Days pass.

Not only have I packed 17 boxes full of my books but also I have done all the marking to which I have access. Virtue can go no further!

The intensity of the marking fury that has taken over the school is now almost comical as teachers frantically evaluate against an inexorable timetable which demands that papers are marked over a very short period of time.

I have now marked the papers of four out of my five classes and the last set is waiting for me in the staff room of building one.

As time has gone on I have become much more Draconian in my demands for Real English and my exuberant red crosses march across many sanguine sheets of attempts to maul the majesty of the English Language.

If anyone is going to commit a linguistic crime against the language of Shakespeare, Milton and A A Milne then it is most definitely going to be me rather than some foreign neophyte. At least my infelicities are committed with malice of forethought and not because phrasal verbs are incomprehensible obstacles to communication!

On the packing front, more perfectly sized IKEA boxes have been purchased (at vast expense) and the filled ones are now forming a familiar island of lightish brown in the centre of the room. Even with my cruelly depleted selection of books in the flat, it is probably going to take some sixty boxes to contain the fragments of a proper library that I have had to sulk over during the past two years.

I suppose that my bubbling enthusiasm to see my books again sounds precious and affected but only to those who are not touched by the bibliophilic addiction that has gripped me for as long as I can remember.

The physical proximity of my books is important as are the different characters that the individual volumes possess. The feel of a book; the way it sits in your hand; the texture of the paper; the sounds, the susurration of the pages; the smell of mustiness, of newness – a books is a sensual object, a physical presence, something which is graspable yet intangible at the same time.

I have never managed to get over the sheer value of most of my books. What they offer is often ludicrously out of proportion to the paltry sums that I have paid for them. I remember a series of Wordsworth Classics which offered Classic texts in paperback for one pound. ‘Wuthering Heights’ or ‘Emma’ or ‘Great Expectations’ or ‘Lord Jim’ or ‘The Just So Stories’ or ‘The Warden’ for a quid! You couldn’t get a packet of crisps on a Ryanair flight for that!

When Ruskin said that “If a book is worth reading it is worth buying” he meant that every book that is worthy of being read should become a familiar possession. A book which is not merely a text, but is a familiar companion; something you know your way around and which (as it is yours) you can be free to annotate and use as a ‘partner’ in debate. I rarely annotate as I still maintain a stuffy reverence for the printed word which sees my scrawl on a pristine page as little less than sacrilege rather than a continuing dialogue with the author!

I am even looking forward to the torture of constructing a whole phalanx of ‘Billy’ bookcases to house the freed captives from the prison of Bluspace.

The time is rapidly approaching when the Bluspace Thousands will at last come home!

Roll on!

To do the impossible . . .

Utilizing all available windows of opportunity afforded by the chaotic timetable of the examination ravaged institution in which I work, a reasonable amount of marking was completed today.

It is all mounting up and I do not see how it is all going to be completed by the school imposed deadline when all the results have to be fed into the computer. In the deathless words of one colleague, “No matter how unreal it all looks, it will be done because it has to be done and there is no alternative to it not being done.” I bow to the inevitability of such cogently expressed logic and feel strangely calm.

To those of you who aver that I could be marking now rather than typing, I merely adduce the experience of teaching and state that to do something unpalatable you have to prepare by doing something you want to do. Or you could merely look on this as some form of displacement activity – which I would maintain is what I was saying in the first place!

At its best all that can be heard in the staff rooms is the swish of stapled pages being turned over and the scratch of pens on margins. I said “at its best” because that is not what usually happens.

There are distinct differences between the staff room in Building 1 and that in Building 4. Building 1 is the original starting point of the school: the elegant town house on the hill built in the traditional form of a masia. Along the first floor side of the building with the spectacular view of Barcelona are located the Directora’s room; the ‘library’ and the staff room. The ‘library’ was, presumably, at one time the dining room with the two other rooms created by folding glass doors. These doors are still there, but are now regarded as permanent fixtures rather than temporary.

Building 1’s staff room has elegant wood panelling and some remarkable floor-to-ceiling glass fronted cupboards. The usual debris of teaching drags the room down to the mundane but if you look you can still see the faded glory that was once the basis for the house.

The atmosphere here is restrained and with the access to the balcony, civilized.

By contrast the harsh modernity of the staff room in Building 4 seems to encourage a more aggressive tension where the only wood is found in the commodious chipboard lockers that are provided for staff. Here the phone never ceases to ring and pupils to knock on the door. The photocopier is in another room and the provision of computers is laughably inadequate. But it’s the talking that is most difficult to cope with.

When I am confronted with marking then my attention span makes Homer Simpson look like Simon Stylites. I have never been noted for my inability to participate in a conversation but it is the Spanish version of conversation that defeats and depresses me.

Although it is a shameful generalization bordering on the racist I have to say that Spanish people do not listen. As they do not listen it therefore follows that they do not need to pause when someone else is talking. You therefore get all participants in a Spanish conversation talking at the same time. When you are in an enclosed modern space, bounded by glass metal and reflective surfaces, such a cacophony is almost unbearable. Add to this the need that Spanish people find to yell down telephones and a sort of audio hell is created in the very place where you need some silence to foster concentration.

One wouldn’t mind if the simultaneous conversations cut the talking time in half, but this, surprisingly does not occur! It is only the fact that my precious permanent contract is tantalizingly out of reach in the distant month of September that stays my mouth and hands from suggesting that interchange rather than overlay is the most expeditious way to facilitate communication!

I am sure that every day is going to provide some ‘New House Related Thought For The Day.’

Today’s thought concerns access to the house. The house has a large front gate covered with that sort of rough twig-like carpet which is used to restrict the hoi-polloi from gazing into the houses of those who dwell near the sea. The gate opens to reveal a driveway large enough to park a couple of cars.

Herein lies the problem. In Spain the mere fact that you have a gate and a driveway large enough to park a couple of cars does not mean that your average Spanish seaside visitor will not park across the entry to your property denying you access. This is quite legal if totally selfish. If you live within spitting distance of the beach then every (and I mean every) reasonable (and unreasonable) inch of pavement, road and gateway will be used.

The only way to ensure that you have access is to apply to the local government and have an official sigh erected on your gateway which ensures that no one will park there. This is not a service provided for nothing; it is something that will cost you. As a mere renter of the property I cannot get this sign, it has to be done by the proprietor. Another hurdle to be surmounted. I have at least found out what it should cost. One goes on from here.

I can no longer delay the categorical imperative: I have to mark.

Pray for me!

Tradition has a reason!

I can relax: I marked one question in one examination paper before I went to bed last night (Friday.) In the strange job-related psychology which operates in my mind this means that I will get a substantial part of the marking done. Said marking is now strewn along the sofa with the top of the red pen pointing ominously in my direction.

Many, many times have I fripped away a Friday evening in an orgy of self indulgence (drinking cups of tea and reading) and failed to complete the statutory single piece of marking that tradition demands and have therefore condemned myself to the ecstasy of a work-free weekend, but with the consequent penalty of the ‘Sunday Afternoon Agony.’

