A world too small for comfort

I had my hair cut today.

I left a pause there for the chortles of disbelief that might meet such a bald statement – pun intended!

I rejected one establishment with plant sin the window and a row of hairdryers as being far too opulent for the fairly basic job that was needed on my scant locks and settled for a rather grimy little corner shop that I had noticed on one of my peregrinations around the more obscure parts of central Castelldefels looking for book shops.

This, when I eventually found it looked much more reasonable. It had an old fashioned chair with real tip up metal footrests; a small plaster image of an old fashioned barber in the window; tufts of un-swept up hair lying around the chair and an awkwardly placed series of very hard chairs stuck in a poorly lit corner.

I had to wait while what I thought was an inordinately long period of time was given over to the hairy heads of two tiny children and then it was my turn.

With a fluent lack of Spanish I gave what I fervently hoped were sufficiently panicky instructions to the barber which would encourage him to trim rather than eliminate what hair I had left.

My mumbled Spanish encouraged him to guess my nationality. He was, of course wrong, but I have learned to accept that I have looked, look and will continue to look German to all Catalans I meet. On being told I was British he enthusiastically changed his mind and pinned my nationality down to English. My rapid correction of this misattribution was about to be accompanied by an explanation of where Wales was when, to my astonishment he smiled and asked me if I was from Newport, Cardiff or Swansea!

In the small world that we inhabit it turned out that his wife was from Newport! There followed a conversation in which he was encouraged enough to lurch in what I am sure he thought was some form of English.

He started talking about his ‘political’ family in Wales which sounded interesting enough until I realised that he did not mean that at all and was instead referring to some form of a branch of his wife’s family – so I smiled and said, ‘Si.’ Don’t knock it, that approach has got me out of more tight linguistic corners than I care to remember. I sometimes wonder what a list of all the things that I have said ‘Si!’ to would read like. I think that I might be very surprised!

When he had taken the shockingly large amount of money for the small quantity of hair that he had actually cut, he handed me his card while bemoaning the fact that his wife was not there to delight in the fact that he had coiffured the head of someone originally from only nine miles away from her ancestral home! To make the sort of coincidence even more surprising it turned out that his name was Stephen (but in Spanish of course) as well! There followed a further fractured conversation about the popularity of the name in our respective countries, and his bemoaning the fact that in Spain it was relatively rare.

As if that was not excitement enough, I have spent the evening printing out some of my more vitriolic letters and emails to The Owner for use in the forthcoming meeting.

I take a great deal of encouragement from the fact that we are going to have a fair representation of the injured parties from The School That Sacked Me and the discussion that will be generated from a selection of the suffers should be a good basis for an action plan for the future.

I have invested a lot of hope in this meeting and will be bitterly disappointed if it fizzles out into the usual inactivity which has allowed The Owner to continue her unprofessional, autocratic rule for too long.

Hope springs eternal!

Hello reality!

The honeymoon is over.

I suppose that I should be grateful that my easy relationship with the pupils has lasted so long: two whole weeks and a couple of days!

The true arrogant, privileged nature of some of the students made itself felt today. My day of limited joy coincided with that of a colleague who admitted that even after a considerable number of years in the school she was still shocked by the level of arrogance she encounters on a daily basis. Another colleague told me with a knowing smile that I would be astonished if I realized the true wealth of some of the students’ families.

One of my classes has been doubled in size and I have inherited some difficult students. This reorganization is another facet of the consequences of the immediate past history of my predecessor in the post that I now have. I suppose that I should be grateful that I am part of the process of getting back to normal; on the other hand the dynamics of my class has altered radically and what was a rather nice, small, fairly intimate class has now become a fairly typical teen group of teens.

Other groups are also beginning to revert to the behavior that they obviously regard as normal and which I regard as totally unacceptable rudeness.

At this point I should point out that I am talking in the context of a delightful school filled with generally personable young people who has a fetish for examination study! This is no U curve of normal distribution; our behavior curve is slewed to the right – it’s just they are too full of themselves and show it!

However and whatever, this is a good school and I think I probably want to stay in it. The process by which this might happen is a little more complex than I had thought. I am working on it.

This week will be interesting in the continuing story of The School That Sacked Me and there should be some news mid week. I am naturally optimistic, but experience when relying on other people to behave in ways that I regard as normal, is not encouraging!

I suppose that I should rely on my unofficial motto of “Anything is better than nothing.”

Or perhaps, “Never despair!”

Perhaps not.

A touch of months to come!

Today is hot enough for sun cream, but the persistent breeze stops it being so like a summer's day that you can kid yourself that it has come early.

Today is even busier on the beach than yesterday. It is obvious that the season has started and that, of course, fills us with dread. This is not because we resent the numbers of people who come quite openly to OUR beach and flaunt themselves on the golden sand. Though, thinking about it, we of course do. No, it is because the start of the season means that our neighbours will come to take possession of their long empty flats.

As I have explained previously, there is a rigid caste system in our block of flats. There are the Brahmins who own their own property and there are the Untouchables who rent.

When the Nabobs deign to return to their flats for the few weeks of the summer that they use them and the odd weekends of festivals they have loud conversations with each other from balcony to balcony in which their sole topic of conversation is what they are going to do to their flats because they are in a condition to do so by virtue of the fact of possession by ownership.

As these moneyed ‘visitors’ only come here in the summer, they tend to act as if their flats are the equivalent of holiday hotel rooms and they feel that they can behave with rather less reserve than they would at home.

The Spanish are not like the British; they do not need the alcoholic fuel of beer to release volubility and generally make an aural spectacle [is that possible?] of themselves. They self cater with a vengeance and have high octane shouting matches (which is what passes for conversation in these parts) on their balconies, so that the whole population of our flats can feel a vicarious part of their meal.

