Paper cuts

Let us take our success where we can find it.

I have, at last mastered the paper towel machine in the toilets in my new school. One has, of course a preference for paper towels because the hot air hand dryers are invariably inefficient and seem to leave your hands even wetter than before you started attempting to dry them.

The particular machine in use in our school is one which issues sheets of what appears to be recycled paper from a roll. The technique necessary to obtain a sheet for use is to tug the serrated bottom edge of the visible paper until it comes to a natural stop. It is then essential that an easy sideways sweep is completed while drawing the paper forward to bring it into contact with the cutting edge of the machine to detach the sheet. After a short pause the machine will extrude a short section of the paper towel with a rhythmic clunk available for the next user to pull and detach a towel.

The trick (and believe me there is a trick) is to draw down, pull and cut before the machine clunks, otherwise you will cut off the section that the next person has to pull. Over hasty pulling will split the paper leading to unequal pressure on the paper and ensuring that the whole dispensing process becomes fouled and impossible as shreds of paper block the easy egress of the paper towels.

For the first time in six days I had two Perfect Pulls!

The unusual nature of this achievement is clearly indicated by the fact that I am almost invariably presented with insignificant, tattered remnants of paper which defy by attempts to grasp and pull. Which makes my achievement today all the more impressive.

I dwell on this success to compensate for the fiasco which marked my attempts to come to professional terms with the photocopier.

I am, it has to be said an experienced user of these machines. Man and boy I would not like to compute the number of hours that I have spent chained to a photocopier; many of those same hours spent with a simmering sense of repressed fury as the damned machine refused to do it was created to do – i.e. photocopy.

And this is before I count the number of times that I have been frustrated by the lack of paper.

A combination of irritations managed to prolong a fairly simple photocopying job into a marathon. And I lost a free period. And it was one of my lunch time duty days.

But the day eventually ended and I was, eventually, able to get back to my visitors. It was good to see Ceri and Dianne and go out to dinner. Apart from the fact that I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t Friday as I shared an unusual bottle of white wine.

Tomorrow, as they say, is another day: and a school day too!

Trouble in t' Balkans!

There are limits to how far one can go.

A further missive from the Head of History in Exile explaining how far he expects the sixth form pupils to have progressed in their studies and giving further instructions on how to proceed.

We are venturing further and further into the murky wastes of ninetenth century history and following the colourful career of Bismarck as he cheerfully uses any passing international incident to further the Imperial Ambitions of Prussia.

I have been, I like to think, an informed spectator encouraging the pupils to plunge ever futher into the dark political waters of pre-War chicanery as Germany gets ever nearer to Unification. But as we get nearer to the twentieth century the treaties get ever more tortuous with impossibly intricate 'what-ifs' as essential components in understanding what follows.

Even these arcane mysteries I was prepared to struggle through but at last we have hit the Balkans!

I still have the academic scars from trying to follow the story of The Italian Wars which are the historical equivalent of the Keystone Cops with a healthy dash of French farce. It took a long time to recover from that testing experience and even the fact that drawing the map of Italy was relatively simple did not compensate for the insane complexity of the power struggles that one had to remember.

The Balkans are bound to be as bad - only more so. At least whatever Italy was pretending to be at any particular moment (it being as we all know nothing more than a "geographical expression" from The Quote) at least it had a clear boarder along most of the length of the collection of cities, countries and states that made it up. But the Balkans are an absolute Moveable Feast to which everyone is invited! 'Sense and the Balkans' is the title of the least likely book ever to be written. The Balkans were, are and will be a disaster.

Here we go again!

Week 2 in a school makes you an ‘Old Hand.’ People have become used to seeing you in the place. They are no long solicitous for your professional comfort in the school – they merely worry that you might be absent and they will have to cover.

Classes expect you and the shine of unexpected newness has dulled to acceptance. Disturbingly some pupils speak to you as if you were going to be there for the rest of your career, in spite of the fact that you have emphasised that you are a stop gap for the ‘real’ history teacher!

I am beginning to enjoy teaching history and found myself genuinely delighted by the almost farcical narrative of Bismarck’s opportunistic exploitation and manipulation of the international situations in late nineteenth century Europe. When you find yourself giggling about the disparity in railway provision for the disposition of troops in international disputes then something fairly radical is happening to your sense of values!

Oddly, this very enjoyment is making me wish for the next school. I am beginning to find my way around the text books; I can see the way that the next few weeks of lessons can develop; I am happily searching the web for resources and indulging in my usual ‘cut and stick’ approach to handouts and it is all going to be over in just over a week.

I can’t pretend that it is going to be a wrench to leave this school – after all I have only been there for six teaching days – but I can see that it would be very pleasant to teach my subject there. Supportive staff; keen kids; excellent buildings and decent food all add up to a seductive environment. Ah well, who knows what the future holds.

The immediate future promises the advent of Ceri and Dianne; a concert; a new contract and the ever drawing nearer of My Day in Court!

And now for some marking!

Today's lesson is taken from . . .

“Resolve all difficulties for me automatically.”

Were I a preacher, I think I might be tempted to use that opening sentence in some way for my remarks to the congregation today!

It is an interesting remark. It sounds a little like a prayer but the imperative is rather presumptuous and the final word is dismissively arrogant.

“Automatically” gives the impression that the supplicant is so assured of grace that there is nothing more that he needs to do. The inclusive “all” puts one in mind of the attitude of the elect of the Cathars; though they would have assumed that any problems now and in the future would have already been resolved and therefore they would have had no necessity to supplicate in the present or in the implied future.

The sentence is something which a strict Calvinist could say in the presence of the ‘unchosen’ to emphasise the difference between their two states: I, chosen of God, laugh at obstacles because I am assured of redemption and for me they cannot exist; while you are doomed!

