Are you sitting comfortably?

 

 

 

Even though we are at the fag-end of the year, something happened today that will be the defining feature for me, and possibly for a few others too.

     My ‘creative space’ is not my brain, it is a ‘squalid corner’ of the third floor where my desk (cluttered) is hemmed in on one side by a sawn-off storage unit, a plastic segmented bookcase and a queeny printer; on the other by a series of CD box vaults, the back of an IKEA bookcase and an Anglepoise (knock-off not real) lamp; behind three low-rise bookshelves, a bewilderingly large number of plastic mini-shelved units and a lopsided arrangement of Things Too Large to Put Away Properly; in front is a low wall and the stair well.  And this altogether conducive-to-creation ensemble is finished by a high-backed office chair that is literally falling to bits, with the faux leather coming away in specks.

     Enough, I said to myself, I said, is enough!  A new chair is necessary and, furthermore, it will be something that can sweep up my Christmas and Name Day offerings into one coherent present.  The ‘Name Day’ thing is important in this part of the world and you ignore the recognition-through-presents at your own risk, it therefore follows (as the night the day) that reciprocation can work together for good.  As my Name Day is actually Boxing Day a seasonal personal present objective makes sense, so I thought a new chair would concentrate minds and contributions.

     Having tried a selection of chairs in all the main superstore outlets in the vicinity and found all of them lacking, Toni actually discovered a dedicated office furniture outlet with ‘sale’ prices in Cornella, a place a few towns along one of our motorways and a place passed through by me on my daily journey to the School on the Hill.

     Today was the day we visited the place.  I had (in mind and written in my notebook) a list of desirable attributes of the New Chair.  It had to have  i) a base of five wheeled feet  ii) a high back  iii) gas suspension  iv) be ergonomic  v) be made of leather  vi) have no arms or have removable arms  vii) look ‘the business’.  I did have a vague sort of idea of what sort of cost it might be, but I decided to be adventurous.

     The end result of much sitting and trying this and then trying that, was that the ergonomic trumped the leather.  The seat that I have decided on, and indeed ordered for delivery in January looks a bit more medical than office-like, but it is comfortable and virtually everything that can, adjusts.

     And the cost.

     Toni was and still is shell-shockedly stunned that any sentient life-form could even contemplate paying so much for what is, after all, at the end of the day, an office chair.  Well, I have.  Or at least I have paid a deposit.  And even the 20% deposit was large.  So, you can imagine that the whole thing (the other 80%) is, well, monstrous.

     In my defence, I would opine that my complete lack of smoking is a major factor in allowing sums of money which would have gone up in smoke and been ingested in tar to be used for something that is much more (much more) useful and necessary.  But is an awfully large sum of money.  For a chair.

     And, as its main material is a sort of mesh (to allow for air flow and healthiness) you don’t even get plush, buttoned leather for your money – in spite of the fact that the money you have paid could easily have allowed wheels to have been fitted to a handmade ottoman and still have had money left over.

     And I don’t care.  I have got (or at least will have) what I wanted.  And it is something that will be used.  And used constantly.  And, and I think I am trying to persuade myself here rather than any reader.  And so, I will stop.  But I (and that is the important pronoun) I, think that it is money well spent.  And I sincerely trust that I will be saying that in twenty years’ time (when I am still using the bloody thing) and then dividing the price I paid in 2020 by the number of years I have been using it and saying to myself, “It’s a bargain!” and “My back has never felt better!” and so on.

     I am further encouraged by the fact that the person selling me thing was actually using one of them as her own office chair.  And that has to be good.  Doesn’t it?  Yes?

     What the AOTC (Advent of the Chair) will necessitate is Doing Something to the chaos of the third floor.  Such a splendid beast must have space in which to dominate the surroundings.  The detritus behind me at the moment must go.  Where?  I know not, but somewhere not behind me.  The Chair will be brought unto me by the lackeys of the firm and they will Construct The Chair, presumably by bringing up the pieces to the third floor.  There is no room whatsoever to do any construction so, what years of nagging by Toni have failed to do, the AOTC will force me to do: create space where no space exists.

