Counting down!

The foul weather has persisted up until today with howling gales, thunder and lightning and torrential rain – and now, at lunchtime the sun has made an appearance!  I love this country!

Which is more than I can say for the institutions which grace it!

I have been told (by a fellow union member) that my absence due to strike action will be treated by the school as if I was absent through illness and I will be covered (or not covered) in the normal way.  When I used the “S” word, my colleague informed me that Spain was not Britain and people would not understand the most virulent words a unionist!

“You will get,” he said, “no support in your action.  You will be by yourself!”  So what else is new, I thought to myself.  I am a past master of poking my head above the parapet on all possible occasions – both worthy and also trivial.  Sometimes I do not even have to raise my head to be within firing range!

But what the government (nation and local) is doing now is beyond contempt.  Imposing cowardly retrospective taxes is contemptible and to allow these cowboys calling themselves politicians to get away with it is not acceptable.  Something Must Be Done and my going on strike is my small gesture of defiance.  The fact that it will be a lone act of defiance is depressing, the fact that its effect will be vitiated by the action of “supportive” colleagues is more than depressing.  It’s disgusting.

Still, this is the real world in which I have to live and my ideas are not those of the majority of my colleagues.  That’s life!

The sun, however, shines.  And is shining brightly.  And I fully intend to go home early and the hell with everyone!

This does mean that I have infinity of marks to enter into the computer tomorrow or over the weekend.  As exams are still being frantically marked for a meeting which can quite easily be moved, but which is now an almost intolerable imposition.  We work ourselves into a frazzle for no reason whatsoever – and for wages which are shrinking as we wait!

The first day of our wrestling with the demands of project-based learning is coming to an end and there are, as far as I can tell, no casualties.  Teaching has gone on and the kids have responded or not in the normal day.

My lesson with the kids was one that I designed myself and, apart from the lack of sufficient time to complete it fully, it worked reasonably well.  Not, of course that I wouldn’t change things were it to be done again – but the basis of an effective learning experience has been established.

Tomorrow sees Day 2 of the PBL (project based learning) experience but, whereas previously it has been all day, this year it has been limited to the morning or the afternoon or the middle of the day or a combination of any of the preceding – leading of course to confusion and resentment.  Especially if you happen to have ordinary lessons in the periods when the kids are not enjoying the freedom of the projects.  In the case of Y9 for example, we are lucky enough in the English Department to have these “lively” kids last thing in the afternoon three times in the week and all during the ordinary periods when we will have to try and drag them back to academic lessons after the open approach of the rest of their day. 

Great happiness! 

What's happening?

Yesterday, the first day of spring, with the irony that confirms the existence of a cruel god, was positively wintry with cold gusts of wind and spiteful spits of rain. 

This adverse weather has continued into the second day of “spring” and has created a day which illustrates the pathetic fallacy as the grey, cold, rainy weather reflects the feeling of depression which fills the hearts of teachers as they see a large substitution list for a colleague who has gone home to Australia for domestic reasons and has not, of course, been replaced by a supply teacher; the looming need to fill in the meaningless marks out of ten for our pupils on some cranky computer system; the chaos which is going to accompany the new approach to a week of project based learning, and all of this further exacerbated by the lack of chocolate. 

Even the relatively near end of term (eight working days away) fails to give the fillip that it should.  We are all too bone-weary to get excited about something like that.  And it’s a much shorter a holiday than its equivalent in the UK.

I am now stuck in front of a Y8 class who are revising for a science exam; at least I only have to do half the lesson as my colleague who shares this class will be coming to do her part and I can escape for a few brief minutes into the tranquillity of the staffroom, where I have to replenish the iconic Chocolate Box in my cupboard which has become such an institution in the school!

I am now sitting in front of a Y7 class and, apart from the inevitable questions about the paper (this is Spain after all) they are working in silence.  But before you think that this is money for old rope, I actually have to mark what these small people are writing.  Furthermore, it has to be done in double quick time because the marks need to be entered onto the school computer system.  There there are two long, long, long meetings at the start of next week just to make sure that we fully appreciate the value of the holiday that will begin at the end of it!