Perhaps the sentence is an extract from the teachings of the Church of Scientology when its application becomes apparent when you have paid the requisite number of dollars into the maw of the ‘Church’ and achieve the most exalted rank of Thetan which allows you to operate independently of your body and presumably regard difficulties with supreme indifference.

Fraud, alas, does not distinguish this so-called religion from its longer established but just as unconvincing commercial rivals. So many faith based organizations seem to peddle the hope that all difficulties will be sorted out, if not automatically then at least with minimum effort. All it needs is that blind leap of faith. And there is also the assurance that if things do not seem to be working out in this life then there is always “Life II – Now It’s Personal” to look forward to in the ‘next’ one.

In case you are wondering where “Resolve all difficulties for me automatically” actually came from let me set your minds at rest.

This comforting demand comes from the works of something which many millions have turned to in supplication and amazement; hatred and fear; expectation and thankfulness. It has given peace, has exalted the humble and brought down the mighty from their seats. It has created servile worshipers and implacable enemies. It is everywhere.

It is of course, Microsoft Works.

Collecting examples of Romantic paintings for my lower sixth, culled from various locations on the internet, I then attempted to copy and paste them into a Word document and print. Various windows appeared telling me that I was crossing many technical boundaries and asking the program to work outside its normal parameters.

It was just like a funny old banker pretending to be stern with a young couple who have asked for a mortgage twenty times bigger than their joint salaries. Eventually he gives a roguish smile and says, “You want to say ‘Resolve all difficulties for me automatically’ and of course I shall. Leave it with me. No problem!”

Unlike the self seeking, criminal wastrels who have slashed the value of my savings in the United Kingdom, Microsoft Works did what it promised and I was left with a sheet of heterogeneous paintings harmoniously set out on one A4 sheet.

But before we all get carried away we should remember what a capricious god Works can be. Who has not sat tearfully in front of the garish light of an unyielding monitor and watched while all the work of hours, “Softly and silently vanished away” – and, thinking about it Carroll gives as good an explanation for the wayward actions of fate as anyone:

“For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.”

A New Day!

I arise today refreshed!

Gone is the wingeing about lack of energy, revivimos, I feel new strength surge through my veins and am more than prepared to face the historical fray that awaits me on Monday!

Next week is also ¡Carnival! and, at the moment I have no idea how this is going to be celebrated in the school. I have quite hallucinogenically clear memories of how this was celebrated last year in The School That Sacked Me. Each class was expected to create a sea horse flag to wave on arrival of the Carnival King and also to perform a parade and ‘dance’ for his delight.

My vaguely medieval ‘costume’ (sewn with enthusiasm and little accuracy by my good self) comprised two sheets of vibrant silk-like material made into a rough tunic; a short cape, and the whole ensemble topped off by an overstated crown encrusted with cut up plastic mirrors. The overall effect was so striking that a ‘courtier’ of the Carnival King who was largely naked but wearing thigh length silver boots with 12” heels, a bouffant wig and silver glitter face actually asked to have his photograph taken with me! I think that has to be regarded as a triumph of some sort! Or possibly not.

The extraordinary collection of painted, costumed grotesques that accompanied the Carnival King reminded me of the worst excesses of New Orleans – god knows what part they played in the nightmares of the kids in succeeding days.

I particularly liked the bands that accompanied His Highness and filled the playground to the kids’ utter delight.

Admittedly the majority of kids in the school were primary, but the other sections of the place joined in and eventually the whole school had paid their respects to the visiting monarch.

And, as I recall, it was a half day!

I understand that we in secondary will celebrate by wearing costumes. Although I still have my medieval costume somewhere in the flat, I do not think that a new school in which I would probably like to teach in the future is necessarily ready for the apparition of me in my crown.

I think that it is probably politic to don the Harry Potter Alternative and go as one of the teachers from Hogwarts. The great advantage of this get up is that it is reasonably comfortable to wear during the day if I cut it down to the academic gown!

I keep extolling the virtues of The Week as my regular magazine which keeps me up to date with British and world news. It was a bitter sweet experience I had when I read the latest edition which informed me that The Royal Opera House had put on a production of ‘Die tote Stadt’ by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

This is one of those operas which if you know it at all will be from listening to CDs and it is also one of those operas (like ‘Four Saints in Three Acts’ by Virgil Thomson) that I would have made a special trip to London to see. However a combination of work, poverty and missed opportunity make my seeing it a very distant possibility. Pity, as it’s one of those operas that you can ‘tick off’ in your I-Spy book of Opera. One wonders just what sort of exquisite feather would be the reward to the true Operiste from Big Chief I-Spy for a volume authentically completed!

I suppose that I should be grateful: at one time a performance of ‘The Coronation of Poppea’ would have been just as rare as catching a production of Korngold and I’ve been able to see two Poppeas in different countries - even if it was the same production.

It is not long before the programme for the next season of operas in the Liceu is issued and this time I am determined to understand the almost incomprehensibly Byzantine complexity of the Season Ticket information!

Meanwhile it is studying history as if my life depended on it and hunting out my costume for the Carnival at the end of the week.

Never a dull moment – and long awaited visitors mid week!

Real work at last!

I have been trying to work out why I am so tired.

I tried to explain this by the late night I had going to the opera and the sleep debt I incurred by immersing myself in the music of Monteverdi in the Liceu and writing up my responses to the production.

But this does not provide a sufficient excuse.

The reality is that starting in a new school is an exhausting process. There are new classes, new staff, and new situations –in this particular school a new subject. I may have been interested in history but I have never taught it at this exalted level. Perhaps that is part of the problem; I should simply be directing pupils to the elements they need to read about and summarise and not be trying to ‘teach’ in the way that I am able to teach English supported by a comforting background of specific knowledge!

