Sunshine!

Cut from the roof/attic space, the third floor terrace is an ideal spot for a little unseasonal sunbathing.

There is a breeze, and if that touches your skin you are aware that it is latish October, but in the tranquil sunshine (and wearing a T-shirt and shorts of course) you can almost believe that summer is still with you.  And I really do want to believe that. 

I hang on to the idea of summer well beyond what is considered reasonable to the good folk of Castelldefels, and the late date wearing of shorts is little short of scandalous to my fellow citizens who wear clothes strictly according to the seasons and the months.  No matter if it is sunny: if it is November it is wintry and clothing should (nay, must) reflect the established winter dress code, even if the thermometer tells a different story.

In Castelldefels, you can tell that the summer has officially ended, because they have locked up the street, car parking ticketing machines.  And, believe you me; in a seaside town as commercially minded as Castelldefels, the only reason to stop reaping the financial benefits from those rapacious machines is money.  Out of season, people need every inducement to visit our beaches and our town and free parking is essential to get the footfall to keep us going.  But over the last few days, yes, we have had torrential rain, but we have also had temperatures in the mid twenties - and those are warm enough (even with the ‘touch of seasonal reality’ breezes) to make a walk along our extensive beaches a true pleasure.  Or, in my case, cycle.  Electrically.

We had lunch outside too, today.  A new restaurant with a reasonably priced, at least for the weekend, menu del dia (14.90 Euros) including as they always do, a three-course meal (for me: Lacón - this is dried pork shoulder, cut into slices and served hot with sliced potatoes garnished with pimentón picante; salmon with battered vegetables; fruit) with bread and a drink.  We also had some mini empanadas as an aperitif. 

Because of the positioning of the spaces and the buildings around the restaurant, there was a fairly continuous breeze that was just this side of acceptable to me, and coat-wearingly acceptable for Toni.  All in all a decent meal, with the only exception being the fruit.  Given the medical strictures that surround our eating habits now, fruit is the only reasonable choice.  Toni chose the last mandarins and I had to make do with an orange.  When these arrived they looked wizened and old, and tasted like they looked.  There is no excuse for serving a poor orange in Spain, none at all - but, as Toni pointed out, finding decent tasty fruit is becoming more and more difficult.

And that, always brings me back to the dearth of Cox’s Orange Pippins.  I cannot remember the last date on which I had one of those apples, but I certainly do remember the taste: sweetness in depth with a complexity of flavour that matched a decent glass of wine.  Why are they not widely available?  And why do we, today, have to make do with a variety like Pink Lady?  The relationship between a Pink Lady and a Cox’s Orange Pippin is like that between fat-free milk and Devon clotted cream: they are both from the same family, but galaxies apart!

It does sometimes seem churlish to moan about some things, when I am typing this with the door to the terrace open, the sun is shining and a garish kite-surfing canopy is floating, spectrally, above the trees that block my view of the sea.  There!  A perfect example of unjustified dissatisfaction!  I am so near the sea that I can hear the waves and the clink of the tackle against the masts of the boats dragged up on to the beach, but I cannot see the sea.  At least not from my seat.  Even when I leave my seat it takes a little bit of contortion to get a glimpse of the big blue!  But it is within a couple of minutes walk.  And, quite frankly, that should be enough.  Though it never is.  Satisfaction is stultification.  To progress is to be greedy.  And other ‘thoughts for the day’ that go the way of all flesh!

Talking of progress, I have to create a WhatsApp group for the students in our Catalan class, as I am now one of the two student representatives of our class.  And, no, I did not volunteer, but I will approach the first meeting of the representatives with the clear thought in my head that it cannot possibly be worse than any of the staff meetings in The School on the Hill. 

And, fortified by that consoling thought, I will set about making the new WhatsApp group a reality. 

Never let it be said that my weekends were anything other than creative!

The Great Stink

We have a great beach - it may not be very wide, but it is certainly long.  The entire population of Barcelona can easily fit on it, and on many sunny Sundays in summer I think it probably does!  The currents in the sea generally bring people in to the shore rather than drag them out to their deaths; the water is fairly shallow until you get out a reasonable distance; we have restaurants, bars and chiringuitos, and, above all we have sun.  A perfect little seaside town with all the facilities that you would expect.  Perfect.

Except for the smell.  One redolent of drains and not the sort of ambience in which the consumption of anything (including sunshine and sea bathing) is encouraged.

