Don't look down!

Name Days are serious things in Catalonia.

Toni’s Name Day (I should have been able to work it out, there are clues in the title of the celebration!) meant that we had to go to Terrassa so that he could scoop up the loot from family and friends.

Which he duly did, but not before we had a meal of astounding value: seven people with a three course meal, wine, water, casera and bread for €42!

It was while we were walking back to the flat that Toni’s mother finally noticed that Toni’s sandals, though joined by a generic title, were not linked by colour or style. Once mentioned, of course, it was perfectly obvious that they were not a pair.

Much good natured laughter – with an edge!

We were supposed to go to an electrical shop to find a mobile phone with a radio which was going to be my Name Day gift for Toni, but he was reluctant to go anywhere while wearing mismatched sandals.

I thought that his mother was unusually insistent when we got into the flat that he should open his presents at once and before an audience.

And this is the thing that you can only relate as part of real life and is not something that you would dare put in a story.

Toni’s major present was a pair of (perfectly matched!) sandals!

Thus armed (or rather, footed) we sallied forth to find the right mobile - only stopping to buy lottery tickets on the very reasonable basis that one unlikely coincidence might as well stretch to another. We wait to see. We have certainly spent all the money a few times over in our minds.

Next week threatens to be a very interesting one. The pupils only stay for half days until the end of their term on Friday. The teachers, however, stay for a full day completing the list of ‘tasks’ that The Owner has thought out to fill out the time we have remaining in the school.

We have a short meeting at 9.00 am tomorrow and we will know part of the worst then. Some of us still have a suspicion that this last week will be the proverbial straw which will provoke a mass walk out so that the summer pay will be withheld.

And the school concert is almost upon us.

Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

What do I do now?

There is something very wrong with the feeling that you are being outwitted by a half wit.

As far as I can tell I have now entered the endgame of my link with the school. I am no longer able to tell whether I am in control of the situation or whether I am merely a toy bobbing about on the turbid waters of an emptying bath.

Having spoken to The Owner I am no more certain of my future in the bizarre school in which I am teaching than I was a week ago. The Owner and I have a ‘stand-offish’ approach to each other which does nothing to elucidate our relationship.

Strangely I have a more positive vision of my time in the school than I did a day ago. You have to understand that in my place a day is a very, very, very long time in educational terms.

Our day was taken up by an edict which stated that we would be in a sports centre for the morning.

I will not dwell on the legal problems which indicated that two members of staff would surely not be sufficient to take a hundred pupils anywhere. The fact that I have to type that statement to reassure myself that it is not a fragment of my delusional imagination is surely something which is a condemnation of the situation in which I am working at this moment in time. And, yes, I do know that the previous sentence is not one of my finest.

So the morning passed with the kids generally enjoying themselves and discovering the pleasures of the Jacuzzi.

All was sweetness and light until we had to go back to school. We had had enough difficulty in persuading administration that the proportion of 1 to 10 for primary was a prerequisite for safe transportation to the sports centre. It was even more difficult in persuading them that the same proportions were necessary for the journey back to the school.

For non teachers everything that I am saying is unimportant, but for educationalists it is essential. “This is a legal necessity” can be a salutary reminder that there are higher rules than an encouraging reassurance from the administration of a school that does not subscribe to the basic necessities of legal requirements.

Today, I should say, has been trying. Trying in all the wrong ways.

I am a teacher. If you ask me to do something in the right way that I am far more likely to say “yes” than refuse. After all, we are constantly presented with the welfare of the kids that we teach as a major reason for our existence, either by ourselves or the administration which directs our educational efforts. That ‘welfare’ is a major bargaining chip in the lottery that is the education of the young. We teachers are suckers for the ‘welfare’ play. We always give in.

In state education you can kid yourself that your efforts are for the general good. In private education it is much more difficult to find a justification in the same way.

I truly do not know what I am doing in this school. I truly do not know what I could do in this school. I truly do not know what I could be allowed to do in this school.

Perhaps I should be out of it.

It is on ongoing question.

Just when you weren't expecting it!

Just when you thought that the school had run out of surrealistically stupid things to shock an ordinary teacher they send you, nay, bring you, a memo.

This informs you that the following day you will be taking over 100 pupils to a nearby sports centre. You will be accompanied by one other colleague.

No consultation. No discussion. No questions. No legality. No professionalism. No doubt it’s that school in Sitges!

I actually laughed when I received the memo. Another unique situation; never before in my entire career have I been (in effect) ordered to take an illegal number of pupils on a trip which had been organized at the last moment.

The reason for the fiesta fiasco is that little attempt has been made by the school to compensate for the absence of teachers. Out of the nine primary teachers who should be in school tomorrow four will be absent: hence the invitation to all the classes at KS2 to frolic.

Our new primary head has had her first full day in post today and has busied herself in visiting all primary classes, looking at books and speaking to pupils and staff. She has also found herself at the sharp point of controversy as she tries to field questions to which she cannot possibly know the answers. God help her! I wonder if anyone has told her that she is the 7th person in that post in the last two years.

The responses to our professional questions about the hurriedly organized trip were rudely brushed aside by the unqualified henchperson of The Owner. She is the sort of person to put her oar in but be rapid in her rejection of any acceptance of personal responsibility.

Things are getting nasty with members of staff positively baying for the final format of the reports. The format has been as much debated and discussed as if we had been trying to decipher the Rosetta Stone. Ignorance is pitted against professional judgement and wins because the ignorance is aided and abetted by financial clout wielded by a bully.

I cannot tell you how tempted I am to develop a virus for tomorrow. But I won’t of course. It is far more interesting to go to such a dysfunctional institution than stay at home.

Sick fascination has its attractions!

Death reigns supreme!

As I made my way from the garage, up the stairs to the flat, I found my way impeded by a miasmic wall of odour. It was as if someone had been using Pledge with Attitude.

The answer, of course, was ants. Toni has discovered that we have a ‘plague’ of ants. This infestation passed me by: put it down to wearing glasses. Anyway this unwanted visitation encouraged the purchase of two plastic ‘mini tents’ which were filled with poison and supposedly irresistible to ants.

Toni’s genocidal attitude towards our six legged visitors doesn’t surprise me at all, as I have seen in all before. He shares his detestation with that of my mother who was like a thing possessed whenever an ant with a death wish managed to penetrate the rigid insect security around my family home.

My mother’s poison of choice was the unfortunately named Nippon™.

I have yet to work out the socio-political wrong thinking that went into that inspired trade name. She would place drops of this lethal liquor near known haunts of ants and then lurk above them urging them to drink and take the poison home to destroy the nest. An unedifying sight and not one that I had thought to see repeated. How badly I underestimated Toni!

