Age old swimming

In years gone by when I wanted to have a swim I seem to remember that I went to the swimming pool and swam.  It really wasn’t complicated!

In Cardiff in days of old there was the wonderful Empire Pool; built for the Empire Games when we still believed that we actually had an Empire.  This 50 m pool was in the centre of the city just opposite the train and bus station.  It was, therefore, simplicity itself to get to it.

You arrived, paid your entrance and were given a ticket that you later exchanged for a metal structure with a container at the bottom and a shirt hanger rising out of it with a rod for the trousers.  It came with a tag that you placed around your wrist and then, with clothes assembled around the structure you gave the article to the man in the window and it was hung on a rail to be claimed later.

You splashed your way through an antiseptic footbath, braved the shower and there, in all its glory was the pool.

And you swam.

In those days eyes stinging from chlorine and hairs floating in the pool was all part of the experience.  Later, skin wrinkled and soul exalted by having touched the bottom in the deep end you reclaimed your clothes dressed and took the trolley back home.

It was all so simple.

 

Nowadays I am still trying to come to terms with the most efficient way to have a swim in Castelldefels.

The wearing of flip-flops of some such shoe is mandatory as is the wearing of a bathing hat.  I add to these the wearing of goggles and earplugs.

Leaving aside the problems of which lane to swim in I am still trying to work out how to get undressed in the changing room.

There are two and a half, or possibly two and three-quarter changing rooms in the swimming pool I use in Castelldefels.  There is a room with benches and hooks on the wall when you get in; there is another room with benches and hooks just before the showers; there is a space like a corridor where the lockers are situated, and there are a series of odd cubicles with doors on two sides giving a sort of through passage.  There is also a small space at the end of the locker corridor that had a couple of benches and some hooks.

There is no clear wet sports/dry sports area as, as far as I can tell there are only pools (two I think) and a gym.  Changing in the corridor is clumsy and too tactile as people brush past.  Changing in the small area seems reserved for muscled triangular people and in the other areas there seems no rhyme or reason to what people should be using them.  The cubicles are virtually untouched and anyway the locks are broken.

The lockers are usually just rectangular spaces, some of which have a chandelier like quartet of hooks in the centre of the ceiling of the box: this is useless.

Before you get in to this questionable area you have to flash your membership card at an electronic reader to pass through the turnstile.  So by the time I get to the selection of areas for changing I am clutching my wallet and trying to get the card back into its designated space.

Whatever method I have used in the past of getting changed it always seems to end up with me forcing an armful of clothing and an overstuffed swim bag into a space which is far too small and totally unfitted to be a receptacle for clothing and bag.

It has taken me until now to realize that the order in which things is done is of ultimate importance if the swim is to be achieve without stress levels above and beyond the acceptable.

First you put your wallet into the zipped pocket of your coat.  You also take the mobile phone and two pens from the shirt pocket and place those in the coat pocket as well.

Next you choose a locker.  These are in two rows one above the other.  The lower lockers are simply too undignified to use so it is essential to be eagle eyed and find a higher-level locker.  Once found (and the closing handle checked to see that it will take your lock) you lock the thing and then proceed to the chosen changing area.

The Spanish (just like the French) are totally paranoid about the dangers of letting your naked foot touch the polluted floor of a swimming pool.  I have observed manoeuvres of balletic brilliance executed by swimmers dressing and undressing while keeping feet firmly in or on plastic slippers.  I am still something of a neophyte in the art of divesting myself of clothing while perched stork like on a piece of plastic footwear.  I am also conscious that for the last half century of my life I seem to have walked barefoot on the floors of swimming pools and changing rooms without my feet rotting away at the ankles!  Still when in Spain etc.

Taking a collection of clothing to a locker invariably (invariably!) means that at least one, and more likely two or more pieces of clothing will fall to the floor –and always on a patch of damp dirt.

Shoes, therefore have to be placed in the swim bag; tie in trouser pocket; underpants ditto; vest in bag; shirt in bag.  Coat weighed down with anything that could fall out of pockets and I am ready to move towards my already reserved locker.

Which of course does not have a hook in it.  My swim bag with its multitude of pockets opens like an undersea anemone and fills all available space as I try and feed my coat and trousers into its maw.

Having pushed the clothes in and eventually locked the door I march confidently off to the pool.

And return because I am still wearing my glasses.

My glasses placed in their case I march confidently off to the pool.

And return because I have not put the ear plugs in.

By the time I get to the water I am almost too tired to raise one arm out of the pool to propel myself forwards.

But I do.

And I’m still working on the most time and space efficient way to get changed.

An on-going project.

Dark thoughts on an extra workload

I am about to gain two extra periods to my timetable!

This makes my timetable 24 periods long.  With an hour-long lunchtime duty and another half hour break time duty.  And a period set aside for a Departmental Meeting each week.  So twenty-six hours of directed time each week.  For a shit wage.

And we have been informed that our wages have been frozen at 2009 levels because the school is compensating for a partial 5% cut which the government has imposed.

And life continues, as far as I can see, as if the economy of Spain was solid and sensible rather than the sick joke that it actually is.

We now have over 20% unemployed – which partially explains why the workers who are being exploited do not reject the rubbish conditions that we have with impunity.

