Scandal in Gran Canaria!

“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness,” came to mind as we finally made it to the “beach” at Maspalomas.

The beach wasn’t there!

I definitely remember, indeed I regaled wretched members of staff who were staying in Barcelona with details of, the golden swathe of hot, hot sand that composed the beach curving all the way around the southernmost point of the island.  I have photographic evidence!  I have walked those sands myself on numerous occasions.  Now – all gone!

Maspalomas beach is now a miserable pebble strewn scrag-end of sand, narrow and third-rate.  The sea is virtually lapping the dunes and the kiosks are now sea-girt bastions of light refreshments defying the crashing waves on a redoubt composed of the very pebbles coughed up by the ocean.

Our wind lashed hammocks were soon deluged by encroaching waves and we had to admit defeat and hobble our way back to a restaurant for lunch; which, by way of compensation, was excellent.

But where has the beach gone?  Questioning of the hamaca-man revealed that the island has been swept by high winds from the south for two years and a combination of governmental ineptitude (so he said) coupled with a fear of destroying the habitat of what is a national park as well as a sea shore resort has resulted in the appalling excuse for a beach that we sneered our way along.

All the picture postcards of the glorious stretch of sand for which Maspalomas was justly famed are out-and-out lies and remind one of the worst excesses of holiday brochures for Spanish resorts in the 1960s were pictorial representation (often “artists impressions”) bore little kinship with what, even to the most liberal mind, might pass for reality!

Add to this bitter disappointment the fact that the hired car did not start this morning and you have the recipe for on-going disaster.  Not to mention Toni’s cough!

I freely admit that I do not count cars as gadgets and I am therefore not wholly simpatico with the whole concept.  All I really ask of a car is that it goes and gets me there.  This one did not.  Did not even start.  Did not even, even allow me to open the bloody door.

At this point the more technically minded will be saying sagely “Battery, I suspect!” in a sort of know-all-been-there-done-that sort of way.  And you would of course be right.  I, however, assumed the worse – encouraged in this depressing view by Toni the Cough – and looked at the holiday as one already ruined.

The fault (certainly not mine) lies in the new-fangled approach that cars have to their lights.

I am the sort of chap that likes a “lights on; lights off” type of switch, but modern cars (probably influenced by a pernicious Nordic approach to so-called safety) have switches that do not do what it says on the tin.  Small drawings representing sidelights and headlights are as self-explanatory as a “0” meaning nothing or off.  Yet when you turn the switch to “0” the lights stay on.  For a while, I found out.  In spite of light, it seems that you must believe “0” is off and then your belief will make it true.

For good measure I also left the indicators on, so I do grudgingly accept some blame.

A Little Man from Hertz came within 15 mins. of being called and, as a Barça fan on an island of Real Madrid supporters was fairly sympathetic to the predicament and, more importantly got the car going in a couple of minutes.

Parking was, of course, impossible – and we were forced to use the municipal car park, the cost of which rather took away from the nicely judge economics of hiring a car in the first place.  Though we have had free parking in the hotel for two days now - and that must be some sort of plus!

Our return to the hotel to allow us to try and get the sandblasted patina that we had acquired removed also allowed us to make the pleasant discovery of a small bowl of fresh flowers; a larger bowl of fresh fruit and a bottle of red wine provided by the management.

I would like to think of this as one of a series of on-going sweeteners to make our say in the Neptuno one of constant delight.  But the more sensible side of me suggests that our room was cleaned but inadequately prepared when the staff rushed to make it ready after our early arrival and the goodies that we had today we should have had decking our room on our arrival!  Nevertheless, I shall say “thank you” to reception – and see if I get any more on further days of our stay!

Today was scheduled to be a day of lashing rain – indeed there was a “yellow alert” for the rain – and we have seen none of it.  I am firmly convinced that Maspalomas has its own micro-climate.  Indeed, on one occasion when I had resolutely marched off to the beach in what could only be described a less than ideal weather conditions, my arrival in my preferred roasting position at the very tip of the island was bathed in a theatrical spotlight of sunshine whose artificiality was startling but I merely bowed my head in homage to the god of sunlight and spread-eagled myself so the maximum skin area was offered as propitiation!

The problem of the holiday watch has been solved by the purchase of a Festina watch which fulfills day/date/luminous/waterproof/sweep second hand requirements, only falling down on the numbers for the hours.  Instead of numbers there are rather fetching light blue wedges giving the watch a rather surprising appearance.

The watch also has the “trio of other dials” which seems obligatory in modern watches in spite of the fact that no one seems to know what they are for.  The metal strap is rather impressive with faceted lines and a contrast of matt and gloss metallic effects.  The three knobs are rather aggressive and business-like, but I do not expect to be using those apart from the hourly change of the seasons. All in all I am quite pleased and with a little extra alteration of the strap to accommodate my elegantly narrow wrists it should be set to impress.

Does anyone look at watches nowadays?  Apart from me that is.  I think a watch is more of an indication of personal worth than the traditional well-brushed shoes and well-cleaned nails – or indeed vice-versa.  And I do not mean that class can be acquired by the mere wearing of a Rolex or Tag or some other overblown and overpriced Name.  An adequate but perfectly judged Swatch can out-perform a name any day!

