The end in sight!

No teaching day which has a lost free period can ever be described as “good” but this is a Friday and the sun is shining and this is my early finish. One has to take comfort where one finds it!



My trip home is going to be enlivened by calling into Alcampo to change the name day book which had already been read: far be it from me not to take advantage of being in a large supermarket not to waste a little money. The Lump Sum (surely deserving of its capitalization) is lurking untouched in my bank account and is piteously screaming to be squandered on something gadgety.


I have in previous periods of financial equilibrium used stationery to quell the irresistible impulse to spend. Many a time and oft a box of paper clips or a packet of self-seal envelopes has placated the devil of expenditure – but in a time of electronic machines all claiming consumer attention such displacement activity seems pedestrian to the point of being a fully paid up member of the group of Captain Swing and I for one spurn to be tarred with the Luddite brush.


The Problem of the Threatened Watch (which sounds like an unpublished Sherlock Holmes story) is one which is preoccupying me at the moment. My Birthday Watch is fine and elegant but it is not supposed to be used for swimming. On past behaviour I will, inevitably, find myself going for a shower at the end of my swim and then noticing that the timepiece has been on my wrist for the whole of the number of lengths.


I have, already, worn it in the shower on a couple of occasions and it does not look to have sustained any noticeable damage and there is not the tell tale misting which indicates that the timepiece has the added lubricant of H2O which, in my experience does not encourage the crystal to vibrate with any added fervour.


I think that I will have to buy another watch which I can then forget about wearing and use the 3 atm watch for special and “dry” occasions!


Spend, spend and spend again.

Snail time!

The week is hobbling towards the spaciousness of the weekend – but the day off on Monday has, paradoxically, made the remaining part of the week seem much longer. Proof, if ever it were needed of the truth of small parts of Herr Einstein’s temporal theories!



Today I expect to invest in the future of Catalonia by buying some of the attractively priced bonds which the Generalitat is issuing in a desperate attempt to get some money. As these offer a relatively high rate of interest my disinterest in the development of my adopted country is tempered by enlightened self-interest at the same time!


Buying bonds which have an odd time limit of one year and two days to produce their return is also another way to keep the cash out of my hot little hands. Money in the bank is a foreign concept for me and in the present parlous circumstances of the financial organization of the world seems to be a deliberate slap in the face of recovery. One feels almost a religious fervour in trying to spend to encourage the frail shoots of economic growth. To save is virtually an act of treason!


My recent reading of “Stuff” has shown that there is a whole world of gadgets which I do not possess. It is comforting to learn that gadgets, like the poor, are always with us. While I have no real enthusiasm for communing with the down and outs in this world I do feel that I could develop a mission to those neglected gadgets which are consigned to the ignominy of lying neglected in their cardboard coffins with the seals unbroken. I feel myself to be a Carter or a Caernarvon breaking through and seeing “Wonderful things!” as each new gadget is freed and brought out into the light of day!


Buying the bonds was not as simple as I thought it would be. The issue by the Generalitat is oversubscribed, so I have been told, therefore there is likelihood that we will be given a proportion of our request if not the full amount.


Talking with the bank, the lady who was dealing with me said that the majority of the issue has been taken up by people in Catalonia. She said that Madrid had not been as forthcoming; she also confided that if Madrid had issued the bonds she would have been disinclined to take them up. “I would subscribe to bonds from your country of Wales before I supported Madrid!” she said. Good to see that national prejudice is alive and well and living in the banking system.


I might also add that the Generalitat is using a vast range of banks to sell its product but not BBVA (aka The Worst Bank in the World) they obviously have some scruples even in the unseemly scramble for cash that this bond issue represents!


The Name Day Jaunt to Terrassa is complete with the presents generally deemed acceptable, though one book will have to be changed as it had already been read by the recipient. Talking of presents: I also had a late present of a couple of bottles of wine with a large cheese – more than acceptable!


I am now more tired than I care to admit and I am trying, vainly, to put out of my mind that my teaching starts at 8.15 tomorrow, which means that I have to get up at 6.30 at the latest.


Perhaps as early a turn in is called for as possible.


That would be sensible – and just think how difficult that last sentence would be for an English learner to come to terms with. (Nothing like ending with a phrasal verb!)

Taunting teachers

A school bathed in sunshine is a direct taunt to the teachers within.



When the sun shines in early November the taunt becomes even more direct and personal. The brightness lights the way towards escape, while the reality of everyday work continues behind the shutters which keep the “unnatural” light at bay. At least it is not warm enough to swim in the sea; that would be unbearable trapped so far from the watery element!


The readjustment in the time of the day means that travel to work is now in daylight which is enough to lighten the soul before the dead weight of work clamps feeling!


Surprise, surprise we are now building up to yet another set of examinations! Who would have thought it! We have barely planted the new trees to take the place of the forest destroyed to produce the last lot of examination papers when we busily set about the next slaughter!


Everything in this place comes down to a mark out of ten. If it cannot be given a mark it is not valued. I can’t help feeling that this approach on a daily basis must have some debilitating and lasting effect on the pupils we teach. No matter how numinous the concepts or how aesthetic the motivation, they have to be reduced to something which can be given a mark, however artificial such a process might be.


It is the “dark side” to the “liberal” attitude which has “informed” much of the educational “development” in Britain for the last umpteen years. And I think I could have used even more sets of inverted commas if I had wanted to. Education is beset by more people with more ideologies with more fervour with less cause than almost any other element of public concern.


Everyone has been to school so everyone has “expert” knowledge which fuels assertive, dogmatic and evangelical pronouncements which luckily do not need the input of the hapless people involved in the teaching profession to give reality to their thoughts. Or perhaps I demonstrate a tinge of insider angst by saying such things. Who knows! Well, the people I have been talking about obviously.


The trip to the UK is increasing in complexity so that I can pick up The Birthday Present.


I will now be staying on the Saturday night in High Wycombe so that I can reclaim my laptop from the Pauls and perchance watch British TV in Spain with the program installed therein. What appeared to be merely a “good idea” some time ago has now grown to be a project involving a new Ariel in the Pauls’ house; a new digibox and numerous people attempting to get the system set up. I have absolute faith that it will work eventually and I will be secure in the arms of the BBC.


Touching really!

To see, perchance to breathe.

It is only on a morning like this when every serration on the back of the dragon of Montserrat is clearly visible that one realizes just how pollution bound Barcelona is.



