Time is slipping!

 

My peaceful existence in the empty staff room this morning was broken by the arrival of the secretary who harangued me (yet again) for my lack of perfection in the Spanish language.  She pointed out that with the length of time that I have lived in Spain I should now be able to indulge my obvious sociability and chatter fluently with my colleagues. 

Did I not realize, I was asked, how much of the interplay of normal social intercourse I was missing by not having a proficiency in the language? 

I did not point out to her that I must have some sort of ability to allow me to understand what she was saying!  But let it pass, let is pass.

We are going to start the day with a departmental meeting and then “the only way is up” – which is slightly unfair as our departmental meetings are dealing with the “here and now” of the situation rapidly approaching when Monday will bring the influx of the hordes.  The febrile tranquillity of days without the students will be fondly remembered by tattered souls ripped apart by the terrible reality of groups of actual smallish people sitting in front of them when they go into a room!

I have yet to be given my class lists for most of my groups.  To be fair (again) the English lists exist, it is all the others that do not.  It will probably only be tomorrow that I actually have the lists and the last full day before the advent of the kids is one that is filled with yet more meetings.

The Quest for Tapas was fruitless this evening.  I am now down to just three establishments that I have to visit and I intend to visit the two that are possible.

 

This evening it was the turn of the restaurant in the area of the Olympic Canal.  This artificial stretch of water was created for some of the boating events in the Barcelona Olympics and is here in Castelldefels.  It is a very large stretch of water and is used for emergency purposes when there are forest fires in the region.  The planes come and scoop up water from the Canal and dump it on the fire.

I checked the time and the details of the restaurant very carefully and we made our first visit.  And were told that all the restaurant staff had left at 8.00 pm and we were out of luck.  This is not the first time that the information printed on the sheet that has to be stamped has been faulty.

Tomorrow I will go there directly from school and nab my antepenultimate stamp!

As the time for the real teaching draws nearer I fell less and less inclined to remain a member of the noble profession and more and more drawn to a life of indolent ease.  I think that I will have to take this year of torture term by term.

In a telling feature of our place it has been decided to give more time to the construction of the so-called Credit of Synthesis which I have no intention of explaining except to comment that it takes up a great deal of a week and is largely a waste of time and effort.  This year the tired feature is to be given a makeover with the direct involvement of small committees or working groups of teachers to construct a project based framework within which the kids can work.

 

I have been drafted into the group considering the 2ESO project and, in spite of our having a timetabled day eight hours long (and sometimes longer) and our having an effective pay cut as our wages have been frozen, the groups are going to meet after school for an hour a month!

As usual I was the only person to exhibit incredulity that it had been impossible to schedule a meeting during the working day.

Our staffing is so tight that a single absence can wreck havoc and the idea of a “supply” teacher is greeted with peals of laughter.  As an example the Head of English will be absent for five working days as she goes with pupils from the school to a school in Canada: no supply.  An absence of more than three days known in advance: no supply.  It is simply incredible and, at the same time, contemptible.  I don’t know whom to blame more: the management or the quiescent teachers.  We can leave the unions out of the picture, as they are generally ineffective and neutered by the arrangements for representation in individual schools.

The shadow of unnumbered weeks of unrewarding, under-paid toil is beginning to depress me, and even the continued sunshine is no compensation because, after all, I will be indoors looking out at what I might be enjoying.

And I think that I have forgotten how to read for enjoyment!

Roll on the weekend when at least we might be saying farewell to the neighbours as they return to the city.

The Cava is cooling!

Eating my way to failure!

How are the mighty fallen!

My sheet of the ruta de tapas (which is now held together with Sellotape) is filling up nicely.  I was down to single figures of the bars and restaurants that I had to visit days ago.  Slowly and surely I was completing my list and my tattered sheet was groaning with the weight of ink from the individual stamps of the restaurants I had visited.

Today I was determined to bring the number down yet again.  Toni had deigned to accompany me (in spite of the fact that he would not be ale to eat many of the tapas as they all used cheese as an essential ingredient) and asked me to draft out the most intelligent route to get the maximum number of tapas eaten and stamped.

It was at this point that I looked a little more closely at the opening times of the restaurants and the days on which they might be closed.  All of my potential targets looked secure: they were open and ready to serve me the tapa.

