I see the light!

TUESDAY 21^st JUNE 2011

A glorious day – made even better by the lack of certain of our more problematic classes who have been taken or are going to be taken to the beach for a wonderful day out!  O Joy!

Unfortunately there are still classes left here in school so that my day is again going to be taken up with arid supervision of kids who are more than 90% on holiday and are certainly not orientated towards things academic.

The remaining teachers are wandering ghost-like around the place with vacant expressions and a more than vague feeling of unease.  This is, in part, explicable when you consider that the day after tomorrow we have one of our marathon courses which this year is going to be about self-evaluation.

This course is going to be led by an outside expert (you will have noticed that I didn’t even put inverted commas around that word, I am not as cynical as you might think) in a foreign tongue, so I will have to do my best to remember all the guff I was told when I last went through all this years ago!

If you spend more than ten years in education you get used to seeing old ideas repackaged and thrown your way, as the “latest thing”.  This inevitably will blunt your professional enthusiasm – the cyclical nature of innovation in education is one of the more depressing aspects of the whole experience. 

Please note that I said “one of” not, emphatically not, “the” most depressing aspect.  I always recall the observation of my father (inter alia) that “Teaching is 25% satisfaction and 75% degradation” and, while one can always quarrel over percentages, its truth will be universally acknowledged!

I have just been interrupted by one of my upper sixth pupils, an able but lazy student, who has taken an arm-huggingly, sentimentally eye-moistened leave of his teachers. 

 

I wish him well and will miss him but he, like so many others who have passed through the school, will come back to visit. 

Remember some of the kids here have spent up to sixteen (16) years in this place!  Starting school here at the age of three and leaving only to go to university! 

The idea of having spent 16 years in my school (any of them) is more horrific than I can contemplate with any degree of equanimity.

Because the dynamics of the school have been unsettled by the unsettled sequence of events that mark the end of term and year, I have got the day wrong and have been confidently planning my day as a Thursday when it is, stubbornly a Tuesday. 

The good news is that it should mean that after the next lesson I should be free for the rest of the day.

I realize that such a remark is a two-fingered snook at fortune and I await with weary resignation the collapse of all my plans for indolent ease.

The basic problem with this place is that there are no convincingly secure hiding places to avoid the almost intolerable peer pressure which demands that all teachers should be seen to be working when sitting in either staff room.

Surprisingly I have now lost a “gained” free and look well placed to lose a second.  Life is never as you expect.

I have just come from an impromptu showing of one of the X-Men films out of which one boy walked brushing past the teacher in charge and saying to me, en passant,  that he wasn’t going to waste hours of his life watching it.  I suppose that he has a point, but it is also a fact that one can dissect any crappy film and gain some sense of intellectual satisfaction from it or at least from the process of analysing it. 

After all, quite apart from the technical aspects of the film itself which are endlessly interesting such as editing, camera shots, colour, lens choice etc. there are the locations, costumes, props, music, lighting and we haven’t even got to the acting and the story line. The political, social and increasingly economic concerns are always interesting not only as elements within the film itself, but also in its shooting, production, advertising and distribution.

If archaeologists can go into raptures over a single human tooth or fragment of jaw or some mundane domestic artefact, then any student of film should find more than enough to talk or think about in any film ever made!  

Take the whole series of “X-Men” films, you do not have to strain too far to see them as part of the continuing discussion of science in evolution; of the outsider in society; of the concept of the übermensch; of the conflict of god-given versus man-created; of the fear of the unknown – and so on ad infinitum.

The Father figure of Charles Xavier is merely a variation on the character in “Trilby” mixed with the inevitable dash of “Jekyll and Hyde” combining to create yet another variant on yet another re-working of the “Frankenstein” myth.

Each of the “characters” in the films can be traced through myth and tale as well as through the rather more recent genealogy of Marvel Comics!

The action of the films is a basic Boys’ Own Story with a superficial overlay of popcorn social concern and politics – just enough edge to cause no concern whatsoever to the establishment.

There is always something to think about which is better than the rubbish that you are watching!

Which doesn’t justify the arrogant walking out by a disturbing student.  When his action was reported to the head of studies he audibly groaned and visibly shrugged his shoulders in disgusted exasperation.

At present I am supervising the 4ESO which is our last class before they enter the equivalent of the sixth form.  I have to say they do not bode well for our senior school next year!

So, from looking towards a pupil free day I have now lost the equivalent of three periods sitting with pupils who have lost the will to study. 

We are not dealing with the crème-de-la-crème here, but rather with the people who are taking recuperation exams to allow them to continue their studies next year. 