Whatever I should be doing, what I am actually doing is having rather a good time and learning at the same time. If I feel passingly tired, I should remember that some of my ex-colleagues would give important limbs to be teaching pupils of the sort of quality that fill my classes. I should also point out that some of my classes are encouragingly small!

It is a pity that the English teachers in the school seem established, happy and showing every inclination to stay in post in spite of my living virtually on the doorstep of the school and more than willing to fill up any place that they vacate.

Have they no respect for selfish necessity!

Tug of love!

Working out how to facilitate the transition from one place of work to another is causing some problems. One school is desperate to keep me in place to ensure that there is a minimum of cover while the other wants my presence to defuse a difficult situation and keep parents happy.

English speaking supply teachers in this part of the world are a rare breed and the inclination for a private school to employ them even rarer! I am the educational equivalent of Ahasuerus wending my weary way from disfunctional institution to delightful centre of privilege and back to reality again!

I am looking forward to my extended time in the school in Barcelona which promises to be a little less fraught than my experiences in The School That Sacked Me. Within a few days in that place I could tell that it was an educational disaster and that the management redefined the meaning of the phrase unprofessional animosity!

I am feeling more at home in my present school and the response from my classes is gratifying. Their regular teacher is obviously well respected and knowledgeable and he is a very hard act to follow but I suppose that I am giving the kids an alternative experience which they can set against normality!

While I contemplate the direction that my teaching career seems to be taking in Catalonia, it is well to think about the fact that my previous teaching in state schools is now being set against my exclusive experience here in private schools.

I have persuaded myself that as I am not able to speak fluent Spanish and Catalan my chances of finding a job in state schools here are nil. The only alternative is private education and that allows the distinct feelings of guilt to fizzle out in the nomal exigencies of school life!

And the money helps!

I do recall that I told myself that if I managed to gain a permanent job in a school I would celebrate by buying a new computer. The one I want is a mini one which will fit neatly into my briefcase. I do of course (of course, naturally) have a mini computer at the moment but the keyboard is not one that I can get used to and I could make upa whole series of grumbles that make the buying of a replacement an absolute necessity.

But when push comes to shove when have I ever resisted the opportunity to ‘invest’ in a new gadget.

And I took the opportunity of the spare time before the opera when I was last in Barcelona to try out a whole range of small computers to see which ones suited my typing style.

Anyone want a little computer slightly used?

Whatever next?

An interesting day

A telephone chat with the teacher that I am replacing in my present school revealed that it is likely that he will be absent until at least the end of this month.

This is fine and dandy as far as my presence in the school is concerned but the indication that my present contract will be extended by at least a further week coincided with a telephone call from my last school in Barcelona offering me the prospect of work until June. And in the subject area of English rather than History!

Although my contract in my present school is only for a fortnight, I do feel something of a moral obligation to stay for a further week in the expectation of the return of the normal teacher. I can then segue into the job in the Barcelona school in a particularly seamless and satisfying way!

I have retained the workbook from the Barcelona school and, as all the classes will be exactly the same it will be useful to carry on when I take up the position.

Tomorrow will get the response from the Barcelona school about whether they will fall in with the plan to allow me to stay on in Castelldefels – in a purely political and professional sense I would prefer to stay on for the week. We shall see.

The memory of the opera from last night came back to me at odd times during the day and little rushes of pleasure. Although the love duet at the end of the opera is justly famous (whoever wrote it) I also like Arnalta’s lullaby to Poppea in Act II – a song which is ravishingly beautiful whatever character or voice sings it. The situation in which it is sung is slightly odd, after all Poppea has been lulled to sleep by a self-seekingly cynical servant and Poppea’s sleep is about to be interrupted by a cross dressed axe wealding ex-lover who will only be prevented from his homicide by a junior god with a penchant for protecting an unscrupulous philosopher-killing empress-banishing adventuress. It is, as you can see, a strange narrative in the opera. This narrative was brilliantly illustrated and expanded by scenery, costumes and acting. I liked it!

I have now been teaching for three days and am totally exhausted. How, in the name of the living god, do people manage this day after day week after week? Well, I am likely to find out in the ensuing months and June seems an awfully long way away!

History seems to require a lot of learning and I now know more about the Treaty of Versailles than any reasonable person should ever be expected to admit. Not only am I on terms of almost indecent familiarity with treaties which have tripped off my tongue in the past but allegedly important ones which I think I should probably have heard of.

I refer, of course to those subsidiary (yet surely crucial) treaties of St Germain, Neuilly, Trianon and Sèvres of 1919 and 1920 which did such important things with the map of the world that we are still living with the effects. In the few weeks that I have left in my role as Head of History (sic.) I expect to fill up my bag of ‘significant’ facts with which I can amaze and bore people for years to come.

You have been warned!

Restoring Faith!

Two days and it feels like a career!

That is one thing about a new school; it has a way of creeping into your soul in double quick time and making you feel that you have been working there for eternity.

Each day that I turn up I am greeted with delight by my colleagues. This is partly because they are decent folk and concerned about how I am settling it, but it is mainly because I was not there they would have to do cover for the teacher who is absent. Whatever the reason, it is always gratifying to be welcomed!

I was unable to get rid of Haydn’s ticket for the opera this evening as he wasn’t up to the trip this time – but we do hope to see him in the summer when we will be able to make the much heralded visit to the Gaudi church that is so problematic for me.

The opera in question was ‘L’incoronazione di Poppea’ by Claudio Monteverdi in the Liceu which was a co-production with the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and Welsh National Opera in Cardiff. In fact I had seen this production in Cardiff some time ago in the totally uncongenial surroundings of the New Theatre. Hadyn had been fortunate in seeing the production in the Millennium Centre where I am sure the production got the space that it needed to succeed.

