Trying Things

Having managed to get my car safely (eventually) into its appointed subterranean parking place, the real excitement for today is getting it out again.

The Road to Gava beckons so that I can increase my collection of significant numbers by which, for the Spanish, I am defined. The only blockage on this road is the garage which appears to have an unnatural affinity for my NIE and they seem unwilling (or, more disturbingly, unable) to return this document. Without this piece of paper my attempts to finish the necessary administration for my residence in Castelldefels is impossible.

The garage is proving to be more than usually evasive about the NIE and after a number of inconclusive phone calls we think that it is in another town where the bloodsucking parasites known as notaries have it – for some unexplained reason.

As far as we can work out, someone from the garage is now going to get the document and deposit it in our flat. Meanwhile, of course, time is running out for the completion of the next bit of paper shuffling as the office in Gava to which we need to take it closes at 2.00 pm and doesn’t open again today. As we also have to get an updated padron and probably revisit the doctors’ surgery; time is limited and we will be pushed to be able to complete this today!

[Later]

My NIE was delivered personally with no real explanation about what had been happening to this well travelled piece of paper. Our trip to Gava was completely pointless. We had been directed there incorrectly; apparently. Our exasperated return to the doctors’ was even more pointless.

Let me explain. Although I have ‘retired’ from school I have decided not to take my pension until my normal retirement age. At present I am therefore: not in work; not getting a pension; not being paid by the government in Spain or in Britain – in short I am “living of mine own” as I believe Tudor kings were urged to do. While this is fine and dandy and well in keeping with a staunchly Puritan sort of life style (not that I aspire to that, of course) but one likes to feel in touch with one’s historical and moral roots, it does create problems when confronted by officialdom.

For this surgery (at least according to the functionaries who staff the ‘information’ desks at the entrance) there are three types of people: those in work and paying taxes; those out of work and drawing a pension; those impoverished and paying nothing to anybody. I do not fit into one of these categories and therefore there was extended (and on Toni’s part, acrimonious) discussion which ended, I have to say most unsatisfactorily.

It turns out that I will have to pay something like 87€ a month to join the Spanish health service. This, I am disinclined to do. My stuttering accusations in broken Spanish about the unfairness of it all, along the lines of, “In my country you would have full access at once to all the services of our great health organization,” did not go down well at all; and with Toni virtually demanding to speak to the Health Minister the atmosphere was decidedly frosty.

Having decided to pay the extortionate demands of the selfish Spanish health service we approached another of the self styled experts who fronted the medical facility and asked for the appropriate documentation.

This was produced with a demand for a photocopy of the NIE and also a photocopy of my passport (!) The photocopy of the NIE was to hand – for reasons too bureaucratic to go into – but I only had the original of the passport. I asked, not unreasonably, as every other organization in Catalonia has made a photocopy of the bloody thing, if the surgery would make a photocopy. No, I was told, it would be better if I did the photocopy. “Why?” I asked. “Because,” was the response, “we are not a photocopy shop.”

At this point, I finally lost the will to live.

Toni was absolutely livid and demanded we rethink our top spot for obdurate, bloody-minded, inept, unhelpfulness (previously held by bank, property agency and car dealership) and substitute the front of house staff of the surgery. Toni said that their attitude reminded him of the jobsworth attitude which used to predominate in the Old Spain.

To be fair, the governmental agencies we have had to deal with have been, in general, helpful and efficient. Yes, there have been some astonishing quirks, but they have done their job with consideration and dispatch. The non-governmental organizations – representing major segments of modern society have been mind-numbingly, customer dismissingly obnoxious.

With my money!

Still, let me not overreact (!) (sic.) I have to say that my experiences so far have been far less Kafka-like than I expected.

This shows how deep my pessimism runs!

Tomorrow Sitges and details of the summer music festival.

I hope.

Have wheels will . . . be thankful!

We are now getting to the nitty-gritty of living in Castelldefels: getting a doctor.

For Toni with his Spanish identity card this was plain sailing for me, however, not so easy.

I came prepared: my passport (for the inevitable photocopying); my NIE to show that I was actually living in Spain; my Padron – or proof that I was living in Castelldefels – everything in short, to show that I was entitled to medical help.

The sorrowful smile on the receptionist’s face and the slow shaking of her head seemed to indicate that my overweening pride in official preparation was destined to excite the anger of the gods leading to the inevitable reversal and my tragic recognition of my parlous state: all the ingredients of a Greek tragedy. There was much conversation in Catalan whose import was that I was not going to be registered when, like a cheap card sharp finessing an ace I produced my European Health Insurance Card! This was greeted with sighs of relief because it had a nice long number on the left hand side.

Alas! My triumph was short lived; it was a mere anti-climax before the final act of failure. No registration was possible: my padron needed to be more recent than twelve days old and I would have to ‘Go to Gava’ where, it would appear, all the more bureaucratic circles of official hell exist. I need another number; I cannot get it in Castelldefels, so to Gava I must go! ‘Tis the way of the world on this part of the coast!

The major excitement today is the promised (absolutely promised!) picking up of the car. So far I’ve had to scan and send a picture of my passport (makes a change from the usual photocopy – the garage machine was unable to delineate my subtle features and just produced a black blob for my face) and the insurance people have phoned up twice about payment. It makes me feel less than confident about the promised (absolutely promised!) pick up time. Still, at least I won’t have to Go to Gava.

I trust those words won’t come back to haunt me.

Only partially was the response to the last sentence. They were not, of course, ready. The guy who sold me the car in the first place and his manager had a stand-up row at one point and had to continue the altercation behind closed doors. No reason was given for the delay but I was asked for my bank details again as the photocopy of the cheque used to buy the car was not clear! I’m still trying to work that one out. By way of compensation they photocopied my driving licence again: why? The file connected with my simple purchase of a car has now reached the girth necessary for official complacency in Spain. I fail to see how, “I want that one; here is my money,” can possibly merit so many pieces of paper – all of which have been photocopied more than once. And one piece of paper, namely my NIE, I think that they have lost!

And we think of the Chinese as inscrutable!

However, after many inexplicable delays, worried faces, comings and goings, I do actually have the car. And very nice it is too – though I find myself unable to enthuse much about a mere car; I am far more interested in the effect of a car rather than its physical appearance. Heresy!

It is cooler this evening than for the last few days and the waves look bigger: I wonder if this presages a change in the weather. And my knee is playing up – surely that means something? I rather fancy myself becoming sage in the ways of the weather and looking knowingly at the sky and tapping the side of my nose and uttering gnomic pronouncements about the future. But the simple fact of the matter is that every day is a revelation to me and my assumptions about whether the cloud will go soon, stay, increase or dissipate have all been wrong.

However, and this, dear reader is important; we have not had a single day of continuous rain. Not one. A shower of two – usually during the night; cloud cover making the weather sultry; but no rain. You really do have to live in Cardiff for most of your life to relish these statements!

And believe me, I do!

A car! A car! My sanity for a car!

[This is the blog for Monday the 9th of July - blame erratic internet connection!]

The battle with bureaucracy continues with yet another delay before I get my hands on the steering wheel of the car!

