Which way is north?

Reading through a descriptive atlas can be a dispiriting experience.

Pointing out the exact location of Cape Cod and Provincetown to a frankly sceptical Toni started one of those delightfully aimless rambles which are a characteristic of my approach to reference books. That quintessentially Old Money Eastern part of the States having been located Toni’s interest flagged but my compulsive page turning highlighted (to me) fascinating elements in the maps: unexplained ‘white bits’ on a map showing part of southern Russia; names from British colonial history popping up in the ‘wrong’ countries; inexplicable and frankly unbelievable ‘correct’ spellings of familiar places; cities of many millions of people which I have never heard of; massive rivers emerging from nowhere and going to another nowhere; an unfamiliar Europe because the book was published ten years ago.

But the most telling aspect of this atlas was in the opening pages when, for each continent, its constituent countries were listed in alphabetical order with a very short description with a colour representation of the flag and some factual information. The description of the United Kingdom was a fairly neutral and factual listing of the home countries and the islands and an assertion of the industrial base of the country. A rather boring ‘assessment’ of the place.

A very different story emerges if you read through the listing of countries under the heading of the continent of Africa. ‘Story’ is an appropriate word because all the elements of high literature are present in microcosm in the descriptions. Deprivation, misery, murder, corruption, political chicanery, colonial exploitation, dictatorship, war, exasperation and despair characterised the lot. A neutral description would have been an expression of unexampled success! Where the land was harsh and unyielding there was human misery; where the ground was fertile and rich there was political repression; where there were abundant natural resources vested interests squandered them – in all respects Africa seems a failed continent.

It is easy to sustain this vision.

Given the recent crisis in Chad with Spanish television giving vivid depictions of the plight of the air crew of the controversial flight it was easy to select shots which included dust, dirt and broken windows to emphasise the poverty of the nation holding these frightened Europeans.

A particularly telling detail was the locating shot of the International Airport with its almost artfully picturesque lopsided letter in the welcoming sign on the airport terminal. Air travel demands a high degree of technological competence with each receiving airport needing to command a sophisticated array of highly specialised equipment; if they can’t even get the sign on the terminal right, we think, how the hell are they getting the plane into land?

Like so much on television (all on television?) you have to read the sub text; with any western dealings with Africa it is essential. Anything which breaks our stereotype of abject failure for that continent seems to be hard for us to take. Africa has been dismissed as the black hole of charity where, in the popular conception, only a tiny faction of the aid given actually gets to those who need the help.

I await with interest the stories of those who were detained in Chad. I am sure that Spain does not like to be beholding to France, especially a France governed by a budding autocrat like Sarkozy who storms into a past colonial possession, shakes a few hands, extricates the whites and leaves.

Spain is at present involved in a diplomatic ‘crisis’ with the President of Venezuela who, at a meeting of Hispanophone nations indulged in a slanging match with the President of Spain and, shockingly, the king. This incident is the latest in the series of publicity generating escapades of President Chávez who seems to be more and more convinced of the truth of his unpleasant cult of the personality which characterises his rule in Venezuela. What at one time seemed a refreshing change from the ruling elites who had dominated politics when Chávez as a native American Indian took over the presidency now looks more like oil funded ignorant boorishness.

To compare the last president of Spain with Hitler is ridiculous in terms of fact and a grotesque insult to the millions who died and suffered as a result of the perverted ideology of the National Socialists.

What I find more interesting in this debacle is the position of the king. I cannot believe that the powers that be in Madrid thought that a gathering of the various ruffians who make up the power cliques in South America would be anything other than a highly political meeting with highly honed personalities on display. In the meeting the president was sitting next to the king that raises the question of who is the head of state. It is also, surely, not the king’s position to reply to abuse, even public abuse from a president. This opens some difficult political questions for Spain.

It is unthinkable that the Prime Minister and the Queen would have been in such close proximity in what was clearly a political meeting; and equally unthinkable that the Queen would have replied to the ill considered ranting of a rapidly developing megalomaniac. After all she acquiesced in the gratuitous posturing that went with the state visit of that bastard Ceausescu as he rode in an open carriage with the Queen down The Mall. And, if my memory serves me right wasn’t he made a Knight of the Garter as well?

Meetings of the Commonwealth are equally difficult, especially when spectacularly failing to deal with another megalomaniac like Mugabe, but I’m sure that the Queen would be protected from the gratuitous insults of an oil rich bully who sees himself as the jolly leader of the world’s oppressed.

I suppose that we have to be grateful that he didn’t insult in song!

Go to the ant thou sluggard!

A lazy day with an excellent lunch.

There is still enough of the Protestant work ethic left in me for vague feelings of guilt to emerge with greater intensity for every minute after 9.30am that I stay in bed in the morning. Suffice to say that I should have crippled for the rest of the day with all consuming anguish after the self indulgent display of prone passivity.

But I wasn’t.

Instead I had a little jaunt to Gava to the shop that acts as a magnet for my gadget longings to see if I could find an internet radio. I remember seeing one for about eighty quid in PC World many moons ago and thinking that it was ‘a good idea’ but not quite good enough to justify the outlay of good folding stuff. And the design wasn’t flashy enough to persuade by unsubtle flashing lights and shiny metallic trim.

With my Spanish it is not certain what I asked for in the shop and the voluble response that I had from the young assistant could have meant anything, but I took what he said to mean that they didn’t have one. Eventually!

10% of a conversation is often not enough to go on. Not even for someone who watched The Magic Roundabout with unvarying fascination and admired Eric Thompson’s convincing narration based only on what he saw rather than any sort of accurate translation from the French. His versions made perfect sense to me and I have always used his imaginative approach to foreign languages to ‘get by.’ I should imagine that I have often got the sense entirely wrong and have gone off in my own sweet way filled with the percentage of misunderstandings which keep us sane.

Every teacher knows that the simplest instruction given to any normal class if only said only once will be misinterpreted by at least half of the pupils there. Teachers have to follow the code outlined in the Hunting of the Snark, “What I tell you three times is true” Repetition is the key means of communication, yet most of the time we only say important, complicated things once and are constantly surprised at not being understood. How many times can we echo the sentiments found in T S Eliot’s ‘Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ – “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.”

But never let it be said that I didn’t revel in happy ignorance. I never fail to convince myself that I have understood enough to justify a warm sense of my own perspicacity in surviving in a foreign language. It’s a good thing that one cannot rerun one’s life and listen to one’s mistakes, not only linguistic but also in terms of perception! That’s one’s friends are for!

If the morning was lazy and the afternoon somnolent, then the evening brought on a spurt of activity as a rearrangement which should have happened a few months ago was finally achieved.

I have noted before that the placing of books, glasses and miscellaneous items when moving house if they are positioned in their new places in the hectic hours of the actual move tend to stay in their randomly chosen positions for at least six months. Rearrangement of non vital aspects of a new life usually has a fairly low priority.

I suppose that having moved into the flat in July I am still a few weeks ahead of schedule when I relate that I have now achieved a personal harmony in the setting out of the more visible glasses in the living room. The rather untidy display of DVDs has been rationalised by the purchase of a very imposing pseudo-suede clad book which has facilitated the throwing of an entire black bag full of redundant plastic cases leaving only Toni’s cases which encompass an eclectic selection ranging from U2, through a promotional film of Terrassa to ‘Finding Nemo’ also including what is probably one of Toni’s favourite films, ‘La Vida es Bella.’

More importantly Toni has rearranged the writhing mass of wiring and established the hifi in a more satisfactory place; wired up the auxiliary loudspeakers, connected the video and generally sorted out the electronic chaos which characterised the television end of the living room. Civilized living creeps on apace!

The lurking threat of tomorrow is to “clean the whole house.” I’m not absolutely sure what this entails when applied to a flat ‘I sincerely hope that this does not mean that we have to follow our footsteps down into the street cleaning as we go. I fail to see myself as a housewife from the nineteen twenties in the valleys assiduously scrubbing the pavement to a pristine whiteness so that the neighbours won’t talk!

I would rather revert to type and keep coal in the bath!

Space!

We have gained a cupboard.

When you take a furnished flat you take someone else’s choice in all sorts of things that you hadn’t previously thought were anything other than your own.

Knives and forks and pans and sheets and cushions and small televisions and plates and glasses and paintings and ornaments other things that you just don’t want at second hand! And large things like tables and chairs and coffee tables and clothes dryers of the metal framework sort. And a microwave.

We managed to fit most of this into one cupboard which we can ill afford to write off. And today the landlord came and took it all away! It’s like being given a present of an extra room. I am just waiting for the arguments to start about how we use it!

Another step has been taken in the sluggish quest to find gainful employment.

Having been frustrated in my attempt to teach the young I have made a first real contact with the British School in Barcelona in order to try and teach the older.

The school has a two form entry – rather different from the entry of Llanishen High School! The English Department comprises three members of staff and they are at full strength. The only possibility in the short term is supply work of some sort, so I will wait and see what happens.

I have also answered a summons to Gava (the administrative soul of this area) as there appears to be an offer of a few hours work in a language school. I left my telephone number and they are supposed to be contacting me but nothing yet. Meanwhile, I wait for the call and do a little light sunbathing.

