Partial Pleasure!

The Week Without Kids is finally beginning to get to me.  Not the “without kids” bit – what teacher worth his salt doesn’t rejoice when the clients are away!  But the relentless work that we who are left are doing.  I have had meetings and marked as though both had gone out of fashion and, let’s face it, when either of those two items is in short supply then teaching itself will have faded away.

The meetings have been productive (he admitted through gritted teeth) and, although they resulted in more work for me (I have yet to go to a meeting which didn’t) it was work that I enjoyed up to a point.

I have learned to smile and accept another part of the joyful adoption of IT that this school sees as an unending pageant of educational justification.  I am not sure that the previous sentence means anything, but I am sure that you can get the slightly jaundiced and more than grudging air with which it was written.

I have been busily selecting paintings for the test that the kids are going to have, to see if they can at least recognize the “-ism” that each neatly (or not so neatly) fits into.  This has been done on PowerPoint, which I do not use as much as I should do, and indeed, delving deeper into the artistic depths of PowerPoint was one of the aspects of my teaching that I was going to explore this term.

More visually stunning PowerPoint presentations was the first of my three or four areas of improvement.  Of the other three I have spent about 7 minutes on one and about 20 minutes on another and no time at all on the third.  This is not what I had hoped for from the “free” week which is ending this afternoon.  And, just in case you are wondering, this typing is being done in what should be my break time!

The rest of the day should enable me to complete yet more marking and I think that I will end up with (at last) some work on my Magnum Opus of Making Sense of Modern Art.  I only hope that I can remember the name of the file in which the few minutes’ work that I have done is safely lurking waiting for me to continue in my customary deathless prose.

Yet more marking has been done – which begs the questions of why it was all waiting for the space of the Trip Week to be completed!  But let it pass, let it pass!  I am now in the blessed state of being almost up to date.  No teacher is ever fully up to date.  This is a state of impossibility.  An educational Nirvana!  There is always something to be done – and that something to be done has a way of creeping up on one and biting tender parts when you least expect it.  Mainly because you have entirely forgotten about it until the space in front of you is filled with questioning faces!

So just time for another little break and a spot of work before a spot of lunch!

I have just cleaned out my pestilential mug with a Kleenex and spit and have thought of the incomparable Boundsie – the tea lady of all tea ladies in my last real school.  I hasten to add that she does not come to mind for use her use of Kleenex and spit (she must be revolving in her grave as she looks at my gross attempts to preserve the integrity of my mug!) but rather for her periodic disgust at the condition of my mug and her later vouchsafing the information that she had doused it liberally in Domestos to get rid of the ingrained tannin which was resistant to ordinary washing!  We shall not see her like again and no staff room that I have been in since has been complete without her!

I made an executive decision yesterday to go home early.  We ragged survivors, the left-overs from the Great Exodus as all the rest of the school has joined in the diaspora to other places in the name of education, have been working inordinately hard considering there was very little in the way of oversight of what we were or were not doing!

I have done a lot, but not what I really wanted to do.

I was beaten by Technological Aspirational Dysfunction.  Not on the part of the machine, oh no, my TAD comes from commercial greed.

It all comes down to a timeline.  For my MSOMA (Making Sense of Modern Art) course I wanted to construct a timeline showing when each of the eight “–isms” we look at is placed in the twentieth century.  Having at last learned to trust the computer to tell me about the computer I ventured onto the Internet to find out if there was a ready-made template for me to use.

They exist – but not quite as I want them to.  I delved deeper and discovered that timeless could be created using Excel and Word.  More delving brought me face to face with a step-by-step video.  Things appeared to be getting better and better!  But (isn’t there always a “but” when you deal with computers) each of the programs that I was considering was of a slightly different vintage to the one that I am actually using.  Added to this is the fact that I am using Microsoft programs which have been designed for use on the Mac.  It was as if I had been magically transported back to my first “real” computer, a Macintosh which supposedly worked with specially adapted Microsoft programs - and it never quite did.  And now in 2012 we are back where I began, trying to use programs which are “almost” the same as the ones that everyone else is using with their machines and finding the inevitable problems.  It is at times like this that one sees very clearly how Microsoft has made its money.  And built up a level of hatred in their imprisoned users that beggars belief.

