Bits of paper!

The Open University





It’s thinner, but more colourful; my name printed rather than hand lettered; it has an impressed stamp like the other, but as a sign of the times, also has a holographic stamp too; it’s A4 portrait on paper rather than landscape and card – it’s my degree certificate.

            A repetition of my first degree (right down to the class) though via rather different subjects.  It is difficult not to look at the piece of A4 paper and not think about the money that such a degree now costs to students studying in many UK universities.  Even without taking living expenses and the cost of textbooks, you are looking at twenty-seven thousand pounds.  I wonder what 27K would have got me when I did my first BA in 1970s – certainly more than Room 816 in Neuadd Lewis Jones in Swansea University, and all my textbooks rebound in leather with my personal monogram embossed in 24k gold on the front!

            OU degrees do not cost as much, but the cost of the courses has increased exponentially since I took my first course over thirty years ago: what was a couple of hundred pounds or less is now a couple of thousand.  Such costs are a reflection of political insistence, especially on behalf of the Conservative party which was a vociferous opponent of the whole concept of the OU.  It has forced the OU to become more financially commercial with the result that its courses have become further and further out of reach to the very people they were designed and intended to serve.  It is still a wonderful institution and I am very proud to be a graduate.  At last.  Only taken thirty years!

I have been reading “Great Lengths” by Dr. Ian Gordon and Simon Inglis, which is a pictorial survey of the historic indoor swimming pools of Britain.  This was an inspired Emma birthday present to me as it fits well with the work that I did on the comparison of Hockney and Guevara’s paintings of swimming pools which was the subject matter for my extended essay in the OU course on Modern Art.

            There is still some discussion about the exact location of the swimming pool in Guevara’s paintings and I am hoping that some of the information in the book will allow a more precise identification.  There is a bibliography as well, so there is the opportunity for further research.

            The history of indoor swimming pools in Britain is not such an arcane area of knowledge as you might think.  The impetus to build such pools in the nineteenth century reflected the growing concern with public health and municipal pride.  Pools were divided into classes and the structure of entrances to the pools reflected the need for division of the classes so that they didn’t mix.  When you add concerns about lady swimmers and what costumes both sexes should use you have a complex history of social manners that delights!

            I have only just started reading the book seriously, but it looks like something to which I will return for future research.

            It was also poignant to see pictures of the Empire Pool in the centre of Cardiff opposite the bus station.  It is now demolished; an act of barbarism which I am not inclined to forgive.  I used the pool (only a trolley bus ride from my home in Cathays) when I was a kid and I used it until adulthood and only stopped when Cardiff built a series of new leisure centres which gave access to decent facilities in neighbourhoods outside the centre.

            I ended up using the David Lloyd Centre situated on what is laughingly called Rumney Common (you have to look very closely to find any vegetation finding a way through asphalt and concrete there now) and it had the advantage of being on my way to and from work.  I would sometimes debate, after a long and tiring day, whether I actually wanted my second swim, but I usually found that the car made the decision for me and while the debate was still going on in my head, the wheels of the car had followed the well worn metaphorical ruts and I was in the car park of the centre!

            It is much the same in Castelldefels.  I was a member (I still am, ah the stickiness of a standing order!) of a municipal pool on the other side of the town, but to get to it I had to go out of my way.  The nearest pool was only open air and, while that is more than acceptable in summer, it is a completely different form of masochism in winter!  When the local pool was reformed with a retractable roof I joined the centre and it is the one that I have used ever since.  My only desertions have been during the times the pool is closed for maintenance- and what happens then is a completely different story for another time.

Meanwhile, I am about to meet an ex-colleague from Cardiff who has come to visit Barcelona and we are going out to lunch to give her the opportunity to explain (as if an explanation were necessary) why I made the right decision to retire from public education!  The stories I am hearing about the administration of my last British school are heart-breaking, not only because of the misery of my colleagues but also because of the way that maladministration will make a difference to the way that the kids are taught.  It is at times like this that I remember that I am being paid money simply for being alive.  Even with a streaming cold that is something to warm the cockles of my heart!

And I’ll drink to that!

And the next please!

My gleeful euphoria (is that tautology?) at the final completion of the latest essay for my Open University course was linked to the fact that the remaining part of the course was to be devoted to the mini thesis that I have planned for the end of module assessment, linking the paintings of Alvaro Guevara and David Hockney.

As the essay winged its electronic way to the North of England and my tutor I was able, with an easy conscience and a light heart, to suggest to Toni that we try another restaurant so that he could add another of our favourites to his blog on http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es/ and we could have a celebratory meal.

We did and we had a selection of tapas of the highest quality in a pica-pica menu; all of which have been photographed and which will, in the next couple of days be posted.  We sat outside for this meal because the inside tables were all taken.  It was not too bad, but I didn’t take my outside jacket off and when the sun moved away from our table it was time for us to move away too!

On our return, after a little light mocking of Toni as he settled down to try and understand what he has to do with his next assignment on the computer technology course that he is taking, I went upstairs to get on with all those little tasks that simply cannot get done when you are retired - because of lack of time.