It’s a hard old life.

Not all fruit is sweet

It is surely no accident that popular imagination has depicted the fruit of the tree of knowledge as an apple. The apple haunts art and literature through the ages from Adam and Eve via William Tell to Snow White and the Beatles failed enterprise.

The serpent too takes many forms in pictorial representations from a fairly realistic reptile to a grotesque amalgam of snake tail added to a female (of course, art was a male preserve) top.

In the twenty-first century it would be sad reflection of our ability to re-envision the iconic past in a new and exciting way if we were not able to unveil a new and even more seductive temptation to encourage the further fall (if that were even remotely possible) of Man. I use the term ‘Man’ advisedly because the New Apple that I am thinking of would probably be less effective with Woman.

It happened while looking for ‘The Name of the Rose’ for Toni who has managed to catch only snatches of the film over a period of time stretching from his military service to the present day. He now has the idea in his head of watching the film all the way through and is even prepared to buy the film (“Only if it’s cheap!”) to satisfy this longing. As he must know, a Shopping Quest is something which I relish, giving me the opportunity to scour shops on the off chance that the goal may be hidden behind a discouraging shelf. After all, anyone can find a DVD in a DVD shop: it takes a certain amount of imagination to find the requisite item in an unlikely location. Which is why I never write off a shop as totally uninteresting: there are always possibilities.

Sometimes, of course, you can use The Quest to indulge yourself. It is, after all, more than probable that the DVD will be on the shelves in a place like MediaMarkt which is also full of interesting gadgets of the electrical sort. So, with a sense of selfless generosity I forced myself to go to MediaMarkt before I picked up Toni from work.

It says little for my much vaunted martyr complex (Stephen by name; Stephen by nature etc) that I did not move immediately to the DVDs but instead found myself irresistibly drawn to the handheld computers.

And there it was! An inert, dark rectangle – almost, but not quite featureless. And that of course made it interesting. One remembers the description of the space craft in ‘The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Universe’ with the black control panel on which black lights lit up in black! Such is sophistication!

What I was looking at was of course my electronic apple: an actual, real, in the metallic flesh iphone!

The only thing which stopped me from buying it at once was that it wasn’t for sale. When I asked (Oh yes I asked!) I was told that they had no idea of the price; no idea of what versions would be available in Spain; no real idea when it would be available – though possibly in March!

That is five months. At least one hundred and fifty days. Lots of hours and even more lots of minutes, and don’t get me started on the number of nano seconds. It’s a long time. The world’s most desirable gadget and I can’t get my hands on it.

My only hope is that the reviews from Britain and Germany (they get it this month) are bad. Very bad.

Please!

Always another page

Catalonia is the one country in the world where I can celebrate St George’s Day with a clear conscience and no feeling of disloyalty to Wales!

This United Nation’s Day only produced two books, only one of which was a novel (and neither, I might add, on United Nations Day itself!)

The Time Out guide to films is a mammoth tome with a suitably encyclopaedic inclusiveness. It is one of those books which I find addictive. I start off with a restricted intention of looking up just a few of my favourite films. The films I like range across the critical divide from generally accepted classic films through interesting but opinion dividing films and ending in my choice and I’ll stand by them films. Perhaps that range can be exemplified by ‘Citizen Kane’, ‘The Bitter Tea of General Yen’ and ‘High Anxiety.’ A nicely mixed bunch!

That was one of the books (Thank you Pauls!) and the other was from The Family and was, according to them, the only book in English in El Corte Inglés and was a novel by Ken Follett. This was another massive volume of over a thousand pages and it had a suitably epic sweep following the lives of different families in England in the Middle Ages. Centred on the fictional Cathedral and Priory town of Kingsbridge, it traced the developing municipal and commercial identity of the town as it attempted to come to terms with living with a powerful Prior whose ideas were often at odds with those of the tradespeople. The action of the novel concentrated on the lives of four children who, at the beginning of the novel are confronted with the bloody reality of living in the fourteenth century.

Basically this is a novel of politics and power struggles, stripped of the medieval background the basic plot could be transposed to any century: creative artist frustrated by small minded bigotry; career woman weighing options; sadistic bully protected by class interests; working class woman makes good in spite of overwhelming difficulties – all mixed with an assortment of colourful characters easy to identify and compartmentalise.

Compared with the Ellis Peters novels of Brother Cadfael this extended narrative lacks the concentrated tension of a murder mystery and it also lacks Peters` easy and unforced familiarity with the historical period. The power of the Church is emphasised in ‘World Without End’ but not the theology behind it which made ‘The Name of the Rose’ such an interesting read, but rather as the power base for a great deal of politicking.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and would welcome reading the novel to which this is the sequel, ‘The Pillars of the World’- which at the moment is swamping the supermarket shelves in its Spanish paperback version.

I think that my biggest reservation about the quality of this novel is in the dialogue. Follett spells things out: he rarely leaves things for the reader to do. All his characters are articulate (unfeasibly articulate in some instances) about their motivations and the motivations of others. A participant in this story might be a thug but he soon develops a perception well out of keeping with his ostensible character. It does, of course, make it easier to follow and is perhaps a key factor in the success of this sort of writing and allows a reader to follow such an epic tale.

Roll on another thousand pages! And Saint George’s Day, which in Catalonia, is the day for the giving of books as presents.

At last a civilized country!

Open your eyes!

The visit of my cousin Judith to Barcelona was a case of “not only but also” in the best sense.

It has been quite a time since we last met and so it was both a pleasure and something of an irony that we finally came back together in a foreign country.

I relied on my in car navigator to get me to Judith’s hotel and it did – in a way. I have noticed that The Voice That Must Be Obeyed has a tendency to say things like, “Drive 50 yards to destination” and “Arriving at destination.” You have to take on faith the fact that you are there because there is nothing clearly visible in the surroundings to indicate that you have actually arrived at the place where you want to be.

In Spain, especially in a popular part of a large city like Barcelona there is nowhere to park and housing development fills every available space. In cases like this your destination may be hidden behind a block of flats and a strip of shops and not be immediately visible from the road, and certainly not from a moving car when you are seeing the place for the first time. Pausing to take stock of your situation is clearly out of the question when you are being followed extremely closely by drivers whose passionate intensity to get to a destination can only be justified by having their cars filled with pregnant persons about to give birth.

All of that was to explain why I missed my destination a few times before I finally got there.

In Barcelona “missing your destination” is a real threat. Once a place is passed you will find all sorts of obstacles in your way to getting back there. Because of the suicidal and homicidal intensity of traffic doing a u-turn is equivalent to falling on your sword. The numbers of ‘no entry’ or ‘no right turn’ or indeed ‘no left turn’ signs constantly frustrate any attempt to circle back on yourself without returning to your original destination and starting again. If you are able, through a combination of good luck, the grace of god and devil-may-care driving to find again your destination then you will inevitably be looking at it like Moses viewing the Promised Land: visible, but out of reach, usually the wrong way up a one way road.

Through a mixture of blind faith, appallingly inconsiderate driving on my part and sheer luck I did managed to approach my “destination” again from the other side of the road and lo! the different perspective revealed the hitherto hidden riches of the hotel. Parking the car was another story which I am not strong enough to relate at the present time.

Suffice to say I found my cousin who was surprised at my promptitude (as indeed was I) and we immediately made plans for lunch.

The hotel was near Camp Nou so we decided to throw caution to the winds and take a taxi to the centre and find somewhere nice to eat in the Old Town.

Our eventual choice was a busy looking restaurant in a square which was marked by a rather random looking assortment of subterranean classical rubble protected from the elements by a sheet of glass. We took our seats on a wooden terrace to watch the world go by and waited for the menus.

We had made a fundamental mistake. We were hoping for the menu del dia and we did not realise that the choice of the cheaper menus did not entitle us to an outside seat. When disabused of our assumption we moved inside and sat down. We did not realise that the choice of the cheaper menu did not entitle us to an inside seat in the spacious interior of the restaurant. We were ushered to a cramped area in the back of the restaurant and, at last, we were able to consider our choices of food.

It has to be said that we didn’t consider much as we talked constantly and had to be prompted a few times before we finally managed to give coherent instructions to the waiter.

The meal was average, though good value for money – though the thick black sauce which covered the hake had only to be tasted to be instantly rejected!

Our next foray after lunch was one of the reasons that visitors to your home city are worth their weight in gold. As Judith had said that she had attended some evening classes in the history of art I thought that a short visit to the Museu National d’Art de Catalunya would be a good choice. This decision was based on a previous visit to the cultural sights of Barcelona when, armed with a Culture Card I went through the museums like a dose of salts. The Museu National d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) while being very impressive had very few of the sorts of paintings that I actually wanted to see. Ignoring all the Romanesque and Classical stuff (!) the ‘interesting’ art only amounted to a couple of rooms. This, I thought, would be ideal for a short visit.

Well, I was wrong – in a good sense!

