Generosity and genocide

Sometimes people surprise you.

Having left my ‘reassuring expensive’ (as they used to call Stella Artois) glasses in Sitges to be repaired a second time after the ineffective footling of the amateurs in Castelldefels who had failed to effect a permanent join between frame and glass, I had been using my old (solidly expensive) glasses. They served their purpose and, as Judith and I were constantly on the go, they had to suffice until yesterday.

The journey to Sitges was justified by an extended period of lounging on the beach and sunbathing. This was possible because there was virtually no wind. The slightest breeze and the realities of the date were forcibly borne in on one! Tempting fate I also threw myself (perhaps not the truest expression I could have used) into the sea. Not once but on three occasions. If one used the standard of the waves’ welcome based on the temperature of the sea on the coast of Mexico then this was an ocean and a sea away; but make your standard of comparison the waters which lap the coasts of southern Wales and the Mediterranean was brisk but acceptable!

The glasses were in a small optician’s on one of the narrow streets leading to the square with the clock tower. There was a brief period of tension when they couldn’t find the things and then success. They fitted perfect and the join looks secure. And no charge! I bought an ONCE ticket on the basis that such an ungrasping approach must portend financial success elsewhere. And we are still waiting for the €2.3m to buy the house we fancy!

Today the weather is different: grey, colour drained and raining gently.

Out of this weather, however, I welcomed a young lady who looked like one of those hearty characters who welcome rain as adding to the delights of camping. She was muffled in a damp anorak and had the gleaming eyes of the fanatic.

She was, of course, the mosquito lady.

We have phoned up the local council about the number of flying terrorists who zoom about seeking who they might devour. I am glad to say that my flesh seems not to the taste of our winged fiends, but the number of nasty bites on other skins has prompted the call to the officials.

After a searching examination of our balcony and a penetrating scan of other terraces in sight, she was off in a storm of excited Spanish to search for larvae further afield.

Her slow inspection of pool, hedge, grass, shower and crannies revealed little suspicious to her eagle eye so she tramped off to the beach.

In front of the flats is a rain water overflow outlet which sometimes has standing water in it. From the dry seclusion of the balcony I saw her crouched at the margin of the pool and The Leech Gatherer of Wordsworth came into my mind.

The lines (suitably altered in deference to her gender)

At length, herself unsettling, she the Pond
Stirred with her Staff, and fixedly did look
Upon the muddy water, which she conned,
As if she had been reading in a book

seemed particularly appropriate.

As she stood to leave I waved to her from the balcony and she tramped her way through the sand and rain to shout from the other side of the wall that there were ‘Muchos! Muchos!’ while at the same time clenching and unclenching her raised hands to give me a visual picture of the number of larvae she had found.

This was probably in response to my excited ‘Spanish’ that I used with her, the sort I speak when confronted with situations when I know that I do not have the requisite vocabulary to cope!

This confirms all of our worst hopes and at least gives us some justification for calling the people in the first place.

We will now wait to see what happens. My money is on the fanatic seeing this thing through. I confidently expect to see council workers with flame throwers pursuing a scorched sand policy towards the ‘Tiger’ mosquitoes which are foreign invaders and must be repulsed with vigour.

As I am still waiting to hear from the police and the inspection team who have been directed towards The School That Sacked Me, my enthusiasm is tempered by reality.

So it goes.

Always something new

If any one or any thing is to blame, then it would have to be the hotel trade exhibition.

It is never a good thing to be shown up in your lack of knowledge about the cultural life of a city of whose cultural life you thought you were the corner stone.

But I was.

Mondays are not good days for culture vultures in Barcelona. The majority of the cultural venues that are worth visiting are closed (much in the manner of the French) and the most you can do is look mournfully through the plate glass windows at the forbidden delights of our artistic heritage.

When one of those closed palaces is MNAC on Montjuic then the view itself is compensation enough. Compensation that has to take into account the somewhat laborious ascent to that pinnacle of Catalan excellence. There is first the long mall-like road whose entrance is marked by two towers in the style of the large bell tower in Saint Mark’s Square in Venice. This mall is flanked by a series of pavilions and the odd fountain until you get to the beginning of the flights of stairs which will eventually (and I really mean ‘eventually’) get you to your destination.

In the best spirit of access for the arts a connected series of open air escalators has been installed to make the long walk as untiring as possible. Admittedly it took me the best part of a year to discover the last link in the chain which deposited my weary feet at the bottom of the last few steps to the actual entrance, but now I can guide guests almost effortlessly from one vista of shining metallic steps to the next.

But not when a massive international hotel exhibition spreads itself over the mall and the adjoining pavilions. Entrance forbidden except to the lost souls queuing to gain their credentials so they could start sampling the freebies.

We were forced to try a flanking manoeuvre to hit the hill at a more congenial point. Judith strode off purposefully with me limping wearily in the background as my hip seems to be trying to make up for its relative quiescence during the whole of my life and now seems to be asking for attention in a tiresome way like a fractious child.

We strode and hobbled past static traffic; ripped up road; indolent workmen and a burnt out flat and then found ourselves gazing at a remarkable building which bore the sign of one of the local banks.

I had previously only seen this building from the lofty prominence on which the grandiose building which houses MNAC sits. I had attempted in the past to take an ‘artistic’ photograph of the pseudo-crenulated brick roof, but I had regarded the building as nothing more than an extra pavilion in the Montjuic complex.

I was wrong.

The building itself is a restored brick built factory designed by the famous Catalan architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch, you can get more information about the building in English at http://obrasocial.lacaixa.es/centros/english/caixaforumbcnbuilding_en.html

What was worse than not realising that the building was an outstanding example of the work of an impossibly famous architect was finding out that the restored building is a positive treasure house of artistic events.

The current exhibition was of the work of Alphonse Mucha (1860 – 1939) it was exhaustive and brilliantly presented. It is always gratifying to leave an exhibition (which was free!) with extra information. Who would have thought that the artist who produced all those Art Noveau posters showing Sarah Bernhardt looking demented and clutching a dagger actually lived until 1939? And that the reason he died was that he was viciously interrogated by the Gestapo after which he developed pneumonia and died in a few days?

