Spending

A bright start to the day and up with the lethargic lark rather than his earlier brother.  By the time that we were up and doing it was time for lunch.

My spag-bol was undoubtedly the worst meal that I have had in our “local” restaurant on the sea front.  It was tasteless and the meat (if that it what it was) was pallid and innocuous at best.  The beer was OK - hoppy brew from Galicia.  And the view.  The view makes up for it all.  The sea was sparkling and the waves were big enough and the light bright enough to make them deliciously translucent.  On the beach a lone photographer with an absurdly long lens taking pictures of two valiant water-ski idiots as the only people in the water.

Barcelona was cold, very cold – and it was an urgent necessity to get into shops to avoid the inclement weather.  Two bookshops later I was able to face looking for the Picasso Museum for the exhibition that we failed to see the last time I was in Barcelona.

There was no queue this time: there was no exhibition either.  I had obviously misjudged the length of time that the Picasso/Degas show was going to be open and I had to make do with the permanent collection.

There are some excellent paintings in the museum, but the Blue and Rose periods are not really represented and there are only one or two masterpieces.  There are ceramics to throw after the dogs and paintings from his later periods, but the quality stuff from his youth is a little sparse.

They do have very early stuff and they had mounted a special exhibition around his large early painting of a sick room entitled "Science and Charity."  Painted for a competition and on the advice of his father who thought that such a subject would be just the thing for the judges to pick.

And in the exhibition a real treat: the Luke Fildes painting (that I have often seen in reproduction but never in the frame, so to speak) of The Doctor.  This was completely unexpected and an absolute delight.

 

The painting looks very different when seen as a 2cm by 3cm reproduction than when being looked at in a gallery as a large, impressive painting.

It is a very engaging painting with much freer brush strokes than are apparent in small reproductions.  The handling of the light is masterly and there is even a small section of flowers and flimsy curtain material that gives at least a part of the painting an almost Whistler-like appearance.  Yes, it is Romantic and the hard-edge Social Realism that shocked and delighted viewers when it was first exhibited in 1887 now seems mannered and contrived, but the vitality of the composition and the modelling of the doctor’s face and the almost Symbolist other-worldly face of the sick child give a compulsive interest which the Picasso signally does not have.

I visited a second museum in the aftermath of the elation I felt after seeing an unexpected painting.  This was the “Mammoth” museum that is apt and a lie: there is a mammoth there but the museum is tiny.  I had to pay a child’s rate to get in (thanks to my teachers’ card) and now that I’ve seen the place I have no lively expectation that I will repeat the experience.

By way of compensation I returned to El Corte Ingles and the classical music department.  My recent copy of the BBC Music Magazine (which I cannot recommend too highly, etc.) has a review of one of the box sets that I seem set on buying nowadays.  Brilliant Classics (awful name!) produce box sets of CDs of spectacular value and I have already purchased Grieg and Dvorak.  The review in the BBC Music Magazine was for the Mozart set of a vast number of CDs for around a hundred quid.  

That may seem like a high price but not for 170 CDs!  As El Corte Ingles has the 3 for 2 offer I was tempted (and duly fell) and bought Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms (the Brahms being the cheapest and therefore “free”) making the cost of each of the CDs I have bought about .5 of a euro or about 42p!  And just before the sceptics among you start assuming that at such a low price the musicians and orchestras must be of contemptible obscurity, I have to tell you that I do not consider the Guarneri Quartet, or The Borodin Trio or The Academy of St Martin in the field or a selection of other soloists and orchestras of similar quality.

 

I may have to spend the rest of my life listening to them!

Who are we?

 

The recognition of national characteristics is perilously close to racism, but even the most liberal and right thinking of people can rarely resist the temptation to make sweeping generalizations and think that they are eternal verities.

Such thoughts struck me as I tried to make a substantial dent in the marking that is gradually becoming less of a mountain and more of a gentle foothill.

Due to the paucity of spare rooms the only realistic place to get schoolwork done is in the staff room.  Normally this is a compromise as your colleagues, being teachers are naturally gregarious and that conflicts with the necessity for silence which produces the best work.

If a staff room is a difficult place to work in Britain, it is virtually impossible when the room is in Spain.  Spanish people talk.  They talk a lot.  And they talk at the same time.  Sometimes (rarely) they listen.  Mostly, and loudly, they talk.  And talk.  Loudly.