I have got the impression that, wherever I have been in an official sense, I am the first foreigner to have asked for something. In the bank; in the estate agent; in the garage: all of them virtually threw up their hands in despair when I asked for things that would be run-of-the-mill in Britain. Then I remember Toni’s experience with Barclay’s Bank in Rumney when the whole of the branch ground to a halt when he tried to get his money from Terrassa to Cardiff. It took months; much to the mystification of the Catalan side! It seems that legislation designed to thwart ‘International Money Launderers’ means that Joe Public has to suffer the indignity of multiple delays while various checks are carried out to ensure that the law is being obeyed. Once again the law abiding are discommoded while I’m sure that the law denying laugh openly at weak rules that they can ignore in their stride, without losing an illicit penny!

The latest delay is because of some sort of law about people new to Spain buying cars; or more particularly not being part of the Spanish tax system. Official Spain has only just started to define me by numbers; and numbers are what count in Spain. The transfer of my bank account from Gran Canaria to Terrassa was reduced to farce because my passport number was different from the passport number that I had given in the Canaries. This, I patiently explained, was because I had had my passport renewed since I opened my account. This, while accepted as a form of words, did not make much sense to the official brain where, when a number is attached to a person, it stays with him, and is part of his official definition.

It took hours to sort that out and I dread the expiration of the next period of ten years and having to explain all over again that numbers to official in the UK are mutable!

We have also started the Search for Work.

This entailed leaving Castelldefels and going by train (no car: see above) to the next stop down the line, to Gava. This is where the equivalent of the Jobcentre is located.

After following rather expansive and generally incorrect directions we described a large circle of the town and eventually ended up not far from our original starting point.

Although the fairly small office seemed crowded, we were seen quickly and Toni was dealt with first. He produced his identity card and the process continued from there. The advisor seemed efficient and generally supportive and Toni was quite impressed with the improvement since he last had to deal with this part of life – admittedly more than fourteen years ago!

When it came to my turn the computer screen was blank. A clean page! There were various difficulties, especially with the translation of British qualifications into their Spanish equivalents – but an address and a telephone number were provided of an office in Barcelona that could help.

The most disturbing element in this (one sided) conversation was the importance attached to my lowly success in achieving an ‘O’ level in French. With a few taps of a computer keyboard it transpired that I was being offered jobs which entailed translation or interpretation! I was reminded of a moment in a Woody Allen (?) film where a man in a white suit appears as a translator and listens to the English and then repeats the English with a foreign accent until two attendants appear with a net and take him away! “The sleep of reason produces monsters!” I seem to get nearer and nearer to that Goya etching!

The end result, to my ineffable relief, was that I was given a piece of paper with a number on it and Toni informed me that I was now officially recognized by Spain; and I could work if I could find a job.

I have also been given a helpful book of courses, some of which are in Castelldefels – though I am not sure if I am expected to join them and learn, or offer myself as a suitable teacher! Time and a little translation will tell.

The flat continues to please and the view astonish. There is something about living so close to the sea that stirs up the atavistic elements in one’s soul and activates those Jungian images at a very basic level; and it’s nice to look at.

I think I will go and count the waves!

A watched beach never palls!

Part of the devilish compact that you agree to when you start writing blogs is, at the very least, to be regular contributor.

There is nothing worse than the expectation of inconsequential froth being denied by the wayward attitude of a supposedly confirmed blogger. I can only appeal to the anti-literary effects of family to excuse my tardy response to my reader anxiously waiting to hear the most recent moan from a newish arrival in Spain!

As a compensation for the day’s rest from literary labour I promise that I won’t moan once during this screed. Whoops! Wrong word to use if I am to keep my word!

Living so close to the beach (ahem!) it is only to be expected that I have begun to analyse the Spanish attitude to the littoral.

It is a disturbing fact that on the beach today in Castelldefels I only saw two black people – and both were trying to sell bootleg CDs and DVDs. Although all the people around me were ostentatiously trying to achieve a darker hue that the one which they had been given at birth; there were no people for whom that darker hue was by nature theirs. I have no idea how much of the population of Spain is black, but I’m sure that Castelldefels is not representative. I will keep my eyes open and report back when I have a few statistics to bandy about.

When I visited Castelldefels for the first time, I picked up some tourist information and emblazoned across one map showing the beach and very little else, it said, “Castelldefels: More than a Beach!” I thought it sounded a little desperate, but a cursory jaunt around the town would give the lie to the assumption that this was a community anxiously hoping to find another reason to exist other than the swathe of sand stretching into the distance. Castelldefels is a thriving 365 day town which, according to Toni, boasts a population of 150,000. I don’t quite know where they keep this number of people; there are only so many that you can pack into flats!

But, let’s face it; if you have seashore along the Mediterranean within easy reach of a major city like Barcelona, you’re not exactly going to pretend that it’s not there! In other words, my adopted town is used to a tourist or two dropping by to take the waters and a bit of sun.

The differences between Spain and Britain are instructive. Spanish people expect sunshine when they come to the coast; it’s their birthright. British people hope for sunshine and, if they get it, they treat it like a treasured gift to talk about later,

Virtually everyone in Spain, especially if they visit the coast in a family group, will have a parasol, which they will use. In Britain taking a parasol to the beach is usually looked on as an affectation with the person obviously boasting that their last holiday was to a place where such a thing might have been needed.

The Spanish also have a different approach to sitting on the beach. In my youth in the late 50s and early 60s there was a craze for sun loungers. These were metallic contraption which folded up to a size just too big to carry easily and unfolded into a coffin shaped piece of furniture of stretched canvas on a skeleton of hollow metal tubes. They were excruciatingly uncomfortable and the canvas not only rotted after the first year but also stretched and sagged in a most unbecoming way. And, yes madam, your bum does look big in that as it swung low on the metal tubes with flesh almost touching the sand.

The Spanish have made a virtue of necessity and their furniture of choice is a sort of truncated folding garden furniture chair with a long back curved at the top with a sort of lip. Since this is virtually on the sand, any sagging looks intentional rather than embarrassing. This counter intuitive seating contraption also has a ratchet mechanism which allows the back to recline which gives the illusion of a real Spanish ‘hamaca’ but keeps your feet, literally and firmly on the ground. If you make the mistake of relaxing in a recumbent position then you will probably find yourself unable to rise with any degree of dignity and will have to wait until the people around you have gone back to the city before you assay a resurrection!

I am also fascinated by where people choose to plonk themselves when they go to the seaside.

Most of us are like timid lemmings who lose their natural urges at the last moment and flock only to the water’s edge and stake a claim to 'our bit of beach', so that by the middle of the afternoon the waves are lapping on a crust of humanity lying around like flotsam strewn along the beach by a particularly savage storm. But that does not account for everyone.

There are always a series of lone wolves and whatever she-wolves are called. Some of these adopt the approach of the yellow Labrador bitch who, in any family, never wants to be obtrusive so she finds an innocuous out-of-the-way place in which to sleep: like a doorway – so everyone has to step over her! In the same way these lone wolves place themselves cunningly on a major sandy thoroughfare and try and look unconcerned or vaguely annoyed as everyone traipses past them.

Then there are those who place themselves to see (mirrored shades are de rigueur so eyes can flicker unseen but see everything) or who place themselves to be seen (mirrored shades are de rigueur so that people can see themselves reflected and realise how inadequate they are compared with the shades wearer.)

And I think that I am not keeping my promise that I made at the beginning.

