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!

 

Ways of speaking, ways of thinking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a decent early morning swim, a nicely surrealistic accompaniment to my post-swim cup of tea by sighting a man with a parrot on a collar and lead, arriving to have a coffee (the man and his lady companion, not the parrot) at an adjacent table.  The white parrot (cockatoo?) alternated his perch from the man’s shoulder to the top of a free chair, but was generally unobtrusive, and certainly quiet, though constantly disconcerting. 

     I think it was the collar and lead that discomforted the most but was not enough to distract me from answering Carles’ questions about English Usage, with which he assaults me most days.

     Yesterday, he wanted to know about expressions of surprise and, knowing his predilection for the archaic (he uses “spiffing” with relish!) I offered him “Goodness gracious me!” as something suitably outré in modern use!  He had forgotten it by today, though after a Herculean effort of memory he dredged up the “gracious me” part.  I wonder if it will make it to his RAM tomorrow!

     Today’s Word of the Day was “spoil” and its use with regard to children (specifically his grandchildren) and to things in general. 

     I enjoy our little chats because it keeps me in touch with my teaching side and, while I do not think that I have the same agility with explanations that I had when I was in the classroom, it does make me think to try and find the way to explain things that to a native English speaker need no explanation.

     I hasten to add that these little forays into education do not, even in the slightest, make me regret my “retired” status from the teaching profession. 

     Teachers have my admiration and sympathy, but not my emulation!

 

The weather is certainly on the change.  I have not only started wearing a short jacket when I set off in the early morning on my bike to the pool, but also when I go on my extended bike ride to the end of the Gavà Paseo after my swim.  The days of a t-shirt being adequate for both are now gone, as indeed are the nights without a sheet and with an open French door.

     Although somewhat overcast, there are intervals of sunshine, and I am still using a small electric fan to keep cool in my chaotic squalor on the third floor.  There are still times in the mid afternoon when the big fans are needed, but the weather is decidedly “fresher” which is our euphemism for colder.

     As with the UK, though not in such a squalidly chaotic way, Spain is dreading the winter with the increases in power and prices generally.  Although the winter is cold, it is not as bitter as the UK, though central heating and blankets with a couple of eiderdowns are necessary to get through the colder snaps.

     Castelldefels is a rich little town with a selection of Russian oligarchs and Barça players living here in multi-million-euro houses (as well, of course, as we, the genteel poor-ish) so the fear of what the winter can bring is somewhat modified by the fact that many here are well able to compensate for the hike in prices and still smile.  But, like any sizeable town, you need an army of lower paid people to keep the place running – and how are they going to survive?

     As part of my forced awareness, I am determined to find out how and what the council is planning to mitigate some of the deleterious effects of the coming financial hardship.

     From time to time, we have volunteers stationed at the check-outs of our local supermarkets asking for donations for Food Banks.  I have no idea where these are situated in our town, and I also don’t know how they are funded.  But I am going to find out.  And Do Something.

     With my not-fit-for-purpose knees there is a limit to what unskilled help I can give, but there must be something that I can do.  I am aware that, though I might “preach poverty” I am comfortably well off compared to many given my status as a Baby Boomer who got born at the right time for virtually everything!  So, even if we have to make some cutbacks in our expenditure to cover exorbitant fuel bills, there will still be something left over to help those who are really having to make the decision between buying food and staying warm.

     I suppose that I am writing this down as a way of forcing myself to do something more than just ruminate.  For example, I am sure that my pool would be more than prepared to collect food for the Food Banks, they have done it before, and perhaps they might be prepared to do it on a more regular basis during the winter months. 

     Before I ask anything of institutions and myself, I have to find out just how these things are organized in Castelldefels and then take it from there.

     Responsibility begins at home, and my home is here.

 

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!

The way that the Spanish talk about their climate makes the British preoccupation with the weather look like a casual remark.  Each year that snow falls in Spain (as it does every year without fail) it is greeted as a unique phenomenon and one worthy of vast swathes of television time, showing presenters knee deep in the white stuff with a 'natural' background of snowball throwing kids.  The falling level of the reservoirs in the summer is painstakingly documented with drowned villages seeing the air again and spoken of in apocalyptic terms as if the rains of Februrary are never going to happen and fill them up again.  And so on for each season as highs and lows are lovingly relayed to appalled viewers who at least have a ready made topic of conversation for the rest of the day.
     This year we have, to be fair, had pretty bad weather.  At least we have if you are looking at the whole of Spain and not just at Catalonia and Castelldefels.
     Here in Castelldefels we usually get off lightly.  Snow in Barcelona (it does happen!) does not mean that anything falls on our little town.  Even The Beast from the East has not really had that much effect, though it has been cold and we have had torrential rain.
     In all the years that I have been living in Castelldefels I have never seen snow where I live, near the sea.  I have once seen snow on some of the surrounding hills, but in my front of back garden - never.
     It was therefore with something approaching shock that I looked out at the car park from my inside seat in the cafe in my local swimming pool and saw undeniable flakes of snow.  Not only did I note it down in my ever-ready notebook, but I took a (bad) photograph of it failing to stick on cars as proof that it actually did occur.
     It seemed fitting to note the occasion with a poem and the following is what, with the sun shining outside and the temperature at 16C or so, I have come up with.
     The last line is one of the main reasons that I live in Catalonia!


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Castelldefels, one winter’s day

Light touch weather,

fleeting, not to stay.

The hills greyscale in mist.

The ‘snow’ a gesture of thrown flakes:

they’re countable.

The kids’ gloved hands,

are raised in

supplication to the skies

to catch the drifting cold.

The stark-pruned spikey canopies

await the promised picturesque.

Lo!  They come again!

Rain’s ghosts!

Zigzags to blot

in spots so slight

the cold evaporates.

Beach side

no flurry fell.

White rain is for TV

and not for us.

And all too soon

the mundane wet will come,

and then, the sun.