Crimes Against Humanity

SATURDAY 26^TH NOVEMBER 2011

In yet another first in my exciting life, I am typing this while sitting in the passenger seat of my car outside the front gate of the school on a Saturday morning.

As I might have mentioned in passing, my cretinous school has decided that the 40 hours that we spend in the place is insufficient time to arrange a pointless meeting, so, in their infinite stupidity they have arranged a meeting for Saturday morning.

As I am programmed to wake up to be ready to leap from my bed at 6.30 am to miss the horrendous traffic that I could encounter each day, it was a luxury for me to lie-in for an extra thirty minutes because of the later start of the PM (Pointless Meeting).

When I arrived – not having been held up by non-existent traffic - I was hailed by a colleague from her car, who informed me that everything was locked up and we would not be able to get in, and, further if we made any attempt we would probably set off the alarm.

So, we are now sitting in our respective cars, pondering on the futility of promptitude!  Our other colleagues are obviously timing it so that they arrive on time rather that in time.  It would be a perfect example of the difference of those phrasal verbs which we are, at present, teaching to 3ESO.

The temperature is 9C and, although the sun is shining it is cold and now the Powers That Be have arrived to open up the school properly.  I shall give them time to unlock everything and then I will waltz in later to make my cup of tea.

To soften the blow of actually being in school on a Saturday we have been provided with croissants.  Croissants!  As if a fat infused piece of bread can compensate for being in school on a Saturday!  Just in case anyone is labouring under the delusion that it can, I state, emphatically, that it can’t.  Ever!

The Blitz Spirit is now imbuing the staff with the same rugged, self-satisfied determination that made the chirpy Cockneys smile in times of crisis as their city was bombed to smithereens around them.  Lack of imagination I call it!

I am now in the meeting and have managed to separate myself from the rest of the participants telling the Chair that my computer is running out of power.  I am therefore seated behind the talkers and attached to a power source.  I have also lost the will to live.

All my colleagues seem to have put the fact that this meeting is being held on a Saturday behind them and are all enjoying the sound of their own voices.  As they are all speaking in Spanish or Catalan – I do not share their enjoyment.  Not that I would even if I could perfectly understand the trivia that they are mouthing.

We have now been here for an hour and a quarter and we are still on the first class in 1BXT.  This is disaster beyond feeling.  And they do not shut up!  And they all speak at once!  This is almost perfect torture!

The meeting lasted for three and a quarter hours.  Three and a quarter hours!  On a Saturday morning!  There are some cultural differences that, try as you might, you cannot understand or forgive.

We went out to lunch almost as soon as my simmering self had returned to Castelldefels.  I had an excellent fideua starter and a mediocre piece of fish for the main with a healthy finish with fresh melon.  All washed down with vino tinto y Casera.  Toni now has indigestion to add to his flu and bad knee, so his meal was a little more circumspect and morose.

To try and lighten my mood of resentment we went to Alcampo to buy a book.  The fact that Toni fell in with this plan perhaps indicates the level of disgruntlement that I was still feeling!

No buyable books caught my eye, but we did do two pieces of Christmas shopping – in late November: a feat not matched since the days when I used to spend a year buying the contents of Rhys and Gwen’s Christmas stockings!

SUNDAY 27^TH NOVEMBER 2011

The day started well with clear blue skies, but they have soon clouded over and we are now back to that strange default position of Catalan weather of being “brightly dull”.  The other default position of course is that the curs next door (canine rather than human, but there again . . . ) have started their usual morning bay with the crippled dog doing his usual “on the second every second” yelp which is perfectly judged by the mangy beast to set neighbours’ nerves on edge.

An uneasy quiet has descended on the menagerie next door.  One can take no pleasure in the silence because one is constantly waiting for it to be broken.  Where O where are hardpad and distempter when you need them!

After the totally unjustifiable stealing of a weekend morning from teachers who had already been in school for 41·25 hours our thoughts turn, inevitably to the nearest holidays. 

The actual Christmas holidays seem hopelessly distant so we have turned our expectant gaze towards the second week in December which will take us into a bizarre week when we have a sort of week’s holiday but we have to come in on the Wednesday and Friday! 

This sort of idiocy is par for the course and we are praying that students, and more importantly students’ parents treat what I call “Stupid Week” with the contempt that it deserves and stay away for all five days. 

