To float at last!

 

Loath though I am to admit it, three weeks exile from the pool and ‘forced labour’ in the gym has had some sort of effect.

     Today was Liberation Day when the pool was finally reopened after the (extended) period of Maintenance work.  This grim period usually extends over a fortnight, and I can just about tolerate the regime of light-use machine work that I devise to fill up an hour of exercise.  But this year the work was over three weeks, and that extra week was almost unsupportable.

     With the liberal use of Kindle on my mobile phone for the bike and the walk, I am usually able to get through to the end of my stipulated period of torture and feel justified in my monthly payment which is specifically for Gym & Pool, so I am entitled to be there, in spite of my pointedly ignoring the gym for eleven-and-three-quarters months of the year.

     Yesterday I ritually knocked the dust from my shoes and vowed that my return to that particular circle of Hell would be no sooner than one long calendar year’s time, when the Maintenance work must begin again.

     Meanwhile, at 6.30 am this morning I was first into the water of the newly maintained pool and relaxed into the comfort of an adequately heated environment and started my swim/exercise that starts my usual day.

     And this is where what I have been doing for the past three weeks (apart from a few carless days) comes into its own.

     I start my ‘swim’ with physio approved exercises that when I first did them just after my knee operations made me yelp with pain.  Pain that was stonily ignored by the physio themselves (they were a moveable feast of considerate torturers) as they urged me to further exertions.  Now, using the cushion of the water’s hold, I can do the exercises with some ease, even the knee bends that at one time I thought would be impossible short of general anaesthetic!

     After about 30 minutes of stretches and bends and a couple of leg paddle lengths using floats, I start my swim proper with a push off from the end and crawl with my face submerged.  At one time I could do a length and a half with no real problem, but I have struggled to complete 20m of the pool in recent times.  So, it was with considerable surprise that I effort-fully managed to do a full length of the pool, which surely indicates that I have not been wasting my time during the pool closure.

     My swim was engagingly interrupted by other ‘regulars’ indicating by voice and air pumps their appreciation of the re-opened pool.  And, I should add, I do not mean to give a one-sided picture of the facilities of our city.  There are other pools that we could have used, quite apart from a chunk of the Med that runs along the southern edge of Castelldefels and an outdoor community pool for our houses.  But Our Pool is different, and to use other (lesser) pools (or seas) would be, somehow, verging on the treacherous.

     There are five lanes in our 25m pool, and, in theory, they can accommodate three people in each lane.  In practice, this is not true as the side lanes have steps leading into the water restricting the width, and more than two swimmers in those is uncomfortable.  Therefore, in total, the pool will work best with (at maximum) about 13 swimmers – if those swimmers are doing lengths and not socializing.

     It was, therefore, with some degree of horror that a mother and two young children arrived and entered MY lane.  If anyone needed a definition of sacrilegious, then there it was, in every splash.  I will reserve my wrath, unless this becomes an habitual invasion!

    

     Luckily by the time this invasion occurred I had reached the end of the swim part of my time and I was doing the final set of exercises, so I was able to complete my time at the opposite end of the pool, and propriety was observed.

     I am relying on the fact that this was the first day of the reopening of the pool and that the numbers generally tail off as we regulars soldier on.

 

Lunch today in the Pool’s restaurant, was preceded by a glass of Cava, a tradition that could (I mused) be extended to cover a glass before my swim each day. 

     A passing thought.  Though a tempting one!

 

 

Official Patience

 

Usually, when dealing with Spanish bureaucracy, the real pain starts when you are dealing with a person on the other side of the desk who asks you for a form, paper or document that you did not know that you had to have.  It turns out that this document (that you did not know that you had to have) is essential.  Is obviously essential.  Patently.  At least to the person sitting opposite you.  And their weary disbelief at your lack of appreciation for the missing piece of paper is palpable.  And nothing can or will be done until the paper is produced.

     Sometimes you have the document that is necessary, but you failed to bring a copy of that document and then things fall apart and the centre cannot hold and you have to depart and come back another day.  This actually happened to me.

     I hadn’t be asked to provide a copy of anything, so the demand for one came out of the blue somewhat.  And I reasoned that, if a copy was required then surely it would be simpler all round if the official opposite me made a copy on the photocopier that I could see in another part of the office. 

     So, I gently suggested, “Would it be possible for you to make a copy here?”

     “We are not a photocopy shop!”  I was told in disgust.

     I had to search around for a place to make a copy before I could return.