My extra two periods are the result of the splitting of a group of students at the beginning of the year.  There were supposed to be two groups of Current Affairs students, but the numbers were too low and a single group was formed which has been taken until now by the head of department but now it is my turn to take on the group.  Thank god for the BBC as their web site is going to provide most of the teaching material for the group!

 

I am dreading the weekend, as it will bring with in an invasion of Familial Proportions.  Not that I resent the influx of members of The Family, oh no, it is not the numbers (which amount to umpteen adults; three children and a dog) no; it is rather the fact that the house is going to be “shown” to people in The Family.

Already the downstairs has been “cleared” which at once has made it tidier and has brought to the surface Tesco bags; a car hand hoover; a series of towels that I thought were lost and a new bottle of windscreen wash.

This however, is just the start, and further tidying is threatened in all areas with selective painting and much use of bleach.  The (Augmented) Family arrives for the eating of the long onions on Sunday: Saturday promises to be a day of cleaning and clearing horror!

 

The tipping point of the week

I am supposed to supervise children who choose to do homework during their free time from 1 until 2 in the afternoon today.  No children choose to do any work today and so I had the library to myself.

This “library” does actually have books in it, which are mostly kept under lock and key; I have rarely seen kids use any of the books on the few free shelves and I have never seen the locked cases of books ever opened.

Outside the elegant French windows there is a balcony that runs the length of the masia that forms Building 1 in our school.  This tiled balcony is about sixty feet long and about fourteen feet wide.  Where the pine trees do not obstruct the view there are panoramic vistas of the city of Barcelona that, even in haze are impressive.

What I am building up to saying is that I was by myself; the sun was streaming in through the French windows and I thought, “Be a devil, open the doors!”  Which I did and with a chair purloined from the tables in the library I sat in the sun.

I cannot pretend that it was true sunbathing; but certainly sun rinsing.  It has now made me hungry for the summer.  With eyes closed gazing (behind closed eyelids) skywards I even dozed off into that pleasant semi-dreaming state that sometimes makes life worth living!

While trying to mark before the start of school this morning I was driven to get out The Machine to drown out the semi-hysterical high pitched and certainly high volume talk (I would not grace it by the appellation of conversation) that filled the staff room.  My intention was to listen to Mozart and drown out the chatter with my noise cancelling headphones.  These worked for a single movement of one or other of Mozart’s divertimenti and then silence!

This was a frightening reoccurrence of the silence that descended on the headphones a couple of days ago.

The Machine has few points of ingress in its aluminium body: a power point; two USB ports; a headphone socket, and a mini something else.  I therefore felt justifiably aggrieved one of the few not working.  Never before has any headphone socket failed to work on any of my other computers.  And now, on one that was ludicrously over-priced, failure was staring me in the face.  The very face that would be lost should I be forced to go to school with some small computer not of the fruit variety!

The headphone socket looked normal – not that I had ever studied one with anything other than passing interest before.  And even twiddling the plug around in the socket failed to produce any music through the phones.

Just as I was beginning to wonder where exactly I had put the receipts for The Machine I noticed a small lozenge shaped addition to the wiring of the headphones.  In the centre of this lozenge was a sliding switch that I guessed might have something to do with volume.

It did, and normal service was resumed with a slightly shame-faced owner prepared to swallow humiliation in the sheer relief that everything appeared to be OK.

I think that the musical dampener on Catalan conversation that The Machine offers is going to be something of a godsend in the forthcoming months!

Two days of this cruel month are now over.  No holidays; no Saints’ Days; no long weekends – nothing.  Just solid weeks of work with only Fiasco Week to look forward to in March.  Easter is so late that at least the summer term will appear to be shortish.

It was easier to make the decision to go for a swim today for a number of reasons (sunshine being one of the most important) but also because I left school early and had a reasonable, stress-free journey home.

The water was a touch colder today, but perfect for swimming when a few lengths had been completed.  The warm glow of self-satisfaction was heated even further by a short stint in the steam room; entrance to which is effected by the insertion of a code into the keypad by the side of the door. 

For weeks this defeated me as I resiliently attempted to feed in the wrong number.  Closer inspection of my membership card revealed another number that did the trick and I was able to sit in humid isolation pretending to myself that it was actually doing me some sort of good.  Who knows, it might!

 

I have decided that I need to go to bed earlier.  Three days of getting up at 6.30 am and the other two at 7.00 am mean that with my normal late hours I am waking tired and this makes for a very long day.  Sense must prevail!

 

And I am not reading enough.  The book on the phone has now taken me longer to read than “To the lighthouse” (a book I started on a great number of occasions and was defeated by boredom and pointlessness on each occasion) and has now taken on the portentousness of “Ulysses” without the language play!

 

Barça are now in the final of El Copa del Rey where they will play the winners of the game between Real Madrid and Sevilla.  Madrid really have to win this cup to try and start the clawing back of trophies of which they have had a dearth for the last couple of years.  The next few weeks should be very interesting!  There’s something I never thought that I would catch myself saying when the topic was football!

And so to bed as part of my new regime of early nights. 

School is life - if you're not careful

Less than twelve hours after leaving school yesterday I was setting out (in the dark) to go back to the bloody place today.  If that isn’t a definition of sickness I’d like to know what is!