So I’ll stop.

Trials and tribulations!

A day without a blog!

As my old surrealist drinking mates in Zurich used to say, after a few beers and when we had stopped taunting Lenin about his grandiose ideas, “A day without a blog is like a fish without a corset!” How we laughed!

The reason for the lack of a blog yesterday was because of the news from home: nothing disastrous, but deeply disturbing.

As a past hardened teacher, I really should not be surprised by startling mendacity but, given my touching innocence, I always am. Even in Chaucerian England when, according to the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, all members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy were indulging in the most ostentatious denial of their founder’s naïf precepts, they did so as ‘fallen’ members of the Christian church: they might have been poor Christians, but they were Christians and, if pushed, they could probably have admitted that they were, in the Wife of Bath’s wonderful phrase, “wandering by the way.” So, bad though they undoubtedly were, they at least knew which set of moral precepts they were ignoring: they were Christian thieves, rapists, cheats and philanderers. In other words, though moral and immoral were clearly distinct; the immoral knew where they should be.

It is therefore something of a shock to come across a couple whose whole raison d’etre seems to suggest that they have no moral guidelines at all; no centre line from which they might be deviating; no commonly accepted code of values which they are ignoring. They present as a sociable, if oddly matched pair, but their motivation is almost distilled selfishness. To this end no lie or distortion is too breathtaking; no falsehood too difficult to accept. Their perception of the world is so narrow that all events can only be assessed in terms of how they impact on their self centred existence.

I reckon that I have done pretty well to write this much without giving you, my reader, very much information on which to build an opinion. Who they are; what they’ve done; how they have responded to others – all of this is a closed book to you. Suffice to say that this pair of prime liars has sought, by criminal means to ameliorate imagined wrongs constructed by their own warped and mendacious take on what you and I could call ‘reality.’

If it wasn’t for the incredulous outrage of friends at home who called the bluff of this outrageous pair of ruffians and managed to restore the situation to something like normality, I would have been impotently gnashing my teeth in Spain while unscrupulous chancers took their opportunity to exploit a fortuitous opening for unfair gain.

To those who know I would advise them to ask Paul and Paul Squared for the details (if they want a particularly partial and excitable narrative then concentrate on Paul Squared!) To both of them my thanks and congratulations; without them and their expeditious foiling of the blaggards’ noxious schemes, I would have been so much poorer – and lost the opportunity to write a more than gnomic blog!

Today was going to be the day when I took possession of my new car. It has all been paid for and as far as I am aware the totality of the documentation required has been signed, sealed and delivered.

While doing some shopping in the excellent, vast shopping centre L’anec blau at the far end of the Olympic Canal, I thought, in that ever trustful way I have, wouldn’t it be a good thing if, instead of trudging all the way home to the flat, one’s fingers gradually turning black from the restrictions which the thin handles of plastic bags cutting into the flesh often produce, wouldn’t it be good, I thought to myself, if my car was ready already and I could drive home with all the goods!

A swift telephone call plunged me yet again into the sort of soulless despair that trying to match life and Spanish bureaucracy often produces. My car was not ready for me to collect. My car would not be ready for me to collect. I would have to fill in a paper which was necessary for those wishing to buy a car in Spain before the tax system had pinned down exactly what your status was. Yes, I don’t know what they hell they are talking about either. But the car will have to wait. I have been told that my car (for which I have paid, as I think I may have mentioned before) might be ready for me on Monday. Perhaps. Maybe. Possibly. Or, indeed, not. As the case may be.

To compensate for this further frustration, we did do a little light shopping in Zara Home: the interesting bit of the rather boring clothing chain store.

We have bought two glasses which characterise the real differences between the drinking habits of the Spanish and the British. The first glass which caught my eye was a version of the traditional toothbrush glass with the chamfered glass sides; but this glass was on a truly Brobdingnagian scale, easily able to take a decent slug of beer which will be acceptable by any drinker of Albion. The other glass was a rather stylish tankard in an almost ostentatiously chunky Swedish style which while promising much by its weight actually only accommodates a very small amount of drink – certainly not enough to qualify as a ‘beer’ in any part of Britain; but more than acceptable in any part of Spain!

Such differences illuminate my discourse!

Beach life in all its variety!

The sea is a slate grey today as lots of interesting shaped sun denying clouds fill the sky. The morning flights into Barcelona airport are winging their way over the flat and I’ve moved some of the furniture around as a way of proving that the flat is ours and not the landlord’s.

My much prized and greenly vaunted piece of equipment that, using solar power (sic) should charge up all my various gadgets, is not working. As I have, as it were, put all my electrical leads into one power source, I am now finding that everything I possess is slowly running down.

Camera, hand held, phone, everything that makes modern life acceptable is fading away before my very eyes. It is like a science fiction story in which you wake up and find that modern civilization has ceased and the survivors have to eke out an existence using the dregs of power left in batteries before the darkness sets in! I’m sure that such pessimism is merely a reflection of the sombre look of the day. A day without sun is like Fideuá without pasta. So there!

But of course, this is Spain and not Britain, so in spite of clouds, when I got back from buying a carbon squandering power pack to get my gadgets back on line, the beach was bathed in sunshine!

My painstaking research into food continues with a visit to Cel Bleu near the beach at the end of our road. The menu: gaspacho andaluz; Fideuá mariscos; salmon a la plancha; helado; vino tinto; cortado – 10.50€ I’m not even going to translate that into pounds sterling – it’s too shaming!

A little foray onto the beach with desultory paddling and then a plonking of myself down on a deserted stretch of beach to watch the succession of planes swoop into the airport.

When I sat up again a couple (not young) had established themselves on my right, with the man in a state of considerable undress! They then proceeded to disport themselves in a manner more befitting the matrimonial bed than the pubic (sic!) beach. As there was no one within the vicinity I hoped that the performance was not for my benefit. I returned (defiantly) to my observations of aeronautical preparations for landing.

When I next resumed the vertical position my unclothed companions wandered significantly, and threateningly, to my left – and much, much nearer.

At this point, as it used to be written in the more scurrilous Sunday newspapers, your correspondent made his excuses (to the waves) and left; deciding that a swim in our sequestered pool was an altogether more salubrious alternative to encroaching sexual abandon of ageing nudists who really should have known better!

Domesticity has taken a further step forward with the first use of the washing machine – I mean in this flat! It is making all the right noises so I assume that everything is normal. There is no tumble dryer (!) so I will have to utilize the wire contraption which I think is used in such circumstances. This object looks like a mixture of a surrealist take on an ironing board and an early Barbara Hepworth, but I am sure that utility will become apparent when necessity demands a dry towel!

Wish me luck.

You pays your money and you takes your choice

Monday is the day that little old ladies hobble to their banks to talk to their money.

You can’t get near a counter for little old ladies lurching from the arms of their grown up children towards the tellers and asking incomprehensible questions that necessitate the combined efforts of teller and children to pacify the questing oldster. Who, presumably after seeing that the money is safe and well and untouched, hobbles home to gather enough strength for the next foray to the bank in a little week’s time.

Having experienced at first hand exactly how Spanish banks treat their customers I think that the older generation have something to teach the rest of us. I have discovered the bank book: this you can feed into a cash machine which then automatically types out the transactions that have occurred on your account. You therefore have some proof about what is going on with your money. It is the first line of defence against the incursion of unscrupulous bankers – is that an example of tautology?

