3 days in 1

 

SUNDAY 1^st October

 

Five years ago, to the day, we were in our local medical centre.  Not for any treatment, but rather for Toni to be able to cast his vote in the referendum about Catalan independence.  On that day, we made our way through crowds of people flocking around the doors of the medical centre and spilling onto the closed road in front.  We walked past police who were there, but not doing anything positive or negative, merely being there.

     The mood inside the centre was fairly febrile with the volunteers staffing the voting stations constantly looking around to see if the police were going to do anything more proactive.  The plastic, translucent, ballot boxes were guarded like precious jewels and were able to be whisked away at a moment’s notice if it seemed like they were in danger of being impounded by agents of the Spanish government.

     News about other polling stations filtered in throughout the day, where the peacefulness of our experience was not matched by the police violence and thuggery that took place in the name of Spanish democracy!

     The scenes of police aggression against people peacefully trying to cast a vote was shocking, and as more stories began to be told about the day, the anger was palpable.  The gleefully heavy-handed ‘policing’ ordered by the conservative PP (the most corrupt political party in western Europe) government in Spain, did irreparable harm to the reputation of the government and the country.  And the extended victimization of the leaders who took part by use of a highly questionable judicial procedure and blatantly partisan judges did nothing to repair the damage.

     North of the Pyrenees the ‘legal’ ‘justification’ for the prosecution and later condemnation of the leaders of the referendum and their consequent imprisonment was treated with astonished contempt, and all other European countries rejected the shaming demands by the Spanish Government for extradition of the self-exiled leaders of the referendum movement, political and social.

     In the five years since the referendum was held, where an overwhelming majority voted in favour of independence, most people would say that the political situation has worsened, and not just as far as the question of independence for Catalonia is concerned.

     The influence of Vox, the far-right party, has grown and there are areas of Spain where the far-right is in government, working with PP to ensure a right-wing majority, or with Vox forming the largest party in its own right.

     Of course, in Catalonia, PP and Vox are treated with the disgusted contempt that they so richly deserve, with their parliamentary representation being so small that they do not even have the numbers to form their own grouping within the Catalan parliament – but nationally, it does look as though the PP with the help of fascist scum like Vox and an equally contemptible right-wing party, the C’s, could have a majority in the next general election for the national parliament and oust the so-called “Socialists” that are in power at the moment.

     Although Catalonia does have a majority of independence representatives in the Catalan Parliament, the politicos have not declared independence and have worked with the national government to get the referendum leaders out of jail and have decided to proceed via negotiation rather than via confrontation.  Which sounds reasonable enough, until you start looking at the history of the conflicts between central government in Madrid and the government and people of Catalonia.

     The question of whether there is a majority in favour of independence in Catalonia is moot.  In Catalan parliamentary terms, the majority is clear; in terms of the general population of Catalonia, the figures are ambiguous.  To which the response might well be, “Then put the question to a vote!”  A vote that would be accepted by all sides in the argument.

     You have to understand that the “Unity of Spain” is a concept that is written into the Constitution, and some have suggested that any vote for independence by Catalonia would have to be open to the whole of the population of Spain!

     When I was seven or eight years old, my parents brought me to Spain from Cardiff, for my first foreign holiday, to Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava in Catalonia.  Dad took me to the building site that was the Sagrada Familia and explained to me what the church represented and said, “Catalonia is not Spain!” 

     It is perhaps significant that behind the Civic Buildings in the centre of Cardiff there is a memorial to the Welshmen who fought and died in The Spanish Civil War https://historypoints.org/index.php?page=spanish-civil-war-memorial-cardiff and some of those names are from the area where my father grew up, he would have known the families and, although too young to have fought in the Spanish Civil War, he was of an age to be a member of the armed forces in the Second World War.  The modern story of Spain and its fight against fascism, and especially the heroic struggle of the Republican forces centred in Barcelona against Franco was a story with personal links.  The miners of South Wales were stalwart supporters of the Republic, as were many other workers and intellectuals.  There is a residual affection for the national ambitions of Catalonia and a rejection of the subterfuge that has been used to belittle the valid arguments for statehood.

     But, as always, politics is the art of the possible, and in the complex games that politicians play, the simple questions become enmeshed in the rococo frills of self-interested definitions, so that impetus is lost.

     Catalan politicians make clear statements calling for independence, but their actions are more nuanced and ambiguous – but the rancour of unfinished business is likely to sour Catalan politics for some time to come.

 

 

MONDAY 2^nd October

 

There seems to be a direct correlation between my buying an uninteresting piece of domestic hardware via the Internet and then finding a cheaper version on sale in Aldi or Lidl almost immediately afterwards.  This has happened too often for it to be a mere coincidence, and I begin to suspect a major conspiracy.

