It's character building!

 

Man, and boy, I have worshipped at the shrine of The Gadget .

What luck is has been that I am someone who has seen the advent of the True Electronic Age with the invention of the transistor and its dissemination through society and useful (and otherwise) machines.

Sitting at my desk and without moving things out of the way, I can see a plethora of machines and gadgets.  Let me confine myself merely to the surface of the desk.

The so-called Old School gadgets: stapler, Sellotape dispenser, stapler remover, pens, pencils, markers, scissors, paperclips, rubbers, etc

Electronic: digital web radio; Mac Computer,  Bluetooth keyboard, ditto mouse, Bose mini Bluetooth speaker, studio microphone, digital led lamp with USB connections, telephone, new smartwatch for a present, electronic flashlight, cables, connectors, batteries, battery charger, power points and plugs galore, printer, removable hard drives and on and on.  And I’ve left some of the things out because such a mass of things becomes rather embarrassing when you list them!

The number of computers that I have owned is little short of astonishing in all their forms from handheld, through portable to desktop.  I have loved them all and have willing accepted the cruel price that dedication to the computer has demanded in terms of lost time in front of an unresponsive screen when programs simply didn’t work or went wrong at exactly the wrong time, in spite of the pleading that all of us have done to the harsh masters of plastic and glass when they decided not to cooperate.

I am not afraid to admit that I have wept tears of pure unalloyed frustration in front of dead computer screens, when I had put all of my digital eggs in one fickle electronic basket.  But I have kept on, keeping on.

And let’s be fair, modern computing is nothing like it was in the Dark Ages of thirty years ago.  Things generally go well.  Delays are minimal.  When you consider that with one of my early computers, the Sinclair QL, I had to wait up to a minute for the machine to save one A4 page of typing – and you could do nothing but wait while it saved – the microseconds that you wait for small documents to save nowadays is little sort of miraculous.  And programs (generally) work and there is a logic behind operations that you are (usually) more than capable of working out.  Life working with computers is (generally) good.

Which brings me to today.

And banks.

I am in the process of buying a new bike and, for reasons too complicated and irritating to go into, I had to pay for the bike by getting my bank to send the money in US dollars to Hong Kong.

The money was sent off.  And eventually the bike makers plaintively asked where it was.  The money had been sent god know where, but my bank did not see fit to let me know that the payment had been unsuccessful. 

When I went to the bank a second time to find out what had gone on, I was informed that the money had been returned and would I like to try again to send the money to the manufacturer.  As the manufacturer had, by this time, sent me a photograph of my bike packed up with my name on it waiting to be shipped, I said that would be a good idea.

So, the money was sent off and successfully reached its destination.

 

But.

 

I was charged 22 Euros for the original sending of the money.

I was then charged 22 Euros for the money to be returned.

I was then charged 22 Euros for the money to be resent.

66 Euros for payment of a printed invoice!

This is an on-going case!

 

However, I had another bill to pay, this time to a firm in Barcelona and I was determined that I would not be caught in the 22 Euro trap of getting a bank teller to do the transfer of funds – I would use the digital aspect of my bank to do it myself.

It took half the morning and a fair part of the afternoon to get things organized.  I could, without too much difficulty, get into my account online.  I even managed to input all the details necessary to pay the debt, it was just the final part of the transaction that let me down.

It was not enough to use all the security to get into the account to make things safe, there was also a mobile phone app that acted as a sort of digital signature.

I am not, for the sake of my sanity, going to itemize the number of times that I went back and fro, from computer to phone, copying and pasting various security numbers (“Only valid for 5 minutes!”) to get some sort of mystical authorization so the bloody money could be paid.

In the course of trying to get things done, I utilized the menu help, the automated digital assistant and anything else that I could click on.  Nothing worked and I found myself in a Circle of Authorization of the Damned, repeating various SMS routines and getting precisely nowhere.

I eventually, through a process of elimination, clicked on a link to a named individual who was apparently my Personal Banker.  I asked for help and nothing happened and so I gave up.

And then the phone rang and, to cut a long story short, after a confusing conversation I was given Another Way to try and it worked.

