Talk and Tranquility

It is amazing what sort of sumptuous spread you can produce if you go to Tesco with an open mind and never closed wallet and buy nibbles for an exciting evening meal.  I was determined that Paul Squared would not have to cook anything for the get-together of our friends and this I managed to achieve.

The only cooked item on the menu was a collection of chicken legs which were something of a centrepiece of meat for an other wise largely vegetarian array of interesting dips and constructed savouries. 

By the time we had finished setting the table the results looked more than delectable. 

Part of the effect was made by defrosting a large packet of smoked salmon and augmenting its appearance with various forms of cooked prawns. 

The cheese board looked particularly inviting, especially with the artfully positioned grapes, which I have been long taught are essential component of any real cheeseboard lurked on the periphery of the gleaming wedges.

The number of people who arrived in the evening together with their “variety” was a perfect combination.  It was a delight to see people who I have not seen for a couple of years and to see again those who have been over to Castelldefels in the more recent past.

One can tell the success of any social gathering in which I am involved by the length of time it takes me to get some food into my mouth.  Everyone had eaten something and the table was beginning to look like Miss Haversham’s wedding feast (without the cobwebs, but with the destruction of the food) before I picked up my plate.  A success!

Toni would have been proud of my abstinence, though from a Catalan point of view I lived up to my British heritage!  I even remembered to drink some water before we finally went to bed in the early hours of the morning.

My lie-in this morning had the advantage that I missed the rain, so that my depression with the climactic vagaries of my country did not get into gear until I was told that the unenviable record of dampness had extended itself for another day.

The Cardiff Festival of Food in The Bay was our destination for the afternoon.  This annual extravaganza takes over the space in front of the Millennium Centre with a series of tents showcasing local and national producers of various types of food.

It was packed and it was difficult to fight your way through the crowds to get the miniscule free samples on offer.  We eventually gave in and bought a lamb burger to save off a hunger which had no right to be there after the Tesco flavoured excesses of the night before!  However, the single burger was largely insufficient (though delicious) and it was joined later by another bap containing most of the ingredients of an English breakfast.  This too was delicious – though the combination of the two did mean that I took to my bed for a little rest when I came home.

However the main even in our version of the festival was to see Angela Gray demonstrate her cookery skills in the John Lewis Partnership supported super tent.  It was brilliant to see the other half of the partnership, as her husband had been in the party last night.  She, we were told, was comatose with weariness on the sofa after two solid days of demonstration.

She made a seafood starter, followed by marinated Welsh lamb with salad, finishing with a sort of cream/fruit indulgence that she had made for some French countess when she was a teenager. 

As usual everything was delicious and she knew that she was playing to my weakness when she handed me a sample of the butter-drenched delight that was the starter!  I did attempt to get the recipe but they had all been grabbed during the previous days demonstration and I will have to go on the Internet to find out how to try and emulate her effortless expertise. 

The end result justifies a little effort though.

Tomorrow I shall mix a little art with an ECG – although thinking about it that sounds like the sort of thing that one of the galleries in Barcelona would regard as a bread-and-butter exhibition uniting the two cultures.

The National Museum of Wales has opened a new gallery and I need to see it.  The Welsh Proms are also on and I am inclined to patronize them – in all senses of the word.

I am fighting against the tendency of all travellers to limit their activities when they find themselves in a place for an extended time.  It is the old idea that if you are in a place for a day or so you get to see everything; whereas if you are somewhere for a week you start thinking that “I can do that tomorrow” and you end up doing little.  I have to attempt a judicious mixture of the laid back and the driven to enjoy my time in the UK!

I will evaluate (I have to get used to the word with what is going to happen in the beginning of the next term) my success at the end of tomorrow.

Which is another day.

The rain it raineth every day - true!

One does not, of course, wish to labour the point – but I have been here since Wednesday the 6^th of July and on Wednesday the 6^th of July, Thursday the 7^th of July, Friday the 8^th of July and Saturday the 9^th of July it has rained.  Rained spitefully, viciously and coldly.  And it is July.  As I might have mentioned.  In passing.

Friday (in spite of the rain) was the sort of day during which I heard the siren call of the shops. 

I felt that I had to go with Paul Squared on a mission of mercy to release commodities from their imprisonment on the other side of the counter; but he was still firmly held in the half-nelson of Morpheus and we were expecting Hadyn at some point in the morning. 

