The red pen strikes back!

What was true for the younger kids when they were given back their examination papers was as nothing compared to the storm of questions and cavils that greeted me as I gave back the papers to the older pupils.

Eventually I began to question my own grasp of the language and I felt myself drifting back to the old days when, for a period of some minutes, I forgot how to spell ‘because.’

In my own justification I have to say that I had been marking papers for some time in which the perverse ingenuity in finding yet more ways to misspell the word had finally tipped my knowledge of the word in question over the edge and my spelling systems closed down!

The clarity of the advice that I received when I returned to the staff room after the distribution shone through the gloomy day: don’t go through them. Give them back and let them add up the marks. Period.

It is good to be in a staff room where the wisdom of past years distils itself into thoroughly practical self interested saws. It is advice that I shall assuredly follow!

My time in this school is marked by a fairly steep learning curve. My previous abilities in the teaching of English are looked on as a luxury, and the things that I tried to shuffle off into the shadows are now thrown into centre stage with a particularly large and bright spotlight on them.

The head of department is a particularly fine lady who dispenses comfort and sharp, effective solutions without breaking step! Nothing is unsolvable, though she does live on nervous energy. Being callous I have to say that the situation is fine with me as long as the results of her neurosis mean an easier life for me.

Now that I am permanent, various dark threats are looming on the horizon. The most dark and threatening is the possibility of becoming a class teacher. This is something which I really do not want to do. Quite apart from the fact that I always loathed being a form teacher (ah, distance always makes the truth easier to utter) I really would have to see monoglot Spanish speaking parents to talk about their children. And our children are needy as far as attention is concerned. They have ideas of their rights far in excess of their concepts of responsibility and such a mélange of strident egos is not something which appeals to me.

But we shall see what is in store for me in the timetable I am given for next year.

Of course the important element that has my full attention is what my future contract is going to say about the two months of the summer. What I expect is that my present contract will expire at the end of June, and the next one will probably start in September. That means that after my pay for June, I will not be paid again until the end of September. Happy days! At least there is the promise of future cash!

A delight awaited me after the limited horror of a small shop in Lidl: a book placed on top of my mail box!

‘Why not Catch-21?’ by Gary Dexter.

‘Why not Catch-21?’ by Gary Dexter is the book version of the column Dexter writes in the Sunday Telegraph which takes the odd titles of books and looks at the stories behind them. It has a very ugly front cover and an excellent back cover and it is obviously published just for me. My dilettante mind is, even now, lurching towards devouring this book. I am, however, determined to spread out the delight of learning the detail behind the choices for as long as possible.

The front cover shows a very bad drawing of Rodin’s Thinker sitting on a pile of books. The posture of the sculpture does give a very clear indication of where the book should be kept!

I seem to remember ordering a few other books after I had succumbed to the frenzy of ‘one step purchasing’ which means that a single mouse click sends a book to me with the minimum of pondering on that evil Amazon site!

I am finding it hard not to read about a few of the titles in the Dexter book before it is reverently placed in its appointed niche in the reading room.

I will have a cup of tea and decide how many titles I can indulge myself with.

It’s better than marking!

Calling the scores!

The day of giving back examinations.

I have tried to think back to how I responded when I had examination papers returned. I hope to god that it wasn’t anything like the demented response of the kids I now teach.

I seem to remember that the first thing that we did was to check the ticks and try and find a few extra marks, or check the teacher’s addition and gleefully take up a miscounted paper for the readjustment.

In my school the examination papers are not so much written examples of pupils’ skill, but rather touch papers to an explosion of accusations, recriminations, questionings, explanations and whining, weaseling demands for more marks.

The moment the papers are in the grubby little hands of the oiks the poor teacher is almost blinded by the blinding light reflected from the metallic bodies of a class full of offensively wielded calculators. Little fingers tap industriously away trying to prove the calculations of the hapless teacher wrong.

I, however, do not do the calculations: the computer does them. This assertion of ‘untouched by human hands’ calculations soon shuts them up.

They are forced to then to flaunt their English knowledge and assert with all the confidence of Professor David Crystal that the construction, “the wood was burnt over the grate’ is one which trips from the lips of all known English native speakers.

Variant spellings are thrust beneath your eyes with demands that you accept that there is nothing wrong with the spelling of ‘geografical’ or ‘infeccious’ and give the poor downtrodden students the mark that they deserve. This, of course is what they get!

The real point of doing all the marking was to be able to mark in a book those pupils who needed an ‘alerta.’ This would flag up any student who was in danger of failing the approaching examinations in June.

