Costly domestic fountains

 

A curtain of falling water is a most attractive feature to grace a garden – but when that feature is obviously leaking from the first-floor kitchen then its beauty is rather limited.

     Entry into said kitchen was also entry to a sizeable paddling pool, surrounded by electro domestic items that do not do well in standing water.  Displaying remarkable technical knowledge, I turned the water off at the mains and then, with even more technical ingenuity used the dust pan to scoop up the flood and deposit it in the sink.

     The problem was our water heater and, as this is gas fired, I always have an added element of fear when things go wrong with machines of this sort, so we turned it off.   

     Unfortunately, with the heater turned off and the water stopped so that it did not continue to pour out onto the work surface, we were then without any water at all, except that we had in bottles.  As it was the weekend (of course) the idea of getting anybody out without paying a king’s ransom to get them to the house, was unthinkable.

     A weekend without water, except for that in bottles.  We did discover that the outside garden tap was still operational and so Toni traipsed up and down stairs to bring water in buckets to use for essentials.  Cleaning one’s teeth and washing one’s face with water from a bottle of mineral water might have an air of the exclusive and indulgent about it, but it is practically, um, difficult.  And I prefer not to talk about the practicalities of the toilet!

     Monday was a day for phoning around and finding someone, anyone, to come to the house and work the technical magic to get the bloody thing operational again.  Hopes were raised, only to be dashed, but eventually we found someone who promised to come out the next morning.

     He came, he did his stuff and asked for 400 euros!  It is at this point that I should mention that our house is rented.  You would therefore be justified in asking why we were doing anything about something that was clearly the responsibility of the owners, and not, emphatically not, the concern of the tenants.  To ask such questions, merely shows hat you do not rent accommodation in this part of the world!

     God knows, Estate Agents do not have a good press, in these parts they are held in even less esteem than The Press and Politicians!  If you can imagine such a thing.  

   To say that our estate agents have been less than helpful is a woeful understatement – they are militantly unhelpful.  Anything that you might think would be the responsibility of the owners, here isn’t.  All they do is take the monthly rent and do virtually nothing to justify the rake off that they get.   

   In a twist to the usual tale, our estate agent is actually the owner of the house that we rent, but it is done via a Company that we are supposed to assume is an entirely different entity, but the owner of the estate agency is also the director of the company.  We find ourselves in an almost Dickensian situation where the poor estate agents tell us that they are hamstrung by the demands of the evil company – which they also own! 

     Even though we know about their machinations there is little that we can do about it.  The contract we signed indicated that we had responsibilities (a bloody sight more than the bloody estate agents) towards things like sinks, toilets, taps and the heater that one would usually assume is the responsibility of the owner.  Assumptions do not pay bills, and the 400 euros is gnawing away at my very being – that is 25% of the cost of buying a new heater!

     But, enough of moaning about legal thievery.  Let one story stand for the whole despicable lot of them.  When we first arrived in the house, we obviously checked things to make sure that we were getting what we were paying for.  In the kitchen we noticed that there were fitted kitchen cabinets, but, when you opened them the lack of shelves limited their usefulness.  When we told the agents that there were no shelves in the units, they simply shrugged their shoulders and did nothing!  Unbelievable, but an unbelievability that applies to many other stories about the callous disregard of estate agents in this part of the world.  400 euros!  The more I try not to think about it, the more I do.

We have just had a phone call from the company that sent the guy to fix our heater.  It appears that the guy got his figures wrong when he made out the bill for the VISA machine and transposed two figures, so that we have underpaid.  They want their extra money.  I wonder if they would have been so eager if the sums had worked out in their favour?  Doesn’t the parallel meaning of “Let the buyer beware” referring to the seller, obtain in this case?  I am sure that it does, but I don’t think that I am going to be the beneficiary of the mistake.  It somehow makes the paying of the money even more difficult to take!

At least the sun is shining and I have done a little light sunbathing.  We are both taking ‘Sol’ capsules, bought from one of the supermarkets, that are supposed to aid tanning.  The capsules contain carotin and copper and various vitamins and are quite cheap so we have decided to give a month’s worth a go.  They are not artificial tanners, but are supposed to ‘aid’ the process.  I have taken a picture of my skin against a sheet of white A4 typing paper and I will take another photo at the end of the test period.  I will have been out in the sun during this time, but the depth of tan will be the key to success.

     While I am regarding this as little more than a half-joke, Toni – with his proverbially white skin – has rather more invested in this experiment than I.  Perhaps all that the capsules do is focus the mind, and that directed thought will ensure exposure and therefore a tanned skin.  We will see- but as the price of the individual capsules is about 13 cents, not much is invested in the success!

 

Next week, Opera, La Boheme – something to hum and cry along with.  Our production in the Liceu (if it is the same as the one I saw last) is rather showy, but good fun.  I have two criteria for success for a production of this opera: firstly, I want to see people actually eating real food in the Café Momus scene; and, secondly, I have to cry at the end.  Usually this is a cast-iron delight, whatever the production (as long as the voices are half-way decent) and there has only been one true disaster of a performance in my experience where “Your tiny hand is frozen” aria was greeted with stony silence at the end!  I left before the first act had ended.  I expect much better on the 14^th of the month when I go to my isolated seat in the stalls.

     Last month the scheduled performance of Tannhauser had to be Covid-cancelled, so I have been having opera-deprivation symptoms and, let’s face it, La Boheme is something you can wallow in.

 

 

When you don't know it's Sunday, its time to think!

 New Lockdown, thrid week, Sunday.

