Moaning and groaning!

As usual this typing is displacement activity.

It is moving towards ten o’clock in the morning when I should have my first year sixth Current Affairs class.  Simple enough you might think.  Not so.  I have had no list for this class and there is no guarantee that it will exist at all.

Well, the influx of well over a dozen kids indicated that the class will definitely run and another class too.

The composition of my class is somewhat odd containing as it does high flyers in academic terms and a certain amount of dross.  This is not going to be an easy group to keep on track.  Even if I knew what the track was in this amorphous subject!

The booklet for The Making of Modern Art has now been produced – all I have to do now is think of a course which might fit it!

We have done three days and I am totally exhausted.  Although I have the same number of periods to teach the way that my teaching load is distributed it not going to make it any easier.  I seem to be traipsing from one building to another after every bloody period.  It’s not going to be pleasant when the balmy sun of autumn gives way to the harsher weather of winter.

On the first three days of the week I am teaching the last period which means that when I finish I join the stationary queue of parental waggons taking their kids home.  Not being able to slip away a few minutes early doubles the time it takes me to get back to the house.

Also, each day this term (well, all three so far) there have been traffic jams on the roads to and from school due to accidents.  This morning it was one involving a motorcycle.  Now I must be fair and say that there is a remote possibility that the two cars which were part of the crash scene also were to blame.  But in my experience the stupidity and criminal cupidity of most motorcyclists has to be seen to be believed.  So far, during the time that I have been in Spain, I have seen 22 motorcyclists who have obeyed the basic safety rules of the road; all the rest have been beyond a joke.

I firmly believe that in all crashes involving motorcyclists, the motorcyclist should be swept to the side of the road and left on the hard shoulder to be picked up by a late night rubbish truck.  Harsh perhaps, but any analysis of the financial cost that the absurd driving of the vast majority of motorcyclists would surely suggest that they have forfeited any right to the emergency services that they seem to want to monopolise.

When ever I am walking along the road and I come across a young man under 25 on crutches I have to struggle to stop a sneer of distain curling my lip as the overwhelming probability is that the injury is a direct result of mindless motorcycle driving!

In medical terms, Catalonia must be a bone setter’s idea of paradise as case after case appears for treatment!

Tomorrow and Friday an early start so, with luck, I will miss the turgid traffic which has made travel so far this week a real misery.  At least I am building up enough “credit” to take the last hour of Friday afternoon off.  Which is something.  Not much, but definitely something!

This too will pass!

In the annals of heinous crimes in education there is not one which ranks as despicably as teaching six periods in a single day.

In a normal school this would be impossible as there are only five periods in a day.  But in our school not only was I able to teach six periods but I had a so-called “free” period as well, and that is not even counting the spaciousness of our lunch hour!  Ah, the delights of physically being in school for eight solid hours – at least!  Eight and a half on Thursday and Friday!  What the hell am I doing in the place?  The money (however little) might have something to do with it!

On the positive side, as I have two early starts on a Thursday and Friday I can go home an hour early on Friday afternoon; little enough recompense I think.

We are all feeling so suicidal at the moment that even news from the outside world seems something guaranteed to make us feel better.  So we chatted about the financial situation of Greece to raise our spirits.

It hardly seems fair that the whole economic situation of the world has descended into farce just because, for once in my life, I have a modest amount in savings!  The entire universe seems to have conspired against me because I tampered with the natural order of things by not spending all the money I had at once.  I should have followed that old gasbag Polonius’s advice and been to mine own self true and spent when I had it as if it was going out of fashion.

I believe that “The Angels’ Portion” is a phrase the French use to describe the amount of Cognac which disappears into thin air by evaporation.  I do feel that this phrase can now be applied to savings as we watch the value of our money dwindle.  There is a nice irony that fine Cognac is the sort of drink of bankers and their ilk – but I’m not quite sure where that comment is going but I don’t intend it to reflect well on those unscrupulous wasters!

But enough of unrelenting grumbling and gloom: it’s Wednesday and the traditional “tipping” day of the week when the weekend is nearer than the start of the week.

Friday sees a long delayed meeting with Caroline for one of our quarterly drinks and then on Saturday a visit to the food fair of Castelldefels and a visiting of some of the establishments’ stalls whose tapas gave so much pleasure.  I am going by bus so that I can sample the wine and other drinks to which my ticket entitles me!