Looking out of the window of the library at the early morning sun, and protected from the brisk temperature by comforting glass, it could be a summer day.  The sky blue and wisps of could decorously stretched over the hills of Barcelona in a very becoming way.  It is the sort of day when one should be going for a walk along the paseo in Castelldefels and watching the sunshine glinting off the wavelets of the undemonstrative Mediterranean.

But I’m not doing that; instead I am invigilating two kids for a late examination and fretting about the marking I have yet to do.

God must have been looking down on me as a colleague came in to the library and looked depressed when she saw me.  While I am used to this response, it turned out that she needed to have some very young future pupils with her and she would supervise the kids that I was supposed to be observing.  I escaped from that irksome duty in double short time and actually did some of the outstanding marking.

I am now preparing for my double period of Media Studies with the equivalent of Year 9: a delight.  At least I can go home immediately after without the threat of another meeting hanging over my head!

As I invariably return home by driving along the road next to the paseo and the sea when I get to our bit of Castelldefels I can observe at first hand the attitude of drivers towards their peers on the road.

Parking has been laid out on the left hand side of the road (the right hand having been taken up by new cycle lanes) and the parking lines are at such an angle that people need to reverse into the spaces, the lines being at an obtuse angle to the oncoming traffic.  It therefore needs drivers to be considerate and leave enough space for those about to park to achieve their manoeuvre.

Consideration is not the first abstract noun that springs to mind when thinking (even slightly) about Iberian drivers.  Overtaking is impossible (cf traffic lanes above) and patience is non-existent in this part of the world.  Driving along this stretch of road (even in winter) would be a real test of Buddhist calm in even the most adept of adepts.  Not many people are of that persuasion.

We had one particularly fine weekend when (as is usual) the entire population of Barcelona descended on Castelldefels to take the sun and walk the paseo.  Driving along the parking stretch of road was only accomplished by remembering one’s breathing exercises to maintain calm as driver after driver dawdled his way along and took hours to park.  One must never forget that overtaking is impossible. 

I go along that road as a test of my mental stability.  I haven’t screamed once in spite of the fact that I have seen a man of mature years, supremely indifferent to traffic around him on the main road, serenely gliding along on a skateboard while holding his baby son in his arms; I have waited behind cars which are waiting behind cars which are waiting behind cars which are thinking of pulling out or parking; I have followed drivers who without indication have meandered their way (difficult in a single lane) along the road as if they were the only people on it; I have seen cyclists – and I don’t need to say anything more as all cyclists are the Spawn of Satan and motorcyclists (ugh!) can only aspire to the glowing appellation of Spawn of Satan in the wildest of their fantasies.

So, as you can imagine I finally arrive home in a state that sometimes borders on the homicidal.  Thank god that I have a comfy armchair that by its very opulence soothes as it rests me.

Though, like this evening, I sometimes have the strength of will to eschew the blandishments of comfort and go for a bracing swim.  The bag in the boot of the car is a reminder of what I ought to be doing and today I accepted that as I actually enjoy swimming I might actually do it.

The pool was suspiciously empty though there were plenty of kids (with attendant parents) milling around outside and I was able to make stately progress in a lane mercifully free of gentlemen of a certain age doing a backstroke drowning and getting in my way.  Women of a certain age, though slower than their male counterparts are usually much more receptive to the concept of allow a faster swimmer to take precedence.  But today, empty water and now aching arms.  I really have let things slip if a few lengths exact a physical price!

I have just finished reading “Ticket to Prague” by James Watson (he of “Talking in Whispers” much beloved of English departments throughout the land – at least in the past) as a possible book for next year’s 4ESO.

This novel concerns a poet isolated by intention and psychiatric diagnosis who is “released” by a young girl who befriends him and manages to get him recognition and to bring him back into the world.

Watson takes a “safe” controversial subject – the post Communist state of Czechoslovakia and the fear of naming those collaborators from the past tainted by their association with the repressive regime.

The story bounces along, as indeed it must, or the unlikely elements in the narrative would make it founder.  Our heroine is as unconvincing a character as one could wish and the interplay between young and old takes on more of the form of a fairy story than a hard hitting political commentary.

But there again, this is a novel for young people and as such it has a number of themes and ideas that should be stimulating and provocative for students.  Certain parts of the story have an overlay of almost mystical proportions that also serves to solve certain narrative problems.

 The ending is abrupt and might prove problematic for some young readers.

I found this an essentially unsatisfying read, but it might lend itself to teaching!  One has to balance conflicting demands in education!

A horror passed!

You can judge a meeting by its most exciting moment.

In the meeting that lasted over two hours that started when school finished the most exciting moment was when I sneezed twice.

The true low point occurred when, after hours of speaking, someone rose to explain a new and exciting initiative involving our pupils in some way.  It was a new and exciting way to use the computer system in the school.  Which then, of course, failed to work.  The program did not load; the password did not fit; three people got up and attempted to help; the password failed again; and again; and again; and they tried to reload again; and again; and again.  And I kept thinking that I had started today by getting up at 6.30 am and that the time was now 7.30 pm and people were behaving as if I actually cared if their bloody system worked or not.  My only thought was to get out and go home.

Which I eventually did in the pouring rain: the pathetic fallacy at its most irritating worst.