I must get away from what is rapidly approaching an obsession with the state of Spanish banking; but when you are as intimately involved in the machinations of those organizations as I am in these first few weeks of settling in and scattering money about me as if it were bankers’ profits then you must allow me a little leeway to scratch the itch of my hatred!

The next stage in settling in is to get our possessions from Cardiff to Catalonia.

This has not started well with my phoning Pickfords to start the process and their not phoning back, in spite of an assurance that they would be in touch within the hour: that was this morning and it is now half past two in the afternoon. Even allowing for the hour’s difference this is not acceptable. And the weather, by way of pathetic fallacy, is overcast with the Mediterranean looking a lot like the Atlantic. I could have got this colour of sea in Penarth, though it has to be said that even though it is overcast, in some way peculiar to this area, the sun is still managing to make the waves sparkle!

Our first domestic disaster: the sink in the kitchen is leaking! Though to compensate for this, the tap is broken and refuses to give any water. The tap itself is a fairly dated used-to-be-cutting-edge sort of thing which has one spout (on an extendable hose) which is operated by a side lever which also regulates the temperature. It took us (at one time six of us) some time to work out how to operate it and it was only by brute strength that water was urged out of it. The physically demanding nature of the water experience meant that it was a breakage waiting to happen and perhaps it is a good thing that it’s happened sooner rather than later. I am not convinced by the positive nature of that particular piece of kitchen philosophy; especially as I have to wash the dishes in the bathroom (I was going to say in the loo but that gives entirely the wrong effect!)

The first clash about the flat is over. I have been to the den of thieves who took a whole month’s rent as commission and asked them to do something about the tap and dripping sink. I also pointed out the inadequacy of a year’s rental for a flat without an oven: unthinkable. We will see what happens. Thank god the person I had to deal with spoke a form of English. I spoke a form of Spanish and we got on famously!

The blustery conditions on the beach today have brought out the wind surfers in force. And very impressive they look too as they leap along the waves at a speed which is totally inappropriate to the flimsy contraption on which they are standing. As I watched their exhilarating failures to stay afloat they prompted me to think about their activities.

There is a whole area of human endeavour which, while fascinating to watch, is totally unthreateningly participation free – for the thinking person. What sane entity would actually want to risk life and limb to bump along the waves at frightening speeds with one foot attached to a board which could fly off in any of the 360º that a circular motion can propel the thing to choose? And limbs are eminently breakable!

Like skiing: a ‘sport’ for the mentally deranged.

My grandmother regarded the onset of winter with personal hatred, and snow and ice with particular detestation. She hated slipping; it was almost a phobia for her. Slipping meant loss of control with possible injury: bad. The reasoning was simple and unquestionable and I find myself more and more in agreement with my maternal Grandmère.

But skiing is enjoyable to watch; in the same way that motorcycle racing is rewarding viewing: they might fall. Let’s face it there is a whole range of ‘sporting’ activities where the only pleasure in spectating is the possible crash, smash, collision, double cartwheel or other disaster that relieves the tedium of watching the ‘sport’ at its soulless worst when nothing is happening except for the practioners, well, practising. The perfect example here is, of course, formula 1: how unbelievably tedious is that hi-tec boredom when all the drivers are doing is driving - round and round and round?

There are other sports where spectating is marginally worse than participation: potholing, for example. Potholing and hang-gliding were two sports that I had to promise my mother I would never, under any circumstances, indulge in during my time in university. It says much for my mother (and little about me) that she insisted on non-participation in insane sports rather than full participation in moral rectitude as one of the preconditions for leaving home for the wild excesses of Swansea University. I think there might be an element of irony in that statement; though quite where is a moot point!

Tomorrow I want to buy something for which there is no possible justification.

And I don’t mean membership of the Conservative Party.

Eating is not enough!

There comes a time when endless listings of menus for next to nothing or graphic lyrical panegyrics on sunny days begins to pall.

I have to admit that this hasn’t happened for me yet, but who knows what my reader is thinking!

La dolce vita is, I suppose, only of interest to those who are living it and it is more like the infliction of a Great Wen (courtesy of Doctor Johnson) when it is experienced at second hand.

I have tried to be scrupulously fair when pointing out that the dream of living by the sea comes with a fairly hefty price tag; not only in terms of the financial implications of living somewhere where lots of people want to live, but also in terms of the day to day frustrations of dealing with officialdom in all its various guises. Maggie has pointed out that in Italy you need a certificate to prove that you are actually alive; I only hope that the Spanish authorities don’t find about this as they will leap on this as a serious omission in their paper work that needs to be remedied at once – in duplicate (with photocopies.)

Like so much else in the lunacy that masquerades as normal bureaucracy, a graphic illustration of its essential ‘otherness’ is to be found in ‘Catch-22’. One is reminded of Doc Daneeka who disliked flying, but as a doctor in the air force had to do a certain number of flying hours. His name was added as a member of a flight crew in a plane that crashed and afterwards he had to try and prove that he was alive. Needless to say he failed in this endeavour and wandered ghost-like among the living ever after: a non person, even though everyone recognised him as Doc Daneeka.

Joseph Heller has been haunted by the success of this novel and has been constantly asked unfeeling questions about his other, later, novels which have never achieved the success of this classic novel. One question that he has fielded expertly is, “Why haven’t you written anything as good as ‘Catch-22’ since its publication?” His answer: “Who has?” Full marks for a response worthy to be in the novel itself!

Tomorrow off to L’Anec Blau to find a frame in which to put Ceri’s sketchbook page. I don’t think that I can go on living with any degree of artistic validity with the choice of art that the landlord has used to bedeck the flat; I want what I like!

The car is bought! Not, of course that I actually have the car: I think that you are forgetting that this is Spain! My passport and licence have both been photocopied (again) and the photocopy of the NIE (my proof that I actually live in Castelldefels) has been – in a novel twist – given back to me in exchange for the original document. This is all so that the car can actually be registered to my name. I must admit that I am rather disappointed that no one has asked me for my blood group!

I have to say that the Spanish themselves find this sort of thing funny too. I remember seeing a comedy sketch on Catalan TV in which a person was handing over documentation to an official who had asked for birth certificate, passport number, identity card number etc. and then asked for things like, favourite film – which was passed over in the form of a cassette; book last read – handed over; the last request was for a urine sample which was duly handed over in a specimen jar from the commodious bag that the applicant had with him. The official looked at the sample and then announced that the liquid did not reach the minimum level and that nothing therefore could be done! I laughed at it, but have discovered that it is only a slight exaggeration!

It is a good thing that I actually called into the bank to check that I could use my bank card to pay the full amount owing on the car. Of course I couldn’t; why did I even dream that such a thing was possible? The bank clerk went through an incomprehensible search for my account through scores of computer screens of information which also, at once point, involved ringing Terrassa and a general kafuffle was enjoyed by all. After some light photocopying of my passport (the photograph of which is now visibly fading after all the exposure it has had to strong light) she seemed minded to write me a cheque. After this was done and presented to me I had to resist a strong desire to knuckle my forehead in servile gratitude to this charitable figure who had graciously allowed me to use my own money for what I wanted.

