The joy of the open road!

There is a sort of equilibrium in my mornings. If there is sunshine then I can expect the traffic to be much worse than usual. Today was a glorious autumn morning; the air crystal clear; infinite blue skies and temperatures in the early morning above the highs for Cardiff – and interminable traffic jams. Just to make matters worse there seemed to be more than the usual contingent of those evil denizens of the road: motorcyclists.

My way of dealing with motorcyclists started as a joke. Why not, I maintained, just brush motorcycle accidents to the side of the road and leave them there. After months of driving on Catalan motorways, especially the ronda de dalt on my way to work, I no longer regard it as a joke. Their driving positively invites disaster and every time I see an accident with the tell-tale bike pushed to the hard shoulder my resentment and hatred towards the whole suicidal breed of bikers increases.

Bikers are one of those problems like Afghanistan or Ireland or Coca-Cola where you do not know where to start to try and sort it all out. So nothing is done. If I was the Catalan minister of transport I think I would sit in my office all day and cry, as I would have no idea how to set about doing something constructive with what I was supposed to be dealing with. The only concrete example of dealing with traffic in this part of the word is to put in multitudes of sleeping policemen and other assorted bumps in the road. Far from calming traffic thee only serve in infuriate drivers further so that the oddly (and dangerously) placed crossings are even less likely to restrict the homicidal tendencies of your average motorist in this area. This is of course aided and abetted by the pedestrian population who use the roads and pavements as if they were the same area and believe in a quite misplaced invulnerability when they stride out onto crossings with never a look to either side.

I am working myself up to attempt the difficult cross-country manoeuvre that going from school to Terrassa is going to be. I have had instructions and I do possess a road atlas that I have never opened, but instead I am going to rely on my recognition of the road to guide my care to its destination. Relying of Catalan road signs is a recipe for disaster as they merely give a vague indication of where you might (or might not) be going. Catalans are masters of the unobtrusive sign for important turnings and also disguising major roads so that they look like side streets. You have to have your wits about you to drive in this area!

I fully intend to slop off early so that I can avoid the bulk of the parents who instantly clog all the roads in the vicinity as soon as the bell goes, double and sometimes triple parking so that their little darlings can fall exhausted onto the leather upholstery of the vehicle before being ferried to their next appointment.

Even if I get lost, I should have enough time to re-orientate myself before the festivities begin.

And I’m driving and it’s the middle of the week and I have to teach tomorrow so I won’t be able to drink. Sob!

Dinner saves the day

Life cannot be all bad when the evening meal that you rustle up consists of stuffed vine leaves; homemade stew; freshly baked bread; Greek yogurt topped by Greek honey with almonds; mature Cheddar; Chilean red. Thank god for Lidl!

On a sadder note I have to report that I felt something like genuine excitement at a discovery in an upmarket supermarket. Over the last few months I have been searching, in a desultory sort of way, for the latest form of toilet block.

I am sure that someone somewhere has written a thesis on the development of the toilet block from the pungent rings found in the loos of British pubs to the latest charming plastic cradles, one of which on sale in the supermarket is designed in the form of a yacht!

How many toilets that you have used recently have empty plastic frames lurking under the rims? Yellowing plastic bereft of its block looking like a safety cage for tiny cleaners: empty, but not discarded. Intention to purchase the block is usually frustrated by the inability to remember what make block actually fits. And let’s face it no one wants to be caught trying to squeeze a block of god knows what sort of chemicals into a plastic aperture that you have forgotten how to open. From personal experience I know that you end up with worryingly ‘fragrant’ fingers whose perfume stays with you for a distractingly long period of time. You keep checking on your hand as you half expect your fingers to start dissolving before your very eyes. So, empty the receptacle stays and the toilet bowl has to be content with the occasional squirt of whatever corrosive liquid lurks inside the bottle with the swan neck.

This being the case my latest purchase seems eminently sensible. This takes the form of a small plunger like applicator which leaves a round gel-like circle of material which adheres directly to the inside of the toilet itself! At a stroke the little plastic cage is redundant! So far the little cake of gel has lasted one day and for the bulk of that day I haven’t been here. I wait to be convinced that this is not yet another way of extracting a lot of money from my pocket for showy innovation. If nothing else it seems to follow the dictum that less is more!

I have now worn all the ties that I was given for United Nations Day (with the exception of the one that I thought at first glance was covered in cartoon ghosts but later realized was actually covered in depictions of condoms) and the kids are still bemused by the effortless succession of neckwear that I can produce. In Cardiff I utilized two large drawers in my grandparents’ commodious wardrobe so that each tie was taken from one, worn and then placed in the other. The system is a little more complicated in Castelldefels but the new system is almost in place to ensure that, with the exception of the Munch tie for the beginning of each term, there is no repetition during a school year.

I had a wholesale cull of ties before I moved and the more repulsive and dated examples of neck adornment were consigned to the bins. I am therefore not entirely sure that I have sufficient ties to last the year as I seem to remember that even with the full collection I was reduced to wearing my prefect’s tie (a tasteful black with small dragons) my house tie (a not so tasteful pink, black and silver creation) and my Caterpillar tie which was covered with small embroidered with small bulldozers! The latter did indeed draw incredulous comments from my colleagues so one can only speculate what it will provoke from the children in our school.

Tomorrow I shall wear a more conservative tie given to me by people who I will be with tomorrow evening for the name day of everyone called Carlos or Carles. I will be going straight from school and have taken advice about how to get to Terrassa from the different starting point of the school. As we are situated in northern Barcelona I should, in theory, be twenty minutes nearer to Terrassa than starting from Castelldefels. This logical assumption does not necessarily follow when my sense of direction and the layout of Spanish roads are taken into account. My attempts to take unauthorized short cuts have, in the past seen me motor my way in ever increasing circles until I hit something I know and then I am able to re-orientate myself and scurry along a known path, keeping to myself the peregrinations that I have made to get there. At least the presents are safely in the back of the car already so I cannot forget them.

This weekend I am going to start the Larsson books and my latest missive from Amazon has offered me a half price copy of the third volume that I am missing. The fates, it seems are conspiring to ensure that my reading pleasure is complete.

Roll on the weekend.

To shop is to live

The morning is just opening up. There are livid golden rifts in the clouds and dusty rays of light are illuminating the pink and purple haze which covers the city. The sky is growing to its deep azure and only the gentlest of breezes is moving the topmost branches of the surrounding trees.

