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Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Mine own, and not mine own!

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You know that you must be old when your ophthalmic doctor smiles at you and says (in Spanish I might add) “You have the eyes of a forty-year-old!” - and you take it as a charming compliment!



This is all a function of the gauzy, torn fairy wing that drifts across the sight in my left eye form time to time.  On a regular basis.  Not one to panic, I immediately assumed that it was a fatal portent of some sort of disease that, almost as soon as it is diagnosed, means death.



As it happened, the doctor was disturbingly soothing, and took rather too many pains to emphasise just now normal and un-worrying having floating wing tips in front of your eyes was.  In the midst of this she also let slip that I have “the very smallest” of cataracts, the very same cataracts, indeed, that her eighty-two year old mother had and “nothing came of them”.  I did notice the past tense in this conversation but preferred to assume that it was a reference to the fugitive cataracts rather than the state of her mother.



I now have two print outs from the retinal scan and the ultrasound scan and have a printed reminded to go back to her in a year.  I always find it refreshing when concern is 365 days away.  I will now assume that all is well with the world and that the wings will actually flutter away “by themselves”.  There is, after all, no delusion like self-delusion - and having typed that, it doesn’t mean that I will consider it as anything more than a play on words, and certainly not something that deserves further investigation.



Which is more than I can say for the stubborn non-acceptance of my perfectly good photograph of The Stain.  I really do refuse to be beaten and will take my steam camera (of happy memory) with me on my next foray and take another snap.



And that will be on my old bike.  The new (five levels of assistance) electric bike is minus a brake.  I have fancy disc brakes, and the disc on the back wheel is what can only be described as floppy.  And application of the brake makes no difference to the speed.  Which is disturbing.



I took the bike to the bike shop that I now use (based on the expert, quick and cheap sorting out of the wobbly wheel on my other bike) and expected the brake to be readjusted in a humiliatingly short time while I looked on open mouthed with wonder at technical wizardry.  No way!  I was told to leave the bike there as it would have to be de-assembled and then re-assembled and he had a lot of work on hand.



As I had come by bike, assuming that five minutes and a pitying look would just about wrap up the problem, I was faced with another.  If I left the bike there I would have to walk back (No!) go by bus (No! No!) or take a taxi (No! No! No!)  So I thought that I would take advantage of the bike’s ability to fold up and bring it to the shop by car.



I went home.  Eventually collapsed the bike, which is never as easy as they make it appear in the little video on the website for the bike, and even more eventually got it into the back of the car.



Once in Castelldefels town, I took the bike out of the car, un-collapsed it, which is never as easy as they make it appear in the little video on the website for the bike, and rode it triumphantly the few blocks to the shop.  Where it has been left to get better.



I returned home via the swimming pool; did my metric mile; drank my tea; wrote my notes and got home to find Toni in a state of decision about the bedroom.



As we live near the sea there is always a tendency for damp to occur, and the ceiling near the tall window doors in the bedroom is a prime growing spot.  We have anti-mould paint and that, I was told, was going to be applied as it was obviously a contributory factor in Toni’s on-going bad throat scenario.



Luckily I had the ophthalmic doctor’s (is that tautology?) appointment and so, as is always the best with partners, one could get on without the ‘help’ of the other.



To get to my appointment I went on my old bike.  As I have ruthlessly ignored the machine that I previously regarded as the Bentley of Bikes, I sprayed oil indiscriminatingly in all mechanical directions in the hope that some of them would prevent screeching metal fatigue on my journey.



I had been using my ‘old’ bike for years and, possibly because of the strange upside-down ‘S’ shape as the main bit holding the wheels together, I can’t ride it hands free - but I do find it comfortable.  Imagine my horror as I mounted the thing for the first time for weeks and found it entirely foreign and strange.



My posture was different, the handlebars were a different height, and my centre of gravity had been displaced.  I felt as if I had never been on the bike before!



Within a few hundred yards, the sense of otherness between the bike and me had gone and I was back where I used to be.  I have never gone from foreign to native in such a short period of time.  Though I wonder about how I am going to adapt to the return of the other bike tomorrow.  Perhaps I might beat my own new assimilation record.



