It's all in the definition. Possibly.

  

Sometimes you just have to tell yourself that proving a negative is as good as a positive.

     For the best part of a fortnight we (AI & I) [If you say that in a swing rhythm sort of way it does sound like one of those inane choruses in a Eurovision failure) have been working on a piece of micro-research into my long-ignored thesis on Huxley from 50 years ago.

     I have fixated on a footnote, and on the person who is the subject of that footnote.  The relatively famous bit of my literary concern is linked to Huxley’s first (published) novel Crome Yellow.  The footnote mentions someone who as far as I was concerned was lost to history.

     Not lost if you have the will and the time to delve.  Very gradually the character (indeed he was a character in the Peacockian novel that Huxley wrote) began to emerge from the shadows of forgetfulness.

     We knew that he was a Rector, and a Rector of the parish of Garsington at the time of Lady Ottoline Morell and her coterie of the literary and the famous, but everyone else in the novel was much more famous than he, and their reputations have largely survived from the dizzy days of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s – together with representatives from a generation that was somewhat older.  Researching the others was easy – I have books on them.  But the humble Rector was not so easy to ¡find out about.

     So the search began.  American born-again fundamentalist on-line libraries actually had copies of some of the book that the rector had written – apocalyptic consideration of some of the more sensational books of the bible looking forward to The End Days – spiritual catnip to the Evangelical Right Wing of those who call themselves Christians.

     Of course, the tract that I wanted, and which Huxley had allegedly used as the basis for a whole chapter in his novel, was NOT online and so the hunt for a copy somewhere began.

     As we began to draw up some sort of biography for the rector, we discovered that he invented a ‘stay’ for a bell – this stay allowed the bell to be . . . well, I did go into the details of what the thing did and looked up a whole vocabulary of bell ringing to try and understand its function and even when onto the website of an old foundry that had used the damn thing extensively, until another fragment suggested that the guy who invented this device was not the guy that we were researching.  Suddenly a whole fascinating aspect of the rector’s personality was snatched away.

     Such is the state of the information available on line, even though we are now questioning the previous attribution, we are not absolutely sure and so instead of dismissing a week of work, we have put an academic question mark next to it: awaiting further clarification.

     I have now contacted the library of the Archbishop of Canterbury in Lambeth Palace, and Oxfordshire History Archive, a foundry, a bellringers society, and numerous other sources all from the comfort of my computer in Castelldefells.  My questions and requests have been sent to locations in three continents, to booksellers, enthusiasts, and academics.

     Self-indulgence personified!

     And, you never know, there might be some answers.

     Eventually!

 

I simply don't have time!

 

 

How do you define a full week?

     When you are working the question is moot.  You have a job that takes up the bulk of your day.  Your week is already full.  And with some jobs, like teaching for example, you have to include marking, meetings, union work, preparation, and the myriad time demands that the profession is heir to, many of which occur outside your stated hours.

     I remember reading in some book about conscription that some highly qualified people, especially academics, welcomed the constraints of a military life because they didn’t have to think.  What to do, how to do it, and when to do it were all laid down.  Personal intellectual involvement: nil. In the same way I also read that the philosopher Wittgenstein enjoyed going to see trashy Westerns and sat in the front row almost up against the screen because the sound and the picture occupied the whole of the space and he didn’t have to think!

     In the vacations of my time in University, I had a wide variety of short-term jobs.  It was inevitable that given the short period that I was going to be employed there was little training needed or offered to do the fairly simple tasks with which I was charged.  The problem in all the jobs was weighing up the offer of the payment for the work and the sometimes mind numbingly tedious work that you had to do to earn the money.

     Sometimes the physicality of the job took over and then there was no time to be bored because exhaustion ensured that you embraced unconsciousness whenever the opportunity presented itself.  I can still recall ‘breaks’ in the plate-laying in the Steel Works where I plonked myself on a plank supported by a couple of bricks, put my back against the wall of our ‘hut’ and in seconds, I was asleep – only to be very rudely awakened when the break was over and work resumed.

     Then there is the sort of work that is mindless and repetitive, but that very mindlessness allows a large percentage of your mind to be elsewhere: your hands and 5% of your brain may have been applying themselves to the task in hand, but 95% of your personality was far, far away from the tedium of paid reality!

     One of the better jobs (though it was ridiculously badly paid) was when I was a Security Guard (!). I refused to wear the uniform, except when forced by management, and had a ‘regular’ placement in the office of a transport firm where my ‘job’ was basically to log the drivers as they returned to the depot, and to do timed rounds of the premises using a clock on a strap.  This had to be ‘keyed’ to show that you had been to the various locations around the place on your regular rounds, each of which had a key on a chain that was used in your machine to prove you had at least moved about a bit during your stint.  Much of the time there I read and sometimes made notes for future essays because I was usually alone.

     As opposed to the time I had a job in a vast open plan office where the work I had to do was soul-destroyingly uninteresting and repetitive, and I had an ‘experienced’ child watching me like a hawk, and each time I finished some god-awful task she provided me with another even worse.  I only lasted a few days before I asked for the agency that had placed me there to find me something (anything) else before I went made.  It was one of those jobs where, even knowing it would only be for a few weeks, was not tolerable.

     With some of the jobs I had there could have been little chance of any real sense of achievement or satisfaction from the work: you were there for the money and nothing else.  I remember in one of my placements that the people I worked with lived for the weekends, and talking about the weekend that had passed gave enough material for conversations during the week!

