Half gone!

After a working week of almost uninterrupted sunshine the first day of the weekend has dawned in a spiteful and sullen way – were it not for the fact that I own a MacBook Air, which is the equivalent of having one’s own private star, I might despair.

Also the delight of having got rid of the marking on a Friday night continues to please and surprise.

The proposed excitement for this Saturday is a visit to the heaving stronghold of the Swedish furniture monopoly.  To get Toni to go to IKEA at all is astonishing, to get him to go on a Saturday is frankly unbelievable.  The answer to this conundrum is that he wants to purchase an occasional table for his mum and, at the moment these are absurdly reasonably priced.

Toni is what is known, in a term that I have just originated, as a “mono-purpose” shopper; indeed the term “shopper” is a grave misnomer for him as he is much more of what might be described as a shop “visitor” of the “in, get what you want and get out” mode. 

I, on the other hand, may be classed, in another term newly sprung, as a “developing purpose” shopper: one goes into a shop to discover the reason why one should be there in the first place.

 

To be a true shopper in the style of my mother you have to adopt Lear’s visceral cry of “O reason not the need” as the clarion call to commercial visitations.  She had the basic Cartesian belief that “I shop, therefore I am” which, to some extent, she passed on to me.  Like her I loathe going in to town with insufficient money to buy something if I see it.  After all you never know when you might “need” something which has to be bought.  Of course the ever-present bankcard means that one is always in “instant spend” mode – which I find strangely comforting though financially diminishing.

I am faced with an ethical dilemma.

The inconsiderate, selfish, uncaring, thoughtless dog owner next door allows her selection of deranged mutts to bark and whine at will.  Our dawn chorus is canine not avian.  I have had enough.

At the moment I behave like some strange teacher, poking my head out of the window and emitting hissing “shushing” sounds like a snake.  This is the accepted from of indicating to children that they should be quiet and I assume that the dogs will have grown up with this form of control as well.

This technique is as effective with dogs as it is with children: momentary silence and then life goes on as normal.

So I have read about super-sonic whistles that only dogs can hear and I am inclined to get one and each time one of the canine criminals starts up to give a few blasts in the hope that it will be as annoying to the bloody dogs as a normal whistle is to humans.

I do not, however want to find myself like some form of urban conductor giving an admonitory blow on the whistle and like the raising of a baton produce an orchestrated cacophony from all the dogs of the neighbourhood from the piccolo yaps of the disgusting rat-dogs that flat dwellers seem to favour to the basso profundo of the larger dogs which house owners keep outside with all the other instruments of the orchestra (in debased form) being horribly mimicked by the plague of dogs that we have in our area.

It is a wonder to me that the people in this benighted part of the world have not bred dogs small enough to perch on their owners’ shoulders like parrots so that they can take their noise with them wherever they go!

Lunch was very reasonably priced in a restaurant that we have taken to patronising.  The food wasn’t quick but it was freshly cooked because we saw the waiter/owner/chef cooking it.  In my mind I compared the price and value of my meal with that I had in the restaurant of St David’s Hall in Cardiff where, affected by the downpour in which I was caught, I incautiously (and uncharacteristically) decided that a Carvery meal would be a good idea.  It was relatively expensive for a one-course meal with a frugal glass of wine and unsatisfying and indeed cost more than my three-course meal here with bread and a bottle of wine included!

The trip to IKEA was horrific.  Well, not the journey but the heaving mass of stagnant humanity infesting the place did make the actual arrival and wandering through the store akin to being in one of the less fashionable circles of hell with the sonic accompaniment of crying, screaming, whining and simply breathing kids.

We didn’t actually find the thing that we went for: a small, inexpensive occasional table – but I still managed to find a few things to buy.

Once a spender always a spender.

Deprivation and possibility

Trembling hands; nervous looks, furtive and frightened; the tearing of small cambric handkerchiefs; lack of coherence and a look of wistful loss.

That just about sums up my broken personality this morning when, arriving in school, I discovered that I had left The Machine on the arm of a chair in the living room at home.

Luckily (!) I had a fairly full timetable with the loss of a free period and so there was little opportunity to use it and even the lunch hour was taken up with eating and desperate marking of the Mock Examinations that we have now started.

As is the way with the school we have created for ourselves an “Examination Nexus” with clashes and pile-ups and general chaos and inconvenience.  There is also a short time scale for the marking of the papers before we have a Grand Meeting (again) to “discuss” pupils’ progress – so I have been marking furiously to get the things out of the way so that I can do more marking to make way for more examinations.  And so on.

