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.

Clouds and change

Do you consider it pretentious, when lying supine staring up into what was a flawless blue sky, to notice a couple of whips of cloud and instead of thinking of castles in the air to consider that what I was looking at was more like one of Bacon’s screaming popes re-imagined by Giacometti?

I certainly hope so or the scraps of knowledge that I have jealously garnered over the years will obviously have counted for nothing!

And believe me, once the comparison was in my mind the perfection of the clouds in presenting exactly what I have described was uncanny and not a little disturbing.

Our weather over the past few days has been glorious and I have stretched myself out on the newly acquired lounger – bought at the bargain price of €20 reduced from €36. It is, however, bright, bright green – but that is a small price to pay for the comfort of lying without bits digging into sensitive parts of the anatomy and restricting blood to various extremities!

The book reviews will have to wait until the literary critic in me rises to the surface.

This has been a holiday and I have celebrated by going out to lunch with friends. I will spend the rest of the week working on a faulty assumption about the day. The only good thing will be that Friday will come a day early!

Paul Squared has just phoned and told me that Patrick Hannan has died. Patrick was, among other things in his journalistic career, the presenter of ‘Something Else’ a programme which took a sometimes irreverent view of the week’s news and was characterized by three guests who helped Patrick through the hour that the programme lasted.

Thanks to Steve Groves, a producer in BBC Wales who once listened to a talk I gave to future sixth formers and their parents and decided that I would enjoy the experience of being on the show. I eventually became a regular guest and even presented the programme once myself.

Patrick was an amiable presenter who wore his knowledge and experience lightly and was expert in coaxing revealing comments out of contributors. His knowledge of British politics was extensive and his general knowledge was sufficient to make him a winner on Round Britain Quiz – a test of anyone’s learning! His writing was fluid and informative and his ‘diary’ of a year in Wales showed just how clued up his was in the political life of the principality.

Patrick has been a feature of Welsh television and radio for so long that his departure will be a real loss.

Out the other end!

Rose, washed, ate my muesli – all without a cough: the illness is officially over! The tempest has been downgraded into snuffles. Snuffles are manageable.

Yesterday was supposed to be the final act in my rehabilitation with my ‘free’ afternoon accommodating the end of my coughs and sneezes. A leisurely lunch with Toni and lazing in the unseasonal sunshine went according to plan but the car was the complicating factor.

What I took to be angry shouts following us as we drove to the restaurant were actually helpful comments telling us that the brake lights were not working. As I had previously worked out that one of the fuses had conked out I expected (foolishly) that the brake lights would be similar and simple.

My garage of first resort turned out to be open (in the afternoon!) but did nothing with the electrics of the car. The Peugeot garage was, of course closed. When I got to the Peugeot garage eventually when they had deigned to be open I was met with a positive torrent of Spanish from the workshop manager of which I understood virtually nothing, but the import of which I understood to be that repairing the car would be an extraordinary feat of engineering and not the simple fuse change as I hoped.

They wanted me to leave the car there, but this was not a practical solution and I arranged (with much sorrowful head shaking by the workshop manager) to bring the car in when I finish work today.

In what can only be regarded as a flash of inspiration when I returned home disconsolate with the prospect of driving to work in the dark with no brake lights and plenty of Spanish drivers, I phoned the RACC and asked for their help. This Catalan version of the RAC responded in English (eventually) and arranged to have a person call. Which he did and within a few minutes he had diagnosed the problem which he told me (in Spanish) was a small piece of plastic which would take five minutes to change.

He then went into a rant about expensive cars which were immobilized by trifling pieces of plastic etc etc. I was rather proud that I was able to follow all of this – or perhaps I should be impressed by my ability to retexture random Spanish words into some form of convincing narrative!

It will be interesting to see what the garage makes of the little slip of paper on which the RACC man has written what is wrong. And how much they charge!

This of course depends on how quickly I can get away and drive the car to the garage. I have a negative feeling about the helpfulness of the garage and have no confidence whatsoever that they will solve the problem. I am already feeling a rising sense of injustice at what they will try and get away with. I feel a letter to RACC asking to sort things out and prosecute them for attempted robbery rising unbidden to my typing finger tips!

My wearing of contact lenses has been something of a success. I have managed to read everything I have had to read and the kids are fascinated by my change in appearance. From their responses I assume that they thought that my glasses were surgically welded to my head!

We shall see how this experiment continues; especially as at the end of the month I should have my new pair of lightweight glasses remade by the opticians in Cardiff and brought over by my ever helpful friends who will be in Catalonia to celebrate United Nations Day in true style.

Meanwhile I am looking for a new book to read. I have been promised one by a colleague in the English Department who is able to feed my craving for fantasy or science fiction. In those genres I am able to read virtually anything; and read it with relish. I will have to beg one for the long weekend of freedom that we have ahead of ourselves.

And another lacuna interposes itself and suddenly it is Sunday.

I did get the books; three of them – and they are all now read. I’ll perhaps wait until Monday (another day off!) before I get around to writing about them.

I underestimated the lack of concern of the Peugeot garage. I rushed home from school on Friday to get me car to the garage before half past five and was met by the loquacious manager with vague apologies but there was no way that they could spend five minutes correcting a fault in the car that they sold to me at vast expense two years ago. I have no wish to make threats that only hurt me, but if it is at all possible I will go to any other garage than that one again. Their lack of concern is astonishing.

It did however force me into what I like doing least in the Spanish language: telephoning. I had been given a card for a garage in Gavá and I decided to take the plunge and try and arrange something. I should perhaps have prepared a little more for the conversation as phrases like “rear brake lights” do not come tripping off the tongue in my Spanish, however, as usual I was understood. Or more accurately they understood something; whether it was the same as what I was trying to communicate remains to be seen. Next Tuesday I will rush after school to a previously unknown part of Gavá and hope that they can do their stuff.

In a pitiful gesture to the great work of Samuel Smiles I have purchased a little box full of brightly coloured fuses of the sort that cars have. These are flat squares of coloured plastic with two flat prongs jutting out. I assume that the colours are indicative of the voltage – and that is just about as far as my knowledge reaches. I am still mystified as to which one of the masses of fuses my car needs might be the one linked to the cigarette lighter.

It is surely a sign of the times that my car did not come with a cigarette lighter presumably because most people use the socket for their GPS or iPod or some other gadget. I need to find the fuse because the GPS is the only thing that is going to get me to the garage on Tuesday! If all else fails (and it will) I can merely charge up the unit at home and use it on battery. Such journeys are always a delight in Spain as the road system seems to change on a daily basis so The Voice is always urging you to take a road which isn’t there or a turning which has obviously been blocked off or, on one humiliating occasion, to turn into a largely pedestrianized area where I was glared at my vulnerable pedestrians as I crawled my self-abasing way along until I turned into the first ‘real’ looking street I could find and escaped!

I trust my experience later in the week will be a little less traumatic than that!

All this as well!

Never let it me said that I am now obsessed with my health, but I do think (from my lack of symphonic coughing this morning) that I have turned the corner and will have left the ‘pitying self concern’ stage of my illness and moved on to the inconvenient where-have-I-put-the-tissues’ level of wellness.

I have thoroughly disliked this illness and it has impudently stretched its malign influence beyond the three days that my body allocates to serious health reverses.

My Opera CD splurge is now paying dividends as I look with seraphic indifference on the stationary cars which block my way to work while the magnificent strains of self indulgent High Romanticism well up from the speakers in the doors. All the discs that I am playing at the moment are repackaged DGG recordings with little booklets for children. I have not read through the child’s version of La Traviata, but it will be interesting to see how they gloss the fact that the sublime music is from a dying whore!

