Slack work!

Mondays are often “nothing” days.  The misery of re-starting work after the weekend is not conducive to joyous thinking and the blank wall of the rest of the week tends to limit vision.  Routine usually takes over and the day is completed in a stumblingly resentful sort of way which gets you to the slumping relief of the armchair at home eventually.  Geldof got it right.

But what is much more exhilarating is that I have only three more Mondays to go before the departure of the kids – this low number is courtesy of an occasional day holiday next Monday – which somehow puts into perspective the horror of this tediously long year.  The end is in distant sight!

I may bemoan the number of days still left for my sojourn in this school, but they seem to slip away quite quickly when it comes to putting finger to key to write.  Days have now gone by and I have written nothing.  This is because of the easy coma into which I can fall at a moment’s notice when I sink into my armchair.  I do, of course, expect this state of affairs to change magically when I finally knock the dust from my shoes and turn my back on education – at least in its city institutionalized form.  I expect to emerge like a vibrant butterfly from the cocoon of fatigue that envelopes me at present.

I have a half worked out (how poetic) timetable for physical exercise that will come into play as soon as the shackles of school are shaken off.

I blame my newly acquired sports centre for my malaise of course.  If they hadn’t had to contend with the reams of red tape before they could allow actual swimmers to enter their newly constructed dome which covers the swimming pool, then I could have been swimming there twice a day.  As it is, it remains tantalizingly out of splash as the stern guardians of public wet safety scrutinize such a radical structure (in use all over Spain) as a retractable roof before giving it the imprimatur of our pettifogging local authority.  It remains, like so many publically funded unnecessary airports throughout Spain, shiningly empty.

I am hoping that I will be able to use it in the same way that I used the pools at home and have an early morning swim and one later in the day before the small humans start shrieking their clumsy way through the water and across the lane that I am using.  I will have to start growing my fingernails again so that any obstruction can be sliced away!

As the centre is near the house I am hoping that it will become a regular haunt of mine.  There is also a café/restaurant next to it which looks interesting.  I have noted that they often have barbecues which look like good value for money.

When I last called into the centre, having been a member since Easter and never used the place once, on yet another fruitless visit to find out when the pool was going to be available for use rather than contemplation, I was told that it would be open in June with or without the “dome” – which I took to refer to the retractable roof.  As long as the water is heated I don’t much care as the only thing that concerns me in the heart jolting horror of immersion in delicious looking but potentially glacial water.  In my experience the sea in all its rough, natural, heat-loss majesty is often much warmer than the ill-heated communal pool.  It is only in the torrid days of the height of August heat that plunging into the waters of the outside pool is anything other than a way of finding out if you heart is strong enough to survive cardiac shock!

The reality of being without work is beginning to strike me, as is the dramatic decrease in the amount of money I will be living on!  I think that this is a circumstance which should provoke a change in how I live – though the practical difficulties of getting a mortgage at my age are considerable.

I do, however, look forward to traipsing through Castelldefels – map and camera in hand – searching for the elusive bank sell-off residence going for a song.  It should be possible to find something within my price range which should tick all the boxes that have to be ticked for somewhere reasonable to live.  I keep being told that now is the time to buy somewhere taking advantage of the crisis and using it to my advantage.

These things always seem more reasonable in theory than in concrete and glass, but it will be interesting to see what is on offer and it will be fascinating to see how the system works when you actually want to buy somewhere.  I have been told that you have to allow about 10% of the asking price as administration and legal fees – and that could be an essential factor!

The search is on!

tonight

Days slip by

The day before yesterday was, at last Friday.  It was not the usual joyous day because there was a meeting scheduled for yesterday (Saturday!) (sic.) to discuss kids in the 2BXT so a pall was spread over the day which poisoned all delight at the end of the week.

It was only when the joyous news that I didn’t have to attend was at last relayed to me that I was able to regard my surroundings with anything other than repugnance.  And just to add that little bit of sunshine on an otherwise cloudy and depressing day – we had a film in the afternoon, which took me nicely up to my early departure time and home.

It is now just over a month to the departure of the kids after their end of course fiesta and then there is just under an extra week of preparations for the next term.  There is a definite sense of winding down – but it is not unravelling fast enough for my taste!

