Life is NOT football!

With a dedication to teaching which leaves me breathless (or is that just one of the symptoms of the cold that I am nursing) I staggered through my ablutions this morning and, with resentment leaking through every pore in my body, I joined the (reduced) number of hapless slaves making their way to work.

In school my coughing soon attracted attention and I made absolutely sure that everything within hearing distance knew that I “had made an effort” to get in.

The reason that I made it in was to fill in the gaps in the computer program which is the essential part of the assessment system which governs our every thought in this place.

My coughing was so convincing (because it was genuine) that my colleagues decided to split the first class between them and let me get on with putting my results in.

An astonishing number of kids have made the effort to come in today in spite of it being a Friday and despite their being on holiday on Thursday.  And Monday and Tuesday of this week as well.  I think that I was a fairly tractable student and obeyed most of the rules and was hardly ever absent – but I think that even I would have thought more than twice about coming in for two odd days in an obviously fractured week.  Especially when I was of an age to stay at home alone!  Ah well, perhaps they are merely coming in to make our teachers’ lives more miserable.  Now that is something I can understand!

The concept of a bed waiting for me in Castelldefels is, to put it mildly, alluring.  But, until I can made an indecent escape from this place, I am relying on the natural resilience of a teacher about to embark on the weekend to keep me going.

SATURDAY 10^th DECEMBER 2011

Home and bed, in short order.  That was the story of Friday evening.  And a restless night to round off a couple of delightful days.

During the weekend I can ponder on the coming week.  On Monday and Tuesday (two days, count ‘em) we have meetings at the end of school which are scheduled to last two hours each.  My Tuesday, therefore, will start with my getting up at 6.30 am; I will teach six periods and then, after a 15 minute gap I will go straight into a two hour meeting which will probably overrun and I might get home some thirteen hours after getting up!  What a delight!  And our local government is talking about reducing our wages.  Again.

Listening to the Spanish and the British news one gets a confused picture of what is actually going on in the financial and political world.  While “confusion” is probably the operative word and gives a fairly accurate description of the present situation, it does give me pause for thought about the future.

All my financial plans laid down more than five years ago now seem to have been made in a different sort of world – or at least in the sort of world that kept such inconvenient phrases like “sub-prime” to itself and no one really knew what was going on.  Now that far too much is out in the open it is obvious that what bankers have been engaging in is obviously no more real economics than Animal Farm is a guide to Horse Hoeing Husbandry.  We have to deal with the fact that no one appears to know what is going on and even fewer people seem to know what to do.

The effective isolation of Britain is surely the culmination of the whole French inspired plan for the European Community – or am I being paranoid!  The EU after all is all about giving votes on fishing rights to those countries which do not have a coastline; on giving countries financial jurisdiction over areas of financial services which in their cases they do not have; on isolating Britain because the noxious little French dwarf and the ungainly hausfrau are too frightened to take real financial decisions which could stabilize the present chaotic situation.

I am not anti-Europe, and voted in favour of our entry, but I do not think that the Union has developed quite in the way that I envisaged all those years ago.  There again, I was also in favour of Britain joining the Eurozone so that show just how profound my economic analysis is!

Each day I go to school I am greeted by the Business Studies teacher and, after a few sentences about what we have heard on the news, we are plunged into dark despair and shake our heads sorrowfully at the sad state of the world that we inhabit.

In spite of feeling like shit after an uneasy night and coughing my way through the morning I was determined to go out to lunch as we always do on a Saturday.

El Restaurante de los Jubilados (as I call it) was strangely empty but we sat down anyway and I had a completely self indulgent meal of spaghetti with a cream sauce topped by Toni’s fried egg which he didn’t want from his arroz cubana.  My second course was eggs and ham and it was topped off by a homemade tiramisu all washed down by vino tinto and Casera.  Very comforting for a sick man!

On our way home we called into the cheapo branch of El Corte Ingles which has recently opened in Castelldefels and I bought a blanket (for warming purposes) and a first aid kit for the car (or home) as my present kit dates back to the last millennium!  And well into the last millennium at that.  Having checked out the kit (9€ reduced from 36€) I will probably get another one for the house (or the car) one should not reject such good value when one finds it!