The smell reminded me of something that Cousteau said in the 60s, about the Med being already dead because of the amount of waste that the Med countries emptied into the waters.  He was wrong of course, but not for lack of unscrupulous countries trying to prove him right by treating (in whatever verb tense you would like to consider) the Med as a handy sewer.

What has caused our noxious effluvium?  Construction.  It turns out that one building site (and believe you me, we have many) has punctured or ruptured or simply buggered up one drain with the result that waste has flowed through storm water channels through the beach to the sea.  Television last night showed depressing black-rivers-of-death like pictures of filth flowing into our sand heavy waters.  To add to the drama of the situation, red warning flags were flown on the beach and lifeguards were patrolling urging people not to bathe.  We were also told that thing would be back to normal in a day.  Which is today.  And the smell, through reduced, is still there.

For any place this would not be good news, for a place that makes the bulk of its income from a family-safe tourist destination it is little short of disaster.  Having said that, on my bike journey back from the pool after my swim that takes me along the Paseo of the beach, I saw that, for a Tuesday the beach was filling up nicely and that there were quite a few people in the water.  And not dissolving!

To be fair, our town takes such things seriously and when something happens to threaten the reputation of the resort, they do something about it.  I will be interested to see the colour of the flags when we go out for lunch; whether I believe them or not, however, is quite another story.

In Castelldefels you are much more likely to be injured by the quality of driving and parking, than you are by anything to do with the beach and the water.  As a resident I have to keep telling myself that many of the drivers are coming here for the first time and looking for a parking space and, clearly, not thinking about other road users.  Pedestrian visitors usually park next to the beach on a long car park that is separated from the beach by the main beach road.  There are numerous zebra crossings linking the parking area with the paseo and beach, but pedestrians are not inclined to walk more than a few meters for a safe crossing and are much more likely to chance their arm (and all other part of their anatomy) by blithely walking across the road as through it was one extended crossing.  I have noticed in Spain that there is an assumption that there is an extensive zone around the actual painted crossing which has exactly the same rights in pedestrians’ minds as the crossing itself.  Remember, I tell myself, these people are visitors and the sight of the sea turns them into vulnerable lemmings.  And I further remind myself that having right on your side is insufficient comfort for injury.  So give them leeway and believe in the myth of the extra crossing zone.  I may tell myself all these reasonable things, but it doesn’t necessarily reduce my irritation by the continued unreasonable conduct of some of our visitors.  Most of our visitors.  No, that’s unfair.  Probably.

Parking, however, is in another universe of selfishness.  I use the Tesco Scale of Unreasonable Parking to guide my responses.  It never fails to horrify me to see just how far selfish parkers will go in Tesco car parks rather than walk a couple of steps and be legal.  Parking without cards in disabled spaces is the norm; double yellow lines are routinely ignored; parking across space lines, single people parking in family spaces, parking on crossings, double parking - I’ve seen all of them, and I’ve also seen just how near a legal empty space can be for these people.  Apart from some small Tesco’s in London with little car parking space, I have never been to a large Tesco where the car park was full.  Never.  So, I thought that I was prepared for anything.

Castelldefels is the only place in the world where I have seen a driver reversing on a small roundabout!  Now that is what I call spectacular idiocy!  There may be elements of inconsideration in the action too, but generally, given what a roundabout actually is, the no-brainer stupidity of the action is more of a characteristic!  But, leave that almost glorious piece of anti-driving aside, how do our visitors park in Castelldefels?

Appallingly.  Selfishly.  Dangerously.  Some of their decisions are aided and abetted by the way that our streets are organized.  It is a general truth that many Spanish towns developed before the widespread adoption of the motorcar.  Our streets are too narrow and curbside parking makes them perilous.  In Cardiff the go-to solution for any traffic problem is to seed the roads with traffic lights, in Castelldefels the solution is zebra crossings.  Except, of course, the solution is one that comes with ready-made problems.

I do not know the regulations for the position of zebra crossings in Castelldefels, and I am certain that if road designers know them they forget them as soon as they look at a road plan.  There is one large roundabout in the centre of the town where, each time I go around it, I tell myself that this time I will finally count the number of crossings that it spawns, but by the time that I finally get there after so may stop starts and sudden sallies by suicidally inclined pedestrians that I have inevitably forgotten the number by the time I emerge from the circular hell.