The marking of the papers is going to be difficult as tomorrow marks the beginning of the project based learning programme and people are already getting het up about it as it is (they assume) going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. 

Ah well, another shining example of the sort of planned chaos this school does so well.

Personally, I think that everything will go quite well and people will be pleased with the results that they get and the response from the pupils.  Time will tell.

The strike is on the 29^th of March and I am more determined than ever to take part in it.  I have said this to a couple of my colleagues and I have also pointed out that I expect them NOT TO TAKE MY CLASSES.  They smile, because they have as much experience of being in and belief in a real Trade Union as the present chubby little dictator of North Korea.  And I smile too because it would be too harsh to tell them that what they are smiling at is an action beneath which there is no lower action in the mind of a Trade Unionist.  I have minor fantasies of standing outside the school with a placard, forming a picket line of one and screaming “Scab!” at every teacher who crosses it.  I won’t do it.  Probably.

But I am feeling more militant at each passing day!

What is there without chocolate?

Thank god for M&S.  Thank god for colleagues using the Occasional Day on Monday to visit aged Ps in Great Britain.

The spirit of Chocolate Week lives on!

The end result is two buckets (poetic licence) of chocolate coated goodies with the style and quality of that most wonderful of shops.  And in the other staff room a delicious chocolate roulade cake!  Delightful.  I used to think that getting soft toilet paper introduced into a school in which I taught was my greatest achievement in education – but I do think that chocolate week, extending as it is into its third or fourth great week is a greater triumph to put to my credit!

Not of course that I actually shop there. 

Even when I was living in the UK I did not shop there, but I liked living near a store.  I heard/read that geographers used the location of M&S stores as a shorthand way of finding out the socio-economic status of a particular area: if M&S was there then you could assume that all the requisites of a normal middle class life were to hand; if M&S were not there then you were in Skelmsdale or equivalent.  I therefore made it a rule not to live more than three miles away from an M&S store.

The equivalent in Spain of M&S is, in my view El Corte Ingles and, although I had to be a little more flexible on distance, I am now delighted to report that the whole system has reversed itself and the store is following me!  We now have a branch of El Corte Ingles (admittedly a discount store, but it still has the name) well within the three-mile limit of my present domicile!

Another glorious day made that little bit more squalid because I am looking at the sun’s refulgence through the grimy window of a staff room rather than in the free space of the Third Floor.  Still, it’s better than looking at rain.

As far as I am aware, the day today is one ravaged by examination supervision so that the normal timetable is in shreds.  There is also a colleague absent which always adds its own dash of chaos as we work so near to capacity – so who knows what might happen today!

First lesson and it’s payback time!

I gained part of a period last week and now my colleague has claimed her rights and I am stuck in front of a class revising or should that be “revising” for their examination.  To be fair since so much of the ethos of the school is taken up by the process of examinations the pupils are well versed in the niceties of the system and knuckle down to work in a much easier way than other pupils I have taught.  Generally speaking (except for the usual suspects) they are all now working and as I touch type I can watch and type at the same time so they realize that they are under observation even if I appear to be working.

As this is my six-period day I welcome the disruption of examinations, as they tend to break up the long slog that this unnatural day brings.

Now is the time to think of more pleasant things and to hope that Toni is phoning the superb restaurant in Girona to find out if there are any places left to sample the gastronomic dinner that Ceri and Dianne did not have the last time they were here. 

If everything goes according to plan then we should be able to sample the world famous cuisine during their next visit – and drink a few tasty wines as well. 

If that doesn’t work out then there is always the fall-back plan of going to the restaurant in Hospitalet and hoping that the restaurant in the “flying saucer” has cooled down a little so that we are able to eat in a place with truly spectacular views.  One does wonder about the quality of an architect who designs a building in Spain which cannot be used in a Spanish summer!  We shall see, but it is something to look forward to whatever location we finally decide to eat in.

