Cultural challenges?

 

 

Well, a second viewing of Aida in the Liceu last night has not changed my opinion of the production – though musically (orchestra, chorus, and soloists) it was as good as my first experience.

     As my second viewing was with friends who were seeing the production for the first time, I kept my negative views to myself until the interval when I was able to add a certain amount of my sored and repressed venom to the general rejection of what the director, Shirin Neshat, had presented.

     The irritation with the front-of-curtain processions, the appearance and inexplicable nature of the veiled characters in black, the one-note moral argument, and the static quality of much of the stage work, all came in for fully justified criticism – while the music producers were as justly lauded.

     This time around I felt much more irritation about the use of film projected onto the blank surfaces of the hollowed out rotating cube that constituted the scenery.  It seemed to me that the director was caught between metaphor and reality and did not give any sort of coherent argument for the differing portrayals of action on stage or indeed on ‘screen’.

     The March of the Zombies, that comprised the last of the front-of-curtain processions before the final scenes, did not provoke the slow handclap and boos that accompanied my first view of this charade, and the conductor was not called on to quell incipient mutiny by the audience with a hard stare.

     Musically this production is redeemed by the quality of the music produced but not justified!

 

 

-o0O0o-

 

 

Our second foray into the music scene is due to be a lunchtime performance in the Palau, but our plans may be derailed by bad weather.  If it is only a spot of rain, then I couldn’t care less, but some of the downpours that we have had recently have been tropical in their intensity, and given the lunatic level of driving normally, I do not want to be on the road in challenging conditions with The Driving Death Cult!  We will see.

 

 

-o0O0o-

 

 

In my Huxley research, the second researcher that I have contacted with a view to looking through the Chatto archives in the University of Reading, has explained that she is fully booked until some time next year; so back to the drawing board.  Though I do have a list of further names of people centred in the area who are contactable, so all is not lost.  Yet.

     The irony of a wide-ranging research project focussing down to a single footnote, which will be used as the basis for an entire research paper, is not lost on me.

     The problem of having a topic so narrow is that the information that is central to my ‘thesis’ and that will be the original element, is contained in an archive that is not readily accessible to me, though it would be just a car drive away were I still living in Cardiff.     

     Well, that is something that I should have thought about when I was doing the original research all those years ago – like half a century ago!  Dear god, it does seem extraordinary writing sentences like that, and even more so when I unearthed my original research and started reading through extensive notes made by someone I barely recognized as myself! 

     I am sure that there is a moral lurking somewhere in those last sentences, but I can’t be bothered to tease it out!

 

 

-o0O0o-

 

 

With all the apocalyptic talk of hurricane-level storms for tomorrow, outside, now, there is bright sunshine and the temperature is a more-than-acceptable 23C.  And we are preparing to go out for a menu del dia – something I feel I deserve given the demands of an evening performance of a Grand Opera last night.

     As I am now used to going to the opera for the Sunday afternoon series (and therefore getting out of the theatre at a reasonable time) it was a shock to the system to find myself hours past my bedtime before head finally hit the pillow.  And, to make matters worse, it took me some time before I finally got off to sleep, so I felt more than justified ignoring the raucous interruption of my reveries by my mobile phone urging me to gird my loins and get to the pool for an early morning swim.

 

 

-o0O0o-

 

 

     Everyone is entitled to a leisurely day from time to time, and this is one of mine.

 

 

 

Paper Rules!

 

My research into Huxley has ground to a halt.  Again.  Or at least part of it.

     We keep hearing about how much information is ‘online’ and has been digitised.  And it is amazing just how much you can find out by using the internet, as you zip around the world visiting institutions and cultural centres and drawing on resources (that are freely available and searchable) that you become complacent and begin to expect ALL information to be available at the tap of a few computer keys.

     But this is an illusion.  In one aspect of my research for example, I can go online and see where in a collection information that I need might be, but the details of that information are only available if I turn up at the library and physically search the archives.

     In some ways of course, this is part of what research is all about, going to a library and actually touching the books, letters and accounts that exist in a mass of documentation, and emerging with the salient information necessary to make your point.

     My problem is the information I require is in a special collection in the University of Reading and not in a library in Barcelona a few km down the road.  Pity.

     There is another solution, and that is to get a researcher who is already in Britain to do some research on your behalf.  I am investigating this option, but there are, as you can imagine, a certain number of practical problems about that.  Still, letters have been sent off and I await developments with interest.