To be fair the marking I am doing reflects little on my professional status: in the so-called “real” world the answer sheets I am marking manually would actually be marked by a machine!  Which in our case we do not have.

I have managed to get ¾ of the task done and I am determined to get the rest finished this very evening as who knows what the weekend will throw in my general direction!

We have now completed 10% of the term and we are all trying to diminish the sound of the 90% of the term remaining.  However hard we try it still amounts to nine weeks of teaching with a “fiasco” week in early March when I at least will have no students but will still have to go in to school for undefined “courses” – perhaps I should regard this interpolated week as a form of Loyola Spiritual Exercises on the lead up to Easter so that I can respond to them in an other-worldly way!

The return of Toni from his exile in Terrassa (where he was ministered unto by a doting parent after his operation for the removal of a tumour near his eye) was for the taking out the stitches and a celebratory meal afterwards.  I know that things are back to what we laughingly call normality when I find myself having an informed conversation about who should have won the golden accolade for being the best footballer in the world.  I am still reeling from the fact that I actually have an opinion about such things!  How times have changed!

 

Toni’s arrival also brought The Family present for me for Kings: a computer lap rest with a light and holes for teacups and pencils and pens.  It is in a pleasing metallic finish and I think that I have a spare Apple symbol that I can affix to cover the actual make of the thing so that I have a seamless co-ordination between The Machine and Rest.  Yes, I have no shame.

My marking is now complete – at least this stage of the marking.  The trick is to finish off your marking and not let anyone know that you have done it.  The last time I finished with what might be described as despatch I was asked to take a chunk of someone else’s marking and complete that too!  I shall not make that mistake again.

Meanwhile the weekend stretches before me with an expansive (if ultimately deceptive) length.  I shall make the most of it.

Almost the weekend!

The looks of envy continue to justify the exorbitant price that I paid for The Machine with new worshipers fawning and begging to touch its metallic case as t’were a religious icon – which in a way I suppose it is. 

I assume that this aura of veneration will eventually diminish as more pupils (and there are three already) possess The Machine and devalue its exclusivity.  How the kids have been able to swing such an expensive Christmas present is beyond my imagination, but that’s our school for you!

My trip to school was made a little more bearable as music from the thirteenth century continued to chronicle the Dominican (let us not forget) spearhead the genocidal slaughter of fellow Christians, albeit so-called heretics given the catch-all lack of definition in the papal encyclical that justified this disgrace. 

The music (on both sides) is excellent though not, I am bound to add, everyone’s cup of tea.

I have yet to start on the long slog that will get the CDs from the boxes onto my Machine.  Much of the music on the disks I already own, but they were such a good price that it would have been criminal neglect to have left them on the shelf. 

As a cautionary tale I might add that I went into the record shop as one of my first ports of call and saw a comprehensive box set of the music of Mendelssohn that I dithered about and, when I finally decided to buy it – it had gone!  The clear moral is to spend lots, spend regularly and spend now: it does, after all keep the capitalist system up and working and safeguards my dwindling savings!

It is all very well talking about high art and the more spiritual aspects of life in Catalonia, but there are more pressing prosaic factors to take into account as well.  Housework.

When I got home I resisted the appeal of the reclining chair and attempted to cut my way through the living grease that decorates the gas rings on the cooker.  It put up quite a fight and eventually I gave in: though to be fair to me it does shine a bit more than it did.  I used two different types of detergent and a great deal of elbow grease (the latter on the principle of like combating like Mr Jenner’s invention.

I was going to do some hoovering but that just seemed like one domestic chore too far.

Yet another early start tomorrow and at the end of the day Week 1 of the ten weeks of this term will be completed.

Sigh.

Never give up!

Although cold there is always the sun to encourage one to believe that summer is not too far away.  This is self- delusion of a high order, but the weather over the past few weeks has been unusually and suspiciously mild and has blunted the horror of distant holidays somewhat.

The drive to school in the gloom is still bloody; the behaviour of motorists suicidal; the parking of parents unconscionable and the teaching day far too long but . . . and here I pause for some sort of overwhelmingly positive aspect of life to strike me . . . and I remember the drive home from work yesterday and the ludicrously impressive sunset dusting the hills and the invigorating sight of the sea on the last part of my journey so that I tell myself to grow up and enjoy the country of choice that I was determined to live in.

As far as the weather is concerned we are having, what in British terms for this time of the year, could be considered to be a heat wave.  I think that, in some ways it is inadequate compensation for the dreadful weather that we had last year at the same time.  I was wandering around demanding compensation from the Generalitat for not providing me with the sultry climes that I had come to expect from the area in which I live.

