Terms of education

Here we are again!  

Siting in front of a class of students busily guessing their way through a multi-choice exam paper while I study my timetable for the day here in my local English language school and shudder at the thought of what looks like four straight periods with the same mixed history and chemistry year 13 class.

My continuing failed retirement takes a new turn at the start of this new term and New Year.  I was scheduled to spend the rest of this truncated week in my local school covering for a colleague who has left and has not yet been replaced.  However, mu old school has also contacted me (yesterday) and informed me that the colleague who was supposed to have come back rom an extended sick leave was doing no such thing and that my services (on a strictly time-limited basis, honestly) were required.

Cynical as I am, I can appreciate the quandary for the head of English who is looking to provide some degree of continuity for pupils who have had a pretty disrupted term during the major teaching period of the year.  And my appreciation was made more pointed by the fact that the head of department actually appealed to my past experience to increase the guilt element in her discourse that she felt could influence my teaching choices.

The end result of my conversation with her is still being worked out, but it could result in my returning to the School on the Hill.  Not for the first time since I ostensibly left!

There is also a cunning plan yeastily stirring in the recesses of my New Year brain, but I will have to wait until further into the day to find out if I can take my strategy to the next level.

I have to admit that it seems unlikely because not only the teacher for whom I am covering, but also another colleague failed to turn up today.  This means that there is even more pressure on the supply list and my suggestion is unlikely to be taken up by the head of secondary, in which case things are back to where they were before the head of English from the School on the Hill phoned me.

For the first time I was awoken (well, that is not strictly true, I was wide awake well before the time that the alarm was supposed to go off, so it might be more strictly true to say that “I was prompted to action”) by the alarm of the new iPhone.  The rising melodic harp-like notes were less instantly hateful than the single alarm that I could find on the other phone.  Though it is probably true that I will come to hate this melody in the same way and to the same extent as the other as soon as it drags me from comfortable dreams!

It may be purely psychological, but I am responding far better to this new phone than I ever did to the other.  This is obviously partially psychological because some of the disadvantages of the new machine are patently obvious – the most glaring being the way that information is inputted.  The Android machine used the sweep finger approach to typing which I found frighteningly accurate.  My fingers are rather too spatulate for the small “keys” on the iPhone screen and turning the thing sideways does not seem to increase the size of the keyboard.

I am using iTunes to transfer the music and amazingly the Apple earphones seem to be an appreciable step forward in technology and easy of use.  They actually work well and are comfortable to wear – certainly compared with the previous versions.

The saddest thing about the iPhone is that the unique power plug’s reversibility is an actual selling point!  And had a round of applause at the launch!

It is light and slim and all the other features seem to work in very much the same way as on the Android phone.  My texts and emails do work more easily on the iPhone and the quality of the screen is excellent in the way it reproduces pictures.  But is it worth the money?  Almost certainly not.  Am I resentful of the amount of money I paid for it?  Probably.  Am I happy?  Yes.  I am one of the saddos who think that being fully Mac-ed or Appl-ed is a good and wholesome thing.

I have just had a History lesson where the kids had just started work on William I or William the Bastard and the way in which he was attempting to wrest control from the English (whoever they were at this time) and establish his dynasty.  It was a delight to talk about something about which I knew at least something.  Solubility product KSp is only going to get me so far in Chemistry at year 13 level!

And now I am back in the School on the Hill.  Reasons too complex and guilt complexes too deep have ensured this transition and now I am back in harness and all things are as they were.  Some people have taken my continuing presence in the place so much for granted that they have not even realized that I shouldn’t be here!  Taken for granted – and at my age too!  Such is life! 

I am not sure if I have done the right thing.  From the point of view of the pupils then I am certainly to be credited with putting their concerns within the outer limit of my ambit of thought, but to commit myself to staying here until June is perhaps beyond the call of duty.  Though, as one should never forget, I am, after all, paid for my selfless devotion.  Not enough, but still, paid.