     Today, to be fair the major problem was not what happened in the office but how I got an appointment in the first place.

     To renew my residency document, I needed to make an appointment in the section of the police department specifically dealing with documentation for foreigners.  The appointments are made online and they are virtually impossible to get.  No matter how and when you try, you fail.  At first, you put the failure down to bad luck, but then after a couple of weeks of trying you begin to get just a little bit panicky because the expiry date on your card is getting closer.  But you’ve left plenty of time and so you try again, expanding the location of the offices that you can use.  And you fail.

     And your card expires and you are no further forward in getting an appointment.  Then your bank informs you that your residency card is no longer in date and that will effect your ability to have a working bank account!

     A desperate visit to the bank later and fears are partially assuaged by the dismissal by the teller of immanent rejection, assuring me that as long as I am making an effort to get it renewed there will be nothing to worry about.

     But I did worry and so decided to go to a lawyer or notary and pay if necessary.  The lawyers I spoke to were not encouraging, but one of them “had a friend” who might be able to help.  A phone call later and I was informed that an appointment could be provided at a cost of 100 euros.  For a supposedly free appointment.

     This “selling” of appointments is a recognized scandal, it was even featured on a television documentary a few days ago, and nothing is done.

     My 100-euro appointment was for the very precise time of 12.09 pm, a time I was to discover was more conceptual rather than related to temporal reality.  I arrived early, queued firstly in the wrong queue and was then redirected to another queue and had to pass through a metal detector, which I failed but was waved through by the young police officer and made my way down to the office that was going to deal with my application.

     My name was ticked off a list and I was given a numbered ticket which was some 30 numbers ahead of the number being dealt with.

     Despair gave way to the Kindle on my phone, and I was content. Apart from the fact that the person dealing with my case also seemed to be the fountain of documental wisdom and was consulted by all and sundry, my application was speedy.  And in spite of the traffic-filled roads on the way back, there were no real hold ups and as I may not have a new card yet, I do have a receipt that explains that one is on its way. 

     A result.  And we went for a menu del dia to celebrate!

 

Onwards, onwards!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is always the temptation with a new bit of technical kit, to expect it to do more than the previous versions of it that one might have possessed.  And there is the expectation too that one will have the technical ability to push the envelope of comfortable achievement just a little further with something that is bright and new.

     So with my new watch.  In spite of the fact that I need it merely to tell the time and to count the number of lengths that I do in the pool to ensure that I get to my daily target of 70 and therefore 1,500m , I always hope that I can get it to do more.

      My relationship with my mobile phone is one of restriction.  Not, you understand imposed by anyone outside, but by my own limitations in using the device.  I use my phone to read The Guardian and the various volumes on the Kindle app and do my Spanish lessons on the Duolingo app.  And that is basically it.  You stand virtually no chance whatsoever of getting me to respond to virtually any form of communication, unless I am actually handling the phone at the time of the message.  I almost invariably have my phone set to silent and so phone messages come and go without my noticing them.

     At one time and with a past version of my present smart phone, I did have, for a limited period some sort of link between the phone and my watch so that when a message or telephone call occurred, it sent some sort of message and/or a vibration to the watch that could (on a good day) alert me to the fact that someone somewhere had tried to make contact.  This brief period of being ‘linked-in’ did not last and I accepted that watch and phone were devices apart and never the twain should meet in any digital sense.

     With my ‘new’ watch – which I might also point out is now ‘so last iteration’ as the next model is already being reviewed in the more salaciously flagrant hi-tec publications in certain parts of the world – I feel, yet again, emboldened to try and get some sort of link-up so that I can deflect the opprobrium that comes my way when I fail to respond to emails, telephone calls, or any other form of electronic messaging.

     Although, in theory, a great fan of linked-up electronic devices, in reality I have always been a separates sort of guy, with each piece of gleaming expense existing in its own little branded bubble of usefulness, while never quite achieving the connectedness that has been the vain aim of justifying all the bits and pieces of historical computing that I have acquired through the years-

     But this time (he says yet again) this time will be different and, behold, there will be an efficiency of through device computing that will link everything in a professional and useful way.  Well, at least I have got Alexa to work on the phone.  Though, when, by way of experiment, I asked Alexa how she was (I was ever polite, even to the inanimate) her reply that she was feeling ‘windy’ as so many people had asked her about ‘farting’ – was something of a surprise, as was also her unsolicited offer of doing her ‘rapping on farting’ if I so desired!  I did not and turned her off.