And it was hard work.  I now see that I have become well used to the judicious touch on the little throttle handle for a small but welcome boost in circumstances when brute foot power would have needed to have been applied.  Slight gradients became irritating and the wind took back its vindictive quality.  I have been vitiated by the cloying and debauched pleasures of Five Levels of Assistance - which sounds like a good title for a book.

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

The dregs linger!


The stain is still there.



I have to say I think it looks quite artistic.  Given my interest in what might loosely be called Modern Art, it is amazing how many isms, movements, happenings, installations, genres, and categories my gestural wine-inspired-broken-bottled artwork fits.  I am mostly impressed that it seems to have certain anthropomorphic elements, and I feel that in its lightly silhouetted form there is a certain reference to Michelangelo’s sculptural Dying Slave series or even elements of a Pieta.  Bear in mind when you look at this stain/artwork that it is on a pavement, and it is only the fact that I have rotated the image that makes it appear as though it is on a wall.  I would emphasise that The Stain is a result of an accident and not my hurling the bottle at some wall in an excess of snobbery at the quality of the wine!

It has now survived one whole day.  Normally, in July, here in Catalonia, I would be fairly confident that it could survive the whole summer, but this month, so far,  has been a trifle frisky as far as the weather is concerned.  I mean it is sunny at the moment, but we have had pesky clouds filtering and dulling the normal direct sunlight that we have come to expect from summer months.  Still, even with the element of unpredictability, I think that my work will adorn the pavement for some time to come!

-o0O0o-

Even after all the time that I have spent in Catalonia, I am still confused by house numbers.  The lack of discernable logic in that you would expect from numbering, that is, as part of its essential nature, sequential, is often lacking in this part of the world.  Even the even numbers on one side or the road and odd on the other is not always strictly adhered to and expecting 14 to be opposite 13 is very often something of a long shot in some parts of the town.

So really I only have myself to blame for trying to go to a ‘Medical Centre’ in a block of private flats.  In my defence the flats did have the number that I was looking for and there was no indication of anything else that would fit.  So I attempted to get in.

This was a problem as none of the buzzers had a number remotely like the ‘door’ number I had been given for my open appointment for a retina scan.  Eventually, a Little Old Lady emerged as a result (I assumed) of my knocking.  I was wrong, and it was merely a coincidence that she emerged when she did.  However, I marched in and found myself confronted by another locked door.  The Little Old Lady had, by this time exited the building and I was left wondering what my next step was going to be.  While I was pondering the Little Old Lady reappeared and was clutching a ring of keys.  She then, ineffectually, tried to open the inner door and eventually gave the keys to me.  I opened it at once, to her delight and I went through and the Little Old Lady immediately disappeared again.

Up some rather dim and foreboding stairs to a series of doors that were numbered up to 5.  Not 9 - that was the door that I was looking for.  Further exploration to higher floors revealed that the layout and numbering was exactly the same.  No 9.

Having found a light switch, which merely helped to illuminate the lack of the requisite door, I stumbled my way down the stairs (the light having gone off) and decided to exit and explore.

Where, of course, I found that a completely separate building next to the block of flats had a humiliatingly large sign telling me that the medical facility I needed was the one that I had ignored in favour of the unprepossessing domestic door that I had chosen as the appropriate entrance to my destination.

Door 9 found.  No response.  The gum-chewing receptionist that I had been told to ignore told me to wait, which I did for a very short period of time before I was whisked out of a crowded waiting room and into a machine-stuffed consulting room.

I think that the only difference with this retina scan from others that I have had with an ordinary optician was this one was lined to a computer.  Ditto the ultra sound scan of my eyes that I had.  Although this one was accompanied by smearing my eyelids with some sort of cream and then moving a scanner pressing onto the skin of my lids.  In no way was it painful, but in no way was it pleasant either.

I know have to wait until tomorrow for the full results of the scans, but the doctor was able to reassure me that things looked normal.  Which of course begs the question of why a small piece of translucent gauze seems to sweep its way across my eye from time to time.  Research (i.e. putting a phrase into Google) revealed that what I am suffering from is a part of ageing, especially of those with short sight.  The advice and treatment seemed to be of the “get used to it” approach because all of the surgical interventions seemed almost barbarically horrific.  But as I have been more-or-less irritated with my eyes and my eyesight for the last sixty years of my life, I am sure it is something I can get used to living with.  And anyway the relief at finding out that it is nothing more than normal-ish ageing is reward enough to be going on with for the moment!

