Another day

To celebrate only 42 working days with the kids left in this academic year our Head of Department was immediately absent!  Immediate chaos: not because we cannot operate without our Beloved Leader, but rather because there was no suggestion that any substitutions (let alone a supply teacher) would be used to cover her classes.  We are working so near the limits than any absence is a potential catastrophe!

I have six classes (6!) tomorrow so I would heartily recommend any member of management to keep well clear of the space that I have in my overlong timetable if they are think of utilizing me to fill any lessons.

As it turned out I did not do any more lessons than my allocated number but classes were collapsed and everybody was tense.  Perhaps this is a sign of how things are going to be in the future with everything kept to a minimum and the school constantly hovering on collapse.

At the moment we are living in a state of expectation while we wait to discover how the school is going to cope with our reduction in wages.  Since our colleague has been sacked there is an air of resignation about what is to come.  As a fellow member of the English Department said this morning, “They can just sack us whenever they want to, can’t they?” 

I felt like replying that of course they could and oh, by the way, what exactly did you do in the General Strike.  It is truly depressing to see what has to happen to intelligent people before they realise that they are in the firing line and perhaps ought to do something about it.

Steve from the Union has sent me an email and asked for a chat.  It will be good to hear what progress, if any has been made towards a more reasonable settlement with the present government.  Or at least to talk about what might happen in the future.

I have given up with the waterproof earphones and pink mp3 player as I found it impossible to swim more than a length before I had to readjust the damn things.  Today I swam with ordinary earplugs and had a proper swim.

I also called into my “new” swimming pool but the woman at the desk said that it was not yet open, in other words the administration to certify the place is not yet in place and to my asking how long it would be before this happened she did not give a specific answer. 

Ah, Spain!

Taking the sun

I’ve had my most British, nay, English morning since I arrived in Spain.

Getting up with little expectation of fine weather, I was galvanised into action when I saw fragments of sunshine among the leaves of a tree lining the street.

I therefore hastily assembled a tray and soon I was on the Third Floor eating toasted scones with Robinson’s strawberry jam and that revolting (but delicious) cream that comes in a pressurized can.  Even as I ate I could sense my mind wondering how I would pronounce those Irene cooked deliciousnesses.  I usually pronounce scones as “sk-ò-nz” but I think that my natural pronunciation at the parental knee would have been more like “sk-ough-nz”.  Good thing that I was alone and the Mitford crisis passed in silent contemplation!

These delights were washed down with my own particular blend of China tea.

For the first time since University, I think, I recently had a cup of Lapsang Souchon tea.  Toni described it as smelling like a box containing a pair of newly bought shoes and it does have a taste which makes one think irresistibly of varnish.  A tea to add a tang to another blend, rather than one to drink by itself.  Even with milk as I drank it.

My blend this morning had a base of Earl Grey with a generous sprinkling of Oolong and just a pinch of Lapsang Souchon - delicious.  I also had it in my individual tea maker which is a machine of quite unnecessary complication with a red button tea release system from an internal reservoir which gives me pleasure each time I use it!

Breakfast over it was necessary to evaluate the sky.  It was not raining which was a good thing.  It was not exactly sunny which was a bad thing.  But I am, after all, British – and we are prepared to suffer in the cause of personal enjoyment.  It was, at best, hazy – but tucked away on the terrace and away from the wind it was warmish.

So I lay out on the sunbed and thought of those rough days in Gran Canaria when I had stretched myself out on the sands in inclement weather because I had paid far too much to be there to ignore any opportunity when it wasn’t actually snowing to get a tan.  I remember one Christmas actually lying in the rain willing the sun to come out again.  Which it did.  But I did get very wet!

It was not unpleasant lying there on the Third Floor except when vindictive clouds filtered the rays quite unnecessarily causing me to squint an accusatory glare towards our nearest star.

Lunch was in St Boi where we had gone to buy a Barça shirt for Marc’s Name Day present.  We went to a very large restaurant which appears to be in part of an industrial unit and only has one window onto daylight.  The main dining area is box-like and the lack of daylight is compensated for by the number of truly hideous paintings they have on the walls.  The food however is better than the art.

