The little patch of blue!

The Great Lie of the teaching world is that the end of the summer term will be easier because some of your classes will have left and you will gain free periods.  Year after year this turns out not to be true and hard faced timetable organizers come and demand your “free” period for something else because you “should be teaching now” and resentment builds on hatred and the bitterness of foiled relaxation takes over again.

I have discovered that the only way to keep your gained free is physically to leave school, and then you only have to worry about some demented timetabler wandering the school howling your name to come and take over a class which is without an adult presence.  That fear, however, is only momentary and can safely be dismissed because even if the person is howling away, it is nowhere near you and the situation will be over by the time you return.

So it was in my generally abortive visit to the tax people; I had surges of guilt when I thought that I might have been used – but they passed and nothing was said on my return.

So, Monday, first thing, told that a “free” had gone and it means that I will be teaching the 2ESO for two periods on the trot: a delightful thought.  They can bloody well revise because I’m damned if I am going to do anything positive with them other than keep them in the room and stop them climbing the walls.

My uncanny luck in having a swimming lane to myself continues and I have decided to regard it as normal in case the situation comes to think of itself as extraordinary and suddenly cease in the screaming rash of brawling babies splashing about enjoying themselves when it is clear that swimming pools are solely for monomaniacs who plough up and down in straight lines ignoring all other pool users.

I must say that I am enjoying the new pool and have now slipped into nodding acquaintance with various users and, even more tellingly I do not have to order my double-bag cup of tea in the café I merely have to appear for the people there to prepare my tipple.

Perhaps fortuitously the “extras” the café has in the way of cakes is so mind-bendingly boring that there is little incentive to indulge.  Yesterday, for example there was a spiral cake which looked unnervingly like a flattened, icing sugar coated dog poo.  Nothing daunted I ordered one and, as a good customer I was given two.  They had the consistency of reconstituted sawdust but, alas without the flavour.  Under the steely gaze of the lady of the counter I ate them both and that, I think, is the end of my experimentation with the comestibles on offer.  I will stick to my cup of tea.

On a far more positive note the working days left with the kids has now fallen to single figures: nine days left!  Admittedly these days are going to be filled with the joyousness of exam supervision and marking but there is something magical in single figure days to the end of my teaching career.  No more getting up at six thirty in the morning; no teaching the absurdity of six periods in a single day; no more meaningless marking; no more listening to the self pitying whining of needy privileged kids; no more education and no more passives, gerunds, phrasal verbs, conditionals, indirect speech, transformation sentences, word formation, sentences to show the meaning of words, inserting words in spaces and all the other soul destroying minutiae of learning English as a foreign language.  Great happiness!

Next week sees the end of the course for the kids and by Friday they will be gone!  There is a simple unalloyed pleasure in writing such a sentence that only a teacher working his way to retirement can truly understand and appreciate.

Keep calm and carry on!

If ever I needed the calming influence of Zen, I need it now.  I have had an extended brush with Spanish bureaucracy and my head is both bloody (with the rush of the red stuff to the brain during my more trying moments) and bowed (with the realization that this is as good as it gets) and I am having, if not the consolations of ancient Chinese philosophy, at least the more tangible and liquid benefits of a good cup of PG Tips.

I had forgotten (which was unforgiveable) the necessity of lots of pieces of paper with which the ever-gaping maw of officialdom needs to be stuffed.  It is not enough to produce a passport; it must be the passport and a photocopy of the passport so that the bureaucrats can feast their eyes on such an inspiring document where the original is no longer there!  I had also forgotten (how could I!) that the photocopy has to be made by you, not the people who say they need one.

I should have recalled the haughty dismissal of my plaintive questioning of the medical staff in our local centre about why they could not use the photocopier (in plain sight) to make any copy that they needed – “Because we are not a copy shop!” – and realized that you should never go under-papered when dealing with the officials who helped make Spain the thrusting, efficient and debt-free country that it is today.

And talking of money, there was the usual traipse over town finding a bank to pay money into so that I could take the receipt back to the police who were issuing a document.  The simplicity of paying into the same office in which one is dealing with the documentation is apparently beyond the imagination of a mere police force.

And the banks!  Spanish banks are a standing joke.  They have no money.  The bespectacled leader of this benighted country is trying to work out a way in which he is not seen to go cap-in-hand (if I am allowed to resurrect the smear that was thrown around in the UK when we had to get cash from the IMF) and beg for the umpteen billions that he hasn’t got to give to the criminally reckless Spanish banks to “save” them and keep the country out of apocalyptic meltdown.