The news of my departure is now an accepted fact and to my delight it does not seem to have percolated its way to the students so I have not been subject to the impertinent questioning that our kids think shows interest and concern.  Or it may be that the information is simply not interesting enough in their fun packed lives to have any real news value!

This weekend I have to write my resignation letter and start the formal process rolling of organizing my financial life AS (After School).  I am still quietly confident that I will get the necessary paper work to allow me to claim unemployment for a few months and that should see me into the new year when the new financial regime will have to start.

Meanwhile the annual battle to pay my taxes has been joined.  The tax people know who I am; they know where I live; they know where I work.  I have been in to see them and take my tax forms.  They have assured me that I am on their system and that my tax papers will automatically be sent to me.  Not! 

I have tried to register on line and the system rejects every attempt to prove my identify.  Using passport, address, name (in various orders), Spanish identity number, date of birth, tax number, previous registration number – all are rejected with impunity.

What adds insult to injury is that when I use the hole-in-the-wall a little logo of the tax people comes up on the menu screen asking me to click on it to “Confirm the draft”!  A draft of my tax affairs that they have not seen fit to send to me either physically or electronically – in spite of the fact that they know my address and email details.

I have made further abortive attempts to get my tax affairs into some sort of order and have been stymied at every turn by the system.  Trying to storm the electronic battlements has been futile and I have, in effect, given up and will accept whatever the bloody tax people take.  Because take they will.  I am the only person I know who does not get some form of tax rebate at the end of the financial year.  Oh no, not I.  I pay the blood sucking bastards even more money.  This is especially galling this year as the government has stolen 5% of my wages which they are going to sequester from my so-called “extra” pay in the summer.  But that does not hinder them in asking for even more at the end of the financial year.  The actual amount if just over €100 – but paying it will be less than trying to wrestle with the unfeeling monolith that is the tax system.

And in the Spanish system the onus in on you to pay!  If the tax office fails to send you information that is no excuse for non-payment.  Even if they make a mistake it is still up to you to make sure that they don’t!  In Spain you are obviously guilty until you have paid and then paid more!  I am a bitter boy at the moment and I am going to crumble in the face of the system.  With bad grace!

Toni has one of his usual bad tummies and therefore cannot eat even the restricted diet that his culinary prejudices force on him – so lunch is going to be a charming experience.  I no longer comment on potential menus because, with the exception of tripe, I can eat anything – so the choice is left to the nit picking of Toni.

We went to our usual weekend restaurant which has the widest range of first and second courses in Castelldefels for their menu del dia.  I chose scrambled egg with garlic for my starter and chose another starter as my main course, which turned out to be a similar size to the roundel of egg that I had for the real starter.  This was a potato and spinach with added greens melange which tasted good.  A light lunch though, as Toni had arroz a la cubana and couldn’t eat his fried egg I added it to my scrambled eggs, a lunch not noted for its lack of cholesterol!

Talking of food, our usual lunch on a Sunday is chicken from our favoured take-away grill, but recently the food has not been of the required standard and we are defying the weather forecast and are planning a barbecue.  This has two advantages: it allows us to strike at the very financial stability of a restaurant that is clearly trailing off in quality and also to provide Toni’s temperamental tummy with food which it can accept!

Today, Sunday, we are trapped in our house as there is some sort of Fun Run (an oxymoron if ever I heard one) where the main roads near the sea are blocked off to allow the masochists publically to exhibit their vile proclivities.  Their reserve is protected until 11.00 am and then I assume that stragglers are fair game for frustrated motorists.

After thunder and lightning throughout the night, the day has dawned with hesitant sunshine - so our projected barbecue is a possibility after all.  The cloud cover looks fairly complete with only a few opportunistic holes to allow the precious shine through, though I have had faith rewarded in darker seeming days and I put my hope in the unrivalled ability of a hopeless day in Catalonia to turn into something sunny!

I am now counting the days to my escape with growing desperation.  There are two end points: the day the students leave and the second the actual end of term.

It is deeply ironic that my leaving should be also the time that the government steals money from the so-called “extra” pay which we get in June.  This 5% theft of what is in effect a backdated tax disgusts me but, alas, does not encourage my colleagues into the sort of reaction which such a despicable action should produce.  I will, at least be paid up until the end of August. 