-o0O0o-

As today is Tuesday, it is The Card Place for lunch.  The Card Place is of course notable for having nothing to do with cards, the designation is merely a reference to the long and distant past when the restaurant was under a different owner.  Nowadays each Tuesday is our opportunity to recognize the quality and value of the food that we invariably get there!  The name of the restaurant is Restaurante Els Fogons de L’Avia, Carrer Antic Camí Ral de València, 38, 08860 here in Castelldefels.  In our opinion this is the best value for money in town and well worth trying.  An extra inducement for my patronage is that I get a personally mixed sauce to accompany my meal whose spiciness is well beyond the normal Spanish range of acceptability.  It is the sort of spicy sauce that augments the food without hiding it in pain!  Delicious!

-o0O0o-


Still no final result from my Open University Spanish course.  The release date for the results is the 19th of July, so still a week officially, but the results usually get to use before the stated date.  I keep checking my emails!

-o0O0o-

Meanwhile, if you want to enter my little competition to guess the date by which The Stain will have disappeared from the footpath over the motorway, do contact me with your estimate and your email address.  There will be a prize for the person nearest!






Monday, July 10, 2017

An Interesting Stain!


I blame the bread.

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And not, of course, myself. 



The basic ‘problem’ is the new bike.

Image result for MATE blue electric bike




I have now generally adapted (with relief) to the fact that my newish bike is electric when you need it to be.  In keeping with the tarnished Puritan work ethic that I like to think that I possess, it is still very much a bike.  A bike, admittedly, with five levels of ‘power assist’ - and indeed a throttle that can make the bike move without the use of foot power.  But, basically, it is a pedal bike with a little boost when you need it.



It is also collapsible, or perhaps I should say that it is ‘foldable’, the previous word have far too many negative connotations.  Foldable and with back and rear suspension.  Although those two attributes seem unrelated, they have a very real effect on how you accessorize the bike.  In means in effect/affect [I really must work out once and for all which one of those is correct] that there are no real areas of ‘free’ metal to attach things.  Like a basket.  Or even one of those back wheel spring-loaded clamps. 



The handlebars of the bike are full.  The bits that are not the grips have brakes, gears, an electronic thingy and a bell - and even the small bell that I bought had to be changed for another because there was not enough room on my handlebars to ring it!  The front light has had to be attached upside down as that was the only way to get it on a very crowded tube of metal!  So, no basket, no clamp.



That lack was, of course, a shopping opportunity as I had to replace my sports bag with a sports backpack.  Decathlon (bless them) produce something which is almost perfect for swimming with a section for shoes; two main compartments; one front flat pocket, and two side pockets: all securely zipped. 

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There is even a little transparent plastic case inside the main compartment for bits and pieces and creams and unguents.



So, my traditional meal of chicken on Sunday from my friends take away in Castelldefels all packs into the backpack - and when you realise that our Sunday lunch usually comprises an entire chicken in container; sort-of roast potatoes; aioli; six croquettes; a couple of salads and a bottle of wine, you will realise how much a mere backpack has to take.  I have done this trip a few times and there is generally no problem.  The backpack is heavy and, packed as it is, it usually rides fairly high on my back, but the levels of assistance on my bike make the extra load nugatory.



The bread however, complicates.



We usually, no invariably, have a baguette and that is too tall to fit into the backpack, and while it is aesthetically satisfying to have a loaf of bread poking out of a handy pocket, it is not practical, and the pocket is not deep enough to secure it.  My solution is to break the bread in the middle and fit the broken parts in their paper case and but them in the flatter part of the backpack at the back.



This time, however, things did not fit.  I was never addicted to Tetris and so three dimensional jigsaw type problems leave me floundering.  I packed all the food into the pack, but it was not an easy fit and I had to take things out and repack them.  Eventually everything almost fitted with only a pastry protrusion of paper covered bread poking past the zip.  That, I thought to myself, is not going to matter.