My first choice of bank was crowded and as I was in the bank at the time when the older generation comes to the bank to look at its money and to have a little chat with the tellers, I had no desire to sit and wait in precious time stolen from the timetable.

The next bank I went to was fortuitously empty but our presence was completely unremarked by the girl one the phone behind the only staffed position in the open plan office.  There was another woman working behind some moveable screens who also studiously ignored us.  I went to sit down and let the rude ladies carry on with their obviously more-important-than-customers work.

While sitting there yet another lady came into the bank, gave a cheery greeting and went straight into the manager’s office.  So, three workers in the bank and all of them ignoring the customer.

Eventually, when Toni left to get a photocopy of my passport there was an indication that the girl at the counter was ready to deal with me but when I went up to the counter she started dealing with papers, sorting them and stapling them together and again completely ignored me.  For a bank that is completely broke (and I mean completely) their arrogance in mistreating customers is perhaps an indication of the reasons for their complete failure!

When the bill was paid I barely had the breath left to mutter a version of gracias and she said nothing.  I couldn’t stay inside the place and waited for Toni outside.

Returning to the horror of officialdom there was then, as there always is, a problem with my name.  My middle name is the problem; in Spain it is the surname of the father, while in the UK it is just another forename.  As with the fact that we change our passport number with a new passport so with the names – all is difficult and will not fit into the systems that the Spanish have devised.

However the issue of the name was resolved (or not) only time and the next official letter will tell, but I do now have a pseudo-identity card which is a little more manageable than the tattered sheet of A4 which was my previous claim to a digital identity in this country.

Saturday was the day of Julie’s party and I was duly picked up by Tina and her husband and taken to the wonderful house that she has – not forgetting the elegant swimming pool at the bottom of the garden.

I ate and drank (particularly) far too much but a good time was hand by all – at least in the parts that I remember!

I still have to find my mobile phone and to check it I remembered to bring the chairs back!

I have managed to cope with daylight, I must now attempt the great outdoors!

Limping along!

 

Nothing is slowing down in school and there is the usual air of barely supressed panic motivating all the members of staff to work, mark, fill in, fill out, prepare, mark, assess, set, mark, conflate and confuse and, of course, mark.

We are building up to the final (!) set of examinations of the year; these start on the 15^th and work their way through the next week and then, though I hesitate to breathe the idea, I am truly “marked out” and Poe’s raven can sing its heart out reiterating the single word that can bring unutterable delight to a teacher’s soul: “Nevermore!”

To my utter horror there are still eleven working days left to the fiesta at the end of the course – and then the week without the students.  This is too long and difficult to imagine.  Double-figure days left is more than human flesh can stand!  Honestly.

Each day is slow torture as there is no guarantee, given the time of year, that the day will follow the pattern that you have been used to.  At this time of year anything can happen: sudden trips; collapsed classes; spontaneously generated meetings; films; talks; changes without rhyme or reason; swapped classes - events which swoop onto the timetable like rabid eagles ripping, rending and tearing, leaving the teaching staff gasping and hollow eyed.

OK, perhaps because I am not returning (let me pause for a moment to savour that statement!) these last days are even more intolerable than for the rest of my colleagues who seem to me to be giving a pretty good impression of stir-crazy junkies at the moment as they lurch spasmodically from task to task with the fevered intensity of prisoners working towards their parole!

I have attempted to discover exactly what the arrangements for the final days of term with the pupils are, but with little success, so it will all have to stay as a seat-of-the-pants approach.

My swimming (a much more agreeable subject and one which imposes itself on my imagination when I look out of the windows and see sun streaming down) continues in a more than satisfactory way with my routine almost being established.  I have almost given up trying to describe the taste of the water in the pool, although I suspect that I would have little difficulty if it were an undertone in a cheap red that I was drinking!  The nearest I can come is that it has the memory of something vaguely metallic mixed with a suggestion of light fuel.  It is the sort of taste that coats the tongue but which the brain soon filters out of the objectionable part of the taste spectrum.

I still have not had to share a lane with any other sentient being and I continue to worry about the correct etiquette when it finally does happen.  I have only been using the pool since last Friday so my swim this afternoon will mark a week of daily use.

