What day is it?

There is something intensely wrong in setting off for work in the dark.  It is unnatural and unsettling.  The sort of thing that necessitates a weekend for recovery purposes – which today at least has the appropriate ending to the day.  But what about all the other days to come in which I will be battling the traffic (and insanely suicidal motorbike drivers) in the dark?  Sigh!

We did have some clouds yesterday, but not of the stubbornly sun-denying British type – and today, yet again, is glorious with sunshine flooding everything.  It may be appreciably cooler, but to all intents and purposes summer continues unabated!  That sentence was tempting fate and the inevitable punishment of The Pathetic Fallacy has ensured that high level cloud is now diffusing sunshine in a much more autumnally way than I like.

Toni is a much happier bunny now that he has electrodes strapped to his extremities and he is as equally pleased with the large backlit display on the handset control as he is with the effects of the machine itself!  A gadget freak after my own heart!

My appetite has almost fully returned, though I still don’t ever feel like lunch and prefer to have a meal in the evening.  This has not gone unnoticed by my colleagues for whom eating lunch is one of the “free” perks that they delight in taking from the job.  I forbear from pointing out that there is absolutely no such thing as a free lunch – and do not join them.

The gruelling nature of my timetable, and indeed that of many of my colleagues is making itself felt as we progress through this interminable term.  What sort of timetabling ineptitude produces a day when a whole collection of colleagues are teaching six periods?  We are in school for eight bloody hours a day, how much more bloody time do the powers that be need to produce something which is just a little more teacher friendly?  Not forgetting the two teachers’ meetings scheduled for a Saturday morning! 

The ethos and working practises of our school would have a collective nervous collapse should they ever get close to the conditions that obtain in a normal secondary school in the UK!

 A shock development this evening is the reappearance of our hated neighbours of the summer.  The deal is that they come and make our lives a misery for the summer months and then they pack up and go back to Barcelona and do not come back for a year.  This is not the first time that they have paid a surprise visit since their official departure – marked by the opening of a bottle of our best Cava and whoops of joy.

If they are going to come back for the odd weekend then I am going to start looking for somewhere else to live.  With the Mad Woman and her dogs on one side and the inconsiderate rowing on the other life will be intolerable.  It is probably the extended summer that brings this detritus back.  I am sure that were the weather to be the same as it was this time last year we would see nothing of them.

Ah well, at least there are two days off!

A resented day

Barcelona might be covered in a thick blanket of pollution by the sun is shining and the soft outlines of the buildings gleam magically against the contrasting glittering sea.  I continue to feel cheated as I watch this magnificent weather from the inside, trapped inside a school by the lure of insultingly low wages.  How much further can I sink!

If, the for rest of my time in this country people make wistful references back to the wonderful autumn of 2011 I will never forgive myself.  Gallons (or pounds or however your measure it) of Vitamin D lavished on uncaring buildings rather than on my receptive skin!

Still, I am getting through today my reminding myself of the fact that, contrary to all internal clocks and calendars, today is nothing more than a Thursday and that tomorrow is Friday and that is the start of the weekend.  By such mind games does one get through the quotidian horror of the slavery of a monthly wage!

The ironing still awaits, lurking in open view as white shirts and undershirts lie carelessly diffused on a chair in the living room like an exploded meringue.

Toni is getting no better and is becoming evilly accusatory about the treatment that his leg is getting.  I think it might be politic to get a magnetic resonance scan done privately before he hobbles around and destroys the health service piecemeal!

We now have cloud around the school – but I keep telling myself that the west is full of sunshine and that is where Castelldefels is.  And, even as I was typing the sun has returned.  I thought for one glorious moment that the heavens had taken pity on my imprisoned state and were trying to make it a little more bearable.  But no, the cruel gleam of outside sunshine mocks my room condemned state.

The one thing that I have to look forward to is the purchase of a toaster.  Our present model now only (and in a very stylish and Post Modern sort of way) toasts only one side of the bread.  It must be junked and something much more elaborate must be purchased.  I am thinking of some machine which can make those individually wrapped and long-lasting croissants taste and feel more authentically pastry-like rather than like a dead collection of chemical molecules completely unrelated to the fine art of the pâtissier together, of course, with cold fat.

