It is colder

I am visibly weakening about my determination to reject coats of any sort in my desperate attempt to “keep summer going” in my one-man campaign to ignore autumn.

My cough is telling me that things are not entirely well with this approach and the glum day rapidly degenerated into that weather of which wind-borne drizzle is the major component. 

Today was, of course the day when I traipse from building 1 to building 4 and back again getting progressively wetter with the insidious, targeted micro raindrops gently soaking me as I made my grumpy way along to give one resentful lesson after another!

It is bad enough that it is a Monday without that “soft” weather that the Irish speak of.  Everybody was in a generally depressed mood and into this atmosphere of negativity yet another meeting after school was announced.  IN a 40 hours week that we are in the bloody place it says absolutely nothing for the consideration of the management that they have to impose on our free time for a further hour.  This will be shortly after our notorious Saturday morning meeting - about which I cannot find words vitriolic enough to express the correct level of condemnation for such an unnatural, pointless, unprofessional and perverse activity.

On a more positive level talks are taking place about when to hold our Chocolate Week.  The general consensus is that the suicide days of early February would be the most appropriate time where the deep frivolity of our Chocolate Week could be just the thing to keep us from succumbing to the depression that distant June evokes in a typical teacher in the short dark days of the early months of the year!

Amazon is hounding me with blandishments of various sorts including art books which are difficult to resist.  I think that I will attempt to get the school to buy some of them because the computer in the room that I use to teach the history of art constantly has difficulties linking to the Internet and is therefore useless for my purposes.

And now to bed.  An early night to escape the dampness in warm oblivion! 

Paintings, provender and play!

The idea of the weekend is as balm to my weary soul; even if the reality is not always as comforting as it should be.

This weekend I will venture into the city to refresh my jaded cultural appetite with an exhibition in a small gallery in the old part of Barcelona.  This purports to be an exhibition on the Golden Age of Catalan Art and from a visit to the site of the gallery it looks to have some real quality among the twenty paintings that make up the exhibition – and what a civilized number of art works to look at!

The real intention behind going to the exhibition is to get a meal in MNAC (of which I am a friend) and gaze out at the astonishingly unimpressive view over the city of Barcelona through the windows which stretch from floor to vaulted ceiling in the dining room of the restaurant.  The seats by the windows themselves have to be reserved so you miss out on the interesting bits of the view by being forced to sit by the opposite wall.  Never mind the food is good and worth the large sum of money for the menu del dia.  And, I might add, the menu comes with water or a soft drink: no wine!

The exhibition, in a small gallery tucked away in one of the winding streets in the old part of Barcelona was full of people who looked as though they could afford the paintings on display.  I must admit that I had thought that many of the paintings on display were of names which you would not necessarily find in a commercial gallery, one would expect to see the paintings in public collections.

One small diversion was to the bookshop that has taken over the premises of PC City and I picked up the volumes that I had left there the last time I had called in.  Which was also the first time.  I was able to use the card that they gave me on my last visit, which I now realize was an opening offer, and got some money off the two books I bought.  Both of them were art books and both are in Spanish so I can pretend to myself that there are necessary for the development of my understanding of the language. 

They both have a dictionary format with the entries illustrated by classic works of art.  The first is a dictionary of Saints and the second of literary characters.  I did, of course, look up Saint Stephen first, before I realized that by looking under “S” I was forgetting which language the book was written in! 

They are both excellent, and I now I know of other artists who have painted Ophelia other than Millais.  (In case you are wondering they include, John William Waterhouse, Henri Gerveux, Alberto Martini, Eugene Delacroix and Felice Carena – the odd Italians might have something to do with where this collection of books was first published, in Milan.

Before we got to the gallery we called into a Basque bar and had one tapa and a very small glass of Basque wine.  They were both delicious but at the price that they charged it was the last visit that we will make!

Although the names of the artists in the exhibition might not be familiar to those outside Catalonia, painters like Mir, Urgell, Nonell, Gimeno, Meifrèn and above all Cassas are staples in major public galleries in this area.  Unfortunately I did not have the eighty thousand euros to purchase a small study by Cassas and anyway it had already been bought!  Crisis?  What crisis!

