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!

 

Baby steps to almost safety!

 

Well, it’s a step forward.

     Today I had an SMS from the health authorities informing me that I am part of one of the groups called to be vaccinated against Covid-19 and urging me to request my appointment to get vaccinated.  Which I of course did, except (isn’t there always an ‘except’?) in all the centres that I selected I was told that there were no appointments available.

     So.  How am I supposed to take this? 

     I have previously been told that I will be ‘called up’ in exactly the same way that I have been when I get my winter flu jab in, or under the supervision of my local CAP (Health Centre), through the receipt of an SMS.  Perhaps this pro-active approach is just to keep us quiet as we try (and fail) to get an appointment, but to make us think that “at least we are on the system, and that is a good first step, eh?”

     Let it pass that ALL my friends of a similar age in the UK (and those a damn sight younger) have ALL had their first jabs, and I do not even have a firm date for my vaccination. 

     Still, the centres’ vaccine availability is updated weekly, so first thing on Monday morning (after my swim and cup of tea) I will be re-entering all my information to try my luck at another round of Vaccine Jackpot!

     In a nice reversal of blame, it now becomes my fault that I have not been vaccinated, as the onus has been placed on me to find a centre.  To be fair, I have only tried those centres that are within a reasonable (however you define that word in relation to a pandemic) distance from my home.  And you could always argue that were I to be truly serious about getting vaccinated, then I wouldn’t be so parochial and I would willingly venture into parts of Catalonia that I have only heretofore seen on maps!

     Or I could wait for my CAP to call me.  I think that will allow another week of querulous prevarication!

     And at least I am on the system, and that has to be positive, doesn’t it?

 

 

 

While I had my swim (and cup of tea) Toni was able to meet up with his sisters and his two nephews.  This meeting took place at our almost-local Outlet, full of logo heavy shops selling still overpriced items to an ever-credulous public.  In which of course I place myself.  But, as I was occupied in ploughing my watery way up and down the 25-metre lane of the swimming pool, I was unable to join them.

     I am not averse to visiting the Outlet, in spite of the fact that it does not have a Wedgewood Shop – but, there again, where does nowadays – where I can vicariously indulge my mother-inspired love of china, glass and cutlery.  But there are limits to the shopping masochism to which I will willingly lend myself: to go to an Outlet with one determined woman shopper might be regarded as foolhardy, to go with two smacks of the sort of extremism that destroys empires!  And two adolescent boys! 

     Anyway, I didn’t go and given my lack of a vaccine (see above) I am sort-of relieved.  Both the boys and their mother have had Covid – and I’m not sure if that makes them more or less worrying for an unvaccinated person.  As with so many impulses during this pandemic, isolationism and a sturdy stance of anti-society isolationism is the better bet!

     But we have now had more than a year where the normal interaction in the family has been stopped, the celebrations of Name Days and Birthdays have been via Zoom and, I have to admit, thoroughly unsatisfactory.  The joint visits to the beach have not taken place during the last summer and, given the rate of vaccination in Catalonia it looks more than likely that they will not take place during this summer (when we finally get to it) as well.

     Spain has said that they are thinking of delaying the second jab follow up to the AZ vaccine to 16 weeks after the first jab: that means 4 months.  Given that tomorrow is May Day, that means that given the delay and the time necessary for the two jabs to come to full strength, it is going to be well into September until this tranche of people is fully vaccinated. 

     I am in Group 5C and it is only today that I had the invitation (not an appointment) to try for the vaccine – so, if I had the injection tomorrow on May Day, it would the beginning of August before I was fully vaccinated.  And I am not getting the vaccine tomorrow!

     The projected timetable for full (70%) vaccination for herd immunity here in Catalonia looks ever more optimistic!  And are we seriously going to be welcoming tourists into our Covid hot spots during the summer?   

     Commerce is driving out sense!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One spine among many

I have lost a book!

Given that I have thousands and thousands of books, you may think that not being able to get my hands on one specific volume is not that surprising.  Which it isn’t.  But what is shaming is that ever since we moved into our present home I have (constantly) made variously wild statements about getting my books organized.

The last time that my books had even the semblance of being part of a coherent system was when I was last living in the UK.  Ever since the move to Spain the books have had to fend for themselves.

I have made half-hearted efforts at establishing a system and there are scattered literary outposts of civilization through my stock - but a coherent and inclusive organizational method has collapsed under the perceived load of the necessary work to make it a reality.

Part of the problem is that my book collection is housed over three floors in a score or more of Billy Bookcases and miscellaneous shelving systems.  Books are double stacked on some shelves and there is therefore not the surplus shelf space to allow “mini collections” to be formed which could then, eventually be amalgamated into a more sensible system.

