Comrades Unite!

Simmering rebellion characterises the atmosphere in our school.

Things are not, as you might say, hunky dory. Apart from that being the first time that I have ever consciously written those words, it is also a grotesquely inadequate way to express the lack of normality that is our normal modus vivendi in this institution.

The meeting of the primary teachers last night produced a series of outspoken denunciations of the way in which the school is being run and the treatment of teachers that were shocking unless you happened to work there. We are working in conditions that would have precipitated a walk out in a more union orientated place than the one in which we have the dubious pleasure in spending the hours of daylight.

The latest piece of downright disrespectful lunacy that has been instituted by the vengeful owner is that a door leading to the office from the main body of the school should be locked because inconsiderate teachers have the temerity to bother the office staff while they go about their duties. Which are apparently not associated with the running of a school which astonishingly has teachers attempting to educate the young!

The ludicrous systems set up by an administrator who knows nothing of the practicalities of education make it inevitable that the office staff have to be asked for such banal things as paper clips! Paper clips are an essential tool in the process which eventually results in photocopies being produced. The same photocopying which has not been done since last Friday; the designated (and thoroughly decent) member of the office staff having been absent and then diverted to other tasks. The result is that carefully worked out lesson plans have all crumbled into ad hoc nothingness.

But the locked door, which effectively imprisons us in our work, also cuts us off from the only toilet available for staff use! The spiteful, autocratic and vindictive action has succeeded in uniting the staff in a spasm of shocked outrage.

This morning, with emails flying like poisoned darts, the locked door magically opened and stayed open for most of the day. In a spirit of heady individuality I not only went through the forbidden door, but also entered the out of bounds administration area and spoke to people I should not have. Excitement indeed!

This cannot go on.

Except of course, it has gone on since September!

Now is the time for members of staff to let out a hollow laugh of incredulity when asked if they are considering staying on for next year. As far as I can see from the moment that staff arrived to take up their teaching posts, no effort whatsoever has been made by the owner to encourage loyalty and respect for her unsympathetic rule. There is every chance that, for the second year running, the entire primary staff will resign at the end of the year!

You would have thought that even the most thick-skinned proprietor would begin to question her approach when it is supported by the display of the backs of departing colleagues. But no! To paraphrase one of her alleged remarks when questioned about the ludicrous turnover of staff, “McDonalds has the same turnover of staff and they are OK.” Breathtaking inanity!

Meanwhile the reading of ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ continues apace. I particularly liked the following: “In my schoolboy reveries, we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book eager to escape into worlds of fiction and secondhand dreams.”

‘Riding the spine of a book’ seems like a phrase specifically designed to please me and a ready made title for a book itself!

Learn to love it!

How bad can shopping really be?

Toni has what amounts to a pathological hatred of the whole process. This is part of that kaleidoscope of human response which finds no sympathetic response in me.

In spite of living for so long in literature, where the people you meet are not necessarily those who you would wish to be living in your street, or indeed in many circumstances in your universe, I find that I have more in common with the reprobates of the great tragic Russian novels than with a person who does not regard shopping as an essential element of civilized living!

Shopping for Essentials this morning was the usual high tension affair with Toni pacing along the aisles like a highly strung aesthete sipping a crème de menthe thrown among the laager drinking loping canaille. I do realize that the last image is somewhat inappropriate but trying to give an adequate impression of Toni’s lack of ease doing something which should be joyous does tempt me into the areas of literary desperation!

A Sunday morning is the time when most of the population of Castelldefels seems to take the opportunity to visit their local shops to load up on the weekly necessities. In Spanish and Catalan shopping trolleys there always seems to be more bulk because of the iniquitous need to purchase bottles of water as the stuff which comes through the taps is so vile – safe, but vile!

Who, I ask you, dispassionate reader of these lines, who does not find the range of something as mundane as bleach laid out in serried rows for our delectation fascinating. Bleach, you might say, is bleach. But such a simplistic statement ignores the combined efforts of grasping capitalism aided and abetted by an equally grasping advertising industry. Different bottle shapes, colours, sizes, type faces, properties, strengths, viscosities and scents – not to mention prices. Faced with such variety; such a plethora who can resist at least pausing and marvelling at the range and choice offered in the most ordinary and humble of household liquids?

Or perhaps it’s just me.

On safer ground I have just started reading ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The opening conceit of the book, that there exists in Barcelona The Cemetery of Forgotten books where, “books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader’s hands,” is one which appeals strongly to me.

The novel itself takes the form of a sort of detective story as the hero of the novel tries to discover more of the life of the novelist whose book he chooses on his first visit to this magical place.

The direction of the novel reminded me of the remarkable book ‘Quest for Corvo’ by A. J. A. Symons where the ostensible academic research for a literary biography was actually the basis for a much more revealing study of the subject and the author.

After a couple of hundred pages I can see why this novel has been translated from Spanish and why it has sold over seven million copies around the world! It is the sort of book that you read dreading its conclusion because there will be no more to read!

The computer I am using is becoming skittish and the research that I was supposed to have done over the weekend has been a little more stressful that it should have been.

How far we have progressed when what would have taken hours to find and download is now intolerable when it takes more than a few seconds!

Perhaps I should remember those happy frustration filled days when Windows 3.1 was the operating (!) system of choice and be grateful that we have progressed so far.

Irony!

A time to note

It has taken me the whole of my professional life and the move to another country, but I have now matched my mother in her first year of teaching.

My first salary from my new school doesn’t cover the cost of my monthly rent.

My mother’s first job was subsidised by my grandparents. Alas! I am bereft of the immediacy of family who can be tapped for easy money, so, in a way the horror is all the more poignant.

My pay slip is an A4 page of incomprehensibility; apart that is, from the deductions. These are all too obvious and I find it difficult to be jocose about the amount ripped from my fragile salary by convincing myself that I am merely paying my dues to my adopted country!

My ‘basic’ salary is so pathetically small that I hesitate to disclose it, but it is augmented by a list of ‘additions’ which Toni informs me are absolute rubbish. The advantage from the point of view of Scrooge like people who pay (I use the term lightly) my salary is that these ‘additions’ can be changed at a moment’s notice and a passing whim. The disadvantage from the point of view of the Cratchit like recipient (my good self) is that my money can diminish beyond the point of incredulity – and all done legally.

