Season change?

A suspiciously clear drive in to school this morning.  The sun was shining and even the motorcyclists were behaving with a less than suicidal attitude towards other motorists!

The mornings are getting pleasantly lighter and there is something soul enhancing about travelling to school in daylight rather than in pre-dawn darkness.

This weekend (?) sees the clocks going back or forward or whatever which means that we will be an hour nearer to darkness yet again.  On the other hand it also means that we are that much nearer to the summer!  I mustn’t allow myself to count the days to the two-month release!  That way lies madness!

 

Today is Budget Day in Britain and the speculation is, to put it mildly, tired.  It seems as though the tax threshold is going to be raised to something like eight thousand pounds a year which is certainly positive from my point of view – though from the point of view of the economy and its management by the present bunch of self-serving idiots who govern the country at the moment, I am not so sure.

At the moment I seem to have slipped below the radar of the tax authorities and I have not had significant communication with them for years.  Perhaps it is time for me to approach them and ask what is going on, or perhaps I should adopt the advice of those more learned in government and “leave well alone”.

I am not sure of my tax status as a British citizen domiciled abroad.  As far as the Catalan and Spanish governments are concerned I am a normal tax paying citizen, paying into a pension fund from which I am going to gain nothing – and there doesn’t seem to be an “opt-out” option which would enable me to boost my meagre payment from the school.

Last year, following the advice of colleagues, I made the effort to go in to the tax offices with all my documentation of my employment history and ended up paying the government more, whereas everyone else that I know was given some form of payback to soften the blow of having so much money ripped from their fragile salary.  C’est la vie!

I should have done some marking during the time that I have before the start of my first period, but the general climactic conditions and my predisposition to sulk about being indoors when the sun is shining all contributed to my sulky reluctance to put red pen to paper.  I am relying on my “library” period as a time when I can do those things that I have not done – and it delays the work for another couple of hours!

My individual welcome back has now included doing a cover for a colleague.  There is a sort of equilibrium in the giving and taking in a school situation that I expected that I would be chosen because of my “uncovered” period in the UK.  People had to cover my classes (why, you might ask as it was a period of absence known in advance) therefore I have to pay back.

Even allowing for “breaks” this interminable term winds its way on with inexorable slowness.  I think that the musing that I do on the trip to Gran Canaria makes it more intolerable.  The absurd lateness of Easter this year has unsettled all the usual internal clocks of teachers leaving a general dissatisfaction and an aching sense of longing for freedom!

Now that I have a new Internet radio, which is very much more reliable than the old one, I am listening to Radio 4 with more regularity.  The advantage is that it keeps me up to date with what is going on in the world in a much more convincing way than the media in Spain do.  The disadvantage is that it keeps me up to date with what is going on in the world!  I now have much more to worry about in a completely futile way!

The only time in my life when I have savings, the whole of chaotic progress of the world seems bend on destroying them.  From world financial crisis to natural disaster everything tends to make my savings less.

I am still recovering from the horror of finding that the “unexciting but dependable fund” into which my savings were placed for “steady growth” on the advice of a “financial advisor” lost 40% of their value in one extended swoop.

I still amuse (if that is the term) myself with speculation about what I might have bought if I had done what I usually do when I have money – and that is spend it.  I eventually worked out that I could have had a world cruise (with outside cabin and balcony) for two; drunk nothing but Champagne and bought a Rolex watch – especially if I had converted the pounds sterling into euros as soon as I had the pounds in my hands.

What seemed like excellent value when the euro was 70p doesn’t seem quite as good when, on a good day, the euro is trading at 86p.  Ah! for the good old days when the peseta was devalued to keep pace with the loosing value of the pound!

It looks almost certain that in the next financial year the wages of teachers will not be increased.  As inflation is forging ahead with scant regard for the normal factors which should be in play with the sort of financial crisis which should be governing our lives, teachers are getting more and more poorly paid.

Presumably, there has to come a time when even our supine profession makes some sort of stand against what is going on in the so-called profession.

Our type of school has an outstanding court case against the government to try and claw back the 5% decrease in grant that was given to our school to pay part of the teachers’ salaries.  We do not know what will happen if the schools loose the case and have to carry the reduction for the foreseeable future.

I am not sure what my reaction to a reduction in my salary would be.  I mean, I know what my reaction would be, it’s just that I don’t know how negative my reaction would be and what action, if any, I would take.

