Time to ponder

Moral, social and personal dilemmas are diverting when they are the stuff of narrative in novels, but they are very different when they leap from the pages of a story and intrude in the reality of ordinary life - if reality it is!

It is always difficult to find the right degree of separation from problems to allow one the luxury of cool perspective; though perhaps such distance is a disadvantage rather than an aid to action.

Distance, also, lends anything but enchantment to the view, but distance also is a physical reality.

Enough!  Moping is no substitute for action and a firm belief (although often wrong) in “Anything Is Better Than Nothing” allows for a satisfyingly limited approach!

The sun, as usual emerged as soon as I got to school and seeing the shadows playing on the screen of the computer as my fingers dance on the keys is not conducive to tranquillity while waiting for a lesson to start: the call of the sand and the sea and a good book is hard to resist!

I have ordered a reading lamp from Amazon.  This is a direct result of the “one-click” evil that Amazon encourages.  This cuts down the so-called hard work of Internet buying to a single click on the mouse.

A single little click and money is magically drained from my account and, who knows, something nice may or may not turn up in a week or so!  Probably not actually turning up, because, as far as I can tell the delivery companies only deliver slips of paper to the addresses telling people that they were unable to make contact and therefore etc.  As I have seen one of these pieces of paper with a time and date after the time I found it!  No wonder I am cynical!

After putting the clocks forward the extra hour of light that we have in the evening really makes a difference.  I am sure that I went back to the UK to live I would probably develop SAD immediately!  Though I have noticed that the Daylight Lamps are now very much cheaper than they used to be!  Which is more than can be said for the lamp that I have just bought.  Why is it that everything I touch turns to gratifyingly large expense!

I have now officially given up trying to find a reasonably priced copy of any of the Dave Brandstetter novels of Joseph Hansen as recommended by Stewart.  I thought in my touchingly naive way that I would download an electronic version: as if!  I attempted to get Amazon to send me a very reasonably priced second hand copy but they refused point blank to send such cheap things to “my location” and I have resorted to buying one on-line at full price - which should arrive just in time to accompany me on my trip to Gran Canaria - which I might add will start in a little over two weeks and a few days.

It is a little disconcerting to discover that I have ordered the omnibus edition of all twelve novels that are apparently in miniscule print and spread over 1,200 pages.  Should keep me quiet for a while!  Even if incipient blindness (for all sorts of reasons) may well follow!

As part of my continuing flight from socialism I am now “looking in to private health insurance”: never a day goes by but I seem to drift that little bit further away from my political inheritance!  I haven’t even kept up my right to vote in British elections or claimed my right to vote in local elections in this country.  Such political indolence!  Though looking at the political situation in my home country I think that I would have a hard time justifying my long-standing political allegiance and voting for the only other party likely to form a majority government is something which I cannot countenance.

And talking of blind prejudice, when is That Woman going to do the decent thing and strong-arm her way into the Great Grocery Shop in the Sky?  The newspaper that hides her wax image from sight is beginning to yellow with age and I have a reoccurring fear that it will spontaneously ignite and deny me the personal pleasure of starting the conflagration to consume her.

Another pet hate concerns the so-called royal house of Windsor and the rapidly advancing wedding.  Even in Spain we are regaled with information and pictures of this couple: as if they matter in any sense more than a youngish couple getting hitched.  The sooner we ditch the whole of this imported family and become a republic the better.  It says something for the extent of my loathing of what this family represents (with the possible exceptions of the odious Duke (!) of Edinburgh and the self seeking Duke (!) of York the family does not possess enough personality for them to be cordially hated for the debased quality of their individual personalities) that I would cheerfully have seen That Woman be regaled by despots around the world as President of my country rather than the set of Germanic dwarfs who currently hold positions of prominence by virtue (!) of a dallying uncle and being born in the right bed!

One doesn’t want to keep harping on about injustice but today I teach five periods; have a substitution for one more; have a departmental meeting in a further one.  Making a Grand Total of seven (7) periods directed time in one day.  This is patently absurd, though I appear to be the only person saying it!  At least in the UK there were only five periods in a day and so what I am doing here would have been impossible there!  And our wages have been frozen this year as well!  It just goes on getting better!

But the sun is shining and, although slightly hazy, there are sharp shadows on the tiled floor of the staff room balcony – to which I will now repair and take a little of what our local star has to offer!