Culture and lights and rain

New Normal, 1st week, Friday 

It rained during the night and the pavements was still wet when I got ready to go to the pool for my daily      swim, but it didn’t rain while I was cycling.  While I was swimming it rained again and as had my cup of tea and a bocadillo there were distinct spots of rain that I could see falling into the standing puddles.  But when it was time for me to leave the café and do my daily cycle to Port Ginesta, the rain stopped again, and I even had some fitful sun during the ride before I got home.

     The day has become steadily colder and the skies have become less and less welcoming – but my point is that it didn’t rain on me.  There is a spaciousness in the dismal type of weather that we sometimes get here in Castelldefels that gives the reluctant cyclist enough of a gap to get the necessary exercise done in the dry – even if the bottom of one’s legs do get a little gritty from the sand-in-solution splashed on them as I make my stately way through the shallow puddles on the paseo.

     It is the lack of perceived vindictiveness in the Castelldefels weather that (even in the cold) warms my heart.  I am now so used to an orderly sequence of seasons, with a marked lack of rain whatever the season, that I am not sure that I could get used to typical Cardiff weather now.

     On one of my last visits to the city, I noticed the amount of moss growing in the shadier nooks and crannies, thriving in damp conditions.  I do not thrive in damp conditions, unless they are in temperature-controlled swimming pools!

     I am still wearing T-shirt, shorts and sandals – though I do add a windcheater when I am on the bike – I may be hardy but I am not stupid!

 

Christmas is a pressing topic of urgent consideration, by not being talked about.  I have no idea what plans are made or are being made to celebrate (a word so out of place in the disaster of 2020) the occasion.  Our typical Christmas since we have been together in Castelldefels (apart from one trip to Gran Canaria) is to go to Terrassa for a family lunch, in recent years in a local restaurant.  It looks, clearly, as if this is going to be impossible, and probably illegal this time round.  It is difficult to know how many households will be allowed to mingle and the age range of possible diners is from teenage to over 70.

     It is perfectly understandable for Toni to want to see his family during Christmas, as he has seen little of them in the flesh for months.  But the risks of going to Terrassa (even if we are allowed to do so) are great.

     I suppose it is all speculation at the moment, but in this country plans seem to be made almost on the hoof, in spite of there having been plenty of time to consider viable alternatives.  I hate being bounced into doing something!

     And then there are the presents.  In spite of one’s justified reluctance to use the well-known Luxembourgian delivery company, it does make life so much easier and sometimes it is worth it just for the savings on postage!  But we have to get the orders in quickly as god alone knows how many others will be using the same delivery point to make the Christmas season seem that bit more normal.  But again, everything will be left until the last moment and . . . 

     Well, I’ve said my bit, we will have to wait and see just how this all pans out.

 

I’ve had some ideas about how to make the Catalogue Raisonné useful for further writing.  Although I will add to it in the future, I think that there is enough there now for me to start working on the basic format.

     As is my usual way, I can also start writing the Introduction.  As I am not entirely sure where I am going with this, the writing of an Introduction might seem to be counter intuitive, but I have found in the past that such a piece of work sometimes clarifies my thoughts and, anyway, as it will be written on the computer it is simplicity itself to dump, change or edit!

     Well, I say that, but my Word is proving to be somewhat difficult.  The program itself is slow and, as I am working on an Apple machine, I see that damned multicoloured revolving circle too often at the moment, which means that everything freezes while the computer works its way through god knows what before it allows me to start writing again.

     I suspect that the catalogue is the faulty element in the equation.  Each item in the catalogue has a thumbnail illustration to accompany it.  I always choose the ‘reduce the size’ option when I save pictures, especially when I take them on my mobile phone, so that any documents that I use them in does not become too unwieldy, but I think that I might have made a few omissions in the compiling of the thing and so it is absurdly overloaded.  I am sure that there is a way of stripping out some of the quality without reducing the effectiveness of the catalogue, but that is something for the future.

     But for the moment, I am happy with what I have and I will start using the raw material to get some sort of sequence going.

 

We went out this evening to have something to eat in one of our regular haunts.  Normally this would not be an occasion of note, but this is only the second time we have eaten out in weeks; the used-to-be normal becomes extraordinary when it is denied; and is even odd when some semblance of old ways are restored.