Meanwhile the Media Studies booklet was completed just before the first class of the course and the raw materials for the Making Sense of Modern Art booklet are awaiting compilation and printing.

The term has really started!

One down too many to go!

First Day!

What emotions, positive and negative are contained in those two words!  No matter that this was not our actual first day in school (we have been here since the first of September) but this was the first day with the kids.

As I was not a form teacher I did not take part in the first two lessons when those poor benighted souls were stuck with their classes for the first two hours.  I used the time to create, (with the air of desperation which is the keynote of our existence in this place) a set of stories for my first form, as their actual books have not arrived yet.

The booklets for Media Studies and Making Sense of Modern Art are also not completed yet so that is something else which is awaiting my attention.  On might have thought that it would have been ideal to have done such work during the time without the kids, but the Meeting Mania which sweeps over the school when there is a spare moment was in full lunatic force and such practical work was impossible!

The first class was with the equivalent of the second year sixth and I have a smallish class who are going to attempt to pass the Proficiency in English examination which is the highest level of English Use that we prepare the kids for.  This was followed by a second year class which again was of a limited size and reasonably responsive.

Yet again I have a lunch duty.  This is a shameful thing as I spent a long time working together with colleagues in my union to make sure that our lunchtime was our own and now, here in Spain, I weakly give in when I am loaded with a duty on an already overloaded day!  Ah, how times have changed!  An ex-President of Cardiff NUT reduced to selling himself for a lowly salary and at the expense of his long held principles.  Ah well, as the saying goes, if those don’t work I have others!

No one else appears to be as genuinely depressed at the start of a new term as I.  The kids are visibly bubbly and my colleagues are not crying.  Perhaps it’s me – but surely they must feel the primal horror of almost four months ahead without a half term.  Mustn’t they?

My last lesson of the day was with the equivalent of Year 9.  Just what you want on the last period of the day and I have them again on Wednesday for the last period.  Inspired timetabling!

Having to teach last period three times a week means that I do not get away those vital minutes before the parents collecting their precious charges clog the single lane road to escape.  Even though I left a quarter of an hour for the parental congestion to dissipate itself it still took me twelve minutes to travel about 200 yards.  The next twelve minutes on the motorway took me from Barcelona to the turn off for Castelldefels!  Minutes mean misery if you miss the window of opportunity to get away at the right time!

Apart from news about Toni’s wonky knee (none; doctor’s appointment Thursday) the most pressing information I need to find out was about the Ruta.

Toni had managed to hobble his way to the Tourist Office and finally get my completed form accepted by the official and was presented was a ticket for the XXIV Mostra de Cuina Castelldefels to take place this Saturday.  This is like a food fair and the ticket I have been given comprises tokens which can be exchanged for food and drink during the course of the festival.

I am still waiting for the telephone call to tell me that I have won an ipad.  It also turns out that you can leave out 5 tapas and still get the free entry!  I think we should have read the small print a little more carefully!  Toni said that the woman who took my form was surprised and impressed that I had managed to collect all the stamps, but I don’t think that there is a separate draw for we purists who have completed the ruta!

So, the first day is over and there are only 60 odd working days to go before Christmas.

Sigh!

All things word together for good!

There are lies; damned lies – and printed information in Catalan.

I was assured by the details on the official stamp collecting form that the last restaurant that I had to get was closed for the first two weeks in September for their summer holidays.

Toni suggested that, in spite of indications to the contrary, we should go and check out the place.  We did and, of course, the place was open and information about summer holidays was greeted with incomprehension!

So, I was able to get the last stamp and finally complete the whole Ruta of 30 tapas!

The next problem, if I am to win a place on the table for the gastronomic feast, is to get my completed fully stamped form to the competition organizers. 

Why not post it, or push it through the door I hear you ask.  Simple, trusting folk: this is Spain!

On the off chance that luck would follow us, as it did for the “closed” restaurant, we decided to go to the Tourist Information Office (which was the official recipient for the completed forms) and amazingly found it open - in spite of the stated times telling us that it would be closed!

We walked in and told the person there that we had come to deliver our form and were promptly told that we couldn’t do that because he was connected with tourism whereas we needed to give the form to a colleague who was connected with gastronomy.  There was not the slightest suggestion that he could take this form and perhaps give it to his colleague on Monday.  No.  We would have to come back when the “right” person was there!