And I really don’t want to be here.

For reasons which are never clear to me I was fairly late getting into the car. I do the same things in the same order each morning but the time it takes me to do these things mysteriously changes for unaccountable reasons.

I drove to school in a state of controlled fury and each idiot incursion into my lane as I was carved up by inexpert motoring butchers only increased my burning cold contempt.

I am working my way towards a response to my second pay slip as a person on a permanent contract. I haven’t had it yet, but if it is anything like my last then I will, in the words that are thrown at all politicians nowadays, “have to consider my position.” From my last pay packet I worked out that I was getting paid something under €9 for each teaching ‘opportunity’ that I had in school. For that sort of money I think that I would prefer to dip into what remains of my crisis ravaged savings than increase the profits of an institution which charges its pupils something like €800 a month for the privilege of attending the classes.

The sun has now broken out from the layer of cloud and is bathing me in its refulgent glory. And of course lessening my world weariness and money orientated gloom.

The sun has now gone in and my resentment has returned! God knows what I am going to be like by the end of the day!

We have another case of Gripe A and I really think that I should find out what the key number of cases is at which point an institution should close. My suggestion of “1” has been greeted with sympathy by my colleagues but bureaucratic silence. Such is life!

The staff room has just been visited by a man whom I have never seen before; it turns out that he is a past deputy head who has now retired. He greeted the science teacher who was constructing an examination paper and then presented her with a paperback book, the cover of which was taken up with a cross section of the trunk of a tree. The book was something which had had privately published and it consists of a series of headed thoughts, notes, quotations and oddities which he has culled from his reading over the years. I suppose in English we would call it a ‘Commonplace Book’ – the sort of thing that John Julius Norwich produces ever year at Christmastime.

My grandmother kept one. She was an omnivorous reader and I am sure that some of my addiction stems directly from her. I have a blue covered horizontal notebook which she used to dash down some of the interesting things she read. I have tried to follow in her footsteps but indolence or being lost in the narrative that I am reading usually means that I do not try too hard to find a pencil to mark the passages that intrigue me and then I am far too eager to start the next book to try and find them again in the one that I have just finished.

The deputy head’s book which I have only dipped into seems like a model which is worth following and perhaps I should make a New Year’s Resolution in November (it must be a new year somewhere in the world) and resolve to make an effort to keep my own Commonplace Book.

To be fair to me I have tried to regularize the snapping up of unconsidered trifles by the purchase of a photograph album into which I have stuck those items from newspapers etc which have caught my attention. All I have to do is write out what makes me pause and there is a commonplace book all waiting for a publisher to snap it up!

Yet another aspect of life with which school and the mundane efforts to earn a living interfere!

A visit to El corte ingles after school (a completely bloody day) and the presents for Carles and Carlos are now bought: a Toyota car which explodes into some sort of mechanical monster for the former and the third volume of the Millennium series for the latter. I have the first two volumes of this trilogy myself and am looking for a paperback version of the third, so it was ironic to buy it for Carlos. The gentleman who sold me the book in El corte ingles was the sort of reason I go there: suited, urbane and obsequious just this side of fawning – a delight and he spoke the sort of Spanish that I can understand.

He didn’t have the volume I wanted in English and therefore tried to palm off the latest novel by Dan Brown on me which was. His enthusiasm rapidly modified itself into gentle contemptuous rejection when he gauged my reaction. I was trying to say that whatever its literary merit, The Da Vinci Code was a compulsive page turner – but as neither ‘compulsive’ nor ‘page’ nor ‘turner’ leaped into my conversational Spanish range my qualified praise for Dan Brown must have slipped beneath his linguistic radar.

I have cooked myself a form of stew with various interesting ingredients and I judge that it should now be about ready to be sampled.

Wish me luck.

It's what I do

Sunday afternoon: lying out on the third floor balcony in a pair of shorts soaking up the sun and listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme on Len Deighton via my Davies Donation wi-fi headphones. A perfect November (!) day.

I felt that such a languid approach to the afternoon was more than justified after the completion of various tasks in the morning.

There is surely nothing more satisfying than seeing the tick beside some of those irritating jobs that are only usually seen off during the first days of an extended holiday. Perhaps it was the lack of a half term break which is now showing itself in a half hearted attempt to persuade me that a weekend is almost as good as seven clear days of non teaching! Some hope!

So, armed with a small paint brush I finally touched up those smudges, scuff marks and smears that moving in to a new house produces with some frequency and in the most obviously visible places. In spite of the fact that as far as paint is concerned white is not white, the different shade of whiteness is certainly less obvious than the unsightly marks which are now more or less covered. I fear that close scrutiny will reveal the patchwork approach to the masking attempts but I am sure that everyone will be far too polite to mention anything. Far too polite.

There is something to be said for every wall and ceiling in our house being painted white: you don’t have to worry too much about the matching of some long forgotten shade of ‘Mystic Magnolia’ made only by Dulux in Aberdeen in 1997. The white you have bought may not be the white on the wall, but it’s certainly a damn sight closer a match than you’re likely to get with the shades of any other ‘colour.’

Not satisfied with this mammoth wall painting task (comparisons with Michelangelo came readily to mind) I also managed another task. I am not one to discard with any degree of complacency any gadget or gadget-like device. The pleasure of finding a pull-out computer keyboard attached to the underside of the desk was limited by the fact that it got in the way of my knees when I sat down. It actually took me a few months to realize that it had to go. It then took more months to get to the point where the screwdriver actually fitted into the Philips shaped hole in the screw: that point was reached today.

No wonder I needed the horizontal rest after so much activity!

The excitement for tomorrow will be to see how many of our charges have succumbed to the flu or The Flu.

I wonder if there is a limit to how far our penny-pinching educational establishment will collapse classes?

Lazy weekend?

A two hour lie-in this morning meant that I got up at half past eight. That is something to think about!

I am glad to say that I frittered away the time that I gained and finished off reading ‘Rules of the Road’ by Joan Bauer. This is a book that a purloined from a colleagues cupboard in school as she has amassed a class library of enticing titles to encourage her special English class to take an interest in literature and read a book by themselves. I have read a few of the volumes and I was picking about among the remnants to find something that I could take with me to the ‘sailing’ that our school does and where I am the ‘other’ teacher on alternate Thursday afternoons.