My colleagues have greeted my reappearance with weary disbelief and they put down my presence to a lack in my own motivation towards a life free of school.  There might be an element of reality in their dismissive evaluation!

For example, I took a “Drama” class this morning and broached the topic of script writing with them.  A few simple exercises and they were writing with a fluency and delight which showed that the few basic tips that I gave them were fully assimilated and had become part of their writing strategies!  Such observable progress in a matter of minutes is one of the great delights of teaching.  Perhaps that sort of thing is more akin to a drug than to professionalism – or perhaps one produces the other!

I should remind myself that I have been here for less than one day and I am looking forward to staying here for the next six months.  God, that has a sobering ring to it!

Meanwhile I am looking forward to my final lesson of the day which is also the last period of the day.  This is very poor planning and gives me no opportunity to slope off.  A process which I fully intend to make a characteristic of my remaining time in this school!

The non-delivering delivery service allegedly made an abortive attempt to get my goods to me in the morning which means that I had to go into town to reclaim my stuff: a new (old) set of Sibelius symphonies with bits and pieces and an amazing EMI set of Twentieth Century Music comprising 16 discs of music in roughly chronological order which I am busily feeding into the iMac so that I can listen while I work on my OU stuff.  Disappointingly the upload rate for iTunes is not great and it takes an inordinate time to get the music electronically available.  But I am sure that it will be worth the effort.  Eventually.  I have only listened to part of the set, but at least with EMI you can relax about recording quality.

The Berglund Sibelius seems to be an idiosyncratic view of the pieces, at least from a listening to two of the symphonies with his tempos being on the slow side, though it does bring out different textures from the orchestra than I am used to hearing – whether I like his view of the pieces I have not yet decided, but they are certainly food for thought and it will be interesting to compare in a more immediate way when the whole of my collection of Sibelius is on the computer and only a click away from hearing.

I am now in my second day of the rest of the school year.  And still thinking about what I have said that I will do.  The sense of my actions will perhaps be clearer when I have yet another leaving party in the summer. 

It’s something to look forward to!

 

The day before

A bright and sunny day though it has to be admitted that the sky is also overladen with pesky clouds too – but it is a day of no school so one should not be overly depressed by the potential overwhelming of the sun.

I should, I suppose, take back some of my anger expressed towards the saintly delivery company MRW yesterday.  Today, bright and early a cheery man drove up and actually delivered two items that I had purchased from Amazon and even as I type I am loading up one of the deliveries to iTunes.

All the major recording companies seem to be trying to wring the last few drops of money out of their old recordings so there are box sets at amazing prices to be had by those who read Amazon listings for fun. 

My latest acquisition is a 100-disc compilation entitled “The Masters of Music” as this compendium cost me less than forty quid one has to look for the catches in such a bargain.  And they are not difficult to find.  The disc that I am downloading at present is the “Symphonic Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in B Minor” by Wilhelm Furtwangler who is better known to me as one of the Great Masters of conducting rather than composition.  This will be the first time that I have (consciously) heard any of his music.  In this performance the orchestra is conducted by the composer – in 1939! And even in its re-mastered form it sounds like it! 

And many of the discs are from the 40s and 50s, and their contents do not stretch the format – many of the discs contain under 50 minutes of music.  Though, to take just one of the 100 recordings which is from the 50s and is under 50 minutes long: Glenn Gould with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Herbert von Karajan playing a Beethoven concerto – who can complain about that combination, especially at that price!  I suppose that one can always justify having historic recordings in your collection and certainly at under 50p a disc, especially as some of the offerings are from much later times it would be churlish to be ungrateful.

The other box sets that I have bought (all at bargain prices) from Philips, Decca, Mercury etc are startling in quality and price.  And although many of the pieces of music are popular classics the performances are well worth having as excellent extra versions in their own right.

Many of these discs I remember from my time in university and later when they were the expensive full-price versions that I couldn’t afford.  I relied on the wealth of cheap recordings that coincided with my adolescence to boost my collection, labels like Allegro, Hallmark, Marble Arch, Heliodor, Saga and of course, Music for Pleasure and Classics for Pleasure.  God bless them all!  They formed my musical taste – though often more by the quality of the cover art than anything else more musically respectable!

