Exculsive produce

The cachet of getting cheese sent over from a specific farm in New Zealand and even from a specific cow was somewhat lessened by the chore of extracting it from the Spanish Post Office.

The post office in Castelldefels is the original of the location of the land that time forgot. Time, which as we all know is relative, seems to achieve a stasis of unimaginable proportions in that building.

When you arrive you are, or at least if you have been before and know that it is there, confronted by a machine which gives you a ticket. The ticket is your indication of when you are likely to be seen by a counter assistant.

These machines are not uncommon. The factor which makes them much more problematic to the noviciate British user is that you are offered a choice of buttons to press to get your numbered ticket.

I have solved this conundrum by pressing all available buttons and taking all the tickets which are disgorged by the machine and going to the counter which is indicated by the first number to be illuminated on the counter board. I then rely on my mumbling incompetence in the Spanish language to ensure that I am seen by a forgiving counter assistant.

An encouragingly low number on the wrong ticket (I think) and a disappointingly high number on the right ticket (I think) might have forced some sort of moral choice if the unequal completion rate of customers had not meant that I actually made the appropriate choice at the end after only an hour of waiting!

Cheese has to be very good to justify all that waiting, sitting next to a strange man who gibbered away to himself about the number of telephone bills that were his fascinating reading while I waited for my number to flash up on the board.

The truckle that I was sent had a dark rind and was surprisingly soft in texture and interestingly mild in taste. Well done that cow!

The weather has been unseasonably wet and the kids had restricted time outside and a disproportionately long time inside during the day. Although the last half hour of lunchtime was outside it was getting more and more problematic as more and more obvious rain began to fall.

The end of the day coincided with a torrential downpour and the dispersal of the pupils resembled the evacuation of a sinking ship as they were herded to the front door and taken to safety to their umbrella wielding parents. It was an extended moment of delicious chaos.

Toni is still not feeling 100% and so we didn’t go out to dinner on his birthday and his birthday present is looking interestingly professional as it languishes impotently in the corner of the living room. I can guarantee that the purchase of a reflector telescope will ensure cloudy skies for the foreseeable future.

Sods’ law is the only unalterable constant in an uncaring universe. I’ve found!

How much?

A bad day of teaching.

My own faults, exacerbated by the unhelpful procedures which operate in the school as far as preparation of teaching materials are concerned. Even in English I find that my expectations are far beyond the capabilities of most of the pupils and they need far easier worksheets with which to approach the language problems with which we are dealing.

I suppose that I should be stimulated by the necessity to dig deeper into whatever teaching experience I can draw on to facilitate pupil learning. It does take time away from reading though!

Next week should be a week of examinations, but the SATs papers have not yet arrived so that we may find ourselves delaying all the testing until the week after next.

Meanwhile a more pressing problem is what to get for Toni for his birthday on Friday. We have (sort of) agreed on a telescope. This relates back to his schooldays when a visitor had such an instrument to show the pupils and everyone got to look through it, but Toni was prevented by the school bell from having his turn.

This has festered in his mind for years and this birthday will see an ancient wrong righted!

But which telescope? Toni has expressed an interest in the reflecting mirror sort. There is an example of one in an electronic supermarket near Castelldefels but it looks robustly professional and to leave it set up will certainly make some sort of statement. Quite what sort of statement I do not know. But it will not be something which can be ignored.

Ah well, we will see. I suppose it will give me an opportunity to buy books on the surface of the moon!

It’s a pity you can’t get the I-Spy Stella Objects or the Observer Book of Planets or something. Might be worth looking for. There are supposed to be English language second hand book shops in Barcelona.

At least it will be an excuse to explore.

Cleanliness is next!

Today marks the day when I have achieved a Black Belt level of acceptance in Castelldefels.

The café at the bottom of the street laid out my takeaway meal on real plates. Not only that, but they also offered me two glasses of beer and a tapa of spicy anchovies. For nothing.

The recourse to takeaway was because of paper overload.

I was acutely aware that, this afternoon, one of my colleagues came into my class and saw me gibbering quietly behind an avalanche of miscellaneous paper – official, educational, pupil and rubbish. I decided that Something Had To Be Done.

School ended and, an hour and a half later the various strata of papers had been excavated and various interesting discoveries had been made. The most useful was a cache of photocopyable OHP slides together with finding other ‘Lost’ documents.

In deference to Toni’s shocked discovery (via an unhelpful TV programme) that your average keyboard was actually dirtier than your average toilet! (can that be true?) I cleaned the surface of my desk. The surface being visible for the first time in some months!

The exhaustion produced by this Augean effort necessitated the assistance of sustenance from your friendly corner café. And a substantial glass of Rioja in a rather splendid glass completed my near regeneration.

And tomorrow the kids will come back into the classroom and bugger everything up again!

As a member of the Registry staff in Swansea University once remarked to me during one vacation, “You know Stephen, this place works so well when the students aren’t here!” How often do those in education feel fully confident when their customers are elsewhere!

Tomorrow is a full teaching day with no free periods and a bewilderingly large and varied series of lessons with a clientele ranging from the uninformed, the unable, the unworthy and the unlettered to the not any of the previously named!

I wonder how uncluttered my desk will be by the end of the day.

Or not.

Meeting misery!

As is the way with my place of work, no opportunity is lost in a meeting to make your life just that little bit sadder.

We have now ‘lost’ a year or possibly two years to the foetus factory on the lower ground floor. Primary will now start in Year 2. Further, just to make things a little different, the absurd educational negative of the so-called Family Group will continue.

The Family Group is a class in which two years are mixed, so I am teaching a mixed Year 3 & Year 4 class which revert to their year specific groupings when they have PE, Spanish and Catalan. The economic advantages for such an arrangement are clear, but . . .

The proposal for next year is that the Family Groupings will comprise Years 2 & 3; Years 4 & 5, and . . . this is the point when things get a little hazy, but there are confused ideas of taking Year 6 up to Secondary and . . .

You can see that there seem to be too many ellipses for comfort. It may make for uneasy reading, but just imagine trying to teach it! Teaching two Key Stages in one class? Easy! Rewriting the entire planning scheme? Simple! Knowing what we might be doing? Impossible!

