Book or no book

Barcelona was hot and unsatisfactory: the first I can deal with but the second, especially as it is connected to a book, is much harder to laugh off.

As I am teaching Art History (only a bit and only modern) next year I tried to get a copy of the book which my pupils are expected to know something of. The buying of this book and the even sweeter thrill of charging the cost to the school was the object of the trip to the city.

Armed with the title, the author, the ISBN number and the year at which the book was aimed I felt fairly secure in the successful achievement of my task. The reality was much more complex.

In the first few book shops I was more or less jocose about the failure of the people there to come up with the book but these people in turn spoke in hushed voices about a bookshop of whose book orders they were not worthy to type into the computer. The name of this Shangri-La of things academic was “Abacus” (in Spanish the emphasis is on the ‘b’) and I was fairly near it.

Eventually, after having asked five people, all of whom knew this shop (including I might add one council dustman) I found it. An unassuming doorway led into a subterranean labyrinth of things stationery which I severely avoided as such things negatively affect my spendthriftfulness. I asked for the books and went straight to the information section to give them the details so that they might give me the book.

The child who took my scrap of paper with all the information on it, glanced at it in a fairly negative way and after tapping half an encyclopaedia into the computer informed me severely that they did not have it with a clear indication that they would not stock it either. His look of autocratic distain was as if I had asked for a pornographically illustrated Book of Kells rather than a simple text book on the History of Art!

Thus defeated I was in no positive frame of mind to take on My Pupil who had however done some homework and who gave me three books of Chinese paintings to look through.

The bus drive back to Castelldefels, just like the drive to Barcelona was hellish. I shall not do this again. I hate travel by bus; in future I think that I shall park in the station here in Castelldefels and go up by train, much more civilized!

The evening was taken up with going to Terrassa for a birthday party but the real revelation was finding out just why my GPS was so expensive: you can talk to it!

With “voice commands” you can get a response from the GPS and you can order it to find a particular address when you are on the move or make a mid-course correction and instruct the device to take you somewhere else.

It does seem like something out of “1001 Nights” with more than a touch of ‘Open Sesame!’ about it, but it is vastly satisfying to have at least one of your passengers grinding his teeth in frustrated gadget owning passion!

I have yet to discover if the thing is actually worth the money, but as Picasso may have memorably said (at least I’ve spent years saying he said it) in another context, “It’s not that the paintings aren’t worth the money: it’s the money which isn’t worth the money.” I have also said for years (using a price that is now thirty odd years out of date or whenever the Falklands Conflict was) that if an Exocet missile cost £250,000 then paintings costing ‘only’ tens of millions seem a pretty good buy! After all many of the missiles actually missed, while a painting generally stays put and only the impoverished intellect of the observer can make it miss!

However, I am still not convinced that I have spent my money wisely.

I shall now pause for a moment to allow the hollow laughter from those that know me to subside.

As it was too late to post this writing yesterday, I am now writing on the Third Floor in the calm of the morning where broken cloud has not encouraged children to break the serenity of the day; the planes are taking off on a distant runway and arching their way out to sea, and even the clamorous pigeons are curbing the amorous one liners.

In this part of the world the pigeons are like really unimaginative morons who go into night clubs and assured by their own delusions of adequacy assume that the chat up line of “All right then!” with the emphasis on right will be sufficient to have the fluttering hearts of their targets laid instantly at their feet, or claws, as the case might be. Even a second cup of tea is sometimes insufficient to make this monotonous chorus emanating from branch and television ariel a little hard to take.

Sometimes sitting on the Third Floor I am irresistibly reminded of ‘Targets’ the disturbing excellent Peter Bogdanovich film, in which a young man for no convincingly explained reason embarks on a shooting spree. The only difference in my version is that I am a little older than the shooter in the film and my targets would be quite clearly chosen for their levels of irritation: starting with pigeons, working my way through assorted dogs in the neighbourhood and culminating in a general massacre of . . . Another cup of tea I think!

That’s better! Tea is the nearest thing to the mythical drug ‘soma’ in Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ which has the contradictory qualities of stimulation and anaesthesia. Tea calms and refreshes; stimulates and soothes; makes the world a better place and is generally an ever present friend in times of stress.

And talking of stress, the pattering footsteps and pipingly piercing voice of the first child of the day breaks into the tranquillity of my eyrie and drags me back to reality.


But wait a false alarm!


The brightly dull day (a feature of Castelldefels) has not prompted the Little One to shriek about on the surface of the pool like a demented water-boatman on steroids and it has retreated to its €1m home leaving the world to silence (always a relative concept in this part of the world) and to me and the pool person cleaning the swimming pool beyond the tennis court busily sweeping up the night’s layer of pine needles

The morning insects must be out in force as I have just been treated to the sort of ariel show by a trio of swifts or swallows which make all other birds look positively lumpen as they labour their way through the air!

I am now down to the last drops of stewed tea in my Zara glass teapot which only hardened Brits would drink and which leave Catalans gasping with sheer wonder at the masochist lengths that inhabitants of the United Kingdom will go to in the name of their cuisine.

They don’t know what they are missing!

Dark delights

Swimming at night in our pool I realized just how selfish sport actually is.

Of the three pools which are virtually adjacent to each other in our area, ours is the only one which is not illuminated during the night. I see this as a disadvantage while Toni sees it in a positive light as everything in the summer time is taken and evaluated in how far it encourages mosquitoes.

To be fair his paranoia has some foundation as the winged avengers seem to make (if I might be permitted to use an insectual metaphor) a bee-line for his blood stream. No Catalan mosquito worth its name is going to sample my foreign blood while succulent home grown corpuscles are flowing in the vicinity. This means that Toni’s legs look as though they have been used for target practice by swarms of beasts with sharpened proboscises whereas mine look as though they have been laved in daily baths of asses’ milk. Result!

Meanwhile: myopic swimming in the dark. Which isn’t really dark because of the light spill from the surrounding buildings; just light enough to highlight the blurred, dark, slow moving ripples and give you the impression that you are actually swimming through something like the BP oil slick – but “BP light” all the visual appeal but with none of the cloying viscosity and acrid smell of the real thing.

I am not an imaginative swimmer: I go up and down and up and down only varying the stroke from front crawl to breast stroke.

I wear ear plugs because my ears tend to retain water extending the muffled world of the pool into real life. Indeed I have a nodule in my right ear which is there as a result of swimming. It also allowed me to do my duty to the National Health Service as I was called in to the Heath Hospital to be a sample patient for budding consultants to see whether they could recognize my little nodule and its possible causes. It is, I am told, quite harmless and would cause more problems to have it operated on than to leave it, so I keep it as a precious souvenir of years of daily swimming.

Gently pushing off (remembering the arthritis)from the side of a dark pool at night you can only see (thanks to my excellent new goggles from Herr Lidl which make my short sighted view of the pool a sharp short sighted view of the pool) grey arms pointing forwards into a shapeless murk which is the rest of the pool. The only sound is your exhaled breath magnified by the ear plugs: a little world of mystery.

Luckily the spilled light meant that the end of the pool was distinguished from the rest of the murky world that I inhabit without my glasses, so I was able to turn without injury.

Even when the pool is crowded with the raucous cronies of the “popular” girl next door and her own pitiful squeaks resound across the water, an easy crawl and exhalation under water and the world of the pool erases all other human activity.

Of course there are people in the pool to contend with but, as long as you are doing lengths on the side which does not have the steps to exit then you are generally left alone. There is also a way of swimming which tells everyone that you are not going to stop and that they are going to be hurt more than you if there is a collision: I make sure of that. Fairly long nails are also a good idea as water merely acts as a lubricant for judicious slashing!

At least I am honest about the anti-social appeal of swimming unlike so-called team players where you only have to watch a striker rip congratulatory hands from himself so that he can appear alone in front of the corner camera after scoring a goal to realize that it is all self, self, self!

Perhaps squash, which I also enjoyed, is the most selfish of the racket sports because as soon as the serve is played the players sets about talking over the whole of the playing space. Even in boxing there is a corner which is yours. I am sure that there is a thesis to be written (or probably has been written) on “Seven Types of Selfishness: a study of self in sport.”

