A bad day.

Milk was the first thing and the final straw.

I cannot pretend that I woke up with any degree of joyful anticipation.  I woke up in the dark and, even though I know that the evenings will be lighter for longer in the future, I resent the hour lost by the changing of the clocks – and it is dark in the mornings.  Again.

So, starting with resentment, I confidently expected this to develop into cold fury as a result of the traditional antics of my fellow drivers but, for once, they were reasonably well behaved.  The simple thought of the forthcoming day however was enough to set my expression fixedly.

The five lessons I teach today have been expanded to six with my participation in project based learning and that, in conjunction with a lunchtime duty means that I will be “engaged” from 8.45 am to 2.45 pm solidly with one mid-morning playtime for a quick cup of tea!  


Six bloody hours virtually non-stop.  Ridiculous!  


Then another period to finish off the day and then immediately after school a vast, rambling, useless meeting.  


I have already warned Toni that my mood is going to be foul at best by the time I eventually get back home.  The only positive element in this catastrophic day that I can see is that I might make it back in something like daylight.

But let us concentrate on the negative.

As I loathe the meetings we have in this school so much I have to ensure that my car is parked as near to the meeting as possible to facilitate my swift egress.  As there are two possible meeting venues in the school which are in buildings separated by a quantity of steps it is important to choose wisely.

I parked as near as I could to the exit of the building where I assumed the meeting would be likely to take place and was rewarded by a newly posted notice giving information that confirmed my suspicions.

I established myself in the staffroom and proceeded to make my start-of-the-day cup of tea.  


And there was no milk.  


Again.

The Mark of Cain is a concept that some teachers are very familiar with.  One does not have to commit murder to get it and it is not always visible - but it exists.  


There are those people who go to the photocopier and get photocopies - while there are others of us who go to the photocopier and have to load the bloody thing with paper.  Again.  And again.  It’s the same thing with the communal stapler.  And especially with the milk in this particular staff room.

Many moons ago when I first discovered for the first time and to my utter horror that there was no milk for my cup of tea, I was told that milk was always available in one of the labyrinthine rooms in the internal structure of the building which comprises the original servants’ quarters and work rooms.  


But to find the milk is a walk down two flights of stairs and then through a collection of interconnected rooms to a metal storage unit on which the precious fluid can be found.  And find it I do – on a regular basis.  


I fail to understand why in this staffroom the milk runs out whereas in the other staff room the milk is always there in plenty.  One of the strange but true facts of school life!

Anyway, the lack of milk this morning was tantamount to a personal affront when added to the constant delight that this day promises to offer to a downcast dominie!

So it goes on.  Today, the first day of the last week of term, is also the first day with the new groups that will see me through to the end of the year.

My first class, a new group of the1ESO I was able to dazzle with my origami skills as a way to getting them writing about themselves.  Two minutes before the class started I worked out the folds that I needed to produce a wedge shaped end result which could be opened up sequentially giving a progressive revelation of skills, appearance, ability etc.  The kids loved it and worked solidly throughout the hour with the ultimate accolade of one kid expressing genuine surprise that the time was over at the end of the lesson!  It’s things like that that keep me going!

One girl after writing furiously throughout the lesson asked if she could write about her personality and, in what I think was a truly inspired moment, I told her that she had “jumped the gun” and what she was asking to write was what the last space on the two sided sheet of A4 was left for!  I further improvised that I wanted the kids to take their work home, show it to parents (translating when necessary) and then discuss what the true personality of the child was and fill in the empty space – in a different coloured pen.  


Creative duplicity in things educational at a moment’s notice is one of my specialities!  


A good lesson which I will now write up for future use.

I have told the authorities in the school that I am going on strike on Thursday.  I photocopied the information that Steve (All praise!) from my Union (CCOO) gave me and have distributed it to all members of the English department and to management.  


I now know of two other teachers who are going to take action: one in Primary and the other in Secondary.  It’s something.  Not much, but something!

The most interesting aspect of the action of course will be to see the reaction of colleagues as they realise that one of their own taking action while they are not is an implied condemnation.  Naturally.

What management will do is as predictable as it is shameful.  They will mitigate the effect of the action by collapsing classes and asking other people to take classes.  The information which I have given management makes it perfectly clear than such action is illegal and could be reported to the government as it clearly infringes my constitutional rights to strike.  If the last bit sounds a bit stilted then it is because I am quoting my union friend!  But it is true and the management I hope will take cognizance of such constraints on their possible actions.  Time will certainly tell and I will spend Friday trying to find out exactly what went on during my absence.

