Catch Up

Today, Boxing Day – or more importantly my Saint’s Day – was notable for lots of things, but, to my mind the most engaging thing was when I looked into the heavens just before I got to Toni’s sister’s flat and only saw the suggestion of clouds out of the corner of my eye.  A sky that flawless this late in December deserves some respect!

Christmas Eve had its own special flavour with the hitting of the log to shit presents with my own excreted gifts including a USB heated drink coaster; a X frame for tablet computers and a very large bottle of aftershave.

My name day saw our having a meal of fideua followed by an experimental chocolate fountain.  My Saint’s Day’s gifts included a book of world architecture; a couple of bottles of Cava and some spa body wash.  All in all a good haul.

What hasn’t been good has been my total inability to get an email plus specially taken photograph to act as a Christmas message to those I should be in contact with.  Each one of the select number of Christmas cards that I have received has been a vicious prod in the area where my guilt complex should reside.  To those who did send a card, I should inform then that they form a neat row under the television and on the printer – and very nice they look too. 

Next year.  Without fail.  Cards of some sort will be sent.  Honestly.

Or not, of course.

Now back in Castelldefels, tomorrow the car has to be taken to the garage, as acceleration seems to be a thing of the past.  My teeth need attention and my cough is still with me.

Roll on the rest of the holiday!

Jesting Pilate

“Are you,” asked a very small child with wide eyes, “the real Santa Claus?”

An impressively complex questions, as I am sure that you admit. 

One which, in many ways, one could say that the whole of my education and experience had been leading up to.  Here was something to tax what I laughingly refer to as my intellect.  Something to push my grasp of ethics.   Something to stretch my concept of morality.

That trusting face, filled with expectation and enquiry, open and innocent waiting for the truth.

The Truth.

I lied, of course.  Instantly and totally with the sincerity which I have laboured to make natural for the whole of my life.

But there again.  With legend, when whatever was once real is lost in the mists of time, interpretation when your representation is a real as it gets.  Perhaps I was telling the truth.

What I thought was going to be a quick appearance, a few waves and a few chortles did not quite turn out like that.

Enthroned on an old-fashioned high-winged bow-legged armchair in boots which had taken me minutes to get on and with a beard and moustache that refused to stay anywhere near my mouth I was trapped for two and a half hours as waves of small people came and received books from my white gloved hands.

Admittedly I only came into contact with the more foetal members of our school, but there did seem to be hordes of them.

They arrived class by class wide-eyed with wonder.  They clustered around me for a group photograph which was only possible because of their teachers’ ability to arrange the kids like a three-dimensional jigsaw in a matter of seconds ensuring that each face can be seen in the final photograph.  Watching them work was a Master Class on how to move small lumps of humanity into a convincing array of humanity.

Each child had an individual photo taken with “Santa” and no present was released into small grasping hands until each child had said, or at least mumbled a convincing version of “Thank you!”

“Santa” was regaled with various songs from the groups.  He was presented with letters.  One child gave him a piece of cake.  Yet another gave him a Christmas card, another a small plastic Santa and one enterprising child (who will obviously go far) gave him a toilet tube covered with crepe paper inside which was a scribbled picture, a small sweet, a plastic silhouette of a bear and a 50c coin.

From time to time Santa’s vigil was enlivened by colleagues arriving and, after emitting little squeaks of admiration or surprise at the transformation, having their photographs taken as well.

The best response however, was when Santa had just got changed and was waiting in the staff room.  One female primary school teacher came in and did not notice the Gentleman in Red until she turned round and then screamed and fell back on a table and then laughed to cover her rather extreme reaction.

Although the reaction of the children was gratifying, two and a half hours of bonhomie towards very small people with a limited command of English was a little wearing.

At the end of Santa’s stint he was supposed to transform himself into a normal teacher and help the Invisible Friends distribution of presents in the equivalent of a Year 8 class.

