Culture to eat!

Listening to Chopin played by Ashkenazy was soothing enough as death defying motorcyclists wove their way around me on the motorway this morning, but being accompanied by sunshine made the whole experience positively mellow – even when a car driver, who was obviously newly arrived at his vehicle having just graduated from his motorcycle, attempted a three lane motorcycle swerve in his car narrowly missing startled drivers – even then, the tinkling ivories through Ashkenazy’s stubby fingers (I know I heard him play in the Memorial Hall in Barry of all places) wafted my anger to another place and stability was restored.

It is clearly getting lighter in the mornings and that does its bit for the mood with which one sets off for school.  It is still not easy to get up at the ungodly hour that I do, especially as I was well into a very vivid dream about the appointment of a new headteacher in what appeared to be my old school in the UK, with my seemingly having some sort of authoritative overview of the tasks that the candidates were being asked to do. 

As I recognized most of the candidates, it probably says more about my subconscious that I made them fail so spectacularly, though just at the point of waking up, I was actually questioning why a particular task had been given to one of my colleagues when he obviously couldn’t even come near to completing it successfully.  Perhaps it was just as well that my mobile phone alarm clock interrupted this line of thought!

As is usual in a Protestant view of life, the sunshine has come at a price.  I was greeted in school with the news that one of our colleagues is not here so classes will have to be collapsed to accommodate this absence.  Today is a “short but full” day so the added irritation of double class sizes will make the end of my teaching time all the more welcome!

The concert yesterday was spectacular, but now I want to remember the misery of trying to find something to eat before the thing started.

As concerts in the Liceu start at 8.00 pm it usually means that the length of Operas mean that one is stumbling out onto the Ramblas after midnight into the welcoming hands of prostitutes, pimps and purveyors of illicit booze.  There is little there to tempt one to stay and find a bite to eat before the trip back.  It is therefore advisable to find something before the concert starts, but the timing is not good as “dinner” does not start until after seven and then one is rushing from the restaurant to the Liceu and one gets to one’s seat hot, bothered and with a touch of indigestion.

This time I found a little tapas bar in the Gothic quarter and found myself sitting down with a plateful of goodies before I thought of how much it was going to cost.  This was something which was only a momentary spasm before I thought of a way of justifying the expense.

I had previously tried to get a meal in the central Barcelona store of El Corte Ingles where the view from the top floor over the central square and the surrounding buildings is spectacular.  The service was, however appalling and I decided to leave as I had been comprehensively ignored by all the waiting staff who looked morose and resentful throughout my stay in the ignored seat.  The cost of the meal that I didn’t have would have been €18 (!) and that was just for the dish of the day, so when I was sitting in my little tapas bar I felt that I had a certain leeway as far as cost was concerned if I compared it with what I didn’t spend there.

Such twisted logic has kept me happy throughout my life!

And the tapas were exotic and poncey in exactly the way I like!

Tomorrow, as soon as I get home, preparations for the Essay Weekend must start.  I intend to have a rough draft of the thing done and dusted by Sunday evening.

Please.

No comment. Especially on the rain!

This is now beyond a joke and back again!  The rains continue with a spitefulness and personally directed vindictiveness that is, to put it mildly, unsettling.  Pools of standing water augment all the fairly flat external surfaces of the school and the dampness is beginning to penetrate our very souls!

At least the first stage of my marking is done.  Though I think I will keep that to myself for fear of being set upon by my colleagues who work nothing but “long” days!

Today, at the end of school, I have to go down the hill and into the city to experience another aspect of my season ticket to the Liceu.  This time it is a concert of some soprano or other – and at least it means that I have not had to do any “homework” for this music, I can just sit back and enjoy.

Talking of enjoyment, I was able to listen to some of my new music and have discovered more of the long lost Gretry music that used to accompany the horror of packing when I was in university.  Little but little I am reconstructing the old LP that I used until it became so scratched that it was virtually unplayable.  I did not, of course, throw it away – that would have been too callous after all the amelioration it had offered me in the heartbreak of clearing my room for the vacs!

I also listened to some of Prokofiev’s film music and discovered that I know some of it quite well – that is at least partly thanks to the JCR of Neuadd Lewis Jones in Swansea University and the dogged determination of late night BBC2 to make me film literate by illuminating the more obscure glimmers of foreign arty cinema!

