A long day

When you get up normally at half past six there is something quite wonderful about waking up at five in the morning.  One can return to one’s bed knowing that there is an hour and a half of musing, self-indulgent, semi-dreaming left before the horrible reality of joining the mad road race to Barcelona.

In theory I could get up much later: in practice that would mean that I would be late each day and not be able to find a parking space.  One has to balance all, bring all to mind and eventually set off in the dark!

We are getting ever nearer to the disgrace of a meeting on a Saturday morning.  During the course of last year the appalling scheduled meetings for Saturdays were changed to (wait for it) Friday evenings!  I keep thinking of the UK and the response from teachers if any management team even vaguely considered let alone attempted such pedagogically unfriendly scheduling!  The nearer we get to the Black Saturday Meeting with no announcement telling staff that it was only a joke and of course we will not be meeting on such a silly day, the darker my mood gets.

I have been to one such meeting and I was amazed at the easy camaraderie that my colleagues evinced during such an intolerable imposition on their sacred free time.  Some of them even laughed and joked!  I found such unprofessional behaviour repugnant.  I dressed in my most casual clothes and kept a stony expression on my face that degenerated into fury when colleagues engaged in idle, gossipy, chit-chat taking up valuable breathing time during my sacrosanct weekend.

I stomped away at the end of the meeting vowing that I would never, ever go to another. 

So much for vows!  I might huff and puff but when push comes to shove I kowtow just like everyone else.  I make up for defeat by clearly visible bad grace: I don’t really do low profile.

Sometimes the resolute acceptance by teachers of near-intolerable impositions makes me proud to be a member of the profession; at most other times I grind my teeth in impotent fury at the fawning acquiescence that my colleagues display.  Anything other than foaming rage at futile meetings on a Saturday morning gets the latter reaction from me.

The Scumbags have gone – though I am very wary of their future intentions.  The next few weekends should show whether they are going to follow the pattern of the last few years or strike out on a new path and make our continued residence in our house impossible. 

At the moment, as well as the usual horrors attendant on moving house, Toni’s bad leg makes it even more problematic. 

As I have stated before, the last move was the last time that I take such an active part in the affair.  I think that I am just about prepared to pack boxes, but I am not, repeat not prepared to move them – especially up and down stairs.  Unpacking is horrendous as well and that is as far as I am prepared to go. 

If nothing else it will give us a real opportunity to downsize on all those possessions which stick to us like iron filings to a magnet.  We shall (to continue the simile) have to hit the magnet hard to make its lose some of its attractiveness and disperse the filings elsewhere.

I must admit that the idea of downsizing in any real sense is more of a theoretical than a real path that I will follow, though it would be interesting to see me try especially with my own in-house Savonarola urging me to put everything (especially books) into the Bonfire of the Vanities!

I am, partially, convinced by such a Draconian approach to mere “things” (books obviously excluded) and in particular a particularly stubborn cupboard which seems to accrete kitchen “things” to the point of bursting and then refuse to disengorge them. 

That cupboard is an impenetrable three-dimensional jigsaw that probably has a temporal anomaly in the centre.  No one knows, because no one has been able to penetrate that far.  I know that somewhere in the morass lurks a multifaceted mixer Shelob-like keeping around herself a whole load of cases, implements, things of plastic whose use is known only to god, and the like.  I have often contemplated attacking this useless piece of unusable and highly filled dead space, but have drawn back fearfully at the immensity of the task.

Every house has one such filled space: we have many for they are legion!

As far as I can see our removal can only be positivized (ugh!) by this single element of putative clearing so I pray that The Scumbags become quiescent and only start irritating us at the much more normal time of late May.

I will soon have to leave the safe confines of the staff room and wing the desolate abyss to the hall where (god help us) a concert of Scottish music by students from a Scottish Academy are performing for the upper end of the Primary and the lower end of Secondary.  I have a vivid and morbid fear of the bagpipes and I fear that I am about to be assailed. 

Ah well, having recently seen film of the D-Day Landings I know that there are worse things that a body could meet!

The second half of the concert that I had to attend was just the sort of middle-brow programme that one would have expected from the happy-clappy suit wearing teacher choirmaster.  The soloists I saw had upper register frighteningly exposed pieces to sing and, in spite of obvious nerves, they did very well.