I am more than half inclined to go back and get all the other discs that I left behind – if nothing else they will be useful extra versions of great music and they will also be relatively inexpensive ways of directing my almost insatiable desire to buy things!

One of the recording that I would never have bought at full price is Stravinsky’s ‘Rakes Progress’ made famous for me by the set design of Hockney. This is an opera that I have never consciously heard so it will be something to get my teeth into. My last attempt to learn an opera was ‘The Witches of Venice’ by Philip Glass which sounded like a pastiche of his work by another hand. Ah well! You live, and in my case as far as Philip Glass is concerned, you don’t learn!

This is my half-day day and I am looking forward to it with a child-like glee. As the illness has officially been downgraded to an inconvenience I hope that I will be able to enjoy the extra time with the sort of guilty pleasure that we teachers feel when we have time off.

To celebrate this freedom Toni and I are going to have lunch out. I will then have to spend the rest of the week trying to remember that it is not the weekend!

It would be good to go to the restaurant where we used to live because I should now be able to pick up my new watch which will have been deposited there by my friendly (if tardy) beach salesperson who has been promising me a ‘superior’ watch to compensate for the two good looking but dud watches he sold me previously. As I have written previously, I still hope, nay expect that he will have done the decent thing. Touching isn’t it?

Faith I might add which was totally unjustified as no watch was waiting for me in spite of the attempts of the restaurant owner to get the dealer to do the decent thing. Ah well.

My resting this afternoon was in emulation of little Hans Carstop in The Magic Mountain. I took to the third floor and stretched out in the glorious sunshine like a patient in a sanatorium and the lounger promptly collapsed! The fact that I was able to shrug of this catastrophe rather than greet it with a glissando of coughing indicates that I really am over the worst of the lingering illness!

At the moment I am reading a book of extracts called ‘Adventure’. It has a cover illustration of one of those lunatic climbers hanging from a rock by his fingertips with an eagle lurking in the background. Not content with a photograph this has been rendered as a painting which looks completely wrong with the legs of the hapless mountaineers executing a sort of balletic jeté as his muscles bulge in all the wrong places and seem to assure him of a swift death as his scrabbling hands fail to drag himself to safety.

The extracts range from Mark Twain to Doris Lessing taking in The Prisoner of Zenda and White Fang along the way – quality, but no real appeal to modern students, and most of the extracts out of copyright too I would expect!

Although the books is almost entirely useless from a practical teaching point of view I am enjoying revisiting books which I have more than half forgotten. Who now reads Paul Berna? Good, if educationally pointless fun!

Who can ask for more?

Enough already!

Home + honey and lemon with hot water + bed = relief. That was the simple equation for yesterday evening.

I was tempted out of bed by the promise of prawns and spinach. This also gave me the opportunity to adjust one horrific statement that I had made in my blog yesterday to wit, that nothing in The Elixir of Love was familiar to me. This was said before the strains of the absurdly famous aria wafted out of the speakers in my car and, in spite of my debilitating inherited illness I was able to croak my way enthusiastically and defiantly along!

The process of my waking is now assisted by the helpful crashing of the rubbish men as they noisily empty the bins at the bottom of our road at ten past six in the morning. This cacophony integrates itself into the bemusingly complicated dreams that I have at that time of the morning until the strident call of the alarm on the mobile phone brings me back to some sort of reality.

I fall into the bathroom and as an experienced myopic it matters little whether the light is on or not as everything can be done on automatic apart from the insertion of the lenses which I have now reverted to wearing. With the old style hard lenses one could virtually flip them into the eye and they would stick, but with one-day soft lenses you have to be a degree more accurate in their positioning. Experienced contact lens wearers have no difficulty (whatever their actual health) of snapping into ‘Lens Mode’ to ensure an appropriately professional insertion. Their professionalism may only extend to the few seconds necessary to establish sight with a complete reversion to imbecility or insensibility immediately afterwards, but it is astonishing how the power of the lens can break through almost any debilitating condition for a few magic moments!

The kids, of course are fascinated by the change in my appearance and are all questions. My response, “I got fed up with glasses” doesn’t go anyway near enough to satisfy their curiosity and one or two of them have looked at me with wonder as if I had decided that my eyes no longer needed glasses and I had discarded them at a whim!

Our Culture Club is crumbling around our ears. The kids are not going to give up their free Friday afternoon (not surprisingly!) so we will have to think again. Our lead event, the exhibition of the paintings of the Fauve artist Vlaminck, might perhaps have been a tad esoteric (Surely not! I hear you informed intellectuals cry) so it has been dumped. Our proposed guided tour by one of the architectural team which designed the new terminal in Barcelona airport has now taken centre stage in our planning. We will probably offer it as a ‘one off’ event and then build on the response to that. It’s hard work bringing advantaged children to Culture, but it surely will be worth it in the long run. Isn’t it?

As I had a free period at the end of the day I took myself off home and took to my bed in double quick time as soon as I arrived.

I am now officially disgruntled at the length of time that this illness is taking to work its way through my system.

Each lesson provides its own energy to get me through it but I feel somewhat drained at the end. It is perhaps a good thing that tomorrow is my ‘owed’ half day after an early start and taking the kids sailing last week.

My bed has never seemed so inviting.

It's the paper not the content!

Spanish organizations love paper. If they don’t have what they consider enough then they will photocopy until the ‘file’ becomes respectable. No matter how ineffectual an institution may be, no organization will fall down on the national standards of paper production. Even The School That Sacked Me produced voluminous wads of paperwork to cover (or illustrate) their complete lack of caring.

My school is not so callous but what they did today constitutes mental cruelty in its most blatant form.

My contract has changed: I was on a temporary contract now my contract is permanent. Even though my employment from one academic year to another was seamless, the school did, in effect sack me at the end of June and reemployment at the beginning of September.

Today I had the paperwork for that dismissal with all the accompanying figures which, for a moment made me believe that four thousand Euros had been paid into my account. This would have been a good thing.

Alas! This is just a case of the paperwork from three months ago finally catching up with me. The money has already been paid in the form of my normal salary for June and the various sums of money which have to be paid when someone leaves service. No one who I know has the slightest idea of how these sums of money are arrived at, but the result of these sums saw me through July as well.

August and September were the cruel months when no pay appeared in my dwindling bank account and the sum now seems even more derisory when I have had a false dawn of financial viability with the envelope handed to me this morning with the ancient paperwork promising thousands! Reality is a cruel friend!

I felt so rotten at the end of yesterday that I called in to El Corte Ingles on the strength of a half understood advert on the classical radio station I listen to on the way to and from school. The shop appeared to be singularly free of special offers but, lo and behold, there in a miniscule section of the music department was the promised view of Opera goodies all at 50% reduction.

I freely admit that I went a bit mad and ended up buying things which, with calmer reflection I might possibly have passed by. The majority of discs that I have bought seem to be highlights from the opera rather than full works – and I suspect that they are reworked analogue versions, but at half price they will do to while away the time that I am stuck in traffic jams on the way to work and the time that I am in a world of my own on the way back!

I have bought another version of ‘Orfeo’ which is a direct fault of Jim, a fellow student in Swansea University, who asked to play records on my record player that he had been given to listen to by his tutor. The first playing of the ‘overture’ to ‘Orfeo’ captivated me and I refused to let him take the records out of my room. I now agree with Robert that this opera is nothing like as good as The Coronation of Poppea – but Orfeo retains a special place in my affections. And at €18 for an Archiv version of the opera is was not something which I was going to pass by!

I am no absolutely sure what, exactly I have bought, except it was a lot and will take me weeks to listen to.