The colleague in Australia has not been given supply cover.  The colleague on maternity leave has not been covered by supply until after Easter, so these days leading up to the holiday are simply tough luck on those colleagues left in school.

The obvious response to a General Strike is to close the school – if only on Health & Safety grounds.  But our parents show a marked lack of enthusiasm for looking after their progeny unless they absolutely have to!

There are still three days to go before the Strike and I look forward to machinations worthy of the dear, alas dead, author of “The Prince” who, we will probably find, could have learned a trick or two from the present day employers of modern Spain as our esteemed government leads us proudly back to the good old days of El Caudillo.   Perhaps a little extreme that last thought, but not too far from the truth as the opportunity to “revise” some of the absurd employment laws is grabbed with both opportunistic hands by PP – our present corrupted government.

I suspect that there may be as many as three of us taking action in Secondary!  Believe me this is a breakthrough in rampant militantism and threatens to escalate into . . .  well, let me not lose a sense of proportion, I suppose it is better than nothing or just me.  We’ll have this place turned into a closed shop in no time.  With the emphasis on “no time” I think!

The lesson I was supposed to have with my new group Making Sense of Modern Art was cancelled with no notice and I had to take the whole class who were doing their projects.  And thanks to the new timetable, I had to do two hours with the same year group.

My present mind expanding chore is sitting with a group of 3ESO as they spend extra time on their projects.  This is not really a hardship as trying to bring them back onto the academic road last thing in a “free-ish” day is not something that I particularly want to do and, to make the bad slightly better I am doing the first half of the period and a colleague is going to do the second half giving me time to make my weary way to the other building to the site of the meeting.  But also it is nearer to the car and escape!

There is some sort of timetable for the meeting this evening and it says that the meeting ends at 7.00 pm.  I am taking that as gospel and am inclined to flounce out at the stated time – though I suppose that would look a little studied when you have just told the management that you are going on strike!

I am now fully prepared for the meeting with the only question in my mind whether or not to take in chocolate to give us some necessary energy to get through the imposition.

As a way of keeping sane I have decided to type out my comments as the meeting progresses.  I was almost caught out the last time when the deputy head asked, sweetly, if she could have a copy of my notes.  I had to explain that they were personal.  And so I kept my job!

And yes, if you can remember that far back, I did have to load the photocopier with paper when I went to use it! 

Soap!

The ability to take delight in the contemplation of seemingly insignificant things is, I am forced to conclude by reason of personal guilt in this respect, one of the attributes of a great mind.

This conclusion came to me, as is not infrequent, in the bathroom – and all because of a Christmas present.

One of my tasteful gifts was a set of various semi-liquids for the cleansing and softening of the external person.  The hand cream I must admit I used once and then promptly poured into the toilet and used the excellent empty container to put real after-sun cream in. 

The first of the other two items was a supposed shower gel which was astonishingly inefficient at its stated job, but which I thought would make an excellent hand wash especially as the supplies in the dispenser on the wash basin was getting low.  The original contents of the dispenser was a white liquid soap to which I now added the blue shower gel and gave them a jolly good shake up.  The resulting pale blue soap was pleasingly aesthetic and I thought that I had struck a blow for economy.

In the morning, of course, the liquids had separated into their distinct layers with the white being the heavier – it still looked aesthetically pleasing and gradually, as the white layer was used up the resultant soap began to the light blue of the original shaken mixture.

Use, however created space at the top of the dispenser and thus the third bottle from the Christmas gift came into operation.  This bottle looks as though it contains mashed up moss and purports to be some sort of facial scrub.  This means that the soap is augmented by a quantity of grit; the theory being that rubbing grit into one’s face removes dead skin cells.  I would have though that it would also remove living ones but, on the Euthymol Toothpaste Test (if it hurts or revolts you it must be doing you good) such cleansing masochism is quite popular.  I therefore decided to add it to the mix.

I think I know that there is a difference between “denser” and “heavier” with ice being a denser but lighter form of water than liquid water.  This facial scrub is much more macho than the white or blue cleaner.

Having squirted some of it from the bottle it looks like the sort of stuff that you could feed to babies if mashed moss and algae (with added grit) was the sort of thing that parents thought would do their sprogs good.  Alternatively, one could say that it also looks like the sort of stuff which may have come out of the other end of the neophyte humans.

Notwithstanding some initial misgivings I forced some of the stuff into the dispenser and now I have a thin opaque white layer on which a luminously transparent blue layer rests which is topped by a convoluted bulbous mass of the facial scrub looking like some revoltingly bumpy iceberg with the greater part submerged in the blue.  The facial scrub has a greater integrity than either of the other liquids and I am fascinated to see what will happen over time as gravity and physics force them into some sort of uneasy co-existence.

