The Lesson For The Day

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There is nothing like being in a gathering where you are the only person who does not have fluency in the language being used in fast, idiomatic exchanges to encourage you to focus on “unconsidered trifles” (and yes, I did look it up, and I thought it was from another play than the one I first thought of, shame on me!) and then to play around with the levels of irony that you can find in and around your place setting at the dinner table.

One such “trifle” was a bottle top (so to speak), from a bottle of Cava given to me because I was British because we obviously know everything there is to know about alcohol from its manufacture, through bottle opening, to astonishing consumption.  

All the Catalans that I know are, generally speaking, moderate in their drinking habits to the point of squeamishness.  Therefore, my ability to consume more than a single glass of Cava is regarded with something approaching pitying awe - though those last two words sound like an example of oxymoron, but let it pass.  The point is that I am deferred to on matters alcoholic, especially in matters Cava-ic, so I always open the bottles.

I have to admit that I am something of an expert now and pride myself on the efficient removal of all but the most recalcitrant of corks with the minimum of sound.  There are no ‘pops’ when I uncork a bottle of Cava, merely the merest of susurrations - if that!

As I am sure that any ful kno (and I am not prepared to give the source of that deathless quotation based on the Satchmo Principle) under the foil covering the cork is a round metal disc that stops the wire holding the cork in place cutting into the cork itself.  Usually these discs have some sort of design on them and have actually become collectors’ pieces!  Sad buggers, says the grown man who still collects British Commemorative First Day Covers!  You can buy specially designed folders with special pouched plastic sheets to display your treasures!  Says the man who has tens of filled folders with pouched plastic sheets to display his FDCs.

Anyway, a colleague in The School on the Hill in Barcelona once told me that her sister-in-law collected such things and that she would be grateful if I could keep my eye open when a bottle was un-corked and, if I remained sober enough, remember to keep the illustrated disc.  I dutifully collected the discs that I drank through, as it were, and in spite of the fact that my colleague’s husband now owns a restaurant and therefore is an unending supply of little discs, I still look and almost automatically put the discs into my pocket.  And then months later throw them away.  It’s a sort of domestic rite of passage.

The one illustrated above, however, caught my interest because of its innate preachiness.

I always maintain that I was virtually unique in the teaching profession by actually listening to each and every school assembly to which I went.  I mean really listening.  Elsewhere I have noted the extraordinary “quality” of what I heard.  The content ranged from the recited (from a printed book of assembly suggestions), through out-and-out gibberish, to one exceptional Christian assembly in which the basic tenets of religion were comprehensively rejected!   

No matter what was said, there was little to no reaction because people did not listen.  Never mind the kids who adopted the defensive ‘closed ears’ syndrome in an assembly situation, but also the adult teachers who I noted were able to look with empty eyes at the speaker on the stage while at the same time giving a vague impression of being emotionally engaged in what was being said.  One of the tricks to maintain sanity!

There were good assemblies in which well-chosen examples were linked to the kids' lives that, if only they had been listening, would have edified them.  But they were in the minority.

My favourite assembly speaker was, I have to admit, one of the worst.  He was a great aficionado of the “While listening to the radio this morning . . .” and the “On my way to school today I noticed” school of assembly giving.  Whatever he talked about in his free-flowing stream of consciousness, the delivery of the punch line of his words was always the same.  The content may have been conflict in Africa, or charity in India, or the perils of drug taking, or the need to plan your studies, but the punch-line, the denouement, the didactic thrust was always, “Don’t drop litter!”   

His greatest moment came when his topic appeared to be (nothing was ever clear cut) something to do with female hygiene!  Just the way to start the day!  After ten or so minutes of acute embarrassment wondering what the hell the point was that he was trying to make in his indelicate meanderings, we finally to to the  clear, concise and gloriously out of place summary: “Don’t drop litter!”

I couldn’t help thinking of him as I looked at the disc, while speedy Catalan flowed around me: “Sin ALCOHOL”, and I wondered just what he would have produced from such a ready-made stimulus for a student audience!  Perhaps he would have remarked the sinuous, sensuous, swash capital ‘S’ taking up so much of the space, spreading itself on the pristine white as though owning it, literally crowning the bottle!  And then the prosaic sans serif of ALCOHOL in small capitals: the capitals representing the importance of the substance, but the size a reference to the insidious nature of the product: no frills, just threat; there, yet at the same time almost inconspicuous beneath the flamboyance of Sin!  And so on, until the peroration and the exhortation to be tidy!