My first choice of disc was completely at random as I took the first one my hand closed on out of the bag and put it on the car system. I can remember hearing ‘The Elixir of Love’ a few times in a WNO performance with Arthur Davis (I think) as the juve lead. The quack doctor was played (or rather overplayed) by a series of character singers and I have a dim recollection of the basic plot. The rather depressing fact about my listening to the music which belted out of the speakers was that I had no real recollection of the music at all. The quality of tunefulness in the opera is such that everything sounds vaguely familiar but nothing that I could whistle with confidence until towards the end of the CD and the aria 'Una furtiva lagrima' when familiarity bounced back into my musical memory!

I do whistle along with the music. I’m alone in the car so I can do things like that without exciting my passengers to open rebellion. You should hear me yell along to Nielsen symphonies accompanied by OTT conducting movements to the confusion and distraction of passing drivers!

Even if the music is not familiar (though I know that I have heard it) the cast is spectacular and the recording crisp and expressive. There is what appears (on first sight) to be something like a cartoon version of the storyline and a listening guide too. If nothing else they will be good for my Spanish!

I am half planning to call in today (I feel just as bad) and buy the rest of the discs by way of compensation for my struggles today.

But I probably won’t.

Especially as the extra money I thought that I had was but a chimera born of a delayed paper chase!

Why bother?

The legacy of disease ridden colleagues and students crawling with germs has finally been realized in me and I felt rotten during the weekend and I feel a bloody sight worse now that I am in school.

Because of the complete (and I mean complete) lack of supply teachers in our school and in most other private schools there is very real emotional blackmail for you to struggle into work no matter how bad you are feeling. I used to do that in Britain as a matter of course, but I feel mounting resentment in doing the same in a moneyed system that does not seem able to use its cash for the amelioration of the colleagues it exploits!

I am relying on the old adrenaline rush of actually being in front of a class to cope not only with the cough and cold but also with the wearing of contact lenses and the blurred edges they give to perception at the margins!

And Toni has something to answer to as well. As he is now in Terrassa for a family wedding I was the sole object of a mosquito’s attention during his absence. With a calculated nastiness the mosquito bit my down the side of my right hand in a concentrated attack that I have never experienced before. If a mosquito has a choice between foreign and home grown blood then, in my experience it chooses the domestic product. With no Catalan blood to drink she turned to the headier draughts of British Blood (Group A+) and gorged herself on it.

In the morning, with contact lenses firmly attached and the light on, I scoured (metaphorically) the walls to search for the mean mozzie and, as our walls are uniform white, even with my mismatched lenses I was able to descry her. I am using the female pronoun because I have been told that only the females bite. My attempts to kill her with my glasses case were futile as I feel that the finality of my swing was mitigated by the fear that I would leave a large blood stain on the erstwhile pristine walls. The bloody (and I mean that literally) thing escaped and is obviously lurking waiting for the hours of darkness to attack my left hand.

I will intensify my defences against this marauder with sprays, patches, high pitched electrical insect repellents – and I will also close the window. The last probably being the most effective of my actions. I do all this with a certain amount of resentment as these damn insects should now be dead. There is always a price to be paid for the continuing good weather in this country! It chimes in well with my assumed puritan sense of not getting anything for nothing!

In spite of my incapacity for coherent academic thought I have managed to read (if that is the right word) two extraordinary books. These were both written and illustrated by Nick Bantock and were ‘Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence’ ISBN 0-8118-0180-2 and ‘Sabine’s Notebook’ ISBN 0-87701-788-3.

These ‘books’ are actually collections of imaginary cards and letters sent from and to a graphic artists by a mysterious correspondent who claims to be able to ‘see’ what Griffin is drawing and painting as he is painting it. The letters are actually in decorated envelopes and have to be extracted to be read.

The conceit of the whole series is that we never really know whether Sabine is actual or a manifestation of the artist. In a post modern sense it plays with the whole concept of the writer and persona; the creator and the created. Rather pretentiously the work has running quotations from Yeats’ ‘Second Coming’ which adds a level of seriousness (or playfulness) depending on your point of view.

In the publishing information the book is encapsulated as 1. Imaginary Letters and 2. Toy and movable book – specimens. I do remember buying a book of ‘real’ letters as an experiment for a class library and it went down very well (and lasted longer than I would have expected) but this takes the practical idea and makes something more visually exciting and with a more satisfying narrative.

Essentially I think that it is little more than a beautifully produced piece of self indulgence – but it is a delight to look at and stimulating to read. God alone knows how much they cost to produce!

The day is dragging and I am thinking wistfully of my bed.

And that last sentence was merely an ending rather than a rather pathetic plea for sympathy. Though if there is any going . . .

A change of sight!

I loathe and detest glasses. Not I hasten to add those crystal goblets purchased lovingly by me over the years following the strict lead of my shopaholic mother, but rather those over priced pieces of ground glass which perch on my nose and are supposed to give me perfect vision.

They have never given me perfect vision and I find the points of contact that a pair of glasses makes on my face to be areas of real irritation.

Contact lenses (in spite of their multifarious negative points) did seem to be The Answer. The hard pieces of unyielding substance that formed my first pair of contact lenses reduced me to the position of a lachrymose nun: I cried all the time and I could not raise my eyes from the ground. Every time I attempted to look at something normally it felt as though someone had knifed my eyes. The famous scene in Le Chien Andelou where an eye is slit open could have been the everyday story of any contact lens beginner at the time when I was fitted for them.

The namby-pamby (that is the first time that I have ever written that) plastics which form modern contact lenses mean that there is no ‘getting used to them period of pain’ for wearers. They simply pop them in their eyes and carry on living. So unfair!

Apart from getting specs of dust under the lenses – and believe me you do not know what real pain is until that happens – there is also the matter of keeping them clean.

I could go through the different solutions that I have had to use: the various design of container that I have tried and lost; the inventive ways of cleaning lenses when you have no solution; the inventive way of storing lenses when you have lost the container and the numerous hunts for a small transparent object when it has popped out of your eye – but I won’t. Suffice to say that I did not look after my lenses and cleaning them (Any opticians reading this should turn away at this point) meant sucking them.

The advent of disposable lenses seemed perfect for me. And when the disposable bit of the life of the lens was a single day then I thought that the New Order had arrived!

One day lenses were more comfortable and you didn’t have to look after them. All problems solved.

Apart from my eyes. My progressive myopia was soon joined by its opposite and I became long sighted as well.

Not worry there are such things, believe it or not, as double sighted lenses and graded lenses and vari focal and dual focal and every other type of focal lens so that the patient should be able to read and at the same time see distances.

I have tried every variant lens known to ophthalmic science (there’s a contradiction if ever there was one) and not one of them works with my eyes. I have ended up with lenses for each eye which do different jobs; the lens in one eye is supposed to be for reading and the other is for distances. “Your brain,” my optician blithely said, “will work out how to use them.”

My brain will have none of it. The lenses are a compromise and my brain knows it. I can sort of see close up for some text and I can see well enough to drive, but neither is perfect.

I also have yet another pair of glasses (there was a time when I kept the opticians going singlehandedly with my eyes, so to speak) made for some inexplicable reason by the car maker Jaguar which are supposed to be used with my contact lenses when I read! I know, I know, it seems stupid to me too, but I bought into this ‘solution’ and I have, at last decided to put it to the test.

The conditions in my present school are, shall we say, less demanding than in my last and so I have decided to see if this compromise will work.

I will, of course forget my glasses, or forget to put my contact lenses in or a combination of both but I do have one factor working to ensure that I remember. I am beginning to develop those little indentations on either side of my nose where the kidney bean shaped piece of plastic holds the frame – and that is simply unacceptable.