This is the period in the weekend when a frivolous teacher realizes that he has not completed work which has to be done by Monday morning. The realization that the work has to be done does not necessarily mean that the frivolous teacher will sigh a deep sigh and get on with it. Oh no! What it means is that the frivolous teacher will wallow in misery as he contemplates the omission and sinks ever deeper into depression as he does nothing about it and finally goes to bed with things undone which ought to be done.

At this point psychology stops and physiology takes over. At least in my case it does. When I go to bed, I go to sleep. I can have the weight of the world on my shoulders but when my head hits the pillow it becomes the sole possession of my mate Morpheus. I can wake up and the weight resumes its crushing position in an instant, but while asleep that is exactly what I do.

The Friday night token marking has become as much a ritual feature of my professional life as Nadal adjusting his underpants between shots just before he bounces his balls. And what a cheap comparison that was!

The marking of these ‘end of year’ scripts is but the first stage in the Byzantine process of obtaining a final mark and I foresee much discussion before the grade is placed in the computer. As the kids will have obtained these marks by cheating and mindless rote learning I fail to see the point in giving the marks extra credibility by discussing them as if they were anything more than crude indications of the pupils’ ‘educational’ worth.

Some of my colleagues have impassioned discussions about the awarding of a quarter of a mark. I usually sit and adopt an unnaturally quiescent attitude in these debates because, after long and deathly experience I know that this is a topic about which everyone has a point of view. A point of view, moreover, that they are eager to share. Because I consider the whole process of the way we test these kids to be fatally flawed I truly don’t care what the decision is. All I want is a decision (any decision) and I’ll mark to it. Such cynicism comes cheap: just look at my wages slip!

The sea is unusually rough today (for the Mediterranean that is) and I am typing this to the accompaniment of crashing waves.

It is one of my continuing photographic projects to get a decent photograph of our waves – or at least using Photoshop to fabricate one. With the rather domestic rollers that we get it is not easy, but if the waves continue to the end of my second mug of tea I might trudge down to the water’s edge and try again. Sometimes enlarging a tiny detail of our ‘mighty’ two foot waves makes it look as though I have been on holiday in Hawaii.

I live in hope!

Sunday 7th June 2009

The first boxes have been packed. The first steps on this particular Via Dolorosa have been taken!

I cannot recall any move I have made with pleasure: the process that is. The end result I have often enjoyed. With the possible exception of one particular move from Neuadd Lewis Jones back home to Hatherleigh Road.

Even though I had a single small room in my university hall of residence I managed to pack so much into it that the bottom lockable drawer of the in-built wardrobe which we allowed as vacation storage for some of the stuff was wholly inadequate and we had to move most of our belongings for each holiday.

I, unlike my friends (with the possible exception of Robert) prevaricated endlessly until the very last moment to pack. Packing always depressed me and it was only an adrenaline fuelled deadline and to the accompaniment of the insanely jolly music of Gluck and Grétry that my packing was ever finished.

On the eve of one departure we had all celebrated with more than usual enthusiasm and I had probably OD’d on my tipple of choice at the time – small sweet sherries – and in the morning I was very much the worse for wear and thoroughly disinclined to find solace in the mundane putting of one thing on top of another in a compact space. I was much more inclined (or rather reclined) to lie on my bed and contemplate the true wretchedness of the cruel world.

In this supine position I was visited, like a latter day Job, by a series of Stephen’s comforters, friends who bewailed my condition and prophesied calamity. Thinking about it, I was probably more like Samson, eyeless in Swansea on my bed with pains, being visited by waves of people designed to test my faith. Needless to say I failed all these tests, but nevertheless maintained what I thought was a sort of simple dignity in adversity by lying motionless with my eyes closed and only emitting small groans.

Eventually I was visited by Colin who tut-tutted about my condition, informed me in ringing tones that my father would soon be arriving to take me home and then, wonder of wonder, started to pack for me!

Through almost closed eyes I watched this paragon of friendship go about my packing with the methodical rigor that characterised his approach to life.

About half way through this heaven sent aid I realised that I was feeling much better, but I kept most mousey quiet in case Colin disappeared back into the world of fantasy!

I did not open my eyes fully and Colin completed my packing and, with a last harrumph of contempt at my sherry ravaged form vanished.

Unfortunately no matter how many small sweet sherries (ugh!) I might drink and no matter how still I might lie no Colin is going to fly in from New Zealand to help. One could see his moving to the antipodes as a direct response to the fear of a repetition of that experience!

Just how we are actually going to move all our stuff is something which we have only tentatively approached with vague gestures of casual thought probing possibilities – and wonder just whose cars we can press into use!

The boxes we used for our first pack were collected by me from IKEA. IKEA on a Saturday in Catalonia is not the place to which a reluctant shopper should be taken. So Toni stayed resolutely at home. Left to my own devices I looked at beds, tables and my beloved ‘Billy’ bookcases which are going to form a substantial part of a purchase in the near future to house my books which are soon to be released from their prison in Bluspace and at long last be on display again.

Although IKEA has many positive aspects you only have to ask any passing shopper and they will be eager to share their own horror stories about the store.

It rapidly becomes clear that they are many ‘worst points’ to the IKEA shopping experience. I know, from thankfully second hand experience, the true horror that attends the opening of an IKEA store. This is when hordes of design starved, money strapped people pour into the area and cause utter chaos in all aspects of the human and communication worlds.

Inside the store (given the serpentine progress that the true devotee is supposed to make in their pilgrimage through the shop) you are constantly impeded by gay couples blocking the aisles discussing the shape of a tea spoon or married couples with various degrees of child impedimenta avidly examining inexplicable pieces of plastic which obviously have their place in the domestic environment.

For me the worst, worst bit of the IKEA experience is knowing what you want and knowing where you need to go to get what you want. As soon as your progress becomes anything more than a sort of quiescent shuffle with eyes wide with wonder at the reasonably priced goodies on offer then the ‘Truman Show Effect’ comes into operation.

As you step purposefully forward towards your objective, at once and from all sides people and pushchairs appear and block your path. Any attempt to bypass the human obstacles will be countered by couples examining huge photographic pictures or long and complicated pieces of flatpack impeding any attempt to gain your destination.

You need the calm of a Buddhist sage on the verge of Nirvana to survive the frustration of the feeling that you are the only one on a specific mission in the Swedish stasis that affects the vast majority of shoppers in the store.

My more prosaic purchase this time was 20 cardboard boxes, beautifully designed which, from a flat template were quickly constructed into handy sized containers with an integral lid. I know that I should be getting boxes from local shops and supermarkets, but the IKEA offerings are so exquisitely designed that it would seem to be penny pinching vulgarity to allow them to languish in the store!

Tomorrow will see me purchasing 40 more IKEA boxes so that the great packing of the books in the flat can commence.

The news, being flashed to me via my internet radio, is grim. For the first time in the last 100 years or so, it is being predicted that the Conservatives are likely to take the popular vote in Wales. That is the sort of information that turns my stomach and makes me feel furious about the bone deep cowardice of MPs who are the sole culprits for the danger that they have brought to the whole system of parliamentary government of my country. If they had reformed the totally corrupt system of expenses (which they created, sustained, defended) and given themselves the salary that they needed to fulfil their jobs then this disgusting situation might not have occurred.

