I do not see the wearing of a blue coloured shirt to be a radical fashion move – but the reaction from the kids that I have had over the past few days to sporting a coloured shirt has been remarkable.

It is yet another example of how closely we are observed by the kids.  It should make we teachers incredibly self-conscious; but our natural arrogance (why else would we have become educators in the first place?) soothes away any self-doubt.

If you think about it, then it is a perfectly natural phenomenon: the kids have to sit for hour after hour staring at us as we explain the Wonders of the Universe – or in my case the idiocies of English Grammar.  If I was listening to a shaky explanation of the intricacies of Mixed Conditionals with their interesting blend of Second and Third (usually) Conditionals to explain how to talk about what might have happened in the unreal past, I think that I too might begin to notice anything else rather than what was actually the ostensible function of the group at that moment!

I really do shudder to think (when I confront the thought) about what else the kids might have noticed and having noticed simply take in their stride.  Thank god for oblivion.

I am, once again, stuck in an empty library doing what is surely a complete pointless duty.  It does, however, allow me to sit in the sun for a time before propriety drives me indoors to listen to The Machine and at least look as though I am working.  At the moment I am listening to the joyously anarchic cacophony of the second movement of Carl Nielsen’s 5^th Symphony with the ad lib kittle drum trying its best to follow the composer’s instructions to destroy the music!

 

All good things come to an end and I was called into lunch that was excellent: a somewhat sparse salad but followed by fresh salmon with green vegetables and a selection of sweets afterwards.  The only thing missing was the café solo to finish off the meal.  But I had a cup of tea.  Of course.

As today was my “early” departure from school I actually managed to get a lane to myself in the swimming pool.

I am always amazed (though I suppose I shouldn’t be) by the way that my swim varies from day to day.  Today, for instance, I managed to get into a rhythm very quickly and felt more than satisfied with my progress up and down the pool.  It seemed relatively (let us, at all times, stick to some sort of reality) effortless; the water appeared to aid progress rather than be the medium that inhibited speed.

Having said that another on either side flanked my lane.  These lanes were occupied.  On my left were “dabblers” whose erratic progress up and sometimes down (after a long pause) could hardly be counted as swimming: more like semi-intentional disorganized floating.

Two swimmers who had half of the lane each occupied the lane on my left.  One of the swimmers was (to my myopic sight) a young, svelte, swimmer-like swimmer and he and I sped up our respective lanes together until I began to pull away!  I was congratulating myself on my superior skills and fitness when I noticed that the swimmer in the other part of his lane, who was much older and fatter, was forging ahead of me with a totally unjustifiable speed!

I was not, of course discommoded by this arrogant display of professional swimming; I merely turned my attention back to my right and outpaced the moribund and thus regained my self-respect.

 

Now that I have finally remembered my code number I can get into the Sauna and Steam Room that are attached to the changing rooms.  I enjoy sweating out whatever it is that one is supposed to sweat out when one goes into these sweat rooms, but I am not totally convinced that they do any good at all.  I am probably one with Saki who in one of his short stories debunked the idea of any benefit from Turkish Baths and the like apart from the obvious element of enjoyment!

 

The great problem of loaning books to anyone (apart from the danger of never getting them back again, in spite of the fact that one has “Ex Libris” stickers in the books I possess) is that when/if they are returned they seem almost irresistible reads.  Such has been the case with “Catch 22” which has recently been returned.  I made the fatal mistake of reminding myself of the opening sentences: “It was love at first sight.  The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.”

 

I am now on page 126.  One hundred and twenty six yellowing pages of closely packed print in a book which is now (horrifically and unbelievably) over forty years old, and I therefore would have read this when I was in the second year sixth.  Sigh.

The rather lurid cover has finally become detached from the rest of the book and the rest of the volume is looking decidedly dog-eared.

I sometimes wonder which of the books that I presently have in my library I would actually bother to replace should they all be burnt.  I also think about which paperbacks I should replace with hardback versions.  With either scenario “Catch 22” would figure as one of the volumes.  Although the book seems much more mannered and self-consciously clever this time around, it still makes me laugh out loud – and any book that does that has got my vote!

Just musing quietly to myself while Spain are attempting to get their first goal against Columbia, the books that would have to be replaced would include;

            Macbeth

            Catch 22

            Stalky and Co

            Old Saint Pauls (because it would!)

            Lord of the Rings

            Heart of Darkness

            Paradise Lost (especially Book IV)

            Great Expectations

Mapp and Lucia (all)

The House at Pooh Corner

And I had better not go on because I will be driven to go and search them out and re-read them!

Early start tomorrow with five teaching periods and a Departmental Meeting!

It’s good to be alive!

New Faith!

Yesterday was, in many ways, something of a non-day.

I had to work of course and, given the absurd level of contact time with students that this place seems to regard as normal for the pitiful salary that they pay, it was a more than normal teaching day if you compare it with the UK.

