A little light reading

Horror in Burma; disaster in China; financial crash looming and rain in Catalonia.

What was my response on a Sunday morning when it was dry enough and warm enough (just) to sit out on the balcony and drink tea?

Why, there is only one thing to do when the rest of the world is depressing: find something even more depressing to read. I do not have Larkin’s collected letters so I turned to Ibsen instead!

I chose one of the more obscure plays by Ibsen – though it has to be said that ‘obscure’ when applied to Ibsen becomes something of a relative term, perhaps ‘The Vikings at Heligoland’ might qualify. Anyway, the one I chose to read was ‘Rosmersholm.’

I last read it over a quarter of a century ago.

That’s the sort of statement that you never think about writing until it slips into your typing and it causes you to pause a while and think!

When I first read Ibsen he seemed to me to combine the readability of Priestly with the profundity and social comment of ‘The Wednesday Play.’ And I suppose that you have to be my age to follow the reasoning behind that statement. I loved Ibsen. You could read him and understand what was going on and feel that you were reading something of importance of (more of a seventies word) relevance.

This time round it was different. I remembered the small town tensions, the opposition of radical and progressive (whatever that meant in a small Norwegian town in 1886) the interesting if confusing morality and the ending.

This time round I found the read just as easy, the situation quintessentially Ibsonian but this time I found more complexity than previously. The layers of complexity in the moral situations were beautifully suggested and easy assumptions were impossible.

The ending is superficially heroic with a double suicide after a spiritual wedding, but the way that it is written it becomes more of a metaphysical existential statement: which is impossible. Therefore the ending is nothing of the sort, and the last words of the play mouthed by a credulous housekeeper. Death is very permanent. And no way to end a play.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And I wrote the first draft of the links for the drama group for the summer concert.

What a varied life I do lead.

It's only a game!

What are the chances of someone from Cardiff and someone from Portsmouth being in the same place on the morning of the final of the FA Cup in Sitges?

Whatever the chances were it happened and we were both very civilized and wished each other good luck and said that we would think of each other at the end of the game. And I did, with a great deal of resentment as Cardiff lost one nil. Well, the next chance to see Cardiff (going on the last gap) will be at the end of the century. So, unless there are some fairly spectacular medical advances in prolonging longevity I fear I will not get a second chance to see my team bring home the trophy. There are worse disappointments I can think of! Without trying!

Leaving Toni smirking in his sleep as a Sacred Saturday was desecrated by my going to work, I decided to use the coast road rather than dignify my route to school by paying the toll to go through the tunnels.

By the time I arrived Adam and some of his merry crew were already setting up the playground for the series of games which were going to constitute the core of the Mini Olympics. This constituted part of the opportunity for competitive physical exertion which would determine which set of pupils and parents would lift one of the impressive selection of gleaming cups prominently glinting in the subdued sunlight from an unconvincingly cloudy sky.

The promised breakfast was indeed provided by the ever helpful caretaker (still looking disturbingly like a past sixth former of mine) and comprised mini rolls, croissants, cakes and drinks (coffee, water and orange juice – it was half past nine in the morning after all!)

The pupils eventually drifted in with a selection of family and friends and settled down to clear the tables of one of the few freebies that they get in this place!

The sports or games were much as you would expect when many of the participants were very young. The one thing which was different from Britain was the inclusion of such Health and Safety nightmares as wheelbarrow races, three legged races and a sack race. As all three of these were on the hard surface of the playground the expectation of blood and shredded skin lubricating the surface. In the event my sanguinary fears were not realised and everyone who was entitled to a medal or cup (which was everyone) was able to skip up to the podium to get their reward.

As usual the most interesting aspect in a school sports’ day which invites the participation of parents was the intensely competitive hysteria which informed their individual efforts. In one race three generations in one family were running over low hurdles and weaving around obstacles and the one thing they had in common was a demented determination to succeed. One father ran around the course with his young daughter in his arms! The shoes that some of the mothers had on were not the most sportily effective pieces of footwear they could have chosen; but I certainly admired their ability to run in pieces of leather that seemed to have been specifically designed to cripple.

A successful morning, though my arthritic progress in the teachers’ egg and spoon race did not even rate pity: scorn and contempt would barely cover the appropriate response!

Lunch in our corner restaurant was consumed while watching the rain drip disconsolately from the awning. We still need more rain, though why this water should fall so near the coast where it runs uselessly into the sea, rather than in the Pyrenees where it would do more good and fill the reservoirs, I cannot understand.

So much for a guiding intelligence!

I think I will go to bed early so that I can be fully refreshed for the morrow. I know that I will have to put up with the sort of, “Hands up those people who have to go to work tomorrow!” imperatives usually favoured by me at the start of a school holiday. The tables have now been turned as Toni uses up all his holiday allocation before it disappears in a blue flash of officialdom!

We sometimes have heavy burdens to bear!

‘Plug in and play.’

A simple enough phrase usually marking the start of a whole traumatic episode of self loathing and total frustration as you begin to realise that the phrase has no relationship with truth.

It was with trepidation that I attempted to use a computer projector with my maths class. The bulb on my OHP has blown and there is no replacement. At all. Probably ever.

So no OHP then. Unless I buy a bulb myself and attempt the squaring of the circle by trying to get my school to reimburse me for the cost. This is not how Things Are Done. If you take the initiative by short circuiting the Byzantine processes that have to be completed before anything can be bought. There is also the problem of who will pay, even if I considered getting spare bulbs through the Normal Channels.

