Life in the early lane!

THURSDAY 9TH SEPTEMBER

The second time this week that I have risen at 6 am and it is not the last as Friday too is an early start. I am trying to persuade myself that I am an “early” person and that this unnatural greeting of the dawn is good for my soul.


Rubbish of course, but you have to delude yourself somehow if you are to get through the year!


There is something to be said for getting the pupils so early as they are mostly stunned into academic compliance as the disenchantment with the whole school system does not usually take over the personality until after lunch!


It does make the day unnaturally long and one feels that it is about time for lunch at about 10.30 am. But lunch is at 2.00 pm! And then school goes on until 4.45 pm.


The author and illustrator of the book that a group of kids are translating are going to come and visit to speak to the pupils and see how the translation is going. If things keep t the timetable that I have in mind then the rough draft of the translation should be ready by the first week in October. This is a positive teaching experience – though god knows I am not really teaching them anything as the finer points of translation from a language that I do not speak with any fluency are somewhat lost on me. I can, however, look at the English that the kids are producing and make suggestions about where they might need to concentrate. At least I hope that is what I am going to do; otherwise my function is going to be confined to sharpening the pencils they use!


I also had an unexpected free period as the numbers of pupils who are going to take a credit on Current Affairs are not sufficient to justify two teachers.


The worrying point here is that I will have two periods for “other uses” and all the other uses that I can envisage are not enticing.


FRIDAY 10TH SEPTEMBER


I have now seen all my classes but one (with one class appearing to have disappeared up its own lack of interest) and only Media Studies is remaining for me to inflict what I think the subject entails.


Considering that this week has been one in which one day has been without the kids, all my colleagues are totally exhausted. We kid ourselves that this is simply a function of the “first week” and that we will become immediately acclimatized to the horror in succeeding weeks. I am not fully convinced by this as three early starts, ploughing on to five o’clock is not my idea of fun and I do not think it ever will be. But, for the sake of my sanity I will restrain my plaintive cries of desperation and ruggedly soldier on for another few days until I decide to plumb the depths of despair.


Friday is the day on which I have an 8.15 early start, then after a break I teach for three hours straight and then another hour after lunch. I do not think that this is ever going to be the sort of day where I am able to take it in my stride. Even with leaving early at “only” ten to four in the afternoon, it is still a killer of a day.

This weekend is an odd one because the 11th of September is Catalonia’s National Day.


In an oddly quirky way, reminiscent of the British inclination to glorify magnificent defeats (Corunna, Dunkirk etc) Catalonia decided to make the day on which the 1714 Siege of Barcelona ended their national day. The Catalans had (with British encouragement and effusive protestations of absolute commitment to the Catalans) supported the Habsburg claimant to the Spanish throne in the War of the Spanish Succession. The 11th of September was the day on which they lost. The victorious Bourbon line (which reigns in Spain today) exacted a Draconian revenge for supporting the “wrong” side. The British, of course, abandoned the Catalans to their fate; as is the way in these dynastic struggles.


So the 11th of September commemorates a cataclysmic defeat which redrew the boundaries of Catalonia and destroyed the defences of the city of Barcelona. Each to his own! Oh, and by the way, this National Day was first instituted in the far off and distant days of 1980! I do like instant tradition!


Unlike the UK just because the day falls on a Saturday we do not get a substitute day to compensate for it being on a weekend.


The most logical thing to do is accept that nothing will be open and merely retire to the beach to laze in the promised sunshine. There are, after all, worse ways to spend ones time on a bank holiday.


And a little light reading, I think!

. . . and early to rise - is a bloody mistake!

In this worst of all possible worlds I got up at 6 am to make it to school for an 8.15 am start and discovered that this one was of the two days when I could have come in at the normal time.



In the way that one does, I tried to make the most of it and managed to prepare all the materials for my lessons in the new space available and even gave myself a congratulatory cup of tea in the time before my first lesson began.


I am gradually meeting my groups and trying to extrapolate what it is going to be like teaching them for the next year. One group has been oddly split to allow a group of talented English students to translate a Spanish children’s book into English. This will be published in the same format of the original and will be on sale in aid of the disaster fund for Haiti. This is an amazing opportunity for a small group of kids to be able to cite a published work in their CV’s for university and beyond! The chosen few have taken to the task with gusto and are pleased and excited.


The sad thing is that this task will only occupy them for a limited period and then we will have to think about how to teach the split group for the remaining two and a half terms.


My group of Current Affairs students looks as though it is going to be strangled at birth and I shudder to think about what might take its place.


No one, at the moment, is taking anything for granted with timetables and class lists and any free time is being regarded as something which can easily disappear at the touch of a computer key. At the moment, for example, I have neither a lunchtime duty nor a playground duty. What I do have is a library duty on a Tuesday, but this is regarded as such a light, insubstantial thing that it is in imminent danger of being added to with something much more irksome.


In my first year class hordes of pupils descended and we ran out of desks. I sincerely trust that this is an aberration and some re-jigging of student personnel can be accomplished without delay – and certainly before I give them any substantial marked work!


In spite of the fact that my early leaving on a Wednesday is because of my early start on a Monday (which this week was a teacher only day and at the normal time) I still too the time off because I arrived early this morning and worked. So there.


I had my customary swim and the water was a little warmer than it has been in the last few days: inscrutable are the ways of pool water and their retention or otherwise of heat from what remains of the sun in the tail end of the summer!


Two more days to the weekend. And it can’t come a day too soon!

Don't take things for granted

Today was remarkable.



Leaving at the end of work it only took me five minutes to go the few hundred yards to the slip road to the motorway and thence to freedom. Five minutes, believe you me, is absolutely nothing, especially bearing in mind the total selfish chaos which characterized the morning arrival at school.


Parents always act as though the school has only one pupil: their offspring. It therefore makes no difference if they single, double or even triple park. It is as nothing to park on a zebra crossing; to park across three parking spaces; to block entrances; to stop exits; to throw doors open into oncoming traffic; to back, walk or run out into the road; to fail to indicate; to stop suddenly – to do any damn thing they please, because they are the school.


We teachers of course know that this is fallacious thinking: we are the school. The parents and their fecundity are merely the means to facilitate our continuing existence.