If the law allows that (to paraphrase one of my great heroes worthy to sit alongside Satan from Paradise Lost and Iago) then the law is a ass; a idiot!

I am assuming, for the sake of my sanity and my bank balance, that there has been some sort of mistake. I will have some critical and hopefully lucrative discussions with the Powers that Be! If not: who knows!

My lack of clacking at the typewriter keys for the last few days has been because Ceri and Dianne have been visiting.

An odd visit. Not because of Ceri and Dianne, I hasten to add. An odd visit because for the first time since I have known them both our holidays have not been for the same days. My half term holiday (if it can be graced with such a title when the days of non education were so preciously few) was the week before Britain.

Their holiday had been arranged months ago when Easyjet was reasonably priced and before I had discovered my previously well hidden vocation for primary education.

This meant that I was not able to meet them at the airport not was I able to let them into the flat when they arrived!

Problems were solved by the generous help of our local French newsagent who kept her shop open so that my visitors could pick up the keys. Vive la France!

What could have been a leisurely meander through some of the more interesting parts of Catalonia was instead compressed into three evenings – or more exactly three opportunities for aperitifs, meals and digestifs! And talk. And talk. It makes you realise who and how much you miss certain things when you move to a foreign country!

On the last evening when we were sitting, rather defiantly, out on a cooling balcony, we had news of the untimely death of a friend and colleague.

The last few months have been characterised by deaths and their effects have always been revealingly unsettling.

Loss has been partially counterbalanced by the reestablishment of communications with a couple who I knew in my first year of teaching in Kettering in Northamptonshire.

It was my great good fortune to start my teaching career in Kettering Boys’ School in the days when it had achieved international fame because a pupil astronomical club within the school had been the first to announce the launch of a Soviet space rocket to the world – beating the Americans with all their technology!

I of course had heard nothing of this when I arrived for my interview and was far more impressed with the reproductions hanging in the secretary’s office: Rowlandson, Lear (he of the limericks) and Girtin. I was much more impressed when what I took to be tasteful reproductions turned out to be originals!

These artistic treasures were part of the legacy of H. E. Bates (he of “the past is another country”) who was an old boy of the school.

Interviewed by the headteacher and the head of governors, I later visited the home of the latter to view a spare room that she had. She was the wife of the vicar of Barton Seagrave and I soon took up residence in the grandly named St Botolph’s House, St Botolph’s Road in the village. St Botolph’s House was the clergy house; joined to the vicarage, but separate from it. The deacon was living more centrally in the parish and so I had extensive if sparsely furnished accommodation. It was also extensively leaky and bloody cold: but it was Somewhere! The vicar once rather disparagingly if rather wonderfully referred to my part of the vicarage as “Napoleonic jerry building!”

The vicar and his wife were my immediate neighbours and we soon became friends. Who else can say that he had a weekend away with the vicar’s wife in his first year of teaching? It was (I hasten to add) because she and I were English teachers and we went to Stratford to see all three parts of ‘Henry VI’ over two days!

The vicar was notable for delivering sermons that were worth listening to and he was a patient and scholarly listener to my enthusiastic (if untutored) philosophical and theological ramblings and always took the Socratic method of gently bringing me back to academic earth! For which much thanks.

After a hiatus of some years we have regained our annual corresponding link and I feel as if a well worn of the jigsaw has been gently eased back into the wider picture of my life.

In school (which continues to astonish) the saga of my non appearing screen is now approaching epic proportions.

My Welsh visitors brought not only their good selves, but also a supply of OHP photocopying sheets; OHP pens and ordinary OHP transparencies. They also brought a whistle. The red (red?) whistles issued by my present school are visually unprepossessing and practically useless: one good blow and the pea implodes. Thanks to Bob I now have a black plastic professional model on a lanyard which is stridently assertive.

Tomorrow the photographing of sculpture on roundabouts.

Don’t ask, merely wonder at the range of excitement that defines my life at present!

Ah the tyranny of inarticulate youth!

After an excellent lunch of fideuá negro the family returned to the flat after a short excursion to the beach. A partial watching of Harry Potter in Spanish to the accompaniment of Catalan pop music to which Toni’s two year old nephew danced with some exuberance led to a perceived need for coffee and cake.

When I asked Toni’s sister if she would like cake, she indicated her infant son, waved a rusk in the air and said that he had something already. “And the rest of us?” I asked innocently. She paused for a moment, registered that there were six other humans in the room apart from her son, and started laughing.

And another son is on the way. She is going to be hermetically isolated from human kind if she is not careful!

Tomorrow Ceri and Dianne for a strange holiday in which we are only gong to be able to see them in the evenings as our holidays do not tie in with the half term in Britain.

We have been having glorious weather recently and I only hope that it continues for the few days that they are here. They are going to have a holiday where they use the flat more like a hotel with our meeting for dinner! Whatever! It will be good to see them as it seems such a long time ago when they were last in Barcelona.

Meanwhile there is the ever present lunacy of school waiting for me tomorrow as well.

Plus ça change!

Licenced to bemuse!

What an extraordinary title for the new Bond film: ‘Quantum of Solace.’

How do highly paid publicity people manage to come up with titles like this? Don’t they have focus groups and try outs and all sorts of things to ensure that they don’t get a repeat of ‘You’re never alone with a Strand?’

Although, I suppose that the Strand advert, though a disaster for the cigarettes that it was advertising, continues to exist as one of the most famous how-not-to-do-it pieces of advertising history. The name of Strand is still spoken of even if the brand itself faded into the smoke. Or, indeed, lack of it in the case of that particular cigarette!

Is ‘quantum’ like ‘nano’: a word which evokes elements of the scientific even if most people (including me) don’t necessarily know its precise definition? With ‘quantum’ even the particle physicists don’t really know what they are talking about. Hardly suprising when they talk of things in one place and then in another but cannot explain how they got there except by the phrase ‘quantum jump’ where the journey is apparently not the sort where you have to travel the boring bits between destinations. Where indeed normal physics does not apply! I think I know that liquid helium flows upwards when it is at a certain temperature: but even in this case when the substance is apparently defying gravity you can still see where it is going!