Many of these summer visitors arrive complete with rat dogs and matching children (both equally noxious) and generally act as if they owned the place – which, of course, they do!

All the economic experts that I have consulted (or the business teacher in my school) are glowingly pessimistic about the probable course of the present Financial Crisis and they are especially suicidal whenever they try and formulate the future of Spain into words. The ‘building boom’ which has fuelled Spain’s economic recovery from the repressive years of the fascist dictatorship has also been something of a hostage to fortune. Yes, people have been employed in building and vast fortunes have been made, but now that sober reality is forcing a long hard cold look at what has actually been done, the Spanish government is discovering that the boom was actually a bubble and that there is a vast amount of housing stock which is now vastly surplus to requirements. Economic gloom and doom is the order of the day as recession seems inevitable.

This, of course, should be good news for me as the price of housing should be tumbling down to such low levels that even I can consider buying something. Alas! As all my savings are in Britain and in sterling, I have had an effective devaluation of some 25% as well as seeing a horrific loss on money invested in ‘low risk’ accumulation funds – how ironic is that! The end result is that house deeds would have to be given away in packets of crisps before I could consider purchase!

There is of course the nearest that we come to economic planning: drawing the winning ticket on the lottery.

Some things never change.

What's to be done!

You find me sitting on the balcony, sipping a strong cup of tea watching our discrete domestic waves roll reasonably quietly towards the shore.

This serene contemplative mode has been made necessary by the amount of red wine which gaily clinked its way into my stomach last night. My dorada a la sal was a delight, but the same could not be said for the rest of the meal. For the first time our local restaurant on the corner with the odd opening hours has let us down. The prawns were distinctly odd – which is not a good thing – though I have to say that my slight instability today is not as a result of any questionability with regard to the shell fish.

Nevertheless we had a reasonably raucous time and went to bed exhausted. Who can ask for more from a Friday night!

I did manage to do some partial marking of one script yesterday which, according to the strange (but tried and tested) rituals which govern my life, should ensure that the rest of marking is completed before Monday morning.

I am now on my second cup of tea which is being drunk for purely medicinal purposes and I am now at least at the stage which I can follow people walking on our newly constructed paseo. When I say ‘constructed’ I am using the word in the Spanish sense where the tense, although seemingly placed in the past and therefore suggesting completion, is more properly translated into a vague hopefulness of completion in the indeterminate future.

The slabs have been laid on the sand so it looks as though a patchy stone carpet has been rolled out. There is no edging to the pathway and the intersections with the continuations of the paths that lead to the beach from the road that runs parallel with it are still at the level of ‘building site’. As we progress relentlessly towards the summer season there is no sense of busy endeavour to get the thing complete for the influx of tourists on which Castelldefels relies for its major source of income. It is well for me to remind myself that I am in Spain. And relax!

And so to my third cup of tea. And the world is becoming a much more manageable place. And worth living in! Don’t get me wrong; I have been, as the phrase is, ‘up and doing’ for some time. I even got the croissants and bread! Though I would have to admit that my walking was of a studied and determined kind as I strove to shake off the lingering effects of the impulsive little house red that we had with dinner last night!

The beach is filling up: people are water skiing and sunbathing. But no one is in the water swimming. There is hazy sunshine and when the sun is behind the cloud it is, in Spanish terms, a mite chilly. It looks like the first weekend of the season and people are, in what looks like a particularly British sort of way, determinedly having fun!

My marking has now been tidily packaged in a multi-leaved folder and is waiting for the touch of my red pen. In a stroke of good fortune The Family (complete with younger elements) is going to descend on us thus giving me the perfect excuse to play the host and delay the wearisome deciphering of ‘interesting’ approaches to English orthography and grammar.

The testing time for me will be when The Family decides to go for a walk. This is the opportunity for me to show some degree of resolve and start the marking. If I can break the back of it today then I know that I will complete it tomorrow. Perhaps if I stopped writing about it and actually did some of it I would be in a better position!

I feel a certain disinclination to start anything yet. The anticipation of the arrival of The Family precludes coherent marking intentions!

And there is lunch to look forward to!

A justified weekend

If nothing else I am getting somewhat fitter as I wend my way between buildings to complete my timetable. At some point I must count the number of steps that there are between the staffroom in building 4 and the staffroom in building 1.

I suspect that there are fewer than 40 all told, but there seem to be many more when one is trudging from one place to another will a full briefcase! The steps range from modern concrete and contemporary stone to garden rustic and cramped servants’ marble.

One building is what looks like an old masia (Catalan farmhouse) with a simple terracotta tile laid roof with rafters stretching out underneath the eaves. The windows have rustic stone surround and are arched. At first floor level there is an extensive balcony with access from the staff room. The view from the balcony is one of the most expensive in Barcelona as (smog allowing) you are presented with a tree interrupted view of the whole city.

We look down on Barcelona’s football ground and have a clear view of Montjuic and most of the iconic buildings which poke above the general roof line. We can see the sea and we can kid ourselves that, given our height, we are above the general smog line!

I must admit that I have not had over many opportunities to take in the view today as my day has been pretty much filled up since my start at 8.15 am! Our normal end time is 4.45 pm so a day can seem interminable and lunch for the secondary section of the school starts at 2.00 pm. This is not the school day to which I am used!

As I come in early two days a week I am entitled to one early end and I have chosen a Friday, so as soon as I have finished with my second year class (which I take in a strange room at the top of an ornamental flight of stone stairs and which has one wall made out of pupil produced stained glass) than I am off down the steps, tripping across the elegantly manicured artificial grass lawn and out into the expensive roads of Pedrables.

