Self-indulgence!

Today I made a conscious decision to stay in bed for fifteen extra minutes.  The amount of sheet guilty pleasure that one gets from staying in bed when one should have got up is out of all proportion to the relatively short period of time spent lazing.

It may just be self-delusion but I think that the mornings are getting lighter.  Giving that it is still January, I think that I probably am deluding myself, but it makes getting up in the almost totally dark better than getting up in the absolutely totally dark!

More examination papers arrived magically this morning and had to be marked and the results entered.  At present all the rest of my colleagues now have their share of the marking and are busily scribbling away draining their pens.  I try and look concerned and as if I too have a heavy load to complete – just in case I am roped in to help!

I have done some work for the “anti-hero” project that we are supposed to be devising for the kids to complete later this year.  I must admit that I got the greater pleasure in designing the front cover for the work than for the run-of-the-mill tasks inside.  That is somewhat unfair as the basic task (decided after a ten minute meeting) is interesting.

Well, the draft of the work is done and is available for discussion and alteration.  The important thing is that we do actually have something to discuss – it really makes all the difference in a meeting called specifically for that reason!

 

Frustratingly I have been unable to find any teaching materials on a Will Smith film (“Hancock” 2008) as this apparently fits in with our theme.  I have seen the trailer and have been unable to watch the suspiciously home-made copy of the film which I have been given.  In some ways I am quite pleased at that as I shy away from anything other than kosher copies of films.  But it does mean that I am attempting to write a teaching and learning guide to a film that I haven’t actually seen!

As I type Real Madrid are starting the second half of the Copa del Rey match against Barça one goal up.  Toni is wearing his Barça shirt and listlessly fingering his Barça scarf and muttering imprecations against the Referee.  He is watching the match on a computer generated stream which is constantly stopping and, even when it is going well produces a rather more impressionistic view of the field than most football fans like to see.

The frustration that Toni must be feeling is extreme as Barça were taking a corner and the whole screen froze and the next time we saw a moving picture it was of a Barça celebration from a Puyol headed goal.  So we are now 1-1 with Barça having got an away goal of course, which could be significant in the second game when Barça will be at home.

And I can’t believe that I am actually taking an active interest in the outcome of football game!

On a more cultural level, my next Opera is at the end of the month and I am feeling guilty that I have done nothing to learn more about the work though there doesn’t seem to be a recording of it, apart from a vastly expensive film version of Blu-ray DVD which I am not inclined to buy.  So I am likely go to the performance of Il burbero di buon core (The Good-hearted Curmudgeon) by Vincent Martín i Soler unprepared and untutored having heard not a single note of the piece.  Apparently there is some evidence that the composer challenged Mozart for popularity and Mozart himself wrote an aria which is included in performances of the opera.  At least there should be some tunes in it given the period in which it was written!

One disturbing point is that this will a first performance of Il burbero di buon core by the Liceu.  So either this is an unjustly neglected masterpiece that has been ignored since the eighteenth century or the Liceu has dug around in the dusty basket of obscurity in the vague hope that people will think the expense of a full opera production has not been wasted.  I retain an open mind.  And eager expectation.

On a rather lower level of cultural activity I have been given “Red Storm Rising” by Tom Clancy through the generosity of a very sharp lad in my 2ESO.  He is reading books which should be beyond his level of English but he seems to enjoy them and this is the second book which he has wanted me to read.  I have to admit that an 800 page novel is not something which I need deflecting me from the work I should be doing – but I was unable to resist and it is lurking on the table in front of me, a red temptation.

And now Barça have won 1-2 away and so are well placed for the second game next week.

And now an early night because staying in bed tomorrow is not an option as I have an early start.

Only Tuesday!

After two days of rain (almost) the sun has reasserted its primacy and come back to the benighted lands of Catalonia and restored my faith in my present location.

These moments to finger my keyboard have been snatched at the fag end of the lunch hour before my double class with the equivalent of Year 9 for Media Studies.

The only way in which this unreasonable amount of continuous time at the end of the day can be justified is by my splitting the class into two with the second part held in the computer room where the hapless pupils can do some research.

Today I launch into Maslow’s Needs which will be illustrated by the kids using the Internet to find an advert example to fit each.  I imagine that I am going to be running around like a thing possessed attending to the linguistic needs of my pupils as they attempt to match words and illustration!

