Rain!

Today I woke up to the sound of rain.  The weather forecast was accurate, god rot it!  The sound of the rain also reminded me that I had not brought in the sun bed cushion which is now having a well-deserved wash courtesy of the climatic conditions.

Looking at the forecast I see that it will be the weekend before it has a chance to dry out!  What a holiday!

Braving the elements we went out for lunch seeking for a different restaurant from our usual clutch of dependable eating-places.  We went down to the other end of Castelldefels and, after finding (yet again) that one small restaurant on the sea front that we liked was closed for logistical reasons that we have never managed to formalize into any coherent timetable for opening, we decided to range further afield.

Toni’s eagle eye spotted a place offering an €11 menu del dia and after a cursory (on my part) and extended (on Toni’s part) view of the menu went in.  This was Restaurante El Mastil, Paseo Maritimo, 299 bis, Castelldefels.

We were guided to a part of the large premises which had a view of the sea and sat next to the large windows.

The view was, it has to be admitted, somewhat bleak: the sea a forbidding grey; the sand damp and dun; the beach totally deserted – and rain sporadically spitting into the pool which had formed under the plastic kids' slide blocking part of the vista of the Med.

It reminded me of nothing so much as sitting by the unforgiving sea of my childhood and watching my parents have a cup of tea from a battered tin teapot (or was it aluminium?) that was a highpoint of the culinary offerings in Barry Island from the café on the front. 

What really captured my attention more was the sodden sand, thinking to myself that damp sand held together better than dry and that this time I really could build a bastion that would withstand the incoming tide. 

And the sea.  On damp days, and so many holidays seemed to be damp, the sea was a brown smudge in the distance which at least game one more time to build.  Swimming was never a pressing temptation until the castle walls were breached and there was nothing left to lose!

Let me not give the wrong impression.  I loved going to Barry Island.  We would load up the Bon-mini (don’t ask) with my parents in the front and me in the boot (don’t ask, but not as cruel as it sounds!) and off we would tootle and not worry about the steep hill to get onto the A48 towards home until the end of the day!

We would park on the cliff top (before Butlin's took over the ground) and I would scamper down over the rocks to the virgin sand and start digging.  Bliss!  But damp sand, grey skies, grey-green sea, rain in the wind and coldness sum up a typical British day by the seaside and that was the view I had from the restaurant window.  I could have been at home!

The “dish of the day” which headed the list of first course choices turned out to be Russian salad which we both like and so we both ordered it.  When it arrived it was set into two artfully arranged squares with small piles of shredded carrot and corn while the whole edifice was surrounded by a swirl of balsamic vinegar.

And it had no taste.  One has to remember that the defining ingredient in a Russian salad for Brits is missing in Spain: no beetroot.  Instead it is a sort of potato, egg and tuna salad with mayonnaise.  In this version the potato was that regular cube sort which suggested that the ingredients had been bought frozen and then assembled later.  No tuna, precious little egg and, as I said, no taste.

Toni’s second course was butifarra.  As Toni has not bee entirely well recently with a form of stomach upset he invited me to try a piece of it as it did not seem entirely right to him and I think he wanted me to share any future gastric illness that he might have rather than to get my expert cooking judgement!

Toni left it unfinished.  As he left his salad unfinished.

My second course was eggs in the style of Manchego.  Neither of us had any idea was this might be and I waited in pleasurable anticipation – after all, as long as it wasn’t tripe I was going to eat it.

Well, the exotically named dish turned out to be fried eggs with chips.  The only “exotic” part of the dish was that three cloves of unpeeled garlic had been fried with the eggs!  What culinary daring!

This was, without a shadow of doubt, as Toni stated, “the worst menu del dia we have had in Castelldefels”.

We skipped the choice of desserts and took the coffee option instead and left as soon as was decently possible.  A dispiriting experience and one that we will not be in a hurry to repeat.

On a more positive note I am reading sci-fi downloads on my I-pad with a passion that suggest that they are all suddenly going to evaporate and disappear in a puff of electronic impulses.  China is figuring more and more in the fantastic suggestions about how the near future is going to develop.

