My garage man has admitted defeat.  After three days of trying to sort out my faulty air con he has admitted that the only real solution is to take the car to the dealer as they have ensured that some aspects of the repair can only be completed by the dealership. 

     One would have thought that air con is hardly an essential system in the running of the car and that repairing it would be something that any tom dick or harry (should those have been capitalized?) would be able to do.  “But,” I was told, “your car is a hybrid,” and that means that all bets are off.

     Even I know that nowadays given the electronic complexity of cars even a simple jump start is something that doesn’t work in modern vehicles and any attempt to try such a positively medieval technique to get the vehicle going again could result in serious damage to both car and also to the human trying to get things moving again.

     My car has an engine and two (count them) two batteries.  This I discovered when one of them stopped working and so did the car.  This was another of those circumstances when ‘return to dealer’ was necessary to get things sorted out.  My problems with the air con are akin to those that you have with the printer.

     It used to be said in the old days of vinal, turntables, hi fi systems, and loudspeakers, that the weakest part of the system was the loudspeaker.  I took the word of whoever felt qualified to say such a thing, whereas my assumption was the disc itself was the most unlikely part of the system, where stereo sound of a full orchestra was coaxed out of a needle going up and down and side to side in micro grooves on a piece of circular plastic.  But what do I know about these things.

     But if records were inherently unlikely sources of rich orchestral sound, printers seem to be constructed to frustrate and infuriate the owner and user.

     I have no intention of restating the evil nature of the pricing of printing ink, making it one of the most expensive liquids that normal people buy, or the horror stories that are repeated all over the internet whereby printers have secret electronic tagging of the number of copies produced and insist that a printer is out of ink when some arbitrary number of copies has been reached, in spite of hearing said ink sloshing around when the ludicrously complicated engineering of the ink cartridge is shaken.  And why is there no standardization for the cartridges?  And yes, that is a rhetorical question.

     One of my printers (and yes, I have more than one, doesn’t everybody?) there are reservoirs for the ink which can simply be poured into the receptacle, and it doesn’t have to be the machines’ own make, any old ink will do.  If that works, why isn’t it standard for all bloody printers.

     The answers are obvious, and they are all to do with money.

     In the dark nights of the soul that visit everyone who has ever tried to print something that needs to be done ‘now’ so that it can be sent off today, knows – that is the time that the printers is at its best-worst.  As it tells you that it has run out of paper, in spite of the tray being well stocked with A4, that there is no cyan ink, in spite of the fact that you are printing text in simple black, that there is a paper jam in spite of the fact that there is no paper anywhere except where it should be.  And then there is the message that tells you that the printer is not connected when you are standing next to the bloody thing with a computer that is sending information to it.

     If you can deal with printers, the logic goes, you can deal with anything.  It is always encouraging, that in a world of ever-increasing technological sophistication, problems can often still be sorted out by the simple expedient of, “turn it off and on again”.

     Unfortunately, this technique does not extend to faulty air con systems in hybrid cars.  More’s the pity.

     I am building up my strength to deal with all the faff and expense of getting things done.

     At least the pool is open on Monday so I can swim my cares away!

 

Cabined, cribbed, confined!

 

 

 

Day 3 without the car, and I am having definite withdrawal symptoms!

     It’s not as if the car wasn’t working, it was only the air conditioning and while that is an important component in comfortable driving, it doesn’t stop the wheels turning!

     It is also a worry that each day has a financial element associated with it.  I mean, given that the air con can (please God no!) cost over a thousand euros to replace I am willing to wait for them to discover that it is, eventually, only a valve or minor part in the set up that has to be replaced.  The ‘easy fix’ of recharging the system (whatever that means) has already been ruled out and the actual fault is (obviously) proving difficult to discover.  And with each passing day I become more apprehensive about the rising cost, because in the world of the car, even failure comes with a price.

     But even more worrying than the cost is the clamp that has suddenly been put on free action.  You do not realize just how much you are dependent on the car until you do not have one at your beck and call.

     Yes, I know that I have my bike, the bus and taxi, as well as the extreme alternative of actual walking.  But my bike is ruled out by my questionable equilibrium given my two new knees, the bus is not readily accessible, and taxis are ruinously expensive to use for ‘run-about’ excursions.