If I am truthful I think my presence in the school is becoming more and more unreal as the routine becomes more and more natural.  It may be a paradox but I am living it!

 

It is now, officially, Spring and the weather is living up to its designation.  From where I am sitting I can see a may tree whose branches are loaded with blossom and walking out onto the balcony you meet the wafting cloud of that sickly-sweet, slightly miasmic perfume of the tree.  As we have brisk breezes as well the scent is swept away only to assault you afresh as soon as there is a lull.

The air is fresher and the vistas a little clearer these days and I am waiting for the solid lump of heat that usually strikes the shirt and tie in late April and early May!

Meanwhile one more day to the weekend.  And three weeks on Sunday: Gran Canaria!

 

It starts again

In the strange way in which the mind plays with logic, I now find myself missing my aunt more now that I have returned to work than when I was in Britain.  I am sure that this will pass and that the closure that I felt when I was there will become a living reality.

However, another reality is now demanding attention: the everyday life of a school.  My absence has been filled with work which needs to be marked and work which will need to be continued.

The chocolates that are a necessary sweetener to colleagues after a visit (for whatever reason) to a place other than the immediate vicinity of Barcelona have been generally well received: Tesco strikes again!  They will all be gone by first break!

No one has yet mentioned the holidays, but I feel that the magic date of the 15^th of April is at the forefront of each and every thinking teacher’s mind.  It certainly is the case with me – and the sooner we get there the better.

As is always the case in this place, there will be yet another series of examinations before the term is allowed to die and the function of the holiday period is to give us a breathing space to prepare for the next series of tests which will fill the summer term.

 

Any day now I will start counting the days to the end of June when the “real” holidays will start.  Before these halcyon days there is the problem month of May that on my calendar is quite clean.  This means that there are no occasional days, or saints’ days or anything else to break up the relentless chore of teaching day after teaching day.

The Pauls have expressed themselves open to the idea of reinstating our weekend gallivanting which characterised our time in Cardiff.  Although we would be departing from different starting points we could certainly and easily join up for a continuation of the triumphal progress that we made through such cities as Berlin, Milan, Dublin, Bilbao and Venice.

The seat of the Painted Whore of the Seven Hills has been suggested for the next trip and as I have never been to the stronghold of Jimmy Red Socks I am rather taken by the idea.  We will have to check the flights and hotels and see if we can meet up.

Previously we used to set an upper limit of fifty quid for the flights: this is now unrealistic and we will have to rethink our parameters.  Although it is still possible to be pleasantly surprised by the low cost of some flights, one is caught by the necessity of coming back on a Sunday as work beckons on the Monday.  I think we my be able to get flights for just over €100 if we are lucky.  Still, it will be interesting to find out if a re-start of the weekend visit programme is possible at all.

The familiar tiredness set in as soon as I got home.  Even a quick trip to town and a most unsatisfactory tortilla bocadillo were insufficient to invigorate my jaded perceptions. 

I have been encouraged to believe that, given the absurd luck that characterised my unfortunate memory lapses during the visit to the UK I should invest in the chance to win the absurdly large sum of money which is now being offered to gullible punters in the Euro Millions!

In spite of my firm belief that lotteries are taxes on the stupid, I have indeed invested some of my hard earned money in a few lines: hope springs eternal!

Back again!

Back in Castelldefels.

More importantly, with The Machine securely in my grasp, rather than having it wing its way around Europe before finally coming back to me.

Toni was quite insistent that I not use The Machine and he even (for the second time in history) urged me to buy two books (!) so that I would read rather than type during the flight.

Needless to say I took his urging seriously and using the “buy one and get the second half price” offer of W H Smith’s I am now the proud possessor of “Civilization: The West and the Rest” by Niall Ferguson and Sebastian Faulks “Faulks on Fiction”.

I started reading the latter first as it looked the less taxing read and of the 28 books mentioned I had read 21 of them – which was 2 fewer than Faulks himself as he said that 23 of the books were re-reads for him! 

I look forward to skating over great fiction in the hands (what an uncomfortable mixed metaphor!) of a more than competent writer!

The Niall Ferguson purchase was an almost instinctive one given my response to “Empire” and “The Ascent of Money” I am his devoted slave and he comes close to toppling Jared Diamond and his “Guns, germs and steel” from my favourite non-fiction “it-makes-you-feel-intelligent” read!  But not quite.

