Nothing lasts!

 

The new cultural season has started with the first in my series of Orchestral Concerts in the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona.

     My first challenge is thinking about exactly when to leave.  Traffic in Barcelona is usually something of a nightmare and the approach roads to the centre are usually traffic jammed so, although the journey is a relatively short one (with clear roads the trip to the city takes about twenty minutes, or thirty minutes tops the actual centre) normality is much longer.  I tell myself that I will leave about an hour and a half for the 19 km journey and that I can fill in the time to the start of the concert if I arrived early by having a snack and a cup of tea.

     Parking is not usually a problem.  There is a car park within a few minutes’ walk of the Palau and even the parking under the cathedral is not that far away, and I have never had to look elsewhere for a parking space, except of course when there are demonstrations and all bets are off, as I venture further and further into Barcelona Unknown in an increasingly desperate search for a space outside my normal ken.

    And parking spaces come at a hefty cost as I find that a normal concert length stay usually works out at about 15 euros for the privilege.

     Yesterday was generally clear, with the only holdups being the traffic lights and drivers who are obviously in the centre of Barcelona for the first time and attempt manoeuvres that do not meet with the wholehearted approval of habitual Barcelona drivers.

     There are always roadworks that throw logistical spanners into the car’s progress.  And nowadays roadworks seem to last for months if not years before things get back to normality c.f. St Boi!

     Anyway, I got to my final destination, or at least a near parking space, with plenty of time to spare and so I was able to pop into the café I use if I get a place in my car park of choice.

     I had a wrap of some sort with a mixture of things, most of which I could identify, and a cup of Earl Grey tea of such insipidity that I was ashamed to drink it.  I must remember to have an emergency tea bag to add to the pap they expect customers to drink so that I can fortify it with a bag of real Yorkshire Tea from my compendious stash at home.

 

I did make an abortive attempt to change my ticket for a concert on United Nations Day (when I have plans other than an evening concert) for a performance of Brahms Requiem tonight, but the seats available were not ones that I felt would give me a true appreciation of the work and so I decided to find something else to swap with my unusable ticket.  I should discover something before next Saturday, because that is my next scheduled concert and that would be the perfect time to change things around.

    

The Concert itself was excellent, with a theme of Emperors and Empire.  It started with Ryuichi Sakamoto’s music from The Last Emperor – the Bertolucci film – and the music trod a path between a soft lilting beauty and an echo of the martial music of majesty conveying the uneasy progression from decadent tradition and the new regime of Communism.

     In my view this was the weakest piece in the evening’s concert, but it was a rousing and melodic introduction.

 

     Beethoven 5^th piano concerto, usually called The Emperor was a different experience entirely.  The orchestra, that I felt was a touch uneasy at the start of the evening had become much more assured and the playing of Alba Ventura spurred them to greater heights.

     Her playing was precise and clear, there was a purity and a crystalline quality to her sound that almost made one believe that one was listening to the music for the first time!

     Her hand movements before putting her fingers on the keys ware histrionic, but with playing such as hers she can wave about as much as she likes.

     Her reception by the audience at the end of the piece was tumultuous, and rightly so, with her encore piece of Debussy’s Claire de lune showing that she was capable of a lightness of touch and a lyrical flow that was in stark contrast with the bombastic nature of the concerto!

     The second part of the concert opened with Lera Auerbach’s Icarus (1973) a piece I was particularly looking forward to because of its use of the Ondes Martenot.  This is one time that I actually did some homework for this piece that I did not know and listened to the performance on the artist’s website, so I was expecting the Ondes Martenot to occupy a firmer place in the soundscape that it did in performance.

     The music was modern, but approachable and there were clear harmonic lines of development as well as the usual pyrotechnics that one expects from the percussion section of an orchestra performing modern music!  A jolly piece.

     The evening ended with The 1812 Overture, where the overriding point of interest is “How are they going to do the cannon shots?”  It was fairly obvious that a big bass drum had been sited to the far left of the orchestra well away from the other members of the percussion section and, when we got to the moment of the first shot, a spotlight illuminated the enthusiastic drummer who thumped his way through the exhilarating ending. 