But enough.  What I wrote yesterday was nothing more than self-pitying mawkish appeals for sympathy given the early start and the tiredness that seemed to encapsulate my feelings after the weekend!  That post has been consigned to the electronic bin where it deserves to disintegrate into harmless electrons or whatever happens to discarded electronic messages!

I would like to say that the day dawned brightly and cheerfully; but it didn’t.  For the last two days Barcelona and surroundings have been enveloped in a hazy layer of what appears to be pollution.  It gave the buildings that I pass on my way to work a cold harsh appearance of almost Communistic soullessness: the high-priced, high-rise, high-sited abodes of the rich were drained of colour with the background of a sky of truly British greyness.

On my way to school I get some panoramic views of Barcelona and its attendant smog.  It is a disturbing thought that we are breathing this rubbish in: I am reminded of a cartoon in Punch which showed a motorist driving along a city road and just about to pas sunder a gantry saying “Warning! Central London – middle tar.”  The irony is now that the centre of Barcelona is more polluted than the centre of London – which seems almost unbelievable.

I talked to one of my colleagues who suggested that the prevalence of smog (which has now all but disappeared) is due in large part to the lack of on-shore (or possibly off-shore) winds from the Atlantic which keep giving the north western coast of Spain and the whole of our northern islands a quick “brush-up” in atmospheric terms.

Even Castelldefels, which is usually lazing in its own little micro-climate and quite distinct from that of Barcelona, was a little dowdy yesterday.  Driving into the west at the end of the day was something of an apocalyptic experience as the clouds took on disturbingly livid colours and Ragnarök seemed only as far as the end of the motorway!

Courtesy has landed me with a lost free period.  Attempting to go to lunch one of my companions was accosted and informed that he should be with another class whose teacher for some reason was not there.

His perfectly justified concern at taking on another class (given our ridiculous workload) was reasonable but he was distrait because he had another class waiting for him at the end of the one he had been asked to take and he would therefore have to forego lunch.  Unthinkable.

Though what I thought, immediately, was that I was next in line to do the class instead of him.  And after a great deal of phoning and palaver that is what happened.  Of course.

So, five taught periods and a lost period later I get to have my swim, and all things are well.  People even gave me precedence and let me go in front of them!  Wonders will never cease.

Tomorrow is my “early” finish so at least I get to the swimming pool before the determined old men who swim as if the pool belonged to them!

One must count one’s blessings.

Invasion!

One of the advantages of having tile floors is that it is easier to clean up after calçots.

Eating calçots is a very un-British activity.  There is no clean and tidy way to eat them.  These are burnt over an open fire and are charred and it is necessary to strip away the burnt outside and get at the moist stem and heart of the vegetable.  Your hands get absolutely filthy and everything you touch (glass, cutlery, bread, bottles etc) gets equally filthy.

For me the dirtiness of the method of eating is an essential part of the experience and there is much to be said for the mutual wallowing in ashes and producing hands that would have had one sent away from the table at once in one’s youth!

The Cava, a superior brand, was well chilled and virtually everyone drank some of it: I must be having more of an effect on The Family than I thought possible.

Everything that could be disposable in the meal was and I have, long ago, given up my prejudice against plastic plates and cutlery when they have to be dealt with by me and mine!  Everything went into a large plastic bag at the end of the meal and we were still exhausted when we had finally cleared up!

Today has been great fun, but not relaxing and hardly the way to start a week in which two extra periods have to be coped with.  I now have five teaching period for four days of the week and on the only day on which I have “only” four I have an hour-long duty in the library.

I am getting progressively more unhappy with the way in which my teaching is being exploited.  I feel that I am being forced into a less and less professional stance given what is happening in education and the poor remuneration that it seems to merit.

If I am realistic then I know that I will moan but probably put up with whatever the powers that be decide to give to we teachers.  I don’t like it, but I fear that I will have to lump it.

I am equally sure that I will get progressively more optimistic as the days lengthen and the sun becomes more of a feature of the day.   Two visitors remarked on my “brownness” and I had only been sitting in the sun for about twenty minutes – this bodes well for the build up to the Great Release of July!

I should be doing some marking or preparation.  But I’m not going to do it.  So there.  Let the morrow bring what I will.  I will cope.

Tidy and ye shall find!

“Tidying” – a word guaranteed to strike terror and despair into the staunchest soul!

Today the garden has been weeded and some of the overhanding branches from the garden of the Scumbags have been ruthlessly cut – give me a ladder and I’d cut more!  Out hope is that the Scumbags will not return to their house until Easter or even later when the cut marks on the branches will not look quite so raw!

What weeds were amenable to being pulled up were pulled up; those that were anchored to the ground with more than stubborn tenacity were scornfully ignored after a few futile scrabblings to dislodge them.

