No sun - no fun!

There is, as far as I know, no Gran Canaria National Gallery so when clouds cover the one and only things that we are here for, there is little else to do other than mope.

Or have faith.  I have always believed, whatever the weather conditions that Maspalomas has a microclimate.  Even if it is cloudy within yards of the place where we rest our prone bodies and expose them to the healing rays I still march forward chanting the mantra that “It will be sunny on the beach.”

Today, this morning, was frankly unpropitious with sullen cloud shading into outright hostility.  There were worrying mutterings about how it might be a good plan to go to Las Palmas – a place, saving the grace of El Corte Ingles, of almost no real interest – or even one of the other resorts along the coast where the proportion of unsuitable Brits tips into the unforgiveable.  I was staunch in the protestation of the central tenet of my Canarian faith that, as has been explained, “It will be sunny on the beach.”

Our trudge through the gloomy dunes was not enlivened by Unexpected Gentlemen looming suddenly from sandy knolls in attitudes their mothers would not have approved of but we were most definitely accompanied by a constant rustling of other lizard life forms scuttling underneath the wholly artificial looking thorn bushes which about along the sandy trail.

After conflicting views regarding the blue-topped pole route through the sands as opposed to the red-topped one, we eventually and acrimoniously broke away from both and eventually emerged within sight of our eventual destination tired, sweaty and cross.

Our mood was not improved by the impertinence of clouds which seemed intent on testing my oft-stated faith in the quality of sunlight on that patch of sand.  But, with gritted teeth and a determination to ignore the wind which reminded one that this was only April, the true believer was rewarded with the full glare of our nearest star.

I did go into the sea on a couple of occasions but that was an ungainly proceeding.

The lack of a smooth shelf of sand under the waves and its replacement by pebbles, larger stones and occluded strata of igneous rock makes walking into the sea a truly perilous task.  Strapping, muscular and healthy men are reduced to bow backed arthritic hags as they stumble and lurch their unsteady way into the water looking very much as if someone had just kicked their walking sticks away.

The topography has wiped out the more irritating macho entrances into the sea.  Anyone trying to run down the beach would be in danger of broken limbs, and throwing oneself into the water would result in almost certain evisceration.  Displays of manliness were confined to peacock strutting along the few stretches of pebble free sand rather than aquatic acrobatics.

Lunch was in a seaside restaurant whose maître d remembered us from the last time we were on the island.  We remembered him too, but the years since we had seen him had changed his face into a Dickensian caricature with ravaged face and teeth which looked as though they had come out of a ham actor’s make up box!  We had an excellent fideua.  This pasta based fish dish is a great favourite and this version was individualistic.  It was much more liquid than the ones that we have in Catalonia and there was much more evidence of herbs, especially oregano – but every region is entitle to its version.

One of the selling points of the hotel in which we are staying is its “Adults Only” policy, rigidly excluding under 18 year olds.  One only has to g into the adjacent shopping centre to see families at full exasperation to appreciate the absence of children from our locale.

It was therefore with something approaching horror that, on our return to the hotel to lounge by the pool I discerned not one, but two of the under-aged creatures disporting themselves in the waters.  I glared at them with the full professional force that I have developed over the years and at the adult who appeared to be encouraging them.  The children were emitting sounds of forced noisy enthusiasm that grates on every teacher’s ears and sounds to the uninformed and quiescent (i.e. non-teacher) like “charming” play.

I know that hotels have a fairly free attitude to the use of their pools and there is a sort of loose inter-communality (if such a word exists) of such facilities between hotels which I find wholly repugnant.  I was busily building up my resentment and also forming the more biting of the phrases that I was going to use in my letter of complaint when the damn kids disappeared.

I shall bear the choicer phrases in mind in case these neophyte life forms dare make an appearance at dinner.

Where do the days go!

The days as you will be able to tell are a little out of joint.  This is due to/owing to (who knows which is right) the fact that we have had other things to do, and when we haven't had other things to do, the things to be done did not include publishing a blog at the right time.  So, you will have to make what you can of the following as it stretches into the past.  But the next bit is today, as it were.  Today being Good Friday.


Good Friday 22nd April

Never let it be said that an Anglican upbringing failed to “take” when you realize that whatever moral imperatives that I have developed are in some way related to the experiences that have been foisted on me by allegiance to some selected tenets of The Church in Wales.

I have an uneasy relationship with Good Friday.  As someone who, on more than one occasion, has gone to the whole of the three hours of the Good Friday service and actually listened to the sermons therein I cannot be easy in my mind if I do not mark the day with some sort of observance.

This used to be quite easily discharged by the mere visiting of a church, but even this easy burden was sometimes difficult – especially when the demands of tanning had taken me beyond the normal range of an Anglican church and indeed Christianity!

A slight change of plan meant that my “conscience” would be satisfied by listening to a performance of The Saint Matthew Passion.  At the beginning of this new dispensation the performance had to be live but problems presented themselves almost at once.  On one occasion I was going to be in northern France on Good Friday and, true to my beliefs I demanded that my host find me a performance of The Passion so that my devotions could be observed.  I was disconcerted to hear, just before I set off of our southern neighbour that the best my host had been able to do towards finding a performance of the masterwork by Bach was a ticket for Snow White on Ice or some such confection!

