Yesterday was a holiday.
At every street corner rather dubious looking characters were selling roses. It is the tradition within Catalonia that on the day which is dedicated to Sant Jordi (Saint George) there is an exchange of gifts. The traditional process involves the man receiving a book while the female partner gets a rose.
When I wearily slouched towards the kettle yesterday morning I was astonished to see that Toni had fought his revulsion to printed matter and there was a gaudily wrapped brick shape waiting for me!
His choice of a Ken Follett novel had been earlier mirrored by his sister who had given me the same volume a few months previously! My disappointment was mitigated by the delighted hope that Toni’s attitude towards the incursion of the tome into all available spaces in the flat would now change. Some hope!
He did however point out that the local newsagent had offered another volume about a cathedral and I was urged to return the book and either exchange it or get the money and go to Barcelona to the festival of books which was being held in the Ramblas.
The alternative novel was one which I had noticed in supermarkets in Spanish and Catalan in the best seller lists in this area. ‘Cathedral of the Sea’ by Ildefonso Falcones is set in Barcelona in the fourteenth century.
The back of the novel proclaims “A new Ken Follett is born!” and from my reading of the first hundred pages in this monumental novel I can see what the critic means. The subject matter is clearly within the territory of Ken Follett, but the standard of writing is not at Ken Follett’s level. There is a certain clunking quality to the scene setting and rather obvious devices in introducing characters and background information. The historical setting is paraded uneasily and exposition is generally unsophisticated. These are, however, early days and I have barely dented the bulk of this read!
For the first time the Habitat lounger was taken out of its plastic wrapping and dragged off to the beach. Even more importantly, for the first time I threw myself into the foaming brine.
That last sentence is not strictly accurate. My entrance into the icy waters was not quite as muscular as is suggested by ‘threw myself.’
There is something sad and humiliating watching a grown man whimper. There is something even more sad and humiliating when that whimpering man is you!
My tentative entry into the Mediterranean was accompanied by little mewling sounds as progressively more of my body was subjected to icy cauterization. It was the sort of cold that you knew would not become ‘swimmable’ if you thrashed about a bit.
Honour having been satisfied by immersion I staggered my way back to shore and the warm calm of the lounger.
Picking up Toni from work I passed all the indefatigable rose sellers who were doggedly sitting tight and waiting for guilt to kick in for home going workers.
Dinner later was in a local restaurant because the Barça/Manchester United game in the Champions League was not broadcast on normal television. From where I was sitting I could see the zebra crossing at the end of the street which was garlanded by four rose sellers, still there and selling after at least sixteen hours of commercial activity. The roses, by the way, were in all the conventional colours and then, for the more extreme pleasure seekers there were totally artificial colours, bi-coloured roses and multi-coloured blooms! I bought a mini rose plant in a flower pot from my local florist and shunned the disreputable looking strangers who clamoured for my money!
Culture Week continues (after the hiatus of a day off) with a trip to . . . well, I think that I cannot trust my fingers to type with any degree of complacency about a magnificent residence with surrounding vineyards, swimming pool and . . . sorry, this will have to wait for another occasion when I am feeling stronger and less consumed by the sin of envy.
Our return to school was marked by the information that the headteacher has broken her femur by tripping over the cat. She is presently in hospital where she will stay for the next two weeks. She will not be able to walk on her injured leg for twelve weeks. Not only is this not good news for her – alone and incapacitated in a foreign country – but it is also potentially disastrous news for our school. We will be without a headteacher for the rest of the term. In a memo whose import scales the heights of horror we have been informed that matters that we would have taken to the headteacher must now be taken to The Owner.
The sleep of reason produces monsters.
We have started to paint our dragons and the ‘tapestry’ of versions of the Welsh flag continues to grow.
The final part of my master plan for the artistic Welshing of the school continues tomorrow with the production of multi-coloured daffodils. My perversions truly know no end!
I ought to take photographs of these momentous artistic events. But there again being etched indelibly on the brains of innocent Catalans is memorial enough!