If you leave early you miss all the giant coaches and expensive cars used to collect and distribute the pupils back to the arms of their loving parents!

Once on the motorway you can sail past the growing queues on the other side of the road and put the car into the developing grooves that mark the journey home.

As usual the journey is marked by jaw dropping poor driving as cars swish their way into any available space which seems to offer any sort of marginal advantage in the desperate race of death which is the journey home.

Motorcyclists have replaced pedestrians as my number one ‘hate’ group. This may have something to do with the fact that my route to school gives little opportunity for pedestrians to show their renowned disregard for any other road user and to demonstrate their legendary fearlessness in the face of a large, quickly moving metal house bearing down on them.

Motorcyclists are truly the motorized scum of the roads. I was once travelling at 80 km per hour (the legal limit near to Barcelona) in the middle lane of a three lane motorway and been passed ON BOTH SIDES by motorcyclists threading their way along the road by negotiating the limited spaces BETWEEN three lanes filled by moving cars! Their complete disregard for anything approaching consideration in their driving is breathtakingly suicidal and I am becoming more and more inclined to execute (how appropriate that word seems) a little zigzag maneuver to clip the passing motor cyclists and send them to the oblivion they are so obviously seeking.

I have to admit that, given the number of young people on crutches that one sees in Catalonia I fear there must be a growing number of motorists who have succumbed to the temptation!

One3 chore which has been completed was to call in to the shopping mall in Gavá and put some of my suits in for dry cleaning. The cost, at just under thirty pounds (given the present exchange rates) was a little shocking so that they will have to be used in judicious rotation to ensure that they last me through to the end of term.

I am looking forward to going out to dinner this evening for a drink and a chat.

But I still have to do my one piece of marking, which is the magic which is needed to ensure that I get the rest of it done this weekend. The idea of going back to school with the load of marking hanging over me while the next load of work is nearing completion is too depressing to contemplate.

I have approximately 37 minutes to get something done before the weekend starts and Rioja makes any coherent evaluation impossible!

Getting out!

Although the school is in exactly the same area as consulates the roads that connect our highly desirable piece of real estate on which the school is located with the motorway system of the city is almost comically inadequate. Massive school busses negotiate (or rather fail to negotiate) tight narrow turns on the sheer slopes which give our school its commanding view of the city.

To help things along two policepersons appear at the end of school to direct the traffic. Needless to say their efforts slow everything down and today they actually refused to let me turn down towards the motorway and I had to describe a vast circle in the car to get back to the only turning that can be used to get access to the motorway.

I thought serene thoughts as I edged up to the policeman for the second time and he obviously sensed my pulsating serenity as I drove nearer to my turning. And he stopped the traffic as soon as I was the next to go. I find it character building to look at a policeman and try and keep the loathing out of one’s expression!

The loathing of an officious, unhelpful policeman is but a passing whim; the hatred I feel towards The Owner of The School That Sacked Me knows few bounds.

The latest outrage appears to be the sacking of a teacher who was absent and who had a doctor’s note to cover the period of sickness. There is certain symmetry to this as The Owner had sacked this colleague’s husband a couple of weeks previously.

There is a growing chorus of discontent as the cavalier approach to management continues unabated. The one positive outcome from what appears to be thoroughly disgraceful behavior on the part of The Owner is that it is encouraging all sections of the school community to unite against her.

Next week should mark a crucial stage in our campaign to return reasonable educational methods to The School That Sacked Me.

Wish us luck!

Oh, that computer!

My latest gadget is in danger of actually being something which can be justified in terms of its usefulness!

A strict following of the principles which underpin my electronic purchases would clearly indicate that mere ‘utility’ is one of the least convincing reasons for my acquisition of a battery driven little object of desire.

My mini computer’s use in full view of an envious staff was more than I could have hoped for.

My gloating was only limited by my stuttering attempts to be superior in Spanish which is something of a self limiting sort of affair.

Today has been an exhausting day, but one which I feel has been distinguished by a reasonable amount of real teaching. I have taken in some examples of pupils’ writing which I shall evaluate over the weekend. I must remember my old tried technique of forcing myself to mark over a weekend.

Traditionally Sunday afternoon is a time of misery for active teachers. In spite of the best intentions everything is left until the afternoon of Sunday, or even worse, Sunday evening.

From painful experience I found that if I managed to mark a single script on Friday evening before the weekend had properly started then I managed to get all my work done before Sunday evening. This meant that I could relax on Sunday evening with an easy conscience rather that relaxing anyway but with an element of guilt over unfinished business tainting the pleasure.

Given the fact that Friday afternoon is the time when I can legitimately leave school 45 minutes early there is the opportunity for me to look at one piece of work thus ensuring that all of it will inevitably be done.

Call it sympathetic magic or call it stupid tradition – it works for me!

The Grand Coalition of the Forces of Good against The School That Sacked Me continues to grow and I look forward to a physical manifestation of support for the campaign in the very near future. I know that it is stupid to expect justice after so many years of inaction on the part of the authorities, but blind optimism can make even the very, very unlikely seem as though it could happen in the next month.

Leave me with my delusions!

And my new computer!

Mine, all mine!

Was it not you-know-who who said that he could resist everything except temptation? And who am I even to think for a moment that I could possibly work against his aphorism.

As no doubt the more astute among you have already realized I am now the proud possessor of a very nifty, very small computer. A computer moreover which responds to the flick of my thumb and puts a space where it should be. My typed words are adequately spaced and my enthusiastic typing does not over ride the little electronic impulse which provides a space where a space should be.