There was a freakishly cheap toaster in one of the shops which looked as though it had been made from an unconvincing Airfix kit.  I spurned this and went to another shop and bought something much more expensive.  Just to hammer the point home about the necessity of supporting the materialist society I also bought a sort of hand mixer with various attachments because it was in a sale and because I sort of needed one.  I really did.

Lidl (god bless it!) came up trumps again when I went to get the bread as they had one of those stick-on electrode machines for stretching and massaging muscles which was exactly what Toni needed for his knee - which continues to give trouble.

My three-day stew in now fully consumed with the final version having fruit juice, grapes, olives and German sweet pepper in it – though precious little actual meat in it.  Delicious though.

As is usual, though always unexpected until it actually happens, a day off mid week always leaves teachers feeling more tired than if they had worked the week through.  It’s a good sort of tiredness, a small price to pay for a day off!

Our next time off is a long weekend at the end of October and then nothing until an absurd week in December when we come into school on alternate days in the middle of the working week.  Madness.  I hope that the kids take every opportunity to go on holiday for the whole of the week.  Though parents in our school take every opportunity to thrust their kids towards us, as they seem to want to get rid of them from their everyday lives whenever they can!  I am sure that it is not actually the case; it just appears like that.

I have now taken, on the back of the infection, to eschew the eating of lunch.  I am not really a lunch person and I welcome the opportunity to eat sparsely at midday and have a larger meal in the evening.  We shall see how it goes.

Meanwhile, one more day and then the weekend.

Release!

Ah!  The bucolic delights of living in a smallish town where, on a day off, the only things to wake you are the cooing of tree doves (or possibly pigeons, am I an ornithologist?) the chirping of insects enjoying the extended life that our extended Indian summer is giving them; the emptying of the rubbish bins and the barking of the dogs.

The neighbour’s animals, who bray as I type, have now been roundly condemned by my good self as I have visited our ever-helpful city hall and officially complained.  It was also the opportunity to lash out at the thieving, inconsiderate vandal who has for the third or fourth time knocked down the anti-parking post.  Far be it from me to cast aspersions but photographs have been taken and sent to the authorities showing a car which has been parked near, and yesterday parked over the post – or the remains of it. 

The person (do you get a sense that I know exactly who did it) who has knocked down the post it of course a thief as destroying public property without admitting it is tantamount to theft.  I do hope the police call!  And we will be able to watch!

 There is nothing like an early morning rant!  It clears the system and allows one to enjoy the rest of the day!

Which is beautifully sunny yet again and this unreal weather continues.  Many of my British (!) colleagues are, inexplicably, looking forward to more autumnal weather while I revel in each shining day, even if I am stuck inside a school looking out at what I should be feeling on my skin.  I am convinced that my vitamin D levels are dangerously low and I need to get up to the Third Floor and do what I do best, soak up the rays!

Which was wonderful; simply lying there and feeling the sun (lately seen only from the wrong side of a classroom window) on my skin.  In was only when there was a whisper of sun that one could even guess that this is getting on for the middle of October rather than the height of summer!  The Puritan part of me knows that there will be price to be paid for such extended sunshine!

Now, as part of the reality of a “holiday” we are going out to lunch.  It will also give me the opportunity to check up on one of my “investments” the money which has been put into La Caixa as a way of beating the pathetic interest rates that one can get with the banks deposit accounts.  The complex returns include occasional interest payments and the conversion of 50% of the money into shares.  All I can say is that it seemed like a sensible idea at the time and now I have to live with the reality!  I ought to do at least some checking up!

My other investment is with the Generalitat of Catalonia (such patriotism!) and I made it on the assumption that the Generalitat would not be able to pay me back when the time of reckoning came.  My plan, such at it was, was to benefit to an extra period of bribery from the Generalitat to persuade me to keep the money in the funds and out of my sticky, spendthrift fingers.  The latter part of the plan might work, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the Generalitat is, to all intents and purposes, bankrupt.  Greece seems to be all around us these days!

I don’t really know why I bother with money as such.  I have never had much luck with its accumulation – but on the other hand I have never really lacked it either.  Confusion, inactivity and general bumbling have seen me OK.  The only time that I took professional advice and invested in a sensible, rock solid fund I lost 40% of it.  Bumbling is better!

I am waiting for the Old Man – for such I must designate Toni as he shuffles his way around the house feeling out each step – to get ready.  I could have done some ironing in the time that I have been waiting for him.  Or not.