The most rewarding and stimulating book in this genre that I have read recently is by Cory Doctorow called FTW or “For the Win”.  This centres on computer games and how their real life implications work.  The collecting of virtual gold becomes something which “gold farmers” or packs of young games addicts accumulating the “gold” which they manage to convert into real money as other players in the game need this “precious” metal to “buy” advantages for themselves to boost their game status.  Doctorow describes brokers, bosses, big business and all the trappings of large-scale international finance – but all based in things called The Mushroom Kingdom or some impossibly pronounced Teutonic mythic rubbish.  I particularly liked a reference to a Vorpal Sword as a weapon of massive power in one of the games!

Its real power comes from the fact that Doctorow is able to describe the big power play of firms and countries as they stamp from a great height on poor and powerless workers.  It also raises hope that the Internet is also a way of uniting the powerless and creating a worldwide community which has never been so well informed and turning groups of isolated workers into a powerful Union of the connected.  A stimulating read.

The rest of my reading has been of derivative and enjoyable rubbish where the fun is working out which literary antecedent or fairy story has played the greatest part in the narrative “creation”.  I’m loving it!

Tomorrow real culture and the sight of some of the productions of the person I consider to be Spain’s greatest painter, Goya.  Not a very controversial choice perhaps, with Picasso his only real rival.  And Velasquez.  I have to admit that I like Goya’s darker paintings (or “black” paintings as he termed them) and his portraits of the talentless trash that ruled Spain at his time.  And of course, the dog buried in sand.

As we are in Barcelona we do not get the top grade exhibitions (they go to Madrid) so I expect that this Goya exhibition will be heavier on the etchings of The Disasters of War than of oil paintings.  But we will see.

I want my money back!

I have now made the made the ultimate mistake of looking at the weather forecast for the holiday week.  Unrelieved gloom with cloud and rain throughout.  Only at the end of the holiday is there a little glimpse of warmer weather.  Some irony is too hard to bear!

But I have made as much as I could out of today, greedily taking in as many of the rays as is humanly possible from the Third Floor and the garden.  I have done my good deeds by getting the lunch and cleaning the car – who can ask for more!

It is hard to believe that the flawless evening skies are going to degenerate into rain sodden horror.  But that is what the weather forecast threatens and I am in the right frame of mind to believe it!

More than ever I hate dogs – or at least their barking.  Quite apart from the obnoxious curs next door, today was made notable by the monotonous, squeaky yapping of some rat-dog in the flats to our left.  Dog owners, generally speaking, do not have the consideration of a dead slug.  Dead slugs (or even live ones) after all do not leave mounds of shit on pavements and they are certainly not raucous in any way shape or form.  Whereas the debased and etiolated dog derivatives that people in this area parade at the end of a string are an insult to canine kind and the mutants take every opportunity to bewail their disgusting in-bred state. 

And that’s just the people!

At the moment it is dark.  A Sunday evening.  And it’s wonderful.

To understand why, you have to be a teacher.  Sunday evenings are technically part of the weekend but for teachers the pleasure is poisoned by the thought of the morrow when the hapless educators have to return to their toil. 

Consequently a Sunday without the misery of a teaching day following is a gained day and a delightful night!

Tomorrow, tasks and writing.  This evening, praying that the weather forecast is wrong!

Why do I bother?

There was something so quintessentially bourgeois about my Thursday morning.

I got up, appropriately, at the time I would have started teaching: 8.15 am, giving me a lie-in of one and three quarter hours!  I started by Day of Action by making a cup of Earl Grey tea and taking it and an Internet radio to the Third Floor where I sipped my tea listening to the dulcet tones of the presenters and guests of the Today Programme.

As the sun grew in warmth I decided to put my years of English expertise to the test and I wrote a poem appropriate to the occasion.  It now follows:

SONG OF THE STINKING SCABS

(To be sung to the first part of the tune of “Lead Me O Thou Great Jehovah”

Chorus

Stinking scabs deserve our loathing!

Stinking scabs deserve our hate!

Stinking scabs deservèd low life!

Stinking scabs deserve their fate!

Can you see him sitting pretty?

Safe, self-satisfied and smug,

Letting others take the action

Proudly thinking he’s no mug!

