Escape!

Pleading ill health I fled from the meeting yesterday when, after an hour and a half we had only completed discussion about two of the four classes that we were supposed to cover in the scheduled two hours of the full meeting. 

This morning I heard the grisly news that the meeting went on for another hour and a half and finally finished at 8.00 pm after three solid hours of pointlessly self-indulgent talk!

The only positive part of the entire meeting was my distribution of the remains of the Toblerone from the Media Studies lesson which ended just before the meeting started.  Two months ago there was the obscenity of holding a meeting on United Nations Day during which, by way of celebration and expiation I handed out mini boxes of Smarties.  That action was so unexpected and welcome that I had a round of applause.  This time the acceptance of large pieces of a 400g Toblerone bar was greeted with delight but no further demonstration of audial dexterity.  How quickly the unexpected becomes customary.

So, in the last two days some of my poor colleagues will have taught a full timetable (and believe me in my school that means exactly what it says) and have been to five hours of after school meetings!  The expression “lions led by donkeys” has never seemed so appropriate.  And we have three teachers absent today which produces its own specific form of chaos, as “supply” is a concept exotic and strange to this school.

I am hoping that my illness is coming to its mucus dripping climax and that from tomorrow I will on the upward slope to wellness.  I bloody better be!  I have no intention of adopting the usual cunning tactic of teachers and celebrating each holiday period by a parallel period of selfless illness. 

In the past (and only in Catalonia) the number of times that I have been actively ill on Christmas Day has been beyond a joke.  For the first few years I alternated illness with Toni’s sister and it was more than a few years before we were able to toast each other at the Christmas meal with a brimming, bubbling glass of Cava!

I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my latest camera.  It should have arrived yesterday from Amazon, but I always assumed that the three-day delivery time was a little optimistic.  Today however could be a very real possibility for delivery and I am looking forward to playing around with a camera with a satisfyingly large number of features which I will probably never use.  But that, as I always point out to those who question my gadget capabilities, is not the point.  The point is possession.

In the way of our school I have now gained a free period because the class I should be teaching is off on a trip and have immediately lost it by taking a class which a teacher on the trip should be taking himself.  Such is life in our establishment.  Win none and lose a lot.  I’m sure it’s character building.  Though I tend to think that my character is quite well enough developed as it is.

I have now (well, not at this moment with a class in front of me) tried on the new trousers for my costume for the end of the term.  I do not have wellies and while this is not an essential part of the costume (as we have what looks like a pair of black, fur topped plastic greaves to make ordinary shoes look more imposing) I feel that real boots add an essential touch of verisimilitude to the whole outfit.  I might even buy some and put the expense down to the school! 

There again I don’t want to press my luck too far; after all I have made the school buy 600g of chocolate for my Media Studies class!

I caught the weather forecast for today in the UK on the television last night and today in Catalonia is one of the most convincing reasons for my presence here: glorious sunlight and blue skies with fluffy white clouds.  It is cold (I do not expect miracles) but bright and that lifts the spirits!

Having the 3ESO as the last class of the day (again) at the end of a day which started at 8.15 am for the kids is not my idea of fun – but I am buoyed up by the overwhelming belief that my new camera will be waiting for me when I get home. 

The idea of not having a new camera waiting at home after a last lesson with 3ESO (teaching the passive) after a week with two meetings after school (and it’s only Wednesday) would be unbearable and intolerable. 

So, in spite of the fact that Toni has not sent me a message informing me of its arrival I will persist in my naïf faith and not make myself even more miserable than I need to be.

Take something else!

My present intake of dugs (which is keeping the pharmaceutical industry going) while certainly having an effect on the cough etcetera, did nothing to deaden the pain of a two hour meeting after school. 

I told anybody who would listen that I was there by a sheer effort of will and motivated solely by an overwhelming sense of bloody minded professionalism, and that I might well not last the full two hours of the meeting.

I did of course with virtually my sole contribution of the meeting being a few extravagant coughing outbursts.

When I arrived back at the house I found that Toni was just about to phone the police, as he had had no idea where I was.  This was in spite of the fact that I spent the whole of the weekend bemoaning the fact that I had two two-hour meetings on the first two days of the week.  Toni must have an incredibly effective filtering mechanism to neutralize my gripes about the educational institution I grace with my presence!

Today is the six period teaching stint, to be followed as a special treat by the next two-hour meeting.  When I think about how little chance the management in this place would have to inflict this absurd burden on staff were I in Britain – I could well weep! 

Here it is accepted as one of the jolly japes that Johnny Foreigner finds essential to him himself going!  In reality, it is, of course, unforgiveable and will rankle in my mind as yet another Crime Against Humanity that I have had to suffer in the cause of education.