God rot them!

Variety makes the day

Just when you think that you have met the apogee of nastiness is when you find out that there is a further depth that you did not suspect. Like when you find out that Attila the Hun as well as etc etc also read Jeffrey Archer novels and thought they were great literature.

In much the same way the worst bank in the world I (aka BBVA) has refused to pay my rent because the regular payments were a day late because of a bank holiday. There is, of course enough money in my account to make the payment but the automated idiocy of the bank takes no account of any deviation from the norm.

It will be a positive pleasure to leave them. Which I trust will be soon – just as soon as they give me back my aval!

Rather than relieve me in an exam supervision, a teacher of French threw herself to the floor and had to be taken to hospital. The end result of which was that I was trapped in a history exam for two hours. Well, better than teaching!

As this was early leave I was able to visit the branch of El Corte Ingles which is fairly near the school and on my way home.

It is an extraordinary store built on the same lines as the Guggenheim in New York – though without the spiral. The circular floors of the store rise up three stories but leave a vast circular space in the middle. It does mean that you can see the contents of the entire store from any point on the circumference of the floor area. Also like the Guggenheim it presents the same frustration when you realize that your final destination is a vast circular distance away from your present location.

The service there was a delight. A be-suited gentleman who spoke English was found to assist me in any purchases that I might make and a further be-suited gentleman guided me around the best value selection of reputable name white goods that the store could present.

It was altogether a delightful experience and I had to restrain myself with some mental force from instantly agreeing to buy anything which was put before my gadget hungry eyes.

I have emerged with a list of their best offers which will have to be compared with the best that the internet can offer.

And then there is marking. Which has to be done – and I haven’t completed my single symbolic script to ensure that I get something done during the weekend.

I defy augury!

Possibly.

Changing times

In spite of the fact that I had the opportunity to have a lie in today but the built in alarm clock would not allow such indulgence and I got up at the normal time and got to school early – as usual.

What met me there was an air of controlled panic as the examination days proper began. The kids were wandering around with papers and books and looking vaguely worried as if the show of concern would compensate for the lack of real effort that they had made in their revision. The ethos of the school is work dominated so to wander around with text books studying is nothing out of the ordinary and is accepted by all.

As cheating is also an integral part of the ethos we have had to take certain precautions to try and check the natural propensity of the Catalans to re-jig the odds in their favour. We have produced the same examination paper but with the questions in a different order and on different pages so that there is an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ paper which has been distributed so that adjacent rows had a different paper.

For the whole of the examination I wandered up and down the classroom with a ‘meaningful’ expression redolent of suppressed suspicion playing around my usually jocose features. The end result, unless I have overlooked a form of cheating which is so sophisticated that it passed me by, is that I have invigilated the first totally honest examination in the history of the school! But perhaps I exaggerate.

The marking has now piled up and there is an inexorable timetable which demands that all of it is finished by the middle of next week because the results are an essential component in the complex mathematics which produces the final ‘mark out of ten’ which will be the magic figure placed on the computer record and will be summation of the effort made throughout the year.

On the ‘Home’ (with a capital ‘H’) front, I have now had some advice from a lecturer in the university about what to do when the owner turns nasty over the return of my (MY!) money in the iniquitous aval bancario and his refusal to hand back the further two months deposit that was given to him at the start of our renting of the flat.

The wife of the lecturer, who is one of my colleagues, also gave me the valuable information that my favourite shop is offering a credit card which will give twelve months interest free repayments. El Corte Ingles is not the shop of first resort when buying basic household equipment but it is unequalled in its delivery and after sales service and has an M&S approach to returns. It is the sort of place from which you would buy if someone else was paying.

But, to my ever accepting ears my colleague told me that the difference in price was minimal and the advantages enormous. It is certainly worth looking into and will fit in nicely with my proposed visit to the concert on Friday. This is the concert of the three line whip to listen to a friend of Hadyn’s in the performance of Carmina Burana.

To get the tickets I will have to brave one of the holes in the wall as they are linked into the ticket system of the hall and I will be able to choose price and seat. In theory! I will perhaps leave such technical niceties to the weekend when it will make a useful break to the orgy of marking which will have to take place!

Meanwhile the royal hunt of the cardboard boxes will have to start otherwise we will find out just how soon the end of the month can jump out at you!

This weekend will have to see the start of the packing otherwise we are going to be panicking later in the month. Perhaps nothing on earth can stop the panic which, surely, is an integral part of the moving experience – otherwise why would it be ranked with bereavement and childbirth as one of the most traumatic experiences of life?

Twenty two days to go and counting!

Consider the house for a moment

A long day today with the loss of a free period and therefore having to stay with the same class for two hours, the last hour of which was the last hour of the day. O Joy!

Our school day is extra long so that you have at least one free period every day. This is, of course, a sly redefinition of ‘free’: if you make the normal day extra long then of course you can appear to be generous with the free periods. I am not fooled by such obvious subterfuge but, as I still need to have a permanent contract I say nothing. Well, little. Well, little for me anyway.

I am having serious doubts about the whole nature of ‘education’ in the school. The courses that we teach as so test and text book led that application of knowledge in any meaningful way is limited to put it mildly. However, even for the distressingly small amount of money that this rich, rich school pays, it appears that I can be bought.

To be fair to the school they sort of look to me to provide a slightly different approach and be more literature based. But any deviation from the Sacred Texts of the deadly dull course books that we have is greeted with little less than panic by the kids. They talk to each other and any deviation from the path of text and test is grasped and used as an accusation. Any individual teacher led innovation which might lead to a perceived advantage for any class is used as the basis for an extended moan.

It is at this point that the excellent and level headed Head of English is invaluable. With her extensive experience she knows just how fleeting is the attention span of perceived injustice on the part of the students. There is, as she often points out, always something new to capture their attention! I truly think that her sensible approach is going to be the way that I survive in the place!

The fact that we had asparagus for lunch today in school should not be enough to dull my belief that I am not really ‘teaching’ in the way that I understand the word. I suppose that this high sounding qualification is somewhat lessened by the fact that I take the money at the end of the month – and will continue to do so, in spite of the horror that sometimes strikes me when I look at the grammar that I am supposed to be explaining to students who, I am sure, care and understand the concepts involved with much more sincerity and passion than I do!

Tomorrow the examinations in school begin in earnest and the deluge of marking starts. To counterbalance this horror there is the ever present delight of window shopping for the necessities of the empty house which is getting daily closer!

Never let it be said that I am not in touch with the important things of life!

And just how many exclamation marks have I used in this writing!

All change!

Never let it be said that I don’t try and find something interesting to start off a new month. Well, for me anyway.

We’re moving.

The deed has been done and a deposit has been put down as the start of paying out vast sums of money to get a new home.

We will be staying in Castelldefels, but moving further up the coast and be living almost in a line drawn from the bottom of the Olympic Canal to the sea. We will be on the second line from the sea but will still have a view from the top storey of the house.

