I have a cunning plan . . .

As Oscar said, “To have cramp in one leg might be regarded as unfortunate; to have cramp in both smacks of mystical muscular messaging.”

Hobbling my way around the house, the last thing that my screaming muscles need is struggling with boxes of books from place to place as I vainly try and find spaces for EVs (Essential Volumes).

I took a deeply symbolic step when I decided (after much heart ache) that the Funk and Wagnells dictionary bought second hand by my father for ten bob umpteen years ago with me in attendance will have to go.

It is an enormous book with thumb tabs for each letter carved into the fore edge of book itself. This was the first time that I had seen such a thing and I was deeply impressed. But have I actually used the book over, say, the last thirty years? The answer is that I have not.

I have no intention of counting the number of English dictionaries that I own as no-one (including myself I fear) would understand why. I still have the Oxford Pocket Dictionary that I had when I entered secondary school. It is venerable and battered and I do have a newer version, but I couldn’t think of getting rid of it. My justification is that I use it as a visual aid in my teaching. “Look!” I say to a deeply unimpressed class, “I am your English teacher and I have carried a dictionary around with me since I was eleven. If I need one, how much greater is your need!” There is a distinct echo of The Book of Common Prayer and The Authorized Version of the Bible in that injunction; echoes that are lost, alas, in the electronic breeze from pupil iPods innumerable.

The latest idea grew to a defiant determination as I vainly tried to massage normality back to places where I had little suspected that such vigorous muscles were lurking. This plan is to accept that I am going to retain my little space in the storage facility for the rest of the moth at least so I may as well use it to try and find a solution to the ‘quart into the pint bottle’ problem with the books.

I will fill boxes with the books that I can see disappear without taking too much of my soul with them. This will (must) leave spaces on the shelves which can be filled with books from those in storage. The books in storage will be sorted in Bluespace itself so that the only books that I actually bring to the house will be those without which I cannot do. If all else fails that I will have to double stack certain volumes and stick something on the side of such overcrowded shelves reminding me what is hidden behind the front row of spines.

Obviously I have to take the boxes containing the ‘Books for Expulsion’ to the car so that the guest bedroom can again accommodate two beds. It might be politic to get the empty boxes (presently gracing the lawn) to the rubbish and start thinking about making yet another pilgrimage to Bluespace.

This time, however, there is, after all, A Plan – and, as Churchill (that great librarian) so memorably said, “This may not be the end of our shelving problems. It may not be the beginning of the end of building Billy bookcases, but it is at least the end of the beginning.” One can only hope so.

It will be interesting to see what I achieve in a day which will bring visitors and in particular one four year old boy! Added to that is a half promise to try and visit Margaret and Ian who have been unvisited for far too long.

Ah well, let the day progress: I feel that I have started well by formulating the details of a plan of action before my second cup of tea.

I will rely on Toni’s sister’s flexible approach to concepts like “we’ll be there in the morning” and make the first of my new purposeful visits to Bluespace. I have to tell myself to keep remembering the amount of money I pay each month to keep the little cell in order to spur myself into concrete action.

Tally ho!

Damnation!

The neighbours from Hell have returned!

This tragedy linked to a cramp in my right calf has taken away the first transports of delight at the prospect of a long weekend.

Tomorrow is a bank holiday in Catalonia (which probably explains the reappearance of our Stygian nemesis) and is a civilized gesture by my adopted country to make the blow of the kids appearing in school on Monday a little more bearable.

Today was notable because I finally signed a permanent contract at my school. As far as I can tell in Spain that means that if they sack me they have to pay a statutory amount of money. A permanent contract does not guarantee permanency in any way - as employers have what to British sensibilities seems like astonishing powers to get rid of staff with the minimum fuss and risible cash outlay! Spain, like France I understand, has a social security system which makes it much more lucrative for the employee to be sacked than to leave employment in any other way! This makes little sense of someone brought up in the British employment market, but, as I am constantly told, this is not Britain!

The signing of the contract does mean that I am now a full member of staff and the permanency also has implications for my financial status. The number of times that I have been asked for the sight of my contract in banks and other institutions would cause consternation in Britain where contracts (especially in teaching) are documents which usually fail to appear for months or even years. In Spain contracts are documents which are much more important and much more visible.

Toni phoned today from Terrassa and announced a three day invasion by a section of the family (with child!) which is fine and dandy but presents book problems.

I have started going through my books and trying to find volumes whose absence will not cause too much pain. I have managed to fill one Pickford’s box and am well on my way to filling a second. To achieve this I have decided to extract all the school examination related commentaries and after much soul searching I have decided to rationalize my Shakespeare holdings. For some of the bard’s plays I have as many as six or seven editions as well as numerous ‘collected plays’ volumes. It is an easy target and I need to find more.

The boxes of ‘rejected’ books are, at the moment cluttering up the guest bedroom: the guest bedroom which is going to be used tomorrow! The empty boxes can be easily disposed of but the filled ones are rather more difficult to tidy away. The lingering effects of the cramp in the my right calf make running up and down stairs with heavy boxes of books on twisting stairs something of a no-no, and the ‘oubliette’ of the cupboard under the eaves is already bursting at the seams. Things are reaching crisis point and the whole situation is exacerbated by the fact that I am still paying for a ridiculously limited number of boxes in Bluespace. Limited they may be but there is nowhere for what they contain to be contained in the house.

In some ways this is good for me, because it makes the impending arrival of hordes of children in my classes in school of distant secondary (pun) importance. I had hoped to have got everything out of Bluespace by the end of July and now it looks as though it is unlikely that I will ever get that space empty! I am going to set myself the limit of the end of September – even if my mother’s (and Toni’s) happy vision of books burning becomes a reality to make more space.

Sitting in my study on the third floor and away from the quite wonderful looking book room on the floor beneath I can take a more measured view of the spatial disparity between what I have and what I want to display. I know that my magpie mind rejoices in reference books and I have a range of reference books which would put many local libraries to shame. At once time not only did I have, for example a dictionary of computers, but I also had different editions of dictionaries of computers. I had the very first dictionary of computers that I bought which offered definitions of terms like ‘graceful degradation.’ In case you are interested this term was applied to a program which, when it was corrupted had a way of shutting itself down in a staged way to protect as much of the original program as possible. To me the term suggested a decaying mansion in the Deep South of America where an old Southern family was slowly slipping down the social scale as successive members of the inbred clan fragmented into imbecility and sexual excess.

A wonderful term, but no longer used. Now the correct term is ‘fail soft’ – a phrase not without some interesting resonances but which lacks the musical magic of the original: from ‘Gone with the Wind’ to ‘Terminator.’ It may be that even this term has now been superseded and ‘fail-fast’ has taken its place.

This shows one of the reasons that I have kept successive reference books: I like the ‘historical’ overview that sees ‘facts’ change over time. What British person has not at some time drooled over old maps showing the extent of the so-called British Empire? Who has not sniggered at pictures from the 1950s and 60s at ‘technological innovation’ which now looks positively medieval? Just because something is out of date, it does not mean that it is not interesting. I have indulged myself by allow the accretion of ‘historical’ reference books to fill my shelves and, while some of them will certainly stay (‘The Bumper Boys’ Book of Facts’ for example) others can (regretfully) be consigned to oblivion. I think.

I will have to do some sorting of the remaining books in Bluespace in Bluespace itself and only bring those volumes which I cannot do without. The rest will have (somehow) to fit under the eaves until they can be disposed of either to the second hand book shop in Barcelona or to other institutions. I could even think about putting some of the volumes on line and see what the web can do for me!

Considering the problems in the world today my difficulties with books really do seem gloriously self indulgent.

So what else is new!

Space, the universe, everything!

I have no idea what Boolean Algebra is and I think that I can live without anyone explaining it to me. However, the word or the concept itself suggests a sophisticated method of looking at the word in which the ordinary confines of normal three dimensional space morph into something strange and other worldly.

As I say I have no idea whether any of that is true, but I am strangely drawn to any ideas which suggest that the ordinary run-of-the-mill universe is only one of many and that in the reality of our existence there is an infinity of spaces tantalizingly almost within reach.