Now, now, don’t get nasty!  What you have heard is true – every retired person I know regularly, especially when non-retired people are present, sighs and says a variant of, “I have absolutely no idea how I ever managed to fit a job into my life!”  This is usually said with a wry smile and an upward movement of the head and a raising of the eyebrows.  And it always works!  People’s expressions are priceless and worth every minute of the decades that you were actually in work.  That last sentence might not be absolutely true.  At all.

Anyway, I settled down to get my tasks completed and thought, as part of my general life housekeeping that I would check up on the pro-forma that we have to use to submit an outline proposal for the end of course module.  It was while I was worrying my way through the administration that is necessary to get this done that I noticed that there was one more essay serial number than there should have been.

The horrible realization dawned on me that I had not factored-in an essay related to the content of the last volume of the course that we are taking.  There is another essay to be done.  And this one is on Body Art.  And if you think that just means tattooing then you don’t know much about modern art as it is understood by the Open University!

So, from a feeling of tranquillity I now realise that the workload is actually heavier than I ever dreamed possible.  That is an overstatement of course, but one has to get over the feeling of being cheated by one’s own inability to study the assessment procedures with the clarity that I have always accused other OU students of lacking!  Touché!

However, I am not going to let this essay creep up on me in the same way as the last one (and the one before that) I will be prepared and get it done in good time.  Even though this essay is on a single title and not divided into two parts like the others, I think that it is more straightforward.  Those may be foolish words that I will look back on with an ironic laugh, but I am relying on them to be true because we have the end of module assessment to think about as well.

I think that there will be useful approaches in this last volume which may well feed into the EMA, especially in relation to sexual politics and sexual identity as Alvaro Guevara was bi-sexual and Hockney, well, Hockney is Hockney!  I only hope that I can trawl through our mighty bible-length book of artistic theory and find some pretentious piece of near gibberish twaddle that links my two artists.

I have discovered, yet again, that philosophy is not my strong suit.  I do enjoy reading about it, just as I enjoy some art theory, but it is hard to retain.  

I have recently read two books by Nigel Warburton.  The first is ‘Philosophy – the basics’ a short and approachable introduction to philosophy which is simple without being insulting. 

The second is a brilliant book, ‘A Little History of Philosophy’.  It is the sort of book which an intelligent and interested young person could read, and is exactly the sort of book that an adult thanks god exists because he can understand it as well.  I recommend this book without reservation.  Warburton makes a narrative out of the history of Philosophy by linking his chosen series of philosophers in a sort of Hegelian dialectic (which he also explains) and probably doesn’t fit what I have just said, but who, after all is going to contradict me! 

These are book worth buying and they form a growing part of my library as a sort of first aid in philosophical understanding.  These books really do speak to the reader is an unthreatening way, in just the way that the ironically titled ‘Wittgenstein made easy’ in the notorious ‘made easy’ series by Fontana did not!  Perhaps, after reading the two Warburton books, I should go back to the ‘easy’ explanation of Wittgenstein and see if anything Warburton wrote has lubricated the rusty philosophical synapses in my brain.

I wonder what justification the president of the Spanish congress is thinking up to explain away the fact that she was playing Candy Crush while her party leader and president was delivering a State of the Nation speech to introduce a crucial debate.  Admittedly Bromo (my ‘pet’ name for the walking joke that calls itself president) is contemptible, a liar and terminally corrupt, but he is her contemptible, lying, corrupt joke.  The least she could have done is preserve at least a paper thin veneer of regard (especially with television cameras around) for the pathetic farce that is the leader of this discredited government of bribe taking blatant criminals, as he was giving a key note speech and attempting to defend that which is impossible to defend if you have any regard for the fundamentals of morality and logic.

            Perhaps we should rejoice that the has demonstrated in the most public of ways the contempt that she feels for her party and her leader.  There is, after all, more joy in heaven over one right-wing scumbag PP member who recognizes the worthlessness of her party than over ninety and nine who unthinkingly toe the party line and don’t play with their IPads.

            It turns out that she wasn’t actually playing Candy Crush but some sort of ice game called Cold Fall or something like that.  Careful viewing of the blurred television pictures clearly show the opening sequence of the game.

            She should of course resign.  Of course she won’t.  This is Spain and PP has an absolute majority and they can do and do do exactly what they like.  The iPad, game-playing president of the congress did have the good grace to ignore all questions about her playing and she carefully took a different way out of the chamber to avoid the press, almost as if she was concerned at the gross lack of respect that she had displayed.  That was a nice gesture, but she doesn’t really need to worry, all she has to do is follow the behaviour of the man she doesn’t listen to and ignore the press: they can’t sack her and she is hardly likely to be sacked by a group which has more ignored denunciations against it than a certain dictator-led Spanish government of some fifty years ago.

            I think that we are near to a breakdown in civil society, with a government which is becoming more and more authoritarian by the day. 

There is a very real chance that this bunch of chancers will be thrown out in the next general election and I am convinced that we have seen nothing yet of what they are prepared to do to retain power.  I truly believe that this government has no moral depth whatsoever and they are capable of anything.  God help us all!