The next exhibition (also free!) opens in a few days time and consists of paintings from the Uffizi in Florence from Botticelli to Luca Giordano.

There are other exhibitions opening, together with music events and readings and debates and all those things that should have been clearly within my cognizance.

And if it hadn’t been for hordes of suited men and women making for the refreshment areas and blocking my usual route to MNAC this cornucopia of artistic delights would have been nothing more than an interesting brick roof!

I have put myself on the mailing list and eaten in the very reasonably priced restaurant.

I am thinking of writing a short monograph on ‘Eating in the Arts’ – I feel it would be revealing and interesting!

Judith has been an excellent companion during the days of her stay in Castelldefels and has made all the right noises about my favourite parts of the city and has exhibited the appropriate degree of envy when contemplating the view from the balcony.

We have eaten out every day; we have sneered at meretricious contemporary art; we have suffered the unrelenting seats of our local bus; we have disturbed the lesser breeds without the law in The School That Sacked Me; we have travelled; we have been (momentarily) placid – and we have talked.

Who could ask for more!

Time passes . . .

The Picasso Museum; Sitges; talk; Santiago Rusiñol’s house; dinner with the girls; planes; talk; Monserrat; living statues; rain; lunch with a view; Quat Gats; Santa Maria del Mar; the Ramblas; plotting; kissing idols; coffee; sun; talk; Basque tapas; too much drink; talk; photos; talk; travel; sights; sounds; drink; talk . . .

There is nothing like a visitor for prompting you to sample the delights of a location that you thought you knew. There is always something new to be gained from the perception of someone looking at old sights afresh and asking obvious questions that you haven’t thought about.

Roll on the next batch of visitors!

Conflicting choices

To learn or not to learn?

Do social and familial pressures outweigh the necessity to keep up instruction? Will abstinence make future negligence easier?

Now that Judith has joined us for a short stay, a series of inviting trips and visits stretch out over the next week. My Spanish lesson will take two hours from this visit and there is a school of thought which avers that a denial of such a short period of teaching time should be welcomed as the minimum grace afforded to an honoured guest.

We’ll see.

I decided to stay at home after carefully calling up my language school to inform it of my non appearance. The lessons are highly subsidised and failure to attend can result in your position being taken away. If you tell them you are not going to be there then all will be well.

It was just as well we went to Sitges because, by popular demand, I had to drive past The School That Sacked Me. By great good luck a member of the administration just happened to be walking outside the school and at the sight of my car and my person indicating the location of the school she stopped immediately and looked back at us with what can only be described as suspicion!

In a place which is driven by paranoia the sight of a person who is actively working against the present administration driving near with two persons in the car as well must at least be a cause for thought.

I would give money to hear the conversation between The Owner and her fawning crony about the lurking presence of ‘That Bloody Man’, as I have been called by the more suspect elements in management of that diseased institution.

The police should now be taking action to find out the location of the charity money and the Generalitat should be attempting to conduct an investigation instigated by me into the contracts from the last five years in the place. I do hope they have fun, fun fun!

The rest of the trip to Sitges was sightseeing and eating.

A visit to the house of Santiago Rusiñol is, for those going there for the first time, a delightful experience in eclecticism.

His accumulation of iron work, paintings, drawings, fonts, plates, glass, sculpture and furniture packed into fairly small rooms downstairs and a totally surprising sort of Great Hall up stairs comes as a shock.

As indeed do the two paintings by El Greco which adorn one wall of the Great Hall!

Downstairs there is the little Picasso which, during a power cut in a previous visit seemed to call, “Take me! Take me!” to my receptive ears. Alas! Years of false morality stayed my fingers from grasping my prize as a multitude of mobile phones suddenly turned on cast their all too revealing light on my dark plans!

Altogether a worthy visit before lunch.

My feather light glasses (which certainly reflect the Mies Van De Rohe doctrine of ‘Less is more’ in terms of price) have sprung apart and need attention. After one ineffectual repair in a Castelldefels optician they are now residing in Sitges where, I am assured, all will be well in due course and expenditure.

Dinner tomorrow night promises to be more eventful with the arrival of three more people than we expected.

Roll on!

Cleanliness is next

Surely only a lunatic would put whitish tiles on the floor of the bathroom.

A bathroom, I might add, which has sink, bath and bidet all in a tasteful blue which is virtually impossible to keep looking clean. And there is no outside source of light.

And we have a visitor immanent.

Veiled references to the Augean Stables have prompted me to mount an all out searching campaign against the dust lurking in hidden corners in my bathroom. In the course of removing said dust I have discovered certain empty containers which, in spite of the floor being level, have rolled to said hidden corners and waited until now to reveal themselves.

I have of course (naturally) cleaned my bathroom on a regular basis. It is therefore an undeniable conclusion to draw that empty bathroom containers have an intelligent, independent, malicious existence as soon as they have been deposited in the bathroom bin.

I think my resentment about the whole process comes from taking down the shower curtains. The cheap IKEA curtains are matched by the cheap plastic rings attaching them to the rail.

Each time they are taken down at least two of the rings snap. The spare packet that I bought has been denuded and I am left with empty spaces which, to me, indicate an undergraduate style of living. I am past that, so a gratuitous trip to that haven of Scandinavian design to ensure my readmission to adult living might be called for.

I decided to cannibalize the remnants of the shower curtain left in the flat before we arrived. We try and use as little as possible of the poor quality rubbish left as bits and pieces to justify the term ‘furnished’ when we rented the flat!

Talking of flats, a family replete with a mass of two children, one of whom cannot write in complete sentences has now moved in diagonally opposite us.

Time to start looking in thieving agents’ windows!

More books!

The absolute rubbish that I am reading at the moment is an absolute delight.

The Sony e-book reader (to which all praise) encourages the mean and mendicant to search web sites for free e-books to fill what used to be regarded as industrial quantities of memory with books that one doesn’t really want to read.

I now have a vast selection of classic texts that I have quoted from but not read waiting in the electronic darkness of the machine for those quiet hours when I decide that I should fill the classical gaps in my reading experience.

At the moment however I have read one science fiction book which I would never have the bare faced anti intellectual audacity to flaunt in ‘real’ book life. I’ve also read a fantasy book which was better written but as each chapter slipped by I could sense time passing which I could not easily justify. I suppose that some of this high academic pose was undermined by the avidity with which I devoured these tomes.