Proverbs usually work best as principles rather than direct situation-specific instructions.  “A stitch in time,” we’re told, “saves nine.”  I know that this is true as I have ignored potential unravellings and paid the price.  Although thread, cloth and stitches comprise the environment of the proverb, I should have transferred the idea to my zipped backpack.



The tip of the protruding bread had a zip on either side of it.  The opening was only a few zip teeth wide but . . . well I suppose you can guess the rest.  The cycle lane from Castelldefels to the beach via the outside of the Olympic Canal is bumpy.  Even with suspension (back and front) each judder was transferred to my back and each jog opened a few more zip teeth.



The final disaster happened as I left the cycle lane to go onto the bridge that takes the road over the motorway.  Suddenly I was a great deal lighter and I was making my lighter way leaving behind me half the meal.  There is a particular quality of sound when a bottle breaks on concrete, inside a plastic bag and hemmed in with plastic containers.  Not a good sound.



I stopped and for a moment surveyed the carnage.  The explosion of cheap red wine with interesting shards of glass that had escaped the bag (presumably the neck of the bottle) together with assorted foodstuffs made a grotesque (and expensive) action art street canvas.



I kicked some of the glass into the gutter.  Picked up the dripping plastic bag, add the unsalvageable bits and made a sorry sight as I shamelessly used the throttle to get me up the hill and down the other side where I knew there was a street rubbish bin.



Amazingly, I didn’t get a drop of the dripping wine onto my clothing and I managed to put the shards safely in the bin.



I have taken a photo of the stain.   



Not because I think it might do as a front cover for my next book, whose title “The eloquence of broken things” encourages the positive use of disaster, but because I wonder just how long it will last.  In the UK, as I recall, it would not be many days (irrespective of season) before a friendly torment would obliterate the vinous remains, and the shadow would be a thing or mobile phone memory and not reality.



In Spain I am counting the days.  Already 24 hours (and more) have passed and The Stain is still there.  Would anyone like to open a book on how long they think the stain will survive?  Please leave your estimates (with email address) and I will give a small prize to the one who is closest!  In the interests of fairness, and because I live here and am wise in the ways of the weather in this part of Catalonia, I will not take part in this contest myself!



Good luck!




Sunday, July 09, 2017

Rain, sun and lunch!

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YESTERDAY



Each time I took a breath going upwards towards the school end of my local pool I noticed the sky.  At first it was a light lilac, then it went to a grubby bluey-grey and finally it took on the appearance of the sort of sky that they use as a backdrop for those dystopian, Armageddon-like total disaster movies that at least take your mind away from what the 45th POTUS might or might not be doing.  Then the first fat drops of rain began to fall.



It’s an odd experience swimming in the rain.  I am always amused by a shower of rain on the beach: there is instant evacuation as if the liquid that is falling (and in which of course they have been bathing) has suddenly taken on corrosive acidic properties and precautions must be taken.  Given where we live, fairly near a very large city and on the flight path of a busy airport, I would not be at all surprised to find out that our rain is anything but Ph. neutral - but generally all we worry about is getting wet.  Even when getting wet is something that we had been doing a few minutes previously.



But rain in an official swimming pool is different.  There is a different quality to drops of falling rain on skin to the splash of a passing swimmer.  And anyway, experiencing rain in a commercial swimming pool is a limited pleasure because Health and Safety regulations indicate that rain will affect the safety mixture in the water and consequently, as with our pool, the roof has to be closed.



As our Russian-doll roof structure began its slow progress enclosing the pool, we were able to go from outside and the rain, to inside and the gloom in a single length.  Luckily I had virtually finished my swim when the shower ended, and by that time the moveable structure had just aligned itself with the exit and so I was able to move seamlessly to my shower and my eventual cup of tea.



I dried off the water on my café chair with my towel and was quite happily imbibing in the threatening gloom when it started to rain again.  The cloud cover look as though it would quite easily be able to sustain  showers and downpours for the foreseeable future so I gave in to Nature and moved to a giant parasol (what irony!) protected table and sulked notes into my trusty jottings book.



But this is Spain.  A visit to the Birthday Girl in Terrassa and by the time we came back the sun was out and, even with odd clouds, all was well with the world and sunbathing was a possibility.