     Nearer to home, tomorrow will take us to Barcelona for to me see (and more importantly listen to) a second performance of Aida.  It will be interesting to see if the two people who will be accompanying me tomorrow share my evaluation of the production.

 

Meanwhile the correct ingredients for a Sangria de Cava continue to be the subject of some considerable discussion, but I think that I have now settled on a recipe that will satisfy.  It remains to be seen if my guests agree with me!

 

It's all in the definition. Possibly.

  

Sometimes you just have to tell yourself that proving a negative is as good as a positive.

     For the best part of a fortnight we (AI & I) [If you say that in a swing rhythm sort of way it does sound like one of those inane choruses in a Eurovision failure) have been working on a piece of micro-research into my long-ignored thesis on Huxley from 50 years ago.

     I have fixated on a footnote, and on the person who is the subject of that footnote.  The relatively famous bit of my literary concern is linked to Huxley’s first (published) novel Crome Yellow.  The footnote mentions someone who as far as I was concerned was lost to history.

     Not lost if you have the will and the time to delve.  Very gradually the character (indeed he was a character in the Peacockian novel that Huxley wrote) began to emerge from the shadows of forgetfulness.

     We knew that he was a Rector, and a Rector of the parish of Garsington at the time of Lady Ottoline Morell and her coterie of the literary and the famous, but everyone else in the novel was much more famous than he, and their reputations have largely survived from the dizzy days of the Bright Young Things of the 1920s – together with representatives from a generation that was somewhat older.  Researching the others was easy – I have books on them.  But the humble Rector was not so easy to ¡find out about.

     So the search began.  American born-again fundamentalist on-line libraries actually had copies of some of the book that the rector had written – apocalyptic consideration of some of the more sensational books of the bible looking forward to The End Days – spiritual catnip to the Evangelical Right Wing of those who call themselves Christians.

     Of course, the tract that I wanted, and which Huxley had allegedly used as the basis for a whole chapter in his novel, was NOT online and so the hunt for a copy somewhere began.

     As we began to draw up some sort of biography for the rector, we discovered that he invented a ‘stay’ for a bell – this stay allowed the bell to be . . . well, I did go into the details of what the thing did and looked up a whole vocabulary of bell ringing to try and understand its function and even when onto the website of an old foundry that had used the damn thing extensively, until another fragment suggested that the guy who invented this device was not the guy that we were researching.  Suddenly a whole fascinating aspect of the rector’s personality was snatched away.

     Such is the state of the information available on line, even though we are now questioning the previous attribution, we are not absolutely sure and so instead of dismissing a week of work, we have put an academic question mark next to it: awaiting further clarification.

     I have now contacted the library of the Archbishop of Canterbury in Lambeth Palace, and Oxfordshire History Archive, a foundry, a bellringers society, and numerous other sources all from the comfort of my computer in Castelldefells.  My questions and requests have been sent to locations in three continents, to booksellers, enthusiasts, and academics.

     Self-indulgence personified!

     And, you never know, there might be some answers.

     Eventually!

 

Bad start, got better

Extension of Restrictions, Day x++, Friday.

 

 

 

A catalogue of mishaps to start the day.

     Firstly, I forgot my mask and set off into the darkness, until the coldness across my lower face reminded me that something was missing.  Luckily I have masks secreted about my clothing and so was able to pull into the side of the road and garb myself up.

      There was a police check point set up just after the junction of the motorway exit and the road along the side of the Olympic Canal.  Luckily, as I was in the cycle lane I was not stopped and was able to get to the pool in good time.  To find that, as I started to change, I had left my bathing costume at home.  If I had thought for longer than a couple of seconds, I would have realized that the wet bathers from the day before were still in the compartment for used sporting clothing.  But I didn’t.

     To general hilarity from the centre staff, I left (almost) as soon as I arrived and plunged back into the darkness to go home.  Where, armed with dry bathers I returned to the pool, changed and got to the water much later than usual.

     Before I could plunge in, the lifeguard told me that the spaces for the next hour were fully booked and so I would need to quit the pool as the new folk arrived.

     As I was so late there was no clear lane for me to occupy and so I had to double up with a swimmer (five lanes, 10 swimmers, two to a lane swimming in parallel) and start my delayed efforts.

     As it turned out, not everyone turned up to claim their booked spaces and so, with a few judicious lane swaps, I was able to complete me full swim with the series of exercises that I do at the end of the official metric mile of overarm.

