Technological Terrors!

Having, as I thought circumspectly, bought a half terabyte external hard drive to back up my computer, it was with something approaching total panic that I saw nothing but a blue screen when I attempted to load up Word this evening.  It was with a stomach churning, sickening recognition that I realised that this was the first time that I had attempted to use the computer since the “backup”.

Nothing daunted (absolute lie) I tried again.  And again.  And again.  And Word would not load.  Then Excel would not load.  To say that I was disconcerted would be a massive understatement.  It is at this time that you realise quite how much of your life is consigned to an invisible disc somewhere in the sleek interior of a Mac machine.  A Mac machine – they don’t have bugs, they don’t go wrong.

My faith returned.  I knew what I had to do.  And I did it.

Once restarted the machine worked perfectly.  I now view the “external” non-Mac hard disc with aversion bordering on loathing.  So much, I say to myself, for trying to be sensible!

Or perhaps it is what I have to do each time I back up.  This was, after all, the first back up that I have done since I bought the machine and it did say that there were more than 650,000 files to copy!  What the hell have I been doing over the past couple of years!

Anyway, all things appear to be well and I will not do it again in a hurry.  Though again it must be done if the cost of the bloody thing is to be justified.  Work in progress.

Tomorrow it will just one month to the day to the end of my time in Education.  Or at least in The School on the Hill.  My replacements are “in place” – two ladies one of who will be back from maternity leave and taking up a part time timetable and the other new lady who will take up the lessons left.  There will be, I am glad to say, no place for me even if I should have some sort of brainstorm and plead to keep my place.  My place is gone.  Well and truly gone.  There is no way back.  Thank god!

My illness of yesterday vanished during the night (an early night) and I felt bright and bushy eyed – or at least as bright and busy eyed as getting up at half past six in the morning allows you to be.  Nothing irritates Toni more than my ability to shake off illness in 24 hours which linger in him for tedious days and sometimes weeks!  Anyway I was fit enough to fill the entire “long” day with a mixture of teaching and marking.  Delight.

My Drama classes are moving towards a confidently predicted chaotic close.  We have a few weeks of single hour lessons a week to produce a dramatic production which is going to be filmed and edited.  Costumes, make-up, props, script and sound effects have all been considered and of my four groups (taking in the whole of the first year in secondary – all two classes of them) are at wildly different stages of unpreparedness.  In spite of the chaos, I am quietly confident that something will come out of this anarchy.  I can’t wait to see the results.  All of which will be captured for posterity on my iPad or the school camera!  Well, this chaos is more artistically productive than most of the rest of my quotidian teaching under the stern dictatorship of the textbook!

What the hell!  Tomorrow I start counting the days and that cannot be bad.

And tomorrow too one of my periodic visits to the Liceu to sit in my Upper Level seat and count the days that I descend to a better view in the stalls next year.  I ought to go down and find my seat and see exactly where it is and check out the sight lines, but I am not sure that I still have the exact coordinates!

I am trying to push from my mind the actual cost of this move from my present position to the solidity of the ground in that Temple of the Middle Classes!

Toni is studying furiously as his examination is now days away: two days, nine hours to be precise.  And counting.

My own exam is in the far distant future – or September, as it is sometime known.  And before that, some time next month, the results from my first exam.  I also have to think about what I am going to do next year: art or creative writing.  I am still inclining to creative writing at the moment, but I could well change my mind.  I will see how this course is panning out and then make my decision.

The first assignment for the present course is rapidly approaching and I have to admit that I am beginning to see possibilities in the title.  My self-indulgent reading so far has managed to change my perceptions entirely! 

Which is good going considering it is officially only week two of the course!

Rant!

In a breath-taking piece of political opportunism the beleaguered PP government of this benighted country is trying to deflect attention from their woeful inability to deal with the present disastrous and chaotic state of, for example the economy, by raising the perennially divisive and attention deflecting issue of abortion. 

They are trying to galvanize the ready prejudice of the right and the thousands with their carefully nurtured, religiously (!) dominated prejudices so that the important questions about the present state of Spain are carefully lost in a debate in which scientific and reasonable arguments are lost in a fog of dogma.

I am sure that there are well meaning and reasonable people who are totally opposed to abortion, but they should beware of their sincerity being abused by cynical opportunist politicians seeking to hide their maladministration and downright corruption in a sanctified miasma of pseudo-moral obscurantism on a topic whose controversial nature is sure to raise temperatures and lessen logic.