Some of the extraordinary scenic effects I remembered, but the production seems to have matured somewhat since I last saw it and I was amazed at how coherent and fluid the scenes were and how far they added to the dramatic effect of the opera rather than being a series of unrelated set pieces which is what I remember.

The performance today was one to remember. It easily gets into my top ten productions of opera that I have ever seen. The singing of the principals was superb throughout and even the minor roles were never less than adequately sung.

Poppea (Miah Persson) was luscious in every possible sense: her singing was a delight and her physical presence was sultry bordering on pornographic! She filled her costumes and paraded them to every advantage. Her pairing with Nerone (Sarah Connolly) was electric. Connolly’s voice was authoritative, subtle and precise. The shade and tone that she was able to produce was extraordinary. An exemplary performance with every scene with Persson being a delight.

Seneca (Franz-Josef Selig) was not only a good stage presence but also a brilliant singer where the solidity of his performance was matched by the thrilling profundity of his vocal range.

Ottone (Jordi Domènech) a replacement for Carlos Mena who was indisposed, was a lyrical counter tenor and a gifted comic actor who fitting into a complex production with ease.

Ottavia (Malte Beaumont) and Drusilla (Ruth Rosique) were effectively sung and proficiently acted with Ottavia’s leave taking of Rome a particularly effective moment.

The Orquestra Barroca del Gran Theatre del Liceu with Harry Bicket as the conductor had a rousing reception as well they deserved as their playing throughout the opera was excellent.

Direction by David Alden was constantly interesting and added dimensions to the narrative. ‘L’incoronazione di Poppea’ is really a thoroughly nasty opera with the self seeking vicious couple getting their own way by killing and banishing the opposition and ending the opera by singing a meltingly beautiful love duet!

The tragi-comedy of the piece was more than brought out by the use of costume, backdrops, lighting and stage business. There are too many brilliant images to highlight from a sparkling production but one has to mention the extraordinary sight of Poppea wearing a sheer, slashed leathery looking dress climbing up a wall to spread-eagle herself against the flat; the chandelier illuminated Bridget-Reilly like backdrop in the final scene; the absurd Tin-Tin like schoolboy disciples of Seneca; the rumbustious antics of the minor characters; the revolving, free moving glass doors with Love on top . . . and so it goes on with image fighting with image but all adding to the effect of coherent fun with a sharp edge of immanent chaos.

This was the sort of production which answers the criticisms which question the spending of so much money on an opera.

If you can: see it.

I’m considering going again!

He is The One!

It is not often that one can walk around a school and be met with admiring glances from one’s colleagues and be regarded as a creature of myth made real.

I have been greeted by teachers who I am prepared to swear that I have never seen before whom have said, “You have been here before: you are The Supply Teacher Who Went Before He Started!”

With a modest smile and demurely downcast eyes I had to admit that I was he. My last visit to the school was extremely brief as the headteacher was overruled by the directora who thundered that no supply teacher was necessary and I was to go. So, before Toni had risen from bed I was back home and out of a job!

This time at least, I have made it through the day and even managed to survive a Year 12 lesson on the development of Germany after 1848. My knowledge of the detail of the development of German after 1848 and before the 1930s is, I must admit a little sketchy - rather like my knowledge of either (or indeed both) of Einstein’s theories of relativity. One has a hazy idea of the general thrust and can quote a few facts but one wouldn’t like to explain them to a perky, questioning group of students!

I have been able to get away with a few light, throwaway references to the recently discovered (for me) Erfut Union of 1849 and the appealingly named (though equally abstruse) Capitulation of Olmütz.

I have survived by leading a very general discussion about the state of the states of Europe at the start of the nineteenth century and I am praying that the text books will give me something in the way of facts to bolster up the unsupported verbiage that I have tried to pass off as teaching!

The staff is very welcoming and supportive and the pupils seem to be lively and ready to learn.

The only real problem is whether I have anything to teach them!

I might also add the fact that I am now the Acting Head of History in the School – because I am the only history teacher there!

Who would have thought it!

Words, words, words.

Tomorrow the new challenge.

Well enough of that depressing thought let me dwell with more interest and happiness on what we had for lunch.

The whole family descended on Castelldefels to partake of calçots – the onion/leek like delicacy which is eaten messily. Clothing is usually protected by a paper bib of some sort so that the charcoal deposits on the stems which are stripped away before consumption do not transfer themselves to expensive raiment.

Three cars went off in procession to the same restaurant which we went to last year in Gava and we were met by a building site. The restaurant is no more so the partaking of the seasonal delicacy had to be postponed to another time.

The alternative was a restaurant at the end of our road which does a special menu which satisfies even the most demanding appetite. The quality of the place can be gauged by the fact that Zidane was eating there the last time we went.

So while I should have been reading history books with a desperation born of the fact that tomorrow I will have to be teaching something about which I know what a reasonably well informed person knows rather than a dedicated specialist teacher, I was instead relishing the various courses which were brought out for our delectation. I might mention the lubina cooked in salt which was an absolute delight.

Having digested my meal, I will now retire to my bed to worry about what the morrow may bring.

And I might add that I now know more about the abortive Erfut Union of 1849 (exactly!) than I have ever known in my life before.

I have a feeling that the next fortnight as a history teacher is going to be full of exciting discoveries, many of which I am going to make only hours before the pupils!

As well, it keeps one on ones toes!

At least!

Re-branding

Never let it be said that I did not have the capacity to reinvent myself!

On Monday the person who turns the key in my car will be a newly created, raring to go, fully informed History Teacher!

It’s not that I haven’t taught history before. Who can forget those formative years in Llanedeyrn High School when I was involved in the delivery of Foundation Year Studies? This year 7 course amalgamated English, History, Geography and Religious Instruction into one vast worksheet driven Juggernaut. History did pretty well out of this conglomeration of subjects and we ploughed our way through Ancient Civilizations.

