Not quite my scene

Our evening meal was taken outside a bar in the centre of town just by the railway station.  Considering its central position, as Laura noted, it was airy and tranquil, with the pots of sturdy greenery giving an illusion of a stunted dell.  Perhaps Laura’s comment was a hostage to fortune as almost immediately a deranged looking man staggering along the street with a plastic beaker full of what looked like liquid mud, lurched up to the entrance of the bar and asked the Chinese waiter if he could have a fill up of water.

The good-natured waiter complied with the request and the man went on his way muttering to himself and spilling quantities of his evil looking concoction and lurched his way into the open square space in front of the station.

Then the dogs started barking.  And went on barking.  And then there were sounds of an altercation with raised voices above the threnody of yelps.

Like the aristos in ‘Dr Zhivago’ looking out at the protesters in the snow from their warm and secure privileged position behind falsely secure windows, we, in our leafy bower watched developments, while I sipped my end of meal cup of tea.

Sirens heralded the arrival of the first police car and as the ‘trouble’ veered towards the pedestrian underpass through to the station car

parks someone shouted out to the emerging policemen, “He’s got a knife.”  From behind the safety of a couple of pot plants, we felt the thrill of proximity to danger and were determined to make our post-prandial beverages last the distance!

More police cars arrived, their flashing lights giving not only a suitably lurid setting for the excitement, but also marking a similarity to the ‘festa major’ fair that had been established at the far end of the car park - I do like an element of the serendipitous in my evenings out!

An ambulance then arrived, shortly followed by a second.  And we settled in for a suitably gory finale to the evening’s entertainment.

As we were finishing our meal it had the temerity to start raining, not convincingly admittedly, but still water falling from on high in August!

This soon stopped, as indeed did the drama as, one by one the police cars and ambulances drove off with nary a corpse or villain in sight.

The rest of the family were frankly sceptical about my explanation of the whole event being part of a street happening as part of the ‘festa major’ of our town – though Toni’s sister did applaud me politely at the end of the little drama and congratulate me (because surely I had something to do with it?) for finding a way to pass the time to the next event on the horizon.

This was a free concert.   

Now I have been to a totally memorable free concert next to the beach here in Castelldefels that featured the student orchestra of the University of Southampton playing a spirited performance of Sibelius’s second symphony, this concert, however, was not like that.

The entertainment, that had started by the time we got there, was of a Catalan group who sang, very loudly, in Catalan.  There were no seats.  But I soon discovered a fringe group of the elderly and infirm and the opportunistic who had found a limited number of metal chairs from somewhere.  I soon found the somewhere and Carmen and I were soon part of the group.

The disadvantage of our position (seated, with the rest of the audience standing) did mean that our view was, to put it mildly, limited.  But the very professional light show that accompanied the singing, together with a liberal amount of stage smoke, did ensure that the lighting effects were clearly visible ell beyond the confines of the stage.

I did attempt to take some photographs, where my mobile phone (disconcertingly) recognized that I was taking pictures of a ‘musical event’!  How did it know?  [I really wanted to use an interrobang at the end of the last sentence, but I don’t know how to print one.]  The end results were patchy, but taking pictures at night at x5 zoom on a handheld phone, I am not sure what I expected to get!

A long (for me) walk back to the car, bidding ‘bye’ to our second set of visitors and bed.  I slept as though drugged and snoozed more on the beach this morning!

It’s a hard old life, but someone has to live it!

Tomorrow Barcelona, and the start of my serious research in the library of MNAC to find out more, much more about the life and times of Adam Elsheimer.

Questing continues!

Why are things, sometimes, so difficult!

Why is it so difficult to transfer music with iTunes from my Macbook Air to my mobile phone?  And that is a real question.  I have downloaded the programs that are supposed to help and all I have got is increasingly frustrated as the music stubbornly stays on the Mac and will not seamlessly transfer itself to my phone.

At which point, I know, some of you are going to ask, “Why are you trying to transfer music anyway?  Haven’t you heard of things like Spotify?”  Well, I have.  But I feel that there is something deeply unsatisfying about instant access to infinite music without some sort of effort.