So, here am I at the end of the day, sitting on the balcony in my underpants, but wearing an elegant watch, drinking the Management wine that Toni the Cough refuses to drink as he is drugged up to the eyeballs with anti-cough medicine and contemplating dinner.

It’s a great life as long as you don’t weaken!

Who would have thought it!

The Curious Case of the Unexpected Breakfast.

Let’s get the totally expected over and done with first.  Flying with Ryanair was, as Churchill almost said about the Russians, “a misery wrapped in depression inside humiliation.”


The seats were made of that sort of shiny plastic that you know only exists so that all known human stains can be wiped off in the eleven and a half minutes that Ryanair allows for the turnaround of the aircraft.


The spaces between the rows were so cramped that Tinkerbell would have had a bad back had she been forced to sit there.


To make matters incandescently worse a party of vivacious youngsters occupied about 25% of the space and 87% of the volume inside the aircraft.


There is nothing a teacher likes better at the start of his holiday than to find himself a calm (yet seething) centre of fixed immobility among the Brownian Motion of young people “seat-belted” on a low-cost airline.


As a result of the impossibly early start of the flight adolescent freneticism soon reached its drooping point and within an hour of take off the neophyte humans had assumed a variety of “crash positions” (made famous by the classic film “Airplane”) and had actually fallen asleep with limbs akimbo and heads at impossible angles.


The plane was totally full and our usual plan of dividing our forces and sitting at window and aisle, leaving the middle seat “free” but with an armed neutrality around it, totally failed and a “person” dared to sit there.  In the scheme of things we could have done worse, as the “person” was a reasonably petite woman – the sort of person who does not fight for the armrest.  Result.


But not much of one.  My aisle position, where I can at least stretch one leg in the hope that circulation there may stimulate circulation in the cramped other, was frustrated by the positive parade of clump footed passengers and Boudicca trolley wielding stewardesses who all attacked my extremities with reckless abandon.


Owing to particularly vindictive geography it appears that Barcelona (two and a half hours away from Bristol) is actually further away from Gran Canaria than Bristol is.  This is obviously Not Fair and I demand that pilots take the two rather than three dimensional route to my destinations.


By the time we Thank God touched down in Las Palmas I felt that a certain degree of adverse torque (not that I know what that is but it does describe my feelings exactly) had been applied to each and every bone and muscle in my body.


Then came the car hire.


It is a known fact, at least as far as I am concerned, that everyone else in the world is a twat.  I know this because every bloody queue that I join has one in front of me.  I was somewhat surprised to discover that this theory holds good for everyone else in the world as well.  I can’t help thinking that this must effect/affect my theory to some extent, ut it is still workable so I won’t worry too much.


Suffice to say that the pair of cretins in front of me asked a range of questions and had to have so many things explained in “Janet and John” language (in Spainish) that I wouldn’t have entrusted a Dinky toy to them let alone a car which works on the roads!


When they left I found out the full meaning of the phrase “additional charges may be applied at the point of hire” when £750 was actually taken out of my account because Visa Electron is a debit card and therefore the waiver cannot be held by Hertz car hire!  What a load of rubbish!


A Korean paterfamilias who pushed in to return his keys in the nicest and most polite way possible clearly did not believe anything that the Hertz man was saying about the “re-ferned” (sic) of his deposit– and who can blame him!


Starting a journey from the subterranean depths of a multi-storey car park is not the best way to get your GPS to cooperate and get you to your destination.  Mine sulked until we were well on our (unaided) way to the south of the island until she grudgingly told us to continue on the way we had already chosen.


When we finally arrived at our hotel there was not a free parking space to be seen.  We recklessly parked in a blue area and hoped for the best when we lurched into the hotel.


I had speculated that our room would not be ready as we were scheduled to turn up well before the magic time of mid-day.  I was duly proved right and we were told that our room would be ready at 1.30 pm approximately.


We were prepared for this and merely asked that our cases be guarded and we would walk, drink and eat until the time was right.


At this point the person who was checking us in was told by a female on the phone to ask us if we required breakfast as we still had time to catch the meal!


Not only did we eagerly agree that we did indeed want breakfast but we also were given a magic card to access the free parking of the hotel.


Breakfast was excellent and clearly stood in for lunch.  The blackout which occurred almost as soon as we sat down only delayed my cup of tea due to the professional approach of a waiter who also lavishly provided Cava when I said that would do instead!


When we had finished breakfast/lunch our room was magically ready and the sheer sensual luxury of a shower was a much more satisfying end to the meal than any cup of coffee!


We eventually walked through the extraordinary shopping-and-other-things centre that is next to our hotel and had a relaxing glass of beer in hot sunshine.


It is now gently raining.


Truly all human life is here!

Not Term Time!

Holiday!  Holiday!  Holiday!

OK it’s the weekend: but under the meaning of the act “a weekend is deemed to be actual holiday if the following Monday is a part of an official holiday.”  And it is so followed.