I have used this reading device so much that I have actually managed to exhaust the battery. Now the e-book reader is sold with the advertising information that you could read War and Peace three times before the battery becomes exhausted. I started to add up the pages and realised that I had indeed read my way through a veritable electronic forest of pages.

As is always the way with electronic devices, the real problems appear when you cut corners with the technical ways of treating the device. This one decided to have a hissy fit when it was being recharged. Basically all you have to do to recharge the device is plug it into the computer. It then uses the USB port to charge. You must, however, take care with how and when you take the device from the machine.

Those of us who have had things like ipods refuse point blank to work after they have been untimely ripped from the parent device are usually reasonably careful about clicking on the little ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ icon to ensure a safe unlinking.

Sometimes, in spite of painstaking attention to detail and being punctilious in the clicking on the correct device designation the notice that it is OK to remove hardware is an out and out lie.

So it was with the device after it had been left on overnight to ensure a full recharge.

Horror piled on horror as the bloody thing refused to work. Then refused to turn off. Then to shut down. Then to reset. This then exhausted the full repertoire of my approaches to recalcitrant electronic devices.

After a frustrating number of long moments I discovered that there are advantages to knowing an electrician with an instinctive understanding of the ways of things with screens and buttons.

It is now back in working order and is quietly taking its charge like a good little device.

I must hunt for more bad books to fill my days with the forbidden delights of stylistically inept, badly structured, self indulgent verbiage.

Sound familiar?

Give me the sun

After an uneasy night’s sleep I can still feel the effects of the liquid meal on Saturday. It is certainly a sign of the times when I can’t shrug off the effects of overindulgence. Or is it called growing up?

It’s something of a grey day today and I trust that it is not a sign that the weather is going to change just at the point that my cousin Judith comes to visit. Castelldefels it at its best when it is experienced out of doors. Like any other sea side resort it is somewhat disappointing if you have to start looking for sheltered amusements.

It is perhaps significant that the local newsagent has a carousel of postcards, most of which have sights from Barcelona on them. Apart from the beach I do not think that there is very much of architectural interest in Castelldefels. Anything with a touch of history has been ruthlessly pulled down to make way for more flats and holiday homes. In the making of money from the Mediterranean Sea coast the Catalans have been anything other than sentimental in their preservation of the natural environment.

This works both ways of course. Left to its own devices the long beach which stretches in front of our flat would not look as it does. Its flawless expanse is carefully nurtured by massive machinery which sifts and moves and cleans the sand in its nocturnal wanderings along the shore. Squads of fluorescent yellow jacketed workers scour the sand to remove the more glaring debris of tourists and various vehicles of doubtful efficacy patrol the strand. This is what is necessary when you lack the sort of cleansing tide which sweeps the beaches in Britain. On the other hand we have sun!

At present we are fighting a losing battle with mosquitoes. We are living in a state of siege with doors carefully closed and spray liberally used to discourage our winged visitors from drinking their fill, but still the cry is they come in battalions armed (if I may mix my quotations) smirking at our chemical dissuasions and supping where they please. I am convinced that a substantial proportion of my blood must be composed of whatever these pesky insects inject to make their chosen liquor flow more easily!

We are taking further steps. I don’t know what it’s doing to the insects, but it’s making our lives virtually unbreathable!

And I’ve got another Spanish lesson tomorrow.

A long day's journey into sobriety

The calm before the storm.

‘Hope springs eternal’ might be naïf motto but it keeps me on course. Monday should be the day when my flock of CVs alight in their various roosting places on the educational perches of Barcelona international schools. It is also the day when the denunciation of The School That Sacked Me should begin to take effect with the arrival of the police to drag off The Owner to her well deserved incarceration.

Realistically I suppose that I will have to be satisfied by a single inconsequential phone call to The Owner by the boys in blue and a long silence from the schools.

However waiting is good exercise in delayed gratification and to those with imagination it’s full of possibilities; possibilities that reality limits in its tiresomely quotidian way!

I have taken today in a more than leisurely way as I am recovering from the meal I had yesterday. The food was exceptional and served on a succession of extraordinary plates and very attractively arranged. The devil, as is so often the case, was in the drinking: red wine and an excellent bottle of Cava.

Time for reflection.

Close music

The inevitability of traffic jams on the Littoral into Barcelona ensures that on an Opera day I am in the city well in advance of the performance.

This also, of course, allows me to meander my feckless way through shops and then pride myself in not buying the latest gadget with flashing lights. Sometimes.

Rain was an unwelcome feature of this visit to the opera; but it was a sort of half-hearted type of precipitation and one which hardly justified my parading about the Ramblas with my umbrella embellished with weather orientated quotations from Shakespeare.

I did so, however, in a spirit of education, allowing the passers-by to appreciate the superiority of our national playwright in comparison with the Spanish equivalent - Lope de Vega!

I was early enough at the Liceu to have a coffee and cake in the café and was gifted a fragrant vision in gold.

A lady, too ancient to be flattered with the appellation of “a certain age”, sat at the next table in a cloud of expensive perfume and glittering with precious metal at cuff, throat and ear. Her jacket of shimmering yellow satin with irrepressible ruffs led the eye to her wide sided glasses where the expanse of white served to show up the gold detailing which even extended to the age defying golden highlight in her age defying hair.

Her mobile was frankly disappointing but the wrist that supported it was encircled with a watch that was swamped with sparkling diamonds and the bag which received the phone after her piercing voice had subsided was a burning fantasy of sequined gold.

Such a character was always going to outshine the characters on the stage for the opera but before I could make any comparisons I was early enough to join the serious opera goers for a pre-performance talk. Which was in Catalan.

I have become a grand master in looking vaguely intelligent when listening to fast speaking Spaniards and Catalans. I must admit that I did not do my homework for the opera for which I had paid a surprisingly large amount for a seat. ‘Tiefland’ by Eugen d’Albert based on a stage play ‘Terra Baixa’ by Àngel Guimerà was all unknown territory to me, a territory which was unlikely to be illuminated much by a discourse in Catalan.