The only thing guaranteed to get me back to some semblance of normality was superior junk food.  So we went to Rober’s for our double buns.  The first spicy beef burger with accompaniments went well; it was when I went to get the second that the problems started. 

I was negotiating a swing door when the plastic glass of red wine which was perched precariously on my tray started to slip, closely followed by the can of Coke for Toni.  I saved the Coke but the wine fell and splashed on quite a respectable swathe of floor at the feet of a table of startled Iberians.

I apologised at once and then, to make light of the situation, said that such wine throwing was a tradition in my country.  They looked deadly serious and obviously took me at my word.  They left almost immediately.

The evening is almost over and I think that an early night is called for to compensate for the horror of the meeting. 

Perhaps oblivion will soothe the memory!

All things will be well

The sun came out today and my headphones are working again.  I am going to assume for the sake of my peace of mind and the price I paid for The Machine that last night was an inexplicable glitch and it will not happen again!

For the first time in a week I have been able to use The Machine without a nagging suspicion that I should be continuing with the chore of putting the music into its memory.  I can listen with out the underlying feeling that I should be doing something else.  At the moment I am listening to a fairly arbitrary piece of The Marriage of Figaro which was decided by the music program, as it certainly isn’t the opening of the opera even though it is the first disk in the list.  Ah well, as long as they haven’t reordered the tracks I can cope with it.

The Family arrived in the early afternoon with the advance force of mother and daughter to prepare the way for the main invasion of the crack forces with the juvenile equivalent of the SAS in the form of two small children under 6.

Kids always lull you into a false sense of security with their ability to dissimulate their sense of satisfaction.  You think that you have them under control and they seem acquiescent and, bloated with confidence, you allow them to play with the Wi games with only one hand unit between them.  One wants to play the FIFA World Cup, the other is much more interested in Bob the Sponge.  Within minutes both are in tears and are on the brink of homicidal tantrums.

Chocolate cake placates the young but, like the fragments of the True Cross, if you add up the crumb consequences which litter the floor I am convinced that put together they form more than the original cakes from which they came.  Kids also have the innate ability to cause rubbish fall-out from places where they have not been!

Now is the calm after the storm with both us flaked out and hoping that dinner will make itself in some way!

Much though I have tried, I cannot get out of my mind the fact that tomorrow is going to be a very long day with nothing to look forward to but an enervating meeting at the end of it.

At least I have my newly repaired glasses back so, if necessary I can take them off and let the horror of the situation appear as a comforting blur and I will not be able to see the mouths move and perhaps the conversation will take on the form of a piece of musique concrete and I can regard it as art!

Who said suffering is ennobling?

Talking of suffering I have bought a book on Office for Mac 2011 so that after years of ignorant frustration I can finally try and understand the workings of the suite of programs.

Cooking up culture

I have now reached the recognizable operas in the Complete Mozart Edition and the number of disks to be fed into The Machine has now dwindled to almost manageable proportions.  The last part of “Idomeneo” is now being lodged firmly in the innards and we are on the home stretch with only another 16 disks to be loaded.

I think that what I now need is a good, but relatively simple but comprehensive guide to Mozart’s music so that I can meander my way through melody after melody with little tit bits of information about the notes to keep me going.  There are some aspects of Mozart’s prolific output where some sort of route through, for example, the violin sonatas would be greatly appreciated.

I have been listening to a whole parade of German Marches that Mozart wrote.  They are very jolly and to me they sound, to put it mildly, fairly slight.  It was after I had listened to about twenty of them that I turned to Beethoven for something a little more substantial and less insanely tuneful!

Tonight is the night of The Perfect Bolognase – or it would have been if I could have found the recipe that Stewart sent me.

I had, of course copied it into The Machine, but I couldn’t remember what I had called the file.  I had written the ingredients on a memo on my phone so I knew what I had to buy, but I had not included the method.

Remembering that the recipe was Guardian Newspaper orientated I googled that and found a couple of recipes the gist of which I followed.

I tend to be rather free and easy with quantities, and I am not sure that my brain can cope with instructions which call for a “pinch” of anything.  I have used all the meat; all the chicken livers; half a bottle of wine; generous amounts of milk; pepper in the way that I like it; a slew of salt; more wine; all the contents of the tin of tomatoes – but no garlic!

It is bubbling away merrily and looks rich and edible.  It will be eaten at the end of the game of Barça and Hercules and the sauce will be soaked up by mini penne rather than spaghetti.  I for one will be having cheese with my meal, though this will be Lidl’s defrosted and crumbled Cheddar rather than the more traditional Italian.

Well, I think that the meal was excellent.  The meat was tender and rich and the sauce subtle without being innocuous.  It wasn’t runny and the Cheddar added a more than usually tasty overtone.  If you sense that I am making a case for myself then you would be right.  Toni was unimpressed finding it too dry and lacking the right amount of tomato.  I think I will salvage what is left of the enormous amount I made and re-treat it in a more Catalan way!

It looks as though the festivities planned for tomorrow are not going to take place and I am going to be cheated of my chance to eat the dirty onions that is the basis of the whole concept of colçets.  And it may rain.

On the bright side I have now loaded the complete works of Mozart on the machine and it is at this very point that the earphone socket has taken to not working.

Sometimes irony is very irritating.

