Wildwood

May 15, 2023May 15, 2023 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

With the summer exams afoot, we’re entering “gained time”. Assessments replace lesson plans, trips take kids out of circulation more frequently, and savvier colleagues do a stock check on their red/green biros (delete as appropriate) for a lucrative summer of script-marking. Since my job description covers not just every year group but also all the conversation classes for the exam years as well, my timetable takes an even larger hit than most at this time of year. As of today, I’ve lost an enviable eighteen hours a fortnight. A man could go mad with that much idleness – so, as I do every year, I set myself a project to fill the time.

This one’s pretty straightforward: read a chapter a day of any book – just one chapter, no more, no less – and reflect on it in less than a thousand words. That way, I’m hoping I’ll develop a better reading habit, as well as keep my writing arm flexed well into the summer. It doesn’t pay £3 per throw like the exam scripts do, but it’s good practice. And who knows? One of these days, when I finally manage to convince somebody to let me try teaching English again, all of this reading might pay off. But until then, I have time to kill and a library to devour.

Guy Shrubsole, The Lost Rainforests of Britain

Here’s a book I’ve had my eye on for a while now. Shrubsole knew what he was doing when he hired the illustrator Alan Lee, of Tolkien fame, to design the cover of his paean to the vanishing temperate rainforests of Britain. The gnarled, mossy arms of Wistman’s Wood might as well be an early sketch for Fangorn Forest. Even the choice of a jay for the single flash of colour is inspired – for what bird could be more evocative of the deepwoods of the British Isles than the oak-sower, a creature almost singly responsible for the very existence of our oak forests?

There’s a medicine within the woods that has few equals. If I close my eyes and let my mind wander, I can picture the trees I sought out when my heart was in a bad place. Brabourne, Canterbury, Durham – and even as far as Plasencia. Now I think about it, those “healing trees” were invariably oaks, every one of them. I’m no spirit of the New Age – I live just a little too far north of Brighton for that – but I can’t help but draw something from that coincidence. Is it because they’re the largest trees in the forest? The oldest, and thus the wisest? Is it because their thick branches reach closer to the ground than other trees, like outstretched arms? While the regimented conifers bristle from trunk to treetop with their arms held high in a stiff salute, the oak tree is a serene creature. Motherly, almost.

Shrubsole’s passionately written text takes the reader by the hand into the soaking air of the last remaining rainforests in Britain. I confess I never really thought of rainforests as a British entity, though I would be the first to admit that, when living abroad, my fondest memories of England were of grey skies and the sound of autumn rain over an English wood. I’m incredibly fortunate to come from a line of amateur botanists: my mother was brought up knowing all the different plants and flowers and their uses (as well as which fungi were best avoided), and though I was stubbornly fixated on my animals, she did her best to pass on what she had learned to me. Consequently, I don’t need an app to tell my beeches from my birches. However, I know I’m on an island in more ways than one in that regard.

Since the last Ice Age, Shrubsole writes, we have cut down a third of all the forests in the world, and half of that in the last century alone. In that time, while we awakened to the plight of the shrinking rainforests in the tropics, our own green treasures have been quietly slipping over the edge and into oblivion. The ancient Britons revered the forests that once covered this island. Most of us, however, are a lot less likely to meet a druid than we are that one person who says something along the lines of “such a nice view, shame about the tree” – as though this land were ours to sculpt.

“Plant blindness” is a reality we must accept. Put simply – in the words of Tolkien’s Treebeard – “nobody cares for the woods anymore”. It’s easy to get excited about conservation when it’s got two shining eyes that straddle the line between beauty and vulnerability, but it’s that much harder to extend that zeal to the silent world of plants. Lack of knowledge leads to lack of empathy. As both a naturalist and a teacher, one of my cardinal rules is that once you can put a name to something, it means so much more to you. Perhaps the reverse is true: if you know nothing, your heart won’t bleed when you tread on a bluebell.

Recent studies showed that only 14% of A Level biology students could name more than three British plant species, while an even more alarming survey indicated that 83% of British children were unable to identify an oak leaf on sight. I suspect if I brought in a few leaves tomorrow and asked my Year 9 students to identify them, I’d fare little better. And yet, they’re very aware of the deforestation in Indonesia and the deleterious impact of the palm oil industry. The grass is always greener – or at least, it would be, if we could tell it was grass to begin with.

I’m learning to drive this summer, and I’m not ashamed to admit that one of the only things that genuinely excites me about having a car of my own is the freedom it will give me to explore even more of this country on foot. I appreciate the irony. But with avian flu decimating our seabird populations last year – an article in The Guardian put the death toll at 50,000 – and more and more common land disappearing under the pressure for affordable housing, I’ve never been more conscious of the need to see our green and pleasant land – before it’s gone. Before the baseline shifts, and we learn to accept what was once unacceptable.

I had a couple of hours between lessons this afternoon, so I took myself for a wander through the estate. I found a toad beneath the remnants of a tarpaulin from the old forest school I used to run three years ago, and a merry carpet of bluebells in their dying days followed me to the deepwoods where a chalk stream gurgles southward on its journey to the sea. A silent pool of rainwater sparked into life as the sun came down, drawing three tadpoles into its warm gaze. Chiffchaffs sang at various intervals, and somewhere overhead, unseen, a buzzard mewed. I didn’t hear our ravens today, but I often do.

The druids were onto something. There really is a medicine in the woods. If only the whole world could see it! BB x

Quote Unquote: ORIGIN by Dan Brown

October 7, 2019October 8, 2019 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Image result for origin dan brown

This week’s attempt at escapism was even lazier than usual, since it required no actual reading on my part but rather dipping in and out of the Audible app on my phone during the emptier moments of the day. You might call it “tactical” escapism, though I suspect it’s still just another tired synonym for procrastination. This week I decided to go for a writer I have somehow managed not to read thus far, that being Dan Brown, author of the best-selling Da Vinci Code. What can I say? The film came out before I got around to reading the book, and Dan Brown doesn’t exactly cut to the chase. Origin, one of his more recent works, does not yet have a film adaptation in the works, so it was one that had to be read. The fact that it takes place in Spain had nothing to do with it.

And on that humongous white lie, let’s dive in. Oh, and before you read on, I might add ***SPOILER ALERT*** (because it’s not an easy book to pick apart without giving away some pretty critical spoilers).