Yes, the soft patina of pollution gives a warmth and hazy beauty to the city, but when one thinks that one is breathing in the filthy particles that comprise this beauty one is prepared to do without the aesthetic layer and simply ask for pure, clean air.


It may be that the cleanliness of the atmosphere was a function of the extended weekend which stretched to encompass a well earned Bank Holiday – I am sure that the journey to school tomorrow will reflect the increased flow of traffic and the build-up of exhaust fumes so the sharp detail of today will be lost in the smoggy haze of tomorrow. It does at least make for spectacular sunsets!


The new watch which was a birthday present from The Family is leading a hazardous life at the moment. It is waterproof to 3atm which means that it is protected from rain drops and accidental immersion for short periods. I, unfortunately, have never been one to take his watch off when sleeping, washing, showering or swimming. This means that the cheapo watches bought on the beach or environs have always had a limited life as, within days, I will have cheerfully plunged into the pool or the sea and the impressive construction of the cheap watch will have show itself to be a façade rather than reality – and no watch works really well when it is half full of liquid.


So far I have only showered while wearing it and I have to say that it has stood the test well. The real test will be later today when I go for my swim. At present I fully intend to take the thing off (in spite of the strict time limits that I set myself while swimming which need a watch to make them real) but that intention will probably go the way of my intention to take it off for my shower.


My watches have to survive in the rough and tumble of my watery life and if they can’t take the pace then it is better that they go under (!) sooner rather than later when I might be relying on the thing to get me to an airport or an important appointment.


A single day off the week is very difficult to cope with. It may be 20% of the teaching time but it always promises more than it delivers in feelings of freedom and delight. It only makes me more resentful about the remaining days and then it is a struggle to a normal Friday and the accustomed freedom of the weekend.


To be fair the work load to Christmas looks doable. I will be going to the UK on the 27th to pay my respects to Aunt Bet as she continues to journey into her 10th decade; then there is a three day break linked to a weekend in early December and finally the Christmas holidays themselves which start on the 23rd. I prefer not to talk about February of next year; the Winter Week in March is ambiguous to say the least and then there is nothing until the Easter holidays which start on the 18th of April. May is a month not to be considered in much the same way that February is also a cruel month and by the time you breach June the end is in sight and the fear of September is lurking around the corner.


Meanwhile I have to contend with the awful reality that this is only the beginning of November and, however much I might talk about future months, they are an unbearable length of time away.


And there is always reading. The electronic novel that I started has far too much religion in it in a preachy sort of way and is also fairly poorly written. I started it because there is something at the back of my mind which keeps nagging at me that I have heard of “Tarn” before, but the quality of the narrative certainly gives no indication of worth. I have therefore unceremoniously dropped it in favour of a Rudyard Kipling short story called “The Bridge Builders” which was replete with all the self indulgent Indian overtones that one could expect and it virtually read itself. I have now decided to look at “Mogens and Other Stories” by J. P. or Jens Peter Jacobsen a man of whom I think I have never heard. On the strength of my liking for the so-called genre of Scandinavian music I am prepared to give any writer from the northern lands a trial reading!


The name day of all the Carleses is soon to be upon us and that means two more presents to be bought and another trip to Terrassa. Carlos senior is always placated with an historical novel while the younger will be delighted with any stuff related to FCB.


A short trip to Alcampo in Sant Boi and the requisite purchases were made. Then, unfortunately, a “meal” in one of the so-called restaurants next to the store was our next mistake. The meal was disgusting with ersatz meat and reconstituted fried potatoes with an over cooked egg. I have to admit that I ate it all because the meal I had for lunch was a little less than impressive but, even so I felt, to put it mildly, cheated. When I consider that I actually had to pay for the rubbish it almost makes one weep.


Listening (on my new headphones) to good old Radio 3: I was very pleased to note that an odd little piece of Catalan music that has just been played by a British string quartet was something that I actually knew – never let it be said that living abroad didn’t widen my cultural horizons!


Talking of culture tomorrow sees the pupils from the History of Art class giving short talks on a painter they were allocated last week. As these painters range from Peter Blake to Rothko and span the gamut of art from representational to abstract expressionism I expect a wide range of reactions from the pupils.


However rushed and cramped the lessons it is a delight to be able to enthuse about something which deeply interests me like the polemical problems thrown up by the disparate movements lumped together in modern parlance as modern art.


The Taschen two volume history of “Art in the twentieth century”(Honneth and Walther) is superb value (€20!) and lavishly illustrated with an intelligent text. The Taschen site on the web is one of those no go areas for me as the number of irresistible, reasonably (ever a debatable concept) priced volumes of art and artists could drain all of my salary with no problem whatsoever!

Works straight from the box?

Having lost the instructions for the new Wi-Fi headphones and having also failed to make them work without the instructions last night, I approached this new piece of hardware with some misgivings and little faith this morning.



Extensive searches were futile. There is little point in hoping to find things after a general clear up in the wake of a visit from The Family. The two children manage to create an area of destruction which necessitates a generally mindless sweep to gather in their detritus. For reasons best known to their parents they were provided with Halloween streamers, together with masks, and other bits and pieces which they distributed liberally in their area of operations. Any distinction in the general waste collected is lost in the determination to get it all away. I fear that a small booklet must have been thrown with the bundles of rubbish.


As if to thwart my worst fears of having purchased another piece of underused gadgetry, when I picked the headphones off their charging stand they were working of their own accord!


In spite of my selfless love for gadgets they too often seem to throw that affection back in my face with a stony determination to humiliate and debase my attempts to get them to work for me.


Nevertheless I remain firmly in the camp of those drawn, unthinkingly and unerringly towards gleaming pieces of metal or plastic punctuated with flashing blue lights which do something or other in the realm of technology.


I remember reading one edition of the magazine “Stuff” – a magazine with lurid covers of scantily clad women with its inside pages packed with the latest developments in technology – and finding myself drawn to metallic boxes of sleek design and captions of incomprehensible techno-speak whose functions were difficult to determine but whose desirability was clear from every line, button, switch and light on the object itself!


Some compulsions never lessen and the way that technology is developing my habit is going to be fed with increasing doses of hi-tec playthings for the foreseeable future.