I am afraid to say that I pulled rank and declined to do anything more and after saying farewell to colleagues he went home.

And collapsed onto a reclining chair and waited for normal service to be resumed.

Within an hour or so Toni returned from Terrassa together with sister, mother and two nephews.

When they left we went out for dinner and had an excellent meal in a new restaurant in which we were the only diners.

An early night was called for.  And was had.

Saturday was taken up with a chaotic visit to the doctor for Toni in a medical centre where the electricity failed as soon as he entered the consulting room.  Chaos continued as he attempted to get a copy of his recent scan.  That is a continuing story.

My own visit was more conventional and my next appointment is scheduled for the 30^th.

And the car needs to be repaired as the acceleration has become faulty and the engine is racing.

Always there is something!

The little patch of blue!

It is always a bracing educational challenge when you find yourself confronted with the loss of your free period on the penultimate day of school.  I find it brings out the best in me, especially when one has a meeting to look forward to after school which will spell out in detail just how much and when we are going to be paid less!

So while I ponder on my possible response to having money ripped from my paltry pay packet I can thank my lucky stars that I only have four periods today rather than the six of yesterday so the free period lost today only brought up my teaching time to a full working day in the UK.   Comparisons are odious and I must keep remembering the sage advice that so often drifts into my bemused mind as I observe the way that Catalonia works: “Remember Stephen, you are not in Britain.”

At lunchtime we had a speculative discussion about what the meeting this evening might hold.  I feel that an across the board reduction in wages when not everybody is directly affected in the same way is patently unfair.  The Byzantine way in which our wages are computed means that some teachers are paid entirely by the Foundation of our school, others entirely by the state and yet others (myself included) are paid by both.  The government is the institution reducing payment so some people should be entirely unaffected by what our political masters say and some only tangentially.  The situation is a mess, but I do not think that penalising those who are entitled to a full payment in the cause of a specious fairness is the right thing to do.

I am actually looking forward to this meeting – in spite of the fact that I do not expect to hear any good news from it.  What I am anticipating is the delight with which I will watch the way in which the school attempts to square the circle. 

Good luck to them! 

Except it is a little difficult to maintain a lofty and smilingly ironic detachment from the discussion when it is your own pay that is being talked about!

Toni has gone to Terrassa for a dramatic entertainment spread over two days in which his nephews are going to have starring parts, or at least they are going to be on stage and in the public view.  Alas!  I am teaching and have to be in school so I am unable to share the delight of seeing a five and a three year-old display their undoubted but nascent thespian skills.

I plan a therapeutic reading session after the meeting this evening.  God alone knows how long it will go on for, but I do know that everyone has something to say when it concerns the magic subject of income.  I trust that I will be able to slip out when the information has been given, and before the discussion about impossible things we might do starts!

The meeting was a damp squib!  True we were told that we would only be paid 80% of our “extra” payment this December, but we were given the partial expectation that we might get the other 20% in January.  This is 20% of a month’s salary as we are paid in fourteen instalments during the year with two instalments in December and June.  If we are to be paid back in January (we hope) then this is a very short term expedient to very little purpose by the government.  Much more serious is the threat of a further cut to salary in February of next year – but our meeting said nothing about that.  All is still speculation.

Meanwhile my cough remains, though I think it is gradually fading – or that may merely be wishful thinking!

I shall have an early night, because it is an early start for me tomorrow and at mid-day I will become magically transformed into the personification of the season.

As I went to lunch today I was hailed by Primary colleagues who asked me if I had seen my seat.  I had not.  And was a little disturbed to see an ornate armchair set up in a rather more public vestibule area than I would have liked.  It all seems to be very serious and getting slightly out of hand!

I am more than a little concerned at the escalation of what I thought was going to be a fleeting visit, a few ho  ho hos and away.

My Christmas ties (yes, I have more than one) have gone down a treat and it is sobering to consider that my person and my teaching may be soon forgotten but my ties will live on in legend!

