What matters?

On an overcast and humid Monday engaged, as one is, in the travails of education there are many associated problems to tax one: over-reliance on questionable examinations for assessment; an overcrowded curriculum; a ridiculously long teaching day and, most heinously a reduction in pay for teachers!  All these, and more rise up to haunt a normal day.

But these are not things which really tax my patience there are other, much more serious elements in one’s teaching life which cause more angst than the mere fripperies of educational thought and practice.

The first is milk.  We have milk provided by the powers that be so that we can fortify ourselves against the depredations of our clients by a saving cup of tea or, for those of a perverse nature, coffee.  The milk is of the artificial long-life variety and is stored in the cupboard under the coffee machine.  That is, it should be stored there.

On a Monday I park my car outside one building (for a quick getaway at the end of the day) and then walk to the other to compose myself for teaching.  Part of this composition is taking tea and, because I am prepared to rough it by using a common or garden tea bag I temper the rough flavour with a soupçon of milk.  Which, each Monday is not there.  And when I check in the cupboard under the coffee machine is not there either.

The milk storage facility is located deep in the lair of the caretaker which is through a service doorway at the bottom of a flight of stairs.  And every Monday I seem to traipse down and through and come back up with the week’s supply of milk.  Because of the location of the staff room, our milk supply is also the supply for the office staff, the directora and anyone else who arrives of sufficient importance to merit liquid refreshment.

And then there is the photocopier.

Photocopiers have been the bane and the delight of my teaching life in equal quantities.  They give and they certainly take; they build up your hopes and dash them with impunity.

My grouse is with the paper.  Photocopiers have to be fed and, given the number of copies that we make, fed regularly.  I only question the regularity with which I have to get reams of paper and placate the pre-emptory digital demands of the autocratic information panel when one of the multiple paper trays is out of that commodity.  Statistically I am owed a period of paper peace which extends well into the years that I will be retired to make up for the releasing of five hundred sheets after five hundred sheets into the innards of the machines that I have tended through the time that I have been in education!

In the same way I have been to the office to get more paperclips, drawing pins, Sellotape and marker pens than the rules of logic and fairness would suggest that I should.  It is a restatement of that irritating piece of doggerel philosophy about everyone thinking that anyone can do something so it’s somebody else’s responsibility so nobody actually does it.  I know that the original piece of twisted logic is much longer than that with a metaphorical wagging finger punctuating each phrase, but there is a limit to trite wisdom that I can take so its shortened form will have to suffice.

What I am trying to say is that I seem to do more than my fair share of the unimportant but essential semi-tasks that need to be done in a normal school so that things can run smoothly.  Which, of course they do not, which is also part of my moan, because that shows that others are not doing the things that they are ignoring, and I’m buggered if I am going to do more.  So there!

The overcast morning has given way to an intermittently bright and sunny afternoon and certainly one which demands my presence somewhere else other than in school.

We have counted the days remaining and there appear to be just 13 full teaching days before the fiesta at the end of the course which marks with its conclusion the departure of the kids.  The remaining week (pupil free) is something which we can contemplate with a degree of equanimity which Lao Tzu himself might envy - in spite of the fact that it will be filled with frustratingly irrelevant activity!

I continue to swim daily and I also continue to have a lane to myself.  This cannot continue.  At some point I will be confronted with a person in the lane that I want to use and there are no directions for the proper etiquette to be observed when sharing lanes.  In the municipal pool there are little signs indicating that multi-swimmers must adopt an anti-clockwise mode if they are not to incur the wrath of the attendants.  There are no such signs in the pool I am now using so (especially if I am not wearing contact lenses and am therefore practically unsighted) there is plenty of room for social and linguistic confusion.

The taste of the water in the new pool is unique in my experience.  I hope that the distinctive – if difficult to describe – flavour of the water is due entirely to the chemicals added to mitigate the fetid contributions of other pool users, but it does not have the easy to define chlorinated aroma which has accompanied my swimming ever since I can remember.  No, this flavour is almost meaty in its mouth-filling quality and is surprisingly un-medical in its aftertaste.

You get used to the “flavour” quite quickly and the taste soon becomes unremarkable which is disturbing considering how unpleasant the taste is when you get in.  Whatever chemicals there are in the water they must be remarkable efficient if they can deaden the taste buds in double quick time!

