Limping along!

An occasion unprecedented in the annals of educational history in our school: a meeting finished early!

Not only that, but the meeting also had a useful function! Just too much for an ordinary terminally cynical classroom teacher to take!

We were all sitting round an island made up of tables in the library and, as the meeting ended people were clearly shocked and didn’t move. Spanish people not moving and sitting down are, by definition talking. And so they talked – a sort of displacement activity for not going home!

Now I am a bit of an expert on the ending of Spanish meetings: they don’t. There is a morbid fear of meetings ending and so official or unofficial AOB can expand to take up any amount of time. I was horrified that so-called professionals could resist the clear opportunity to go home and in my desperation I started to inch one of the tables away from the other tables in the island while packing my brief case: I am nothing if not subtle and suddenly ambidextrous when it comes to getting away from school!

Eventually, just before things resting on the edge of my chosen moving table fell to the floor, other people realized that escape was possible and the general exodus began. I was away to my car before the others had drawn a breath! Experience always tells.

The weather has been rotten: close, cloudy and oppressive. A few raindrops were actually squeezed out of the humidity but nothing worth putting the windscreen wipers on for. We hope, as we have hoped for much of this year, for better weather tomorrow.

There are now sixteen days to go to the end of term: and counting!

Standard Four in my Junior School was a constant succession of Progress Papers specifically designed to lead to success in the 11+. We had homework on a regular basis which we suddenly didn’t have when a schools’ inspector was present. Not that we knew he was an inspector and not that we knew that as primary school children we were not supposed to have homework. I didn’t help matters by asking our teacher what the homework was and being completely mystified by an airy wave of dismissal from a teacher who had given us considerable amounts of homework on a regular basis and who had quite definitely suggested that passing the exam would be totally impossible without the constant attempting of paper after paper at home as well as in school.

Everything was geared towards the exam in a way in which I find creepily familiar in my present school. But this was education when I was eleven in a system entirely governed by passing an exam which would be the pathway to academic success in a grammar school or academic ignominy in a secondary modern school. My recognition of the bad old days (whatever the right wing and so-called New Conservatives say) in my present location does not say much for educational development in Catalonia.

Just as in my old primary school there are concessions to modern thinking. Every Friday afternoon we had a couple of periods when we could “do” projects. These were pages culled from some sort of forward thinking publication which allowed us to do a rudimentary sort of research and to present our findings in an interestingly graphic way. This “freedom” was strictly confined and the real education was via Progress Papers which forced endless practice of the types of 11+ exam papers with which we might be confronted.

The only paper I actually enjoyed was the essay writing. The stimulus for this piece of writing was a comprehension on, of all things, Victorian bathing machines! Just the thing that a lad just entering into the swinging sixties would be interested in! I was. I still remember the writing clearly and my description of the proprietor of the bathing machine as “looking like a Gorgon” which in turn says something for the extent of my reading.

Unfortunately my essay was never read as the piece of writing was apparently only used in borderline cases to give further evidence to justify a pass or fail. I was no genius at the age of 11 but I wasn’t on the borderline either.

In my present school the examinations are over and the pupils are all following a similar sort of “project” to those that I used to delight in all those years ago. Things are a little different I used books for my information and most of the pupils in front of me are using computers. My books always opened, which is more than can be said for the internet programs for these privileged pupils! Perhaps they would do well to go back to the old days and give each class a selection of reference books and see what happens.

Though, thinking about it, no, not a good idea. In spite of the fact the inevitable internet problems that accompany any attempt by a school to expand internet access to actual pupils in a working environment means that the amount of information which, in theory is vast, in practice becomes non-existent. Pupils therefore rely on the games and music and other fripperies that they have stored on their machines and research goes out of the window.

When I think back to a slightly more recent period when I was in university the real problem that I always had was finding somewhere to study. Yes, I had my own room on campus – but that was far too full of distractions to allow for concentrated study. And English students have, by definition, books, and the book on the shelf is always worth more than the book in the hand!

The library in Swansea University was modern and well appointed, though during the lead up to my finals the authorities decided to try and stop the whole building sliding gracefully into the sea and so had an extended period of pile-driving which was anything but an encouragement to revision or learning. I once went into the library during the height of the pile-driving and saw rows of finals students looking more and more paranoid as each earth shaking thump echoed through the erstwhile sepulchral calm of that centre of academe!

The library anyway was not a good place for me to study as it was full of, yes; you’ve guessed it, books. With my magpie mind the subject of an individual book was not really important and I often found myself engrossed in some abstruse tract which had nothing whatsoever to do with the ostensible subject that I was officially studying.

Ironically it was a library that was my final and most useful choice of working environment. Not a “real” library in which there were books which begged to be read, no, another place altogether.

The Department of Chemistry in Swansea University had gone through a period of megalomaniac power building which saw a number of phases of construction as a professor got his budget increased exponentially. The end result was laboratories which were used for such things as the storing of cardboard boxes rather than the teaching of students – true I saw the cardboard boxes with my own eyes and was told the epic tale of vaulting Chemical ambition by one of the technicians! And a Chemistry Library is, almost by definition filled with incomprehensible books and, given Chemistry students’ disinclination to read around their subject it provides a location which no one used.

Except for me!

Once discovered, I treasured this arid oasis of calm and used it to complete essays and read and annotate those odd books through which even I had to struggle; books like “The Fairy Queen” which, to be fair, even the clinical surroundings of the Chemistry Library didn’t encourage me to read all the way through!

I`m not sure that even the spaciousness of retirement (when ere that might be) will tempt me to plough my way through the whole thing!

It rained solidly through the night and, working on the third floor, I heard that melancholy drip, drip, drip which is the sad watery percussion that I grew up with! This year continues its depressingly skittish approach to summer and as I sit here I can see through the window banks of threatening cloud, though there is also a band of brightness which promises some amelioration. Eventually!

Experience doesn't always help!

Although I did manage to stop myself from saying, “I knew it!” and “I told you so!” I could not refrain from a “Every bloody year!” as the computer system which takes in all the results for the grand meeting this evening crashed.

I am not good at coping with screen freezing as it takes me back to the black night many years ago when my Sinclair QL, on which I was typing the final version of a long external exam paper which had to be handed in to the external moderator the next morning, froze. I finally got to bed in the late early hours of the morning and refreshed by a single hour’s sleep after retyping the whole thing I went to school a not very happy bunny.

The programme which we had to use to load the final examination results actually (rather cheekily) allowed me to assume that everything was going to be fine. It encouraged me to start typing in the results with growing confidence and then, at the point when I knew that all the results were going to be in place by the stipulated time – stasis.

The misery was slightly ameliorated by the presence of a charming member of the maths department whose frustration matched my own – but she was rather more decorous in showing it! In a welter of mystifying Spanish but clearly communicated facial grimaces she expressed in a most eloquent way the teacher’s lack of faith in all hi-tec equipment which invariably fails at the point when you need it most.

Needless to say I found another way of getting what I wanted by going snivelling to the bursar who has a way with computers. Who failed. But then suggested that I enter the information directly on the server. Which I did and the job was done. I wonder what the rest of my colleagues are doing as their levels of homicidal frustration reach critical mass and they try and vent their feelings on some inanimate (or indeed animate) object in their vicinity!

I have lost one of my free periods (par for the course) and I will try and harness what reserves of placidity (!) I possess to manage the horror of the meeting this evening.

I have now lost another free and the meeting is going to start while I am engaged with yet another class. They are starting to discuss a year I don’t teach (the only one) and then go on to our classes. There is a horror scenario where I am left in charge of two classes while the Spanish/Catalan speaking English teacher slopes off to join the misery of inconsequential talking. The day is developing well! And it’s only 11 am so far!