They show little concern because they know full well that they will have to do appallingly badly not to be allowed to come back next year.

We do have pupils retaking a year and this means that some of our pupils may have been in this school for up to 18 years before they finally leave.  I believe there was one person who was here for almost 20 years!  Even convicted murderers manage to get out of prison before then!

Two hours supervising the 4ESO is not my idea of fun.  And it was followed by another hour of supervision.  Disaster!  As I prophesised at the beginning of the day, my life of ease was nothing but an illusion, rudely shattered on the shards of young voices!

At least the swim was good when I got home – though the beautiful day had subsided into a humid slightly overcast afternoon.  And there were two people who had the sheer effrontery to be in the pool when I made my way to the shower before my immersion.  What is more they stayed in the pool, chatting in the shallow end as I made my way up and down!  Some people have no manner of breeding at all!

With myopia and earplugs you can enclose yourself in a watery world in the swimming pool and Others become vague shapes more noticeable for blocking the tracery of light from the rippling surface on the tessellations under the water than anything else.  And I out-swam their stay and claimed the pool for mine own!

Tomorrow is fin de course – the end of the academic term and year for the students –we “celebrate” by having “fun and games” with the students and then get rid of them at lunchtime and have a seafood spectacular for staff.

Last time I was in charge of skipping – I kid you not.  Lengths of rope were strewn around a part of the playground and, in spite of other more productive uses springing unaided and immediately to mind, pupils, teachers and parents were encouraged to show their prowess and dexterity by avoiding the swinging rope.  Needless to say I sat immobile in my proprietorial chair and spent my time encouraging others to shocking displays of cringe-making ineptitude.

By the time we were finished we seemed to have acquired more rope than when we had started.  One of those little conundrums which enliven one’s life.

WEDNESDAY 22^nd JUNE 2011

Where do you put the emphasis on tombola: surely on the “bo”?  Not in this part of the world where the word is mangled with the emphasis on the “tom” – and what is more it isn’t even a tombola.  There is an element of luck in my version of the thing: you pays your money and you takes your chance, your ticket might get you anything from a bottle of ketchup to a doll.

Here the first thing that parents see when they come to sample the delights of our institution in fiesta is a string of trestle tables, paper covered and laden with the unwanted jumble from our kids.

Everything is priced in tickets that are purchased in specific strategic locations and then spent in various “fun” places around the campus.

On our tombola stall the potential punters merely asked the ticket price and then decided to pay or not.  A simple system insuring that real money was only handed over in designated places.

We actually sold out thanks in no small measure to my paranoid insistence that we get rid of as much junk as possible as soon as possible.  I instituted “special offers” which galvanized the punters into accepting rubbish as if it had a real value!

Most of the stuff we sold was of questionable value with the highlights being bags and clothing from a major international store one of whose owners sends a child to our school and is generous at occasions like this.

The most offensive item on sale was a glass version of the Eiffel Tower with which I managed to stab my thumb and decorate the white paper covering of the table with a dash of crimson!  You really can’t make such things up!

We finished half an hour before time and I got the kids to clear up and stack the trestles and the tabletops and I was back inside the staffroom with time to relax and look forward to our special meal.

Which was composed of seafood and which was delicious.  The crustaceans were washed down with Cava and orange juice and even the inevitable speeches didn’t take away the warm glow of satisfaction from such an excellent repast.

A little later than I expected I returned home and found that Toni has constructed a mosquito screen for one of the windows and was busily at work on another.  As we had to go to a hardware supermarket for some essential supplies I was able to look around for essential elements to make my illuminated peacock a little more startling.

Thanks to Toni’s suggestion I was able to find a plinth and base which now is laden with peacock, lights and high expectations for a startling display tonight when the solar lights do their stuff and catch the jewelled glass of the bird in their rays!  It makes a statement of sorts at any rate.

Today the children left.  School is now bereft of pupils and all is well with the world.  To compensate for the excess of joy that such an absence brings we have a course to enable us to complete a personal evaluation of our professional competence blah blah blah.  Or am I being too cynical.  I am certainly too old and too experience to go through this palaver all over again.  But I will and I will try and contain my evil thoughts and not let them show in my smallest gesture either facial or body.  This won’t of course work, but it will be fun trying!

Meanwhile I shall consider the fact that this week and next are four-day weeks and that I am so close I can almost touch the start of the holidays!

Do you actually want my money?

The tedious saga of my attempting to pay my taxes goes on and on.

