Sun enough to brown!

It says a great deal about my determination over the past week or so that my arrival in the staff room this morning was greeted by colleagues asking where I had been on holiday.

This was not the simple politeness that you would expect after any holiday but rather a comment on my brown face.

My colleagues reasoned, perfectly fairly, that such a bronzed god-like look (I have to admit those were my words) could not have been obtained anywhere in the Barcelona region given the less than clement weather we have been having.

This is, of course, to ignore my sun orientated monomania where each time that timid star managed to insinuate a stray ray through the almost unrelenting cloud cover over Castelldefels – I was there! If a few bright electrons beamed down to earth then a prone body (mine) was spread-eagled to receive them. Whatever was there met my skin so that I am on my way towards that level of dusty obscurity which I used to boast after an out of season trip to Gran Canaria.

The truly terrible thing is that as we progress more and more surely towards days of unlimited sunshine, I will have to stand the frustration of seeing them wasted with my being indoors rather than outside soaking up the main reason that I am in Catalonia in the first place. School can be a cruel denier of pleasure!

The shock of having to start teaching by 8.15 am after the more spacious days of the holiday was a shock to the system; to say nothing of seeing all my pupils sitting in front of me expecting me to do something.

This term promises to be one replete with new experiences and will encompass my first brush with the external examinations that the pupils will have to sit. Some of their exams are held in centres outside the school and will necessitate logistical solutions which seem daunting.

No doubt I will look back on all the problems with a light heart and a ready jest by the time of the end of term. I only hope that the end of this term is a prelude to my starting a new year in the school in September.

Nothing has been said yet of my continued employment so I will have to try and contain the cold horror which sweeps over me when I realise what I should be teaching the pupils. This morning it was the conditional in all its guises, including something called the ‘Zero Conditional’ of which I had never heard.

The ‘First Conditional’ and ‘Second Conditional’ had, as mere designations entered my sphere of cognition, but the idea of teaching and explaining them to grammar savvy questioning kids had never entered the wildest nightmares of my imagination. It would have taken Goya at his blackest to have given an adequate pictorial representation to my almost overmastering panic when I was asked to explain on the board ‘The Second Conditional and Its Relationship to Unreal Possibility, Present and Future.’

It’s not something that the teaching of English Language to A Level prepares one for! Especially when bright eleven year olds are asking technical questions that most Heads of English in British Schools would be flummoxed by!

And on a technical note I have ended the last two questions with prepositions; standards are indeed falling fast! As indeed is my ability to take on board very much more grammar!

Tomorrow is the presentation of the prizes for our International Literary Competition. This is something which has a high profile in our school and is taken very seriously with the winning entries being published in a book. The competition has sections for English, Spanish and Catalan and the whole prize giving is graced with the thoughts of a writer of note. This is something to which I want to go as I have expressed interest in the competition and I have to carry through my interest and listen with intelligent appreciation to the speech of a Catalan writer. Ho hum, I’m getting quite good at that!

My “Si! Si!” approach to conversational Spanish will have to see me through another linguistic ordeal!

The extra day

The holiday ends in bright sunshine with fluffy white clouds on the horizon and very few people on the beach. But the people who are on the beach are prone and taking the rays. The swimming pool is almost looking inviting, but I know that the water is unheated and my heart doesn’t need the shock that sudden immersion will give it!

This is an ‘extra day’ which seems to be limited to my school. In spite of the blank incomprehension of my colleges in the state sector about not going back to school today I have had the strength to enjoy it and not subside into a driveling wreck worrying about whether it is actual or just a simple mishearing on my part. If it was, no one in school has phoned up to tell me about it, so I think I’m fairly safe.

I suppose that I am benefitting from a nasty anti-Benthamite god who has reasoned that most of the teachers and pupils will be returning today, so it’s OK to turn on a wonderful day of sunshine so that they can see what they are missing. And if a few of the privileged get a little extra Vitamin D then so be it. For once I can be a recipient of the beneficial effect of the principle of the Greatest Misery for the Greatest Number!

As I typed that last exclamation mark, the fluffy innocuous white clouds on the horizon have spread across the rest of the sky and the sun is now well filtered and the glittering pool is now a rather dull looking stretch of water. So much for arch comments on dead philosophies!

My brief case has been entirely emptied and I only found two unexpected items. As the traditional emptying of the case is usually akin to a breathtaking conjuring trick with a rapid succession of things produced which illustrate a whole chunk of my personal history, I am rather proud that I seem to be using the case for what it was intended rather than a Black Hole for difficult to deal with areas of my personal and educational life!

In an excess of organizational frenzy I even rationalized my two pencil cases: one of which now actually contains pencils! The other, larger one now contains all those things which no teacher should be without: stapler, sellotape, rubbers, paperclips, gluesticks, tippex and highlighting pen etc. This being a particularly me-type ‘other’ pencil case it also contains a Swiss Army Hunting Knife and a USB mini hub and lead.

By the way have you heard the statistic that says only two out of every ten paper clips made are actually used to clip papers?

That statistic came from a survey conducted by a bank.

It does not take a super subtle mind to realize that as a major buyer of paperclips and therefore presumably major culprits of their non use for purpose, the banks have transferred their attitude towards paper clips to money which they have also spectacularly misused.

We poor fools with little financial acumen use money to buy things that we need, not realizing that what we should have been acquiring was ‘toxic debts.’

One would have thought that the clue was there in the description. Perhaps all those illiterate bonus takers needed was an English teacher on their boards.

I’m still available.

Better late than never

Sitting on the balcony being caressed or buffeted by the late afternoon on-shore breeze – a designation dependant on your level of cynicism after such a damp holiday as we have had – I am able to contemplate an excellent paella which we had for lunch and be at least partially jocose about the fact that today has been bright and sunny if occasionally hazy.

My optimism (never far from the surface) also takes note of the Signs of Summer.

We dwellers on the littoral become adept in reading those tell-tale signs, so obvious to us, yet hidden from the generality of people who disturb our peace with their incessant stepping on our incomplete paseo.

The first and most obvious harbinger of the warmer months to come is that the sun beds have returned after their winter migration and are congregating on the beach.

They have formed themselves into what naturalists have described as “their typical vertical interlocking rest displays” or what ordinary folk refer to as stacks. As they are a protected species, and are still recovering after their long journey no one has disturbed them. The delicate membrane which covers their framework, still fragile from the effects of their epic voyage to the shores of the Mediterranean, needs to harden before they prepare to adopt their “horizontal territorial spread” for the hotter months of the year.

The second sign is that two person-high, nondescript piles of planking have appeared in the middle of the beach in a direct line down from the walkway onto the sands. To balcony dwelling fauna such as myself they betoken the immanent Building of the Chiringuito.

The chiringuito has been a source of considerable controversy and debate this year. The chiringuito, as you probably know, is the temporary (sometimes) beach bar which sells food and which is actually located directly on the beach. The government has decided, in a stalwart and vigorous way, totally in keeping with the sort of decisive action that we look for in times of crisis, that one of the most important issues facing the people of Spain today is regulation of beach snack bars. To howls of outrage they propose to limit what the chiringuitos can sell in the name of health and safety. ‘Fiddling,’ ‘Rome,’ ‘Nero,’ and ‘burning’ all come to mind!

