O God The News!

 

Never let it be said that the bloody awful weather dictates my attitude towards life.  However, I am in a bloody awful mood to match!

The news from Britain as the shambolic ‘government’ of talentless Conservative (have you any idea how difficult it was for me to put a capital letter at the start of that word) lower than vermin, self-seeking, inept, traitorous, bastards descend lower and lower into the farce that is their approach to Brexit.

And my contempt for May grows.  And, no, I have no sympathy for her as she is savaged by the liars and cowards with whom she has surrounded herself.  Whenever I see her robotically defending the indefensible and fell a smidgeon of sympathy, I only have to remember her tenure at the Home Office and the heartless and ILLEGAL processes that she put in place to banish any fellow feeling for her ‘suffering’ now.  Her on-going failure at least gives a re-reading of the “all politicians’ careers end in failure” as hers has been failure in its more continuous manner.  To say nothing of her dancing.

It is a sign of desperation and picking through the dregs that Pixie Cheeks Gove has been asked to take on the barbed wire rimmed, poisoned chalice of Brexit Secretary.  But he will only accept if he is allowed to renegotiate!  What world are these people living in?  Are they so secure in the foreign investments that they can look on with equanimity as the rest (the large rest) of us suffer?

I know that I do not command a great deal of sympathy as I spend my retirement by the side of the Med here in Castelldefels – but my pension is paid in pounds sterling and when I first came to Catalonia a Euro was 70p; now a Euro is 87p which means that my pension has been reduced by 20%, a fifth of my buying power has been wiped out largely because of the stupidity of a discontented electorate listening to the lies of the Brexiteers and believing that those Brexiteer had access to whole herds of magic unicorns who would make all manner of things well!  Rubbish.  Just recite the names of the most prominent Brexiteer and then ask the age-old question, “Would you buy a used car” from any of them?  Of course, you wouldn’t, so why entrust the future of your country to the sick imaginations of these failures?

And that scum that has resigned . . . and I paused there because my dictatorial watch informed me that I had been sitting for too long and I needed to move about for a minute!   

Perhaps its is just as well I walked away from the keys.  What do I achieve by venting my spleen?  I suppose it could be considered cathartic, but apart from keeping my blood pressure within the green range, cui bono?

It is, however, ironic that the “onlie begetters” of Brexit are generally not in government any more and therefore are not dealing with the mess that they have made!  Nothing like denying responsibility, but I suppose they have the superb example of Cameron to take as their guide for thoroughly selfish irresponsibility!

And the back wheel of my bike has been punctured or something because it was thoroughly flat when I attempted to ride it to my Catalan lesson this morning.  And now I have to go and pick it up in the pouring rain.  Again.  Much as I like the bike, I have to admit that I have been singularly unlucky with the damn thing.  I have barely gone more than a fortnight riding the thing without some reason to take it back to my bike man.  The broken spokes have become a running joke and the suspension is suspect too.

I am now thoroughly regretting that I have ordered the updated, fat wheel version of the bike that I have.  It will have improved brakes and gears, with a sexy paint job (sigh!), a full colour display and a back pannier, or at least a framework to put one on, and the thing will have a sort of brake light as well.  As you can see, I am easily persuaded with the trivia and don’t really care about the important engineering of the thing!

The new bike should/might arrive in time for Christmas and will give me something to worry about, while not being able to ride the thing because of poor weather.  It is all in the anticipation and not the reality!

Anyway, to finish off a near perfect day, after I have collected my bike, I then have to return to the centre of town for a dental appointment.  If a day is going to be bad then it does make sense to concentrate all the badness so that you can enjoy it a schadenfreude sort of way.

To keep my sanity, I have not gone out of my way to find what new infantile lunacy the so-called Head of the Free World has been up to.  That can wait until I am stronger!

Beach pimples!

 

Weather trumped work - at least the academic sort – and we spent the morning on the beach.  The weather varied from scorching sunshine to cloud filtered mugginess.  The other two set off on a long hour duration walk while I slumped in my chair, occasionally braving dead jellyfish to dip myself in the sea.