     So, we are now, stay-at-home carless people, moping about and resenting every house bound moment.  Luckily, we are well provided with the essentials of life and do not (at the moment) need to do any emergency shopping.  Which is just as well, as the nearest supermarket shops to us are car trips away rather than walks.

      Our one sort-of super (!) market was part of a parade of restaurants that for some inexplicable reason have suddenly closed.  So, pizza restaurant, pollo a last, bakery, ordinary restaurant (with a fair menu del dia), and corner shop – all gone, or at least all closed.  To me it makes no commercial sense at all as all the elements in the business seemed to be thriving.  It is set on a main road, has a hinterland of domestic dwellings houses and flats, and is near a camping site that always has food needs.  We have often tried to work out the Reason Why behind the changes, opening hours, closures, and change of business that happen in Castelldefels – and have failed to find any logical justification for some of the decisions made by owners and managers.  But, there again, what do we know of commercial pressures – one fears that it is a murky world behind the smiling faces and clean table napkins.

     I remember once asking a friendly waiter in our local commercial centre if the Mafia played any part in the criminal life of our town, and he answered, “Which Mafia do you mean?”  And then rattled off a list of nationalities who all had a criminal stake in our town.  I keep telling myself that despite the awful state of our roads, we live in a very wealthy city, where house prices are sky high and our residents include the very wealthy in enormous houses behind over-the-top security to guard them.  And us of course!  Those families would not have just the one car, and so would not feel as bereft as we do!

 

However, there is one bright spot amid the static misery of carelessness.  Yesterday I took delivery of my new robot cleaner!

     I must admit that I have owned a number of these devices and while I am enthusiastically in favour of them in principle, in practice I find that they are lacking and woefully lacking.

     When they first came out, and I bought mine from Kickstarter or some such enticement, I was more than happy to have the thing suck up dirt.  I was prepared to empty the machine each time I used it, and I felt that I was in the forefront of what used to be science fiction in those glossy projections in the 50s about what the future would hold.

     As is the way with gadgets like this, each innovation that I read about made me less and less satisfied with the pedestrian nature of my own machine, to the extent that I was glad to have it give up the ghost so that I had (had) to buy another one.

     I will not go through the sad procession of inadequate machines that I cherished and then despised, before, after extensive research, I bought a machine (at a reasonable price) that purported to hoover and mop at the same time, with a self-emptying facility as well.     

     The key indicator that I should have noticed with this machine was the “reasonable price”.  It did indeed do what it said on the box.  It hoovered, it emptied itself and, when you filled it up with water it did (sort-of) mop.  But not particularly well.

     Eventually, I stopped using the ‘mop’ function because it was so ineffective and cast glances of contempt at it each time I passed.

     At last, it stopped working, and I was able to cast about for a replacement.

     I did do some research, and used Chat to help with evaluation, and this time I looked for what I wanted rather than looking for a “reasonable price” i.e. cheap.  What I wanted was not available for what I paid for the last one and so I have now ended up with something that hoovers, mops, cleans the mops, dries them, uses AI for god knows what, and is equipped with an onboard light and a camera!

     I am too afraid to look, but I suspect that there are short films on line which show the cleaning from the point of view of the machine.  I know that on the mobile phone that runs the thing, I can click a button and watch its progress.  I have to admit that there was something strangely fascinating to see your house at floor level, and a little shaming as well as, equipped with a light and a camera there is no hiding place for the underside of lower unit doors nor for the insalubrious division between floor and white goods.

     The machine is not plumbed-in, so you do have to fill the reservoir with water and empty the other one with the dirty water, but everything else is automatic with occasional beeps to show that it is still working.

     It is far too soon to give a thumbs up or down for the things yet, but its first trial run (apart from the usual glitches in the technology of getting the thing paired with the phone) it was excellent.  And since it will have to be used daily (and perhaps more than daily) to justify its price, I will soon have much experience to give an authoritative evaluation of my outlay.

     And that last bit of writing at least took my mind off what might or might not be happening to my car.

 

Idle hands: active research?