The headset seems to be working well, but it does have to cope with the inexplicable “network error” messages which mean that some of the stations which are entered into the memory of the internet radio simply refuse to work from time to time. There is no discernable logic to the working of the stations: while Radio 4 may be unobtainable the World Service or Radio 3 may be coming through well. However, one is prepared to put up with the vagaries of reception for the sheer joy of listening to decent radio!


The weather continues changeable (though not of course raining) but the visitors to our beach are resolutely marching up and down and looking (in a very British way) as though they ought to be enjoying it as this is, after all, a Bank Holiday.


I am conscious that I am frittering away my free time in aimless lolling and not even reading. Now that the headphones are working I will either have to learn to multi-task or resign myself to having heard all the items in “Pick of the Week” – just like old times!

Stop all the clocks!

The putting back of the clocks is a time of considerable stress.



Not only for those unfortunates who forget and find themselves an hour out for an uncomfortable day but also for those of us with what might be described as a plenitude of time pieces.


My latest watch is one without a central knurled knob to change the hour. Instead this function is done by the pressing of various buttons in combinations which I have completely forgotten. I will now discover if my placing of all instructions in the same box has actually been something which I have kept to. My plan was to put each new set of instructions in an A4 envelope of their own and place all the envelopes in a box which, while it might be consulted infrequently, would contain everything necessary for a calm technological life.


Computers are the worst. When you get a new program you often find a disc, an instruction book; guarantee cards; repair centre lists; special offers and sometimes leads all packed together. These are now in their own A4 envelope waiting for disaster to drive me to consult the arcane words of the instruction booklet to find salvation.


I hope.


Meanwhile I think that I will wear another from my extensive collection of wrist associated chronographs which is easier to adjust than my present choice.


Today has been a varied day in terms of the weather with periods of bright sunshine alternating with overcast conditions. It is, however, still warm.


The arrival of The Family gave me a chance to get into an open shop and buy something to go with Toni’s birthday gift of an internet radio: a Wi-Fi pair of headphones.


As usual (as you would expect from gadgets) I already have a pair of Wi-Fi headphones but they have suffered the vicissitudes of normal wear and tear and have fallen off my head when I have forgotten that they were there and they are now intermittently effective. They have given good service and I suppose that I should be grateful that they have lasted as long as they have.


I tried to make the pair I bought work after a couple of hours and then read that they should have been on charge for at least 15 hours. I hope that my impetuosity has not done terrible things to the batteries. Given the parlous state of the supply of the material necessary to make the bloody batteries we really do have to take care of what we have got!


Toni is still not well; which is a worry. Hopefully he will be fully restored for the “Holiday” tomorrow and the sun will shine.


At least Barça won, and against a team like Seville which means that one of the big games is out of the way and the trail is still awaiting for Real Madrid.


I really never thought that I would either know about such things or be even tangentially interested in them. Times change!

The Long Weekend

My weekend started on Friday night with injected drugs.



I wonder how many people are able to match my experience – though I think that their drugs may be more recreational than the anti-flu jab that I had!


Once again the health service in this part of the world lived up to its promise: I had an appointment for 4.15 pm and I was seen just before 4.15 and left within a couple of minutes of being seen after my injection had been administered.


My egress from the place of learning on Friday was swift, so swift indeed that I was able to sit down and read a few more pages of “Earthly Powers” by Burgess on my Kindle.


This interminable, verbose, self indulgent and prolix jeu d’esprit of a writer’s life cobbling together fictionalized portraits of real people and events to create a rambling, well travelled screed in which scandalous, thinly veiled portraits of the good and the great were illustrated in self congratulatory prose left me, ultimately, cold.


In the hands of Nabokov this would have been a quarter of the length and more intellectually satisfying – perhaps pandering to the readers intelligence rather than Burgess’s parading of his own!


It will not stop me reading more of his work; perhaps the long overdue reading of The Malayan Trilogy is called for. I will certainly be tempted if I can find it free as an electronic book.


At the moment my “library” in my Kindle is full of classic, impressive tomes which I am sure that I will not be tempted to read, but are too good not to add when they cost nothing. Perhaps I should set myself a target of at least one World Classic a term.


At the moment the Kindle Store is particularly insistent about Trollope and Sophocles being a major part of my immediate reading. Dream on!


Tomorrow, Toni’s illness permitting, The Family will descend with chestnuts (roasted) and small pine covered pastries for whatever fiesta such things are supposed to celebrate. I am all for these festivities because we have an extra day for the weekend - and four day weeks have a nicer sound to them than the full whack.


I have yet to see a single penny resulting from my last birthday, though I am working on it.


En passant, why does an electronic transfer of funds from one of the richest banks in Britain take four working days to get to a rich bank in Spain? How do the bloodsucking, shameless, crisis-inducing bastards get away with it? As these evil manipulators of other people’s money must deal in millions of pounds every day, they must make substantial amounts of money from a three day delay. God damn them all to hell!


When the money finally gets to me I fear that my resistance to the blandishments of the iPhone will be paper thin: indeed as thin as the notes that will buy one for me!


I consider that I have held out against buying an iPad with a fortitude which does credit to my name – admittedly with printed sheets entitled “12 Reasons I Will Not Buy an iPad” tucked inside my mark book to bolster my strength in time of temptation.


Today I bought the Spanish version of “Stuff” the gadget magazine and that still rates the iPhone 4 top of the available smartphones. It is only a matter of time!


Meanwhile I am preparing to enjoy Sunday – which is a sure sign that Monday is a holiday!


All I ask is a little sun.

The future is too far away!

Someone mentioned the “J” word in the staffroom today and was told off quite severely.



There are many things that can be said with impunity within the sequestered confines of our private space but talking about “July” is not one of them.


In Catalonia we teach until the end of June and then we have a (fully justified) two clear month holiday. There was some talk of having a week at the end of February when the rest of the country will be taking its “White Week” to go skiing, but we preferred to work on and keep the two months release sacrosanct.


We are only allowed to talk of the Christmas holidays as they are within a (barely) tolerable length of time. Once our little one day extension to the weekend is over we face the horror of a November with only the relief of weekends to keep us sane.


At least in my case there is the delight of a visit to the UK and the celebration of a civilized tea party for the natal celebrations of my aunt. Luckily as this momentous event is on a Sunday it will impracticable for me to fly home on the same day and so I will be forced to take a day off school. I see no reason why I too should not have something to celebrate to allow me to feel a certain sympathy with my relative!


