If it's not one thing it's another!

In the midst of life we are in chocolate steeped in so far returning were as tedious as go o’er.

Let’s start with the positive: yesterday I was introduced to a new perversion called chocolate suis amb merlindos. Let’s face it; any beverage which you have to drink with a spoon has got to have something going for it. This ‘drink’ is made of thick, sweet, gelatinous chocolate (suis) topped by a conical cap of whipped cream and eaten with light sponge fingers (merlindos). An utter delight and more than welcome after a considerable period spent in various Terrassa shops successfully finding what I was looking for as a certain number of bemused friends will find out on my return to Wales!

Now to the real: Toni continues to be ill and has spent most of the morning comatose on the sofa in the living room. I am rapidly joining him in his enjoyment of the full range of cold symptoms. Both Toni and I took to our respective beds in the afternoon and were dead to all for a recuperative period. This is the illness which has been handed to Toni by his mother and from Toni to me; as opposed to the illness handed from Carles to Carmen to me. Ah the joys of family infection!

The only advantage gained from an uneasy sleep last night was the compensatory vividness of the surrealistic dozing dreams which accompanied my intermittent coughing. None of the details of which, I’m sure you are relieved to know, will I impart without copious amounts of alcohol and a written guarantee never to repeat the import of my subconscious to anyone!

In Catalonia the spending has gathered pace in preparation for the Kings. Shops are full of people buying the sort of things which in Britain we buy before Christmas. We will, yet again, be back in Britain before this festival and one of things that I am looking forward to when in Spain permanently, is the fact that we will be able to see the procession of the Kings in Barcelona as they appear from the sea and they make their way through the city.

The television has been advertising, ad nauseum, and a whole series of new magazines all of which, for me, have an almost magnetic appeal: especially in their first issues – which is almost always half price with a special offer!

The one which has particularly caught my eye is a photography magazine which promises to give a selection of the work of world famous photographers. The first in the series was devoted to Robert Capa with a large reproduction of his picture of Picasso on the beach. There was also an introduction to Magnum. This first issue was marketed on an unfeasibly large piece of cardboard which had to be deconstructed into its component parts before it was possible to walk around the shops.

As is almost always the case, the analysis of the material bought was disappointing. The production of the magazine was perfectly bound and therefore guaranteed to fall apart after a few perusals. The selection of photos was limited and left you wanting much more. Some of the more famous pictures were there but it was nothing more than a taster and thoroughly unsatisfactory. This production has all the characteristics of a rip off where a previously published book has been cut up and republished in a more lucrative form as a magazine. I seem to remember the format which the publication uses in a book on ‘Magnum’ with similar design details right down to the ‘picture index’ at the end of this issue.

I remember that ‘Which?’ did an expose on part publications which counted up the cost of actually making something month by month (for example making a model of The Victory) and estimated what a ruinous cost it was compared with buying the kit all at the same time.

The most recent part publication advertised widely on Catalan television is for making a model of a T Rex. Given the month on month cost, it would probably be cheaper to build a time machine and go back to prehistoric times and steal an egg!

I am now well into ‘Oliver Twist’ and am struck by how much humour there is in it. I don’t think that I remember the amount of bitter irony which informs so much of the social comment: there is a self consciousness in the writing which invited the active participation of the reader. One part in particular is almost like one of the introductory chapters to the reader in Fielding’s ‘Tom Jones’ which by its confiding artlessness seeks to make the reader complicit in a weary resignation about the obvious techniques of the melodramatic writer while Dickens makes every use of them with an over stretched writer’s impunity!

There is a very unpleasant assumption of Dickens’ part which assumes that gentility will out whatever the circumstances. So, although Oliver’s mother has ‘done wrong’ she showed strength of character in making it to the workhouse at all and her upbringing shows itself in the presentation of Oliver. This is a boy who has been treated with all possible brutality and where the comforts of Christianity are seen as punishments rather than solace, yet he presents as an artlessly innocent saint like character who, when circumstances change at once adapts to the assumed position of his pre-lapsarian mother!

Oliver is not really a likable character, and one has a guilty respect for those who lash out at him with frustration at his sheer inability to sense his true surroundings. He is more like Frank Spencer in his almost comic beliefs and actions; unconsciously causing problem after problem by his irritating innocence.

The constant reference to Fagin as ‘the Jew’ is disturbing to a twenty first century reader and reeks of anti Semitism, but he is obviously not alone in being a repulsive character in this novel and other Christian characters are condemned in as round a manner as that of Fagin.

The emphasis on the abuse of children is also very strong in this novel with their abuse centred on the perverse role models afforded by the responsible adults by whom they are surrounded.

As usual the society which perpetuates this abuse is shown to be corrupt and vicious, but no alternative is suggested except for individual acts of personal kindness: the system frustrated in individual cases but nothing to change or threaten the system itself.

Tomorrow (today!) is New Year’s Eve – cava and grapes.

Hooray!