In the compensatory way of Catalan weather, it is now gloriously sunny and raining! I managed to get my tempest-delayed bike ride from this stormy morning in, just before the lashing rain thoroughly soaked me – and that last bit can be read in both ways, and both are right!
In this part of the world, thunder sounds as if it is being ‘played’ by an over enthusiastic ASM in some ropey rep. It grumbles away in the background until you suddenly feel as though you are in the front line in WW1 as a cataclysmic clap of thunder sounds as if it has taken over all of your immediate surroundings.
As I have been typing, the rain has stopped and a sunny dampness has settled around the blissfully quiet pool, devoid as it is of persons of limited age. It won’t be long before the determined sunshine chimes in with their youthful energy and the (imagined) solitude is rudely broken. Again.
We are approaching the two-week period when our local pool is closed for essential maintenance, or whatever. This means that each year I have to decide about where I go to maintain my daily exercise.
Let me be clear, only the pool is closed, all other aspects and facilities of the centre are available. My knees preclude padel, so the only other alternative is To Go To The Gym.
When I first came to join this centre, I was given the guided tour by one of the managers who asked, “Would you like to see the gym?” To which I replied, “No.” I was there for the covered 25m pool and nothing else.
I am not going to the other main pool in Castelldefels because I have bad (and expensive) memories of using the place, so my choice in past years has been to go to the municipal pool in the neighbouring town of Gavà (Gavá, in Spanish) which means that I have to use my bike to wing the desolate abyss (an unlighted link road) between Castelldefels and my destination pool, with frankly rather frightening traffic obviously resenting my presence on the tarmac!
This year, however, I am seriously considering To Go To The Gym in the pool with a much shorter bike ride, and most of it on an actual bike lane! My reasoning is, that if I can find a gym instructor who lacks that sadistic side that seems a common factor in so many of their approaches to exercise regimes, and someone who actually appreciates the bone-on-bone reality of arthrosis, then I could profitably do some exercises to strengthen by leg muscles to show willing by the time I (finally) get to the traumatologist where something might be done. I have to admit, I am not entirely convinced by that reasoning, and I am telling myself that the early morning cycle ride to Gavà in the dark was frighteningly exhilarating and availing to good.
The internal debate can continue until the 5th of September (when I have a delayed routine hospital appointment in the morning) but by the 6th I will have to have decided. Probably before then, because the days of just popping into a pool and being able to have a swim, post pandemic simply do not exist. So, some planning needs to be done.
As I sit in the sunshine drinking my tea and adding pepper to my tortilla francesa baguette I am often regaled by music that is entirely unknown to me, piped to the outside sitting area by who knows who inside. Most of it washes over me, but occasionally I perk up a little and take notice.
Yesterday was one such day because part of the lyrics of one of the songs sounded odd to me. The song (I have since discovered) was a “collaboration” between Yves V, INNA & Janieck. How it took that many to write the deathless lyrics or the equally deathless tune, is somewhat beyond me, but one particular line stuck out, “You haunt me like a déjà vu” (written without the accents in the original, but let it pass, let it pass – and I might add that they were added automatically by Word when I typed them and not with my fingers.)
And I realized that I have never seen the phrase used like that. Yes déjà vu is a noun, but I had never seen, or indeed heard the phrase with only an indefinite article to keep it company “a déjà vu.” One hears things like, a sense of déjà vu; it is déjà vu; it was déjà vu; a feeling of déjà vu, but never, “a déjà vu.” In the chorus of the song the first line uses “a déjà vu” but the repeat is “You haunt me like déjà vu” which is how I would use it.
Obviously, using the indefinite article is not in any sense wrong, but it is odd that it is generally not done.
I am now wondering if I should find an opportunity and try out the song’s way of using the phrase and see how it sits with my way of expression.
Words, I love them!