This is not something which is as automatic as it is in the UK and in private schools teachers spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about how much is going to be and when.  In The School That Sacked Me all (and I mean all) the teachers who had started there in September were worried about their summer pay.  Not one of them had total confidence that the money that they were legally owed would be paid.  Not one.  Which leads on to the question of Unions, or rather their scarcity in the private sector and I begin to lose my temper again.

Toni says that I am growing into a Grumpy Old Man, and I reply that not to be grumpy at the present time is to ignore the circumstances which surround us.  Pay cuts; rising inflation; growing unemployment; the growth of the right wing; currency fluctuations; teaching; noisy neighbours; the end of the opera season; dogs; high blood pressure; dog poo; clouds; lack of reading time; rain; motorcyclists; lack of book space; no I-phone and a touch of athlete’s foot – what is there to be joyous about?

Nevertheless, day by tortured day, we creep, broken bodied towards the first of the Days of Release – the day the kids go.  To my way of thinking there is not a great deal of sense in my being in school for the last week, as that is preparation for the next term when I won’t be there.  I suppose that there could be some point in my using that time to produce a series of lesson plans for the two credit courses that I teach: Making Sense of Modern Art and Media Studies.  We shall see.  I am sure that the school will want to get its last drop of blood out of me and I will want to get a place in the last meal of term when we have a mariscada out of them!

Give and take!

When is Friday?

Although the last tatters of rain washed me on my journey to school, the bulk of the water had obviously descended during the night and left a tide of what looks like sawdust but is actually the result of the continuing storm of pine pollen which continues to cloud our neighbourhood.

The new batch of CDs has now been loaded and is ready to be played. The first has already been inserted and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, followed by Barber’s Adagio for Strings saw me through the dampish trip to school and who knows what pop Classics will waft me home again. 

And this is what I want: hummable tunes to build up to the more challenging CDs that lie in wait for me.  What I have now got should see me through to the summer and then the psychological need for music first thing in the morning and at the end of the afternoon will be substantially lessened!

It’s odd, but I reckon that I can see the invisible chains that are binding my colleagues to the school; their heads are bowed over their own or the school computers and there is a sullen look of weary resignation about them.  Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!

I have not yet decided when to get de-mob happy and start (!) behaving disgracefully.  There is an opportunity on the 22^nd when there is another strike in the educational sector targeting private schools.  I know that our status is somewhat anomalous but we are still basically a private school no matter how much public money is inexplicably pumped into our coffers.  My chatting with the other “activists” does not give me much hope for a concerted thrust of militant action!

Julie may, or may not, have bought a flat in Sitges now.  The price was (for Sitges) absurdly cheap and it is the sort of flat to which value can be added fairly simply.  Her purchase has sparked off in me a lust for property of mine own – especially if it is a bank repossession sale where the blood-soaked, grasping banks are looking for instant liquidity rather than making the swingeing profits for which they are justly reviled. 

Toni will have to get his property-searching mode up and running and find a similar absurd bargain in Castelldefels.  If everything goes according to plan then there might be the possibility to look around in the summer – though that is not necessarily the best time to be searching for property in a seaside resort.

This Wednesday is feeling like a Friday – which is a bad thing.  There being more days left in the week than one’s body calendar has recognized and which therefore makes the “extra” two days almost unbearable.  Especially when Saturday is going to be rainy.  Just one damn thing after another!

As I have decided that this is a pseudo-Friday I am acting to preserve my essential Fridayness and take it relatively easy.  My class of 2ESO are now studying for their examination and that gives me a breathing space to get on with other work which is waiting to pounce on me if I am not careful.

My next lesson is with 1ESO in which I have to attack relative pronouns and subdue them to my will so that I can try and explain their use to guileless students who have happily been writing sentences with the new vocabulary we have learned.  The lesson after (yes, three lessons on the trot) is one of my Making Sense of Modern Art lessons where the kids themselves have to give a presentation – this time on Cubism if I am not mistaken.  This is not as relaxing as it could be as the pupil talk lasts only a few minutes and I have to stimulate debate for the rest of the time with the hapless pupils taking some sort of notes.

The last lesson of the day (for the third day in succession) is with the 3ESO and they are now groaning and muttering about the load of work that they have to do for the final assessment in June.  But, in a very real sense, I couldn’t care less and they are going to be someone else’s problem next year.  As, of course, is everything else that I am doing now.  Ah, ‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!

