Glory be to God for spiked things!

I sing of the cactus!

There is a clear winner in the IKEA ‘three in a plastic tube, all different’ cactus purchase. Having spent most of their existence in the cramped pots in which they were bought, they have lived a stunted life forlornly retarded by little earth and unyielding plastic. Their liberation came in the form of two large circular pots which allowed transplantation and growth.

The seven cacti (where did the other one come from?) and the dead cactus from school now reside in spacious accommodation with fetching white stones on the surface to highlight their colour (green.)

In reverse order the cactus with the least vitality is a vaguely brain-like growth covered with a lattice-like display of spikes which cover the hummocky blobs like a spider’s web. There are a few unobtrusive and unexpected small white flowers to fail to catch the attention of a casual viewer.

Then there is a coral-like creature of apparently random excrescences which give it a sort of unsymmetrical Baroque feel. My specimen is only eight or nine centimetres high and I have seen examples metres high looking like organ pipes designed by a person living in more dimensions than four!

There then come two fleshy leaved, unspiked, bush like plants which look like shrubs, but provide valuable background for other more interesting examples.

The finger cactus with, gosh, five fingers is more typical of a child’s version of the plant: long rounded growths with close packed lines of spikes in neat rows, so fine that the tops of the plants appear to have a light green halo. These are also the most vicious. The spikes appear to be downy, but a brushed finder accumulates a host of tiny but very painful daggers which seem to work their way into the flesh and are very competent in evading extraction!


The aloe vera plant with its elegant extended triangular leaves with serrated edges spiralling out from the centre is a common choice in this area as it is unaffected by sand, salt and arid conditions. Mine is being harassed by one of the fleshy shrubs, but looking at the vicious spikes in which the triangular leaves of the aloe vera end, I know which one I am going to put money on!

And so to the clear winner. This is the cartoonists’ choice of cactus. One which looks as though it is constructed of thin plates of plant material one stuck on the edge of the other and building up into a random structure where you begin to wonder how the cantilevered plates sticking out at unlikely angles actually stay in place. The structural strength of the plant should be studied by architects and translated into buildings whose child-like sense of unexpected playfulness would be a refreshing change from the staid constructions which usually add to the visual boredom of our cities.

This cactus, as soon as it was transplanted (well, soon in plant terms) pushed out five substantial new plates. From where I am sitting I can see at least two more budding plates emerging from the new growth. This is a plant set on pot domination!

The dead cactus from school has definite life.

At this stage it is impossible to say whether the fuzziness at the tip of two of the stalks is actual cactus growth or developing mould from my assiduous and hopeful watering of the desiccated corpse.

As I have taken this dead cactus from the school that sacked me as an organic metaphor for my time there and my future career, I am prepared to give it more time to see what develops. This will also give me more scope to apply my skills in literary analysis to give intellectual substance to the casual death into life of this discarded and unremarkable plant.

It is also worth mentioning that the mini rose plant bought to celebrate Sant Jordi (Saint George – April 23rd) is still alive even though it is on the balcony where sand and salt air make the conditions less than idea for such a notoriously difficult plant. True there are no flowers, but the dusty leafs continue to grow and they have supported an etiolated sort of bud which looks to have achieved its full life cycle in this nascent form and appears far too vitiated actually to flower. But full marks for surviving say I!

There’s a lesson there were I to seek it!

Every day's significant!

Yesterday was the Name Day for all Carmens.

The concept of a Name Day when everyone with the same name can expect a reasonable haul of presents from anyone who knows their first name is one which is foreign to we Brits. And indeed it would be difficult to establish such a day in the UK as so many of the first names of British people do not have their equivalent saint to link to a specific day.

Is there a Saint Tracy or a Blessed Jason or a Beatified Craig? Those were some of the ‘problematic’ names when I started teaching some time ago; the sort of name that we were told would be synonymous with trouble! It wasn’t that many years before all those stigmatized appellations had worked their way through the system and I had taught with colleagues with those names.

Today such names as Kyle, Tyler and Harrison for the boys, with Ellie, Mia and Kylie for the girls mean that quite a few years will have to go by until the potential saints from today’s crop can achieve their golden crowns.

There is also the question of those Britons who have become naturalized citizens and those whose names reflect a religion other than Christianity. Perhaps the inclusive reality of a Name Day for Brits is totally illusory and, like so many other good ideas, the whole concept would be divisive and would foster resentment!

Today my first interview for a language school in Castelldefels. I have no lively hopes of a job – or at least a job paying a reasonable amount of money as an hourly rate. But I shouldn’t prejudge, even though all previous experience has shown that anything in excess of about 12€ an hour is unlikely – and therefore unacceptable.

And it was. I was offered the possibility of 15€ an hour, but as I had set my minimum at 20€ it was easy to dismiss. Pat the Director of Studies at the language school was refreshingly honest and helpful about my ‘needs’ and suggested that I would probably do better by getting involved in Company Language Teaching and very usefully got a magazine and flicked through suggesting possible contacts that I might like to try.

As soon as the meeting was finished I was off to lunch in Cubelles via Margaret and Iain’s. Lunch was a long bout of drinking and talking and lasted something like five and half hours. As I was driving moderation kept my mouth within limits and I was stone cold sober to go to dinner with Toni when I returned to Castelldefels.

It’s a hard old life.

Making an effort!

The search for a new job has taken another step towards reality.

A reworked CV and covering notes to two likely prospects (actually in Castelldefels) winging their way electronically to their destinations. Going there is one thing, finding anyone there in this season of summer holidays is something else. I fear that my two little please for employment might not find a willing ear for a couple of months!

However, the very process of writing for jobs is, in itself a cathartic process, with the pleasing result that it washes you clean from the dirty necessity of actually doing anything further for a couple of weeks! Although I think that I should adopt the saturation approach and apply for anything which is even half way possible in the hope and expectation of meeting more youths in ill fitting suits who ask me questions like, “If you go into a noisy class; what would you do?”

Ah the happy days of going to agencies and tolerating their inane questions in the hope that they could find a suitable job. Or was it hoping that they would be entirely unable to find a suitable job?

It would appear that in modern Spain (though not yet Catalonia) the influx of my ageing fellow countrymen has encouraged a rather worrying response. In the south of Spain in response to the number of foreign pensioners needing medical assistance it has been decided that free medical service will no longer be offered. I’m not sure that this is actual policy but even if such a thing is discussed then it is something to be very concerned about. I have not factored buying expensive private medical insurance into my living expenses!

But such things are in the future and at present the sun shines and all is well with the world.

In a way.

Now the interesting bit!

The Rubicon has been crossed! Hostilities are now open. War is declared!

Well, if you want the rather more prosaic truth, I have sent a few carefully worded letters. And it now relies on people not having gone on their summer holidays for anything significant to happen in the immediate future.

This really is a case of waiting and seeing. I look forward to the replies – if I get any!

My hatred for BBVA grows and grows. My account has finally been transferred from Terrassa to Castelldefels and I am actively looking for alternatives to the money grubbing, unhelpful, Spanish speaking in Catalonia apology for a financial institution that BBVA is. At the moment ING is in the lead because an ‘English’ speaking assistant gave a spirited (if sometimes incomprehensible) presentation for taking out one of the bank’s alluring accounts.