This is because of my books, of course.

The boxes which I sneakily brought home while Toni was babysitting for his sister have revealed Old Friends whose reappearance I have greeted with greedy delight and have spent hours poring over them rather than putting them away. And that is the point of course: there is nowhere to put them.

I have started the process of taking out all the York Notes and Text Books. I have started rationalizing the number of editions of texts that I have. I have discarded my Opera programmes. I have extracted the two or three books that I am convinced that I will never read again. And there is not enough space.

This weekend I will have to be uncharacteristically heartless and ruthless and (dare I say it) realistic. Books will have to go – but it’s going to be hard. Very hard.

Take, for example the small book case nearest me. I have just opened it up. What do I get rid of? My Giles cartoon books? The True Story of the Novel by Margaret Anne Doody – the lady who chose my name for the helper of the great philosopher in her novel ‘Aristotle Detective’? Perhaps my copy of the Good Housekeeping Cookery Book or The Mammoth Book of Literary Anecdotes? The Oxford Book of Letters or A Dictionary of Twentieth Century Quotations? I think not.

I can no more get rid of those that I can dispense with my copy of the cartoons of H M Bateman or The Penguin History of Christianity Volume 1 which is next to it!

Part of the delight of the way in which my book collection is ‘arranged’ at the moment is that the ‘arrangement’ is gloriously arbitrary. Who is of soul so leaden that they could not rejoice at the sequence of volumes on one shelf which is: ‘The English’ by Jeremy Paxman next to The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations next to The Authorized Version of the Bible (with maps) next to National Anthems of the World next to History of Art: Surrealism next to the Guide to Museu Nacional D’Art de Catalunya next to The Oxford Book of English Verse. Who wouldn’t want to browse all the other shelves to see what else is there in the higgledy-piggledy excess? And how could I dispense with any part of that eccentric arrangement?

It will be real test of character. There are still twenty boxes left in Bluespace. This is why I need multi-dimensional book shelves.

Work today has been an elegant waste of time but my homecoming was speeded up because Caroline was going to visit.

We have not been in touch for some time so it was an opportunity to catch up on what we had both been doing and to make firm plans for our future activity. We are both passionate believer in the idea of Ladies Who Lunch and, although our future commitments make this difficult we are determined to ensure that we get the spaciousness of a meal to allow us to indulge our delight to talk.

Lunch might have to be dinner but we are determined not to allow so long a gap to separate our gossip!

Tomorrow threatens another absurdly long meeting. I have vowed that I will not sit through another three hour marathon without a break. I will have to see if I have the strength of purpose to keep to my word and brave the questioning stares of my colleagues as I march towards the door. Especially as I have not yet signed my contract.

There is only so much that the idea of a decent lunch can do to keep you servile.

I might just emphasize the vile and have done with it!

The Day of the Books

Toni has gone off to do his good deed for the day and babysit for his sister – and may the good lord have mercy on his soul!

Meanwhile in the rarefied reaches of education we had the continuation of the computer course today. Our hapless tutor did not know his way around the software that the school has decided to use for the whiteboards so some fairly basic questions left him floundering. It has to be said that it was not entirely his fault as the copy of the software that he had been given earlier in the summer with which to familiarize himself did not work when he got it home and tried to play it on his computer. Pause, while the entire world expresses astonishment about this unprecedented happening!

The tutor ploughed on regardless but did not engender any sense of confidence by saying “You probably know as much about this software as I do!” I found it all faintly embarrassing and I was glad when it was all over.

As someone who has used a whiteboard I found most of what he said of little use, but the others on the course were grateful that they had been introduced to at least some aspects of the new technology and they were duly grateful – and at least it wasn’t the other course which was grinding its laborious way onwards in spite of the numbness of the bottoms of the participants in the course and the fact that their brains must now have the consistency of a Wonderloaf left out in the rain for a fortnight.

It is now Tuesday and with Friday being a bank holiday we have two half days left before the pupils arrive. A sense of barely concealed panic has now begun to inform the attitudes of the staff and they are starting to rush around from meeting to meeting emerging looking more harassed by the second.

The school has decided (when? by who?) that pupils will now produce all their work on sheets of A4 paper. The logistics of this fairly fundamental change in the way the school operates are still shrouded in mystery and it has led to dark mutterings and sage shaking of various heads.

One of the reasons for the change has been the weight of material that the poor students have to carry to their parents’ car from their homes as they are ferried to school. There is then the fearful ordeal of getting out of the car and dragging their bags to their teaching areas. While there, we teachers move to them. Then, at the end of the day they have to struggle with the bags to the waiting car to take them home. My heart bleeds!

Also, of course the real weight is not in the paper on which they write but in the textbooks and workbooks that they have to use. The real difference in weight is going to be marginal.

The real delight is in the fact that the students will have to be more organized than they have been before. Some anal students are already at a stage of organizational perfection that approaches bureaucratic Nirvana, but the others – or ‘boys’ as they are known – are going to find placing the papers from a day’s work in the appropriate compartment in their work folders akin to synthesizing amino acids using a ball point pen and an acid drop! I only hope that the maids will take on extra responsibility and ensure that their young masters and mistresses keep some hold on their new style studies!

I think that all this bitterness comes from the fact that the school did not pay me for August. Toni informs me that I should have had no expectations that I would have been paid as it was made quite clear that my temporary contract was up to the end of June and my permanent contract would begin with the start of term in September. But, morally, I think that I was entitled to it; but there again if employers had been moral then there would have been no necessity for Trade Unionism.

I have decided to make another visit to Bluespace to look at what remains still in storage. The Christmas decorations will, I think, fit into the long cupboard under the eaves but there are still boxes of books which need to be brought to the house. There is no way that they are all going to fit and so I will have to make some serious decisions about what is to stay and what is to go.

Toni’s sister gave a leaflet about an English language second-hand bookshop in Barcelona. I will have to investigate and see if there is a market for some of my books. I am steeled to the reality that, even if the shop is prepared to consider buying my books then I am going to be offered a sum which will bear no relationship to their value – either monetary or emotional.

I have been looking through what I have on the shelves already and I can give the back story of so many of the volumes that I have. I can remember where I bought them and which ones were the best bargains; I can remember the ones whose purchase made me feel guilty (‘guilty’ in my sense of the word I mean, don’t go overboard with the ramifications of that concept in the real world!) and the ones whose purchase was sheer self-indulgence. There are books that I have not read and probably will never read – but that doesn’t mean that I want to get rid of them. There are books in tattered editions that I have read and re-read and will read again and those are volumes that I could never throw away.

I suppose that I seem maudlin and sentimental over things which, after all, are just things – but, as I have said before, I never fail to be amazed that a rectangular slab of reprocessed rags or wood pulp with their little black marks can be so powerful.

To Bluespace and the rescue of more books!

(Don’t tell Toni!)

Thoughts from the Third Floor!

I am an exile.

I sit in my lonely corner of the universe with only the music from my ipod playing in the background and a few drinks from the fridge to reach which I do not have to leave my seat to keep me company.

OK, the balmy air drifts gently against my cheeks as the subtle tintinnabulation of the halyards against the masts from the Maritime Club at the end of the road forms a gentle accompaniment to whatever pretentious music you assume I am listening to (and believe me, you probably wouldn’t guess, it’s that pretentious) and I think I’ll have a Bitter Kas now as the lights in the neighbouring pools flicker on and the shimmering of the water looks almost too inviting to resist.

But two floors below the TV is now showing a basketball competition. I refused point blank to watch it as I understand that Great Britain has recently been defeated by some transitory country from the ever irritating Balkans. It it’s not basketball then it is some version of football and Barça seems to be actively involved in at least a dozen different competitions and is collecting cups like some sort of pantomime genii. It all takes television time and Toni wants to see all of them.

Now it is true that I know more people in the Barça football team than I have ever known in any sport at any time in my life. I even have favourite players and, even more shocking, I have opinions about who should be played and where!