I can only hope that some sort of educational reality informs some of the more manic deliberations that are forming themselves into a disastrous gallop into a second great year of chaos.

Never a dull moment.

Meanwhile Toni has been affected by what Doctor Johnson called The Great Wen and is at present lounging in what I take to be a close approximation of a dissipated Byzantine emperor complaining that he can do nothing, while I am reduced to a subsidiary role twittering about what is past, or passing, or to come.

Talking of The Great Wen I do not know whether to laugh or cry at the rise to some sort of power of the Blond Buffoon as elected mayor of London.

I find myself torn between the loathing of his previous incarnation as insensitive hooray henry and the alarming character he has assumed after rising from his self excavated grave of arrogant self interest to become a caring sharing champion of the common man. He is one vile antithesis with only his bombastic elitist arrogance illuminating his hectic ambition. He even makes that creepy newt lover seem positively wholesome by comparison!

I leave the country for a few months and they degenerate like mindless Yahoos. God help us all!

And today was cloudy. But not cloudy in the spiteful way of British weather where one cloud presages a multitude of fluffy sun obstructers and the rest of the day condemned to a colour drained greyness – which kills the spirit! Here in Catalonia one cloud is singular and, having cast its shadow moves on!

The kiosk on the beach has still not been rebuilt: until that happens we cannot state that summer is fully with us.

I keep a constant watch!

Broken stones?

After almost two thousand pages of reading about Medieval Man’s attempt to build cathedrals and churches it was time for a counter blast to all that dedicated faith.

‘God Is Not Great’ by Christopher Hitchens is one of a recent series of books which set out a damning (unfortunate word!) condemnation of the pernicious influence of religion and the destructive effect that it has on human development.

This is an intensely readable book which, tempted by agreement, I am inclined to regard as informed, perceptive and convincing!

I wonder how far back in time in the countries of Europe you would have to go to find that possession of this book would lead to your being ostracized, forced from your job, prosecuted, imprisoned, executed, suppressed – you name it and it is ease itself to find examples from the history of religion.

In my present country, I would only have to go back as far as the 1970’s when Franco was still in power and many books were ‘banned’ – though as I found during one holiday I could break the rules with something like impunity. To be fair, it would not be hard to find similar examples from secular society! Though, as Hitchens’ book interestingly points out it is difficult to find a solely secular society which at some point did not ape the elements of religion or use the established religion as part of its method of repression.

A stimulating book which should develop the debate to rid ourselves of the moribund remnants of superstition. Some hope!

Meanwhile this short holiday has merely highlighted the long slog to the summer holidays. From now until July there is a seemingly endless sequence of full weeks of teaching.

In this school, more than any other in which I have worked, continuity is something which seems to be like an unobtainable ideal. Last year the entire staff of the primary section of the school left. Not only left, but left with attitude. They left a school which had to be reinvented by the incoming staff last September. The stories I have been told of what the first few weeks were like recall the difficulties of a group of educationalists founding a school in a developing country, not in a concrete and plate glass building half an hour from one of Europe’s stylish and bustling capitals!

Who will be there next year is an intriguing question, the answer to which will have a direct effect on how far I can continue my job there with any degree of satisfaction. I await my ‘interview’ to discuss my future which will either clarify my situation or give me much more to consider before I make my decision about returning.

I will have to revise what I know of eschatology because there is a definite sense of the end of things in my school!

Another cup?

A couple of days’ holiday is too short for a real holiday but is an ideal opportunity to complete tasks which have been put off for too long.

There are usually far too many ‘tasks’ (define them how you wish) to complete in the time available, so it is also an opportunity to order your priorities.

Today has been one of those days when even I question my priorities.

What I wanted to do is filling up an electronic itemised page on my PDA. What I actually did was to pay homage to the stern training my mother meted out to my youthful self and buy a rather camp glass teapot with a fluted base and an even more camp scalloped glass cup and saucer. You have to understand that one thing that my mother instilled in me was an almost reverential attitude to Wedgwood and things china. This later extended itself to include things cutlery and things glass. Here in Catalonia Wedgwood is usually found only in places like El Corte Inglés so in Castelldefels I have had to compromise and change my allegiance to Zara Home. I have to say that the teapot was an impulse buy because I immediately imagined myself sitting on the balcony sipping Earl Grey while contemplating the gently undulating waves. It’s what I do! Sad isn’t it!

I also bought two rather splendid trays. That wasn’t an impulse buy but to replace a gravitational disaster when the two melamine trays carefully packed and transported to Catalonia feel off the top of the fridge and shattered. Their replacements (courtesy of Zara Home) are much more stylish and practical. How often do those two words go together?

I actually managed to buy a replacement battery for the garage door remote, so I feel that I have completed a tedious quotidian task which justifies just about any amount of irresponsible impulse buying by way of compensation.

The Ken Follett is finished: over one thousand pages of professionally engineered enjoyment. But, if I am truthful, there is little in volume one which is not in volume two. As I read the second volume first I was able to see the plot parallels as I read through the first volume. The superficial details are different but the thrust of the character and motivation is similar. I think that the detail is quite enough to justify a sequel but it really is more of the same. I thoroughly enjoyed both!

And what a beautiful day it has been!

The Battle of the Cathedrals!

I have been trying to work out why, in my opinion, Ken Follet is a better writer than Ildefonso Flacones.

Other people, I know, would simply enjoy these parallel stories of the building of big churches, but I have been fascinated by more than mere plot.

On the surface there are many similarities: they are epic novels; they concern the building of places of worship; they are set in the middle ages; they are melodramatic; they span generations; they are violent and gritty; they display exhaustive information; they look for verisimilitude in their descriptions; they are historically ‘accurate’ within the demands of the story – but they are not the same.

The appeal of Ildefonso is largely based on the fact that it is set in Catalonia and it mentions buildings, personalities and places that are near (though not in time) to the place in which I presently live. It was a good, enjoyable read. But I always had a nagging suspicion that something was missing.

I have now read 500 pages of ‘The Pillars of the Earth’ by Ken Follett and I have an entirely different response in my reading. With Follett I feel as though I am in a safe pair of hands and the rhythm, pace and development of the plot is more satisfying than in ‘Cathedral of the Sea.’