The motorways to school were reasonable (for city motorways) and I found myself grumpily reassessing the time which would allow me to sleep and get to school when I hit the slip road off the motorway to my place of work. That is to say I didn’t hit the slip road for a considerable period of time as I was held up in a scarcely moving line of traffic waiting to join the cheerful chaos of the roundabout where what seem to be hundreds of lines of traffic meet.


Spanish drivers are not given to flashing their lights to encourage hard pressed car owners to join their lane of traffic. Flashing lights are a sign of impatience and hatred. I have known drivers speed up in the inside lane to stop me joining it even though immediately after I have insinuated my way there they join the outside lane!


The roundabout is our own version of L’Etoile we may not have a triumphal arch but by god we do have bloody minded drivers who merely point their vehicles in the direction they intend to take and then press the accelerator.


The real problem is that the exit I need is one lane wide and sometimes I seem to be the only driver who actually sees that there is not room for two cars. People who are in the lane for going left suddenly decide that they want to go right and cut across my path and go down another slip road to a motorway.


By the time I have negotiated the roundabout the road then lurches upwards in a one in one gradient at which point there is a set of traffic lights. When you finally get a green you then have to contend with drivers cutting across you again as they disappear down yet another slip road to a motorway.


By the time you have negotiated the obstacle course of parents decanting their kids with unseemly languidity kissing their progeny as if they were consigning them to an unspecified stretch in the Chateau d’If and finally found a parking space you are in no fit condition to teach. This is par for the course with most professionals!


So I was not looking forward to the departure from school. Well, that’s stupid, of course I was looking forward to it, the long wait in an unmoving caravan of little emperors being ferried back home in expensive cars was what I was not looking forward to.


But the traffic was “moving” – obviously five minutes for a couple of hundred yards is not quick but for us this period of time indicate a formula 1 type acceleration away from the place. And here is where it is remarkable.


The reason for our speed of egress was that the crossing was controlled by the police. Yes, police actually speeding up the traffic. A unique experience. I even forgave them their predilection for whistles; I even waved my thanks as I sailed serenely down the slip road and sped home. It won’t last of course.


Once home and changed we rushed to the beach and there, despite grim looks and prim warnings, I charged (walked tentatively) into the rolling waves which were churning up the sand and spoiling the neat manicured appearance of the beach. After being tumbled about by waves which really were quite rough I lay on the beach and the brisk breeze ensure that powdered sand coated every crevice. One is prepared to put up with a damn sight more than that to lie on the beach in September!


Tomorrow reality really does kick in with the first of the 8.15 am starts, but it does mean that I go home early and miss the end of school rush.


Early arrival home and, in spite of the shower we have just had and the clouds which I can see in the sky, the possibility of another swim in the sea and a more tranquil number of lengths in the pool.


It a way of life!

Fear so near you can almost touch it!

I had my swim in darkness this morning and felt fully awake and tinglingly refreshed by the time it had ended.


I got to school to be met by suppressed hysteria from all, amid frantic attempts to get some of the simple administrative tasks done at least. My attempts to find out who might be in my classes was, I suppose, doomed to failure from the start. “I can give you a list off the top of my head” and “the information is on my computer at home” were two of the responses which didn’t really help in any tangible way, but they at least showed some sort of willing.


Probably the best aspect of the Lurking Horror that is tomorrow is that my worst fears have not been realized (so far) and I remain without a form. As is traditional in schools the first couple of periods have the students with their form teachers so that they can be given books, advice, warnings and pleas in the fond hope that they are prepared for the long slog to the end of June in 2011. Dear god what a(n) horrific thought!


For two of my new courses I have no idea what to teach; or to put it another way I have no end of ideas of what I would like to teach but I don’t know just how much can be squeezed into a course which is only a term long and in which I have two periods a week: under 20 hours. One of the courses has to include the translation of a child’s book into English and the history of modern art from Cubism to the present day. The other is Media Studies and here my central project was based on a computer program which doesn’t seem to want to work. What is a “dedicated graphics card” and wouldn’t some sort of more casual and lackadaisical one work just as well in a raffish and debonair sort of way?


The only way to survive is to lurch from weekend to occasional day to major holiday. September is already partly gone and there is a holiday in Barcelona on the 24th when I will make a State Visit to the UK for a significant birthday party of an ex-colleague. The 11th and 12th of October form another break and then there is my own significant birthday when the possibility of changing the car becomes a reality.


Reality of course, would mean that something as essentially frivolous as a convertible would not be considered, but, on the other hand there is something irresistibly decadent about spending more money to get less car that I find strangely beguiling.


The convertible version of the car I already drive is expensive and I would end up with a two-seater with room in the back for a child with rickets and a stunted mermaid with no legs. The version up from my present car is substantially more expensive (I mean substantially) but it does look more elegant and it has a more realistic pair of back seats where people would not have to be suffering from post-war diseases or be members of a fabulous race to be able to enjoy the ride.


The drooling imagination will have a field day with pondering the choices. I might add that I have not seen in the flesh any version of either of these cars and I am determined (a last shred of intelligent thought) not to commit myself to anything until I have had a test drive.


I fear that my school work is going to take a very poor fifth or sixth place while the bulk of what I am pleased to call my mind is engaged in fascinating possibilities far removed from the conditional and changing perfectly good active sentences into ponderous, unlikely and cumbersome constructions in the passive!


On the positive side the neighbours left last night and a bottle of Cava was carefully opened (you do not find me wasting any of the precious liquid at the cost of a vulgar popping of the cork) and consumed mostly, it has to be said, by me. Their departure lifts a pall from our little community and one source of bellowing imbecility is now presumably depressing the neighbours in the city.


On the negative side it has now started to rain. I am a great believer in the Pathetic Fallacy (even if my hero Ruskin meant it as a condemnation) and here, as thousands of teachers gloomily think of the morrow the heavens themselves show their sympathy in an effusion of ethereal tears!


On the even more negative side, there are few things less appealing than the sight and smell of wet pupils whose natural volcanic warmth ensures that all classrooms take on the feel if not the appearance of tawdry saunas!


I can hardly wait!

In the west the sun is sinking!

