Taxing times!

THURSDAY 12th MAY 2011

Doing my tax has taken two of us all our free periods today.  My colleague Frank has a horror story to tell of an innocent tax mistake; bravely admitted because he is fundamentally honest costing him thousands of euros.  Since that soul searing time he has been paranoid about filling in his tax form and is constantly bragging about how easy it actually is on line.

Not, of course in my case.

Frank is, however, indomitable when it comes to wrestling with websites of fractal complexity and thinks nothing of tracking down his electronic quarry through a series of pop-ups that leave me breathless.

He was not happy and he began a litany of complaints which always ended with “I don’t know why this is happening; it never happens with me.”

Frank assured me that far from having to pay €71 to the bloodsucking, rapacious bastards who feed on the innocent flesh of sanctified tax payers, I would, by contrast be in receipt of money which had been wrongly torn from my fragile pay packet.

Attempt after attempt was made to plough our way through screen after screen of incomprehensibility and slowly, painfully and very tediously we eventually managed to add information to my tax statement that meant that far from paying €71 to the tax authorities I would only pay €73!  A net increase in my contributions of some €2!

My state of mind was not markedly improved by listening to all (and I mean all) my colleagues delightedly swapping stories about the size of the payouts that they got from the tax people and also the speed with which they were delivered.  “I got €1,800!” chortled one, while another said, “Between my wife and I we managed to get almost €4000!”  Oh how I laughed!  I have yet to find a single, solitary teacher who has actually paid the tax people money rather than having been in receipt of a swift, fat cheque.  But at least I am not bitter.  Not at all.

And this afternoon to Terrassa.  I have taken advice, yet again about how to get there from here in Barcelona.  I vividly remember my first months in this country when every journey from Terrassa to Castelldefels was an adventure and no two adventures were the same.

At the end of this birthday party, I simply want to get back to my bed as directly and simply as possible and not go on another magical mystery tour of the more well lit tunnels in Catalonia.  The trick is remembering that I live in the direction of Tarragona and heading south rather than to strange places in the hinterland of this country!

Someone has just spoilt my day by saying that the weekend is going to be wet.  This is totally unacceptable.  The terraced on the Third Floor is notoriously underused, but even I draw the line at pretending that lack of sun and biting winds are no obstacle to tanning!

FRIDAY 13th MAY 2011

The trip up to Terrassa was uneventful, apart from the usual fear that I am going in the wrong direction and am going to find myself on a motorway where the only turn off is 60 kilometres in the wrong direction.  As it turned out it was a delightfully uneventful journey up and I even had time to call into the Chinese shop near Toni’s mum’s flat to find the bits and pieces that I needed (key rings and dice if you are wondering) and still appear to have made excellent time in getting from the school to the town.

A teacher never stops being a teacher, no matter what the situation and who the potential pupils might be.  And sometimes, outside the classroom, one has an effect. 

Take, for example, Toni’s mum.

Time was when arrival would be greeted with a familial kiss and an exchange of pleasantries but not the essential ingredient without which no British meeting is complete.  Today, almost as soon as it I plonked myself on the sofa I was offered an all-important drink.

And not just of tea, coffee or coke, but the all-important chilled red wine.  Bottle opened I asked if Toni’s mum was going to accompany me in a glass.  This heretical thought was dismissed out of hand, but the heresy did not last and even she succumbed to a small, one might say token, smidgeon of wine.  This is a major breakthrough in urging a Catalan at least to pay lip service (sip service?) to a very British way of saying “Hello!”

Being the sort of woman that she is, she has, of course, left most of her smidgeon and gone into the kitchen to cook and prepare for her own birthday party.  My much larger smidgeon waits to be consumed!

The television, a join effort, was duly presented to a more than content mother and when we left it was still being programmed to delighted squeaks of joy as each new station was added to the list.

The highlight of the party was the birthday cake which, as is now becoming traditional, baked by Toni’s sister.  The slightly odd thing about these sugar, chocolate and cream confections is that they are produced by someone who has been on a strict and highly effective diet.  There is the making of a short story there I think!

The drive back was noticeably shortened by the adoption of the New Route – this time the right turning off the motorway being chosen did make a difference.

Signposting on Spanish roads is abysmal with no consistency about where a signpost should be put: sometimes they are way before the turning; sometimes on the turning, and sometimes just after.  The importance of the turning is sometimes completely at variance with the unobtrusive and self-effacing indication of direction which you only notice subconsciously after you have passed it.  At night time this is even worse and sometimes the obscurity of night is enhanced by overhanging vegetation.

And don’t assume that your GPS will help.  The Spanish change, altar and rearrange roads in a whipstitch and, unless you have an almost daily up-dating service you are constantly going to asked by the nice lady to turn into dead ends, or go the wrong way down a one-way system or be asked with increasing desperation to “turn around when you can” as according to the maps you are driving in the middle of countryside as the new road is not recognized.

The New Route however is better and cuts a little time off the journey – and coming back at night with an early start the next day every minute counts.

I was tired. 

I can remember a time when I would go from school to meeting to cultural event with a game of squash pushed in along the line and then get smashed out of my head and be bright and cheerful the next day.  Now I can see a real and personal significance to the concept of the siesta!  The years are obviously mounting up!