     I am sure that some of the jobs that I had in the past no longer exist.  More sophisticated automation has probably taken the place of fallible human operators, and AI will take care of more.

     No one should have a job where there is no opportunity for development.  Money cannot compensate for 30 years of mindlessness.  Can it?

     I remember one stop our security van made when we were delivering wage packets to a factory (that concept dates me!) and I was chatting to the girls who were working on a production line.  To make small talk I asked what they were making.  And they had no idea whatsoever.  They did their bits and didn’t think about anything connected with the actions.  I was horrified at the lack of interest in a major element of their lives, except of course that their jobs were not a major element in their lives in the way that I would have thought it should have been.  Their jobs were a mean to an end, and that end was companionship with the other girls, and a wage packet at the end of the week that allowed them to live their real lives divorced from what they were doing each day.

     This piece started with a question, my response would be that the week starting tomorrow is full, including such events as a dental appointment and culminating in a performance of the Emperor Concerto by Beethoven in the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona.  The week  takes in, along the way, an expensive (it should have been free) appointment with the police to renew my identity and residence card, and a meeting of a local Poetry Group.  Throughout the week I am also conducting long distance research using an almost defunct research project of mine from the 1970s into the novelist Aldous Huxley and his use of the arts in his work.  I have centred my research in the last couple of weeks on a footnote in his first novel.

     I know that to most that sounds absurdly, inward-looking-end-in-itself-academic-twaddle, but I have been able to convince myself that the problems and opportunities presented by this footnote will be illustrative of technique and intent of someone who was to become a world-famous novelist.  So there!

     And Chat has done a lot of the donkey work involved in checking sources and suggesting useful websites and libraries, any spare moment can be taken up with a passing thought of mine being translated into something with the trappings of academe by the indefatigable ‘intelligence’ at the tap of my computer keys.

     Most of what I am doing about Huxley is only possible because I am retired and because I have access to the Internet, but I am enjoying producing something that I think will be a valid addition to Huxley scholarship.  And that is worth making an effort about.

     So, a full week!

Alone, not lonely

 

 

 

A ¡Fiesta! on a Friday throws out my Day Reckoning, and I begin to believe that I am living in a succession of Sundays.

     ‘Sunday’ is my default setting if something seems slightly ‘off’ about the day: if the light is not right, or it’s too quiet, or the smell is different, or I feel odd.  The answer for all of those is, ‘It’s Sunday!’

     Sometimes I get a feeling that I used to have on Sundays in College – a sort of spacious loneliness because things were off-kilter and the routine of the week had been broken, with nothing as filling to take its place.  The strangeness of the feeling was all the more odd because I could feel it when I quite patently was not alone.

     A typical Sunday would start with breakfast in the hall canteen, which was always taken before 8.30 am (or you got nothing) followed by a Communion Service for Anglicans (as I was then) in one of the meeting rooms.  This was a quite cosy affair as there were not so many of us, and we were able to disport ourselves in chairs a lot more comfortable than hard wooden pews.  And the Chaplin always ensured that the communion wine was “decent” even though as a well-trained churchman, I never let the liquid do more than touch my lips.  Though even with that brushing acquaintance you could tell quality.  That experience did mean that in future non-University communion services I always felt that taking the wine was another symbol of self-abnegation rather than celebration given the vinous horror that some vicars deemed acceptable for the faithful!

     Lunch was not included in the catering for those of us in hall, we survived on breakfast and an evening meal, but Sundays were different and we had a sort of tea-meal to keep us going.

     The afternoons on a Sunday were sometimes taken up by concerts in the Arts Hall which were free, and sometimes excruciatingly boring, but improving and worth the experience even if it meant that you crossed off another composer from your general listening list.  And then the evenings were free, to prepare for the following week of academic work.  As if.

     But there was an emptiness about the day that went beyond the lack of the normal to and fro of a working day and, like Proust’s madeleine, the feelings come back to me in the strangest of circumstances where, for a moment, even in a crowd, I’d feel a certain sort of aloneness.

     It’s not even as if these feelings are negative, they are just other, and at odds with how I usually feel.  As an only child I have been used to being by myself, and I am happy to relate that I find myself jolly good company.  Usually.

     I value friendship and enjoy companionship.  I look forward to meeting people and talking is surely one of the great joys of being human!  I also appreciate space of my own and solitude. 

     Space to think, and to write.  Hence this!

 

Take the damp with the dry!

 

 

 

As I never tire of telling people, I once sunbathed in the rain. 

     It was, to be fair, light rain, and as I was in Gran Canaria, even in the rain it was pleasant.  And my determination was rewarded with the sun coming out and drying me off.

     Admittedly that was in the Before Times when I was living in Cardiff and I was going to Gran Canaria for my Christmas holidays so that I could return to Cardiff sporting an out of season tan.  I also rather enjoyed going to my local branch of Boots to buy suntan lotion in late December just to see the expression on the sales assistant’s face!

     Today I live in the Now Times when sunshine is an expected element in everyday life here in Castelldefels, rather than an exceptional gift.  That being the case, one can get a little blasé about the visible presence of our nearest star and assume that there is always tomorrow to disport oneself to achieve the requisite degree of browning.

     And so, the summer disappears and one suddenly realizes that September has arrived and one is still a rather pasty white.

