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Saturday, November 10, 2007

Go to the ant thou sluggard!


A lazy day with an excellent lunch.

There is still enough of the Protestant work ethic left in me for vague feelings of guilt to emerge with greater intensity for every minute after 9.30am that I stay in bed in the morning. Suffice to say that I should have crippled for the rest of the day with all consuming anguish after the self indulgent display of prone passivity.

But I wasn’t.

Instead I had a little jaunt to Gava to the shop that acts as a magnet for my gadget longings to see if I could find an internet radio. I remember seeing one for about eighty quid in PC World many moons ago and thinking that it was ‘a good idea’ but not quite good enough to justify the outlay of good folding stuff. And the design wasn’t flashy enough to persuade by unsubtle flashing lights and shiny metallic trim.

With my Spanish it is not certain what I asked for in the shop and the voluble response that I had from the young assistant could have meant anything, but I took what he said to mean that they didn’t have one. Eventually!

10% of a conversation is often not enough to go on. Not even for someone who watched The Magic Roundabout with unvarying fascination and admired Eric Thompson’s convincing narration based only on what he saw rather than any sort of accurate translation from the French. His versions made perfect sense to me and I have always used his imaginative approach to foreign languages to ‘get by.’ I should imagine that I have often got the sense entirely wrong and have gone off in my own sweet way filled with the percentage of misunderstandings which keep us sane.

Every teacher knows that the simplest instruction given to any normal class if only said only once will be misinterpreted by at least half of the pupils there. Teachers have to follow the code outlined in the Hunting of the Snark, “What I tell you three times is true” Repetition is the key means of communication, yet most of the time we only say important, complicated things once and are constantly surprised at not being understood. How many times can we echo the sentiments found in T S Eliot’s ‘Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ – “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.”

But never let it be said that I didn’t revel in happy ignorance. I never fail to convince myself that I have understood enough to justify a warm sense of my own perspicacity in surviving in a foreign language. It’s a good thing that one cannot rerun one’s life and listen to one’s mistakes, not only linguistic but also in terms of perception! That’s one’s friends are for!

If the morning was lazy and the afternoon somnolent, then the evening brought on a spurt of activity as a rearrangement which should have happened a few months ago was finally achieved.

I have noted before that the placing of books, glasses and miscellaneous items when moving house if they are positioned in their new places in the hectic hours of the actual move tend to stay in their randomly chosen positions for at least six months. Rearrangement of non vital aspects of a new life usually has a fairly low priority.

I suppose that having moved into the flat in July I am still a few weeks ahead of schedule when I relate that I have now achieved a personal harmony in the setting out of the more visible glasses in the living room. The rather untidy display of DVDs has been rationalised by the purchase of a very imposing pseudo-suede clad book which has facilitated the throwing of an entire black bag full of redundant plastic cases leaving only Toni’s cases which encompass an eclectic selection ranging from U2, through a promotional film of Terrassa to ‘Finding Nemo’ also including what is probably one of Toni’s favourite films, ‘La Vida es Bella.’

More importantly Toni has rearranged the writhing mass of wiring and established the hifi in a more satisfactory place; wired up the auxiliary loudspeakers, connected the video and generally sorted out the electronic chaos which characterised the television end of the living room. Civilized living creeps on apace!

The lurking threat of tomorrow is to “clean the whole house.” I’m not absolutely sure what this entails when applied to a flat ‘I sincerely hope that this does not mean that we have to follow our footsteps down into the street cleaning as we go. I fail to see myself as a housewife from the nineteen twenties in the valleys assiduously scrubbing the pavement to a pristine whiteness so that the neighbours won’t talk!

I would rather revert to type and keep coal in the bath!

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