Although Toni tells me that it is illegal and not in the Spanish version of the highway code, cars park right up to zebra crossings and sometimes on them!  Cars park on corners, on pavements, on chevroned areas, on lines of any colour.  They park within inches of other parked cars - which make one wonder how they got in.  Well, no it doesn’t: I have watched Spanish drivers ‘parking by touch’ on more than one (or indeed twenty) occasions.  Your average Spanish driver may be better than I am at reverse parking into a small space, but not that much better.  Space is at a premium this close to the sea, so where you can find it you use it, and the hell with consideration!

During the week, even in summer, things are sort-of manageable, but during the weekends, and especially holiday weekends they are unimaginable.  Finding a parking space becomes the only moral imperative in driving, and all road rules are thrown out of the window as lane crossing and indication becomes something of winter, not a luxury that can be allowed in the height of summer!

“Zen and the Art of Spanish Driving” would be an interesting book to read, though I am not sure under which section it would be kept: Philosophy? Religion? Fiction? Self-defence? Fantasy? Dystopia? Wish-fulfilment? Humour? Adventure?  I am half inclined to type it into Google just to see if it exists!

My Chinese phablet is under repair.  Or possibly not.  It may be that repairing it goes beyond a necessary expense and becomes a ‘junk-it’ alternative.  The problem is that I keep my mobile phone in my short’s pocket and the phablet being oversize meant that I managed to bend the body slightly.  However slightly it was it has played merry hell with the charging of the bloody thing.  I have had to fall back on my Russian alternative.

Yota phone is a make that no one apart from myself seems to have heard of.  It was discovered by Toni who informed me that a phone existed that had two faces: one an ordinary mobile phone screen, and the other on the back something like a black and white Kindle screen.  I did not believe that such a thing existed, but now I have had three of them (1 stolen; 1 dunked in the swimming pool; 1 bought cheaply as a reserve and now in full use) and can recommend them fully but, as is noted in the parenthesis, they are not waterproof!

It may be that the repair to my phablet is affordable, in which case I will return to the phone and enjoy the large screen.  If it is not then I will either stick with my Yota phone or go for something more substantial and waterproof.  I rather like the idea of getting a new phone, but Toni will be disapproving of such warrantless expense.  I have found a phone called the Blackview BV8000 Pro, where even the product name seems defiantly rugged.  I must admit that I am tempted and the price is not too ridiculous.  As opposed, for example to the new proposed Samsung 8 Note.

I was one of the hapless potential owners of the ill-famed Note 7, that the entire technology world remembers as The Phone That Exploded, or at least burst into flame.  I pre-ordered one of these phones and, after a long waiting period was finally told (by the World Press) that Samsung had had to initiate a worldwide recall.  Which was a little harsh, as I didn’t even managed to get my hands on one for even the briefest moment of time.

Samsung have announced that they are going to refurbish some of the millions of recalled phones (with a non exploding battery) and sell them at a yet-to-be-announced price.  I am strangely drawn to this, especially as the new and improved Note 8 is probably going to be the first (non-bling) production mobile phone to break the four figure price barrier: certainly in dollars and perhaps in Euros as well!  Even I draw the line somewhere in my lust for cutting edge tech.  Though the suggested appearance of the thing does make it look lovely.  And it is waterproof - or however such a term is subscribed, qualified and defined in relation to expensive gadgets and liquids.

I will be strong.  I can resist.  But, as always, Oscar is right, everything but temptation.

When in doubt, read poetry!

The Way Ahead?

The relentless wave of injustice and blatant lying continues in this country.  The next election is going to be crucial in the modern development of Spain.  I am no expert, but it seems to me that the democratic process has not been under such sustained threat since the fall of Franco.

            The present government is a total disgrace, that 20% of the population can still express an intention to vote for the bunch of self seeking contemptible liars is absolutely astonishing.

            With the rise of the C’s party, which to be seems like a crypto-PP excuse for a political organization, there is a very real threat that tactical voting and plain ignorance could lead to PP uniting with the C’s and forming another government!

            People should realise that a vote for the C’s is a vote for PP and continued corruption and denial of fundamental human rights.  Already PP has pushed through education reforms with NO other party’s support.  They have altered basic citizen rights on protest and organization with NO other party’s support.  They put politics, their own politics, before the law, the police, and the citizens of this country.  They are a continuing shame to anyone who supports concepts of justice, equality and fairness – and they should have resigned years ago! 