We took the underground to MNAC – or at least to Plaza de España and began the long hike via street and escalator to the museum itself.

The meal was just the sort of poncy food that I love and served in such an impressive setting and with excellent company it was ideal.

Although we did not “do” an exhibition while we were in the museum we did (fatally) go into the bookshop where I found a book that I have been looking for. 

I have been searching for a general description of the artists who figured in the exhibition we had just visited in the small gallery in the city and lo and behold the bookshop had what looked like a newish publication entitled “Modernisme in the MNAC collections” with essays by Mercè Doñate, Mariàngels Fondevila, Cristina Mendoza and Francesc Qiílez i Corella.

And it was in English!

It is an excellent book, lavishly illustrated and with informative essays on Painting, Drawings, Decorative Art, Sculpture and Posters, Prints and Bookplates.  It was reasonably price for a hardback at €20 and the only drawback I can see is that the translation by Andrew Langdon-Davies makes for an uneasy read. 

I am sure that it is a faithful translation from the Spanish or Catalan, but that does not always produce the most convincing English!  Having done a tiny, heavily guided amount of translation I can vouch for the fact that a good English translation sometimes deviates quite substantially from the original - and one hopes that people do not take the time to check one against the original!

But the overview of the artistic activity at this time, roughly from 1890 to 1911, is one of the best that I have found and it allows me to make links in a surer way than I have been able to previously.  I read the book last night with the same enthusiasm that I usually reserve for a gripping novel!  And remember there were lots of pictures!

Sunday has dawned grimly and we have had a short but torrential downpour that has now degenerated into a sulky drizzle.  The west, however, looks bright and I shall preserve my optimism about a day rarely passing in this part of the world without a brave show of sunshine at some time during its daylight hours.

So, on with the reading!

Thrills and Spills

Going on the experience of this morning’s journey to work, today must be National Bad Driving Day in Catalonia.  The almost comical awfulness of the motoring skills on graphic display was awe-inspiring.

I blame fairgrounds.  The trills and spill of the rides in a typical fairground obviously foster those desires outside the gaudy boundaries of those licenced (though probably unsafe) night-time areas of revelry.

And the biggest culprit in the development of inconsideration is of course the dodgem. 

Riding in a fun little vehicle, with rubber bumpers all around and a limited space in which to operate and at a low speed gives susceptible drivers a cheap thrill which they translate to real roads as soon as possible. 

They know that “bumping,” adds zest and excitement to the drive in the fairground, so why not try it out in “real” life?  After all what can happen?  A little bump, a stimulating jolt and a hearty laugh!

Death and serious injury obviously plays no part in the possible outcomes and so my journey to work is made a total delight by the “immortals” driving on the same motorway with me.

It Britain the crash on the M5 in which seven people were tragically killed has made news headlines and it going to be the subject of an official inquiry.  IN this country the number of deaths on the road would prompt questions in parliament on a daily basis.  Yet people do not seem to link the way they drive with the number of deaths and serious injuries that result from this cavalier attitude to driving.  The Generalitat has taken to using the information gantries over the motorway to inform drivers in Catalan and Castilian of the total number of deaths and injuries since the beginning of the year.  It has no effect whatsoever.  None.

The only positive result from this constant spectacle of suicidal motoring is that I no longer scream abuse at the people trying to kill me.  I have not reached the stage of chuckling amusement with the slight raising of eyebrows, but my Latin shrug of the shoulders is developing nicely!

I have just done a panicky bit of marking and then discovered that the class was an hour later than I thought.  I now have “gained” time, which I shall use to read my art book as a pointed rejection of the tedious grammar and vocabulary that I have to plough through for the hapless kids who learn our impossible language!

The first report back from the trip to Lisbon informed us that one of the pupils had left her coat on the plane – far less worrying than a MacBook Air, but there again things come back to me!

One lesson to go but, as is the case three times a week that is with the third form and it is the last period of the day.  This timetable is not a pleasant one.

