That's what I call a holiday!

First of all Sundays are not classified as official holidays, they are after all a part of the weekend, but if the following Monday is a non-school day then the Sunday becomes an official day off as well, counting as a quasi-holiday!

Today has been a notable day in the year; today, for the first time this year, I lay out on the third floor in a bathing costume and used sun tan spray!  I am also wearing shorts rather than trousers.

I have to admit that now that it is the evening, my knees are cold!  But for me the “summer” has begun.

I have finished “1000 Years of Annoying the French” and heartily recommend it to all and sundry: an entertaining and informative read!

I am now well into “The Ascent of Money” by Ferguson.  This is not as light a read as “1000 Years of Annoying the French” but it does promise to add further layers of understanding about the “magic” power of money-

The book takes an historical approach and promises to lead me by the hand into the murky areas of international finance.

So far so good, but there is much to understand and I hope that there will be a generous sprinkling of anecdotes and interesting historical facts to keep me going.

Talking of keeping me going I am still waiting for my book on the music of Mozart.  I am hoping to use this volume to give myself some pointers to make my way through the more obscure parts of his oeuvre.  But where is the bloody book!  I fear that it has gone astray as I was informed that it was on its way a number of days ago.  I suppose I ought to keep the faith and perhaps it will arrive tomorrow!

There is also my phone book: the seemingly interminable whimsicality of an extended short story that I am determined to finish and find out who wrote the damn thing.

But, sun allowing, the history of finance tomorrow.

Retention and Release!

I am filled with dread and foreboding.

This is the common reaction of a teacher who starts the day knowing that he is going to be in his place of employment for an inordinate amount of time over and above the hours of normal employment.

In my case (can I over state it!) it is a “not only, but also” scenario: not only will I be stuck here during a period which it is my right to take off, but also I will be here for a meeting on a Friday evening.

I know that I might have mentioned this before, casually, in passing, but I think it will take repetition.

And now that I have got that canker of injustice out of my system (at least until the bloody meeting starts) I can face the rest of the day with something approaching cold fury.

The unaccustomed rain continued throughout the night accompanied by thunder that was positively operatic in its duration and sonority.

Today has dawned with the full fervour of a “red sky in the morning” giving a glimpse of our erstwhile elusive star that only serves to emphasise, cf. common superstition, that the day will degenerate into continued dampness.  A dampness which will add to the gaiety of nations as we sit glumly in the rain while ragamuffin students cavort among us with a semblance of frivolity in our beggared version of Carnival, just before the start of the meeting.

But: begone dull thoughts!  It’s five past eight and the sun is still shining!

I have so far capitulated to the kids that I am preparing to show un-improving films to young minds.  Sometimes my own personal survival is more important than the moral imperative to improve the minds of the customers!

The sun continues to shine and outface the Cassandras who bewailed the blue and white smudges on the weather maps last night.  Such sunshine is wasted at the moment; it will only be of importance in the afternoon when I have to go out and sit grumpily next to a table and monitor the kids as they “enjoy” themselves in Carnival – all the while thinking that my Carnival will end with a meeting.  And then a bottle of Cava.  Obviously.

My body thinks that we are coming up to a holiday because I feel that incipient discomfort which comes as a prelude to a cough or a cold: a certain thickness at the back of the nose and a roughness in the throat.  This would be par for the course where there to be a real holiday and, as a teacher, succumb to illness at the start thereof.  But I hardly think that a long weekend counts!

The sunshine is becoming more and more forced, as the time for it to be at its strongest gets nearer.  Indeed . . .

Time, as they say has passed since I wrote the last paragraph.

The meeting has come and gone.  Eventually.  The sight of so-called professionals laughing, chatting and joking in a meeting that was progressing further and further into Friday (Friday) evening is a memory that will live in infamy.  What part of “the start of the weekend” do some of my colleagues find difficult to understand!

So when I finally left in the evening, almost twelve hours after I had arrived that morning, I was not a happy bunny – but I kept my mind focussed on the cooling bottle of Cava that I had placed in the fridge a good deal earlier than twelve hours before.  So to speak.

Which is why I did not post the last episode in this continuing saga yesterday.

Today, Saturday, the threatened poor weather has not materialized and the sunshine has been encouraging.

What is appears to have been encouraging is the pack of dogs by which we are surrounded to give voice to their joy at the climatic conditions.  If I were not living in the midst of the noisy cacophony I might find amusing the howls, barks, yelps, screams, yips, yaps and unearthly baying that assail our ears on a daily basis.  But I do and I don’t.

After giving it some thought I have come to the following conclusions.