     This explains why today, for example, we have taken the remains of an indifferent day and salvaged the sunshine of a blustery afternoon.

     Our (that word should be in inverted commas) section of beach was delightfully empty as other folk are not so hardy in braving mild gale force sand-filled flaying winds as we are.

     At least the sand quotient of our breezes was limited because we were on the wave washed section of the beach, where the occasional liquidity of the surge kept the sand damp and disinclined to fly.

     In the event, it was easy to enjoy the experience, and I am a firm believer that a spirited wind is one of the most efficient aids to browning, short of bronzer, that there is, and the discomfort appeals to my Moderated Puritan Outlook that postulates that no pain no gain is one of the great truisms of our (and any) time.

     An added advantage of the rough movement of air is that it discourages the easy attack of mosquitos, and we managed to make it back home with only minimal damage, with gratifyingly few puncture marks.

     Tomorrow is Catalonia’s National Day, when most of the world (or at least Catalonia) is on holiday and the whole of Barcelona seems to decamp to our part of the world and fling themselves into the sea.  And clutter up ‘our’ beach.

     Another problem with the day is that it is officially ¡Fiesta! and therefore the menu del dia is also at ¡Fiesta! prices, and a Friday is out eating-out day and we object to paying so much more for a meal that is fundamentally the same as on a normal day. 

     But we probably will go out, and swallow through teeth as gritted as the air!

    

 

Attack!

 

 

 

Now that September is well underway there is a balancing act to be undertaken.  I live in a seaside town, and chunk of the income of the place is dependent on tourists, especially those who come from Barcelona and the surrounding towns to enjoy a day on the beach.  We have a long, if not over wide beach and it can take thousands of tourists comfortably.  But we who live here have expectations.  We feel cheated if we are not able to walk to the beach and claim for ourselves a spot with a clear uninterrupted view next to the sea.

      As September is the month in which most people go back to work after the summer holidays, we venture forth to the beach in the hope of finding it relatively empty.  I use the word ‘relatively’ because, even in the most inclement weather, our beach is never totally deserted.

     Anyway, the weather in early September has been good (apart from yesterday when we had a Special Storm warning, for a 'special storm' that did not occur) and beach-worthy.  So, clutching our chairs we set off for the beach and had a couple of hours or more in very pleasant sunshine, occasionally venturing into the warmish waters of the Med.  So far so good.

     The real problems started when we arrived back home.  We stacked the chairs, hung out the towels and brushed the sand off backpacks, and went indoors to have the welcome shower to get rid of the stubborn stand that loves sun cream!

     And we realised that we had been bitten to buggery and back again by rabid mosquitos.  It was a concentrated attack the like of which I have not known before!   

     The only episode I can compare it to was when we visited the Everglades in Florida and were pleasantly surprised by the lack of antagonistic insect life that we were warned to expect.  Then there was a brief rain shower after which swarms of kamikaze insect life threw itself at us.  We made a run for the car, while picking up broken branches of vegetation which we used to belabour each other in a vain attempt to dislodge the bloodsuckers – which were large enough to be seen clearly on our unprotected skin.

     The mosquitos in Castelldefels seem to resort to greater use of local anaesthetic when they plunge their probiscis into tender skin, so that the damage only becomes apparent after the damage has been done and the pain starts spreading.

     It is our firm belief that mosquitos know that September is the beginning of the end for them as winter approaches and they perish, so there is a fanatical putsch to get as much iron via our blood to fulfil the quota for egg laying before the harsh months of the winter begin.

     When we inspected the damage, we saw that the multiple stings had raised welts that merged into one another so that there was an embossed isthmus of pain along the thigh.  Individual hit-sites on head, face, neck and stomach added to the all-over misery of discomfort.

     A cold shower gave momentary relief, but reality hit as soon as the water stopped.

    We know that this is the ‘last fling’ of doomed females trying to propagate before the ultimate insect zapper of winter puts an end to the pain – but that doesn’t ease the pain of their frantic attempts to drain.

     When we went to the beach the next day, we planned the way we were going to get through the ‘garden’ in our house, open the door and gain the relative tranquillity of the inside. 

      It was more like a military operation as we surged through the invisible pests and slammed the door shut on the swarm.  And pain free, we felt we deserved a congratulatory cup of tea to celebrate unpunctured skin.

     And since then the weather has not been conducive to beach lounging.   

        Such is life!

 

Football or Opera?

 

 

 

There is, of course, no reason that one could not enjoy both, and such people do exist.  But the generality of one audience does not usually have same enthusiasm for the experience of the other.

     Both Opera and Football (the Association sort and NOT the American version) both have drama galore; there are strong narratives to both; emotion runs high – and you can go on makings lists of similarities and make yourself sound like a harassed PR person trying to justify the submission to some sort of funding agency emphasising how wide ranging the attraction of the activity is to all sectors of society.

     I am not here to state that one is intrinsically better than the other, though I obviously have my prejudices, and the last time I paid for a ticket for football was ten years before the black snows. 

