Frustration and release

 

 

 

Most days I get up at 6.15 am to get ready for my morning swim at 7 am in the local pool.  As it is August, I have the luxury of a lie in until 7.15 am as the pool opens at 8 am for that month.

     I would like to say that I feel a sense of smug satisfaction for rising so early and taking physical exercise before many people have stirred from their beds - and I suppose I do.  But, the thing is that I find it difficult to stay in bed after my accustomed rising time.  When I was working I went for a swim before work started and I have sort of continued that regime.  If truth be told, I do not really ‘lie in’ with any degree of sincerity.  At the time that I need to get up, I get up and if I try and stay in bed I feel uncomfortable.  So, my soft, musical alarm on my mobile phone goes off and I get up.

     This morning, my arrival at the pool was greeted by what appeared to be a small meeting at the gate.  It turned out that the increasing murkiness of the water in the pool over the last couple of days had prompted the technical services to Do Something and thus “product” had been added to the water, but for the “product” to work, we swimmers had to be excluded.

     The helpful message from management that the pool was closed was sent to members of the leisure centre via email at 10.10 am today, that is some two hours after we arrived to start our swim.  Sigh!

     I made the best of a bad job and decided to go for an extended bike ride from the pool to Port Ginesta, so that I could tell myself that I had kept up my morning exercise.

     Admittedly the effort of cycling those kilometres was somewhat mitigated by the fact that I have an electric bike and I make full (full!) use of its electric capabilities, but it is still exercise under the meaning of the act and as such it is duly recorded by my Smartwatch and adds to my daily PAI rating (whatever that is) – one of those acronyms linked to health and exercise that, in spite of its meaning being ambiguous (or even unknown) is something I take semi-seriously and try and maintain a rating of 100 or as near as I can get.  Because, yes.

     Not only did I go all the way to the beach in Port Ginesta, but I also went as far as the Gavà bike lane could take me in the opposite direction, which amounts to a total of 17.85 km which, even on an electric bike (for me) is quite a lot.

     Not that the electric bike is my only form of ‘personal’ transport.  The electric scooter was taken out of the boot of the car AGAIN yesterday and I used it to get to our favourite ice cream shop as a jaunt to get out of the house.

     I am not a natural bike rider, but I am semi-professional compared with my shaky progress on the scooter.  On the scooter, like a highly-strung thoroughbred horse, I am spooked by: anything other than a completely level surface, traffic, people, turns, crossings, pavements, other scooter users, hills, slopes and the state of the world.  I do not, I have to admit, exude confidence when I am a-wheel, but it is the only way that I can match Toni’s walking without having to pay the price in pain for days afterwards!

     So far, my two trips on the scooter means that I have paid 150 euros per trip, given the total cost of the purchase.  A sobering thought.

 

 

The weather is a little cooler, I think, but that doesn’t make me particularly happy.  Yes, the sort of heat that we have been experiencing has been of a different quality than in previous years, but I’d still prefer that to the cold of winter – that any diminution of heat now makes me far is almost upon us!  But that is only may paranoia speaking.  I hope.

Here we go again!

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Back to school after the holidays!

That statement is both true and misleading. 

It’s true that I did go to ‘school’, or rather a place of education for those beyond the normal years of childhood - which is another way of saying that I am getting Spanish lessons in an Adult Education Centre, though it also appears to have near school age pupils too.  Confusingly.  However, there I go, which brings me to the misleading part.  My present day schooling is only twice a week for two hours - rather different from my previous experience as pupil or teacher!

I might add that the level of Spanish that I am supposed to be doing means that four hours a week is more than enough for my brain to take in.

In a direct proof of the existence of the ‘hand of god’ element in my life, I somehow managed to pass last year’s course and that ‘success’ was used as a direct threat-and-proof by my teacher, so I reluctantly signed on for the higher level course this year.

My horror has been compounded week-on week by the explosion of fiendish verb tenses to which we have been introduced and which stubbornly refuse to stay in my memory.  Of course, mere lack of knowledge does not stop my chattering away in class, ignoring the greying, haggard faces that have to make sense of my enthusiastic but ungrammatical exposition in Spanish!  But there will come a time when surface loquacity will have to pass an exam, a written exam, and smiling-faced gibbering in roughly approximate Spanish will not be enough - or even acceptable.