The only reason that I hesitate for a moment to remove my vast monetary reserves from BBVA is that I can’t. Six months rent is locked into a ‘dead’ account which I cannot touch and BBVA pays me 1.7% (1.7%!). This account cost a vast sum of money to set up and takes a substantial amount of money to service throughout the year. Why, I hear you ask, did I voluntarily put my money into such a stupidly unattractive financial jail?

The key word in that question is ‘voluntarily.’ Of course it wasn’t voluntary. It was a necessary prerequisite for the obtaining of the flat.

To me it seemed like a criminal conspiracy between ‘sub-lawyers’ (can such a debased life form exist outside a sick nightmare?) called Notarios combined with banks and estate agents. Now that is what I really call an axis of evil! And we are stuck in this absurd arrangement until the end of the contract for the flat, which could be in five years time. Something must be done!

This relentless paean of misery must cease. At once!

The weather has been excellent and we were able to laze in indolent ease.

Talking of indolent ease, it would appear that Toni’s unemployment pay after being sacked from his job is almost as much as when he was working and could continue for the next 22 months!

Who says it’s all bad news!

Always something to do even if it's nothing!

The colour of the sea is like that found on an early seaside photograph which has been colour treated – not unpleasant, but not quite blue. There has been a steely quality to the tone of the water inspite of the fact that most of the day has been bathed in glorious sunshine.

We have had the sort of weather where sunburn could strip the flesh from your bones: very hot with a stiff breeze coming off the sea so you don’t notice the temperature. You could actually see people turning that light, slightly watery looking pink which is my favourite colour for very good, very fresh, barely cooked meat. Not something you are likely to find in Spain unless you ask for it; I appear to be in the midst of a country of ‘well done’ diners!

And 'well done' is the colour I am mimicking as the temptation to laze in the sunshine and make enough vitamin D to carry one through the winter becomes irresistible. Well, as I took every opportunity of reminding those I left behind in Wales when I first moved here, “it is on the beach after all!” Now that I think about it, it still sounds pretty good!

But next week will be no time for lazing about. Toni has to continue the paper trail that started as soon as he was sacked. With any luck this one will end up with a more substantial amount of money per week than he could every have expected to get in Britain – and it will give him time to look around for a job more suitable to his qualifications and interests that the one which quit him.

I too have much to do. The second part of my Campaign for Real Teaching in Schools That Have Sacked Me will continue with letters winging their way to various interesting destinations.

I will also have to contact my union again and work out the strategy for getting official bodies involved in making The Owner’s life just that little bit more difficult.

There is also the phoning of the school to discover if they have found the lone maverick lawyer who will say that black is white and agree with the administration of the school that the fraudulent contract that I was given was actually legal and tip top. It is a ‘nice’ legal point that the administration is making. I have to agree with them that the contract qua contract is indeed legal, but not for the job that I was doing inside the school.

Their argument is similar to their pointing to a prescription drug and saying this drug is effective and then using it for a disease for which it was not intended. I’m not sure that likening my teaching to a disease is the most appropriate of images to use, but it’s simply too hot to think of another!

Job hunting also calls with our local English glossy freebie magazine littered with low paid possibilities! Worth investigating, if only for exposing their shameless attempts to exploit indigent fellow countrymen and the opportunity to reject with contempt the derisory pittance offered as ‘salary!’

But now I must get the documentation together for the letters that have to be sent on Monday. My first public salvo against The Owner.

I shall await the replies with interest!

Not all dead meat is the same

I suppose it is because I don’t know my way around the corpses of rabbits (especially dismembered ones) as well as chickens that I made my mistake.

For someone as well brought up as myself, taught from his earliest age to be ‘tidy’ in the way that he ate his food, the ‘hands on’ approach of the Spanish people to their food is somewhat liberating.

During one family meal in my grandparents’ dining room when I was very young, I even attempted to eat crisps with my fork, ensnaring each individual crisp between the tines of the implement. This tortuous way of eating continued until my uncle remarked after a guffaw that he had previously only seen the very drunk attempting what I was doing!

So, both hands on my food is a very liberating experience. Toni’s sister Laura bucks the Catalan trend by being very fastidious with the eating of her food and using her knife and fork with the dexterity of a trained surgeon, but I don’t have the patience to emulate her.

Chicken is perhaps at the edge of genteel cutlery accompaniment: it is possible to strip the flesh from the bones with implements without leaving surplus. To attempt to do the same with the altogether smaller remains of cooked rabbit is much more problematical.

I started on my rabbit with garlic with knife and fork but soon realised that the civilized approach would be counter productive in terms of the amount of flesh in my mouth as opposed to the amount left on the bones. Both hands were a necessity. So both hands were used.

Teeth nibbled assiduously and effectively, though from time to time thumbs were used to prise off some succulent titbits. One such titbit having been devoured with gusto I then noticed its proximity to a tiny set of perfectly formed teeth and realised that I had just popped and eaten its eye! At least it was well cooked!

Today has been an odd selection of weather styles: from the morning when we both defiantly lay on the beach in spite of the overcast conditions and lowering darker clouds on the horizon to when we finally gave up and went out to lunch which of course produced clear blue skies and bright sunlight!

The late afternoon saw yet another change and produced a sky of that particular cloudy dark blue much regarded by Dutch landscape painters. It filled the sky down to the low horizon formed by the sea and looked very dramatic, but it was not conducive to successful sunbathing!

The evening was presaged by rumbling thunder, rather unimpressive lightning and very impressive torrential rainfall.

Unlike Britain we can assume that we will have reasonable weather tomorrow: Catalonia does not have the spiteful quality of inclement climatic conditions that we Brits have come to expect as part of the joy of living in our green land.

The proof of the pudding will lie in the lazing on the beach tomorrow.

I hope.

It begins!

The letter has been delivered!

In one of those irritations which are written into literary accounts but do not usually happen in real life, I remembered that I had forgotten the calculations page (as written by my union) having left it in Castelldefels in the study. So, in a journey worthy of Ann Stone (who once crossed the Severn Bridge three times when going from Cardiff to a course in Bristol – think about it!) I had to ping my way through the tolls four times in order to make my appearance in Sitges.

In an act of hypocrisy worthy of me, The Owner greeted me with cordiality and asked me how the summer was going!

When we finally got down to business The Owner was nowhere to be seen and I had to be content with the secretary.

I was still clutching the letter I had brought which had been stamped by reception to prove that it had arrived and I was about the launch into my diatribe about the criminal contract that I had been given when I thought I heard the word 'cheque' penetrate my consciousness. I immediately shut up and urged the secretary to speak first.

The incorrect payment for my months of work at the school had apparently been recognized and I was given a cheque for a few hundred euros and new paperwork. All of this I eagerly accepted and then started on my condemnation.

The secretary read the letter in silence until she came to the word, 'fraudulent' at which she bridled a little and asked for an explanation. She rejected the explanation offered and insisted that the contract that I had been given was perfectly legal. I agreed that it would have been legal if I had been engaged to do something which was not the normal work of the school e.g. if I had been contracted to repaint the exterior. As I had been contracted to do the normal work of the school, i.e. teach, then I should have had an entirely different contract.

