The Way Ahead?
The relentless wave of injustice and blatant lying continues in this country. The next election is going to be crucial in the modern development of Spain. I am no expert, but it seems to me that the democratic process has not been under such sustained threat since the fall of Franco.
The present
government is a total disgrace, that 20% of the population can still express an
intention to vote for the bunch of self seeking contemptible liars is
absolutely astonishing.
With the
rise of the C’s party, which to be seems like a crypto-PP excuse for a
political organization, there is a very real threat that tactical voting and
plain ignorance could lead to PP uniting with the C’s and forming another
government!
People
should realise that a vote for the C’s is a vote for PP and continued
corruption and denial of fundamental human rights. Already PP has pushed through education
reforms with NO other party’s support.
They have altered basic citizen rights on protest and organization with
NO other party’s support. They put
politics, their own politics, before the law, the police, and the citizens of
this country. They are a continuing
shame to anyone who supports concepts of justice, equality and fairness – and
they should have resigned years ago!
Let’s hope that Spain has the
informed self-interest to get rid of them in the General Election.
Another tongue!
The first three poems in my Autumn Trees sequence have now
been translated into Catalan and are printed ready to be ‘looked at’ by Catalan
speaking members of the Poetry Group tomorrow.
This is an important step forward in making the idea in Flesh Can Be Bright a reality!
The other
parts of the project are slowly taking shape, though what I thought was a more
than generous time scale, seems to be getting tighter by the day! I have plans to deal with most permutations
of what might finally occur, but I would be more than gratified to have
everything work out as originally planned.
There are a
couple of poems on the go at the moment; one is largely worked out, but the
ending is proving tricky. The other is
plodding along an is the sort of thing that will come together with
concentrated effort as many of the creative bits have been done and it is ‘just’
a matter of putting it all together.
Well, something
should be done in the next couple of days and, tomorrow, Wednesday is also the day of my Poetry Group
and that is usually the opportunity to respond to a stimulating theme and start
the germ of another idea.
Things are
going well as far as The Eloquence of
Broken Things is concerned, which is scheduled to be published in October
2016. The only dangerous thing is to
give myself the luxury of thinking that it is well over a year away and there
is time to do as much as I like! This is
where time melts away and everything is eventually done in a rush. I do not intend to be caught out!
Reader’s Card
I have now been given an ‘extension’ to be British Library Reader’s Card. This is slightly odd as the last time that I used my card must be over thirty years ago! Still, rather like the OU system, with the British Library, if you are on the system once you tend to stay there until, presumably, you are “Destroyed by enemy bombing during the war” (which I once had for a book published in the 1960s not being delivered to my desk in the Old Reading Room!)
I have
visited the new British Library, but my visit in May will be the first time
that I will have used it as a library. I
will have to be canny about its use as I will only be there for a few days and
the number of books that you can order is limited. I will have to use the rules of book ordering
to its full if I am to get the full benefit.
I am looking forward to the
experience and am very impressed by the on line catalogue actually giving you
how long the book will take to get to you!
It will be interesting to see how
this all works out in practice.
Browning
The continued and more hysterical the warnings about the dangers of sunbathing become, the more they are tucked securely away in the corner of the mind marked ‘non used on voyage’.
I have
always favoured my father’s skin colouring rather than my mother’s and tend to
tan relatively easily.
There was a
time when I used to shed skin with the facility of a snake – the tell-tale itch
on the back generally leading to sheets of skin peeling away leaving me looking
like a piebald creature. Those days seem
to be over, though I think that it has more to do with a born-again approach to
moisturising than anything else.
I also
think that the change of sun tan lotion might have something to do with it
also. The family cream was Boots own
Cooltan which I chiefly remember as a white cream which stubbornly refused to
be rubbed into the skin and being protected (by one’s mother, of course) was a lengthy
tactile experience! And it didn’t really
work, as skin fell away in chunks – though one always regarded that as a
prelude to brownness as once the outer layers were stripped away it revealed
the eventual tan underneath. Though as I
recall it the skin was always white underneath and it was the brown skin which
fell to earth!
Ironically,
the brownest I have ever been was after a holiday to Scandinavia, and more
especially Finland! No accounting for
sunshine!
Parking
The epic restructuring of the leisure centre car park continues with a second (unused) entrance now being opened up with consequent access road being created to link this entrance with the main road. So far, every thing that the workmen do seems to create several other ‘things’ that have to be done before the new and improved, all-concrete, electronic-access car park gets back to use for the paying members!
I think
that most of us have now accepted that, in effect, there is no car park and
have adapted accordingly. In my case, as
long as it doesn’t rain. I am sort-of
enjoying biking it, but this will change a the first sign of dampness. Or winter as it is sometimes known!
I have not
yet had the opportunity to cycle when the car park is open, so that testing
time is still ahead.
Sad to say,
I am looking forward to having a drink with my friend Caroline. The sadness is nothing to do with her, I am
looking forward to catching up on her news as we have not seen each other for a
time, but sad because part of my excitement of seeing her is that I will be
meeting her in a bar on the beach and it will be dark when we end our talk and
then, gasp! I will have the opportunity not only to use my new lights on the
bike, but also the flashing LED lights set into a niche on the back of my helmet!
As I do not
intend to go on any roads to get home, but to stick entirely to the paseo, this
might seem like something of illuminated over-kill, but it makes me happy! And biking home after drinking (not too much
you understand) is all the justification that you need!
Whitman
Now to hunt through my poetry books to find the extract from Leaves of Grass that we are going to discuss tomorrow. This is the nearest that I get to homework, as I don’t look at the work that I have to do for the OU course in the same way!
Poetry calls!
