The Art of Derek Dohren

As my fellow trainee TEFL colleagues begin to depart this great city the class of Oct '09 is finally scattering to all corners of the globe. Of the 13 of us that sat the course, 11 of us have been in Granada living and working through most of this year. Half of us remain but half have now gone on to bigger and better things. It's been a privilege to know them all and we've had some great experiences and shared many laughs. I think we have all forged lasting bonds. 

I turned this photograph taken on our final training day into a painting this week. It was a surprisingly emotional exercise for me. The end of an era - the start of another.

From left to right:

(Back row) Chris Irwin, Steven Julius, Brittany Cheviron, Sara Goldfarb, Loren Davy, Laura Ffrench, Lizzie Andrews

(Front row) Steven Sheridan, Mate Varadi, Derek Dohren, David Crow, Paige Ratleff, Paola Borelli (teacher), Chris Dover

I love you guys.

Pretty girls approaching you on the street to chat you up can mean one of only two things: they're trying to sell you sex or they're trying to sell sects to you. Sadly, in either case, I'm a dead loss. If it's the former I have no money, and if it's the latter, well I still have no money.

It's a testament to the pulling power of pleasing your God that a pair of female Mormons can make a pitch for your soul look just ever so slightly like a pitch for your pants - at least long enough for you to momentarily drop your guard (if not the pants) and make the fateful mistake of engaging in conversation. Oh lordie, get me outta here now.

Clearly some of those who profess to do God's work on the streets are not afraid to take tips from that most ancient of professions. And why not? Sex sells everything these days from cigarettes and alcohol, to deodorants, cars and houses, so why not everlasting life?

It was somewhat disarming then to be stopped this afternoon along the Acera del Darro by what can only be described as two outstandingly beautiful girls, only to then be asked for directions. I felt cheated somehow. I was ready to sell my soul, to drop my morals there and then. I've still got no money mind but I do have an ever increasing wonderment at the effortless beauty of youth.

And so, cashless and denuded of work I trudge on. Any maybe, just maybe things will change again for the better? Promises of work are in the air again, Spain is still in the World Cup, and let's face it, for us men (the weaker of the sexes of course) just chatting to a pretty face is sometimes enough.

I refuse to join the naysayers who would have it that they never want to live through another one of these economic crises. As the saying goes 'economic crises come round every 11 years, more or less the same as a typical cycle of sunspot activity' What, you've never heard that one before? Well you should have paid more attention in school then. I don't know if the two things are linked, kind of like El Ninos and the rise to power of right of centre governments, or something. I should think there's a research paper begging to be written somewhere. Anyway...

In short it would be a fine wish to never see another such crisis if I was 101 years old and hanging on to dear life in a care home, unable to remember my own name, but as things stand, I'm still of sound enough mind and body for the powers that be to expect me to do an honest day's work. And, yes, if it's all the same I for one would quite like to be around when the next pathetically avoidable, yet still apparently unavoidable, crisis comes along. There'll be another along in about 9 years I shouldn't wonder and I'll still be of pre-retirement age (an age which by then will indubitably be set to 86 for all European Union subjects).

Having established the requirement of, and the willingness to, work for my living the only problem I have now is finding, erm, some work to go and do. It's all very well saying you're up for stuff but there's very little stuff to be up for. It's back to carting myself round schools and door knocking I fear. You have to get in people's faces here. Leaving messages and sending in CVs counts for nothing compared to presenting oneself face to face. It's just the way of it out here. The rest is down to luck, and timing.

All life is timing if you weigh it up. We've all been in the right places and we've all tried to seize the right moment but only the successful amongst us manage to pull both stunts simultaneously. My timing's off. It usually is. I feel strange empathy with England's hapless footballers at the World Cup. World beaters between tournaments they give the impression they couldn't tie their own boot laces once the serious action starts. That's me, the Emile Heskey of the TEFL world. But I'll press on. It only takes one speculative shot to fly into the back of the net and you're on top of the world again. At least until those pesky sunspots start doing their thing again.

Just a note to comment on the recent site refresh. You may have noticed a few new pages - if not then this is to tell you there are a few new pages. And there has been a site refresh. This is a note of them.

It's not just new fancy background colours and fonts and stuff...