The secretary's rejection of this point of view was almost comic in its intensity and I urged her, if she could find a lawyer in Catalonia who agreed with her to give me the address so that my lawyer could communicate with him or her and find out which dimension they were living in!

This conversation ended in stalemate with neither side conceding ground. With my new found knowledge of a couple of days ago I knew that I had right on my side. I also knew that the secretary knew that I knew that she knew that I knew it. Knowing is all, but it doesn't necessarily bring you the money.

I had the distinct impression that, had I gone first and outlined my belief that I was owed the equivalent of 45 days payment then the cheque (which is now safely banked) would have softly and silently vanished away!

My further requests for information about the Readathon were first of all countered by “Well, as you are no longer part of the school, I don't really think that . . . “My assertion that this was the only charity appeal with which I had been involved where the total sum raised was a secret was greeted with a wry grin.

She then elaborated on her position with the, “Well, we pay it all into the bank account and. . .” this, of course was what I was afraid of and surely a clear implication of asking for the name of the charity and the date it was paid in, suggests that I am not full convinced by the probity of it all! I await with interest the final details of the Readathon that is if it has never been.

God knows it would have been difficult enough for money to have made it to Burma if it had been paid in when it should have, but given the delay and prevarication inherent in any dealing of the school with money it is almost inevitable that the help that we thought we might be able to give has been all but dissipated.

Monday will see the union add force to my arguments and the other phases of my plans will have been set in motion.

Meanwhile a fine day and the rest of Toni's family enjoying a day by the beach.

This entry has been composed on my new Asus Eee PC. The real trick will be to get this on to the blog site.

An experiment!

Lost opportunities

Another visit to the labour exchange, this time for Toni and a cheery wave to the lady at desk 2 as we are now old friends!

Then, with Carmen and Laura in tow we began to scour the toy shops to find Mickey’s House. Carles has now developed an obsession (as Toni knows to his cost having endured multiple playing of one particular video) for Mickey Mouse and all his works.

Toys R Us is a startling experience for those of us who do not have the nagging reminder in the form of a young child who constantly demonstrates the cruel lack of Mickey related material in his everyday life. Salvation (and an empty bank balance) waits in the astonishing aisles of this horrific shop.

Stuffed representations of the various characters seem positively repulsive in their unimaginative ordinariness and their (relatively) low price.

Your child can have a Disney digital camera, a Mickey Mouse television with the loudspeakers looking like a pair of the most famous ears on the planet or a Mickey Mouse café or Market – all at prices to bring water to the eyes of the most doting parent.

As you wander through this wonderland of overpriced tat watching children in various states of dismay hounding increasingly harassed looking parents only one thought rises to your mind: why didn’t I buy shares in this enterprise when it started. Toys R Us turns the most tawdry flimsy gimcrack rubbish into the purest gold!

Plans to thwart the evil schemes of The Owner continue slowly and tomorrow will see another stage of the campaign be realised. I am trying to keep a sense of proportion about my efforts and am utilizing the ‘Oxfam Control.’ This relates to a time when I had just started teaching and was an enthusiastic member of a local Oxfam group. Against my better judgement I was persuaded to participate in a carnival in which our group decorated and staffed a float. The number of planning meetings and design crises that we endured before the final design and completion were roughly similar to those needed for the architectural planning and resiting of the capital of Brazil to Brasilia.

The amount of money that we raised in the form of sometimes frighteningly well aimed coppers along the route of the parade was derisory for the mental and physical effort that we put into the bloody float.

I then and there made a resolution that my time was worth X pounds so, if we were organizing a fund raising enterprise it had to have the very real possibility of raising X+ pounds before I would take part in it. This ‘Oxfam Control’ can also be used for other aspects of life including relationships, the price of a cup of tea and God.

Had an early evening drink with an ex-colleague with our conversation running along predictable lines, but comforting nevertheless as we persuaded each other by total agreement with our statements that we had not lost the commonly accepted sense of reality which is away with the fairies in our school!

Thinking about it, I must finish my short story about wrestling. Don’t ask. But since you do, it is a promise that I made to my English class which I should fulfil, otherwise their touching faith in the veracity of teachers could be fatally shattered.

And far be it from me to give them too much reality too soon!

Which dungeon?

The upward turn of the lawyer’s eyes when he heard The Owner’s name spoke volumes for her rotten reputation, and his attitude of weary resignation to the catalogue of her machinations did not bode well for my case.

However, it is clear that the contract that I was given was fraudulent and therefore everything connected with it is similarly fraudulent so The Owner’s conceit that I had merely come to the end of my ‘contract’ can be treated with the rich contempt that it deserves.

I shall maintain that I was sacked and ask for the full compensation that the law allows. I have to say that the ‘full compensation’ is a little (well, a lot) less than magnificent, but, as the saying goes, it is better than being splashed in the face with rancid yak piss.

The campaign starts tomorrow with an innocuous telephone call informing The Owner of the amount of money which she owes me and why she owes me it. As telephonic communication has been a little strained between The Owner and my good self, I have also prepared a little letter

which I will personally deliver to the said person or her representative.

The complete lack of response to this letter will galvanize the Union into some sort of action and then I will deem the campaign really to have started!

Other ‘weapons’ are primed and ready to go off so my little printer will be working overtime!

I returned somewhat disconsolately to Castelldefels after the Union meeting because I was hoping that the lawyer would immediately phone the police and have The Owner arrested and carted in chains to some evil smelling and rat infested prison to rue her past life and ponder on the consequences of her evil acts. The rather more sedate way forward seemed wholly out of kilter with the damage that The Owner has done.

It was while I was wearily wending my way along the tedious motorway links home that I caught a glimpse of the distant mountains.

They were strung out in a misty overlapping line of blues looking like the most delicate brushstrokes of a master Chinese watercolorist. The sky behind was a casual smudge of orange with a muted gleam of light radiating from gold to ochre.

It was breathtaking and one of those casual displays of beauty that nature throws at one when one is least expecting it. And the music of Eduard Toldrà was playing on a recently purchased CD and the air conditioning was astringently cool.

Who could ask for more. And how easy it is to forget what had seemed overpoweringly important seconds before.

But then the view changed.

It always does!

Anybody there?

No answer was the stern reply

My suspicions that I am persona non grata with my previous school seem to have been given an added reality by the constant inability of the institution to get back to me in spite of an electronic storm of emails and a plethora of telephone calls.

Nothing.

The good people who still work in that benighted place respond with enthusiasm to my voice; but the shadowy powers that be that can actually answer my persistent questioning remain firmly in the dark and even more firmly silent.

Tomorrow the visit to the lawyer and finding out if there is any small thing that can be done to encourage fair education for students and teachers alike in a small school viciously mismanaged by an autocratic, unprofessional, untutored, interfering busybody who uses her financial clout to compensate for her lack of educational understanding.

My union has constantly emphasised that my expectations should be contained generally within the area generally described as ‘disappointment.’ I suppose that I would be happy with any indication to The Owner that her actions have not gone unnoticed and uncondemned. After so many years when she has been able to get away with the most disgraceful unprofessional behaviour (to put it at its mildest) it seems to be almost futile to think that anything real will be done. But I am an eternal optimist and a great believer in the tag of ‘Anything is better than nothing.’