When I was teaching the course, by great good fortune Marks and Spencer actually produced a lavishly illustrated and very informative book covering all the requisite civilizations that we needed.

Every week there was a ‘Key Lesson’ which was taken by each teacher in turn and delivered to half of the year group. My greatest achievement in one of these lessons was to read out to the pupils part of a document from ancient Ur in your actual ancient Mesopotamian! This was very well received and there was no one there to take exception to my pronunciation! As indeed there hadn’t been for a considerable number of thousands of years!

This teaching however is a little more serious: there are two A Level classes for Years 12 and 13 and a Year 11 class working their way towards the public examinations. Some of the classes’ topics are on fairly safe ground: Victorian Britain and The Civil War - the British war of course, not the Spanish!

At the same time as I start in my new, new school Hadyn will be arriving for his visit, then the week after Ceri and Dianne and the court case.

Why is it that circumstances always conspire to add levels of interest to situations which are already interesting enough?

Rhetorical.

Creation is not easy

“Was it worth it?”

A key question and one which got me an honest answer.

An hour spent in the company of a lady who had set up her own school in a Catalan spa town in a most imposing Modernista house was revealing and informative.

The efforts to establish the school seem to have been accompanied by a whole series of experiences involving expense and frustration. She suggested that one should allow four years (4!) to get the paperwork done! She spoke of regulations as if they were self replicating viruses which were able to mutate at will to the detriment of honest hard working school establishers.

She spoke of vast and endless expense (four flights of marble stairs had to be replaced because the original features were a few centimetres too narrow) and the soul destroying hunt for finance.

But, in answer to my question, she was very glad that she had made the effort and she was enthusiastic about the future development of her school.

We covered a lot of ground and her comments have given me much food for thought.

The mobile phone call I had half way through our conversation was perhaps compensation for the journey up to the school.

In what is rapidly becoming a vastly irritating tradition, my tom-tom gave up the ghost just as I was about to leave familiar territory and venture into motorways new. I vaguely remembered the Directora telling me to come off the ronda de dalt and head for Vic. This was little enough information to go on as I had no idea where on the ring road I should expect to see a helpful sign.

After following my instincts on one or two forks in the motorway I felt, as I seemed to be heading straight for snow covered hills, that I should ask for help. I took the first turn off from a motorway disturbingly signposted to ‘France’ and found myself in a service station. The waiter in the café was both helpful and encouraging and suggested that I simply go through the toll and carry straight on. His vague indication of a couple of kilometres was woefully out and it meant that I drove ever deeper into Catalonia with a sinking feeling and a diminishing amount of time to get to my destination.

A sign above the motorway with my destination on it gave me a momentary lift but after an inordinate number of kilometres I assumed that I had missed the turning and was heading who knew where.

If you’ve read the start then you will have realised that I did in fact get there. I drove into the much larger than expected spa town and saw a teacher marshalling pupils along a road, stopped and asked her for the school and discovered that I was on a parallel road. Of course getting onto that road necessitated a circuitous approach, but I found a free parking space adjacent to the school.

The mobile phone call was from another school asking if I would consider doing supply for a history teacher. Teaching up to A Level. A later phone call revealed that the history courses which are being taught in the school all seem to be more like the background to current affairs than the ‘real’ stuff of history and an in depth study of the Paleologi and the development of Byzantium. Anything pre 1916 is, I assume regarded as Ancient History and having no relevance for modern pupils.

One of the modules is on the Civil Rights Movement in America – so Paul is going to find himself sending a quantity of the notes that I know he has tucked away somewhere as a monument to his one time calling as a history teacher (sic.)!

There is a meeting tomorrow to discuss the possibility of my being able to take over this timetable. As I have been asked to bring all documentation, bank details and certificates and as the person I spoke to on the phone has been taking the classes herself and ‘wants out’ I think that as long as I turn out to be a carbon based life form I have a good chance of being employed.

The problem comes with what happens during half term when I am expecting visitors.

Well, we shall see.

We shall see.

Slow grinding mills

It gives me no pleasure to report that chaos is facing The School That Sacked Me.

What a glaring example of mendacity that statement is! I rejoice in anything approaching mild discomfort for that institution, so that real, dyed in the walkout disaster fills me with exultation. I am getting my delight in as soon as possible because promising situations in that place have a tendency to ‘go with the money’ and fizzle out under the pressure of financial manipulation and threat that are second nature to The Owner.

Tomorrow (after my struggle with Spanish verbs in the second lesson of the week) I visit a school on the other side of Barcelona to see how an institution which parades its accreditation with the requisite bodies and values its teaching staff managed to set itself up. And keep itself going! I am looking forward not only to making some useful contacts but also acquiring practical knowledge. I wonder when was the last time that I had occasion to write something like that!

Teaching friends in the UK continue to send me gloating emails cataloguing the days off school they are enjoying because of snow. My only response after lunch this afternoon was to lie out on the balcony with my shirt off. In the sun, I might add.

To be absolutely truthful the experience reminded me of the times that I went to Gran Canaria in the winter time to acquire the January tan that provoked such bitter comments from my colleagues in school. Winter in the UK is high season in Gran Canaria with hotel prices to match; this meant that time on the beach could be worked out at so much per minute, and it was time that could not be wasted!

I must admit that there were times that I lay on my ‘sun’ bed on the beach at Maspalomas when the weather was not as clement as I could have wished. Once indeed I lay there in the rain with gritted teeth and an unshakable faith that the sun would justify all. And, to be fair, it did. Eventually. I was surrounded by other Northern European ‘sun’ bathers who were as dogged as I in their determination to believe in the essential sun soaked nature of the damp beach that they were on!