The cover, with its pink Cadillac and strap line of “A girl. A Car. A trip. A revelation . . .” was not particularly encouraging, but the pastel picture gave little indication of the muscularity of the writing.

Yes, this was a feel good book with a number of stock characters: girl from broken home with alcoholic dad and demanding younger sister, grandmother with Alzheimer’s and mother working as a Casualty nurse – just for starters! Add to that an unnatural (but fascinating) interest in selling shoes and big business chicanery with ancient founder of a shoe empire being sidelined by unworthy son and you really do have the ingredients for an interesting novel.

The girl heroine was satisfyingly sassy and there was just enough self conscious irony to make the whole thing believable. Well, probably not, come to think of it but who cares. A good read.

I have also read “Unseen Academicals” by Terry Pratchett. I simply couldn’t resist. I have spent the day drifting to the novel and back again in the spaciousness that comes with Toni being safely in Terrassa watching the dramatic cavorting of his nephews as they celebrate Al Souls Night (or afternoon in their case) and my refusal to go to a party this evening.

The only occasion on which I have left the house was to get some pollo a last from the restaurant on the motorway. I look on this weekend as a period of recovery from the week in school which has been made more difficult by the number of absences from kids and staff as the autumn period of illness strikes. We have collapsed classes and lost free periods and things have been unacceptably stressful as our place never considers hiring a supply teacher to take some of the strain.

It will be interesting to see what happens if the teacher illness rate rises. I think that there is a limit to what I am prepared to do for an institution which acts so nicely but pays so disgracefully!

Talking of disgrace, I had a strange conversation with a colleague about unions. He tells me that there are more union members than I would think in the place but that nothing much has been done to provide a focus for activity. He had been asked to consider becoming union rep. but he didn’t have the time to give as he was part time in the school. There are things that need to be addressed: facilities for members of staff: curriculum: timetable: supply – but there is not forum for discussion in the place. Meetings yes, but real discussion about things that matter no.

As term stretches on and seems to peter out in the far reaches of December, I am less and less likely to want to continue working in the place after United Nations Day in 2010. Perhaps this is just the end of October speaking, but I suspect not!

The Terry Pratchett book was a Terry Pratchett book. I found myself even becoming slightly annoyed by the smug predictability of the arch humour that characterizes his writing. His surrealistic approach to plot and his bizarre collection of freaks that people his narrative were annoying rather than amusing.

And then I settled into the comfortable rhythm of Pratchett’s style and I was captivated once again. Unbelievably “Unseen Academicals” is his 37th novel in the Discworld® Series (thus it is written in the inside covers of the book) and perhaps that ® show just how valuable the franchise has become.

This novel is about the Unseen University having to found a foot-the-ball team and play a match in order to retain money from a bequest which ensures the pointy hats (wizards) of Ankh-Morpork will continue to get their “one hundred and seven types of cheese, and more than seventy different varieties of pickles, chutneys and other tacklements” as the normal end to one of their traditional meals!

The story is quite up to his usual standard and the use of football as the motivating force gives some added humour. But this is one for people who already know Discworld® and are comfortable in its many insanities rather than for an unsuspecting reader coming to this strange world for the first time.

I have done none of those little jobs which look so good as you tick them off on a little list.

The one thing that I must manage is to get my phone working. My new phone with the touch screen which a child in school catching a glimpse of immediately said, “Oh, Juan in 3ESO has the next model up from that one.” Sometimes the thought of the Black Death singling out selected pupils is simply not enough! It does work and I have even discovered (by accident) the qwerty keyboard for making text messages just that little bit easier to send – and also allowing me, effortlessly, to add capital letters and apostrophes! I can’t get my computer to recognize it and thereby download pictures and music. It (and my computer) is supposed to have Bluetooth and I always assumed that they would find each other out merely by being on, but such simplistic views do not encourage electronic communication.

I’ll have to ask the kids!

It's all a game!

Today I weakened and took ‘The Final Empire’ into school with me and read it before the start of lessons, at lunchtime and in the free period that I lost.

That makes two free periods that I have lost this week. This in a week in which the English Department (against my better judgement) decided to collapse classes to cover the absence of the head of English rather than find that rarer-than-a-hen’s-tooth character in private schools in Spain: a supply teacher.

Assurances that we would not be used for cover have, of course, naturally been ignored. Sincere expressions of regret by management cut no bloody ice with me when my free time is being encroached on. What does it take to motivate this pleasant group of professionals to behave in a professional way? That was indeed a rhetorical question as I know from past experience the simple, human answer to this question. Everything takes time. And part of that time is going to be taken up with my contacting my union representative to discuss some of the ludicrous working practices that my school adopts to save money at professional expense.

When does my probationary period run out I wonder!

The book (all 650 pages of it) has been read and thoroughly enjoyed. The structure is complex without being demanding and the elements of the story are familiar, yet pleasingly arranged.

Brandon Sanderson, the author has been described as “the natural successor to Robert Jordan.” Who he? There is obviously a fantasy world of which we dabblers in the other fringes of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Harry Potter’ know little. The book is the first part of a trilogy and I shall look out for the other volumes.

I think I shall now move on to the first of the Larsson trilogy and save up the Terry Pratchett for a thoroughly self-indulgent wallow later.

Real Madrid were defeated 4-0 in a Copa del Rey match against a second division team last night. You can imagine the whoops of delight that emanated from the sofa as a rabid Barça fan squinted at the poor computer picture which was his only access to the game. This continued in school today where the Australian Humanities teacher who supports Madrid came in for a quantity of good humoured ribbing. Except there is no such thing as ‘good humoured ribbing’ when it comes to football in Spain! Support for your chosen football team is something deep and atavistic and my dilettante amusement about how seriously everyone takes it is condemned on all sides. Delicious!

So, it’s a choice between soul destroying marking and the first volume in the Larsson trilogy.

Choices! Choices!

Books are back!

I walked out of the meeting at the stated end time.

This was yet another revolutionary action taken by me in this strange school. My other anarchic actions include taking a chair out into the playground when I was on duty so that I could sit down and watch the kids rather than standing for an hour and taking time off in lieu. This marks me out as a dangerous radical seeking to destroy the foundations of educational society!