I have now been swimming twice this week after school and I feel the warm glow of self-congratulation which comes with the taking of exercise – no matter how little.  Apart from the fact that there are other people in the pool, and specifically in my lane, when I am swimming I am enjoying it.  My idea of perfection is a completely empty swimming pool in which I am the first to drive and thus break the glassy surface into a myriad of shimmering waves.

Having said that my entrance into the water yesterday was the apogee of inelegance.  My excuse was that a stick thin creature had got into the cramped lane before I made my grand entrance and therefore limited the grace that accompanied my stumbling fall into the water.  And the water went up my nose!  Such humiliation.  So to compensate I swam at her heels making sure that she realized that she was impeding my imperial progress as I carved my way through the water!

My goggles are less than watertight and, even though they are Speedo and therefore expensive they will be consigned to the bin and I will go through the multitude of pairs lying around the house.  It is no easy thing to find a pair that suit.  All I ask is that they keep out the water.  Given my eyesight being able to see through the inevitable fog is hardly of any importance as, even with crystalline lenses the only show the myopic blurs with more clarity – if that makes any sense.

At one time I did have a pair of prescription lenses but they have long gone and an off the shelf pair have rotted with age.  At least it will give me an excuse to go shopping again and wonder at the range and the breath-taking expense of what no one other than a “professional” swimmer representing the country at the highest level would have dreamed of wearing when I was a child!

But at the same time what adult male would have been seen squirting after-shave or eau de toilette on himself after a swim in a public changing room?  Times have changed!

Too much water!

Yesterday it had been raining solidly for over 24 hours when I looked out of the window in the early evening.  The sharp susurration of the rain drops was punctuated by a varying arrangement of more percussive drips from god knows what overhang on the house.  There was regularity from one source for a few minutes and then another location took over so that we got the full stereophonic effect of being surrounded by water in one form or another.  It was like being in some old-fashioned clock maker’s shop with all the ponderous grandfather clocks ticking out their varying take on the time.  At one moment the drips were playing some complicated syncopated rhythm given visual form by a surprisingly large number of magpies which seem to relish flying in ragged formations around the house in this less than clement weather. 

 

“Good morning Mr Magpie, how’s your wife!”  It may be superstition, but that phrase and the touching of something made of leather is a small price to pay for the averting of the evil eye!  And why would birds of ill omen be flying in that atrocious weather if not to tempt the injudicious to omit the necessary forms of superstitious safety though irritation at the adverse climatic conditions.

I regard weather like this at the weekend as a day stolen from me and the pairs of magpies as a supernatural laugh at my expense!  My intellect is becoming damp with the rain.  To say nothing about what it is doing to my multi-level cactus garden!

When the day is dull and damp there is a concomitant sluggishness about the whole approach to life and things planned remain at the planning stage and progress no further.

The only time I ventured out of the house on Sunday was when I went for the chicken and that miserable experience was only lightened by the fact that the driving rain kept the queue down so that I got the food in record time!

Rain is, however, conducive to reading.  Though what sort of reading is questionable.

I do not think that it is solely meanness that keeps me from purchasing electronic books – I certainly have no problem whatsoever in purchasing the means to read them!  I am rapidly beginning to fill up a shelf which contains nothing but various forms of electronic book.  I seem to be developing the same approach to these increasingly sophisticated devices as I continue to have with the camera in all its forms!

And on each one of these devices I download free books.  At the beginning I downloaded everything that I could no matter how remote the chance of my reading some of these was.  Classic after unreadable out of copyright Classic began to fill the disc space on the device.  I convinced myself that there might come a time when perhaps stranded in a doctor’s waiting room and waiting for an appointment, the reading of Sophocles or Aristotle or Hegel or Kant might seem like a good idea.  Though even then I doubted it.  But free books are free books and who can resist them.  Not I for one.

