Books are never unwanted!

There are six bags filled with my books waiting to be taken to the school in which I was teaching last week.  Each one represents a chunk of my life and is filled with books that I should not be getting rid of.  Even if the books are going to a place where there is a real likelihood that they will be useful and be used.  It is still difficult to give away something that has been part of your life for so long.

The truly worrying thing is that, even though I have now filled more than ten big supermarket shopping bags with books it appears to have made little impression on the overcrowding of my shelves!  My now pathetic belief that I would be able to get rid of sufficient books to have a single line of them on the shelves now seems like an impossible dream!

I feel like the Angel of Death as my pitiless eye roams across each line of books on each vulnerable shelf seeking the victims for the bags.  As I have said the urgent necessity to winnow because of lack of room is convincing but the pain is still real!

What is far more disturbing is that after the next batch of books I am sure that the school will be grateful but panicky that I might actually be preparing to give them even more and they will be desperately sorry but they will not be able to accept a single book extra!

Still, the action that I have taken so far encourages me to carry on and take advantage of the impetus of my clearing urge and be more ruthless.

At the moment many of my books are hidden through chaos and the dispersion of similar volumes throughout my collection.  My holdings of Evelyn Waugh seem to have gone on their own personal diaspora and turn up next to the oddest volumes which have nothing to do with twentieth century literature whatsoever.  But at least I have now discovered more of them in their disparate locations than have come together since they were all on their shelves in Kennerleigh Road in Cardiff!

The more I think of the number of volumes that I have taken out and their slight impact on my total holdings, the more extraordinary my book collection becomes.  I think that “Out with some of the old and in with a lot of the new” will have to be my slogan for the next few weeks.  Even if the school pleads respite from my insistent generosity, I think that I will have to find an alternative victim for the unwanted (how grotesque a word that seems) volumes to allow some semblance of order to return to the battle of the books in my library.

And life goes on.  The OU occupies a pleasing amount of space in my concerns, though if I am absolutely truthful I cannot say that I have been charting new intellectual territories, rather paddling gratefully in mildly interesting shallows.  I fear this may be the lull before the storm as there is the Dreaded Wiki to be produced.

As far as I can work out the Wiki is simply a web page that has to be produced by a group of distance learners over a period of time and then, when it is completed we have, individually, to write a “reflection” on the project.  I though that the whole point of distance learning was that one did everything by oneself.  I am not sure that I wholeheartedly approve of this collaborative malarkey.  I am sure that the Grocer of Grantham would not approve.  If she is still capable of making these sorts of value decisions.

The wholesale “Doing” of the house continues apace with Toni in an especially manic mood.  He can put up with only just so much disorder and then there is a reaction to match the scale, say, of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia to “put things right.”

The Third Floor has been transformed from a sinister labyrinth of four-dimensional material chaos into a pleasant working space with tearoom.  How this has happened I have no real idea, but I do know that I have been involved in its transformation and my exhaustion is plain proof of that!

One of my parts in this clean up has been to get some order into the hundreds of CDs that have not been put away.  I hade the almost fatal mistake of buying various CD holders from the Chinese shops on the grounds that I wasn’t going to throw money away on the over-priced main store versions.  But throw away money I did, as the quality of the ones that I bought was no poor that I have had to buy more expensive alternatives.  Ah well, if nothing else I have had sort-of fun in sorting through CDs that I had forgotten that I possessed!

The “fun” part had well and truly gone after an hour or so, but it took a damn sight longer than that to get some sort of order into the shop worth of discs that I had to sort out.

I am rather pleased by the final result.  A row of rather severe black cases at the top of each the carrying strap flopping outwards give a look of an ancient chained library – a touch of class I feel.  The gaudy Chinese rubbish has been jettisoned!

There is nothing more poignant than buying two prong foreign plugs to replace the good old stalwart rugged three pin “correct” plugs on machines bought in the UK to demonstrate one’s acceptance of a new country.  Cutting the lead to put on a different plug is a statement about staying!

Tomorrow, another visit to the employment office after my little stint in school.  Even though the authorities know perfectly well what you have been doing, they like to see you personally so that they can give you photocopied and stamped pieces of paper.

In a rather more pressing sense I am acutely aware that I am supposed to be going to the UK on Friday and I haven’t even worked out which case to take, let alone packing anything.

Situation normal.

This and that

A strangely empty day, punctuated by jolly telephone conversations with friends.  When you are a long way away from some of your friends it is odd how the telephone creates an equality of perceived proximity: talking to the UK and to a small village just outside Castelldefels were just the same.  All helped of course by the fact that I was talking in English to both!