'classes' provides details of the new art classes I'm starting up here in Granada. If you're heading out this way and fancy spending a few hours creating some original artwork then let me know! This page will flesh out with more information in the coming week.

'evolution' describes how three of my recent paintings developed.

'career resume' and 'things I know' might not all be entirely true. I'm not sure.

Finally, if you've not looked around the site before please stay and have a browse. There's plenty to see. Some of it's rubbish though.

I'm feeling the pressure again and am trying to get through one week at a time. Always a good time to paint a self portrait.

It's seriously hot here now. I went into town this afternoon and saw three roadside temparature displays reading 39, 39 and 38 degrees centigrade respectively. That was at 6pm. I hadn't left the apartment before then because it just looked so hot outside. And it's still May, at least for a few more hours.

I'm doubting the wisdom of trying to set up outdoor art classes if this is a foretaste of what the next four months holds. On the plus side all the trees along the boulevards and avenues are fully in leaf and are providing some shade. The city council, or whatever it's called, have also pulled canvas sheets across the busier roads from the top floors of the buildings along each side of the road. This artificial canopy is cutting out direct sunlight in many places. Best of all, and a real life saver, is the presence of a wafting breeze, coming down off the Sierras (which incidentally still lie under 3 metres of snow). I hear cities like Cordoba and Sevilla have no such mitigating meteorological assistance and basically if you get caught outside in these places during the afternoon you fry.

The temperatures are still dropping to reasonable levels overnight though and once the sun goes down you can get from A to B without looking like you've just climbed out of a swamp.

TEFL work is now beginning to wind down for the season. The summer months, August in particular, will see a lot of Granada simply shut down. It will be extremely hot and fairly unpleasant here and many Granardinos simply decamp to the coast for the summer. Many of the bars will close immediately the World Cup is over. It seems counter-intuitive, particularly to those of us from the UK, to shut up shop at that time of year, but I'm told this is the normal course of events here.

I'll be needing to tap into a new income stream. The magazine I'm writing for is one of the businesses that'll go into summer hibernation so it's a double whammy for yours truly. The art classes I am trying to get off the ground will need to deliver the goods in July and August. Tourists will still come to Granada and if I can lure enough of them into doing a bit of painting then hopefully by the time September comes around I'll still be clinging on here.

Of course there will still be some English teaching opportunities to be had throughout the summer. Not everyone goes away, and not everyone who goes away goes for two months. Many students are also 'mature' and are not tied into school or university terms. They are studying English on their own terms. Though I have already lost two students, and am soon to lose a third and probably a fourth, I have one student who is a businessman and who wishes to continue his studies over the summer. Some students stick around too and use the summer as an opportunity to catch up in areas they've fallen behind in. It's a case of targeting your advertising carefully if you want to pick up the clients that are still to be found.

All in all it would seem July and August would be a great time for me to think about coming back to the UK for a few weeks. It's immensely appealing but I fear I simply don't have the funds for such a trip. I'll use the opportunity of having less TEFL stuff on my plate to try and establish the art classes - whilst hoping for the best. Mabye I'm fiddling while Rome burns, but I see little alternative.

Perhaps I'll be sticking a fiver on England to beat Spain in the World Cup final?

I've not painted for a while. Work has been a bit too heavy but I sense a shift in the daily routine is imminent. Things don't seem to stay the same for long here.

Here's a portrait I painted last week. It was done in a matter of hours, proving to myself again that my best work is spontaneous and quick. I hope to be getting my head down to more serious painting projects soon.

A bigger version of this painting is viewable in the portrait gallery.

Odd things co-incidences. It doesn't matter how minor or irrelevant they are in themselves the sheer co-incidentness of them is startling sometimes. If you get two in a short time that's really weird. Three in two days is hard to comprehend. I'm sure everything can be explained by mathematics and other sciences of course but it doesn't make these things any less gobsmacking.

And I'm talking about nailed on, absolutely clear cut, extremely unlikely co-incidences here.

First coincidence: A name I had never heard of before caught my imagination and I looked the origins of it up on Wikipedia. It was the name of some medieval saint over here. Within hours, I received a spam email from someone with the exact same name.

Second one: During a conversation I was having in a cafe down town someone rode past on a bicycle, bizarrely broadcasting a piece of music from a film we were actually discussing.

