While Marina and I are away for the week, we’ve turned over the blog to veteran Notes from Spain contributor and guest blogger Gary Child, who was recently let loose for a fortnight in Barcelona. In this second instalment, Notes from the Language School…

I do not do mornings well. For this reason I need to be up and about for a good while before I am ready to interact with the rest human race, more so when this is going to take place in a foreign language.

When in Barcelona to study Spanish for my annual fortnight, on school days I am up at about 7.15. The school is a 20 minute walk from where I stay but, as the arthritic knee I mentioned previously doesn’t work so well until I get it going, I get the Metro to school and walk back.

Two flights of stairs down, a 90 second ride and three escalators up puts me on the terrace of a bar outside the school by just gone eight o’clock. My daily routine will see me order café Americano and a glass of hot water to pour in to create a longer drink.

I arrived this year in my usual spot and within ten minutes was approached by probably the oldest hooker in Spain. She certainly is persistent, having now been graciously declined by yours truly for the second consecutive year.

In one or two areas of Barcelona being approached is a fact of life. In the streets round Raval it is possible to be propositioned several times as you walk through, often by very pretty girls. It can be flattering when you’re fat, balding and in your fifties, until you recall the commercial enterprise that underlies the come hither. This, my second encounter with la vieja, left me pondering just how desperate I actually look…

Pues nada as they say, in to school to take the induction test which was soon marked before placing me in my class. If you are over fifty as I am, you have to expect to be the oldest kid on the block. You will almost certainly have to sit and listen to an endless tirade of anti American foreign policy mini lectures and mindless unquestioning eco-bollocks.

Mind, you could have heard a pin drop when, up to my eyeballs in savers of the planet, I suggested that their beloved Nelson Mandela spent twenty odd years in jail for terrorist offences. Out of sheer devilment I suggested that there was no way Ground Force would have extended the courtesy of redesigning Winnie’s garden, as they did Nelson’s, for fear of what might be lurking there! My tongue nearly popped right through my cheek at one point.

Anyway, last year I was in a class of eight to ten, this year there are five of us. I don’t know whether there are fewer students in school or just fewer working at this slightly higher level. The class this year has three German girls, all nurses on a government funded sabbatical, and an Italian bloke. All four of them are in their late twenties and good company. We do 90 minutes grammar, have a coffee break, and then 90 minutes conversation. Both sessions fly by and are very productive. For most of the students the day is over at 12.15.

The trick is to know exactly what you want out of the fortnight’s lessons before you go. Last year I needed to get the past tenses straight in my head, this year I need to get a feel for the subjunctive (though I know 20 years down the line I will still be picked up on it).

Once you have achieved your aim don’t try to over learn, you wont absorb and internalize if you cram, as soon as you get off the aeroplane it will be gone. It is better to have a walk, a sit in the dappled shade of a quiet square and sip tinto de verano whilst you mull over that you have learnt and internalize it. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

This year, however, I have elected to do the intensive course, which has an extra 90 minute conversation class in the afternoon. The makeup of this class is entirely different. And there’s the rub.

Again, I am with four others, all Germans this time, two boys and two girls. One of the boys, Reuben, has only been seen once - Peter Brady would be proud of him. Both girls are about 18 years old. Laura is pretty, as are all girls of that age, and a good student; Sara is, frankly, stunning. There is no other word for it. Like a fine work of art it is hard not to look, such is her beauty - and herein lies the problem.

Ralf is 24 and a nice enough chap, I imagine. He certainly must be intelligent as he is attending Barcelona University studying Applied Maths. Put politely, the presence of Sara next to him is not having a good effect on Ralf. Bluntly ‘He’s like a dog with two dicks’, as my grandad was wont to say. If you imagine one of those wobbly headed toys, once fashionable to have in the back windows of cars, with a persistent hideous grin on its face then you more or less have it nailed.

So, all the time the lesson is going on, whenever they are not directly involved, these two are whispering, doodling on each other’s hands, staring into each others eyes and generally being touchy feely.

There are a number of options, I reckon. The first is to demand that the school supply vomit bags, so sick-making is the performance. The second is to give Ralf a substantial, fatherly slap up the side of the head. Satisfying as that might be, the likelihood is that I shall take the third way, which is to dip the class and do something more productive, lunch and a beer maybe.

I don’t feel too bad about doing this. There is no break to speak of and the law of diminishing marginal returns sets in - the more you work the less you achieve once the optimum has been passed. Concentration levels are not so good after the morning’s exertion, certainly not for Ralf (I don’t know what he does for the rest of the day but I might respectfully advise that he stops it, lest his eyesight be adversely affected!)

I actually do reckon that the third session is too much and I shan’t book it next year. What’s more I have managed to arrange at least one intercambio every day which I am finding way more useful than spectating whilst the Liebegeschichte plays out before my eyes and Ralf, the gibbering German, drools all over his Arian supermodel.

When not living it up in Barcelona, Gary Child works on great Free educational resources for the Primary classroom.