     In fact I can actually remember the tickets that I have bought: there was a Wales versus Yugoslavia match in Ninian Park – the team and the location shows just how long ago that was; another time when I was backpacking in Scandinavia I bought a ticket for a first division Finnish football match in the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki because I happened to be staying there as it doubled as a Youth Hostel – and if that was the First Division, then even to my untrained eye, I would hate to think what the lower leagues were like.  In more recent years (relatively) I bought a ticket for Catalonia versus China in the Camp Nou (before the reworking and rebuilding) Stadium – whereas with Opera, my tickets for the next season 2026-27, in the Liceu, have already been purchased.  So, if you follow the money, I come down very firmly on the Opera side of the equation.

      However, it is fairly easy to ignore Opera if you are not interested in it.  It is much more difficult to ignore football, considering that the Season for the game now appears to extend through 365 days a year, and its coverage on television, in the newspapers, and general advertising is omnipresent.  And I find it very difficult to ignore (as much as I want to) FIFA-Corrupt sickening experiences like the World Cup and the prostitution of FIFA to the whims of a corruptly indifferent American President.

     In our household the fortunes of Barça are of some import, and it is much easier to fall in line with the clear preference/prejudice and at least show the minimum of interest.  It also helps that Barça is, to put it mildly, a fairly successful club, so that one is supporting a usually winning team.  And supporting Barça also affords one the pleasure of having an Instant Enemy in the form of the much-hated Real Madrid.  As a person who knows little of football, I take my cues from the utterances of my partner and mouth, sometimes surprising, nuggets of ‘informed’ analysis about the game!  And however little I know about The Game, I now know more than I ever did before, and am therefore able to take more of an informed interest in watching the ball as it is kicked around the field.

     As with most things, apart from Conservatism and Jazz, the more you know, the greater your sympathy or at least interest and tolerance.

     For me, the more pressing debate is between Opera and Orchestral Concerts.  Again, following the money that I pay for tickets, you would have to say that my preference is for Opera as that is by far the more expensive pursuit of mine, but I know that if I had to make a decision about which mode to follow I would probably opt for the Orchestral Concerts.

     And one thing that Football and Orchestral Concerts have in common is that both last about 90 minutes – whereas things like Cricket and Opera can go on for what seems like for ever!

 

The Price of Exercise

 

 

 

“You know that the pool is closed?”  Was the question that greeted me this morning as I waited to get into the centre just before 8 am.  Yes, indeed I did know that the pool was closed and I was about to begin my via dolorosa of gym use for the next three weeks.

     As I went through my selected series of exercises, I was interrupted by a number of acquaintances who questioned my presence, with a smile it must be added.  And they sympathised with me as I explained the extra time that the pool would be closed.  And if anything their smiles grew wider.

     The interesting thing is why I am bothering to go to the gym.  The choice is mine after all.  I can choose to do something else for the next few weeks and not moan about doing something for which I have, to put it mildly, little enthusiasm.

     Why I do it is all down to self-knowledge.  I enjoy swimming.  I like the difference that water gives, it is a different element, and moving through water is not the same a moving through air.  When you have suspect knees then the support that water gives allows you to glide without artifical aids – an experience that is unique to the element.  I am also able to do my exercises that are supposed to strengthen my knees and the muscles that support my new bits inside those knees!

     There are some that enjoy hard physical exercise and thrive on the pain that comes with pushing oneself to the limits of physical endurance.  I am not one of those people, and I look for an easy life.  Generally.  So, left to my own devices I would probably let exercise slide and do my mental exercises inside the pages of a good book.

     Having an early morning swim, getting up at 5.45 am, takes effort.  If that effort can be integrated into a regime, then all the better, habits are difficult to shake off, the trick is doing something enough (if it is an effort) to make it into a habit.

     When I played squash I was a member of a squash league at my local leisure centre, that meant that I ‘had’ to play a certain number of games each month or I would be relegated.  It is the same methodology that keeps me doing a Duolingo exercise each day as I do not want to be relegated from the arbitrary league that the program has placed me in, and which encourages me to participate offering electronic digital inducements to keep myself applied.  We all need those incentives to keep us in line, because so few of us are real self-motivators.

     When I was in Cardiff, I used to swim early morning and after school.  After a day in work, virtually the last thing on my mind was calling into the David Lloyd Centre on my way home for a swim, and I spent the greater part of the journey home debating whether or not I really wanted to go for a swim.  Often that question was answered by the fact that I ‘found’ myself in the David Lloyd car park, while my internal debate was still going on.  Location trumping questioning!

     In a similar way, I go for a swim ‘most days a week’, it is a habit and I wake up at the appropriate time and get ready before I am fully awake!  It is built into the system that is me.  But, I also know that were I to break that system then the whole edifice of exercise will come tumbling down.  So, just because the pool is closed (other pools, and the sea are available) I know that I have to keep up the routine, even if it means going to the gym.

      One problem of gym going, as I found this morning, is that there is a different list of things that you must take to make the experience enjoyable and hygienic.  I forgot to pack another shirt ,and so I had to wear the soiled garment in which I exercised when I went for my cup of tea – luckily outside!

     And I learned my lesson.  Even though I liberally dowsed myself in Citronella, my sweat infused T-shirt attracted more than the usual tribe of blood sucking mozzies as punishment for my lack of preparedness.

   Tomorrow (Day 2 – only 20 to go, sigh!) I Will Be Prepared, and I will take a more potent repellent for fight off the desperation of the latter-part-of-the-summer insect life.

 

The sleep of reason produces monsters!

 

 

 

This particular time in early September is a date I dread.