As a cursory detail I decided to check the dates of their summer holidays being assured that they were all some time in August and I was safe to eat.

All except for one restaurant.  One restaurant had decided to take their summer holidays from the first of September until the 15^th.  The 15^th of September being the closing date for completion of the Ruta de Tapas.  It is now the 7^th of September and therefore impossible for me to complete the Ruta!

Disaster!

And I had cleared a space in my diary for the gastronomic meal that was the prize for the lucky completer of the ruta sheet.  I feel thoroughly defrauded.

Although to look at things more positively perhaps participation in the ruta for the first year merely equips you to complete it more thoroughly the next year.

Next year I shall strengthen all the creased in my sheet with Sellotape as soon as I get it; I will start my eating in July as soon as it opens; I will check dates more thoroughly; I will pace myself; I WILL complete it and WILL win.

Of course thinking about tapas and meditating on all the new establishments we have found is so much better than contemplating the lurking horror of 8.45 am on Monday the 12^th of September.

We had three tapas today.  The first was in a bar we had never visited in a part of town outside our usual ambit.  The tapa was uninspiring but the goat’s cheese was good and the strawberry jam adequate.  The white wine however was disgusting.  There is not justification whatsoever for any restaurant, however mean, to serve disgusting wine.  In this country it is perfectly possible to buy a bottle of drinkable wine for less than €1 - though I am using the word “drinkable” in its widest possible interpretation here.

Our second tapa was in a restaurant we have passed a number of times but never been in.  The tapa was tuna and red pepper on toast.  Uninspired.  The red wine (once bitten twice shy) was vile.

The third and last tapa was in the most uninspiring restaurant and consequently the best.  Toasted bread with caramelized onions with tomato, bacon and pork loin topped with cheese made a hearty tapa and the wine which accompanied it was workaday reasonable.  Excellent value for money – and quite enough for one evening.

I am now left with three restaurants, two of which I will visit tomorrow and the third – well, the third will be a reminder to me for next year that even the most random of experiences must be planned!

And another day of meetings tomorrow.

O Joy!

Every damn day!

I am still not attuned to the time: it took my mobile to wake me at the appropriate moment this morning.  It usually takes only a single day for me to hear the terminally annoying “tune” that my alarm plays and then the automatic protection systems of my body take over and I wake within a few minutes of the alarm time and am usually able to turn the damn thing off before it offends my sense of what is right!

This morning after scrabbling at the screen to stop the noise, I eventually prised myself away from the blandishments of the Today programme on Radio 4 and set off in bright sunshine for the Place of Torment.

Traffic was heavy but moving, when I joined the second motorway that I have to take to get to my school everything stopped.  And for the next 45 minutes I was stuck in a traffic jam, the second in two days.

As I sat and fumed in my generally immobile car listening to a selection of the 50 greatest Romantic tunes (I have no shame as far as my driving listening collection is concerned and as I had completed my listening to the 50 greatest children’s tunes) I considered the true worth of my job.

A daily traffic jam of that magnitude and high frustration quotient would not, in my view be adequately compensated for by the measly wages that I am paid – and it would be rather fine to walk away from a job claiming that the transportation problems were intolerable and my continued presence could only be guaranteed by moving the school considerably closer to Castelldefels!

It is a little worrying that I am having these thoughts a few days into term when the kids haven’t even arrived yet!

Today was a little less intolerable with the three meetings that I had being of a more practical nature than the others we have endured.  I even did a little cardboard box of books opening and counting the volumes therein: just like the old days!

The delight of returning home (I eschew the provided lunch in school as though ‘twere a rabid dog, it would after all mean my staying there when I could leave) evaporated when an open window indicated that our truly repulsive neighbours were still, stubbornly rejecting our oft voiced plea for them to leave as summer is now officially at an end.

We trust that the will finally leave at the end of this week: I’m not sure that we could stand their raucous presence for any longer.

We have a real fear that the French woman who brings her brats to the pool and allows them to scream for hours without making any attempt whatsoever to fling them into the water as a way of shutting them up is actually living in one of the houses permanently rather than simply renting it for the summer.  This would be a disaster which I cannot easily contemplate at the moment.  So I won’t.