December is a marvellous month for us with a three day holiday incorporating La Constitución; La Inmaculada, and a linking dia libre elección. With the weekend this gives the delight of a five day break! And then the Christmas holidays start on the 23rd of December and we do not enter school again until the glorious 10th of January next year! That (including weekends) is a period of release of eighteen days! One feels that one ought to go somewhere warm – even though the days here are far from the sort of cold which I have been used to at the end of October.


I think that talking of holidays has given the world a twist and I have just been reminded that I have gained a free period! Life goes on getting better! Though at some point I think I might be asked to teach something to somebody again!


The weather was good enough for me to sit outside in the sunshine and read my Kindle, but it is getting steadily colder and I fear that the days of my continued wearing of short sleeved shirts may well be numbered – though I am sure that I can delay succumbing to that sartorial admission of winter for a little while longer.


A little while.

For this relief?

Bone deep tiredness has overtaken not only me but also the rest of the school; at least the teaching part of it. We are indeed ready for the extra day off next week on Monday.



As befits my advanced age I have attempted to get an injection against flu. This is not as easy as one might think as the times for injections are times when I am in work. Luckily (though that is a strange use of the word) as I have a few early starts in school I am able to aggregate that time and leave early on Friday last period. If I am quick I should be able to leave school and make it for my appointment for the injection. Just. It will be a suitably breathless start to a long weekend.


My swimming continues, although I am still unable to work out the correct etiquette for claiming or sharing a swimming lane in the pool. Two lanes I have discovered are for “up” and “down” respectively and are as frustrating as one would imagine as some “swimmers” refuse to allow one (me) to push past and take a little less time to complete a length than some limb flailing ineptitude generally accomplishes.


The lanes on either side of the pool seems to be for the “lurking” swimmers who hog the end of the pool and do nothing but gently bob up and down and look daggers at anyone who attempts to swim.


The other lanes appear to be for bona fide swimmers who actually attempt to complete lengths. They sometimes have a flamboyant single swimmer in them using a style of propulsion in which flailing limbs attempt to take up as much of the width of the lane as possible. If one (me) has the temerity to try and share the lane there is usually a silent struggle for territory which usually results in an uneasy truce with resentful passing of combatants with the real possibility of damage from a trailing leg.


At the moment the outdoor pool is still open for hardy children and other of a masochistic tendency. As autumn inevitably progresses into winter there will be more concentration on the indoor pool and the struggle for swimming room will increase to the point of intolerability.


This is for the mediumly distant future, while the extra day of the weekend is in the reasonably immediate prospect.


Perhaps I can catch up on my sleep debt.

Sweet sounds!

There is something prosaic about the Word “lump” – but when it is placed in front of the word “sum” then the combination takes on a sort of mystical beauty.



I have now started my seventh decade: a time when in the normal course of events a British teacher should thankfully consider his professional duties done and relax into the affluence that a grateful government showers upon a faithful servant. Leaving the biblical fantasy of that last statement to one side, I have now reached the magic age when I fully intended to retire. Again.


But. Already (!) two months of term (and the year) have gone and the long haul to the summer doesn’t seem so impossible. Really.


The real key to my continued employment will be the real amount of money that the pension actually pays month by month. That, as they say, is for the future – but is a financially more interesting problem as it is dealing in positive amounts of money.


And here I must put in a word for the charming ladies in the call centre of First Direct – my telephone bank.


When I called up to see if the Lump Sum (it surely deserves capital letters) had been paid into my British account, I asked the lady to give me the balance in my current account. She told me the amount and I gave a little squeak of pleasure, at which point she said, “Shall I read that again?” Which she then did in what I can only describe as a sensuous voice.


Our conversation developed a slightly raunchy tone and the lady (!) suggested that she could probably make a living by reading out large sums of money on a dedicated phone line. After much giggling, chortling and laughing Toni asked who I had been speaking to and was a little mystified by my response of “My bank!”


On my Kindle I am presently reading “Earthly Powers” by Anthony Burgess and, as usual with his novels I am making a collection of the words that I have had to look up. So far the list includes: “prolepsis”, “deist” (which I knew, but not to use convincing in a sentence to show its meaning); “onomastic”; “velleity”; “exiguous” (see explanation for “Deist” above); “oenophile” (which I remembered when I looked it up); “supinated” and “omnifutuant” (for which I still have not found a meaning, as the print in my two volume Oxford English Dictionary is simply too small) – and I am still only half way through the novel!


At the moment the book is reading like Nabokov with added vulgarity: not a bad mix!


Exams have been marked though not necessarily handed back. Monday was the Day of the Long and Pointless Meeting. I started teaching at 8.15 am and left school at 7.45 pm. The meeting which started as soon as the last lesson of the day had been taught lasted two hours forty minutes and was of almost unendurable boredom.


By way of compensation we have an “occasional day” or something which means that this weekend is three days long with Monday being blissfully free of teaching!


Time to regroup!

Shine on October sun

Another fine day which makes me worry more and more about using up the climactic credit for the weekend and the celebration of United Nations Day.



The thought of a meal out is the only thing keeping me going as the paper sheaves of scrawled mountains of examination scripts is beginning to build up to that sort of height that engenders morbid depression.


It is at times like this that I refer myself to the Collected Wisdom of David – a colleague of some years standing in the school and country. His single most useful dictum was (and indeed is) “Remember Stephen; you are not in Britain.” You have absolutely no idea how many times I have turned to this simple, yet life-saving saying and managed to stay just the right side of sanity!


On previous occasions when what seem like completely arbitrary deadlines for marking to be completed have been ridiculously near to the day on which the examinations have been taken and when I have despaired of getting the marking done another of David’s sayings has come to the fore and helped me through, “Stephen, it may look impossible – but it will be done!” And it always is. Or has been.


The Kindle continues to please but it has a marked lack of flexibility in getting to the book that you want to continue reading or in finding another book than the Sony version of the eBook. As usual I am only scratching the surface of what the gadget can actually do and, in much the same way that I use the computer as a glorified typewriter, so I am using the Kindle only for its ability to store eBooks. Give me a month or two and I might have pushed my knowledge a little further!


Meanwhile: where is my red pen!

Delighted thoughts

There is definitely a new spring in my step since the receipt of the email outlining the reality of the money that comes with a pension. Can it really be this simple? All you have to do is pay vast sums of money for thirty years and a grateful government showers one with cash.