I marked with my grip on the pen getting ever tighter and my strokes of the nib getting ever more firm.

It was a positive relief to have to go to the other end of the school to do a duty.  The back of the marking is well and truly broken and it only remains for me to enter the marks into the computer.  It means that Monday will be a day in which the next load of marking (two loads actually) will not be an unbearable accretion but rather an irritation which should be dealt with relative ease.  Though “relative” as its name suggest is always, um, relative.

Although cold the day is bright; the sort of wintry day which is bracing rather than depressing.  This is also one of the days in which I seem to spend my time travelling from one of the school to the other so I have an extra intake of the clearer air that comes with the height of the exclusive neighbourhood in which our school is situated.  Hear we breathe a purer air than those dwellers in the rest of the city whose polluted atmosphere we can clearly see from our elevated position.

The clarity of the air gives an almost surrealistic appearance to the city.  Its outlines are usually softened by the gentle smog that blankets the city, but today the buildings are crisp and clear and Montjuic, which can be seen from the staff dining room, seems nearer than usual.  The sea is the sort of clear blue that looks inviting, until you realise that the temperature is somewhat bracing!

The unfortunate effect of this bright view is to emphasise the fact that one would rather be outside looking in than inside looking out.  It makes one count the hours!

In a clear act of spite my head of department marked her 3ESO papers in the time she had spare waiting in school for a meeting yesterday evening.  No one marks papers before I do; it is a sort of unwritten rule in our school.  I only mark them with dispatch because I know that if I don’t do them at once then they will linger and become a looming burden until the actual date when they have to be completed and then they will be marked in a lather of frenzied, hysterical concentration.  I only ever mark in self-defence: never because it is my professional duty!

My only consolation is that my head of department has yet to start marking her share of the mock examinations whereas I have finished my share – almost.

The horror of marking of course is but a prelude to the unimaginable horror of school meetings.  Unfortunately the horror is all too easy to imagine because I have vividly painful memories of previous periods of torture when people with nothing to say didn’t shut up!

But, when all is said and done another week has been worked and that means that there is one less to suffer before the distant Easter holidays.

I live to mark!

In a day, which is a close parallel to the one where I left the Sacred Machine at home and duly suffered deprivation symptoms, today I have had The Machine with me, but I have had not a single opportunity to use the thing.

The school has given itself over to the Ecstasy of Examinations and the futile thrill of photocopying page after page of fill-in-the-gap questions on (at least) recycled paper to make our kids’ lives just that little bit fuller.  One of my colleagues remarked that the pupils seemed a little bit subdued, while I thought that shell-shocked would have been a better description. 

Within days of returning from the Christmas Holiday the kids were hit with the start of the extended testing period which, in English, comprises not only a mock examination for their external exams, but also a regular test which goes towards the final mark of the term.

The marking of this lot means that members of staff are looking a little weary, the weariness tinged with desperation, as there is a timetable for the completion of these things, which, though self-imposed is seen as an absolute cut-off date when everything must be done and be seen to be done.

In spite of my moaning and groaning I am totally confident that I will get everything done in plenty of time; the great trick is not to let anyone find out that you have finished.

So every available moment today has been taken up with marking with the end result that I am actually ahead of myself.  Such confidence is obviously a prelude to some form of educational disaster, which will ensure that the final finishing of the marking is done in a lather of frantic pen wielding.

 

Our school looks as though it might want to participate in a UNO sponsored Iberian version of the General Assembly: a conference which would take about a dozen of our kids and, suitably prepared, set them in a multi-school context for a series of debates on important issues.

That the organization takes itself very seriously can be seen from the details of the dress code that has to be adhered to by the participants.  This includes the maximum distance that skirts should be allowed to rise above the knee – and that’s only for the boys!

Although passingly interested in this as a concept I am also worried by it.  I fear that there may be a role for me somewhere in this project and I am not altogether sure that would be good news for me.  Still, I shall do a bit of investigation and bide my time.

When tomorrow is done, we will have completed 20% of the term – which sounds a damn sight better than knowing that 80% is still to be done.

I am more than ever determined to get more boxed sets (3 for the price of two) and feed the discs into The Machine.  I have listened to more enjoyably obscure music by Grieg and Dvorak since I bought the last two boxes than in the last umpteen years of conventional listening.  I shall look on it as an educational experience and I shall also buy more of the lavishly produced and gloriously arcane medieval music championed by the Catalan Jordi Savall.