Consequently I was reduced to reading one of Conon Doyle’s novels on my phone tangentially featuring the fearsome Professor Challenger and explicitly justifying a more liberal approach towards Spiritualism and the contacting of the dead.

And drinking cups of tea made with pure Welsh Water!

I had forgotten just how pleasant it is to drink water straight from the tap without having to remind oneself that however disgusting the liquid tastes, it is, allegedly safe.  The amount of calcium in the water in Castelldefels makes one astonished that it is actually flows out of the tap in liquid form rather than cascading out in chunks. 

One only has to look at the amount of chalky residue in the kettle to make one wonder just how furred up the pipes leading to dishwasher, shower, and washing machine must be.  In the Barcelona area you have to add the financial burden of replacing water-using machinery on a fairly regular basis to your assessment of the cost of living!

I have now made appointments with the doctor and optician as a sensible part of my time in the UK.  My dentist is unobtainable until August and I was told that he doesn’t work on a Friday so that bit of my Master Plan to Get Everything Done will not be working out. 

The rain has now changed from “shower mode” into “driving mode” and is making my venturing out less agreeable by the minute.

Clarrie has phoned up to check that the arrangements are all in place for the celebrations on the 16^th when I will have left Wales for London and Reading.  My timetable is sorting itself out.

 

“Well,” said the lady in Tesco at the checkout, “I do hope that no one else of your size comes into the shop today because they are not going to get very much are they!”

I must admit that I have behaved like women in M&S at Christmas time when I have observed the female of the species at its most indiscriminately materialistic, sweeping swathes of substances from shelves and into trollies as if everything were free, gratis and for nothing.

I too have been liberal in my acquisitiveness and my largely empty suitcase is now over the limit and I may have to battle my way through the EasyJet website to buy a larger allowance!  But my clothing needs are now satisfied for another season - though I still won’t have very much to wear in winter: another trip perhaps?

The appointment with the doctor (I am still firmly on the system there) was as much social as medical.  I have a great deal of respect for my doctor in Cardiff and will be everlastingly impressed by the way that he got a professor in the Heath to see me individually and not on his usual consulting day during the progress of dealing with my high blood pressure!

 

My blood pressure is a little high, but as I have a highly developed “White Coast Syndrome” I will have to wait and check the readings at home rather than with a doctor watching to get some sort of accurate reading.

I pitied the people whose appointments were later than mine languishing in the waiting room as our talk in the consulting room ranged from the wonders of the British Museum to the life and works of Mervyn Peake with much laughter and a little medical attention along the way as well.  Things appear to be generally satisfactory but I am going back for a scan so that he can have more information to add to my file.

Toni will be appalled, but not surprised to learn that I have bought a couple of books (though remember I bought nothing in London in spite of great temptations) one of which is a series of lists of the “10 most and greatest” so that we had a pleasantly raucous charades aided quiz of the ten most popular pop hits of the 70s and 80s where the amusement felt by all might have had something to do with the amount of alcohol consumed.  I drank the least and confined my imbibing to a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape because I could.

I am now typing in an eerily quite house as I am downstairs and the others are snoring behind closed doors.

Tonight is a little get together of a few old friends so at some time when the sleepers under the hill have finally roused themselves we will have to go back (once again) to Tesco to get the food and drink.

Sunday will probably be a visit to Cardiff Bay because there is a Festival of Food and Drink there and Angela has a part in the proceedings demonstrating her cooking.  And you never know, we might even have some sunshine to tempt me out and about!

London or bust!

Our basic thinking was on the right lines.  Early July; kids would still be in school; holidays would not have started; mid week was a quiet time – the visit to the British Museum would be accomplished with minimal fuss and in the spaciousness of empty galleries.

On every count we were wrong.  The entire youth population of Spain was thronging its way through all the galleries we visited.  British school kids were visiting in phalanxes as an end of term treat.  “Thursdays,” as one taxi driver commented, “are some of our busiest days!”  We couldn’t get a table for lunch.  We couldn’t get anywhere near the Rosetta Stone.  The Egyptian Mummy Room was a nightmare – and I am not referring to the decomposing dead but to the all to lively living who stuck to the glass cases like Amazonian tree frogs!

But in spite of everything it was a successful day.  After misgivings about the willingness of the rail system to accommodate the disabled we were treated with care and consideration not only in Cardiff but also by the incomparable staff in Paddington.  Ramps were provided and porters pushed Louise up them.  In overcrowded trains our seats were, with an imperious flick of a guard’s finger vacated.  Thoroughly tiring but very satisfying sums up the day.