Perhaps I have been a little hasty.  I was trying to form my timeline at the end of school yesterday and that was not the best time to be concentrating with full attention.

Today, Friday, a day I should be in school but this is an occasional day, a day of freedom – and the last day of joy until the Easter holidays – we went to Terrassa and I had an excellent lunch provided by Toni’s Mum.  I had planned to go to Barcelona and see an exhibition but returning on the motorways was threatening, with the amount of traffic building up nicely to intolerable proportions so I returned home.

And did housework.  I think I made a false call somewhere along the line!

Garzon has been stripped of his position of Judge for 11 years.  For those who cheered when this enterprising Judge tried to get the loathsome Pinochet extradited to Spain to face charges for the various crimes that he had committed, it is a time of considerable sadness that this crusading (whoops, sorry, that word is very much off limits nowadays!) this resourceful legal force has had his activities limited by what appears to be a well orchestrated and politically motivated campaign to stop him.

The fact that he was investigating a massive case of alleged corruption which implicates the ruling PP party and that the judges who have ruled against him have links to the party as well makes for a truly depressing assessment of the state of the judiciary in Spain at the moment.

The slimy ex-president of Valencia has been found not guilty of corruption by the resounding margin of 5 to 4 by the popular jury while the most enterprising judge of modern times in Spain has been stripped of his authority (and there are two other cases against him pending) is enough to make one weep.

And with that sad thought I will go to bed!

And music shall untune the sky!

It is impractical and illegal to have a shot of strong, black coffee while motoring in the rush hour on the northern ring road of Barcelona, but you can have the aural equivalent.

This morning, after setting off for work a delicious half hour later than usual, I played the first of the discs that form part of the Mercury Living Presence box set that I collected (again!) from the non-delivering deliverers.

The first disc in the collection was a performance of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” (and the answer to the Trivial Pursuit question is Hartmann) played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Kubelik. 

The Mercury sound is highlighted in this recording and the sharpness of the instrumentation is something which wakes you up in an instant!  Subtle it is not - but thoroughly enjoyable. 

The piece was not complete by the time I pulled into my usual parking space - nearest to home!  I therefore have “The Great Gate of Kiev” to come and given the rest of the performance that should match my mood of exultation as I head downwards to the shores of Castelldefels at the end of the day!  Having failed to play the trombone very well in a number of orchestras in my school days I vividly remember the triplets (of impossible height above the stave) in The Great Gate (triplets which do not occur in the original piano version I might add) which we in the brass section generally failed to play.  Ah memories!

The Great Gate was as exhilarating as I expected with the crisp sound vibrating through the car frame!  The next piece of music on the disc, however, reminded me of the bad old days as I heard the gentle hiss of extraneous noise that I had almost forgotten from even the most basic DDD CDs.  How Proustian!

An exhausting day today with another set of exam papers marked; a meeting in the morning; a written account of the rats of Hamlyn from the Piper’s point of view (with rat illustrations) and not a single moment spent on what I want to do.  It is amazing what you can do when your working environment is cleared of clients!  Two more days and then a day off.  The high point of the day was the morning break when we had croissants with dark chocolate and ginger.  As it happened I had decided to bring some of my vastly expensive Earl Grey tea.  


Most satisfactory – and with Mozart playing through my computer almost civilized!

Sport? Why?

God knows, except in exceptional circumstances, I am lukewarm (to put it mildly) about most forms of spectator sports.  My interest in the forthcoming Olympics is mostly political and sociological.

This time around I have missed the usual horror story of venues incomplete, transportation in chaos and money being thrown around as if all those involved had been Las Vegas winners.