So vanity is the driving force behind my experiment – and there have been worse motivations, so don’t sneer.

I await the panic which will accompany my now unaccustomed insertion of contact lenses in the dark.

It is a situation ripe for chaos – just the way to start a school day!

The days merge

The journey to school yesterday was only marginally intolerable. I am starting off in the dark and grinding my teeth with frustration as the traffic solidifies around me while the view of my destination remains infuriatingly distant.

I am now starting for school about three quarters of an hour earlier than I used to last year. As I keep reiterating, I really am not paid enough for the extra hassle.

I think that these lengthening times that I spend on the road before I arrive to spend time in school account for the vague feeling of dislocation that I am feeling today. Arriving early and having desultory conversations with people waiting to go to early classes is not the best way to start the day.

The press and television are all full of Madrid’s bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games. They have been told that their bid was not good in terms of presentation so for the final attempt to get the votes of the IOC they have dragooned the King and the President to go to Copenhagen to make the pitch.

There is little firm information to go on to make an informed guess about who will have the privilege of spending vast sums of money on a fortnight’s entertainment, but it does seem that Madrid is something of an outsider. Tokyo too does not seem to be at the forefront, so that leaves Chicago and Rio.

Putting the games in Rio seems like a risk in all possible ways, so my money is on Chicago. This evening will see the result and whether my analysis was correct. With the IOC anything is possible and I understand that the chair of the committee that made the assessment of the candidate cities was Moroccan – that adds another factor given the general attitude of the population in this country to the African country out of which they have carved a couple of cities and termed them part of Spain!

I typed all that yesterday. I stayed awake for long enough to see that Rio won (so much for my analysis) and then went for a little lie down. And then it was tomorrow.

And I think that I have the start of a cold or worse. I blame Toni of course. He was ill last week and in some way he must have infected me. One always has to have someone to blame!

Today has not been good, though feeling ‘not well’ did not stop our going out to lunch at our ‘local’ and a fine experience it was too. We are unbelievably lucky to have one of our nearest restaurants situated on the beach and with panoramic views along the beach to the mountains and out to sea. And good value too!

The story of my watch continues. Being susceptible to the blandishments of itinerant watch sellers, I inevitably fall to their completely implausible claims for decent looking watches. One seller (who can obviously tell a potential sucker at a glance) has managed to sell me two watches – neither of which worked. The watches look good but never keep out the water. Never.

I have given him back two watches and have been told that I will be given one ‘special’ watch to make up for the trouble. That was weeks ago. We have seen him twice since and he has assured us that the watch will appear.

Today, by chance, we met him again and, after the administration of a sharp slap he laughingly assured me that ‘tomorrow’ would see its appearance. And I still believe!

I am touching at times.

Or touched.

What were you saying?

After an hysterically enthusiastic conversation in what I take to be Spanish with a member of the office staff, I have decided (yet again) to find out about proper Spanish lessons to improve my command of the language. It is not as if I do not have incentives.

I find myself something of an outsider in general conversations at the lunch table for example when in a room which seems to have been designed specifically to produce the worst possible acoustics for chatting I am attempting to make sense of conversations in which I have only understood about 50% of what is being said.

This does have the advantage of making my stuttering interjections have a piquancy which I did not intend as I sometimes have only grasped a facet of the conversation rather than its main thrust so my comments cause everyone to look at me with an expression of mixed interest and deep concern!

The school is also prepared to pay for my lessons! So I really have little or no excuse. That does not, of course mean that I will do anything about it, but I will nurse my guilt as I sip a glass of Rioja of an evening.

I started for school a full hour before the start of my teaching time and still I ran into heavy traffic. Last year if I had set out at the same time I would have been assured of an easy run through to the school and also assured of a reasonable parking space. Something is obviously going on and I wish it would stop!

I have been encouraged by the member of the office staff who also lives in Castelldefels to give it until the end of the month; by that time we should have reverted to normal patterns of morning irritation. She confidently predicts that people will have decided that their jobs are simply not worth getting up that early for or found another and easier way to work. I have to admit that we do not have a Plan B if this does not take place. I await with trepidation the end of the month.

All my frees this afternoon were wiped out by my agreeing to accompany the PE teacher with a group of Year 9 pupils as they went down to the Olympic Port in Barcelona for their sailing lessons.

This particular year in the school contains some choice specimens so the trip down in the bus was fairly unrestrained. I resolutely refused to look around and gazed steadfastly at the passing scenery. When the PE teacher turned around I accompanied her hissing with a stern look. Who could ask for more?

As the PE teacher and I sat on the quay side it was delightful to see the spoilt scions of various wealthy Barcelona families use large water plastic water bottles cut in half to bail out their sodden boats before they attempted (and failed the first few times) to get the sails raised.

There was hardly a breath of wind so when the little flotilla of boats was finally ready they had to be tied together and an inflatable motorboat towed them out to sea. Or wherever they went! Out of sight; out of mind and as soon as the last bow vanished from view I read a book and my colleague lay back and fell asleep! It was, by way of mitigation, a beautiful afternoon and she has two kids, or possibly three.

Although we came down by bus the kids were allowed to melt into the centre of the city at the end of their time on the boats. We two teachers had a taxi back to the school. Our trip bisected the city and we travelled some of the way back to school on the Diagonal. This gives you the opportunity as a passenger in a car to see just how spectacular and stylist Barcelona can be. The façades of buildings are constantly interesting and sometimes astonishing. Barcelonetta and the Diagonal have some sumptuous modern buildings as well: it is an architectural feast.

I was tired however by the time I got back to the car and I was praying for a clear run through to Castelldefels. My wish was granted by the traffic was exceptionally heavy and my sedate progress was enlivened by the lunatic antics of drivers who were prepared to take absurd risks for minimum advantage on crowded roads. But I don’t even scream with impotent rage anymore; there’s no point!

This week has been a long one and I am longing for the weekend to start and give me the opportunity of a lie in until at least 8.00 am – such a luxury!

Unconsidered trifles!

There must (surely) be a reason why I have a pair of (clean) underpants (mine!) in my briefcase. I half remember something from the end of last term but the details are fairly hazy. Not, I might add because of the depths of alcoholic stupor I was in at the auspicious termination of educational activities. No, I was cleaning the flat prior to its handover on the last day of term. And I still wake up sweating when I think of the work that Toni and I did in July!

It also shows how dedicated a teacher I am in my new environment by the fact that I did not discover this intriguing garment until well into this term when I was frantically trying to find something else.

It is a sad teacher who doesn’t clear out his school bag thoroughly at the end of the summer term in preparation for the ‘new’ start which usually links a clean, fresh briefcase with a renewed optimism to face the new term.

Finding these underpants which are still, inexplicably in my case makes me wonder about what else might be lurking in the depths. Perhaps this weekend, if I am feeling strong I will completely empty my case and the hell with the consequences!

I really going to have to address my complete inability to come to terms with the names (I am assured they do posses them) of the pupils I teach.

I have gone throughout the whole of my career with only the sketchiest notion of the personal nomenclature of the individuals who have sat before me while I have digressed in front of them.

One or two of the more resilient pupils have demanded me to tell them my names each time I pass them: I applaud their intelligence in appraising the problem and finding a possible solution to it. Would that others followed their lead!

The school has a system: teachers who take the first year take each of the three classes only for a term and then pass on to the next. This, the school in its touching naivety assumes, is enough time to learn all the new pupils’ names and then keep them in the memory for the whole of the time that these kids are in the school!

For the other teachers this does seem to work (god knows how) and they discuss pupils with an ease and with a name which leaves me breathless.