With the particular help of a battle weary colleague I have attempted to submit my tax declaration on line.  The form is 50 pages long and is virtually impossible to fill out without making errors.  Helpfully (and yes I am using that word with deep irony) a little table appears every time you try to submit it telling you which sections are incorrect.

After two days of work the 50 pages; hours on the computer and a last desperate printing out of the material in a vain attempt to pay on line I am just about to give up.  Except I do not have that option either.

As everything is printed out I could take the material to the bank: if I could get to the bank.  But the banks have now switched to their “summer hours” which means that no one in work can get to them.  Similarly with the offices of the tax people – they are not open when I can get to them.  Impasse.  Or at least Catch-22.

Which has just been smashed by my being allowed out of school to go to my bank and pay the bloody thing over the counter.

As is usual, the person directly in front of me seemed to be putting in the tax returns for Shell/BP/ICI and took the time commensurate with dealing with the affairs of such a conglomeration!

By the time it was my turn to be served and I had un-gritted my teeth I was beginning to wonder if I had time to call into the house for the cup of tea that I had been looking forward to since I left school on my mission of mercy to pay my tax.  I was seen to mercifully quickly with the 50 pages of print out neatly divided into a section to be sent to the Hacienda, a section neatly stamped and typed on given back to me and a third section retained by the bank.  All of this information has been dealt with electronically, but there is still a paper trail to make assurance double sure!  Pointless and witless!  Still, I can now relax about the state being in a condition to carry on, now that it has my €40.02 safely in its grip.

The amount of time, effort, petrol and soul that has been put into paying this amount is out of all proportion to its size – but at least the whole process is over for another year.  I trust!

Our school fun run, or misery walk as it was for some, has now been completed and the phalanxes of police who guarded the route through the repugnantly opulent area in which we teach have gone back to their bars.

Although I shouldn’t say that as we did see the boys in blue (or whatever they wear here) do something else last Friday night: for the first time in my life I was breathalysed!

This was because there was a routine roadblock set up at one of the bridge entrances to the beach part of Castelldefels and all cars were being stopped. 

I used to encounter these barriers after I had been to the opera and was returning to Castelldefels late at night or early in the morning, but all of the times that the police had set these up I was waved through as obviously not looking like the target victim for this tired police sting!

This time I was stopped.  Why, I don’t really know as I was still in school dress and ostentatiously wearing a tie.  Indeed one of the other policemen saw me and then asked his colleague why he had stopped me.  Toni said that he told his superior that I had looked nervous!

Anyway after showing my licence and weathering a barrage of Spanish an English-speaking officer was found who guided me through the rest of the procedure.

I was handed a sealed plastic pocket which held the mouthpiece for the test.  The one thing I was determined to do was make it unnecessary for the policeman to tell me to “keep blowing” which is such a fixed feature on all the television reports which feature hapless drivers in the clutches of smirking policemen.

I am glad to report that my breath was not half exhausted before the ping of the machine indicated that the test was over.

It was duly taken away and after a few seconds I was told that the test was negative and we went on our way, so that the real drunks could be caught later – probably going in a different direction and at a rather later time in the night!

These roadblocks only occur at the weekends in our part of the town and, as we are working up to the summer and a national holiday just before the schools throw out their pupils for the holidays we can expect more of them.

Parking is also reaching new levels of stupidity with last weekend being particularly notable for the sheer lack of consideration which seemed to have motivated most of the drivers who failed to find a legal parking space.

Near the beach nothing is sacred for the determined parker: zebra crossings, pavements, corners, driveways, entrances, exits – wherever you can get a car, there, in high season, you will find a vehicle. 

One which was parked in front of a locked driveway opposite us had its windscreen wipers wrenched out by the end of the afternoon.  I felt it difficult to sympathise.  Though the perpetrators must have been glaringly obvious to the car owner.

I don’t quite know how it has happened but I have done far more than my fair share of supervision today and ended up with a second year class which has a few prize idiots in it.  But, when all is said and done we are in the Last Days – at least with the pupils: three more days left in this week and then a four day week of half days and then . . .

Almost there!

Health and beauty

I have told myself that the rather timid and ineffectual illumination of the peacock was due more to its placement than to any basic design flaw.  By the night it will have been moved into a more prominent position and its alignment adjusted so that it can be seen better from the house.

Our Sunday morning is accompanied by the usual moronic barking of one of the damned canine souls in bondage next door.  Ever time the jailer (aka Owner) leaves the dog, its own doggie version of the Stockholm Syndrome kicks in and it barks its deprivation until its captor returns.

In spite of it being a somewhat overcast day I have had an “early” morning swim; so early indeed, that it was not even accompanied by the shouts and screams of the local children having their usual conversations. 