 

 

 

A second day dawns without the car!

     A false alarm with an early morning call from a private number, but my cautious ¡Hola! was enough to make them ring off immediately!  So, a second day without recourse to the gym.  And no, even though I did sleep-rest-in until after my usual rising time of 5.45 am I find that I am now generally incapable of lying-in with any degree of comfort.  So I got up.

     I did make myself a morning cup of tea and prepare my museli and then settled down to read:

 

 

This is a reprint of the tract that Huxley found to act as the basis of Mr Bodiham’s sermon in his first published novel Crome Yellow.  Huxley wrote that he had lifted the inspiration for the sermon that he gave the character from a tract that he found, and I am going to find out just how much was inspiration and how much was straightforward copying. 

     What sparked my interest in this sermon and the Rev E H Horne who wrote it was a footnote inserted into later editions of Crome Yellow that acknowledged the debt that owed to Horne.

     An idle thought about the origin of the footnote grew into a search that has prompted me to try to find out when and why the footnote was added, and to find out a little more about the historical Horne. 

     This has involved contacting a variety of individuals and institutions ranging from the Library of Lambeth Palace to The Bodleian, taking in the British Museum, the British Library, the archive of a foundry, an evangelical library in Catalonia, the university of Reading and various antiquarian booksellers, and others – all of which was possible using my computer and emails.

     I have been astonished at just how helpful people have been and how much time and effort they are prepared to make for a stranger pursuing an odd line of micro-research!

     I have also discovered that there is a limit to what you can actually do in certain circumstances, before you reach a digital paywall and the gates come clanging down. 

     What I should be doing is looking around Castelldefels and Barcelona to find a University with access to various websites that are closed to me, but as a private researcher I do not know how I can gain access.

     One thing that I can do is search through the list of local libraries and find out which ones are open to the general reader.  I remember the revelation while researching the painter Dalmau, to find a wealth of relevant volumes in the art library in MNAC.  There must be other institutions with open access around and I must make a real effort to find them.

     Another quest!

 

What a difference a letter makes!

  

Today is one of those by-days, a day when I do not have the car because the air conditioning is (I hope) being recharged as it isn’t working – anything more serious than that is something that I am keeping my fingers firmly crossed against.  The garage in which the car is now residing is one recommended to me by a friend in my pool, and which is owned by another member of the sports complex.

      I have already had a major service and change of tyres done by the garage, and they were professional and fair – in other words a place to bind to yourself with bands of iron for future work.

     Opposite the garage is a bus stop which has a regular bus that takes me to with a few streets of the house.  That bus is the L95 and there is a set charge of 2,90€ - you can either use the exact amount in coins, or you can use the multi-card, which in my case I have not got.

     I knew that somewhere on the chaos of my desk there might have been a money box, one of those with a little screen and a mechanism that counted the money as you put it in that I used to get rid of the smaller coins each day.  Though nowadays I hardly ever use actual money relying far more on my bank card to pay for everything, great and small – from yet another robot hoover (in my never-ending search for the perfect machine) to my cup of tea at the end of my swim each day.  Amazingly I found the tine and after considerable effort managed to dislodge the lid without destroying the whole thing and scraped together 2,90€ leaving my desk looking like someone had opened an impoverished pirate’s treasure chest!

     Thus prepared, I sallied forth to the garage and left my car in the entrance, in a vain attempt to get the mechanics to see to it first and walked, stick-assisted to the bus stop.  I had taken my stick because at that time of the morning buses are often crowded, and ostentatious use of a walking stick usually means that people positively jump up from the disabled seats to show their public spirit.  For which I am most grateful as standing on a bus, even with a firm grip on the rails is something of a challenge for me.

    I even found a seat in the shelter to wait.  The one advantage of waiting for a bus on the main road in Castelldefels is that lots of buses pass, and while they may not be yours, you do get a little jump of positive expectation which keeps you going as each one passes.

    Then my bus turned up.  At least it was the 95, though it did have an ‘X’ in front of it, rather than the ‘L’ that I wanted – but I reasoned to myself, how different could they actually be?  Not much, I thought.