The museum building was constructed for the 1929 exhibition and is grandiose and impressive, but inside they have created an excitingly modern space working with the original elements of the building but developing them into dynamic areas which complement the art.

We were both astonished at the scale of the building and the unexpected vistas that it afforded. I had also underestimated the range and quality of the art on display. It appears that Judith and I both play the same game in art galleries – ‘Which one would you take home with you?’ For me, the most impressive painting was a small ‘Portrait of a negro’ by Flink (?) more information will have to be collected from the gallery itself as there is no illustration of information in the gallery guide (in Spanish, blame Judith!) which I bought at the end of our visit.

Taking Judith there has opened my eyes to what a treasure we have in Barcelona in this museum. When (if?) the trains start running normally, I will return! I must warn Hadyn now that this museum is going to be one of the stops on his cultural itinerary when he visits in December.

He has been warned!

And on your right . . .

Days slip by and palsied fingers touch not the inviting keys of the computer.

I used the adjective advisedly because I have succumbed to the illness that smote Toni, aggravated it must be admitted by an excess of good food and bad liquor. The good food was perhaps a little of an overstatement as I am convinced that the quality of the food in the restaurant that we had was more than a mere contributory factor.

But, but but. The past days have been enlivened by the arrival of a quartet of friends, whose arrival emphasised their loss in a strange sort of way. This is a paradoxical arrangement that I’m sure will become clearer to me and will be well known already to those who live abroad.

Alison and Bryn had a fairly clear idea of the bones of what they wanted to do, though their ability to pack in as much as they would have liked was severely restricted by the dead hand of RENFE and the total disruption of the entire traffic system in our part of the Barcelona area. What was a short, efficient train ride into the centre of the city became something reminiscent of the worst excesses of the M25 – and we all know what that abomination (my favourite word of the moment) led to!
In spite of the machinations, the continuing machinations I should say, of RENFE and its entire works all five of us – Alison, Bryn, Paul 1 and Paul Squared – were able to pack into my car and set off for the city. Alison and Bryn set off for a little light shopping and a Gaudi house while the Pauls and I settled for the long, slow frustration of a City Tour.
I wonder if there is any decent city in the world (or at least in Europe) in which it is possible to take a City Tour without feeling that the sights run a poor second to the frustrations. Traffic in most cities now ensures that the speed of transportation is now lagging behind what it might have been in the days of the horse and cart. Add to those traffic light systems which seem entirely designed to restrict rather than facilitate traffic flow; unattended building works spilling into roads; road repairs without any repairers but with maximum inconvenience; tunnel sighted drivers and suicidal pedestrians –and you have the perfect mix for an agonizingly pedestrian (adjective and metaphor) tour. I think this is why Walking Tours have now become so popular in cities: it allows people to move at a real and acceptable speed, a speed indeed which is usually faster than the stationary traffic forming the metallic barrier to the walkways that the speedy pedestrians inhabit!

On my advice the Boys decided to take the Red Route bus ride which took us to the Casa Milla, Sagrada Familla and Camp Nou inter alia.

The more I see of Barcelona the more I am convinced of what a handsome city it is. So many buildings are not only interesting in their general shape but are also fascinating in the detail of their construction and ornamentation. It is said that Barcelona has the largest (and Catalans would fairly maintain, the finest) collection of Modernista buildings in Europe. I never fail to be amused by the irony of the British calling the Modernista movement Art Nouveau while the French call it Le Style Moderne. It is almost like admitting that since we Brits have not excelled in the plastic arts since the heyday of eighteenth and nineteenth century water colourists, so we don’t really have the right to give an English name to a movement in painting or architecture. Though thinking about it, didn’t Fry coin the name Post Impressionist for the London exhibition? There again, the term ‘post’ is hardly of English derivation and the term ‘Impressionist’ was used as an referential insult by a French newspaper critic about one of Monet’s paintings.

Enough!

The Boys were vaguely interested in everything they saw, but certainly did not evince the appropriate quantity of awe and respect for what they were viewing. They remained staunchly unimpressed by one of the great public spaces in the world in Parc Guell and they were bemused to the point of indifference by the Casa Milla.

They were impressed however by the strength of the sun.

For the first time for a long time I was able to view the Sagrada Familla from a closer viewpoint to that which I am usually accustomed. My difficulties with the building remain.

What from a distance looks imposing, strange and organic when seen close to resolves itself into its disparate parts. I think that the sculptures on the Passion façade are a grotesque, insulting and disastrous encrustation. The splayed pillars, which on Gaudi’s early drawings looked revolutionary now look gaudily commercial and cheap giving a tent like appearance to the entrance, with stones looking more like guy ropes than structural supports. The ‘Gothic’ windows look too much like their distant ancestors to be original and not well enough finished to be acceptable: it’s almost like a childish representation translated into stone and glass.

The towers still impress and the use of ceramics seems to me to be masterly. I still maintain that this is a building to be seen at a distance and, at a distance it ranks with the Kaufmann House and Ely Cathedral as one of my favourite buildings.

Our evening meal, this time taking in Toni who was back from work early, was one with poor results – hence my illness and my failure to take Alison and Bryn to the airport and to take the Pauls on a jaunt to Sitges.

Such an ending to a visit demands a return to make amends.

I will keep the beds aired!

Cheers!

I have now seen the ultimate height of idiocy in Spanish driving.

While driving at night in Castelldefels coming up to a busy roundabout, I noticed a car stopped on the roundabout – not on the pavement side of the road, but next to the roundabout. Then the reverse lights went on and the woman (sorry!) driving the car reversed back to a turning that she had missed!

It is a little worrying that the principle of circularity inherent in a roundabout had been lost on a qualified driver on the roads of Castelldefels!

An incident like that puts the everyday criminality of driving on the roads of Spain into some sort of context.

You can see the reckless overtaking and undertaking (I am aware of irony in that word); the speeding and the moving from lane to lane like a jinxed horse; the assumptions of rights of way with imperial disregard for other road users – you can see all these as a sort of heightened form of driving. It’s like speed driving: no not the use of velocity, the use of the drug.

Spanish drivers are considerate – as long as you play by their rules. It’s like R D Laing’s descriptions of the insane in ‘The Divided Self’: if you enter the world of the disturbed person then you will find that there is a logic and even ‘sense’ in the way that their universe is ordered. It’s just not the one that the majority of the population find to be real. The only difference between the insane in ‘The Divided Self’ and Spanish drivers on the roads of Catalonia is that the Spanish drivers are the majority and a timid look/indicate/manoeuvre British driver seems to be from another world.

I do not want to give the impression that I am god’s gift to advanced driving. I loathe driving and regard it only as a convenient means to get to a necessary destination.

I like arriving not travelling.

I am by no means impeccable in my driving skills and I realise that I have a nasty tendency to drive too fast. But I do manage the basics like always wearing a safety belt; using my mirror; indicating and showing at least some degree of consideration towards other road users.

To survive on Spanish roads, at least those in the vicinity of the city of Barcelona, you have to enter the world of the Spanish driver. I suppose if I was to continue the analogy with the delusional patients in ‘The Divided Self’ you have to believe that you are surrounded by multiple mobile Napoleons, all with the imperial right to do as they please and you must be a Napoleon as well. And believe in it too!

On a more pleasant note Alison and Bryn have arrived. They emerged from the arrivals gate in Barcelona airport confident in the knowledge that the information that I had given them about the convenience of Castelldefels as a centre for their stay in the Barcelona area was based on up to the moment first hand experience.

Of course, when they arrived and before they got into my car I was able to disabuse them of these comfortable assertions. What they actually found was a situation where the rail link between Castelldefels and Barcelona was broken because of the seemingly criminal incompetence of RENFE; the road system in something approaching chaos because of the construction work for the new terminal for Barcelona Airport; traffic congestion on an epic scale because of ham fisted attempts to ‘ease the problems’ and last, but not least, the closure of roads in Castelldefels because of the Marathon of the Mediterranean on the day that they both wanted to go to Barcelona.

Very unreasonably, I thought, they blamed me!

Earlier in the day I had my delayed celebration of United Nations Day with Toni’s family and, very pleasingly, by Caroline. I had a more than satisfactory haul of gifts and it was especially good that the extended family were able to see the flat.

Once again I was astonished by the way in which Catalans drink. OK, there were a few drivers and they are discounted, but the ones that were left leave a normal British person bemused at the lack of involvement with the liquid intoxicants which lubricate the vast majority of festive occasions in the Old Country.

I had bought red wine, white wine, Cava, two types of beer, fruit juice and various forms of fizzy drink. Three people asked for water; two people drank fruit flavoured fizzy drinks; one person (she knows who she is!) drank Coke Zero; two people drank nothing; I poured the drinks. And two people, just two, drank canned beer. The two people with beer, eventually, after much persuasion managed a second can during the afternoon!

I had made a martyr-like renunciation of alcohol because I was picking up Alison and Bryn later in the evening. This gesture lost all its value by the almost complete lack of alcohol consumption by my guests. What, I ask you, is the point of grand gestures of abstinence if no one around you is indulging in animal like excess? You don’t gain many points if you are, daringly, acting just like everyone else!