     After my cup of tea and bocadillo I usually set off on my bike ride to Port Ginesta and back, but the gage on my bike informed me that I was down to 20% power and, oddly, when I made my first attempt to come to the pool the screen actually registered 6%!  Only once have I attempted to ride the bike without any electrical assistance and it is an experience that I do not intend to repeat.  To give an equivalent example, without any electrical assistance, it is like driving a car without power steering, something I prefer not to do.

     It did not help that the weather was uncomfortably odd, the sky a funny colour and the temperature low.  I rode down to the paseo and as I met it, I made an executive decision to return home.  Being caught in a thunderstorm is another experience that I do not intend to repeat!

 

 

 

I now have a number of writing projects on which I am working, some of which require a little light research.  Some information is proving hard to find, but I know that it is only a matter of time before I find what is necessary.  Or not.  Sometimes the effort is all!

 

Tomorrow the restrictions on people travelling to other municipalities means that only Castelldefels people should be walking along the paseo.  It is very hard to believe that the strangers that we see are just fellow citizens who have kept themselves to themselves and have finally decided to come out to have a breather.

     We have had police checkpoints on entry points to Castelldefels (especially the beach area) to dissuade ‘outsiders’ from breaking the regulations, but it must be difficult for people close to us from not wanting to make a quick visit.

     The figures for Covid in Spain and Catalonia are not good.  The restrictions have been extended for a further 15 days here in Catalonia which virtually gets us up to the Christmas period.

     The loosening of the regulations and restrictions for Christmas seems to me to be fatal madness.  As experts constantly point out, the virus doesn’t recognize the Christmas period and will act accordingly.  We must expect an increase in deaths in the middle of January if people decide to meet up and try and experience anything but a shadow of what Christmas used to be like.

     As far as I can see, Christmas will be just the two of us.  There may be a way for Toni to meet up with some of his family, but I really do not see the point in taking such a risk when the vaccine is only a few months away.  We will see.

     At least in the New Year the Trumpian Nightmare will have his tiny hands forced away from the levers of power and we can hope for a boring presidency to take its place.

     Pity that the horror of Brexit in some sense or other will be filling the minds of people in Britain.  To think that we have years (o god, years) more of the bunch of viciously and fatally incompetent chancers governing us is depressing.

     And what is more depressing is the Dance of Death that the Conservative Party is doing with the EU in the lead up to some sort of agreement.  I do not see how Johnson is going to be able to spin anything that he manages to get in a positive way.  He truly (as are all the rest of us) in a no-win situation.  Any Brexit is going to be a disaster, it just depends how big a disaster.  Whatever agreement he manages to get, it is going to be construed as a betrayal by whole swathes of his own party and the rest of the country.  God alone knows what Northern Ireland is going to get out of that bumbling fool’s final idiocy.

     If he does manage to cobble together some sort of paper-thin agreement then my pension will go up.  When I arrived in Catalonia the euro was 70p now it’s 90p+, that translates into a 30% reduction in my pension as it is paid in pounds (tax deducted) and then transferred to Catalonia.  If there is any sort of agreement then the value of the pound will go up, I will get more euros for my money right up until the full impact of the idiocy of Brexit comes home to roost and the pound plunges down again.

     And a Happy Christmas to us all!

How much have I spent!

 

 

If people took as much time to research their partners as they do to buy a smartwatch then the world will be, um, a different place. I suppose that I will now have to hurriedly bring in a whole series of disclaimers that this is not about me and mine, it is just a casual thought.  A casual thought, brought on however, by my own experience.  And I will stop there as I appear to be adding to the depth of the hole!

I have been researching watches for some time.  I need little impetus to do so as watches and their purchase are a ‘thing’ of mine.  Ever since my first Ingersoll (8 jewels, or was it even more?) that was my first real timepiece – discounting the red plastic with yellow moveable arms thing on which I learned to tell the time – and the start of a life-long casual (but serious) affair with watches.

I have never been a fan of the upper range of absurdly expensive watches for much the same reason that I shun expensive fountain pens: I am drawn to both, but know that my less than serious approach to things material will mean that they will go the way of all flesh before I have had my money’s worth out of them.

I have always maintained that my favourite Madge song is “I am a material girl”.  I adore things, philosophically and materially, but I do not look after them in the way that I should.  I was brought up with grandparents and parents who were firmly in the ‘make do and mend’ generations, but they produced someone who, even though he had a cub badge which represented the fact that he had proved himself not to be a spendthrift (for a stipulated period of time) has yet to learn the true value of money and via that the value of things.