     And, indeed, the bus did seem to go in the right direction and called into the University just before the bridge that would take the bus over into my bit of Castelldefels.  But it didn’t.  Instead, the bus retraced the direction that it had already taken and, horror of horrors, diverted onto the slip road towards the motorway and the direction of Barcelona!

     The second mistake I made (the first being ignoring the X on the bus number) was not to get off at the first stop after Castelldefels, that of the Hospital Bellvitge.  I knew that there was a major bus terminus there, but it was on the other side of the motorway.  I assumed, wrongly, that it would call in at the hospital before it carried on with its journey.  So, I stayed on board and eventually got off in the outskirts of the city of Barcelona!

     I crossed the road and waited for the ‘right’ bus and hoped that my trusty stick and stuttering Spanish would get me the right degree of sympathy that would overlook the dual facts that I did not have either the correct change for a ticker not a 5€ note that I would willing offer for the fare.

     In the event everything worked out, and I got off the bus within an easy walk of my house.

     It had only taken me 2 hours to leave my car at the garage and return home.  A journey that takes approximately five minutes by car.

     You live and learn!

 

Exercise, Music, and Literature?

 

 

 

Waterproof headphones for swimming have their limitations.

     I remember thinking that I could make use of all those lengths in the swimming pool finally to listen to and get to know Beethoven’s Late Quartets.  Pretentious?  Moi?  I worked on the assumption that as I was ‘trapped’ in the water I could use the enforced concentration to break the barrier of my earlier dismissal of the music and find a new appreciation.

     In theory that was a good plan.  I downloaded some of the quartets to the memory of the headphones and prepared myself to be amazed.  And it didn’t work. 

     It wasn’t my prejudices getting in the way, it wasn’t that I didn’t listen, it was more the actual mechanics of the production of the music.

     Swimming is loud.  To the outsider it is just the gentle (in my case) parting of the water in an unobtrusive and fairly quiet crawl, but to the swimmer, especially with earplug-type headphones on the sound of the motion of the arms through water and the bubbles of air are more cacophony than anything else.  And the subtlety of Classical music with its sonic highs and lows is not the best way of cutting through the ambient swimmer’s sound to make a good listening experience.

     This is where pop music comes into its own with a thumping bass and a clear instrumental accompaniment to a strong singing voice or voices: those come through loud and clear, where most classical music does not.  And yes, I have tried bone conduction as well and it works, but only up to a point, and that point is far away from the texture that makes listening enjoyable.

     But now, for another week, I am in the gym as the ‘maintained’ pool begins to refill and whatever has had to be done during its three-week shutdown draws to an extended close.

     Goodness knows, swimming is basically boring – and I therefore have considerable admiration for those professional swimmers who simply have to do length after length after length (after length) to maintain their professional standard.  And I can see why the sheer tedium of training encourages many dedicated swimmer sportspeople to give up.  I do not, of course, pretend to be in that category in either the dedication or in the tedium, but I do like to be distracted during my swims and during my (enforced) sojourns in the gym while the pool is being serviced.

     With my daily swim I have divided up the hour and a quarter that I spend in the water by doing firstly a series of water-based exercises loosely based on what my physio told me I had to do after the knee operations.  I then do two lengths of leg-paddling using spaghetti floats, then two lengths of breast stroke, then umpteen lengths of front crawl with one of those ‘infinity’ floats clutched between my legs, to compensate for the disequilibrium that two new metal knee joints give, then two further lengths of leg-paddling and finishing with a modified form of the exercises with which I started.  So it is a varied mixture and anyway, the thought of a cup of tea in the adjoining café keeps me keen!

     I have established a pattern for the gym (only another week before the pool is back in use!) which comprises 1km on the rowing machine; 30 minutes on the cycle; 5 minutes on a sort of knee compression thing; 5 minutes on a variant of knee pressing, and a 5-minute walk.  I also, at some point, do the leg raising exercises that I usually do in the pool and discover that they are a bloody sight more difficult in the air!  And that is my hour done.

     Only the cycle affords the opportunity to do something other than suffer, and I have found that I can read on my mobile phone (everyone else uses their phones to establish a wi-fi link with the machines so that their exercise can be endlessly analysed, collated and admired.