Admittedly there have been the traditional scandals about the money and newspaper people have made much of the questions about “legacy” – but this is scraping the barrel compared to the lead up to the Athens Olympics.  And, let’s face it, part of the reason that those Games took place at all is now coming back to haunt us because the money that the Greeks spent they did not actually have and now they are dragging us all down with the lies that they told about their finances!  One hopes that this is not going to be the pattern for the present Games!

 

I have watched with delight the way that the venues have been built and the way in which the subsidiary aspects of the Games have been developed.  I like the walkways and the art associated with them; the landscaping and choice of flowers; the steel artwork by Kapoor (though I am not convinced by the final outcome, I like the enterprise of its construction); I am interested in the housing which has already been produced for athletes and the people of the area and I love the lying rhetoric of everyone involved.

As far as I can tell the traffic chaos (which is inevitable) has been thought about in detail and firms have been informed of the best ways to deal with it.  There is, however a feeling that I get from the press that it is only disaster that will be acceptable.  This is normally my own feeling about this corrupt and corrupting sporting event, but I must admit that I do feel differently now that it is taking place in Britain – and if my information is correct, I understand that one of the first events will take place before the official opening takes place and will be held in Cardiff!  How can I be openly cynical at such a time!

There is also the other nagging fear, and that is the one where we will end up without a single gold medal.  This happened in Canada where the host nation did not pick up a single example of the yellow stuff.  That cannot (can not) happen in Britain because a new stamp issue featuring Britain’s gold medal winners has already been scheduled!

In philatelic terms the Olympics has already been a success.  From the remarkably elegant “Handover” issue to the various issues celebrating the range Olympic sports including, for the first time the paraplegic as integral rather than periphery, has been excellent.  Credit where credit is due!

 

It is a pity that these games are four years too soon.  Too soon for a world class (and world champion at his level) yachtsman that we have as a pupil in school who, in spite of my repeated encouragement to get rid of the couple of guys in his way, has settled for possible representation of Spain in Rio in four years time.  I don’t think that he understands that I would have gone to Britain to watch him compete, but am loath to make the trip to South America in 2016!

I am writing this while watching the Irish v Wales game and we have just converted a try and are in the lead and now the Irish have a penalty kick.  Toni has been noting the language used by a self-confessed agnostic as far as competitive sport is concerned.  But I do get worked up when I actually watch it!  And the Irish are now in front again.  By a single point.  With half an hour to go.  The score has changed but with three minutes to go Wales are still a point behind the Irish.

It a totally melodramatic ending, with everything depending on a final penalty, Wales has WON!  So there!  And, even for someone like me with a limited attention span for this sort of thing, I considered this to be an excellent game.  Not without its moments of controversy and, to add my five penn’orth, I think that the Welsh player should have been sent off and not given a yellow card and six minutes in the sin bin.  However, we WON so I don’t care!  And with three home games yet to come we are well sited for the Championship.

 

That was yesterday.  Today, for the first time I had to scrape ice off the windscreen.  I could see my breath!  This was not what I wanted as I made my way to a supposedly virtually empty school.

During my school day I taught the first lesson to the 18 members of the first and second form who had not gone on trips; invigilated an examination I had written for my second year sixth; did a lunch time duty; marked a set of examination papers; started marking a second set – and even did a few minutes of the work that I actually wanted to do.

Tomorrow there is a scheduled meeting for the work on Heroes and Anti Heroes that we have been engaged on for some time.  I have done my bits apart from a tedious schemata for assessment so I will look forward to my colleagues’ contributions tomorrow!

There are two other threats to my own work projections but I have dismissive plans for one of them and the other I will simply have to duck and weave with!

The Amazon delivery service always falls down when entrusted into the hands of the carrier of the last distance.  Yet again, in spite of someone being here when they were supposed to have called, I found myself going to the central office of the company to get my goods.

Which are wonderful.

Having purchased a few cheap CD cases to contain them I spent a happy hour unpacking the goodies.  My two major purchases are the box set of Mercury Living Presence recordings and the Decca box set. 