The BBC Music Magazine (to which all praise) has a cover disc of Liszt this month and a great deal of writing suggesting that Liszt is a scandalously underappreciated composer of genius and we should all be ashamed of ourselves for not knowing and promoting more of his music.  I therefore copied the disc on to my Machine and listened to “Mazeppa” for the first time in years an thoroughly enjoyed the playing of the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda and was thus emboldened to listen to the rest.

“Totentanz: Paraphrase on Dies Irae, S126” where the orchestra was conducted by Leo Hussain and joined by pianist Martin Roscoe was remarkable in the quality of the variations and anyway I am a bit of a sucker when it comes to plays on the Dies Irae – I put it all down to listening to the Music for Pleasure version of Berlioz’s “Symphony Fantastique” at an impressionable age!

One of the other pieces of music on the disc was “Symphonic Poem No. 11” which had a much more suggestive title as “The Battle of the Huns” – irresistible!

I have to get down to my homework for the Opera season soon and find versions of the operas that I don’t know.  For the first time I am prepared to consider downloads rather than actual discs.  My experience in going to Cardiff and being unable to find any discs with the music of André Grétry has been a salutary experience for me. 

There will have to be more searching for the tracks in the more obscure operas which will at least give me a sense of achievement when I finally get to see them!

And the kids are not here yet!

The horror of three hours stuck in a room listening to a psychologist was slightly modified by the suggestion of Toni that I use the morning to get my replacement card from the bank.  The bank which doesn’t actually open at a time at which I can get to it.

Even using the risibly “early” end to the school days that we have without the kids it still doesn’t give me enough time to get to a bank and collect a card: I have to take time off work – and what better time to take off than that devoted to meetings!

I drove to school in driving rain to tell the powers that be that I needed to take time off to replace the cancelled card.  The head of secondary pleaded with me to ensure that I returned for at least the last hour of the talk.

Driving back to Castelldefels I passed a RTA with a truly horrific tailback which looked as though it would take hours to clear.  I resolved not to take that cursed road.

The bank, to my astonishment, was open and I was seen and my replacement card duly issued.  It worked and I was out of the bank within minutes and ready to return.  A quick call into the house to general astonishment that I was there at all and I felt that I had to set off on my way back.

Within seconds of joining the other main road I noticed that the signs on the overhead gantries were urging me to slow down – a sure sign of an accident.  Within a couple of minutes I had come to a complete stop and for next few kilometres we inched our way forward.

The delay was not caused by an accident.  The delay was not caused by road works.  The delay was not caused by an act of god.  No.  The delay was caused by a police car parked diagonally across one lane with an officious officer having the gall to urge the terminally frustrated drivers through the narrowed gap with an illuminated wand.  Nothing there to indicate why the road should have been narrowed.  Nothing!

I tend to think that it was sympathetic action so that we could join our colleagues on the other motorway and share their pain.  Just because we didn’t have an accident of our own the police provided us with a similar sort of delay.  How kind!

I did work out, however, that stuck in a car listening to my latest CDs was infinitely preferable to sitting in an classroom and pretending interest in a talk which was not likely to have the slightest effect on my teaching.

With a frightening sense of timing I joined my colleagues in durance vile just to be released for a tea break!

All in all I only had an hour of the talk – which was something of a result!

The other meeting was with Suzanne and with only two other members of the department and was severely practical and therefore more than acceptable!

I rushed home for the last menu del dia with The Boys and we decided to go into the centre of the beach area and have a meal with the Basque.  Stewart, with stories of his youth and sitting at the “Little Eaters” table in his primary school ringing in our ears, had a subdued meal of asparagus while the rest of us got stuck into the menu.

My meal of tortilla and Fideua (on separate plates!) was excellent and was not lessened by the bottle of rosé that Stewart and I shared – with my share of the liquid augmented by gaseosa!

Our guests are gone!  And the house feels strangely empty – especially as there are no further visits planned.

I am sure that the exigencies of education will take up the slack!

At the moment most of my colleagues are feeling stressed – and the kids are still six days away!

The reason for this is that things still seem up in the air.  We have not had lists of pupils.  We do not know where we are teaching.  Books may or may not have arrived yet.  New methods of teaching are being encouraged and we have days in which to write a course.  New computers have been bought for the new pupils and we have been told nothing about them – if they have been bought at all!  Project Based Teaching is the flavour of the month and we have to integrate it into our courses – which start, I might remind you, next Monday.  And we have meetings about vacuous elements of educational theory!  Nothing changes.