For some reason, not entirely clear to me, I have the keys for the entire school; a bunch of jangling metal that Joseph Marley would not have rejected to add to his burden of chains. I feel more than slightly Dickensian when I withdraw the gleaming mass of what looks like copulating keys from my briefcase.

I still have not calmed down from losing a free period yesterday after we spent last week planning (why oh why) how we could cover the head of English as she went off on her jolly to Canada. A few plaintive bleats for consideration as far as free periods were concerned were made in the meeting and we were assured that representations would be made, but that all planning might go out of the window is anyone was absent. And someone was absent. And all planning went out of the window.

It is situations like this that make all the union bones in my body ache. This school runs (as indeed do all schools) on the goodwill of the staff. This school more than most. There is no attempt, none whatsoever, to find supply teachers. My appearance last year must have been like a bolt from the blue when I came in to replace a teacher, but by the time I arrived the staff situation was rapidly reaching critical mass and Something Had To Be Done. It is not sufficient for a school to react when there is a slowly cooking disaster in course it should react when there is a perfectly ordinary situation which requires a supply teacher to take over the day to day teaching that needs to be done.

This school needs a union and it needs to be taken by the scruff of the neck and told that teachers are people too and should be considered professionals. The real trouble is that the school would probably say that they look after their teachers well, because people are nice and polite and colleagues always look after each other. But the pay is, to put it mildly, crap. The time table is a joke with a school day extending from 8.15 am to 4.45 pm. It is hardly surprising that in such a long day every teacher has at least one free period a day. Different groups of kids have different weeks with half days appearing in a bewildering sequence for different years. But the teachers’ day is the same. Not all teach more than one 8.15 start but a long day gives the timetabling staff a lot of spaces to play with.

I have now calmed down a little because the day has at last ended and home life has begun!

We went out to Castelldefels town to buy ONCE tickets and have a drink. This was soon augmented by snacks which in my case were tapa of patatas bravas and an extraordinary risotto with ceps and covered with a thick dusting of cheese. It was truly delicious and altogether an unexpected pleasure to find something so fine in an ordinary little bar in the centre of town!

I am at present reading one of the books which I was given to celebrate United Nations Day, ‘The Final Empire’ by Brandon Sanderson. I am just under half way through and it has been a positive delight to count up the clichés which abound in the book.

There is the Map at the front of the book with such places as the Canton of Orthodoxy Headquarters and Lake Luthadel with characters like Reen and Kelsier.

We have been introduced to the innocuous girl who has exceptional powers who is being helped by the man who survived the worst tortures of the Dark Lord. There are religions galore and Steel Inquisitors – and I love it all!

There is something very comforting in feeling yourself in a safe pair of writing hands and it is a good game when you can start counting up the literary influences as each new ‘twist’ to the plot is revealed! Again I want to emphasise how much I am enjoying the book; I actually left it at home today because I knew that I would be tempted to read it at inappropriate times if I took it to school.

Not only my enjoyment but also the realization that I have a Terry Pratchett (‘Unseen Academicals’) waiting for me is encouraging me to read with a certain amount of dispatch! Then there are the Larsson books and the volumes that the school purchased to coincide with the visit of the writer all waiting for me too.

Roll on the weekend.

The Dreadful Day!

In the true scheme of things, I should now be luxuriating in the knowledge that today was the first day of a week long holiday. Ah! Cruel fate that I should find myself a job in the vaccationless wastes of October, November and most of December that is the school term in Catalonia.

As my British friends fly back to a well earned holiday (or in Paul’s case drooling over the ways in which he is going to spend the king’s ransom that he will be paid in January) I have found myself back in school.

Not only back in school, but also losing the first free period that I had in the week and facing the prospect of the collapsed classes and re-jigged timetables that was the English Department’s response to the head of department having an absence of more than three days known in advance.

Years of union activism seem to have been lost in the fluffy, candyfloss way of thinking that my colleagues have about how to deal with professional situations in the working environment.

My bitterness is exacerbated by the knowledge that we are going to be subjected (are subjecting ourselves?) to the excruciatingly boring pointlessness of a Giant Meeting conducted in a mixture of Catalan and Castilliano which, even if I could understand the languages with ease and fluency would still be soul-destroyingly vapid. A system has been instigated to expedite the process of discussion of individual pupils, but I know, with the same certainty that comes when you check your lottery ticket, that nothing will change and there will be nothing to lighten the load.

The meeting (O God, I can barely contemplate it with anything other than infinite horror!) is scheduled to end or die or implode into an educational black hole at 7.30 pm. I am debating whether or not to walk out at this time pleading an Old War Wound or claiming the Fifth Amendment or citing the UN charter on torture.

Whatever happens this is going to be a long, long day and I am ready to lie down NOW! And it isn’t even lunch time yet.

There is no god.

Now it starts!

First things first: the dearth of cards has been addressed by witty effusions from Ceri and Dianne, the Pauls, Louise and Hadyn. So that’s all right.

Presents have showered themselves into my unresisting hands and I have delighted in the books, ties and perfumes that have come my way. Not to mention the grant aid to purchase a new (and much less shaming) mobile phone from Toni.

All of this happened after the journey to Reus and the belated return to Castelldefels and the eventual meal to celebrate United Nations Day.

A Terry Pratchett novel; a fantasy novel; ties too numerous to enumerate; clothing and the latest Nordic novel sequence together with a reversible belt added themselves to the accumulated loot of this more than satisfactory day.

The planning now starts for the momentous birthday which will take place on United Nations Day 2010. Be warned I look forward to a representative selection of acquaintances from the last six decades to join me in Castelldefels for the celebrations which are one would consider appropriate on the occasion on my putative collection of my bus pass!

365 days to think of excuses!

UNKITED NATIONS DAY!

The count-down has begun! My bus pass is but 365 days away!

We have recovered from the disaster of the missed plane and we are assuming that our three intrepid travellers are already in Bristol Airport leaving a comfortable five hours before their flight leaves!

So, the major event to celebrate United Nations Day will be a drive down and back again from Reus Airport. O Joy!

At least the weather has gone back to normal after the few days of torrential rain that we suffered and the morning sun is being diffused through gauzy clouds. Quite right too!

We have now made an executive decision that the Club Marítimo is going to be the venue for the United Nations Day meal and we will worry about getting Louise up and down the curved flight of stairs when we have to deal with the situation. I hope that at least some of us manage to retain a degree of sobriety so that Louise’s descent from the repast is not of a bouncingly vertical manner.