 

My point is that things were difficult when they should have been easy.  In spite of my dedication to things gadgetful, I was still left hanging.  And re-living the frustration of years ago.

If I think about it, years ago I would have written a cheque and put it in the post.  Job done.  When is the last time you wrote a cheque?  You are not given a cheque book in Spain.  If you need a cheque you have to get the bank manager to sign one and they cost a fortune!

So, although on my digital account I can see every payment and get details of when and how much has been taken from my account; I can see pretty graphs of my expenditure; I can sort and search, it is just all there to compensate me for the fact that some things were easy and are now complicated.

But, and this is the real lesson that one takes from the digital experiences that bloody one; the next time it will be easier and I will be able to take advantage of the glorious possibilities that digital banking offers.

Such self-delusion is the way that we keep sane.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFLS - DAY 36 - Monday 20th April

It’s still raining!  This is the third day; I may as well be in the Britain – except I understand from resentful looking at the weather forecast for Cardiff that it has had the temerity to be fine in my native land!  What is the world coming to!

     I did manage to take my walk in a brief interlude of dryness between showers and then spent the rest of the day trying to edit my new chapbook, Coasts of Memory.

     Every time I read through the thing I find something else that I want to change.  I don’t mind the substantive editing where I am actually changing words, it’s the technical editing that always gets to me.

     I do have something approaching a final working draft, but I am nowhere near finished with the final product.

     The real problems have developed with the printing.  As I am trying to produce something in-house I am relying on one of the printers that we have to do my bidding.  This would be fairly straightforward, but I print out my chapbook poetry in A5 format, which means that I double side a page of A4 so that the final book is put together using multiples of 4 A5 pages to one double sided A4 sheet.

     The last time that I tried to print out a booklet I failed, but I failed with the expert help of technicians from Microsoft, Epson, Brother and Mac.  At one time I was getting on-line advice and help from three continents!  It was truly amazing how uselessly helpful true experts could be!  The end advice?  Buy another printer!  Honestly!

     The final resolution to the problem was to transfer all the files that had failed to my ever-trusty MacBook Air and print from that!  A solution that I am still using.  No matter that I have a state of the art printer in my study, it finds my up to date version of Word too difficult to work with!  Don’t ask!  I don’t understand either, but I do have a solution that works with a ‘vintage’ laptop and I am prepared to go with that.

     As I have added photographs to the chapbook, my current problem is that the printer refuses to print them in colour.  We have given up trying to get satisfactory solutions in the damp dark and I will wait for the bright morn to attack the recalcitrant printer.

     Toni has said that the reason the printer is not working is that I have bought a new Roberts Internet Radio to replace the white junk in the kitchen and the printer is sulking that I have a newer piece of gadgetry than  her!  Given my experience with insane pieces of electronics, I find that explanation for the non-colour printing of the document eminently sensible!

As you might be able to tell, I have embraced the problems with the printer as a way of thinking about something other than the Covid-19 crisis.  But alas, it has only partially worked.

     At the moment I am not convinced that any country in the world has actually got a convincing handle on how to deal with this situation.  I realize that we are in a dire situation: people are dying and are resenting social separation and while we are dealing with the medical crisis, the economic and social crises are gaining traction.  The story of the Great Depression is not an encouraging one, and neither is the long slog out of the Depression.  What is going to happen when the three months of government paying 80% of wages stops?  How far is this government prepared to go to ease the inevitable hardship that the complete dislocation of economic activity is going to continue to produce?

     The economy must be up and running as soon as possible, but at what cost?

Our Catalan class is stumbling towards some sort of new existence: I await developments with interest.

It looks as though it is going to be raining tomorrow as well!  I will have to lose myself in technical resolution.  So to speak.

     Tomorrow the colour many not be courtesy of the weather, thought I hope it will be courtesy of my printer!

Practical problems

The changing of the shower hose has now assumed crisis proportions.

What should have been a simple case of unscrewing the end of the hose from the tap attachment and putting the new one on has filled parts of three long days with increasing frustration and hopelessness.

The trouble is that the bit that should have stayed in the tap, didn’t and I cannot (no matter how I try) get the bit that didn’t stay to leave the bit that has to be replaced.  If you see what I mean.