This explains my love/hate relationship with the Internet.  There is nothing more satisfying that having an informational itch that can be satisfied by a few key clicks. 

I always forget the word for the technique of putting opposites together like “hot ice” in Romeo and Juliet, but I know that I can find it out by going on to Google.  Which I just did.  I first searched with “technical term for hot ice” and found a whole series of scientific, chemical references which, if I had not been writing this, I might have been tempted to delve into and spent god knows how much time getting further and further away from the original investigation! 

However, I added “Romeo and Juliet” to the search terms and got to a whole range of references.  Glancing through them I soon found the word “oxymoron” and didn’t even have to click on anything further to find it!

I had the whip of writing this to keep me on task, but the number of times that I have started off looking for something like, “When was Cervantes first translated into English?” and found myself, half an hour later looking at the latest finds from the ancient Antikythera wreck, and looking at the amazing “Mechanism” that was found that might well be the oldest computer in the . . .   You see what I mean! 

Fascinating stuff, but not what I was looking for.  [Though, if you haven’t heard of the wreck, you really should read about it.  The quality of stuff that has come from this sunken ship already is amazing, and the finds that might come to the surface next year promise wonders!  You can find more information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_wreck  Well worth reading.]

But to be realistic, you don't always diverge from your appointed task and find yourself reading about something as culturally uplifting as an old Greek wreck!  No, most of the time you discover that, for the last twenty minutes you have been going through a horror show of pictures that show "25 child stars who have not aged well" or "50 famous people you did not realize have died this year" or something similar and generally unedifying - but compulsive!

So, the excitement of the chase for knowledge has been made much easier.  The laborious use of the index in various encyclopedias and the frustrating page turning has gone.  But I seem to recall that my page searching days were just as frustrating, as my eye would inevitably fall on a tempting title and be drawn into seductive byways having nothing to do with the original search.

But the speed with which you can get through the ‘little’ things; correct the lapses of memory; check an irritating, questionable reference – for these the Internet is wonderful.  When I think of the amount of time that I have spent during my life in long, exhausting searches that could easily have been completed in a few seconds had I been able to move forward into the future and use the Internet I could weep!

But you can often only get so far putting your trust in the Internet.   

I have found that using the Internet in traditional specific research, certainly in the arts, encourages you by gains in the early stages.  You get the sense that you are making real progress and then something, sometimes something that you consider to be a minor obstacle, becomes immovable and whatever you do, the Internet does not seem to have the answers and you have to return to more traditional methods to get where you want to go.

As someone who is now outside the traditional university system, I do miss access to a decent University library and the library services that it provides.  Sometimes a thoughtful librarian can save you days of work!  

In my case, a couple of years ago, I was looking for an article in an Arts magazine published in the 1970s.  The Open University, with which I was then studying, had electronic copies of the magazine but not including the 1970s.  The ‘Night Librarian’ of the OU – a service of international librarians accessed via the OU website – found copies of the magazine for me in Milan and somewhere in Germany, but not in Barcelona. 

I sulked.   

I knew that I could go to the British Library, but that was a flight away from where I was.   

I sulked.   

It was only when I enquired about a book in the art gallery shop on Montjuic and the shop assistant casually asked if I had tried the library on the first floor that things became to happen for me.   

The library, whose existence I had not guessed at, was a positive treasure trove.  My magazine was there, and was photocopied for me; other books that I had hoped to read but had given up finding were there; suddenly, everything seemed possible!

Perhaps the mistake is mine.  I am in a foreign country and I have not exhausted the availability of institutions that might be of help to me.  But, sometimes you just have to admit that you have failed.

One piece of work that I was doing concerned the artists Álvaro Guevara and David Hockney. 

I was comparing Hockney’s A Bigger Splash with swimming paintings by Guevara.  I had seen one of Guevara’s paintings in an art book I owned, and I was able to find a colour reproduction on line from an auction catalogue, but I did not know where the original was. 