I was reduced to swimming widths today at the shallow end because that was where the sun was. Then I realized just how whimpish such activity was and boldly swam my way into the cool, murky shadows.



There is a definite “end of era” feel to my lengths as the working week this year is going to mean my getting up at six in the morning just to get to my classes in time and I think it unlikely that I will rise at half past five just to have a swim in the dark!


The great thing about the David Lloyd Centre was that it was on my route to school and home again and often, having spent the journey debating whether or not I would call in to have a swim, I would find that the car had made the decision for me and I was already through the gate. At that point I always went with the flow, so to speak, and felt better for it. It is always good to counteract one form of fatigue with another. The draining effects of teaching can be strangely counteracted by indulging in another exhausting activity. Well, it worked for me anyway.


All of this is to force myself to join the town pool and call in after school as a way of surviving the onslaught of classes which is my burden this year.


I went to three different supermarkets this morning to get the goods that I wanted. At times like that one does miss Tesco. That organization’s burgeoning hubris as it gobbles up any commercial opportunity that comes to mind may make the territorial ambition of Alexander the Great look like debating whether to purchase a beach hut in Torbay – but one does miss the “one stop provides all” approach of the larger Tesco stores. None of our choices of Alcampo, Mercadona or Carrefour are at the same level and their “own brand” products leave something to be desired. But, shopper to my fingertips, I rather enjoy meandering my way up and down the aisles and remaining impervious to the less than enticing “ofertas” thrust beneath my sceptical gaze.


Tea bags, for example. In Carrefour I can at least get hold of PG Tips. I miss few gastronomic delights from my home country, but to go without tea bags (proper tea bags) is simply unthinkable. So, a few bonus points to Carrefour for at least stocking the items.

They sell the tea bags in packs of 40 and 80. The 40 tea bag box costs €1.92 while the 80 costs €4.35. One feels that some of the finer points of economic theory have gone slightly amiss on that form of pricing! So I bought three boxes of 40 – and would have bought more but they only had three boxes.


This is not the first time (and not only in Spain) that I have calculated that it does not pay to buy in bulk. Most people do not work out the sums and merely assume that more is less and pay the price for the privilege.


Talking of value, three bottles of reasonable Rioja for €4.35 is value for money whichever way you drink it – and a nifty little carry box was included! It’s an odd old country.


Our obnoxious neighbours seem stubbornly static and have not left for their town house in the city. Every sound they make (and there have been suspiciously few recently) is gleefully interpreted by us as activity of imminent removal. Even as I was typing more “going away” sounds reached my ears; sounds like cases being dragged along producing that distinctive sound that only little nylon plastic wheels on tile make.


To my almost incoherent joy, inspection showed that the large van like car that the head of the household affects is on the drive way, back door open and packing has begun!

I have set out the Cava glasses on the table so that when Toni and his mother come back from their walk we can toast the departure of the Dysfunctionals and look forward to a more peaceful autumn, winter and spring. It’s a good bottle of Cava so I trust that this is not a false dawn of hope! We want the whole family to go at once, not leave one or two members behind to extend the period of misery. We have specific and damning objects to each and every one of them. Good riddance!


This is an odd Sunday as Monday is not the real start of school. We have been there without the kids since Wednesday and they will not arrive until Tuesday. It is therefore possible (indeed essential) that the typical Sunday Sadness which is common to all teaching folk be denied its full force today as however frantic tomorrow might be, it will be chaos without the customers – and that has to be a good thing.


I have now opened the kitchen window so that the opening of the gate and the starting of the car will be clearly audible to me and I will be able to twist my face into a falsely wistful smile at the retreating exhaust of the family to whom we refer with jocular detestation as The Scumbags.


Meanwhile I am hopelessly unprepared for the start of term. So no change there then: though I would say that the lack of names of the pupils in my classes; books with which I am supposed to teach and access to the technology which we are all supposed to use with gusto are not necessarily my fault. Possibly.


I shall keep my thoughts fixed on a convertible!

Stereotypes and Rites of Passage

Just because one has sense it does not mean that one is sensible.


I am looking to replace my car as it is now three years old and will be getting into the testing period when I will, year on year pay out vast sums of money to get the damn thing through.


I therefore went to the Peugeot garage and asked for the cost of a new car giving mine in part exchange. I was asked what model of car I wanted and I said a replacement of what I had got. They have made a few improvements and I think (!) at last that I will be able to play one of my iPods through the music system.


Safe, unimaginative and lacking in imagination – but sensible.


Then, the seeds of discontent (sown some time ago by Jane in Sitges) sprang into full flower with the simple enquiry about why I hadn’t considered a convertible.


As soon as the question was voiced the experience of the drive to the last wine tasting in Sitges with the wind whispering through where my hair would have been in a previous age came back to me with seductive force.


Why hadn’t I considered a convertible?


With United Nations Day looming and access to the vast wealth built up by a grateful government over the last thirty years or so getting ever closer to my grasping finger tips, surely this purchase was more than a possibility!


I am getting to the age where such a purchase will be met with raised eyebrows and pitying exasperation by those people who don’t have one and who will not be allowed to buy one. Issues of practicality will cloud desire and the dream will remain a dream.

As a concession to sense I am considering the Peugeot version rather than a more expensive brand. I wonder if they do real leather seats.


Enough.


This was the enthusiasm of yesterday night, who knows if it will survive the rigours of four days of school with actual kids to make it to the showroom next weekend and find out the cost of reality. This is something to ponder, but not with too much of my brain otherwise the tempting idea will disappear with the waking up of reason!


Waking up was not something that II did convincingly this morning. I woke up at the “right” time because I always do, but I made the mistake of turning over and going back to musing and letting my mind go into free fall association – or that half or quarter sleep which is so comforting and has an insane logic all of its own.


Eventually the Protestant Work Ethic kicks in (usually almost immediately with me) and I wake up properly. As it was a Saturday after three days of school (even without the kids) I felt that I was entitled to a lie-in.


I did however have my swim in the increasingly icy waters of the pool. Anyone watching my progress up and down the pool might have been intrigued by my erratic progress as I crawled (with my best strokes) snake-like down the pool. I was, of course following the pattern of sunlight as it shone above the trees and dappled the water. The water of the pool was of that degree of coldness that is described as “you can get used to it – just” that is only one stage away from being un-swimmable.