If you’ve read/seen The Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons, you’ll already be familiar with Brown’s clever plots. Expect the same in Origin. In fact, expect a lot of what you’ve seen before: a highly suspicious bishop, a strong, silent-type hit-man with an agenda, a glamorous female sidekick, a mind-blowing secret that you have to wait until the end to discover, and Doctor Who levels of sci-fi explanation. Edmond Kirsch, a billionaire futurist and Elon Musk by another name (Musk even gets a nod at one point), announces to the world that he is going to change what it means to be human (another moment Doctor Who fans might be familiar with), but is shot by a hidden assassin before he can make his ground-breaking reveal. It’s up to Robert Langdon, Kirsch’s one-time mentor, and the director of the Guggenheim Museum and future queen of Spain, Ambra Vidal, to finish the job, racing against the clock to deliver Kirsch’s discovery to the world. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the novel is Kirsch’s supercomputer, a sentient AI known as Winston, who guides the protagonists towards their goal with godlike success.

I’ll admit, I expected a little more from Origin than I got. I wasn’t actually all that bothered by the familiarity of the storyline, but for a book dealing with religion on Spanish soil, I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed when the Muslim and Jewish characters were killed off early on and nothing was made of this. Fair enough, Spain is a primarily Catholic country, but Angels and Demons made such an exciting use of the spectre of the Illuminati that I went into Origin expecting some dark vestige of Spain’s bloody history to raise its head. Instead we got the Palmarian Church – an innovative introduction to most of us, but given its role in the story, hardly the most threatening or thought-provoking of obstacles. All the same, I enjoyed Brown’s modern, pop-culture-imbued writing style, as it is so far-removed from my usual material, which I am increasingly coming to see as verbose and out of touch (though the travel writings and adventure novels of the late 1800s and early 1900s will always hold a position of glory in my heart for the lexical skill of their writers).

I haven’t mentioned the role played by the Royal Family of Spain, largely because it is so insignificant to the main plot that it might as well have been a soap opera flickering away on a TV in the background. The ghost of Franco was conjured up – but for just a moment. Barcelona loomed into view – but nothing was made of the Catalans. The Spanish Inquisition was mentioned several times, and a terrorist attack on Spanish soil was explicitly detailed – but there was only ever one religion truly under fire all along. Brown has always been good at misdirection in his plots, and he was subverting expectations in Origin like Rian Johnson did with the new Star Wars movies.

The big reveal? Not as mind-blowing as I anticipated, I guess – but then, Kirsch set the stakes very high. When the truth came out at the end, I was surprised it unsettled the Parliament of the World’s Religions so much that they considered prematurely sabotaging his discovery before it could go public. I’m not all that firm a believer myself, but I didn’t find myself questioning my faith once: Kirsch’s expositions on the seventh kingdom and the origins of mankind were insightful, but not exactly earth-shattering. By this point in our history, a future where we share the world with, or perhaps even cede it to the silent sentience of artificial intelligence is more or less inevitable. What started out as a plot device for a 1970s sci-fi nightmare is now almost a matter of fact. My question is, why should that kind of knowledge shake the foundations of the faithful?

My journey with Catholicism is still in its infancy. That comes from growing up in a country which threw off the “shackles of the papacy” a long, long time ago. Though I live and work in a Catholic enclave, it is precisely that, an enclave. It’s easy to forget that, beyond the bubble, most of my countrymen don’t go to Mass on a Sunday, meatless Fridays aren’t the norm, and many of the rules and expectations that seem so normal seem out of date if not alien. Everybody has their own take on their own religion. For me, it’s a family affair. It’s my way of reaching out to my grandfather, a man I never knew, and to my cousins, uncles and aunts in Spain. It’s a way of sharing in that rich and beautiful legacy of ages. Futurists and scientists like Brown’s Edmond Kirsch take great delight in tearing down the temples of the ancients, but what are they doing if not building glass temples of their own in their stead, just as humans have delighted in doing for all time? Religion isn’t about rules and false truths. It’s about love.

My experiences as a student at a Kent grammar school, where daggers-drawn atheism was almost a state religion, actually gave me more of an appetite for a faith of my own. Ironically, my highly opinionated contemporaries pushed me towards God more readily than any beaming, hot-chocolate touting, guitar-strumming Christian Union friends ever did. I suppose what I objected to more than blind faith and the endless four-chord songs about some heavily distorted Western Jesus was the hostile rejection of hope, which has ever been my most treasured of core values (there’s a modern buzzword if ever there were one). And yes, in case it isn’t clear already, modern Christianity and I aren’t exactly a match made in heaven. Somebody once put it to me that Christian music adapted to suit a modern audience. Call me old-fashioned, but I’d take a hymnbook over guitar worship any day. I appreciate the staggering irony in that statement as a devotee of Gospel music, and I’m afraid I’ll have to hold up my hand as an all-too-human hypocrite on that count. For me, Gospel music has never been about a white Jesus who loves everybody, rather about bridging the gap between worlds and reveling in the rage, the sadness and the hope together with the joy of faith. Because that’s what faith is: perseverance in the face of insurmountable adversity. Kirsch, like many characters from my own past, went head to head with the world’s believers with a smug smile, believing he could sweep away the dark religions so that sweet science could reign. In doing so, he betrays his humanity: there are many for whom the most bitter of blows fall like rain upon their faith. Faith is not founded on facts. It comes from a deeper well.

I am one of those for whom the great questions – where do we come from? Where are we going? – have never held all that much interest. For most of our history, mankind has sought to make itself master of all things, seeking the logic and the reason behind everything in an attempt to bend it to his will, to subjugate it, for knowledge is power. And while I love to learn new things, I am no Kirsch. For me, the real beauty of faith is in the great mystery. There are some things that will forever be beyond my understanding. And I’m ok with that. It’s not so much “Jesus, take the wheel”. It’s more of a “I’m mysterious, folks. Deal with it.” Sometimes – as Rowan Atkinson’s character says in the 2005 film Keeping Mum – all we need is a little grace.

Favourite scene:

The chase scene in the Sagrada Familia was pretty spectacular. Brown knows how to pick a good setting, that’s for sure. There’s always something terrifying about the idea of fleeing from a searchlight – some “flight” instinct, buried deep, from a time before flashlights when we ran, ducked and weaved to get out of eyesight of predators who were after our blood, perhaps. Those were always the levels in video-games that scared me the most (Zelda: Wind Waker, Metroid Fusion, Harry Potter etc). I digress. Brown’s assassin had a gun and had just killed a man with his bare hands, but that torch in his hands was his most frightening weapon by far. To survive, Langdon and Vidal had to keep in the shadows. Add that to their escape taking place within a cathedral as bizarre and unorthodox as the Sagrada Familia and it makes for a truly terrifying pursuit.