     My last and latest attempt to Clear Up the third floor comprised checking through long unopened files and junking and shredding irrelevant papers.  This created gratifying large bags of rubbish, but not any appreciable space as I had been excavating rather than bulldozing.  Something much more radical is called for, and to be frank, I am not sure that I can muster up enough iconoclastic zeal to do the necessary.  Toni has, bless him, offered to do the ‘tidying up’ for me, but I know that I would have to ‘dispose’ of him after the event when I realized what priceless pieces of ephemera he might have got rid of!

     So, the next few weeks are going to demand a positively Dominican level of material rejection from me if I am to make any impression on the cluttered chaos.  Wish me luck or wish me the equanimity to see the AOTC as setting a diamond in the dross of attic confusion!

     And yes, I am well aware that I have not actually told you the price of the thing.  And yes, I have no intention whatsoever of so doing.  I may be happy (if that is the word that I am looking for) with what I have done, but I think that I can only convince others by denying them specific totals.  Better to speculate with lurid imagination rather than condemn in black and white!  And you will have noticed that I chose a generic chair for illustration rather than something more identifiable.

 

 

 

 

And talking of the unjustifiable, Johnson is trying to have his cake and eat it: he fulfils his promise to allow us to celebrate Christmas but wants us not to do it because it will fuel the increase in Covid infection.  So, what this appalling man is actually doing is putting the onus on the British People.  He lacks the courage to admit that he was wrong to promise a variant on the “it will be all over by Christmas” (that always works out well!) and instead of imposing legally enforceable restrictions he is leaving it all up to us.  He will then, of course, wash his hands and say that it was made clear by the government that there were risks involved and people were warned, but people will be people and therefore you have only yourselves to blame!  He truly is repellent.

     Here in Catalonia and in Spain things do not appear to be much better.  Our prime minister has had to self-isolate because of his proximity to the French president and we all know that all hell is going to break out after the Christmas period.

     We have gone through a year when normal has been taken out roughed up, lightly killed, spat at, insulted, trampled on and general bad mouthed.  I think we know that we are in the final stretch, and I further think that we know that the final stretch is not going to be measured in weeks but rather in months.  And probably quite a few months.  I am telling myself that I will be lucky, very lucky, if I am vaccinated by April.  And since I tick a few of the ‘at risk’ boxes, I think it is going to be the end of the summer or the middle of the autumn until a majority of the country is close to having had the jab.

     Given those expectations, Christmas is neither here nor there, it is just an odd date in the unrelenting sequences that we have been subject to during this pandemic.

 

But my chair will be here in January.  Something concrete to look forward to.

Ease of expression

New Lockdown, third week, Monday

 These are the first words that I have typed with my new keyboard.  After many years of good-natured abuse of my previous keyboard, it has finally, if not quite given up the ghost, then it has decided to be whimsical with it allowing certain key keys to work.  It is difficult and frustrating to have to check every word that contains an ‘e’ or an ‘i’ to find out whether the damn thing has worked.

     Rather than allow my default position to come into play (i.e. buying new immediately) I allowed myself to be influenced by Toni who suggested (not unreasonably) that, armed with cotton buds and wet wipes, I attempt first to clean the thing.

     A determined cleaning of a keyboard is immensely shaming because of the sheer amount of filth that you are able to dislodge from between the keys (in spite of the fact that you had, you really had gone over the keyboard regularly with moist tissues to clean it) and the shocking amount of detritus that falls out when you turn the keyboard upside down and gently knock it about a bit.

     And, I managed to convince myself, it all really made a difference.  Except it didn’t, and wishful thinking does not supply missing letters, but Amazon does.

     So, within hours of placing the order, I am now the proud and much poorer possessor of a new Magic Keyboard. 

     The new version of the keyboard is smaller and thinner that what I suppose I ought to refer to as my old ‘vintage’ keyboard.  The function keys are the same size as the letter keys and the rechargeable battery is built in and charged via a lightening thingy.  There is less key travel than in my old one, and the old separate tack pad looks as though it comes from a separate universe and is nothing like the same size and colour as the new keyboard.  But it works and I am damned if I am going to pay Apple prices for purely aesthetic cosmetic reasons – which possibly shows that I am not a ‘true’ Apple owner!

      So far, so good.  The keyboard appears to be working well and it is a relief not to have to look at each word with suspicion to see if the most common vowel has made an appearance!

