Seconds count!

I had not planned to start my day so early in the morning, but needs must when public transport fails.  On a daily basis.

 

When the job starts at 7.00 am in Cornellá, and you live in Castelldefels then public transport will simply not get you there on time and so “needs must when the devil drives” comes into operation and I have to turn into a chauffeur.   

So, washed and tooth brushed, but un-showered and unshaven I face the day in the profound dark and make my way along an overcrowded motorway full of motorists who don’t seem to take their continuing life at all seriously and positively ‘last trip’ kamikaze motorbike riders.  Luckily the horror aspect of the driving is only on the going there, the coming back is much more relaxing, especially when viewing the growing tail-backs on the other side of the road.

But, to get back to the cruel start of the day.  To get to Cornellá before 7.00 am we must leave at the latest by half past six; given the special physics of over-used motorways into big cities, it is a given that every minute after 6.30 am that you leave the house will mean, in a fairly complex, inverse ratio sort of thing, that there is an exponential chance of delay or hold up of some kind – and, of course, domestic misery!

This means that Toni’s alarm goes off at 6.00 am and he gets ready to go.  I get up a vital 10 minutes later.

Those ten minutes are a delight.  A delight out of all proportion to the actual length of six hundred seconds!I hear the alarm and so, at 6.00 am, I am awake – but then I have the delight of literally turning over and not quite resuming my slumber, but allowing the shreds of almost lost dreams to pleasurably confuse is a real pleasure. 

 

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me my body seems to know when the glorious ten minutes are up and a shake of the wrist (it is that sort of watch) my Pebble confirms that it is 6.10 and time for me to get up.

I get up willingly, but only because of those precious ten extra minutes, a sort of gift to start the day.  Although there are few who will see it that way unless they have to share my early rising!

As we were held up yesterday and Toni was a few minutes late for work (unavoidable given the accident that was in our way) we left a little earlier this morning and I returned a little earlier as well.  This meant that I was actually waiting outside the locked gate of the swimming pool for the place to open!  There seems to be an element of desperation about that, until you realize that this early start is not exactly my unforced choice!

I will say that I am getting used to the early start and am trying to make the most of the ‘extra’ hours that I have ‘gained’.  Trying.  There is a nice ambiguity in that word!

-oOo-

In our Catalan classes, we have now just about finished the first unit in our text books.  We are still firmly in the present tense, and only the first three persons (I, you, he/she/it), but we have also been introduced to a variety of verbs and tricky words that change with person and number.  It may only be a single unit, but there is a frightening amount of new information to take in and, more horrifically, apply – and we know that there is an examination at the end of the second unit.   

And that is something that I am trying hard not to think about too much.  Or even at all, on the “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” sort of thing.  I know that I need to up my game substantially if the examination, when it happens, is not to be something of a condemnation of my learning ability!

-oOo-

Something that is deflecting me from my linguistic travails has been the arrival of the Melvyn Bragg & Simon Tillotson book celebrating twenty years of In Our Time.  The book is a self-indulgent (for me) pleasure with a stimulatingly bewildering variety of subject matter that reflects the range of the programme itself.  From bird migration to The Salem Witch Trials; from The Death of Elizabeth I to Kant’s Categorical Imperative; from Zoroastrianism to Absolute Zero – each topic is compressed into seven or eight pages with illustrations with a variety of responses from the academics collected to discuss each individual concept. 

The book is very like a drug and is compulsive and thoroughly interesting, even on those topics that you might think would not be engrossing.  They all are, and I have had to limit my reading to try to stretch out the pleasure.  It’s not really working and I am already half way through.  I think that the programme has published an earlier book and I may be forced to buy a copy of that one as well to satisfy my greed!  For knowledge that is, of course.

This book is an elegant hard back volume of over 400 pages with a range of colour and black and white illustrations.  The text is generously spaced with contributors’ names in bold capitals.  I presume the unjustified lines are to give, what is a book of an unscripted live radio programme, a more informal look.

The only thing I don’t like is the dust jacket.  The look is good, a sort of restrained confident professionalism with a sans serif capital title in embossed gold that is flaking off.  It’s not the look, it is more the feel.  The paper has a slight suede-like touch that I find quite unpleasant, but other might think adds a touch of luxury.  A slight point, and not one to dissuade any future reader.  This is a book worth buying.  Buy it!

Remember the Ruskin quotation that has been a guiding light for me since I was a schoolboy: “If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.” 

For me, that is a simple (if expensive) truth!