‘Quantum’ has a sort of magic that evokes all sorts of responses without the necessary tedium of having to know what it means. The sort of catalytic scientific word beloved of advertisers to add academic cachet to a description of toothpaste to reassure the user that the white coated boys in the backroom have been slaving over their test tubes and Bunsen burners to bring you the full force of the white hot heat of the technological revolution.

My old Sinclair computer was called the QL – which stood for Quantum Leap – was indeed a jump ahead of the commercial opposition all those years ago. It was black and sleek and had tenchological ideas above its station. Who, among those who owned one, can ever forget the quaintly absurd invention of the ‘micro drive’! Who, among those who owned one, can ever forget those lost hours as the machine ignored increasingly desperate typed command; or hours of work simply disappeared as the key board froze. Ah, happy days!

The most recent use in the commercial world of the word ‘quantum’ is in association with Gillette shavers where the addition of an extra blade in the shaving head seems to merit the addition of this overblown scientific appellation.

The advert is even more interesting in that it has two white coated extras apparently adding some sort of glowing material to what looks like a particle accelerator! I suppose you have to admire their ‘thinking through’ of the visual implications of their choice of word, but the reality is boringly prosaic.

So, at least I can partially understand the choice of the first word in the title of a film in a series of films which relies unashamedly on the (literally) explosive nature of cutting edge technology (who can forget the laser beam cutting its way through metal on its inexorable way to Sean Connery’s crotch?

But ‘solace’? A wonderful word but how many people know its meaning? To me ‘Quantum of Solace’ sounds like those mysterious titles from British colonial history: The Begums of Oudah or the Ankor of Watt – I may be confusing history, geography and literature here; didn’t Edward Lear write about something similar? But I hope you get my point.

It turns out that ‘Quantum of Solace’ is actually an obscure short story by the Man himself, Fleming. Since the makers of Bond films show shown themselves perfectly capable of ‘expanding’ Fleming’s original conception to unrecognizable proportions, the fact that they still seem to need that touch of authenticity to link to the stories is rather touching!

I suppose that ‘Quantum of Solace’ still has a way to go until it catches up with the idiotic ‘Night Of The Day Of The Dawn Of The Son Of The Bride Of The Return Of The Revenge Of The Terror Of The Attack Of The Evil, Mutant, Hellbound, Flesh-Eating Subhumanoid Zombified Living Dead, Part 3’ (2005)!

The kettle that never boils

The kettle’s gone!

Our compact and bijoux staffroom boasted, until today, a coffee machine and a kettle. The coffee machine was rarely used, but the kettle was a popular item of staff sustenance.

The only problem with the kettle was the lid. This was insecurely placed on the top of the device and when boiling water was poured out; it fell off and scalded unwary hands that thought they were safe.

The tried and tested technique to avoid personal injury was to allow the thing to boil; switch it off; then with an expert flick of the index finger send the insecure lid flying thus allowing the more painful gush of stem to dissipate itself allowing the safeish pouring of water into the receiving receptacle.

This labour intensive and fairly dangerous method of procuring a cup of tea or coffee needed to be changed by the simple expedient of buying a new kettle. This solution was not really rocket science but in my school such thinking was regarded as dangerously radical. One thinks of Galileo and the repressive Roman church.

My suggestion that we simply buy one out of petty cash was greeted with incredulity. We don’t have any petty cash in my school.

The buying of a new kettle for the staff room needed discussion, planning and the writing of emails resulting in the writing of an order on an official order form.

Then nothing. No kettle. No action.

Until today.

The reason for replacing the kettle: that it was dangerous suddenly (after two terms of using it in its present state) precipitated its immediate removal from the staff room.

And nothing was put in its place. And nothing was planned to put it its place.

It’s a perfect example of how the school operates: petty bloody-mindedness augmented by officious obstruction. A minor (if possibly fatal) inconvenience inexplicably worsened to the detriment of staff comfort.

You can expand what is rapidly coming to be known as The Kettle Affair to cover all aspects of life in the school: bugger education is the colour of the requisition form for essential equipment the correct shade of puce.

One of the few Latin quotations I know (apart from salis populi suprema est lex, of course) is Ex Africa semper aliquid novi – there is always something new out of Africa. I now understand what that quotation means when I think of the novel and idiotic that pours from that alleged seat of learning every live long day!

Again and again I have to keep telling myself that this is actually real life and not some grotesque farce being played out for my amusement.

But every day, in spite of everything, kids are taught and most show every indication that they are enjoying their education. It’s amazing what teachers can produce in spite of the petty, stupid and self defeating restrictions imposed by people who know nothing of the educational process that they are there to promote!

One could say that this is yet another case of 'tell me the old, old story!'

Complete Complexity

Windows is up to its old tricks again!

In a moment reminiscent of the frightening old days of Apple messages like “Fatal System Error!” complete with graphic of a round bomb with fizzing fuse a message flashed up as I was using Word which basically informed me that everything that I had typed was lost and gone and would ne're return.

I entertained a faint hope that the incomprehensible information which sometimes appears to the left of the Word page telling me that Word has recovered something or other would spring into action and allow me to find the typing which simply vanished.

No such luck. Word will not be mocked by mere faith that things will work out.

So here we go again.

Not only is the evil disseminated through the world by the ever diabolically resourceful Mr Gates now working against me through the mechanism of World but also my screen has not shown up in school.

In spite of producing a colour photograph of the screen; the price; the part number; the address of the firm; its web site; its dimensions and the colour of the managing director’s eyes it failed to produce item in the school. It eventually transpired that I had not written out the information on the correct order form. So nothing was done. When asking for the Correct Order Form I discovered that none were actually available in the staff room. And no one knew where they might be had.

After asking five people for the Correct Order Form and getting no further forward in my quest, I eventually found someone who remembered that she had seen one sometimes in the recent past or at least knew where one might be found.

