Sunshine after rain

No sooner had I started for my Catalan lesson on my trusty bike than the skies opened and lashing rain assaulted me.  I had to wait for the protection of a bridge before I could dismount and rootle around in my backpack for the bike rain trousers (there must be a single word for them, surely, that phrase is just so unwieldy – leggings perhaps) and go on my less damp in the nether regions way, conscious at the same time of the amount of static electricity I had to be generating from the swathes of waterproof nylon in which I was now encased.

     God alone know what impression I made as I eventually dripped my sodden, baggy way into the class – though one member of the group was delighted that she had finally seen me in a pair of long trousers, albeit of a strictly utilitarian persuasion!  I divested myself of various wet garments and eventually I was able to sit in remarkable dryness given the ferocity of the storm.

One of the reasons that I love this country is that, at the end of the class, I went out to ride home in blustery sunshine.  There is none of the spitefulness of the lingering rain syndrome so common in British weather.  In Catalonia it can be raining, misty, cloudy, cold, blowing a gale – but you can virtually guarantee some sunshine at some point in the day.  It is a rare occurrence indeed when the sun stays away for an entire twenty-four hours.  Delightfully rare!

The waterproofs (that’s the word!) were bought during my last visit to Wales and haven’t been used since I returned, so I will have to ensure that they are thoroughly dried before they are put away, because it might well me months before they are needed again and I do not want to withdraw a moldy garment from its packaging when occasion calls.  In the UK you can put them away in their damp state because they will be called into use far sooner than any mold could form!  Or at least, I like to think so, it makes me jocose when the weather here is not as equitable as I would wish it to be!

The fear of the upcoming examination in Catalan is developing.  One of the participants in the class asked for clarification of what exactly was going to be in the test (a much more comforting and less intimidating word) the week after next, no, at the end of next week I now realize.  We have done two pieces of writing (that have been corrected) that will be models for what we will have to complete in the test and we have been given pretty clear indications of what sort of vocab we will need to be conversant (exactly!) with.

In the description of my house that was one of the topics, I tried to explain that of the three stories that comprise the dwelling, the ground floor is taken up with the entry and the staircase, the living quarters start on the first floor with the living room/dining room and the kitchen.  The problems came in the way that I translated ‘living quarters’.  I went for a literal translation from English to Catalan “els quarts d’estar” which I suppose would be something like “quarters of being” – perhaps unsurprisingly this stumped the teacher who demanded to know what I meant.  My explanation ranged over three languages and was not easily resolved.  There is a Catalan phrase for “living room” which is “sala d’estar” – the ‘room of being’, so I think that my attempt is more than reasonable.  But it didn’t pass muster, and I was offered the complex alternative of “l’allotjament” or the much simpler “l’habitatge”.  The ore astute among you will have realized that my typing all of this is merely a device to try and fix the words in my mind so that they can be used to great effect in the examination.  Anything is worth a try, to get a foreign word to stay in my mind!

The other topic we had to complete was an email to a friend.  Given a free hand to write what we liked, I always tend to veer towards my own interests, so exhibitions in art galleries or operas in the Liceu tend to be my stock in trade for such pieces of writing.  I told my friend that I had been to an excellent exhibition in MNAC and I was then able to list the Catalan artists whose work was featured in this fabricated show.  Outside of Catalonia how many of the following artists would be known: Ramon Casas, Joaquim Mir, Joaquim Sunyer, Modest Urgell, Joan Brull, Ramon Alsina?  The Catalan artists with world recognition are probably Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró – and Picasso, of course.  Yes, I do know that he wasn’t Catalan, but Pablo himself said that he had the soul of a Catalan and so he is counted!

It is one of the delights of living near MNAC in Barcelona that I have been able to get to know a whole range of Catalan artists of whom I had never heard before I lived here.  All of the names above now mean something to me and I can link specific works of art to the names.  Of all of the artists that I have come to appreciate living in Catalonia and being able to see their paintings relatively easily, the artist whom I most admire is Ramon Casas – a draftsman and painter whose charcoal sketches of the good and the famous in Barcelona (his sketch of a young Picasso is constantly reproduced) are astonishing.  Yes, perhaps his art did not develop in a way that influenced world painting, but he remains a remarkable second or third order artist and one who deserves a wider audience for his work.