He even lacked my mother’s deadly patience and, having seen no visible deaths in the arrogant strutting of ants in the house, decided upon dramatic measures which stretch the boundaries of the Geneva Convention. The entire house has been sprayed to within an inch of its liveable limit.

Everything is dead. No ants walk. The cloud of death has done its work. But I also feel that the noxious residue of the wave of death is limiting our lives too! But we are alone again.

This destruction came at the end of a generally uneventful day save for the appearance of the new head of the primary section of the school. My first meeting with her was limited to a smile and a firm handshake, but we were assured that we would be able to meet her informally during a little ‘get together’ at the end of school.

At the end of school we began to assemble in the staff room where there was precisely nothing to suggest that there was a little informal meeting about to take place. We were mystified. Where were the bottles of Cava? The little nibbles? The air of easy informality? Nowhere.

I went into the unit managers’ office and there was our new headteacher sitting by herself gazing (with hope!) at a computer screen. In answer to my laconic questioning she revealed that she too had expected some sort of reception but that The Owner had disappeared and she knew nothing. The shape of things to come!

Returning to the staff room I decided to Do Something. Using the small plastic coffee cups salvaged from the Sports Day and filled them with the orange juice from a colleague’s marriage do and a paper plate of the remaining biscuits from my tin. It looked, I have to say, pathetic.

When the unit manager of the foetal section of the school came into the room she laughed out loud. But I fear that my ironic tribute to adequate refreshments for newly appointed headteachers arriving on their first day and meeting the staff went largely unappreciated as they drank all the orange juice and scoffed all the biscuits!

The new head was duly toasted in orange juice and gave a heartfelt speech which demonstrated to Those Who Know that she has a number of crucial misconceptions about what she can possibly hope to do in this employment that will destroy her if she takes them seriously. And she looks the sort to take them seriously. God help her!

The end of term comes on apace with my attempts to use up all the resources still available in the school becoming more and more inventive and ever more extravagant!

The non appearance of the final format for the reports is driving one of my colleagues frantic with frustration as she is stymied in her attempts to finish everything which is, or may be, or could be required of her. She takes organization to a higher level than I could have believed (or would ever have wanted to have believed) possible.

I wonder how long it will be before I can translate a sentence like that last one into convincing Spanish.

Rhetorical.

Sing ho! for the life of a teacher!

It says much for our school that the news that the report format devised by a senior teacher for reporting the end of session progress of Year 6 was to be checked and assessed by a reception secretary barely raised an eyebrow!

This follows the extended meeting with The Owner by my colleagues in Years 3 & 4 to limit her absurd demands for reporting in miniscule detail things she does not understand. Luckily they were able to temper her excesses and we (few, we happy few) are able to contemplate filling in reports without the production of a novel sized communication with parents being the end result!

Bear in mind, if you can, the fact that the present teachers had no (nada, nothing, zilch) information handed onto them last September from the Lost Legion of primary teachers who left (or rather decamped) in the summer of 2007.

The Owner attempts to make it appear to be absolutely normal that this passing on of information from one year to another is nothing more than the ordinary process of education which has been the norm for the last umpteen years.

This is, of course, not even a glancing tangent at the truth.

As far as I can work out each generation of primary teachers has adopted the ‘scorched earth’ policy much beloved of the dispossessed and desperate and left the school taking with them all the relevant information and leaving the computers wiped as clean as a pampered baby’s bottom!

Preparations for the school summer concert continue with a rather startling tunelessness marking the various classes’ contributions. My script for the characters linking all the pieces seems progressively more bizarre as the kids get to know their words. Their costumes will add that final touch of horror to the event.

Those parents so unfortunate as to have allowed their procreative impulses to give them a spread of progeny through all three sections of our school will find that their experience of the three consecutive concerts will be roughly on a par with the length of the Ring Cycle but without the tunes. And acting. And costumes. And direction. And coherence. God help them!

We await with some trepidation the final list of ‘tasks’ that we will be asked to complete before our contribution to the academic life of the school is deemed to be sufficient and we can slope off for the rest of the (damp!) summer.

We confidently expect one of the ‘tasks’ to be to construct a new cantilevered section of the school, while another might be to rewrite the text books which might be used next year. In our school anything, literally anything, is possible.

As if to confound expectations the saga of the repair of the dishwasher (now in its umpteenth month of frustration) took a new turn when the people who were supposed to turn up at 4.00 pm and take the bloody thing away to repair it their workshops actually turned up before 3.55 pm and were waiting for Toni when he made it back early from his work!

They have taken away the jerry built rubbish (never buy a Taurus) while leaving – rather poignantly – the dish rack type innards looking forlorn and skeletal. I wonder how long they will languish before their enclosing body returns. The men said that it would take about a week but, apart from today’s shocking promptness, there is nothing in the way that they have interpreted the word ‘service’ to expect anything but disappointment.

Talking of disappointment there are ten more calendar days before the kids finally go. Those ten days will encompass the arrival of a new head of primary; a summer concert; a parents’ evening in the afternoon; meetings about my contract; completion of my theatre project (don’t ask); a kids’ end of year party; recriminations, ruminations and revaluations.

The one thing about our school is that anything is possible.

It really is.

Even normality!

Soft words often . . .

Caution got the better part of cauterization in my approach to the powers that be at school today.

It may be that my much vaunted perceptive understanding of the nuances of powerplay in the rough and supine of school politics is woefully inadequate; or it may be that I still have much to learn about the way things happen in this more-foreign-than-you-think country.

Either way I am holding fire on my first blast of the trumpet (an interestingly mixed metaphor) against the iniquities I see all around me and awaiting yet another deadline when all will be explained.

Perhaps my reading of the situation merely demonstrates my pathetic belief that, essentially, everyone strives, in their own way, to do good. I know that I sound like an even more naïf version of Candide; but who can resist the destructive innocence of the man as he accepts tribulation after tribulation and manages to preserve his fondly held philosophy that all is for the best as we live in the best of all possible worlds?

I must cultivate my garden – or at least tend to the cacti!

It is finished!

Marking done!

I should just let that stand. It has a sort of elegant, succinct beauty that any teacher will be able to appreciate.

The weather is still not wonderful (certainly not for June) but it didn’t stop a multitude of people from plonking themselves on ‘our’ beach. That was about as far as they went: immersion seemed to be that one step too far.

And to fair to our tentative visitors they are perfectly within their rights to refrain from flinging themselves into the briny deeps. The hut on the beach is not open.

I had thought that the simple start of summer was signalled by the rebuilding of the wooden hut on the beach, but I was misled by my simplistic view of its mere construction having a final meaning.

The approach to summer as exemplified by the building of the kiosk is much more sophisticated than I first thought. There is a definite sequence.

First the hamacas appear in their tidy piles at the bottom of the wooden walkway into the beach and all joined together by a chain. This is the first stage and the delay before they are used should be propitiation to the weather gods to ensure fine sunbathing delight.