It does seem, to any normal person, like an open invitation to truancy, but our parents are notoriously given to the flinging of their precious dears at us at every opportunity in order to transfer the responsibility for their care, so it is almost guaranteed that there will be just a sufficient number of pupils to ruin our two days of possible peace!  After all school only run efficiently and pleasantly when there are no students in them!

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I have been delving into the pleasures of literature that is “life + 70 years” copyright expired.

My latest indulgence was an offering by S S Van Dine called “The ‘Canary´Murder Case.  This is set in America in New York and, in an not exactly original way, has an wealthy amateur detective as the main intellectual character. 

Vane, as he is called, is a remarkable construction much given to a cod English use of the apostrophe and a way of speaking which is overwhelmingly camp.  He is “artistic” and litters his speech with an array of references to high art.  French and Latin phrases abound and casual references to the Classics pepper his drawling observations. 

The novel, no Detective Story, was written in 1927 and gives something of a sepia tinted view of a completely different way of life.  This is something more than pulp, but not much more.  I loved it!  And have downloaded a variety of other works by The Master all of which start with the definite article and end with “Murder Case”.  S S Van Dine now has the largest number of individual works in one of my virtual libraries!  Not many English Teachers with a shred of intellectual vanity left in their souls can say that!

At least reading these books drives from my mind the hurt of the lost weekend morning!

Hours to misery!

Bright sunlight and a gained free period – who could want more?  And getting towards the weekend.

But wait!  The Day of Shame approaches.  A tedious, mind-bendingly boring meeting scheduled (and actually going to happen!) on a Saturday morning!

I have confidently been expecting the meeting to be changed to a Friday evening.  This is a shocking hope, I know, but it just shows how twisted academic life is here if you can even begin to think of a extended meeting on a Friday evening after school as some sort of triumph!

But even this sad compromise is not to be.  The meeting has been confirmed for Saturday.  Which is bad.  What is worse is the jokingly fatalistic attitude of my colleagues who even josh each other about how hard done by they are!

I am, of course, as who would expect otherwise, totally appalled by the idea and am bitterly and inwardly convulsed with disgust at the whole concept.  Mindless educational tedium during my weekend!  My gorge rises at the mere thought!

However, I will be there.  Unsmiling and glowering, but I will be there.

It will be also the last time that I go to such a meeting.  My head of department will be informed of this at the end of the fiasco.  There is another one scheduled for next year.  I will not, emphatically not be there.  Let the consequences be what they will!

Things appear to be moving to some sort of climax as far as the educational world is concerned.  The government has discovered that the only money it can easily save is that which is paid to its workers.  There’s a surprise!

Now that we have a right wing government, it is only a matter of time before our right wing leaders let us know what they are actually going to do with the power that they have gained.  The leader of the right wing party was particularly carefully to say bugger all about what he might be thinking of doing as his response to the financial crisis as it begins (!) to engulf the country as we march relentlessly downhill after feckless, irresponsible Italy.

The first mutterings about financial savings have been directed towards civil servants.  That term has a slightly different meaning in this country where even some teachers fall into the category.  Our school is a foundation (whatever that means here, I suspect it is merely a way of getting tax exemptions) and our status is nearest to a grant maintained school in Britain.

Although we charge parents for each child that crosses into our demesne, the government pays for the teachers in Primary and Secondary.  Why?  No idea.  The teachers in the foetal section of the school who teach the Very Small People and those who teach the equivalent of the Sixth Form are paid for by the Foundation.

So I have two cheques each month, one from the Foundation and the other from the Generalitat to reflect the proportions of my teaching which are respectively in each sector.

Last year the Generalitat cut the money it gave to the school by 5%, but the school (The Foundation) decided to make up the money so that no teacher (whatever the proportion of money actually stopped) had less than s/he had before.

The Generalitat is thinking (has decided) to cut civil servants (i.e. our, in spite of the fact that we are not proper civil servants) pay further and it is unlikely that this extra cut will be ameliorated by the largesse of the Foundation. 

I will then have to consider my position, as I am emphatically not a registered charity.  And certainly not for the benefit of children of the same wealthy parents who probably helped precipitate the crisis in the first place!

I am truly shocked by how little colleagues seem to know about what is going to happen to their livelihoods.  They have only the haziest notion of how their salaries are going to be affected by the unfolding political and economic situation.  And if they truly care then they are managing to hide it well from me!