I am a firm believer in the “iron free” nature of some shirts, in spite of the obvious creased that they all develop no matter if you drip dry or tumble dry them.  If life is too short to stuff a mushroom then how much further down the scale is ironing!

Lunch was acceptable in El Restaurante de los Jubilados or the place where all the OAPs hang out.  Follow the grey hairs and you get value for money!  My appetite has all but returned but I had to make do with fizzy water rather than the bottle of Lambrusco (!) which is available for two diners during days of fiesta – when incidentally the price of the meal rises by some 33%!

The day is still not over and I have already spent a couple of hours on the beach and thrown myself into the sea.  Considering the date the water was surprisingly not freezing.  I am not going to lie and affirm that the water was actually warm, but it was pleasant enough.  As opposed to the pool into which I threw myself on the return from the beach.

Although I was actually able to breathe (just) while swimming, the pool did not invite me to stay and after a number of cool regulation lengths I emerged into the apparent heat of an October evening.

I am about to go into the real heat of a shower – further displacement activity rather than do any ironing.  And marking is simply a non-starter.

I now have to get into my mind that tomorrow is a Thursday, as a day off mid-week is somewhat unsettling.  


Though always welcome.  


Obviously!

Tomorrow is not enough!

Tuesday is not a good day.

With six (count them, six) periods to teach it can never be a good day.  With the last two periods of the day a double session of Media Studies with Year 9 it starts sliding down the “insupportable” scale.  And when the day starts with an examination which demands marking, it has gone off the scale of awfulness.

On the other hand tomorrow is The Day of Spanishness about which I couldn’t give a damn except that we have a day off on which to not give a damn which makes it strangely different!

Unfortunately it now feels like a Friday evening and after a free day tomorrow it will only be Thursday when I have to go back to school; and Thursday and Friday are my early starts.  Ah well, one shouldn’t be greedy.

One afternoon I have to look forward to in school is going to be taken up by a performance of a pipe band from some Scottish Academy.  One really has to weigh up the positive of not teaching a class with the horror of the sick parallel universe cacophony which constitutes the playing of the bagpipes. 

 

If I remember rightly there is an apt quotation in The Merchant of Venice about the inability of urine retention when the “bagpipe sings i’the nose”.  I think in context it is seen as inexplicably positive, but for me the negative is much nearer to the fore.  Life is far too short for it to be tarnished by any folklorique abomination which uses contained wind to whine down reedy pipes to produce travesties of music.  On the other hand, it does mean not teaching for a period

My investigation of the problem of the so-called “extra” pay at the end of the autumn term has revealed that it is only the upper echelons of the civil service who are threatened with the withdrawal of this money, not mere teachers.

The “extra” payment, as I never tire of explaining to my colleagues and anyone else who will listen, is nothing of the sort.  The way that salaries are worked out in this inexplicable country is that you have a monthly salary and then a month extra in December and June: making 14 pays.

Now even a person of mean intelligence can work out that this 14 pay rubbish is merely a ploy on the part of the employers to retain one sixth of the annual salary and pay the salary late; four months late in December and an astonishing six months late in June!

In spite of the obvious indication that the two “extra” pays are completely spurious and that the total salary over the fourteen pay-outs should be divided by twelve and paid out in normal monthly instalments people here insist on looking at these payments as “useful” because they help pay for Christmas presents in December and help defray the cost of the summer holidays.  Such thinking makes me weep with frustration at the way that stupid workers redefine managerial meanness as paternalistic thoughtfulness!

I am now in the age group where an injection against flu is now regarded as a necessary formality.  I now have so many drugs coursing around my system that I am virtually a walking pharmacy.  My very perspiration should be bottled and distributed in vials for the benefit of mankind!

If I had my wits about me I would do some purely mechanical marking.  But I simply cannot be arsed.

I declare a holiday!

Life is getting better all the time - sigh!

Well, apart from a short sojourn in bed after my second pill, this weekend has been more active and less depressing than the last few.  The swelling in my leg is going down steadily and it looking far less red.  All positive aspects of a extended and draining period of not feeling well.

Monday evening I go to the nurse in our medical centre to check on progress and I can look forward to a blood test at the end of the month.  That at least is a good thing as the tests are and a possible shake up in my medication.   Oh, the things I have to look forward to!