 

The first three records bought for me in 1959 or 1960 were on Pye Golden Guinea records which cost £1 1s 0d – hence the name of course.  The one that I had asked for was The March from the Nutcracker that I had grown to like as it was played on our BBC Music Programme broadcasts in school.  The short suite from the Nutcracker was complimented by the Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor and The Ritual Fire Dance Music on the other side.  The other two were Grieg’s Peer Gynt suites and the last was “Immortal Melodies” which included Ave Maria and a Humoresque by Dvorak.

 

I played these discs until they were almost transparent – and that was something because these records were solid and when placed on the automatic changer of my portable record player fell to the turntable with a very satisfying thump!

But let us talk realities.  If that pound in 1960 were thought of in terms of its purchasing power then it would be worth something like fifteen pounds today!  Which means that I could easily justify paying full-price for Jordi’s esoteric music – without the added inducement of one out of every three being free!

Roll on Saturday!

The marking is about to reach critical mass.  Added to the mock examinations, which take in virtually the whole school, I have media studies, art history and an exercise on question tags to mark.  On Monday there is a “Control” examination for the 3ESO – and so it goes on: exam, test, mark, meeting.

Needless to say I am getting more and more frustrated with what I see as almost totally pointless and educationally nugatory activity, but activity which requires my active participation, and I am thinking more and more of the hard earned money which a grateful government is lavishing on me to allow me a life of idle ease bathed in luxury.

The last bit isn’t (unfortunately) true or I would have been out of the doors of the school with a hop and a skip and a whoop of joy, but I am regarding the next 85% of the term with something approaching weary dread.

Now I am well aware that I am not alone in this attitude.  I know that the vast majority of my colleagues with some partial claim to sanity are thinking the same.  I know that the dead days of the middle of January are not necessarily the most conducive to positive thinking; that has to wait until well after Easter.  But, getting up this morning was a real struggle and going to work in the dark is not my idea of fun.

I wonder, when the days get longer and longer and I look back at this moan whether I will consider it merely January Blues or something more significant.  The payment at the end of the month (pittance though it is) also concentrates the mind!

 

I am unsure whether my mood was helped or hindered by the music to which I was listening while typing the preceding grumble.  From my amazing value box set of everything that Dvorak wrote I am listening to a favourite of mine, the Dumky Trios.  I got to know these on a Deutsche Grammaphon recording (bought in a sale) with a cover with some tastefully photographed feather on it.  I thought that they could best be described as “tea-room passionate” and I loved their domestic playfulness.  My new recording has a piano with more than a touch of honky-tonk and the whole things sounds as though it was recorded in the nave of an empty St Paul’s church.  The resonant acoustic gives it an almost symphonic sonority that, while not quite what I expected, does give a different dimension to very familiar music.  I wonder what other surprises I will find, especially in the later symphonies!

 

The other box set of vast quantities of music that I bought in the same expedition to El Corte Ingles was that of the music of Grieg.  For such a populist undertaking the little booklet that accompanied the discs is quite candid about Grieg’s limitations as a composer for large orchestra and concentrates on more domestic elements in the music.  I have, therefore been listening to a whole series of chamber pieces and various folk music inspired compositions while I have thoroughly enjoyed and discovered that there are quantities of music that I know but could never have given a name to!  Always a pleasure!

I am inclined to go back to the shop this weekend and find out if there are any more boxed sets.  As there is an offer of buy two and get one free it seems churlish not to take it up and respond to new versions of things I know.  I do have the discs of other, older recordings to which to resort should any of the present slew of versions prove to be too outré.

 

Wednesday is regarded in our school, well, our department, well, by Chris and Myself as the “tipping point” of the week and we officially assume that the relief of the weekend is immanent.

It also looks as though the cold wintry weather that we were promised has not crystalized and while it is not by any means hot, we have had a degree of sunshine and the weather is still relatively mild for this time of the year.

Long may it continue!

Oh, and the American Quartet of Dvorak sounds much more conventional, though not as self-indulgently languorous as I like!

It's only money

At last, a piece of preparation which has paid off!