Always something new

The last time I taught in the UK there were five periods in the day which started at 8.45 am and finished at 3.25pm.  Today I had six periods of teaching in a school day that started at 8.15 am and I finished early (a whole period early!) at 3.50 pm.  Something, somewhere is dreadfully wrong!  And I get paid a crap salary, but it does at least pay the bills.

Perhaps this downbeat, resentfulness is due in part to the lousy weather which is grey overcast skies with desultory rain sulking its way down just to irritate me.

On the other hand it is the weekend and however grey the skies there is the bright prospect of two days of freedom!

Qualified freedom as I am still chained to The Machine feeding in a seemingly unending sires of Mozart CDs.  I am now on disk 80 and approaching the end of the string quartets and just about to start on the piano sonatas and still not half way through yet!

Ever vigilant as I wend my way along the tedious bit of motorway that connects me with the school and looking without interest at the back of the car in front of me I actually saw something unique.

 

It is the custom of Catalans to show their national pride by putting a symbol of their identity on their cars.  The Spanish symbol of a silhouette of a black bull is taken from the Osborne company and was used to advertise its Brandy de Jerez starting in 1956.  It has become a symbol of Spanish speaking Spain, or “core” Spain inside the country and a national symbol outside it.  In Catalonia the symbol is sometimes seen as a studied insult and the Catalans have adopted the silhouette of a black donkey or burro as a response to the bull.

 

For the first time ever I saw both symbols on the same car: the bull on the right and the burro on the left – if that is significant in any way.

Far from being even handed by showing both symbols I think that the person sporting the two images would be equally hated by both sides for failing to nail his national colours to the mast more exclusively!

I can’t help feeling that the car I saw today is going to be unique.  I see no real sign of a rapprochement between what is very obviously a real division of tradition, interest and political aspiration when it comes to Catalunya and the rest of Spain.

The weather has now become openly vicious and the rain is pouring down to an accompaniment of OTT thunder.  This does not bode well for the weekend.

I am now over half way in the putting of the Mozart on to The Machine and I am in territory where I have never knowingly gone before.  The latest disk is “Die Schuldigkeit des Ersten Gebots” Part 1.  To which I can only adopt, in self-defence, a posture of musing incomprehension.  It will be listened to in time, though god alone knows when that time might be as I now have the equivalent of three weeks worth of solid musical listening waiting for my ever-receptive ears to appreciate.

Monday sees one of our school Meetings.  These are a gruesome and grisly feature of the school year and are truly dreaded by all the non-Spanish members of staff who regard these interminable marathons of pointlessness as something akin to a natural disaster or a malicious act of god.

I need to use the weekend to store up energy to combat the fatal enervation that is an inevitable by-product of the meetings that litter the annual timetable like monumental slabs of granite-like unrelieved tedium.  And they go on for hours and hours and people simply don’t shut up.  And I used to think that Curriculum Meetings in LHS were the low point of existence. 

How wrong I was.

A bad day to do the right thing eventually

A bleak day with Barcelona lost under a thick blanket of smog based cloud.  Aesthetically it is quite attractive with buildings looming out of the mist with their foundations lost in greyness but I like the sun and I miss it every minute it is supposed to be shining.

There is a parallel greyness about my colleagues who are looking somewhat drawn and haggard, as the awful prospect of unbroken teaching days becomes an un-escapable continuing misery; where the nirvana (if I may be allowed a cross-religious allusion) of the Easter holidays seems distant indeed.

I am at present being bullied by one of my colleagues.  This is not as negative as it sounds as the bullying is at my instigation as her task is to remind me of my stated intention of going to have a swim each day.  She vaunts her prowess on her Wi-Fi fitness board while pointedly reminding me of my non-swimming status.  She tells me that my lack of brownie points is matching the state of the National Debt and that there will soon be no way back. 

I have taken the first step and put the swimming bag into the boot of the car, but I have not checked to see if all the necessary impedimenta are in place for the swim to take place.

In the Municipal Pool it is essential to wear a very unbecoming swim hat; to wear sandals to the pool; goggles to protect the eyes and earplugs.  The clothes have to be placed in lockers that only lock if you buy a lock to secure it, so lock and key have to be in one of the pockets.  A glasses case is essential too because there are simply too may health and safety issues connected with lodging them in a shoe for the duration of the swim.  Then there is a towel and soap.  And of course the card to get in.  What used to be a fairly casual visit has now become a major journey!

This is merely an excuse and not a convincing one for my lack of effort.  I know that, just like banana yogurt, I will like it when I try it.  I do enjoy swimming and all I have to do is allow the car to continue on to the next turning on the motorway and I’ll be there.  Perhaps this afternoon is when the correct approach to exercise re-asserts itself.  Meanwhile there are still two teaching lessons and a departmental meeting to get through before the freedom of the open motorway and home.  Or a swim, as I should say!

Which I actually had!

Slipping into the comfortable waters of the pool had a delicious sense of re-entering a natural element.  I could tell that I had not had a real swim for some time by the growing ache in my shoulders, but this will not last and as long as I keep it up I should be back to normality in a few days.

The only downside to the experience was forgetting to put in my earplugs.  I only remembered when I was at the pool side and I simply couldn’t be bothered to go back in to the changing rooms; unlock the locker; dig out my swim bag from the pile of clothes under which it was buried; go through the pockets to find the plugs and then traipse all the way back to the pool.

