The early call!

Leapt out of bed to the raucous sound of the alarm on the mobile phone and was brushing my teeth virtually before I woke up. An ugly welcome back to education orientated normality.

School was enlivened by the appearance of a poet, Paul Cookson, who I know from the compilation poetry books that he produces as much as from the work that he produces under his own name.

I met him first thing in the morning and, as he seemed a fairly jolly and accepting person, I felt that I had to admit that I had been breaking copyright in the production of a small (illustrated) booklet produced by my good self. He was completely unfazed by this and on my presenting him with a copy of said breach of copyright he looked through it and said that I had chosen one of his favourites and that he would read some of my choices to the kids when he took them.

After a brief meeting with the poet or Poet I was then dragged away into the morass of teaching and did not manage to see him again until the afternoon when I was able to spend a free in our auditorium where he was to take the equivalent of our year seven.

When I found him he was sitting in one of the luxurious tip up seats in the auditorium and strumming a ukulele – as you do!

When the kids arrived my free period was forgotten and I was just another teacher manning (staffing?) the pumps and making sure that the chaos which is par for the course when a stranger visits the school was kept in check.

I have to say that Paul Cookson had the kids in the palm of his hand. Not so much a poetry reading as a stand up comedy routine with selective insulting of the audience! He literally had them rocking in their chairs and he harnessed this enthusiasm by directing it into a lively accompaniment to his poems by inviting his audience to participate.

He has written tongue twisters and poetic jokes; football poems; autobiographic poems and, a great favourite with this audience, poems about teachers. He showed them a cartoon drawing of a teacher that an artist friend had produced and that elicited howls of recognition from the kids who immediately identified one of my colleagues!

He recognized when he was on to a good thing and tried following up this popular success with another teacher poem. As I was sitting at the side of the hall, this directed the attention of the kids to me (in spite of the fact that there were two other colleagues present) and the kids began a chant of “Stee-ven! Stee-ven! Stee-ven!” until Paul snarled, “Oi! I’m supposed to be the star here!” which produced even more laughter. I either added to my reputation with the kids or found it evaporate (with these kids it’s hard to say) by enthusiastically joining in with the words and actions that Paul demanded from his audience.

Those who know me from Llanishen will not be surprised to learn that, even though this was my free period and this visit was not my responsibility, I introduced the poet and gave the vote of thanks at the end. Some things never change!

It’s things like this that make me think that I am too much at home in this school. I have been teaching here for about 40 days but it doesn’t feel like that and I worry (!) that some of my colleagues may see me as somewhat presumptuous in the way that I have established myself.

They needn’t worry, they can always put me in my place by speaking to me in Spanish and then I subside, quiescent into a handy corner licking my linguistic wounds!

I spoke to the head of English about my contract and she expressed surprise that I had not been seen by the Directora as the rest of the department have apparently had their interviews about their positions next year. It appears that I will probably be seen this week. At least my CV is updated and the outline of a new general letter of application is waiting to be polished on the computer.

One part of Toni’s present has been bought; most of Laura’s is complete and Carmen’s will have to wait until nearer to date as part of it will die if I buy it too soon!

Tomorrow early start in school and a long, long day.

At least I will have my signed copy of one of Paul’s books to read during my free time!

Present hope: future disaster!

A sullen day with resentful, grudging sunshine at best and flat greyness at worst.

With all my holiday reading done and dusted and the seven volumes making a most impressive pile on the table I was able to set my mind to the crossword from the ‘BBC History’ magazine kindly sent to me via email by Paul One.

When the magazine was first published the crossword was of such fiendish complexity asking for minute knowledge from such a variety of historical periods that only the very saddest of historical anorak wearers (or should I say cowl wearers!) would have been able to answer all the clues without cheating. To be able to answer six or seven of the clues was regarded as a major achievement. A further six or seven clues would be discovered by guessing and ‘light’ use of references. The rest were then down to sheer hard book slog or a few finger taps on the internet.

The latest example of the crossword shows the same descent into popularism and surface knowledge that has affected (allegedly) the examinations that kids are taking now. Suffice to say that this crossword used such obvious kings and queens as Alfred, Arthur, Mary and William of Orange. The foreigners were represented by such obvious monarchs as Xerxes; Nilotic civilizations by Nubian; ancient capitals by Nineveh; ancient gods by Leda. With the addition of a few scud missiles, a touch of the magisterial Pevsner and a sunk Lusitania the thing was virtually done. Any historical crossword that doesn’t make me look up at least two or three of the clues is not pulling its weight. OK, I did momentarily manage to confuse two opposing Second World War field marshals and two English kings (in different clues) but it was relatively plain sailing. It is now up to Paul One to match the achievement!

As the weather did not encourage sun gazing I went into Barcelona in a (futile as it turned out) trip to buy some or all of the presents I need to match the mass of anniversaries looming on the immediate horizon. My tramping around the city produced one small frippery for Laura. Period.

To be fair I now have an idea for at least half of the present for Toni’s fairly momentous birthday. When I pointed out to him that it was usually regarded as a birthday of some significance and should be celebrated with due style, I was treated to a short two word rejoinder which seemed to have little to do with the issue at hand!

My short holiday is almost over. It only remains for me to update my CV and draft an all purpose application letter so that I can start the process of educational prostitution to ensure employment next year.

I will ask the head of department if I can quote her as a referee – that should produce some sort of response as everyone (with the exception of the administrative staff proffering me a permanent contract) seem to expect me to be there next year.

I suppose that I have taken a fairly casual indication that I would probably know by the end of last week to be an absolute deadline. This may be true, but as my past experience of dealing with private school has clearly shown, it is far better to be prepared for the self defeating illogicality of private school ‘forward planning’ than to rely on what everyone else expects. Everyone expected me to still be teaching in The School That Sacked Me. Point taken!

Now until the end of June is solid teaching with a variety of internal and external examinations. More importantly it will also be a time of relentlessly improving weather with long hours of sunshine when I will be stuck indoors teaching.

At least I have the rest of the books that I garnered unto myself from the school bookshop on Sant Jordi and I am going to try my damndest to get some of the kids in my classes to try and read some of the books for pleasure.

This is a difficult thing to do in a school where the majority of the pupils are native English speakers. In our school the majority of the pupils are not. For some English is their third or fourth language so they have to be congratulated on the level at which they speak it.

There is an added problem.

As is well known, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are the three great Religions of the Book. The kids in my classes form themselves into the fourth great Religion of the Book as they regard their text books as the most important element in their understanding of the language. Any attempt to deviate from the pattern of exercises and explanations laid down in the English text book is greeted as a major heresy and one is urged to forsake the paths of linguistic dalliance and return to the strait way of The Book.

I (for I, gentle reader, am the false prophet, issuing Devil’s Photocopies of things not necessary for grammatical salvation) have had pupils pleading with me to teach them more grammar and speak to them of the delights of the Conditional in all its forms; charm them with the lofty formality of the passive; stimulate them with the giddy possibilities of relative clauses and revel in the skittish incomprensibility of the phrasal verbs. They are, of course, all mad. Bless!

Now for the CV and letter. And the coming week should give me a clear indication of my future status in the school.

Here’s hoping! (At a salary 20K less than the UK!)

The reading must go on!

By way of a change I decided to go to Sitges to expose my crisping skin to further rays. But it was full so I came home again.