The second stage is when the sun beds are moved closer to the sea. Then there follows a whole sequence of events: the leaving of piles of prefabricated segments of the hut proper; the building of the shell; elaboration of the hut into its almost finished form; setting out the sun beds for hire; building the canopy for the kiosk – all of these have happened.

But the hut is not open. It therefore follows that summer is not yet with us. Like some patient pilgrim I watch and wait!

But one thing is sure.

My marking is done!

Careful child!

When someone attempts sarcasm in response to my reasonably worded memo then, metaphorically, I start sharpening my fingers for a pointed reply.

When the sarcasm is ungrammatical, incoherent and demonstrates a woeful ignorance of word meaning then the impulse to respond with lofty, yet coyly naïf irony is irresistible. So I haven’t bothered to resist.

As far as I am concerned battle has been joined. The date on the termination notice of my contract was the same day that I handed in a few innocuous memos. I have been singled out for special treatment and it deserves a spirited response!

In this battle I am, alas, a mere David; though I did see a re-thinking of that story which pointed out some verities from biblical times. Apparently a skilled man with a slingshot against an armed man at a distance was the equivalent of a man with a crossbow against a knight in armour – as long as distance is maintained then the seeming underdog is the stronger. I shall take strength from this!

Monday is going to be a softly, softly sort of start to the week. I shall leaven the mildness with a few well chosen memo replies and await developments.

Meanwhile after a delicious dinner last night in one of the smaller restaurants near us which is now opening more regularly, the weather continues to disappoint.

I am not one to hold god to account but I have actually moved country to escape the rain and it does appear to have followed me. I am well aware that when I speak to my fellow countrymen on the phone they are often quite graphic in their descriptions of inundations which are taking place as the conversations continues. I am then conscious that I have been sulking because there were a few more clouds in the sky than I wanted.

I must learn proportion.

As if!

Not funny

Two journeys to the Correos, one abortive, just to find out that what was waiting for me there was an official notification that my contract with my present employer will be terminated on the 20th of this Month.

My efforts to find out what sort of contract is available for me for next year have been unavailing, but I have been told (by memo) that I can have a meeting with the Administration on my last day after the completion of the school course and before the end of my working day. Not exactly confidence inspiring!

No one else has mentioned having a personalized reminder of the end of their contract, so I think that I can take this piece of official communication as a clear indicator of a problematic future.

I suppose their only mistake is giving me 14 days to think about it. Just how spiteful can I possibly be?

School is fraying at the edges and people are getting a little hyper; a little apprehensive; a little frustrated and more than a little cynical.

On the other hand the weather has been a little more clement and I hold out hopes for the rest of the weekend.

This is a better prospect than the marking which I will have to complete before Monday.

There are simpler ways . . .

“Did I see your photograph in the newspaper?” asked the gardener as I put my case in the back of the vehicle in the underground car park. I had to suppress an instant feeling of guilt and shame as though I had received the famous advice, “Flee! All is discovered!” I am not sure which of my imagined indiscretions frightened me most, but I covered my confusion in a bluster of half attempted Spanish.

This unsettled me enough before I got to school and the incipient chaos that is a keynote of our everyday existence in school.

Today’s absurdity concerned a trip to the beach. We are, after all, situated in Sitges. The beach is not a problem. We can see the sea! However . . . there is always a ‘however’ in our place.

Not all pupils in our seat of learning share the academic impulse which is our life blood. Some are even naughty. Naughtiness is punished by forbidding the perpetrators participation in the delights of escape from the classroom. Five pupils were deemed to be of sufficient disruptive potential that they were to be precluded from participation. But the head of primary who agreed this just exclusion is absent and the administration which remains considered that there was insufficient parental notification time to stop the pupils from accompanying the other students on the trip.

This did not meet with unqualified approval from the teachers who actually know the miscreants involved. Their professional opinion was disregarded and administrators decreed that the pupils should go. Margaret had worried about this trip throughout the night and had produced a statement which identified the administrator and made it clear that this was all against the teachers’ advice.

The administrator, of course, refused to sign and there was a general hiatus as someone was found who could give an unequivocal order. This was, of course, another administrator with no teaching qualifications. Of course.

Margaret was thoroughly professional about the responsibility involved in this trip and agonized over what needed to be done. She was pressurized into going after refusing to countenance transferring the responsibility onto another colleague.

The pep talk that she gave to the five individuals involved who should have been left behind, aided and abetted by me, was a masterpiece of fully justified moral intimidation: a classic of its kind!

I have started writing memos of beguiling softness asking for information of the most sensitive nature. Our numbers are substantially depleted and the thorny question of supply is raising its head. I have asked for clarification.

I have not, of course, received my promised letter explaining the details of my future contract. As I am always in the vicinity of questions and problems in our school, I do feel that my future employment is becoming more and more of a marginal possibility.

More and more of my colleagues are adopting S Q Ball’s patented technique of ‘closing my head’ to remain oblivious to the lunacy around - and survive!

As you know, working out the actual date for the end of our term makes working out the date of Easter look like making a cup of tea. With a teabag.

Time with the kids is running out – they are off on the 20th of this month and I can’t help feeling that The Owner is playing a completely unscrupulous endgame.

But, there again, perhaps her paranoia has finally affected me!

Heel clicking time?

The picture of me resplendent in academic gown, bushy white beard and witches hat waving a paint brush as a wand will have to live in your imagination because I made damn sure that no photographic evidence will exist!

My entrance onto the patio as someone from Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or something ready to take in my class was little short of sensational. Unfortunately I rapidly found that the full costume was impossibly hot to wear so beard and hat were soon jettisoned. By the end of the day I was glad to get rid of the gown as well!

The day started with a meeting to try and articulate our fears and simple incomprehension linked to the infamous End of Term List devised by The Owner for the intimidation of her faithful workers. We have been promised a written reply to our written questions because she knows how tricky people can be when things are only spoken. She (in the sacred name of irony!) should know!

Since today was a full teaching day for me there was little time for sly deception, skulduggery, subterfuge, gunpowder, treason and plot. Or indeed the truth.

My promised letter in reply to the two missives I have sent did not, of course, appear. I will ask tomorrow with no lively hope of success.

There is a definite feeling of ‘endgame’ about the school with a clear sense of eschatology lurking in every dark corner of the place!

Tomorrow there will be two teachers absent and a trip to the beach taking out a further proportion of our number so god alone knows how we keep going. My invariable advice in situations of extreme academic stress is “Close the school!” This simple, direct and effective advice is just as invariably ignored as those in authority seek to discover a remedy which is complex and usually involves people (usually not them) giving up non contact time or collapsing classes (not theirs) and generally looking to the PBI to get them out of trouble.