I understand that dogs will be dogs: they bark.  I do not have a problem with them.  It is the owners who deserve censure.  The inconsiderate idiots who, finding their own human relationships inadequate or non-existent need non-human companionship to compensate for their human failings.

My suggestion would be that all dog owners should be locked in their homes with their dogs and then the owners should have their legs broken.  The owners would then gradually disappear in the growing mountain of dog shit that they fail to clear up when they take their noise machines to the public toilets, or pavements as we more usually call them.

For a dog person like myself, it has taken but two short years of living in Catalonia to cure me of what I now recognize to be a self-deluding Romantic version of Man’s best friend.

My comments do not extend to yellow Labrador bitches of course, which remain outside and untouched by my dismissive screed!

Talking of pet hates (!) I am now well into “1000 Years of Annoying the French” and it is turning into a gripping historical read.  I am not always convinced by the historical shorthand which informs some of the more amusing statements; but it is packed with casual points of information which add highlights to a reasonable background of passing acquaintanceship with history.

The book reads more like an episodic novel than a work of academic research, but if anyone expected than from the title then they are delusional.  Though I have to say that the bits that I have checked out because of their basic implausibility seem to be based on fact.

As I am getting through the book with some speed, I expect to be able to start on the Nial Ferguson tomorrow.

What is a holiday weekend without reading!

Where is the sun?

Unrelenting wetness.

It has been raining or threatening to rain for an unconscionable length of time now and I am fed up with it.  It rained last night; it rained for most of the day, and it threatens to rain tomorrow.

This is a bad thing.

Quite apart from the fact that I thought that I had some sort of arrangement with god that it would rain on the Pyrenees and not, emphatically not where I live!

 

The poor weather is bad news for the “Carnival” which should take place tomorrow afternoon in our school.  This comprises the pupils dressed in an unconvincing variety of costumes wandering about from place to place in the playground participating in a variety of educationally improving activities for House Points.

And this on my “short” afternoon when I should have the last afternoon off for my early starts this week.  Unfortunately I will be working later than usual and going to a meeting.  I feel that I cannot emphasise enough the humanitarian disaster that having a meeting after school on a Friday actually is.  This is so far from what would be tolerated in any school in the country of my birth that it would be comical were it not that I have to go to the meeting.

The long weekend that follows it is hardly compensation for the lack of professional respect that would follow my ex-colleagues finding out that I had so far swallowed my vocational pride as to go to an end of week gathering to discuss mere pupil progress!

Fiasco Week starts on Monday with the pupils dispersed to all points of the compass and we precious few left to hold the fort in Barcelona and work 9-1. There is still no timetable for what we are going to do during this week and I fear for the worst!  Things have been put off, left to be done “during the week” - and that means that things are going to be allocated on an ad hoc basis.  In the stumbling way of things, it probably means that everything will get done - but with the maximum amount of stress.

I think the next week is going to be frustrating – and the Easter holidays still seems a very long way off!

Aunt Bet is dead.

It seems incredible that such a vital spark should be extinguished.  The world is lesser without her.

It is difficult to choose a particular memory that sums her up; she was too various a character to be tied down to a single experience or response.

Was it her carrying a small sign on trains which she would use if she found the people by whom she was surrounded too boring to talk to, “I am sorry, but I am deaf”; her letter writing which if collected would fill many volumes; her travel - where even the most innocuous of journeys would take on epic proportions when she described them; her omnivorous, rapacious, insatiable reading; her phenomenal memory; her sparkling vivacity; her generosity and, above all, her conversation.  It was and is all of these and more, much more.

How can I forget taking my Aunt Bet to my Great Aunt Gwen’s funeral?  We talked constantly from Gloucester to Hove and all the way back again.  Conversation was life blood for Aunt Bet and her experience and maturity made it vital and engaging.

I shall miss her.  Very much.

But a full life like hers deserves to be celebrated, and sadness, though understandable must be tempered by appreciation.

Toni’s response (incredibly but aptly) on hearing the news was, “You must buy a book!”  If ever there was a clearer example of pushing at an open door than this then I have never heard of it.  The choice in our local bookshops was not as wide as I would have liked but I eventually decided on “1001 Días que cambiaron el mundo” which has just that right mix of variety linked to a dilettante shortness of individual entries that keeps me interested, especially when the language used is not my native tongue! 

 

I have started a tradition that I will enthusiastically keep up for the rest of my life, buying “Betty’s Book” on the 2^nd of March each year!

Term is stumbling along to the stutter that is Fiasco Week.  We have a meeting on Friday after school (!) then we are off for a long weekend while other colleagues take pupils to all points of the compass, up to and including Wales!