For it is a house. With upstairs and everything. Even what could be a garden? In time.

The real horror now starts in packing everything up without the help of Pickfords. And we have no boxes. On the other hand we are only a short drive away from our new place.

Our struggle will be to get back all the money which is controlled by the owner and his appalling estate agents. We anticipate many occasions for outraged innocence to voice its disgust at the way that money works!

Meanwhile my one day holiday is over and reality in the form of school tomorrow looms.

Tomorrow is for measuring the rooms and (from my point of view) seeing how many bookcases can be fitted in.

I am not entirely sure that Toni’s view is exactly the same as mine!

Gather your belongings!

Up bright and early to find a new place to live.

Having decided that our Owner is little better than the Attila the Hun of flat management we are now determined to leave our present domicile and find something new.

My foray into the offices of the low life who masquerade as what is laughingly called estate agents resulted in the usual fairly dismissive attitude they adopt to anyone desperate enough to have to use their services. My Spanish which can rise to specific occasions in a fairly hysterical way browbeat the indifference of the people on the other side of the desk and they actually gave me some useful information!

While I was in yet another chair opposite yet another vaguely informative person who couldn’t use the printer I was phoned on my mobile by the second place I had gone into.

I must pause here.

You probably do not understand just how remarkable that is. This is Castelldefels where estate agents are definitely doing you a favour if they don’t actually throw you out of their shop for having the audacity to ask them to do something. When any Castelldefels estate agent says, “I will phone you later,” they could just have well have said, “I will raise a statue in pure gold of you, set in diamonds with platinum detailing with the London Symphony Orchestra playing your favourite bits of Philip Glass” for all the reality behind their statement.

It was therefore with something approaching terminal astonishment that I had a phone call from an estate agent within minutes of leaving the office offering me a viewing of a property in which I expressed an interest within a further twenty minutes!

And, by god, they (or rather she) were there!

We were quite taken with the place that we were shown. It was described as a ‘house’, but it would be fairer to describe it as a three storey raised terraced. It might be able to take my books and there was a little sun trap on the third floor. Seem perfect. All we need now is the money to facilitate the changeover.

Oh yes, and we have to get our money back from the owner and find out just how long notice we have to give to get out of the flat we are now in.

Never a dull moment – and for the first time for about two months it was sunny on the first day of the weekend.

Things are looking up!

Then the family arrived and we are now terminally exhausted!

We need to go to bed early because there is a lot to do tomorrow!

I did it with my little hatchet!

As the relentless exposé of The Daily Telegraph continues it is time for me to ‘come clean’ before the evidence is placed before the howling mob of the General Public.

I have to admit that in my professional past I did submit an expenses claim to the Welsh Joint Education Committee for some pieces of string. Of course, in the light of the recent publicity I apologize unreservedly and ask for consideration and forgiveness.

The fact that the string was used to tie up wrapped (oh, I claimed for the brown paper too!) marked examination papers which were then sent to the WJEC should in no way mitigate the disgraceful nature of my claim. So too the risible amount of money that I was paid for each script marked by me should have no bearing on the case. I done wrong! It’s a fair cop!

With my new internet radio I have been able to indulge in an orgy of Radio 4 listening and so have surfeited on MP’s expense claim horror stories. I am constantly reminded of the “7/84” Theatre Company which used to tour schools and art venues. The title came from the ‘fact’ that in Britain 7% of the population owned 84% of the wealth – leaving (just do the maths) 93% of us to enjoy the 16% of the rest of the wealth of the country!

The ‘moat cleaning’ and the ‘floating duck house’ sound like something from Wodehouse and remind us that the rich ruling classes have never really left the seats of government whatever we tell ourselves about living in a democratic meritocracy.

From the serene seclusion of my balcony it does actually look as though the whole parliamentary system is rapidly imploding. A commentator on Radio 4 expressed my fears in a rather neat progression which I can’t remember in exact detail but went something like, “The expenses scandal affects perception; perception affects voting; voting affects the parties; the parties affect life – so the expenses furore changes our life.”

I think that this whole affair has been produced by the cowardice of members of Parliament. It has been pointed out many times in the past that the salary of an MP is low for a legislator in a developed country. Instead of grasping the nettle and making the salary reasonable MPs have fudged the issue by boosting the expenses side (which up until these present days was hidden salary) at the cost of transparency in the major monthly payment.

I feel no sympathy for them; they are, after all, the architects of their own destruction. And perhaps that is what is needed – a wholesale winnowing of the present members of the House and, with new rules, a new start.

Cameron’s rather desperate appeal to anyone, even those outside the political fraternity to offer themselves for consideration as future parliamentary candidates comes with many dangers. Most governments who have appointed ministers from outside the usual parliamentary pool have found that such people rapidly become liabilities as they show themselves insensitive to the workings of the governmental system.

Perhaps we should have faith in the black flag of Anarchy and believe in the constructive aspects of that philosophy and hope that out of chaos a New Order will emerge: though history tells us that the “New Order” is usually heavily in quotation marks and totalitarian rather than humanitarian in flavour!

I remain optimistic (probably because the sun is shining) and will watch future developments with wary interest.

Roll on the European elections and god help us all!

There comes a point in every non-football-interested thinking person where you have simply had enough Barça!

That point has been reached by me. I have seen the two goals which won Barça the third of their cups this season played back from all directions and at all times of the day. I have watched part of the five hours of triumphal progress that the Barça team took in the open topped coach from the bottom of the Ramblas to Camp Nou. I have listened to the drunken statements that many in the team made to an adoring and full stadium. And enough is enough. I have been kept awake by the exuberant tooting of passing cars at all times of the night and by the explosion of fireworks. And enough is enough.

In my time in Catalonia I have talked more about football than I have ever done in the whole of the rest of my life. I have so far become infected with the football compu7lsion that I recognize members of the Barça team when they come out to play. I have opinions about the suitability of players. I make statements about the effect that Barça (mes que un club) has had on recent signings. I didn’t have a moment’s fellow feeling for Manchester United as a British club deserving my support. I am far gone.

But enough, already. From the response in Catalonia you would think that they had discovered a new source of free energy. Thank god the football season is limping to its end!

Meanwhile back to good, old fashioned fury.

The bloated plutocrat who owns our flat (as well as a much bigger one on the floor above us) decided (after a few days thought) not to give me back my aval.

The aval is six months’ rent (my money) put into a closed account (of my money) in the Worst Bank in the World (aka BBVA) which was a requirement of the BP (i.e. the Bloated Plutocrat) before we could rent the flat. This was stated to be necessary because I did not have a job and I wasn’t retired and on a pension.

Now that I have a permanent contract the owner has still refused to give me back my money. I have yet to find out what spurious reason he has given, but I doubt that it is going to be convincing enough to keep us paying the bastard money – so we will be looking for another flat.

Even here in Castelldefels there is some effect from the crisis which means that flats are available and at what appears to be lower prices. We will have to see what is available and try and fine somewhere with enough room to take my books!