It is mildly amusing to observe Catalans go berserk as Barça wins yet again and even more amusing to see them exercise a completely spurious restraint in their merciless goading and mocking of Real Madrid as they struggle manfully to retain their cup-less trophy cabinet in this most arid of seasons for them. But I’m not that interested in the game itself and the more I see the less interested I become.

So, exile to the third floor it is; and now the aircraft have started flying low to keep me company! I am sure that Charles Ives would heartily approve of the musical mix that iPod, boats, planes and people create. I think I will resort to headphones.

School today was generally unstructured and that gave me time to start ‘preparing’ my text books for the forthcoming term. ‘Preparing’ basically means using the answer book to write in the correct responses in the text book itself. This is important as with the English Language it is often the case that there are many ‘answers’ to linguistic problems. This is not the approach that we as a department adopt. If the book says that there is a right answer then that is the answer we teach because the books are directed towards a specific set of examinations and we are an examination led school. Philosophically I might have problems with this approach but, as Spenser Tracey said about Method Acting, “I’m too old, I’m too tired and I’m too rich to bother!” Well, one out of three is good enough for me!

The one timetabled activity today was when we had a tutor from the British Council to take us through a two hour session on the use of the new interactive whiteboards.

After a shaky start when the idea of two hours of a stuttering idiot seemed more than the human frame could stand, he settled down and proved to be an amiable course leader. But – isn’t there always a ‘but’!

He was not actually familiar with the software that we are going to be using and so most of the material he had work not work interactively on our machines. It also turned out that his lack of familiarity meant that he didn’t know how our software worked. This is a bad thing for a tutor.

In the even the work that we actually did was so basic that we didn’t stretch anyone’s capabilities – though changing the colour of a piece of text which had been magically changed from handwriting into print proved a little tricky.

It turns out that we have two systems of interactive whiteboards in the school with different software with each one. It may be that material produced for one will not work with the other. As all of us teach in both parts of the school we will either need to produce duplicates of what we need or, in the words of the tutor, “Not bother, because it will be a waste of your time.”

What amazed me was the astonishment expressed by the tutor that two mutually exclusive systems doing the same thing might be established in the same school.

I don’t know what sort of schools he has worked in but I have never worked in a school in which there was an integrated system using any technology of any sort at any time. Take, for example computers. When there was only one computer in a school then things were fine. As soon as another computer was added then things started to diverge. In my last school at one time I think that there were as many as six or seven completely separate network systems operating at the same time. The IT teacher who was obviously unacquainted with the Myth of Sisyphus started an audit to find out where everyone was and then, the plan was, that he would suggest a system that everyone could subscribe to. Nice try!

The only way that the Myth of Sisyphus can be altered is by using another Myth that of the Cleaning of the Augean Stables: a radical solution but one that would have worked if a Cardiff river had been able to have been diverted to wash away the Byzantine complexity that was computer use in the school!

My solution to this problem would be a fairly simple and (in the long term) a fairly cheap one. All teachers should be issued with a small laptop. The school would provide all central programs like word processing, publishing, archive, spreadsheet etc that were necessary and would insist that only that particular machine could be used inside the school. Subject specific programs would be authorized by the school and different levels of memory need etc would be assessed by the school too.

I’m already bored with this idea because as I type I can see that it isn’t going to work. Even with a full time, dedicated and knowledgeable technician machines will breakdown completely or be stolen or lost and replaced with the latest model which will be slightly different in what it offers and be differently styled and will, inevitably lead to jealousy and resentment from those people who have the old machines! I see rivers flowing with much blood!

No doubt we will muddle our way forward as teachers always do making the best of inauspicious equipment and material and compensating with their professionalism for the inadequacy of their resources.

What finished my experimentation with the interactive white board was a bulb. The projector used a bulb; a bulb with a limited life. When that life was over and the bulb needed to be replaced it was discovered that the cost of a replacement was absurdly high – well over two hundred pounds! And no one would buy it!

If things follow the normal pattern then there will be a year when people try out the new technology and the staff room will ring with enthusiastic voices regaling their fascinated colleagues with ‘The Story of My Struggle to Show a Web Page on the White Board’ but this bon mots will soon pale and be replaced by sullen resentment at technology that doesn’t quite work because The Person Before Me in the Classroom Left it Unplugged – or some other variation.

I know this. I have been there.

But with my permanent contract tantalizingly close and retirement just over a year away, I can afford to take the long view because I need only to be going there for a relatively short time.

Like some of the appalling vacation jobs that I had, their dire quality was always mitigated by the fact that I was being paid for what I was doing and I knew that I was not going to be doing it (like the poor souls around me) for years and years and years.

If I count the months, there are 14 before that magical date in October 2010. Take off July and August of next year because they are holidays and that brings it down to 12 working months; one year. 356 days, minus of course 52 x 2 for weekends, so that’s 252. Allow an extra 20 or so for holidays and we have 232. Divide by 5 to make the working weeks and we are left with 46 and a bit – and counting!

This is possibly not the most positive calculation to do days before the term starts in earnest, but it is realistic and it makes the days and weeks ahead part of a declining statistic and when it gets to zero then I have a decision to make.

As I feel at the moment I can consider the idea of continuing beyond the retirement date and that is certainly the impression I have give my school. It will be interesting to look back in October 2010 and read through what I have written here and see what the reality looks like rather than the speculation.

I wonder.

Raise a glass!

When our less than ideal neighbours put their crippled rat (oh alright, a rat-dog) into a plastic prison and loaded it into the back of their car we were virtually certain that their reign of audio terror was at an end.

Since we were informed by the overbearing parvenus that they only inhabited their house for a few months in the year we have hoped that the whole dysfunctional bunch would decamp to Barcelona so that their foul mouthed daughter could continue her studies and expand her extensive friendship among the remaining adolescent male population.

When the shutters came down and the car moved off we opened a bottle of Cava and drank a toast. We now look forward to a great deal of nothing from the house next door rather than listening to the blaring television dominating the ‘outside’ sitting room; the daily shouting matches between parents and daughter; the late night karaoke sessions of the adolescents and the general parade of proprietorship of the swimming pool and poolside area with loud voices and raucous singing.

I only hope that they are not on vacation somewhere commensurate with their pretentions, only to return with even more intolerable attitudes! With any luck we will not see them for any length of time until next summer.

On a housekeeping note I have now brought some sense of order to the ‘attic’ mainly, it has to be said, by pushing all the stuff cluttering up the place into the long cupboard under the eaves. Don’t knock it – it worked! I now have a decent working space with, what for me, is a fairly clear desk. Admittedly this is only because I have done little work for school so far and therefore the usual accumulation of papers and work related impedimenta have not yet taken over.

The Spanish version of ‘Big Brother’ has started its interminable monopolization of air time and Toni is unnaturally fascinated by it. I therefore have to contend with a double whammy of football and Big Brother, so I expect to be utilizing the educational and refreshment facilities of the ‘attic’ for some months to come!

The Family arrived just before lunch and immediately decamped to the pool. The shower is not working and the water temperature was cooler than normal. We wonder if this is a sign that the maintenance of the pool is being wound down for the winter: we sincerely hope not as we expect to have a number of weeks swimming before the temperature becomes such that only the more extreme religious masochistic fanatics would welcome immersion.

We decided to go out for lunch and have the menu del dia in our 'local' the Maritime Club. My meal of a rice soup with lobster and other sea food, followed by fresh tuna with a tomato sauce. To end I had crema catalana. I wont go into the price of the meal with wine etc, but I have to say that the tuna was spectacular and I would have been happy if I had paid double the price of the meal just for that course!

Meanwhile I worry about what new horrors the morning will bring. We have been threatened with yet another computer course. This one, at least, will be specifically designed (or aimed) at the English Department. Though speaking from experience the fact that a course is supposed to be for a particular group of teachers means virtually nothing. I shall, however, reserve judgement.

As if!

The shades get closer!

A week of half days in school is over and it has left me yearning for the opportunity to teach rather than suffer another incomprehensible meeting or interminable and badly organized computer course!