As the weather has continued to be astonishingly good for this time of year we have been afflicted by a weekend spate of even more astonishingly bad parking by our visitors.  As we are one road away from the sea our parking spaces are quickly taken up and then the parking on corners, parking on zebra crossings and everywhere else that they can (and shouldn’t) park a car.  The selfishness of our visitors has to be seen to be believed – especially as the parking spaces the next road back were virtually empty!

Anyone who has been into a supermarket car park knows just how little consideration people seem to have for parking.  It seems to be impossible for people to consider walking more than the absolute minimum of yards to a destination even if it means parking in a disabled space!  One can get quite cynical just by considering the selfishness on prominent permanent display in public parking areas!

The week of work stretches ahead and I can work up little enthusiasm for the classes ahead.  My timetable is so enervating that by Wednesday I am exhausted having spent most of my time traipsing from one corner of the campus to another for one lesson after another.

I think that the negativity follows on from the disastrous start to term where the managements’ compulsive desire to have worthy but irrelevant staff meetings meant that the lead into the start of the year was hysterical rather than measured, as all the essential preparatory work was postponed as meeting after meeting got in the way.  And one should remember that planning in the traditional sense is difficult as the new year is very much a new start and what one has been told at the back end of the year in June may have changed radically by September.

Just in case that anyone thinks that all I do nowadays is moan and sulk about the work I have to do to get my measly pay, I would point out that I have actually done some reading.  To be precise “Blimey! - From Bohemia to Britpop: London Art World from Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst” by Matthew Collings with photographs by Ian MacMillan.

This is an updated version of the original book (though Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud are both still very much alive in this edition) and is a thoroughly entertaining, thoroughly prejudiced view of modern British art from a commentator both knowledgeable and involved.  The book has big writing, lots of photos, swear words of the worst sort and gripping anecdotes. 

Who could ask for more!

Good and bad!

Let’s get one thing straight: no day can be entirely bad when it starts with me stretched out on the Third Floor soaking up the sun in a bathing costume!

So even Clarrie’s insulting phone call to attack my nation for having beaten the Irish in the Rugby World Cup while, at the same time casually (not!) mentioning the fact that she had bought the latest version of the i-pad failed to dent my optimism which the bright start to the day loaded into my system.

This feeling of rightness with the world lasted right up until I went outside, unlocked the front gate and gazed in speechless horror at the anti-parking post which, for the THIRD time has been destroyed by person or persons unknown.  Actually that last adjective is just there for legal purposes as the guilty parties are within a hair’s breadth of where I live.  Allegedly.

I of course took photographs of the broken post which, this time had been left in the gutter – which was possibly one step better than what they (allegedly) did the last time but one, which was to put the post they knocked over in the street rubbish bin, from where I “rescued” it to be used as evidence against them (allegedly).  Actually, the last time they (allegedly) knocked the post down they had the criminal intelligence to hide the evidence.

Taking a photograph of the broken post also meant that I took a photograph or the car that was parked (illegally) on the pavement and suspiciously near the broken post.  The photograph (now printed out ready for the city hall to act on) also shows the number place with remarkable clarity.

While I was taking the photographs relying on the anti-shake setting of the camera to compensate for my towering fury someone not a million miles from being a neighbour asked, with consummate cheek if we were taking photographs of her illegally parked car!

Toni responded that we were taking photographs of the post and did she know anything about that?  To which her reply was, “Oh, OK.”  My Lord, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, I ask you, was that a reasonable response, or did it betoken some form of guilt?  I ask for the ultimate penalty the law can impose – and I won’t write what I was going to write, but it did have something to do with the end results of dogs’ ingestion.  So to speak.

I have now had a total of eight of the forty-two fearsomely serious looking and virulently coloured antibiotics that I have been prescribed.  Although Toni says that the improvements to my leg are clearly visible, I am not so jocose but am prepared to give it until the end of the weekend for me to be convinced that something is really working.

The weather has been noticeably cooler this evening, though only by a couple of degrees or so – the windows are still open and I am praying that this unnatural autumn will continue for as long as possible!

We have bought another printer to replace the broken one and have decided to keep it downstairs.  It prints photos, in colour, copies and has a little screen to preview things etc and it cost €49 – just over forty quid.  The printer manufacturers of course make their money on the ink; the cost of replacement cartridges is more than the cost of a new machine; the cartridges in a new machine are of course not fully filled.  Oh the cunning swine!

