Count your blessings

The dull drive up to Gloucester yesterday seemed to presage a touch of the pathetic fallacy for the funeral.  The lack of close parking spaces and the loss of diamond cuff link also added to the general air of depression.

But then the sun came out and the cuff link was found and the family started arriving and the general chitchat that is a function of these occasions started to happen with that air of brittle humour that often characterises ostensibly melancholy events.

As these things go, it went.  I read the Robert Frost poem and, as the specific significance of the lines to the life of my Aunt made themselves felt, it was more and more difficult to continue.  However, I got to the end and, in the reception after I managed to make my little speech and then it was done.

For the first time in my experience I found that the service (albeit humanist) fulfilled one of its functions and gave me a sort of closure.

I think that it was a fitting celebration of the life of an exceptional woman and I am grateful to my cousins for organizing something so appropriate.

After all our goodbyes were said I faced a longer than usual drive back to Cardiff.

We went back to Bristol.  Bristol airport.

Why you might ask.

I listened to my painstakingly uploaded music during the flight over and, when the time came for us to land, I carefully put The Machine into the pocket of the seat in front.

And left it there when we left the plane!

It was only when I was in Cardiff and boasting about my possession of such a sleek machine and then offering to show it to my hosts that I realized that I had left it my EasyJet flight.

Frantic calls to Bristol airport only made its loss more certain, as no lost property had been handed in.

I knew from the announcement before we got off the plane that the turnaround time before our flight was off somewhere else was very short.  And I also knew that the next destination was Edinburgh.

Edinburgh was duly phoned and the more I phoned the more I discovered that The Machine was not in any of the places where it might have been.

Eventually I had to desist and leave my further searches for the next day.

Adopting a resolute jollity which I did not feel. We then went out for a meal in the Italian restaurant that Toni thinks is the best in Cardiff, Skellinis.

Our meal was excellent with a richness that you do not usually get in Castelldefels.  I paid the price by developing tummy trouble almost immediately.

The next day was the day of the funeral and, before starting out I phoned the length of Great Britain to find out if there was an honest man in the country who might have handed in The Machine.

Edinburgh was depressing, but I was told that the plane had another quick turnaround and went back to Bristol so I phoned Bristol again.

This time I was lucky.  Yes a machine had been handed in which the voice at the other end of the line identified as a Mac Book and then altered that to (and I quote) “Oh, it’s an Airbook; one of those computers which are so think you can put them in an envelope.  They are nice, very, very nice!”

At that point I felt that such enthusiasm was dangerous and I intimated that I would like to collect it as soon as possible.  Hence the journey down to the airport after the funeral.

It is now safely in my possession, but it is hard to determine just how long that might be.

For example.  We went out to lunch today, Sunday, to one of the restaurants in Cardiff Bay.

Toni spent much of the time before lunch taking a series of photographs to show his family as they have been to Cardiff in the past and he was very keen to show them just how much the centre has changed.

Toni’s meal was traditional (fish and chips) while mine was a little more outré: a trio of pies with mash and gravy.  There were excellent and merited a photo in their own right.

The shirt that I was wearing was one without a breast pocket and so, true to form, I put the camera on the dining table in the restaurant and duly left it there when we left.

Only discovering its loss when we called into a dockside café, I hared back to the restaurant and, my luck still holding, the camera was still there.  I am now, officially, in the “pressing your luck” zone!

The weather here in Britain is shockingly fine – not at all what we expected, thank god!

Now, assuming that I can get together all of the equipment that I brought with me, I can begin my packing and get back to Castelldefels with more (not less) than I came with!

Settled thoughts

Tomorrow UK.  Friday Aunt Bet’s funeral.  

I have felt the loss grow a little each day, but I am looking to the funeral to provide a sort of closure of one stage of mourning.  I want to remember my Aunt as she was at her best: lively, interesting, interested, articulate, intelligent and, above all, talkative!

Some people become so much a part of your personal landscape that their loss is like some essential landmark being bulldozed into oblivion.  But, unless you are living a stagnant sort of life, the perspective must be always changing.  Admittedly, not always for the better - but there is in life a natural state of flux and the way that one adapts to the changes makes a statement about your essential personality.

Although the natural metaphor may be getting a little strained, I think it can be pushed further.  Some lives are like hard gardening: the structures which define spaces; whereas others are like the planting areas where flowers bloom and fade and may even be replaced.  Bet is the “hard gardening” a influence and a framework which will always be there – just like my parents' legacy – whose presence still and will shape my attitudes and responses.  And I am grateful for that.  And to them.

Today has been long.  Not with thinking about the visit to Britain, but literally long as our school indulged in one of their notorious meetings.

Examinations are a thing of the past - for little less than a month until the next series starts to unsettle us all!  This meeting was to discuss the results of the first three years of the secondary section of the school.

