Sunday start

A lazy day today, I didn’t get up until 8.15 am!  I decided to give swimming a miss and will compensate by having an extended bike ride on the way to and from getting lunch in the local chicken place.

     I’ve completed the quick Guardian crossword, though it was a little more taxing than usual and I am sometimes stuck by the brevity of the clues that give a slanted version of the necessary word’s definition, so I often get the word before I realize its link to the clue!  Still, it’s done and that gives the start of the day a sort of achievement to add to the impetus of filling time with something useful.  Not that I have to search around for things to do as each day ends with my only having completed a part of my ‘to do’ list.  At the moment, for example, Catalan homework is handing over me and this writing is, yet again, displacement activity to compensate for my not doing it!

     There is a whip to get me in line with the work that I need to do for Catalan, as the examination for this section of the course will take place on the 13^th of this month.  We have been given fair warning, have been told what sort of vocabulary is going to be tested and have been given direct and clear indications of what sort of writing we will need to complete.  With such clear directions it is perverse and churlish not to get stuck in to the work and start the process of learning.  But I haven’t yet got round to starting this.  In my notebook that is supposed to be for my ideas for poems, I often find myself writing encouraging or admonitory notes to myself about work that needs to be done.  This writing too is another way of my communicating with myself to get geared up to start the hard work of learning.

     I find learning new words difficult; I discover a new, often useful word in Catalan, look at it, try and memorize it, write it down a few times – and then it’s gone.  The amount of effort needed to set the words in my memory seems disproportionate and I therefore tend to enter my learning zone with negativity washing around my mind.  I try and reason with myself: I live in Catalonia, I am surrounded by the language, learning it is merely a matter of common courtesy as well as increasing my understanding and so on and so on – but whatever psychological boosts I give myself, the simple inability to retain new vocab. Is a settled fact.  This in turn means that the examination will be another depressing indication of inability as I stagger my illiterate way towards the end of the scholastic year!

     In my own language, however, I continue to thrive.  The latest work on the ‘recalcitrant’ poem is producing good results.  Even though I may not have written a single line of poetry, the ideas and some phrases are steadily coalescing and the structure is beginning to emerge from all my pencilled scribbles.  I know for past experience that the present discrete idea elements scattered throughout the pages that I have already written will, eventually come together into a (hopefully) coherent poem.  Even if it doesn’t, the process is one that is enjoyable if demanding!

 

Today is Saint David’s Day and I have hunted around (as I do each year) to find the little artificial daffodil (purchased in aid of the Marie Curie Foundation) to wear for my National Day.  And, each time I wear it, it focuses my attention on my nationality.  In my next book, The eloquence of broken things, there is a section that brings together poems I have written that consider my nationality and what it mean to me.  For a numerically small nation, identity is a constant preoccupation and with the swamping proximity of England and the overwhelming use of English as the language of Wales the relationship between Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom is a critical element in the national sense of identity.  Each St David’s Day has become an opportunity for me to indulge (and I think that is the right word) in a particular form of introspection that rarely affects me on other days of the year – which is significant in itself!

     Only once has anyone commented on my wearing of a daffodil on St David’s Day and I assume that it will go generally unnoticed today as well.  Though there is a slightly different dimension because daffodils are yellow. 

     Let me explain.  I wear a metal pin of a yellow ribbon to show my support for the Catalans who are still in prison or restricted in their public lives because of the Spanish justice system in the aftermath of the referendum for Catalan independence.  Putting the question of independence aside for a moment, I consider the jailing of so many Catalan politicians to be reprehensible and perhaps an indication of the politicisation of the Spanish justice system. 

     The reaction of the Spanish to the Catalans has sometimes been little short of paranoid, with some instances of the banning of the colour yellow e.g. football supporters wearing yellow t-shirts or scarves having to give up pieces of yellow clothing before they were allowed into the games!  So a yellow daffodil could be seen as a statement of support for the prisoners and Catalan independence.

     In my case as I am wearing it next to the yellow ribbon, obviously for aesthetic rather than political reasons, the link is more obvious!

The noise!

 

 

I am beginning to suspect that the lengthy and noisy ‘reformation’ of the house next door is being done solely to drive us to distraction and out!