I got up relatively early because my internal clock is now in a sate of flux because my normal waking up time has had to be adjusted again and again as my circumstances changed.  The last week or so working in a school that was substantially nearer than my usual place of work meant that I could get up earlier as well. 

But my body clock is attuned to getting up at 6.30 am and the luxury of an extra half hour in bed meant that everything felt wrong by the time I was having my shower. 

And now glorious release!

After what felt like a wickedly self-indulgent lie in, but was actually only 8 am, I got up.

And started my OU work.  Thanks to my efforts when I was stuck in front of the kids I am now in advance of the proposed timetable by a couple of weeks and so am beginning to worry about the first tutor marked assignment that we have to complete.

This assignment is the construction of a Wiki which has to be written by a group of we students on line, working together and producing an explanation of the concept of “authority” found in a choice of designated texts and explain our analysis for a group of students in another arts course.  This is not something to which I am looking forward, but other students have written that they found this a very interesting piece of work.  I remain to be convinced!

The work of going through my books and deciding which ones make the growing number of bags of rejects that will make their way to the school that I have just left is soul destroying.  As I put each one on the pile to be given I can remember buying each and for many of them where I bought them.  But reality is a hard taskmaster and I know that I have not cut down very much on my buying of books and there is a limited space available and something has to give.

I have decided to release my critical books unless they have a value as literature as well.  Fun books which I read through and kept and now going.  Frivolous books which years ago I found mildly amusing have been stacked ready for redistribution.  An agéd atlas is staring mournfully at me as I type, topping off a bag of soon to be displaced books.  I am giving away a tome version of my life.  But to make way to the new - that is the concept I use to make it possible.

Tomorrow more bags and the slaughter of innocents continue!

And it will be good to see the books which at present are hidden behind the front row of books on the shelf.  And furthermore I might even be tempted to do what I should have done years ago: sort the books out!

Retired again!

The ordeal is over, my 1.6 weeks of work with the youth of Castelldefels and region is over.  Originally retained for just three days and my workload extended to and extra week, I have to admit that I am glad that it is over.

OK, I also have to admit that I did feel comfortable from time to time when I actually did some teaching rather than the very unsatisfactory child minding that occupied the major part of my extra week.  In spite of my having had the space to make a considerable dent on the first few weeks study material for the OU course, I still felt that my abilities were not utilized to anywhere near the full.

Today for example I was teaching art for some of the my time and I was able to take the set task a stage further after experimenting with a pop-out element of the congratulations card that they were supposed to produce a few minutes before they arrived for their lessons.  It certainly concentrated their minds and kept them busy and I was able to relax into one of my default pick-up-your-sheet-of-A4-and-fold-it-like-this modes of teaching: it always concentrates the minds of kids!  As well as giving me something to think about!

Towards the end of the week I had had enough though.  I think that I have taught enough – if teachers ever actually stop!  The idea of going back next week, in spite of the fact that the school is well ordered and the kids are generally well behaved, was more than I could contemplate with any degree of equanimity!

I am now waiting for my papers, like some character from a Pinter play.  These papers are crucial to my future financial strategy – well part of it.  We will have to see how things play out in the present parlous financial situation.

These papers should have been given to me at the termination of my employment with the school, but I have been assured that they will be available early next week.  I will go into to the school to get them and use the opportunity to donate more books.  I have a weekend to go through my downstairs cupboards which, at the moment are double stacked and have further volumes laying on the tops of the books.  A situation entirely unsatisfactory.

I am not prepared to get rid of poetry books and reference books, not matter how out of date still have a real attraction for me, but simple logistics are not to be denied and Something Must Be Done!  I will have to see how truly ruthless I can be!

I now have a week to prepare for my trip to the UK.  It hardly needs a week, as I invariably pack the night before or the morning before, or rather hours before I leave: I feel that the sense of panic that this attitude engenders is the only true way to start off a little trip!

For the first time for a long time, I actually did some book sorting when I came home from work.  Now that the books are actually reachable because of the Titanic effort which has been put in to the cleaning and clearing of the Third Floor.

I might also add that not only have I taken in the kitchen money to school to be used to boost the funds of their campaign in favour of Save the Children, but also three bags of my books have been donated to the English Department.  These were a motely collection of academic (at least in secondary school terms) books and a number of others that I know that I will never read again.  I have the firm promise of the department that they will not throw away those volumes that they feel that they cannot use.

There are threats in the air to the effect that even the cupboard in the kitchen might not be safe from the present zeal for “sorting out” – this is a real threat, and I shudder to think what might actually be lurking under there.  The design of the cupboard is such that most of the contents are unreachable without dismantling the bits and pieces at the front each time you want to find something in the interior.  I fear that there will be a mighty winnowing of the things we haven’t used for the last year or so, unless I am firm.