As you can clearly tell by the foregoing, I even more clearly need the holiday which will allow me to recharge the program in my mind which deal with priorities and be able to tell me that watching liquids separate is not conducive to academic advancement!

In a more outgoing way I went to Barcelona yesterday to meet Irene so that we could bewail our situations and set the world to rights.

We frightened ourselves with our lack of knowledge of French given the impending holiday to deepest darkest Northern France that is going to mark the beginning of the summer holiday for us.  I suspect that Irene’s “I know nothing” is not quite at the same level of truth as my assertion that the tattered remnants of my O Level in French have long since been swept away by the winds of time.  But I am still amazed that I can sometimes remember the French word for something when the Spanish equivalent remains firmly locked outside my memory.  We shall see.

Lunch was a Lebanese or Turkish concoction and made a welcome change from the food that I usually eat.

Unsurprisingly I did not adjust my clock and so I was an hour late for lunch in Terrassa.  This is made even more inexcusable when I tell you that Toni phoned up earlier in the morning and pointed out that I was probably an hour out in my calculations.  I thanked him for the information and then it left my mind as completely as the reason for having to learn how to do quadratic equations has left my brain.  Though not, interestingly, the formula for solving said equations, all of it right down to the “all over 2a” at the end, with the emphasis on “all” is sharp and clear, ready to be used if anyone could tell me how and why.

The visit to Terrassa was short and sharp (and a hour less) and I was able to go back into my car and strive for the ultimate accolade that the machine gives which is a flashing “EXCELLENT” for the quality of the “eco” drive that you have had.

As far as possible I now rely on the “cruise control” to drive the car, as the on-board computer seems to manage a more economical drive than I do with my foot on the accelerator.

I am also getting close to the first 1,000 kilometres when the car has its first check to see that everything is working properly.

Again my only complaint is with the information that the car displays when a CD is playing.  I am convinced that this is something which should be working better but we have not managed to come to terms with the detail of the instruction booklet for the TomTom which is the display heart of the system.  I will get to grips with this in the holiday because this is the only thing about the car which is not satisfactory at the moment.

Oh, and the boot which is smaller than on my previous car.  But there is something I might be able to do as there is a “floor” to the boot which can be removed revealing a sort of well and it is only underneath that well (so I am informed) that the spare tyre lurks, so it must be possible to dispense with the “floor” and make use of the increased space.  In fact I will go and do that now!

Done!  Bigger at a stroke.  If only the rest of life was that easy!

Let us not forget that next week is the last week of term.  Just to take away the pleasure from that sentence the powers that be have ordained that there will be two monster meetings on Monday and Tuesday after school.  Given the time that I get into school in the mornings this means that by the end of Wednesday I will have been in school for something over thirty-two hours!  An awful prospect!

My ever-excellent friend in the Union has sent me information for distribution to colleagues about their duties if a colleague goes on strike.  Not that I think that it will have very much effect.  Still, one should take every opportunity to encourage people to do the right thing!

And still the thrust towards project-based learning is going on, leading up to a climax when the kids make their presentations – on the day of the General Strike. 

Hey ho! such things happen.

Counting down!

The foul weather has persisted up until today with howling gales, thunder and lightning and torrential rain – and now, at lunchtime the sun has made an appearance!  I love this country!

Which is more than I can say for the institutions which grace it!

I have been told (by a fellow union member) that my absence due to strike action will be treated by the school as if I was absent through illness and I will be covered (or not covered) in the normal way.  When I used the “S” word, my colleague informed me that Spain was not Britain and people would not understand the most virulent words a unionist!

“You will get,” he said, “no support in your action.  You will be by yourself!”  So what else is new, I thought to myself.  I am a past master of poking my head above the parapet on all possible occasions – both worthy and also trivial.  Sometimes I do not even have to raise my head to be within firing range!

But what the government (nation and local) is doing now is beyond contempt.  Imposing cowardly retrospective taxes is contemptible and to allow these cowboys calling themselves politicians to get away with it is not acceptable.  Something Must Be Done and my going on strike is my small gesture of defiance.  The fact that it will be a lone act of defiance is depressing, the fact that its effect will be vitiated by the action of “supportive” colleagues is more than depressing.  It’s disgusting.

Still, this is the real world in which I have to live and my ideas are not those of the majority of my colleagues.  That’s life!

The sun, however, shines.  And is shining brightly.  And I fully intend to go home early and the hell with everyone!