We did not get to see everything that was on the list, but we had a damn good stab at completion and saw a few extras, which were not on the official schedule.

The meal in the museum restaurant was, to say the least, leisurely – it took over two hours for two courses to be served!  But we managed to chat our way through this lacuna and managed to consume a bottle of wine as well.  Louise’s eyelid drooped visibly even when encourage to gloat over the possession of the Elgin Marbles, saved from the hands of the feckless Greeks.  After all, if they can’t run a viable economy they are certainly not to be trusted with some of the greatest cultural artefacts from the Classical World!

Sutton Hoo, the Lion Hunt and various pieces of silverware, not forgetting the Ram in the Thicket and other treasures seen passing through galleries to find the items on our list meant that at the end of the day we were both physically and culturally exhausted.

The taxi drive back from the BM to Paddington was made all the more circuitous because of the road closures to ensure the success of the premiere of the last (positively the last) part of a schoolboy’s adventures in wizardry.

I could have done with a little bit of magic when I was faced with getting all my gadgets fed.  Leads are snaking all over the room as the essential accessories to any attempt at sophisticated living demand their allowances of electricity.

Any nocturnal wanderings will be fraught with peril as I myopically try and negotiate the 3D labyrinth of random wires which would give an athletic bat problems!

But now sleep.  Sleep.  Sleep.

Procrastination, thy name is packing!

I have, scornfully, thrown a few scraps of clothing into a large case and considered the major part of this loathsome occupation done.

The more interesting packing of all those gadgets without which civilized life is impossible still awaits and the depressing pile of uniformly black leads and plugs demands attention.  Which I will delay until the last moment.

My packing is a prime example of “the book for the bath syndrome.”  I sometimes take an age to choose the appropriate book to read in the bath, sometimes taking more time over the choice than the time that I am going to spend in the bath.  Once chosen the book usually remains unread: but it is there “in case”.  The stuff I take is quite literally “in case” usually festering away in the bottom of the luggage and not used at any point in the trip.  But I would not like to be without it.  It is a comforter; a dummy; a pacifier!

Now I really do need to make a move and pack the remaining items.  It will then give me a chance to sit down and suddenly remember an essential that I have forgotten.  Like my spare pair of glasses or the contact lenses that I always vow I will wear instead.

In the airport.  I have just has as gratuitous a revolting meal as I have ever had to suffer in an airport in Britain.  The meal deal in the café in the maelstrom of a holding area for all the paupers travelling with EasyJet was disgusting.

The “caliente” bocadillo of cheese and bacon was made “not cold” (anything more would be a grave misappropriation of any words to do with “heat”) in a filthy piece of equipment which looked as if it has been once an essential part of the persuasive equipment of some particularly vicious Spanish Inquisitor.  After a few (more than two and less than four) seconds this item of the culinary art of Catalonia was deemed ready for consumption.

The tastiest parts of this abortion were the charred remains of previous disasters.  At least the cold lager in the cheap plastic cup was acceptable as was the small packet of crisps that made up this meal deal.  At €8.95 this has to be the worst value that I have had so far in my time in Barcelona.

This holding area is full of grotesque caricatures of British low-life abroad.  Shaven headed thugs in sports shirts and trakkie bottoms abound.  As my seat is en route to the toilets I have seen whole families, none of whose members look as though they could aspire to what Huxley in “Brave New World” termed epsilon semi morons.

One particularly repulsive plump scion was a shaven headed ginger dwarf-like oikish child dressed in cut off sleeve Estoril sports shirt with a (surely not!) tattoo of a dog going to the toilet on his left arm.  His leprously freckled face was almost hidden by what appeared to be a large plastic bomb from which he was drinking via the fuse!  Some things you just can’t make up!

As I am next to the escalator I can view new batches of freaks that are constantly arriving to boost the number of characters which are rapidly forming something worthy of the combine brushes of Bosch and Brueghel at their most nightmarish.

The grotesques have now all lined up to board a plane, I have just discovered, for Belfast.  I rest my case.

It is about now that I go to the board and check my flight and then retire to my seat in cold fury as I find that it has been delayed and I have to sit on the specially designed pieces of discomfort for yet longer!

The plane left on timeish.  And we got into the UK in the scattered rain on timeish.  Even the entry into the UK was not too bad, as the usually sullen faced denizens of the checking of the passports seemed unusually receptive and human.