At least it is now the weekend and time for relaxation. Well, it would be time for relaxation if it wasn’t for the rather indecisive weather we are having. While we were in the pool yesterday evening it actually had the effrontery to rain – not convincingly, but rain nevertheless. I think that the Catalan weather is trying to find that mixture of gloom and grey depression that usually characterizes the start of term in the UK.

There is a certain amount of cloud around but the sunshine does keep popping through – though not enough to tempt one into the pool yet!

As Telefonica decided to deny us an internet connection today I have made the brave decision to try and sort out the top floor. As this is where I am going to do most of my school work and as this is where I am going to find refuge when the presence of yet another programme on football on TV becomes just a tiny bit unsupportable, it is in my interests to get the place ship shape – or at least a space which encourages peace and contemplation rather than despair at the sheer weight of accumulated stuff which I have been unable or unwilling to throw away.

This cluttered space is actually the attic, though it is reached by a set of twisting stairs and a chunk has been taken out of the roof to create a reasonably sized enclosed balcony. A balcony on which, I might add, I have installed a fridge; a table and chairs and a recliner. At the moment there is also a barbecue.

One must have one’s creature comforts!

Keep your hands to yourself!

‘Restraint’ is one of those tricky words whose meaning I know but whose application is a little more problematical.

The extensive scab on my right knee (courtesy of the slippery pavements of La Senia and amusing Toni’s nephew) now looks like an over symmetrical satellite view of some obscure archipelago. It is not painful, but my hand keeps reaching, questingly towards it.

What child cannot remember testing the edges of a ripe scab? Adults, of course realize that the scab is there for a particular purpose and any interference with its healing function will merely extend the process of restoration of new skin. But there is a small child in all of us and I found myself reminding this internal delinquent to restrain his picking proclivities.

Believe me picking scabs was a bloody sight more interesting than what we were supposed to be doing for three hours (without any break) chained to a badly working program on one of the serried ranks of computers in the computer room.

Apart from the horror of things not working and my not having a file which everyone else seemed to have and which made my progress impossible – the real authentic touch of torture was found in the chairs.

“Don’t go back on your chairs” is a recurring cry of teachers down the ages, especially when folk history tells of the case where a child almost broke his back after tipping his chair back etc etc. To combat this almost instinctive movement on the part of students the computer room is equipped with extraordinary seats.

These examples of pupil punishment are circular three legged low stools with a ‘back’ if it deserves that name of a thin bar of metal about six inches from the seat itself. They are supremely uncomfortable – and we were on them for three hours without a break! But I have not signed my permanent contract so I remained silent. Well, mostly silent. Well, grumbling mostly. And as I shuffled around trying to find a position which was marginally less painful and stretching my legs at the same time, my hand wandered down to my knee and the child in my took over.

The programme for our Culture Club is taking shape with six events (with pre and post talks) during the year. In our plans we have included Art, Music, Dance, Architecture, Drama and some other aspect of the arts which for the moment escapes me. On paper it looks good and convincing, but we now have to make it real by phoning around and trying to get people interested.

My function is to contact an English language theatre company and see if we can get part of their offerings directed towards our pupils.

Reality hits!

There is something about a timetable which puts freedom into perspective.

Sheets of paper giving us the schedule of our weekly misery were dropped unobtrusively into pigeon holes today.

For reasons that I like to think are connected to the way that the British Empire was coloured in all the Mercator Projection maps of my childhood, English lessons on our timetable are in a tasteful pink! My sheet of paper seemed to have been emblazoned with an inordinate amount of this colour and that it before the duties are added.

For a staunch Union member I have been most cravenly quiet about the number of lunchtime duties that we are expected to complete. Years of struggle in the UK to ensure that colleagues did not have to work in their lunchtimes and could, indeed leave the premises if they so desired, are but a thing of faint memory as I resentfully complete a lunch hall supervision and a patio (as they call the playground) supervision together with at least one break supervision! And for much less money!

The Brave New World of the year 2009-2010 was to have seen the genesis of The Culture Club in the school. The time which the art teacher and I had timetabled for this and which we had been assured would be ours was (of course) filled by teaching according to our new timetables so, reluctantly, the art teacher said that our efforts would have to be ‘after school.’

Apart from the Cultural Visits and Events themselves I have absolutely no intention whatsoever of giving up my free time for a bunch of spoiled, over privileged, rich kids – not on my derisory salary anyway. I intimated (in shocked disbelief) to the art teacher that our little venture appeared to be still-born and she scuttled off to talk to One of the Powers to see if timetables could be re-jigged.

While having lunch I was accosted by the head of secondary who, in fluent Spanish (which was not matched by my fluent understanding) I think suggested that some sort of compromise could be reached.

There is a certain fluidity about this week that I find invigorating. There are few books for the pupils as the British publishers seem to have taken off August in much the same way as the Catalans, but no one seems unduly perturbed. Classes are fluid. I have had three changes in two days and I am sure that more will follow. We are not even entirely certain who exactly is going to turn up on the 14th of September when the school gates open to the pupils!

At least in the English Department all the teachers who were supposed to turn up are sullenly questioning their timetables and resentfully tidying their cupboards.

The only communal act of solidarity, accompanied by smiling faces and genial conversation is when at 2.00 pm sharp we all converge on the dining hall and has our lunch.

Our computer course today took the form of an explanation of the new intranet system with new and improved calendar. In theory everything works together: departmental information; school information; our timetables – everything is a connected whole. From a cursory view of my colleagues as they, with various degrees of success wrestled with the new technology, I can’t help feeling that the ‘connected whole’ is going to lose that ‘w’ somewhere along the line!

Toni has not been well today and has only just risen from his bed – though he does seem strong enough to watch one of the gossip programmes which litter Spanish television. This takes the form of various non-entities shouting at the same time about some other non-entity. The sleep of reason produces monsters.

I have now finished the third part of The Bartimaeus Trilogy ‘Ptolemy’s Gate’ by Jonathan Stroud.

This novel had to square the circle and make the young magician whose fortunes we have followed in the first two volumes (‘The Amulet of Samarkand’ and ´The Golem’s Eye’) a more likeable person than he had become by the end of the second volume.

The imaginative conceit of the trilogy is that the dominant force in the world is a British Empire which has been built on the shoulders of magicians whose use of demons has ensured their almost unassailable position as the dominant force in the world. The London described in the novels is recognizable with all the major landmarks and streets in place, but the history is very different.

The greatest magician in the history of the country and the founder of the Empire is Gladstone whose magical power was the decisive factor in ensuring the pre-eminence of Britain.

The ruling class of magicians has become arrogant and has found itself bogged down in a colonial war in America. There is growing discontent from the masses of the ‘commoners’ who are treated with barely concealed contempt by the magicians and Nathaniel, our ‘hero’ has joined the government and become the Minister for Information and produces lurid chauvinistic lies for the commoners to swallow.

So far so ordinary. Take a dystopian concept, add a dash of ‘what might’, and stir in some magical fantasy and voila! A novel. The element which makes it rise above the ordinary is the character of the demon that Nathaniel summons to help with his career.

Bartimaeus is a two thousand year old djinn who has a sardonic way of talking and is a most engaging narrator. His explanations, often by way of ironic footnotes, show him to be a cowardly, self-seeking and arrogant demon. His relationship with his ‘master’ is one of mutual irritation, contempt and eventual respect.

To be fair the third volume of this trilogy is more of the same from the first two volumes but throughout one can feel the narrative working to a resolution of the seemingly insoluble problems facing the hero.

There is more human feeling in this volume and the climax is well structured and delivered.

I enjoyed reading this, but I would understand some people treating the whole concept with contempt. This is a book designed for children and it takes interesting themes and treats them in a clever and enjoyable way.

I feel that the demands of my teaching are going to try and limit my reading for pleasure. Well, they can try!

Home from home!

Opening boxes of books and having a computer course: how hackneyed a second day of an interminable series of what could easily be (and by two of my friends in the UK have been) called ‘Baker Days.’ I look forward with growing dread the whole tranche of days until the 14th and the return of the kids.