My usual parking space in the bloody place is in the process of being churned up by road works. Just what you would expect at the start of the summer season in a place which only exists because of the tourist trade! Most of the parking spaces were taken up by broken road surface and a series of workers’ huts. As I drove away tracing delicate patterns of frustration in exhaust gasses there was not a single parking space in the place. That also includes spaces which were not parking space – all of which were filled with cars!

Like Yeats, I balanced all, brought all to mind, and thought that the balcony back in Castelldefels was a much better bet than parking a 20 minute walk away from the beach (assuming that I could find a parking space that close!) and being bereft of all the facilities that an attached flat provides.

As soon as I arrived back in Castelldefels the sun disappeared with inconvenient scraps of cloud pointlessly obstructing sunshine. So I made lunch.

I don’t want you to think that the proximity of lunch indicates a slatternly lie in bed in the morning. No, indeed! I was up bright and early and reading.

My morning cup of tea on the balcony was accompanied by ‘Silverfin’ by Charlie Higson. This is the first volume of the ‘Young Bond’ series which takes Ian Fleming’s iconic spy back to his childhood. I can remember the publicity when the Fleming Estate decided to back Higson and allow him to produce an initial volume so I was interested to see what it was like.

The book has an interestingly bloody (and somewhat misleading) start which whetted the appetite for a rollicking adventure yarn which then settled down into a public school story when the young Bond went to Eton. The description of the school is rather ooh-ahh documentary style with the gnomic slang of the upper class lovingly detailed and the architectural details of the ancient school dwelt on with relish.

The action developed along fairly conventional lines with bullying (gosh!) as one of the most important story lines. The opportunistic nature of this school saga is later developed by having the characters coincidentally playing a part in the major section of the book where the more traditional elements of Bond story telling come into play.

I have to admit that the structure of the book is quite masterly and it is easy to see the influence of the films rather than the novels playing their part in the exciting narrative.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it more than lived up to its exploitation of the Bond name. Talking of exploitation there are a number of volumes in the Young Bond series and a website to keep enthusiasts happy.

Once back from my abortive trip to Sitges I settled down on the balcony (in spite of the lack of sunshine) to read the last of the seven books that I had brought home to read over this holiday period, ‘The Stone Testament’ by Celia Rees.

This is an altogether more complex novel which skips from period to period, fantasy to gritty reality and narrator to narrator. The essential apocalyptic trust of the narrative is fairly simple to comprehend but the vast time span involved and the reincarnations of the central characters through history will put off some readers.

This is basically a race against time in which the actions of teenagers are going to be crucial in the saving of the world. The author uses multiple narrators and illustrations to give a spacious feel to the story and the references to different historical periods are intriguing.

Celia Rees states that what she wanted to do was, “write for teenagers, books that they would want to read, almost adult in style and content, but with like them at the centre.” I suppose that the only problem with this type of book is concerned with the definition of that word “almost” and how far it can be pushed to stimulate young readers to make a real effort to follow a complex narrative.

Celia Rees uses a wide range of contemporary and historic references and her reworking of the character of Ambrose Bierce as Brice Ambrose Stone is witty and well used. She is fair with the reader and produces a short acknowledgements page in which Bierce, Hawking and Machen are all credited.

This was a book with epic scope and multiple points of interest. It was a stimulating and satisfying read.

Although it is late my dinner is simmering on the hob. I decided to produce one of my ‘honest chunky’ meals. This means that I put slabs of meat together with roughly chopped onions, peppers, sliced potatoes and an oxo chicken cube and a low heat. It’s really too late for a meal but that is not going to stop me.

So there!

A just reward!

You know what it’s like: you go out to the kitchen to make yourself a cup of tea to take onto the balcony after a hard afternoon sun bathing, when suddenly you think to yourself, why not a glass of wine instead.

Its half past six in the evening and the sun is still above that bloody tree next door whose obstinately living branches bring sunset a little sooner than I would like. And it gives me the opportunity to use one of my ridiculously expensive Edinburgh Crystal ‘Edge’ wine goblets because cut glass does catch the sun nicely, doesn’t it?

If you hold this art object up to the sunlight the facets on the cut stem are reflected as little red stars on the underside of the curved Rioja filled space behind the glass. A magpie has suddenly appeared and is cackling at me from the hedge by the side of the pool, presumably attracted by the elegant glints from my enticing cup! I shall move it into the shade to removed temptation!

The worst part of today has been waiting in a ridiculously long queue in Lidel. The Spanish share with the British the belief that the immanence of a Bank Holiday is a sure portent of famine. It is as if the young Joseph (he of the multi-coloured clothing rather than he of the unconvincingly engendered child) has spoken to the Pharaoh and everyone has to scurry around and garner all foodstuffs for the lean years. Anyway the world and his wife were in the store (into which, incidentally, I had only casually popped to see what odd things they were selling in the middle bit) and when I finally entered and saw the press of people I decided that I ‘had to make a shop of it’ in a phrasal verb that would have most of my students weeping copiously at yet another example of the idiocy of English!

As one of the eggs that I had bought cracked in transport, my lunch comprised the simplicity of scrambled egg and slivers of cheese with fresh bread. Delicious!

On the beach our prefabricated chiringuito has finally opened (indicating that this is officially the first day of the summer season) and been doing roaring trade. People are parading up and down our newly almost completed paseo as if they are attempting to establish their professional status. And I have been for my first swim in the pool.

The water, it has to be said, was not welcoming and constant swimming was essential otherwise I feared that the blood in my limbs would congeal.

As I was doing my solitary lengths a small humanoid appeared from one of the lower flats and watched me with interest. He had a small cup on a string with which he vainly hoped to gain my attention. His lack of success was obviously a new and most unpleasant experience for him. You have to understand that children in Spain are absolute tyrants and are used to adults who fawn at every fart so my resilient indifference to his imperial presence was a threat to his nascent world view in which he was the centre of existence.

His manipulation of the stringed cup became more intense with water directed towards my enigmatic wake. Siren-like I swam in parts of the pool furthest away from him and he duly trotted along, sometimes trying to anticipate my eventual touch on the side.

I have to admit that my actions were performed without real hope as the goggles that I had chosen to wear were actually adjusted for my level of short sightedness and so even if I had enticed him into the cold waters of the pool I would really have been duty bound to rescue him. Still, he can’t always expect me to be so keen sighted!

The weather has been delightful and I am praying that the next two days will be the same. If we have a similar day tomorrow then I might be tempted into the sea.

I have discovered that, although I love looking at the beach and the sea, I rarely go onto or into either. I much prefer sitting on the balcony and watching the world go by and having instant access to a decent cup of tea and reasonably priced food!

Tonight is the long awaited clash between Barça and Real Madrid, the result of which could well settle the league championship.

The things one has to worry about!

Pack the break!

There is, I have discovered, a correct way of eating Crema Catalana.

Lunch today was a fairly sophisticated affair as befits the first lunch on a sadly short ‘holiday.’ After a dull, rainy start – which of course either proves or disproves the existence of god, depending on your philosophically sophist standpoint – to yet another Bank Holiday Weekend, I felt that a little culinary self-indulgence was called for.

The meal with its variety of small starters and its delicious duck filled crispy pancake main course culminated in the traditional Catalan dish of what is effectively cold custard with melted sugar. That downbeat description does not really do justice to the flavour of a well prepared Crema Catalana – and this one was well prepared with the brown of the melted sugar complimenting the darker brown of the circular dish in which it is traditionally served.

The problem, of course, lies in the sugar.

My approach is to use the side of the spoon to break the sugar toffee surface as it has the dual effect of producing an intensely satisfying crunchy breaking sound and also it reduces the circular disc of sugar to more delicately edible proportions.