The front garden has been largely cleared of pine needles and the back garden fence has been stripped of its incrustations of ivy.  All the extraneous vegetation comes to us courtesy of our neighbours whose pine trees overshadow the front garden and in the back the tree and one side and the ivy on the other makes their stealthy way into our demesne.

Other peoples’ organic rubbish!

The chaos of the Third Floor has now been reduced to the level of “unacceptable untidiness” which may mean that with a little light reorganization tomorrow I could get to see the surface of my working area for the first time in months!

I have discovered various “lost” items including a set of reproductions of works of art for an art history lesson; a photograph that is perfect for a friend’s 50^th birthday; a cache of ties; a few watches; a lost stapler; a new leather belt and various papers that I had actually forgotten that I had lost.

But the really disturbing element was discovering just how many pairs of earphones I possess.  I have no intention of revealing the actual number because it defies any rational explanation.  I have five pairs of earphones in a particularly unattractive blue colour, which I can only put down to air travel and buying the cheap and awful sets that they used to sell to passengers who were desperate to try and forget just how uncomfortable the seats were by watching edited films that one didn’t want to see.

I am sure that I should have thrown most of them away as I am equally sure that some of them date back to my first transistors and must harbour generations of germs!

Instead of throwing them away they are now in little compartments in a special box where they will be ignored for the next ten years.

Various leads and power adaptors have now been carefully put in compartments to be similarly ignored.  But they are at least tidy.

We are now, more or less prepared for the invasion tomorrow and by careful purchasing for their arrival I have gained a small bottle of olive oil (free with two packets of crisps) and three small boxes of Lindt chocolates (free with superior Cava).  There was also a tiny plastic bottle of decent red wine with the mature cheese I bought, but I rather think I paid for that!

I shall go to bed early and hope for refreshing sleep so that I am able to cope with the onslaught.  On the positive side the weather promises to be fine and there is a real possibility that we will be able to eat outside.

The logistics of putting umpteen people around a plastic table for six is something that I haven’t yet worked out but I am sure that we will cope.

Bring on the onions!

Age old swimming

In years gone by when I wanted to have a swim I seem to remember that I went to the swimming pool and swam.  It really wasn’t complicated!

In Cardiff in days of old there was the wonderful Empire Pool; built for the Empire Games when we still believed that we actually had an Empire.  This 50 m pool was in the centre of the city just opposite the train and bus station.  It was, therefore, simplicity itself to get to it.

You arrived, paid your entrance and were given a ticket that you later exchanged for a metal structure with a container at the bottom and a shirt hanger rising out of it with a rod for the trousers.  It came with a tag that you placed around your wrist and then, with clothes assembled around the structure you gave the article to the man in the window and it was hung on a rail to be claimed later.

You splashed your way through an antiseptic footbath, braved the shower and there, in all its glory was the pool.

And you swam.

In those days eyes stinging from chlorine and hairs floating in the pool was all part of the experience.  Later, skin wrinkled and soul exalted by having touched the bottom in the deep end you reclaimed your clothes dressed and took the trolley back home.

It was all so simple.

 

Nowadays I am still trying to come to terms with the most efficient way to have a swim in Castelldefels.

The wearing of flip-flops of some such shoe is mandatory as is the wearing of a bathing hat.  I add to these the wearing of goggles and earplugs.

Leaving aside the problems of which lane to swim in I am still trying to work out how to get undressed in the changing room.

There are two and a half, or possibly two and three-quarter changing rooms in the swimming pool I use in Castelldefels.  There is a room with benches and hooks on the wall when you get in; there is another room with benches and hooks just before the showers; there is a space like a corridor where the lockers are situated, and there are a series of odd cubicles with doors on two sides giving a sort of through passage.  There is also a small space at the end of the locker corridor that had a couple of benches and some hooks.

There is no clear wet sports/dry sports area as, as far as I can tell there are only pools (two I think) and a gym.  Changing in the corridor is clumsy and too tactile as people brush past.  Changing in the small area seems reserved for muscled triangular people and in the other areas there seems no rhyme or reason to what people should be using them.  The cubicles are virtually untouched and anyway the locks are broken.

The lockers are usually just rectangular spaces, some of which have a chandelier like quartet of hooks in the centre of the ceiling of the box: this is useless.

Before you get in to this questionable area you have to flash your membership card at an electronic reader to pass through the turnstile.  So by the time I get to the selection of areas for changing I am clutching my wallet and trying to get the card back into its designated space.

Whatever method I have used in the past of getting changed it always seems to end up with me forcing an armful of clothing and an overstuffed swim bag into a space which is far too small and totally unfitted to be a receptacle for clothing and bag.

It has taken me until now to realize that the order in which things is done is of ultimate importance if the swim is to be achieve without stress levels above and beyond the acceptable.

First you put your wallet into the zipped pocket of your coat.  You also take the mobile phone and two pens from the shirt pocket and place those in the coat pocket as well.

