Prevarication?

 

 

 

 

The weather cools further: this time I may have the French door open, but I do not have the small fan on.  By such things one measure the descent to the depths of autumn and on to winter!  I am also doing up my coat when I go for my second bike ride, rather than leaving it unzipped.

     On my bike ride to Gavà on the beach side paseo, I see more evidence of the removal of the last of the temporary chiringuitos, a true commercial indication of the changing of the seasons.  But, in spite of all these portents, the weather remains generally fine, and I have not had to take the car to my early morning swim, so far!

     Although my timing for my swim is exact, the time that I leave for my bike ride to Gavà differs, depending on whether I have written anything of consequence in my notebook, or if I am engaged in conversation with people in the café, but seemingly at whatever time I leave, there are the Unknown Regulars that I pass or am passed by.

     The start of Autumn sees the re-emergence of all the retired folk who have been nudged off their parts of the paseo by the summer visitors and the kids.  Now that the kids are (mostly) back in school there is a sort of spaciousness to the beach area which is being reclaimed by those of a certain age.  Some of them (us?) are defiant in their appearance and their actions, relentlessly throwing themselves into the cooling waters of the Med or parading along the paseo in temperature-ignoring wispy coverings and pretending that the summer is still with us.

     There are plenty of cyclists, many of whom are in Lycra and, at first glance, look to be common or garden wearers of that revealing material, but a more searching look shows that the costumes are holding the riders together rather than making them more aerodynamic!  But that is to be commended.  Just as TV series are now ‘colour blind’ when it comes to casting, so clothing is ‘body-blind’ – you wear what you want and the fit is what you decide it is, rather than having to make reference to some sort of unobtainable body-ideal that can only be achieved by self-inflicted starvation or torture in the gym!

     You can see where this is going.  It will end up with my justifying anything in a reductio ad absurdam that (in spite of the poor Latin) will allow me to feel smug!

     Enough!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I find that I am oppressed not by the number of books that I have, but rather their weight.  I have lived with ‘too many books’ since I was a kid, so that in my smallish bedroom I had to be careful when I awoke as the shelves on my bedside wall, actually stretched over the bed itself, so that I slid out of bed rather than rose from it!    

     There was never enough space and gradually every room in the house became, as my mother would phrase it, “infested” with books.

     The move from Cardiff to Catalonia was beset with problems because of the number of books that had to be housed (or flatted) and not all of my prized possessions made it onto new shelves in my new country, but an inordinate number of IKEA Billy Bookcases later and a substantial number of the books found a space.  Not that the space was coherent, as the moves from Cardiff, to storage, to flat, to releasing more storage, to house meant that an overall system was never really imposed on my books and in the various rooms of the house there are now what you could describe as “colonies” of like-minded books forming interesting islands of partial coherence but separate from an over-arching empire of classification.

     I must admit that I have got used to the disparate nature of my literary holdings and quite enjoy the serendipitous discovery of a long-lost volume tucked somewhere where it has not logical reason to be.  Some of the juxtapositioning of some of my books simply looks far too contrived to be aleatory, but I assure you that however pretentious the shelf might look to the outside eye, it is what it is by luck rather than intention!

     The problem that I am presently wrestling with is to do with the placement of new books.  In spite of the lack of available space, that has in no way hindered my purchase of new volumes that I “need”.  And sometimes “need” is augmented by “bargain” – in the sense of value for money.

      I try and tell myself that I have no problem in paying an inordinate amount of money for a decent seat in the Opera, but I would hesitate to pay the same amount of money for a book.  Even though books, I have to admit, have given me more (if different) pleasure than Opera.  I can pay a triple figure sum for a seat for a momentary experience, but not pay the same amount for something that can give lasting tangible pleasure.

     I am not the sort of person to pay vast sums of money for a first edition.  The first editions I have were bought because I bought the books when they came out first.  I do have a 1702 edition of Swift, but that was an unexpected gift and not something that I bought for myself.

     My problem was that Taschen Books had a sale.

     Taschen Books is an imprint that produces spectacularly impressive volumes as well as what you might call domestic books, but their key, or one of their USP is in producing books that are large, opulent, and very heavy.

     In the on-line sale I bought a number of these books which, when they were delivered, it was impossible to carry them all upstairs at the same time.  It is also difficult to hold them and if you rest them on your knees, they crush them.  They are ‘table’ books and, when they are opened up, they need a big table to accommodate them.

     At the moment they form an arty looking pile by the side of my chair, looking almost like a stage prop of a pile of large books.  The trouble is that I have nowhere to put them.