Although I am a staunch defender of the woman’s right to decide, I also believe that there is a real debate about the number of months that elapse before the foetus is regarded as viable.  These debates are scientific and medical and can be used by the so-called religious community to bolster their arguments, not to be ignored by them and the element of “faith” be used instead.

The Roman church, in this priest dominated country, where their status is enshrined in the constitution; where their tax affairs are greatly to their advantage; who siphon off money from tax returns; whose churches are rate free; whose pronouncements are anti-gay and anti-democratic – this contemptible Roman church is an eager co-conspirator in the deflection of real debate about their privileges, their crimes, their cover-ups and their signal failure to provide spiritual and moral leadership in a time of financial crisis.  A plague on them!

In the cold light of a dull day the preceding rant seems almost mellow given what is going on in this country!

Meanwhile in the OU Forums things seem to be slowing down.  I thought that I had a vibrant group of fellow students who would use the Forums constantly and provide real stimulation but that is not proving to be the case. 

Our present task to is produce a list of ten items that we own and then write a brief character sketch of the personality that has drawn up the list.  This could, potentially be very revealing, and however the individual has completed the task, it will obviously say a lot about the choices that have been made.

The point behind it all is to emphasise how we are defined by material culture, how our possession tell tales about us.  I think the hard part is writing the character descriptions.  Needless to say I rejoice in writing these brief but penetrating pen portraits and my obvious facility has driven my fellow students underground.  Again.  I will have to try and coax them out into the open again and sooth their tender feelings.

At the start of the course there were some intellectually aggressive postings or a professional nature which made me hopeful that a “keenie” had joined our group, but even his thrusting intimidation seems to have abated.  It’s a lonely old life as a distance learner when your fellow electronic companions don’t push the buttons!

Toni appears to be a little better, though he has had a rough couple of days.  It turns out that the whole family has been struck by the same illness (with the signal exception of my good self!) and the only common experience that I can think of (apart from the wedding where, if anyone deserved to be a little less than perfect it were I!) was the meal we had on Sunday in an overcrowded and almost unbearably noisy restaurant in Terrassa.  But the only common element in that experience was that we had food from the same kitchen, because our individual meals were various.  Another mystery, though Toni will hopefully be better when I get home at the end of this “long” day.

It is impossible for me to ignore the date and not begin to count, with growing mixture of desperation and delight, the number of days left in education or even Education! 

The end of course is the 23^rd of June and it is now mid-way through the previous month, so to speak so, apart from obviously not being just four weeks away, it is not so far that such a concept cannot be warmly thought about!  And good luck with finding your way through that sentence.

People here are tired.  Very tired.  And the summer holidays are regarded in much the same way as The Second Coming – though without the “rough beast” and all that apocalyptic crap. 

My poor colleagues have to endure a further week of torture after the departure of the kids, while I wave my cheery goodbyes with the general exodus of the customers.  And quite right too.  I still have not decided how to celebrate this momentous event. 

Again.  Though I bloody well will, I can assure you of that!

Survival!

My “untouchability” was again emphasised today by the complete lack of comebacks from my non-attendance at one of the interminable meetings held last night in school.  I have resolutely held to my determination to shun these pointless examples of witless viciousness as part of my personal crumbling towards final retirement.  So far so good.  Though I did feel a jolt of shadenfreude when I heard that the meeting closed one whole hour earlier than planned.  But then sense intervened and told me that any meeting that closed an hour earlier than planned had to be of inordinate length to make that something to talk about!  Well out of it, I think!

I am still feeling the lingering after-shock of the physical damage that indulgence wrecked on my fragile body over the weekend.  Indeed Toni has a stomach upset and has yet to rise from his bed.  I put that down to after-shock too, though Toni did nothing like as much as I did in the five and a half hours of eating that the wedding entailed!  Or indeed drinking!

The OU course has got off to a good start with work in the books and on the Forum taking up a good deal of time.  I am learning more so far and I am well out of my comfort zone so this is all to the good.  At present I am learning about the ways in which anthropology has been redefined since the nineteenth century and am having to confront new ideas – which is what it is all about.  There is more a sense of discovery on this course than the other one which is both exciting and also disconcerting!  However, armed only with a disposable fountain pen and fluorescent yellow marker I battle my way to knowledge!