Our hopes for the fabled “school” that we had hoped to found seem further away than ever. The discussions and the expectations have been interesting but everything founders on the simple necessity for money. We are beginning to doubt that anything can be done in spite of the fact that our proposal fills a real need and we are convinced that it would be a success. But, and it’s a big but, not only is money in short supply but also time (in all sorts of ways) is running out. At least I can comfort myself with the fact that I have always regarded the founding of the “school” as an amusing pastime or a mild curiosity rather than an essential reality. Even if everything was in our favour at this moment (and it isn’t) it would take at least two or three years to set up a school and . . .

Perhaps, out of sheer spite, I will turn my attention back onto the School That Sacked Me. There must be something to learn there by observing an institution which is not fit for purpose; which ignores rules and regulations; which has no recognizable curriculum; which treats teachers with contempt; which had educational standards which would prompt any inspectors to put it in special measures and - what is the point of going on! In spite of its manifest failures it opens its doors year after year and pretends to be a school – and people pay real money to send their children there! If such a place can exist, so the logic goes, then how much more welcome would be a school which actually tried to be a real educational institution! But such thoughts merely lead to madness!

I am concentrating on the end of term, visits, wine tastings and getting my library in some sort of real order. I have started making lists of What I Am Going To Do During The Summer.

Not a good sign!

Why is the weekend only two days long?

Well, it didn’t rain today in spite of the rather uninspiring weather forecast which assured us that it would. Broken cloud with intervals of brilliant sunshine was what we actually had and, gloomy periods ignored, a refreshing swim in the pool.

Today was Toni’s name day and the opportunity for him to rake in various presents from his family. My gift (the TV dongle for the computer) was slightly tarnished by the fact that the artistic construction which doubled as an aerial signally didn’t work. Still there should be hours of some sort of fun in looking at the myriad stations that are able to be picked up with the equipment supplied.

There are now 17 days left to the end of the month. If we take the last ‘working’ week in the month which is a week without the kids and the two days of the weekend that precede it and subtract those days from the total we are left with eleven days. San Juan on the 24th is a holiday so take another day off and we are left with 10 days. There is a weekend at the end of this week, so we are left with 8 working days. That is this week and a few days of next as the full extent of school time with pupils. That sounds doable.

Now, although my colleagues might not be actually writing down these calculations, they are certainly thinking them. One of my colleagues asked me weeks ago when we could start counting down the days. I was strict and told him that such an approach was unacceptable until the month of June had actually started. As soon as we started counting days he wanted to know when we could start counting hours. Again I was strict and told him that this was unacceptable in all professional educational institutions until the last week of term. One must have standards otherwise chaos looms!

Of course institutions have their own little ways of making sure that the summer holidays are fully appreciated. Tomorrow we have an endless meeting of almost unendurable vacuity when “colleagues” (we all know them, they are the same in all schools under the sun) feel the need to give their sixpence worth of gabble although nobody wants to hear them, or rather at this stage of term Nobody Wants To Hear Them At All. It means that I will reel out of the meeting at about 7.30 pm after a working day which stretches from 8.45 to 4.45. The meeting starting at 5.00 just about giving one time to snatch a glass of water and fix firmly in place the disinterested smile which indicates to all and sundry that one is present but not voting. This smile will stay fixed until the end of the “discussion” when, with what I like to think of as highly visible contempt I rush to my car and flee to Castelldefels trying to blot from my mind that when I finally arrive home, distrait, emotionally drained and extremely pissed off that this is only the first day of the week!

The one good thing of course is that I will be able to subtract it from the measly total of 8 working days with kids and perhaps I will allow a wan smile to cross my thin lips!

As the sole British male at the lunch today I felt the onus of alcoholic irresponsibility rest firmly on my shoulders and I am ashamed to admit that my total consumption was one glass of Tinto de Verano – a bottled mixture of red wine and lightly sugared pop! I have no real excuse for this unbecoming abstinence except to say that everyone else drank less than I did! It is very trying to be British and to attempt to fit in with the perverse aversion to excess by which I am surrounded! It is only in our “Wine Tastings” that I feel truly at home!

I know that school tomorrow is going to be chaos. Examination results have to be entered on a computer programme for the meeting tomorrow afternoon and there is an invariable crash which turns all teachers into nervous wrecks. At least this year I know that it is going to happen and so I can, oddly, be a little more relaxed about it. I have learned to feed off other peoples’ hysteria and I have used it like a sedative, so that as civilization is razed to the ground around me I assume my laurel wreath, take out my lyre and follow the music illuminated by the flames around me!

As far as I can work out, all our results are nothing more than smoke reflected in a series of cunningly placed mirrors that have the same relationship with reality as does Lewis Carroll’s world. When dealing with institutions it is always good to remember the wise words of Humpty Dumpty when he said, “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.”

I defy anyone who has worked in education for longer than a week to tell me that they haven’t experienced a situation in which they could have been talking to Humpty Dumpty. Alice, of course, spoke for all of use toilers in the field when she said, “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.” God bless her! The voice of reason; a little plaintive and naïf, but with the ring of solid logic behind it. It puts Humpty Dumpty clearly in his place and reduces him to stunned silence.

Anyone who believes that in a scholastic context must have worked for less than the week that I talked about. Humpty Dumpty comes back with the unanswerable managerial question stopper, “The question is which is to be master -- that's all.”

At times like these I remember a younger version of myself speaking to Ivor Davies, Trade Union supported Labour MP for Gower when I was a student representative talking to the Council of my University. I used language that should have been common to us both but I was surprised and hurt (I was young) that this MP with a rock solid majority was a true Humpty Dumpty and he may as well have been speaking Serbo-Croat for all the sense that our dialogue held. I have, over time, come t see this exchange as, at best a learning experience, at worst . . . ah, I was always too sensitive and easily hurt to become a politician!

Writing all this has neatly ensured that I didn’t actually do any of the school work that I only half heartedly planned to do this weekend.

C’est la vie!

The end of civilization - again!

The long dark night of the soul has begun. Association Football has taken control of all means of communication and is now dominating the carbon based world.

I have to admit that in Spain the quality of the television is so mind bendingly awful that wall-to-wall kick ball coverage might actually be an improvement! Only joking! Not about the quality of the programmes though.

Tomorrow is the name day of all the Tonis in Spain and so there is a grand gathering of the clans to celebrate this auspicious day. The Name Day is just as important as a birthday in Spain and is celebrated with presents and eating.

Toni has acquired some sort of device which plugs into the side of his computer and turns the computer into a television, dragging in many, many television stations which I do not want to see. The point is to try and get a better service for the ubiquitous World Cup so that he can see even more of the games than can be packed onto the channel that won the contract.

They key in making this little gadget work lies in the quality of the ariel. The one supplied with the device is pathetic so (thanks to information gleaned from the internet) Toni is constructing one which would do credit to someone brought up on Blue Peter.

Using the front of a dismantled drawer, a few screws and lengths of wire he is constructing an art work which reminds me of a Lynn Chadwick from the late fifties. This artefact is, apparently going to make all the difference in the reception and give unlimited access to all the football channels that he wants. I will reserve judgement until I see the pictures flashing across the screen.

Today has been glorious with the heat making the tiles on the terrace on the Third Floor too hot to walk on with bare feet. This is more like the summers that I feel I have a right to expect now that I am living in Spain!

Gradually, empty houses and flats are filling up as the summer gets into its high season mode and, at the end of the month, everyone will be here – and the ones who don’t have houses or flats here will be on the beach. It is a good thing that our beach is so long that it can take the population of Barcelona with ease! As long as some of them stay at home.

England (I’m Welsh) has just drawn against The United States. Our goalkeeper should be publically hanged and all the players with the exception of Rooney should be forced to give their salaries to charity. I am now switching my allegiance to España.

Roll on more sunny days so that I can escape to the television free environment of the Third Floor!

Glug!

Who is he so dull of soul that hasn’t felt that at the end of the week that he needs (as Pooh would say) a little something.

And who has not realized as one balances a plastic cup full of wine on one’s knee that perhaps that point of equilibrium that has been so signally absent during one’s working day is now fully restored!

