First steps!

My third week out of hospital and my first walks outside the house and my first trips to the local shops in the car!

It is a sign of how limiting the thrombosis and embolism are that such ‘easy’ actions I now regard as worthy of note.  Yesterday, with all the confidence of an idiot, I did rather too much and today I am aware that I did so.  I cannot say, in all truthfulness that I am actually suffering, but I am sitting down and biding my time before another foray into the lairs of commercialism!

I have not been idle in these last few weeks and have been working on the notes that I made during my stay in hospital and have worked them up into a series of poems that are part of my new chapbook called, “A Point of Blue”.

This chapbook comprises not only the dozen or so poems directly related to my stay (including one about the flowers that I was given!) but also half a dozen prose pieces to accompany them.  I have also included ‘drawings’ that I did on my reMarkable tablet that may be, “little more than glorified doodles” but they also, “come as near as I am ever going to get to some form of non-literary meditation”.  High-sounding words!  But this collection is best described as “a wry mixture of prose poetry and ‘drawings’” where, in spite of the seriousness of the condition, I am still able to get some humour out of the situation!

The chapbook is in process of being published and will have an ISBN number and will be one sale at €5 in the Euro zone and £5 in the UK.

I am pleased with how this chapbook has turned out and I am looking forward to comments about the content!

Next week will be a significant one for me as I intend to go to the opera.  The next opera in my season ticket is Romeo and Juliette by Gounod.  I have never seen this opera, although I know one or two of the arias, and I do not intend to let this opportunity slip!  I have book an hotel room for a night in Barcelona and the walk to the Liceu is very short.  We will have to see how it goes.  The only problem is that I have to inject myself at 9.00pm and that might be a little disconcerting for the audience if I do it during the performance!

Meanwhile the political situation in Spain becomes ever more murky.  On the television today there are scenes of pensioners throughout the country protesting and demonstrating about the derisory 0.25% increase – well below the rate of inflation, for yet another year – while the political fall out from the various corruption trials for members of the right wing minority government of PP continue to shock. 

It is becoming even clearer that the party is systemically corrupt and the frankly disgusting antics of the leader of Cs as he expresses his shock and distaste for the party that his group of sluttish politicos helped elect to government, masks the fact that the dyed in the wool sheer badness of PP was abundantly clear to even the most politically inept neophyte when his bunch of opportunistic riffraff voted for them.

More and more of the people who are in the courts being processed through the glacially slow judicial system are singing and implicating all the top echelon of PP.  The latest phase of this farce is the ex-treasurer of PP (all of the treasurers of PP in the history of the party have been accused of malpractice – and I’m using that word because they have not yet been sentenced and put in the prison that they richly deserve) has given evidence in the Valencia parliament about the funding of a past PP campaign.  As the national treasurer he has asserted that he no knowledge or control over the finances of the regional PP in Valencia.  In other words, he has thrown the past PP politicos in Valencia under the proverbial bus and washed his hands of a responsibility that you might, possibly have expected a national treasurer to have some knowledge about.  Especially as the campaign was such a major part of the national campaign and all the political leaders of PP were there to soak up the paid-for adulation!

In spite of the overwhelming evidence of corruption, I have no real expectation that any of the major political characters in PP will resign or have judgements (official judgements that is, in the court of public opinion they are guilty as sin!) against them. 

But, as always I live in hope and always believe that justice, will, eventually triumph.

The end of the holidays!

The cake was the most important part.

Celebrations of religious festivals, even when the religious element seems to be more of an historical afterthought than the actual basis for the festivity, seem to be only to be justified in terms of what you can eat and drink to make the day(s) special.  And presents of course.

In Britain we do not take the Festival of the Kings quite as seriously as they do in Catalonia.  Kings is very much part of the Christmas Season and I suppose part of the reason why the Sales do not really get started until after parents have made all of their purchases for Kings.

Kings is basically for kids.  There are elaborate processions to welcome the Kings when they come into a town or city, and then there are a series of floats all of which have people on them throwing sweets at the young people who lines the streets to greet them.

In Barcelona the Kings come into the city by sea and then make a triumphant progress into the centre.  We missed the procession on the day before Kings in Terrassa and instead came for the lunch in which the kids (and as it turned out, we too) got presents.

But the highlight of the meal is the cake.  This is a circular cake with a hole in the middle, with the filling being of cream and, most importantly, little things hidden inside the filling.  The official name of this cake is the Tortell de Reis or the King’s Tart, and ours was a magnificent affair with a filling divided into cream and chocolate and hidden inside the filling, somewhere, two inedible things: a porcelain broad bean and a little figure of a king.

The cake is cut up so that everyone gets a piece and then they chomp down.  Carefully!  I did and was ‘rewarded’ by finding a cream covered broad bean.  The significance of that discovery is that you have to buy the cake for the next year!  The person who gets the king figure is rewarded with the golden paper crown that is set in the hollow centre of the cake and is made King of the feast.

If you want more information about the Catalan customs at Christmas then an extensive illustrated explanation may be found at https://www.elnacional.cat/en/culture/a-catalan-christmas-explained_221886_102.html

And I assured you that these are not obscure folk customs, they are part of the everyday life of everyone who lives here!  And if you do read through it all, then I can assure you that the Belen on the stairs by the entrance to our house did have a caganer discretely squatting at the side of the stable!

With the end of that meal, I consider the Christmas Season well and truly over, but we will not be taking down all the Christmas decorations.