Favourite character:

Winston is far and away the standout success in Origin. Think HAL voiced by Stephen Fry. Educated, intelligent and eerily human, Winston is immediately likable from his first appearance. In fact, I found him such an interesting character that I felt a real sense of loss when Langdon and Vidal lost contact with him at a certain point in the narrative. I had my suspicions about the whole monte@iglesia affair, but the twist that he was the mastermind behind it all hit me like a sucker punch. I didn’t stop liking him for it. In fact, I found him an even more interesting character by far. And that recurring trait of his awkward laugh was a stroke of genius: endearing in its first appearance, terrifying in its last. Origin could be criticised for being a recycling of Brown’s old plots, but his Oxford-educated HAL makes it worth every page.

Favourite Quotes:

“The devout can always benefit from listening to non-believers. It is in hearing the voice of the Devil that we can better appreciate the voice of God.”

Zeus, more than any other god, resisted his own extinction, mounting a violent battle against the dying of his own light, precisely as had the earlier gods Zeus had replaced.

“I’ve been taking confessions for fifty years. I know a lie when I hear one.”

Quote Unquote: BEARSKIN by James A. McLaughlin

September 22, 2019 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Somebody must have kicked the reading machine in my head real hard, because it’s working overtime at the moment. I suppose it’s the very real threat of having to read up on plotless educational policy and classroom management that is making fiction so damned attractive at this point in time. With lessons well underway and the dreaded Numeracy Skills Test now but a distant memory, the next task looming is the first of the PGCE written assignments – perhaps the first written assignment in my life that I will not be able to wing on the back of a clunky box of quirky and otherwise useless general knowledge. My capacity for absurdity became something of a badge of honour at university as I made it a personal prerogative to shoehorn the most bizarre comparisons into every essay I submitted. Samurai and pashtunwali found their way into an essay on Lope de Vega. The sea witch from The Little Mermaid popped up in an assignment on La Celestina. The Sack of Baltimore somehow drifted into a commentary on Spanish banditry. And then there was that unforgiveable allusion to the nest-building practices of great-crested grebes in a second-year Spanish language exam on cultural divisions (I got scorched for that one, justifiably, and I don’t think it was because my examiners stumbled over the word somormujo).

Nope. This is one essay that I will have to write with my own blood. And my head will not thank me for it.

So, conscious that I will scarcely have the time to do my own writing this year, I shall endeavour to persevere with my reading project. After muscling through Thin Air in forty-eight hours (a personal record), I threw myself right into another. This time around, I thumbed around for something different and picked James A. McLaughlin’s Bearskin off the shelf…

……..

“Gruesomely gorgeous” is certainly one way of putting it (New York Times Book Review). Bearskin tells the tale of Rice Moore, an Arizona ex-con working as a caretaker on the Turk Mountain preserve in the forests of Virginia whose decision to get to the bottom of a local bear-hunting operation brings him into conflict with the locals, the law, and ghosts from his past. At times hard-edged thriller of the “Dark South”, at others a quasi-mystical exploration of man in the wilderness, Bearskin is a powerful retelling of the lone-man-standing-up-for-the-forest genre, without the ego or distasteful pessimism of the twenty-first century eco-warrior. Rice makes for an appealing hero, a man with no illusions on whom the forest works its magic. Some of the characters are satisfyingly familiar: a John Wayne, no-bullshit sheriff; a thickset Redneck patriarch and his lawless, swaggering sons; a psychopathic assassin who says nothing and yet instils more fear at the mention of his name than any other man in the book. And then there are the others: Dempsey Boger and his hounds, the ethereal mushroom-picker and, of course, the bears themselves.

There are points in the narrative – fugues – when you cannot be entirely certain which world you are in. When the forest takes on a mysterious character of its own and colours and images swim before your eyes in unfamiliar patterns, and time seems to flow in both directions at once. Moore’s ghillie-clad seclusion on the mountain is ritualistic and deliberately so, serving in a sense as an awakening. It was almost stupefying to read. I’ve never taken magic mushrooms myself, but I felt like I had after one of the scenes. Trips may well be relatively easy to recreate through the medium of film, but McLaughlin certainly knows how to write one.

There was only one thing I was left wanting from the story, and that was something more about the bears. They serve as a springboard for the main events of the narrative, but I caught myself waiting for a gratifying (if cliched) encounter with one of the bears at some point towards the end. One gets the sense they are always there, on the periphery of Rice’s world, more like ghosts than creatures of flesh and blood. And perhaps that much is true of the wild, as man and his endless pursuit for dominance pushes such spirits further and further into oblivion. All the same, I reckon the bears might have appreciated some closure.

Favourite Scene:

The hellish image of the baiting scene deserves a special mention for its sheer monstrosity: the pawless, gutted carcasses of two bears beneath the totemic severed head of a Charolais, suspended from the trees above by a bloody rebar driven through its eyes. The buzz of flies above, the growl of worrying hounds below and the sickly stench of liquorice. I’d like to give a hand to the stalking scene towards the end for its pace and power, but this static freeze-frame is just one of those scenes that will stay lodged in your mind’s eye forever. Some stories produce characters of eternal weight, others moments of utter majesty, and others still paint pictures with flesh, blood and the stuff of nightmares. There’s a lot of human villainy in Bearskin, but the baiting scene takes the biscuit. Somehow the absence of the perpetrators does the trick: the aftermath is far worse in its silence than the act itself.

Favourite Character:

The mushroom picker. McLaughlin strings out a strongly convincing cast of Southern marionettes in Bearskin, but there is one oddity in the bunch who, like the pip of a blackberry, sticks in your jaw long after the cast has come and gone. I was never entirely sure whether he was real or not – and neither am I alone in my doubt, as Rice himself asks this question at least once – but his brief appearances were memorable, to say the least. Who was he? Where did he come from? Was he a mountain man, or something stranger – a vengeful woodland sprite or god, a green man, released from the deepwoods to send the protagonist on a quest? When first he appeared, Rice mistook him for a bear – a mistake he made again on the mushroom picker’s second appearance. To my eyes he is certainly more Beorn than Bombadil, and whatever the author intended him to be, he comes across as by far the most enigmatic and powerful character to emerge from McLaughlin’s narrative.

Favourite Quotes:

Information about the universe leaked from the open eye like poison gas.