I am determined that Monday, being the last of our four short days without the kids, will also be a swimming day for me with a short dip before the school day starts. It will be sign of my seriousness whether I find out details of the indoor pool in Castelldefels to continue the regimen of activity that I have kept up during the summer.


As I have to stay alive to get back all the money (with compound interest and adjusted to reflect today`s prices) that I have paid into the superannuation fund over the years, I suppose it is in my interest to stay healthy!


Swim on!

Schools! Don't ya just love 'em!

How often have management (and teachers) in school been seduced by the sheer vulgarity of the blandishments that high technology seems to dangle before their dazed and drunken eyes. A few flashing lights and incomprehensible techno-babble and they are hooked.


I thought of this as I viewed the fifty (count them!) computers that the school has just bought to facilitate a pilot project using them extensively in class.


They are the wrong size, far, far too big; they are not rugged and designed for heavy school use; they have batteries which do not last a full working day; the collection, distribution and return has not been thought out; class teachers do not know how to use them; material is not available for constant computer teaching – need I go on?


It is another story of resources which are going to be squandered and forced use with inappropriate resources. But, there again this is a pilot study and a few teething troubles can be expected and who knows, this time something positive may come out of it. Possibly.


Faces of my colleagues are looking a little drawn as they (and i) realize just how little time there is before the Great Unwashed descend on us and expect to be taught.


I have been attempting for the last two days to find out exactly which students are in my groups. The English Department has given me a full list but my other classes of media studies, history of art and current affairs are titles without pupils. Frantic work on Monday will probably get me the names and then they all have to be reorganized into electronic form. Happy Days!


With any reasonable luck our summer neighbours should leave this weekend. Spain is getting back to work after the summer break; school is restarting; the weather is getting cooler and visitors should now go home. Especially the dysfunctional collection of selfish ignoramuses we have been landed with. Still, shouldn’t really complain, they were a damn sight better than they were last year!


The bottle of Cava is cooling in the fridge to be opened as soon as we are absolutely certain that they have left.


Meanwhile there is the expectation of my camera returning, fully repaired on Monday and attempts to make the program (which has been downloaded on a trial basis for 30 days) to work.


At least these two things will take my mind off Tuesday!

Still the waters flow

A sullen day with the sun firmly locked behind impenetrable cloud – but still I threw myself into the icy waters of our unrelenting pool and felt the warm glow of self-denial fuelling my self esteem.



There really is something to be said for being brought up in a Protestant-no-pain-without-gain sort of society which encourages you to suffer for a moment and then let that discomfort justify feelings of moral superiority for extended periods!


All of this, of course, does not get you through a day of meetings of incomprehensible retreading of things that I have heard a hundred times before. With limited time available for preparation we seem to be wilfully wasting that precious commodity with bizarre meetings of questionable utility. So what’s new!


The day was, however, enlivened by my discovery of a program which looks as though it was designed for the Media Studies Course – which, of course, it was.


It has been designed to allow students to create a film or television set, people it with electronic actors and give those characters dialogue. It looks ideal, in fact so ideal that I am positively suspicious.


I ended up phoning the producers and talked to a guy who “used to be” (i.e. an escapee) a teacher who knew all about the product and enthused me even more about it. Although a licence for the school is a thousand quid a standalone copy of the program is only eight pounds and I am sure that something can be worked out to make it possible for a few kids to get involved with a few more copies.


I asked for a trial version and I hope that they will be able to supply me with a copy to try out for a week or so to discover, firstly if I can get the thing to work (which would mean than any child would be able to do it) and secondly to find out just how useful it might be.


A growing realization that we only have a couple of days left to prepare for the rapidly approaching academic year is beginning to sow the seeds of blind panic.


I shall immerse myself in the cooling waters of the pool and think of other things.

The shadow Falls!

I went for swim first thing in the morning just after 7.00 am, long before I went to school for the start of the new year. I felt that such a demonstration of masochistic self denial was a necessary sacrifice to whatever gods there be to make the commencement of education as I know it a little more acceptable.



I needn’t have bothered. After the effusive greetings were over reality took over and we were subjected to one of the meetings for which our school is justly famous. A short opportunity for a cup of tea and then another meeting which overran its time by over half an hour. Immediately after that meeting another which ran into lunchtime.


The good thing about the last meeting (apart from the fact that it was directly relevant to me as it was a departmental meeting) was that it was at least in English. The other four hours were in Spanish with various lapses into Catalan.


It is rightly said that the normal period for reasonable concentration in these situations is twenty minutes. When that concentration is in a foreign language then the time is much less. My brain had the consistency of over-cooked cauliflower by the time I staggered to lunch.

At least we had poached salmon which made up for my previous suffering in part; only in part!


After lunch I reverted to the normal occupation of a highly trained professional teacher and searched through the stacks of cardboard boxes from publishers containing the book orders sent off at the end of last term. To make our work just that little bit more complex some publishers had filled some boxes with a variety of books destined for different departments. I found one copy of one of our books sandwiched between books for the French and Spanish departments. This way it is going to take some time before all the books get to their correct subject teachers.

May I take this opportunity of thanking the packers in the warehouses for their contribution to the stress free atmosphere which is a characteristic of the start of term.


My timetable is horrific with my starting to teach at 8.15 am three days a week - and just to remind you that we finish at 4.45 pm. Oh joy!


My fear that the history of art classes would have disappeared from my timetable is not quite correct, but the form they take may change by the time I actually come to teach them. In a positive way, I trust!


The layout of my lessons is not useful and seems almost designed to be stressful. The only positive element that I can see is that with the accrued time I gain by starting early I can take the last period on a Friday as my compensated time and leave early.


The fortnight we had to prepare for the start of the year last September had been reduced to four days this September; and we start teaching on Tuesday. Dear god.


As pure displacement activity I have had two swims since I have come home. And the water in the pool is getting no warmer.


Tomorrow, as far as I can tell, I have only one incomprehensible meeting which is supposed to last a single hour (sic) and then I can get on with my own academic preparation.