Follett was initially a writer of thrillers and his background show through in this novel: there is tension and high drama. He excels at depicting conflict and exploring the baser motivations that lead to duplicity and faithlessness that make such fascinating reading!

His exposition of technical and historical information is unforced and flows naturally in the framework he creates for his characters. His choices of central protagonists even when they are manipulated with the callous unreality of a Dickens are satisfyingly predictable and have all the comforting cosiness of a Perry Mason episode where you know, give or take a few knifings and graphic rapes all is going to work out reasonably well in the end!

Take the openings of the novels. Falcones’ opening sentence is: “Bernat realized nobody was looking in his direction, and glanced up at the clear blue sky.” Whereas Follett opens with, “The small boys came early to the hanging.” You may say that the Follett opening is obvious and melodramatic, but it undoubtedly catches the attention and you plunge into the story. The calm opening of Falcones does quickly develop into something much darker, but I maintain that Follett is the writer who demands your attention and repays your reading with instant and constant gratification – not an easy task when my 500 pages read so far leaves a generous chunk to go!

And talking of that chunk, I’m now going back to it!

Which tells you something about the novel!

Weighed in the balance

Today a glass of water in the face!

Maybe that was a metaphor, but the effect was the same.

For the first time for a long, long time I was officially ‘observed’ in one of my lessons!

I suppose there are some who might say that for a stranger teaching in the school since January, late April is rather a long time to wait to find out if the recent acquisition is actually doing what he was employed to do!

With consummate professionalism, Margaret observed, participated when encouraged to do so and made copious notes.

Professionalism: that is a word not often used in most dealings with the mechanics of administration and officialdom in my school, but in this instance the experience reminded me of being in a real school!

Now for the water. And cold water too.

My colleague who observed me had the bare faced temerity to give me a 2! A 2! Me! And I thought she was a friend! The fact that she could point to evidence to support her award of a ‘good two, border line one’ did not sweeten the bitter pill.

When I complained to the incapacitated headteacher when I later visited her in hospital she told me that I shouldn’t worry, that 1s were only rarely awarded and then only to exceptional teachers. “But I am exceptional!” I asserted and the intensity of the laughter of the headteacher in response was only matched when I asserted in another conversation that in spite of my name, “I am no martyr!”

I have to say that, as always, it is an incentive and a stimulant to have a colleague in your class and her feedback was revealing. Is it really policy or normal to have your lesson objectives written on the whiteboard for each lesson? Extraordinary!

The checklist of elements in a lesson which have to be met are, I think, impossible to achieve in one lesson, though possible in a series of lessons. Well, that, in Conrad’s phrase was the “saving lie” with which I consoled myself for my abject inability to gain the highest grade.

Ah well, gives me something to think about and upon which to improve for the next time! If of course there is a next time.

My interview with the Powers Who Decide These Things takes place a fortnight into May.

I can hardly wait to hear what they have to say!

Faint praise?

‘Cathedral of the Sea’ by Ildefonso Falcones is now read.

I must admit that after the first few hundred pages I warmed to the narrative, but that was responding to your average tale of medieval rape, pillage, duplicity, deception, viciousness and noble brutality!

The plot is somewhat plodding and sometimes predictable but enjoyable none the less. The characters are never more than two dimensional, but at least you know where you are with them.

As soon as you realise that awful things are going to happen throughout the novel but that eventually good is going to be rewarded you can relax into a good, extended rollicking tale.

It has more in common with Harry Potter than an historical novel with literary pretensions.

Its great claim to fame is its setting in Barcelona and the adulation it gives to one of the great churches of Catalonia, the Cathedral of the Sea of the title, Santa Maria del Mar. This church was singled out by Hadyn as being the building in which, as soon as he entered, he uttered a short sharp yelp and then pronounced the acoustic excellent!

I think that I can recommend this book (such magnanimity for a book which has sold over two million copies worldwide in umpteen languages) but you should not look for profundity in its pages. An excellent beach read.

I can now start on the first volume of Ken Follett’s cathedral novel sequence. I still rate him more highly than the Catalan.

I seem to be using up my summer reads before the actually season starts.

I’ll just have to buy other volumes to compensate!

Sweetness and light!

I think that it must be a Catalan rule of life that no self respecting inhabitant will park more than spitting distance from their destination.

I say this after parking a considerable distance from the doors of the hospital I visited this morning. Even if I had the assistance of the moon’s gravity to help with the trajectory of my expectoration I fear that the sputum would have fallen well short.

And what parking I passed as I eventually found my own space on open, dusty, uneven and (most importantly) unshaded ground! Any kerb is an open invitation to wheels: no matter how dangerous and obstructive the final parked car may be - if a wheel can touch a kerb it has the equivalent of ecclesiastical sanctuary.

It sometimes looks as if all the parked cars are engaged in a childish game where they have indemnity while at least one wheel is touching the kerb, but, at any moment when the policeman hides his eyes, they may all scatter and find other even more bizarre parking spaces!

I have told myself to be tolerant about the sort of parking which is an everyday horror in the part of Castelldefels in which I live because, after all, it is beside the sea in a seaside resort and too many people are chasing too few parking spaces so one must expect inconsiderate parking. But far too much of the parking goes beyond the inconsiderate and ventures into the territory of the downright dangerous.

The clearest and most glaring examples from the point of view of a British person concern zebra crossings. I suppose that I should point out that the British semi sacred nature of a zebra crossing is not shared by the Spanish. The absolute right of a person to cross is not guaranteed on the Spanish version.

Some zebra crossings here are controlled by traffic lights and you have to wait for the green light to cross. Some are semi controlled in the sense that, if the road traffic light is flashing amber you have to give priority to a pedestrian. Or not, as some drivers believe. The qualified nature of the zebra crossing in this country is an open invitation to disaster for the British visitor. British certainties should not encourage you to venture onto a zebra crossing with the same assurance that you might have in the home country. You might be right, but you could easily be left for dead by a naughty retreating motorist!