The rest of the day is now going to be taken up with television programme after television programme about El Classico (the Madrid v Barça game) which is over five long hours away!  At times like this one thanks whatever gods there may be for access to the back catalogue of the BBC and a merciful escape from the hysteria which always surrounds these matches.

Sports commentators are congenitally unable to “discuss” any aspect of the game.  They all talk at once and then talk louder if their point of view is swamped by all the other voices.  It is, in every sense of the word, unbearable.  And I will soon be taking refuge in my earphones as the only escape from the torture which is the Spanish approach to the game that we invented!

Even with the isolating security of earphone I do not think that I can stand five more hours of mindless coverage of a future game so I am going to throw things away.  This is going to be a cathartic experience.  Or not.  I have often voiced the sentiment of “clearing” but the reality lags somewhat behind.

I shall now settle down and wait to hear the explosions that greet a Barça goal.

Please god let them win.  My life is so much simpler when they do!

Struck again!

What was a niggling, tickle at the back of the throat yesterday, developed during the night into a full-blown cough and cold.  Most of the day was spent in bed.  What a waste of a “holiday” just before the weekend!  I suspect that most of the weekend will be spent trying to get rid of the illness – and I will have to go in to school tomorrow whatever I feel like as it is an essential day in our assessment procedure in which “things” have to be entered into the computer.

Another one of our self-imposed totally artificial deadlines that create chaos for no particular reason.  However that may just be Mr Cough and Grump speaking.

There is only one thing that I know which brings me out of a winter malady induced lack of oomph and that is, of course, buying a camera.

Now my camera buying frenzy has included all the modern developments in camera technology and so I now have to go for gimmicks which I repackage in my mind as essential features without which I cannot exist.

I tempered my purchases at Amazon with David Crystal’s latest book on 100 words in English – which sort of justifies the other purchase.

Doesn’t it?

Too early!

First teaching day in Stupid Week and almost the first thing that happens is that I am caught to do a substitution.  I was so flabbergasted at the audacity of anyone daring to be away during a two-day week that I accepted my less than satisfactory fate with surly submission.  In a very real sense I fail to see how this is fair, especially when I hear of two other members of the English department caught by the powers that be to make this odd day work.

That fact that it was also my duty day did not add appreciably to my attitude in which the level of sanguinity was noticeable by its absence.  The sun has, however, shone!

The supine kids that we teach have turned up on this most inconvenient and idiotic of days in numbers which do no credit to the sort of natural schoolphobia which every child (pretend he ne’er so swottish) should have in oodlesworths.  There they are, in front of us, expectant waiting to be taught.  Shameful!  I bet they will be there, with just the same expressions on their bovine faces on Friday after the third day of holiday on Thursday!  One truly feels like weeping!

Meanwhile I am beginning to dread going home because of the certainty of catching the tail end of some house improvement programme! 

Let there be television!

Hallelujah!  We have British television at last.

The man arrived only twenty minutes late and installed the dish and an hour or so later pictures of some dreadful daytime television programme from years ago was being flashed across the screen.

Toni has become almost delirious with joy as he revisits re-runs of “Location! Location! Location!” and “Place in the sun” giving rise to some wry chuckles as the prices of more than nine years ago give a sense of the unreal to the debate that potential buyers have about whether to buy a five bedroom house for one hundred and eighty thousand pounds!

We have at last escaped from the worthless tyranny of the advert filled rubbish which is broadcast as Spanish television.  And it might give you some pause for thought about the general standard of what we have been offered by the channels here that we look at the UK version as so amazingly superior!

We went out to lunch in our local sea side restaurant and I had a delicious meal of Poussin which was more than enough without the plate full of chips that came with it.  I was also somewhat filled by the hearty starter that I had which was a broth of beans and cockles.  The whisky tart at the end was a fine complement to an excellent meal – even if the restaurant upped their prices because of it being a bank holiday.