You never know, perhaps tomorrow will be the exception which proves the rule. But I’m not holding my breath.

Toni left for work this morning and soon afterwards returned. The police (on their way to the bar) actually stopped off and told the disgruntled people waiting for a bus that there was not likely to be one arriving as they were on strike. Nice of them to tell the customers! Perhaps The Owner has a stake in the transport system of this part of the world as well as a stranglehold on education in English in Sitges as well.

Ah, I seem to be getting more bitter as the weather gets warmer. Something of an oxymoron, but then isn’t life one as well?

Time to stop!

It can only get better!

An ‘Open Morning’ means that parents – usually kept safely outside the school gates – are allowed, nay, encouraged to break the boundaries of common decency and parade themselves around the classroom while consorting with their offspring in full view of the teacher! Appalling but true!

So the parents came in and fussed over the books of their kids and sometimes managed to penetrate the cordon of pupils around me and engage me in conversation. The dialogue was entirely predictable, but a necessary part of the relationship between parent and teacher. Or PR as we generally know it.

Given what your school does and doesn’t do, whenever I speak to parents there is a whole script which I never use and I think that some of the parents sense that there are more important things to do about our institution than indulge in fairly meaningless banter about the relative niceness of their kids.

The hour that the parents were there was a fairly painless, anodyne experience – though it did take place during a free period of mine!

The next exciting episode in my day was a meeting with The Owner. This took the now familiar form of a partial monologue on her part of blustering reasonableness which ignored implications and facts and resolved itself into a series of exasperated ‘explanations’ which were anything but. Clarification will have to wait until Friday when we will have a response to our questions which we are going to formulate tomorrow.

At the end of the meeting I went to a colleague and reported back, only to be interrupted by The Owner herself (paranoid as ever) who testily informed me that conversations with individuals in doorways was not acceptable! Ah me!

I then returned to my sewing.

I know, I know. Primary teaching means never being settled in a subject. My class and I have been making money containers and this has involved a certain amount of needlework – taught by my good self. Our end results defy categorization. And that is a good place to end my account!

The fun and intrigue were not, however, over.

While waiting at the gate for the kids to be shunted off to their parents, a Dutch mother approached me and in a transparently suspicious manner asked if she could have a meeting between a handful of teachers and parents ‘without The Owner’ so that she could find out ‘the other side.’ While professional reserved dictates that such a meeting must be impossible, simple justice would seem to demand that something should be done. I think that most of the staff (with a few signal exceptions) would welcome an opportunity to say what they really think about the place.

I prevaricated with the parents and said that I would think about what she had said and contact her later. I know what I want to do, but discretion and practicality dictates a certain amount of caution.

The last time that the parents tried to form an association in the school The Owner asked all the ‘guilty’ parents to take their children out of the school! Unbelievable, but true!

From this tempting conversation I did the only sensible thing possible and drove to Gava to buy a false beard and witches’ hat.

This is not an example of disturbing displacement activity, but rather an active attempt to create my costume for the Readathon tomorrow.

Finding my degree gown was an epic story of moving everything in the flat and feeling more and more frustrated as it refused to turn up. You have probably guessed the figure from ‘literature’ that I had decided to personate.

Not only did I find my Cardinal’s outfit and a realization of how svelte my university body had been, but I also found my Herod outfit still a blazing gleam of gold lame and a welcome realization that it still fitted!

A full day of delight. Who knows what the morrow will bring?

I suppose I should just wave my wand and find out!

If only.

Dark morning, afternoon and early evening of the soul!

Today has not been good.

It started badly and got steadily worse until it climaxed in one of the worst meetings I have attended. And then, just to finish me off a final piquant touch of depression. It wasn’t a good day.

A message from our headteacher in exile (luxuriating at home nursing her broken bones) was written on our staff white board notice board. It informed us that she had problems with her email, but she was much better and if anyone wanted to contact her then the telephone number etc etc.

Within minutes this notice had disappeared by order of The Owner who decreed that she and her sidekick were to be the only messengers to our staff room. Furthermore it was decreed that were we to contact the headteacher then no talk of school should be part of our conversation as she was officially ill!

It’s pathetic really, the absurd assumption that any of us would take the slightest notice of a ridiculous prohibition on our private life. It is further proof (if any were needed) of the paranoia which characterises the administration of our school.

I had barely tempered my disgust at this blatant piece of professional discourtesy when we were plunged into an unexpected rehearsal for the forthcoming summer concert. A rehearsal schedule had been produced but not circulated to the people who were supposed to use it. No comment.

Tomorrow is, unexpectedly, an Open Morning for parents and Wednesday is a Readathon Day – these two events are linked by the lack of preparation which is a little disconcerting when you are in the front line! The kids and parents have little to no idea of what is concerned in the latter and we have two days in which to make it work.

In such a day of untrammelled delight it was, of course, impossible that my maths class would not have an opportunity to add their inimitable quota of delight to my Day of Dolour. And they did.

The meeting after school was preceded by a presentation to a teacher in Primary who is getting married on Thursday. The Unit Manager for Primary being absent someone else had to do the honours for the presentation. As I had collected the money; bought the present; set out the nibbles and the Cava and persuaded Margaret to make the astonishingly impressive card. I spoke.

I wasted a few minutes in trying to work out just how long it was that I had done this little duty last. I suppose it was a ridiculous fancy that I could go for the major part of a year in a school without making some sort of speech!

The Cava consumed and the chocolate biscuits ravaged we Princes of Primary advanced, refreshed, to our meeting.

To say that it was a disaster is to underestimate the awfulness of complete frustration in the face of educational idiocy. The Chair of the meeting was little more than a glorified messenger and knew virtually nothing of the detail of the things that she was supposed to be relating.

The feeling of the meeting steadily worsened with each new admission of ignorance. The meeting broke up late and in bad humour, with little of moment having been decided.

But there was more!

Three of us were asked to stay behind to discover that our lesson observation and assessment was null and void because the person who observed us was not the person The Owner had asked to evaluate us. Now the person who had observed my lesson had done as professional a job as one could hope for – a welcome exercise in normality and professional competence. To be told that the new Unit Manager of primary (yet to arrive) would repeat the exercise was not, as it were, satisfactory.

The strength of feeling soured what had been a fairly rancid meeting experience.

Alone in my class later sitting thinking about what had happened so far in the evening I was approached by two cleaners who tentatively handed me a letter that we had all had put in our pigeon holes informing us that our pay had not been paid into the bank because of some unexplained electronic malfunction.

The fact that this delay of the May pay was greeted with a total lack of surprise by the hardened teachers says much for the way our school is administered.

I must admit that I found a certain fluency in Spanish in explaining by total disgust at the behaviour of the administration and I screwed up the offending letter and threw it across the class room. This was greeted with quiet contentment by the cleaners who informed me that this happened each year.