Summer is almost officially here!

As I have used this holiday to read voraciously I have not yet emptied my brief case to discover exactly what school work I should have done last week. “Tomorrow,” as I have been saying each day of the holiday so far, “I will do the work.” As tomorrow is the last day I do not have very much option; I only hope that what I discover is not too impossible!

I also have to contact our Little Band of Pilgrims in the continuing struggle against The School That Sacked Me. We are coming up to the second meeting of our little group and, as yet, no one has contacted me. So, time to give everyone (including myself) a little push.

So much to do!

I think I will close my eyes and soak up what is left of the afternoon sun!

Summer?

Thunder, lightning and torrential rain yesterday evening prepared us for the miserable sodding weather today. So much for Easter!

Continuing to watch the god-awful television we are fed in Spain makes me wonder why I ever felt even remotely uncomfortable about trying to explain Morris Dancers to those not of our national persuasion. Times of festivity bring out the inexplicable en mass.

I have watched dances by groups in Spain whose music and dress sense makes Morris Dancers look like elegantly dressed competitors from Come Dancing moving to the most conventional of waltzes! Local festivals usually involve the most unrestricted use of fireworks; parades of giant figures dressed in the clothes of the 1920s; food – very often thrown, and if not thrown, then cooked in giant pots and pans. And don’t get me started on the religious excesses – most of which are greeted by Catalans with a scowl and mutterings about foreigners (or the Spanish as we sometimes know them!)

With Toni enjoying his Easter present from his mother – a stinking cold – today has been a little lacking in dynamism. I haven’t even felt like reading.

This is probably because I have overdosed on a marathon reading of all of the ‘Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Universe’ series courtesy of a worryingly inclusive web of free eBooks. It allows you to download 4 or 5 books on the understanding that they will be deleted when you have read them. You are therefore, in some sort of electronic way, ‘borrowing’ them from a legitimate library of the web host. There is a complete subsection of the site devoted to questions about the law where it dismisses any legal questions from the USA, the EU and the United Kingdom because it is situated outside the jurisdiction of those areas.

I have read the books and duly deleted the file. I read through the legal part of the site with what might be described as a ‘light eye’ because it could be a wonderful library for me while the larger part of mine is still locked away in Bluspace, and I don’t want to ‘know’ that it is all illegal. Perhaps I should read the information again with a slightly ‘heavier’ eye this time!

This afternoon a proposed visit to a teacher from The School that Sacked Me with the possibility of yet another school being founded. Catalonia seems to be full of people who hope to found schools but their reality is a little more sparse. Sill, my insane optimism will encourage me to believe that here too may be something positive which we can add to the information contained by our little group which may eventually lead to something.

More ‘mays’ then ‘cans’ there, but as Mehitabel would say ‘wotthehell!’

A gleam of hope!

Nothing brings out the difference between the land of my birth and my adopted country than a bank holiday.

Not, you understand in the manner of the respective people. Catalonia is as capable of “taking its pleasures sadly” as Britain and I have seen Spanish people ‘enjoying’ themselves at various festive occasions with that dogged, slightly hysterical forced gusto that is so characteristic of Britons when they know that things are really not going that well. As usual.

A Bank Holiday in Britain is the one time when you know that the hose will not be necessary. Your plants will have their thirst quenched by the liberal amounts of water which will, as surely as Big Brother will plumb new depths of moral, psychological and scatological horror with each new series, fall liberally from the skies and give that particular gleam to the traffic jams of cars lined up trying to get (in spite of past experience) to the seaside for ‘a little bit of sunshine.’

In Catalonia for the past week or so the weather has been (with one or two bright exceptions) bloody. But now, at the first morning of the Bank Holiday weekend opens, we are greeted with bright sunshine. I would, by way of celebration, skip skittishly onto the balcony to take my cup of tea within the envious stares of the Lesser Breeds Without the Law who parade for my endless enjoyment on our perennially unfinished paseo – but we have run out of milk.

It is these little hiccoughs in the smooth line of quotidian delight which remind me of my national predilection to shake my head sorrowfully and say, “I’m not surprised,” in a voice reminiscent of Ada Doom recollecting ‘something nasty in the woodshed.’

For the British ‘something nasty in the woodshed’ is a symbol for the imperfection of experience which seems to be our lot; it is the fatalistic dread that we all have about the cringe-making horror that the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games is going to be; the sullen resignation we display as the pound goes into free fall against every currency including cowrie shells; rain on Bank Holidays.

But, as L P Hartley didn’t say, “Catalonia is another country; they do things differently there.”

So, I’ll just pop out to the shops for the milk to revel in the Balcony Experience and enjoy the sunshine while it happens.

Hanging about?

The responses of your average Spanish-type person are always interesting and instructive.

What, for example would enter your head to be doing on Good Friday. One must bear in mind that Spain (even Catalonia) is ostensibly a country steeped in the more outlandish manifestations of the Roman Catholic Cult. What, thinks your average Spanish bloke, shall I do today.

Never let it be said that a tasteful response to the apparent death of your god was beyond your traditional Iberian imagination. What to do? What to do?

What about taking your shirt off, wrapping thick cord around your waist up to your armpits then have your outstretched arms laid along a wooden cross beam again with cord wrapped around your arms. Then drape a lace table cloth over your head and place a crown of thorns on your head. Add two more lengths of cloth over your cord wrapped, wooden beam stretched arms. And you are good to go! People of a sensitive disposition, perhaps unsurprisingly, kneel at your approach.

The news on Good Friday is a succession of unlikely forms of religion related masochism. Broadcast, I might add before the nine o’clock watershed!

Nothing brings out the Anglican atheist in me more than gratuitous exhibitions of superstitious, idol bearing subjection! Still, if it keeps them happy!

The weather, as you have probably guessed from the preceding bitterness, has been less than satisfactory with rain adding to the general air of holiday deprivation.

On the fight against educational nastiness, it also (in the sense of another bad thing like the weather) appears that the accounts of The School That Sacked Me are – apart from missing years – roughly what you would expect. There are no glaring instances where instant phoning of the authorities would be the only appropriate action.

Perhaps I was wrong to hope for a ‘quick fix’ solution to the problem and, as we have been told, the only way to success (however we define that) is in the long run and by exercising persistence.

Onwards and upwards!

Shine On!

I sometimes feel like a living embodiment (tautology?) of Ruskin’s Pathetic Fallacy.

The sun is shining this morning: all is well with the world. Yesterday in the grey-bright misery of indifferent weather (which is as close as Castelldefels comes to a grotesque mimicry of the Principality Pall that drove me from my native shores) I felt that life was void and without form – and now antithesis.

Having wasted valuable living time trying to make some sort of sense of the welter of computer generated statistical gibberish connected to the finances of The School That Sacked Me, I have decided that the combination of lots of figures with helpful subheadings in a foreign language is not conducive to my peace of mind.