A domestic weekend ahead I think.

Crack of the whip!

A day of unrelieved baby sitting lightened only by a casual discussion of medical ethics in one sixth form chemistry class – otherwise, I have been sitting on an extraordinarily uncomfortable chair, watching kids generally get on with the work that they have been set.

This tedium has however been very good for my OU studies and I have been making notes about Buddhism and John Donne as though I have never heard of either.  My high and mighty attitude is not entirely justified as I have actually been learning things about the life of John Donne (which I probably should have known) and about the Metta Sutta (which I probably have been told about at some point in the past but which I have totally forgotten) and other bits and pieces which add to the jollity of nations and make me feel happier as it certainly makes the day worth while.  And I have ten sides of notes and various flashes of fluorescent yellow highlighting to show that I have been busy.

I do not think I can take much more of this though and I am constantly telling myself that there are only three more days and then I get my papers and I begin the bureaucratic rigmarole of getting my details on various governmental computers all over again, again – but this time with more satisfactory results I trust!

In theory my timetable tomorrow should include some free periods, but if I were in charge of cover I would work the supply teacher for the whole of the day without breaks.  After all the supply teacher does no preparation, does no marking, does not have a form class and usually does not do any extra duties.  As the art teacher is also absent I think it highly unlikely that my timetable will have any gaps.  Indeed, if it does have gaps then I should, in all conscience, offer to take the place of a full-time teacher who has been asked to give up a hard won free period.  We shall see, there is only so much Christ-like giving of myself that I can do in one week. 

I am still living in the warm glow of appreciation from colleagues that comes with offering to take the place of a teacher doing supervision in the so-called “study area” for the sixth form during one of my “free” periods.  From the look of disbelief on the face of the teacher I feel that such a gesture will live on in the mythology of the school for generations to come!

The school is Doing Something for Save the Children: a sponsored walk, crawl or run in which even the three year-olds are taking part.  Although I will not be teaching in the school when this event happens it is too good an opportunity to pass by for getting rid of the so-called Oxfam money that is in the 5L plastic jar in the kitchen.  At last it can go to an “acceptable” charity – even if it isn’t my charity of choice, Oxfam.

I am keeping up my swimming after school (as in the old days) and am feeling better for it – in spite of the fact that I am usually surrounded by hordes of small people splashing their excited way along in parallel lanes.  I am (apart of course from the monitors) the only human swimming up and down with the monotonous regularity that I find invigorating and highly satisfactory for the twenty minutes that is my limit before terminal boredom sets in.

Yesterday I was totally wacked when I finally got home and gazed for the first time on the Tea Room Annexe in all its glory.  I slumped in a chair and didn’t really move, not even a muscle until Toni cooked something that finally galvanized me into some sort of action, if only of mastication!

Today, after my swim, I have to call into the supermarket – a prospect which is energy draining merely in the thought, let alone the reality.

At least the today, Wednesday, started with a lesson with the semblance of normality where I actually had to interact with the class and do something vaguely approaching teaching – even if it was only PSE with Year 11.

After lessons of incomprehensible chemistry I am now in an art class where the pupils are busily constructing congratulations cards which should keep them occupied for the lesson they have in which to produce them.

An my gestures of studied casualness as I willingly give up a free period for the benefit of my colleagues are now nugatory as my timetable had been fully filled out with supervision.  I know in theory that a supply teacher has no right to free periods because of the lack of need for preparation and marking, but I would have liked to have been able to shyly offer my services to a needy colleague.  Ah well, another piece of faux generosity bites the dust!

My name does, however ring through the staff room in the mornings when the cover list is put up and colleagues recite my name in a delighted chant-like way as they realize that I am doing the cover that could have fallen to them.

I wonder how they are going to adjust when reality hits on Monday when I will no longer be here and their free time will be swallowed up in resentful supervision!

There are eighteen periods to go before the end of the day on Friday, and the fact that I am counting them shows my attitude quite starkly.  This is a good school with generally well-behaved kids, but I had not realised just how frustrating it is to be in a school and not teach your subject.  Very.  I am not even in classes where I can bluff my way.  This is probably going to be the one time in my life where studying for the OU course was a form of escapism and displacement activity!

As he days have gone on I have become bolder in the way that I am studying and today was the first when I looked at the DVD excerpts and listened to the musical examples that I am supposed to be considering.  This meant that I, like the majority of my class, had an earphone firmly placed in a single ear.

In the inclusive and multi-cultural way which is the lifeblood of the OU I have been listening to Buddhist chants, the Hallelujah Chorus and Cole Porter.  I have the Vienna Opera yet to come!

And two days to go before my release from durance vile.