 The same could not be said for the tenors and pseudo-basses; if they had been anywhere near the bonny banks about which they were singing the fish would have flung themselves into the Irish Sea forthwith or possibly the North Sea to escape, possibly travelling overland to escape the song-shout that the men of the choir created!

The most disreputable looking character was an over-grown gormless sixth former or under-grown nerdish teacher who was sporting the kilt.  There are some people for whom the kilt is not: he was one of them.  The knees, my dear, the knees!

The more than creditable concert ended, perhaps inevitably, with a portion of the choir (all the ones who couldn’t sing) sloping off and reappearing with knees akimbo and dead animals’ innards under arms and three drummers.  They were very loud.

The highlight was a young drummer called Andrew (he was the only person to be named by the head of the Scottish Academy) for whom the kilt definitely was (and he knew it) giving a tour de force of something called a “drum fanfare” all stick hitting and twirling and putting drumsticks under his arm and retrieving them in a most bravado and pointlessly adroit fashion and then soaking up the adoring adulation in a way that no other performer did.  And he had a positive smirk on his face.  Though he did steal the show, so that was alight!

When I came home I found that only a minority of the letters filling the post box were actually for me.  Some of the others were clearly addressed to other addresses, while two cards from Britain and the notification of the non-delivery (!) of a package were correctly addressed but Gulia (complete with exotic surname) simply doesn’t live here!  I am not sure what to do with these missives.  In the UK, I could put them back in the post box with “Not at this address” on them, but here?  Who knows?

I have done my public duty with some of the others and placed them firmly in what turned out to be another wrong address – but they are nearer to where they should be!  I think.

One of the more-or-less correctly addressed letters was from the national census office urging me to go on line and register the household and presumably change the address just to show that we had been taking notice.  I have tricked Toni into taking on the task of filling out the form and he is rapidly becoming less than enamoured with the process as streams of questions keep appearing.  There were, of course, various threats and mentions of laws that made the non-completion of the form a major crime, so there is an incentive for him to keep going to get the thing off our electronic hands.

My “learning” of Schumann’s “Scenes from Faust” is taking longer that I would have expected given the general jolly nature of the music.  Perhaps I need one of those pocket scores to help me along.  I wonder if there is a web site on which I can get such things for nothing, as I do not fancy paying the inflated prices that I know these things demand.  I am sure that there must be and app. for the iPad which would suit me down to the ground!

I mustn’t start thinking like that.  That way lays madness and penury.  Though I did find a complete score on line and it would, indeed lend itself to being seen on an iPad.

Y

It would be wonderfully naff to admit that I was forced to buy an iPad because it was the only inexpensive way I knew to view scores that I needed to get to know for the operas that I was seeing that season!

I have almost convinced myself!

Culture is a terrible thing!

Slack time

Scattered cloud was insufficient to keep me from the Third Floor and taking what sporadic sunshine there was.  To be fair it is still summer-like and it is very easy to forget that it is the middle of October! 

The living room windows remain open – the only reason they were momentarily closed last night was that The Scumbags next door were smoking by their open windows and the foul fumes made their miasmic way into our house.

The Head Scumbag has been “doing things” to the house.  This is a bad thing as that might mean that he is planning to live there for longer than we can tolerate.  The worst-case scenario is that he is tarting up the place for his repulsive daughter to live in by “herself.”  This would produce such an increase in unbridled noise that living here would be intolerable.  We await developments.

Today has been a truly lazy day with the only time I left the house being to go for lunch from the localish grilled chicken place.  One day we will remember to phone so that when I go to the place I will not have to wait in the long queue which is always there on a Sunday but rather do straight to the counter and pick up the order. 

Some things never really work out as you expect even when you know that a small adjustment in behaviour would bring about results.  That’s life!  Even if it shouldn’t be.

Now Clarrie and Paul 1 have, rather unfeelingly, bought an iPad 2 – in spite of the fact that I am just a poor human trying his best to resist the blandishments of the gadget of the moment.  And the adverts on Spanish television are very unfairly enticing. 

I used to carry around with me a printed list of “14 reasons not to buy an iPad” kindly given to me by the IT teacher in school.  But this list only related to the iPad not the iPad 2 – and many of the fundamental objections have been dealt with by the new machine. 