The journey from Cardiff to Bristol Airport was smooth, misty and uneventful; traffic jams only remarkable by the complete absence.  The flight was called in good time and took off promptly, landing a few minutes early.  The taxi was immediate and, as we approached Castelldefels the sun, obediently came out and blazed.

The house has been restocked and I am trying not to think too closely about the return to teaching tomorrow.

As no attempt was made to find a supply teacher for my “three day absence known in advance” I have bought two boxes of Tesco Chocolate Collection as sweet gesture to my colleagues who have had to cover for me.

What keeps me going is the thought that the holiday in Gran Canaria starts four weeks yesterday: roll on the 17^th of April.  As a mark of respect to the sacred nature of the period during which I shall be away, I shall insure that my iPod has The St Matthew Passion which I shall (as I have done before) listen to laying prone on the beach in the seasonal sunshine!

Give me another two weeks and I shall start counting the days!

Count your blessings

The dull drive up to Gloucester yesterday seemed to presage a touch of the pathetic fallacy for the funeral.  The lack of close parking spaces and the loss of diamond cuff link also added to the general air of depression.

But then the sun came out and the cuff link was found and the family started arriving and the general chitchat that is a function of these occasions started to happen with that air of brittle humour that often characterises ostensibly melancholy events.

As these things go, it went.  I read the Robert Frost poem and, as the specific significance of the lines to the life of my Aunt made themselves felt, it was more and more difficult to continue.  However, I got to the end and, in the reception after I managed to make my little speech and then it was done.

For the first time in my experience I found that the service (albeit humanist) fulfilled one of its functions and gave me a sort of closure.

I think that it was a fitting celebration of the life of an exceptional woman and I am grateful to my cousins for organizing something so appropriate.

After all our goodbyes were said I faced a longer than usual drive back to Cardiff.

We went back to Bristol.  Bristol airport.

Why you might ask.

I listened to my painstakingly uploaded music during the flight over and, when the time came for us to land, I carefully put The Machine into the pocket of the seat in front.

And left it there when we left the plane!

It was only when I was in Cardiff and boasting about my possession of such a sleek machine and then offering to show it to my hosts that I realized that I had left it my EasyJet flight.

Frantic calls to Bristol airport only made its loss more certain, as no lost property had been handed in.

I knew from the announcement before we got off the plane that the turnaround time before our flight was off somewhere else was very short.  And I also knew that the next destination was Edinburgh.

Edinburgh was duly phoned and the more I phoned the more I discovered that The Machine was not in any of the places where it might have been.

Eventually I had to desist and leave my further searches for the next day.

Adopting a resolute jollity which I did not feel. We then went out for a meal in the Italian restaurant that Toni thinks is the best in Cardiff, Skellinis.

Our meal was excellent with a richness that you do not usually get in Castelldefels.  I paid the price by developing tummy trouble almost immediately.

The next day was the day of the funeral and, before starting out I phoned the length of Great Britain to find out if there was an honest man in the country who might have handed in The Machine.

Edinburgh was depressing, but I was told that the plane had another quick turnaround and went back to Bristol so I phoned Bristol again.

This time I was lucky.  Yes a machine had been handed in which the voice at the other end of the line identified as a Mac Book and then altered that to (and I quote) “Oh, it’s an Airbook; one of those computers which are so think you can put them in an envelope.  They are nice, very, very nice!”

At that point I felt that such enthusiasm was dangerous and I intimated that I would like to collect it as soon as possible.  Hence the journey down to the airport after the funeral.

It is now safely in my possession, but it is hard to determine just how long that might be.

For example.  We went out to lunch today, Sunday, to one of the restaurants in Cardiff Bay.

Toni spent much of the time before lunch taking a series of photographs to show his family as they have been to Cardiff in the past and he was very keen to show them just how much the centre has changed.

Toni’s meal was traditional (fish and chips) while mine was a little more outré: a trio of pies with mash and gravy.  There were excellent and merited a photo in their own right.

The shirt that I was wearing was one without a breast pocket and so, true to form, I put the camera on the dining table in the restaurant and duly left it there when we left.

Only discovering its loss when we called into a dockside café, I hared back to the restaurant and, my luck still holding, the camera was still there.  I am now, officially, in the “pressing your luck” zone!

The weather here in Britain is shockingly fine – not at all what we expected, thank god!

Now, assuming that I can get together all of the equipment that I brought with me, I can begin my packing and get back to Castelldefels with more (not less) than I came with!

Settled thoughts

Tomorrow UK.  Friday Aunt Bet’s funeral.  