I have tried brute force and liberal applications of penetrating oil.  Well, I say that, but I don’t really know about the ‘penetrating’ bit, its just oil from a spray can – but I do remember hearing about the ‘penetrating’ bit applied to recalcitrant un-screwable things, so I’m hoping for the best.  Wrong tense there, I have tried to separate the two parts and there was absolutely no movement whatsoever, so perhaps I should have said something like, “I had hoped that the oil would have done the trick, but, alas, I was to be unhappy with the lack of outcome” – that seems complicated enough to mirror the problem!

I have used spanners and wrenches and nothing works.  I went to our local Chinese supermarket and bought things.  And they didn’t work either, so I now have yet more tools that will rest unused in a big plastic toolbox for years to come.

There was a moment’s hope when it appeared that the use of an allen key might be able to be inserted into the tap bit and the purchase gained with a set of pliers might do the trick.  None of the allen keys that I possess was bulky enough so, foolishly I bought a hefty set - and not one of those works either.  The two largest are just too big and just too small to be of any use.

I am beginning to despair.  And I’ve probably paid too much for the completely useless tools that I have bought to try and do the job.

As I live in a rented house and as this is Spain - where no landlord appears to pay for anything, no matter what reason or reasonableness is involved, I am determined not to replace the taps to benefit the rapacious landlords’ future tenants. 

 

The concept of things wearing out and needing to be replaced by the people who actually own the house and who, after all, are getting a substantial rent on a monthly basis, does not apply here.  If it breaks, it appears to be the responsibility of the renter – even if such things are usually covered by the insurance of the house owner e.g. fitments like sinks, baths, toilets.  But what I assumed from the UK does not apply here.  Apparently.

So, a fully justified attempt to deny the landlord a lasting benefit is, it appears, going to cost me more than if I had shelled out the cash for a new set of taps in the first place.

I have not given up entirely.  There must be a shop open (even though this is August and NOTHING HAPPENS in August) with a sympathetic person who has more technical nous than I posses who is willing to take pity on me and use some as yet untired tool and achieve separation.

Saturday is probably not the best day to go around with a woefully winsome expression asking for help.  At this time of the year you are far more likely to get some startled student wondering what the hell you are talking about rather than a competent workperson.  But, as always, I live in hope.

And my failure with the bike spokes is just as complete.

My bike seems to have a penchant for snapping back-wheel spokes.  I have never previously owned a bike where the spokes have broken.  But this one has made up for all of those spoke-solid years by ones breaking on a regular basis.  As I have had to take the bike to the shop to have them replaced, it seemed like a sensible idea to have the raw material (as it were) and do the job myself.  After all, how difficult a job can it be?

The answer, as you will have guessed, is impossible.  At least for me.  

I seem to remember my bike person telling me that he had had to cut them to fit.  So I tried cutting them.  I prefer not to think too closely on the ineptitude of my attempts; I am telling myself that the fret saw I used was the wrong sort – it certainly seemed to blunt its teeth almost instantly.  Disturbingly, the broken one appeared to be the same size as the uncut spokes.  But then there is the problem of fitting them inside the rims. 

 

There is at least a workable solution to this problem and that involves swallowing my pride and taking the bike back to shop, tail between my legs and spokes in my hot little hand and pleading for professionalism.

With both my technical problems, I suspect that there must be a simple solution, but I am buggered if I know what it is.  And part of me doesn’t want to know.

I spent the morning in the library of MNAC in Barcelona looking at the books that they have on Elsheimer.  At least one of them looks ideal for what I want to use in my writing, while most of the others are, not unreasonably, in German - but there are some useful illustrations in them, and there is always Google Translate in extremis!

It was odd getting back into an academic library.  And there is that musty smell that comes with opening old books that you are certain have not been consulted for years!  Heady and depressing at the same time.

I am still in the area of ‘finding out’ about my subject matter and I have not settled on the topic that I want to develop.  But, I’m getting there.  Or at least I’m kidding myself that I am becoming clearer about where I am going.