If the condition of spectacles at the end of the day are an indication of the sort of experiences that a normal wearer has then it would not be unreasonable to assume that most spectacles wearers work underground in conditions of filthy squalor that the UNO would consider totally unacceptable and a denial of human rights. 

I started cleaning my glasses, which were almost opaque with the detritus of the day in a way which only glasses wearers can tolerate and non-glasses wearers find impossible to envisage seeing out of, this morning in the staff room just before the start of the day I was appalled to see one of the arms of my specs neatly break off. 

My glasses hardly exist: the lenses which should look like the base of milk bottles are specially thinned; the glasses are rimless and the arms are mere wisps of highly expensive metal which do not fold down but which are pre-sprung to touch the head lightly and hold firmly in place.

One of the arms has broken before and it costs a king’s ransom to replace: every day and in every way I get poorer and poorer!

I am now reduced to wearing one of my old pairs that, with foresight that still shocks me, I keep in the car “just in case”.  They feel heavy and clumsy after my others and the vision is not as good.  I can see the rims and there is a fish-eye lens effect to make my seeing just that little bit more exciting: squares have become trapeziums.

I take this as a sign that god wants we to wear contact lenses.

I have used up my normal supply of lenses and I am now reduced to wearing some of the lenses which were given to me as an experiment to see what my eyes would tolerate in trying to get a compromise between distance and reading.  The experimentation will have to continue because I hate wearing the old fashioned type of glasses now and I know that repairing my lighter pair will take time.

The glasses are now safely in the hands of the grasping optician in Sitges.  My fond hope that they might be under guarantee was shattered when it was revealed that that particular arm was over two years old.  How time flies when looking through pieces of thinned plastic!

To further justify being in Sitges we went to a Basque restaurant and had their version of the pinchos we enjoy so much in Castelldefels.  I think I made a better selection than Toni, but we did not think that it matched the quality of the ones that we were used to.

 

The method of choosing the tapa is to select what you want from a series of plates laid out along a counter or from chilled cabinets of various tasty constructions held in place on a piece of bread by overgrown toothpicks and your bill is calculated by the number of sticks you have on your plate.  In our restaurant in Castelldefels there are two lengths of stick with the longer being indicative of a more expensive tapa, though this was not the same in Sitges where the length was irrelevant.  It was an expensive meal but I found it tasty and interesting.

In spite of the cold and it being clearly out of season, Sitges was lively with plenty of people wandering around.  This may change over the next few days when the weather is supposed to take a change for the worse and become much more wintry than it has for the last few weeks.  This is depressing.

 

As is the growing mountain of marking which is looming over me in school.  Class after class takes paper after paper and over the next couple of weeks I will have marked examination papers from 90% of the secondary section of the school: a daunting thought.  There is not enough time to complete this marking but, by some strange educational quirk of space-time continuum it will, somehow be finished in time for an Interminable Meeting (the sordid blight of my life) in which the most positive thing that I will do is pray for a swift death!

I comfort myself by thinking that each examination period past brings us relentlessly nearer to a holiday and the end of the year and the two-month reason why it is worthwhile teaching in Spain!

Things can only get . . .

We have been back a week and a day and already the length of time before another holiday is beginning to oppress our hearts and minds.

At least today has been a time when I have read (re-read) Susan Hill’s “I’m the King of the Castle” a bleak book which I am going to have to teach to an unreceptive 3ESO class – I am not sure that I am looking forward to that but it will at least be playing to one of my strengths and is Literature and not the hated Grammar and all its evil tentacles of incomprehension!

I think that January must be the low point in the school year (though I am aware that we have not got into February yet) when spirits are low because of the fact that we are only a third of the way through the year.  Though with Easter being so late this year the summer term will be encouragingly short.

When are we in education going to recognize the absurd tyranny of the mystical date of Easter in determining the length of an academic term?  I really see no problem about disassociating the date of Easter with the organization of more equitable terms.

The only “problem” is Good Friday, which is a Bank Holiday and could remain so.  Easter Day is always on a Sunday so there is no problem with that.  The religious observation of Holy Week could be accomplished by worship before or after normal working hours.  And perhaps regularizing the dates of the “Spring” Holiday could also see a move to a four-term year.  Most European states are not theocracies and we should not let ourselves be dictated to by the dates of absurd Christian festive days that in turn were hijacked from pagan originals!

