Work and play

 

The ‘A4 blank sheet of paper approach’ to the writing tasks that I still need to complete has been effective.  So far.  The individual sheets forced me to break down the tasks into their component parts and I have been able to produce notes towards a draft that now look quite impressive.  I keep telling myself that, "The most important thing about a draft is that it has to exist"!

I think that my inaction was a function of having too much to do and therefore doing little or nothing because I couldn’t decide where to start!  This is a common problem and is sometimes used to justify laziness rather than anything else!  Yes, there are some problems in the completion of my work that are beyond my individual reach and I am getting frustrated waiting for a response from particularly unresponsive colleagues, but that is only one small part and should not really have caused me to do anything other than write speculatively and wait for back dated permission!

I feel energized by the amount of work that I have done in the last couple of days and the trick, as ever, if continuing the momentum in producing drafts of the individual elements that will be going into the next book.  The next book that I intend to publish has just “growed” (like Topsy) from its initial conception to become something altogether more ambitious, though, as there are photographs and illustrations, I am not sure about the economic reality of its actual publication – perhaps it will end up as a more substantial form of chapbook.  Who knows!

But I am positive about the production and I am raring to go as far as the last pieces of writing are concerned.

There is something exhilarating about having three separate books ‘on the go’ and I am hoping that the overkill of creativity will spur me on to completion!

-oOo-

Our last lesson in Catalan was something of a waste of time.  We all arrived – some of us on time – and then just sat around wondering where the teacher was.  Eventually I went to the office to enquire and discovered that our tutor was ill and that there might be a cover teacher for us.  Work had been set, but no one was found for us so we dispersed to our homes – not before a few of us had a chat and a cup of coffee (tea) to make the morning more civilized!

But what I take from that ‘wasted’ morning was something that used to be so ordinary for me.  When I found out what was going on, I marched up to the teacher’s desk on my return from the office, put the books that I had been carrying down on it and spoke to the class, informing them of what was going on and what work they had to do.  And, as I was doing it, I realized that this was the first time that I had been ‘in front of a class’ for a long, long time.  Never mind the fact that this class was not mine, and that I was delivering information in broken Spanish and English, it was still a ‘class’ and, even in the short period of time that I was out the front, a period of time that could be counted in seconds rather than minutes, I felt the old teacher in me stir, and I could swear that my tone of voice changed the pedagogue of old shook off retirement for a brief moment!

Not an experience, you understand, to tempt me back to the reality of teaching.  Just an interesting brush with the concept!

And now for the Catalan homework, it behoves me to make the effort as I was the one who told the rest of the class about it!

-oOo-

Before I go: I wonder how my watch dealt with my swim this morning.  

After my slow warm-up length and gentle warm-up exercises, I now set my new watch to monitor my achievement and progress.  For the last two days I have clicked on the ‘swimming pool’ icon and later tried to make sense of the bewilderingly complete information about my efforts.   

Today however, I made things a little more difficult because of my faulty eyesight.  With my contact lenses I can see distance, but reading is more of a challenge.  A challenge that is almost impossible when I am trying to read a small moisture covered watch face.

I clicked on what I thought was the right icon, and was passingly concerned at the lack of the 3-2-1 countdown that usually appears (with vibrations) before I start, but thought nothing of it as the watch face looked suitably complicated.  It turned out that I had pressed the wrong icon and the watch thought that I was actually running rather than swimming.

I am assuming that action is action and the watch will have registered something, but it will be interesting to see just how the watch processes it!

I have now realized (with my reading glasses on) that the ‘running’ and ‘swimming’ icons are actually different colours and that is something that I will have to remember tomorrow morning!

A taste of things to come!

My taste buds are adapting.

At least I’m telling myself that, and I am, in part believing it.  All of this is a direct result of my having to have a diet of low fat with no salt.  And believe me, pepper is no real alternative to the lack of sodium chloride, no matter how much I add to my flavourless food.  And yet, I persist in telling myself that my taste buds have become more sensitive and are able to take what pleasure they can in the rather more subtle flavours that saltless preparation offers.

This evening, for example, I had salmon with broccoli and I enjoyed it.  A sprinkle of salt would have improved it, but I resisted and made the most of what my taste buds could get from the food, that in the event was quite a lot.

I am going to have to look into the range of spices that I can add to food that do not have a negative influence on my condition (thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and weakened heart) and can make the eating experience a little more exciting.  When I asked the doctor how long my present diet would last, his answer was, “For ever!” which makes the finding of ‘safe’ condiments something of urgent necessity!

Today, I have got down to the graft of getting something like a working draft of some of the poems that I have been planning out put down on paper.  I have four poems now in a working draft and I count that as something of an achievement.

It may just be the way that I work but I find that getting to the working draft stage of my poems is not sitting down and waiting for some mythical muse to touch my brow with inspiration, but rather hard work.  The slog of writing out notes, working them up into phrases or ideas and then trying again and again to put all that together into something that is satisfying.  At least to me.

I have not put any of my new poems on my poetry blog, but you are welcome to see past drafts of my other poems at:

http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es

The ‘problem’ of how to fill a day being confined to my seat for the bulk of my waking hours, does not exist for me.  As someone who delights to read, being forced to be sedentary and do something is an invitation to do the thing that I like most.  I now have the (enforced) leisure to read The Guardian thoroughly – though I am not sure how efficacious reading so much factual description of the idiocy of various countries’ leaders around the world, does not make for tranquillity.

The idiocy of Brexit and the glaring ineptitude of a hopelessly riven political apology of a party failing to articulate a reasonable response to it are constantly frustrating.  We still don’t know what exactly May is trying to negotiate for and the reports of her asking Merkle to “Make me an offer!” is cringemakingly embarrassing and terminally humiliating.

Trump, meanwhile, in the publishing of the shameless piece of political chicanery in the publication of the partisan Republican “Nunes Memo” shows that he is prepared to trash anyone and anything to protect himself.  This is a time when American Institutions are being pushed to their limits to contain a person who has no regard for anything other than himself.  He is of course aided and abetted by a Republican Party of such low moral imperatives that they are as much a threat to Democratic Institutions as the monster in the White House.

And Catalonia is in a bad place at the moment.  We still have no President and the PP is using the courts to muddy the waters.  Things should clarify in the next few weeks, but I find it difficult to see a realistic solution if the obtuse President of Spain refuses to be a politician and try and find a negotiated solution to the problems.

It is ironic that at present I am reading Andrew Marr’s History of the World that covers 70,000 years of human history.  The irony is that the problems that we see in the present are covered again and again in the sweep of the historical view that Marr offers in his eminently readable book.  Perhaps his book should be compulsory reading for the leaders in the world and perhaps they might see themselves and, more importantly see where actions like theirs have ended up the populations that they are supposed to serve!

Of course there is no way on earth that a person of the calibre of Trump could be encouraged to concentrate for long enough to read a multi-hundred page book.  Has he ever read a book of over a hundred pages?  I know he is supposed to have written a book, but I don’t think any reasonable person actually believes that particular fiction, not even the grandiose fool himself.

Still, I tell myself that worrying overmuch about world events that I cannot influence is not good for my health.  But not knowing about them is even worse – the Catch 22 position for anyone interested in politics!