No choice to choose

 As I am off to the Liceu this evening - admittedly for an evening of ballet rather than opera, but that is how the season tickets tumble – I will deny myself the mucky pleasure of pointing out the corrupt sleaze that the Conservatives and presently mired in, led by a craven and despicable apology for a leader 

 

T

who because of a ‘previous appointment’ cannot be in the commons to apologise or accept his knocks for his frankly appalling management of the Paterson Scandal. 

     I will instead, to keep my mind unscarred by justified vitriol, consider decluttering.

 

knees, operation, library, getting rid of books,

      

 

 

     With the present state of my knees, which are little more than flesh covered bags of various sized marbles, our present abode is almost perfectly unsuitable.  The house is spread over three floors with the ground floor containing only the garden and the entrance, while the living quarters start on the third floor.  There is no lift, and the stairs are unyielding and narrow.

     There is no bathroom on the first floor that contains the living room and the kitchen, so everything needs stairs.

     My study (or hollowed out space in clutter) is on the third floor and that also has no bathroom.  The result is, when you get where you want to be, you don’t move until you absolutely have to!

     If, and given the way the health service has been knocked for six by the pandemic that is a big ‘if’, anything by way of an operation was considered to try and get my knees back to something approaching normality – then my house would emphatically NOT be the place to consider recuperation.  This means that we now have to consider moving within the near future.

     This is a sobering and frightening proposition.

     Where I go, there also goes my library.  And libraries, unless you are totally wedded to Kindle, is not something easily transportable.  And my library is large.

     Were I to move taking only my Art books and catalogues then I would be moving more books than most people have in their houses.  And given that they are Art books, a damn sight heavier than the books most people have.  And Art books are but one small part of my holdings.

     In spite of what Toni says and believes, I have ‘rationalised’ by collection over the years.  I did manage to shed a depressingly large section of my library in Cardiff (books, I might add, that I still resent having got rid of) and over the years in Castelldefels I have donated masses of books to educational establishments (and I resent their absence even more) but, and this is a sad, but entirely understandable fact, I have replaced the Lost Volumes with new and essential books that I NEED.

     If I am realistic, I know that we are unlikely to find somewhere as commodious as our present place and that means that I will have to be bloody minded in cutting my holdings even further to the bone before we are able to move.

     Yes, I know that there are some books that moved with me from Cardiff that I have not looked at or even opened since they were unpacked, but I know that they are there and THAT is the important point.

     I also know that I can have the classics of English Literature (at least historical and out of copyright English Literature) stored electronically and I do have various books on my Kindle, but I also have the copies of the books in which I first read them.  And I am and remain a ‘paper purist’ – there is nothing like actually turning the pages and feeling the heft of a volume in your hand.

     Sooner, rather than later, reality is going to have to hit, and I am going to have to make some very hard choices.  But I am putting my faith in prevarication and the liberal application of embrocation to stave off the evil day.

     Long live the bound and printed word!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 13

Get your recriminations in early, list them, remember them and throw them at the guilty when the crisis is over and they are brought to justice.  As if!

     The latest piece of absurdity to surface here in Spain is that 650,000 Covid-19 test kits have been ordered that are not fit for purpose, it even says as much on the side of the packs!  They were ordered from China from a supplier not approved by the Chinese authorities who had previously provided a list of recommended suppliers - ignored by the Spanish health officials.

     A plane left Barcelona airport for Malaga packed with people who were not the regulation distance apart – how was this allowed?

     Couples are walking dogs together.  People are coming and going (using the back entrance) of the house next door as if there is no crisis to limit their actions in continuing the building work.

     There is no uniformity about travel and keeping a distance.  We have death figures higher than China and many of us fear that the commitment to total lockdown as the only solution to rising numbers is not entirely accepted by the government.  We MUST remember and hold them all to account.

Listening to The Now Show on Radio 4 last night, we were left in no doubt that the participants had all followed guidelines and were broadcasting the show from their respective homes.   

     As it was radio we do not know just how they were dressed and consideration of that factor is perhaps best left to imaginations more prurient than mine, but the major difference between the normal show and the crisis show was the lack of a live audience.  With humour this can be something of a disadvantage when the listener sometimes needs to hear the audience give a more audible response to the inward chuckle.  But it was a good show, with a few wry digs and a competent set of comedians.

     Other shows are also being broadcast where the participants are not in studio but are at home and if the show is for television, that is where the Crisis (capital ‘C’) comes into play.  News broadcasts now regularly feature experts and politicians who are ostentatiously following the rules and self-isolating, but such exposure presents them with a real problem: what, in a Crisis, to have in the background.

     For most people who wish to present a professional vision (literally!) of themselves, the problem is solved by having a background of books.  Books add gravitas, they show knowledge, they are Culture.  But.

     If I had an HD television and a recorder and had a way of enlarging the background, I feel it would be very interesting to see exactly what books these people have chosen to put themselves in front of.  There is a post-crisis PhD thesis there!