I am convinced that the habitual listening to iPods and the like at high settings have destroyed the hearing of the last few generations of children which would account for their always having to communicate at the sort of volume that can drown out passing aircraft!

The peacock is now on a small plinth at the end of the garden and looking, if I am truthful, a little odd.  Still, if it blazes forth in a coruscating display of light and colour tonight it will have justified its purchase.

Today one of my major irritants is a direct consequence of the birthday party.

The present we bought was one of the spin-off products from the cartoon film “Cars”: a talking truck pulling a container which opened out in three directions to form a track on which three small cars could be catapulted by use of a small accelerator device.  A perfectly ordinary offering to a three year old!

Although shoddily made of flimsy plastic, it looked good in the box and made a satisfyingly large, gaudily wrapped gift. 

And in my view that is how the gifts should stay until well after the givers have left. 

Taking the wrapping paper off presents merely encourages the recipient to want to take the gift out of the packaging and nowadays, no child can disentangle the object from the fiendish prison in which it is encased.

The first major problem is opening the box.  Even (or especially) when there are clearly tucked in tabs which should be un-tucked to facilitate easy opening this will never be the case.  Sellotape of evil transparency will stymie any attempts to get to stage one in the releasing of the contents of the box.

The tape used to lock up the box is not only of crystal transparency but also of a composition that melds it to the very cardboard on which it is supposed to be just stuck.  Broken nails and shattered spirits are the inevitable result of trying to peel off the tape so there is recourse to The Knife.

A new rule now makes its presence felt: how ever many pieces of tape you slice through there will always be one that you have missed that keeps the box structure secure and impenetrable.

It is at this point that one resorts to brute force to rip, rend and tear the box to pieces and one also discovers just how lethal cardboard can be as, in my case, fingers are effortlessly sliced open.  And why is it that the cuts are always in the most inconvenient places: on the right side of the nail of the index finger of the right hand.  A place where a cut makes itself noticed every few seconds!  Yet another price I pay to keep children happy!

Of course opening the box turns out to be the simple part of the dislodgement of the present – which by this point one has learned to loathe.

All the contents of the box are securely attached to a backing card with plastic ties and sharp-ended twists of wire.  I have always assumed that this was the revenge of under-paid Chinese workers on the soft, exploitative western capitalists buying the results of their labour.

I sawed through the plastic and after innumerable pinprick reminders of how lethal wire can be the contents were free.

Then the full horror of “some assembly necessary” comes into play.  The instructions were only discovered much later, having slipped unnoticed onto the floor and been swept under a table, so all I had to go on was a picture on the ripped front of the box.

All things considered I did quite well and by the time I finally gave up in infuriated exasperation there was the appearance of something like the front picture – or at least what one could make of it from the fragments left after the fury of opening. 

The finer details I left to the parents who accepted my partially completed construction with eyes that gleamed with what I can only describe as naked resentment.

My job “done” I retreated to a part of the room as far away as possible from the “playing” area of kids and doting relatives – and there I stayed and, apart from a fairly long sword fight with the nephews, in relatively safely.

Roll on the time that we can give money and have done with the present thing entirely!

FRIDAY 17th JUNE 2011

In an incident serious in its immediate consequences, a colleague has had the beam from a laser pen shone in her eye.  The pupil who did this was also rude and offensive to her.

My immediate reaction was to tell my colleague to take a taxi and go to the doctor immediately.  I also asked if the boy concerned had been suspended.

In my view, a real test of any school is how the management reacts to what is an assault on a member of staff. 

In a way I know that I am setting myself up for an extended period of irritation as the action that will be taken will, inevitably, seem to me to be woefully inadequate.

There is a French cartoon on the staff room notice board that shows two sets of parents with their respective children in meetings with the pupils’ teachers set in different decades.  In the first one from the 1960s the teacher is sitting proud while the parents round on their cowering son and demand he explain his poor grades. 

In the present day version the teacher is cowering behind the desk while the infuriated parents of the smirking boy demand that the teacher explain the low grades given to their child!  I am sure that the concept behind the cartoon translates easily as a comment on many of the schools in Europe.

I know that school exists to teach the young and without them there is simply no school, but that is no reason to look on our raw material as pure ore rather than the adulterated amalgam that we get to work on. 

 

“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves” - unfortunately the sense behind Cassius’ words go unremarked by generations of parents who see little wrong in their progeny and constantly try and find some external blameable reason for failure rather than looking at the qualities (or lack of them) in the individual concerned.