I am enjoying the unrestricted length of the pool and I have now trained the two people who run the café next to the centre to make a decent cup of tea!  Bliss!  If only they had free British newspapers I would be ecstatic.  Still, I must remember to bring my I-pad and I will have The Week at hand!

Meanwhile my Worst Day awaits.  But how many of them are left: thee including today.  Manageable!  Just.  Even though great chunks of the school have finished their courses or are taking examinations I still have five periods to teach today with the necessity for my scurrying between buildings after each bloody lesson.  My swim at the end of the day will be more balm than exercise – even allowing for the odd taste of the experience.

And the days continue to be counted down.

Making the most of it!

Another week consigned to the history books.  Slowly, o so slowly, time creepeth on and liberty (and of course abject poverty) beckon.

School is gearing itself up for its last spasm of examinations before vomiting forth the pupils to their various holiday homes.  The magic mark-out-of-ten will have been given and pupils will either completely ignore their achievements having done their duty and placated their paying parents or settle down to ignore their holiday work until the last possible day before the start of the next term!

The air of unreality about my presence in the school is growing; I can’t wait for them to start talking about “next year” and all the preparations which will be necessary to ensure that the commencement of the first trimester is as smooth as is humanly possible to reduce to the absolute minimum any stress teachers might feel as they face the term ahead.  That is, of course, a joke.

This year saw the introduction of a teacher assessment/evaluation scheme.  This was accompanied by meetings, documentation and much discussion about classroom observation.  We had, eventually, one meeting with department head and section head.  Objectives were set and the general chitchat included a question asking how dedicated I was to the school!  This is an interesting question because of its essential meaninglessness.  It tells you a lot about the attitude of the managerial questioners and is not likely to get any sort of realistic answer from the interviewee.  I responded by voicing an enthusiastic platitude which sadly seemed just what they wanted to hear: box ticked we moved on.

We have had, of course, no classroom observation which every teacher, perhaps rightly, regards as a threat.  If the initial process is flawed, why should one expect the final results to be better?

This month will see the theft of money from our pay packets: 3% of our total wages since September rawly ripped and poured into the maw which characterizes the empty coffers of the state.  This is backdated income tax and little more than theft.  This disgraceful depletion is made possible by the emasculated nature of the unions in this country which are actually financed by the government!

As a reaction against such horror today, Saturday, Irene and I had flee to Barcelona to partake of culture.  We went firstly to lunch, in the restaurant that I went to when Katy came to Barcelona, Los Caracoles.  The prices were high and for what we had – three shared tapas: mixed salad; Catalan broad beans and a small prawn omelette – extortionate!  We had a couple of beers and no change from €50!

We went to what, on the surface, appeared to be an enterprising temporary exhibition in The Picasso Museum.  The basis of the show was a consideration of the “Picasso Product”, thinking about the artist as a logo or trademark and studying the industry which has grown up around his marque.  At least that is what I thought the exhibition was about; having seen it I am not at all sure!

I found the presentation pretentious and confused and the visual material sometimes irrelevant to the stated comments.

When I got to the middle of the displays I was frustrated, and by the time I got to the latter sections of the exhibition I couldn’t wait to get out as the frustration had by that time developed into full blown grumpy old man exasperation.

The permanent collection of the museum is interesting rather than impressive and Irene’s face showed more and more disillusionment as she surveyed one mediocre painting after another.  The final straw was the collection of slapdash ceramics that Picasso threw together.  We were ready to go!

As we started our return journey to the car through the cramped, atmospheric and smelly narrow streets of the Born district we re-passed the adverts for MEAM, the Museu Europeu d’Art Modern containing “Contemporary Art of the XXI Century” and, hoping to find something more to our taste we went in.  My teacher’s ticket only got me a €2 reduction (the Picasso Museum was free for me, €11 for Irene!) in the Palau Gomis, the impressive eighteenth century palace in which the museum is situated and so we started up the flight of stone steps which took us to the first of the galleries.

We visited all the floors of this museum and by the time we had seen everything we were bemused by what we had been looking at.

The central concern of the place is that the art has to be of active artists and all the works share “the common denominator of . . .working in line with the rules of figurative art” - whatever they may be!

The end result is a bewildering display of portraits, landscapes and sculptures where you can see what the image is but not why it is there.