And that is what I love about living here: we do not have the sort of spiteful weather that cursed my life in the UK.  The sort of threatening clouds that I swam under in the morning could easily have accompanied my exercise for the next fortnight in Britain - but in Spain it is an isolated day when you do not get at least a sight of sunshine during it!  Yes, Spain, and Catalonia are not as green as Britain.  You have to go to a region like Galicia in the north west of the country for the lush greenness that Brits might recognize.  But I am content with a certain degree of aridity and the sight of the sun.



TODAY





I was beset with a lingering malaise of indolence and so decided (because I can) not to go for my swim today.  I suppose the idea was that I had thought that preparing, going, swimming, changing and tea drinking took up such a disproportionate amount of my time, I wanted to get settled into some sort of academic activity without the distraction of swimming to act as displacement activity.  Needless to say such laudable motivations did not translate into actuality and what I actually did was have a cup of tea, do the Guardian quick crossword and read further information about the Antikythera mechanism.



I think that there are two approaches to the acquisition of knowledge not previously known: the first, is one of sheer delight in discovering new areas of understanding that were previously blank; the second is a deep sense of shame that one didn’t know about it previously.



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The Antikythera (I love the sound of the word anti-kith-ar-ee-ah, it is the sort of word you can roll around your mouth) Mechanism, falls securely into the second category.



An account of what the ancient shipwreck offered historians may be found here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/decoding-antikythera-mechanism-first-computer-180953979/ and you can tell that I have been doing courses in the Open University because I did not give you a Wikipedia entry first!



This ancient shipwreck has been described as the most astonishing archaeological discovery of the twentieth century, or indeed of the twenty-first century - the discovery of what might truly be called the mechanism of the first computer ever discovered, dating from some two thousand years ago!



And I had never heard of it!



I am not saying that I am the datum point of common knowledge, but surely something this astonishing and revolutionary should have impinged on my rag-bag accretion of general knowledge at some time since its discover in the early 1900s?





With the discovery of early ‘technology’ I am always reminded of the invention of the first voice recorder.  The mechanism and the raw materials and the whole technology while put together for the first time in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, were actually available in Classical times!  A way of recording the voice could have been available during the time of Christ, and we could have heard the last words from the cross or the text of the sermon on the mount as they were spoken.  But the machine was not invented and we didn’t.



The sophistication of the Antikythera Mechanism was around over a millennium before its next iteration!



And I knew nothing about it!  What shame!




Guns, Germs and Steel 



It is at times like this that I am reminded of my first reading of Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years, where a revolutionary world view disrupts conventional acceptance.  This book is constantly revelatory and, rather like one of my tutors in university, constantly says things that you should have thought previously!  The sort of things that are blindingly obvious as soon as they have been articulated, but you need their help to get there!  Diamond’s book (as indeed are the works of M Wynn Thomas https://www.swan.ac.uk/crew/staff/professormwynnthomas/  are wholeheartedly recommended.



And now I shall echo Osvald’s plea, “Mother give me the sun!” - though, I am glad to say in rather different circumstances, and I will only retire to a sun lounger rather than the murderous ministrations of a mother!








Friday, July 07, 2017

Learning is reading is seeing!

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It is gradually dawning on me that we are already in the month of July.  Which means that there is only one full month between today and the start of September.  So much, so obvious.  The reason why this is a disconcerting fact is that in September I start a new course in Spanish III.



Although I have lived in Spain for almost a decade, I am shamefully, and woefully inadequate when it comes to expressing myself in Spanish.  I mean, I get by.  No matter what the situation, be it garage, government, restaurant, optician, library, art gallery, theatre, opera house, museum, bus, train, bike shop, etc etc etc - I get by.  But I am always conscious that when I compare what I am able to say in English with how I express myself in Spanish, the different is, to put it mildly, glaring. I have Taken Steps to rectify my inarticulacy and this year I have taken an OU course in Spanish Beginners and a course in Castelldefels in Spanish 2.  This sort of overkill approach has had mixed results.

On the positive side I have passed my Spanish 2 course and am now officially certified as having a proficiency of A2 - I have documentary proof of this, and that is something which I look at from time to time as I am not entirely convinced that my ability matches the printed description.  Still, I have done the exams and got the paper. 