We have important work to do which is essential for the first week and we are bogged down with impractical verbiage. 

At least my two next meetings tomorrow will be directly related to what we are going to teach next week.  Plenty of time!  Count it up in seconds and then it sounds more than generous!  But it doesn’t make it longer.  Alas!

Another day in school and another five hours of meetings.  In Spanish.

The first couple of hours were spent in a lecture on stuff which was old fashioned years ago in the UK but which is cutting edge educational theory here.  So, not only did I have to listen to half-baked, but breathlessly delivered and tediously presented dated ideas, but I also had to listen to them in a foreign language.  Educational theory gains nothing by being translated into another language, especially one that you speak, to put it mildly, imperfectly.

The horror was compounded when in the second interminable torture session we were divided up into groups where I was placed with a French teacher and the Latin teacher.  We then had to write rubrics and statements of achievement during which my colleagues displayed the faces that I know so well: interested, sympathetic and showing just a tinge of pain as they tried to decipher my enthusiastic Spanish!

Eventually it was over and I was able to flee home and suggest that we visit the blue and white hotel for lunch.  This hotel, whose name we do not know, has been highlighted for us by our “favourite” waiter who has become so because we saw him in a restaurant with which we did not associate him.  He is one of the regulars in our local restaurant and so we were surprised to see him in a little visited restaurant in town.  He explained that he had two jobs and because he recognized us he gave us a glass of Cava.

This tradition was transferred to the other restaurant and a relationship was established.  We now shake hands when we arrive, which is a degree of intimacy we do not share with any other!

He was in the blue and white hotel restaurant when we got there and we were met with his customary warmth.  The meal was excellent; three types of pasta with cheese followed by scrambled egg with cod, black pudding and mushrooms.  He engineered by usual whisky tart – this time a very tasty chocolate mousse cake with a dash of the hard stuff!  Delicious!

Later today the arrival of The Boys will take away the unsavoury memory of the two wasted days in school.

The evening meal was delightful – in every way too much in just the right quantities!

We were looked after royally by the restaurant owner and were plied with food whose taste was excellent.  The wine lubricated everything smoothly and a siesta today has rectified the energy deficiencies that such indulgence involved!

A little light shopping today has seen me replaced the shorts which have disintegrated through over-use this summer and I am now prepared to go into autumn defiantly baring my legs!

I am confident that we will be able to do some of the remaining establishments on the ruta de tapas which should make the possibility of completing the list by the end date of the 15^th of September.

Yesterday saw us complete one of the more “difficult restaurants on the ruta as it is nowhere near anywhere else and halfway up a mountain.  When we got there the place was totally empty and we were apprehensive about what to expect.

When it came the tapa was delightfully presented and tasted delicious.  So delicious indeed that we decided to stay and have dinner there.  Justification for the ruta in itself!

We had a selection of Indonesian food which, from the number of times it was ordered by the people who soon filled up the place, must be the signature dish of the restaurant.

Alas the coconut and curry ice cream was not available for sweet but I made do with a confection of white chocolate and dark chocolate syrup which was more than satisfactory.  An excellent meal to end the day.

The sun is still shining and so an expedition to the beach has been arranged.  And I am trying to forget that tomorrow is the start of another week in which meetings will predominate.

Expect anything!

There is always somebody who, when you have netted what you consider an exceptional bargain will trot out some sort of platitude like, “The Only Thing You Get for Nothing Is Nothing.

My last purchases of the summer (which were forced on me by Emma’s insistence on going into Barcelona) were in my favourite store in the classical music department.  Emma virtually forced me to buy “Shakespeare at the Opera” which was a box set of 14 CDs for some ridiculous price and which comprised 7 operas including Bellini’s “I Capuleti e i Montecchi”; Wagner’s “Das Liebesverbot”; Verdi’s “Macbeth”, “Otello” and “Falstaff”; Nicolai's “Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor” and Gounod’s “Romeo et Juliette.  As the singers included Domingo and Gobbi I realized that they might be oldish recordings but at least they had real singers in them.