We will see.

Time has run out!

The water in the pool this morning was cool. You might call it refreshing or, as I staggered out still sleepy eyed and threw myself in the water, you could call it shocking.


By the time I had done my customary few lengths of breast stroke to acclimatize myself to the water, I found that my goggles were gently leaking. Given that I have not adjusted them throughout the summer this was no major affair and it merely meant that I would have to tighten the straps.


It was at that point that I found out why these Lidl goggles were so reasonable priced.


They have been very serviceable and have been comfortable to wear. They look elegant and have a complex arrangement of plastic parts to ensure that the strap stays in place. A complex arrangement which, I discovered when I attempt to tighten the strap was all dependant on one tiny nub of plastic; which promptly broke, leaving the elegance of the structure something to admire as it was thrown away.

I am not, of course, the sort of person to have only one set of goggles so a replacement was not a problem.


The goggles that I chose had luridly coloured straps (with a very simple fixture to the goggle part) and lenses of a sickly dirty orangey-yellowish sort of colour. The effect was to give my glimpses of the cloud strewn sky the look of the heavens after the Seventh Seal had been opened. Head down and it merely appeared that one was swimming in urine; head up and it looked as though it only needed the Four Horsemen to be heading for me to make the end of the summer complete!


And they are not as comfortable as the last goggles and they make you look like an agency walk-on extra from the set of “Waterworld”: shame if ever there was!


The goggles giving up the ghost on the last day of the holidays seemed like yet another omen or a nice bit of irony!

Lunch in a restaurant we had not previously tried was excellent but the “infusion” I was given which purported to be a “cup of tea” made in the British way with a touch of cold milk was nothing even close to the real thing. It keeps up the sad record of never (not once) having had a decent cup of tea in any bar or restaurant in Spain. The coffee is usually very good, but, if you are British then there are times when only a cup of tea will do. And a proper cup of tea at that. I will not give up, but I have no lively expectation of success.

There is an inevitable difference between the idea and the practical application of that idea.


Garden fences are tricky things in all sorts of ways. One could have the Robert Frost poem in one’s mind about “good fences make good neighbours” and see the building of a new fence or the augmentation of an old one as an artistic affirmation of the power of poetry – or it could just be a desire for a little more privacy.


We are counting the days when our obnoxious neighbours on one side (who think it fun to have an outdoors radio and television on for the greater part of the day and then argue their way into the night) will finally decamp for the city and leave us in relative peace.


The peace is relative because the neighbour on the other side has made me wish for a very localized outbreak of hardpad, rabies and distemper to destroy her barking zoo of misshaped mongrels. I am assuming that the bawling brats in the houses in front of us will be taken back to school in the next week or so.


All of this makes me sound very grumpy, but I have to admit that I have had a great and invigorating time off school and have actually managed to complete some of the tasks (which I am certainly not going to list) which I set myself at the start of the period of freedom that I have enjoyed.


Our attempt to make the fence a little higher was doomed from the start. After an abortive effort to secure the post which was going to carry the wire which was going to support the bamboo which was going to be the new fence we sort of gave up to regroup and find another solution.


The last day of freedom.


I am getting my case together and assembling the books which I will need to photocopy to ensure a smooth start to the term with the pupils next week.


This year should, in a professional sense, be more interesting than last. I will be teaching the history of art; current affairs; English Arts (don’t ask) and my various language classes.


What is going to be interesting is to see how far plans outlined at the end of the last academic year have changed.


What will also be “interesting” is the likely way that the possible future staffing problems that pregnancies are going to cause will be sorted out. I have a horrible feeling that I may be involved in the solution and that believe me, is not good news. Being a class teacher in our school is an involved and language heavy task and not one that I care to undertake. But I get ahead of myself and I should calm down and wait for developments.


Sing ho! for the life of a bear.

But two months, nay, not so much, not two

As if to share my growing grief the pine needles seemed to have given up hope and have dropped silently onto the surface of the pool last night. The sun hid itself behind the clouds as I ploughed my lonely furrow – and this time, given the amount of vegetation in the pool the metaphor did not seem too out of place!



I have started my traditional preparations: getting a new battery for another watch so that the summer watch can be placed in a drawer with one or two others that I have accumulated over the years. As is now usual when I get a battery changed, it was anything but ordinary.


I had thought to wear a red Ronson watch, of which I am particularly fond, but it is many years since that one has ticked and even the surge of power from a new battery was unable to get it started. So many years ago was it bought that I can find no mention of Ronson watches on the internet except in those catch-all sites which give you a false sense that they actually have real information but it is all a blind.


My choice of watch for the autumn term (I could probably make it a weekly choice if I wanted) reverted to the one near perfect watch that I own.


I have a simple list of requirements for a watch:


1 It must be waterproof


2 It must have luminous hands


3 It must display the day and date


4 It must have a sweep second hand


5 The hours must be numbers


You check out any page of watches in a catalogue or on the internet and you will see just how few fulfil all the conditions that I consider necessary. Even when you realize that I am prepared to be flexible about the colour of the watch face and the strap my conditions eliminate well over 95.4% (a figure I have just made up) of all watches currently on sale.


My Swatch “Irony” is one of the very few watches I own which have all five requirements. Bless it.

I left the watch to have its battery inserted while I went shopping for groceries and on my return a distrait young lady weakly held out the watch and said that she had been unable to open the battery compartment. She had been trying to dislodge it with a 10c coin which didn’t really fit the groove, whereas I had a 1c coin which I had picked up from the floor of some bar in a gesture which obviously showed that at least some of my antecedents were from a place is Wales a little further west than Cardiff!


With my reading of Chandler firmly fixed in my mind I twisted the coin and the back opened. It was at this point that I should have made some throwaway remark or originality and hard bitten wit, instead of which I did a mock growl to demonstrate my he-man potential. This was greeted with what could only be described as an embarrassed simper.


Well, at least the watch works and I now have a band of gleaming metal on my wrist which is a contrast from the chunky black plastic that I have been sporting for the summer.