The meeting started at 5.00 pm and ground its way juggernaut-like to its grisly termination at 7.30 pm!  This after a full day of teaching and missing out on my "early leave".

As my examination results for the kids are on The Machine I have a legitimate reason to flaunt the discrete illuminated apple set in the sleek metallic sheen of brushed aluminium.  It also gives me the opportunity subtly to click a few buttons and segue my way from the tedium of names and numbers on Excel to the altogether more interesting screen which shows the latest news on the BBC website.

The school might have my physical presence but in these meetings they do not command my intellectual attention!  The few times that I dragged my attention away from the beguiling information on the screen of The Machine and actually listened to the wittering of my colleagues I could sense my teeth wanting to grind together in febrile disgust at the sheer pointlessness of two and a half hours of mind-numbing futility.

When I eventually escaped I picked up Toni and we went into town to have a meal.  We ended up having an excellent if expensive meal of tapas and beer.  It was after the second mouthful of the first tasty tapa that school faded into a comfortingly distant memory!

Now bed, so that I have sufficient energy to finish my packing early tomorrow!  As usual.

Sight costs!

As something of a public service announcement I would like to state that should you be desirous of tasting the driest Spanish omelette baguette or what is undoubtedly the vilest “bacon” baguette served in the Iberian Peninsular then I can direct your footsteps towards La Cantina del Pintxo in Passeig de la Ribera, 41 in Sitges.

This morning while cleaning my glasses they broke neatly in half at the nosepiece.  This now means that every piece of metal work on these fabulously expensive glasses has now snapped.  There is a definite price to be paid for having rimless lenses held in place by virtually undetectable sprung mental arms.  If they weren’t so comfortable I might have junked them long ago.  That, and the fact that the specially thinned, photo chromatic, variable focus lenses were the most expensive that I have ever bought and will have to be used until I have no sight left!

I put contact lenses in but needed to find my half glasses to be able to read properly.  I am now using old contact lenses from the time when my optician way trying to find the happy median to compensate for my short and long sightedness.  All the experiments were only qualified successes and I am left with a variety of different strength lenses that I can use in various combinations to continue the experiments.

So, in order to get something near my normal prescription for lenses, and get my broken glasses repaired I had to go to Sitges as I have discovered an optician who is able to repair the particular make of glasses that I use.

Having paid out yet another vast sum of money for the daily disposable lenses that I use (when I feel like it) we went in search of something to eat and found, to our cost the aforementioned La Cantina del Pintxo.  Avoid it like the plague.  And the bread of the baguette wasn’t very nice either!

While going through my briefcase I found the packet of postcards (all with stamps on) that I put together so I could send one to Aunt Bet every couple of days during her illness.  I only managed to send her one.  A sad moment looking at them.

I am hoping that Friday will give me an opportunity to celebrate a life and accept that memory will be something to cherish and will be enough.

Meanwhile there is a vast amount of work to be done before we leave on Thursday.  School demands attention and Wednesday evening will be spent in one of the interminable meetings that our school does so well.

And yes, that is irony.

The rain it raineth . . .

It is not only raining, but also pouring.  This is not what I expect from Catalonia!  Especially not at a weekend!  And the weather for the rest of the week looks equally gloomy.

Perhaps my trip to the UK on Thursday will be to a better climate, even if the reason for my visit is not a happy one.  Still, it will be an opportunity to trade memories with the rest of the family to make sure that Aunt Bet has a gathering that she could be proud of.  She made chatting into an art form!

Amazon’s evil level must be fairly high.  Not content with ordering yet another radio by their individually directed blandishments I was further tempted by the side adverts that adorn the site to purchase a box set of re-mastered recordings of Sir John Barbarolli conducting Sibelius.

As one of the first generation Sibelius conductors he has something of an iconic status and I don’t have a single one of his recordings in my collection.  I do have many versions of the symphonies, but it is always interesting to listen to another interpretation.

I keep forgetting that my musical taste was formed with injudicious, indeed indiscriminate buying of budget priced LPs when they came onto the market: Heliodor, Marble Arch, Allegro, Music for Pleasure which became the snappier and more expensive “mfp” and a host of others that I have forgotten.  I remember Marble Arch records as quite chunky and vulnerable; they gathered scratches if you so much as breathed on the surface!  But they were 9/11 and affordable.

I can still remember the progression of inflation on budget LPs: 9/11 soon became 10/- then 10/6 then 12/6 then, oddly 13/4 and I rather lost track of the increases after that and I was looking to record shop sales (especially Boots the Chemist in those far off days) to increase my respectable music coverage.

And now all of those LPs are gone: given to the Pauls and then sold on by them after they found that the ceiling was beginning to bow after they stored them in the attic!  More than 40 years of collecting.  I can still remember the artwork on LP covers from so many of the ones I had.