     Everyone 'knows' that one’s computer and mobile phone listen to us via voice and keystrokes.  How many times have we volubly prevaricated about cutting the grass or painting the bathroom ceiling with proper anti-mould paint, to find adverts for mowers, strimmers, paint brushes, paint, and those little trays for use with rollers suddenly making their way into the feeds for computer and phone?  And bafflingly, if you do succumb to the purchase of a lawn mower or strimmer, you are assailed by further adverts urging you to buy another one!  What sort of palatial establishments do Amazon, and their devilish associates think we live in, where a single mower is wildly inadequate for our vast lawns?  Why waste computing power on repeat adverts when the product has already been bought?  Such things are beyond the imagining of we mere consumers – perhaps Amazon has a computer-generated list of the things and the number of those things that we are supposed to possess according to their relentlessly capitalistic algorithms, and we are kicking against the weight of untold exabytes of computing power that tell the company what we should have, irrespective of how we mere flesh-carriers think our possessions should be ordered!

     I am sure that there is a sci-fi short story there somewhere - if it hasn’t already been written.

 

TUESDAY  3^rd October

 

Today is the opening performance in the new Opera Season in the Liceu – at least it is the opening concert in Torn A – the subscription series that I have – though I don’t think that this is the First Night.

     The walk from the car park on the Ramblas to the Liceu is getting more and more onerous for me, as I hobble along with my baston and pausing to look into the windows of shops full of tourist crap, as a way of spacing out the effort to get me there.

     I always dress down for the Opera, which is to say that I wear what I always wear, shorts and a t-shirt, unless the weather is really cool, in which case I make the concession to dressiness and sport a pair of jeans.  The weather at this stage of October is still fairly warm, and I type this with the doors to the balcony open to give a cooling breeze!

     The opera is Don Pasquale by Donizetti and, as usual, I have had recourse to my Amanda Holden edited copy of The Penguin Opera Guide to give me an edge as the absurdities of the piece, but it is a masterpiece of opera buffa, and a convincingly realistic narrative is not something that we should expect!

     And, at the end of the week, another (the second) of my Saturday afternoon (early evening) concerts in La Palau. 

     Culture reigns!

Present sounds: past emotion

I am now firmly plugged back into BBC Radio.  Like The Guardian, I can only do without it for the length of a short summer holiday.  No longer.

It is odd to consider that the whole concept of ‘going on holiday’ has changed utterly in my lifetime.

My first foreign holiday at the age of 7, was with my mother and father and my uncle and aunt.  We went by bus, train, train, boat, train, coach, train, train, coach, coach (taking well over a day) to Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava in Catalonia.  I loved it.  I spent the majority of my time in the sea, trying out my new swimming mask and losing one of my new flippers.  I ate my first squid. 

And I realise that as a well-behaved and utterly polite child with four grateful adults, I must have been spoiled rotten!  Perhaps that holiday more than anything, ingrained in me a love of sunshine that has lasted up to today – though ‘today’ is not the best advert for Catalonia as it has been raining solidly for the last two days!  That is, to be fair, unusual.

We spent 15 days on holiday and during that time we didn’t have any British newspapers, we didn’t phone home, we didn’t watch television – except for me to see, with wonder, Bonanza in Spanish, that I found endlessly funny!  We were, in effect, cut off from home – and thoroughly enjoyed it.

When I was old enough to go on holiday by myself, then all my parents expected was the odd postcard letting the know that I was still alive at that point in my vacation.  My only attempts to phone home were total disasters that ended up in my feeding public phone boxes with money for no link to Cardiff. 

Three weeks going down the Greek Islands from Athens to Crete and staying in what could euphemistically be called ‘basic’ accommodation; five weeks travelling across the United States; a couple of weeks in Italy – none of these had me phoning home, nor reading a newspaper, nor listening to the BBC. 

My holiday effectively erected a cordon sanitaire around my previous life that was only broken through when I came back to Heathrow, or Luton, or Paddington and made the phone call home.  While the ring tone sounded I mentally wiped out all my family and waited, with a concern that I had not (oddly) felt for the previous weeks of the holiday, for my mother or father to answer.  And then my first question was inevitably how my other parent was!

My next task was to catch up on the world news that sunbathing or scouring galleries or swimming had allowed to pass me by.  And, as I did so, each day would bring in the post cards that I had posted weeks before!

Nowadays, thanks to the mobile phone, kids are never beyond their parents.  Pictures can be sent immediately.  Keeping in touch costs nothing, no matter where you are in the world.  News is a click away.  Google Translate is there for those tricky moments that used to be solved by a combination of mime and use of any foreign words you might have known said in an accent appropriate to the country in which you were stuck!

It is deeply ironic that “getting away from it all” usually involves sharing with everyone you know exactly where you are and exactly what you are doing moment by moment!

Young (and indeed the old) are all linked in to modes of instant communication that will make the 3 week hiatus of my first backpacking Greek holiday as a situation akin to travelling with maps that had areas marked “Here there be dragons” on them.  Communication is good, but sometimes-enforced separation is good for the soul!