 

I made an executive decision to suffer the consequences of water in the ear.  This was fine until I shook my head at the end of the swim and only managed to unblock one ear.  The other remained stubbornly waterlogged and I had fears of having to live with it like that for a couple of days – which has happened in the past.  Gingerly prodding it with a perfectly shaped index finger finally broke the dam and hearing was restored.

Restored in time to go to Sitges to reclaim my glasses which had a wisp of metal masquerading as an arm of my specs fixed to the lens: so much paid for so little!

 

For our evening meal Toni (for it was he) had a yearning to go to Burger King with which I complied.  He now has a vivid recollection of what the food was like and I do not think that we will be repeating this eating experience any time in the near (or indeed distant) future!

To compensate for the awful meal we called into a pastry shop and bought a custard-filled pastry confection topped with a glorious selection of fresh fruit.  It may have cost more than the meal for two in Burger King but it was a bloody sight more tasty!  

And there is some left for tomorrow to lighten the dark start of an early class!

Higher things

The welter of paper tedium that is at the heart of examination marking is slowing down so that the steady flow of class marking can now surge forward and be considered.

What is left is the group of people who missed the examination and will have to be accommodated at some time in the future.  This means that odd papers will suddenly appear from nowhere that you will be expected to mark.  I have kept all the mark schemes but, as is always the case in these situations when you do not have a room of your own, it is the putting your hand on them that is the important point.

In terms of time expended, the maverick examination papers take a disproportionate effort when you consider just how much (or rather little) time was spent on the bulk of the marking!

This too, as they say, will pass.

 

I am at present in an empty library doing a “library duty” listening (because I can and there is no one to disturb) to Mozart.  If push came to shove then I could probably justify playing Mozart in a school as his seems to be the only music that actually aids pupils’ concentration – or at least that is what we are told by various spurious “scientific” studies which I can’t name.

I don’t know whether I should be surprised, but I am enjoying listening more to Mozart than to the other composers that I have downloaded.  It may be that I am using his music as it was supposed to be used – as background noise for other activities.  Divertimenti and Serenades are perfection in subtly adjusting the ambience upwards on the pleasure scale.

I haven’t got to the church music or the operas yet when a little more concentration may be called for!

Another cold day with flawless blue skies; I hope that this weather continues to the weekend so that we can accommodate the numbers of people who will be eating long onions cooked on the barbecue.

I will have to go into Castelldefels to spend more money.  Although I need little incentive to do this, there is an actual reason behind this little jaunt.  Last night I knocked the Bodum tea thingie into the sink and it broke.  That is the glass body of the thing shattered; the plastic holder and the plunger are fine.  All I need is a replacement body.

And I know that I am going to have problems.  Firstly the chichi little shop that I got it from is only going to stock the whole thing and the torn jean wearing and spiky haired affected person who usually serves me is going to look at me in bewilderment when I ask him for another.

Then, even if I do manage to get a replacement, there is the major problem of fitting the glass into the holder.  To say that the glass fits snugly is an understatement and I am convinced that in fitting it myself I will not only break the thing but also take a chunk out of my hand in doing so.  And even if I do not break it by forcing it into the holder, I will find when I have completed the insertion that the spout is not correctly aligned with the handle and I will have to start all over again and break the glass in the adjustment.

And it has to be replaced as I have now got thoroughly used to brewing exotic and flavoursome cups of tea by a judicious mismatching of various teas to obtain something unique.  I rather like the fact that I am mixing one of the most expensive teas that I have ever bought (the Earl Grey Rioja) with a cheap black tea from Lidl’s: delicious.  And the Bodum thingie is easy to use and jolly and encourages me to experiment, so without it I am back to the PG Tips triangular teabags – it’s just not the same!  If necessary I will buy another one just so that I can (eventually) find the glass to replace and have a spare so that I will not have to suffer the horrors of real tea withdrawal symptoms again.

There is a real variety of teas on sale in the shop and I am thinking of branching out and trying another one – perhaps something a little more subtle.  I remember drinking a Formosan Oolong in University that I quite liked, but when the tin from Fortnum and Mason was finished I kept ordinary tea in it.  Perhaps I should revisit old taste paths.  I am certainly inclined to try some of their muslin tea bags packed in fetching individual sachets with the most outré flavours!

I was right.  My presentation of the plastic holder in the coffee shop was greeted by the boy with open incredulity.  He did not, of course have a replacement glass container but did offer to “ask” about getting a replacement and he also took my phone number.  We shall see.

In the meantime I asked for another cafeteria and lighted upon a shining metallic little number that was also a thermos flask.  The revelation of the price evoked a gasp of horror from me, whereupon the boy hastened to inform me that the price he had just told me was the “normal” price, but that it was on offer at a price a few euros less: so I bought it.  Never let it be said that I failed to fall for a transparent sales ploy.

 

By way of compensation the boy gave me a sample of coffee to try, a single sip of which has woken me from my usual evening torpor and will probably keep me awake for the rest of the night!

I have replenished my stocks of the exorbitantly priced but delicious Early Grey Rojo and also bought some Oolong Fancy – which in its raw state looks exotic indeed!

