Amazon Saves!

Preparations have been made for The Clash between the Blaugrana and the Reds.  A barbecue has been decreed and I am determined to get in (“augment” would be a more accurate word) stocks of Cava to celebrate what would be a most notable win in a season which has had its ups and downs.

It is very difficult for an outsider to take the bone deep hatred that exists between Barça and Real Madrid seriously.  Reasoned discussion is impossible when referring to the games between the two and any non-partisan approach is seen as traitorous by one side or the other.  I have learned to keep my disinterested thoughts about the progress of any game severely to myself!

 

Wembley has a certain nostalgic magic to it for Barça fans, as it was in that stadium that they won their first Champions Cup.  I myself have traipsed round the shuttered wreck of the old stadium building in the company of a Catalan as an act of homage to the sacred turf!  I did, admittedly, feel like a total fraud during this circumnavigation and was heard to mutter imprecations to the gods about the futility of the walk, but I was firmly ignored and eventually accepted my pilgrim state with good grace!  At least it wasn’t as demanding (and demeaning) as the Camino Santiago which seems to attract such jolly, sincere and dedicated walkers who positively welcome the privations that such a pilgrimage demands.

Talking of dedication I have finally posted the application for tickets for the opera for the next season.  A great chunk of money will be invested in some fairly obscure musical works in the next academic year.  I do have membership of the Caixa Forum in Barcelona which has (I hope) an extensive collection of CDs which are borrowable and which will I hope allow me to do my musical homework so that the odder operas do not strike my ears for the first time when I am sitting in my pricey seat!

In previous years I have used the new operas as an excuse to purchase CDs of the operas, but I am determined to be a little more sensible this year; after all how often would you sit down and listen to a Donizetti opera in cold blood?  Borrowing is a much more sensible solution.

There are some Catalan composers in the list as well and I am assuming that La Caixa will have made a real effort to include those in its collection.  As you can tell, I am building myself up to a pose of outraged disappointment, as I am frustrated in my financially conservative approach!

The hunt is on for a comparable gastronomic meal in Barcelona and area to compete with The Crown at Whitebrook.  The flying saucer in Hospitalet designed by Richard Rogers tops the Hesperia Tower and contains under its domed crystal roof a restaurant which has a taster menu which looks promising – I have always wanted to try sea urchin and sea cucumber, so this is my chance!  At least it is worth considering - and it is gratifyingly expensive!

My arriving home was to discover a wealth of goodies: two copies of The Week (my newspaper drug of choice) together with the copy of The Collected Poems of John Betjeman ordered through Amazon second hand in an edition from 1968 and unopened.  In 1968 it cost 7s 6d, seven and six, 7/6 – what a trip down memory lane writing those sums of money out was!  I have just opened the book at random and found a passage where Betjeman rhymes “Wembley” with “trembly” and that somehow sums up his work: twee but engaging.

 

The major book waiting for me was “Austerity Britain 1945-1951” by David Kynaston.  I have only read a couple of pages and I have found that the use of voices from the past very evocative.  The opening of the second chapter deserves to be quoted at length, so I will:

         Britain in 1945.  No supermarkets, no motorways no teabags, no sliced break, no frozen food, no flavoured crisps, no lager, no microwaves, no dishwashers, no Formica, no vinyl, no CDs, no computers, no mobiles, no duvets, no Pill, no trainers, no hoodies, no Starbucks.  Four Indian restaurants.  Shops on every corner, pubs on every corner, cinemas in ever High street, red telephone boxes, Lyons Corner Houses, trams, trolley-buses, steam trains.  Woodbines, Craven ‘A’, Senior Service, smoke, smog, Vapex inhalant.  No laundrettes, no automatic washing machines, wash day every Monday, clothes boiled in a tub, scrubbed on the draining board, rinsed in the sink, put through a mangle, hung out to dry.  Central heating rare, coke boilers, water geysers the coal fire, the hearth, the home, chilblains common.  Abortion illegal, homosexual relationships illegal, suicide illegal, capital punishment legal.  White faces everywhere.  Back-to-backs, narrow cobbled streets, Victorian terraces, no high-rises.  Arterial roads, suburban semis the march of the pylon.  Austin Sevens Ford Eights, no seat belts, Triumph motorcycles with sidecars.  A Bakelite wireless in the home, Housewives’ Choice or Workers’ Playtime or ITMA on the air, televisions almost unknown, no programmes to watch, the family eating together.  Milk of Magnesia, Vic Vapour Rub, Friar’s Balsam, Fynnon Salts, Eno’s, Germolene.  Suits and hats, dresses and hats, cloth caps and mufflers, no leisurewear, no ‘teenagers’.  Heavy coins, heavy shoes, heavy suitcases, heavy tweed coats, heavy leather footballs, no unbearable lightness of being. Meat rationed, butter rationed, lard rationed, margarine rationed, sugar rationed, tea rationed, cheese rationed, jam rationed, eggs rationed, sweets rationed, soap rationed, clothes rationed.  Make do and mend.

