A Stab to Start the Day

 

 New Lockdown, Day X, Tuesday

 

 

 

Not everyone starts their day by stabbing themselves with their electric toothbrush.  And I mean real stabbing.  With blood.

      Not an easy feat, but I managed it.  The head of the brush somehow or other came away from the main body of the brush and I then was distracted by the perception of distance and I brought the vibrating metal stalk forcibly into in the right-hand side of my mouth, just below the bottom lip!  It certain woke me up, and any lingering drowsiness was jabbed away in a concentrated moment of pain.

     Before you start thinking of wasting any sympathy on me and my injury, I would point out that the puncture is small and it looks more like a shaving nick than anything else – but still a wake-up call to the unwary to beware of seemingly domestic dental devices.

     When I checked the errant brush head, it did look a little worn and perhaps I should have replaced it earlier.

     Toothbrushes (and electric toothbrush heads) are in a category of simple things that could be easily and cheaply replaced but aren’t, until something happens.  This is a category they share with wooden kitchen spoons and spatulas; face flannels; tea towels and coffee mugs.

     Actually, the last item, the mug, is something that I will throw away as soon as I detect even the smallest chip or crack – some things are ingrained in your innermost soul by maternal edict that cannot, dare not be gainsaid.  My mother regarded a chip or crack in pottery and china as being as toxic as a vomiting fly, safe harbours for unmentionable and uncountable germs.  Discard instantly!  And I do.

     But the other things?  I have some wooden spoons (not thrown away) which look as though they were carved from a beam in the ark; tea towels that have only the faintest suggestion of pattern, others delicately threadbare.  Why?  They are so cheap to replace, and I am not known for my thriftiness – indeed, in certain respects I am an eager celebrant at the altar of planned obsolescence.  But you can almost read the history of our family in the tea towels that we use, whereas my purchases of watches or computers brings tears to the eyes of my bank manager, and untold you to manufacturers.

     I have known people (well, one person) who would refuse to go into a café for a cup of tea because of the mark-up on the cost of a cuppa compared with what he knew it cost at home.  He would actually wait outside the café while the rest of us imbibed in feckless luxury and then re-join us when we had finished our squander.  But for other things, he paid the price asked without question, even when the profit margin was just as substantial.  Ah well, one shouldn’t always look to logic to explain how humans work.

 

 

 

The radio in the kitchen is a Roberts and is Internet linked, so, in theory I should be able to get Radio 4 (without which civilized life is not even remotely possible) but the reception is unruly.  Toni has suggested a solution which involves turning the electrical wiring system into some 

 

sort of conduit for the Wi-Fi link to the internet.  All this involves is the purchase of a link from the router to the socket and then another link from the socket to the radio: one of those “plug and play” solutions.

       

     “Ho!  Ho!  Ho!” he laughed hollowly.  It didn’t work.

     The reason it didn’t work is that the link to the router has to be direct to the socket in the wall.  That, in this house is a problem.  Built in the days when a couple of sockets was more than enough for any home, the availability of power is an ongoing quest.  And an extensive use of extension leads.

     The router is in the living room and the radio is in the kitchen.  The area behind the television and almost hidden from view is a writhing mass of cabling for the basic electrical necessities of modern life.  There is no socket available for the frivolity of getting Radio 4 when so much else needs power.

     No problem.  We have another router on the third floor.  The house is built of concrete and is terrifyingly solid, wi-fi needs boosts to get all the computing machines to work, so all I had to do was find the socket on the third floor and we could try that.

     The third floor is my workroom.  It is also a comically unreal picture of cluttered chaos.  Bookshelves line the walls and extension plugs proliferate.

     Finding The Source of The Nile was one of the great stories of exploration and daring, but it pales into vapid insignificance when compared with the Search for the Socket on the Third Floor.

     There is no space.  For anything.  On the Third Floor.  If anything is moved, then something else must be moved to make a space for the thing that has been moved to a new location.  At the moment, when many, many things have been moved, the space looks like a vindictive labyrinth, and my progress from desk to stairs is in a slow undulating slink as I manoeuvre around insecure piles of stuff and am rewarded by sharp book corners biting into ankles and shins.