My cup of tea at the end of my exertions is also becoming something of an institution and both of the people who work in the café know how to make a half way decent cup of British-type tea after my careful instructions.  It is very pleasant sitting outside watching the world go by while drinking a cup of tea and reading my mobile in a fairly desultory fashion.  A calming end to the day.  Most satisfactory.

The “Mafia” who live opposite, in the large and impossible to afford house with pool, are doing something in the corner of their extensive garden which backs onto the front of our house.  To facilitate the work rate the guy deems it necessary to open all the doors of his parked car and turn the music system up to its loudest volume.  This is irritating.  Toni informed me that the music had been going on all day yesterday and as I arrived home the last thing that I wanted to be subjected to was the blaring music of some ill educated oaf.

I shouted some sort of imprecation as soon as I got out of the car indicating my feelings of displeasure at such a wonton disregard for the normal civilities of neighbourly living. 

I got out some of my stuff from the boot of the car and then marched disgruntledly over the road and began stacking the goods that I had purchased near the school bag and my swimming kit.    On my second trip to the car and back again I heard the dog-woman of next door cackle some sort of whimpering moan about the music being too strong.  Barely resisting the inclination to snort with derision at her hypocrisy I continued my transporting.

On my third journey back to the car something inside broke and I marched resolutely towards the big automatic metal gates behind which the open doors of the blaring car were clearly visible.

Taking my courage in both fists I tapped irresolutely on the metal producing a weedy clicking sound.  Kicking the metal car doors did go through my mind but then I heard the unmistakable sounds of man-at-work emanating from the new construction rapidly rising, though all but hidden by the luxuriant greenery, in the corner of the garden.

My first “Señyor!” lacked authority and projection, but my second had command and the right degree of the peremptory to insure a reply.

In Spanish made fluent by fury I indicated that I was a close neighbour, that the noise was insupportable and that it had been going on for too long.  An indistinct reply seemed to indicate some sort of guilt and by the time I had reached the gate there was blissful silence.

The dog woman (the curses of an irascible Cerberus fall on her head and his fangs savage her kidneys) was going through her gate and behind it I heard mutterings of appreciation.  There is a certain irony in the fact that that the woman who cares not a jot that her cantankerous curs bark themselves hoarse in their cells under her house is sensitive to noise!

What matters?

On an overcast and humid Monday engaged, as one is, in the travails of education there are many associated problems to tax one: over-reliance on questionable examinations for assessment; an overcrowded curriculum; a ridiculously long teaching day and, most heinously a reduction in pay for teachers!  All these, and more rise up to haunt a normal day.

But these are not things which really tax my patience there are other, much more serious elements in one’s teaching life which cause more angst than the mere fripperies of educational thought and practice.

The first is milk.  We have milk provided by the powers that be so that we can fortify ourselves against the depredations of our clients by a saving cup of tea or, for those of a perverse nature, coffee.  The milk is of the artificial long-life variety and is stored in the cupboard under the coffee machine.  That is, it should be stored there.

On a Monday I park my car outside one building (for a quick getaway at the end of the day) and then walk to the other to compose myself for teaching.  Part of this composition is taking tea and, because I am prepared to rough it by using a common or garden tea bag I temper the rough flavour with a soupçon of milk.  Which, each Monday is not there.  And when I check in the cupboard under the coffee machine is not there either.

The milk storage facility is located deep in the lair of the caretaker which is through a service doorway at the bottom of a flight of stairs.  And every Monday I seem to traipse down and through and come back up with the week’s supply of milk.  Because of the location of the staff room, our milk supply is also the supply for the office staff, the directora and anyone else who arrives of sufficient importance to merit liquid refreshment.

And then there is the photocopier.

Photocopiers have been the bane and the delight of my teaching life in equal quantities.  They give and they certainly take; they build up your hopes and dash them with impunity.

My grouse is with the paper.  Photocopiers have to be fed and, given the number of copies that we make, fed regularly.  I only question the regularity with which I have to get reams of paper and placate the pre-emptory digital demands of the autocratic information panel when one of the multiple paper trays is out of that commodity.  Statistically I am owed a period of paper peace which extends well into the years that I will be retired to make up for the releasing of five hundred sheets after five hundred sheets into the innards of the machines that I have tended through the time that I have been in education!

