Holiday: A Taster

FRIDAY 24^th JUNE 2011

A definition of “pleasure” for me is constantly to remember that today is Friday and not the weekend and that, more importantly, I am not in school!

Last night outdid the 5^th of November by the sheer perseverance of people throughout the night, the whole night and continuing into the morning, of setting off fireworks whose raison d’etre was to produce a bang.

When I went to bed, amid flashes, explosions and distant sounds of revelry, I lay my head on the pillow and wondered, “How am I going to get to sleep?”  I was about half way through that sentence when Morpheus claimed me for his own.  And I slept peacefully through the cataclysm that is St John’s Eve with a tranquillity which thoroughly irritates lighter sleepers.

As a concession to ¡Fiesta! I actually stayed in bed till ten this morning; which is three and a half hours later than I usually get up!  I am not very good at the “lie-in”, I never have been.  It is something of a duty paid to holiday that I do it all – but even during the long holiday I never become acclimatised to wasting the morning!  The afternoon, yes, but the morning never!

Toni continues to paint and things are looking somewhat brighter.  It is hardly surprising that wood, this near the coast and the salt laden sea breezes rots fairly quickly.  Paint at least delays the inevitable destruction and makes the old and worn out look bright and superficially acceptable!

After the triumph of the Garden Peacock, I am now turning to the multi-level cactus garden.  The latter will incorporate discarded elements from a disassembled water feature and a certain amount of new buying.

The evening was spent in Barcelona in Les Caracoles – a restaurant just off the Ramblas where my cousin and a group of friends were meeting for a meal.

It was an excellent meal and the company was stimulating.  I came into Barcelona by one of the slowest and most frustrating buses in Catalonia which stopped at every bus stop to pick up the single person who was placed there just to irritate me.  It also stopped at every single bloody one of the traffic lights (and there were many) which impeded my progress.

On Toni’s advice I booked a cheapish hotel room opposite the Liceu rather than try and make it back to Castelldefels after a late meal.

The room in the Hostal Paris was basic; my miniscule room had a shower and basin but no loo.  The bed was rather short for me and the air conditioning was programmed to turn itself off after a short period of operation so that there was no appreciable diminution in temperature.  It was on the third floor and there was no lift. 

But it was in the centre of the city, within an easy walk of the restaurant and it cost €35; it made sense to me at that price and it might be somewhere to consider if I have to go to operas during the weekend in the next season.

SATURDAY 25^th JUNE

The thin and short bed did not invite lengthy occupation and the only thing which kept me in it was the time of the first bus back to Castelldefels.

This time the trip back was with the quicker bus and so we were able to begin our rounds of the supermarkets to get what we needed to continue our process of mild transformation of the house at a reasonable hour.

Finding the fitments for the mirror was impossible, but the wood and cacti with other bits and pieces were easily purchased.  Wandering round overpriced garden centres was just like old times back in Cardiff.

As indeed was the eye-wateringly high cost of a collection of parsimonious water using weeds and a few stones!

Toni continues his anti-mosquitoification of the house with more and more inventive ways of securing our insect free peace.

A peace which has been rudely shattered by our obnoxious neighbours on one side entertaining a degenerate section of their unspeakable family; on eth other side by the moronic dogs; further down a man who can only communicate at a shout having a party for some unformed human and culminating in the screaming dogs at the end of the row!  There is plenty of material here for any Grumpy Old Man to have a field day!

SUNDAY 26^th JUNE 2001

The Cascading Cactus Garden is now complete with the peacock standing proud on its plinth in the centre.  Words fail me - as I am sure they will not fail visitors when they view the Designer Corner of the demesne!

I don’t really know what Japanese knotweed looks like, but I think that our little garden is riddled with it.  I say this because we have a species of creeping plant which is like something out of a science fiction story.  From extensive casual listening to Gardeners’ Question Time on Radio 4 when there was nothing else worth listening to, I know that Japanese knotweed is a pernicious pest and spreads.  On those two criteria we have it.

I remember being told that a Bizzy-Lizzy was totipotent, so that any part of it stuck into dirt would produce a plant.  I used this attribute to produce multiple plants which I fed with Plantoids™ and fabricated a generation of spindly, sick-looking plants that would have done credit to any of those in-bred drawling families of the decadent Deep South!

At least you got flowers with those, which is more than you get with the insidious growth of our ground-covering pest.  Like some of the more flamboyant lizards’ dismissive attitude towards their rear ends, it seems quite prepared to sacrifice whole visible strands of itself in order to protect the essential areas of growth – which are usually nowhere near where you are doing the damage.  And I am convinced that any part of the bloody thing once it touches anything remotely approximating to earth seizes the chance to propagate itself and spread like “innit” in so-called Modern English Usage.