Next you choose a locker.  These are in two rows one above the other.  The lower lockers are simply too undignified to use so it is essential to be eagle eyed and find a higher-level locker.  Once found (and the closing handle checked to see that it will take your lock) you lock the thing and then proceed to the chosen changing area.

The Spanish (just like the French) are totally paranoid about the dangers of letting your naked foot touch the polluted floor of a swimming pool.  I have observed manoeuvres of balletic brilliance executed by swimmers dressing and undressing while keeping feet firmly in or on plastic slippers.  I am still something of a neophyte in the art of divesting myself of clothing while perched stork like on a piece of plastic footwear.  I am also conscious that for the last half century of my life I seem to have walked barefoot on the floors of swimming pools and changing rooms without my feet rotting away at the ankles!  Still when in Spain etc.

Taking a collection of clothing to a locker invariably (invariably!) means that at least one, and more likely two or more pieces of clothing will fall to the floor –and always on a patch of damp dirt.

Shoes, therefore have to be placed in the swim bag; tie in trouser pocket; underpants ditto; vest in bag; shirt in bag.  Coat weighed down with anything that could fall out of pockets and I am ready to move towards my already reserved locker.

Which of course does not have a hook in it.  My swim bag with its multitude of pockets opens like an undersea anemone and fills all available space as I try and feed my coat and trousers into its maw.

Having pushed the clothes in and eventually locked the door I march confidently off to the pool.

And return because I am still wearing my glasses.

My glasses placed in their case I march confidently off to the pool.

And return because I have not put the ear plugs in.

By the time I get to the water I am almost too tired to raise one arm out of the pool to propel myself forwards.

But I do.

And I’m still working on the most time and space efficient way to get changed.

An on-going project.

Dark thoughts on an extra workload

I am about to gain two extra periods to my timetable!

This makes my timetable 24 periods long.  With an hour-long lunchtime duty and another half hour break time duty.  And a period set aside for a Departmental Meeting each week.  So twenty-six hours of directed time each week.  For a shit wage.

And we have been informed that our wages have been frozen at 2009 levels because the school is compensating for a partial 5% cut which the government has imposed.

And life continues, as far as I can see, as if the economy of Spain was solid and sensible rather than the sick joke that it actually is.

We now have over 20% unemployed – which partially explains why the workers who are being exploited do not reject the rubbish conditions that we have with impunity.

My extra two periods are the result of the splitting of a group of students at the beginning of the year.  There were supposed to be two groups of Current Affairs students, but the numbers were too low and a single group was formed which has been taken until now by the head of department but now it is my turn to take on the group.  Thank god for the BBC as their web site is going to provide most of the teaching material for the group!

 

I am dreading the weekend, as it will bring with in an invasion of Familial Proportions.  Not that I resent the influx of members of The Family, oh no, it is not the numbers (which amount to umpteen adults; three children and a dog) no; it is rather the fact that the house is going to be “shown” to people in The Family.

Already the downstairs has been “cleared” which at once has made it tidier and has brought to the surface Tesco bags; a car hand hoover; a series of towels that I thought were lost and a new bottle of windscreen wash.

This however, is just the start, and further tidying is threatened in all areas with selective painting and much use of bleach.  The (Augmented) Family arrives for the eating of the long onions on Sunday: Saturday promises to be a day of cleaning and clearing horror!

 

The tipping point of the week

I am supposed to supervise children who choose to do homework during their free time from 1 until 2 in the afternoon today.  No children choose to do any work today and so I had the library to myself.

This “library” does actually have books in it, which are mostly kept under lock and key; I have rarely seen kids use any of the books on the few free shelves and I have never seen the locked cases of books ever opened.

Outside the elegant French windows there is a balcony that runs the length of the masia that forms Building 1 in our school.  This tiled balcony is about sixty feet long and about fourteen feet wide.  Where the pine trees do not obstruct the view there are panoramic vistas of the city of Barcelona that, even in haze are impressive.

What I am building up to saying is that I was by myself; the sun was streaming in through the French windows and I thought, “Be a devil, open the doors!”  Which I did and with a chair purloined from the tables in the library I sat in the sun.

I cannot pretend that it was true sunbathing; but certainly sun rinsing.  It has now made me hungry for the summer.  With eyes closed gazing (behind closed eyelids) skywards I even dozed off into that pleasant semi-dreaming state that sometimes makes life worth living!

While trying to mark before the start of school this morning I was driven to get out The Machine to drown out the semi-hysterical high pitched and certainly high volume talk (I would not grace it by the appellation of conversation) that filled the staff room.  My intention was to listen to Mozart and drown out the chatter with my noise cancelling headphones.  These worked for a single movement of one or other of Mozart’s divertimenti and then silence!

This was a frightening reoccurrence of the silence that descended on the headphones a couple of days ago.