My first Nielsen and Mahler records were bought purely because I liked the pictures on the covers of the records: I had never heard of either of the composers!  In the case of Mahler’s symphonies I would say that I have not progressed very much beyond my initial liking of the 4^th and later adoration of the 1^st.  I have, of course listened to all of them (including the 0^th or 10^th) and heard most of them in concerts but Mahler is not to my taste whereas Nielsen has become one of my favourite composers and certainly the one to whom I listen most and I can, with certainty, trace my early knowledge of the composer to a chance purchase of a Heliodor record in the years when the world was young!  I would also say with more than reasonable confidence that my present collection of Nielsen recordings is unmatched in Castelldefels; surely to god there cannot be two of us with the same fixation!

Meanwhile, in the background, Furtwangler’s concerto plays through the speakers of my new iMac and it becomes clearer why this is the first time I have heard it.  However I will give it another chance, though the dead sound of this recording with the orchestra seemingly playing at the end of a corridor does it no favours!  And it’s over an hour long!  Though the second movement is growing on me!

All this typing is displacement activity, as I should be checking that I have white shirts which are capable of being worn in public – which means ironing, which in turn means misery.  I have never managed to find that imaginary point of enlightenment where ironing is anything other than a supremely irritating chore.  So I do very little of it and only iron, as it were in self-defence when it is impossible to avoid.  Teaching, however is one of those times when a wrinkled, curling collar is simply not acceptable.  Damn it!

We are now getting close to lunch time, but Toni is still far from well and has stayed in bed so we will have to cope at home and not go out to one of our chosen eateries – ah well, what better way to prepare for the harsh reality of teaching tomorrow!

Ill and everything

Toni is not better, indeed is worse, than he was yesterday, so the proposed trip to Terrassa has been cancelled and the day has been given over to not feeling well.

As usual, I feel fine.  Which doesn’t really help as I have to keep showing a face of concern for longer than is humanly possible when one also has to be worrying about the forthcoming beginning of term and whether one has sufficient clean white shirts to get one through one’s next bout of teaching.  Even if it is only proposed to be four days long.

I have kept up my new swimming regime for a grand total of two consecutive days; something of which to be proud!  It is, oddly easier to keep up my swimming on teaching days than when I have more time.  Yet another of the odd paradoxes which define our species!

I called into Lidl before my swim to get tonic water for Toni who is not eating properly and wants what he wants.  I took the opportunity while I was there to buy a Rascon because today is the day to eat it.  This round, loaf-like cake has a hole in the middle and what is left forms a cream sandwich in which is secreted a series of small toys of which the most important is the King.  The person who finds the king in the slice of cake that they have is the one who, in theory, is supposed to buy the cake the next year.

This is no small responsibility – a casual look at the price of these damn things, which can easily reach twenty quid, quickly disabuses you of their triviality.  Which is why I was in Lidl.  Even if Toni is too ill to eat it, we have two further (non-traditional) days to get it eaten and even if neither of us actually wants to eat it the Lidl cost makes it easier to throw away!

On another cultural tack I have been benefitting from the largess of Amazon in the seasonal price reduction in a series of Kindle books.  I have bought a few to store up on my over-used machine.

The book that I am reading at present is based on the television programme hosted by Stephen Fry called “IQ” which takes a series of well known assumptions and explores their falsity.  It is full of those sorts of facts that I greedily treasure.  I mean, surely it is important to know that one of my favourite animals is also the one which dreams the most of any creature in the world.  My brain is now filled with little tit-bits of knowledge to be sprung on unsuspecting people during otherwise innocuous conversations!  And the book is barely a third of its way read!  This book possesses the same hypnotic quality as the Guinness Book of Records for those of susceptible propensities.  And god knows, I am one!