The first child has now jumped into the pool and the serenity which has characterised by tea drinking on the third floor is now shattered. The first child has now been joined by a second and where there are two children “communicating” even the civilizing effects of tea are no match for the volume of sound.

To the sound of car horns and explosions Spain have made it through to the final of the world cup. This is an historic achievement as they have always been dogged by bad luck and dreadful refereeing in previous competitions. Perhaps this is Spain’s year. We shall see.

Tomorrow Barcelona and book buying and a little light teaching.

Spending Therapy

My Pupil cancelled this morning as I was getting ready to go to Barcelona for the lesson. This is Not Good and my patience is running a little low as this is the second time that he has done it.

By way of compensation I went to El Corte Ingles and bought the ludicrously expensive update for my GPS. I could, of course, have bought the internet download of new maps for my device but that really is not my style. The one that I have bought is elegantly slim and you can talk to it and order it to do things. What things these are I know not of; but I am working on it!

This is one of those gadgets for which you really will have to download the manual to find out exactly what it can do. It might also be one of those gadgets that does enough to make you wish that it did more!

The one true disaster is The Voice.

I cannot contemplate with anything less than panic a voice ordering me to do things which wasn’t the lady to whom I have become accustomed on the previous version of the GPS. The idea of having a bloke tell you to take the third turning just doesn’t seem possible to tolerate and my real fear was having an American accent. Impossible.

Eventually the helpful gentleman in El Corte Ingles managed to find the right part of the system when he was “demonstrating” the device and there was Emily speaking British English. Good enough for me.

I actually managed to get the device out of its box and talking on the way home from the shop. It was a little disconcerting to have The Voice talking in miles but that was soon rectified. The device is now registered and that means that I am entitled to at least one map update. Given the way the Spanish change their road flow system this will be essential before the first year is out!

For the first time this year I have swum in a rather grubby looking sea lurking at the bottom of our road. I, as is my want, immediately swam out towards the Holy Land until I felt a familiar series of pin pricks on my leg. We have been inflicted with a plague of medusas (jellyfish) and these are not merely decorative but very painful. I had one sting last year and the rash stayed with me for longer than was aesthetically necessary!

One touch, or possibly two and my front crawl improved dramatically and I was half way up the beach before I stopped swimming. The pool will be enough for me I think.

Updating the GPS is another task completed and I managed to send off a letter to the General Teaching Council of Wales updating my information. I`m not absolutely clear why I am still paying the money to that august body, but as I seem to have paid for another year that should take me past the magic date in October!

Talking of which I will have to check up on the progress of my claim!

Nothing changes!

The heat last night meant that in spite of the predation of mosquitoes the window was left open. This also meant that we were regaled with the brittle forced laugh of the teenage girl next door as she showed her delight at the mawkish posturing of the males with which she surrounds herself in the pool. Her high pitched expressions of delight were punctuated by even higher pitched squeals of faux displeasure as a few drops of water touched her skin when the males went into their clumsy mating displays.

The one positive virtue this girl has is that she refuses to surface and face the world at any time before the clear afternoon. This sometimes has the negative effect of prompting her parents, especially her father, to trumpetings of displeasure and repeated howlings of her name as they try to get her up!

We have not, yet, had the farcical accompaniments of breaking crockery and slammed doors which we had last year, including what we sincerely believe to be a thrown hi-fi system during one incandescent row!

Poor weather is starting to close in around us in the rest of Spain which is fine by me as it is restocking the reservoirs that supply us with water! This attitude may appear on the surface to be a tad selfish – but it works for me!

The simple tasks for the summer are running out and I will soon have to contemplate starting on one of the more significant ones. I am trying not to panic as I realize that one thirtieth of my holiday has already gone, never to be recalled – no, wait, my calculations have been faulty; there are 31 days each in July and August, so I have only used up 2/62nd or 1/31st: much better!

Spain has just made it to the semi final to the accompaniment of car horns and the explosion of fireworks. They now play Germany in the semi finals and I know who I will be supporting!

I have re-read “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and other stories” by F Scott Fitzgerald with a view to using the stories for our equivalent of the sixth form because at the moment we are using “The Great Gatsby” which would not be my choice of book to give to students whose first language is not English. I have suggested the stories as a possible replacement, but I thought I ought to re-read them since I read them god-knows-how-many-years-ago in a Penguin Modern Classics edition which cost me three shillings and sixpence! Which does actually give you some idea of the length of time!

On one level I thoroughly enjoyed reading these stories, surprised by how much of them I actually remembered and delighting in Fitzgerald’s style and content. He doesn’t do happiness very well, but I do enjoy the misery that he writes. I think it is a function of being an English teacher that we, as a breed, much prefer to teach death and unhappiness than anything cheerful. I always cite Blake as my defence: which would you rather read “The Songs of Innocence” with their insipid “little lambs” etc or “The Songs of Experience” with running blood and “mind forg’d manacles” - no contest I think!

But how would non-native English speakers respond to them? And are they of sufficient quality to encourage the effort which would undoubtedly be necessary for an understanding of their content and meaning? I think the answer to those questions is probably yes. But I will give it some more thought until I make a recommendation. It will also give me time to find out if the edition that I know is actually still published!

I count the reading of the book as completing my task for the day. So there.

I have also reread a short book by Penelope Fitzgerald called “The bookshop” a beautifully crafted novella about a woman trying to open a bookshop in an enclosed East Anglian coastal town. It is a desperately sad (I suppose) picture of a narrow minded claustrophobic society not making too much effort to come to terms with a new sort of society. Although essentially depressing it has moments of humour and farcical moments of true nobility. It is short and sparse but what is there has a muscularity which gives the narrative a real drive. It’s a book worth reading. But not one for my kids I think. Pity.

This Sunday was an indication of what the rest of the weekends in the summer are going to be like. Parking was chaos and two cars parked across the gate to our drive. There are marked out parking spaces on one side or our road and clearly no real room on the other side. What visitors do is park their cars on the pavement making it impossible for pedestrians to pass and blocking us from our houses.

Toni has suggested taking a philosophical view of this inconsideration as there is nothing we can do about it and it is not worth the heartache of trying to keep obviously selfish pigs from doing in the right thing!

Driving into the centre of the playa area of Castelldefels on Sunday evening was a horrendous experience as not only had drivers and pedestrians obviously left their consideration at home, they also appeared to have left any clear ideas about their owns self preservation there too. Peop0le wandered backwards into the road, they strolled across the road ignoring crossings; drivers meandered from lane to lane; indication was confined to my car and U turns and reversing into the main road was common.

I had to summon all my reason to tell myself that Castelldefels is a seaside town and has an overwhelming number of visitors who come here without really knowing where they are going and, when they get here they find that there are no parking spaces within what must be a largely crippled car driving population‘s idea of “walking distance” of the beach.

They therefore park on crossings, corners, pavements, driveways and generally squeeze themselves into any space that they deem available no matter how bizarre and/or dangerous it might be.

Monday saw me trying to take advantage of the “No VAT” day in MediaMarkt. I am attempting to change my GPS for a slim and over-featured replacement. My only fear is that any machine bought in this country might have an American voice for the English directions. I will not be able to stand that. I need a British woman’s voice to guide me: in the more turbulent roads of central Barcelona you need the calm assurance of some sort of Julie Andrews prim RP voice to put a tinge of normality on what can be totally surrealistic motoring on Spanish roads.

The maps that came with my present GPS are now totally out of date and the cost of updating them is almost as much as a new machine, so I am taking the advantage of almost necessity to get a better unit. The one that I am after tells you all sorts of things which my present one does not and also gives you a “real” view of difficult junctions where a simple “Keep left!” is simply not sufficient given the sometimes fractal roads that we have here.

The Family arrived at lunch time and we all went to the local restaurant for a meal. Excellent value, though the service was not so good – though it wasn’t the fault of the waiter. At the end we had excellent value again and I saw a colleague who was surrounded by her family as well – we arranged to meet for a beer when we were not quite to encumbered!