Meanwhile I am having to put up with the morning Catalan Cackle which occurs when two or more ladies of that national persuasion get together.  I have been driven from staffrooms by the cutting quality of high pitched simultaneous chattering which is more effective at wiping intelligent thought from a British brain than a high power magnet on a hard drive!

Accompanying this baying was the most glorious sunrise visible at it rose over a distant hill.  It is such images of beauty which will keep me sane during the horror of the hours ahead.

I am also taking strength from the phone call from Dianne last night when she confirmed that she is going to apply for early retirement.  This means that she and Ceri will be able to come over to Barcelona out of season and hopefully at low cost.  If I don’t see them in the summer then I certainly look forward to seeing them in the autumn – and we can think again about the visit to the gastronomic restaurant perched like a spaceship atop the hotel is Hospitalet!

I will need any and all positive motivations to keep my mind away from the horrors or another meeting this evening.

The day has started well with my first class being delayed by their having a talk by students who are trying to encourage them to go on a school visit to America.  In fact I have just been told by the head of department not to expect “much of a lesson” as the talks have, as usual, extended themselves and will take up the greater part of the lesson.  One down five to go!

One of my lessons is going to involve chocolate.

As part of my Media Studies classes I touch on logos, advertising and packaging.

I am fascinated by packaging.  I think all people are.  How many times have kids been given presents and they are far more interested in the box in which the present came than the actual present itself!  For some of us that delight never leaves.  I think that my interested may have been boosted by a period in my mother’s life when she was ensnared by a local Avon Lady who came Calling and left the most delicious catalogues.

I was absolutely fascinated by the bottles that the nondescript smells and potions came in, especially as my father explained that he was convinced that the bottle cost more to produce than the contents!  This was a revelation to me and it directed my interest more keenly.

Todays shops are a packageaholic’s paradise.  Not only do you have the minimalist delight of Apple packaging but also you have the bubble plastic tomb extravagance of Japanese cartoon character toys packaging as well.

How many adults have been left with shredded and bleeding fingers as they try and release toys from their razor sharp plastic covering only to have the wounds augmented by the dagger like metal twists that hold toys in place on their backing cards!

But my real pleasure is in the clever deceptive packaging where hapless consumers are encouraged to pay much, much more for less and less.

My current favourites in this field are Nespresso and Dettol (to be taken separately).  Coffee I can treat with detachment but Dettol is part of the Circle of Trust that is made up of products given the maternal mark of distinction and turned into icons by my mother. 

This circle is made up of Domestos, Dettol, TCP, Savlon and Vic.  In my mother’s view any child brought up in a household in which any one of those products was lacking had a right and duty to phone Childline and ask to be taken into care!

Nespresso has made a religion out of coffee purchase and their packaging of minute amounts of coffee into elegant capsules has made the coffee grains weight-for-weight on a par with gold dust!

Dettol is slightly different.  They have developed a hand soap dispenser that is electronic and deposits the soap on the hand without the user having to touch any part of the machine. 

The brand-specific soap refills are smaller than the cheap alternatives that you can buy anywhere for a single euro or less and are, of course, substantially more expensive. 

I have used up one refill and have discovered that the opening in the bottle is a cleverly designed valve which precludes the use of cheaper soap being forced through – though, it occurs to me that there must be something on YouTube that will show me how to thwart the system!

What I have chosen as an illustration my lesson this afternoon is Toblerone. 

I have bought a packet of individually lavishly wrapped triangles of Toblerone chocolate and a solid bar of the stuff – both cost the same but the difference in weight for money is astonishing.  And the packaging makes such a difference in the presentation.  The kids will be amazed and involved because at least we get to eat the things!  At least that is my plan.

The way that Media Studies is organized means that I have two periods with the equivalent of Year 9 taking up the entire afternoon from 3.00 pm to 4.45 pm – the graveyard shift for hormonal adolescents!  This is done in a room in which my personal storage space is in the remaining space of the moveable television cabinet, where, not surprisingly the television and video/CD player take up most of the available space.

I have tried to make the second part of the double lesson practical, but any practical component is a constant battle to find and distribute stuff which always has to be found and brought in just before the lesson itself.  I (like the idiot I am) have bought a class set of scissors – yet again ignoring my oft-repeated advice to members of my own department “not to buy things for school”.  When it makes your own life so much easier and it comes courtesy of Lidl’s at relatively little expense I think that it is worth it!

Then there is the meeting or The Meeting as it has become in my mind.  Talking with the head of department she seems not averse to my sloping off after the 3ESO has been done which should be at least an hour away from the gory end of the horrible experience for everyone else.

And at the termination of this school day I will have chalked up: eleven teaching lessons; four hours of mind-numbing meetings; a tedious lunchtime duty and much spectacular coughing and snuffling, we won’t even be halfway through the week! 

Which is not a good way of thinking about the time that I have already done.  Or indeed the time left to the weekend!