This could be a technological relationship which lasts!

The usual chicanery of the electronic powers that be has ensured that this machine comes to its owner bereft of programs. It does give you a free trial of a suite of programs and then asks for some vast sum of money to ensure that they stay on the list of programs.

The machine is so small that there is no room for a DVD drive so it is difficult to get programs onto the computer. My wish is to attempt to link up my old laptop with this machine and get my copy of Works downloaded by using the laptop as a hard drive. This is an obvious solution which will probably be impossible because of some devious bit of machine code found in the depths of the program that I am trying to download and copy.

I have little expectation of success.

However, until failure makes itself felt, I will rejoice in the sheer quality of what I can only call ‘gadgetness’ and wonder at its sheer portability. This is a love affair that is going to last. I will see tomorrow just how much space and how heavy it is lurking in my case. Only it won’t lurk there long. I have not lashed out on yet another gadget to keep it hidden away in my case!

Plans to cope with The School That Sacked Me continue to mature.

For lunch today we had rabbit. It was served as a sort of pastie of minced rabbit meat covered with pastry. It was not, I have to admit a success. Not only was the meat rather salty but there were small pieces of bone in the mélange: hardly the most appropriate savory to give to children! Having said that, I didn’t see any children actually selecting it, so perhaps it was just served as a little treat for the teachers!

After a phony war period of a lack of marking, the burden has built up through examinations and set pieces into a paper chase of scripts which an unlooked for extra free today has done little to diminish.

The English of the kids is odd. They write with fluency and confidence in English but they make mistakes which are incomprehensible until you realize that they are sometimes directly translating from Spanish or Catalan for their words and phrases.

This week should see some interesting pieces of creative work from a whole selection of pupils. Their efforts will be very revealing.

Meanwhile any suggestions about how to link up my new computer to my older laptop to download the suite of Works programs which I bought some time ago.

I refuse to buy get another version of programs that should be free after the amount I have spent over the years!

But try asking for justice from Microsoft!

I want . . .

Gadget lust has descended on me like a red mist.

After my abortive attempt to buy a new mini computer which resulted in my having to take the thing back, I had hoped that my processor linked desires had sunk back into the realm of the manageable. Not so. While attempting to buy some bananas I was lured into an Orange shop and almost entered into some sort of contract to acquire a mobile phone with a touch screen. I was saved by the fact that the shop required very specific bank information which luckily I did not have to hand. There should be some sort of law against the allowing of mobile phone outlets to be located by the cashiers for an ordinary supermarket.

Bananas safely purchased I was then forced to go into MediaMarkt. Because it was there.

And behold! It was revealed unto me that there was within a small computer; and lo! it had a keyboard that even fitted unto the spatulate nature of my fingers. And I did look upon it. And it was good in my sight. But, alas! It was bereft of programs. And verily I have been caught like that before.

But I can feel myself falling. I put it down to the touch of Old Adam within all of us – but especially near the surface with me when gadgets and computers are near me!

It will be interesting to see how long I last. I am safe at the moment because the shop is closed. I am teaching all day tomorrow. But the shop stays open until 10 pm. Oh god!

Meanwhile things have speeded up in bringing together the injured from The School That Sacked Me. Things proceed satisfactorily.

The ‘Chosen One’ effect is wearing off and pupils are beginning to accept me as part of the furniture and they are also discovering that I can be quite as demanding as them. They are starting to realise, like Hamlet that my smiling face is nearer to the living Claudius than to the dead Yorick. I’m not quite sure what I mean there, but if I manage to convey a sense of underlying threat then I am satisfied!

In the next couple of days I am having work in from some of my more enthusiastic classes: I can truly say that I am looking forward to reading their attempts – and they are prettily illustrated as well. Bless!

Life is pleasantly busy at the moment.

Like minds!

Today a meeting with two more of the walking wounded of The School That Sacked Me.

Over a couple of hours I heard again the familiar story that I am sure could have been told in much the same way over the last decade. I listened to a story of managerial ineptness; professional incompetence; personal animosity and self-defeating rejection. And all centred on one person: The Owner.

Recitation of wrongs is therapeutic but we are planning a little more than that. Gradually ideas for action are coming together and with my traditional optimism I can see a clear progress to retribution and restitution. Now is the time to bring together a whole series of strands that can combine to create a coherent . . . and that sentence was gathering itself into a fairly vicious metaphor, so perhaps its best to let it rest and enjoy the prospect of action with the appearance of possibility.

It was only when I returned to Castelldefels that I realised that I had left our little gathering, with my colleagues about to have lunch without paying for the couple of coffees that I had drunk! I realised, far more importantly, that the helpful, reasonable persona that I had been projecting during our discussion was now seriously under cut. Here was I revealed as a person prepared to ‘do a runner’ for the price of a couple of two coffees. Luckily my immediate and grovelling mobile phone call seemed to restore my tattered reputation and I can now look forward to further meetings with an easy conscience!

By the end of the week I should have the basis for a dossier to present to the Generalitat which should clearly call into question the suitability of The Owner to be allowed anywhere near a school. We progress!

And after lunch it was warm enough to sun bathe on the balcony. If you were made of stern stuff it was possible to ignore the occasional gusts of wind which brought back the reality of it being early March!

Roll on the summer.

White stone day!

If you want to know what my day has been like then I would refer you to my lunch.

Lunch was in the restaurant of the Fundación “La Caixa” in Barcelona. I had been to an exhibition of the art of Joaquim Mir (of which more anon) and felt that I deserved a meal to match.