Once in the mouth it is essential that the sugar is not chomped; this merely compacts the toffee into the contours of the teeth and produces, if you are not careful, a most effective bond between the two sets of molars. The trick is to encourage the sugar to disintegrate by moving the sets of teeth in a glancingly lateral movement rather than a direct closure which effectively sticks the teeth together.

A final cafe con leche should ensure that all remaining sugary debris is swilled away and teeth survive to deal with the next meal. And it was a decent little half bottle of Rioja too.

The gloom of the morning encouraged me to settle down and indulge myself by a prolonged bout of reading.

‘Airman’ by Eoin Colfer (the author of the Artemis Fowl books) is, as the Guardian critic noted “Swashbuckling high adventure” and a thoroughly enjoyable read. Set in Victorian times and mostly on the islands that make up the independent kingdom of the western Irish islands of Saltee, it concerns a young hero who is consumed by the idea of flight.

This novel is a mixture of fantasy, history, political thriller and fairy story. The hero, young Conor Brockhart, hold our attention from his birth in a hot-air balloon through his savage times in the diamond mine on Little Saltee to the more than satisfactory conclusion. Colfer is an assured writer whose grasp of narrative flow is exemplified in this fast paced story where our assurance that everything will turn out well is convincingly stymied by well placed and enjoyably frustrating difficulties that our hero has to meet and overcome.

Although I do not think that there is much chance of my using any part of the story for the kids that I teach it does encourage me to look out for more of his work and try to find another of the Artemis Fowl novels to luxuriate in.

Anthony Horowitz has an almost unassailable reputation and Colfer’s Conor Broekhart would mix well with Horowitz’ Alex Rider™ another resourceful young man whose adventures have brought Horowitz fame in novels like ‘Stormbreaker.’ The book that I read wasn’t one of those however.

‘Three of Diamonds’ a collection of three stories written by Nick Diamond the younger brother of Tim Diamond ‘the world’s most defective detective.’ The stories are ‘The French Confection,’ ‘I Know What You Did Last Wednesday’ and ‘The Blurred Man.’ As the titles suggest they are derivative stories which are written in a groan inducingly punning style which you probably either love or loathe. The pace is fast and often descends to the level of written slapstick. To me they seemed little more than pot boilers and irritating ones at that.

‘Spy Dog’ by Andrew Cope had big writing, beguiling drawings and a super hero in Lara (aka GM451 to the British Secret Service) who may be a black and white mongrel with a black sticky-up ear but is also a dancing, whistling, black belt karate, newspaper reading super spy!

This is a delightful book, picaresque and heart warming. I loved it – and it can be used with the kids in school!

I was reminded of a film with Max Von Sydow where he plays a diabolical character who runs a shop called, as I remember, “Needful Things” which offers its customers exactly what they want in return for nasty ‘services’ which eventually produce mayhem in the little community. Good eventually triumphs and Max is apparently incinerated only to appear walking through the flames to his Rolls Royce and going off through the smoke to find another bunch of gullible, corruptible folk. E E Richardson’s ‘Soul Trader’ has much the same idea though the scene is set in Britain and there are a few nice touches of contemporary life.

The story starts with a boy’s search for a birthday present (apt for me at the moment as the next week or so sees at least three birthdays looming and no ideas for presents!) and the fortuitous happenstance of finding a strange shop with what appear to be a miraculous number of crystal balls which contain amazing pictures. The price of one of these balls is where the title of the book comes in and the tag line on the cover emphasises the idea with its question, ‘How much are you willing to pay?’

The story is an effective mixture of contemporary life-style situation; ancient clash of religion and magic and moralistic fable. The writing is effective and the narrative taut – and the ending is conclusive and suggestively open ended. An easy read.

The book that I am enjoying most is ‘The Amulet of Samarkand’ by Jonathan Stroud, the first in the Bartimaeus Trilogy. I have recently read the second volume, The Golem’s Eye’ and reading backwards you can see that the relationship between Nathaniel and Bartimaeus is the real strength of this series. The Resistance which is barely mentioned in the first volume becomes much more important in the second and complicates and lessens the excitement of the relationship, but the dynamic of Nathaniel and Bartimaeus in the volume I am reading now is deeply enjoyable.

So I’ll carry on with the reading!

Time for what?

Well, my self-imposed time limit for positive news about my contract has passed so the soul destroying tedium of re-presenting my much touted CV to the various educational establishments of Barcelona and surrounding districts commences.

This lack of certainty is running alongside the conversation I had with the head of English this morning about books I might to look at in another store room to use for future English classes. She was also very concerned that I had the right key to get into the place. As a matter of fact I have enough metal work in the multitude of keys that I have been given for the school to kit out a very respectable representation of Marley’s Ghost. There can be few places in any of the buildings that comprise our school campus that I am unable access if I cared to spend the time and effort and find out which of the many, many keys that I possess would fit the many, many locks.

In spite of the very impressive accoutrements of security with which my case is laden it doesn’t stop things going missing. The latest even which has thrown the school into a hissy fit of fatuous verbiage is that some money has been stolen.

We must get things into proportion. These are rich kids with richer parents. And they steal. I remember years ago when I was on an exchange trip to France that one boy revealed that he had stolen a pair of flip-flops from a shoe shop we had just been in. Leaving aside for the moment the truly sad nature of our little group that found visiting a French shoe shop interesting – the one fact that eventually found a little squeak of horror in my mind was that the ‘sophisticated’ (i.e. he smoked) rich French boy had more than enough money to have bought the things. Then, I didn’t understand the appeal of the element of bravado and risk that attracts those vitiated by the comfort zone of money. To be fair I still don’t. But I am sure that something of that motivated the thief in our midst.

And lunch time was revealing too. The kids are well fed with good quality food served in spacious surroundings with some fairly spectacular views of Barcelona. Today we teachers had a variety of desserts to choose from including ice cream in various forms.

The children were given a snack sized Magnum chocolate covered ice cream on a stick. These were distributed by the lunch ladies when they had considered that the kids had eaten enough of their other two courses. What was interesting was not that Magnums were distributed but rather the reaction of the ‘customers.’ An unbiased observer would have assumed that the children eating were underprivileged kids who had never tasted ice cream before. They begged borrowed and stole ice cream from each other and then besieged the ladies for extra. As I was on lunch time duty I was the person trying to stem the flood of kids trying to wheedle an extra Magnum out of the kitchen staff. Some of the kids (obviously not knowing my flinty inner core of child contempt) attempted to soften my stern ordering of them out of the dining room with what they fondly supposed were ingratiatingly plaintive doe-eyed moist eyes as they beseeched me to have pity on their poor wretched condition and allow them a little taste of the flavour of Elysium vouchsafed to other more fortunate kids.

As you may be able to tell from the tone of that writing I was unmoved – though I myself, in the privacy of the staff dining room had partaken of two ice creams myself. Some hypocrisy is just too delicious to pass by!

To fortify myself for the all-too-short holiday ahead I have brought home seven of the books which I got from the bookseller (at the school’s expense) on Sant Jordi and will indulge myself in an orgy of reading, lubricated by the odd glass of Rioja.

If the sun shines with any degree of intensity then I have almost vowed to throw myself into the foaming briny for the first time this year.

I will be looking at the thermometer as there is a minimum blow which it is a criminal offence to immerse oneself in Spain!

Toni is going off to his nephew’s Name Day which will be celebrated by barbecue in the company of countless young humans aged four and below.