As far as I can tell I now have more than enough music in the form of new discs to keep me humming until the end of June when my driving will drop dramatically as I will no longer need to go to Barcelona on a daily basis.

I have fed disc after disc into the hungry maw of my iMac and have barely dented its memory.  There is now over a fortnight of solid music waiting for me to immerse myself in and many more discs waiting to be slotted in.

In iTunes there is part of the display which informs the viewer of the number of times that they have listened to a piece of music.  As you can imagine, as this is a new machine, there is a sparse scattering of numbers indicating to whoever looks that I have listened to virtually nothing.  Of course, my music is on a number of platforms, an embarrassing number of platforms now I think of it ranging from the iMac, to the MacBook Air, to iPad, iPods and even my iPhone 5 – all offer me a section of my musical holdings.

Having said all that, even by combining the play lists of each one of them there must still be a substantial amount of music that exists simply as electronic code and has never been brought out into the open.  The only way I will hear some of it is when I put things on random play and then wait for each new serendipitous delight to reach my eardrums!  Sometimes it is a piece of Mozartian recitative; sometimes an obscure 80s pop song, but more often than not it is some half remembered fragment of music that lurks just beyond confident attribution!  It’s all great fun and a guilty pleasure!

Last night, just before I went to bed I had a little spurt of academic enlightenment and I got a couple of pages of The Essay done – or at least into some sort of shape that can be whittled into something acceptable in due course.  I find that I am writing the essay piecemeal with odd paragraphs rising from my subconscious and demanding to be written.  If I am not careful what I am going to end up with will be a patchwork quilt of perceptions rather than a flowing discourse.

I now have my trust paperback with me at all times, but I must admit that I am looking forward to the luxury hardback which should be with me by the end of the week – and just in time for the Big Push over the weekend to get at least a first draft out of the way.

Next week is going to be a little fraught with examination marking, meetings and running deception taking up most of my conscious time and there will be little left for the fripperies of self-indulgent academic study!

Lentil soup was the start of my meal this lunchtime, followed by an uninspiring salad of which the most enterprising party was an odd rice salad in the mayonnaise of which I am sure I detected a hit of mustard.  Whatever - easily forgotten!

One of the bright things about this dull, dull day is that before the concert I am giving Suzanne a lift and perhaps we might partake of something before the performance.  It is not worth my while going home at the end of school and then coming back out to Barcelona – the traffic makes that an unattractive proposition, so into Barcelona straight from school it is. 

In the rain. 

With city drivers taking absolutely no notice of the changed conditions. 

Joy!

Rain and fish

It has now been raining for over twelve hours and, while it is not cold, it is wet and I am not happy.  Not happy also with the edition that I have been sent of Hard Times which is the wrong one.  On the other hand, with my instinctive mercantile approach to problems, I have decided to buy a luxury hardback Penguin edition of the novel to compensate for my disappointment – and I have ordered it with an express delivery charge as well.  Never let it be said that I was behindhand with my attempts to stimulate the economy by the injection of hard cash!

We in the staffroom are all of a mind that we should have stayed in bed this morning, and disturbingly, from the fact that only three of us are actually in at the moment, our other colleagues seem to have taken the advice!  Though I have to admit that I sincerely hope it not the case as this is one of my “short” days and I have no intention of staying beyond my appointed “time” - especially as there is a meeting this evening and, under no circumstances whatsoever am I going to be drawn into that!

To my absolute horror I have been roped into invigilating an examination at the end of my “short” day!  This means that my short-est day becomes merely a short-er day, which is not the same thing at all.  At all!  And this 'extra time' will produce even less time for me, because this will be the start of my marking.   
     Marking which has to be finished in double-quick time because there is a meeting (which unfortunately clashes with a tutorial for me, so you can tell which one is going to have preference) on Saturday (!) and all marks have to be in and noted in the various ways that the school deems appropriate.   
     Sigh!  And, indeed double sigh!

On the other hand I am almost at the stage when I can begin to count the days left.  Almost, but not quite.  I think I will wait until after the Easter holidays before I revert into man-in-cell-marking-the-days mode.  I feel that I should have “The Final Countdown” playing in the background!