I also bought a box set of recordings called “Snapshots – Developments of contemporary classical music” which comprises 10 CDs including such composers as Bentzon, Ligeti, Varèse, Nørgäård, Stockhausen, Berio, Schnittke and more.  The “more” bit hides the fact that there were only three CDs where I had heard of all the composers featured on the individual discs.  I obviously have some musical homework to do – but they do look like a stimulating collection and at the price they were irresistible!

It was Smetana than was my undoing.  10 CDs, again for a bargain price and featuring not only the old favourites like “Ma Vlast” and “The Bartered Bride” but also things of which I have never heard like the symphonic poem “Richard III”; the Triumphal Symphony in E major; March of the Prague Students’ Union and the Shakespeare Festival March – as well, of course as the usual ethnic Bohemian dances.  I was gloating over all these possible riches when I noticed the date of the recording of “The Bartered Bride” – 1933!  But the Overture is from as late as 1941.  To be fair, although there are a few recordings from the 1950s there are others from only a quarter of a century ago!

As I have only downloaded the recordings to my computer and not listened to a thing I am in no position to say what the eventual quality is like.  I live, as ever, in hope – but I hear the dissenting voices of the self satisfied Cassandras telling me that perhaps my bargain is more of a white elephant and that I am going to listen to things once and then consign them to the “un-listened to but historically interesting” which is the deathly category for any music!

As you might have realized, the chore of putting music on the computer is basic displacement activity rather than face the horror of acceptance of the fact that tomorrow is the start of term.

Everyone, without exception, has an element of their lives which harks back to a fresher and more innocent self, well, younger anyway.  There is some aspect of the way that they live which is slightly juvenile and something which, if discovered, is treated in the slightly dismissive, yet ever-so defensive way that people exhibit when a guilty secret is discovered.

I was never a stamp “collector”, though I did collect stamps.  “Real” stamp collectors are interested in things like the size of the perforations and almost invisible phosphor bands which can only be seen when the stamp is tipped towards the light.  I collected them because I thought they looked nice: not the “right” response for the fully initiated!

Eventually I settled for getting the Philatelic Bureau to send me a First Day Cover for each new issue of stamps: the Post Office Covers were always well designed and the stamps were at least used for the purpose for which they were designed – even if a little over-financed for a mere envelope with one piece of card inside it!

All my collecting needs is me to open an envelope take out the stamped cover and place it in a special album.  Aesthetically and artistically I do think that British stamps are very well designed and I think that we can be justly proud not only of producing the first stamp but of continuing to publish astonishingly elegant examples of philatelic art.

It was only when I received some publicity from the Bureau that I realized that the stamps which had been issued to commemorate Gerry Anderson and his puppet creations had not been sent to me.  I had received the miniature sheet FDC with extraordinary stamps which appeared to have moving pictures when you tipped them but not the ordinary issue of stamps.

A telephone call to the Bureau revealed that they had been sent but they certainly did not arrive.  The person to whom I talked said that as the issue was as long ago as January I would have to report this in writing – but he did give me an e-mail address.

A paean of praise to the British Philatelic Bureau!

Within an hour of my sending the e-mail I had a response saying that my comments were being noted.  Within a couple of hours I had another e-mail from David (we are on first name terms now) saying that he had organized a replacement for me and it would be sent within a couple of days!  God bless the British Post Office and especially the Philatelic Bureau!  Makes you proud to be British.

Though if one wanted to be picky, one could comment on the ethics of manufacturing a FDC with a date on the special stamps in January when it is actually being sent in September – but let it pass, let it pass – let us instead wallow in prompt, efficient and friendly attention from a caring organization!

Well, it is said that "Present fears are less than horrible imaginings" though I am not sure that this operates when you are a teacher facing the first day of term – even when the first days for us are without the raw material that we are supposed to be changing into human beings!

The motto of our school should be, “Begin As You Mean To Go On” because after fulsome and kiss-laced greetings we got down to the serious business of our establishment: meetings.

The first one was a two-hour talk by the Directora which went over aims, objectives, statistics, achievements, initiatives, developments, pay, and assessment.  So far, so forgettable.

Then she mentioned that we would, in future have a new “platform” for documents, mail and internal communications.  A new sense of awakened interest mixed with a certain amount of panic gradually grew in silent volume as people registered the fact that past systems were not only going, but also access to them was going to be impossible!