As the meeting with the lawyer is in the evening I will be able to indulge myself with a whole day of expectation in order to store up enough positive vibes to see me through the inevitable depressing reality that legal possibility often turns out to be!

Toni has been to his meeting with his union representatives and they seem to be quite enthusiastic about taking his unfair dismissal further. He is naturally cynical about how much can be done, but there do seem to be clear grounds for further action.

The headquarters of the organization in which he used to work is located in the Zona Franca which is a hellish industrial complex set around a river and imaginatively set out around a series of roads named after the letters of the alphabet. Our journey to ‘B’ was given that twist of frustration by a solid traffic jam which was the result of extensive work on an elevated section of a new motorway.

The Zona Franca seems to be a spawning ground for ridiculously large lorries to the extent that as a mere car driver you feel like a vulnerable pygmy surrounded by hostile moving metallic cliffs which threaten to crush you at any moment.

Toni has a sense of direction like a homing pigeon and he sees structure where I merely see roads. His expectation of salvation by way of roundabout was duly rewarded and we slingshot our way out of claustrophobic metallic enclosure into the stench of industrial pollution. Toni orientated himself instantly and pointed imperiously towards a mercifully lorry free exit and within seconds even I knew where we were!

Depositing Toni outside the building, I made haste to get out of the stygian horror of (surely) regulation free development and made my way to MediaMarkt to see what progress had been made in respect of my handheld computer.

A torrent of Spanish greeted my arrival in the store, none of which to my 10% understanding seemed very positive. Eventually a boy was found who reluctantly spoke English after hopefully suggesting we communicate in German. I countered with French which, thankfully, he declined in favour of the King of Languages!

I reiterated the past history of the getting of an estimate and the difficulties of contacting the British insurance company. After a sotto voce conversation between the boy and the girl he announced that the repair had been stopped and I could have my deposit back.

How kind.

What this actually meant was that the machine had not left the store; it had not been sent to HP; nothing had been done since I last spoke to the store; they had lost the documentation and therefore the number on the packet with the machine in it; finding the documentation they had also found the machine which they had not sent anywhere.

They therefore presented me with my money as a kindness of their part, rather than returning my money because they had done nothing at all. It just goes to sow what a soft touch I am that I actually began to believe that the machine was on the point of being repaired when actually nothing, nothing at all had been done. Learn by experience. At least begin to do so. Soon!

A birthday party in Terrassa and tea and talk in Sant Pere completed my day: both stimulating in their different ways – how did I ever have time to teach in school all day!

Time to put my documentation in order for tomorrow!

Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!

Living in Spain for a year has not given me any greater understanding of what is going on in the celebration of the festival of Sant Fermin.

This includes the tradition of bull running in Pamplona. A disturbingly large number of people dress up with white shirts and red neckerchiefs and provoke bulls which are set loose in the streets.

In the normal course of events I have no objection to people who indulge in dangerous sports as long as they do not expect the public health services to patch them up again when they get what they richly deserve.

I dread to think what they do the bulls before they set them loose, but if the bulls have the temerity just to stand around then there are plenty of people there to spur them up into more aggressively macho activity to match the fearless alcohol fuelled idiocy of the participants.

The bulls are obviously frightened and confused and on that basis alone this Hemmingway supported piece of cruelty should be banned. And talking of Hemmingway, look what happened to him at the end.

Toni is quick to point out that bizarre things like bull running only occur in places outside Catalonia. Inside Catalonia they have things like castell building and fuet. Things which have a human dimension at least and don’t involve cruelty to animals, though the fuet was once an animal, though I hope it was killed humanely!


There is very much a feeling of end of term and beginning of holidays and that is a moment for me to take the making of lists of tasks more seriously. More seriously because there is actually time to get them done and tick them off – surely one of the more satisfying activities known to human kind. As my list of tasks is on my handheld computer it reminded me that my insurance company have finally decided that the amount to repair the old broken handheld is too much. I therefore needed to return to MediaMarkt to get a refund on the deposit that was demanded before they would give me an estimate for the repair.

The ‘repair’ of my handheld is a long ongoing story which has been complicated by the international nature of the claim and the difficulty of the language in ensuring that the activity or lack of it in Spain was understood by all parties.

For whatever electronic reasons the first attempt to get the electronic copy of the estimate to the insurance company did not work and the delay between the failure and my realization that it was a failure meant that the time limit on the estimate had expired. The refreshing of the estimate and the extra application to the insurance company meant that I had to redo all the paperwork in MediaMarkt.

My presentation of the documentation for the refund was greeted by the assistant with the disturbing information that the repair would be ready in a few days. When I explained that I had not, could not have, authorized the repair, there was immediate recourse to yet more documentation – which could not be found.

You have to understand that I have given no indication of the actual time that this little transaction took or the number of people of increasing seniority and importance that were necessary to arrive at absolutely no conclusion to what is a nice dilemma.

I did not authorize the repair. The broken machine is mine and must be returned to me. I want the refund of the €100 deposit. I await the judgement of Solomon which will be needed to sort out this little mess.

I have, of course, bought a new handheld some time ago. This action was based on an eerie prescience based entirely on past hard experience which told me that the repair would not be simple/cheap/possible/easy/satisfactory or any combination of those words. As indeed it turned out.

The next horror I expect is that the insurance company will send me a cheque based on some gnomic computation to assess the value of the machine which has been deemed beyond repair.

This money will be sent to me by international cheque which I will have to pay into my hated bank, BBVA. This institution’s greedy fingers, unhelpful meretricious obstruction, dismissive attitude and refusal to speak Catalan (that last one was supplied by Toni) suggests that a major percentage of the cheque is going to be taken up with spurious ‘bank charges’ and probably the worst rate of exchange in the western hemisphere.

I can feel a comforting anger beginning to build and, as the cheque takes about 28 days to be processed, there is plenty of time for that anger to develop into an all encompassing fury.

My tasks are still growing with not a single job completed today.

But the sunbathing and a swim took my mind off such mundane concerns.

And I’m now convinced that the ‘dead’ cactus is showing subtle signs of life!

On other people's shoulders!

Watching a very young child clamber up the backs of a human construction some fifty feet high to the accompaniment of a raucous orchesta of various reeded instruments is an odd experience.

I have to say that every time I see groups of castelleres making their castells I find it a rather moving experience.

These human towers are constructed using people standing on each others shoulders and these structures sometimes have up to ten levels!

The top two levels are where the children come in. One child known as an aixecador makes his, or in my experience her, way to the top of the tower and then awaits the second child known as the enxaneta. The enxaneta climbs on top of the aixecador and raises his or her right hand which is the sign that the castell has been contstructed. The completion of the castell does involve the successful dismantling of the structure as well without its collapsing.

For more information you can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castell but reading about the process does not give you an idea of what it is like acually being there.

On the face of it this activity is absolutely pointless and dangerous with the added suspicion that sending a small child to the top of a rickety column of people smacks of child abuse!

If you would like to stop and think about how many of your activities could be summed up by the two adjectives “pointless and dangerous” then you will rapidly discover that many of the more interesting diversions of the human animal can be dismissed with those two words. Sport, sex and sunbathing (to take but three starting with the letter ‘S’) could certainly be covered!

So, we will ignore the obvious idiocy of the activity and concentrate instead on the more positive aspects.