This has been a good week to look back on; it has been a bad week to work through. The frenzy of marking reached a climax during the last period of the morning (which was well into the afternoon, but that is our school for you) when I marked as if my life depended on it. Which, let’s face it, it doesn’t. Everyone looks stressed because there is much more marking to do and a limited time in which to do it.

In spite of all by bleating, I did finish all the marking I had to do in good time with the aid of a little space given to me by my colleagues who were baby-sitting a group of our first years who were watching “Finding Nemo” which was the key stimulus for a whole unit of work on biodiversity.

I have now finished all the marking that I have had to do and a soul destroying experience it was too. I lost the will to live on seven separate occasions during the expenditure of red ink this time round. Thank god this is the last time this year. We are now counting the days to our eventual release!

THz Monday sees us labouring under the duress of incarceration in yet another of our interminable and incomprehensible meetings when, as far as I can see, nothing of any moment is decided, but everybody has a chance to talk as much as they like about things over which they have no control. But at least they have the chance to make my life just a little less enjoyable as I listen to acres of screed in Catalan about the hard lives of over privileged kids!

But perhaps I am a little too harsh, my attitude reflecting the late stage of the term and the almost pathological tiredness and lack of motivation affecting all of us!

Meanwhile the weekend beckons and who am I to be insensible to its blandishments!

My new camera continues to please; though the exploration of its full potential will have to wait for me to print out the encyclopaedic details of how to use the damn thing! The pictures that I have taken so far scratch the surface of what this machine is capable.

Many of the last session of my photographs were taken from my seat on the Third Floor while sipping a very pleasant Rioja.

The view from the Third Floor includes a view of part of the sea. We are not far from the Med and our view is circumscribed by the pine trees which grow in the area. Our view is a section of the sea which is shaped like a reversed map of Catalonia and what little we can see of the sea is now threatened by the new growth of the trees. I think by the end of the growing season we will only hear the sea and not be able to look at it!

All I ask is that the sun is a more constant companion than it has been during the lead up to the summer.

Meanwhile the problem of Toni’s name day is becoming ever more pressing.

Always something to worry about!

It's Friday tomorrow!

Today was utter delight.

And yes, that is bloody ironic.

First there were people away so, because of the parsimonious attitude towards getting other people in to help with teaching there was instant chaos which was only averted by calling on the pseudo-free periods that we have so that all hands could man the pumps.

This is at the time when all of us need all of our time to plough through the absurd amount of marking that we have to complete before our artificially imposed deadlines come into effect.

I have managed to complete the marking of three sets of scripts and am left with one last set which is fiendish in its neurosis inducing capabilities when one comes to put an actual mark on any section of it.

However “failsafe” you make an exam, assuring yourself that there is only one possible answer to your carefully phrased question – our kids will defy expectation and produce something which “could” be said by a native speaker, but would be of such linguistic complexity that they couldn’t possibly know that they could say it!

I have never forgiven one girl who, when I was explaining the meaning of one particular word, said, “Oh, I don’t use the work like that!” To which I was tempted to say, “Oh really foreigner, and your point would be?” But I didn’t. But I do not forget. Never!

There is a comforting and simple philosophy which gets me through some tricky linguistic situations, which was outlined for my by the head of department: “If it isn’t in the book it’s wrong!”

My examination paper speciality is the writing of sentences in which a space is left for the insertion of the most appropriate word. This is not an exercise in thinking up a word; it is an exercise in remembering one of the words studied in the particular unit in the book: the words in the book. The Book. It’s soul destroying! But it’s paid!

As I managed to get the target scripts marked today, I came home early (time owed from yesterday which should have been my early finish but the exigencies of the examinations (!) forced me to stay in school beyond my allotted time) and had a swim. Today started with sullen rain and overcast skies but ended with bright sunshine and a blue sky streaked with very artistic cloud.

After a compulsory period of sunbathing, we ventured into Castelldefels town to find out if the fabled Welsh Soap Shop was a reality. It seemed unlikely but there it was and I bought an eye-wateringly expensive chunk of lavender soap to show solidarity with my native land! No bloody discount for natives though!

An evening meal of tapas and a couple of glasses of red wine at a restaurant that we now patronise and I was ready to start my last tranche of marking.

But I didn’t: so there!

Sufficient unto the day (as they say) is the evil thereof!

The ball commeth!

This is the last sane moment that I will have for some time. It has been carved out of a period when I should have been marking, but I simply couldn’t face it and I have watched (indeed am watching, thank goodness for touch typing) Spain rather comprehensively beating Poland at football.

I cannot truthfully say that I am “looking forward” to the televisual overkill that will be World Cup football – the advent of which is drawing ominously closer heralded by rather artful advertisements on the TV and pages of technical information in the newspapers. I am praying that the weather is clement so that I can retire to the Third Floor and brood like Achilles in his tent – though I seem to recall his retirement was for rather different reasons than the movement of various spheroids. Considering that comparison a little further I feel that it is rapidly becoming infelicitous!

I shall however condescend to watch Spain play and England too as long as they are played at a reasonable hour. In previous years I have bought the equivalent of “Every Boys Colour Guide to the World Cup” so that I could throw a few facts into the general conversation to show just how conversant I was with the detail of the “beautiful game.” It’s hard work though, and I am always found out!

I will make sure that I have a supply of books to keep me sane.

My second lesson with my pupil is today and it will be interesting to see how he has responded to the stimulus I sent him the day before yesterday. Some money would be nice too!

Marking is now dominating the entire life of the school with monastic rows of teachers bent over their vellum (well, light excreta coloured recycled paper) scripts as they scratch away with a manic concentrated intensity trying to process the reams of sometimes inventive drivel to arrive at the magic mark out of ten that is the end result of all the work which is done in Spanish schools!

It now turns out that, unlikely though it may seem, that Castelldefels boasts a soap shop. Not, in itself of interest, until you add the fact that this is a Welsh soap shop! Soaps, the website informs us, from the “woodlands of Wales.” This will have to be investigated!

I now have collected all the scripts that have to be marked by my good self. There was a moment of pleasurable panic when it seemed like half a set of scripts had gone missing but while I was invigilating one exam a colleague brought them to me, presumably so that I could fill in the empty hours when I was not in school by marking them. She obviously doesn’t know me very well!

To be fair I have marked two sets of scripts: one from a fairly small class and the other from a larger class with a paper which seemed to stretch on to eternity: I lost the will to live on three separate occasions while marking it.

I also discovered a use for recycled paper.

My scripts came in two varieties: the dun coloured recycled sort and good white cartridge paper. The cartridge paper was bulky and emphasised the number of scripts left, while the recycled sort was thin and flaccid and gave a flattering picture of what was left. I am going to insist that all future scripts are printed on thin paper: the psychological effect of seeing an insignificant scattering of scripts rather than an intimidating stack!

My second “lesson” with my new pupil in Barcelona took the form of a “conversation” in a cafe on a table outside on the little Ramblas in this particular part of the city. Our conversation took in Egyptian pharaohs Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Palladio, Gaudi (of course!) and restaurants which do not look like restaurants.

The last was pointed out to me a few shops down from the garage in which I was parked. The shop front looks like a dry cleaning shop but, on the wall is an illuminated numeric touchpad – type in the right combination of numbers and lo and behold! You find yourself in a most exclusive restaurant. Where, I was told, the prices are not that expensive. Or it could be a normal dry cleaning shop. But I do hope not!

Meanwhile my revolving and reclining chair has taken on a life of its own and sitting on it has become something of a challenging experience. I fear that the fault may be terminal - and if you think that furniture is overpriced I suggest you come to Catalonia and have a look in quite ordinary furniture shop to wonder if you have slipped by mistake into some sort of designer shop.

I popped into a shop just before the “lesson” and found a fairly ordinary revolving chair for €1.750! I was told that I could take 17% off the price or even more if I was buying them in bulk! Another chair for only €980 was smilingly dismissed as the cheap end of the market! I suppose that I should have been warned as soon as I saw that they stocked Philip Stark chairs!

At least I got paid!

First steps!

