Resistance is
useless!
Ah, how those prescient words of the Darleks came back to me
this morning! Actually, they came back
to me yesterday, but it was on charge and so it didn’t really count until,
fully charged today, it did its thing.
As Doctor
Johnson so very neatly put it when Boswell tried to distract him from playing
Candy Crush on his iPad, “A man who is tired of gadgets is tired of life!” And who am I, a mere poet-taster to go
against the Great Man’s words!
Which is a
roundabout way of explaining that, as we went out to lunch to add another venue
to Toni’s blog (http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es)
I pressed the button which brought my new robot hoover to life. Toni has christened him with a name that I
have instantly forgotten and we sallied forth, leaving said Robot to ‘do’ the
second floor. Needless to say, I had
already checked that he had some sort of sensor to stop himself hurtling
downstairs.
When we
came back he was bleating plaintively, asking to be fed and was in a different
room from the one that I had placed him in before we went out – so that much
prove something. And there was dust in
the little container for collecting such stuff.
Tomorrow the living room and kitchen because, after all, the whole point
of these things is not only do you not do the hoovering, but also you are most
pointedly not there while it is being done.
So we will be forced to go out to lunch again tomorrow, just so the
hoovering can be done!
Toni is
still deeply sceptical (though also just as clearly deeply fascinated) and I am
delighted. This happiness will last up
until the internal batteries explode or the brushes wear out or both. And it is only then that I find that the only
replacements are hideously expensive and only available from a small village in
some outlandish province in deepest, darkest China. Ah well, as I have always said with gadgets,
“Enjoy! Before built-in obsolescence
catches up with you.” Wise, if sad,
words.
Send the bloody thing
in!
How many partners of those doing an Open University course
have had occasion to voice the deathless words in the title?
They have
had to suffer detailed descriptions of the bureaucracy (and I still can’t spell
that word, thank god for Word and its dictionary – though sometimes I so mangle
the letters that even the ever-patient Word can offer no suggestions) and,
these days the electronic hoops through which one has to jump before the work
can get where it needs to go.
It is at
times like this that one of the sayings in my family comes into its own:
“Anything is better than nothing!” I do
realise that this is not always true in all cases, but it is sufficient to give
a little kick up the academic backside when necessary and so it justifies its
existence. And I think that I would
maintain that it is more true than wayward in most cases!
All the
necessary work for my next piece of work has been done. It is just putting it in words that it the
difficult bit.
I have, as
usual, and much to Toni’s amazed disgust, left what I have to do until the last
minute. It isn’t actually, but, as I am
going to Barcelona tomorrow I really should get it out of the way before it is
due on Thursday at mid day British Time.
As this
piece of work is unmarked and merely a guide to initial thoughts (through
compulsory) you would have thought that it would be a relatively easy thing to
polish off. It isn’t. And continues to be problematic.
Why, I hear
you ask, am I not working at it rather than writing this? I reject the idea that this is displacement
activity – though, god knows, I could write a fairly comprehensive handbook on
the subject – it is merely releasing my writing flow. I regard this in the same way as a sort of
‘freewrite’ where the words flowing from my fingertips will, inevitably, result
in the academic stuff that I should be writing being released.
Perhaps I
should put it to the test, as I would like to sleep this evening and not stay
awake wondering if I will have the time to get the thing done before the
deadline. And we all know, thanks to the
publicity which is given to the American Civil War, exactly what that phrase
meant in reality!
To short?
The weather has definitely changed for the better. It is still blustery and if you are in shadow
it is not warm, but on the whole you can imagine summer happening without too
much mental activity on your part.
This being
the case the question of appropriate apparel comes to the fore.
I have,
throughout the year, been true to my sandals.
My feet, unlike other extremities I might mention, do not usually get
cold. I hate wearing shoes or sports
shoes and so I have worn sandals. I have
rejected the accusations that I am making myself look like an ageing peacenik
from a bygone age of innocence and bad clothing, and I have stuck to my
footwear of choice. Catalonia is not
warm in the winter, though a damn sight warmer than the UK, and I have allowed
myself to be persuaded into jeans. Now
that the weather is, or indeed has, changed, the question of shorts presses
itself for consideration.
If it were
merely a question of walking about then I might shortify myself forthwith, but
the bike is a complicating factor. I
find that riding the bike is colder than walking. I don’t really see why, it is hardly because
I am whizzing along with the wind tearing at my flesh, but it is colder.
Needless to
say, no one in Castelldefels is wearing sandals, let alone shorts. It is not the season to do that and Catalans
are not ones to throw caution and their clothes to the winds just because it is
hot. If the date is not right then the
clothes stay on. And lots of them. So if I decided to wear shorts then it will
only be me. Not that that has ever
dissuaded me from a course of action, but I do have to put up with Toni who
never fails to mention the people I have blithely ignored and who Toni later
tells me stared with open fascination at my sandals.
So this is
a decision not to be entered into lightly.
I have picked out a pair of shorts that have been left to one side of
late and am considering. Seriously
considering.
Thalassa! Thalassa!
From where I sit typing this, if I concentrate hard and the
wind is in the right direction and synchronises the movement of some branches I
can actually see a small fragment of the sea.
If I use my imagination I tell myself that I can sometimes make out
scraps of whitish things that could be parts of waves.
What I can
see, plainly are lots of pine trees.
They are infuriatingly luxuriant and block out a grade one sea view and
make it a fourth rate peep-hole sea view on a good day.
These trees,
after which the area in which I live is named, grow everywhere. They drop resin on cars which is virtually
impossible to get off. They drop pine
needles which sometimes form carpets of vegetation which stop anything else from
poking its head above ground. They drop pinecones
like anti-personnel ammo, and they block drains.
They also
have astonishingly shallow roots and whenever we have high winds (for us) I
secretly pray that the ones that block our view will be uprooted. They never are of course and, given my
propensity for writing poems on trees (see: http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es)
this praying for destruction smacks a little of hypocrisy, but that is just
part of the rich tapestry of contradictory emotions that make us what we
are. I say.
Determination
And now, I can put off working on my outline no more, this
is it, a concerted effort, no distractions.
Write!
