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'On the Job'

27/8/2018

 
It seemed a normal day.  I’d pulled myself out of a delicious sleep on the mattress on the floor of the servant’s rooom I sublet in a friend’s apartment in Madrid; dressed and taken myself out for breakfast coffee and churros at a local bar on my way to teaching English at La Casa Inglesa on Plaza de Salamanca.  I quickly reviewed the lesson for the day over coffee and caught up with news of ongoing restlessness from the Franquist right wing activists as young King Juan Carlos, who had returned from exile a year earlier after the death of Generalissimo Franco, prepared the community for a referendum to become a democracy, hopefully to be followed by elections.  With limited Spanish, I wasn’t ‘across the detail’, but the news didn’t look good.

Working with my morning class in the small, high ceilinged room in the urban mansion bought by English gentry to teach the families of the wealthy and aspiring business people English, the sounds of an armada of helicopters hovering over a nearby square could be heard.  My students informed me that a demonstration was in train.  When I walked out not long after to go to lunch, young fully armed storm troopers were alighting from a bus nearby and heading towards the demonstration.

I decided to head to a bar further away from the school than usual, to ‘Bar Stop’, a bar frequented by the expatriate ‘English teacher’ community.  I needed to speak English.   A teacher I didn’t know well was sitting at the bar.  Looking up from the newspaper he was reading intently he made room for me to sit down.  He looked relieved to see someone he knew, however vaguely.  We talked, both grateful to be with someone ‘in our shoes’ with whom we could share our fears and gain strength and support.  I suspect we drank more wine than usual with our coffee and tortilla lunch.  We sat there, intensely discussing whether we should leave Spain; what this could mean in terms of broken contracts, lost ‘pagea (the amount taken out of our pay to be returned to us when our contract was successfully completed), and more.  I can remember us both visibly shaking. 

Still fearful if somewhat reassured, without time to return to my room for a siesta, I headed back to La Casa Inglesa for my afternoon class with six or seven young lawyers.  I particularly enjoyed working with them – they were highly intelligent and very well briefed about matters political.  They usually enjoyed drawing me out about politics to practise their English, often in a bar after class.  However the past weeks had seen them coming to class discussing recent developments with great intensity.  They shared with me their anger and sadness after five young left wing lawyers, some of whom they knew, had been murdered.  I knew the day’s demonstration was a response to this event.  They also surprised me when sharing the reason one of the class members had not been in class in recent weeks related to his being a young ‘Fuerza Nueva’ extreme right wing activist who had been caught using chains attacking communters in one of  Madrid’s Metro stations as they returned home from work.  I remain confused and bewildered by this.

That day, the day of the demonstration, nobody came to the afternoon class.

Bev Lee,
​August 2018
Further reading:  https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/02/03/inenglish/1454496288_346509.html
    'Our Stories'
    Picture

    Bev's stories

    As I look through the stories I've written since setting up the memoir writing group some years ago, it seems quite a number of  my stories reflect on my experience of aging! 

    Stories

    All
    2020'
    A Bed Time Story - 'The Little Wallaby'
    'A Childhood Memory'
    'Advice'
    A Friendship Tested
    Alexander Theatre
    'A Love Letter To Travel'
    'A Test Of Courage'
    'Aunts And Uncles'
    'Car Stories'
    'Car Story
    'Causes'
    Claire Bowditch
    'Cockles And Mussels'
    'Community'
    "Cringe"
    'Dear Unfinished Business'
    'Deja Vu'
    'Election Day 2022'
    'Experiencing The Unexplained'
    'Faking It'
    Family Ritual
    'Family Treasures'
    'Fear Of Failure
    'Fiesta Of Festivities'
    'Fish Out Of Water'
    'For Better For Worse'
    Gliding
    Grandparents
    'How I Came Here'
    'I Broke It'
    'If Only!'
    'I Grew Up In...'
    'I Quit'
    'I Was There'
    Jack Manuel
    'Lost And Found'
    Lost In Music
    'Making Waves'
    'Memoir Review'
    Molyullah Sports
    'Monash Modern Dance Group
    Monash University
    'New In Town'
    'Once'
    'On The Job'
    'Paulie Stewart'
    'Peter And The Wolf'
    'Precious Objects'
    'Rebellion'
    'Right Here
    Right Now'
    'Rise And Shine - Waking Up To Milk Arrowroot Biscuits)
    'Running With Scissors'
    'Shaped By Childhood'
    'Stock And Land'
    'The Music Of My Madrid'
    'The Separator Room'
    'The Sky's The Limit'
    TheSydney Tunnels
    'Things I've Left Behind'
    'This (...) Life'
    'This (Time Travelling) Life'
    'Three Wise Monkeys'
    Time
    'Too Hard Basket'
    'Travel Tales'
    'Trees'
    'Trigger'
    'What Happens In Vegas'
    'What I Was Wearing'

    Twitter ....

    @Lee_Bev

    Links

    Coping with Criticism (ie editing!)

    Hannie Rayson memoir interview video link

    The subconscious mind and the creative writing process

    Writing Historical Fiction

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    Attribution:

    Image--copyright Mary Leunig; owned by Beverley Lee; permission to use Mary Leunig.
We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay our respects to their elders - past, present and emerging.
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