Football or Opera?

 

 

 

There is, of course, no reason that one could not enjoy both, and such people do exist.  But the generality of one audience does not usually have same enthusiasm for the experience of the other.

     Both Opera and Football (the Association sort and NOT the American version) both have drama galore; there are strong narratives to both; emotion runs high – and you can go on makings lists of similarities and make yourself sound like a harassed PR person trying to justify the submission to some sort of funding agency emphasising how wide ranging the attraction of the activity is to all sectors of society.

     I am not here to state that one is intrinsically better than the other, though I obviously have my prejudices, and the last time I paid for a ticket for football was ten years before the black snows. 

     In fact I can actually remember the tickets that I have bought: there was a Wales versus Yugoslavia match in Ninian Park – the team and the location shows just how long ago that was; another time when I was backpacking in Scandinavia I bought a ticket for a first division Finnish football match in the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki because I happened to be staying there as it doubled as a Youth Hostel – and if that was the First Division, then even to my untrained eye, I would hate to think what the lower leagues were like.  In more recent years (relatively) I bought a ticket for Catalonia versus China in the Camp Nou (before the reworking and rebuilding) Stadium – whereas with Opera, my tickets for the next season 2026-27, in the Liceu, have already been purchased.  So, if you follow the money, I come down very firmly on the Opera side of the equation.

      However, it is fairly easy to ignore Opera if you are not interested in it.  It is much more difficult to ignore football, considering that the Season for the game now appears to extend through 365 days a year, and its coverage on television, in the newspapers, and general advertising is omnipresent.  And I find it very difficult to ignore (as much as I want to) FIFA-Corrupt sickening experiences like the World Cup and the prostitution of FIFA to the whims of a corruptly indifferent American President.

     In our household the fortunes of Barça are of some import, and it is much easier to fall in line with the clear preference/prejudice and at least show the minimum of interest.  It also helps that Barça is, to put it mildly, a fairly successful club, so that one is supporting a usually winning team.  And supporting Barça also affords one the pleasure of having an Instant Enemy in the form of the much-hated Real Madrid.  As a person who knows little of football, I take my cues from the utterances of my partner and mouth, sometimes surprising, nuggets of ‘informed’ analysis about the game!  And however little I know about The Game, I now know more than I ever did before, and am therefore able to take more of an informed interest in watching the ball as it is kicked around the field.

     As with most things, apart from Conservatism and Jazz, the more you know, the greater your sympathy or at least interest and tolerance.

     For me, the more pressing debate is between Opera and Orchestral Concerts.  Again, following the money that I pay for tickets, you would have to say that my preference is for Opera as that is by far the more expensive pursuit of mine, but I know that if I had to make a decision about which mode to follow I would probably opt for the Orchestral Concerts.

     And one thing that Football and Orchestral Concerts have in common is that both last about 90 minutes – whereas things like Cricket and Opera can go on for what seems like for ever!

 

Telling Trivia

 

 

 

It’s the little things in life that keep you grounded.  Those objects, habits, sounds and tastes that are significant to you, and let you know the you, you think you are, is still the you that is.

     Grounded, yes.  But also, those little unimportant things can be a threat and a restraint if jolted from their accustomed places by being denied.

     Take, for example, the shower in the changing room of a swimming pool.  When I first started using the swimming pool that I go to for my early morning swim each day, the changing room was not very different from the changing room I used when, for one afternoon a week, I had to traipse from my school in Cardiff to the sports ground that we used - a long walk, or a short bus ride away. 

      We used The Harlequins Ground, as my secondary school was set in concrete and had no playing fields,  The Quins had been opened in 1892, it was one of the first multi-sport facilities in Cardiff, serving the residents of the eastern side of the city and situated on the northern side of the Newport Road, and to the south of the suburb of Roath.  This is where my school played Rugby in the winter, and Cricket in the summer.

     I have no fond memories of this place at all.  As a tall boy, I was placed in the second row in rugby at the age of eleven, and there I stayed for all of my time in the school – hating every game that I played.  The fact that my father was, in his day, an excellent rugby player and even played for the Possibles against the Probables for inclusion in the Welsh National Side, made my loathing of participation so much worse, and an on-going guilty secret.

     I’m not sure that I ever did enough during the games themselves to make a shower a justified ending to the torture, but just scrumming down was exhausting for me, and so a shower was at least relaxing and painless.

     The showers were communal and usually hot, so we didn’t have to experience the bracing denial of comfort via icy showers, that seemed to be an essential ingredient in all those public-school stories that were popular at the time.  And since my school, although a state secondary, had a timetabled session on a Saturday morning – we had pretentions in that direction!

     So, the showers of my youth and those of the pool here in Castelldefels were similar with the exception of the water flow.  In my youth you turned the shower on, waited for the water to get warm, showered, and then turned it off.  In Castelldefels the showers were time limited.  You pressed a button in, adjusted the water mixture and showered, while re-pressing the button as necessary to complete your ablutions.

     The trick in communal showers was choosing the shower with the longest water flow, as each of the showers had its own peculiarities.

