Only a day left!

With a speed which is truly unnatural the four-day “holiday” is drawing to a close and there is time for me to wonder what I have actually done during it!

Admittedly, I do have a first draft of part of the joint assignment that we have to do as our far-flung Internet group of students gets down to the work that really has to be completed by Christmas.  It is far too long and full of interesting if fundamentally irrelevant material that I could not bring myself to leave out!  I now know more about the composer of “The Planets” and the writer of “I vow to thee, my country” than almost anyone else in Castelldefels – unless of course they happen to have done the course that I am following at present!

At least with something written there is the opportunity to rest for a while and indulge oneself in the heady pastime of editing.  Although I rarely do it with my own writing, I am quite good at wielding the blue pencil and slashing out sections of others’ work!  This time I have to encourage my faculties to be rather more self-critical than is good for me!

As most of the group appear to be concentrating on the other section of the work that we have to do, I am ploughing a somewhat lonely furrow and I have had only a single voice from the six other members of the group to keep me company, so I have been posting my thoughts basically to myself in an academic monologue to try and push myself into the flesh paring of the writing that I have done.

Tomorrow, rather than cut, I will actually add to the screed which I have already produced and then start the heart breaking work of consigning hours of work to the electronic dustbin.  I am sure that it will be good for my health!  Or something!

Friday saw the descent on our tranquil existence of two ever-charged and ever-active batteries – also known as Toni’s nephews!  Their energy is truly inexhaustible and they obviously recharge by draining the energy supplies of those adults around them!

Our lunch was planned to be in an absurdly popular pasta restaurant in the shopping complex that was built around F. C. Español’s new football stadium.  The complex is large, but not large enough to hide the delight of every true Barça fan that the team is going through a disastrous season and will undoubtedly be relegated at the end of it.

The queue outside the pasta place was ridiculously long and I muttered my complete rejection of waiting in it for bloody pasta (however good it was) despite one nephew doggedly standing at the end of the thing with his despondent mother dejectedly holding his hand.  Eventually, with the accompaniment of forced tears we moved away – to my horror towards a KFC!  This Scylla avoided there was the much greater threat of MacCharybdis, but we eventually settled on a tediously conventional meal – but only after a half hour wait!  And no, it was in no way worth the time we wasted standing in a draft caused by an automatically opening door!

I did manage to get some work done on the Third Floor when the kids were left with their aunt who had to endure the horror of their playing some sort of TV video game for a couple of hours to the accompaniment of their screams of pleasure or pain as the game swayed one way and another.

Saturday saw a brief visit to the Medieval Market in the centre of Castelldefels and the traditional buy of cheese from Majorca which is sold on one stall.  The one I chose was a mature crumbly cheese with a “rind” of spice which is edible.  The cheese itself is full of character with a bright tang in the first chew and a lasting aftertaste.  It is reminiscent of a farmhouse mature Cheddar but a little sharper.  It is utterly delicious (as indeed it should be at the price that I paid) and it is only with the sort of restraint that has kept me from a glass of wine since my return from the alcoholically liquid islands of my native land that I have resisted the temptation to carve and eat!

Lunch today was with Irene, who we have not seen for some time.  We had this in the hotel which is in the area of the sheds in St Boi and, even though the service was appallingly slow, it was delicious and with just that right amount of ponciness that I like in the delivery of my food in restaurants and hotels.  The starter was particularly effective with something purporting to be bacon mousse!

Irene’s delight at seeing the sea-glass lamp created by Toni has galvanized us both into thinking more commercially about how these can be produced.  Research and the buying of “glass drills” is just the start!

A life full of incident – and I have sent in an order to Amazon to make life just that little bit brighter!