The course has begun!

Having taken my first “allsorts” selection of drugs first thing in the morning, I am beginning to wonder if the cure is going to be worse than the illness.  I have convinced myself that the swelling in the lower leg has gone down a little but the general feeling of unwellness has increased since the drugs hit my unprepared stomach.

The prospect of another two weeks of feeling like shit is not an alluring one and, because I look well even when I am not, I cannot relax into a comforting wash of sympathy from colleagues!  It’s a hard old life.

John Wilkins has written to me informing me that an old college lecturer and tutor of mine was giving a talk to his local chapel group following the publication of his latest book.  M Wynn Thomas “In the Shadow of the Pulpit” - Literature and Nonconformist Wales has been described as “anecdotal” and “an easy read” as well as “authoritative” and “exhaustive”.  I remember Wynn as a frighteningly knowledgeable lecturer and an intimidatingly responsive tutor.  The things that he saw in books I would have given my eye-teeth to have discovered by myself before he made his insights blindingly obvious!  A good man and I must go to Amazon and buy his book!

The rest of the day was just about as bad as the start with my missing lunch yet again and relying on my appetite returning with the evening.  Which it did and I made a sort of broth with a chicken leg and numerous fresh vegetables to give a lining to my stomach to prepare it for the receipt of the next antibiotic!

I enjoyed the meal as far as my jaded appetite allowed and I think that the pill is now safely embedded and doing its work.  I have to admit that it really does feel as though there is a battle going on in my leg as the antibiotic forces for good get down to destroying the bad.  Toni tells me that the swelling looks less and I confidently expect the weekend to be better than the last two and I further expect to feel some real progress.

As the pupils have now been back in school for somewhat under a month the examination season will start on Monday!  One wag in our department suggested that the kids should be tested on what they did on their holidays, which would have just as much educational relevance as what they have been taught so far!

The one advantage of teaching the number of “credits” that I do is that they are not examined in the frenetic way that the EAFL elements are.  Thank God!  This means that I miss out on the seconds, fourths and first year sixth – though I have classes in all those years, classes with a bewildering variety of titles and a depressing amount of marking.

My colleagues in Britain will, at this trying time of the year, be looking forward with growing impatience to the slowly approaching half-term holiday of a week’s glorious freedom.  We have nothing like that to anticipate with only the odd day to keep us going until some horrifically late time in the year before we can make our escape.

Now, given the microclimate of chemical antagonism at present dominating in my body, is probably not the right and proper time to think about just how long there is in teaching terms before release.

Let me instead dwell on the wonders of a regularly occurring weekend which allows some semblance of sanity to obtain! 

A conclusion of sorts

Another beautiful day in which I feel too lethargically distant to take much pleasure in it.  I would consider that I am working at about 20%, though it is possible to boost this when I am in front of a class.  Sad but true.

Anyway a far more pressing problem is how to get the downloaded music from the i-store on to a disc so that I can play it in the car and thereby get to the know the music well enough not to think about how much I am paying for the privilege of sitting in a subsidized seat in the Liceu.

When Clarrie was working in WNO and I got to see what I wanted, including rehearsals it was a wonderful way of learning new operas.  It was a full dress rehearsal of The Makroplous Case that started my “stalking” of the WNO productions of the opera with the result that it is the opera I have seen most in my life.  I am sure that there are few opera fans who can say that!

There are some operas that I have seen once and that was enough: Tristan and Isolde (I know that the liebestod is wonderful but the rest of that turgid opera leaves me cold, like most of the paintings of Poussin; you admire the work but are less than impressed with the final result); “The Beach of Falesa” by the always dependably awful Alun Hoddinott; “The Making of the Representation of Planet 8” which was such a bitter disappointment after my delirious reception of a half heard and half recorded performance on Radio 3 of “Akhenaten.” 

There are others that heard once just makes you want to hear them again.  Top of that particular list is, of course, “Four Saints in Three Acts” which, when I heard it in the Coliseum reduced me to tears.  Tears which were quickly staunched when, turning to the lady on the left I said, “Wasn’t that wonderful!” to which she promptly replied, “No!”  Peasant!  “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” was a wonderful experience and, as I know the opera a little better now I would love to revisit.  But the opera I would most like (after “4 Sts.” - obviously!) to see again is “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” ideally with a cloned version of Marlene singing the Alabama Song.  Ah, if only!