I have felt the loss grow a little each day, but I am looking to the funeral to provide a sort of closure of one stage of mourning.  I want to remember my Aunt as she was at her best: lively, interesting, interested, articulate, intelligent and, above all, talkative!

Some people become so much a part of your personal landscape that their loss is like some essential landmark being bulldozed into oblivion.  But, unless you are living a stagnant sort of life, the perspective must be always changing.  Admittedly, not always for the better - but there is in life a natural state of flux and the way that one adapts to the changes makes a statement about your essential personality.

Although the natural metaphor may be getting a little strained, I think it can be pushed further.  Some lives are like hard gardening: the structures which define spaces; whereas others are like the planting areas where flowers bloom and fade and may even be replaced.  Bet is the “hard gardening” a influence and a framework which will always be there – just like my parents' legacy – whose presence still and will shape my attitudes and responses.  And I am grateful for that.  And to them.

Today has been long.  Not with thinking about the visit to Britain, but literally long as our school indulged in one of their notorious meetings.

Examinations are a thing of the past - for little less than a month until the next series starts to unsettle us all!  This meeting was to discuss the results of the first three years of the secondary section of the school.

The meeting started at 5.00 pm and ground its way juggernaut-like to its grisly termination at 7.30 pm!  This after a full day of teaching and missing out on my "early leave".

As my examination results for the kids are on The Machine I have a legitimate reason to flaunt the discrete illuminated apple set in the sleek metallic sheen of brushed aluminium.  It also gives me the opportunity subtly to click a few buttons and segue my way from the tedium of names and numbers on Excel to the altogether more interesting screen which shows the latest news on the BBC website.

The school might have my physical presence but in these meetings they do not command my intellectual attention!  The few times that I dragged my attention away from the beguiling information on the screen of The Machine and actually listened to the wittering of my colleagues I could sense my teeth wanting to grind together in febrile disgust at the sheer pointlessness of two and a half hours of mind-numbing futility.

When I eventually escaped I picked up Toni and we went into town to have a meal.  We ended up having an excellent if expensive meal of tapas and beer.  It was after the second mouthful of the first tasty tapa that school faded into a comfortingly distant memory!

Now bed, so that I have sufficient energy to finish my packing early tomorrow!  As usual.

Sight costs!

As something of a public service announcement I would like to state that should you be desirous of tasting the driest Spanish omelette baguette or what is undoubtedly the vilest “bacon” baguette served in the Iberian Peninsular then I can direct your footsteps towards La Cantina del Pintxo in Passeig de la Ribera, 41 in Sitges.

This morning while cleaning my glasses they broke neatly in half at the nosepiece.  This now means that every piece of metal work on these fabulously expensive glasses has now snapped.  There is a definite price to be paid for having rimless lenses held in place by virtually undetectable sprung mental arms.  If they weren’t so comfortable I might have junked them long ago.  That, and the fact that the specially thinned, photo chromatic, variable focus lenses were the most expensive that I have ever bought and will have to be used until I have no sight left!

I put contact lenses in but needed to find my half glasses to be able to read properly.  I am now using old contact lenses from the time when my optician way trying to find the happy median to compensate for my short and long sightedness.  All the experiments were only qualified successes and I am left with a variety of different strength lenses that I can use in various combinations to continue the experiments.

So, in order to get something near my normal prescription for lenses, and get my broken glasses repaired I had to go to Sitges as I have discovered an optician who is able to repair the particular make of glasses that I use.

Having paid out yet another vast sum of money for the daily disposable lenses that I use (when I feel like it) we went in search of something to eat and found, to our cost the aforementioned La Cantina del Pintxo.  Avoid it like the plague.  And the bread of the baguette wasn’t very nice either!

While going through my briefcase I found the packet of postcards (all with stamps on) that I put together so I could send one to Aunt Bet every couple of days during her illness.  I only managed to send her one.  A sad moment looking at them.

I am hoping that Friday will give me an opportunity to celebrate a life and accept that memory will be something to cherish and will be enough.

Meanwhile there is a vast amount of work to be done before we leave on Thursday.  School demands attention and Wednesday evening will be spent in one of the interminable meetings that our school does so well.

And yes, that is irony.

The rain it raineth . . .

It is not only raining, but also pouring.  This is not what I expect from Catalonia!  Especially not at a weekend!  And the weather for the rest of the week looks equally gloomy.