The single item, which has made me happy in the last week or so, is something for which I have been searching for some time.  A chance glance at a likely hiding place for it on our way to the centre of Cardiff last week (was it only last week that I was there!  Impossible!) And I was raring to go.

The shop that I eventually patronized is one that has had a number of incarnations.  One of the “sheds” on Rumney “Common” (the only grass grows in cracks in the concrete) has now reinvented itself as a sort of outward-bound superstore (complete with discount card for which you have to pay) with all sorts of things that you never knew existed.

Rather than traipse my way through I asked the first assistant I saw for directions and was shooed off to a particular section of the store.  I diligently hunted and saw nothing.  Well, not nothing, I actually saw lots of interesting things, but not the one that I wanted.  My return to the assistant gleaned more specific locational information and there it and they were.  I bought two.

So now, each morning and each night as I take my rattling collection of pills I am able to wash them down with the contents of my collapsible cup!  Made in ringed stainless steel with a rather smooth and elegant cover to use when travelling, I am now happy.  No longer have I to cup my hands, no longer worry about using a fragile glass in the bathroom nor yet have to suffer the vulgarity of a plastic one – I am fully collapsible!  It is amazing how much sheer pleasure you can get for the price of a few coffees!  It is a pity that my remaining tastes and desires cannot be satisfied so easily and cheaply!

Back home, and Toni is still in bed feeling very sorry for himself.  He has now decided that the abondigas and Magnum ice cream were the culprits in his upset.  Though, it also has to be said that I too partook of both delicacies with no adverse side effects.  Ah well, horses for courses and colons for comestibles, as they say in this part of Castelldefels.

The weather has gone steadily downhill since an indifferent morning.  And the general joy of life has been substantially increased by the noisy fact that the adjacent swimming pool is being restructured with pneumatic drills and noise, noise, noise. 

And now it’s raining. 

O Joy!

Dayflow!

I couldn’t wangle a decent seat on this flight so I am typing this on one of the rear seats in a free row, so at least I have ben able to put the other arm rest up and give myself a little more room.

The weekend is over and I am totally wrecked.  I need the rest of the week to recover from the excesses of the past two days (and one night) which I spent in Cardiff, but that is not to be and I will be teaching at 8.15 am tomorrow.  Retribution is swift after indulgence!

Friday evening was almost civilized as I arrived far too late and far too tired to do much more than drink a glass of wine or three and go to bed.

Saturday, I was graciously informed, was mine to do in as I wished.  I therefore decided to keep the appointment I had made to go to the optician in Tesco, Culverhouse Cross.  It was a very good thing that I did so because the service there was exceptional.  From the pre-tests to the choosing of frames everything was done with a friendly courtesy and professional ease which was a delight.

The optician even managed to fit in a consultation for my contact lenses by checking appointments and making time.

The end result was I spent over five hundred quid!  So see what doing your job gets you!  And, even though that might sound a little steep, it does include four pairs of glasses and a month’s supply of a new type of contact lens for me to try.

I did voice my idea that the basic problem with my eyes was that I have cross dominance.  In other words I am right handed by left eye dominant.  At the moment my left eye is adjusted for distance and my right for reading when I am wearing contact lenses.  The brain is supposed to work out which eye to use for which activity which it pointedly doesn’t when I wear them.  My solution was to swap functions.  The optician decided not to do that but changed the prescription so that the difference between the two eyes if more obvious and, he said this would make it easier for my brain to accept.  I hope it does because I prefer to wear contact lenses than glasses, though at the moment it is much easier for me to wear glasses for the amount of reading and writing that I am doing.  Hopefully after June when the schoolwork ends I will be able to use my contact lenses more.  That is the plan anyway.

And going back to the five hundred quid spend, I actually had a bit of a bargain there.  If you are not a glasses wearer that might seem to be impossible – but if you are visually challenged then you will have grown up being regularly being shafted by opticians.  I have been wearing glasses since I was about eight and contact lenses since I was eighteen.  So if you count up all the money that I have spent and money which has been spent on my behalf – and have every payment adjusted for 2013 prices I must have spent tens of thousands of pounds on flimsy bits of metal, plastic and glass and consultations when you, the customer, have to do most of the work to get the prescription right!