It is therefore sensible to submit the whole farrago of nonsense to somebody who can read the financial runes and sense whether there is black or white magic enwrought (thank you Yeats – though in the translation into Spanish Daniel Aguirre has chosen the word ‘bordado’ which means embroidered; a word (in English) that Yeats uses in the first line of the poem, so Yeats is able to gain the rich distinction between ‘embroidered’ and ‘enwrought’ and add an element of the archaic, whereas the beggared Spanish translation looses . . . I better stop there) in the incomprehensible rows of figures that confound and blast my sight.

That last sentence is an obvious example of what happens when you start reading Milton for fun! A couple of days ago I was re-reading the first couple of books of Paradise Lost and marvelling again at the modernity of the Weasel Wisdom that Satan (or Stan as I typed it: it gives an altogether more homely and Northern feel to the Evil One!) uses as he raises his fall’n legions. “What tho’ the field be lost: all is not lost.” How many times do you hear that logic on the Today programme voiced in a myriad ways but the central theme being, “Black is white: believe me.”

As I never tired of telling my A level classes, you don’t need to read Machiavelli (though he is good fun and unfairly maligned) when you can read the speeches of Satan (or Stan) in Paradise Lost and follow the machinations of Iago in ‘Othello.’ As far as I can understand it, Political Science is a close study of those two texts and their application in the Real World. Job done!

I sometimes feel like Captain Cat sitting on the balcony and watching the world (or Castelldefels) {or my tiny section of the beach of Castelldefels} come to life. As I drink my early morning cup of tea I only see the Dutiful Dog Walkers and the Manic Old as they strut purposefully along our newly almost constructed paseo. Gradually Other Ages (suitably be-coated) pass along. The Hardy Boys (adjective not proper noun) start to play volleyball and the squeak of buggy wheels begins as grandparents wheel about their firmly strapped-in grandchildren. There is only one Lounging Figure looking in the distance like those Mexican carved sculptures you see in Chichen Itza. Gradually the beach will fill with people telling themselves that this is their holiday and they should be enjoying themselves!

A lot of work to be done today and not much of it enjoyable.

It remains to be seen if I can resist the ever present lure of the eBook as totally justifiable displacement activity!

Synonym: Holiday/Rain

The flat now has a veneer of cleanliness to it, it having been chamfered up in preparation for the arrival of the family.

The family, containing as it does one three year old and an unsteady toddler will ensure that any chamfering will be a distant memory within seconds of their arrival!

The weather continues bloody. It rained fairly solidly throughout yesterday and the general appearance of the weather today could be encompassed in the word ‘glowering.’ Although not raining at the moment it certainly looks as though it wants to rain. This is a situation which I remember well and thought was going to be confined to memory rather than experience!

Yesterday saw a friend and I delivering CVs to any building which looked substantial enough to need reasonably literate employees; and a few others which didn’t. I have said that a response rate of one in twenty could be regarded as reasonable. Indeed in El Crisis it might be miraculous, but one must have faith.

We will continue to spread the news of availability this afternoon and will enliven our little jaunt by delving electronically into the murky finances of The School That Sacked Me.

We have had, as they say, certain information (which I am assured is in the public domain) given to us and we now have to work out if there are, shall we say, any discrepancies between what The Owner says is going on in her dysfunctional institution and what is really going on. We can foresee problems with the tabulation of accurate information to double check her figures as record keeping is not one of her strong points. We will have to work backwards from what we know and try and find something which does not fit easily with our knowledge and hope that it is enough to crush her. A fond hope, I know, but nevertheless a hope!

My team-by-adoption has won: one has to take success where one can find it, I suppose.

Barça humiliated Munich in the latest leg of the French version of the European Cup and we watched the massacre courtesy of the large television courtesy of the local corner restaurant in the charged atmosphere which you always get when you are watching Barça play in Catalonia.

This, I suppose is the popular part of my cultural experience as opposed to reading the short stories of Katherine Mansfield. I am reading these stories (‘Bliss and other stories’) on the tail of Kate Chopin’s collection of her novel ‘The Awakening’ with a few other stories. They make interesting companion reads with Mansfield being the more engaging. The Awakening is a compelling story of a woman finding herself with fatal consequences. Although American it is a story which seems particularly European with touches of the frustrating ennui that is so characteristic of the more sombre Russian tales of depression and death! This one is however imbued with an almost savage affirmation of love and life; the tragedy (if it is a tragedy) comes from the impossibility of reconciling individual truth and honesty with the familial and social ties which define so much of life.

Mansfield brings to high significance the alarming reality of the significant detail. Her writing is sure and fluent and she invites the confidence of the reader in her narrative style. To me she seems like the readable version of Virginia Woolf.

Today has been yet another depressingly damp day with the actual precipitation waiting until we set off on part two of the distribution of the CVs. I have a depressing feeling that we will be doing this on my behalf some time after the Easter Holiday.

After many frustrating attempts to print the information about The School That Sacked Me in some usable form, we finally succeeded when the combined technological knowledge of three minds was applied to the problem and one of them suggested a possible solution.

Needless to say that mind was not mine, but, on the other hand, I was the one pressing all the keys!

Gradually the case against the School That Sacked Me grows; but not, unfortunately my confidence that anything will really be done about a glaring instance of educational unfitness for use that the school represents.

I will have to re-inflate my flabby optimism.

Again.

Why not pad?

There is much to be said for tile floors in a hot country.

At the moment this country is not hot. The weather is damp and the beach has that deep ochre look which doesn’t go well with a washed out hazy blue-grey sky. I realised that the weather was beginning to get to me as I was taking the rubbish out to the bins and barely scowled at the cheery ‘bon dia’ of the person coming in the opposite direction.

Part of the reason I have to admit has nothing to do with the damp weather, and much more to do with tiles.

The person passing me and leading a dog was obviously our upstairs neighbour. The key is the dog.

Personally, I think that there is no place for a pet in a flat. The beach is, out of bounds for dogs, it is illegal to take a dog on to the beach. I have to say that particular law is not honoured in either the breach or the observance and foul curs foul at will.

This particular dog we know well, very well. Thanks to the tile floor on which it walks, we are fully conversant with its staccato progress as it minces about sounding as if it was walking on a collection of screwdrivers. As it skitters about it has never, obviously, entered the degraded heads of its owners that its nails might need cutting.

Such vicious thoughts would never enter my giddy holiday head in the normal process of indulging my ingestion of vitamin D via sunlight. It its absence vitriol is sprayed in a fairly general arc seeking whom it may destroy. (I will allow Stewart to check the grammar of that statement incorporating as it does a half remembered phrase from the Book of Common Prayer!)

Meanwhile the reading of a book of short stories by Kate Chopin – one of the many authors dredged up to complete the almost total feminisation of literature studies in our schools – is part of my displacement strategy to hinder my application of effort to the work that I should be doing for school.

I am still reading ‘The Awakening’ the first of the stories which I think I last read in a fit of absent mindedness when I was looking for pre-twentieth century non-British short literature to cover a number of bases in the coursework requirements for GCSE English. It was obviously too long for use and the subject matter was too subtle to hold many pupils’ interest.