Not long after I first arrived in this country a local newspaper produced a whole series of books featuring Catalan artists, all of which I bought and which provided a firm foundation for me to begin to build my knowledge of a whole new school of art.

Always learning!

Fight the good fight!

In my own language, I am an articulate, responsive and witty speaker.  In Spanish I am enthusiastic early Tarzan and in Catalan epsilon semi-moron.  As someone who loves language and the speaking thereof, my inability in any other tongue than mine own is baffling.

     Of course, you could point to the fact that, apart from the lessons, I do virtually no other work.  My expectation that language will work by osmosis, though patently not working in my case, is still firmly a methodology to which I adhere with monomaniac fixation.  Well, it beats methodical working and revision!

     Even though I am something of a past master in blagging my way through Spanish, I have even less basic linguistic information with which to work in Catalan.  And we are now getting close to a crunch time as, in the middle of next month (which, horror of horrors, starts tomorrow) I have an examination.

     It makes no difference how many times our present teacher assures us in his class than the examination, nay, not examination, more of a test, really, is simple beyond belief – I still know that with my level of ability ANY bloody casual (let alone searching) examination of my knowledge will lead to hot-faced humiliation.

     At this point, the more incisive reader might wonder about my typing about these concerns, rather than actually doing something about them.  If so, you haven’t read the previous short paragraphs where I freely admit my lack of effort in acquiring or attempting to acquire another language.

     The one positive point about this next ‘test’ seems to be that it is vocabulary heavy with an unnatural concentration on the direction and existence of accents on individual words and, in any choice between the two, ‘vocab’ is an easier option than ‘grammar’.  So, you never know, if I play to my strengths of being able to cram discrete points of information for the duration of an exam I might even be able to scrape through.

     Though, I do admit that scraping-through in the language of the country in which I actually live is not a very inspiring (or indeed worthwhile) goal, but it is what I am working towards. 

     And you never know, now that the date of the examination has been set, it might (just might) encourage me to make a start on the tedium of vocab learning this very weekend.  There is, after all, nothing quite so self-satisfying in doing a minimal amount of work sufficient to engender the feeling of complacency in knuckling-down to something worthwhile.  Obviously.

It’s all about the far end lane.  Of the swimming pool I mean.  Of those hardy folk (or nutters depending on your point of view) who turn up at 7.00 am when the pool opens, the one thing motivating their early appearance is the claiming of an empty lane for your lonely furrow.

     There are five lanes in our pool, and they fill up quickly.  Lane one is usually taken by a sedate looking retired lady who makes stately progress up and down the pool.  Lane three or sometimes four is taken up by two ‘youngsters’ whom I call the twins who are dedicated and athletic and look as though they are training for a triathlon.  Lane four is taken up by a recent arrival to the family of a snorkeler who rushes into the pool to try and get the Crown Jewel of lanes: lane five.

     Lane five is the lane to get.  Why?  Because it is slightly obstructed by the metal access ladders.  The way the ladders slightly jut out into the pool space means that two swimmers in a lane is somewhat awkward.  Therefore people go to double-up in the other lanes before trying the end lanes.  Lane one is for the slower swimmers and the periodic exercisers; they rarely go to lane five.  So, if you bag lane five early enough you are almost guaranteed to have it to yourself for the whole duration of your swim.

     The problem with this is, no matter how early I get to the pool, even if it is before the pool has officially opened, one man, the same man, always seems to get there before me.  So I am reduced to going to one of the other three lanes (remember lane one is given over to slower others) and hoping that it remains uncluttered with extraneous swimmers for my metric mile.

     If you are an early morning swimmer then the intensity of possession in the highly charged first hour of opening is something that will not need to be explained to you; if you have not experienced the rush of claiming a lane and swimming in a savagely elegant style to keep it to yourself, then I would suggest you think about the last time you went on a train or a bus and looked for a double seat for yourself and the looks and hopes that kept people away from you as a guide to how we feel.

     This morning, for example, I was, yet again beaten to the fifth lane by my friend, but I managed to claim the fourth lane and keep it to myself until almost the end of my swim when I had to share it with another swimmer for a few lengths until my friend left the fifth lane and indicated to the other person in my lane that he could take over the vacated fifth lane.  Now that is courtesy and civility of a high order!

