And the rain, it raineth every day!

 

A storm complete with lashing rain, thunder and totally theatrical lightning – and today serene and sunny, a more than reasonable 23ºC.  In Catalonia there is rarely that held-over spitefulness of continuing bad weather that Britain likes just to rub it in!

     Our house is not impervious to storms and Toni is usually quick to lower the outside blinds to shield us from water ingress.  But yesterday, ingress it did, and we are still trying to work out exactly how and where.  That does not sound as stupid as it writes as there was a puddle in front of the television which was more like a self-contained lake than something fed by tributary streams.  There is also a disconcertingly elegant (if unnecessary) extended streak of a dried water track on one of the inside walls, where our wall adjoins the next house.  That is a mystery deserving of more investigation.

     The basic problem of the house is that it is, I suspect, shoddily made and our landlords have done virtually nothing to upkeep the place over the years.  The only time they have ventured to do something is when actual human life is threatened, as for example in eventually dealing with the large broken branch of one of our neighbour’s trees overshadowing our garden and swinging out over the pavement, or some of the stone cladding on the house breaking away and falling.  God alone know when the electrics of the house have last been tested and the pipes looked at.  Certainly, the front of the house has not been painted for decades and looks set to be dingy for decades more.

     We do not have double glazing, and the window frames are ageing wood, and I suspect that the glass in the window is more suitable for framing domestic art than keeping out the elements.

     Why, you may well ask, do we not move?  And the answer is the old three word response: location, location, location.  And so, we make do, and mop.

 

 

I did not trust the pool to be open this morning and so I had an extra hour or so in bed.  Our mobile phones are full of pictures of the the main road in the centre of Castelldefels looking more like a shallow canal with cars ploughing through as if they are hoping to give a good watery display for any passing Ticktocker with an active camera, ready to post.

     There are certain key spots in Castelldefels that flood even with a moderate amount of rain, so they become impassable with a decent storm.  As much of Castelldefels is built at or even below sea level, and a substantial part of it is built on a reclaimed marsh, it is hardly surprising that water tends to stay in place rather than drain away – and one of the places that it remains, is opposite the entrance to the Pool, and indeed in the car part of the Pool itself.

     One of the civic messages that I read this morning states that there are likely to be ‘problems’ with flooding during part of today.  The flood warning extended from last night up until 6 am this morning, so there will have been some adventurous driving needed to get around – at last justifying the high-rise 4 by 4s that so many of the affluent affect in this area.  Although, thinking about it for more than a moment, the state of many of our roads also calls for rugged suspension, where roots of adjacent pine trees cause roads to be switchbacks!

     

 

     And visitors are arriving this Sunday!  With one threatening retribution on whoever is around at the time unless there is a goodly amount of autumnal sun!  We will have to see what we can do.

 

 

Three Local Mysteries — Castelldefels, Gavà and Les Botigues

Three Local Mysteries — Castelldefels, Gavà and Les Botigues

 

 This was largely written with the active help of AI Chat.

1. The stopped redevelopment of the Passeig Marítim, Les Botigues

What is being done: The stretch from the Castelldefels boundary towards Port Ginesta is undergoing a complete reconstruction by Spain's Ministry for Ecological Transition. Work began in November 2025, budgeted at about €4.15 million, with completion originally scheduled for September 2026. There are separate Sitges council works around the Port Ginesta entrance. VisitSitges

Why has it stopped? The Ministry's project was being financed through EU Next Generation funds. The project missed the funding timetable and the available European allocation was exhausted. Continuation therefore requires a new Spanish government budgetary procedure/credit modification. Sitges council has been told that work should resume, but we have found no firm restart date.

The important distinction: this appears to be a financial/administrative interruption, not abandonment of the project. The half-finished state of the paseo is therefore, rather wonderfully, a physical manifestation of European and Spanish public-finance bureaucracy.

Still to discover: when the new funding is formally authorised and when contractors actually return.