The Machine has few points of ingress in its aluminium body: a power point; two USB ports; a headphone socket, and a mini something else.  I therefore felt justifiably aggrieved one of the few not working.  Never before has any headphone socket failed to work on any of my other computers.  And now, on one that was ludicrously over-priced, failure was staring me in the face.  The very face that would be lost should I be forced to go to school with some small computer not of the fruit variety!

The headphone socket looked normal – not that I had ever studied one with anything other than passing interest before.  And even twiddling the plug around in the socket failed to produce any music through the phones.

Just as I was beginning to wonder where exactly I had put the receipts for The Machine I noticed a small lozenge shaped addition to the wiring of the headphones.  In the centre of this lozenge was a sliding switch that I guessed might have something to do with volume.

It did, and normal service was resumed with a slightly shame-faced owner prepared to swallow humiliation in the sheer relief that everything appeared to be OK.

I think that the musical dampener on Catalan conversation that The Machine offers is going to be something of a godsend in the forthcoming months!

Two days of this cruel month are now over.  No holidays; no Saints’ Days; no long weekends – nothing.  Just solid weeks of work with only Fiasco Week to look forward to in March.  Easter is so late that at least the summer term will appear to be shortish.

It was easier to make the decision to go for a swim today for a number of reasons (sunshine being one of the most important) but also because I left school early and had a reasonable, stress-free journey home.

The water was a touch colder today, but perfect for swimming when a few lengths had been completed.  The warm glow of self-satisfaction was heated even further by a short stint in the steam room; entrance to which is effected by the insertion of a code into the keypad by the side of the door. 

For weeks this defeated me as I resiliently attempted to feed in the wrong number.  Closer inspection of my membership card revealed another number that did the trick and I was able to sit in humid isolation pretending to myself that it was actually doing me some sort of good.  Who knows, it might!

 

I have decided that I need to go to bed earlier.  Three days of getting up at 6.30 am and the other two at 7.00 am mean that with my normal late hours I am waking tired and this makes for a very long day.  Sense must prevail!

 

And I am not reading enough.  The book on the phone has now taken me longer to read than “To the lighthouse” (a book I started on a great number of occasions and was defeated by boredom and pointlessness on each occasion) and has now taken on the portentousness of “Ulysses” without the language play!

 

Barça are now in the final of El Copa del Rey where they will play the winners of the game between Real Madrid and Sevilla.  Madrid really have to win this cup to try and start the clawing back of trophies of which they have had a dearth for the last couple of years.  The next few weeks should be very interesting!  There’s something I never thought that I would catch myself saying when the topic was football!

And so to bed as part of my new regime of early nights. 

School is life - if you're not careful

Less than twelve hours after leaving school yesterday I was setting out (in the dark) to go back to the bloody place today.  If that isn’t a definition of sickness I’d like to know what is!

Looking out of the window of the library at the early morning sun, and protected from the brisk temperature by comforting glass, it could be a summer day.  The sky blue and wisps of could decorously stretched over the hills of Barcelona in a very becoming way.  It is the sort of day when one should be going for a walk along the paseo in Castelldefels and watching the sunshine glinting off the wavelets of the undemonstrative Mediterranean.

But I’m not doing that; instead I am invigilating two kids for a late examination and fretting about the marking I have yet to do.

God must have been looking down on me as a colleague came in to the library and looked depressed when she saw me.  While I am used to this response, it turned out that she needed to have some very young future pupils with her and she would supervise the kids that I was supposed to be observing.  I escaped from that irksome duty in double short time and actually did some of the outstanding marking.

I am now preparing for my double period of Media Studies with the equivalent of Year 9: a delight.  At least I can go home immediately after without the threat of another meeting hanging over my head!

As I invariably return home by driving along the road next to the paseo and the sea when I get to our bit of Castelldefels I can observe at first hand the attitude of drivers towards their peers on the road.

Parking has been laid out on the left hand side of the road (the right hand having been taken up by new cycle lanes) and the parking lines are at such an angle that people need to reverse into the spaces, the lines being at an obtuse angle to the oncoming traffic.  It therefore needs drivers to be considerate and leave enough space for those about to park to achieve their manoeuvre.

Consideration is not the first abstract noun that springs to mind when thinking (even slightly) about Iberian drivers.  Overtaking is impossible (cf traffic lanes above) and patience is non-existent in this part of the world.  Driving along this stretch of road (even in winter) would be a real test of Buddhist calm in even the most adept of adepts.  Not many people are of that persuasion.

We had one particularly fine weekend when (as is usual) the entire population of Barcelona descended on Castelldefels to take the sun and walk the paseo.  Driving along the parking stretch of road was only accomplished by remembering one’s breathing exercises to maintain calm as driver after driver dawdled his way along and took hours to park.  One must never forget that overtaking is impossible. 