Far from the ‘make do and mend’ approach to life, I have always veered (quite directly) towards the ‘buy new’ approach to the capitalist society.  The evil fiends behind the planned obsolescence that drives our society must regard me as some sort of patron saint.  Cameras, computers, mobile phones and, above all, watches litter my life as I eagerly embrace each new fad, app and gadget.

As far as the watches are concerned, I had thought that I had found the smartwatch of my dreams in the Pebble.  This excellent watch was funded on Kickstarter or similar and produced a smartwatch with an always-on display, waterproof for swimming, a large face with digits easy enough for me to read, metal construction with metal band and all at a reasonable cost!  Job done!  And it was, until the firm produced a further watch, a development from the original (that I backed) and I waited for another great watch.

And it didn’t happen.  Because the firm was bought by the larger watch maker Fitbit and that was the last that we heard of the Pebble.  Except, of course, thousands of customers actually own them and have continued to use them.  But the apps that we use to make the most of the smart capabilities are gradually being un-supported and if anything goes wrong with the watch there is no real system to repair it.  The Pebble community does what it can, but our watches are gallopingly obsolescent.  One of the buttons on my watch is not now working.  It still tells the time, but that is a far cry from what it should be able to do.  So, I decided to search for a replacement.

The internet is awash with ‘reduced’ cost smartwatches costing between 20 and 100 euros, with the median price being just under 50.  What these watches offer is astonishing: they play music, take photos, locate you, tell you the weather, height above sea level – and tell the time.  Just as with modern phones, their primary function, the fact that they allow people to speak to each other seems to be the least of their capabilities!

But these ‘bargains’ were rarely waterproof, or if they were, they were not equipped with an always-on screen.  As soon as I had found a watch that seemed like a reasonable replacement for my Pebble, a more searching examination of the attributes of the watch would reveal that it actually had “everyday waterproof” status which mean that you could wash dishes carefully in it, or it would take a few drops of rain.  Or, more revealingly, it would say nothing about its waterproof status and so you would buy at your own risk.

I must have looked at scores of watches and rejected the lot.  Well, that is not strictly true.  I have ‘fallen’ for one or two too-good-to-be-true offers that have turned out to be exactly that.  I now own one watch that actually plays stored music on its tiny loudspeakers!  This was supposed to be waterproof, but the back of that particular watch is very easy to dislodge and is anything but waterproof.  There is another watch that I helped fund on Kickstarter that is powered by body heat and will never need a battery, and it is also waterproof.  But the most important aspect of this wonder watch is that it doesn’t yet exist!  Or at least its production seems impossibly delayed.

So, I have taken commercial action and bought a watch: the Amazfit Stratos.  It seems to tick most of my ‘must have’ attributes: easily readable watch face, good battery life, waterproof for swimming.  The proof of course will become clear in the next few weeks through use – but I live in hope.  And it will, after all, be the end result of many hours of pleasurable imaginary spending.

Later.

I have now been struck by the ‘waiting for a bus syndrome’ – in the sense that you wait and wait for the one you want and then two come along at the same time.  As with buses so with watches.  No sooner had a bought the Amazfit than the watch that I supported on Kickstarter, indeed the one I referred to above, suddenly became a reality and, after a hefty import duty paid to the delivery driver, I now have a Matrix that I could put on my wrist!

This too is waterproof and never needs a battery (in theory) because of its ability to extract energy from the difference between body temperature and ambient temperature.  I shall put the technology for this in the same category as the oscillating crystals that tell the time in watches!

Apart from the difficulty of pairing the Matrix with my phone – and that was solved by reference to the Matrix website and the FAQs – I now have two working watches, two NEW working watches, to replace my fading Pebble!

As it happens, I am wearing the Amazfit today.  Having made an executive decision last night after weighing up the attributes of both.  I can’t pretend that I have been scientific or even fair with the products, but a decision has been made.

The reasons: the Amazfit has a dedicated ‘swimming’ app that gives lots of information that I am sure will come in useful some time or other; it is easy to use; it has the bigger number size when telling the time; it looks better than the Matrix and it is lighter.  I think that they are roughly comparable in price and both have an always-on display on which I insist.  I could probably recommend either, but at the moment the Amazfit has taken pride of place with the Matrix being a reserve watch.

I don’t think that I have ordered any more watches in the deep past that are suddenly going to pop over the fence into my time reality – but I really am a sucker for a well designed face, so to speak and I cannot positively rule out the fact that I backslid some time ago and there is a timepiece with my name on it making its way to Castelldefels from China!

I await the next post.