In the same way I have been to the office to get more paperclips, drawing pins, Sellotape and marker pens than the rules of logic and fairness would suggest that I should.  It is a restatement of that irritating piece of doggerel philosophy about everyone thinking that anyone can do something so it’s somebody else’s responsibility so nobody actually does it.  I know that the original piece of twisted logic is much longer than that with a metaphorical wagging finger punctuating each phrase, but there is a limit to trite wisdom that I can take so its shortened form will have to suffice.

What I am trying to say is that I seem to do more than my fair share of the unimportant but essential semi-tasks that need to be done in a normal school so that things can run smoothly.  Which, of course they do not, which is also part of my moan, because that shows that others are not doing the things that they are ignoring, and I’m buggered if I am going to do more.  So there!

The overcast morning has given way to an intermittently bright and sunny afternoon and certainly one which demands my presence somewhere else other than in school.

We have counted the days remaining and there appear to be just 13 full teaching days before the fiesta at the end of the course which marks with its conclusion the departure of the kids.  The remaining week (pupil free) is something which we can contemplate with a degree of equanimity which Lao Tzu himself might envy - in spite of the fact that it will be filled with frustratingly irrelevant activity!

I continue to swim daily and I also continue to have a lane to myself.  This cannot continue.  At some point I will be confronted with a person in the lane that I want to use and there are no directions for the proper etiquette to be observed when sharing lanes.  In the municipal pool there are little signs indicating that multi-swimmers must adopt an anti-clockwise mode if they are not to incur the wrath of the attendants.  There are no such signs in the pool I am now using so (especially if I am not wearing contact lenses and am therefore practically unsighted) there is plenty of room for social and linguistic confusion.

The taste of the water in the new pool is unique in my experience.  I hope that the distinctive – if difficult to describe – flavour of the water is due entirely to the chemicals added to mitigate the fetid contributions of other pool users, but it does not have the easy to define chlorinated aroma which has accompanied my swimming ever since I can remember.  No, this flavour is almost meaty in its mouth-filling quality and is surprisingly un-medical in its aftertaste.

You get used to the “flavour” quite quickly and the taste soon becomes unremarkable which is disturbing considering how unpleasant the taste is when you get in.  Whatever chemicals there are in the water they must be remarkable efficient if they can deaden the taste buds in double quick time!

I am enjoying the unrestricted length of the pool and I have now trained the two people who run the café next to the centre to make a decent cup of tea!  Bliss!  If only they had free British newspapers I would be ecstatic.  Still, I must remember to bring my I-pad and I will have The Week at hand!

Meanwhile my Worst Day awaits.  But how many of them are left: thee including today.  Manageable!  Just.  Even though great chunks of the school have finished their courses or are taking examinations I still have five periods to teach today with the necessity for my scurrying between buildings after each bloody lesson.  My swim at the end of the day will be more balm than exercise – even allowing for the odd taste of the experience.

And the days continue to be counted down.

Making the most of it!

Another week consigned to the history books.  Slowly, o so slowly, time creepeth on and liberty (and of course abject poverty) beckon.

School is gearing itself up for its last spasm of examinations before vomiting forth the pupils to their various holiday homes.  The magic mark-out-of-ten will have been given and pupils will either completely ignore their achievements having done their duty and placated their paying parents or settle down to ignore their holiday work until the last possible day before the start of the next term!

The air of unreality about my presence in the school is growing; I can’t wait for them to start talking about “next year” and all the preparations which will be necessary to ensure that the commencement of the first trimester is as smooth as is humanly possible to reduce to the absolute minimum any stress teachers might feel as they face the term ahead.  That is, of course, a joke.

This year saw the introduction of a teacher assessment/evaluation scheme.  This was accompanied by meetings, documentation and much discussion about classroom observation.  We had, eventually, one meeting with department head and section head.  Objectives were set and the general chitchat included a question asking how dedicated I was to the school!  This is an interesting question because of its essential meaninglessness.  It tells you a lot about the attitude of the managerial questioners and is not likely to get any sort of realistic answer from the interviewee.  I responded by voicing an enthusiastic platitude which sadly seemed just what they wanted to hear: box ticked we moved on.

We have had, of course, no classroom observation which every teacher, perhaps rightly, regards as a threat.  If the initial process is flawed, why should one expect the final results to be better?