 These CDs are reissues of famous LPs of the past.  I now have a CD of the Nelson Mass that I lost when I got rid of all my LPs.  The original Britten Requiem is now part of my collection again.  And the famous recording of the 1812 which I last owned as an EP!  There is much, much more with famous dead musicians and conductors as well as those who are still very much alive.

I am slightly ashamed that all these treasures have been bought merely to keep me amused as I travel by car to work.  Though I am looking forward to ploughing my way through a substantial tranche of quality music.

Tomorrow back to the limited work I did on The Bricks in the Tate – part of my proposed introduction to Making Sense of Modern Art.  Something I want to do rather than the things that my school wants me to do.

It will be a battle of wills to see what work comes out on top tomorrow!

Resumed!

The time since I last wrote is something like the missing and blank pages in Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy” – they are there through deliberate decision and have a communicative power which printed pages can not convey.  Or I might just have been a touch lazy and slumped into my bed without committing my thoughts to back lighted screen!

I have visited the Opera and seen “Il bubero di buon cuore” (“The Good-Hearted Curmudgeon”) by Vincent Martín i Soler with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte from a play by Carlo Goldoni and first performed in 1786 and first performed in the Liceu in 2012 and more than likely it will now slip back into its well-deserved obscurity.

The promise of the overture was not sustained by the rest of the opera.  The overture was lively and inventive and the rest of the music was not able to save a ridiculous storyline with too much recitative.  I found myself dropping off during the first half and, while the second half was better it was not enough to convince me of the worth of this relic.

The singers were fine and the orchestra was conducted by local legend Jordi Savall who is the undisputed king of period music in Barcelona, but still not enough to compel interest.

It was ironic that it was during this unspectacular performance that we were informed of the dire straits that the Liceu is in at the moment.  Grants have been cut with the result that the production of one full opera has been cancelled with other dance and music events falling to the financial axe as well.  The Crisis begins to hit the middle classes!

We season ticket holders have been presented with a few options.  We can have a refund; put the money to a subscription next season; spend the money (plus 10%) in the Liceu shop, or donate the money to the Liceu Foundation.  The last option is, of course, out of the question – and I don’t think that an extra 10% on Liceu prices gets near the profit margins they already have so I think that an interest free loan towards the cost of the next season is as far to charity as I feel like going!

The cold financial climate is matched by the weather.  The bitterly cold winds from the north have swept through Spain and we have been shivering in seasonal, but unwelcome chilliness.  I think that I must have adopted the responses of Catalonia as I have been complaining of the cold when the temperature has been a healthy 3°C and which has further risen to 7 or 8°C by the time I have got to school.  As I listen to the Today Programme first thing in the mornings I am aware of the temperatures that I would be experiencing at home and I tell myself to be grateful.

We have had snow!  Not, admittedly in Castelldefels, but rather in the mountain fastness of my teaching establishment.  The kids went wild with their first sight of snowflakes and gleefully told me that they would have to go home at once.

As the flakes drifted lazily down promptly to dissolve on the wet surface of the ground I disabused my less than enthusiastic educates about the likelihood of their departure.  Admittedly, in our minds was the snow of two years ago when the precipitation was of such an unusual ferocity that the entire traffic system of Barcelona was reduced to chaos and it took me over two hours to get home.  And that was as nothing to the five hours that it took one of my colleagues!

With the awful prospect of being stuck in school in all Catalonia minds, the whole of the country reverted to their comfort zone of complete panic.

While the British contingent was reduced to helpless laughter and eyebrows raised to a height previously thought impossible without some of the instruments of torture dear to the hearts of the Spanish Inquisition, the school started to implode.

With class teachers dashing from place to place, tannoyed announcements making the school sound like a copy of a Second World War Spitfighter squadron being scrambled, secretaries trying to cope with the flood of telephone messages from parents – the only thing that was missing as kids were frantically dispatched to the safety of their homes was the snow.  Which had stopped.  And with a clearing sky looked as though it was not going to start again.

But the evacuation went on and went on so efficiently that, as one colleague remarked the “school was emptied more efficiently and quickly than for a fire drill”!