I look forward to the opportunity to get a space to begin reading Betty’s Book.

I long for long weekends

Montserrat was particularly clear as I proceeded on my way up the Ronda de Dalt towards the school.  I am sure that I should be able to work out some prognostication for the weather from the clarity with which I could see the bizarre corrugations of the mountain range so dear to the hearts of Catalans, but I can’t.  It either means that the pollution is at unusually low levels or alternatively that pollution has become more cunning and is hiding its poison in transparency.

In face, looking out of the staff room window in Building 1 I can see that a gauzy pall has descended on the city and the sun is more hazy than it was on the journey in.

I count all of this as a positive, as the weather forecast was less than inspiring for this week and, although it is markedly colder than it was last, at least it is not raining – so I am (relatively) happy.

My last batch of marking is due to be completed this morning and the computer is primed and ready to take in and process the raw marks that I get.  I have the marking key at hand.  I can do no more until I get the papers themselves.

The examinations finish today, but lessons with classes go on until the end of the week.  With some of the groups this is their last times with a particular teacher as everything changes for the next term; except the change occurs in March and the term ends in April.  This is another of the courtesy details of life in the school that makes life just a little bit more difficult.

I have a double lesson of Media Studies this afternoon and I am disinclined to teach but I do not have a film which (even remotely) can be linked to advertising that is the aspect of the course that we have been studying.  No doubt I will think of something – and anyway I want to get the examination papers marked before I leave this school this evening.

The so-called “evaluation” meeting to discuss the results of the kids is being held, wait for it, on Friday afternoon and will probably extend itself interminably until about 7 pm!  On a Friday!  They would never, never, never get away with scheduling a meeting at that time in Britain.  But when you consider that the original time for this meeting was on Saturday morning then you tend to count your blessings!

Today being what day it is, I have caused my usual sensation by wearing appropriately garish neckwear to celebrate the National Day of my country.  Large red dragons march defiantly and diagonally across my tie in front of a background of green and white: it is, you might say, noticeable.  And rightly so!

As there is a school trip to Wales during Fiasco Week and our party will be sharing the centre with another private school from England, our pupils have been encouraged to write letters to their British counterparts.  My colleagues have discovered, perhaps not surprisingly that many of the kids have called the country “Whales” or “Gales”: I trust that they will be a little more accurate after their experience in the actual land!

I’ve started listening to Rattle’s Records and I am pleased with the quality of the reproduction and the intensity of the interpretation – a continuing delight! I haven’t really delved deeply into the less well known of the pieces in the sets of discs and I look forward to learning something new.

Clarrie’s book has arrived: “1000 Years of Annoying the French” by Stephen Clarke a jokey yet serious look at Anglo-French relationships showing how the French have lied and misrepresented everything from the North Man (NOT French) invasion of our jewelled isle in 1066 to French involvement in World War II.  600 pages of enough stuff to fee righteous indignation for an age!

I have also had two other books delivered.  By delivered of course, I mean that the delivery people left a note saying that they had “tried” to deliver the package but were unsuccessful.  As they obviously did not have the package with them and made no attempt to contact the people inside the house where they were supposed to deliver the package, I suppose we should be grateful that they did at least deliver the notification that they had the package somewhere.

“Portable Genius” a handbook for Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 was the first of the books and looks just about at m level and has lots of screen images to keep me on the right track as I try to explore what this set of programs can do.

The second is “The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World” by Niall Ferguson.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading his “Empire” and bought this on the strength of my response and a feeling that I need some background to put what investment managers have been doing with my money into some sort of historical perspective.

The reading is building up nicely for the long weekends!

A spacious day

First period in the morning and it’s a “study” period.

I don’t know what the word “study” conjures up for you but it probably doesn’t cover the chatty lack of concern that the class in front of me is showing.  Still, even with the level of noise it is better than actually teaching them and I have learned to accept a much higher level of talk than I would find tolerable in a British class!

This is the week before Fiasco Week and I have to admit that it shows.  The kids and staff are tired and waiting for a gap to recharge depleted batteries.  For some of my colleagues their recharging period will be on a foreign holiday complete with our pupils.  Personally, I would not find that refreshing or relaxing and I resent the fact that I have to spend three days of the Fiasco Week in school.

It looks as though the long weekends are going to be just than rather than mini-holidays, but as long as the weather is acceptable then I will be satisfied – and the weather is steadily improving.  Even though today was supposed to be the first day of rotten weather it looks reasonable with clouds but sunshine as well.

Taking farming superstition into account then I would have to say that “Red sky in the morning, etc.” would come into play and we should see rain later in the day – but I am the eternal optimist where the weather in Spain is concerned.