     The roar of acclimation that the piece received and I have to admit that my eyes were moist with the response to the sheer exultation of the music.  And gratitude to the conductor Andrés Salado a true favourite with the audience!

     Reality came back with the trip home and the usual lunatic driving of those tired of life!

 

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!

 

Cutting the tape

    

 

 

Next month will see me going to Barcelona for an allegedly ‘free’ appointment that I had to pay 100€ to get, as all normal attempts to get one on line are next to impossible. 

     The appointment is to renew my NIA my Número de Identificación de Extranjero is a very important card with my unique identification number.  I show this card when I leave the country and, most importantly, when I return, as that means that my passport is not stamped, as I have a permanent right to reside in Spain.  The number, if not the actual physical card, is often asked for, for example when packages arrive.  And I haveofficaldome, padrón, tea,  used it so often in Spanish, that I consciously have to translate the numbers into English when I need to use them myself on forms.

     Spanish bureaucracy is notoriously photocopy-heavy: officials like you to have copies of everything and anything to give them, and they reciprocate by giving you a wodge of photocopies in return, usually on odd coloured recycled paper, which gives the impression that they are always thinking of the environment.  You never, of course, look at these photocopies ever again, and they have no function but to exist.

     So, as I was doing my morning write, after my well-deserved post-swim cup of tea, I mused to myself about what I should take to the appointment.  You are obviously told what to bring, documents like the old card and your passport, but they do not tell you that they might require lasting proof that they had seen them – you’ve guessed it, a photocopy of the documents.

     One time, with one official department I was dealing with, I was told that I needed to supply photocopies of the documents that I had bought, and I told them that I didn’t have photocopies, perhaps they could make them if they needed them.  “We are not a photocopy shop!”  I was told.  I had to leave the office and my appointment, for which I had queued for over half an hour.  Find a photocopy shop.  Get the photocopies done, return and queue again to continue the appointment.  The second wait was not as long as the first, but the seething rage that I barely controlled made it seem like an eternity.

     So, this time, you consider not only what they have asked for, but also what they might ask for.  There was a television sketch show here in Spain where one skit showed someone waiting in a queue to get some official business done:  He eventually reached the window and the official asked for identity card, passport, then asked for blood group, followed by favourite film – all of which needed documentation and, in the case of the film a VHS Cassette of it, and so it went one, with ever more bizarre demands, with the guy showing that he had anticipated all of these outré requests.  At the point where he appeared to have satisfied all demands, the official informed him that he was in the wrong queue and the window that he needed had closed.  I may have made up the ending to the skit, but the guy did not get what he wanted!

     To most Spaniards the skit is not comedy but documentary as everyone will have stories of bureaucracy gone mad – or normality as it is more generally known.

     I have decided to pay a visit to the local city hall and get an updated copy of my padrón, which is a certificate that shows my address is registered with the local authority.  It is not necessary, but it is official and officials like adding it to the bundle of papers that make their lives worth living.  And it costs nothing.

     The key concept is Be Prepared – or at least as prepared as you possibly can be.  And that two word phrase made me think of the organization with which is it most usually associated, The Scouts.

     I am a failed Scout.  I was a Wolf Cub and even carried the flag in our official processions through our local streets when we went to attend Church once a month, but in the move from Cathays to Rumney to a new area, I did not continue my participation in the Cubs, and therefore never became a Boy Scout.

     “Be prepared” was the motto of the scout organization, but we had an oath that we recited at the start of each of our meetings.  “I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen, to keep the Law of the Wolf Cub Pack, and to do a good turn for somebody every day.”  My mind then wondered if that oath had changed over the years.  So, I looked it up.  The ‘Oath’ is now called ‘The Cub Promise’: “I promise that I will do my best, to do my duty to God and to The King, to help other people and to keep the Cub Scout Law.”  There are versions for Cubs who are Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Humanist, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and for Atheist or of no faith background.

     Rather like the Anglican Creed, that I found myself not saying parts of as I grew older, feeling that the truth of what it contained needed to be rather more nuanced to accommodate my changing beliefs, so with the Oath or Promise. 