Well, perhaps not quite.






There are taxes and tax codes which (when was the last time this happened!) are set at “Emergency” level until the government decides just how much you have to give back!






From what I can deduce from the documentation that came with the email, the date on which one is paid relates directly to one’s birthday: so I expect my first “pay” cheque on the 23rd of November. Or something. It will be fun waiting to find out how much and when.






Tomorrow the examination season starts. This is one of the convulsive testing periods that the school decides on. The kids become fully paranoid for a week or so and then everything reverts to the normal pace of life until the next examination convulsion.






Some of our pupils have a remarkable capacity for writing notes; learning notes, regurgitating notes. I wish I could say that this links to education in some way, but that would not be true. There is a glorification of rote learning of those things which are “for the examination” which is, to put it mildly, depressing to witness.






The school does train the kids to get the marks which are necessary for their future development within the system but when you come to evaluate the system then you might be left with one or two questions about its essential worth.






The art history class which I share with the art teacher is, however trying to be something different with a far more practical approach and an experiential feel which is much more satisfying to be involved with.






But enough disinterest: what about me!






The finding of a portable internet radio for my birthday is proving to be an almost insuperable problem. My shop of first and last resort (El Corte Ingles) has show itself to be woefully lacking producing a single radio as the total of their stock! Not what I expect.






And, as I was having an unsatisfactory conversation with my GPS, which was not doing as I was ordering it to do, I made a wrong turning and explored yet more of the traffic filled streets of central Barcelona on my way to the largest El Corte Ingles store.






Although I did not find a suitable radio, I did wander into the “Gourmet” shop within a shop which is a feature of the store. This miraculous niche of comestibles is filled with the most irresistible smells of cheese, wine and spices. The shelves are overcrowded with eye-poppingly expensive jars and boxes of delectable foodstuffs and it is as difficult to emerge from this haven of taste without a purchase as it is to go into an Apple store and leave the ipad unbought. But if I can do the latter then the former is definitely within my reach.






Not that I am counting, but there are now five days to the magical date when I could, should I choose to do so, walk away from my scholastic responsibilities and . . . but I would never do that. I do have some shreds of professional pride left. I think.






But, there again, there are the Saturday morning meetings to discuss examination results! Pause for thought.






At least tomorrow is not an early start: a whole half hour’s lie in!






One takes one’s pleasure where one finds it!

Passing Time Pays the Pension

The pleasure that gadgets give they can take away in spades, so to speak.



I have been sulking for two days over the internet radio.


This radio is my birthday present from Toni and it had to be collected and checked out to ensure that it worked properly. It was collected and over five hours of concentrated attention did not get it working. It will not connect to the internet and that is something of a disadvantage to an internet radio.


It has now been repacked in the Amazon wrapping and taken to the post office and is, even now, on its way to Scotland where lives the army of Amazon workers who deal with the mountains of returns that such an operation must engender.


The radio looked and felt very much like the old fashioned tiny portable radios of yore and, if it had worked, would have been appreciated as much as I used to treasure the minute machines of my youth. But it didn’t work and I have rejected it. If Toni can’t get it to work then it simply doesn’t work.


The only positive thing that I can take from the Dark Days of Internet Intemperance connected with the Malign Machine was the second gadget that was available for me on the same day as the radio.


I am now the proud possessor of the latest generation Kindle e-thingie. I know that I will use it as a glorified book and I have already started loading free books into its electronic storage that I will never read. When do normal people read Sir Walter Scott nowadays? And I have blithely loaded Aristotle, Aristophanes, Darwin, Faraday, Hobbes, Hume, William James, Kant, John Stuart Mill, Poincaré, Thoreau and others of whom I have never heard but their books were free! I now have 134 “books” (some of which are little more than short stories) and the one that I am reading is “Shatter (the Children of Man)” by Elizabeth C. Mock; to which your (and my) response could be “Who?”


I fear that much of my reading from my new device will be of people of whom I have never heard. Mainly because I am far too mean to pay real money for a book whose only existence is electronic and not hard covers and sensual pages of real print.


Early attempts to get the device to go on to the internet were successful, but it appears that early success does not mean continued success and recent attempts to get on to Google have been signal failures. No doubt Toni will rectify this lack and point out how simple it was to do it at the same time.


I have been fairly faithful to my one revelation in information technology: I am a user and not a programmer.


This is a simple, yet vital insight and saves the individual from hours of pointless dabbling in the arcane mysteries of whatever the gobbledegook is that programs are written in. Machine code I believe it is called. Well, for me, machine code is for machines and those who aspire to that state; I prefer to luxuriate in the more understandable realms of what those denizens of the lower depths manage to create for we “surface eaters” in the technological world!


The days slip away bringing me ever nearer to the fabled date of United Nations Day 2010 which used to be a date when like Aaron and unlike Moses I would slip over to the other side and see the milk and honey of the Promised Land.


Well the date is going to come and go and I will still be in employment – which was not the original plan. But there is something to be said for going in to school bright and early (8.15 am start) on Monday 25th of October knowing that I don’t really have to.


I will place the sweets in each staffroom (a tradition which is rigorously upheld by each person who has a birthday during term) and explain the significance of the birthday. My colleagues however look towards retirement as being at age 65 so they will only expect me to start thinking of leaving education in the autumn of 2015!


There are people in school who have worked out that, with commitments and children, they will have to work until they are at least (at least!) seventy years old!


Needless to say that is not (even remotely) my intention.


Cleaning tomorrow!


The days have passed in a welter of technology: failure with the radio but something of a glowing success with the Kindle.


I have now started to download books from my computer on to the device and, at the moment, that appears to be going smoothly. Admittedly the format of title and author does not seem to match that of the books already on the machine but I can surely deal with that.


I am still getting to know the little quirks of the device and I am not able to navigate around it with the same speed and facility that I can with the Sony e-book, but I am sure that will change in time.


All this is small change however when I consider an email which I received today, Sunday.


This little missive was one of those Rites of Passage moments which define the future.


Today my pension was finalized. What that means is that the total amount of the money that I have been paying out for the last 30 years is at last coming home to roost!