I was greeted on my return by a satisfyingly large amount of mail which included the CD “The Sound of Poetry” - an extraordinary disc which has been masterminded by Mike Read who has induced various singers ranging from Sir Cliff Richard to David Grant and The London Community Gospel Choir to give their rendition of his musical versions of the poems of Sir John Betjeman.  I understand that the David Essex version of “Myfanwy” was a “hit” single.  Marc Almond singing “Narcissus” was interesting and created an other-worldly effect as I was listening driving along through Barcelona rush hour traffic on my way to school.  I can’t wait to hear Gene Pitney, Leo Sayer, The Rodolfus Choir, Donovan, Captain Sensible and The Eton College Chapel Choir sing their contributions!  Some things simply transcend camp and go into another universe.

I have also ordered a replacement copy of Betjeman Banana Blush which is the result of another musical collaboration this time between Jim Parker and Betjeman and I think it’s the one where Betjeman attempts a gloriously inept American accent while Parker’s tinklingly attractive music plays in the background.  An absolute must.  I have also ordered the other discs to replace my LPs that were produced in that collaboration.  Sheer indulgence.  Perhaps it might also be the time to order a collected Betjeman poems. 

Amazon here I come!  Indeed came, as Betjeman’s collected poems are winging their way to me even as I type.  Or at least they are paid for!

I have a sneaking suspicion that I already own such a book somewhere in the maelstrom that is my library – it is exactly the sort of thing that my Favourite Aunt Bet would have sent me.  I always think to myself that a copy of a book merely means that you have the facility to make someone else happy by passing it on!  And that is the only way that I would give away one of my books.

Though I do have in my possession a book which has been passed on from owner to owner for about a century – and who knows it might even have been over a longer period of time.

I own an old copy (published in the same year as the first edition 1704) of Swift’s “Tale of a Tub” and “Battle of the Books” – it even has a typographical error in the famous passage “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own”.  This book was given to Frank Thompson, my first Head of English in Kettering Boys School by a member of an old Northamptonshire family and, after I discovered it lurking among un-regarded books in a cupboard in my classroom, he gave it to me.  Perhaps it is the sort of book that I should pass on to a receptive sort of person.

The only trouble is that I don’t know any in my immediate vicinity.  To them it would merely be an odd 300-year-old book.  They would not get the thrill that I did from feeling the impression of the type and reading something that a contemporary of Swift would have handled.  I must admit that I didn’t find the works in this volume in any way remarkable when I read them in the nasty Everyman edition with small print and no notes, but I suddenly found them to be witty and delicious when they were in an edition of 1704!

The tactile experience of a book is something which cannot be captured in an electronic format.  Sometimes it doesn’t really matter and the electronic versions are infinitely preferable to some paperbacks that I have where the ink is smudgy or the print tiny on poor quality paper or where the pages are stained or falling out.  The ability to adjust print size is something which is of inestimable value and with the new technology the electronic page can look exactly like a crisp page of bright white paper but it is not the same.  

Not the same at all.

But I have nailed my colours to the electronic mast and I possess four electronic book readers (apart from computers) of which the Kindle is the easiest to use and the most useful.  I have yet to pay for a single downloaded book, but I am sure that the time will come.

I did actually try to download the electronic Kindle form of The Collected Poems of John Betjeman but it was only available in the UK – perhaps they think that Sir John’s style simply doesn’t travel!

The weekend is going to be awful with rain on Saturday and heavier rain on Sunday.

To compensate for this disaster I am going to buy a shredder and get rid of some of the extraneous papers that I seem to have accumulated and which are cluttering up boxes on the Third Floor.

Each to his own sad pleasures!

School grumpiness - as always!

Catalan women speak on the in-breath.

I write this as my nerves are stretched to twanging point by the continuous parallel “conversations” of two of my colleagues who speak with that unendingly penetrating drone which makes all other work and thought impossible.  They have now gone outside the staffroom and still their voices wash over me like a tide of stinging nettles – and they have been joined by a third so now there is a on-going, three-way, simultaneous conversation.  Dear god!

However, the sun is shining and, even though I am incarcerated here for the day, it cheers the spirits.

However (Part II) my second “gained” free period from the disappearance of my second year sixth has been taken in examination supervision.  Admittedly this has taken the form of a “real” free period being taken for the supervision, with the understanding that I am “compensated” for this loss by the period with the sixth which is “free”.  Therefore I gain “nothing.”  So far 100% loss.

In secondary education the myth of the “easy summer” is the only thing that keeps us going.  The loss of classes and the consequent gain of non-contact periods that allow development of resources and sleeping etc. never really occur.  Every year something or other turns up to fill the space and the spacious expectations are always frustrated.  But just as surely, like devout Jews saying, “Next year in Jerusalem!” we teachers say, “Next year The Spaciousness!”

 

At least in Spain I do not have to kid myself that “This summer is going to be a repeat of the Summer of 1976” as we do have a reasonable chance of a sunny summer in Catalonia.  I still talk about the summer of ’76 - which is an astonishing 35 years ago!  Just goes to show the quality of August in the UK!

The next examination season is upon us.  Again.  The second year sixth have taken a risible examination the results of which will bear little relationship to their final grade.  I no longer question the ways of education in this country.  That way lies madness!

A colleague and I have to write an examination paper in the next couple of days and I think that we have both effectively put it to the back of our minds – and we can’t afford to do that as I have just realized.  Ah well, something to do in my “gained” free period tomorrow!