I am sure that my inability to retain the names of other people is a sign of a deep seated neurosis – a sort of super-id arrogance which does me no credit and which I should fight. But as I don’t know the names of my professional colleagues why the hell should I be expected to know the names of the mere amateur clients?

If anyone has any reasonable suggestions to aid my memory (short of putting labels on the foreheads of all the kids) and suggestions which are commensurate with the pitifully low salary that the school pays then I will be happy to adopt them.

It goes without saying that if anyone (staff or child) doesn’t know my name I am contemptuously disgusted with them.

I think this attitude goes back to my arrival in school when I was greeted as something little sort of a knight in shining white armour walking on water while changing stones into fresh, crisp loaves. The teacher I replaced must have had a nightmare of an experience in the school and she was eventually sacked to make room for me! With an introduction like that the school can be grateful that I didn’t immediately go to one of the overpriced curio shops in the centre of Barcelona in the Gothic Quarter and buy a Cardinal’s ring to give the people I passed among the appropriate object to which they could pay their respects!

Reality did, of course, kick in and leave me stranded on the arid wastes of grammar clutching scraps of literature about my person to salvage something of my self-respect as my colleagues waltzed through the tangled woods of linguistic sterility with practiced ease. They don’t make mixed metaphors like that nowadays!

Meanwhile I have to survive for the next year and twenty four days before the generosity of my increasing age begins at last to pay dividends.

What of my classes? My first year sixth is now already beyond redemption as we whip each other up into a state bordering on linguistic hysteria where ludicrous digression meanders into irrelevance which then mutates into anecdote and subsides into unsubstantiated opinion. We do have a stimulating time, but I don’t think that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing!

My youngest classes listen to me in fascinated horror as I cement each aspect of grammar and vocabulary that they have to learn with snippets of information that leave them gibbering with knowledge overload.

My second year sixth was today subjected to a listening test. They had printed answer sheets with the questions on them. I armed with a cassette tape and a player set up the machine before the class and, having distributed the answer sheets then, with a flourish turned on the tape recorder.

It didn’t work of course.

I had plugged it into the wrong sort of electrical socket. My second choice of socket brought much needed power to the machine.

It was the wrong tape of course.

A few desultory attempts to find the right part of the right side of the bloody tape and the lesson was heading steadily for chaos.

So I told them about the concept of the ‘Monkey Mark’ and they all then completed the test by random choices of the appropriate letters for their answers which should only have been put in the spaces after they had listened (twice) to the taped extracts.

One boy got 10/18 for his score!

I have thus successfully taught a whole class that they don’t need to do anything more in their examinations than put down whatever letter appeals to them when the choice presents itself!

Need I go on? In a school whose motto is ‘Test Them Till They Drop’ I am forming a one many Counter-Revolutionary Committee for the destruction of the Culture which has built up the reputation of the school over the 40 years that it has been in existence!

Ah well, one should always have a hobby!

Every day has an ending

One of the many pleasures in this country is going to a nondescript bar/restaurant in the centre of town on the Ramblas (well, our version in Castelldefels) and having a set meal where each one of the three courses was well cooked, delicious and well presented. An important factor in my enjoyment was the quality of the cutlery: chunky, modern, sinuous and clean. And a drink was included in the €9 cost. Excellent!

Traffic continues to be horrific on the way to work, in spite of the fact that I am leaving for school almost literally at the crack of dawn. The traffic was nothing like so intense in the last academic year and it adds a level of stress to the beginning of the day which I can do without. As I can the continuous noise of the aircraft which now seem to use the lights in the garden as an essential guide on their flight paths.

If this is what it is going to be like with the new terminal taking extra flights then the tranquillity of the area is going to be rudely shattered! Ah well, I’m buggered if I am going to move again for a few years at least!

I still have not found my pace in the new academic year and I (in common with my colleagues) am tired at the end of the day. Two colleagues today told me that they go home and plonk themselves in front of the telly and have a drink. And who can blame them? And us. And me!

My classes with older pupils are learning how to encourage me to regale them with the ‘unconsidered trifles’ from my rag bag mind. I do try and link everything I say to some salient grammatical or linguistic point though I have to admit that my connections are sometimes tenuous to say the least.

I find myself remembering a past deputy head who used to use the most amazing and wildly unsuitable topics in his morning assemblies (quite safely, I was always the only person in the hall actually listening to him!) and then suddenly lurch towards the inevitable moral at the end of his incomprehensible diatribe by saying something like, “And so don’t drop litter!” Sometimes I was literally open mouthed in amazement at the glorious non sequiters which he threw at an unheeding audience!

I truly fear that his example is coming back to haunt me and I sometimes frighten myself by how far I have deviated from teaching the tedious grammatical archaisms in which our text books seem to delight.

If any of our pupils actually went to Britain and started using in normal speech some of the convoluted constructions they are encouraged to form then people will back away from them in horror!

I do try to keep myself in check and stick to what I am supposed to be teaching, but with such uninteresting source material I do find that I have a Homer-like attention span when it comes to the text books.

Unfortunately, these are the Holy Texts on which a whole series of examinations are going to be based so I will have to knuckle down and get on with promulgating the silly lessons contained therein to give my pupils a chance of passing.

I think that the kids will remember my ties more clearly than the exciting aspects of grammar packaged so tediously in the books. I am open to the suggestion that it would therefore be my professional duty to find a more attractive way of presenting the information so that they could respond to it more easily.

To which of course the simple answer is that they do not pay me enough for that! And I have no confidence that they ever will.

Our Culture Club has now expanded its membership to three. I can’t help thinking that giving up a free Friday afternoon to culture is something of a stumbling block to most pupils.

We are still determined to try and get our programme for the Club offered to the kids in another way, but it will take some rethinking and a little more commitment from a generally unenthusiastic student body before our ideas for a thriving centre for cultural dissemination and discussion becomes a reality within the school.

Still, we do not despair and the preparations for our visit to La Caixa Forum to visit the major exhibition of the paintings of Vlaminck continue. We spent a period in the morning deciding on the most striking poster that we could to try and whip up a little support for this cultural jaunt – we will have to see if the wild beast aspect of this particular Fauve can still stimulate the jaded appetites of our pupils.

One more full teaching day and then off to see the kids mess about in boats. Oh for the pen of a Jerome K Jerome to describe their antics.

But I don’t know what to expect from this little weekly jaunt and I don’t particularly want to ask for details in case it is too prosaic.

As always I live in hope.

Whoops! There goes another one!

I now have some idea of what the Berlin Airlift must have sounded like.

I understand from an aeronautically inclined friend that Castelldefels is only supposed to be over-flown (as I believe the technical term is) when there is a strong wind in the wrong direction. I arrived home and scurried up to the eyrie to snatch the last rays of the declining sun while Toni groaned on his bed of pain with a contrary tummy.

My grumbling acceptance of the watery sunshine that was supposed to colour my limbs to a shade of rich teak was made all the more difficult by the accompaniment of what seemed like one of Bomber Harris’s 1,000 plane missions which had somehow popped out of the Second World War and decided to disturb my well earned peace.

From the balcony of the eyrie you can see the planes lining up in the distance to make their approach virtually over my sun bed on to the runway in Barcelona Airport. They are now so low that I can test my autism quotient by glancing at the plane as it passes and then estimating the number of rivets in the fuselage!

The only thing that gives me some pleasure is that there is a dedicated band of Castelldefels inhabitants who monitor the plane that come over and then phone up the airport and raucously (rather like the planes themselves) complain to the authorities.

This evening has been ridiculous with what I can only assume is Europe’s entire air fleet making a visit to our city.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you get used to the sound of planes passing overhead. Such people are those who have bought (not rented) their accommodation and are looking to sell!

