Survival!

 

 

Our cosy meeting of the Poetry Group in Barcelona last night was rudely interrupted (ironically during the period of silent introspection before our free-write) by a chorus of alarms from our mobile phones, the local government raucously informing us that a major storm was about to break and that extra care needed to be taken and . . .  but the way that the alarms are set up is that if you press the ‘OK’ on the screen to stop the noise, it also wipes the message, so any further details are lost and you just have the memory of the noise and the brief glimpse of the apocalypse outlined in three languages.

     It is a sign of the times that one member of the group had used her past experience to explain the proper etiquette for dealing with the increasingly regular (and intrusive!) mobile phone alarms, by informing us that the proper etiquette is is lower the volume to stop the noise, and then you can read the message from the authorities at your leisure.

     It was also with a certain amount of cynicism that we now appreciate these ‘warnings’.  After various scandals where withering fingers of accusation have been levelled at various officials who did nothing or less than nothing in the face of prompt warnings, we are now at the other extreme of responsibility with any front-line authorities showing an eagerness to put warnings out as soon as possible so that the officials involved can cover themselves in the case of disaster.

     It was the first flash of over-the-top lightning (looking more like the results of an amateur junior ASM being over enthusiastic in giving a dramatic light show for Lear’s Madness on the Heath scene, than anything in so-called real life) that I realised that I had not even backed a mini umbrella into my backpack and that I would have to traipse my way to the car park under the arc de triomf in driving rain.

     In the event, at the prompt termination of the event, there was what appeared to be a lull in the storm (which had provided sometimes disturbingly apposite sound and lighting effects to the poetry being read) which I took advantage of and scurried (in so far as I am now capable of that action) off to the car park with my baston clicking an urgent clicking beat to my progress.

     The car park is one of those vast underground constructions which honeycomb the city and give vastly expensive parking spaces, because finding something on the actual above-ground streets is virtually impossible.  My problem is always getting back in at the end of the meeting after the doors have closed.

     As is usually the case, at the entrance to the car park you are provided with a ticket from the machine which gives you a printed bar code which can be read by a machine which will then open the door for you to get your car.  I, however, have a little machine in the car which is recognized and lets me through without having to take a ticket, and this is also the case when I leave, my payment is automatically and (almost) painlessly extracted from my account, as you only get the briefest digital glimpse of the astronomical amount that you have paid to stay there.

     But I can never get in because the after-hours closed doors can only be opened from the street by showing your printed barcode on the ticket that you were issued with when you came in.  A ticket that I do not have.  I have previously been told that I can punch the registration of my car into the machine manually to gain access – but the keypad only has number and not letters, so I always find myself pressing the little button next to the keypad to summon one of the workers to open the door. 

     This usually takes a few minutes, which is usually not a problem (in spite of some of the suspect characters who hang around the arc de triomf late at night) but yesterday, I was waiting outside in The Lull waiting for the rains to recommence at any moment.

     My entry was facilitated by a customer leaving and, by the time that I got to my car, I was passed by a worker on one of those little electrical vehicles usually seen in airports, making his way to where I would have been waiting if it wasn’t for the aforementioned customer.

     Almost as soon as I got out of the carpark it started raining, complete with thunder and lightning.  As the air-con in the car is not functioning, I had the windows open and, as the rain increased, closed so the car became like a sauna.  And I took a new way home, guided by the GPS, going through new streets until I came to the welcome familiarity of the Via Laietana and a well-known way back.

     Driving at night in Barcelona is a total pain as you limp your way from red traffic light to red traffic light, with the added frustration of stopping for imaginary people to cross.  Would it really hurt the municipal authorities to install a degree of AI into the lights to facilitate the smoother running of the roads?  No, perhaps I shouldn’t have added a question mark to the last sentence, as its rhetorical nature is clear!

     As I drove through the city accompanied by lashing rain and the melodramatic production of son et lumière for the end times, I eventually made it onto the motorway.

     Although I was expecting it, based on vast past experience, the quality of the driving (in rain that needed the fastest setting of the windscreen wipers to fail to clear all the water) was appalling.  Motorists did not reduce their speed; they attempted risky manoeuvres on roads covered in standing water and . . . it was just like a normal night’s bad practice with the added danger of torrential rain.