Chorus

Suddenly he’s found his “ethics”

Moral codes to “do what’s right”

Pity that he can’t apply them

To a real in-house fight!

Chorus

He has “higher duties” pressing

To the kids within his care

Couldn’t ever think of striking

Such a crime he could not bear.

Chorus

Loss of money’s not important,

Or the frowns of management

He’s prepared to be upstanding –

But he has to pay the rent!

Chorus

He has family commitments

Food to buy and kids to raise;

These are real, pressing problems –

Strikes put off for “other” days.

Chorus

Days that never come for someone

Who can’t think beyond today;

Men whose fights are fought by others -

Those on strike for better pay!

Chorus

Just for us the bigger picture,

Grime of politics, the fight.

Just for us the risks and struggle

And the prize for doing right.

Chorus

Scabs are quick to take what’s offered,

No compunction, guilt or pause,

Strikers, though, they should remember

Won’t forget their selfish flaws!

Chorus

I may be a tad childish but it did give me some pleasure, and there was something so totally bizarre about singing such a thing to the tune I have heard reverberate (and indeed help reverberate) around the National Stadium, to sing the thing sotto voce as my small votive offering to the Power of the Strike.

We had lunch out and then it was time for me to go in to Barcelona to join the procession.  Lunch was on the beach looking at hordes of children with their parents, reminding me that there were some schools which did have the strength of their convictions and did the right thing.

My plan to go into Barcelona by train was frustrated firstly by the fact that the station was closed until 4.00 pm and then secondly by discovering that the first train into Barcelona (on the strike approved minimum timetable) was at 5.30 pm – the same time as the start of the march.

Plan B meant that I drove my car into the city and at the top end of the Diagonal I met a small group of workers marching and effectively closing the road.  I think I was the only driver held up who lowered the window to give a thumbs up sign to the marchers.

I got down the length of most of the Diagonal but had to turn off before the junction with Gracia – which is where I was supposed to meet my colleagues.  I did manage to find an underground parking space and then made an unsteady and hesitant way towards the meeting point as my direct route had been frustrated by police cars blocking off certain parts of the road.

I did, eventually, get there well before time and found none of my colleagues there.  As a march of an associated union set off (the UGT) I set off with them until my nerve broke and I went back to the original meeting point to find the right union.

I never really did find them, but at least I found other people who were part of the Union the CCOO and that was good enough.  I acquired a plastic flag and a couple of stickers and I was ready to destroy the system!  Well, I walked a bit and then decided that, as I had become a statistic, it was time for me to go home.

After paying an extortionate amount for my shortish sojourn in the underground car park and making my way through road blocks to the motorway, I gained my home and entered flag-waving and filled with delight at the thousands upon thousands of people men, women and children I had seen marching peacefully towards something or other.

This was not the way that the demonstration was portrayed on the television.  They hadn’t been very many of us and we had smashed bank windows and violently threatened shopkeepers strike-breaking!

I did, I have to admit, take a few pictures of banks with broken windows and regretted having passed a branch of BBVA which had been splattered with paint without taking a lasting memento of this more than justified act of contempt!

FRIDAY – THE LAST BLOODY DAY OF THIS BLOODY TERM AT BLOODY LAST

Coming into school this morning I first looked at the substitution list and saw that all my classes had been covered by my colleagues.  Thank you very much for that act of support!  I felt strangely distanced from those colleagues – let’s fact it, most of them – who had shown themselves to be nothing neither more nor less than scabs.  I felt, more than anything that I simply didn’t fit with these people.  It is at times like this that I begin to despair.  But, this is nothing new.  How many times have I felt like that in schools in Britain!  Nothing changes.  Nothing.

I have, however, taken a photocopy of the substitution list and I will speak with the other colleagues who went on strike, to find out exactly what they want to do.  Their classes too, were covered with no expression of hesitation as far as I can tell.

The email we were sent asking if we could inform the management if we were going on strike, prefaced, as it was by a statement that the school would stay open, can now be taken as intimidation.  The school has behaved abominably and we have to decide if we take this further and report the school to the relevant authorities.  I will be all in favour of taking more action because I think it is important that the management of the school realizes that they cannot act with impunity as a completely separate entity from the rest of the world in education!