Tomorrow the lesson with My Pupil, but I think that I shall make a day of it in Barcelona and add a little culture to the occasion. I will be able to tick off one or two more of my tasks and I feel that buying a wireless printer at an 18% discount allows me to tick one for today.

Things to do

The heat last night meant that in spite of the predation of mosquitoes the window was left open. This also meant that we were regaled with the brittle forced laugh of the teenage girl next door as she showed her delight at the mawkish posturing of the males with which she surrounds herself in the pool. Her high pitched expressions of delight were punctuated by even higher pitched squeals of faux displeasure as a few drops of water touched her skin when the males went into their clumsy mating displays.

The one positive virtue this girl has is that she refuses to surface and face the world at any time before the clear afternoon. This sometimes has the negative effect of prompting her parents, especially her father, to trumpetings of displeasure and repeated howlings of her name as they try to get her up!

We have not, yet, had the farcical accompaniments of breaking crockery and slammed doors which we had last year, including what we sincerely believe to be a thrown hi-fi system during one incandescent row!

Poor weather is starting to close in around us in the rest of Spain which is fine by me as it is restocking the reservoirs that supply us with water! This attitude may appear on the surface to be a tad selfish – but it works for me!

The simple tasks for the summer are running out and I will soon have to contemplate starting on one of the more significant ones. I am trying not to panic as I realize that one thirtieth of my holiday has already gone, never to be recalled – no, wait, my calculations have been faulty; there are 31 days each in July and August, so I have only used up 2/62nd or 1/31st: much better!

Spain has just made it to the semi final to the accompaniment of car horns and the explosion of fireworks. They now play Germany in the semi finals and I know who I will be supporting!

I have re-read “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and other stories” by F Scott Fitzgerald with a view to using the stories for our equivalent of the sixth form because at the moment we are using “The Great Gatsby” which would not be my choice of book to give to students whose first language is not English. I have suggested the stories as a possible replacement, but I thought I ought to re-read them since I read them god-knows-how-many-years-ago in a Penguin Modern Classics edition which cost me three shillings and sixpence! Which does actually give you some idea of the length of time!

On one level I thoroughly enjoyed reading these stories, surprised by how much of them I actually remembered and delighting in Fitzgerald’s style and content. He doesn’t do happiness very well, but I do enjoy the misery that he writes. I think it is a function of being an English teacher that we, as a breed, much prefer to teach death and unhappiness than anything cheerful. I always cite Blake as my defence: which would you rather read “The Songs of Innocence” with their insipid “little lambs” etc or “The Songs of Experience” with running blood and “mind forg’d manacles” - no contest I think!

But how would non-native English speakers respond to them? And are they of sufficient quality to encourage the effort which would undoubtedly be necessary for an understanding of their content and meaning? I think the answer to those questions is probably yes. But I will give it some more thought until I make a recommendation. It will also give me time to find out if the edition that I know is actually still published!

I count the reading of the book as completing my task for the day. So there.

Break the mould

For me a “lie-in” has to be matter of conscious decision. I wake up in time to get up by 7.00 am and holidays do not interfere with this regular internal clock.

But, rather like the efficacy of a cool laager on a hot day; the heady adrenalin rush as Formula 1 cars roar by; the nauseating stench of the canals of Venice and other book learned experiences which are not true in practice for me, I still believe that one should try and “lie-in” because not only is it a sacred function of the holiday to indulge oneself in this way but also I am constantly told it is pleasant.

So today, on day two of the holiday (dear god, one sixtieth of my vacation has irrevocably flown!) I steeled myself to ‘enjoy’ an extra couple of hours in bed.

God, as they say, will not be mocked – though Dawkins et al seem to have done a pretty good job to me – and at the time that I was ‘supposed’ to get up The Combined Canine Cacophony Chorus started to get underway.

The dogs are positively operatic in their attempts to get sluggish sybarites out of bed. The ground bass is provided by the partially de-barked dog next door. He is joined by a couple of light tenors from the flats opposite and the coloratura glissandi are provided by The Screaming Dogs of next door but one. Grace notes in various registers are provided by assorted curs in the district. The sweep of passing aircraft provide a timpani accompaniment to the hound harmonies while the early morning rubbish truck offers a variety of percussion effects to give the whole performance a sort of crazed grandeur .

Stockhausen would wet himself with excitement were he to live here and listen to the sort of racket which makes his music sound positively melodic. I am not Stockhausen and lurid thoughts of the more satisfying parts of Macbeth come to mind together with Hamlet’s injunction that “My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.”

Who would have thought that a professed “dog person” (albeit only as far as Labradors are concerned) could be reduced to the level of hatred of all the wolf-descended life forms by which I am surrounded. And don’t get me started on pavement poo!

As I have been typing an uneasy silence has fallen on the district only broken by the mindlessly monotonous cooing of wood pigeon, or pigeon or even doves – what the hell do I know of flying rats; all I know is that I wish they would shut up or indulge in their amorous shenanigans elsewhere!

But, and most importantly, be still my beating heart, the skies are a perfect azure: what then can be wrong in this best of all possible worlds!

Another task has been completed: the sending off of the cash back form to Canon.

I am finding, indeed as I have found again my handheld computer that I am adding tasks to the electronic list just so I can cross them off! Two down and a growing list to cope with. No empty days for me!

After the sunbathing of course!

Wide horizons!

The first day of the month; the first day of my holiday “real” and, as I fear most days will start for the foreseeable future, a quick check of the Teachers’ Pensions website.

This excellent institution has a facility to allow those gasping for what is laughingly called financial security in these times of economic eventfulness, to check the progress of their claim.

According to the graphics on the website in the few days that they have had my form which was completed on the internet the claim has made 60% progress. There but two more steps according to the graphic before my claim is complete and the money can start dribbling into my account.

The progress of the claim is marked by a ‘progress bar’ which is filled in as it, um, progresses. And this is where my enthusiasm and belief both come to an abrupt stop.

How many times have computer users sat in front of a screen which is giving them encouraging information about how quickly a program is loading and then found themselves grinding their teeth in impotent rage as the whole system seems to go to sleep!

You use your logic to tell yourself that if 50% of the program has loaded in ten seconds then another ten seconds should see the whole thing ready to run. But it is that last 50% or more usually the last 10% where stasis comes into its own!

There is something dreadfully mesmerizing and totally frustrating in staring at a rotating stylized hour glass. I wonder just how much of one’s life will be (and has already been) spent staring at little graphics telling you (or kidding you) that something is happening.

Ever since the beginning I have been a user – in computer terms I mean, before you jump to the conclusion that I am making some sort of philosophical confession. Machine Code was always gibberish to me and Basic was the engaging language Tarzan might have used if he had met Mac rather than Jane in the process of his entering the world of electronic civilization.

I wasted a great deal of time in the early days of “A BBC B in every school” learning how to program the damn thing. I never did advance beyond a program which asked you to enter your name (with much use of dollar and hash signs) and was approving if the input was ‘Stephen’ but dismissive if it was anything else. I can still remember the important words of this type of programming: IF, PRINT, THEN, LET, BE, GOTO. And I think that I have a little poem concrete going there! I particularly like the Shakespearean admonition with which it ends!

So the end results of my cogitations is that I am both impressed because I want to be with 60% progress in a few days, but also depressed by the fact that 40% is still to be completed.

The Pensions people know that the last day on which I had gainful employment in teaching in the UK was on the 31st of August 2006, but they don’t know that officially. There is a form with a designation similar to that of Doctor Who’s mechanical pet which they should have received from my last employer.

Which in their case they have not got.

Even more worryingly the web site states that they have everything they need to complete the calculations for my pension. As I am convinced that the so-called 60% progress so far is purely mechanical I fear what is going to happen when an actual person begins to check to see if there is any way in which the miserly amount to be paid out can be restricted even further: I dread the living rather than the silicon check before the final button is pressed.

At least I will have a job next year and I will not be wholly dependent on the amount of money lavished on me by a grateful government. That will not happen for another five years!

