Dripping hatred as usual

Much though I enjoy swimming in an empty pool – even one with floating lanes – I understood that some sort of Health & Safety rules demand that there be a life-guard there at all times that paying customers are in the water.  Perhaps I am wrong and, to be fair, there was a slight but pleasant sense of danger in swimming unobserved.  Except of course for the various cameras that are on all the time and watching – even if no one is actually looking at them.

            With no one to pace myself against I think I had a rather leisurely swim, even if I am swimming faster than I used to owing to the development of my improved breathing on a longer stroke rate.  If that actually makes any sense.  What it means in effect is that I do more stokes with my head in the water before coming up for a breath.  This is faster and more efficient and improves the speed of swimming but doesn’t use up as much energy.  Which is probably a bad thing as I am using the swimming to improve something or other that demands more and more effort to work – not finding ways to make the exercise easier!

            However I thoroughly enjoy my swim and I always have the added delight of the possibility of meeting colleagues from the school next door, whereupon I can remind them of the delights that are waiting for them many years ahead when they too retire.  Call me saintly, but I take real pleasure in this duty.

Yet more drafts of the poems for the next TMA and some of the revisions are fairly radical.  I am trying with increasing desperation to integrate all of the major elements that have been highlighted during the forums and tutorials.  I have, therefore, ticked the boxes – but I am not sure that I have ticked them quite convincingly enough.  As with the last exercise, time will tell.  As will the numbers.

The steady loss of avoirdupois is sort of on course towards the Day of Reckoning which will be April Fool’s Day.  I have set myself an arbitrary target (which I have no intention of divulging to all and sundry) and will therefore be able to announce my achievement of it with confidence.  Never be let it said that I have not learned something about the way that things are done in the country of my adoption!

            It is interesting that my wardrobe has now become a time capsule as I steadily make my way back through time discovering clothing which has lain fallow as my girth increased and is now being brought into the light again as my waist shrinks.  That last verb is perhaps a little dramatic for what is happening, but it is undoubtedly true that belts that were unusable are now serviceable.

            The sad thing is that, if things go according to plan then the clothing I am wearing now will, in turn be consigned somewhere or other by the end of the year as unwearable.  If that does happen then I will have achieved something which I thought undoable late last year.

            There is also the question of expense because the plan involves purchasing an entirely new set of outfits – but that, if all goes according to plan, is something to be thinking about in 2015.  It is good to have plans, but better that they actually come to fruition.  That is something that I need to keep telling myself.  Long terms plans they may be, but they need to be constantly updated and checked to see that they are on course.

Our cretinous government has voted to make abortion more difficult to obtain in this country.  This is despicable on at least three counts.  Firstly it shows the pernicious influence of hard line Papists in the upper echelons of government; secondly it is a conscious attempt by a beleaguered government to deflect attention from the plethora of scandals that surround them, and thirdly it is a gross violation of a woman’s right to decide.

            On the plus side, I have to admit that I have not felt this degree of loathing for the misfits of a duplicitous political party since the high and palmy days of the odious Thatcher and her supine bunch of self-seekers.  It keeps the muscles which deal with hatred supple and exercised, ready to lurch my body into action at the sight of any one of a range of the pygmies who find themselves in government in Spain.  To be fair a reasonable number of the government ministers look like small time crooks, still surprised that they are holding the levers of power.  Many of them look so much like caricatures that a simple photograph of them comes out looking like a professional cartoon.

            The Prime Minister is a walking joke; the minister of education a sick joke: the minister for taxation a contemptible joke, and the latter a nasal pip-squeak as well.  The leader of PP in Catalonia looks like a freak, though this does not distinguish her from her fellow party members.  They are a bunch of corrupt liars, undemocratic and selfish. 

I relish detesting them all.

Here we are again!

Just as there was no real reason why I stopped, so there is no real reason why I am starting again.  Whim is as good a reason as any.

            So much has happened in the blank gaps of my writing that there is no obvious point to survey and explain.  Nothing dramatic has occurred, no life changing events, but life continues and my part within it bumbles along on its appointed course.

            Perhaps the single most pleasant event was receiving an email floating the idea that perhaps I would like to do a couple of week paternity leave in the School on the Hill.

            Instant and complete rejection was the first (and indeed the last) reaction but it did give me pause for thought, and there was a tug of interest before the rationality of self intervened with the knife of logic and cut the whole idea from my mind.  The simple logistics of doing a couple of weeks work would necessitate various visits to governmental offices that I have no desire to make.  Easier by far to stick to my stated aim of following Uncle Eric (who, by the way is hale and hearty, albeit with a Zimmer) and remaining retired for more years than the years of work which fund it.  In an absolute sense, taking extinction as part of the retirement process, we all have more time after than before – but Eric continues to draw his pension as he marches (well, shuffles) towards triple figures.  He has now been drawing his governmental money for more than ten times longer than I have – but at least I have started the long trek towards parity!

            The poems for TMA 03 have been written, though not revised and edited.  I have left them for a few days to attempt to get some sort of distance so that I can look at them with a critical gaze to se if there is anything more that I can do to try and improve my lamentable performance for the last TMA.  It was by no manner of means a disaster, but when you are living with the personification of an A Grade then anything less than the top mark is seen as something of a failure.

