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Friday, August 26, 2011

Do I smell autumn!

Cumulus!  The curse of the sunbathing classes!

Clouds do look pretty set against a bright blue sky – but when they get in the way of the sun they are vile.  No matter how often one tells oneself that even with cloud cover it is quite possible to get brown under a hazy sky, it simply does not feel the same.  And it adds an unwelcome air of desperation to the whole sunbathing business.

I remember on my expensive sojourns in Gran Canaria during the Christmas period that I would lie on my sunbed on the beach sometimes with gritted teeth trying to ignore the cutting winds or even rain and willing the sun (for which I had paid lots) to reappear and tint my skin to the exact colour of brown guaranteed to make my colleagues in Cardiff look at me with envious hatred when I turned up in early January for the start of term!

Today I could say that my dissatisfaction with the fluffy whites is not personal but a disinterested response because I am thinking of the limited number of days that Emma has to boost her Vitamin D levels!

We do have a Plan B – and that is to go into Barcelona and have a wander in the Gothic Quarter and perhaps take in an exhibition.  But I for one prefer the beach, swimming and lazing to a late attempt to find culture in my holiday!

The one thing about living where I do is that clouds are not usually the end of good weather.  They appear, fluffy and extensive and then disappear to allow sunshine to flow around and make the folk glad.  I have every faith that the present indicators of flying moisture will dissipate and allow normal service to resume.

Which they did to a certain extent, but not before the skies darkened to that threatening shade of blue which portends precipitation.  The rain has lasted at least five seconds leaving things glistening though hardly damp.  It is supposed to rain on Monday and not today!  I trust that this little spat of rain was only a teasing foretaste and not a harbinger!

We have been promised sun for today and tomorrow.  I have faith!

This evening Emma and I completed another few venues on the Ruta de Tapas which included snails (which Emma ate for the first time) and mussels.  Sadly, we finished the evening by going back to the place which, up till now has been holding on to first place in my opinion, but this time it was not as good as on the previous occasions.

The snails were presented in an inverted pyramid-like plastic container and had a surprisingly spicy sauce for this area.  That particular tapa has come up on the rails as it were and is now a contender!

With typical dedication and single-mindedness I am now more than half-way through the 30 featured tapas – but the time to complete the full range is fast running out: I have until the 15th of September to eat my way through the rest of the tapas and submit my form for entry into the prize draw to join the restaurateurs for their gastronomic feast.

Toni has pointed out that the number of people actually finishing the whole 30 has got to be severely limited so the odds on winning have to be a damn sight higher than for the lottery!  But I thought the same about the absurd competition run by the Russian radio, television and camera makers. 

It was only when I returned to the shop where I had bought a Russian radio and considered it such good value that I had decided to buy another one for my father for Christmas that the shopkeeper fixed me with a steely gaze and accused me of buying a radio previously.  I stuttered out my guilt and then the man said, “As you have bought two, you are entitled to enter a competition!”

It turned out that entry for the competition was only open to those purchasers who bought two radios or two televisions or two movie cameras etc.  “This,” I thought to myself, “is a competition where the odds have to be stacked in my favour!”

The competition itself was not one which demanded a great deal of intellectual prowess: it asked you to list a number of attributes of your product in order of importance and then think of a slogan to go with it.  Before you even think about asking, I have had a long series of psychiatric sessions to bury my contribution deep in my subconscious and therefore I cannot repeat my contribution to advertising history.

I had moved from Kettering to Cardiff after waiting in vain for the letter of congratulation to drop through my letterbox in Barton Seagrave and had already started my new job in Llanedeyrn High School when I received a telegram (ah, time for a moment of historic wistfulness) informing me of my success.

My prize was a trip to Russia (all expenses paid) but it had to be taken at a time when part of the trip would have been in school time.

The head teacher at the time, a man of discernment (he did after all appoint me) and liberal sensitivity (he did after all support my application for leave of absence) said that even without pay it was too good an opportunity to miss. 

So, with the totally false justification that I was not merely going on an all-expenses jaunt, but was rather going on a scouting trip to suss out whether or not it would be possible to take a school party to the Moscow Olympics, my local authority not only gave me leave of absence to go on the trip but also gave me PAID leave of absence!

You can tell by the reference to the Moscow Olympics just how long ago all this was, but there are colleagues in Llanedeyrn High School (now retired) who still throw back the “paid leave” part of the story in my face as one of the great crimes in educational history.

On the first night of the holiday we were in a nightclub on board a boat anchored in Leningrad harbour admid oceans of Russian Champagne and piles of black and orange caviar – both of which I tasted for the first time on that trip.  Emboldened by drink and the general air of louche debauchery I engaged the competition organizer in conversation about the extraordinary set up of the thing.

He told me that, far from receiving merely a trickle of entries as sense might suggest, there were masses of them.  I took it that it was the genius of my carefully crafted (but totally forgotten) slogan that made me a worthy winner.  Not so, I was told.  I hadn’t in fact won – a woman had beaten me, but as all the rest of the members of the trip were blokes she had been given a camera and was more than please with her success and I, because of my sex, was boosted to the premiere position!  Happy, unenlightened days!

So, even if I complete the complete Ruta I will probably find out that thousands of people did the same.  And I fear that I can expect no advantages from my sex this time!

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