All Catalans I have met take a defensively nonchalant attitude towards the building of castells and treat the successful completion and dismantling of a high castell with the same respect and enthusiam as they would give to a well scored goal in football.

The musical accompaniment with the traditional instruments and the fact that the enxaneta is supposed to raise four fingers as a symbol for the four bars on the Catalan flag gives some idea of the nationalistic feeling that is present when the castells are built and perhaps gives some basis for the sight of the rising column of people being a representation of a national group rather than merely a quaint custom produced by odd folk.

For the column of people to rise there has to be support and, at the base of the structure, this support is a whole mass of people whose combined effort ensures the solidity of the whole. The people involved are not all trained athletes (through training and practise there certainly is) and the sheer ordinariness of the participants is strangely uplifting.

It may be, of course, that I am merely exhibiting my more romantic side. Or indeed just wrong. Time and understanding the country in which I now live will tell.

Meanwhile our joint life as the unemployed is about to start - though the idea of forming an EFL school is a real possibility and one which deserves some serious consideration during the summer.

My visit to the lawyer is still some days away so I have time to try and understand the tickets allocation system for the opera for next season. The Liceau offers various packages, none of which include all the operas, but do include other concerts that I do not necessarily want to attend. The total cost for a decent seat with a reasonable view is astonishingly large, but if you look on it as a year’s worth of entertainment then I suppose it becomes a little more reasonable. But it’s a lot of money to pay out all in one go!

And I’m unemployed!

One thing after another!

As I opened the door to go to the opera there, standing on the threshold, early, far too early to be home from work was Toni!

Not one to allow me to revel in exciting life changing moments in isolation he has joined me in the experience of being sacked!

My first instinct was to suspect the long arm of The Owner being in some way involved, but then I considered that such a response would show that I had taken too much of the everyday paranoia of my ex school into my ordinary life!

Whereas my dismissal was always on the cards, Toni's fall from grace was far more unexpected. His misery is somewhat lessened by the fact that, due to the quaint unemployment laws in Spain, and the fact that he has got a reasonable number of years in work to look back on, he should get a reasonable amount of money to luxuriate in days of idle richness. Though I have to say that this is one of those things that I will believe when I see it!

With both of us out of work we are back to those halcyon days of exactly a year ago when we arrived in Castelldefels: funny how cyclical life can be!

Talking of cyclical I have to report that the devil is among us!

He is alive and well and setting out his satanic wares in PC City. The fruit may have become less 0rganic and more technological, but this Son of Adam still stretched out his hand and did eat.

In my defence I would aver that only the basest form of scoundrel could pass by the new Eee PC series of mini laptops on the other side of the road.

It's cute little 7” screen and its tiny keypad which is not really made for my spatulate fingers: it is, simply put, a Needful Thing so I now have one and I feel that I can call on the moral support of that great technophile from the past, King Lear in dismissing carping criticism with the stern injunction, 'Argue not the need!'

The kind people in PC City set up the machine for me and offered to put all the basic software on the machine in an hour. I therefore departed for dinner.

The fish menu in the Basque restaurant was excellent with fish soup, cod with beans (how Bostonian!) and the sort of chocolate cake that, after one spoonful you feel like dropping your face onto your plate as the only adequate compliment to the confection. As the table was outside the restaurant in a colonnade next to the market and there were numbers of people passing I managed to resist. But only just!

Collecting the diabolical delight now bursting with its newly installed software, I took it back to the car in the Ramblas car park. The Basque meal having, as it were, completed its gastric journey I entered the car park toilet. And left it almost immediately as it was insole deep in what I hope was overflow from the cistern.

I decided to repair to the altogether more salubrious surroundings of the Teatre del Liceu.

Meditating in the spotless and marble acccommodation afforded to bourgeois patrons of the opera I heard a gentleman of advanced years come in to avail himself of porcelain relief.

I can only hope that the opera gave him as much pleasure as the emptying of his bladder. If I had been a marker of porn films I would have signed him up on the spot! In the time it took him to complete his business he enacted aurally the sound effects of a complete and graphic 'little death!'

The opera was 'Luisa Miller' and a thoroughly nasty little tale it is. The censors did not allow Verdi and Cammarano to stick too closely to Schiller's original conception which was much more political than the tragic melodrama which finally resulted which means that this fatal love story seems grotesquely morbid and self obsessed.

The ending is a piece of morbid philosophizing which is thoroughly repulsive. The son of a murdering count has suppressed his memory of his father's guilt until his own philandering becomes exposed and he uses his knowledge to ensure his father's compliance in not imprisoning his peasant lover. As you can see it is not the most sophisticated of story lines.

A sorry tale of intrigue ends with the count's son poisoning himself and his lover (while not omitting to murder the rascally lascivious henchman before he dies) leaving the count to look on the pile of bodies and rue the destruction of all his dynastic plans.

The tenor lead of Rudolfo was sung inadequately by Aquiles Machado who lacked the necessary bravura to being off this impossibly melodramatic role.

His father, Count Walter was adequately performed by Giacomo Prestia looking as though he had stepped out of a John Singer Sargent portrait, while his dastardly lieutenant, Wurm, was sung by Samuel Ramey with a rocking vibrato which was either crass characterization or poor singing. The unrewarding role of the unfortunate duchess was given a nasal performance by Irina Mishura. The old soldier and father of Luisa, Miller was sensitively portrayed by Roberto Frontali.

The star of the evening and a singer whose stage presence and glorious voice stole the show, Nino Surguladze, almost made the evening comprehensible. She was controlled, dramatic and exact – a joy to listen to!

The production (Gilbert Deflo) was interesting. The stage was undulating and (memories of WNO's 'Cunning Little Vixen') was visually exciting though it did let dropped hats roll and the soldiers stood at a slant.

The visual 'idea' of the production was to have the proscenium converted by black curved flat so that the audience saw the action take place in a sort of semi circular bubble. It gave the effect of an old fashioned print and at the same time it made the action look as though it were taking place in one of those glass bubbles which you turn upside down to create a snow storm.

I am sure that there were ideas of artificiality and contained societies knocking about in the concept but I was happy with the fact that it looked good!

Musically I found the sound of the orchestra somewhat cramped. It reminded me (disastrously) of the acoustic of the New Theatre in Cardiff – a boxed sound that I thought I had left behind forever!

At times I found the balance unsettling and the orchestra sometimes swamped the singers, but that might have been a reflection on the singers and not the band!

As an opera I found 'Luisa Miller' a join the dots Verdi: there was more bluster here than raw power.

Perhaps it's unfair to look at 'Luisa Miller' and think of 'Otello' – but it's a free world and I did and I was left unsatisfied, but I enjoyed the production.

Who could ask for more!

The repair man never calls!

The way to contentment is not gained by dwelling on the amount of time spent waiting for repairmen to deliver the dishwasher they have managed to keep out of operation for months.

But who wants to find contentment. Contentment (why not ‘content’?) equals stasis equals death. So I will dwell on the time that I have donned the Marigolds (metaphorically) and got down and clean by washing dishes using the old fashioned (and unhygienic) method of hot water, lemon washing up liquid and sheer exasperation.