     As the bike that I use has an actual back to it, one can luxuriate in moderate comfort and there is the sort of stability that makes reading a positive pleasure.  Except, reading what?  Rather like my pretentions to get to know the late quartets in my swim, I realize that what you need when doing exercise is something that does not demand a great deal of brain power to appreciate.  And I have found that the perfect fodder for a 30-minute static cycle is firstly to complete the Guardian ‘Quick’ crossword, that I will have started before I leave the house and then let myself drift away in the narrative nonsense of one of the ‘free’ digital books that a website regularly offers me.

      The last book I read during my cycling was an episodic, feel-good narrative sparked by the finding of a book list by various characters, a conceit that allowed character development and a pleasing circularity to the various story lines.

     The latest book is, or seems to be, an Egyptian murder mystery with references to the British Museum and King Tut and the puzzle of mysterious inscriptions and that sort of thing.  Ideal!

     I only hope that I can spin it out over the next week, when the water will then reclaim me and the constant attempt not to drown will be mind-filling enough to keep me occupied.

 

Nothing lasts!

 

The new cultural season has started with the first in my series of Orchestral Concerts in the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona.

     My first challenge is thinking about exactly when to leave.  Traffic in Barcelona is usually something of a nightmare and the approach roads to the centre are usually traffic jammed so, although the journey is a relatively short one (with clear roads the trip to the city takes about twenty minutes, or thirty minutes tops the actual centre) normality is much longer.  I tell myself that I will leave about an hour and a half for the 19 km journey and that I can fill in the time to the start of the concert if I arrived early by having a snack and a cup of tea.

     Parking is not usually a problem.  There is a car park within a few minutes’ walk of the Palau and even the parking under the cathedral is not that far away, and I have never had to look elsewhere for a parking space, except of course when there are demonstrations and all bets are off, as I venture further and further into Barcelona Unknown in an increasingly desperate search for a space outside my normal ken.

    And parking spaces come at a hefty cost as I find that a normal concert length stay usually works out at about 15 euros for the privilege.

     Yesterday was generally clear, with the only holdups being the traffic lights and drivers who are obviously in the centre of Barcelona for the first time and attempt manoeuvres that do not meet with the wholehearted approval of habitual Barcelona drivers.

     There are always roadworks that throw logistical spanners into the car’s progress.  And nowadays roadworks seem to last for months if not years before things get back to normality c.f. St Boi!

     Anyway, I got to my final destination, or at least a near parking space, with plenty of time to spare and so I was able to pop into the café I use if I get a place in my car park of choice.

     I had a wrap of some sort with a mixture of things, most of which I could identify, and a cup of Earl Grey tea of such insipidity that I was ashamed to drink it.  I must remember to have an emergency tea bag to add to the pap they expect customers to drink so that I can fortify it with a bag of real Yorkshire Tea from my compendious stash at home.

 

I did make an abortive attempt to change my ticket for a concert on United Nations Day (when I have plans other than an evening concert) for a performance of Brahms Requiem tonight, but the seats available were not ones that I felt would give me a true appreciation of the work and so I decided to find something else to swap with my unusable ticket.  I should discover something before next Saturday, because that is my next scheduled concert and that would be the perfect time to change things around.

    

The Concert itself was excellent, with a theme of Emperors and Empire.  It started with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s music from The Last Emperor – the Bertolucci film – and the music trod a path between a soft lilting beauty and an echo of the martial music of majesty conveying the uneasy progression from decadent tradition and the new regime of Communism.

     In my view this was the weakest piece in the evening’s concert, but it was a rousing and melodic introduction.

 

     Beethoven 5^th piano concerto, usually called The Emperor was a different experience entirely.  The orchestra, that I felt was a touch uneasy at the start of the evening had become much more assured and the playing of Alba Ventura spurred them to greater heights.

     Her playing was precise and clear, there was a purity and a crystalline quality to her sound that almost made one believe that one was listening to the music for the first time!

     Her hand movements before putting her fingers on the keys ware histrionic, but with playing such as hers she can wave about as much as she likes.