The first course was a pasta dish. The pasta was long wide ribbons with crinkled edges flavoured with spinach and a tasty sauce. As I was eating it I thought that pine nuts would be an elegant finishing touch and then, with a movement of my fork I disclosed – pine nuts! And that, my friends, has been the flavour of my day.

The day started with an encouraging series of telephone conversations with friends which continue to build the case against The School That Sacked Me. The forces of Gandalf are massing against the evil of Sauron! Each day a new element falls into place. For the first time for months I feel that something real and positive is happening.

The exhibition of Mir (free, as are all the art exhibitions in “La Caixa” god bless them!) was an extraordinary experience as the eighty or so works cover his entire career and is the most complete exhibition of his works ever mounted.

Mir’s artistic career is traditionally divided up into the five major places in which he settled during his life but, as this exhibition attempts to make clear, the locations do not define his achievement.

For me, the paintings he completed in Mallorca in four short years from 1900 to 1904 before his mysterious fall on the rocks of Sa Calobra are by far the most interesting. As I walked around the exhibition I was trying to identify the elements of his style which struck me. I found it easier to think of artists who suggested themselves as I looked at the paintings. His use of colour is certainly individualistic and not necessarily realistic and shows a clear tendency towards abstraction. This tendency however is always contained in representation and at no point does Mir depart from his love of landscape and its portrayal.

Mir manages to obtain a short of Redon-like pastel effect even when he is using oils. The symbolist use of colour and the molten look of the rocks that he portrays in a painting like ‘Cueva de Mallorca’ give an almost surrealistic look to some of his paintings and the painter he reminds me of is Ernst. In ‘Olivos de Mallorca’ the use of outlining and the particular shade of blue used reminds me of some of the more disturbingly organic threatening objects of Welshman Ceri Richards. This is a very busy canvas and gives an unsettling view of olive trees!

‘La cueva verde’ (1903) is an explosion of colour and shape and looks more like a Sutherland in its portrayal of living rock with almost theatrical lighting. This ‘green cave’ is a very personal vision of landscape.

For me the most successful painting is an extraordinary one from c. 1903 ‘La roca de la cala’ – a rock in a pool – a beautiful portrayal in shimmering colour in a subdued environment. This is the one I would save in the event of fire!

This is an exhibition to revisit! And I am prepared to forgive ‘La Caixa’ for the extravagantly priced catalogue not only because of the quality of reproduction but also because there is an essay in English at the back.

And this afternoon I was able to lie in the sun with my shirt off on the balcony watching the white horses plunge their way towards the shore.

Nice!

And so it goes on!

Having started at the crack of dawn on two days of this week I am entitled to an early departure on a day of my choice. Friday seemed the obvious candidate and so I was able to slip away unhindered by the fleet of cars that appear at the end of school to ferry away our privileged charges.

I used my early leave to call in to the medical centre to replenish my supply of drugs and to find out (if possible) why I have been sent a second medical card.

Amazingly there was no queue at the pharmacist in the medical centre and so was able to waltz in immediately and get my prescriptions. There is no explanation for the extra card, I was told to keep it safe and use it if I lost the other. It is ironic that getting the first one was so bureaucratically difficult and the second comes as a free gift!

As if in a form of compensation for ease of acquisition, it took three attempts to find a dispensing pharmacist that was open, but I was still home and sipping a well earned cup of tea before the time that I would have left school normally. Result!

I have now been at the school for a grand total of seven working days, but it feels as if I have been there for an absurdly longer period of time. The children are friendly to the point of caricature and I have begun to suspect that their attitude is one of ironic condescension. But it isn’t. Gosh.

The food is even more unreal, but I don’t say anything in case it all disappears in a puff of smoke!

The kids are NOT all angels, by no means! But they are the sort of pupils that most teachers would give important parts of their bodies to teach.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I have started a campaign in school to get a portable OHP machine. Many classrooms have been equipped with an interactive white board but . . . There is always a ‘but’ with the introduction of so-called hi-tec teaching equipment.

Teachers in this school do not have a teaching base. We move to the pupils. There are laptops, but these are not readily available and are not permanently linked up to the whiteboards. Use of one would necessitate setting up the equipment before each lesson in each of the individual teaching classes and . . . well; you know it just ain’t gonna happen. So a portable OHP seems like a sensible idea.

It will be a test of the school to see how it reacts to my request. We are surely inching our way towards a new financial year when such things can be considered. I shall speculate no more, but await events. I suppose I ought to push things forward a bit by finding the model that I want and presenting the powers that be with proof of its existence and an indication of expense. I declare this project open!

I took my tea out on to the balcony and watched the waves. This was the sort of sea that my father would have loved. The wind was whipping the tops of the crests into a misty spray which was catching the evening sun. For the first time here, the breaking waves out to sea did actually look as though there were ‘white horses’ galloping towards the shore! With the deep pounding and crashing of the walls of water on the wind raked sand it all combined to give a stunningly beautiful display.

A rough sea always stimulated my father and it is a continuing regret that he cannot (except in the imagination) sit next to me puffing contentedly on his pipe occasionally quoting some fragment of poetry learned from books taken from the library in Abergwinfi!

Or perhaps learned from his sister whom he fondly believed was the author of ‘Jerusalem’! I can well imagine his sister (my aunt) not telling him the truth too!

This weekend a bus tip to MNAC is called for as I have been deprived of interesting galleries for too long.

I wonder if they do a menu del dia on a Saturday there!

Teachers' Liberation!