The real irony, of course is that interpretation only works in English, not in Spanish!

In Spanish the word for ‘sin’ is ‘pecado’ - which we retain in English in the word ‘peccadillo’ meaning a little sin.  Interestingly, though probably only to me, the word ‘peccable’ meaning open to sin, also exists, but this word is more commonly used as its negative as in ‘impeccable’ and therefore forms a part of the select group of words which include ‘gruntled’, 'whelm', ‘kempt’, ‘couth’, ‘ruly’, ‘corrigible’ and ‘wieldy’.

Anyway, in English the Spanish word ‘sin’ means 'without’, so the bottle top disc was actually from a bottle of semi-sec (ugh!) Cava-like liquid, without alcohol!  It tasted, I couldn’t resist it, as disgusting as you might imagine.

I suppose, if you were feeling in the right mood of mischievousness, you could work out a whole ‘assembly’ in which the revolting taste of the drink without alcohol, linked to the free forming and sheer exuberance of the word ‘sin’ and the solid reassurance of the black capitals of the word ALCOHOL are a direct encouragement to sybaritic excess.

But, please to remember, Don’t Drop Litter, and dispose of the metal disc in a container for recycling!

Now, go and learn! 

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The end of the holidays!

The cake was the most important part.

Celebrations of religious festivals, even when the religious element seems to be more of an historical afterthought than the actual basis for the festivity, seem to be only to be justified in terms of what you can eat and drink to make the day(s) special.  And presents of course.

In Britain we do not take the Festival of the Kings quite as seriously as they do in Catalonia.  Kings is very much part of the Christmas Season and I suppose part of the reason why the Sales do not really get started until after parents have made all of their purchases for Kings.

Kings is basically for kids.  There are elaborate processions to welcome the Kings when they come into a town or city, and then there are a series of floats all of which have people on them throwing sweets at the young people who lines the streets to greet them.

In Barcelona the Kings come into the city by sea and then make a triumphant progress into the centre.  We missed the procession on the day before Kings in Terrassa and instead came for the lunch in which the kids (and as it turned out, we too) got presents.

But the highlight of the meal is the cake.  This is a circular cake with a hole in the middle, with the filling being of cream and, most importantly, little things hidden inside the filling.  The official name of this cake is the Tortell de Reis or the King’s Tart, and ours was a magnificent affair with a filling divided into cream and chocolate and hidden inside the filling, somewhere, two inedible things: a porcelain broad bean and a little figure of a king.

The cake is cut up so that everyone gets a piece and then they chomp down.  Carefully!  I did and was ‘rewarded’ by finding a cream covered broad bean.  The significance of that discovery is that you have to buy the cake for the next year!  The person who gets the king figure is rewarded with the golden paper crown that is set in the hollow centre of the cake and is made King of the feast.

If you want more information about the Catalan customs at Christmas then an extensive illustrated explanation may be found at https://www.elnacional.cat/en/culture/a-catalan-christmas-explained_221886_102.html

And I assured you that these are not obscure folk customs, they are part of the everyday life of everyone who lives here!  And if you do read through it all, then I can assure you that the Belen on the stairs by the entrance to our house did have a caganer discretely squatting at the side of the stable!

With the end of that meal, I consider the Christmas Season well and truly over, but we will not be taking down all the Christmas decorations.

As you know, Catalonia and Spain are in the grips of the worst political crisis to have rocked Spain since the Dictatorship of Franco.  The Catalan referendum about independence was blighted by astonishing violence from the police forces of the Spanish national government preventing peaceful people from trying to cast their votes.  Our Catalan President and a slew of political leaders have been forced into exile or have been imprisoned.  The government of Catalonia has been disbanded and the functions of government have been taken over by PP, the minority right wing governing party of Spain whose actual popular mandate in the last election was a measly 4 seats out of 135, their percentage of the popular vote 4.2%!

