Day 0+1
To our absolute horror, an overheard
conversation seems to indicate that they might all be here until the
weekend! Unprecedented, unprincipled,
untolerable. And I am going to let that
last word stand because its strangled form expresses precisely how we feel!
My morning swim was at its best because I
swam in an empty pool. An especial
delight. In the sunshine and in the open
air – and warmish water.
And my bone music system is still working
well. Well, the reproduction would
result in my returning any other music system which did as badly – but you have
to make allowances when you are dealing with something which works through cheekbones
and under water! It is an advantage if
you like pop music and you are playing tracks that you know. My original (some years ago and with a
different system) plan of getting to know the late quartets of Beethoven while
going my lengths was a basic non-starter!
My post-length cup of tea is now made to an
approximation of a half-way decent cuppa and is at least acceptable – which
believe you me is something of an achievement in this country – and was made
for me while I responded to the greeting that I had when I got to the counter.
One of my ex-colleagues from the school
next door saw me and said, with a considerable amount of aggression, “What are
you doing here and not there!” It took
me the whole of the conversation to realize that I should have countered with
exactly the same comment, as she should have been in school. But let it pass, let it pass!
I do hope that this chance meeting is not
going to result in telephone calls siren-like tempting me to quit my happy
state and revert to early morning misery!
We shall see.
It certainly bucked me up to see my
colleague scuttle off to her place of work while I settled down with my
pseudo-cuppa and a versatile phone.
I have managed to balance my work/life
conflict today by engaging in a little light sunbathing and completing stage
one of my revision, i.e. doing the course review. I am going to enjoy the more detailed
revision because there is no aspect of this course that I do not find
interesting, taking in as it does subjects as diverse as the posthumous
idolatry of the Bulimic Bitch; the history of overpriced Greek vases;
Travellers taking black idols to the sea and back; strange Cabinets of Curiosity;
incunabula; Khatyn, Katyn, Yama and associated places of death and memory;
Elvis the King; a Native American’s brain and what the white man did with it –
in short, the usual delights of a well planned and constantly fascinating OU
course!
Sooner or later I have got to make the
effort to synthesise the three or four “libraries” that I have in the house so
that I can find what I think I might have when I need it. At the moment my collections are scattered
over three floors – and that phrase is partially literally true – so that
finding an individual volume is an exciting, though exhausting, paper
chase. I am hoping that over the next
couple of weeks (as light relief from revising) I can bring “even more” order
to a system which has what one might kindly refer to as “ragged edges” at the
moment.
One television programme to which Toni is
addicted (and I am not averse) concerns a couple of Americans living in Ohio
(?) who go “picking” or visiting scrap yards or junk houses to see if they can
buy “stuff” which they will be able to resell for a profit.
Some of the places that they visit are
literally junk yards with rubbish strewn over a sometimes-vast acreage of land,
submerged in vegetation or covered with earth.
What is surprising is how this seeming chaos is like a carefully
organized museum display to the owners who confidently assert that, “What
you’re looking for is under that car chassis.”
And lo! It is!
I feel that my books and I have the same
instinctive relationship. I sort-of know
where things are, but sometimes it is just too much trouble to dig down or
through or over to prove to myself that the volume is there, when the
information I need is so simply available from the Internet!
Though the books are so much more and will
never be replaced in my affection by eBooks no matter how slick and convenient they
are. I would not want to do without my
eBooks but the reading experience is simply different.
For example, thanks to the generosity of
Amazon (yes, I am being ironic) I bought an eBook called, “Why? Answers to everyday scientific questions” by
Joel Levy. This book has an awful
cartoon-like cover which reminds me of the worst sort of educational book of
the early sixties, but the content is excellent. It is popular science which perhaps tries a
little too hard to be hip and funny, but is clear and interesting.
From time to time on the pages it refers
you to another section of the book, and to get there all you have to do is
click on the word and magically you are there.
How you get back to where you were is not quite as easy and it is
simplicity itself to get yourself lost.
You also tend to read sequentially because
you are tapping on pages to get to the next, but this book is quintessentially
a “dipping” book where you flick-and-read – except you don’t in the electronic
version.
On the other hand this is the sort of book
that you read once and then it is just taking up space on your shelf. It was too good a read to throw away but it
is just dead space. On a Kindle, who
cares! It can stay there forever and,
although I have learned that there is a measurable weight of the information
stored, I also know that you have to have a very, very, very sensitive balance
to discover it!
In short is it a book I can recommend
without hesitation (especially for 99p from Amazon) though I would prefer to
have the book full of pages in my hand rather than a screen.
Madrid has not been given the Olympic Games
for 2020 and there is a general witchfinder general approach to apportioning
blame. The most interesting personality
to come out of the debacle astonishingly badly is the lady mayor of Madrid,
some PP idiot, who mistakenly thinks that she can speak English. Her grimace-filled, mispronounced and leering
performance has been lovingly re-broadcast, especially her phrase urging
members of the Olympic Family to have “a refreshing cup of café con leche in
the Plaza Major” in Madrid. This is
already on a T-shirt and has been made into a rap song and is going to haunt
her for the rest of her, hopefully, short career!
Corruption continues to blossom in this
country with accusation of financial misdoing following creative accounting and
the wiping of hard disks. All of which
end up with our glorious governing fiasco PP.
They are a bunch of contemptible clods and the sooner they are moved en
mass to prison the better.
But the sun was shining today and the first
tranche of pupils have been forced back to school so the streets and shops are
gloriously un-crowded and the noise level has dropped dramatically.
The 11th of September is
Catalonia’s National Day during which there is going to be a Human Chain across
the country to say something or other to the national government.
More importantly, the 12th of
September should see the rest of the school population returning so that
civilization will be justifiably returned to the Just Retired – and I mean the
word “Just” in all possible senses!
We are counting the days to The Departure!
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