One colleague who was sitting opposite me said the only time that my stony meeting face twitched into something resembling a smile was when I considered the technological confusion that was being meted upon the hapless survivors of the summer holiday!

The one fact which caused me pause was the projection of our wages remaining exactly the same until 2015 as the rest of the public (government) school sector gradually reduce the reductions of wages that they have imposed and we gradually reach parity again with a small increase in 2015.

Of course, as any fule kno, inflation is not subject to the Draconian whims of an exhausted government and so, year on year we get paid less and less as the imbecilic governors of this surrealistic economic state spend time and money trying to get the barbaric spectacle of bull-fighting reclassified by UNESCO as something of an essential element of the patrimony of humanity rather than the degrading glorification of animal cruelty which it is.  I speak, of course, as a disinterested observer.

As is usual during times of financial crisis the management of our school expects more for less: some things never change!

Where is the fire in the belly of a boy brought up with the slogan, “Not a minute on the day; not a penny off the pay” ringing in his ears?  Aye, where is he!

I am now teaching 24 periods a week with an extra period scheduled as a departmental meeting time.  Three of my lessons are last thing in the day, and two of those are with the equivalent of Y9.  Oh joy!

I still have my Media Studies class; my Current Affairs class and my History of Art class; my English Language Arts now renamed something else in a title chosen from a vast list that I typed out for the Department but I can’t remember which title they chose – all the rest are English as a Foreign Language: Y7, Y8 and Y13.  The only plus side that I can see is that with two early starts I will continue to have the last period on Friday “off” and thereby give a kick start to the weekend!

They have not yet allocated “duties” which include things that I fought long and hard in the NUT in Cardiff to make sure that we were not landed with!  The words of a colleague ring in my ears, “Remember Stephen this is not Britain!”

How true!

Lunch was in the Maritime and the excellent gentleman waiter who found and took my wallet to the police station refused point-blank to take 10% of the money inside that I offered him as a reward.  I know that doing right is its own reward – but money is surely useful!

As a colleague in school remarked today, “It is very comforting to know that there are honest people around!”

I’m not sure if that thought is enough to keep me going throughout the next school year though!

And they talk about the luck of the Irish!

The trick to the successful loss of a new wallet containing a newly drawn substantial sum of money; a Spanish identity document; a credit card; driving licence; social security number; season ticket to the opera; membership cards of various organizations including MNAC, the RACC and the local leisure centre; a medical card – not to mention a 70% completed Ruta de Tapas entry form – is to ensure that you loose it in a place crawling with people.

Yesterday the meal overlooking the sea was even more drawn out than usual with excellent food (though I would not liked to have had an encounter with the living turkey whose chunky flesh I was eating suggested a bird with the stature of something approaching an ostrich than a normal fowl) and a glass of Cava given to us by our favourite waiter. 

This was later augmented by a bottle of Cava brought by a sniggering waiter who told us that he had been instructed by the boss to give a bottle to “the table of Germans” – which doesn’t say very much for our enunciation of English.

As I did not have my wallet on me I had to (had to!) let the others, well Emma, pay for the meal.

It was only later that evening when we were going out to eat (!) that I noticed the loss of the wallet was a real loss and not merely forgotten.

All the usual places were searched in vain.  Ruthless cross-examination by Toni and Emma elicited the information that the last time I had used the wallet was in a restaurant the previous evening when we had a disastrous meal served by a shuffling imbecile who, like the description of Gerald Ford by President Johnson would have had a job “farting and chewing gum at the same time.”  My “pasta” salad had to be seen to be believed: a thinly covered plate of pallid pasta with a quartered hard boiled egg and a few cherry tomatoes which had been split open.  I shall draw a discrete veil over Emma’s “Tropical” salad because some things cannot be adequately described in words, thank god!

Paying for this insult to cuisine was the last time I remembered using my wallet so we returned to the scene of the crime and Toni peremptorily demanded the return of the wallet we had left there as we had decided that the assumption of its presence would intimidate the finders to return it.

The flustered denials of the epsilon semi-moron; his mute appeal to Emma and his explanation that his parents owned the restaurant was enough circumstantial evidence of guilt to convince us that he was hiding the truth.