     Houses here have tile floors throughout; the bathrooms are tiled and so are the stairs – this means that if a new occupier wants to renovate there is a quantity of loud banging to replace the coverings.  As we live in a conjoined house, and as those houses have a framework of concrete, all thwacks against one part of the structure is seamlessly transmitted to the adjoining houses giving a reproduction of the attacks that cannot be bettered by a Bose loudspeaker.  We have been living through a positive battlefield of noise for months!

     Today, apart from a few desultory hammer knocks almost for ‘old time’s sake’ the noise is now emanating from the front approach to the house where a walkway is being extended to cover the whole of the front ‘garden’.  Nothing really grows in our front gardens because of the overshadowing pine trees where lack of sunshine and a covering of pine needles ensures that the ground is vegetation free – apart from the needles.  The laying of footpath slabs is not in itself noisy, but the radio turned up full to accompany the labours of the workmen is.  I have retreated to the opposite side of the house and am typing in relative tranquillity.

     I am very well aware that typing such stuff is an open invitation to the Gods of Perversity to fill the silence with the hammering-by-proxy that has become so much an irritating part of our lives.  And, even as I type the low timpani roll of hammer thuds rings out from next door!

     There is always something to keep me grumbling!

The first responses to the pre-publication copies of The eloquence of broken things have started to trickle in and they are positive and encouraging.  What I need to do is think more about marketing and publicity, which I am sure can be just as intellectually satisfying when done properly as producing the writing in the first place!  But I am constantly beset by the signal disadvantages of writing in a foreign language in Catalonia and writing poetry too!  Niche in a niche!

     I will have to reach out more to the cultured ex-pats who might actually read what I’ve written!

Back again!

 

Old habits die hard.  Or at least they have a way of rising zombie-like from time lost in laziness or indifference.

This writing is a case in point.  I am using, not my newish laptop bought after extensive trawling through reviews and at least one expensive mistake, but my old trusted MacBook Air.  Although I have abjured the buying of new Apple machines after the shameless pricing of the latest iteration of the Apple Watch, I am ever drawn to my MacBook Air.  It is the only piece of computer technology which, even after the decade (or ‘century’ in computer age years) of use that it has given, it still looks the business and its svelte metallic appearance still makes it a little object of desire. 

I understand (horror of horrors!) that the Apple logo does not light up on the latest versions of the machine – that surely is a travesty!  I speak as someone who bought an entire music system (there are three words that you don’t often see together nowadays) because it met two of my basic requirements: it had to have lots of flashing lights and the cassette eject system had to open in slow motion.  The user may not see the illuminated logo, but other people do and they either feel a fellowship with the user that they can see, or they know themselves cast into the other darkness of lost souls with dead logos.  It may not add to the operating system but the light from the logo paradoxically puts others in the shadow.

Little things are important.  And they are not ‘little’ either.  The last time that an Apple Dealer saw my MacBook Air when I was trying to update the system, he described it as ‘Vintage’, as all machines over five years old are described!  That lustrum is the age of a Secondary School generation as it progresses from Year 7 to Year 11, and I suppose that kids in Year 11 looking back to their younger selves in Year 7 would wholeheartedly agree that anything that they liked and admired when fresh-faced first formers (forgive my own regression to out-dated nomenclature there) playing ancient games on their outmoded mobile phones in those far-off times!

But the look and the feel of the MacBook Air from 2010 still looks good, still makes other machines look clunky and somehow stodgy.  So, in spite of the fact that my (expensive, compact and powerful) Dell is within a hand’s reach, I am typing on the Mac.

And typing a blog entry.  I have been very remiss over keeping up my blog and it has become very much an Occasional Feast for me instead of the Daily Duty that it was at one time.  My self-protestations that I will produce a piece of writing every day, have been empty, and each day without writing makes it easier to add a further day to the dilatory approach.  But today, today I feel inspired to put finger to key and get back into the habit.

Why, you might ask.  The sad reason is that I have left my mobile phone upstairs and I am too lazy to go up and get it.  My morning schedule includes going the quick crossword in the Guardian and I usually complete that on my phone.  I can do the crossword on my iPad, but I have allowed the battery to run down and I have had to put it on charge.  I could, of course, use the very computer that I am typing on now to do the crossword, but doing the crossword on the computer smacks of slight perversity – so, it was either sitting down sipping tea and trying to look demure; going up stairs to get the phone, or setting-to and writing.