The Union meeting gets ever closer and this time there will be an extra person there who will be my contact for the future.  I am struggling to think of ways in which anything real and positive will emerge from the meeting, but I fear that it will mostly be plaintive mewling about the lack of fibre in the modern trade unionist!

And I have to get to the place as well.  I have been on the journey from my school to the centre of the city on a number of occasions and no two have been the same.  In spite of a GPS the road repairers of Barcelona go out of their way to ensure that the street on which you should have turned down has suddenly become a “No entry” and you have to drive on and double guess your way through a maze of one-way streets hoping that your essential belief that you are generally going in the right direction is going to hold good until you get there.

I have decided to make my GPS think that I am going to the Hard Rock Café because the underground car park entrance is near it: your direction of travel is essential in this city because it will define how you approach your destination.

 

The Union meeting is now over and I have been introduced to the gentleman who is most directly concerned with the unionization of our particular area of education.

Most of the meeting was discussing with Steve the best way to involve more colleagues in the union.  We did work out some strategies; time will tell if they are anything more than a vain attempt to get things moving.  As I keep telling myself “Anything is Better than Nothing” so I will have to preserve my long-suffering optimism and carry on carrying on.

Another early start tomorrow, but there again, it brings the weekend nearer!

As part of my continuing spend-thriftness I ventured into the sales (or rather “sales”) in Barcelona and in spite of lean pickings I did manage to find one or two CDs to add to The Machine.  I know that no one with any pretentions to electronic maturity actually buys CDs nowadays, but I continue to be virtually unique in having all the actual CDs to go with the music that I have on my computer!  Selective morality is a wonderful thing!

 

I did make one purchase which I am very pleased with:  “Le Royaume Oublié: La croisade contre les Albigeois.  La tragédie Cathare” which takes the form of a hardback book about The Albigensian Crusade with three CDs charting the history of this shameful episode in the history of the Roman Catholic church in contemporary music.  It is a bizarrely fascinating and musically quirky compilation and I am thoroughly enjoying it.  So far my favourite musical item has been a series of fanfares and battle calls dating from the period at the start of the “Crusade” in 1209.

My other purchases were massive boxed sets of Dvorak and Grieg because they were exceptional value with each CD being less than €1!  The ones that I have listened to so far have been the Cathar disks which cost considerably more than €1 each, but in another way they were even cheaper because I bought the three items on a “buy two and get the third free” offer – but that concept only works if you buy into my individualistic approach to economics!

It works for me!

Forward!

My colleagues are beginning to talk about the length of time to the Easter Holidays – on day two of the present term!  There are ten long weeks to go with no half term to soften the blow of relentless teaching of a timetable load which is much above what I would have in the UK at a salary much below.

Pathetic isn’t it!  Teaching in a private school in one of the most interesting cities in the world with panoramic views of said city and living by the side of the Mediterranean.  Methinks I do protest too much – but there again we do adjust our moans very quickly to new situations and ten weeks of slog is nothing to look forward to.

Suzanne, on the other hand is constantly enthusiastic and continues to plan, innovative and suggest, dragging me along behind her.  She is living proof of the necessity of having people on the staff with limited experience but of recent training and who are prepared to put into action ideas that (for them) haven’t failed in the past!  And be delighted at the results.

It is such a pleasure to hear kids talking about art and putting forward ideas about the subject that it acts as a very specific tonic when I am jaded by some of my other more prosaic (and that is a very carefully chosen word) teaching in areas where I am not so much at home.

My Machine continues to please with my taking great satisfaction in the clear envy evinced by staff and students alike.  This delight reached a high point with one student plaintively asking, “Can I just touch it!”  It certainly is easy to see why icons and relics have had such power in the past.

I know that the word “iconic” is over-used these days but there are certain things that effortlessly achieve that status.

 

In 1990 the British Post Office issued an exceptional set of stamps that commemorated British iconic design.  It is hard to argue with any of the choices and the stamps themselves are elegant and effective.

Over the last couple of years the object which I would nominate is the iPod Nano: simple, beautiful, of its time and something which effortlessly (ignoring the advertising blitz for the moment) inveigled its way into the hearts and minds of the core of Apple enthusiasts who then Saul/Paul-like went about the world seeking to convert the podless into the ways of truth, musicality and penury.