My telephone seems to draw on a library which is far more modern, but of much more questionable quality.  I have downloaded a quantity of science fiction which had its first publication in the pulp pages of Astounding Science Fiction.  I know that some of the greatest of the exponents of the art had many outings in the pages of that august periodical, but many of the writers justify the “pulp” designation for the literary worth of their productions.  Not that such a judgement affects my gobbling up of such stories.  I keep telling myself that even if the story lacks literary merit, there is often a central idea in sci-fi stories that is worth pondering.

On my phone I am reading a hallucinogenic series of stories called The Ant King and other stories by Benjamin Rosembaum whose free flowing imagination seems oddly suited to the gobbet approach of limited page size on the screen of the phone.  The easy way to approach his stories is to characterize them all as Surrealistic, but I think that they are a little more literary and a damn sight more contrived than that designation would suggest.  I am, within limits, enjoying them.  And they certainly have come in useful when I have been waiting - or trying to ignore what is going on around me!

Monday has dragged its tedious way along and I am waiting to take my final class in the final period of the day.  I am actually waiting more for it to be over so that I can affirm my old faith in the medicinal and restorative power of swimming.

I have (a long time ago) purchased a new multi-coloured swim bag that refuses to be ignored when lying in the maelstrom of junk which lurks in my boot.  I am relying on its obviousness to act as a vivid reminder to keep me on the straight and narrow, which in this case is the roped of lane of a swimming pool.

The negative element in this approach is that the swimming pool is not directly on my route home.  Not is it not direct, it is positively out of my way.  I have to make a special effort to get there, park, change and swim.  How easy was it in Cardiff to let the car go its own way and take me to the David Lloyd Centre (that energetic haven of the middle classes) while I debated within myself whether or not I actually wanted to go there.  Too often I was still continuing the debate while the car parked itself outside the centre!  Once there, it was foolish not to swim and swimming, after all, I like.

I am determined to get back into the habit of a daily swim and I am sure that not only will it do me good, but I will enjoy it too.  Probably.

Celebration and Relaxation

I think that we have had our year’s allocation of rain given the torrential downpour that we went through yesterday.  It made driving home even more of a delight as lunatics ploughed through the standing water on the roads and made driving just that little bit more exciting as one’s view of the road was obliterated by sheets of water.

Although traffic was heavy going to Terrassa for the joint name day it did keep moving and so my exasperation was kept within check.  Just.

The main element in the celebratory meal was a gigantic five-foot long baguette which changed filling half way along its monstrous length.  There was also the largest croissant that I have ever seen in my life which was filled with sobrasada – which is the raw, cured sausage with paprika that is a speciality of Majorca.  The Cava was rosé, but still tasted good.  The kids were still impossibly full of energy and, as I can never resist whipping them up into frenzies, I was soon as drained as they were hyper!

The trip back was generally better on emptier roads but as soon as my feet touched home turf the exhaustion of the day came back in spades and I retired to a bed of blissful unconsciousness.

The best that can be said about the weather this morning is that it is not raining.  As is usual at times of climatic depression I will pay a visit to MediaMarkt to fortify my sunless soul with a gadget or two!

I am now the proud possessor of two insubstantial yet frustratingly expensive pieces of kit – which I have discovered I could have got much cheaper if I had bought them on Amazon.  Though postage does bring the price up absurdly.

My delayed birthday present is now up and running.  This is a hard disc of 1T which is able to be linked to computers and television and record programmes and photographs and god knows what else.  In theory it is supposed to release memory elsewhere on my computers because they are getting clogged up with documents and pictures that I do not use on a regular basis.  This is the theory; I have a feeling that the practice will be a little different.

Toni has of course, got it up and running and he has already recorded one of his DIY programmes on it.  And that worked.  I have downloaded a few photos and that appears to have worked as well.  So far, so good.

Lunch was unspectacular but good value with the food being washed down with Toni’s favourite fizzy Italian pink!  The restaurant that we go to on a Saturday must be the only place in the world where Lambrusco is treated as an exotic , quality drink and it gets its own, coveted wine cooler!  Though I have to say that About.com calls it “a vastly under-rated wine” – each to his own.

The most astonishing thing about today has been the purchase of Strepsils for Toni’s sore throat at €5.20 a packet I hope that they have a damn sight more active ingredients than their cheaper British equivalents!