Where is my puffer?  Live a little, say I!

Little by little!

Time ticks on in this slowest of all ends to a tired term.

The dawns, which I watch from the eyrie of the staff room in building 1 become progressively more spectacular with a great swathe of ochre orange splashed across the sky sandwiched between bands of black and dirty purple lapsing into a military looking blue-grey, until the sun finally arrives in all its resplendent vulgarity.

Today is my six period day giving me no pause for thought to dwell on what the management might say tomorrow in the meeting (after school of course!) to tell us just how much worse off we are going to be in the future.  A future that looks increasingly precarious for the country let alone for a privileged, though for this sector, a fairly considerate school like ours.

Taking my cue from Marie Antoinette I am rising above the chaos all around me by steadily listening to the half price EMI operas that I bought from El Corte Ingles.  “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” yesterday and “The Turn of the Screw” today.  Both of these are splendid productions with excellent voices and a world away from the screeching unmusicality of a highlights of “Turandot” I suffered last week with a cast of consonant heavy eastern Europeans with ululating vibratos whose visual representations would not have looked out of place in a vertiginous ride in a Disney theme park.  One of my more laboured metaphors there!

It may be psychological rather than medicinal, but I do feel marginally better this morning after a few puffs of my new inhaler and I look forward to continued improvement so that I can break the series of Christmas Days when I have been feeling hors de combat.  Our Christmas meals are so delicious it is a culinary crime to miss out on any morsel!

Now that the sky has turned colour yet again and the military greys have become soft violets or mauves I think it is time for my start-of-the-day cup of tea.

The staff room of building one is at least partially removed from the morning scream of children.  We are one floor up and at least two if not three closed doors away from their piercing voices, so the start of the day here is not so trying as it is in the other staff room where the separation of kids from staff is non-existent.

To my mind there is nothing worse than the easy acceptance of pupils entering the staff room.  In this school pupils seem to think that they have an absolute right of entry.  Part of the problem is that the pupils’ “breakfast” is kept in the staff rooms for pupils’ representatives to collect for the morning break.  This should not happen, but I seem to be one of the few teachers who are even remotely concerned about it.  But let it pass, let it pass.  There is the meeting on Wednesday to worry about which puts the appearance of pupils’ faces into perspective.

The last two periods today were less stressful than normal with the pupils shunted into the computer room for the last period trying to analyse the shots used to produce commercials.  Nothing like making the pupils think!

The hours left in work are rapidly (I’m saying that to convince myself) dwindling and the glorious release of the holidays is well within sight.

The remaining horror is the reality of what might be said in the meeting tomorrow when the full extent of the parsimony of the school and government are laid open for inspection.  I still have residual faith in the school doing the right thing – though what the right thing to do is at this time is not entirely clear.

Tomorrow will clarify the position and give me pause for thought.

Something to do

Well, one day down and only three to go.  Though that “only” does not see so insignificant as it might suggest!

My continuing and thoroughly tedious story of low level but mildly decapitating illness has now driven me to a further consultation with the doctor.  This visit was made into a necessity after the depressing day of relentless teaching and a lunchtime duty – oh yes, and a meeting at the end of lunchtime as well.

I called into the doctors after school and asked for an appointment which, surprisingly I was given for ten past six in the evening.

I returned to the surgery after a swift visit home and I was seen first!  Some things do happen properly.

I am now the proud possessor of two inhalers which are going to give me medication for the next month.  It has been decided that my little cough be upgraded to bronchitis with my next appointment being on Friday to see what progress I have made.  At no point in the consultation did I hear the suggestion that “time off” might be part of the treatment.  There is no justice in this harsh world!

My mild inconvenience is as nothing when compared to what is probably about to happen in school.

The government has been suggesting and hinting about their response to the crisis with regard to the teaching profession.  As our school is substantially supported by grants from the Generalitat we are probably going to part of the way in which this bankrupt country is going to try and extricate itself from some of the financial chaos which its own mismanagement has created.