Today our school is pleasantly denuded with 50% of the secondary school going on a trip or two and so we should be able to get down to the real stuff of teaching: moving books around and throwing away accumulated paper!

My cupboard in the staffroom is like a three dimensional jigsaw which, as far as I can tell, is constructed using more than three dimensions.  This means that only the slimmest of sheets of paper can be tentatively fed into the morass which is revealed when the doors are opened.

My lesson “gain” from the departed kids has, of course, been nullified by my having to supervise a class for a colleague in that gained time.  This has been the story of this summer where expectation has been dashed by squalid reality and I have supervised class after class to the detriment of my imagination - but it has certainly improved by typing skills!

Amazingly I still, after all these months, have the edge on lust-worthy computers.  My MacBook Air with its clean, and above all sharp lines, is still a thing of envy for our materialistic pupils.  The glowing Apple symbol on the cover of the computer is still a visible point of excellence and, although there is a bank of three girls all with their Apples in a row – not one of them has the elegance of my machine!

It must be unprecedented for a computer to have held its “wow factor” for as long as mine has done!  My first mini laptop was a sensation, but was quickly followed by pupils’ acquisitions and (more slowly) by those of the staff.  Suddenly everyone had a mini laptop – and all of them look roughly the same.  When I bought mine there were only a couple of models to choose from now there is a pleasing plenitude of desirable devices arrayed in even the most pedestrian of electrical shops.  But nothing is quite like the MacBook Air which - given its grossly inflated price - is as it should be.

The work of the department is about to begin and I will be asked to do lower grade clerical work, but this is better than taking some of the classes that I teach or, at this stage of the year I should say that I “taught” – all things come to the end; but this year seems to have gone on for an eternity.

 

I have been reading (re-reading surely!) “Trent’s Last Case” by E C Bentley on my mobile phone.  I am well used to the “gobbet” approach to literature having read three Dickens novels on my old palmtop and it is very comforting to know that I am (nearly) always with the means to facilitate the reading of a book. 

The list of out-of-copyright volumes that I have on my phone grows as I utilize the download button on anything that looks even half way likely lurking in the “publicity” material that is situated at the end of each novel or short story that I read on the program that I use. 

There has to come a time when the memory is used up but so far the library keeps increasing and the machine doesn’t really seem to mind so I will keep adding to my eclectic list which should cover any mood that I am in.

The school day was a series of supervisions interspersed with periods of proof reading documents that had been written in Catalan, translated into Spanish and then rendered in a form of English spoken by no speaker of the language!  It was my function to try and rewrite this into real language.  The school is rewriting its website and we have been ploughing through verbiage which even if it had been written by Shakespeare would still have been crap.  And lies.  But what the hell!  I rather enjoy making the odd silk purse!

The Birthday Party in Terrassa was, considering the Birthday Boy was just 3, enjoyable. 

Of course, as was only predictable, I was shocked at the number, expense and complexity of presents for a three year old and the equally uncomfortable situation where most of the relatives gave the 3 year old’s brother presents as well even though it was not his birthday. 

I would imagine that this is standard practice to prevent sibling rivalry but it goes against ingrained attitudes formed by extensive reading of R H Tawney – or at least a half-baked understanding of an summary of what he might have said about the role of Protestantism in forming “correct” attitudes towards life as opposed to the clearly “wrong” ones inculcated in people by the pernicious doctrine of the Whore of the Seven Hills!

Also, I didn’t have the same quantity of presents when I was three.  Not that I remember my third birthday of course, but I know that I was deprived!  Certainly compared to the largesse showered on the undeserving these days!

SATURDAY 18th JUNE 2011

A better day weather-wise and there was a period in the afternoon when I was able to repair to the Third Floor and take the sun.

All of this was after going into town and various supermarkets and garden centres so that Toni could find the raw material to continue with his experimentation for his latest invention.  Prototypes have been made and they are ready for testing.

Among all the sensible buying I was much taken with an object once seen soonest bought! 

There may be some so cold of heart that they are able to resist a solar light illuminated wire construction covered in chunks of coloured glass in the shape of a peacock with a spread tail – but I am not that man.  I am now eagerly awaiting night so that I may glory in the shimmering wonder of it all.

And next week is only four teaching days long!

Life is good.

Driving where?

All the characters that I mentioned (with the exception of the backward sliding mother in the family car) were out and about this morning!  The I’ve-got-a-god-given-right to join the road that you are driving on car owners caused me to take one or two indrawn breaths and the boy-racer was comic-book stupid as he dodged from lane to lane, undertaking, overtaking and generally risking death!

But the sun is shining and it promises to be another lovely day.