Every setback is also an opportunity.

Apparently.

What game?

The tension in Catalonia is almost palpable. I don’t know how many people are actually playing in the game this evening in Rome, but from the way that people are ac ting you would think that half the population were about the don the two coloured jersey and put their sporting reputations on the line.

I have been tricked into giving a prediction for the end result (1-1 and Barça win 5-4 on penalties) which I thought was merely a gesture, but which turns out to involve money. This is one of the things that you learn to avoid in the future, but you have to pay the price for in the present!

The kids are all hyper of course and I sincerely dread to think what they are going to be like win or lose tomorrow. Teaching is going to be a nightmare – and I’ve lost a free period when I will be covering the class of a science colleague teaching the dangers of alcohol abuse (sic.)

I still haven’t written the exam papers that I should have and I don’t think that there is much change of my doing it this evening.

I returned to the flat to find the area around the television bedecked with Barça flags and memorabilia and a Barça shirt lying over a chair. The Moreneta (the Madonna from Montserrat) has been given a good shake and pressed into service to bring whatever luck she can placed next to a Barça hat while the musical box which contained a Barça box has been opened so it can play its tinny version of the Barça anthem. I think that we have nailed our support colours to the mast. Sorry Manchester!

Even I am getting tense as we wait for the game to start! As is usual here the game has taken on a significance far in excess of the sporting meaning that would have been evident if Real Madrid had been the representative of Spain.

Barça is a club (or more than a club if you read their world famous motto) that prides itself that it is owned by its members. Its sporting tentacles reach into a vast number of sports and its place in the hearts of Catalans is secure. It will be interesting to see how many (if any) ‘Catalonia is not Spain’ banners are in evidence this evening.

The teams have just been announced and Barça has positioned itself to play its usual attacking game while Manchester seems to be relying on The Arrogant One as its sole striker with players like Rooney playing in semi-defence. Fergusson said that he learned a lot from the last defeat that he suffered from the hands of Barça and that probably means that he is going for defence. Personally I think that Manchester’s apparent tactics seem quite sensible to me and they could steal the match by relying on Barça’s notoriously wayward defence to allow them to sneak a goal.

But, there again, what the hell do I know about football? Reading through the preceding I can find no authentic trace of my voice in these concerns!

I better go out and buy a flag!

Is anything else going on?

The frenzy of The Game continues to increase. On Catalan television there is virtually non-stop coverage of the game which is not happening until tomorrow.

Various pupils in our school are going to Rome to watch the game (it is, after all, that sort of school) where the flights and tickets have been provided by relatives who own major enterprises in Catalonia.

It is hard not to feel a certain resentment about the monied ease which informs many of the pupils we have the privilege to teach. And yes, that was ironic.

In desperation, to try and get away from the relentless coverage I have delved deep into the murky depths of the internet radio and have, purely in self defence, listened to Radio 4, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 7 and The World Service. As the radio is a Roberts it is ridiculously easy to use and makes my other internet radio (you didn’t seriously think that this recent acquisition was my first did you?) looking like something from the late Middle Ages.

An internet radio offers you the world in sound – though you soon discover that it is strangely samey until you get to the good old BBC. Thousands of stations and so few worth listening to!

Talking of something ‘worth’ listening to I have now completed working my way through the 5 CDs of the ‘Anthology of English Folk’ which I bought in Andorra. I have been listening to the disks as I have been going to work and on the way to and back from the opera.

The disks mark an amazing journey from reasonably authentic sounding songs through a woeful degeneration through time to songs of such surpassing self indulgent pretentiousness that almost defied belief. One singer (who I hope was on strong drugs, because I wouldn’t like to think of a chemically undamaged mind producing what I was listening to) appeared to be making up the lyrics (and indeed the tune) as he went along. I would actually offer you a quotation from one of the songs but I refuse to listen to such rubbish again.

It seemed very unfair as I had just come out of a very disappointing production of ‘Fidelio’ and I could have done with something a little more uplifting.

The programme for the new opera season has arrived and the attempt to understand the various options has begun. As is the case with all opera houses the attempt to understand how to get the best value from the various offers is virtually impossible.

The one thing which is patently clear is the vast expense if I want to go to everything. As every opera company always seems to want to make its customers suffer I note with weary resignation that we are promised a performance of ‘Tristan and Isolde’ at almost 5 hours and a marginally shorter performance of ‘Der Rosenkavalier’ Just to keep me happy they have included a production of ‘The War Requiem’ and a selection of other events of popular appeal and things I’ve never heard of.

Whether I go to any of these is linked to whether the owner of our flat actually condescends to give me back the six months rent which is held in an infamous aval bancario which gives the opportunity for a variety of useless parasites to suck money from me for no apparent purpose. The owner has said that he needs to think about it. Think about giving me back my money! I can feel myself building up a head of outraged steam so I should, instead think of serene things to calm down my rage.

For a while.

Listen to the world!

A truly depressing start to the day with mist (at best) and muggy fog (at worst) with fewer people seemingly intent upon death by mangled metal as an accompaniment to the lunatic driving that is the usual journey of stressful intent to get to my school.

Some days, I have to say, are better than others but sometimes the pathetic fallacy takes over and drivers seem to take on the depression of the weather and steer as if they were eager to get to the other side of life!

I made it to school in good time to join in the growing hysteria which characterizes the spasmodic orgies of examinations that we have. These are even more important as they are end of year exams which count for double the value of the other exams during the year. The mark out of ten that pupils have at the end of the year is important, not only as an indication of how they have done but also because the marks if recorded officially and will form part of the final assessment of the school which will travel with the pupils through their lives. Eventually this mark will have a part to play on the pupils’ final assessment when they make their way to university.

The maths involved in this assessment is still beyond me so I do my bit and hope that everything will come out properly in the wash!

There is a definite ‘end of term’ feeling in school, but the real end of term is weeks away and I am growing uncomfortably aware that there is going to be a major reaction after the major exams are over. It will be interesting to see if this school is any more successful than any other school that I have attended in finding the way to square the circle and keep all the students on task until the final end of term.

When I come back in September it will still take me six months before I have completed a full year in the school and begun to understand the range of pressures that attend the normal school year. Something to look forward to!

To my great delight (and part5ial relief) my internet ordered Roberts internet radio arrived today. This is the Roberts WM-202 and, true to the reviews that I read, once plugged in and the internet key finally punched in, it did very much what it said on the box and offered me the radio stations that I wanted and also a range of the podcasts that interest me.

I have already listened to a version of Shaw’s ‘Major Barbara’ on some sort of American public service channel. I am ashamed to admit that it took me some minutes to work out what I was listening to. To my credit I had worked out the GBS bit relatively quickly, but the actual play took a little longer. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it as it was a serendipitous encounter – I wonder if I will ever find the internet station again!

Something to experiment with later!

A half lost day or not

Sometimes it’s nice to have a day when your body simply takes over and orders the agenda.

Yesterday was a case in point. The Family visited, we had lunch, I went to bed for a little siesta.

Then it was today!