The peace of my unaccustomed lie-in this morning was rudely broken by the raucous ringing of the phone and then a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ that would have had Stockhausen curling his little toes with excited pleasure! You’ve guessed: it was Clarrie singing from far away Reading.

I might add that for the first time in just less than sixty years I have not had a single solitary United Nations Day card. The only one was a computer generated e-mail from TEFL.net which is an employment agency which constantly sends me details of poorly paid TEFL jobs in the more obscure parts of the Spanish peninsular.

Toni, shamed in action, is, even as I type, trying to send me an electronic card – and failing to do so.

I have not yet gone down to the post box, but the very wonderful British Post Office has ensured that, even were people to send, their missives would be sure to be piled up somewhere in an obscure sorting office beyond the ken of man.

I must say that I regard Post Office Workers in much the same way that I think of Fire Fighters – people who have great public sympathy as the valiant people who struggle to give a true public service. If I was a child, that is what I would still be thinking. But I am no longer a child and I have put away such childish thoughts. I know full well that both ‘professions’ are stuffed with what are collectively referred to as ‘Spanish Practices’ – in other words they have retained and developed the approach to work that was seen at its most disgusting in the Surrealistic attitude to negotiation that characterized the attitude of The Print Workers Union.

I want no one to think as I start out on my sixth decade that I have become an honorary member of the Disgusted of Tonbridge Wells Brigade and lost sight of my ‘if he is not a socialist before he is twenty he has no heart’ and am now comfortably in the ‘if he is a socialist after twenty he has not head’ attitude.

My mother (the most intelligent of the three of us as she took every opportunity to inform us) was a follower of Owens’s celebrated remarks on the dissolution of a partnership, “All the world art queer save thee and me; and even thou art a little queer.” She had a wary mistrust of most people and a distinct mistrust of husband and son!
My father was more a follower of Beckett in his dismissal of the human race as “bloody ignorant apes” and he particularly blamed the working class for constantly “fouling their nest” as he put it.

It is hardly surprising therefore that my favourite concept is ‘irony’ – and I am aware that that in itself could be an example of the very concept I like!

I should, I suppose be the acme of cynicism – but Saint Oscar’s wit shames me from espousing so negative a philosophy.

But I couldn’t be so woolly a liberal as to watch, for example, the destruction of the coal industry during the Miners’ Strike (led by that odious rat Scargill) with misty eyed romanticism and a deluded middle class belief that the noble working class (especially the iconic Miners) could not possibly be wrong. I found the violence on both sides repulsive; the politics nauseating and the human cost harrowing.

I did contribute to the Miners’ Fund – who wouldn’t, there was human suffering and misery whatever the rights and wrongs of the dispute; but I resented the fact that it had happened and that Thatcher (why, o why is that woman still alive when I have her candle representation ready and waiting to be burnt on the occasion of her long and eagerly awaited death) was handed a ‘victory’ on a plate by her victims. The phrase ‘lions led by donkeys’ never seemed to apposite.

So jobs that seemed so romantic to a child do not (or should not) give those who do them the right to protect themselves by practises that, in the cold light of day are patently absurd and unjustifiable. I wonder if either of the ‘professions’ I have mentioned would like to see their ‘conditions of service’ fully explained to an incredulous public? I think not.

And what I have said goes for the management too, of course. The ‘bonus culture’ of the astonishingly arrogant financial community is only the tip of the iceberg of selfishness which flies in the face of reason but is all too easy to explain in terms of callous self interest.

Those previous paragraphs are the result of not going out last night to celebrate Paul’s elevation to the educational purple. There is obviously a high linguistic price to be paid for enforced sobriety.

Perhaps tonight will make up for it, and tomorrow I will be all sweetness and light!

Perhaps.

Best laid plans etc

Good news: Paul got the job and so the decline of education is official! He is a head teacher!

Bad news: a three hour drive from Cardiff to Bristol ensured that they missed the flight!

Our celebrations planned for tonight have therefore had to be ever so slightly cancelled. We only hope that the fall back plan hurriedly devised by Toni of their flying in to Reus might come to fruition. We will wait and see.

Now is the exact time that the little troop of three should have been arriving in the airport. We are waiting for a phone call from Cardiff letting us know what arrangements might have been made.

Meanwhile, to keep my mind off what might have been, perhaps I can digress to what actually happened today. This day was significant in so far as I went on a course. Not in itself of any major importance, but an indication of permanence in the institution in which I am teaching. Getting time off and arranging cover is such a fraught experience in our place that you have to be part of the fabric before they consider the enormous investment of time and effort in getting you off lessons.

This course was on ‘Reading’ as a part of one of the Cambridge exams that we use in the school. The venue of the course was the British Council building in one of the more opulent areas of Barcelona. There were only eight or nine of we participants and the course was led by an intense young man with a determined smile. The course was well planned with practical components and material to use in the classroom later.

A description of my fellow course members might make the membership of the class appear slightly freakish, but I suppose that English as a Foreign Language Teachers are an odd bunch, especially when they are observed out of their native environment. Though, thinking about that there were only three native English speakers of whom one was American and one Welsh and the other had one of those difficult to place accents with only the high volume and slightly nasal quality to let you guess where the melange was first mixed.

The time passed quickly enough with the frenetic nervousness of the course leader transmitting itself to our work rate. The last half hour of the course was in the computer room where we were expected to produce teaching ideas which would be collated and sent to us all via email.

To be fair to the course leader, this evening saw an email from him in my in-box with teaching material but, alas not the stuff which we produced: technological problems prevented his finding the work and sending it out. Some things never change!

Meanwhile tomorrow . . . .

Where is the sun?

Thunder, lightning and lashing rain. Appalling driving conditions with standing water on the roads and the gutters flowing freely with newly spouted rivers.

Did any of this daunt the suicidal intent of motorcyclist?

Of course not.

If anything they were even more stupid than usual. The high point of insanity came when I was moving from the middle lane to the inside lane prior to taking the slip road off the motorway. I indicated (as I always do) and began the manoeuvre. It was actually as I was turning into a space that a motorcyclist accelerated and wove himself though the miniscule space as I slotted myself into my indicated lane and then shot off in front of a car in the next lane – all of this on a wet slippery road! It was breathtakingly audacious stupidity and left me feeling slightly breathless with fascinated fury!