After much searching on line, I did see what I thought was the painting in a lifestyle magazine and I was eventually able to contact the owner who very kindly allowed me access to the paintings that he owned and I was able to complete my work. You can see the finished essay here:

http://independent.academia.edu/StephenRees

But one painting by Guevara (with a tempting title that paralled Hockney’s) I was never able to find.  I knew that it existed and had been exhibited, but beyond that, nothing.  I wrote, I telephoned, I searched, but I could find out nothing about the present whereabouts of the painting.  A dead end.  

Or a nagging lack that might, one day, prompt me to revisit what I didn't find the last time I tried!  

Something for the future!

As is getting to terms with Spotify if I persist in being unable to get music from one machine to another!

Too many new words!

This is my last weekend of freedom before my various courses start in earnest.  To be strictly accurate on has sort-of started and the other is lurking in the near future.  I have received all the books for one course and half the books of another.  Usually, of course, the receipt of printed material would encourage me to break out into my “Libros! Libros! Libros!” song (believe me the lyrics do not get much more sophisticated) which greets any package with pages, but my jolifications have been somewhat more muted for these offerings.

            The reason is that the two (count them) courses that I will be taking this academic year are both a belated attempt to improve my woeful Spanish.  This means hard work, rather than the usual voluptuous sinking into the printed word.  It means rote learning and forcing my memory to accept a whole new vocabulary.  Given that each new word in English (let alone Spanish) only lodges in my mind after the mental equivalent of using high explosives to make a space for the new information, I shudder to think about what my calcifying brain will have to do to accommodate and entire language!

            Still, the effort must be made, especially as my convincing display of verb-less fluency in the tongue of my adopted country makes most people who don’t speak Spanish think that complete proficiency is a mere nuance more in my efforts to become a consulting member of the Spanish Academy.  It would be somewhat satisfying to construct a sentence with all the grammatical parts in place rather than slurred in the Impressionistic approach to communication in a foreign tongue that I affect.

            The faux-fluency (see above) means that I am in the second level of classes for my course in Castelldefels, rather than where I deserve to be in the class of rank beginners.  This is all fin and dandy, but we had to complete an exercise on (gasp!) verbs, today, in the second lesson – and my woeful inadequacy was shown up in a series of tentative, rubbed out, unconvincingly rewritten, rubbed out again and then copied answers!

            My plea to the teacher to be instantly demoted to the class of the more comfortingly inarticulate was greeted with a blank refusal and an encouraging smile.  The way, seemingly, is now set for a true linguistic via dolorosa for my bleeding pilgrim feet to follow from now to next May.

            On the other hand this course is as cheap as chips, with the local council subsidising the cost of materials and tuition.  I cannot believe that the €50 that I have paid is for anything more than the first term, though even €150 for a year’s classes of two two-hour classes a week seems something of a bargain.

            Especially when you compare it with the other course that I am taking which is with the Open University – and which is well over ten times as much.  I am hoping that these two courses will run in something like tandem and get me to the level of A2 in Spanish by the summer of next year.

            The designation I am aiming for is not an arbitrary one.  A2 is the minimum standard necessary to apply for citizenship in Spain.

            Given the implications of Brexit and my determination, short of expulsion, not to give up my access to Mediterranean sunshine and free health care, I feel that I have to be pro-active about what might happen in just over two years time.

            I might add that I have absolutely no intention of giving up my British citizenship.  Whatsoever.  No matter what bunch of self-seeking, idiotic, self-serving, selfish bigots are actually governing (ha!) the country, it is mine own.  Like Prospero with Caliban, we are indissolubly linked.  But, on the practical side, once the UK is out of the EU (and I certainly do not trust any of the Conservatives past, present or future to look out for me and mine) I will have to shift for myself.  And one of those movements might be to apply for joint citizenship.

            The language is only half the challenge.  Another part of the examinations to become a Spanish citizen involves a test of knowledge of Spain, the Spanish People and Its Institutions.  Having just come back from an exhibition in the Museum Nacional d’Art de Catalunya of the work of Lluïsa Vidal – Pintora del Modernismo I do feel that that box is ticked.  It turns out, however, that the test will not only be on High Art, but also the so-called popular arts of pop singing, and probably even bull fighting!  I have to admit that, apart from the excellent group Mecano, I am not exactly ‘up’ with yoof culture in Spain.  I look forward to the “All You Need To Know About Spain” book for budding citizens!  I can’t wait to see what they say about Government and Justice, especially as both concepts are little more than farcical jokes at the moment in this politically benighted country!