David’s sage advice came back to me at this time of disbelief: “Remember Stephen, this is not Britain!”  Indeed it isn’t.

But even this piece of idiocy fails to detract from the unexpected delight of having completed my Ruta.  And, of course, I am completely confident that I will win a place at the gastronomic meal or an ipad or possibly both.  Much better thinking about that than considering the months ahead.

Mr and Mrs Shouty had a party for their repulsive grandchildren yesterday and, just to increase the pleasure, they asked all the most boisterous children in the neighbourhood: and so from 11.00am until gone 8.00 pm we had the joyous sound of screaming, shouting, yelling children wafting its way through the window for over ten (10) hours.

In a positively negative sense I mixed up the days and assumed it was Sunday yesterday rather than today: that is a gained day in anyone’s money!

The Scumbags have gone!

Almost to the minute of the time that Toni predicted the troop of degenerates sloped out of their house and made their way to the car and out of our summer lives!  Apart from odd holiday weekends they should be safely away until next summer.

And tomorrow is the Great Arrival with blissfully empty classrooms of the past week now filled with the unwilling to be taught by the . . . well, I will not presume to paint all my colleagues with my own negativity!

The most pressing thing at the moment is finding my shoes which I have not worn for a couple of months and I am not entirely sure of their whereabouts.

But then, who cares?

Everything for nothing!

With the touch of irony in which my life is rich, the Internet chose the penultimate day of freedom to work on the sunny uplands of the Third Floor which it has never done before. 

The result was that I took my breakfast in bright sunlight in a silent dog & child-free environment listening to the web giving me Radio 4 and an extended interview with the ever-glib Mr Blair.  Who did nothing wrong while in office.  Again.

Ah, my mind goes back to that election night (well, early morning) when all right-thinking people stayed up long enough and late enough to see Michael Portillo lose his seat and consequently open a celebratory bottle of Champagne and eventually go to bed confident that the next morning would bring a new dawn. 

They do say that those who appear to be the most cynical also hide a deep streak of sentimental Romanticism.  And of course they pay the price when reality hits.  As it always does and disillusion sets in.  All the more harshly by being expected by the external character and desperately hoped against by the internal one.  If that makes sense!

All comments made in this “Last Weekend” (see the film version with Ray Milland as a sad, harassed teacher hooked on the TES Internet site indiscriminatingly downloading project idea after project idea and hallucinating rubrics creeping out of packs of printing paper) must be read with the realization that in less than 48 hours classes will start filling up with the raw material than will keep me occupied for the next 10 months.  With no half terms!  God help!

To those who ask if I am prepared for the first day of term.  Me!  A teacher of over thirty years experience!  I answer: of course I am not!  What true teacher ever is!  And that is my guiding philosophy.  Give me a few minutes and I will able to work it up in eduspeak and it will sound convincing!

The last of the available tapas has been consumed!

The Olympic Canal is a fine venue in which to finish.  I was sitting on the terrace outside the restaurant with a good view of the canal, the castle and the various users, ranging from an elderly gentleman in a single skull to groups of kids trying to navigate rafts made of barrels across the canal to retrieve a flag.  Groups of primary children were being kitted out with life jackets which were absurdly over-size while parents coated them with sun block so that they ended up looking like junior apprentice vampires!

The tapa itself was elegantly served in a pastry tart case which contained peppers and lemon wrapped in smoked salmon topped by caviar.  There was a picante side salad with chopped tomato and a more than decent glass of red wine.

The waiter was a thoroughly decent sort of bloke and engaged me in a testing conversation about my experiences in getting my Ruta de la Tapa sheet so full.  He asked me directly which tapa was the best, as I had tasted all but one of them, but I declined to make a specific choice.  I certainly think that if the tapa is anything to go by then the restaurant in the Canal Olympico is certainly worth a visit.

As I cannot get to the last restaurant as they (very unsportingly) have gone on holiday for the last fortnight of the Ruta, I will now have to make my decision about the best tapa.