When I was very much younger, I remember going in to a small specialist audio shop on The Hayes in Cardiff.  I went there to pay homage and silently to adore the equipment that they sold there.  Buying anything was beyond the dreams of avarice because they stocked the impossibly expensive but infinitely desirable stuff made by Bang & Olufsen: the ampersand said it all, class and severely beautiful design from the north.

 

Once I went in to wonder and found that they had a sale.  Even in the sale their stuff was exorbitantly expensive but among the large and intimidating systems there was one small radio.  Impossibly, it seemed to be within the price range that I couldn’t afford but couldn’t afford not to pay.  The radio had all the design that set you apart and looked very much like the distillation of the more discretely flamboyant constructions for which Bang & Olufsen were famous.

The only problem was that it was solely FM when in our area there were few FM stations – or possibly not, who can remember the machinations of our radio providers.  But I do remember that, to all intents and purposes it didn’t really work.

Needless to say I bought it and, while using another, cheaper and altogether more vulgar radio gazed at the B&M and hoped for more affluent days when I might actually be able to afford something that worked.

 

I’m not sure that those days have arrived but the slim MacBook Air that I have makes up for those B&M-less time.  This surely is something that is iconic.  And it’s mine!

The school has kindly installed Office for Mac on the thing and I am now trying to learn a new system that seems to do much more than the last version of Office that I had to contend with.  I would like to go on a course that explains how to make full use of Office. 

I am of an age where most people assume that the use of this suite of programs is almost second nature to me, but all I do when I use it is scratch the surface of what the programs can do and I am sure that some of my strategies for getting things done which are complex and involved can actually be done with a few key strokes if only I knew which ones to press.  Perhaps a visit to Amazon and Windows for Dummies is called for!

I have done a little rearranging of the paintings and I think that I might drill a few more holes to put up some of the unjustly neglected works that I have.  Anything other than school work – even if it means hoovering!

Tomorrow the meeting with the Union and an attempt to raise my level of belief that something real can be achieved in the present climate of job fearing subservience. 

Days past

5th January 2011


It's about now that I start to panic about the fact that I have done nothing in the way of packing for my short trip to the UK tomorrow. Not only have I done no packing but also I haven’t even printed out the boarding pass for the plane, nor to think about it the information about the hire car.

I always say that a holiday, no matter how brief, is nothing without a modicum of panic to season the voyage!

I have a sneaking suspicion that I have deleted the emails which gave the information about boarding passes etc which adds a further level of concern to tomorrow's journey.

I am looking forward to it – after all which starts with a visit to hospital and takes in a Michelin star restaurant and the January sales has got to be memorable.

THE CROWN AT WHITEBROOK 8^th January and onwards, 2011

I have now consumed probably the most expensive meal that I have ever eaten.

In a four hour opulent, self indulgent fantasy of food we steadily ate and drank our way through nine courses each of which was accompanied by its sommelier chosen wine to complement the food.

Ceri and I behaved like spoilt children throughout the meal and Dianne has a look of martyred, self-resignation – when she remembered to wear it, otherwise she was as taken as we two. At one point we all made little moaning and whimpering sounds as a cacophony of warring tastes assaulted our tender palettes.

The food was consumed with an added zest as the shortish drive from Cardiff was made that little bit more exciting by the fact that the small country roads that we had to negotiate at the end of the trip were both vertical and hazardous with ice and the gleam of the headlights showed by the grey scummy frozen slush which was smudging the hedges which pressed in on both sides.

Our eventual arrival left us all just a little tense and it was with relief that we were guided to our “named” rooms. Mine (Ivor after Ivor Novello – a fine Canton-in-Cardiff boy made good) was a hovel under the eaves on an added-on attic to the original building.

It was an en-suite hovel of course and it had tea making facilities which included five different types of tea and sachets of ground coffee for the cafeteria. There was also a metallic vacuum flask filled with fresh milk. As an added ethnic touch there were two Welsh cakes scintillating with more sugar than have seen on anything that I have eaten in the last year or so.

I had a bath (using up the bath crystals) and a shower (using everything else that was set out by the side of the bath) and then started to use up the luxuriant towels that were obviously provided for the two people that they expected to be staying in the room.

When we eventually got down to the lounge to, well, lounge in the armchairs and try and drink something in a decorous way which could mask our growing excitement it was already to late as our expectation was egged on by the excellent service we had when merely trying to drink a bottle of beer.

The appetizers were exquisite: small but tasty and we were all rather too hyper to take in what they actually were – what I took to be rather bland pale orange caviare was actually some concoction of tapioca!