     I did reduce speed, but that merely meant that vehicles drove at my speed a few centimetres behind me until they swerved to overtake into idiot traffic that was doing the same as they were.  I would like to say that it was an invigorating experience, but it wasn’t.  It was stressfully depressing and it remains a constant wonder to me that I do not have to thread my way through a series of pile-ups on all the roads I use!

     But obviously, I made it home, and was ironically drenched in the short run from the car to the front door.   

     A small price to pay for survival!

 

 

Sunday start

A lazy day today, I didn’t get up until 8.15 am!  I decided to give swimming a miss and will compensate by having an extended bike ride on the way to and from getting lunch in the local chicken place.

     I’ve completed the quick Guardian crossword, though it was a little more taxing than usual and I am sometimes stuck by the brevity of the clues that give a slanted version of the necessary word’s definition, so I often get the word before I realize its link to the clue!  Still, it’s done and that gives the start of the day a sort of achievement to add to the impetus of filling time with something useful.  Not that I have to search around for things to do as each day ends with my only having completed a part of my ‘to do’ list.  At the moment, for example, Catalan homework is handing over me and this writing is, yet again, displacement activity to compensate for my not doing it!

     There is a whip to get me in line with the work that I need to do for Catalan, as the examination for this section of the course will take place on the 13^th of this month.  We have been given fair warning, have been told what sort of vocabulary is going to be tested and have been given direct and clear indications of what sort of writing we will need to complete.  With such clear directions it is perverse and churlish not to get stuck in to the work and start the process of learning.  But I haven’t yet got round to starting this.  In my notebook that is supposed to be for my ideas for poems, I often find myself writing encouraging or admonitory notes to myself about work that needs to be done.  This writing too is another way of my communicating with myself to get geared up to start the hard work of learning.

     I find learning new words difficult; I discover a new, often useful word in Catalan, look at it, try and memorize it, write it down a few times – and then it’s gone.  The amount of effort needed to set the words in my memory seems disproportionate and I therefore tend to enter my learning zone with negativity washing around my mind.  I try and reason with myself: I live in Catalonia, I am surrounded by the language, learning it is merely a matter of common courtesy as well as increasing my understanding and so on and so on – but whatever psychological boosts I give myself, the simple inability to retain new vocab. Is a settled fact.  This in turn means that the examination will be another depressing indication of inability as I stagger my illiterate way towards the end of the scholastic year!

     In my own language, however, I continue to thrive.  The latest work on the ‘recalcitrant’ poem is producing good results.  Even though I may not have written a single line of poetry, the ideas and some phrases are steadily coalescing and the structure is beginning to emerge from all my pencilled scribbles.  I know for past experience that the present discrete idea elements scattered throughout the pages that I have already written will, eventually come together into a (hopefully) coherent poem.  Even if it doesn’t, the process is one that is enjoyable if demanding!

 

Today is Saint David’s Day and I have hunted around (as I do each year) to find the little artificial daffodil (purchased in aid of the Marie Curie Foundation) to wear for my National Day.  And, each time I wear it, it focuses my attention on my nationality.  In my next book, The eloquence of broken things, there is a section that brings together poems I have written that consider my nationality and what it mean to me.  For a numerically small nation, identity is a constant preoccupation and with the swamping proximity of England and the overwhelming use of English as the language of Wales the relationship between Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom is a critical element in the national sense of identity.  Each St David’s Day has become an opportunity for me to indulge (and I think that is the right word) in a particular form of introspection that rarely affects me on other days of the year – which is significant in itself!

     Only once has anyone commented on my wearing of a daffodil on St David’s Day and I assume that it will go generally unnoticed today as well.  Though there is a slightly different dimension because daffodils are yellow. 

     Let me explain.  I wear a metal pin of a yellow ribbon to show my support for the Catalans who are still in prison or restricted in their public lives because of the Spanish justice system in the aftermath of the referendum for Catalan independence.  Putting the question of independence aside for a moment, I consider the jailing of so many Catalan politicians to be reprehensible and perhaps an indication of the politicisation of the Spanish justice system. 

     The reaction of the Spanish to the Catalans has sometimes been little short of paranoid, with some instances of the banning of the colour yellow e.g. football supporters wearing yellow t-shirts or scarves having to give up pieces of yellow clothing before they were allowed into the games!  So a yellow daffodil could be seen as a statement of support for the prisoners and Catalan independence.

     In my case as I am wearing it next to the yellow ribbon, obviously for aesthetic rather than political reasons, the link is more obvious!