As you know, Catalonia and Spain are in the grips of the worst political crisis to have rocked Spain since the Dictatorship of Franco.  The Catalan referendum about independence was blighted by astonishing violence from the police forces of the Spanish national government preventing peaceful people from trying to cast their votes.  Our Catalan President and a slew of political leaders have been forced into exile or have been imprisoned.  The government of Catalonia has been disbanded and the functions of government have been taken over by PP, the minority right wing governing party of Spain whose actual popular mandate in the last election was a measly 4 seats out of 135, their percentage of the popular vote 4.2%!

Political corruption in Spain is rife.  PP is the most corrupt political party in western Europe and hundreds of its members, including all past treasurers of the party, having been accused of corruption or are in the process of being tried or are waiting to be sentenced.  This is the political slime that is deciding the future of our country!

To show solidarity with the imprisoned Catalan politicians twists of yellow ribbon are being worn.  Indeed wearing anything of the colour yellow is now considered something of a political statement by the minority right wing government of Spain.  I wear a yellow ribbon on my shirt at all times and have recently purchased a yellow scarf.  Those of you who know me, know that I never wear scarves, so this recent (and difficult) purchase shows considerable dedication!

Although the national minority government maintains that there is separation between the executive and the judiciary, too many recent examples of unequal treatment and opportunism make such an assertion difficult to believe.  The national minority government also maintains that there are no political prisoners in Spain and that the political leaders have been detained on criminal charges not political ones.  I am reminded of some of the policies of Queen Elizabeth the First who always imprisoned Roman Catholics for acts of treason, never merely because of their religion, that was always a strange coincidence!

While our political leaders are in prison we will keep our Christmas tree up.  It is not decorated in the usual festive manner, but has a whole series of yellow ribbons on the branches and even the lights are yellowish!  It will stay up until Spain sees reason and releases the political prisoners.

These early January days are a low level prologue to the political activity that will take place later in the month, when the new delegates to a new Catalan parliament will take their places.  The election, called by Rajoy, the leader of the minority right wing PP (with a mandate of 4.2% in the popular vote in Catalonia remember) in the hope that the independence parties would lose their majority.  Well they haven’t - but Rajoy and his disgusting collection of corruption monkeys, PP, lost 7 of their 11 seats.

So, if the majority of the elected representatives vote for independence Rajoy has already said that he will ignore the democratic wishes of the Catalan parliament and keep Article 155 in place which allows his 4.2% mandate to give him the right to govern Catalonia.  And don’t get me started on the way that the Spanish Senate is packed with PP fodder!

So, later in the month, all the rites and delights of Christmas are going to be well and truly forgotten as the political cut and thrust lurches back into action.

To find more information about what happened in the last Catalan elections in December, 2017, go to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_regional_election,_2017

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If you would like to read drafts of my recent poems please go to smrnewpoems.blogspot.com

Justice? What justice!

You know when you try and remember one of those words that you used (teacher or pupil) to describe a ‘literary effect’ (or is it affect?  I’m a teacher and I can never really remember which one is correct and I am always too lazy to look it up.)  The word I am trying to remember is one that is used in Romeo and Juliet when the phrase ‘hot ice’ is used.  The teacher (or me in a previous incarnation) would reveal that the correct word to use was oxymoron.  Well, living in Spain I now have a different phrase to exemplify this concept: Spanish justice.

Today was the last day when my heart-feeling that the unity of Spain was worth fighting for finally died.

The politicised justice that parades as disinterested in the courts in Spain has shown itself to be as grotesquely politically inept as that shown by their PP masters in parliament.  Any remaining belief that the separation of powers exists to any real extent in Spain is now, officially, dead.

Some of the political leaders of the Republic of Catalonia have been to court to testify in Madrid and they have all (with one significant and reprehensible exception) been jailed without bail.

The minority right-wing repressive government of Spain, whose PP representation in Catalonia is a measly 8%, has assumed the government of Catalonia, imposed a motely scum of PP politicians as the leaders of our political society and has now jailed our leaders.

Political ineptitude seems to be the go-to default position of PP.  It would appear that their judicial spaniels slavishly follow their political masters and have behaved in a way guaranteed to bolster support for independence.

What of the elections called by the ever more contemptible president of Spain?  This government has jailed the leaders of our government: are they supposed to electioneer from behind bars?  With every step that the bunch of deadbeats in Madrid take, they further the break-up of Spain.  And please, do not pretend for one solitary moment that justice is separate from the political party that put most of them in place: PP.

PP is the most systemically corrupt political party in western Europe.  While it is super sensitive to any group or individual that speaks against its power base, it is strangely indifferent to the proven corruption of its own members as hundreds (yes, literally, hundreds) are going through the ‘justice’ system a damn sight more slowly than the leaders of our government!

For me, these jailings constitute a sort of turning point.  I have always been a vocal opponent of nationalism, and I am more concerned with unity in Europe than the petty national divisions that have fermented so many deaths over the last centuries.  But how can you go on thinking that linking to a corrupt and corrupting central government is anything other than, well, corrupting!

The Spanish government, under its bad-joke president Rajoy has shown its contempt for liberty, democracy, decency and unity.  Rajoy, personally and vindictively has engineered the present situation and has constantly shown himself to be opposed to any reasonable solution based on significant dialogue. 

Over the last decade and more Rajoy and his PP party has worked towards this impasse. 

 La Republica Catalunya

He now deserves to suffer the breakup of the country that he has so signally failed to represent in its totality.

¡Visca la República Catalunya!