Gradually class lists are emerging. The ones I was given yesterday have already been changed. This is just like old times!

The major part of the day has been taken up with a computer course.

I did not start well as I was in a meeting with the art teacher about our proposed Culture Club (yes, we have heard all the jokes that can be made, thank you!) when the Head of English came into the art room and said that everyone had got the time of the start of the course wrong.

We both sloped in late and sat at the back and used the computers to find cultural events to form the programme of our activities for this subversive organization!

As far as I could gather, the computer course was about some new program which would revolutionize our use of the intranet. Or something.

My interest was not even remotely aroused until I was told that exit from the course to lunch would be impossible until a number of tasks had been completed.

Thus galvanized we lurched into action and managed to produce an animated jigsaw of dancing farm animals. This use of this to the teaching of technical aspects of English to foreigners learning it as a second language is too obvious to need any explanation. Allegedly.

Tomorrow we continue this exciting course. I can hardly wait.

Because we are only working half days at the moment my return home is the excuse to go out to the beach and have a swim in the sea. Don’t worry about the sand I wash it off when I come back to the house, just before I go and have a swim in the pool.

It’s a hard old life!

Cruel or kind?

First day back in school.

The institution had an opportunity to show that it was somehow different from the other schools in which I had started a term. I was all expectation.

And apart from the language nothing was unexpected. The expressions of horror that we were back in school – with some of my colleagues even telling me that they had trouble sleeping the previous night worrying about the start of term!

Let me explain to my colleagues in the public sector in the UK that we have returned to a school which is mercifully devoid of pupils. These benighted creatures do not return until the 14th of September. Until then we have a school day which starts at nine and finishes at two after meetings and courses. Lunch is provided for those teachers who need it. You can then go home.

And for this they stayed awake! God knows what they would have done had they to go to a typical secondary school in Wales!

The meetings were like any meetings at the start of school: boring and inconsequential. People talked who should have remained silent and difficult topics were avoided like the plague. Nothing changes.

When I asked about a timetable it was as if I had committed a social gaffe – obviously it will ‘emerge’ in the course of our time without the kids. I was encouraged by the head of department giving me at least some of the names of the people in my classes.

The great excitement of the day was the ‘bagging’ of the new lockers in the staffroom of Building 1. I was unnecessarily early and so I started moving books into a well placed locker at once. This was later beguiled from me by a female member of staff who pleaded her dwarfish height as an excuse. As usual limited resources and unlimited demand showed colleagues in their true light!

Tomorrow we have a course on the whiteboards which we were assured last year would be in every classroom in Building 4. I was informed (sotto voce) by a cynical colleague that this was the course that they had had last year. As I say, nothing changes.

When I arrived in school one of the first people I met was the bursar. I was able to give him the details of my new bank as I am gradually leaving the worst bank in the world aka BBVA. He then said something which was either very encouraging or a mistake or a piece of nastiness. “Oh,” he said, “It may not be in time for the August pay!”

I have written that my contract with the school was a temporary one which took me up to the end of June. My promised permanent contract was to be started on the 1st of September. There was a period (as I thought) of July and August when I would not be paid.

My June pay was double (as is apparently traditional) and I did not expect to be paid until the end of September. This comment by the bursar sent me scurrying (when I got home) to grab my bank book and go to my old bank and see if indeed August had been paid. I was buoyed with hope and was thinking very positive thoughts towards the school.

Positive thoughts that evaporated when my bank book showed that no money had been paid in! Another dream bites the dust!

Toni tells me that I was lucky to get the two pays in June and I should shut up. Perhaps he’s right.

I enjoyed my swim after work but was dismayed to see that our repulsive neighbours have still not returned to their non-summer residences. Their departure will rid us of a half dead yapping dog; a dog like daughter (and I don’t mean in terms of looks) and a cigarette smoking harridan and her abusive shouting matches with members of the family. We can hardly wait.

As I now drive off into the smog and hard slog in meetings, Toni has stated his intention to go to the beach every day to get some sun.

Something to think about as I try and work out the most absurd interpretation to some of the rapidly spoken Catalan in the boring meetings ahead.

And with no pay.

Sigh!

The Summer's almost over!

Thursday 27th August

The reality of a new term is beginning to intrude itself into my waking moments.

There is not, I have to admit, the sick dread that eventually accompanied starting a new term in Cardiff, but there is certainly apprehension.

We will be in the building for approximately two weeks before the students (whoever they may be) arrive. As this is a grant aided school (for reasons which are not entirely clear, unless you think about the cash) and the parents have to pay vast sums each month to keep their progeny in the privileged educational surrounds of our prestigious institution – they can also withdraw their children at any time.

One of the more interesting pupils in Year 8 will not be going into Year 9 in our school because she is having a year in a boarding school in England. As she will be in Malvern I have encouraged her to find out about the Women’s Institute. She has all the determination to become chair of her local WI by the end of her year in the school! They won’t know what has hit them until it’s too late!

Other pupils are going elsewhere to continue their education in a different school though they are leaving at the start of a new key stage. Others, I have been told, will simply not turn up.

It is only at the actual start of a new term that we know the exact numbers of those who are going to be with us for the year. All this makes the buying of text books and materials a little problematical – but no doubt I will see the organization lurch into action and all things will be well.

The most important element of this new term for me is the signing of a permanent contract: this will give me an illusion of security and should, with any luck, see me through to the balmy days of my official retirement when new supplies of devalued pounds should trickle more convincingly into my British bank account. One is reminded of his late majesty, King Henry VII who managed to “live of himself” and manage his finances so that he had little recourse to the parliament for money. The salary for teachers in Spain is woefully low (even with the extra months that you are paid at Christmas and in the Summer, so the salary is actually 14 months worth) and living within my income from school will be a tricky economic balancing trick calling for restraint bordering on parsimony and a careful and realistic assessment of necessity to govern purchases. As I don’t really know what the sentiments in the last sentence actually mean and even if I did I am sure that they have never touched my financial attitude, I shall probably march wide eyed into penury.

Except, of course, I won’t. As Miss Flite in ‘Bleak House’ said in a different context (in her case about ‘pain’), “I don’t have money, but there is money somewhere in the room.” The derisory exchange rate makes the use of money from the UK a ridiculous extravagance, so my tattered pounds will have to stay where they are until the bankers (who make The Owner of The School That Sacked Me look like St Thomas Aquinas) have sucked enough money out of the system and into their pockets so that the pittance left can be used to boost the miserly financial ruin that I have left behind in my rain sodden country.

The sticky fingered cretins who manage our financial system have until October 2010 to get things sorted. If they don’t I will be forced to ‘open a file’ – and we all know what that means!

All this talk of money has prompted me to phone the company that lost almost 25% of my savings and see what else they have done to remedy the situation. Expect another diatribe if things are just as bad!

Well, the incompetent cretins have managed to bring down the loss to just under 10% on the original investment – but this ignores the fact that the money has been in the fund for over two years where it should have grown year on year. I suppose that I should be grateful for the fact that my money is slowly getting back to the starting point as some people lost vast sums of money irrevocably.

I cannot help thinking that if I had taken the money for the house, ignored expert financial advice and merely transferred the money to a Spanish bank and left it in a simple deposit account I would have been much better off. The exchange rate was 70p rather than the present 87p and I would still have had the global sum and interest on it at whatever rate.

Hindsight is a wonderful banker and certainly better than the unscrupulous thieves who direct our money into their own bottomless pockets. And don’t tell me that I am being unfair and simplistic: they deserve every piece of opprobrium we can throw at them as they continue to live their privileged and expensive lives well away from the concerns of the rest of us!

If the toothache was not enough my old tennis injury is playing up. I was horrified to work out that this injury is now forty-two years old! I would be proud to report that it was a result of my smash serve destroying my elbow or the sheer amount of intense tennis that I played. Alas! Hubris was the cause of my discomfort.