I go along that road as a test of my mental stability.  I haven’t screamed once in spite of the fact that I have seen a man of mature years, supremely indifferent to traffic around him on the main road, serenely gliding along on a skateboard while holding his baby son in his arms; I have waited behind cars which are waiting behind cars which are waiting behind cars which are thinking of pulling out or parking; I have followed drivers who without indication have meandered their way (difficult in a single lane) along the road as if they were the only people on it; I have seen cyclists – and I don’t need to say anything more as all cyclists are the Spawn of Satan and motorcyclists (ugh!) can only aspire to the glowing appellation of Spawn of Satan in the wildest of their fantasies.

So, as you can imagine I finally arrive home in a state that sometimes borders on the homicidal.  Thank god that I have a comfy armchair that by its very opulence soothes as it rests me.

Though, like this evening, I sometimes have the strength of will to eschew the blandishments of comfort and go for a bracing swim.  The bag in the boot of the car is a reminder of what I ought to be doing and today I accepted that as I actually enjoy swimming I might actually do it.

The pool was suspiciously empty though there were plenty of kids (with attendant parents) milling around outside and I was able to make stately progress in a lane mercifully free of gentlemen of a certain age doing a backstroke drowning and getting in my way.  Women of a certain age, though slower than their male counterparts are usually much more receptive to the concept of allow a faster swimmer to take precedence.  But today, empty water and now aching arms.  I really have let things slip if a few lengths exact a physical price!

I have just finished reading “Ticket to Prague” by James Watson (he of “Talking in Whispers” much beloved of English departments throughout the land – at least in the past) as a possible book for next year’s 4ESO.

This novel concerns a poet isolated by intention and psychiatric diagnosis who is “released” by a young girl who befriends him and manages to get him recognition and to bring him back into the world.

Watson takes a “safe” controversial subject – the post Communist state of Czechoslovakia and the fear of naming those collaborators from the past tainted by their association with the repressive regime.

The story bounces along, as indeed it must, or the unlikely elements in the narrative would make it founder.  Our heroine is as unconvincing a character as one could wish and the interplay between young and old takes on more of the form of a fairy story than a hard hitting political commentary.

But there again, this is a novel for young people and as such it has a number of themes and ideas that should be stimulating and provocative for students.  Certain parts of the story have an overlay of almost mystical proportions that also serves to solve certain narrative problems.

 The ending is abrupt and might prove problematic for some young readers.

I found this an essentially unsatisfying read, but it might lend itself to teaching!  One has to balance conflicting demands in education!

A horror passed!

You can judge a meeting by its most exciting moment.

In the meeting that lasted over two hours that started when school finished the most exciting moment was when I sneezed twice.

The true low point occurred when, after hours of speaking, someone rose to explain a new and exciting initiative involving our pupils in some way.  It was a new and exciting way to use the computer system in the school.  Which then, of course, failed to work.  The program did not load; the password did not fit; three people got up and attempted to help; the password failed again; and again; and again; and they tried to reload again; and again; and again.  And I kept thinking that I had started today by getting up at 6.30 am and that the time was now 7.30 pm and people were behaving as if I actually cared if their bloody system worked or not.  My only thought was to get out and go home.

Which I eventually did in the pouring rain: the pathetic fallacy at its most irritating worst.

The only thing guaranteed to get me back to some semblance of normality was superior junk food.  So we went to Rober’s for our double buns.  The first spicy beef burger with accompaniments went well; it was when I went to get the second that the problems started. 

I was negotiating a swing door when the plastic glass of red wine which was perched precariously on my tray started to slip, closely followed by the can of Coke for Toni.  I saved the Coke but the wine fell and splashed on quite a respectable swathe of floor at the feet of a table of startled Iberians.

I apologised at once and then, to make light of the situation, said that such wine throwing was a tradition in my country.  They looked deadly serious and obviously took me at my word.  They left almost immediately.

The evening is almost over and I think that an early night is called for to compensate for the horror of the meeting. 

Perhaps oblivion will soothe the memory!

All things will be well

The sun came out today and my headphones are working again.  I am going to assume for the sake of my peace of mind and the price I paid for The Machine that last night was an inexplicable glitch and it will not happen again!

For the first time in a week I have been able to use The Machine without a nagging suspicion that I should be continuing with the chore of putting the music into its memory.  I can listen with out the underlying feeling that I should be doing something else.  At the moment I am listening to a fairly arbitrary piece of The Marriage of Figaro which was decided by the music program, as it certainly isn’t the opening of the opera even though it is the first disk in the list.  Ah well, as long as they haven’t reordered the tracks I can cope with it.

The Family arrived in the early afternoon with the advance force of mother and daughter to prepare the way for the main invasion of the crack forces with the juvenile equivalent of the SAS in the form of two small children under 6.

Kids always lull you into a false sense of security with their ability to dissimulate their sense of satisfaction.  You think that you have them under control and they seem acquiescent and, bloated with confidence, you allow them to play with the Wi games with only one hand unit between them.  One wants to play the FIFA World Cup, the other is much more interested in Bob the Sponge.  Within minutes both are in tears and are on the brink of homicidal tantrums.