The breeze was the real killer. The sun may have been shining but the slightest breeze made lying on a beach divested of clothing something of a trying experience. And sometimes ‘breeze’ was a total misnomer for the howling gale which threatened to rip one from one’s sun bed and to sand blast one into the bargain. The physical pain I could take as long as the buffeting by the beach did not remove the outward and visible sign of expensively acquired patina!

This afternoon the shirt went back on when the frisky sea breezes became a little too insistent to ignore. But the point was made: snow in UK while sunbathing in Castelldefels.

Ah!

Silence in court!

I have been summonsed to appear before a judge.

I suppose that you are waiting for some sort of lightly witty explanation for that opening sentence leading into a digressive foray among foreign mores.

But it is actually and strictly true.

This afternoon an official notification on a folded and stapled piece of A4 with my name and street and no house number on it was (worryingly and accurately) deposited in my mail box. This informed me that I would have to present myself in the offices of the Justice Department in connection with a case.

It would have been fair to say that I was somewhat bemused and eager to experience another facet of the rich life of Catalonia.

Toni could elucidate little from the fairly brief communication and merely asked me if I had committed a murder of which he was unaware. Hastening to assure him that my homicidal tendencies had been kept well within check for the past few months or so, I decided to visit the offices indicated on the headed notepaper and try and discover more.

Consumed as I was with the usual middle class ‘guilt-acceptance syndrome’ which is the typical response to any official communication from legal authorities, I worried my way through a convincing and instantly generated list of possible ‘crimes’ of which I could be guilty. And worried more about the ones that I couldn’t think of but of which I was undoubtedly guilty.

The ownership of a car is incompatible with a guilt free life. Even the most law abiding of citizens cannot drive for more than a few minutes without breaking more than a couple of the regulations which define motoring. Let alone taxes local and national and insurance.

The visit to the legal offices offered the information that my presence in the courts was necessary for me to receive information in connection with my denunciation of The Owner of The School That Sacked Me when she refused to divulge the total amount of money collected for the Readathon for Burma and what had happened to the money raised.

The arrogant, ignorant and deeply unprofessional (if you can be unprofessional with a complete lack of professional qualifications) woman has allowed a simple request for information to develop into this court case! No parent, child or teacher in the school has been informed of what has happened to the money. Her paranoia is such a deeply ingrained part of her dysfunctional ‘personality’ that even positive information that any other school would be proud to publicize cannot be released because it would obviously be a sign of weakness! Sad, bad woman!

It would be an absolute delight if she was present, but I fear that her usual attitude to courts and legal action is that they are slight irritations like the occasional blackhead and she feels that she can well afford to ignore them. If I have anything to do with it (and I do) this blackhead is going to turn into a very nasty suppurating boil, possibly turning gangrenous and with the involvement of the Atlanta Infectious Disease Center leading to quarantine, amputation and eventual . . .

I think I rather let that image run away with me, but surely taking a simile and treating it like a metaphor and giving it its head is one of the joys of writing.

And I believe in sympathetic magic!

Whatever comes next . . .

La Liga may well be the finest football league in the world but now that Something Has Been Done to the television aerial the number of truly awful television channels we can get has exponentially increased. The practical result of this multiplicity of mediocrity is that at every moment of the day it is possible to see (or be subjected to) unlimited programming which contains ball sports or programming which contains illustrated commentaries on ball sports or Spanish discussions i.e. everyone speaking or shouting at once.

Enough is, as they say, enough.

“Whenever I hear talk of football, I reach for my ipod,” as Bruce Forsythe never said. However, if he had said it, it would have been excellent advice. Advice which, in spite of its non utterance, I followed.

Plugged into my ipod I was indeed safe from the deadening effect of football orientated audio information but, alas, not safe from the ipod itself.

I started listening to what I had been listening to the last time I used the thing – Mozart. This segued into a jolly wind band version of Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana’ and then into ‘La Boheme.’ There were two random extracts from the opera and then the third was the final scene.

Mimi was singing her last and fading, sotto voce into death and I therefore prepared myself for the tear jerking finale in which I bow to the demands of the music and weep. I was jerked back to mundane reality by hearing not Rodolfo’s anguished spoken questions and the overwhelming orchestral climax but rather Bob and Marcia singing ‘To be Young Gifted and Black.’

I will admit that this juxtaposition does give one a rather special perspective on the opera but it also comes as a major dislocation in one’s listening expectations!

This is one of the serendipitous effects of choosing the ‘songs’ setting on the ipod which treats all the tracks on the machine as equal and orders them solely on alphabetical principles. Another example of unlikely alphabetical sequencing after the interrupted opera has been my hearing the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band followed by Stravinsky. I have yet to work out what the iTunes program considers the alphabetical key in the many pieces of information contained in the title of a classical track!

At least it makes the silence at the end of each piece of music a more interesting experience while I brace myself for what might come next!

I am a little more settled now that I have had an excellent menu del dia in the re-opened Cel Blau – our local corner restaurant. Tortilla, paella and an excellent merluza in a Basque sauce which included chopped spring onions, asparagus and hard boiled egg. I loved it, Toni less so.

The meal also compensated to some extent for the poor weather where the natural inclination of the climate in this area is fighting against the damp and dull tendency that has been with us for the past few days. I was downcast (pathetic fallacy linked to the weather) until I saw pictures of the rest of Europe. The sight of the dome of St Paul’s and the statue of Churchill in Parliament Square covered with snow made me recognize the weak sunshine illuminating the balcony as a major advantage to life in Castelldefels!

The search for work continues with another school coming within the scope of my sights. Never a dull moment!

