Some things never change

Toni has turned from the theoretical to the practical and is repairing his old computer for his mother with much drilling, solder and other things about which I have no desire to know.  It is touching the way that he assumes that I have even a passing interest in actually knowing how these things are done!  As long as he’s there to know, why should I burden my mind with such knowledge!  Anyway, to be on the safe side I try and show a polite interest and make the appropriate cooing noises when I am shown something that is, apparently, interesting.

Writing my Morning Pages on the computer is nothing like the same as using a pen and having written two days on the computer I am ready to buy another book and get writing again.  It is more of a physical effort to write rather than to type and the extra effort is, I think, an element without which I cannot do.  The computer is fine if you have done all the preparatory work and all you are doing is just writing out a draft.  I then need hard paper copy to edit and then back to the screen where editing is simple, again as long as you know what you are doing.

There is nothing more delightful than moving a paragraph around on a computer – because you can.  When I was using a real typewriter then a paragraph out of sync. was a disaster and it simply had to stay.  Unless, of course you had a home photocopier and you could cut and paste!  And of course I did have a home photocopier, until printers made them obsolete – but by that time the Word programs were good enough for you to start real editing without fearing the loss of you document or other things that early versions of Windows did with impunity!

Why is it that the little obvious jobs take so much time to do?  Why do we (I) put off a simple case of minimal reorganization for so long?  Or is it just I – or do you do the same?

It all, as is to so often the case, comes down to tea.  Of late I have eschewed normal tea and have given myself to the exotic.  Which is tautological, or pleonastic or self-contradictory, or is it only me noticing such things?  Anyway I am not drinking the floor sweepings put into little bags but am branching out into whole other areas of dried left taste experience.  

One bag from Lidl’s says it is Mediterranean tea which seems to mean oranges and lemons with flowers.  An interesting taste and one that I think corresponds to the Barcelona Tea that I was told about on Sunday, but I will delve deeper into this and get some of the ‘real’ stuff when I go into town for my next opera.  I understand that it may be purchased in the ‘Tea Shop’, which is just inside the Triangle next to the Café Zurich.  Which in itself is next to FNAC and – but that is another story and I am working on the next ‘chapter’ of that saga, and it can wait to be told if there is a satisfactory outcome!

Tomorrow the car goes to have the door repaired in the garage next to the pharmaceutical company in which the wrecker works.  I will have to get the car cleaned so that the appearance of the repaired door can be seen clearly in comparison with the old.  More money to be spent!

My swim this morning was in the afternoon, though only just in the afternoon and it went well.  Though I was bereft because of the untoward behaviour of my swimming device.  I had recharged it and now all it will do is show the battery full sign and nothing else.  I assume that I have over charged it somehow (I have a shrewd idea) and I will have to wait in patience (and silence while I swim) for the thing to run down and become more amenable to conversation with the computer. 

I sincerely hope that nothing bad has happened because this will be the third or fourth time that I have had to send this machine back.  Why persist, I hear you ask.  Well, it is the only one which does the job, all the others are less impressive and I am prepared to take the rough with the smooth and hope for the best and all other clichés in my continuing use of it.  Roll on the hours for the thing to run down and then I will start praying. 

If I do have to send it back I will order another at the same time.  Stupid, eh?  But that’s the way I work!

How does my next topic link to the last, well, I can see a way of seguing from one to the other!  I am currently reading a book (on my new Kindle, though to be fair I was also reading it on my old one) on The Borgias by Christopher Hibbert and in the narrative of blatant self-interest, nepotism, outrageous lying, re-writing history, coercion, rigged voting, bribery, violence, the love of money, ostentatious display and so on, I couldn’t help thinking of our own dear government.  British?  Yes!  Spanish?  Absolutely!

In the latest twist about the carnival of freaks that make up the Spanish Cabinet, the minister of education (who is universally loathed) has been called ‘rubbish’ by a British spokesman for the European Parliament.  The look on the Spanish cretin’s face when an eager journalist told him what he had been called was priceless and, in theory, I would buy a mug emblazoned with his face at that moment and a suitably insulting inscription!  This was only the highlight of days of many ‘What the fuck did he say?’ type incredulous conversations that have been going on conducted by various journalists and by Spanish students around Europe. 

Clearly, he should resign and, if he had a shred of decency, go on national television bow to the population and then disembowel himself with a blunt stick. 

Unfortunately, owning to the shameless (and shameless is far too mild a word to express it) nature of the so-called Spanish Government, the Walking Joke (Rajoy aka the Stumbling Idiot) has expressed full confidence in the piece of mediocrity.  As well he might, because the antics of the clowns he has surrounded himself with deflect some of the attention from the shady dealings that he is involved in.  When denounced he angrily defended himself and said that everything was untrue ‘except for some things’!  It really defies contempt!

The last box of new discs is waiting to be fed into the computer, though with the device temporarily (I hope and trust) out of action I will have to enjoy my new acquisitions by listening to them in the aleatory system that governs what I hear when I turn on iTunes!

Now back to the Third Floor to get stuck in to more writing and feed in more discs.  And prepare myself for my second swim of the day without my trusty music!

I shrug off hardship and face the travails of my existence with a wary smile!