The simple statement of some approaching events is loquacious beyond the power of adjectival hyperbole to convey the horror!

Enjoy!

The question is . . .

Exam writing has now reached its peak in our school with emails flying from person to person and pen drives being plugged it right left and centre to ensure that the pupils are presented with yet another paper on which they can practice their considerable skills in cheating.

I must admit that I completed my part of the construction of one of the latest papers with something rather less than enthusiasm. God knows if I’d rather watch a mediocre game of football where Chelsea send in the wreckers to limit the flowing football of Barça than compose a shining set of clever and scintillating sentences to stimulate the exam jaded appetites of young scholars in our place then something must be very wrong about the sort of work that I am supposed to be doing.

Or perhaps it was just a day on which I felt jaded and frustrated after having to deal with the natural arrogance of the rich spawn we have to teach all day!

Also the delay in saying anything about my contract is also playing on my mind. The head of English was talking about books for next year and including me in the conversation which does seem suggestive, but nothing has been said and unless there is a contract then nothing is clear. Tomorrow is the last day before our four day holiday which is seen as some sort of watershed in our place. If nothing is said then I will use the holiday to rewrite my CV (which I haven’t done because I still assume that they will present me with a contract in due course!) and, with a suitable letter start addressing the envelopes to all the schools which could possibly use my services.

I keep writing that I should not trust any private school to do the decent thing, but in my heart of hearts I still expect them to do so. If nothing else my time in The School That Sacked Me should have taught me that logical expectations cannot be relied upon in a private system which bears little relationship to the way in which I have been used to experience education!

It is a simple fact that the public system of education, with all its faults and its built in idiocy is more professionally based that any private school of my experience. But the food is much better in private education!

As an unexpected bonus I was able to luxuriate on the balcony in the evening sun today – and yes, I did have a glass of red wine to soothe away the stresses of the day!

In spite of asking the bank to send my new card to the house the bank (the awesomely hateful BBVA) has of course done nothing of the sort. It is now residing in the local branch which (in spite of the obscenely large amounts of money earned by that shameless organization) has now adopted a so-called “summer timetable” which means that the bloody place is only open between the hours of eight and half past two. Thus ensuring that I will not be able to get my card until the summer!

Although I have tried in the past, I feel that the gentle finger taps I make on the keys of my computer are totally inadequate in managing to convey the atavistic, visceral and overwhelming hatred that I feel towards that smug, arrogant and consumer oblivious organization. The only (believe you me it really is the only) reason I stay with them is that they have managed to acquire a substantial number of my euros held as a sort of ‘guarantee’ for the contract that we had to take out on the flat. This piece of financial skullduggery was perpetrated using the excuse of my somewhat ambiguous financial status. I feel like echoing the biblical sentiment, “I was a stranger and you took me in.” I am a little more cynical than I was when I first arrived and there are certain aspects of what was explained was essential that I would now treat with the contempt that they deserve. But there again it is very easy to be wise after the event!

I am already planning the books that I am going to read over the ‘holiday’ – but only if the sun don’t shine!

Expectations through work

A full day in school and a union meeting after numbed me sufficiently that the writing of my blog yesterday was lost in a mist of tiredness.

The whole of our being as an institution has been taken over by the immanence of a four day holiday incorporating May Day. May Day is taken seriously here and signs have already gone up on electronic gantries informing lorries that they must stay off the motorways on May Day. One colleague informed me that her furniture was supposed to be delivered on the May Day holiday. The lorry was stopped by the police and he had to pull over and park up for the day. Her furniture was not delivered in spite of the fact that it was tantalizingly near!

All I ask is that there be sunshine. (And that construction confused the hell out of a student in class today. Word doesn’t like it either, but what the hell does a mere machine program know about language!)

Perhaps what also sapped the writing strength out of me was emerging yesterday afternoon and finding that someone had smashed into the back of my parked car. Well, not exactly the back but the driver’s side rear bumper under the light. A cursory glance revealed that the small amount of damage was actually connected to a massive chunk of the car. And my insurance is not comprehensive – in spite of the fact that I thought it was. It’s always when there is an accident that you suddenly find out just how much you are covered.

The sad thing is that the probability is that the damage was caused by the car of a parent and as they are not short of a bob or two then I probably had the equivalent of a domestic tank hit the car. It says something about the essential duplicity of the parents of our school that no note was left so I am going to have a substantial bill to pay. God rot them to the everlasting pits of a particularly fiery hell. Please!

I cannot rely on my writing to be the enjoyable displacement activity which is so often the balm of a full day as I have to write examination questions for consideration in a meeting tomorrow. This piece of work has crept up on me, but the horror is mitigated by the fact that the sort of questions I have to produce are types that I quite enjoy writing is a ‘sad-sod’ sort of way!

And dinner to cook, so that kitchen activity will have to fill the place of the writing.

Never a dull unfilled moment.

Cut and thrust in memory

Shaving is a powerful process; especially if you are short sighted.

The precision which a mirror encourages is largely wasted on the myopic so a shower is as good a place as any to facilitate the smoothing process. Shampoo lathered on the remaining stubble on my head bubbles its way southward to coat the stubble on my face and, electric battery shaver in hand, the morning chore begins.

The soapy foam ensures that eyes must be kept tightly shut and this has two advantages: it prolongs the illusion of sleep and it encourages the mind to wander. Fingers search questingly along the contours of the face to position the shaver so that it might make the rough places plain. While this semi automatic process is taking placed the mind wanders.

Or rather follows a free association of ideas just a fraction more ordered than that found in the surrealistically logical universe of the dream.

As the three headed rotary shaver wended its way across my face my mind went back to a whole series of conversations and observations about shaving that I had with my father covering the different techniques necessary for optimum results with the blade shavers and then the seemingly counter intuitive approach to utilize the capabilities of the electric shaver. The fact that electric shavers can now be used with foam in the shower confuses and conflates necessary techniques for an adequate (who has ever had a ‘perfect’) shave.

As my mind was quite happily surfing the seas of memory I had one of those deeply poignant moments where the reality of the realisation of the loss of my parents settled on the whole area of my brain.

I am not given to morbid introspection and my acceptance of the fact of death in those close to me has been seen by others as ‘unnatural’ and ‘callous.’

Even that sense of ‘loss’ in the shower was not one consumed in sorrow; rather it emphasised the firm presence in memory of two of the most important characters in my life. A life which continues with their living memory as a daily focus for my interpretation of experience. I do not see them as ghostly presences, but their remembered characters with their likes, dislikes, prejudices and linguistic responses colour and enrich my day to day appreciation.

A moment’s melancholy soon lost in a jumble of positive recollection!

And all this before I was fully awake!

The grey day has now developed into a sullen day with rain darkening a totally deserted beach.

There is, therefore no excuse whatsoever for my not starting the more mundane tasks that I have set myself to complete today.

And who knows at the end of this sentence I might actually start them!

Reading in the gloom!

With all the tasks that I had to do today what a shock it was that the one that I completed was reading the book!

The book in question was ‘The Golem’s Eye’ by Jonathan Stroud, the second volume in ‘The Bartimaeus Trilogy.’

On the back of Harry Potter in that it postulates a Britain in which magic is an everyday occurrence the twist here is that the magicians are in control in a Britain whose history includes Gladstone as an Empire founding master magician who leads an army in a battle royal against the Czech Empire.

The ostensible hero of this volume (and presumably the first volume too) is a young magician called Nathaniel who is accompanied on his adventures by his reluctant djin Bartimaeus. The non-magical heroine is Kitty and the interplay between Nathaniel and Kitty is a continuation of the tension which had been established in volume 1.