The drive from Bristol was fraught with fear as I passed each of the recognized stop points at each of the traditional points in the road where stoppages were expected.  Even the horror point of Newport (that vile “city”) was passed with relative ease.

Apart from the completely unnecessary intrusion of rain into my re-introduction to my native land, I have had a more than pleasant evening in Wales.

Now bed so that I can be bright and fresh for the journey to London tomorrow.

I take back everything that I have said about the delivery companies in this part of the world: this morning a gentleman rang the bell and proffered an Amazon box filled with Art books.

I think that I went slightly mad with indecision as I rescued each volume from its snug nest of crushed paper in the box and didn’t really know which one to devour first.  They are all wonderful and fully justify my unjustifiable assertion that I had “only bought them because I needed them for school”.  Toni is very sceptical about my use of the word “need” in all its forms and tends to be downright dismissive when it comes to considering my well-supported and convincing case for each new purchase.

Each book was more exciting than the one before by the time I had stopped gloating and actually got down to looking at them.  They are full of fascinating information which will soon be winging its way to those to know me and to those that pay (in one way or another) to be known by me.  Beware, O beware of my starting a sentence with “Did you know that . . .” or “It is a fascinating fact that . . .” unless you are really and truly interested in the history of modern art.  I am slightly resentful that I will have to leave these heavy and profusely illustrated books behind as I journey to the UK, though I have made room for one reasonably small book on “-isms” which will keep me going – and provide most of the curriculum that I will need to teach for next year!

No day with a delivery of books can be a bad one and even the irritatingly scattered cloud gathered itself up and departed to produce another stunningly sunny day.

Toni returned from his “fun” day with the nephews in a theme park: fourteen straight hours of hyperactive youth.  How unfortunate that I was not able to accompany him!

I have, resentfully, got down to some sort of packing: few clothes but strings of leads, power packs and gadgets.

I have told myself that anything I lack I will buy.  As if I needed an excuse.

Tomorrow the UK and the start of something which really can be called a holiday

Day One-ish! Of many!

The first real day of the holidays and already I have to hang my head with shame as I have committed an Unspeakable Act: I have returned to school of my own volition during the holidays!

In my defence I have to say that it was occasioned by an act of kindness for an erstwhile colleague; though it also has to be said that, had I remembered to complete this act when I was in school, this desperate expedient would not have been necessary.  Anyway, in spite of the opprobrium of all right-thinking teachers whose well-deserved etc. has started, I have defied augury and done the deed.

To accomplish this I had to use the photocopier and was seen in my cringing progress by the entire management system of the school – wearing I have to admit expressions of amazed incredulity.  How are the mighty fallen!

Still it is only the 4^th (and not the 3^rd as my wristwatch stubbornly maintains) and I have the best part of two months to regain my reputation by staying away from the place!

My progress to the School of Shame was momentarily delayed by my finding a parcel from Amazon carelessly thrown into the front garden.

This is the most efficient of the ways that parcels from Amazon are delivered.  Usually the parcel has to be collected from the central depot because the delivers have been “unable to make contact” with the addressee.  It is my personal belief that some parcel delivers only deliver the notes telling you to collect your parcel and the item in question never leaves the depot.  


In one case I actually found the note before the time that they had written on the note as the time when they attempted to deliver the item – if you see what I mean.  Liars and deceivers is what they are, but one can say nothing because their way at least I eventually get the parcels – who knows what they might do if one actually has the temerity to complain!  I hate seeing book mistreated and I cannot but assume that they will be literal grist to the mill in one of the dark corners of the depot if a voice is raised in protest.

The parcel contained the lids which fit the saucepans in the Tefal Ingenio range of handleless and knobless items that make up the cookware.  Even the lids are flat having a magnetic knob which is released via winged flanges.  Four saucepans and a frying pan together with the lids are now all stored in a small handy space.  I have almost thrown away the vulgar and difficult-to-stack lids which are now redundant (surely someone somewhere wants them) and impossibly clumsy compared with my slimmed down cookware.

I realize that enthusiasm for pots and pans is not something for which I am noted, but this range of saucepans and frying pans is such a good idea that I think it actually qualifies as a gadget and therefore something about which I have a right to express a view. 

Once you have seen them you ask yourself why this hasn’t been done before; it’s one of those inventions which are so-bloody-obvious only once they have been invented!  Though perhaps I am just showing my ignorance and the motorhome fraternity have been using such things for generations.  