In our school there are co-ordinators who have monthly budgets. These have to be spent during the month. I seem to remember viering or vireing (or however it was spelled) money, which meant that you were able to save money from one month and put it together with money from another month to buy something which would have been impossible to buy in one month. This is not allowed here. Budgets are jealously guarded. My OHP exists outside the normal subject allowances. It is a financial orphan with no parent prepared to pay the maintenance. I will, yet again need to find a sneaky way through the logical gates on impenetrable financial obduracy. Or cheat. Is that the same thing?

In desperation I turned to the computer projector. In the best traditions of professional teaching I waited until the class were sitting in front of me before I attempted to make the machine work.

And it did!

I linked it to my laptop and it worked. It was a delight even if the area around my desk looked as though a patient was undergoing major surgery with power cables going everywhere.

In my shocked experience young school kids have a primary urge to ‘touch base’ or get up to check that the person they can see from their seats is actually the same person in reality as their teacher. This can only be achieved by the sceptical pupils getting up from their seats and making a pilgrimage to the front of the class and demanding a close contact response to a question directed to the teacher irrespective of what he might be doing or saying at the time.

With such a flow of pupils (nailing them to their seats being regarded as dated educational thinking) the multiplicity of power lines will lead, inevitably, to expensive disaster.

On the other hand it isn’t my money.

So many things to weigh up!

Gainful employment

“What are we going to do with you?”

Not the most encouraging opening by The Owner when starting an interview about your future in the school. The further admission that there was a difference of opinion about my worth between The Owner and the Headteacher added to my general sense of unease.

My, uh, uneasy approach to the school and the rules when I first arrived was highlighted and placed on the table for discussion. Altogether a fairly clear indication of negativity.

However the interview did, eventually, become more productive with a suggestion that I might like to take a so-called ‘bridge class’ of year seven pupils for English, Geography, History Drama, PSHE and a selection of KS3 classes. This seems like a good idea and more than I expected.

Problems, of course remain. What sort of contract would I have; when would it start; what rate of pay would I be on; what duties would there be; who would be my line manager and other questions too mundane to enumerate but essential to a comfortable existence in the school.

A positive start, but who knows what might happen by September?

What was far more interesting than the information which the interview revealed was the response of the rest of the staff to it. I was the first in Primary to go in for my ordeal and there was an unhealthy amount of speculation about what might happen. The old conversations about the payment of summer money are again surfacing and the astonishing lack of trust in the administration taking a paranoid hold on the staff. The suggestion that it might be safer to expect the unexpected is now almost second nature to the hardened denizens of the lower depths of our school!

Mine is just the opening scene in an extended drama which will stretch into next week with the hysterical growing with each new revelation of the inner workings of the controlling mind manipulating the educational pawns at her control!

Meanwhile the Summer Concert looms. My drama group (egocentric queens to the last) is eager to act as the eccentric links between the class acts - and the ironic pun is intentional! Six classes in primary are going to ‘perform’ a selection of songs ranging from ‘Mama Mia’ at the high art end of the repertoire to some extracts from the inexplicably popular ‘High School Musical’ at the mindless crowd pleasing end of the harmonic scale!

At some point I have to write a script for my motley crew of would be thespians to present. They have elected to dress up for the occasion in a variety of costumes, so if anyone can suggest a linking theme for a ballet dancer, spy, victim, hippie, detective, cat and policeman – do please let me know.

Meanwhile two more days. Yes, two. Saturday is our Sports’ Day. Such high expectations.

And breakfast is supplied!

Such larks!

Velcro and naked men!

Today I shaved my shoes. A new experience!

The trouble with Velcro is that the receiving anchor point of the fastening does tend to get a little woolly and therefore get a little loose: hence the shaving. What better preparation for school than clipping shoe fluff?

After settling down, yesterday afternoon, book in hand and pot of tea on a small table by the side of my chair on the balcony, I did think it advisable to check that I was actually going to the opera on the following day.

By the time I realised that I was already running late (allowing for the horrendous traffic on the Ronda Litoral into Barcelona) I was already flustered. I need not have worried, after a cursory wash and an extended squirt of aftershave and an even more extended period of frustration in an almost stationary car I still have time for a truly awful menu del dia in one of the low dives on the Ramblas.

In Spain there is no excuse for the almost inedible bread I was served. On the other hand it did match, in its down market tastelessness the other delights I was offered: watered down wine; microwave reheated paella and woefully overcooked salmon. With the Casera I had to eke out the small carafe of wine this travesty of Catalan cuisine came to €14 a total rip off.

As I made my unsatisfied way towards the Liceu I only hoped that the opera was going to be a better experience than the meal. Considering my seat was almost €100, it really had to be!

In the event I wasn’t disappointed. This was the Liceu’s first production of Britten’s ‘Death in Venice’ and some of the stage pictures that they managed to create were as good as any production of Britten that I had seen.

The interpretation of the libretto was conceptual rather than literal which was emphasised at the outset when the opening scene set ostensibly in a graveyard was a raised desk/walkway extending from down stage centre to up stage centre. Aschenbach (Hans Schöpflin) started singing with his back to the audience sitting facing the desk/walkway which was covered with scattered papers the visible sign of his stymied inspiration.

The traveller appeared upstage from behind a large suitcase, there was no attempt at naturalism and when Aschenbach sang his disturbance The Traveller removed his coat to shelter Aschenbach revealing that he was stripped to the half. This established the overtly sexual atmosphere in which the rest of the opera was sung.