Today I had a lie-in and didn’t go for my usual early morning swim, so the opportunity to write in my notebook after my swim had been taken away.  Yes, I know that I can write in my notebook at any time, but I do it after my swim, so I hope that you begin to see that ‘circumstances’ have conspired to get me writing another entry for my long ignored blog, because ‘historically’ most of the entries for my blog have been written on the machine that I am using now, my Mac.

So, from the dark days of wordlessness, I lurch towards the light of articulacy and prose.

As someone who find the style of ‘Tristram Shandy’ eminently natural in its predilection for digression, I do not find it at all surprising that I have taken the best part of a couple of typed pages to say, “I’m writing a blog entry.”  And I now feel that I can get on with what might be appreciated as actual subject matter.

Since Christmas, indeed since a little before Christmas, we have been beset by noise.  Now, Catalonia is not a quiet place (although, paradoxically it is only the lingering sounds of the tail end of Toni’s cough that echo through the house at the moment) but we have had the cacophonous horror of the house next door being completely renovated.  As far as we can appreciate, this involves hitting all wall, floor and ceiling surfaces an infinite number of times with hammers.  As we live in a group of five conjoined houses, structural sound in one is seamlessly transferred to the others – and even more so if you live next door.  As far as I can tell, the workmen must have hit every square inch of the surface and each of those blows we feel.

One Sunday (sic) the noise was so intense that I couldn’t hear the radio in our living room.  I complained, but if the work needs to be done, what can I reasonably expect?  This is what you get when the skeleton of our houses is concrete; hit one part of the frame and it is shared with all!

This evening, Opera, Mozart’s last, La Clemenza di Tito – and not one that I know particularly well, but I am open to being enthused by the production, and of course the music!

When I go to the opera I take the opportunity in the interval to go to the Café de l’Opera in the Ramblas and scribble a few notes about the production with a view to writing a review in the blog.  I have again been rather remiss here too and my notes have remained notes.  Today, however, I will assume that tomorrow I write and post the review!

Talking of writing.   The production of my latest book, The eloquence of broken things[1], has been beset by problems.  The pdf of the book was used for the print but, for reasons that have not been discovered, a double series of printing errors made their way to the finished books.  The printer has not been able to explain how a good pdf copy produced faulty final product.  A reprint was necessary and I am more than pleased with the results.  But.  In reading through and admiring my and the printer’s handiwork, I noticed a typo in one of the first poems!  This could not be put down to the faulty printing; this was a proof reading error.  By the time I noticed it, it was too late to change anything.

I decided to make the best of a bad job and therefore wrote an insert ‘celebrating’ and explaining the error in a poetic mea culpa, tucked inside the front cover – each copy individually initialled to make it more official!

The poem is included here as part of the lead up to the publication of the collection.

 

Erratum

p.14,  l.2,  w.6
for hr read her

Within a Turkish rug’s

expensive symmetry

is woven an intentional false note –

because perfection’s the preserve of god,

and not of stumbling, imperfect Man.

But, isn’t there an arrogance

in saying, “Yes, of course there’s that –

but all the rest . . . !”  As if

parading of a self-made fault

limits additional faux pas?

It’s Baldrick’s bullet[2]. 

Logic?  False!

Yet it’s a way of life we all adopt

because we live inelegant reality,

not textbook-sharp, black-outlined clarity.

Mistakes and errors?  That’s who we are!

Come with the territory.

Flaws are the marbling of life.

We have to say.

Because it’s inescapable.

I’d read and read again

the poem that contains the fault,

and yet not seen the missing ‘e’

until the final print was done

and it was then too late to change.

The sticking-plaster-sized

erratum slip is grudgingly applied

accepting and bewailing

my falling short.

But, what are vowels in the scheme of things?

Thngs tht cn b thghtlssly gnrd –

and still the consonantal frame

allows a certain fluency. 

If there had only been a gap

the reader could have,

would have, filled it in

without a thought.

But these are cavils

trying hard to justify

imperfect sight.

I should regard the ‘humbling by slip’         

as something more akin to public sacrifice:

(expiation, celebration,

for inexact humanity)

than hoping that,

in spite of all the odds,

the misprint, all alone,

is by itslf.

---

[1] Rees, SM. (2020) The eloquence of broken things, Barcelona, Praetorius Books.

[2] Private S. Baldrick, Captain Blackadder’s idiot batman is caught inscribing his name on a bullet when in the trenches in 1917, his explanation is, “I thought if I owned the bullet with my name on it, I’d never get hit by it.”  Blackadder Goes Forth Series 4, Episode 1.  First broadcast 28^th September 1989, 9.30 pm on BBC1, written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton.