Political corruption in Spain is rife.  PP is the most corrupt political party in western Europe and hundreds of its members, including all past treasurers of the party, having been accused of corruption or are in the process of being tried or are waiting to be sentenced.  This is the political slime that is deciding the future of our country!

To show solidarity with the imprisoned Catalan politicians twists of yellow ribbon are being worn.  Indeed wearing anything of the colour yellow is now considered something of a political statement by the minority right wing government of Spain.  I wear a yellow ribbon on my shirt at all times and have recently purchased a yellow scarf.  Those of you who know me, know that I never wear scarves, so this recent (and difficult) purchase shows considerable dedication!

Although the national minority government maintains that there is separation between the executive and the judiciary, too many recent examples of unequal treatment and opportunism make such an assertion difficult to believe.  The national minority government also maintains that there are no political prisoners in Spain and that the political leaders have been detained on criminal charges not political ones.  I am reminded of some of the policies of Queen Elizabeth the First who always imprisoned Roman Catholics for acts of treason, never merely because of their religion, that was always a strange coincidence!

While our political leaders are in prison we will keep our Christmas tree up.  It is not decorated in the usual festive manner, but has a whole series of yellow ribbons on the branches and even the lights are yellowish!  It will stay up until Spain sees reason and releases the political prisoners.

These early January days are a low level prologue to the political activity that will take place later in the month, when the new delegates to a new Catalan parliament will take their places.  The election, called by Rajoy, the leader of the minority right wing PP (with a mandate of 4.2% in the popular vote in Catalonia remember) in the hope that the independence parties would lose their majority.  Well they haven’t - but Rajoy and his disgusting collection of corruption monkeys, PP, lost 7 of their 11 seats.

So, if the majority of the elected representatives vote for independence Rajoy has already said that he will ignore the democratic wishes of the Catalan parliament and keep Article 155 in place which allows his 4.2% mandate to give him the right to govern Catalonia.  And don’t get me started on the way that the Spanish Senate is packed with PP fodder!

So, later in the month, all the rites and delights of Christmas are going to be well and truly forgotten as the political cut and thrust lurches back into action.

To find more information about what happened in the last Catalan elections in December, 2017, go to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_regional_election,_2017

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Before the bell rings.

Unease by proxy. 

That’s what I call this weekend.  The holidays are almost over.  Today is Kings when Catalan kids will expect their second (or third) tranche of presents, sweeping together the loot from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the sweets from the procession of the Kings and parental presents for the day itself.  And Monday, reality hits.

As a SRP, (BBLE) that is, Smug Retired Person, Baby Boomer Leading Edge, I regard the end of the holidays and the reopening of the schools as the start of the time when we can reclaim streets, shops, supermarkets and open spaces as the noisy neophyte life forms are herded back into the rightful (if all too brief) seclusion of secure institutions.

As a retired teacher, however I cannot fail to feel that familiar frisson of dread that comes with the looming opening of a new, long, school term.  In Catalonia the new school terms also comes with the deadly threat of Staff Meetings.  However awful you think your experience of meetings might have been, you have not truly suffered until you have undergone the trail by frustration of a Spanish staff meeting in a school. 

I have been to thousands of meetings during my working life and indeed before and after, and the range, complexity and variety of those meetings and the different sorts of people who managed them and participated has been exhilaratingly different.  I was just thinking about the range of ‘meetings’ that I have experienced and the proportion of time that must have been spent on them.  At every stage of my life committees and meetings have been a constant.  In school: clubs, societies, sports, library, Prefects, magazine, orchestra, brass band, charity, hobbies - all have demanded some sort of committee work.  In university: clubs and societies again, but this time with a more formal structure of committee work; student politics; senate sub committees; subject work; trade union activity.  Work: departmental meetings, faculty meetings, union meetings at school, local, regional and national level, educational meetings of all sorts, Heads of Department Meetings, Staff meetings and on and on and on.

And throughout my long and generally soul destroying experience of committee and meeting I have never, ever experienced meetings of such vicious vacuity as those that I have experienced in Spain.  Ever.