The ‘buying’ of the car seemed a good excuse to continue my gastronomic exploration of Castelldefels with the menu del dia of Miguel Angel, a restaurant and bar opposite the more stylish Lancaster where I had eaten previously.

The meal came to 10€ (£7) and comprised: bread, red wine, a Spanish take on Chinese fried rice; lightly battered cod covered in ketchup on a bed of thin fried potatoes; pink and white ice cream and a cortado to finish of course. This was a much more basic meal with few frills but still excellent value for money. The rice was probably a little too bland for British taste and the cod was too salty, but a good, basic lunch.

It rained last night and that seemed to be the prelude for hordes of biting insects to seek out my tasty flesh and feast themselves to stupefaction. I am, as a result, a little bumpy today and may take chemical precautions to prevent a further onslaught this evening! This is the first time for years that the winged fiends have singled me out for sucking; I do hope that my foreign blood is not to their taste in the future.

Where is my crucifix?

A flat life!

Another part of the dream slots into place as I type this; sitting on the balcony looking out over the swimming pool towards the beach and the sea. Admittedly, to be perfect, there should be flawless skies and a burning sun, but, alas the sun is intermittent and the people sunbathing are doing so defiantly rather than languorously. This however is Spain and not Britain, so there is a general expectation that the sun will appear it all its glory; unlike the (fully justified) pessimism that characterises the phlegmatic British approach which expects the solitary cloud in a British summer sky to block the sun throughout the time that one is on the beach. And, true to form, as I type the sun is now out and shining!

One preconception that has been destroyed is that of the peculiarly British obsession with the weather being something mystifying to the foreigner. This is clearly not so as, during my time in Spain so far, virtually everyone I’ve met at some time has said something about the heat. You see, it’s the same but different: we talk about the rain; they talk about the sun!

I have received various communications from my bank, BBVA, the first letters to the flat: how piquantly appropriate! One of them purports to be some sort of statement in which a thousand euros magically disappear into the coffers of the bank. It is my personal belief that BBVA were there in force in the early years of the first century and their activities probably prompted Jesus to start his campaign of cleansing the Temple. I look forward to my next brush with them when they have to change a cheque for pounds sterling into euros and deposit the results in my account in Spain. I shudder to think how much they are going to charge bearing in mind the massive risks that the bank runs in accepting a cheque from one of the major financial houses in Britain. It is at times like this that one has to remember the sage advice of Mr Meagles in ‘Little Dorrit’ to “count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram” to emphasise the quality of patience in those given to imprudence; but one should also remember the reaction of Tattycoram who, when pressed to the limit, “stopped short, looked me full in the face, and counted (as I made out) to eight. But she couldn't control herself to go any further. There she broke down, poor thing, and gave the other seventeen to the four winds. Then it all burst out. She detested us, she was miserable with us, she couldn't bear it, she wouldn't bear it.”

Now that sounds more like me and my relationship with my bank. Any day now I’ll only make it to three and then go for the jugular.

I am having to learn again how to live in a flat. This is nothing like the same thing as inhabiting a house. A flat is an exercise in communal living whether you like it or not.
The arrangement of balconies means that you are intimately involved with those to your right and left and below. To the right is a balcony at right angles to ours so their life is our life; to the left is a brick partition which separates us visually but not audibly. The flats below, which are on the ground floor, have (unfairly) large patio areas and are ostentatiously visible to us flaunting their own personal access to the pool!

There is a definite hierarchy of recognition in flats. It goes from ignore; look; stare; nod; grunt; speak - to eventual conversation. So far only the early stages have been reached but, as I am fond of pointing out to all and sundry, I am here for at least a year in my flat by the sea, so there is plenty of time to be sociable!

I have eaten very little since yesterday lunch time so I feel justified in a little more scientific exploration of the differences between British and Catalan food by going to a Japanese restaurant.

I will leave that conundrum to fester.

Bon appetite!

What a way to enjoy youself!

Festa Major has converted Terrassa from a normal busy city into a traffic jam. The Ramblas has a stage and a funfair on it and a parallel road has been upgraded to the major thoroughfare; except it isn’t made for the amount of traffic and so everything has ground to a halt. What precisely this festival means in terms of spectacle has not been made clear to me, but I have been promised a dragon.

To my plaintive call for fuegos artificiales (fireworks) to go with this dragon, I was informed that they were reserved for the end of the festivities; with the clear implication being that I was being greedy expecting all my treats at once!

After the let down that was Saint John’s Night’s Eve, I am reserving judgement until after tonight, but the reputation of the city is at stake!

The details of our new life continue to frustrate: there is, it appears always room for another piece of paper (or two if you count the photocopying) before normal life can be established.

We are girding up our loins to attempt to get to grips with the employment system in Castelldefels. Today, of course, was a holiday in Castelldefels so all our attempts to communicate by phone and by email were doomed to failure. It is, or it might be, the Feast Day of Saint Peter, so it was almost blasphemous for us to expect any municipal authority to respond to any communication that the ungodly might attempt, spurning the sanctity of such a day.

I am trying to remember how Saint Peter died: was it in the odour of sanctity or in the traditionally gruesome ways that early member of the church usually ended their days, or indeed a combination of the two. I am sure there is some grotesquely inappropriate confectionary that the Spanish have developed to celebrate the saint’s apotheosis. Going by the delicious cakes that we ate to celebrate Saint John, I do hope that Saint Peter’s cakes are at least on a par with the pastries of his holy colleague!

The Day After

No saint specific cakes, but something much better, fireworks!

One of George Bernard Shaw’s sayings which is sometimes trotted out to justify lazy perception came to mind during the evening festivities in Terrassa last night. Shaw said, “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” There used to be fairly marked differences between Spain and the UK; certainly on my first visit I was aware that I was in a very ‘foreign’ country where the policemen carried guns, murderously camp men in tight trousers killed bulls and the general population ate with relish the tentacled denizens of the deep.

In Catalonia today in Terrassa and Barcelona there are very few differences in everyday life (apart from the ones that I noted in 1958!) so when you are presented with glaring differences you are more than surprised.

My bank manager, who at present is probably having treatment after my daily abrasive visits to him, was completely confused by my request that I have a cheque book connected with my account. He hunted through screen after screen to see if this outré demand could be realised within the Spanish banking system. It could not. Not with my account. I was to come to him when I needed a cheque and he would write it for me.

This is the sort of arrogant paternalism that used to exist when bank branches in Britain had actual bank managers in charge rather than the uppity clerks that staff these money making concerns nowadays. But even then we were actually allowed to write cheques all by ourselves. This is yet another abuse of the banking system that I will Have to Open a File about: be afraid BBVA; be very afraid!

Leaving aside the continuing persecution by Spanish banks (actually just BBVA) last night was another example of how the Spanish do things differently.

The start of Terrassa’s Festa Major was marked by general genteel merrymaking compared with what would have been a drink sodden embarrassment in Britain. Wandering past the funfair in the middle of the main street we passed families strolling through packed streets.

In one of the main squares in front of the Cathedral a raucous band was playing as if the major requirement was sound rather than subtlety and people were dancing the Sardana. This is a Catalan dance which requires people to hold hands in a circle and perform a series of steps to the music. For Catalans this is much more than a dance, it is a terpsichorean statement of national identity. Like the human castles that Catalans build, these odd demonstrations of a deep tradition are very moving to watch.