I bet I am the only person to have approached the bursar in the school and asked if The Foundation has taken any decisions about how to approach the possible reductions in pay.  I was told that as the governments, both national and local, have not made any finalized decisions themselves then the Foundation has not been able to formulate its response.  But I was also informed that it would probably be unlikely that the whole of the cost of the reduction in wages would be covered by the Foundation itself. 

So, with our wages frozen since 2009 and the year-on-year inflation not being reflected in a pay rise and the prospect of an actual cut in the salary, I am too depressed to even attempt to calculate the actual and real percentage drop in the value of the money that I take home each month!

Hard times indeed.  And added to that is the expectation that the pay freeze will be extended by at least another year!

I am no economist, and cordially loathed the economic theory that I had to pretend that I had assimilated for my A Level, but I fail to see how an economy can be stimulated by the punitive reducing of the wages of a substantial proportion of the working population of a country.  Inflation does not appear to have been tackled in any meaningful way and everyone can see quite clearly that prices are rising while the ability to compensate for these increases is being eroded by diminishing pay.

I will be very interested to see the figures for the spending during the Christmas period.  I know that there is a particular form of specifically Christmas moral blackmail which prompts parents to spend much more than they can actually afford, but that is true for each Christmas.

Perhaps there will be a Giffen Good effect (one of the few economic concepts that stay with me) where it describes the counter intuitive phenomenon of the rising in the price of a good actually causing an increase in its demand.  I think that this was first observed with cheap staple goods when the rise in something like bread for the very poor would mean that they give up other things to have more of the staple; so they no longer buy meat because they have limited funds left after the increase in the price of bread so they buy more bread with the small amount of money that they have left after they have bought bread because it is not enough to buy a reasonable amount of meat.

And that explanation probably demonstrates in as clear a way as possible the reason that I didn’t pursue economic studies once the A Level was safely out of the way!

So, according to my analysis parents will spend more on a festival with a high moral blackmail constant, by spending less on others with a slightly lower.

A child in Catalonia has three distinct opportunities for being spoilt in the Christmas period.  There is obviously Christmas Day itself, but in Catalonia it is Christmas Eve which is traditionally the time for presents to be exchanged.  There is also Epiphany or Kings in early January when a great fuss is made of the arrival of the Three Kings with parades and sweet throwing and present giving.  There is therefore, an opportunity for parents (if they haven’t already) to amalgamate all three celebrations into one and make their chosen one more extravagant than the spread of expected expenditure.

The trick, I suppose, is not to over-compensate and find yourself paying more on one than you would for the three.  Although the more I think about it the less like Giffen Goods the whole situation seems to be.  So much for my A Level!

The latest news on the governmental cuts to education is that the government is slightly backtracking.  They (or more properly “it”) are talking about taking away some of the perks that civil servants expect as part of their jobs, for example, lunch tickets.  This sounds suspiciously like emptying the ashtrays on a 747 to decrease the weight – and yes, I do know that there is no smoking on flights nowadays and that is part of the point.

The real expenses in terms of civil servants are chronic overstaffing, ludicrously generous pensions; free private health services; general corruption and the job-for-life attitude which characterizes the life style that functionarios have become accustomed to. 

Changing the fundamental and expensive elements that the government has to tackle is going to cause ructions and change the face of Spain.  If the government decides to do something about it.  If!  Let me emphasise yet again that although we are classed as some sort of civil servant in the way that we are funded, we are not classed as the sort of civil servant that is entitled to the generous financial packages that our more privileged colleagues (some of whom are teachers, but they have passed professional examinations to gain the title of functionario) enjoy.

I will wait, without holding my breath, to listen to the echoes of outraged loss for the targeted group.   Am far more likely to hear the rumble of retreating footsteps from the politicians appalled by the negative howls of anguish from their affronted employees!  At least I hope so, because their cause will become ours.

It looks more and more likely that the notorious “extra” pays will be the target for the government.  The idea that there will be 14 payments during the year does not mean that there are any extras there.  It is just the fact that two tranches of money which you have earned are not paid to you in monthly instalments.  And now they are under attack.  If, of course they had been integrated into the normal monthly salary then they would not have been able to pick it off so easily.

The “plans” are not fully formulated and therefore there is still hope before the money is “untim’ly ripped” from our less than inspiring wage!  We teach the kids that the difference between “wage” and “salary” is that the latter is paid monthly and the former weekly, but with the amount that I get I do not think that it qualifies as a professional sum at all and therefore the more homely term of “wage” seems to fit it better!