By dint of concentration and guesswork I managed to gain that the play was about mountains and lowlands; shepherds and Romanticism; that it was a modern version set in an office; a love triangle; something about a wolf; Glasgow and Barcelona were mentioned. I wasn’t a great deal more informed and I rushed to get a programme and read the short synopsis given in English and French.

‘Terra Baixa’ turned out to be something of a staple in past years of traditional Spanish and especially Catalan theatre: the story of true love developing and winning out against the machinations of a wicked character set in the ‘good’ mountains and the ‘bad’ lowlands. The mentioning of a wolf I learned was a reference to the last lines of the opera when the baddie had been despatched by the hero and hero and his girl were able to leave for the mountains and goodness.

I was prepared for the opening scene which revealed four glass cases which contained four human characters.

Stage left was a bank of scientific equipment complete with flashing lights, while stage right was a sort of dentist’s chair which was linked to the characters in the cases with a scientist wearing an interactive glove to make contact with the human specimens in the cases.

We were therefore presented with a concept of virtual reality in which people were being conditioned to behave in certain ways. This idea was fine and an interesting slant on a very traditional story, but it was not sustained throughout the action of the opera and was only reintroduced in the final moments to give a short of enforced coherence to the directorial view.

The majority of the action was confined to the art deco ‘office’ of a bread mill. We could see the sliced product slowly going by on a short conveyer belt throughout the action of the opera. Presumably we were supposed to make the link from the processed bread to the processed people.

Frankly all I saw was a fairly vapid melodrama indifferently acted and unimpressively sung. Musically I found the piece undistinguished even if d’Albert was born in Glasgow and is reputed to have written the overture to one of Sullivan’s operas!

The hero, Tommaso, was sung by Alfred Reiter. The role calls for a Helden tenor and I felt that he lacked the consistent power and definition that was necessary. His heroine, Marta, sung by Petra Maria Schnitzer was the undoubted star of the evening and gave a powerful performance with a voice that was compelling. The other roles were sung adequately but the insistence by the director, Matthias Hartmann, that the piece is not a ‘realistic’ one does not excuse the two dimensional acting which accompanied the music.

As my seat was in the fourth row of the stalls (did I mention how much it cost?) my new black and gold opera glasses were a little redundant! It did allow me to experience the orchestra at close quarters and I think that they, and their conductor, Michael Boder were more than creditable.

Is it truly shallow of me to admit that I enjoyed the Indian meal afterwards without reservation?

Who cares!

Shades of the prison house . . .

The deed is done!

The police have taken down my denunciation of The Owner regarding her refusal to divulge any details of the Readathon.

This time it was the right policemen and after a hesitation about what could be done we were ushered into a small room where details were taken down.

I know it is a truism that as you grow older the police look younger and younger

but the selection we saw didn’t even look as though they had made it to the sixth form. If it had turned out that Y11 were having a work experience stint in the place I would not have been surprised.

At one point we were joined by our interviewing policeman’s boss wearing plain clothes who looked, if anything, even younger than his subordinate. At this point my translator (one of the lady parents from The School That Sacked Me) hissed sotto voce, “Another pin up!” Whatever their apparent or real ages and their physical attributes they were very helpful and even threw in one or two words of English to keep me happy. The basic denunciation was written and augmented with a cutting detail from the boss, typed, printed, photocopied and stamped.

Now the waiting to see if efficient administration ever translates itself into satisfying action. If necessary I am prepared to supply a Black Maria to take her away!

If nothing else I now have two typed pages of official Catalan to add to the file.

In The Magnificent Ambersons the narrator says, “Something had happened. A thing which, years ago, had been the eagerest hope of many, many good citizens of the town, and now it had come at last; George Amberson Mainafer had got his comeuppance.”

These words came to mind as I visited the local tobacco shop to post a series of letters. Given the way with ‘Johnny Foreigner’ the need to go to a tobacconist for stamps is not regarded as strange and I have come to accept these quaint customs. The letters winging their way to the four corners of Barcelona all contain my CV and are addressed to the various headteachers of educational establishments which might be able to use my pedagogical accomplishments.

I feel it churlish to laze with indolent ease gazing out from the balcony, glass and e-book reader in hand and ignore the effects of the financial crisis which seems purpose made to wipe out all my savings; thus giving the lie to the pernicious doctrine of delayed gratification so beloved of the middle classes.

Why scrimp and save when criminally inept bankers play fast and loose with money which they don’t have and leave the bourgeoisie gnashing their teeth with impotent rage as they see that Bernard Shaw’s ‘undeserving poor’ have had the right idea all along. When you’ve got it spend it at once otherwise you’ll gain nothing and lose everything.

Now there may be some who say that I have followed the spend it all when you have it assiduously throughout my life and that the only time I saved was when the money was ripped from my salary at source so it was taken away to safety before I could get my sticky fingers on it.

I refuse such base reflections on my preparedness for unemployment with scorn but little ready cash!

I have, therefore resorted to the touting of my CV and am steeled to find that far from urging me to join their establishments I may well be greeted with stony silence and a complete lack of response.

I am, however, shallow enough to take the attempt for the reality and retire to my balcony in the warmth of the October sunshine and feel that I have done my best and wash away any feelings of guilt with a glass of Rioja!

On the new school front our ‘founding fathers’ impulses have been stymied by the lack of a suitable site. Our trawling through the illustrated parades of lies which constitute the web sites of estate agents in this area (any area?) is a soul destroying exercise, but sooner or later we are bound to find something which will be a reasonable base for our little enterprise.

We continue to live in hope!

Why do we do it?

Wrong police and the wrong time.

Sometimes I do love the sheer bureaucratic idiocy of the country in which I live!

Today was the day when the visit to the police could be delayed no further and the denunciation was to be made official.

The School That Sacked Me has refused through letter, email, telephone call and direct enquiry to respond with any information about what has happened to the money raised for the Burma disaster fund last June.

Any reasonable person (let alone me!) would assume that the militant silence was covering something not to the credit of the school. I have decided to assume the worst and let the police sort it out.

Armed with copies of my eloquently insulting emails and a summary of the details of the ‘case’ and accompanied by my ‘translator’ I went into the local police station. Alas ‘police’ doesn’t mean ‘police’ because I had gone to the police but I needed the ‘police.’ Luckily armed with a translator and a map we were able to drive a short distance and find the correct building which housed the correct type of police.

