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.
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!