The red wine we had was a trifle rough but the Casera made it drinkable.  We were brought small sausage roll like pastries filled with a smear of paste or a taste of cheese as an appetizer.  My first course was scrambled egg with potato which was hearty rather than subtle and had overmuch salt for me.  My second course was chunks of tender pork cooked in a very mild mustard sauce with some undercooked rice; this looked like a curry but was of a inoffensiveness to pander to the Spanish taste for the non-spicy.  I chose to have iced coffee rather than the dessert.  €9.70.  A bargain.  Unspectacular, but a bargain.

Before the rain started hammering down in the evening I did manage to get a very little time on the sunbed though that was through gritted pores as it were rather than unalloyed sunshine!

I trust that our climate is getting the rain out it its system so that tomorrow can be a day to give me the necessary vitamin D boost that I need to get through the looming week.

And this week, a working week of five days rather than the three we had last week.  Though the collective exhaustion of the staff on Friday bore no relationship to the amount of time that we had spent in school!

I am going to count the number of days to the end of term.  A bad idea but one I need to do on a need to do basis!

And Barça have won the worst game that I have seen them play for a long time!

Who cares, it's Friday!

Cold, damp, grey – not the sort of weather conditions to inspire me with joi de vivre at some ungodly hour of the morning!  And, although I am in danger of repeating myself, the level of driving this morning was beneath the primeval sludge from which various motorcycle drivers have not yet fully, or in some cases not even partially, emerged.

In the continuing saga of What Is Going On in terms of employment, payment and representation in our school, I have one or two lines of approach which need to be cautiously explored today.  One of the great imponderables is just who to trust in this place.  We are a gossipy school and while that it itself is no evil thing, the direction of gossip is.  There are too many people here whose only concern is themselves.  And that concern expresses itself in a quiet gossip to those in power so that job security (!) becomes the motivating factor in ethical behaviour.  Just like always!

As I collate responses from various sections of the staff it becomes increasingly obvious that not everyone is telling the strict truth and I am getting fairly irritated by the jostling queues of people trying to wash their hands of all responsibility and knowledge of anything and everything that might be considered to be significant knowledge.

It has also become increasingly obvious that my dear colleagues are not going to do much to improve their own situation; they are not going to ask any difficult questions; they are going to be grateful for what they are presented with – and I am going to lose my temper again!

I am continuing to keep the discussion alive about our departed colleague and the lack of comprehension about his abrupt departure should be a condign lesson to my colleagues – but it isn’t.  One comment, “Well, I expect we will learn about all this in the long run.”  Which is another way of saying that we are not going to be concerned about the here-and-now and will wait for the dust to settle and then reminisce about those stirring times when we all managed to keep our jobs while one poor unfortunate sap got his comeuppance.

I have just had a class switch foisted on me, but I am not too concerned about it.  It is my Current Affairs class and I think that I shall talk about Police Brutality – that should get the kids talking!

The lesson didn’t quite work out like that but it went well enough and got me through to lunchtime.

My last lesson of the day was with the 1ESO, the youngest of the secondary pupils and Fridays are reading days, which of course I love.  The book we are reading at present is “Holes” and part of the delight is being able to read it without the inevitable innuendo of a normal group of sniggering British schoolchildren towards a book with such a title!

The weekend promises to be rubbish as far as the weather is concerned, but I live in hope that Castelldefels is not the same as the wet Barcelona!

What if this had been a full week!

I have been giving some thought to the position of my sacked colleague and am totally frustrated by the real lack of help that I can give him.  The mood in the school, at least the secondary part of the school in which he worked last year, is, to put it mildly, jumpy.  Our preconceptions about how the management of the school acts have been shaken by this abrupt forced departure.

I have been to see the Directora and in a carefully worded explanation (which I am not sure that she listened to with sufficient attention to marvel at the subtlety of my words) I tried to explain the feelings of the staff.  I came out of the meeting less satisfied than when I went in – though perhaps that was inevitable.  What I heard did not make me feel easier and to be told by the Directora that “anyone” could come and ask her about the sacking, when she knew perfectly well that only somebody like me was going to come and see her about the affair was, perhaps a little disingenuous.