The OU course has been interesting, but my approach to it has been less than wholeheartedly enthusiastic.  My marks for the OU course have been among the highest that I have managed to get, with my lowest mark being 94%!  But perhaps those marks have more to do with the fact that I now know how the OU works and I am able to push them exactly what they want.  And this is not false modesty on my part, I know what I do not know, and I do know that the marks do not reflect my proficiency and ability.  Bumbling by in a confident ungrammatical style is not competence.



 Exacto Spanish Grammar, OU Course Book for L140


So, the start of Spanish III in September is a truly daunting prospect.  There is no way that I can get through this year by relying on quick wits and a smattering of half remembered vocabulary.  Spanish III is serious - that’s why I have written the number in Roman numerals rather than the more prosaic Arabic alternative.  [And just as a casual thought, how might I have translated that last sentence?  Pause.  Although I have no intention of showing you my version, I did put my Spanish attempt in Google translate and something vaguely similar came out the other end in English!]  I will have to take a more serious and studious approach if I am not to be humiliated by the experience.



I have determined an approach that might help, but it does need constant effort and a seriousness that I have not shown heretofore.  With the OU course I left out great chunks of the material, decided that other bits were stuff I knew, and concentrated on the tutor marked assignments and the computer marked multiple-choice questions.  I worked to the final result and the final result will therefore reflect my ability to understand the mechanism of the institution rather than show exactly how much I have learned and I know.



But I know that if my approach had been slightly different and I had been more methodical towards all the course and not just to those bits that had a final mark attached to them, I would have benefitted immeasurably.  The material is well thought out and leads you gently (generally) to proficiency.  It is a sign of the realism of the Open University that access to the studenthome website for the course is available to students for three years after the course has finished.  I think that I will need that to go over just what it is that I am supposed to have learned.



And then there is the course that I have just completed in Castelldefels.  We have a course book for this, complete with CD.  The lessons are generally more conversational than overly didactic so much of the hard graft learning is left to the students.  I cannot, in conscience say that I kept up my end of the bargain and too often the next time that I opened the books after the previous lesson was in the next lesson.  This does not work.  And it will not work in Spanish III.  So things will have to change.  I live in hope.



-oO0Oo-


Image result for restaurants in castelldefels


As part of our “Summer is the Time to Explore” approach to life, we have been to a new/old restaurant in Castelldefels.  OK, it’s not exactly sailing up the Zambezi in a canoe made of matchsticks, but it is adventurous according to our lights.



We chose to go to an old haunt further down the beach road, where previously we had got a fairly basic menu del dia for about €10.  The food was not spectacular but it was good value for money. 



It must be over a year or so since we last went there.  At this point you have to understand that time in a seaside resort is not the same as in the rest of the world.  A single year in resort is equivalent to at least five in the normal time frame.  In our world shops come and go; restaurants rise and fall; banks close; hotels rise up like Lego constructions; car parks become flats - nothing stays the same for long.  So, you could say that we were somewhat naive in expecting to get the same experience from something so far back in resort time.



And things had certainly changed.  Rough and ready had now become canvas backed chic; tables and chairs had been redone, and there was air conditioning inside.  And the price was now €16, a 60% increase.  And that was without drink!



Service was poor and slow.  The starters were OK, but the main course was far too salty.  The piss-poor wine was €12 and the bottle of gaseosa was €2.50.  We had to pay €2 for parking because the service was so slow.  The final bill (after the beer that we didn’t have had been deducted!) was over €50.  We could have had better for €20 elsewhere.



You could say that I should name and shame - and the fact that I didn’t leave a tip shows how dissatisfied I was - but, how many of my readers are going to turn up looking for a cheap lunch any time in the next decade?  As a one off experience it was not good, but thinking about what I was prepared to accept when I first came to Spain, I would have been quite happy with the meal.  In those days I would have been impressed by the ‘free’ olives and even more by the thimble full of cheap vermouth with a speared olive in it.  But that was then and this is now and my standards are a little higher than they were.



This is a seaside town and summer is the traditional time to rip off those tourists who are so green that they look to have a meal with a sea view.  I should have known better, so I will let the restaurant hide behind my gifted anonymity and let them rack up the Euros while the sun shines!





-oO0Oo-
Image result for the eye




My eyes have never been the strongest part of my anatomy, and recently they have been more irritating than usual.