This does mean that I have infinity of marks to enter into the computer tomorrow or over the weekend.  As exams are still being frantically marked for a meeting which can quite easily be moved, but which is now an almost intolerable imposition.  We work ourselves into a frazzle for no reason whatsoever – and for wages which are shrinking as we wait!

The first day of our wrestling with the demands of project-based learning is coming to an end and there are, as far as I can tell, no casualties.  Teaching has gone on and the kids have responded or not in the normal day.

My lesson with the kids was one that I designed myself and, apart from the lack of sufficient time to complete it fully, it worked reasonably well.  Not, of course that I wouldn’t change things were it to be done again – but the basis of an effective learning experience has been established.

Tomorrow sees Day 2 of the PBL (project based learning) experience but, whereas previously it has been all day, this year it has been limited to the morning or the afternoon or the middle of the day or a combination of any of the preceding – leading of course to confusion and resentment.  Especially if you happen to have ordinary lessons in the periods when the kids are not enjoying the freedom of the projects.  In the case of Y9 for example, we are lucky enough in the English Department to have these “lively” kids last thing in the afternoon three times in the week and all during the ordinary periods when we will have to try and drag them back to academic lessons after the open approach of the rest of their day. 

Great happiness! 

What's happening?

Yesterday, the first day of spring, with the irony that confirms the existence of a cruel god, was positively wintry with cold gusts of wind and spiteful spits of rain. 

This adverse weather has continued into the second day of “spring” and has created a day which illustrates the pathetic fallacy as the grey, cold, rainy weather reflects the feeling of depression which fills the hearts of teachers as they see a large substitution list for a colleague who has gone home to Australia for domestic reasons and has not, of course, been replaced by a supply teacher; the looming need to fill in the meaningless marks out of ten for our pupils on some cranky computer system; the chaos which is going to accompany the new approach to a week of project based learning, and all of this further exacerbated by the lack of chocolate. 

Even the relatively near end of term (eight working days away) fails to give the fillip that it should.  We are all too bone-weary to get excited about something like that.  And it’s a much shorter a holiday than its equivalent in the UK.

I am now stuck in front of a Y8 class who are revising for a science exam; at least I only have to do half the lesson as my colleague who shares this class will be coming to do her part and I can escape for a few brief minutes into the tranquillity of the staffroom, where I have to replenish the iconic Chocolate Box in my cupboard which has become such an institution in the school!

I am now sitting in front of a Y7 class and, apart from the inevitable questions about the paper (this is Spain after all) they are working in silence.  But before you think that this is money for old rope, I actually have to mark what these small people are writing.  Furthermore, it has to be done in double quick time because the marks need to be entered onto the school computer system.  There there are two long, long, long meetings at the start of next week just to make sure that we fully appreciate the value of the holiday that will begin at the end of it!

The marking of the papers is going to be difficult as tomorrow marks the beginning of the project based learning programme and people are already getting het up about it as it is (they assume) going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. 

Ah well, another shining example of the sort of planned chaos this school does so well.

Personally, I think that everything will go quite well and people will be pleased with the results that they get and the response from the pupils.  Time will tell.

The strike is on the 29^th of March and I am more determined than ever to take part in it.  I have said this to a couple of my colleagues and I have also pointed out that I expect them NOT TO TAKE MY CLASSES.  They smile, because they have as much experience of being in and belief in a real Trade Union as the present chubby little dictator of North Korea.  And I smile too because it would be too harsh to tell them that what they are smiling at is an action beneath which there is no lower action in the mind of a Trade Unionist.  I have minor fantasies of standing outside the school with a placard, forming a picket line of one and screaming “Scab!” at every teacher who crosses it.  I won’t do it.  Probably.

But I am feeling more militant at each passing day!

What is there without chocolate?

Thank god for M&S.  Thank god for colleagues using the Occasional Day on Monday to visit aged Ps in Great Britain.

The spirit of Chocolate Week lives on!

The end result is two buckets (poetic licence) of chocolate coated goodies with the style and quality of that most wonderful of shops.  And in the other staff room a delicious chocolate roulade cake!  Delightful.  I used to think that getting soft toilet paper introduced into a school in which I taught was my greatest achievement in education – but I do think that chocolate week, extending as it is into its third or fourth great week is a greater triumph to put to my credit!

Not of course that I actually shop there. 

Even when I was living in the UK I did not shop there, but I liked living near a store.  I heard/read that geographers used the location of M&S stores as a shorthand way of finding out the socio-economic status of a particular area: if M&S was there then you could assume that all the requisites of a normal middle class life were to hand; if M&S were not there then you were in Skelmsdale or equivalent.  I therefore made it a rule not to live more than three miles away from an M&S store.