Parking near to, next to, or even on zebra crossings is also a problem. As most visitors to Castelldefels have to cross a main road to get to the beach the municipality has helpfully provided a rash of zebra crossing to help the sun seekers to their destination. This is a good thing but to our municipality the construction of a zebra crossing is no more than painting black and white strips on the road. There are no markings either side of the crossing to prohibit cars from parking.

You therefore have the situation that the first part of a crossing may effectively be blocked from the oncoming motorist’s view. This impediment does not seem to effect the pedestrians however, who walk out on the crossing as if the sides were protected with barriers of reinforced concrete.

I have often noted that the experience of the motorist rarely seems to inform the actions of the pedestrian and vice versa. It is almost as if there are two races, the motorist and the pedestrian, separated into distinct and mutually exclusive factions with mutual incomprehension. These two exclusive factions are bitterly antagonistic and are only united by their mutual (and very understandable) loathing of the cyclist!

The cyclist is the true pariah of the streets, roads and pavements. Those three areas are linked because they are all fair game for the cyclist who regards all space as his exclusive property; all road signs as merely street art and all traffic lights as mere flashing decorations.

The cyclist weaves intricate patterns of propulsion among cars and motorcycles which vary from the suicidal to the homicidal but are always informed with the key motivation of the dedicated cyclist – arrogant selfishness.

And don’t get me started on the ridiculous clothes they parade – it would be a vicious misnomer to say that a cyclist ‘wears’ his lurid garb. And I’m sure that there are specialist web sites where they could show off the intimate details of their bodies without the mobile fetishist exhibitionism that cycling is today.

The walk from my parking space to the hospital doors was not as long as the various digressions that I have written but long enough to tut! tut! my way pleasantly to steel myself for the difficulties in finding out where the patient I had come to see was located.

Apart from totally predictable confusion about the room number and discovering that the lifts were not for people I found the room relatively quickly (considering I was searching for a room which did not exist) and I was delighted to see that our Fallen Headteacher looked remarkably healthy for a woman with three screws in her thigh. The fact that she was not in plaster and was only going to be in hospital for a few days more was healthily encouraging. The flowers went down well as did the Sunday newspaper. The Observer.

What else do you expect me to give from a wishy-washy liberal with a small ‘l’ like me?

And I had paella for lunch.

Who can ask for more?

Cultural hopes

I think that the definition of optimism is expecting to get a reasonably priced flight to somewhere interesting over a Bank Holiday.

Or delusion.

Definitely delusion. We have trawled the internet looking for the elusive bargain and have discovered that the expectation of such a find is on a par with believing that you can find a bank with ethical principles.

I have to keep reminding myself that I am actually living in a place that I would previously have moved heaven and earth and vast quantities of money to get to for a holiday. To echo the words of Shylock, I am content!

The series of Grans Genis de l’art a Catalunya has reached volume 14 and the painter Josep Amat. This is a painter of whom I have not previously heard and, from a cursory look at his oeuvre, a painter who is not going to be a major force in my appreciation of the painting of the region!

And talking of my appreciation of the art in Catalonia, it turns out that Carmen Cervera, baronesaThyssen-Bornemisza (http://www.hola.com/biografias/carmen-cervera/) has announced that she will move her collection of 19th and 20th century Catalan art from Catalonia’s Museu Nacional d’Art (MNAC) to Sant Feliu de Guixols Monastery in 2011. She is the high profile protector of the insanely, mind bogglingly incredible art collection that she inherited from her insanely, mind bogglingly etc wealthy husband, the Barón Thyssen-Bornemisza. The collection is split between a number of locations.

The gallery in Madrid is an astonishing place and the modern collection of paintings is very accessible with a wonderful collection of art which is not so exhaustive and intimidating for the casual visitor. For a person not that interested in the ‘hard stuff’ of art and not wanting to traipse around a musty gallery full of incompressible canvasses dulled with ancient varnish the Thyssen-Bornemisza gallery is a breath of fresh air. The masterpieces are there aplenty, but not to the same extent as some of the major art galleries of the world where the pictures seem to press in on the observer and weigh him down with their international significance.

I have described the selection of paintings in the Thyssen-Bornemisza as looking as though someone had decided to give a talk on modern art and, instead of showing slides had decided to pay the representative paintings instead!

I can still remember my astonishment when there was an exhibition of ‘Masterpieces’ from the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in the National Gallery. I could not understand how it was possible for a private individual to actually own so much of the cultural heritage of the world!

The Spanish government had the artistic bargain of the century when they were offered the collection by the Baronesa (a past Miss Catalonia) for a knock down price of something like £50 quid!

The baronesa is well known for having very definite ideas about how the art given to the Spanish should be treated and she is very touchy about the details of its presentation.

I am not sure what will go to the monastery if she decides to stick to her stated aim to remove her collection from MNAC but any reduction in their excellent collection would be a disaster.

Many of the paintings illustrated in the series of books that I now have on Catalan art have been taken from private collections, but there also a number of galleries mentioned in other parts of Catalonia that I am looking forward to visiting. At the moment I do not know the relative importance of the collections held in these other places but I do know that it is impossible to omit a visit to the gallery in the Monastery of Montserrat. I think that I know a little more about the exhaustive selection of painters that is held in the collection now than I did on my previous visit.

I look forward to another pilgrimage!

Put not your trust in manufacturers' promises!

When the chronicles of this year come to be written there will surely be a chapter devoted to the time of trial that we have undergone. The heartache, the misery, the struggle: the dogged heroism in the face of adversity. All of this should receive its accolade. And now, at last, there is an end in sight, a glimmer of hope in the darkness of these times.

The dishwasher should be repaired this evening.

For someone with a pathological hatred of washing dishes, or rather of drying them, the extended period of dishwasherless existence has been, one might say, a trial. The astonishing inefficiency of Taurus, the company who made the benighted machine, has not made the situation any easier.

The only good thing to come out of this depressingly familiar situation is that I will have to leave school on time in order to get back to let the workpeople in. The idea of missing this appointment is too dire to consider: given the difficulty of making this appointment the fear of losing this opportunity will ensure that my car skips its way through the tunnels to get back in time.