     A set of my large art books are in an extra open section that I have attached to the top of a whole series of Billy Bookcases.  But these books are too big to fit into those oversized shelves and anyway, the idea of reaching up and bringing one of them down to reader level without doing irreparable harm to yourself, or at least breaking an arm or a hand is not to be considered.

     Their weight is too great when they are put on any domestic normal shelf for it to survive.  They have to be put at the base of the bookcase, but it means taking out two shelves to fit them in – and I simply do not have the room to rearrange without (perish the thought) actually getting rid of some of my books.

     So, they sit there at the moment, like a monument, waiting for life to rearrange itself so that they can be enjoyed.

     I have spent my life, giving preference to books, and I am girding my literary loins to Find A Solution.

     The books will win.  They always win!

 

Too much, is too much

 

It comes to something that I regard as a positive achievement the fact that I can squeeze myself sideways through a narrow path of piled high possessions to get to my desk on the third floor in an almost direct passageway from the top of the stairs!  The room still looks as though it has been ransacked by indiscriminate looters, but believe me, that is an improvement on what it looked like before the attempt to turn the electricity grid in the house into a way of getting better reception for my internet radio.

     If you are still reading after ploughing your way through the last two unnecessarily complex sentences, I salute your fortitude and your innate optimism in assuming there must be a linguistic or literary reward for perusing such verbiage!

     I have never, it must be said, been able to keep a clear desk.  Whether at home or at school or work (which was also school) my desk (no matter how big it was) would, in a matter of days be reduced to a workspace more suited to a submarine than a spacious house.

     Take this moment for example.  I sit in front of a computer, in front of which is an Apple ‘magic’ keyboard and a presumably equally enchanted touch pad.  The amount of free space on my expansive desk is (I have just measured it) is a thin strip of desk on the left-hand side of the keyboard of some 12 cms!

     Just to give you some idea of what I do with ease and a certain aplomb I will describe what I can see from where I sit – and I am going to give you only the briefest outline of what ‘things’ there are occupying the space that should be free for papers and books.

     On my right is a book of post-its (with another collection of post-its further in the debris) with a rogue CD, notebooks, a copy of The Economist from April 2013; a cable for linking to the Internet; a book stand; a DVD of ‘Weekend’ – a film by Andrew Haigh with Tom Cullen who I used to teach; a disc drive; ‘The Arts of Spain’ by José Gudiol, published by Thames and Hudson; a reMarkable electronic tablet; a metal book end and a packet of blutac.  All of that lot (and more) blends into the printer and a bookcase arching over it.

     The sheer amount of stuff on the left-hand side is overwhelming and to list it in any detail will call into question not only my sanity but also my sanity.  Suffice to say a (highly edited) list of what is there includes a low cardboard box decorated with multiple images of Warhol’s Marilyn that I have designated as an ‘Archive’; a box of Christmas cards; an Internet radio; three pairs of scissors (me neither); pens, pencils, rulers; an electric pencil sharpener; a large bottle of black printer ink and a collection of plastic straws 70cms long.  There is a reason that I bought those straws, and it has nothing to do with Blue Peter constructions or drinking!

     So, I am confined to a tiny space in front of the computer.  If I do any writing that needs recourse to reference books, I have no space whatsoever to lay them out around me. 

     And because the third floor is so cluttered, there is no space to move things while you decide where to put them.  If you see what I mean.

 

     

 

     Toni accuses me of suffering from Diogenes’ Syndrome, where the unfortunate cannot throw things away.  I am not convinced by this as I seem to recall that Diogenes was the philosopher who was keen to divest himself of all physical possessions and who lived in utter simplicity (and nakedness) in a barrel.  Is the name of the syndrome based on irony?  Anyway, although, it is true that I do have a disinclination to throw things away (You never know when they might come in useful!) all the things I keep have a basic utility.  I find it hard to throw away containers, even though containers allow me to squirrel things away that otherwise might have been dispensed with.

     I remember, from years ago, a medical drama series, in which one episode concerned a medical technician who created very specific pieces of equipment for very specific patients – and then he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of those pieces of equipment, in spite of the fact that the individuality was so pronounced that their general utility was zero.  I think the more astute among you will have worked out where the narrative thrust is going.  Sure enough, a patient appears whose treatment demands just such a piece of equipment that he has in his stores and which people have been urging him to junk because it is taking up valuable, expensive room.  Diogenes justified.  But that is not why I remember the episode.

     After his triumph of being able to magic up something extraordinary for a particular patient ‘from stock,’ another scene showed him in his stockroom kicking something that he tried to move and dislodged a whole welter of other bits and pieces and saying, almost in tears of frustration, something like, “I hate all this bloody junk!”