But I also remember the scratches, hiss and other extraneous sounds as well as the fag of having to turn the bloody things over to get the final movements of symphonies.  And the various cloths and liquids that were guaranteed to get rid of the dust held like microscopic limpets by the power of static electricity to the surface of the LPs.  And they never did.  Fully.  Silence was never quite silence on a record!

And now I am told that CDs are only possible because of the compression of the audio signal which supresses the higher frequencies, which I can’t hear now anyway, so no real loss there.

The only loss is that not all of my favourite LPs have been transferred to CD and, as the records are now gone, I do not have the opportunity to use a special desk to get the analogue into digital form.  Ah well, more opportunity to buy – like the Barbarolli set of Sibelius mentioned above!

The rain has continued unrelentingly with the moisture pouring down from a sludge-grey sky.  It is the sort of day that drains initiative and produces a slump-like attitude that defeats even the desultory reading of the latest book to be attempted on the Kindle.

In desperation, after lunch with the rain still falling I resorted to traditional way of dealing with can’t-be-bothered wet Saturday afternoons: I watched television!

And saw, in bemused astonishment a 1953 film by Roy Rowlands (Stanley Kramer producer) called “5000 fingers of Dr T.”

This is ostensibly a children’s musical film (!) about a nine year-old kid with a tyrannical piano music teacher, a widowed mother and a spare plumber.  What it actually presents is a surrealistic, self-indulgent extravaganza of amazing sets, extraordinary props, Dr Seuss lyrics, unbelievable dialogue and delicious over-acting!

I looked up the review of it in the Time Out Film Guide and was particularly taken with the closing lines, “[there are] a couple of musical routines that come close to defining camp, [and] this awesome entertainment really does have something for everyone.”

The choreography of the imprisoned musicians in the lower dungeons has to be seen to be believed!

I am not sure that I would recommend this film, but as an oddity from the 1950’s it is worth a glance.

I might add that my particular god of the cinema, David Thomson, in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (4^th Edition) says of Kramer (the film’s actual director, Roy Rowlands doesn’t even merit an entry) “Kramer is a hollow, pretentious man, too dull for art, too cautious for politics.”  His films are “middlebrow and overemphatic; at worst, they are among the most tedious and dispiriting production the America cinema has to offer.”  Of the films that Kramer made with Columbia (of which “5000 fingers of Dr T” is one) Thomson says, “There is not a good film in the lot.”  Never one to mince his words is our David!

Today, apart from the rain, has been wonderful as I have constantly forgotten that today is Saturday and not Sunday – surely one of the delights of having Friday off.

But Monday looms!

The end is in sight!

There is a sort of delight of staying in bed until 9 am on a Friday morning, knowing that you have had a lie-in of two and a half hours!  It is a case of making the most of it until Monday when reality and getting up at 6.30 am hits.

I have used the holiday to finish off reading “The Ascent of Money” which is a book that has the pace of a novel rather than a dry academic economic textbook.  Well worth a read.

My copy of the BBC Music Magazine (which is as avidly read as my weekly copy of The Week) has prompted me to splash out on a new radio via Amazon thanks to an article in the magazine.  For a long time I have been looking for a portable Internet radio and failing to find one which is satisfactory.  The last attempt seemed to produce something that looked on the surface to be ideal, but when I tried it out it was a total failure.

 

I have now sent for a Pure One Flow radio and battery pack that should (should) make it fully portable and still give me access to my audio drug of choice, Radio 4.  From my experience the real problem comes when a radio maker tells you that “setting up is simplicity itself.”  I will reserve judgement until the machine arrives and then rely on the much-vaunted Amazon promise of easy return of goods that do not do what they should do!

Concern about something as trivial as an internet radio seems almost indecent when the BBC is broadcasting horrific pictures of the earthquake and tsunami which have hit Japan.

The force of the tsunami crumpling cars and houses in its path was startling and of course with the numbers of people who have cameras in their mobile phones we are given dramatic pictures of every stage of the disaster.  Admittedly the quality of the images is sometimes awful but there is a sense of immediacy that makes it difficult not to be moved by what is occurring.

After having read “The Ascent of Money” one also can’t help wondering what effect the disaster is going to have on the world financial situation.  As Japan is the third largest economy in the world anything that limits its normal business is going to have a knock-on effect on the whole of the financial system. 

Of course in the perverse way that our monetary system works this is going to be bonus time for a number of entrepreneurs including those in markets who make money when investments go down as well as up!

Whatever happens I hold out no lively hopes for a boost to my savings where every cough in the financial world seems to need my money to buy ever more expensive handkerchiefs!

A good short week!

Day 2 and Day 3 of easy driving conditions on the way to school and easy parking etcetera, etcetera.

The mornings have been taken up with extended meetings about our participation in the mock United Nations to be held in Lisbon.