Perhaps my trip to the UK on Thursday will be to a better climate, even if the reason for my visit is not a happy one.  Still, it will be an opportunity to trade memories with the rest of the family to make sure that Aunt Bet has a gathering that she could be proud of.  She made chatting into an art form!

Amazon’s evil level must be fairly high.  Not content with ordering yet another radio by their individually directed blandishments I was further tempted by the side adverts that adorn the site to purchase a box set of re-mastered recordings of Sir John Barbarolli conducting Sibelius.

As one of the first generation Sibelius conductors he has something of an iconic status and I don’t have a single one of his recordings in my collection.  I do have many versions of the symphonies, but it is always interesting to listen to another interpretation.

I keep forgetting that my musical taste was formed with injudicious, indeed indiscriminate buying of budget priced LPs when they came onto the market: Heliodor, Marble Arch, Allegro, Music for Pleasure which became the snappier and more expensive “mfp” and a host of others that I have forgotten.  I remember Marble Arch records as quite chunky and vulnerable; they gathered scratches if you so much as breathed on the surface!  But they were 9/11 and affordable.

I can still remember the progression of inflation on budget LPs: 9/11 soon became 10/- then 10/6 then 12/6 then, oddly 13/4 and I rather lost track of the increases after that and I was looking to record shop sales (especially Boots the Chemist in those far off days) to increase my respectable music coverage.

And now all of those LPs are gone: given to the Pauls and then sold on by them after they found that the ceiling was beginning to bow after they stored them in the attic!  More than 40 years of collecting.  I can still remember the artwork on LP covers from so many of the ones I had.

But I also remember the scratches, hiss and other extraneous sounds as well as the fag of having to turn the bloody things over to get the final movements of symphonies.  And the various cloths and liquids that were guaranteed to get rid of the dust held like microscopic limpets by the power of static electricity to the surface of the LPs.  And they never did.  Fully.  Silence was never quite silence on a record!

And now I am told that CDs are only possible because of the compression of the audio signal which supresses the higher frequencies, which I can’t hear now anyway, so no real loss there.

The only loss is that not all of my favourite LPs have been transferred to CD and, as the records are now gone, I do not have the opportunity to use a special desk to get the analogue into digital form.  Ah well, more opportunity to buy – like the Barbarolli set of Sibelius mentioned above!

The rain has continued unrelentingly with the moisture pouring down from a sludge-grey sky.  It is the sort of day that drains initiative and produces a slump-like attitude that defeats even the desultory reading of the latest book to be attempted on the Kindle.

In desperation, after lunch with the rain still falling I resorted to traditional way of dealing with can’t-be-bothered wet Saturday afternoons: I watched television!

And saw, in bemused astonishment a 1953 film by Roy Rowlands (Stanley Kramer producer) called “5000 fingers of Dr T.”

This is ostensibly a children’s musical film (!) about a nine year-old kid with a tyrannical piano music teacher, a widowed mother and a spare plumber.  What it actually presents is a surrealistic, self-indulgent extravaganza of amazing sets, extraordinary props, Dr Seuss lyrics, unbelievable dialogue and delicious over-acting!

I looked up the review of it in the Time Out Film Guide and was particularly taken with the closing lines, “[there are] a couple of musical routines that come close to defining camp, [and] this awesome entertainment really does have something for everyone.”

The choreography of the imprisoned musicians in the lower dungeons has to be seen to be believed!

I am not sure that I would recommend this film, but as an oddity from the 1950’s it is worth a glance.

I might add that my particular god of the cinema, David Thomson, in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (4^th Edition) says of Kramer (the film’s actual director, Roy Rowlands doesn’t even merit an entry) “Kramer is a hollow, pretentious man, too dull for art, too cautious for politics.”  His films are “middlebrow and overemphatic; at worst, they are among the most tedious and dispiriting production the America cinema has to offer.”  Of the films that Kramer made with Columbia (of which “5000 fingers of Dr T” is one) Thomson says, “There is not a good film in the lot.”  Never one to mince his words is our David!

Today, apart from the rain, has been wonderful as I have constantly forgotten that today is Saturday and not Sunday – surely one of the delights of having Friday off.

But Monday looms!

The end is in sight!

There is a sort of delight of staying in bed until 9 am on a Friday morning, knowing that you have had a lie-in of two and a half hours!  It is a case of making the most of it until Monday when reality and getting up at 6.30 am hits.