The swimming pool next to the British School of Barcelona which I joined under false pretences continues not to be open.  Which is not quite the same thing as closed.  We are still waiting for the council to give the OK for the thing to be opened.  At the moment the water is glinting seductively and everything is spick and span and new but without the safety certificate (I assume) the pool remains tantalizingly not available for swimming. 

I joined the Sports Centre at Easter when I was told with a light laugh by the girl at the counter that the authorities would “not even in a matter of weeks” be giving the certification.  Now that months are beginning to pass I realize that the ambiguity of their statement should have struck me much earlier and I should have used my experience of living and working in Spain and Catalonia to hold back from recklessly spending money on the naïf presumption that something which they told me was being done was being done!  You live and learn.  Or not of course, in my case.

As the weather is sullen I do not feel like throwing myself recklessly into the icy communal open pool and need the comfort of warmer water in an enclosed environment to lessen the shock to the system.  This is one of the times when I wish that my Spanish was much, much better so that I could lose my temper in the nuanced way that I find most beneficial when dealing with recalcitrant shopkeepers and service providers.

The weather improved in the afternoon and the evening was sunny and delightful and just the setting for a caña y tapa which we had in a new location our usual café having eschewed such low value crisis-friendly fare; our loyalty however is money dependent and we will desert ungainly entrepreneurs at a Euro’s notice!

A secondary purpose in going into town was to purchase yet another CD holder to take the new Amazonian discs that have finally been picked up (one cannot, after all expect the delivery firm in Castelldefels actually to deliver) and are now being played in the car.

I have devised a system whereby I will undergo a varied selection of music to keep me sane as I am wound about by the kamikaze spiralling gyrations of motorcyclists and the inane discourtesy of single-mindedly bigoted car drivers as I make my sedate drive-controlled way to work.

This morning was Nielsen and his first symphony conducted by Bloomstadt.  To me the sound sounded slightly muffled and the tempo at which he takes the opening of the first movement was ponderous but it certainly grew on me and I was happily humming along by the time I reached the turnoff from the motorway.  This music certainly took away the unpleasant taste of the classical pop shit that one of the other purchases left in the ears (so to speak) and I look forward to other delights.

One of the major purchases has been a British Symphonies box set which is notable for not being exclusively composed of symphonies.  The ten discs seem to cover a fair amount of musical ground up to, and including the rubbish which Hoddinot produced!

The weather is again threatening and depressing with cloud cover which is supposed to get thicker as the day progresses.  The flattening atmosphere appears to have transmitted itself to the staff who are subdued and colourless at the moment.

For me the lack of enthusiasm is easily explained as the notorious predilection for Saturday morning meetings in this place which is about to claim another weekend - and my fury at my enforced participation does not lessen with each infringement of my sacred weekend time.  

My startled yelps of “Lower wages and more impositions!” (not quite as catchy as “Not a penny off the pay not a minute on the day” or whatever was the actual phrase used by the strikers of yore) seems to fall on employee ears closed by the very real fear of what lack of work could mean for anyone rash enough to speak out and consequently be shown the door.  It is very lonely being a trade unionist in this sort of environment!

Meanwhile the day limps on with disruption to our normal timetable through the arrival of a choir from Scotland which is going to sing to us and the general entropy which is a delicious morsel of happiness consequent upon the ragged attendance of the second year sixth or 2BXT and the relishable free periods which follow in their absence.

This is the second day which has felt like Friday without actually being that sacred day.  Yesterday also felt like Friday and I am assuming with Sod’s Law that tomorrow, Friday, will feel nothing like it.  The threat of the Saturday meeting is still there which adds to the sense of grotesque unreality – as does the weather forecast which predicts the same cloudy weather into next week with the only difference being it will rain on Sunday.  So much for the weekend!

At least I can get on with some of my reading if the allure of the Third Floor is lessened by cloud!

End of yet another era!

Today I told the head of department that I would not be teaching in the school during the next academic year.  She had the good grace to look as though someone had put a bullet through her forehead!

She had, as I would have expected, the good grace also to sympathize with the demands of my questionable health and agree that it was more important to be healthy than soldier on and gradually subside into coughing absence.

The school hasn’t quite agreed (I think) to one of my perfectly reasonable requests for a gentle financial decline from fully paid employment, but I remain optimistic (I think.)

