How bad can it get?

In spite of my best and most professional intentions to remain stony faced when I entered the school this morning, so as to express best my feelings of desolation about the forthcoming meeting this evening, I was tricked into a positively friendly reply to a more than cheery “Good morning!” uttered by one of the office staff – and she had her tiny child with her as well.  Who am I to preserve a harsh demeanour when she is able to sound happy encumbered with a small person as she was!

I think that I was lulled into a false state of complacency with the world by the fact that one of the cars on the manically car filled motorway which I have to join, deliberately moved over to let me onto the carriageway from my lowly side road point of entry!  Such things unsettle you for the whole day.  Especially in Spain!

I have only lost my temper once over the proposed meeting so far today and am trying to limit my ire so that I have some energy left to look suitably morose by the time of the meeting itself!

I have discovered that there are going to be attempts to get the “work” (pause for hollow laughter) for tomorrow’s meeting done tonight, so that there will be one less day of unutterable misery.  The day can hardly be considered good as I will be teaching six periods tomorrow as it is, so a two and a half hour meeting can only make the day unbearable.  Though of course we do bear such things and even seem to thrive upon them; which is our weakness – and our strength.

In order to get me through the day (and especially the evening) Toni has promised to make a chicken dish of his own devising so that I can concentrate my mind on that rather than the meaningless chatter with which I shall be surrounded.

I might also re-start my daily swimming, admittedly late in the evening, as a way of metaphorically and literally washing the school off me.

I have just discovered that the delivery that I was expecting from Amazon has not arrived – which is par for the course for the non-delivering delivers who do not service my area.  It is back to their office armed with a magic reference number for the umpteenth time to get myself what they should have brought to me.

Just to add that soupçon of icy anger to an already hotly furious attitude I have just found out that sending a description of my group by internal electronic email has not actually worked and teachers have been asking where my venomously honeyed words have gone.  I have had to find the file on my portable computer, transfer it via my pen drive to a school machine (don’t ask) and then have it print out two copies for my colleagues.  Neither of who speaks presentable English. (If that last non sentence is actually presentable English!) And of course my little piece makes few concessions to a less than fluent grasp of our slippery language.  I pride myself upon getting the words “Svengali-like” into one description.  And that was one of the easier ones.  What fun they will have!  Linguistic revenge is sweet!

My final lesson of the day is about to start and the end of that usually brings to an end an exhausting day.  Not today.  But I am not talking about that.  I cannot trust myself to do that.

I am now sitting in the room waiting for the horror to start and start it does only five minutes late which is astonishingly early for us!

I am sure it is a false start.

Things and cakes

I think that it is generally accepted that if someone incorporates an image of a collapsible colander into the everyday surrealism of waking dreams then there is possibly a certain something lacking in their lives.  Or it may be that (and this is the version that I prefer) that your general level of appreciation of the odder things in life is more highly attuned than other ordinary folk.

Castelldefels has a shop which is a combination of Habitat and Pound Stretcher: a poor man’s version of a version of elegant living.  Things are priced at a reasonable level and the general layout is not as crowded as the Chinese emporia which clog up the shopping streets of the town.  Don’t get me wrong; Chinese shops are exactly the places you need to go when you need something like a washer or an artificial flower. 

From cheap and potentially lethal children’s toys to dubious concoctions supposed able to clean a bathroom the settlement of most human shopping needs is there.  They are like the old-fashioned hardware stores which, in their crowded aisles and towering shelves stuffed with little cardboard boxes and items whose use could only be guessed at, were the treasure troves of my youthful imagination.

The plasticized rubber (or possibly the rubberized plastic) construction of the (in this case blue) colander means that its bulbous semi-circular shape can be pushed in so that it can be stored flat.  It can be restored to its proper shape by being pushed out again.  I did try and effect this change by a flick of the wrist but, alas, even after many years of playing squash the necessary force was not there and it remained resolutely flat and it needed the four finger push to get it ready for work.

But I just love the idea.  It fits in so well with the Tefal saucepans and frying pans which are stored one inside the other, needing only the snap-on removable handles to make them fully functional.