I have managed to resist the temptation to start on the rest of the Mapp & Lucia novels after finishing “Trouble for Lucia” – given the wealth of electronic reading which is available it would be unacceptable to indulge myself by re-reading such an addictive series of books. 

There is a progression to my reading and I would probably start on “The Lord of the Rings” immediately afterwards; which is the normal slide downwards into the literary drug induced euphoria that is always just a book away from my normal life. 

I would inevitably go on to the hard stuff and start re-reading “The Gormenghast Trilogy” with yet another re-assessment of my view of “Titus Alone”.

It is then but a short step to Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep”, Azimov’s “Foundation Trilogy” (ignoring, of course the other additions to the basic three) and “Stalky and Co”. 

The true end game would be a re-reading of “Old Saint Pauls” leading, finally, to “Winnie the Pooh”!

Just writing that has induced me to download the Gormenghast Trilogy: this is a clear danger sign.  What will follow?

I have managed to print out my Media Studies booklet by judicious use of Publisher for the simple cover; the photocopier to reduce the logo for the course and then cutting with scissors and sticking with Pritt.  The great sensation occurs when I produce my jealously guarded long-arm stapler to give that final semi-professional touch.

Long-armed staplers are the stuff of dreams.  Only the most professional and acquisitive of teachers manage to bag one for their very own.  It is a well-known fact that, if a long-armed stapler is made generally available to a normal staff of teachers then its half-life is akin to that of a terminally sick member of the drosophila family!

I gained two glorious free periods today and used them to finish off my second little booklet for the Media Studies course.  This one was for the writing that I am expecting the kids to do.  The exercises seem to take on a greater authority when they are collected together in a stapled (!) booklet.  I certainly hope so anyway and it will make my job much easier.

Work continues on the Making Sense of Modern Art booklet that is going to be a wondrous work of art when it is finally completed - if it is ever completed.  I now, after yet another meeting about the thing, have to write a short account of Futurism and then edit the combination of other pieces of writing that have been joined by force together!

The contrast between my booklets and the art booklet is going to be marked: but my booklets are already done and stapled!  Experience will tell!

An early departure from school thanks to one of my gained frees bucked me up enough to venture into town to find out what Amazon had deigned to send me.

As I have had occasion to point out before, home delivery of parcels seems to be a thing of the past: the only thing delivered is the piece of paper telling you that you were not there when they called.  Where “there” is exactly to a parcel delivery person is not entirely clear as the recipient actually being in the house to which the parcel is supposed to be delivered is not sufficient to persuade a delivery person to hand over the package rather than leave the form!

A jaunt into the centre revealed that the undelivered package contained my boxed sets of Simon Rattle – the Russian, British and Stravinsky.  I am eagerly loading them into The Machine for later listening pleasure: hours and hours of it!  There are 22 discs and, although I know most of the stuff on them and have versions already in my collection, the British selection is more interesting containing music by Grainger, Arnold, Knussen, Ades, Maw, Matthews and Turnage.  And, anyway it’s along time since I listened to things like The Planets and Belshazzar’s Feast: it will be an indulgence!

In an act that I consider to be both defiant and intelligent I have bought one of those little-old-lady shopping bags on wheels!  It has a collapsible handle and so fits easily into the boot of the car.  It is red (or pink in some lights) and has a striking and colourful linear design and I think it is sensible and yes, I have wheeled it through town.  But that was in the dark and whether I would do so in the cruel light of the day is another matter. 

We, as they say, shall see!

Meanwhile there is another disc to feed into The Machine and some serious listen to be done!

Roll on the summer!

No day on which I have been able to sit outside on the terrace of the Third Floor and feel the sun on my face can be described as all bad!

I’ve even done a piece of school work.  Though as this was writing a short screed on eight selected art movements that wasn’t exactly a burden.  Just for a change I used books to provide the basis for my writing keeping well clear, you understand, of Wikipedia which will be used by all (and I mean all) the students that we take.

It was quite like old times finding my desk becoming covered with different sized volumes and trying to keep control of where I wanted to be consulting three books almost simultaneously!

The only time that I regretted not having access to the Internet (it is temperamental, to put it mildly, on the Third Floor) was when I realized that I would have to add first names to some of the artists to avoid confusion in our pupils’ minds. 

Though it might be interesting to see a pupil confuse the Pop artist Peter Blake with the older and madder William Blake because if you put “Blake” into Google I am sure that it will bring up the older Blake rather than the newer. 

Though, again, thinking about it, I expect that I could make a case somehow or other for Bill being considered a precursor of the Pop Artists!  After all “Good and Evil Angels Struggling for the Possession of the Soul of a Child” could have come straight out of a Marvel Comic!