My sixth form examination was something of a disaster with the kids whimpering with horror at the questions that they had to attempt.   
     I do have some sympathy as their examination is based on a previous study of a random photocopy with a series of unrelated words and phrases and a smattering of odd clause structures.  Just the sort of thing to keep them interested at the fag end of a long, long term.   
     And please to remember that we do not have a half term holiday as such.  Still, this is very much what Spanish kids are used to: vast piles of fact-heavy material which needs to be memorized and regurgitated at regular intervals.

I have completed my marking, ironically during the time when my colleagues were incarcerated in school experiencing another (!) two hours of lecturing about the new “platform” that has been installed on the school computer system to allow the easier (!) input of examination results.  I think that I may have used the time a little more usefully!

Tomorrow is a “long” day and I will be thoroughly grumpy by the end of it, but it will be a day nearer to the arrival of the “proper” version of my book (at great cost, but I don’t bloody care) and the weekend can be given over to writing the next draft of The Essay.

My notes have now reached a ridiculous level of complexity and I am no nearer getting a clear overview of what I hope to write.  I could follow the outline given to us, but I am still hoping to find my own way of 'seeing' to give some life to what could be a fairly arid exercise.  During the more deadly moments in exam supervision I even thought of a good opening for the essay, but I couldn’t write it down because that would have meant taking my eye off the kids and given their propensity to cheat that would have been disaster! 

This weekend really does have to be the time when I break the back of this assignment, because the marking will come thick and fast in the following week as each sullen examination room empties and the paper detritus is shoved towards the unwilling pen-wielding hands of we educational hacks!

Ever since the Great Winds and Lashing Rain of a few days ago which stripped the pines in this area of their surplus needles (which look like thin, joined chopsticks) one of them lodged under part of the windscreen wiper arm meaning that it smeared a path across the screen every time it rained.

 

The solution, you would have thought, was easy.  Take the needle away.  Yes.  But this is where the “Goldfish Effect” comes into play.  It is a well known, though alas specious fact, that goldfish have an attention span of five seconds (or 70% longer than the average school child) and therefore they forget with an ease unmatched except for members of the ruling class here in Spain who use their faulty memories to cover all their obvious misdemeanours in a way which would embarrass a forgetful carp.

For the last few days, as I get behind the wheel, I cannot fail to notice that the irritating fronds are still there.  Each time I drive I resolve to remove the offending vegetation just as soon as I get out of the car.  And the next time I drive, I note that it is still there.  This has gone on for so long that I have become more frenzied in my determination to remove it, and to remember to do it, that it has become more and more difficult.  And each time I get behind the wheel, there it is again!

It had become so ridiculous that I even began formulating philosophies and sociological explanations for my seeming inability.  But you will notice that I used the past tense in the last sentence and that is because today, at last, memory and action came together in a triumphant affirmation of human capability and I actually picked out the tree dirt and felt somehow refreshed and reformed!

Unfortunately it is only Tuesday and there is much of the week left.  Too much.  Still, one examination down and two more to go.  Not an unbearable burden.  At least not until the essay becomes a pressing necessity and trembling fingers will try and pick an electronic way through the verbiage of which I am capable to find a cogent expression of OU acceptable description to fulfil my academic obligation.

Or to put it another way, just get on with it and stop talking!

What is the answer!

The days starts, as it often does, with an extended moan about the educational system in which we find ourselves trapped – more particularly the examinations which we impose on our kids. 

We find it increasingly difficult to understand why we are forcing the kids to sit pointless exercises in short term memory gain when we are not teaching them the skills that make the individual facts that they are learning meaningful. 

This is the sort of grizzling that goes on and on and, as we lack the political clout to do anything about the system, there is no satisfactory end in sight – except of course for the exhaustion of red pen after red pen!

The weather is a little more sombre today after the unexpected gift of a sunny Sunday yesterday.  At our lofty elevation we are in the clouds and Barcelona is lost in the off-white blanket of pollution rolling down the mountains.

As the examination season has come to a climax there will be spasm after spasm of pen pushing during the day which will unsettle our teaching and turn us into disgruntled invigilators and make the day so much longer.  For me this is a “long” day anyway so I will be whimpering with frustration by the end of the day – and god help any of the selfish parents who have triple parked blocking my car today!