I shall console myself with the fact that this is the last full week before the Christmas holidays.  We finish on the 22^nd of December and we do not return until the 9^th of January next year.  It always sounds more comforting when you say that.  “Next year” always sounds more distant in time, even when you are talking about it on the 31^st of December!

Roll on oblivion!

Life is NOT football!

With a dedication to teaching which leaves me breathless (or is that just one of the symptoms of the cold that I am nursing) I staggered through my ablutions this morning and, with resentment leaking through every pore in my body, I joined the (reduced) number of hapless slaves making their way to work.

In school my coughing soon attracted attention and I made absolutely sure that everything within hearing distance knew that I “had made an effort” to get in.

The reason that I made it in was to fill in the gaps in the computer program which is the essential part of the assessment system which governs our every thought in this place.

My coughing was so convincing (because it was genuine) that my colleagues decided to split the first class between them and let me get on with putting my results in.

An astonishing number of kids have made the effort to come in today in spite of it being a Friday and despite their being on holiday on Thursday.  And Monday and Tuesday of this week as well.  I think that I was a fairly tractable student and obeyed most of the rules and was hardly ever absent – but I think that even I would have thought more than twice about coming in for two odd days in an obviously fractured week.  Especially when I was of an age to stay at home alone!  Ah well, perhaps they are merely coming in to make our teachers’ lives more miserable.  Now that is something I can understand!

The concept of a bed waiting for me in Castelldefels is, to put it mildly, alluring.  But, until I can made an indecent escape from this place, I am relying on the natural resilience of a teacher about to embark on the weekend to keep me going.

SATURDAY 10^th DECEMBER 2011

Home and bed, in short order.  That was the story of Friday evening.  And a restless night to round off a couple of delightful days.

During the weekend I can ponder on the coming week.  On Monday and Tuesday (two days, count ‘em) we have meetings at the end of school which are scheduled to last two hours each.  My Tuesday, therefore, will start with my getting up at 6.30 am; I will teach six periods and then, after a 15 minute gap I will go straight into a two hour meeting which will probably overrun and I might get home some thirteen hours after getting up!  What a delight!  And our local government is talking about reducing our wages.  Again.

Listening to the Spanish and the British news one gets a confused picture of what is actually going on in the financial and political world.  While “confusion” is probably the operative word and gives a fairly accurate description of the present situation, it does give me pause for thought about the future.

All my financial plans laid down more than five years ago now seem to have been made in a different sort of world – or at least in the sort of world that kept such inconvenient phrases like “sub-prime” to itself and no one really knew what was going on.  Now that far too much is out in the open it is obvious that what bankers have been engaging in is obviously no more real economics than Animal Farm is a guide to Horse Hoeing Husbandry.  We have to deal with the fact that no one appears to know what is going on and even fewer people seem to know what to do.

The effective isolation of Britain is surely the culmination of the whole French inspired plan for the European Community – or am I being paranoid!  The EU after all is all about giving votes on fishing rights to those countries which do not have a coastline; on giving countries financial jurisdiction over areas of financial services which in their cases they do not have; on isolating Britain because the noxious little French dwarf and the ungainly hausfrau are too frightened to take real financial decisions which could stabilize the present chaotic situation.

I am not anti-Europe, and voted in favour of our entry, but I do not think that the Union has developed quite in the way that I envisaged all those years ago.  There again, I was also in favour of Britain joining the Eurozone so that show just how profound my economic analysis is!

Each day I go to school I am greeted by the Business Studies teacher and, after a few sentences about what we have heard on the news, we are plunged into dark despair and shake our heads sorrowfully at the sad state of the world that we inhabit.

In spite of feeling like shit after an uneasy night and coughing my way through the morning I was determined to go out to lunch as we always do on a Saturday.

El Restaurante de los Jubilados (as I call it) was strangely empty but we sat down anyway and I had a completely self indulgent meal of spaghetti with a cream sauce topped by Toni’s fried egg which he didn’t want from his arroz cubana.  My second course was eggs and ham and it was topped off by a homemade tiramisu all washed down by vino tinto and Casera.  Very comforting for a sick man!

On our way home we called into the cheapo branch of El Corte Ingles which has recently opened in Castelldefels and I bought a blanket (for warming purposes) and a first aid kit for the car (or home) as my present kit dates back to the last millennium!  And well into the last millennium at that.  Having checked out the kit (9€ reduced from 36€) I will probably get another one for the house (or the car) one should not reject such good value when one finds it!

The rest of the day is now going to be taken up with television programme after television programme about El Classico (the Madrid v Barça game) which is over five long hours away!  At times like this one thanks whatever gods there may be for access to the back catalogue of the BBC and a merciful escape from the hysteria which always surrounds these matches.