The reaction of my colleagues was one of shock and disbelief – which was touching – but it was also noticeable that the breaking news of the morning had given way to disinterested acceptance by the afternoon.  A school is a very good place to learn the transitory nature of things; generations change with bewildering speed in normal school life and there is always something new to replace the recently interesting.

It will be revealing to see how long it takes the kids to find out that I am going; which of the teachers reveals information that the kids do not need to know – and of course the reaction of the kids.

I do feel different having said irrevocable words to the Powers That Be, though perhaps not quite as different as I thought I would have felt.  Still, as one of my colleagues pointed out to me, I am now “untouchable” and it is up to me to work out how to use this illusory power!

Toni and I went out to collect my Amazon goodies which, of course, have not been delivered by our local non-delivery delivery service. I have discovered that I have ordered two copies of Peter Watson’s “Ideas – A history from fire to Freud” well, one of the copies will be an excellent present for Suzanne.  Lucky girl!

The rest of the Amazon order is CDs of various sorts to harmonize the journey to school each day.  I have added to my already incomparable (at least to my knowledge) collection of Carl Nielsen.  I think that my recordings of that Great Dane now outnumber the recordings of my first Scandinavian love, Sibelius!  Though possibly not quite.

Celebrations of this auspicious day were held in La Fusta, our tapa restaurant of choice.  We have decided that their patatas bravas and ensallida rusa are the best in Castelldefels and we had a chilled bottle of Cava.

I did want to buy a summer watch to commemorate the day but the model that I had seen and wanted had been sold and I had to order another one which I will have in a week or so.  It will be rather different from the other watches that I have worn recently – but perhaps it is time for a change.

Yesterday was one of those days for which a new word for the concept of “tiredness” needed to be invented.

As well as frantic marking of the odd examination papers that were sat late, a full time table, preparation for my epic day today when I have six periods to teach, a two hour meeting after school and a trip into the centre of Barcelona to go to an opera which did not finish until 11.30 pm, the worry about the non-arrival of stuff from Amazon thanks to the idiot incompetence of the delivery people at this end, my inability to learn French quickly enough for a holiday in July, the economic situation in Greece, finding somewhere prominent to fly my second CCOO flag in the garden, being in school when the sun is shining provocatively outside – there is also the problem of life in general.

There is going to be another strike and I have been talking to those activists (or “normal” people as I like to call them) who took action last time and we have been discussing the almost pathological, eyes-closed rejection of action to the disastrous situation which is unfolding around them.  For Christ’s sake, their bloody pay has been cut and they do nothing, nothing at all.  They fear to take further (ha!) action from the absolutely nothing that they have done in spite of the fact that they are in a situation that demands their active demonstration of rejection!

The Opera was Adriana Lecouvreur by Francesco Cilea based on an 1849 play and first performed in 1902.  I must admit that I had not heard of either the composer of the opera and I must further admit that I have done not a single second of listening to get to know the music of the production and I don’t even know the libretto – even after watching the opera I am not convinced that I fully understand what went on.

The thing that strikes one about the production is the sizzling animosity between the two lead female singers.  I was irresistibly reminded of “Dynasty” or was it the other one where two of the major female stars ended up in one episode wrestling in a lily pond – not quite mud wrestling but near enough.

The music was odd and reminded me of Delibes and at times was vulgar beyond belief and sounded like the most sensationalist musical type production.  The storyline was risible – poisoned violets forsooth – but the magnificent set and the powerful singing made the evening one which kept me awake in spite of my almost overwhelming tiredness

That was the last of the operas this season and I look forward to the next year in rather more relaxed times!

We shall see who has just found out about my departure tomorrow.

More of the same!

Life certainly does have a way of interfering with the civilized pursuit of writing, especially if you happen to be involved in the specific type of education that seems to be staple fare in our place: chaos.

As usual, the examinations are to blame – as when are they not?

The timetable for the writing, sitting and marking of these odious intrusions into the life of the kids and staff have been (as they were last year, and the year before that, and the year before than and . . . well, you get the idea) timed so that there is not enough time between their sitting, marking and meeting.

The meeting to discuss all the results is on Monday.  The last examination was on Wednesday.  The deadline for getting results, comments and class descriptions into the computer system was Friday.  Oh yes, and we have a more than full timetable to teach as well!