So, within a remarkably short period of time we teachers were left in that educational nirvana known as a pupil-less school.

I was lucky that I was in Building 4.  Our Glorious Leader came in and told us we were free to go home!  Not so the teachers in Building 1 who only discovered our departure some time later and who, when appealing to the less than glorious leader of the other building were told to stay!  Their mutinous mutterings did eventually get them away, but only an hour after us!

The celebratory meal that Toni and I had to welcome the (lack of) snow sending me home was the only unsatisfactory element in a delightful day.  For the first time our restaurant of choice produced a poor main course – but we put that down to experience and I was in too high spirits at the unexpected break that nothing could dampen.

The next day, in spite of dire forecasts we had nothing but cold sunshine – but the break was appreciated and the Friday that we returned, for me at least, was a less than strenuous day with tests and films and an early departure.

The spirit of my mother loomed large on Saturday with a trip into Barcelona to see Irene.  Our meetings are few and far between nowadays as Irene’s teaching commitments are unsocial and so our usual way of staying in touch is via email.

Yesterday was, however a good face-to-face in one of the larger Barcelona shopping centres.

Our first act was to have a cup of coffee (tea in my case – I never learn) and start the chatting and gossip.  By the time our dregs had dried we were ready to “go shopping” – a phrase which well deserves its speech marks for both of us.

I did have a thin justification for shopping, as I “needed” some spices not held in our local supermarkets and also a coffee thingy by Bodum.

What I actually bought were two deliciously elegant Cava glasses with endless stems and cruelly etiolated tulip shaped business ends.  Simple and yet decadent!  And they had 30% off in the sales, so there.  In the same shop I bought a small two-cup Chinese clear glass teapot (full price) and six dried tea bombs (more than full price) whose price was more than worth it when an open -mouthed Toni watched the tea bomb expand into a sort of flower arrangement as boiling water was added.  The almost clear water that was the “tea” I eventually drank made up the most expensive cuppa I have ever had.  I am sure that she already has one, but I couldn’t help thinking that the teapot and bombs would be the almost perfect present for Clarrie!  She’d love it.

Next week the school will be unnaturally empty, as my colleagues have taken our raw material off on trips.  My 2BXT will still be there on Monday.  Which is just as well as they have an examination written with my own hands which tests the vocabulary they have come across during their so-called reading.  Writing sentences into which the kids have to fill in the gaps with words that they have learned in class is one of the few exercises that I enjoy producing.  You can imagine the sort of sentences that I write!

My plan for next week is to get stuck into the task of producing a sort of reference book for my Making Sense of Modern Art – for which I have made some unnecessarily large purchases of wonderful art books.  I fear though, that devious minds have laboured well into the night to ensure that I do not have the freedom necessary to work alone and that I might be drawn into collaborative exercises that will fritter away time in other less productive directions.

We will see.

What happens next?

For one horrible moment I thought that next week which I have been looking forward to was going to be ruined because of the noxious presence of extraneous kids.  My idea of paradise, a school drained of the unruly horror of actual students was going to be blasted by economic disaster.

Spanair has gone bust and we were flying some of our kids off to who-cares-where and now they (whoever they are) have to find alternative transport.  I was transfixed with despair at the thought of a surgically clean school being polluted with disgruntled students who were unable to participate in our Trip Week, mainly because of the realization that someone left back at base would have to look after them in their lessons.

Buses, train, AVE, horseback, hovercraft, pogo stick were all suggested by me in an excess of fear that my pseudo-holiday was about to be ruined.  I even suggested making the trip into a pilgrimage so that we could justify the kids walking if necessary.

But crisis management is something this school does well.  It is unfortunate that it also precipitates the crises that necessitate the crisis management, but we have to be grateful for small mercies.  An announcement was made in morning break which suggested that various alternatives were already being explored and that the kids should be safely (if possible) away at the appropriate time.

A week today will be the last normal teaching day for my 2BXT, and I think that the rest of the school will be safely away by that time.  Nothing, absolutely nothing has been said about what we Ones Who Are Left are supposed to be doing.