So with Tesco the consultation and prescription were free.  They also have a buy one and get the second pair free.  Which is good value.  Until you realize that all the little extras are extra.  So I have the lenses thinned, I have varifocal made to my specific prescription with a wider reading area and they are photo chromatic and they are lightweight.  All of that little lot of extras add about one hundred and fifty quid!  And those extras are not “free”.  So I decided to have two pairs of glasses with everything and then two “basic” pairs with no extras.  And the contacts lenses are daily disposable, but they work out at less than a quid a day.  And if you have been wondering at my slumming by using colloquialisms like “quid” it is merely because I cannot be bothered to find the pound sign on this Spanish keyboard, far too much effort!

So my lunchtime on Saturday I had justified the trip in purely financial terms, quite apart from seeing the Pauls.  I did call in to see my Aunt Micky and was horrified to see a picture of That Woman set out for contemplation and adoration.  But she is my aunt and so I didn’t say exactly what I felt, but I did relate the story of my setting fire to my candle of That Woman and her blue bouffant is now well and truly burnt.  I also told her that the film of this act of fully justified post-mortem fiery revenge was freely available on YouTube and that she should watch “Burning Thatcher” as something which would be good for her soul.  I regard my little film as the equivalent of an act of devotion and a modern take on a chantry where the evidence of my act of immolation will have some form of life immortal in the electronic world!

I did call in to see Louise but she was out and so I was denied my traditional cup of tea and a chat.  Another time.

Uncle Eric too did not have a visit from me this time around.  Shame on me!

Saturday night was supposed to be the opportunity for me to take the Pauls out for a meal.  Our first, second and third choices were full so we decided to patronize an old haunt, “Le Monde”.  Our ill luck was to continue however as there was a power cut in the recently reopened restaurant and while we waited for our table a round of drinks was fourteen quid.  Not the place to stay and get drunk in.  Time crept on and we felt that there must be somewhere else in the centre of Cardiff which could offer us a meal.

Our plan was therefore to go to one of the restaurants that said it was full and take a chance.

This was a good plan because it worked.  Our meal in “Viva Brazil!” was interesting and good.  There is a substantial buffet island with cold and hot food to load onto your plate.  When you have regained your seat you have to turn a beer mat which is green on one side and red on the other.  Green means that you want one of the roving waiters to bring something to your table.

The waiters wander round with a metal spike on which is impaled meat of some sort and, with the large and menacing knife that he also carries around be begins to carve off a slice which you pick up (with what looks like a pair of sugar tongs) and transfer it to your plate.  A very nice idea and there was plenty to eat.  I think the trick of the place is to ensure that your first selection of food will accompany what is going to be brought to your table.  I chose various types of potato and fish – I do like surf and turf!

But it was expensive.

Sunday was The Day and it Went Well with our eventually being upgraded to “White” armbands which meant that we were able to walk through the crowds (rather than be part of them) into the area directly in front of the stage on which the heroes of the team were to parade themselves.

This achievement was preceded by a beautiful meal in La Strada (if my memory serves me properly) in which I had the best risotto, of the seafood variety, that I have ever eaten.  It was washed down, however, by one hundred and twenty quid’s worth of booze which made an al fresco meal into something of a fiasco.

But an excellent day which prepared me in no way whatsoever for the next “illegal” day off school.

Monday started on a somewhat delicate note because of the alcoholic orchestration of the previous day but I was determined to use all the time to the full so I went to Tesco and spent, because that is what I do.  Well.

There was also time to visit Hadyn (yes I know that it isn’t spelled like that, but I have spelled it like that for as long as I have known him and I am simply not prepared to change now) and sit, in glorious sunshine, in his back garden.  Somewhat unexpectedly I was also able to help him repair the fence.  Never let it be said that I was not prepared to earn my cups of tea!

The exact time of my departure was a bit hazy for me and so it was only when I was galvanized into activity by Paul 1 who said that I needed to make a move that I did.  Through a complicated piece of key exchange I had to leave the Pauls in a pub go and pack and then return to key to the Pauls and go on my way.

The packing, amazingly, took longer than it should have done and, with all my little purchases stuffed into the walk-on luggage the damn thing would hardly close.  As it was I have to carry my computer and hope that they would not insist, as I have seem Them do, that I put it in my suitcase for the passing of the control.  Shutting the case with a computer in it would have broken the thing in two.