This is something approaching a prose poem to a lost time that could have been written by Dylan Thomas: he discovered the magic of listing the mundane to create powerful effects.  I think that the passage I have quoted is superb.  The only thing I question is Vapex inhalant, my family only used Vic.  And I still do.  And he should have mentioned TCP and Savlon – or am I giving these products an age they do not deserve?

Not only all these delights, but also the latest issue of the BBC Music Magazine with the disc containing The Firebird and Tarmara played by the Scottish and Welsh BBC orchestras.

I still remember the first time I heard The Firebird in a free lunchtime concert in the City Hall Assembly Rooms played by whatever the BBC National Orchestra of Wales was calling itself in those distant days before I went to university.  They were nothing like as accomplished as they are today and I remember a performance of Beethoven’s Third Symphony when I would quite cheerfully have terminated the horn players with extreme prejudice.  But what they lacked in subtlety they more than made up for in volume.  So the triple fortissimo chord in The Firebird was played with gusto and the entire audience jerked backwards as if physically smitten!

I went out and bought the mfp record at once – and was duly disappointed by the lack of oomph! at the chord moment.  And have been in every subsequent performance I have heard.  But I live in hope!

Reading and listening for the weekend is sorted out as long as I can restrain myself until then!

Plus ça change

We wake up this morning to a very different political situation in Spain with the “Socialist” party having suffered a swingeing defeat at the hands of an electorate which desired to inflict punishment on the ruling party for the financial crisis and the catastrophically high rate of unemployment.  They have voted, however, for PP – a party even more mired in corruption than most of the others.  This PP is a right wing party and its leader is a modern day Pontius Pilate washing his hands as each question about corruption by droves of his Hench people in power up and down Spain.

God knows the “Socialist” party is hardly clean, but I look towards Rajoy as leader of this country with undisguised horror – though one has to admit that his eyebrows are less startling than those of the present incumbent!

The (illegal) demonstrations continue in the major squares of Madrid and Barcelona and, while I appreciate the genuine feeling of those people who are faced with a future without work, there is little sense of a coherent policy to ameliorate the situation.  Opposition is healthy, but what do protesters actually want – apart from the wholly understandable desire to have the dignity of employment and at least a partially assured future in difficult times.

The municipal election results are a clear indication that next year in the general election there will be a change of government.  PP is not friend of the working person but that never stops turkeys voting for Christmas - and providing the trimmings too!

If Toni stays in Terrassa today then I have plans for the house.  There is something about tidying which is intensely satisfying – if only periodically in my case.

The Third Floor is a case in point.  The Terrace is clear apart from the essentials of loungers, table, chairs and small fridge.  The room into which one departs from the delights of the worshipping of the Aten resembles an almost comically chaotic jumble of hi-tec and low rubbish.  Not actual rubbish you understand, but the flotsam which bobs its way upward in a house until it reaches the top floor.  In British houses this would be the attic, but in our Torre this means the open space on the Third Floor.  There is a cupboard under the eaves, but that is so full that merely opening the doors precipitates an avalanche of biblical proportions!

My excitement this evening after school is to deviate from my homeward course and go, with perfect justification, into a shop.

My shopping soul yearns, of course, for shops in which little blue lights twinkle seductively and brushed metal jostles for place with shiny carapaces of multi-coloured plastic: in other words an electrical shop of useful gadgets.

Such is not, unfortunately, my prime destination.  No, in a manner which is wholly foreign to my innate electronic yearnings I am set to buy a mop.

Having destroyed my hi-tec automatic bleach dispenser type cleaning stick and broken the squeezy part of the bucket and emptied the contents all over the floor – and all of that was within five minutes of starting to clean the bathroom – I now boldly venture forth to purchase the most complex mob and bucket I can find.  I fear that I am destined to an arid search, but the hypermarket I intent to patronize has other and far more interesting sections than mere surface sanitizers.

I do not intend that the purchase of some fluffy ended stick is going to change the attitude I have towards cleaning – which is always one of self-defence.  But I am inclined to contemplate a new regime of tidiness.  This does not mean that all magazines from henceforth will be squared off to the edge of any table that they might be on.  No.  What I do contemplate is a step towards the long delayed sorting out of my library.  There is, at the moment, an unsettling insufficiency of shelf space for the double-stacked nature of some of my bookcases to revert to normality.  It therefore follows that some of the space given over to other things will have to be liberated in the name of culture.

This is where the shredder comes in.  Boxes full of papers look very official and business-like, but they take up valuable shelf space.  When the papers inside are seen to be relating to a past life which no longer needs official documentation then their destruction negate their container and each document box is the equivalent of three of four substantial paperbacks.  The true instigation of the fabled “paperless office” would ensure that all my books would be on open display.  The theory is sound.  What more can I say.

I did buy a mop.  I really did.  And it was on special offer.  Domestic duties can go no further.  Well, I suppose there is the using of the damn thing – but I consider that a domestic affectation too far.