I have plenty to do during this unnatural week and it would be great if I were able to get into the writing for my Art Book – though those capital letters are a little pretentious for what I am seeking to achieve.  But it would give me a couple of days to break the back of the project and anyway it would give me time to get together a series of pictures that will be necessary to make the thing work.

I will also have marking to do and I have vowed that I am never going to do any marking at home again.  We have an enforced eight-hour day and that is long enough for anything to get done – and if it isn’t long enough then it simply is not going to get done.  I have adopted this policy for the last few months and, while it does make for some fun-filled and frantic days, it generally works out.

Of course there are some things that I will do in my spare time at home connected with school that do not count: reading is an obvious example.  Especially reading about (art or Art) and reading literature.

I cannot bring myself to tolerate the mealy mouthed pretentious indulgence which usually constitutes writing about education.  Suzanne is different and she rejoices in the stuff that makes my blood run cold and, even worse, actually puts educational ideas into practical operation in her classes.

I tell myself that as an Art Teacher she has her own room, own equipment, a practical bias and enough time to develop concepts whereas I am an itinerant teacher with no base and no storage in my teaching spaces.

I have realized that the last sentence is not strictly true as, in one class I have the upturned lid of a paper box to keep my text books while in another I have attempted to utilize the space around the television, CD player and computer in a video storage cupboard for the stuff for Media Studies, Current Affairs and Making Sense of Modern Art.  To say I am squeezed is something of an understatement!

Tomorrow is the next in my opera series in the Liceu and this is either going to be a revelation or an explanation of why this piece has never been played in the Liceu since in was written in the last quarter of the eighteenth century by Vicent Martín i Soler – a name, I am sure you will agree, to conjure with.  OK, his librettist was Da Ponte and Mozart wrote an aria for inclusion in the opera and it doesn’t matter how much you say that in his day he rivalled Mozart and Salieri, there must be a reason why this Catalan composer has not had his opera presented once in Catalonia in the Liceu in the couple of centuries that have elapsed since the first performance.  I wait to be convinced.

So far into the season, with the exception of Carmen, I have not been to anything that I have known well.  And tomorrow I am presented with a composer whose name I heard for the first time when I read the prospectus for the forthcoming season. 

Educators need to be educated too!  At least I am with Suzanne on that one!

There is always buying1

A cold but sunny morning and the drizzle and rain of yesterday just a damp memory.

I went shopping for the ingredients for Toni’s paella and on the way back stopped at a stall to get chocolate and churros.  Churros are fingers of extruded batter which are deep-fried and sprinkled with sugar.  The chocolate drink which comes with this indulgent calorie-filled excess should be of the consistency of slow moving lava.  Ours was not; it was more like a sweet drink of comforting late night coco-lite and was greeted with nationalistic dismay by Toni.  And these so-called foodstuffs weren’t cheap either.  Another eating place to cross off the list!

Toni’s paella was a good first attempt – there is nothing so satisfying as damming with faint praise.  He chose to make a vegetable paella which is more difficult to bring off because there is not the obvious taste centre of meat in the dish – but the rice was done to perfection and that, after all is the main ingredient!  Damming with faint praise Part II!

My journeys to school devour CD at an astonishing rate and I am therefore always in the market for cheapish (though intellectually respectable) CDs to be used and discarded much like hitchhikers Quentin Crisp described being picked up by truck drivers “used for their pleasure and then discarded like used Hershey Bar wrappers.”

As I am usually driving in sullen disbelief as I make my way (in darkness) to my place of work, I need the comfort of Classical Music to make my entry to school just that little bit more tolerable.  There are, you might remark, two perfectly good Classical Music Radio Stations on my radio but they both suffer from the same delusion and that delusion can make my sullen resentment boil up into incandescent anger in the twinkling of an eye.

I do not, have never and will never understand why Classical Music, even in its widest interpretation (i.e. allowing people like Karl Jenkins with their euphemistically “polystylistic” approach to share a concert stage with composers like Sibelius!) has to include the dreaded and justly despised so-called music designated by the appellation of “Jazz.”