Its setting links it to the short stories of Somerset Maugham but it lacks the more obvious narrative point of that author.

I have to say that I remember absolutely no point of the story so far, so completely did my mind wipe it out as having no utility for school use! I hope that I will be able to gain more enjoyment this time round as the requirements for short stories for my present crop of students is even more particular than for a group of 16 year old native English speakers!

I am now waiting for a friend to call so that we can join forces to make the distribution of CVs a little easier. This is not for my benefit but to give moral support to another. With any reasonable luck reciprocation will not be necessary, but preparing an updated version of my CV and drafting a general covering letter is part of the workload that I have to complete this holiday. Although my present school has given me every indication of positive support, I do not yet have the contract in my hands. This being the case, and with my experience of private education fresh in my mind, preparation for all eventualities seems to be called for!

The sun has now made a half hearted effort to show that it is still there behind the clouds by popping out for a moment to show what this holiday period could be like if really wanted to be a friend.

It’s now gone again.

Gnash!

Another View

I wonder how much Don Marquis is read today.

I was introduced to him (I suspect by Aunt Bet) as the creator of the wickedly engaging characters of Archy and Mehitabel. The fact that we are talking about a cockroach and an alley cat who often had poetic conversations about the meaning of life gives a certain je ne sait quoi to the literary creations.

The ‘poems’ of Archy were supposedly written by the cockroach by means of his head butting the keys of Don Marquis’s typewriter during the night! Archy often brings in the philosophical contributions of his friend, the alley cat Mehitabel who also happens to be the reincarnation of Cleopatra. Archy types Mehitabel’s song which includes her favourite refrain of “tourjours gai toujours gai.” Archy doesn’t do upper case and punctuation and we should be grateful that he manages the carriage return – just imagine how difficult that is for a cockroach! The following is a sample of the verse that he produces, though this extract is his relaying the voice of Mehitabel:

my youth i shall never forget

but there s nothing i really regret

wotthehell wotthehell

there s a dance in the old dame yet

toujours gai toujours gai

I thoroughly enjoy these poems and you rapidly discover that there is a sort of secret society of people who know and like them – all part of the Masonry of Poetry!

Last night I read something different from Don Marquis: a novel.

Called ‘The Cruise of the Jasper B.’ it was a bewildering piece of work. Half children’s fairy story and half detective adventure story the third half is surrealistic fantasy!

It concerns a copy writer suddenly coming into a fortune left by a teetotal uncle and deciding to spend his money refurbishing a decrepit boat lodged firmly on the bank. His purchase creates havoc with surrounding hoodlums while the sudden appearance of an English Lady with the body of a noble stalker complicates matters.

The style is difficult to characterize but if you imagine Dashiell Hammett meeting Daisy Ashford, hitting it off and deciding to write a story together then you will still be only part of the way to appreciating the light touch of lunacy which informs the narrative style of this extraordinary novel.

To be truthful I am not sure if I would recommend it. As I was reading it I constantly reminded myself that I was reading something from the pen of the creator of Archy and Mehitabel.

I also thought that it could make quite a good film. It reminded me a little of the books of Lemony Snicket. The 2004 film of ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ with Jim Carey is exactly the sort of production which ‘The Cruise of the Jasper B.’ deserves. Carey could have a part too, though this time he could play the hero Cleggett, rather than the villainous Count Olaf. I have since discovered that there is a film of the book but it is very much 'from' the novel by Marquis rather than 'of' the novel.

The weather has been substantially better today which is just as well as I have resorted to unusual forms of locomotion.

The holiday is an opportunity to get done all those things which you can put off with a clear conscience during term time because there ‘simply isn’t time’ to do them. One of the most pressing was for the car to have its first major service. As this was the first time that I have ever owned a car which has needed its first major service this was an occasion of some moment for me.

Saturday saw the appointment made and at 8.30 am this morning I was at the Peugeot dealers leaving the car. I decided, rather rashly as it turned out, to walk back to the flat.

Within twenty steps an urgent necessity made itself felt with every extra step! As I was in the centre of an industrial area the number of public conveniences was strictly limited – or nonexistent! Luckily I realized that there was an hotel within a reasonable distance. Gingerly making my way towards it I eventually catapulted my way into the place after missing the cunningly placed step just the other side of the sliding doors.

The toilets there were like something out of Blade Runner all dusty lighting and gloom with bright red square basins and slate walls – but for me it was like the Promised Land!

The walk back was much longer than I had estimated, but I felt thoroughly virtuous. But then I remembered my folding bike and felt thoroughly foolish that I hadn’t brought it with me to make the return journey!

Collecting the car saw me donning my crash helmet and, throwing caution to the winds, actually taking the bike out on to real roads, rather than the paseo on the beach. I remembered my dad’s dictum that if it was easier to walk with the bike rather than ride it, then you should walk it. For most of the way there is a cycle lane – but it was very narrow and when I met another cyclist coming in the other direction I had a moment of unstable panic!

Arriving at my destination the most disturbing aspect of picking up the car was not the paying of vast sums of money for very little, but rather folding up the bike to put it in the back of the car. I always seem to do it in a slightly different way each time I disassemble the bloody thing so that various parts of the machine are flapping around and failing to fit into the compact footprint (or whatever you call it) that makes it easy to fit into the boot.

Returning home, eventually, I felt fully justified in lounging on the balcony in the glorious sunshine which should always accompany a holiday.

Roll on the next week of fine weather!

I hope.

One lump or two?

Gravy is always the problem.

As I had a window of opportunity today to have a meal which only I had to eat I decided to ‘do a British.’ I went to Carrefour and bought a joint of meat rather than the thin slices that we usually cook.

I went to the Most Expensive Supermarket in the World (conveniently situated with a couple of hundred yards of the flat) to buy selected vegetables (if you have seen the prices you will realise why you select the vegetables individually and carefully) and I was set to go.

Given the lack of an oven in the flat (!) I bought a multipurpose microwave with a conventional oven and grill setting. Each time I use it I forget which buttons to press to get the thing to work as there are a bewilderingly large number of possible combinations of microwave, convection oven, grill - and then, many decisions later you have to add the complication of the variation in heat settings.

Each time I use it I end up looking like some sort of mystic devotee of The Cult of the Oven as I sit cross legged on the kitchen floor gazing at the control panel and pressing buttons pretty much at random. Perhaps I should explain why I sit on the floor.

When the kitchen was ‘designed’ (I use that word as a concept as no process of anything I understand as design was applied to the place) a space was left under the electric hob (ugh!) which clearly is intended to house an oven. The space is allegedly (according to the cheapskate owner) too small for a real oven so he thoughtfully provided the very cheapest sort of microwave. A useless piece of tatty junk!

My attempts to get him to provide a combination microwave were met with blank incomprehension, though eventually ‘a man’ appeared who measured the space and informed us it was too small for an oven. So, rather than spend rather less than 10% of the monthly rental that we pay for this ‘furnished’ flat, the owner gave up and very kindly provided us with nothing.

It took me one visit to our localish electrical store to find what I wanted and, fed up with the attitude of the owner, I bought it. And have used it inexpertly ever since.