 

 

 

There is something deliciously ironic about Johnson having to self-isolate while averring that No 10 is a Covid-secure environment, in spite of publicity photographs released showing Johnson without a mask and inside the appropriate physical distance from the MP who later proved to be Covid positive.  Johnson doesn’t really seem to learn from past infections.  But then ¡he doesn’t really seem to learn essential lessons from anything, so perhaps no surprise there.  Again.

     And to think this was the week that Johnson was going to re-set his chaotic ‘government’ after breaking friends with his bestie and finally going to get the easiest trade agreement in history.  Withering contempt does not even come close to what I feel for that vicious charlatan.  Well, he won’t have Cummings to blame for things going less than well (!) when the end of the year finds the UK totally unprepared for anything that is likely to happen.

 

I spent my time on the bike this morning wondering if I would get back home before the rains.  It was one of those day when what you thought the day was going to be like depended on which direction you looked in: to the south east the sky was bright and there was some glimpses of sun; to the north west the low cloud cover was dark and, as I cycled nearer to Port Ginesta I actually put my lights on!

     In the UK, I would have said that rain was inevitable, but by the time I had turned around at Port Ginesta and started to make my way back, the sun came out and, although not entirely convincing, it hung around for a while to make the journey more positive.

     Now, we are in the customary ‘brightly dull’ weather at which Castelldefels excels. And which gives hope for future sunshine.  I hope that is frequently realized, even when things look hopelessly dank!

 

The first steps have been taken towards making a Catalogue Raisonné of my ‘artistic’ holdings a reality.  I don’t think that there is any point in producing a purely academic version, so I think that I will make it a chatty one and use the art described as a way of encouraging more discursive writing.  The technical bits I can attempt to make as academic as is required, but the descriptions can be a little looser and, as ever, a trifle more self-indulgent.

     I can tell that I am going to have problems with dates and names.  Most of the art works are not dated and the names are either indecipherable or not there.  And for the single piece of Ewenny Pottery that survived my childhood fingers – how to describe it and date it?  And if pottery is included, why not glass, even though most of my glass is commercially produced and at the moment it is in storage because neither of us is drinking very much wine at the moment? 

     And china, even my everyday plates and bowls are now no longer produced, perhaps they merit inclusion! 

     And what about my discarded ‘vintage’ keyboard, that surely has a right to be catalogued, though as I no longer have the box I cannot get full dollar for its resale value!  And the keyboard suggests that old computers and aged but not discarded mobile phones should be candidates for inclusion.  But, perhaps I am getting beyond myself and I should stick, at first, with the more conventional elements of art.

     The research for this is going to be fun!  And I hope informative, though the accusation of cui bono could always be levelled against such an enterprise.  As if mere logic and utility have ever been compelling guiding principles for me!

 

It’s the thinness of a piece of pork lion that makes the difference.  At least this is what I have been told by Toni, who has rejected the present pieces of meat that we have and demanded daintier.

     And that gave me an opportunity.  There was no way that I was going to throw out a whole tranche of loins (or lions as I first wrote) because they were a few millimetres too big.  So, I decided to make a stew.  It’s a long time since I’ve made a decent stew and I am looking forward to dinner this evening when Day 1 of the stew will be sampled.

     The real joy of stew is not the Day 1, run-of-the-mill offering that you get (satisfying though it often is) but rather the Day 3 or Day 4 version with the delicious accretions that make each Day of Stew wonderfully different.

     It will, alas, be a singular pleasure as Toni deigns to eat such things – and it is also the reason that the stew might last until Day 4!

     At some point I always weaken and add curry powder and perhaps a few pieces of pasta to the softened potatoes already there and, together with a few nuts and some dried fruit always give it a bit of a zing!

     Just in case all of the preceding sounds a little too professional, I have just realized (having taken the finished stew off the hob) that I have added no onions, garlic or leeks – which were specifically bought in our last jaunt to the shops (to get out of the house) to add the flavour that all expect.  I am now debating whether to go back downstairs and add the ingredients that nobody (nobody) forgets or wait until tomorrow to give an entirely different taste to the experience.

     The hell with it!  What’s an extra hour with a slow cooked stew?  I’ll add them before I settle down to a little artistic research!

     Essential ingredients duly added – roll on dinner!

Put it down to experience!