“So many people hate snakes. I think it’s because they threaten people’s worldview – they’re alien, limbless, impossible, black magic: a stick come to life. But maybe we’re all sticks come to life. We want to think we’re exceptional, ensouled, angel fairies or God’s special children. The magic of being animate matter isn’t enough.”

They ate a quick breakfast, homicide having no effect on their appetites.

Quote Unquote: THIN AIR by Michelle Paver

September 18, 2019 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

The funny thing about being busy is that it makes all the things you wanted to do when you were free that much more achievable. It seems counter-intuitive, but it’s true. When time is on your side and you have a stack of books to read, it can be hard to even chip away at one. When you have lessons to plan, essays to write, work to mark and affairs to set in order, reading for pleasure suddenly becomes both more appealing and more feasible. Somehow those twenty minutes you carve out of the day always come around. I suppose routine is the answer, as it so often is. It’s just a pity that routine is harder to maintain when you have nothing but time on your hands.

The days are growing shorter. Prep ends in darkness now, and this Saturday just gone, the martins gathered on the abbey roof, as they always do on a certain day every year. The following morning they were gone. All of them. They say a swallow does not a summer make, but for me, summer is always over on that day when the swallows and martins take their leave. Now is the time of cold, crisp mornings, clear blue autumn skies, mist in the trees and the musty smell of mushrooms.

It is also a wonderful time of year for ghost stories.

……..

Thin Air tells the tale of a British expedition up the southwest face of Kangchenjunga, a mountain of fearsome repute in the unforgiving wastes of the Himalayas, as seen through the eyes of Dr Stephen ‘Bodge’ Pearce. The expedition party, an assortment of British public-school chaps (the swot, the bully, the priest and the major), have set their sights on being the first to climb the evil mountain, which has turned away all previous comers and slain several for good measure for even trying. Struggling with an unenviably rocky relationship with his brother, Kits, Stephen tags along as the expedition’s medic. From the very beginning the expedition is hag-ridden by the previous sortie led by the larger-than-life Lyell and company, whose disastrous defeat casts a long shadow over the group’s attempt – in more ways than one. It quickly becomes apparent that Lyell’s disastrous attempt to climb Kangchenjunga was less of a heroic withdrawal than it seemed at first, and as Pearce’s company scales the mountain, something sinister begins to dog them by degrees. Bullied into silence by his older brother, who alone seems oblivious of the creeping dread, Stephen begins to believe they are being haunted by a vengeful spirit. The mountain may not be the only thing determined to prevent them from carrying out the mission that Lyell started…

The story is full of men walking in the shadows of others. Kits marches in the footsteps of his hero, General Lyell. Stephen plays second-fiddle to Kits for most of the narrative, who seemingly does his level-best to keep him from stealing his place in the spotlight. The sherpas follow meekly in their wake, dismayed at their employers’ ignorance, and both a dog and a raven – stylised with the more ominous name of gorak – shadow the company on their ascent into the darkness. More chillingly still, there is always the nameless presence of something unspeakable. And then, of course, there is Kangchenjunga itself, overshadowing them all.

Kangchenjunga is not just a setting. It is an objective, an idea, an antagonist and a fierce deity. It is also far and away the standout character of the story. There are more sinister incarnations of rage at work in the tale, but one is never allowed to forget the raw ferocity of the mighty mountain. It threatens the company with its avalanches. It sends blizzards to slow them down and it reminds them of their chances with the cairns of those who have tried to master it and fallen in the attempt. One of my favourite parts of the Lord of the Rings growing up was the section of Fellowship when the company of nine attempt the pass of Caradhras and are beaten back by a mountain that is more sentient than it appears. There is something truly awesome about nature at its most raw, and Kangchenjunga is Tolkienesque in its might (interestingly enough, Caradhras’ other name, the Redhorn, is evoked at least once in Paver’s description of the mountain’s “dark-red precipices” – a colour that instantly stands out from the whites, greys and blues of the snowbound Himalayas). Stephen, a Western doctor ruled by his head, flatly denies it all, shooing away the sherpas’ fears as the darkness settles:

“This mountain has no spirit, no sentience and no intent. It’s not trying to kill us. It simply is.”

The question is: are you convinced?

This is genuinely one of those books that merits re-reading. There is so much subtle foreshadowing throughout, and a great deal of it will pass you by until the end. To read it again is to watch Dr Pearce and the company march knowingly into the jaws of doom with an even greater surety than before. You knew the mountain was a killer from the word go – Lyell, Pearce and all the others point to that endlessly – but the way in which Paver weaves the narrative forwards and backwards is spine-chillingly precise. I have deliberately avoided talk of the ghost in this ghost story, if only because the less that is said about it the better – the strength of a ghost story is often in that which is left unsaid. If you know, you know, if you don’t, give it a go. And when you’re done, seriously, skim back through and read it again. It’s almost scarier the second time around. Which is exactly what a good ghost story should be.

Favourite Scene:

The first cairn. It is Dr Pearce’s first encounter with the reality of their situation – and also his first brush with the nameless terror of the mountains. For the superstitious, there is an ancient belief in some parts of the world that walking the wrong way around a sacred object, such as a pillar or monolith (or in the case of Thin Air, an urn) brings on bad luck. I remember the tradition being used to comedic effect in Tintin, but as soon as it showed its head in Paver’s narrative I knew we were in for trouble – I’m glad she made use of that old trick. Because it felt like the necessary snowball that starts an avalanche. Dr Pearce’s musing before the cairn of Dr Yates, the doctor on the Lyell expedition is both stark and satisfying in its foreshadowing – and powerful in the ensuing scene it delivers. This is definitely one of the scenes that is worth a second look.

Favourite Character:

Kangchenjunga. For all of the reasons I laid out above.

Favourite Quotes:

Surely the purpose of a grave is to benefit the living. Aren’t the dead beyond caring where they live?

It’s lack of knowledge which lets in the shadows.

Perhaps that’s what we find frightening. Being on a mountain forces us to confront the vast, unsentient reality that’s always present behind our own busy little human world, which we tuck around ourselves like a counterpane, to keep out the cold. No wonder that when we trespass into the mountains, we create phantoms. They’re easier to bear than all this lifelessness.

There is no justice in this world, so why should we expect it in the next?