To me the “museum” resembled a large multi-floored commercial gallery of relatively “easy” art.  I could discern no connecting theme apart from the reliance on the figurative and the groupings of paintings seemed aleatory rather than the result of some deep curatorial process.  Each work had a name and a title together with information about material.  Nothing else.  It was up to the individual observer to make sense of the stuff that they saw.

The paintings ranged from semi-pornographic photo-realism to an appalling wall hanging entitled “Dresden” which referenced Picasso’s “Guernica” from a large, rather fetching painting of two pigeons on a stone ledge to a young adolescent boy in his underpants with tiny heads of famous men drifting off like soap bubbles in the top right hand corner.  Mystifying and essentially unsatisfactory.

Confused by culture we fled back to Castelldefels and the shopping centre where Irene bought a present for the French lady whose birthday I am going to help celebrate in early July and, more importantly, ice cream.  We had a double scoop and agreed that, after the meal at the start of our little jaunt, this was the second best highlight!

Today, Sunday has dawned overcast and sultry – but I feel smug because I have already been to my new swimming pool and done my lengths.  I am still greeted effusively and questioned closely on my exit about the quality of experience that I have had swimming.  I am sure that it will not last, but it gives me a warm glow of self-importance while it does.

I have now used the pool three times, thus each swim has cost me approximately €40 what with joining fee and yearly subscription.  If I keep up my attendance as I intend then each visit will have cost me less than €1.

There was only one other person in the pool when I arrived for my swim this morning and she left soon after I started my lengths so I had the luxury of the pool to myself.  Today, the weather not being gloriously sunny, the telescopic roof was fully extended so the pool was entirely indoors.  Although this is fairly irrelevant for the next few months, it will be increasingly important that heat can be conserved for the winter months!

There is a restaurant/café next to the centre and I had a halfway decent (sic) cup of tea there.  Admittedly I had to ask the guy there to make it with two tea bags and a dash of milk – all done under my careful instruction, but when I eventually tasted it, it was a cup of tea with which I could live and that is saying something for this country!  All in all a most satisfactory start to my time with this pool.  I sincerely hope that it becomes a habit.  I will have to remember to pack an e-book reader when I am a free man to make the most of the experience!

Dark days!

The one disadvantage about having a satellite dish which will beam British TV programmes into your home is that you might be tempted to look at them.  And if those programmes include The News and Newsnight then your night’s sleep is totally screwed.

To say that their coverage of the latest Spanish crisis was depressing was rather like saying The Hull librarian was not noted for his jolly limericks and his up-beat take on life.  There seems to be no hope in sight and the Nobel Laureate economist that they had in the studio said that there were two impossible solutions to the financial mess – but one of them would have to happen!

By the time the programmes had ended I had virtually written off all my savings and my future life in Spain.  I feel a little more composed this morning, but I don’t really know why.  Except, I suppose that it is difficult to keep up nerve twanging panic for very long before the self protection system built in to the human system kicks in and a wash of improbability softens the keen perception of impending disaster!

I have followed David’s advice and shunned the temptation to see how much of my savings have been light-fingeredly filched by rapacious thieves and salted away in pension funds for bankers, though I suspect that I am back in the situation where I now have less than I put into that “unspectacular but steady” (sic) growth fund five years ago.  I am not insensitive to the deep irony of the fact that the only time that I have savings is the time for the entire world to go into recession and precipitate a global financial crisis which means that saving is the one form of financial activity in which only an idiot would indulge at the present time.

I think that it is increasingly likely that we will have to become increasingly financially conscious and retrench.  Quite what that means in real terms I am not sure; but that the present situation is likely to continue without adjustment seems unlikely.  It is just the definition of “adjustment” that worries me.  As T S Eliot rightly remarked “Humankind cannot bear too much reality” and who am I to gainsay that particular ex-pat American!

Because many of the courses I teach do not have an end-of-year examination I am not approaching complete dissolution at the moment.  I have two examinations pending and that will be it.  I do, however, have to face the almost impenetrable intricacies of our computer system to put whatever fantasy seems appropriate on to the database, but that is some time in the future.

