Trials and tribulations!

A day without a blog!

As my old surrealist drinking mates in Zurich used to say, after a few beers and when we had stopped taunting Lenin about his grandiose ideas, “A day without a blog is like a fish without a corset!” How we laughed!

The reason for the lack of a blog yesterday was because of the news from home: nothing disastrous, but deeply disturbing.

As a past hardened teacher, I really should not be surprised by startling mendacity but, given my touching innocence, I always am. Even in Chaucerian England when, according to the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, all members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy were indulging in the most ostentatious denial of their founder’s naïf precepts, they did so as ‘fallen’ members of the Christian church: they might have been poor Christians, but they were Christians and, if pushed, they could probably have admitted that they were, in the Wife of Bath’s wonderful phrase, “wandering by the way.” So, bad though they undoubtedly were, they at least knew which set of moral precepts they were ignoring: they were Christian thieves, rapists, cheats and philanderers. In other words, though moral and immoral were clearly distinct; the immoral knew where they should be.

It is therefore something of a shock to come across a couple whose whole raison d’etre seems to suggest that they have no moral guidelines at all; no centre line from which they might be deviating; no commonly accepted code of values which they are ignoring. They present as a sociable, if oddly matched pair, but their motivation is almost distilled selfishness. To this end no lie or distortion is too breathtaking; no falsehood too difficult to accept. Their perception of the world is so narrow that all events can only be assessed in terms of how they impact on their self centred existence.

I reckon that I have done pretty well to write this much without giving you, my reader, very much information on which to build an opinion. Who they are; what they’ve done; how they have responded to others – all of this is a closed book to you. Suffice to say that this pair of prime liars has sought, by criminal means to ameliorate imagined wrongs constructed by their own warped and mendacious take on what you and I could call ‘reality.’

If it wasn’t for the incredulous outrage of friends at home who called the bluff of this outrageous pair of ruffians and managed to restore the situation to something like normality, I would have been impotently gnashing my teeth in Spain while unscrupulous chancers took their opportunity to exploit a fortuitous opening for unfair gain.

To those who know I would advise them to ask Paul and Paul Squared for the details (if they want a particularly partial and excitable narrative then concentrate on Paul Squared!) To both of them my thanks and congratulations; without them and their expeditious foiling of the blaggards’ noxious schemes, I would have been so much poorer – and lost the opportunity to write a more than gnomic blog!

Today was going to be the day when I took possession of my new car. It has all been paid for and as far as I am aware the totality of the documentation required has been signed, sealed and delivered.

While doing some shopping in the excellent, vast shopping centre L’anec blau at the far end of the Olympic Canal, I thought, in that ever trustful way I have, wouldn’t it be a good thing if, instead of trudging all the way home to the flat, one’s fingers gradually turning black from the restrictions which the thin handles of plastic bags cutting into the flesh often produce, wouldn’t it be good, I thought to myself, if my car was ready already and I could drive home with all the goods!

A swift telephone call plunged me yet again into the sort of soulless despair that trying to match life and Spanish bureaucracy often produces. My car was not ready for me to collect. My car would not be ready for me to collect. I would have to fill in a paper which was necessary for those wishing to buy a car in Spain before the tax system had pinned down exactly what your status was. Yes, I don’t know what they hell they are talking about either. But the car will have to wait. I have been told that my car (for which I have paid, as I think I may have mentioned before) might be ready for me on Monday. Perhaps. Maybe. Possibly. Or, indeed, not. As the case may be.

To compensate for this further frustration, we did do a little light shopping in Zara Home: the interesting bit of the rather boring clothing chain store.

We have bought two glasses which characterise the real differences between the drinking habits of the Spanish and the British. The first glass which caught my eye was a version of the traditional toothbrush glass with the chamfered glass sides; but this glass was on a truly Brobdingnagian scale, easily able to take a decent slug of beer which will be acceptable by any drinker of Albion. The other glass was a rather stylish tankard in an almost ostentatiously chunky Swedish style which while promising much by its weight actually only accommodates a very small amount of drink – certainly not enough to qualify as a ‘beer’ in any part of Britain; but more than acceptable in any part of Spain!

Such differences illuminate my discourse!