Put a spoke in it!

-->

 

Why do the spokes on the back wheel of my bike keep breaking?  In all my time of owning bikes in the past this has never happened, but with my new electric bike it happens all the time.

OK, the wheels on this bike are small and I am not, but I refuse to accept the depressing analysis that says that my avoirdupois is the reason for metal failure!  Taking the bike back (again) to the shop, the technician was mystified by the constant breakages.  I have to admit that the original spokes looked somewhat flimsy, but those have been replaced (at great cost) by much sturdier struts and so there is even less justification for breakage.

The shopkeeper did point out my foldylock (one of those jointed thingies that locks your bike to something immovable) and suggested that I might have hit its bulk against the spokes when locking the bike, but this is something that I have thought about too and make every effort to keep foldylock and strut apart.  So the mystery continues as does the outpouring of money.

But the money will have to be paid because I am now reliant on my bike.  This has nothing to do with a zest for exercise, but all to do with the fact that my bike is electric.  This is the sort of bike that I needed when I was growing up in Cardiff.  Living in the suburb of Rumney, going in to the centre of the city was a delight because you could coast your way down the long length of Rumney Hill.  But any delight was limited by the thought that to get home you would have to cycle up it or, following the eminently sensible philosophy of my dad’s “If it’s easier to push the bike than ride it: push it!” by pushing it.  The long slog either way of attacking the slope was waiting and depressing.  How might my early life have changed if all I had had to do was put the bike in first and the assist on five and peddle nonchalantly.

I do not want you to feel that I have succumbed to old age and smile vaguely at passing scenery as I press a button and whizz along.  No, my bike (electric though it is) uses the battery to ‘assist’.  The bike has seven gears and operates as a normal bike if you want it to.  The motor gives you five levels of assist to make the peddling easier.  To be absolutely truthful there is also a throttle which does give you a ‘free ride’ but I tend to use this feature to cross roads where the throttle will propel you forward without the need for clumsy peddling, especially if you are stationary and starting off in seventh gear!

So I am reasonably ‘good’ about the level of cheating that I use with my bike and even though I use the fifth level of assist to go up hills, I leave the bike in seventh gear which means that you still have to peddle to go where you want.

What owning the bike has meant more than anything is that I now use it more.  I am much more likely to go into town on various errands using the bike because not only is it easier to park when you get there, but you are able to enjoy the experience without too much effort.

You also have to bear in mind that I am not in Britain and I do not have to worry as much about rain and cold as I do here.  It is only in the last week or so that I have started wearing a jacket and I am still wearing shorts and sandals!  And as I am typing this, the setting sun is illuminating the tops of the pines and wispy cloud adds interest to an otherwise faultlessly blue sky.  So there is an incentive to get out and about - and to feel good about making the effort too!

My Spanish lessons (two hours, twice a week, subsidised by the city hall, god bless them) are in the centre of Castelldefels in an adult education centre whose immediate vicinity is devoid of free parking spaces.  Or at least the nearest free parking spaces are up a one-in-one hill and ‘officially’ too far away.  On the bike there is no problem as I can lock the thing up next to my classroom and within feet of the front door.  And since the classes started last month there has not been a single occasion where adverse weather conditions have encouraged me to use the car!  Not one!

My bike is also foldable.  Its construction is solid so, although various bits and pieces fold up and down and together it is hardly easy to manhandle into the boot of the car when it needs to go to be seen to, but it can and has been done and will be done again when in an hour or so I go to pick it up so that it will be available for me to go to my lesson tomorrow.  I wonder how much the guy who has repaired the spokes on three or four occasions will have the temerity to charge me?

This typing, as my more experienced readers will have guessed, is more displacement activity than literary endeavour.  I have the exercises 3B in both our textbooks to do on the use of the subjunctive in Spanish.  In one of my informative Spanish/English dictionaries in the middle ‘note’ section the explanation of the subjunctive and when to use it stretches from page 58 to 65 - and that is in note form!  What chance have I got!

Well, I’ve stopped typing, so I will now have to go and get the bike, then it will time for a cup of tea and a little light TV watching - and then copying from the back of the book!

Oh, I have drafted another poem called, 'The Victors' - it's about flies!  You can read it at:

http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/

 

When education is not enough

Today I rose in the dark, had a hurried shower and gulped down my essential cup of tea and then marched upstairs to my ‘study’ on the third floor.  I have to admit that this is not normal behaviour on my part.  My enthusiastic study dedication was a direct result of fear: a test. 

You would have thought that a life spent in education, lurching from exam to exam (either sitting or marking) would have meant that these, uninspiring experiences would have lost any ability to inspire anything other than boredom in me.  But this test was different – though only because it was part of my Spanish class in town, and for some reason I feel more, how shall I put it, exposed somehow.

It is true that I am struggling as each new tense fails to ‘take’ in my mind.  I have been wandering around chanting verb endings to myself like some demented cult monk and then, as soon as I am confronted by an actual piece of original writing in Spanish all verbs leak away and I am left with nouns and the odd adjective linked with inaccurate badly spelled illiteracy.  Or is that last part tautological?  Anyway, there are others there (we are all learning Spanish as a foreign language) who are much, much better than I am.  They find things easy that I find very difficult; they see simplicity in exercises where I only see fiendish evil.  I am, in other words, suffering what the more work shy pupils in the school on the hill used to go through when I took them through similar exercises in English!