An underwhelming evening at the opera

I am constantly aware of how niche going to the opera is, especially sitting as I do in one of the more expensive seats in the Liceu, surrounded by the good and the great of the cultural scene in Barcelona.  I do my bit for egalitarianism by wearing sandals and jeans, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I am (generally speaking) surrounded by the white, the elderly and the middle class.  Count the number of balding men exiting a performance at the opera and you will begin to fear for the survival of this art form after another generation or two!

            It doesn’t have to be like this of course.  In some parts of the world going to the opera is a normal and relatively inexpensive experience.  But there is no way of producing good opera cheaply.  Think about it: there is an opera house, seats, a stage, sets, lighting, soloists, costumes, a chorus, technicians, an orchestra and so on and so on.  Opera is an expensive business and it is only ‘affordable’ with subsidy.  That subsidy is either via ticket prices or via public finance.  I am well aware that, expensive as my ticket might be, it would be a damn sight more expensive without government help!

            It all comes down to whether you think that opera as an art form is worth subsidising to make it more available to a greater range of punters.  As far as I am concerned, opera at its best successfully combines so many different art forms that the resultant melange is exhilarating.

            And sometimes it isn’t.

            And the performance of La Clemenza di Tito by Mozart in the Liceu last night was one of those underwhelming evenings that makes you question the expense.

            La Clemenza is an opera seria: a serious opera, historical and heavy with moral worth and interminable continuo.

            The legendary ‘mercy’ of the Emperor Titus was chosen as a subject matter to flatter Leopold II as part of the celebrations for his coronation as king of Bohemia.  Opera seria was the preserve of the nobility and played to their predilections, but it doesn’t necessarily play to ours.

            Even though the opera includes love, fidelity, betrayal, rebellion, arson, confusion and moral dilemma it is a fairly static piece with most of the real action being the inner turmoil of the individual characters expressed in recitative or decorated aria.

            At the end of the first act I understood why this opera had had a century and a half of obscurity before its modern rediscovery.

            The opening of the opera gave an opportunity for the Orquestra Simfònica conducted by Phillipe Auguin to show its ability in the playing of the overture and in this, as throughout the opera the playing was nuanced and authoritative.  While the orchestral playing was excellent the stage picture of the opening of the opera was less convincing.  The scenery was drab and literally clunky and the sombre, black uniformed figures of the praetorian guard formed a circle around a shrouded figure and did nothing else for minutes until, towards the end of the opening music they pushed the plinthed figure into an alcove up stage and allowed Roman architecture on wheels to form a frame for the opening numbers.

            Myrtò Papatanasiu as Vitellia had a good stage presence but I felt her voice sometimes lacked conviction.  She certainly rose to the occasion in her final aria, but I remained unconvinced.  Stéphanie d’Oustrac as Sesto moved around the stage well and had a dramatic presence, with a tendency to melodrama and a voice that was more than competent.  Annio, sung by Lidia Vinyes-Curtis, was always a lively presence and, although I found her voice a trifle too nasal for my liking, she played her part well.

            The eponymous role of Tito Vespasiano was taken by Paolo Fanale whose lightish tenor voice was pleasant within the middle range but became harsh at the top end of his register.  He lacked the commanding quality that would have made his presence on stage striking.

            For me, the stand-out voice of the evening was that of Anne-Catherine Gillet singing the role of Servilia, a voice that was thrillingly immediate.

            The chorus were their usual characterful selves, and it would have been good to have had more of their work enlivening this drawn-out entertainment.

            The end of the opera had a moment that I wished had informed more of the preceding couple of hours.  As the tediously magnanimous emperor walked upstage after forgiving everyone for everything, his praetorian guard suddenly turned on him and the last stage picture was of a suggestion of another rebellion.  This ‘false note’ runs counter to the thrust of the original intent of the piece but it did add a (tragically too late) indication of how the staging could have been more interesting.

            If this review seems unduly negative, then that’s how I feel.  There were good things in this piece, and some of the ensemble music was captivating – but recitative leaves me cold and I left the opera with a feeling of shaking the dust off my sandals and hoping that this is a production that will not see a revival over the next decade or so.

And I was ripped-off for the Indian meal that I had before the start of the performance.  But let it pass.  Let it pass.

The next opera is Lohengrin which I am ashamed to admit I have never seen in a full performance!