Today was the first day back after our little four day break.

The entire staff was exhausted by first break!

In spite of the fact that I still rather enjoy teaching once the class is captive in front of me I do not find the days easy. The teaching is not laborious – though what I have to teach is almost terminally boring and the text books with their lavish colour and their attempts at trendy modernity make it all somehow worse.

I am allowed, nay encouraged to teach literature; but it is seen very much as a luxury and something which does not have a strict relevance to the all powerful examinations which the students have to take. These examinations are grammar based and the writing is functional. I have effectively been de-skilled in the teaching I am asked to do and each day reveals more and more of the absurd world of English grammar to me. How many of you English Teachers out there know what a stative verb is? How many of you would contemplate with anything other than horror having to teach the conditional in all its numbered forms up to and including mixed? How familiar are you with the passive and what is a phrasal verb? I’m not even going to touch on the forms and descriptions of verb forms that we are expected to know and teach.

And the kids lap it all up. It is only when you ask them to read or write that they become restive! It is a mad world my masters!

But it is money in the bank and the rent paid so I will Follow The Book and keep my more heretical literary leanings to myself!

My books are still in fragmented chaos and yesterday I tried to find an edition of the poems of John Clare that I know I have. I was re-reading ‘I Am’ in Q’s Oxford Collection of English Verse and was confused by the first line in his chosen version of the poem.

The line with which I am familiar is:
“I am – yet what I am, none cares or knows”
Q’s choice is of the version which starts:
“I am! Yet what I am who cares, or knows?”
I think that the first version of the poem was produced when Clare’s poems were published by the Superintendant of the Asylum in which the poet spent so much of his life. I know that trying to find some sort of consensus on the punctuation is difficult, but most versions are variations on the first and more well known than the second which is a dramatic departure from the accepted line.

So I looked for my copy of Clare’s poems. And try as I might I couldn’t find it!

I know in the scheme of things quibbles about the authenticity of versions of a line of a nineteenth century poet’s best known work is not great. But I wanted to know and check my book and the frustration of knowing that somewhere in the serried ranks of very roughly ordered volumes the book lurks was great.

Once again I make resolutions to spend a little time each day moving ten or twenty books so that at least there is some progress and each day the sheer scale of the task daunts me.

I should remember my oft quoted motto, “Anything is Better Than Nothing” and get on with it.

As a sign of this new determination I have moved The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations next to The Times Book of Quotations next to my desk.

Not much: but it’s a start!

"Poop poop!" said Toad

The worst thing about Spanish roads is their sheer inconsistency.

Yesterday I went to a friend’s house for lunch. She lives in ‘the hills’ and so I was directly dependent on my GPS to get me there. The first part of the journey was on one of the roads that I knew and it was only after I took the ‘other’ branch of the motorway from the one that I usually take to go to Terrassa that I was in uncharted territory.

That ‘uncharted’ bit was only metaphorical as the calm voice of the GPS was obviously quite confident about where we were going and, as the roads on which I was travelling were a minimum of three lanes wide I was jocose.

It was when I hit a B road that I felt less secure. My first mistake was when The Voice told me that I was approaching a roundabout which did not readily show itself. As The Voice told me to take the first exit from a roundabout which did not exist I noticed, unobtrusively tucked away from the road on which I was travelling, what could have been a casual roundabout.

My eventual return along the road after The Voice had uttered the dreaded word, “Recalculating!” did reveal the timid little roundabout and I was back on course.

From there on the road transmogrified itself in a playful and capricious way which left my faith in The Voice severely tested. One moment the road would be a normal two lane entity with road marking and everything and then, suddenly, for no apparent reason it would look like some unused country lane. Sometime the road surface would be up to normal road standards and sometimes it would suddenly change into something which looked as though the residents had just thrown something together to cover a few potholes.

It didn’t help that these changes in road surface were accompanied by a gradient of what seemed at times like 1 in 1. I kept thinking that the roads were too steep and too badly kept to be anything other than a private farm road and then on roads far too narrow I would see a bus stop! I think that I would have had to have had a fairly strong sedative to take a ticket on a bus travelling those precipitate roads, but at least it encouraged me to believe that I was still on the right track.

The actual road on which my friend lived was not on the maps but I had a hand drawn indication of what I had to do when the GPS gave up. Her road was, if anything, even steeper than the other roads that I had used and reversing into a space on a slope so steep that the seat belt automatically locked put pressure on the capabilities of the car and left a funny mechanical smell in the air when the manoeuvre had been completed.

She has an incredible parcel of land around her property with trees galore and enough space for the dogs, cats and a hen that she looks after.

I had left Toni at home feeling sick, lying in front of the television looking at Big Brother – a picture of misery that would be hard to duplicate from any work of literature!

I left before the sun set as I had absolutely no desire to try the precipitous, circuitous roads in anything other than bright daylight. I timed things well and darkness only approached when I was safely back on Big Roads that I knew well.

As all three people having lunch were linked by searing experienced in The School That Sacked Me you can imagine the course that at least some of the conversation took. It was not however all negative and plans were made for action which could result in a positive education outcome – something which has eluded The School That Sacked Me for some time.

We have come away from our meeting inspired to take further action and to keep ourselves informed of anything that we discover.

Today is the last day of the ‘holiday’ and I think that I have spent the time well combining everything from tree felling to sunbathing. School is going to be an anti-climax after the ferocious activity and masterly inaction which have characterized this break!

I do have to do some school work as well – though god knows with the sun shining and the beach beckoning I am, shall we say, disinclined to do any.

I only hope the perennial guilt which accompanies a typical Sunday afternoon in the life of a normal teacher will kick in and prompt me to action!

As your fancy takes you!

Sitting on the balcony of the eyrie in the morning sun drinking tea from my grandmother’s Royal Albert and reading ‘Lycidas’ by Milton may not be everyone’s idea of the best way to start a day, but it certainly has my vote.

With only the mechanical rumble of the water purification system for the pool and the roar of a passing 747 for company I can appreciate the fascinating complexity of Milton’s paean for his dead friend. Although I have read this poem a number of times before (I ‘did’ it in school and university) I was still jolted to find that phrases like, ‘dead ere his prime’; ‘To sport with Amaryllis in the shade’; ‘Fame is the spur’; ‘Look homeward Angel’; ‘Tomorrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new’ – all come from this work!

I wonder how many people can read this poem today and be comfortable with all the Classical references? Certainly not me. Milton’s word order is also a difficulty or a delight depending on your education and age. And his resolute Christianity, “Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more,/ For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead.” May also be a problem in this more than secular age.

In an age which finds the dreadful doggerel of the obituary verses printed in newspapers to be the lyrical face of public woe, a highly worked English version of a Classical original seems by its very effort and complexity to be out of sympathy with real grief. How can real feeling find its way through a forest of Classical allusion and the straitjacket of irregularly rhymed verse. These constraints to modern eyes were of course liberation to a person versed in the Classical forms. For Milton the elements of the Pastoral Elegy were already in place; the artifice of the form gave him a framework to express his authentic grief and his absolute faith in the ‘blest Kingdom’ which would, for Lycidas, ‘wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.’ This faith allows the Poet to contemplate living a full life after the death of his friend and with confidence progress to ‘fresh Woods, and pastures new.’

I cannot remember this poem making much of an impact on me when I studied it in school, and my reading of it was cursory when I had to ‘do’ it in university, but this reading I found deeply moving.