It all seemed rather low key until we came to the main square in front of the City Hall where there was a gathering of people wearing large caricature heads representing the local governmental officials who watched their cavorting parodies from the opulently draped balconies of the civic building. A clear view of the little dance these grotesques stumbled through was impeded by the backs of two giants directly in front of our vantage point.

These giants are another feature of Catalan festivities. These enormous figures are hollow allowing a person to be inside the character and actually carry the giant around, making it look as though this twelve to fifteen foot monster was actually walking. The two tradition characters are a king and queen who dance together. These are clothed in traditional fairy tale clothes with regal crowns. The rest of the figures are odder. The two other giants in the town square where of a man and woman in clothes from the 1920’s or 1930’s. It has been explained to me that this period in Catalan history was one of affluence and importance hence the dated appearance. These characters dance too, to general acclaim and delight.

After a lightish meal in a restaurant whose menu was cut down to basic snacks because of the festivities we returned to the square where the giants had given way to something darker and more impenetrable.

The square was packed with people forming a rough circle around two groups of characters from whose ranks alternately a person would advance towards a microphone and speak. One group was dressed as angels and the other devils. As I didn’t understand a word that anyone was saying and as no one enlightened me as to what was happening, I will make my own assumptions.

Even though I couldn’t understand the language that was being used, I could tell that the people were speaking in verse. As the debate continued (with the devils having the best of the argument going on the response of the crowd) I was reminded of the vitality of medieval mystery plays in which this sort of dialogue was common.

Eventually from the side of the angels a debonair and assertive angelic form appeared armed with a sword. His clearly combative approach provoked a murderous response from the devils who killed the angel to whoops of delight from the crowd.

Then, to put it mildly, all hell broke loose.

Drums started an insistent harsh rhythm and the square was filled with muffled figures who began to tramp around in a circle, into their midst erupted hooded figures brandishing pitchforks from whose tines fireworks were soon spraying showers of sparks on the crowd. Fire eaters disgorged immense plumes of flame while the screams of the exploding fireworks, the rhythmic beat of the drums and the yells of the crowd added to the atmosphere.

The square was filled with the acrid smell of burnt gunpowder and eyes were soon streaming and devil after skipping devil entered the square spraying fire, not only on the tramping forms in the middle but also on the unprotected observers at the sides. From time to time whole sections of the outer circle of watchers would recoil as a volcano of sparks attempted to ignite clothes and hair!

A spectacular highlight in the action was when one of the devils carried into the square what looked like a Tibetan prayer wheel which, when engulfed by an extruded plume of flame from one of the fire eaters, exploded into an apocalyptic vision of fiery hell.

Dragons, covered in fireworks and breathing real fire cavorted in the square scattering spectators but with the tramping figures seemingly immune to the conflagration.

The drums continued to beat as fiery horses came into the square, all the time accompanied by whooping devils. At some points all you could see were gesticulating horned silhouettes waving pitchforks in front of a sheet of sparkling fire. It was like one of Goya’s black pictures brought to startling life.

This was not a quick experience – a pyrotechnic moment; it was a sustained ritual: the hypnotic beat of the drums; the shuffling, circling figures constantly showered with fire; an occasional piercing blare of a brass instrument and a crowd half fascinated and half frightened.

Eventually, after well over an hour, to immense acclimation, a devil pranced into the centre with what looked like a tombstone with a cross on it.

Immediately the centre of the square cleared as this funereal object was placed in the middle. At that point, I must admit that I felt some apprehension myself. My reasoning was that anything that a crowd of fire dancing maniacs was wary of should bloody well frighten me. The crowd, though yelling encouragement put their fingers in their ears. I followed their example and felt the soft whumph! of a massive explosion, followed by a shower of spent gunpowder which fell like gentle rain on us all.

A remarkable experience and one which left me absolutely filthy. I’m still wondering what to make of it all. But I certainly enjoyed it.

Whatever it was.

Really?

IT IS OFFICIAL!

IT HAS COME TO PASS!

I AM A CITIZEN OF CASTELLDEFELS!

And to prove it I have a wodge of paper which has been scrutinized, photocopied, checked, stacked, riffled, sorted, signed, stamped, signed over the stamp and stapled. And you don’t get more official than that!

For once the agency behaved impeccably professionally and did exactly what it should do; an unnerving experience. And we were allowed the keys days before the official start date.

That laxity, however, came back to bite us as the local government refused to recognise that we were living in Castelldefels because the contract we had signed said that we were commencing our tenancy a few days later. But that was (as it turned out) a minor inconvenience and was easily (for Spain) resolved.

To celebrate our new found domesticity we went out for a meal and I continued my gastronomic experiment comparing the popular cuisines of Catalonia and Wales. The restaurant, this time was just around the corner from our flat. You know; the one on the beach with vistas del mar! Anyway the menu del dia was a little more expensive than yesterday’s experience, but given the occasion I though that we could splash out a little.

My meal was: empanada (mini pasties) to start; followed by a dish of paella marinara; followed by a small chicken cooked with lemon and bay; followed by chocolate tart. A bottle of red wine with fresh bread and a cortado to end the meal completed a more than satisfactory repast. “And the cost?” I hear you ask: 13€ - just over £9. Cardiff, I’m afraid loses out again. The score so far: Catalonia 2 Cardiff 0. There’s still time for Cardiff to pull something out of the bag. (That’s not strictly true!)

This has been such a casually momentous day: the completion of the blog title – that I am inclined to rest my ironic fingers; relax my sarcastic tone; settle my jaundiced thoughts; smooth my sneering grimace and simply enjoy the moment.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

[Normal service will resume tomorrow – I can assure you]

If it isn't one thing it's another!

It was hardly a shock today to discover that my new bank book when fed into the BBVA machine completely buggered the thing up.

The bank manager, who must now shudder each time he sees my cheery face looming towards him, had physically to dismantle the machine to extricate my miraculously unmangled book. His attempts to change my foreigner’s account to a Spanish resident’s account took on a more and more desperate tone as he desperately punched at the keyboard of his computer!

My BBVA file is now bulging with incomprehensible sheaves of paper (all of which I’ve signed) which are the inevitable consequence of having anything to do with a bank. The papers a bank forces on you are exactly like the essential information that you never read when downloading some program on the computer. I should imagine it more than likely that most of us would find out that we have probably sold ourselves into slavery if we care to read the detail of the small print which never sees the light of a pixel when we impulsively click on the ‘accept’ button in our desperation to add to the growing stack programs that we never use.

I reckon that we have all sold our souls to the devil (aka Bill Gates) and all it needs for the bargain to be sealed is for a drop of our blood to fall onto the screen and we will find ourselves living through a modern version of Dr Faustus. Bill ‘Lucifer’ Gates will tell us that we have had our days of power and importance by using the internet and that our souls will be instantly taken to Silicon Valley to be imprisoned on a duo core processor. After all, if you think about it, how does a simple little bit of metal and goo manage to do all those tasks if there wasn’t an entity physically there to ensure that the thing actually worked?

When the administration in the bank was finished I was gifted (how else to describe it?) by a call from the lowlife in the estate agency who, only three and a quarter hours later than promised, told me that the contract for the flat could be signed tomorrow.
This I will believe when the contract is placed in front of me.