The low value of the pound means that what would have been quite a healthy amount of money when I first arrived in Spain a few years ago has now been diminished somewhat. When I first came here the euro was trading at 70p to the pound; now it is 83p – almost a 20% reduction. Or if one wants to think of it in more positive terms almost a 20% increase in pound terms to my miserable teacher’s salary in Spain! I think these sorts of sums are a prelude to financial madness so I will merely accept whatever the government has not yet stolen and be thankful that there will be a nice little monthly salary coming in whatever I do over the next year or so!


It is a wonderfully relaxing moment when you consider that you have reached the stage when you begin to reap the benefits of 30 years of enforced saving.


I suppose that it is traditional at this time to cast the mind back to the person who made all this possible. The Welsh Wizard (or the Poison Dwarf depending on your point of view) instituted the Old Age Pension and for that, whatever faults Lloyd George had (and they were many) he must surely be among the blest for that single liberating action.


I feel warmly towards him anyway, even if what I am going to start getting in seven short days time is an occupational rather than a state pension. The principle is the same and I have always rather liked Lloyd George for his assurance, political acumen and blatant dishonesty!


Saturday saw The Family descend bearing foodie gifts of utterly delicious mushrooms and artichokes. Now, in Catalonia is the season for basket wielding citizens to start combing the woods for the best and most succulent mushrooms they can find. In restaurants the mushrooms are exorbitantly expensive but eating as a family is very much cheaper and just as (if not more) delicious!


We have had two great days of sunshine and it has helped us to try and get the house organized.


This is not a pro-active move on our part, but a reactive one to the fact that we are slowly sinking under the sheer weight of things!


Clothing has been sorted and thrown and clothes which have some sentimental value but little sartorial worth have been consigned to history. The T-shirt that Aunt Bet brought me back from one of her trips to the USA which was emblazoned with the subway system of NY has now gone to the skip. To be fair it was threadbare and had long lost its claim to the whiteness which is such an encouraging background for the geometric scrawl of the Big Apple’s underground.


I still have numerous suits, well, four and I cannot remember the last time I wore one. I never wear more than trousers and shirt (with tie of course) in school – though I think I might have worn a suit for the interview. They do take up a lot of space which we do not have and there is a great temptation to just junk them – but of course I haven’t done any such thing. They are waiting, lurking, ready to be donned for a suitable occasion.


Hopefully the next week will not be so gadget filled and I can start using the Kindle rather than playing with it and seeing just how many unreadable (but free) books I can download!


I have also noted that the Amazon Store offers free books which are the first volumes of trilogies in the hope that the reader will have been captured by the first volume and just have to carry on reading no matter what the price.


I have just completed reading Elizabeth C Mock’s “Shatter” which ends abruptly with a declaration of loyalty and the clear indication that at such a juncture there is only the one option of buying the rest of the books in the series. Amazon is wrong on that one. Much though I enjoyed leaving my critical mind outside the pages (well screen) of the book I do not think that I could bear to actually pass money over to anyone to read more.


Balzac anyone?

Clothes do not the Man make!

“Today,” I was informed by an elegant member of my sixth form, replete in an ill fitting set of clothes, “was Suit-up Day.” And sure enough a few member of the sixth form and odd members of other years were wearing scraps of suits: a tie here, a jacket there; a severe pair of trousers cladding spindly legs. It was a bizarre spectacle with the most convincing suit wearer looking like a very restrained undertaker. The sixth former who informed me of the “event” eventually admitted that he must look like “a rugby player going to an interview” which was exactly what he did look like!



As I made my way around the school I was greeted with “Look Stephen, just like you!” with individual students pointing to a cloth hanging of unusual ghastliness handing around the individual’s neck. I hope my condescending look of amused contempt made them realize that emulating a hard wired tie wearer was not as easy as putting any old thing on public display!


We had a visit from the author and illustrator of the children’s book that a small group of 4ESO students has been translating into English. They were both grateful for the efforts that we had made and were generous with their time in answering the questions that the kids had about the process of writing and the choice of subject matter – the disaster in Haiti. I have assured them that the translation will be published (complete with ISBN number and opportunity for inclusion in a CV) and will have to strive to make sure that this happens.


Throughout the day I suddenly remembered that it was a Wednesday and not a Monday which gave a little thrill of pleasure. This happiness however was wiped out by a sudden request that I substitute for a teacher during the last period. My last period on a Wednesday is one of the times that I can leave school early to compensate me for my unnatural start on Monday. I was told that the teacher merely needed me to be there for a few minutes, five – ten at most and then I would be able to leave my half hour earlier as usual.


The five minutes was extended by another thirty-two minutes and I stomped out of school incandescent with fury fearing that I would arrive too late to secure a decent swimming lane in the pool.


Luckily I was able to insinuate my seal like body into a lane which was only occupied by a gentleman of a certain age propelling himself serenely backwards with the aid of flippers.


I immediately claimed the other side of the lane and was able to swim my lengths unmolested.


Having upped my time spent by 50% from 20 minutes to 30 minutes I have now adjusted to the increase and am not working any harder to complete the extra time. I will have to consider making more of an effort and increasing my speed. I should be sweating at the end of my efforts and, although I must swim some 50 to 60 lengths I am aware that I could be doing more. I shall consider such things and not make rash statements about what I might do.


I enjoy swimming and I know from past experience that I begin to detest it when I start timing myself and setting targets and generally making the event a negative one.


The weather has been depressing but the panoramic views that we are afforded from many of the classrooms always manage to show us some scrap of blue lurking surreptitiously on the horizon. I am hoping that the rapidly approaching weekend will give a more settled supply of sunshine.


The next book in the Bristol Airport Extra Plastic Carrier Bag experiment is “We Need to Talk About Kelvin” by Marcus Chown, author of “The Never ending Days of Being Dead” and “Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You” – on the basis of those two titles alone I am already prejudiced in favour of the book in my possession. I have so far read the first twenty pages of the first chapter entitled “The Face in the Window” which has the subtitle of “How when you stand in front of a window the most shocking discover in the history of science – that ultimately things happen for no reason – is literally staring you in the face.” If that is insufficient to get you going then there are two quotations to tweak your fancy. The first is from Paul Valery “A difficulty is a light. An insurmountable difficulty is a sun” and the second by John Wheeler “No progress without paradox.”


The chapter is about light and it takes my scientific knowledge about this subject (based in my case entirely on the plays of Tom Stoppard, in particular “Hapgood”) to another level.