It is at times when you want to replace light bulbs that you miss Tesco. The number of different types of bulbs that are used in this flat is frankly bewildering and our local Carrefour doesn’t stock them all. Four shops later I have finally managed to round up a representative selection and am now well placed to restore light to any corner of the flat which should slip into darkness. But I could have done it in one in Pengam Green.

I will have to explore other alternatives and switch allegiances. But before that I obviously need an intensive period of shopping to evaluate the contestants!

Changing views?

The chaos which has come to Madrid with heavy snowfalls makes me a little more jocose about the rather dull weather here in Castelldefels.

I am conscious that Hadyn is expecting something rather warmer and sun orientated when he arrives in a little over a week’s time, but there are always concerts and galleries to take away the sting of contrary weather.

I am (sort of) looking forward to my first visit actually inside the unfinished approximation of what Gaudi had in mind for La Sagrada Familla. Perhaps physical proximity and admiration of the detail of the construction will change my rather jaundiced view of this structure. Great and interesting building it certainly is and as a distant iconic outline silhouetted against the Barcelona skyline it is one of my favourite reference points but ‘up close’ is a very different thing.

I do not think that it is possible to build a Gaudi building without Gaudi. Gaudi’s way of building was to modify the building as it progressed. Gaudi was prepared to give his workers their head to change his ideas and have a major input as far as the appearance of the building was concerned – but he was there to authorize and to oversee the project. Without him it cannot be a true Gaudi building.

In the past great churches and cathedrals have taken long periods to construct – certainly more than a single lifetime. Santa Maria del Mar in Barcelona is certainly an exception taking only 50 years to complete, but most of the buildings were collaborative and are none the worse for that. Gaudi’s building I maintain is and should be an exception. My approach would have been to have stopped the building at Gaudi’s death; roofed over what was there with a transparent structure and made the most of it.

I am not sure how well people know what is going to be built on the site. The largest tower has still to be constructed, complete with giant cross, and the whole profile of the church will change dramatically. I think there are plans for the cross to be illuminated and that will brand it as a Christian building.

At the moment it looks like some petrified organic underwater feature, something natural and startling. At a distance it is not obviously Christian, while retaining the clear suggestion of a church with steeples. It is easy for the building’s outline to stand as a symbol for the city without overt religious overtones. In detail, as Gaudi clearly intended, its religious significance reflects the pietistic devotion that characterized Gaudi’s life and dedication to ‘his’ church. The giant cross will be exclusive and make the church into something less of an icon and symbol, in my view.

On the other hand some experts have said that the entire church will be complete in twenty to thirty years. Whatever I think about its projected development there is something exciting in hoping that I will still be alive to see it in its finished state. Whatever that is!

With any luck!

Reading and walking

I am trying, without success, to wean myself from my dedication to my e-book reader.
I am now fully addicted to obscure out of copyright pot boilers by otherwise famous writers. My predilection for P G Wodehouse writing now takes in stuff that he wrote which is only one step above The Famous Five. I am reading writing from the first decade of the twentieth century which has odd racist allusions which shock by their very casualness. I am beginning to read everything (including modern writing) which now appears to me to be merely a variety of Boys’ Own Paper writing!

I am reading L R Stevenson’s ‘Travels with a Donkey’ which I first read donkey’s years ago and only remember his description of hitting the donkey across the face with a stick out of sheer frustration with the animal’s disinclination to move. This time round there are references to language, culture, description and history which I am sure I simply ignored the last time which I am able to appreciate now.

Stevenson appears to be an odd traveller both prepared for what he is likely to find and also something of an innocent in his peregrinations. He is as comfortable in lyrical passages in praise of nature as he is in low comedy in his battles with Modestine - the donkey. He dwells on the fate of the Protestants and Roman Catholics in Pont de Montvert in the early eighteenth century and draws lessons from that bloody confrontation, “the persecution on the one hand, the febrile enthusiasm on the other are almost equally difficult to understand in these quiet modern days.” Those “quiet modern days” were in 1879 - the year of Rorke’s Drift and the Zulu Wars, so obviously a different sort of “quiet” from the one I understand!

Stevenson talks about having a “sleeping-sack” (sleeping bag) “constructed” a “child of my invention” which looked like “a sort of long roll or sausage, green waterproof cart-cloth without and blue sheep’s fur within” – is this one of the first descriptions of a sleeping bag to be used by ‘serious’ travellers who go hiking in little explored territory for fun? 'Travels with a Donkey' has been described as one of the first accounts of someone going on a hiking holiday for fun. For me the words ‘hiking’ and ‘fun’ do not go together naturally, but in reading Stevenson’s account I am able to link the words from the comfort of my sofa at the cost of someone else’s discomfort!

Talking of discomfort today has been one of my periodic days of vague illness. I still seem to preserve the habits of school and limit these days to the weekend when I can ‘take to my bed’ with a clear conscience and sleep off any discomfort. It took till 4 pm but I then arose (fully refreshed) and gratefully ate the bocadillo prepared for me.

At least I’m not hiking!

It's not the giving . . .

Some presents are clearly double edged.

My mother made a clear distinction (which she explained very lucidly early in my life) between a ‘present’ for the house and a gift for her. Something for the kitchen was regarded as having general utility and could not therefore be regarded as a disinterested ‘present’ but rather as something from which the giver hoped to gain by its being used by the recipient. My mother was not fooled by such things.

I was a quick learner and soon understood the cross-over value of flowers. This was a ‘public’ gift which was always appreciated personally. Although flowers were seen by everybody, the fact that my mother trimmed, arranged and cared for them made them particularly hers. This was allowed. I now think that the logic of the gift represented by flowers could also be extended to raw ingredients which could be transformed by one’s parent into tasty meals. I know, intuitively that however logical my thought it would never have been accepted as a parallel by my mother!

