennui of marking.

Oh joy!

Don't touch tradition!

When I last met her on the island of Majorca two years ago she was elegant, poised, articulate, flattering and not a little unsettling. I met her today in Marc’s name day celebrations and she is now raucous, loud, rumbustuous and inconsiderate – and she is almost five! How time changes us all!

Three children with combined ages which barely make double figures: and they didn’t stop. When the youngest fell asleep clutching a book it merely seemed to provoke the other two into excesses of pure noisy energy. When the three of them were at full strength it was almost unbearable.

I have to admit that my “Labrador Technique” for dealing with the very young, i.e. whipping them up into a frenzy is not necessarily the most effective in producing the most restrained atmosphere in which to exist. But at least you can hand them back to their parents and leave!

We had an excellent lunch which also provoked discussion about the most Catalan way to cook habas - broad beans. I cook mine with black pudding, bacon, garlic, fennel seeds and an oxo cube. I would add mint but I have resistance from my resident food critic so I don’t use it. At the lunch table today I was informed that it is more Catalan to use butifarra negra. I also noticed, though that might have been wishful thinking, that there were a few cockles or something similar mixed in with the vegetables. It tasted interesting, but I have been given strict instructions to stick to my well tried recipe and not try any gastronomic experiments. We’ll see!

One of my bookshop books from the shop held in school I completed today “The Agency: A Spy in the House” by Y S Lee. The basic premise for the trilogy of books of which this is the first is of a women’s detective agency set in the 1850s. The style is aimed at older teenagers and has some content which asks for a slightly more sophisticated understanding than some of the other books that I have been reading recently for school.

“A Spy in the House” is well constructed with vivid writing and some telling social comments which should resonate in a youngster’s mind. The tensions and relationships are well thought out and the pages turn very easily.

Still a few more volumes to go and the forthcoming examinations will interfere with my reading.

If I let them!

The Old Guard Win Again!

Friday was a day of a double whammy. In the first place there was the Invisible Friend. The books (note the plural) that I bought for my I.F. were things that I would have wanted myself, apart possibly for the fact that one of them was written in Catalan, and were wrapped not only by the store in which I bought them but also by my good self with high quality wrapping paper.

It was therefore with something approaching dismay that I went into the staff room and saw on the table where I usually sit an unwrapped Wordsworth Classic edition of Le Morte D’Arthur by the discredited knight Sir Thomas Malory with a strip of paper with my name on it sticking out of it. Who, in the name of the living god, reads Sir Thomas Malory? And who, in the name of some other deity, gives an 850 page paperback of turgid prose as a present, even if it has modernized spelling? I put the book in my cupboard at once and tried to forget about it.

For all the nations other than the British the concept of an “invisible” or unknown present giver is unthinkable so I had a great deal of pleasure in watching everybody else (of the foreign persuasion) trying to find their unknown giver! I am rather flattered to report that I was accused of giving some very apposite books to happy recipients. I have no idea where I managed to gain such a reputation for consideration and perception but I am happy to count it as mine own!

My recipient has not said anything; but for a greater part of the day I was not in the vicinity to find out how it had been received. I hope to hear more on Monday.

The second ‘hit’ was in the photographic competition. The announcement was made during an assembly which had been set up with all the chaos for which our gatherings are famous!

Once the literary competitions were out of the way and we had heard readings in English, Catalan, Spanish and what passed for French when we came to the photography.

The tension built (at least for two of us) as the announcement for the staff winner grew nearer. I and my colleague became progressively more hysterical until the result was actually announced and . . . dramatic pause . . . the person who we said would win it actually won! He even gave a little gesture of astonished self-depreciating surprise as his name was announced! My colleague managed to gasp out, “I don’t believe it!” and then we dissolved into giggles of outraged innocence defiled!

The culmination of Saint George’s Day was an excellent performance by a three person drama group in the little theatre in Castelldefels in support of the work of Inter Libros.

This worthy organization, which was celebrating its fifth anniversary, exists to collect books in Spanish and send them to deprived areas of South America. As a friend is part of the organizing committee I know rather more about this group than the ordinary person in the street!