In spite of it being holiday I did actually go in to Barcelona to take my pupils for his individual lesson. English conversation it is not, but I expect that this will improve slowly.

I gave him a copy of The Week and told him to read though the arts information and give me his opinion. I think that I may have to resort to my visual dictionary to find vocabulary of places like “The Theatre” and “The Recording Studio” to get things back on to some sort of academic level! We seem to get to subjects and need to use vocabulary at a level which is not comfortable for him in English or for me in Spanish!

I paid my car insurance today. Every day of the holiday must see me complete or be in the process of completing some of the long list of tasks that I have set myself. I am sure that this resolve might see the week out.

Everyone has his price

Everyone can be bought. The price may be money, power, sex, promotion or the right sort of chocolate.

I have found out that my price is a fairly cheap bottle of Cava.

When school finished I left at once and miss out on the lunch that was provided. I would rather eat at home than in school and so went for chicken from the better of the two roast chicken places near us.

I was the only person there and the jolly guy serving engaged me in conversation. When I told him that I had just finished work he opened a bottle of beer and poured me a glass, inviting the person working behind the scenes to join us too. When I said it was also the first day of the holidays he brought out a bottle of Cava from the fridge and plonked it on the counter and urged me to drink it to celebrate such an auspicious day!

I must admit that such a generous impulse has bound me to this particular restaurant for the rest of my life: not only a glass or beer but also a cold bottle of Cava. I am well and truly bought.

There was a different quality to the lying out in the sun this afternoon knowing that I didn’t have to go to school the following day – even for a half day!

I intend to enjoy the next two months!

And tomorrow I will start to construct my “To Do” list.

The games go on!

Thank god that Spain has reached the next round of the bloody World Cup. I am all for domestic calm!

The penultimate day (or half day) in school. A strange sort of day which was more for class teachers than we mere foot soldiers. I tried to look busy and keep out of most people’s way. I even, at times of great stress and public view actually did some work.

I get progressively more worried by the pregnancies in our school. Both ladies are class teachers and will need to be replaced and I am determined that it will not be me. In our school, and quite rightly, class teachers (form teachers) are paid more. The extra money, which worked out at a miserable daily rate, in no way compensates for the convulsive neediness of our pupils and I have no intention whatsoever of joining the damned tribe of hollow eyed class teachers as they traipse once more to listen to the whining of yet another pupil knocking on the staff room door!

Talking of not doing more than I have to for the derisory sums that we are paid; I had an acknowledgement email to my completed and submitted pensions form – roll on October!

Another glorious day with the temperature in the car when I came home at 2.00 pm standing at 47°C! By the time I arrived home it was at a more manageable 35°C and just the temperature to go out to lunch again and sit outside on the balcony of the Maritime Restaurant overlooking the beach and the sea.

The menu del dia was an astonishingly good value feed with fideos to start and then a herby pig’s cheek to follow and all ended by crema catalana and iced coffee. Delicious and for under a tenner!

The traditional rest period of horizontal sun gazing was only interrupted by my reading another Pullman novel in the Sally Lockheart series.

“The Tiger in the Well” is set in 1881and has all the positive qualities of “The Ruby in the Smoke” which was the first of the novels in this series that I read.

Pullman uses the historic period deftly and provides a fast paced narrative with genuine excitement and unusual exotic elements. It is imbued with a certain didactic quality in its presentation of socialism and capitalism which reminded me of Dickens in its intensity and its plea for social justice. It is remarkable that many of the Victorian abuses: inequality of wealth; sweatshops; treatment of Jews; pogroms; mistreatment of immigrants; demagogy and the denouncing immigration and proclaiming the purity of the race, the problem of a possible Israel; corruption; inequality under the law and ethical investment – are all relevant today. As I am sure that Pullman intended.

This is a very eventful book with every use made of the historical setting. There is a “picturesque” villain, though you have to read the book to find out just how apposite this word is, and a truly feisty heroine. Yes some parts of the novel are laboured, for example the identity of the villain and sometimes the political message is a little too much up front, but this is an exciting book which should work well with any group of young responsive readers.

Tomorrow the last half day.

No comment needed.

Now we see through a glass darkly

Habitual glasses wearers are always surprised at the comments from non-glasses wearers who ask with pained interest how the glasses wearers can possibly see through the filth encrusted roundels of glass through which they are peering.

It is true that sometimes I have been shocked at the range and extent of detritus which has coated some lenses that I have used to aid my sight and once noticed the grime becomes impossible to ignore. But, it is only when some casual reflex action prompts an absent minded wipe that the archaeological layers of past civilizations in dirt on the glass become apparent.

I mention this because I have been swimming. As a purely quotidian hygienic procedure, rather like putting chlorine in the swimming pool, I washed the goggles that I use in Fairy liquid and placed them ready for their next use.

When I entered the pool this afternoon and put the goggles on I was shocked at the clarity of the water in the pool and the fact that trees have leaves on every branch. As the lenses are tinted a sinister yellow I had assumed that the murky world of the pool was a function of the colour of the lenses. It was like being in a Wilfred Owen poem during a gas attack. And then, with a little detergent a whole new world is revealed!

Like every glasses wearer that I know I have now decided to clean my glasses regularly. And like every glasses wearer I know I will not do it. Some lessons are never learned.

Incidentally, how do occasional glasses wearers behave? This is summer and an inordinate number of people suddenly sport astonishingly vulgar examples of designer emblazoned eye protection – sometimes wearing them everywhere but in front of their eyes – and only for a matter of months. Do they clean them or do they develop with instant facility the same resistance to clear vision as their more experienced practioners tolerate.

But today is momentous: I have filled out the form on line for the claiming of my pension. It is wonderfully liberating to think that in a few months time I will be entitled to spend some of the vast sums that I have been paying into the funds of the state for the last thirty years!


There is a strange sense of fin de siècle in the staffrooms at the moment. Some work is being done which has to be completed before the end of the term on Wednesday but there is also a sense of un-direction as people get on with what they think is important. After the fractured week that we have had, it was a real effort to come into work today!

I actually mitched off early today as I had to pay my taxes. Everyone else I know has a tax rebate at the end of the financial year, but not me, I had to pay. And of course banks are not open at reasonable hours and so I had to slope off and I got to the bank with literally a couple of minutes to spare before they closed.

I am now a full paid up member of Catalan society with the tax office recognizing me and my address and taking my money. I have arrived!

Courses for next year are being decided and I have been given the opportunity to teach Modern Art – officially, rather than sneaking it into the curriculum on the understanding that English encompasses everything! This will be a course which will have to be taught three times during the year as the groups change at the end of each term. At two hours a week I can work out exactly how much time can be spent on each art work or each movement.

What larks!

A Match Made in Africa

I think that I made a wise choice when I decided to lie prone on my sun bed listening to the songs of Tom Lehrer rather than watch the English team be sent packing. Again.

I am however watching an appallingly refereed match where Mexico had a clearly (even I could see that!) off-side goal against them allowed by a linesman who obviously knows just a little less of the rule book than I do!

The clearly idiotic Capo (I use the word advisedly) of FIFA has made some sort of fatuous comment that the mistakes in refereeing add to the excitement of the game. I understand that this gentleman is French. A member of the nation whose national team has returned in disgrace to its home country and where a member of the team has been summoned to the presence of the diminutive president to explain himself. And I think that is sufficient xenophobia for the moment!

The best thing about the World Cup, as far as I can see is that there are now fewer teams in the competition after the group stage and there is only one game that the remaining teams play as they progress to the next round. The fewer the games the sooner it will all be over thank god.

I also fail to see that the travesties of sportsmanship that we see in every game and the blatant national hatreds that are demonstrated with startling clarity do anything to foster international understanding or anything positive at all – except to demonstrate the clear fact that there are some grossly overpaid under-performers in this world!

And I wonder if their wages are going to be reduced by 5% like government paid teachers in Spain! Thinking about it that is a poor analogy as teachers have done nothing to create the circumstances in which their wages might be reduced and there is no question about their ability to do their jobs – they are paying for other people’s mistakes. Whereas the England team, however, etc etc etc.