Let the scoffers eat their scoff and the sneerers reform their features into something more fetching. I have used the mini-mixer to make something!

The something was a “soup.” I have placed inverted commas around it because the consistency was only liquid in the way that lava is liquid. It also managed to retain its heat in much the same way too. When poured into a dish there was nothing resembling a meniscus on my soup, no, to continue the volcanic theme it looked more like the Pahoehoe lava flow of Hawaii – though possibly a little more tasty.

I was very impressed with the efficiency with which the mixer, well, mixed. I am therefore preparing myself to start Project Unique Tea in which I will formulate a drinkable tea equivalent of the coffee capsule utilizing the mini mixer.

I realize that the Perfect Tea Capsule might be as illusory as the Philosopher’s Stone but in one way at least the coffee capsule has achieved the principle of the Alchemist’s dream by giving customers much less and charging them much more for what they haven’t been given. If that is not making gold out of base materials I don’t know what is!

I have started to read a novel by Pullman with which I am not familiar, but I fear that it’s completion is going to be delayed for some time because of the avalanche of examination scripts which is about to bury me in boredom.

Because of the seemingly arbitrary and sudden deadlines which we set ourselves the marking will quickly descend into ill controlled panic and frenzy. I have reasoned that this completely unnecessary misery is inflicted to make the end of term sweeter. At least I hope there is some reason behind it rather than simply SNAFU!

The first “private” lesson has come and gone after a hair raisingly (or scalp crawlingly) horrific drive into the centre of Barcelona to the meeting place. The GPS was fine until the final adjustments almost at the destination when everything went pear-shaped and I had to navigate the last bit more by instinct than by geo-stationary satellite!

My pupil’s knowledge of English is much more sketchy than I was lead to believe but that need not necessarily make the lessons any the less enjoyable. He has practical knowledge of a whole range of arts so there should always be something for us to talk about.

Catalonia has always been a place full of new experiences for me. Today sees another one. The unions have called a general strike in the public sector for all those paid by the Generalitat. This usually means civil servants, but in this country there are whole areas of public life which have public servants – including the teachers. You may think that this is similar to Britain but the teachers in Spain who are civil servants and are paid for by the government have very different conditions of service to those in other areas and are better paid.

Our school is in the anomalous position of being a foundation and a private school funded partially by the government. Rather like the most exclusive and expensive private schools in Britain which also, grotesquely, are classed as charities! Our school will be subject to reductions but the extent of the reductions is limited by the different proportions of the salary which each individual teacher is paid by the government.

Union membership in our school is subtle: it’s like being in the Masons but without the handshakes and the power and influence! Although I have been told that there are other union members in my school I still do not know of anyone else who is actually a self-confessed member.

Although my name may suggest otherwise, I am no willing martyr and I know that any action I take will be easily covered and my future employment may well be compromised. The end result is that I drove resentfully along clearer roads than usual to a school that probably should be closed today.

It is ironic that the parents of some of our pupils are the movers and shakers of the commercial world of this area are certainly the people who had more to do with creating the crisis than the teachers who try and educate their children. And they remain unaffected by the action. As usual. Just as their salaries are unlikely to be cut by 5%! Still, I would surely be jejune if I was looking for justice. Or perhaps that is not strictly true, one should always look for justice; it is jejune to expect it!

Enough cynicism!

The reality of marking will soon bring its own meaning to life!

What else do we expect!

With the glorious spitefulness that teachers are used to, today is exactly the sort of day that yesterday should have been: bright, warm, sunny – but a school day.

With the resourcefulness for which teachers are famous, I was able to rationalize the downpour yesterday as a necessary part of nature refilling depleted reservoirs and refreshing streets and vegetation rather than taking it personally as part of the vindictiveness of a deity who obviously had some harsh, unsympathetic teachers and he is now getting his own back by making virtually every weekend less than climatically satisfactory.

This morning is the official opening of the Examination Season for the kids and the scenes that greet one as one makes one’s way towards the staff room remind me of a grammar school just before a test, where all the pupils are clutching books or scraps of paper and talking hopelessly or frantically with other testees to try and guess the mind of the examiner. This school is perhaps a little different from my experience of a grammar school because all (ALL) pupils revise, even the naughty ones, though only at the last minute.

Because examinations are such an omnipresent part of the school life, and because they have a multitude of subjects the kids are constantly trying to stuff their heads with yet another set of facts. They have become adept at short term memory storage and are able regurgitate material that would delight Mr Gradgrind’s heart. The only problem is that I am not sure what use they are making of all the knowledge that they are showing that they know “at that time.”

If knowledge is compared to a grain of sand then the pupils in this school are busily acquiring bucket-full’s of the stuff but, if I am allowed to continue the metaphor, I don’t think that they are making many sandcastles! Such, it seems to me, is the Spanish Education System.

Last week I saw children with long lists of countries and their capital cities; a list on which they were going to be tested. I know in Britain we have probably gone too far in the other direction and don’t make kids learn lists of facts without a “reasonable context” in which to situate them; but this means that the end result is that they do not have the factual basis to situate themselves in a world where opinion is valued but the factual basis behind the opinion is essential. In Spain arid lists of “thing to be learned” seems to reign supreme while the context which makes facts important is largely ignored.

There is something totally refreshing in pontificating about a system which, although all around me, is not something in which I actively participate – our level of existence being defined by external examinations set by the Cambridge Examination Board!

My “lesson” this evening is beginning to worry me. My future pupils does not seem to relish the challenge of speaking English and I am not sure that encouraging a reluctant English speaker is what I want to do at the end of my school day. My visions of lofty discussions about the nature of art seem to be evaporating together with my enthusiasm – but I should give it a chance and see what happens. A new experience if nothing else!

I am, if nothing else, a snob about glassware and cutlery. When I have Waterford, Wedgwood and Stewart why should I drink from anything less? And plastic is simply beyond the Pale. And yet.

I am in the process of trying to find a way to compromise between the acceptable and the outré. Perhaps that is putting it a little too dramatically, but it all comes down to the fact that my house starts at the first floor.

A barbecue outside means that everything which is necessary for the meal to work has to be taken down a long flight of stairs. And of course brought up again at the end of the meal. Not too onerous one might think, but irritating enough for shortcuts to be suggested. One of them is the use of plastic plates, implements and glasses. At the end of the meal (to hell with recycling) everything can be tipped into a conveniently situated bin. Job done.

I am ashamed to admit that I have now willingly bought plastic knives, forks and spoons. I have a variety of plastic glasses ranging from long tumblers to monsters that can take a British pint (not that I can get one anywhere near me) and a range of plates and bowls.

If I am going down market then at least I am going to do it with a full canteen and dinner service in a substance that I have not eaten from since the pseudo-melamine days of my first job in Kettering and the £10 bargain box bought with disbelief from a temporary shop at the bottom end of St Mary’s Street which saw to all my place setting needs for years!

That box contained eight of everything from dinner plates to plates so small as to be practically useless. It had various types of serving bowl and serving spoons. It had a gravy boat and a conserve jar and lid – and all in brown plastic, except for the dinner plates which had a printed design in lighter colours on them. There were tea cups and saucers – all in brown plastic and the crowning glory was a set of eight cut plastic glasses. These were not as grotesque as they might sound and were in use for years. Admittedly not at glasses, but in use none the less!
The use of this extravaganza of the man made was extended by people who knew me simply not accepting that I could possibly be serving food on anything as mundane as plastic. But I did! I once had a dinner party and came in with food (in the brown serving bowls) to find one of my guests looking at the underside of the plate “Trying to find out the name of the pottery” – such is the power of pretention!

I think that the move to Spain finally saw the end of the Plastic (I think it deserves the capital) and not one piece has come over with me: still not bad for something bought over thirty years ago!

Not many consumer durables last that long!

Reality - or something.

Today has been something of a contrast after the glorious day of sun we had yesterday. The lowering clouds eventually gave way to rain just before the barbecue was due to be lit for lunch.

It was however warm enough to sit outside and the space under the house was also perfect to house the barbecue - after it had been placed down wind.