The fact that the drowning of Edward King in 1637 was transformed by Milton, using the Classical name of Lycidas for his friend, allowed Milton to express a range and depth to his grief which would have seemed immoderate and questionable if he had preserved the real name of his friend. Yes, the end of the poem is uplifting and determinedly optimistic, but the memorable part of the poem is the elegy and the lyrical expression of loss. Rather like the sonnet ‘On his blindness’ we tend to remember the poignant expression of frustration rather than the fairly pompous ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’ in the conclusion. So in ‘Lycidas’ what is memorable is the grief and horrible sense of loss rather than the conventional ‘and they all died happily ever after’ of Christian optimism of the ending.

And to those of you who think that writing about a seventeenth century poem written on the death of a friend is an odd way to spend a Saturday morning – cut me some slack, at least I don’t smoke! That’s got to give me some latitude!

Viewed from the first floor living room window our destruction of the tree stumps looks wilful and rather indiscriminate. There will have to be a good deal more tidying up before the point zero of our slashing activities looks like a reasonable part of the garden, but we have made a start. There is now a substantial new part of the garden which will have to be thought about and made into a more productive area. I will leave that to Toni!

I now have to go to the estate agents to redirect their demands for money to the correct bank. I confidently expect trouble from this change over because it has seemed so smooth so far. BBVA, if they are anything like they have been in the past, will find a way to screw me. I would like to think that it was personal animosity on their part, but it isn’t, it is merely the institutional incompetence which has characterized every element in the ‘service’ that they have extended to me. I must write The Letter while my anger is still an active memory but while my feelings of revenge have cooled to allow the most effective form of expression of which I am capable.

The changing of bank accounts for the estate agents was simplicity itself (assuming they actually get the details right) but another problem has presented itself.

In the summer the parking in Castelldefels is the motorists’ equivalent of the Somme. The crazy places in which day trippers place their cars is enough to make the indigenous inhabitants weep. Especially if the unthinking outsiders actually park across your driveway, thus trapping the car inside the house.

Although parking is illegal on our side of the road as motorists have to put their vehicles on the pavement to allow others to pass, it does not stop them. This is why you have something called a ‘bardo’ to stop motorists parking. The bardo is a metal sign issued by the local authority which informs putative parkers that their vehicles will be towed away if they have the impertinence to place their cars there.

Of course you have to pay for the sign; its placement and an annual charge for the bardo to be in force. But for the peace of mind that this sign gives (motorists do generally obey it) we thought that it would be a good investment. We therefore instructed the estate agents to start the process. This process has been going on since July and nothing has happened.

Today when I went to see the estate agents about changing my bank for the payment of the rent I was informed by the person who deals with us that she had information but that it would be better if Toni phoned up and she spoke to him. Toni duly phoned and was told that a meeting face-to-face would be necessary to discuss this sign. Rather mysteriously ‘building work’ was mentioned. We have no idea what they are talking about. This afternoon will therefore see us traipsing down to the centre of Castelldefels for a ‘meeting’ with our agents to tell us things they could not over the phone! Most mysterious!

I have now (in this task orientated holiday) taken my bike back to the shop because the dynamo was impossible to work; the stand was loose and a back wheel guard was missing. In another example of my touching faith in people I will await the phone call from the shop which I was told that I would get today or tomorrow, which will tell me what is being done and when I can get my bike back.

My attempts to find a ‘bike safe’ (a construction like a big box which you can leave outside with your bike safely inside) have signally failed with people looking at me as if I am talking a strange and incomprehensible language – which, to be fair, I often am when I attempt my version of Spanish. I will not despair and I have not yet resorted to the internet and a shop in Britain. Not yet. But it’s close.

Another task completed was to buy a case for my little computer. I have been making do with the ‘skin’ that they supplied with the machine, but that is clearly inadequate and the poor little thing is getting progressively bashed. I made the mistake of taking Toni with me when I went to look at the cases on offer. Toni is very much a member of the that-will-do school of shopping – a school I might add that I regard as the antithesis of real shopping. I have ended up with something a little more bulky that I would have liked, but something which affords much more protection that the machine has had before. And I also got a free ‘mini-mouse’ which allegedly lights up in kaleidoscopic colours. It really does, I’ve tested it. When I can ever use with without ridicule I don’t know, but I think it’s rather cool!

The explanation for the meeting with the agents about the Bardo (see above) ended in our being given a photocopy of a completely incomprehensible letter from the local authority telling us that we need one and a half thousand euros of building work on the pavement if we are to be given a bardo. As the house three doors down has a bardo and has a pavement exactly the same as ours the letter does not make any sense.

This could run and run!

I'm a lumberjack and I'm . . .

There is something shockingly vandalistic about destroying a tree.

Even a tree that has been reduced to a series of truncated stalks with an unprepossessing collection of green shoots springing haphazardly from the defiant trunks.

Their final crime against humanity (in the eyes of Toni and by god they are sharp) was that the unsightly clumps of greenery attracted mosquitoes. Their fate was sealed.

At this point Irene and her chain saw come into view. Although Irene has possessed this formidable machine of wooden destruction for some time, the strictures of her daughter have prevented her from actually using it. Our mosquito friendly vegetation seemed a prime example of something begging for oblivion.

My past experience with ‘Real Machines’ has almost always ended in tears – either real or metaphorical. I still have the psychological scars from my time in the steel works when I was asked to use a pneumatic drill on a piece of recalcitrant concrete. I was not eager to wield something which had the capability of divorcing my legs from my body with insulting ease.

So I adjusted the helmet and visor to fit Toni, who then, with fastidious care cut swathes through trunks that would have taken us weeks without the mechanical help of a chainsaw.

I was pressed into service to do my share of cutting, but was speedily replaced by the unanimous plea of both people present to allow Toni to continue. I think my approach to slicing the trunks had an apocalyptic flourish which disturbed them both!

The greenery has now been consigned to the refuse area in our street and the garden looks considerably bigger. The flashing lights (don’t ask) are now laid out in a line which outlines the border of the ‘grass’ and limits the verdant green from the volcanic rubble which forms the boundary with the fence next door.

We are not satisfied with the reduction of the trunks we are looking for their complete destruction. To this end we have consulted the internet and are now going to buy copper nails and sprinkle sea salt liberally and fill drilled holes in the stumps with salt as well. If I had any Classical education at all I would proved a witty paraphrase of Cato the Elder and say Arbolo delenda est – though I have no confidence that I have the right Latin word for ‘tree’ and I am far too lazy to look it up, even on the internet! Carthage will look as though it had a light storm hit it when compare with the horrors that we are preparing to visit on the surviving stubborn stumps.

Having ‘smitten them hip and thigh’ we feel that we have accomplished a major work and can now afford to relax and take things easy. Looking back on our lunch it now seems like a partial recompense for our efforts which we were to make later on.

There is a developing story about my watch. I am a sucker for watches and have an engaging optimism that I will find a bargain in the watch department when I am shown a selection on the sea front. I have one particular seller whose watches I am always seduced by and invariably disappointed with. This has culminated in my returning two watches to him on his assurance that he would find me one ‘super’ watch to justify my faith in him.

His English doesn’t exist and his Spanish is suspect to say the least, however he gave assurances that this masterpiece of the watchmaker’s art would be in the safekeeping of a friendly restaurant owner within a week. That was some weeks ago and nothing! Today at lunch he hove into view again and once again with many protestations of sincere intent he assured both of us that the special watch would be waiting for me within a week. This story can run and run! But, unreasonable as my attitude is given all the contrary evidence, I still believe.

Above all today an important step has been taken. I have now been to my new and wonderful bank La Caixa (Catalan to the core) and made an official request for them to transfer all my money from the Worst Bank in the World BBVA (Basque to the core). This means that I really will have to Write The Letter condemning BBVA and all its works.