     I am sure that the episode was not quite like that, but I remember it because it gave both sides: one piece did save a life, but most of what he had was junk and took up space.  I liked the complexity of his being proved right, but still probably being wrong in his indiscriminate belief that everything and anything might be useful.

     The Health Service can take whatever money is given to it, there will always be something that needs funding.  But funding is finite.  At some point decisions have to be made; judgements that have life changing consequences.  Just like the space for the technician’s ‘junk’.

     These decisions and judgements are not theoretical, they are being made all the time.  In the Days of Covid those decisions are here and now, we can see (and bury) the results of political decisions about what to do with limited resources.

 

 

 

 

 

     As we are Waiting for Vaccine, we have to hope that those vials are not the Godot of our times, and that the right decisions and judgements are being made on our behalf!

One does try to do the right thing. Honestly!

 

 

My fight against planned obsolescence has been lost.

     I did attempt to get the part of my cleaner that clearly wasn’t working properly repaired, but I was only offered replacement as an option.  As I am loath to throw away something that is ‘generally’ working I have opted to fork out a surprising amount of money for the so-called ‘power head’ of the machine (the bit with the revolving beaters that collect the dirt) to make it a fully functioning ‘up stairs’ cleaner. 

     God knows there is little enough floor space to be seen in the jumbled chaos of my ‘study’ on the third floor to tax the capabilities of even the weakest of suction hoovers, but even I am aware that the floor (however little of it is actually visible) should be cleaned from time to time.  It’s just the sheer fag of lunking a cleaner up three flights of stairs never really appeals – even when the cleaner is cordless.

     Well, now that I have expended money on the thing it has to be used to justify the price that I have paid to get it working again.  There is a logic there, though even I admit that it is tenuous.

 

 

 

The concern with the general concept of ‘tidiness’ (as opposed to cleanliness) is one of pressing import at the moment because Toni has embraced the life work of Cleaning The Kitchen. 

     Although this is a generally traumatic experience, I am spared the worst excesses of the process by being banished to the third floor because of my tendency to suggest that nothing that we possess is worth throwing away.  If the decluttering mantra of, “Only keep it if it brings you joy” were to be applied by Toni to the things that we possess then after his approach had been implemented I would be living in an echoing, empty tomb-like home, with only retro computers and their peripherals allowed to make it to a surface.

     Now admittedly, our kitchen cabinets were designed by a person who had obviously never worked in a kitchen before, or indeed been told its function, so that we have corner cupboards that mock attempts to use them as such.  They become kitchen black holes, anything that goes in, does not easily come out again.  This means that there is much in those Escher-like containers that has not seen the light of day for many a long year.  And I am not one given to exhaustive searches, as I find the ‘buy another one’ much more efficient and satisfying.  But such an approach does lead to duplication and considerable embarrassment when and excavation, such as the one that Toni is currently undertaking, brings to the surface and within the sight of a quizzical eye many inexplicable extravagances.

     Space has been created in the kitchen because much of my glass has been consigned to kitchen towel and plastic tubs now found in the cwtch under the stairs, and that new space has been given over to order and “everything in his place” which is an unsettling dispensation for those of my more cluttered ilk.  Still, I can always retreat from the regimented order of living room and kitchen and come to the comforting chaos of the third floor, and the tranquillity of the jumbled blunts the edges of rectitude.

 

 Set off for my pool swim on my bike at 6.45 am to be ready to enter the pool by 7.00 am and in the water by a quarter past.  It is still dark at that time of the morning and for the last few days it has been unquestionably cold.  Although I wear a T-shirt and shorts, I also wear a short coat for the journey to the pool and for my longer bike ride after my swim.  It is not quite cold enough to start wearing gloves for the morning ride, but that is not far away and then I will know that the summer (that I keep alive as long as possible) is truly over.

      I have always regarded Winter as a personal enemy and this year there has been a positively Medieval fear about a hard Autumn and Winter that we have to survive!  Usually, my distaste for Winter is linked to the sun and its limitations in the colder months, this year the personification of the seasons has taken on a mortal tone as I have had conversations with friends about how to survive, given that the Virus, like the Devil, is seen to be prowling around seeking whom he may devour .

     If I wasn’t real life, the present chaos in the White House as the results of idiotic macho libertarianism show that the greatest and the lowest are equally susceptible to an indifferent virus, would be farcically amusing.  But actual fear for survival is around in a way that it hasn’t been in my lifetime since the worst parts of the Cold War.

    

     Still, life must go on and I have the delivery of a Hoover spare part to look forward to!