The meat was placed inside and some programme was initiated which provided cooked (and well cooked I have to say) sliceable meat at the end of the rather arbitrary time that I (or rather the machine) had decided was necessary.

The veg. were placed in the pressure cooker and I assayed the Task of Hercules of making the gravy.

I like both the idea of gravy and also its taste. I don’t usually have gravy.

I know that these two statements look contradictory, and indeed are, but that is how I am. I have nothing against gravy, it’s just I don’t eat it. This time, however, I had decided to make an exception. I reasoned that if one is going to have a ‘British’ then one should go the whole hog.

I used fat from the meat and a (foreign) stock cube. I added the water from the vegetables and produced a dark, tasty but indubitably thin liquid. A little flour was called for and was duly added. That is to say, that is what I thought I added. In my serene professional haste what I actually added were micro breadcrumbs.

I would not, on mature reflection, suggest that my inadvertency has produced a new and exciting recipe which should be followed by all. No. What I ended up with was a thin, dark liquid with suspicious fluffy bits looking like minute dumplings in it. Tasted OK. In a way.

I had the meal defiantly outside. Although sunny, it is obviously not Spanish sunny as the people walking along the paseo were dressed as for autumn. I was wearing thin shorts and T shirt, the walkers on the beach had overcoats and jackets. Summer is still (though not for me) a couple of months away!

I have finished the crime short stores: an interesting school collection with contributions from Conan Doyle to Ruth Rendell. They have a selection of worthy educational ‘activities’ at the end of the book which are depressingly like the sort of stuff which I could have produced and which no one would ever have used. Including myself!

Moving to my eBook reader I read ‘Agatha Webb’ by Anna Katherine Green. Green is an author of whom I have heard because I did an on line search for out of copyright detective authors and hers was one of the names that came up. Further searches revealed that she had an impressive reputation and is looked on as one of the earliest of the American detective novel writers.

She is talked about with respect on websites which deal with the history of the detective novel and she is usually described as an author who produced stories with plots which were well presented and interesting. She also made every effort to ensure that the technical details of the law were accurate.

Although she was a pioneer and a woman in a world dominated by men she was not a supporter of feminism and was opposed to Votes for Women! She was born in 1846 and died in 1935: so she was born two years before the Year of Revolutions and died in the year that the Nazi government revoked the German citizenship of Jews. Quite a time span!

The novel ‘Agatha Webb’ is concerned with redemption and truth and seems nearer to Hawthorne than Chandler! The plot is complex and has an almost Dickensian reliance on coincidence. It has two detectives, a roué, a Bad Young Woman, deaths galore, money, shipwreck, sons, fathers, daggers, flowers, starvation, secrets and, as you might have guessed by that list, a fairly happy ending.

Detective stories do date very quickly. Many of the seemingly insuperable problems faced by detectives in the past leave them stumped, but leave the modern reading public shouting “Look for fingerprints!” or “Check the DNA!” Social attitudes also date stories and sometimes essential elements of the plot are dependent on some trait of behaviour which would pass without comment in the modern world.

Another choice of book tonight: but I might try and move a little up market this time!

The days ahead

The thing to remember is that I do not have a fortnight.

After ‘x’ number of years (where ‘x’ tends towards lots) where the Easter holiday was a full two weeks it is going to be hard to adjust to the fact that this so-called ‘holiday’ is only one week two days long! And, apparently I should be grateful about this as we are going back one day later than the general lot of teachers elsewhere!

I should, perhaps, not play the ‘hard-done-by’ card too enthusiastically as our term does end in June rather than July and we do have two full months of holiday – or in my case a possibly unlimited holiday!

My school still has said nothing about any extension to my contract, but has said that I will know after Easter. Perhaps that should have been written as ‘after Easter’ to give a true flavour of how unspecific it all is.

Dangerously I feel a part of the school. I am accepted as a part of the institution by teachers and students alike; sometimes to a disconcerting degree. I am producing material which is welcomed with alacrity and I am assumed to have a professional knowledge commensurate with my experience. Approaches and techniques which are second nature to an English teacher in a British comprehensive school are not so common in an institution which is dedicated to the teaching of English as a foreign language. Therefore the facile production of a list of ideas which takes me a few minutes is greeted by my colleagues as little short of miraculous.

Alas! I know from personal experience that ‘gratitude’ in educational terms is time limited and contingency specific. In other words recollection is short and then the juggernaut of the timetable washes away the remembrance of short term fixes and expedient competence becomes a half recalled, mostly forgotten vague gratitude.

I am prepared, of course, to rewrite all of the above if the school does the decent thing!

The preceding screed was actually written on Friday, but I was too late to put it on the blog page before the time had switched to Saturday.

This is actually Saturday – and the weather has at last relented and made itself amenable to my lying on the balcony listening to Radio 4 on the headphones. Bliss!

I have started reading some fairly decent short stories connected with crime on the flimsy pretext that they could be useful for some or all of my classes. My eBook reader is fully charged and waiting for me to choose to wallow in yet another rubbishy book by some low out of copyright writer.

I could of course, just as easily wallow in some of the greatest literature that has ever been produced in English that is out of copyright as well and which has been carefully been put out on the web by the good folk in Project Gutenberg – but, hey, I’m on holiday and if I want to do a bit of literary slumming then I think that I have earned it!

I have just made myself some chicken curry with left-over meat and a tin of Homepride cook-in sauce. The tin of curry sauce was snatched from the shelf of the local Carrefour where there was a little Union Flag next to the price indicating that it was a British speciality. In the event, though palatable it was a little bland for my taste and seemed more in keeping with the demands of Spanish taste rather than the spicier expectations that I had. I fear I will have to wait until I return to the Old Country before I relish a ‘real’ Indian. The discovery of an Indian restaurant near the Liceu turned out to be poor value for money and a true disappointment in terms of taste, so I am still looking for an ‘authentic’ Indian restaurant in Barcelona.

The car sort of been booked in for its first major service. My visit to the dealership merely unearthed a startled looking mechanic who, wild eyed with horror at my relentless Spanish retreated to a computer screen and told me that Monday looked OK and I was to come around on spec at the crack of dawn on Monday. We’ll see!

Now back to books to start my traditional holiday feast of literature after the fast of working days filled with school trivia and tiredness.

The quality stories are almost finished. How low shall I go into the murky undergrowth of forgotten novels of the early twentieth century?

Wait and see!

The sun will shine . . . tomorrow?

As if to quieten my grumpiness about how much I am paid there is programme on television about how desperate the search for jobs is in some parts of Spain.

We have yet to see any real effects of the crisis here in Castelldefels, or at least here next to the sea. I always make the assumption that most of the people around us bought their flats years ago and have watched their investment grow and grow. Even with the crisis wiping off a substantial chunk of wealth from the book value of properties here, I think that most of the owners are still very much quids in as far as their investment is concerned!

There is very much a sense of the end of term about the staff and certainly about the students. As if to give a little extra spice to the end of term one of the years is being reorganized so that I can experience a little thrill of discomfort to keep me going through the short holiday break. I lose three pupils and gain six. The story of my life!