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2. The enormous Castelldefels flood-water project

What it is: A new storm-water pumping station for the Interceptor Nord, being constructed in Carrer Aragó, near the Canal Olímpic/UPC area. Cost: approximately €14.8 million, principally funded by the Catalan Water Agency (ACA), with FEDER European co-financing. Ajuntament de Castelldefels

Why it is necessary: much of coastal Castelldefels occupies former marshland and is extremely low-lying. During intense rain, gravity alone cannot get the water to the Mediterranean quickly enough. The existing Interceptor Nord is capable of carrying much more water than the present system can effectively evacuate.

The new station is intended to allow the Interceptor to operate at up to 31 m³/second. Interestingly, council publications are inconsistent about the present capacity: earlier material says about 5 m³/s, whereas an August 2026 council report says 13 m³/s. The safe statement is therefore that the new installation is intended to raise effective evacuation capacity substantially, ultimately to 31 m³/s. Ajuntament de Castelldefels

Where the water goes: the Interceptor system ultimately reaches the sea at Plaça de les Palmeres, around Carrers 16–17. During exceptional events the sand barrier across the beach is opened/breached so the accumulated water can reach the Mediterranean.

That produces the environmental question: this is urban storm runoff, not treated sewage, but it isn't clean water either. It can contain road oils, tyre/brake residues, litter, sediment, animal waste and other pollutants. Increasing the hydraulic capacity also raises the question of what a very large discharge does to the sand and sediment dynamics of the beach.

Still to discover: the actual engineering drawings showing precisely where the concrete/engineered outlet ends, where the anti-return gates are, how water crosses the beach, and what protection against scour and beach erosion has been designed. That remains the most interesting unanswered question.

And the brick pumping building near the Canal Olímpic road is a different system altogether: Estació elevadora d'aigua residual Costa Castelldefels I—a sewage pumping station. The fact that both sewage and storm water require pumping is itself a nice illustration of Castelldefels's peculiar geography.

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3. The sudden death of La Pava

What happened: La Pava, a landmark beside the C-31 for roughly 65 years, closed abruptly at the beginning of September 2026. The complex had included the pizzeria, braseria, bakery, pollastres a l'ast/rostisseria and takeaway operations. The closure surprised customers, neighbours and apparently Gavà council itself. La Vanguardia

Employees reportedly finished a Monday shift and were told they needn't return the following day. The owners have made no public statement explaining the closure. Bruguers Digital

What the press says: recent C-31 roadworks and altered access have been mentioned as a possible factor, but no published source has established that as the cause. Indeed, the major works had been completed before La Pava closed. The press continues to report the reason as unknown. RAC1

What our digging uncovered: there is evidence of a much earlier corporate transition. The two companies associated with Grupo La Pava—Pizzeria La Pava SL and Madefin SL—underwent coordinated changes of administrator. Juan Marine Bellido relinquished them in 2023; Antonio Sánchez Valero succeeded him; and in February 2025 Eduardo Salvador Juan became administrator of both simultaneously. Customers were already referring to a “nuevo dueño” or saying “han cambiado de dueño” during 2024. That is circumstantial evidence of a change in control, not proof of precisely what was bought or sold.

The intriguing possibility: the restaurant business and the underlying real estate may be separate assets. Given the site's size and position—C-31 frontage, opposite the campsite and surrounded by the residential areas of Gavà Mar/Castelldefels—the land and buildings could represent a very substantial asset independently of the restaurant goodwill.

There is currently no evidence that we have found of an announced redevelopment, so we mustn't leap from “valuable land” to “they closed it to build flats.”

Still to discover: who owns the actual cadastral parcel and buildings; whether ownership changed when management of the restaurant companies changed; its planning classification; and whether any planning application, sale or development proposal subsequently appears.

 

Cullture, Politics, Money - and other concerns!

 

 

I am not watching or reading anything of real value at the moment.

     I am partially binge watching Ghosts (Netflix) and not (NOT, emphatically not Ibsen) but rather a jolly, undemanding Sunday-afternoon-TV sort of series.  This about a young couple who inherit an old house from a distant aunt and discover that it is full of ghosts.  Which the female part of the couple can actually see because of a near-death experience.