It is rapidly becoming apparent that there is sort of fraternity which is composed of those hapless souls who have had dealings with The School That Sacked Me. We recognize each other by a certain look in the eye and the involuntary twitch when the name of the place is mentioned. There must be hundreds of us scattered all across the globe – and it’s time the disaffected walking wounded of that dreadful place made their voices heard. And heard in the right places so that the authorities will have to act.

As usual, my innate sense of optimism triumphs over the hard reality of the last fifteen years – the years that the place has been open. Court cases come and go, but the essential components of a dysfunctional institution remain in place and The Owner endures. But time must have a stop and god knows it’s time for a stop to be put to that place; or at least to the way that it is run.

Grumbles grow and it’s time to put the inarticulate on a more literate level and give voice to justified objection.

Meanwhile back in the real world of my present school, examinations loom and the whole place is convulsed in a collective act of bowed headed adoration of various text books and photocopies.

I am beginning to understand the way the English department here works. This is a school where the vast majority of the pupils are English language learners. Their first languages are overwhelmingly Spanish and Catalan though there is a significant minority with another first language. The teaching of English as a foreign language is fairly rigidly text book based which is a strange form of release from the bondage of virtual text-book free learning which is the norm back in the UK. But using a text book which is closely linked to the external examinations means that when the pupils are tested with what look like fairly ‘open’ questions there is a specific text based answer that the pupils have to get to gain the mark. The ‘answers’ in the teacher’s book are the revealed word of god and must reign supreme over any cavils that individual teachers may have about what might be acceptable in the sight of the examiners.

The lore of the place is being revealed to me bit by bit: I am beginning to understand how the exercises are supposed to work; how much you should tell the pupils about English usage; how far to deviate from The Way of the text book and, most importantly, how much latitude you are supposed to give in the way that pupils express themselves in English.

One sentence that the equivalent of the first year sixth had today in their examination asked them to know that in English a wall is given ‘a coat of paint.’ They had obviously never come across (phrasal verb) this use of the word. Their suggestions ranged from ‘layer’ through ‘carpet’ (one of my favourites) to ‘hand.’ The latter seemingly lunatic suggestion is actually a direct translation of the Spanish phrase, so at least I learned something from the experience!

My first examination marking came after a meeting where I discovered that we mark in quarters of a point, with .25 of a mark being subtracted for the misuse of a pronoun! Strict but fair!

Today has been marked by loss and theft.

The loss was my keys. I have been given a substantial bunch of the things which, as far as I can tell, opens everything lockable in the place. The loss of such a bunch of keys was, potentially, giving anyone finding them access everywhere!

A frantic search of all the rooms that I had been in revealed nothing. No sets of keys had been handed in to the office staff. I was thinking to myself that I had been there barely a week and already I had compromised the whole security of the school.

The keys were, of course, found. They were on the table in the staff room. Clearly in sight and only slightly obscured by the edge of a pencil case. The secretary smiled slightly and nodding her head sighed, “A senior moment!”

The theft was a set of examination papers. Now I do have an excuse. And I didn’t do it deliberately. I blame a third party.

The ‘third party’ in questions is a colleague who with considerable consideration had written out the answers for the examination and then photocopied her original for our use. When I collected all my papers at the end of the day I gathered in all those which looked like mine and the other examination papers looked like mine. That’s my excuse. Luckily another colleague asked about one of my students and I was able to give the result of his recently marked examination. My efforts to locate his paper in my brief case brought to light another set of examination papers which I soon realized were not of my kids.

My telephone call to the other staff room brought a frantic teacher to the phone whose relief that I had taken the papers outweighed (just) her anger that they had been taken in the first place!

Having done enough damage for one day, I decided to go home.

I shall now read ‘Holes’ by Louis Sachar and refresh my memory about the book that one of my classes is reading.

Keeps me out of trouble at least!

Letters with meaning

Sometimes opening your emails is a real pleasure.

Stewart’s emails are masterpieces of contained quizzicality. And it is very good for me to have someone’s with raised eyebrow reading what I’ve written and gently suggesting that my casual attributions could be a touch more accurate! I don’t know how grave a crime it is for an ex-head of an English department to confuse H E Bates with L P Hartley, but I fear it is little short of a resigning issue – so it’s just as well that I am PBI nowadays!

While Stewart’s emails are always a delight, I hesitated to open those that I knew would have more news from The School That Sacked Me.

In the event there actually seemed to be something positive. Unsurprisingly there seems to be a group of parents which is prepared to voice objections to the way in which the school is being run. This gives me a moment of optimism. Perhaps this disaffection is something which can be built on and could develop into something serious in our attempts to bring The School That Sacked Me back to something like normality.

The story continues!

Meanwhile in my present school the absence of colleagues meant that I lost two periods and had to substitute. This is never a happy experience and when one of your substitutions is for the last period of the day this is potentially a very bad experience. In the first period I did manage to complete the piece of writing that I had set for the class I had just been teaching. In the second I experienced the only round of applause that I have ever been given as a teacher coming in to take someone else’s class! I take little credit for this adulation; I am merely reaping the benefit of not being the person who was there before me. This is a ‘time limited’ advantage and I am making the most of it while I can!

Spanish bureaucracy has reared its head again. The man who helped me to prepare my academic documentation before it was all sent off to Madrid has sent the educational authorities in the city and asked how the processing is going and has had a reply which suggested that all I needed to complete the procedure was proof that I had been teaching for more than two years. I wasn’t even slightly fazed by this seemingly idiotic demand as this information is actually printed on one of the documents sent to Madrid.

A phone call to my last school in Wales got an instant response and I was able to indulge in a chat with an ex-colleague with whom I had to admit that as I was speaking to her it was actually raining. That at least gave her a moment of pleasure. Though she still asked me to find her a job and wanted to know if the invitation to stay was still open!