It’s not really a question of which I prefer: washing or drying. I hate both. And the minimalist, white plastic curve which is supposed to be a draining rack which I had to buy (god how that rankles!) merely suggests stability for stacked dishes. A slight misreading of the topography of the sedimentary arrangement of plates and it all comes crashing down.

The delivery of our thrice futilely repaired machine is scheduled for the limited time slot of five hours from two in the afternoon to seven at night. Three of those hours have now passed and I can hear the nails scratching their way down the blackboard as my nerves begin to wind themselves up to fuel an inevitable tirade.

I confidently expect a ring on the bell at this moment because in my experience it is only when you have written about something that reality finally manages to catch up and see the way in which it should be going. So, the jigsaw repairmen (you know the sort, the ones with no technical expertise and whose knowledge only extends to replacing the most obvious units in a machine in order to get it working) should be here now.

I paused a few seconds and no bell rang.

Perhaps my writing lacks the compelling verisimilitude which produces instant results, perhaps I should look back and be more pointed, or more desperate, or more furious or be prepared to spend more money and get a better make than the notorious Taurus (never buy it) brand.

Deep breath. Think of other things.

Tomorrow the Union and a three way conversation to find if anything can be done to frustrate the machinations of The Owner. My paperwork is almost all together, I am just waiting for the headteacher’s reference and then I am ready to go to the meeting and start writing the necessary letters.

The school is answering none of my emails which suggest the way that the institution is preparing to face my gentle assault: by ignoring me. I am sure that this was a perfectly effective way to see off the irritants in the past, but I am not one to be placated by feigned indifference.

The battle lines are drawn!

(Please add your own appropriate quotation from the works of William Shakespeare.)

Waiting to go!

I don’t think that I am alone in thinking airports life denying vortices of desperation.

There is a desolation about those vast, inhuman, architecturally sculpted spaces which is difficult to comprehend.

The departure of the girls gave me an opportunity to muse and I realized that large city airports are usually monumentally striking in a tawdry sort of way, covering acres of land with nondescript prefabricated enclosures and are probably the nearest things we get to secular modern gothic cathedrals. Like the medieval churches of old they are centres of social hope, commercial greed and wish fulfilment, but mostly nugatory activity.

And the whole point of them is that people should (and want) to leave them as quickly as possible.

You come to an airport to go.

On the face of it there should be no difference between an airport and a bus station or train station – but there is.

With buses and trains you have proximity; you are next to them, you can touch them. A similar relationship in an airport would only be possible if you could stand on the runway without the reinforced plate glass between you and the mode of transport.

All the vast warehousing of check in, shops, passport control, more shops, cafes, waiting rooms and yet more shops keep you well away from the planes: no bus stops (except for airport buses) no platforms (except for airport trains) no tangible link to what is going to take you away.

And the activity.

Some of it purposeful especially from those uniformed denizens of the permanent workforce walking with confidence and barely concealed contempt for the transient population of mere travellers.

Most of the activity is of the pathetically aimless sort as neophyte voyagers struggle to orientate themselves in the ebb and flow of airport bodies. Like modern day dung beetles they scurry about rolling their lurid possessions on precariously loaded trollies, scanning their surroundings as if afraid of a predatory attack and looking for the safe haven of a short queue.

And leave taking is now a ludicrous sort of extended pantomime. Hugs and kisses just before the ticket control and then the ludicrous Pac-man impersonation of walking through the zigzag maze which separates people into single person lines in preparation for the x-ray machine and body scan. While you tramp your aimless way round this uninspired obstacle course, the people you are leaving watch everything with a fixed smile. By the time you have managed to navigate the frisky rays of the metal detector the fixed smile of your hosts has become a rictus!

As your erstwhile guests disappear into the money pits of the shopping concessions you are left to do what all airports encourage: leave.

So I had a menu del dia by way of compensation for my loss and give me strength for the further Struggle Against The Owner.

So far I have not manage to contact a single parent to inform them of what has gone on, and the longer this information is delayed the weaker its eventual effect.

There is still the weak hope of the Union doing something, but it is difficult to see quite what they can achieve, but I shall have an interesting time trying to make them do something!

Meanwhile on the real life front, there is an opera to go to on Friday and the tickets for next year to worry about!

Big, bad bank!

Never, never bank with BBVA.

Follow this simple rule and your way through life has just got to be better.

Not only was there the usual long queue of frustrated ‘customers’ in this apology for a financial institution but also my bank book did not work. When it finally did manage to get printed I discovered that this bunch of thieving pirates had stolen over €100 to service my money which the bank has locked away.

Six months rent ripped from my hands and imprisoned as some sort of surety for the flat. I will never forgive them! This money is locked in the bank ‘in case of’ something or other and they pay me 1.7% and charge me €400 a year to look after it. I wonder what their rate of interest to borrowers is. Not 1.7% I’ll be bound. And all the time it’s my money!

I left the bank spitting fire, yet at the same time reassured that the cheques The Owner had paid as part of the recompense for my teaching in her dysfunctional school had been honoured. The only time such a positive verb is going to be used for anything connected with her!

I had calmed down somewhat by the time that I got back to the flat and soon settled down on the balcony with a book taken from Gwen.

‘This book will save your life’ is a title which is instantly arresting and sets high expectations. Putting a picture of six doughnuts on the front cover is provocative so you open the book expecting to be stimulated from page one.

The opening paragraph, written in the second person and the present tense, is frankly disappointing and that was a response I had to the book as a whole.

The action of the story is a sort of ‘new age finding yourself’ type and is written in a picaresque style by A M Homes is alternately engaging and irritating. There are moments of humour and some absurdly captivating moments, but the novel taken as a whole is less than its parts.

The girls have taken the opportunity to ‘fry’ a little more with Nia throwing caution to the wind and welcoming the rays while Gwen has shrunk a little more towards the shadows with a good book.

As it was the last evening we made another attempt to have tapas at the Basque restaurant. We were lucky we went when we did, as we were offered a full display of the whole range of tapas which, during the early course of the evening was soon reduced to a fraction of the offerings we could choose from! The poor kitchen staff were loosing out in the race to keep a full range of tapas ready for the masses of people who were hoovering them up!

The evening ended with ice cream on the beach and photographs taken to the accompaniment of flashes of lightning in the distance.

The girls have been perfect house guests managing the seemingly impossible trick of being unobtrusive yet highly visible! Each time we have gone out for dinner they have always managed to turn quite a few heads and I have managed not to smash the faces of any of the impudent males who have dared look at my charges!

Their departure forces me to focus my attention on The Campaign and to realise that the Union has not contacted me and that I need to get a few more bits of paper before the next stage in my restrained revenge can take place.

This is the last week of school for virtually all the teaching staff whatever their status in The Owner’s eyes and after that, like all educational institutions it will fall into that particular form of hibernation where all enquiries seem to fall into a black hole from which nothing emerges until September. The Owner sacking me when she did was fully aware of the limited time opportunity that I would have to make any difference and I think that the typical torpor of the summer institutions may defeat me after all. However, I shall make a spirited foray and see what I can do, after all it’s only Tuesday.

Four days until Cut Off Friday might make all the difference!

You see, ever the optimist!

A win to savour

I never thought that I would ever sit in a restaurant in Catalonia and hear the chant of “Es – pañ – ya!” echo around me!