At last the Terrible Term has ground to its inexorable close with no pomp, no ceremony and no concession to the sheer beauty of the occasion!

Up bright and early this morning so that the final packing of the cases can take place.  This, in my case, has, of course not been done.  And, as it turned out just as well.  Our “Crisis Management Token” of only taking one case has not proved to be possible and so, at the last moment, I have had to book another case.  This makes everything so much easier (and so much more expensive) and I was able to accept my immaculately folded (not by me you understand) pile of clothes and transfer them seamlessly into another case.

The Gathering of the Gadgets is now taking place at a leisurely pace as the main case has been packed at, what for me, is a ludicrously early stage of the preparations for departure.

The elusive second battery for the camera is never easy to find and usually remains behind.  The strings of leads defy any reasonable organization and I usually stuff them unceremoniously into a small computer bag which makes it look semi-professional.  My numerous glasses and contact lenses make me look like a travelling Opticians and my attempt to use e-book readers (yes, the plural is correct) to eliminate the need for actual books has proved to be signal failure with the end result that I am taking two of each!

All of this, including The Machine, will be in the new Fascist cabin case which fulfils all of the Stalinist requirements of Ryanair.  Too late, always too late, I found a United Colours of Benetton case which was even smaller and more expensive than the one I have and led to Toni (sic.) berating me for “not having looked around enough” before my purchase!  This is the equivalent of Colonel Gadaffy accusing Mother Teresa of lacking compassion for the poor of Calcutta (or whatever we are supposed to call it these days.)

We are almost ready to go to lunch and I need to choose the ‘holiday’ watch from my extensive collection that will be discarded utterly when I find a new one in Gran Canaria or the airport.  It is one of my many money burning “traditions” that I purchase a new watch on each holiday.

As it was getting embarrassing finding watches in every nook and cranny of the house, I purchased stylish compartmentalized containers to store my collection.  Even I was startled by the number of timepieces that I have managed to accumulate: it made my past collection of cameras look positively provincial!  While looking for the elusive battery I found another two watches – one of which is a strong candidate to grace my wrist until a new replacement is acquired.

The chosen watch was a Swatch in blue, still bravely telling the time in its compartment albeit an hour out.  It has all the requirements: luminosity, waterproof, day, date, sweep second hand and numbers.  It’s rather boring though – ripe for change!

Time marches on and my cabin case is still not packed; the taxi is not ordered; the clothes for the plane not checked – this is much more like my usual preparations for a journey away!

Just to add a little frisson to the occasion the first of the almost daily confrontations over the next month between Real Madrid and Barça is about to take place.  Needless to say there have been programmes on the TV almost since dawn in which the participants find no problem in arguing, speculating and voicing the most abject prejudice!

It will make for a much more agreeable flight if Barça win.  I do not want to have to endure three hours of sulking and recriminations for my personal interventions on the side of Real Madrid.  

Everything from looking at the television in the wrong way to simply breathing can and has been taken to be an implied criticism of Barça, Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain!  In normal Barça games I can afford to relax and enjoy them, but that is not a possibility with El Clásico.  Unless Barça is winning 5-0 (a situation which the club has recently been in of course) there is no room for anything less than total concentration and attention!

The Match has now started and so I am condemned to a couple of hours of high-tension shouting.  Toni has changed into a Barça shirt and is roundly criticising the Barça side which even I think have failed to settle down yet.  Ah well, only 84 minutes to go.  What bliss!

A suspect yellow card against Barça within reasonable shooting distance of the Barça goal has somewhat changed the atmosphere in this household.  The ref. is now officially the enemy!

Time to put the car on the drive I think!

Why do I believe people?

My rush to get the car to the garage to have the brakes changed might have been a little less frenetic if I had known that I was going to spend the next four hours in the bloody place.

The first time of completion for the car was one and a half hours after I had brought the car there.  I duly went into the shopping centre, completed a few chore-like purchases and then settled down for a cup of tea and, more importantly, a decent sized table – and got on with my 3ESO letter marking.

When I finally got back to the garage my car hadn’t been touched; hadn’t even been moved from its parked position on the road.  My arrival catapulted the management into action who, once they had seen the scarred state of the discs, told me they would have to have the parts driven over from somewhere else and that my car would be ready by eight o’clock.

This time my visit to the shopping centre took in dinner and I managed to complete the marking of the set of papers.  Something at least came out of it!

My car was actually ready and, after paying a surprisingly large sum of money I was free to drive it home.

Unsurprisingly I was shattered when I finally made it back to the house and a “little lie down” soon changed into a full night’s sleep – which was a good thing.

I cannot truly say that I feel refreshed this morning as this is week 13 of an educationally unjustifiable term and, with a resolution which I can only deplore, the school staunchly refutes, but its general attitude, the idea that this is the penultimate day of term!

The chaos of “Nano Day” where our sixth formers took groups of pupils to explain the wonders of the nano world actually managed to work in my favour because with the reduced number of pupils that I had for “Current Affairs” I was able to justify letting the kids have some study time for the examinations facing them in the last days of term and I was able to get on with the much more congenial task of reading about the more extreme protagonists in the murky (though often brightly coloured) world of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s.  Don’t tell me that I don’t know how to have fun!