The future is a funny thing in this school.  We know that things are going to happen.  They are timetabled.  They are in the calendar.  We know the present date.  We are numerically literate.  We can do the sums.  Yet every time something happens it comes as a complete shock.  Then there is the wild panic which is a defining characteristic of this school!

Bottlenecks in administration, examination, visits, teaching, you name it - are all foreseen, but their reality is only theoretical until the actual day when things happen when everything comes as a complete shock.

The usual cause of much hilarity is the timing and content of our notorious meetings.  These are of an evaluationary nature and rely heavily on examinations which are the life-blood of our institution.  The timing of the most recent examinations are usually hard upon the date of the dreaded meetings so there is a period of even more than normal frantic marking to provide the raw material for our inconsequential discussions.

Last year examination papers seems to shower upon me from all directions and even I, with my relentlessly and legendary mechanistic approach to marking deathly examination papers found it difficult to keep up.  There seemed to be simply insufficient time to get everything done by the self-imposed deadline.  It was done of course, but it was a thoroughly unpleasant time and, in spite of having fewer papers to mark, the timing of the meeting means than I will again be forced to mark as if for the end of days!  Ah, happiness ahead!

Toni is well into his final battle against the much-feared mosquito.  His homemade mosquito screens have been something of a success and so he is extending their extent to cover virtually every opening in the house.  As we do not have air-con open windows are essential in the hotter days of the summer and such are, of course, an open invitation for the well-bred insects to come and make their annual feast upon the blood of a true Catalan.

I have to admit that, while I do not get off scott (or bite) free during the season, the mosquitos certainly have a pronounced inclination to feed on home grown meat and consequently Toni is a much more delectable and refreshing drink for our winged visitors than Welsh beef.  I am phlegmatic about the bites that one has to accept during the summer, but Toni takes each mosquito incursion as a personal insult and reacts accordingly.

Watching Toni hunting the source of a vague insect sound as he prowls around brandishing an electrical racquet and gloating over the pzzzt! sound of frying flesh as the hapless stinger meets its fate on the electric filaments of the racquet head is not a pleasant sight!

Our house will soon be a shimmering fortress with each opening sheathed in small mesh material whose only aesthetic appeal is that there is a slight moiré effect as the breeze moves the screen and the light catches it in the right way!

Tomorrow is the alleged opening of my sports centre pool.  Time will tell.

It's the little things that count!

They say (who e’er they be) that when three planets align then it is a sign of something or other.  In a purely domestic sense this mystical alignment is more prosaically achieved by a few seemingly unimportant coincidences changing one’s view of life.

For me this occurred recently when three small, but important elements in my existence were renewed: the brush in my electric toothbrush; the blades in my razor and a fresh towel.  Not important in themselves but a whole new world of renewed experience when taken together. 

One suddenly realizes that one had been trying to clean one’s teeth with a stunted and splayed array of abused filaments that had all the cleaning power of a worn down and long dead porcupine; one’s razor had all the cutting power of a corroded strigl recently unearthed from some archaeological dig and the less said about the marsh-like consistency of a towel when one finally decides that one has to walk three steps to a cupboard containing a plethora of crisp fresh pieces of material to replace the flexible petri dish that one was using ostensibly to dry oneself.

I never fail to be impressed by how little it actually takes for a massive change to be effected in day to day living – I call it the “Tea-Towel Effect” after the fact that tea-towels cost virtually nothing, but people cling to old ones with passionate intensity until they are holey and tattered before they can even bring themselves to consider parting with the pittance to buy a new one and thus transform their lives!

I am considering writing a short monograph on “The Power of Little Things” and then distributing it to the less fortunate (most of the world during this crisis) so that they can change their domestic world even if they cannot afford to eat.  It is the modern take on “bread and circuses” to distract the minds of those who should be rising up in wrath and fury against the incompetent thieves who have brought us to this situation of desperation and hopelessness.  The thinking would be that with a new tea towel revolutionizing the look of the kitchen area who could possibly think of armed rebellion! 

Thus, judicious distribution of interestingly coloured tea-towels and bright new toothbrushes could calm and distract an enraged crowd at a much cheaper cost than the deployment of police and water canon!

My continuing frustration with my new Sports Centre (still unvisited since I joined at Easter!) is about (allegedly) to be ameliorated by the swimming pool (the only reason I joined) to be opened on Friday.  I have been told this by a member of the sports centre staff - but I have been living in this country too long to take an unequivocal statement at face value as if it had truth behind it!  On Friday (my early end) I will make an effort to visit, for the first time, my new swimming paradise!