     We had an opportunity to view the Christmas lights in the centre of the town and surely this is one extravagance that has to be justified in the hope that it lifts spirits.  Even though it was finally raining, they looked good.  They looked good, and appropriate!

 

Our timing was perfect in that we arrived back in the house with a couple of minutes to spare before the National Theatre performance-

 

Official Death of England: Delroy | Free National Theatre Full Performance

12,240 views1 hour ago

Watch Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ Death of England: Delroy, an ‘urgent, timely solo work, performed with firecracker energy’ (★★★★ Evening Standard) by actor Michael Balogun. The play explores a Black working class man searching for truth and confronting his relationship with Great Britain

 

It is still available for the next 24 hours free!  It is a tour de force and you should watch it!

 

 

 

 

The trackpad that lost its click

Once upon a time, and a very long time ago, when Windows 3 was ravaging the land (reducing grown men to bitter tears of impotent rage) with its malevolent vagaries, one hapless seeker after gadgets stumbled upon a machine with an operating system that seemed specifically designed to invite humans to interact, allowing (nay, encouraging) adherents to be instinctive and logical in their responses to particular problems and lo! they were resolved!  The Holy Grail of computer systems had been found, and that system was enshrined in a Mac.

The Gadget Seeker was hooked.  And he stayed faithful, even though he was so lonely in his affirmation of the Wonders of the Mac because all his friends, colleagues and virtually everyone else in his little world owed allegiance to the false gods of Microsoft.  He stayed faithful, even when he discovered that the Grand Mufti of Microsoft had a secret decree that forbade those programs that worked on Windows from working with Mac – even though it said it would on the box!  Such deception!  So unlike the friendly, civilized world of Mac.

And the Seeker was true unto the Mac, and lavished praise and pounds, and more pounds, to affirm his faith, buying anything and everything that Mac made.  Soon his electronic life was enriched by iPod, iPad, iPhone, MacBook Air and a mighty all-in-one.

But our little Seeker didn’t realize that the providers of this profusion of goodies were no longer the welcoming, helpful, altruistic innovators of old – they had become hard and calculating.  They had progressed from their lowly garage cradle and had been shown the riches of the world - and they had Fallen, because the Voice had said that all of those riches could be theirs!

The Seeker was beguiled and listened not to the voices of reason that told him that his devotion was being manipulated and that he was being taken for a very expensive ride.  He clove unto the beauty of the design and the thinness and the lightness thereof and said that his eyes were wide open and he was prepared to suffer for his faith.  A little.

And the cost of his devotion was ever rising and he appeared to be getting ever less important ‘stuff’ for his money and doubt began to sow its seeds.

And then the dark minds that held sway in the realms of Mac began to flaunt their power and produced such vapid things as the Apple Watch - that was not really a patch on the Pebble and cost oh-so-much-more!  And the murmurings grew.

At last, as was inevitable, there was the Golden Calf Moment in the Messianic Empire of Mac and they flung a gewgaw of great price but little worth in front of their fanatics and screamed, “Buy!”  Behold!  It was the iPhone 6, and it was ridiculously expensive for what it was, but the Demons of Mac said, “Believe - and Buy!”  And many did.

But the veil was torn from the faithful eyes of the Seeker and he repudiated his faith (though not to the extent of getting rid of all the Mac stuff that he had, or not using it, or anything silly like that!) and vowed to turn towards Windows in a Dell.

Which he did, so now his MacBook Air (once his Pride and Joy) is now relegated to his jobbing ‘second’ laptop!  Ho!, and yet again, Ho!

But fate had yet a sneaky trick to play.

The trackpad of his main computer (a Mac) became skittish and refused to bend to his will.  And he was wroth.  It looked perfectly normal from the top.  Underneath, however, one of the two ‘pimple’ foot-bumps had become dislodged.  Its design was simple, it looked like the top half of a very small spaceship: a curved ‘dome’ with a circular flat flange around it.  That flange was supposed to fit underneath the bottom casing, but, try as he might, the Seeker could not get that flange in the hole, or at least not enough of it to make the connection secure. 

He knew that there must be a ‘knack’ to its re-insertion, or that there would be some useful (but specifically and exclusively Mac-type tool) that would facilitate the operation.  He also knew that there was a small Mac Temple in the town where the Followers of Mac-dom would work their magic.