The best of the 29 tapas I have sampled are (in no particular order) with the name of the restaurant and its address in Castelldefels, followed by the printed description of the tapa:

·               Gustokoa Restaurant & Cocteleria (Av. Santa Maria 3) – Pinxo de Vieira sobre crosta de jaburgo y olivada negra

·               Restaurante la Finca (C. dotze 25) – Brocheta de langustino y pollo a la salsa de queso

·               Restaurante Sidral d’Eva (Pg. Marítim 185, local 1) –Revuelto de bacalao

·               Restaurante Rincon de Galicia (Plaça del Mar 1) – Pinchito mar y montaña

·               Restaurante Mar Blanc (C. Ribera de Sante Pere 17) – Paté de cebolla tostado con desmigado de morcilla

·               Restaurante Olave (Passeig Marítim 259) – Mejillón de roca a la plancha

·               Restaurante Can Pere Martí (Passeig Marítim 289) – Caracoles en salsa de tomate y jamon jabugo

·               Restaurante El Elefante – Canelón de salmon y cangrejo al aroma de wasabi con tartar de tomate al gengibre y cilantro

·               Restaurante El Mirador De Canal Olímpico (Av. Del Canal Olímpic, s/n) – Delicia de salmon olímpico

And the winner is, as they say in all the best shows after an appropriately tense few seconds as the ham fisted celebrity tires to open the envelope: Restaurante El Elefante with the tapa of Canelón de salmon y cangrejo al aroma de wasabi con tartar de tomate al gengibre y cilantro. 

It won, in my view, because it was beautifully presented; it had a well orchestrated combination of tastes and it was accompanied by an excellent glass of wine.  Who could ask for more!

Following the advice of the waiter in the restaurant in the Olympic Canal, I will still enter my sheet with the words “CLOSED” written on the single restaurant that I did not get to. I live in hope that there are not that many anally retentive people in Castelldefels who would have made the same efforts that I have to get round as many of the establishments that I have! 

Wish me luck!

Now is the time to run!

Just to vary the misery, the traffic jam was on the way home today rather than on the way to school.  Apparently a lorry smashed into a panel (whatever that is) on the motorway and there was flamboyant chaos.  Luckily I was on the other side of the motorway and could only sympathise with the miles of stuck motorists that I passed.

My glib assumption that everything would be cleared by the time I started off for home was woefully optimistic and within seconds of joining the motorway just outside my school I had decided to go home “by another way.”

This other way turned out to be a repetition of my chosen route of escape during the Great Snows of last year.  In bright sunshine and optimum conditions it proved to be just as congested as if frozen.  Two-lane roads interspersed with irritating roundabouts are not really the solution to increasing the flow of urban traffic.  And it didn’t flow.  I began to feel that I had made the wrong choice and I should have taken my chances on the motorway system that I know and love.

However, in the cold light of the unflinchingly consistent ticking (which it of course does not do) of my watch I was only about 15 minutes longer in getting home than on a clear run.  And I did have my 50 greatest chamber and vocal classical pieces to keep me company.

As I was on relative unfamiliar roads I found myself not in the optimum positions on two occasions and I had to do what I despise others for doing – cutting in.  I wonder if there is a convincing piece of body language that expresses to the driver that you have just cut up that “I would not normally do this but these are exceptional circumstances and I do not know this route.”  I think not.  You just come over to the drivers behind you as a typical “knob-head”.

I find it very soothing to the heated motorist temperament to execute the traditional index finger to thumb placed on the forehead and then the hand brought down in an arcing movement to indicate to a less-than-considerate driver that his grey matter is penile rather than perceptive.  I do this in total confidence because Toni informs me that no one in Catalonia knows what this sweeping gesture means!

As soon as I had passed the hated traffic blackspot which is also known as Sant Boi, my home motorway was blissfully clear with only the normal suicidal motorists speeding their way to certain oblivion.

I did not go directly home, but called into one of the few remaining cafés whose stamps I have yet to collect on the soon-to-end Ruta de Tapas.

This was another one café we have never been to and on the strength of the tapa I was given, will not call into again.  The cold beer was excellent (for a Spanish beer) in a glass whose frosted stem made the liquid look much more inviting than it tasted.

The Olympic Canal restaurant closed at 1.00 pm today so I will have to wait until tomorrow to get my final possible stamp.

The other restaurant that we visited together was a vegetarian one where Toni refused to eat anything and only grudgingly accepted the offer of an organic Coke.  Which came from Britain as it turned out!  And which he rather liked.