     This is not because of any lingering horror of being a teacher and the inevitable quoting of the deathless line in Wordsworth, “shades of the prison house begin to form Upon the growing boy” which seemed to me to work for pupils as well as teachers approaching a new year, and I have thought and quoted it through my life – right up until retirement.  From retirement onwards the metaphor of the “prison house” takes on a rather more terminal meaning that merely getting a new timetable!

     No, the dread here is the annual closing of the swimming pool for its “Essential Maintenance”.  This usually means a fortnight of closure which in the past I have compensated for by using other pools in Castelldefels and Gava, using the community pool, and swimming in the sea.

     The community pool and the sea are free, but the other options come with complications.  As I no longer use my bike thanks to the element of instability that my new knees have gifted me, I need to take the car and park, and in some cases the distance from the pool that a vacant parking space offers itself, I might as well as walked from home!  That is not strictly true, but a long walk is something that I do not relish, and neither do my knees.  There is also the cost of swimming in another pool.  A one-off swim is expensive, so you need to buy a season ticket or a multi-swim card and that is all a bit of a faff.  So I look for alternatives.

     For the last couple of years during this time of enforced dryness, I have reasoned that as I pay a subscription to my swimming pool and gym, I should really take advantage of the latter and use the various machines that are dotted around the torture area assigned to those who like to sweat.

     As I vividly remember asking one attendant at a gym in Cardiff to “walk me though” a reasonable workout regime – and not being able to move a muscle without exquisite pain the next morning, I now take things relatively easy.  When you are a swimmer, you take for granted the cushioning and supportive elements of the water in what you regard as fairly hard exercise.  When you transfer that level of effort to the air, the gravitational drag on muscles is rather different.

     Therefore, when I go to the gym, I have a Survival in Relative Comfort approach to the machines which, to my eyes all look like instruments of torture.  I start with the static cycle, especially one machine that has real back support, I then move on to some sort of knee bend thingie where the weight that you push is adjustable by the use of weights.  I always check where the rod in the weights is situated before I start, because once or twice I have started without looking and almost popped my knees with the astonishing heaviness that some people take in their stride.  I then move on to the rowing machine and end up with a gentle walk on the treadmill.

     There are variations in the order and selection of machines because sometimes the ones I want are occupied so I have to improvise with the schedule.  Some machines I do not use because I have yet to work out how one threads one’s body into to them to get them to work.  You might well say, just look at how other people use them and then emulate.  Which is good advice, though I have also noticed that the more professional users have their own individual variations in how they utilize the various flanges and bits of the machines – and given the way that their bodies look with triple layer muscles, I do not intend to match their exertions, even in my imagination let alone in what I like to call “real life”.

     There is obviously an overlap between gym and pool, though there is a distinct sub-species of masochist that concentrates solely on the gym, and usually specializes in an area I never walk in (let alone participate in) the area of the Free Weights.  This is the area that has a mirror wall so that the sufferers can watch their pain.  Each to his (and it is usually ‘his’) own.

     I would imagine that tomorrow, for my first visit to the gym there will be some people that I am on ¡Hola! Level acquaintanceship with who will in various ways question why I am there, when most of them will have seen me (there is a row of machines with a view of the pool) ploughing my lonely (if I’m lucky) furrow up and down ‘my’ lane.

     I am an early morning user of the pool and there are a number of regulars in the pool and the gym who I tend to assume are the ‘users’ of the facilities, but I really fail to understand that there are many more people who have a different timetable from me and so there are layers of ‘ownership’ of various aspects of the pool and gym that are time sensitive.

     It’s like a Sci-Fi story I read that described an over-populated world in which your life was lived according to a particular day, so that if you were a Monday person, you would live your active life on a Monday and then go into suspended animation for a week, until on the following Monday you would be revived and assume that you were in day two of your particular week.*  So, in the pool and gym there are people who would not consider using the facilities at the time that I use them and vice versa.

    The few times that I have swum out of my time I have been confused by the differences in clientele almost as if it was a different place.

     Well, for the next three (sic.) weeks I will be changing my habits and (resentfully) following a different path. 

     Life is hard sometimes.  But at least I’m not teaching!

*Philip José Farmer's “The Sliced-Crosswise Only-On-Tuesday World” (1971). 

 

Time is a-fleeting!

 

 

 

This was morning was a lazy one.  The mobile alarm went off to indicate that it was time for me to get ready for my early morning swim and I rejected its peremptory tone, as I rejected the beeping from my watch.  There are some mornings where to stay in bed is simply more convincing that going to the local pool.

     However, that does mean that I feel the accusation of a version of the Protestant Work Ethic about something I have not done that I ought to have done, and there is no health in me - once learned, the language of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (old style) does not leave you – even if your faith does.

     It does mean however, that if I fail to do my lengths, I have to do something to justify my indolence.  This does not entail my going out into the world and doing good works, but rather thinking about getting one (or fewer) outstanding tasks done.

     When you are retired, how you fill your days (apart from the necessary elements of ordinary life like shopping, eating and cleaning) are pretty much up to you.  Which means that success and completion are very much yours for the interpretation.  If you decide that one of the major elements in a satisfyingly filled day is the writing of this blog, then who is to gainsay your achievement!

     In talking to a colleague who has returned from holiday and is about to start a new term in the school that is next to the pool, she vouchsafed to me that my commiserations were falling on deaf ears because she was “looking forward to the routine” that a timetable offers.