           

The arrangements have been made for the State Visit to Cardiff at the end of June.  The flight is to Cardiff by Vueling and so we will fly from the fabled Terminal 1 – whose existence is a tribute to conspicuous expenditure rather than need.  Oh, and corruption of course.

            As you can imagine I am having a field day in Spain at the moment as the sorry sight of a chiselling member of the so-called Royal Family is forced into court to answer questions about her knowledge of the criminal activities of her greedy husband.  The evidence against the pair of them is overwhelming and their protestations of innocence are pathetic.  Revealingly La Razon (a nasty little right wing rag) published a very clever piece of research that they did.  They asked a carefully worded question of the public: “Do you think that the Infanta (the daughter of the elephant and brother shooting king of Spain) [La Razon did not add that clarification to their question] will be found innocent?”  Notice that they did not ask if people thought she was innocent, but if she would be found innocent.  No one in his right mind thinks that Justice (!) will prevail in this sorry country.  Though it is clear that her husband is being set up to take most of the blame together with his partner in crime, a lecturer or professor.

            Significantly, at the start of this long drawn out investigation, the wife of the professor was also implicated and part of the proceedings.  Belatedly the powers that be have realized that if they charge the professor’s wife then they will have to charge the Infanta as well, so they have dropped the wife from the investigation in the hope that the Infanta can be protected as well.

            All of this is so glaringly obvious that it takes the breath away.  The evidence against the pair in the public domain is so clear, with her bloody signature on various incriminating documents that they would appear to be no escape – but that is to ignore the way that Justice works in this country.  It doesn’t.  And there you have it.  With a wave of logic that would leave the author of Alice in Wonderland struggling to catch his breath everything will be sorted out so that nothing is sorted out and all the corrupt movers and shakers will carry on exactly as they have been doing since the Dictator died.

            It is a sad state of affairs with cases involving virtually anyone with money and a pulse waiting to be carefully unresolved so that the rich can go on exactly as they want.  If the situation in Spain doesn’t make you a rabid socialist then nothing will!

            The only real problem in Spain is knowing where to start in the cleaning of stables because wherever you look filth is piled high and is stinking to high heaven.

            In such a situation it is a relief to be able to go upstairs and immerse oneself in the arcane niceties of apposite assonance!

            As if.  Today has been one in which I have made various desultory attempts to improve on my poems and all I have achieved is thorough disenchantment with the lot of them.  This will pass and I am sure that what I have done, with minor alterations will suffice.  Probably.

            

The things I do for Knowledge

Amazingly I have already packed my case.  The more cynical among you might say that for a trip that is going to last some 48 hours spread over three days the ‘packing’ element might be, one might say, light.  But this is not to take account of my almost pathological hatred of the whole enterprise.  Packing that is, not necessarily the whole travel thing. 

I keep telling myself that the experience makes it all worthwhile.  Even in that centre of corruption in the quintessential country of corruption.  Home to the disgraced husband of the Infanta and her brood, getting out of Spain because whenever they walk abroad in their home country the general population calls, ‘Chorizo!’ which is the Spanish slang term for ‘Thief’ because, of course there is a large amount of circumstantial evidence (!) which would point to certain irregularities in the financial way that they have lived their high-style lives.  I must stop that sentences otherwise I will get into trouble – both political and grammatical!

So Geneva, home of tarnished Spanish royalty and FIFA.  Funny how disgraceful selfishness and a complete disregard for the finer feelings seem to gravitate towards places like Geneva!

With the exception of the OU, of course, naturally!

I have been frustrated in my attempt to buy another watch.  I know, I know – but this one was something of a bit of bling.  The modern fashion in watch design is to add ceramic to the mix.  The one on which I had my eye was in white ceramic with a mix of steel and around the watch case, sparkling almost diamonds!  Believe me it looked better than it sounds!

I actually saw someone else buying this watch and was immediately taken with it.  But he took the only model that the shop had and so they very kindly offered to get me one.  Today I had a message telling me it was in, and waiting.  With the patience and reserve for which I am justly famous I actually waited until after my swim before I rushed to the shop to claim what I was more than prepared to pay far too much money for.

Seen, liked and bought.  It was as the lady was about to remove a link to make it fit for my slim wrist that I innocently asked the question, “It is waterproof, isn’t it?”  To which the harsh response was in the affirmative with the horrific qualification, “But not for swimming.”  Collapse of stout party. 

I have vowed that I will not go back on the features that I have gained in my last watch purchase and so, with great reluctance, I had to forgo the pleasure of (as Toni might phrase it) ‘wasting’ money.  I have been sulking throughout the day.

We went out to have tapas at our favourite haunt in Castelldefels of La Fusta.  Bitterly disappointing, only the patatas bravas were up to standard, everything else was not what we expected.  If forced us to have an extended conversation about how we would design our new house after winning 57 million euros in one of the many lotteries than Toni, with a faith which ought to move mountains and bring the Spanish political system back from the dysfunctional Swiftian horror fantasy that is our everyday experience, should ensure that the next draw will be the big One for him.  But, alas, it never is.  However, speculation about how my library would look and where to put the second Jacuzzi is always comforting when faced with eating second-rate tapas.

Whatever I think of mildly unacceptable Spanish snacks in one particular restaurant, I can’t but think that the next few days are going to see me think very fondly of that half-baked experience as I sample the delights of Swiss cuisine.

I shall retain an open mind and hope for the best.