Life, and the spending of money are so difficult at times!

An odd day

As if to share my horror at the return of The Scumbags next door, the day has started overcast and (for us) gloomy.  But the weather in this part of the world is seemingly irrepressible and the sun keeps breaking through and spoiling the effect of self-indulgent misery that the re-emergence of obnoxious neighbours engenders.

Any anger that I feel takes place to an orchestral backing of canine music.  From the piccolo upper register of the pop-eyed abortions that mince their way around on stick-thin limbs and produce sounds that remind me of an old sofa being moved on rusty wheels to those few Catalans who have real dogs which are capable of producing the basso profundo that matches the rumbling of the passing jets – I hate them all.  My especial loathing is reserved for the moronic staccato of the middle range animals all of which seem to imitate a badly played viola.  Where are distemper and hard pad when you need them!

My frequent looking at the BBC Sports web site has just revealed that the Welsh Captain, Warburton, has been red carded f19 minutes into the game for a dump tackle - something about which I have previously never heard.  This decision by Referee Alain Rolland (a name which sounds suspiciously French in origin) has been described as “hugely controversial” and “ridiculous”.  Looking on Twitter the tackle has been described as a “spear tackle” but the designation has been modified by the lack of the element of maliciousness in the tackle.

In spite of a spirited game from Wales, the red card really signalled the end of a realistic hope of winning.  We did miss a couple of kickable penalties and a possible conversion, but they didn’t happen and the French were able to win by a single point.  It was not a convincing win and I think that they have less than a rat’s chance in hell of winning the World Cup against either New Zealand or Australia in the final.  I will certainly not be supporting them.  So there.

Lunch was in the Flora Park Hotel in town and was the good value that we have come to expect from the place.  Yet again in a reversal of the natural order of things Toni drank more than I – my casera being merely lightly coloured by the addition of a splash of red wine! 

I enjoyed my lunch – which would not necessarily be something of note if it wasn’t for the fact that the infection all but took my appetite away, so its reappearance it something to be grateful for.  I did lose some weight which was good, but I fear that lost avoirdupois will be restored in double quick time.  I sometimes think that I can acquire calories through my skin!  Can you?

I have five more days on antibiotics and then my leg will have to be reassessed.  There is no disputing the fact that I do not feel as miserably ill as I did when the infection was, shall we say, raging.  But the swelling has not gone down fully, so I think that something else might have to be done.

The sun has been slipping behind clouds and then coyly peeking out again, so it is not really a beach-type day – but still one that tempts one out of doors.  Which is better than attempting to do the ironing which is still waiting.

Indeed, the ironing was left so long that it had to be rewashed (with special attention given to collars) and is now waiting for me in the machine.  It is probably just at the right dampness to take to the iron like nuclear power stations to the protesters who are marching through over 180 places world-wide after taking their inspiration from the original demonstrations in Spain.  And I think that last image got carried away with itself.  Still typing is not ironing – and that sounds about right to me!

But I did it anyway.  The windows are now festooned with white shirts which are still slightly damp, but at least have fewer creases than usual.  I cannot say that my ironing technique is anything approaching the scientific, but one has to admit that the feeling with which it is done makes the visceral hatred that I feel for Margaret Thatcher appear like mild irritation!

I have ironed eleven shirts and I am now bathed in sweat, feel as though I have moved house and am simmering with resentment.  I am sure that there are better ways to spend a Saturday evening.

Some men are spending their evening by singing loudly a capella somewhere in the neighbourhood.  Their music sounds like a cross between a low grade yodelling song (bad) and an army marching song (worse) but at least they have now stopped and allowed the dogs and the aeroplanes to re-establish their dominance of the sound scene of the area!

A party has now erupted into full throat while explosions rock our surroundings! This really is not a normal Saturday evening!  We, of course, ascribe all the extra noise to the unexpected arrival of The Scumbags. 

Paranoid? 

Us?

What day is it?

There is something intensely wrong in setting off for work in the dark.  It is unnatural and unsettling.  The sort of thing that necessitates a weekend for recovery purposes – which today at least has the appropriate ending to the day.  But what about all the other days to come in which I will be battling the traffic (and insanely suicidal motorbike drivers) in the dark?  Sigh!