There is still no absolute clarity about what is going to happen to our pay this year.  I have been told conflicting stories about what the government is going to do and all we have is rumour and not hard fact.  The school does not seem to have set a time aside for a meeting to inform staff about the probably deductions from their pay and I have to say that my colleagues seem remarkably, even shamefully resigned to the possibility of 5% of their total income being deducted in two tranches of 3% and 2%!

The date for the strike has been set for the 29^th of March and I am more than inclined to take part.  I realize that it might be something of futile gesture as none of my colleagues seem inclined to take part, but the situation is so serious that to do nothing seems to me to be a complete abdication of union responsibility.  But it is also the loss of a day’s pay and god knows what complications with the tax authorities etc.  However, this really does seem to be a time, if ever time there was, to take some form of action to tell the government in no uncertain terms that their actions are not acceptable to working people.  Or me!

The next period is a “study” period with the equivalent of Year 9.  Need I say more?  However, this penance is compensated by the next period being made into a free as my colleague is compensating for me taking a whole class rather than our individual groups.  It all works out in the end.

Perhaps this is the time I should be taking to get ready for the Great Change which usually catches me out.  One of my classes is divided into three.  Our school year is divided into three.  It follows that each of the classes should last a term.  Wrong.  The date for the Great Change seems quite arbitrary but, this year, for the first time, I think I know when it takes place.  So for the last class of the year I will have one week and two days of this term and the rest of the summer term in which to teach them.  Previously my class has simply disappeared to be replaced by another group of bemused looking kids drifting into my class.

At least I have two days notice this time and some spare examination gained time in which to prepare.

It does mean, however that the introduction to the subjects are lost in a general lust for holidays and the usual mind-wipe of the school holiday makes the start of next term something of a trial when you are building on material and knowledge that the kids have long lost!  But, there again, it all adds to the gaiety of nations!

We are also, on the very day of the changeover, starting the projects which are supposedly taking up a swathe of time during the day.  However, with the change in approach that has been brought in with little or no consultation I think that it means that after a whole day of being off timetable, my ordinary classes will be there waiting for me to teach them.  A rabble mentality having been established for the majority of the day I suddenly have to bring the kids back to conventional teaching.  O Joy!

It is now, at long, long last getting on for the end of the day.  I am stuck with a Year 9 class for a double period and have suddenly been informed that the periods last Wednesday that I took to be the end of the course were not and the two this afternoon are.  Well, stuff that.  I am not in the mood to magic up a sudden lesson or couple of lessons for these unreceptive people when I have work to do for the next group.

I have now designed and printed out the cover sheets for the work that these kids are going to do.  Not unimportant because if work is not recognized as having a mark these kids consider it worthless.  A cover sheet (an A3 printed single sheet folder) therefore gives legitimacy to all the work it contains.  As it will get tatty by the end of the course - part of the mark includes designing a replacement!

One of my courses is made more complicated by my having a pupil stay on from the group that I am supposed to be giving up because he does not speak fluent Spanish - so he is going to have to do everything again.  Actually this is not as futile as it sounds because he came late to my course and anyway I change things that I have done so there will be enough there which will be different to keep his attention.  I hope.  And my attention as well which is, after all, much more important!

By the end of the day I can look back on the production of two folders for my two credit classes; pages printed out for my Making Sense of Modern Art class; a bluffer’s guide to how to paraphrase; a guide to the writing of effective magazine articles and the consumption of numerous cups of tea

But today has been thoroughly unsatisfactory in all sorts of ways.  There is a growing tension in the school about all the work that has to be compressed into the last two weeks of term before the holidays and there is frustration building up about what exactly is going to happen to our money and about the strike which is going to take place on the 29^th of March.

The school management have stated that the school will be open during the strike and, from what I have heard from my colleagues, shamefully there are going to be plenty of teachers who are prepared to come in to keep the place going.