Clutching the Correct Order Form I filled in exactly the same information that I had given on the previous sheet. And nothing happened.

I am now in the Harry and Confuse phase of my plan of attack in getting a screen. I daily and duly pester people who I think might have some leverage and ask plaintive questions about screens and arrival. Things have reached that particular form of stasis which comes when the whole life of an institution is challenged through the bottleneck of a single person whose dead hand slows everything to a funereal dead march.

At the moment I am using pens which are inappropriate for OHPs on transparencies which have been provided by one of my colleagues from a previous school augmented by a donation by me from a previous educational institution, ahem.

There are no OHP pens or spare bulbs and I lack the necessary energy to start a campaign for them until I have the screen safely in my room.

This may take some time.

I am beginning to appreciate the excesses of the city which gave its name to the adjective which exemplifies the Heath Robinsonianly unnecessarily impossibly complex: Byzantine. Our school would seamlessly fit into the bygone world of the dynasty of Palaeologus. I have discovered that both literally and figuratively Yeats’ ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ fits the experience of teaching in our school!

Imagine what I would have been writing if I had needed textbooks!

It simply isn't done!

Just think.

At one time the growth of the computer was supposed to lead to the paperless office and from there to a paperless world.

It’s not even laughable is it?

Today (the last day of my oh so short holiday) was spent trying to control my temper after a visit to the agents for the flat and disagreeing with the assessment that they and the owner have made about certain payments for the repair of a tap. The rest of the day was occupied with sorting the papers by which my life is apparently ruled.

Spain likes paper; especially greyish coloured paper with an inky stamp on it. This would indicate that something has been photocopied (they love photocopying things) and by reason of the stamp has entered some sort of archive (they love making piles of paper and stapling them together and putting them away carefully) and thereby becoming wonderfully and terminally Official with a capital O.

Because any odd sheet of paper with reference numbers on it is treated with the same reverence that High Church Anglicans reserve for the similarly reserved Host it is essential that you go into any conflict with The Society of Paper Pushers (i.e. the whole of Spanish Mercantile, Political and Cultural life) it is best to have MAD. This acronym does not stand for Mutually Assured Destruction from those happy years of living a couple of minutes to midnight on the Atomic Clock, but rather for Manifold Augmented Documentation.

The on going joke (which isn’t funny once you’ve actually experience it) in this country is whatever documentation you bring with you to any bureaucratic confrontation you will always not have one essential piece of paper and you will Have To Come Back Tomorrow.

My documentation is now in such order that I will be able to go back in the afternoon of the same day rather than the next!

Toni has already consulted the lawyer in the family about the legality of the flat owner’s position and in the absence of a clear answer our anger continues to simmer.

Although it is a pity, because we are both happy in our present flat, we have to consider that if the owner is prepared to be petty about fifty quid or so, then what is he going to be like with the hundreds of pounds which is at the moment at his command in terms of the iniquitous Aval (don’t get me started!) and the two deposits that we had to give before we got the flat. It came as a very nasty surprise that we had to fork out almost a year’s rent in advance in various financial commitments before we were granted the privilege of paying our not inconsiderable rent!

Can you tell it still irks?

So filled with fury and indignation after the iniquitous actions of people not doing exactly what I want them to, the pressing question was how to dissipate such an unproductive feeling.

Yet again the good old menu del dia, eaten in the sun with vino tinto and casera came to the rescue. By the time that I reached the fideuá my mood was mellow and the tarta Santiago

with an ice cold smidgen of muscatel in a tiny shot glass meant that the harsh memory of injustice had faded to a vague description in someone’s blog!

And in the later afternoon I sat in the sun on the balcony and failed to complete the quick crossword in the Guardian Weekly.

What better way to end the holiday?

Don't bank on it!

Far be it from me to use this blog as a weapon against institutions that, in my perception, as far from fulfilling their objectives.

However.

When it comes to a bank like BBVA is becomes a positive duty to anathematize the whole bloody mess that has the temerity to style itself a financial organization.

They have managed, with that effortless idiocy that seems to be second nature to them, to cut our phone cut off! Admittedly the inconvenience has now been sorted out by a terrifying performance on the mobile by Toni who did a sort of replay of his masterly fury which was last vented on the hapless administration of our local health clinic.

The essential problem, of course, was bureaucracy. My initial account with BBVA (Rue the day! Rue the day!) was opened in Gran Canaria using my passport as proof of identity.

When I attempted to get at my money in a branch of BBVA in Terrassa in Catalonia with a renewed passport all hell broke loose. Spanish authorities do not understand the concept of having an identity card (i.e. a passport) on which the number can change. An identity card in Spain will have a number which will stay with the individual until death.

Eventually the problem was resolved after a less than edifying incident when I banged my hand on the bank manager’s desk and demanded all my money in cash immediately! Sometimes the histrionic can be the most effective form of rational discussion!

My account was transferred to the Spanish mainland and all seemed well with the world.

Wrong.

As a non Spanish person in Spain there are various degrees of who and what you are. As a British person in Spain you are a person from the EC and have a variety of rights. But, if you stay in Spain there are a variety of documents which begin to redefine your status. To live in Spain in some form of rented accommodation you have to prove, in a true Catch-22 style, that you already live in Spain! But to live in Spain you need to have proof that you live in Spain –and so it goes on back to infinity. There are ways of outwitting this piece of nonsense and, to be fair to the authorities, they do not seem seriously intent on checking the veracity of the assertions made.

If you manage to show that you actually do live in Spain you can get a document saying so, duly stamped by the local authority. This entitles you to another document showing that you are a foreigner (!) living in Spain and this document is regularly called for, together with any others (a photocopy of your passport always – this is an official reflex request) that come to the mind of any petty bureaucrat to prove that you are who you say you are and you live where you say you live.

So far so complex.

But, as you wend your way further and further into the tortuous paper labyrinth bedecked with the magic reference numbers so beloved by Spanish officialdom, your status subtly changes. Each scrap of paper meshes you ever more closely into the system. It’s like one of those incomprehensible Treasure Hunts where you have to collect seemingly incomprehensible and irrelevant clues so that, at the end, all will be revealed and you can claim the prize.