These thoughts came to me when listening to my new Internet radio, a Sangean SIR-100 (that looks suspiciously, exactly like a Roberts Stream 107 that it is replacing) and, having worked out how to use the pre-sets enjoying the morning music programme on Radio 3.  They played the second movement of Dvorak’s New World Symphony with The Tune.  Beautiful.  Hackneyed?  Well, it is very well known and the sort of thing that Classic FM plays at least twice a day – but I wondered when the last time I had heard it was, and then, by progression on to the first time I heard it.

Music for me carries a personal history.  I can still remember the LP covers of the Music for Pleasure and Classics for Pleasure 

budget LP manufacturers when records could be bought for ten bob (10/- or 50p) and I was getting to know the Classical Canon.  Some music I recorded, Beethoven’s 1^st and 8^th Symphonies on cassette in my (ground breaking at the time) Philips portable cassette recorder.  Hearing the music takes me back to my bedroom in 32, Hatherleigh Road in Cardiff where they were first recorded and listened to, amazed at what sort of sound could be got out of such a small loudspeaker and even more amazed when played through my Boots Stereo Record Player.  But the tape hiss and the slightly cramped sound still stays with me.

Mahler’s 4^th is bottles; Nielsen’s Helios Overture is corn fields; Beethoven’s 5^th is a Constable painting; Immortal Melodies is a large flower bloom; Sibelius’ 1^st is broken snow mounds; Britten is Aldeborough; the 1812 is that graphic cannon – and so I could go on, remembering the cover art of my LP collection (now long gone in favour of CDs) but forever imprinted on my mind, and having some sort of intangible effect on the way that I heard the music and continue to hear it.

Place is also important.  The quickest way to learn new music is to play it.  As an inept trombone playing member of Cardiff Youth Orchestras as well as a member of a various Brass Groups and the School Orchestra I ‘learned’ a lot of music by being there.  I have to admit that in most orchestral pieces the trombones are usually tacet (i.e. being silent) and much of our time is taken up with counting bars (or asking the members of the orchestra in front who play more to give us a nod when ‘figure E’ has been reached in the score) and then lurching into action hoping that the embouchure was still good enough to get most of the notes!  But you did learn music and appreciate the structure of orchestral sound.

For trombone players the best pieces of music (or the most threatening) were when We Had the Tune.  The overture to Tannhäuser is an excellent example where the trombones come into their all, though the first time we played through this piece the awful realization that we were the only ones playing in the orchestra brought us all to an abrupt embarrassed silence!  I still get a little rush of combined panic and pleasure each time I hear the music!

All music, no matter how hackneyed it might appear to be, is new and original to somebody who has never heard it.  I was played the 4^th movement of Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony by my piano teacher in the days when it was still thought that I might be able to do more than the first few bars of Für Elise on the damn thing.  I was much taken by the music and bought a cheap LP of the symphony and when I listened to it, I was stunned by the second movement: simple repetitive and magical!  I was not at all surprised to discover that this movement was given an encore on its first performance!  My listening to the symphony is always in some ways bound up in my abortive attempt to master the piano, together with the patience and feel of the piano in my music teachers dining room in a house exactly like my own home but made so different by the decoration and the smell and feel.

There are also parts of well-known musical pieces that have associations.  The BBC National Orchestra of Wales has given me many and varied delights and I used to go to the concert series in St David’s Hall when I lived in Cardiff where some of the performances were among the best I have ever been to of the pieces played.  The orchestra that one hears today is a development from other variations on a National Orchestra that have been tried in the past.  I can remember as a school boy going to performances in the Assembly Rooms of the City Hall, other performances in Broadcasting House in Llandaff and yet others in the Coal Exchange in Mount Stuart Square.

One early performance stands out.  It was of Beethoven’s 3^rd The Eroica and the part that particularly stays with me is the horn’s solo.  The symphony was taken at a lively pace until the entry of the horns when everything slowed down for them to try and get the notes, then the music returned al tempo for the rest of the orchestra.  I still can remember my exquisite embarrassment for the horn section and my relief when such an exposed passage was over.  I still feel some of the tension whenever I hear that particular section.  Still.

Lest this memory be the abiding one from this piece, I should mention a couple of performances of the Turangalîla Symphony by Olivier Messiaen that I heard in St David’s Hall.  These were played spectacularly well and left me literally open mouthed in astonishment and musing about how far the orchestra had come in terms of sheer technical accomplishment. 

And, after all, I have an abiding debt to the orchestra from the time when I went to a performance of The Firebird that I had never heard before.  I was sitting in the middle of the audience and when the fff chord introducing a piece was played the entire audience jerked back in their chairs.  That sort of thing spoils you for every other performance because not one of them, on record or live, has had the same effect!

But, as always, I live in hope!