The Imperial Britain postulated in ‘The Golem’s Eye’ is one in which society is fairly rigidly stratified with the magicians being the ruling class and the non magical section of society (the commoners) being relegated to the more menial jobs within society and generally living the life of an under-class. The magicians are shown as arrogant with all the corruption of power.

The action of the novel is taken up with the activities of the Resistance and the intrusion into the orderly society of the magician dominated society of Britain of disruptive magical features. The upper echelons of the magicians are riven with an unseemly display of infighting as the minsters in government jockey for position.

This is a long novel which is packed with action and a sometimes bewildering collection of magical creatures of whom the most interesting by far is the djin Bartimaeus whose enforced subservience to his magician master Nathaniel is characterised by a wittily resentful dialogue where his own cowardice is engagingly presented!

All the major characters with whom we are encouraged to identify are flawed and the social tensions in this magical society are presented with some complexity. ‘Real’ history is tantalizingly spun to provide a convincing backdrop to social comment.

The cyclical nature of society and the inevitable decline of over-reaching empires add piquancy to the conflict between all sections of society. It’s also a damn good adventure story in which the many elements are handled with confidence and produce a gripping and engaging narrative.

I look forward to the other volumes in the series, but I do not see the style as something which will be useful for the pupils in my charge.

Another grey day. It seems particularly cruel that the week should be fine and only the weekend dull.

Perhaps it is an incentive for me to complete my tasks!

I know what I like

“Why,” asked one of my pupils today, “are you so brown?”

The answer is of course is because I am British.

The Catalans are still in their spring mood and are looking forward to the coming of summer. As far as they are concerned, whatever the weather is actually like, this is not the month which they can regard as being officially summer: they can afford to wait.

But I am British and do not have the Iberian faith that summer will come and summer will be fine and sunny. I therefore take every opportunity to allow myself to be drawn to the balcony and luxuriate in the sunshine which we never take for granted!


One of the tasks that I have to complete this weekend is produce a little booklet of poems by Paul Cookson. He is going to visit our school and it is only fitting that the kids who are going to meet him have some knowledge of the poems that he has written. Having read through a selection of his stuff I have to say I am not sure how the kids are going to respond to it.

Our timetable is so examination driven that any deviation from the Way of the Book has a knock on effect on what we can test. Literature doesn’t really have as much status as the fabricated ‘grammar’ with which experts try and define English and which we have to teach!

I have seen the most extraordinary diagrams of the grammatical analysis of sentences in Catalan which look like a cross between the organic structure of a complex hydrocarbon and a geometrical construction. They look much more difficult that the involved box analysis with which I wasted many hours in the two years of my ‘O’ level course.

Box analysis of sentences and clause analysis were the banes of my life – though there was always a scientist from whom one could copy! The logical minds of my more scientific friends came into their own when dealing with analysis of existing sentences rather than having to make them up themselves.

I am reading ‘The Golem’s Eye’ by Jonathan Stroud which is apparently a multi-million seller in the children’s book world. Modern London run by magicians sounds like a rip off of the Harry Potter franchise, but I will reserve judgement until after I have read it.

Given the weather forecast, I won`t be going outside so a good book it going to take my mind away from the lack of sunshine.

I hope.

Needing to know the unknown

The Spanish obviously find difficulty with the meaning of some adjectives.

Today, Sant Jordi – the National Day of Catalonia – was the occasion when the staff of my school participated in the ‘invisible friend’ approach to the tradition of book giving on Sant Jordi. We drew names and had to buy a book and have it delivered anonymously to the recipient today.

The Brits in the school entered into the spirit of the event and ensured that their books were placed with or near their intended recipients with minimal fuss. All that is except for one hapless colleague who decided to integrate the other aspect of the present giving on this day – the rose.

In a spirited romantic gesture he cut the remaining rose from his garden to add to his book. Unfortunately his wife saw him enter the house clutching a cut rose and immediately assumed that it was for her. Explanation, as we all know, is invidious.

I advised him to buy one of the extortionately priced single red roses that are on sale at every street corner today by suspiciously foreign looking gentlemen who jump at passing cars in order to foist their floral offerings on guilty male drivers who have not already placated their partners with the appropriate bloody plant!

The British section of the staff saw their books and idly wondered who had bought them. The foreign section saw each book as an intriguing clue and with a cry of “The game’s afoot Watson” (or the Iberian equivalent) they started an inquisition of everyone they saw with an intensity worthy of Torquemada. Obviously the suggestion of a ‘friend’ being ‘invisible’ was a concept one philosophical idea too far!

Some of my colleagues signed their anonymous gifts; others gave them directly to the recipients; other watched with such a propriatorial air that it would have been almost impossible not to guess the donor.

The person to whom I caused my book to be delivered by another hand actually came to see me to thank me – God knows who told her because the only person in whom I confided and who translated my dedication into Spanish didn’t tell her.

After the traumas of attribution there were further delights in store.

There was a full assembly of the school in the playground where selected senior pupils put on some sort of drama connected with St George and later in the day an assembly of the secondary section of the school for the presentation of the prizes for essay writing and photography.

The actual presentations were made by the teachers in charge of subjects but the presentational chat and announcements were all made by pupils.

The behaviour of the audience was appalling. The older secondary students chatted throughout and I could feel myself getting even hotter under the collar (it was a very fine day) and then I remembered that I was on a temporary contract and my wages are pathetic and there were other people there who were form tutors and they could sort it out. This attempt at Zen-like serenity was only partially effective.

Although there were various hushing sounds emitted by various teachers at various times throughout the ceremony it had virtually no effect on the level of chat that went on throughout. I was sitting at the back and I stayed sitting. After the first panic of my doing nothing to stop the grotesque rudeness of the audience I sort of relaxed into a semi detached observation of the futile actions of (very few) of my colleagues who attempted to do something about what should have been seen as glaringly unacceptable behaviour. I shall ponder on the responses of my professional colleagues and add my thoughts to my developing picture of how the school works!

We have had a book shop open in the library and I looked and identified many volumes that I would have marked down for inspection were I head of department. When I actually attempted to buy a book the manager of our temporary shop informed me that the department was entitled to a whole slew of books as ‘payment’ for the percentage given to the school as our cut from the total amount spent on books. The manager urged me to speak to the head of department and see if the books I wanted could be taken as part of the department’s justified cut.

Being told by a book seller to wander about and take what I want was a bit like telling an alcoholic to spend a night in Bottoms Up! So there is now a whole box of books waiting for the inspection of the head of department to check through – it’s almost like old times!

Another colleague commented today that it must be hard for me as a past head of faculty to be a lowly teacher in this school. How little she really knows!

To celebrate Sant Jordi we had a bottle of Gran Plus Ultra – the exceptional Cava – so expensive it has a piece of embroidery on the box in which it comes! To be absolutely fair Toni did not even have one full glass, but that’s the way the bottle empties!

And tomorrow is my early end of day. Please god let the sun shine!

A book in the hand is worth two in the shop!

Blogging, I have often thought, can be like cleaning your teeth: something habitual and necessary, but not always a pleasure.

Unless of course when your mouth has become the palette for a whole series of contrasting flavours each of which is fighting for supremacy and emitting its own distinct scent, noisome to yourself and those around you. Then it is a positive delight to ‘delete all and insert’ (as we used to say in farcical General Body meetings in university) and greet the world with a sparkling new mouth which does not deal death with every breath.