The equivalent in Spain of M&S is, in my view El Corte Ingles and, although I had to be a little more flexible on distance, I am now delighted to report that the whole system has reversed itself and the store is following me!  We now have a branch of El Corte Ingles (admittedly a discount store, but it still has the name) well within the three-mile limit of my present domicile!

Another glorious day made that little bit more squalid because I am looking at the sun’s refulgence through the grimy window of a staff room rather than in the free space of the Third Floor.  Still, it’s better than looking at rain.

As far as I am aware, the day today is one ravaged by examination supervision so that the normal timetable is in shreds.  There is also a colleague absent which always adds its own dash of chaos as we work so near to capacity – so who knows what might happen today!

First lesson and it’s payback time!

I gained part of a period last week and now my colleague has claimed her rights and I am stuck in front of a class revising or should that be “revising” for their examination.  To be fair since so much of the ethos of the school is taken up by the process of examinations the pupils are well versed in the niceties of the system and knuckle down to work in a much easier way than other pupils I have taught.  Generally speaking (except for the usual suspects) they are all now working and as I touch type I can watch and type at the same time so they realize that they are under observation even if I appear to be working.

As this is my six-period day I welcome the disruption of examinations, as they tend to break up the long slog that this unnatural day brings.

Now is the time to think of more pleasant things and to hope that Toni is phoning the superb restaurant in Girona to find out if there are any places left to sample the gastronomic dinner that Ceri and Dianne did not have the last time they were here. 

If everything goes according to plan then we should be able to sample the world famous cuisine during their next visit – and drink a few tasty wines as well. 

If that doesn’t work out then there is always the fall-back plan of going to the restaurant in Hospitalet and hoping that the restaurant in the “flying saucer” has cooled down a little so that we are able to eat in a place with truly spectacular views.  One does wonder about the quality of an architect who designs a building in Spain which cannot be used in a Spanish summer!  We shall see, but it is something to look forward to whatever location we finally decide to eat in.

There is still no absolute clarity about what is going to happen to our pay this year.  I have been told conflicting stories about what the government is going to do and all we have is rumour and not hard fact.  The school does not seem to have set a time aside for a meeting to inform staff about the probably deductions from their pay and I have to say that my colleagues seem remarkably, even shamefully resigned to the possibility of 5% of their total income being deducted in two tranches of 3% and 2%!

The date for the strike has been set for the 29^th of March and I am more than inclined to take part.  I realize that it might be something of futile gesture as none of my colleagues seem inclined to take part, but the situation is so serious that to do nothing seems to me to be a complete abdication of union responsibility.  But it is also the loss of a day’s pay and god knows what complications with the tax authorities etc.  However, this really does seem to be a time, if ever time there was, to take some form of action to tell the government in no uncertain terms that their actions are not acceptable to working people.  Or me!

The next period is a “study” period with the equivalent of Year 9.  Need I say more?  However, this penance is compensated by the next period being made into a free as my colleague is compensating for me taking a whole class rather than our individual groups.  It all works out in the end.

Perhaps this is the time I should be taking to get ready for the Great Change which usually catches me out.  One of my classes is divided into three.  Our school year is divided into three.  It follows that each of the classes should last a term.  Wrong.  The date for the Great Change seems quite arbitrary but, this year, for the first time, I think I know when it takes place.  So for the last class of the year I will have one week and two days of this term and the rest of the summer term in which to teach them.  Previously my class has simply disappeared to be replaced by another group of bemused looking kids drifting into my class.

At least I have two days notice this time and some spare examination gained time in which to prepare.

It does mean, however that the introduction to the subjects are lost in a general lust for holidays and the usual mind-wipe of the school holiday makes the start of next term something of a trial when you are building on material and knowledge that the kids have long lost!  But, there again, it all adds to the gaiety of nations!

We are also, on the very day of the changeover, starting the projects which are supposedly taking up a swathe of time during the day.  However, with the change in approach that has been brought in with little or no consultation I think that it means that after a whole day of being off timetable, my ordinary classes will be there waiting for me to teach them.  A rabble mentality having been established for the majority of the day I suddenly have to bring the kids back to conventional teaching.  O Joy!

It is now, at long, long last getting on for the end of the day.  I am stuck with a Year 9 class for a double period and have suddenly been informed that the periods last Wednesday that I took to be the end of the course were not and the two this afternoon are.  Well, stuff that.  I am not in the mood to magic up a sudden lesson or couple of lessons for these unreceptive people when I have work to do for the next group.