One consequence of bright sunshine and living in a city of generous amounts of pollution is the awe-inspiring vistas that you get as you wend your way to school.  My motorway of choice affords generous views of the surrounding hills which zig-zag their way into the smoky distance.  When illuminated by a rising sun they are breathtakingly beautiful - and even the pollution looks good!

Toni has been buys working on his devices to keep a towel on the beach secure from inopportune gusts of wind.  He has now made a prototype and he should be testing it today.  If (when) it works it will be time to take it to a design centre in Barcelona which exists to help people with their inventions and to give advice about their possible development.  I can say no more at present, but I look forward to developments with some interest.

Impulse buying is one of the great pleasures in life.  Visiting a hypermarket yesterday in pursuit of “items” to help Toni’s invention I impulsively bought a new beach towel (I put that down to the psychological effect of Toni’s creations) some Barça shorts (which will have to be taken back today as they barely fit one leg!) and, more oddly, frying pans.

Impulse buying frying pans would suggest a beggared life because, as all know, impulse buys are for those things which do not have a real practical use and about which you feel terribly guilty later.  Frying pans do not fit this concept.

Though, “fitting” is one of the reasons that I bought them.  Storage in the house is at a premium and cupboards are full to overflowing so these Tefal things with, most importantly, removable handles (!) are easily stackable and also have that magic “gadget” element without which purchases are arid and empty.

I have tried to get hold of these stackable frying pans for some time and this is the first time that I have seen them on open display in Spain.  Of course I haven’t used them yet as I have some vague memory of Clarrie telling me that you have to coat them with olive oil first in some mystical way akin to a christening.  This may just be with the fabulously expensive cooking receptacles that she uses and mere Teflon does not merit such loving care.

What I have been able to do so far is to click the handles on and off with proprietorial glee.  I have also ordered some similar saucepans from Amazon.  These things do not (of course) come with lids - which are surprisingly expensive.  There are also plastic clip on lids which mean, in theory, that something can go straight from the cooker to the fridge – minus the handle of course.  These lids are also things that I do not have. 

I have justified the purchase of the saucepans because, for reasons that I do not fully understand, I have got them “post free”.  Which makes everything sensible and reasonably priced.  In a way.

Tomorrow-another trip to Terrassa for the birthday celebrations of the Little One who is now two or possibly three.  I am sure that I will have to contain my fury as I see the presents with which he is showered and I compare it with what I had when I was three. 

Of course, I can remember nothing of what I had for my third birthday; in fact I can remember remarkably few presents being given.  

One I remember with remarkable clarity was when I was allowed to choose an ornament from my kindergarten Christmas tree (a Father Christmas on a sleigh with bits inside that rattled when shaken as you ask) which was on our Christmas tree for the next umpteen years.  I may not be able to list them all but I do remember them in use. 

There was a wigwam of cloth stretched on a framework of four bamboo poles; a scooter; a Dinky toy dumper truck; a feathered headdress (more Red Indian than 1920s Flapper); the March from The Nutcracker Suite; a stapler; books; a Golliwog; a second-hand tape recorder; a xylophone; a small carved dog; a recorder; a helicopter on a long wire with a handle at the end which, when turned, caused the helicopter to fly into the air – and that lot takes me up to the years that I can remember with clarity.

It is sad to think of the multitude of toys lovingly and considerately bought which have vanished completely from my mind.  I am sure if I thought long and hard I could resurrect more of my juvenile possessions – roller-skates, for example pop into my mind – but the amount of money spent on things which have left no lasting impression must be enormous.

As my parents were fond of telling me: when I was one year old they decided against elaborate celebrations because I would remember nothing of them, but they did bow to convention in the Birthday Cake area by putting a candle in a jam tart.  I was, apparently, delighted – and my first birthday lasted until the jam tarts and candles gave out!  How sensible!

All of which makes me wonder about the amount we have spent on Toni’s very young nephew: how long will the present last?  Given the shoddy construction of expensive toys, if they last the birthday it’s a bonus; if they are remembered the day after it’s astonishing.

Ah well, I sometimes think that such purchases are more proof to allow the parents to realize that we care, rather than something which is going to be a lasting treasure for the kid!  And we do get a meal out of it as well!

A vivid memory from a few years ago is of a very young girl who we visited on Christmas Day and she got bored with opening her Christmas presents because of there were too many of them!  Something which I cannot recall from my own personal experience – and I did very well from my parents and relatives! 

Different times, different customs!