            With concerns like this a daily terror in Spain, it is little wonder that I turn to the more grotesque extremes of cutting edge modern art to take my mind of the even more grotesque artistic disaster that the government of Spain is becoming.

Another form of escape is actually a sort of double negative because my concentration on my poems is really a intensification of thought which is at its best an exclusion of anything else.  At least for a moment! 

My recent poems can be seen at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/

Time to breathe again?

The fatalistic philosophy of David from The School on the Hill has proved its worth yet again.  Like a modern day Candide, his supremely irritating assertion that, in spite of all the factors hindering completion of any action in academic life, “It will get done!” has been shown to be true once more.  And, although the even more irritating and fiddly work of referencing is not complete,  a useable draft of my essay exists.  This writing has almost gone to the wire but, dare I say it, I have two days in hand and the thing (for thing it is) is largely complete.

            It will be a relief to get this essay out of the way, to allow concentration on the end of module assignment.  Quite what happens to Book 4 of our course which is now ahead of us with no essay or examination to force concentration, I do not know. But that is for the future and I am not looking forward with any discriminating clarity until the essay is winging its electronic way to my tutor and her fully justified condemnation!

Toni is working with what I can only describe as compressed smugness.  He is enjoying the thrill of horrified anticipation about the depth and width of the work that he will have to complete in the new courses that he has just started, but that is because he is no believer in the fear-fuelled production process that I espouse.  He looks back to his time in school as largely wasted and therefore the makeshift and lackadaisical approach that he had then is anathema to him now.  He works with oodles of time in hand and ensures that all his assignments are finished well within the limits allowed.  I do not think that he could exist in the digressive world that I inhabit!

            I am supposed to be writing an abstract of my ‘research’ so that its inclusion in some form or other might be considered for an exhibition on Guevara in Leeds University!  I am not sure that people outside the course A318 in the Open University have any real idea of what I am doing or what I am proposing to do and at what level – but I am enjoying the frisson of thinking that my work may extend out of the narrow tutor/student environment and gain further readers.  
          Yet again, as with my autumn book, all I have to do is write the thing so that there is some there to share!

Toni is using his blog (at: http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es/ ) as part of his course as he is able to try out the various technological techniques to which he has been introduced.  
          The number of restaurants that he has commented on has now reached double figures and I rather enjoy the fact that our eating out has now been given a sort of authority and vindication by the inclusion of each of our meals as raw material (though rather delicious and usually cooked!) for their critical inclusion in his blog - with photos!

            I think the best part of the blog is the illustration of the food, and for the photographs I have resurrected my old Canon G9 – probably the favourite of all my cameras.  This is a flexible and compact piece of kit, feels good in the hand and does not have the bulky ostentation of a bridge camera or full SLR.  I am inclined to take it with me to London for the photographing of the Guevaras when I finally get to see them in Chelsea.

            It will be interesting to see how Toni’s blog develops, especially when the Ruta de Tapa is in full swing as each offering will have an entry of its own and Toni has indicated that we could do one-a-day then the number of entries will be considerably boosted.  
          The only unfortunate thing is that these tapas are only produced for the limited period of the Ruta and therefore will be of only historical interest as people will not be able to sample them after the Ruta closes.  
          But I think that they will be interesting to look back on and, if Toni continues the blog for the next few years then he could show how restaurants respond to the Ruta by adding the new tapa to the old and linking this to the general meal entry.  
          Already we have revisited one restaurant and we have added photos of the ‘new’ meals so that the range of food available in at least one place has been demonstrated.

            Eventually this blog will be a fascinating pictorial record of the food that we have eaten over a period and also a way of keeping track of how restaurants keep up their standards.

            
          In my blog, the one that you are reading now, I am still mystified by the fact that one particular entry has had and continues to have a large and regular readership.  
          I have re-read this entry myself and I would like to think that it is because of the witty and insightful writing that it has such a continued popularity – but I don’t see it myself.  
          The ways of the blogosphere are weird and wonderful and I suppose that one just has to accept rather than analyse.

            My poetry blog (at: http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/ ) is altogether more rarefied and the readership is, shall we say, more select.  I would welcome ways in which to extend the readership, but I don’t know how.  I can hear Toni’s injunction to “Go on YouTube!” as the answer to all of life’s questions.            I don’t know why philosophy is still taught in universities because now all you have to do is “Go on YouTube”.  What is reality?  Why does pain exist?  Is there a God?  What?  All the answers to these and more questions are waiting to be experienced in a three minute barely articulate video made by some spotty teenager in Wisconsin.  It is such comfort to know that Knowing with a capital K is just a few clicks away!

Now for my swim, and then the fiddly bits of the essay – together, of course with my flamboyantly academic yet paradoxically popularist bibliography, all carefully double-spaced.  
          If nothing else, and sometimes my essays are exactly that, they look professional and polished.  Pity about the content – though there is sometimes an elegance of expression which almost makes up for the paucity of apposite perception!  Almost!

And let’s face it, sometimes that is enough.