The arrival of Alison and Bryn in the flat (with Toni hors de combat on his bed of illness in the bedroom and therefore neatly eliminating the only moderating influence) changed my drinking habit for the day.

The now traditional bottle of ‘Ne Plus Ultra’ Cava and a few bottles of El Corto went down very nicely thank you. We eventually remembered that I had prepared comestible refreshments which, once consumed, obviously allowed the consumption of a little more excellent Rioja. And then a little more. And then, probably, too much.

Ah how British it all was!

You are too late!

First things first: let me wish you all a happy and prosperous United Nations Day FOR YESTERDAY!

Yes, if you were planning to celebrate United Nations Day on the 24th of October(perhaps by sending a card or giving a present to anyone you might be acquainted with who has a connection with this auspicious day) you’ve missed it.

And if you know me you also know when United Nations Day is, so ignorance is no excuse

No, this is not a case of let’s-look-at-the-calendar-and-find-what’s-on-yesterday; this is a genuine wish to celebrate a day which focuses attention on the nearest this sad world has come to finding a forum to discuss ways of addressing the putrescent sores of criminal ineptitude which disfigure the body politic of the globe.

What can one say about an organization which regularly hosts gatherings which include the criminally insane, the exultantly megalomaniac, the murdering dictatorial, the self righteously bigoted, the strutting poseur, the smugly self delusional, the corrupted, the corrupting and the lost?

Well; it’s the best we’ve got and represents the most effective (!) gathering for tempering the excesses of men (let’s face it, it’s usually the males) who try to indulge their lusty power dreams without the tedious restraint of an enfranchised population to restrain their excesses.

It’s easy to be cynical when you hear the public proclamations of decency and freedom from our representative in the United Nations and realise that he speaks while the pernicious cancer which is, for example, the relationship HMG has with the repressive (but oil rich) regime of Saudi Arabia is eating away at our credibility.

It is difficult to be upbeat when you see African nations uniting to defend the murderous dictatorship of Mugabe. It is difficult not to feel impotent rage when countries like Burma and the Sudan continue to ignore the posturing of world opinion.

But surely Churchill’s faint praise of democracy must also be applied to this virtually toothless successor to The League of Nations. “It has been said,” Churchill declaimed in a speech to the House of Commons, “that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms which have been tried from time to time.” Just substitute UNO for Democracy. And I’ve just realised what a terrible irony there is in that last sentence!

You may be wondering why it is that I feel so strongly about an organization which virtually every country in the world has condemned with contempt at some time or other. Yet I have celebrated this day throughout my life. When I was younger with the able assistance of my parents and, when I was older, with the able assistance of copious amounts of alcohol.

I will leave it to the more astute reader to work out the significance of this day for me and leave him with a picture of me sitting at my table, tapping out a short tattoo with my elegantly manicured finger nails and looking archly at the empty post box!

Robert is now back in Syria. It was his intention (and he managed it) to go to school today. This is not in itself remarkable, but when you consider that his travelling time from Barcelona to Damascus via Milan and then a five hour coach drive to his home will bring him home, looking at the clock, just in time for work –then I think this intention reaches into the realms of the heroic.

One does wonder, however, what the quality of his teaching was like after a day and a half of constant travelling. Exhaustion lowers defences and the barrier between thought and expression becomes as loose as an email! I am sure that an astute and observant student, listening with analytical attention to Robert’s utterances will have gained more insight into his character on this one day of physical depletion than during twenty weeks of perky conscientious teaching!

The alternative approach to exhaustion, of course, is one that I adopted after a particularly stressful journey back from Çinarcic in Turkey via Bucharest and Geneva. During this epic voyage (which seemed to span several lifetimes rather than the mere forty hours that it took) I utilized a fair variety of modes of transport including car, boat, lift, taxi, escalator, bus, foot, train and plane. At the end of my trip I found that I could lapse into a coma-like sleep at a moment’s notice jerking into hyper-hysterical attention for the briefest moments necessary for the maintenance of human existence and resuming my catalepsy, like a comfortable bed, at will.

As long as Robert was able to comatize himself with his eyes wide open, I am sure he will have survived the day. Perhaps he utilized his new ipod and plugged himself into one of the educational podcasts that I put on his machine and allowed the electronic impulses to flow into his tired brain and out through his mouth.

I only hope that he didn’t choose one of the more profane podcasts which also figure on the extensive list of freebies that I downloaded!

Forestalling elegant excess

One of the many things that I despise about Windows is that it makes executive decisions without reference to the poor user who has paid out good folding money for computer and programs that work in ways known only to God and Bill Gates. I never know if that juxtaposition is an example of oxymoron or tautology.

This time the program suggested that every word that I was using was incorrectly spelled and emphasised this by underlining each word so I could make my adjustments. As my spelling can sometimes exhibit wayward propensities, my confidence can be knocked by the merest wisp of a suggestion of doubt about my orthography. Having the whole of my typing dissed by the puissant omniscience of Microsoft Word was daunting to say the least.

The underlining of a word like ‘forestalling’ suddenly makes you think that you must have it wrong. After all, you reason to yourself, have I ever actually written the word before? When I last read it (how long ago was that?) did it have a different spelling from the instinctive one that I used? You then try other spellings, all of which look wrong. Then, after a while, all the alternative spellings start to look right. Then you think to yourself, well, I have a wide vocabulary, I’ll use another word. Then even your simpler alternative words are underlined. You begin to doubt your ability to communicate. Your world is falling apart.

Then salvation reveals itself.

The program has decided, unilaterally, to use a Spanish dictionary instead of the English one and, most cunningly, doesn’t let you know that it has changed and is now reading all your English words as poor spellings of Spanish ones!

I remember one person writing about the recent developments in cars and computers and comparing them. He said that if cars had developed at the same rate as computers and kept pace in terms of price as well, then today you would be able to buy the equivalent of a Rolls Royce for the price of a bicycle but that it would also stand a reasonable chance of exploding for no apparent reason.

Someone else wrote that if cars were sold with the same number of fundamental faults that quite ordinary programs have when released for general sale, the car manufacturers would never be out of the courts being sued for gross negligence.

Anyway I eventually noticed a few words at the bottom of the screen which indicated Spanish rather than English as the dictionary of choice (which explained all the underlined words) and I was able to double tap and get back to normal.

But still the nagging question of how it changed disturbs me. If that can change, what else is going on that I do not know about? Who or what is operating my machine? This is not a rant of a conspiracy theorist but the reasoned thoughts of someone who has known too many inconsistencies, faults, failures, inexplicable shifts in programs and momentary glitches for comfort.

Lunch today with Caroline and the usual conversational peregrinations through a variety of topics: easy talk at its leisurely best. I look forward to our next in a fortnight’s time.

Caroline displayed a tendency which she herself described as ‘Luddite’ about computers. This gave me the opportunity to wax lyrical about yet another Achilles’ heel: my infatuation with machines electrical. It turns out that Caroline’s computer is not performing at its best and it further turns out that Caroline has not been housekeeping and god alone knows what is lurking on her computer. Being the helpful sort of person that I am I immediately said that I had gone through a recent searing experience when my computer developed an illness which seemed to indicate that all the information (When did YOU last backup your files?) that I had stored on it would be lost. It took a few days but a saviour appeared and managed to save most of it and restore the operating system so that it, well, operated. I also said that I would try and find the card which I knew I had and send her the information about this professional electronic Samaritan.

This is almost always a disaster. It is a lose/lose situation: you won’t find the card and will feel bad with yourself and your lack of organizational effectiveness; you will feel bad about building up the hope of a friend only to have to dash the expectations by sad incompetence.

It was therefore with something approaching despair that I started the via dolorosa of drawer to cupboard to shelf to ledge to table in the vain hope of finding a small sliver of cardboard with the all important number on it. I should at this point emphasise that my PDA (palm top computer) has a faulty battery and it has proved to be impossible to replace it in this part of Spain. That would have been where I would have stored the address in the old days. These days meant that I had to find the original card or give it up as a bad job.

As in all the most clichéd stories I did find it in the last drawer of the last chest of drawers which was the last place in which it could be.

As in all the most clichéd stories I did also find two things that I have been looking for in a fairly desultory fashion for the last week.

All things work together for good in this best of all possible worlds!

I must now go and cultivate my garden.

Oh yes, before I forget, the title of this piece relates to the present that Toni gave me; but that is for another time and another place

Keep taking the tablets

Incipient colds are lurking at the edges of our physical health.

Toni looks a little groggy and has taken some efficient looking powders to combat the messy effects of our antisocial seasonal afflictions.

As I am still defiantly maintaining a summer wardrobe and stoutly affirming that the ‘summery’ temperatures encourage a beach orientated existence.

Given that the legendary Robert has stayed with us for a night, it was essential that he experience the delights of living by the sea and take at least a nominal plunge into the sea.

We had talked well into the night and it was good to be able to make pretentious conversazione with someone who regarded it as normal! God, when I think back to the talks we had in university, if any of them had been recorded we would have been put away!