As time goes on I am more and more prepared to go on strike and I have had support from one other member of staff.  Two of us out of the whole of the teaching staff!  It’s pathetic! 

And, let’s be realistic, we haven’t actually done it yet.

Blooming lightly

Surely no day can be counted wasted when you have planted four flowers of the clearest plastic lit with a colour changing solar powered LED?

Never let it be said that I could not use a day off to the full.  And what is a day without spending; therefore a little light buying of yet more solar lights and the day can settle down nicely.

The handbook of the car, in English, arrived a couple of weeks after the purchase: but it was for the wrong car.  Another five days before the real handbook arrives - in a language I can fully understand.  Though I have to admit that proficiency in a given language is not necessarily a guarantee that you will understand a handbook in that language which purports to tell you how to work a complex machine!

Now, I have to admit that handbooks about anything, let alone cars, have never been my favourite reading.  I still have not raised the bonnet of my new car – though why I should want to look at the engine I do not know – and I do not know how to raise the bonnet anyway.  My only technical concern is not with the car at all, but rather with the music system.

When a CD is being played there should be, at the pressing of a button, information about the track appearing on the screen on the dashboard.  But it doesn’t and only the track number is displayed.  I have gone back to the showroom but the lady who sold me the car was unable to get any more information on the screen than I.  This is a problem which will need more attention.

I am informed that there is a special “link” which can (at great expense) be purchased from Toyota which will send all information to the screen.  When I asked the price of the link the woman looked shocked and said it was too expensive!  Honest, if disconcerting!

I am still (!) enjoying driving the car and still (!) watching the central image of battery/engine in an attempt to drive in an energy efficient way.  At the end of every journey when you push the button to turn the car off (!) a little graphic appears telling you how ecological the drive was!  Something else to worry about!

At least tomorrow is a Tuesday and that means that our week is only four days long.  And then one more full week and the Easter Holidays.

Each day from now to the holidays is going to be an achievement.

Which is not to say that the remaining days are without their individual interest.  We are soon going to take forward a project-based approach to school teaching through year specific projects; lesson observation - for the first time in this school; two after school endless meetings; a group change over, and of course normal teaching and the ordinary life of the school. 

And nine working days for all this delight to happen!

From Friday to Sunday - the missing days

So why am I not feeling happy?

Not only is today Friday (well, it was when I wrote this), but also it is the last day of pseudo-work before the long weekend, to which colleagues have been looking forward with an almost unhealthy greed!  There is an air of desperation about a single day (and not the day on which I have six periods to teach) which shows like nothing else the true state of exhaustion of the staff.

After this tantalizing taste of freedom there is an extra fortnight before the Easter holiday – and even this release is a truncated form of what you would get in Britain with only seven working days of holiday rather than a full fortnight being allocated for the vacation.

The one thing which is similar to Britain is that my colleagues here share the same delusions about the summer term.

I have already heard colleagues saying things like, “The summer term goes so quickly” and “When the sixth form goes we will have extra time” and other statements of equal hope but little reality.  Colleagues will be absent and extra time will be missed; examinations will need to be supervised; odd little events will suddenly be organized which need our attendance.  In short, time will be illusory and weeks will be exactly the same length as in a term which is perceived to be more strenuous.

Although teachers are expected to say this every year that they are in teaching, I do think that this term has been one of the most arduous that I have ever endured.  Not only has the content been taxing but also the sheer number of days that we have been in school has been enervating.  I will be very glad when this term is over and I will gleefully enter into the collective delusion about the easiness of the third term.

Although it was rather an expensive way of doing it, I have been amused and delighted by the new car and I am still, continuingly fascinated by the way that the car switches seamlessly between petrol engine and battery, sometimes using both at the same time.  I am beginning to suspect that the little graphic is a lie and I am kidding myself about what is going on!  But the silent progress I sometimes make is more than satisfying!

