One of the three pools which you can see from the balcony is already out of service with the perimeter of the pool picked out in police incident tape stopping swimmers. Though I have to say that the lurid green colour of the water is enough by itself to discourage immersion!
Our own pool now had a new level of fresh water after the deluge last night and a liberal addition of pine needles, leaves and other detritus from the surrounding trees. My morning swim was a combination of exercise and hoovering. At each stoke my hands would encounter something organic and at the end of each length I would jettison the rubbish and start a new sweep.
Being surrounded by the number of pine trees that we are each storm brings a shower of pine needles which are then cleared up by extremely noisy portable air blowers which are used at extremely early hours of the day. These save the operators having to lower their dignity by using a mere brush to gather up the pine needles. Actually, from personal experience, I can assure you that sweeping up recalcitrant strands of resinous matter is amazingly difficult to do competently. Thinking about it I might have lacked a little commitment in my attempts – one can`t help feeling that there will be more pine needles when you have swept up one lot and so, basically, what is the point!
The same goes for so-called “housework” too. I keep remembering Quentin Crisp’s dictum that “the dust doesn’t get any thicker after six months” and feel that I am doing well with the desultory approach to cleaning public areas that I have developed. In effect that means leaving it to somebody else. And why not!
The weather today has not markedly improved and my response has been to start (at least) the work that I am supposed to be doing for the start of the new school year. How those last three words chill one’s very soul.
In what I take to be characteristic approach to the unsavoury I have started my efforts by spending money. After an exhaustive search I have found a copy of the art book which has been recommended to me by Suzanne and I have ordered two Media Studies books from the good old Welsh Joint Education Committee. As the publishers of my only “book” I feel that I can do little else but support their educational efforts!
I am trying (probably vainly) to resist the temptation to send for a copy of “The Longest Journey” by E M Forster which, if I am absolutely honest (as when am I not) I am not completely sure that I had heard of. It raises not a scintilla of memory and, what makes it worse, is that it is the book which Lionel Trilling described as “perhaps the most brilliant, the most dramatic, and the most passionate of his works.” I wonder how much it is on Amazon.
But back to work. Or do I hear The Family returning from their walk along the paseo. I must descend and have a cup of tea.
One must always keep a sense of proportion.
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