The tapa was one of the more interesting ones with sundried pepper on top of slices of cucumber resting on feta cheese with a homemade bread/cake base that was the best part.  It was generous and tasty and there is no way in which is it going to win!  And I am convinced that the white wine was non-alcoholic!

There are two days left in the countdown to the departure of The Scumbags.  This year there has been a truly unholy alliance between all the noisiest people who can use the pool.  If they do not go on Sunday I am not sure how I can face school with the prospect of coming home to the raucous chorus of insensitive noise-makers!

Good news!  Toni overheard one of the shouters telling the chief scumbag that he would come over to the house and repair something “when you have gone”!  And that was to be on Monday.  So the logic is that they will be gone on Sunday! 

Great happiness!

So starts the last weekend of relative freedom before the terrible reality of pupils in the class hits us!

Time is slipping!

 

My peaceful existence in the empty staff room this morning was broken by the arrival of the secretary who harangued me (yet again) for my lack of perfection in the Spanish language.  She pointed out that with the length of time that I have lived in Spain I should now be able to indulge my obvious sociability and chatter fluently with my colleagues. 

Did I not realize, I was asked, how much of the interplay of normal social intercourse I was missing by not having a proficiency in the language? 

I did not point out to her that I must have some sort of ability to allow me to understand what she was saying!  But let it pass, let is pass.

We are going to start the day with a departmental meeting and then “the only way is up” – which is slightly unfair as our departmental meetings are dealing with the “here and now” of the situation rapidly approaching when Monday will bring the influx of the hordes.  The febrile tranquillity of days without the students will be fondly remembered by tattered souls ripped apart by the terrible reality of groups of actual smallish people sitting in front of them when they go into a room!

I have yet to be given my class lists for most of my groups.  To be fair (again) the English lists exist, it is all the others that do not.  It will probably only be tomorrow that I actually have the lists and the last full day before the advent of the kids is one that is filled with yet more meetings.

The Quest for Tapas was fruitless this evening.  I am now down to just three establishments that I have to visit and I intend to visit the two that are possible.

 

This evening it was the turn of the restaurant in the area of the Olympic Canal.  This artificial stretch of water was created for some of the boating events in the Barcelona Olympics and is here in Castelldefels.  It is a very large stretch of water and is used for emergency purposes when there are forest fires in the region.  The planes come and scoop up water from the Canal and dump it on the fire.

I checked the time and the details of the restaurant very carefully and we made our first visit.  And were told that all the restaurant staff had left at 8.00 pm and we were out of luck.  This is not the first time that the information printed on the sheet that has to be stamped has been faulty.

Tomorrow I will go there directly from school and nab my antepenultimate stamp!

As the time for the real teaching draws nearer I fell less and less inclined to remain a member of the noble profession and more and more drawn to a life of indolent ease.  I think that I will have to take this year of torture term by term.

In a telling feature of our place it has been decided to give more time to the construction of the so-called Credit of Synthesis which I have no intention of explaining except to comment that it takes up a great deal of a week and is largely a waste of time and effort.  This year the tired feature is to be given a makeover with the direct involvement of small committees or working groups of teachers to construct a project based framework within which the kids can work.

 

I have been drafted into the group considering the 2ESO project and, in spite of our having a timetabled day eight hours long (and sometimes longer) and our having an effective pay cut as our wages have been frozen, the groups are going to meet after school for an hour a month!

As usual I was the only person to exhibit incredulity that it had been impossible to schedule a meeting during the working day.

Our staffing is so tight that a single absence can wreck havoc and the idea of a “supply” teacher is greeted with peals of laughter.  As an example the Head of English will be absent for five working days as she goes with pupils from the school to a school in Canada: no supply.  An absence of more than three days known in advance: no supply.  It is simply incredible and, at the same time, contemptible.  I don’t know whom to blame more: the management or the quiescent teachers.  We can leave the unions out of the picture, as they are generally ineffective and neutered by the arrangements for representation in individual schools.

The shadow of unnumbered weeks of unrewarding, under-paid toil is beginning to depress me, and even the continued sunshine is no compensation because, after all, I will be indoors looking out at what I might be enjoying.

And I think that I have forgotten how to read for enjoyment!

Roll on the weekend when at least we might be saying farewell to the neighbours as they return to the city.

The Cava is cooling!