We left with accusation ringing in every footfall and after a further even more futile search of the house we then traipsed our way to the police to report the loss.

Given the complex structure of law enforcement agencies in Spain the first police station we went was to the wrong sort of police, so we had to go to the other side of town to the right sort of police.

Here a child in uniform with a gun spent half an hour having animated discussions with Toni in Catalan and then typing up the information which he then photocopied and stamped and gave me three sheets of paper with the sort of finality which indicated that the police had now done as much as they were going to do.

Walking away from the police station in no peaceable state of mind (my jokiness was roundly condemned as thoroughly inappropriate by my companions who felt that I was not depressed enough at the catastrophic loss) condemning the café owner, the café waiter, the police and humanity (which was obviously anything but humane) we decided upon another course of action.

The guilt of the café was taken as read so, on Toni’s suggestion we decided to check the bins in the immediate vicinity thinking that Toni’s accusations will have panicked them into getting rid of the evidence.

So, parking nearby and as a fun activity to make the last night of her stay as memorable as possible, we poked about in the malodourous bins with me ostentatiously flashing my key-ring torch which probably made us look like affluent and well-organized tramps.

Failure made the journey back home a little sombre and my assertion that, “Well, no one has been injured or suffered death!” was seen as tactless and unnecessarily unconcerned.

When we arrived back the Scumbags were at large and conversation outside their house and their talking made the ringing of the telephone almost inaudible, but the bat-like ears of Toni caught the sound and he rushed upstairs soon to descend breathing the word “Police!” – at which point the Scumbags made themselves scarce and silent!

My wallet was in the first police station we had called into and had apparently been handed in that afternoon.

Back in the car and speeding on our way with what I thought were slightly envious expressions of wonderment at my luck we speculated about how much, if any, of the money would still be inside.  We decided (as you do) that the cards and documents would be gift enough as long as they were all there.

Our arrival at the police station brought out an English speaking policeperson who handed me the wallet without any further ado.  A colleague of hers advised me to count the money – all of which was there!

It turned out that the wallet must have been left or dropped in our favourite restaurant next to the sea and that the waiter who had brought us the Cava had taken the wallet to the police.  Sometimes one’s faith in one’s fellow creatures is restored – though I am sure that it will be knocked down soon as I am now within hours of the start of the new term and the chaos that entails is sure to test my new-found belief!

It was a slightly more sprightly trio who yet again returned to the house where I was given two individual lectures about using a smaller wallet in future; dividing documents; holding less money and generally being more careful. 

But with my luck who needs care!

Pause for culture!

The Sybaritic life of food and fulsome appreciation of the nearest star must surely be tempered from time to time with a soupçon of culture.  Yesterday it was with a visit to La Caixa Forum in Barcelona and a viewing of the exhibition “Portraits of the Belle Époque” – a period defined in this exhibition as the years from the 1880s to The Great War.

As is my wont I led Emma into the shop to buy the catalogue and was rather staggered to find that it was only available in hardback and cost a healthy €58!  On the positive side though, it was also available in English for once so I felt fully justified in buying it!

The exhibition was divided into sections from “Self-portrait” to “Crisis” which included a typically assured portrait by John Singer Sargent in the first section to a primitive mask-like painting by Kirchner in the last in the year of the start of World War I.

This was a fascinating exhibition with a stimulating selection of works.  It was not overwhelmingly large but gave enough to justify a self-congratulatory menu del dia in the restaurant attached to the gallery.

Highlights for me included the extraordinary portrait of Asher Wertheimer the art dealer by his friend Sargent which could almost serve as a portrait for Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda as Wertheimer is presented as a shark-like business man whose cold calculating stare makes you feel that you are unlikely to get the better of him!

Asta Nørregaard’s “In the studio” is an exceptional painting of great stillness with a delicacy of lighting effects which are captured with amazing confidence.  It is a subdued canvas but immensely satisfying with the tress seen through the barred window of the studio counter balancing the trim figure of the artist in a harmonious composition.

Munch, Sorolla, Casas, Zoen, Boldoni, Repin, Kokoschka, Schiele, Anglada-Camarasa and Toulouse-Lautrec all figured in an exhibition that I would recommend without reservation.  And it was free!