Tomorrow is Toni’s mum’s birthday so it is yet another trip up to Terrassa and this time the return will be on the new route but turning off before we get to Barcelona city.  I hope.  This time.

The evenings are getting longer and I was able to go to the Third Floor to catch some evening rays.  Delightful.

 

As opposed, of course to the scandal surrounding (yet again) the allegedly corrupt group of scoundrels who comprise the governing junta of FIFA.  The latest scandal would seem to indicate that over a quarter of the group of all too fallible humans who “gave” the World Cup to the mighty football nation of Qatar might have been persuaded to honour this somewhat surprising choice by very tangible inducements.

I do not see how, with honour, Sepp Blatter can refrain from doing the decent thing and resigning.  He has promised to do what he has never done in the past with other allegations, and that is investigate thoroughly and fearlessly.  Someone suggested that this could be FIFA’s Salt Lake City moment when a generally perceived to be blatantly corrupt organization has to do something to regain public confidence.  But this is the same Blatter in charge who has done little to nothing to in response to many other allegations about past snouts in the bucket, and the same Blatter who is (amazingly) not merely not resigning, but is also standing for re-election presumably to continue his, at best complacent and at worst connivingly corrupt administration. 

And look, his opponent for the capo di capo situation is none other than Mohamed Bin Hammam from, you’ve guessed it, the oil rich, dripping in money state of, gasp! Qatar!  It makes you sick.

This topic leads on nicely to a future innovation in our school: teacher evaluation.  There is a meeting on Monday to discuss a document that we have not yet been given.  Presumably it will be published on Friday so we will have the weekend to consider and digest it.  All teacher evaluation, without exception, is a managerial tool to attack teachers.  The more the rhetoric is geared towards support for teachers the more you know the knives are out!

A system whose heart was probably in the right place had been instituted in my last British school but the reality, that is the allocation of time and resources to complete the evaluation were always the sticking point.

I shouldn’t pre-judge what might be suggested in the document that we do not have but it is almost irresistible and I can feel the arguments in response bubbling up from an indignant sense of betrayal.

I have undergone trial by General Inspection three times; departmental inspections innumerable; teacher appraisal ad nauseum and I am disinclined to take any more.

Mischievous voices have been raised suggesting that in the plan there will be a part where pupils will be given a voice to evaluate their teachers.

 

I wish that my response to any Catalan form of appraisal or evaluation could be like that of Spenser Tracy to the suggestion that he should take up method acting, “I’m too old, I’m too tired and I’m too talented to care.”  Two out of three of Mr Tracy’s assertions in my case are not quite enough to be completely dismissive, but, like Melville’s Bartleby, “I would prefer not to.” 

 

I do hope the text of the plan is in English.  I have every reason to suppose that it will be because I was asked for a suitable English translation of a Spanish phrase in the text.  The translation I suggested may give you some idea of the present status of the thing: “The process is on-going and has not yet completed its first cycle.”  A colleague overheard just my translation and laughed saying, “You are describing a plan which hasn’t happened aren’t you!” 

Weasel words are not as convincing as they used to be!

It's a hard life!

I don’t know why I should feel bitter but I do.  In spite of my experience and my expectations I do.

I probably shouldn’t have crowed about the fact that I have “lost” my second year sixth class and perhaps the inverted commas tell you that any assumed gain is illusory.

Today was my first “gained” period.  And it was duly lost.  I had to cover for a colleague who is absent for the trifling reason that his house has been broken into!

But, even as the anger was rising, behold! a white knight in the form of the head of the sixth form game ambling to the rescue and has taken the class of talkative students (who I had painstakingly reduced to silence) for a discussion about their future studies next year.  I am all for that as long as it gives me extra time away from the students.

Which is hardly the mantra that a teacher should be reciting in what I sincerely hope is the midnight of his career!

Given next year and my supposed participation in the education of the pampered youth in our school, it might be the School of the Midnight Sun for a period but even the Midnight Sun sets eventually!

I am no further forward in my applying for the season ticket for the opera and willingly embraced the preparations for the party which meant that I could not put pen to paper.  I am building myself up to attempt the form’s completion during the weekend when my approach can be lubricated by decent food and even more decent booze!

I can no longer ignore the fact that this is tax paying time.  The onus in Spain is very much on the taxpayer to make sure that the tax is paid and in my case the authorities certainly have not been enthusiastic in getting my forms to me.  One would imagine that such lack of interest on the part of the tax people would be welcomed, but I have been warned by Those That Know that I take such disinterestedness at my peril and it is very much in my interests to ensure that my tax is fully paid.

Last year I made a journey to the tax offices themselves and I ended up (after paying tax throughout the year) owing the tax people money.  Everyone, absolutely everyone I know gets some sort of tax rebate at the end of the financial year. but not, uniquely, me!  Even Toni has been informed that he is entitled to just under two euros as his rebate.

The form also asked him (I assume in a merely rhetorical sense) if he wanted his “rebate” to be donated to the treasury!  Even more amazingly the Roman Church in this country has wangled its way on to the tax form and you can tick a box if you want your rebate to be paid to Papists!  Sometimes a tingle exclamation mark seems somewhat inadequate.

I have more lively hopes for getting some money back this year, but that may merely be a sense of injustice talking!