Although it is a good idea the whole process is being foisted on us and there will not be sufficient time for the process of preparing the students to be completed properly.

I don’t know if it is truly depressing or vaguely funny to find out that the attitude of innovation in education is the same the world over: an idea forced through with inadequate thought about the consequences and the practicalities.

 

We, however, will make the thing work – as usual.  This of course justifies the attitude of management and encourages them to continue in the age-old way of setting unrealistic targets and being unsurprised when they are met.  C’est la vie!

I could get used to a form of teaching that is spread over Tuesday to Thursday, is only half a day at a time and doesn’t involve any students!  Alas, Monday will arrive all too soon and we will be back to the old routine!

As is usual at Easter we have now had the threats of strike action in the airports.  These threats are as traditional as bullfighting and just as odious.  I hope that their action will not adversely affect the flight that I have planned to Gran Canaria.

 

My book on Mozart has finally arrived: “The Compleat (sic.)  Mozart” edited by Neal Zaslaw with William Cowdery.  This does appear to do what it says on the box, and all the works of Mozart are listed with their K numbers.  But the K numbers are not quite as simple as I thought that they were.  My simple idea was to look through the book and read in a sort of desultory fashion and then, when something took my fancy I could find it with commensurate ease by merely putting the K number into i-tunes and then listening to the music.

Fond hope.

To test this system I used the book to find the K number for the irritatingly competent music that Mozart wrote when he was an eight year-old child visiting London and living in Chelsea.  I found the music eventually - and not from the General Index – in the unfashionable end of Solo Keyboard Music section, listed as,  15a-ss 44 Untitled Pieces, “London (Chelsea) Notebook,” ( Anh 109b).  Simple indeed!

 

The version I have is played on piano, which my book describes as “unimpressive on the modern piano, but present an entirely normal texture for mid-eighteenth-century harpsichord music.”  Now that is the sort of casual comment one would like to throw into a conversation!

The book goes on to say that some of the pieces “contain intervals not playable on the keyboard, suggesting that the little boy obviously heard this music in his mind as orchestral music.”  In a previous age, when I used to listen to music on LPs I got to know this music in an augmented version which, as I recall boasted that it was a “first” recording of the fabricated “orchestral” version.  I will have to look out for the transfer to CD or a more recent recording.

I managed to get out of school at a reasonable time today and we went, as we have gone throughout the week, to lunch in Castelldefels.  We tried to go to a small bar where we have had reasonable food in the past, but they only served tapas and no menu del dia.  We decided to branch out and visit a restaurant which has not been into before: Els Torres, Pintor Serrasanta, 15 in Castelldefels.

While Toni was reading the menu outside, I had already gone in and asked for a table.  Where, I asked myself, is the menu del dia which has failed to appeal to me!

When I finally got to look at the menu the only discordant element was the fact that the drinks included in the menu were a glass or beer, a soft drink or a glass (!) of wine.  IN this part of the world only to provide a glass of wine seems stingy.  And indeed, in the event, a newly opened bottle of red wine was placed on the table.  That’s what I call civilization!

I ordered, as is traditional on a Thursday, a paella – this one having ceps (mushrooms) as the key ingredient.  Toni ordered the Spanish version of Russian Salad which comes without beetroot.

As they cooked my paella from fresh there was a delay which was filled with two tapas one of which, patatas aioli was in marked contrast with the anaemic dish of the same name that we were served with in Sitges last weekend.

Toni’s Russian Salad, which came first, was delicious and the best that I have tasted in Spain, it was the sort of dish that sets a mark for the others to reach!

My paella looked and tasted much more like a risotto and was a tad salty for my taste, but it was delicious and the subtle flavours grew in intensity as the meal progressed.  A superb first course.

We had the same for the second course: butifarra de Lleida which was served with chips and pimentos de padron – another excellent course.

My sweet was turron ice cream which was better than the last one that I had and showed quality.

Els Torres, based on the meal we had today, is a restaurant I recommend without qualification.  The only negative point that I could make is that the lighting inside the restaurant is subdued so subdued that we actually thought the place was closed!  The service was friendly and efficient and the cost was €12.50 per person.  Excellent value.

I have now got into the swing of “The Ascent of Money” by Niall Ferguson and am thoroughly enjoying it and the book should be finished during this extended weekend.

Joy!

A cheerfully fractured week starts

If going to school can be designated “delightful” (which of course it can’t) then the journey this morning could well merit such an adjective.  Traffic was still heavy, but nothing like a normal Monday morning.  Obviously people have taken the Winter Week (or White Week, or Ski Week, or Fiasco Week) to their hearts and kept off the roads.

Parking was a dream.  The staff room was empty.  The head of department called away to another meeting and left the remnant of her department to do as they would.