Actually now I come to think about it, I did once record a conversation in college. As a joke, when I was preparing a meal and dismembering a frozen chicken with a largely ineffectual carving knife I turned on the cassette recorder (ah, such simple technology) to see how the conversation would develop. I set myself the task of initiating the interchanges with the intention of stimulating my companions to linguistic displays which could be the source of innocent merriment later. But after a few minutes I forgot that we were being recorded.

The ensuring tape, when we finally got to listen to it shocked us by the deeply infantile nature of most of the utterances and the general mood of surrealistically Pinteresque normality of our gnomic mode of communication. One member of the trio recorded took an unhealthy interest in the whole affair and used to borrow the cassette and listen to it in his room. As he was by far the most academic of us one can only wonder what intellectual substance he found in such an inconsequential load of chatter.

I suppose that the sad thing was that we generally thought that we were having conversations of the most profound nature where we were touching the very substance of philosophy itself. Out time would have been much better spent if we hadn’t subscribed to such illusions; but it would have been immeasurably duller!

Robert and my conversations were much more prosaic, but just as enjoyable.

It is also gratifying to find out that my one real skill has not deserted me.

I have always prided myself on being a dependable catalyst for encouraging other people to spend money.

Robert put up a token resistance to buying a 160GB ipod but by the time he was deposited in Barcelona airport to try and discover just which terminal he should have been waiting in for his flight to Syria he was the proud possessor of a gleaming black mp3 machine of Apple manufacture with a remarkably eclectic and stimulating collection of musical tracks!

I will be interested to her what sort of musical Odyssey he makes through my collection of idiosyncratic classics interspersed with oddities that have limited popular appeal. How can I forget going to an ENO performance of ‘Four Saints in Three Acts’ (one of personal favourites) and turning to the lady on m left at the end of the performance and saying breathlessly, “Wasn’t that wonderful!” To which she replied, “No!”

I sometimes plough a lonely furrow!

The Music Plays On and On and On

Why do so many programmes on Spanish television have low level background music?

Some news programmes have wildly inappropriate music playing under even quite serious news stories at a volume which impinges on the consciousness without adding anything to the viewing pleasure.

Sometimes you ignore the crying interviewees as they tearfully relate some horrific experience and concentrate instead on the music playing behind their soul baring words and realise that some trite piece of American superficiality is the background music to human tragedy. It is vulgar and deeply irritating as the ‘name that tune’ approach to serious news reporting detracts from the message.

It is not only news programmes that adopt this musical affectation, but also sports programmes. I have just ‘watched’ a Catalan sports programme.

Perhaps I should define what I mean by ‘watched’ when we are talking about a programme on a subject about which I have minimal interest in a language I don’t understand. If you are the sort of person who can speak fluent Spanish, are conversant in French and remember, in detail, all those Latin lessons from school (sic.) then Catalan should be a language which has sufficient linguistic links to what you know to encourage you to believe that you have a fairly good idea about what is going on.

I, however, am not one of that polyglot number and so, like Shakespeare (though substituting French and Spanish for Latin and Greek) I stumble my way though watching by the ‘one in twenty words at best’ approach to foreign communication. The fact that it is television also allows you the luxury of attempting to read body language and facial gesture into the general communication mix. This, often, does not help you gain the actual meaning of what is going on but, like the British version of ‘The Magic Roundabout’ you substitute your own story to the pictures that you see.

My other approach to language is based on extensive reading of ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ – as indeed is much of my philosophy of life. I would refer the curious to an incident in one of the books where Pooh is visiting Owl and has to listen to his lofty conversation. Pooh being a bear of little brain whom long words bother, has slipped into automatic mode and is responding to Owl’s monologue with a random selection of ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

I have refined this technique over years of trying to bluff my way through various countries using their languages by limiting my random, though encouraging responses to the affirmative. This usually encourages the speaker in foreign tongues to believe that I am fluent in that particular language. This is all well and good and ‘hands across the sea’ stuff, but it all falls into ashes and despair when the foreign conversationalist demands something more than a monosyllable as a response. Encouraging smiles, raised eyebrows and a general demeanour of hearty acquiescence, which is my equivalent to the required sentences has got me into all sorts of interesting scrapes in the past!

So the fact that the programme I was attempting to watch was a sports programme; that it centred its interest on football; that it was a discussion programme; that it was in Catalan all meant that this was something which on my Interest-ometer registered negative results. But the one thing which did prod my jaded resentment into some sort of apathetic notice was the music droning on in the background.

The programmes choice was a tuneless, meanderingly inconsequential piece of instantly forgettable jazz. Once again the music was too low to have character, but too loud to be ignored. Its effect was akin to the results you get when you wipe your glasses with a balm infused tissue. When you next look out onto the world your vision is impeded by a gauze-like veil which softens and smudges your view. The same is true with the music behind programmes.

I feel that I am as one with the immortal words of Mr Growser from Toytown (if that allusion has to be explained, and if you are not already humming the theme tune, then you should be grateful for your youth!) “It’s disgraceful! It ought not to be allowed!”

Alas, I allow that phrase to slip more and more easily to my lips nowadays.

Thank goodness!

Free and easy

There is a naked man on the beach.

In Spain this does not usually constitute news as there are many nude beaches along the coasts, but I was not aware that the beach in front of our flat had this designation. There are not many people on the beach today, though the sun is shining and the skies are clear blue. Is the lone man a dedicated naturist making a bare statement seeking to liberate the beach or is he a daftie who forgot his bathing costume and disports himself defiantly?

Who knows; who cares?

The continuing story of my medical treatment has now reached the stage, as I have previously mentioned, of getting my medication. Given my problems with the medical centre this is a major break though, though the problems do not stop there.

A simple duplication of my British medication is impossible because of “different protocols” so one tablet is now two; one brand name has given way to another; one dose has been doubled and one prescription seemed entirely different and didn’t have the active ingredient anywhere on the box or on the paper inside. After a few phone calls and one phone call back from the doctor I was advised to visit the surgery and make an appointment to see him. Thus, the first of my visits to the medical centre today. The second to see the doctor revealed that the medication I had been given was indeed the wrong one. Thus, back to the pharmacy where confusion reigned. I did get a replacement box, but the shop assistant actually tried to charge me for it! I refused to pay holding up the other box and muttering “incorecto!” like a sort of incantation to get my way. Eventually, after giving my telephone number, I was allowed to leave with my appropriate pills and later had an almost completely unintelligible telephone conversation with the lady in the pharmacy (I understood that much) which I have decided meant that she was accepting the cost of he wrong medication to compensate he for the price of the right one. Well, she has my telephone number and she can always make another attempt to get me to do something other than nothing! And anyway Toni might be home then.

I suppose that there is a law which states that how ever much time you appear to have available to complete a series of tasks they will all, inevitably, gravitate towards one particular time slot for their actual completion. So tomorrow, along with other less pressing requirements, now has Toni’s arrival in Barcelona airport together with the courier arriving at the flat with the precious Barça tickets while the rubbish needs to be taken to the bins.

A second law states that if to complete one task you leave the centre of operations then, inevitably, all the other tasks will require your immediate presence in the centre – In which you are not, if you see what I mean.

I look forward to a fraught fugitive time.

Doctor in the house!

In the old days, before the introduction of the National Health Service, people had to pay for their medical services at the time that they used them. The doctor’s bill was waiting for them; no payment – no treatment.

I can hardly pretend that the situation is now the same for me with the way in which I see the doctor in Castelldefels, but there is a similarity in the way in which entitlement is treated. I get the feeling that I am regarded as a leech on the system and they are much more concerned about how my treatment is going to be paid for then my own personal care.

I am perhaps being unfair, but the medical centre is rapidly taking over the hated mantle of Most Obnoxious & Officious from the other likely contenders for the title. And believe me they are worthy contestants and have a proven track record of mindless paper pushing futility to back up their claims to be considered.

Toni reminds me that his experience of dealing with large organizations in Great Britain was also dispiriting with the obtaining of his National Insurance number possibly the most distasteful. So I should think and remember before I castigate the Spanish authorities that my own country is not guiltless in making newcomers feel exasperation and high minded despair.

Toni has just phoned in high dudgeon as it appears that his firm has not been telling him what be loosely regarded as an approximation of the truth about the job in Madrid. It turns out that the job, which was presented to Toni as some sort of short term rescue operation is actually a full time position with employment for the next twenty two months!

Toni is returning by plane on Friday (as he told them he would) and to hell with the consequences. Employment in this area is not really a problem and he should be able to find another job if the circumstances demand with very little trouble.

Meanwhile the dealings with the medical centre grow in complexity.

Today I have seen a nurse. He was, I imagine, in his teens, but that did not stop his being quite severe about my weight and entirely dismissive of the amount of exercise that I complete each day. I fought back in the only way open to me: kiss of death to machines.

I have often found that, in spite of my well known love of gadgets, I often provoke mechanical crisis on many of the entities that I fain would love. For someone who loves computers as much as I do, I seem to have spent more than my fair share of time wallowing in self pity in front of an unresponsive screen praying for activity.