Armed with the “new” watch we defiantly went to the beach where I at least threw myself into the foaming shallows and was slapped and buffeted by waves which for the Mediterranean were large and aggressive. In a thoroughly domestic and matronly sort of way the currents and waves all tend to bring you to shore in double quick time. Indeed the interval from being out of your depth and suddenly being able to stand up is so swift that the illusion of security that comes with touching the sand with your feet is immediately thumped out of you by waves which come laughingly over your head and tumble you the few remaining feet to shore.


The sun was not immediately the most impressive thing about being on the beach, I think the sandpapering from the brisk breeze propelling sand grains at delicate skin was the more obvious, though by concentrating on the texture, colour and movement of the waves noting particularly the effects of whatever fugitive light from the skittish sun was about it was possible to forget about the abrasion. Now say that a cultured mind is worth nothing!


I have now reached the stage where interspersed with the more normal fare there are some strange un-Chandler-like stories emerging from the electronic innards of my e-book reader. One of them concerned a magic bronze door and the next story is entitled “Professor Bingo’s Snuff” – I can’t help feeling that I am delving into those reaches of Chandler’s literary past where, like Asimov in his mind-bendingly awful “Lucky Starr” novels (all of which I have read, I might add) you find stuff stories which were simply written for money. At least Asimov adopted a pseudonym!


I am painfully aware that, as evening draws on, there is only one clear day left of the holiday. I have therefore decided to turn my mind to an altogether more congenial date in what really is the very near future.


There are now 55 days to the time when I will start to “earn” by doing nothing more than staying alive.


I am sure that a numerologist would make something of 55 but to me it merely signifies a time period of less than two calendar months.


And I’m counting!

Sundays are always bad days for teachers, unless of course they occur in holidays. There is a sort of flatness about a Sunday, even after the stranglehold of the church has been relaxed a little allowing us to whistle on a Sunday if we choose, there is a deadness to the day which does not encourage happy thoughts.



Of course in these more enlightened times, the whole concept of the “weekend” invented by the British has been hijacked by modern entrepreneurs and turned into working opportunities. Contracts, especially in the retail sector, now routinely contain a section taking away the sacred weekend for many workers and turning it into an ordinary working part of the week.


The weekend for teachers is the one factor which keeps (most) teachers on an even keel, or at least makes our stumbling progress to the Nirvana of the summer holidays possible.


I am still having counselling for the meeting which was scheduled for a Saturday last year. I think that the supine acceptance of this abomination infuriated me more than the obscenity of its being called in the first place.

Next month sees what is supposed to be a General Strike. Given the laughable organization and power of the unions in this country (especially in the teaching sector) it will be interesting to see exactly how this momentous event plans out.


Many government workers, including teachers, have been given a pay cut of 5% and a pay freeze. VAT has been increased and inflation, as far as I can see in the little oasis of prosperity in which I live, is on the up and up. In other words the scene is set for a major confrontation with the ludicrously inept government which purports to govern Spain at the moment. But . . .


The employment law in this country, which makes Byzantine complexity look like an IKEA construction leaflet – I`m not sure that image is quite what I thought it was going to be, but I am far too intellectually lazy to change it now! The end result is that the “power” of the unions seems at best compromised by the structure in which they have to operate.


It will be very interesting to see how my school reacts to the General Strike (you can tell I am a trade unionist by the way that I put those words in capital letters and feel just a shade of historical guilt about the event) and what measures they put in place.


The school has behaved quite decently about the foolish meanderings of the government so far and they have protected teachers’ wages as far as they say they are able, but if the strike goes ahead then there will be transport chaos in Barcelona.


I have no intention of sitting in a traffic jam for a couple of hours getting to school and then doing the same trying to get home: I don’t mind sitting in a jam in school time, but I am damned if I am going to do it in my own!


The obvious solution would be to close the school for the day – but we have parents who pay a lot of money for us to act as childminders and they would not be best pleased if they have to look after their progeny again so soon after the summer holiday!


There is also the response to the half term break in February next year the details of which still have still not been finalized. Some colleagues will be with kids on trips and the children I teach will simply not be in school. There have been a whole variety of solutions to the staffing problems but I wait for further variations at stages intervals up to the time of the holiday itself!

Basketball is, I concede an a lively sort of sport when it is being played at full tilt but that only happens between what seem like interminable stoppages and that gives one time to note all the irritations which make it so difficult to watch.


The players are clearly freaks whose early deaths are clearly signalled by their ridiculous height. For some of these players scoring a basket only necessitates their launching themselves a couple of inches from the ground – and that is just as well as they look as though any further height and the stadium would be destroyed with the force of their landing. One critic once asked what was the point of actually playing the games when all you had to do was measure the teams and then give the result to the one with the greatest number of units of measurement.


But the real absurdity is the wholesale adoption of the nauseating American attitudes to the game that the players demonstrate from group hugs, high fives, the whole touchy-feely thing, and the breathtakingly arrogant way some players score and most importantly don’t always score because of the theatricals they demonstrate.


Then there are the ‘time-outs’ when coaches use etch-a-sketch boards to demonstrate to players that it is important to get the ball through the hoop, glittering girls come on and cavort while Spanish television manages to broadcast even more adverts than the already illegal limits to which they normally work.


Some sort of basketball world cup is taking place somewhere and, as the Spanish team is usually quite good at this sort of thing, we are being saturated with hour after hour of tall men bouncing balls. It is positively purgatorial and I am sure that I will be far more vituperative by the end of next week if this torture continues that long.


Meanwhile Chandler leads me along the dangerous roads of Los Angeles and the winding ones up to imposing mansions in Beverly Hills whose immaculate lawns and clipped hedges give little indication of the corruption behind those facades they lead to. I am almost, but not quite persuaded to join his characters in a drink of bourbon, rye or whiskey (which for all I know might be the same thing) no one seems to drink wine and I know that any reference to “beer” is not bitter.

But how can a reader not forgive Chandler for his sheer inability to treat his reader with anything less than respect. And still hundreds of pages (large print) to go!


But only two more days of holiday!


Sigh!

The Big Read

It is proving more and more difficult to emerge from a world in which all ladies seem to have small pearl handled guns in their reticules and where the drinking of whiskey is obligatory to take away the pain of being smacked across the face by some ignorant policeman. In short the world of Raymond Chandler.