With one of my colleagues we mapped out the next tranche of work for our problematic 3ESO who are going to be hysterical when they see what we expect them to learn for their next examination.  Please excuse me as a hide a wry smile.

 

Most of the morning was taken up with the art teacher as we finally put together the booklet that is going to be the new basis for our Making Sense of Modern Art or MSOA as we have rather trendily decided to designate it, taking our inspiration from MOMA in New York.  There are indeed no shallows in our pretention!

After all the effort to produce this booklet with running headings and page numbers and all sorts of professional details by doing it in Publisher we were reduced this morning to photocopy/cut/paste – a technique in which I excel.

I started to explain the mysteries of pagination and photocopying the final mock up, but the excitement of production had to be delayed as I suddenly realized that it was already five minutes past the magic hour at which we could leave.

And then there was a problem.

Yesterday was a precious day off and I used a different coat when we went to Sitges and I wore a different pair of jeans and what I am trying to say is that I was not fully prepared when I went to school this morning.

I had my trust case with me and The Machine but not everything.

Ever since The Great Separation my school keys have been on a different key ring to house and car keys.  This is a good thing, as the Combined Keys needed their own form of transportation because of their number and weight.  It does however mean that I can get to school with no problem having left my school keys behind.

As I did today.

Normally this is an irritation, but today it was a problem.

There were so few members of staff actually in school that spare keys were not to be had at a moments notice.  And the metal exit door from Building 4 was locked.  By the time that I had realized that I would not be able to get out, everyone had gone to lunch.

 

I could not face the humiliation of getting someone out of lunch to let me out so I walked to the other end of the campus and hoped that someone was in the other office to facilitate my egress.  In fact, huffing and puffing as I had said that I would meet Toni for lunch, I found the top gate open, which makes me wonder that possibly the other gate might have been open too.

Anyway, rushing down the virtually vertical road which skirts the site I got into the car and found the return journey almost as painless at the journey to.

Rushing back home is not a good thing at any time, as we know that “Speed Kills” but in Spain at the moment there is the additional horror of a change in the speed limit.

At vast cost the local authority built a series of highly expensive gantries over the motorway with large illuminated signs that can change the speed limit at the whimsical push of a button; the power of the lights overriding any other static signs that might be in the vicinity.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that for the last couple of years roads near the city of Barcelona have been subject to a limit of 80kph.  This was imposed because of the pollution in Barcelona and was a policy of the last government in the area.  With a change of government came a change of opinion about the worth of this speed limit and we were informed that the old limit of 120kph would be restored.

And so it was for a short period of time, although the coast road seemed to have signs static and illuminated which changed every few hundred metres or so.

Then the national government decided that the national speed limit should be 110kps, so all signs (including the newly restored 120kph) had to be replaced by new ones.

 

The government informed us that not only should be ignore any signs that might indicate that a speed of 120kph was legal, but that also anyone going at the speed on the sign would be signally fined.

Were I sad enough I would count up the number of times the speed limit changes on my way to school; suffice to say it is legion.

But now important things: Barça is playing the Gunners to decide which team advances further in the Champions Cup and they are two one down.  At least Barça are at home.  To those who might say that I should be supporting a “British” team, I would ask where the British players in the team are!  What is most disturbing is that I am aware of how many Catalan players there are in Barça and I also know that one, solitary Brit has taken to the field for the Gunners.  Shame!

I look forward to a satisfactory result and a clear journey to school tomorrow.

Always the sun!

When not lying prone on the Third Floor I have been revisiting the audio past.

The sun has been relatively well behaved today and allowed (sheltered) exposure to its rays.  I was only tempted away by the offer of lunch in Sitges.  Lunch was unimpressive but there was a moment of temptation.

At the corner of the square with the old church there is a small gallery with paintings, sculptures and drawings by somebody whose name I carefully omitted to discover.

The artist seems to have a predilection for horses and well-rounded women.  The painting I saw was of horses.  Sketchy and almost monochromatic.  But I liked it.  The only problem was it was €500 and unframed too.  But I liked it.  It will remain a nagging little desire at the back of my mind.

The forefront of my mind is taken up with thinking of a poem for my Aunt Bet to read at her funeral.  Given her knowledge of poetry in English I could choose virtually any one of the more famous poems and be sure that not only would she have liked it, but also that she would have been able to recite it from her formidable memory!

As my cousins are not going to have a religious service I will have to fit in with the tone that they use in their writing.  My personal favourite is John Donne’s “Death be not proud” but that might be a little heavy for a service that is going to have Glenn Miller and Moon River as the music! 

I had thought of “Warning” by Jenny Joseph where the light tone and the praise of unconventionality could fit with my aunt but people might wonder why on earth it had been chosen.  I think that Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” might be more appropriate.