We do now have a menu which lists the food and the accompanying wine that we had for each course and even without the necessary technical (and of course quintessentially foreign) language that was used to describe what we were about to eat it still sounds quixotically exotic. It will take a little time for the experience to become bedded into our memories and even longer for the counselling to try and accept just how much we paid for the whole experience!

But, by god, it was worth it. Everything was done well; it was unostentatious but throughly competent and assured. As plate succeeded slate slab and wooden sliver; and glass gave way to yet more glasses in a constant scintillation of flashing crystal and as knives and forks and spoons were laid, used and cleared canteen by canteen it became clear to all that we were made to live like this!

The cheese board had to be seen to be believed with the vulgarly named “Celtic Promise” (a cider cured cheese) being a startlingly good find. The poor girl who was adding cheese after cheese to our communal slab of slate only stopped taking our requests because there was physically no more room on the slate to put another morsel.

When we finally staggered back to the lounge well fed and well oiled and still reeling from the two desserts which followed the cheese board and clutching at proffered coffees as if they were a combination of essence of Rennies for Fast Relief and the Elixir of Life we were appalled to find one of the staff appear with a narrow tray for each of us with petit fours on them. One of them was a bubblegum mousse and there was no concession to lightness.

My breakfast the next day was admirably restrained compared with the excess of the night before: tea, yogurt, smoked salmon, poached egg and blinis – positively Puritan!

The drive back to Cardiff was conducted in bright sunshine and a complete absence of ice and snow.

This has been a fantastic way to end my holiday and make the start of teaching at 8.15 am tomorrow morning a little more bearable.

As a fitting end to the holiday and as a response to the vivacity,good humour and sheer friendliness of the staff in “Worlddutyfree” shop I have bought a rather startling new watch, this one constructed (“made” seems inadequate) by Diesel. It has a sort of iridescently blue watch face of curved rectilinear design with the indicators for 2,4,8 and 10 being indicated by a rearing prong of metal. It is, of course, day and date and I have made sure that it is safe to swim while wearing it. It is a rather assertive little number and I like it a lot.

To show that buying the watch was the right thing to do, it emerged when I got it into my hands that the price on the actual watch was £25 cheaper. I got it for the cheaper price. The woman serving me was an absolute delight and I think that I would have bought virtually anything just to keep her in humour!

As I had “gained” £25 I immediately spent it on a selection of four small bottles of after shave which are small enough to be part of a toilet case in a “one bag” EasyJet scenario. A sensible as well as a “free” purchase!

All (well, most) of this has been typed while sitting in the departure lounge watching the Departures Board document the increasing lateness of the plane for Barcelona. However my new watch and my perfumes comfort me and the Apple logo shines out like a good deed in a naughty world.

If the last departure time that the board gave is accurate then we should be boarding in about ten minutes. Time to pack up and look expectant.

For the first time in my life I am actually typing on an aircraft: typing that statement out is surely the computer equivalent of shouting when using a mobile phone on a train in the early days of those now ubiquitous devices. Still, it is a sort of rite of passage, especially as the young lad sitting on the opposite side of the aisle has a much bulkier Mac than my svelte, gleaming beauty!

I might also add that the lad is wearing a baseball cap and is now using his computer after using two other electronic devices before the plane had started taxing on the runway prior to takeoff. To my great astonishment he has also produced a book and has actually managed a few pages, but as soon as the seat belt lights went off he ignored the mere printed media and turned to his small screens. He is only using his computer for music and he is playing a handheld game on something else. Such is progress. He also ate a truffle (my membership of the Cubs came in useful for noticing and remembering the different stages of his amusements.

His attention span must be minuscule and his life must be exhausting if he constantly has to be amused through the 24 hours of each electronic action packed day of his life!

There again, everyone else is assuming that I am some sort of electronic nurd myself for having the barefaced shame of getting out a computer.

I have to admit that I too have played a game of solitaire on my telephone and eaten the notorious “meal deal” for which EasyJet is justly maligned. It cost six quid for a small tin of Pringles; a chicken and stuffing roll and a bottle of pop. What, I hear you ask, is a mere six quid to someone who has just eaten in The Crown in wherever it was in the back of beyond. Let it pass; let it pass.

The two people next to me have now brought out an iphone and a nano ipod so, apart from the bloke next to the window on the other side of the aisle we are all using Apple products! There is nothing like market saturation!

The musical harshness of my telephone alarm broke through escapist dreams and dragged me back to the reality of an 8.15 start to teaching the passive this morning. How teaching the passive relates to reality I have yet to understand, but it is a staple of the Cambridge Examination that the hapless kids have to take so it remains an essential ingredient in the melange of grammar that we offer up to whatever nit picking gods there may be!