 

I am working on a poem at the moment which grew out of notes that I made in my pocket notebook: two days’ work; five unsatisfactory lines, no, four and a bit lines now I look at it.  I mapped out the ideas behind what I want to write in annotations of the transcription of my notes, but the working-up is taking longer than I expected

Some poems write themselves, in so far as the structure is concerned, the skeleton is roughly assembled and then the hard slog of fleshing-out takes up the real time.  In the present instance, I only have fragments of bone, meaning that my construction of meaning in my writing is more palaeontology than poetry, but it is getting there, or more accurately it will get somewhere sometime.  And there is no title yet, either.  Working on it, working on it.

The daily crash-bang-wallop of reformation in the house next door continues unabated and is now producing a steady stream of rubble which is filling bags which are taking up parking spaces on the road.  One of the (industrial sized) rubbish bags has been in situ for over two weeks.  This is not satisfactory and ‘steps will be taken’.  I have already asked about them and the workmen have shifted the blame on to the company that should have picked them up.  As I recall, there are usually by-laws about leaving household rubble on the street and on Monday I will make a trip to the city hall after my Catalan class and find out the legal situation.  I will also take photographs (they like photos) to illustrate their wicked deeds.  Our city hall is generally helpful, and I look forward to being armed with the Regulations of the Righteous to smite the rubble makers hip and thigh – if necessary with the jaw-bone of an ass.  And I wonder how many people nowadays will pick up that reference!

So, lots to do this weekend: planning, scheming, writing and lino-cutting – never a dull moment.

Pet Hates

When you are as contrary as I tend to be, ‘Pet hates’ as a title is far too wide-ranging to be meaningful.  So much irritates and annoys me that one has to compartmentalize the discomfort.  So, today I will be concentrating on those elements which disturb my enjoyment of the swimming pool.  Here is the first dozen or so that spring to mind!

My Swimming Pool Hatreds

1     People who do not put their clothes away in lockers in the changing room, but leave them hanging up on hooks over the benches.  These people have what amounts to an ostentatiously proprietorial attitude to a public space.  And they limit space for changing too.

2     Other swimmers in my lane.  I know that it is inevitable that a pool with five lanes, is going to have more than five swimmers are popular times – especially when the two outer lanes are taken up with older folk doing exercises for their health or families with babies and therefore the lanes are not available for real swimming.

3      Children.

4   Single long hairs in the water.  In our pool it is obligatory for all swimmers to wear caps, except for some extraordinary reason in the summer time when the roof of the pool is open to the elements, but it is easy for the hairs to escape.  This is not resentment because I am follically challenged, and I do not really blame anyone for the hairs, it is just the disgust at feeling a hair wrap itself along your face or find its way between your fingers.  Not really logical, but the revulsion is real.

5      Clumsy swimmers splashing me.  I loathe this in a way I find difficult to explain.  The spray from another lane is a constant irritation.  This morning was a more than appalling example, where the swimmer appeared to be digging his way through the water and flinging handfuls on me!  Ugh!

6      Children.

7     Taking up too much of the bench on which towels are place before your swim.  This is a simple case of selfishness and poor consideration.

8     Children (of all ages) hanging on to and pushing the lane float line.  If you have an energetic stroke having your fingers hit the plastic floats is actually painful.  My nail ends are in a parlous enough state as it is without having the abrasion of floating plastic making them worse.  There is also the effect of clunking the buttons of your smartwatch and therefore negating the information being collected on your swim.  Information, I might add, that I do nothing whatsoever with when it is collected – but that is not the point.

9    Invading my lane.  This is mostly having to deal with people who have no idea whatsoever about when to make a move if they want to pass through a lane.  They do not seem to be able to judge speed and proximity.  They should learn!

10   Ambient music.  I am more than content with the sound of the bubbles breaking against my ears and the music of my own thoughts!

11  Men peeing with the door of the toilet open.  Do women do this in their changing room?  I think probably not.  Is this a macho sort of thing?  Whatever.  Stop it!

12  Over equipped swimmers.  Unless you are a professional (in which case you probably shouldn’t be doing your training at our pool) the only equipment you need is: costume, goggles, cap, slip-ons, towel, ear plugs.  Anything else is mere ostentation.  Some people have water bottles, plasticised sheets of their regime, flippers or fins, hand thingies and other bits and pieces.  No.

13  Cold showers.  I’ve done the exercise, I deserve the pleasure of a warm shower not the punishment of something more befitting one of the more vicious old English public schools.