Both of those things happened yesterday. They both freaked me out.

Then today: In Granada this morning I was coming from teaching a class. As I strolled towards the effing bus stop I was mulling over the versatility of a certain English swear word, a word that may be used as a verb, noun, adjective, preposition or adverb. Barely two hours later I came across the exact same thing, written out almost word for word, in a novel I'm currently reading. Believe me, I hadn't been reading ahead.

What does this all mean? Almost certainly it means nothing. How can it mean anything? Why should it mean anything? What would be the point? We think, say and do a billion things a day and then immediately forget most of it. There are bound to be occasional co-incidences with certain events and conversations and they will be the ones we remember, the ones that stick in the mind. And yet, when these things strike like that they have a habit of unsettling you.

Of course you can't will these things to happen. It's almost as if once you become conscious of the possibility of co-incidence it can't, by some sort of rule of physics, actually happen. God knows I've tried to make myself rich and successful by thought processes alone yet muttering out loud the words 'imagine if I found a 1,000 Euro note on the pavement this morning' have so far yielded no results.

I shall go to bed tonight imagining an art collector somewhere is imagining that an artist somewhere is lying in obscurity imagining that he's going to be discovered by this collector. Stranger things happen every day. Sometimes more than once.

Sorry to have kept you.

So spring came and went, in a matter of a few short weeks, and we appear to have careered head first into summer. Temperatures hit the low 30s at the end of April, fell back a little for a week or two and have now decided that's where they'd like to be until further notice, that probably being in July when they decide they'd quite like to hit the 40s.

Fiestas abound. La Zubia had it's annual patron saint festival last week, in honour of San Juan Nepomuceno. It ran from May 14th to the 17th and was notable for the large helping of free paella I got handed last Sunday afternoon while I was picking my way through the massed throng of revellers. It was a splendid dish, containing as it did all sorts of dead animal (of land and sea, vertebrate and invertebtate) many of which where of an inderterminate identity. I spilled some on my shirt and made a point of getting it washed pronto.

Corpus Christi kicks off from May 31st to June 6th and La Zubia has another couple of fiestas in June, namely San Antonio and San Pedro.

These are nice events and the whole village/town seems to get together to celebrate but I hope the epicentre of the festivities is not where the last one was - a few hundred yards from my door. The noise, day and night, was relentless.

Though I continue to have no joy getting a foot in the door of the language schools in the area (though in truth, I haven't tried particularly hard) I have six regular English students I am privately tutoring now and am giving out eight lessons a week. The best aspect of this is that each of the students is at a different level and each one is requiring a very customised type of lesson. I am sticking to very little of the lesson formats taught to me during my formal training though much of what I learned in terms of teaching technique has been vitally important.

My student demographic ranges considerably too - in age from 11 to late 30s, male and female, professional and student, elementary to advanced. It's certainly extremely invigorating for me to have to get into the correct mindset prior to each lesson. I am involved in a real mixed bag of lesson routines. One student has business oriented lessons; another requires help with an English fiction book; one works as an interpreter and wants to brush up a knowledge of English language idioms; one is a mathematics teacher who wants conversational English; one is a fun loving child who, at his parents' behest, I will take on an excursion into the hills next week; and the other is needing help with essay writing. Never a dull moment.

Generally I am in awe of all of them. Not only do they speak far better English than I do Spanish, they are juggling heavy committments elsewhere and are clearly very bright and able people and extremely motivated. I'm humbled when I see the effort they put into everything they do.

For the time being I cannot advance my plans for the art lessons as I feel I need to give these English students my fullest attention. It's the least they deserve. In four weeks time I will lose two of them as I am acting only as a temporary fill in teacher for them. Things will then ease but of course I will need to replace the income, and then some, accordingly.

The thing is I already feel I will miss those two students and I also feel a growing attachment to the others. I have learned out here though that things change, and change dramatically, so I'm trying to expect the unexpected. I've no idea at any point, beyond a week or so, what I'm going to find myself doing. It's as refreshing as it is worrying.

I finally got inside the Alhambra on Sunday, courtesy of Charley. She is over for a visit and purchased tickets for us both as a forthcoming birthday treat. It was amazing. The photos don't really do it justice but I'll post a few anyway...