As the parts of The Traveller, the old fop, the gondolier, the manager of the hotel, the hotel barber, the leader of the musicians and the voice of Dionysius are all sung by the same singer (Scott Hendricks) it is easy to see these characters as aspects or alter egos of Aschenbach himself.

The sailors and old fop on the boat to Venice were greeting one of their own when Aschenbach was there and the abusive kiss from the fop was recognition of Aschenbach’s sexuality and an indication of the doomed attempt to find anything more than sacrifice in what Aschenbach himself describes as ‘ambiguous Venice.’

The gondola ride to Venice is stunning. The desk/walkway becomes the boat and moves in a sinister and elegant way around the stage with a projected background of rippling water.

The other sets were elegant and effective, but it was the action on stage which gripped the imagination. The setting in an art gallery in which there was only one painting – a giant version of the Bacchus by Caravaggio from the Jarman film of the artist’s life, showing the god as a very streetwise piece of rough trade, merely emphasised the sexual attraction between Aschenbach and Tadzio (Uli Kirsch) with Tadzio showing himself to be (even if experimentally) interested in the attraction of the older man.

The games ended in Tadzio being stripped naked by his playfellows and then executing a particularly violent form of waltz with the Traveller while Aschenbach slept. It was very effective and deeply disturbing. But Aschenbach’s discovery sung at the end of the first act, ‘I love you,’ has been made so obvious that the assertion carries little dramatic force.

The second act has many good things: the barber and his ghoulish group of characters looking as though they are auditioning for the cast for a dance of death; the puppet show; the grotesque group of singers and, of course, the obligatory group of full frontal male nudes!

For me, the end of the opera was an anticlimax. The novella poses almost insuperable problems for any visual presentation. The final gesture of Tadzio to Aschenbach – a ‘clear beckon’ according to the libretto – loses all its ambiguity when viewed. It is surely all about sex and nothing more, but the novella suggests deeper levels of meaning both sexual and philosophical. This production solves the problem of presentation by removing Tadzio from the equation. The final moments have Aschenbach deposited in a deckchair and when he slumps (in death?) The Traveller gets up from a deckchair up stage and walks off leaving the corpse of Aschenbach behind. A weak moment in an otherwise strong production.

The singing was, to be fair, variable. I warmed to Hans Schöpflin initially but gradually I became less impressed. To me he sometimes seemed forced and harsh. Aschenbach was supposed to be Germanic so his accent was no real barrier. The real star was Hendricks who really seemed to relish his multiplicity of roles and was a commanding presence on stage.

‘Death in Venice’ is the Britten opera I know least and I think that it suffers in comparison with ‘Billy Budd’ and ‘Peter Grimes’ and in its more intimate moments it lacks the immediacy of ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, the masterly tension of ‘Turn of the Screw’ and the musical charm of ‘Albert Herring.’ To me the music seemed almost vulgar, as if a competent composer was attempting an affectionate pastiche of Britten. The use of percussion was ludicrously overblown and seemed a substitution for full orchestration!

However it was an excellent evening with orchestral playing of a high order (Sebastian Weigle); chorus work which was professional and dramatically effective (José Luis Basso) and enough pretentious direction (Willy Decker) to keep one happily amused and intrigued throughout the evening. Well worth supporting and enjoying.

And the next time I go to an opera I will find a better place to eat!

Riddle me ree!

Question: When is a bathroom paper towel not a paper towel?
Answer: When it is a toilet roll.

It’s funny that the most trivial things point up the nature of an institution.

The staff toilets (or rather toilet) have run out of paper towel. The school has run out of paper towel. The school has (allegedly) ordered paper towels. They have not arrived. For some time.

This morning I decided, during a free period, to bring things to some sort of crisis.

I went to the front desk of Administration/Reception (in itself virtually a capital offence in our school) and indicated that as there were no towels in the loo and as the school had none, I was prepared to go to a local shop and get some.

The panicked chaos which resulted from this innocuous offer was almost comical in its intensity as bewilderment, frustration and impotence characterised the responses of the ladies behind the counter.

A brief exchange with The Owner merely instituted a Catch-22 sequence of futility which, as the abstract noun suggests, achieved nothing.

So the lack of towel was compensated by a giant roll of toilet paper. A paper which disintegrates instantly when attempting to deal with residual water on the hands.

My offer ignored with embarrassed rapidity. My suggestion obviously something which threatened the whole ethos (and I use that word with qualification) of the school.

So no towels. And no prospect of towels.

I raised the point in a staff meeting and, while my concerns were recognised as valid, the mindless obstruction of the school was seen as an insuperable obstacle to a satisfactory solution.

If they are like this over something which is unthreatening and easily rectified what, the logic demands, will they be like with something of major importance.

The answer is obvious.

The course of action, less so.

Because it's there!

At some ungodly hour of the morning when the frailty of the human frame drove me to ambulatory consciousness I couldn’t help noticing that there was a smidgen of sunshine to brighten the day. I had assumed that the bloody awful weather (which of course we need given the water situation) had sent in for the foreseeable future and I had steeled myself for the depressing sequence of dull, wet days that are a feature of life in the United Kingdom.

How considerate of Catalonia to provide a brief interlude of sunshine to show that the weather is only being inflicted on me for the replenishment of reservoirs rather than displaying personal vindictiveness that is a characteristic of British weather!

I am well into another Eoin Colfer novel

in preparation for my teaching on Monday. I am more than ever convinced that it is not ideal for my pupils, but they are supposed to be the top set in English so it will give them something to work on – at least they will have to use their dictionaries for something other than the dictionary look up sequence at the beginning of the lesson.