I am still recovering from all the edu-talk that Suzanne subjected me to.  It did all make sense, but it also brought back bad memories of the wording of some of the plethora of educational “initiatives” that plagued your life if you entered education at the time that I did!

And now in the last period before home time in my career, so to speak, initiatives rear their heads in my erstwhile little troubled academic life.  Suzanne is a born-again believer in Project Based Learning and she has started a crusade to get PBL accepted in our school.  Just before the Easter holidays she will be going to the US of A to visit a selection of schools specifically to learn more about PBL in action!  This is serious stuff! 

And our little course on Making Sense of Modern Art is an integral part of her approach.  We have planned and evaluated like true professionals – I didn’t know that I had it in me!

The descriptions of art movements will be part of the new booklet for which Suzanne is doing a mock-up.  I have designed the cover (all part of the Praetorious Design Service of old) and the finished article will be a marked contrast to the more ordinary booklet that I am preparing for the last course of Media Studies!  But it will take less time too!

Next week is the week before the Fiasco Week and just to get us into the mood Friday is Carnival.  Admittedly Carnival is our school is less of a celebration than a duty, but the kids seem to enjoy it with some mild dressing up and excitingly educational paper puzzles to do.  To, if I remember rightly, the sound of raucous music.

Then a long weekend and a three day week into which virtually everything that we have not had time to do before will suddenly be done.

Then another long weekend and the long slog to Easter!

Every day, I must keep telling myself, is a day nearer to the end of June!

Books for health

My Aunt Bet is not well.  My cousin has written to me saying that she has taken to her bed and is not reading or doing crosswords.  For a fanatical reader like my Aunt not to be reading is like taking away intellectual oxygen!

My thoughts go out to her and I wish her a rapid recovery so that the printed word can do its magic for her again, soon.

Although I am surrounded by thousands of volumes of the printed word, what I have been looking at increasingly over the past few years (has it been that long?) are electronic forms of writing rather than paper versions.  Apart from computers I have three electronic “books” two of which have fallen into disuse as my Kindle takes precedence not only in the ease with which I can load new books on to it, but also because it has the most efficient cover, incorporating as it does a built-in light!

Saturday saw me in Barcelona to meet Suzanne so that we could discuss the content and planning for the next term’s course in Art History.  As Suzanne is deeply into Project Based Learning and the theory thereof she forces me to take a more academic approach to the structure of this Credit than I would usually tolerate – and to use the fashionable buzzwords that go with it!  I am sure that it good for my soul to behave as a twenty-first century educationalist from time to time!

We are planning a small inter-active booklet to accompany the course and, whereas I would have made do with stick, paste and photocopy Suzanne is constructing (I think that is the right word) the whole thing in some exotic version of Publisher!  I have left her with the detailed fiddling with the pages that we have roughly designed and I will wait to see how much better it is than my hastily fabricated cover for the Current Affairs class!

We have brought the course content down to eight Movements in Art History: Fauvism; Cubism; Dada; Expressionism; Abstraction; Surrealism; Abstract Expressionism and Pop.  Futurism was one of the many ‘isms’ that didn’t make the final cut, but we have had a great deal of pleasure in deciding which of the many and currently proliferating groupings in art we could safely “ignore”!

I did manage to find time to call into El Corte Ingles but was very disappointed at the so-called “offers” that were displayed in the Classical Music Department.  There were discs with -50% emblazoned on them, but investigation revealed that they were extraordinarily expensive items to start so the reduction made them merely extortionate.

There is some marking that ought to be done, but I am thoroughly disinclined to do it and instead I am going to trawl my way through a selection of Art books to see if I can find a short and pithy summation of each of the art movements that we are going to study.  If they do not come to hand fairly quickly then I might have to write the damn things myself instead of resorting to The Teachers’ Friend – or plagiarism, as it is usually known!

Although today appeared to be setting itself up as a wonderfully sunny spring-like day, its early promise evaporated and grey skies gave warning of the quality of the weather that we have been promised for the forthcoming week.  I will take rain on Monday as long as it is sunny on Sunday!

A chance comment by Stewart about what he was reading on his Kindle sent me to a well frequented shelf in my library and choosing a volume at random I starting reading “Trouble for Lucia” by E F Benson in my rather nice 1994 Folio Society edition printed on Hamilton Wove paper using Goudy typeface and with suitably fey line drawing illustrations by Natacha Ledwidge.

I read all the novels on a beach in Sitges in 2005 (in the Folio Edition of course) and any catalogue description would have to take into account some slight sun tan oil staining to the boards!