I have now designed and printed out the cover sheets for the work that these kids are going to do.  Not unimportant because if work is not recognized as having a mark these kids consider it worthless.  A cover sheet (an A3 printed single sheet folder) therefore gives legitimacy to all the work it contains.  As it will get tatty by the end of the course - part of the mark includes designing a replacement!

One of my courses is made more complicated by my having a pupil stay on from the group that I am supposed to be giving up because he does not speak fluent Spanish - so he is going to have to do everything again.  Actually this is not as futile as it sounds because he came late to my course and anyway I change things that I have done so there will be enough there which will be different to keep his attention.  I hope.  And my attention as well which is, after all, much more important!

By the end of the day I can look back on the production of two folders for my two credit classes; pages printed out for my Making Sense of Modern Art class; a bluffer’s guide to how to paraphrase; a guide to the writing of effective magazine articles and the consumption of numerous cups of tea

But today has been thoroughly unsatisfactory in all sorts of ways.  There is a growing tension in the school about all the work that has to be compressed into the last two weeks of term before the holidays and there is frustration building up about what exactly is going to happen to our money and about the strike which is going to take place on the 29^th of March.

The school management have stated that the school will be open during the strike and, from what I have heard from my colleagues, shamefully there are going to be plenty of teachers who are prepared to come in to keep the place going.

As time goes on I am more and more prepared to go on strike and I have had support from one other member of staff.  Two of us out of the whole of the teaching staff!  It’s pathetic! 

And, let’s be realistic, we haven’t actually done it yet.

Blooming lightly

Surely no day can be counted wasted when you have planted four flowers of the clearest plastic lit with a colour changing solar powered LED?

Never let it be said that I could not use a day off to the full.  And what is a day without spending; therefore a little light buying of yet more solar lights and the day can settle down nicely.

The handbook of the car, in English, arrived a couple of weeks after the purchase: but it was for the wrong car.  Another five days before the real handbook arrives - in a language I can fully understand.  Though I have to admit that proficiency in a given language is not necessarily a guarantee that you will understand a handbook in that language which purports to tell you how to work a complex machine!

Now, I have to admit that handbooks about anything, let alone cars, have never been my favourite reading.  I still have not raised the bonnet of my new car – though why I should want to look at the engine I do not know – and I do not know how to raise the bonnet anyway.  My only technical concern is not with the car at all, but rather with the music system.

When a CD is being played there should be, at the pressing of a button, information about the track appearing on the screen on the dashboard.  But it doesn’t and only the track number is displayed.  I have gone back to the showroom but the lady who sold me the car was unable to get any more information on the screen than I.  This is a problem which will need more attention.

I am informed that there is a special “link” which can (at great expense) be purchased from Toyota which will send all information to the screen.  When I asked the price of the link the woman looked shocked and said it was too expensive!  Honest, if disconcerting!

I am still (!) enjoying driving the car and still (!) watching the central image of battery/engine in an attempt to drive in an energy efficient way.  At the end of every journey when you push the button to turn the car off (!) a little graphic appears telling you how ecological the drive was!  Something else to worry about!

At least tomorrow is a Tuesday and that means that our week is only four days long.  And then one more full week and the Easter Holidays.

Each day from now to the holidays is going to be an achievement.

Which is not to say that the remaining days are without their individual interest.  We are soon going to take forward a project-based approach to school teaching through year specific projects; lesson observation - for the first time in this school; two after school endless meetings; a group change over, and of course normal teaching and the ordinary life of the school. 

And nine working days for all this delight to happen!

From Friday to Sunday - the missing days

So why am I not feeling happy?

Not only is today Friday (well, it was when I wrote this), but also it is the last day of pseudo-work before the long weekend, to which colleagues have been looking forward with an almost unhealthy greed!  There is an air of desperation about a single day (and not the day on which I have six periods to teach) which shows like nothing else the true state of exhaustion of the staff.

After this tantalizing taste of freedom there is an extra fortnight before the Easter holiday – and even this release is a truncated form of what you would get in Britain with only seven working days of holiday rather than a full fortnight being allocated for the vacation.

The one thing which is similar to Britain is that my colleagues here share the same delusions about the summer term.

I have already heard colleagues saying things like, “The summer term goes so quickly” and “When the sixth form goes we will have extra time” and other statements of equal hope but little reality.  Colleagues will be absent and extra time will be missed; examinations will need to be supervised; odd little events will suddenly be organized which need our attendance.  In short, time will be illusory and weeks will be exactly the same length as in a term which is perceived to be more strenuous.

