Another date filled

 

Well, the one good thing is that I have only missed one meeting or appointment - and I thought that I might have missed three.  But no, blood test and concert are still in the safe future, it is only the student representative meeting that has slipped me by, and the teacher concerned seemed far more concerned about my new pressure stocking than the meeting.  The lack of my attendance at the meeting apparently could be solved, or at least mitigated, by a short chat with one of the teachers.

My pressure stockings are another factor.  These are stylish (for pressure stockings anyway) free gifts from China.  I only had to pay the postage (and that wasn’t very much) and I got three pairs!  It reminded me of the trip that Toni and I made to stay in Catalonia where the flight cost us nothing – except for the landing charges.  I do not understand the economic logic of giving away a flight for nothing, but I gratefully received the largess.  God knows we have paid back that free gift many times over given the amount of travel that we have run up over the years since.  But I do remain grateful for the inexplicable gift!

The pressure stockings are perhaps easier to explain as a sprat to catch a mackerel and the assumption must surely have been that I find out that the link with the supplier is real and you stand a chance of getting what you hoped for, and you buy much more stuff - and god knows, China is the home of stuff nowadays.  Was it enough for the Chinese supplier merely to get hold of my email and start sending me information, to get me on a mailing list, that they could write off the merchandise. 

 

And again, I insist that the postage was so small that I could afford to speculate and give it a go not really worrying about losing the pittance that they had asked to get the stuff to me.  They have since asked me to comment on my purchase, but I assume this is merely a device to ensure that I am still a live customer and that any giving of stars will unleash a whole catalogue of offers too good to miss!

Give my predilection to submit myself to the blandishments of the capitalist system and buy stuff for the mere sake of it, I have steeled myself to be rude enough not to reply – even though I am wearing one of the said stockings even as I type this.

The net two months should prove to be revealing, with the possibility that I will not need to wear the bloody stockings any more.  The function of them is to increase the blood flow in my right calf so that the thrombosis will be dissolved away.  To that end, my diet (low salt, low fat, no alcohol, decaffeinated tea and coffee) added to the half a tablet of rat poison that I take daily should all be working together to get rid of the thrombosis in a gradual way.  Over the next couple of months, I am scheduled to have various tests and appointments that should enable my doctors to determine the extent or otherwise of the offending clot and adjust my treatment accordingly.

I had thought that I would be taking the rat poison for life, but one doctor seemed surprised by this assumption on my part and assured me that there was a possibility that it would be discontinued in a few months’ time.

I continue to be impressed with my treatment and the thorough way in which I have made a Grand Tour of most of the hospitals in the area for consultations and tests.  The important ultra-sound scan will be in January, so I won’t have a Christmas present of my treatment being ended, but I will settle for a late gift!  At least by the New Year I should be in a better position to know how my appointments calendar will look for the rest of the year!

Meanwhile, my book “Stephen’s Health” continues to grow as each new sheet of information, results and appointments is added to the plastic pockets.  I take it with me whenever I go to see a doctor as a sort of visible token of my active participation in my treatment.  I can also refer to any of the information about my case (downloaded from the secure Internet link) to encourage those doctors battling with their ageing computers.  In one or two instances it has been very useful to point to relevant information to help the consultation along!

I feel fine, though I am not able to walk as far or as fast as I used to.  My shooting stick has been invaluable and I am now back to my normal swim and bike ride quota for each day.

My replacement watch for my Pebble, the Amazfit takes a dictatorial view of my activity and gives me reams of information that I totally ignore.  It tells me where I have cycled and how – though I am not sure that it realizes that my bike is electric; it analyses my swim, using acronyms that I do not know; it noted my ‘run’ that I did not do – and I am still wondering about that; it measures my sleep and its depth; it takes my heartbeat; it tells me (and nags me) about sitting down for too long.  And it also tells the time.  Its battery life is nothing near the longevity of the Pebble, but it is at least four or five days between charges and I can live with that.  The text it uses is too small for me to read without my reading glasses, but I am used to making sense of the out of focus – I have been doing in for as long as I can remember – so that is not something that worries me.

I now use my Matrix watch (the one that runs by making electricity out of the difference between your body heat and the ambient temperature of the watch case!) as a backup when the Amazfit is charging.  I good, if expensive, compromise about their use!

The major problem I have is making sure that the alarms on any and all of my pieces of wearable electronics do not go off as inopportune times.  I take my half of rat poison at 8.00 pm.  That is the time of the start of the operas to which I go.  The trouble is that merely switching off the phone (which I do when I go to performances) does not always stop the bloody alarm and once or twice I have fumbled with the phone during the applause for the conductor in a frantic effort to silence the thing before the music starts.  My watch merely trembles and that can easily be turned off by jabbing at the screen.  The anticipation that an audience feels at the start of the performance is given an added layer of fear by the threat of my electronic alarm orchestra playing an unwelcome additional melodic line.

And I am looking forward to this performance: Janacek, Katya Kabanova.  Let’s see just how well my ‘education’ in the works of Janacek by WNO and Richard Armstrong with the voice of, among others, Elizabeth Söderström, will be in my appreciation of the performance tonight.  I am all anticipation.