As with the more esoteric poems of W B Yeats, so with popular scientific writing: I understand all the words but not necessarily the order in which they are laid on the page! To be fair to Mr Chown I am still with him and I have started the sub section entitled “Two Places at Once”. I like his style and he reminds me of Professor Nevin, the Swansea economist, for whose homely and easily understood examples which leavened the harder graph-driven pieces of economic theory that I was supposed to grapple with at A Level I was (and perhaps still am) grovellingly grateful.


The fractured Art Course that Suzanne and I am teaching now demands some “texts” about modern art for the students to use as a backup to the practical work which we are in the process of devising. It is time for me to search the books that I have for something suitable in English to encourage the kids to speak.


I am sure that I have something.


Somewhere!

Bank Holidays are all the same!

The weather today was indifferent to the point of direct insult. When one considers that it was also a Bank Holiday then the effrontery of such blustery, wet, miserable conditions seems like studied insult.

And there is a carpet of pine needles strewn across pavement and road to show exactly how blustery it was last night!



However, it did encourage me to read “The Fry Chronicles: An Autobiography” by Stephen Fry.


Perhaps the word “chronicles” should alert the wary reader that what he is going to read is some sort of archaic construct with all the built-in ambiguity and glossed-over historical detail that chronicles as histories usually offer.


Let me first point out that this book is an episodically amusing and lightly written rambling memoir which is easy to read. What it is not and emphatically not, is an “autobiography” in any meaningful sense. “Stephen Fry” the person is artfully hidden among all the anecdotal exposure of personal neurosis and ostensible confession.


This book charts another eight years to extend the autobiographical writing of “Moab is My Washpot” which fleshed out his childhood and adolescence. They are eight significant years which saw Fry established (or well on his way to being established) as a National Institution much like his revered idol Alan Bennet – but a more knowing and more studied version than him.


This is an oddly coy book too; famous names are dropped into conversations: most glaringly when a casual reference to “Paul” commenting on Fry not singing turns out to be Paul McCartney and another Paul on page 366 turns out to be Paul Whitehouse by page 394. Perhaps Fry has borrowed the technique from Alistair Cooke who regaled the 50th anniversary of the Cambridge Mummers (as related by Fry) with an anecdote about a young architecture student who came to audition for a part. Cooke told him to carry on with his studies as ‘“I’m sure you’ll be an excellent architect.” He did indeed get a First in Architecture, but whenever I see James Mason now he says to me, “Damn. I should have taken your advice and stayed with architecture.”’


Such things I can take from Cooke but not from Fry. This book hides much, much more than it reveals and Fry’s repeated “honesty” begins to irritate rather than illuminate.


The cover photo of Fry shows him in his customary garb looking straight out at the reader with a trace of a smile as if daring the reading to put any significant detail on the featureless wall that acts as a background. I certainly didn’t.


Two days of the week have now gone and the real struggle tomorrow will not be rise and start life at an unreasonable time, but rather to keep remembering that tomorrow is Wednesday.


It is also the day when the author of the children’s story that we have translated is supposed to be coming to see and speak to and with the kids who have done the translation. This has been much delayed and I am not sure that there will be much to say, but it is a courtesy that is worth making to bring the two sides together. I have no idea whether this lady speaks English or only Spanish. If it is the latter then I sincerely hope that there will be someone other than my good self and a gaggle of students in the room where the meeting is supposed to take place. I fear that the discussion may be a little lopsided otherwise! Which may be interesting in itself though I feel not ultimately productive either to my status as a stumbling teacher floundering publicly in the language which I have been translating or for the kids as they struggle to ask questions which do not question the literary worth of the story which they had been translating.


We are building up to another marathon session of examinations which should come to a climax during the period of my birthday. I have noted this auspicious event in many different ways but never with a red pen on student’s work.


My present from Toni has been eventually ordered on line and my present to myself has now also been processed: both should be here by the beginning of next week.


The biggest birthday present of all, of course, is the magic age which means that I am entitled to my lump sum and pension and the illusion of freedom until I see just how little my pension gives me and I realize that the job (however poorly paid) is an essential part of my present life style.


My Mr Micawber response to the economics of real life has never really been of help in trying to work out the truth about how much actual money is needed to fund my sybaritic life style. I do not intend to change the habits of a lifetime and suddenly become sensible and start treating money as if it was significant; I am sure as someone said, “Something will turn up!”


As will tomorrow for which I am not prepared – though a casual glance at my timetable for Wednesday shows that I can busk my way through the day! The only important thing I need to remember is a towel for my swim after school.

Hotter holidays please!

Another sullen day. Catalonia, it would seem, has taken up the climatic response to Bank Holidays that characterizes Britain and given poor weather for the workers!



Although it is threatening there are still areas of blue in the sky which give some hope for improvement later in the day. I am a great believer in the “micro-climate” form of self delusion, whereby the sufferer believes that his own little patch of a country has a different and more equitable weather system that that by which he is surrounded.


I am suffering from what is known as the “Eventual Sunshine Syndrome” where however bad the day, the victim believes that there will be a compensatory glimpse of sunshine to keep alive the vitamin D in the body.


Apart from the cretinously inane barking of the ill-controlled dogs next door, owned by the family of phantom bollard destroyers, the neighbourhood is curiously silent suggesting that the rest of the world has a Puente (bridge) of today to link to the real Bank Holiday tomorrow, thus giving a four day holidays if you count the weekend.


Bank Holidays in Britain are merely the excuse for workers to be paid double time (I trust) and, apart from the banks, shops are usually open. Not so in this country. A sepulchral calm descends on us and the shops are as closed as if it is a Saturday afternoon. Yes, I know, but this is a foreign country and they do things differently here. They may be closed in the afternoon but they are open in the evening.


When shops fail then there is always recourse to The Book. I have now completed reading Bill Bryson’s “At Home: A short history of private life” and it was everything and m ore that I had hoped for.


I have been a fan of Bryson ever since I read a piece of his writing in Granta – the magazine for new writing. The stuff in Granta can sometimes be just a little earnest and depressing so it was with unexpected joy that I read a piece which was informative, well written and very funny.


At first, second and third glance “At Home” would appear to be written pretty exclusively for me! It is, as all of Bryson’s writing is, well written and amusing, but this book is literally packed with “unconsidered trifles” in the main text and in the irresistible footnotes that function for me in the same way as Class A drugs!


Taking the Norfolk rectory in which he lives as his structure he tours the house and each room affords a wealth of historical information about how and why the rooms came into being and what they tell us about ourselves.