Meanwhile to the Internet to find out snippets of information about this author in order to give the kids something to use to try and produce a booklet about the writer and his works.

I only hope that my photocopies are ready for me tomorrow other wise the lesson is going to be something of a compromise!

As ever!

For the rain it falleth all the time!

We in Catalonia have received 20% of our annual rainfall in three days.

In a country which is experiencing a drought, the rainfall is necessary though for a sun devotee like me not strictly welcome!

I can only hope that the reservoirs in the country are responding in much the same way as our swimming pool which is filled to the brim with the extra rainfall. The rain outflow to the beach is now the mouth of a considerable river with significant sand ‘cliffs’ on either side of the flow.

I have decided to be magnanimous and not greet the downpour with a tirade of vituperative invective pointing out that the weather in Great Britain has been glorious and sunny and quite Spanish in its solaristic tendencies. I shall resist. Almost. I shall remember that summer is almost with us and I think that I will have sufficient opportunities to think revengeful thoughts as I compare our respective climates.

My mobile phone (my new one) has a cracked screen. This is a total disaster as it usually cost as much to replace the screen as it does to buy a new phone. I think it is god’s way of telling me to reconsider my decision to eschew the iphone as a work of the devil. Talking of the devil, you have to sell your soul in a punitive contract to get one of the things.

This weekend is a time for me to read a couple of Artemis Fowl novels with a view to obtaining extracts for next week’s teaching. The easy option was teaching Roald Dahl but I was too slow off the mark to bag all the novels in the library. I am therefore left with a ‘make do’ option. I fear that the story line, vocabulary and concepts will be too advanced for my class, but we shall see. Anyway I rather like the novels: they are good fun and easy to read.

Who can ask for more?

Exculsive produce

The cachet of getting cheese sent over from a specific farm in New Zealand and even from a specific cow was somewhat lessened by the chore of extracting it from the Spanish Post Office.

The post office in Castelldefels is the original of the location of the land that time forgot. Time, which as we all know is relative, seems to achieve a stasis of unimaginable proportions in that building.

When you arrive you are, or at least if you have been before and know that it is there, confronted by a machine which gives you a ticket. The ticket is your indication of when you are likely to be seen by a counter assistant.

These machines are not uncommon. The factor which makes them much more problematic to the noviciate British user is that you are offered a choice of buttons to press to get your numbered ticket.

I have solved this conundrum by pressing all available buttons and taking all the tickets which are disgorged by the machine and going to the counter which is indicated by the first number to be illuminated on the counter board. I then rely on my mumbling incompetence in the Spanish language to ensure that I am seen by a forgiving counter assistant.

An encouragingly low number on the wrong ticket (I think) and a disappointingly high number on the right ticket (I think) might have forced some sort of moral choice if the unequal completion rate of customers had not meant that I actually made the appropriate choice at the end after only an hour of waiting!

Cheese has to be very good to justify all that waiting, sitting next to a strange man who gibbered away to himself about the number of telephone bills that were his fascinating reading while I waited for my number to flash up on the board.

The truckle that I was sent had a dark rind and was surprisingly soft in texture and interestingly mild in taste. Well done that cow!

The weather has been unseasonably wet and the kids had restricted time outside and a disproportionately long time inside during the day. Although the last half hour of lunchtime was outside it was getting more and more problematic as more and more obvious rain began to fall.

The end of the day coincided with a torrential downpour and the dispersal of the pupils resembled the evacuation of a sinking ship as they were herded to the front door and taken to safety to their umbrella wielding parents. It was an extended moment of delicious chaos.

Toni is still not feeling 100% and so we didn’t go out to dinner on his birthday and his birthday present is looking interestingly professional as it languishes impotently in the corner of the living room. I can guarantee that the purchase of a reflector telescope will ensure cloudy skies for the foreseeable future.

Sods’ law is the only unalterable constant in an uncaring universe. I’ve found!

How much?

A bad day of teaching.

My own faults, exacerbated by the unhelpful procedures which operate in the school as far as preparation of teaching materials are concerned. Even in English I find that my expectations are far beyond the capabilities of most of the pupils and they need far easier worksheets with which to approach the language problems with which we are dealing.

I suppose that I should be stimulated by the necessity to dig deeper into whatever teaching experience I can draw on to facilitate pupil learning. It does take time away from reading though!

Next week should be a week of examinations, but the SATs papers have not yet arrived so that we may find ourselves delaying all the testing until the week after next.

Meanwhile a more pressing problem is what to get for Toni for his birthday on Friday. We have (sort of) agreed on a telescope. This relates back to his schooldays when a visitor had such an instrument to show the pupils and everyone got to look through it, but Toni was prevented by the school bell from having his turn.

This has festered in his mind for years and this birthday will see an ancient wrong righted!

But which telescope? Toni has expressed an interest in the reflecting mirror sort. There is an example of one in an electronic supermarket near Castelldefels but it looks robustly professional and to leave it set up will certainly make some sort of statement. Quite what sort of statement I do not know. But it will not be something which can be ignored.

Ah well, we will see. I suppose it will give me an opportunity to buy books on the surface of the moon!

It’s a pity you can’t get the I-Spy Stella Objects or the Observer Book of Planets or something. Might be worth looking for. There are supposed to be English language second hand book shops in Barcelona.

At least it will be an excuse to explore.

Cleanliness is next!

Today marks the day when I have achieved a Black Belt level of acceptance in Castelldefels.

The café at the bottom of the street laid out my takeaway meal on real plates. Not only that, but they also offered me two glasses of beer and a tapa of spicy anchovies. For nothing.

