You ate what?

Eating one piece of toast during a barbecue still haunts me!  While the rest of The Family was cooking what appeared to be the entire herds of cattle and kilometres of sausage - I ate none of it.  I sat in solitary splendour in a patch of sunlight, reading Hard Times (for revision purposes) and trying to look pathetic.

Didn’t work of course and I even (by example and unnatural brownness) encouraged the white folk of Catalonia to join me and rapidly assume a ruddy complexion which will, I am sure, have developed into pure pain by the next day!  (I am not entirely convinced that the tense in that last sentence makes temporal sense, but what the hell!)

My tummy started playing up on Saturday afternoon and was only proclaimed safe on Monday evening.  This was achieved by my usual recourse of “taking to my bed” and staying there for the best part of a day until the illness was over.  I have a sort of kind of feeling that one day this one-day cure using somnolence as the major active medical element will fail me some time in the near future, but at the moment it is proving to be the most reliable remedy that I know.  And cheap too!

Monday (day) was a careful sort of time only enlivened by the receipt of a twenty-page letter of justification from a recently sacked colleague.  As it is written in Catalan I have had to rely on the pronouncements of others to understand the gist of what he has to say - but it has the potential to cause some unsettled days in our institution.  It appears that he has also sent the letter to parents and kids.  I am sure that is questionable from a purely professional point of view though it does add to the gaiety of nations.  But this looks like s story that can run and run.

Talking of which, that is exactly what I did at lunchtime today when my teaching duties had been done.  The only way I am surviving is to leave school when I am not “needed” – and I only hope that this form of escapism is allowed to continue until I finish in the place.  How many months are there?  Middle of April to middle of May to middle of June and a week extra.  In terms of weeks we are almost down to single figures!  O Joy!

Cardiff City are playing at the moment and all they need is a single point from the game to go up.  I have probably damned them by typing that but, if auguries are confounded and they do actually manage it, then I shall look out my football tie and wear it with pride tomorrow and explain the meaning to inquisitive children.  Please!  I have been saying all year that this time Cardiff is going to do it, please god don’t let me down!  I keep checking periodically with a sinking feeling. 

At the moment it is still 0-0.  And that result will be enough to see us up.  There are ten minutes to go, plus injury time.  I have tried and failed to listen to the radio on my computer and no television was available “in your region” so I have had to rely on the “live” reports which tell me that, pause, it is still 0-0.

And that was what the score remained and with the single point Cardiff are promoted and we are back where we should be.  I demand a Bluebirds tie to wear on the last day of term!

Bring on tomorrow!

Rest!

This weekend is most welcome.  The fatigue hang-over from a mid-week start last week, coupled with the actual teaching has meant that this Friday has been eagerly awaited as it has to administer the soothing salve which makes the next week of work possible.  There has to be a better way to spend my time than this!

The OU Elluminate tutorial session was preceded by total chaos on my part as my iMac refused to load the program to run it!  I was reduced to using the fading battery life on my MacBook Air to join the merry throng.  God knows what was going on there as the iMac has worked well with this program in the past but it added that injection of panic that makes things go better.  Sometimes.

How much use the tutorial was is debateable, but it was a sort of valedictory session for the course as we wished each other well in our future studies.  It was quite moving in a strangely distanced sort of way; who, after all, are these people with whom I have been exchanging messages for the last twenty weeks?  Our relationship has been of the oddest and most selective sort and will have to start all over again next month with the next course.  I suspect that I may find the same students on that course too.  I will have to wait and see.

This weekend is devoted to revision and a visit to Terrassa for lunch.  And I hope a little light start-gazing on the Third Floor!

The next stage!

Getting up is getting harder.  Another day of the week in which resentment was the overriding emotion dragging me back to bed.

The mobile phone alarm on the iPhone is just as irritating as it was on the Samsung and I am getting to loathe it so much that I am waking up just before it goes off so that I can turn it off before its insanely jolly noise irritates the hell out of me.

Today I didn’t get to it on time so that I had to fumble it to silence.  I had also inadvertently placed it on its power cord so that when it burst into life the vibrations were, for some reason connected to it being slightly off of surface, even more sonically pronounced than usual, using the unit it was placed on as a sort of sound box.  The lurch to wakefulness was more acute than is physically bearable when this sort of thing happens!

Once up I went through the usual rituals to get me to school on time and it is only the music in the car, thanks to EMI Eminence, than calms me down enough to face the day.  Though I have to say that a rousing performance of the 1812 Overture was not necessarily soothing this morning!

Today is one of my “long” days when I start at 8.15 in the morning and then my last lesson ends at 4.45 in the afternoon.  An absurdly long day with an overcrowded curriculum, but there is little chance of anything revolutionary happening to change the situation – and certainly not in the two and a half months that I have left in the profession!  I will have to remember to bring in my sandals and an ornate bowl so that I can knock the dust off my feet and wash my hand in a double gesture of rejection!  But how many will understand?  Though I should be used to unremarked gestures by now!

As my examination draws nearer so does the double horror for my colleagues of a Friday evening session followed by a Saturday morning session of work on the iPad.  In effect my colleagues will be working an extra nine hours during that week!  There are mutterings, which is a pity as the technological innovation is something which should be welcomed and celebrated – not berated!  But . . .