This year, I have therefore decided, will be the Year of the Verb (YOTV) [And you could read that acronym in Spanish as ‘I Television’, he typed irrelevantly] and I have therefore been vaguely busy in trying to rationalise my learning.

I purchased (and have very rarely used) a sort of book/bible called, imaginatively, “501 Spanish Verbs” that, unsurprisingly contains 501 Spanish Verbs fully conjugated!  Who would have thought!  But wait, that is not all.  There is much, much more - none of which you would find remotely interesting unless you are engaged in the study of the language.  If you are, then this book is indispensable.  Truly.

And it is going to be the key to my groping way towards Spanish verbal acceptability.  The idea is to photocopy part of the introduction that gives a clear and understandable guide to The Seven Simple Tenses and The Seven Not So Simple (Compound) Tenses with a Mood (Imperative) and use these pages as my Daily Readings.  In this way, I am fondly hoping that mere looking will allow the grammatical delights to seep their ways into my brain and become something that I can actually use with something approaching proficiency.

This introduction also tempts with a glimpse of the forbidden pleasures of The Future Subjunctive and the Future Perfect Subjunctive. It says, “The future subjunctive and the future perfect subjunctive exist in Spanish, but there are rarely used” and that is a good enough excuse to ignore them completely, even if I actually knew what they were!

All displaced persons keep referencing their distant homes, and all I want to be able to do is say, with confidence, in Spanish: “When I was living in Cardiff” or “When I used to play badminton in the Eastern Leisure Centre” or “Having been educated in Swansea University” or “I am thinking about taking another course in the Open University in the next few years” or simply “When I was younger” etc.  As well as dreaming about saying, in Spanish something like, “If I had known what it would have been like, I possibly might have” etc.  As it is at the moment, I attempt sophisticated verb tenses but end up sounding like a Tarzan figure whom choses random parts of a grammar primer and hopes for the best.  Which is something!

This morning’s lesson played to my strengths.  It started late, didn’t have any new grammar or vocabulary and all of it comprises various students speaking and responding!  The two hours sped by, and the most concerning element in the lesson was worrying about whether the battery pack on my electric bike would last for the homeward journey.

As it happens it did and the pack is now safely recharged and ready for insertion to get me to my swim tomorrow.

One thing that I note is that I used the term ‘worrying’ about whether the battery would last.  Basically, it doesn’t matter.  Without a working battery, my electric bike is, well, a bike.  It has seven gears and you pedal.  It’s a bike!  It works with sheer leg power.  But the electric bike is like the dishwasher.  I am tempted to let that last sentence stand alone and not give an explanation, rather in the Lewis Carroll “Why is a raven like a writing desk” (or vice versa) but that would be pointlessly cruel.

A number of times I have started the dishwasher and then found a cup or plate that should have been included.  Now, you have to stay with me here, as I did not discover that you could open up the dishwasher and insert something part way through the cycle.  And that knowledge was based on the very first dishwasher I owned where I assumed that breaking the cycle would not pose a problem, and flooded the kitchen!  I know that with water saving and eco-cycles the amount of water used is minimal, but that is not the point.  I would see the lone cup and think, “Damn!  If I had found that a few minutes earlier it could have gone in the wash and now it will just have to wait for the next load.”  What I didn’t think was, “Oh well, I’ll wash it in the sink and dry it with the tea towel.”

As a bike without a battery is still a bike, so a cup can be washed by hand rather than by a machine.

Then I started thinking of other statements that I know that I have made at some point or other whose link to reality is sometimes questionable:

“The hoover is not fully charged, I can’t clean.”

“I’m not going to the shops because it’s raining.”

“I didn't contact you because I mislaid my mobile phone."

"I am wearing this shirt because I do not have any others."

"I bought it because I needed it."

"We have nothing in the house to eat."

"You can never own too many tea spoons."

And I think I better stop there as perhaps I am giving too much away!

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Mine own, and not mine own!

You know that you must be old when your ophthalmic doctor smiles at you and says (in Spanish I might add) “You have the eyes of a forty-year-old!” - and you take it as a charming compliment!