     When I was a Cub I was a Christian, so the ‘duty to God’ would not have been a problem, but as a life-long, and I mean for as long as I can remember, I have been a republican, so ‘my duty to the Queen’ would have been problematical even for the child that I was.  There again, both God and The Queen seemed to be somewhat above my paygrade, and as we had never been personally introduced, I knew about them only via intermediaries,  The immediacy was so slight that the actual ‘duty’ could be taken as read, if one kept to the rest of the oath.

     Then my drifting mind turned to the National Anthem.  Obviously, we in Wales have our own anthem, and we tend to regard God Save the King (how odd it feels to be typing that as someone who has grown up with the Queen as the central figure) as the English national anthem.  Just as the Union Flag has no part of it representing Wales, so we feel that God Save the King is, at best, ‘other’.

      And then I ran through the lyrics in my head.  You must understand that I never sing God Save the King.  Never.  And haven’t done for years.  I stand when the so-called National Anthem is played and I show respect, but frankly I feel none to the subject of the song.  But strangely, as I sang through the lyric in my head. I got stuck at line 4.  And the line would not come.  No matter how hard I tried. 

     I knew the words of the second verse (unlike so many members of that performative group of idiots in Reform) as a direct result of being in the Cubs, we had to learn the second verse as part of some badge or other.  But that line that I had heard, god knows how many times, remained hidden. 

     Although I am writing about it, and checking all the verses of the national anthem is but a click away, I prefer to remain in darkness.  After all, even if it does come back to me, I have zero intention of ever singing it!

     I thought that this piece of writing was going to be how different the Oath that I took and the Promise that modern Cubs take were.  But they are basically the same, and there is something rather splendid in the simple and direct injunction to “help other people”.

     Isn’t all human decency encapsulated in that phrase?

Schrodinger's Fiesta!

 

 

 

 

 

An odd day today. An in-between sort of day.

     Although it is a fiesta in Barcelona, it’s not here in Castelldefels, though there is always a knock-on effect as we get an influx of day-trippers from the city to swell the areas around the beaches.

     There were fewer in the pool this morning when it opened, but more of the ‘day-release’ people turned up, just as I was completing my lengths and exercise.  The bike ride along the paseo of the beaches of Gavà were fuller than a normal Monday, so I was able to exhibit a bonus grumpiness as the usual suspects invaded the bike lane, in spite of their being a bike (mine) in it, with the headlight on!

     I have taken to using the Gavà paseo because the Castelldefels paseo is now banned to bikes and electric scooters.  There are signs informing people of this ban at the entrances to the beaches and there are signs repeating the information attached to lampposts along the paseo, and they are generally ignored.

     There are good, health & safety, logical reasons for banning bikes on the Castelldefels paseo.  There is no dedicated bike lane and cyclists invariably ignore the very low speed limit that is set (or used to be set) to use the place.  Some cyclists seem to take a perverse delight in refusing to slow down as they make their way along the paseo and avoid people by a circus-act-like display of weaving and jigging.  This is obviously dangerous.

     At a certain point the beach paseo narrows, and the danger to cyclists and pedestrians becomes even more pronounced.

     As we move further into autumn and winter the number of people using the paseo, especially at the time that I used to use it after my swim, drops.  And if there is empty space then cyclists and electric scooter riders will ignore the rules even more than the general flouting that happens at the moment.

     We have parking tickets for spaces on the sea front and other areas of the city, but the machines that dole out these tickets are closed down for the winter months and you can park wherever you like (except for high days and holidays) for free.  Some spaces in the centre of town are always paying spaces except for the afternoons, so we have a fairly complex system in place.

     My point would be, given that we are able to adapt to complex parking rules, why shouldn’t there be more flexible rules for bikes?  If we can cope with those rules, then we should surely be able to cope with time limited rules for bikes.

     On the narrower parts of the paseo, I do think that bikes should be banned totally, but on the other parts I think it is only sensible to have more reasonable rules.  As the rules stand at present, there is an obvious and blatant rejection, and there doesn’t seem to be any move to police the rules and make them stick.

     Yes, I do feel resentment as I see all the paseo bike users as I make my way along the (legal) road, but, if people don’t like the rules and they can see little real justification for them, then those rules are going to be broken.