Needless to say the mop was not the first, second, third or even fourth thing that I bought, no indeed.  A small but elegant portable CD player; numerous batteries; metallic looking plastic cutlery; small plastic olive dishes; plastic cocktail forks (no, I don’t know what they are for either, but they were simply too cute not to buy); a plastic shower curtain which matches the splash-back – just the normal things you would expect to buy before purchasing a mop in fact.

Examination overload is threatening to overwhelm with external and internal examinations crashing together in a cataclysm of frantic posturing.  We also have the endless meetings to anticipate with boredom so crushing that it is positively palpable. 

But the end, please god, is almost in sight.  At least of this month.  And that is something.  Not much.  But something.

Some things you should never start

How difficult is it to clean a bathroom?  I mean it is small and make up of tiles.  All you need is a good mop and a healthy dash of bleach and you are away.

This is the theory, but my cleaning also incorporated an element of re-arrangement.    And that was disaster.

Suffice to say that the flood which ensued was not really my fault and anyway it was contained in the bathroom and did not spread to the bedroom.  And the floor is unusually clean now. 

My reading of early Forster continues and, with the listening to John Betjeman’s engaging poetry with a musical background by Jim Parker I feel as if I have been transported to another rather distant age where people say the word “off” with more vowels than I would have thought possible to articulate!  Does the word “tripthong” exist I wonder?  If it does then certain words of Sir John certainly give graphic examples for consideration.

With Toni away in Terrassa celebrating, if that is the right word, the First Communion of some poor child sucked into the unscrupulous theological abuse for which the Roman Church is famous.  And that last sentence gives you some idea of why I am in Castelldefels and not joining in the familial jollifications!

 

I think that I might have reached my FLOB or final level of brownness, beyond which no amount of sun worship will deepen the hue.  The next stage in my adherence to unthinking discipleship of the sun will probably result in the flesh curling away from the bones!

I am frankly unhappy with my shade as I have clear memories of what three weeks in Greece did for me.  There is a photograph, somewhere, of my lounging on the stage set of “Tristan and Isolde” in The New Theatre (for reasons which now escape me) which would have allowed me to say, “Mislike me not for my complexion” with some degree of aptness.    Those days of chocolate darkness seem to have become a thing of the past, though my present colour is much more profound than that of my Catalan colleagues!

And yes, I do know about skin cancer.

Early start tomorrow, but the days are drifting inexorably away towards June and the laxity of endings.

Sun!

There is nothing more delightful when hearing about grey skies and the threat of miserable drizzle than lying out on the Third floor under a flawless blue sun-filled sky in a different city!

I woke relatively early and took my breakfast on the Third Floor and contemplated a swim.  Which in short order, allowing a reasonable amount of time for the muesli to settle, I did.  There is nothing more guaranteed to give a feeling of smug self-satisfaction than a swim taken early.  It allows one the luxury of extending haughty condescension to the sluggish majority of population still abed.  And muesli does taste better when eaten in the open air!

A few swims later it was time for lunch.  Which was taken in a pretentious little restaurant on the main road.  I was the only person in the place, but the warning never to frequent empty restaurants was not applicable to this one.  The meal was excellent: a small taster of gazpacho, then a first course of green beans and potatoes – simple but excellent.  The main course was carpaccio of bonito with a small leaf salad – light but tasty.  The sweet was fruit soup with chunks of watermelon.  A delight of a meal.

I have started reading “Abinger Harvest” by E M Forster.  This is the sort of book bought as a good idea which can lurk unnoticed on well-stocked shelves for years – as indeed this one has done – until, for reasons not clear, even to me, it comes to hand and stays there.

The book is a series of reviews, essays and fugitive poems that read very much as if they come from another age.  I think that it is the liberal fastidious tone of the writing which ages it, as much as the innocently naïf grudging acceptance of communism as a doctrine with a possible theory for a positive future.

The writing is facile in the best sense and it wears its learning lightly but there is always a sense in which Forster is speaking to his intellectual and social class, he is not inclusive – to put it mildly.  They are almost indecently moreish and I put the book down (to have a swim) reluctantly, but the sun was disappearing from the pool and there is a limit to human endurance!

The sun is setting and I still have not attempted the Opera request for the next season.  There is still time.  Just.

So much lying around all day has left me exhausted and longing for bed.

To which I think that I will go.

Almost there!

The only blemish on a delightful day is, of course, the teaching which intrudes yet again on time which should be spent in the pool or on the Third Floor with a good book to hand.

As a second best my teaching load, for various reasons, is not unbearable today and, to cap it all, the last lesson I teach is consumed by a film in our very own auditorium and then it is my early finish.  All in all not a day to resent too much, though the weather looks unstable and I will spend my time on the hill looking fretfully towards the sea and hoping that the reasonable weather continues so that I can throw myself in the pool without too much of a calorific shock to my system.