Meanwhile the music in the background is the wildly inappropriate Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band on a disc which includes the two classics, “I’m the urban Spaceman” and the Introduction to a music piece that never happens.  God knows the last time I listened to that!  It’s the sort of disc where you have to say it’s a work of genius or an absolute load of rubbish.  Like Monty Python easy flowing imagination veers from inspiration to insipid and you have to take the greatness where you can find it.

The other music from the past has been Rattle’s interpretation of The Planets with the CBSO.  I was loath to listen to the music because I have heard it so often, but there was a lot to listen to in this version.  Some of the tempi were not quite what I would have expected and the texture in the orchestration were given different emphasises to those that I expected.  It was a re-reading which made me listen anew and gave the music a freshness that I didn’t expect.

I am now more inclined to listen with a freer attitude to the Elgar variations and The Dream of Gerontious: I hope he has been inventive with these as well!

My single day holiday is almost over and there is school tomorrow.  But school with a difference: only 9-1 and no kids.  There is, however a special course to integrate Project Based Learning and the Model United Nations on which a group of us is going to spend some six hours working out how to produce a “project” to enable some students to go to the General Assembly in Lisbon in November of the next academic year.

I am not sure that what is needed to make this a success can actually be achieved during lesson time – and I am fundamentally disinclined to offer any extra time; certainly not on my timetable and salary!  But I mustn’t (as I already have) pre-judge what is involved; it is going to be interesting, especially given the group of people who are scheduled to be together for these six hours.  I am prepared to bet that there will only be a core of people who are there for the whole time!

“The Ascent of Money” is proving to be more interesting and easier to read as I continue, I am also finding an overlap between some of the content of “1000 years of Annoying the French” – The Mississippi Bubble and Mr Law feature prominently in both!

Half day tomorrow!

That's what I call a holiday!

First of all Sundays are not classified as official holidays, they are after all a part of the weekend, but if the following Monday is a non-school day then the Sunday becomes an official day off as well, counting as a quasi-holiday!

Today has been a notable day in the year; today, for the first time this year, I lay out on the third floor in a bathing costume and used sun tan spray!  I am also wearing shorts rather than trousers.

I have to admit that now that it is the evening, my knees are cold!  But for me the “summer” has begun.

I have finished “1000 Years of Annoying the French” and heartily recommend it to all and sundry: an entertaining and informative read!

I am now well into “The Ascent of Money” by Ferguson.  This is not as light a read as “1000 Years of Annoying the French” but it does promise to add further layers of understanding about the “magic” power of money-

The book takes an historical approach and promises to lead me by the hand into the murky areas of international finance.

So far so good, but there is much to understand and I hope that there will be a generous sprinkling of anecdotes and interesting historical facts to keep me going.

Talking of keeping me going I am still waiting for my book on the music of Mozart.  I am hoping to use this volume to give myself some pointers to make my way through the more obscure parts of his oeuvre.  But where is the bloody book!  I fear that it has gone astray as I was informed that it was on its way a number of days ago.  I suppose I ought to keep the faith and perhaps it will arrive tomorrow!

There is also my phone book: the seemingly interminable whimsicality of an extended short story that I am determined to finish and find out who wrote the damn thing.

But, sun allowing, the history of finance tomorrow.

Retention and Release!

I am filled with dread and foreboding.

This is the common reaction of a teacher who starts the day knowing that he is going to be in his place of employment for an inordinate amount of time over and above the hours of normal employment.

In my case (can I over state it!) it is a “not only, but also” scenario: not only will I be stuck here during a period which it is my right to take off, but also I will be here for a meeting on a Friday evening.

I know that I might have mentioned this before, casually, in passing, but I think it will take repetition.

And now that I have got that canker of injustice out of my system (at least until the bloody meeting starts) I can face the rest of the day with something approaching cold fury.

The unaccustomed rain continued throughout the night accompanied by thunder that was positively operatic in its duration and sonority.

Today has dawned with the full fervour of a “red sky in the morning” giving a glimpse of our erstwhile elusive star that only serves to emphasise, cf. common superstition, that the day will degenerate into continued dampness.  A dampness which will add to the gaiety of nations as we sit glumly in the rain while ragamuffin students cavort among us with a semblance of frivolity in our beggared version of Carnival, just before the start of the meeting.

But: begone dull thoughts!  It’s five past eight and the sun is still shining!

I have so far capitulated to the kids that I am preparing to show un-improving films to young minds.  Sometimes my own personal survival is more important than the moral imperative to improve the minds of the customers!

The sun continues to shine and outface the Cassandras who bewailed the blue and white smudges on the weather maps last night.  Such sunshine is wasted at the moment; it will only be of importance in the afternoon when I have to go out and sit grumpily next to a table and monitor the kids as they “enjoy” themselves in Carnival – all the while thinking that my Carnival will end with a meeting.  And then a bottle of Cava.  Obviously.

