The major advantage to studying is not a belief in the idea
that ‘to live is to educate’, but rather the relief that you feel each time you
complete an exercise or essay. It is
like a headache; you don’t realise how delightful normality is until pain shows
you what non-normality can be like!
However much you enjoy the
learning process, there are few things to beat the sheer relaxation that comes
when the proof that you have completed a unit of learning has been sent off to
the powers that be and there is nothing further that you can do except wait.
I am now in
that honeymoon period of waiting for a response and I am going to make the most
of it. I am ahead of myself as far as
the reading that we have to do is concerned, so I can give almost my full
attention to my poetry.
Poetic justice?
In what I am sure could be seen as a fairly grotesque
metaphor for something or other, our robot hoover ate its own power lead. At least it tried. There is, luckily, a fail-safe system that
kicks into play when the machine tires to consume something more substantial
than dust. So, when Toni came back from
his walk the poor machine was bleeping plaintively in the middle of the living
room with the power lead firmly in its innards.
Don’t
worry, I rescued the poor thing, disengaged the lead and it is now feeding
quietly and will roll into renewed operation when we go off for lunch.
This time I
will put the power leads well out of its way – and check the receptacle at the
end of its time to check that it has actually been doing what it is supposed to
do.
Beyond a joke
In the lead up to the Spanish election, the bunch of morally
bankrupt thieves and liars that have hijacked the government have sunk to a new
low. The Minister of Justice (sic) has
decreed that people will no longer be termed imputado when they are accused of a crime, they will be termed investigado instead. Why? I
hear you ask! Well, a large section of
the ruling PP party are totally and completely corrupt, as are their friends
and paymasters in banks and businesses.
So many of them have been imputado that they have had to find a way to
make it sound a little less, uh, criminal in the run up to the election that
they have resorted to the desperate expedient of changing the word: semantic
hiding of criminality.
The
unspeakable horror who has come out of retirement to stand for PP as a possible
candidate for Mayor of Madrid should be ashamed to be seen in public. She is a hit and run driver and virtually all
her past colleagues are either in prison or are awaiting prison. She, however, remarkably, astonishingly,
unbelievably, alone-ly amongst all her erstwhile criminal colleagues is pure
and untainted. As if!
And she is
not alone. Every day there is a new
scandal about the way PP are ruling (I use the word lightly) the country, or
some new revelation about how the PP wealthy backers have been milking cash
from banks and companies. Few of them
are in prison and I have little belief that Justice (whatever that word means
in Spain at the moment) will prevail and that the droves of thieves and liars
who daily parade themselves on our television screens will get their
comeuppance. But I live in hope and
trust that Podemos will get a healthy showing in the election and force the
established (and corrupt) political parties to pass laws which will bring some
degree of transparency to political life.
Continuing lunch
Tomorrow sees Irene arriving to join us for lunch. We will have to go somewhere different to
boost Toni’s blog. It’s hard work
enjoying yourself.