I will certainly think carefully about what she said and ponder on my next course of action – or inaction.  Where is a decent union when you need one!

It is now midday and I still have three lessons to go before I can think of quitting this place.  And it’s raining.  Again.  And again yet more.

My teaching is now over and I have a free period at the end of the day but this school dislikes people sloping off before the final bell.  I have decided to go early because if I don’t then I am stuck behind the phalanxes of parents with the overlarge cars taking their precious cargoes home.  This exodus starts in about twenty-five minutes and so I have to leave a little before that and the “little before” has been growing with each week that I am stuck in school.  At present the “little before” is roughly half an hour before the official end of school.  Which is about right I think.

I arrived home at the exact time that school officially finishes – so I think that I judged the time to leave with a nice precision!

Toni, ever vigilant on his trusty portable, informed me that Lidl had a new case for iPad in its Thursday specials.  My tiredness forgotten I galvanized myself and leapt towards the car and the shop.  I am not sure if it is the ideal case for me but it has one of the best-integrated keyboards with real keys that I have seen so I bought it. 

Now of course comes the problematical time of getting the bloody thing to work.  I have given up and handed it over to Toni who has also failed.  We have therefore taken a fall back position of charging the battery in the hope that things will be different when a full power surge links the keyboard to the iPad.  It is the equivalent of giving it a sharp hit in the hope of more productive things happening!

It is now working – a joint effort I like to think – and working very well too.

And tomorrow is Friday.  Thank god!

The Opera That Never Was

Yesterday in a suspiciously easy approach to Barcelona where there were no real holdups I arrived one and a half hours early for the opera.  I was in no mood for a meal (having had a more than excellent lunch) and so I decided to go to the Liceu shop and see if there were any bargains to be had.

The shop was oddly quiet but I thought that would give me extra opportunities to find a programme and read the synopsis before the performance started without having to buy the extortionately priced programme.

What performance? 

I finally realized that I had made all the effort of driving into the city to see one of the cancelled operas.  I withdrew in good order and attempted to phone Toni to share my shame.  I was informed by my phone that I was “not registered on the network”; which means that the sim card needed to be taken out and cleaned.  Which I did three times.  Nothing.  I cut my losses and left the subterranean shop (which may have had something to do with my lack of recognition) and ventured outside.

Where I got an immediate signal and was able to phone home. 

Toni’s first words were about food and his suggestion was that I go to KFC and get one of the buckets of whatever it is they sell.  As it happened, as I was having this conversation, I was actually standing directly opposite the aforementioned fast food joint.  Toni has had an inexplicable yearning for a KFC for ages and I was inclined to indulge him to hide the pointlessness of my journey to the city.

After carefully checking to see that there was no one I knew walking on the Ramblas I scurried across to the “restaurant” and bought a bucket for two.  My attitude towards this establishment may be gauged by my always referring to it rather cleverly as Kentucky Fried Shit, and the warmed up “food” which we finally consumed while not so objectionable as excrement was bland to the point of boredom. 

To be fair I do not remember it being quite so innocuously easy to dismiss when I ate it from time to time in Cardiff.  Perhaps the recipe was spiced up a bit for the Brits and smoothed out for the Catalans.  Whatever, I will not be tempted back again.

The non-opera did mean that I had time to look for my tie on my return to the house.  It is a proud tradition of mine, stretching back over a number of years that I mark the awfulness of the start of each school term by the wearing of my Munch tie of the screaming man – and it is just as much of a tradition that I spend hours looking for the bloody thing the night before the first day of term.  Last night was no exception.

As usual my frantic searching did manage to unearth various things that I had forgotten that I had lost including, strangely, a mug of clear, light brown liquid perched demurely on a napkin on the tops of a row of books.  The small islands of bacterial growth suggested that it had been there for a period of time.  Shame on me – especially as I had taken books form the shelf opposite and noticed nothing!