14    Children 

15    Swimmers chatting in the pool at the lane end.  Pools are for swimming not talking.

16    Men who wear anything other than brief swimming costumes.  That sounds more overtly sexual than I meant it to sound.  I was only making a practical point about practical swimwear for serious swimming.  One person this morning was wearing shorts that came down to mid shin!  What next?  Full dress costume and the re-emergence of Victorian bathing machines?

And I better stop there (though there’s more, much more) because you probably get the idea!  And probably too clear an idea of my character!

Far more pressing and disturbing is the fact that our select class of language students was hit with the unwelcome news that we have an examination a week today.  That did not go down well.  Our attendance is patchy.  There should be as many as twenty students in the class, but we have never had more than a dozen at best.  I can’t imagine that the examination will encourage them to creep out of the woodwork for the ritual humiliation that attempting to speak a language you do not know brings.

To be fair our examination is only (sic.) on the first two units of the course book and has some fairly basic stuff in it – but it confuses the hell out of us anyway.  Today, for example we were doing an exercise where we had to add the ‘from’ bits to show where someone was, well, from – and we were hit with the definite article scam.  It is always amusing to hear those of a foreign inclination refer to The Big Ben having been seen on their trip to London.  In our explanations we tell the hapless non-English speakers that “We don’t say that.”  We then explain that The Houses of Parliament but Buckingham Palace; The London Eye and The Tower of London, but Piccadilly Circus and Wembley Stadium.  And we hope that clears things up!

I have now been paid back in my own coin as we have been told that India, in Catalan is actually The India and therefore the way you write things like, “He is from India” in Catalan has to include the definite article, so it becomes “He is from the India”.  O Dear!

 

Well, we have a week to get things organized in our minds before the sudden onset of bits of paper with other bits to fill in is suddenly upon us.  As I always say at this point, this week should be one of revision, of bringing to the surface those elements of language that have been drilled into my subconscious.  Real life is not like that.  There will be a week of frantic learning so that the devastation of the red marker pen is not scrawled too thoroughly on my tear-sodden paper.

-oOo-

In an act of nasty minded viciousness, someone or other has thrown a black plastic bag of rubbish into our neighbour’s front garden.  Cats and other vermin have been at the debris and it looks unsightly and insanitary.

We have no access to the garden, and our neighbours are not in residence, so I took the extreme measure of phoning the rental company to Do Something About It, as they own the building and they must have something like a duty of care.  I was assured that they would at 10.00 am this morning.  It is now 5.00 pm and the rubbish is still there.  I will keep track.

-oOo-

I feel as if I am in an R D Laing poem, where there is something I should know that I have forgotten.  I am fairly sure that there is a part of the domestic shopping list that I have not filled, but I am damned if I can remember what it is.  And there is nothing worse that endlessly going through the litany that my mother used when she was trying to remember what groceries she needed.  She always started the list with “Butter, lard, marge, sugar, eggs . . .”  And that has stayed with me. 

Its usefulness is limited as we don’t buy the first four items on the list and Toni is fully paranoid about eggs and checks the dates and is scrupulous about staying within the time limits.  I, on the other hand, am probably more flexible that I should be with sell by dates and best by dates.  Toni has never really recovered from going through my cupboards and finding items that were years out of date.  And he was insistent on his sharing his astonishment with me at each new archaeological discover that he made.  For the sake of a quiet life I allowed him to bin stuff that I would never have thrown out and would quite happily have used today.  I mean dried pasta is dried pasta – what can go off.  And anyway, some pasta is naturally green!

I have been hoping that typing will prompt my fingers in an unconscious sort of way to suddenly become possessed by the Spirit of Domesticity and reveal the item.  But, nothing!

Himself will soon be home and I am sure that as soon as he steps over the threshold it will come to me with a bump.

I can always aver that my mind is now consumed by the looming examination and I have no time for trivial things.

REVISION STARTS TONIGHT.  Unless there is a decent film on.  NO!  I will dedicate myself to the acquisition of the rudiments of the language.  I will.  I will!  A bit.

This & That

 

Just Speak

It’s a simple injunction - though not quite so easy when you have to do it in a language that you do not, to all intents and purposes speak!

Our relief Catalan teacher takes a very different approach to the learning of the language than our previous teacher, who at present is ill and cannot take us.  Our previous teacher has a methodical, textbook-led methodology that works through language via the grammar and selected vocabulary.  As we are all beginners we lack grammar and vocabulary so conversation is not a realistic option.  This does not stop our present teacher urging us to talk, talk, talk!