I will still have money in their benighted coffers because I have a device which allows me to sweep through pay stations on the motorways. The electronic device which records and sends the information sends it to the bank which issued the device: in my case BBVA. The way they got and didn’t issue the device is another element in my condemnation of the bank, but to change would entail me in the purchase of another device. So I will stay. For the time being. But all my real banking will be with La Caixa.

More tasks for tomorrow as the holiday continues.

A day of vistas

A few fugitive moments before I am dragged away from the comfortable seclusion of the staff room in building 4 and have to face my sixth form.

Already it is almost midday and we are all looking forward to a well deserved four day holiday after slogging our guts out by teaching for eight days with the kids. If only this could set a precedent for the succeeding weeks I might be able to face the future with some degree of equanimity. As it is hard reality will hit first thing on Monday morning of next week!

The things that I have planned to do in this holiday (the more I go on using the word the more it makes the four day gap seem longer) now have expanded to fill much more than the time allotted to their completion. One of the days is a Bank Holiday and trying to get anything done on a day like that which involves other people being in work is obviously a non-starter. As two of the days comprise a weekend you will note that the amount of time I have to get real things done is remarkably limited.

At long last I am going to try and transfer all of the important elements in my banking life from The Worst Bank in the World (aka BBVA) to the saintly La Caixa. I am terrified that I will forget some standing order or something and all hell will break loose. Trying to get something reestablished which has been willfully disconnected is not easy in this country so I need to take things in a regulated and careful way. I only hope that my new bank actually knows what it is doing – though having said that it would indeed be difficult for them to do worse than BBVA. And I sincerely hope that I am not tempting fate by saying that!

Disturbingly, after lunch and just before classes were due to restart I was approached by one of the Heads of School and asked to go with her to a meeting. As is usual with me I immediately assumed guilt and rapidly reviewed my teaching over the last week or so to discover where the fault was.

When I got to the meeting room the Head of English was there so it seemed like some sort of disciplinary court.

I was somewhat reassured by the Head of English saying, “I’m here to translate!” and the Head of School saying, “Stephen we want to ask of you a favour.” I still assumed that this was a polite lead up to some sort of condemnation so I remained tense.

In some ways it turned out to be worse than a denunciation. It turned out that our “pampered darlings” (Othello?) go sailing on a Thursday afternoon and they needed someone to accompany them to the Olympic Port for their shenanigans. It turns out that I have periods free on Thursday afternoon and “as you are not a form teacher” (said sotto voce by the Head of English) I was the obvious candidate to go with the kids and the Head of PE.

This removes free periods from my timetable and there is no offer of more money to compensate. This is, however a complex system of time-off in lieu. As I start one teaching day at the totally unreasonable time of 8.15 I can take half an hour at the end of the day to pay myself back – if I have a free period. The extra time for taking the kids is only considered if I am late back to school for the 4.45 finish. I am not sure of the mathematics, but if I am able to have a free afternoon every other week I think that will be acceptable. If not, then I have been taken for a fool and I will find a way out of it. If I can.

Thursday (the day on which I will be taking the kids and working a longer day) is the only day in which I have a free period last thing. There was an offer of my being able to come into school in the morning late, but this is a false idea as all the time I would gain in coming in late would be lost by having to start off for school by leaving even more time to cope with the increase in traffic.

And my timetable was changed again.

Given the way that my timetable in Llanishen changed on an almost daily basis at the start of one term when there were multiple absences I suppose I should count my blessings. And I can always walk away!

That last sentence is truly one of the sweetest that a teacher can utter – as long as it is not self defeating!

In a foolish move Toni has revealed that Messi’s annual salary could employ (at my rate of pay) 410 teachers. There is something mind-bendingly obscene about a statistic like that and, even though I think that Messi is an outstandingly competent and professional player how can he possibly be worth the salary of over four hundred teachers? It is at times like this that I remember one of my favourite quotations from Picasso when asked about the then astronomical price for one of his paintings. “Is the painting worth the money?” a reporter asked. To which the Great Man replied, “You are asking the wrong question. It is not whether the painting is worth the money, but whether the money is worth the money!” In other words society puts a value on things and judges their worth by putting a monetary price tag on them. Who is to say if a missile is worth the same as a middle rating Modern Master? All of which I think shows that I am not being paid enough!

Or something

The holiday has begun.

Friday tomorrow?

There is a definite feeling of end of term about the staff room this week – just because we have a three day week! Don’t knock it, the feeling is authentic and I am making the most of it because this will be our last real break before Christmas as far as I can tell!

I am sure that this is wrong because Spain and Catalonia have a way of suddenly presenting you with an occasional day of freedom because of some obscure festivity. All days off are gratefully received!

The school is settling down into a routine and, as far as I can tell, we have a full complement of staff. This is obviously not the case in all other schools as I have had another phone call from a school offering me work. As the call was in Spanish I have only the haziest notion of what was being offered but it was definitely work of some kind.

If anyone has teaching qualifications and they are looking for work in this area then I would suggest that they send their CVs around all the schools listed on the internet because I am sure that some of them are now in the final stages of panic as they try and secure enough warm bodies to take their classes.

The School That Sacked Me continues to lurch into the new academic year and already some of the teachers that started in the school in September have now left. The unreality that is the professional life of that place continues to amaze year after year and nothing official seems to be done about it.

A meeting of some of the Disgruntled Ones who once taught there has been tentatively arranged for some time during the impromptu holiday this extended weekend and new battle plans can be sketched out for action in the forthcoming months. At some point I must make the journey to the courts and find out what has happened to the case about the disappearing charity money. Every little helps.

In spite of (I’ve been teaching that phrase in class today) the generally positive and supportive nature of the school in which I am presently teaching I have found this start of term exhausting. As this is after only seven teaching days I have to say that the official date of my retirement seems a very long way off and any idea of extending the period of time that I continue working seems ridiculous.

As all the other members of staff seem to share my tiredness I perhaps should not read too much into the normal dread that attends teachers who see the academic year stretch away into what seems to be the sort of infinity which characterizes the disappearing writing at the beginning of Star Wars pictures.

It will be interesting to see what I am saying in January when 25% of the academic time that I have left before retirement will have gone when this first term is consigned to history. The money is useful and it does pay for the house. My investments (which are in British pounds) are 10% down and the Euro is currently trading at over 90p. Something of a disaster if I think about it, and something which my salary encourages me to forget. For the time being!

I have done my first marking and have checked and corrected the writing of a girl who wants to go and study in MIT. She was taught by me last year and came to me this term because, “Stephen is the expert on writing.” Where this accolade comes from I do not know, I have certainly done nothing obvious in the school to deserve such a commendation, but I am loath to bring reality into the picture!

I still feel an almost comical sense of unreality about my whole experience in the school. It is unlike any other in which I have worked. It is almost insanely examination orientated and as the head of English said without any irony, “We don’t do fun!” as far as the content of the teaching is concerned. Cheating is endemic and is regarded as one of the quaint traditions of the area, but the kids themselves are generally happy and polite.

They don’t listen of course, but that is something that everyone who teaches in this part of the world finds out with some speed!

I suppose that the fact that I can walk away at any moment is also something which adds to the general feel of otherworldliness about my time there. It is obviously too good an opportunity to squander, but the oddness of my situation keeps intruding into any unguarded moment in my teaching.

Meanwhile I look for images from the internet to bring some reality to the Somerset Maugham story that I am attempting to get the equivalent of the First Year Sixth to read. Believe you me, it is uphill work and I had never realized quite how much there is to explain in what seems like a perfectly innocuous story like ‘Before the Party.’

It is, as they say, an education to teach!