Instead of diminishing, the work load that I have seems to be increasing. I will continue to monitor what is going on and learn that if I want to survive in the private sector of education I will have to keep my mouth shut for the immediate future.

My contract is a temporary one and I will not be in an even remotely secure position until I get a permanent contract. Such a contract does not mean that you cannot be sacked summarily – it merely means that you will be entitled to the statutory days’ compensation for each year you have worked in your position!

Spain is not Britain and sometimes the different ways that things are done are breathtakingly different. But all part of the experience!

The weather continues to be poor and the poverty of the sunshine here is exacerbated by my listening to Radio 4 and hearing that fine sunny conditions continue unabated in the land of my birth!

I have just seen the six day weather forecast and I gained no confidence from their prognostications of gloom and dampness. I think curling up on the sofa with a cup of tea and my eBook may characterise this Easter holiday!

The last words of Osvald Alving are beginning to haunt me!

Damp Doubts

Perhaps because it was raining I looked at my pay information with a jaundiced eye. I am getting almost exactly twice what an unskilled production line worker would get. I can’t help feeling that there is something radically wrong with the financial priorities of the country in which I am living.

If I work it out in detail, my monthly salary just about pays the rent with the extras connected with running a dwelling. So I am in the strange position of having a job which just about covers the expense of living next to the sea. But, for the greater part of the day, I am not in a flat but in a classroom. The view, which from some classrooms is fairly spectacular, is not one which I can enjoy as I have demanding customers clamouring for my attention. It is one of those ‘nice’ problems (in the nice sense of the word) where the work takes you away from the thing you are working to enjoy! Ah the taxing paradoxes of life!

Enough of this maudlin self-pity over a couple of days of rain! What if the skies are as dull as a Spanish television advert break; what if the rain hammers down causing the route from building to building to become even more hazardous; what if the pay is derisory; what if I carry on depressing myself and forget that the summer is almost upon us!

Ah, the promise of lazy days of sunshine! And a holiday which lasts two whole blissful months!

Which is the case in point. What happens for the two months of the summer and the month before pay? There is little likelihood of the school paying for the summer even if they employ me to start teaching again in September. Contracts are contracts and mine only stretches until the end of June. The School That Sacked Me recommends to its hapless workers that are effectively sacked at the end of the school year that they apply to the employment office and ask for unemployment money to tide them over the lean months and then they will possibly be re-employed by The Owner at the start of the next school year!

Anything is possible. Even, I like to dream, being paid over the summer. Fond, I’m afraid, hope!

Three more days to go to the holidays and staff and students are more than ready to succumb to vacation inertia now. Unfortunately it is all systems very much go in our place with new initiatives about to be sprung on us.

The class of the youngest pupils I teach has now changed to another group; my second class has been relocated; my oldest pupils have been joined by others; one of my other classes is about to be enlarged and who knows what other delights await me. Although all this sounds unkind and directed it is not: classes have been rearranged to cope with the demands of examination classes and change of pupils is to facilitate knowledge of pupils’ names. I am no longer consigned to a windowless classroom in the depths of the building and all is well with the world.

Talking of wellness on our entry to the staff room this morning we were greeted by a plastic tray of sugar glazed donuts next to the tea and coffee making facilities. Next to the donuts was a pile of chocolate covered waffle-type confections which were not to be resisted. Maybe not resisted, but certainly unfinished as their sucrose packed nature was explored by the tea sodden tongue. I managed half before I gave up!

I have been searching for the last couple of days for the alleged marking from my oldest pupils who maintain that they have given me the work that I am berated them for forgetting. A salient detail divulged by one of the workless pupils convinced me that I had seen these elusive papers and therefore instigated a thorough search. Alas! All my best efforts seemed to be doomed to failure until I looked in a multi pocket file labelled with the names of the classes that I teach. And there they were, all the missing work, in the section marked ‘marking’ together with the name of the class. With my sense of organization it was the very last place that I would have expected me to file them!

I have now subscribed to the very excellent magazine ‘The Week’ for the next three years. This invaluable magazine is my window on the world and its sometimes idiosyncratic view of what was important during the last seven days is always invigorating. Although there are no articles in any real depth, the gobbet-like approach appeals to my thoroughly dilettante soul and, as a confirmed snapper up of unconsidered trifles it is purpose made for me.

My previous weekly read some years ago was The Guardian Weekly which incorporates a digest from Le Monde and The Washington Post – but it was altogether too grown up for me and it often remained unread at the end of the week. The Week is never unread as anyone could tell by the smudges of the slippery type which disfigure its well thumbed pages.

The approaching holiday will give me an opportunity to catch up on my reading which has sadly reduced itself to normal term time levels – where the last book I read would truly be flattered if I called it pulp fiction. It was an anti German rant concerning attempted Hun beastliness from the pen of the creator of Tarzan. Something of historical interest only – though I have to say that I read it avidly!
Early start tomorrow and a long day; but I intend to take my two early ends of the day that I am owed.

A fine descent into the expanse of the holiday.

Life is long!

Blake, so he wrote, found infinity in a grain of sand. He was obviously a follower of Mies van de Rohe and discovered that “less is more” long before Mies wrote his famous dictum.

My glimpse of infinity came via a tortuous meeting in school which started at five and finished at eight – with the second part of it delayed until tomorrow!

The ‘meeting’ was something which I assume is required by the Generalitat as no sane person would countenance such a fiasco without the inspired intervention of government.

The meeting was held in the library which was converted into some sort of court room for the occasion. Tables were set out in the centre of the room and all the teachers taking classes in the lower school were ranged around them. A few chairs were left vacant for the elected representatives of each form to occupy.

The form the meeting was to take was that the representatives would seat themselves then the form teacher would give an overview of the form while the pupils took notes to report back to the pupils at a later date. Then all (yes all) the teachers who taught the form would have an opportunity to say a few words. Finally the representatives themselves could say, basically whatever they liked.

Everyone wanted their 15 minutes of fame and some got quite carried away and spoke interminably. At the best of times and in ideal circumstances this sort of meeting would be excruciatingly boring. When the only languages used (with one shining exception) are Spanish and Catalan the boredom enters another dimension of awfulness.

There is just so much enjoyment that can be extracted from taking tiny, desperate sips of water from a school plastic cup while people talk in incomprehensible jargon about pupils you don’t know in a language which, to understand, you would need subtitles at least!

The tedium was enlivened by one Bolshy little bugger of a pupil who seemed hyped up on having an audience of all the teachers who taught him and another who actually said nice things about me.

My contributions to the meeting (in impeccable English) were greeted, according to one of my English colleagues being told by a Spanish colleague, “Doesn’t he speak English well!” Almost like a native one is tempted to reply!

I have now had a meeting with the Directora who asked me about my intentions and, although she mentioned interviews she seemed fairly positive about my chances of remaining at the school. Things will become a little clearer after the Easter holidays. With any luck! I must admit talking about who I would speak to in the school to confirm details about a permanent contract gave the meeting with her a little spice and perhaps pointed towards a certain direction as far as a job was concerned!