I have used the holiday to finish off reading “The Ascent of Money” which is a book that has the pace of a novel rather than a dry academic economic textbook.  Well worth a read.

My copy of the BBC Music Magazine (which is as avidly read as my weekly copy of The Week) has prompted me to splash out on a new radio via Amazon thanks to an article in the magazine.  For a long time I have been looking for a portable Internet radio and failing to find one which is satisfactory.  The last attempt seemed to produce something that looked on the surface to be ideal, but when I tried it out it was a total failure.

 

I have now sent for a Pure One Flow radio and battery pack that should (should) make it fully portable and still give me access to my audio drug of choice, Radio 4.  From my experience the real problem comes when a radio maker tells you that “setting up is simplicity itself.”  I will reserve judgement until the machine arrives and then rely on the much-vaunted Amazon promise of easy return of goods that do not do what they should do!

Concern about something as trivial as an internet radio seems almost indecent when the BBC is broadcasting horrific pictures of the earthquake and tsunami which have hit Japan.

The force of the tsunami crumpling cars and houses in its path was startling and of course with the numbers of people who have cameras in their mobile phones we are given dramatic pictures of every stage of the disaster.  Admittedly the quality of the images is sometimes awful but there is a sense of immediacy that makes it difficult not to be moved by what is occurring.

After having read “The Ascent of Money” one also can’t help wondering what effect the disaster is going to have on the world financial situation.  As Japan is the third largest economy in the world anything that limits its normal business is going to have a knock-on effect on the whole of the financial system. 

Of course in the perverse way that our monetary system works this is going to be bonus time for a number of entrepreneurs including those in markets who make money when investments go down as well as up!

Whatever happens I hold out no lively hopes for a boost to my savings where every cough in the financial world seems to need my money to buy ever more expensive handkerchiefs!

A good short week!

Day 2 and Day 3 of easy driving conditions on the way to school and easy parking etcetera, etcetera.

The mornings have been taken up with extended meetings about our participation in the mock United Nations to be held in Lisbon.

Although it is a good idea the whole process is being foisted on us and there will not be sufficient time for the process of preparing the students to be completed properly.

I don’t know if it is truly depressing or vaguely funny to find out that the attitude of innovation in education is the same the world over: an idea forced through with inadequate thought about the consequences and the practicalities.

 

We, however, will make the thing work – as usual.  This of course justifies the attitude of management and encourages them to continue in the age-old way of setting unrealistic targets and being unsurprised when they are met.  C’est la vie!

I could get used to a form of teaching that is spread over Tuesday to Thursday, is only half a day at a time and doesn’t involve any students!  Alas, Monday will arrive all too soon and we will be back to the old routine!

As is usual at Easter we have now had the threats of strike action in the airports.  These threats are as traditional as bullfighting and just as odious.  I hope that their action will not adversely affect the flight that I have planned to Gran Canaria.

 

My book on Mozart has finally arrived: “The Compleat (sic.)  Mozart” edited by Neal Zaslaw with William Cowdery.  This does appear to do what it says on the box, and all the works of Mozart are listed with their K numbers.  But the K numbers are not quite as simple as I thought that they were.  My simple idea was to look through the book and read in a sort of desultory fashion and then, when something took my fancy I could find it with commensurate ease by merely putting the K number into i-tunes and then listening to the music.

Fond hope.

To test this system I used the book to find the K number for the irritatingly competent music that Mozart wrote when he was an eight year-old child visiting London and living in Chelsea.  I found the music eventually - and not from the General Index – in the unfashionable end of Solo Keyboard Music section, listed as,  15a-ss 44 Untitled Pieces, “London (Chelsea) Notebook,” ( Anh 109b).  Simple indeed!

 

The version I have is played on piano, which my book describes as “unimpressive on the modern piano, but present an entirely normal texture for mid-eighteenth-century harpsichord music.”  Now that is the sort of casual comment one would like to throw into a conversation!

The book goes on to say that some of the pieces “contain intervals not playable on the keyboard, suggesting that the little boy obviously heard this music in his mind as orchestral music.”  In a previous age, when I used to listen to music on LPs I got to know this music in an augmented version which, as I recall boasted that it was a “first” recording of the fabricated “orchestral” version.  I will have to look out for the transfer to CD or a more recent recording.