     Like some demented game, I followed power leads, trying to find their source – only to be frustrated by finding one trailing socket only led to another trailing socket, not to the true source of power.  Crouching, crawling, moving books to move bookcases, shining a torch behind pieces of furniture (and ofttimes being bewitched into reading volumes that I had not seen for some time, but then needed by immediate attention) I felt the full weight of despair.  Indeed, I began to doubt that that there was ‘a’ source of power – it (The Power) was numinous, it was ubiquitous, it was ‘there’ and not to be questioned or assumed to have a simple source: it simply Was.

     Well, that is fine and dandy thinking for Scholastic monks, but I needed the physicality of a plug.  Which I eventually found directly behind me.  A four-socket thing, with leads going off in all directions but, amazingly with one socket free.  End of story.

     No.  The lead supplied with the magic plug is too short to reach the router and the router cannot be moved.  So, in spite of all my misgivings about the pernicious influence of Amazon in the world today, necessity bent my principles (again) and a longer lead has been ordered and will be delivered to the door tomorrow.  When we will discover the next problem to cope with.  Plug and play indeed!

 

 

 

Tomorrow the Liceu is putting on a performance of an early Mozart Opera.  The original date of the performance has been changed twice.  The time of the performance has been brought forward by two hours, and the audience has been limited to 500 people.  Masked, we sit in a circle of empty seats – and are grateful that at least something is being done in the season.

     Because of the re-arrangement the cost of the ticket has been halved, and as I sit in an aisle seat in the front stalls, that is a considerable amount of cash!

     This is a concert version of the opera, which is never a truly satisfying way to see an opera, but it was always going to be a concert version so I have nothing to complain about there.  The countertenor in the piece has a wonderful voice and I only hope that it is enough to keep me interested in a less than convincing narrative – though there are powerful human passions behind those ordered notes!

     It will also give me an opportunity to see at least some of the Christmas Lights in Barcelona, and perhaps I will feel a little more of the spirit of the ‘festive’ time – though the only present that anyone really wants is a double dose of efficient vaccine!

 

The excavations on the Third Floor have revealed more items that will be added to my growing Catalogue Raisonné, including one thing that I had thought was long lost!  It is good to see that there is some gain from the pain of sorting out!

 

 

 

 

 

There And Back Again - again

Going back to Britain is not the same as it once was.  I suppose that is a truism as, how could it be when I have spent the majority of the past few years outside the country of my birth.

     It used to be that I felt a certain amount of excitement to ‘go home’ because of the people I knew I’d meet; the places I would be able to revisit; the shops that I miss so much, and the culture that used to be an important part of my life there.  All of those things are still reasons to enjoy my return.  But it is not the same.

     I know that it’s a cliché, but the bloody weather really does get me down.  I mean, it rains here in Spain and we have cloud and the winter is cold and it can be very windy.  But, and it is a very big ‘but’, on most days you get to see the sun.  It may not be very strong, and you may not see it for very long, but you do see it.  And that is important.  Very important.

     I have not had the courage to check the weather forecast for Cardiff for the next few days.  It may be that the weather will be a delightful surprise for me and I will relish it all the more for being unexpected.  If it’s what I fear, then friends and culture and shops will have to do.  And ‘do’ they will.

I think that I have left it far too late to trawl through the libraries in Cardiff in the hope that some institution will have the obscure journal, or at least the obscure article that I am finding so elusive at the moment.  This is for my ‘research’ for my final piece of work in my Open University degree.  

So, if you know of anywhere, or indeed if you happen to have a complete run of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts going back to 1982, then do let me know.  The article I am interested in is by A. S. Fuchs, and is snappily titled, “The Virgin of the Councillors by Lluís Dalmau (1443-1445): The Contract and its Eyckian Execution.”  It’s in volume 99 and on pages 45-54 – nine pages of what I am convinced will be eminently quotable stuff for me to us.  Just if I can get my eyes on it.  I live in hope!

Well, the above was written days ago, just before I actually went to Cardiff.  Why, you may ask, have I written nothing since, while I was there?

            Good question.  To which the answer is capitalism.