We are finally, at last, at long last coming towards the last period that I have to teach (or at least be around for) in this impossibly long term.  And, as is traditional I have been informed that the glorious weather that we have been luxuriating in inside the school will not last beyond this weekend outside the school!  Nothing changes.

SATURDAY – THE FIRST GLORIOUS DAY OF THE SUPERB HOLIDAY

I reverted to British Tourist Mode today and the first thing I did this morning was look out of the bathroom window to see if the sun was shining!  It was and I consequently spent the rest of the morning lazing on the Third Floor.

My “little rest” yesterday afternoon extended its way through the night until this bright morning.  If only the rest of the weather during this holiday could be relied on to be as good as today, it would be perfect.  But we have been told to expect a change in the weather after the weekend, so I am making the most of it.

Toni continues ill, so I went to have a start of holiday celebratory lunch alone – though it did give me the opportunity to sit in the sun, something Catalans will not do by choice!

I am still waiting for the English version of the handbook for the car and I am also hoping that there is something simple I can do to get more information on the display when a CD track is playing rather than simply the number.  This problem does seem to be intractable.  But I live in hope.

I have made my traditional list of things to do during the holiday, though this list is even more unrealistic than my usual ones!  This one includes the equivalent of writing two books and those are just the first two items on the list!

Ever the optimist.  

A Day To Go!

 

There is a nervous excitement about today as people wonder what is going to happen tomorrow.

It may be my imagination but I think people are fighting a little shy of me as they realize that I will be taking action tomorrow in defence of their conditions of service, their futures, their wages, their way of life.  One doesn’t like to overstate such selfless actions, but if the medal fits - wear it!

I have to admit that I do think much less of my colleagues for not taking part in the strike.  Though I do not think that they realize just how much less I think of them.  In the circumstances in which we find ourselves I do not see how, with honour, they can excuse their inaction.  There are unlikely to be such pressing forces to encourage their participation than these.  What the hell has to happen before my colleagues realize that they are under a very real threat and their inaction will come back to haunt them. 

Or, rather, I will be very much alive and I am more than prepared to remind them (in many and subtle ways) of the action they did not take. 

Perhaps I should Photoshop a copy of the famous First World War recruiting poster and entitle it “Colleague, what did you do in the General Strike?”  Perhaps a little too near the knuckle for some of the staff!

I continue to be amazed by the attitude of my colleagues who have done everything from wish me “good luck” to “have a nice day”!  What do they think I am doing and why?  This is not a little holiday!  Do they really think that my actions are divorced from what they can expect from employers in the future when the actions of “those that have” are going to be endorsed and strengthened by a government which is gleefully skipping along the road of employee repression!  Just what does it take to activate the social conscience of these people!

I am now stuck in the last lesson of the day while 3ESO finish off the work which has been necessary for the completion of the dossier.  Tomorrow they make their presentations – though to who is an interesting question. 

I have made it as plain as I possibly can that anyone who takes any of my pupils or my classes is actually breaking the law.  And to some I have intimated that I would be quite prepared to report the school to the requisite authorities as soon as I have information that they have infringed by Constitutional Right to Strike by taking my classes.

But now to bed with the prospect of a lie in.

Two days to the strike!

It seemed darker when I got up today than it did yesterday: surely a reflection of my depression at facing another six period day with a two hour meeting at the end of it all.

To be fair the meeting last night ended on time (so I only spent 11 hours in school rather than the 12 I had expected) though I had, ostentatiously, packed away my computer and was standing up ready to go when it was actually brought to an end.

In theory as the 3ESO are going out on a trip I should gain a free period, bringing my total teaching periods down to a full-day 5 – but no, of course not, I am taking a lesson for my colleague who is in Australia – an extended absence known in advance.  And people say absolutely nothing.  It’s shaming.  Our lack of action about blatantly unprofessional behaviour on the part of management merely encourages them to do what they have always done and get away with absolute murder.

I have noticed that the timetable for the projects has been rewritten and one of my colleagues has been put in my place for the afternoon when I am off.  Scab!