One begins to despair!

A long night's night!

Sometime the world of the badly drawn comic seems much closer to the real world than is comfortable in an ordered existence.

Yesterday, when already weakened from the musical onslaught of the first two acts of Die Walküre, my resolve to stay to the end was almost destroyed when the eponymous ladies walked, no, marched? invaded? conquered? sequestered? the stage.

One of them, who appeared to have been made of metal, glided on to the stage with a frightening gracelessness and to my horrified eyes appeared to have breasts on both sides of her body – front and back! Her hair was plastered down on top in a stern parting which then found its escape in a frizzled explosion of hair above her ears. Her sisters, in a variety of luridly coloured dresses were equally intimidating and when they rose from their chairs in this concert performance in the Gran Teatre del Liceu and advanced threateningly towards the audience to ‘Hojotoho!’ and ‘Heiaha!’ at us there was an appreciable shrinking back of the audience in their seats!

But the evening for me changed its course when I bought a programme, flicked it open to the cast list and discovered that the role of Seigmund was going to be sung by Plácido Domingo! Presumably that was the reason, back in July of last year that I was prepared to pay over €130 for a ticket for a concert performance of an opera I didn’t really know. Still it came as a little surprise.

As the Greatest Tenor of All Time (BBC Music Magazine April 2008) you are entitled to expect a lot. Born in 1941 (or earlier as some say) he is over retirement age but the voice that I heard last night was confident, rich and expressive. The role of Seigmund is one which could rip a voice to pieces, and at the top and bottom of his range there were signs of strain, but the performance was assured and from his first notes there was an authority in his presentation that was instantly beguiling.

Hunding (René Pape) and Wotan (Alan Held) were worthy protagonists on stage, but the singers in many of the other roles were less impressive.

I found Sieglinde (Waltraud Meier) unimpressive – though I have to admit that I was a placid oasis of restrained clapping for her performance amid a turbulent sea of hysterical shouts of approval when she came on to accept her plaudits and lethally aimed flowers! While some of her register was expressive and attractive she had a disturbingly throaty and nasal sound which was repulsive.

Brünnhilde (Evelyn Herlitzius) was physically unlike her sisters, had an attractive stage presence and created a dramatic partnership in her singing with Wotan – but again I found her voice unattractive and unsettling. Yet again I was a single restrained minority of one as the audience went wild at the end of her singing.

Fricka (Jane Henschel) gave a magisterial performance with a voice full of passion and hurt pride.

The orchestra under Sebastian Weigle was excellent though I have to say that some of the ensemble work was a little ragged, especially with some of the more prominent entries of the brass. I also found that ‘the famous bit’ or ‘Ride of the Valkires’ lacked the musical excitement that I have come to expect from this orchestra and I often found many of the tempi slow to the point of irritation, but in the relentless flow of music that is this opera I thought the orchestra did well.

The performance started at 8.00 pm and I got out of the theatre at 1.15 am! During one part of Act II I began to wish for easeful death as the only escape from what seemed like an interminable musical prison – but I bucked up and managed to see the ordeal through to the end!

I have to say that were Wagner himself to come back from the dead to conduct together with all the great singers from the past to take the roles in one of his operas – this is the last time that I go to see a concert performance of an opera.

For me the dramatic interpretation through direction, scenery, costumes and lighting of a great work is a major element, or perhaps the major element in my enjoyment of opera. Even the excitement of hearing live singing and a live orchestra playing do not compensate for the lack of the visual and intellectual stimulation of the complete experience. And it was expensive – even if Plácido was singing! And even if Plácido is iconic enough to have made a role in The Simpsons

it is still not enough.

Before the performance I ensured that I arrived in Barcelona in good time so that I could park the car and perhaps just happen to drift into a certain shop.

Who is of such paper thin resolve that his whole life can become unsettled by the mere glimpse of a picture of a reasonably priced mini laptop computer?

What sort of person can admit that his reserves of self control can be brushed away by the simple proximity of an electronic gadget? Who can be such a creature controlled by the base instincts of transistorised acquisition?

Alas, I can only echo the plaintive cry of the Infant Samuel and say, ‘Here am I lord!’

The Asus mini computer has been the seed of discontent sown in my mind and all has become as ashes as my untrammelled desire for a needful thing has overshadowed the more important things that I should be doing, like marking the hysterically guessed answers that my other worldly maths set has produced.

Talking of which: I have put of marking until the very last minute (or day) and this Sunday; this Sunday evening, is probably the time when everything will get done.

Please!

A cynical moment?

Displacement activity is as mother’s milk to me.

Especially when there is marking to be done.

As far as I can tell the actual, physical placing of a mark on the sad sheets of paper on which my pupils have scribbled by way of completing their exams is but the first part of a mystical process in obtaining some sort of indication of their worth.

Far be it from simple addition as being the end result of their efforts. No, a mere mark is but the starting point in a process which makes the interpretation of the tarot as simple as reading a Janet and John book.

Vast charts which look like spreadsheets for a company the size of BP are necessary to find out the ‘level’ of a child who thinks that 146 is more than 160. I have no doubt that a final statement of a pupil’s academic standing will entail the counting of the number of teeth each pupil has and dividing the result by the square root of the number of pencils they have in their cases then adding their results and subtracting their date of birth times the number of degrees their capital ‘L’s deviate from the perpendicular.

There again, I might just be tired after completing the most specious pieces of ‘planning’ I have ever fabricated.

I should stop while I am still behind, as it were, and wait for the light of a new day to illuminate my writing.

Some hope.

At least it’s Friday tomorrow!

Time for reflection?

My English class show how examinations used to be.

All around me they are working quietly with only the soft slide of pencil on paper and the occasional exhaled breath of gentle exasperation as the words (sometimes in the third of the pupils’ store of languages) do not come exactly as they want.

It’s a strange universe that is created by the examination room.

All dimensions are different. Time becomes elastic – depending on whether you are an invigilator or an examinee. The other dimensions of length, breadth and height also lose their defined nature as you feel yourself lost in the vast emptiness of a desolate examination hall or claustrophobically oppressed by the tension filled individuals surrounding you.

The dynamic within an examination room also has its own rhythm. I can well remember the ripple of naked fear that rolled through the hall when I was sitting my European history A level. As the papers were distributed and opened candidates in front of me realised that previously distinct historical events which had, heretofore their own distinct questions had now, in a grotesque parody of what we had understood as adequate scholarship had been yoked by force together. A question linking The Italian Wars and the Wars in the Netherlands? Unfair! Unreasonable! Impossible! What saddo had revised both, when in previous years only one was necessary to pass?

The history teacher who read the paper with something akin to our own despair told the invigilators not to let us out until we had been in the hall for at least a respectable length of time.