For me, the Patron Saint of Meetings is Girolamo Savonarola, (1542-1498) the Italian Dominican friar and Renaissance Florence troublemaker.  He was one of those historical characters where there was much to admire (his hatred of clerical corruption, his rejection of tyrannical government and the exploitation of the poor and his championing of Republicanism) while, equally there was much to be disturbed about (his ‘prophecies’, his iconoclasm, his extreme puritanism and intolerance).  However the element in his life that both appeals and appals is the concept of The Bonfire of the Vanities. 

This bonfire was literal and the flames were fed by the population, responding to Savonarola’s urging, throwing luxuries into the conflagration to show their rejection of the ‘vanities’ of the world.

I am no great supporter of iconoclasm, but the idea of a Bonfire of the Vanities is a powerful one.  Especially when you are sitting listening to people waffling on about nothing in particular in a meeting that is taking up hours of your life.

I am reminded of a Robert Heinlein story in which the ultimate authority in the known universe was a powerful female figure.  She was respected throughout the galaxy etc. and delegations came to her for advice that would be followed strictly.  I remember one example of her advice being that members of the delegation that came to see her be executed as the solution to their problems!

How many times in my life have I imagined a Bonfire of the Loquacious in various meetings that I have attended where selective burnings would have concentrated the minds and shortened the meetings (and all future meetings) considerably.  As well as giving real satisfaction at seeing the guilty burn.

As I’ve mentioned before, some colleagues were only able to survive the more infuriating meetings by watching me as the supressed fury that I radiated in the more boring sessions could (my colleagues hoped) suddenly burst forth in a glorious display of justified ire that would make attendance justified.

I never did ‘break’, but I came close on a number of occasions. 

The truly and unbearably awful meetings in Spain were only made tolerable by a stratagem that I devised for survival.  I took my MacBook Air into the meetings with me and wrote personal, unexpurgated and real minutes in which my true feelings found full expression through my touch-typing.  There is nothing more satisfying while looking and listening to some idiot waffle on while your eloquent fingers say exactly what you are thinking as you stare at the guilty!

Each piece of idiocy was loving described by my tapping fingers and each fragment of fatuousness was highlighted by venom infused description.  This literary scorched earth assassination made the meeting just about bearable, but there were dangers in such an approach. 

In one meeting, a member of the English Department was sitting next to me and she began reading what I was typing and laughing.  Each time something stupid was said she looked over at the screen to read my assessment: in this way we both managed to survive the meeting relatively unscathed.

The real moment of tension occurred at the end of the meeting when the person who was chairing (I use the term because I can think of no other, but what she did bore no relation to what I would understand even a marginally competent chair might do) the meeting said that she had seen me making notes and would it be possible for her to have a copy!  I explained, with a straight face, that the notes were personal and not for general consumption and were in English that she didn’t speak.  While I was convincing and composed, my colleague was convulsed by what might have happened if she had read (and understood) what I had written!

God knows, teaching is a demanding enough profession in the day-to-day interaction of teacher and pupil, without making the whole thing so much worse by having cruelly pointless meetings.

And we had one meeting on a Saturday morning!  Though that criminal occasion was years ago, I feel I cannot write about it, as the wounds are still too fresh to cope with!  Saturday morning!  I can neither believe that it actually happened, or that I actually attended!  The Horror!  The Horror!

So, I feel for my colleagues.  Today is Saturday and the real stomach churning will not get into gear (does that mixed metaphor work, I wonder?) until Sunday evening and the realization, as the bedclothes are pulled up to the chin, that the morrow brings work!  In a school.

The nearest I will get to a school on Monday is the pool where I take my daily swim.  Two schools are next to the centre and I have to admit that there is something deeply satisfying as I sip my tea, to hear young voices in the distance and know that I will not be teaching them and I will be paid for not doing so!


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All you need to do!

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Psion.

I wonder if that word means anything to you?  It brings a wry smile of almost satisfaction to me because I can relate to it directly and remember the pride with which my casual use of . . .

But I get beyond myself. 

In my largest (within hand reach, I’m not going to make that much effort) dictionary, The Encarta Dictionary  2,175 pages, it does not get a single mention. 