I managed to get out of school at a reasonable time today and we went, as we have gone throughout the week, to lunch in Castelldefels.  We tried to go to a small bar where we have had reasonable food in the past, but they only served tapas and no menu del dia.  We decided to branch out and visit a restaurant which has not been into before: Els Torres, Pintor Serrasanta, 15 in Castelldefels.

While Toni was reading the menu outside, I had already gone in and asked for a table.  Where, I asked myself, is the menu del dia which has failed to appeal to me!

When I finally got to look at the menu the only discordant element was the fact that the drinks included in the menu were a glass or beer, a soft drink or a glass (!) of wine.  IN this part of the world only to provide a glass of wine seems stingy.  And indeed, in the event, a newly opened bottle of red wine was placed on the table.  That’s what I call civilization!

I ordered, as is traditional on a Thursday, a paella – this one having ceps (mushrooms) as the key ingredient.  Toni ordered the Spanish version of Russian Salad which comes without beetroot.

As they cooked my paella from fresh there was a delay which was filled with two tapas one of which, patatas aioli was in marked contrast with the anaemic dish of the same name that we were served with in Sitges last weekend.

Toni’s Russian Salad, which came first, was delicious and the best that I have tasted in Spain, it was the sort of dish that sets a mark for the others to reach!

My paella looked and tasted much more like a risotto and was a tad salty for my taste, but it was delicious and the subtle flavours grew in intensity as the meal progressed.  A superb first course.

We had the same for the second course: butifarra de Lleida which was served with chips and pimentos de padron – another excellent course.

My sweet was turron ice cream which was better than the last one that I had and showed quality.

Els Torres, based on the meal we had today, is a restaurant I recommend without qualification.  The only negative point that I could make is that the lighting inside the restaurant is subdued so subdued that we actually thought the place was closed!  The service was friendly and efficient and the cost was €12.50 per person.  Excellent value.

I have now got into the swing of “The Ascent of Money” by Niall Ferguson and am thoroughly enjoying it and the book should be finished during this extended weekend.

Joy!

A cheerfully fractured week starts

If going to school can be designated “delightful” (which of course it can’t) then the journey this morning could well merit such an adjective.  Traffic was still heavy, but nothing like a normal Monday morning.  Obviously people have taken the Winter Week (or White Week, or Ski Week, or Fiasco Week) to their hearts and kept off the roads.

Parking was a dream.  The staff room was empty.  The head of department called away to another meeting and left the remnant of her department to do as they would.

With one of my colleagues we mapped out the next tranche of work for our problematic 3ESO who are going to be hysterical when they see what we expect them to learn for their next examination.  Please excuse me as a hide a wry smile.

 

Most of the morning was taken up with the art teacher as we finally put together the booklet that is going to be the new basis for our Making Sense of Modern Art or MSOA as we have rather trendily decided to designate it, taking our inspiration from MOMA in New York.  There are indeed no shallows in our pretention!

After all the effort to produce this booklet with running headings and page numbers and all sorts of professional details by doing it in Publisher we were reduced this morning to photocopy/cut/paste – a technique in which I excel.

I started to explain the mysteries of pagination and photocopying the final mock up, but the excitement of production had to be delayed as I suddenly realized that it was already five minutes past the magic hour at which we could leave.

And then there was a problem.

Yesterday was a precious day off and I used a different coat when we went to Sitges and I wore a different pair of jeans and what I am trying to say is that I was not fully prepared when I went to school this morning.

I had my trust case with me and The Machine but not everything.

Ever since The Great Separation my school keys have been on a different key ring to house and car keys.  This is a good thing, as the Combined Keys needed their own form of transportation because of their number and weight.  It does however mean that I can get to school with no problem having left my school keys behind.

As I did today.

Normally this is an irritation, but today it was a problem.

There were so few members of staff actually in school that spare keys were not to be had at a moments notice.  And the metal exit door from Building 4 was locked.  By the time that I had realized that I would not be able to get out, everyone had gone to lunch.

 

I could not face the humiliation of getting someone out of lunch to let me out so I walked to the other end of the campus and hoped that someone was in the other office to facilitate my egress.  In fact, huffing and puffing as I had said that I would meet Toni for lunch, I found the top gate open, which makes me wonder that possibly the other gate might have been open too.

Anyway, rushing down the virtually vertical road which skirts the site I got into the car and found the return journey almost as painless at the journey to.

Rushing back home is not a good thing at any time, as we know that “Speed Kills” but in Spain at the moment there is the additional horror of a change in the speed limit.