My Amazon compulsion has not yet managed to get me my next book, but this may be a good thing, as it will not distract me from the gargantuan task of filling in the form for the opera.  There are a few other administration related tasks which I have been putting off which can also benefit from my undivided attention this weekend.

This Sunday is one of those family events with which I have little sympathy: a first communion for a young girl in the Roman rite.  Luckily I can’t go to this ceremony or the related jolifications and, speaking as an Anglican Atheist I can feel all my Low Church upbringing revolting from the enslavement of a young soul to the tawdry blandishment of the so-called church of the Whore of the Seven Hills.  But enough of balanced commentary!

An unprejudiced view of my shower curtain would seem to suggest that far from being a mere scrap of IKEA’s best, it is now a Site of Special Scientific Interest – indeed there are some SSSIs which have far less flora and fauna than the folds of my curtain.

As a “kill-or-cure” approach to the item I have bought a “trust in pink” container of cleaning granules to try and get rid of those stubborn stains which mere boiling doesn’t touch.

I was going to use the tried and test form of long soaking as my approach to the problem when I discovered that we have no bucket.

This is astonishing.  What is life without a bucket!  How can normal life go on in all its complexity without a bucket?

This situation will be rectified today!  Never let it be said that such anomalies can be tolerated in a civilized society.

I have at last started to listen to Sir John on The Machine after downloading the CDs into the memory but tragedy; the voice track seems strangely muted and totally unsatisfactory.  I am obviously doing something wrong somewhere along the line, but I’m buggered if I know where.  Surely it can’t be something added to the CD to make sure that they are not properly loaded up on a computer in iTunes.  Surely not!  That would be too cruel.  This is something about which I will have to take advice from Those Who Understand These Things – or “kids” as they are sometimes known.

For reasons which have been largely unexplained one of the buildings of the school has been without electricity all day.  Did we close the school?  Did we buggery! 

The only concession to the fact that nothing was working properly was that we had a procession of waifs from one building trudging to the oldest building in the school (which still had electricity) to get their fixes of coffee – poor addicts. 

How different are these wretches from we tea drinkers.  They are slaves to their beverage whereas we imbibe, sip and appreciate the bouquet of the most delicate of brews.  And we can give up whenever we want to, but we choose not to stop drinking he most sophisticated drink in the world.  So there.

My sole occupancy of the pool has now been shattered by the appearance of a strident group of women (one of whom in my myopic state I took to be a man in a bikini) with a small naked child. 

At least they had the good grace to confine themselves to the shallow end pool for the proto-humans allowing me to complete my leisurely circuits of the pool until they started smoking at which point I huffed myself away from them all.

Now, as the traditional start to the weekend, out to dinner.

Day after bloody day!

Each extra day in this impossibly long year takes a conscious effort to get through: twelve more days of the month to go and then the downward slide through June to the blessed relief of the two months of holiday until harsh reality strikes again and it’s September!

The lethargy of staff and pupils, which is now bone-deep, is glossed over by a febrile day-to-day activity which uses the ever-present threat of preparing/writing/sitting/marking exams as a noxious educational stimulant.

And before anyone shakes their head in a gesture of weary disbelief at such sybaritic self-indulgence and work-shyness let them be aware of the half term holidays of those denizens of the Sceptered Isle; and the two weeks for Christmas and Easter; and the fact that there are only two weeks to be worked in July before the Brits join us in our collective relaxation.  Count up the days and our two months becomes more of a perceived advantage than a real one.

Still, the summer is the time when we get one of our notorious “extra” pays.  I have discovered that this “extra” pay is tax-free which I suppose is one reason to acquiesce to the notion of “extra” in spite of my obvious desire to have the money spread over the twelve months as a boost to the ordinary pay rather than have these mysterious “extras” given at Christmas and summer.

My tax is still under construction and I am hoping that my Union dues will be taken into consideration in cutting down the monstrous sum of €73 that I have to pay.

When last getting money from the hole-in-the-wall in my bank I was a little started to see that an extra icon had added itself to the menu of choices that I could make on the introductory screen – the tax symbol.  Presumably I could click on that and my tax would be paid.  An innovation which I did not take advantage of, as I feel there is a little more fight left in me yet!

Though not, apparently in the court case about the government cutting our pay by 5%.  State teachers have had their pay cut by at least 5% and the government decided to apply the same cut to those grant aided schools. 

The cut is more complex in our case as the government funds the teachers in the primary and the secondary sections of the school but not the nursery and sixth form – these areas are funded by the foundation which runs the school.  There is therefore a widely ranging difference of “deductions” from colleagues’ salaries depending on the number of lessons taught in each section.

The school decided to make up the deductions pending a court case against the government.  Which has been lost.  At the moment we do not know what is going to happen to our wages next year.  And I seem to be the only one to be sincerely concerned!  Unbelievable!

Given the fact that much of Spain is being deluged by vicious rainfall I suppose that I shouldn’t complain about the indifferent cloudy sunshine that we were gifted today.  The pool was a little cooler than yesterday, but still acceptable as long as one didn’t linger in one’s lengths!