I will find out what happened to my classes when I was on strike and I will take some sort of action against the scabs.  And the school that employs them.  I am beginning to sound like a toned down, but equally ineffective King Lear threatening to do “such things!” but people have to realize that inaction is also a powerful form of action and they must be held accountable for their position.  As my mother once said when faced with cutting down the family budget, “No more mushrooms!”  I am sure that I can find some equally personal form of repayment for the lack of support.

It’s not as if my colleagues have to do anything; they simply have to refuse to do more – which is their legal right.  And of course their duty as colleagues.  Not as scabs.

The first lesson over I am now well into the second which is the cover for a colleague whose absence was known in advance.  I have now made it known to all members of the management that I regard his non-coverage by a supply teacher as a grotesque joke.  For whatever use that it apart from making me persona non grata to them!  I don’t particularly care.

My next lesson is one with two groups made into one class.  I have no intention of “teaching” them in any meaningful way, so they can continue with their projects.

Every so often I remember that there is another bloody meeting at the end of the day and a sharp pang of despair mixed with absolute hatred convulses me.

When is the last time that I read a book?  Given the enervating effect of this interminable semester I do not naturally reach for reading material.  Even my subscription to The Guardian has lapsed and I am too lackadaisical to renew it!

On the positive side Toni has managed to put some 80s songs on my new swimming mp3.  Ever since I bought the mp3 player that worked by passing the music through the bones of the side of the head I have like the idea of music while I swim.  Unfortunately the original device had a very limited storage capacity and it worked (it really did!) only when my head was submerged.  My original idea of getting to know “difficult” pieces of music while swimming had to jettisoned very quickly as the subtleties of string quartets did not make it through the waves and it was only the insistent beat of pop that was truly effective.

Replacement devices have been woefully inadequate with problems connected with every part of the machine.  I particularly dislike the earplugs that are provided with most headsets and their lack of comfort is only matched by their sheer inefficiency.

The present machine is untested, but the fact that you have to screw the earphone into the device is at least a cause for some hope that it will be waterproof.  The earphones also appear to be designed for swimming and fit more snugly than the earplugs that I currently wear.  It is all looking good.

An added feature is that the machine itself is not built into goggles or on a strap; it is designed to fit on the wearer’s own choice of goggles.  Another intelligent aspect.

It is pink though.

There was no choice and I welcome the opportunity to challenge sexist colour preconceptions. 

Or rather I welcome the opportunity to rationalize the ownership of an mp3 player whose colour would not have been my first choice.

And there is a light on it which sometimes flashes blue.

Just in case people had not noted the pink capsule on the back of my head the light flashes to catch their wandering attention.  It also lets me know what type of playback has been chosen.  Though, as it is at the back of my head what the hell am I supposed to know about it?  No, I have to conclude that the sole reason for its being there is there to draw attention to its inappropriate colour!

Argh!  I just remembered this evening’s meeting – be still my beating heart!

I have just been asked if I am going on strike and I replied in the affirmative.  I see no reason not to share this information with the pupils – but I will not discuss my actions as I feel that would be something beyond information and into the dangerous area of undue influence. One must tread carefully in such matters.  Not, again, that I truly give a damn.

Another lesson and babysitting again – though this one is slightly different because this is the group on whose projects I have been working.  At least all members of this class have their own computers and are therefore able to get on with “research” by themselves. 

Though I have to say that their powers of discrimination and the amount of time they devote to reading are both very limited so that, if they don’t get easily digested information on their specific search term at once, they give up.  This is an approach to learning that we are going to have to cope with soon or our pupils are going to be indulging in even more superficial learning, as they get older.

There is something very touching in seeing a colleague come to a decision about taking action.  Over the lunch table she found the strength to put her doubts to one side and join us.  I am sure that I will be blamed because she was sitting opposite me!  An accusation I would be happy to accept.  Now We Are Five!  That is something; certainly more than I expected – though I still don’t know how I am going to get to the demonstration!

The Meeting was The Meeting; tedious, useless and another confirmation of Sartre’s dictum that “Hell is other people.”  The meeting was scheduled to end at seven o’clock so I walked out at that time.  Enough time had been spent listening to teachers who should buy tape recorders if they want to listen to the sound of their own voices and not inflict their half-backed aperçus on the rest of us.

Another day done and another day nearer the end of the week.

Still counting!