Let’s hope that Spain has the informed self-interest to get rid of them in the General Election.

Another tongue!

The first three poems in my Autumn Trees sequence have now been translated into Catalan and are printed ready to be ‘looked at’ by Catalan speaking members of the Poetry Group tomorrow.  This is an important step forward in making the idea in Flesh Can Be Bright a reality!

            The other parts of the project are slowly taking shape, though what I thought was a more than generous time scale, seems to be getting tighter by the day!  I have plans to deal with most permutations of what might finally occur, but I would be more than gratified to have everything work out as originally planned.

            There are a couple of poems on the go at the moment; one is largely worked out, but the ending is proving tricky.  The other is plodding along an is the sort of thing that will come together with concentrated effort as many of the creative bits have been done and it is ‘just’ a matter of putting it all together.

            Well, something should be done in the next couple of days and, tomorrow,  Wednesday is also the day of my Poetry Group and that is usually the opportunity to respond to a stimulating theme and start the germ of another idea.

            Things are going well as far as The Eloquence of Broken Things is concerned, which is scheduled to be published in October 2016.  The only dangerous thing is to give myself the luxury of thinking that it is well over a year away and there is time to do as much as I like!  This is where time melts away and everything is eventually done in a rush.  I do not intend to be caught out!

Reader’s Card

I have now been given an ‘extension’ to be British Library Reader’s Card.  This is slightly odd as the last time that I used my card must be over thirty years ago!  Still, rather like the OU system, with the British Library, if you are on the system once you tend to stay there until, presumably, you are “Destroyed by enemy bombing during the war” (which I once had for a book published in the 1960s not being delivered to my desk in the Old Reading Room!)

            I have visited the new British Library, but my visit in May will be the first time that I will have used it as a library.  I will have to be canny about its use as I will only be there for a few days and the number of books that you can order is limited.  I will have to use the rules of book ordering to its full if I am to get the full benefit. 

I am looking forward to the experience and am very impressed by the on line catalogue actually giving you how long the book will take to get to you! 

It will be interesting to see how this all works out in practice.

Browning

The continued and more hysterical the warnings about the dangers of sunbathing become, the more they are tucked securely away in the corner of the mind marked ‘non used on voyage’.

            I have always favoured my father’s skin colouring rather than my mother’s and tend to tan relatively easily.

            There was a time when I used to shed skin with the facility of a snake – the tell-tale itch on the back generally leading to sheets of skin peeling away leaving me looking like a piebald creature.  Those days seem to be over, though I think that it has more to do with a born-again approach to moisturising than anything else.

            I also think that the change of sun tan lotion might have something to do with it also.  The family cream was Boots own Cooltan which I chiefly remember as a white cream which stubbornly refused to be rubbed into the skin and being protected (by one’s mother, of course) was a lengthy tactile experience!  And it didn’t really work, as skin fell away in chunks – though one always regarded that as a prelude to brownness as once the outer layers were stripped away it revealed the eventual tan underneath.  Though as I recall it the skin was always white underneath and it was the brown skin which fell to earth!

            Ironically, the brownest I have ever been was after a holiday to Scandinavia, and more especially Finland!  No accounting for sunshine!

Parking

The epic restructuring of the leisure centre car park continues with a second (unused) entrance now being opened up with consequent access road being created to link this entrance with the main road.  So far, every thing that the workmen do seems to create several other ‘things’ that have to be done before the new and improved, all-concrete, electronic-access car park gets back to use for the paying members!

            I think that most of us have now accepted that, in effect, there is no car park and have adapted accordingly.  In my case, as long as it doesn’t rain.  I am sort-of enjoying biking it, but this will change a the first sign of dampness.  Or winter as it is sometimes known!

            I have not yet had the opportunity to cycle when the car park is open, so that testing time is still ahead.

            Sad to say, I am looking forward to having a drink with my friend Caroline.  The sadness is nothing to do with her, I am looking forward to catching up on her news as we have not seen each other for a time, but sad because part of my excitement of seeing her is that I will be meeting her in a bar on the beach and it will be dark when we end our talk and then, gasp! I will have the opportunity not only to use my new lights on the bike, but also the flashing LED lights set into a niche on the back of my helmet!

