Day 5 of Bike Riding.
At last an uneventful day with the chain staying firmly on
the cogs. The wind, however, was another
story. And it was against me all the way
there, even drawing water from my eyes.
There is nothing like discomfort to make you believe that you are really
doing something major. It allowed me to
ignore the pathetically small distance that I actually travel each day to get
to my swim. Small enough to be manageable
but long enough for me to feel that I have accomplished something when it is
done.
The
aquacise or whatever they call it when a group of aging people stand in the
pool and vaguely follow the gyrations of a raucous teacher shouting against
pounding music. A pair of earplugs and
head under water modifies the noise level and anyway, I am usually thinking
profound thoughts as I mindlessly make my way up and down. Well, not necessarily profound but deep, deep
as the pool. And as this is a modern
double shallow end pool and child friendly, you can tell exactly how probing
those thoughts are!
I am
reminded of my time in university when I used to go for a swim in the pool next
to Singleton Hospital every day. The
swim was a form of exercise and of relaxation too. I thought, I am always thinking, but the
level of thought was not quite so focussed, it became more wide-ranging and
less serious, almost like a waking dream.
Sometimes I take a single part of a thought and worry it like a bone and
let it go where it will. The great thing
about swimming is that if you don’t keep at least part of your mind on what you
are doing, you drown. So there is a dual
control thing going on which is so different from normal living that it can
little less than a form of escape. Or at
least that is what I tell myself.
Anyway, by the time all the half thoughts, the vague ideas, the
necessary exercise and little distractions of other human bodies have played
themselves to some sort of climax, it is time to end the swim. And it can all start again tomorrow!
Support Toni’s Blog
Lunch now has become a duty.
We only eat to add another restaurant to the growing number contained in
Toni’s Blog http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es/
this time going to a place that we haven’t been to for some time.
The décor
had been partially changed but the ambience of the place was just about the
same, or rather it was a bit lopsided as if they hadn’t really made a final
decision about how the almost revamped place should look.
The food
was fine with my main dish of wok fried chicken and vegetables being really
rather good. But look at the blog to see
what we ate.
I like the
idea of each eating out experience being captured and blogified. Over a year or so we should have a
substantial number of entries and have a bewilderingly luscious selection of
what Castelldefels can offer.
I wonder if
what Toni writes will develop more of a bite and be more destructive, or
constructively critical as time goes on.
This is still very early days for the site and so there are all sorts of
ways in which it can go.
The next book
Considering the actual ‘next’ book has not actually been
produced yet, to be planning one for 2016 is either an example of exceptional
forward planning, or a shining example of hope trumping reality.
However, I
have a working title, ‘Structured Sense’ and I have added the first poem to its
pages and I am already thinking about ideas for the few sequences that I think
I would like to include. One of my
favourite quotations concerns ‘vaulting ambition’ – though I have always
considered that it only applied to murdering Scottish pretenders than to my
good self.
‘Flesh Can
Be Bright’ continues to progress and, as far as I am concerned, my poems for
that book are done. I am now waiting on
the work of others – but I also have a plan B to cope with any and all failures
of contributions. Though I am quietly
confident that everything will work out in the end.
I am now
editing and redrafting and I reckon that will take me well up to May and then
final decisions will have to be taken about the final appearance of the
book. You would think that
self-publishing makes things a damn sight easier – and that self-delusion is
what I am working on. And I like the
ambiguity of that statement!
OU hysteria
Even when, or perhaps especially when, we are a separated
group of studiers, hysteria has a way of uniting us in one howling band of
paranoia. This is partly because the
next few weeks are ones of concentrated work production with two pieces of
tutor work having to be sent in.
We have
just had an on-line tutorial. I do not
know what some of my fellow students use as microphones, but some of them do
not seem to have the same quality of reproduction of a tin with a piece of
stretched string. One of them sounded as
though he was in a cardboard box surrounded by cotton wool. And people don’t read the instructions and
the information that they are given and, I am sounding like a teacher. So I will stop.
At least my
tutor seems not only sympathetic to my general choice of topic for my mini
thesis, but also sympathetic to my bending the rules a little to further my
ideas. This is positive. I will reserve my relief until I get back my
academic pro-forma and see exactly what comments my tutor makes for the next
stage.
I am lucky
in being able (in theory) to see both of my paintings in London. One, the Hockney, I will have check that it
will be on display when I am able to get to the Tate. I bloody well hope it is as I have built my
ideas around seeing it again as a central part of my thesis. The other painting is in a private collection
and the owner has, very kindly, invited me to view the paintings when I am in
London. This could all work out very
well, and I still have in mind the development of the ideas to link up with the
exhibition in Leeds. That would be a
major achievement. But that is for the
future. The immediate future is the
writing of an outline of what I think I might be able to do.
