It's all in the definition

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is much to be said to a Carrollian approach to life, that is, using the work of The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, in books like Alice Through the Looking-Glass, as a guide.

     I was thinking of one aspect in particular, the concept of the “un-birthday” that Humpty Dumpty explains in Chapter VI of Through the Looking-Glass.  You have only one “birthday” a year, but you have 354 “un-birthdays” in most normal, non-leap years.  Thinking about it, the idea of an “un-birthday” is more like something Pooh could have discussed with Piglet and Owl, rather than something out of the altogether darker pages of Carroll, but Carroll has the credit.

     Further thinking about it, I do have a (borrowed) copy of The Tau of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, where the Pooh books are mined to show how far the stories and the characters exemplify elements of Taoist religion, with Pooh himself of course being the prime example of someone or something that can just be!

     Far from being a mere frippery, this book is well worth reading.  Yes, it is witty and amusing, but it is also serious – and a gentle way into one of the world’s major religions.

     The “reading in” of meaning also reminds me of a book that I have treasured for some time, ever since I found a compelling Penguin paperback version in the sixties, The Annotated Alice with the texts by Lewis Carroll, academically (if indulgently, and nothing wrong with that) edited and footnoted by Martin Gardner – any book that prints foreign language versions of the Jabberwocky nonsense poem has got my vote! 

     And there is a lot to think about in what Carroll wrote.  The footnotes do not seem forced, and the wealth of information and thought prompted by discussion of the text can be demonstrated by the fact that Gardner’s book has been republished as More Annotated Alice and Annotated Alice – The Definitive Edition - I am only writing out their titles in a vain attempt to stop my purchasing them!

     So, “un-birthdays”.  These have been on my mind as my birthday was on United Nations Day and, for the second year running, the people with me to celebrate were limited by the pandemic.  To compensate, therefore, I have decided to have a week-long birthday with treats on each of the seven days!

     So far, apart from The Day itself, on other subsequent days I have, so far, had a lane to myself for my morning swim; a truly outstanding menu del dia; the arrival of the catalogue of the Surrealist exhibition in The Tate (ordered months ago); tomorrow a book on the French painter Poussin arrives, so my extended festivities are going well and look set to continue.

     I hope you enjoy your un-birthday days as well!

Here we go again!

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Back to school after the holidays!

That statement is both true and misleading. 

It’s true that I did go to ‘school’, or rather a place of education for those beyond the normal years of childhood - which is another way of saying that I am getting Spanish lessons in an Adult Education Centre, though it also appears to have near school age pupils too.  Confusingly.  However, there I go, which brings me to the misleading part.  My present day schooling is only twice a week for two hours - rather different from my previous experience as pupil or teacher!

I might add that the level of Spanish that I am supposed to be doing means that four hours a week is more than enough for my brain to take in.

In a direct proof of the existence of the ‘hand of god’ element in my life, I somehow managed to pass last year’s course and that ‘success’ was used as a direct threat-and-proof by my teacher, so I reluctantly signed on for the higher level course this year.

My horror has been compounded week-on week by the explosion of fiendish verb tenses to which we have been introduced and which stubbornly refuse to stay in my memory.  Of course, mere lack of knowledge does not stop my chattering away in class, ignoring the greying, haggard faces that have to make sense of my enthusiastic but ungrammatical exposition in Spanish!  But there will come a time when surface loquacity will have to pass an exam, a written exam, and smiling-faced gibbering in roughly approximate Spanish will not be enough - or even acceptable.

This year, I have therefore decided, will be the Year of the Verb (YOTV) [And you could read that acronym in Spanish as ‘I Television’, he typed irrelevantly] and I have therefore been vaguely busy in trying to rationalise my learning.

I purchased (and have very rarely used) a sort of book/bible called, imaginatively, “501 Spanish Verbs” that, unsurprisingly contains 501 Spanish Verbs fully conjugated!  Who would have thought!  But wait, that is not all.  There is much, much more - none of which you would find remotely interesting unless you are engaged in the study of the language.  If you are, then this book is indispensable.  Truly.

And it is going to be the key to my groping way towards Spanish verbal acceptability.  The idea is to photocopy part of the introduction that gives a clear and understandable guide to The Seven Simple Tenses and The Seven Not So Simple (Compound) Tenses with a Mood (Imperative) and use these pages as my Daily Readings.  In this way, I am fondly hoping that mere looking will allow the grammatical delights to seep their ways into my brain and become something that I can actually use with something approaching proficiency.

This introduction also tempts with a glimpse of the forbidden pleasures of The Future Subjunctive and the Future Perfect Subjunctive. It says, “The future subjunctive and the future perfect subjunctive exist in Spanish, but there are rarely used” and that is a good enough excuse to ignore them completely, even if I actually knew what they were!

All displaced persons keep referencing their distant homes, and all I want to be able to do is say, with confidence, in Spanish: “When I was living in Cardiff” or “When I used to play badminton in the Eastern Leisure Centre” or “Having been educated in Swansea University” or “I am thinking about taking another course in the Open University in the next few years” or simply “When I was younger” etc.  As well as dreaming about saying, in Spanish something like, “If I had known what it would have been like, I possibly might have” etc.  As it is at the moment, I attempt sophisticated verb tenses but end up sounding like a Tarzan figure whom choses random parts of a grammar primer and hopes for the best.  Which is something!

This morning’s lesson played to my strengths.  It started late, didn’t have any new grammar or vocabulary and all of it comprises various students speaking and responding!  The two hours sped by, and the most concerning element in the lesson was worrying about whether the battery pack on my electric bike would last for the homeward journey.

As it happens it did and the pack is now safely recharged and ready for insertion to get me to my swim tomorrow.

One thing that I note is that I used the term ‘worrying’ about whether the battery would last.  Basically, it doesn’t matter.  Without a working battery, my electric bike is, well, a bike.  It has seven gears and you pedal.  It’s a bike!  It works with sheer leg power.  But the electric bike is like the dishwasher.  I am tempted to let that last sentence stand alone and not give an explanation, rather in the Lewis Carroll “Why is a raven like a writing desk” (or vice versa) but that would be pointlessly cruel.

A number of times I have started the dishwasher and then found a cup or plate that should have been included.  Now, you have to stay with me here, as I did not discover that you could open up the dishwasher and insert something part way through the cycle.  And that knowledge was based on the very first dishwasher I owned where I assumed that breaking the cycle would not pose a problem, and flooded the kitchen!  I know that with water saving and eco-cycles the amount of water used is minimal, but that is not the point.  I would see the lone cup and think, “Damn!  If I had found that a few minutes earlier it could have gone in the wash and now it will just have to wait for the next load.”  What I didn’t think was, “Oh well, I’ll wash it in the sink and dry it with the tea towel.”

As a bike without a battery is still a bike, so a cup can be washed by hand rather than by a machine.

Then I started thinking of other statements that I know that I have made at some point or other whose link to reality is sometimes questionable:

“The hoover is not fully charged, I can’t clean.”

“I’m not going to the shops because it’s raining.”

“I didn't contact you because I mislaid my mobile phone."

"I am wearing this shirt because I do not have any others."

"I bought it because I needed it."

"We have nothing in the house to eat."

"You can never own too many tea spoons."

And I think I better stop there as perhaps I am giving too much away!

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