Which is what happened – but it’s better than teaching in a classroom for two solid periods in the afternoon!

Calling in to a supermarket on the way home I signally failed to find a small carafe but I have bought a rather tasteful small, glass jug which will serve the same purpose.  I hope.

Today has been tiring and unsettling as the bloody alarm did not go off and I stole an extra fifteen minutes in bed – for which I paid by cutting my chin while shaving in a hasty way trying to make up lost time.

So today bed betimes in the hope that tomorrow will not be so exhausting.

A weak week!

Yet again, as is so often the case in this place, I am stuck in front of a class watching the little heads of the pupils bent over yet another examination paper.  The only good thing about this is that I have completed my marking so I will have to keep out of the way of my colleagues who, from today are going to be involved in all the other papers.  I only hope that they do not expect any disinterested help from me because I will give them exactly the same amount of aid that I have been given on my lonely vigil ploughing through hundreds of scripts – none!

Admittedly my marking has not been much of an intellectual endeavour as I have been checking optical mark sheets so small pencil filled brackets are swimming cross my line of sight and I am sure that they will haunt nightmares for some time.  But my work is done.

Well, not quite.  I have all the results and they now have to be entered on mark sheets so that the overall mark for the mock examinations can be calculated.  That, in itself is not difficult, what is more taxing is trying to fill in the last few marks for which the examination papers will, inexplicably have gone missing.  Or it might be that some of the pupils had the poor form to be absent on the day the examination was set.  This means that over the next week or so I will be suddenly given odd examination papers for which I will have to find the mark scheme.

But I am too old a hand at this to let such concerns phase me.  Safe inside a specific folder are all three of the marking stencils (of my own design) which will ensure that any extraneous papers can be dealt with in a swift and satisfactory manner.

I am desperately trying to get everything tidied up and done before the original folders of my marked work are swamped in a deluge of folders for the other papers.  Getting the entire school through a mock examination at three different levels is a logistical exercise of frightening proportions and there will be administrative and examinational mishaps that will induce the fearful anarchy that sometimes seems to power this place!

My normal class marking can now be dealt with and I should be able to gasp a partial sigh of relief before the next internal examinations start – next week!  You couldn’t make it up!

At least we are over half way through the month and getting nearer to the “Trip Week” in early February.  I do not “do” trips so I will remaining firmly in Catalonia while my colleagues roam far and wide visiting places as far apart as The Isle of Wight and Cantabria.  Good luck to them.  At least in our school teachers who accompany trips are paid extra.  Not enough, but extra.

There are teachers other than myself who are left in school and we will be expected to come to school and do “work”.  As far as I can remember we are allowed to leave at lunchtime and we can all look forward to a “puente” as we have the Friday of that week as an Occasional Day so have a three-day weekend.  Thank god for small mercies!

After this small break, with only one day as a real holiday, we only have one other day off until the Easter holidays.  That is going to be a hard slog.

Day by day.

What weekend?

Another lie-in!  Such criminal indulgence.  But not for long.

Up and doing gave me time to read “The Week.” 

Usually this inestimable publication arrives well after the week that it is supposed to be about, this in spite of the “Time Sensitive” inscription emblazoned on the front of the postal package.

Today, however, I read it on my iPad and so was able to enjoy something electronically that was more closely related to the actual date.  I think it makes sense to continue my subscription to the electronic version rather than the wayward print version.

It is a sign of age or something that, for the last week I have been wearing a jumper.  A jumper!  A man renowned for wearing shorts through the hardest winters in Catalonia, reduced to espousing the apparel of the elderly!  I now wear a scarf.  I put my coat on when I move from building to building.  It is a sad development in the story of my erstwhile hardiness that I have descended to such namby-pamby coverings in my day-to-day existence!

At long last Sales have hit Catalonia and the shops in our local centre were packed with spenders (apparently untouched by any concept of Crisis) and so I was able to boost my collection of jumpers at purchases at half price.

I would imagine that, having bought (pure wool) jumpers there will now be a heat wave in Spain.  I look forward to it.