Shocking news. We had an earthquake underneath Granada on Monday measuring a whopping 6.2 on the Richter Scale. It was very deep underground so no surface damage was caused.

News link here...

http://www.pamil-visions.net/spain-earthquake-inigma/214002/

I missed it and can only assume that at the time the quake struck, just after midnight, I'd passed off that particular seismic tremble as one of the kids upstairs going for a midnight poo.

The painting's taking a back seat again as other matters come to the fore. I have an increase in TEFL work, and am dealing with a subsequent increase in travel time and lesson planning. Bizarrely I find myself scheduled to teach on six days a week for the next five weeks (Saturday being my day off). It's actually one lesson a day, except Monday which will be two, and the total amount of hours isn't great but of course each day is impacted and broken up.

Some of the lessons are late morning, some late afternoon, some early evening and I'll need to get my head around the new routines quickly. For instance a round trip to one of the neighbouring villages for a one and a half hour lesson can still eat four to five hours of my day if I don't swap buses efficiently. I need to work the timetables to my advantage but of course it's not always possible. At least I don't have to get from one village to another on the same morning or evening.

If I had enough cash I'd buy myself a scooter, but it's not an option right now.

Of course, this work is important. The injection of cash will be a life saver for me. Even so, the frustrating part is that the workload arrives right at the time I was putting together a plan to run some art classes. I feel these classes can be a much more enjoyable, and yes lucrative way for me to make a living out here and I'm anxious to start the ball rolling before I lose my nerve.

Here are a couple of photos from the two art classes I ran last week.

The top picture shows the students on day one while the second picture shows the finished paintings from our trip out into Granada.

Anyway, for now I'll have to content myself with backgrounding all the logistics of how I'm going to run these courses. I can work on gathering more of the hardware I'll need, nail down a price structure, and think up how I'm going to lay out and then distribute my advertising flyers.

So it's all change again. It seems to be the way of things for me out here.

ESPN news

Police in a suburb of Granada were this morning investigating a bizarre incident that has left an octogenerian English gentleman dead. The man, a former ground floor resident in an apartment block in La Zubia, had earlier raced upstairs to his neighbour's apartment and barged his way in.

His surprised neighbours told police that he appeared to have lost his temper and was rambling incoherently. And they should know.

He dragged each of the family members personally, one by one, around to every item of furniture in the apartment, asked them IF. THEY. WERE. HAPPY. WITH. WHERE. EACH. INDIVIDUAL. ITEM. OF. FURNITURE. WAS. Then nailed each of the furniture items to the floor using 12 inch nails and his own fists.

"Hewasveryangryandwasshoutingandsteamwascomingoutofthetopofhishead" shouted all of the family at the same time to our news reporter.

They added. In unison. All at the same time. Shouting "HEWASNOTHAPPYABOUTSOMETHINGANWHENHEHADFINISHEDNAILINGEVERYTHIGTOTHEFLOORHETRIEDTOMAKEUSALLTALKTOHIMBUTJUSTONEOFUSATATIMEINREALLYQUIETVOICESITWASHORRIBLETHENHESTARTEDPOURINGALLOURTINYBITSOFMETALTHATWELIKETOPLAYWITHALLOVERTHEFLOORUNTILITWASALLUSEDUPITWASREALLYHORRIBLE."

The incident ended tragically when the man apparently rammed 6 HB pencils up his own nose, gnawed off his left arm, and with his right hand ripped off his own head before jumping off the balcony.

Police have noted the complaint but say the matter remains a 'domestic issue' and no further action will be taken.

** Note **

A lot of the above is not true yet. 

Work and promises of work continue to be offered and withdrawn. As it stands I’m on the threshold of a very busy period and for the next 6 weeks will be working a 6 day week (including Sundays). On the other hand it’s possible I’m not. It really changes from day to day, even hour to hour and until you’re sat down with a student anything can happen. I’ve now lost count of the number of ad-hoc jobs that have come my way and of the number of various leads that have fizzled to nothing. Still the more that gets thrown your way the greater chance you have of something sticking. It’s a case of ear to the ground and trying to make as many contacts as possible.