And this was even before I’d arrived in school!

As I type this the storm has reached new levels of ferocity and I can hear the cascading water spilling out of guttering which is clearly inadequate. You might think that I would be at the point of despair at this all-too-familiar weather, but I have seen the forecast for the next few days and I have faith enough to believe that by Friday the clouds will have largely departed and we will be back to more unseasonal weather with sunshine and happiness. It is the least that Barcelona can do for my approaching guests.

Blue skies in the late afternoon; Catalonia always does you proud!

I have now assumed the stance of Her Late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the First and maintained my masterly position of deciding to do nothing about the forthcoming celebrations. Everything will have an aleatory element built into it. Having spoken with Paul Squared we agree that previous arrangements will add nothing to the sense of occasion that is necessary for true satisfaction!

The typing I am doing at the moment is but displacement activity for the marking which is lurking in my briefcase.

I now have yet more marking and it has to be complete before the end of school tomorrow. We have to mark any kids who have ‘failed’ the exams and their parents are officially informed.

The weather has been horrific today with lashing rain and gutters converted into cascading rivers. As is usual when we have any rain the entire drainage system of the area fails and standing water appears everywhere.

The gentle walk down the Ramblas to a select coffee shop in the Gothic Quarter with my two ex-colleagues had to be consigned to history as the heavens opened. We walked from Habitat to all the way to Cafe Zurich: a distance of about 50 feet! We made two cups of coffee last two hours as we chatted and gossiped and reminisced. It was a delight to see them both and I urged them to come back and see Barcelona in the sunshine.

In spite of the weather conditions they were both much taken with the city and were reeling from the discovery that the city wasn’t composed entirely of small winding streets! They went on two different tour routes and discovered the modern architectural delights of Barcelonetta and the Olympic Port and they were even more impressed with Monjuïc.

Enough I have to get back to my marking, while wishing Paul every success for his final interviews tomorrow for the headship he is seeking.

Tomorrow our three guests arrive for the celebrations of United Nations Day and, hopefully, a promotion.

I’ll have a Cava please!

Observation and assessment

“It must have been good; I didn’t fall asleep.” Thus the judgement of a sixth former I asked giving his opinion of a speaker who visited the school.

John Brindley is a writer for young adults who uses science as his starting point in many of his novels. He was not, he pointed out a science-fiction writer, but rather a writer who used science. Admittedly science taken to its extremes, but still recognizable science in a world which could be real. He uses ideas from such areas as natural selection and genetics to provide the basis for his narratives. His books look interesting and I am looking forward to reading them.

But his talk! In spite of our willingness to divide his time up into reasonable segments with various classes, he opted to take the whole of the first and second year sixth for a straight hour and a half each!

It is a tribute to the quality of our students that, given the rambling nature of the ‘talk’ that they were given they were as well behaved as they were. John Brindley did not appear to have a Plan B to cope with slightly restive students and he appeared to be making up his discourse as he went along.

For me this was harrowing and I shuddered at each meandering line of thought which petered out into silence. He didn’t seem to know what strengths he had in his fascinating development from early school leaver to published writer with a dozen books to his credit. I tried one or two questions to him to try and direct his discourse but did not manage to get him onto safer and more interesting territory where he could play to his specific knowledge.

Instead he gave a quirkily personal stroll through some areas of controversial science, but he didn’t link this convincingly to his books.

He is not a natural and easy speaker and he therefore should have prepared more and not relied on extemporary fugitive thoughts to keep himself going. But if the kids thought it was OK, who am I to carp? That is a rhetorical question to which there is a clear answer.

Another examination has been completed and is waiting to be marked. This will have to be done before Friday when, with any luck, a new head teacher will be arriving in Catalonia together with a bevy of friends for bibulous celebrations!

I have been loaned a book by Suzanne, the art teacher which also has a double CD tracing the music of Jerusalem through the ages. The book has been opulently produced and luckily is in English - as well as Hebrew and Arabic and a few other European languages, including Catalan as a gesture to inclusiveness.

Meanwhile, I must give in to terminal tiredness and retire to my bed.

A visit to mark - so to speak

No nearer to finding a venue for the United Nations Day celebrations ad I have now decided not to worry as Toni is hors de combat with a streaming cold and looking very sorry for himself!

I did not have a good day myself, but I put this down to a hysterical reaction after visiting Toni’s nephews yesterday. I am so used to picking up some childhood disease from those two that I am half way to infirmity by the time they have reached out their tiny sticky hands towards me in greeting!

I sincerely hope that my downward dip was only a psychosomatic response because illness would be inappropriate this week: there is too much to do and too many people to see!

Today the appalling driving that I have to endure on my way to school was accompanied by the best bits of Cosi fan tutte – and there are plenty more discs where that came from. Great music should take me through to the Christmas holidays – at least as far as they journey to school is concerned. We have now used up all our holidays between now and December so the weeks stretch out ahead in unrelieved horror!

The examination season is convulsing the school and the only problem for me is that the marking does not appear at the best time for me. It will get done I suppose, even in a drunken stupor!

I have been loaned ‘The Uncommon Reader’ by Alan Bennett. This slim volume has recommendations from ‘Country Life’, ‘The Daily Mail’, and ‘The Mail on Sunday’ and ‘The Spectator’ - a truly off-putting selection of papers! If it wasn’t for the recommendation from ‘The Observer’ on the front cover, I think I might have had to reject it sight unseen. If I had done that I would have missed a masterly piece of self indulgence which reads itself. It takes as its subject matter the Queen happening upon a mobile library in the servants’ area of Buckingham Palace and becoming hooked on books!

The opening page sets the scene (and the tone) as the French President is being led into a state banquet in Windsor ‘”Now that I have you to myself,” said the Queen smiling to left and right as they glided through the glittering throng, “I’ve been longing to ask you about the writer Jean Genet.”’ If only! This is a gentle tale of what appears to be suspiciously like idolatry, but written in Bennett’s beguiling style, which can resist! I certainly didn’t – and I have to give it back tomorrow.

The screen on my electronic book has broken and I need a replacement. Well, that is not strictly true. The screen is faulty in the top right corner, but this doesn’t mean that the whole unit is useless.

