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Showing posts with label Musak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Musak. Show all posts

Sunday, August 26, 2018

Everything in its time


Resultado de imagen de changeable weather

A nondescript sort of a day. 
 
Rain first thing in the morning, then a day of sun shine dampened by lowering clouds – but not cold at all.  Yet another brightly dull day.  And I have real faith that tomorrow will be a true beach day.  I believe.

And the writing is flowing a little more freely.  After my morning swim (which lasted a little longer than usual) I found it easy to scribble out a few thoughts that might well make it into poems in some future time.

The day was not made any better by a bitterly disappointing lunch in one of our regular restaurants: a forgotten meal meant that two of us had finished before the gambas for the third had arrived.  The paella starter was tasteless and the orange at the end of the meal was stringy and lacking in sweetness.  Hey ho!  You win some and you lose some.

The plan for the rest of our guest’s stay includes a barbecue and a visit to the library of MNAC: we know how to make people feel welcome.

There is a distinct feeling of the end of the summer about Castelldefels at the moment.  Not only has the temperature dropped appreciably, but also kids appear to be just that little more hysterical as they realize that shades of the prison house are beginning to grow around the jaded holiday-heavy kids!  And the retired sense that the streets are soon going to be returned to their suzerainty as the neophyte organisms go back to their institutions.

Talking of institutions.  Christmas came to mind as I availed myself of the facilities in our local shopping centre.  As I was washing my hands, the unmistakable strains of a particularly repulsive Musak version of ‘The First Noel’ accompanied my ablutions.

Resultado de imagen de the first noel


It is the end of August, literally months away from the Festive Season – and a Christmas carol!

In the UK I grew used to ‘Back to School’ promotions in supermarkets almost as soon as the kids had broken up for the summer.  No, wait a bit, as a working teacher I never got used to the vulgar, uncaring reminder that work was waiting a mere six weeks in the future, but the sickening shock was deadened after repetition: the first twenty years were the worst.

This is not on a par with hearing the first cuckoo of spring - there is a sort of leaden inevitability of suffering the season-before-the season with the relentless commercialization of anything that can give capitalism a buck!  But Catalonia used to be (is?) different.  The shameless extension of special days into previous months that is a characteristic of Britain is not quite so prevalent in this country.  Or at least it used not to be. 
 
I do hope that those musical strains are not a prelude to a very long countdown to Christmas!