The missing tie was eventually found lurking underneath a coat on the hooks at the top of the stairs which suggests that on the last first day of term (if you see what I mean) I must have been more than eager to rip the rags of my profession from my resentful body.  Today I must be careful to place the tie in the Special Ties Box which I inaugurated some time ago in a futile attempt to lessen the number of hours wasted in fruitless searching.  As if!  When else am I likely to bring to the surface a mini tape dispenser with eight gaily-coloured rolls of tape to feed it?

I had forgotten just how bad the driving was on the motorways in the morning.  I am sure that this is not restricted to Barcelona, but I am sure that the motorcyclists (whom even kamikaze drivers find unsettling) add a horror to the experience which is particularly Catalan.

The breaking news in the staff room was that one of our colleagues had been sacked after all the teachers had left on the last day of last term.  This was astonishing news as there was no indication that this sacking was being considered!  People are confused and slightly fearful at what appears to be a high handed action.

I have written to my sacked colleague and offered him what support I can, but he will have to take the next steps to get what he considers justice.  It has made a number of colleagues consider their positions with a degree of concern.  As well they might!  The whole affair cast a pall over the first day of term which, let’s face it, was pretty depressing as it was!

I did go for a swim after work and I am beginning to wonder about when constant fiddling with the waterproof earphones has to be considered a failure rather than a work in progress.  At the moment I am barely getting a length out of the things before the music stops in one or other ear.  I think that I will have to concentrate on swimming rather than music appreciation!

And tomorrow, although an early start is one day nearer to the weekend so life is not entirely bad!

The Last Day

It has come round in half the time that it would have taken in Britain: the last day of the woefully short Easter Holiday.  I shouldn’t grumble as my holiday has been extended by an extra day by the school taking one of the days that they can choose.  But it is still far, far too short.  And the long slog towards the end of June begins.

The day for me began with an almost swim: I almost decided to go to the pool but there were things to do and you know how it is.  So I didn’t.

One of the things to do was financial and that meant that I took out a large sum of money from my bank in the morning and, because of circumstances beyond my individual control, put it back in the bank in the afternoon.  At least I tried to.

Banks, as I have always maintained in this country have taken the place of the market square.  Where do people meet and chat?  Their banks.  The old folk come in for a socializing talk with the tellers and to make sure that their money is still there.  People come in with sheaves of bumf and take an inordinate time sifting through their documentation and getting their papers stamped (always a good thing in Spain) or signing each page of endless photocopies from the bank.  The queue for the single teller never seems to get shorter and everyone in front of me seems to be putting the affairs of the whole of the Eurozone in order by the amount of time that they take.

So it was with a sense of depressing familiarity that I entered my bank and stared mournfully at the congress of humanity that had decided to visit at exactly the same time as me.

As I had a wodge of money to put in I thought it expedient to wait in line so that I could give the whole amount to the teller and let them do all the work of checking that the amount I said was there was, well, there.  No movement for minutes so I decided to risk the machines.

I know from past limited experiences that I can feed money into my account as well as take it out.  And I knew which one of the three machines on offer in the central bank was the one to use.  I had previously had my bankbook renewed in the morning when I took the money out so I was well prepared to put it all back again.

I fed my bankbook into the appropriate slot and the machine grudgingly authenticated it and (in English, because it is well trained) it asked me what I wanted to do. 

Each request was displayed on the screen and each finger touch was accompanied by an inordinately loud beep.  I got through to the feeding of the machine with my cash when I hit a problem.  The machine can cope with 40 notes at a time and I was trying to feed it 100!  So the whole process had to begin again with my feeding the thing with batches of 40 notes.  Each time the machine rejected one suspect note (a note I might add which came from the same bank just a few hours before) and therefore after three separate transactions and a whole orchestra of beeps I finally retreated with two of the notes still in my hand but the vast bulk of the cash safely in my account.

I tried to ignore the baleful looks which my retreating back had to endure from those hapless souls who were waiting for a machine, but their reflections in the window of the bank will haunt me!  God alone knows how long I was stuck there but Toni was virtually dancing with impatience before I finally emerged blinking into the cloudy, patchy sunshine.

Recuperation took the form of a double teabag pot of tea and an astonishingly expensive turron muffin – one can’t help feeling that such an establishment is first in line for closure when the crisis grips further. 