Quote Unquote: BLINDNESS by José Saramago

August 5, 2019August 5, 2019 / Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

**Quote Unquote is a new series of review-style posts geared towards mining my way through the mountain of books I have managed to accrue over the last few years**

Tonight I’m going to be looking at Blindness by Portuguese writer José Saramago, Nobel Prize winner and author of The Gospel according to Jesus Christ. I’ve had the book for the best part of a year, having borrowed it from my mother’s collection, and I took it with me on the Camino two weeks ago. I thought it would do me good to get some cultural reading under my belt, and Blindness looked like a light read… at the time. But that’s exactly what you get for not reading the blurb thoroughly, though the title alone should have given me an idea of what I was in for!

In his ensaio, Saramago weaves a monstrous tale centred on, above all else, the darkness in the human heart. It is not so much a cautionary tale as a dreadful reminder that we are only one small stage removed from savagery: one small push is all it takes. In this grim tale, that small push is the loss of sight. Starting with a man who goes suddenly and inexplicably blind whilst waiting at the traffic lights, the blindness spreads like a plague, spreading out from the source and driving panic in its wake. As the authorities race to take action, the affected are quarantined within an asylum, where things deteriorate with terrifying speed, culminating in the rule of force of a bunch of blind thugs who seize the food supply and extort their fellow inmates, first demanding their possessions, then the women. When a timely fire drives the blind out of the asylum and into the world, they find things are not all that much better on the outside. Throughout, Saramago conjures up a bleak world of stumbling and tripping, of unimaginable filth and miserable humanity and the depths to which the world can sink. We see it all through the eyes of the doctor’s wife, the one character miraculously spared the “white evil”, whose ability to see all that transpires becomes something of a curse as she alone is forced to bear witness to the breakdown of the world around her. She, and those within her halo of morality, somehow make it through their terrible ordeal until, just as quickly and inexplicably as it began, the blind have their sight restored.

Saramago’s writing style is hard going, to say the least. Even in translation, Saramago opts for chunky, seemingly endless paragraphs with no markers to indicate who is talking to whom. Like the Nadsat employed in A Clockwork Orange, one adapts to this style of narrative after a while, but it does make for difficult reading at times, especially when multiple characters are in conversation.

I’m not entirely sure what it is about blindness that makes for such a powerful plot device. I often come back to Triffids between books, and there are obvious parallels between the two books, though when rested against Saramago’s version of events, Wyndham’s vision of a world populated by the blind seems remarkably clean. Compared to the latter’s apocalyptic London of shattered windows and irregularly parked cars, the streets of the mental asylum and the unnamed city in Saramago’s work are rancid, litter-strewn and splattered with so much human sewage that one wonders whether the triffids operated a waste disposal service as part of their world domination bid. Wyndham’s world is also laced with an unmistakeable air of Middle England decorum: even after the total breakdown of society, the old laws still apply and sex is as invisible in Triffid-infested England as it is in Middle Earth. Not so with Saramago. There is one scene in particular in Blindness that will probably haunt me to the end of my days, not least of all for having seen it acted out with remarkably human depravity by Gael García Bernal in the 2008 film version (not how I imagined the character, but no less menacing a presence).

Blindness as a theme holds a morbid fascination for me, as sight is the one sense of the five I could not live without – and I can speak with a little experience on this count, as an especially fierce migraine temporarily robbed me of mine when I was eleven years old. It was only for few minutes – it might have been three or it might have been five – but I remember the terror as the world faded into darkness in the middle of a Biology lesson one morning. When my sight returned a few minutes later, I cannot even begin to describe my relief. It was an incident I never got any stick for – which is surprising, given how much of a commotion I must have made, flailing about on my stool and crying out that I could not see – but perhaps that stands testament to the shared understanding seated deep within all of us of the terror of a world without sight; an inheritance from our ancestors of a time before fire and the electric light, when the starless night was inky black and full of danger. That primordial sense of fear is never far away in Saramago’s writing. Stripped of any kind of logic or explanation, the plague of blindness reduces humanity to its very worst, reminding us all that, without sight, our mastery of this world is finished and we are cast back to a primal state which, in all likelihood, will kill us all eventually.

In short, I’m glad I read Blindness, but boy, did Saramago have some demons… I am learning to bleed a little more darkness and despair into my own writing, which is and always has been so thoroughly oversaturated with hope, but I sincerely hope I am never driven to conjure up such a hellish place as Saramago’s asylum for the blind.

Favourite Scene:

The blinded icons in the church. You’ll find a lot of the same images in Triffids – the lines of blind people staggering down a street, people clawing hopefully at tins in supermarkets that don’t contain food, the silence of a world where all the cars have suddenly stopped – but there is nothing quite as harrowing in Wyndham’s world as the church of the blinded icons. It’s one of those truly original scenes that one encounters every so often in a good book that stay with you forever. The idea of a vengeful priest scratching out the eyes of the painted saints and blindfolding the statues is monstrously chilling; a vision of lost hope in a figurehead normally associated with being the last bastion of faith in a darkening world. The absence of said priest in the scene, leaving the reasoning to conjecture, only adds to the haunting effect. It is a scene I almost feel moved to paint. Perhaps someday I will give it a try.

Favourite Character:

The girl with the dark glasses. Cool, independent and frequently insightful, the girl with the dark glasses puts up with a lot in the narrative – in Saramago’s world, a physically attractive woman is no safer in a blind world. She adjusts to her predicament with remarkable speed, adopts an orphaned child and provides an iron support to the women of the asylum through her cool head and determination. The circumstances surrounding her affliction also make for a curious and delightfully awkward plot point – a rare moment of humour in the tale.

Favourite Quotes:

It is necessary to kill when what is still alive is already dead.

I’m not entirely convinced that there are limits to misfortune and evil.

Panic is much faster than the legs that carry it.

Veni, Vidi, Victus Eram

May 31, 2016May 31, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

And that’s that. My last working day in Villafranca is over. I only just got away with crying out of my final class. 4°A are total angels, the lot of them.

What other class could handle Hobbes vs. Rousseau in another language?

I should make it clear that it’s my last working day of 2016… because I’ll be back. Sooner than I’d originally planned. The truth is that I’ve had such an amazing time this year, I don’t half wonder whether it would be difficult to top elsewhere. So I’ve burned my boats and taken advantage of the British Council’s four-year cap by deciding to return to Villafranca independently in 2017, leaving me another three years to wander about Extremadura, Spain and/or the rest of the Spanish speaking world if I so choose under the British Council. Maybe then I’ll be ready to train as a real teacher. Don’t call it unadventurousness on my part. Think of it as happiness found. Villafranca has been a wonderful home for the last nine months. And now, I suppose, I’d better do it justice – peppered with photos of some of my favourite moments of the year…

…starting with this.