At the moment the tax people seem to know that a version of me exists but not necessarily with my names in the right order.  They were right last year, but obviously twelve months have caused separation and confusion.  I can see that I will have to pay another visit to the circle of hell which houses the tax offices.  God help!

I have had to dig out my old tax forms and that necessitated a futile search through papers years old, which I no longer need to keep – I can feel an extra addition to the list of tasks for the summer itching to be written!

I don’t know why I should feel bitter but I do.  In spite of my experience and my expectations I do.

I probably shouldn’t have crowed about the fact that I have “lost” my second year sixth class and perhaps the inverted commas tell you that any assumed gain is illusory.

Today was my first “gained” period.  And it was duly lost.  I had to cover for a colleague who is absent for the trifling reason that his house has been broken into!

But, even as the anger was rising, behold! a white knight in the form of the head of the sixth form game ambling to the rescue and has taken the class of talkative students (who I had painstakingly reduced to silence) for a discussion about their future studies next year.  I am all for that as long as it gives me extra time away from the students.

Which is hardly the mantra that a teacher should be reciting in what I sincerely hope is the midnight of his career!

Given next year and my supposed participation in the education of the pampered youth in our school, it might be the School of the Midnight Sun for a period but even the Midnight Sun sets eventually!

I am no further forward in my applying for the season ticket for the opera and willingly embraced the preparations for the party which meant that I could not put pen to paper.  I am building myself up to attempt the form’s completion during the weekend when my approach can be lubricated by decent food and even more decent booze!

I can no longer ignore the fact that this is tax paying time.  The onus in Spain is very much on the taxpayer to make sure that the tax is paid and in my case the authorities certainly have not been enthusiastic in getting my forms to me.  One would imagine that such lack of interest on the part of the tax people would be welcomed, but I have been warned by Those That Know that I take such disinterestedness at my peril and it is very much in my interests to ensure that my tax is fully paid.

Last year I made a journey to the tax offices themselves and I ended up (after paying tax throughout the year) owing the tax people money.  Everyone, absolutely everyone I know gets some sort of tax rebate at the end of the financial year. but not, uniquely, me!  Even Toni has been informed that he is entitled to just under two euros as his rebate.

The form also asked him (I assume in a merely rhetorical sense) if he wanted his “rebate” to be donated to the treasury!  Even more amazingly the Roman Church in this country has wangled its way on to the tax form and you can tick a box if you want your rebate to be paid to Papists!  Sometimes a tingle exclamation mark seems somewhat inadequate.

I have more lively hopes for getting some money back this year, but that may merely be a sense of injustice talking!

At the moment the tax people seem to know that a version of me exists but not necessarily with my names in the right order.  They were right last year, but obviously twelve months have caused separation and confusion.  I can see that I will have to pay another visit to the circle of hell which houses the tax offices.  God help!

I have had to dig out my old tax forms and that necessitated a futile search through papers years old, which I no longer need to keep – I can feel an extra addition to the list of tasks for the summer itching to be written!

Culture is complex

There comes a time in most peoples’ lives when they realize that all the effort they put into their education is about to pay off.  A time comes when the full panoply of acquired knowledge has to be put to the test in a practical situation.  This is what you have been working towards!

I am now faced with such a situation.  A challenge.

Which subscription series should I choose for the next opera season in the Liceu?

If you think that this is a simple choice then I suggest that you start studying the 130 page long description of the forthcoming attractions and especially the pages devoted to how to choose your tickets.  And don’t get me started on how to fill in the application form!

The operas for the next season are (on the ticket I am likely to get) Scenes from Goethe’s Faust by Robert Schumann; Le Grand Macabre by Gyorgy Ligeti; Linda di Chamounix by Gaetano Donizetti; Il burbero di buon cuore (The Good Hearted Cermudgeon) by Vicent Martin i Soler; La Boheme by Giacomo Puccini;  Una tragedia florentina (Eine florentinische Tragodie) and El nan (Der Zwerg) by Alexander von Zemlinsky; Adriana Lecouvreur by Francesco Cilea and finally, Pelleas et Melisande by Claude Debussy.

There would seem to me to be a fair amount of work involved in that list where I have seen precisely one of the operas before and heard of one other!  Still, it is a challenge and that is to be relished.  I suppose.

Irene has talked about going to concerts in la Palau de la Musica, that Modernista extravaganza, and that might be light relief to the programme of operas!  Investigation is called for.

A long day and then preparation for Toni’s birthday celebrations – which went well with his collecting a respectable stash from the assembled guests!

The two small children factor means that we are now exhausted and reduced to half watching the remake of Shaft in Spanish.

Roll on bed time.

Weekend Escape

SATURDAY 7th MAY 2011

Real Madrid is trouncing Sevilla to the accompaniment in Catalonia of lashing rain, thunder and lightning.  Barça were hoping for a humiliating defeat, but the other way round so that all they would have to do in their forthcoming match would be to draw and the Championship would be theirs.  Jollifications will have to wait for another week or so – and given Barça’s lamentable recent league performance, perhaps even longer!

Enough of this unnatural concern about football!

Barcelona this afternoon was sultry and very full.  The skies were trying their best to squeeze out a few drops of rain but we generally managed avoid the precipitation until after our lunch and visit to the exhibition.