I have been looking at new electronic books but the market in Spain is a little confusing to say the least. I realize now that living in Britain meant that we had the all-important gadgets before the rest of Europe. Here in Spain things are a little behind hand. I am still trying to find out if the Amazon Kindle electronic book reader is available in this country and if it is the best model available.

Any help out there to get me to decide on a new machine would be appreciated.

I defy augury

In spite of my not completing a symbolic piece of marking on Friday evening all the marking that I had to do has been done. It was a case of needs must when the devil drives as we had to go to Terrassa today for the name day of Toni’s sister. It’s actually tomorrow but today just seemed a more reasonable idea than going after school on Monday.

I was very reserved in my greetings of the family as I have few desires to go down with what the kids have had over the last couple of weeks! I still have a residual cough from my irritating days of illness and the last thing that I want is not to be firing on all cylinders for the celebrations for United Nations Day. If Paul gets what he deserves then it could be a double celebration with his having greatness pushed upon him! We shall see and wait and hope.

My visit to Terrassa saw me taking photographs of the pavement, tree stumps and empty watercourses. This was at the behest of the art teacher in school who is doing a project on nature intruding into the urban landscape. Never one to turn aside from a challenge like this I snapped away with the limited abandon which comes with pointing the camera while having to keep up with Toni as he made his way to his sister’s flat to gather up the family for the lunch! I will have to see what they look like on the larger screen of my other portable.

After I had finished my marking I had a frustrating short period of sunbathing before we had to start for the lunch in Terrassa – but the fact that I could actually stretch out in the sunshine at this time in October is an absolute delight. I trust that there will be many more days when a snatch of vitamin D can be taken on the third floor of the house!

I have given in to the constant harassment of Amazon and bought a few books with the notorious ‘one click’ system of purchase that the evil organization has devised. Whenever I turn on the ‘one click’ option it is as if I have travelled back to the bible and the Devil himself is showing me the riches of the world all of which can be mine if etc etc etc. It is only fair that I succumb from time to time.

I am also conscious of the assertion that I have made that if I buy a new book then I will consign one already in the house to oblivion – or the staff room or a friend. I will have to think carefully about what to discard. Not easy.

Next week is going to be a full one with examinations (which have to be marked) pushing themselves forward into my already full schedule.

The visit is working itself out, with meals seeming to play a major part in the timetable of activities!

Bring on the next course.

Art For Ever!

What a delight not to get up at half past six. Thus rested I threw myself at culture in Barcelona.

My new bank, La Caixa, spends some of its money on a foundation which funds a gallery complex which is at present showing an exhibition of The Worlds of Islam with items from the Aga Khan’s collection of paintings, manuscripts, sculptures, Ceramics and Artefacts. The scope of the exhibition is big, trying to give some feeling for the different phases of expansion of the Islamic Empire.

The exhibition is worthy rather than spectacular. There is no central object which takes the breath away and astonishes – but there are a whole series of items which are almost attention grabbing and interesting. I went round the exhibition with the art teacher from school and it was her company and comments which made the experience enjoyable.

And the lunch of course!

Something which I felt we deserved after our extended chatty wander through the pots and pans, coins and Korans; tiles and textiles; miniatures and maps.

I am now a member of the library of the Caixa Forum which gives me access to books, magazines, CDs and DVDs. I hope to make some inroads into the mass of films which have been flagged up for me by ‘Have You Seen?’ by David Thomson – a partisan book on film which I wholeheartedly recommend.

Their collection is not extensive but a cursory look has revealed a number of older films that I would like to see. Something to check more thoroughly at a later date I think.

Throughout the visit to the gallery I wore a red pen prominently in my shirt pocket to remind me that I should really be marking. So far I have had the strength of character to ignore such petty reminders of educational responsibility and have now started to think of dinner and finishing off the rather fine bottle of Lidl Rioja I started yesterday.

My colleague went home after lunch to a siesta – I am made of sterner stuff (as my refusal to knuckle down to school work shows) and I took the Metro to my favourite shop where the opera CDs have been reduced by 50%.

I went berserk.

I have not taken the discs out of the two El Corte Ingles bags that it took to contain them because I am too frightened to see the extent of the music that I have bought!

With the ‘killing’ that I made last week in the branch of El Corte Ingles that is on my way home from school I have spent about €400 – but they were half price and therefore count as a bargains that would be criminal to pass by. So there.

God alone knows how long it is going to take me to listen to all the stuff that I have bought. But it is going to be fun doing it!

And furthermore, if any more was actually needed to be taken further, I have worked out that my expenditure of the vast number of discs is roughly equivalent to the price of three decent seats for an opera production in the Liceu. So looked at in that way I have had even more of a bargain than I thought!

The stuff I now have ranges from ‘Elektra’ and ‘Mr Brouchek’ via ‘Thais’ to ‘Billy Budd’. And those are only four of the vast array that I can remember – even if I can’t be bothered to check the spelling of them.

I suppose that the sole advantage to be gleaned from the extended time that I resentfully spend on the motorways getting to school is that my opera listening is going to be the bright spot to make the inevitable traffic jams more bearable.

Thinking about it, some of the subject matter of the discs that I have bought could be exactly the right catalyst to bring out into the dawn light the more homicidal tendencies that I generally manage to suppress by vigorous Alex Ferguson-like gum chewing.

I will have to choose my operas carefully!

To sleep perchance . . .

Today, disturbingly enough, even without dramatic lighting the hills of Sant Boi looked pleasingly dramatic as I zoomed past them on a generally clearish motorway.

I think I must be over working! My perceptions are being knocked out of kilter by the unnecessarily early hour at which I have to throw myself onto the mad motorways of the morning.

I shall try and take a more measured view of Sant Boi over the weekend and try and restore normality to my evaluative apparatus!

My progress around the school is punctuated by shrill cries of my name, presumably in a form of greeting from small people to whom I have not knowingly been introduced. I smile and mutter “Hello, there!” in what I take to be a dismissively disturbing way and scurry along my way. I know that these homunculi are from the primary (and even lower) school which is on the same campus as the secondary school but I want to be seen as a remote and slightly frightening character, disturbing enough to feature in their dreams as they make their way towards the educational heights of secondary. I would hate to think that I am turning, against every atom of my essential being, into some sort of avuncular character whose cheery face lightens the pupils’ downtrodden plight. Mr Chips, for me, is a character from the darkest reaches of educational psychological hell and on a par with The Joker and the gone but not forgiven Kenneth Baker – the politician not the other one.

