Another milestone passed: I phoned up the telephone company to complain about the lack of intent access. The telephone call was troubled with mutual incomprehension on both sides but the proof of the conversation is clearly indicated by the fact that there is now, irrefutably, internet cover.
It was depressing to see that the highly paid professionals of the telephone company could recommend little more than taking the plug out and putting it back in again. It worked so I shouldn’t even breathe a word against the struggling (if only in a linguistic sense) gentleman who made all things well.
If I had thought about it I would have done the same thing before I phoned him up, but I had dark thoughts about what might have gone wrong and I had no desire to exacerbate the situation.
Yesterday I went in to Barcelona ostensibly to look at the Christmas lights and take a few photographs and perhaps mosey round the shops and sneer at the lack of bargain opportunities which will, in retrospect be even more glaring when I waltz around the January sales in the few hours of spare time that I am going to get when I visit the UK just before the re-start of school.
I shocked myself by the lack of spending that I did and was congratulating myself on my positively unnatural sense of restraint when I just happened to go up six escalators to the electronic department of El Corte Inglés. There, after some intensively desultory searching I happened upon the Apple store.
There is a product made by Mac which is sleek and silver and elegant and ridiculously expensive. It was while I was drooling over the MacBook Air 11 that I was accosted by a young girl who, after admitting that she spoke a little English, spoke none at all and witch like with foreign blandishments urged me to buy the said machine.
And I said “yes” and she said “we don’t have one at the moment” and I took that as the word from god that I should not even think about one. No, not even when she said that she would take my name and phone number and let me know at once when she was able to get one. I resisted. I stood firm. I went down the six escalators feeling undeniably cheated and yet, at the same time, a more moral person.
By the time that I had reached my car which was two floors underground the moral superiority was totally gone and the feeling that I had been “untimely ripped” away from what was rightfully mine had taken over.
It was then that MediaMarkt (think Temptation in the Desert and you get some kind of idea of what kind of role this unprincipled store plays in my life) came whispering into my mind, telling me that they sold the machine and, what is more, they were giving away a disk drive free, gratis and for nothing. As long as you paid a king's ransom for the machine itself.
It was night (seeing the lights remember) when I set off for home and I decided to give god another chance to make his message clear. I would cut off the usual road that I took home from the city and go onto the parallel motorway. From this road it was but a matter a moments to go into the shopping mall in Gava and find out if the store was open and . . .
So I took the road and then, just as I was about to join the motorway I took the wrong turning (something very easy to do given the darkness and the appalling road signing) and found myself going back the way I had come. I therefore took another turning to right myself and found that I had got on to a one way road going in the wrong direction with a low wall down the centre to ensure that mistakes could not be corrected.
With the magnanimity for which I am famous I decided to give god a “best out of five” opportunity to stop me getting to the shop.
Eventually I found myself on a bit of motorway that I knew and, inwardly cringing at the distance that I had manoeuvred myself out of my normal course, I made doggedly for the shop which I knew must, by this time be closed.
It wasn't.
My last chance of salvation was that they did not have the model that I wanted. At first it looked, as two assistants looked, that the specific machine I had insisted on what not there. However, four cupboards later there it was packed in a box as elegant as the contents. Clutching my free disk drive (a sop to a guilty conscience if ever there was one) I staggered my way to the check out.
Where my credit card did not work. This was because the cost of the machine was so astronomical that my card was not authorized to the full amount.
The girl behind the till was not fazed for a moment. She knew what had happened and she knew (dammit!) how to deal with the situation, so that within a few thumping heartbeats she had done what was necessary and I, with faltering feet and slow, was making my way to the poetically just subterranean car park for my journey home.
Where I am sitting at the moment, on the sofa in the living room, I can see two other laptops that I own which, if you think about it, makes this purchase all the more inexplicable.
Except, the others do not have an Apple logo that light up on the lid when the machine is in use; they do not have the metallic gleam that this one has; they do not have a power supply lead where the tiny head that fits into the power socket of the machine is magnetic and they are so, so heavy. So there.
I don’t even have the courage to take it into school. I will wait for next year when I will have a proper case for it. At the moment I am using something which was given away free with the magazine “Muy Interesante” and is bright red and lacks the refined sophisticated aura of expense that this seductive sliver exudes.
Well, it is bought now so the least that I can do is learn to use the thing as it should be used.
Perhaps as expiation I should put the Christmas tree up. Good old fashioned misery as recompense for the gratuitous indulgence in conspicuous expenditure!
Paul continues to be bored in hospital as he waits for a bed to become available for his operation to take place. It seems strange to be sitting here and not visiting him: the practical problems aside it is impossible not to feel a little guilt at not being there. It seems likely that he will be in hospital over Christmas which is not something that you would wish on anyone: but better that than not being taken care of. At least I will see him in January.
Now the tree and the misery of decoration only partially lessened by the thought that there are only three days left in school.
Onwards to the tinsel!
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