Why not, I hear you ask, mark during the examination time of another class?  Alas, our kids are so finely attuned to all the different forms of cheating (good and bad kids alike) that eagle-eyed invigilation merely keeps the cheating down to acceptable proportions, it does not eliminate it.  No time then to mark.  And of course one of the examinations was held last period on Wednesday, which was also Toni’s birthday during which The Family came down to celebrate and arrived before I had had a shower after returning from work.

Thursday was, therefore, a day of frantic marking as was Thursday evening so that I could have the marks ready to put in to the computer system on Friday in the “free” periods that we have in our absurdly long day.

But that, of course was not possible because the lists which were in the computer system did not relate to the actual classes that we were teaching this term.  In spite of the fact that the “changeover” dates have been known since the start of year, nothing had been done.  As I was the one making a fuss about this and trying to get the groups changed it also followed that I was the only teacher of these groups who was trying to put the marks into the system - ah hem!  So, out of all my classes, I could only put in two sets of results on Friday when I had a "free" period.

I personally and physically took sheets of paper with teachers’ names and pupils’ names to the secretary to get the system updated, traipsing uphill on the infinity of steps which links our vertical campus.

As Friday is my “early” finish (at only ten to four in the afternoon) I left school with the entry of marks having been impossible.  My mood was not subdued in any way by listening to La Stupenda shrieking her way through The Girl of the Golden West, so it was only when I found the usual note from our local Non-Delivery-Delivery service that Amazon uses that my mood lightened.

Skipping back into the car I drove into town and parked audaciously in a Blue Zone to get my parcel from the harassed little man who looks as though he is doing compulsory Car in the Community work in the office.  Anyway, clutching my suspiciously light parcel I rushed back home and ripped it open.

“Simple French”, 100 Classical something or others and Messian – The Collector’s Edition (13 CDs!) was the varied fare inside.  The Classical Thingies are for the car, the French is for my trip in July and Messian is for indulgence – so putting on the first disk of the Messian which was, unsurprisingly The Turangalila Symphony I settled back prepared to be swamped by the music.  And I was until the fifth movement when the bloody thing stuck.  I cleaned and tried again and again it stuck.  I tried it in the computer and there was no problem, so it must be Toni’s music system.  I hope!

However the mood had been broken so I turned to the French book and was mildly gratified to discover that many of the words were at least familiar, even if their exact meaning was sometimes elusive!  I do, after all, have an O Level in French – even if, as I now realize, it was sat more than 45 years ago!  How is this possible?

The charm of French soon fading I turned, resentfully, to the school work that I was unable to complete in school and found that the list had been changed at last and so I was able to put in the marks.  Then I thought I would have a little lie down - and you can guess the rest.

So, on Saturday morning, Saturday morning mark you (I can hear the cadences of Neil Kinnock ringing in my ears) I settled down to write the class descriptions that we had been told by management had to be completed by Saturday afternoon!

I am still trembling with anger at the grotesque assumption of management that they can commandeer our weekends by their own incompetence in not getting groups changed while, at the same time, reducing our wages.  And I am the only teacher who seems to be furious about it all.  I despair!  I really do!

And another thing.  The Classical Thingies is ear rottingly awful.  I had expected a few disks of all the favourites to hum along with but this grotesquery includes “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and Sarah Brightman, as classical!  And Our Bryn (may god forgive him) singing some sort of Benedictus whose syrupy vulgarity makes the theme music of “Muffin the Mule” seem like High Art.  I have already skipped forwards over a whole range of tracks and I think that the whole nonsense will have to be given away or repackaged as a present for somebody – anybody.  I wonder if Messian is suitable car journey music?

Mu schoolwork had to be done quite quickly as I was called to Terrassa to celebrate Toni’s mum’s birthday.  I did leave in good time to get there for 2.00 pm but I had not counted on – what is the collective noun for magpies, or rather for magpies with dysentery? – because my car was covered in bird shit and pollen.  One window was quite odured over with the stuff.  And I couldn’t park anywhere near the bank to get money to pay my share of the present, so I admitted defeat, came back home, hosed off the car so that it looked a little less like a medieval night-soil collecting cart and started on my journey.