On the face of it things look good right now, certainly in terms of me being able to actually earn as much as I’m spending (for a month or two anyway). After that, well who knows?

The most exciting leads of all continue to be the non-TEFL related opportunities. My art class students are all primed for ‘Part 2’ of their class tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to seeing this develop into a long term project. We will hit the streets early on (weather forecast is set fair) and I’m expecting to see three mini masterpieces produced before lunch. I’m formulating an idea to set up classes for English speaking holidaymakers, or locals for that matter, and feel there’s a niche there to be grabbed. We’ll see and there’s things I need to work out.

I’m also involved now with a startup magazine that’s aimed at the English speaking community. It’s called ‘Granada Insider’ and is a monthly publication. I’ll be writing some pieces for it.

None of which means I’ve given up on the Spanish. Far from it but while that remains a work in progress I need to do what’s necessary. Selling some works of art on a regular basis would give me a multi-pronged income stream, albeit an erratic one, but that’s better than a no-income stream. I can’t afford any more fallow months.

A quick word about the Rojiblancos. A splendid 5:1 victory over league leaders Melilla was gratefully witnessed on Sunday lunchtime. Dave and I sat in the top tier of the roofless stand, under two hours of glorious sunshine, and revelled in Ighalo's magnificent hat-trick and another double from leading score Tariq (all for just 15 Euros).

Pick of the bunch was Tariq's first. A simply towering header, lashed into the net with no messing about. It was like watching what you always imagine Peter Crouch can do but can't. 

If Billy Reid's reading this - either of these lads could do a job for the Accies. They know how to put the ball in the onion bag - repeatedly. And they're used to wearing the red and white hoops so it's a no-brainer Billy. Whip the cheque book out you tight get. It's the least you can do for giving away James McArthur in the summer (probably).

Only downside was severe sunburn to the face and to the top of the napper.

Promotion beckons.

Here's the table. I've no idea if any sort of formatting will hold up. They show points first, then games...

pos equipo        ptos  j     g  e p  gf   gc

1     UD Melilla     63  32 18 9 5 43 28

2     Granada        60  32 18 6 8 65 34

I taught an art class this afternoon. It was great fun and a 100 times better than teaching English. My students were all excellent and enjoyed themselves. They are all now stealing themselves for day two of the course which will take them out onto the mean streets of Granada for a cityscape later this week! Bring it on!

We started the lesson painting colour wheels and touched a little on some colour theory before loosening up the artistic mood a bit more by experimenting with different sized  brushes and knives.

The class then went on to paint their own gardenscape paintings (photo above) and produced a wide array of beautiful pictures. A great afternoon!

Some photographs taken from a recent trek into the Sierras to the small village of Cumbres Verdes.

cold sun and green skies flying

when you pass this way I know I'm dying

not just typing ceaseless words

I don't make this noise to curse

my sense of apathy, abstracted commentary

in tumultuous waves tossed up aplenty

you don't know the words I'm slaying

I don't have to because no one's paying

to me the slightest bit of attention

so bend and twist you force of dimension

forgive him if he drinks too much

better he drinks than he thinks too much

this painting wraps a finger of hope

the best of things fits me to cope

well maybe that's so, I hear

selling you wares unawares where you dare

were you really stringing along that line

and hanging them apart sublime?

I never realised the cold sun and skies

where always so green as your eyes

time flies slowly but sand falls quick

through the eye and heralds a new day sick

adorning a family neighbourhood

acute in folding paper, card, canvas and wood

troubled with experience of sand and blood

caskets of vermillion and yellow oxide

trembling fingers holler to one side

retreat in my harness now solidly blue

In all honesty what now would you

have me do?

hills of suede and icing sugar

spread with palette knife, fried in butter

the fisherman's catch in tethered rock

tableau of stone in shattered shock

in vitriolic fervour of frustrated happening

under rotted bridges and ragged scattering

going internal please curdle and jam

that passage through arterial dam

in muddy flows your concrete complexion

drops from a veldt of absent affection

catedral sits in sickening rock

borne on the hands of a quivering flock

to buy a place in heaven with Him

and sidestep that unholy din

too late to know what can't be known

when you've realised you've turned to stone

the route to safety already blown

away and yet seek tether and groan

fastidiously you do shudder and enter

that contract with the absent mentor