The one positive point is that Amazon should call today with yet more discs and, more importantly, my real version of Hard Times.  I have tried to use the electronic version and it simply does not work when you are using it for academic purposes and are trying to find the right section of the book.  In some way the electronic version is idea when you have half remembered a quotation you can type in the words and hey presto! there it is!  But for quoting when writing an essay on the computer it is a disaster – or perhaps I am merely saying that I am more comfortable with a book!

I have just gone up to the two sixth form classes that are about to have a Spanish exam and, much like the creatures in Monsters Inc., I fed on their fear and feel much refreshed!  I am going to take over from colleagues who are at present starting the exam so I will have the opportunity to see how they have fared during the hour of examination delight before I continue their watching.  And watch them you have to do because they take every opportunity to cheat.  Examinations are not a time for relaxed working on your own affairs, you have to maintain a vigilance which would do the SAS proud if you want anything like a realistic result from the pen pushing!

I am now stuck in front of a class “doing” their exam and, I simply cannot face staring at them without doing something, so I can at least touch type so I can watch them and let me fingers pretend that they are doing something useful as well.  Their paper is a mixture of multiple choice and discursive questions but it does look as though the general level of work is only for memory yet again.  The kids are thoroughly bored and have does as much as they can, they are now in that dangerous time when they have to make up what they don’t know and hope for the best.  The ideal time to start cheating.  They are fascinated by the fact that I am typing without looking at the keyboard and I suppose, if nothing else, it gives them something to think about or watch rather than cheat!

I am conscious that there is a limit to the amount of vacuous typing that I can do, and there is another piece of written work that should be occupying my time – but I have given up writing the essay until I can hold the text in my hands.

The Text (the capital letters are well deserved) has arrived and it is the wrong one!  Although the description states that it is Dickens’ novel with the introduction by Kate Flint this is not the case and I have been sent a cheap version of the Penguin Classic.  Ah well, at least it is the text in book form and I can work with that.

My notes continue to expand and my inclination to put coherent sentences on paper continues to shrink.  I still haven’t found a significantly original slant on what I have to do to prompt me to put my thoughts forward for critique.  I think I am trying too much and I should settle down and do as I am told in the Assignment Booklet notes and not strive for more – but we shall see after I have completed my umpteenth reading of the novel, but now with added sensual addition of feeling fingers on actual pages.  It makes all the difference.

To sweeten the blow of the wrong text being sent, I had another package from Amazon with my next slew of discs.  Toni is now frankly worried at my escalating rate of purchase, but I can’t stop myself because if the bargains are there, who am I to resist them.

The most interesting of my purchases in a five disc set of “Music from the Middle Ages” with disc five being entitled “L’agonie du Languedoc” and who can resist such an offering!  Well, realistically I suppose that the answer to that would be “most people” but as I already have music about the disgraceful slaughter of the Cathars (including a wonderful extract from an episcopal letter urging right thinking Christians to slaughter the heretical inhabitants of the Languedoc in the name of the God of Love!) I am one of the other group who looks forward to listening to such music with absolute relish!

The only oddity among the other box sets which include The Hilliard Ensemble with music by Ockenghem, Desprez, De la Rue and Lassus and another Baroque Collection with music by Albinoni, Bach, Handel, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Purcell, Telemann and Vivaldi is a box set of the ballets, orchestral works and film music of Prokofiev.

I think that “Lieutenant Kije” is a wonderful work and the “Troika” is one of my favourite pieces of music which, under the right circumstances, can reduce me to tears – once embarrassingly during a long drive on English motorways with me yelling the tune lustily and beating the steering wheel in time to the music.  God alone knows what startled drivers must have thought of me!

I am finding my present set of “car” discs irritatingly tame and some of the tracks quaintly antique in their recording quality, so I think I may substitute the newest arrivals – though it does mean that some time in the future I will be driving along a dismal motorway with suicidal motorists while listening to two discs of Orlando de Lassus’ Penitential Psalms.  Well, if nothing else I suspect that I will be having a unique listening experience on the orbital hell with encircles the city of Barcelona!

After a day of glorious sunshine yesterday, I suppose there had to be a reaction today and it has been dull, cold and this evening, wet.  This is the sort of uneven weather experience that I was used to in Britain but I have become less tolerant of it when it occurs in Catalonia.  Even though today was miserable, it was 14C, so one shouldn’t complain!

Now back to Dickens and trying to find that slant which has so far eluded me!