     The ghost characters span the years stretching from a Viking, via a representative of the indigenous peoples of the area, to a trouser-less almost up to date idiot, taking in a flower-power hippie, a black jazz singer, and an American Revolutionary Officer on the way.

     The variety allows for a somewhat picaresque approach as the back stories of the ghostly individual characters interact with the living or other ghosts.  It is effortless watching and there are some moments of wry humour.  But it remains a guilty pleasure that consumes time that I feel I should be spending on other more worthy matters.

     My reading is equally easy, with my just having finished reading Nine Minutes of Sun by F G Harrow.  This Sci-Fi novel is set on a distant ice bound planet where the inhabitants of the underground shelters are threatened by a heat devouring ‘other’ that threatens the existence of the human population.  It is a well worked narrative and the description of politics and the mechanics of living in challenging situations is carefully crafted and has a gritty realism within the fantasy that is compelling.

     As this was one of my ‘free’ books courtesy of the internet, I was not really surprised to find out when I got to the end that this book is one of a series, the rest of which needs payment!  Not unreasonable.  But my enjoyment of the book was not sufficient to encourage me to pay for the next instalment.

 

I am something of a fan of the Father Brown short stories of by G K Chesterton, though it is many years since I have read them.  Therefore, a casual glimpse of the television series based on the character was enough for me to give the tele my attention and follow the episode. 

     I was also drawn to the fact that the character of Father Brown, the unlikely Roman Catholic parish priest detective, played in the television series by Mark Williams, which has been running since 2023 and has over 140 episodes to its credit.

     Williams is perhaps better known as Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter films and for his excellent comic work in The Fast Show.

     The episode that I saw was called The Viper’s Tongue and it originally aired in January 2022.  It concerns a woman who returns to Father Brown’s village to avenge the death by suicide of her sister on those who she considers drove her sister to it.

     And Williams as Father Brown was awful.  His acting was wooden, his charisma nil, and his ability to mouth religious platitudes embarrassingly unconvincing. 

     Just as with The Dresser you have to believe that the wreck of an old style actor in that play could have played Lear in his past, so with Father Brown the actor must have the ability to make you believe that he could be a Parish Priest with an extraordinary ability to solve seemingly intractable problems in crime.  It is the clash of incisive minded analyst and kindly, umbrella wielding priest that makes for the drama, and is the USP of the stories.

     Perhaps I just saw a dud episode, it is the only one I have seen, but all the rest of the cast were the usual professional jobbing actors and character part players that the British acting community do so well, giving the perfect acting setting for Williams to do his starring bit.  Which he didn’t. 

     What is especially galling is I know that I have seen him act better than this.  I felt cheated.

 

And it’s raining.  At least we have no had another of those intrusive mobile phone bad weather warnings, but we have an a period of extended heavy rain, so that we can be absolutely sure that all the usual places on our roads will be flooded.

     Next to a Catalan School and the site of The British School of Barcelona there is a building site which is supposed to be constructing something to deal with the flooding by capturing (in some way or other) the excess water that our inadequate drainage system is incapable of dealing with.

     As is often the way, what at first appeared just to be a big hole in the ground has developed into something much more sophisticated and much more expensive.

     I have been having extensive conversations with Chat and have discovered more information about this structure.  It is, in effect, a giant pumping station that can force excess rainwater through a system of pipes and out into the sea.  Since this new collection of pumps can pump up to six times the present volume of water, it would be good to know just what quality of water will be being added to our local patch of the Med every time we have a downpour.

     It turns out that there will be no treatment of the water and that the excess will be pumped out into a channel on the beach to make its way to the sea.  At present, although I have turned up an amount of technical information the precise details of where and when are not yet settled.  Chat has asked me to do some photographing of likely areas where the outfall is supposed to occur and we will take it from there.

 

Another question has been bothering us as well.  At the end of the sweep of our beach towards Port Ginester, there have been extensive works on the coastal road and the paseo, which have now ground to a halt.  The works here were supposed to have been completed last month, but the stretch is still a building site, and one half of the road has had to be closed with wire netting restricting access to the beach. 