Our evening’s entertainment was watching “Up” the animated film of an old man uprooting his house with helium balloons and being wafted (with boy scout on board) to South America to fulfil a long held promise made to his dead wife.  It is an excellent film and the short section of animation which covers the growing up of the young boy seen at the beginning of the film into the old man who is the hero of most of the film is one of the most economical and masterly pieces of compressed narration that I have ever seen.  Wordless, it covers marriage, married life, pregnancy, and death of a child and death of the wife in a moving but unsentimental way; and it’s a cartoon.  Brilliant.

The weekend is whizzing away and Monday is looming.  And if you are saying that on a Saturday evening then that is telling you something about the experience of work that you are expecting!

Drinking my tea in a staff room where everybody, apart from the IT technician, is stuck in front of a computer tapping away with the desperation which characterises a morning in this place, I am able to contemplate the fact that my thirteen hour (plus) day in school has just started.

The marathon begins with an examination for my 2BXT and ends with a Certificate Ceremony when the successful candidates in the EFL examinations last term finally get the piece of paper which proves that they have passed.

In past years we have had a speech from some public person to mark the occasion and they have generally been mercifully brief.  There might be some sort of reception at the end of the ceremony which I, of course spurn as I rush towards my car to make my escape.

I suppose that one good thing about staying on after the end of school is that I will be able to mark the examinations which were taken this morning.  And the fact that I can look on that as an advantage just shows how far I have sunk!

The pupils are now taking the exam and I am taking a chance in typing because this means that my full attention is not given to these characters who, it has to be admitted have years of experience of cheating to get their decent marks.  OK, I can touch type and therefore my eyes are constantly roaming over the bowed heads of the pupils as they vainly search for the meaning of the words that we have been studying, but I am trusting them to give this their best shot and not rely on notes secreted about their persons or hidden in the depths of their pencil cases.  We shall see!

Tomorrow is the start of the new swimming regime where I will go to the pool at the end of each day.  My card is up to date and this evening, when I eventually get back from school, I will repack my swim bag so that I am ready to enjoy a swim on my early departure from school on Friday.

As is usual for teachers who have a partial week to teach, the days off seem to intensify the stress in the days remaining so at the end of yesterday all my colleagues looked shattered and even the Nirvana of Friday seems distant and unreal.  Someone should (they probably have) done research on the DLS (Days Left Syndrome) and why it is so much more stressful than an ordinary week.

Just to test the theory we have Stupid Week in December where we have Monday and Tuesday off then we come in to school of Wednesday then we have Thursday off and we come back in for Friday.  If that doesn’t make stress go off the scale then nothing will.  I am hoping (probably vainly) that pupils will take the clear hint and go off with their parents for a week’s holiday and leave us in peace.

However, given the unholy zeal with which parents throw their children into school to get shot of them on every available opportunity (Why do they procreate if they don’t like the product?) I expect that we will have a depressingly large percentage of the kids traipsing in on the two days when they can come, being ejected with unnatural glee from the people carriers that bring them to school by parents who have started to remember what the summer holidays were like!

It is now truly autumn, but the weather, although cloudy is still quite warm.  Indeed yesterday it was “close” - the only word to describe weather which was cool yet sweatily unpleasant at the same time!

Tomorrow we are going to Terrassa for a double name day.  The presents are in the car already - an altogether unnatural piece of planning.

My teaching day is over and now I have the tedium of waiting for the ceremony to take place at 7 pm.  In a bout of enthusiasm I completed my marking for the examination this morning consequently I have a three-hour stretch to look forward to before the further tedium of the ceremony takes place.  Ah well, it’s better than teaching.

Home at last after a relatively short certificate ceremony in which two of my Proficiency students turned up to get their pieces of paper; big hugs all round!  The Spanish are a much more tactile people than we staid Brits.

I am at that stage of tiredness where only a long hot bath will bring me back to some sort of reality!