A complicating fact is my interest in art.  Not that there is anything wrong with the subject, in spite of it being the choice of brain-dead royals to get a degree, no, it is the format of so many art books that is the problem.  Most hardback books are of a size.  There are differences, but those differences can usually be contained on a normal sized shelf.  Many of my art books are large format books that generally require wider spacing to allow the volumes to fit.  Some of my art books are ‘pocket’ size very small publications, while others are extra large.  This means that art books connected to a single artist or a single art movement cannot reasonably be stacked together.  This means that, of necessity there will be various different groupings in place to make any sense of my holdings.

Professional libraries get around the problem of size by having an ‘outsize’ collection and boxes or portfolios containing very small publications.  I have attempted to implement part of this concept by having, for example, a box which contains my poetry notebooks; there is one bookcase which has a higher than usual shelf height at the bottom; my miscellaneous religious books are in one plastic box folder - but the system keeps falling down because of the lack of room.

Toni’s solution is of course to get rid of books.  I shuddered when typing that, because for me that is tantamount to blasphemy and sacrilege.  I think it is the word ‘rid’ that offends me.  After all, I did donate a whole slew of books to the Oxfam Bookshop in Cardiff before I left; donated many bags full of volumes to the library of the British School of Barcelona; have given away selected further volumes to friends - but I cannot bring myself to throw books away.

The problem is further complicated by being in Spain.  We have no real second-hand bookshop in Castelldefels, and even if we did my books are in English and are not of the sort of English that Spanish or Catalan speakers are looking for to improve their language skills.  I have old hardback editions of the CUP Shakespeare, that do not have the latest scholarship informing their editorial decisions, but the pages are good to turn and there is a feel to the paper that I enjoy.

And that is the reason that another of Toni’s suggestions of “Why not have a shelf of Kindles containing all the books you have” is not acceptable either.  I like books as physical objects in themselves.  I like the feel of them, I like the smell of the them and I like the look of them.  I know my way around the trusted books that I have.  They are in a way, a part of me.

Today, when I hear some well-known piece of Classical music, I can usually remember the record that I bought when I got to know it first.  I may not remember the orchestra and the conductor, but I remember the make of the LP and the picture on the front cover.  For some of my early recordings I can even remember what the inner sleeve was like, for example, my recording of the famous orchestral bits of Bizet had a crinkly plastic sleeve rather than the boring white cartridge paper, while my recording of La Création du Monde by Milhaud was jet black, sort of in keeping with the jazzy influence of the music.  Marble Arch, Heliodor, MFP and CFP are all iconic names that helped create my reasonably priced record collection.  Now, I have none.  Instead I have a series of virtually identical discs, kept for reasons of storage in zipped, black, books of plastic pockets.  I don’t want my books to be confined to a Kindle (though I have 5) or the hard disc of a computer (though I have an incomprehensible number of those too) I want my books to have covers and pages and textures and weight.

But they do take up room.  Our living room has one wall of bookcases from floor to ceiling; one bedroom is designated ‘The Library’ and has bookcases along the walls and four back to back as an island in the middle.  I am getting far too fat to squeeze through!  The ‘study’ on the third floor is a jumbled chaos of junk and shelves which contain odd books, papers, CDs (I must be the only person in the world who can point to CDs to cover the tracks on iPods, iPads, computers and the like), machinery (!), tables, chairs - well you get the picture, and I hope it works in words because I have no intention of taking a photograph to show just how squalid the self-imposed conditions in which I work actually are!

So, getting my collection into something approaching a real collection would necessitate wholesale reordering of present arrangements and mean my constantly walking up and down three flights of stairs, adding books to precarious piles which cannot be placed where they should be because there isn’t really that little empty area that there is on a plastic puzzle where you have to move things around one square sliding away to make room for another.  I know that anything other than a gentle tinkering will result in chaos and misery.

Though, there again, having written about it all, I do no feel empowered to Do Something About It.  After all I did visit the ‘church on the hill’ above St Boi that I had been threatening to do for years.  And, with my cousin Dylan and with four aching knees to show for it, we did managed to get to the top and see the spectacular view.  If, the reasoning goes, I can do that, then a labour of love like handing all my books should be far easier.

Though the handling aspect has its own problems that I characterize as The Guinness Book of Records Syndrome.  It is a well-known fact that any previously specified piece of information to be searched for before picking up the Guinness Book of Records will not have been found by the time the book is put down.  However many other interesting facts, though irrelevant to the stated search parameters, will have been discovered. 

Books are meant to be opened not organized.  As many of them are old friends, it would be churlish to pick up a book and plonk it on a shelf without justifying its existence and opening it and reading some of it.  During some past instances of attempted organization I have read entire books (again) after picking them up.  With this approach, I would need a few lifetimes to get the job done.  But done it should be because, and here I go back to where I started, I would not be searching for the book that I cannot find, because I would have know where it was - and if it wasn’t there then it must be lost.

On the other hand, writing about organizing a large collection of books is so much more satisfying and a damn sight less taxing than actually doing it.

The Stain

There has been a short shower! 

Admittedly the rain was more of a momentary sun shower, but liquid did fall from the sky and that must have made a difference to The Stain.  I will take a ride and check on its progress and post the results here.