After lunch we wandered around the Gothic Quarter where I bought more books and Emma bought a pair of embroidered pumps made by the Barcelona house of Cuesto.

In spite of being prostrate with exhaustion on our return to Castelldefels, the invigorating effect of a shower enabled us to attempt more of the Ruta de Tapas with the result that I am down to single figures of those tapas which are left!

We were frustrated in our attempt to get one of the more “distant” establishments ticked off the list when we found, after scaling the one-in-one heights of upper Castelldefels to find the obscure restaurant that it was closed on Mondays!

The end though, is in sight and I am bolstered in my determination by the stated support of Andrew and Stewart to aid me in my quest!

Although it is sunny at the moment we are promised (well, 40% promised) thunderstorms at some point in the day.  Yet another case of the Pathetic Fallacy as the summer holidays come to an end!

Stamp them all!

Last night’s effort towards completion of the Ruta de Tapas was revealing.  I am now some 66% of my way through the list and soon I will be down to single figures!

We got through three more establishments and they showed the best and worst of what the Spanish eat.

The first of the tapas was a pizza: good pizza base, fresh and light but a rather stingy allocation of topping.  It was unimaginative and dull.

What wasn’t dull was discovering on the next table to ours a whole group of young and enthusiastic diners who were flamboyantly waving their ruta maps in the air exulting in the fact that they had marked off another tapa on the list!  This is opposition and, as I feared, there are many people out that who are as compulsive as I!  The odds-on winning of a gastronomic meal are receding!

The second was a complete contrast.  We failed to get into one of the bars on the ruta because, like so many in Castelldefels, its opening times are a mystery known only to god.  I do not understand the logic of a bar that does not open on a Saturday night; perhaps their guiding theory of economics is one which governs the working of the financial institutions of the world and we therefore should not be at all surprised when the whole edifice crashes into the walls of reality!

The bar which was open gave us a spectacular tapa of scallop on a bed of Spanish ham served on a piece of melt-in-the mouth bread enlivened with olive oil.  Delicious!  And the waiter seemed genuinely concerned about our reaction to it!

By this point we were determined to make the tapas into a trio of culinary experiences and so we traipsed off to a Mexican restaurant for their offering.

To my horror, as we were walking towards the restaurant, the merry band of eaters that I had seen in the first café we went into were walking confidently away from the place!  This determined approach on the part of other competitors has given me fresh impetus to complete my list.  I am sure that there will be one or two establishments which are outside the easy walk of the centre which will be a real test for the casual eaters!

In spite of our being after the stated hours, we were served a pastry wrapped chile con carne served on a bed of lettuce and garnished with tomato.

It was tasteless.  


The pastry, I have to say was light and delicate but the meat was tasteless.  When the waiter asked me how I had enjoyed it I replied that it was “interesting” – always a danger sign in my responses - and then I ventured that as a British person I would have liked it to have been a little more spicy.  The waiter’s response was a tired revelation!  There was no chile in the chile con carne because that was not to the taste of the indigenous population!

One is tempted to ask why then the restaurant bothered to put chile at all in the description of the tapa – but let it pass, let it pass.  


The glass of wine which accompanied this tapa was also startlingly awful, but I have drunk much, much worse in my life and I regarded its consumption as something of a challenge!

The lightness of our evening meal was in sharp contrast with the “light” lunch we had in a Japanese restaurant at lunchtime.

The restaurant that we eventually patronized, after a search for a parking place (which was like a scene from a Kafka novel) was a place with an excellent buffet.  


But this buffet is not one that the customer can raid to serve himself, it is a buffet where you reel off the items you wish to consume to the patient waiter and then it is all brought to your table in a startlingly unexpected order.

It is quite a cunning ploy as I am sure that they rely on the fact that most people will not have the barefaced effrontery to sit at their tables and drone on through an embarrassingly large number of dishes.  


I am sure that it works with most but not with Emma and myself.

By the time we had consumed the umpteenth maki and sushi we were praying that the olives and soup that we had ordered would never be brought to the table.  


I managed to forestall further food by suddenly ordering a coffee that signalled to all the end of the meal!

Today we are going to ration ourselves and, as long as the rain holds off, we are going to christen (with fire) the new barbecue.

Clouds threaten!