I don’t really do parties.
However, I seem to have agreed to go to one in Sitges. This is all part of the aftermath of the meeting that I went to in the middle of the week. The occasion purports to be dinner and a concert: which I think means tapas and the first drink free with a group of whom I have not heard.
That negativity will be mitigated by the fact that there will be a few friendly faces there and writing about it will obviously be a nice counterpoint to the opera and concert reviews that litter these electronic pages. I have to say that the ticket for my festivities this evening is a damn sight cheaper than the ticket for my next opera – and this one includes food as well!
The sun is making a valiant effort to shine its way through a stubborn layer of cloud and I stoically drunk my mug of tea on the balcony while watching the inexplicably ostentatious faffing about of the bulldozers moving piles of sand which they had laboriously built up a few days ago at the side of our slowly developing paseo on the beach.
The fact that they are working (!) on a Saturday shows a certain degree of panic. Last weekend was one where the beach was covered by people, some of whom divested themselves of many of their garments. You have to understand that the Spanish (and indeed the Catalans) are not ones to discard body coverings lightly merely because the sun shyly shows itself. There has to be heat which is clearly equivalent to summer levels before they show the sun any Spanish skin! The beach 'season' had clearly started.
Today’s temperatures will ensure that the only epidermis the sun’s rays will reach is on the face and hands – and on the head in my case. This seems cruelly unfair when the rest of the week has been glorious. I have been able to appreciate the good weather in my trudging up and down vertiginous steps as I make my way from building to building in school. The journey may be arduous, but you are rewarded by constantly changing vistas of the city of Barcelona laid out beneath the school. From some classrooms the view is spectacular.
But I want unlimited sun here and now. If I am to protect my Germanic status (I don’t look British to any Catalan) I have to be tall (no problem) and tanned – which is where the sun comes in. I have a deep psychological psychosis which centres on my belief that I am becoming paler and paler and that my expensively acquired tan, garnered in the past from high season days in Gran Canaria, is fading to pasty whiteness. I have also convinced myself that I have obviously lost reserves of vitamin D which needs to be replenished by healthy sunshine. I can hardly wait for the penurious days of July (no job / no contract) when I will be able to wallow in the sea and sun with equal impunity!
I’m now off to buy a grandfather’s shirt in my size in preparation for the party as I have decided to wear my Neru suit and to hell with the consequences!
However, I seem to have agreed to go to one in Sitges. This is all part of the aftermath of the meeting that I went to in the middle of the week. The occasion purports to be dinner and a concert: which I think means tapas and the first drink free with a group of whom I have not heard.
That negativity will be mitigated by the fact that there will be a few friendly faces there and writing about it will obviously be a nice counterpoint to the opera and concert reviews that litter these electronic pages. I have to say that the ticket for my festivities this evening is a damn sight cheaper than the ticket for my next opera – and this one includes food as well!
The sun is making a valiant effort to shine its way through a stubborn layer of cloud and I stoically drunk my mug of tea on the balcony while watching the inexplicably ostentatious faffing about of the bulldozers moving piles of sand which they had laboriously built up a few days ago at the side of our slowly developing paseo on the beach.
The fact that they are working (!) on a Saturday shows a certain degree of panic. Last weekend was one where the beach was covered by people, some of whom divested themselves of many of their garments. You have to understand that the Spanish (and indeed the Catalans) are not ones to discard body coverings lightly merely because the sun shyly shows itself. There has to be heat which is clearly equivalent to summer levels before they show the sun any Spanish skin! The beach 'season' had clearly started.
Today’s temperatures will ensure that the only epidermis the sun’s rays will reach is on the face and hands – and on the head in my case. This seems cruelly unfair when the rest of the week has been glorious. I have been able to appreciate the good weather in my trudging up and down vertiginous steps as I make my way from building to building in school. The journey may be arduous, but you are rewarded by constantly changing vistas of the city of Barcelona laid out beneath the school. From some classrooms the view is spectacular.
But I want unlimited sun here and now. If I am to protect my Germanic status (I don’t look British to any Catalan) I have to be tall (no problem) and tanned – which is where the sun comes in. I have a deep psychological psychosis which centres on my belief that I am becoming paler and paler and that my expensively acquired tan, garnered in the past from high season days in Gran Canaria, is fading to pasty whiteness. I have also convinced myself that I have obviously lost reserves of vitamin D which needs to be replenished by healthy sunshine. I can hardly wait for the penurious days of July (no job / no contract) when I will be able to wallow in the sea and sun with equal impunity!
I’m now off to buy a grandfather’s shirt in my size in preparation for the party as I have decided to wear my Neru suit and to hell with the consequences!
It is a sign of the speed of the times that Neru is now underlined by ‘Word’ as an unknown word. So the founder of modern India and the first Indian prime minister is no longer recognized as a proper noun by the most powerful word processing program in the world. Sic transit gloria mundi! And I might add that ‘Word’ solely recognizes ‘gloria’ as a girl’s name and is only too eager to give it its capital letter! And I think this is all getting too self-referential; so I’ll stop.
Time to shop!
Alas! The only collarless shirt that I found was priced at an extortionate €109 which was 'reduced' to only €85. It did look quite nice, but not €85 nice! It is therefore ordinary shirt and glaring tie.
The sun is now a blurred smudge on the sky and, while there appear to be blue skies near the horizon the only ones above Castelldefels are cloud filled.
I suppose there is always marking!
As if!
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