Cold and weight!

Today is cold.  Not British cold, but cold for us here in Catalonia.  And I begin to wonder if my medication (Clexane twice a day via injection for ‘thinning’ the blood) has anything to do with my heightened perception of temperature.  For the first time in my life, my feet are often cold when I go to bed.  I do realise that this is a fairly common occurrence for many people, but it hasn’t been for me.  The comparison between hot water bottles and me has often been made by those who are near and dear to me, so not to retain the calorific qualities of yesteryear (or indeed yestermonth) is something new to cope with.

Today, Sunday is weigh day, when the weekly ritual of standing on the cruel machine that gives our weight is duly noted.  Bear in mind that my diet is now a low fat and no salt one.  I eat chicken, turkey and fish.  I garnish the meat with pulses and green vegetables.  I do not drink alcohol.  I have one cup of tea a day.  I drink water.  I am, as is clear, a good boy.  And if I have a tendency to deviate from the strictness of my regime then I have a pair of eagle eyes watching me and articulating prohibitions before my backsliding becomes reality!  In other words, the weight should be slipping effortlessly from my frame.  Admittedly I am sedentary – not by choice, I might add.  But still 

So it was with a certain degree of light confidence that I stepped onto the scales and found that I had indeed lost weight.  600 measly grams!  A little more than a large bar of chocolate – a cruel comparison, and I can assure you that chocolate has gone the same way as the occasional small glass of red!

I tell myself that I must take comfort from the fact that the trend is still downwards.  I have lost 6 kilos in total and it is inevitable that weight loss will slow down after the initial confidence boosting loss of the first couple of weeks.  But, 600g!  The compensation is that we have never eaten so healthily in our lives – at least not over such an extended period.  Admittedly eight days of appropriate diet was enforced on me from being in hospital, but we have been fairly rigorous in our application of the suggestions for a suitable diet for my condition.

It is a sobering thought to think that I am still between 15 and 20 kilos away from what might be my ideal weight, so, if weight loss continues to slow down then I am looking at the best part of a year to get to the weight that matches my height.  In some ways, it is better to think of this ‘project’ as something as long term.  If I think of reaching my goal in February 2019, then that length of time will allow for the odd week when the trend is bucked, and, more importantly it will allow for placidity as the weight loss is thought of over the longer time span.

I have read through the working drafts of my first ‘Hospital’ poems for inclusion in the chapbook that I intend to publish about my experience, and I am reasonably satisfied with the progress I have made so far.  With any luck, I will work up my notes for another poem today into a working draft and begin to think in more detail about the form that the chapbook will take.  I am inclined to make this chapbook into a prose/poetry production, but I have not yet worked out the practicalities.

There is also the production of my next book, The eloquence of broken things, which is now severely delayed, and I have to admit that my hospitalisation and period of recuperation have not helped.  Its initial publication was for the autumn of last year, but that date has been put back through production problems.  But that is something that I am working on and I hope that the draft of the book will be ready for the printers in the next month or so!

Don’t forget you can read my previous poem drafts at:

http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es

Now, to work.

When in doubt, read poetry!

The Way Ahead?

The relentless wave of injustice and blatant lying continues in this country.  The next election is going to be crucial in the modern development of Spain.  I am no expert, but it seems to me that the democratic process has not been under such sustained threat since the fall of Franco.

            The present government is a total disgrace, that 20% of the population can still express an intention to vote for the bunch of self seeking contemptible liars is absolutely astonishing.

            With the rise of the C’s party, which to be seems like a crypto-PP excuse for a political organization, there is a very real threat that tactical voting and plain ignorance could lead to PP uniting with the C’s and forming another government!

            People should realise that a vote for the C’s is a vote for PP and continued corruption and denial of fundamental human rights.  Already PP has pushed through education reforms with NO other party’s support.  They have altered basic citizen rights on protest and organization with NO other party’s support.  They put politics, their own politics, before the law, the police, and the citizens of this country.  They are a continuing shame to anyone who supports concepts of justice, equality and fairness – and they should have resigned years ago! 

Let’s hope that Spain has the informed self-interest to get rid of them in the General Election.

Another tongue!

The first three poems in my Autumn Trees sequence have now been translated into Catalan and are printed ready to be ‘looked at’ by Catalan speaking members of the Poetry Group tomorrow.  This is an important step forward in making the idea in Flesh Can Be Bright a reality!