In a development (or degradation) of the original theology the need for a live performance was replaced by the listening to a recorded performance.  At this rate, and following the way that theology normally develops, all that will soon be necessary will be the reciting of the name of the work and all will be well!

Today, however, burning gently on what is left of the beach of Maspalomas, I dutifully listened to the whole of the great Protestant reworking of the Passion of Christ – and went for a swim at the conclusion of each of the parts.  It was not too difficult to know where I was in the Passion story (even though I listened to parts II and III before part I) from my fugitive scraps of German and my memory of numerous performances of the piece itself.  It was then not too difficult to relate the story (in its widest sense) to the little dramas that were taking place around me on the sun beds.  All human life was there!

The top of my head is now burned to a crisp and is shedding skin at the same rate as a Labrador scatters hairs – which in my case, to quote The Naming of Parts, “I do not have” upon my head to keep the skin in place.

My fear is that this Great Shedding will extend itself neck-down and leave me a pure white making it seem as though I have been on Retreat in a monastic cell rather than enjoying the fleshpots of Gran Canaria.  I have abandoned Eroski own-make “after sun” and gone for Nivea aloe vera infused lotion as a last ditch measure to keep my skin stuck on.

An easier approach would, of course be to limit my exposure to the sun; use more shade and be reasonable in my approach – but when you take the trouble to come to islands off the coast of Africa it seems churlish not to tend to excess!

Toni has had the last of his antibiotic injections and is looking forward (!) to having an alcoholic drink!  Tomorrow night, Holy Saturday, he intends to have as many as three (count them) drinks in one night!  For Toni this is the equivalent of binge drinking!

We are just about to go into dinner when I will have a drink of wine with my meal and Toni will have to be content to look at me drinking it.  Roll on tomorrow!

Wednesday or Thursday the 20th or the 21st April.

By way of enlivening the holiday Toni’s cough became so pronounced that we had to go to the local all-night doctor.  Bronchitis having been diagnosed we then had to rush off to the last open pharmacist.

The directions to this fabled purveyor of medicaments was a little vague and it was left to me (sic.) to run up and down the street minutes before the closing hour trying to find this allegedly open shop.

It was, of course closed and we therefore had to go to a completely different and distant neighbourhood in some god-forsaken dark hole to find that they were open but the didn’t have the drugs!

An eventual return to the original doctor produced a single dose of the antibiotics that were promptly injected into an, as yet un-tanned part of Toni’s anatomy.

Getting the other doses this morning was easy in our local dispensary, but the cost of €25 for a simple injection from the all-night doctors, coupled with the rather arbitrary €50 for the nights consultation with an extra €35 for drugs makes the illness rather expensive.

Toni’s use of the internet produced a doctor who could inject the antibiotics for a more reasonable €4 – a saving of €21 per shot.  Given that Toni is due to have five shots the savings mount up!

We visited (as is traditional for one day when visiting Maspalomas) Las Palmas and wandered our way through El Corte Ingles (also traditional) and then had a menu del dia to complete the tradition.

Our way back to the sunshine of the hotel was drenched by a tropical downpour.  We returned to heat of our resort with incongruous globules of water marking out our car as one which could only have come from a car wash!

We did manage to get in a swim before the call of an early dinner and the spiritual preparation for the final of the King’s Cup.  Which has now gone into extra time!

Tragedy!

Due to a combination of bad luck, a disallowed goal, blatant cheating and terrorist tactics by a once great club now degenerated into a bunch of unscrupulous cowboys, Barça failed to win last night.

As is traditional in Spain with El Clasico the result is celebrated by the setting off of fireworks, each explosion causing Toni a little shudder of disgust as he was made to realize that the “baddies” had won!

We have now got into the routine of going to a district of questionable propriety so that Toni can have his cheap injections of antibiotics to try and cope with the bronchitis.  We do not count the cost where health is concerned.

The beach, or what is left of it, was packed today and I actually managed to stagger towards the sea, trying to avoid the cruelly shaped stones which seemed to be attracted to the tenderest parts of my instep.

The clear stretches of sand leading into the sea are deceptive as there are stone shelves and large lumps of rock to discomfort the most intrepid of swimmers.  I did manage an unconvincing and ungainly entry into the sea and was promptly knocked over by stone laden waves.  My exit from the foaming brine was no less unglamorous than my entry – but at least I have swum in the Atlantic.  Job done.

Tuesday 18th April

I am the first to admit when I am wrong.  That is not strictly true, but it can stand as an opening of questionable validity.

I thought that hiring a car to take us to the beach and carry up from the airport to hotel etc. would be something that paid for itself over the length of the holiday.  The general principle still holds good, but, as in so much of life, it all depends on the parking.

Of which there is none in the general vicinity of the beach.  The beach which is not there.  [See previous blog for the Scandal! of the missing beach.]

Today, using a route to the beach which I knew when I first took a holiday on this island, we should have been able to park within hobbling distance of the beach.  We could not.  Roads were closed, narrowed, blocked and otherwise not available for use.  We ended up parking by the golf driving range and that is a bloody long walk to the place where we wanted to be.

We walked for an inordinate length of time beside the empty waterway whose depth and extensiveness of structure just shows what happens when it does actually rain in this area!  We then walked more to the lighthouse and then even more to our hamaca.

Today could not have been more different from yesterday.  A blazing sun, very little wind and the depressing sight of massive earth movers rebuilding the defences of the kiosks which were all but washed away yesterday.