The culmination of today’s efforts were then discussed in a meeting of soul destroying boredom which lasted for two solid, bloody, stinking hours immediately after the end of school.

The school is small enough for all the teachers in all subjects in the first three years of the secondary section to sit in the library around a large island of tables and discuss all (and yes, I do mean all) the pupils whose results fell in the area of 5.5 or less. You have to understand that all marks, no matter how bizarre their allocation (we mark in .25 of a mark) end up as a mark out of ten.

The whole concept of the meeting is of course laudable and shows a caring school. When the discussion is conducted in Spanish with seemingly arbitrary leaps into Catalan, you can understand my lack of enthusiasm in feeling linked in to this tedious marathon. And there is part two tomorrow – though thank god I am teaching at the time of the start of the meeting and so I am unfortunately unable to be there!

By way of compensation for my ordeal, I called into the shopping centre in the next town of Gavá and specifically into the gadget shop called MediaMarkt (or some such travesty) and indulged my whims for things electrical. I am made happy by the possibility of purchase, so I was able to pass a perfectly happy time there mentally thinking covetous thoughts while only actually buying cartridges for the printed.

The cartridges now cost almost the same as buying a new printer, indeed I saw a few printers which cost twenty Euros less. In case you are thinking that I should have thought, “To hell with global warming and the evils of conspicuous expenditure: throw away your old printer and buy a new one for the cartridges.” Alas, the manufacturers have thought of that one and install special cartridges which have little ink in them. One shop assistant in Barcelona told me that the most expensive liquid on the planet is HP printer ink! And I believe him!

I have bought Pelikan cartridges which take the place of the over-priced originals and last a damn sight longer.

The weather has been very sticky today and I am sure that it has been the perfect environment for encouraging the remaining bacilli to regroup and make a renewed attempt on my well being.

Time for another lemon honey drink!

After a lie-in of some 30 minutes I got up and blearily surveyed the deserted beach which looked bleak and colour drained in the washed out light filtered through cloud covered skies.

Defiantly I made myself a pot of tea in my thin glass Zara teapot and surveyed my domestic empire. Paper everywhere in neat piles, though most of it in odd sheets scattered around in the best traditions of the chaos which characterised my approach to education.

Gradually order and been restored and (eventually) information put into the computer. Excel is an excellent programme for demonstrating the idiocy of computers. It will do exactly what you type into it and it refuses to compensate for the illogicality of your commands when the odd letter is misplaced in a formula. I must admit that as soon as I get a result which is halfway reasonable I believe in all the other results implicitly!

I am almost at the stage where I have managed to produce two pages of official looking information with another two on the way. You will note that I said, ‘almost’ – the ink is running low in my printer. Anything may yet happen!

After a punitive raid on Carrefour for tea bags I made a fruit salad and retired to my bed and lapsed into the acceptable comatose condition which is my usual approach to the irritation of anything less than rude ill health. My only concession to medicine was to purchase some lemon honey to soothe my throat.

I am beginning to wonder if my ‘cold’ could be a reaction to the amount of pollen in the atmosphere. Plant parts looking like specs of flying foam are filling the air and catching what sunlight deigns to force its way through the cloud cover. But I don’t think so. I only hope that a good night’s sleep will see off the niggling remains of ill health.

Another reason for taking to my bed was the coven of screeching girls who shouted at each other for the greater part of the afternoon around the pool.

The summer brings out the most colourful aspects of my misanthropy as the people we refer to as ‘the rich bs’ turn up to indulge themselves in their otherwise unoccupied flats and obnoxious progeny of the people already here disport themselves round and about and do it noisily as well.

One flat seems to be occupied by beach bums with two dogs and unspeakable friends. They leave the detritus of their beach-bumerry in all the common areas of the flats – and I realise that I am beginning to sound like Disgusted of Tonbridge Wells, so I’d better stop!

The mozzies are also beginning to make themselves felt so I think I will have a cup of tea.

I’m typing this watching Barça play the game which, if they win will give them the Championship. I hope that I am not tempting fate when I say that the score is at present 3-1 to Barça with 20 minutes to go. Iniesta (who always has been one of my favourite players because of his sense of fair play and his phlegmatic approach to the game) is playing like a man possessed and producing some extraordinary football!

And who ever have thought that I would ever have written a sentence like that last one. Now say that living in foreign parts does not have an effect on one!

I might add that since I wrote that Barça look well set to win the game, Barça have had a man sent off and a penalty against them!

I suppose that I should stop typing while Barça are still ahead!