Lunch was in the stylish restaurant near the Roman graveyard and the exhibition was at the bottom of the Ramblas in Arts Santa Monica and was “The End of Appearances” by Julio Vaquero.

A series of largely monochrome large drawings on tracing paper of modern technology mixed with ornate wooden furniture.  The overall effect was one of otherworldly looking objects in a world seen through the medium of a spectrum other than that or normality.

To complement the drawings there were two installations of gold coloured furniture a bed, wardrobes, chest of drawers, a washing machine – all crumpled and with wax or solid oil oozing out of corners or gushing out of machines and all set on an undulating mound of black dust.  The usual sort of thing that parades itself as modern art nowadays.

If you search for meaning in the publicity for the exhibition you find such things as,  “In aesthetic freedom, painting speaks when form breaks down. And so it is that representation bleeds and flows when the referents suppurate gold and fat in transit of time that is light. And so it is that the painter sees and constructs the referent. Vaquero not only perceives and equates art and the real in a system of representation and expression but also, in an unexpected turn in the history of art, assaults the objects of the world by storm and transforms them into painting for the eye of the other.”  So now you know!

Thank god our conversation and the lunch we had was a little more comprehensible!

I have now completed reading the dozen novels that comprise the Dave Brandstetter series of books written by Joseph Hansen who died in 2004.  The novels were published between 1970 and 1991 and chart the professional successes of the American detective Dave Brandstetter who lives an eventful life as an insurance investigator checking out suspicious deaths before the company pays out.

The stories are tautly written and have satisfyingly complex plots enlivened by the period detail of life in a certain sector of society in Los Angeles and the surrounding area.

Dave Brandstetter was one of the first openly gay detectives and the novels trace an interesting (but never salacious) private life sub plot as a parallel to the investigations of his public life.  We see the successes and failures of his love life and we get to know his character through a series of constants that develop through the series.

The common framework of the narrative base of the novels include repeated references to his much married father and his last young surviving widow; the tri-partite home with its sleeping loft and the faint whiff of horses reminding one that the place is a reformed stable; the modern refrigerator housed in an ancient ice box; Max, Romeros and Dave’s corner table reserved for him in the restaurant on a permanent basis; the Jaguar; the Swiss gun; Dave’s fame, wealth and personal attractiveness to both sexes; Dave’s smoking and his love of quality single malt whiskey (sic); the fact that gays recognize each other instantly; the background of southern California and Los Angeles; highly worked paragraphs of description a la Steinbeck; philanthropy; high culture and Jazz; violence and the inevitable hard talking without which an American detective novel would never be complete.

Through the series of novels he gets older and his reactions slow down.  He smokes and drinks, in spite of advice and the deleterious effect it has on his life.  He has a keen mind and takes risks that keep the reader guessing outcomes. 

I am not convinced that the “gay” aspect is anything other than window dressing and am not convinced at how much would really change in the stories if Cecil the boyfriend was Cecily the girlfriend – not much I suspect, but that does not stop me recommending these novels wholeheartedly as excellent reads.  Try them.

SUNDAY 8th MAY 2011

As other people reach for cigarettes so I stretch out greedy hands towards CD collections of the Complete Symphonies of Carl Nielsen. 

To be fair to myself I cannot be expected to show restraint when my companion in Barcelona yesterday, Irene, buys the Complete Works of Beethoven.  She bought 85 CDs and my purchase was only for 3 onto which you can easily fit Symphony No 1; “The Four Temperaments”; “Sinfonia Expansiva”; “The Inextinguishable”; Symphony No 5 and finally “Sinfonia semplice” all played by the (appropriately enough) Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Michael SchØnwandt.

I am listening to what is perhaps the most immediate and friendly of his symphonies the second.  This recording is sympathetic and shows attention to detail in what seems to me to be an exuberant rendition.  It is certainly taken at a cracking pace and lacks the indulgence that some conductors exhibit when faced with the lushness of Nielsen’s sometime showy orchestration.  I look forward to the rest!

Tomorrow is Toni’s birthday with the inevitable descent of The Family.  We have been out to buy a variety of tapas to keep them happy while the birthday cake will be provided by Toni’s sister.  I only hope that I have the energy after a day in school that starts at 8.15 am with the equivalent of Year 9 to enjoy the festivities!

After a dull start the day brightened up and the afternoon was sunny.  We couldn’t face doing anything culinary so we went out to the Maritime for lunch.

This is, I suppose, our favourite restaurant and we have never forgotten how much we needed it when we first moved into the house.  We used to fall into the place and eat food like faded ghosts after yet another day of unpacking!

I had the menu del dia and had two starters instead of the first and second courses.  I chose to start with smoked salmon and followed that with arroz caldoso which is a substantial broth of meat, fish and shell fish with rice.  The sweet was tarta whisky and the whole lot was washed down with a more than respectable red wine.  This little lot was at the weekend inflated price of €17 – delicious!

I am counting down the days to the end of June.  Already my second year sixth have departed – although they will be back for a totally useless examination in English that they have to take for purposes of university entrance.  This sounds important, but for reasons that I will not go into it is a complete waste of time.  However, the most important thing is that they no longer figure on my timetable so it is able to shrink to what would be a full timetable in the UK – such is the parlous state of the profession in Spain!