The application form for seats for the opera still has not been completed and it must be done before early June if I am to have a chance of getting the seats at the price that I am prepared to pay.

Culture calls!

Nice things!

I have to admit that the pool was somewhat cooler than yesterday, the sun having disappeared fitfully as soon as I took to the road to come home. 

Needless to say the weather had been glorious all the time that I was stuck in school and it was only during a so-called library duty that I was able to sit on the terrace (no child venturing into my demesne) and emulate Akhanarten and pay my respects to the Aten undisturbed by any professional duties.

I used a free period to complete my reading of “Beacon for Change” by Barry Turner and my recommendation stays firmly positive.  I am now looking forward to the next book on the subject that I have ordered, “The Autobiography of a Nation” – it will have to be very well written to match the Turner book.

As if to reward me for my dispatch in getting the book read the various Betjeman CDs were waiting for me.  I now have, as far as I can tell, the whole set of the collaborations between Betjeman and Parker. 

From anyone other than Betjeman some of the “lyrics” would be unbearably twee and looking though some of the poems they read almost like pastiches of his style.  Get a dumpty-dum rhythm going; mention a district of London and a local firm; add a cute neologism and you are away! 

I do like his poems though and I am looking forward to revisiting the “songs” in “Betjeman Banana Blush” – the first of the Parker collaboration and one which I listened to in delighted astonishment when I first heard it.  Perhaps it is caviar to the general - or pure self-indulgence.  

Who cares I am going to immerse myself in an orgy of English whimsy.

Reading is best!

A second dip in the pool.

There was still sunshine covering more than half the pool when I got back home and it was hardly an effort to discard my school clothes and march resolutely towards the water.

Swimming in the pool at the moment is to immerse oneself in a shining mote filled universe.  The pine pollen is caught in suspension and illuminated by the sun so that one swims through a myriad pinpricks of gold.  It reminded me of my times in East Moors Steel Works in Cardiff when the air glittered with coal dust, fragments of black diamonds in the sunshine.

I’m not sure what I feel like swimming in the progenative dust of pullulating pines but it is certainly refreshing after the sweaty proximity of too many pupils and anyway I always have a shower after swimming!

Waiting for me at home was one of the many books that I have ordered in an untrammelled spate of book buying over the internet.

The one which has arrived first is “Beacon for Change – How the 1951 Festival of Britain shaped the modern age” by Barry Turner.

The Festival of Britain has always been one of my enthusiasms because it falls in the so-called Age of Austerity which stretches in Britain from 1945 to 1954 and the end of rationing.  I think part of my fascination can be traced back to the effect of a Penguin book called “Age of Austerity” edited by Michael Sissons and Philip French which had a series of engaging readable essays on this period in British history.  This is a book I unhesitatingly recommend, as indeed is the Turner book I am reading now.

“Beacon for Change” takes an unashamedly personal view of the period and the exhibition and produces something which is as gripping as a novel.

I am someone who possesses a Festival crown, bought for me I hastily add, by one of our Leeds neighbours who ventured down into the smoke and came back with something for the baby for him to treasure.  I have a very hazy memory of the Battersea Fun Fair, but I no longer know if it is mine or something which I have reconstructed from photographs and old film.  I remember shocking a teacher by recognizing and naming the Skylon in a photograph when the poor old festival was all but forgotten.

Talking of Skylon, I remember something on the radio a year or so back that suggested that the thing might be lying in the Thames somewhere and that we should find, retrieve and re-construct the illuminated exclamation mark.  I wholeheartedly subscribe to such a wanton use of scarce money!  I was always in favour of doing it to mark the 2012 Olympics in London and act as a symbol, but other more vulgar counsel prevailed!

I went to the exhibition in the Victoria and Albert some years ago and revelled in the amount of memorabilia and the photographs I had never seen before.  It was a delight!  And I still have the catalogue.

The Turner book gives an historical account, but it is filled with well-chosen quotations and anecdotes which enliven the narrative.  I have read the first 170 pages in the page turning way in which I usually read my guilty pleasures of science fiction or fantasy and have had to tell myself to go to bed because, as ever, I am teaching tomorrow!

More books should be on the way!

Here we go again

A new week and a meeting after school.

I had thought that SMART targets was something I had left behind in the UK but no, phoenix-like they have raised themselves from the dust of the school and reasserted themselves as the latest in educational technology.

As far as I can tell our school has no tradition of assessment, evaluation or professional development – but, after a secret conclave of twelve just persons who have slaved away in isolation from the people they are going to effect with their decisions we have now been presented with a document which is going to be implemented next month which outlines the evaluation procedures for the next couple of years.

It is a case of “Instant Ethos”: from nothing to a fully-fledged system which could have been downloaded from any British school’s website.  The interesting aspects of any system of evaluation or professional development are things like the time allowed for the initial interviews to happen; the personal agreement which determines the scope and direction of the observation; the resources available to make any further professional development real.  I don’t think that any of the above is in place in our school.  I fear that this system of evaluation is more a box ticking exercise than anything real.