Which was relatively uneventful, even if I did start off on the wrong motorway.  In Spain, or at least in Catalonia, they like their motorway links: why travel on one when you can pop over to another and sample the delights of another road.  This is useful if you have made mistakes in your navigation because you never need to retrace your steps there will always be a portal to another universe to bring you back to the straight and narrow.

The disadvantage of these links however is that they have obviously been designed in an office by someone who doesn’t drive.  If you want to experience the reality of Yeats' “Second Coming” then I suggest using a Spanish motorway link road.  You will find yourself “turning and turning in a widening gyre” and unless you are driving very carefully the whole of history will flash before your eyes as you tackle yet another eye-wateringly tight bend on a spiral going who-knows-where.

Lunch was delightful and the present (a red Casio touch-screen camera) was received with delight.

Back in Castelldefels I returned to the French book and have now ploughed my way through some sixty pages desperately hoping that at least some of it will stick and even hoping, hope against hope, that it might activate some lost memories of the language so I can stagger my way along in a non English speaking environment – as I am assured I will meet in the remote part of northern France that we are going to visit.

Today I am on the Third Floor.  In spite of some flimsy cloud I am confident that it is warm enough to lie out.  Which I intend to do.

Tomorrow: school, meeting and opera.  A varied day.

Frantic fun!

What a way to start the day! 

To be greeted with the information that the examinations which have yet to be sat by the pupils will all have to be marked, ready for assessment with class and individual commentaries all ready and in the computer by Saturday afternoon “at the latest” so that things are ready for the interminable and pointless meeting on Monday – which also coincides with the last opera that I am supposed to see in the Liceu. 

This is going to cause a real problem.  Not that I ever say anything of any importance whatsoever in these meetings (during which I am in something of a protective coma brought about by almost terminal tedium) but presence is regarded as the sine qua non of professionalism in a display that the school (as opposed to other sentient beings like myself) thinks is the culmination of educational excellence.  It is, of course, nothing of the sort – but try telling meeting-hungry talkers that!

I think that this is going to be a major irritation.  I have no intention of missing my opera (not at the price of the seat that I have paid for!) but am prepared to compromise with the meeting by attending part of it.  I am going to leave at 7 pm and that gives me an hour to get into the centre of Barcelona. 

An hour of tension and worry that will be brought about by every (and I mean every) traffic light being against me and the Diagonal lateral being forced into one lane by illegally parked cars, vans and busses and, the central horror, sudden road works forcing time heavy diversions into unknown parts of the city infuriatingly, tantalizingly and constantly adjacent to where I want to go. 

I will leave those concerns for the day itself and concentrate on getting through the next few tension-filled days of celebration, examination and frustration.

Days are getting a little over-filled at the moment with all sorts of events getting squeezed into less than a week.  By Wednesday of next week things should be a great deal clearer – one way or another!

It is Toni’s Mum’s birthday on Saturday and yesterday (just 3 days before the event) Toni informed me that he has no idea whatsoever about what to buy her.  The default present is perfume by Rocha but his mother has very pointedly told her offspring that she is well stocked with that particular liquid and they would have to do some out of the box thinking.  Three days before.

The only suggestion I have made, my suggestions having been sharpened by the yearly struggle to find presents for my own mother fresh in my mind, which has found partial favour is a camera.  This purchase however, is one which needs the active and financial participation of all the children to make it come to fruition and that, dear reader, is a task in itself.  And not one that I am particularly eager to undertake.

The Birthday Party has come and gone with my participation spasmodically active from my cataleptic state of exhaustion – even the Cava (decent Cava I might add) failed to raise me above the semi-somnolent.  The start of the Europa Cup added a fatigued horror as I assumed that the “party” (with Toni acting like the Ghost of Christmas Past as he had a dickey tummy and could eat and drink nothing but Coke and ham) was going on until the end of the match.  Luckily, at half time The Family decamped and I went thankfully to bed.

This morning brought a round of frantic marking as I have worked out that it is unlikely that I can get everything done by the deadline of Saturday afternoon (sic!) by which time everything has to be marked, the marks entered into the computer system; comments given for each child and a group description given to class teachers.  Ha bloody ha!

It is now late at night days after the date of the opening sentence to this entry and both sets of examination papers have been marked and I am readyish to start the comments during what free time I have in the absurdly long day that our school imposes on us.