Our enquiries produced a child dressed in a police uniform who informed us that we had found the right type of ‘police’ but we had not found the right type of ‘time’ to see the right type of ‘police.’

It would be better, we were told, if we could come back in an hour of so, or tomorrow even.

It would appear that crime of a certain sort cannot take place officially between the hours of one and three in this part of Spain – even with the right sort of ‘police.’

We are rescheduled for tomorrow so that I keep my word of getting the denunciation in this week. I can only guess at the way that the ‘police’ will go about getting the information and my translator said that they probably wouldn’t let me know what they did or didn’t do – and there I no likelihood of The School That Sacked Me ever (and I mean EVER) contacting me again. I will have to live in hope that my spies in the camp will be able to enlighten me if any police activity is seen.

I am told that the atmosphere in The School That Sacked Me can be cut with a knife and that it has reached new levels of negativity.

You have to have worked in the place to realise just how horrific that idea is and how essentially improbable any further descent into a deeper hell of professional managerial chaos that already exists can possibly be achieved.

I can’t help feeling that some idiot savant mathematician would have had a field day with the way we sat in the pharmacy waiting area the day before yesterday.

For we people with repeat prescriptions the trek to the pharmacy is monthly where, on presentation of one’s health card (see previous blogs for the epic story of getting the bloody thing) the recipient taps away on a computer and produces the necessary prescriptions for a month’s worth of drugs.

For the summer one is given prescriptions for two months to allow for holiday absence to cover the time when you might need to get more away from the source. Although there are now indications that the two monthly supply will become normal. Who knows, no one tells us anything!

Anyway: seating. Once or twice I have just gone to the door of the pharmacy and walked in. I understand now that was extraordinary luck. The normal procedure is to sit and wait in the open corridor of fixed chairs which stretch the entire length of the corridor.

Where people sit on the thirty or forty chairs is obviously governed by the Higher Mathematics and not logic. I have learned over time that the correct approach to finding a seat starts with approaching the immediate vicinity of the pharmacist’s room and then asking, ¿Último? in a generally vague interrogatory way and then waiting for someone to raise their hand to indicate that they are the last.

That is the signal to sit down. Logically, if there is a spare place next to the person who has put up their hand then that is where you should sit. But nobody does this. Nobody. Why?

The arrangement of chairs means that at least half of the people cannot see the other half and since the entrance to the pharmacy is at the end of the corridor people have to keep turning round to check that they take up their turn.

Logically again, all you have to do is ensure that you can see the person who was last when you came in when you are sitting down. But people don’t do that either. Why not?

It gives the whole area an air of suppressed panic as each person becomes paranoid about missing their turn. I do not jest: I was there once when someone tried to get in early – there was very nearly a riot and one woman commented loudly and at length on the evil nature of mankind and the ‘pusher-in’ in particular for the whole duration of her continued wait. To my horror I was drawn into the general conversation by a man on my right to whose question I responded with a rueful smile and a sardonic “¡Hombre!” which seemed to satisfy him and the rest.

Some people merely give up when they see the number of people waiting and slope off in the hope of a more limited queue on their return. Some sit a long way off as if there should be a sort of cordon sanitaire between them and the ordinary waiters. Some sit and look as though they are waiting for a doctor behind another of the doors in the corridor. And most of us must do some sort of evaluative computation and sit where we will.

For the record I sat three rows in front of the ‘last’ person with my back to her. Other spaces were available. I wonder what went through my mind.

While I was waiting my mind was taken up with the latest Saki book on my e-book reader.

Never let it be said that I failed to utilise any spare moments with cultural improvement!

A Class Act

Thank god for the French.

This heartfelt commendation is based on the fact that the two French ladies in my English class are much worse than I am: one of them does little more than speak French with a hopeful look as though, both Spanish and French being Romance languages, no one will notice that she is speaking one rather than the other.

As is usual in these classes I launched myself on a sentence of amazingly ambitious complexity with no real vista of a successful conclusion tempting me to a coherent full stop.

This is where being an English speaker is a distinct advantage because a muttered repetition of the word that you need in English usually prompts a few people to rush in to supply the Spanish version.

If you were say, Serbo-Croat or whatever the benighted Balkans is calling itself this week, it wouldn’t matter how many times you barked your glotally stopped language (if such a thing is possible) you would be none the wiser. Everyone in Spain wants to improve their English and I don’t even have to open my mouth before people start speaking to me in English!

My first words in Spanish merely confirm my listener’s suspicions and then I have a battle royal to keep the conversation in my target language. But at least I make the effort, and god knows it is an effort, to speak in Spanish. I only hope that the lessons I am taking now will stimulate me to do the hard learning which is the necessary evil to make merely sitting in a class something real in my linguistic development.

I have homework to do before the next lesson on Thursday: I have asked Irene to phone and nag me to ensure that I am doing the work necessary to gain some sort of fluency. I have been told that, with real application, there is no reason why I should not be ineffectually fluent with simple conversations in six months. That gives me until February to achieve this goal.

God help. And that is sincere!

Although in strictly factual terms I am now living where I would have gone on holiday if I had been in Wales, we feel that we deserve a vacation somewhere else. I would look forward to restarting our short excursions to cities that are served by cheap airways.

I realise that this is not carbon friendly, but I look on travel as culturally essential and therefore carbon neutral. There is also the Angel of Immanent Depression whose extending wings seem to cast a shadow over the future of cheap flights so we need to take advantage of them until el crisis and the tyrannical force of political correctness denies such country hopping to us members of the hoi poli leaving it the preserve only of the rich and concerned politicians.

Were I to say that the temperature of the sea was warmer than that of our swimming pool; I fear that I would not have the instinctive sympathy of many of my readers.

Yet I have to report that after lounging on the beach with my ever present e-book reader the exigencies of the human frame dictated that I would have to return to the flat or venture in to the sea. The weather was fine with a scattering of cloud and a persistent sea breeze, but not withal unpleasant.