The weather, though hot and stuffy, is depressingly negative with harsh light reflecting from threatening clouds which look ready to unleash a deluge.  In many sense I couldn’t care less; my attention is more taken up with the weather in islands off the coast of Africa rather than the Iberian Peninsular!

Andrew and Stewart are back in the UK and I only hope that they have not drained the islands of their share of sunshine for we poor deprived dwellers on the Mediterranean coast.

Today is the day that I draw up a list of the electronic equipment that I will need (together with the adaptors and leads) to make any fairly short holiday a gadget success.  I now have a USB plug that has prongs for whatever part of the world that one finds oneself in.  I have enough USB leads to sell them by the kilo and it is only with the toothbrush and the camera that I need to pack a charging station. 

How times change, especially from my first visit to Spain and Tossa de Mar at the age of seven when not one of the electronic things that I am going to take with me had been invented!  But we was ‘appy gov’!

This evening has been notable for my not eating the worst tortilla I have ever been served in a restaurant.  This crime was perpetrated in the Gavá shopping centre just off the motorway.  Sympathy was expressed by the waiter but no material compensation offered, so that is another restaurant that we can cross off our list.

One would have thought during a time of economic crisis that attention to service and quality might have been something in the front of the minds of owners of places for which there are ready alternatives!

The trip to the centre was fundamentally to get some anti-mould paint to try and counteract the inevitable dampness that one gets this near to the sea.  I enlivened the buying experience by buying a new toilet seat.

The en suite bathroom has bath, sink, toilet and bidet in a postmodern excreta brown.  In a desperate attempt to bring a little lightness into the cramped gloom I have ignored the “colour” scheme and gone for an adventurous white on the basis that “every little helps” and it does make a difference!

Packing of the small case seems to have gone by the board this evening – fixing the toilet seat was much more anyone had the right to expect and I am exhausted with my achievement!

One working day to go.

Tomorrow (the last day) makes no concessions to finality at all.  We work until the bitter end.  In my case almost to the bitter end: Friday is my early finish and I am not staying one nano second more than I have to.

Sooner or later the reality of leaving Barcelona at 6 in the morning is going to strike me: working backwards, we will have to be in the airport at 4 in the morning, leave the house by 3.30 in the morning and get up at 2.30 in the morning.  Sunday is going to be an interesting day!

I shall rely on Toni’s paranoia to ensure that I am dragged bodily from my slumbers to make all the deadlines.

I hope.

Fun filled days!

The nearer we get to the end of term the less like the end of term it seems to be.  Indeed, so unlike an end of term is it that I am beginning to doubt that this term is actually ending and that I face a Sisyphus-like eternity of being stuck in a Wednesday in the last week of term!  A truly horrific thought!

It is just as well that I have the various pits of home produced paper which are the essential accoutrements of air travel nowadays.  Ryanair, of course, demands that all its customers print their own tickets, book-in on-line and then pay for the privilege of relieving the administrative burden on their “friendly” airline!  But at least I do have the paper which suggests, in black and white, that I am not going to be on the Spanish mainland whatever the apparent attitude of the school appears to be, suggesting as it does that there is no end in sight and we will have to teach until the proverbial bovines are back in their domestic paddock.

Everything is, at last, booked.  Barding passes are printed and confirmation for hotel and car are tucked away in the Tesco “real leather” travel wallet with magnetic clip.  As in my passport, in the section marked “passport”.  I am also comforted by the fact that my passport does not expire until the summer of 2015.  I shudder to think of the bureaucracy entailed in getting a new document in a foreign country.  But be still my beating heart, that is (in terms of this term) eons of time away!

As is usual in our staff room no-one is talking about the planned increase in teaching time and decrease in payment.  There is an unspoken (until I speak) assumption that “it will not happen here”.  There is no hard evidence for this belief, but one can look to the positive attitude of the school in trying to mitigate the harsher effects of governmental policy, though it has to be said that the conditions of the different schools do not form an exactly level playing field so comparisons, as always, are odious.

I have stumbled through the day and finally made it to the last lesson that I have to teach.  This is my “early leave” when I quit the school only 25 minutes later than the end of a normal day in the UK!

I have to admit that I am taking a further 30 minutes off and using the whole of the last period to get to the garage to have my brakes checked and the brake pads changed.  I fear that I have left this change over too late and have scratched the discs which will mean a horrific outlay to keep the bloody car on the road.  But I will have the front headlight bulb replaced and new trip put on the wheels so that I will feel that something real has been done for the money!

Every day and in every way I get poorer and poorer!

On the other hand when I leave the school I know that there will be just two working days left before the start of the holiday.

Tomorrow is a day when the science department is bringing the delights of knowing about Nano technology to whole chunks of the school and the teachers who would normally be teaching other groups have been drafted in to make this experiment work.  Three of my lessons will be affected by the rearrangements and I look forward (on the penultimate day of term no less) to the consequent chaos.  I am, apparently, involved in some form of role-play for which I have no information. 

Ah, bliss!

Stll an age to go!