After playing a strenuous game against the French exchange student who was staying with me I celebrated my victory by leaping nimbly over the net. Well most of me so leapt. A trailing foot ensured that I landed on the asphalt of Rumney Gardens Tennis Court with my right elbow leading the way.

Splitting the bone is, I can assure you, much more painful than actually breaking it. The legacy of this little show of exuberance is an elbow which is subject to swelling. Over the last couple of weeks it has become uncomfortable and so I thought I would have a day of double pleasure and go to the doctor as well as visiting the dentist.

I was seen almost immediately and then, in spite of my repeated requests to have someone stick in a hypodermic and draw off the fluid, I now have a further appointment for Monday. Such joy!

Friday 28th August 2009

Our trip down to deepest darkest Catalonia began with my thinking that our eventual destination was ‘a little beyond Tarragona’: this was not true – it was an extra hour beyond Tarragona and near the Ebro delta. Well, nearish.

Our destination was the town of Senia which was inland from the sea but within easy reach of beaches and other stretches of water as we were to discover.

The town itself is unremarkable but has unexpected touches of interest. The mountains rise abruptly from the ends of streets and add a dramatic touch. Some of the domestic architecture harks back to a more decorative age and some of the houses have a simple elegance. A small tree shaded ‘square’ had a constantly running drinking fountain of pure, sweet water which, I am ashamed to admit I squirted at Carles by placing my finger over the spigot; a trick which he had not up to that point of his advanced age of four yet learned. He was an apt pupil and we were both quickly inappropriately drenched. Luckily the weather soon dried us off and that was only during a short walk around the corner!

Our tasty tapas lunch completed we went off in a convoy of two to ‘The River.’ This (confusingly) turned out to be a reservoir which, given the profile of the valley that it filled encouraged some swimming in a few parts from its rocky banks.

After my experience of The Lake District on a blazingly hot August when I and Penny (the Labrador) threw ourselves into the refreshing water and both nearly passed out with the intense and somehow personal cold which instantly penetrated all sections of our bodies, I was wary of placid stretches of water not connected to a warm sea – or at very least the Gulf Stream.

I needn’t have worried, the intriguingly green water was positively inviting compared with my expectations. The only drawback was the structure of the shores of the dam which were of foot-unfriendly stones. We had been warned of this and I had a pair of plastic flip-flops which took away most of the pain but, as they were lighter than water, gave a distinctly odd feel to my swimming. As I was also concerned about their falling off my feet I do not think that my style would have scored highly from any discriminating viewer.

Returning to the car via a precipitously friable mud and stone surface in wet, slippery flip-flops is not to be recommended as my middle finger on the right hand attests. Flailing wildly (not for the last time on this holiday) I just about managed to catch my balance and the serrated bark of a passing tree gave me a little souvenir of my immersion.

We then went to an open air torture chamber. Or river as it is sometimes known.

The river was absurdly picturesque with overhanging banks and bosky growth and waterfalls and crystal clear pools but we were not expected merely to observe the landscape but actually to participate in it.

I was encouraged to venture into water so cold that I was amazed that it wasn’t solid. Luckily I noticed my evil friends moving away to another spot and so waddled out of the glacial horror on legs which had lost all feeling and followed them to what they assured me would be more tolerable water.

They were of course lying.

The cold of the water in this lovely stretch of river was the sort that actually burns and after one short breathless width from one bank to another I was grateful to regain the human warmth of the balmy surrounding air above the water! But we did all feel that we had achieved something!

The evening was another day of the festival of the town and the area in front of the town hall beautifully treed with shade was set with chairs and a concert platform.

The usual travelling fair had been set up and Carles was taken to see it and take part in some of the more disturbing rides.

To British eyes the whole things was absurdly impossible. Wherever you looked Health and Safety had been ignored. Open machinery; unfenced areas; rickety staging; unsafe stairs; children next to rotating machinery and so on. Like the Spanish attitude towards the public’s involvement in the setting off of fireworks it’s something to enjoy as long as you don’t think about it too closely!

Saturday 29th August

Today the seaside – or rather riverside; or maybe a bit of both.

The morning was taken up with a walk through the town. The streets are narrow and have the typical patchwork variety of connected buildings that you see in many Spanish and Catalan small towns. Some of them still have the original rough stonework while others are smoothly covered in new rendering. There are juxtaposionings of modern with traditional and you experience these in a particularly tactile way given the very narrow pavements.

The town was preparing for an evening’s entertainment of setting a bull free with flaming torches attached it its horns while idiots pranced around in front of it courting death, disfigurement and a further drain on medical resources. We made an executive decision not to grace such barbarism with our presence. Instead we went to the local market where I was told that I could purchase eight (count them!) litres of locally produced red wine for the princely sum of ten euros. And just in case you are thinking – it was, I was assured, not at all bad!

As I was walking to the ‘fountainhead’ of such liquid value I should have remembered that bit in ‘The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy about flying. It says somewhere that the trick of flying without any artificial help is to fall and ‘forget to land’ – that way you defeat Newtonian physics and fly like a bird. I forgot that piece of advice as I tripped my way along the narrow, worn smooth pavements swinging my eight litre canister eager to make my purchase and then tripped in reality.

So, in addition to the tree injury, the inflammation of a forty year old tennis accident, the tooth ache (even after the replacement filling) and the upset tummy that the witches’ cauldron of drugs that I am now taking, I am now able to add two grazed knees and a bruised wrist. I look (and indeed feel) like a naughty schoolboy with my shorts and short sleeved shirt showing off my wounds to their best advantage!

I, of course, look and feel fine so the injuries (that you can see) look like an absurd affectation. Affected! Moi?

I had been to the Delta of the Ebro a couple of years ago but I remembered it without affection. This experience was rather more interesting with a trip along the river’s edge as it wound its way through grassland to the sea.

The whole area is a wonderland for birds and other fauna, though the vision I had to a flamingo was of a distant blob!

The riparian shore is made more interesting by the inclusion of modern sculptures along the path to the major watchtower – which itself looked like a sort of modern wooden take on a ziggurat!

After lunch we went further along the spit of land which housed the delta passing as we did so fertile acres of planted rice and went to the dunes on the sea side of the delta. The long gentle slope of the beach into the water meant that the sea was filled with sand in suspension and any chance of seeing fish was lost in glittering grains. But a warm swim was pleasant in spite of the sting of the salt on my newly grazed knees and a very satisfactory laze afterwards!

Back to the house and, then allowing Carles to risk death on our behalf. This time the ‘ride’ that he chose was a sort of ‘House of Soft Pain.’ This was an open fronted arrangement of soft ladders, slides, plastic balls and rope ladders and inflatables. Children of tender years rushed their separate ways though various obstacles on three levels to ‘have fun.’

It is not often that one sees a version of ‘The Lord of the Flies’ in living horror. The kids may not have had many years between them, but by god they had set ideas about how to get from place to place. Bodies were flung and discarded as happy, demented children smashed their respective ways through, over and past obstacles – up to and including other children!

I began to give some of the juvenile battlers names from the novel. There was an absurdly wide eyed innocent who could only be Simon. Then there was a chunky bruiser and his lanky sly looking sidekick who seemed perfect for Samneric. I would have liked to have thought that our own Carles could have been the Ralph character but I fear he lacked the essential ‘kindness’ that would have been more appropriate than the cavalier disregard he showed as he rushed his way through the obstacles.

I have been trying to read ‘The Little Stranger’ by Sara Waters but the proximity of a one year old and a four year old do not necessarily provide the right ambiance for reading, but I managed to finish it yesterday evening.

As it is now already tomorrow I think I can safely leave my thoughts until later in the day!

Sunday 29th August

Carlos and Carmen have bought to a fine level of perfection the collection of kids’ toys and all the other impedimenta which is nowadays essential when taking young persons away on holiday. They did this without fuss and with the perfection which comes from long practice!

I was almost able to sit down with my book and read away with a quiet conscience as any ‘help’ I could have offered would only have interfered with the smooth running of the well oiled parental machine.