I am now listening to Bartok as I make my way to school.  This is part of my bulk buy of CDs which of late have tended towards Bruckner and Mahler - rather heavy going for first thing in the morning!  The present Bartok is now exactly hummable but the astringent almost-melodies are refreshing and match the driving skills of my fellow motorists as I make my stately ecological way along the motorways.

For virtually the first time in my experience I am actually enjoying driving and I like the car.  This reaction means that I do notice the little (or not so little to my way of thinking) things that are not working as I expect them to.  My greatest gripe is the music.

The reproduction of the music is fine I have no complaints about that – it is more the fact that the information about tracks is not being displayed on the screen when the various devices are linked up.  In theory I should have all the information which is displayed on the IPod screen on the display in the car, but this merely gives a track number for the CD player and doesn’t even give you the total number of tracks. 

The information about performer, orchestra, and movement is totally absent, and yet according to the information in the guidebook it should be part of the driving experience. 

Well, it isn’t and I am not pleased.  I am more than half inclined to go back to the dealer and see how they respond to a request from a customer after the money has all been paid in!  But I hold myself back from doing this in the fear that I am not following an instruction of mindless simplicity which will make all things well.

My first period has been turned into a study period and even that is cut in half as I am shortly to be relieved by a colleague who will take the latter part of the lesson.  The second period is a Departmental Meeting which I assume will be given over to marking (which I have done) and then I have a free.  This is the sort of teaching that I could take up as a career!  Pity this is the exception rather than the rule!

Where did Saturday go?

The Family came down for lunch and then stayed for the more than satisfactory win by Barça over Seville.

I was tricked into going into town with the ladies for shopping.  I thought that we were going in for food and other essentials: the ladies had other ideas.

Many clothing shops later I felt that I deserved the coffee that might as well have been strapped to the neck of a Saint Bernard dog for that state that I was in by the time that at least half of us sat down!

In C&A a father a daughter hogged the only two seats for those waiting for the people trying on clothes.  In spite of the poisonous looks that I gave them both neither relinquished their hard gained comfy chair.

It took me a while to remember that, having exhausted the delights of the haute mode of the men’s section of C&A and feeling like a plane crash survivor staggering in a desert of tat, there were benches just outside the store.  Thus armed with my trusty mobile phone which is always charged with numerous “Amazing” stories gleaned copyright-free to satisfy my sci-fi addiction (though not always charged with money for its ostensible purpose) I was able to read myself to sanity.

Our trip to the shopping centre was taken in the new car (New Car) and drew appreciative coos of delight from the assembled ladies and with the CD player off (I felt that the spikier Bartok was not to their taste) the eerie silence with which we threaded through the lanes of the underground car park reduced them to silence as well!

Today is an officially “gained” day.  Usually Sundays are broken days for teachers.  They have a lie-in in the morning; enjoy a Sunday lunch, and then use the afternoon and evening to worry about the next day.  But today is different.  Sunday may be enjoyed in all its schoollessness because we are not working on Monday.  Even the traditional worry-free morning takes on a different sort of delightfulness.

A gloomy colleague told me on Friday that the unusually fine weather we have been having would last up until Sunday and then miserable normality would take over.  Well, it may only be ten o’clock in the morning, but the perfect blue skies bode well for the rest of the day.

A day passes . . .

Another exam! 

Hardly an original opening for a school that seems to need examinations in the same way that Cameron needs a presidential smile!  The calm of silently working kids in front of me has the price of mindless marking squeezed in for the rest of the day to ensure that I don’t take examination papers home.  And there is more to come!

The only bright spots are: an extra day on the weekend and my continuing fascination with the car.

For the first time yesterday I drove the thing into the centre of Barcelona and, although the TomTom GPS tried to take me another way to the school I resisted the persuasive tones of the machine and drove the way I usually go, while noting the differences.

The car is of course perfect for city driving because when I stop, it stops and all is silence – except of course for the blaring music of the excellent stereo which keeps me company.  My IPod is connected, and the CD player is a delight as the holding for the GPS swivels out of the way to reveal the slot for the disk!  The radio is tuned to the Classical Music station of Catalan Radio and all is well with the world.