My body thinks that we are coming up to a holiday because I feel that incipient discomfort which comes as a prelude to a cough or a cold: a certain thickness at the back of the nose and a roughness in the throat.  This would be par for the course where there to be a real holiday and, as a teacher, succumb to illness at the start thereof.  But I hardly think that a long weekend counts!

The sunshine is becoming more and more forced, as the time for it to be at its strongest gets nearer.  Indeed . . .

Time, as they say has passed since I wrote the last paragraph.

The meeting has come and gone.  Eventually.  The sight of so-called professionals laughing, chatting and joking in a meeting that was progressing further and further into Friday (Friday) evening is a memory that will live in infamy.  What part of “the start of the weekend” do some of my colleagues find difficult to understand!

So when I finally left in the evening, almost twelve hours after I had arrived that morning, I was not a happy bunny – but I kept my mind focussed on the cooling bottle of Cava that I had placed in the fridge a good deal earlier than twelve hours before.  So to speak.

Which is why I did not post the last episode in this continuing saga yesterday.

Today, Saturday, the threatened poor weather has not materialized and the sunshine has been encouraging.

What is appears to have been encouraging is the pack of dogs by which we are surrounded to give voice to their joy at the climatic conditions.  If I were not living in the midst of the noisy cacophony I might find amusing the howls, barks, yelps, screams, yips, yaps and unearthly baying that assail our ears on a daily basis.  But I do and I don’t.

After giving it some thought I have come to the following conclusions.

I understand that dogs will be dogs: they bark.  I do not have a problem with them.  It is the owners who deserve censure.  The inconsiderate idiots who, finding their own human relationships inadequate or non-existent need non-human companionship to compensate for their human failings.

My suggestion would be that all dog owners should be locked in their homes with their dogs and then the owners should have their legs broken.  The owners would then gradually disappear in the growing mountain of dog shit that they fail to clear up when they take their noise machines to the public toilets, or pavements as we more usually call them.

For a dog person like myself, it has taken but two short years of living in Catalonia to cure me of what I now recognize to be a self-deluding Romantic version of Man’s best friend.

My comments do not extend to yellow Labrador bitches of course, which remain outside and untouched by my dismissive screed!

Talking of pet hates (!) I am now well into “1000 Years of Annoying the French” and it is turning into a gripping historical read.  I am not always convinced by the historical shorthand which informs some of the more amusing statements; but it is packed with casual points of information which add highlights to a reasonable background of passing acquaintanceship with history.

The book reads more like an episodic novel than a work of academic research, but if anyone expected than from the title then they are delusional.  Though I have to say that the bits that I have checked out because of their basic implausibility seem to be based on fact.

As I am getting through the book with some speed, I expect to be able to start on the Nial Ferguson tomorrow.

What is a holiday weekend without reading!

Where is the sun?

Unrelenting wetness.

It has been raining or threatening to rain for an unconscionable length of time now and I am fed up with it.  It rained last night; it rained for most of the day, and it threatens to rain tomorrow.

This is a bad thing.

Quite apart from the fact that I thought that I had some sort of arrangement with god that it would rain on the Pyrenees and not, emphatically not where I live!

 

The poor weather is bad news for the “Carnival” which should take place tomorrow afternoon in our school.  This comprises the pupils dressed in an unconvincing variety of costumes wandering about from place to place in the playground participating in a variety of educationally improving activities for House Points.

And this on my “short” afternoon when I should have the last afternoon off for my early starts this week.  Unfortunately I will be working later than usual and going to a meeting.  I feel that I cannot emphasise enough the humanitarian disaster that having a meeting after school on a Friday actually is.  This is so far from what would be tolerated in any school in the country of my birth that it would be comical were it not that I have to go to the meeting.

The long weekend that follows it is hardly compensation for the lack of professional respect that would follow my ex-colleagues finding out that I had so far swallowed my vocational pride as to go to an end of week gathering to discuss mere pupil progress!

Fiasco Week starts on Monday with the pupils dispersed to all points of the compass and we precious few left to hold the fort in Barcelona and work 9-1. There is still no timetable for what we are going to do during this week and I fear for the worst!  Things have been put off, left to be done “during the week” - and that means that things are going to be allocated on an ad hoc basis.  In the stumbling way of things, it probably means that everything will get done - but with the maximum amount of stress.

I think the next week is going to be frustrating – and the Easter holidays still seems a very long way off!

Aunt Bet is dead.

It seems incredible that such a vital spark should be extinguished.  The world is lesser without her.

It is difficult to choose a particular memory that sums her up; she was too various a character to be tied down to a single experience or response.

Was it her carrying a small sign on trains which she would use if she found the people by whom she was surrounded too boring to talk to, “I am sorry, but I am deaf”; her letter writing which if collected would fill many volumes; her travel - where even the most innocuous of journeys would take on epic proportions when she described them; her omnivorous, rapacious, insatiable reading; her phenomenal memory; her sparkling vivacity; her generosity and, above all, her conversation.  It was and is all of these and more, much more.