Hoping that the practitioners would not be able to guess that he was an apostate, he tentatively entered the Temple and proffered the offending touch-pad with a simperingly dismissive smile at the simplicity of the challenge it offered to the Geniuses. 

The Chief Priest of the Mac Temple looked at the touchpad, looked at the foot, looked at the hole and made a few ineffectual attempts to reinsert the thing.  In much the same inept way, it has to be admitted that the Seeker had done.  Eventually, the Chief Priest turned to the Seeker and said, “The Engineer will have to look at this.  He will decide if anything can be done.  It may not be possible.”

The Seeker was puzzled, astonished, nay dumbfounded  Where was the specially designed tool for this particular job which could, obviously, only be used for this particular foot replacement?  Where was the easy display of ‘knack’ showing how melodiously simple and ‘right’ everything Mac was?

“Come back in one hour!” said the Chief Priest in a voice heavy with lugubriousness.  With a sinking heart, illusions shattered, despondency settling on him like dust from disintegrating floppy disks, the Seeker left

.

The hour passed.  He returned.

And lo! The job had been done!  The offending trackpad was brought to the Seeker by a lowly Server, who turned to the Chief Priest with a questioning look.

The Chief Priest looked at the trackpad long and hard, then he looked at the Seeker, then back to the trackpad and then, in a voice drained of emotion, he said, “That’s OK!” and dismissed the Seeker with a half-hearted wave.

Stammering his thanks, the Seeker backed out of the Temple, the only man to get something for nothing from Mac!

MORAL: Sometimes money isn't everything.

ANTI-MORAL: If you get lucky once - run!

Realization

Apple – The Great Satan

I think that I am moving into my apostate stage in my relationship with Apple.

You must understand that this is being written on a MacBook Air, that there is an iMac upstairs, the iPad is on my left and my iPhone is in my pocket.  If I had to find an analogy for my situation I would suggest that it is like a Spaniard living in Spain.  This is a Roman Catholic country in which the church has an unfortunate political and social influence; where people cross themselves without a second thought – but where most Spaniards do not go to church and have what I regard as a healthy loathing of the institution.  So, while I am surrounded by Apple stuff I feel myself more and more distanced from it – even as I continue to use it.

And, of course, it really has to do with money.  Which at the moment is trumping aesthetics.

The Great Turning Point for me was the latest iPhone.  A beautiful thing with some interesting features – but the price!  The price is, I think, disgusting.  It is Apple at their grasping worst, confidently expecting to exploit, fully, their dedicated customer base.

And the Apple Watch!  I have followed the development of this item with all the avidity that one would expect from a person who was converted to Mac when the Windows experience was one of continued frustration.  My Mac (in those long lost days of customer consideration) was a friendly machine which usually did things that I expected it to and when I wanted something to happen I could follow simple logic and it usually worked.  Programs didn’t of course.  How cruel those words “Also works with Mac” were on most products.  It encouraged you to buy and then to cry and the things refused to work the way they did on Microsoft.  But that was then and this is now.

To me, the Apple watch looks like a thing of beauty – a rather big thing of beauty to strap to your wrist admittedly, but something you might (ha!) want.  Especially if you were an Apple aficionado com yo!

The first, and for me, crucial flaw in the Apple Watch enterprise was that it was not waterproof.  They produce a sports version of the watch and it isn’t waterproof!  Go figure!  The second was the absurd battery life.  They tried to take credit for it lasting a whole day!  Which means that you have to charge it each night and so the apps which monitor sleep are impossible with this watch.  The third was the fact that the watch came to life when you lifted your wrist, not in other words with a permanent display.

The more information that came out, no matter how well presented it was (and it was) just added to the disquiet.

And then there was the price.  Quite apart from the obscenity of the solid gold version of the watch, the regular price is high.  We are being asked to pay for a fashion item which is going to be out of date and sneered at in a year.  Few people look at television via the cathode ray tube anymore and, with the increased pace of fashion technology obsolescence wearing a first generation Apple Watch is going to be a faux pas in months!

I am no Savonarola, I have no intention of jettisoning the vast amount of money invested in my Mac stuff, just to make a point.  And, my MacBook Air was, and remains, a thing of beauty and elegance.  But my next computer is not going to be a Mac.  I now recognize that I can get a damn sight more bang for my buck by turning towards the dark side of PC, Microsoft, Windows and Android than I can ever expect from the profit generator that is Apple.