This is all a function of the gauzy, torn fairy wing that drifts across the sight in my left eye form time to time.  On a regular basis.  Not one to panic, I immediately assumed that it was a fatal portent of some sort of disease that, almost as soon as it is diagnosed, means death.

As it happened, the doctor was disturbingly soothing, and took rather too many pains to emphasise just now normal and un-worrying having floating wing tips in front of your eyes was.  In the midst of this she also let slip that I have “the very smallest” of cataracts, the very same cataracts, indeed, that her eighty-two year old mother had and “nothing came of them”.  I did notice the past tense in this conversation but preferred to assume that it was a reference to the fugitive cataracts rather than the state of her mother.

I now have two print outs from the retinal scan and the ultrasound scan and have a printed reminded to go back to her in a year.  I always find it refreshing when concern is 365 days away.  I will now assume that all is well with the world and that the wings will actually flutter away “by themselves”.  There is, after all, no delusion like self-delusion - and having typed that, it doesn’t mean that I will consider it as anything more than a play on words, and certainly not something that deserves further investigation.

Which is more than I can say for the stubborn non-acceptance of my perfectly good photograph of The Stain.  I really do refuse to be beaten and will take my steam camera (of happy memory) with me on my next foray and take another snap.

And that will be on my old bike.  The new (five levels of assistance) electric bike is minus a brake.  I have fancy disc brakes, and the disc on the back wheel is what can only be described as floppy.  And application of the brake makes no difference to the speed.  Which is disturbing.

I took the bike to the bike shop that I now use (based on the expert, quick and cheap sorting out of the wobbly wheel on my other bike) and expected the brake to be readjusted in a humiliatingly short time while I looked on open mouthed with wonder at technical wizardry.  No way!  I was told to leave the bike there as it would have to be de-assembled and then re-assembled and he had a lot of work on hand.

As I had come by bike, assuming that five minutes and a pitying look would just about wrap up the problem, I was faced with another.  If I left the bike there I would have to walk back (No!) go by bus (No! No!) or take a taxi (No! No! No!)  So I thought that I would take advantage of the bike’s ability to fold up and bring it to the shop by car.

I went home.  Eventually collapsed the bike, which is never as easy as they make it appear in the little video on the website for the bike, and even more eventually got it into the back of the car.

Once in Castelldefels town, I took the bike out of the car, un-collapsed it, which is never as easy as they make it appear in the little video on the website for the bike, and rode it triumphantly the few blocks to the shop.  Where it has been left to get better.

I returned home via the swimming pool; did my metric mile; drank my tea; wrote my notes and got home to find Toni in a state of decision about the bedroom.

As we live near the sea there is always a tendency for damp to occur, and the ceiling near the tall window doors in the bedroom is a prime growing spot.  We have anti-mould paint and that, I was told, was going to be applied as it was obviously a contributory factor in Toni’s on-going bad throat scenario.

Luckily I had the ophthalmic doctor’s (is that tautology?) appointment and so, as is always the best with partners, one could get on without the ‘help’ of the other.

To get to my appointment I went on my old bike.  As I have ruthlessly ignored the machine that I previously regarded as the Bentley of Bikes, I sprayed oil indiscriminatingly in all mechanical directions in the hope that some of them would prevent screeching metal fatigue on my journey.

I had been using my ‘old’ bike for years and, possibly because of the strange upside-down ‘S’ shape as the main bit holding the wheels together, I can’t ride it hands free - but I do find it comfortable.  Imagine my horror as I mounted the thing for the first time for weeks and found it entirely foreign and strange.

My posture was different, the handlebars were a different height, and my centre of gravity had been displaced.  I felt as if I had never been on the bike before!

Within a few hundred yards, the sense of otherness between the bike and me had gone and I was back where I used to be.  I have never gone from foreign to native in such a short period of time.  Though I wonder about how I am going to adapt to the return of the other bike tomorrow.  Perhaps I might beat my own new assimilation record.

And it was hard work.  I now see that I have become well used to the judicious touch on the little throttle handle for a small but welcome boost in circumstances when brute foot power would have needed to have been applied.  Slight gradients became irritating and the wind took back its vindictive quality.  I have been vitiated by the cloying and debauched pleasures of Five Levels of Assistance - which sounds like a good title for a book.