Listening to Tom Lehrer (a consummate professional) while ignoring the woeful performance of England (add your own adjective before the word “professional”) was a delight. Only he would have the linguistic temerity to rhyme “try to hide” with “cyanide” in the wonderful song of “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”. As he is still alive I have considered writing to him and asking him to pen a ditty along the same lines but this time taking dogs as the subject matter.

It really does seem like an unwritten law that each house and flat should have its own wolf-descended yelping travesty to lessen the peace in the world.

The amount of dog filth on the pavements is ludicrous and it looks as though there is some sort of coprophiliac turd fairy who trips along Catalan streets distributing disgusting canine deposits as she goes! The chances of an owner being fined as, to put it mildly, remote so they don’t need to worry too much about their pampered pets fouling the pavements.

Tomorrow I am supposed to be having some sort of meeting to work out what I am going to be teaching next year: this should be interesting as, in one or two areas that I am going to teaching I have been told that I can do what I like. Within certain limits. Perhaps I will find out what those limits are tomorrow.

Always something new.

Raise the rays!

Sun bathing ought to be so last century: we know that it is linked to skin cancer and to disreputable medallion wearing criminals in the more luxurious parts of southern Spain – but I am hooked on our nearest star.

My aim of course (ignoring the Shakespearean predilection for white skin as a sign that the person does not do outside labouring work) is for the perfect tan. A recent visitor to our swimming pool divested himself of his upper garments and revealed a torso of the sort of flawless even brown that is my goal. I hated him at first sight and then, as if to show that my opprobrium was justified he took out a cigarette showing himself to be lewd fellow of a baser sort.

My skin has its own progression through the spectrum when exposed to the sun and, in spite of my best efforts and the lavish application of salves and unguents the best I can do is a sort of rugged russet: the creamy khaki eludes me!

I do not, however, intend to give up trying and with the aid of a new transparent spray from good old Lidl. I may not be brown but I do gleam!

My total domination of the Third Floor is now being threatened by other sun-worshippers, but I utilize the office swivel chair using its lowest back declination to produce a sort of dentist’s chair effect. As the back is a sort of mesh it might almost be purpose made for the sun as it allows the back to breathe – if that actually means anything!

Lazing about on the Third Floor has the advantage over the beach that I have easy access to all my gadgets. Including my iPod.

Why is it that listening to Tchaikovsky is almost like a guilty pleasure? I remember buying a (bargain) boxed set of all of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies and orchestral suites when I was in university to the general contempt of my musical friends. Didn’t stop me of course, and it was a revelation listening to the ones which were not as famous as the later ones.

It was the second symphony that I listened to on my iPod and, although I have not listened to it for some time, it is not the sort of music that you ever forget.

It is also dangerous music. As the narrative of the music developed and as my hands become more and more expressive as if an orchestra were in front of me, the illusion that I could conduct a real performance of the symphony became almost an accepted fact in my mind. I feel the same way about Schubert’s Great C Major Symphony. And then I think about the score in front of me and my fingers frantically searching for some arrangement of notes that look even remotely like what is happening musically and the dream begins to fade.

Plenty of others to take its place.

Lost Days!

Tuesday 22nd June 2010

Today was the Day of the Great Disappearance. The sacred day when, in the afternoon, with unseemly haste and unrestrained glee we bid the kiddiewinks adieu.

The morning was ¡Fiesta! – or at least the form of jollifications that we indulge in at the end of course for the kids.

The school is transformed by the stringing of plastic streamers and flags of all the nations (including the Union Flag – I checked) across the patio (playground) and pupils and teachers join together in various activities to which the parents are invited. My designated area of jollity was to supervise “traditional games.”

In the way that our school operates, I knew nothing about this (or indeed these) until the actual morning when, with a colleague in the English Department we discovered that “traditional games” involved the use of ropes and chalk.

Before anyone gets excited at the sexual possibilities of considerate bondage, where the ropes are chalked before applied, I have to tell you that we were in charge of skipping and hop-scotch.

I found myself a chair and a quiet corner of the playground, threw a few ropes in decorative patterns on the floor and urged passing school children to chalk out a hop-scotch grid. I then repaired to my chair in the shade and hunkered down to pass the long hours before lunch.

Children did skip and one or two of them made a half hearted effort to skip their way along the grid.

Luckily our almost complete lack of enthusiasm was covered by a group of children playing football: so time passed.

Once the kids were out of the way the staff repaired to the dining hall to have what can only be described as a sumptuous feast of various forms of dead sea creatures followed by a spread of sweets which included totally evil tiny cakes whose weight to size ration was gratifyingly disproportionate!

The Drinking of the Liberlis has becomes something of a ritual for Suzanne and myself and our libations had become more infrequent that we would have liked. Therefore, an impulsive moment of alcoholic desperation drove both of us both figuratively and literally to The Third Floor in Castelldefels to watch the drink and the sun go down.

This formed one of the many Fridays of this week. The first was yesterday with Irene who I had to encourage to remind me (as the drink flowed down my gullet) that “Tomorrow is a working day and not the weekend!” Doing much the same on the Third Floor again needed some sort of marker to indicate that the working week was progressing rather than falling into the freedom of Saturday and Sunday.

“Better to think yourself in a Friday than the first Monday of a new term” – as the Zen Book of Teaching states.

Wednesday 23rd

The kids have not gone!

All the pupils who failed an exam have returned today to sit their recuperation exams. This meant that I had to start up my marking mode again as the marks are necessary for a meeting on the real Friday of this week.

By the time we were given lunch I was exhausted and after lunch I fled home to the pool and the cool reality of soothing water washing away the memories of the red pen!

The Family arrived in the afternoon and preparations were made for the Sant Juan meal before going out and watching the kids set off fireworks.

As a past Health & Safety Officer for my school I am constantly appalled by the risks that institutions in this country take. Their attitude towards fireworks is one which constantly amazes me.

The whole of the day has been punctuated by small fire-cracker detonations and large land-mine like explosions. This is the time for petardos (versions of the penny banger) which have been illegal in Britain for years. Here in Catalonia small wooden huts spring up so that everyone who wants to may buy as many as they like of cheap explosives to hurl around as they wish.

The paseo along the beach was a ribbon of fire as young and old engaged enthusiastically in the traditional towing of fireworks at each other. Many of them, to be fair, only set them off among pedestrians so that a walk along the sea front was punctuated by some fairly energetic skittish behaviour as the more limb threatening tongues of fame snaked at ankle level along the paving.

It is also traditional for people to camp out on the beach and drink and have fires on which to roast various pieces of meat. In Castelldefels this year, this had tragic consequences.

Castelldefels has two stations, one in the town and the other at the beach. Late last night as people who did not want to stay out on the beach all the night were trying to get home, they crossed the tracts (something which is specifically forbidden) and a train ploughed into them.

12 or 13 people were killed and many more were injured, some, horrifically by body parts which were flung about as the bodies of the unfortunates trying to cross were fragmented by the force of the impact! The story kept running on what appeared to be a tape loop on the television and put, as you might expect something of a damper on what was a bank holiday.

However, the tragedy happened at the other end of Castelldefels and in the part where we were there was no indication of anything amiss.

The long delayed meeting with Caroline took place in the Basque restaurant where I felt fully justified in drinking the local wine as I had made my way there by bike.

So yet another Friday!

Friday 25th June 2010

I set off a little earlier than usual and was met by virtually empty (for the roads I usually take) rondas and I got to school far too early. It did however allow me to complete the two remaining “catch-up” papers of the students that I had to mark. These marks had to be collated for a meeting which lasted from 11 am to 2 pm! The whole of my contribution to this meeting consisted of the words “Tres comma ocho” Thank god I was there!

Staying in school one second longer than was absolutely necessary after yet another meeting of stultifying tedium meant that I eschewed lunch and went out in Castelldefels instead.

The most difficult thing I will have to do tomorrow is realize that it is Saturday!

Another day to forget!

For a day I have been transformed into a class teacher and have had to be with a first form. Not in itself too stressful but when you don’t know what is going on a little unsettling.