This usually happens when I have something which is slightly or definitely suspect to eat. Where others would have stomach ache and messy illnesses my body responds by shutting down all other services and, with me safely comatose, sets about settling any gastric problems in its own way.

I must admit that I felt fine (if tired) when I went to have my little siesta, but I bow to the superior knowledge of by body’s systems and am therefore grateful that things have apparently been sorted out!

I was able to have an early morning cup of tea on the balcony and watch unsettled sunshine degenerate into a sort of sullen haze. I have watched the unsteady progress of a solitary drunk stagger about the beach, periodically fall to his knees and stretch out on the sand for a snooze and then stagger away only to return to the sand for a repeat performance. I suppose in his own way he is doing what I did yesterday, though without the excuse of alcohol in my case!

The little band of red dressed council workers have arrived to clean the beach; the first joggers are puffing their way along the paseo and the first hardy sun worshippers have offered themselves as sacrifices in the hope that the sun will make an unclouded appearance!

Captain Cat like I sit on the balcony and watch the little world of Castelldefels wake up to yet another ambiguous weekend: the glorious weekdays of sunshine compromised by the spiteful covering of cloud. Still, I Am in shorts and an open shirt so there is not much that I should be grumbling about and yesterday was 29ْ C, though humid.

The quality of the illumination from the hidden sun has now given my view a look of studio lighting, so that the chiringuito on the beach has the appearance of a set for a fashion shoot!

The first raucous cries of children communicating in frenzied screams in the hope that the sound will cover the vast distance of six feet between them have begun. The hamacas man has started setting out the two lines of sun beds as a sort of prayer offering. After all, the clue to the purpose of the beds is there in the first part of the word.

The prayer seems to be unanswered as the first planes into the airport seem to be dragging a heavier cloud cover in the wake of their roar and depositing them neatly over Castelldefels. The little patches of blue (known locally on this balcony as “Stephen’s Faith”) are gradually shrinking. Perhaps in such a lazily Roman Catholic country like this the aspirations of an Anglican atheist count for little.

Certainly the look of the beach now reminds me of one of those depressing days in November when Barry Island looks as though no sun has touched it for a millennium! But at least here in Castelldefels it’s still warm and the only sound is the breaking of waves and Toni calling for a cup of coffee!

Duty calls!

Stone culture

A day of double culture – as well as multiple teaching opportunities!

It has now been confirmed that my present contract ends at the end of June and my new (albeit permanent) contract starts in September. The summer months are therefore without pay. Although unfortunate, this is no more than I expected.

I do now have an official form of written confirmation from the school that I have a new contract and I hope to use this to force the thieving estate agents and the grasping owner to give me back my six months of rent which has been put in a form of criminal restraint known as an aval bancario.

This is ‘my’ bank (BBVA, aka The Worst Bank in the World) which is holding six months’ rent and charging me an arm and a leg for doing so. This form of ‘insurance’ for the owners is nothing short of a scandalous rip-off and should have been banned years ago, but there are far too many vested interests for it to be done easily. So, the outmoded sucking away of funds will go on happening. I do imagine that El Crisis must be making these unreasonable demands a little less easy to demand. I wait to see what happens.

I was able to revisit the Museu Monestir de Pedralbes which is a hop, skip and a jump from our school, but which is much more difficult to find if you are in the car.

Entry to this museum is (as I discovered when I said that I was a teacher and a Friend of MNAC) free to members of the profession.

The monastery church is only open in the mornings but the cloisters and the gallery are open until 5 pm so I was able to leave the hustle and bustle of our private school infested area and step back to the cloistered calm of a previous age.

The elegant columns which line the sides of the cloisters enclose an open courtyard with a central goldfish pool; a herb garden and various other pieces of architectural whimsy – or religious significance depending on your spiritual proclivities!

I was hoping to get some photos of the art works held by the monastery, but the gallery was closing by the time I got round to trying to get in. Good reason to plan another trip! The monastery is exactly the sort of calm location that everyone should have tucked away for use when times become a little crowded. Especially as teachers get in for free!

I went straight from my visit to the Monestir de Pedralbes to the centre of Barcelona. Straight is probably not the most honest word to use for the progress that I made trying to find the Plaça de Catalunya, but at least I drove past new bits of the city in my somewhat tortuous progress to my traditional parking spot.

Yet again I was dismayed and astonished (still!) at the dreadful attitude to driving, parking and overtaking which is demonstrated by so many of the drivers in the city.

Motor cyclists and scooter drivers are simply the scum of the earth and should be extirpated in a systematic and professional way by a governmental extermination squad, rather than waiting for the drivers themselves to winnow out their numbers by the homicidal and suicidal way in which they drive.

As I have mentioned before, my lip now curls in disgust whenever I see a young person on crutches or with limbs encased in plaster – these are reliable indications that the ostensible ‘victims’ are actually blatantly parading their self inflicted injuries gained from the idiotic way in which they have failed to thread their way through non-existent gaps in the traffic.

By the time I finally arrived at my destination I was more than ready for a self indulgent wander round my favourite second hand book shop and then have an overpriced, but more than acceptable menu del dia in one of the main thoroughfares of Barcelona.

All of the preceding was an attempt to delay talking about the opera that I went to see this evening.

‘Fidelio’ in the Gran Teatre del Liceu was directed by Jürgen Fimm around scenery designed by Robert Israel. I liked the scenery.

The opera was undersung by what I consider to be a second rate cast. Gabriele Fontana as Fidelio produced a, shall we say, mature voice with a most unpleasant vibrato. Her acting (like everyone else’s) was mannered, melodramatic and of course unconvincing. Her vibrato however faded to a mere irritation when compared with that employed by Ian Storey as Florestan. His vocal gymnastics reminded me of a two tone police siren.

Friedmann Röhlig as Rocco was acceptable and Elena Copons as Marzelline was positively enjoyable. Lucio Gallo, however in his presentation of Don Pizarro was positively awful. His wooden acting and unsteady vocal range bordered on the ludicrous.

‘Fidelio’ is a positive opera with true love and selfless devotion winning through in the end – perhaps not a convincing message for an age of cynical dismissal like ours. There were hints of a darker picture in the presentation of the narrative but they were not developed and were certainly not thought through.

The opening moments of the overture were depressing as the sound was lacking in resonance and reminded me of those dreadful recordings of Toscanini which sound as though they have been recorded in a shoe box. The sound quality also reminded me of the worst excesses of The New Theatre in Cardiff! Act II was better with a much warmer sound – perhaps it had something to do with the orientation of the seat I was in!

Musically Fidelio is a wonderful opera. I look forward to seeing another performance so that it can erase the memory of what I have seen and heard tonight!

At least I have seen a sufficient number of operas to be able to put it down to experience. An expensive experience though.

Roll on the next season!

Test 'til you drop!

Our examination production is now reaching a level of frenzy.

The one saving grace is that the head of English has solid common sense and doesn’t ask the impossible. She is a great believer in not re-inventing the wheel and always looks for the most reasonable way forward. It helps that her experience in the Cambridge exams is, to put it mildly, extensive. I have learned that her suggestions as I find my way through this first year are invariably sensible and agro lessening. I have warned her that under no circumstances is she ever to be ill!