     While intellectually I can understand such sentiments, I cannot sympathise with them.  I fall into the category of teachers who say of retirement, “I cannot understand how I ever found time to teach” given the way that elements in their retired lives fill up their days.

     It is very often a case of “in place of” superseding “as well as” in the dynamics of a retired life.  I often give the example of trying to deal with things external to school when I was in teaching.  You have a timetable and a number of free periods with breaks and lunch.  If you need to phone an outside agency, then you have to wait for an opportunity in your timetabled day and do it then.  If you need a response, then you have to tell the people you are dealing with that you will only be able to respond withing a fairly tight clock-defined period of time.  If they phone later than say 11.35 am, you will not be available because you will be teaching.  Few outside agencies seemed to understand the constraints on your free access to communication and were mystified when a call at 11.45 am went unanswered.  Admittedly this was in the era pre-mobile phone use, but the principle is still the same.

     Similarly, medical appointments had to be fitted into a school day that caused the least difficulties for colleagues and teaching periods, whereas now in my retired state I turn up when they ask and other things take second place.

     The set elements in my timetable are concerts, opera, family events, and medical appointments.  As if to demonstrate this, I have just checked my phone and there is a message from my dentist saying that I need to make an appointment.  To be fair, there is an element of choice in this appointment, I can suggest a range of times and days and the dentist is usually accommodating.

    My appointments with doctors are less flexible.  I am now firmly fixed in the automatic schedule of appointments and follow-up consultations, and I am far too grateful to the Catalan medical system to suggest alternatives.  Luckily by concerts and operas are all at the weekend, so they never interfere with the doctor appointments.  The medical establishment in this country has been more than generous with their time and expertise and so the very least I can do is fit in with their arrangements and express gratitude.  This is one occasion when I appreciate the force and necessity of an automatically generated timetable for diagnosis and follow-up supervision.

     I weave my interests around the distractions that play fast and loose with my determination.  But I am aware of what I should be doing and I understand that there is more than enough of what I could call ‘work’ if I cared to, but which is in reality me exploiting my freedom to do pretty much as I like with the time that is not now taken up by paid employment.

     I like to think that I do not waste my time, though the use to which I put it, might be considered individualistic, to put it mildly. 

      But it keeps me off the streets and harms few!  Surely that is a life being well spent!

 

Surviving Time

 

 

 

During one University vacation, I was in my parents’ house and debating what to do about getting some extra cash.  In talking with my parents, I said that other students had suggested going to the Labour Exchange, (Job Centre) failing to find a job and then claiming some sort of social security money.  My father said that was tantamount to theft.  If there was a job I should take it and not try and “work the system”.

     So, off I went for the first time in my life and entered a Labour Exchange.  I cannot pretend that my reception was anything less than frosty, but one question they asked was revealing, “Do you actually want a job?”  Which suggested that they usually processed vacationing students with the minimum of delay, assuming all students were workshy and looking for a handout!  I protested that I did actually want a job.  They said that they would let me know.

     By the time that I got home, the Labour Exchange had phoned up, and my father told me that I would be working in a bakery, and that my shift started at 10 pm that night! 

     I had never previously worked in a bakery or in any sort of factory, and I had never done a night shift.  It was a baptism of fire.

     I was put on a bread production line, and I did the sort of mechanical job that one assumed would be better done by a machine: I picked up pre-cut slabs of dough and put them in tins.  That was it.  After a couple of minutes instruction, I was doing the ‘job’ as competently as someone who had worked there for twenty years.  It was intensely boring, but you couldn’t lose concentration because the convey belt production of dough was inexorable and you had to deal with it.

     The best part of my shift was towards the end of it (surprise!) when instead of dolloping dough I helped stack the bread tins and was able to talk to a young under-manager.  This was the highpoint of my work and the time I looked forward to!  Which is sad on a number of levels.

     However, we are taking of the days when low paid jobs were numerous and it was possible to leave one and go into another with no real fear of being jobless for an extended period of time – even for we students who were only looking for a few weeks’ employment.

     Because we were there for a relatively short time, it did mean that you could stand just about anything because you knew it was time limited: This Too Will Pass, was the every ready motto to keep frustrated students focussed on the pay-packet, and not the intellectual worth of what they were doing to get it.

     Only one vacation job was impossible to continue, and if I tell you that the most interesting and satisfying element of this open-office vicious tedium-inducing torture was going through thousands of receipts and taking out all the ones with a small asterisk in the right corner, it will perhaps give you a sense of the bone-crushing awfulness of the work.

     I can’t say that I enjoyed any of my vacation jobs, though there were sometimes episodes or moments that were good, and, after all, all experience is valuable – even if it’s negative.

     The job that paid the best (with paid overtime as well!) was when I was employed as a platelayer on the internal railway inside East Moors Steel Works, in Cardiff.  A job, I might add, for which I was almost entire unfitted, but did my best.

     This job came back to me because we are now in the early days of September and I have been watching the return of teachers who troop through the café next to the swimming pool to get their coffees before turning the corner and walking towards the school where they teach.

     It is the start of a new school year and there a spring in their steps and an unalloyed enthusiasm as they greet colleagues that they have not seen for the duration of the summer holidays, that will barely last a day before the reality of the hard slog to Christmas forces itself on the consciousness.