As far as I can work out we have time for two complete sets of examinations between next week and the longed for exodus of the students on the 24^th of June!  You have to admire the dedication to the cause of an institution that lives and dies in the Truth of Faith in Examinations and the Power of Temporary Memory Retention.  Makes no sense in terms of education, but what the hell!

Talking of temporary memory, I am beginning to forget how horrendous the last interminable term was.  As the sun shines more and we do not have to go to school and come home in the sunless hours we forget the true misery of the dark night of the soul that a long middle term without the leavening of occasional days off can be.

It says something that, while I am looking forward to the end of June and our two months off, I am just a keenly dreading next September.  Perhaps I should take the obvious lesson from that sort of response!

Meanwhile a birthday and the next working week.

Now is a good time to walk out of my job.

I started work at 8.15 am (after getting up at 6.30 am) settling into the first of the five periods that I would be teaching, only to be told that I had to take another class.  This, of course would be impossible in the 5 period day that is common in the UK.  It means that, as I have a library duty as well, I will teach solidly, without a break from 9.45 am to 2.00 pm. 

I was going to put an exclamation mark at the end of that sentence, but I felt that such an understated piece of punctuation was the equivalent of litotes and I would rather the statement of horror is left bleakly with a mere full-stop to mark it.

I am going to check into this as I appear to be the only person in the school who has lost a free period today – and how easy it is to have free periods in a day which is absurdly overblown into a eight period length!  So, in effect the 25 period week in the UK becomes a possible 40 period week in our school.  Timetabling must be a dream!

Still, it is the weekend.  Though the weather forecast is anything but positive and encouraging.

I am almost down to the last of the Hansen novels and I think that I have developed a feel for his style of writing.  I shall miss not having another novel in the thick tome that has accompanied my leisure moments for the last few weeks.

My day of teaching shame was compounded by the last of the six lessons that I had to teach was a collapsed class as a colleague had to go to her child who had been injured in another school.  I was therefore frantically photocopying the answer sheets for a listening test which could be administered to the whole of a class rather than our smaller groups.  My day has been so awful that the situation almost makes one think of Constructive Dismissal!

There was only one way to salvage such a disastrous end to the week: spend!  And spend in El Corte Ingles.

So Toni’s birthday present is now bought, wrapped, bowed – and he has to wait until Sunday to get what he actually tried on in the shop!  Buying for others only has a limited ameliorative effect so I had to get something for myself; I am therefore the proud possessor of a new piece of luggage which at a satisfyingly stupid expense should meet all the requirements of even the most power crazed, nit-picking, fascist budget airline.  And it looks nice and sort of matches The Machine.

Tomorrow Barcelona and culture.

Another bloody day

Getting up in the mornings these days is a much more civilized experience than in winter.  Getting up in darkness and returning home to darkness is inhuman and puts one in mind of the worst excesses of the Dickensian world of “Hard Times” – and worse!

The lashing rain of yesterday when Barça triumphantly achieved their 1-1 draw against Real Madrid to the accompaniment of thunder and lightening that would have done justice to a camp version of The Ring, has now given way to the brightly dull days that are a feature of Catalonia without rain and without sun.

I am feeling a tad more optimistic today as it is one of my “early” finishes and this extra 30 minutes will give me time to find a present for Toni’s birthday which occurs on a single digit date this month.  I am a little hazy about precise details but I have five days left to get my act together and find something.

The light bought for Toni’s sister provoked me into buying one as well and it is a remarkable success.  I am not quite sure how it works but it is able to shine in over 600 colours.  Not, obviously at the same time, but in a changing pattern of colours or fixed on one.  There is a remote control for the light so that, depending on mood or inclination, the light can be adapted to your requirements.

I am not sure how long it will take for the remote to be lost and then for the novelty of having a coloured source of light to fade, but at the moment I am enthusiastic.  And it didn’t cost that much. 

Really. 

But the light bulb looks unlike anything that I have seen, so that I suspect that the “reasonable” cost of the entire feature will be seen in quite another, ahem, light when we have to buy another bulb. 

It is a situation akin to that of computer printers where the cost of the ink cartridges is almost as much as a new machine.  Indeed in some cases it was worth buying another machine just to get the ink. 

Now computer printer companies are wise to such wasteful expenditure and provide new printers with especially partially filled cartridges so that a major purchase of more HP ink (what one electronics expert described as the most expensive liquid in the world!) can only be slightly delayed.

I have started reading a book brought back by Suzanne from her American trip to find out about Project Learning in Operation.  This volume is “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris (author of “Naked”) #1 National Bestseller.  I’ve never heard of him, but the series of Thurber like personal reflections are immensely enjoyable.  I even delayed taking lunch to finish off one of the little essays. 

The drab and uninteresting cover gives no indication of the sparkling, perceptive and droll writing inside.  He uses his homosexuality as a sort of distorting lens to give a twist to autobiographical insight.  Admittedly I have only read the first 60 pages, but I am looking forward to the rest.

The Hanson novels are still going strong, though now I have reached page 1,000 I am down to the last couple of stories – though god knows when I am going to get the time to read them.  When I came home this evening, for example, I read a chapter or so and then lapsed into somnolent repose.

I have awoken because I “have” to watch Manchester United win their way to the final of the Champions League where they will meet Barça in the final.  God help!

It would appear that my 2BXT class will disappear at the end of this week which should, in theory, bring my teaching load down to something more reasonable.  In practice however my school has a positive genius for finding something else to fill in the tempting space left in my timetable!