To go from a life in books in the morning, to one in which I get my hands dirty in the afternoon, is not something that I appreciate. 

 

Perhaps I should.

Rain means write

True to my word: the heavens have opened (momentarily) and I have taken to the keyboard, making electronically concrete my pledge to write more when the weather broke. It is still hot, but there is a fresher feeling to the heat than there was yesterday.

This will be another opportunity for this country to display its usual ability to vouchsafe a little sunshine even in the most unpromising of days. The weather in Catalonia lacks the spitefulness of the customary British weather where the sun can disappear for days on end. Here, it is rare indeed for a single day to pass without at least a moment’s sunshine. The clock is set and I am waiting!

Yesterday was a day of waiting. Well, at least part of it. I was scheduled for a hospital appointment at the unnatural hour of 1.40 pm to get the results of my “sleep-over” in hospital to check on my level of sleep apnoea. The threat was that I would be forced to wear some sort of mask during the hours of darkness to encourage me to have a more sleepfully sleepy sleep. From experience derived from my stay in hospital in January I knew that, as far as I am concerned, a mask (however slight) would result in steely wakefulness.

My appointed time came and went and, disturbingly, not a single person came out or went in to Room 12 where my meeting was to take place.

In Catalan hospitals there is a card reader for patients. You take your medical card and let the machine read it, and a few seconds later it recognizes your existence and shows you your name, appointment time and room location. So, as soon as you use the machine, the doctor knows that you are in the hospital and waiting.

And wait I did. Thanks to my mobile phone I was able to while away the time by a combination of intelligent reading and mindless (almost!) game playing so that I never reached that fingernail-down-the-blackboard furious irritation that comes with endless inaction. However, even electronically fuelled activity cannot keep patience even and I flounced off to an “information” section of the hospital to find out what was going on.

And they didn’t seem to know either. Unanswered phone calls and a group discussion produced nothing, but I was told to go back to where I had come from and something would happen.

I returned to the waiting room and nothing happened.

For a while.

And then, through an unnoticed staff door, the person to whom I had been speaking suddenly appeared, motioned me to change my seat and then disappeared.

And nothing happened.

And then it did. Hearing some mangled combination of my names I leapt to my feet and was eventually seen. You have to understand that, in Catalonia, they assume that my middle name (unused expect as an initial in Britain) is my family name and that my last name (my family name in Britain) is my mother’s surname (as in Catalonia). How my dad would have coped in this country, not having a middle name is something to think about.

Anyway I was seen by two tired medicos who were obviously reading my notes for the first time as I sat across from them.

I had all my notes. In Catalonia you can register with your medical centre and download all the notes that your doctor has. I am now building up an impressive book called, “Stephen’s Health” that contains everything about my condition that I have ever been given or I have been able to download. The results from my hospital sleep over had been missing, but they have now found their electronic way into my records and have consequently been transferred to hard copy and extra pages in the book.

The unfortunate thing is that they are largely meaningless to me as they are couched in medical terminology that is beyond me. This is where the website on which my records live shows its versatility as there is also an opportunity to contact your doctor via email to ask for clarification. And that I have done.

We have just had another sharp shower that means that I will continue to type as the lack of sun means that the lure of the sunbed has no present power.

Showers also limit my bike riding. Although I have a cycling rain jacket, a flimsy thing with slashes whose function seems to let the rain in, I distain to use the bike when the weather is inclement. To be fair I can only think of a few occasions in the past six months or so when I have had to use the car rather than the bike, so I cannot complain – and I might add that I have yet to use the rain jacket as I have not been caught in a storm.

But the non-use of the bike at the moment is because of a flat tyre. I have zero intention of either repairing the thing or changing it, so I am looking for a cycle shop to do the dirty work. But, it is August. And no one wants to be in their shops during this traditional shut down time, so I will have to hunt around for some character who is prepared to work during the non-working time of the year. And that is going to be something of a problem.

Although Castelldefels is a seaside town where you would think that everything would be open to take full advantage of holidaymakers, you would be wrong. There are restaurants here that are now closed for the holiday season! 

We have long ago given up about trying to understand just how the commercial mind of this place works, we simply have to go with the illogical flow!