My plans to revisit the monastery near the school were thwarted by my losing a free period right at the end of the day – and the only good thing about that was that the room which I had to use to take the lesson was delightfully air conditioned. The weather has been glorious, but is not the sort of climactic conditions which are conducive to pleasant teaching situations!

My contract situation seems to be clarifying itself, but not in a particularly useful way. It appears that my new contract will be from September (leaving the summer months without pay) and then I will have to complete a three month probationary period! This is not absolute yet, but I live in hope that something can be worked out to my financial advantage. But I have few realistic expectations. The school is supposed to be quite reasonable in the way that it treats it employees, but they don’t throw money around when they don’t have to! Although in British terms they are behaving in a way which is not acceptable, I have to keep telling myself that this is not Britain and I am teaching in a private school. Different country, different system, different expectations.

Toni has rearranged the balcony in expectation of our spending more time out there during the summer and very nice it looks too! The new position of the cacti is not the most advantageous for their continued growth, but their placement does give us a little more space.

I feel more and more strongly that I would like to get somewhere with more space and some sort of a garden. If that means being away from the first line of the sea – so be it!

I think that we should start looking with some intensity for a new place in the autumn.

At least I could then take my books out of durance vile.

Something to think about.

Mark, learn and inwardly digest

This has been a day when, apart from a slump on the balcony when I arrived home has been continuous academic action – stretching I might add, late into the night time.

Some of the time spent at home on school work was a punitive marking exercise to ‘bring people down.’ As I have mentioned before the thing that our school does best is cheat.

I have been informed by people whose non-racist credential are impeccable that cheating in school is a time honoured custom in Spain and which seems to have reached its apotheosis in our school.

Whatever way of cheating you have heard of is practiced in our place. They use notes, books, each other, mobile phones – anything on which or in which information can be displayed or stored. Things have reached such a pitch that a meeting has been held and member of the PBI have had to agree to new and more stringent methods to try and limit the extent of this widespread infection.

One boy, a plausible enough child, who sits at the back, gained a frankly impossible mark in the last examination. The head of English immediately said that he must have cheated. He was suspiciously near to the best pupil in the class (who got 100% in the latest test) and his eyes certainly seemed, to put it mildly, slippery.

This time the test was designed to test a little more than putting the appropriate word in the appropriate space – though I wrote exercises of that type to lull the guilty into a hopeful state of putative cheatiness. Little did the gullible (a word recently taught to the class) know that the exercises on which they could cheat easily had a pitifully low tariff while the real marks were reserved for the writing of sentences.

The proof of this particular pudding was in the fact that the suspect candidate had a mark some 40% lower than his previous effort. How are the cheaters fallen!

It also helped that for the duration of the test I was standing within feet of the candidate at the back of the class. His little face was a picture of frustration.

Exam ever is beginning to break out with classes demanding full details of what elements of English are going to be in their tests. The meeting of the English department which was held early in the day was a masterpiece of controlled hysteria with a plethora of dates of and planning meetings for a whole raft of looming examinations. I found it hard not to start giggling!

I have had to make my tortuous way between buildings a number of times today and each time my little fan club of small people called my name and demanded to shake hands and pass a comment about my tie! I have no idea what’s going on, but I suppose that I should enjoy it while it’s happening and accept that next September is going to be rather different.

At the end of school today (a little before if truth be told) I went to the monastery near the school. This used to be the place where you could see part of the Thyssen collection, but that has now been moved to my favourite gallery on Monjuïc MNAC. My visit was hurried as the place was going to shut, but it was long enough to see that it was a place that I would have to revisit. With camera.

Meanwhile I can relax with the thought that my marking is done and a selection of significant sayings on Education, Learning and Language has been magicked up by me and a selection of dictionaries of quotations for some aspect of the committee which is organizing the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the school. This is the sort of thing which is seen quite distinctly as my ‘thing’ by everybody else – so I have to keep up my reputation as Mr Literature and General Culture.

And I still have not been given my contract.

But I have a plan!

I was offered a view of the easy life today. Photocopy a test which will take up an entire period and laugh your way through minimal marking of single letter answers to a long reading test.

I managed to complete my disgraceful mangling of ‘Sredni Vashtar’ to make the story suitable for those learning English. As long as you don’t know the original and have never read a Saki story you might possibly accept what I have produced as a reasonable story. If you have but a passing acquaintance with Saki’s style you will read it with growing doubt and horror!

I am going to try it out on my Year 8 class and see what happens. I half hope that it will fail, though to be fair to the original I have included a site on which people can look at the story written in the way that Saki intended it to be published. I only hope that pupils find out about how the story should have been well after they have left school!

I am trying to infiltrate books into the kids’ hands using the volumes I managed to acquire from the bookshop in the library on Sant Jordi. So far I have managed to place two (count them 2!) books with pupils. A slow start, but I live in hope. The odd thing is that given the curriculum of the English department in the school which is geared to the Cambridge examination system for English learners, literature is not something which has a high status. Although every class has a ‘reader’ which is looked into once a week, it is fairly obviously an ‘add-on’ rather than something which is integral to the subject. I think I am supposed to be the person who likes literature and has ways and means of making it more important in an exam dominated, grammar led approach to English.

I have been approached by the art teacher who has suggested that we run a sort of Culture Club by organizing visits to significant artistic events in Barcelona for pupils, staff and parents. The present proposal is for us to think about two events per term and then to reassess at the end of the next academic year. Sounds good, though knowing this place it will not mean any free tickets!

I have to write a test for the kids for tomorrow and I am disinclined to do it.

Unfortunately there are no free periods tomorrow and I start at 8.15 in the morning.

God help!

The early worm has got it wrong!

I set off for school extra early to avoid any chaos which might result from the opening of the new terminal in Barcelona Airport. The new terminal is a major work with roads being extended and rerouted; reclamation of protected (huh!) wetlands, and much building. Acres of tarmac have been spread (over the aforesaid protected (huh!) wetlands) in preparation for the extra cars expected. Slip roads have been built which join onto the road that I take to school each day – and thereby lays the rub.

Any deviation from normality for the main arterial roads around Barcelona means, because of the density of traffic using them, total and utter chaos. Rubber necking produces astonishing delays and length tailbacks, so my leaving extra early was a wise precaution.

At least it would have been a wise precaution if the information we Castelldefels dwellers had been given was in any way accurate. I arrived in school with over an hour to the start of my classes to be informed that the terminal is actually opening in a month’s time, in June not May. At least I was early!

The Spanish do not listen. That may seem like a racist remark but in the majority of circumstances in which you could expect discussion it does not take place. A Spanish discussion is one where everybody speaks at once in a loud voice which quickly gets louder.