On one notable occasion I actually talked to a frozen keyboard and asked, in what I took to be a very reasonable tone of voice, if it would very kindly unfreeze itself by the time that I had made and drunk a cup of tea. It didn’t and I retired to my bedroom and wept.

Admittedly this was in the days of the notorious QL computer when a page of A4 could take up to a minute to save to its little microdrive. And I might add that I had to get the typing that I was doing done that day. I eventually went to bed at about five in the morning (after retyping everything that I had failed to save) and got up two hours later for school. Ah, happy days!

That was with a Sinclair computer; cutting edge – the affordable hybrid between a disc drive (too expensive) and a cassette drive (too slow) which allowed the illusion of top end computing for a reasonable sum of money. For those interested there is (of course) a web site about the QL at http://homepages.tesco.net/dilwyn.jones/ though now I look at the address I feel both a sense of national identity and total confusion! Not that much different then form my usual experience in front of a computer!

So, kiss of death to machines. The child nurse decided to take my blood pressure and asked me to lie down and relax. Now perhaps I am unusual, but the two actions of ‘lie down’ and ‘relax’ when set in a medical context seem to me to be oxymoronic.

I have never recovered from a particularly invasive medical examination carried out with gusto by a lady doctor when I got a job in the local steelworks. My defences were, as they say, down – as indeed were my trousers - when the lady doctor did such things that anywhere outside a doctor’s surgery would have been regarded as legally dubious and a certain invasion of an innocent lad’s privates (sic.)

So my defence was attack and the blood pressure machine failed to work. The child nurse had to rely on the old ‘pump it up by hand’ method and, lo and behold, my blood pressure is high pero solo un poco! Well done Catalonia! However, the CN (child nurse) was not to be outdone and demanded that I return tomorrow for an electrocardiograph or gram or whatever. Almost as an afterthought he gave me an injection for la gripe which I think is a good thing.

I have, at last, managed to get a prescription for my regular drugs. I did to have to pay, but only about €10 which is £7 which is hardly excessive for a month’s supply of four drugs.

Perhaps things are beginning to work out and the last bastion of bureaucratic insanity is gradually becoming more human! One can but hope.

I am beginning to wonder if Toni is going to make it to Friday with the present firm. As far as I can see they are exploiting their workers with a callous disregard for anything other than the well being of the firm. I think that Toni is being misused in the same way that an illegal immigrant would be treated; being shunted from one workplace to another with very little remuneration. I think that this job had a very definitely limited life span and he should be actively looking for a new position.

We will see.

Another test past!

Another milestone.

This is blog number 300!

And as I typed those words, outside the rain started to fall. Is this, I ask myself, significant?

Rain at night time is more than acceptable; that is what I call well regulated weather!

Today came the sudden revelation that, living next to the beach, I was not making full use of the Mediterranean swept shore. Therefore, donning swimming trunks under my shorts and pausing only to collect an easy chair, book, pen, ipod, keys, oil, towel, goggles, back pack and the kitchen sink I sallied forth to take of the rays of the still strong sun.

No sooner had I finally managed to negotiate my way through our notoriously recalcitrant gateway onto the beach and had begun to plod my way towards the waves than I saw a bag lying on the fringe of the small dune outside our flat.

The bag was open and had what appeared to be papers or documents peeking out of the open edge. Closer inspection revealed a bag complete with wallet, cards and keys.

As I had seen a couple of ladies sunning themselves on the flank of the dune I approached them and was told it wasn’t theirs. The only other couple of people within sight denied any knowledge of it, though I suspect that they thought I was some sort of illiterate salesman tying to get them to part with a few euros.

I settled myself down and make a more thorough inspection of the bag. It was obviously a ladies’ bag and, as I riffled through the contents I realised that there were car keys, house keys, a French identity card, a drivers’ licence and bank cards. There was no money and no mobile phone.

Having had experience of replacing important documentation the frustration is something to be avoided at all costs, so I did feel sympathy for the absent owner. As there were bank cards and identity documentation I realised that ‘doing something’ was a pressing demand and not an action that could be left until after a relaxing read and soothing sunbathe.

For a moment I felt the same hesitation as when a bevy of hysterical children burst into my form room and told me that their teacher had collapsed. I rushed into the class and found that an elderly supply teacher had indeed fainted and badly gashed the side of her head which was pouring with blood.

AIDS publicity had been relentlessly showered on us via leaflets and lurid television commercials and for one absurd moment I hesitated to help my colleague because we had been informed that we were never to allow ourselves to become contaminated with fresh blood. What I thought my colleague had been getting up to which might have given her the opportunity to catch the disease in the first place god alone knows, but at least this tardy attitude lasted but a thought before I helped her up ignoring the blood.

As you go through a bag which obviously contained all the important identifying documents of a person you know that such a bag, which also had a wallet, would probably have contained money. Such a bag would probably have held the mobile phone of the person too. No money; no phone.

For a moment you think that, were you a clever thief you would remove all the quickly saleable items and then give the bag back and receive the thanks of the person. Perhaps if you were even cleverer, you would offer to bring the bag to the person yourself. In this way you would have found out where the person lived, where the car was kept and other information which could allow you to plunder the poor person more thoroughly at your leisure.

I sometimes think I think too much.

So I phoned the most hated bank in the world (you have to be a customer of BBVA to appreciate fully that statement) and gave them a ring informing them (eventually, when I was put through to an English speaker) that I had found the bag and within minutes the grateful owner was on the phone arranging to meet me.

The owner turned out to be a young French girl who was almost incoherently grateful to get her car keys back. Her car was parked in Castelldefels though she did not live there. She had been attending a farewell party as she was off on holiday and she had only taken her eye off her bag for two minute before it was taken. Money, camera, mobile phone all had gone. She had been quick off the mark and managed to transfer her mobile phone number; get her cards cancelled and inform the police. She had, however, as she said between delighted squeaks of relief had one of the worst twenty four hours in her life: no car; no money; no documentation etc etc. Her parents had tried and failed to get a flight to come and help her and so the finding of the bag solved a lot of problems at once!

And, of course, it gave me a warm comfortable feeling – which was just as well because I certainly wasn’t getting it from sunbathing!

A touch of sobriety almost

The trouble with the mountain on which the Monastery of Montserrat is situated is that it looks out of place in Europe.

The landscape leading up to the bizarre weather sculpted rocks is perfectly normal which makes the surrealistic setting of the monastery even more strange.

Te rock formations evoke the mesas and buttes of Death Valley rather than the more agriculturally lush surrounding countryside of Catalonia.

Our trip with the usual family contingent started with a visit to El Casot a typical masia or Catalan farmhouse which had been turned into a restaurant. This establishment was situated ten miles beyond men’s thoughts and only found after driving along near vertical single track roads. It was touching to find that the boundary between our road surface and the airy nothingness of certain death in valleys far beneath was a series of slender iron posts with a single smooth strand of wire slung between them.

Its position was spectacular with the unreal profile of the Montserrat peaks almost within touching range. This of course was a fallacy which was shown by the even more hair raising journey from the masia via a glorified concrete pathway before we picked up a ‘real’ road.

The meal was good with excellent Catalan bread. Due to my having misunderstood Toni’s translation for my choice of main meal I ended up with pig’s trotters and snails – a rather more adventurous choice than I would otherwise have made. Pigs’ trotters seem to have no meat on them at all and consist of bone and gristle covered thickly in fat. The fat being the delicious food that you are supposed to eat, augmented by the slimy deliciousness of the sails oozing gently out of their shells. Having said all that, I (sort of) enjoyed my dish, I think that the sauce was lively enough to give character to the whole meal. I was shocked however, to be asked by the waiter at the end of the meal if I had found the dish too spicy.

I still have a way to go to understand the Spanish definition of ‘spicy.’ I think that a korma would be about the limit of what they could eat in any reasonable Indian restaurant in Britain!

The monastery looked slicker that it had done for my first visit. Admittedly this time it was sunny and there was a more relaxed atmosphere than during my first experience of this monument to the religious heart of the Catalan people.

The restaurant was packed and the shops were doing a roaring trade, including the stalls outside which were selling a range of cheeses, honeys and different sizes of fig bread.

Carles, of course, injected a certain amount of secular noise into the otherwise reasonably religious subdued queue waiting to see the Black Madonna or Moreneta.

This small statue is located way above the high altar in the church in Montserrat on a raised plinth. She is accessible to the faithful (and also to we Anglican atheists) via a long queue which stretches down a side aisle and then ascends via a couple of flights of stairs to the Madonna herself.

The lady herself is a fairly squat seated figure holding the Christ child in one hand and an orb in another. As her adjective suggests she is in fact black and is protected from the elements and the faithful by a Perspex shield. Part of the orb, however, projects beyond this shield and this is the part of the idol that those queuing touch – for whatever reason.

Having touched (last time I kissed!) the orb we felt free to indulge our more carnal appetites firstly by having a well deserved cup of coffee and secondly by having a quick shop.

I was fully determined to buy a small version of the Moreneta as long as it was encased in an instant snowstorm globe. Alas, among the acres of poor taste pandering to the credulous church consumer there were no snow globes. I could have had the Holy Family in a gentle snow storm, but that was it.