If Christians could be pragmatic in the placement of their major religious festival, where the one certainty about their choice of dates was that the event commemorated did not happen on that particular day, then I see no reason why we should abide by their arbitrary dates to the detriment of normality.

Tomorrow we are back on the examination treadmill and I get to loose some free periods to get the exercise done.  I am sure it is good for the soul because it is no bloody use for anything else.

I'm counting the days

To be told that Terrassa was warmer than Castelldefels is an affront to nature and is not something that I can abide.  There was sunshine today but not enough to justify even sitting outside and pretending to enjoy the warm sunshine.

The lie-in this morning was not so extended as to qualify for that appellation but it was still a couple of hours later than I would normally get up so it seemed like a luxurious self-indulgence.  I am still not attuned to the whole concept of the lie-in.  Perhaps it goes against the partial acceptance that I have of the so-called Puritan Principle by which I almost live.

 

I have to say that my adherence to this principle is almost luxurious in the way that I cherry-pick the elements that fit my essentially selfish attitude towards ideologies.  I seem to have missed the inclusive nature of sticking to an ideology as a way of life and instead roam free and interested through a range of sometime conflicting life-style theories to find the most appetising pieces of each and then stick them together by force and produce a theoretical metaphor which I find congenial to style my life around.

So if I had to describe my moral motivations I would need to outline a Judaic-Christian base (in an Anglican sense) heavily influenced by Humanism (an aggressive form inherited from my Dad) with a little historical Socialist colour; a soupcon of half understood Oriental mysticism relying almost exclusively on translations of Lao Tzu; a tinge of Ruskinian fascism in the nicest sense; a dash of “true” Communism which has not yet existed in the world; an overlay of what I understand High Culture to be; a twist of exclusivity; a pinch of Family Wisdom; an underlining of self-interest and a belief that Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony is one of the finest pieces of music ever written (especially the second movement) while underpinning all is the crucial and defining fact that I could have bought Hockney’s “A Bigger Splash” if I had really meant it and milked the relatives for the money!  It is only fair that at least one part of one’s ideology should haunt one!

 

The Family has made its appearance and individual members seem enthusiastic about my idea to invade Wales en mass in early July of this year.  Carles will have forgotten his early memories of the city and Mark has yet to visit Cardiff.  With the recent redevelopment of the city those who have been to the city previously will have a lot more to see now and they can compare their memories with their present experiences.

The primary purpose of the return to Cardiff is actually to go to London on a special visit to the British Museum to take Louise.  This needs a degree of organization but this will only be one day in the visit and I would like to stay for a week and see all those people who I miss.

This however, is in the far future and I cannot think coherently beyond this month, as my brain tends to close down when I think of the extent of the term and the year still to go!

This next week is going to be testing as we are continuing our series of Mock examinations; examination preparation and other examinations – so there will be a frantic period of marking at every available opportunity to try and get everything done before our own painfully set deadlines.

Having recently (this morning) discovered how to make my telephone into a loud speaking radio I am determined to discover all the elements that make my phone so impossibly expensive.  I still have not read the instruction booklet and therefore my incredibly sophisticated phone is just that – a phone.

 

Admittedly I do read books on it; I have taken and sent photographs and play solitaire (I must be the only user of my type of phone in the world who actually bought, with money, his version of solitaire) but I feel that there must be electronic worlds connected with my phone that I am not tapping into.  I shall make it one of my tasks to explore the phone more and thereby justify the cost!

Today started in a dull and dispiriting way but the weather perked up towards lunchtime and then faded away into a depressing coldness.  The colour of the sea was a lifeless grey but that didn’t deter intrepid visitors from filling up all the parking spaces along the front.

Our local council, in its wisdom, has taken away one lane from the road in front of the beach and made it into two protected cycling lanes.  There is a line of what looks like sleeping armadillos set into the road to ensure that motorists keep to their assigned lane.

The parking spaces have been drawn at an angle so that cars should reverse into them to fit.  It means that the whole of the traffic system stops while a person parks.  It also means that the car has to go past the space to reverse into it.  This has already led to a few disagreements and with just a few people attempting to park it slows things down considerably.

What it is going to be like in the summer defies thought, though I am sure that you will need the patience that comes with years of rigorous study of Zen Buddhism to rise above the frustration that is a guaranteed accompaniment to any road reorganization let alone one which reduces the road by 50%.

 

Something to look forward to!

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.