Sports commentators are congenitally unable to “discuss” any aspect of the game.  They all talk at once and then talk louder if their point of view is swamped by all the other voices.  It is, in every sense of the word, unbearable.  And I will soon be taking refuge in my earphones as the only escape from the torture which is the Spanish approach to the game that we invented!

Even with the isolating security of earphone I do not think that I can stand five more hours of mindless coverage of a future game so I am going to throw things away.  This is going to be a cathartic experience.  Or not.  I have often voiced the sentiment of “clearing” but the reality lags somewhat behind.

I shall now settle down and wait to hear the explosions that greet a Barça goal.

Please god let them win.  My life is so much simpler when they do!

Struck again!

What was a niggling, tickle at the back of the throat yesterday, developed during the night into a full-blown cough and cold.  Most of the day was spent in bed.  What a waste of a “holiday” just before the weekend!  I suspect that most of the weekend will be spent trying to get rid of the illness – and I will have to go in to school tomorrow whatever I feel like as it is an essential day in our assessment procedure in which “things” have to be entered into the computer.

Another one of our self-imposed totally artificial deadlines that create chaos for no particular reason.  However that may just be Mr Cough and Grump speaking.

There is only one thing that I know which brings me out of a winter malady induced lack of oomph and that is, of course, buying a camera.

Now my camera buying frenzy has included all the modern developments in camera technology and so I now have to go for gimmicks which I repackage in my mind as essential features without which I cannot exist.

I tempered my purchases at Amazon with David Crystal’s latest book on 100 words in English – which sort of justifies the other purchase.

Doesn’t it?

Too early!

First teaching day in Stupid Week and almost the first thing that happens is that I am caught to do a substitution.  I was so flabbergasted at the audacity of anyone daring to be away during a two-day week that I accepted my less than satisfactory fate with surly submission.  In a very real sense I fail to see how this is fair, especially when I hear of two other members of the English department caught by the powers that be to make this odd day work.

That fact that it was also my duty day did not add appreciably to my attitude in which the level of sanguinity was noticeable by its absence.  The sun has, however, shone!

The supine kids that we teach have turned up on this most inconvenient and idiotic of days in numbers which do no credit to the sort of natural schoolphobia which every child (pretend he ne’er so swottish) should have in oodlesworths.  There they are, in front of us, expectant waiting to be taught.  Shameful!  I bet they will be there, with just the same expressions on their bovine faces on Friday after the third day of holiday on Thursday!  One truly feels like weeping!

Meanwhile I am beginning to dread going home because of the certainty of catching the tail end of some house improvement programme! 

Let there be television!

Hallelujah!  We have British television at last.

The man arrived only twenty minutes late and installed the dish and an hour or so later pictures of some dreadful daytime television programme from years ago was being flashed across the screen.

Toni has become almost delirious with joy as he revisits re-runs of “Location! Location! Location!” and “Place in the sun” giving rise to some wry chuckles as the prices of more than nine years ago give a sense of the unreal to the debate that potential buyers have about whether to buy a five bedroom house for one hundred and eighty thousand pounds!

We have at last escaped from the worthless tyranny of the advert filled rubbish which is broadcast as Spanish television.  And it might give you some pause for thought about the general standard of what we have been offered by the channels here that we look at the UK version as so amazingly superior!

We went out to lunch in our local sea side restaurant and I had a delicious meal of Poussin which was more than enough without the plate full of chips that came with it.  I was also somewhat filled by the hearty starter that I had which was a broth of beans and cockles.  The whisky tart at the end was a fine complement to an excellent meal – even if the restaurant upped their prices because of it being a bank holiday.

We finished our meal a little resentfully as we were not offered the customary bottle of Cava that had become something of a tradition when we eat there.  We were discussing this oversight sotto voce in English when we heard the non-English speaking manager indicate that we should be given our bottle as he walked past our table in what seemed like a co-ordinated piece of irony.  But the Cava was eminently drinkable!

In spite of the quantity of red wine and Cava consumed during lunchtime I still managed to find sufficient energy to drag the Christmas tree from its hiding place and place the new decorations on it.  I discovered that I had managed to buy some half-price decorations from Matalan in last year’s January sale to put on the tree.  I had (not unreasonably) totally forgotten about them, so now there are chunky filigree glittery Christmas trees and the word “JINGLE” in golden letters with small bells handing from them as part of the decorations on the tree which in spite of the their vulgarity leave the tree looking suspiciously tasteful.  No doubt during the run up to the festive day I will endeavour to make it a little more startling!

Meanwhile I have to get myself together and realise that tomorrow is Wednesday and not Monday as we will all be thinking as we stumble in hardly believing that we are actually there.

I will have to keep telling myself that it is only a two-day week.  With both of the days yet to come.  But then it’s the weekend.  And the Christmas holidays are not too distant a prospect.  Possibly.