After liberally dosing myself with what appeared to be scented cooking oil I lay back and fried.  My forehead now has that tingling, prickly tautness that suggests I should have put my cap on at an earlier stage of my somnolent taking of the rays.

The trek back through the dunes (an ostensible short-cut) resulted in bad tempered exhaustion and when we finally reached what is laughingly called civilization in these areas, we still had a lengthy walk back to the car.

A warm soapy shower restores faith in mankind and we were able to go to lunch in something approaching civility.

The meal was in a Norwegian restaurant and the waiter was, naturally enough, Catalan.  Toni was delighted to be able to speak his natal language and to make general comments about the widespread nature of British, Catalan and Italians in every part of the world making them sound like a sort of human plague – which is not an unfair metaphor I would think.

We may have to swallow our economic pride and admit defeat with the cheaper-to-go-by-car philosophy and take with enthusiasm to the concept of the hotel bus as the way of getting to the beach.  Or not depending on our state of monetary perversity.

The Holiday Watch has been adjusted for a second time.  This is only to do with the strap and my non-standard wrists and not with the mechanism of the watch itself which , as far as I am aware, is working perfectly well.  As I am only really confident about the big hand and the little hand, I cannot say whether the other dials and numbers are as they should be.  They do however look pretty and business-like so I am quite happy.

I think that the watch strap may need to be adjusted a third time, but this is only at the buckle and I think (fond hope) that I may be competent to do that alone.  The trouble is that this involves a spring-loaded bar which (from past experience) has a disconcerting habit of, well, springing away from one and disappearing in a nook (or cranny) from which it may never again emerge.  I am, however, prepared to take the risk rather than have to endure the look of weary resignation on the face of the charming assistant who has been slaving over the strap for the last two days.

The risk was duly taken and the result was that I really need a half-stop to make the adjustment exact.  I will have to compromise and put up with a slightly tighter than usual strap, because the watch is chunky and very solid and has a disconcerting habit of trying to escape from my observation.

I have not yet had the courage to press either of the two buttons on the right side of the case and I have not intention of using the central one until I have to.  In the meantime I will merely observe the charmingly light blue (sorry Stewart) triangles as they pursue their differently paced circular tracks around their own little dials.

Our marathon walk this morning and afternoon took it out of us and we slumped on our respective beds for a well-earned siesta.  The only movement that we have made before the time for dinner has been for Toni to find an ONCE ticket as a well considered part of his financial plan for economic security.

My contribution to the financial discussion was to suggest drinking one of the Mini Nevadas of sec Cava by Freixenet to make the money worries go away!  It works for me!

The sky at the moment looks like one of those jobbing Dutch landscapes with artfully scattered clouds under-lit with professional facility and emphasising the contrast between the lower, darker cloud and the bright cumulo-nimbus.  This is all very well and artistic, but I don’t want any bloody clouds in the sky: I want uniform, boring blue with a big blob of yellow.

The weather, like the beach, is not quite living up to expectations.  It might seems a little greedy, as we have been able to sunbathe every day that we have been here and, apart from a dusting of rain (if such an uneasy metaphor can be allowed) on the first evening it has been blowy, but fine.  However, any impediment to uninterrupted sunshine, up to and including the night, is a source of bitter resentment from my good self and I have returned to my bad British habit of checking the weather each morning with nervous fingers twitching away the nets to find out if the sun has deigned to shine.

My reading matter is now well behind schedule: it has now been the best part of three days and I haven’t read a single one of the eight remaining novels in the Brandstetter series by Joseph Hansen.  I need to get down to the serious business of reading the novels if I can get away from the equally serious business of eating, drinking and sunning myself!

I can but try!

Scandal in Gran Canaria!

“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness,” came to mind as we finally made it to the “beach” at Maspalomas.

The beach wasn’t there!

I definitely remember, indeed I regaled wretched members of staff who were staying in Barcelona with details of, the golden swathe of hot, hot sand that composed the beach curving all the way around the southernmost point of the island.  I have photographic evidence!  I have walked those sands myself on numerous occasions.  Now – all gone!

Maspalomas beach is now a miserable pebble strewn scrag-end of sand, narrow and third-rate.  The sea is virtually lapping the dunes and the kiosks are now sea-girt bastions of light refreshments defying the crashing waves on a redoubt composed of the very pebbles coughed up by the ocean.

Our wind lashed hammocks were soon deluged by encroaching waves and we had to admit defeat and hobble our way back to a restaurant for lunch; which, by way of compensation, was excellent.

But where has the beach gone?  Questioning of the hamaca-man revealed that the island has been swept by high winds from the south for two years and a combination of governmental ineptitude (so he said) coupled with a fear of destroying the habitat of what is a national park as well as a sea shore resort has resulted in the appalling excuse for a beach that we sneered our way along.

All the picture postcards of the glorious stretch of sand for which Maspalomas was justly famed are out-and-out lies and remind one of the worst excesses of holiday brochures for Spanish resorts in the 1960s were pictorial representation (often “artists impressions”) bore little kinship with what, even to the most liberal mind, might pass for reality!

Add to this bitter disappointment the fact that the hired car did not start this morning and you have the recipe for on-going disaster.  Not to mention Toni’s cough!

