Always waiting!

Day 0 + 6  [DD -1]

Today and tomorrow will be like the Ides of March for us.  Every small sound and every movement of our next-door neighbours will be garnered and analysed to provide incontrovertible proof that the Great Migration back to the City has begun.

We have not really considered the consequences of their staying any longer than Sunday.  If they are still here next week then our only recourse will be to apply to the United Nations to get their behaviour recognized as “cruel and unnatural” and therefore be considered officially as torture.  I would anticipate getting the Consul in Barcelona involved first then via our Embassy in Madrid bringing the full weight of the British Government to put our case to the Security Council and then presumably tactical air strikes from the USA (with the help of France nowadays!) to put us our of our misery.

Talking of the United Nations, I was gratified to see that United Nations Day this year is the date for a General Strike in support of Education here in Catalonia!  As that date, of the 24^th of October, is also the celebration of a much more important event I find the synergy of the two occasions converging as something which is too good an opportunity to miss.  I do hope that there is some way for the Birthday Boy to give his support to such a significant event.  A birthday to remember. 

And that reminds me, my little red flags of the CCOO which have been proudly stuck in flowerpots in the garden have pinkified and disintegrated so I will need new ones to show my affiliation and support!

Next week should see the arrival of the learning material for the next OU course arrives.  And if it doesn’t then I am going to the post office here to make enquiries as their past history is not very convincing on the actual delivery of any parcels entrusted to their tender care.

I am still waiting for the mark for the last essay.  Our poor tutor has had a complete technological deprivation as the Wi-Fi and telephone service in her remote location collapsed and without computer access the whole of the OU tutor system fails. 

As she is a rapid marker she rarely takes up the allotted “ten working days” to get the work done but she has asked us to be patient this time.  As usual I have worked out that she doesn’t actually need to get the work back until the 18^th of September, but I do hope it is sooner as there is a sense of limbo which comes when you are waiting for the last piece to be tidied up and it is a nagging distraction to getting settled down to make the next concentrated effort.

Toni is now getting back to his studies as his course has now started again and he will have an examination some time in December of January.  At least mine will be out of the way some twelve weeks before his – though I have another one looming in the summer of next year and five or six tutor marked assignments to complete before then.  And all of it self-inflicted!  Ah, the masochism of learning!

Disaster!

OK, it’s my fault . . . but . . .

Through an oversight I left my iPhone on a table on the terrace of the third floor.  And it rained.  Luckily I left the phone on a table that was partially sheltered from the storms but a “few” drops of rain did get to the iconic surface of the machine.

I dried it and hoped fore the best and, lo and behold, it worked.  For a while.  This morning I unplugged the thing and it had not taken its charge.  And now it is just an inert block of well-designed metal and glass.

We are about to go out to lunch and I have left it plugged in in the hope that . . . in the hope . . . in the . . . in . . .

And another thing. 

I find it deeply suspicious that my phone should give up the ghost at precisely the moment that Apple has announced a new iPhone 5S.  Suspicious and fatal!

However, for this lunchtime I will live in hope and pray that my phone recovers and that all things may be well.

Please.

But they weren’t.

The phone was taken out of its enclosing battery case and plugged in with the official plug and lead.  And nothing.

So admitting defeat I came downstairs and demonstrated to Toni how it wasn’t accepting its charge.  When it did.  Why do things behave like that.  At least I hadn’t admitted the putative disaster and so it just seemed like a slight glitch, obviously the fault of a power adaptor upstairs.

So that happy event has saved me a few hundred euros!  Thank god for inconsistency!