By way of relaxation I called in to our local Lidl shop to get bread and ended up buying bed linen: that, surely is the beauty of shopping.  And I didn’t get bread in the end either.

Ever since my shock of finding out the cost of a single down and feather pillow in El Corte Ingles I have been resting my head resentfully on the plastic apology for a pillow that I now possess.  You can imagine my glee when I say that Lidl had its own pillows and my glee converted to near hysteria when I realized that they actually had real feathers in them!  The fact that they cost almost twenty (sic) times less than the pillows in the aforementioned shop might also have had something to do with my heightened emotion.

The bed now has a riot of floral motifs and two elongated feather filled pillows and I will find out now if such natural artifice is conducive to more restful sleep than I have failed to get used to in the near past.  I do hope so, because I need to be refreshed and finger ready to start punching information into our computer system.

If I can’t get it done tomorrow then it will not be done at all because I am treating with contempt the instruction from On High that all information must be in the system by Saturday afternoon.  How dare they presume to hijack part of our weekend when they are actually paying us less!  Bloody cheek!

But, mindful of the ravelled sleeve of care and all that I will repair to my bed and hope that the gentle fingers of Morpheus will work their magic and make me fighting fit for the fray on the morrow.

One can but hope!

Closing eyes!

Guiltily cheered by the awful weather in Britain I am able to face what are going to be fairly stressful days ahead.

Not only is my knee playing up at the start of a day when I do little else but traipse from one building to another lesson after lesson up and down innumerable steps, but also I have to buy Toni’s birthday present; get stuff for the meal for The Family who are descending on Wednesday for the celebrations; start marking the pointless examinations – oh yes, and teach!

At some point I am going to have to make an appointment for the doctor so that he can read the auguries from the red stuff taken yesterday and, by contrast, I am supposed to be doing “something cultural” with Suzanne.  A full and satisfying week which should result in complete prostration by Friday.  At best.

Of course I have no idea about what to buy Toni for his birthday so, as long as I remember on my way home, I will call into MediaMarkt and hope that electronic inspiration hits me - and the impact is not too costly!

The only thing that I need to buy for myself is windscreen washer.  This is the season of pollen and when you live in an area which is covered in pine trees then pollen takes on a completely different meaning.  Given the sheer quantity of pollen that a single pine tree makes it is astonishing to me that the entire world is not covered in coniferous forests.  I remember last year that Carmen kicked her son’s football into the branches of a pine tree in the park and thick clouds of pollen floated from the branches in a totally unconvincing sort of way.  It looked as though boys had been paid to sit up a tree and when a flying object hit any branch they had to open their sacks of powder in gleeful abandon.  All the cars in our area look as though they have been to one of those Indian festivals where the main occupation is throwing pigment around.

Most of the pollen in our area seems to have settled on my car and no matter the speed at which I travel it does not go off to do its stuff elsewhere.  I can’t help feeling sorry for the tenacious pollen trying its damndest to do its reproductive stuff on the unyielding surface of a motorcar – but full marks for trying.  And that’s another thing I have to do – get the car washed before the pollen becomes an integral part of the decoration.

Toni’s presents have been bought and, more importantly wrapped.  The card has been written.  The food has been amassed and Toni can set it out tomorrow.  The Cava is cooling in the fridge and I am beyond tired.

We had a disastrous meal after doing the shopping.  Torradeta in Centre Comercial L’Anec Blau was the perpetrator of the gastronomic crime against food.  Perhaps stupidly I chose the offer of three tapas for €6.90.  On the surface they sounded OK.  On the surface.

The meal was not helped by my participation in a cliché before I had eaten a thing.  The ketchup bottle was one of those commercial squeeze things filled with watered down liquid which had coagulated in the narrow nozzle.  A little pressure and soon one of the dishes was explosively filled with ketchup.  And Toni’s shirt had interesting red stains, as had the table and various condiments.

My meal was taken away but alas, when it returned nothing was new.  The three tapas had merely been cleaned up a bit and reheated so that they had the texture and taste of ancient cardboard.  Disgusting.  And expensive for what it was.  Never again.

Tomorrow the first and second of the examinations I will have to mark and then the bloody, bloody meetings.  One of which is still scheduled for a Saturday morning.

Think not of such things.  That way madness lies!