I freely admit that I do not count cars as gadgets and I am therefore not wholly simpatico with the whole concept.  All I really ask of a car is that it goes and gets me there.  This one did not.  Did not even start.  Did not even, even allow me to open the bloody door.

At this point the more technically minded will be saying sagely “Battery, I suspect!” in a sort of know-all-been-there-done-that sort of way.  And you would of course be right.  I, however, assumed the worse – encouraged in this depressing view by Toni the Cough – and looked at the holiday as one already ruined.

The fault (certainly not mine) lies in the new-fangled approach that cars have to their lights.

I am the sort of chap that likes a “lights on; lights off” type of switch, but modern cars (probably influenced by a pernicious Nordic approach to so-called safety) have switches that do not do what it says on the tin.  Small drawings representing sidelights and headlights are as self-explanatory as a “0” meaning nothing or off.  Yet when you turn the switch to “0” the lights stay on.  For a while, I found out.  In spite of light, it seems that you must believe “0” is off and then your belief will make it true.

For good measure I also left the indicators on, so I do grudgingly accept some blame.

A Little Man from Hertz came within 15 mins. of being called and, as a Barça fan on an island of Real Madrid supporters was fairly sympathetic to the predicament and, more importantly got the car going in a couple of minutes.

Parking was, of course, impossible – and we were forced to use the municipal car park, the cost of which rather took away from the nicely judge economics of hiring a car in the first place.  Though we have had free parking in the hotel for two days now - and that must be some sort of plus!

Our return to the hotel to allow us to try and get the sandblasted patina that we had acquired removed also allowed us to make the pleasant discovery of a small bowl of fresh flowers; a larger bowl of fresh fruit and a bottle of red wine provided by the management.

I would like to think of this as one of a series of on-going sweeteners to make our say in the Neptuno one of constant delight.  But the more sensible side of me suggests that our room was cleaned but inadequately prepared when the staff rushed to make it ready after our early arrival and the goodies that we had today we should have had decking our room on our arrival!  Nevertheless, I shall say “thank you” to reception – and see if I get any more on further days of our stay!

Today was scheduled to be a day of lashing rain – indeed there was a “yellow alert” for the rain – and we have seen none of it.  I am firmly convinced that Maspalomas has its own micro-climate.  Indeed, on one occasion when I had resolutely marched off to the beach in what could only be described a less than ideal weather conditions, my arrival in my preferred roasting position at the very tip of the island was bathed in a theatrical spotlight of sunshine whose artificiality was startling but I merely bowed my head in homage to the god of sunlight and spread-eagled myself so the maximum skin area was offered as propitiation!

The problem of the holiday watch has been solved by the purchase of a Festina watch which fulfills day/date/luminous/waterproof/sweep second hand requirements, only falling down on the numbers for the hours.  Instead of numbers there are rather fetching light blue wedges giving the watch a rather surprising appearance.

The watch also has the “trio of other dials” which seems obligatory in modern watches in spite of the fact that no one seems to know what they are for.  The metal strap is rather impressive with faceted lines and a contrast of matt and gloss metallic effects.  The three knobs are rather aggressive and business-like, but I do not expect to be using those apart from the hourly change of the seasons. All in all I am quite pleased and with a little extra alteration of the strap to accommodate my elegantly narrow wrists it should be set to impress.

Does anyone look at watches nowadays?  Apart from me that is.  I think a watch is more of an indication of personal worth than the traditional well-brushed shoes and well-cleaned nails – or indeed vice-versa.  And I do not mean that class can be acquired by the mere wearing of a Rolex or Tag or some other overblown and overpriced Name.  An adequate but perfectly judged Swatch can out-perform a name any day!

So, here am I at the end of the day, sitting on the balcony in my underpants, but wearing an elegant watch, drinking the Management wine that Toni the Cough refuses to drink as he is drugged up to the eyeballs with anti-cough medicine and contemplating dinner.

It’s a great life as long as you don’t weaken!

Who would have thought it!

The Curious Case of the Unexpected Breakfast.

Let’s get the totally expected over and done with first.  Flying with Ryanair was, as Churchill almost said about the Russians, “a misery wrapped in depression inside humiliation.”


The seats were made of that sort of shiny plastic that you know only exists so that all known human stains can be wiped off in the eleven and a half minutes that Ryanair allows for the turnaround of the aircraft.


The spaces between the rows were so cramped that Tinkerbell would have had a bad back had she been forced to sit there.


To make matters incandescently worse a party of vivacious youngsters occupied about 25% of the space and 87% of the volume inside the aircraft.


There is nothing a teacher likes better at the start of his holiday than to find himself a calm (yet seething) centre of fixed immobility among the Brownian Motion of young people “seat-belted” on a low-cost airline.


As a result of the impossibly early start of the flight adolescent freneticism soon reached its drooping point and within an hour of take off the neophyte humans had assumed a variety of “crash positions” (made famous by the classic film “Airplane”) and had actually fallen asleep with limbs akimbo and heads at impossible angles.


The plane was totally full and our usual plan of dividing our forces and sitting at window and aisle, leaving the middle seat “free” but with an armed neutrality around it, totally failed and a “person” dared to sit there.  In the scheme of things we could have done worse, as the “person” was a reasonably petite woman – the sort of person who does not fight for the armrest.  Result.