     Perhaps ‘chosen’ is the wrong word to use for some of them, in so far as they are perhaps sitting at their desks in their home ‘office’ and the bookcase is the one that happens to be behind them.  Or is it?

     There is a low-ish bookcase behind me as I type and I’ve just turned around to look at it.  It is not the background that I would choose to be televised against.  There is an unsightly collection of mismatched books on the top shelf (together with a garish money box inscribed “Para mi gran viaje”) and the other shelves are filled with a variety of tatty box files with hand written titles and a sellotaped piece of paper reminding me that Palm Sunday is on the 5^th of April this year.  This last is because I write a poem-a-day during Holy Week.  Because I do.

     To my right is another bookcase, one shelf of which is filled with reference books.  Now these are far more photogenic: not only are they solid looking hardbacks, but also one of them has the word IDEAS in big capital letters along the spine.  Importantly, the word is large enough to be read by an appreciative watching television audience, or one that might be subliminally impressed!

     The problem with these books is that they are all too new looking, a little too superficial.  You need older books to make it appear that the shelves' contents have been read; that the books are old companions, not window dressing.

     I have a lot of books and, although I have tried, I have failed to get all of them into a coherent order on my shelves.  Most of my shelves are a voyage of discovery rather than a pattern for the Dewey Decimal System.  There are unexpected juxtapositions so that (and I have just reached up for a couple of books from another bookcase) The Nations of Wales 1890-1914 by M. Wynn Thomas is next to Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia and The Garden of Cyrus by Sir Thomas Browne, both of which are worth reading in their different ways and whose proximity is pleasing.  Give me time and I will work out why they deserve to be together!  But my point is that for most people with a large book collection the organizing principle is chaos not order.  Or perhaps that is only true in the Arts rather than the Sciences.  Or perhaps it’s just me.

     Now some people are chaotic in their organization and some have chaos thrust upon them and some others play at chaos: the casually strewn and oddly placed as artful indicator of the eccentric genius.

     The Book Backgrounds have ranged from the pitifully eked out shelves to the deep alcove floor to ceiling plenitude, but I just wonder how contrived it all is, and how long the ‘players’ in the television game have thought about how to present themselves.

     Now you might well say that I must have too much time on my hands to be concerned about such things, but what an individual places behind themself is a clearer indication of how they want to be perceived than anything they might have to say.  I think.

On television this evening there was a snatch of an interview with a solitary walker who was accosted and asked why he was breaking the regulations and his response was that he did not know that there were any regulations to break!  Not only have we have the Spanish Government paying for ads on the television, we have had the Generalitat in Catalonia and various advertisers who have tailored their messages to include reinforcement of the restrictions on behaviour.  How could the man have missed everything?  If, of course, he was telling the truth about his ‘ignorance’!  All it needs is a man like that who is also infected to cause another spike, and kill people.  Inconsideration is fatal, not funny.

As we come to the end of the second week of isolation, it is sobering to think that we may well have only passed one seventh of the time necessary for the sequestration to work on the virus.  One hopes that is a pessimistic forecast, but I fear it is a realistic one. 

     What are we going to be like by the end of this time?  One friend in the UK says that we are headed for civil unrest and riots; a friend in Catalonia says that the restrictions are too lenient and if they are not tightened then the situation will get much worse.  As time goes one and people who are not sick think that the restraints are too irksome, will they become freer in their actions, and will people who see others breaking the rules feel entitled to follow them?  And then . . .

     The real problem for us is that this situation is unparalleled and we are winging it, following advice from deeply flawed politicians, with failure illustrating their lack of forthrightness.

     One of the free MOOC courses that I am following at the moment is using some of the writing of Kant and I am sure that he would say that the restrictions on our behaviour and actions that are the most satisfactory are those that we would impose on ourselves if we had the freedom to do so.  Are the restrictions the sort of restrictions that we would think necessary in the circumstances?  I will stick to the rules come what may because Kant tells me to!  And I have managed to prevent myself from making a jocose comment using the name and adding an apostrophe and changing the K to a C.   

     Such restraint in the time of Corona!

    

One spine among many

I have lost a book!

Given that I have thousands and thousands of books, you may think that not being able to get my hands on one specific volume is not that surprising.  Which it isn’t.  But what is shaming is that ever since we moved into our present home I have (constantly) made variously wild statements about getting my books organized.

The last time that my books had even the semblance of being part of a coherent system was when I was last living in the UK.  Ever since the move to Spain the books have had to fend for themselves.

I have made half-hearted efforts at establishing a system and there are scattered literary outposts of civilization through my stock - but a coherent and inclusive organizational method has collapsed under the perceived load of the necessary work to make it a reality.

Part of the problem is that my book collection is housed over three floors in a score or more of Billy Bookcases and miscellaneous shelving systems.  Books are double stacked on some shelves and there is therefore not the surplus shelf space to allow “mini collections” to be formed which could then, eventually be amalgamated into a more sensible system.

