When you get up normally
at half past six there is something quite wonderful about waking up at five in
the morning. One can return to one’s bed
knowing that there is an hour and a half of musing, self-indulgent,
semi-dreaming left before the horrible reality of joining the mad road race to
Barcelona.
In theory I could
get up much later: in practice that would mean that I would be late each day
and not be able to find a parking space.
One has to balance all, bring all to mind and eventually set off in the
dark!
We are getting
ever nearer to the disgrace of a meeting on a Saturday morning. During the course of last year the appalling
scheduled meetings for Saturdays were changed to (wait for it) Friday
evenings! I keep thinking of the UK and
the response from teachers if any management team even vaguely considered let
alone attempted such pedagogically unfriendly scheduling! The nearer we get to the Black Saturday Meeting
with no announcement telling staff that it was only a joke and of course we
will not be meeting on such a silly day, the darker my mood gets.
I have been to one
such meeting and I was amazed at the easy camaraderie that my colleagues
evinced during such an intolerable imposition on their sacred free time. Some of them even laughed and joked! I found such unprofessional behaviour
repugnant. I dressed in my most casual
clothes and kept a stony expression on my face that degenerated into fury when
colleagues engaged in idle, gossipy, chit-chat taking up valuable breathing
time during my sacrosanct weekend.
I stomped away at
the end of the meeting vowing that I would never, ever go to another.
So much for
vows! I might huff and puff but when
push comes to shove I kowtow just like everyone else. I make up for defeat by clearly visible bad
grace: I don’t really do low profile.
Sometimes the
resolute acceptance by teachers of near-intolerable impositions makes me proud
to be a member of the profession; at most other times I grind my teeth in
impotent fury at the fawning acquiescence that my colleagues display. Anything other than foaming rage at futile
meetings on a Saturday morning gets the latter reaction from me.
The Scumbags have
gone – though I am very wary of their future intentions. The next few weekends should show whether
they are going to follow the pattern of the last few years or strike out on a
new path and make our continued residence in our house impossible.
At the moment, as
well as the usual horrors attendant on moving house, Toni’s bad leg makes it
even more problematic.
As I have stated
before, the last move was the last time that I take such an active part in the
affair. I think that I am just about prepared
to pack boxes, but I am not, repeat not prepared to move them – especially up
and down stairs. Unpacking is horrendous
as well and that is as far as I am prepared to go.
If nothing else it
will give us a real opportunity to downsize on all those possessions which
stick to us like iron filings to a magnet.
We shall (to continue the simile) have to hit the magnet hard to make
its lose some of its attractiveness and disperse the filings elsewhere.
I must admit that
the idea of downsizing in any real sense is more of a theoretical than a real
path that I will follow, though it would be interesting to see me try
especially with my own in-house Savonarola urging me to put everything
(especially books) into the Bonfire of the Vanities!
I am, partially,
convinced by such a Draconian approach to mere “things” (books obviously
excluded) and in particular a particularly stubborn cupboard which seems to
accrete kitchen “things” to the point of bursting and then refuse to disengorge
them.
That cupboard is
an impenetrable three-dimensional jigsaw that probably has a temporal anomaly
in the centre. No one knows, because no
one has been able to penetrate that far.
I know that somewhere in the morass lurks a multifaceted mixer Shelob-like
keeping around herself a whole load of cases, implements, things of plastic
whose use is known only to god, and the like.
I have often contemplated attacking this useless piece of unusable and
highly filled dead space, but have drawn back fearfully at the immensity of the
task.
Every house has
one such filled space: we have many for they are legion!
As far as I can
see our removal can only be positivized (ugh!) by this single element of putative
clearing so I pray that The Scumbags become quiescent and only start irritating
us at the much more normal time of late May.
I will soon have
to leave the safe confines of the staff room and wing the desolate abyss to the
hall where (god help us) a concert of Scottish music by students from a
Scottish Academy are performing for the upper end of the Primary and the lower
end of Secondary. I have a vivid and
morbid fear of the bagpipes and I fear that I am about to be assailed.
Ah well, having
recently seen film of the D-Day Landings I know that there are worse things
that a body could meet!
The second half of
the concert that I had to attend was just the sort of middle-brow programme
that one would have expected from the happy-clappy suit wearing teacher
choirmaster. The soloists I saw had
upper register frighteningly exposed pieces to sing and, in spite of obvious
nerves, they did very well.
The same could not be said for the tenors and
pseudo-basses; if they had been anywhere near the bonny banks about which they
were singing the fish would have flung themselves into the Irish Sea forthwith
or possibly the North Sea to escape, possibly travelling overland to escape the
song-shout that the men of the choir created!
The most
disreputable looking character was an over-grown gormless sixth former or
under-grown nerdish teacher who was sporting the kilt. There are some people for whom the kilt is
not: he was one of them. The knees, my
dear, the knees!
The more than
creditable concert ended, perhaps inevitably, with a portion of the choir (all
the ones who couldn’t sing) sloping off and reappearing with knees akimbo and
dead animals’ innards under arms and three drummers. They were very loud.
The highlight was
a young drummer called Andrew (he was the only person to be named by the head
of the Scottish Academy) for whom the kilt definitely was (and he knew it)
giving a tour de force of something called a “drum fanfare” all stick hitting
and twirling and putting drumsticks under his arm and retrieving them in a most
bravado and pointlessly adroit fashion and then soaking up the adoring
adulation in a way that no other performer did.
And he had a positive smirk on his face.
Though he did steal the show, so that was alight!
When I came home I
found that only a minority of the letters filling the post box were actually
for me. Some of the others were clearly
addressed to other addresses, while two cards from Britain and the notification
of the non-delivery (!) of a package were correctly addressed but Gulia
(complete with exotic surname) simply doesn’t live here! I am not sure what to do with these
missives. In the UK, I could put them
back in the post box with “Not at this address” on them, but here? Who knows?
I have done my
public duty with some of the others and placed them firmly in what turned out
to be another wrong address – but they are nearer to where they should be! I think.
One of the
more-or-less correctly addressed letters was from the national census office
urging me to go on line and register the household and presumably change the
address just to show that we had been taking notice. I have tricked Toni into taking on the task
of filling out the form and he is rapidly becoming less than enamoured with the
process as streams of questions keep appearing.
There were, of course, various threats and mentions of laws that made
the non-completion of the form a major crime, so there is an incentive for him
to keep going to get the thing off our electronic hands.
My “learning” of
Schumann’s “Scenes from Faust” is taking longer that I would have expected
given the general jolly nature of the music.
Perhaps I need one of those pocket scores to help me along. I wonder if there is a web site on which I
can get such things for nothing, as I do not fancy paying the inflated prices
that I know these things demand. I am
sure that there must be and app. for the iPad which would suit me down to the
ground!
I mustn’t start
thinking like that. That way lays
madness and penury. Though I did find a
complete score on line and it would, indeed lend itself to being seen on an
iPad.
It would be
wonderfully naff to admit that I was forced to buy an iPad because it was the
only inexpensive way I knew to view scores that I needed to get to know for the
operas that I was seeing that season!
I have almost
convinced myself!
Culture is a
terrible thing!
We got back in good time and it was only
then that my frantic search for me keys revealed their lack. My friend the secretary, fellow survivor of
The School That Sacked Me and lover of penguins was typically phlegmatic about
my loss, worked out where they might be, phoned and – there they were! A calm end to a fairly frantic day.