But not much of one.  My aisle position, where I can at least stretch one leg in the hope that circulation there may stimulate circulation in the cramped other, was frustrated by the positive parade of clump footed passengers and Boudicca trolley wielding stewardesses who all attacked my extremities with reckless abandon.


Owing to particularly vindictive geography it appears that Barcelona (two and a half hours away from Bristol) is actually further away from Gran Canaria than Bristol is.  This is obviously Not Fair and I demand that pilots take the two rather than three dimensional route to my destinations.


By the time we Thank God touched down in Las Palmas I felt that a certain degree of adverse torque (not that I know what that is but it does describe my feelings exactly) had been applied to each and every bone and muscle in my body.


Then came the car hire.


It is a known fact, at least as far as I am concerned, that everyone else in the world is a twat.  I know this because every bloody queue that I join has one in front of me.  I was somewhat surprised to discover that this theory holds good for everyone else in the world as well.  I can’t help thinking that this must effect/affect my theory to some extent, ut it is still workable so I won’t worry too much.


Suffice to say that the pair of cretins in front of me asked a range of questions and had to have so many things explained in “Janet and John” language (in Spainish) that I wouldn’t have entrusted a Dinky toy to them let alone a car which works on the roads!


When they left I found out the full meaning of the phrase “additional charges may be applied at the point of hire” when £750 was actually taken out of my account because Visa Electron is a debit card and therefore the waiver cannot be held by Hertz car hire!  What a load of rubbish!


A Korean paterfamilias who pushed in to return his keys in the nicest and most polite way possible clearly did not believe anything that the Hertz man was saying about the “re-ferned” (sic) of his deposit– and who can blame him!


Starting a journey from the subterranean depths of a multi-storey car park is not the best way to get your GPS to cooperate and get you to your destination.  Mine sulked until we were well on our (unaided) way to the south of the island until she grudgingly told us to continue on the way we had already chosen.


When we finally arrived at our hotel there was not a free parking space to be seen.  We recklessly parked in a blue area and hoped for the best when we lurched into the hotel.


I had speculated that our room would not be ready as we were scheduled to turn up well before the magic time of mid-day.  I was duly proved right and we were told that our room would be ready at 1.30 pm approximately.


We were prepared for this and merely asked that our cases be guarded and we would walk, drink and eat until the time was right.


At this point the person who was checking us in was told by a female on the phone to ask us if we required breakfast as we still had time to catch the meal!


Not only did we eagerly agree that we did indeed want breakfast but we also were given a magic card to access the free parking of the hotel.


Breakfast was excellent and clearly stood in for lunch.  The blackout which occurred almost as soon as we sat down only delayed my cup of tea due to the professional approach of a waiter who also lavishly provided Cava when I said that would do instead!


When we had finished breakfast/lunch our room was magically ready and the sheer sensual luxury of a shower was a much more satisfying end to the meal than any cup of coffee!


We eventually walked through the extraordinary shopping-and-other-things centre that is next to our hotel and had a relaxing glass of beer in hot sunshine.


It is now gently raining.


Truly all human life is here!

Not Term Time!

Holiday!  Holiday!  Holiday!

OK it’s the weekend: but under the meaning of the act “a weekend is deemed to be actual holiday if the following Monday is a part of an official holiday.”  And it is so followed.

At last the Terrible Term has ground to its inexorable close with no pomp, no ceremony and no concession to the sheer beauty of the occasion!

Up bright and early this morning so that the final packing of the cases can take place.  This, in my case, has, of course not been done.  And, as it turned out just as well.  Our “Crisis Management Token” of only taking one case has not proved to be possible and so, at the last moment, I have had to book another case.  This makes everything so much easier (and so much more expensive) and I was able to accept my immaculately folded (not by me you understand) pile of clothes and transfer them seamlessly into another case.

The Gathering of the Gadgets is now taking place at a leisurely pace as the main case has been packed at, what for me, is a ludicrously early stage of the preparations for departure.

The elusive second battery for the camera is never easy to find and usually remains behind.  The strings of leads defy any reasonable organization and I usually stuff them unceremoniously into a small computer bag which makes it look semi-professional.  My numerous glasses and contact lenses make me look like a travelling Opticians and my attempt to use e-book readers (yes, the plural is correct) to eliminate the need for actual books has proved to be signal failure with the end result that I am taking two of each!

All of this, including The Machine, will be in the new Fascist cabin case which fulfils all of the Stalinist requirements of Ryanair.  Too late, always too late, I found a United Colours of Benetton case which was even smaller and more expensive than the one I have and led to Toni (sic.) berating me for “not having looked around enough” before my purchase!  This is the equivalent of Colonel Gadaffy accusing Mother Teresa of lacking compassion for the poor of Calcutta (or whatever we are supposed to call it these days.)

We are almost ready to go to lunch and I need to choose the ‘holiday’ watch from my extensive collection that will be discarded utterly when I find a new one in Gran Canaria or the airport.  It is one of my many money burning “traditions” that I purchase a new watch on each holiday.

As it was getting embarrassing finding watches in every nook and cranny of the house, I purchased stylish compartmentalized containers to store my collection.  Even I was startled by the number of timepieces that I have managed to accumulate: it made my past collection of cameras look positively provincial!  While looking for the elusive battery I found another two watches – one of which is a strong candidate to grace my wrist until a new replacement is acquired.