Part of the time wasting involved taking the two classes to a local park along relatively busy roads. There is little point in worrying about these trips because virtually none of the procedures that are essential in Britain are followed here. “Stephen, remember this is not Britain!” rings in my ears as such things occur!

All I have done today is to do things that I haven’t wanted to do – and the one productive thing that I should have been doing was made impossible by everything else.

Even the lunch was crap.

The one bright spot was going out with Irene and receiving my papers back at last from the lawyer who was going to “do something with them” to help bring about the demise of The School That Sacked Me. Needless to say nothing has been done and it is now down to me to go back to the law courts and try and find out what, if any, progress has been made with the case.

Easily the most interesting even to school was phoning the Teachers Pensions people in Britain. I contacted a charming lady who engaged me in light conversation for some time and informed me that I could fill out a form on line and get the ball rolling for me to have my pension and lump sum on United Nations Day this year.

It appears that one essential form has not been sent to the office from my previous school so I phoned that place and had another excellent conversation with one of the secretaries who assured me that the form would be sent post haste. And then back to the awful reality of a school quite quickly imploding!

Still: one half day left and then the kids will be gone.

Something to think about!

A day in the sun

Two young children: yes. Two young children with their young friends: no! I grace fully bowed out of a barbecue with enticing food but over-the-quota children.

Children can only communicate by shouting. In Spain they can only communicate by shouting at the same time. I am prepared to put up with this in my professional life, but not in my free time.

I spent an intellectually demanding day lounging about on the Third Floor raiding the fridge and listening to Radio 4 on my wireless headphones. I also used my time to debate whether I had the energy to go for a swim. I did change into my new bathing costume, but that was as far as my exercise went. There is always tomorrow after a day at school whose format is something which I am dreading.

Time with the students is running out. One and a half days to be precise. The half day is largely given over to a fiesta where the pupils staff a series stalls. Last year I managed to avoid all of this by supporting a colleague who was showing a series of plays to parents who felt that they had the right to barge in to a performance irrespective of the stated starting times. Trying to keep the door closed to allow the pupils to perform to the best of their ability on the stage without interruptions was a losing battle.

But first the empty waste of a day without notion of what it should be doing. We are one colleague down and in a school that refuses to bring in supply this has a very real consequence. Another colleague is getting married and who knows somebody might be ill. That is a recipe for absolute chaos.

At the moment I have very little idea of what my timetable is going to be next year. Timetables will not be issued until the first day of term next year if we are lucky. Still, this is how it has always been so there is no point in worrying about what might be when there is no possibility of it happening.

I am adding to my list of Tasks for the summer (which is growing exponentially) the monumental one of sorting out the power leads. This is not so much a task as an aspiration. I don’t see why I should succeed at this when everyone else in the world (with the possible exception of Andrew) has a box or some sort of container which houses a writhing mass of electrical power sources. My particular box is made of transparent plastic and its appearance is like one of those displays in museums which show you cross sections through a particularly eventful geological stratum containing twisting fossils. I think that I will need the patience of a geologist just to separate each individual entity as I try and remove it from its compressed surroundings. I have already prepared a series of labels which I hope to attach to each lead and then match it to its raison d’être (camera, iPod, eBook, headphones, printer, computer, Nintendo, handheld, etc) in a IKEA CD tower to contain the bits and pieces. In theory it is a workable solution which will lessen tension when the power on something runs out. Who knows how it will work in practice.

Meanwhile bed beckons.

Keep going!

It is not yet 11 o’clock but already the day is rubbish and to cap it all the sun is shining and I am most unequivocally indoors.

The day started with my “supervising” a seething mass of 14 year olds who were just about to deliver their speeches explaining and defending what they had done over the past week when they should have been working on a project.

I am now sitting in front of a denuded class which is composed of those pupils who failed the earlier exam. At least it is quiet, but the time in which they are completing this paper extends over the “patio” or playground time and the sensitive souls have demanded that the double glazed windows be shut so that they can concentrate more! Bless.

When this is over I have a meeting with the Directora, presumably about next year and then a segue my way back to the class that I started the day with who, by that stage will probably be in a heighted hysterical state as everything that they will have had to do will have been done. Snatching a quick lunch takes me up to my lunch duty (oh the shame of it!) and by that time the powers that be will have found something else for me to do.

The only (ONLY) thing keeping me going is the knowledge that we have three more days with the kids and then they are gone. Gone I tell you!

Tuesday the 22nd is the End of Course and is a school fiesta and, more importantly a half day for the kids. I hope. The staff then have a mariscada composed of various forms of shellfish all washed down with Sangria. The 24th is San Juan and we have a day off. You can tell the level of desperation by the adding up of these moments of freedom until the final release on the 30th in the broken week which, at last ends the term.

I do not pretend to know much about Association Football (except when I think I can get away with it) but the fear-gripped, boring incompetence that characterised the English “game” against Algeria (!) was of such stupefying irrelevance as an entertaining event that I stumbled my way to bed at the end of the first half completely uninterested in the eventual outcome.

I would be grateful if anyone could explain why Heskey was our striker, or indeed why he was playing at all. And why was Rooney placed where he was on the field? The five million pounds a year earning English manager looked like some bloke who had been tempted out of a local pub for a couple of hours to give it a go for the lads. I don’t know what a manager should look like but I am bloody sure that it should not be like Capello. I do know that one shouldn’t judge on appearance. So let’s consider last night’s game, oh yes, and the game against the US of A. We could build a school for what we pay him. And if we add to that the grotesque salaries that we pay to the players who cavort their way on a patch of grass sullenly kicking the ball to the opposition, then we can staff the new Capello Institute for Useful Things Other Than Football for the next fifty years. Bitter? Me!

And while I am in the mood; I am getting progressively more fed up with the sanctimonious gibbering of the American President as he mouths xenophobic popularism which puts one more in mind of a typical French president rather than an ally. If it does nothing else than finally put to rest the dangerous myth of the “special relationship” then at least something positive will have come out of this ecological disaster.

One is tempted to think of Union Carbide and the real disaster in Bhopal and the compensation paid out there by an American company to sense the hypocrisy of the present demands for the wealth of the Indies to be placed at the feet of a group of “Southern Gentlemen” who are going to milk BP for every cent they can get to scrub each grain of sand to pristine whiteness.

But the sun is out, the sea is calm and at the moment everything seems right with the world.

At the moment.

What's a day between friends!

Bone tiredness precluded any intellectual activity after I returned from Barcelona having completed my “lesson” with my “pupil” in an outside café with a couple of glasses of red wine.

There is something draining about being with class after class of chatty Spanish and Catalan students who are “discussing” ways forward in their projects around computers that refuse to connect to the internet. It is almost easier to teach them rather than let them be!

Tomorrow is the day of their presentations when, surprise, surprise I will be sitting with classes supervising them as they wait to make their pitch for good marks – because without the carrot of a mark, nothing would get done. “Does it have a mark?” is the cry which greets any piece of work which is given to these students; without a “mark” any attempt to get students to take something seriously is doomed to failure.

Anyway, refreshed after something like ten hours sleep I can face the future with something almost approaching placidity. After a number of exciting periods babysitting I have the enticing prospect of hard, intellectually demanding work: counting dictionaries in the various rooms in the school. Given the tedium of my other “work” during the past few days, I can sincerely say that I am looking forward to wandering around with a little list and counting any volumes I find! Sad isn’t it – but the end of term (and more importantly the earlier date which signals the departure of the students) is within sight!

I can now (almost) find my way to the café which is the site for my “lesson” without the aid of a GPS. Almost!

Yesterday’s journey was enlivened by my attempting to kill a policeman.

The first part of my descent to Barcelona from our eerie-like school, perched precariously on one of the steep (yet affluent) sides of a Barcelona hill, takes me past a Monastery with an “open season” roundabout where it is every one for himself and even when you are around it you have to negotiate a transition from one road to another by crossing solid white lines and cutting into traffic.

Imagine my horror when, added to this transport nightmare, I saw that the whole of the traffic light system had failed and, to make the terror yet more terrific, policemen were directing the hapless motorists!