Sleep did not pay any sort of extended visit to me last night with the result that the world’s most irritating alarm tone saw a resentful and unbelieving arm reach out for the blessed silence that a finger on the illuminated screen would bring.

Unfortunately I was not able to sink back into the luxury of even partial oblivion as the road situation of Barcelona necessitates a strict timetable being adhered to in the mornings.

As if to mock my unrested soul the standard of driving along the motorway to school was refreshingly appalling.  I use the adjective advisedly as the sheer awfulness of it all meant that any approach other than self-defensive alertness would have been tantamount to suicide.  Drivers (male: under 25) risked mayhem to gain a single car space.  One driver (male: under 25) had obviously recently graduated from a motorcycle as he drove the car as if it were a slim, manoeuvrable two-wheeled vehicle rather than a squat, space eating car.  Watching the insanely reckless movements of this idiot left me open mouthed with a mixture of horror and terror.  As he was not alone in treating the crowded motorway as if it were empty, you can imagine the somewhat unsettled state of mind I was in by the time I exited the motorway.

 

To exit the motorway is to change one type of madness for another.  The roundabout which greets one at the top of the slip road is the whirling vortex for a number of roads and all cars (with of course the signal exception of mine) drive as if god-given pathways through the mayhem had been cleared specifically for them.  Keeping to your lane is a hair-raising and soul fluttering experience.

School, by the time you have ascended the virtually perpendicular hill, appears like a haven of tranquillity and sanity.  After a cup of tea life does not seem as woefully random as it did on the drive up.

Classes waiting to be taught soon bring any tranquillity back to a general sense of fatalistic unreality – very much like the scenery in the surrealistically anthropomorphic landscape creations of Yves Tanguey.  In Week 13 of this awful term, believe you me; I know what it is to be in one of those canvases!

I have various mantras to get me through sleep deprived, school depressed feelings of desolation.  The one I choose to recite to myself now is, “When in doubt – spend!”

The trek along the beach in Gran Canaria (five working days away) necessitates the carrying of various elements in the sun worshiper’s catalogue for the satisfaction of the body from the brain outwards.  The collapsible backpack that I once owned has now faded into the general area of the “unbought” and, to quote Winnie-the-Pooh, the more I looked for it the more it wasn’t there.  It therefore needs to be “rebought” and that means calling into a supermarket on my way home and a little retail therapy always gives me a jolt out of work-induced lethargy.

The time approaches when, in the real world, there might be a pause for lunch.  Here it is merely the time for another lesson.  By the time lunch is actually finished I would welcome a short siesta – but there are two more lessons to be taught before escape can be contemplated.

It’s a hard old life, but the days are counting down!

In spite of temptations I still have not read any of the other eight volumes of the Bradstetter detective novels.  The only thing which can stand in my way to complete the plan of reading them on the beach is the weight of the volume itself.  As I understand it the packing of the suitcase is going to be of scientific exactness so that any extra will bump the case up to the next stage of expense in the ever-escalating costs of a Ryanair flight!

The continuing crisis in Spain continues to amuse.  At least it would amuse if it wasn’t something in which I am involved.  The latest laughable attempt to save money and persecute teachers has taken the form of the threat of more hours worked for less pay in schools.  As usual the history of Trade Unionism provides us with a lesson, “Not a minute on the day, not a penny off the pay” was the slogan of miners in the 1926 General Strike when they were of course hung out to dry.  Which also provides a lesson for the success of action against government.

Because of the appalling standards of educational achievement in Spanish schools there was a governmental initiative to increase the number of hours worked by teachers - the infamous “sixth hour”. 

As far as I can work out the government is “speaking” about changing the system so that in some schools, oddly, they are going to end up working extra hours for no extra pay.  The situation is confused, but I think the fact that we work every hour god sent (and a few extra) including the fact that we are discouraged from leaving the premises at any time until the end of school means that we are technically available for lessons or cover or something for more than the number of hours that are being suggested.

In other schools you only have to be in the school for the hours that you are teaching; in our school you are only allowed time off if you have had an early start at 8.15 am and, as that is 30 minutes before the normal start of school you are allowed to take a half hour at the beginning or end of the day if you have a “free” period at that time.

After a 5% cut in teachers’ wages last year (made good it has to be said by our saintly school) one can imagine anything from this panicking government.  Sooner or later (probably later) even the supine Spanish teachers must surely take some sort of action to protect their already eroded situation.  Not in our school, of course, naturally – but elsewhere, surely?

 

There is absolutely no feeling of end of term in the school.  None.  We gave our sixth form an examination today; tomorrow the 3ESO have to produce a test letter – and so it goes on.  Nothing to suggest that we are coming to the end of an almost un-enduringly long and tedious term.

I have done my best to try and inject a certain degree of expectation into my weepingly sincere countdown to escape and the holidays – but the teachers in our school are seemingly programmed to teach, prepare and mark in a way which is foreign and unfeelingly unnecessary to a normal British teacher!

“Tired” and “jaded” are not the appropriate prompts to encourage pondering on my attitude towards my chosen profession and present location.  But I do feel myself out of sympathy with the educational ethos and clients in my present school.  I am aware that, at this time of crisis having a job gives a security which a frighteningly high percentage of the working population of Spain does not have.  But . . .