 

 

 

 

In theory this morning, I should have been surrounded solely by my fellow citizens of Castelldefels as I went on my accustomed bike ride.  During the weekends we are legally bound to keep within our municipalities.  Yesterday there was a police control on one of the roads coming off the motorway checking, well, asking people where they were from.  When we were asked and replied, “Castelldefels” w were further asked where in the city we lived.  Having given the answer, we were waved on without further ado or any checking.  To be fair, my car windscreen does have a Castelldefels parking permit, which could have been an indication that we were telling the truth.  Policing of the lockdown restrictions where we live has, you might say, been somewhat unobtrusive.

     Today is a bright, sunny morning – just the sort of day when you might feel like visiting the seashore and walking along our extensive paso.  There were no police in evidence anywhere along my ride at the key points where access roads from ‘outside’ allow entry to the beach area of the town.  And if we are relying on trust for these restrictions to work, then information and graphic videos from around the country and the world show just how ineffective relying on people to do the right thing can be.

     I did note today that although a majority of people passing me were not wearing masks (and I include those with the mask under the nose and one the elbow!) the minority who do wear their masks is slowly getting nearer to parity.  Perhaps by the time the first vaccines hit, we might actually have made 50%!

 

 

 

Cummings fall from grace echoes other ‘over mighty’ counsellors like Cromwell, More and Wolsey, with somewhat less fatal results.  Which some might bewail.  And I think that I will leave the last sentence there with its nice ambiguity!

     Cummings’ influence has been truly poisonous and it is difficult to feel any sympathy from a person who has shown so little in the execution of his duties.  The fiasco of the illegal lockdown trips for ‘child care’ and ‘eyesight testing’ had a direct influence on the way that the restrictions were perceived, and emphasised the ‘one law for them, another for us’ syndrome that is so clearly in evidence here in Spain too with the kid glove treatment of the criminal activities of the so-called king emeritus and his corrupt financial dealings.  At a time where unity of purpose is essential, establishment figures seem to go out of their way to undercut acceptance.

     Cummings should not be the story; Covid and its management in the UK is the essential narrative that we should be concerned with, though Johnson must be terrified that he is going to become the intense focus of attention, and he will have to step up and take some sort of responsibility for the chaos that characterises his method of ‘government’.

     To be fair to Johnson, I do not for a moment believe that he has any ethical rock or ideological motivation.  It is, of course, unreasonable to expect a narcissist to be anything other than self-regarding and as, by definition, he cannot be wrong, he will continue to find others to take the blame for his own deadly incompetence. 

     All Johnson has to do is look over the Atlantic to see a master class in the survival game that he wants to play.  Trump’s reasoning is, “If I am losing an election then it must be rigged.”  Simple, elegant and criminally deranged. 

     This is the game plan that means that the population of the UK has to be blamed for the increase in Covid infection and not the people elected to manage its containment: the greater the numbers the more at fault those being infected are!  There is a sort of evil elegance to such reasoning.  And, of course the PBI not only get to suffer but also get to pay for their suffering! 

     Modern Conservatism to a ‘T’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Daddy, what did you do during lockdown?”

     Yet another re-working of the First World War recruitment poster is an accusation to those of us with time on our hands to think about what we have made of the extra ‘space’ imposed on us.

     I should be writing.  I know that I am merely by keeping this blog up to date, but the writing that I am thinking about is what starts in my notebook and is sometimes worked up into poems.  As I have explained before, my routine has been shot by my not being able to go for a swim and then to have my reward of a cup of tea in the pool café, where I then write in my notebook.

     I know that it should be perfectly easy for me to write in it at any other time – but it just doesn’t work out like that.  So, my writing has been a little desultory.

     I have therefore decided to do something different and (for me) interesting.

     I am going to compile a Catalogue Raisonné of the art works that I own.

 

 

 

 

     Not only is a Catalogue Raisonné something which is necessary for insurance purposes [that sounds a bit forced, but at the same time there is an element of truth to it] but also it will, I am sure, bring to the surface some ‘art works’ that have been unduly neglected over the past few years. 

     What, for example, am I going to class as artworks?  The small penguin figure made by a youthful Pat Giles in Rumney Pottery and bought by me as a present for my grandmother, will certainly count.  But what about the Coty bunny (without the bottle of Coty L’aimant in its little paws) bought as the final present my mother recognized getting from me?  Surely, that counts?  If Duchamp can have ‘readymades’ then I should be entitled to ‘bought objects with emotional charge’ as part of the catalogue!

     From where I am sitting typing this I can see four, framed ‘works’.  The first (and largest) is an ink drawing that I bought when I was a student in Swansea; the second is a page from an artist’s sketchbook; the third an elegant ‘joke’ birthday card where a penguin (a recurrent visual theme in my life) is treated in the style of various modern artists; the fourth is four framed medals of my paternal grandfather from his time in the British Army in The First World War.

     The great thing about a Catalogue Raisonné is that it has nothing to do with monetary worth (the ‘insurance thing’ was just a ploy to get me started and give a facile ‘purpose’ to the enterprise) but the written description that accompanies the objects can hint at the true non-monetary value.

     Then there is the question of my watches – not one of which is truly (or in some cases even remotely) valuable – but they do have a sort of worth and many have excellent design and they are worthy of consideration.

     So, far from being something which is static and visual art fixated, my Catalogue Raisonné will be dynamic, its scope changing with its development and how I look at what I possess.

     I’ve just thought, what about my (pitifully) small number of first edition books?  (Peake, Coward, Huxley) and my older tomes, like Swift – and when I say like Swift, I mean just Swift.  They too have a place.  And it will be fun finding out exactly how the condition of these books is described and replicating the language in my personal catalogue!

     The first thing to do is begin to take photos of what I have and then put them in the inevitable booklet that is my default position when confronted with a visual and writing project.

     I will start at once!