Stewart has sent me the “perfect” recipe for Bolognese sauce and I intend to try it out on Saturday: shopping in the morning for the ingredients and the rest of the day for the cooking.  The recipe actually says, “and cook for at least 3 hours (4 is even better) until the meat is very tender” and this is not something that I normally do – I am more of an “instant” cook and demand visible and edible results almost immediately.  It will be an exercise in restraint for me and I only hope the meal is worth it!

The nightly task of feeding CDs into The Machine is well underway, but I am still not even a third of the way through the Mozart collection and already there are 41.5 GB of music electronically tucked away in the innards of The Machine. 

I continue to trip merrily along unfrequented Mozartian melodic roads listening to the odd little kontretanz, gavotte or menuet.  The more I listen the more ludicrous the price of this amazing set of CDs becomes. I urge people to buy it: Mozart – Complete Edition - Brilliant Classics.

A number of years ago I read that of all the people in the world who have ever been capable of playing all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas the majority are alive and playing now.  In the same way how many people have been in the position of having all of Mozart’s music at the press of a key.

Before the advent of recordings the only way to get to know Mozart was via the score or going to a performance.  People who were able to read scores would probably have a piano score rather than the full score of many pieces.  And anyway what sort of person would have the scores of the whole of Mozart’s oeuvre?  My ownership of this set of records means that I will shortly have heard more performances of Mozart’s music than many experts on the composer in past times!  It becomes something of a privilege.  I suppose it should also be something of a responsibility: shouldn’t my appreciation of the Music become more profound with such exposure to the totality of the production of the composer.  Or perhaps I should just wallow in the luxury of ownership!

In terms of cost: if I think about the first LP records that I owned which cost just over a pound (bought by my parents I might add) allowing for inflation, if I had bought the set of Mozart then it would have cost the present day equivalent of about two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds, whereas it actually cost me just under fifty quid! 

Admittedly this amount was after taking into account the 3 for 2 offer in El Corte Ingles – but still, remarkable.

Happy sigh!

Yearning

There is no substitute for having your own teaching room.

In our school (apart from gym, art and science) the teachers go to the children rather than vice versa.  This makes everything much more difficult.  We are supposed to be using technology in our teaching, but only the most naïf of teachers relies on equipment working when someone else has been using it just before you.  And it’s worse if they haven’t been using it because then it has to be set up and it is a golden rule of life in the classroom that problems multiply with an inverse relationship to the complexity of the technology employed.

 

God knows it was difficult enough in the days of the spirit duplicator.  Teachers wandering around with beatific smiles on their faces and trailing behind them the slightly antiseptic scent of the alcohol heavy liquid used to transfer the image to paper with this method of reproduction. 

What wonderful ideas the term “Spirit Duplication” raises in the mind: illicit experimentation in producing a clone of the soul; unlimited booze or perhaps the general spreading of zest for living.  How banal the reality: smudged images and print on unpleasant paper.

Then the Roneo machine; that voracious eater of paper.  I once left a Roneo machine unattended as I had a vast number of copies to produce.  While I was absent a piece of paper concertinaed and each succeeding sheet concertinaed in turn, with the result when I opened the door to the room on my return I was met by a paper flow of biblical proportions!  Luckily I was able to find plastic sacks and dispose of the evidence before anyone found out.

Luckily in that instance the Roneo “skin” was not damaged and I was able to print out the full run that I needed without too much further fuss!

My great discovery was to find out that there were special books, which could store the skins for re-use.  After careful cleaning off the ink from the skin it could be placed in the “book” on a numbered page and then catalogued.  I eventually had quite a collection of these books representing a monumental quantity of work.

Then came the photocopier.  The first one I came into contact with lived in a portacabin of its own and was tended by a deputy head who understood the mysteries of its use.  The primitive system that it adopted was akin to photography with positive and negative sheets of paper that had to be peeled apart leaving a grey image on shiny paper that sent shivers of disgust down your spine every time you touched it.  Even thinking about it is creating the old reaction and I am shuddering with what can only be partially explained by the cold!

Xerox was a revelation.  A massive machine that produced single copies in black and white.  If you were lucky.  These machines had “key holders” who were able to get inside and sort out the inevitable paper jams.  Mere “users” could only load the paper – always remembering to “fan” the ream before insertion for gnomic reasons never divulged.  I always assumed it was simply a propitiatory ritual to the paper gods who always had to be appeased.

And Xerox was the harbinger of the modern age of school technology.  The BBC-B computer; Sinclair and the QL; my first Apple; my Fall from Grace and turning to the Dark Side of PC ownership and the torment of Windows in its most tortuous form, through a multitude of increasingly powerful computers - which I continued to use as if they were typewriters with attitude – to the present day and The Machine.

 

Then there were the OHPs. for many teachers the last piece of “hi-tec” equipment that they knew how to work and knew how it worked.

I must have been one of the few teachers who used an OHP in his student teacher days and went on using one throughout his career.  For dependability, easy of use and effectiveness for money I still think that OHPs cannot be beaten.  I am not so Luddite that I do not recognize the amazing capabilities of computers; but in the classroom they so often go wrong that they are a positive liability.  Whereas the old OHP just goes on and on – and I had one which had a built in spare blub which came into play at the movement of a simple lever!