One policeman (barely more than a child) held up an imperious hand to stop me and then with an airily dismissive wave seemed to direct me down another road. I might add that this child was actually standing in the middle of the route on which I would normally have continued my journey, so I held my hand up palm forward to indicate that I expected to travel over him! Meanwhile one of his colleagues had encouraged a stream of traffic to make its way down the road that I thought he was indicating me to use!

The situation was exacerbated by his moving towards my car and looking furiously through the windscreen; indicating that I lower my driver’s side window; listening in disbelief to my stuttering Spanish (you try translating, “I thought that you were indicating an alternative route and I misunderstood your clearly contradictory casual gestures,” while looking at an perversely bearded, irritated, uniformed child) and finally by his uttering some sort of veiled threat.

I eventually escaped by all his other colleagues working together to create a space for me to slip into a stream of traffic making its escape from the scene of confusion and distress.

Thank god the rest of the traffic light system was in good working order and I simply had to cope with rush hour Barcelona!

Today was Toni’s nephew’s second birthday. He has a four year old brother. Most people who have had or are in the process of bringing up children will be able to fill in all the details that I might mention about the unwrapping of presents and the searing envy, jealousy and tantrums that ensued.

As the seven hundred and fiftieth present is unwrapped and discarded one cannot, OK “I” cannot help but think back to my own birthdays and the decorous present unwrapping that I engaged in punctuated with many expressions of gratitude. And perhaps I should stop at this point before I become maudlin and resentful. I wonder what I had for my second birthday. But such musings are not productive in 2010 with kids born in a TV dominated and materialist society. Ah me!

I have been reading “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles. This is the best known book of a writer of whom, before today I had never heard. The only reason I read it was because it has been suggested for the sixth form as a relatively simple reader.

I must admit that I was vastly unimpressed. Originally the novel was published in 1959 (“Catcher in the Rye” published 1951) and it is set largely in 1942-1943. It is a bildungsroman or "coming of age" novel which is largely set in an exclusive American prep school and concerns itself with the friendship between two unequal young men whose friendship and animosity proves both productive and fatally destructive and yet allows the main character to realize some sort of human potential within himself. Possibly.

There is some fine lyric writing and it is a fairly compelling portrait of torture that self knowledge can demand, but it is not an easy read and the action is limited - though some fairly dramatic events take place.

Overall this is a duty read rather than a pleasure and I can see this being a particularly hard slog getting the subtleties through to the cynical members of an English as a second language sixth form!

I shall raid the reading cupboard before the end of term and arm myself with school books to while away the long months of freedom!

It does count as work you know!

Limping along!

An occasion unprecedented in the annals of educational history in our school: a meeting finished early!

Not only that, but the meeting also had a useful function! Just too much for an ordinary terminally cynical classroom teacher to take!

We were all sitting round an island made up of tables in the library and, as the meeting ended people were clearly shocked and didn’t move. Spanish people not moving and sitting down are, by definition talking. And so they talked – a sort of displacement activity for not going home!

Now I am a bit of an expert on the ending of Spanish meetings: they don’t. There is a morbid fear of meetings ending and so official or unofficial AOB can expand to take up any amount of time. I was horrified that so-called professionals could resist the clear opportunity to go home and in my desperation I started to inch one of the tables away from the other tables in the island while packing my brief case: I am nothing if not subtle and suddenly ambidextrous when it comes to getting away from school!

Eventually, just before things resting on the edge of my chosen moving table fell to the floor, other people realized that escape was possible and the general exodus began. I was away to my car before the others had drawn a breath! Experience always tells.

The weather has been rotten: close, cloudy and oppressive. A few raindrops were actually squeezed out of the humidity but nothing worth putting the windscreen wipers on for. We hope, as we have hoped for much of this year, for better weather tomorrow.

There are now sixteen days to go to the end of term: and counting!

Standard Four in my Junior School was a constant succession of Progress Papers specifically designed to lead to success in the 11+. We had homework on a regular basis which we suddenly didn’t have when a schools’ inspector was present. Not that we knew he was an inspector and not that we knew that as primary school children we were not supposed to have homework. I didn’t help matters by asking our teacher what the homework was and being completely mystified by an airy wave of dismissal from a teacher who had given us considerable amounts of homework on a regular basis and who had quite definitely suggested that passing the exam would be totally impossible without the constant attempting of paper after paper at home as well as in school.

Everything was geared towards the exam in a way in which I find creepily familiar in my present school. But this was education when I was eleven in a system entirely governed by passing an exam which would be the pathway to academic success in a grammar school or academic ignominy in a secondary modern school. My recognition of the bad old days (whatever the right wing and so-called New Conservatives say) in my present location does not say much for educational development in Catalonia.

Just as in my old primary school there are concessions to modern thinking. Every Friday afternoon we had a couple of periods when we could “do” projects. These were pages culled from some sort of forward thinking publication which allowed us to do a rudimentary sort of research and to present our findings in an interestingly graphic way. This “freedom” was strictly confined and the real education was via Progress Papers which forced endless practice of the types of 11+ exam papers with which we might be confronted.

The only paper I actually enjoyed was the essay writing. The stimulus for this piece of writing was a comprehension on, of all things, Victorian bathing machines! Just the thing that a lad just entering into the swinging sixties would be interested in! I was. I still remember the writing clearly and my description of the proprietor of the bathing machine as “looking like a Gorgon” which in turn says something for the extent of my reading.

Unfortunately my essay was never read as the piece of writing was apparently only used in borderline cases to give further evidence to justify a pass or fail. I was no genius at the age of 11 but I wasn’t on the borderline either.

In my present school the examinations are over and the pupils are all following a similar sort of “project” to those that I used to delight in all those years ago. Things are a little different I used books for my information and most of the pupils in front of me are using computers. My books always opened, which is more than can be said for the internet programs for these privileged pupils! Perhaps they would do well to go back to the old days and give each class a selection of reference books and see what happens.

Though, thinking about it, no, not a good idea. In spite of the fact the inevitable internet problems that accompany any attempt by a school to expand internet access to actual pupils in a working environment means that the amount of information which, in theory is vast, in practice becomes non-existent. Pupils therefore rely on the games and music and other fripperies that they have stored on their machines and research goes out of the window.

When I think back to a slightly more recent period when I was in university the real problem that I always had was finding somewhere to study. Yes, I had my own room on campus – but that was far too full of distractions to allow for concentrated study. And English students have, by definition, books, and the book on the shelf is always worth more than the book in the hand!

The library in Swansea University was modern and well appointed, though during the lead up to my finals the authorities decided to try and stop the whole building sliding gracefully into the sea and so had an extended period of pile-driving which was anything but an encouragement to revision or learning. I once went into the library during the height of the pile-driving and saw rows of finals students looking more and more paranoid as each earth shaking thump echoed through the erstwhile sepulchral calm of that centre of academe!

The library anyway was not a good place for me to study as it was full of, yes; you’ve guessed it, books. With my magpie mind the subject of an individual book was not really important and I often found myself engrossed in some abstruse tract which had nothing whatsoever to do with the ostensible subject that I was officially studying.

Ironically it was a library that was my final and most useful choice of working environment. Not a “real” library in which there were books which begged to be read, no, another place altogether.

The Department of Chemistry in Swansea University had gone through a period of megalomaniac power building which saw a number of phases of construction as a professor got his budget increased exponentially. The end result was laboratories which were used for such things as the storing of cardboard boxes rather than the teaching of students – true I saw the cardboard boxes with my own eyes and was told the epic tale of vaulting Chemical ambition by one of the technicians! And a Chemistry Library is, almost by definition filled with incomprehensible books and, given Chemistry students’ disinclination to read around their subject it provides a location which no one used.

Except for me!

Once discovered, I treasured this arid oasis of calm and used it to complete essays and read and annotate those odd books through which even I had to struggle; books like “The Fairy Queen” which, to be fair, even the clinical surroundings of the Chemistry Library didn’t encourage me to read all the way through!

I`m not sure that even the spaciousness of retirement (when ere that might be) will tempt me to plough my way through the whole thing!