We finished our meal a little resentfully as we were not offered the customary bottle of Cava that had become something of a tradition when we eat there.  We were discussing this oversight sotto voce in English when we heard the non-English speaking manager indicate that we should be given our bottle as he walked past our table in what seemed like a co-ordinated piece of irony.  But the Cava was eminently drinkable!

In spite of the quantity of red wine and Cava consumed during lunchtime I still managed to find sufficient energy to drag the Christmas tree from its hiding place and place the new decorations on it.  I discovered that I had managed to buy some half-price decorations from Matalan in last year’s January sale to put on the tree.  I had (not unreasonably) totally forgotten about them, so now there are chunky filigree glittery Christmas trees and the word “JINGLE” in golden letters with small bells handing from them as part of the decorations on the tree which in spite of the their vulgarity leave the tree looking suspiciously tasteful.  No doubt during the run up to the festive day I will endeavour to make it a little more startling!

Meanwhile I have to get myself together and realise that tomorrow is Wednesday and not Monday as we will all be thinking as we stumble in hardly believing that we are actually there.

I will have to keep telling myself that it is only a two-day week.  With both of the days yet to come.  But then it’s the weekend.  And the Christmas holidays are not too distant a prospect.  Possibly.

Free!

A fine summer’s day.  Well, almost.  It is after all December and one must take what one can get at this time of the year.  Inside the house, sitting in a puddle of sunlight it is more than pleasant – but move out of that puddle and you realise the month!

This is a holiday day: Bank Holiday for the natives tomorrow and the start of Stupid Week for we teachers.  Tomorrow is not a teaching day, but Wednesday and Friday are.  A pleasantly disjoined and educationally worthless week!  I am however concentrating more on the fact that it is a two-day week rather than on the pedagogical usefulness of it!

I have one a modicum of housework though I find that it does not sit very well with my general approach to life!  At all.

Lunch was in a new place: Restaurante Marbella at the other end of Castelldefels, in fact it was probably technically in Sitges as the other end of the town is claimed by a resort ten minutes away by car through tunnels!  Remember Stephen that you are not in Britain!

The meal was 10€ including drink and bread, though we did have to pay another €1.35 for a cup of coffee.  The best thing about our eating experience was that we sat outside (me in short sleeved shirt) and had an uninterrupted view of the beach and sea.  Delightful!

There are a number of jobs that need to be done, none of which I feel like doing.  They range from sweeping the front garden path free of pine needles from the trees which do not grow in our garden to getting the artificial pine needles out which bedeck our tired old Christmas tree.

As there was nothing in the January sales in this country that I wanted to buy last year I have been into one of the cheap shops and bought some new Christmas decorations at a more than reasonable price.  I have also bought a tinsel star topping for the tree in the foyer in school: it may only have cost me €1.50 but I expect a refund!  There’s dedication and there is stupidity.

Talking of stupidity, the government is floating all kinds of money saving ideas including cutting government employees’ salaries; cutting subsidy on public transport; raising VAT (that evil German concept); paying to see the doctor and all the other usual politicians’ penny-pinching proposals.

I wait in breathless anticipation for the Perfect Storm that will accompany the pronouncements of the President (either national or local) to cope with the crisis.

I am taking to heart old A J Smith’s cry of “Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day” from the General Strike.  It does look as though we are going to be attacked and have our pay cut.  I wonder what the reaction of my colleagues will be when this happens?  Our school has been “decent” and made up the reduction that the government imposed - but I fear that it will not make up any future cuts.  And then I will have to make a decision. 

When I last checked, I did not see that my working life was classified as charity work!  Whatever I might think about my present rate of pay!

I can foresee a time in the not too distant future when all of my colleagues are going to have to make a decision about where they stand in relation to our school’s response to how the crisis is affecting the way they operate.  I won’t hold my breath about their rising up in righteous indignation and marching for their rights!

After an exhausting visit to our local shopping centre all the immediate Christmas shopping is now done!  Being a Channel and a couple of countries away from my own, my personal Christmas shopping for Brits is severely limited.  And as I am not visiting the UK this holiday my “guilt” presents do not have to be bought! The Catalans, are catered for and I can now wrestle with the knotty problem of how to put a picture into an email without its being an attachment.