The lesson is coming to an end.  I have been able to type in it because, strange to relate, the kids are taking an exam!  Well, there’s a thing!

This is my “early” leave for home so that I can ponder the fact that, in spite of it being a Friday I still have another morning of school to look forward to tomorrow.

“Shame!” I hear myself scream.  And scream again.

tonight

To think I paid for it all!

There must have been a time (I can, after all remember it) when listening to Philip Glass was not a guilty sin.  Even in the generally dismissed world of Minimalist Music he was regarded as a pioneer and someone to be respected as a classical composer.

I say this because, having recently bought a new Naxos disc of his music including “Light” and the “Heroes Symphony” I think that he has descended to level of Muzak.

 

This reaction might come as a direct result of my experience of “Le Grand Macabre” on Tuesday.  Arriving in Barcelona at a reasonable hour, some two and a half hours before the start of the performance, I filled the time by dividing it by visiting El Corte Ingles and failing to find a reasonable restaurant to while away the spare minutes.

El Corte Ingles again offered me the tempting prospect of boxed sets of extremely desirable discs at almost give away prices.  Unfortunately, even at “give away” prices the number of discs in each box meant that the total was quite high.

In an uncharacteristic act of self-denial, I resorted to my sci-fi book technique of limiting purchases and decided on one composer and cheap prices and selected the work of Philip Glass and there, at a unit price which was much higher than the box set offer, but much less in total was a new disc.  I bought it quickly and left with indecent haste, lest I be tempted by anything more expensive.

I justified the expenditure on a few grounds: firstly because I have a growing collection of Glass music and I like it; secondly because Naxos disc are always worth buying and lastly, and most importantly, so there could be something to look forward to hearing in the car after staggering out of a performance of Le Grand Macabre if it was as dire as I expected it to be.

I have been listening to the discs of Ligeti’s opera religiously in the car to and from work.  I cannot believe there have been many doing their musical  “homework” as diligently as I – and failing signally to get to “know” the work they are listening to so much.

Le Grand Macabre is an unrewarding work to which to listen and I was relying on the much-vaunted visual effects to make up for the discordant and frankly messy sounds that accompanied me to work each morning and speeded my homecoming.

Apart from a brass fanfare-like interlude; a broken fragment of a string quartet; a chanted chorus which sounded like people were asking for a beer in Spanish; a cacophony of car horns and a very short interlude which sounded as though it could have developed into a real tune – there was not much in this farrago that took my fancy.

The pre-opera meal was in a café/restaurant on the corner of the block next to the opera house and for my €15 I got two tapas, some bread with tomato and a glass of fizzy water.  My last visit there I think!

The most impressive aspect of the performance musically was the orchestra who were superb, though I think that their sheer professionalism sometimes have a more polished sound to elements in the music which were deliberately (or at least at one time in the past) intended to be raucous.  But the overall effect was one of intense competence and they had the biggest cheer of all at the end of the performance.

The second star was the set, the giant crouching woman on a revolve.  During the course of the performance various parts of this giant figure opened and people or scenes were revealed.  Characters emerged from nipples, mouth and other parts while thighs opened to reveal sets within sets.  Lights and films played across the surface of this gigantic figure and the eyes lit up in a comically disturbing way.

The opera was sung in English, which was an unexpected bonus, though not all the singers were equally at home in the language.  I assume that Ligeti is not something that is every opera singer’s cup of tea and it must be a matter of horses for courses for his operas and I suppose that a lingua franca like English makes the assembling of a cast that much easier.  I imagine that Ligetti singers are rather like ondes Martenot players: a small group who know each other and meet up around the world when a performance calls for their skills.  I suppose that the ondes Martenot is demanded in something other than the Turangalîla-Symphonie – but I don’t know of it.  And I’m too lazy to look it up!

Yet again at the start of the second half of the opera, the seats were noticeably more empty than they were before the performance started – though I suspect that some of the patrons took advantage of empty seats to improve their view of proceedings!

My favourite singer was the lady who took the role of Venus and the Head of the Secret Police as she combined a strong, melodic and resourceful voice with a vibrant stage presence.  Otherwise, this is an opera that I will not be making huge efforts to see again – though having bought the discs I might well give it the benefit of another change with the images from the stage performance still clear in my mind.

The next opera is Linda of Chamounix by Donezetti – and I do have the month of December to get to know it, as the performance which is the next part of my season ticket is not until January.  I am not a great fan of Donezetti – but at least it will have tunes, ornamented tune possibly, but tunes certainly! 