I certainly remember rectangular camping pans when I was a kid with folding handles which fitted into each other.  But they were not Teflon™ coated and therefore can be dismissed from the pantheon of gadgets with ease and contempt – and they certainly didn’t have a little logo in the middle which indicates when the pan was ready for frying!

The portable vacuum cleaner was broken out of its packaging in the boot of the car because of an explosion of bits of the shellac-like coating of chewing gum being liberally distributed over the passenger seat as a hasty movement of my hand sent the container of the gum bouncing away.

Chewing gum is an essential part of the way I live.  It is one of the most effective ways I know to get the taste of school out of your system.  I use its sharp peppermint or spearmint flavour in the mouth in much the same way as a squirt of alcohol heavy eau de toilette under the chin can revivify a jaded attitude towards life!

As everything has its price, the pieces of the (sugar-free) coating look like particularly aggressive dandruff on the seat.  The vacuum cleaner was bought specifically for in-car disasters such as this and therefore it was with a certain degree of smugness that I helped the cleaner free of its fiendishly snugly packed box.  And found that the machine only worked after it had been charged from the mains.  Defeat of stout party!

The wretched machine is now charging (for 24 hours according to the instruction booklet) and will have to live at home (much like Spanish men) and have an occasional jolt (much like Spanish men) and then be set to work (unlike Spanish men at the moment with “admitted” unemployment figures of 40% for the young and over 20% for the population as a whole).

Today has been an odd one as Toni has been accompanying his very young nephews to a fun park some way down the coast.  This was a “present” for him – thus giving a new meaning to the act of giving!  As it is now 10.30 pm I can only assume that the “fun” goes on and on!

Meanwhile my umpteenth generation I-pod is proving to be a very intelligent purchase as it is so small that using it is nothing more than fitting the earphones into the ear and enjoying.  The eclectic mix of music that it serves on its shuffle setting is constantly unsettling – which is a good thing.  Isn’t it?  Well, it works for me.  Mozart has just given way to Britten – and why not!

Tomorrow is packing day, and consequently a day replete with misery.

Monday is Not a Threat - this time!

Today didn’t start off as a convincing Sunday; it was quieter than normal in the early morning without the moronic baying of the cretinous dog next door – though it did later revert to form and perform its sad litany of staccato barked protests against its incarceration in an outside pen under the house of our neighbour.

Although the weather has been intermittently cloudy it has been very warm and exactly the sort of weather to tempt me to the Third Floor and try out the new luxurious comfort of the recently installed sun loungers and, well, lounge.

It seemed almost criminal actually to lay oneself down on the pristine smoothness, but when the sun shines we devotees of our nearest star can do nothing but worship in our own prone way.  It now looks lived in and has lost its fashion plate look.

Toni has installed another light on the Third Floor and we have bought one of those blue light insect killers.  I have to say, tempting fate, that I am not usually bitten by the flying stingers; they prefer their own and go for the natives!  Toni also has a sort of electrified tennis racquet with which he is adept at eliminating all flying pests – and they make a fascinatingly satisfying phisszing sound as they depart this life for their particularly pestilential future one.

Now is the time in a traditional Sunday when the clammy hand of the Monday Yet To Come descends on the normal teacher and sucks out the pleasure of the end of the weekend.  It some ways is it almost worth going though this weekly misery for the delight when it doesn’t happen in the holidays.  One must take one’s pleasure where one can find it!

The only active thing that I have done today is to collect our lunch from the local chicken restaurant.  

Driving through the seaside part of Castelldefels one is yet again amazed at how bloody-mindedly thoughtless the parking of our visitors is.  

A seriously conscientious policeman could single-handedly make our little town one of the richest in Catalonia.  But policemen are singularly and glaringly obvious by their sheer absence.  I have never, in all the time that I have been in Spain seen a single policeman give out a ticket to a badly parked motorist – though I have seen hordes of policemen pass without giving a ticket to the most horrendously parked cars.  Plus ça change!

I have now started my holiday reading with Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks which has been lurking on a bookshelf hidden by lots of spectacularly unrelated books for some time.  It is a reminder of my intention to bring order to the amazing surrealistic arrangement which obtains at the moment.  

There is a skeleton of organization in some of the cupboards and there are runs of similarity on some shelves; it is now a question of putting shards of order into a complete library!

The task of the summer!