A blog can be the equivalent of a good mouthwash where the frustrating bitterness of real and imagined slights can be retextured into what the perpetrator fondly believes is deathless prose.

By such small necessary deceptions do we live our little lives!

I have been forced to think about the medium as a friend has whimpered that the reason he does not indulge (I think that is the right word) in a blog is because he does not have enough time. He may not think he has enough time for a blog, but he certainly has time for a few jewelled observations presented in the form of an email. How is a blog different? I can see the essential fatuity of the exercise, but what a simple self-indulgent delight it is to complete.

I can now go back over two years in my blog and rediscover the emotions and events which have marked a fairly momentous change in my circumstances. A few weeks ago I read some of the last entries in my blog before I came to Catalonia and it was a strange experience. I was reading about someone I knew, but the distance and the altered perspective gave a different spin to my appreciation of what I thought was going on then.

Good, bad or indifferent, it is an engaging record of my times and I’m glad that I started writing it. Whether the readers can say the same is of course something else entirely.

I write this on the balcony in school during my lunch hour in a sun which has, at last, merited the adjective ‘hot.’ The usual manic interest in the weather evinced by all Iberians means that they have now convinced themselves that summer has finally arrived. No matter that there are clouds in the sky and the haze over the city is as threatening as ever, the season when even Spaniards might divest themselves of some of the layers of clothing seems appreciably nearer.

The day started well with my personalized edition of ‘Sredni Vashtar’ being churned out by the photocopier. I am rapidly amassing a collection of selected short stories to be used with various classes. At the moment I am using Chekhov and Salinger and Saki will soon be added to this heady mix.

The Somerset Maugham story that I want to add to my limited editions is proving to be stubbornly difficult to find on the internet, but I know that it there somewhere in the electronic cloud of the bibliosphere and I will find it and mercilessly bend it to my requirements for English learners!

Back inside at the end of the day and my Search for the Story will continue - wish me luck!

One of the school secretaries has just come into the staff room and said, "I bet you are happy that you will not be indulging in the Sant Jordi panic that the rest of us will be in!"

This refers to the 'Invisible Friend' event which the school is using to celebrate the 23rd of April Sant Jordi's Day (St George's Day) and the National Day of Catalonia. It is traditional for books to be exchanged - and that is where the 'Invisible Friend' comes in. I drew a spill of paper and had to buy a book for the person whose name was written thereon.

As I didn't know the person I had to take advice and it transpired that I was buying for one of the secretaries. I have bought and wrapped what I take to be suitible books (based on advice) and have even written an appropriate message (translated for me into Spanish) to be added. No one else it appears has done this so, along with the rest of the population of Catalonia, they will be taking part in the Book Buying Frenzy of Sant Jordi's Eve!

Smug indeed!

It's the season I suppose

A glorious day which started with bright sunshine and yet another car crash and ended with thunder and lightning and torrential rain. I do wish the long expected consistent summer would get here and shine its months away!

People in school are now getting progressively more panicky as the examination season proper gets under way. Tomorrow I have a meeting with the head of English to discuss the oral examinations which all the students will have to take. These are external examinations and over the next month or so we have to complete a series of practice tests the form of which is going to be explained to me and then I will have to implement. Such larks!

I am finding much innocent pleasure in deciding what short stories to give to the pupils and then designing covers for the little booklets that I am producing. I know that such activity is merely displacement activity to push the necessary marking into the background where it belongs, but I cannot resist it.

Most of the stories that I am drawn to are all out of copyright and are available somewhere or other on the web. Project Gutenberg is a very useful source of texts and there are other sites whose legality I have been seriously questioning – though, it has to be said, using.

Having committed the ultimate literary blasphemy of ‘lightly editing’ (May I be forgiven!) a Chekhov story, I decided to do the same to a short story by Saki, ‘Sredni Vashta.’ Don’t worry, every change that I made seemed like cutting a chunk of living flesh and watching vital blood drain, so I gave up by paragraph two! I have limited myself to creating new paragraphs as Saki’s vocabulary is taxing for English learners and they need the slight respite of smaller sections to have to cope with.

They may miss (but then most do) some of the more subtle passing humour of Saki’s style, but the story is strong enough to stand in its own right and most will be able to appreciate the true nastiness of the vengeful writing that Saki uses in that bitter story. I hope!

And the school has bought me a long armed stapler for my little booklets.

Who, reasonably could ask for more!

How long to the hols? Dear God!

A sticky day today: definitely time for me to assume the mantle of the short sleeved shirt for my professional duties.

The pupils are (dismayingly) wayward as if the date were a damn sight nearer to the end of June than it is in depressingly real life. Or perhaps this is just a reaction to taking a Year 9ish class last thing in a long, long day!

The lunch we get still more than makes up for any student obstreperousness. I have now developed a meticulous approach to these meals and I refuse to have wine unless I am not teaching in the afternoon: such professionalism!

Still nothing about my continued contract, but on the other hand I have been encouraged to find an immersion course in Spanish to take in the summer –that surely is something of a good sign!

In the evening to the Liceu for what I think was a world premiere of ‘La Cabeza del Bautista’ by Enric Palmoar. The libretto was adapted by Carlos Wagner from a text included in the series of plays collected in the ‘Retablo de la avaricia, la lujuria y la muerte’ by Ramón Ma del Valle-Incián. The title, by its reference to the head of John the Baptist suggests that the melodramatic story of the opera (a stepson returning unexpectedly to blackmail his stepfather about his mother’s murder while flirting with his stepfather’s woman. It all ends in death of course with some fairly serious necrophiliac kissing!) should be seen through a fairly close reference to Wilde’s play ‘Salome.’

The action of the play is only tangentially ‘realistic’ though it deals with real enough human motivations which lead to tragedy.

The setting when first revealed reminded me of gaunt trees more suited to a Beckett play and the later appearance of a blind man and boy is an echo of Pozzo and Lucky in ‘Waiting for Godot’. The stage was almost covered by a whole series of snooker tables to represent the billiard hall that Don Igi (well sung by José Manuel Zapata) owns and which Alberto Saco (Alejandro Marco-Buhmester; good too) enters with ideas of extortion. As far as singing is concerned La Pepona (Angeles Blancas) carried off the main plaudits. She is asked to some fairly radical things with her voice, and she has to produce some fairly authentic screams while slutting her way across the stage!


A character who propelled himself around the stage in a small wheeled trolley added a rather nice touch of Bosch to the mis en scene but there was not enough of real interest to compell attention.

Musically I remained unconvinced. Josep Caballé Domenech and the Orquestra Simfònica I Cor del Gran Teatre del Liceu were excellent but I found the sound they produced unsatisfying. There were conventional harmonic sounds and what passed for arias, but I could get little purchase on the musical life of the piece.

The reception was luke-warm to put it mildly and around my section of the theatre at least four people walked out midway through the piece. The curtain calls were barely sustained by the applause.

It is a sad reflection of the production that the sound that will remain with me is not an element of the score but the clicking sound of the stage dagger as the point disappeared into the pommel as Igi stabbed and stabbed again a well killed Saco. And it is the only time that I have seen a grave dug on stage in which real earth was thrown out of the hole! But not enough to justify an opera I think!

Bring on the next!

Beware the Ides of Friday Night!

Foolish boy that I am, I have ignored the age old traditions of teaching and I did not complete at least one piece of marking on Friday night.

Now, instead of beavering away (a phrasal verb that the kids have to know for their English examinations, which shows the archaic level of language knowledge that they require) at the marking which has to be done, I am sitting here watching Valencia and Sevilla play football while typing out my increasing unease and guilt.