I now estimate that I can be asked for at least fifteen different pieces of paper by officials before they are satisfied that I exist and am Part of The System.

The changes in my status also, apparently, affected my bank account so that it changed or metamorphosed during the various stages before it was fully formed. This, in turn, affected the standing orders that I had so that payment was not made because of the lava turning into a pupae or whatever the banking equivalent in the evolution of my account was. Whatever happened, money didn’t flow to the right people and the telephone didn’t flow either.

My bank, of course, naturally, why would they, who am I to question them, did not deem it necessary to inform me that there might be problems and then when there were blamed me for it!

Some things are international; transfer of blame to the customer being one of them.

The really interesting thing is that, given the accumulation of sheer bloody mindedness on the part of my present bank I am eager to change to another.

The only thing that holds me back is the depressing thought of the amount of paper work that will be involved.

Prepare the photocopier; I would not go unarmed into the den of banker!

Wish me luck!

Click!

A spectator in the narrow streets of Old Sitges does not necessarily get the most flattering view of the gaudy glitter that is Carnival.

Pressed against the house wall which is literally inches from the gutter to avoid the edge of the floats as they sway and bump their way millimetres from your knees means that you are close enough to see beneath the gauze and paint at the mere mortals clothed in plastic cloth of gold.

As they walked, gyrated, skipped, slid, danced, ran, shouted, sang, and bopped their way along a depressingly large number of them had fags hanging from the corner of their mouths and the rest were either drinking from plastic cups or looking for a drink.

A drink I might add which was not so well hidden in the various cubby holes and spaces on the floats. A few of them had unashamed bars which were kept busy keeping the dancers in the mood.

To be fair Carnival in northern Spain is not, I presume quite the same in terms of warmth as the sultry climate of Rio – and that being the case given the length of time that the dancers had to endure in the inhospitable cold of Sitges they could well be forgiven for needing something other than the Spirit of Carnival to keep them going!

In my little cwtch along the route I was flanked by two formidable French ladies who had spirited conversations through me until I accepted the inevitable and moved to let them speak together. By doing so I gave up my position next to the wall and as the evening dragged its weary way towards midnight, the lack of stiffening began to tell on my back!

I decided to use my Casio camera and put my trust in the high sensitivity setting, so that I would not have to use flash. I convinced myself that the grainy appearance would add to the atmospheric quality of the photos. We all have to kid outselves along from time to time!

The floats were not massive, but their size was obviously determined by what could get through the tortuous streets of Sitges and sometimes there was precious little room for manoeuvre.

The tight squeeze obviously told on the speed of the Carnival which dragged to a halt almost as soon as it had started the descent towards the sea. This meant that we had more than enough time to appreciate the dear drum destroying level of music being pumped out inches from our ears.

The floats were impressive, but only at a speed which brought them into view at a slow walking pace at least. Stasis is not good for a festival which by its very nature should be one of activity.

After over two hours of eventual float after eventual float I was frankly bored and was trying to escape. Unfortunately escape was impossible as any attempt would involve the escapee intimately in the Carnival. There was also a very young, very serious member of the local police force (complete with gun, uniform, floppy hat and stern demeanour) stopping anyone trying to get off the wafer narrow pavement.


Eventually after yet another lull, I made my bid for freedom only to be caught up in an Operation of Michael Jacksons, closely followed by a Death of Elvises. My penultimate freedom dash was stopped by yet another Frill of Brazilian Sambaists.

Then I broke: I made a mental decision to smash my way through anything that came after them. No matter pharaohs, spacemen, cowboys, owls, eighteenth century scantily dressed noblepersons,

germs, bees, Heidis, leathermen, Christopher Columbuses, char ladies, waiters, lions and gas salesmen (all of whom, I assure you, did pass me) I would scream my way through them all and get to the car.

As it happened I managed to escape and just missed the voodoo dancers who were lurking around the corner. I was frozen and could barely stagger to the car and escape!

Carnival needs alcohol and a seat.

And warmth.

Well, I shall put it all down to experience.

The next parade is on Tuesday. Late at night. In Sitges. Last chance before the rigors of Lent make such jollifications impossible.

Apparently.

Unseasonal!

It rained.
It rains.
It will rain.

Not a good couple of days these lat couple of days, but there is always a band of light somewhere shining on the sea; that gleam of sun which Wales so often denied for weeks on end!

As if to match the weather the pollo from the place that we get Sunday lunch was sub standard as well.

And we didn’t win the Once.

There is just so much one can take; as long as one can dilute it with a little Rioja!

The good news, as relayed on my internet radio was the astonishing news that Wales had beaten England at Twickenham in the opening game of the Five, sorry, Six Nations Championship! I don’t want to be defeatist, but the tried and test scenario is now for Wales to burgeon with impossible self confidence, start talking immediately of The Triple Crown and convince themselves that the winning of The Grand Slam is a mere formality. Then comes the period of bitter recrimination when it doesn’t happen. I can imagine it all!

What this victory does do is that it allows me to enter school with head held high and look my English colleagues in the face. As we have Scots and Irish among the staff I feel there will be a group feeling of solidarity!

‘The Lovely Bones’ by Alice Sebold was en engaging read. The opening sentences: “My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973,” are arresting. This is one of those few times that it is worth reading the epigraph, or preface where the girl Susie worries about the penguin in a snow globe. “Don’t worry, Susie,” says her father, “he has a nice life. He’s trapped in a perfect world.”

These two quotations give the reader the gist of the book. It is a realistic fantasy if that sort of description makes any sense. Told from the point of view of the murdered girl as she describes her life in her own developing Heaven and her excursions to earth to watch her family, friends and murderer.

The book’s concerns are those of loss, guilt and coping within the relentless narrative of life.

This is a modern fairy tale, but one in the tradition of the Brothers Grimm where killing, maiming and unbearable pain are an essential part of the story. I recommend it as an uncomfortable book which is not unnecessarily cruel. A most enjoyable read.

The weather does not encourage me to go to an overcrowded Sitges and spend an age trying to find a parking space for the car.

Perhaps Tuesday.

More to learn!