We are getting ever nearer to the result of one of the most highly anticipated and closely fought competitions this year: the Teachers’ Section of the St Jordi’s Day Maths Department Photographic Competition of our school.

In the past a colleague and I have marvelled at the individualistic decisions made and the histrionic response of the winners.  This year what can only be described as a concerted effort has been made by the English Department with no fewer than four members of the department submitting photographs.  My own efforts were rushed and submitted at the hysterical insistence of a member of the maths department who said that no teachers had entered and I had to.  I put together a small portfolio of four shots and hoped for the best.

The best, in my opinion, are two shots from two members of the department and I have pinned my hopes of breaking the stranglehold of the Old Guard on this important competition on a short of symmetrical dhows and another of the inside of the Pantheon in Rome.  Of my own shots I will draw a discrete veil, though I have had some shocked approbation!

Three working days left to escape

All Praise to Ra

A hard day preparing for Gran Canaria.

That is lying in the sun so that the rays on the island by Africa will not come as a shock to my skin.  I take preparation for the holiday seriously!

As a concession to the crisis and general economic situation a single case is being taken and, indeed, is being packed even as I type.  Obviously not by me.  The idea of packing with more than a week to go to the actual holiday is something so outré that it doesn’t even make it into the area of ideas which I reject!

I have bought a new cabin case to fit in with the Stalinist requirements of Ryanair with whom we are travelling.  The large case, which is also new, has a clothing allowance of just 15 kilos: it is just as well that we are going to a hot place with a beach because anything colder and more formal would have necessitated a ruinous extra charge for more weight.

 

One only chooses Ryanair through necessity not preference.  Compared with that airline EasyJet looks like the luxury option!

Disturbingly, my prone preparation for Gran Canaria was a little unsettled by the realization that the Third Floor of the next house was also occupied.  Not only occupied but smoking!  It was fortuitous that my disgruntled departure was accompanied by the sinking of the sun!

Tomorrow sees the start of Week “Unbelievable” 13 of The Term That Would Not End.  Neither pupils nor teachers have any enthusiasm left for this final barrier to partial relief.  The two weeks Easter holidays sacrosanct in Britain is here truncated to a cruel seven working days and we will be back (surely not the nations cry) working in school a fortnight on Wednesday.  God, it seems even more horrific when you actually say it!

Still, we come back on the 27^th of April and we finish at the end of June.  The kids will have finished before then on the 20^th of June.  Then July and August gloriously free of kids, school and teachers!

We talk not of September.  And there is always a chance that I will not be invited back to teach in the next academic year.  One lives in hope!

Sleep makes some days shorter!

One cannot be living the appropriate life style when a “lie-in” until 10.30 am means that you have extended your time in bed by four hours when compared with a normal start!

As is usual in this canine bedevilled area the luxury of a lie-in is always tempered by the moronic mewling of the mongrels with which we are surrounded.  The crippled dog next door (not my fault I hasten to add, but if thoughts were followed by deeds then . . .) is as regular as an alarm clock.  It is one advantage to getting up early for school that I miss his aurora arousal of yaps (every second on the second) during the working week, but I am gifted his one trick performance when ever I get the chance to disregard the terminally irritating 6.30 melody which welcomes the start of each working day.

We are trying, and failing, to treat the barking which which we are surrounded like the ticking of a clock – something which the brain should be able to edit out of normal life.  Unfortunately, although their repertoire is severely limited, the various members of the chorus have their own particular howl, yelp, bark or scream and they do not (except at times of chaotic pandemonium) all perform at once.

It takes a Dracula to find the beauty in the howling of wolves, but even I can see a sort of majesty in the combined wail of a troupe of wolves compared to the Fred Karno’s Army of dog doggerel that assaults our ears during a normal day.

One almost wishes for the Transylvanian Count to pay a visit to our neighbourhood to slake his thirst on the various rat creatures confined bodily but not aurally by their uncaring human jailers.  Though thinking about it I am not sure that an unholy horde of vampire rat-dogs would be an improvement on the present degenerate crew.  Thinking about it again, vampires do not eat and drink, so at least there would be diminution in the unbelievable quantity of dog shit which graces our pavements!

In an uncharacteristic moment I decided to wash the car.  Admittedly I have gone through the last few months telling myself that a dusty car covered with bird droppings and lumps of congealed pine resin was a sure-fire way of ensuring the safety of a vehicle; a turn of for thieves.

However, there is a limit before designer dirt on a car becomes simply filth – and I think that limit has been reached.

I have broken two nails trying to get the pine resin off; I will have to use something more like a solvent rather than the wash-and-wax liquid that I used to clean the car – or rather I will speculate about what might get the resin off while I gently allow the car to resume its protective covering of dust, pollen, sand and the other accretions that a car accumulates.

At the end of my admittedly cursory cleaning of the car I decided to sit outside and continue listening to the internet radio (Pure – the new one) which continued to work in the garden and provided the traditional Radio 4 accompaniment to such a mundane chore of car washing.

