Wait and see!

Going from purely literary sources, I feel that school at present is experiencing a sort of “Phoney War” there is a sense of anticipation, though of what we are not entirely sure.  We are waiting for things to clarify themselves though what things and what sort of clarity we are looking for we are not certain of.

I think that things will become more concrete after the meeting next week about our salaries.  This should of course provoke an outcry because 3% of your salary being ripped away is something to be slightly upset about.  But I have my doubts about what my colleague will think of doing.  Which is to say that I don’t really doubt at all and what they will do is precisely nothing.

In much the same way that I feel impotent to help my sacked colleague I think there will be a mass groan of realization and then stolid acceptance!  Such is life.  Or, if the management act as I think that they might, then there could even be an expression of thanks about our not having to pay as much as other schools.  I wait to see what happens, - but not in pleasurable anticipation!

I should now be doing work for my class of Making Sense of Modern Art – but I am not in the mood – but I do have just over an hour to get into the necessary mood somehow and produce something intellectually stimulating and provocative for my lesson.

Well, the mood did change and 150 years of artistic development in four pictures from a still life by some obscure German in 1850 to a pseudo-abstract from the year 2000 by some Spanish sounding guy were duly printed out and a sheet of instructions fabricated to go with them.  I always work best under stress, but I’m not sure about the cost to my blood pressure readings!

Although they are a highly selected chosen quartet of paintings to represent the century and a half I do like the idea behind them (however false a picture of artistic development they might give) and it is really designed to give a sense of progression and allow kids to make connections and contrasts over an historical period.  We didn’t of course get as much done as I would have liked, but we are well set for the next lesson.  I hope.  And that should reduce the tension of my normal teaching by at least one notch!

I am now stuck in school for three hours before the start of the Literary Prize Evening.  It is not worth my while going home as I have to start off at such an early hour to get through rush hour traffic that I gain more by staying in school than trying to get home and then return.  But it does make for a day in this place which will turn out to be some thirteen hours long.  Too long by any sane teacher’s standards!

I am now sitting in the staffroom with Mozart’s 41^st Symphony for company debating whether to go to the kitchen and see if the cooks have put out scraps for we “peons” who are left to while away the hours before we swell the numbers for the audience for the festivities.  We have been told that we can go to the kitchen and have something before the cocktail party begins which is the start of the official VIP reception for the evening.  And it’s started raining after a glorious afternoon which I had the merest touch as I left one classroom to go to another.  ‘Twas always thus!

I have now been interrupted on a number of occasions and each time I have got involved in conversations way beyond my linguistic ability (in Spanish I hasten to add!) to play the part that I should.  I have to say that all my colleagues are equally patient as I mangle their language to try and make myself understood!  From teachers to kitchen staff and cleaners they all smile at me with that patient resignation that I have come to recognize so well as they disentangle my shattered Spanish syntax and make some sense of what I might have been trying to say!

The Literary Prize evening was not as painful as expected with an unexpected bonus in that the guest speaking was a world famous author, Paulo Coelho whose most famous book is probably The Alchemist which has, to date been published in over 70 languages!  This multi-million-book seller was something of a coup for our school and, as I left the Russian mother of one of our pupils was holding out a copy of The Alchemist in Russian for the man to sign.  His speech was short and to the point.

The end of the evening was a truncated concert with out kids singing a couple of songs.

My attempt to escape was delayed by a couple of parents who wanted to meet me and say thank you!  A rare enough occurrence to be a pleasure!

As Toni and I had agreed to go out for a meal of some sort after the presentations we went to an old haunt of ours near the flat we used to live in.  We had tapas but up-market ones and, although the meal was expensive I think that it was worth it – and anyway I deserved it after the long day I had had!

And tomorrow is Friday.  After all.

Full days

Barça are one goal down in the pouring rain in Chelsea.  I do not have a good feeling about this game, but there is most of the second half to go and we shall see what happens.  I find typing good displacement activity to cope with the tension in what is a very exciting game.  If a little wearing!

Further colleagues in school have told me how shocked they have been by the recent sacking.  One teacher was bitter and angry about how it was done, but most of the others are strangely reticent about it all, probably thinking who will be next. 

I feel as if I should be doing more to help someone who seems to have been summarily dismissed in a way which invites suspicion and leaves all the rest of the staff vulnerable.  But there seems to be a very real limit to what I can do.  Everyone I know accepts what has happened as unfortunate but irreversible.

The meeting next Wednesday when we will be given the details of the reductions in our salaries will further concentrate minds and close lips!

I’m not sure that teachers in our school have actually realized that they are going to have a cut in their incomes.  They know it as a concept but I don’t think the reality has struck them and will not until the actual money disappears from their pay packets – and as this will not happen until teachers are actually on holiday they will have the whole of the two months off to forget that it happened and then they will be equally surprised when the money is taken from their December pay packet!

In Spain at the moment we are truly living in “interesting” times and I think that there is much, much more of that “interest” which is going to play itself out over the next year or so

There is a lot going on in school at the moment and there will be in the near future and the partial relaxation of the summer term (the “saving lie” of the teaching profession) has yet to kick in.

As soon as we have a breathing space the paranoia about exams will pop up and the setting, marking, evaluating process will begin again.  But at least we have started on the real countdown to escape!

And Barça have just lost 1-0 to Chelsea – but it is not over yet.  Chelsea have to come to the Nou Camp.  We will see.

Still lots to learn

All set with two boxes of chocolates and a packet of biscuits as inter-active visual and gastronomic aids I was rather looking forward to my Media Studies Class this afternoon.  Armed with photocopies and a firm idea of what I was going to do I looked forward to a “fun-filled” couple of hours.

So much for an experienced teacher’s expectations!  I had, as usual not counted on the selfish, egotistical bloody mindedness of smug, self-satisfied, pampered, inadequate, adolescents.  Or the lessons were wrong.  But one child said thank you, how often does that happen!

In spite of my years of experience and the thousands of pupils that I have taught, I still find it difficult to believe that the things that I find interesting do not fascinate all pupils.  And therein lies the central problem in all my teaching (I mean apart from the arrogance inherent in what I have said): if any individual pupil is not taken with what I am doing then I cannot count the lesson a success.  And even though, logically, I know that to “capture” a whole class is difficult to impossible it is still what I want.  Or need rather.

In a six-class day, one should not take the last two hours of a long, long day as the key point.  But I did and I remain dissatisfied with what I did.  Back to the drawing board.  The ideas, at least, were good they just need a little more work.  As always!

I talked to two more colleagues from Primary and Infants and they are just as much mystified about the sacking at the end of last term as I am.  The more responses I get the more unhappy I am with what has happened.  But things must take their course and I hope that the situation will be a little clearer in the near future.

In the nearer future I am looking forward to revisiting the Goya exhibition with Irene on Saturday, but before then in the even nearer future I have to stay in school to support a colleague who helps organize an International Literary Competition based in the school by staying for the prize giving. 

So Thursday is going to be another school day extending into the night.  But the counting down to the end of the teaching part of term continues.

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!