I am mesmerized by the illuminated graphic which shows what is powering the car at any one time.  There is a picture of a battery and a representation of the petrol engine together with a segmented arrow to show where the power is going.  At low speeds and for manoeuvring the battery is drawn on; for more high powered motoring the petrol engine is used - and when the foot is taken off the accelerator the car charges the battery. 

I think I spend more time looking at the symbol and gloating over the fact that my motoring is ecological than looking through the windscreen!

As parking in the centre of Barcelona is impossible except in the extortionate underground car parks, I was able to feel the extra rush of goodness because I was not contributing to the exhaust fumes that are part of the atmosphere in those dark, dank places.  I feel I should have a badge for pure goodness.  Though I would much rather have the €2k that I have been told will be my little present from the Generalitat as an incentive for buying such a low emission car.  And this from a bankrupt authority which has just announced the latest reductions.

The government is proposing to deduct 3% of our total annual salary from the so-called “extra” payment that we get in the summer.  They are, of course, yet again, treating us like kids thinking that we will not notice a delayed chunk of our salaries disappearing noiselessly from our bank accounts.  We will, after all, still have our normal salary to keep us going.

They further propose to deduct 2% of our annual salary from the other “extra” payment at Christmas time.  This is disgusting.

And what is the reaction from my colleagues?  A weary shrug of the shoulders and a sort of what-can-we-expect-given-the-crisis sort of response!

My fury makes me an isolated spot of seething hatred where everyone else has decided that even with wage reductions it is better to have a job than not – and too much open dissatisfaction could lead to that employment being ended.  There is genuine fear about what an employer might do and the unions are largely emasculated and ineffective.

There is a General Strike on the 29^th of March and I, a life-long Trade Unionist, Past President of the Cardiff NUT and general right-thinking sort of cove; I am debating what to do.

Clearly there is The Right Action to Take – which with my background I should take instinctively.  But I hesitate.

I hesitate because it is becoming increasingly obvious that if I take action, I will be the only person in the school to take action.  My classes will be collapsed and taken by others and I will have to spend the rest of my time calling colleagues “Scabs!”  And what will be achieved?  A rhetorical and very real question.  The government – local and national – is bust; they do not have the money to pay us and they are certainly not going to reject the easy option of attacking the government employees first in an attempt to balance (ha!) the books.

Spain has a slightly different approach to civil servants to the British.  In Spain there is a class of Functionario which is paid by the government and enjoys various perks that we ordinary folk do not.  The pay, conditions, pensions and employment rights are excellent – far too good for what the government can afford to pay.  There are also the stories of (and I have seen pictures of) vast arrays of empty desks with no people at all indicating the number of “workers” paid for by the government who do not have “real” jobs.

Now I know that civil servants are in the firing line and it is easy to find an office or department where the “work” done is difficult to see but, in Spain, civil servants are also teachers.  Toni’s sister, for example is one and her benefits come through examination and in being placed by the government in a school in which personal choice is only one factor in the eventual position.

So far the salary of funcionarios has been cut by 5%; the present proposals threaten to cut it by a further 5%.

Our problem, in my school is that some of the teachers’ time is paid for by the government and some by the foundation that runs the school.  I am paid with two cheques: one from the Generalitat and the other from the Foundation.  But the cheques do not tally with the amount of teaching time that I do in Secondary (Generalitat paid) and Bachillerato (Foundation paid) so a cut in our salaries is going to be problematic.

Primary and Secondary teachers are paid by the Generalitat so I assume that a global amount is paid to the school on a monthly basis.  I further assume that the cut will be shared equally by all the teachers in the school and that this will be expressed as a percentage less than 5% when the money is finally stolen by the government.

I await with interest the pronouncement of the school.

The end of tomorrow is the start of our long (but not that long) weekend.  We have Monday off.  Then it is nine teaching days to the end of term at long, long last.