Chocolate cake placates the young but, like the fragments of the True Cross, if you add up the crumb consequences which litter the floor I am convinced that put together they form more than the original cakes from which they came.  Kids also have the innate ability to cause rubbish fall-out from places where they have not been!

Now is the calm after the storm with both us flaked out and hoping that dinner will make itself in some way!

Much though I have tried, I cannot get out of my mind the fact that tomorrow is going to be a very long day with nothing to look forward to but an enervating meeting at the end of it.

At least I have my newly repaired glasses back so, if necessary I can take them off and let the horror of the situation appear as a comforting blur and I will not be able to see the mouths move and perhaps the conversation will take on the form of a piece of musique concrete and I can regard it as art!

Who said suffering is ennobling?

Talking of suffering I have bought a book on Office for Mac 2011 so that after years of ignorant frustration I can finally try and understand the workings of the suite of programs.

Cooking up culture

I have now reached the recognizable operas in the Complete Mozart Edition and the number of disks to be fed into The Machine has now dwindled to almost manageable proportions.  The last part of “Idomeneo” is now being lodged firmly in the innards and we are on the home stretch with only another 16 disks to be loaded.

I think that what I now need is a good, but relatively simple but comprehensive guide to Mozart’s music so that I can meander my way through melody after melody with little tit bits of information about the notes to keep me going.  There are some aspects of Mozart’s prolific output where some sort of route through, for example, the violin sonatas would be greatly appreciated.

I have been listening to a whole parade of German Marches that Mozart wrote.  They are very jolly and to me they sound, to put it mildly, fairly slight.  It was after I had listened to about twenty of them that I turned to Beethoven for something a little more substantial and less insanely tuneful!

Tonight is the night of The Perfect Bolognase – or it would have been if I could have found the recipe that Stewart sent me.

I had, of course copied it into The Machine, but I couldn’t remember what I had called the file.  I had written the ingredients on a memo on my phone so I knew what I had to buy, but I had not included the method.

Remembering that the recipe was Guardian Newspaper orientated I googled that and found a couple of recipes the gist of which I followed.

I tend to be rather free and easy with quantities, and I am not sure that my brain can cope with instructions which call for a “pinch” of anything.  I have used all the meat; all the chicken livers; half a bottle of wine; generous amounts of milk; pepper in the way that I like it; a slew of salt; more wine; all the contents of the tin of tomatoes – but no garlic!

It is bubbling away merrily and looks rich and edible.  It will be eaten at the end of the game of Barça and Hercules and the sauce will be soaked up by mini penne rather than spaghetti.  I for one will be having cheese with my meal, though this will be Lidl’s defrosted and crumbled Cheddar rather than the more traditional Italian.

Well, I think that the meal was excellent.  The meat was tender and rich and the sauce subtle without being innocuous.  It wasn’t runny and the Cheddar added a more than usually tasty overtone.  If you sense that I am making a case for myself then you would be right.  Toni was unimpressed finding it too dry and lacking the right amount of tomato.  I think I will salvage what is left of the enormous amount I made and re-treat it in a more Catalan way!

It looks as though the festivities planned for tomorrow are not going to take place and I am going to be cheated of my chance to eat the dirty onions that is the basis of the whole concept of colçets.  And it may rain.

On the bright side I have now loaded the complete works of Mozart on the machine and it is at this very point that the earphone socket has taken to not working.

Sometimes irony is very irritating.

Always something new

The last time I taught in the UK there were five periods in the day which started at 8.45 am and finished at 3.25pm.  Today I had six periods of teaching in a school day that started at 8.15 am and I finished early (a whole period early!) at 3.50 pm.  Something, somewhere is dreadfully wrong!  And I get paid a crap salary, but it does at least pay the bills.

Perhaps this downbeat, resentfulness is due in part to the lousy weather which is grey overcast skies with desultory rain sulking its way down just to irritate me.

On the other hand it is the weekend and however grey the skies there is the bright prospect of two days of freedom!

Qualified freedom as I am still chained to The Machine feeding in a seemingly unending sires of Mozart CDs.  I am now on disk 80 and approaching the end of the string quartets and just about to start on the piano sonatas and still not half way through yet!

Ever vigilant as I wend my way along the tedious bit of motorway that connects me with the school and looking without interest at the back of the car in front of me I actually saw something unique.

 

It is the custom of Catalans to show their national pride by putting a symbol of their identity on their cars.  The Spanish symbol of a silhouette of a black bull is taken from the Osborne company and was used to advertise its Brandy de Jerez starting in 1956.  It has become a symbol of Spanish speaking Spain, or “core” Spain inside the country and a national symbol outside it.  In Catalonia the symbol is sometimes seen as a studied insult and the Catalans have adopted the silhouette of a black donkey or burro as a response to the bull.

 

For the first time ever I saw both symbols on the same car: the bull on the right and the burro on the left – if that is significant in any way.