But the idea of carting one around (even the so called portable version) from classroom to classroom is guaranteed misery.  You have to have a base.  Preparation of material and its presentation is so much easier if you don’t have to take everything with you at the end of each lesson.  Space is at a premium; my cupboard in the staffroom is full and claiming a space on the two tables for personal work is sometimes difficult.  There is no space for silent work and piercing, female Catalan voices can cut through the keenest concentration!

Meanwhile the loading of Mozart into The Machine continues apace with the only problem being the finding of the music when it is locked in the electronic innards.  However much I scoff, I think that the only solution to find some of my favourite pieces is going to be learning the K numbers!  Soon I will be able to listen to Radio 3 without feeling like an imposter!

I am, at present listening to K 525, the Serenade No 13 in G, which is not the title by which I knew it when I listened to it on my EP.  I was always losing it because it was a different size to the LPs and was engulfed by them.  The version I am listening to now is by the Kurpfälzisches Kammerorchester Mannheim conducted by Florian Heyerick (neither of which I have heard of) but a very sprightly version it is; perhaps a little too sprightly for me, but energetic certainly.

I am thoroughly enjoying my forays into the more obscure (are there any?) corners of Mozart’s music and have listened with condescending amazement to the early symphonies and various odd pieces that I have never heard before and, to be truthful, probably will never hear again!

I am almost 25% of the way through loading the discs into The Machine and I am now listening to K 250, which I feel I should know, but I don’t.  I think that I am going to find that a lot in my future listening – and not only to Mozart!

Work frustrated

Not only have I forgotten my reading glasses but also I have left my school keys in one of my coats.  This is because my shirt does not have a breast pocket.

Small changes in one’s normal routine have grave consequences in the way life is lived.  The breast pocket in normal times houses my blue and red disposable fountain pens and my mobile phone.  Wearing contact lenses means that there is not room for the mobile phone, as my half-moon reading glasses in their tube have to be lodged there.  The mobile phone is consigned to my pocket.  The pocketless shirt therefore, by it very absence, does not remind me that I should be carrying extra things for my day.

My pocket is then overstuffed with wallet; phone, handkerchiefs, miscellaneous coins, chewing gum and the keys that should be noticeable are then lost in the general bulges.  Until they are needed when their loss is acute.  We lock everything in our school and to be without keys is a pain, to put it mildly!  And not seeing the locks properly without my glasses is also a pain – though not one I care about much.

I have now redistributed the personal luggage that a normal day requires: car and house keys in the front section of the outside of the brief case; wallet inside the briefcase; pens ditto; phone in a pocket of its own; gum in briefcase; paper handkerchiefs relegated to the bin.

I have availed myself of Mad Lewce’s wisdom that, “Nothing is lost until you have looked for it three times” and that “No bag is checked until everything has been taken out”.  The practical result of these proven aphorisms is that my school keys have emerged Venus-like from the depths of the outside pocket of the briefcase and are now lodged securely in the internal pocket in my trouser pocket. 

This valuable addition to the mundane garment means that the metal does not jangle when you walk and the keys are safely segregated from anything else that might be snagged by the bittings.

The discovery of the keys goes some way to mitigate the resentment I feel on having the first free period of the week taken away to supervise two candidates who failed to sit their exam last week.

Later in the day I will get the final (I hope) instalment of the Mock Examination marking which seems to have lingered over our lives casting its dark shadow for some time now.  If things go according to plan I should be able to start the first tranche of marking in part of one of my free periods and then complete the rest in the lunch hour.  I refuse point blank to take the damn things home with me so the rest of my day is going to be rather full with some frantic periods of activity.  And even some teaching!

This little period is a calm before the storm where everything is potential rather than actual and I am stymied by the lack of material on which for me to put my red mark.

Next weekend there is a Grand Gathering of the Clans and we are going to have a colçotada but this time without the mountain of meat that has accompanied the delectable onions in the past.  This time just the veg and a few sausages – all in the best of Catalan taste.

This school is a transcendent example of the examinations tail wagging the educational body of the dog.  We examine!  We test!  We fell vast forests of trees to feed our voracious appetite for photocopied sheets with little gaps for the pupils to fill in.  Our pupils are either waiting to take a test; are recovering from taking a test, or are preparing for a test.  That is the life of the school!

School was hell, with my cunning plan to get the marking done frustrated at every turn.  I am ashamed to admit that I responded to my time being taken away by giving one of my classes a “reading opportunity” and marked like fury, then filled in the results after school and thereby missed most of the chaos that marks the departure of the students in the fleets of cars that they need to transport them back home!

At home the irritation of a defunct microwave – but there again, the opportunity to do a little light shopping.  I have very definite ideas about what qualities a microwave should have: reasonable size; grill; convection oven and one or two microwaves as well.  These requirements cut down the number of machines that one has a choice of, but I found one in the second shop we went to and money was duly spent.

The instruction book is in Spanish and Portuguese so it may take me a little longer than usual to familiarize myself with the details of how to work the thing.  All the various buttons, however, are marked encouragingly in English!

I have started the Herculean task of feeding the Mozart disks into The Machine.  I have been doing this all evening and I am not yet 10% of the way through.

The first piece of the collection that I listened to was The Jupiter (K.551 – as if I know Mozart by Köchel numbers!)  This was a mistake as I was trying to listen to the earliest symphony in the collection and I selected the wrong one from the list.  But, what the hell, that will come later!

Delight!