Basically this book is a constant delight. Where else would you find a description of the essential nature of the Erie Canal in the development of America with the comment that “Probably no manufactured product in history – certainly none of greater obscurity – has done more to change a city’s fortunes that Canvass White’s hydraulic cement.”; the description of the Eiffel Tower, “So there is a certain irony in the thought that the greatest edifice ever built of iron was also the last.”


Just to demonstrate the treasure trove nature of this book I have just asked Toni to give me a number at random for a page of the book and I will extract the interesting morsel.


Toni chose page 9 which tells us that the idea for the Great Exhibition of 1851 was the idea of a civil servant named Henry Cole “whose other principal claim to history’s attention is as the inventor of the Christmas card – as a way of encouraging people to use the new penny post.” You might be able to resist such information, but for me it goes straight to pleasure centre of my dilettante mind!


I recommend it without qualification. Enjoy!


The sun has struggled out from behind the clouds and bathed our disbelieving faces in some welcome sunshine, but the weather forecast is not good and a general weather alert has been issued for Catalonia. God help.


I fear that we have reached the stage in the year when cushions etc are never going to dry out fully if left out on the terrace. Sad.


Meanwhile one of the tasks that I set myself has been completed: going to the town hall and explaining that the bollards which stop people parking on our drives have been destroyed and subtly trying at the same time to give the impression that the neighbours are the culprits. Which they are. When the town council employee to whom I was speaking tried to blame “young drivers late at night” as the possible miscreants I was quick to disabuse her and re-orientate the blame in the right direction – although using weasel words to avoid making actual, specific accusations.


I have been given a comment number which I can use to trace the progress of my complaint.


I have to say that the way in which our town organizes the first-contact to find out about anything connected with the civic services is both efficient and friendly. I will now await the consequences of my visit. I am ever optimistic!


It would be good to see those responsible for the destruction and removal of the bollards charged with criminal damage – but I am sure that our neighbours will get away with it. However, if the bollards are replaced and knocked down again then we will resort to denunciation.


The weather forecast has emphasized the approaching rain so I think that I will go to the Third Floor and take was vitamin D I can while I can!

In this best of all possible worlds!

There are those who aver that programmes like “This house is a ruin” are unspeakably vile and useless. These programmes are where a gaggle of self congratulatory mawkish opportunists descend on some unfeasibly large family living in squalor; rip their house down and rebuild it in as consumeristically vulgar a way as possible and then stand back and collect the communal tears of gratitude before moving on and wiping their victims from their minds, before settling vulture-like on the next bunch of wastrels.



This programme is the apotheosis of the “deus ex machina” much beloved as a narrative device by Dickens where, having got his hero into an impossibly difficult situation, resolves it by having a long lost uncle or distant relative suddenly appear, promptly die and leave all his money to the hero so that he can live in genteel, jobless comfort.


In the same way “This house is a ruin” showers consumer durables on one deserving family to the greater glory of the television company which produces their meretricious trash and to the accompanying glory of the system that produced the poverty in the first place.


Useless, vile and positively bad one may think. But not by me.

As soon as the programme started on the television I made my excuses and decamped to the Third Floor. I would, I thought, reclaim my Bryson book (“At Home: A short history of Private Life”) which I had lain at the side of the sun bed as I lay out in the gentle heat this morning. As I opened the door to the terrace rain started and I was able to rescue the book with only a few drops of moisture on the back cover. So expeditious was I that there was not even a suggestion of the horrible warping that detracts from the pleasure of page turning if what you are turning is like a thin piece of corrugated cardboard.


I am prepared to bet that saving my book is the one positive effect of the programme. I am sure that they do not revisit their victims and show how they are coping a year or two on. How the family, suddenly at the cutting edge of technological innovation, copes with things going wrong and breaking. I wonder what the repair and replacement policy is for poor families suddenly gifted with high value, high maintenance equipment with a very finite life!


But they can rest assured that they have one grateful “viewer” because as soon as I saw the programme I was driven from the living room and was able to save my book two floors above. Well done! And thank you!


I refuse to see today as merely Saturday; I prefer to think of it as Day 1 of a four day holiday. As I have already done a little light sun bathing one aspect of any real holiday has been fulfilled already and I feel myself positively refreshed in my determination to get some “tasks” done.


By way of a change we went to Cubellos for lunch. This is a smallish town whose name has been hijacked and affixed to a sprawling new (seemingly relatively empty) residential development stretching along the sea coast.


We chose a restaurant next to the beach with a clear view of the sea and also with what seemed like a reasonable menu del dia for €10.50. It was a meal of mixed fortunes. The paella starter was shockingly bad with the rice dry and the whole thing absurdly salty. The wine was watered! But the chicken main course was tasty and succulent a piece of fowl that I have eaten in years. The sweet was as immediately forgettable as one would expect with a normal menu del dia.


The fact that we were sitting outside in a brisk wind but also generous sunshine and a view of waves crashing (for the Med) on a breakwater was almost enough.


Our way back was interrupted in Sitges for an orgy of buying in the cheap German supermarkets which included (as by law you must) an Object of Doubtful Use But Bargain Price.


Today this took the form of a box containing three or four door hooks of the sort that fit over the top of the door and which you therefore don’t have to screw in: a good thing when your property is rented. These have already been “installed” and look to be more than decorative. Give me a few days and I might be able to upgrade adjectives to the coveted “useful” status!


Tomorrow The Family descends. If the rain does as well I may have to take semi-permanent refuge on the Third Floor!


I have just checked the weather and, although there is scattered cloud, the rain has stopped and I can clearly see stars or planes, or possibly both – I am no expert in this area of ariel identification.


This could mean that tomorrow, like today, could defy the gloomy prognostications of callow weathermen and be bright and sunny rather than stormy.


One plan for the morrow is to go into the Garaf National Park and search for mushrooms. This is a national pastime and there are television programmes devoted to sad folk with wicker baskets pouncing on various fungoid growths with expressions not unrelated to some sort of sick pleasure.


As I am sure that this activity necessitates walking; and walking in places where paths are bent grass rather than carefully laid paving stones, I am not totally convinced that this sort of thing is necessarily better than finishing off my Bryson.


Still, as one says about all those things that one will not want to do again, “It will be an experience, won’t it!”


Which sentiment, when you think about it, is hard to gainsay.


Bring it on!