At vast cost the local authority built a series of highly expensive gantries over the motorway with large illuminated signs that can change the speed limit at the whimsical push of a button; the power of the lights overriding any other static signs that might be in the vicinity.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that for the last couple of years roads near the city of Barcelona have been subject to a limit of 80kph.  This was imposed because of the pollution in Barcelona and was a policy of the last government in the area.  With a change of government came a change of opinion about the worth of this speed limit and we were informed that the old limit of 120kph would be restored.

And so it was for a short period of time, although the coast road seemed to have signs static and illuminated which changed every few hundred metres or so.

Then the national government decided that the national speed limit should be 110kps, so all signs (including the newly restored 120kph) had to be replaced by new ones.

 

The government informed us that not only should be ignore any signs that might indicate that a speed of 120kph was legal, but that also anyone going at the speed on the sign would be signally fined.

Were I sad enough I would count up the number of times the speed limit changes on my way to school; suffice to say it is legion.

But now important things: Barça is playing the Gunners to decide which team advances further in the Champions Cup and they are two one down.  At least Barça are at home.  To those who might say that I should be supporting a “British” team, I would ask where the British players in the team are!  What is most disturbing is that I am aware of how many Catalan players there are in Barça and I also know that one, solitary Brit has taken to the field for the Gunners.  Shame!

I look forward to a satisfactory result and a clear journey to school tomorrow.

Always the sun!

When not lying prone on the Third Floor I have been revisiting the audio past.

The sun has been relatively well behaved today and allowed (sheltered) exposure to its rays.  I was only tempted away by the offer of lunch in Sitges.  Lunch was unimpressive but there was a moment of temptation.

At the corner of the square with the old church there is a small gallery with paintings, sculptures and drawings by somebody whose name I carefully omitted to discover.

The artist seems to have a predilection for horses and well-rounded women.  The painting I saw was of horses.  Sketchy and almost monochromatic.  But I liked it.  The only problem was it was €500 and unframed too.  But I liked it.  It will remain a nagging little desire at the back of my mind.

The forefront of my mind is taken up with thinking of a poem for my Aunt Bet to read at her funeral.  Given her knowledge of poetry in English I could choose virtually any one of the more famous poems and be sure that not only would she have liked it, but also that she would have been able to recite it from her formidable memory!

As my cousins are not going to have a religious service I will have to fit in with the tone that they use in their writing.  My personal favourite is John Donne’s “Death be not proud” but that might be a little heavy for a service that is going to have Glenn Miller and Moon River as the music! 

I had thought of “Warning” by Jenny Joseph where the light tone and the praise of unconventionality could fit with my aunt but people might wonder why on earth it had been chosen.  I think that Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” might be more appropriate.

Meanwhile the music in the background is the wildly inappropriate Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band on a disc which includes the two classics, “I’m the urban Spaceman” and the Introduction to a music piece that never happens.  God knows the last time I listened to that!  It’s the sort of disc where you have to say it’s a work of genius or an absolute load of rubbish.  Like Monty Python easy flowing imagination veers from inspiration to insipid and you have to take the greatness where you can find it.

The other music from the past has been Rattle’s interpretation of The Planets with the CBSO.  I was loath to listen to the music because I have heard it so often, but there was a lot to listen to in this version.  Some of the tempi were not quite what I would have expected and the texture in the orchestration were given different emphasises to those that I expected.  It was a re-reading which made me listen anew and gave the music a freshness that I didn’t expect.

I am now more inclined to listen with a freer attitude to the Elgar variations and The Dream of Gerontious: I hope he has been inventive with these as well!

My single day holiday is almost over and there is school tomorrow.  But school with a difference: only 9-1 and no kids.  There is, however a special course to integrate Project Based Learning and the Model United Nations on which a group of us is going to spend some six hours working out how to produce a “project” to enable some students to go to the General Assembly in Lisbon in November of the next academic year.

I am not sure that what is needed to make this a success can actually be achieved during lesson time – and I am fundamentally disinclined to offer any extra time; certainly not on my timetable and salary!  But I mustn’t (as I already have) pre-judge what is involved; it is going to be interesting, especially given the group of people who are scheduled to be together for these six hours.  I am prepared to bet that there will only be a core of people who are there for the whole time!

“The Ascent of Money” is proving to be more interesting and easier to read as I continue, I am also finding an overlap between some of the content of “1000 years of Annoying the French” – The Mississippi Bubble and Mr Law feature prominently in both!

Half day tomorrow!