Teachers have already been subject to something like a 5% cut in salary which our own school made up from the Foundation funds so that no teacher had a reduction.  Any further reduction will probably not be compensated for by Foundation funds and working out the exact proportions of money to be reduced will be difficult.

The school will be presented with an incredibly difficult problem because they will not want to reduce the salary of any one teacher, but if the funds are not available from the government then some sort of discrimination will be difficult to avoid.

I am expecting that our “extra” pay will be delayed or perhaps even reduced.  Speculation is rife within my own brain, but my colleagues seem strangely subdued in their expectations.  Wednesday should illuminate some of the darker corners of the government’s financial mind – if indeed it has anything approaching a coherent plan about what to do.

It is typical of management that such important information is to be relayed to the workers on the day before a holiday.  How well I remember such tactics being used with boring regularity in Britain.  Nothing changes.

But I do at least hope that the drugs that I now have in an unholy cocktail will do something to shift the mucus soaked cough ridden ill health which I find so tedious at the moment.

Coughing Continues

FRIDAY 16^TH DECEMBER 2011

Arriving home to a new-cameraless house is a dispiriting experience.  I checked again in my emails and ascertained that the item had been “handed over to carriers” in Spain five days previously.  Five days is surely enough to deliver one small package!

Toni, as usual, suggested a practical course of action: phoning the company.  Unable to find the details on Amazon’s “complete” list of carriers but the Internet, as ever, provided the dire news that the carrier is one with which I have had similar unsatisfactory experiences before.

After trying various telephone numbers we were at last able to find out that, yes, the item was in the carrier’s Castelldefels office and of course they had left a note informing us that they had attempted to deliver the package.  And if there was no note then it was perhaps the large letter box on the pillar of the front gate, just under the “B” of the torre of the house, was impossible to see by the hard working deliverer.  Or, if we didn’t like that obviously false excuse then it was Amazon’s fault.

As our past experience of this carrier is that its operatives are a little less than honest and scrupulous in their deliveries – casually throwing packages with fragile contents over the front wall and leaving notes (!) for non-response when people have been at home.  We always end up trying to find a parking space in the congested area around the office in the centre of Castelldefels.  I feel the futility of making a fuss when I am there and the desire to get my hands on the package always outweighs the expression of frustration that I should make as a response to the incompetence that they constantly show.

The end result of the telephone calls was that we went in person to pick up the goodies and then had a meal in a corner restaurant that we had tried (and dismissed) once before.  In an exceptional demonstration of magnanimity we decided to give it a second chance.

We had a series of tapas including a very cold and oddly tasting Russian Salad and a thoroughly delicious Pulpo Gallego served traditionally on a wooden round accompanied by some potatoes cooked in the Gallician style.  All this was washed down with a more than decent Rioja diluted by Casera to make it seem reasonable and positively abstemious!  It was quite pricey at €45 but I think we can let it re-join the list of the favoured establishments that we sometime patronize.  Though the expense may limit our attendance.

The worst thing about gaining a gadget in the short term is the amount of time necessary for the battery of the damn thing to charge.  The tiny red light on my camera stubbornly refused to extinguish itself in spite of my constant trips to the kitchen where the machine was soaking up power from one of the three pin sockets that take British plugs.

I did eventually get my hands on the little beauty and it is a delight.  It is small, as befits a device that is now in direct competition with mobile phones.  The improvement of the mobile phone as a picture taking machine has compromised the utility of a separate camera and therefore the newest cameras have to contend with increasingly sophisticated gadgets like the i-phone 4 (S) which offers a whole suite of editing possibilities as well as the computer facilities – not to mention a phone!

My new Samsung looks more like a phone than a camera and it is only when the thing is switched on the lens emerges that its single function is made clear.