We move inexorably nearer to the examination season and there will soon be a welter of examination papers waiting for the firm kiss of my red pen!

Oh joy!

Always look on the bright side

We had calçots for lunch.

May as well get the positive out of the way as soon as possible! I was able to dine in some degree of spaciousness because I had to have an early lunch because of my duty.

The reality of working in a place which has little recourse to supply teachers is beginning to show with my having to do two ‘substitutions’ tomorrow –though to be fair I do gain a period because my youngest pupils are going on a trip. A trip about which I knew nothing. I do not blame my colleagues (who have been kind, supportive and generous with their advice) but I am entering a situation where co-operation was not the norm and so it is taking time to realize that I am a different sort of character from my predecessor!

The kids are amazingly friendly and, except for a tendency to chat, they are responsive and intelligent. They are, of course, highly privileged and it is sometimes difficult to remember that your class does not have the usual social, economic and behavioural spread that you are used to in a state school.

I have discovered that the school has its own branded chocolate bars which I discovered in the drawer which houses our tea bag collection. I have liberated one to show Toni so that he may marvel at the difference between my present establishment and The School that Sacked Me!

Of the latter ‘school’ I find that I am hesitant to check my e-mails because of what new horrors I may find related in them. Yet I remain the eternal optimist and expect that eventually right will prosper. Naïve possibly, but such beliefs allow me to sleep at nights.

Talking of sleeping nights, I have to read ‘Stone Cold’ this evening to refresh my memory about this text which has to be taught to one of my classes. It is probably a bad idea to continue with the book as the kids have been turned off the story by the way that they have been introduced to it. I will, however, persevere and see what can be salvaged from the wreckage.

Wish me luck.

No joke!

If you think that your working conditions are poor then I suggest you take a short (or maybe very long) detour to visit The School That Sacked Me and you will revise your opinions.

The situation in that god-awful apology for an educational institution has now, unbelievably, taken a turn for the ‘even worse!’ The number of heads of the primary section over the last two or three years has now reached double figures! A laughable state of affairs and should mean that the place is put under Special Measures at once – but that hasn’t happened over the last dozen years so why should one suppose that normality should reach out and bring this deeply dysfunctional and professionally disgraceful place back to what can be described as a school.

Meanwhile my own school experience continues to please and we had sea food au gratin in a scallop shell for one of the lunch courses. Need I say more!

With what is happening in The School That Sacked Me and what is not happening I feel disinclined to be lightly humorous.

A little justice would be appropriate to right a fundamental wrong.

Read the sunshine!

A sullen St David’s Day with a grudging attempt at forced sunshine late in the afternoon.

The day was also enlivened by a visit to the supermarket for supplies – an idea apparently shared by the rest of the population of Castelldefels. The queues at the cashiers stretched well into the produce aisles and the interminable wait was only enlivened by the attempts of the eternally optimistic to worm their way into the queue. I am proud to relate people obviously noted the homicidal gleam in my eyes and avoided any attempt to insinuate their trolleys in front of me and were thus allowed to enjoy the rest of the day rather than lying in bloody chunks at my feet.

There were the usual people in front of us. In spite of the fact that the queue was stretching well into the next town they behaved as if they were alone in the store and were the only people the cashier had to deal with. With a blithe disregard for an electrically resentful line of people whose sheer pulsing waves of detestation could have ignited matches languid conversations took place over items whose price was disputed.

The usual single parent with hyperactive child brought the line to a grinding halt as the cashier had to pack the items for the mother as she dealt with the small person. Eventually the mum was able to help as she pinioned the small person firmly between her clenched calves and rightly ignored the piteous mewlings from the self centred object of delay at her feet. Whatever ‘sufferings’ the small person was experiencing as she was prevented from hindering our egress from that large shop of horrors, it was a damn sight less than any one of the furious shoppers behind her would have meted out given half a chance!

The rest of the day has been spent enjoyably re-reading Mark Haddon’s ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ which is being studied by the equivalent of my Year 8 and reading for the first time ‘The 22nd Pan Book of Horror Stories.’

The stories (selected by Herbert Van Thal) are the usual heterogeneous bunch with a particularly nasty one by Ian McEwan called ‘Pornography.’ The definition of ‘horror’ in this collection is a fairly wide one ranging from an almost conventional supernatural example of the genre like ‘The girl with the violet eyes’ by Elsie Karbacz; through distasteful (literally!) humour in ‘Dante’s Bistro’ by Carolyn L. Bird to a version of slapstick in ‘Incident in Cairo’ by Bessie Bird to a version of Armageddon in ‘The trump card’ by Jane Louie. A most enjoyable, if unsettling read!

Although borrowed from the school cupboard, I cannot imagine the class with which I would use any one of them!

Meanwhile back to triple homonyms and the construction of elegant sentences which leave out the key word and encourage students to supply it. This is a particular and cruel form of torment for those learning English and if I can find a fiendish example I will encourage my reader to try it.

Meanwhile an internet search to ensure that I do not re-invent the wheel!

I know my rights!

The sun is not shining!

As is almost written in ‘The Diary of a Nobody,’ “I am not a rich man, but I would willingly give a half a crown to discover the identity of the deity who produced such insulting weather.”

I am now going through the traditional period for me when I worry that every day and in every way I am becoming whiter and whiter. The only time that I am in the sun is when I walk from building to building. I was hoping to top us my vitamin D levels this weekend and have been viciously disappointed by the cloud cover.

Thank god for chocolate: solid sunshine!