I realize that my reaction to noise must seem to be verging on the paranoid but sitting with me in the garden after cleaning would have shown the full horror of al fresco listening.

The dog next door was barking; the dog in the flats opposite was barking; the dogs next door but one were screaming; a distant dog barked basso profundo; a child was yelling with a shouting father; a birthday party was being conducted in flats adjacent to us – the only thing we didn’t have was a bloody jet flying over!  Sitting next to the radio which was on a shelf at ear level I couldn’t hear the commentary because of the ambient sound!  God rot the lot of them!

Meanwhile, as if my troubles were not enough, Barça have crawled back from being a goal down to a draw at a crucial point in the season with Real Madrid huffing and puffing in the background.  (Barça eventually won 3-1)  Thanks to the demands of the league, King’s Cup and the Champions League, Barça and Real Madrid are going to play each other three times in the next few weeks.  The tension is going to be unbearable!

 

I have now read four of the Brandstetter novels by Joseph Hansen: “Fadeout”, “Death Claims”, “Troublemaker”, “The Man Everyone Was Afraid Of”.  I have been warned by Stewart (on the advice of his mother, though not I suspect in relation to these particular novels) not to read them all at once.  I will therefore apply a self-denying ordinance and put the volume containing all twelve of the books aside to be placed in the case for Gran Canaria.  This leaves a novel a day for the holiday.  We shall see.

 

Toni is by no means well.  He does appear to be a little more healthy today but he is nowhere near 100% but the idea of a holiday is keeping him going too.

And my examinations are all marked and results are in the computer.  I am prepared for all the unexpected things that the last week of this interminable term might have to throw at me.  Fond hope!

Real life economics!

The whole PIG has now gone and we in Spain are waiting in trepidation for that porker to become plural! 

Portugal, as the latest nation to go (what was the phrase that was used so dismissively about Britain when we had to go to the IMF, ah yes, cap-in-hand) grovelling to the moneyed nations of the EU asking for unbelievable amounts of cash – behaving indeed as if they were a nation of bankers!

So Portugal, Ireland and Greece – the whole PIG – not noted for its adherence to strict financial rules but certainly noted for a more than flexible approach to tax gathering, have shown the financial depths that a whole chunk of Europe is plumbing at present.

And we in Spain are next.  But, say the experts, we are too large to go under, there is simply not enough money to bail us out if we go bottom up.  But will we need this money?

I listened in amazement to a piece on Radio 4 this morning which had a correspondent say that the reports on the banks (by the banks) and the austerity measures (by the government of Spain) are making a difference and that things seem to be better there than in the rest of the PIG.

The key word, of course, is “seem”.  There is 20% unemployed in this country, whatever that actually means.  What is more significant is there is something like 40% unemployment in the youth section of the working population.  40%!  This is a total disaster.  Half a generation is being raised without work; without contributions - without the hope of a pension!

The so-called economy of Spain with its fatal link with the chaos which is the construction industry is something which is not healthy to contemplate.

Sooner or later I assume that something approaching reality will be partially accepted by this country and then god knows what will happen!

I wonder if the euro will survive.  What will that do to the value of the pound?  I will probably have to work forever!

And as if to emphasise the full horror of working in Spain, I was greeted at just before 8 am this morning with the information that during my five period teaching day with a duty as well, I would be adding to a full day the supervision of an extra lesson for a colleague.

To say I was not pleased would be like saying that the burning of the library at Alexandria was a minor inconvenience to the development of western civilization.

I had formulated plans to use whatever spare time (in our eight period day) I had to complete the marking of the next examination paper I had to mark.

I loathe marking with a deeply held and personally sincere hatred, but that drives me to get it out of the way as soon as possible.  I was like a thing driven to get the papers out of the way and I did manage to finish them all today: something of an achievement!

The mere mention of Indian food this evening drove me (literally) to our localish restaurant for a take away.  Delicious!  From time to time a decent Indian meal is the only thing to hit the mark!

I shall repent tomorrow!

Soon the hours will be numbered!

The car temperature gauge read a most satisfying 34°C when I rushed out of school this afternoon to try and escape the parental rush.  Obviously the gauge settled down to a more reasonable temperature as soon as I was on the move, but it still read a most respectable 25°C.

Oddly I seemed to leave the decent weather back at the school on the hill and my drive west was characterised by interesting lighting effects, but by a gradual diminution in the strength of the sun.  By the time I got into Castelldefels itself I was driving through wispy puffs of what looked like smoke.  I am, alas, not wise in the ways of sea mists and I just resented the lack of sunshine!

 

By a manic effort of concentration I have managed to get the first set of examination papers marked and the results fed into the computer.

Tomorrow comes the second (delayed) examination and little time to get the back of this lot broken before the weekend.

Still, there is the whole of next week – though I am still not entirely clear about how normal the timetable is going to be during the lead up to the longed for release from durance vile which will finally happen on Friday the 15^th of April, and mark the end of the thirteenth week of term!

Keep on keeping on is the order of the day!

Put it down to fatigue!

