Last Days Again!

Yet again, displacement activity comes to the fore and precludes my doing anything useful for education.  When in doubt, type – seems like a philosophy for survival to me!

This is the start of my last week in education.  I am stating that with increasing fervour so that I will not be tempted by the warm summer months and a decent timetable to think of anything other than retirement!  The demands of the OU make it easier to contemplate the extra free time and commandeer it for study!

Seriously, this week has to encompass my producing, as if my magic, hundreds of results to give some sort of numerical authenticity to my past six-ish month sojourn in the school on the hill.  Normally this would not be a problem, but the new computer platform which has been created to make our job so much easier, does, in fact, unsurprisingly, make it considerably more stress-filled.  But, for me, each time I do something now, I am conscious that I am doing it for the last time, and that does make it somewhat easier.  To say the least.

On the other hand, there is also a sort of time-stretch which occurs when I think of distant Friday when I finally shake the dust form my sandals and quit and the time seems to extend itself into some sort of grotesque lengthened insult to my impatience.  However, parasite-like I am feeding off the barely concealed resentment of my colleagues as they realize that I will be sailing into the blue beyond while they have years to go before they sleep (and years to go before they sleep).

I have now been intimidated by the rest of my frantic colleagues into making at least a pretence of “doing something” with the exam marks.  The typing will have to cease, as the Americans say, momentarily.

I’m back!  I made the attempt and am waiting for a colleague to give her expert “massaging” advice to my final figures so that they can be published as something which can be taken seriously.  Karl Marx (with his well known attitude towards statistics and imaginative numbers) would delight in our school!

I did precisely no English teaching today.  I had a free instead of a sixth form lesson; I invigilated part of a Catalan exam; I filmed part of a drama lesson and finally sat in sullen silence watching the dreadful behaviour of kids supposedly watching a film.  And then home.

Where the news was good and bad.  The good was the kids were having a party in the park and we did not have to go to that.  The bad was the gathering for adults was at 9.30 pm at night and so god alone knows what time I will get back this evening – and its up at half six tomorrow morning and teaching at eight fifteen!  God help!

It looks as though I am not going to get my Grown Up Camera before the end of term (at least the end of term for me) and I will have to wait for later in the summer before I try it out and see whether I can get back to the standard of picture taking that I had with my old Canon.  Time will tell.

More and more dirt is being displayed in public about the disgraceful way in which political parties in this country behave.  The “ruling” party continues to astonish by its blatant disregard of the avalanche of multitudinous items of corruption and amazing misuse of public funds which would have ensured its dismissal anywhere in northern Europe.  The hollow cypher which (I use the word advisedly) is our Prime Minister continues to wander aimlessly around this country, and even more embarrassingly, around Europe where his shambling appearances produce widespread indifference and he is generally ignored as a total irrelevance in modern politics.

The weather is disgraceful and the summer continues its shamefully unseasonal progress through to the holidays when I hope its comes to its senses and lavishes sunshine on my work exhausted limbs.

The jaunt to Terrassa was exhausting because of its late start, but we made it home just before midnight and I fell asleep almost at once as soon as I had downloaded the drama videos to one of the grudgingly “loaned” memory sticks that I have managed to squeeze out of the school stock.

The whole of the drama course has been a productive failure with lots of good ideas foisted on unsuspecting kids which should result in a more rational and effective course next year – except I will not be teaching it and the teacher who takes back the class has other ideas and I am not prepared to present mine in a systematized way because there are only four days left of my career and, basically, I can’t be bothered.

The major element in the course this term has been the filming of a group-produced script.  The process has been valuable and I only hope that the kids have been able to take something from it, because the final results are a little less than professional.  If I am realistic there is a limit to what can be done with only an hour a week, but if it is spread over a longer period and more time is spent on the production of the script interspersed with workshop type exercises in monologue, dialogue and filming I think that it can work.

My most pressing academic chore, which is becoming more pressing with each passing day, is to put my “results” into the computer system.

This chore is much more than that because the computer system seems to have taken ag’in’ me, and no matter how hard I try to get my access information to do just that, I remain stubbornly on the outside looking in, rather than inside and completing the information.