I have not given up on my desire to purchase a new mini computer. Though I am now bloody from my recent experiences I remain unbowed and am full determined to boost the economy and foil the crisis by the wilful spending of quantities of money I can ill afford on the type of machine of which I already possess a number of examples. That’s what I call dedication!

In a clearly specious attempt to show dedication to my new school I took home a book from the English cupboard in the upper school. This was ‘Midnight Over Sanctaphrax’ book 3 in ‘The Edge Chronicles’ by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell.

It is significant that on the front cover of this volume is a blue circle in which is written, “For children who’ve read Harry Potter and want another world to explore.” I will not allow the fact that this quotation is from a hack in the Mail on Sunday to influence my opinion about the book, but . . . This feels altogether slighter than the Harry Potter books, even though there is a similarity in the use (or abuse!) of similar elements. There is the same amusingly quaint naming of people, places and wildlife: Twig, Tug, Spooler, Goom, Flabsweat, the Great Shryke Slave Market in The Deep Woods and so on.

The story links to other stories in the series, but there is enough information in the present novel for it to stand alone. The thrust of the tale mixes together a familiar melange of fairy story, legend, with a light dusting of creation myth religion. The story is simple enough but there is enough imagination to keep the rather pedestrian narrative alive.

From the point of view of my new school the level of language used is slightly too difficult, but it could be simplified to be of some use. If I cared to do it!

Needless to say hackneyed, clichéd and predictable it may have been, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Fantasy and magic have the same sort of fascination for me as sci-fi and I have to treat them both like dangerously addictive drugs. Talking of which, I have also borrowed one of the ‘Pan Book of Horror’ series of short stories. These are also quite compulsive, though under the sometimes lurid covers you find classic tales masquerading as contemporary stories!

I look forward to the mixture!

Dreams are fragile!

The Welsh Rugby Dream is over for another year. Ah well, and I even wore an artificial daffodil (supplied by Dianne) in school today. This occasioned much questioning, with the result that I think that I ought to have some sort of bonus from the Welsh Tourist Board for services to Welsh awareness in those of foreign extraction!

The ‘love-on’ continued into the second day with my being greeted like a favourite uncle on all sides in school. It is perhaps just as well that the weekend has intervened to bring a sense of reality to my return. On Monday I will be regarded as just another fixture and normality will be restored.

Though they haven’t got used to my ties yet. I have set myself a fairly high standard with my choice of neck coverings so far and I do not think that I can sustain the level of quirkiness that I have established. To my consternation pupils have spoken of their favourite ties from my last visit and were quite specific about which ones met with their approval.

I have always maintained that teachers do not realise how closely they are observed by their classes. We have this self denying approach which suggests that even though we stand in front of a class in full view of all the pupils they somehow take us for granted and look without seeing. I suppose if we realistically appreciated how much scrutiny we routinely undergo we wouldn’t venture out in front of a class!

Even with my previous experience of a week in the school some time ago and these two days, it is not enough time to think about how the next few months there will pan out. The signs seem positive enough but it will need some compromise on my part if it is going to work out well. It will be interesting to see how my teaching style adapts to the demands of a very different style of teaching which is the norm in this school.

All in all this has been an interesting week and one which has left me a trifle tired!

And emotional!

You are all too, too kind!

Every teacher should have his “Mr Chips” moment. And now, after my first day back in the ‘new’ school, I have had mine.

Greeted warmly by all; hand firmly shaken; kissed by colleagues; hugged by students, and surrounded by welcoming smiles it was difficult not to feel something of the triumphalism of Judas Maccabaeus and to hear “See the conquering hero comes!” playing softly in my ears.

The frighteningly competent girl in my youngest class spoke to me confidentially at the start of our first lesson and said, “Stephen – two things. Firstly, I knew you would be back. Secondly, welcome!” You see what I have to cope with!

It was a glorious day surrounded by happy, smiling, responsive pupils and enjoyable teaching. To mark my return the school even managed to have a fire drill almost as soon as I started teaching and offered me the opportunity to do a lunchtime duty as well. Truly, my cap ranneth over!

There is a different feeling in this school to the last. I think that the fact that the school is spread over a number of buildings on a steeply sloping site with each of the buildings linked by what seems to be an interminable number of steps, makes the experience of teaching there more expansive than in Castelldefels. The staff rooms in Barcelona are not as claustrophobic or cramped as in Castelldefels and the provision of a ‘breakfast’ roll with free tea and coffee creates a different ambience.

It will take a while for me to work out the exact requirements of the various examinations that the school offers the pupils in English and also the approach to the subject itself. I am beginning to understand that the sort of English that the pupils will find in the examination is a very formal and rather stilted kind. They have to know and be able to demonstrate facility in the definition and use of various obscure (to the normal English speaker) grammatical points. The use of text books imposes a discipline of progress that is rather foreign to my ‘method’ of teaching. It will be interesting to see how I progress in this rather foreign pedagogical country!

Lunch, when I finally got to taste it after my duty, was tasty – which was just as well as we have to wait until 2.00 pm to taste it; or in my case today, until 2.30 pm!

I have brought books home today to look through them for the lessons tomorrow, but I am loath to do it. I have made up some handouts to supplement some of the things that I said this morning - and that is far nearer to what I find enjoyable than studying the arid verb forms which seem to be the basis of good marks in the examinations that the pupils are going to take.

The next few weeks are going to demonstrate clearly how congenial this placement is going to be. I think that it will call for a certain compromise on my part and a re-jigging of my expectations.

At the moment I rejoice in the sheer self indulgent pleasure of my welcome and remember that the future, as H E Bates almost said, is another country. Another country in which I have yet to travel.

Time for a cup of tea!