But I have sat in that restaurant. The victory of Spain in the European Cup was accompanied but much nationalistic shouting; though I have to say that I thought I noticed some Catalans sitting as quieter tables with a bemused smile on their faces while their more demonstrative countrymen were being very vocal. To my utter horror I actually heard the assembled delirious Spaniards even attempt a version of ‘Eviva España’ and was correspondingly delighted to find out that they knew even fewer of the words than their English counterparts! I have to admit that it sounded a little grotesque to hear an ill sung anthem of British boozers abroad ill sung by the people who were expressing their staunch patriotism.

Both the British and Spanish media have made much of the fact (as they see it) that support for the Spanish team has crossed all the cultural and political boundaries in the country and has fostered a real sense of national pride. You have to live in Catalonia before you can understand what an odd sight it is to see Spanish flags publicly waved in solidarity rather than as a political insult. Long may such a feeling of togetherness remain, but, personally, I don’t think it will see out the week!

The match was excellent and I saw how involved I was in the outcome when I realised that I had been shredding paper napkins in my anxiety. I think that this must have been some sort of unconscious tribute to those Dickensian figures that shred delicate cambric handkerchiefs at times of stress!

The only spectre at the feast for a victory that was richly deserved by the Spanish team, who had numerous chances which could have been converted into goals, was found in the opening ceremony for the game.

It is one of the facts of international stereotyping that Austrians never ignore a chance to parade eighteenth century foppishness as what they imagine to be a glorious symbol of the one time greatness.

To an Austrian any occasion would not be complete without effete figures clad in tight fitting silk breeches, silk stockings, satin shoes, brocade waistcoat and ornate white wigs lurking about. Sure enough, give or take a few sartorial details, the opening ceremony had such figures inexplicably waltzing around moving conical colanders which were covered in multi coloured buboes representing the national colours of the participating nations. The erratic paths of the colanders seemed to be contained by what looked from an aerial shot of the stadium to be a pattern derived from an uninteresting crop circle.

The camera shorts attempted to give vitality and coherence to this display but did not succeed. As I watched this vacuous posturing the cold hand of fear clutched my imagination and I thought about what we might have planned for the opening of the Olympics!

Talking of premonitions, my cactus, to my prejudiced eye seems to be getting healthier. The three parts of my prickly plant seem to be stouter – but this may be self delusion. Although I vowed not to look at it for a few days to give it time to find itself and start a new life, I find myself studying it like some ancient Greek looking for auguries in the entrails of some unfortunate beast.

Since the cactus is intimately connected to my ex-school I do not know what would be the most appropriate direction for the plant to go: flourish or fail, both extremes can be incorporated into a more than satisfactory prognostication for future progress.

As indeed can any state in between.

Wonderful thing literary analysis!

A Simple Night Out

The good thing was we weren’t actually stranded on a desolate motorway miles from anywhere relying on my shaky grasp of Spanish to contact the RACC.

As I believe it says somewhere in Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Technocrats (Chapter 7, Verse 18 et passim) “Verily I say unto you; even as that man puts his trust in gadgets so also will he be disappointed. For of an hundred men that believe the smooth talking of the navigator by satellite, ninety and nine shall be brought to the narrow roads unlit and strewn with rocks of all sorts and potholes of unplumbed depth leading nowhere.”

And so it came to pass as we ricocheted from roundabout to roundabout like some hapless metallic ball in a giant pinball machine!

We eventually found the place to which we were supposed to be going by a combination of trying roads almost at random in the hope that the ‘recalculating’ voice from the box would have more understandable directions and also by Nia’s sharp eye which noticed a large sign stuck on a wall with our destination painted on it!

If we had been (if I had been) a little less flustered I would have noticed that Banyeres del Penedés was composed of picturesque arched entrances and quaint narrow roads and all sort of other details which were lost when we were unsure that we were ever going to reach our destination.

Seeing Reeven was a delightful bonus because basically he was the reason that we had made the epic journey. His enthusiastic and shocked welcome made up for some of the frustration of finding him.

We discovered that we had missed his first set, but that he and his singer were going to play a second when they had something to eat.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from the location for our musical feast but it was anything but the lowish sort of dive that my mind associates with Jazz!

The hotel restaurant of L’hort del l’avia turned out to be a stylish location with wide floor to ceiling arches

and wooden beams; starched linen napery and heavy cutlery; a ponderous waiter and uncomfortable chairs – all the prerequisites for an expensive meal.

The waiter was a remarkable gentleman; he moved with the ponderous slow dignity of the very fat and had an almost feminine grace in his majestic peregrinations from table to table.

As it turned out, at €20 for a three course meal, it seemed a bit of bargain. In an ironic twist, it would have been cheaper for me to have had wine with the meal (which was included in the price) than the water which I chose (which was extra.) Water was essential for a clear mind to deal with the petrol – but of that more anon.

The only hot thing I had in my meal was the coffee at the end of it. This is not a condemnation of the restaurant, but rather a comment on my choices: Vichyssoise followed by carpaccio and completed by turrón ice cream. Delicious!

Reeven and a singer Nicole were an excellent accompaniment to the meal. Her voice reminded me of Cleo Lane; it had a throaty sexiness and a melodic smoothness that was great to listen to. Reeven’s guitar playing was both an accomplished and sympathetic foil to the voice and also virtuosic when he performed some solo developments of the musical line.

It was an excellent meal, though I have to admit that the girls found their cod a little too salty for their taste (Welcome to Spain!) but they seemed to enjoy the evening. As Nia said, “It took a long time to get here, but I think it was worth it!”

At the end of the meal, after the bill had been paid certain facts which I had forcibly suppressed for the duration of the dinner began to reassert themselves. We were, it had to be admitted in the back of beyond. We were, to all intents and purposes, lost. It was very late. And last, but by no means least, we had very little petrol left.

The whole of the restaurant were involved in working out if there was a petrol station open at one o’clock in the morning within the distance that my empty tank would reach.

The directions that we were given were so simple, straightforward and fundamentally inaccurate that I was back at the hotel being plaintive within minutes. Plaintive tinged with hysteria as my schoolmarmish on board computer had pinged at me and lit up an ominous little light informing me that the car was running on faith rather than diesel.

To the everlasting credit of the restaurant, one of the workers volunteered to guide me in his car to the petrol station. Following the car through a hugely complex series of turnings which bore no relation to the simple instructions we were given we pressed on and – found the petrol station closed.

It says something for the mendacious (thank god!) qualities of petrol gauges that the next open petrol station was a considerable (and when I say considerable I mean all of us sitting in the car tight lipped, tight knuckled and forgetting to breathe sort of considerable) distance away – and we made it! When we finally coasted in to the side of a pump I am convinced that we were running on vapour and not liquid!

It is almost worth fearing running out of petrol for the sheer delight in the quality of relief when you find some to refill the tank. Almost, but not quite!

The girls took to their beds at once when they got into the flat and I do not expect to see them for any part of the morning! Though wait! I think I heard some vague sounds as of sluggish movement and it’s only half past ten. More plausibly it could be the neighbours who have turned up en masse as this is obviously the official start of summer and the preciously empty flats of the we-are-so-rich-we-do-not-need-to-rent-them are now filled by their few weeks a year owners.

Never let it be said that I was envious!

Or bitter!

To read is to live!