One candidate within my sight cut up his blotting paper into a series of little squares and made them into a pack of cards with which he contentedly played patience for the rest of the exam. One can’t help wondering if some innocuous missive from the WJEC outlining the new format of questions within the examination had been ignored courtesy of the traditional inertia which characterised the attitude of my old school to anything in the way of innovation!

The science examination has come and gone. Very different from the English exam. I had to read all the questions and try and forestall all those questions which would be perfectly natural were British school children asked about the growth of plants in Spanish, for example. This steady flight away from normal examination etiquette is but preparation for the true horror that will be my maths set tomorrow.

I have tried to get rid of two of my most ‘challenging’ pupils one of whom is very definitely ‘special needs’ in a multiplicity of ways and directions while the other thinks that plastic is a rock. In a science examination this is what we educationalists call a ‘bad thing.’ They will have their own dedicated teacher who has a bloody sight more patience that I will ever possess, though even she has been known to lose it from time to time and berate her trying charges with exhilaratingly direct invective.

I will be left with the hard core of maths strivers who have spent the last two weeks trying to tell the time.

I have noticed in all the tests that I have invigilated that some of the pupils almost instinctively cross themselves and then kiss their hands before writing anything!

My maths class will need more than empty mystic gestures invoking the non existent power of an absent god to get them through. They will need a complete reversal of Newtonian physics; Einstein’s physics and the refutation of String Theory, Black Holes, Stephen Hawking and all his works before their take on currently accepted academic norms becomes anything less than, simply, wrong. Bless!

The countdown to June gathers pace and all hell threatens to break out with interesting deadlines due to bring an extra element of dislocation into a dysfunctional institution.

One shudders with barely concealed impatience for the worst to happen!

Things, as a long lost version of a political organization known as the Labour Party used to think, can only get better!

Tempus fugit!

Our bus stop has gone!

Toni went to catch the bus this morning and – nothing! The whole bus stop had gone: shelter, post, sign, people – everything.

And of course no notice, indication or clue about where you might be able to catch a bus, if you were so strangely inclined. He wondered if he should wander up or down the road in search of the peregrinating stop. He eventually opted to go in the direction of Sitges. And there it was. Newly erected: having sprung fully formed like thingamabob from the thigh of Zeus or the mythic Catalan equivalent.

The transport system in Catalonia (at least in our bit) is both wonderful and also god awful.

The total fiasco of the tunnel collapse for the high speed train (a national government project) which was being constructed in the vicinity of Hospitalet – a Barcelona suburb near Castelldefels resulted in the entire area grinding to a halt.

For months trains were unable to get nearer to Barcelona than Gava (the next stop on the line from Castelldefels into Barcelona) and the resultant traffic jams had to be seen to be believed! The political fall out was enormous and the howls of outrage from Catalonia could be heard all over Spain. It was, said all of Catalonia, yet another example of Madrid screwing the Catalans. A national disgrace.

National and local politicians vied with each other as to how much of the television schedules they could monopolise. The resentment rumbles on and the traffic system has not markedly improved.

Crap it might be; but cheap too! Transport into Barcelona (when it was finally re-established by train was free for months for those travelling to the previously affected areas!) And even when you have to pay the trip to Barcelona it costs one tenth of seven euros fifty. That is the cost of a T10 ticket which is valid for ten trips! British cities could learn a thing or two from this!

I am tempted to make a metaphor of the disappearing bus stop and say that it represents, in some ways, attitudes in Spain, or at least in Catalonia. Consumer satisfaction does not rate highly on the agendas of many of the businesses with which I have come into contact. A service or product is provided: buy it if you want to. If you don’t want to: no problem. And we are not that concerned if you don’t come again.

Perhaps it’s something to do with living in a tourist area with a large transient population of gullible pleasure seekers waiting to be fleeced.

That sounds more bitter than I meant it to. I like the people in this area; for the most part they seem reasonable and innocuous – just what a city boy like me wants. Small town chumminess is not what I am used to and I would find it cloying.

Meanwhile back in the asylum the last couple of days have been enlivened for me by a small task that I had been given by the head of the primary section of the school. One of our number is going to get married a week Thursday so I was asked to collect for him.

If I had a pound for each time that I have collected for people in the schools in which I have worked I would be able to retire in comfort at once. I have collected for colleagues in the English Department, colleagues in other departments, office staff, and ancillary workers. In one notable case I was asked by a sadistic chair of the staff room (a post which truck terror into my soul) to collect for the chief dinner lady.

You have to understand that her meals made the feast that Titus Andronicus made for Tamora (look it up) seem positively alluring.

Not only was her food uniformly disgusting she was also a fairly repulsive character: raucous, unhelpful and vindictive. The task of collecting having been given to me however, I collected assiduously though prefacing my requests for money with a fairly unflattering picture of the hag. I was amazed that people who had loathed her draconian culinary regime of inedible horror still gave me money! They all, bless them, dredged about in their memories and retrieved a small act of gastronomic palatability: an odd sandwich, a reasonable salad or glass of orange juice which might justify a small act of charity now that she was going!

At her leaving presentation, when she uncharacteristically simpered her way into the staff room to receive the results of my hard work, she gave a heart stopping little speech. In an unnaturally formal version of the ungrammatical patois she spoke, she thanked us all for our kindness and told us not to worry as she had spoken to the new head chef and “learned her everything I knows!” I hope she took our horrified silence for deep appreciation!

No such reservations about the present colectee and people have been (with a little gentle prompting) most generous. It is strange how comfortable the role of Collector has felt after an unnatural length of time since I have last Taken Round the Envelope.

For a small staff we have raised a respectable amount of money and Margaret has created a truly splendid card which everyone (to the best of my ability) has signed. Margaret could have a lucrative career as designer of extravagant hand made special occasion cards. Thinking about it, the one she has created is more spectacular than merely splendid! It will have to be photographed before it is given lightly to a mere groom!

Meanwhile revolution is lurking around the corner. Threats spoken and unspoken are hanging in the air depending on what The Owner decides to do as we run down (!) to the end of term. Our relative powerlessness in the face of autocratic monetary power is pathetic.

Perhaps we will change.

I hope so.

In the slightly eerie gloom of my blind shrouded room I am sitting at my desk, surrounded by empty desks as my class is taught music. I am gathering my strength for the intellectual onslaught which is my maths class.

The numerical universe populated by my hapless pupils is a different one from that one which is creatively and imperfectly understood by those able to read these lines with a modicum of fluency.

To be brutal, for my class a sum such as “three plus nine” is as powerful in its intellectual challenge as trying to solve Fermat’s Last Theorem and never having heard of Sir Andrew Wiles.

Getting the class to make an effort at telling the time has been as searing a teaching experience as I have ever endured. I have used every technique that I could think of and which the internet could offer; I have used animations and worksheets; I have been reasonable and demented; exuberant and suicidal.