It rained solidly through the night and, working on the third floor, I heard that melancholy drip, drip, drip which is the sad watery percussion that I grew up with! This year continues its depressingly skittish approach to summer and as I sit here I can see through the window banks of threatening cloud, though there is also a band of brightness which promises some amelioration. Eventually!

Experience doesn't always help!

Although I did manage to stop myself from saying, “I knew it!” and “I told you so!” I could not refrain from a “Every bloody year!” as the computer system which takes in all the results for the grand meeting this evening crashed.

I am not good at coping with screen freezing as it takes me back to the black night many years ago when my Sinclair QL, on which I was typing the final version of a long external exam paper which had to be handed in to the external moderator the next morning, froze. I finally got to bed in the late early hours of the morning and refreshed by a single hour’s sleep after retyping the whole thing I went to school a not very happy bunny.

The programme which we had to use to load the final examination results actually (rather cheekily) allowed me to assume that everything was going to be fine. It encouraged me to start typing in the results with growing confidence and then, at the point when I knew that all the results were going to be in place by the stipulated time – stasis.

The misery was slightly ameliorated by the presence of a charming member of the maths department whose frustration matched my own – but she was rather more decorous in showing it! In a welter of mystifying Spanish but clearly communicated facial grimaces she expressed in a most eloquent way the teacher’s lack of faith in all hi-tec equipment which invariably fails at the point when you need it most.

Needless to say I found another way of getting what I wanted by going snivelling to the bursar who has a way with computers. Who failed. But then suggested that I enter the information directly on the server. Which I did and the job was done. I wonder what the rest of my colleagues are doing as their levels of homicidal frustration reach critical mass and they try and vent their feelings on some inanimate (or indeed animate) object in their vicinity!

I have lost one of my free periods (par for the course) and I will try and harness what reserves of placidity (!) I possess to manage the horror of the meeting this evening.

I have now lost another free and the meeting is going to start while I am engaged with yet another class. They are starting to discuss a year I don’t teach (the only one) and then go on to our classes. There is a horror scenario where I am left in charge of two classes while the Spanish/Catalan speaking English teacher slopes off to join the misery of inconsequential talking. The day is developing well! And it’s only 11 am so far!

Our hopes for the fabled “school” that we had hoped to found seem further away than ever. The discussions and the expectations have been interesting but everything founders on the simple necessity for money. We are beginning to doubt that anything can be done in spite of the fact that our proposal fills a real need and we are convinced that it would be a success. But, and it’s a big but, not only is money in short supply but also time (in all sorts of ways) is running out. At least I can comfort myself with the fact that I have always regarded the founding of the “school” as an amusing pastime or a mild curiosity rather than an essential reality. Even if everything was in our favour at this moment (and it isn’t) it would take at least two or three years to set up a school and . . .

Perhaps, out of sheer spite, I will turn my attention back onto the School That Sacked Me. There must be something to learn there by observing an institution which is not fit for purpose; which ignores rules and regulations; which has no recognizable curriculum; which treats teachers with contempt; which had educational standards which would prompt any inspectors to put it in special measures and - what is the point of going on! In spite of its manifest failures it opens its doors year after year and pretends to be a school – and people pay real money to send their children there! If such a place can exist, so the logic goes, then how much more welcome would be a school which actually tried to be a real educational institution! But such thoughts merely lead to madness!

I am concentrating on the end of term, visits, wine tastings and getting my library in some sort of real order. I have started making lists of What I Am Going To Do During The Summer.

Not a good sign!

Why is the weekend only two days long?

Well, it didn’t rain today in spite of the rather uninspiring weather forecast which assured us that it would. Broken cloud with intervals of brilliant sunshine was what we actually had and, gloomy periods ignored, a refreshing swim in the pool.

Today was Toni’s name day and the opportunity for him to rake in various presents from his family. My gift (the TV dongle for the computer) was slightly tarnished by the fact that the artistic construction which doubled as an aerial signally didn’t work. Still there should be hours of some sort of fun in looking at the myriad stations that are able to be picked up with the equipment supplied.

There are now 17 days left to the end of the month. If we take the last ‘working’ week in the month which is a week without the kids and the two days of the weekend that precede it and subtract those days from the total we are left with eleven days. San Juan on the 24th is a holiday so take another day off and we are left with 10 days. There is a weekend at the end of this week, so we are left with 8 working days. That is this week and a few days of next as the full extent of school time with pupils. That sounds doable.

Now, although my colleagues might not be actually writing down these calculations, they are certainly thinking them. One of my colleagues asked me weeks ago when we could start counting down the days. I was strict and told him that such an approach was unacceptable until the month of June had actually started. As soon as we started counting days he wanted to know when we could start counting hours. Again I was strict and told him that this was unacceptable in all professional educational institutions until the last week of term. One must have standards otherwise chaos looms!

Of course institutions have their own little ways of making sure that the summer holidays are fully appreciated. Tomorrow we have an endless meeting of almost unendurable vacuity when “colleagues” (we all know them, they are the same in all schools under the sun) feel the need to give their sixpence worth of gabble although nobody wants to hear them, or rather at this stage of term Nobody Wants To Hear Them At All. It means that I will reel out of the meeting at about 7.30 pm after a working day which stretches from 8.45 to 4.45. The meeting starting at 5.00 just about giving one time to snatch a glass of water and fix firmly in place the disinterested smile which indicates to all and sundry that one is present but not voting. This smile will stay fixed until the end of the “discussion” when, with what I like to think of as highly visible contempt I rush to my car and flee to Castelldefels trying to blot from my mind that when I finally arrive home, distrait, emotionally drained and extremely pissed off that this is only the first day of the week!

The one good thing of course is that I will be able to subtract it from the measly total of 8 working days with kids and perhaps I will allow a wan smile to cross my thin lips!

As the sole British male at the lunch today I felt the onus of alcoholic irresponsibility rest firmly on my shoulders and I am ashamed to admit that my total consumption was one glass of Tinto de Verano – a bottled mixture of red wine and lightly sugared pop! I have no real excuse for this unbecoming abstinence except to say that everyone else drank less than I did! It is very trying to be British and to attempt to fit in with the perverse aversion to excess by which I am surrounded! It is only in our “Wine Tastings” that I feel truly at home!

I know that school tomorrow is going to be chaos. Examination results have to be entered on a computer programme for the meeting tomorrow afternoon and there is an invariable crash which turns all teachers into nervous wrecks. At least this year I know that it is going to happen and so I can, oddly, be a little more relaxed about it. I have learned to feed off other peoples’ hysteria and I have used it like a sedative, so that as civilization is razed to the ground around me I assume my laurel wreath, take out my lyre and follow the music illuminated by the flames around me!

As far as I can work out, all our results are nothing more than smoke reflected in a series of cunningly placed mirrors that have the same relationship with reality as does Lewis Carroll’s world. When dealing with institutions it is always good to remember the wise words of Humpty Dumpty when he said, “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.”

I defy anyone who has worked in education for longer than a week to tell me that they haven’t experienced a situation in which they could have been talking to Humpty Dumpty. Alice, of course, spoke for all of use toilers in the field when she said, “The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.” God bless her! The voice of reason; a little plaintive and naïf, but with the ring of solid logic behind it. It puts Humpty Dumpty clearly in his place and reduces him to stunned silence.

Anyone who believes that in a scholastic context must have worked for less than the week that I talked about. Humpty Dumpty comes back with the unanswerable managerial question stopper, “The question is which is to be master -- that's all.”

At times like these I remember a younger version of myself speaking to Ivor Davies, Trade Union supported Labour MP for Gower when I was a student representative talking to the Council of my University. I used language that should have been common to us both but I was surprised and hurt (I was young) that this MP with a rock solid majority was a true Humpty Dumpty and he may as well have been speaking Serbo-Croat for all the sense that our dialogue held. I have, over time, come t see this exchange as, at best a learning experience, at worst . . . ah, I was always too sensitive and easily hurt to become a politician!

Writing all this has neatly ensured that I didn’t actually do any of the school work that I only half heartedly planned to do this weekend.

C’est la vie!