Even as I know that I should be working: I work not. The curse of The Unmarked Friday Script has struck again! I never fail to be struck by the fact that I can articulate what I should do (and must do before tomorrow) while using that same articulation as a form of prevarication! What a complex animal the Sunday Evening Teacher is!

Saturday was a day of rest, up to a point. Sunday morning, when I should have been marking, I was actually designing and producing some extra address cards – which seemed absolutely essential when compared with marking.

Lunchtime and early evening was taken care of by the fact that we went up to Terrassa for lunch to sample the delights brought back from Aragon by Toni’s mum. Some of the confection that she bought included the most overblown boiled sweets that I’ve ever stuffed into my mouth and huge block of chocolate which divided into the largest chunks I’ve ever seen. The actual lunch was delicious and was preceded by cheese and cooked meats from Aragon and Galicia and, as I was driving, alas, a single glass of excellent red wine!

The two youngsters were there, Toni’s two nephews: ten months and four. Yet again I do not understand how parents survive. The youngest child always seemed to me to be on the point of having a serious accident and once or twice I found myself exhausted by sheer fright as he narrowly escape decapitation (so it seemed to me) by inches and chance! As far as the older child was concerned the sheer volume of attention seeking noise provoked by sibling jealousy had to be heard to be believed. I do not know how they do it. Whatever ‘it’ is or indeed whoever ‘they’ are!

And I still have done no marking!

A long short week!

Why is it that three day weeks seem more stressful to a full week?

Or is that just a load of rubbish?

I am tempted by how tired I feel to think that there must be something about the spiritual preparation for starting to teach in the middle of the week which saps the quotidian strength that you need to survive an abnormal week.

Whenever you return to work it ought to be a Monday. You start at the beginning of the week; anything else is abnormal and contrary to normal practice – and probably unprofessional (I will have to look at the small print in the description of our jobs in the Welsh Teaching Council’s Secret Analects.)

Didn’t John Wyndham write in ‘The Day of the Triffids’ that, “When a day you know is Wednesday starts off feeling like a Monday, you know that something is very wrong.” Actually, he didn’t. But the feeling of unease that my misquoted opening sentence from that novel is supposed to convey exactly conveys what starting a week on a day other than the Monday feels like.

The anticipation of the start of the week on a later day and the consequent worrying about what one should have prepared for a fragment of the week tends to diminish the anticipated stress free bonus of not teaching for a proportion of the normal timetable.

There is a built in resentment of teachers and pupils about the petty vindictiveness which offers the promise of another week and then cruelly denies its fulfillment by demanding the attendance of teachers and pupils for a limited run performance of normality.

On the other hand Friday did come round a little more quickly than usual.

And my early departure on Friday to which I was fully entitled because of the two days a week on which I have early starts (both of which were retained in the curtailed week I might add) meant that I was able to meet visitors from Cardiff for tea and cakes in a little café in the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona.

As is always the way with these things, the only time that I needed money on my mobile was the only time that the money was low. To recharge my mobile necessitated my visiting the hated headquarters of The Worst Bank in the World that was still Solvent. I long for the day that I have enough money to spurn BBVA and all its works and move to La Caixa which has my undying support because of their excellent galleries at the foot of Monjuïc. However, at present I still have to use the bank and wonder about what they are doing with my Aval Bancario. This is my money (six months’ rent) which was demanded by the owner of the flat as a sort of deposit before he would sign the contract for the lease. The bank holds the money. They charge a hand and a fist for looking after my money. I had to get everything signed sealed and delivered by that specious, grasping band of legal nonentities called Notarios who demanded a vast sum of money for telling me that what I had to sign was a contract!

Eventually recharging my mobile I was able to contact the visitors and meet them in Zara. It says something about me or about the people who have visited me in Barcelona that I knew where Zara was.

It was a delight meeting people from Cardiff, even though the rain tried to make the city appear in its worst light.

Even depressing rain cannot hope to be victorious when opposed to a cup of chocolate in its most viscous form and a particularly venomously delicious chocolate cake!

Ever since reading ‘The Shocking History of Advertising’ published by Penguin in a most beguiling cover showing a bedraggled Victorian poster paster putting up the latest advert, and reading Vance Packard’s ‘Hidden Persuaders’ I have been fascinated by Marketing in all its insane forms.

Insanity seems to be the motivating force behind the large scale and obviously very expensive campaign to encourage the people of Catalonia to buy a Nespresso machine and chain themselves to the buying of packaged coffee products at high prices.

I am usually amazed and delighted at the ways in which manufacturers are adept at charging more for less. There are numerous examples of this. I don’t suppose that anyone has actually taken a box of extravagantly packaged washing powder tablets and crumbled them down to their original powder to see just how little actually stuff is really there; or taken the tea out of tea bags to see how little actual tea you have; putting glasses’ wipes in individual packets; selling individual sachets of anything – all of these ask the consumer to pay for packaging as much as for the contents.

A brilliant recent example has been the selling of chewing gum. One gum which is low in sugar, low in calories and high in price is now sold in tablet-like blister packs making the gum look more medicinal and therefore justifying a higher price. The latest packaging of a measly five sticks of gum is elegantly presented in a stylish metallic looking flip pack at an equally fashionable price!

As far as I can work out the Nespresso machine is merely a kettle which forces water through a number of holes in a small capsule filled with ground coffee and directs the resultant liquid into a suitable receptacle. It looks elegant enough but it is gloriously unsophisticated. The clever bit comes from selling small portions of coffee in small metallic capsules at an inflated price. The machine has a very specific purpose and you can only use the specially produced capsules with it.

And that is where the strange thing comes into operation. The capsules themselves are only available from limited outlets. I think that the general idea of the machine is that the consumer should become a member of a special club and order the capsules from the internet. Certainly in this part of the world there are very few places in which they can be bought. Our nearest shop is in Barcelona and none of the supermarkets sell the capsules. I have been told that this is to give a certain cachet to the use of the machine, to attach a certain spurious exclusivity to it.

This is fine and dandy, but the advertising is extensive and, while the price of the machine is obviously grossly inflated for what it does, but is not beyond the reach of many pockets. It stands to reason that, therefore, the capsules should be instantly available to gratify the artificially stimulated coffee needs of an every gullible public. The ‘thinking’ behind this particular approach leaves me stumped!

But I still admire the commercial mind which plays on public perception to deprive us of money!

Needless to say we do have a machine – though in my defence I have to say that it was given to us as a gift. Its use is likely to be the length it takes us to work our way through the strange selection of capsules that were bought (not by me) in the first enthusiastic frenzy of ownership.

YouTube (or however it’s spelled) has numerous short films indicating how the capsules might be re-used. The amount of effort necessary to complete this penny pinching piece of conservation looks disproportionate to the possible end result. This is the sort of thing on which I will keep a watchful eye to see how popular rejection of high priced exclusivity is manifested.

Today I wore shorts. I have made an executive decision that summer has started. As I have mentioned I am strengthened in my position by the fact that the framework for our chiringuito has now been assembled and I confidently expect the place to be finished tomorrow. The sun loungers have moved to the edge of the sea. All is in place for the summer. Hence the shorts.

I hope the weather takes the hint!

On show!

The first opportunity to see my school in its public guise.

This was the prize giving for the international literary competition that the school holds every year. The event started at 7.30 pm so I had the delight of braving the evening traffic on the northern circular road of Barcelona to get back to the place for the commencement of the festivities.