Its touch screen and icon led capabilities have only been tentatively explored by me at the moment but, as I have brought it to school, I took advantage of a high vantage point and a particularly spectacular dawn to take my first “proper” photograph!

The USP of this camera is the fact that it has a screen which can be tilted to 180° which, I am reliably informed, facilitates the taking of accurate, well centred low level and over-the-head shots.  There is also a satisfyingly large number of icons which allow the image to be played with.  I do have another camera which is larger and bulkier which does the same sort of thing, but this one appears to be better, more sophisticated and a damn sight smaller. 

The real test, of course, will be with my on-going attempt to take a satisfactory fireworks photograph.  With dawn safely on the memory card can pyrotechnics be far behind?  I am itching to try every aspect of the machine out, but I am constrained by the presence of colleagues to keep it to myself – as I rather expected I would have to.  I am, however, going to flaunt it in my Current Affairs class under the specious topic of “Gadgets – do we need them?”

Well, I did get to show off my camera and the discussion was interesting, at least it passed the time and that is one thing which has been dragging throughout this week which started with the horror of consecutive meetings on the first two days after school.  I don’t think we as a staff have actually recovered from those yet.  It will take a holiday just to get back to normal.

Next week is, at last, the final week of term – just another four days until Thursday and then release!  This final week was not made any more tolerable by Paul 1 phoning up to let me know that he had just broken up for the holidays!

SATURDAY 17^TH DECEMBER 2011

The feeling of wellness was further away today.  In spite of the pills and lotions that I have gulped down I am feeling still below par.  This is clearly not fair and I am becoming more and more worried as soon I am going to be ill in my own time.  It is one thing to be unwell during the weekend, it is quite another to be misfiring on one or more cylinders during a proper holiday.

We did manage to go out for an excellent lunch and I did manage to take some photographs, though putting them in the body of an email seems to be something which is simply too difficult to accomplish.  I have even been on You Tube to get the advice of the under tens who seem to command authority on that benighted site.  Nothing works.

A generally miserable day and early to bed in the hope that the morrow will dawn bright and that I might follow it.

SUNDAY 18^TH DECEMBER 2011

A lie in but still no real improvement.  I think that another visit to the Quack is called for, certainly before Christmas and the general cessation of activity which that festival entails.

I have noticed that the engine in my car is racing when I accelerate.  I have no idea what this means except that I am sure that it entails my throwing large sums of money at surly mechanics.  I hate spending money on a car when you have already bought the bloody thing almost as much as I resent buying cleaning fluid: necessary but hardly interesting.

Toni and I are now snuffling and coughing in a demented way that reminds me of the more harmonious sections of that extended joke of an opera I went to see recently - Le Grand Macabre.  The way we are both feeling at the moment do chime in with the more noisy end-of-the-world manifestations that clumsy piece tinkered with.

The only clearly positive thing that has happened today is that Barça have won the title of World Champion Club Side.  This is good is two ways: not only because Barça have won, but also because Real Madrid have not.  I await with pleasurable anticipation the snarlingly petty whinings of the coach of Real Madrid who I think has a genuine gift for comedy in the manner of Max Wall!

Tomorrow is the start of the final week of term which will be truncated by the fact that we finish on the 22^nd of December and therefore Friday will be the start of our holidays.

There is almost a tangible fear in our place that this last week may descend into some sort of Saturnalian orgy of education-free enjoyment for the kids so tests, timed essays and photocopies of extra work are being marshalled so that no element of jollity informs our woefully extended days.

The last day of term is always a struggle.  I can remember the admonishments of successive headteachers who were firm believer in the “teach until the end” theory of pupil containment – mainly of course because they were not the ones doing the teaching.

I think that even we do “something” on the last day of term with kids exchanging “Secret Santa” presents; a football tournament, and even a film.  I will, of course have other duties (cough allowing) and will see to keep as great a distance as possible between me and pupils en mass.  I also have a free period during the last period of the day and I am damned if I am going to give that up to help some dreary concession to the season.  I cannot wait for the moment of release and I shall ritually kick the dust off my feet until next year.