     There has been much talk in the news about the retirement age and how the number of years before a full pension is awarded seem to be creeping upward.  Figures like 65 – 66 – 67 are quoted before a pension is paid!  Being a classroom teacher until you are 67 or older!  That is tantamount to a death sentence!

     As has been said, “Teaching has the peculiar problem that the pupils stubbornly remain the same age while the teacher doesn’t.”  Raising pension ages makes actuarial sense when people live longer, but it doesn’t follow that every occupation remains equally sustainable at 65-67.

     The trouble with teaching is that classroom teaching is classroom teaching, with all the stresses and strains that dealing with large classes bring.  There is no real shortcut to being a professional teacher.

     But, it seems to me that making a teacher work until the age of 67 or, God forbid, even older is not fair either on the teacher, nor on the pupils.

    What are the possibilities for teachers outside the classroom?  Administration is allowed for with an extra allocation of free periods within a teaching timetable.  Pastoral Care, being a head of year or similar, again there may be more free periods, but most heads of year also have a teaching timetable as well.  Senior Management Team – apart from the headteacher, most have a teaching timetable.

     So, if you are a subject teacher, and you want to survive until you reach retirement age and enjoy some sort of life after the magic date, what can you do?  Your options are limited and there is no clear progression from a demanding teaching timetable in the classroom to something that allows you to remain in the profession but to thrive and develop outside the classroom.

     Back to my plate laying days in the steel works.  There was one guy who was well advanced in years, but he was still part of the team that laid track, transported it, used drills and hammers to do hard physical work, but there was an understanding that he would not be asked to do certain things and some of his duties involved oiling the points in the rails that meant that he carried a pot of oil and a long brush and make sure that things were lubricated properly.  From time to time, he did do physical work, but I noted that he used the minimum amount of effort in a masterclass of conservation of energy, in stark comparison to the younger and their more gung-ho physicality.  He bobbed along, playing his part, but not doing the hardest of graft, but justifying his position.

     In teaching we need the equivalent of “oiling the points” so that older colleagues can survive and thrive.

 

Telling Trivia

 

 

 

It’s the little things in life that keep you grounded.  Those objects, habits, sounds and tastes that are significant to you, and let you know the you, you think you are, is still the you that is.

     Grounded, yes.  But also, those little unimportant things can be a threat and a restraint if jolted from their accustomed places by being denied.

     Take, for example, the shower in the changing room of a swimming pool.  When I first started using the swimming pool that I go to for my early morning swim each day, the changing room was not very different from the changing room I used when, for one afternoon a week, I had to traipse from my school in Cardiff to the sports ground that we used - a long walk, or a short bus ride away. 

      We used The Harlequins Ground, as my secondary school was set in concrete and had no playing fields,  The Quins had been opened in 1892, it was one of the first multi-sport facilities in Cardiff, serving the residents of the eastern side of the city and situated on the northern side of the Newport Road, and to the south of the suburb of Roath.  This is where my school played Rugby in the winter, and Cricket in the summer.

     I have no fond memories of this place at all.  As a tall boy, I was placed in the second row in rugby at the age of eleven, and there I stayed for all of my time in the school – hating every game that I played.  The fact that my father was, in his day, an excellent rugby player and even played for the Possibles against the Probables for inclusion in the Welsh National Side, made my loathing of participation so much worse, and an on-going guilty secret.

     I’m not sure that I ever did enough during the games themselves to make a shower a justified ending to the torture, but just scrumming down was exhausting for me, and so a shower was at least relaxing and painless.

     The showers were communal and usually hot, so we didn’t have to experience the bracing denial of comfort via icy showers, that seemed to be an essential ingredient in all those public-school stories that were popular at the time.  And since my school, although a state secondary, had a timetabled session on a Saturday morning – we had pretentions in that direction!

     So, the showers of my youth and those of the pool here in Castelldefels were similar with the exception of the water flow.  In my youth you turned the shower on, waited for the water to get warm, showered, and then turned it off.  In Castelldefels the showers were time limited.  You pressed a button in, adjusted the water mixture and showered, while re-pressing the button as necessary to complete your ablutions.

     The trick in communal showers was choosing the shower with the longest water flow, as each of the showers had its own peculiarities.

     Given that I had an early swim, it usually meant that when I decided to leave the water, I would enter a generally empty changing room and therefore the choice of shower was mine to make.  I cannot remember now if it was the second from the left or the third from the right that was the ‘sweet spot’ of watery abundance, but I can still retexture my frustration if somebody else had got to ‘my’ shower before me.  And it took all of the calming power of my post-swim cup of tea to bring my anger level back to containability.

     The communal showers are long gone.  Our changing room underwent a radical make-over and it is hard to remember what the ur-changing rooms looked like.  Our little sauna (closed during the Covid outbreak) never really reopened and was lost in the reworking.  We had swish looking lockers installed, stylish lighting, new loos, and a series of individual cubicle shower stalls.

     In theory all of these stalls are identical, but they are not.  Because of the physical demands of the space, not all the stalls are of the same size and shape, though they look identical from the outside.  The shower heads are of the circular ‘rainfall’ type, the temperature of the water is centrally controlled, and the water flow is regulated by a push button.  There is a shower soap dispenser in each cubicle.

     After a period of research, trying a different stall each day, searching for the elusive ‘extra seconds’ of water from a single push, I settled on the third cubicle on the right (they are divided into two groups of five) and was content.