I think the school dislocates me from my true responses because I find it very difficult to believe that I am actually there. It is difficult to explain the essential unreality of the experience, but the setting, the curriculum, my colleagues and the kids all combine to create a seething cauldron of wealth, privilege, oddness, underpayment, overwork and genuine psychosis that is difficult to match in my experience.

I flatter or delude myself that I can walk away from the job at any time and settle down to an easy existence of reading on the third floor and sipping Rioja. This ‘escape pod’ of power is enough to nourish my sense of the ridiculous and sustain me through the torrid, examination fuelled hysteria of a normal week in the place. I have to admit that my colleagues are a supportive and interesting bunch and they show real concern and it would, therefore, obviously be wrong to let them down by departing post haste.

All of this I’m-offism has been brought on by the fact that I have a set of papers to mark over the weekend: and this will be the first of many as class after class enters the maw of our evaluation system. Normally this would be a time to dread, but the disconcerting nature of the experience has been given a twist of horror by the fact that next weekend The Guests arrive and their holiday is my prime concern. (God that sentence sounds pompous and it merely masks my own dislike of the whole process of examination and the necessary expenditure of red ink on paper after paper!) Therefore the marking of the papers has to be started almost as soon as the kids have put pen to paper.

When I bleated last term that there wasn’t time to get things done, a colleague agreed with me and then said, “But they will get done, because they have to be done. So relax!” Twisted logic but, as it turned out, accurate!

Tomorrow I hope to go to Barcelona to visit the latest exhibition in La Caixa. More effort called for and I still haven’t marked the single Friday evening symbolic answer paper yet to ensure that I get the whole load of marking done by the end of the weekend.

Where’s my red pen?

A tick of the light

Sant Boi de Llobregat was looking particularly lovely as I drove home this evening.

Perhaps you have to live in this area to sense the true oxymoron inherent in those words. Sant Boi is a distinctly unlovely place mixing ugly urban sprawl defacing the slope of a mountain mixed with industrial unit after industrial unit shirting the motorway. Useful for large shops and extensive parking but not a place to excite cultural feelings.

Except. The sun was setting and completely artificial looking rays of dusty sunshine shone down like heavenly spotlights. One of them illuminated the side of a distant mountain which threw into contrasting relief a small hill in front of it. The effect was positively magical. Luckily there was heavy traffic so I was proceeding with infuriating slowness and could mollify my frustration by visual splendour!

Today was the day that I had to accompany the PE teacher taking the kids down to Porto Olimpico for their sailing lessons. I know, but it’s that sort of school! I actually watched them this time around. Some of the kids actually appear to be quite professional; but that is because they own boats in ‘real’ life. It is hard to avoid whichever number deadly sin envy occupies!

Envy indeed characterised the walk we took along the Marina passing impressive boat after astonishing boat. A few of these were flying the Red Ensign but they turned out to be based in BVI which I would guess have certain tax advantages – or perhaps envy is clouding my judgement!

A surprise email informed me that two past colleagues are paying a visit to Barcelona and in one of those serendipitous conjunctions of unlikely circumstances which obviously prove that there is no god. My accrued time off in lieu for things like taking the kids sailing and starting early means that I can have an afternoon off. On the 22nd of October I am going on a course which will take me into Barcelona on the morning of the 22nd. My way is clear to plan a meeting for the afternoon of the same day to meet my colleagues. All things work together for good.

At least until things start falling apart and everything changes!

Until then I have marking to think of. This is the start of one of our self-generated examination frenzies which will last for a couple of weeks while the kids are examined unt5il the educational pips squeak.
I cannot afford to let the marking mount up because of the imminent arrival of my guests for the celebration of United Nations Day (for which no arrangements have been made) and the general jollifications appertaining thereto.

Roll on.

Sleep?

There was a reluctance bordering on resentment about getting up today. Going to school just didn’t seem a persuasive way to spend the day when the sun was going to shine on the empty sun bed on the third floor balcony.

And the roads were as crowded as usual in the early (an adjective that I would emphasize!) morning with the usual battalion of kamikaze motorcyclists making the journey so much more enjoyable.

I have positioned the car for what passes for a quick getaway from this narrow street bound educational summit. This is in preparation for the jaunt to the garage to try (for the sixth day running) to get the small piece of plastic fixed which will allow the brake light to function with its proper degree of sensitivity. I have no active hope of success, and expect to be met by the Catalan version of the British expressions of amazement and contempt that usually greet the appearance of a car brought to a garage to be repaired.

But, just like the watch that I still haven’t got, I preserve my naïf faith that all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

We are building up to one of the series of examination periods that characterize this institution. It also happens roughly to coincide with the appearance of my guests for the celebrations of United Nations Day. If all goes according to plan then I should be in a more than usually hysterical frame of mind by the time the first celebrant gets off the plane with my having marked a multitude of examination papers to ensure that the weekend is free from such mundane educational irritations!

I have made no firm plans for where the celebrations are going to take place or indeed who might be asked.

Perhaps I ought to bestir myself.

Or not.

Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent position!

There was a reluctance bordering on resentment about getting up today. Going to school just didn’t seem a persuasive way to spend the day when the sun was going to shine on the empty sun bed on the third floor balcony.

And the roads were as crowded as usual in the early (an adjective that I would emphasize!) morning with the usual battalion of kamikaze motorcyclists making the journey so much more enjoyable.

I have positioned the car for what passes for a quick getaway from this narrow street bound educational summit. This is in preparation for the jaunt to the garage to try (for the sixth day running) to get the small piece of plastic fixed which will allow the brake light to function with its proper degree of sensitivity. I have no active hope of success, and expect to be met by the Catalan version of the British expressions of amazement and contempt that usually greet the appearance of a car brought to a garage to be repaired.

But, just like the watch that I still haven’t got, I preserve my naïf faith that all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

We are building up to one of the series of examination periods that characterize this institution. It also happens roughly to coincide with the appearance of my guests for the celebrations of United Nations Day. If all goes according to plan then I should be in a more than usually hysterical frame of mind by the time the first celebrant gets off the plane with my having marked a multitude of examination papers to ensure that the weekend is free from such mundane educational irritations!

I have made no firm plans for where the celebrations are going to take place or indeed who might be asked.

Perhaps I ought to bestir myself.

Or not.