Seventeen hundred large print pages have been eagerly consumed by me and I merely worry that there will too little time to finish this book before the dreaded start of term.


The weather also seems to be taking a turn for the ironic with our “suffering” the two hottest days of the summer at this late stage in the dying days of August as a cruel reminder that the summer does not necessarily end when the teachers go back to school!


I only hope that the pool retains its heat to allow a swim in the evening when I come back from school. This year, as I am never slow to repeat, the leisurely fortnight of half days before the advent of the kids has been telescoped into a week of full time grind with an extra week with the students to make up for the lost time! A bum deal, as I am sure Chandler might have said if his legendary black humour could not supply a cutting remark sufficient suitably to attack a management who consider this a good idea.


The garden is something which has suddenly got a raised profile as Toni has “Ideas”. This usually means that I have to try and destroy the tree stumps again.


These stumps are the remains of trees which were decreed doomed and where chain sawed by myself as part of the destruction process. I have also strewn rock salt in the ground around the stumps and filled bore holes with salt as well. The result is that they sprout shoots of luxuriant growth all the time.


I have cut off the shoots for the last time. I will refresh the salt and add bleach for good measure and, if they grow again then I will regard it as an off-shoot of the tree of life and I will try to destroy it no longer, and probably install a suitably world weary snake to live among its everlasting branches!

I have bought some new solar lights as my contribution to the new look garden. They look much more modern and give little light – who could ask for more; decorative and practically useless. I`m sure there is a moral there somewhere.

A swimming pool with children in it is like being locked in a bathroom with an obtrusive fly: irritating.



Let us get a few ground rules clear.


Children in swimming pools should always be supervised by parents whose primary duty should be confined to telling the children to stay in the children’s pool, especially if they are toddling around with arms at 90% to their bodies because of the inflated bands of plastic which keep them afloat. Their secondary duty is to keep repeating the mantra, “Don’t get in the way of that nice man who is swimming lengths in the pool because he will cut you with his sharpened nails or hurt you with enthusiastic leg kicks and it will be you own fault if you start crying because you have been warned so don’t come crawling to me!”


But they never do.


No; instead they watch their little darlings gravitated towards the only part of the pool where someone is actually swimming with all the suicidal intent of feckless iron filings attracted to a powerful magnet.


No matter where you start swimming, within moments some little cartoon character will patter its way towards your line of strokes and hurl itself into your way.


The positive side of this is that it does give you an incentive to be wary when making your way up and down the pool in a straight line a small children are still capable of breaking your back as they giggle their way almost into your path.


And the parents of course, of course, naturally, say nothing.


You will notice that political liberality does not extend itself to the watery element in my case. Etiquette is etiquette; just as steam must give way to sail so flounderers and players and people larking about must keep out of my way as I make my stately and sometimes seriously expressive way up and down the pool.


The holiday has now dwindled to the weekend and a few days and my diatribes against pool abuse will dwindle just as quickly as the temperature of the water settles down into it autumnal range which will preclude my immersing myself in the chilly liquid!

My reading of Chandler continues to fascinate; especially his blatant use of earlier short stories as the basis for later novels.


The early short story “The Curtain” for example has the opening sentence: “The first time I ever saw Larry Batzek he was drunk outside Sardi’s in a secondhand Rolls-Royce.” In “The Long Good-Bye” is has become: “The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers.” The second is the more powerful as ironic detachment has become more pronounced. The first is direct but unbalanced by the odd name, whereas in the second the archaism of “laid eyes on” the more ordinary name, the specific model of the Rolls-Royce and the use of a less famous place than Sardi’s seem to indicate the direction that Ian Flemming was to make his own.


Reading books electronically means that you can make notes easily and tag those lines and sentiments which appeal. You can read about dark places and shady haunts where “the people are dissipated without grace, sinful without iron” in gatherings where “furtive-eyed men slid words delicately along their cigarettes, without moving their lips” talking to women who are “handsome, but this side of beautiful.” It is all finely written and as I consume story after story I realize that I am just as addicted as virtually all the characters in the tales who seem to exist on drugs of one sort of another as they take slug after slug from the square shaped bottles when they finally remove their cigarettes from their mouths!


At least the weather is something that we have in common as the sun shines in Spain as it shines on the Spanish place names of Los Angeles and the surrounding countryside!


I have read about half of the electronic pages so far in my Chandler Omnibus but I have plenty of hardback additions to keep me happy until the start of term!

Seek and ye shall find - sometimes!

Tidying up does have its advantages.

I am not interested in the obvious ones like keeping the Black Death and other interesting diseases at bay, but rather the much more interesting ones like finding the right power lead for the right power recipient.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can power up gadgets just as well via the MSB socket as from a power lead connected to the mains; even if your MSB socket is actually lined to the mains. My e-book readers remain as stubbornly unfulfilled with the pap power from the MSB as if I had merely waved the gadget around in the vicinity of a socket in the wall.

Tidying, however, revealed the True Power Lead and suddenly I am able to read my way through about 3,000 pages of the collected works of Raymond Chandler. Admittedly this is the large print version of the books and short stories where the size of the print does at least mean that you can read it easily whatever the light no matter how bright or how dim.

Restraining my desire to re-read “The Big Sleep” (the only English novel I took with me on a trip to France in the hope that by constant re-reading I would at last understand who was killed and why) with considerable difficulty I have read the introduction to this immense compendium and started reading a selection of the short stories, some of which do not reflect the final choice of the name Marlowe as the only and authentic appellation for such a famous detective. It is strangely unsettling to find someone speaking in Marlowe’s voice and acting in the way that one has come to expect from reading the great novels and yet not having his name!

Reading for me is a powerful drug and I should be careful about the way in which I indulge my passion as I tend to retreat into my own (or rather the author’s) world and being recalled to an inevitably mundane reality is often something of a shock!

The books from the WJEC have finally arrived and I have spent some time in reading the latest approaches to the teaching of media studies which will be one of my areas of pedagogy in the coming year. The book produced directly for the WJEC by teachers in Wales has been of less use than I expected and the Heinemann text book looks like something much more directly linked to what actually has to be taught. I expect that a judicious use of both books will eventually form the basis for m approach. I hope!