Too late! The score is now 3-3! Talk about kiss of death!

Meals to eat when you are ill!

It is amazing what a decent meal and hyper tension talking in a foreign tongue will do to the lingering debilitations of general un-wellness.

This lunchtime to Terrassa for the Meal of the Three Birthdays and very nice it was too. I had baby broad beans flavoured with a variety of fishy bits, followed by a vast dish of fish and sea food.

I have developed an ‘efficient’ way of eating these seemingly mountainous meals. The almost overwhelming visual effect is (as it were) affected by a carefully ostentatious structuring of the dead sea creatures on offer.

The base of the edifice is constructed of large shelled mussels which look and usually taste good, but have a high ‘flash to flesh’ ratio – which means that there is a lot of inedible shell to a small amount of succulent mussel. De-shelling the mussels gives you room to manoeuvre and allows you to distinguish exactly how many crustaceans are lurking on your plate.

De-heading those removes a vast amount of interesting, if indigestible fishy limbs.

The mountain of exoskeleton, which at first sight had drawn envious comments, has now been reduced to manageable proportions and only the slabs of fish (hitherto lost beneath waving shrimp limbs) are the only substantial mouthfuls in sight.

If, like me you are an enthusiastic ‘hands-on’ eater then revealing the flesh of the gambas is put the frenzied rending of a moment and the taste sensation can commence.

The drawback of this approach to the dish is that if anyone else is eating it at the same time, your efficiency in the rapid discarding of inedible bits produces a mountain of waste before the others have got started!

Having said that, I don’t think that anyone fully finished their dish. Not that it stopped anyone from having a dessert. And a coffee. A good meal.

In a rather flashy show of dedication (and desperation) I returned to Castelldefels to continue the exam marking which has to be done before Monday and, which is rather more intimidating, has to be entered into a program which uses Excel to order the results.

The ‘magic’ details involving the devious use of the dollar sign as some sort of instruction to the powers that be to do the correct mathematics have been explained to me. But I am not absolutely sure that I remember all the stages in getting the machine to do more work that I have to do putting the information in.

The only good thing about programs not working for you (especially if you have been brought up on early versions of Windows™) is that time in front of a computer screen does not seem to have the same value as time spent, for example, drinking a cup of tea.

I have spent frustrated hours trying to get a computer program to do some calculations that would have taken me a few minutes with pencil and paper. But there is that sense of consummate achievement when your results are tabulated with the inhuman elegance that only a computer can bring to mere lists.

I am hoping that I can go back to a previous table and click on certain squares and read the runes that appear when you do so and then scurry back to the work in progress and attempt to introduce the magic and hope for the best. I am tempted to leave this until tomorrow because the state into which I get when I find that things do not work out always tends to echo the sentiments found in one of the bleaker stories by Somerset Maugham

So, I shall hope for sun tomorrow and a renewed will to dress up figures so that they look almost convincing.

But, for tomorrow, definitely.

In the normal course of events, and in a kinder world, today would have been spent in bed.

Starting last night or perhaps a day or two earlier, a grumbling sore throat made itself felt. This morning I felt ‘unwell’ suffering from one of those unspecific moods of general ‘not-rightness’.

The Bed of Oblivion, however, had to give way to the Toothbrush of Rectitude and I made my reluctant way into school. Once arrived there one of my colleagues spoke a few cheery words to me to which I croaked a reply. At this she instantly told me to go home, pointing out that was the advice I had given her a few weeks ago when she was not feeling well.

Unfortunately that was not an option. Luckily two classes were having exams and another was watching a film so that (in theory) I could have a fairly gentle supervisory role and sit, a picture of misery, feeling sorry for myself.

As is always the way in schools that rather optimistic timetable did not quite happen but I was able to sit quietly watching the pupils cheat (as they do in all examinations, it is an essential part of the culture of the school) while I sipped water from a plastic cup and tried to look pathetic, doggedly resilient and yet touchingly vulnerable.

While supervising one examination class I was attempting to mark the examination papers of one of the two others which have already sat their exams. Four sets of examination papers really need to be marked this weekend because there is a Grand Gathering of the Clans on Monday when an Academic Inquisition is held whereby Those About to Fail are identified and their status notified to parents.

I would like to think that this was part of the normal function of a school supplying parents with as much information as they require gaining a rounded picture of the progress of their children. What it is actually is a way of safeguarding the school so that they can say ‘told you so’ when the pampered pupils actually do fail and the parents come gunning for the teachers for an explanation of how their perfect progeny could possibly fall below perfection!