Far from being even handed by showing both symbols I think that the person sporting the two images would be equally hated by both sides for failing to nail his national colours to the mast more exclusively!

I can’t help feeling that the car I saw today is going to be unique.  I see no real sign of a rapprochement between what is very obviously a real division of tradition, interest and political aspiration when it comes to Catalunya and the rest of Spain.

The weather has now become openly vicious and the rain is pouring down to an accompaniment of OTT thunder.  This does not bode well for the weekend.

I am now over half way in the putting of the Mozart on to The Machine and I am in territory where I have never knowingly gone before.  The latest disk is “Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots” Part 1.  To which I can only adopt, in self-defence, a posture of musing incomprehension.  It will be listened to in time, though god alone knows when that time might be as I now have the equivalent of three weeks worth of solid musical listening waiting for my ever-receptive ears to appreciate.

Monday sees one of our school Meetings.  These are a gruesome and grisly feature of the school year and are truly dreaded by all the non-Spanish members of staff who regard these interminable marathons of pointlessness as something akin to a natural disaster or a malicious act of god.

I need to use the weekend to store up energy to combat the fatal enervation that is an inevitable by-product of the meetings that litter the annual timetable like monumental slabs of granite-like unrelieved tedium.  And they go on for hours and hours and people simply don’t shut up.  And I used to think that Curriculum Meetings in LHS were the low point of existence. 

How wrong I was.

A bad day to do the right thing eventually

A bleak day with Barcelona lost under a thick blanket of smog based cloud.  Aesthetically it is quite attractive with buildings looming out of the mist with their foundations lost in greyness but I like the sun and I miss it every minute it is supposed to be shining.

There is a parallel greyness about my colleagues who are looking somewhat drawn and haggard, as the awful prospect of unbroken teaching days becomes an un-escapable continuing misery; where the nirvana (if I may be allowed a cross-religious allusion) of the Easter holidays seems distant indeed.

I am at present being bullied by one of my colleagues.  This is not as negative as it sounds as the bullying is at my instigation as her task is to remind me of my stated intention of going to have a swim each day.  She vaunts her prowess on her Wi-Fi fitness board while pointedly reminding me of my non-swimming status.  She tells me that my lack of brownie points is matching the state of the National Debt and that there will soon be no way back. 

I have taken the first step and put the swimming bag into the boot of the car, but I have not checked to see if all the necessary impedimenta are in place for the swim to take place.

In the Municipal Pool it is essential to wear a very unbecoming swim hat; to wear sandals to the pool; goggles to protect the eyes and earplugs.  The clothes have to be placed in lockers that only lock if you buy a lock to secure it, so lock and key have to be in one of the pockets.  A glasses case is essential too because there are simply too may health and safety issues connected with lodging them in a shoe for the duration of the swim.  Then there is a towel and soap.  And of course the card to get in.  What used to be a fairly casual visit has now become a major journey!

This is merely an excuse and not a convincing one for my lack of effort.  I know that, just like banana yogurt, I will like it when I try it.  I do enjoy swimming and all I have to do is allow the car to continue on to the next turning on the motorway and I’ll be there.  Perhaps this afternoon is when the correct approach to exercise re-asserts itself.  Meanwhile there are still two teaching lessons and a departmental meeting to get through before the freedom of the open motorway and home.  Or a swim, as I should say!

Which I actually had!

Slipping into the comfortable waters of the pool had a delicious sense of re-entering a natural element.  I could tell that I had not had a real swim for some time by the growing ache in my shoulders, but this will not last and as long as I keep it up I should be back to normality in a few days.

The only downside to the experience was forgetting to put in my earplugs.  I only remembered when I was at the pool side and I simply couldn’t be bothered to go back in to the changing rooms; unlock the locker; dig out my swim bag from the pile of clothes under which it was buried; go through the pockets to find the plugs and then traipse all the way back to the pool.

 

I made an executive decision to suffer the consequences of water in the ear.  This was fine until I shook my head at the end of the swim and only managed to unblock one ear.  The other remained stubbornly waterlogged and I had fears of having to live with it like that for a couple of days – which has happened in the past.  Gingerly prodding it with a perfectly shaped index finger finally broke the dam and hearing was restored.

Restored in time to go to Sitges to reclaim my glasses which had a wisp of metal masquerading as an arm of my specs fixed to the lens: so much paid for so little!

 

For our evening meal Toni (for it was he) had a yearning to go to Burger King with which I complied.  He now has a vivid recollection of what the food was like and I do not think that we will be repeating this eating experience any time in the near (or indeed distant) future!

To compensate for the awful meal we called into a pastry shop and bought a custard-filled pastry confection topped with a glorious selection of fresh fruit.  It may have cost more than the meal for two in Burger King but it was a bloody sight more tasty!  

And there is some left for tomorrow to lighten the dark start of an early class!