With only the sound of passing
jets to break the tranquillity of a sleepy Sunday morning, it took more than
good intentions to get me on my (electric) bike to make the arduous journey to
the swimming pool – you have to understand that I count the bridge over the motorway
as an actual hill. But it is amazing
what sheer peer pressure will do to get you moving. One comment from Toni and I was out of my all-too-comfortable
chair and finding a fresh towel.
As it is a Sunday I eschewed my
normal route to the pool via the longer way, allowing me to cycle along the
paseo next to the sea and beach, as the bright sunshine would have brought out
an overwhelming crop of dominguerros (Sunday visitors to our seaside resort)
and cycling with oblivious pedestrians is far too hard work in the mornings,
and anyway it encourages negative homicidal approaches to progress. Even along the clearly delineated cycles
paths it took relentless dinging of my less than authoritative bell to get the
more resentfully recalcitrant walkers to get over on to their bit of the
pavement.
My Herculean efforts to get to my
daily lengths were surprisingly rewarded by a totally empty pool. There is little (at least to a swimmer) more
satisfying than breaking the pristine surface of a tranquil pool: an example,
if ever there was one, of the sort of hidden pleasures of a peculiar life.
I know that everyone has quirks
and, while some may be socially disadvantageous there are others that are
particular, do not harm and give great pleasure. I know someone whose choice of beach is purely
dictated by the fact that it is next to the airport and lying in the sun had
the added advantage of low flying, noisy aircraft enlivening the tedium of
tanning. Another friend has an eye for
vegetation and always has her phone camera at the ready to capture the bounce
of a bough or the lilt of a leaf; yet another regards a trip to Matalan as
justification for a visit to Britain; another regards the Crunchie Bar as the highest
achievements of the confectionary trade, while yet another relishes Marmite. You will note that I have not ventured into
the realm of sexual proclivities because, well, because as soon as you go there
then all the other little innocuous kinks can be seen as sexual as well. Take, for example, the diving into a
pool. It doesn’t take a doctor from Vienna
to make something suggestive about that!
It's all in the noticing, taking
note of something and seeing it in a way that is personal to you. This line of thought was brought on my
sunbathing.
Sunbathing is a tedious occupation,
and the sometimes-blotchy results make you wonder if it is all worthwhile. You tell yourself that the ‘modern’
preoccupation with a tan can really be traced back all the way to the middle of
the last century, as, previously (at least in Europe) white skin was more
highly valued than tanned skin. Tanned
skin was the normal preserve of the working agricultural classes and was
therefore seen as rather infra dig. In
the same way that Chinese Mandarins’ long fingernails was a visible indication
that everything (and I mean everything) would have to be done for them rather
than their having to do things themselves, therefore showing their high class
and their ability to afford the servants necessary to live a long-fingernailed
life style.
Nowadays tanning is seen as a sign
of health, and to hell with scare stories of skin cancer. People like my good self, prefer to think
that the acquisition of Vitamin D from sunlight is enough of an excuse to indulge.
Anyway, getting away from why I
was sunbathing and getting towards how I was sunbathing. For the purpose of extending my periods lying
prone on the beach or on the third-floor terrace I had resurrected my iPod –
that now, by the way, appears quaintly dated: so heavy, such a little
screen! But it worked and that was all I
wanted.
Being by nature an incurable dilettante
I always set the thing to ‘shuffle’ play.
This means that my musical experience is very much like the organization
of my library: serendipitously chaotic, where juxtapositions of tomes is so
random that it looks contrived! I put an
exclamation mark at the end of that sentence to stop those who know me from shaking
their heads sagely and remarking, “Exactly!”
So, my ‘listening pleasure’ via
my iPod might feature a movement from one of the less fashionable early
symphonies by Tchaikovsky, followed by a Spanish conversation from a previous
on-line course, succeeded by a piece of obscure German table music, followed by
some random pop.
With earphone stuffed firmly into
my ears (see ‘passing jets’ above) I actually listened to the lyrics of ‘Lola’
by the Kinks that were remarkably clear and easily decipherable. Perhaps everyone else in the world (well,
given the sales of the thing it must be a sizeable chunk) knew that Lola was a
transvestite or trans-sexual, but I didn’t.
I listened again to check my perceptions and finally thought what a
remarkable record that must have been for its time. It was of course banned by the BBC – not for
any sexual priggishness, but rather because the Kinks used the word ‘Coca-Cola’
and the Beeb did not go in for any sort of in song advertising, so the Kinks re-recorded
it substituting a more generic ‘cherry-cola’ for the obnoxious ubiquitous
liquid. I am still at a loss to
understand how that disgusting concoction has spread like a carbonated plague
across the face of the earth. It can’t
all be down to advertising. Can it?
So Lola, “she walks like a woman,
but she talks like a man” or was it “moves”, I can’t remember, and I am typing
this on the terrace so that the sun can get at my back, and there is no
internet – lying again: there is internet and I have re-read the lyrics and
they are worth looking at, you can find them here: https://www.google.com/search?q=lola+the+kinks&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b
The narrative of the song is
fairly simple, a guy goes to a club in ‘North Soho’ drinks suspect champagne
meets an ambiguous girl and declines to take things further. Probably.
The interest lies in the detail of the lyrics where we discover that the
protagonist is inexperienced “I’ve never ever kissed a girl before” he only
left home “a week before”. He admits
that he is “not the world’s most physical guy” or “passionate” or “masculine”
not really a traditional build up for the profile of a lover, but then, this is
no conventional love song. In spite of
the fact that he is confused “Why she walk like a woman and talk like a man” he
“drank champagne and danced all night” with her and it was only when she asked
him home that he realized that in spite of living in a “mixed-up, muddled-up,
shook-up world” where “Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls” he is able
to assert that “I know what I am and I’m glad I’m a man” and, in my favourite
line before the final extended chorus, “And so is Lola.”! I love the general ambiguity in the quality
of the attraction between the ‘hero’ and Lola, seen at its most sexually
poignant when he gets down to his knees and “that`s the way that I want it to
stay” – is that a rejection or an invitation! He admits that he “almost fell for my Lola”
and I think that the use of the possessive is revealing!
This is a rhythmic, musically
exciting and lyrically engaging song, it’s a pity that I did not notice the
ironic complexity when I first heard it in 1971 when it first came out! Better late than never. And who knows what other linguistic delights
there will be as I listen more attentively to the occasional erratic pop tracks
that pass the time as I bake on the third floor.
The World Cup
I must admit that I have been less than stringent
in my not looking at the FIFA (corrupt) World Cup (corrupt) in Russia
(corrupt), in spite of my best intentions I have constantly been beguiled into
giving this ‘competition’ some attention.
Not, obviously, to the ridiculous extent of actually watching England play,
but I have watched some part of some of the games.
At the moment Spain (corrupt) is playing Russia
(corrupt) and while I have little interest in the outcome, I did break my
typing to go downstairs and get myself a cup of tea where I saw that the
so-called King of Spain (corrupt) had ‘graced’ the game with his presence. May I be the first to extend my
congratulations to a Head of State from a fellow European nation giving
credence to a state that ordered a murder, using their own noxious nerve agents,
in Great Britain. Thank you, your majesty,
and you wonder why you are cordially loathed by your rightfully rebellious ‘subjects’
in Catalonia! The sooner that a republic
is declared in this country the better.
Independence for Catalonia might be a vexed question, but the case for a
republic is surely a simple one! And
made simpler every day by the actions of a high handed, autocratic Borbón de Borbón!
And Spain have lost on penalties to Russia. I am sure that there must be some sort of
point that I can make, but the ‘bread and circuses’ simply depresses me too
much!