Calçots in batter.

Just when you think that you have one aspect of foreign living sussed – they do something slightly different and you realise that you are still very much in the learning stage!

Another excellent menu del dia in the centre of Castelldefels just before retrieving Ceri’s working charcoal from the framers. This was the only real casualty in the move and so a nasty Habitat slip frame broke allowing the purchase of something rather more appropriate. And, of course, costing more than the original charcoal! Such is time and inflation – and buying the picture years ago!

Where to put it is an increasingly difficult prospect as I am disinclined to drill into virgin walls. The system of putting up sizable pictures here is two fixed hooks to fix into two eye screws on the frame. This has to be exact because there is no room for adjustment as far as I can see. Give me the old fashioned string at the back every time!

Today I picked up the third in the series of Catalan Artists from the newspaper: Gaudi. I have a few books on Gaudi and I assumed that this little monograph would not add much but I was mistaken as there were a number of pictures and views of edifices that I had not seen before. As the text is in Catalan I will have to use more imagination than knowledge to decipher what new insights the text might add!

The other book I bought today was the next volume in the National Geographic's Atlas Visual Patrimonies de la Human dad which this week was of France.

As you can imagine the wealth of buildings in France is a little overwhelming and the traditionally spectacular photographs of the National Geographic do more than adequate justice of their impossibly famous subjects.

The vast majority of buildings considered worthy to be part of the protected heritage of human kind are religious institutions. And those that aren’t, are royal. It is with conflicting emotions that one considers the disproportionate time, effort and money devoted to the construction in stone of monuments to the philosophically impossible and the politically inexcusable!

But often the sheer beauty of the proportions of some of those Gothic cathedrals and abbeys just takes the breath away. The Baroque is easy to resist and the French preoccupation with excessive ornamentation leaves me cold but the spaces that the Master Builders managed to create never fail to excite.

And the book is in Spanish, so at least I have a partial chance of understanding what it’s on about.

I am reading (as a Holiday Treat) a novel! I have chosen ‘The Lovely Bones’ by Alice Sebold. I should have finished this by tomorrow and write my response then.

I bet you can hardly wait!

Cheers!

Carnival!

The kids were as high as kites today in expectation of the King.

Not, I hasten to add, His Majesty King of Spain but an august personage of much more significance to the children: the Carnival King.

The entire school eventually settled down for the spectacle by nine thirty and awaited His Majesty whose first stop was our school.

Each section of the school from the very youngest toddlers to sixth formers put on a display of some sort ranging from a stomping march from the first classes to a spirited rendition of a line dance from the oldest.

My own kids found it very difficult to stay in their seats and anxiously awaited the arrival of their spectator parents before they finally settled down on firing the odd question to me to explain the non arrival of the Carnival King.

When he finally arrived on a golden throne on the back of a lorry complete with police escort and musicians who comprised a band of instrument players and a troupe of drummers the kids’ hysteria was complete!

The fact that he was so late that he was not able to witness the cavorting of years three and four as various kings, princes, knights, ladies and dragons faded into insignificance as the full extent of the troupe with which the Carnival King travelled was made apparent.

To my (admittedly) limited experience the personages of our Carnival visitors owed much to the Mardi Gras celebrations of the Deep South especially of New Orleans with an admixture of the Carnival in Rio for extra spice.

The King himself, with painted face and formal jacket covered in medals was accompanied by fan waving bewigged flunkeys and also by his Carnival Queen. His courtiers were characters ranging from blue suited, white faced attendants with plume topped helmets to skin tight lamé clad dancers sporting flamboyant headdresses of bright yellow feathers.

And your humble correspondent? I was clad in a purple cape edged with gold with a tunic of crimson and gold. This ensemble was topped with a crown which I felt expressed my understated aspirations.

To describe in words the glittering masterpiece that was that headpiece: sparkling gold, gleaming silver, the shimmering reflections from the cut up plastic mirror we used in a science lesson; the layers of border paper; the swish of tissue paper; the glinting flash of sun caught staples holding the whole thing together; the excess glitter flakes slowly floated to the ground – to describe this, I say, would be impossible.

I confidently expect my crown to be claimed by the Generalitat as a work of art which will need to be preserved for the nation.

During the Carnival dancing after the Carnival King had read the incomprehensible poems about the staff in Catalan saw one of the more extraordinary characters of his entourage – a near naked character wearing impossible high heels and a high camp high collar ask me to pose with him for a photograph! This inversion of the natural order confused and exhilarated me. Though in retrospect it did make me wonder just what I looked like for such a character to consider me worthy to complement his extraordinary appearance!

Sunday? Carnival in Sitges!

Bring it on!

Just a little hem!

And now for a test of my dressmaking skills.

The day of the Carnival Parade is almost upon us. Only a few short hours and our classes will be bumping their way through an ill rehearsed routine in front of the Carnival King.

And I, I will be resplendent in a cardboard crown augmented with fragments of glass and tiddlywinks counters; purple tissue paper and gold card; glitter flakes and silver pen.

Glitter flakes are a wonderful invention. They come in plastic sauce bottles with a clip up spout and, when tipped, disgorge a shimmering array of specs of well, glitter. These flakes are tiny and metallic and only a masochist who had not had his share of self immolation would ever give these to primary school children. I was careful and mindful of the cleaning repercussions and I still managed to create a wide zone of glittering chaos all around me. The idea of a class, any class, getting hold of these tiny objects of desire does not bear thinking about; as it is I confidently expect to notice gleaming spots of brilliance around those front desks that I used for my nefarious purposes for the next term or two.

The crown is made. The costume yet to make.

I have brought home three pieces of material and I have been urged to use a simple stitch to marry them all together into a coherent whole.

The word ‘simple’ and ‘stitch’ do not usually combine in my day to day vocabulary. I found that my simple puppy dog look when the proposed ‘stitching’ was talked about did nothing to get the garment made. It actually appeared that the advice that was floating about concerning the making of the costume was actually for my practical benefit and not, as I thought, simply for information!

