So far and yet so near

There is, they say, no place like home; or near home. I once drove to Amsterdam (the boat helped), drove around Holland and drove back to Cardiff. During the course of the hundreds of miles that I drove I was only held up once in all the hours that I was on the road – and that was near Newport. The ugly sister ‘city’ that lurks close to Cardiff but always gets blotted out on weather maps by the little square that contains the temperature reading for the premier city in Wales.

I was reminded of this delay when returning from Exmouth today. A clear (if foggy) run down and a clear (if busy) run back right up until, you’ve guessed it: Newport! When it also started to rain! Talk about the pathetic fallacy!

God knows I am not that interested in football. I have had, for personal reasons, to show an interest in a certain Catalan football team beginning with ‘B’; an interest which has grown with time into something approaching mild appreciation. But I have been surprised by the absolute unreasoning fury which has consumed me watching an apparently professional team of full time footballers fail to score against a semi professional part timer team in the Nou Camp stadium in Barcelona in the first half.

I really do think that it is time for fully developed envy and righteous indignation to take over and fuel the baying for blood which seems to accompany any game by England now. If the coach had a scrap of decency in him he would now, at half time, with the score Andorra O – England O, resign. One is tempted to remind him of Antony after the fiasco of his last battle, and offer him a sword. And as for the players! That over paid bunch of talentless poseurs! I think that each player should be taken to a scrap yard and watch as his favourite car (with wallet, watch, ipod and mobile in the dash) is reduced to a tightly packed cube of metal. The player should then be told to go on a pilgrimage of penitence to the stadium in Israel and in Barcelona dragging his car block behind him while being whipped by WAGs with wet copies of the Sunday Observer.

Who would ever have thought that I could get worked up about a game of kick ball? Anything is possible! At this rate I should try one of the viciously unreadable novels of William Faulkner; perhaps I’ve been wrong all along. And what about Rap music; should I give it another chance? Margaret Thatch . . . no, that’s one reassessment too far. Hell would have to freeze over and I’d have to be passionately involved in the intricacies of mind numbingly tedious American Football for That Woman ever to rank above a retarded amoebae in my pantheon of the interestingly human. If hell, as Sartre wrote, is other people, I wonder who would be on the other two sofas if Thatcher was established on one. My own suggestion to His Infernal Majesty would be Arthur Sargill and the Reverend (?) Doctor (?) Ian Paisley. What a charming trio!

On the positive side today has been marked by a more than acceptable meal with Ingrid in the Devoncourt Hotel in Exmouth. A table by the window with a view of the well tended grounds of the hotel and a clear view of the sparkling sea as well as a tasty meal made for a very pleasant time. I returned to Cardiff with, of course, my soupçon of Geman cooking courtesy if Ingrid. She once made me a poppy seed cake which I ate with wonder and a certain amount of rapidity, and it rapidly become a tradition of my devouring at least two a year supplied by her fair hand. As Ingrid is not particularly well, I have, ever the considerate gentleman, given her due warning that I expect one for my birthday in some months time. She therefore can plan my treat in a more leisurely way. I pointed out to her the possibility of her not making one for me, was not to be entertained. Some traditions must be sustained whatever the struggle there might be.

My green credentials have taken a knock, as the panacea for the multiplicity of electronic gadgets that I acquire – the solar recharger – does not work! I have had to take it back and start all over again in testing its capabilities. God knows what that does to my carbon footprint: futile charging and waste of power; driving to shop to exchange; having to wait for replacement; driving back to collect; old charger sent back to be scrapped; much printing of vouchers, till receipts etc., etc. My attempts to be green have probably destroyed a whole copse of unsustained trees.

My only response is to remember Queen Victoria and say with her, “I will be good!”

The future is a wonderful place, and always out of reach!