Surely there is a niche in the marketing plan for someone who can show even less taste than the junk on view seems to indicate already exists. I am waiting to be called on a free-lance basis to advise on even more down market ideas to fleece the religiously inclined!

On the way back to the car I succumbed to the blandishments of a stall holder who started speaking English as soon as I started looking at the cheese. I think that I will have to resign myself to the reality that I will never be taken for a native of the peninsular. It is disconcerting though just to ‘be’ and be recognized as a foreigner before even my faulty grasp of Spanish nails the identification!

She plied me with increasingly tasty samples until I gave in and bought a cheese round and some eucalyptus honey.

Tomorrow Toni goes to Madrid for a week to help repair some machines for the company. Why they cannot find personnel in Madrid I do not know, but this away visit will possibly indicate their future intentions with his career. We will see.

The sun continues to shine.

Except at night, obviously.

I was weak and I did eat!

“The word ‘Inexplicable’ is,” as no writer I know has said, “a moveable feast.”

What is blindingly obvious and necessary to one person can appear to be unbelievably and recklessly surplus to requirements to another.

As a confirmed gadgetophile I am but a helpless pawn in the close mesh nets of the techno-manufacturers as they cast far and wide to ensnare the all too willing victims whose eyes narrow to blinkered tunnel vision centred on the latest shining, sparkling electronic object of sharply obscure desire.

The only new thing about computers recently which managed to interest me was the introduction of a new operating system. As with all new operating systems there was the usual chorus of dissatisfaction with the glitches which are a function of all computer innovations. Such objections are good for me as they lessen the necessity of possession.

So far; so safe.

The real problem was the broken lead for the in-car navigator. The complete lack of spare parts for the model which I had foolishly bought on the understanding that it was better value than the much better known versions shows that my faith in sales talk was misplaced. I have trekked through shops in Barcelona, Castelldefels, London, Reading and Gavá: an international quest. And I had found nothing that worked.

In an evil day I tried a store called MediaMarkt and found something which appeared to work, but turned out to be a false lead. (That pun was intentional by the way.) However, the seeds of my own destruction were sown I saw the wealth of needful things laid out in bright lines along innumerable corridors.

I managed to convince myself for a few days that I was safe. But no.

You see, the actual object of my downfall was not the computer itself but the cover. The cover had a small screen on it. This could operate independently of the computer itself. It was in colour. It was, simply, wonderful.

So I now have a new portable computer. With a little screen on the cover. How can anyone resist?

Anyway, this is my first computer with a Spanish keyboard so that typing something like ¡Hola! is simple.

And all the decretals are readily to hand. Now I have used that word to stand for all the accents and bits and pieces with which words are sometimes encumbered. For the first time in god knows how many years I’ve just looked the word up and found that it concerns the decrees of popes. Not a word about accents. So I wonder what word I should have used.

Any help would be appreciated here.

Oh yes and I wasn’t alone in falling for a shapely-small-screen-on-the-cover computer. Toni bought one too!

It’s our weaknesses that keep us happy!

Medical Merriment!

My anomalous status continues to confuse the Spanish medical system.

The medical centre to which I am now (at least partially) affiliated has reached the stage where I have been allocated a doctor and I have even managed to see him. That was the simple bit.

The consultation went quite well. The doctor spoke passable English and with my little Spanish (how quaintly ambiguous that description is) we managed to communicate. I now am booked in for a blood test and god knows what.

The medication that I take was discussed and the confusion about the different ways in which the essential working element in the medication is dressed up with national trade names caused some confusion at first, but that was soon sorted out and I had a list of Spanish equivalents for the three drugs that I take.

The 75mg of aspirin now has become 100mg which is neither here nor there. The real surprise was the Glucosamine and chondroitin tablet that I take. This doctor refused to betaken in by the popular support for its influence on arthritis and he said that he couldn’t prescribe it. There was not medical evidence for it to have any effect on arthritic limbs so he couldn’t in all conscience add it to my list. So there!

Having had a very uncomfortable day with clicking knees (just before a turbulent electrical storm – can that be significant?) and having faithfully taken the Glucosamine and chondroitin tablets which had a signal lack of effect I did not feel like gainsaying him. Out they go!

The consultation, as I said, went well. He handed me a few documents, told me to go to room 17 to get my medication and then give the rest to reception who would arrange the further appointments.

That’s when things started to go wrong in a now fully recognizable way.

The pharmacist refused to give me any medication because I did not have my number. As far as I could understand from her torrent of Spanish, My Number (I feel that the capitalization is necessary) would probably be ‘somewhere’ in four days or so. Therefore my “Proxima semana?” which was greeted with stern amusement, seemed a positive step towards getting my prescriptions filled which is the only reason that I want a doctor.

So, empty handed, yet, paradoxically optimistic, I turned my attention to the reception desk.

My documents were accepted and a few cursory finger taps on the computer keyboard were sufficient to elicit that ‘I-can-do-nothing-you-don’t-have-a-number’ look which I have grown to recognize at its first frown. The deluge of Spanish at this point was overwhelming and, apart from the general negativity, I understood nothing.

Reinforcements were brought in and a man appeared from behind the filing cabinets who engaged me in a conversation that I have had at least five or six times before over that very counter.

The details of what he said and what he asked are not really relevant, but they do vividly illustrate the fact that no one appears to know what anyone else is doing or has done as far as individual patients are concerned. And I wonder what use the bloody computer is: they spend ages typing information into it, but that seems to be an en in itself and not part of some coherent database which might conceivably help anyone.

This time the debate was concluded by my showing my European Health Card (which I have shown on every other occasion) which had an immediate effect this time and was accepted as important and finished the debate.

I feel more and more as if I am a hapless character in a second rate Kafka short story. Though, there again, ‘Metamorphosis’; ‘The Great Wall of China’ and ‘In the Penal Colony’ are a more accurate reflection of the world in which we live in that ‘Cinderella’; ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ even if the latter three have a greater currency and recognition than the first three!

We will see if the exasperated, “Oh just do it!” approach of the administrator on the penultimate visit to the doctor translates itself into some sort of tangible card with a number that the computer recognizes. That will be achievement and ‘K’ will have managed to emerge successfully from the rigors of ‘The Trial.’

Robert and Antonia arrived today after a gruelling bus journey, long over night flight and another flight this morning. At least their room in Hotel Playafels has a vista del mar! Where they found the energy to go into Barcelona when they have another flight early tomorrow to Seville I don’t know!

They will sleep well – I only hope that their early morning alarm manages to cut through their deep repose!

Some things go right!

A day to mark with a white stone.

Not only lunch with Caroline, but also finding (at last) the correct lead for my in-car navigator.

I should have learned my lesson when I bought an Apple computer about the dangers of choosing something which was not the ordinary and popular choice. Tom-Tom is the obvious choice for in-car navigator, but no, I was sweet talked by a convincing salesman in Halfords into getting a Garmin machine which was "so much better value than the equivalent Tom-Tom." The lessons of buying an early Mac computer were lost!

I bought the Apple Mac computer when everyone else was buying machines that ran Windows.

I have to admit that the Mac was much better than the other machines. The operating system was more like Windows XP is now: an intuitive operating system which did (generally) what you thought it ought to do in the way that you thought it might do. As opposed, of course, to the DOS system where to get anything done you virtually had to sacrifice a chicken before the bloody screen grudgingly indicated that you were part of the way towards your objective.

The trouble was, of course, that everything was geared towards a DOS system and Apple Macs were very much in the minority. The school operated with DOS; magazines gave away software in DOS; everyone you knew offered programs in DOS. Even when programs were sold as compatible with Apple machines, they never quite worked in the same way as they did with DOS computers. I should have gone with the majority. Although as Ibsen wrote (via one of his characters) “The majority is always wrong.” Whatever than means.

Eventually, after a few court cases Windows had a system which was suspiciously similar to that of the Mac and all was well with the world. Then the ipod came along and Mac was the way of the world.

And at least I have an ipod (or three) and I find that walking into the electrical department of any reasonably sized supermarket and there are rows of inexplicable accessories for my mp3 player. I am now one of the majority. So I must be wrong!

All of preceding peregrinations were occasioned by Caroline’s observation that it was a relief to share a meal with someone with the same range of reference.

Living in a foreign country, especially one which is as near to us as Spain, one is struck by how much is the same yet subtly different.

Even with my limited Spanish I can tell when simple questions on quiz shows have answers that I wouldn’t have known even if I had been speaking fluent Spanish. I lack the basic knowledge of the faces of famous people; I’m not able to hum along with the theme tunes of childhood television children’s television series; basic facts of Spanish history, on a par with 1066 and 1215 and 1666, are unknown to me; basic understanding of Spanish geography are searching specialised knowledge for me – and so on.

In one way it is good to have a whole culture waiting to be discovered, but so much which is naturally acquired in a life time is only going to be imparted to me by accident.

Which is as good a way of expectation as any I suppose?

Who is spoon fed a culture ?

The roads to nowhere

You can tell that the summer season is over in Castelldefels because the road system is now in chaos.