And my tea was exceptionally weedy. 

It was served in what looked like a tiny Chinese inspired cast-iron teapot in which the tea bags had been placed inside a metal filter which ensured that they barely touched the hot water.  I extracted the completely redundant filter (they were tea bags after all) and poked them about a bit in the water and eventually got an ecru coloured beverage and that, believe me, is better than most attempts at our impossibly complicated national drink!

Lunch in the Maritime: which for me was quail broth with butter beans followed by half a dozen fat prawns finishing with whisky tart (swimming in it my dear!) and iced coffee.  The red wine and Casera goes without saying.  Not bad for €12 and much better service than you get during the weekend.

Although the day started dull and cold it did brighten up a little and even allowed me half an hour on the Third Floor before comprehensive cloud cover forced me indoors.

This gave me the opportunity to look at my timetable for tomorrow and decide that the work that I have not done yet didn’t need to be done then either so I can relax and enjoy the opera this evening.

This is another opera that I do not know so, as I have not done my homework about it, there is a plain sheet on which the experiences inside the Liceu can be writ large!

I have decided to risk leaving the house at 6 pm for an 8 pm start.  It is only half an hour or so into the centre of the city from Castelldefels but this is rush hour and I consider (perhaps rashly) that four times the normal length should be enough.

The one good thing about traffic jams in this car is that when I stop so does the car.  If anything needs feeding like lights, or radio or whatever this is taken from the battery which has been charged up by previous driving.  The stop/start approach of petulant lines of traffic is perfect for my type of car with a hybrid engine which does all the irritating staggering on the battery.  But the delight of some sort of idea of economy does not make me relish the trip into the city at the unkindest part of the day.

To which the reasonable response is why not do this journey by bus or by train.  Alas!  If only!  I have no intention at my venerable age of taking the “nit” bus, where the Catalan for “night” does give some sort of indication of the vermin who usually fill such a conveyance.  And the trains stop running by the time that I come out of the opera house.  It is a far better thing to have a car available so that one can get home as easily and quickly as possible – and certainly when the next day is the first day of a new term!

I have just had yet another call from Toyota asking if I am satisfied with my purchase of the car.  This must be the sixth such call which shows concern with customer satisfaction verging on the paranoid.  It is certainly much more than Peugeot ever showed which is part of the reason that I am no longer driving one of their cars!

The sun looks as though it has shone as much as it wants to for today so I should go and get showered and ready to go off to the opera – but first I must try and find my opera glasses which I think I will leave in the car for future performances.

My ideal is to go to the opera by train and then stay in the city overnight and come back at my leisure the next day.  The cost of accommodation is little more than the cost of parking the car in the centre of the city and it makes for a much more pleasant experience.  The inconvenience of having school the next day makes this plan impractical at the moment, but there will come a time!

Irene is still keen on setting up a school and, after going through some documents and coming across old statements by dissatisfied teachers who had been connected with The School That Sacked Me, I can understand her urge.

It is wickedly wrong that a school so clearly unfit for purpose as that one should be allowed by the authorities to continue.  From regal disregard of the health and safety regulations to the bullying attitude of the owner and her general unprofessionalism everything about the place calls for somewhere better to be established to drain her pupils away so that they can have a proper education.  And nothing is done!  A school that has been accused of stealing money raised for charity – nothing is done!  Enough!  I don’t want to relive those times!

Focus on finding the opera glasses and looking forward to a last evening of musical pleasure before the alarm goes off at 6.30 am tomorrow bidding me drive off for a new term.

Actually there is one thing that I need to find before I go to the opera: my start of term tie.

Each first day of term I don my Munch tie which has a vivid version of “The Scream” printed on it. This is clearly the most expressive and accurate of all the ties that I wear - with the possible exception of the one which has Homer Simpson strangling Bart as a tastefully repeated motif on one of my other favourites!

Ties for teachers!

Cake, cake, all the way!

I am now getting thoroughly paranoid about the weather.  Today is more cloudy than sunny and I feel the usual resentment that is the natural concomitant for me for anything less than flawless blue skies with an unrelenting sun shining forth in refulgent splendour.  Still, after the excesses of yesterday my reddened skin needs some time to readjust!