In the way that one does, I have done nothing in the way of school work that I should have done, and there is no health in me (as the Prayer Book has it) and I am sure that I will regret my indolence during the rest of the week, but there again, who cares.  Next week is going to be a continuing horror of marking so I may as well throw in the stuff that I haven’t done with the rest of it so that I “get in the groove” and won’t really notice at all.  That sort of logic has made my life difficulty in so many ways in the past!

I have had various conflicting dates from Amazon about when my various purchases should arrive, but the consensus that I have gleaned from the series of emails that I have received is that next Thursday will see everything that I have ordered arrive in god knows how many parcels.

In the way that these things happen, the dogs next door have been suspiciously muted in their barking almost as if they know that their electronic nemesis is about to arrive and make their miserable lives just that little bit more eventful.

I must admit that my faith in the efficacy of the dog repellent/bark stopper machine that I have purchased is limited but, in the immortal words of that centre of philosophical enlightenment, Tesco would have it, “Every little helps”.  As long as the ultrasonic whine is enough to unsettle the dogs as they bark in their untrammelled way and give them at least some sort of pause for thought then I will be satisfied.

At the moment when the noise of their moronically insistent barking finally frays my nerves past breaking point I open a window and hiss a sharp “shush!” by emphasising the “sh” part in the same way that I have heard Catalan teachers quieten pupils.  Though I have to admit that as the teachers who do this are almost inevitably women, the “sh!” tends to be a more sibilant “sssss!” so that it sounds like the kids are being threatened by a rather insistent snake.  My sound to subdue the dogs is a quite subtle combination of the two sounds.

When I have the machine I will open the window, hiss my hatred at the malevolent beasts and then follow it up with a blast from the machine.  Eventually, I hope that the mere act of opening the window will cause the curs to slink away into obscurity and terrified silence.  Time and good batteries will tell!

But enough, I am determined to do at least one thing for my “book” before the end of the weekend.  Then at least I can go to bed with what I am pleased to call my conscience placated!

Sweet dreams!

A guilty day

A disgracefully long lie-in this morning (just morning, but only just) started the day and then I had to balance my fear that I had wasted precious free time with my conviction that after a first week back at school such indulgence was more than justified.

After a cup of tea I leapt back into my weighty tomes of art history and soon lost myself in a thoroughly delightful meander through those areas that I am supposed to be studying and also other areas that just appeal.  For me a well illustrated book on art has the same disruptive effect on as the Guinness Book of Records – how can a normal person be methodical when confronted by a book which is packed full of equally tempting distractions.

I am determined to do “something” for my “book” this weekend (mainly because I have marking to do which I probably will not do because it is boring) and writing something is good and productive displacement activity!

Tempted away from my books by the concept of lunch we decided to go to somewhere where we had excellent value a couple of months ago but today, a Saturday the prices of the menu del dia were about 50% more than for a weekday!  We left in disgust.

We ended up in a restaurant near the Castelldefels railway station on the beach.  This is at the other end of the town from where we live and the restaurant we went into was allegedly Galician but the waiters appeared to be of Indian extraction, though the food turned out to be impeccably Spanish.  The price was good at €11-50 and I was able, after my extended period of nursing and upset tummy, to enjoy, at long last arroz al la cubana!  In something of a rice fest I also had paella and rounded things off with tarta Santiago.  Excellent value and a place to go back to.

One idea that I will take on board is the way in which they served the wine.  I was given a petite carafe of wine which was 25 cl.  Given that a bottle of wine contains six glasses (albeit mean glasses) then such a carafe should contain two glasses – which was just the right amount for a lunch. 

I do not want to give the impression that my incipient alcoholism has to be kept in check, merely that the 25 cl was an appropriate amount, the carafe looked cute and, if you think about it, it means a bottle of red will last for three meals at that rate!

This evening (at last) the Christmas tree was packed away for another year.  God knows what sort of bad luck comes with taking decorations down well after Twelfth Night, but I am prepared to take my chances!

Tomorrow I might consider packing up the Nativity Scene which is at present gracing the shelf along the side of the stairs.

Tomorrow.

Marooned!

Today has been a day of continuous horror.

Deprivation, sudden, total deprivation is something which shakes even the stoutest heart.  When your fix is taken away what can be the response but anxiety and complete disorientation.

I left my computer at home.