One thing that I know is going to happen during those periods is that I am going to be roped in to give an opinion about the English used on the re-written blurb for the website of the school.  This is a massive document which is being translated from Spanish and Catalan and then proof read to make sure it makes sense.  They will find more!

Meanwhile the series of birthdays and festivities is about to get under way. 

So much for relaxation at the weekend!

This close to murder!

If I suddenly walk out of my school never to return it will be because of the meetings.

Last night, after starting school at 8.15 am, and well into the second hour of a meeting which started at 5.00 pm I seriously considered walking out and never coming back.  Not only was the discussion of the pupils of mind-bending vacuity but also there were “other points” which were thrown into the discussion after 120 minutes of tedium.

To my utter horror one of the heads of school started talking about “appropriate” clothing for pupils.  I know, from bitter, bitter experience that such “discussions” are deathly.  As it is nothing to do with the curriculum or anything else important everybody in the meeting has something to say.  They all have opinions – after all who can resist giving their modicum of wisdom about the precise degree of gaudiness that shorts can possess before they become unacceptable!

A remarkable proportion of my professional life has been spent in meetings where such teeth-gnashingly irrelevant topics have been enthusiastically embraced by small minded colleagues as an opportunity to show the Jesuitical complexity of their “educational” thought as they wrestle with length of skirt, or how many buttons of a shirt may be left undone, or what form of earrings are most in accord with Health and Safety Regulations, or what shade is the most acceptable black for trousers or . . . to go on is to court madness.

I could feel my eyes gradually being filled by a red mist and my vocal chords lubricating themselves for a primal scream when, mercifully, this idiot discussion was brought to an end.

But not an end to my sufferings.

We were then (135 minutes into the bloody meeting) given a “paper” about Attention Deficit Syndrome.  Was I the only person in that mini hell who instantly noticed the vicious irony of the situation?  And then, to cap it all, one of my most loathed techniques for destroying brain cells was adopted by the distributor of the paper.  She read it to us!

I sat, very pointedly, with the paper closed; my glasses on the handout and the knuckles of my thumbs pressed either side of my eyes at the top of my nose.  I felt the thrill of cold, hard hatred mixed with the steely fury from which the consequences can be fatal.

I had determined that 150 minutes was my absolute limit and I would walk.

They finished just in time and I was the first out, in my car and calming myself on the drive to Castelldefels.

My tolerance for the absurdity of the way that the school operates is getting less and less.  They get away with absolute murder which in Britain would trigger an immediate strike of the teachers.  But the managers in our school are not vicious, they are not vindictive – they are merely working in an environment in which such things are allowed because no one has told them that they are intolerable.

Another example is that three people are absent in school today and we work on such narrow margins that this causes chaos.  There is no “slack” in the system to provide adequate cover.  The concept of a “supply” teacher is something which is known but not applied.  Because no one makes them apply it.  So far this week (starting last Wednesday) I have lost 2 free periods; have had two classes collapsed into one; will lose another free period and more for a meeting in school time; have spent 2 and a half hours on a meeting after school; have spent 4 and a half hours after school for a prize giving – and the week isn’t over! 

And the pay is truly crap! 

But we are in crisis and people are grateful in my school that they have a job and are in no mood to start agitating for changes to their conditions of employment – especially as my school has “made up” the government imposed reduction in wages as part of their response to the crisis.

One crisis which has passed is the qualification of Barça for the final of the Champions League in London.  A 1-1 draw was enough to send Barça to Wembley with a winning margin on aggregate of 3-1.  Thank God!

To accompany this match we have had thunder and lightning and lashing rain.  My hope is that it will wash away all the remaining pollen and leave my respiratory system uncluttered by yellow particles!

We have now completed a week back in school – and if the remaining weeks are as taxing as this one has been then I am going to need the months of July and August to recover.

My lunchtime and half a free period disappeared in a meeting with a colleague from another school in Barcelona who has been to a whole series of student United Nations meetings in Lisbon, Milan and The Hague.  He was able to give us much needed practical information about what actually happens in these student gatherings.  This is a good thing as the school is sending a dozen pupils to Lisbon to take part in the model United Nations meeting there.

The preparation for these students is supposed to take place in a number of different classes from June to November.  I am going to be part of the preparation and I fear there is a misguided assumption on the part of the school that I will be part of the team accompanying the students to Lisbon.  I have gone out of my way to let as many people as possible know that going on foreign trips with students is Something I Do Not Do, I Have Not Done and Will Not Do.  I am sure that Management have managed to persuade themselves that such a trip is a rather large “perk” – I am Not Convinced.  Still, it will be fun to see how things turn out.

The summer term is the time when the Directora has a meeting with each member staff to find out their intentions for the next academic year and to confirm them in place.

It is likely that there will be no increase in wages this year.  It will be interesting to see if the teaching load is increased.  Each extra period added to an already full timetable is the equivalent to teaching at least one extra week over the year.  I shall wait and see what is offered.  Last year it was only during the shortened introductory week at the beginning of September that we found out what our timetables were.

I thought that the end of last term was a low point for teachers and pupils who felt worn out by the inordinate length of the stretch of weeks that encompassed January, February, March and most of April.  However, the Easter break does not seem to have refreshed people very much and the number of absences is an indication of the low morale which characterises our staff at the moment.