It is truly amazing how difficult removing small spots of paint left behind on tiles after sloppy painting of a wall can be.

I was given an invaluable opportunity to discover this for myself today in the continuing saga of the Preparing of the House for the Summer.  This project is following a schedule laid down by somebody other than myself and is driven forward by Another.  I follow meekly, lazily and without apparent enthusiasm in the wake of the fury of cleanliness and order which has tornado-like swept through my erstwhile calm household.

Today, in honour of the visit of one of my colleagues, it was the turn of the Third Floor.

Bleach was to the fore as everything that could be covered with corrosive liquid was duly coated.  Sun beds had hidden corners searched for hardened accretions of dust which were duly blasted into liquid oblivion by a well-wielded mop.

Inexplicable stains which we inherited having proved themselves impervious to previous cleaning assaults held out well against the bleach-reinforced attack this time.  They might be a little fainter, but they are still there, and I for one am prepared to admit defeat and accept them as part of the design of the floor tiles.

To compensate for the lack of success in one area we have reinforced another by changing the cushions on the sun beds.  They look expensive and elegant mainly because those two adjectives sum up their essential qualities.  They have a little built in head cushion which adds that professional touch.

I confidently expect the weather to change at once to dull, overcast and essentially sunless days.  One really shouldn’t tempt fate.  And the sun beds are now bright red.  Though I am not quite sure about what that adds to the equation.

However the Third Floor is now Summerized and looking pretty good.  We have not yet lain on the beds, as we do not feel entitled to do so: they simply look too good in their pristine state to be sullied by an actual body.

Bit by bit the house is taking shape with minor change making major differences. 

Next in line to be “done” is the garden and I need to buy some week killer because of incursions of unwanted vegetation from neighbours’ gardens.  When I get the poison I shall dedicate my activities to Sir John and Slough and I shall try and enact the line “swarm over death”!

My multi-level cactus garden looks pretentious and unlikely while the addition of my bejewelled peacock adds just the right touch of the bizarre!

The pica-pica which accompanied the extended chat with my colleague was excellent and we eat everything which was on the plates in a casual almost absent minded way which may have had something to do with the easy consumption of wine which accompanied the conversation.

Even though today is Saturday and there would be no school tomorrow there was a different feel to the ease of talk that comes with knowing that school is more than two months away!

Roll on the holiday!

Do something!

Today is Friday.  That has been going through my mind all day.  As has the fact that I am not in school and that today, today is the first day of the holidays!

As is traditional on the First Day, I attempted to get at least one of my tasks done.  I deliberately chose one of the easier ones: replacing the fetid cushion covers for the sun beds.

This is not quite as simple as it sounds as, unsurprisingly, this country boasts a whole range of covers at variously unattractive prices.  We eventually settled for a local supermarket own-make affair of seductive thickness and reasonable cost.  The proof now is in the lazing!

The second task was getting the car serviced.  The local dealership is characterised by arrogance and demanding vast sums of money for everything that they do so I was tempted by a colleague’s recommendation of a garage that did the manufacturer’s service at a fraction of the cost.

As time is limited until I go to Britain I was confidently expecting to be offered a date some time when I wasn’t in Spain – I was certainly not expecting to be asked if I wanted the thing done at once!  However, when I had recovered from my shock, I agreed with alacrity and then contemplated the few hours that we would be stranded in a shopping centre.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing around in shops.  Buying things has a greater high-octane rush than going from 0-60 in two seconds!

My purchases ranged from the aforementioned lounger cushions, through CDs and outside lights to a book on posters from the Spanish Civil War and wheel trims.  I may be a spendthrift, but at least I inject variety into my obsession!

The CDs reflect nothing on my musical pretentions.  Driving to work requires music to get me there, the more hummable the better.  As if in answer to a prayer a whole series of CDs under the inspiring title of “Best 50 . . .” have appeared in supermarkets with 3 CD sets at a cost of about €2 a disc.  I have bought ballet, Baroque, Chopin, Romantic, Opera, Beethoven, Cello, Violin, Puccini, Bach – and anything else that gleamed through its plastic case!  I now have enough music to last for years.

To be fair the selections are not as banal as the title might have you believe and there are some inspiriting tracks – which means there are some things that I have never heard of!  Some of the music is recognizable, even if I couldn’t easily put a name to it.  So, some learning and a lot of complacency in store on my daily journey to Barcelona!

This evening a meal with Irene and a chance to chat.

YES!