Before the end of term we have the results of our attempts to fabricate lessons in the Project Based Learning way.  This has caused ructions with staff moaning and groaning at the extra work that this has entailed.  And indeed it is being done in the wrong way with little concession made for the extra work which is necessary.  Our school seems to want a different way of working but is not prepared to give the timetabled time necessary for it to work properly.

Perhaps we are all simply jaundiced by the term stubbornly refusing to finish and at the same time having to write, set and mark another tranche of examinations added to the implementation of the projects that we have been working on for the past month or so.  All at the wrong time of the year.

Roll on the holidays!

Getting to know it

I have consulted the mystic books of knowledge and steeped in their lore I feel that I am about 20% confident about linking the IPod to the Tom-Tom GPS via the USB port in the dash.

For how many years has the latter part of that sentence been comprehensible?  Probably not more than a decade, but that does mean that most of the kids that I teach have never been aware of a world without them.  What I regard as new technology they accept as complete normality.

My father used to say that my grandmother on my mother’s side had lived through a period of time which brought in the modern age: she lived to see the development of the motorcar as a normal means of transport and the start of the space age.  She saw the introduction of television and its development into colour sets.  She lived through the revolution that came with the development of the transistor.  She saw flight as essential rather than exceptional.  And so on.  She lived from Victoria to Elizabeth II and her world changed radically.

But having been born in the middle of the twentieth century I think more of my world has changed than the equivalent in my grandmother’s time.

My father was much taken by a “sculpture” made by one of his colleagues which was a construction with a base of shattered glass valves set in plaster and painted black with a gleaming silvery transistor stretching upwards on spindly wire legs from the broken technology of the past.  How quaint that now seems in a world of microprocessors.

I am fond of saying (no doubt inaccurately, but who cares) that there is more storage on my mobile phone than there was in all the computers in the world when I was a small child.  And the kids never fail to smile with the superior condescending indulgence that they do so well, when I tell them – truthfully – that the memory of my first computer was 28K.  In fact this present from Clarrie which made me deliriously happy in spite of the fact that I could do virtually nothing with the machine had only 1kB of on board memory; I have just looked it up and seeing the machine again made my memory lurch!  It seems like an ancient artefact and indeed it is, as its name suggests from 1981 – over thirty years ago.

I am typing all this on a MacBook Air.  Thirty years seems like a very short time to go from the ZX 81 to what I am using at present – and how much of our lives have changed in the same way.  At least for those of us “lucky” enough to live in the so-called First World with ready access to the latest developments in society, technology and social networking.

All of the preceding is of course yet another example of displacement activity as I should be proving that I am a worthy recipient of all this technology by actually making an effort to get it all working and linking the IPod to the GPS in reality rather than speculating about the social trends in writing!

Well, that didn’t work.  I’m not sure why.  The music from the IPod plays through the car stereo system but the information about the tracks does not appear on the screen.  Probably you have to buy some highly expensive lead to get the final bit of the acoustic puzzle into place!  Which I am not going to do.

Lunch was from our usual place but the quality today was awful: the chicken dry; the chips far too greasy and hard; the salad unimpressive and the croquets tasting “funny” according to Toni.  The only satisfactory part of the meal was the aioli – even the wine tasted odd.  A meal best forgotten.

The entire population of Barcelona appears to be in our town at the moment and we are getting the first taste of the awful parking that we can expect for the rest of the season.  On the positive side (and believe you me you have to look carefully to find the positive in the summer months) I suppose that the new car is at its best in these stop/start situations.  At slow speeds the car works on the electric battery and when I stop, everything stops – except the radio which is being powered by the charged battery.  Quite economical and carbon dioxide lite!  Probably.

For the first time this year I have had a “proper” sunbathe lying out on the terrace on the Third Floor.  There is still a little wind, but the weather is glorious and the crowded beaches at the bottom of the road would indicate!

Tomorrow sees the start of, wait for it, an Examination Week.  Another Examination Week!  To go with all the other Examination Weeks that make up the normal day to day existence of the institution in which I teach!