     Given that I had an early swim, it usually meant that when I decided to leave the water, I would enter a generally empty changing room and therefore the choice of shower was mine to make.  I cannot remember now if it was the second from the left or the third from the right that was the ‘sweet spot’ of watery abundance, but I can still retexture my frustration if somebody else had got to ‘my’ shower before me.  And it took all of the calming power of my post-swim cup of tea to bring my anger level back to containability.

     The communal showers are long gone.  Our changing room underwent a radical make-over and it is hard to remember what the ur-changing rooms looked like.  Our little sauna (closed during the Covid outbreak) never really reopened and was lost in the reworking.  We had swish looking lockers installed, stylish lighting, new loos, and a series of individual cubicle shower stalls.

     In theory all of these stalls are identical, but they are not.  Because of the physical demands of the space, not all the stalls are of the same size and shape, though they look identical from the outside.  The shower heads are of the circular ‘rainfall’ type, the temperature of the water is centrally controlled, and the water flow is regulated by a push button.  There is a shower soap dispenser in each cubicle.

     After a period of research, trying a different stall each day, searching for the elusive ‘extra seconds’ of water from a single push, I settled on the third cubicle on the right (they are divided into two groups of five) and was content.

     It was with something of a shock that I turned into ‘my’ cubicle one day to find that a digital display thermometer had been added to the stem of the shower pipe just above the shower head.  From a slow start the temperature went upwards, changing colour as it did so, until it reached a satisfactory warmth and turned green – the thermometer read out, not the water.

     As I was the only one in the showers at the time, I checked the other stalls, and ‘my’ shower was the only one with a thermometer.

     I have since worked out some sort of reason for this.  People are paranoid about the temperature of water.  Not only of the showers, but also of the pool – and most of the time those who care about these things do not believe the ‘official’ temperature, which for the water is posted in daily reports on the stairs up to the pool.  There are also complaints about the warmth of the showers, and I think that the installation of a single thermometer was to give proof positive that the temperature was as was stated.

     Which is not to say that all the water flow, duration and temperature are the same in all of the cubicles.  Again, after a lengthy period of research I can report that the fifth cubicle on the left (the one nearest to the external pipes) is the one with the greatest flow of water and the highest temperature.  The time limit is not great, but I have developed the technique of showering with a fairly constant pressure applied on the button to ensure maximum coverage and comfort!

     And woe betide any user who dares to usurp my rights of proprietorship over it!  That is the sort of small thing that, usurped by somebody else, can ruin my day!

 

Art gets me every time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My un-birthday continues as my mind works reality into a progression of gifts (free swimming lane; excellent cup of tea in the café; delicious menu del dia; a glimpse of sunshine etc) as well as an actual gift, the catalogue from the National Gallery’s exhibition of Poussin and The Dance, which I have now read.  It always helps the process when so many of the pages are illustrations!

     I have a soft spot for Poussin, even though I often find his paintings repulsive in their Classical, static, theatricality.  He was the first painter that I studied in the History of Art section of my O Level Art.  The list of French painters we were asked to consider stretched from Poussin to Picasso – even though Picasso was Spanish, born in Málaga, Andalusia, in southern Spain (though Catalonia claims him, and Picasso himself said that his soul was Catalan) though I think that the course talked of French Painting rather than French painters, so with the amount of time he spent in France, and the importance of his early work being completed in France, they might have a claim as well.  I might add that all the painters were white and male – surely something that would not be tolerated today!

     The Catalogue of Poussin and The Dance is something that can be held in one hand and the essays which make up the academic content of the tome are very readable and approachable.

     As is usual for me, the art that I find the most engaging is the preparatory work of sketches.  There is one compositional sketch where you have to keep telling yourself that this artist was born in 1594 – because the sketch looks like something that could have been produced by an artist from one of the -isms of the early twentieth century!

     The catalogue ends with a concentration on A Dance to the Music of Time, which was painted in the 1630s, and is now in The Wallace Collection in London.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     If you have not been to The Wallace Collection, then you should go.  It is free, it’s in the centre of London and it has treasures – as well as an excellent café in the refashioned courtyard.  I always enjoy pointing out that The Wallace Collection and the building in which it is situated (Hertford House, Manchester Square) was given to the nation in an astonishing gesture of generosity by the FRENCH widow of Sir Richard Wallace in 1897.  

 

     

 

 

 

 Just remember that when the Brexiteer cretins start bad-mouthing our closest neighbours.

     Go to the Wallace Collection website at:

https://www.wallacecollection.org/art/collection/history-collection/

to get a flavour of what is FREE for you to visit in real life.

     I am conscious, as I urge others to go to see a collection, that I have not been to an art gallery for far too long.  Admittedly in this benighted country, national collections are not free to view, and I am sure that if many Conservatives had their way (as they did under the odious Heath) they would impose museum charges.  In my view FREE ENTRY TO NATIONAL COLLECTIONS is a right, there should be no restrictions for a person to view what is a distillation of their heritage.  To get a sense of the range of FREE entries to places of wonder that I greedily visited when I was resident in Wales, check out:

https://museum.wales/

     It is about time that I revisited MNAC in Barcelona which, even if it is not free, I do have a very reasonably priced season ticket, so I am never under the obligation of “having to see everything” when I go there to “get my money’s worth”!