We have limited storage space and Toni is well embarked on a cleaning up (or “throwing away” in my parlance) spree which has seen him tackle the horrors of the space under the sink, which is now so anally tidy that I am fearful to use anything there fearing that I might destroy the fearful symmetry of the space.

He has also ravaged the spice box which is now half empty, as he has binned those spices that he has designated “beyond their use-by date”.  I was not, and remain not, aware that spices and dried herbs had or have a “use-by” date – though it does perhaps explain how I was able to use what called itself spicy paprika pepper powder as a colorant rather than a seasoning – and have considered all such dates to be part of a conspiracy to make we poor consumers buy more.

In some ways, however, sell-by dates were made for people like me, people who take any old opportunity to go and buy things, especially if they have bright new containers, or if the container has a new, ergonomically designed top for example.  I have done this!

On the other hand Toni is sometimes like a reincarnation of Savonarola and Torquemada with a dash of New England Witch Finder General when it comes to things like heretical yogurt.  The expiry date is, for him like Holy Writ and anyone attempting to eat a pot a day beyond is a blaspheming infidel iconoclast and will suffer the torments of salmonella (which, come to think of it sounds very like a Renaissance Dominican zealot) and be inevitably cast into the outer darkness.  It is in vain that I maintain the weeks of leeway that yogurt expiry dates have – it is cast scornfully into the bin, the flameless bonfire of the comestibles.

And don’t even begin to speculate about his ideas on eggs!

All of the aforementioned meant that I had to go into town and buy the ingredients that I needed for my trial run of cakes for the Second Annual Chocolate Week (incorporating cakes) that is due to kick off on the 27^th of February.

Holding myself to my promise to a colleague last year who only eats white chocolate, I found myself a recipe for “Chocolate Goldies” which, as any fule kno, are Chocolate Brownies made with white chocolate.

Vanilla essence is difficult to find here and I had to make do with a small, dark coloured bottle looking as though it contained a venomous poison but which was filled with dark vanilla stuff linked to sugar, but not like the openly labelled vanilla sugar that I have in a transparent bottle.

I also failed to find white chocolate bits and so substituted interesting looking sweets which turned out to be candy coated peanuts.

The end result was interesting and very, very sweet.  Toni gave it a 4/10 partly in revenge for my giving him a 5/10 for his first attempt at a vegetable paella.  Although the mark is harsh, I shall not make them in the same way again.  I shall substitute chopped almonds for the peanuts and fragmented white chocolate for the little cake pieces with the further addition of glacé cherries because I like them.

The second cake was a triple chocolate cake found by Toni on the Internet and re-found in a different form by me when he forgot the web address of his first sighting.

This is the sort of cake where the only cooking is in the melting of the chocolate in the milk and cream and the addition of a sachet of some sort of white powder which presumably assists in the setting of each of the layers.

The layers of dark, milk and white chocolate stand on a cheesecake base of crushed digestive biscuit and butter and the monstrously heavy creation has been languishing in the fridge for a day to provide a sweet for our lunch.

As I will be presenting this cake to an unsuspecting public on March 1^st I have decided to add a fondant icing (which I have never made) version of the Welsh flag to the top.  Just in case you think that this final addition of calories will take the cake into some sort of calorific nuclear meltdown, I must point out that there is no use made of additional sugar in the recipe.

This cake turned out to be a presentational disaster.  As I suspected, the centre could not hold and mere anarchy was loosed upon the lower levels by the uppermost layer of white chocolate spreading outwards and downwards.  Within five minutes the entre cake was attempting to leave the plate in a delicious ooze!

I have returned to the Internet and attempted to find another recipe to make for St David’s Day.

The one that I am tempted to try is an American version which has a cooked more cake-like base but made without flour and then mousse for the other two layers.  I may make it later in the week before I try it the week after.  So much fuss for so few for so many calories!

Talking of calories, we have just tried a new Sunday chicken grill place.  We have our traditional favourite but a new one near where we used to live has opened and I wanted to give it a try.