But what will be real is the influence that this new system has on the professional lives of the teachers that are bound up in the “practicality” which follows from the theoretical guff with which the process was launched.

There is nothing worse than someone saying, “I have seen all this before!” but I have and I know the consequences of an ill prepared, or worse, ill-resourced evaluation system.

Just another factor to take into account in my response to this school.

On the other hand the month is marching on to its close and we are getting ever nearer to the last teaching month of the year.

As something to keep us going I have suggested a Chocolate Week where each member of the English Department makes a chocolate confection in turn for a week.  I have discovered an excellent sounding recipe for chocolate brownies in The Week and so I am prepared for my contribution.  It will be interesting to see how my colleagues respond!

The examination season, in one of its periodic spasms, has now gripped the school and left me with marking to do which is soul-destroying tedium.  And these exams are but a taster for the end of year examinations which are yet to come.  Sometimes the end of June seems a very long way away.

A very long way away.

Justice!

In the post-Eurovision 2011 world we need to be a little tighter on our definitions and a little stricter concerning out-moded views on democracy.

Firstly, there seems to be a certain slackness about what scraps of land are being allowed to call themselves countries.  A name does not a country make, especially when Monty Python names like “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” are being countenanced!

I would like to offer my services to help the next Eurovision contest which is to be held in the country of the un-spellable and the city of the un-knownable.

Real countries are those:

1              Which have fought an official war with or against the British.

2              Which are or have been colonies, ex-colonies or dependencies of the Commonwealth (see 1 above).

3              Which have country names of three words or fewer including the definite article

4              Have been in existence for at least 21 years and have therefore come of age.

5              Which have a population of more than five million and all votes to be scaled according to population.

6              Which give their votes using the English language and do not have ludicrously dramatic pauses before announcing the higher points awarded to their immediate geographical neighbours.

7              Which are not in the Balkans

8              Which are not bloody fragments torn from the old USSR

9              Which have armies of more than a regiment

10            Which have the minimum of three of the following artists in their national or regional collections: Monet, Turner, Goya, Cezanne, Titian, Van Gogh, William Blake, Rothko, Canaletto, Magritte, Richard Wilson, Van Eyck, Constable, Rubens, Ter Borsch and Hockney.

11         Which recognize and implement Gay Rights as, given the make-up of the audience in the Eurovision Contest the reporter on the World Service of the BBC said there could be a real possibility that the hall might be at least half empty if there are problems.

12         Which sing in English and do not have folk dancers, folk costumes or folk instruments in their performances.

If these simple, humane and liberal rules were to be applied then I think that we could look forward to an intensely satisfying and civilized contest next year.

The rain hammered down last night and now at midday there is bright sunshine – I suppose I should make the most of it before it disappears!

The Summer (with a capital S) is assuredly here.  I have thrown caution, and most of my clothes, to the winds and thrown myself into the pool.  This is the traditional way in which Summer (with a capital S) arrives in Castelldefels.  To be truthful it was not as horrific an experience as I expected it to be.  After the initial shock has worn off I considered it within a degree of the perfect temperature for swimming - possibly not for lounging about in the water though.

Because of pullulating nature in our area it was necessary to break through a positive crust of pollen deposited over the water in the pool by the randy pine trees in the immediate vicinity.  Having broken the ice, as it were, I confidently expect other residents to follow.

Unfortunately our vile part-time neighbours seem to have taken up residence for their annual visit.  We expect them some time in May for their summer stint, but not usually this early.  They have the consideration of deaf cockroaches for the sensibilities of their neighbours and play loud music at all times of the day and night; argue vociferously and vilely with their recalcitrant daughter and they smoke. 

Their only redeeming feature is that they are only here for the summer and Easter week.  Their going in September is marked by our drinking the best Cava in the finest of cut glass.  Unfortunately it also coincides with the start of school, so it is not a time of unmixed joy.

As we did not go out for lunch today, we are going out to dinner and I will try to forget that I have to get up at 6.30 am for an 8.15 start in Barcelona.

Ugh!

But, on the other hand, we have reached the “tipping point” of the month of May and June is the last month of the year.  All things come to an end.

Eventually.

A normal Saturday

 

One has to count one’s blessings: we had sun this morning and into the afternoon and we had been promised rain.  I even had time to stretch out and take what rays I could.

Apart from the extraordinary feat of going to El Corte Ingles with The Family and spending nothing – not even on parking, the day has been largely uneventful.

This is of course essential when the evening is going to take all the accumulated energy that I possess to get me through the annual humiliation of Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest.  Watching the songs is the easy part.  It is the voting.  It is always the voting.

I always end up shouting at the television; demanding that we leave the EU; send gunboats to those countries that have coasts; bomb the ones which are landlocked; withdraw aid; get the International Court of Justice activated – in fact all the usual over-reaction that is traditional when watching the end part of the Eurovision Song Contest.