However, I should bear in mind that private schools are a law unto themselves and nothing can be certain, or even likely most of the time!

Meanwhile there is the fact that day one of five days to the holiday has now irrevocably gone.

And that, dear reader is a good thing.

Art and Protest

However valid the reason for doing it may be, I always feel a little self conscious when traipsing along a busy street holding a union banner.

So, after an interminable bus journey (never take the 95 to Barcelona, always take the 94) I finally made it, half an hour late, but, as it happens at exactly the right time to take place in the march.

Our ‘march’ was a damp stroll around the block leaving a small tree outside the employers association as a sign and symbol of our protest. Our group (a couple of hundred strong) was protesting about the lack of progress there has been about the negotiations for the private (unregulated) section of education. The annual debate about the increase in wages looks very far from settled and the employers are trying to negotiate by trying to trade worse conditions for a small amount of money. Some things never change no matter what country you are in!

Because of the damp conditions there was no food provided as had been promised and the Catalan contingent of the protest were outraged; the British section just shrugged. Never let it be said that national stereotypes were obvious!

Duty done and whistle blown I went by metro to España to begin the long walk to MNAC. To my horror the whole of the front of the building was shrouded in dark netting as some sort of rebuilding is in progress. My horror was not that the building might be closed, but rather that the view from the first floor restaurant would be obscured while I had my well deserved lunch.

In the event I needed have worried as my attempts to have a meal were met with an expressionless “Impossible!” by an impassive maitre d’hotel who I could tell relished the refusal.

Foiled by my gourmet inclinations I was determined to be satisfied by my cultural aspirations and so, having got my free ticket by the magical production of my Amics de MNAC card I visited the present temporary exhibition “Sorolla. Visión de España,” from the Colección de la Hispanic Society of America.

The exhibition was in two parts. One part was of preparatory sketches and drawings for the commission and the second part was of the massive paintings themselves.

With the pretention which has become an essential part of my character, I did, of course prefer the sketches to the finished work. The finished panels were to grace the Manhattan headquarters of the Hispanic Society of America and were to show characteristic scenes representing the different regions of Spain.

The sketches that I liked showed fishermen wading through water; a couple of oxen and the sinister hooded figures from Easter time. The painting was fluid and gestural (a meaningless word used on the introductory blurb) but the impasto gave an almost sculptural effect. The ink drawing of the two oxen was obviously a quick sketch on a piece of paper which came to hand. It looks almost like some sort of hieroglyphic and, while the representational meaning of the piece emerges from the lines, it is a very satisfyingly abstract looking work.

For me the subject matter of the Easter penitents (as with depictions of bull fighting) is uncomfortable in a way in which more obviously distressing subject matter (e.g. human suffering) is not. The semi abstract sketch-like quality of the portrayal of the Easter procession in the work that I like makes the subject more of a design idea than a faithful representation.

The large scale works have a brio and vitality which is attractive and some of the brush work has all the exuberance of a Sargent. Throughout the time that I was looking at the paintings, which seemed to me to be accomplished but entirely unoriginal in their execution, I was reminded of a painter who I couldn’t place when I was in the exhibition.

It was only when I was leaving that I suddenly remembered who it was I was thinking of – Frank Brangwyn. Given the size of the finished paintings I really should have made the connection with the paintings I had looked at each time I went to the Brangwyn Hall in Swansea for one of the many concerts I heard there. Those massive paintings intended for the House of Lords have much in common with the panels produced by Sorolla (though I think that Brangwyn’s are the more accomplished) the same range of characters and the depiction of flora and fauna in generous colour and a clear representational style.

The exhibition was interesting without being fully satisfying. The range and extent of the material on sale associated with the exhibition seemed to indicate that my lack of enthusiasm was not shared either by the exhibition organizers or by the general public. So be it.

As a bonus I decided to finish my trip to Barcelona was going to what is probably my favourite exhibition space – Caixa Forum.

I revisited the Joaquim Mir show and am more firmly convinced than ever that the paintings he produced during his short stay in Mallorca are by far the most impressive he produced.

I was also struck by how badly they had all been framed. Many have come from private collections and it is easy to see that proud families have produced what can only be called ‘Heritage Frames’ to show how important the individual painting is. Given what the paintings depict the subject is often ludicrously at odds with the opulence of the frames. Still, an exhibition not to be missed – and free to boot!

Another exhibition in the same collections of Modernista buildings (and free too) is a retrospective of the paintings of Mersad Berber, a Bosnia artist of whom I have never heard. Although his name is not household, the quality of his drawing is so clearly related to that of the Great Masters that his images have a disturbing familiarity.

His debt to the history of art is made quite explicit in his various ‘homages’ to artists like Velazquez, Ingres and Gericault. Indeed his version of ‘The Raft of the Medusa’ almost covers a wall and is quite as disturbing as the original.

He has a delicacy of touch in line and assertive confidence in his brushwork. His use of collage gives a busy look to his canvases and suggests a narrative which is sometimes ambiguous and provocative.

As I ‘did’ his work last, I think that the pictures deserve another look when I am less tired.

Now for some mindless reading from the pen of Edgar Rice Burroughs!

Me Stephen! You reader!

Solidarity!

For what seems like the umpteenth time in succession the weekend dawns dull. Not only dull, but it actually has had the temerity to rain!

This is a problem.

A problem which touches the very (in both senses) socialist soul which I am fairly sure that I used to have at some point in the past – I think. Today has been set aside by my Union (the CCOO) for a demonstration in the centre of Barcelona for which I have received more than one email from my mate in the Union and who I feel I would be letting down if I did not attend.

But it’s raining!

As you see I hardly fit easily into the role of a Tolpuddle Martyr. But I do see my way to creating a strategy which will encourage my sun loving self to do the right thing.

I am prepared to bet that in the crowd watching Wales play Scotland at Murrayfield when I last attended the match, there was only one person in that multitude who, while cheering on Wales (in a match which we won incidentally) was clutching the catalogue raisonné of the National Gallery of Scotland under his arm! I think that a similar inclusivity can be adopted in this case combining Power to the People with Paintings for the Patricians. It is a long time since I have wound my way up the steps and escalators of Monjuïc to have a more than decent meal in the first floor restaurant and incidentally look at the paintings that I am getting to know pretty well. I am sure that my sense of working responsibility and cultural thirst can both be satisfied in a judiciously spaced visit to the capital.

This demonstration is not in My Barcelona. This is designation of those bits which I know. God knows My London is small enough stretching as it does from the Royal Academy in Piccadilly, to the electronic and book stores in the Tottenham Court Road and stretching down to the South Bank and reaching east to the Barbican, that morass of modern buildings and lost culture vultures!

My Barcelona is even smaller and is basically restricted to Las Ramblas with islands of familiarity in Monjuïc for MNAC; the high location of my school and on a parallel slope the wonderful Parc Guell; the restaurants of Port Olympic and one or two other places of particular significance.

