Saturday morning was taken up in a
confusion of intentions. My lunchtime
appointment in the centre of Barcelona took a number of attempts before I was
safely on my way.
Arrangements are the very devil when
reality tries to frustrate them. I was
supposed to meet Julie and John on the train from Sitges and join them for the
journey into Barcelona and our meal.
After having received no telephone call to finalize the arrangements,
and after I had discovered the original (lost) email which started the
Arrangements I panicked into setting out almost at once. To me “mediodia” means midday (though I later
discovered that just because the words can be translated like that it doesn’t
necessarily mean it) and I was therefore catapulted into action a couple of
hours before I was ready.
By the time I had reached the station
Arrangement had caught up with me and a closer definition of mediodia mean that
I could return to the house while calling into the supermarket to get the
little delicacies that I would normally have bought to take to a meal.
We did finally meet up and it was a relief
to get onto the train and escape from the thoroughly unwelcome rain that had
irritated me throughout the morning.
After a brisk walk and some indecision we arrived at our destination.
The flat in the centre of Barcelona on a very
fashionable street was exactly like some of the more opulent residences that
you see on the television and this one was packed with art, sculpture and other
nice things. Some the nice things I
would very much like to have had. But my
breeding got the better of me, that and the fact that there were far too many
witnesses!
The meal was very enjoyable, but stressful
at the same time as much of the conversation was in Spanish. I tried my best but it is impossible for me
to be anything like my normal self in a foreign language. I know it is my fault that I have not made
more of an effort to be fluent given the amount of time that I have now spent
in Spain – but there it is. And I think
I exploit my status as “false beginner” to an extraordinary degree. And as soon as I learn a few more tenses and
a few more verbs to go with them, there will be no stopping me.
I returned with Julie and John on the train,
as they were off to spend their first night in the new Sitges flat. Toni and I cannot wait to see exactly what
they have done with it.
Maybe it’s the weather, or perhaps it was
the amount of walking in the rain that I did, but my legs were hurting by the
time I got home and I was grateful for my bed.
Sunday was going to be a restful day, but
The Family appeared at lunchtime and I retired to the Third Floor to get some
OU work done and brood.
I realized today that the weekend should
also have been a time when some much-needed work should have been done, as
Monday morning was something of a nightmare.
Put not your trust in machines. What should have been a simple operation of
getting a document form one computer to another via a memory stick turned into
an epic struggle of failure as all aspects of my attempted transfer (apart from
the computer) failed to work. Perhaps it
was just a sort of mechanistic grin that allowed the document that I wanted to
work with to be so clearly displayed as, without a cup of tea, I set to work in
the early morning night-time. The
computer in the odd little pseudo-classroom that I use for the 1ESO doesn’t
link to anything – including the Internet most of the time. It refused to recognize my memory stick and
left me fuming and impotent.
I was eventually helped by a fast speaking
Catalan whose dexterity on the computer keyboard both mystifies and frustrates
me. He eventually got things moving but
not soon enough to be of any real use to me.
Having switched to Plan B I worked at a
frantic pace to get the work done for a colleague and then found myself stymied
by the whole of the school Internet system crashing yet again!
Still without my cup of tea I walked down
to the other building and set about getting results transferred to a central
data base (or stapled photocopied sheets) and then discovered that one set of
papers appears to have gone missing. I
did what any sane person would do given the amount of work waiting for me to do
and systems crashing right, left and centre: I pretended that everything was
alright!
With a lurching sense of unease (having
completed the examination setting work I had to do) I realized that I had not
designed and made the folder for the Drama workshops I take. Ten hysterical minutes later and the folder
was complete and eventually, while waiting in fuming impotence for a charming
colleague to finish her interminable photocopying, I had the necessary numbers
of folders for my next class.
And so the day progressed, wobbling from
one unsatisfactory work linked experience to another. Although wearing to the soul, I did actually
get quite a lot done.
This week sees the second part of my Puppet
Project in Drama. This is a three-week
experiment to get the kids in Year 7 to write and design a short, filmed
production using the simplest forms of puppets and backgrounds. It will be interesting to see what comes of
it. And what will be more interesting is
to see what I will do next. I have a
completely free hand in what I do in these four lessons a week and I intend to
take full advantage of such an opportunity and make the most of them. The only thing that I am determined not to do
is to mount four dramatic productions at the end of the year to which parents
are invited. I have seen with mine own
eyes just how much extra work this entails and I am determined to have none of
it!
Tomorrow is an ESAEF day (Early Start and
Early Finish) by which means I think it possible that I might get to the end of
the year without terminal harm!
We shall see.