The Internet, however, suggests that Psion is a name that will be familiar to groups of people with whom I am not familiar: Gamers, Comic aficionados and the like.  Psion is a whole character class in Dungeons and Dragons, no less.  And in what sounds like an extract from one of the sci-fi, pseudo-scientific books in which psionic (i.e. telepathic and beyond) abilities are taken as the norm, it would appear that the word psion (J/ψ) refers to a subatomic particle, a flavour-neutral meson consisting of a charm quark and a charm antiquark.

As interesting or indeed unintelligible as the foregoing might be, these are not the definitions of the word Psion (with a capital ‘P’) that have meaning for me.

In the early 90s of the last century, which I am horrified to think is almost 30 years ago!  I was an early adopter of the Psion 3 a handheld, clam design personal ‘digital assistant’.  It had a small screen in one half of the clam and a keyboard in the other.  I was the only person I knew who had one of these and every time I used it (and I used it as often as I reasonably could) it excited techno-amazement and techno-envy, which more than justified its price!

Ever since I saw my first digital watch on Tomorrow’s World on the BBC and certainly when they came down enough in price for them to be afforded by mere mortals, I have been an infatuated devotee of things techno-electrical.

If I could count up the amount of money that I have spent on computers and computer-like things (which I have absolutely no intention of doing because of the shame that lies in quantifying the outrageous amounts that I have willingly squandered on the latest gadgets) I would probably find that the only recourse that I could possibly have to compensate for such extravagant monetary behaviour would be immediately to enter a Monastery, don a hair shirt and only take it off to start flagellating myself with scorpion whips (look it up, it’s not using the animals, especially as it’s my birth sign) as the lightest possible penance for such wilful throwing away of money.

But I don’t care.  I have gained more pleasure in my amassing and displaying gadgets than . . . well, I don’t want to go overboard here, there are other things and pleasures in my life that go beyond the mere electronic - but gadgets have given me satisfaction.  And as soon as I realized with computers that I was a ‘user’ and not suited to be a ‘programmer’ I was happy to indulge in machine after machine.  Monochrome screens burst forth into glorious colour; print went from dot matrix to laser to ink jet; memory went from 8kb ROM (sic!) on my very first ‘real’ computer the famous Sinclair ZX81 to 1TB on my newest laptop!

So, my twitchy little fingers have been urging electrons to light up screens for years and I never really get bored with the results.  I wear the appellation of Gadget Freak with something approaching pride.

I still remember in the far off days of computer exclusiveness, I would be asked as I paraded my Psion before technology confounded eyes, “But how does it work?  Show us!”  And I would press a few buttons and behold, staring eyes and open mouths agape in wonder.

I remember too, in those early days going to a ‘Computer Workshop’ and when I got there the instructor in charge of the group said, “Thank God you’ve come Stephen!  You take this side of the room and I’ll see to the other!”  My plaintive whines about the fact that I had come to be part of the group not an instructor was ignored as our joint class lurched into action.

“Stephen, it’s not working!” said one of the members.  “I’ve tried pressing this and this and this and nothing happens.”  And it shows you how long ago this little group was, that my masterly assessment of the problem led to a swift resolution when the computer was actually switched on at the mains and the screen blazed into life - to gasps of amazed thankfulness!

Such innocent days are long past.  We are all thumbs efficient now and are laid back in our utilization of complex machinery that we could not have dreamed of only a few years back.

So, to keep me up and running as far as my mobile phone (A Yotaphone, two faced Russian built affair) I decided to take a power pack with me to feed the insatiable electric hunger of the thing.  I powered up the phone; I powered up the as yet unused power pack - I was good to go and to survive a New Year’s Family Celebration which would go on well past midnight!

Sure enough my phone’s cravings became more than I could accommodate and so I plugged in the pack and waited for the phone to be sated.  And nothing happened.  And continued not to happen while the phone descended into darkness.  In desperation I was reduced to writing in my little notebook that I always carry with me.

I assumed that the failure of the power pack was another example of sleek, svelte packaging over hard utility.  Little bigger than a credit card with built in short leads, I always thought it was too good to be true.  And to be absolutely honest I only bought it because it looked shiny and neat - and useful of course.  And it didn’t work.  Another waste of money.  Another gadget bites the dust.