The chosen watch was a Swatch in blue, still bravely telling the time in its compartment albeit an hour out.  It has all the requirements: luminosity, waterproof, day, date, sweep second hand and numbers.  It’s rather boring though – ripe for change!

Time marches on and my cabin case is still not packed; the taxi is not ordered; the clothes for the plane not checked – this is much more like my usual preparations for a journey away!

Just to add a little frisson to the occasion the first of the almost daily confrontations over the next month between Real Madrid and Barça is about to take place.  Needless to say there have been programmes on the TV almost since dawn in which the participants find no problem in arguing, speculating and voicing the most abject prejudice!

It will make for a much more agreeable flight if Barça win.  I do not want to have to endure three hours of sulking and recriminations for my personal interventions on the side of Real Madrid.  

Everything from looking at the television in the wrong way to simply breathing can and has been taken to be an implied criticism of Barça, Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain!  In normal Barça games I can afford to relax and enjoy them, but that is not a possibility with El Clásico.  Unless Barça is winning 5-0 (a situation which the club has recently been in of course) there is no room for anything less than total concentration and attention!

The Match has now started and so I am condemned to a couple of hours of high-tension shouting.  Toni has changed into a Barça shirt and is roundly criticising the Barça side which even I think have failed to settle down yet.  Ah well, only 84 minutes to go.  What bliss!

A suspect yellow card against Barça within reasonable shooting distance of the Barça goal has somewhat changed the atmosphere in this household.  The ref. is now officially the enemy!

Time to put the car on the drive I think!

Why do I believe people?

My rush to get the car to the garage to have the brakes changed might have been a little less frenetic if I had known that I was going to spend the next four hours in the bloody place.

The first time of completion for the car was one and a half hours after I had brought the car there.  I duly went into the shopping centre, completed a few chore-like purchases and then settled down for a cup of tea and, more importantly, a decent sized table – and got on with my 3ESO letter marking.

When I finally got back to the garage my car hadn’t been touched; hadn’t even been moved from its parked position on the road.  My arrival catapulted the management into action who, once they had seen the scarred state of the discs, told me they would have to have the parts driven over from somewhere else and that my car would be ready by eight o’clock.

This time my visit to the shopping centre took in dinner and I managed to complete the marking of the set of papers.  Something at least came out of it!

My car was actually ready and, after paying a surprisingly large sum of money I was free to drive it home.

Unsurprisingly I was shattered when I finally made it back to the house and a “little lie down” soon changed into a full night’s sleep – which was a good thing.

I cannot truly say that I feel refreshed this morning as this is week 13 of an educationally unjustifiable term and, with a resolution which I can only deplore, the school staunchly refutes, but its general attitude, the idea that this is the penultimate day of term!

The chaos of “Nano Day” where our sixth formers took groups of pupils to explain the wonders of the nano world actually managed to work in my favour because with the reduced number of pupils that I had for “Current Affairs” I was able to justify letting the kids have some study time for the examinations facing them in the last days of term and I was able to get on with the much more congenial task of reading about the more extreme protagonists in the murky (though often brightly coloured) world of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s.  Don’t tell me that I don’t know how to have fun!

The weather, though hot and stuffy, is depressingly negative with harsh light reflecting from threatening clouds which look ready to unleash a deluge.  In many sense I couldn’t care less; my attention is more taken up with the weather in islands off the coast of Africa rather than the Iberian Peninsular!

Andrew and Stewart are back in the UK and I only hope that they have not drained the islands of their share of sunshine for we poor deprived dwellers on the Mediterranean coast.

Today is the day that I draw up a list of the electronic equipment that I will need (together with the adaptors and leads) to make any fairly short holiday a gadget success.  I now have a USB plug that has prongs for whatever part of the world that one finds oneself in.  I have enough USB leads to sell them by the kilo and it is only with the toothbrush and the camera that I need to pack a charging station. 

How times change, especially from my first visit to Spain and Tossa de Mar at the age of seven when not one of the electronic things that I am going to take with me had been invented!  But we was ‘appy gov’!

This evening has been notable for my not eating the worst tortilla I have ever been served in a restaurant.  This crime was perpetrated in the Gavá shopping centre just off the motorway.  Sympathy was expressed by the waiter but no material compensation offered, so that is another restaurant that we can cross off our list.

One would have thought during a time of economic crisis that attention to service and quality might have been something in the front of the minds of owners of places for which there are ready alternatives!

The trip to the centre was fundamentally to get some anti-mould paint to try and counteract the inevitable dampness that one gets this near to the sea.  I enlivened the buying experience by buying a new toilet seat.

The en suite bathroom has bath, sink, toilet and bidet in a postmodern excreta brown.  In a desperate attempt to bring a little lightness into the cramped gloom I have ignored the “colour” scheme and gone for an adventurous white on the basis that “every little helps” and it does make a difference!

Packing of the small case seems to have gone by the board this evening – fixing the toilet seat was much more anyone had the right to expect and I am exhausted with my achievement!

One working day to go.

Tomorrow (the last day) makes no concessions to finality at all.  We work until the bitter end.  In my case almost to the bitter end: Friday is my early finish and I am not staying one nano second more than I have to.

Sooner or later the reality of leaving Barcelona at 6 in the morning is going to strike me: working backwards, we will have to be in the airport at 4 in the morning, leave the house by 3.30 in the morning and get up at 2.30 in the morning.  Sunday is going to be an interesting day!