     Her reception by the audience at the end of the piece was tumultuous, and rightly so, with her encore piece of Debussy’s Claire de lune showing that she was capable of a lightness of touch and a lyrical flow that was in stark contrast with the bombastic nature of the concerto!

     The second part of the concert opened with Lera Auerbach’s Icarus (1973) a piece I was particularly looking forward to because of its use of the Ondes Martenot.  This is one time that I actually did some homework for this piece that I did not know and listened to the performance on the artist’s website, so I was expecting the Ondes Martenot to occupy a firmer place in the soundscape that it did in performance.

     The music was modern, but approachable and there were clear harmonic lines of development as well as the usual pyrotechnics that one expects from the percussion section of an orchestra performing modern music!  A jolly piece.

     The evening ended with The 1812 Overture, where the overriding point of interest is “How are they going to do the cannon shots?”  It was fairly obvious that a big bass drum had been sited to the far left of the orchestra well away from the other members of the percussion section and, when we got to the moment of the first shot, a spotlight illuminated the enthusiastic drummer who thumped his way through the exhilarating ending. 

     The roar of acclimation that the piece received and I have to admit that my eyes were moist with the response to the sheer exultation of the music.  And gratitude to the conductor Andrés Salado a true favourite with the audience!

     Reality came back with the trip home and the usual lunatic driving of those tired of life!

 

Bring on the water!

 

 

There is water in the pool!

     By itself, that opening sentence reads more like a truism than an observation – a pool, self-evidently must have water.  But we are talking of my local swimming pool that has been drained and closed for its annual maintenance period, and I have been ‘forced’ to go to the gym.  Which I hate.

     As my swim is an early morning one, I felt that my transfer to the gym for the period of exile had to be at the same time.  I am, in some things, a creature of habit and I know that if I break routine then I am quite capable of dismissing that particular activity from my life with consummate ease.  So, hate it or not, I traipse to the gym at 6.30 am and do my rounds of the hated machines.

     I have established a Via dolorosa Machinarum with each of the instruments of torture being an individual statio on my particular Camino Doloroso de las Màquinas.  I start with the rowing machine – we only have one, so I go there first to ensure that it is done and dusted before the ‘masses” arrive for their pre-work rituals.  I do 1,000 m of brisk rowing and stop.

     My second statio is the static bike on which I do 30 minutes of pedalling at level 3 or 4 and can read from my phone via Kindle to pass the time.

     It is from the vantage point of the static bike that I can gaze through the large windows on the side walls of the gym into the parallel building that houses the pool.  As I start my ‘exercise’ early it is not yet light and the pool is in the sort of gloom that I feel matches my mood as I complete my go-nowhere exercise.  And where I can also make out (just) the echoing emptiness of an empty space where the water should be.

     It wasn’t so much direct observation that alerted me to something positive, but rather the rippling reflections of dim light being caught in the windows.  Ripples mean water and the only place to hold enough water to create ripples like those was in the pool itself.

     I looked more closely and noticed that there did appear to be a different quality of obscurity underneath the bottommost rung of the metallic ladder at the end of the pool.  And an even closer look discerned what could only be water!

     I have long learned to treat Spanish estimates of “this will be ready by . . .” as anything more than pious well-meaning, but essentially empty platitudes: and nothing says a pool is not ready for use than it being empty of the one element that makes it a pool.  So, the slow, but visible element rippling gently, is, to put it mildly, encouraging.

     I am further encouraged by the necessity of getting the pool up and running for the contracts with the various schools in the immediate neighbourhood that have to be fulfilled.  Money speaks.  And speaks loudly.

     I will look with an evaluating eye at the water level tomorrow as I peddle nowhere, and can afford myself the luxury of assuming that if it is higher than it was yesterday then my pedalling is (metaphorically) getting me further towards the reopening of the pool.

     And to those of my fellow sufferers in the circle of hell that Dante would have created if he had known that such places like gyms with Los instrumentos del tormento had existed (with willing participants!) who smile at me and say, “After a couple of weeks you will be converted and will come here rather than the pool!” – my only response is, “Watch me!  I am a proud heretic and will burn rather than stay a second beyond the opening of the pool!”