Today is a Bank Holiday and a day on which Castelldefels can expect to do good trade with a full beach and people from Barcelona spending money as if it had gone out of fashion, but such a brightly dull day is not going to get people out of their flats and into the traffic jams just to sit huddled together on the beach pretending they are having a good time in the blustery wind which is still with us.  You have to be British to bring that sort of thing off successfully – after a lifetime of unsatisfactory Bank Holidays.

In Britain of course there is the alternative to the beach – the DIY shops.  Rumney Common (if you looked very, very hard it was possible to see a few wisps of grass pushing up through the paving stones as a reminder of what the area used to look like) was full of stationary traffic as the lemming-like instinct of the British for self-improvement shopping during a Bank Holiday took hold!

In Catalonia, however, the enthusiasm for 24-hour shopping has not yet reached British proportions and Bank Holidays are more like what they used to be in Britain rather than the free-for-alls that they have become.

Shop opening hours do take some getting used to here.  They usually open at about 10 am but then they shut at 1 pm and do not open again until 5 pm when they finally close for the day at about 8 pm.  It is always strange for someone from Britain to go into the centre during the afternoon and find a ghost town.  Saturday afternoons are as dead as any other time of the week.  Odd.

Some restaurants in Castelldefels seem to have opening hours that only the most learned clerks in the Middle Ages who spent their time calculating the date of Easter (and burning those who disagreed) could possibly understand.  There seems to be no positively agreed half-day closing in this place and some defy all logical understanding in the ways in which they run their businesses.  They are also capable of taking holidays in the actual holiday time which, in a summer seaside town would appear to me to be commercial nonsense – but it is part of the rich cultural experience that comes with changing countries!

Our swimming pool remains stubbornly empty – apart from the rather unsavoury looking pool of brownish water which does not seem to have drained away.  The pool’s emptiness is a monument to the god-given fact that nothing, absolutely nothing can be done during Semana Santa or Easter Week.  The world, apart from seaside restaurants which have not decided to be closed because of an indisputable right to whimsicality, does nothing.  

Government and its associated bureaucracy do nothing – but can find time to emerge from holiday to make announcements about the most swingeing financial retrenchment in Spanish democratic history in the hope that during a holiday we will not take it so seriously as if it were to be made during work time.  

This is a serious wake up call to the Spanish people, but I fear they are all too fatalistic to take is seriously and will bumble on denying the evidence of collapse all around them.  I say them because here in our little bubble of Castelldefels there is very little evidence of the so-called crisis to be seen.  Prices keep going up and people keep looking affluent.  I am obviously well out of my league living here!

 

The Easter 

lunch in Terrassa was excellent with a truly startling Esqueixada (salt cod with chopped peppers, onion, tomato, garlic, olives, etc – all raw in a marinade) which tasted different, in spite of Toni’s mum saying that she had done nothing special in its preparation.  We then had “blind man’s” fideua which means that all the shellfish had been taken out of their shells so, consequently, a blind man could eat it without difficulty.  Most civilized, even though there were no blind people at the table.

It is traditional at this time in Catalonia to have a Mona de Pascua which is a special Easter cake which comes in a bewilderingly various range of shapes and sizes.  The kids had one each baked by their ever-resourceful aunt; but other relatives had done their bit too.  We had one Bob the Sponge cake with chocolate house and figure; two Barça players on a chocolate pitch; a cake with a chocolate fish from Finding Nemo; a butter chocolate cake made by the grandmother and the great-aunts; a third chocolate cream cake made by the aunt and another cake that we didn’t actually get to see!  I tried as many as were offered and they were all delicious.

The highlight of visiting Terrassa however was not the food but the people.  The two teachers, Toni’s sisters.  They start school tomorrow.  And I don’t.  An extra day!  They looked at me with outright hostility when I told them.  And with increasing hostility as I reminded them at every opportunity that presented itself!

Tomorrow the last day of the holidays and time to do some tasks that a gained day when everyone is back at work!