I only had four lessons today so that I could prepare some of the work for the next lot of history of art classes that we are going to take. Prepare on my new computer of course which had a most satisfactory reception of unashamed covetousness by my colleagues – so that was money well spent!

The new WJEC book on Media Studies has given me plenty of ideas to extend and develop what I am already doing with the kids so that too was an excellent purchase – as indeed was my new watch which also elicited a somewhat startled response. As Oscar said, “There is only one thing worse than achieving a startled response and that is . . . etc etc.

I know that they say that the first day back is the worst, but I am so tired that I am afraid to go to bed in case I don't wake up!

But wake up I will and have to go in an teach with only the distant promise of some vague days off at the end of February to keep me going.

At least the sun was shining.

tonight

Prepared as usual

It's about now that I start to panic about the fact that I have done nothing in the way of packing for my short trip to the UK tomorrow. Not only have I done no packing but also I haven’t even printed out the boarding pass for the plane, nor to think about it the information about the hire car.

I always say that a holiday, no matter how brief, is nothing without a modicum of panic to season the voyage!

I have a sneaking suspicion that I have deleted the emails which gave the information about boarding passes etc which adds a further level of concern to tomorrow's journey.

I am looking forward to it – after all which starts with a visit to hospital and takes in a Michelin star restaurant and the January sales has got to be memorable.

Holiday officially ends with days to spare!

I defy augury.

I took my Christmas decorations down today. I know that it is not the 6^th of January, but I won't be here on that date so I decided to do it today. I usually do it earlier, usually on New Year's Day but we were in Terrassa for most of the day and by the time we got home neither of us was feeling up to the tedium of deconstruction.

I never did manage to find the Christmas lights in the horror which is the cupboard under the eaves on the Third Floor so the tree was relatively painless in its stripping. The “guilt” Christmas cards (so called because I sent none this year; not even an electronic one) have been collected up and, as usual, some decorations have been overlooked.

The ones which escaped notice this time round are the most camp of the lot. These are three golden, tasselled cords which have a series of large, clear, crystal globes along their length. I have (artistically) scrunched them in the translucent, curved shade of a couple of up-lighters with the tassels and one globe hanging over the side. The rest of the globes pick up the light from the lamp and gleam interestingly through the shade. The other is draped rather absurdly over one of Ceri's paintings.

I think that their addition to the rather stark and severe up-lighters are a good thing, though Ceri's painting will be returned to its original unadorned glory at once. I am sure, though, that Toni will want them all packed away securely and completely for another long year!

The Christmas tree, as usual was the most difficult element in the packing away of the festive season.

When I bought the tree (I have to have artificial as I am allergic to the real thing – and I would be grateful if all readers just took that information as a simple statement of fact about living Christmas trees rather than an interesting metaphorical take on my personality) I know that it fitted comfortably into the box in which it came. Obviously. In the few years that I have owned the tree the box has, quite obviously shrunk. There is no way in which the tree as it now exists can possibly have fitted into the box in which it came, and is yet another proof that the present state of Physics to explain the material universe is woefully inadequate.

It is only by the application of many strips of sellotape (my spell checker has offered me words from “sell-out” through “Sellafield” to “salt-pans” to replace sellotape) that anything approaching closure can be secured. The box is now a sort of down market jack-in-the-box with the stout cardboard stretching the tape to a twanging tautness.

The tape itself is now rapidly (well, annually) becoming a feature in itself as, rather like the rings in a tree, you can tell the age of the artificial variety by counting the layers of yellowing tape which have been used to secure the contents in the box. When the box is opened the fluttering ends of the tape appear to be post-modern strands of seaweed fringing the opening.

Well, at least the tree has been thrust back into the Cupboard of the Unnecessary on the Third Floor, but I did not have the energy to push back the tree decorations and the figures and stable from the Belen back into the three-dimensional jig-saw puzzle that the cupboard has become. Sufficient unto the day etc.

To all intents and purposes Christmas for me is over. I will not be in Spain for the last gasp of the season for the festival of The Kings with the parades and sweet throwing so I can now reorientate my thoughts towards the forthcoming term.

Perhaps the use of the word “can” in that last sentence was used in its more accurate sense of “it is physically possible that” - whether I choose to do so is another matter entirely. Given the risible salary that the school pays (though good and fair by Spanish standards) I feel no pressing compulsion to use holiday time for the benefit of the overprivileged youngsters that we are honoured to teach.