The hardest thing here is knowing where to begin. How do I possibly sum up what has been the very best year of my life? Do I start from the beginning – from touchdown in Seville airport? But you know the story from there. And if you wanted to know the details, the entire year is spread out across the blog. Just go back to the 23rd of September and follow on from there. I don’t think I’ve ever been more faithful to a diary in my life.

Where it all began… under Alicia’s bridge in Seville in September ’15

It took the British Council all of eight months to provide me with the name of my home for the following year. Eight months that would have dragged immensely had it not been for my intense extracurricular existence. Protocol. But I spent a good part of my childhood as an avid birdwatcher, and that taught me that patience – even vain patience – always deals its own rewards. And that’s as good a metaphor as any to begin with.

Hanging on a few hours in Badajoz and accidentally finding a vulture is a good example

Villafranca de los Barros is not exactly what you might call ‘buzzing’. If you were to tell anybody else that they’d be spending the year in a town of some fourteen thousand inhabitants with no nightlife and a lively farming scene, they’d probably jump ship in less than a week and make a break for the nearest city. That’s what the last applicant assigned to Extremadura did, or so I was told by my concerned supervisor before leaving Durham. But Benjamin has strange triggers, and is nothing more than a simple country boy at heart. I could spend my life traveling the world, but if the truth be told, I want nothing more at the end of the day than to come back to some quiet, village retreat that I can call home. After Amman, anywhere with a pop count below twenty thousand would have done for me. As such, Villafranca could not have been a better place.

Spain does do some pretty spectacular skies on a regular basis

It’s been a formative year. You do all sorts of growing up when you strike out alone for the first time. Over the course of the year I’ve tried my hand at a whole range of new and crazy experiences, including:

Mobile data and WhatsApp. Frankly I don’t know how I’d have managed this year without the tech, as Spain as a whole seems incapable of functioning without it, but it’s proved absolutely invaluable as a last-ditch traveller’s aid. Except HERE Maps, possibly. Deceiving trickster.
Drinking. Ron Barceló isn’t so bad after all, but rest assured I’ll be back on the dry wagon when this is all over, if just because it’s a lifestyle I know and love.
Skiing. And I discovered that I am singularly useless at it.
Flirting. Likewise, useless. Try as I might, I’m just not the casual type.
Interpreting. Specifically, interpreting a spiel on Dadaist techniques. Talk about a challenge.
Olive-harvesting. Trust me, it’s really quite technical.
A (surprise) foam party. God bless Spain’s laissez-faire attitude to risk assessment.
Being the person that starts a conversation. Radical.

The last point is probably the most poignant of the lot. When this year began I was the kind of person who happily let others get the engine running first. Striking up a conversation with fellow travellers, calling the waiter in a restaurant, starting an essay… I’ve never been very good at starting things. It’s a running theme in my life. But this year I’ve seen myself talking to strangers on the road, setting up a bank account and even asking for help when a certain primary class got simply too much for me. These basic things were well out of my reach when I got off the plane back in September 2015. By hook or by crook, I’ve made it.

Proud to say I’ve done my bit for the local cooperativa!

Of course, it’s not all been roses. When I say it’s been the very best year of my life, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was flawless. There have been lows. Getting misdiagnosed with herpes was one. Getting the friend-zoning of the century on the night of what was supposed to be a romantic break in Madrid was another. And I seem to remember spewing my guts out for an entire twenty-four hours in a hotel room in Andorra, manacled by an ever-increasing tab from the mini bar; though it did spare me from more skiing fiascos, that was a definite low point too. And then there’s that primary class, a weekly nightmare that I’ve somehow survived. But my attitude to life is that balance is the most precious thing of all: life would be no fun whatsoever if there wasn’t the occasional crippling blunder to make things interesting. Not that I wouldn’t beg not to be given that lot if I were to go through it all again, but if they’ve done one thing for me, it’s left me in very good stead to be the father of Spanish children. I reckon I know all the necessary vocabulary after a year’s stint with that bunch.

It’s largely thanks to this little star that my Spanish has come so far this year!

Now comes the most difficult part: listing the highlights. Since each and every one has its own entire blog post somewhere along the line, I’ll be as brief as I can. I’ve forced myself to choose only ten, though I could quite easily go on to make twenty-five. Still, ten it is.

A close encounter with a lost griffon vulture in Badajoz
Taking time out beneath the stone pines in El Rocio
Seeing El Rey León from the best seats in the house, Madrid
Accidentally getting the best views of the Semana Santa processions, Seville
Olive-harvesting with Ali and the family, Olvera
Sitting beneath the Monfragüe cliffs with the vultures flying in overhead
Spending the weekend in Cantabria with the wonderful Brocklesby
Getting a surprise party from one of my bachillerato classes
Discovering that simply speaking Spanish makes me happier
Hearing the first bee-eater calls of spring from my own bedroom in Villafranca

Tough call. And yes, I’m aware that two of those ten are vulture-related. If the number really had been twenty-five, there’d have been plenty more feathered highlights.

Specifically for Cantabria, climbing Watership Down Hill was a high…. geddit?

As for what this year has meant in the grander scheme of things, it’s pretty much laid out the road beneath my feet. I was pretty hooked on this country before I came here. I was even pretty certain already that I’d be living out here someday. Somewhere in the back of my mind I always knew. I guess that’s why I never quite managed to lay down roots with a girlfriend or even a best friend per se. Perhaps I always knew I’d be leaving England behind.

A ready-made fan club is also a major reason for coming back

Well, now it’s fixed. I won’t be swayed. I’ll be back for another two or three years of this auxiliar life, garnering experience as I go, before throwing myself at the notorious oposiciones and trying to carve a space for myself in the Spanish education system as a fully-qualified English teacher – without robbing the places of my friends and colleagues here, of course.

Reasons to live abroad: a risk-assessment free foam party courtesy of the fire brigade

It was a remarkably easy decision to make. I’ve enjoyed teaching since I took my first class in pure spite of my flustered English teacher way back in 2007. Despite years of my parents warning me not to follow them into their trade, here I am, teaching, and loving almost every second of it. Being an auxiliar is all of the best parts and none of the bad, granted, but I reckon with another few years under my belt I’ll be ready to take on the homework and the discipline. It’s not like I haven’t been asking to help out all year.