We have gone through times when (at its best) understanding was almost in sight and I, like a frankly more healthily sceptical Moses, glimpsed what might have been the promised land of time telling on every corner. I have also endured times (at their worst) when what we teachers know as an ‘answering frenzy’ takes place.

To those less than au fait with the minutiae of high level education an ‘answering frenzy’ is when a pupils gives an absurdly wrong answer and the rest of the class is drawn into what amounts to a bidding competition which involves throwing ever more tangential numbers at the teacher in the belief that some mathematic god will prompt them to speak in tongues which will involve the correct answer.

This is the teaching equivalent of my shocking ascent of a staircase in new The National Theatre when, having unwittingly stored a vast reserve of static electricity by walking across a vast expanse of nylon carpet in the foyer, I foolishly touched the metal handrail while stepping on the first part of the staircase.

The electric spark my hand produced propelled me to the other side of the staircase where I instinctively grasped the opposite handrail which sparked at once and the pain propelled me to the other side when, having learned little in the previous millisecond I reached out and . . . . Well, you get the idea. I fell up stairs in a series of galvanic twitches which would have brought tears of joy to the eighteenth century experimenters with frogs’ legs.

Falling upwards into oblivion with my maths class, rather than the rather nice, but pricey restaurant that was my destination in the National.

My class has already had one practice test on mental maths where the idea is that a problem is read out and the pupils have five seconds to respond by writing down an answer. This created the equivalent of mental melt down with each question being greeted with squeaks of outraged amazement that anything so demanding could be asked of mere children.

Today we have a practice of the real maths test and I foresee innumerable problems with, well, everything. With some of my class the simple effort needed to obtain a sharp pencil takes up the whole of their intellectual reserves. To ask them to do computations as well is frankly ludicrous in their eyes.

Wish me luck! They are almost back and raring to go. God help!

The reality was much worse than my most dismal imaginings. The idea of sustaining a church-like calm in the classroom was almost as difficult as obtaining such quietude in a Roman Catholic place of worship. The Anglican attitude to things ecclesiastical is polite but disengaged respect and keeping the children quiet. This is not echoed by their Iberian counterparts where noisy participation and unchecked children shock the Anglican atheists!

So my maths class will have to be policed with a light touch as I do everything but tell them the answers on Thursday!

The latest threat lurking on the near horizon of our misery is the Summer Concert. This lurking horror is to take place during the lastish week of term. Or the last week in which children are in school. Or might be considered to be in school in a way. As you will know if you have been following the inexplicable mystery surrounding the precise date of the end of the term there are at least four or five separate ‘endings’ depending on your ‘contract’ and whether Saturn was in the ascendant with Venus on the cusp in the House of the Rising Sun at the hour of your birth.

We wait with something approaching hysterical nervous collapse the Presentation of the Final List. This is the (by all accounts) voluminous (and still growing) list of tasks which departing teachers are expected to complete before they leave our august establishment and (more importantly) before they qualify for their holiday pay.

Holiday pay is of course a vulgar misapprehension of how teachers are paid. Our salary (even the risible pittance paid in our place) is paid in 12 equal monthly payments. Holiday or teaching it’s all the same, it doesn’t matter; it’s the way our pay is divided up.

We are getting closer to crunch time with our employer. People seem inclined to wait until their May pay is in and then, if necessary start taking some sort of concerted action during June to ensure that we are at least treated with something approaching professionalism. A bit late, but there is more joy in the TUC over one complacent, quiescent worker who turns to the truth faith of Trade Unionism (even in its debased Catalan form) than in ninety and nine who continue to make a meal of employers’ less savoury bodily areas.

From past experience I will believe professional radicalism when I see it!

Ever the cynic.

We Wuz Robbed! Again! Again!

This year I was determined not to lose my temper while watching the voting for the Eurovision Song Contest.

I failed.

And the day had started so well. Having been told that a post office note of an undelivered parcel was waiting for me in Terrassa, curiosity and hope drew me like a Conservative voter to an Old Etonian.

Talking of which (in spite of The Spectator’s protestations of his worth) what the hell are voters, especially Labour party voters doing! As the little funny one on The News Quiz commented in the last programme, “I can understand Labour voters deciding to protest by voting for the Lib Dems or the Greens, but voting Conservative? It’s like going into your hairdresser and saying ‘This week I think I will have something different; I’ll set my head on fire!’”

My parcel turned out to be from Aunt Bet and contained two books, two copies of The New Statesman and an encouraging card! I walked back to Toni’s Mum’s flat with a broad smile on my face and hours of reading material in my hands!

Returning to Castelldefels with Toni’s mum and sister we planned a trip into the centre of the town to show our support for our current most famous citizen.

The Spanish entry in the Eurovision Songs Contest was being ‘sung’ by a local boy (albeit born in Argentina.) The chosen song was selected after a strange process where singers submitted their entries primarily through the website MySpace! A televised national selection was held where the top songs chosen from MySpace were performed. This competition was won by Rodolfo Chikilicuatre with his song ‘Baila El Chiki Chiki.’ Rodolfo is not a singer; he is a comedian who does not plan to continue with his singing career after this one special occasion.

Since then the television stations have been flooded with videos of the high coifed glittering waistcoat wearing performer, eyes roguishly glinting behind his large glasses and agile fingers playing (or not) his toy guitar. A mere description could not possibly convey the calculated insult to the whole concept of the Eurovision Song Contest as it is presently constituted that this ‘song’ represents. Judge for yourselves at http://www.eurovision.tv/event/artistdetail?song=23994&event=1469

When the Irish entry (‘sung’ by a turkey puppet with lyrics mocking all aspects of the competition) was eliminated Rodolfo was asked if he was relieved that his greatest non-human competitive threat had been removed. His statesman-like reply was that he did not gloat over the misfortunes of his colleagues! A real touch of ironic professionalism – though not bitter enough to get me through the evening without heart ache.

The central square of Castelldefels in front of the church was filled with people, many of whom were wearing Rodolfo masks. As we arrived, the link was made to the national television programme for the contest and the cheering, hand waving; mask wearing multitudes (us!) was relayed to Spain and to Rodolfo himself waiting in the Green Room before his performance.

After a deeply unsatisfying drink of sweet, cloying and fizzy pop masquerading as beer we returned to the flat to catch the rest of the show. Which we did.

And then the marking.

Now I am well aware that the Eurovision Song Contest is ‘only a bit of fun’ and to be annoyed at the xenophobic bigotry which is displayed each year is a grotesque overreaction.

So I am going to overreact.

The British song was a decent effort and was given a spirited performance and a good production. We came last.