The usual overkill, which seems to be the norm where The Family is concerned with barbecues, ensured that there was a container full of uneaten meat which will be shamefully thrown away because we can’t be bothered to make something of it later.

But wait, my latest purchase from Amazon might be the answer.

I have begun to fear the innocuous emails I get from Amazon. I know that their system logs what one has browsed, hence the frighteningly apposite tasters that one gets from that company, but they are often just as bizarrely left-field with some of their suggestions which are supposed to interest you. Last week, however, one of their suggestions was exactly what I had been thinking about, though I am sure that I had not been near anything which could have given Amazon sufficient information to double guess my needs.

So it was with something approaching genuine fear that Amazon suggested that I might like to purchase a mini blender! Which of course I promptly did using that personification of evil in our times: one-click ordering.

In a forgotten drawer in the kitchen there lies a quantity of small metallic capsules which were bought in the first enthusiasm of finding something less expensive for the coffee machine. These are do-it-yourself coffee machine capsules which I thought could be adapted to produce the ideal cup of real tea. My idea was to purchase a quantity of Earl Gray leaf tea and some decent Indian leaf tea and then put them both in a small blender until a suitable powder had been produced and then spoon the result into a number of capsules and, hey presto! a unique blend instantly produced.

I have yet to test whether this actually works because my first trials some time ago were an unqualified failure. I cut open a PG Tips tea bag and placed that inside a capsule and made a cup of tea. Perhaps “cup of tea” was something of an exaggeration for the insipid liquid that I forced myself to drink. But I reasoned that with better quality teas, expertly blended for subtlety and aroma, pulverised to within an inch of their lives and packed (positively packed and tamped down) into a capsule I would be within reach of the Nirvana of a civilized cup of tea produced almost instantly.

And before anyone says that the same results can be obtained by using a tea infuser or by using two tea bags and dipping them for the requisite number of seconds each – then all I can say is that they are wrong and they can’t and they won’t. So there.

I realise that the one great drawback to my scheme is that the coffee machines do not deal in real boiling water: almost is not enough. But I have faith and I will reveal to the world the eventual success of my endeavours – or you will hear nothing more about it. But be suspicious if I am suddenly discovered to be producing a quality of soups or smoothies!

As is usual in this part of the world rain is not for ever. The sun, albeit a little shyly, has condescended to lighten the surroundings and there is a gentle haze of light purple which is what you get when the sky blends seamlessly into the sea. But the rain has stopped.

I think that my participation in this barbecue was a little optimistic as I decided that “tummy trouble” was a thing of yesterday and today could be given over to culinary ordinariness. I think that I have over-estimated by tummy’s resilience and I had a little nap so that my body could sort things out amongst itself.

It is now late afternoon and the adjustments (for which my body is justly famous) have been made and I am back to normal – though I think that I might stick to the second bottle of Vichy water that I bought yesterday to make sure that things are finally right.

Next week takes us deeper into June and therefore nearer to the end of term. We have decided that we can now count in days rather than weeks to that glorious event and during the last week we will be able to measure things in hours.

Examinations are about to begin (again) and then the timetable gradually disintegrates until the kids leave. We then have a week in which we are supposed to do as much as we can to prepare ourselves for the next academic year.

There is something to be said for having a school which is divided up into buildings. There are two buildings which I use for the junior secondary pupils and the upper school. Although there is a fairly large vertical distance between the two, it has the advantage of encouraging people to stay put where they are rather than moving easily between the two. This means that you can, if you so choose openly hide in one or other of the buildings. Unfortunately there are no hide spaces which are without a telephone, but I find the olde worlde wood panelled splendour of the original building of the school before its mushroom like expansion to be the more congenial to my needs. And there are fewer people.

My reading has been given a boost by my finding a cupboard with one shelf filled with single copies of books which Were Thought To Be Worth Buying To Try. I don’t think much came of that because the books are obviously unread, but I am making up for that and reading them fairly steadily. I then try and convince unsuspecting students to give them a try. I sometimes feel like a drugs pusher and I know it is only a matter of time before I whisper to some kid, “I’ve got some really good stuff: the latest Caroline Lawrence with real details of life in ancient Rome!”

Which I do have, having just finished reading “The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina” by Caroline Lawrence another volume in The Roman Mysteries series. I have read a couple of the others and this one was well up to standard.

I find the setting, 79 AD Ostia, fascinating, but I am not sure about your average Spanish teenagers reading this in what will probably be their third language.

The story is gently interesting focusing on a young child who suspects that the woman who is close to her widowed father is a gold-digger. With the help of her friends and within the loose framework of the Labours of Hercules she finds out more than she bargains for. There is a sense of the didactic about this novel with Latin words and Classical allusions lovingly integrated into the story. There is even Aristo’s Scroll at the end which is a glossary written by the teacher character in the novel. If it is teaching then it is persuasive teaching and the story line is good enough to take it.

I’ve also read “Ark Angel” by Anthony Horowitz. This novel too is one of a series and, as I started to read it, I realized that I had read the next volume – but that did not interfere with my enjoyment of the novel.

Horowitz is a master story teller and an incredibly safe pair of hands in narrative terms. The novel is based around a fourteen year old, Alex Rider, who has managed to get himself involved with MI6, with the result that this novel opens with our young hero in hospital recovering from a bullet wound.

This is a Boy’s Own Paper story where, to all intents and purposes we have a young James Bond character (Horowitz didn’t get the chance of write the novels of James Bond’s youth, Charlie Higson did and very good they are too) engaged in hi-tec violence in a fast paced narrative which does not give you time to consider the essential unreality of it all. Indeed the unreality is the whole point: this is the modern remake of “and with a leap he was free” Saturday morning film series, except Horowitz always gives you enough information to make it at least barely believable. In this novel Alex rider does everything from space travel to tightrope walking between a burning tower block and freedom – but I’m sure you get the idea. This series is much to be recommended and in a native English speaking school I think it would make a good reader – as long as it wasn’t the only book that the kids were studying!

Tomorrow my first lesson with my new artistic pupil. I still don’t really know what to expect.

Roll on the morrow.

Take nothing for granted!

Lunch today was the first real meal I had eaten for something like 45 hours!

For what seems like most of my life I have been drinking water instead of eating real food. The only solid food I took was pills!

Friday had been characterized by what one must delicately call “tummy problems.”

I did not feel 100% when I set off for school and the drive there was uneventful (thank god) and without accidents – if you know what I mean.

My first period (as is my custom when I am not feeling truly well) was perfectly OK with the adrenalin of teaching carrying me through to the end. The end of the lesson, again as usual, found me a little lower than when I had started.

A colleague, who casually asked how I felt and was given a truthful answer, immediately suggested that I go home. Because of the staged collapse of our timetable I had few lessons, except (as per usual) the last one. Amazingly, my colleagues with Teutonic efficiency arranged everything and I was free to go home.

I took to my bed for the customary number of hours and felt much better at the end and was even able to go into Barcelona to meet a prospective pupil who wanted English conversation. This is a contact from the brother of a colleague and all four of us met in the centre of Barcelona in the unexpected courtyard of an arts institution with tables set around a central fountain on whose central jet an egg was rapidly rotating. (Don’t ask!) Sitting amount the vegetation we sipped glasses of wine – or at least they sipped glasses of wine and I had my Vichy water – at least it had bubbles!

My first “lesson” will be on Monday evening and we will have to see how it all goes.

Saturday has seen the augmentation of my previous progress to full health and a stable stomach.

I have swum and lain on the Third Floor and all things have been well.

Roll on Sunday!

Everything to be tested!

The public examinations are now in full flow and couples of pupils are being taken for the oral part of the certificate that they are trying to get. This means that classes have been collapsed and the whole class is sitting a further examination by use of so-called Progress Papers – which take me back to the end of Junior School when we had them to give us practice for the 11+! Ah happy days.