Today, I idly wondered whether I had fully powered up the pack, perhaps things would have been different if I had left it on charge a little longer.  I decided to give it an extra boost and plugged a mini usb into the slot on the edge of the ‘card’ and noticed as I did so a tiny and almost imperceptible button with the words ‘On/Off’ incised unobtrusively next to it.  I pressed it experimentally and a little line of blue lights appeared on the face of the ‘card’; I plugged it into my phone and the little lightning sign appeared in the empty battery symbol indicating that power was being transferred.

In spite of my years of working out how to set up digital watches without the instructions; my apprenticeship through Sinclair, Amstrad, Mac, HP, and a wealth of other logos; my dedication to gadgets, no matter how marginally useful they might be - I had been defeated by a simple on-off button.

How are the mighty fallen.  Vanitas, vanitas etc etc.

I start 2018 chastened by the thought that complexity and sophistication starts with something simple.   

I will indeed, think on these things!

Accepting reality? I think not. Possibly.

I know I’m getting old!

Other ageing people point, often literally, to a selection of their aching joints, or illustrate with an airy wave of the hand a forgetful memory, or pause with what they hope is significant timing to try and find an errant word.  Not me.  Even though I act out those tell-tale signs I still spurn (as ‘twere a rabid dog) any admission of the fact that I am getting older.

But today, today was a turning point.

At lunch, the meal after the late night/early morning of the New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day family celebrations, I finally had to face the realization that the accumulation of years in my life had reached a disturbing point.

The meal was provide by the tired but indomitable mother of Toni and comprised a melange of potato, Spanish ham and egg with accompanying bits and pieces and whole prawns.  Delicious!  And to wash it all down was the inevitable (and loathed by me) Coke Zero Zero, and a bottle of water.  The real drink comprised a rather fine bottle of Cava.

As usual, for reasons that are all to explicable, I was given the bottle of Cava to uncork.  Which I did.  Offering it around to the diners, only one of us had a full glass: me.  The other three have a notional smear of the liquid so that they could say that they had been full of New Year Spirit.

Every offer of a fill-up (or augmentation of their piddling amounts) was met with a polite but firm refusal.  So I had recourse to the only other accepting rim, mine.

And here is where the realization of just how old I might be showed itself.  I eventually stopped filling my glass up.  I allowed a partially full bottle of Cava to leave the table and go into the kitchen where it will be poured away.  Into the sink!

I have always prided myself on being ‘so much younger than my grandparents were at my age’ – but how can I, in all conscience, maintain this assertion when I actually and in reality, allowed a half empty bottle of Cava to be ‘wasted’?

I remember, vividly, though years ago, a party in the Circle Bar in the New Theatre, Cardiff for someone’s birthday party where the drink provided solely consisted of cocktails.  There were three as I remember, but only one that I recall: a Champagne cocktail that, I can still see in my mind's eye, comprised a brandy soaked cube of sugar at the bottom of a glass that was then filled with Champagne.  

I tried one of these and thought, immediately, that the liquor soaked sugar cube was a profanation of decent Champagne.  So I took action.  I ‘acquired’ a bottle of Champagne and retired to a corner and slowly but purposefully drank it.  I then went looking for another bottle, which I found, but was not allowed to drink it in the sequestered peace of the first, as owners of un-drowned sugar lumps came in search of submersion.

It was an easy switch from Champagne to Cava, especially to the older, tastier Cava brut versions with which I am now familiar, and mostly especially given the radical difference in price.  

With a few adjustments made to my purchases over the years, spurning the offerings of Frexinet because of the poisonous political attitude of the owner and questioning a few of the other brands because of their suspect right wing leanings, I have learned to love Catalan Cava.  And apart from the cheaper and sweeter varieties I have never been known to leave a bottle half drunk.

But now I realize that the time has come to take stock and to consider what this not-empty bottle left in the kitchen might mean.  

I could, I suppose, assume that leaving alcoholic liquid that I don't really need to consume is a sign (at last) that I am getting to the age of discretion.  Or it could mean that the pain in the lower back is not muscular, but rather my tired kidneys calling out for respite!

Whatever the analysis might bring up, it remains as an indisputable fact that I did leave a bottle of Cava with some drinkable Cava inside!