However, I do hope to find some decent teaching material about Advertising which is the basis of my Media Studies Course on my whistle-stop visit to the UK. 

There are so many things which will have to be packed into the few days that I am there that it will only be possible if there is a calamitous fall of traffic-stopping snow to allow me to get it all done in the extra days that may be added because of the elements!

That is always assuming that I do not spend them in the salubrious setting of Bristol Airport! And perhaps I shouldn't joke about such things.

Toni has just visited the dermatological consultant and been told that the growth at the side of his left eye is a small tumour and will have to be removed. He has been told that it is not serious but he is having an operation with local anaesthetic and the growth is going on Friday first thing in the morning.

Hospitals are beginning to have a central role in my social life! Better than school!

Count the days

After a night of heavy rain the clouds of the morning gave way to a glorious day of bright sunshine only marred by Toni's continuing illness. He stayed in bed till mid day and is now lying on the sofa a picture of dejection.

I have signally failed to get My Machine to recognize my phone. My technical knowledge extends to using a cable to join the two and then I expect the vast power of The Core (which had five stars ***** count them in the MediaMarkt blurb) to do its stuff. Which it is signally not doing. I know that I should read the instructions (I am, after all of that generation) but I feel resentful that in 2011 I should have to do something which surely ought to be automatic.

I did however have occasion to use one of my other laptops and I had forgotten just how bloody heavy these things usually are. I am afraid that you will have to put up with comments like this for some time so that I can continue to convince myself that I have done the right thing by purchasing The Machine.

Toni's illness stopped up from going out into any bar, cafe or restaurant and finding out if the new laws, some of the most swingeing in Europe against smoking in public places are actually being enforced.

I am particularly eager to revisit an Argentinian restaurant where the food was excellent; it was the atmosphere which was unpalatable. Everyone, apart from Irene and myself seemed to be smoking: man, woman and child. It was impossible to enjoy the food in the miasmic surroundings that Spaniards have accepted as normal until today!

There are, of course bleatings from those who fear that they are going to be forced out of business by the changes. And, if I am fair, and god knows I have no real desire to be fair to the people who have attempted to poison my life via passive smoking, they can point to all the countries that have changed their attitudes and laws and show that businesses have gone bust. And at a time of crisis in which there is already 20% unemployed!

The television has already shown pictures of people taking their drinks outside the bars, in one case a lady taking her bar stool outside and resting her drink on the outside windowsill. Another man, his drink on the sill, the window open and breathing his smoke through the open window.

It is also part of the law that there is to be no smoking outside or in the vicinity of school gates. As the older pupils in our school congregate outside the entrance to the secondary school I shall very much enjoy calling the police and getting the pupils expelled or at least having a criminal record. While I may be exaggerating a little I am sure that our school will react with a knee jerk inappropriateness on the day we get back.

This new law is going to have to create a real change in the way that people here behave and reform their expectations.

I shall observe the implementation of these new laws with considerable interest. And not a little scepticism. We shall see.

I am now painfully aware that it is the New Year and all I have done is buy new books and not arranged the ones that I already possess. I am determined to do something if it is only to bring down the volume of Sorolla 

that is on top of a book case on the third floor and put it with my latest bargain buy hardback of that painter in the living room collection of individual artists. That's what I call doable book organization. The key things, of course, will be to see if I have even done that little before the end of the holiday.

The days are creeping away but at least my holiday ends with a trip to the UK, my opportunity to visit Paul Squared at last and to celebrate a significant birthday, with the very real possibility of being snowed in on the Sunday before I have to start in Barcelona.

One can but hope!

Festive Days

Watching another country's music from the eighties as I am trying not to do at the moment as a nostalgic (is that the right word for the eighties?) television programme brings to light for me totally obscure non-entities from a lost decade is rather like watching an embarrassing faux pax from a distant relative in a social setting, but one still part of the family.

God knows I knew little enough about 80s music in Britain until I was taken in hand by Paul and given a double album of the greatest hits (sic.) of that decade and told to listen to them. I vaguely knew two of the tracks and when I told Paul the names of them he was contemptuous and didn't believe that my ignorance could be so complete of a decade that he thought one of the most memorable and scintillating in terms of popular music. He then went through the tracks saying, “Surely you know this bit!” but I did not.

I have to admit, surrounded as I was by people who valued rather than voided the eighties that I did, in self defence, come to know a few more numbers than the admitted genius of Ultravox with “Vienna” - kept off the number 1 spot in the UK by the mindless “Shut-up-a-your Face” - as even the most neophytic trivial pursuit player will know.