     It turns out that money has run out, and so all work is on stop until funding is made available for it to continue.  The powers that be have said that work will resume “soon” – but no firm date has been given, and we all know what that means!

 

It does say something that AI does give access to what could only be discovered with hours of research and frustration.  Now the frustration is almost immediate when you find out just what has been going on in your name with your money.

     And that is progress of a sort!

    

 

Here comes the rain!

 

 

There are few things as comforting as being inside, safe and dry, while rain hammers down outside.

     The first few drops of what has become a fully-fledged (with mobile phone alerts!) storm, complete with long rumbles of thunder and distant flashes of lightning has now arrived in full force.

     In the extended prelude to this storm, I sat outside the café of our local pool sipping my English Breakfast & Earl Gray Melange in a camply OTT faux (moulded) cut glass outsized cup when the first erratic drops fell.   

     But you could tell that rain was immanent because of the swarms of flies and mosquitos that flocked to my unprotected skin – in spite of the fact that I am Group A+ - and not their favourite tipple of Group O.  And these flies did not take an angry sweep for an answer, relying on their insect speed to avoid any exasperated hand movements, and resettle on the tastier parts of my epidermis with smug pity for my leaden reactions!

     It was when the spots of rain developed a more insistent rhythm that I decided to call it a day and pay up and go.  It turned out that I was ahead of the storm and reached the house before the weather truly broke.

     As is usual here in Castelldefels, even in the middle of a downpour, you can still see patches of blue in the sky as a visible sign of the unspoken promise of the weather in this area that, “this too will pass,” but with the added adjective proviso of, “soon”.  That, anyway, is what I believe.  It may sometimes be delusion, but like all firm delusions, it keeps me happy and hopeful!

 

I have spent some time re-editing a poem I wrote recently called, “On Looking Into the Eyes of a Hoverfly” the newest version of which can be found at

https://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com/

 

I have almost reached the stage where I could compile a slim volume of poetry based solely on the number of poems I have written on insect life and my interactions with it.  Though I won’t.   

Though I will try and add new work to that blog on a more regular basis than I have in the immediate past. 

     I do urge readers to click the “follow” button in my blogs so that you can get the most recent additions.

 

PS We have just had another mobile phone alert telling us that "the rain is going to stop soon" and with that message the rain instantly increased in intensity with a gratuitous roll of thunder complete with lightning!  Nature will not be digitally contained! 

 

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!

 

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!

    

 

"Corby" - a name and a trigger.

 One hundred and twenty-seven pounds sterling.  One hundred and twenty-seven pounds to renew my aged passport.  Not counting the expense of the car park and the cost of the postage to send my old passport to Corby.

Corby.  A name from the past.  The outré sister town of the so much more prim Kettering.  I remember during my first year of full time teaching in the Boys School in Kettering that I much preferred going to Corby than going in to town in Kettering - though, of course, Kettering was the place with the Waitrose and not, emphatically not, Corby.  

There was a more immediate vitality about Corby, and then there was always the shock of hearing the Scottish accent as the predominant one in that town in the centre of England.  I was told that a steel works had shut in Scotland and the work force flocked to Corby to take jobs in the steelworks there and the accent had persisted.  I was also told, to take taxis and ignore the busses there as "Corby was rough".  

I never found it so myself and often scoffed at people in Kettering who wondered at my bravery in chancing my arm in such a place.  So, as my old passport was stamped and slotted into the system in Castelldefels to get it to Corby and get a new one sent to me, I supposed that the Passport Office situated there was a government initiative to try and find some work for the folk who having moved from Scotland to find work in an open steelworks after their own had closed, had to think about upping sticks again after the Corby works closed.

It brings back a whole slice of my early working life, whose memories are now more of a melange of impressions rather than distinct narratives of day to day existence.