With a cruel irony today (the Last Day) dawned overcast, dull and depressing.  But with a pleasing justice the day developed into a gloriously sunny day by the time I had to leave!

Only in this country would the powers that be end a long, long year with a two-hour meeting.  And only in this country would benighted teachers of a foreign persuasion talk enthusiastically (!) right up to the bitter end.  I was driven to read my mobile phone to stave off insanity!

Eventually (a much used concept in my experience of school life) this too ended and after saying goodbye to various colleagues I was free to join the heavy flow of traffic clogging up the motorways of Catalonia around Barcelona.  But who cares when two whole months of holiday stretch ahead!

Lunch today was in a restaurant in Gava that we hadn’t tried before: fideua, rustic chicken and a delicious chocolate cake and the usual red wine and gaseosa and all for €9.  Sitting outside in the sun and no school tomorrow. 

Life just doesn’t get better!

I see the promised land!

The penultimate day!

There are few phrases more heartening to the ears than that.  Obviously “The last day!” or even better “The last day was yesterday” have an even better ring to them.  But at this stage . . . 

I am prepared to wait.

Another vaguely unsatisfying day characterized by a meeting in which we were told that nothing had really been decided.  I love occasions like that – and thank god that my Spanish is insufficient to understand the detail of what is going on!  Sometimes even the most general of outlines evades me; it’s how I survive.

Our school is beginning to pay a little more than lip service to the concept of Project Based Learning – three little words that can strike terror and confusion into the hearts of most seemingly secure teachers in the profession!

As I am friendly with the Evangelist for this approach (indeed I team teach with her) I have been dragged into the maelstrom of approaches which characterize this approach.

Under her fanatical guidance and rabid inspiration I have even been encouraged to do some “planning”; to write rubrics; to consider outcomes and other things which are entirely (or used to be entirely) foreign to my nature.

Of course, our school being our school, I don’t know my timetable for next year; we do not have class lists; I don’t know what courses I will be teaching; I don’t know the dates of the terms.  Still, we will have a week of half days in September before the kids arrive, so it can all be sorted then.  Probably.

With the absence of this somewhat vital information, I have done what I can as far as my new found enthusiasm for planning is concerned and created the folders which are going to contain the information that I don’t know.

More astonishingly, I have registered with the Buck Institute for Education – a known hotbed of Project Based Learning, and have downloaded some of their forms to organize the subjects for next year.  This can’t last, of course – but it’s good fun while it is unreal and not actually in practice.

I have weakened and bought some books and lids.

The lids are probably part of a good idea.  As space in the house is limited I have invested in a set of Tefal saucepans and frying pans with detachable handles.  They are like those Russian matrioska dolls and all fit inside each other; so three frying pans and four saucepans only have the “footprint” of the largest frying pan and the height of their collective bases and one saucepan.  The glass lids are flat with a removable knob.  It’s all very sensible.

Which is more than can be said for the book purchases which are mostly self-indulgent art books bought with the facile justification that I might need some of them for my course of “Making Sense of Modern Art”.  It is a good thing that nobody who knows me has the opportunity to hear me pontificating about paintings – though, there again, who would be surprised!

The other book has been purchased on the half-understood but seemigly enthusiastic endorsement of a friendly Catalan teacher who saw some of my kids’ work on logos for my Media Studies course.

All of the books have been bought virtually sight-unseen from Amazon (post free) with only a picture of the front cover for guidance.  

Buying from Amazon, especially with the one-click option, is such a beguiling way of throwing your money into the gaping maw of a vast organization that I can rarely resist once I get on to the site!  

I think the devil was a bit unimaginative in his temptation of you-know-who with his reliance on the old-fashioned "whole world" technique.  Now if he had offered "one-click purchasing" on Amazon the whole history of theology might have been different.  Or has it all worked out in exactly the same way anyway?

Tomorrow we start the last day with moving our departmental book store to a new location in a different building and end the day with a two-hour meeting.  I hope to god we are let out early for good behaviour!

The end is in sight!

My run of good luck continues with two meetings not needing my presence today!  One cancelled and the other only a threat of possible attendance.  This freedom will eventually catch up with me but I am enjoying this tension-free period while I can.

Another gloriously hot day whose effects are modified by the air conditioning working overtime.

Today has been an unsatisfactory day in school with an insufficient amount of real work being done.  One starts something and then there is another call on one’s time which means that what you started is not finished and . . well, you get the idea.