I can usually cope with the sheer frustration of short sightedness, and even the addition in later life of longsighted-ness to go with that: varifocal glasses are worth their weight in gold - just as soon as you have worked out how to walk down stairs in them!  I have been wearing contact lenses since I was seventeen and I have attempted to get used to a multitude of different forms of plastic pressed against my eyeballs.



Only those who have had hard contact lenses and then got a spec of grit behind one can truly understand the meaning of the oxymoronic “exquisite pain”!  The development of soft contact lenses and the further development of ‘daily’ soft contact lenses where, at last, you could throw them away at the end of the day, rather than pretending that you cleaned them properly and put them in fresh solution for the night rather than popping them in your mouth and sucking them to get them clean.  I pause here for opticians to have their fit of the vapours - which emphatically occurred when I first admitted to my optician that was my usual treatment.  From there I (like all other hard contact lens users) I lied.



Anyway.  Even with soft, daily contact lenses there will come a time when your eyeballs have had enough of plastic already, and demand that you dig out your old specs and wear those for a while.  My eyes have been getting ‘tired’ recently and my eyesight has become somewhat blurred, so I have gone back to glasses,



My glasses are lightweight, thinned, photochromatic, varifocal and laser and computer fabricated.  They have lightweight frameless frames made of matt platinum (going by the price) and are altogether things of loveliness - if you like that sort of thing.  I hate them, and only use them when my eyes scream for relief.



This time the respite that glasses is supposed to give to contact lens-abused eyes, has not worked out.  I am still getting blurred vision, and it is as if a tiny piece of translucent gauze has been stuck on my left eyeball.  And I am worried.



Worried in two ways.  I have an optician appointment at 6 this evening (this is Spain and not Britain you understand) and my first worry is trying to translate a phrase like “tiny piece of translucent gauze” into Spanish.  My second and more real worry is that what I am experiencing is related to diabetes.  I have been borderline diabetes 2 for some time and, although my last blood test was triumphantly negative for diabetes, I fear that I may have backslid.  So to speak.



Although it is the summer I have a lot of bookwork to do.  Not only re-reading the Spanish course that I didn’t read the first time around, but also working on my latest book of poems.  Although the poems are written, the introduction, the editing and the proof reading are all to come.  I need my glasses or lens assisted sight for some fairly intense work over the next few months.



Although I try and make light of it, I am worried.  There are too many nasty things that the “tiny piece of translucent gauze” might suggest.



However there is a whole hour before my appointment and I am not going to spend it in fruitless, frightened speculation.  I will write a poem instead.  Or at least draft one out.




My drafts of poems can be seen at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/ that you are welcome to visit or ignore as your pleasure dictates.





58 more minutes to the appointment.  Not that I am counting or anything, you understand.  No indeed.  Indeed not.












Thursday, July 06, 2017

Have they ever thought of trying politics?



There was a two-and-a-half hour meeting between the laughable (yet viciously contemptible) President of Spain, leader of the corrupt and corrupting PP group in parliament and the leader of the opposition and general secretary of the so-called socialist party PSOE.  The President does not have an overall majority in Parliament, but is able to govern because of the supine attitude of PSOE who (incredibly) abstained during the last vote of confidence against the government, and the active support of C’s the right wing sluts of Spanish politics.

God knows there is more than enough for these two ‘leaders’ to talk about ranging from the rampant corruption that marks the way that politics is lived in this country to the crucifyingly high youth unemployment rate; the rising numbers of the poor and dispossessed to the rising cost of living.  And much, much more.  But the pressing problem at the moment (leaving aside their own real failings and those of their parties) is Catalonia.






On the first of October of this year the government of Catalonia has said that it is going to hold a referendum asking the simple question of the population of if they are in favour of forming and independent republic of Catalonia.  If the vote is positive, the government has said that it will start the formal process of withdrawing from Spain within days of the vote.


This is not the first vote that Catalonia has had.  There was a previous vote where the overwhelming majority of those who voted, voted for independence.  The qualifications in that last sentence are important.

The PP government in Madrid said that such a vote was illegal.  The question was referred to various courts including the Constitutional and High and all of them ruled that the vote was both illegal and invalid.  The government did not allow government buildings to be used to facilitate the vote; voter registration lists were denied to the organizers; various threats were made about the participation of any civil servants; there was a propaganda war against the government of Catalonia.