In my wallet is a tattered piece of paper with barely legible instructions about how to get in, but yesterday I spent almost an hour trying various forms of propitiation to get the system to bend to my will – and failed.  There are some sixty results which I have not yet fabricated to enter and even assuming that I can get each one out of the way in just a minute that means a concentrated hour of my time is going to be devoted to this particular piece of vacuousness.  I think that Wednesday is going to be the day as that particular day I have to stay in this place until the final bell, so there are various times when I will have the enforced opportunity to do what should have been done before.

The weather is dreadful.  It is overcast and sultry and has that sort of glare that is the bane of contact lens wearers.  Talking of which I am getting on better with my present lenses than any since I started wearing them – or at least since my eyes went their separate paths and made wearing a simple prescription impossible.  The present attempt to get my sight back to something approaching normality uses the same approach of past opticians, that is trying to get my right eye corrected for reading and my left one for distance and then attempting to get my brain to sort out the messages to make it all work.  In the past this has not happened, but this time there seems to be a greater inclination on the part of my little grey cells to do their stuff.

The only problem is driving at night when the confusion of messages is exacerbated by the out of focus halo effect around lights which produce a very complex view of the road.  I think that I will have to get a pair of glasses made which correct the right eye to distance and equalize the vision.  Or wear glasses for night driving – I do, after all, have four new pairs to choose from!

If the contact lenses are encouraging, the glasses (in all their unbelievable expense) are not.  The new ones are not a patch on the old ones and the area of good sight in the multi-focals is severely limited.  I suppose they are just something else to get used to, but at the moment I prefer the lenses.

Much to my surprise my lack of glasses has prompted a storm of questions from the kids, in spite of the fact that my previous glasses were nigh on invisible!  Perhaps I underestimate their powers of observation!

Meanwhile, there is a day to get through.  At least this is my early end – and another day will be able to be crossed off in the final countdown! 

What next!

What to start with!  So much to say and so little inclination to say it!

Probably the lady with big boobs is most worthy of note.  Not, you might think, remarkable.  There are, after all, many pictures of ladies with big boobs.  You can see them everywhere.  And I think that is part of the point.  And the word point is significant too.

As I have finally finished the bulk of my 3ESO marking and put the marks on my computer before putting them on the school computer, I felt that some form of mild celebration was in order.  So we went out for a beer and tapa this evening.

After denouncing a group of Romanians who were raiding the charity clothing bins in the centre of town in broad daylight we had a few bevvies and then I had occasion to use the facilities in the bar.  The toilets were in good order but it was the positioning of the photograph of the lady with the big boobs.  Which was just above the water line on the back of the toilet.  Presumably we were supposed to aim for the nipples!  Questionable taste I fear!

I have now consumed the mini bottle of Cava which was the guys’ gift from the couple we went to see get hitched what seems like months ago.  The reason for drinking this inestimable liquid was because the Scumbags have left for another week and given us the gift of their non-presence.  However, we fully expect their re-appearance next week and that will signal their summer stay.  We count each week they are not here as an extra present!

My penultimate week has now been completed and I am looking forward to only five more working days to the end of my career!  There is much filling in of spaces on a computer to facilitate the production of end of year reports and there are two extra examination papers which I will have to mark.  But the end is very much in sight.

Which is more than can be said for my Grown Up Camera which still appears to be languishing in customs in the UK and not in my hands in Catalonia!  And it looks as though it is going to be unlikely that I get it before the end of term.  Ah well, delayed gratification is something which should be second nature to a person of my generation!

There has been much good-natured banter about our respective triumphs in our recent examinations.  I have to admit that I have never been so relieved in my life to get a comparable result to you-know-who to ensure that we are both on a level playing field!

The next part of my course continues seamlessly with the first TMA sent in and our area of concern now having switched from Greek Vases to Iconoclasm.  Never a dull moment!

Tomorrow Terrassa for the birthday of one of the kids.

Life goes on.

Will this essay never get writ!