Although I was early to school the traffic, which is usually reasonably light at this time of the day, was very heavy with long tailbacks onto the motorway from the various turn-offs.  An irritating consequence of the tailbacks is that Spanish drivers feel the urge to cut into the line of cars waiting to exit and thereby block another lane of the motorway. 

This means that Spanish drivers who are thus blocked attempt the most outrageous manoeuvres to cut into the nearest free lane where the drivers are not inclined to let them in and so you have the perfect recipe for disaster – which, as a general rule does not take place. 

In spite of its being almost impossible to imagine cars escaping from the mayhem and general cataclysm that must result, space magically appears and life goes one.

It is true (to their shame) that Spanish drivers are worse than French drivers.  I discovered this piece of useful ammunition in a general Internet search for the safest drivers in Europe.  The safest drivers were not the British - but we figured surprisingly loftily in the list which dwindled down to the lunatics of the east.

Based on vehicle miles you are twice as likely to die in Spain as you are in the UK and about a 50% higher chance of dying than if you are driving in France!  Shameful figures!

One of the most satisfying activities as I trudge my way to school – although trudging in a car is difficult – is double guessing the drivers in front of me or lurking at the side.

At various points in my journey there occur opportunities for drivers to demonstrate their innate sense of courtesy as roads merge or diverge, or where lane changing is essential or where space is restricted and Care Needs to be Taken.  And they don’t.  The fun comes from deciding the sex and age of the person behaving as if they were immortal. 

I take one slip road which joins two motorways and it is a constant source of fun to be driving along in the lane which eventually changes into the link road and guessing which of the cars on my left is suddenly going to change lanes and push in before it is too late.  One has little enough to go on as the driver is usually invisible and one has to make one’s decisions based on the make of the car and the slightly uneasy parallel along which they drive. 

Unfortunately such people also take further risks after they have gained their lane and disappear into the distance to become another statistic.

Some drivers are obviously in the ”under 25 male” category, while others are just as obviously in the “little old lady of either sex” slot.  There are well-catalogued descriptions of “middle aged man refusing to accept ageing” and “wife driving family car for the school run” which any experienced driver will recognize.  One learns to slow down to avoid death with one and to keep a more than reasonable distance on hill starts with the other!

The middle lane is the most problematic area for the keen driver spotter.  The “middle lane tail backer” who attracts a line of trapped traffic behind his (I use the pronoun advisedly) slow moving vehicle as traffic streams past him on both sides is the usual preserve of the frankly old man; his wife is more likely to be an “inside lane crawler” and can usually be passed with ease.

Those irritatingly smug smaller cars with the rounded shapes and the look of self-satisfied domesticity are the preferred mode of annoyance of the younger career woman, usually professional and in one of the so-called caring professions.  They drive carefully badly and anything, absolutely anything can be expected from them.

BMW and Merc drivers are obviously in a class of their own and their vehicle make transcends age and sex: they are all bloody inconsiderate, arrogant and downright dangerous.

Tinted windows are danger signs, while tinted windows, spoiler and line drawing decorations are extreme danger signs.  Any attempt at car humour using toys, stickers or painting is an obvious Keep Clear warning.

The one clear rule that one needs to know when driving in Spain is that “indication means action, not mere intention”: when the indicator light comes on the driver is already moving in (usually) the direction the light shows.  The fact that you are in the space that the driver appears to be attempting to occupy means nothing to him: he has indicated; he is moving.

If Spanish drivers use the roads in the same way in Britain that they do at home in Spain then they must move to a constant fanfare of car horns.

In Spain, in my bit anyway, the horn is rarely used because the manoeuvres that would give British drivers heart failure and an urge to punch the horn in the middle of the steering wheel are here are accepted as a normal part of driving.

When a Spaniard uses his horn it really is because he cannot kill you with his bare hands!

Sometimes I have risked death through a determination to find out if my hunches about the age and sex of an inconsiderate driver are correct.  In city traffic, or even on urban motorways, traffic progress has a way of being somewhat self-limiting: the car that lurched past you and then in front of you with a death-defying swerve that you normally only see on action movies you see a little later caught up in a line of stationary traffic.  Only the most stupid of motorists (and all motor cycle users) manage to make real progress – and I wish them well in the rest of their short lives!

Today is one of my early finishes and I have a trip to Toys r Us to look forward to!

Such happiness!

The school is suffused with a electrically crackling air of hysteria as today, today we have naming of parts. 

Or to put it another way, we have one of our monumentally long and tedious meetings.  This one is scheduled (“scheduled”) to run for three and as half hours.  As I will be praying for death within five minutes of the start of the thing, you will appreciate that it is going to be a long, long day for me.