But I have quite enough learning to do for the forthcoming season without indulging in fantasies about what might be.  I have, among others, Ligetti, Donizetti, Semlinsky, Vicent Martin i Soler, Debussy and Francesco Cilea: a hefty load!

An early bedtime last night after a lengthy sermon from Toni’s mum about what I should be eating and a diatribe against the consumption of cheese.  As Toni loathes cheese this was greeted, as you can imagine, with gleeful receptiveness and he barely contained a cheer as his mother urged me to throw the contents of the cheese box into the bin!

The doctor today was encouraging (in English) [I suppose] and informed me that my two weeks of feeling completely rubbish were a result of an skin infection on my left leg and nothing whatsoever to do with any suspect food.  I was roundly told off for not going to him sooner and the tedious pattern of Nurse visiting (“At you age you must have the flu jab!”) and blood tests before they decide whether or not to change my medication. 

Meanwhile my daily tablet intake has been boosted with a fourteen-day course of antibiotics. 

The doctor’s routine question about allergies elicited an exasperated response from him when I, just as routinely trotted out the family legend that I am, of course, allergic to the major breakthrough in antibiotics for the last two millennia: penicillin. 

This produced hurried consultations of books and colleagues (something guaranteed to lower patient confidence – but at least he didn’t guess the alternative) and an eventual new list of my drug intake.  The antibiotic has been augmented by some sort of diuretic pill that seems to be having no effect whatsoever. 

I am relieved that there is some sort of diagnosis and I shall expect my pills to work within a day or two.  Even though a two-week (one three times a day) stint of antibiotics is longer and more serious than I expected.

The new regime of offensively healthy eating started (and probably finished) this evening with a melange of vegetables and barrage of complaints from the carnivore!

I only seem to have an appetite at night at the moment.  I wonder if that makes me sound alluringly vampiric! 

Perhaps not.

And music shall untune the sky!

I am at last getting down to my Opera homework for my first visit to the Liceu late in October with a performance of Schumann’s “Scenes from Goethe’s Faust” – a piece about which I know nothing.

Well, I have read bits of Goethe’s Faust in the Penguin translation, but I have not ploughed my way through all of it.  Thank god for the Internet.

I am now the proud possessor of a download to which I am listening.  I’m not sure that one should say this about a highpoint of Romanticism with Death and Transfiguration but it does sound like thoroughly good fun.  At the moment for instance I am listening a very jolly piece of Pater Seraphicus with a chorus of Blessed Boys, and I haven’t reached the chorus of Angels (and Younger Angels) and indeed The More Perfect Angels.  The music is absolutely glorious and disgracefully easy to listen to.  I am already looking forward the live performance!

The music is fairly monumental with a large number of soloists singing at the limits of their vocal ranges and various choirs of ethereal personages accompanied by a more than full orchestra.  The Naxos version that I have purchased is full of punch with excellent musicians.  I think that the Liceu is going to be hard pressed to match it.

I wonder if this is one of those performances that I can tick off in the i-spy book of Rarely Performed Pieces?  If it is, then all I can say is that from a first listening it deserves to be more widely known.

The Lamp is now filled after a positive hoovering of the beach of Castelldefels by Toni’s mum over a period of four hours when she returned with masses of pieces of glass.  The lamp is filled with hand picked sea glass and the multi-coloured bulb inside is startlingly effective.  We are already planning the second – though I think that we will have to refine our techniques and make the constructions a little more cost effective.  Perhaps we should only make them to order!  If only!

I will have to take some photographs of the coloured effects – that should stimulate demand!

I am still not right and I didn’t eat anything during the day today but was tempted to partake of Toni’s Mum’s tortilla: there is not feeling well and being stupid and TM’s tortilla is not something to thrust aside lightly!  I have made another appointment to the doctor and this time it is in school time: the new regime has started!

With a cruel irony the first available appointment was for Thursday at 11.20am - a time when I will be able to go into school for the first two lessons which start at 8.15am, come back to Castelldefels for my appointment and, in theory if the appointment is on time and quick I can be back in school without missing a single teaching period!  Even when I decide to be selfish, it works against me!  


There must be a sort of Teachers’ Fate reserved especially for me!