     It makes me think of the decorative, picturesque council laid footpaths that wind around a grassy area, and the unofficial footpaths that actual feet make as they plot the most direct route.  People will do what they think is more logical, and to hell with routes that looked pretty when drawn on plans.

     I remember working, before I went to College, in the Planning Department of Cardiff City Council and seeing a map of the city centre showing ‘customer routes’ showing the reality of how people moved from point A to point B.  These maps showed streets, but they also showed routes through shops, ways of access that I had previously thought were individual ‘secret’ ways but were obvious when you needed to imagine a straight line with shops in the way!

     So, people will do what they think is reasonable.  That is until they are either shown that they are wrong in their assumptions, or that they will be punished if they do not follow the council’s stated rules.

     I am following the rules.  I await to see how the council responds to the breaking of those rules.          I’m watching!

What guilty pleasure?

 

There are some things that you do that you know are questionable, but you do them all the same.  Because sometimes you simply want to fall, or should that be Fall?  We are, after all, only human.

     Perhaps I am making too much of my current weakness, but I do feel that it is a guilty pleasure.

     The source of my self-indulgent unease is a book.  Not a book that I have bought (for once) but I book that I have been loaned.  It is a substantial book, with a rather fine cover featuring an overview of the city of Barcelona with the instantly recognizable structure of La Sagrada Familia taking centre stage. though in my reading so far, the action has taken place in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

 

 

 

The title of the book is Origin, and the author is Dan Brown, he of The Da Vinci Code, and it is Book 5 in the series featuring his academic enigma solving professor Robert Langdon.  And should I be reading it?

     The fact that I am even asking myself the question is significant.  Why shouldn’t I read something that has sold, with his other books, over 200 million copies?  Or is it because he has sold over 200 million copies that I should shun his work as being far too popular for my fastidious taste?

     There is a sort of snobbery over best-sellers that posits that if the appeal is so wide-ranging then it must perforce be somewhat infra dig to be seen paddling in such muddy overcrowded waters!

 

      

 

 

     One of my favourite quotations is taken from Len Deighton’s Billion Dollar Brain and concerns someone sneering at another character whom he accuses of talking in clichés, the response from the accused is, “I got nothing against clichés, son. It’s the quickest method of communication yet invented, but I get you.”  Which nicely puts the supposed superiority of the sneerer in place, and yet at the same time recognizes that while the efficiency of the communication via cliché might be unparalleled, there is an element of style that is lacking.

 

 

 

     I have only just started reading Origin and I am already hooked.  Yes, I can see that the structure of the novel is formulaic and yes Brown is serving up all the old tropes from religion, secrets, codes and mystery that has served him well, not well, most handsomely in his previous books, but if you are wheeling out Robert Langdon (again) then you just about know what to expect in terms of subject matter (just as you do with James Bond) but the delight is finding out how the old tune has been jazzed up to keep you reading.

     Brown is a safe pair of narrative hands, and the action fairly bounces along.  I am not expecting to find the equivalent of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann in his pages, but I am expecting to be intrigued.  It also helps that the locations in Spain that he has chosen for the action so far are all ones that I have visited, and therefore feel a personal link with them.

     And, anyway, I should point out that I am a person who has read ALL the space adventure Lucky Starr novels written by Isaac Asimov under a different name (Paul French) purely for money.  They are awful, and I devoured them.  To be fair, these novels were written for a juvenile audience, and there was a hope that the series would be picked up by a television company and produced, but they never were.  To give a flavour of the book, I could cite just one of the snappy titles, Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids, and the writing matches the banality of the title.  And remember, I’ve read it, and the rest of them.

     I justified to myself the reading of the Lucky Starr series because I was on a sort of project to read all the sci-fi stories and novels that Asimov had ever written, so I had to read the Lucky Starr novels to achieve completion.  Did they have the profundity of Nightfall or The Foundation Trilogy?  No, of course they didn’t, but they were not attempting to match those.  And I enjoyed them.  All of them.

     Brown was quoted as saying of The da Vinci Code that he hoped it would be “an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate” and from what I have read in Origin so far, he could claim with some justification that same statement as a tag line for the novel.

     And what, after all, is wrong with “an entertaining story” at any time!