They still haven’t managed to settle in convincingly and their premises, which used to be a surfers’ shop, still have an unsettled and temporary look to it.  They had a very limited range of food on display and for sale but I bought the usual half chicken a couple of baguettes and two types of potato.  I made some sauce for the patatas bravas, but the meal was a disaster.  Even the bread I bought was disgusting!  Perhaps it was starting pains, but the end result of this new place does not bode well and we will go back to our usual haunts.

Meanwhile, although I am not going to talk about it, the horror of what is waiting for me after school tomorrow (and the day after) has ruined a restful weekend, but, as I said, I’m not going to talk about it.  At all.

Thank god for the distraction of Chocolate Week.  Incorporating cakes.

Weekend at last!

Today, at least in junior schools, it was the start of Carnival!  This does not compute in my understanding of the world, as it is not Shrove Tuesday or Ash Wednesday and thus the start of Lent.  But who am I to understand the ways of sects outside the warm and wonderful family of the fratricidal organization of the Anglican Church!

Going out for tapas this evening and gazing out of the window of the bar in which we were sitting, I watched a procession of small children dressed in a variety of bizarre costumes including one small boy dressed as a devil with a Zorro cape and hat.  At least the tapas were conventional and delicious.

There must be something going on with my response to Spanish beer as I had a few small caña (a small tumbler), certainly much less than a pint in total and I felt distinctly woozy!  How times are changing!

And now it is the start of the weekend and I can spend most of it trying not to think of the . . . but, I said that I wasn’t going to mention the lurking horror, and I won’t.

I did eventually find the book that I had promised a colleague: Yeats’ poems with a parallel translation into Spanish.  It took me well over half an hour and then I didn’t find the book that I actually wanted but another parallel volume.  As usual I found a whole selection of books that have been submerged for the past year or so!  Again as usual I found “uneasy bedfellows” with the most strange runs of books on the same shelf.

This has made me even more determined to sort my library out.  But not so determined that I am not prepared to leave this until the summer holidays!

Misery Awaits!

We have an internal mail system in my school which I assiduously avoid.  There will be nothing in the messages, I keep telling myself, that are going to make my life easier.  On the contrary the only missive I have there entail extra work.  I avoid going into my mail like the bloody plague.  Anyone who cares knows my “proper” mail address and will write to me there.

I was tricked into writing an internal mail communication and I then happened to see the mail that was waiting for me.  Even more stupidly I opened one of the messages.  And, inexplicably, I opened the attached file.

To my utter horror and woeful disbelief I discovered that the unreal management of our institution has scheduled FIVE HOURS OF MEETINGS AFTER SCHOOL ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY.

There is no reason for my broken astonishment.  It is not as if the institution has not done this sort of thing before.  

We have had a new computer “platform” on which we have to enter all our term marks.  We also have to write a comment for each child on the computer.  We also have to write a class comment which has to be sent to the class teacher.  All of this is extra work, giving extra information to the people who will ignore it all.  And we have a longer meeting to say the same things that we have already written to people who are not listening.

So after a full day’s teaching of five or six periods we are then allowed a fifteen-minute break and then subjected to two and a half hours of a meeting.  And then the same thing the next night.  Unbelievable.  And all in a foreign language.

I wouldn’t mind if these meetings were in any way useful, but they are merely talking shops for people who like to hear the sound of their own voices and any attempt to make a decision about the pupils who need a new approach to deal with their problems is brushed away.  By late on Tuesday evening I will be spitting blood, if I can get that liquid past gritted teeth and a clenched jaw.

The system that we are having use is unhelpful and slow and crashes when too many people try and access it.  It was a trying time using the system this morning surrounded by frustrated teachers breathing fiery threats of immanent destruction towards the inoffensive machines they were punching information into!

I have mostly completed the reporting that I have to do and hope that I can complete what I have to do in the free period I have tomorrow.  If not. Not.

This week has been horrendous with people we cannot afford to be without being absent due to an increase in the amount of flu that has stricken our school.  Who knows who might be absent tomorrow!  And we don’t begrudge doing extra in our overcrowded week because it puts in the right frame of mind for the five hours of meetings that are going to make our lives just that little bit more complete next week.