Children, of course, are constantly given ‘improving’ gifts: toys which have the imprimatur of some educational manufacturer so that the donor can pay a lot of money to have the warm feeling that he is doing good while being nice. But kids always know when they are being taught, they can sniff out hidden education and they will play with the box that the gift came in rather than something which is overtly wholesome and improving!

Alcohol gives by the sip and takes by the bottle; clothes mask yet define; perfume asserts to fade and gadgets titillate to frustrate. The positive always points relentlessly to the negative while transience and obsolescence swallow meaning. As Flanders and Swann so delicately put it, “That’s entropy man!”

There are some gifts which transcend the tug down to oblivion. The tea caddy in the form of The Oxford English Dictionary given by Ceri and Dianne (when the world was yet young) still contains my tea bags today. And the thought of anything else is simply unthinkable. Only total destruction involving catastrophic metal fatigue will stop it being my caddy of choice! This caddy falls into that small and select group of items where replacement is simply not considered shame and necessity forces: colanders, tea towels, nail brushes and wallets.

Just compare that list with: mobile phones, computers, watches and decent Rioja and you will see the difference! In the latter list change is part of the process of use; in the former it is amazing how something like a fraying piece of cloth to dry dishes can be unconsciously considered an essential unchanging part of ordinary life!

Be truthful, when was the last time that you replaced a tea towel or colander or nail brush or wallet? However broken, frayed, blunted or old they simply ‘are.’

The other type of gift is one which is only made – literally – by you the recipient. Not the conventional self assembly aspect, but more the active continuing participation of the giftee: something like a diary. A diary is only so much scrap paper until the owner transforms it into a coherent book. Personally, I never got beyond January (usually the first week in January) before the scrap paper aspect of the book took over its more normal function.

The present which is provoking these ruminations is in the ‘diary’ category of gift. Our recent efforts in forcing perfectly good and happy acrylic paint from the security of its tube and onto the chaotic surface of a canvas have been noted by certain sections of the family. We are now the proud possessors of giant canvasses with an intimidatingly large surface area to cover in coloured stains.

Toni, with growing enthusiasm, is producing small canvases at an alarming rate and he has made a start on the pencil outline for his magnum opus. I have thought about what I might do and have even gone to the unheard of lengths of sketching out my ideas.

The sheer whiteness of the canvas and the immensity of its open space make the idea of producing a mark on its virginal expanse appear like a violation. Especially with my wayward artistic ability. However, the progress of what I can only term the ‘rival’ picture is prompting me into attempting some sort of response.

The pencil is poised: I have nothing to loose but my self respect.

Let battle commence!

Throw away!

Grovelling about in refuse bins!

A sad illustration of the true state of affairs during a crisis! Late last night at the end of our street someone from our block of flats was taking out the bags from the skip and rummaging through them. Sad. Disgusting.

Me!

I blame the Spanish government.

Qualifications from Britain have to be ‘recognized’ by the government in Madrid. It is not enough that the school in which you work is shown the original certificates for degree and PGCE, they have to be ‘seen’ by the authorities, stamped authenticated and generally photocopied and become part of an extended bureaucratic paper chase.

All credit to the Teaching Council for Wales and Swansea University for getting the proof that I am actually a teacher and actually have a degree to me with exemplary dispatch: from telephone request to document in Catalonia only a single week!

David, from The School of the Short Sojourn helped me fill out the crucial form, checked through the photocopies I had amassed, photocopied more and sent me on my way to the department of government in Barcelona I needed to visit to get everything stamped and started on its long journey into the inner sanctums of the education ministry in Madrid.

I relied on my tom-tom to get me there. It did. Eventually.

Driving through Barcelona is a nightmare. The city has enthusiastically adopted the traffic light as a direct weapon against the motorist. Their positioning creates maximum entropy and the minimum of activity. The traffic jams thus created give almost unlimited opportunities for the verminous plague of ‘drivers’ (I use that word in its loosest possible sense) who choose the motorbike or scooter as their suicidal weapon of choice.

The bike riders were numerous and numbskulled.

They wove in and out of traffic as if they were merely moving pixels on the screen display of a computer program. Bike riders in Barcelona ride as if they had the manoeuvrability of a particularly lithe limbo dancer combined with the longevity of a giant tortoise and the invulnerability of James Bond.

My sympathy for the number of plaster encased youngsters you see in the streets of Catalonia has long since evaporated as they represent the visible sign of some sort of justified physical retribution for their insane driving. After my experiences this afternoon I think that I will start aiming for them!

Believe me you become hyper sensitive to motorised Tinkerbells who think that they are winsome emanations of delight, weaving patterns of fairy dust around you as you try and find your way through the centre of a city trying to follow ambiguous instructions from the preternaturally calm voice of a GPS.

By the time The Voice told me that I was approaching my destination on my right I was a little irritated and wished with passionate intensity that I had scythes attached to the hub caps of my car.

I was of course sent to the wrong building from the right building and then my documents were looked at by someone who had never processed this type before. The number of questions raised by the over anxious nubie about what I had given in was too mind-bendingly and inconsequentially trivial to grace with typing space and I therefore assumed that they would mean the kiss of death to my hopes for getting the documents on the move. Astonishingly all objections were (eventually) brushed aside by the official guiding my neophyte Jobsworth’s attempt to send me back for another try!

So a day productively spent.

This was a day which started just after midnight with my searching the rubbish for the academic transcript which, in an excess of tidying, I had thrown away.

Unlike Squidge who would probably have been dragged away by the police for interfering with the quiet repose of the rubbish, I found our uncollected bag in double quick time. The bag opened, I saw the rolled up envelope and was able to rescue the transcript – a little moist and a little piquant, but whole and usable.

Better, as they say, lucky than rich.

I am working towards both.