The political shouting match which developed in my class when discussion of the allegations about the corruption of PP (the right wing party) started was laughable. It was a caricature of how we think foreigners behave when they start talking. One boy started well explaining his point of view to me but, the instant there was a sneered interjection from a slouching girl he snarled back an instant response and then it was all shouting, raised shoulders and splayed hands! It was only by my staring steadily at him and saying, “Oriel, to me! Calm!” that I managed to get a coherent statement from him. The slightest suggestion of a contrary point of view and he was ready to jump. In fact getting him to put forward his point of view was a bit like I imagine it would be talking someone in from the outside ledge of a tall building!

It was a relief to get back to the topic in hand which was an article on stalking. You can imagine the sort of vocabulary that I had to explain!

I have returned to the task of rewriting the short story of Saki called ‘Seredni Vashtar’ – a charming tale of cousin killing by proxy and all written in Saki’s priceless prose. I have only re-written a single page and I feel positively unclean with the outrages that I have committed in the name of comprehensibility for English learners. I tell myself that it is a good story, not only in terms of the writing but also in terms of the plot. I have used the original story with a year 10 class and they found it impenetrable, so I feel that I am justified in making the basic story more accessible. Having already ‘lightly edited’ a Chekov short story I feel that I am ready for more deliberate evisceration.

Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!

Apart from the dirty great planes roaring overhead the scene at the moment is one of idyll with the sun beating down and a light breeze cooling the reddening brow. To hand, a glass of Rioja and a bottle of Gaseosa while other fingers play on the keys of a computer with a screen bright enough to read in reasonable sunlight.

Who could ask for more? (Rhetorical.)

But that was in another country, and besides . . .

When a country with pretentions to some sort of independence is actually ‘governed’ by co-princes comprising the head of state of another country and the local bishop of another you realize that expectations must be high when you visit such a surrealistically situated entity.

Expectations, I might add, which had been lowered dramatically by everyone who had been there telling me that it was very ugly.

In the event, however, Andorra was gratifyingly interesting.

It is a long drive from Castelldefels to the obscure corner of the Pyrenees which holds this tourist magnet and tax haven, but you are rewarded with some spectacular scenery along the way. At this time of year the high Pyrenees are still snow capped and form a dramatic and distant backdrop to pleasant driving in temperatures well into the range of a normal English summer.

The customs posts were drive through, though the Spanish side seemed to be far more thorough on the return trip!

The reason we were going to Andorra at all was that I was sharing in one of Toni’s birthday presents: a night’s stay in a central hotel and a visit to ‘caldea’ a thermal spa in the centre of the largest town in the state.

The GPS did its magic and got us to the hotel and, apart from the fact that our room had not been prepared we settled in with minimum fuss – especially as the parking was in an underground car park opposite.

The main town of Andorra la Vella is crammed into the narrow valley floor which is hemmed in by steeply rising Alpine sides. The town itself is made up of blocks of flats and shops etc – nothing much to write home about – but at the end of each short road leading off the main streets there are breathtaking views of almost vertical slops covered with greenery.

In the centre of the town there are houses and flats dotted at various points on the precipitate slopes looking as though someone has placed a habitation on the slope and hammered in a wedge or two to keep them in place. The views must be awe-inspiring but any false step after a drink or two could see you plummet a thousand feet!

There is a river running along the bottom of the valley which has been channeled and given a make-over so that it looks like a rather extravagant water feature. The flow of water is fierce and I wouldn’t give very much for the chances of anyone unlucky enough to fall in! Part of the river has a sort of suspension walkway over it, though which exciting glimpses of the torrent below can be seen!

The grubby truth about Andorra is that it is a tax-haven and its ambiguous national status allows it to sell tobacco (it has a museum devoted to the disgusting stuff) and alcohol at cut prices to visiting Spaniards and other tourists.

Everyone appears to smoke and the entrance to our hotel was made revolting by the café immediately adjoining the reception area reeking of cigarette smoke. It would have been impossible to eat there – but the dining rooms were elsewhere luckily. Otherwise we would have to have forgone the food which already been paid for and eaten out.

Shops are the lifeblood of Andorra and you can find all the major makes at prices lower than you would get in France or Spain – but not startlingly lower. Poor old Toni trudged around shop after shop and the only thing that kept him sane was the idea that he was looking for a little Barça kit for his nephew (what Conrad called the ‘saving lie’ – otherwise he would have to admit to all and sundry that he went shopping, to the everlasting detriment to his character!) The number of perfume shops is extraordinary and reminded me of my visit to Lampeter where I was struck by a similar surprising number of commercial establishment – though there I have to admit that it was pubs and not perfume shops. Unsurprisingly, really.

We had a short siesta until the evening meal (which was very adequate) and then we set off for our visit to the spa.

‘Caldea’ is an extraordinary place. Its appearance is ‘Spiky Plate Glass Modern’ with a central tower of great pointyness!

The inside of this spa is a fantasy of shiny metal and modern design: you really do feel ‘cutting edge’ when you go in with intertwining staircases and mezzanine floors and clever lighting and everything you would expect from a designer who was obviously given his or her head and told to create.

The centre of the spa is basically a thermal pool which is surrounded by a series of saunas, Turkish baths, showers, and other things water related. One little room actually has an ice machine constantly churning out the stuff to make the cold plunge even more heart-stoppingly un-warm!

The central pool has a series of ascending bowls linked by steps which contained a variety of Jacuzzi-linked experiences.

For me the highlight was following one channel of water and finding myself outside in the cool night swimming in warm water. The focus of the outside ‘pool’ was a spiral channel which sucked the unwary swimmer in with an artificial current and deposited him around a gushing fountain. Most satisfactory!

While we were clinging to the tile work to stop ourselves being swept into the already full embraces of courting couples we noticed that light and sound was coming from the central ‘dome.’ We swam our way back and were rewarded with “son et lumiere et eau.” A first in my experience.

With lowered lights and much playing of a vulgar version of extracts from ‘The Planets’ a series of suspended balls were lowered, illuminated and thereby turned into the planets. A central ‘sun’ opened up and smoke and fireworks were used to (I think) tell the story of water. At one point to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning we were treated to a rain storm (talk about home from home!) All in all it was an invigorating experience which left the two of us totally exhausted!

After we left the spa it was getting near to midnight, but this is usually no hindrance to finding somewhere to have a drink. The whole place was dead, but we could hear muted cheers behind closed doors as Real Madrid appeared to be going down to defeat and therefore gifting the league championship to Barça.

We found no bar open and therefore went into a Basque restaurant and had what turned out to be a surprisingly expensive bottle of wine and a few tapas. As we sat and drank we saw and heard the celebrations as Barça won the league. Cars passed hooting their horns and passengers with various degrees of danger leaned out of the cars waving Barça flags. Two flag waving youngsters were actually perched on the roof rack of one car! While this mayhem was making its noisy way along the roads, in the sky rockets and other bangs went off showing that the basic allegiance of the people of Andorra is to Catalonia!

We collapsed into our beds and didn’t so much fall asleep as lapse into coma.

Today has been a day of recuperation and we broke the journey back to Castelldefels with a visit to Terrassa and The Family for lunch.

Toni has explained that the relaxation that is the inevitable bonus from going to the spa will finally reach me tomorrow when the exhaustion will transform itself into relaxation.

I will wait and see.