The recourse to takeaway was because of paper overload.

I was acutely aware that, this afternoon, one of my colleagues came into my class and saw me gibbering quietly behind an avalanche of miscellaneous paper – official, educational, pupil and rubbish. I decided that Something Had To Be Done.

School ended and, an hour and a half later the various strata of papers had been excavated and various interesting discoveries had been made. The most useful was a cache of photocopyable OHP slides together with finding other ‘Lost’ documents.

In deference to Toni’s shocked discovery (via an unhelpful TV programme) that your average keyboard was actually dirtier than your average toilet! (can that be true?) I cleaned the surface of my desk. The surface being visible for the first time in some months!

The exhaustion produced by this Augean effort necessitated the assistance of sustenance from your friendly corner café. And a substantial glass of Rioja in a rather splendid glass completed my near regeneration.

And tomorrow the kids will come back into the classroom and bugger everything up again!

As a member of the Registry staff in Swansea University once remarked to me during one vacation, “You know Stephen, this place works so well when the students aren’t here!” How often do those in education feel fully confident when their customers are elsewhere!

Tomorrow is a full teaching day with no free periods and a bewilderingly large and varied series of lessons with a clientele ranging from the uninformed, the unable, the unworthy and the unlettered to the not any of the previously named!

I wonder how uncluttered my desk will be by the end of the day.

Or not.

Meeting misery!

As is the way with my place of work, no opportunity is lost in a meeting to make your life just that little bit sadder.

We have now ‘lost’ a year or possibly two years to the foetus factory on the lower ground floor. Primary will now start in Year 2. Further, just to make things a little different, the absurd educational negative of the so-called Family Group will continue.

The Family Group is a class in which two years are mixed, so I am teaching a mixed Year 3 & Year 4 class which revert to their year specific groupings when they have PE, Spanish and Catalan. The economic advantages for such an arrangement are clear, but . . .

The proposal for next year is that the Family Groupings will comprise Years 2 & 3; Years 4 & 5, and . . . this is the point when things get a little hazy, but there are confused ideas of taking Year 6 up to Secondary and . . .

You can see that there seem to be too many ellipses for comfort. It may make for uneasy reading, but just imagine trying to teach it! Teaching two Key Stages in one class? Easy! Rewriting the entire planning scheme? Simple! Knowing what we might be doing? Impossible!

I can only hope that some sort of educational reality informs some of the more manic deliberations that are forming themselves into a disastrous gallop into a second great year of chaos.

Never a dull moment.

Meanwhile Toni has been affected by what Doctor Johnson called The Great Wen and is at present lounging in what I take to be a close approximation of a dissipated Byzantine emperor complaining that he can do nothing, while I am reduced to a subsidiary role twittering about what is past, or passing, or to come.

Talking of The Great Wen I do not know whether to laugh or cry at the rise to some sort of power of the Blond Buffoon as elected mayor of London.

I find myself torn between the loathing of his previous incarnation as insensitive hooray henry and the alarming character he has assumed after rising from his self excavated grave of arrogant self interest to become a caring sharing champion of the common man. He is one vile antithesis with only his bombastic elitist arrogance illuminating his hectic ambition. He even makes that creepy newt lover seem positively wholesome by comparison!

I leave the country for a few months and they degenerate like mindless Yahoos. God help us all!

And today was cloudy. But not cloudy in the spiteful way of British weather where one cloud presages a multitude of fluffy sun obstructers and the rest of the day condemned to a colour drained greyness – which kills the spirit! Here in Catalonia one cloud is singular and, having cast its shadow moves on!

The kiosk on the beach has still not been rebuilt: until that happens we cannot state that summer is fully with us.

I keep a constant watch!

Broken stones?

After almost two thousand pages of reading about Medieval Man’s attempt to build cathedrals and churches it was time for a counter blast to all that dedicated faith.

‘God Is Not Great’ by Christopher Hitchens is one of a recent series of books which set out a damning (unfortunate word!) condemnation of the pernicious influence of religion and the destructive effect that it has on human development.

This is an intensely readable book which, tempted by agreement, I am inclined to regard as informed, perceptive and convincing!

I wonder how far back in time in the countries of Europe you would have to go to find that possession of this book would lead to your being ostracized, forced from your job, prosecuted, imprisoned, executed, suppressed – you name it and it is ease itself to find examples from the history of religion.

In my present country, I would only have to go back as far as the 1970’s when Franco was still in power and many books were ‘banned’ – though as I found during one holiday I could break the rules with something like impunity. To be fair, it would not be hard to find similar examples from secular society! Though, as Hitchens’ book interestingly points out it is difficult to find a solely secular society which at some point did not ape the elements of religion or use the established religion as part of its method of repression.

A stimulating book which should develop the debate to rid ourselves of the moribund remnants of superstition. Some hope!

Meanwhile this short holiday has merely highlighted the long slog to the summer holidays. From now until July there is a seemingly endless sequence of full weeks of teaching.

In this school, more than any other in which I have worked, continuity is something which seems to be like an unobtainable ideal. Last year the entire staff of the primary section of the school left. Not only left, but left with attitude. They left a school which had to be reinvented by the incoming staff last September. The stories I have been told of what the first few weeks were like recall the difficulties of a group of educationalists founding a school in a developing country, not in a concrete and plate glass building half an hour from one of Europe’s stylish and bustling capitals!

Who will be there next year is an intriguing question, the answer to which will have a direct effect on how far I can continue my job there with any degree of satisfaction. I await my ‘interview’ to discuss my future which will either clarify my situation or give me much more to consider before I make my decision about returning.