I still feel a bit of heel saying it though!

2001 – A Blog Odyssey

My stats tell me that this is my 2,001st blog entry!

            It’s difficult to know where to go after an opening sentence like that – though having written a couple of thousand blog entries it really shouldn’t be that difficult.  I do, after all, have something of a back catalogue to draw on!

            It is daunting though – as much for my readers as for anyone – that the sheer number of words generated means that I have probably written the equivalent of the books in the Old Testament!  Though I now realise that the comparison I have made is a little sweeping, almost as if I am claiming the same profundity – which I am not, by the way!

            I have never pretended that this blog is anything more than an opinionated, prejudice filled, occasional diary, dedicated to the oddities that I find around my day to day life – but it is also a time capsule, like any diary, and I can read certain parts of this ‘journal’ with the same sense of discovery of a stranger!

            Sometimes reading parts of this extended reflection does not necessarily bring back my specific memories, but it does generate responses and some humour, almost as if I were another me reading what the former me was thinking and doing.

            It is amazing that these words are read around the world and it is humbling at the same time.  Quite what people make of them is also part of the pleasure of writing.  And as long as I have a single reader other than myself, I will continue to add to this quotidian saga!

            And to my readers: a heartfelt thanks!

What next?

 

Toni, as a steadfast non-reader of my poems, is constantly appalled at my choice of subject matter.  On being told that one of my latest poems was about a car park (Car Park Country at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/) he asked when I was going to write a poem about underpants!

            Which I think is a fair point and, given the range of subject matter that I find appropriate for my muse, I feel it is only a matter of time!

            Meanwhile I am hoping to have sight of the first few poems of Autumn Trees translated into Catalan.  If my plan comes to fruition they will form part of the complex centrepiece of my forthcoming book Flesh Can Be Bright which, as I say as a sort of mantra in the hope that it will be true, will be published on United Nations Day, the 24^th of October, 2015. (DV)

Pillow talk

There are many hardships that I am prepared to undergo with silence and dignity, but uncomfortable pillows are not one of them.

            For me the pillow is the central feature of the bed and where I lay my head is central to the experience of rest.

            At the moment the experience is not restful.  Which is not to say that I do not go to sleep.  That is one thing that I do with expedition and profundity – but it is the lead up to oblivion that is taxing me at the moment.

            I prefer feather pillows and always have.  I know that there are authorities (there always are) that tell me that feathers are nowhere near the healthiest option you can choose, but that has never been an overriding constraint on my behaviour.

            The most comfortable pillow I have ever discovered was in El Corte Ingles and I was all for buying it, when I was told the price.  I can no longer remember exactly how much it (it was only one) cost because of the psychological counselling that I have had, but the sum was vast!  And more!  And even I have my limits for self-indulgence!

            I have been searching for a reasonably priced alternative ever since.  I thought that I had found a perfect compromise between composition and commodification (I wanted to say ‘price’ there, but it didn’t start with a ‘C’) in a local supermarket.  I thought that I have found the perfect pillow for price and performance (see, I got the word in!) until I needed to change the pillow and found that the store did not stock that particular type any more.

            I bought a feather alternative and it is like sleeping on rock.  Every time I put my head down I grumble.  Silently, just before unconsciousness.  Toni maintains that my entry to the Land of Nod is synonymous with my head touching the pillow – but that is not true and the ‘grumble period’ is becoming more irritating and therefore Something Must Be Done.

            I have geared myself up to sally forth after my swim and take in the shops (never a hardship for me) in pursuit of the perfect pillow.  Again.

The British Library

After a number of years I am going to re-join the British Library – or at least get a Readers’ Card (one feels that it deserves capital letters) so that I can use the facilities when I visit London at the end of the month.

            In theory, I have been told over the phone by a very nice lady form the membership department, I will be able to get a temporary Readers’ Card and order books which will be ready for me to read when I am in London.  I should also have full access to the digital catalogue.  All of this in theory.

            Today I intend to put the theory to the test and find out if such access is real.

            The best part about it will be to watch Toni’s irritation as I am prepared to bet that such a thing will be totally impossible with the National Library in Spain.  We shall see.  And, as always, I live in hope!