I shall rely on Toni’s paranoia to ensure that I am dragged bodily from my slumbers to make all the deadlines.

I hope.

Fun filled days!

The nearer we get to the end of term the less like the end of term it seems to be.  Indeed, so unlike an end of term is it that I am beginning to doubt that this term is actually ending and that I face a Sisyphus-like eternity of being stuck in a Wednesday in the last week of term!  A truly horrific thought!

It is just as well that I have the various pits of home produced paper which are the essential accoutrements of air travel nowadays.  Ryanair, of course, demands that all its customers print their own tickets, book-in on-line and then pay for the privilege of relieving the administrative burden on their “friendly” airline!  But at least I do have the paper which suggests, in black and white, that I am not going to be on the Spanish mainland whatever the apparent attitude of the school appears to be, suggesting as it does that there is no end in sight and we will have to teach until the proverbial bovines are back in their domestic paddock.

Everything is, at last, booked.  Barding passes are printed and confirmation for hotel and car are tucked away in the Tesco “real leather” travel wallet with magnetic clip.  As in my passport, in the section marked “passport”.  I am also comforted by the fact that my passport does not expire until the summer of 2015.  I shudder to think of the bureaucracy entailed in getting a new document in a foreign country.  But be still my beating heart, that is (in terms of this term) eons of time away!

As is usual in our staff room no-one is talking about the planned increase in teaching time and decrease in payment.  There is an unspoken (until I speak) assumption that “it will not happen here”.  There is no hard evidence for this belief, but one can look to the positive attitude of the school in trying to mitigate the harsher effects of governmental policy, though it has to be said that the conditions of the different schools do not form an exactly level playing field so comparisons, as always, are odious.

I have stumbled through the day and finally made it to the last lesson that I have to teach.  This is my “early leave” when I quit the school only 25 minutes later than the end of a normal day in the UK!

I have to admit that I am taking a further 30 minutes off and using the whole of the last period to get to the garage to have my brakes checked and the brake pads changed.  I fear that I have left this change over too late and have scratched the discs which will mean a horrific outlay to keep the bloody car on the road.  But I will have the front headlight bulb replaced and new trip put on the wheels so that I will feel that something real has been done for the money!

Every day and in every way I get poorer and poorer!

On the other hand when I leave the school I know that there will be just two working days left before the start of the holiday.

Tomorrow is a day when the science department is bringing the delights of knowing about Nano technology to whole chunks of the school and the teachers who would normally be teaching other groups have been drafted in to make this experiment work.  Three of my lessons will be affected by the rearrangements and I look forward (on the penultimate day of term no less) to the consequent chaos.  I am, apparently, involved in some form of role-play for which I have no information. 

Ah, bliss!

Stll an age to go!

Sleep did not pay any sort of extended visit to me last night with the result that the world’s most irritating alarm tone saw a resentful and unbelieving arm reach out for the blessed silence that a finger on the illuminated screen would bring.

Unfortunately I was not able to sink back into the luxury of even partial oblivion as the road situation of Barcelona necessitates a strict timetable being adhered to in the mornings.

As if to mock my unrested soul the standard of driving along the motorway to school was refreshingly appalling.  I use the adjective advisedly as the sheer awfulness of it all meant that any approach other than self-defensive alertness would have been tantamount to suicide.  Drivers (male: under 25) risked mayhem to gain a single car space.  One driver (male: under 25) had obviously recently graduated from a motorcycle as he drove the car as if it were a slim, manoeuvrable two-wheeled vehicle rather than a squat, space eating car.  Watching the insanely reckless movements of this idiot left me open mouthed with a mixture of horror and terror.  As he was not alone in treating the crowded motorway as if it were empty, you can imagine the somewhat unsettled state of mind I was in by the time I exited the motorway.

 

To exit the motorway is to change one type of madness for another.  The roundabout which greets one at the top of the slip road is the whirling vortex for a number of roads and all cars (with of course the signal exception of mine) drive as if god-given pathways through the mayhem had been cleared specifically for them.  Keeping to your lane is a hair-raising and soul fluttering experience.

School, by the time you have ascended the virtually perpendicular hill, appears like a haven of tranquillity and sanity.  After a cup of tea life does not seem as woefully random as it did on the drive up.

Classes waiting to be taught soon bring any tranquillity back to a general sense of fatalistic unreality – very much like the scenery in the surrealistically anthropomorphic landscape creations of Yves Tanguey.  In Week 13 of this awful term, believe you me; I know what it is to be in one of those canvases!

I have various mantras to get me through sleep deprived, school depressed feelings of desolation.  The one I choose to recite to myself now is, “When in doubt – spend!”

The trek along the beach in Gran Canaria (five working days away) necessitates the carrying of various elements in the sun worshiper’s catalogue for the satisfaction of the body from the brain outwards.  The collapsible backpack that I once owned has now faded into the general area of the “unbought” and, to quote Winnie-the-Pooh, the more I looked for it the more it wasn’t there.  It therefore needs to be “rebought” and that means calling into a supermarket on my way home and a little retail therapy always gives me a jolt out of work-induced lethargy.

The time approaches when, in the real world, there might be a pause for lunch.  Here it is merely the time for another lesson.  By the time lunch is actually finished I would welcome a short siesta – but there are two more lessons to be taught before escape can be contemplated.