He does not really care if we substitute English or Spanish for words that we do not know, as long as we are making an effort to use what Catalan we do!  As he is quite keen on making us take turns standing in front of the class to stutter out our illiteracies, this becomes a terrifyingly exhilarating experience!

Our learning is not made any easier by the fact that the composition of our class is something of a moveable feast with hard-core regulars numbering about 7 or 8, out of an initial membership of over twenty.  The classes start at 11.00 am but students drift in until almost 11.30 am.  I realize that this is a class of adults and there may be a whole range of problems and situations that make prompt arrival difficult - but still!  I would be incandescent if it were my class!

The conversational approach will only be for the next couple of lessons as our normal teacher should return next week, but our supply teacher has certainly made an impression and, as will all temporary replacement teachers, he will be used as a measuring stick against whom all future and past teachers will be assessed.

-oOo-

Tomorrow I am going to a meeting of the Barcelona Poetry Group.  This will be a special meeting as the organizer, now resident in the US of A, will be making a ‘guest’ appearance and hosting a meeting where the topic will be ‘Memory’.

I used to go regularly to these meetings, but when the locations changed to more difficult to get to places, I let my attendance slip.  With my present physical circumstances, the number of floors that I would have to ascend (without a lift) in one or two of the locations would make my appearance difficult if not terminal!  But this meeting is in the centre of Barcelona near the Cathedral and I not only know how to get there without fear, but I also know that there is parking (expensive parking to be sure, but parking nevertheless) within easy walking distance of the flat where the meeting will be held.

I will not have seen many of the people there for some time, so there will be a certain amount of catching up to do - as well as a certain amount of writing, as there is a practical aspect to the meeting as well.

I shall wear one of my lurid pressure stockings.  If nothing else it will be a focus of shocked attention and disbelief, giving me the opportunity to recite my well-practised tale of hospitalization and life change!

It will also be an opportunity to find out how changed the others’ lives have been by the passing of the years.  Perhaps I can take some copies of Together Apart to share and distribute!  Though, thinking about it, all the poets represented in that book need to have equal treatment, so perhaps just a few copies to show what the Group has achieved in concrete written form!

-oOo-

The young girls from the family next door have thrown themselves, with much screaming, into the waters of our communal open-air pool.  Indeed it is not cold, but it is certainly not the weather in which I would ever consider immersing myself in any water that has not been artificially heated to something approaching blood temperature!  Well, perhaps a few degrees less.  I admire their determination, though worry about the noise levels: if they are prepared to face the elements in the middle of November, when exactly will the waters of the pool be off limits, so to speak.  Are we condemned to hearing high-pitched enthusiasm for the whole of the year?

I did go into the sea in December, Christmas Eve to be precise, in Sitges.  It was a beautifully warm day with bright sunshine.  That temperature had not transferred itself to the water, which I entered gingerly and exited expeditiously.  Nevertheless, I did ‘swim’ in the sea on Christmas Eve.  And that is an achievement of sorts.

-oOo-

I am at present writing a poem based on observations written in my notebook from this morning.  There is an amazing backlog of ‘notes towards poems’ waiting to be written up and, with my imminent visit to Barcelona and the Poetry Group, now seemed a good time to get back into the swing of things and start drafting.

As is usual for me, I have written the body of the poem and have come up against a blank sheet of paper for the ending.  I sort-of know what it is I want to say, but the ways in which I have phrased it so far are depressingly trite or mawkish.  That is why I am typing this, as displacement activity to rest the part of my brain that isn’t finding the appropriate ending, in the hope that I can trick out a suitable phraseology when I go back down stairs and try again!

-oOo-

I have been doing my musical homework and my knowledge of Katya by Janacek has now reached the level when I am identifying tunes and indeed am humming along in certain parts.  Admittedly those are the parts most closely related to Janacek’s use of folk tunes, but it is progress.

I don’t know what language Katya is going to be sung in at the Liceu, though I doubt that it is in the original language, especially given the nationality of the soloists, still that will be something to weigh up when I get to the theatre and start enjoying the performance, there are always sur-titles to keep me on track and I have read the libretto in English and see productions of the opera as well.

Now back to the poem and the hope that the ending has sorted itself out in the depths of my mind.  Time to go fishing!