Although teachers are expected to say this every year that they are in teaching, I do think that this term has been one of the most arduous that I have ever endured.  Not only has the content been taxing but also the sheer number of days that we have been in school has been enervating.  I will be very glad when this term is over and I will gleefully enter into the collective delusion about the easiness of the third term.

Although it was rather an expensive way of doing it, I have been amused and delighted by the new car and I am still, continuingly fascinated by the way that the car switches seamlessly between petrol engine and battery, sometimes using both at the same time.  I am beginning to suspect that the little graphic is a lie and I am kidding myself about what is going on!  But the silent progress I sometimes make is more than satisfying!

I am now listening to Bartok as I make my way to school.  This is part of my bulk buy of CDs which of late have tended towards Bruckner and Mahler - rather heavy going for first thing in the morning!  The present Bartok is now exactly hummable but the astringent almost-melodies are refreshing and match the driving skills of my fellow motorists as I make my stately ecological way along the motorways.

For virtually the first time in my experience I am actually enjoying driving and I like the car.  This reaction means that I do notice the little (or not so little to my way of thinking) things that are not working as I expect them to.  My greatest gripe is the music.

The reproduction of the music is fine I have no complaints about that – it is more the fact that the information about tracks is not being displayed on the screen when the various devices are linked up.  In theory I should have all the information which is displayed on the IPod screen on the display in the car, but this merely gives a track number for the CD player and doesn’t even give you the total number of tracks. 

The information about performer, orchestra, and movement is totally absent, and yet according to the information in the guidebook it should be part of the driving experience. 

Well, it isn’t and I am not pleased.  I am more than half inclined to go back to the dealer and see how they respond to a request from a customer after the money has all been paid in!  But I hold myself back from doing this in the fear that I am not following an instruction of mindless simplicity which will make all things well.

My first period has been turned into a study period and even that is cut in half as I am shortly to be relieved by a colleague who will take the latter part of the lesson.  The second period is a Departmental Meeting which I assume will be given over to marking (which I have done) and then I have a free.  This is the sort of teaching that I could take up as a career!  Pity this is the exception rather than the rule!

Where did Saturday go?

The Family came down for lunch and then stayed for the more than satisfactory win by Barça over Seville.

I was tricked into going into town with the ladies for shopping.  I thought that we were going in for food and other essentials: the ladies had other ideas.

Many clothing shops later I felt that I deserved the coffee that might as well have been strapped to the neck of a Saint Bernard dog for that state that I was in by the time that at least half of us sat down!

In C&A a father a daughter hogged the only two seats for those waiting for the people trying on clothes.  In spite of the poisonous looks that I gave them both neither relinquished their hard gained comfy chair.

It took me a while to remember that, having exhausted the delights of the haute mode of the men’s section of C&A and feeling like a plane crash survivor staggering in a desert of tat, there were benches just outside the store.  Thus armed with my trusty mobile phone which is always charged with numerous “Amazing” stories gleaned copyright-free to satisfy my sci-fi addiction (though not always charged with money for its ostensible purpose) I was able to read myself to sanity.

Our trip to the shopping centre was taken in the new car (New Car) and drew appreciative coos of delight from the assembled ladies and with the CD player off (I felt that the spikier Bartok was not to their taste) the eerie silence with which we threaded through the lanes of the underground car park reduced them to silence as well!

Today is an officially “gained” day.  Usually Sundays are broken days for teachers.  They have a lie-in in the morning; enjoy a Sunday lunch, and then use the afternoon and evening to worry about the next day.  But today is different.  Sunday may be enjoyed in all its schoollessness because we are not working on Monday.  Even the traditional worry-free morning takes on a different sort of delightfulness.

A gloomy colleague told me on Friday that the unusually fine weather we have been having would last up until Sunday and then miserable normality would take over.  Well, it may only be ten o’clock in the morning, but the perfect blue skies bode well for the rest of the day.

A day passes . . .

Another exam! 

Hardly an original opening for a school that seems to need examinations in the same way that Cameron needs a presidential smile!  The calm of silently working kids in front of me has the price of mindless marking squeezed in for the rest of the day to ensure that I don’t take examination papers home.  And there is more to come!

The only bright spots are: an extra day on the weekend and my continuing fascination with the car.

For the first time yesterday I drove the thing into the centre of Barcelona and, although the TomTom GPS tried to take me another way to the school I resisted the persuasive tones of the machine and drove the way I usually go, while noting the differences.

The car is of course perfect for city driving because when I stop, it stops and all is silence – except of course for the blaring music of the excellent stereo which keeps me company.  My IPod is connected, and the CD player is a delight as the holding for the GPS swivels out of the way to reveal the slot for the disk!  The radio is tuned to the Classical Music station of Catalan Radio and all is well with the world.