It is now this evening. Nothing. No workman to bring some semblance of normality to the washing procedures in this household; no phone call to explain why no workman has turned up for the agreed time; no act of God to destroy the evil organization masquerading as a white goods company. Never, ever buy any goods with the Taurus trade mark. Never! Be warned and learn from my example.

We now sit planning violence, or at least some sort of revenge for the frustration that this company has forced us to experience. At this stage in Britain I would have “opened a file” and commenced my classic approach for dealing with recalcitrant traders, i.e. writing articulate letters dripping with the implied threat suggested by middle class articulacy and promising a wealth of informed trouble in store for whatever unfortunate institution had incurred my wrath.

Frustratingly I have to do this at second hand via Toni. It is not the same thing at all. There is little satisfaction to be gained by hearing second hand reports of conflicts with nameless voices at the end of a telephone line, unless you are one of the protagonists. And there is always the nagging doubt that if you had been on the phone you would have been that little bit more incisive and cutting and managed to gain a clear assurance and effusive apology with a monetary compensation. We will see what they say and what they offer by way of contrition!

The FA Cup Final comes on apace and I have made the promise that, if I get a ticket I will make every effort to go to the UK to see this once-in-a-lifetime match for Cardiff. I shouldn’t build my hopes up but it might be worthwhile looking at cheap flights to Cardiff and London!

If all else fails I can look at the weather and find compensation there!

Books and things

Yesterday was a holiday.

At every street corner rather dubious looking characters were selling roses. It is the tradition within Catalonia that on the day which is dedicated to Sant Jordi (Saint George) there is an exchange of gifts. The traditional process involves the man receiving a book while the female partner gets a rose.

When I wearily slouched towards the kettle yesterday morning I was astonished to see that Toni had fought his revulsion to printed matter and there was a gaudily wrapped brick shape waiting for me!

His choice of a Ken Follett novel had been earlier mirrored by his sister who had given me the same volume a few months previously! My disappointment was mitigated by the delighted hope that Toni’s attitude towards the incursion of the tome into all available spaces in the flat would now change. Some hope!

He did however point out that the local newsagent had offered another volume about a cathedral and I was urged to return the book and either exchange it or get the money and go to Barcelona to the festival of books which was being held in the Ramblas.

The alternative novel was one which I had noticed in supermarkets in Spanish and Catalan in the best seller lists in this area. ‘Cathedral of the Sea’ by Ildefonso Falcones is set in Barcelona in the fourteenth century. The back of the novel proclaims “A new Ken Follett is born!” and from my reading of the first hundred pages in this monumental novel I can see what the critic means. The subject matter is clearly within the territory of Ken Follett, but the standard of writing is not at Ken Follett’s level. There is a certain clunking quality to the scene setting and rather obvious devices in introducing characters and background information. The historical setting is paraded uneasily and exposition is generally unsophisticated. These are, however, early days and I have barely dented the bulk of this read!

For the first time the Habitat lounger was taken out of its plastic wrapping and dragged off to the beach. Even more importantly, for the first time I threw myself into the foaming brine.

That last sentence is not strictly accurate. My entrance into the icy waters was not quite as muscular as is suggested by ‘threw myself.’

There is something sad and humiliating watching a grown man whimper. There is something even more sad and humiliating when that whimpering man is you!

My tentative entry into the Mediterranean was accompanied by little mewling sounds as progressively more of my body was subjected to icy cauterization. It was the sort of cold that you knew would not become ‘swimmable’ if you thrashed about a bit.

Honour having been satisfied by immersion I staggered my way back to shore and the warm calm of the lounger.

Picking up Toni from work I passed all the indefatigable rose sellers who were doggedly sitting tight and waiting for guilt to kick in for home going workers.

Dinner later was in a local restaurant because the Barça/Manchester United game in the Champions League was not broadcast on normal television. From where I was sitting I could see the zebra crossing at the end of the street which was garlanded by four rose sellers, still there and selling after at least sixteen hours of commercial activity. The roses, by the way, were in all the conventional colours and then, for the more extreme pleasure seekers there were totally artificial colours, bi-coloured roses and multi-coloured blooms! I bought a mini rose plant in a flower pot from my local florist and shunned the disreputable looking strangers who clamoured for my money!

Culture Week continues (after the hiatus of a day off) with a trip to . . . well, I think that I cannot trust my fingers to type with any degree of complacency about a magnificent residence with surrounding vineyards, swimming pool and . . . sorry, this will have to wait for another occasion when I am feeling stronger and less consumed by the sin of envy.

Our return to school was marked by the information that the headteacher has broken her femur by tripping over the cat. She is presently in hospital where she will stay for the next two weeks. She will not be able to walk on her injured leg for twelve weeks. Not only is this not good news for her – alone and incapacitated in a foreign country – but it is also potentially disastrous news for our school. We will be without a headteacher for the rest of the term. In a memo whose import scales the heights of horror we have been informed that matters that we would have taken to the headteacher must now be taken to The Owner.

The sleep of reason produces monsters.

We have started to paint our dragons and the ‘tapestry’ of versions of the Welsh flag continues to grow.

The final part of my master plan for the artistic Welshing of the school continues tomorrow with the production of multi-coloured daffodils. My perversions truly know no end!

I ought to take photographs of these momentous artistic events. But there again being etched indelibly on the brains of innocent Catalans is memorial enough!

Time will tell.

Who has time?

No blog yesterday.

When you are finally let out of the opera house at half past midnight there is little time left for the lazy pursuit of literature!

Not that the day hadn’t been full either. Culture Week reached out its tentacles to another class who after completing their quota of idiosyncratic Welsh flags turned their artistic little fingers to the production of Welsh love spoons in clay. This was as nothing compare to my frenzied attempts to get another class to produce something approaching a simulacrum of a Welsh hat.

It was the tapering nature of the hat which was the problem. My notorious predilection for folding paper came into its own when the conventional folds were augmented by a rather daring diagonal fold which elicited gasps of astonished disbelief from the pupils. Well merited disbelief as their inept attempts to follow my professional display amply demonstrated. I came as near as I ever have to full mental collapse as the demands on my full and immediate attention were demanded by what seemed an entire world peopled solely by small persons speaking English in a variety of foreign accents!