I am aware that there are those of my acquaintance who would not fling themselves into the foaming brine unless the temperatures were able to fuse sand into shimmering sheets of glass; others who venture not into the salty shallows unless they can see steam rising from the waves; others who have listened once to my assessment of the welcoming nature of the waters and never trusted my word again, but I aver that the sea today was surprisingly humane and I was able to bob about evincing little gurgles of pleasure. The gurgles came from the fact that the waves were anything but considerate and, although our Mediterranean crests break but a couple of meters from the sea bed it is remarkable how much casual power they pack. It is also amazing how much sand in suspension they manage to transfer from their watery structure and onto (or rather into) one’s skin and crevices.

I had a shower before I went into the swimming pool, had a swim and then had a further shower in the flat when I had finished – and I still I have a faintly opalescent gleam from the residual grains!

I am rapidly getting to the stage where I am feeling like a character in one of H M Bateman’s cartoons in ‘The Man Who . . .’ series. I am ‘The Man Who Wore Shorts in October.’ It doesn’t matter how many times I point out that the weather is fine and it’s warm; there seems to be a timetable which is rigidly adhered to and, according to this calendar summer is over and long trousers are essential.

Although I will bow to public opinion and decorum for my visit to the Liceu tomorrow for the opera I think that I still have a month of showing the leg in Castelldefels.

Unless the authorities get to me first!

Does maths help?

I can’t help feeling that some idiot savant mathematician would have had a field day with the way we sat in the pharmacy waiting area today.

For we people with repeat prescriptions the trek to the pharmacy is monthly where, on presentation of one’s health card (see previous blogs for the epic story of getting the bloody thing) the recipient taps away on a computer and produces the necessary prescriptions for a month’s worth of drugs.

For the summer one is given prescriptions for two months to allow for holiday absence to cover the time when you might need to get more away from the source. Although there are now indications that the two monthly supply will become normal. Who knows, no one tells us anything!

Anyway: seating. Once or twice I have just gone to the door of the pharmacy and walked in. I understand now that was extraordinary luck. The normal procedure is to sit and wait in the open corridor of fixed chairs which stretch the entire length of the corridor.

Where people sit on the thirty or forty chairs is obviously governed by the Higher Mathematics and not logic. I have learned over time that the correct approach to finding a seat starts with approaching the immediate vicinity of the pharmacist’s room and then asking, ¿Último? in a generally vague interrogatory way and then waiting for someone to raise their hand to indicate that they are the last.

That is the signal to sit down. Logically, if there is a spare place next to the person who has put up their hand then that is where you should sit. But nobody does this. Nobody. Why?

The arrangement of chairs means that at least half of the people cannot see the other half and since the entrance to the pharmacy is at the end of the corridor people have to keep turning round to check that they take up their turn.

Logically again, all you have to do is ensure that you can see the person who was last when you came in when you are sitting down. But people don’t do that either. Why not?

It gives the whole area an air of suppressed panic as each person becomes paranoid about missing their turn. I do not jest: I was there once when someone tried to get in early – there was very nearly a riot and one woman commented loudly and at length on the evil nature of mankind and the ‘pusher-in’ in particular for the whole duration of her continued wait. To my horror I was drawn into the general conversation by a man on my right to whose question I responded with a rueful smile and a sardonic “¡Hombre!” which seemed to satisfy him and the rest.

Some people merely give up when they see the number of people waiting and slope off in the hope of a more limited queue on their return. Some sit a long way off as if there should be a sort of cordon sanitaire between them and the ordinary waiters. Some sit and look as though they are waiting for a doctor behind another of the doors in the corridor. And most of us must do some sort of evaluative computation and sit where we will.

For the record I sat three rows in front of the ‘last’ person with my back to her. Other spaces were available. I wonder what went through my mind.

While I was waiting my mind was taken up with the latest Saki book on my e-book reader.

Never let it be said that I failed to utilise any spare moments without cultural improvement!

A forward step?

An excellent conversation (and dinner) last night with two parents from The School That Sacked Me. A great deal of bitterness was expressed about how the school was ‘run’ but also a great deal of sense for any future action which could result in the formation of an alternative institution to replace a school which is clearly not meeting the needs of pupils, parents and teachers alike.

I think that a lack of any site is holding us back and preventing us from formulating a convincing financial projection and plan for immediate action. I think that the likelihood of any reasonable location will focus all our minds and take us to the next stage.

The possible time scale is also of critical importance. The formation of another school in Garaf is something which does not appear to be demonstrably nearer and I have spoken to people who doubt the actual credentials of those who purport to be about to found it. For a relatively small area in Catalonia and for something which is so clearly needed and ‘easy’ to provide, there seems to be more speculation, intrigue and mendacity than found in one of the murderously inclined courts in Renaissance Italy.

However, the offer of informed help in our project was gratefully received last night and I think that we have made two intelligently resourceful allies. Even though it was meant ironically and used for humorous effect, I think that I will go with Voltaire’s sentiments and believe that all is for the best in this best possible of all worlds. Self deception can go no further!

I continue to enjoy my regime of electronic self indulgence by re-reading favourite books. It is a disturbing fact that the ‘heroes’ of virtually all the works that I have read are self opinionated, overtly sophisticated, elegant and linguistically aphoristic, self regarding young men. All of them trying in their own ways to out do Emlyn Williams in his langorous portrayal of Caligula in I Claudius,

the great unfinished film of 1937 directed by Josef Von Sternberg. Characters like Clovis and Reginald of Saki’s short stories; PSmith of the P G Wodehouse novels and Satan from Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book I.

Thinking about it, I’m not sure that I can claim Satan as a youngster, but his specious and elegant speeches would not be out of place in the mouth of Clovis.

It is only a matter of time before I start re-reading the Portrait of Dorian Gray or The Importance of Being Earnest to get back to the Ur Aesthetic Young Man of Wilde. Though in Dorian Gray it is Lord Henry Wotton rather than the young eponymous hero who has all the best lines.

And then perhaps I should read something a little healthier.

Or not.

Location! Price! Location!

Doom, gloom and crisis are finally reflecting itself in lower prices for property, even in this area.

This does not mean to say that the houses and flats become any more affordable because their prices are starting from ridiculous levels.

The price of an average three bedroom semi in Cardiff will get you an undistinguished one bedroom flat near the sea here; near, not next to!