I am getting all the bile out of my system so that I can adopt an unnatural serenity in the days to come.

Fond hope!

Unobtrusive wins!

Febrile activity at the moment as the Lady with the List appears in the staff room spreading misery where’re she goes as the many substitutions are distributed to cope with the wholesale absence of staff who are succumbing right, left and centre to the ravages of colds and flu-like diseases.

I am sitting alone in the staff room as I am early and all the rest of my colleagues have rushed off to start their first lessons at the ungodly time of 8.15 am.  I am, as you will realise, totally vulnerable and as management rush around looking more and more frazzled I can’t help feeling that my free time is in a more than fragile state.  And there is nowhere to hide.  When teaching starts all available rooms are in use and therefore not available for hiding.

The lady has returned with sheaves of paper with the names of the condemned on them.  I shall go to the toilet in self-defence!

The comings and goings are continuing and I still have not had the courage to look at the list to see if I have been “taken”.  It is more stressful worrying about the possible loss of non-contact periods than actually losing them!

Lunch consisted of veggie-burgers of sawdust like texture and it certainly gave a clear indication of taste together with a plate of cooked, sliced vegetables with a sauce which was as gastronomically distant from the pseudo-burgers as Boris Johnston is from a Black Hole – although I realise that that last random conjunction of imagers is perhaps not as random (or as distant) as I first thought!  Anyway, the veg were excellent and made up for the rest.

Apart from my liking for meat, eggs, fish and the like I really think that I could become a vegetarian.

Not to be out of the diseased loop which seems to be claiming so many of the staff I too now feel slightly under the weather.  There is that vague tickle in the back of the throat, a slightly metallic feel to the back of the nose and a very distinct lethargy – if that is not a contradiction in words – which I know well.

These symptoms are not helped by the skittish attitude towards working temperature that the building I am in at present thinks is conducive to stable living.  As you progress from room to room via the corridor it is like going on a walking tour of the globe passing from Tundra to Tropical in a matter of seconds.  In a piece of idiocy that has to be experienced to be believed each room has its own complex temperature control.  Which doesn’t work.  It is either too hot (even for me!) or too cold. 

And you have to have experienced Catalan and Spanish children to realise just how pathetic they are capable of being when they encounter anything less than Atacama Desert heat in their teaching environment.  Their piteous cries for warmth would melt the heart of a Thatcher – but I remain coldly aloof and smile an icy smile of complete lack of sympathy at their plight, and urge them to think harder and faster to get the neurons heated up!

Our Second Annual Chocolate Week (incorporating cakes) is now scheduled to start on Monday 27^th of February and to stretch into March (even if this year is a Leap Year) and give us something to look forward to and something to think back on during the hard days leading up to the Easter Holidays.

As I promised a colleague during our First Annual Chocolate Week I will be making chocolate goldies this year – they are the same as chocolate brownies but made with white chocolate rather than dark or milk.  I also quite like taking over the St David’s Day spot and producing a triple chocolate Welsh flag topped cake.  But that might be a bake beyond!

Time will tell.

Well, at least Tuesday is over!

I know my place!

After all my moaning and groaning about the absurd timetable we have in this school I felt what I knew ought to be humility when a colleague told me that he had just lost his remaining free period and so was teaching eight (8! Count ‘em!) periods today!  Awful but true!

I checked through the substitutions list this morning, saw that I wasn’t on it and have sedulously avoided looking at it again.  Just in case.  Two, or even one, extra periods added to the six that I am scheduled to teach today would push me over the edge into that misty realm of the educational berserker from which blood-dimmed tide no reputation emerges unscathed!

I shall just meditate quietly and without rancour on the second and third lessons with the 3ESO that I am about to experience today, the first having been a collapsed class having to cope with yet another person being absent.

