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.

A Day To Remember!

A day which starts with an extended dream taking its inspiration from a combination of Midsomer Murders and The Walking Dead is never a good sign.  And, even though I survived (naturally) the carnage, it left me weary and, at the tail end of the dream, trying to convince a sceptical reporter that I knew “all the facts” and that “I could tell him so much that his career would be made!”  Things were getting progressively more complicated when the blessed alarm went off and more mundane realities truncated illusory slaughter and its aftermath!

The action may have been unreal but the weariness is with me now and that sense of other-worldliness stays!  Though I am sure that such whimsicality will be dissipated by my first contact with the clients!

There was a glorious sunrise as I came to school this morning with a burning, searing blaze from the low rising star.  That magnificence has been moderated into a much more hazy day with brightly-dull weather.

I am feeling quite alienated from what is going on in school and this is exacerbated by the fact that I arrive early and my first lesson is not until 10 o’clock.  I therefore sit facing the door and watch successions of people come in and out, fussing about their own business.  And I sit impassively watching the world go by.  This gives me time to settle in and become more disgruntled (because a lesson delayed is a lesson threatened) until the pressing concerns of adolescent youth deflect my own introspection into something more responsive!

The most productive thing I have done so far is to have an internal debate with myself in “And do I dare” T S Eliot style about having another cup of my individually packaged and blended tea mixture.  I have eventually, after prolonged and indolent internal discussion decided to forego the pleasure and wait, allowing delayed gratification to make more piquant the flavour of the tea when I finally drink my second cup!

MARGARET THATCHER IS DEAD!

The news that I have been waiting to hear for years has finally been broadcast!

I am the first to say that the illustration I have chosen is cheap, inappropriate, unfair and crass.  And frankly, my dear, I couldn't give a damn!

Yes, I know that rejoicing at a human’s death is demeaning at best and bestial at worst.  But this is Margaret Thatcher; a woman whose policies I have loathed ever since that milk-snatching bitch was made Minister of Education. 

Her use of the Falklands Conflict to bolster her retention of power was sickening in its self-seeking indifference of any concept of morality.  Her denial of community, her treatment of the Unions, her disgusting approach to the Miners’ Strike, her promotion of self, her anti-cultural, anti-BBC, anti-anything that I care about attitude means that I can feel little sympathy for her passing. 

Obviously I feel for her family, but for her – I feel nothing but . . . and there is the problem.  I find it difficult to find the right word to express my long-standing something or other about her life, policies and politics!  I suppose I could dedicate my life to finding the right word to encapsulate my feelings for That Woman!

I have, at last, lit the Margaret Thatcher candle that my mother bought be so many years ago.  As I look at her slowly burning on the table, her blue bouffant hair has gone and she looks as though the Holy Ghost has sliced the top of her head off and taken up residence in the middle of her cranium!

I have washed out my unfeasibly long millennium glass and filled it with my favourite Cava.  And I have drained it many times.  Even Toni has taken a token sip of Cava to “Celebrate good times, come on!” (thank you Kool and the Gang) and we are planning to go out and “ditto” before I fall into bed and try to get up tomorrow morning! 

Margaret is burning steadily.  And just how much I hate her is surely shown in the fact that the candle could have raised near to €100 or even one hundred quid on e-bay, perhaps even more now that the bitch is dead.  But there was not way on earth that I could have gone back on what I have told so many people: namely, that I would burn her as soon as she died.  And that, my friends, is exactly what I have done.

Of course I extend the invitation to everyone to come and visit me and partake of a glass of Cava to celebrate her passing.  And no one who is right thinking (not in your way Margaret!) would be denied a drink of the bubbly stuff should they come calling and say that they have seen the video of my lighting the candle that Toni says he has put on YouTube!  Well, he is still working on it and the uploading seems to have taken an age, so I am not confident that the finished article is going to be available for viewing!

He has also suggested that I put the video in this blog, but I am not sure how to do that.  Something new to try and it couldn’t be tried for a better reason!

And now out we go for a celebratory meal!

I think that the link to the little video about the demise of Thatcher on YouTube recorded by Toni is: 

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

Click on it and share my pleasure.  Guilty pleasure perhaps, but real nevertheless!

The meal that we eventually had was in our third choice of restaurant - we had forgotten that Monday is not a good day to eat out - but we had a good meal and I had another bottle of Cava!

A new world!