The voting was as predictable as it was explicable in terms of economics, politics, history and society. But the fact that it can be explained does not justify public money from the BBC being squandered on this travesty of a competition which results in the ritual humiliation of Western Europe by countries like Israel and Russia – one of which is not in Europe and the other which is mostly outside Europe. However, geographical quibbles are not my theme.

Voting is not only the most contentious aspect of Eurovision but also, it has to be admitted, the most interesting and corrupt.

In years gone by there used to be a national jury composed of god knows who used to give the votes. Not fair or above board, but more satisfying than the present. In the strange system adopted today San Marino has the same voting power as Russia, no matter how many people actually vote in each country.

Eurovision has become a lucrative brand. Each vote by phone has a monetary value to the owners of the brand and there is a proliferating selection of merchandising to buy. Fairness comes a very poor also ran to commercial considerations and viewing figures.

My suggestion would be for a greater transparency to enter the competition that styles itself as one of the greatest (and most lucrative) such competitions in the world.

1 Who funds Eurovision?
2 Who funds the actual Song Contest?
3 Who sells the rights?
4 Who are the directors, the decision makers?
5 Who banks the telephone poll money?
6 Who has financial oversight?
7 Where are the polling figures published?

There are many more questions to ask about something which is much more than a few innocent hours of prime television time!

I have decided, in the best traditions of ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, retd.’ to write to the Director General or somebody and complain at this waste (or something) of taxpayers’ money.

Or perhaps this writing will suffice and I will bluster for a few days and only achieve full outrage again in the lead up to the next contest.

That’s life and Eurovision!

What was that again?

I have read some of the western world’s greatest literature in English.

My reading from the Middle and Far East has been more restricted relying on philoreligious books like Lao Tsu’s jingly aphoristic brain teasers together with various books of fairy tales ranging from 1001 Nights to the Old Testament and The Koran.

The rest of the East, as long as you count Russia (Old Style) as part of Asia is solidly represented by the usual nineteenth century bricks masquerading as novels and so on.

Africa is rather woefully underrepresented in my library with a few volumes of Achebe and Soyinka, a couple of books of African Poetry and does Doris Lessing count as real African?

America, of course is much better represented with volumes from countries throughout the continent and Australasia is lumped in with the West.

From Conrad to Confucius; Dante to Defoe; Hegel to Heller and Belloc to Blyton I have read voraciously and indiscriminately. From delicious lows like the ‘Lucky Star’ novels that Isaac Asimov wrote shamelessly for easy money under a pseudonym to mind altering highs like ‘The Magic Mountain’ by Thomas Mann, I have gobbled up book after book.

So why can’t I remember them? I look at the covers of some books and I know that I have read them; sometimes I can remember the enjoyment I got from the reading. But I also know that if I had to give a one line summary of the book as the final question in ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’ I would be leaving the studio without the six figure sum in my bank account. I am in a similar situation to Woody Allen when he said, “I took a speed-reading course and read ‘War and Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.”

Deathless prose that will live for ever as a shining example of human intellectual achievement and philosophical thought has obviously gone into my eyes and straight out through my ears. To give an example: ‘Dead Souls’ by Gogol – it’s about serfs. Thank you Woody Allen!

If ‘Dead Souls’ is, at it were, dead for me. Why is it that literature of a somewhat lower order should be bright and shining in the forefront of my memory?

All of this cogitation is as a result of one of my pupils brining in a book which he forced his parents to buy for him in the Book Fair that was a part of our notorious Culture Week (when things Welsh were forced upon the innocent consciousnesses of my hapless group of pupils.)

The boy bought with his eyes rather than his understanding of English so that, at present, he has managed to work his way through the first three line paragraph and is totally exhausted. He has therefore given me the book to read and has allowed me to keep it for the weekend. As a rather touching final comment he opined that, as I only had the novel for the weekend, he would not expect me to read much more than a few chapters! Bless!

The book itself has a striking cover by Bob Lea. It represents an old fashioned sailing ship with timbers made from what looks like charcoal sailing through a churning blood red sea. The filling sails look like lizard skin and the rigging is peopled by silhouettes of mariners. The only figure delineated with any clarity is standing clutching the bowsprit wearing a tricorn hat, holding a lantern which illuminates his billowing cape which looks like a veined butterfly wing. Crimson lightening streaks through a dark blue sky to add a final grotesque touch of horror.

The final clue to the subject matter of this book is indicated by the ornate skull and crossbones embossed on the top of the cover. But look more closely at the skull and you will discover that the canines are unnaturally extended, justifying the title of this vulgar little rip off, ‘Vampirates – Demons of the Ocean’ by Justin Somper.

Bringing together ideas morphed from inspirations like orphans of Lemony Snicket with a touch of Swallows and Amazons infused with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Pirates of the Caribbean and set (apparently) in Waterworld, this book is a masterpiece of unscrupulous popular culture jigsawing!

The book is set is 2505, but there is nothing in the story so far to suggest the far future – presumably this will develop in the rest of the series, as this volume does little more in its 300 pages than set the scene. As the captain’s whisper (don’t ask!) puts it in the last two sentences of the novel, “So it ends. So it begins.” So please, parents, be prepared to fork out a whole series of £5.99s as the series plods its way towards a story.

The front cover of this novel has a quotation from Anthony Horowitz, “Totally original . . . I wish I’d had this idea!” One can’t help feeling that he would have made a better job of it.

No matter what I think of the book as a piece of writing, the idea, as Horowitz says is original and I’m sure it will stay with me, whereas other ideas more profound in the hands of writers more skilled have flitted away from my mind.

Two stories stay with me.

The first is a science fiction story about delusion. The story concerned apparently wealthy, happy people living contented lives surrounded by consumer comforts. In reality they were living lives of squalor in a laboratory like maze having been successfully duped to accept another version of reality to cover their misery. The detail I remember is reading the description of a sumptuous meal and then finding out that the reality was gruel like sludge emerging from a rough pipe into a trough. Title and author have faded into the soft memory where files are unable to be retrieved. Any help will be appreciated, and I am sure that I once caught a glimpse of a film which used this idea, with numbered cardboard boxes taking the place of cookers, fridges, televisions, paintings etc.

The other was a fantasy or science fiction short story about an American youth always surrounded by a cloud of insects - to his continuing annoyance. The crux of this story was that the unassuming adolescent was actually the Lord of the Flies himself! Perhaps it was god’s little joke for the Beelzebub to be reworked as a sneaker wearing non entity and to be unaware of his potential as a Prince of Darkness! Title and author here too have gone. But the idea remains, fresh and pristine.

Perhaps the price for retaining each pushy, flashy and empty literary idea is that a profound and well written one has to be pushed into the twilight world of forgetfulness.

Perhaps maturity is also the time to drag them back where they belong and reinstate them in the forefront of consciousness.

That means that my programme of rereading should start now and will probably take the rest of my life!

Now that is what I call contentment!