You will gather that typing is a more enticing idea than any aspect of my life as a seamstress has for me. I can vaguely remember Dando (my name for my father’s mother, a probable corruption for the Welsh for grandmother) teaching me chain stitch as we roasted crumpets against the bars of the electric fire. But that was when my age was in the lower single digit area rather than encumbered as I am with more years than I care to enumerate. Chain stick has long been relegated to that area of memory that looks back with a nostalgic shudder to such things as sherbet fountains and love hearts. These things are best kept as memories and distant memories at that: there is not necessity for these uneasy memories to be refreshed by present experience.

Yet I feel sure that sellotape will be inadequate.

With a sigh he considered ending his missive to the world and looked with fear and loathing at the task which lay ahead. He hesitated only for a moment after which a new resolution filled him with the conviction that he would and could do this thing. No matter what cost; no matter the humiliation; no matter the ill reward – he would throw restraint to the wind and sew until his fingers bled. If necessary. If he couldn’t find the sellotape.

Haute couture be afraid. Be very afraid!

Choices: style or effect

Is my school ready for my Herod costume?

This is the sort of pressing question which taxes my brain nightly. The Parade for the Carnival King is fast approaching and as yet I have neither costume nor accoutrements to acquit myself with any dignity on the great day.

We have decided on a Knights, Royalty and Dragons sort of theme and worked out a mind numbingly simple scenario to occupy the long minutes when our year groups are in the limelight.

It’s funny how long ten minutes of parade and action seem in theory and how short they actually are when acted out by wildly enthusiastic young human creatures! I can foresee that there will be wild, bad natured rehearsal when the day is immanent. And god knows it is immanent enough when you consider that we will be flaunting our polished performances the day after tomorrow.

And the more immediate problem is that tomorrow is masks. And I haven’t got one. During this week I have made a sort of tricorn hat complete with national flower and feather and I have also made a pair of card glasses with gold and silver wings. Who knows what I will create for the morrow!

As for the golden creation that was my Herod costume; I have no idea where it is. It is either here somewhere in the flat or freezing in the inhospitable exile of my storage space.

Who knows?

Who cares?

Text denial!

When was the last time I read a book?

Aunt Bet sent me a copy of a Tolstoy story which I devoured: though I am still trying to work out the reasons for her sending me a story of a compulsively confessional murderer. The only other books that I have been perusing have been books of Catalan art. In Catalan. I have not so much read them as looked at the pictures!

I am obviously suffering from Novel Fatigue which comes about when all your narrative literature is locked away in a storage space and when each new book purchase creates a storage crisis in the flat.

I am going to have to pay a visit to Bluespace and rescue a selection of novels that I cannot do without. The only problem is that the rented space is so expensive that I have only rented enough to store the boxes of books which I have brought over and there is no space to set them out so that they can be consulted. Moving the boxes to see what they contain is like a giant three dimensional version of the little plastic puzzles which used to be popular.

You know the ones; they were made up of a series of little moveable squares which were contained within a frame work which allowed one square to be moved at a time. There is a computer version of this irritating little game too where you have to click on the empty square to move the one adjacent to it – or something. I never really had the patience to discover the finer details of how to work the thing!

I really do have to win the lottery!

You know it's worth it!

For my father the whole practical benefit of my education was demonstrated one Christmas when, using my trusty compass I constructed a six pointed star for the top of the tree.

This geometric wonder elicited a damned-with-faint-praise encomium on the value for money that Cardiff High School had provided for my family.

After a number of years the star became an essential part of my family’s cynical post modernist take on the shallow commercial promise that Christmas became. I might add that the grotesque parody of a tree that was topped with the increasingly tatty star only added to the general contempt that we felt for the festival.

If it wasn’t for my mother’s cooking and the increasingly hasty wrapping of excellent presents we might have given up the festival altogether.

My painstaking achievement of a cardboard star rose to mind this morning as the week of Carnival dawned in school. The promise of a funny hat (essential garb for day one of the Carnival week) was not fulfilled by Toni and I searched high and low in a fruitless search for a hat which I could (somehow) have made funny.

In the event I reached school with no hysterical headgear and therefore had to set about making something with which to pacify my class.

Minutes later with the help of a large sheet of black sugar paper and origami skills a dead Japanese slug would have been ashamed of I had produced something which could perch on my head.

Triangular in conception and reminiscent of the headgear of our greatest admirals in Britain’s Golden Age of Maritime Achievement and bedecked with lines of silver and gold this wonderful head covering also sported a yellow cardboard feather on one side with the worlds most badly drawn daffodil in similar yellow cardboard on the other. The band of golden boarder paper added that final touch of elegant distinction to a masterpiece of crafted paper sartorial style.

The kids were stunned which is just as well as it is very difficult to maintain academic respectability while looking like a poor man’s Robin Hood! Luckily the kids also had absurd headwear including one girl who had a white hat with a toy hippo wearing a bell. You can always trust kids to freak you out!

We had our first rehearsal for the detail of what we want the kids to do as our contribution to the parade in Carnival. The kids responded well to impromptu direction and a somewhat hackneyed storyline involving kings, queens, knights and dragons. The only problem, as the eight year old ‘court ladies’ pointed out was “We don’t do anything but stand around and then fall over.” Fair point! So I have decided that their actions will be in bandaging the knights as they creep back to court “bloody but unbowed.” All this to the music of The Grand March from ‘Aïda’ – never let it be said that we lack the intellectual courage to go for cheap emotional overkill.

With the crowd waving their sea horse flags!

Don’t ask!

Knit up the ravelled sleeve or something

Some people are good at lie-ins; I am not.

I think it is the combination of a dash of protestant work ethic added to a broth of Welsh non-conformist guilt and old fashioned Valleys determination that makes the ‘wasting’ of a morning lying in the ‘rank sweat of an enseamed bed’ (and that’s probably enough of that particular ‘Hamlet’ quotation, I think!) slightly - if not totally - immoral.

There is always the example of Paul and the summer of ’94 or whenever it was, where in a holiday period which seemed far too short for the incidents which it contained – I had almost 50% more holiday than Paul because I got up in the mornings!

I can remember during that surrealistic combination of life experiences that was that summer trying to fill in a calendar with what we had done and when and then panicking because according to our calculations, with the relationships of one event to another, we thought that we should have been back in work a week previously!