The decision I have to make is which version I order and listen to.  I would like a version in English, but that probably will not be forthcoming, and I am not sure what I will gain from one of Donezetti’s opera from hearing the words in a language I can speak.  I fear that it might be the sort of opera where the melodramatic action might be best hidden behind the comforting cloak of Italian!

I don’t even know the famous bits in this opera, so I might start with the highlights and work from there!  If there are highlights.

Yesterday I was given on loan “Solar” by Martin Amis and it turned out to be a jolly, if predictable read.  My favourite extract occurred near the start of the novel when the anti-hero of the story was described as a person for whom, “The M4 demonstrated a passion for existence which he could not longer match.  He was for the B-road, a cart track, a footpath.”  A delightful description that the rest of the novel demonstrates both is and also is not true of the character!  This novel should come with a warning that it is not as determinedly depressing as his work usually is!  I even laughed out loud at one point!

I have also been given in a more permanent sense, a selection of three improving and authentically literary books to keep.  I have read all of them, but one of them, “Rebecca” is in a Folio Society edition with excellent paper, crisp print and obviously in hardback which is well worth keeping and I am more than prepared to throw away/give away my paperback version. 

“Rebecca” is by far my favourite of Du Maurier’s novels and the one which repays analysis most profitably.  The imagery is dense and deeply satisfying.  It will be a pleasure to re-read this novel in such a voluptuous edition.  Though I don’t like the illustrations!  Small point!

Febrile freedom fades

For the first time for five days I will have to get up at 6.30 am tomorrow.  And I will probably arrive home at 6.30 pm after a meeting to explain how to use the new computer “platform” for entering the most sacred thing in our lives – examination results!  And, as luck would have it, the new season of examinations starts tomorrow so that we will have something to put in to the new system!  Funny how things work together, eh?

Toni voted today (I am unable to vote as these are national elections) and, though not as a direct consequence, I think that we will probably have a new government tomorrow headed by the head of PP the right wing party which has this election to lose, given the awful stewardship of the so-called Socialists who have bumbled their way through the Crisis.

The other parties have no idea what to do, but according to the comfortable consumers who make up the student population of my school, as soon as the right wing government is elected there will be “lower taxes and more jobs”!  I am not holding my breath!

I have a feeling that many of those in power today are going to have a rude awakening tomorrow.  When Jack Straw was asked what no longer being a minister was like he said, “Well, being out of power is when you get into the back of a car and it doesn’t go anywhere!”

I fail to see what any government can do except for continuing the austerity measures that have already been started: higher indirect taxes; cuts in public services; continuing pay freeze in the public sector; possible “real” pay cuts in the public sector; closures of anything which the government feels it can get away with – and our new library in Castelldefels continuing to be empty of books and remaining unopened!

The polling station was in the school next to the British School of Barcelona (which is here in Castelldefels) and we had to fight our way through a positive phalanx of police who were valiantly guarding the integrity of the polling station by standing around and chatting with each other.  At least it keeps them out of the bars.

For the first time ever there was no queue at the pollo a last (the barbecue chicken place) though the quid pro quo for that was a rather scrawny piece of chicken and dry-ish chips – thank god I had the salad!

I have now read “Caliphate” by Tom Kratman an interesting if disturbing novel about what the author sees as an almost inevitable struggle between Islam and the rest.  He virtually writes off Europe as having given in to Islam on a continental cultural level which will lead to the indigenous populations being swamped by Islamic people.  It was written in 2007 and therefore long before the Islamic Spring, but it is a bleakly prophetic view of what is in store for the vitiated West with its lack of belief and its virulent (as he sees it) multi-culturalism.

I must admit that I have modified my views on multiculturalism over the years and look back and consider the emphasis that we placed on that aspect of education back in the days when I was active in the NUT. 

My mother always dismissed the high-sounding rhetoric about multiculturalism as building up a teaching resource that was really “nothing more than stories from around the world”!  I think it would have been of more benefit if we had given lip service to the concept and emphasised the acquisition of English (which to be fair we English teachers did!) and some version of our national literature and history more convincing than the shreds of cultural tradition which we were able to convey.

The television programmes have started to broadcast the beginnings of the speculation about the next government.  Virtually everyone expects the right wing PP to gain an absolute majority so Rajoy will become the next leader.  Not something I relish.

At least the sun has been shining today.

Which is more than it is going to do tomorrow.