Our return journey to Castelldefels was broken at Segur de Calafells where Toni’s aunt has a flat. Toni’s mum was staying so the augmented family was able to go out and have a more than respectable meal at an air-conditioned restaurant.

The family has a predilection (to me entirely inexplicable) of going for walks. One such was proposed after lunch and we all set off along the sea front to children’s swings and such things to keep the kids quiet and give the adults a breathing space.

The walk extended itself to the marina area where in special alleys a game (actually many games of) boules were taking place. I was impressed with the way that these ancient persons ‘read’ the rink and managed to produce precise placement along a ridged and rutted terrain. I was also particularly impressed with the ways that they picked up the boules after playing. One person had a sort of magnetic plumbline which saved him the trouble of bending over and gave him a remarkably foppish appearance when throwing his first ball. I did at first think that it was some sort of balance to ensure accuracy and to give himself the correct amount of poise for the precise shot. Another old man had a telescopic pointer with a magnetic tip: very professional!

I was dragged away from watching fascinating matches by the offer of one of those fruit drinks which are mostly composed of minute balls of ice. I had always assumed that these were the same as slush puppies but I was assured that these were in a different class altogether.

A heft glass of luridly green slush was placed in my hands and I greedily (I must confess) sucked on my straw. It was a strange sensation as the tiny globes of ice mixed with remarkably pungent lemon and lime slurped its way down my throat.

Almost immediately I was reminded of frozen yogurt. Not the taste, you understand, but rather the pain that had to go with this sort of acute pleasure.

It was in Atlanta in the dim and distant days when I have left Europe rather than listen to the sycophantic, nauseating posturing of abject worship that accompanied Big Ears’ wedding to the ‘Give me attention or I’ll die’ Princess, that I first tasted frozen yogurt. It was delicious and each lick of icy pleasure was succeeded rapidly by another. And that greed provoked the inevitable headache.

A slower eating of my next frozen yogurt the next day was still too quick and the searing pain should have told me that perhaps frozen yogurt and I were not compatible. But, in some things I have a fairly high pain threshold and I was determined to continue.

The tricks I learned in Atlanta which enabled me to eat frozen yogurt without almost immediate hospitalization were very helpful as the first twinges of pain crossed my forehead as the ice globules slipped down.

Finding an easy pace which mixed natural melting with hand assisted defrosting and judicious stirring with the straw enable me to drink a fairly constant supply of delicious fruit associated drink without crying.

Although the last few drifts of ice were just that – frozen water, I have to say that the flavour lasted well and even at the end there was a suggestion of citrus that I had not expected to find so deep into the cup.

By the time we finally got home we were both exhausted but I was determined to finish my book and indeed did so.

‘The Little Stranger’ by Sarah Waters is a masterly novel which is (or is not) a ghost story. It is difficult to talk about the novel without spoiling the story for a new reader but the basic structure of the book is clear.

This is the story of a house and the clash which results when a dysfunctional ‘county’ family seemingly out of place in the Brave New World of a post war Labour government comes into contact with something which eventually destroys the family for good.

The narrator is a family doctor called Faraday who, rather crassly given the name, introduces himself firmly into the family circle by the use of his electrical stimulation machine to try and help the young squire trying and failing after a war career and serious injuries in the Air Force to take some control over the fortunes of the family.

The first part of the novel charts the way in which the life of Faraday (a working class boy made good) is increasingly joined to those of the gentry in the old house.

My major problem with this book is about the narrator himself. There seems to me to be a dichotomy between the skill of the narration and the hapless nature of the narrator himself. His writing is fluent and perceptive but his character is less than convincing and where it does come to life it is infuriatingly ineffectual. Would someone who writes as well as this be as flaccid a character as he portrays himself in the story? I constantly found myself convinced by the writing and not by the character.

Ambiguity is at the basis of this story and Waters takes every opportunity to complicate any easy response to the problems of the narrative. There must be a constant questioning on the part of the reader asking himself what ‘exactly’ is going on. Themes abound in this book and there is enough symbolism (if you care to look for it) to fuel a literary thesis! This could be a ghost story; a revealing autobiography; a story of class conflict; a love story; a psychological thriller – with a few other genres thrown in.

Without giving away the ending (which I found chilling and disturbing) the author leaves us with an image which may or may not be an accurate summation of a life.

A thoroughly provoking, unsettling and chilling read. I recommend it.

Monday 31st August 2009

I can hardly believe that this is the last day of the holidays. The sky has partaken of my sorrow and has been generally overcast, but this being Catalonia; we have had our portion of sunshine too!

Lunch was with Irene and time for a chat to catch up on all the news that had passed me by as I was in the very south of Catalonia.

The most significant part of the day was a visit to the doctor who drained the fluid which had accumulated at the site of a forty year old tennis injury. I hope that this will not need to be repeated for another forty years!

I realize now that I have done nothing to prepare myself for the forthcoming term. I only hope that the promised two weeks space before the kids arrive to be taught will allow me to catch up on those things which in my case I certainly have not done. To be fair to me I don’t actually know what I should have done as no one has told me. Also I have not been employed by the school for the last month. And I have done damn little to find out what I should have done. And I seem to be protesting too much!

In a strange sort of way I am looking forward to seeing what happens tomorrow.

I can’t help feeling that my expectations will be disappointed and the natural cynicism of any teacher will be fully justified in my case!

I must remember to set the alarm!

Into every life etc etc

There is a universal equilibrium which links pain and pleasure.

I don’t really believe that, of course – but it fits nicely in the significant moments of the day.

My toothache has become significantly worse and my search for a dentist has had to be extended to include those who are not necessarily proficient in my native tongue. The dentist I used last seems to have decamped: his local is for sale and his phone number doesn’t work. This is a pity as he actually had a photo of his participation in the Henley Regatta on the wall of his clinic and almost represented Holland in some Olympics or other. His English was certainly sufficient to cover all the necessary clinical details of what he was doing in my mouth!

The search for a dentist involved my computer and sending a request to be phoned back which happened immediately I pressed the return button on the keyboard. A computerized voice eventually contacted us to a real person and the appointment was made. As the appointment was in the evening the whole of the rest of the day was threatened by the misery of what they might do later.

To keep my mind occupied I arranged house contents insurance – a little late, one might say after the purloining of our bikes but better late than never. The conversation with the insurer (RACC) took a long, long time but I am now covered. It was a particular pleasure that Ceri’s paintings now have reached the stage where they have to be listed as separate items and photos taken for ‘insurance purposes’! The cuff-links which my cousin made (or hand-cuffs as the insurer disturbingly called them!) also make it to the separate item list!

Still having spare time we went out to lunch so that I could see the wandering watch seller. I have a fatal predisposition to believe that I can get a decent watch at a rubbish price from these characters. In spite of extensive, expensive experience which would indicate fairly clearly that my faith is somewhat misplaced I continue to buy watches whose make I have never heard of (because of their ludicrous price in ‘real life’) which fail as soon as I go for a swim – in spite of the fact that the ‘real’ watches are guaranteed virtually to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

Our meeting had been arranged by Toni over the phone in dreadful Spanish (the seller’s not Toni’s) and, as it turned out neither of them had fully understood the other and my ‘good’ watch will be left with the café owner. My faith is still strong that this one (out of all the others) will work!

Time inevitably dragged on so I volunteered to go to Lidl to get a few essentials and buy the plastic outside cupboard to put my bike safely away – in spite of the comfort of household insurance!

The cupboard was made of plastic and was flat packed. It boasted that no tools were needed. The bits were on a sort of Airfix frame and looked interesting. Tools may not have been needed but patience was an essential.

Before it was tried out I was off to the dentist.

I bought a book about the history of Castelldefels on my way to the clinic and put the purchase down to ‘displacement activity’ – especially as the bloody thing was written in Catalan!

In the clinic there was the usual rather frantic use of Spanish by me and the relief as the actual dentist spoke a form of English. The upshot is that I have a small infection under a molar which, if it responds to antibiotics can be safely ignored for another few years. A broken filling will have to be done tomorrow. Not good.