I also owe Concha Velasco Band for introducing me to Escuela de Calor. Tune!

Just before I go and christen the end of the Spanish stretch with a severe haircut, here’s a few goals for next time:

Learn to drive (car or motorbike)
Apply to work afternoons at San José
Share a flat with people roughly your own age
Likewise, find friends your own age in the area
Pack less… or buy less books

Just five. That will do. All of which would be a lot easier if I had a clear idea of where I would be living – which is one of the chief deciding factors in Villafranca Part II. And after that… Who knows? As of 2016 the British Council offers teaching placements across Spain, but also in Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador. I think I could afford to be apart from my grandfather’s country for one year. Especially now that I know I’m coming back – and coming back for good.

Oh, and one more goal: get inside the goddamn Alhambra again. It’s been too long.

So today it’s neither a ciao, nor goodbye, nor even adios. It’s hasta pronto. Muy, muy pronto. Que te lo pases bien en mi ausencia, España. Y sera breve. Te lo prometo. BB x

2016 Reasons to Smile

January 12, 2016January 12, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Hello you. Welcome to 2016. Happy new year, feliz año and all the rest. I’ve only really just finished with my first teaching day of the year and I’m already broken, but my Gold Box playlist is on at full blast, currently serving up a fantastically uplifting Son of Man courtesy of Phil Collins and all is as it should be. 2015 is behind us, a brave new year awaits. And it’s you who’ll climb the mountain, it’s you who’ll reach the peak.

What was it I said last year? That 2015 would be my year? In a sense, I suppose it was. It was, in all honesty, the very best of years. I took part in an international a cappella competition in London. I braved the Atlas Mountains. I sang the Circle of Life solo in front of a thousand-strong audience in Durham Cathedral. I recorded a single with the Lights. I saw the sun set over the Holy Land, swam with triggerfish in the Red Sea and watched a meteor shower over the desert in Wadi Rum. I found my old friends in Olvera after so many years and had some of the best nights of my life in my old hometown. I also had a close encounter with a griffon, saw the cranes come down for the winter and learned to harvest olives.

It wasn’t flawless, by any means. My essay ethic got worse and worse and my timetable got busier and busier, Persian was (sadly) a mistake, I had some Judas-level loyalty issues between the Lights and my official post as a musical director for Durham’s gospel choir and Year Abroad admin threatened to break me body and soul for several months. Amman, ever more of an obligation than a decision, practically drained me to the last drop of my will to study Arabic, and if it weren’t for having such good and honest companions about me, I might have tossed in the towel for good. And maybe, just maybe, I came home all the stronger for the ordeal.

But that’s looking back. Here’s to looking ahead. I’ve never been one for living in the past so much as in the future, which is equally problematic. One of my New Year’s resolutions really should be learning to live in the moment, which is a healthier state of mind by far, but… I guess I’d better be realistic. You can lead a horse to water, but if it’s not thirsty, there’s no point in drowning it just to make a point. So here, without further ado, are my reasons to smile in 2016.

I’m alive. That’s as good a reason as any.
I wanna know ’bout these strangers like me.
I’m living in Spain. It’s what I’ve always wanted.
I might be working long hours, but I’m being paid for it.
Winter is upon us, and that means spring is around the corner.
I’m going to be here in Spain when spring arrives.
In three months’ time the bee-eaters will be here.
Jesús and Laura, two of my primaria children, gave me a hug today.
I’ve just seen The Lion King. Twice. Once on stage, once on film. Big smiles.
Femi Kuti’s Truth Don Die has just come on.
I’m going to learn something new this year.
I’m going to go somewhere new this year.
I’m going to live somewhere new this year.
I’m going to meet somebody new this year.
The world is huge, and full of life, and wonderful people, and beautiful moments.
The sunsets here are nothing short of gorgeous.
The novel is coming along better than ever before.
You’re never lost if you’ve still got hope. And there is always hope.
I’ve finally found my feet with serious photography after a few years’ absence.
Get up, get on up; stay on the scene, like a sex machine.
Durham chose me as one of its international bloggers.
My brother and I are more alike than I ever knew.
I know who my dearest friends are and I love them so.
Erin Shore.
I haven’t had to do a maths paper for almost six years.
I haven’t started the TLRP yet, but it’s going to be hella interesting when I do.
My passion for learning new (useless) facts hasn’t dried up.
Nants ingonyama bagithi baba (sithi uhm ingonyama).
Wa sangoma ngi velelwe.
The 2015 negatives paragraph looks longer than the positives, but only because it ends on a positive.
I’m not in Syria. Whoever decides these odds has dealt me a very fair hand.
I’m an Englishman in a country where English is always in high demand.
Consequently, I don’t hate being English anymore. Thank you Allan Quatermain.
Dar baz ast.
There’s plenty more fish in the sea. Oh, and the nearest sea is the Mediterranean.
The Herculean backlog of stories I’ve got to read is still growing.
The new Star Wars film is nowhere near as bad as the prequels.
Zulu chant never ceases to lift my spirits, and it never will.
I’m going back to Morocco in June.
I’m not going back to Amman in June.
Thriller.
I might well be fluent in Spanish by the end of the year.
Two of my Big Five life ambitions have already been accomplished.
I’ll never stop chasing my dreams.
I’ve still got two new pairs of socks to wear.
Incidentally, the laundry is almost dry, too.
Philip and Stephanie live happily ever after in the end.
My childhood obsession with video games is over. Sméagol is free.
I actually have three weeks’ worth of lessons already planned for once.
I’ve got somewhere to live next year.
I’ve got a roof over my head at the moment, which is more than can be said for many.
Everyone is where they need to be, doing what they need to do.
Everything that happens, happens for a reason.
It’s raining, but I love the rain.
All the setbacks in the world will never kill the romantic in me.
I’d originally planned on twenty-six reasons. We’re now approaching sixty.
There are only four of us left, but I love my family to pieces.
It’s the little moments, not the major ones, which make life worth living.
I’ll never give up on myself.
My last class ends at half seven tomorrow, so I’ll have time to go grocery shopping.
Chipicao might be gone, but Spain still deals a roaring trade in its twin, Bolycao.
The last song on shuffle just happens to be my all-time favourite: Back in Stride, by Maze and Frankie Beverley. The ultimate in cure-all, feel-good songs.
Don’t worry. Be happy.