Needless to say, we were wrong in our calculations and there were more precious days of work free enjoyment to be had. As a time of unfeasibly full days of disparate enjoyment that summer will probably be unique in my experience. I was just about to give a ‘from this – to that’ example of the range of things that I did, but realised just in time that neither the alpha nor the omega are entirely decorous for a long standing Primary School Teacher (now almost three weeks!)

I will say that taking part in a street parade wearing a wheel trim around my neck and popping into a wedding after a blind date were two of the more ordinary events in that extraordinary period!

So, this morning was horizontal and we eventually staggered out into a vertical sunny world for lunch.

In an unprecedented piece of culinary magnanimity we decided to give a local restaurant another chance. We originally visited this place in the height of the summer and we less than impressed with the service and the food. This time the service was quick, efficient and grasping and the food more than acceptable.

It was only when we compared the price for what was little more than a series of tapas that we realized that yesterday’s meal of calçots and paella with wine was round about the same price. But, as the sun was shining and the sky was blue (bearing in mind that it is January) who cares?

In another fortnight or so Ceri and Dianne will be arriving for a few days. It will be a different sort of break for them than the last time as Toni and I will be working and only be able to see them in the evenings, but I have had a spare set of keys cut so they will be able to treat the place more like an hotel and take the holiday at their own pace.

I suppose I should be thinking about what they ought to bring with them from Wales that I have been missing, but, apart from their good selves, I am happy as I am here.

But there must be something that I want and which can easily be placed in hand baggage!

Once,yes, once for a laugh

This morning developed my sympathy for Sisyphus and his never ending task.

OK house cleaning is different in many ways from rolling a rock but I don’t find it any more rewarding.

With tile floors it should be easy to hoover up the dust and dirt; but it isn’t. I am beginning (rather late in life it must be admitted) to realize that there are different types of dust. I am sure if I had paid more attention in my physics lessons then I would be able to discourse learnedly on the positive and negative charges of dust particles and their adhesive affinities to places that should be easily cleaned. But I didn’t and I can’t. All I know is as follows:

1 A coloured bathroom never looks really clean no matter how you, what you and when you clean.
2 A wet mop moves dirt around and takes little off the floor.
3 Water needs to be changed every few squeezes (as if!) to prevent the dirt in suspension being transferred to the surface being cleaned.
4 Cleaning windows is impossible.
5 Metal sinks only look clean for a maximum of three or four nano seconds.
6 Putting real polish on nasty plastic pseudo veneered surfaces just smears.
7 Cleaning is largely pointless.

I feel that these Eight Observations could easily be expanded into a philosophy of life. Alternatively the hiring of domestic help could inspire me to compose a new list.

The Family is going to descend upon us today and I am finally going to get me Secret Friend Christmas present and we are also going out to eat calçots. Toni has suggested the beachside restaurant in Gava and I look forward to wearing a bib and being able to indulge in hands on eating.

Calçots are an odd institution. Whichever way you look at it, in spite of the exotic name, calçots are large burnt spring onions. I never really know if I should eat the burnt bits or strip the outer layers away to reveal the slimy inside.

The meal was a delight. The calçots were well cooked and slipped down nicely! The sauce was excellent and we had seconds! The only down side of eating calçots is that your hands get absolutely filthy and, as is usual for me, my area at the table looked as though I had not used my plate at all. I have decided that I eat with more enthusiasm and less reserve than I probably should!

The paella was good but I noticed that this one had more ballerinas (tiny bivalves) and square lumps of processed meat as part of the ingredients. I sure that this was done because it was cheap, but it did add to the taste and texture. Something to remember for my next paella!

The second volume in the Catalan painters series is of Ramon Casas.

He is a considerable painter but I think that he is a much more accomplished artist in charcoal and brush.

His portraits of just about everybody in the artistic world in his time are uniformly accomplished and interesting. I think that to have your sketch by Casas was a sign that you had arrived!

My little library of monographs of Catalan art is growing and Toni has to grin and bear it because it is part of his culture as well. I am now desperately trying to read Catalan to find out more about the artists. God knows how accurate my guesses are. I am likely to end up with the most distorted history of Catalan art ever!

I can always look at the pictures!

Just another day in . . .

I arrived at school this morning (Friday) to find it locked!

It was, to put it mildly, a surprise to find that the institution was not available for instant professional access 45 minutes before it was supposed to open for its clients! And it was cold because we (yes, we soon formed a little group; the dispossessed) were out of the sun. Such hardship!

Once inside (eventually let in by the disturbingly-like-one-of-my-last-sixth-formers 19 year old caretaker) it turned out that not only was the headteacher ill, but the head of primary was also hors de combat. As the head of primary is a full time teacher this meant that there was a class to be covered. How that was achieved, and by whom, I know not; all that I know is that my non contact periods were not touched.

The preparations for Carnival continue with this morning being the time to rehearse the walking downstairs with the chairs to set out the area where we are going to sit. I could now go into a length and expressively witty description of the contained chaos that ensued, but I would merely ask my more erudite and frivolous readers to think of E F Benson’s incomparable novels and you will get the flavour of it all!

We still have the rehearsal of the ‘dramatic interlude’ or more horrifically the ‘dance’ that have yet to be devised. This magnum opus of terpsichorean or dramatic force will be presented before His Majesty, The Carnival King next Friday. His Highness has condescended to grace our humble school with his august presence as the first stop in a crowded day. No doubt he will be suitably stultified by the mind numbing boredom that such infantile displays produce in industrial quantities. Thinking about it he may well be invigorated by the barely suppressed hysteria and air of murderous intent that teachers usually bring to these occasions.

As a lead up to this event, next week will be characterized by such jeux d’esprit as the wearing of funny hats, odd socks, amusing glasses and masks.

I can hardly wait.

As the Powers That Be were all ill today and as the secondary part of the school was going to give an assembly to the primary section on the importance of understanding global warming and how we can prevent it, it was left to me to introduce the guests and thank them for their efforts. It was just like old times with me standing in front of people and speaking.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!