The journey to Barcelona directly from school ensured that I did arrive in time for the start of the performance, though the raucous drunken hordes of Manchester United supporters in town for the Champions League game cavorting along the Ramblas accompanied by a phalanx of police caused me to miss the entrance to the underground car park. I then had visions of being condemned to drive aimlessly along vomit spattered streets in search of a space.

Luckily I was able to park underneath the central square and manage to get a mediocre menu del dia as well. Though not in the same place.

Tannhäuser was a triumph!

The overture showed the direction the production was going to take by portraying the central character as a painter. The orgy scene presented Venus as Woman (with a capital ‘W’) model, mistress, lover, muse and probably other aspects which passed me by. Tannhäuser painted on a large canvas with the pack of the canvas to the audience. His large gestures were rather obviously in time with the music and suggested a very literalist approach which, I am relieved to report, was not continued through the production.

Although Tannhäuser was in the arms of the goddess of love and his sensual side fulfilled his inspiration was frustrated and his artistic production was disappointing. His contentment was unbalanced and he needed to suffer to complete his artistic and personal vision.

The theme of redemption through suffering and sacrifice was all worked out in terms of art. Effective images were produced by stacked canvasses all with their backs to the audience, presenting us with a series of cross supports which became effective crosses when carried by the pilgrims.

Act II, which for me was the highlight of the piece, was particularly effective with the hall for the song contest being transformed into a high walled gallery with a series of easels looking like particularly elegant Charles Rennie Mackintosh chairs awaiting the artistic productions of the contestants.

Eventually, of course, paintings had to be seen when, after the sacrifice of Elizabeth Tannhäuser was able to produce a work of art which demonstrated his redemption.

The bizarre programme listed a whole series of paintings with spaces where the illustrations should go but only the canvas size was printed. A couple of paintings were reproduced in colour, but they were hidden in uncut pages: a Courbet and a Manet. Try and guess which paintings they were. Not difficult I think!

The final chorus was electrifying as Tannhäuser finally moved to put his painting among the art in the gallery and just as he was about to reveal it the opera ended. A cop out perhaps, but what could he have shown? The Courbet perhaps?

A stimulating and thought provoking production and, to my mind, more satisfying than the singing. The orchestral playing was excellent and I particularly liked the voice of Herman, Günter Groissböck: a voice of depth and sophistication. Venus, Béatrice Uria-Monzon, produced a most unpleasant sound while here alter ego Elizabeth produced a sound which was deeply satisfying. The other singers were adequate to undistinguished and the voice of Tannhäuser himself, Peter Seiffert was determined rather than musical.

The highlight of the evening was in the second interval when I decided to sustain myself by partaking of the delights offered by the Liceu. I had a delicate croissant with cheese a glass of Cava and a plate of four exquisite chocolates one of which had a few salt crystal on top and another which was bronze!

Such delight!

Let Kulture Kommence!

The Red Dragon has certainly been leading the way in my classroom today. My hapless pupils have started a week of helpless subjugation to my Culture Week Whims.

Their first taste of my chosen country was a sight of one of the two posters kindly sent by the Welsh Tourist Board at the instigation of Dianne. Bedecked with tricolour garlands the second poster on the door meant that the kids were already impressed when they were lining up to come into the classroom. Inside they were visibly shaken by the display of photos (mainly untimely ripped from a publicity magazine sent by the Tourist Board) and the piece de resistance of the giant flag sent by Dianne pinned behind my desk on the sun blind! Wales has certainly arrived in one small corner of Sitges!

The kids’ first cultural experience after the shock of the changed appearance of the classroom was to be launched unceremoniously into the maws of a dragon, even if it was only to be made of clay. I had determined on the production of clay dragons because ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time.’ My enthusiastic instructions about how to produce such a creature were far more confident sounding than my complete lack of experience in things clay would (or indeed should) suggest. Based on the naïve assumption that a clay dragon was little more than a central blob with four leg blobs, a stumpy neck blob supporting a blob of a head with two ear shapes stuck on the body blob I proceeded with carefree abandon.

Let no one tell you that modelling in clay is easy: they lie! It was however good fun and, apart from the near hysteria that characterised rampant creativity in a (normal) timetable free week, we managed to create a number of stumpy creatures of varying convincingness. My own efforts look like a good effort from a reasonably intelligent seven year old, so I am more than pleased!

The traditional colouring in of the national flag was given an added twist by a previous colleagues work with younger kids who encouraged them to produce some hallucinogenic colour combinations for erstwhile boring fruit. I have followed his lead and allowed the kids full use of a recently discovered box of felt colours to make their versions of the Welsh flag as bright and unexpected as possible. I propose by the end of the week to have some 60 or 70 versions of the flag all sellotaped together in a sort of tapestry. Already we have had to deal with kids who find it virtually impossible to follow the simplest of rules and when asked to cut around the black line which outlines the flat to be coloured they find this too complex to follow and cut at random and are amazed when I question their understanding! In spite of this the ‘tapestry’ continues to develop. I think, at a distance, it will look quite impressive. At a distance!

The kids have also drawn pictures of Castell Coch from a series of photographs that I gave them.

I have always assumed that a group of teachers was the worst possible manifestation of The Questioning Syndrome. Anything, absolutely anything which is put to a group of teachers will immediately elicit a barrage of questions. It makes no difference if the group of teachers actually knows anything of the subject being discussed, the questions keep coming. Teachers, of course, never listen when they are being told something. Spending their lives telling others things they sometimes (always?) find it difficult to listen. Who was it said that the definition of an actor is a person who, if you are not talking about him, he is not listening. It doesn’t quite fit teachers, but some version of it would be apposite.

This simple drawing task ensured that every member of the class came up to me and asked about something. I have never made so many instant artistic judgments and made compelling suggestions which ensured that the pupils continue working on their mini masterpieces until the end of their allotted time!

Probably the most satisfying part of the day was given over to ‘Traditional Games.’ Whose traditions we were following was never made clear but when presented with a variety of low cost (remember what sort of school I am in) games, I instantly pounced on apple bobbing as the one which I would like to supervise.

The apples could be provided by the school and this, in itself was a clear inducement to drain at least some money from the grasping hands of The Owner.