Is it a comforting sign of residual professionalism that one can tell when one has been teaching appallingly badly?  I sincerely hope so because yesterday was a day when a short film could have been made about me entitled “How Not To Do It” in the teaching profession.

I was tired and resentful at the early start of the day and the heady descent to the depths of technical and intellectual incompetence culminated in truly awful Media Studies lessons which drew a long day to a sad end.

The day did not end with the end of lessons, as I had to write an exercise for one of the next series of examinations which are the icing on the cake of this glorious term!

This morning I was greeted by a serious faced colleague who told me that he had bad news; I was being searched for to take a substitution.  As I was not officially supposed to be in school at that time, indeed I was half an hour early for the official starting time of school, I immediately lost my temper.  As it happened I could have saved my energy as no one said anything to me and I didn’t say anything to any member of management who might have been able to do something about it!

I also had to work before my official start time anyway when the content of the exam for the 3ESO was discovered to use words and phrases that we had not said were in the exam.  In our school this gives rise to bitter recriminations which make Emil Zola’s “J’accuse” look like a gentle reprimand!

 

This meant that I had to write yet another exercise for the exam this time using “Phrases using the word ‘end.’”  Teaching English as a foreign language is a bit like finding that First Aid in English has come back from the grave and this time is it personal and grammatical.  If our kids are at a loose end they can find themselves ending up putting phrases on end and in the end producing passable English; which might help them make ends meet.  You see how sad I have become!

The poor kids of the 1ESO are, as I type, busily and neurotically filling in their examination papers.  This will be the first of the exams that I will have to mark before the end of term.  The second will be tomorrow and that will have to be out of the way well before the end of term.  I am sure as hell not taking with me on holiday!  Which I might add is in seven and a half days – and counting.

My new (Stewart recommended) book has arrived and, in spite of my determination to reserve this book for the sands of Grand Canaria, I have read the first of the twelve novels contained in the volume.

I do not blame my legendary lack of restraint for this indulgence, but rather the arrival of a new, and of course expensive, reading light.  This is a floor standing Alex light which, I am assured, is perfect for the more mature reader.  I have to say that it does what it say on the tin – or in this case on the elegantly expansive cardboard box in which it came.

I have been told that where I have placed it is (obviously) wrong and I confidently expect the writhing, seething, pullulating mass of wires which surround my chair (giving it the look of imperfectly formed nest) will have been “re-arranged” and “tidied”.  I dread the result!

I consider book lovers to form a distinct (and of course higher) branch on the evolutionary tree – but they can be difficult for the lesser breeds without the book to understand.

For a Book Lover it is essential for books to be within reach at all times and in all places.  The ideal is to have bookcases full to overflowing with tottering piles of books around which one has to navigate to get from place to place.  There should be a system ordering the arrangement of books which only the owner fully understands and even he is subject to surprise when hunting for a specific volume.  Books should be capable of charting a life with specific editions linked to developments in knowledge and income!  Books are the windows of the soul rather than eyes and a much more reliable guide to inner depths!

I have now read the second of Joseph Hansen’s Brandstetter novels (ten to go!) and am thoroughly enjoying them.

They seem to be plot heavy – but that is a function of the detective novel – with a satisfying complexity.  There are some self-conscious pieces of description which the writer obviously enjoyed writing and can sometimes be a little intrusive for the reader, but there are felicities of expression contained in these set pieces which make up for their being spotlighted.

The USP of these novels is that the central detective, in fact an insurance investigator, is gay – and in the two novels so far read homosexuality has played an important part in the plot: I hope that the sexual proclivities of the central characters does not become a predictable element in the explications of the narratives.

Brandstetter himself is developing nicely as a character as parts of his life are being expanded in the sub plot which is his personal life.  The loss of his long-term lover to cancer and his finding of a partner through the ramifications of a case have given a line of development which hopefully will be extended through the remaining novels.

My task is to try and limit my reading so that my intention of taking it on holiday is not negated by my having read all 1200 pages before I go!

Meanwhile, the marking of the examination papers will be something to limit my reading possibilities.

In yet another example of the way in which the children in the school seem to have a power which is out of all proportion to what I regard as normal or professional, an examination has been postponed for a day because the kiddiewinks would otherwise have had two examinations on the same day.  Something not to be contemplated and certainly something which has never, ever happened to me in my academic life.  One wonders what world these pampered children think that they are living in!  I keep telling myself that I don’t really care about what they do in the school – but I do!  Sometimes I have to bring to the front of my mind the sage advice of my colleague, “Remember Stephen, you are not in Britain!”  How true!  How true!

At times, when engrossed in the second novel, “Death Claims” by Joseph Hansen, I dragged my eyes away from the printed page when prompted by the squawks of excitement from Toni as the Barcelona game in the Champions League produced a profusion of goals and an almost certain progression to the next stage and even Manchester have secured a good goal to nil lead in Chelsea’s ground, which promises well for their progression too.  It would be good to have a British team (if only in name rather than in terms of players) in the final in Wembley.  I can’t believe that I am writing such things.  Where will it end!  The wind might change and I could actually start enjoying football!  Perish the thought!

I have already started reading the third novel. 

I am indeed an addict.