The evening over the most telling element of the experience was observing the astonishing rudeness of a substantial section of the audience who seemed to think that it was more than fair to come in more than half an hour late causing maximum noise! If this is the typical behaviour of the parents in the school then the powers that be might at least oil the doors so that they make less noise in their continuous opening and closing while the guest speaker is delivering his talk.

Yes, the talk, well . . .

This was delivered in Spanish and so called for a degree of concentration on my part which was particularly exhausting, especially when what the man was saying seemed to be an ill thought out extemporary ramble voicing a multitude of platitudes about the importance of reading and writing. His (slightly slurred I thought) delivery made little concession to his juvenile audience and bounced from pretentious peak of empty rhetoric to vacuous summit of glaring obviousness.

I might, of course, be absolutely wrong. After all it is hardly fair to be so dismissive of a discourse in which the odd word (to put it at its most optimistic) was lost in the desperate scurry of frantic translation. But, hey, I can’t change the habits of a lifetime just because someone has the temerity to use a language which places me at a linguistic disadvantage!

I thought that the directora looked at the speaker rather warily from time to time as he rambled on, so I don’t think that I was absolutely alone in my less than enthusiastic appreciation of his words of wisdom.

The awards were eventually awarded with two of the winners making a video contribution as they were from South America!

The evening ended with a contribution from the school pop group. They were enthusiastic and had a wonderful reception from an audience which related to them quite literally!
The band’s encore completed the audience disintegrated rather than dispersed in the general direction of a buffet which had been laid out in the open air in a wilful defiance of the odd day which we had which had provided us with sunshine, cloud, thunder and lightning, sunshine, torrential rain, sunshine and cloud. And sunshine.

I left with a colleague who hissed at me as we left the hall that my function was to protect her from marauding parents. We passed the buffet which was in the process of being submerged by roving pupils. She managed to bag a mini baguette, I gave it a miss. And so escape.

A thoroughly successful event I thought – and it was all over by nine; so civilized as well!

And tomorrow’s Friday.

Who can ask for more!

Sun enough to brown!

It says a great deal about my determination over the past week or so that my arrival in the staff room this morning was greeted by colleagues asking where I had been on holiday.

This was not the simple politeness that you would expect after any holiday but rather a comment on my brown face.

My colleagues reasoned, perfectly fairly, that such a bronzed god-like look (I have to admit those were my words) could not have been obtained anywhere in the Barcelona region given the less than clement weather we have been having.

This is, of course, to ignore my sun orientated monomania where each time that timid star managed to insinuate a stray ray through the almost unrelenting cloud cover over Castelldefels – I was there! If a few bright electrons beamed down to earth then a prone body (mine) was spread-eagled to receive them. Whatever was there met my skin so that I am on my way towards that level of dusty obscurity which I used to boast after an out of season trip to Gran Canaria.

The truly terrible thing is that as we progress more and more surely towards days of unlimited sunshine, I will have to stand the frustration of seeing them wasted with my being indoors rather than outside soaking up the main reason that I am in Catalonia in the first place. School can be a cruel denier of pleasure!

The shock of having to start teaching by 8.15 am after the more spacious days of the holiday was a shock to the system; to say nothing of seeing all my pupils sitting in front of me expecting me to do something.

This term promises to be one replete with new experiences and will encompass my first brush with the external examinations that the pupils will have to sit. Some of their exams are held in centres outside the school and will necessitate logistical solutions which seem daunting.

No doubt I will look back on all the problems with a light heart and a ready jest by the time of the end of term. I only hope that the end of this term is a prelude to my starting a new year in the school in September.

Nothing has been said yet of my continued employment so I will have to try and contain the cold horror which sweeps over me when I realise what I should be teaching the pupils. This morning it was the conditional in all its guises, including something called the ‘Zero Conditional’ of which I had never heard.

The ‘First Conditional’ and ‘Second Conditional’ had, as mere designations entered my sphere of cognition, but the idea of teaching and explaining them to grammar savvy questioning kids had never entered the wildest nightmares of my imagination. It would have taken Goya at his blackest to have given an adequate pictorial representation to my almost overmastering panic when I was asked to explain on the board ‘The Second Conditional and Its Relationship to Unreal Possibility, Present and Future.’

It’s not something that the teaching of English Language to A Level prepares one for! Especially when bright eleven year olds are asking technical questions that most Heads of English in British Schools would be flummoxed by!

And on a technical note I have ended the last two questions with prepositions; standards are indeed falling fast! As indeed is my ability to take on board very much more grammar!

Tomorrow is the presentation of the prizes for our International Literary Competition. This is something which has a high profile in our school and is taken very seriously with the winning entries being published in a book. The competition has sections for English, Spanish and Catalan and the whole prize giving is graced with the thoughts of a writer of note. This is something to which I want to go as I have expressed interest in the competition and I have to carry through my interest and listen with intelligent appreciation to the speech of a Catalan writer. Ho hum, I’m getting quite good at that!

My “Si! Si!” approach to conversational Spanish will have to see me through another linguistic ordeal!

The extra day

The holiday ends in bright sunshine with fluffy white clouds on the horizon and very few people on the beach. But the people who are on the beach are prone and taking the rays. The swimming pool is almost looking inviting, but I know that the water is unheated and my heart doesn’t need the shock that sudden immersion will give it!

This is an ‘extra day’ which seems to be limited to my school. In spite of the blank incomprehension of my colleges in the state sector about not going back to school today I have had the strength to enjoy it and not subside into a driveling wreck worrying about whether it is actual or just a simple mishearing on my part. If it was, no one in school has phoned up to tell me about it, so I think I’m fairly safe.

I suppose that I am benefitting from a nasty anti-Benthamite god who has reasoned that most of the teachers and pupils will be returning today, so it’s OK to turn on a wonderful day of sunshine so that they can see what they are missing. And if a few of the privileged get a little extra Vitamin D then so be it. For once I can be a recipient of the beneficial effect of the principle of the Greatest Misery for the Greatest Number!

As I typed that last exclamation mark, the fluffy innocuous white clouds on the horizon have spread across the rest of the sky and the sun is now well filtered and the glittering pool is now a rather dull looking stretch of water. So much for arch comments on dead philosophies!

My brief case has been entirely emptied and I only found two unexpected items. As the traditional emptying of the case is usually akin to a breathtaking conjuring trick with a rapid succession of things produced which illustrate a whole chunk of my personal history, I am rather proud that I seem to be using the case for what it was intended rather than a Black Hole for difficult to deal with areas of my personal and educational life!

In an excess of organizational frenzy I even rationalized my two pencil cases: one of which now actually contains pencils! The other, larger one now contains all those things which no teacher should be without: stapler, sellotape, rubbers, paperclips, gluesticks, tippex and highlighting pen etc. This being a particularly me-type ‘other’ pencil case it also contains a Swiss Army Hunting Knife and a USB mini hub and lead.

By the way have you heard the statistic that says only two out of every ten paper clips made are actually used to clip papers?

That statistic came from a survey conducted by a bank.

It does not take a super subtle mind to realize that as a major buyer of paperclips and therefore presumably major culprits of their non use for purpose, the banks have transferred their attitude towards paper clips to money which they have also spectacularly misused.

We poor fools with little financial acumen use money to buy things that we need, not realizing that what we should have been acquiring was ‘toxic debts.’

One would have thought that the clue was there in the description. Perhaps all those illiterate bonus takers needed was an English teacher on their boards.

I’m still available.