I really does say something for the length of the school day that I have now taught four lessons with one to go and at the end of the day I will also have had three free periods, a mid-morning break and a full hour for lunch.  When you put it like that the day is obviously absurdly long but, as I said previously, nothing will be done – especially not in a climate of financial cutbacks and job losses!  Roll on the good times again when workers can ask for reasonable working conditions without being regarded as red revolutionaries!

I started to listen to the coverage of the Thatcher Jamboree in Parliament when I came home from school but the (very balanced) coverage of the BBC raised so many bitter memories that I turned away and had a cup of tea.

I am, however encouraged today, Thursday, by John Wilkins sending me something forwarded by his son Owain which shows Glenda Jackson in full flow despite of the baying of backwoodsmen and saying what needs to be said about the toxic legacy of That Woman.  More strength to your rhetoric Glenda!

Yesterday was a tiring day and one not made any calmer by the appalling performance of Barça against their French opponents.  They really showed how bereft of ideas and motivation they were without the force of Messi (who, for the first half sat, or rather sulked and looked generally uncomfortable, on the bench) and how they were a different force when Messi (injured though he might well be) finally came on in the second half.

Toni sat fuming, not only because of the lacklustre performance of his team but also because he was watching on a laptop attached to the TV that froze at inopportune moments merely adding to his ire.  By the end of the game he would have sold most of the team at best and given away swathes of players at worst.  If they play like that in the next stage of the competition then their progress is going to be severely limited.  It makes one wonder yet again what is going to happen to the team post-Messi!

Today is the day of the last tutorial of my present OU module and coincidentally the books and DVD for the next one arrived yesterday.  I am getting progressively more nervous about this exam, in spite of the fact that I have studied assiduously and am conversant with the details of the content on which we are going to be tested!  One of my colleagues has just remarked, “Well, Stephen, what do you say to the kids?  ‘If you are well prepared you have nothing to worry about!’”  Yeah!  But this isn’t anything to do with the kids; this is me!  I will be very glad when it is all over.

On an altogether more positive note, the teaching material for the next aspect of my OU degree looks to me to tick more boxes than the course that I am completing now – although I see that the bloody Buddhists make it in to the teaching material again!  We have been told by the OU that the two separate courses that I am taking this year are going to be amalgamated into a single integrated course in the future, and I think that makes sense.  In fact, I can’t wait to get started - and I will as soon as the damn examination is over!

Later this afternoon we have our final tutorial with Elluminate (the on-line system) in which the full hysteria of distance learning students facing their first examination will be loosed on the world and will whip me up into further frenzies of frightened introspection!  Or not, who know, it might actually give me information which calms.  Some hope!

Meanwhile, teaching calls.  I only hope that the echo of that call does not extend into the afternoon, as I need to work myself up before the international meeting of the learners!

Divisive to the Last

The kerfuffle in the Staff Room over the death of That Woman is still sending out mild ripples of unease.  I have to say that all my Celtic Fringe colleagues are united in rejoicing at The Demise while my English colleagues are displaying varying degrees of response from mild satisfaction to tigerish defence of That Woman’s legacy.  They are a funny breed, the English!

The video of Thatcher Burning has been seen by a decent number of those who know me and so I feel that I have fulfilled my oft-stated declaration to have a party and drink to her combustion.  The party may have been electronic but I feel that right thinking people were joined in a common bond of remembered detestation. 

To any who still need to see the proof of my setting fire to a candle which now would fetch ever more on eBay I refer them to the following link for proof positive that the Blue Bouffant is no more!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zescW4c1Q0

Today was enlivened by my confusing two classes and waiting patiently for a class that was not going to turn up as I was not only mistaken about the class that I was supposed to be taking but also about the building that I was supposed to be in.  Wild panic ensued until my breathless appearance (do you know how many steps there are between Building 4 and Building 1!) brought the semblance of order to my young charges.

The lesson was about communication and in particular The Media and so I was able to pad out my limited TV and Radio experience and make it sound as if my teaching was a minor part of my life, sandwiched between glittering media triumphs!  I truly have no shame in my instruction of the young!

My swim was deflected by meeting a friend in the car park of Lidl and by the time that we had finished talking in the balmy sunshine it was time for me to meet up with Toni for lunch.

After lunch it was warm enough for me to divest myself of various pieces of outer apparel and lie out on the Third Floor.  I consider that I am still a pasty pale colour but in the past few days a parent has accused me of being too brown to be British and one of the kids was shocked at my colour and had to search for the English word for a few moments before she could give voice to her concern. 

This does not mean that I am brown, it merely demonstrates that your average Catalan would not consider casting a clout until May be out, so with my totally foreign approach to any scrap of sunshine going I am beginning to look healthier than the general run of the native population!

Meanwhile revision continues with the Excel approach proving to be the most productive.  My nerves continue to grow as the time of the Great Write gets nearer and nearer.  The sooner it is over the sooner I can get on with the next stage in my studies with the next module.

And the summer gets ever nearer.  I suppose.