A seaside town relies on the summer trade to ensure its survival through the winter. Castelldefels is not just a seaside resort; it does have the ‘other half’ of the town on the other side of the motorway which is a normal, busy, thriving centre. The tourist, however, is King and must be treated as the moneybags that he is.

During the summer it is all important that the flow of cash in the form of human visitors is kept as sweet and generous as possible so that the extraction of euros is as painless as possible. During the autumn and winter months however, the story is not the same.

At the moment our access to the motorway changes from day to day because the municipality is (as far as I can tell) changing the sewerage system. There are long black pipes lying by the side of the road all over the place. To accommodate these behemoths little yellow signs are sprouting up denying access to important roads, or suddenly changing the left to a right turn, or making a dead end of a road that usually goes somewhere.

This means that using the in-car navigation device has become even more problematical as you have to ignore the instructions of the schoolmarmly voice and turn in the opposite direction. She is spending more time saying, “Recalculating!” than actually telling me where to go.

This is just getting to the motorway. Once beyond Gava and you enter a new road system which is going to be part of the service motorway for the new terminal for the extension of the airport. As far as the schoolmarm is concerned you and the car are in the middle of the countryside. She doesn’t panic however and merely urges you in a general direction where there might have been a tractor track some time ago. And so you plough (literally as far as the voice is concerned) your way onwards until, with an almost audible sigh of electronic relief you get to the point where the new road joins onto the existing motorway system and you can begin to believe what she is telling you.

I went to Gava today in a futile attempt to re-establish my existence for the social services. Futile, because I arrived in the afternoon and the office was only open until 1.30 pm. My fault I should have known. But I used the voice to get me to the street.

When I say get me to the street, I mean it tried and failed. I always feel a little self-conscious when you are urged by the voice to go down an empty street, the entrance to which is flanked by signs which are round and red, and which is paved in a pedestrian sort of way. However, as no one was around, I did so and followed her instructions until she urged me to disobey a no left turn sign. I had to go the other way and she resolutely brought me back to the same impasse by another route.

I eventually parked the car and asked. And I was near enough to make the extra walk interesting without being devastating when I found the office closed.

Returning to Castelldefels I relied on my instinct and got onto the right road immediately.

I am intending, however, to rely entirely on the machine to get me to Judith’s hotel when she arrived in Barcelona at the beginning of next month.

I have touching faith sometimes.

Bite on!

I am beginning to understand that there are seasons in the battle between mosquito and man.

When I first arrived in Castelldefels I thought (due no doubt to shaky biology teaching earlier in my life) that living close to the sea would be something which would deter these spiteful insects from feasting on my body. I was confirmed in this supposition by the complete lack of poisoned proboscis piercing my skin in the first nights by the sea with doors and windows wide open.

Then there was a suggestion (no more than that) of precipitation and with this mere thought of rain the winged avengers swooped in and had their fill of blood. Windows were closed, electric devices were placed in plugs and the monsters were kept at bay.

It turned out that the sophisticated counter measures of the local supermarket were of less effectiveness than the fact that mosquitoes seemed to prefer Toni’s flesh and blood to mine. In Wales I was told by a member of the blood transfusion service (in the days when they were eager for my sanguinary flow) that my blood group, A+, was the most common in the country. Perhaps the mosquitoes in Catalonia are used to a different vintage and A+ is a little passé for the discriminating devotee of the liquor of the vein!

Whatever the reason, I was left comparatively unscathed while t
Toni’s legs began to resemble a relief map of the Pyrenees. At times like those you have to feign sympathy and keep close so that a mosquito can chose the tastier option!

This all worked very well until we came to the end of September when I was informed by Toni that we were now entering a more interesting period in the animal/insect conflict when the flying daggers would attack anything with a pulse.

Now my legs began to develop that tell-tale itch which if resisted and treated with ammonia (‘cos that’s all the anti bite liquid is) would calm and the little chappies in the blood would do their stuff and deal with the poison.

There was one bite just above the ankle bone which, in spite of an almost irresistible call to a sharp nail for relief I made a conscious decision to ‘ignore.’

My strength of purpose has been displayed many times. I made a conscious decision to be influenced by a Jimmy Saville advert and conscientiously ‘clunked and clicked’ for each car journey from that point; I gave up biting my nails; I have constructed IKEA furniture; I have sat though an entire performance of ‘Tristan and Isolde’; I have learned to like dry white wine after being a confirmed Sauterne drinker – I have the will. Sometimes.

It is one of the hardest things in the world to ignore a mosquito bite. I remember reading of one man in a concentration camp who decided to commit suicide by holding his breath. With an amazing breadth of determination he actually managed not to breathe until he reached the point of unconsciousness – and at that point of course, the automatic systems of the body kicked in and his body saw to it that he started breathing again.

Even when you are telling yourself that a scratch now will mean hours or days of misery later (together with an unsightly scab) your automatic systems are directing your unsheathed nails southwards for a long northward scratch. Usually this scratch will be of the cupped four finger kind. This sort of scratch is a harrow-type coverage of a whole section of the leg. Your brain is trying to tell you that you have an ordinary itch in the area and, if by chance the mosquito bite might be itched as well that would be an unlooked for bonus from something which was not intended to be specific.

This is the same sort of delusional reasoning that allows people to think that what they are going to do is merely scratch ‘around’ the bitten area. Or, in an even more delusional rationalization, merely ‘rub’ around the area.

We have all gone through it and all the fallacious reasoning that we use to gain relief.

At the moment, although it might be tempting fate, I can speak of such things in the past tense. My period of tastiness for the pestilential stingers seems to have passed.

I have however been informed that November too is a time of trial.

I only hope that they are not biding their time for a concerted attack to make up for lost Welsh corpuscles!

It's all around you!

“Be watchful! Be vigilant; for your enemy, the devil, prowls around seeking whom he may devour!”

As my access to the internet is, to put it mildly, skittish, I have not been able to verify the exact wording for those admonitory sentiments. Are they from evensong? I feel I should know. And I do know that at least one of my readers will be shouting at the screen at my laxity of memory and be repeating the correct wording (and punctuation!) and stating the exact location of the opening.

One is reminded of Saint Anthony; he of the temptations. As far as I know the exact nature of the temptations that afflicted the poor man are not known. This explains why it was a very popular painters’ choice because it gave them the opportunity to exert their imaginations and paint subject matter which was generally forbidden by the strictures of the church.

For most painters the nature of the temptations could only be one thing: sex. They were therefore able to paint scantily clad females in all sorts of alluring positions as long as they remembered to paint a frustrated (and sometimes irritatingly serene) saint somewhere in the orgy of female pulchritude.

Some painters, especially of the Bosch and Grunewald school of demented ‘surrealistic’ visual expression also found room for the most fantastic demonic monsters, but generally it was the naked ladies that made the most convincing temptations for the single gentleman saint.

Jesus of course was tempted by the illusion of power offered by the shadowy personage mentioned in the opening; though 2 i/c to Satan is not a convincingly attractive proposition. And anyway a position already held by That Woman!

But I digress. History has shown that the lure of ‘sex’ has been generally effective: from your new wife waving an interesting piece of fruit for you to eat, to the good old fashioned beautiful Russian spy of the Cold War – it all worked!

Have times changed? Are we looking for something more than sex? [Rhetorical.]

There was that wonderfully kitsch film “Needful Things” with that Swedish actor that played Death at chess in the Bergman film (you can tell that I don’t have the internet!) who played a sort of curio seller who had just the thing you wanted, be it a rare cigarette card or whatever, for which you were prepared to sell your soul. Of course, it being an American film, he was not allowed to win, but he did survive the mayhem he had helped create and, striding through fire, he drove off in his satanic Rolls Royce.

We are now surrounded by small objects of desire - perhaps best exemplified by the ipod nano. This elegantly svelte gleaming miracle of consumer exploitation; this iconic apotheosis of manufactured necessity; this, this wonderful little gadget! Who would not want one? And before you say, “Well, I wouldn’t, for one!” I must warn you that I regard bad-mouthing ipods to be inverted Luddite snobbery of the worst sort; and not to own an ipod to show contempt for modern living which puts me in mind of the worst excesses of the Sacking of Byzantium. I speak, of course, as someone (as I might have mentioned this once or twice before) who owns (count them) three ipods. As Milton might well have put into the mouth of Satan, “Not to own three ipods argues yourself unknown the lowest of your throng!”

Perhaps in a modern version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony electronic devices of personal gratification would be seductively passed on conveyor belts in front of the holy man with the Evil One intently watching his itching fingers!

All of which is a typically digression laden preamble to my having seen a pictorial representation of a portable computer with a small screen on the outside of the cover together with illuminated buttons. Why there is a screen on the outside I know not, but it makes my boringly featureless portable computer cover with merely a vulgarly inert logo in the centre a thing of horror and repugnance to me!

Monday will find me wending my way to Gava to the Media*Markt® - an Aladdin’s Cave of screen adorned gadgetry – to gaze with unashamed desire at something I don’t need.

After all: what is life about? Be fair!