Flowers of ice

Is there a word for finding out that what you have been lying about is actually true? I know I can always use my favourite word that has seen me through my entire teaching career, ‘irony’.

Looking at that last sentence I can see that the ‘irony’ I mentioned can have a far greater significance than I originally intended. I did not intend that it should suggest that the whole of my professional life has been subterfuge and deceit, though of course one of Waugh’s most telling phrases was in ‘Decline and Fall’ when wrote that teachers must ‘always temper discretion with deceit’ – mind you, his insulting description of the Welsh does not endear him to us: 'The Welsh,’ said the Doctor,' are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing,’ he said with disgust, 'sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver.' I might add that, when trying to find the exact quotation for the second extract from ‘Decline and Fall’ I was directed to a web site which has many more insulting quotations about the Welsh than positive ones; check it out on http://bdaugherty.tripod.com/wales.html and you’ll see what I mean.
The irony that I am talking about (if there isn’t a more appropriate word for it) applies to the climatic conditions that obtain in Wales at the moment. I have been living on the tarnished memory that on a visit to Barcelona at winter time there was a mound of snow; I constructed a snowball and threw it at Toni. I lived on the memory of that moment because snow seemed to be in short supply in Wales and I was able to say (with monotonous regularity) that, “the last time that I threw a snowball was in Barcelona” much to the fury of Toni who vaunts the climate of Catalonia above all others.

The arrival of undeniable amounts of snow was a problem which I solved by informing Toni that the patches of whiteness that he observed were due to the sudden blooming of snowbells; a shy flower of surpassing virgin whiteness whose delicacy is such that any handling of the plant would guarantee that the flower would deliquesce into mere water, almost as if one were handling ice crystals. The white flakes that we saw swirling through the air were the petals of that delicate flower caught up by the wind. Toni was, I assured him, very fortunate to see such a substantial blooming of this rare growth and, as it was protected under the Wild Flower Act he was forbidden by law to pick, trample or otherwise disturb it.

I cannot, in all conscience, say that Toni was necessarily convinced by my enthusiastic description of this native flower. So, for added verisimilitude I decided to look up ‘snowbell’ on the internet and, lo and behold! the ‘snowbell’ exists and flourishes; in Texas apparently.

It’s good to see that invention is closely followed by reality! I’ve even found a picture to accompany my apparent fabrication.

I have obviously taken the wrong approach, not only to this blog, but also to my life.

You are encouraged to write about what you know and what you have experienced whereas, the ‘snowbells’ incident obviously indicates that this approach is quite wrong. What you ought to do is write about what you want and then wait for reality to catch up with you.

Talking of reality, I can feel my grasp on that precious commodity slipping away though the malign influence of television.

I think that most intelligent people have a hate/hate/love relationship with the idiot box: two thirds of the time you hate the bloody thing, but one third of the time it is worth every penny of the license fee, whatever channel you happen to be watching!

Toni is sublimating his desire to decamp to warmer climes by watching every programme of ‘A Home in the Sun’ type: France, Italy, Spain, Greece – anywhere southwest of the channel and he’s watching as though he’s going to get the property at the end of the show as a prize for his devoted attention!

To me these programmes are merely sunny salt rubbing into the festering wound of rain soaked envy as I watch yet another couple try and spend the mere £350,000 that is their trifling budget for their holiday home. I am beginning to loathe the chirpy presenters who urge me every time I see the programme to join them again as they search for that perfect holiday home in the sun. I can feel hatred seep out of every pore as I watch perfect place after perfect place being paraded for my delectation and destruction of my peace of mind.

The worst aspect of the programmes is when a villa is photographed with four bedrooms; wonderful kitchen; infinity pool; double garage; commodious space under the house suitable for a library; amazing garden and within spitting distance of the sea and a private beach, all, we are told for £127,000. “That,” you think to yourself, “is not bad. Not bad at all. It is cheaper living there, and look how much more house you get for your money. It’s worth waiting a little bit, because I’ll be able to exchange my present life style for a way of life that I thought was only possible in my dreams!”

The programme ends, and it is only then that you see that the date on the end credits which indicates when the programme was made puts it firmly in the eighties. “Perhaps,” you think with quiet desperation, “inflation in the Costa Brava has been very much less than in the Costa Cardiff.” But the sad ache of native, instinctive intelligence is telling your unresponsive brain that, as more than half of your fellow countrymen are trying to escape the drip, drip, drip of our damp atmosphere by fleeing to the Iberian Peninsular, that inflation may possibly be a tad higher than at home and that a semi in Rumney is probably not directly translatable to a detached villa set in its own bougainvillea filled grounds next to the Mediterranean. But who, I ask you, ever listens to ‘the sad ache of native, instinctive intelligence’?

Certainly no one that I know.

Whatever they pretend to other people.

I am typing this in the conservatory to the harsh percussive sound of fat raindrops hurling themselves onto the polycarbonate roof, reminding me, if reminder were even partially necessary that, “We’re not in Castelldefels anymore, Tonto.”

And how well that last word translates from Spanish.

Sigh!