Two firsts!

Day 3 of the bike riding.

At least the chain did not come off today, so I count that as a bit of a triumph.  I also cycled up the hill over the motorway which I really think must count for something!  I can’t truthfully say that I am ‘getting into’ cycling, but I am doing it with something approaching good grace.  Unless it rains.

Tree destruction

I continue to watch the levelling of the area where the trees used to be with some grief, mixed with fascination in watching the speed and efficiency with which the workmen are effacing all traces of what used to be there before.  I may not like what they have done, but they are doing it well!

            What will be a telling indication of the level of managerial competence is the way that they put the lines in the space that they have now created for parking.  In my experience few humans (including myself) have the spatial and organizational imagination to paint a sequence of parking lines that uses the available area to its full potential.  Indeed my experience is that the almost arbitrary spacing of the lines creates vindictive confusion and bitter recrimination.

            Perhaps this car park will buck the trend in this country and they will actually give a reasonable amount of space.  For once.

Critical lunch

Lunch was eaten selflessly as an expedition to discover the quality of food provided in the restaurant connected to the apart hotel that some of our guests in October will be using.

            In due course an illustrated account of our meal will appear in Toni’s blog at http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es where other of our joint eating ventures are to be found.

            The meal was delicious and the glass of vermouth to start the meal was a welcome touch.  Still, details on Toni’s blog.

The inspiration

Toni heard, saw, hunted and killed the first mosquito of the season.  How the hell the thing survives this early in the year is difficult to imagine – though the weather has been fine and sunny.  Indeed it has been so good that I have had my first official sunbathing attempt.  It didn’t last that long, but it did happen.  I trust that this will be first of many tanning sessions so that I can get rid of my pallid skin colour!  The hell with health, I need my vitamin D!

The Muse

Although I have a couple of poems which are refusing to come together in anything like a form that I can regard as finished, or even as things with a positive direction – my notes after my swim and during my cup of tea translated into a poem with a speed which left me breathless.  The finished poem may be found at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and is available for comment!

Green transport is ecological quid pro quo

The cutting down of trees in the car park of the swimming pool means that I have had to resurrect my bike.  Or at least take it out from its partial hibernation.

            Destroying twenty trees was obviously not enough for the heartless people in the leisure centre.  No, they want to efface the evidence of their destruction and have closed the car park for the next month.  The leisure centre is in a residential area with lots of on-road parking.  Unfortunately next to the leisure centre is a school.  And that changes everything.

            Children go to schools.  A very good thing too, it keeps them off the streets when we retired people can wander about without the screams and general awfulness of the youngest generations spoiling our well deserved time away from work.  But probably the worst thing about children and schools?  Parents.

            In the general run of things I have nothing against parents, after all my entire existence is thanks to them, but my parents allowed me to catch a bus to school.  They did not see the need to take me to the school gates, drop me off and then wait around imagining me making my way through the yard towards my form room.  While being themselves double or triple parked, on a pavement or on the zebra crossing, across an entrance, at an angle, on a corner or any damn where they pleased with little or no consideration for any other non-parent-of-their-child whatsoever.

            So, now, added to the insanity of parents dropping off their kids, residents parking their cars, visitors needing a parking space we will have people going to the leisure centre, finding the car park closed and then trying to park within a maximum of ten paces away from the door.

            It is going to be chaos.  And nasty chaos as well!

            Having given this some thought, I imagine that one of the more unbearable aspects of this month-long torture is going to be car drivers stopping in the middle of the road trying to spot a non-existent parking space and effectively blocking the road for all other road users. 

Luckily, in this country, we are blessed with some of the most tolerant road users in Europe who never mind waiting and who show no impatience at any road user impeding their progress!  So that’s all right then.

As if!

This morning I had to park three streets away from the centre and half way down the street as well.  Things can only get worse, and I do not intend to emulate the Flying Dutchman endlessly roaming the area searching for a parking space!  The bike is the answer.  Possibly.

It is well over a year since I’ve ridden the thing and I have had to hack the dust off it.  Toni has oiled the bits that need oiling and I have attempted to make the dynamo work.  Not that I have any intention of riding the thing in the dark, you understand, but I do like to think that I could if I wanted to.

It will be interesting to see how I adapt to this new regime.