The pundits have said that those in work and who have bought and paid for their own homes should be able to see through this crisis with something approaching equanimity. As I fall into neither of those categories, it gives me pause for thought!

I am not, you understand, pleading poverty (as a recent purchaser of a Sony e-book reader inter alia I am not sure that I could get away with it) but the lack of a regular income does focus the mind.

To this end I will, finally, have to send my CV to all and sundry in the hope that there will be a response – even if that response comes from the city of Barcelona.

Barcelona, like any other major city, is a nightmare to get to in the mornings and most schools have a stubborn habit (born of fatuous historical example) of starting their instruction in the early hours of the day. I do not think that I am prepared to sit, fuming, in some almighty traffic jam before I throw away my intellect and self respect on the self satisfied scions of the wealthy middle classes. Unless they pay me!

I think that it would be interesting to sample the educational provision outside The School That Sacked Me and discover if that institution is the exception or merely the most pernicious example of a general malaise.

On the other hand I do have Spanish lessons twice a week in the mornings which would be interrupted by the intrusion of professional work into my otherwise expansive existence.

One is ever be-set by problems!

Summer thoughts?

The last remnants of the hut have gone from the beach – it is as if it has never been. The beach is now truly ours again. The weather is bright, but noticeably colder than it has been and that is the reason that our ‘fine weather’ neighbours have now departed.

I have to say that the actual weather would not disgrace a good summer day in Wales, but, as the increasing amount of clothing affected by the natives would demonstrate, summer is over!

The weekend will mark a week since the last email to The School That Sacked Me and I have, of course, received no reply. I wonder how one approaches the police to investigate suspected fraud? Well, on Monday I am going to find out.

In my dealings with Authority (with a capital A) in Spain there is a sort of farcical element inherent in the pseudo communication that takes place. It is probably more fitting to a workaday 1950s British film comedy than anything else. I see myself as a sort of amalgam of Terry Thomas,

Peter Sellars and Alastair Sim when it comes to taking on the force of Spanish bureaucracy. I will have to see if my sense of humour survives the contact.

I continue to read electronic versions of books that no one else really wants to read. I have downloaded books by Stephen Leacock, the famous Canadian humorist. I remember that John the Maths teacher in Llanishen always thought very highly of him and in the last couple of days I have been reading a whole series of short stories by a range of writers that John enjoyed: Bramah, Saki and Wodehouse. I have not yet been able to find a free download of short stories by Maugham – but it’s only a matter of time and exhausting searching through thousands of electronic sites!

I keep thinking of books of mine which are still locked up in storage that I have missed during the past year or so and then trying to find them on the web as a free download. It’s one way to remind myself of the delights still waiting to be unpacked.

It’s still not the same as the real thing, and like the machine as much as I do, it’s not like a real book!

The declension of learning

Listening to an explanation of Spanish Verbs can be a taxing experience; listening to the explanation in a foreign language is closer to torture. At a certain point in this morning’s Spanish lesson I felt panic born of incomprehension begin to sweep away what little confidence I had about my presence there.

Needless to say I weathered such uncharacteristically realistic assessments of my linguistic ability and by the end of the two hours (without a break) of relentless Spanish teaching I was bubbling with belief in my ability to communicate. Somehow.

The amount of learning that I have to complete before the next lesson is daunting, if not impossible, but this is the month when I am going to make a more than determined effort to try and understand the use of the two different verbs that the Spanish have for ‘to be.’ If I get anywhere with that conundrum then I will assay to comprehend the differences which distinguish the use of the words ‘bien’ and ‘bueno’.

The Sony e-book reader continues to give pleasure, not only because it is easy to read, but also because it affords me the opportunity to be ever more pretentious in the growing selection of books which I am able to put into its memory. There are now 162 books which, on just one electronic page in the index range from The Koran to Macbeth by way of Voltaire, Wilfred Owen and William Harrison Ainsworth’s “Old Saint Paul’s!” And there is still room left for more. Now that I have discovered http://manybooks.net/authors.php as a website the number of books available for download has expanded interestingly. Of that web site I have to say that it offers what it says in its title!

I have yet to buy any of the books which comprise my electronic library but I keep telling myself there is a whole wealth of past literature in English that I haven’t touched, that’s out of copyright and available in electronic form.

I suppose the real triumph will be when I actually download a book in Spanish. And enjoy reading it! I think that is some time away!

Meanwhile there is my dinner next Saturday with very disaffected parents of a child in The School That Sacked Me to consider. Who knows this might afford us some worthwhile leads or thoughts towards a lead which might get us started on the real preparations for setting up an alternative.

You can see how my optimism keeps me going!

And the sun in which I lounged this afternoon!

Keep on rolling

Not only but also. Another morning up with the lark. This could be habit forming.

Alas, the reason was a faulty fear of missing a Spanish lesson so I found myself with more time for a leisurely cup of tea before the repairing of the tyres of the car.

Spanish roads have their little peculiarities. In a sea side resort like Castelldefels debased zebra crossings are scattered around like used Hershey bar wrappers and they are treated as safe, sacred ways with high protective walls by pedestrians and as a sort of moving shooting gallery by motorists.

Here in Castelldefels the absurd number of crossings on the main road would ensure a complete lack of road parking in the UK as each ‘real’ zebra crossing has markings on either side to ensure that there is no parking near the crossing so that pedestrians are clearly seen by motorists.

Not here.

Cars are parked right up to the actual markings of the crossing and often on the crossing itself. Pedestrians stride out from between parked cars with the absolute security of inviolability because they have walked the first few hidden steps on the crossing and therefore have divine protection for the rest of the open space to the other side of the road. Half (at least) of pedestrians do not look to left or right before they make their crossing and less than half (much less) actually shows any gratitude.

What mystifies me is that these suicidal pedestrians are probably drivers as well.

One only has to drive on Spanish roads for minutes to realize that the suicidal tendencies of pedestrians are matched by the homicidal tendencies of those behind the wheel.

Is the schizoid character of the Spanish so complete that they do not realize that the road user is a complete human being and the two sides comprising driver and walker inhabit the same body?