Four more days!

Magic!

Toni, as he mentioned forcibly to the doctor who was speaking to him at the end of his particularly pointless series of rehabilitation exercises on his faulty knee, had been waiting for a magnetic resonance scan for one month and twenty days.  He cut through the vacuous pleasantries of the woman and made the strength of his displeasure obvious.  He was then assured that the hospital would be contacted and that the hospital would contact him either on the same day or the next without fail.  If failure there was then he was to ring the hospital and speak directly to the person involved.

My arrival home (to no new camera!) was taken up with a discussion about Toni’s experiences for the first hour or so and our general dismissal of the managerial approach to expensive resources.  We both agreed that something like a magnetic resonance scanner should be operated virtually 24 hours a day and we would be prepared to go at five o’clock in the morning is that was when the machine was available.

To change our mood and to bring an end to the bitter recriminations about the health of the health service in Spain and the general level of corruption that we felt motivated everyone and everything we went out to a local fast food joint and had some comfort food!

When we were driving home, Toni’s mobile started ringing.  It was the hospital asking if Toni could get to the hospital at once and they had an opportunity to get him done.

We went, but all the way there we speculated on the fact that if this could suddenly be arranged on the day that Toni made a fuss in rehab. perhaps it could have been arranged one month and twenty days ago just as easily!  After all if the machine has a quota of ten patients a day, it is almost certain that at least one of them will cancel on the day itself and another will simply not turn up, thereby giving spaces which someone like Toni would have been eager and available to fill.

Still, the scan has now been done and we should (and are) grateful.  There is now a week’s delay and the scan should be ready to be interpreted and we will have a clearer idea of what exactly is wrong with Toni’s knee.  And that, surely, is the start of real improvement.  I hope.

Meanwhile this interminable week drags its tortuous way along without the bright spot of playing around with a new camera.  I know that I should not have built any hopes on a “three day delivery” as being anything other than a series of connected pixels on a computer screen, but I did and I am bitterly disappointed that I do not have my latest gadget to hand with which to play or experiment as I should say.

We are leading up to the Maths Department Photography Competition which I force my colleagues to enter because we are seeking to stymie the relentless success of one of my senior colleagues who until fairly recently seemed to have a monopoly of staff prizes.  Last year we broke the sequence with a colleague in the English Department walking away with the laurels.  This is something we hope to repeat this year!  My new gadget will be extensively used to find that elusive winner in our “Anyone Other Than X” approach to the competition!

All entries are printed out and exhibited in a small exhibition in the new building of the secondary section of the school.  The winners of each section of the competition are sent to the regional final of the competition for Barcelona so here is the chance of fame and glory awaiting the most proficient.

Having spoken to the maths teacher it appears that the titles of the photographs are more important than the actual picture itself.  Points are obviously awarded for the specious linking of a random picture with some mathematical concept.  I have a long held ambition to produce a photograph to illustrate the solution used to solve quadratic equations but, in spite of repeated request to those who should know, I have been given little help in trying to find a subject that provides a graphic equivalent.  I shall continue to search and, as soon as I get my hand on my new camera, snap!

There continues to be no sense of the Festive Season in school, which makes this endless week seem even longer.  As far as I can tell there is little or no concession to Christmas in the plans for next week apart from the last day of term when chaos will reign supreme and I will rise in all my red splendour as the Scarlet King of Misrule.  Though I think that such an interpretation of the role might go a little way above the heads of the miniscule foetal children who are my target audience.

It will be interesting to compare the reactions of Spanish children with the little kids of British staff who have been my previous victims.   In my experience, no matter how Jolly you appear to be the character is usually enough in itself to provoke floods of tears in some children and their despairing rush to the comforting arms of teachers.  We shall see.