It is true that, following the development of modern communications, if a person is only known to you by a snail-mail address they do not, to all intents and purposes, exist?  I know that I have been meaning to write to the wife of the son of a friend of my mother in Australia for the last five or six years.  I have carefully preserved the address and have had true and honest intentions to write, but you know how it is.  The best laid plans etc.

Perhaps this year will be the one during which I reach out to the people who have been cruelly ignored as I have used the excuse of moving to a foreign country to excuse my indolence in communication!

Who knows.

Expansive Days

FRIDAY 2^ND DECEMBER

Where is the supressed hysteria that should be informing the staff as they approach a holiday?  OK, albeit a strange holiday in which we put in guest appearances at various points during our time off, but nevertheless a holiday.

There is no evidence of the smiling face, the lighter step the cheery aside which would tell one that there is a period of time when we do not have to come into this benighted place.  Nothing!  Most strange.

My time off is already being formed by visits to Barcelona for culture and consumerism.  The most intriguing activity is something that will push my comfort zone to its widest extent: a watercolour class.  I have, of course been inveigled into this by Suzanne who tempted me with the promise of a decent lunch, but I am already having misgivings, as my level of practical artistic ability is woefully low, especially when demonstrated in a public arena.

I think that being interested in the history of art makes it even more difficult to express yourself in any of the media that you have studied in the great art galleries of the bits of Europe that I have visited.  Watercolours, particularly are a very English area of expertise with the great exponents of the art towering over their foreign contemporaries in the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries – arguably the only time in the history of art that British painting led the world!  And now me!  Continuing (or finishing) the Great Tradition!

I escaped going Christmas shopping last night.  A lucky escape, but I will not trust on my luck to continue indefinitely.  I do enjoy shopping – but with other shoppers, not with a person who regards shops as a necessary evil which should be used in a crudely utilitarian way and then spurned utterly.  This approach makes what is already a fairly stressful experience something of a torment when one’s natural inclination is to wander and gaze and handle and dawdle.

This “holiday” is the perfect time for the resurrection of the Christmas tree, but I would really like to buy something new to give me the impetus to decorate it!

SATURDAY 3^RD DECEMBER

No lazing in bed for me – well a couple of hours extra, it is after all the weekend – and ready waiting on a cold station for the Barcelona train to come in.

A metro ride from the central station and I was outside El Corte Ingles on the Diagonal waiting for Irene to begin the Great Shop.

We were meeting to ransack a massive shopping centre on the Diagonal, ostensibly for Irene to amass the Christmas presents necessary to make her forthcoming visit to the UK a success.  She leaves on Christmas Eve so there is not much opportunity to rush into Tesco and find those little gifts to make the season supportable.

In something of a first I spent hours in the place and bought nothing.  I did however encourage Irene to get rid of a reassuringly large amount of cash!

The only time I was tempted was in an upmarket version of Habitat where I saw Cava glasses of original design with a fluted conical base and a vaguely tulip shaped top with an irregular rim.  How I resisted I know not, but my decision to leave the purchase “until later” ensured that they stayed in the shop as, by the time I left I was positively crucified with exhaustion!

The Lebanese meal was a restful and delicious interlude.

I might go back for the glasses.  There is parking near.

SUNDAY 4^TH DECEMBER

Up even earlier today to get to Barcelona at a reasonable hour.  Well, an unreasonable hour considering this is the holiday weekend.

Today was given over to a watercolour class.  This was a suggestion of Suzanne, and one which I enthusiastically fell in with.  My enthusiasm was tested sitting in the shade on a cold but bright morning.

After a morning coffee with Suzanne in the sun I felt better.

The workshop was held in a friend’s flat.

The flat was on the third floor – without a lift.

Just before you sneer at what would appear to be a whimpish moan at a few steps, I would point out that we did not seem to get to the first floor for at least six flights of steep steps!  I would never, never, never live in such a place.  It is impossible not to feel trapped in such an environment.  Every movement has to be planned because forgetting something and “popping out” to get it is a major event!  I think that I would eat out every day for every meal, rather than drag food up x flights of steps when x tends to infinity!