The one good thing about my approach, however, to differentiate it from the attitude of so many of those I taught in Barcelona, is that I don’t cheat.  I find frustration, ignorance and inability all working against me, but I don’t cheat!  It remains to be seen if such an approach actually gets me sufficient credit to scrape through.  And I have to say that I will be quite satisfied with a bare pass.  However, humiliating that might be in comparison with a certain other gentleman who is taking examinations at the same time as I!

The actual horror of the test was slightly mitigated because there were a few 50/50 questions which at least allowed me the luxury of hoping that the informed monkey vote would work out to my advantage.  There were also a few ‘odd word out’ questions which were also a sure thing, but I am not sure that there was enough there to give me the marks that I need.

And ‘need’ is a key concept here.  The reason for learning Spanish is surely a no brainer!  Who would not want to be able to speak the language of the country in which he lives?  It is common courtesy and common sense.  And essential.

Given the lunacy of my fellow countrymen in their support of Brexit, I have had to rethink my position in Spain.  At the moment as a citizen of the EU my position is unassailable, but what happens when the trigger is finally pulled and the Brexit bullet goes careering into the British brain?

So far, the fall in the value of the pound has lowered by pension income by 20% at least, and that is likely to be much more when the dreaded Article 50 is finally invoked and we start the two years’ hard labour to break ourselves away actually begins – which I am sure will be a surprise to some die-hard Brexiteers who think we have actually left already and aren’t we doing well financially!  Then the real problems begin for me when I have to start thinking about my ‘rights’ in Spain when the real rights that I have at the moment will be taken away by the hard ‘right’ and ignorance.

Then there is the question of health care.  As a retired person, I am conscious that I am not getting any younger and that there is a likelihood that my medical needs will only grow with time and at the moment my needs are well met by the Spanish National Health Service of which I am a card-carrying member.  The fact that we Brits living in Spain are being used as a bargaining chip is not an encouraging element in my future planning!

So, the Master Plan is for me to apply for dual citizenship so that when the final break occurs I will be able to stay in Spain because I will have the rights of a native.

There are problems there however.  Two to be precise.  The first is that you have to have a level of proficiency in Spanish equivalent to A2 (a level where a working knowledge of the dreaded verbs is obligatory) and the second is you have to pass an examination to demonstrate your knowledge of Spanish culture, geography, politics and institutions.  A further problem is that I am not sure that Spain actually allows join Spanish/British citizenship, but stories are confused on this issue and I will go with the confusion until I am told it is impossible.

So, my efforts to learn the language have an added urgency.  It’s just a pity that this does not translate into information staying in my brain!  I will keep on keeping on and hope for the best – and use any other clichés that come to mind.

Meanwhile, I have bought and read (thank you Amazon) “The making of Donald Trump” by David Day Johnson (2016), First Melvin House, Brooklyn & London.  A thoroughly depressing read for lots of reasons.  It is obvious from what Johnson writes that there have been numerous occasions in the past when the murky behaviour of Trump should have landed him up in far more trouble that he appears to have got into.  The number of times when, if various legislative bodies and law enforcement agencies had done their job, it would have been highly unlikely that the present President of the United States would have made it to the White House.  Trumps unsavoury background and the appalling people with whom he has associated; his unscrupulous chiselling; his duplicity, where the truth does not seem to have any purchase on any part of what he might laughingly refer to as his system of morals and on and on. 

“The making of Donald Trump” is a compulsive read, though you have to keep reminding yourself that this is documentary and not grotesque fantasy.  The reality is emphasised in the last section of the book where there are detailed references, where the horrified reader can find documentary references to follow up any of the unlikely incidents, occurrences and statements made.

As a way of dealing with the awful reality of the political situation on both sides of the pond, I have discovered (and am desperately trying to lose) Nestles Strawberry Cheesecake Chocolate.  In an oversize bar.  I bought it because I could and then made the disastrous mistake of trying a bloated square of it.

By way of digression: have you ever seen a half-eaten dish of dry roast peanuts?  To which the usual answer is, no you haven’t.  My explanation was that, as part of the production process, the peanuts were lightly dusted with heroin.  I was always astonished by people’s reactions, which were mildly surprised, but not dismissive!  People actually believed that a commercial company would really do something like add a Grade A drug to nuts!  In fact, the easy acceptance of the drug addiction as an explanation for the taste and consumption, has made me wonder about it too!  I suppose this is the nearest that I get to experience what it must be like to be Trump: someone who believes his own alternative truth!

Anyway, back to Nestle.  One piece of that delectable sweet was enough to convince me that I would never buy another bar as long as I lived.  Something that delicious is dangerous!  I limited myself to one square a day, a restriction that (after the first day of splurge) I managed to keep to.  In a desperate attempt, yesterday, to make the thing last longer I sucked it instead of crunched it. That was a mistake, it is the immediate masticated combination that makes it what it is. I would only recommend this addictive chocolate to those of a stern and forbidding constitution who able to say no in spite of overwhelming compulsion!

And now to get ready to join my fellow poets for an evening in Barcelona to which a certain orangely self-regarding bigot is not invited!