Spanish roads are also enlivened by all sorts of street furniture together with bollards and narrowings and twists and turns and blind corners and sharp impossible bends and . . . well, what I am trying to say is that it wasn’t my fault.

The street down to the main road from the motorway is relatively uneventful apart from a thoroughly dangerous feeder road to the right and a worrying turning to the left. Oh yes and a left turning blocked off with bollards with a high kerb on the right.

A momentary lapse of concentration and the high kerb did for me and took out one tyre and damaged another. With perspiration and a certain amount of high language I changed a wheel and then started hunting for a place to replace the tyre.

Unlike Cardiff I do not know where to go for the little occasional things which make life just that little bit more complex and expensive. I eventually ended up in the dealer’s garage, but only the very rich and the very lazy have mundane jobs on their cars done by the dealership.

From the dealership I was directed to Gavá and a half remembered visual memory guided me to one of the ‘while you wait’ garages.

My waiting was made a positive pleasure not only by my fairly ostentatious use of my new Sony e-book reader, but also because the cost was substantially lower than I expected. All things work together for good is this best of all possible worlds.

As I have now threatened The School That Sacked Me with the arrival of the police to ascertain exactly what has happened to money collected for charity months ago, I am trying to find a companion to translate for me in an official capacity.

Spain is a delightfully bureaucratic country with official forms to accuse and denounce. I am sure that there is something which can be photocopied and stamped and acted on – I just have to find out which one I have to fill in.

My pen is ready and sharpened!

Always time to read!

There is much to be said for forgetting that your Spanish lesson has been cancelled because it gives you more of the morning to enjoy having leapt out of bed to welcome the morn!

I must admit that it did take me until I was waiting to go into the school for my lesson before I remembered that the 30th of September was the day for a meting for members of staff in Barcelona. A whole morning gained.

I spent part of it sitting in glorious isolation having a cup of strong coffee (is there any other sort in Spain?) and a croissant thinking that this is what semi retirement is supposed to be all about!

The location of my semi retirement is in question. We have seen the house that we want (at a cost of €2.4m) and there is, therefore, the problem of how we raise the money. The obvious answer is to try the lottery with more passion and belief. It may not be much of a financial strategy but it is one you can work on!

My e-book continues to delight, though it is perhaps significant that in an electronic library that contains War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, The Authorized Version of the Bible and Wind in the Willows that I am actually reading Sherlock Holmes short stories!

I have yet to stray beyond the e-books that I have discovered that cost nothing to download and are 'World Classics' which have been electronically processed by worthy institutions for the betterment of humanity. I want rather more frivolous literature like Saki short stories,

P J Wodehouse novels and the nasty writing of Evelyn Waugh: you miss these things when you know that they are securely locked up in Bluespace awaiting release onto shelves in our new home (as soon as the numbers come up in the right order!)

I can see that the next few weeks are going to degenerate into an undignified scramble for web sites which offer free downloads of things that I actually want to read, rather than books which add cachet to one’s e-book reader but, alas, may only exist to take up space rather than be there for my delight!

I suppose this is no different from the crucial questions centring on the contents of the ipods of people who actually care about such things. We are constantly bombarded by politicians eager to prove their street cred (or whatever phrase is currently the correct way to say that) by laying out the tracks on their ipods as some sort of public shorthand way of showing their personalities via music. I must admit that the choice of china, glass and cutlery is much more revealing!

Book lovers always ignore social niceties when they are invited into a person’s home and let their eyes range over the books on display and start making all sorts of immediate character judgements. When there are no books visible in the main living area then one can feel oneself reaching for that small square of black silk.

Or am I just speaking for myself?

Writing and Reading

Today was the day I sent off the next instalment in my attempt to get the results of the Readathon from The School That Sacked Me. This charity event was held last term in the summer to aid the people of Burma after the disaster and, as far as I know, the money is still lurking in the drawer in which it was placed when it was handed in to the financial clerk before being paid to the charity.

I have sent emails, I have telephoned, I have asked and I have sent a letter asking for simple information. At every step I have been denied any scrap of an indication of what has happened to the money.

I have sent copies of my increasingly pointed emails to the regulatory bodies which deal with ‘British’ schools in Spain. I have involved the Unions in a watching brief observing the attitude of the school. I have exhausted my limited patience in expecting a professional response from that dysfunctional place.

The latest in a series of Unit Heads of Primary has been replaced: there have been nine Primary Heads in just over two years. Any school in the UK with a chronic inability to retain senior staff at this rate would have had a searching inspection and probably have been labelled a ‘failing school’ but this place just carries on carrying on in the disastrous way in which it has done for the last fourteen years! This is an intolerable situation for hard working teaching staff and hard done by pupils and parents.

My latest email has had an effect, but not because of the implied accusation of misappropriation of funds for charity, but rather in trying to find out how I found out. The paranoia which is ever present in that place always looks inward to find victims to blame, never outwards to try and respond to the observations of those who clearly point out the numbers of ways in which the school fails in its basic ethical and moral duties.

I have given them a month to respond and then I will go to the police because I can think of no one else who has the authority to ask the right questions.

My jumpiness waiting for the post to arrive this morning was rewarded by the arrival of my Sony e-book reader.

This wonderful gadget really is the size of a paperback and, after the usual battle royal to get any ‘simple’ gadget to work it now holds something like 160 books which include Paradise Lost, The Authorized Version of the Bible, Russian Classics and various other bits and pieces. The machine comes with a CD which contains 100 books, but the titles are not necessarily those which have an immediate commercial appeal. As I suspected Dickens, Poe, Balzac and other Great Writers who are out of copyright figure heavily and the only modern writers like Ben Elton who figure in the list are served by extracts with an injunction to purchase the whole book in its electronic form.

I, however, have revisited a site I used to fill my PDA with books and downloaded other classics to fill up the space available.

It is easy to use and the screen is not back lit so it can be read in bright sunlight as well as inside a room.

I know that pretension is in the contempt of the observer, but I have to admit that I sat at the edge of the sea after an excellent meal and read book one of Paradise Lost in the sunshine of a bright and blowsy day. And the screen was easily visible. So one of the problems in travelling to Britain is solved: I will have a range of reading matter for the plane and all is one small package!

The cost I hear you ask – don’t be vulgar!