     It was with something of a shock that I turned into ‘my’ cubicle one day to find that a digital display thermometer had been added to the stem of the shower pipe just above the shower head.  From a slow start the temperature went upwards, changing colour as it did so, until it reached a satisfactory warmth and turned green – the thermometer read out, not the water.

     As I was the only one in the showers at the time, I checked the other stalls, and ‘my’ shower was the only one with a thermometer.

     I have since worked out some sort of reason for this.  People are paranoid about the temperature of water.  Not only of the showers, but also of the pool – and most of the time those who care about these things do not believe the ‘official’ temperature, which for the water is posted in daily reports on the stairs up to the pool.  There are also complaints about the warmth of the showers, and I think that the installation of a single thermometer was to give proof positive that the temperature was as was stated.

     Which is not to say that all the water flow, duration and temperature are the same in all of the cubicles.  Again, after a lengthy period of research I can report that the fifth cubicle on the left (the one nearest to the external pipes) is the one with the greatest flow of water and the highest temperature.  The time limit is not great, but I have developed the technique of showering with a fairly constant pressure applied on the button to ensure maximum coverage and comfort!

     And woe betide any user who dares to usurp my rights of proprietorship over it!  That is the sort of small thing that, usurped by somebody else, can ruin my day!

 

Do we get what we pay for? Do we?

 

 

 

Mondays and Fridays are the going-out-for-lunch days for us.  A sacred ritual.  And usually, an enjoyable one.

     Castelldefels is a seaside tourist resort that partially sells itself on being a centre of gastronomy.  We even have a school of gastronomy, though the alumni of that institution do not often seem to find work in Castelldefels given the people that we see cooking and waiting in the restaurants that we patronise - but that is another whole kettle of social, political and economic fish, so to speak, and I have no intention of getting into the minutiae of how the commercial logic of providing food works out in this place!  We have often tried to understand the logic behind the way that many of the restaurants operate in Castelldefels and have given up at the obvious levels of more-than-Byzantine complexity that seem to govern how and when they open and what and how much they charge for what they provide.

     We have our favourites, but we also have a strict system of punishments ready to be applied to restaurants that we feel fall short of what we, as paying customers, have a right to expect.

     We are not unreasonable, and we know that everywhere has the occasional off-day and we are prepared to accommodate a sub-par meal and put it down to experience, but two or three strikes – and out!

     The holiday season is particularly difficult as personnel take their annual leave and sometimes that has a drastic effect on the quality of the food being dished up, as well as the level of service.  We make allowances, but there is a limit and that limit has been reached by a few of the restaurants to which we used to go regularly and now are punishing, by striking them off our list of Acceptable Establishments.

     A recent case in point: one restaurant that was a regular haunt of ours, we went to fairly late in the lunch service, as I had picked up Toni from his work experience in Terrassa and driven back to Castelldefels.  Yes, we were late, and the lunch service was almost (almost) over, but that did not excuse the quality of the meal that we were given.  I can (famously) eat anything and suffer few consequences from indulgence; Toni’s tum is a different creature altogether and, where I felt a little uncomfortable after the meal, having said that the food tasted “a little odd”, Toni was positively ill, and not just for one day.

     We have never, and will never, go back.

     When I first arrived in this country I thought that the menu del dia was one of the greatest inventions on earth.  The price was exceptional, and the range of food that was offered, constantly delighted me.

     Times have changed.  My tastes are much more educated in what certain dishes could taste like, so what I would have thought wonderful some years ago is now met with disappointment.  Don’t get me wrong, I still think that the menu del dia is a good deal (though the price has crept and jumped up over the years) and, at the price, with wine, it is almost impossible to match anywhere in my native land.  But . . .

     The original idea of the menu del dia was something devised to meet the burgeoning tourist trade in the Costa Brava in the late 50’s and early 60’s.  For a reasonable price tourists could get a lunch which comprised, a local soup, a meat or fish course, and a piece of seasonal fruit.  A three-course meal for not a lot of money, perfect for the cheap holidays that were being sold on the British market – hence my uncle, aunt, mother, father and I, having a fortnight’s holiday in Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava in 1958.  The concept was popular, not only with tourists, but also with the local population and the meals developed into an institution enjoyed by all.

     The ‘problem’ with the menu del dia is what is provided, and who the caterers think is going to eat it.  There are ‘simple’ local dishes that have been served for generations that are inexpensive and, if done properly, with fresh ingredients, delicious.  Too often such simplicity is lost in an attempt to produce showy food at a low price, that may look good in the inexplicable photos that people take of food but does not taste good in the mouth – which is surely the important bit.

     Cheap cuts of meat can be delicious.  Sheep’s jaw and cheek, doesn’t sound appetising (especially when served with visible teeth still in the jaw) but it is a revelation of sweet, tender meat when you eat it.  Nowadays the recognizable parts of the jaw are removed and all you get is an everyday-looking bone with meat that falls from it.  Cheap, excellent and usually my choice for a main meal if offered.

     In a time of rising prices and stagnant wages, I can understand the need to be economic in the food choices that a restaurant offers for its menu del dia, but there are many Catalan choices that are not offered because the chefs are not local, or they can’t be bothered to adopt the 0Km philosophy and stick with locally produced meat and veg.

     We are usually satisfied with what we are offered, but I would much rather be impressed by a clever use of local produce and decent cooking!