I can no longer find my way about the haunts that marked my home in Saint Botolph's House in Barton Seagrave and my way to school and into town.  Not unreasonable you could say as my memories are half a century old and based on my being there for little over a year before I moved back to Cardiff and promotion, in a city that would see me to the end of my teaching career.

The passport is being renewed because I am going back to Cardiff for a pre-birthday Birthday Party, and in digging out my passport (not used for years) discovering that it expires in August of 2025.

My passport is a burgundy one, with the European Union stamped across the top of it, a passport that gave access to a bewildering number of countries until the narrow-minded cretins of Brexit ensured that our insular geographical situation was mirrored in our political and social states.  

My new passport (one hundred and twenty-seven pounds worth of it) will be a British Beggared one, and my saving grace is that I moved to Spain before the idiocy of Brexit limited possibilities and therefore I have permanent residence and a card to show for it.  It means that when I come back into the country I show my residence card first so that my passport is not stamped, and therefore does not start the countdown of the time that I am allowed to spend in Spain.

The longer I spend time away from the country of my birth, the less Britain remains a living reality in my mind, and the more it appears as a sort of stage setting for past memories.

I don't really know the price of anything.  I understand that the price of 20 fags is now astronomical, though it is still not enough to repay the lost revenue from early death that the cancer of smoking steals.  I don't know how much a pint is, or how much a loaf of bread is.  I am used to Catalan prices and I am prepared to be shocked by how much the staples now cost.

But this visit is about Time, and my seventy-fifth birthday, and more importantly about seeing friends, ex-colleagues and family whose lives have gone on without my day to day involvement!

There are some people where no matter how long the time has been since last seen, to meet up is to be back where the relationship has always been.  This is something that is especially relevant considering the death of my old friend of more than sixty years, Richard.

In writing about him for his funeral service I went back to the essential triviality of shared experience, the nothing occasions that mean everything - the slight and the transient that stay with you for ever.

The death of friends of such long standing, are not tragic, they are unthinkable, in so far as it is so difficult to imagine a constant presence (in spite of geographical distance) not being there.  It takes time to realise the loss, with memory fighting to fill the gaps to kid you that nothing has really changed.

One part of my mind does, obviously, register the loss, and that will give an added urgency to the meet-up in early October (the passport office and the good folk of Corby allowing) in seeing people who have not remained the same age as I last remember seeing them, but, like me have lived the years through.

I remember talking with my Uncle Eric (a teacher who was retired and drawing a pension for longer than he had been in teaching!) once telling me that he had watched his entire generation, one by one, die off until, as he said, "I think that there is only one boy I was with in Junior School left, and I'm not sure that he is still with us."  

This was a man who was evacuated after Dunkirk, in a much less well-known chaotic rescue mission from Cherbourg, and whose stories about the farcical, quasi-Surrealistic experience of fighting in an all-out war had to be heard to be believed.

Unlike my father and my grandfather, I have not had to fight in any war.  Indeed I was a decade too late to have the horror of Conscription forced on me, and I was able to toddle my way from school to university lubricated by free milk and free tuition.

Although I seem to have digressed, it isn't really a diversion from the main theme of memory and responsibility: the memory of what was and the responsibility to articulate a response to who you are now.

And if that sounds a little pretentious and high-fauluting, then I should also say that the return to Cardiff is also the opportunity to have a decent Indian Meal and to drink a real pint of authentic Bitter, preferably a pint of Brains SA!

Obey your technology!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My new watch even beeped at me to let me know that it thought that there would be rain later in the morning!   

     When you are stumbling around in the pre-dawn getting read to cycle for the morning swim, a beeping watch is the last thing that you need, as you mostly rely on automatic to get you through the quotidian rituals of getting the day going.

     I did however, glance at the watch and a terse message said, “Expect rain at 8 am” – even poetic in its way.  However, I decided to ignore such a warning and trust to the legendary positive weather conditions of Castelldefels.  Sometimes, even when the forecast for the town says rain, it seems to make an exception for the strip of the town along the beach and we often stay dry.

     Not this time.   

     It rained at 8. 