I am well aware that I am dismissing, by using the term Jazz as an inclusive description, a whole diverse collection of widely different strands.  And I am further aware that when Jazz forms part of the inspiration for so-called conventional composers I am more than happy to listen to it.  And if it comes to that I am thirdly aware that some Jazz has set my feet tapping and I have been more than happy to devour quantities of strong liquid beverages while listening to it as a pleasant background music.  What I hate is the hard-core stuff, the modern self-indulgent meandering masquerading as music.  And they put it on Radio 3 and write about it in my Classical Music Magazine and foist it on unsuspecting listeners who tune into the radio in good faith expecting the Real Thing.

So I am more than prepared to provide my own series of discs so that my journey time is conducive to mellow contemplation – even when the music is hysterical.

I have therefore had a wonderfully self-indulgent (but not in the way of modern Jazz musicians) time seeking out the most Classic FM or These We Have Loved selections and listening with glee during the chunks of time when I am avoiding motorcyclists on the motorways.

In one of the supermarkets I chanced upon a series of triple-disc sets which were marketed as “The 50 best . . . “ etc.  In this series I have listened to the fifty best adagios, children’s classics, cello works, ballet extracts, marriage pieces, spiritual classics and so the list goes on.  Some, I have to say I will never listen to again – even with a cash inducement!  But supplies, like teabags, just run out when you least expect and I have been hunting for new supplies.

And, yet again, trusty Amazon shoulders its way to my attention.  I am a great devotee of “Brilliant Classics” – a terminally naff name but an excellent CD publisher with unbeatable prices on their offerings.  I have been um-ing and ah-ing over one of their latest offerings which is a box set of the works of Tchaikovsky.  But this includes all sorts of things which are not necessarily the best sort of thing to listen to when driving with loonies in the morning.  I am looking for something altogether more vulgar.

And Amazon, much in the manner of Uriah Heep when he was pushing the bottle of sherry towards Mr Wickfield in the hope of encouraging him into ways of dissipation, keeps popping up urging me to buy, buy, buy things that they know that I want.

So I have given in and ordered two box sets of innumerable discs for a couple of quid each which give me the best and brightest of Decca and Mercury.  I know that these are the dusty back-catalogues of hard pressed music companies trying to squeeze the last drops out of obsolete recordings, but they are perfect for what I need them for and will cover my travel time for the rest of the year.  And, after all it’s cheaper than petrol and it will last longer!

I also have another non-delivery to anticipate as the fluid organization that is Amazon is dammed (in both senses of the word) by the shoddy and lying inefficiency of the final firm in the chain which actually gets the parcels to me.

I now assume that Amazon is right when I read the email which says that the package has been handed over to the local delivery service and I now ignore the mendacious notes and denials of the service and merely go in to the local office, proffer my identification number and wait for my package. 

Which I later take without saying what I really think because I know that they can get a great deal worse. 

I am sure that companies like the one that is supposed to deliver to us rely on the fact that they know that there will be more hassle when returning packages than putting up with the sub-standard service that we can from them at the moment.

Culture at last!

Waiting for a 95 in meaninglessly spiteful drizzle I wondered about the complete lack of information we have about what is happening to the bus system.

Bus prices were hiked by a third as a gesture towards repairing the ravages of the Crisis and there has been a reorganization of bus stops so that one bus appears to have vanished.

The most direct bus into Barcelona is the 94 but that bus seems to have been banned from our part of the world, so I had to be satisfied with the 95 which stops everywhere before it gets to its destination.

But at least I got a seat, and eventually I was able to change it for one pointing in the right direction.  And eventually get to the exhibition for a visit which has been long delayed.

“Maestros Franceses deal Colección Clark” was an amazing collection of paintings from the Barbizon School to the Impressionists and slightly beyond.