Changing Times

Driving into school today was a nightmare with the traffic jam (for no apparent reason) stretching for well over a mile.  School itself smells fragrantly of raw sewerage as the torrential rains have flooded something or other resulting in the roads being covered with stones and mud and the smell of shit over everything.

Nothing has been done to cover the absence of a colleague who has had a terrible bereavement and other people appear to be away.  There is a barely repressed sense of panic as the school staggers on only with the underpaid help of the teachers who are actually here.

OK, it’s not a normal day, but it does make you wonder, apart from the derisory pay, why, exactly I am here.  Although the staff is fine (if supine) the atmosphere is frenetic with a relentless emphasis on action and doing.  This is intensified by the moronic insistence on examining everything at all times.  A typical pupil in our school is one who wanders about with sheaves of paper in hand staring vaguely into space as he tries to commit to memory another mass of facts that have to be forced into the soggy mass where his brains used to be.  And be as soon forgotten as they dry out!

It comes to something when a major topic of conversation in my house is whether or not a Barça footballer is having a house built near us!  A corner plot one road up from us has been cleared and a plate glass and concrete construction has risen from the massive hole that they dug in the sand (all the houses in this area are built on sand) and is almost ready for occupation.

The key factor in the assumption about the next owner is the fact that the new swimming pool (clearly visible thanks to the low level fence around the property) has a mosaic picture of the Barça badge on the bottom.  Ergo, it is owned and being built by a Barça footballer.  My suggestion of a Barça supporter as being the likely owner was dismissed, as it is general knowledge that said famous footballer is having a new house built in Gavà – the town from which he hails.  In vain did I point out that the new build they were talking about was in Castelldefels.

To be fair, we do live on the very edge of Castelldefels: the end of our street is the end of the town.  Although there is absolutely nothing to indicate that this is so, careful study of the road nameplates on each street corner indicate that we merge seamlessly into Gavà.  It is a moot point whether or not the new build is actually in Gavà or Castelldefels.  As far as I am concerned it is definitely in Castelldefels and anyway, the whole build is far too open for a privacy-seeking footballer and, more importantly, I do not think it has a clear view of the sea.  What football player is going to live in a multi-million pound new house in a seaside resort with no view of the sea!

This discussion is displacement activity to stop my mind from dwelling on the morrow and the classes therein.

And the Certificate Ceremony which starts at 7 pm and is therefore too close to the end of school to make it worth my while going home and returning to school.  So tomorrow I will be in school for over twelve (count ‘em) hours.  Thinking too much about that leads to madness.  Better to concentrate on the fact that the weekend is near.

In a disturbing sign of disaffection I have cursorily worked out the number of weeks left in the year and I have started deducting holidays and the all too few saints’ days and odd holidays to try and make the number of weeks less horrific.

It is when I start working out the exact number of days that I will have reached the nadir of human hopelessness that for teachers may be in the middle of November or more usually in the grey days of February.  The countdown to the summer holidays starts immediately after the Easter holidays when it is acceptable to count the number of working hours that are left.

I have called into the municipal swimming pool to renew my entry card.  I proffered my bank card to pay for the extension for another year and was stoutly repelled by the counter lady who told me that I would need to give my bank details which are on my bank book rather than the card which is accepted everywhere else.  Why?  Who knows?  I suspect it is simply to remind me that I should never forget that I am in a foreign country!

Now all I need to do is make sure that my swim bag is filled with the paraphernalia to allow me to have a swim.  I can remember a time when that would have been a pair of bathers wrapped up in a towel.  How times have changed!

In the municipal pool you need to have a pair of bath shoes to get you from the changing rooms to the pool; you need to have a swim cap; I also wear goggles and earplugs.  Clothes need to be put in a locker for which you need to purchase a lock and key.  And of course you need an up to date card to get you in.  And soap and shampoo of course.  I can’t remember taking soap with me when I used to take the trolley down to The Empire Pool in the centre of Cardiff.  I certainly did not take the deodorant and aftershave which are normality itself nowadays.  So the swim bag is bursting at the seams with much more than a rolled up towel!

When and how did I become so high maintenance!

And when is the next holiday.