Time will tell.
At every street corner rather dubious looking characters were selling roses. It is the tradition within Catalonia that on the day which is dedicated to Sant Jordi (Saint George) there is an exchange of gifts. The traditional process involves the man receiving a book while the female partner gets a rose.
When I wearily slouched towards the kettle yesterday morning I was astonished to see that Toni had fought his revulsion to printed matter and there was a gaudily wrapped brick shape waiting for me!
His choice of a Ken Follett novel had been earlier mirrored by his sister who had given me the same volume a few months previously! My disappointment was mitigated by the delighted hope that Toni’s attitude towards the incursion of the tome into all available spaces in the flat would now change. Some hope!
He did however point out that the local newsagent had offered another volume about a cathedral and I was urged to return the book and either exchange it or get the money and go to Barcelona to the festival of books which was being held in the Ramblas.
The alternative novel was one which I had noticed in supermarkets in Spanish and Catalan in the best seller lists in this area. ‘Cathedral of the Sea’ by Ildefonso Falcones is set in Barcelona in the fourteenth century.
The back of the novel proclaims “A new Ken Follett is born!” and from my reading of the first hundred pages in this monumental novel I can see what the critic means. The subject matter is clearly within the territory of Ken Follett, but the standard of writing is not at Ken Follett’s level. There is a certain clunking quality to the scene setting and rather obvious devices in introducing characters and background information. The historical setting is paraded uneasily and exposition is generally unsophisticated. These are, however, early days and I have barely dented the bulk of this read!For the first time the Habitat lounger was taken out of its plastic wrapping and dragged off to the beach. Even more importantly, for the first time I threw myself into the foaming brine.
That last sentence is not strictly accurate. My entrance into the icy waters was not quite as muscular as is suggested by ‘threw myself.’
There is something sad and humiliating watching a grown man whimper. There is something even more sad and humiliating when that whimpering man is you!
My tentative entry into the Mediterranean was accompanied by little mewling sounds as progressively more of my body was subjected to icy cauterization. It was the sort of cold that you knew would not become ‘swimmable’ if you thrashed about a bit.
Honour having been satisfied by immersion I staggered my way back to shore and the warm calm of the lounger.
Picking up Toni from work I passed all the indefatigable rose sellers who were doggedly sitting tight and waiting for guilt to kick in for home going workers.
Dinner later was in a local restaurant because the Barça/Manchester United game in the Champions League was not broadcast on normal television. From where I was sitting I could see the zebra crossing at the end of the street which was garlanded by four rose sellers, still there and selling after at least sixteen hours of commercial activity. The roses, by the way, were in all the conventional colours and then, for the more extreme pleasure seekers there were totally artificial colours, bi-coloured roses and multi-coloured blooms! I bought a mini rose plant in a flower pot from my local florist and shunned the disreputable looking strangers who clamoured for my money!
Culture Week continues (after the hiatus of a day off) with a trip to . . . well, I think that I cannot trust my fingers to type with any degree of complacency about a magnificent residence with surrounding vineyards, swimming pool and . . . sorry, this will have to wait for another occasion when I am feeling stronger and less consumed by the sin of envy.
Our return to school was marked by the information that the headteacher has broken her femur by tripping over the cat. She is presently in hospital where she will stay for the next two weeks. She will not be able to walk on her injured leg for twelve weeks. Not only is this not good news for her – alone and incapacitated in a foreign country – but it is also potentially disastrous news for our school. We will be without a headteacher for the rest of the term. In a memo whose import scales the heights of horror we have been informed that matters that we would have taken to the headteacher must now be taken to The Owner.
The sleep of reason produces monsters.
We have started to paint our dragons and the ‘tapestry’ of versions of the Welsh flag continues to grow.
The final part of my master plan for the artistic Welshing of the school continues tomorrow with the production of multi-coloured daffodils. My perversions truly know no end!
I ought to take photographs of these momentous artistic events. But there again being etched indelibly on the brains of innocent Catalans is memorial enough!
Time will tell.
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