Whatever the truth of this exercise it is a harsh truth that the results of the tests that we have inflicted on the kids will need to be available for tutors on Monday – or, as the case with one of the year groups, we can relax because we only have to worry about giving in the results by as late as Tuesday!

And I still don’t feel well.

The highlight of the day was a meeting with the Directora (at the time when I should have been able to leave the school during my ‘early leaving’ as compensation for doing to ‘early starts’ each week.

The meeting came straight to the point with the Directora saying as she was sitting down, “Well, if you are still interested we would like to have you come aboard!” How delightfully old fashioned. Sitting as we were in her office which was probably the elegant, wood panelled study of the old town house which was the base from which the modern school has spread, what she said seemed somehow quite appropriate.

So I am now, on the basis of a handshake rather than the rather more solid reality of a signed contract, a permanent member of staff of my school, and for a few minutes we smiled and said nice things about and to each other.

It also appears that the usually dilatory Education Ministry in Madrid is about to give me the certification that officially recognizes my qualifications and officially allows me to teach in Spain. The school has a personal link with the education office which is why my papers seem to have been processed with what, in Spanish terms, seems almost indecent haste!

The celebration of my new status was drunk in fizzy water and I had to drag myself to the table to get on with the marking of at least some of the examination papers.

I have now finished two sets of papers and feel like some sort of mythical hero having slain two multi-talloned beasts, but also uneasily aware that more substantial opponents are lurking in my briefcase awaiting the slashes of my red pen. And then there is the putting of all the results in the format which I have established for myself – but as that is playing with the computer it doesn’t really count as work. Also, there is the real advantage when the results are finally presented in Excel that they look so official and convincing that I almost believe they mean something!

Tomorrow Terrassa and The Three Birthdays. Presents have generally been bought and the more difficult ones wrapped in stolen wrapping paper from Toys r Us – though I did ask before I took it!

It is already too late to have an early night, but I had better make the most of what is left of the hours before tomorrow to hope that time will sweep away the residual irritation of illness.

To have to mark is bad enough, but to be unwell at the same time smacks of the worst excesses of Victorian sentimental novels.

I’d rather be in a Rider Haggard sort of frame of mind and then I would be able to see the marking as part of my Imperial Duty, by gad!

And so, very much, to bed.

To test is life!

Once more we are gripped by the convulsions of examination fever – all self induced by the ethos of the educational institution in which I am at present residing. I have been 33% of an exam writing team before now with the youngest pupils, but, with good behaviour, I have graduated to 50% of the effort.

I must admit that I had completely put out of my mind the fact that I was supposed to produce various questions for the equivalent of Year 9 – though they look very much older than their British equivalent. Therefore the casual question I was asked this morning was a little disturbing. This related to our getting together to put the examination paper, well, together.

Needless to say, by the time we actually did meet I had reams of paper on which questions of breathtaking erudition and wit were scattered. I even included five questions about a grammatical point which had to be included and which I didn’t really understand. When the question writing frenzy is upon you such things are as nothing.

When we finally united our efforts the length of the proposed paper gave a whole new meaning to the term ‘Lifelong Learning’ and it took the swift and practised pen of the head of English to cut swathes through our work and produce an easily digestible paper for the poor pupils to groan and sweat their way through tomorrow.

Their efforts are going to be a little more painful as the head of English has cut out small clues to the correct words and phrases that I left in, so the candidates will have to dig deep to find the appropriate archaic phrases which are beloved by their examination board!

Merely because it is a grotesque and possibly racist simplification to assert that the Spanish do not listen to anyone and do not read instructions is hardly going to stop my saying it. You only have to look at what is laughingly designated a ‘discussion’ programme in this country to see that half a dozen people simultaneously shouting at each other does not really fit such a definition.

Teachers are encouraged to say everything three times so that a class can go through the normal process of 1) noticing that you are speaking 2) realising that you are trying to tell them something 3) actually listening to what you have to say. This ‘three step’ approach is woefully inadequate in this country. It is probably more helpful if you think of the TV sketch where someone tries to explain to an old British officer left behind in the jungles after the war that the conflict is actually over. It simply doesn’t get through; rather like information being relayed to a class in Catalonia!

But they generally lack the hard edge that you find in British schools so it is fairly easy to forgive much. And they are friendly. Whenever I progress (that really is the only word for it) I am assailed on every side by children calling my name. I wave regally in a way reminiscent of a shared memory from my mother who was visited in school by that redoubtable dowager Queen Mary and who sometimes demonstrated that august personage’s progress along the corridors and in the classes.