To celebrate this unlikely tardy competence on the part of the overpaid leeches of humanity Toni, his Mum and I went out for a menu del dia. This is the first in a series of experimental comparisons to ascertain the real differences between Catalonia and Wales in the value for money lunch stakes.

So, the first restaurant in this scientific comparison was Cal Gendre in the Carrer de Baix in Terrassa. Although smoking was allowed downstairs, upstairs was smoke free and, though the service was a trifle tardy, we were soon given a bottle of rose (taking Toni into account) a bottle of casera and basket of bread.

Since the meals were all comparable I will only describe mine: Fideuá to start followed by chicken cooked in Cava with boiled potatoes and a sort of Cornetto to finish. I also ordered a further bottle of red wine and we had three cortados. All of this came to under 30€ that is under £21, that is £7 per person. I think that Terrassa is a clear winner over Cardiff! I look forward to cataloguing further successes for Catalonia and eating the evidence!

Just when we felt that the saga of finding of a flat was beginning to deflate into a simple tale, the problems with buying a car appear to have risen from the slime and start to pose insuperable barriers to successful completion.

The real problem (or rather problems) is (or indeed are) that I do not have a regular income and have no recent records of continuing money being paid into my account. Such a person in modern Spain should not and cannot exist; at least cannot exist and ask for credit, no matter how healthy his balance at the bank is.

The whole of Peugeot in Castelldefels has been thrown into confusion by my having the barefaced audacity to ask for 33% of the payment for the car to be in the form of finance when I do not have a regular income! Such (as the Catalans would say) face! I look forward to the struggles ahead with an anger fuelled exasperated exhilaration.

And when all is said and done, who can ask for more?

Give me strength, O Lord!

All brushes with officialdom in Spain should be looked on as preparation for the Camino de Santiago.
The endless walking; the suffering; the moments of doubt; the testing of faith; the illusory glimpse of salvation; the aching feet; eventual surrender, all of these can be the gift to the modern pilgrim trying to, in Pinter’s memorable phrase, ‘get my papers.’

The experiences today, trying to get the bank to give me a number to signify that the guarantee for the rent of the flat was secure, rapidly descended into the realms of disordered hallucination. The sleep of reason produces nightmares: how appropriate the best illustration of that is Goya’s etching!

To secure the Aval Bancario (Bank guarantee) for a flat, you need to have a NIE (Numero de Identidad de Extranjero) which is a document which says that you live in Spain. To get a NIE you need to be living in Spain in a house or flat. But to get a flat you need a NIE. Catch-22 is alive and well and living in Spain.

We have short circuited the system and I am now officially living in Terrassa – for days - before I move to Castelldefels!

I had to register with the police to get my NIE which cost 6€, but this money had to be paid into a bank not the police station! Off we traipsed with time running out to get things done before the dead time of the afternoon threatened. Having got to the bank we rushed back to the police station to – wait. And wait. And wait. Then, when the precious NIE was finally issued back we went to the bank. An institution that we had visited three times already that morning. Then back to the Notario, whom we had visited only once that morning.

This particular species deserves a few paragraphs to itself. What exactly is a Notario? What specific function does it serve? If any?

We had to go to an adjacent building to find this creature, using a rickety lift which wheezed its way up to the fourth floor where a Dickensian collection of people waited on a selection of chairs and benches while a self important group of people rushed around looking as though they might be doing something.

In Spain if something doesn’t move for longer than three or four seconds someone photocopies it and puts it in a nice little file which soon grows into a big important file as everything within reach is photocopied and placed inside. The Notarios’ lair was characterised by obsessive non entities walking significantly past vitiated, demoralised people waiting dejectedly for the prancing puppets to state the obvious and stamp or sign a piece of paper.

I am sure (or it ought to be true) that the original reason for existence for Notaries was to copy out legal documents. The photocopier has made their existence null and void but, like The Socialist Workers’ Party, they refuse to lie down and die.

We had to suffer the humiliation of listening to some non entity mouth inanities then some other some other pompous windbag say exactly the same things and then put a big important stamp on a piece of paper. And that was it. These busy, bustling people look at standard contracts and say they are OK. What is the bloody point of that? Hordes of innocent people have an extra layer of pointless legal meddling forced on them to what purpose? One thinks of the Court of Circumlocution or of Daumier’s incomparably accurate depictions of members of the legal profession. Dress them up in jeans and modern clothing and you have what I saw in Terrassa today. God rot them!

We feel, perhaps dangerously that we are over a substantial hurdle and that the rest of our brushes with government are going to be oh-so-much-easier. There is nothing like self delusion to give you extra energy for the struggles ahead!

Bring ‘em on!

Who expects meaning?

Is it encouraging or depressing to find out that there are actual eternal verities? That your ordinary life experience leads you to believe that a unified theory of everything is not too far away? That life does indeed have a meaning?

That all of the above may be true because, wherever you are, anywhere in the world, banks, estate agents and insurance companies are self serving, incompetent, uncaring agents of evil.

Needless to say I can back up my assertion that the Gorgons, Medusa, Loki, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Bennett (I’ve always hated that oleaginous git) are the elemental motivating forces behind the life hating existence of the modern versions of the apocalyptic riders found in, you’ve guessed it, banks, estate agents and insurance companies.

It would be too searing an experience to relive in words my morning; and that was speaking to only two of the ‘horsemen’ – but their sheer unfeeling nastiness will live in infamy and my memory. [And, to cap it all, I’ve forgotten the name for the linguistic device which links two dissimilar things in a single sentence, like the combination of ‘infamy’ and ‘memory’ in the last sentence. But it will come to me. It will.] {It didn’t, but the internet helped and reminded me it was ‘zeugma.’ Interestingly I remembered that the word was Greek for ‘yoked’, but I couldn’t remember the word. Just shows how bad my Greek is: on a par with Shakespeare’s!}

At least this morning is over and I suppose there are worse ways to spend your morning than sitting in a chair in front of the Commercial Director of the Bank threatening to withdraw all your funds. If you can thing of those worse ways do please get in touch with me, as that will give me strength for the bureaucratic tussles yet to come!

For my reader in Wales, the day has been glorious and, if I had not been sitting in front of a Commercial Director of a Bank, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it.

Toni has informed me that the first days in any foreign country for someone trying to settle there are trying. I must learn patience and a Zen detachment. Given the fiendish reputation of Spanish officialdom I will need to develop this attitude in about 36 hours! Given a life time of dedication to instant irritation, my conversion to Patience will make Saul of Tarsus later life look like a slow evolution.

All things, as they say, are possible!

It is easier to find a Spanish film with English subtitles in Spain than it is to find an English Film with Spanish subtitles in Britain. So I was ‘fortunate’ in being able to see Santiago Segura’s “Isi Disi – Alto Voltaje” and understand what was going on.

With a plot that would have been rejected as hackneyed and unimaginative by the Teletubbies the usefulness of the script was made virtually redundant as any member of the watching audience over eight must have been here in similar stories many, many times before.

Apart from the language, this film was the stuff of children’s matinee cinema and was a clear commercial rip off of the characters created in the first AC DC presentation. The failed rock stars . . . ah, what the hell.