     It says something for the way that people are using the pseudo AI of Alexa that a perfectly civil asking after health gets such a scatological response!  What sort of depraved ‘conversations’ with the poor woman have been taking place for an ingénue of AI rapport to be so abused?

     The watch has now beeped, not to obliterate the racier utterances of Alexa, but to tell me that some twisted chess grandmaster is prepared to play naked to show that he is not cheating. 

     With news like that one almost turns with relief to the political situation in the UK where the Conservative Party has gone ‘all out and obvious’ in pandering to its paymasters and is now openly boosting the wealth of the obscenely rich at the expense of the obscenely poor.  A sort of refreshing honesty from a party that has previously tried to dress up its class preferences with mealy mouthed platitudes to try and ensure that the poor people that they are fleecing to feed the rich will not notice the Tories’ real intentions.

     As my (UK taxed) pension is paid in pounds sterling and transferred to me here in Catalonia in euros, every fall in the value of the pound is not a momentary worry about how much spending money you are going to have on the next holiday, but is rather more ‘here and now’ in the worry stakes for someone who relies on the cash being sent over to pay for basic living costs.

     If you are concerned about the cost of living, you might ask, why buy a new watch, rather than use one of the many that you have in reserve?  Well, you’ve got me there.  But I might point out that you are questioning a man who went out and bought a couple of new shirts rather than ironing one of the many clean but creased ones he had waiting to be attended to.

     I am not sure, exactly, what that little anecdote is supposed to illustrate, but it does certainly point towards an attitude to money where reality is only accepted when it bites.  Hard.

     Now, off to the first concert in the new season!  Make music as the pounds falls!

No choice to choose

 As I am off to the Liceu this evening - admittedly for an evening of ballet rather than opera, but that is how the season tickets tumble – I will deny myself the mucky pleasure of pointing out the corrupt sleaze that the Conservatives and presently mired in, led by a craven and despicable apology for a leader 

 

T

who because of a ‘previous appointment’ cannot be in the commons to apologise or accept his knocks for his frankly appalling management of the Paterson Scandal. 

     I will instead, to keep my mind unscarred by justified vitriol, consider decluttering.

 

knees, operation, library, getting rid of books,

      

 

 

     With the present state of my knees, which are little more than flesh covered bags of various sized marbles, our present abode is almost perfectly unsuitable.  The house is spread over three floors with the ground floor containing only the garden and the entrance, while the living quarters start on the third floor.  There is no lift, and the stairs are unyielding and narrow.

     There is no bathroom on the first floor that contains the living room and the kitchen, so everything needs stairs.

     My study (or hollowed out space in clutter) is on the third floor and that also has no bathroom.  The result is, when you get where you want to be, you don’t move until you absolutely have to!

     If, and given the way the health service has been knocked for six by the pandemic that is a big ‘if’, anything by way of an operation was considered to try and get my knees back to something approaching normality – then my house would emphatically NOT be the place to consider recuperation.  This means that we now have to consider moving within the near future.

     This is a sobering and frightening proposition.

     Where I go, there also goes my library.  And libraries, unless you are totally wedded to Kindle, is not something easily transportable.  And my library is large.

     Were I to move taking only my Art books and catalogues then I would be moving more books than most people have in their houses.  And given that they are Art books, a damn sight heavier than the books most people have.  And Art books are but one small part of my holdings.

     In spite of what Toni says and believes, I have ‘rationalised’ by collection over the years.  I did manage to shed a depressingly large section of my library in Cardiff (books, I might add, that I still resent having got rid of) and over the years in Castelldefels I have donated masses of books to educational establishments (and I resent their absence even more) but, and this is a sad, but entirely understandable fact, I have replaced the Lost Volumes with new and essential books that I NEED.

     If I am realistic, I know that we are unlikely to find somewhere as commodious as our present place and that means that I will have to be bloody minded in cutting my holdings even further to the bone before we are able to move.

     Yes, I know that there are some books that moved with me from Cardiff that I have not looked at or even opened since they were unpacked, but I know that they are there and THAT is the important point.

     I also know that I can have the classics of English Literature (at least historical and out of copyright English Literature) stored electronically and I do have various books on my Kindle, but I also have the copies of the books in which I first read them.  And I am and remain a ‘paper purist’ – there is nothing like actually turning the pages and feeling the heft of a volume in your hand.

     Sooner, rather than later, reality is going to have to hit, and I am going to have to make some very hard choices.  But I am putting my faith in prevarication and the liberal application of embrocation to stave off the evil day.

     Long live the bound and printed word!