Bucking the normal weather trend this morning is fine and that doesn’t bode well for the afternoon as we have been experiencing good weather/poor weather syndrome for the past few days.
As I am at home and this is Monday it is officially classed as a workday and an opportunity for me to get some of those tasks completed that are impossible given the length of our school day.
The two essentials today are a visit to my bank and to a hotel in Hospitalet to check out the availability of a deal for a gastronomic meal for our first visitors of the summer.
Disturbingly I have tried to get information from the web site of the hotel and I have phoned twice to try and get details and – nothing! I was transferred from person to person all of whom seemed confused by a concept clearly outlined on their web site. At some point in the pass-the-parcel approach to enquiries I was asked by one of the people on the other end of the line which hotel I was talking about, so god alone knows where in the world I was at that point. And we thought it was only British Rail that out-sourced customer enquiries to Mumbai!
It shows what a vitiated life I lead that today, to what depths of depravity I have reached, that today, the 25th of July is the first day that I have thrown myself into the foaming brine!
As a British swimmer I always (always) expect the shock of incipient numbness to accompany all immersions in seawater. The Med is a little more welcoming and at this stage of the summer the temperature of the water is hardly horrible and is positively not cold. Notice that I do not use the word “warm”; having swum off the coast of Mexico I know that some sea water is actually like a tepid bath – the waters here are not!
This evening I am meeting my friend Irene for a therapeutic gossip. An odd sort of gossip really as we tend not to talk about people but situations – especially The School That Never Was. This was the dream that a few of us had to found a school in the area and drain money away from The School That Sacked Me (and him and her and us!) As this didn’t happen, we talk about what might have been and the difficulties of life when one has to be making money at the same time!
At least that would have been true if today had been Tuesday. But it hasn't been Tuesday all day and I would still have been in Tuesday denial if Irene had not phoned up and changed our dinner date from tomorrow to Thursday. All things work together for good! In this best of all possible worlds!
The basic problem, which I understand is remarkably common, is that our preferred life styles are not quite in kilter with our present ones. We feel, with some justice I think that the vast amount of money recently directed towards two Britons went to the wrong ones. I am not greedy and would have quite willingly settled for a measly 10% of the total sum. Alas, we reasonable ones are never rewarded for our modest aspirations.
The great disappointment of today is the fact that a British architect didn’t really allow for the heat of a Spanish summer in Barcelona.
It was our intention to go Hesperia Towers and more particularly the flying saucer restaurant which tops this extraordinary building to sample the taster menu from the Michelin starred eatery which is contained inside the sci-fi part of the structure.
We were told that during the summer the heat in the saucer dome is so extreme that they take the restaurant down from the top of the building to a lower floor. That was fine with us as long as the food was the same. Then we were told that the whole restaurant (wherever it was) closed for the month of August. Tragedy!
At least Ceri has expressed an interest in visiting the Argentinian restaurant for a steak and so we have one gastronomic experience to look forward to!
No progress on the books.
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