The performance took the form of a series of improvisations which were based on a member of the audience choosing a book from a pile on a table on stage, opening the book and reading a short extract. The group then had a few seconds before they start an improvisation based on the extract. One of the books chosen was a recipe book and another one chosen was a technical book! I suppose that I understood about 20% of what was being said, but the vivid mime filled in most of the gaps; or at least my imagination filled in the gaps in a way satisfactory to me!

Our attempts to go out for a meal after the performance were unsuccessful. Admittedly we only went to one place and then gave up when the people there looked distressed at our appearance! They had their coats on and were just about to leave. The face of our usual waitress spoke volumes and we didn’t press the issue.

Saturday has been a little more relaxed and I have managed to finish the book which Toni gave me for Sant Jordi. This was “The Last Dickens” by Matthew Pearl a very easy read which centred on “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” and the fact that it was left unfinished at the death of Dickens. Into the interest of the non completion was woven a mystery and murder story with a well meaning American publisher being the central character.

I liked the literary details and the historical context that the author used and, although the writing was unremarkable, the narrative bounced along in a most satisfactory manner. It is a perfect ‘beach’ book and summer is, I am told, almost upon us. It’s one of those books that read themselves and it is also one of those books that you will probably not re-read.

Tomorrow the name day of a two year old.

God help us all!

It's the waiting!

The fever of expectation about Sant Jordí shows itself in a growing dread about the organization of the event in school. Already horror stories are beginning to be circulated about the chaos which attends any event which needs the entire school to assemble in one place at roughly one time.

The day is an important one and prizes will be distributed. There has been a frenzied book buying by all the language departments as they are rewarding the successful candidates in the ‘literary’ competition which marks this day. The winners have to read out a section of their winning prose so I will listen to a variety of kids look terrified and whisper foreign nothings into the microphone.

It is also the day on which the results of the photography competition will be announced. This is all very interesting but not gripping. Our efforts to complicate the end result of the competition for the teaching staff may or may not have succeeded. We have not had even a sniff of the possible name of the winner and we have convinced ourselves that our photos are much, much better than the established teachers who have been here since St Paul himself came unto this very place and planted the staff of learning that we all might partake of the fruit thereof and thus refreshed impart education to all and sundry. We have discussed ways in which we might make our protests at the grave injustice when the ‘wrong’ name is announced! My colleague and fellow participant’s suggestions while certainly colourful were frankly pornographic so I feel that my more restrained suggestion of calling out “Shame!” as a member of the Old Guard is announced as the winner is much more dignified!

Whatever happens I feel that the two of us will be near to hysteria by the time the announcement is made as we have been keeping up a “conspiracy theory” approach to the competition ever since it started. This will be the culmination of weeks of hilarity the cause of which has only been known to the two of us!

The ‘event’ goes on for almost two hours and will extend into a non-contact period for me! I know what I would rather be doing.

I have started my next book which is “The Telling Pool” by David Clement-Davies. Not only was I drawn to the faux-Medieval woodcut which graces the cover together with the distressed golden lettering of the title, but also to the content. The name of the author and the name of the hero of the novel, Rhodri seemed to point to a Welsh flavour and as the action of the novel is set in the time of Richard called the Lion Heart I was already hooked.

Opening the volume I was confronted by an extract from The Second Coming by Yeats and an Old English Plaint: and this was before the opening chapter! The heading of the opening chapter “The Teller and the Smith” was immediately followed by the opening lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “The Windhover”: some pretention you simply have to go with, any other attitude would be churlish! He seems like my sort of guy!

Sunday is Marc’s Name Day and so I have been seen to go into the library and purchase a book called “My first words and pictures: Animals” It is a splendid book (which I have read) with photographs of many animals, but not alas either of my favourites: the penguin or the duck-billed platypus. The cover picture of this book features a giraffe – a creature in which I have decided not to believe. In spite of the fact that I have actually touched one! I think it was when I saw footage of the giraffes running or galloping or whatever it is that they do to get from one place to another quickly that my belief finally failed!

By comparison belief in the crocodile, zebra, rhinoceros or indeed the duck-billed platypus is relatively easy!

Books as displacement activity

For the second day running we have woken up (I have woken up) to a mysterious street filled with wispy mist with totally artificial looking shafts of sunlight delineated in the mist.