So far Denmark has produced something that could be popular; the Balkans are producing their usual rubbish but given the spread of voters that means nothing; Britain’s effort seemed uninspired and under-sung; Germany has the same singer as last year; most of the songs are absolute rubbish and the real star of the show is the light show.

The backgrounds to the songs are amazing and easily the most impressive that I have ever seen in this contest – but in a song contest if the single element that deserves comment is the set then there is something radically wrong!

We have listened to all the songs and we have both decided that the winner is Denmark!  Also in the running are: Hungary, Switzerland, Moldova, Romania and Spain (Toni’s choice) and Sweden, Slovenia, Russia and the UK (My choice).  I am quite calm at the moment.  The voting is about to begin.

We were of course wrong, or “wrong” because the patchwork nature of modern Europe has too many pretend countries with colonial attitudes.  No-one votes for the songs and even the worn jokes of national prejudices shown by the awards of the 12 points are wearing a little thin.

This year the last.  We should stop paying for this fiasco and make the Balkans pay for everything.

Taxing times!

THURSDAY 12th MAY 2011

Doing my tax has taken two of us all our free periods today.  My colleague Frank has a horror story to tell of an innocent tax mistake; bravely admitted because he is fundamentally honest costing him thousands of euros.  Since that soul searing time he has been paranoid about filling in his tax form and is constantly bragging about how easy it actually is on line.

Not, of course in my case.

Frank is, however, indomitable when it comes to wrestling with websites of fractal complexity and thinks nothing of tracking down his electronic quarry through a series of pop-ups that leave me breathless.

He was not happy and he began a litany of complaints which always ended with “I don’t know why this is happening; it never happens with me.”

Frank assured me that far from having to pay €71 to the bloodsucking, rapacious bastards who feed on the innocent flesh of sanctified tax payers, I would, by contrast be in receipt of money which had been wrongly torn from my fragile pay packet.

Attempt after attempt was made to plough our way through screen after screen of incomprehensibility and slowly, painfully and very tediously we eventually managed to add information to my tax statement that meant that far from paying €71 to the tax authorities I would only pay €73!  A net increase in my contributions of some €2!

My state of mind was not markedly improved by listening to all (and I mean all) my colleagues delightedly swapping stories about the size of the payouts that they got from the tax people and also the speed with which they were delivered.  “I got €1,800!” chortled one, while another said, “Between my wife and I we managed to get almost €4000!”  Oh how I laughed!  I have yet to find a single, solitary teacher who has actually paid the tax people money rather than having been in receipt of a swift, fat cheque.  But at least I am not bitter.  Not at all.

And this afternoon to Terrassa.  I have taken advice, yet again about how to get there from here in Barcelona.  I vividly remember my first months in this country when every journey from Terrassa to Castelldefels was an adventure and no two adventures were the same.

At the end of this birthday party, I simply want to get back to my bed as directly and simply as possible and not go on another magical mystery tour of the more well lit tunnels in Catalonia.  The trick is remembering that I live in the direction of Tarragona and heading south rather than to strange places in the hinterland of this country!

Someone has just spoilt my day by saying that the weekend is going to be wet.  This is totally unacceptable.  The terraced on the Third Floor is notoriously underused, but even I draw the line at pretending that lack of sun and biting winds are no obstacle to tanning!

FRIDAY 13th MAY 2011

The trip up to Terrassa was uneventful, apart from the usual fear that I am going in the wrong direction and am going to find myself on a motorway where the only turn off is 60 kilometres in the wrong direction.  As it turned out it was a delightfully uneventful journey up and I even had time to call into the Chinese shop near Toni’s mum’s flat to find the bits and pieces that I needed (key rings and dice if you are wondering) and still appear to have made excellent time in getting from the school to the town.

A teacher never stops being a teacher, no matter what the situation and who the potential pupils might be.  And sometimes, outside the classroom, one has an effect. 

Take, for example, Toni’s mum.

Time was when arrival would be greeted with a familial kiss and an exchange of pleasantries but not the essential ingredient without which no British meeting is complete.  Today, almost as soon as it I plonked myself on the sofa I was offered an all-important drink.

And not just of tea, coffee or coke, but the all-important chilled red wine.  Bottle opened I asked if Toni’s mum was going to accompany me in a glass.  This heretical thought was dismissed out of hand, but the heresy did not last and even she succumbed to a small, one might say token, smidgeon of wine.  This is a major breakthrough in urging a Catalan at least to pay lip service (sip service?) to a very British way of saying “Hello!”

Being the sort of woman that she is, she has, of course, left most of her smidgeon and gone into the kitchen to cook and prepare for her own birthday party.  My much larger smidgeon waits to be consumed!

The television, a join effort, was duly presented to a more than content mother and when we left it was still being programmed to delighted squeaks of joy as each new station was added to the list.