We did have some clouds yesterday, but not of the stubbornly sun-denying British type – and today, yet again, is glorious with sunshine flooding everything.  It may be appreciably cooler, but to all intents and purposes summer continues unabated!  That sentence was tempting fate and the inevitable punishment of The Pathetic Fallacy has ensured that high level cloud is now diffusing sunshine in a much more autumnally way than I like.

Toni is a much happier bunny now that he has electrodes strapped to his extremities and he is as equally pleased with the large backlit display on the handset control as he is with the effects of the machine itself!  A gadget freak after my own heart!

My appetite has almost fully returned, though I still don’t ever feel like lunch and prefer to have a meal in the evening.  This has not gone unnoticed by my colleagues for whom eating lunch is one of the “free” perks that they delight in taking from the job.  I forbear from pointing out that there is absolutely no such thing as a free lunch – and do not join them.

The gruelling nature of my timetable, and indeed that of many of my colleagues is making itself felt as we progress through this interminable term.  What sort of timetabling ineptitude produces a day when a whole collection of colleagues are teaching six periods?  We are in school for eight bloody hours a day, how much more bloody time do the powers that be need to produce something which is just a little more teacher friendly?  Not forgetting the two teachers’ meetings scheduled for a Saturday morning! 

The ethos and working practises of our school would have a collective nervous collapse should they ever get close to the conditions that obtain in a normal secondary school in the UK!

 A shock development this evening is the reappearance of our hated neighbours of the summer.  The deal is that they come and make our lives a misery for the summer months and then they pack up and go back to Barcelona and do not come back for a year.  This is not the first time that they have paid a surprise visit since their official departure – marked by the opening of a bottle of our best Cava and whoops of joy.

If they are going to come back for the odd weekend then I am going to start looking for somewhere else to live.  With the Mad Woman and her dogs on one side and the inconsiderate rowing on the other life will be intolerable.  It is probably the extended summer that brings this detritus back.  I am sure that were the weather to be the same as it was this time last year we would see nothing of them.

Ah well, at least there are two days off!

A resented day

Barcelona might be covered in a thick blanket of pollution by the sun is shining and the soft outlines of the buildings gleam magically against the contrasting glittering sea.  I continue to feel cheated as I watch this magnificent weather from the inside, trapped inside a school by the lure of insultingly low wages.  How much further can I sink!

If, the for rest of my time in this country people make wistful references back to the wonderful autumn of 2011 I will never forgive myself.  Gallons (or pounds or however your measure it) of Vitamin D lavished on uncaring buildings rather than on my receptive skin!

Still, I am getting through today my reminding myself of the fact that, contrary to all internal clocks and calendars, today is nothing more than a Thursday and that tomorrow is Friday and that is the start of the weekend.  By such mind games does one get through the quotidian horror of the slavery of a monthly wage!

The ironing still awaits, lurking in open view as white shirts and undershirts lie carelessly diffused on a chair in the living room like an exploded meringue.

Toni is getting no better and is becoming evilly accusatory about the treatment that his leg is getting.  I think it might be politic to get a magnetic resonance scan done privately before he hobbles around and destroys the health service piecemeal!

We now have cloud around the school – but I keep telling myself that the west is full of sunshine and that is where Castelldefels is.  And, even as I was typing the sun has returned.  I thought for one glorious moment that the heavens had taken pity on my imprisoned state and were trying to make it a little more bearable.  But no, the cruel gleam of outside sunshine mocks my room condemned state.

The one thing that I have to look forward to is the purchase of a toaster.  Our present model now only (and in a very stylish and Post Modern sort of way) toasts only one side of the bread.  It must be junked and something much more elaborate must be purchased.  I am thinking of some machine which can make those individually wrapped and long-lasting croissants taste and feel more authentically pastry-like rather than like a dead collection of chemical molecules completely unrelated to the fine art of the pâtissier together, of course, with cold fat.

There was a freakishly cheap toaster in one of the shops which looked as though it had been made from an unconvincing Airfix kit.  I spurned this and went to another shop and bought something much more expensive.  Just to hammer the point home about the necessity of supporting the materialist society I also bought a sort of hand mixer with various attachments because it was in a sale and because I sort of needed one.  I really did.