This year has seen a marked increase in the number of jellyfishes rolling through the surf to die in the shallows.  At least we think they are dead, once they are out of the water and stranded on drying sand they look inoffensively inert.

Legend has it that jellyfish are still poisonous even in death, with the chandelier-like stingers able to inflict wounds on vulnerable flesh even when the malign force driving the living creature is no more.

This morning, there were three glistening ‘pimples’ with easy reach, occasionally washed by more adventurous waves, but anchored on the littoral.  They were viewed with interest by the passing pedestrians promenading along the water line, but it took a couple of young lads to do something about it.

It is obvious that the younger generation of beach dwellers have been deeply influenced by “Finding Nemo”, especially in the sequence where his dad and the truly wonderful Dory met the jellyfish when the dark (but safe) canyon is rejected in favour of the lighter, higher (but fatal) shallower water.  They know that the dangling stings are painful, but they also know from having seen it in the film that the rounded tops of the jellyfish are harmless.  So, the lads made their hands into crane-like grabs and lifted the blobs from their occasional sea-washed dampness to the fatal embrace of the perennially dry soft sand.

I have to say that the visible reminders of possible pain did not deter swimmers, including myself, from going into the briny.  I did “look about me” to check if there were any obvious transparent dangers, but satisfied myself that the odds of safety were on my side.  And, indeed, they have been so far this year as I have been signally un-stung.  Though I am aware that last statement is a hostage to fortune, especially given the prevalence of ghostly retribution swimming about in the waves around us.  But I have faith.

Tomorrow, with a rare sense of occasion, we have been invited out to a barbecue on the only day in recent weeks that is scheduled to have thunderstorms. 

Sometimes the irony of life is too obvious to be funny.

Everything in its time

A nondescript sort of a day. 

 

Rain first thing in the morning, then a day of sun shine dampened by lowering clouds – but not cold at all.  Yet another brightly dull day.  And I have real faith that tomorrow will be a true beach day.  I believe.

And the writing is flowing a little more freely.  After my morning swim (which lasted a little longer than usual) I found it easy to scribble out a few thoughts that might well make it into poems in some future time.

The day was not made any better by a bitterly disappointing lunch in one of our regular restaurants: a forgotten meal meant that two of us had finished before the gambas for the third had arrived.  The paella starter was tasteless and the orange at the end of the meal was stringy and lacking in sweetness.  Hey ho!  You win some and you lose some.

The plan for the rest of our guest’s stay includes a barbecue and a visit to the library of MNAC: we know how to make people feel welcome.

There is a distinct feeling of the end of the summer about Castelldefels at the moment.  Not only has the temperature dropped appreciably, but also kids appear to be just that little more hysterical as they realize that shades of the prison house are beginning to grow around the jaded holiday-heavy kids!  And the retired sense that the streets are soon going to be returned to their suzerainty as the neophyte organisms go back to their institutions.

Talking of institutions.  Christmas came to mind as I availed myself of the facilities in our local shopping centre.  As I was washing my hands, the unmistakable strains of a particularly repulsive Musak version of ‘The First Noel’ accompanied my ablutions.

It is the end of August, literally months away from the Festive Season – and a Christmas carol!

In the UK I grew used to ‘Back to School’ promotions in supermarkets almost as soon as the kids had broken up for the summer.  No, wait a bit, as a working teacher I never got used to the vulgar, uncaring reminder that work was waiting a mere six weeks in the future, but the sickening shock was deadened after repetition: the first twenty years were the worst.

This is not on a par with hearing the first cuckoo of spring - there is a sort of leaden inevitability of suffering the season-before-the season with the relentless commercialization of anything that can give capitalism a buck!  But Catalonia used to be (is?) different.  The shameless extension of special days into previous months that is a characteristic of Britain is not quite so prevalent in this country.  Or at least it used not to be. 

 

I do hope that those musical strains are not a prelude to a very long countdown to Christmas!