You find me sitting on the balcony, sipping a strong cup of tea watching our discrete domestic waves roll reasonably quietly towards the shore.
This serene contemplative mode has been made necessary by the amount of red wine which gaily clinked its way into my stomach last night. My dorada a la sal was a delight, but the same could not be said for the rest of the meal. For the first time our local restaurant on the corner with the odd opening hours has let us down. The prawns were distinctly odd – which is not a good thing – though I have to say that my slight instability today is not as a result of any questionability with regard to the shell fish.
Nevertheless we had a reasonably raucous time and went to bed exhausted. Who can ask for more from a Friday night!
I did manage to do some partial marking of one script yesterday which, according to the strange (but tried and tested) rituals which govern my life, should ensure that the rest of marking is completed before Monday morning.
I am now on my second cup of tea which is being drunk for purely medicinal purposes and I am now at least at the stage which I can follow people walking on our newly constructed paseo. When I say ‘constructed’ I am using the word in the Spanish sense where the tense, although seemingly placed in the past and therefore suggesting completion, is more properly translated into a vague hopefulness of completion in the indeterminate future.
The slabs have been laid on the sand so it looks as though a patchy stone carpet has been rolled out. There is no edging to the pathway and the intersections with the continuations of the paths that lead to the beach from the road that runs parallel with it are still at the level of ‘building site’. As we progress relentlessly towards the summer season there is no sense of busy endeavour to get the thing complete for the influx of tourists on which Castelldefels relies for its major source of income. It is well for me to remind myself that I am in Spain. And relax!
And so to my third cup of tea. And the world is becoming a much more manageable place. And worth living in! Don’t get me wrong; I have been, as the phrase is, ‘up and doing’ for some time. I even got the croissants and bread! Though I would have to admit that my walking was of a studied and determined kind as I strove to shake off the lingering effects of the impulsive little house red that we had with dinner last night!
The beach is filling up: people are water skiing and sunbathing. But no one is in the water swimming. There is hazy sunshine and when the sun is behind the cloud it is, in Spanish terms, a mite chilly. It looks like the first weekend of the season and people are, in what looks like a particularly British sort of way, determinedly having fun!
My marking has now been tidily packaged in a multi-leaved folder and is waiting for the touch of my red pen. In a stroke of good fortune The Family (complete with younger elements) is going to descend on us thus giving me the perfect excuse to play the host and delay the wearisome deciphering of ‘interesting’ approaches to English orthography and grammar.
The testing time for me will be when The Family decides to go for a walk. This is the opportunity for me to show some degree of resolve and start the marking. If I can break the back of it today then I know that I will complete it tomorrow. Perhaps if I stopped writing about it and actually did some of it I would be in a better position!
I feel a certain disinclination to start anything yet. The anticipation of the arrival of The Family precludes coherent marking intentions!
And there is lunch to look forward to!
This serene contemplative mode has been made necessary by the amount of red wine which gaily clinked its way into my stomach last night. My dorada a la sal was a delight, but the same could not be said for the rest of the meal. For the first time our local restaurant on the corner with the odd opening hours has let us down. The prawns were distinctly odd – which is not a good thing – though I have to say that my slight instability today is not as a result of any questionability with regard to the shell fish.
Nevertheless we had a reasonably raucous time and went to bed exhausted. Who can ask for more from a Friday night!
I did manage to do some partial marking of one script yesterday which, according to the strange (but tried and tested) rituals which govern my life, should ensure that the rest of marking is completed before Monday morning.
I am now on my second cup of tea which is being drunk for purely medicinal purposes and I am now at least at the stage which I can follow people walking on our newly constructed paseo. When I say ‘constructed’ I am using the word in the Spanish sense where the tense, although seemingly placed in the past and therefore suggesting completion, is more properly translated into a vague hopefulness of completion in the indeterminate future.
The slabs have been laid on the sand so it looks as though a patchy stone carpet has been rolled out. There is no edging to the pathway and the intersections with the continuations of the paths that lead to the beach from the road that runs parallel with it are still at the level of ‘building site’. As we progress relentlessly towards the summer season there is no sense of busy endeavour to get the thing complete for the influx of tourists on which Castelldefels relies for its major source of income. It is well for me to remind myself that I am in Spain. And relax!
And so to my third cup of tea. And the world is becoming a much more manageable place. And worth living in! Don’t get me wrong; I have been, as the phrase is, ‘up and doing’ for some time. I even got the croissants and bread! Though I would have to admit that my walking was of a studied and determined kind as I strove to shake off the lingering effects of the impulsive little house red that we had with dinner last night!
The beach is filling up: people are water skiing and sunbathing. But no one is in the water swimming. There is hazy sunshine and when the sun is behind the cloud it is, in Spanish terms, a mite chilly. It looks like the first weekend of the season and people are, in what looks like a particularly British sort of way, determinedly having fun!
My marking has now been tidily packaged in a multi-leaved folder and is waiting for the touch of my red pen. In a stroke of good fortune The Family (complete with younger elements) is going to descend on us thus giving me the perfect excuse to play the host and delay the wearisome deciphering of ‘interesting’ approaches to English orthography and grammar.
The testing time for me will be when The Family decides to go for a walk. This is the opportunity for me to show some degree of resolve and start the marking. If I can break the back of it today then I know that I will complete it tomorrow. Perhaps if I stopped writing about it and actually did some of it I would be in a better position!
I feel a certain disinclination to start anything yet. The anticipation of the arrival of The Family precludes coherent marking intentions!
And there is lunch to look forward to!
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