I have marked the official beginning of summer by the purchase of a summer watch.  In honour of my adopted city I have chosen a timepiece with the mark of Cuesto on it and a flamboyantly wide white leather strap.  Unusually for me I have decided on a digital watch with a display which gives time, day and date.  I am assured that it is waterproof and I have carefully preserved the guarantee which lasts two years against the incursion of water into the mechanism.  Its shape is a squared off oval with blue and sliver trimmings.  I like it, though it has not met with unalloyed approbation in certain quarters.

Although this is a week shortened by the delight of a bank holiday on Monday we will all be suitably exhausted by Friday as if the phantom day of delight we had was just as work orientated as any other.  I suppose that we should consider ourselves lucky that we didn’t have two days off because, in the odd, contrary world of teaching, a week shorted by two days is exponentially, ontologically and existentially longer than any normal week - with the concomitant exhaustion at the end of the week sufficient to drain pleasure from the succeeding weekend!

I have noted that I am getting more and more lax with my writing as day slips by and I think that tomorrow is fine for the entry.  Perhaps the relaxation of future escape is working its magic on me at the moment and I am going through some form of release-syndrome lassitude.

This must end.  It is part of my concept of twisted professionalism that things must be as they must be and no minor change (like retirement) can be allowed to influence the important elements of life like wittering away on my computer!

Writing must go on!

Culture, Cava and Coping!

My only attempt at “external” Culture this week was an abortive attempt to go to the Picasso Museum in the centre of Barcelona.  The permanent collection here is not noted for the range and quality of the artist’s most iconic works but they compensate for a rather idiosyncratic range by holding very inventive exhibitions to bolster the scanty offerings.  In was on the basis of an exhibition that I set out at the end of the day with Suzanne to boost our flagging Art Quotient.

The trip to the centre from our elevated position in school is always a frustrating one as calm driving is impossible with the constant swarm of pesky motorbike riders.  They buzz about the traffic lanes like suicidal mosquitoes and my only regret is that it is apparently illegal to swat them.

They drive with almost complete and total disregard for their own and other drivers’ safety.  Almost.  There is a sort of breath-taking obliviousness to death and injury that would be amusing were one watching a TV programme of “Mad Drivers!” – but which is chillingly frightening when one is part of the performance.

Astonishingly, after one more than mad manoeuver by one of the death-head motorcycle brigade, I saw a trailing hand twitch in an unmistakable gesture of apology!  Unique!  It makes one doubt one’s sweeping assumption that all motorcyclists are the direct spawn of a debauched and defrocked devil, too evil even to be tolerated as a part of Satan’s true cohort.  Might it be that they have humanity? 

This is too radical an opinion to be held for more than a few nano-seconds.  And I am not going to allow it to influence my long held opinion on their debauched breed!

In spite of the infestation of motorcyclists we managed to get to an underground car park beneath the Cathedral and then started our Cultural Expedition.  Suzanne bleated that she needed “a little something” and, as we were passing an ostentatiously city-rustic, bare brick, organic laded shop I suggested that we have a coffee to sustain us on our artistic Odyssey.  Our foray into the shop revealed lots of attractively presented good-for-you edibles in frighteningly un-priced containers.  So unnerved were we by this “buy now and worry about the price later” philosophy than we fled in some disarray. 

And when I suggested that we have a glass of wine instead of coffee Suzanne almost wept with relief that the character that she knew had reappeared in my guise!

I therefore followed her to a charming little summer courtyard location where metal seats and tables were set out for the knowing to partake of Cava and tapas.  A bottle of Cava was duly ordered and much lubricated conversation followed.  Indeed so much conversation followed that by the time we got to the Picasso Museum it was literally about to close.  One could not, however count such a delightful end to the day as anything less than an authentic cultural experience, especially as we could see one of the early twentieth century Gothic towers of the Cathedral from where we were sipping.

Return from Suzanne’s house (after I returned her home like the gentleman I am) was courtesy of my Tom-Tom in which I have an absolute trust.  And it was repaid by delivering me to my street in double quick time.