How can I forget taking my Aunt Bet to my Great Aunt Gwen’s funeral?  We talked constantly from Gloucester to Hove and all the way back again.  Conversation was life blood for Aunt Bet and her experience and maturity made it vital and engaging.

I shall miss her.  Very much.

But a full life like hers deserves to be celebrated, and sadness, though understandable must be tempered by appreciation.

Toni’s response (incredibly but aptly) on hearing the news was, “You must buy a book!”  If ever there was a clearer example of pushing at an open door than this then I have never heard of it.  The choice in our local bookshops was not as wide as I would have liked but I eventually decided on “1001 Días que cambiaron el mundo” which has just that right mix of variety linked to a dilettante shortness of individual entries that keeps me interested, especially when the language used is not my native tongue! 

 

I have started a tradition that I will enthusiastically keep up for the rest of my life, buying “Betty’s Book” on the 2^nd of March each year!

Term is stumbling along to the stutter that is Fiasco Week.  We have a meeting on Friday after school (!) then we are off for a long weekend while other colleagues take pupils to all points of the compass, up to and including Wales!

I look forward to the opportunity to get a space to begin reading Betty’s Book.

I long for long weekends

Montserrat was particularly clear as I proceeded on my way up the Ronda de Dalt towards the school.  I am sure that I should be able to work out some prognostication for the weather from the clarity with which I could see the bizarre corrugations of the mountain range so dear to the hearts of Catalans, but I can’t.  It either means that the pollution is at unusually low levels or alternatively that pollution has become more cunning and is hiding its poison in transparency.

In face, looking out of the staff room window in Building 1 I can see that a gauzy pall has descended on the city and the sun is more hazy than it was on the journey in.

I count all of this as a positive, as the weather forecast was less than inspiring for this week and, although it is markedly colder than it was last, at least it is not raining – so I am (relatively) happy.

My last batch of marking is due to be completed this morning and the computer is primed and ready to take in and process the raw marks that I get.  I have the marking key at hand.  I can do no more until I get the papers themselves.

The examinations finish today, but lessons with classes go on until the end of the week.  With some of the groups this is their last times with a particular teacher as everything changes for the next term; except the change occurs in March and the term ends in April.  This is another of the courtesy details of life in the school that makes life just a little bit more difficult.

I have a double lesson of Media Studies this afternoon and I am disinclined to teach but I do not have a film which (even remotely) can be linked to advertising that is the aspect of the course that we have been studying.  No doubt I will think of something – and anyway I want to get the examination papers marked before I leave this school this evening.

The so-called “evaluation” meeting to discuss the results of the kids is being held, wait for it, on Friday afternoon and will probably extend itself interminably until about 7 pm!  On a Friday!  They would never, never, never get away with scheduling a meeting at that time in Britain.  But when you consider that the original time for this meeting was on Saturday morning then you tend to count your blessings!

Today being what day it is, I have caused my usual sensation by wearing appropriately garish neckwear to celebrate the National Day of my country.  Large red dragons march defiantly and diagonally across my tie in front of a background of green and white: it is, you might say, noticeable.  And rightly so!

As there is a school trip to Wales during Fiasco Week and our party will be sharing the centre with another private school from England, our pupils have been encouraged to write letters to their British counterparts.  My colleagues have discovered, perhaps not surprisingly that many of the kids have called the country “Whales” or “Gales”: I trust that they will be a little more accurate after their experience in the actual land!

I’ve started listening to Rattle’s Records and I am pleased with the quality of the reproduction and the intensity of the interpretation – a continuing delight! I haven’t really delved deeply into the less well known of the pieces in the sets of discs and I look forward to learning something new.

Clarrie’s book has arrived: “1000 Years of Annoying the French” by Stephen Clarke a jokey yet serious look at Anglo-French relationships showing how the French have lied and misrepresented everything from the North Man (NOT French) invasion of our jewelled isle in 1066 to French involvement in World War II.  600 pages of enough stuff to fee righteous indignation for an age!

I have also had two other books delivered.  By delivered of course, I mean that the delivery people left a note saying that they had “tried” to deliver the package but were unsuccessful.  As they obviously did not have the package with them and made no attempt to contact the people inside the house where they were supposed to deliver the package, I suppose we should be grateful that they did at least deliver the notification that they had the package somewhere.

“Portable Genius” a handbook for Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 was the first of the books and looks just about at m level and has lots of screen images to keep me on the right track as I try to explore what this set of programs can do.

The second is “The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World” by Niall Ferguson.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading his “Empire” and bought this on the strength of my response and a feeling that I need some background to put what investment managers have been doing with my money into some sort of historical perspective.

The reading is building up nicely for the long weekends!