And now to get ready.  As a point of principle, I wear casual clothes to the Opera, in spite or rather because of the fact that I will be surrounded by those who ostentatiously dress up.  I am still wearing shorts and sandals (for me Summer Never Dies) but I might wear jeans tonight.  Not because of the cold, you understand, but rather because getting out of the Liceu and walking up the Ramblas late at night can be a dispiriting experience, and if you look ostentatiously like a tourist then you might well be the target for one or more sex workers to come up to you with blatant offers of gratification!   

Better to be taken for, if not a native, then at least a resident, and hobble (in my case) my stick-assisted way towards my expensively parked car!

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!

Wave

 

Another crummy day during which I had the delightful experience of conducting my daily swim to the accompaniment of the extended drum roll of rain on the retractable roof of the pool together with the vision of water cascading down the glass walls.

Making the most of the weather I paused on the sea front on my return, parked the car and took photos of the larger than usual waves.  And just as usual my final pictures failed to show the majesty of a breaking wall of water.  Part of that failure, I have to admit, is that the waves (even during turbulent weather conditions) are well short of anything approaching majestic and I hesitated before I took off my sandals and paddled in a way to make the most of the proximity!  (Just in case there was any ambiguity in that last sentence, I did not take my sandals off, it was cold wet and miserable and I had no intention of intensifying any of those adjectives!)  I was also trying to bring a large umbrella under control at the same time during a struggle of wills between a brisk wind and the hand that was not holding the camera, well, the phone.  One day, I will take a picture of the waves of which I will be proud.  In the same way that on another ‘one day’ I will take a decent photo of the firework displays that we have on the beach.  One day.  But not one day today.

This week is going to be a short week for Toni as he has Thursday and Friday ‘off’.  These two days link to the weekend to make a four-day holiday Puente (bridge) to be enjoyed.  What this means in effect is that for four days all the menus in all the restaurants in Castelldefels will be at Fiesta & Fin de Semana prices, that are substantially higher than for an ordinary weekday.

Today is All Souls Eve and there is, I am glad to say, a selection of traditional food that should be eaten on All Souls or All Saints Day, or on any period of time near enough to qualify.  We have been invited to Terrassa to eat our fill of chestnuts, sweet potato and small marzipan cakes or panellets.  Over the past week or so there has been a chestnut seller in the centre of town doing a brisk trade.  Although we haven’t bought any of them, the rich smell as you pass the brazier is available for free! 

For kids of my age (!) roast chestnuts bring back memories of Johnny Morris (born in Newport in Wales!) in black and white on the BBC!

I have also, apropos of nothing that I have written above, been listening to part of my birthday present: a nine-disc set of the operas of Janacek in preparation for a performance of Katya Kabanova next month – which starts, of course, tomorrow!  Time is, as always, speeding up.

I did not listen to Katya first as my favourite opera by Janacek is The Makropulos Case.  This is the opera, as I never tire telling people, I have seen the most in live performance.  Given the number of years that I have been going to the opera you would have thought that by now one of the biggies in the opera world like Tosca, or Madame Butterfly would have overtaken my viewings of what is, still, a fairly obscure opera.  But no, it remains paramount in my experience thanks mostly to WNO’s trailblazing 1978 performances with Elizabeth Soderstrom singing Emilia Marty, conducted by Richard Armstrong, directed by David Pountney, with designs by Maria Björnson – a production I saw wherever WNO played it.  And, over the years I have augmented these initial viewings with others when I could get to them!  I am still waiting for a production of Makropulos by the Liceu, but Katya will do in the meantime!

And talking of that performance, it is astonishing what you do not see if you either don’t want to see it or have assumed something other than the reality that is printed in black and white in front of you.

I have a season ticket for the opera in the Liceu and, with the addition of an odd ballet and recital, I get to see all the major opera productions of the season.  Or, at least that was what I thought, and my request for the CDs (ah, I am a traditionalist at heart and I like to have ‘hard’ copy as it were) was to bring myself up to speed with the music so that I could fully relish the performance.  And then I realized that a ticket for this performance was not included in my package!  How could I have missed this?  I am sent an individualised calendar giving me the dates for all of the performances during the season.  And Katya was not among them!  There was a moment of panic before reality reasserted itself and I reasoned that Janacek is still not given the credit that he deserves in pushing the limits of opera and that selling the seats would always be a problem.  And sure enough, when I phoned the box office, I was able to get ‘my’ usual seat (row 10 on the aisle) for a performance on the 20^th of next month.

So, apart from a single nasty moment, the situation has now been rectified (by the injection of cash) and I will be able to see the opera.  But the ‘oversight’ did make me think.  This was one of the operas that I was looking forward to seeing and still I managed not to pick up on the fact that it was not part of the package.  Admittedly my season ticket is automatically renewed unless I stop it, so I do not have to search through the Byzantine complexity of what package is right for me, but still, I saw the list of operas and Katya was not on it.  How? 

And it really does make one think about what else one has assumed to be that is simply not.  The good thing about that thought however is that obliviousness dampens fear.  I will not know what it is that I have not know about until I find that I do not know.  So to speak.  Perhaps I am just one of those people who assume that something or other will happen to make me question something in just enough time to ensure that disaster does not strike.  Well, that is my ‘saving lie’ and I am sticking to it!

And, by the way, the sun has just come out!