The enthusiasm of the kids was wonderful to see as they realised that gentle nuzzling of the apples would produce no result whatsoever and they would have to commit themselves to a proper dunking to get the fruit.

Apart from a few intelligent spoilsports the rest of the kids entered into the spirit of the thing with gusto and were soon soaking wet. If the bobbing (which took place outside) had been in Wales then all the kids would probably have been decimated by pneumonia in short time, but here in the gentler climate of Catalonia a few minutes of frenetic skipping around soon restored acceptable dryness.

No day would be normal in our school without the necessary bitter chaos which is the normal currency of our daily life.

The Owner was furious to discover that normal timetable had been suspended for the ‘cultural’ activities of her imposed ‘cultural’ week. In spite of the fact that this had been discussed, minuted and passed to the ‘higher authorities’ (i.e. The Owner) the actuality was, of course, a shock and was roundly condemned, in spite of the fact that she (her) The Owner had already said that it was a good idea. Yet again normal logic falls before the magic realism of our school!

The weekly meeting after school also produced the usual spiteful unhelpfulness that characterises any attempt by the teaching staff to do their jobs. So nothing new there then!

The attitude of the teaching staff was semi humorously summed up by one of my colleagues who after the meeting responded to a question from me by saying, “I’m sorry but my brain has been disengaged for the meeting, I’m only just back on line: Good evening!”

Yet again, as it does so often at present, Goya’s wonderful engraving, ‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’ comes to mind.

Tomorrow, love spoons.

And normality of course!

Another bloody Sunday!

Today will be a test of the resilience of Catalan weather.

When a day starts off being gloomy in my previous country you can guarantee that the morose climatic conditions will persist throughout the day. The contrast with Catalonia is striking. Here a depressing morning can often result in a glorious afternoon and superlative evening. Not always, but often enough to give a desperate sun seeker some reason to hope.

And hope is something in short supply at the moment as Toni seems to have seamlessly passed on his tummy bug to me so that I am already worrying about the epic journey of some twenty minutes that I have to make to work each morning and afternoon. This is a long time to be distant from essential services!

Tomorrow sees the start of Culture Week.

What powerful words those are! Immediately after writing them I took to my bed and had an extended period of writhing in agony with only multiple glasses of water as my medicine. Toni’s bugs are more powerful than I had expected.

Now that I have risen from my recumbent position I find that there is a gale blowing. The sea has taken on a muted colour as it can only be seen through a filter of airborne sand. There is a febrile brightness about the day as the sun attempts to shine in spite of everything.

Meanwhile: Culture Week.

The one thing that you can predict is that the carefully worked out timetable painstakingly constructed by the two girls will not work out. Something Will Happen. And everything will be different in the twinkling of an eye.

Obviously in these circumstances you need to have Something In Reserve so, for the first time in my life I have constructed a Word Search. I suppose that it is impossible for any young teacher not to approach his or her first job without his or her laptop being loaded with a program to construct word searches. And pupils are apparently programmed to respond to word searches with alacrity. We shall, if I manage to get them printed out, see if the well attested magic works every time!

I am worried that I do not have enough ‘stuff’ to see me through the week and, as the teachers are country specific, I will not be able to beg, borrow or steal any material to dish out to the kids when they suddenly appear in front of me in defiance of the timetable.

It will, as the soothing professionals always say, be a learning experience!

Bring it on!

Relentless reading!

Today has started with an oxymoron.

It is brightly dull or dully bright. It is not a convincing morning, neither one thing nor another. And it’s still windy. The new padded lounger is optimistically facing outwards to where the blazing sun should be and is looking emptily forlorn as its raison d’etre is sitting indoors morosely typing rather than lounging in the warmth.

It is the sort of day when I would, in the past, have girded my loins and made an expedition into town to scour the bookshops for a suitable consumer durable to ameliorate climatic angst. Although Cardiff is described as having an equitable climate (and to be fair it does) this charitable description does not preclude generous amounts of rain. I find rain depressing and the only way of coping is to treat myself with the printed word. That is one of the reasons that Bluspace has a substantial number of cardboard boxes filled with the compensatory volumes which were emotional counterweights to the debilitating depression that is the inevitable consequence of dull, damp days in Wales. Of course, when the weather was fine then it was time for me to buy a book to celebrate. I alwys try and live a win/win sort of life!

Luckily my weekend goodies are waiting in the newsagent. Each Saturday La Vangardia has special offers so I get two books and a CD. The most important volume is the next one in the Great Catalan Painters series.

I have steadily been increasing my knowledge of a series of painters whose names were previously totally unknown to me. The series includes such luminaries as Picasso (claimed by Catalonia, though born in Malaga) Miró, Dalí and Gaudí who are very well known, through artists who at least I had heard of like Rusiñol and Casas through to artists who are very important in Catalonia and were unknown to me like Fortuny, Urgell, Meifrèn, Anglada-Camarasa and Guinovart. It is a fascinating study and repays any effort. The drawings and paintings of Casas are a revelation; he has the fluency of line and perception of a Daumier and other 'unknown' Catalan artists can take their place easily with some of the best in Europe for their time.

It has now become doggedly fine, so I’ll shower and venture out to get my presents and settle down for a trying read as I attempt to work out what the Catalan might mean when applied to the painting on the opposite page!

Wish me luck!

Are things looking up?

Begone negativity!

God knows there is enough to be negative about in my professional life, but in ‘sort of’ other terms, today has been good.

All praise to The Welsh Tourist Board who have come up trumps and sent me a lavishly illustrated booklet and two posters. Dianne (all praise also!) has been true to her promise which has been equally matched by the efficiency of not only the British post office but also that of the Spanish and Catalan service which has ensured that Dianne’s flag, CD and postcards have all arrived in time for the Culture Week in our school!

The flag, especially, is splendid and I will attach it with safety pins to the sun blind behind my desk. At least one room in Sitges will be flamboyantly Welsh for the next week! Thanks to all.

The Welsh Tourist Board’s contribution has been cut up and laminated and now forms part of a display of ‘Images of Wales’ taking up space on my whiteboard. Llanfair pg has been written out (with English translation) and streamers of almost red, white and green adorn my walls.