Yet again the demands of life transcend art, and I have omitted my daily writing task.  I can of course plead pressure of work and the demands of an OU course which has taken over my waking moments, but it would be false.  There is always time to write.

Anyway, I haven’t but am now trying to make up for it.

Part of the problem is my approach to the first assignment in the new course.  I have been hunting around for something new to say on an area that must be worked dry from the point of view of the poor marker!  I have read more about Greek Attic Vases in the past weeks than I have ever read in the whole of my previous life!

And very interesting it has been too, though I have been less than academically rigorous about saving my references so there is going to have to be a wholesale rewriting of the sites that I have visited before the piece of work can be thought to be finished.

I do at least have a rough draft, and I have crafted a fine ending but it’s the painstaking putting of it all together that takes up the real time.  I have two days left and, ideally, I would like to send the thing off today – but we shall see how far I am able to get through the nitty-gritty.  To say nothing of cutting down the words that I have used to ensure that I stay within the Draconian limits demanded by the OU!  I fear that some of my more interesting details will have to be sacrificed in the interest of brevity.

As a welcome change from sitting in front of a class doing an examination, I am now in front of a class preparing for one – with only one sainted child opting to complete the work on Billy Elliot that we have been doing over the past week or so.

I have also been informed (and it always comes as a complete shock) that this will probably be the last class that I take with this particular group as exams and the end of term will eat up the rest of the time!  Prepared as always!

It is rumoured that summer might have come at last.  Today is hot, especially in Building 1 where there is no air conditioning and we are threatened with a tomorrow which will be scorching.  As we are in the elevated purlieu of the rich in Barcelona we do not have the muggy closeness of the city, but even here it is on the verge of being unpleasantly hot.  At last!

This has been an odd build up to summer and not a very pleasant one; I trust that it does not bode ill for the rest of the sunny season.  Even though I will be hard at work on the course during the summer I do not want the weather to be so un-Catalan that I am forced to my books for solace!

I am also telling myself that it is time for me to finalize my decision about what I am going to study next year.  And, more importantly, pay the grossly inflated fees that we overseas students are expected to pay!  Still, that’s what the money is for: to be spent.  And it is hardly the action of a wastrel to follow a degree course!

When I leave school in quarter of an hour’s time, there will be eight (8) working days left.  The lack of belief in my going is shared by staff and pupils alike and they confidently expect me to be sitting in my usual place, typing quietly come September. 

The kids have reasoned that one or both of the ladies who will be teaching my timetable will get pregnant and therefore I will be called upon once more.  The calls, I regret to say, will go unheeded. 

The siren call of the Third Floor will prove stronger and, as incentive, I must remember that I will never have so agreeable a timetable as the one I am working out now!  With, as I might have mentioned, single digit, eight working days to go!

Now lunch with Toni and a final push to finish the OU work!

Sun and singing!

The calm before the storm. 

Yesterday was one of those days when there was too much to be done to make a start on anything and the amount of work didn’t really fit into the time available.  But it was at times like that that I remembered the wisdom of my colleague David whose soothing words in times of crisis came back to me, “Stephen, it will get done!” – and to be fair it always has got done and there was no reason to suppose that yesterday would have been any different from all the other chaos filled days. 

Chaos, I might add, self-inflicted by unreasonable demands on limited time by a self regulating school which could, if it chose to do so, arrange things very differently.  But they don’t.

And, sure enough, all the work did get done and with a frightening synchronicity the head of department turned up at the exact moment when I had put the last result into the computer! 

I don’t know whether to be flattered or annoyed at her assumption that I would get the marking done in double quick time – a function of getting the horrible stuff done with the efficiency of a machine when I have to!  Anyway, the marks (such a they were) are now safely with the powers that be and are still in their raw state before the computational and administrative magic has been applied to produce the final results – a process which I now regard with the same sort of weary resignation that I afford the system of politics in this country!

The pre opera time was taken up with a large (and very welcome) glass of G&T in a central street café near Suzanne’s place of recuperation and then on to the environs of the Liceu for a meal. 

