Food for belly and soul!

Out To Lunch – Again!

There is nothing better to end off a morning by going out to lunch.  We have now made this more of a way of life than a luxury – but I think that we are becoming better people because of such determination!

            Especially when we go to a place like Tast, which is a restaurant in the center-ish of town.  This is a relatively small place on a relatively obscure road (even if its name is C/ Major 16) which does not shout out that it is a place to go.  But go you should.  We have never had a bad meal there and certainly on the last few visits we have had a meal which we would have been happy to have had in a restaurant a few times the price that we paid.

            My meal comprised a cold vegetable soup called salmorejo which is served with crumbled hard-boiled egg and bits of Spanish ham.  This version came with dried fruit as well and was refreshingly delicious.

            The second course was a perfectly cooked fillet of salmon with a selection of al dente fried vegetables and my dessert was a mouthful selection of four of the normal postres that the restaurant served.  We accompanied the meal with a jug of Sangria and I ordered a second one for old time’s sake!

            The meal for two came to €36.20, and that included two coffees (well, a tea in my case) and that extra jug of Sangria.  Call it €40 and that means that the total cost was a tip and a bit under thirty quid!  Sing ho! for the hard old life!

Traitor!

Today, Wednesday is the day that I go to my Poetry Group in Barcelona, but a friend from The British School has told me about another group which meets in Sitges.  I have given my contact details and I am awaiting a contact from someone in that group.  This group meets on a different day and their concerns may well be different from the Barcelona group – but it will be interesting to find out what they offer.

            It terms of ‘getting there’ – it is a damn sight less stressful to go to Sitges than the centre of Barcelona and it will probably be cheaper too.  At present I park in a vastly expensive car park next to the Cathedral in the centre of Barcelona.  I am protected against the cost of the place by the fact that my car has a little gizmo which electronically passes me through barriers and automatically charges my bank account directly.  I neither see nor touch a ticket as I go into the car park and I have no idea about how much it has cost me as I leave.  Sometimes ignorance is best!

            One of the people from the Sitges group is going to contact me, so I await with some interest to see how this works out!

            I am not sure that I have the time or the space or the money to keep two groups going, so there may be a choice involved.  We shall see.

            This evening in the Barcelona group, I am going to distribute the first of the translations of my poems into Catalan and ask for comments to relay back to Hannah who has translated them.  I might add that this is with her permission, so it will be interesting to see the reactions and to take in the suggestions.

Flesh Can Be Bright

The master plan for this enterprise continues to worry me.  Things are moving, but not I think to my initial timetable.

            My publication date for the book is United Nations Day 2015, the 24^th October: time is rapidly running out and, at the moment, the five other collaborations that are necessary for my ideas to work are nowhere near complete, and one of them doesn’t exist!  Such things add to the gaiety of nations – or so I’m told!

            At the moment only Stage 1 of my idea looks certain to come to fruition.  Stage 2 is likely and Stage 3 is, shall we say, fluid!

            Such uncertainty is good fuel for creativity!

Time’s wingèd chariot

The buffer time that I amassed working my way through Book IV of our course in the history of art has now been dissipated in poetry writing and I find myself looking at the time left for my last essay and wondering if I have left enough to complete something which gives my marks a boost.

            I cannot pretend that the subject matter of this last essay is something which truly interests me and, as you can imagine, its relationship with what I regard as art is somewhat tenuous!  Still, it is all good for theoretical mumbo-jumbo and that should be something of a strong suit for me!

            I am in the comfortable position that I could ignore this essay completely and still pass this part of the course, but it is not the mere passing which concerns me, but the level of pass.  This course has been much more demanding that I previously imagined and it has stretched me, which, in some ways is a good thing, but it has also been something of a strain.

            This essay isn’t even the last putsch as there is the end of module mini-thesis after this essay is complete and, as I have not taken what my tutor has termed ‘exemplary’ artists as the basis of my work, I have made the task a lot more difficult.  But more interesting I think.

            Now, time to get down to the hard work of getting the essay written.  Or perhaps a little rest before I go off to Barcelona!

            Always choices!