            Let me explain.  In this modern world of ours, the Internet is not a luxury reserved for technology geeks – at least not entirely – but is something that all of us build our lives around.  Probably we do this to the extent that we don’t actually think very much about the Internet, we just use it.  Which is fine and dandy, until you find that you do not have access.  Which is were capitalism comes in.

            The hotel group I was using has the phrase “Wi-Fi throughout the hotel” in a massive banner outside the building.  And, indeed it does.  

What is not made clear is that you have to pay for it.  A disgrace, but there you are.  Nothing is for nothing in this harsh world (unless of course, you are a banker or developer or a member of the Conservative Party) and if you want ‘it’ you have to pay for it.  Which I duly did.

            And still couldn’t get access to my blogspace.  I even wrote a daily screed and then spent fruitless moments (I am a hasty sort of person) trying vainly to get the thing to upload.  But it didn’t and so I am now returned with little in the way of literary effusion to show for my short stay in Cardiff.  So I will summarize.

I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and immediately went to the branch of Lidl which was at the end of the road on which the hotel was situated.  And got something of a shock.  The same sort of shock I had when I went into the London, Kensington branch of Tesco and discovered that there was a whole range of foodstuff set out temptingly for me on the shelves that had never been seen in the Tesco in St Mellons.  I suppose you have to have some knowledge of Cardiff and its suburbs to grasp the distance between the social aspirations of Kensington and those of new St Mellons, but take it from one who knows – they’re vast!  So, in much the same way, I was interested in the differences there were between the Welsh and the Catalan take on what a consumer would want.

            Much of the stuff was common, but it was in the details that the differences became clear.  Suffice to say that I took a half-price bottle of 20 year-old Tawny Port to my friends’ house that evening.

            Where, it turned out, I was not expected until the following night!  However that merely meant that I had two evenings with my friends rather than one!

The next day was largely taken up with the funeral of my aunt, which was the reason that I had come to Cardiff in the first place.  This went well, if you can say that about funerals, and it was good to see members of my family.

            My Friends Part II – Now It’s Dinner Time, made a good end to the day with much talk, excellent food and a small glass of Tawny Port with some delicious and creamy Stilton cheese.

The next days were taken up with visits, including one to my last remaining representative of my parents’ generation: my father’s younger sister, my aunt.  Although she is not at all well, it was an excellent visit and one of her comments stayed with me so clearly that I wrote a poem about it. 

            If you wish to read that, or any other of the drafts of a range of poems that I have written, please go to smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es

When I attempted to go to the local leisure centre for a swim, a clearly embarrassed lady asked for my age and, on being given it, announced triumphantly that I could swim for nothing!  As I have previously made slighting remarks about the impossibility of getting anything for nothing, I can only excuse such blatant hypocrisy by stating that I had paid Cardiff Council Tax (and all its other manifestations) for decades before moving to Spain, so I feel that the council has been richly repaid for their moment of generosity.  For which, by the way I am sincerely grateful!

Shops, friends and restaurants filled up other time, but I did make space for one visit that I had prepared for: a trip to the National Museum of Wales to see, once again, the Rembrandt portrait.  This painting had been on loan to the museum, then it was taken back, eventually sold and appeared to be out of reach.  But, the new owner (having paid thirty-five million quid for it) decided to loan it to the museum for three years.  It had to be seen, and I envisaged a sequence of three poem connected to its being viewed.  The first one has been written, the second in lying in notes in my notebook and the third is just a hazy idea at the moment.

            The portrait of Catrina Hoghsaet is a brilliant work and, considering how much Gareth Bale cost Real Madrid, seems something of a bargain – given that Bale is just going to decline and be finished in his career in a few years, whereas the Rembrandt (with careful conservation) will last into the next centuries.  Anyway, this writing is partly displacement activity to avoid the start of the work that will bring the other two poems into existence.

It only remains to say that on the flight to and from Cardiff, I was able, at no further cost, to get a seat by the emergency exit and so my legs were able to breathe!

Home in Castelldefels and I have decreed summer.  I rode back from the swimming pool this morning without wearing my thin coat; I have given up the undershirt; I am wearing shorts and I had a café con hielo – all of that for me, is like hearing the first cuckoo of spring, but for summer, if you see what I mean.  The next step is swimming in the sea.

And that might take a while!