Lidl (god bless it!) came up trumps again when I went to get the bread as they had one of those stick-on electrode machines for stretching and massaging muscles which was exactly what Toni needed for his knee - which continues to give trouble.

My three-day stew in now fully consumed with the final version having fruit juice, grapes, olives and German sweet pepper in it – though precious little actual meat in it.  Delicious though.

As is usual, though always unexpected until it actually happens, a day off mid week always leaves teachers feeling more tired than if they had worked the week through.  It’s a good sort of tiredness, a small price to pay for a day off!

Our next time off is a long weekend at the end of October and then nothing until an absurd week in December when we come into school on alternate days in the middle of the working week.  Madness.  I hope that the kids take every opportunity to go on holiday for the whole of the week.  Though parents in our school take every opportunity to thrust their kids towards us, as they seem to want to get rid of them from their everyday lives whenever they can!  I am sure that it is not actually the case; it just appears like that.

I have now taken, on the back of the infection, to eschew the eating of lunch.  I am not really a lunch person and I welcome the opportunity to eat sparsely at midday and have a larger meal in the evening.  We shall see how it goes.

Meanwhile, one more day and then the weekend.

Release!

Ah!  The bucolic delights of living in a smallish town where, on a day off, the only things to wake you are the cooing of tree doves (or possibly pigeons, am I an ornithologist?) the chirping of insects enjoying the extended life that our extended Indian summer is giving them; the emptying of the rubbish bins and the barking of the dogs.

The neighbour’s animals, who bray as I type, have now been roundly condemned by my good self as I have visited our ever-helpful city hall and officially complained.  It was also the opportunity to lash out at the thieving, inconsiderate vandal who has for the third or fourth time knocked down the anti-parking post.  Far be it from me to cast aspersions but photographs have been taken and sent to the authorities showing a car which has been parked near, and yesterday parked over the post – or the remains of it. 

The person (do you get a sense that I know exactly who did it) who has knocked down the post it of course a thief as destroying public property without admitting it is tantamount to theft.  I do hope the police call!  And we will be able to watch!

 There is nothing like an early morning rant!  It clears the system and allows one to enjoy the rest of the day!

Which is beautifully sunny yet again and this unreal weather continues.  Many of my British (!) colleagues are, inexplicably, looking forward to more autumnal weather while I revel in each shining day, even if I am stuck inside a school looking out at what I should be feeling on my skin.  I am convinced that my vitamin D levels are dangerously low and I need to get up to the Third Floor and do what I do best, soak up the rays!

Which was wonderful; simply lying there and feeling the sun (lately seen only from the wrong side of a classroom window) on my skin.  In was only when there was a whisper of sun that one could even guess that this is getting on for the middle of October rather than the height of summer!  The Puritan part of me knows that there will be price to be paid for such extended sunshine!

Now, as part of the reality of a “holiday” we are going out to lunch.  It will also give me the opportunity to check up on one of my “investments” the money which has been put into La Caixa as a way of beating the pathetic interest rates that one can get with the banks deposit accounts.  The complex returns include occasional interest payments and the conversion of 50% of the money into shares.  All I can say is that it seemed like a sensible idea at the time and now I have to live with the reality!  I ought to do at least some checking up!

My other investment is with the Generalitat of Catalonia (such patriotism!) and I made it on the assumption that the Generalitat would not be able to pay me back when the time of reckoning came.  My plan, such at it was, was to benefit to an extra period of bribery from the Generalitat to persuade me to keep the money in the funds and out of my sticky, spendthrift fingers.  The latter part of the plan might work, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the Generalitat is, to all intents and purposes, bankrupt.  Greece seems to be all around us these days!

I don’t really know why I bother with money as such.  I have never had much luck with its accumulation – but on the other hand I have never really lacked it either.  Confusion, inactivity and general bumbling have seen me OK.  The only time that I took professional advice and invested in a sensible, rock solid fund I lost 40% of it.  Bumbling is better!

I am waiting for the Old Man – for such I must designate Toni as he shuffles his way around the house feeling out each step – to get ready.  I could have done some ironing in the time that I have been waiting for him.  Or not.

I am a firm believer in the “iron free” nature of some shirts, in spite of the obvious creased that they all develop no matter if you drip dry or tumble dry them.  If life is too short to stuff a mushroom then how much further down the scale is ironing!

