A short, sharp, apocalyptic, thunder and lightening
storm yesterday afternoon has left the path strewn with pine needles. Yet again.
From trees that are not ours. This
means that we have the imminent appearance of the noisy leaf gatherers to look
forward to.
The invention of the leaf-blower has to one of the
major banes of the modern urban leafy suburb - if our little zone could be
called one. As our area is named after
the pine trees which are a characteristic of our streets, it is not surprising
that we are well used to the howl of the leaf-blowers - both private and
municipal.
It is not out of any aesthetic civic pride that the
pine needles are gathered up; it is rather because of our inadequate road
drainage system. Fallen pine needles
gather into impressive clumps and block the drains, so any delay in collecting
the organic excess, when linked to a sudden downpour, will result in extensive
flooding, or at least large areas of standing water on the roads. The collection is therefore necessity rather
than cosmetic. Our economy relies on the
tourist, usually the day tourists from Barcelona, so any discomfort and
inconvenience has a direct relationship with the wealth of our municipality. Our resort, through undoubtedly popular, does
have rivals, and it doesn’t take much to persuade fleeting visitors to fleet
elsewhere.
The one good thing about refuse collection here is
that it is daily via the system of collective bins that are found along all the
roads. In addition, each Friday (in our
zone) any pine needles or tree clippings or general plant waste will be
collected separately. On a Thursday
evening, therefore, I brush together all our neighbours’ pine needles that have
fallen in our back garden and sweep them into a neat heap outside our front
gate. And by Friday afternoon they are
gone.
Although I know that the logistics of refuse
collection are prosaic enough, I have always found the reality of rubbish
collection almost magical: now you see it - now you don’t! I also know that the reality of landfill and
the general problems of disposal are rapidly assuming crisis proportions and we
are probably living in the last age of the free-and-easy,
throw-it-all-in-the-bin approach to refuse.
I know that Britain is gradually developing a fairly Draconian approach
to when, when and how you throw things away, and I read with interest of local
councils fining people for putting the wrong things in the wrong bins, or
putting things out at the wrong times.
Here in Castelldefels while we do have bins for plastics, cardboard,
glass and general refuse - there is nothing to stop you from putting veering in
the same black bag and throwing it in the ubiquitous green bins. I feel that this anarchic time is quickly
coming to an end, and it is only a matter of (short) time before we too are
dragooned (rightly) into a more caring attitude.
The Greek
Way
On a related economic model, I have now reverted to
something that I used to do years ago - make my own yogurt!
I used to own a rather nifty device which comprised a
heated stand on which stood six yellow screw topped containers complete with
overall plastic cover and which provided me with (though I say it myself) a
rather fine yogurt. I seem to remember
heating milk with ‘starter’ yogurt in a saucepan while keeping an eye on the
thermometer to ensure the reaction ‘took’.
That is obviously old school. My
new device comprises a cylinder inside what looks like a pressure cooker: you
add the milk, add the yogurt, stir it a bit, turn the machine on and leave it
for 10 hours or so. Voilà! It’s done!
The resultant yogurt was a trifle runny. But the little book of instructions had
advice (in Spanish) about making Greek yogurt - that, in theory should be more
solid. The complex instructions for
adding this sort of value were merely to let the runny yogurt stand for 24
hours in the fridge then put it into a mesh strainer (provided) in the white
receptacle (provided) and let that drain for a couple of hours in the fridge
and the job is done. And it worked! And is delicious!
The next time I am in a supermarket I am going to look
at the price of Greek yogurt. My newfound
machine makes 1ltr from UHT milk with the use of the machine (obviously) and 10
hours of very low-level electricity and the fridge. I will have to start making ‘fruit’ versions
and see how they go!
At the moment there is something very satisfying in
having made a food that I eat every day, it is the equivalent to growing your
own wheat for your daily loaf! I am very
smug about it all!
Slotting
into place
When I was living in Cardiff, I could walk around town
and sooner or later I would bump into someone who would say, “Hello!” with that
element of genuine recognition that would suggest that we knew each other. And to be fair, I am generally a good
rememberer of faces to the same extent as I am an appalling rememberer of
names. My inability to recall names
bordered, and continues to border on. the psychotic, but my ability to feel
affinity with faces means that I am subject to an almost endless mental jigsaw
as I attempt to fit the face into a pattern that never seems, at first glance
to have the correct space to place it.
The last time this happened was in the changing room
of my swimming pool. I was about to walk
to the pool for my swim when a naked young man came from the shower, saw me,
smiled and said, “¡Hola!” I replied with
a smile and walked on to the pool, thinking as I did so, about where the hell I
knew him from.
In Cardiff, as a teacher, you have a bewilderingly
wide range of ways of knowing people they could, after all, be present pupils,
past pupils, colleagues, past colleagues, Union Members, friends, family,
shopkeepers, audiences (I had cultural season tickets) sports partners, parents
(of pupils I mean - even my inability with names is not that bad!) and so
on. Here in Spain there are not quite so
many possibilities, though I have taught here and the parents, pupils,
colleagues thing can be brought into play here in Catalonia as well.
But this guy was in the sports centre. He was slim and fit and so I tired to ‘dress’
him in the uniform of the centre, perhaps he was one of the summer guys brought
in to cope with the summer schools being run.
But that didn’t really fit. Past pupil
didn’t seem right. Customer? Wrong time of the day for someone so young. And so I went on, slightly resentful that he
was naked as clothing would have been a clue!
Shops, supermarkets, opera houses, restaurants all
went through my mind. Not, you must
understand because it was important to know where I knew him from, but because
I was irritated by not knowing. Wherever
I placed his smiling and variously dressed face and body, he didn’t fit. I made notes about him in my little notebook
hoping 1) his habitat would come to me through the simple power of writing, and
2) if all else failed I could make a virtue of necessity and write a poem about
it. Neither occurred.
As is usual in cases such as these it was while I was
thinking about something else entirely that I got: a) new waiter, in b) old favourite
restaurant. Of course!
And what have I got from expending a frustrating
amount of time and mental effort in trying to remember something that is
entirely unimportant?
Here is where you, dear reader, can help me. What have I gained?
A quiet satisfaction in allaying the fear that my mind
is losing its ability to organize information and bring past events to the
surface when they are needed? A
triumphant reassertion of my capabilities of being able to deconstruct new
combinations and find the essential truth behind them? A complete lack of understanding of
priorities? A gleeful acceptance of
mind-games displacement activity? The
lack of something better to do?
Who knows and, more importantly, who cares!