The work for the history of art course continues with my delighted enthusiasm, although I am amassing a vast number of books in which illustrations and photocopies could be used and I have to weigh up the difference between my photocopying them at home and taking the weighty tomes into school, finding somewhere to keep them during the day and cart them all back again. I know that the real solution is to put everything on a pen drive and then print out. I am working on it!

The other elements of the courses that I am teaching will just have to wait until I get back into harness. This, I realize with horror, is now next week! Dear god!

We have a week 9-5 of time without the students. This looks generous until you compare it with last year when we had a fortnight of 9-1 without the students. This means, in theory, that we have exactly the same amount of “time” for us to attend to those administrative and educational tasks that we managed last year, but anyone will tell you that a fortnight of breaking for lunch is nothing like the same as a week full time.

It also means that there is an extra week with students in a term which is crucifying long as it is. In Spain there is no half term so it is a solid unimaginable wilderness of weeks before the Christmas Break. There are one or two “Bridge” days which link into weekends to give some respite but they are few and far between so teachers look thoroughly shell shocked by the time the commercial horrors of the Nativity are upon us!

Constant checking of the progress of my teachers’ pension on-line does not make the “60% complete” gain a single percentage point more. I do understand that the normal retirement day for teachers will be the first of September or a week later, whenever the autumn term starts and mine is towards the end of October. I have to expect that the bulk of administration will be taken up with the people retiring before me, but it would be gratifying to find a little more progress so that I can be confident that everything will be ready for the Great Day.

Meanwhile I shall enjoy the last few days of the holiday and keep thinking positive thoughts.

Drink takes away the pain

There is a dying fall to each arm stroke as I wend my way up and down the pool. How many more lengths until the fateful entry of September puts paid to my feats of swimming?



One has to make the most of what one has and try not to think of the morrow, or at least the week after tomorrow which takes up to the fateful day when the horror begins again.


Talking of horror our unutterable neighbours have, despite our worst thoughts, been better than they were last year. The “popular” daughter of the household has made an “unfortunate” choice in terms of her male friends and her parti-coloured haired consort has been forbidden the run of the house. This has the added advantage of keeping the rest of the unsavoury brood from haunting the purlieus of our pool. This has meant that the usual foul mouthed imprecations emanating from the other side of the fence have been somewhat limited.


Only somewhat. The television situated outside the front door has been played at full blast whether or not there were any of the selfish scum there to listen. We have had the father screaming at the daughter and the daughter telling her mother to go away in the most brutal terms. We have had the whole family brood shouting their way through the day. But, we must keep telling ourselves, it is much better than it was last year!


Today has been taken up with the visiting of other garden centres and a constant marvelling at the prices that they feel they can charge for the most insubstantial pieces of hard gardening. Our thoughts of using old sleepers to delineate parts of the garden have been dismissed in a shocked appreciation of how much it would cost – especially for actual old beams or sleepers!


Lunch and the afternoon have been taken up with a visit from Suzanne. The fact that we can still talk coherently about education after a few bottles of wine is a tribute to our sheer professionalism and the fact that there was no one else there to listen to the drivel we were speaking!


A vague desire to go to a performance of “Carmen” in the Liceu was translated into direct action and the buying of tickets. At the price we were prepared to pay the first performance for which we were able to get suitable seats was for July of next year. Ah well, it’s just as well to have one’s calendar planned out well in advance!


We also almost booked a flight and hotel in Madrid to go to the Turner exhibition before wiser judgement got in the way of alcohol fuelled possibilities!


I look forward to a quieter water fuelled evening!

A new approach!

The first day of the last full week of freedom is over. Shades of the prison house are indeed closing in and now is the time for a real productive scholastic effort so that the beginning of term may be enjoyed without the hysteria that is usually its natural accompaniment.



So we designed and constructed small cactus gardens.


The rot set in during a casual visit to a new garden centre of remarkable opulence and reassuringly vast prices. The only things that were less than one euro (and situated at the entrance to give one a woefully unrealistic view of the cost of the contents of the shop) were miniscule cactus plants. Finding a reasonably priced round plastic deep sided tray sealed our future activity.


By the time we had bought small ornamental white stones and compost the cost was beginning to rise and, as we bought larger plants to go with the cheap mini plants the cost rose further. What started as a gesture became a statement: not for the first time!


I have to admit that when we had finished our attempts at arid design I had to explain that mine would be at its best when it had grown a little. Self delusion always helps in times of aesthetic trouble!


I think that we had been encouraged to adopt an artistic mode by the excellent lunch we had in our favourite Basque restaurant: food has much to answer for.


Encouraged by an effort which made Capability Brown look like the Grim Reaper I felt empowered to try and bring some sort of order to the office on the Third Floor.


Order (of a sort) has been imposed on the chaos but only at the cost of pushing those things that I do not need at this moment (those last three words are significant) into the long cupboard under the eaves. I have put off the Great Sorting to another day; even so what is left on open view is hardly the impeccable office as seen in the frightening film I saw last week on how to clear your office. It looks better than it did and that is all I am saying!


Although Arthur Conon Doyle had had enough of his Great Detective and took great delight in killing him off in the Reichenbach falls struggling with his arch enemy, the pair of them falling to their respective deaths.


Conon Doyle was not allowed to let his creation wallow in his watery grave but was forced by public demand to resurrect him. Ever since that enforced new life his continuation in literature, film and drama he has been assured.


I read “The Last Sherlock Holmes Story” by Michael Dibdin. This is an elegant pastiche and celebration of the oeuvre with a story line which brings in Jack the Ripper and the dreaded Reichenbach Falls. The narrative purports to be papers that Doctor Watson placed in a bank vault not to be opened for fifty years.


The actual story is, I think, fairly banal though horrific in places. The real point of interest is in the playful way that Dibdin complicates the fact and fiction interplay which always surrounds the life and times of Mr Sherlock Holmes.


I can remember as a child knowing that Conon Doyle wrote the stories, but I also knew that there was a Baker Street and I was assured that 221B actually existed. It was an existential problem that hardened up young children of my generation for the more difficult appearance and reality conundrums that litter everyone’s life.