But the positive aspect came when I left the clinic in a part of Castelldefels that I have not previously walked through and found a very well appointed cheese shop!

My request for Cheddar (which I have not eaten for a couple of years) was gratified with what turned out to be a very ordinary version of that noble food. A couple of other Spanish cheeses which I sampled were much more interesting and I will savour them later. The rest of the produce in the shop looked appetising and interesting and I am sure that it is not the last time that I will visit the place.

So another day to pass before some stranger has me in her power.

I must think of engaging things to do to keep my mind at rest!

Peel me a grape!

Well, it hasn’t rained – but by god it wants to.

We have had one of those humid or ‘close’ (as my mother would have described it) days which encourage little rivulets of sweat (sorry, perspiration – I was forgetting my ‘First Aid in English’!) to flow across the furrows of a brow wrinkled in disgust at the incessant crying of the infuriating small child which is gifted to every neighbourhood.

The Girls have gone and should now be back in Reading checking that the paddy fields of the city are still in working order after the generous supply of water that they have missed during their weekend when we were all galvanized into a strenuously inactive round of doing nothing. And very enjoyable it was too!

The Culture Club that I was invited to help found by the American art teacher in my school is going to illustrate the differences between state and private education.

Our original idea was to take small groups of students to various art events throughout the year and by pre and post event meetings with the students give them context for what they were going to experience and get a feedback of their reactions by encouraging discussion. We thought that two visits per term would be about right and, after a year we could assess the success or otherwise of the venture and take it further or give up!

The Good Idea had to be written up into a fairly formal proposal and then The Powers That Be had to make a decision. I couldn’t really see any problems apart from the obvious bureaucratic horrors of ‘risk assessment’ – and even that is not as highly advanced into the realms of inane stupidity as it is in the UK.

The Powers That Be have spoken and said that we will be ‘compensated’ for our joint efforts; the small group that we had in mind must be expanded to a larger one; a year’s programme must be submitted as soon as possible with all costs estimated; this could be a course for which a payment would be demanded from the parents . . . and at that point I knew that I was in a different teaching institution from the ones in which I have been up to now.

The art teacher and I will have a meeting in the first fortnight back (which is without children) and have to come up with something pretty concrete before the arrival of the pupils on the 14th or 15th of September. We have been told that opera does not meet with the full approval of whoever has considered our proposals and that any cinema going must be thoroughly vetted to see that there is nothing ‘inappropriate’ for the pupils’ viewing.

I shall wait for more information about the precise detail of what restraints there might be on our ideas but I have a suspicion that I am going to experience another, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” situation that sums up a lot of my response to some of the more odd ways of doing things that I have found in Catalonia.

Meanwhile I look forward to a series of cultural jaunts with intelligent and articulate students. And I will try and keep my pontificating to an absolute minimum!

The most pressing problem facing me at the moment (apart from my toothache and the lack of a dentist, let alone an English speaking one) is what to do with the bike. The new un-stolen one, that is.

At present our bikes (all three of them) are securely locked in the space under the first flight of stairs. This space has been made into a sort of lumber wedge with the door opening to the space under the house. The bikes are stacked together in a limited space and securely padlocked together behind a locked door.

This is wonderful security, but the sheer fuss of getting the bike out is certain to mean that I never (and I mean never) use it.

I have therefore looked at other possibilities. Clarrie and Mary have a bike ‘safe’ which seemed like an idea solution until I was told that it came flat-packed and fiddly and that its construction took an entire day and almost ruined a relationship. It also cost four hundred quid. I am therefore looking for an alternative solution.

I thought I had found one in a sort of plastic garden shed thing in Lidl’s until Toni poured scorn on the idea saying that the macho thieves in our area would merely carry out the whole caboodle and put it into the ‘van’ that Toni is convinced is prowling around waiting to scoop up expensive possessions.

My counterblast to luke-warm contempt is fatally weakened by not being able to find one of the five or six tape measures that we have to find out the dimensions of the bike and then compare those with the Lidl shed. As the shed costs €60 I am understandably keen on the idea.

Meanwhile, until a tape measure turns up, I will settle down and start reading Sarah Waters’ ‘The Little Stranger’ which was left with me by Clarrie so that I could (according to Clarrie) enjoy a writer whose work I have not read or (according to Mary) take a heavy book off Clarrie’s hands which would push her hand luggage over the limit!

In either case I have gained a book which is, as all right thinking people know, A Good Thing!

New Cycle Thefts!

Our next door neighbour has had his bike stolen and another two have gone from surrounding houses. Our faith in the police to do anything practical to regain our bikes is zero and so we have started to compile a file of information for ourselves.

Toni keeps breathing defiance and threats against our unknown thieves and I sincerely hope that that he never comes into close proximity with any of them: I have a strong personal disinclination to go visiting in a Spanish prison!

The pattern of thefts now makes it more likely that there is a gang operating in the area and relying on opportunistic thefts to keep them in business.

Our relaxed lifestyle continues with the most energetic things that we have done as a group is to prance around in the swimming pool bouncing an inflated plastic ball between us. I would imagine that there are a few groups of people who would relish photographs of our little athletic session, although I am sure that the use to which they would be put graphic images would not reflect well on our respective professional situations!

The tentative plan for this evening is to go into Sitges and watch the usually spectacular firework display which marks the progress of the annual festival. Our lethargy makes this a possible rather than a probable.

Since I wrote that last sentence we have indeed been to Sitges.

The fireworks in Sitges are justly famous and my timing to get a meal and be ready for the show at 11.00 pm was perhaps cutting it a little fine. Finding a parking space in the public car park was a little difficult and the antics of other drivers manoeuvring for space provoked a level of lively interest from the girls that got the necessary adrenaline surge into the system to appreciate the pyrotechnics.

Finding a table outside facing the sea was even more difficult, especially as the police had demanded that restaurants with seating outside the actual restaurants close down that area to allow more people into the best viewing sites.

We eventually found a French Restaurant (nobody tell Toni who was at home watching Barça romp home to a 5-1 win for their latest trophy) where, amazingly we sat outside in their ‘garden’ to have a meal.

The setting and the ambiance was a pastiche of a stereotype of a cliché for a certain type of restaurant in Sitges. We were taken to our seats by an impossibly slim waiter with tight fitting T shirt who was a damn sight older than he thought he looked. Our order was taken by a chunky transvestite wearing silver sequined dress which revealed good rugby player legs. The food however was delicious.

As the service was leisurely we watched the first part of the firework display from our table but, this being Sitges we were able to see the bulk of the show after we had paid the bill and rushed down to the sea front.

The show, as usual was fantastic and Mary transformed into a child with hands at her mouth watching countless thousands of Euros transform into burning light.

At the point when other firework displays would run out of money and end the one in Sitges found new strength and filled the dark night sky with colour and light.

The climax of this stunning show was a disorientating series of bright light explosions whose shock waves had a tangible physical effect on the watchers and ensured that they were whipped up into the right state of mind to whoop their appreciation as the last rocket ended the display.

We went to a bar on the main exit road for a drink to watch the people pass and to give the car park a chance to empty a little. The number of people with dogs was shocking to those of us brought up with the injunction every November the fifth to ‘Keep Pets Indoors’ – however the animals looked none the worse for their experiences.

The car park was (again) a nightmare. The only parking space that we could find when we arrived was right at the back of the park. Clarrie kept me company in the front while we inched forward every ten minutes or so. When we finally made it out of the confines of the parking area there was still a stalemate of selfish drivers jockeying for position to get out as well!

Perhaps, in some ways the misery of the parking experience allows my selectively Puritan soul to see a sort of balance between the utterly frivolous expenditure of vast sums of money on fireworks to see it all, literally go up in smoke and the harsher reality of being stuck in an unmoving gridlock in the parking. With pleasure must come pain!

Today is the day when Mary is going to fling herself upon the foaming deep (well, the gentle swell) and go windsurfing or possibly boating – depending on which is available for hire. This will mean that at least they will have visited the beach at least once!

I must get my camera ready!