The only problem I have is that the location of the demonstration is not in either My Barcelona or in an associated colony. I will have to branch out into new areas. A bit of map check is called for before I set off to catch the bus. I am going to rely on the much vaunted transport system of this area to get me there and back and to the gallery which is my bonus for going in the first place.

Fair’s fair!

Keep clicking!

The computer has been the baleful presence in the staffrooms today.

Our ecstasy of examinations has reached its apogee and all the results have to be placed in the computer. Not, of course in their raw form, but augmented, multiplied, divided and massaged. This is in preparation to the Great Printing which will distribute the final marks out of ten for all subjects.

Exciting though this is I fear that it is but a prelude to the highlight of the present season: the meeting.

After school on Monday we will be living the reality of a grotesque version of the painting by W F Yeames ‘And When Did You Last See Your Father?’ when the entire staff of the secondary section will be subjected to a ‘feedback’ by representatives of each form. In our version the child will be in charge instead of standing cowed before a relaxed collection of Roundheads - right but repulsive.

It is, apparently a marathon which takes boredom to new heights. The kids are not checked in what they say and so public denunciation could be a possibility! The pupils that I teach are beginning to realise that I am not the Mr Nice Guy that I appeared to be when teaching there for one short week.

It is easy to appear to be God’s Gift when your immediate predecessor has not been generally accepted by the kids. It is much more difficult to sustain pupil satisfaction over an extended period of time when you are trying to establish your own working method which demands that the pupils fit in with your own methodology rather than the relaxed educational environment that the students would like to exist. It will be interesting to hear if I make a guest appearance in the students’ speeches!

Next week is the last week before the Easter holiday and it can’t come too soon. I only hope it is graced with decent weather.

The tan is a priority!

The Power of the Paper Clip

With only an early morning’s reading of Stewart’s erudite email to strengthen and stimulate me I drove a very sleepy way to school to day.

With the examination frenzy now over and the marking frenzy now reaching its crescendo my day in school was a continuous flow of teaching, marking and duty. That sounds like a motto of one of the more gung-ho American military organizations!

My colleagues are more than helpful and have provided me with examination papers and marking schemes and I have struggled with Excel to try and put the results in some sort of electronic form. The typing is obviously no problem is it when I try adding the mathematical functions to the lists that the problems start. The simple stuff worked (up to a point) but the more complex calculations gave results that were simply fantastic. And indeed wrong.

One of the advantages of working in a school like mine is that there is expert advice on difficult programs available at a moment’s notice.

Once the mystical significance of the $ sign in the program had been explained to me the whole problem that had been facing me vanished. Quite why the $ sign is used in the way that it is in Excel was not explained but, in very much the same way that I learned and applied the formula for solving quadratic equations, I accepted it as one of those bits of magic that when you use it you get results that are pleasing.

All my results are now nicely tabulated and calculated and I have finally ended up with the result which all examinations and tests in Spain end up – a mark out of ten.

Such is my new found proficiency in Excel that I have even discovered (with a little help) how to make the program work out the finished result to only one decimal place. My previous best efforts merely resulted in final numbers which sometimes had a bewildering and frankly vulgar number of digits after the decimal point!

Tomorrow will see the arcane process whereby the numbers that I have produced will be added to other numbers in due proportion; averages will be taken and forced; other numbers will be introduced into the mix; judicious manipulation will be employed; calculators will begin to glow with overuse; computers will be hogged; tempers will be frayed and, eventually, the final Number Out of Ten will be ceremoniously entered on the computer as the summation of a term’s work.

This intricate mathematical chicanery is merely the fussy preliminary to an extraordinary general meeting which will be held on Monday after The Publication of the Mark Out of Ten.

This meeting is a gathering of the entire staff and representatives from all the classes. The form it takes is that the chosen pupils will take centre stage and then say what they like about their educational experience over the past term or year or whatever. They have, apparently, carte blanche to say what they like; nothing is off limits – up to and including commenting on individual teachers!

It should be quite an experience, though I will be partially restricted from the full effect by my faltering Spanish and my non-existent Catalan! I have no doubt that colleagues will be only too eager to translate the more juicy bits!

Interesting though this promises to be, I have also been assured by Those Who Know that it is a soul destroyingly boring experience. I, however, will maintain an eager anticipation so that the anti-climax will be all the more poignant when it happens.

Tomorrow promises to be a fraught day as I attempt to access the main computer listings and type in my paltry marks. At least I have my own computer and I will not be at the mercy of one of my colleagues slipping out for a visit to the toilet to free up one of the four computers that are set aside for the use of the secondary staff.

And there is teaching too!

Truly my cup runneth over.

Mark well, my lord!

There was only one topic of conversation at the lunch table today and that was examination marking.

I was frankly astonished as I had thought that examinations were the life blood of this institution. Such regular testing takes place that one would have expected such frequent occasions to slip by without a second word, but not so, quite wrong.

I now realize that simply because examinations are so intrinsic to the whole ethos of the place it is essential that their existence is celebrated by a series of woeful faces bemoaning the piles of marking which threaten the placidish life of our school. I further realize that the protestations of overwork in the marking department are actually a form of celebration. Bemoaning the burden is part of the exaltation of the process.

These examinations are not wordy affairs. There are usually far more words in the questions than there ever are in the answers. They are a ‘fill in the gap’ type questions with some ‘fit the word in a sentence’ type puzzlers to take the place of the essays!

You would think that such papers are easy to mark with many of the responses limited to a single permissible word. Alas! You woefully underestimate the insane genius which motivates most children when it comes to answering examination papers. They eschew the simple, direct answer and plump instead for some obsolete and Heath-Robinson like circumlocution or choose a verb formation so Byzantine and obscure that it makes Miltonic prose look like Enid Blyton. Whatever answers we think they might provide, the first few answer papers show areas of delirium that we have not even considered.

And giving the papers back is a horrendous operation as eleven year olds snap into Rottweiler divorce lawyer mode and question every mark you have deducted while using state of the art calculators to check your addition all the while questioning your qualifications to mark anything they have written wrong!

The most bizarre conversation I had was with a child who stoutly maintained that a squiggle he had drawn was actually the letter ‘h’. As what he produced resembled one of those open v’s that kids draw when they show flying birds I felt that he was pushing his luck. The fact that his ‘bird’ had a broken wing was universally accepted as making the squiggle unequivocally an aitch! Such are the customers that I have to satisfy on a daily basis! Pity me!

Or not. Lunch, in spite of the examinational conversation, was delicious with a salad of couscous and savory rice followed by merluza with pasta. Sweet was flan with chocolate cake which was all façade and no real content.

I understand that my classes are going to change as in the lower school we change our groups each term so that all teachers get to know all children. Eventually.

With my legendary inability to differentiate children by name after years of knowing them I fear that the present educational institution is a little optimistic if it expects me to achieve this in a couple of weeks!

Still nothing has been said about my continued employment in the place though my colleagues are blithely talking about what I will be doing next year there. I hope something is clarified before the Easter holiday otherwise I will have to start the via dolorosa of the Barcelona private schools hawking my CV about and hoping for the best.

My next opera is a work of which I have never heard so I will have to do some homework before I start pontificating about it!

And there is yet more marking to do!