It was with sick recognition that I opened my briefcase and the more I looked for the computer the more it wasn’t there.  I felt bereft.  I am used to typing a few paragraphs before I start teaching and not being able to do so was, ah, unsettling.

On the other hand it did force me to get on with the mountain of marking which has now piled up.  Today two other years sat their mock examinations today, adding to the already daunting pile which is waiting for me.

In spite of my teaching load today, my lack of computer and pure dedication added together encouraged me to get on with the completely unpalatable task and I managed to get two folders of marking completed.  Admittedly they were very small folders of work, but the files that they were placed in were substantial and so it looked as though I had made a real effort and achieved something very significant!

I am now left, I think, with six sets of papers to correct and then the task of matching marks to names on class sheets and then I am done.  Until the week after next when the next round of examinations start!  Insane!

What isn’t mad is the fact that this is being typed on a Friday evening at the start of a glorious weekend.  An easy adjective to apply when referring to time spent outside school!

I am gradually getting together the books that I will need to write my little reference book about “Making Sense of Modern Art From Fauvism to Pop Art” which is clearly going to be a vanity publishing scam as far as I am concerned – as long as the school pays for it all!  It is the only thing about the rest of this school year which really gives me any enthusiasm – it’s a pity that mere teaching of actual children so often gets in the way of lofty cultural aspirations.

I have looked around at the “books” that some of my colleagues have produced for their courses and I think that I can aim to write something reasonably substantial.  And of course what worth has an art book without full colour illustrations! 

Choosing pictures (and presumably breaking copyright right, left and centre) is going to be fun.  How far is a teacher allowed to reproduce something like a painting if it is solely for teaching purposes within an academic institution?  I think that I will allow that to remain a purely academic question and not seek too closely to find what will probably turn out to be a thoroughly unacceptable and restricting answer.

I’d love to produce something full of clever graphic solutions but I should stay this side of possibility and aim for something which is achievable within the restraints of how our school operates and within the limited expectations of the school – but I have nothing to lose by pushing those limits a little.

I am eating almost normally and look forward to a weekend when I can partake of our traditional Menu del dia without worrying about the gastric consequences.  It is a very sad thing to report that a week in school has been more efficient at restoring a satisfactory state of health that weeks under the ministrations of various doctors!

Suzanne is trying to get me to go to her pet herbalist and have a whole assessment so that I can start taking natural remedies and cut down on the nasty medically approved drugs that I take.  I am, understandably I think, rather reserved in my enthusiasm for this project as one always suspects quackery.  I have to say though that my experiences over the last few months or so have not increased my respect for conventional medicine much – perhaps it’s time to be tempted by wandering a little closer to the Dark Side of alternative health approaches.  Or not.  I am ambivalent.  And likely to remain so as I continue to take my prescribed medication.

As next week is likely to be dominated by fevered marking and equally febrile preparations for the next sets of examinations, I shall begin roughing out the form and possible style for my art book and begin collating ideas for inclusion.  What all this is, is a perfect excuse to luxuriate in sensual page turning, treating my art books as if they were sumptuous catalogues from which I can make my selection of desirable art works, pretending that I am ordering them for inclusion in my own personal imaginary gallery.

I am aiming to get a rough version of the book ready for the end of this term and have it printed by the end of the academic year.  We shall see.

I also have to get going on the production of work on the anti-hero.  My happy wandering in the ways of the Internet a few days ago was not terribly productive and, at the same time as the next round of examinations, we have another meeting to “finalize” the ideas which, as far as I can see so far, we have signally failed to come up with yet!

Something else to think about.  As indeed in the next opera in my season which is an obscure Catalan thing for which I have done no “homework” whatsoever.  Perhaps it will astonish with its sheer musicality and originality.  No not.

Early night tonight and lie in tomorrow.

Bliss!

Culture Cures!

There is nothing worse than finding out, via late planning, that there is not enough time to do something.

I vividly remember devising my “revision” timetable for my final examinations in college and discovering that I had to “do” Jane Austen in the morning of one day and Charlotte Bronte in the afternoon of the same day if everything was to be covered!  It made for some fairly hairy, adrenalin boosted learning – and to this day Austen’s novels tend to merge into one great, exquisitely written marriage fest.