A complicating fact is my interest in art.  Not that there is anything wrong with the subject, in spite of it being the choice of brain-dead royals to get a degree, no, it is the format of so many art books that is the problem.  Most hardback books are of a size.  There are differences, but those differences can usually be contained on a normal sized shelf.  Many of my art books are large format books that generally require wider spacing to allow the volumes to fit.  Some of my art books are ‘pocket’ size very small publications, while others are extra large.  This means that art books connected to a single artist or a single art movement cannot reasonably be stacked together.  This means that, of necessity there will be various different groupings in place to make any sense of my holdings.

Professional libraries get around the problem of size by having an ‘outsize’ collection and boxes or portfolios containing very small publications.  I have attempted to implement part of this concept by having, for example, a box which contains my poetry notebooks; there is one bookcase which has a higher than usual shelf height at the bottom; my miscellaneous religious books are in one plastic box folder - but the system keeps falling down because of the lack of room.

Toni’s solution is of course to get rid of books.  I shuddered when typing that, because for me that is tantamount to blasphemy and sacrilege.  I think it is the word ‘rid’ that offends me.  After all, I did donate a whole slew of books to the Oxfam Bookshop in Cardiff before I left; donated many bags full of volumes to the library of the British School of Barcelona; have given away selected further volumes to friends - but I cannot bring myself to throw books away.

The problem is further complicated by being in Spain.  We have no real second-hand bookshop in Castelldefels, and even if we did my books are in English and are not of the sort of English that Spanish or Catalan speakers are looking for to improve their language skills.  I have old hardback editions of the CUP Shakespeare, that do not have the latest scholarship informing their editorial decisions, but the pages are good to turn and there is a feel to the paper that I enjoy.

And that is the reason that another of Toni’s suggestions of “Why not have a shelf of Kindles containing all the books you have” is not acceptable either.  I like books as physical objects in themselves.  I like the feel of them, I like the smell of the them and I like the look of them.  I know my way around the trusted books that I have.  They are in a way, a part of me.

Today, when I hear some well-known piece of Classical music, I can usually remember the record that I bought when I got to know it first.  I may not remember the orchestra and the conductor, but I remember the make of the LP and the picture on the front cover.  For some of my early recordings I can even remember what the inner sleeve was like, for example, my recording of the famous orchestral bits of Bizet had a crinkly plastic sleeve rather than the boring white cartridge paper, while my recording of La Création du Monde by Milhaud was jet black, sort of in keeping with the jazzy influence of the music.  Marble Arch, Heliodor, MFP and CFP are all iconic names that helped create my reasonably priced record collection.  Now, I have none.  Instead I have a series of virtually identical discs, kept for reasons of storage in zipped, black, books of plastic pockets.  I don’t want my books to be confined to a Kindle (though I have 5) or the hard disc of a computer (though I have an incomprehensible number of those too) I want my books to have covers and pages and textures and weight.

But they do take up room.  Our living room has one wall of bookcases from floor to ceiling; one bedroom is designated ‘The Library’ and has bookcases along the walls and four back to back as an island in the middle.  I am getting far too fat to squeeze through!  The ‘study’ on the third floor is a jumbled chaos of junk and shelves which contain odd books, papers, CDs (I must be the only person in the world who can point to CDs to cover the tracks on iPods, iPads, computers and the like), machinery (!), tables, chairs - well you get the picture, and I hope it works in words because I have no intention of taking a photograph to show just how squalid the self-imposed conditions in which I work actually are!

So, getting my collection into something approaching a real collection would necessitate wholesale reordering of present arrangements and mean my constantly walking up and down three flights of stairs, adding books to precarious piles which cannot be placed where they should be because there isn’t really that little empty area that there is on a plastic puzzle where you have to move things around one square sliding away to make room for another.  I know that anything other than a gentle tinkering will result in chaos and misery.

Though, there again, having written about it all, I do no feel empowered to Do Something About It.  After all I did visit the ‘church on the hill’ above St Boi that I had been threatening to do for years.  And, with my cousin Dylan and with four aching knees to show for it, we did managed to get to the top and see the spectacular view.  If, the reasoning goes, I can do that, then a labour of love like handing all my books should be far easier.

Though the handling aspect has its own problems that I characterize as The Guinness Book of Records Syndrome.  It is a well-known fact that any previously specified piece of information to be searched for before picking up the Guinness Book of Records will not have been found by the time the book is put down.  However many other interesting facts, though irrelevant to the stated search parameters, will have been discovered. 

Books are meant to be opened not organized.  As many of them are old friends, it would be churlish to pick up a book and plonk it on a shelf without justifying its existence and opening it and reading some of it.  During some past instances of attempted organization I have read entire books (again) after picking them up.  With this approach, I would need a few lifetimes to get the job done.  But done it should be because, and here I go back to where I started, I would not be searching for the book that I cannot find, because I would have know where it was - and if it wasn’t there then it must be lost.

On the other hand, writing about organizing a large collection of books is so much more satisfying and a damn sight less taxing than actually doing it.

The Stain

There has been a short shower! 

Admittedly the rain was more of a momentary sun shower, but liquid did fall from the sky and that must have made a difference to The Stain.  I will take a ride and check on its progress and post the results here.