It is difficult to tell if the dead cactus I planted to commemorate the cessation of my scholastic striving in Sitges has changed its status.

It was planted in a fit of confused metaphorical angst, but now I feel a certain proprietary concern about its future. One of the girls pointed out, “It does look a little bit grey!” but I persist in a stubborn belief that its wasted sides and spikes have become a little plumper since I have lavished care on it. I think I will try and ignore it for a few days and then be surprised by a cheeky green bud or a potential poniard shyly pointing skywards!

I wonder if Tim Burton has purchased the rights to film The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett. If he hasn’t he should have: it would be a perfect vehicle for the portrayal of his sombre visual humour. No obvious part for Johnny Depp though; but there again, perhaps he could do the voice over for the character of Death!

The book was a present from Cardiff and I devoured it. Terry Pratchett is something like a banned substance for me. I remember reading my first Discworld novel and mentally registering that this could be trouble. If you are not immediately repulsed by the grubbily twee ideas featured in Pratchett’s novels then you will probably be hooked by the end of your first. Some people, of course, recognize this proclivity and immediately set up fire walls to protect themselves.

I have had some practice at this having had to defend myself from the novels and short stories of Robert Heinlein,

Isaac Asimov, Evelyn Waugh, Tom Sharpe, P G Wodehouse, Agatha Christie (especially the Miss Marple series) and Penguin Modern Classics when they had all those wonderful modern paintings on the covers. Some of these writers have an addictive quality that makes heroin look like sherbet.

I remember with the writings of Robert Heinlein that I had to set a number of strict rules to prevent my total overdose on his eminently readable books. I vowed that I would only buy his works second hand, in one second hand book shop and for a small sum of money. A sum, indeed so small that I hesitate to bring it to mind as it merely demonstrates with stark clarity the inroads that inflation has made in the ensuing years!

With Terry Pratchett I have had to rely on even stricter fire walls and only read volumes that I am given or find lying around. For example, if there had been a Pratchett novel among the books on the borrowing shelf in my last school then it would have been taken and read as one of my first coherent actions in the place. But there weren’t so it wasn’t.

Read it your own peril. A thorough delight!

The other book which I finished this morning while waiting for the girls to arise and go forth to fry was ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ by Khaled Hosseini.

This was given to me by our absconding assistant unit manager (obviously before she absconded. Isn’t that a wonderful sounding word? Absconded. I think its something to do with the daring juxtaposition of a plosive and sibilant) with the smiling injunction that I was to cry as I read it. I didn’t.

It is set in Afghanistan and uses religion, sectional infighting and the effect of world politics to provide some of the impetus for the drive of the narrative. The basic story is “in the end it is love that triumphs over death and destruction.” I know this because it says so on the back of the book. I found sections of it gripping and I found it hard not to sympathise with the final act of violence – but overall I was not enthusiastic. I would however recommend it as a painless way of reading about the misogynistic hypocrisy of the regime of the Taliban. One feels like making some trite comment about the inequities of religion and the inevitable genocidal extinction that comes with the logical extension of a faulty hypothesis which is based on revealed knowledge which is true by faith. That oxymoron, ‘revealed knowledge’ has brought so much misery into the world one doesn’t know how to find the words to give an adequately venomous response to the lazy beliefs founded by the sons of pregnant virgins, angels talking to business men, oddly disappearing golden tablets, stone engraved tablets and the rest of the magic rubbish.

I’m only guessing, but I think that the previous paragraph has its genesis in a bout of extended cleaning of the flat. There is nothing like brushing, sweeping and polishing to get me in a thoroughly unphilosophical state of mind.

Perhaps when the scent of the various aerosols I have used has dissipated I can get back to the state of placid cynicism which is my default setting!

Untune the sky!

Be wary of asking for CDs of Vaughan Williams in Barcelona.

I was in ‘the other part’ of El Corte Ingles and browsing through the classical music section looking in a determinedly desultory way for bargain box sets of the music of Vaughan Williams on the occasion of his significant commemoration (you can tell that I am a bit wary about just when he was born or died.) I have read about such things in the very wonderful BBC Music Magazine and am eager to spend a sizeable amount of money for a frankly astonishing number of CDs.

One of the basic problems with Vaughan Williams in his bid for musical immortality is that he chose the wrong bit of the alphabet for his surname/s. This name/s is/are too near the end of the alphabet. His stuff is likely to be mixed into the ‘Various’ section of the display shelves and his serious symphonic works are likely to be mixed in with bargain basement boxed sets and crossover trash by however is being touted as the new Caruso. This is no way for a serious musician to be treated.

Having searched through the Various and sneered my way through Vivaldi I eventually discovered that our Ralph (or Rafe as we pseudos like to call him) was firmly placed in the Mr Williams category. And there was nothing new or remotely interesting or bargain basement about anything.

Throwing linguistic caution to the winds I intimated to the friendly looking woman of a certain age behind the counter that I would like to have a box of Vaughn Williams.

The blankness of the stare which greeted this request forcibly reminded me of Toni’s mum as she struggles to make sense of my enthusiastic yet essentially flawed Spanish. I further explained in fluent foreign (far be is from me to claim that my excited gibber was anything approaching Spanish) that Vaughan Williams was a very important English composer. Her blankness, if anything, became even more vacant.

I then had one of those ideas which, almost invariably, have landed me in almost terminal social complexity. “His name is Bough-ch-an Why-ii-anz.” An immediate look of recognition closely followed by infectiously chuckling laughter and a gurgled compliment on my pronunciation!

Still no boxed sets though, so that it will have to be The Boys or Amazon.

After the thunder and lightening of the early morning and a sluggish sort of sulking weather up to lunch time, we were treated to a reasonable day of sunshine. We used the opportunity to go to Barcelona to ‘do’ the shops from El Corte Ingles to Mare Magnum. And back again.

After an extended period of energy building (or staying in bed till late) the girls were more than eager to expend their reserves on serious shopping. I told them, only half jokingly that a lack of purchases would mean the lack of seat in the car going back to Castelldefels.

I am glad to report that I had two exhausted passengers on the return trip.

I think that we would have to tick the Culture box because the girls visited the Market just off the Ramblas and had their photographs taken with a variety of ‘living statues probably the most notable one being the white painted gentleman on the toilet. Payment of money for the photograph eventually produced a most realistic fart, which I only half suspect was electronic in its delivery rather than gustatory! (Not the right word possibly but it’s in the same ball park.)

Our meal this evening was Japanese and for the first time we were given seats on the periphery of the integrated steel cooking area. Sushi was obviously not going to extend his dexterous use of cooking utensils, so I was somewhat relieved that we all ordered at least one hot thing.

Our cook provided the sort of interesting floor show of redundant flourishing of clanking metal knives and scrapers and those things that look like overlarge icing sugar smoothers that left us thinking that he could have done it better. But it certainly gave our food a certain vibrant urgency. Most enjoyable.

Tomorrow the girls fry during the day, while at night we have been urged to attend Reeven’s band performing some way down the coast. The girls seemed genuinely enthusiastic when this little excursion was mooted and we will have to see how the reality matches expectation.

It will, if nothing else, give me an opportunity to compare notes with the headteacher and for us to indulge in some cathartic skulduggery on the side of right!

A day to savour to come!