Drip! Drip! Drip!

The tempests which swept through southern Spain yesterday have reached us as irritating rain storms. We did have some sunshine before the rains started in the late afternoon and now I am typing this to the steady drip of rain from the roof onto the terrace on the Third Floor. More and more the weather seems to presage the coming of autumn; even in the sunshine there is a shiver of coolness to remind one just how bad the summer has been.



And the winter wasn’t very good either.


Altogether a poor showing from the north eastern part of the peninsular to the compact that I thought existed between what powers there are and my poor sun starved self.


There is, of course, an element of protesting too much about all this as I can count the days of rain that I have had to endure on the finger of a relatively ordinary spider and I am likely to dismiss a day as poor and unacceptable which I might have welcomed with something approaching relief in the UK.


My friends, however, inform me that the weather has been “really quite good” in Britain and, apart from not really knowing what that phrase means, it makes me feel glad for my fellow countrymen but a bit resentful when I consider that I have travelled far to ensure a bronzed and god-like appearance – well, brown in bits!


I have been assured that fine weather will follow this unnatural wetness and I will be able to resume the supine governance of my Kingdom of the Third Floor.


In an excess of self-survival (and in direct defiance of the prevailing weather conditions) I have invested in a second air conditioning machine. I was prompted to this by an apparent bargain at the end of season sale in one of our local commercial sheds which sells things for the house. The reduction (whose amount I have already forgotten, for it is the principle involved in the idea of a reduction that influences me) seemed substantial, and I know that the chill comfort of more reasonable temperatures is still some way off, so it was wise in my view to strike when the prices were cooling!


It is only the excitement of a major purchase which can explain our choice for lunch.

As Toni took his first bite of his “Whopper” he said, “This reminds me of Cardiff!” I feel somehow depressed that the fine city of my upbringing should be a la Proust associated with a Burger King “Whopper”!


I must admit that after so much fine food, it is tempting to “rough it” with a burger from a fast food outlet – and anyway I did not pass beneath the double arches of you-know-where; I do have some pride.


Fast food, as usual was a gross misnomer. We had to wait to give our order and then wait again while it was cooked, or whatever they do to the food in those places.


While we were waiting for our tray to fill up some Argentinean chap standing next to us assumed that the tray was his and he pinched a chip! The waitress/cashier informed him sharply that they were not his chips and although he expressed some grunts of dismay it did not occur to him to say sorry. The waitress (sic) behaved with exemplary firmness and swept away the contaminated packet of chips and threw the thing away and gave us a fresh portion.


One of the good things about patronizing a fast food joint like this is when it comes to the beverages. I abhor Coke in all its manifestations and the Fanta they serve is so full of sugar that you have to be very careful when you drink it as the slightest tap and the whole thing solidifies. But this is not the UK and I was able to have a super sized or whatever plastic glass of beer. Admittedly it was beer as Johnny Foreigner knows it and therefore can be dismissed as lager, but it was still a damn sight better than the other offerings.


We ate our food well outside the interior of the “restaurant” and as far away as possible from the pretty plastic cage that contained the younger patrons of the establishment. Unfortunately the lack of triple glazing meant that the piercing shrieks and screams (not of pain unfortunately) of the children were particularly clear and encouraged us to finish our meal and pretend that we hadn’t been there.


As Toni said, “It reminds you how bad it is.” Fair point, but that doesn’t stop the urge to eat “dirty” from time to time!


With the rains comes the taking in of the cushions on the sun loungers, so that the Office on the Third Floor looks even more chaotic than usual. My desperate purchase of a number of plastic boxes as a defeatist gesture to tidying will probably backfire and the boxes will merely add their own particular dash of disorder to the already apocalyptic mess in which I work.


Talking of work, the books from the WJEC have not yet arrived and I really do need to see them before I start teaching! They are going to be the basis for a whole course so they better arrive soon so that I have at least a few days to photocopy and draft to make it look as though I have been working assiduously throughout the holiday period.


Meanwhile, as something of a contrast to the novels of E M Forster, I have been given “The bear nobody wanted” ISBN: 9780140348095 a novel by Allan Ahlberg with black and white drawings by Janet Ahlberg. I have only read poems by the Ahlbergs before with “Please, Mrs Butler” being the one that has saved many a lesson in schools up and down the country! I shall read this with interest.


Meanwhile the rain continues to fall with its melancholy sound only partially masked by the whirr of my new air conditioner!