And as I ploughed my way up and down my gloriously empty lane in the local pool, I heard the tell-tale sound of globular moisture hitting the retractable roof and, with my surgically altered eyes, I could make out the running smears of water trickling down the glazing at the sides of the pool.

     Never mind, I told myself, after I’ve finished my swim there is always the extra time for my tea and sarnie in the cafe, which together with note writing  should ensure that by the time that I am ready to leave the weather will have cleared up.

     Not this time.   

     In a rather touching gesture of moderate futility, I drained the water from the cleft of the saddle and dabbed, mostly ineffectually, at the rest of the seat in the hope that first rump-contact would not be totally wet, but just unpleasantly damp.

     And so I made my way home through spiteful rain that, in spite of the fact that I modified my route back via tree canopied roads, seemed to find the spaces between the leaves to fall, not so gently, on me.   

     My coat is now hanging on the sheltered line downstairs to drip dry and my shorts have (bugger the expense!) been put into the tumble dryer in gloriously damp isolation.

     It is said that the amount of super-computing power that it devoted to forecasting the weather dwarfs all other uses.  But I still react to forecasts as if they were based on the “feeling of a bit of seaweed” approach of the “experts” of my youth, rather than the almost infinitely sophisticated approach of the present technological day. 

     I should believe the forecasts because they are really, generally, correct.  I think that what you might call 'forecasting faith' could be related to an age divide, where people of my baby-boomer generation are still sceptical, whereas those who have been brought up looking at ever smaller screens for their information now expect the info that they are given by the Almighty operating systems of their phones to be correct.

     As a matter of interest, I just asked Google what it based its weather forecasts on and the answer was that it, "takes radar data created by doppler radar stations" and by organizing this data into images and creating a time specific sequence is able to suggest what the weather will be.  So there!

     Just staying with temperature, I got to thinking about how much 'faith' I do have in flashing lights and digital information connected to various things that I possess actually telling me the truth.

     I have never independently verified the set temperature in the fridge for example.  I have taken as gospel the temperatures that the machine tells me that my dishes are washed at in the dishwasher; the time that the microwave cooks for; the length of the various washes in the washing machine.  Virtuallly the only time that I check my watch is when the BBC News starts, and even that is compromised by the fact that I listen to the BBC on the Internet and I have discovered that there are seconds lagging, between broadcast and my radio making absolute accuracy impossible.

     I remember, from my teaching days, one supremely irritating child in a 'bottom group' when such things existed (no, hardly a child he was 15 going on 7) who replied to everything I said for almost the whole of a lesson with the single word, "Why?"  

     I decided, in the way that you sometimes do, that, instead of losing my temper or ignoring the kid, I would attempt to answer him.  And I did.  The interchange (if you could call it that because the boy didn't think about any of his responses, which were always "Why?" or consider any of my increasingly philosophical responses) were obviously one-sided, but the rest of the small class appreciated the 'game' and eventually, they called time, to which the kid gave one final "Why?" and laughed.

     I recall this because it was an example of questioning, mindless questioning perhaps, but it did force me to think while I attempted to answer the continuous drill of "whys?" that was leading to a point of absurdity that I never quite gave into.

     If that experience was essentially arrid, perhaps it should make us think about the way that we too easily accept authority from electronic, inanimate machines functioning on a series of zeros and ones.

     My watch measures and charts my movement and lack of it, my activity, my sleep, my heartbeat and lord alone knows what else.  When I go for a bike ride, I can with a few taps bring up a map and trace the route that I have taken, the time it took me to complete it and even the elevation above sea level and the inclines and declines that I navigated.

     My watch and the app that is linked to it have more information about me and the way that my body works and where that body has been, than anyone else in the world - apart of course from the people who can link into the watch or the app and download whatever.

     What prompted these thoughts was that my watch was right about the rain and I was wrong.  

     Perhaps, in the future should I be more willing to listen to the information that, although presented on one, small, round watchscreen, is actually the visible and tangible sign of an unthinkably powerful information superhighway to which I am linked?

     I am no conspiracy theorist, but asking "Why?" might be the really human thing to do.