Lunch was acceptable in El Restaurante de los Jubilados or the place where all the OAPs hang out.  Follow the grey hairs and you get value for money!  My appetite has all but returned but I had to make do with fizzy water rather than the bottle of Lambrusco (!) which is available for two diners during days of fiesta – when incidentally the price of the meal rises by some 33%!

The day is still not over and I have already spent a couple of hours on the beach and thrown myself into the sea.  Considering the date the water was surprisingly not freezing.  I am not going to lie and affirm that the water was actually warm, but it was pleasant enough.  As opposed to the pool into which I threw myself on the return from the beach.

Although I was actually able to breathe (just) while swimming, the pool did not invite me to stay and after a number of cool regulation lengths I emerged into the apparent heat of an October evening.

I am about to go into the real heat of a shower – further displacement activity rather than do any ironing.  And marking is simply a non-starter.

I now have to get into my mind that tomorrow is a Thursday, as a day off mid-week is somewhat unsettling.  


Though always welcome.  


Obviously!

Tomorrow is not enough!

Tuesday is not a good day.

With six (count them, six) periods to teach it can never be a good day.  With the last two periods of the day a double session of Media Studies with Year 9 it starts sliding down the “insupportable” scale.  And when the day starts with an examination which demands marking, it has gone off the scale of awfulness.

On the other hand tomorrow is The Day of Spanishness about which I couldn’t give a damn except that we have a day off on which to not give a damn which makes it strangely different!

Unfortunately it now feels like a Friday evening and after a free day tomorrow it will only be Thursday when I have to go back to school; and Thursday and Friday are my early starts.  Ah well, one shouldn’t be greedy.

One afternoon I have to look forward to in school is going to be taken up by a performance of a pipe band from some Scottish Academy.  One really has to weigh up the positive of not teaching a class with the horror of the sick parallel universe cacophony which constitutes the playing of the bagpipes. 

 

If I remember rightly there is an apt quotation in The Merchant of Venice about the inability of urine retention when the “bagpipe sings i’the nose”.  I think in context it is seen as inexplicably positive, but for me the negative is much nearer to the fore.  Life is far too short for it to be tarnished by any folklorique abomination which uses contained wind to whine down reedy pipes to produce travesties of music.  On the other hand, it does mean not teaching for a period

My investigation of the problem of the so-called “extra” pay at the end of the autumn term has revealed that it is only the upper echelons of the civil service who are threatened with the withdrawal of this money, not mere teachers.

The “extra” payment, as I never tire of explaining to my colleagues and anyone else who will listen, is nothing of the sort.  The way that salaries are worked out in this inexplicable country is that you have a monthly salary and then a month extra in December and June: making 14 pays.

Now even a person of mean intelligence can work out that this 14 pay rubbish is merely a ploy on the part of the employers to retain one sixth of the annual salary and pay the salary late; four months late in December and an astonishing six months late in June!

In spite of the obvious indication that the two “extra” pays are completely spurious and that the total salary over the fourteen pay-outs should be divided by twelve and paid out in normal monthly instalments people here insist on looking at these payments as “useful” because they help pay for Christmas presents in December and help defray the cost of the summer holidays.  Such thinking makes me weep with frustration at the way that stupid workers redefine managerial meanness as paternalistic thoughtfulness!

I am now in the age group where an injection against flu is now regarded as a necessary formality.  I now have so many drugs coursing around my system that I am virtually a walking pharmacy.  My very perspiration should be bottled and distributed in vials for the benefit of mankind!

If I had my wits about me I would do some purely mechanical marking.  But I simply cannot be arsed.

I declare a holiday!

Life is getting better all the time - sigh!

Well, apart from a short sojourn in bed after my second pill, this weekend has been more active and less depressing than the last few.  The swelling in my leg is going down steadily and it looking far less red.  All positive aspects of a extended and draining period of not feeling well.

Monday evening I go to the nurse in our medical centre to check on progress and I can look forward to a blood test at the end of the month.  That at least is a good thing as the tests are and a possible shake up in my medication.   Oh, the things I have to look forward to!