What’s the point in wasting time on a production that should never have seen the light of a single studio bulb? Santiago Segura should be ashamed of himself and I don’t know whether the film’s message of ‘not selling out’ is there as a completely cynical two fingers to the audience or a coded message to the viewers to have sympathy for someone hard at work making a lot of money by simple exploitation!

Did someone say, ‘exploitation?’ Are we talking about banks, estate agents and insurance companies again?

Calm! I must just contemplate this butterfly.

Ah!

Shine on Spanish Sun!

St Johns Eve, it has to be said, was something of a disappointment.

Instead of the crackling of roaring fires over which people were jumping with reckless abandon, walking through the streets of Terrassa was like being in the middle of an unconvincing sound effect of some tin pot African dictatorship undergoing a periodic coup with desultory street fighting.

The occasional explosion with the accompaniment of what sounded like sharp gunfire made one think that this must have been what the Civil War must have sounded like as the fascist forces began their systematic sweep through the loyal country of Catalonia.

There were a few flamboyant fuegos artificiales but not nearly enough to make me use my recently charged camera.

I don’t think that many witches were intimidated by the activity of the night and I warn all denizens of Catalonia to be wary, as the forces of evil remain unscathed!

The evening terminated with the interminable ‘Apocalypto’ another self indulgent piece of Boys’ Adventure Story mixed with half baked spirituality that is becoming something of a hallmark of Mel Gibson’s directing style. The basic storyline is simple: man is captured and has to escape and try to save his pregnant wife and child. The twist on this hackneyed story was that it was set in Central America just before the appearance of the Spaniards and the action was concerned with Mayans and, of course, another Gibson affectation, the dialogue was in the local language.

The violence was graphic and convincing, which was more than could be said for the Jim Henson jaguar which appeared at a climactic moment in the film in fulfilment of an inexplicable prophecy made by a dying child to the vicious captors of the film’s genial hero. I don’t care if the jaguar was real; they should have spent money on producing a more convincing real animatronic version!

I presume that Gibson (credited with the writing of this farrago) was deeply influenced by ‘Lord of the Flies’ as the end of the film is a direct copy of the book. The lone fighter against the forces of bloody unreason manages to evade his pursuers until he falls to his knees on the beach, easy prey, but is saved by the fantastic appearance of Spanish galleons and a boat crowded with Conquistadors and priests: representatives of ‘civilized’ society as opposed to the callous human sacrifice society we have been viewing up to this point. The pursuers fascination by the apparition of other worldly creatures enables the hero to escape back to the forest for ‘a new beginning’ little realising that the Spaniard’s civilization will entail the complete genocidal destruction of the indigenous societies.

There are other parallels too puerile to note between Golding’s novel and ‘Apocalypto’, I only hope that Golding’s estate gets a share of the royalties from this film!

After a lazy Sunday morning, with me champing at the bit to ‘do something’ to get us fully settled in Catalonia and being constantly frustrated because it is, after all, Sunday, we went to Carmen, Toni’s sister for a large family lunch. We had a take away, but that term hardly does justice to the excellent rotisserie just around the corner from Toni’s mum’s flat. The chickens are cooked on a long spit which is turned over an oven fuelled with aromatic wooden logs: the flavour of the cooked chicken is superb. This place also has extras like Russian salad; sliced grilled potatoes; marinated peppers; seafood salad and giant rissoles. I do like rissoles, especially the game you have to play guessing what ingredients might have been added to the melange to give that distinctively, softly bland texture and flavour that I love!

I will only mention the visit to the open air swimming pool and the relaxing sunbathing because I know that the weather in Wales was pretty poor.

I suppose it will be a sign of my having settled in when I stop looking at the weather forecast for GB just so that I can have a private gloat and convince myself further that the choice that I have made is the right one!

The sun shines still!

The night draws on apace!

Sants railway station in the centre of Barcelona has been transformed into an eighteenth century vision of the grotesque and picturesque.

This underground cavern supported by vast concrete piles looking like sweptback slim-line funnels from some sleek yacht is undergoing what looks like a mixture of destruction and renovation. Solid shafts of sunlight penetrate the murky depths from jagged holes above illuminating well placed piles of rubble and discarded giant machines in such a dramatic way that one suspects that the whole thing has been set up for an artist like Piranesi to complete another set of etchings of the fantastic.

In every area in which I have been in Catalonia this week (God! Have I only been here a week? It’s certainly been an active one!) there seems to be a frenzy of building, rebuilding, restoration and casual destruction. Walk along virtually any street and you will suddenly encounter a gaping hole where an entire building has been ripped out leaving jagged masonry on either side to denote where the living inhabited limb used to be. In a rather touching act of architectural anthropomorphism Spaniards paint the newly exposed areas with an earthy ochre coloured paint almost as if they were applying a sort of iodine to the exposed flesh of the building!

Barcelona is a city of extraordinary casts.

I have never seen so many people proudly exhibiting such a bewilderingly large display of the doctor’s craft in swathing limbs and bits in plaster of Paris. I have seen so many people in neck braces that I was beginning to think that it must be a chic new fashion accessory. Legs, knees, arms all swaddled in medical white with sometimes a patch of material to give a collage like effect to the whole. One man had his hand swathed so completely that it became one white gigantic comma.

I think that there should be a new i-spy book of Plaster Casts because it would be a doddle to fill it in while walking around Barcelona and then I could claim my feather from Big Chief i-spy! For those of you who know what I’m talking about, did you ever meet anyone who actually got a feather from Big Chief i-spy? I tend to think that this was another of those comforting myths which kept me in place when I was young. Like milk tablets – that takes me back!

I have just been invited to join the family in their inexplicable activity of Scoobydo which appears to be a form of finger knitting which has struck this previously stable family unit like some sort of obsessive compulsive behaviour.

Toni has now given up after confirming his status as a non teacher by attempting to teach me how to do it. He is eating the strange mixture of nuts and seeds which keeps him noisly happy for hours. Carmen and Laura continue with their knotting like opressed labour in some Oriental sweat shop. Strange are the ways of the Catalans!

To day is St John’s Night Eve, the shortest night of the year when, as I recall from extensive listening to Mussorgsky’s “Night on a Bare (or Bald) Mountain” also known as St John’s Night (though I may have made that bit up) this is a time when witches are abroad and waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting.

I have been told that sleep tonight is bound to be interrupted with explosions and fire. The celebrations of the birth of St John are six months before the birth of Jesus, hence the 24th June. Festivities in Spain include the burning of bonfires over which people apparently jump to prove their courage and to rid themselves of sin and disease. I await with interest the revelations that will come when I go and see how Terrassa celebrates. As long as there are fireworks I will be satisfied.

The Spanish, or perhaps the Catalans, seem to have a predilection for fireworks in their most dangerous forms. There is a form of conjuring known as ‘street magic’ which is performed, as the name suggests, in the street and close to the punters. In Spain they have the same approach but with fireworks.

I have not yet recovered from my experiences in Sitges when a whole troupe of hessian coated, sinister hood wearing visions from a Bosch painting of Hell showered a screamingly delighted crowd with fountains of fire from dangerously hand held fireworks. What a fire officer in the UK would have made of it all beggars description; the courts would have been busy for months!

I have great hopes for this evening (already there are sporadic explosions although the sun is still shining) and I hope to have a thoroughly pyrotechnically intimidating night.

Witches beware!