I will have to revise what I know of eschatology because there is a definite sense of the end of things in my school!

Another cup?

A couple of days’ holiday is too short for a real holiday but is an ideal opportunity to complete tasks which have been put off for too long.

There are usually far too many ‘tasks’ (define them how you wish) to complete in the time available, so it is also an opportunity to order your priorities.

Today has been one of those days when even I question my priorities.

What I wanted to do is filling up an electronic itemised page on my PDA. What I actually did was to pay homage to the stern training my mother meted out to my youthful self and buy a rather camp glass teapot with a fluted base and an even more camp scalloped glass cup and saucer. You have to understand that one thing that my mother instilled in me was an almost reverential attitude to Wedgwood and things china. This later extended itself to include things cutlery and things glass. Here in Catalonia Wedgwood is usually found only in places like El Corte Inglés so in Castelldefels I have had to compromise and change my allegiance to Zara Home. I have to say that the teapot was an impulse buy because I immediately imagined myself sitting on the balcony sipping Earl Grey while contemplating the gently undulating waves. It’s what I do! Sad isn’t it!

I also bought two rather splendid trays. That wasn’t an impulse buy but to replace a gravitational disaster when the two melamine trays carefully packed and transported to Catalonia feel off the top of the fridge and shattered. Their replacements (courtesy of Zara Home) are much more stylish and practical. How often do those two words go together?

I actually managed to buy a replacement battery for the garage door remote, so I feel that I have completed a tedious quotidian task which justifies just about any amount of irresponsible impulse buying by way of compensation.

The Ken Follett is finished: over one thousand pages of professionally engineered enjoyment. But, if I am truthful, there is little in volume one which is not in volume two. As I read the second volume first I was able to see the plot parallels as I read through the first volume. The superficial details are different but the thrust of the character and motivation is similar. I think that the detail is quite enough to justify a sequel but it really is more of the same. I thoroughly enjoyed both!

And what a beautiful day it has been!

The Battle of the Cathedrals!

I have been trying to work out why, in my opinion, Ken Follet is a better writer than Ildefonso Flacones.

Other people, I know, would simply enjoy these parallel stories of the building of big churches, but I have been fascinated by more than mere plot.

On the surface there are many similarities: they are epic novels; they concern the building of places of worship; they are set in the middle ages; they are melodramatic; they span generations; they are violent and gritty; they display exhaustive information; they look for verisimilitude in their descriptions; they are historically ‘accurate’ within the demands of the story – but they are not the same.

The appeal of Ildefonso is largely based on the fact that it is set in Catalonia and it mentions buildings, personalities and places that are near (though not in time) to the place in which I presently live. It was a good, enjoyable read. But I always had a nagging suspicion that something was missing.

I have now read 500 pages of ‘The Pillars of the Earth’ by Ken Follett and I have an entirely different response in my reading. With Follett I feel as though I am in a safe pair of hands and the rhythm, pace and development of the plot is more satisfying than in ‘Cathedral of the Sea.’

Follett was initially a writer of thrillers and his background show through in this novel: there is tension and high drama. He excels at depicting conflict and exploring the baser motivations that lead to duplicity and faithlessness that make such fascinating reading!

His exposition of technical and historical information is unforced and flows naturally in the framework he creates for his characters. His choices of central protagonists even when they are manipulated with the callous unreality of a Dickens are satisfyingly predictable and have all the comforting cosiness of a Perry Mason episode where you know, give or take a few knifings and graphic rapes all is going to work out reasonably well in the end!

Take the openings of the novels. Falcones’ opening sentence is: “Bernat realized nobody was looking in his direction, and glanced up at the clear blue sky.” Whereas Follett opens with, “The small boys came early to the hanging.” You may say that the Follett opening is obvious and melodramatic, but it undoubtedly catches the attention and you plunge into the story. The calm opening of Falcones does quickly develop into something much darker, but I maintain that Follett is the writer who demands your attention and repays your reading with instant and constant gratification – not an easy task when my 500 pages read so far leaves a generous chunk to go!

And talking of that chunk, I’m now going back to it!

Which tells you something about the novel!

Weighed in the balance

Today a glass of water in the face!

Maybe that was a metaphor, but the effect was the same.

For the first time for a long, long time I was officially ‘observed’ in one of my lessons!

I suppose there are some who might say that for a stranger teaching in the school since January, late April is rather a long time to wait to find out if the recent acquisition is actually doing what he was employed to do!

With consummate professionalism, Margaret observed, participated when encouraged to do so and made copious notes.

Professionalism: that is a word not often used in most dealings with the mechanics of administration and officialdom in my school, but in this instance the experience reminded me of being in a real school!

Now for the water. And cold water too.

My colleague who observed me had the bare faced temerity to give me a 2! A 2! Me! And I thought she was a friend! The fact that she could point to evidence to support her award of a ‘good two, border line one’ did not sweeten the bitter pill.

When I complained to the incapacitated headteacher when I later visited her in hospital she told me that I shouldn’t worry, that 1s were only rarely awarded and then only to exceptional teachers. “But I am exceptional!” I asserted and the intensity of the laughter of the headteacher in response was only matched when I asserted in another conversation that in spite of my name, “I am no martyr!”

I have to say that, as always, it is an incentive and a stimulant to have a colleague in your class and her feedback was revealing. Is it really policy or normal to have your lesson objectives written on the whiteboard for each lesson? Extraordinary!