Now, although the whole of Barcelona (that is the view from the balcony outside the staff room) has had its contours softened by the haze, we are in bright sunshine. This will last until the end of the day and I am only hoping that as this is my early finish that I will trick fate and actually have time to go to the third floor of the house and disport myself in the unaccustomed light!

The books shop is in full swing in the library and I have been told not to blithely order a box full of books which I did last year. This year I have been restricted to three volumes so my choice will have to be a little more selective! Ah me, it was good while it lasted!

Sant Jordí gets closer and I shudder more and more to think about what my ‘invisible friend’ has bought – I only hope that they include the receipt so I can change it!

I read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas today – it is one of the books which we have just bought for one of the classes. It is a very moving read and, as I read it, I wished that I hadn’t seen the film first.

The film is impressive and the acting of the two young main characters is remarkable but the book and the way in which this searing story is presented is much more subtle and even more disturbing.

The action of the novel is seen from the point of view of the young German boy though there is a third person narrator to present his perception. The narration is not obviously intrusive and with mispronunciations and repetitions it follows the prejudices and concerns of Bruno. Hitler is referred to as the Fury and Auschwitz becomes “Out-With”. This may appear twee at first sight but in the context of the novel it is piquant and sometimes unbearable.

The film is, but its very nature, more directly explanatory and direct; the novel, taking every advantage of Bruno’s limited understanding is much more oblique in its presentation.

The real ‘action’ of the novel is compressed into a few pages at the end of the book where the reader’s horror is intensified by the understated presentation.

The author reserves his Swiftian disgust for the last sentence in the book where the bitter irony comes home at last!

Read the book – and then wonder if you need to see the film!

The book shop opened today and before I could get in to select a few books for ‘research’ I was told that this year I was not to blithely fill a box of books but should limit myself to a few volumes. I have been severely parsimonious but my weekend reading is secure – especially as I do not trust my invisible friend to get something I want to read and I have no faith that anyone else is going to throw a book my way on Friday.

With books waiting to be read, it doesn’t matter if the weather follows a pattern which is rapidly being established in the cruel month of April where the weekdays are fine and the weekend rubbish!

I shall escape into another world of paper and print!

Word and boot

In spite of the spirited searching by the elegant gentleman in El Corte Inglés he wasn’t able to make very much of my almost impossibly vague indication of the book that I wanted to give as my gift for Sant Jordí. I eventually gave up and looked for something else.

I ended up with two books and a small card. The comment inside the card is almost impossibly obsequious and translated by a friend of mine (!) into Catalan.

Most of the fun in this invisible friend thing is watching Johnny Foreigner trying to find out who gave the book. I am determined that mine is going to be anonymous and I am going to say nothing. I am not sure if the colleague who came round with the names knows who I have to buy for, but I will observe the response of my recipient and enjoy!

The Divine Joke continues with the weather being glorious while I am in school and this evening even extending to the drive home. By the time I had parked, however, the clouds had returned and gloom reigned!

Unsurprisingly we are now preparing examination papers for the new round in our favourite pastime. I am now regarded as the resident expert on the writing of sentences into which a missing word must be placed. I sometimes have to reign in my enthusiasm and remember that the poor (!) kids only know English as a foreign language and my wilder flights of fancy are not strictly appropriate! I do however try and slip through a few of my favourite prejudices with each tranche of sentences that I write!

As I type Barça are playing again, this time against the ‘divers’ of Milan. Although Barça scored first, Milan have just equalized in a scrappy game in which Barça are not playing well. They do, however, have an away goal. Messi is not playing up to his almost god-like capabilities and Toni has worked himself up into a state of electric tension where I am expecting the matches in a drawer in the kitchen to burst into flame!

The game has gone from bad to worse and Barça are now 3-1 down. This is not good.

It is at times like these that I remember that I have an extra free period tomorrow!

Barça have lost! This is a disaster! I have been listening to Toni so that I can sound knowledgeable tomorrow when I give my view of the unmitigated horror that was the match!

Tomorrow also sees our annual Sant Jordí bookshop open in the library. Last year this bookshop was a very useful source of new youth literature for me to sample. I hope that I am given an allowance to indulge my appetite for the printed word.