The highlight of the party was the birthday cake which, as is now becoming traditional, baked by Toni’s sister.  The slightly odd thing about these sugar, chocolate and cream confections is that they are produced by someone who has been on a strict and highly effective diet.  There is the making of a short story there I think!

The drive back was noticeably shortened by the adoption of the New Route – this time the right turning off the motorway being chosen did make a difference.

Signposting on Spanish roads is abysmal with no consistency about where a signpost should be put: sometimes they are way before the turning; sometimes on the turning, and sometimes just after.  The importance of the turning is sometimes completely at variance with the unobtrusive and self-effacing indication of direction which you only notice subconsciously after you have passed it.  At night time this is even worse and sometimes the obscurity of night is enhanced by overhanging vegetation.

And don’t assume that your GPS will help.  The Spanish change, altar and rearrange roads in a whipstitch and, unless you have an almost daily up-dating service you are constantly going to asked by the nice lady to turn into dead ends, or go the wrong way down a one-way system or be asked with increasing desperation to “turn around when you can” as according to the maps you are driving in the middle of countryside as the new road is not recognized.

The New Route however is better and cuts a little time off the journey – and coming back at night with an early start the next day every minute counts.

I was tired. 

I can remember a time when I would go from school to meeting to cultural event with a game of squash pushed in along the line and then get smashed out of my head and be bright and cheerful the next day.  Now I can see a real and personal significance to the concept of the siesta!  The years are obviously mounting up!

I was greeted on my return by a satisfyingly large amount of mail which included the CD “The Sound of Poetry” - an extraordinary disc which has been masterminded by Mike Read who has induced various singers ranging from Sir Cliff Richard to David Grant and The London Community Gospel Choir to give their rendition of his musical versions of the poems of Sir John Betjeman.  I understand that the David Essex version of “Myfanwy” was a “hit” single.  Marc Almond singing “Narcissus” was interesting and created an other-worldly effect as I was listening driving along through Barcelona rush hour traffic on my way to school.  I can’t wait to hear Gene Pitney, Leo Sayer, The Rodolfus Choir, Donovan, Captain Sensible and The Eton College Chapel Choir sing their contributions!  Some things simply transcend camp and go into another universe.

I have also ordered a replacement copy of Betjeman Banana Blush which is the result of another musical collaboration this time between Jim Parker and Betjeman and I think it’s the one where Betjeman attempts a gloriously inept American accent while Parker’s tinklingly attractive music plays in the background.  An absolute must.  I have also ordered the other discs to replace my LPs that were produced in that collaboration.  Sheer indulgence.  Perhaps it might also be the time to order a collected Betjeman poems. 

Amazon here I come!  Indeed came, as Betjeman’s collected poems are winging their way to me even as I type.  Or at least they are paid for!

I have a sneaking suspicion that I already own such a book somewhere in the maelstrom that is my library – it is exactly the sort of thing that my Favourite Aunt Bet would have sent me.  I always think to myself that a copy of a book merely means that you have the facility to make someone else happy by passing it on!  And that is the only way that I would give away one of my books.

Though I do have in my possession a book which has been passed on from owner to owner for about a century – and who knows it might even have been over a longer period of time.

I own an old copy (published in the same year as the first edition 1704) of Swift’s “Tale of a Tub” and “Battle of the Books” – it even has a typographical error in the famous passage “Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own”.  This book was given to Frank Thompson, my first Head of English in Kettering Boys School by a member of an old Northamptonshire family and, after I discovered it lurking among un-regarded books in a cupboard in my classroom, he gave it to me.  Perhaps it is the sort of book that I should pass on to a receptive sort of person.

The only trouble is that I don’t know any in my immediate vicinity.  To them it would merely be an odd 300-year-old book.  They would not get the thrill that I did from feeling the impression of the type and reading something that a contemporary of Swift would have handled.  I must admit that I didn’t find the works in this volume in any way remarkable when I read them in the nasty Everyman edition with small print and no notes, but I suddenly found them to be witty and delicious when they were in an edition of 1704!

The tactile experience of a book is something which cannot be captured in an electronic format.  Sometimes it doesn’t really matter and the electronic versions are infinitely preferable to some paperbacks that I have where the ink is smudgy or the print tiny on poor quality paper or where the pages are stained or falling out.  The ability to adjust print size is something which is of inestimable value and with the new technology the electronic page can look exactly like a crisp page of bright white paper but it is not the same.  

Not the same at all.

But I have nailed my colours to the electronic mast and I possess four electronic book readers (apart from computers) of which the Kindle is the easiest to use and the most useful.  I have yet to pay for a single downloaded book, but I am sure that the time will come.

I did actually try to download the electronic Kindle form of The Collected Poems of John Betjeman but it was only available in the UK – perhaps they think that Sir John’s style simply doesn’t travel!

The weekend is going to be awful with rain on Saturday and heavier rain on Sunday.

To compensate for this disaster I am going to buy a shredder and get rid of some of the extraneous papers that I seem to have accumulated and which are cluttering up boxes on the Third Floor.

Each to his own sad pleasures!