            As I do not intend to go on any roads to get home, but to stick entirely to the paseo, this might seem like something of illuminated over-kill, but it makes me happy!  And biking home after drinking (not too much you understand) is all the justification that you need!

Whitman

Now to hunt through my poetry books to find the extract from Leaves of Grass that we are going to discuss tomorrow.  This is the nearest that I get to homework, as I don’t look at the work that I have to do for the OU course in the same way!

Poetry calls!

Holiday end

Sequence

I have finished the last of the Poems in Holy Week, written an introduction and published a single copy as a chapbook!  It now exists electronically and in a single unique printed copy.  I used a rather abstract photograph I took from a hotel window of a wall, railings and frames which was the rather unlovely, but satisfyingly abstract view that I had.  Toni hated the picture and so I have replaced it with something which I think is more acceptably picturesque.

            If anyone would like an electronic copy of the poem sequence you only have to let me have your email address and I will send a copy to you.

            The poems, or versions of them are also available at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and, as I always say, I welcome comments either on the site or to me via email.

            I am still not quite sure what to make of what I have written, and I think that the poems will be further revised in the next few months.

            I have found writing them challenging and stimulating – and they have kept me away from my essay on body art which has to be completed in the next couple of weeks!

Easter Day

Apart from writing the final poem, there has been nothing about this day which makes it more distinctive than any other.  I think that tomorrow stands more chance of being festive, as we are going to Terrassa for a family meal in which we will consume the traditional cake or mona de Pascua which I hope has been made by Toni’s sister.

            If you are foolish enough to buy one of these constructions in the shops it can cost you ridiculous sums of money.  One edifice, cake hardly described the fantasy in chocolate and frippery, cost over €80!  And that was in a local shop just waiting for a buyer, as if people just popped in off the street and handed over the money.  Which they did!

            Our version will be home made and almost certainly having a theme of Barça.  I will attempt to remember to take a photograph before the kids get stuck into it and then try the even greater task of getting the damn thing on the site and the almost impossible effort of getting it to stay there.

            Still, Toni’s mum is an ex-cook and her meals are always worth eating.  It is just unfortunate that the whole of Spain seems to be going somewhere on Easter Monday so the roads are likely to be nightmares.

            One particular nightmare concerns our local motorway.  During periods of high volume, the police in this area have been known to cone off one lane on one side of the motorway and have traffic going against the flow of the other two lanes.

And yes, it is quite as horrific as it sounds!

            And the police will have been prised out of the bars that they frequent and will descend on roads main, side and motor to collect untold wealth in fines.  So one small glass of Cava is going to be my limit – with plenty of Earl Grey.

Exercise

I am not a great believer in exercise for the sake of exercise.  I quite enjoyed playing squash and badminton – but those were sports and competitive and therefore there was a point to them.  Swimming is OK because it uses a different medium and that makes the ‘exercise’ element a necessary part of an otherworldly experiment.  No, it’s the treadmill and gym stuff that I can’t stand.  And cycling.

            And therein lies the rub.  I have been cycling for the past few weeks because the car part in the leisure centre is being redone and is therefore closed.

            As it has gone from being a piece of tree shaded, gravel covered dirt to polished, drained concrete, you will appreciate that this is no afternoon with the lorries type of transformation.  The car park is out of commission for a month and since parking in the area is a nightmare the bike will have to do.

            But I have quite taken to it.  I have bought (always a good sign) a rather swish new helmet which is more comfortable, more adjustable and more stylish than the old one.  And, and this is the killer, it has a little red LED flashing light on the back as added protection against blind drivers in killer cars.  The dynamo on my bike has never really worked, as so I have bought a two-intensity front light and a cute red, programmable flashing LED light for the rear wheel.  I do not of course go out on the bike when it is dark or when it is raining, I am after all, no fanatic, but as the sun shines, so I ride.

            It seems more and more likely that, even when the car park reopens, I might continue to ride the bike.  As long as the sun shines.  And I feel so self-congratulatory as I lock the thing up after having navigated quite a nasty mountainous bridge over the motorway!

Exodus

Monday is a holiday and Tuesday should find most of the population of this country going back to work.  The Easter Holiday in Spain barely deserves the word as it is so short.  But on the positive side all of our visitors from Barcelona (which seems to come here en mass during any holiday) will go home and gather strength for the long haul of the summer.  And we have to prepare as well.