A home which is now threatened by the appearance of The Scumbags – our worst neighbourhood nightmare – who have returned to watch The Match.  At the moment their proximity is tempered by the fact that Barça is winning by three goals.  Barça dominated the first half in all departments and the game should be a “Perfect Goodbye” for Pep as he leads the team in his last attempt at yet another cup!

I do hope that our pool will not now be haunted by cigarette smoking harridans – one of the many curses of the summer season – whose constant smoking will be accompanied by the dire sound of the television left on at full volume outside the house.  To make matters worse The Scumbags are fixated on the unutterable tedium of Formula 1 racing so Sunday will be accompanied by the sound track of the intrusive whine of rich people burning petrol for the enjoyment of other rich people while stupid poor people (who actually pay for it all) look on.

At least it is supposed to be fairly sunny during the weekend. 

That is something.

Slack work!

Mondays are often “nothing” days.  The misery of re-starting work after the weekend is not conducive to joyous thinking and the blank wall of the rest of the week tends to limit vision.  Routine usually takes over and the day is completed in a stumblingly resentful sort of way which gets you to the slumping relief of the armchair at home eventually.  Geldof got it right.

But what is much more exhilarating is that I have only three more Mondays to go before the departure of the kids – this low number is courtesy of an occasional day holiday next Monday – which somehow puts into perspective the horror of this tediously long year.  The end is in distant sight!

I may bemoan the number of days still left for my sojourn in this school, but they seem to slip away quite quickly when it comes to putting finger to key to write.  Days have now gone by and I have written nothing.  This is because of the easy coma into which I can fall at a moment’s notice when I sink into my armchair.  I do, of course, expect this state of affairs to change magically when I finally knock the dust from my shoes and turn my back on education – at least in its city institutionalized form.  I expect to emerge like a vibrant butterfly from the cocoon of fatigue that envelopes me at present.

I have a half worked out (how poetic) timetable for physical exercise that will come into play as soon as the shackles of school are shaken off.

I blame my newly acquired sports centre for my malaise of course.  If they hadn’t had to contend with the reams of red tape before they could allow actual swimmers to enter their newly constructed dome which covers the swimming pool, then I could have been swimming there twice a day.  As it is, it remains tantalizingly out of splash as the stern guardians of public wet safety scrutinize such a radical structure (in use all over Spain) as a retractable roof before giving it the imprimatur of our pettifogging local authority.  It remains, like so many publically funded unnecessary airports throughout Spain, shiningly empty.

I am hoping that I will be able to use it in the same way that I used the pools at home and have an early morning swim and one later in the day before the small humans start shrieking their clumsy way through the water and across the lane that I am using.  I will have to start growing my fingernails again so that any obstruction can be sliced away!

As the centre is near the house I am hoping that it will become a regular haunt of mine.  There is also a café/restaurant next to it which looks interesting.  I have noted that they often have barbecues which look like good value for money.

When I last called into the centre, having been a member since Easter and never used the place once, on yet another fruitless visit to find out when the pool was going to be available for use rather than contemplation, I was told that it would be open in June with or without the “dome” – which I took to refer to the retractable roof.  As long as the water is heated I don’t much care as the only thing that concerns me in the heart jolting horror of immersion in delicious looking but potentially glacial water.  In my experience the sea in all its rough, natural, heat-loss majesty is often much warmer than the ill-heated communal pool.  It is only in the torrid days of the height of August heat that plunging into the waters of the outside pool is anything other than a way of finding out if you heart is strong enough to survive cardiac shock!

The reality of being without work is beginning to strike me, as is the dramatic decrease in the amount of money I will be living on!  I think that this is a circumstance which should provoke a change in how I live – though the practical difficulties of getting a mortgage at my age are considerable.

I do, however, look forward to traipsing through Castelldefels – map and camera in hand – searching for the elusive bank sell-off residence going for a song.  It should be possible to find something within my price range which should tick all the boxes that have to be ticked for somewhere reasonable to live.  I keep being told that now is the time to buy somewhere taking advantage of the crisis and using it to my advantage.

These things always seem more reasonable in theory than in concrete and glass, but it will be interesting to see what is on offer and it will be fascinating to see how the system works when you actually want to buy somewhere.  I have been told that you have to allow about 10% of the asking price as administration and legal fees – and that could be an essential factor!

The search is on!

tonight