This month will see the theft of money from our pay packets: 3% of our total wages since September rawly ripped and poured into the maw which characterizes the empty coffers of the state.  This is backdated income tax and little more than theft.  This disgraceful depletion is made possible by the emasculated nature of the unions in this country which are actually financed by the government!

As a reaction against such horror today, Saturday, Irene and I had flee to Barcelona to partake of culture.  We went firstly to lunch, in the restaurant that I went to when Katy came to Barcelona, Los Caracoles.  The prices were high and for what we had – three shared tapas: mixed salad; Catalan broad beans and a small prawn omelette – extortionate!  We had a couple of beers and no change from €50!

We went to what, on the surface, appeared to be an enterprising temporary exhibition in The Picasso Museum.  The basis of the show was a consideration of the “Picasso Product”, thinking about the artist as a logo or trademark and studying the industry which has grown up around his marque.  At least that is what I thought the exhibition was about; having seen it I am not at all sure!

I found the presentation pretentious and confused and the visual material sometimes irrelevant to the stated comments.

When I got to the middle of the displays I was frustrated, and by the time I got to the latter sections of the exhibition I couldn’t wait to get out as the frustration had by that time developed into full blown grumpy old man exasperation.

The permanent collection of the museum is interesting rather than impressive and Irene’s face showed more and more disillusionment as she surveyed one mediocre painting after another.  The final straw was the collection of slapdash ceramics that Picasso threw together.  We were ready to go!

As we started our return journey to the car through the cramped, atmospheric and smelly narrow streets of the Born district we re-passed the adverts for MEAM, the Museu Europeu d’Art Modern containing “Contemporary Art of the XXI Century” and, hoping to find something more to our taste we went in.  My teacher’s ticket only got me a €2 reduction (the Picasso Museum was free for me, €11 for Irene!) in the Palau Gomis, the impressive eighteenth century palace in which the museum is situated and so we started up the flight of stone steps which took us to the first of the galleries.

We visited all the floors of this museum and by the time we had seen everything we were bemused by what we had been looking at.

The central concern of the place is that the art has to be of active artists and all the works share “the common denominator of . . .working in line with the rules of figurative art” - whatever they may be!

The end result is a bewildering display of portraits, landscapes and sculptures where you can see what the image is but not why it is there.

To me the “museum” resembled a large multi-floored commercial gallery of relatively “easy” art.  I could discern no connecting theme apart from the reliance on the figurative and the groupings of paintings seemed aleatory rather than the result of some deep curatorial process.  Each work had a name and a title together with information about material.  Nothing else.  It was up to the individual observer to make sense of the stuff that they saw.

The paintings ranged from semi-pornographic photo-realism to an appalling wall hanging entitled “Dresden” which referenced Picasso’s “Guernica” from a large, rather fetching painting of two pigeons on a stone ledge to a young adolescent boy in his underpants with tiny heads of famous men drifting off like soap bubbles in the top right hand corner.  Mystifying and essentially unsatisfactory.

Confused by culture we fled back to Castelldefels and the shopping centre where Irene bought a present for the French lady whose birthday I am going to help celebrate in early July and, more importantly, ice cream.  We had a double scoop and agreed that, after the meal at the start of our little jaunt, this was the second best highlight!

Today, Sunday has dawned overcast and sultry – but I feel smug because I have already been to my new swimming pool and done my lengths.  I am still greeted effusively and questioned closely on my exit about the quality of experience that I have had swimming.  I am sure that it will not last, but it gives me a warm glow of self-importance while it does.

I have now used the pool three times, thus each swim has cost me approximately €40 what with joining fee and yearly subscription.  If I keep up my attendance as I intend then each visit will have cost me less than €1.

There was only one other person in the pool when I arrived for my swim this morning and she left soon after I started my lengths so I had the luxury of the pool to myself.  Today, the weather not being gloriously sunny, the telescopic roof was fully extended so the pool was entirely indoors.  Although this is fairly irrelevant for the next few months, it will be increasingly important that heat can be conserved for the winter months!

There is a restaurant/café next to the centre and I had a halfway decent (sic) cup of tea there.  Admittedly I had to ask the guy there to make it with two tea bags and a dash of milk – all done under my careful instruction, but when I eventually tasted it, it was a cup of tea with which I could live and that is saying something for this country!  All in all a most satisfactory start to my time with this pool.  I sincerely hope that it becomes a habit.  I will have to remember to pack an e-book reader when I am a free man to make the most of the experience!