I decided to “go vulgar” and went to an Irish Bar near part of the University where I had a club sandwich, a glass of Irish “red” beer as the next best thing to a pint of lager and a hot chocolate brownie.  The sandwich was virtually tasteless, the brownie calorie packed with ice cream and foamy cream and the pint alone being excellent.  That little lot came to €15!  An absurd amount of money for what I had and indeed could have got on the Ramblas itself.  Though I should remind myself that my foolish “small beer” in the interval of the opera taken on the Ramblas sitting outside and watching the foreigners go by cost €5.50!

Added to all the previous expense was the fact that I went to the “wrong” car park to use the cut price parking ticket that you buy in the Liceu to make your stay a little less painful – and so my ticket was useless and that is another €7.20 I will not see again!

The opera itself was reasonably well done, L’elisir d’amore in a Gran Teatre del Liceu production designed by Mario Gas.  The set was functional and looked good with the overture being a time of the waking up of the town which was done with some style.

Musically, again, the orchestra under Daniele Callegari was excellent with the addition of a stage band which was a welcome part of the vitality of the production.  The chorus under José Luis Basso was as competent as usual and their stage movement was professional and assured.

I don’t know if I am getting more demanding, but, as with the last production that I saw, I felt that the roles were under sung.  Or I did until the second act when Nemorino (Roland Villazón) came into his own in “the” aria and had the sort of audience reception that opera singers dream of!  In fact all of the singers seemed to grow into the roles in the second act and the (extended) curtain call with an encore from Doctor Dulcamara (Ambrogio Maestri) nailed it as far as the audience was concerned!

Belcore (Joan Marin-Royo) left me fairly cold, but Adina (Aleksandra Kurzak) developed a voice which commanded attention.  Ciannetta (Cristina Obregón) was competent and pleasing.

All in all a satisfactory end to my opera season and also and end to my “high level” seat as next season I descend to the platea or stalls for my next cultural injection!

I really must do a fuller survey of the hostals in the area to get a more comprehensive view of what I can expect to pay for my stay-a-night-an-opera approach to my future musical outings when I am not frustrated by the necessity of going to school the next morning!  This calls for some intensive planning, alas!  So that ain’t going to happen!

The pressure to get going on my double part assignment for the OU is ever more pressing and HAS to be started this weekend if there is any reasonable likelihood of its being completed by the deadline.  As Toni has upped the ante by his totally unreasonable results I am duty bound to “make an effort” to emulate his achievement.  Damn him!

I am fairly confident about the first part of the assignment but the second part is more difficult as there are vast lacunae in the life of the vase that I am supposed to be talking about which will have to be filled in with informed speculation!  Informed speculation based on about ten days of Instant Connoisseur courtesy of the OU!  We shall see!

On the positive side I have just been told that my august presence is not needed in the Departmental meeting this afternoon as long as I contribute some “creative” ideas for the use of the iPad as soon as possible.  I suppose that I will have to fabricate some sort of creative mish-mash and pass it off as possible pedagogy.  This is one overriding feature of this work that should make my task just that little bit easier – I will not have to teach any of it!  I am therefore limited only by how lenient I want to be with my colleagues!

Lunch was in our usual place and was as good value as ever but not, alas very interesting either.

The sun however is appearing with some regularity and I am cooking nicely.  Toni, bless him, says that if I get any darker I will start being racially harassed!  I have checked my skin colour against that of a New Zealand teacher and I am only marginally darker at the moment and he will inevitably overtake me as the summer progresses – perhaps it is just as well that I only have eleven (count them) working days left in gainful employment and that limits the time that he has left to get a more convincing tan than me – even if he does have a native built in advantage!

Toni has now had a (brief) swim in the pool only five (count them) days after I entered the outdoor pool for the first time this year!  This is unheard of and just shows how debilitated I have become with the dictates of teaching full time again draining me of that hardy couldn’t care less attitude towards personal warmth in the water that used to be a characteristic of mine!

Perhaps when I am back in the land of reality and away from education perhaps I will return to more regular swimming than I am doing at the moment.  And I will re-subscribe to The Guardian again!