Perhaps we need another weekend for the realization that there are a limited number of weeks left before we can relax properly to sink in.  Hopefully.

We are entering into a season of Birthdays and Name Days which means a frantic succession of trips to town and our related hypermarkets in an increasingly desperate search for appropriate gifts.  Then there is the even more despairing search for the carefully put away wrapping paper which constantly seems to migrate from a sensible place where one would be expected to find it to a quirky hiding place.  And don’t get me started on the sellotape!

Thursday is Terrassa and Saturday Barcelona; Sunday may well be another descent of The Family to celebrate another birthday. 

And then it’s Monday again. 

Sigh!

Yellow Dust and the Future

SUNDAY 1ST MAY

Like something out of 60s science fiction series we are now having to cope with the Yellow Dust.

 

Living in an area which is called after the pine tress which are a feature of this coast and which still exist in considerable number around us it was perhaps inevitable that during the pollen season we are engulfed by a tide of yellow particles which seem to be having a deleterious effect on me.  I took to my bed for a number of hours in the hope that whatever the pollen was doing it would stop. 

My uneasy slumbers were of course accompanied by the chorus of infernal canines with which this area is truly, deeply and irritatingly affected.  I eventually merged from my enforced rest with the uneasy feeling that sunny hours were passing me by without my lying prone soaking up the rays.  The sooner the trees stop their promiscuous sexual shenanigans the better!

Tomorrow, keeping up the time pressures from our absurdly long three day week and also keeping alive the strong sense of existential angst which fuels our school, we have an after school meeting.

These meetings, as I may have mentioned in passing before, are of monumental, terminal and life-denying boredom.  Only the most ascetic monks given to daily flagellation and the wearing of lice-infected hair shirts could see these meetings as anything other than what they actually are: direct works of the Evil One!

I know that I shouldn’t write this, but I will anyway.  This term is relatively short: we are already in May and we finish school at the end of June.  By my calculations that gives us 31+30 days making 61 days or 8 weeks 5 days.  Allowing 16 days for the weekends we are left with a total of 45 days of teaching time or 6 weeks 3 days.  You would never guess that I am looking forward to the summer holidays would you!

Let’s face it, it is by such computations that one preserves one’s sanity!


MONDAY 2ND MAY

At least two of my colleagues are in school when they should be at home: one of them has virtually no voice and the other was physically sick this morning after a weekend of illness.

Because of the total lack of supply staff during normal absence and even for those absences of more than three days known in advance, there is a moral imperative for teachers to come into school when they are not well because they know that the burden of their teaching will be foisted onto other colleagues, usually within their departments.  If British conditions were imposed on our school it would fall apart within a few months, unless radical and professional precautions were taken.  Fond hope!

Far better to think about the end of June and release!

Well, talk about hoist with my own petard of concern!  After having suggested to one of my colleagues that he go home, he has now taken my advice and I am lumped with his class.  Such is life!

All this, just before the Unending Meeting of Doom.  What a way to start the week!

Is it sunny?

This morning dawned a bloody sight more enthusiastically than it did for the last two days when we were in Gran Canaria.  But let it pass, let it pass.

The Family duly descended and we had a barbeque in more than pleasant sunshine.  What was even more surprising is that we had the meal in sunshine as well.  This is not to say that the weather was good, but more of an indication that a Spanish, Catalan family actually ate in the sun rather than rushing towards the shade.  I have to say that I was shocked.  The idea of eating in full sunlight is usually confined to the foreigners in this country not extended towards the indigenous inhabitants.  It was obviously not far enough into summer for eating in sunlight to be considered a crime!

Toni and his sister have now bought their mother a Mothers’ Day gift which has been very well received.  We can now all relax with a feeling of duty duly done!

I have done my summer shopping for clothes and so I can now relax and ignore all other incitements to spend money on mere cloth.  It can be expended on books and other worthwhile commodities instead.

The story of football in this country continues with some part of The Family taking a ghoulish interest in the progress of their favourite team to hate loosing against their league opponents.  This means that Barça will have to win their next game and Real Madrid loose and  . . . the Championship will be . . . who cares?  But however uninvolved I feel, things are reaching some sort of climax which will be marked with the setting off of lots of fireworks.  From the sound of it (I am typing in the garden with only the mosquitoes attracted to my lower legs for company) some sort of conclusion has been or is about to be reached.  I think that the Barça/Madrid story has still got a few weeks to run its macabre course!

On a much higher level of interest, I have discovered that if you put the contents of the Actimel or cholesterol reducing liquid yogurt into the bottom of a glass and fill it up with Casera (the oddly un-sugared fizzy drink found in this area) it produces a most satisfyingly milky cocktail-like drink.  As one is low in sugar and the other high in thingies that aid one’s digestion then I can only consider that I have created a tasty yet health-giving drink. 

I shall call it Yogurfizzisalud in its full form, which will usually be shortened to Yogafizz in popular parlance: my gift to the world!

By the sound of it the Madrid game has ended and Madrid have duly lost, thus proving everything that Barça have said in denigration of this once great club to be true!  It is positive and invigorating to be living in the middle of such sectarian hatred!

A day has almost gone by without my having read a single page of one of the remaining Brandstetter novels – a crime which will have to be compensated for in the very near future!