Or could it be the start of a trend?  My suit was tight so I do need to lose weight; cutting down on my lunchtime red wine might be one way of doing it.  

Or it could be a flash in the pan and this disgrace will not be repeated.  We shall see.

Meanwhile I am dog tired and I feel that putting my watch to charge counts as housekeeping.

Time to think about a snooze and perhaps I will feel and think differently after some of the recent sleep deprivation losses have been partially made up.

Things are different?

When I was a kid . . .

There probably isn’t a greater turn-off opener than that one.  It is the sort of phrase that is regularly used as a weapon by the older against the perceived privilege of the young.  There is nothing that riles a certain proportion of the older generation that seeing a very young child with a mobile phone.  And especially the young child using it with a proficiency that the resentful oldie can only wish for.

Technology means that kids have things like music players, film players, TV, radios, cameras and, yes, telephones way before the generation that includes me ever had, but – just think about what my generation had and continues to have.

Free milk, free school, university grants, free university tuition, full professional employment, good health care, generous pension scheme, professional retirement at 60 with professional pension, state pension at 65, membership of the EU throughout my working life, free access to foreign countries within the EU, access to the work markets of the EU, and so on.

Yes, my parents did not buy a television until I was 11, though we did have the radio.  I did not have a ‘real’ record player until I was in my teens, though I had had a second hand wind up version with some old 78s for one birthday.  Our holidays were usually in the UK and in B&Bs, though I did go to Spain when I was 7, and I was the only kid in my year in primary school who had been abroad.  Our camera was a Kodak box camera, until we had the next model up, eventually – and those two camera kept us going for years and years and years.

Although we were not rich as a family, I did not lack anything important.  I was loved and secure and, most importantly (as I was really too young to truly worry about the Cuban missile crisis) I felt secure.  I felt that I had a future and that I would easily be able to get a job and that I would be able to keep it for the whole of my career.

How many young people today can say as much?  I know younger colleagues in teaching who are dreading the extra years that they will have to work until they are able to retire and I sympathetically share their dread, though I cannot imagine what the awful reality must be like.  In my view you cannot be a classroom teacher beyond the age of 60 in any sort of normal school.  Forcing people to work beyond that is like a sort of death sentence, or at the very least they are not going to be paying many pensionable years for the unfortunates who are able to make it.

This serious thought was brought on my thinking about cartoons.  One channel on the television this year has been given over to a whole series of ‘blockbuster’ animated films and I am constantly amazed at their quality.  There was a scene of one of the monsters from Monsters Inc II where he was sitting by the side of a lake in moonlight which was stunning, a beautifully rendered part of the film.  And in another film I was fascinated by the sheer complexity of the rendering of hair and fur with a naturalness that would have had early animators reaching for their crucifixes!

It used to be that Christmas would see the latest-old Bond film trotted out to general delight, but I am not sure nowadays that there is a single screen franchise that would bring viewers together now in the way that 007 did.  After the gloriously clever first film of the 'Pirates' franchise, for example, the whole series descended into a narrative nightmare which denied coherence to the story, but did give individual moments of success, as for example in the umpteenth film when the company baddy walks, with manic serenity, down a flight of steps as his ship is destroyed about him.  It is a sublime moment and deserves a better film around it!

But the mechanics of showing films have changed.  When I was in school we did have 'Christmas Treat' films.  The two I remember are 'Fanstasia' and Tony Hancock's 'Punch and Judy Man' - the first we loved and the second we hated.  But both these films were shown via a film projector, the cans of film had been rented and were shown projected onto a screen.  In an age when films are available on your phone, the attitude towards a 'grand' production has changed somewhat!

So time, place, technique, everything has changed, and the 'gift' of a major film at Christmas is not longer the 'treat' that it once was.

But for me, at least, the power of a great animated film, something like 'Up' for example has me as glued to the picture as if I were a child watching fireworks - and you only have to see my open mouthed wonder and fixation with exploding rockets to understand how quickly I can regress to childhood!

Perhaps cartoons are the nearest things we get to keep us together, to bring back the sense of wonder that over exposure to CGI in so-called reality films has taken away.