The school timetable for next week has been abandoned and ‘cultural larks’ are to take place for the general edification and delight of the pupils.

The things I have planned for the forthcoming week are many and various and suggest a familiarity with a traditional Welsh upbringing that I do not possess, but, what the hell! It’s all good fun!

I feel that it is significant that the major lessons that I have planned all have elements which I have not tried and tested: there is nothing like living on adrenaline! If what I have planned works out then there will be a dramatic display to show at the end of the week in the cataclysmic assembly which will mark the end of this enforced cultural experiment!

Meanwhile, in the real world, I understand that I am at last being observed and my kids are being tested for their reading ages and maths ability. This is an initiative of the headteacher who thinks that the educational standards of the pupils are abysmally low. The reading test results seem to indicate that many of the pupils have reading ages way below their chronological ages. Something, as a failed king once said, must be done.

I have to admit that I am rather looking forward to next week as it promises to be an extended period when I can indulge my frustrated artistic impulses by forcing the pupils to exploit their innate creativity. Ho! Ho! Ho!

In this generally positive atmosphere I have to report that Toni also is partaking of this lack of negativity and is feeling better than he has done over the past few days.

Roll on the weekend!

Kulture Kosts

Today is not likely to be marked with a white stone.

It took me one and a half hours to travel the 20 or so kilometres from Castelldefels to Barcelona this evening.

In the normal course of events this would have worked me up into an intolerable fury. This evening I had allowed one and half hours travel time to ensure that I arrived at a reasonable time to take my seat at the opera for the performances of ‘Bluebeard’s Castle’ and ‘The Diary of One Who Disappeared.’

The Liceu has a civilized technique for dealing with those unfortunates who believed that the road system of Barcelona was designed to facilitate the movement of cars. The opera had already started when I arrived and so I was ushered, with another harassed looking individual, into a small viewing theatre where a televised broadcast of the performance was being screened.

After a certain time an usher appeared and drove us all to the lifts where, on our appropriate floors we were met by other uniformed ushers who positioned us by the appropriate doors so that we could access our seats in the short interval of applause before the second opera started.

It was smoothly done, but I still feel that I have been cheated of an opera.

Comments on the Janácek would be based on a limited experience of the production but I have to say that it looked interesting with the soloist stripped to the half in a hole in the stage. At once point he was surrounded by writhing undulating bodies – and this was after his head had been grasped in the naked thighs of the soprano! Ah, the wonders of modern opera production.

‘Bluebeard’s Castle’ was a production with interesting moments but not, for me, satisfying overall.

There was extensive use of gauze screens which allowed a series of projections which facilitated the creation of extraordinary ‘rooms’ and, most effectively a three dimensional line grid to emphasise the nature of the relationship of the two singers.

The Bartók was better sung than the Janácek, but the orchestra was the real star with superlative playing throughout.

The lighting was adventurous and effective but not slick enough to be completely convincing.

The most impressive coups de theatre were in the Bartók when the barrier to the final room was a sheet of water and when uplighting from a stage floor grid provided a short of magic carpet for the singers when there was a projected overlay of a cityscape.

An enjoyable evening: if a shorter one than intended.

And after: the most expensive bocadillos ever.

I am reminded (forcefully) of a traumatic occasion when I had a cup of coffee in the next café down from the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysées. I made the vast mistake of taking my coffee sitting down outside. I had no idea that there was a sliding scale of extortion, but when the bill arrived I went into cardiac arrest! It has remained a symbol of rapacity throughout my life. Its status as the most expensive causal drink in my life (allowing for inflation) was almost supplanted by the extortionate beer in the arcades of Milan.

Now the bocadillo shop on the Ramblas in Barcelona is vying to become the new Café of Shame. Itemising the individual overpriced delicacies is too painful, suffice to say what should have been a snack cost a couple of quid actually cost €27 – given the present dismal rate of exchange that’s about £21! Words fail me! And the parking was £5 too.

God knows I don’t find it at all difficult to get rid of money.

It’s a sort of gift.

The dragons are coming!

Culture Week approaches and I find I now know more about Welsh love spoons than is reasonable and proper.

Those kids don’t know what they are in for next week: dragons, flags The Welsh National anthem, Welsh hats and feathers, clay, paint and sweat!

And no money to make it happen of course. I only hope that Dianne’s largesse arrives in time to add a certain gaiety to the occasion. Then at least there will be music and a real flag to wave!

Still, in terms of our school, next week is whole mad incidents away and not to be thought of as immanent.

My planning for the week after next has to be in tomorrow. The fact that I can type that without dissolving into a quivering mass of neurosis shows how far I have developed or degenerated – depending on your point of view.

I have discovered a hitherto unrealised fascination for the Wirral. That splendid local authority there has devised a whole scheme of mathematics for primary school children. On the web. Available. Downloadable. Understandable. Wonderful!

Without the internet our school would grind to a halt. Well, I certainly would!

Of course, the really important element in planning is akin to the truism that voting is unimportant, it is who counts the votes that is the crucial question. Planning is all very well, especially when it is printed out in a detailed format – but who is teaching it?

Since I have been in the school no one has looked at a single lesson that I have taught. It follows, therefore, that I could have been teaching anything. I might even have been following the planning that I submitted. Who knows?

Who cares?

We are getting nearer to the date when I will know if I am to be teaching in the school next year. You might well ask, why, if all that I have written is even remotely correct, could I even consider continuing in the place. A fair question.

It is sometimes said that a teacher’s class is his or her own kingdom. If I can make that a reality for next year then continuing is a possibility. Assuming that I am allowed to continue. All is up in the air.

Each day the kids in front of me urge reality while the ‘going ons’ around me in the larger academic context suggest that a Surrealistic approach would be the best attitude to adopt for survival.

I think that my present responses are more a function of the rather unsettled weather that we are having (and are due to have) than a placid philosophical stance.

Perhaps I will be more reasonable after the visit to the opera tomorrow evening: a double bill of ‘Bluebeard’ and ‘Diary of one who disappeared’. Leoš Janáček and Béla Bartók. You have to be impressed with a programme which includes composers with so many accents. Such sophistication!

Culture indeed.