The weather remains muggy – it has been a long time since we have had an unequivocally fine day. I have found that the micro-climate in Castelldefels seems to be better than the rarefied air in the expensive part of Barcelona where the school is situated!

The cloud of final exams hangs over all of us casting a very real pall on everything that is going on. People are already marking; or having meetings about papers; or are typing and checking; or doing whatever people do when exam papers have to be manufactured on such a regular and soul destroying basis!

The meeting arranged for this afternoon has been postponed until a week this Friday, which makes the timing about getting back into Barcelona much more problematical. Still, it will be another aspect of life to experience even if the eventual ‘conversation classes’ come to nothing. There is always another bottle of dry white wine to drink anyway!

I had a talk with my first year sixth class about cheating, as they had asked me about what I found different in teaching in Spain. I told them, truthfully, that I had never taught in a school where teaching was so endemic with all pupils, whatever their ability engaging in it. They found it difficult to believe and regarded cheating as “only a game” and it was “right to help your friends” and they couldn’t or wouldn’t see the pernicious effect of cheating.

In Spain the school produces marks which will determine your entry to university, so the way that the internal examinations are taken has a direct result on the future prospects for education and employment. If those marks are not accurate then who and what exactly are you getting in higher education and then, if the cheating continues, in the professions themselves?

Pause for thought.

And the Devil showed him the whole world . . .

Almost as soon as I had sat down with my morning cup of tea the IT teacher came in a gave me three pages of glossy print out headed “12 reasons why I won’t buy an Apple iPad” which I read as avidly as addict might read about the advantages of methadone over the Real Thing!

I am now beginning to suspect that the “help” I am being offered in my manful struggle against the lure of the i-pad is motivated more by base envy than by logical analysis. Or is that the reasoning of someone who is hopelessly drawn towards his drug of choice!

By great good chance I had a sequence of non contact periods this morning and so (after suitable permission) I was allowed to go to Cornellá to my local tax office to try and get my taxation situation sorted out.

Having heard various horror stories about the stopping of time and the slitting of wrists connected with this place I did not go there with any lively expectation of easy results.

All I wanted was a set of taxation forms to replace the ones which the authorities (allegedly) sent to my old address. As I have collected the mail sent there religiously I have more than a little scepticism about the verity of the statements of the office.

However, it was time off school and therefore it would have to be very bad indeed to make that fact nugatory.

I parked in the underground car park of El Corte Ingles and began my epic walk towards the building of myth and mystery. Tina had very kindly provided me with a map but I still had to ask my way there twice.

The tax office when I eventually got there was something less than impressive with a heaving mass of humanity sweltering inside in the expanded entrance hall/office.

I looked around for the ticket machine. I am used to these things from other governmental offices and so began to make my way towards a computer screen, only to find myself in a queue for the tickets. The computer gave nine choices of which only the one marked “Informacion” looked at all friendly. I produced a ticket and made my way into the human scrum to insure a sight of the computer screen giving details of which ticket was being dealt with at which desk.

Depression settled firmly when I realized that my particular number was number 116 and they were helping the person with number 73. As my ticket was designated with an “I” and as there were other letters of the alphabet with their own sequences I seemed to be settled there for some time.

People came; people went – but I sat on.

The proper way to behave was demonstrated by a thin rat-faced boy who came in and marched towards the machine and selected himself a ticket. I watched, as I had watched all the other people arriving as the machine was opposite the seat that I was occupying. He checked the number of his tickets and then marched back to the computer and selected another, presumably for a different letter, and then he went back again, and again. Now armed with a pack of tickets he was able to choose the one which got him quicker access.

And it worked because I saw him exit smiling and with an officially stamped paper long before I was seen.

I was eventually seen by a smiling and cheerful lady who wished me good afternoon and then waited. I asked my usual question about her ability to speak English to which she replied with a smile and by saying that “Why should I, I am in Spain!” To which of course there was no answer. Except, of course, for my torrent of “Spanish” which issued from my lips.

The bemused look mixed with animal terror which is the normal reaction to my Spanish soon settled on her face and I am certain that he proud dismissal of my language will be rectified when she starts look for English lessons to limit her future expose to the mangling of her language that only I can produce!

She, however, did produce a whole sheaf of papers many of which I think I need.

And it turns out that I owe them money!

All that effort just to pay more! But my colleague who understands these things (in so far as anyone can be said to understand them) informs me that I can claim for more and so lessen (if not reverse) the amount that I have to pay. I hope. I trust. I pray.

The day continues muggy but, thankfully at the moment, dry. Indeed the only wetness around is emanating from our bodies as the atmosphere squeezes moisture from us. It is the sort of weather when all sane people are having a refreshing swim in their pools and then having a cocktail afterwards.

Toni has now become an expert at making some sort of South American cocktail which uses limes and sugar, crushed ice and some sort of clear liquid that gives it its punch. He doesn’t make them in those effete conical glasses but rather in chunky, oversized toothbrush glasses and very nice they are too. After the horror of visiting the tax office I think that I deserve one!

Cheers!

The end is slow!

It is no fun teaching recalcitrant kids in the fag end of a term. I know that in the UK teachers are enjoying their second blissful day of holiday freedom which comes courtesy of half term – but we, on the shores of the Med are plodding wearily on as the term slimes its way to some sort of conclusion at the end of the month.

The equivalent of the second year sixth has now completed its course and today the first year sixth finished its last lesson. The equivalent of Years 7 to 11 have a series of examinations both internal and external.

This afternoon the older kids sat their oral examination and tomorrow the younger kids are in line to be done. By the end of the week all the external oral examinations should be complete, then the internal examinations start. There will be, I think, at least one more interminable and incomprehensible meeting of all the staff and then a free for all of group work based on a topic which changes yearly and we will finally be in that relatively blissful area of the term where the kids will have gone.

No one seems to know exactly how many teaching days we have left, but as we finish on the 30th of this month and we have a few weekends before then the maths are beginning to look distinctly in favour of the teaching staff.

Which is more than can be said for our salaries! It turns out that the Generalitat has already decided that all teachers are going to be subject to the reduction of 5% in their wages as our government’s belated (sorry, woefully belated) vicious response to the so-called financial crisis.

Because of chicanery that leaves me breathless, the government is actually putting money into our extremely expensive private institution. My wages, for example are partly paid by the Generalitat. There are other colleagues whose wages are similarly paid and these monies will be subject to a reduction. Some colleagues have their wages wholly paid for by the foundation which runs the school.

At present the management is considering options and deciding what, if anything, to do. Any reduction in wages should be accompanied by an explanation of how and why any monies are going to be taken. It is a complex situation and one which can only be appreciated if the full financial details are made known. That, in itself, will be fascinating. I have learned that nothing in this country is straightforward, so I do not expect some simple explanation, or indeed any explanation which makes clear sense. I see fun and games ahead.

On the staff front there has been, and continues to be virtually no discussion about what might happen to our money. I am astonished at the lack of staff concern which apparently is the response to a situation which is unparalleled in my experience: both the situation and the response!

Now, you would think, is the time for any normal professional to bethink themselves of the protection which a union might afford. But nothing. No discussion. No action. No concern. Amazing. In Britain we would be building up to World War III – but here, nothing. At least in my school nothing.

If management behaves as it always does then nothing will be finalized until well into the holidays and then when we come back in the autumn term we are presented with a fait accompli! Perhaps this school is the place to prove me wrong. Or not. Again.

I have had an assurance from the IT teacher that he will provide me with a written list of reason why NOT to buy an i-pad. This is a kind gesture, but I fear that it may prove to be insufficient to resist the visibly weakening opposition in the face of the publicity machine that is Apple!

Thursday I am going to meet someone who wants to have English conversation lessons. As he is connected with the artistic life of Barcelona it may be a mutually beneficial arrangement. If nothing else it will be an interesting meeting, if the practicalities of going to Barcelona get in the way.

Meanwhile I am counting the days before release and possible reduction.

Death by trendy!