The latest late planning revelation is that the presentations of my Making Sense of Modern Art have to be telescoped into a fairly short period of time.  A very short period of time.

Let me explain.

A normal school timetable is usually built around the concept of three terms.  Given the idiotic way that we have of finding the date of Easter, these three terms are not of equal length but, for general purposes, the year is divided into three.

I teach a course which is taught three times during the year and I therefore assumed (fatal!) that I would be teaching each of the three groups for a term.

Wrong.

For example: the present term ends with the start of the Easter holidays on the 2^nd of April, but my second term course actually end on the 13^th of February.  That is officially, because there is a week of trips before then starting on the 5^th of February (which is a Sunday) so the period of teaching actually ends on Friday the 4^th of February, or in my case on the 3^rd of February because I do not have a lesson on Friday.  So, from a comfortable view taking in April to illustrate all the finer details of the course I now find myself trying to cram everything in before the start of February!

This is my own fault of course because there was a single line on one of the many documents I have which told me the essential information about the length of the second term as far as taught groups was concerned, but I relied instead on a vague idea of it being some time in early March to keep me going.

I should follow the lead of Suzanne and make sure that I have all my lessons dated and planned from the start of the year!  Shame on me!

Next term (oh, how often have I heard all this before) will be different and I will fill in one of the many forms that Suzanne has given me so that I will know exactly where I am going in terms of the term time!

Meanwhile (and this is to be kept as a close secret) I have completed the two years Mock Examinations papers that I am supposed to mark and I am merely waiting for the class lists so that I can enter the marks on the sheets.

Very dangerously I find that all of my papers will have been sat before the end of this week and, if I keep up my furious (in all senses of the word) marking rate I should be finished before the rest of the Department start on their appointed tasks – thereby making me available to “assist” my colleagues in getting the mountain of marking done.  This, with all due respect to outmoded concepts of Christian Charity, is a bad thing.  I am going to keep most mousy quiet about it all and find other places in school to lurk so that my efficiency (in this single regard) does not become generally known!

After school to Montjuic and the Fundació Joan Miró for a visit to the exhibition which I declined to pay vast sums of money to go and see when I was in London last.  This was a good decision as my teacher’s identification card meant that I got in free in Barcelona!

The exhibition of an artist who is far from being one my favourites, even in terms of Catalan art, was actually quite stimulating.  This was not only because they had a reasonable selection from Miró’s early paintings, but also because there were some startlingly large and effective canvases from his late work too.

Although Miró is best known for his Surrealist paintings and the later Abstract Expressionist productions I was most impressed by the series of paintings centred around his parents’ home in Mont-roig.  These are highly detailed and colourful canvasses which are representational while the components of the landscapes are simplified into a series of stylized decorative elements which make the finished work more closely related to an exercise in graphic design than a startlingly modern exercise in contemporary art.

It is a tribute to this exhibition that it becomes startlingly clear that although the canvasses became larger and the painted symbols became more abstract and rough that Miró never lost sight of his fascination with the small details which make his paintings almost lapidary in their effect.

Perhaps this attention to detail can be seen best in the three very large paintings (267cm x 350cm) called “Painting on White Background for the Cell of a Recluse I, II, III.”  The white painted surface on each painting is only disturbed by a thin, black meandering line.  On two of the paintings the lines roughly descends from right to left while on the “central” panel the line descends in a just-off vertical way to a vague hook like curve at the end.  To sit on a bench and look at these three walls is a remarkable experience almost equivalent in power to the Rothko room in the Tate.

Well worth visiting and a considerable achievement on Suzanne and my part considering this is a Thursday of a week which seems to have been ploughing its painfully slow way along for at least the last twenty or so days.  And we have to go in to school tomorrow for an early start.  What dedication to culture we both show.

Tomorrow will see the rest of the classes take the papers that I will have to mark, but I will have no time during the day to get them started so they are going to hang over me during the weekend – because I have no intention whatsoever of bringing the papers home to do.

On another point I have been informed by Suzanne that the new date for the end of my second term class on Modern Art is wrong and that I was right in the first place about when the bloody thing is supposed to come to a conclusion.  Back to the drawing board and see what can be salvaged from my re-jigged plans.  Can plans be re-re-jigged?  And can I pretend that all this chaos is exactly what I had planned in the first place?

One can but try.