As a remembrance of times past I did a small amount of book counting – not as much in my last real school but enough to let me re-live the delightful experience of doing low-grade clerical work around which so much of teaching is based!

Today dragged much more than yesterday and at one point I found myself sitting on a junior child’s chair in our book room reading a Jacqueline Wilson book about a wimpy boy and his large friend Biscuit and the rough and tumble girlfriend and the bullies and it was set in Wales.  Gripping stuff, and I have brought it home to read the last few pages.

The book has moments of genuine humour and some insight but it is written for young children and the pleasure in reading it is limited.  I still lost myself in the narrative; I forgot that I was sitting in a small room in a school in Barcelona and that I should very probably be doing something else – I was reading.  It’s what I do.

Our lunch today was not as good as yesterday: tomato juice; scrambled egg with asparagus and prawns; salmon, rice and vegetables.  It sounds better than it ate, but still reasonable value.

Domestic painting continues apace, and indeed continued while I had a very lazy swim.  Today was hotter than yesterday and even I felt the need to come into the shade!

I have been looking at books to buy for some of my courses next year.  In theory I should be able to get money back for some of them, but I don’t hold out much hope.  I think I am using my courses as an excuse; though, naturally I don’t see anything wrong with that!

There really is going to have to be something of a sort out of the books this summer, together with a determined attempt to put them into a logical order.

Honestly!

It gets easier!

In keeping with one of my mottos, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” I did not look at the timetable for the remaining days of term.  Which was just as well, as having read it would have ruined my mini-holiday over the extended weekend: two meetings top to tail during the day!

Having settled down into a mood of terminal grumpiness, imagine my ecstatic delight on finding out that my sullen presence was not required in the first (and shorter) of the meetings.

With an elation that is not a common adjunct to the task I then set myself, I started clearing out my staff room cupboard. 

Half an hour later and a whole sack-full of paper placed in the bin - nothing had changed, there was still no space for anything. 

I think that I will have to use my other cupboard in the other staffroom to store some of the literature that I have adapted for school use.  When I say “adapted” I actually mean eviscerated.  No matter how great the writer; no matter how delicious the style – I can make the storyline almost understandable to learners of English.  Luckily students of literature are unlikely to read my blasphemous efforts so my reputation is secure.

I am now in a meeting which is discussing the fates of pupils in the lower school.  I wonder what my colleagues think I am doing typing away here.  Everyone is talking at the same time about kids who are not worth the effort.  Some of reasoning being employed by colleague would have done credit to some of the less scrupulous members of the Society of Jesus!

Perhaps it is tempting fate, but we are making good speed through what can be a meeting of coruscating boredom.

We have now reached a pupil with few redeeming graces; she is lazy; sulky; disruptive and a thorough waste of space.  Horrifically it is being suggested that she be kept down a year thereby destroying the normal working of yet another class.  God help!

The meeting went on and on and I ran away for the last quarter, giving my proxy vote to a colleague with whom I team-teach.

Lunch, an ordinary menu del dia made up for the misery of the morning: a tapa of delicious tortilla with pepper; a starter of puff pasty filled with sea food; a main course of chicken with a creamy mushroom sauce and a sweet of copa de crema which you have to eat to understand.  All washed down with a respectable red wine unrespectably diluted with gaseosa and a café con hielo - €13 the lot!  And we ate outside under flawless blue skies and school had finished at 2.00 pm.  Life is sometimes good!

The pool is now becoming a very important part of normal everyday life with the water retaining the heat of the day to maintain a very pleasant temperature.  Unfortunately the equitable conditions encourage people other than myself to impertinently use the pool.

I resort to my usual tactics and swim in purposeful straight lines, using crawl my nails glint in the sunshine ready to slice anyone who gets in my way, switching to breast stroke my frog like kick maintains a cordon sanitaire around my surging form.

 

Tomorrow we have a computer course.  My memory from last year was of a similarly innocuously entitled course which lasted for four straight hours.  No break.  No respite.  No pity.  And in bloody Spanish!

The one tomorrow at least has one break and I intend to take supplies and an electronic book to keep my equilibrium in place.  I have also bought an iPod Nano (7th generation): one of those impossibly small tactile squares which can store music, podcasts, photos, films and other things which are clearly against the law of god.

 

It seems to have been designed specifically to assist in the maintenance of sanity of hard pressed English teachers surrounded by machinations of those not of his nationality!

Still, and I am counting, there are only three days to go!