            The other parts of the project are slowly taking shape, though what I thought was a more than generous time scale, seems to be getting tighter by the day!  I have plans to deal with most permutations of what might finally occur, but I would be more than gratified to have everything work out as originally planned.

            There are a couple of poems on the go at the moment; one is largely worked out, but the ending is proving tricky.  The other is plodding along an is the sort of thing that will come together with concentrated effort as many of the creative bits have been done and it is ‘just’ a matter of putting it all together.

            Well, something should be done in the next couple of days and, tomorrow,  Wednesday is also the day of my Poetry Group and that is usually the opportunity to respond to a stimulating theme and start the germ of another idea.

            Things are going well as far as The Eloquence of Broken Things is concerned, which is scheduled to be published in October 2016.  The only dangerous thing is to give myself the luxury of thinking that it is well over a year away and there is time to do as much as I like!  This is where time melts away and everything is eventually done in a rush.  I do not intend to be caught out!

Reader’s Card

I have now been given an ‘extension’ to be British Library Reader’s Card.  This is slightly odd as the last time that I used my card must be over thirty years ago!  Still, rather like the OU system, with the British Library, if you are on the system once you tend to stay there until, presumably, you are “Destroyed by enemy bombing during the war” (which I once had for a book published in the 1960s not being delivered to my desk in the Old Reading Room!)

            I have visited the new British Library, but my visit in May will be the first time that I will have used it as a library.  I will have to be canny about its use as I will only be there for a few days and the number of books that you can order is limited.  I will have to use the rules of book ordering to its full if I am to get the full benefit. 

I am looking forward to the experience and am very impressed by the on line catalogue actually giving you how long the book will take to get to you! 

It will be interesting to see how this all works out in practice.

Browning

The continued and more hysterical the warnings about the dangers of sunbathing become, the more they are tucked securely away in the corner of the mind marked ‘non used on voyage’.

            I have always favoured my father’s skin colouring rather than my mother’s and tend to tan relatively easily.

            There was a time when I used to shed skin with the facility of a snake – the tell-tale itch on the back generally leading to sheets of skin peeling away leaving me looking like a piebald creature.  Those days seem to be over, though I think that it has more to do with a born-again approach to moisturising than anything else.

            I also think that the change of sun tan lotion might have something to do with it also.  The family cream was Boots own Cooltan which I chiefly remember as a white cream which stubbornly refused to be rubbed into the skin and being protected (by one’s mother, of course) was a lengthy tactile experience!  And it didn’t really work, as skin fell away in chunks – though one always regarded that as a prelude to brownness as once the outer layers were stripped away it revealed the eventual tan underneath.  Though as I recall it the skin was always white underneath and it was the brown skin which fell to earth!

            Ironically, the brownest I have ever been was after a holiday to Scandinavia, and more especially Finland!  No accounting for sunshine!

Parking

The epic restructuring of the leisure centre car park continues with a second (unused) entrance now being opened up with consequent access road being created to link this entrance with the main road.  So far, every thing that the workmen do seems to create several other ‘things’ that have to be done before the new and improved, all-concrete, electronic-access car park gets back to use for the paying members!

            I think that most of us have now accepted that, in effect, there is no car park and have adapted accordingly.  In my case, as long as it doesn’t rain.  I am sort-of enjoying biking it, but this will change a the first sign of dampness.  Or winter as it is sometimes known!

            I have not yet had the opportunity to cycle when the car park is open, so that testing time is still ahead.

            Sad to say, I am looking forward to having a drink with my friend Caroline.  The sadness is nothing to do with her, I am looking forward to catching up on her news as we have not seen each other for a time, but sad because part of my excitement of seeing her is that I will be meeting her in a bar on the beach and it will be dark when we end our talk and then, gasp! I will have the opportunity not only to use my new lights on the bike, but also the flashing LED lights set into a niche on the back of my helmet!

            As I do not intend to go on any roads to get home, but to stick entirely to the paseo, this might seem like something of illuminated over-kill, but it makes me happy!  And biking home after drinking (not too much you understand) is all the justification that you need!

Whitman

Now to hunt through my poetry books to find the extract from Leaves of Grass that we are going to discuss tomorrow.  This is the nearest that I get to homework, as I don’t look at the work that I have to do for the OU course in the same way!

Poetry calls!