That is the sort of thing that a Kindle lacks: physical reminders of when a book was last read and, as in this volume a photograph and a receipt to give you the date.

But the wonder of the Kindle does not diminish: the Bible; Shakespeare; Paradise Lost and a host of other works all unobtrusively contained in a slim, elegant package.  A true wonder!

All I need now is time to read the bloody thing!  

The phoney war!

It begins!

The First Day of the examination season is upon us!

We have two people with the same first name on the invigilation timetable and there is no differentiation made so the day starts with the chaos that we know so well.  But, ironically, as chaos (of a sort) is our middle name it is taken in our stride and we confidently wait for the next crisis.

The sun has come out to indicate that it is still there and to give us hope throughout the next few days as, according to the strict rules of the pathetic fallacy and the local weather forecast it will be thoroughly sad and depressing for the period of the examinations with overcast skies and even precipitation.

The day for me has started well with an unexpected free for almost a whole period and then finishing off one exam and allowing the class “study time.”

This so-called “study time” is, as you might imagine, the bane of our lives.  The pupils, in a school that is constantly setting examinations, constantly ask for study time.  Their idea of study is to “revise” for less than an hour just before the examination.  Their short-term memory capabilities have been honed to a fine edge by constant practice and they can easily take in a vast amount of knowledge that they can just as easily discard as soon as they have regurgitated what they have been asked to “learn”.

As talking is second nature to our pupils the idea of studying in silence is an almost impossible ideal for them to aim at and therefore an enforced period of quiet is a fairly noisy battle of wills.  Still, it’s better than teaching.  And on day one they do at least have a plethora of tests for which to prepare!

I am trying to read more.  This is because the demands of school drain the natural inclination towards the printed (in whatever form) word to fill the free-ish evenings that I might have.  God knows there is enough for me to get stuck into in spite of the fact that the two authors that I decided to download electronically do not seem to exist in digital form.  I will persevere and should have the texts safely in my Kindle for the holidays – however long or short they may be.

I have ordered a book from Amazon that purports to be a complete guide to the musical works of Mozart.  I have been merrily listening to the more famous parts of his oeuvre but am looking askance at the more esoteric offerings (especially in the operas) of which I have never heard.  I always find that some sort of background gives me the incentive to listen with a little more concentration. 

I have been caught before about what people regard as a “musical guide” and the one that I bought on Carl Nielsen is almost impenetrable in its use of technical musical jargon and immensely unhelpful illustrations from the score. 

A famous line in “Look Back in Anger” was, “Do the Sunday papers make you feel ignorant?”  Well, this guide to Carl’s music certainly made me feel so!  I only hope that the present guide that I have bought after looking (electronically) at a few sample pages is a little more human and inviting.

I have also bought a guide to Office for Mac and only hope that it too is user friendly: I am a “user” and not a “geek” so I need things explained in a rational and not an intuitive way.

To leaven out the arts I have also purchased a series of Simon Rattle’s discs that seemed to be good value covering a range of music: British, Russian and Stravinsky – the latter of which I had not realized was a nationality!

I like the fact that the overwhelming quantity of music on The Machine is new, though some old favourites will have to be added by hand, as it were.  The Rattle versions are of music that I have on other discs, but it will be good to experience them on something new. 

I suppose that what I am saying is that the purchase of The Machine is an excuse to buy more and experiment with other radical interpretations than the ones I already have.  Of course, this all falls down when it comes to paying for them and I am much more inclined to go for what I perceive to be bargains than pay full price for something supposedly more “interesting”!

Today has been interesting given the fact that I have four lessons and a meeting and I appear to have taught only one of them – and that was more of a question and answer session rather than a formal lesson. 

My second lesson was supervision; my third simply disappeared and my students flocked to the “library” to engage in ceaseless conversation until the head of the sixth form stormed in and demanded their silence; my fourth has disintegrated into a “study” lesson where most of the pupils appear to be actually engaged in work of some sort.  I confidently expect that the meeting will be curtailed in the interests of marking.  So, all in all a fairly lazy day and the sun has shone throughout.

Today does however mark a significant moment in the management of my finances.

It has taken me a while to recover from the horror of discovering that the only time that I had savings was the only time when it didn’t really pay to have them.

The bloated plutocratic thieves who run the bond market played fast and loose with my savings and managed to rip 40% of the value of my funds away.

Needless to say, I remembered the small print that always stated that “investments can go down as well as up” and I confidently awaited an upturn in the market.