And just to make matters more than perfect I seem to have gouged a chunk out of a nail which has left a jagged edge which catches in everything and encourages a questing thumb to smooth its serrated edge with increasing irritation.  Don’t let anyone tell you that cutting a recalcitrant nail with stationery scissors is a way of getting the situation back to normal.  I am sure that The Case of the Catastrophic Cuticle is merely displacement activity to blank my mind to the two hours of eagerly receptive faces that will fill the long, hard stretch of the dwindling afternoon.

I have just had my lunch which consisted of a hardboiled egg on a piece of toast covered with something soft and whitish with a latticework of hardened cheese granules.  And chips.  With grated carrot.  As meals go, it went – and I am ready to depart.  But, alas – the smiling faces, the smiling faces!  Which sounds like an unfunny parody of Mr Kurtz’ final utterance.

Having got that out of my system I can now look forward to female stereotyping as found in multitudes of advertisements on the Internet.  My media studies class is becoming almost expert in the annotation of the most glaring denotations in the outpouring of the commercial visual arts and a few of the more lively intelligences hazard tentative conjectures around the most obvious connotations that they may contain!

Our task this week, following on from what we are going to do in the first period is construct a list of five different examples of male stereotypes used in advertising.  The five females types are The Beauty Bunny; The Alpha Female; The Fashionista; The Perfect Mum and The Granny.  It will be interesting to see what the kids come up with, as I am not sure that there are direct male equivalents – at least not as widely used in advertising.

One hour of the two hours that I have with the kids is taken up with them in the computer room.  Our kids are so needy that this is not as restful as you might think with my constantly being called on to validate or explain or evaluate.

Dinner this evening was delicious, simple but tasty and all lubricated with a mysterious bottle of Cava that someone must have given us at some time in the past but rather appropriately for the day it had a graphic of a red sketched heart as part of the label.  Happenstance. 

The useful part of having a new bottle of Cava is that I can save the metal top on the cork and pass it on to our school secretary whose sister-in-law collects these things.  She gains brownie points by donating to the growing collection.

This, in itself is of no importance to me, but as any experienced teacher will tell you, anything which makes the school secretary happy is worth encouraging – especially if you can be seen to be doing something positive yourself to increase this happiness.  We are blessed in our school with a secretary who is helpfulness itself – and with a sense of humour linked to a keen sense of irony.  Hard earned experience will tell any receptive teacher that this is something not to be treated lightly!

Barça are playing in the Champions League (which explains why we didn’t go out to El Elefant as I wanted to this evening) and I hope to god that they win as, in La Liga, Real Madrid are now ten points in front and, as far as I can see, unassailable in their ownership of the cup.  Barça’s possible silverware remains anchored to the Copa del Rey and the much, much more difficult to win Champions League.  I think that I will move to another country if Barça are forced out of both of those!

Tomorrow, Wednesday, is the “tipping point” of the week when we begin our downward slide into the weekend: we have to take our points of human warmth where we can find them.  And it is in this spirit of positive belief in something better than the drudgery in which we find ourselves that I have raised the idea of The Second Annual Chocolate Week.

This was inaugurated last year and was a great success.  Each day of the week a member of the English Department brought in a homemade chocolate confection for the delectation of the hard working members of the department.  I was very much in favour of an obvious exclusivity connected with this enterprise on the principle that it is not enough for people to be happy, it is necessary for other people to be seen to be unhappy.

Disappointingly, given the flaccid attitude of so-called professionals in the caring professions to hard-line selfishness, there was a general tendency towards sharing and this has been (in spite of a minority of one’s vociferous objections) elevated into some sort of moral imperative defining the activity of the proposed week.

Not only has this pinko-pseudo communistic attitude towards exclusivity lessened the delight of the week but also there are mutterings against the hard-line insistence on chocolate as the motivating factor in the energy giving productions.  It has been suggested that the chocolate appellation be extended to a more generic “cake” theme.

It has been proposed that the week be the bridging one between the tail end of February and the start of March.  Presumably I will have to create something in the form of the Welsh Flag to celebrate St David’s Day!  How would I do that, I wonder?

I will have to see tomorrow if the date meets with general acceptance and then we can get planning.

Something to look forward to!