I have not yet seamlessly integrated my important gadgets but I am getting there.  At the moment I am exploring the possibility of putting all my iTunes library on the Cloud.  This will give me 26,000 “songs” (as iTunes quaintly puts it) on the Cloud which can be accessed on any of my devices.  I am not absolutely sure, but I think that will be insufficient for my library, and the service costs something like €25 a year – if it is available in Spain.  It is worth thinking about and it would solve the problem of creating an index for my collection.

The world’s greatest non-delivering delivery service aka MRW has yet again shown its quality by not delivering yet another Amazon package.  The time was that this dysfunctional organization used to leave a note telling you that it had failed to deliver something (whether or not you had happened to be in when they (ostensibly) were outside (ostensibly) trying to deliver a package.  They don’t even bother to do that now, merely send an email letting you know that they hadn’t managed to deliver it.  They rely on customers visiting the shop/depot in the centre of Castelldefels, so that we do their jobs for them.  And yes, I am bitter.

The last time I visited the depot, after the firm had sent me a mobile phone message letting me know that my package had (what a surprise) failed to be delivered, they denied all knowledge of it when I actually turned up.

Tomorrow, therefore I intend to be fully armed with a copy of the email with all available reference numbers so that they will not be able to deny it!

And that is the delight of this Sunday.  Whereas all my colleagues in the UK are feeling sick at heart and the thought of the long slog towards Easter and the first Monday of term, I and my Spanish colleagues are relaxed about the extra day of freedom that Monday brings and, while it is a school holiday, it is not a Bank Holiday and so all the shops should be open.  As if.

Still, it is a joy to have a whole day to prepare for the next assault on the walls of ignorance!

The horror to come!

In a shameful reflection of the indolence of the holiday period today was the first time that I went to have my daily swim this year.  On the positive side, I suppose that the date wasn’t actually in double figures!  Now to keep up the determination to go there each day.

Next week I, with the rest of the profession will return to school for a few days supply.  It is difficult to know whether to be pleased or depressed by the fact that yet another term start sees me in harness.  Four days – though it’s just round the corner rather than in Barcelona and it finishes an hour earlier than the School on the Hill.  It’s a win-win situation – apart of course from the teaching element of the experience.

The wonderful thing about my teaching nowadays is that it is for a limited period; I am looking towards four days of teaching and then and end to it.  Unless the head of secondary has other more extended ideas!  My idea was to do a couple of days a month, but if the first week of term is anything to go by, there might be more work than I suspected.  Or feared!

However, I will put my dark fears to one side and see what happens in this New Year.

I have just completed my umpteenth re-reading of “The Lord of the Rings”.  I enjoyed it (as ever) but I am getting more analytical about my responses.  In the Fantasy World Tolkien is a safe pair of hands and he writes effortlessly in a timelessly classic style which at times is a little too effortless and becomes an end in itself. 

It is probably crass to accuse a work like “The Lord of the Rings” of self-indulgence when you could just as well call it a labour of love and there is something delightfully excessive in the detail of language and lore that Tolkien gives to the reader.  You shouldn’t fight it; just let it wash over you.  And if some of lovingly detailed descriptions add little or nothing to the narrative, who cares?

In this reading I found the story quite slow in parts where the writing demands its own solemn, self-important place and where ridges, mountains, ghyls and other geographical elements are lingeringly described.  But I wouldn’t have it otherwise!

I find the last moments of the ring moving and the recognition of the Hobbits’ part in the installation of the King emotionally powerful.  The description of the Dead Marshes seemed shorter than I remembered it, when it made a deep impression on me during my first readings, but feelings change and one’s view of writing changes depending on the forces around one.  Reading of the defeat of the Dark Lord just before the start of terms is always a good idea!

I have still not made my mind up about the performance of Rusalka that I saw recently and I have not done my homework after the event in looking up the director’s reasons for setting the opera in the way that he did.  Work in progress.

I am supposed to be meeting Suzanne tomorrow but communication seems to have broken down somewhat and the arrangements have not been finalized, but we shall see.

I also have to make sure that I have enough clothing for school washed and ready.  Four days!