If all else fails, put on a smile yourself. It’s not a failsafe, but it sure looks nice, and it makes everybody else feel nicer. And maybe they’ll smile too. And that will come around and make you smile, too. And that, in itself, is a reason to smile. BB x

Wrapped Up for Christmas

December 21, 2015December 21, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

The end is nigh. I woke up nice and early this morning for one final lukewarm Spanish shower, shaved and set out in perfect time to make my 9am class… Only to find it empty. It must be Christmas.

I’m not really complaining. I’ve only had a few dud lessons like this over the course of the first term and they’ve all been in the last few weeks, when you can see them coming a mile off. I’ve heard plenty more horror stories from other assistants finding themselves with nothing to do all too often. That doesn’t stop the professional in me going in to school regardless. Hey, there’s free internet there – that’s as good a reason as any.

I should point out that today is my last full day in Spain… for a fortnight. In fourteen days exactly I’ll be back for Reyes Magos and the Cabalgata parade in Olvera, but primarily for Ali’s birthday and our weekend together in Madrid to see El Rey León. Before all that, I’ve a grace period I hadn’t planned on to see my brother, my parents and a cavalcade of old friends, most of whom were under the impression (as I was) that they wouldn’t be seeing me until September 2016. And, of course, to work on the drawing.

I’m sticking to my guns, though. Next year I’m in it for the long haul, in every sense. In truth, Christmas in Spain was never a certainty, but Easter most certainly is. Ain’t no way I’m spending even a second away from this country when it’s at its most beautiful.

I promised you all a summary, didn’t I? I’ll doubtless have a grand old 2015 review penned as the year draws to a close, but for now, I’ll stick to summing up the ups and downs of my first year-long stint as a teacher:

Improvised lessons are the best

Fail to plan, plan to fail, right? Wrong. Expect, and expect to be disappointed, as me mam would say. Some of my best lessons so far have been the ones where I’ve gone in with an idea on the day and simply improvised. By the end of the week, it’s usually matured into a fully-fledged lesson in its own right. By contrast, lessons where I’ve gone in with every minute blocked out with various exercises tend to fall dead in the water when one little aspect derails the entire flow, be it because the students were too quick – or, as is more often the case, too chatty.

Spanish seven to eight year olds are (mostly) demons

I didn’t sign up for primary teaching. I nearly did, but I didn’t. When my colegio scheduled me for two hours of primary a week and my instituto stepped in to reshuffle my timetable to their favour, I thought I’d dodged a bullet. A second reshuffle landed me back in the hot seat. I mostly look at teaching as something fun that I’d happily do for free, but at least one of those two hours a week is definitely a test of endurance that I only submit to for the cash. It’s not as bad as that one time I tried looking after those Iraqi children, but… I’ll put it this way. Given that Monday, a three hour day (less than a third of my usual workload), is nonetheless my least favourite day of the week is testament to the raw power of those kids. Without them, I dare say there’d be almost no catch at all to this post.

Speak up

If you aren’t comfortable with something, say it. That’s something I’ve never been very good at. I’d never describe myself as proud – if I once was, that side of me was mauled seven years ago – but I’d still rather soldier on on my own. That’s not the way to do it. Regular feedback is a good thing, especially as far as teaching is concerned, as you’re there for the kids’ benefit and not your own.

More money, more problems

I budgeted on maybe two hours of private lessons a week on top of my earnings from my instituto posting; a reasonably paid, casual fourteen-hour week. Instead, I’m burning the candle at both ends on a thirty-hour week, working two schools, two bi-weekly private groups and three one-to-ones, also bi-weekly. It takes in the dollar, no doubt, but it doesn’t half make for an intense four-day week. And to think that I’d originally planned on working evening shifts at a third school.. Coming back alive from this year abroad could well be a priority.

You’re an assistant, not a teacher…

So says my instituto. Sure, most of them are happy to take a back seat and let me have the run of the place for an hour every time, but rarely on my own. That they’ve never bolstered me with the assistance of a guardia (supply teacher) means I must be doing a good job, which is reassuring, but the support network is very real. I never have to worry about discipline, grammar or marking, for one, which means all I have to do is the teaching itself; all the pros and none of the cons.

…unless you’ve been told otherwise

That’s all well and good at the instituto. Elsewhere, I’m expected to take classes alone, and to cover everything besides: full explanation of grammar, discipline and the occasional bit of homework. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great practice, but as I’ve mentioned before, there’s at least one class where I could really do with a little help. There’s a reason people train as teachers.

Keep your personal and professional life separate

When you work in a town as small as Villafranca – especially if it’s as fond of gossip as this lot are – it’s easy to feel like the eyes of the world are on your every move. And they are. As my colleagues put it, I’m “controlado”. You won’t have to think too hard about that one. I’ve split mine down the middle, going out in Cadiz and working in Badajoz, with all of Sevilla as a buffer zone. It works. It doesn’t stop my kids hunting me down on Instagram, though. How they found me in the first place is quite beyond me.

Knowing their names is the key

Alright, so when you’re dealing with ten classes averaging twenty-five to thirty in number, putting names to faces is a Herculean task. I think I know the three or four best and worst kids in each one, and the others tend to blur into one. But at my second school, thanks partly to the register and mainly to the smaller classes (six to fifteen a throw), I’ve memorized almost all of them by name – and boy, does it pay dividends. It may only be a small move, but it means the world to them when they realize you’ve taken the trouble to remember. That, and it beats pointing and saying ‘uh… You’ twenty odd times an hour.

Sacrifice is only worth it if you’re prepared to bargain

I had to give up my day off on Friday to rehearse a Christmas number with two of my younger groups and then to see it carried out in the concert that night, scuppering any plans I’d had to explore Plasencia with my mum, who’d come to visit. It’s a testament to how much I’ve improved in this profession that I didn’t simply take it lying down as I might have done before; I had the sense to negotiate, as it were, for a day off of my choosing at some point next year. I’ve been collecting favors by working overtime at my other school with the aim of visiting Olvera a day early to make good on an invitation to spend a day working at my former primary school. It should be obvious, but don’t make sacrifices unless there’s something to be gained.

Spanish living is ridiculously cheap

Seriously. 150€ a month on rent. 25€ a fortnight on food (and that’s splashing out). Eating out well for 10€ a throw. And all that for the luxury of living out in the sticks. I don’t know how I’m ever going to readjust to English pricing…

Who knows what the new year will bring? With any luck, a new camera… it’s time I got back into my SLR game. Until then, I’ll be taking a well-earned break from teaching for a good three weeks. Hasta enero, España. You’ve been good to me. I mean that x