Today is gloriously sunny and very hot and the inevitable hordes have descended to shatter our coastal idyll.

I have driven out to the supermarkets (closed) and the town shops (closed) to try and get a few bits and pieces that are necessary for the tidying up of the house.  The only places where anything other than a beer and a coffee can be bought are in the Chinese Shops (open) where I have been prepared to compromise on what I wanted to buy and come away with reasonable alternatives.

The centre of Castelldefels in front of the church has been cordoned off and a massive piece of Papist art has been constructed or drawn in what looks like coloured sawdust.  As a concession to the secular, much of the design is floral and the central motif comprises doves in flight.  On the dais, which is the sort of open-air stage for community events, an altar has been set up the backdrop for which is a representation of the chalice with the wafer with the name of Christ “IHS”.  There is a massive hanging of the same image on the façade of the church and I assume that the congregation will ritually destroy the art as they assemble to hear mass.

There are various flower festivals in Spain where incredibly intricate patterns made up of flower heads are constructed along the streets, are admired for a moment and then destroyed by tramping feet.  Presumably it is yet another version of the transitory nature of life highlighted by the church to encourage the “faithful” to book a place in the Eternity Hotel before it is too late.

The centre of town was relatively quiet but the beach part is anything but.  There are queues of cars waiting to get to the sea and start their hopeless pilgrimage around the Via Doloroso of parking areas before finally settling on places which defy comprehension. 

There are people parked on pavements, thereby reducing the width of the road to one uneasy, and very narrow lane; there are people parked on zebra crossings; on areas marked with do-not-park lines; on roundabouts (!); in driveways; double parked next to rubbish bins; There are droves of people who, when they finally get back to their cars will realize that they should have put their wing mirrors in before they left!

There has been a Great Cleaning today, and I have been told, in no uncertain manner, that This Is How It Is Going To Be In The Future.  Everything In Its Place.  Dream on!  But I have to admit that things look good – it’s a pity that it takes so much effort to keep it looking like that!

Because of the deadly parking today I have gone to our local ‘pollo a last’ and we have had a superb meal with grilled vegetables with the same sauce that they use on calçots: delicious!

Now we have the final task of the holidays: putting up the mirror.  Given the difficulty in finding the fittings to secure it to the wall, getting it straight should be downright impossible.  Then there is the position on the wall, not only in terms of height, but also in where to place it.  Toni’s plan it to have it centred on the table, but I can see it all coming down to a battle of wills!

Tomorrow the week of half days (minus one) begins which take us to the end (hallelujah!) of term at long last.

There are other meetings lurking somewhere in those four days but with any luck, I should not be involved.  My task, rather, is to find out exactly what I am teaching, even if the idea of actually having a realistic timetable at this point in the year is something beyond the wildest dreams of Catalan educationalists!

Counting is fun!

Today is the Day of the Course; and I am determined not to be overly cynical.  Not overly – but one does have certain standards that one has to keep up and I do not feel inclined to be too sympathetic to a man who is going to encourage me to be self critical when the term is virtually over and all the kids have left.

I cannot imagine that anyone actually wants to be in school and the idea of thinking coherently and theoretically about education is anathema at most times, but at the fag end of the year it becomes whatever word is that which is stronger than “anathema”.

 

The reality was that we were subjected to three solid hours of the course without a break!  Words fail me.  At least it wasn’t for the full five hours that we were supposed to be in school. 

Only five hours – rather than the usual eight.  We were able to leave at 2.00 pm.  That was when I had completed the recuperation marking that I had to do form the pupils who failed their summer exam.  Never a dull moment!

Today is the eve of the festival of Sant Joan (Saint John the Baptist) and is the night on which Catalans throw sobriety to the winds and stay on beaches throughout the night letting off fireworks and drink like the Brits!

I have just come down from the Third Floor where I spent many happy minutes watching with untrammelled delight the hundreds of thousands of euros disappearing in the twinkling of an eye.  Fireworks are truly one of the most satisfyingly unjustifiable transitory delights ever!

As it is traditional to drink Cava and eat cake whose name sounds disturbingly like the slang term for cocaine – a good time was had by all.

And it can all be slept off tomorrow – though in the evening I have to go into Barcelona to meet my cousin for a meal – and it will still not be the weekend!

O the joy of four-day weeks!

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.