There is a price to be paid for using examples in English grammar which are drawn from current events. While illustrating some previously abstruse point in grammar (which now, of course, is as mother’s milk to me in my reborn I-know-what-a-second-conditional-is manifestation in my present school) I made the mistake of referring to the Eurovision Song Contest.

The equivalent of my first year sixth were aghast that the Mighty Intellectual Titan who had previously been teaching them had so blatantly revealed his common feet of clay by even alluding to such a common and vulgar little programme. It was in vain that I pleaded that I only watched the thing in a Gnostic spirit of Post-Modernist angst tinged with Surrealistic irony.

One of my students, at the end of the lesson came up to me with downcast eyes and disconsolately shaking hands said, “I am sorry Stephen, but I do not think I can respect you anymore!” One is tempted to think that such histrionics would place my students firmly in the midst of the audience in the hall of the actual event!

The devil was stalking the dining hall of the teachers this afternoon as one of my colleagues was carrying one of the Forbidden Objects. This was pointed out to me by a number of my “concerned” colleagues who, knowing my weakness, wanted to see my reaction when confronted by the actuality of an i-pad within my reach. It really does seem as if circumstances are propelling me towards a purchase – but I remain firm at the moment. But visibly weakening. Visibly.

Today is the last day of the month and from tomorrow it is acceptable to start the countdown in days to the end of term.

Before that delectable event there is the small question of examinations. We have the confluence of two streams of testing the external and the internal. The external examinations are for the various levels of English that we teach and the internal ones are for the normal rash of periodic tests on which we thrive.

This spate of examination should be the last before the kids finally depart. Thank God!

A fine bad day!

Well, if nothing else the Eurovision Song Contest shows that the God of the Bible is alive and well and living in Mainland Europe. He is, as any cursory reading of that appalling but compelling book will show, petty, vindictive, arbitrary, partial and above all mysterious. And what other adjectives could one apply to a contest that saw Germany walk it with a barely sung effort to which I awarded the mark of 3 out of 30.

Yes. Awarding marks. I did actually download the BBC score sheet and filled it in as the contest progressed. It now lies in a crumpled ball at my feet thrown there in a fit of pique as the voting developed.

As it is the day after the contest I shall now go into my (well rehearsed by now) tirade against the competition and against Johnny Foreigner in particular!

I can see no justification for the continued support of the BBC in funding this twisted farrago of blatant political bias. OK, one of the “big four” did win bucking the trend of nascent nationalistic nonentities voting for their friends and neighbours – but I am sure that some shaky economies were thinking that a vote for Germany might ensure their continued survive when it came to a bailout! Or not. I always read too much into these tawdry extravaganzas.

I shall, however, vary my moaning this year by suggesting that the UK does not continue to buy its way into the competition finals by funding a ritual humiliation every year, but rather take its chances with the heats and at least get a cut price shaming!

Thank god that rant is over for another year!

A courtesy call to Clarrie resulted in grave discourtesy. It turns out that not only has she purchased an i-pad, but also she got it on the first day of sale from The Apple Store in Regent’s Street.

My weekend is ashes and despair.

How can I teach for even a single more week knowing that Clarrie’s fingers are gliding over the sleek screen of a reasonable sized object of desire?

How?

It's hard to resist!

By 10.05 am this morning I had read a whole slate of reviews of a gadget that I do not want. The words said one thing but the pictures of the svelte, alluring, suavely curvaceous beauty of the artefact said quite another. “It is a solution without a problem!” I repeated with growing desperation. I think that the trick is never, ever actually hold one – or possibly even see one in the flesh, so to speak. Ever.

The day started in a selfishly morose fashion with a sulky sun hiding spitefully behind odious looking clouds. In Britain the climate for the day would have been set and I still preserve the particularly British pessimism that anything short of bright, direct sunlight feeds on! This, however, is Spain and the clouds lifted and soon we were bathed in sunlight.

Lunch was in the centre of Castelldefels in the restaurant that we sometimes use: Fideúa, duck and cheese cake washed down with house red and the fizzy water that one takes in summer. All eaten and drunk outside in what passes for a Ramblas in our little town with life passing fascinatingly by as one eats.

The photography that was supposed to be a keynote of today has taken a second place and I am finding in the desultory shots that I have taken that the omission of a viewfinder in the camera is a larger loss than I would have expected. I do not find the same immediacy with the image as I did with the other camera. This is very odd as I have been using digital cameras for some time, but as this one is something of a replacement for my larger canon, I am expecting it to do as much if not more than the other. When there seem to be differences they are magnified. But this is still the time of finding out rather than giving final assessments.

This evening is the final of the Eurovision Song Contest. I don’t think that I can keep on pretending that I only watch it in a mood of post-modern irony considering that I don’t think that I have missed a performance in the past umpteen years!

Obviously the voting is one of the highlights as is my inevitable vow never to watch it ever again if the travesty of democracy is allowed to continue. And so on. Until the next year when prurient curiosity always gets the better of me.

Spain, this year, has a reasonable chance with a personable (if inordinately curly) young man singing a catchy tune with odd, if likable choreography from marionette type dancers. As Spain is not an odd part of the ludicrous Balkans or a tattered part of what used to be one of the superpowers it has little chance of gaining enough votes to put it in the running for the Eurovision crown. However, I am going to download some score sheets for the contest sot that I can have a totally unbiased and authoritative view of what should have happened!

The pool has started to be used on an almost daily basis by someone – who is sometimes me – and the water is getting to the temperature where cardiac arrest is not a probable element of submersion. I really must get back to taking my swimming seriously as even after a relatively gentle twenty minutes I feel as if I have done serious exercise!

Now to find the score sheets. The drinks, snacks and enthusiasm are all ready to be depleted!

Escape?

The festivities in school last night to celebrate the graduation of certain students went on until 11.00 pm: I shudder to think of the state that Toni would have been in if I had stayed and found him slumped in his plastic chair in the garden in the darkness! It was obviously fated for me to come home and rescue him!

The day has dragged, especially as my “gained” “free” period was taken up by the showing of a French film set in the early years of the twentieth century, about a young girl who rescues a wolf cub after his family had been slaughtered – and I think anyone knowing the story of Androcoles will be able to work out the rough lines of the narrative. The film ended after the girl had crashed in a light aircraft in an isolated snowy part of France and was “saved” by the wolves and a simple-minded peasant and . . . the bell went and I had to stop the film.

It was a perfectly acceptable historical portrayal but at no point did I get a sense that anything original was being said. This is one film shown in school that I will not rush to see in its complete form!

Lunch today (now that I have rejected the meat and fish that are served in school) was surprisingly good. I had a salad with many interesting ingredients and there were ripe strawberries for postre afterwards.

Today the i-pad is unleashed on Europe and I repeat the mantra “This is a solution without a problem” to ensure that I resist the almost overwhelming urge to spend money I do not possess on an over-hyped and totally desirable Apple product!

Even I have been unable to entirely ignore the fact that some sort of football competition is soon to be invading our television air time. Spanish programming is not something which necessarily looses anything by having its uninspiring schedules inundated with endless sequences of overpaid young men kicking an inflated spheroid on grass in another hemisphere, but I am dreading the overkill that comes with such competitions.

Given my present location I go into this competition with two teams to support: England and Spain and I have that sort of despairing fear about which one is going to go further! Spain, however is trying to buck its usual bad luck which dogs its attempts to gain the World Cup. Even I was shocked by the truly shameful and seemingly deliberate way in which Spain was forced out of the competition when it was staged (a very apt word I think!) in South Korea.

As the Cup is being staged in South Africa I do have a very lively hope that everything goes well. Years of not eating South African apples or drinking South African wine do leave their impression. South Africa is not a country to which I can feel neutral. In spite of the very real problems social, political and moral that the country faces I do hope that such a focus of international attention reveals a country with potential rather than one replete with negative aspects.

I refuse to regard the non-completion of stadia as anything more than the usual horror stories which are paraded in the press before every major sporting competition in the world wherever they are held!

Tomorrow photos and an evaluation.

Another bloody day!