On the plus side I suppose that this is the last Great Horror before the holidays and then we will have two months to try and forget that they will all be starting up again next September!

My list of Things To Do is growing longer as we approach the magic date at the end of June and this year I want to get more of my list done than I did the last.  Two things that I am almost determined to complete this year are sorting out my books and visiting a church on the hill that I have been passing for years and have always voiced an ambition to visit it which lasts as long as it is in sight and then my determination fades as it falls behind.

This is part of the reason that the books still remain in their unsorted state.  As my bookcases have opaque doors the chaos of double stacked books and books shoved horizontally into the spaces above the books and below the next shelf is hidden from view, unless, like yesterday I went in search of a book.  Then the full horror is revealed in all its squalid higgledy-piggildyness.

The book I was looking for was the catalogue to the exhibition in the V&A about the Festival of Britain.  As I have been reading other books on this event I wanted to refresh my memory with some of the excellent photographs that I knew the catalogue contained.

All things considered, I found the book relatively quickly: it always helps when you know what the design of the spine is like and I even managed not to be too distracted by seeing other books which seemed to demand my immediate attention.

One thing that I had forgotten was that I had a copy of the original 1951 Guide to the Pleasure Gardens of the Festival of Britain in Battersea.  I wonder how difficult it would be to obtain a Guide to the Exhibition itself.  I will have to consult Amazon!

The Meeting was broken up by the fact that it started at 3.00 pm (1¾ hours before the official end of school) and as there were two lessons to staff some of us had to leave, only to come back after a hour of looking after kids to listen to the gibberish of colleagues who like the sound of their own voices and do not seem to care that there is a life outside school. 

The meeting finally finished a mere 45 minutes late and, as we went home in daylight we counted ourselves lucky.  At least they did, I was fuming with impotent rage at the time (which can never be replaced) was squandered on my having to half understand the tedious home life of kids not in my charge.

I can truthfully say that knowledge of the home life of any pupil has never played a significant part in the way or what I have taught.  A few Shakespeare plays usually cover most of the likely situations of domestic dysfunction that any modern family is likely to reproduce!  What is a teacher supposed to do?  Self-censor?  Bowdlerize?  Rubbish!

When I finally got home and had a swim the water was quite warm at gone 7.00 pm, there was only one way to take away the taste of having been in school for close to twelve hours – going out to eat.

Our choice of the Basque restaurant near when we used to live.  This has always been a good choice as we invariably have the tapas which are placed out on the bar.

We had a fair selection ranging from a slice of tortilla with cod to a strange tapa of chorizo and salmon.  They were good but not good enough to justify the pretty steep charge of 40 odd euros even if that included a bottle of the strange wine which has to be poured into the glass from a distance of a couple of feet!  It will be long time before we go back!

Meanwhile another day done!

Cake Day!

The cake is out of the freezer and softly defrosting.

It doesn’t look exactly symmetrical and I am wondering just how much one can do with a palette knife – especially when one does not have one.  Or is a palette knife just for painting?  I am thinking about the rounded end pliable knife used to smooth icing sugar.  Well, whatever it’s called I haven’t got one and so I will have to improvise or make my cack-handed attempts look intentional!

The most that can be said for the weather is that it isn’t raining, though it looks that though it is thinking about so doing.  So far June has been a total failure.  I am eager for summer to start and to stay.  Perhaps it is waiting for me to finish school and then it will spring forth in all its glory and not go away until the start of school in September.

The weather improved and the cake was a success.  Every bit of it was consumed.  I have therefore been emboldened to try another one with the cream and chocolate that I had left.

This one took a tenth of the time that I took with the first one and although I had to improvise with the fruit – as I didn’t have any strawberries left I used apple and nectarines and marinated them in red wine and brown sugar with a touch of lemon juice.  That sounds really professional: one cake and suddenly I am a Master Baker!  The proof of the mastery is in the eating and that is yet to happen.

The whisking of the egg whites was taken to the next stage this time.  After listening to the advice of two hardened professionals about the dangers of grease remnants stopping the formation of peaks, I was meticulous in my washing of the receptacle for the whisking thereof.  And it didn’t work, but it didn’t work in a way which was a step nearer to success, so I wasn’t downhearted – and I used them anyway!

The whole thing is now freezing so that – well, I don’t really know but I was told that it was the thing to do.

Toni has had his Name Day celebrated in style with the assembled hosts of The Family going out to Our Restaurant and then having a selection of cakes made by Toni’s sister and my good self!

Another day gone and we are now down to single numbers with the kids.  All things come to those who wait and wait and wait!

And a day of the week is already gone!