The meeting on Saturday (!) and some of the discussion in it was aspiring to a form of education in the school which is impossible given the tyranny of the examination system that they willingly encourage.  But logical joined up thinking has never been the forte of the educational establishment anywhere, and certainly not here in Spain.

So the beginning of the week will be spent looking at past papers and wondering if you have completed all the work necessary for the kids to have a good stab at the mindless questions that they are going to be asked to complete.

We are working, or more accurately stumbling our way towards our long weekend which is at the end of next week and then another two weeks before we finally get to the Easter holiday.

This term has been truly interminable with no real lighter spots to leaven the blank depression of day succeeding day only interspersed with examination preparation, setting and marking.  That is, of course, a lie.  There have been lots of good moments since January – but remembering them now is contrary to the justifiable feelings of resentment that a long term engenders!

Still, in spite of everything, time is ticking onwards and each second brings release nearer.

I am already “planning” the summer and have decided to join the Olympic Canal club (as long as it is not too ruinously expensive) and do a little light rowing.  I rather enjoyed going down to Roath Park from time to time and messing about and I would like to do the same nearer home. 

I have other things in mind that I would to hand.  But I need the comfort of a holiday to work out the details.

It’s better than marking.

Day of Shame

I set the alarm for an hour later than usual and enjoyed my lie-in through, as it were, gritted teeth until I got up at 7.30 am to get ready for school.

I dressed in jeans, pseudo American college t-shirt and trainers.  After a cup of tea I rejected the trainers as not casual enough (and they were uncomfortable) and put on a pair of sandals after, of course, taking off my socks – I would not want to be taken for a German!

The net effect of my dressing in this way was to emphasise my feeling that a Saturday was no day for a meeting and therefore I was dressed as obviously casually as I could be as my mark of disgust.

The Powers That Be had visited a high class bakery for us when we arrived, but I cannot be bought by a cruddy croissant and I made myself a cup of Earl Grey tea in my individual filter machine and sat, or rather paced around muttering obscenities and general bewailing my state.  I was joined in this sullen activity by one of my colleagues who was, remarkably, even more pissed-off than I!  Who would have believed it possible?

I ostentatiously stomped off to the meeting room so that I was there for the scheduled start of the meeting which did not, of course, start at the scheduled time.

The meeting was like all meetings in this school, a form of ritualized torture.  The practical value of these meetings is practically nil – but that does not stop us from spending three hours of a Saturday morning wasting our time.

I had to say something as every teacher had to comment on their classes, and I was even thanked for my contribution by the directora afterwards!

My angry colleague was out of school as soon as the meeting ended and beat me to his car!

It was only The Great C Major blaring through the speakers that kept me on the straight and narrow driving home.  To insert a CD one presses a button and the whole of the GPS does a sort of glissade to reveal the disc slit: very ostentatious and yet elegant!

Lunch was in our favourite restaurant in Sitges and was the excellent (if unspectacular) value that it always is.  The wine tasted watered though and, as it came in an open bottle, one has one’s suspicions!

I had a siesta when we got back to Castelldefels and then decided to go to El Corte Ingles to buy a new pillow as I am missing by old (and I mean old) feather pillow which was finally put to sleep after my consecutive bouts of illness during the winter.  I was beginning to feel that the pillow was beginning to develop a life of its own which was rapidly becoming inimical to my own survival!  I therefore purchased some sort of artificial equivalent which was supposed to have all the characteristics of the real thing.  Not true.

I tried out a variety of pillows and eventually settled on the one that I thought was best.  I then made a big mistake.  I asked the price.

I returned to Castelldefels without the pillow which, to my absolute horror, turned out to be over €200!  Even I have my limits.  And I could, in no way, count a mere pillow as a gadget!

The evening has been taken up with updating my GPS and establishing a base for the information on the computer.  According to the instructions I can use this to control my IPod.  Something I can try out tomorrow.

When The Family are arriving too.  A day full of incident is promised.