The vote was held and I voted.  The result was dismissed by the same government that had done all it could to make the holding of the vote difficult.  Considering the difficulties and the opposition, the turnout was remarkable.

The government in Madrid prosecuted the president of Catalonia for holding a democratic vote and he had to go to court.  He was found guilty and was banned from taking part in public political life for two years.  The Spanish government was a laughing stock for being seen as such an active opponent of democracy.

We have had the same sort of build up by the Spanish government for the next vote.  Legal arguments have been made and various courts have pronounced on the essential illegality of holding a democratic vote.  Our joke president of Spain has said that the only legal vote would be one in which the whole country of Spain takes part.  So, for example, the recent vote about Scottish independence, according to the rules of the Spanish government, would have been open to the voters of the entire United Kingdom England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - and not restricted to Scotland!  Absurd and ridiculous.

There has been some bellicose talk, with one minister in the past referring to the use of tanks!  But surely, even at this late stage, politicians could try politics to work out their problems?

I am constantly amazed by how little politicians in this country actually use politics to try and diffuse situations.  Their first loyalties are to party and not to country, and their nauseating repetition of platitudes fails to hide the paucity of ideas to take Spain forward.



Our television screens give us a daily diet of graphic depictions of corruption largely unchecked by what passes for Justice here.  The politicisation (in the worst sense of the word) of daily life of the rich and the powerful means that they evade the consequences of their actions.  Ministers refuse to resign in spite of votes in parliament and reams of evidence against them; proven criminals walk free from prisons; liars and thieves pay eye-wateringly large sums of money IN CASH to get out of prison; some convicted liars and thieves have yet to be put away.  But, speak in the ‘wrong way’ about the Roman Church, or the police, or the royal family, or make jokes in poor taste about ETA and you will find that ‘justice’ in this country can be swift and exemplary.  We have laws that ensure that if an individual films say, police brutality, then the person taking the film will be prosecuted before the offenders!

Image result for fundación franco
This is a country where a government grant is given to the Franco Foundation (sic.) but the same government is proud that it has not given a penny to fund the work of scientists who are trying to discover the DNA and therefore the identity of those who were murdered during the Civil War and thrown into common graves. 


Recently, a 92-year-old woman was able to bury the remains of her murdered father after an Argentinian organization funded the DNA work.  In her moving responses on television she expressed her gratitude that she was finally able to give her father the burial respect that he deserved, but she pointedly said that she gave no thanks at all to the Spanish PP government as they had done nothing at all to help.

Catalonia has banned bull fighting in the region and refused it regional finance; the Spanish PP government has tried to get bull fighting listed as of national historic importance and part of the patrimony of mankind and, where it is in power, it has financed it.  You go to the Plaza de España in Barcelona and the historic bullring there has been converted into a shopping centre. 


That just about sum up the attitude of many Catalans to the central government.

In my view the Spanish government seems set for a showdown with Catalonia, which is going to achieve nothing - except to harden attitudes on both sides.

I would give Catalonia a referendum.  Not immediately, but I would commit to holding one in the near future.  I would then work with the Catalan government to restructure the relationship between the Generalitat and Madrid.  Having drawn up a new map for the relationship between the two, then I would hold a referendum using the new relationship to urge voters to go with a united Spain.

There are many foreigners in Catalonia.  Not only those from other countries of the EU and the rest of the world, but also those specifically  including important sources of immigration from Morocco, China and Russia.  There are many from the ex-colonies of Spain and Portugal in South America.  To many those Spanish citizens from outside Catalonia (and there are many in this region) are also foreign.  I am sure that a renewed relationship, a more equitable relationship could be sold easily to unconvinced Catalans and a majority of ‘foreigners’ who are uneasy about the position of an independent republic of Catalonia.

But the government of PP shows no sign of reasonableness, shows no sign of being able to listen sympathetically to justified complaints.  As is not unusual with sides entrenched in positions because of years of intransigence, it looks as though, as usual, lack of political nous will ensure disaster.

And that brings me to Brexit.

But this post has been depressing enough without that!

Tomorrow I will be more cheerful.  Honestly!