But still, not a decade to be proud of: the fashion; the hair styles; the footballers' shorts – so many things that jolt one from one's accustomed torpor when they leap out at you from some archival programme on the TV. There should be a little sign in the corner of the screen to warn viewers of a sensitive disposition that 80s footage is about to be aired!

The Familial strain of cough/cold/sore throat has now made its way through at least four members of The Family to me, so I am sitting in the self pitying echo of a past cough listening to Toni moaning about the condition of the kitchen.

I will at least have my revenge as I adopt the role of Plague Annie and make the fajitas for the meal this evening liberally dispensing pestilence with the paprika. The real temptation is to throw in a liberal splash of Tabasco and watch them cringe as the spice tickles their taste buds, but I do have to remember that I am dealing with people who regard chorizo as the daring point of piquancy!

A night in Terrassa and then back to prepare for my voyage to the UK.

The fajita mix is now made to my own recipe: the trick is in how you open the packets I find. A whole steaming casserole pot of goo is waiting to be spooned into wraps. I can do no more, and I certainly have no intention of chopping up the salad, tomatoes and cucumber for the interesting dips.

Neither Toni nor myself are in what might be described as rude health so the jollifications this evening are going to be a little muted, to say the least. One must always remember in The Family that there are two, young, shouting, irresistibly active children under the age of competent reading and writing to contend with.

Meanwhile there is the feeding of music to the New Machine. Because of the incredible selfishness of itunes it will not accept my music from my ipods and I am having to put the music into the computer's memory disk by disk. I have grabbed handfuls of disks from my storage and have fed them painfully slowly into the machine with the only bright spot being that they are being accessed by use of the “free” disk drive that I was given for being fool enough to buy such an exotically priced computer.

The selection of music I have so far made is a little unbalanced with an emphasis on Carl Nielsen and Benjamin Britten seasoned by a number of tracks from the evergreen 60s!

Well, New Year's Day is here and I am sporting a facial injury from the dinner last night.

As I always suspected young children are fatal. While whipping one of the nephews up into a frenzy in the only way I know how with kids viz. treating them like Labradors, a flailing hand raked my chin leaving a gaping wound which poured with blood.

The other, younger nephew was fascinated with this effusion and seemed delighted that it was the other nephew's fault. The other, older nephew seemed blissfully unconcerned of course and no one else seemed to notice. And you can't even blame alcohol in a Catalan household – though everyone did drink at least a taste of Cava after midnight.

The actual striking of the hour is the time of an important ritual where for each chime a grape has to be eaten. It is very interesting to see the difference between Britain and Catalonia. From the first strike of midnight we Brits drink, cheer, sing and start kissing; the Catalans are pictures of sobriety and are concentrating with all their might to ensure that they don't choke when the eat the grapes. There is a real sense of achievement at the twelfth stroke when your plate is cleared.

We didn't have seedless grapes so there was a certain amount of swallowing at we didn't have time to spit out the seeds. You can buy little tins of twelve grapes or cellophane packed twists of grapes you can set out on the dining table.

The food for the dinner and for lunch today was excellent, though it did not contain the seafood cake that Stewart was hoping to get the recipe for. Another time perhaps!

Already the light of the day is beginning to disappear and dusk with its short duration is starting to turn into night. The Christmas and New Year celebrations are ended for another yea and it only remains for me to put away the tree and decorations for it to be officially over. Unlike the Catalans I do not wait for 12^th Night and The Kings for the end of the season. Indeed, almost unthinkable to a true Spaniard, I will be travelling to Britain on The Kings presumably I will be among fellow citizens as The Kings is a time for family in much the same way as Christmas. My only hope is that all the best stuff has not been snapped up in the January Sales which, because of The Kings are unknown in this part of the world in the same frenzied way that they are greeted in the UK. Indeed the pictures of doors being opened in London to let the ravening crowds in made it to Spanish television.

We are now back in Castelldefels having left, with few regrets, the modern re-make of The Thomas Crown Affair that the men were watching with the aid of subtitles because. Instead I am settling myself down to enjoy one of the episodes of Harry Potter that I don't think I have seen. Which is a good thing.

My book reading this holiday seems to have stalled at an Algernon Blackwood novel that I am reading is a desultory fashion on my telephone. I started reading it assuming it to be one of Blackwood's short stories but it has developed into something which I would have expected from the pen of J M Barrie or Kipling or Wells in their more whimsical moments.

Keep the rubbish rolling!