I am mesmerized by the illuminated graphic which shows what is powering the car at any one time.  There is a picture of a battery and a representation of the petrol engine together with a segmented arrow to show where the power is going.  At low speeds and for manoeuvring the battery is drawn on; for more high powered motoring the petrol engine is used - and when the foot is taken off the accelerator the car charges the battery. 

I think I spend more time looking at the symbol and gloating over the fact that my motoring is ecological than looking through the windscreen!

As parking in the centre of Barcelona is impossible except in the extortionate underground car parks, I was able to feel the extra rush of goodness because I was not contributing to the exhaust fumes that are part of the atmosphere in those dark, dank places.  I feel I should have a badge for pure goodness.  Though I would much rather have the €2k that I have been told will be my little present from the Generalitat as an incentive for buying such a low emission car.  And this from a bankrupt authority which has just announced the latest reductions.

The government is proposing to deduct 3% of our total annual salary from the so-called “extra” payment that we get in the summer.  They are, of course, yet again, treating us like kids thinking that we will not notice a delayed chunk of our salaries disappearing noiselessly from our bank accounts.  We will, after all, still have our normal salary to keep us going.

They further propose to deduct 2% of our annual salary from the other “extra” payment at Christmas time.  This is disgusting.

And what is the reaction from my colleagues?  A weary shrug of the shoulders and a sort of what-can-we-expect-given-the-crisis sort of response!

My fury makes me an isolated spot of seething hatred where everyone else has decided that even with wage reductions it is better to have a job than not – and too much open dissatisfaction could lead to that employment being ended.  There is genuine fear about what an employer might do and the unions are largely emasculated and ineffective.

There is a General Strike on the 29^th of March and I, a life-long Trade Unionist, Past President of the Cardiff NUT and general right-thinking sort of cove; I am debating what to do.

Clearly there is The Right Action to Take – which with my background I should take instinctively.  But I hesitate.

I hesitate because it is becoming increasingly obvious that if I take action, I will be the only person in the school to take action.  My classes will be collapsed and taken by others and I will have to spend the rest of my time calling colleagues “Scabs!”  And what will be achieved?  A rhetorical and very real question.  The government – local and national – is bust; they do not have the money to pay us and they are certainly not going to reject the easy option of attacking the government employees first in an attempt to balance (ha!) the books.

Spain has a slightly different approach to civil servants to the British.  In Spain there is a class of Functionario which is paid by the government and enjoys various perks that we ordinary folk do not.  The pay, conditions, pensions and employment rights are excellent – far too good for what the government can afford to pay.  There are also the stories of (and I have seen pictures of) vast arrays of empty desks with no people at all indicating the number of “workers” paid for by the government who do not have “real” jobs.

Now I know that civil servants are in the firing line and it is easy to find an office or department where the “work” done is difficult to see but, in Spain, civil servants are also teachers.  Toni’s sister, for example is one and her benefits come through examination and in being placed by the government in a school in which personal choice is only one factor in the eventual position.

So far the salary of funcionarios has been cut by 5%; the present proposals threaten to cut it by a further 5%.

Our problem, in my school is that some of the teachers’ time is paid for by the government and some by the foundation that runs the school.  I am paid with two cheques: one from the Generalitat and the other from the Foundation.  But the cheques do not tally with the amount of teaching time that I do in Secondary (Generalitat paid) and Bachillerato (Foundation paid) so a cut in our salaries is going to be problematic.

Primary and Secondary teachers are paid by the Generalitat so I assume that a global amount is paid to the school on a monthly basis.  I further assume that the cut will be shared equally by all the teachers in the school and that this will be expressed as a percentage less than 5% when the money is finally stolen by the government.

I await with interest the pronouncement of the school.

The end of tomorrow is the start of our long (but not that long) weekend.  We have Monday off.  Then it is nine teaching days to the end of term at long, long last.

Before the end of term we have the results of our attempts to fabricate lessons in the Project Based Learning way.  This has caused ructions with staff moaning and groaning at the extra work that this has entailed.  And indeed it is being done in the wrong way with little concession made for the extra work which is necessary.  Our school seems to want a different way of working but is not prepared to give the timetabled time necessary for it to work properly.

Perhaps we are all simply jaundiced by the term stubbornly refusing to finish and at the same time having to write, set and mark another tranche of examinations added to the implementation of the projects that we have been working on for the past month or so.  All at the wrong time of the year.

Roll on the holidays!