It’s a hard old life, but the days are counting down!

In spite of temptations I still have not read any of the other eight volumes of the Bradstetter detective novels.  The only thing which can stand in my way to complete the plan of reading them on the beach is the weight of the volume itself.  As I understand it the packing of the suitcase is going to be of scientific exactness so that any extra will bump the case up to the next stage of expense in the ever-escalating costs of a Ryanair flight!

The continuing crisis in Spain continues to amuse.  At least it would amuse if it wasn’t something in which I am involved.  The latest laughable attempt to save money and persecute teachers has taken the form of the threat of more hours worked for less pay in schools.  As usual the history of Trade Unionism provides us with a lesson, “Not a minute on the day, not a penny off the pay” was the slogan of miners in the 1926 General Strike when they were of course hung out to dry.  Which also provides a lesson for the success of action against government.

Because of the appalling standards of educational achievement in Spanish schools there was a governmental initiative to increase the number of hours worked by teachers - the infamous “sixth hour”. 

As far as I can work out the government is “speaking” about changing the system so that in some schools, oddly, they are going to end up working extra hours for no extra pay.  The situation is confused, but I think the fact that we work every hour god sent (and a few extra) including the fact that we are discouraged from leaving the premises at any time until the end of school means that we are technically available for lessons or cover or something for more than the number of hours that are being suggested.

In other schools you only have to be in the school for the hours that you are teaching; in our school you are only allowed time off if you have had an early start at 8.15 am and, as that is 30 minutes before the normal start of school you are allowed to take a half hour at the beginning or end of the day if you have a “free” period at that time.

After a 5% cut in teachers’ wages last year (made good it has to be said by our saintly school) one can imagine anything from this panicking government.  Sooner or later (probably later) even the supine Spanish teachers must surely take some sort of action to protect their already eroded situation.  Not in our school, of course, naturally – but elsewhere, surely?

 

There is absolutely no feeling of end of term in the school.  None.  We gave our sixth form an examination today; tomorrow the 3ESO have to produce a test letter – and so it goes on.  Nothing to suggest that we are coming to the end of an almost un-enduringly long and tedious term.

I have done my best to try and inject a certain degree of expectation into my weepingly sincere countdown to escape and the holidays – but the teachers in our school are seemingly programmed to teach, prepare and mark in a way which is foreign and unfeelingly unnecessary to a normal British teacher!

“Tired” and “jaded” are not the appropriate prompts to encourage pondering on my attitude towards my chosen profession and present location.  But I do feel myself out of sympathy with the educational ethos and clients in my present school.  I am aware that, at this time of crisis having a job gives a security which a frighteningly high percentage of the working population of Spain does not have.  But . . .

We are getting ever nearer to the result of one of the most highly anticipated and closely fought competitions this year: the Teachers’ Section of the St Jordi’s Day Maths Department Photographic Competition of our school.

In the past a colleague and I have marvelled at the individualistic decisions made and the histrionic response of the winners.  This year what can only be described as a concerted effort has been made by the English Department with no fewer than four members of the department submitting photographs.  My own efforts were rushed and submitted at the hysterical insistence of a member of the maths department who said that no teachers had entered and I had to.  I put together a small portfolio of four shots and hoped for the best.

The best, in my opinion, are two shots from two members of the department and I have pinned my hopes of breaking the stranglehold of the Old Guard on this important competition on a short of symmetrical dhows and another of the inside of the Pantheon in Rome.  Of my own shots I will draw a discrete veil, though I have had some shocked approbation!

Three working days left to escape

All Praise to Ra

A hard day preparing for Gran Canaria.

That is lying in the sun so that the rays on the island by Africa will not come as a shock to my skin.  I take preparation for the holiday seriously!

As a concession to the crisis and general economic situation a single case is being taken and, indeed, is being packed even as I type.  Obviously not by me.  The idea of packing with more than a week to go to the actual holiday is something so outré that it doesn’t even make it into the area of ideas which I reject!

I have bought a new cabin case to fit in with the Stalinist requirements of Ryanair with whom we are travelling.  The large case, which is also new, has a clothing allowance of just 15 kilos: it is just as well that we are going to a hot place with a beach because anything colder and more formal would have necessitated a ruinous extra charge for more weight.

 

One only chooses Ryanair through necessity not preference.  Compared with that airline EasyJet looks like the luxury option!

Disturbingly, my prone preparation for Gran Canaria was a little unsettled by the realization that the Third Floor of the next house was also occupied.  Not only occupied but smoking!  It was fortuitous that my disgruntled departure was accompanied by the sinking of the sun!

Tomorrow sees the start of Week “Unbelievable” 13 of The Term That Would Not End.  Neither pupils nor teachers have any enthusiasm left for this final barrier to partial relief.  The two weeks Easter holidays sacrosanct in Britain is here truncated to a cruel seven working days and we will be back (surely not the nations cry) working in school a fortnight on Wednesday.  God, it seems even more horrific when you actually say it!

Still, we come back on the 27^th of April and we finish at the end of June.  The kids will have finished before then on the 20^th of June.  Then July and August gloriously free of kids, school and teachers!

We talk not of September.  And there is always a chance that I will not be invited back to teach in the next academic year.  One lives in hope!