How long, O God!

Thing have reached a pretty pass when I actually make an effort to find out what cottage cheese is in Catalan!  This was prompted by the fact that I put one kilo back on last week.  Cottage cheese is simply not very nice, has not been very nice and will never be very nice – but it is better than nothing.  And I have spices, they have to make some sort of difference, for the better I trust!  I have bought an exploratory tub of something white and lumpy and will experiment with it.  A rapid sprinkling of my bottle of spices for tomatoes (it exists, I have bought it) and it became not very nice but with some sort of taste.  Presumably that is what I have to look forward to for the foreseeable future.  Happy days!

Tomorrow or the day after should see the arrival of my new boxes of CDs, forward to which I am certainly looking.  You really have to be of my generation and to have been interested in classical music, been at college and not been able to afford the records that you wanted to fully appreciate the delight in now owning all the unobtainable, of our your range, music.  And at a bargain cost.  For a couple of euros, no less, and in a format which is a damn sight more rugged than the original discs!

We have just come back from Terrassa where we went to celebrate a joint Name Day.  We had the ‘celebration’ in a local café and I had one bottle of fizzy Vichy water and a cup of coffee with ice to drink.  I am beginning to ask myself if what I am now living is in any way linked to what might loosely be called a ‘life’!  A whole bloody year of deprivation and it still won’t be enough!  I am not sure if my strength of will is up to a campaign which is going to last a whole year.  Though there again, the alternatives are less than acceptable if I am to have any chance of emulating my Uncle Eric.

Meanwhile the waiting for examination results and the return of the first TMA continues.  We have been told that our tutor will return all the assignments at the end of the marking period, in other words she will take the full ten working days, which actually means that the time can be over two weeks.  We have been told to concentrate on the chapter in The Big Red Book and do the exercises written there.

The present problem in writing concerns the asymmetrical nature of the human face.  We have been told to look at faces and make an assessment about each side of the face and give a description for each.  So, for example, after looking at a series of random faces on the Internet I have come up with a whole series of linkings such as, Judge/Whore; Murderer/Hostess and the one that I am working on at the moment Soldier/Innocent.  In keeping with the impulses of the course, I have done a certain amount of research and now know more about the basic issue gun of the British Army and the history of the Royal Welsh Regiment (or any variants of Royal Welsh, Welsh, Welch etc) than I have ever known before.  Did you know for example that the goat mascot was given by the Queen, had a surname of Windsor and had an official rank in the Army?  Just think how your life has been enriched by such knowledge!

Anyway I have written a monologue, which I have wisely left for revision tomorrow, which purports to be by a character who is both a soldier and an innocent.  I will have to read it again and more critically to discover if this is actually conveyed by the writing.  And there are more splits for me to give words to.  Much more writing to do!

The lure of a further gadget is getting to be almost irresistible, but my indolence has done nothing about getting the money together to buy it so it remains tantalizingly out of reach.  I am hoping that time will blunt my purpose and I will be able to look at adverts without convulsively looking for a shop.  The Shop.  Lurking at the corner of Plaça de Cataluña.  I know where it is and I know that to enter that beautifully designed place of consumerism and planned obsolescence is to fall.

For only the second time since my final retirement, I wore jeans and socks and trainers.  Most unpleasant, but even I cannot go on pretending that the weather has not changed.  It is autumn and there is no getting away from it.  Much though I would like to.

Tomorrow chores as well as writing.