     One thing that reading about Poussin has prompted me to do, is think about reading A Dance to the Music of Time sequence by Anthony Powell, in all its volumes.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have one or two of the novels lurking on my bookshelves, but I have never started it because I hadn’t collected the “full set” – a specious reason for literary inactivity, but one I think I will begin to remedy.

     If I can find the books in the grotesque disorder of my so-called library!  Whatever, it is always fun searching and I will probably end up reading something entirely different, having been seduced by the magic of long closed pages.

Sunshine after rain

No sooner had I started for my Catalan lesson on my trusty bike than the skies opened and lashing rain assaulted me.  I had to wait for the protection of a bridge before I could dismount and rootle around in my backpack for the bike rain trousers (there must be a single word for them, surely, that phrase is just so unwieldy – leggings perhaps) and go on my less damp in the nether regions way, conscious at the same time of the amount of static electricity I had to be generating from the swathes of waterproof nylon in which I was now encased.

     God alone know what impression I made as I eventually dripped my sodden, baggy way into the class – though one member of the group was delighted that she had finally seen me in a pair of long trousers, albeit of a strictly utilitarian persuasion!  I divested myself of various wet garments and eventually I was able to sit in remarkable dryness given the ferocity of the storm.

One of the reasons that I love this country is that, at the end of the class, I went out to ride home in blustery sunshine.  There is none of the spitefulness of the lingering rain syndrome so common in British weather.  In Catalonia it can be raining, misty, cloudy, cold, blowing a gale – but you can virtually guarantee some sunshine at some point in the day.  It is a rare occurrence indeed when the sun stays away for an entire twenty-four hours.  Delightfully rare!

The waterproofs (that’s the word!) were bought during my last visit to Wales and haven’t been used since I returned, so I will have to ensure that they are thoroughly dried before they are put away, because it might well me months before they are needed again and I do not want to withdraw a moldy garment from its packaging when occasion calls.  In the UK you can put them away in their damp state because they will be called into use far sooner than any mold could form!  Or at least, I like to think so, it makes me jocose when the weather here is not as equitable as I would wish it to be!

The fear of the upcoming examination in Catalan is developing.  One of the participants in the class asked for clarification of what exactly was going to be in the test (a much more comforting and less intimidating word) the week after next, no, at the end of next week I now realize.  We have done two pieces of writing (that have been corrected) that will be models for what we will have to complete in the test and we have been given pretty clear indications of what sort of vocab we will need to be conversant (exactly!) with.

In the description of my house that was one of the topics, I tried to explain that of the three stories that comprise the dwelling, the ground floor is taken up with the entry and the staircase, the living quarters start on the first floor with the living room/dining room and the kitchen.  The problems came in the way that I translated ‘living quarters’.  I went for a literal translation from English to Catalan “els quarts d’estar” which I suppose would be something like “quarters of being” – perhaps unsurprisingly this stumped the teacher who demanded to know what I meant.  My explanation ranged over three languages and was not easily resolved.  There is a Catalan phrase for “living room” which is “sala d’estar” – the ‘room of being’, so I think that my attempt is more than reasonable.  But it didn’t pass muster, and I was offered the complex alternative of “l’allotjament” or the much simpler “l’habitatge”.  The ore astute among you will have realized that my typing all of this is merely a device to try and fix the words in my mind so that they can be used to great effect in the examination.  Anything is worth a try, to get a foreign word to stay in my mind!

The other topic we had to complete was an email to a friend.  Given a free hand to write what we liked, I always tend to veer towards my own interests, so exhibitions in art galleries or operas in the Liceu tend to be my stock in trade for such pieces of writing.  I told my friend that I had been to an excellent exhibition in MNAC and I was then able to list the Catalan artists whose work was featured in this fabricated show.  Outside of Catalonia how many of the following artists would be known: Ramon Casas, Joaquim Mir, Joaquim Sunyer, Modest Urgell, Joan Brull, Ramon Alsina?  The Catalan artists with world recognition are probably Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró – and Picasso, of course.  Yes, I do know that he wasn’t Catalan, but Pablo himself said that he had the soul of a Catalan and so he is counted!

It is one of the delights of living near MNAC in Barcelona that I have been able to get to know a whole range of Catalan artists of whom I had never heard before I lived here.  All of the names above now mean something to me and I can link specific works of art to the names.  Of all of the artists that I have come to appreciate living in Catalonia and being able to see their paintings relatively easily, the artist whom I most admire is Ramon Casas – a draftsman and painter whose charcoal sketches of the good and the famous in Barcelona (his sketch of a young Picasso is constantly reproduced) are astonishing.  Yes, perhaps his art did not develop in a way that influenced world painting, but he remains a remarkable second or third order artist and one who deserves a wider audience for his work.

Not long after I first arrived in this country a local newspaper produced a whole series of books featuring Catalan artists, all of which I bought and which provided a firm foundation for me to begin to build my knowledge of a whole new school of art.

Always learning!