As the weather has continued to be astonishingly good for this time of year we have been afflicted by a weekend spate of even more astonishingly bad parking by our visitors.  As we are one road away from the sea our parking spaces are quickly taken up and then the parking on corners, parking on zebra crossings and everywhere else that they can (and shouldn’t) park a car.  The selfishness of our visitors has to be seen to be believed – especially as the parking spaces the next road back were virtually empty!

Anyone who has been into a supermarket car park knows just how little consideration people seem to have for parking.  It seems to be impossible for people to consider walking more than the absolute minimum of yards to a destination even if it means parking in a disabled space!  One can get quite cynical just by considering the selfishness on prominent permanent display in public parking areas!

The week of work stretches ahead and I can work up little enthusiasm for the classes ahead.  My timetable is so enervating that by Wednesday I am exhausted having spent most of my time traipsing from one corner of the campus to another for one lesson after another.

I think that the negativity follows on from the disastrous start to term where the managements’ compulsive desire to have worthy but irrelevant staff meetings meant that the lead into the start of the year was hysterical rather than measured, as all the essential preparatory work was postponed as meeting after meeting got in the way.  And one should remember that planning in the traditional sense is difficult as the new year is very much a new start and what one has been told at the back end of the year in June may have changed radically by September.

Just in case that anyone thinks that all I do nowadays is moan and sulk about the work I have to do to get my measly pay, I would point out that I have actually done some reading.  To be precise “Blimey! - From Bohemia to Britpop: London Art World from Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst” by Matthew Collings with photographs by Ian MacMillan.

This is an updated version of the original book (though Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud are both still very much alive in this edition) and is a thoroughly entertaining, thoroughly prejudiced view of modern British art from a commentator both knowledgeable and involved.  The book has big writing, lots of photos, swear words of the worst sort and gripping anecdotes. 

Who could ask for more!

Good and bad!

Let’s get one thing straight: no day can be entirely bad when it starts with me stretched out on the Third Floor soaking up the sun in a bathing costume!

So even Clarrie’s insulting phone call to attack my nation for having beaten the Irish in the Rugby World Cup while, at the same time casually (not!) mentioning the fact that she had bought the latest version of the i-pad failed to dent my optimism which the bright start to the day loaded into my system.

This feeling of rightness with the world lasted right up until I went outside, unlocked the front gate and gazed in speechless horror at the anti-parking post which, for the THIRD time has been destroyed by person or persons unknown.  Actually that last adjective is just there for legal purposes as the guilty parties are within a hair’s breadth of where I live.  Allegedly.

I of course took photographs of the broken post which, this time had been left in the gutter – which was possibly one step better than what they (allegedly) did the last time but one, which was to put the post they knocked over in the street rubbish bin, from where I “rescued” it to be used as evidence against them (allegedly).  Actually, the last time they (allegedly) knocked the post down they had the criminal intelligence to hide the evidence.

Taking a photograph of the broken post also meant that I took a photograph or the car that was parked (illegally) on the pavement and suspiciously near the broken post.  The photograph (now printed out ready for the city hall to act on) also shows the number place with remarkable clarity.

While I was taking the photographs relying on the anti-shake setting of the camera to compensate for my towering fury someone not a million miles from being a neighbour asked, with consummate cheek if we were taking photographs of her illegally parked car!

Toni responded that we were taking photographs of the post and did she know anything about that?  To which her reply was, “Oh, OK.”  My Lord, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, I ask you, was that a reasonable response, or did it betoken some form of guilt?  I ask for the ultimate penalty the law can impose – and I won’t write what I was going to write, but it did have something to do with the end results of dogs’ ingestion.  So to speak.

I have now had a total of eight of the forty-two fearsomely serious looking and virulently coloured antibiotics that I have been prescribed.  Although Toni says that the improvements to my leg are clearly visible, I am not so jocose but am prepared to give it until the end of the weekend for me to be convinced that something is really working.

The weather has been noticeably cooler this evening, though only by a couple of degrees or so – the windows are still open and I am praying that this unnatural autumn will continue for as long as possible!

We have bought another printer to replace the broken one and have decided to keep it downstairs.  It prints photos, in colour, copies and has a little screen to preview things etc and it cost €49 – just over forty quid.  The printer manufacturers of course make their money on the ink; the cost of replacement cartridges is more than the cost of a new machine; the cartridges in a new machine are of course not fully filled.  Oh the cunning swine!