What I hadn’t banked (ironic) on was the fall in the value of the pound.  What, when I first arrived in Spain was a Euro worth?  70p.  What is a Euro worth now?  85p.  An effective devaluation of some 20%.  So for my savings (ironic) to worth simply the same as they were when I put them into the “slow but steady growth” bonds they would have to increase in value by  while if I consider what interest rate I could have got in an ordinary bank or building society then I would need to earn another .  If I then consider the charges that have been made while these wealthy fools have gambled away my money, while being paid with my money as well then I would need to add a further  and all of that is merely to stand still.  I could weep.

However apart from a few bad tempered (on my part the people at the other end were serene) telephone calls I don’t know exactly what the situation is.

I have been encouraged by the economics and business studies teacher to leave things well alone and only worry nearer the date of the maturity of the investments, but planning for something as important as the rest of my life should occupy some of my time in the years leading up to the date on which the funds become available without penalty.

I have therefore written to the managers of the fund and asked them to come clean and let me know exactly where I stand.  It says something for their sense of decency that they have not seen fit to send me a single printed account of what the hell they have been doing since I put the money into the funds.

I have, of course kept some track of what is going on, but my discoveries were inevitably discouraging and depressing while I comforted myself with the feeling that time was, hopefully, on my side.

Now I will find out if the length of time that I have left for the funds to settle has been sufficient for me to regard what seemed like a safe investment to justify my grudging confidence.

Meanwhile life, as they say goes on.

Who knows what's true

Today is one of those days whose fabric is permeated with a sense of unreality.  It’s sunny but unreal.  There is a patina of fantasy that is colouring our actions and nothing seems quite as it should be.

This might be a hang-over from the cheese I ate late last night or a mild case of dyspepsia or even the tail end of my illness but it is there nevertheless: a sense of other-worldliness.

I sometimes think that this attitude is a teacher’s response to the enormity of the task which we have to face every day: five new performances with a hypercritical audience and one’s standing only as good as the last show!

Tomorrow exams start and the self-induced chaos and stress that come with this season starts.  It has an almost biblical ring to it and it puts one in mind of the words of the New Testament that “A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be examined” and each child will have to go to his or her own classroom and, well, you get the general idea – though I do not think that our burst of activity, though of stellar proportions, will presage the birth of another messiah. 

 

It is more likely that as the last examination is taken that the Four Educational Horsemen of the Apocalypse will descend: Photocopying, Cheating, Marking and Meetings. 

“And Meetings shall ride upon an oval table borne high by soulless managers and he shall be surrounded by chairs piled high with the empty shells of people who have imploded from despair.  And he shall look around and see that all things are good and he shall say, “Shall we open diaries and schedule a quickie to talk about this?” and great will be the groan and lamentation thereof and he will look upon the desolation that he has wrought and he will be satisfied.”

The exams do not work out very well for me and much of my marking will be right at the end of the period which links into the long weekends.  Still, it should not be too much trouble and I am sure that I will be ahead of the game by the time we are able to take our couple of days off.

What is more interesting is what is going to happen during the Fiasco Week when we few (we precious few) are left back at base while our more enterprising colleagues are taking school trips right, left and centre.

Over the past couple of months I have heard the refrain, “We can discuss that during the Fiasco Week” for a whole variety of problems and possibilities.

 

One of the more interesting ideas concerns our participation in a student UNO meeting in Lisbon next academic year.  I am more than prepared to get involved in discussions about who to take and how to prepare the students for this enterprise, but I am not prepared to accompany them anywhere on a trip that involves overnight accommodation. 

I have tried to make my travel restrictions clear to anyone who will listen and I do hope that they will not be foolhardy enough to encourage me to break a rigid rule which I have never broken in all my years of teaching.  A subsidized trip to Lisbon is not likely even to reach the outer borders of vague temptation!

But I jump the gun and I am hoping that there will be others eager to go off on a jaunt that they may see bolstering their employment prospects and be a further step to advancement.  Good luck to them!

Just the thought of escape from school has made me turn my mind to the “tasks” which are a natural element in any free days.

There are some tasks connected to finance which are just too important to be interesting and there are boring letters that I must write which by their essential nature continually get consigned to the back of the queue for completion.

The real pressing problem and therefore the most urgent task is one which I am sure is taxing the resources of people all over the world.  This is, of course, where to find a decent transparent toilet bag to take the little bottles of not more than 100 ml each that is the stated essential holder if you only take hand luggage with you.

 

I have bought ready-filled packs with miniature toothpaste etc. in them and they self-destruct after a single trip.  The worst part of these transparent holders is the plastic zip type fastening which breaks before the holiday has really got started: even if it is only a weekend!