Conrad came to mind as I went from the relatively clear, clean air of Castelldefels to the dingy pall over the dark heart of Barcelona. The distant hills were shrouded in misty but murky filters of light orange, ochre and khaki: it made the landscape look artistic and strangely beautiful, but one was not at all convinced that one should be breathing the air surrounding it!

The sky is white at the horizon shading into an unconvincing blue in the sky from which a bright but tired looking sun is doing its best to convince us all that summer is truly here. The atmosphere is sticky and energy draining – but that might just be a side effect of getting up early for my 8.15 am start with the equivalent of Year 9!

Staff have started chanting the litany of salvation for this time in the term consisting of the encouraging words, “Well, we’re getting to the end!” This would be truly encouraging if it were true; but the real truth is that we do not finish school until the end of June. OK, the kids will have gone some time before, but we will still be in school and still longing for that fateful day when we will be free for two glorious months!

As you can tell there is an element of stir-craziness in the way that we are going about our business, but the short, sharp shock of the impending examinations will bring us all back to our oars in the slave galley and we will dutifully bend our back under the lash of the whip from our overseers as we keep the drudgery going.

The camera is the one bright spot. It is a truly remarkable machine whose potential I have barely scratched. There is a vast discrepancy between its look – which is a truly unremarkable and ordinary looking black digital camera when it is switched off and the fearsome beast it becomes when the lens erupts from it unfeasibly slim body!

I am going to have to explore sub-menus otherwise I will have paid top dollar for a machine which is not being pushed as hard as it should be. A continuing story.

I couldn’t face the so-called “graduation” of students in my school and I fled at the end of the day just before the actual end of school so that I avoided the maniacal exodus of kids in their parental tanks as they fled towards their homes.

I made good time and arrived home to find Toni sitting outside on a garden chair staring at me morosely. He had come outside at 1.30 pm and inadvertently locked himself out; locking keys and mobile phones and phone numbers safely inside. He had been sitting there patiently (redesigning the house in his mind to fill his time) for over two hours. As he had been preparing his lunch when he locked himself out he was more than prepared to visit Rober’s in the centre of Castelldefels for a superior burger and refrescante.

Rober’s was, of course, the scene of my arrogant attempt to evade payment when simply walked away after the last burger that we had there, the vulgar necessity of paying having slipped my mind. While buying bread in the shop opposite Rober’s one of the waitresses in the establishment crossed the road and intimated that it would be preferable if I abandoned my attempt at the behaviour of royalty and succumbed to my essential plebeian status and actually paid for what I had consumed!

Toni was, of course, convulsed with shame at such behaviour while I merely found it amusing. Today, I reminded the waitress that El Ladron (The Thief) had come back to patronise the establishment – but this time I paid for what I ordered at once!

Next Tuesday is the first of June and one will be able to say with some justice that the end of school is truly in sight!

The weekend is an opportunity for me to take some pictures and I have downloaded the 180 page manual for the camera and am now a few steps further forward to knowing how it works.

Onwards and upwards!

Time to unlock

The camera is beginning to reveal some of its secrets and I still have not had recourse to the CD Rom guides. I would still feel so much more secure if I could work my way through a manual.

Given the size of the camera the selection wheel for different shooting styles is necessarily more restricted and some functions are hidden in sub menus which were more readily available on my other camera. Still, it is early days yet and I have not taken a decent picture with the machine; I have been far more concerned with the simple mechanics of the camera and photos of my legs (though obviously alluring in many ways) as the subjects nearest to me when trying different styles, are not necessarily the photos which I choose to keep!

Today is one of those bright but hazy days which negate the panoramic possibilities of photographing from the terrace of the school, but I might try anyway and see what quality I can get.

Interesting results, but I will have to do some more extensive testing this weekend. Hopefully I will have some decent shots to make real comparisons with my other camera.

No more than desultory teaching today with all the staff looking as though the holidays are going to happen some time in the next century!

With the realization that I have not read anything recently I started reading yet another book of short stories which might be suitable for pupils. This collection of stories has lost its cover and is scrawled on by past generations of students, but it is the only thing in the staff room that I can find that I haven’t read!

It did give me the chance to re-read “The Rocking-Horse Winner”. It is narrative heavy story but the whole of the action is deeply based on a conception of class and the tensions in a society which equates success with wealth. The ending is harsh and is a savage indictment of misplaced objectives which ignore the human element. What a good story it is! Not sure how the kids will react to it though.

Tomorrow is the day when I am supposed to have a double free in the afternoon to produce the material necessary for my teaching. Unfortunately it is also the day when the kids in the upper secondary section have their “graduation” so I may have to stay on to witness whatever excess they have planned for the evening. Last year one of the parents ordered a vast cake which had icing sugar photographs of all the teachers. God alone knows how much it cost. I think that I was told, but my conscious mind has pushed this knowledge far into my deep subconscious!

We shall see.

When is the weekend?

A relatively free drive to school with only two traffic jams: one thinks not about the airy and sunshine filled journey of May butt rather of what the journey is going to be like in the darker mornings of autumn and winter when dark lines of traffic will snake their way slowly up the hill towards the radio beacon which is the landmark which indicates where the school is situated. Dark thoughts for a light day.

As usual the reappearance of pupils in school was accompanied by the customary panic as a school trip necessitated a whole reorganization of the time table to take account of missing members of staff. Our English groups composed of the first English classes of the day were collapsed – the traditional response to missing teachers. A free gained by my second class going out was immediately by my being taken by another class for maths. At least work was set; though as I sit here typing, it is hard to gauge how much of the lesson is going to be productively filled by the sparse looking sheets which I have been given to keep the kids occupied.

What I really want to do is go out and about and try out the capabilities of my new camera. I have brought it to school but I am too reticent (given recent economic conditions) to flaunt it. I think that this camera has a multi-shot option which I never found on my other Canon and that is something which one of my colleagues needs to use if she is to capture real movement shots of the big game and exotic creatures she is likely to see on her Safari in South Africa. This is one function which I never found on my previous camera and with my built in aversion to using the fiddly manuals on CD-rom. I must emulate the technique of the very young and assume that the workings of any piece of hi-tec gadgetry will be (or should be) intuitive. There seems to be more on-screen help than with the other camera so I am gently optimistic.

The decent weather, which is continuing today, is scheduled not to continue through to next weekend.

The long weekend end

The pall of misery that usually accompanies the last day of a long weekend was somewhat mitigated by the eventual arrival of my new camera.

I saw ‘eventual’ as the delivery company resorted to the low tactics that we were used to in the previous habitation where the delivery men put the note which says they tried to contact the householder without actually using the bell. In the flat I actually had one ‘failed contact’ note with a time that was later than the actual time that it was “delivered”. So, there were two people in the house at the time stated and, amazingly, neither heard the doorbell which didn’t ring!

Our complaints to the central office were greeted with a shrug of the shoulders. At least given the one way system in our street, the driver will not have had to get out of the van to post the note!

At the moment the camera is everything I hoped it would be and less! The last word refers to its size which is really and truly shirt pocket fitting. The controls are traditional Canon which I know fairly well but the proof etc etc will be the photos. The USP for me was the 14x optical zoom which segues into a 56x digital which should make framing a decent picture a little easier.

The major drawback, as usual, is that the manual is on disc and printing it out takes up half a forest!

Time, as they say, will tell.

Meanwhile the fag end of term is beginning to shuffle its incontinent way into our consciousnesses as the last convulsions of examinations dribble their intrusive slime into the quiet tenor of what our lives could be!

My last gasp of freedom was a meal out with Irene as we go over ground that we know so well about what the future can hold for us both and what it probably will hold!

I am going to try and find out what happened in the courts about what happened to the money that was supposed to go to Charity in a Readathon I helped organize in The School That Sacked Me. In spite of numerous requests about the amount and destination of the money raised nothing was ever told to staff, students or parents! It is time to dust off the statements and other information and go back to the courts and find out exactly what has been done.

Roll on the weekend in what is left of this four day week!