I left the Pauls (at least the Pub) with a vague feeling that I could make the flight with enough time, but I did not have the confidence to check that this was so.

In the event this che sara, sara approach worked and I got petrol and to the airport in plenty of time.  I must try that attitude again!

I failed to pass the security check and was patted down and my shoes checked.  My case failed the security check and various things had to be dug out of the congealed mass of commodities and dirty clothes.  The Sudafed didn’t make it and my mobile phone was checked for traces of explosive.  I asked.

I think that my idiotic purchase of sparklers and Roman Candle type decorations for Toni’s birthday cake may have been the cause of this as I plonked the sparklers and candles into my case before I realized the impossibility of actually getting them out of the country!  Can it be that their machinery is so sensitive that it can pick up decorative gunpowder, still wrapped after having been left in a case for a day or so?  If so, so impressive!

I eventually got through and settled down to while away the stretched time that exists in every airport terminal in the world.  In the event it was not too bad and the flight was called at the time that they said it would be.

Bristol Airport is now one of the most unfriendly places I have ever been to.  If you are flying EasyJet the walk from the plane and to the plane is of almost comic length.  Indeed they have put up notices to tell you that you are still on course and I have seen more than one able-bodied traveller eye the wheelchairs provided at strategic points throughout the Long Trek with what can only be described as longing!

The flight was full and generally uneventful and, although I didn’t get an emergency exit seat I was allowed to move to the back where there were free rows so I was able to spread out.  I will pass over the collection of returning Spanish schoolchildren in silence, which is certainly not what they did!

An 8.15 start the next day dampened the spirits when I finally got home in a much more expensive taxi than usual and so I drifted off to sleep eventually, I was that tired that sleep was not easy, with the dread of an examination marking packed week ahead.

And that it what it was, with OU work being a distant memory.

In spite of the crap in school I did, at the end of the week I managed to write my “object driven” and “object centred” approach to the Festival of Britain Crown that I chose as my object for the first exercise on the Tutor Group Forum.  I have thoroughly enjoyed this introduction to the course and I am finding the comments on the National Forum even more stimulating.  I am not as securely in my comfort zone with this course material and I think that is a very good thing.

I did make the mistake of looking at some post connected with “A150 Exam Results” which was a foolish and masochistic thing to do.  Hysteria is, after all, catching!

So to the end of this week and The Wedding.

This was held in a Masia in the countryside, down a winding dirt track and was excellent.

The actual ceremony was held outside with white draped seat a la Americana with real rose and flower petals strewn along the sides of the path leading to the “stage”.  All very pretty, but when we arrived we were not given a drink.  And we went on not being given a drink (apart from a table with bottles of water on it!) for longer than was strictly necessary!

Once the ceremony was over we were ushered to a canopied area where, to my horror, we were offered a drink composed of tropical fruits!  My aghast face must have spoken volumes as glasses of Cava soon appeared.

The yucca crisps were a nice touch and they prepared us for an entrance to the courtyard area of the Masia where, passing by the kids who had been issued with soap mixture to create a curtain of bubbles we came to the tapas.  These were, without exception, exceptional!

From sushi with cream cheese (!) to jamon iberico everything was tasty, beautifully presented and interesting.

The highlight for me was a mini scallop gratinated on its shell.  Toni’s mum and I regarded these as our rightful property and consumed a plate of them before we were dragged away clawing for more!

Some of these tapas were presented on plastic spoons, the disposable equivalent of Chinese soupspoons but with an arched stem.  I believe that the traditional adjective to use for such elegant constructions of food is exquisite – and they were.

The Cava was on tap, as it were and with hot tapas following the cold together with plates of risotto we had had our meal before the meal started!

Food, food and more food.  And we were even threatened (I thought it was a joke) with yet more food after the dancing.  It was not a joke and I refused to push another morsel through my mouth!

The distribution of gifts meant that I am now the proud possessor of a mini bottle of Cava and a Cuban cigar!

At the moment we are preparing to go out to lunch after which I think the next time that I will need to eat will be sometime in the distant summer.  You will note that I used the word “need” in the last sentence.  That gives me, as they say, “wriggle room”!

And I still have to get back to Castelldefels to prepare for the week which is getting closer all the time.