The checklist of elements in a lesson which have to be met are, I think, impossible to achieve in one lesson, though possible in a series of lessons. Well, that, in Conrad’s phrase was the “saving lie” with which I consoled myself for my abject inability to gain the highest grade.

Ah well, gives me something to think about and upon which to improve for the next time! If of course there is a next time.

My interview with the Powers Who Decide These Things takes place a fortnight into May.

I can hardly wait to hear what they have to say!

Faint praise?

‘Cathedral of the Sea’ by Ildefonso Falcones is now read.

I must admit that after the first few hundred pages I warmed to the narrative, but that was responding to your average tale of medieval rape, pillage, duplicity, deception, viciousness and noble brutality!

The plot is somewhat plodding and sometimes predictable but enjoyable none the less. The characters are never more than two dimensional, but at least you know where you are with them.

As soon as you realise that awful things are going to happen throughout the novel but that eventually good is going to be rewarded you can relax into a good, extended rollicking tale.

It has more in common with Harry Potter than an historical novel with literary pretensions.

Its great claim to fame is its setting in Barcelona and the adulation it gives to one of the great churches of Catalonia, the Cathedral of the Sea of the title, Santa Maria del Mar. This church was singled out by Hadyn as being the building in which, as soon as he entered, he uttered a short sharp yelp and then pronounced the acoustic excellent!

I think that I can recommend this book (such magnanimity for a book which has sold over two million copies worldwide in umpteen languages) but you should not look for profundity in its pages. An excellent beach read.

I can now start on the first volume of Ken Follett’s cathedral novel sequence. I still rate him more highly than the Catalan.

I seem to be using up my summer reads before the actually season starts.

I’ll just have to buy other volumes to compensate!

Sweetness and light!

I think that it must be a Catalan rule of life that no self respecting inhabitant will park more than spitting distance from their destination.

I say this after parking a considerable distance from the doors of the hospital I visited this morning. Even if I had the assistance of the moon’s gravity to help with the trajectory of my expectoration I fear that the sputum would have fallen well short.

And what parking I passed as I eventually found my own space on open, dusty, uneven and (most importantly) unshaded ground! Any kerb is an open invitation to wheels: no matter how dangerous and obstructive the final parked car may be - if a wheel can touch a kerb it has the equivalent of ecclesiastical sanctuary.

It sometimes looks as if all the parked cars are engaged in a childish game where they have indemnity while at least one wheel is touching the kerb, but, at any moment when the policeman hides his eyes, they may all scatter and find other even more bizarre parking spaces!

I have told myself to be tolerant about the sort of parking which is an everyday horror in the part of Castelldefels in which I live because, after all, it is beside the sea in a seaside resort and too many people are chasing too few parking spaces so one must expect inconsiderate parking. But far too much of the parking goes beyond the inconsiderate and ventures into the territory of the downright dangerous.

The clearest and most glaring examples from the point of view of a British person concern zebra crossings. I suppose that I should point out that the British semi sacred nature of a zebra crossing is not shared by the Spanish. The absolute right of a person to cross is not guaranteed on the Spanish version.

Some zebra crossings here are controlled by traffic lights and you have to wait for the green light to cross. Some are semi controlled in the sense that, if the road traffic light is flashing amber you have to give priority to a pedestrian. Or not, as some drivers believe. The qualified nature of the zebra crossing in this country is an open invitation to disaster for the British visitor. British certainties should not encourage you to venture onto a zebra crossing with the same assurance that you might have in the home country. You might be right, but you could easily be left for dead by a naughty retreating motorist!

Parking near to, next to, or even on zebra crossings is also a problem. As most visitors to Castelldefels have to cross a main road to get to the beach the municipality has helpfully provided a rash of zebra crossing to help the sun seekers to their destination. This is a good thing but to our municipality the construction of a zebra crossing is no more than painting black and white strips on the road. There are no markings either side of the crossing to prohibit cars from parking.

You therefore have the situation that the first part of a crossing may effectively be blocked from the oncoming motorist’s view. This impediment does not seem to effect the pedestrians however, who walk out on the crossing as if the sides were protected with barriers of reinforced concrete.

I have often noted that the experience of the motorist rarely seems to inform the actions of the pedestrian and vice versa. It is almost as if there are two races, the motorist and the pedestrian, separated into distinct and mutually exclusive factions with mutual incomprehension. These two exclusive factions are bitterly antagonistic and are only united by their mutual (and very understandable) loathing of the cyclist!

The cyclist is the true pariah of the streets, roads and pavements. Those three areas are linked because they are all fair game for the cyclist who regards all space as his exclusive property; all road signs as merely street art and all traffic lights as mere flashing decorations.

The cyclist weaves intricate patterns of propulsion among cars and motorcycles which vary from the suicidal to the homicidal but are always informed with the key motivation of the dedicated cyclist – arrogant selfishness.

And don’t get me started on the ridiculous clothes they parade – it would be a vicious misnomer to say that a cyclist ‘wears’ his lurid garb. And I’m sure that there are specialist web sites where they could show off the intimate details of their bodies without the mobile fetishist exhibitionism that cycling is today.

The walk from my parking space to the hospital doors was not as long as the various digressions that I have written but long enough to tut! tut! my way pleasantly to steel myself for the difficulties in finding out where the patient I had come to see was located.

Apart from totally predictable confusion about the room number and discovering that the lifts were not for people I found the room relatively quickly (considering I was searching for a room which did not exist) and I was delighted to see that our Fallen Headteacher looked remarkably healthy for a woman with three screws in her thigh. The fact that she was not in plaster and was only going to be in hospital for a few days more was healthily encouraging. The flowers went down well as did the Sunday newspaper. The Observer.