I have found something that looks more substantial and could well last for more than a single trip, but this container is filled with expensive liquids already, one of which is a large professional looking bottle of hair conditioner – something which, for reasons I prefer not to go into, is not an essential purchase in my world!

As I do not need it until April I have a substantial amount of time to mosey my way, with purpose, through the supermarkets in our area!

Delayed delight

First things first: a good night’s sleep!  That is something which my technicolour cough has been working against, so I look forward to rapid improvement.

Secondly: the sun is out in a hazy sky but still the glare on the ceramic tiles of the balcony in the old building is proof of its strength.  Long may it continue.

And just as things are going well there is always forgetfulness to make it better!

I ran downstairs from my 2BXT class to go to my 3ESO, calling in to the staff room to pick up the necessary books and I was on my way out when a colleague laconically asked me if I was mad!  It had completely slipped my mind that the class (our equivalent of Year 9) had gone out on a trip and I had a free period.  A free period all the more enjoyable when “unexpected”!

And what did I do to celebrate this forgotten freedom?  Wrote part of an examination paper for the pupils who were on the trip.  There is a sort of irony that works in schools that never lets you down!

Part of the mysterious way in which my school works pertains to the length of the “terms” for certain classes we take.  Simple logic would dictate that, as there are three terms in a year and three groups to teach, each group would be taught for a term.  But simple logic doesn’t obtain here.  The present term might have ended today, or maybe next week.  Who knows?  Probably the kids do.  They always know about these things in spite of the fact that their teachers may well be in the dark!  This teacher certainly is!

The exact date of the next classes is important as in two of them there are special booklets that will have to be produced.  In a welcome return to the good old days of booklet covers designed by c. Praetorious 2011 the tried and tested techniques of photocopy-rip-collage are at large again.  The cover for Current Affairs is done and dusted; the cover for Making Sense of Modern Art is done and awaiting discussions about content before it is put into production.  The cover for Media Studies is only a thought in the mind of god at the moment, but it may be the first entirely computer designed cover that the c. Praetorious 2011 workshop has turned out.

The amount of time and trouble to produce these things is totally out of proportion to their use – but they are one thing that gives me pleasure and a sense of creativity. I find it very difficult to be creative about Mixed Conditionals, especially when I hardly know what they are myself when I have to describe them in precise grammatical terms!

English Grammar is truly a deadly discipline.  Some parts that we teach truly do defy logic.  If you are used to a fairly ordered Latinate language the lackadaisical attitude to grammar in English must be either frustrating or exhilarating! 

I know which adjective best fits my attitude!

Another week

To get up at 6.30 am might be regarded as unfortunate; to get up at 6.30 am to teach the unresponsive members of 3ESO is little short of disaster!

In the increasingly light mornings that see me slogging up the northern orbital motorway I can feel my mood lighten at the same time.  It still does not entirely compensate for the pupils who are waiting for me, but it helps.

The sun, god bless it, is out again and we have had to lower the shutters to ensure that the conditions in which we work are acceptable.  Once again the depressing quality of the weather forecast for my home country has given me a little boost as I realized that the morning starting temperature in Catalonia was higher than it was going to get during the whole day in the UK!

 

I have now booked flights for Grand Canaria in April during the Easter break and I am looking for places to go for the two long weekends.  There is little point in earning the money if you don’t spend it; especially in a time when the feckless idiocy of mendacious bankers devalues your savings while you watch!

It does seem particularly poignantly ironic that the only time in my life that I have savings is the only time that it doesn’t pay you to have savings!

I was only ten when what should have been a more formative experience occurred.  Viv Nicholson, one of the most famous pools winners, uttered her infamous dictum in response to a newspaper’s enquiry about what she was going to do with her winnings: “Spend! Spend! Spend!”

If left to nature I would follow such obvious wisdom with the all instinctive devotion of a rabid stag in full bellowing rut; but since my early youth I have been surrounded by people who have fed me the pernicious doctrine of so-called “saving.”  My indoctrination started with a Post Office Saving Book whose rate of interest only becomes less than risible when compared with the rates at this time of absolute crisis.

I should have been warned off such evils by the fact that my local branch of the Post Office in Tewkesbury Street in Cardiff was closed after a robbery – presumably committed by someone looking for a decent return on his money!

In the following years my fecklessness with money was constantly berated as one of my most pressing and deleterious faults.  No sooner was money in my pocket than the spirit of Keynes came upon me and urged me to spread it around and keep western capitalism going!  Far from being condemned I should have been encouraged to think that such an approach was the first step towards an OBE at the very least!

Today and tomorrow are the calm before the storm of examinations that will soon take over the rest of the week.  This is a time of considerable tedium, stress and unending marking: cui bono indeed!