Still nothing has been said about a future contract and I can’t help feeling the more I look inquisitively at the directora; the more she doesn’t look at me!

On the other hand, the bursar has said that he is going to phone Madrid to find out the progress the department of education is making on registering my qualifications. Disturbingly, one of my colleagues at lunch today said that she sent off her documentation two years ago. After one year she received a letter telling her that her documentation was insufficient and that they were not going to recognize her status. The following year has been taken up with the appeal process! Not encouraging. Though I have been told that showing willing in sending off the documentation is taken as proof of process and that will keep the school authorities quiet for a number of years.

Still, it has only been a couple of months for me – and if I get restive, then I only have to cast my mind back to the fiasco of my CRB check to realise that bureaucracy is only as good as the bureaucrats administering it!

The present situation is little improved. Large gifts are still needed before I dare make my way to Terrassa for the Lunch of the Three Birthdays.

God help us all!

You are never alone with Radio 4

Strange as it must seem to many, it was only as I was getting into my car to go to work at the unearthly hour that I need to depart to get there to start teaching at a quarter past eight in the morning that I realized that I was still listening to the same Today programme on Radio 4 that I had been listening to while getting ready to depart.

The answer to this conundrum was, alas, not that Spanish radio had decided to broadcast Radio 4 (the best radio station in the world) to all the benighted citizens of Castelldefels through strategically placed loudspeakers so that I might have a seamless experience of the early morning drug that is the Today programme. That was not the solution.

The blame rests securely on the shoulders of Ceri and Dianne who, with a totally inspired Christmas present gave us (aka me) a pair of wireless free headphones. These came together with a niftily designed gadget that, plugged into any media device allows the signal to be picked up by the headphones.

Wandering about getting ready in the unfriendly early hours is only made bearable by the comforting cynicism of your average Radio 4 interviewer.

It is a mark of the competence of the headphones that they relayed crystal clear reception to my ears as I left the flat, walked down the stairs, out through the door and towards the parked car which I had left on the street overnight. It was only at the point of unlocking the door of the car than I became mildly bemused by the continuing presence of the British radio programme.

I then felt a complete fool, resplendent in my suit and sporting a large pair of headphones, though obviously impressed by the range of the device! As the school secretary is apt to remark, “A senior moment!”

School was a succession of chatty classes and a free period devoted to the drama production of a colleague who has been beavering away for the past two months to get our youngest secondary kids to put on a series of plays.

The one I observed was a reworking of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice updated to modern times with a sax playing musician and a wife given to drugs. Not a bad little piece. What I was watching was supposed to be the last rehearsal before the performance.

It was appalling. The person who spoke the largest number of lines during the ‘performance’ was the teacher – and she wasn’t supposed to be in it! I was there to give the “you cannot expect an audience to sit there and listen to this sort of thing” speech and try and galvanize them into learning their lines. They have nine days. Orpheus has now become my special charge and I am going to have special sessions with him to ensure that the production is not cancelled.

Anything, of course, to help a colleague. But, I find myself asking ‘cui bono?’

I couldn’t help feeling that as I passed from building to building as I taught in the upper and then in the lower school I seemed to pass and re-pass the directora. The head of English has said that she will remind the lady that I am waiting for my interview (which the directora appears to have given to the rest of the department) which will decide my future in the school.

I may be over sensitive and a touch paranoid but I did not sense the warm camaraderie that I have experienced in the past and I fear that the school is working towards a negative response. This will complicate matters, but at least the paper work is in place and I am ready to begin an assault on the other establishments of learning in the region.

The weekend, which still seems a long way off, will culminate in the joint birthday party in Terrassa for which I still have not purchased all the necessary presents. At least that means one or two after school jaunts to the shops with the vain hope that inspiration will strike!

Two classes have had examinations in the past two days and two others will be examined soon; all of which will need to be marked. A truly depressing outlook and one which is close to the assessment heart of the institution in which I am now working.

Today has been very hot (according to the Spanish teachers) and rather pleasant for me. There is a definite feeling of the summer and I dread the amount of conversation which will flow directly related to the climatic conditions. Let no one say that the British are fixated on their weather; when we are compared with the Spanish and Catalan we only seem to give our climate a fleeting thought.

The weather is a constant topic of conversation here and, given the diversity of the regions of Spain there is always scope for showing snow or rain or hail (a real favourite this) or wind or clouds or sleet or sun or anything else the skies can throw at us.

I need to splay my limbs and let the sun do its soothing work!

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!