Apart from the Clarks’ unhealthy preoccupation with Renoir – whose unhealthily saccharine works have never appealed to me – the collection is astonishing.  It is inclusive and revealing.  A Monet of a storm at sea dating from 1886 and other early examples of famous artists gives an alternative view of some of their work.  For example a Caillebotte painting from 1892 has elements which give it the appearance of a piece of Fauvist art, a far cry from his more urban meticulousness!

My cordial dislike of Corot continues centred I think on his smeary approach to the portrayal of trees, though I also have to admit that an Italian oil for c. 1840 had all the sketch-like vitality of a watercolour by Cotman!

It is difficult to retexture the revolutionary nature of many of the paintings – especially when all these canvases are framed with such portentously ornate gilding!  We do not now see the odd industrial chimney as an astonishingly outré aspect of a “pretty” landscape; we fail to find the odd shapes of Degas paintings and he cut-off figures as bizarre; Pointillist and other colour experiments are seen as decorative rather than dangerous!

The painting I would most like to have stolen was by Lautrec” La espera” from 1888, a deceptively simple work of a back view of a young woman sitting at a circular table with a glass in front of her.  Her head is turned slightly to the right and she has a certain world-weariness which is always engaging in Lautrec’s work.  The composition of the piece is exceptional with a contrapuntal movement of geometric forces giving a dynamism to the painting where the point of eye contact of the young woman with the viewer seem immanent.

There is a Daumier, a Fantin-Latour, a couple of Tissots and a scattering of Major Names to keep any art watcher happy.

This is an exhibition well worth visiting.  And, at the moment, the exhibitions in La Caixa are still free.  Long may it continue!

“The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak is now read.  A book narrated by Death about a young girl fostered in war time Germany and lined to the position of Jews in that disastrous time should have been more disturbing than I found this book.

At times the technique overtook the story telling and I found myself admiring the style rather than the content.  It is always a problem when dealing with the horrors of World War II and the Final Solution that the subject matter is more powerful than the author is capable of making the slant that he is adopting for his story line.

There were (I discovered) two pages of adulatory comments from magazines from around the world at the start of the book, but I cannot be as enthusiastic about it.  There were moving and stimulating parts to the novel but it left me essentially dissatisfied.

Tomorrow Toni is going to cook his first paella.

At last!

A colleague of mine is returning to the UK today to visit his parents and, as the common courtesy of these trips demands, he asked me if there was anything from the UK that I wanted him to bring me back.  And there was nothing.

It makes you think that an entire culture that has nurtured me for a vast number of years has nothing to offer!  I spurn Marmite as I would a rabid dog; tea bags of the correct British quality are readily available in many supermarkets here; I have The Guardian sent to my iPad; I cannot eat a whole Cadbury’s cream egg, and rain I can do without.  So what is there left?

The weekend is to be given over to the reading of “The Book Thief” which I have been told in no uncertain terms is both very good and will make me cry.  I have read the first twenty or so pages and I am less than impressed.  The novel seems affected and meaninglessly tricksy – but it is early days and a few hundred pages to go.  I will reserve judgement.  In so far as I have ever done that!

An early night to be up bright and early for Culture tomorrow.

Exams - now it's personal

A day of frantic marking: every moment an opportunity to bring out the red pen and make marks resulting in wholesale failure for my pupils!  Half the class have failed to reach the magic five out of ten which indicates a pass.  Ah well.

The days are slowly slipping away and bringing us nearer to the week when the greater part of the school will disappear on the trips leaving we stay-at-homes to the quiet majesty of an empty school.  Well, empty as far as the secondary section of the school is concerned.  The other sections of the school may or may not be functional and we may or may not be required to do “something” in other parts of the school to compensate for the fact that we are still in situ!

This has been a hard week as (and I’m not alone here among my colleagues) we are all looking the worse for wear and are all, without exception, tired.  I at least can look forward to a less stressful week, though our school has a Puritanically vindictive system which wants no one to escape for any misery going: what’s discomfort for one must be discomfort for all!

At least I have an art gallery to visit this weekend and a new book to read as well.

A day to go and an early finish.