            Just as with a range of Catalan artists that I have come to know and now can recognize and enjoy their art, so too I hope to find a whole new way of looking at this country as I make a determined effort to become au fait with its geography, history, religion (ugh!), politics (ha!), bull running (ugh!), architecture, film stars etc etc etc.

            I did take a look at some of the questions that applicants for British citizenship were asked and, if the Spanish equivalent is anything like those, then there is no way that I can feel jocose about my present knowledge being deep and wide enough to get me through!

            Last night I went again, after a lengthy absence, to the Barcelona Poetry Workshop.  It was, as it always is, a delight to be with people who do not sneer when you try and write poetry, and are respectful (or at least quiet!) when you recite it!

            The theme for the evening was poetry and paintings and I was encouraged enough to draft out some ideas based on my experience of the Rothko Room in the Tate Modern.  The poem and some ‘explanation’ is available at smrnewpoems.blogspot.com and is called, imaginatively enough, The Rothko Room, Tate Modern.

After I discovered that swimming with your mobile phone in the pocket of your bathing trunks was not a good idea and looked around for a replacement, I settled for something which was not (under any circumstances) an iPhone and would keep me quiet until I found something which would truly replace my Yota phone which, uniquely in my phone experience had two ‘faces’ with the back one being the equivalent of a Kindle!  Ideal for me.  Well, after one Yota phone stolen and the other drowned it seemed like the communicative gods of commerce were telling me to look elsewhere.  And look I did, until I fell under the spell of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7.

            This phone is, I imagine, a thing of beauty: big, blue, with screen to the edges, a pen to write with, waterproof (see above) and with a decent camera.  It was of course (I am after all Marion Rees’s son) eye-wateringly expensive – but, I thought to myself, soon the untold wealth of my State Pension is going to come tumbling into my grasping hands and, anyway, I do not smoke and therefore it is OK to splash (unfortunate word in the case of my phone) out.

            Unfortunately, although paid for, I do not have this exclusive piece of ostentatious materiality in my hot little hands.  Hands that could be hot because the one thing that people know about this phone is that the battery has a habit of bursting into flames when it is being recharged.

            That, of course, is a gross simplification.  There have been just under (?) 30 cases out of a million or so units manufactured that have malfunctioned, but that number is more than enough to create absolute chaos.

            The Note 7 was the flagship phone for Samsung; its release date was days before the new iPhone and it was backed by an intense advertising campaign.  Utter, complete disaster.

            I should imagine that the release of the Note 7 will be a key element in business schools around the world as part of the How-Not-To-Do-It class in the course.  It will be there with “New Coke” and “The Edsel” as horror stories to frighten neophyte businesspeople.

            The financial repercussions for Samsung were catastrophic with an unbelievable sum of money being wiped from the shares.

            As far as I can understand one battery manufacturer is at fault.  Perhaps.  The units sold in China are fine, the ones elsewhere might explode!  As part of the general hysteria I have read of a newspaper in Samsung’s home country suggesting that part of the problem has been used by the Americans to further their own company’s fortunes!

            My attempts to find out what exactly was going on after the release was abruptly cancelled and units started to be exchanged was frustrating.  Helplines were anything but, and I only got some sort of reasoned response by phoning a sister company in the UK and speaking to a very helpful young man who shared my exasperation as he had purchased the same phone for his parents and even he, working for the company, had been unable to get his hands on any.

            You might ask why I am still allowing people to hold my cash when they haven’t delivered the goods.  Well, that is difficult to answer, but the phone does look good (in pictures) and it does do what I want it to do and it is waterproof.  So I can wait a little longer rather than compromise.  Again.

            We in Spain have been given a date of the 7^th of October for the phones to appear.  I will wait and see.  And decide what to do on the 7^th.  But, it is very pretty, so . . .