What else do you expect me to give from a wishy-washy liberal with a small ‘l’ like me?

And I had paella for lunch.

Who can ask for more?

Cultural hopes

I think that the definition of optimism is expecting to get a reasonably priced flight to somewhere interesting over a Bank Holiday.

Or delusion.

Definitely delusion. We have trawled the internet looking for the elusive bargain and have discovered that the expectation of such a find is on a par with believing that you can find a bank with ethical principles.

I have to keep reminding myself that I am actually living in a place that I would previously have moved heaven and earth and vast quantities of money to get to for a holiday. To echo the words of Shylock, I am content!

The series of Grans Genis de l’art a Catalunya has reached volume 14 and the painter Josep Amat. This is a painter of whom I have not previously heard and, from a cursory look at his oeuvre, a painter who is not going to be a major force in my appreciation of the painting of the region!

And talking of my appreciation of the art in Catalonia, it turns out that Carmen Cervera, baronesaThyssen-Bornemisza (http://www.hola.com/biografias/carmen-cervera/) has announced that she will move her collection of 19th and 20th century Catalan art from Catalonia’s Museu Nacional d’Art (MNAC) to Sant Feliu de Guixols Monastery in 2011. She is the high profile protector of the insanely, mind bogglingly incredible art collection that she inherited from her insanely, mind bogglingly etc wealthy husband, the Barón Thyssen-Bornemisza. The collection is split between a number of locations.

The gallery in Madrid is an astonishing place and the modern collection of paintings is very accessible with a wonderful collection of art which is not so exhaustive and intimidating for the casual visitor. For a person not that interested in the ‘hard stuff’ of art and not wanting to traipse around a musty gallery full of incompressible canvasses dulled with ancient varnish the Thyssen-Bornemisza gallery is a breath of fresh air. The masterpieces are there aplenty, but not to the same extent as some of the major art galleries of the world where the pictures seem to press in on the observer and weigh him down with their international significance.

I have described the selection of paintings in the Thyssen-Bornemisza as looking as though someone had decided to give a talk on modern art and, instead of showing slides had decided to pay the representative paintings instead!

I can still remember my astonishment when there was an exhibition of ‘Masterpieces’ from the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in the National Gallery. I could not understand how it was possible for a private individual to actually own so much of the cultural heritage of the world!

The Spanish government had the artistic bargain of the century when they were offered the collection by the Baronesa (a past Miss Catalonia) for a knock down price of something like £50 quid!

The baronesa is well known for having very definite ideas about how the art given to the Spanish should be treated and she is very touchy about the details of its presentation.

I am not sure what will go to the monastery if she decides to stick to her stated aim to remove her collection from MNAC but any reduction in their excellent collection would be a disaster.

Many of the paintings illustrated in the series of books that I now have on Catalan art have been taken from private collections, but there also a number of galleries mentioned in other parts of Catalonia that I am looking forward to visiting. At the moment I do not know the relative importance of the collections held in these other places but I do know that it is impossible to omit a visit to the gallery in the Monastery of Montserrat. I think that I know a little more about the exhaustive selection of painters that is held in the collection now than I did on my previous visit.

I look forward to another pilgrimage!

Put not your trust in manufacturers' promises!

When the chronicles of this year come to be written there will surely be a chapter devoted to the time of trial that we have undergone. The heartache, the misery, the struggle: the dogged heroism in the face of adversity. All of this should receive its accolade. And now, at last, there is an end in sight, a glimmer of hope in the darkness of these times.

The dishwasher should be repaired this evening.

For someone with a pathological hatred of washing dishes, or rather of drying them, the extended period of dishwasherless existence has been, one might say, a trial. The astonishing inefficiency of Taurus, the company who made the benighted machine, has not made the situation any easier.

The only good thing to come out of this depressingly familiar situation is that I will have to leave school on time in order to get back to let the workpeople in. The idea of missing this appointment is too dire to consider: given the difficulty of making this appointment the fear of losing this opportunity will ensure that my car skips its way through the tunnels to get back in time.

It is now this evening. Nothing. No workman to bring some semblance of normality to the washing procedures in this household; no phone call to explain why no workman has turned up for the agreed time; no act of God to destroy the evil organization masquerading as a white goods company. Never, ever buy any goods with the Taurus trade mark. Never! Be warned and learn from my example.

We now sit planning violence, or at least some sort of revenge for the frustration that this company has forced us to experience. At this stage in Britain I would have “opened a file” and commenced my classic approach for dealing with recalcitrant traders, i.e. writing articulate letters dripping with the implied threat suggested by middle class articulacy and promising a wealth of informed trouble in store for whatever unfortunate institution had incurred my wrath.

Frustratingly I have to do this at second hand via Toni. It is not the same thing at all. There is little satisfaction to be gained by hearing second hand reports of conflicts with nameless voices at the end of a telephone line, unless you are one of the protagonists. And there is always the nagging doubt that if you had been on the phone you would have been that little bit more incisive and cutting and managed to gain a clear assurance and effusive apology with a monetary compensation. We will see what they say and what they offer by way of contrition!

The FA Cup Final comes on apace and I have made the promise that, if I get a ticket I will make every effort to go to the UK to see this once-in-a-lifetime match for Cardiff. I shouldn’t build my hopes up but it might be worthwhile looking at cheap flights to Cardiff and London!

If all else fails I can look at the weather and find compensation there!