The workshop (when I had got my breath back and was in a condition to make judgements) was excellent.  Christine, the teacher was a professional artist and she used her knowledge to take us, gently and easily through an amount of information that I would be proud to have conveyed to my pupils in any of my lessons.

We stuck down our paper to the worktable and progressed, under her watchful guidance, to experiment with washes of wet on wet; wet on dry; crayon masking; scrubbing; using sponges; using salt crystals and, my personal favourite, wafting.  I am not sure if this is a recognized term in watercolour painting or one of Christine’s inventions. 

Wafting necessitates the use of a fabulously expensive animal haired brush which looks more like a cosmetic face brush than anything else and its use on wet watercolour applied to paper in order to blend colour before it dries.

We spent a couple of hours listening to explanations and being shown the materials necessary for the production of watercolour paintings.  Rather flatteringly we were also given some hints and tips to make our productions more saleable (!) and how to ensure that they were up to museum standard (!)

Our actual productions, which started from the “simple landscape” idea developed in very different ways as experiment followed experiment – with varying levels of success.

For many of us the pure white border around our works of art, formed when the masking tape was removed was the high point of our creative success!

Lunch followed with semi hysterical conversation.  A truly delightful day which, as Monday is a holiday was enjoyed without the teachers’ fear of Sunday afternoon as, normally, the reality of work the next day drains the last free moments of the weekend of their delight!

The holiday is a Bank Holiday so everything will be closed, but Tuesday is one of our occasional days and that day is being marked by the installation of a dish to get British television.

Spanish television is awful in a way that Brits find astonishing – and the awful programmes are constantly interrupted by illegal (12 minutes maximum per hour is the legal limit) levels of advertising.  A recent and most unwelcome innovation is that presenters of programmes suddenly launch into some commercial promotion and then, seamlessly go back to the ostensible programme they are actually presenting.

I look forward to the escape from the tyranny of third-rate rubbish!

It's the damn waiting!

Another exam – but the sun is shining.  You take the rough with the smooth!

A depressing number of kids look as though they are going to turn up for the odd days we have in school during “Stupid Week” next week.  We come in for two days out of the five (on Wednesday and Friday!) and I would have thought that the clear indication to pupils and parents alike was that they should regard the whole week as a holiday.  This message seems not to have been clear enough or, on the other hand, the parents simply cannot face five whole days with their own kids.  I do at least know where they are coming from in that case!

This particular week will show the school at its best: trying to cope with unusual circumstances at the very last moment.  I will be extremely disappointed if the two days that we are in school are full days with no “free gifts” of extra time.  It is at the end of the week that all the marks have to be fed into the computer using a different program and we will need the comfort of strangers and the very real help of program literate colleagues to get all the marks in the right place at the right time.

And as soon as we have done that, we start all over again!

After the evening meeting on Tuesday, I am entitled to exchange the time I spend there to enable me to leave school during a free period today.  This hard-won “freedom” will be expended in going to a large supermarket to find an overpriced plastic monstrosity exuding slime that has been demanded by the younger elements in the family.  As far as I can tell the plastic thing is some emanation of the violence that characterises the Japanese cartoon industry and is indistinguishable from every other monster construction with which the attention deficit generation whiles away those tedious moments between TV and oblivion!

I am determined to buy a book.  If I am being forced into buying Christmas presents this early in the month then there has to be some sort of pay off!

Then there is the problem of the Christmas tree.  And no Tesco.

There are the frighteningly practical problems of getting the bloody thing out of the hidey-hole in which it is at present secreted; the aesthetic problems of how to decorate it; the logistical problems about where to site it.  But up it will certainly be and in the very near future.

I do miss Tesco, Peacocks and Matalan where, by judicious yet totally unnecessaryI spending one can accumulate many glittery bits and pieces, not to mention new and wonderfully camp sets of lights.  However, one has to cut one’s electrical urges to fit the voltage or whatever, and Catalonia does not offer the cornucopia of delights for Christmas indulgence – though they are gaining on us.

The pseudo-holiday draws nearer and it won’t come a day too soon.