Internet intensity

I blame living in a fairly small town bereft of normal access to the everyday gadgets that are the life blood of my imagination.

The internet is an over compensation for the lack of up to date electrical shops within a couple of minutes of the flat. But it is an irresistible one. Which is another way of saying that I have ordered the Sony e-book reader.

I have told myself that it is essential so that I have something to read on the plane when I go back to the UK for Aunt Betty’s birthday. Why, you may ask, can I not take a book on the plane with me? To ask the question shows that you would not understand the answer. After all why read a mere paperback which costs a couple of quid when you can at vastly increased cost read exactly the same thing electronically? If that is not a rhetorical question then I don’t know what is.

The new Canon G9 camera continues to impress, even if the complexity of the operation of the more esoteric features remains a closed book to me – even with the print out of the manual open in front of my unseeing eyes. According to this book of fairy tales I should be able to change the colour of a flower by the pressing of certain buttons. Leaving aside questions of why I might want to do that; I can’t. I have followed the steps painstakingly and nothing happens. Admittedly I am attempting to change the colour of the settee, but surely the principles are the same!

I have also found that every time I have left the security of the ‘auto’ setting on the camera the results have been uniformly bad. I am regarding this as the low base from which I will ascend, Snowdon-like, to the pinnacle of the mountain of photographic excellence. And let’s face it, if I am capable of puns like that, then nothing is beyond me!

I think that I will do what I did in Rumney and start taking photos of my immediate surroundings. I like taking pictures of flowers: they don’t move very much unless there is a wind; they have strong colour and they are unselfconscious about being photographed: perfect subjects!

With my other cameras the close up function on one is too limited to get decent shots and on the other it is ‘touch and go’ on its approach to focus. This camera should be substantially better and give me more leeway in choosing the effects of depth of field. I say ‘should’ advisedly as my initial experiments have been anything but satisfactory. I shall take as my motto the hit of Yazz and the Plastic Population and look heavenwards for my direction as far as my photography is concerned!

Incidentally, when I told Emma that her camera and photographic efforts in Catalonia were the immediate cause of my buying a new camera, she wrote, “You shouldn't feel any pixel envy just accept that I'm a better photographer than you.” Good phrase, wrong assumption. Or at least an assumption I am prepared to work at to prove wrong.

Let the clicking commence!

A full day!

Given the sacrosanct nature of bureaucracy in Spain, I suppose that I should be grateful that signing up for my Spanish classes only took just over an hour. During the complex series of manoeuvres where, like some form of ancient dance, movement, conversation and the offering of documents must be executed in the correct ritualistic style, in the time honoured order, one step following the other like an ancient Pavanne.

The payment of the exorbitant fee for the course of lessons which are twice a week from September to June could not, of course, be handed over to the person registering you. The frightening sum of €20 (!) had to be paid by your being given a bill which then had to be taken to a bank (the despised BBVA) where the actual money was paid, your receipt stamped, then you had to return to the centre and wait again for your receipt to be accepted.

Yet again, even though I was talking to someone in Spanish who spoke Spanish I have managed to convince a native speaker that I am actually more competent in the language than I really am. I think that this is one time where my easy plausibility will come back to haunt me during my very first lesson where my inability to decline the verb ‘to be’ will be my public downfall!

Lunch with Caroline seemed to be a fully deserved recompense for my travails in the morning and we managed to talk with fluency and interest about subjects great and small while consuming a very reasonably priced Japanese meal.

As we are looking around at other possibilities for renting I accompanied Caroline to look at the outside of a house for rent near her in the last urbanization of Castelldefels before The Tunnels on the slope of one of the hills that surround the town.

From the outside the place looked interesting and the shared pool certainly looked attractive but there was a series of steps down to the front door and the view was of houses and flats on the other side of the hill. Considering the price I think that this is one viewing which will not take place. As I sit here listening to the waves I think how hard it is going to be to leave the beach – even for the ‘Freeing of the Bluespace Thousands’ as my books are now generally known.

The gadget event of the day was the arrival of the new camera. This has arrived in record time and came with little extras like an ineffective tripod and a camera case that doesn’t fit that I didn’t expect.

The camera itself (a Canon powershot G9) looks a little bit retro but the pictures it takes are excellent. The x6 optical zoom and the 3” LCD viewer are both astonishing. The verticality of the viewed image is maintained even if you turn the camera – a feature which almost caused an accident when first discovered!

The instructions are dense to the point of opacity but I am told that there is a photography course on line which might help. Otherwise it is going to be a question of trial and error to find out how some of the features work.

The first results are pleasing though and I am looking forward to producing shots which can get me back to some of the pictures I took ‘on a roll’ during an unusually productive and successful couple of weeks back in Rumney.




There was only time to charge the battery before I had to be off to Barcelona for the first in the series of my visits to the Liceu.

Having left just over three hours to travel the 20 km to Barcelona, and finding the roads gratifyingly free of the usual traffic jams I was able to take a series of ‘artistic’ shots of various locales in the city within spitting distance of the Ramblas and have a quick meal.



Here I broke one of my cardinal rules and was duly punished for it. It is perfectly possible to eat on the Ramblas for a reasonable sum of money but, as they say in all the best fairy stories, stick to the path. In the case of eating in Barcelona this means: find a set cost meal and do not deviate from the menu provided.

My mistake was water. I had an excellent value meal of chicken, salad, spaghetti and chips on one enormous plate with bread and what I thought was a drink and sweet. Wrong. The drink of agua con gas was almost three quid! It was a large glass, but it was still water. And coffee was another quid. I have now, well and truly, learned my lesson.

Uncharacteristically the performance I had gone to Barcelona to see in the Liceu was of dance. I am subject to the ‘Banana Yogurt Effect’ in this art: I don’t ever choose it, but quite like it when I get it.

The company performing was Tanztheater Wuppertal under the direction of Pina Bausch. A person and company of whom I had never heard.



The first part of the programme was ´Café Müller’ which was a load of pretentious twaddle which reinforced my pre-existing prejudices about the value of Dance with a capital ‘D’. I was not best pleased when the start was delayed and then when the lights when down it was delayed further before the ‘action’ got started and one of the protagonists limped into action crashing into furniture on a stage littered with chairs and tables.

The ‘characters’ in this piece were loosely enough defined to accommodate any half baked psychological, social or political meaning a viewer cared to attach to the paucity of meaningful movements visible on stage. The music was not continuous, but when it did hiss into audibility at least there were a few good tunes from the extracts from ‘Dido and Aeneas’ by Henry Purcell.

According to an overheard conversation from the gentleman on my right who had one of those plumy, sonorous English accents that make me feel like a provincial clodhopper, ‘Café Müller’ was about ‘isolation.’ I suppose that was as good an explanation as anything.

So, the action: it was about isolation you know. The couple playing the lovers were competent enough as was Pina Bausch herself playing a sort of ghost at the feast. Other characters included a small stepping sort of fussy Women’s Institute character and a pony tailed man whose function seemed to be to smash a path through the furniture to allow other characters to thrash their way about the stage.

I really do not think that a series of vaguely interesting, unrelated movements gain in significance by inane repetition. I began to wonder if Pina Bausch was seeking to be the dance equivalent of the minimalist music of Philip Glass.

When this interminable pseudo intellectual crap finally subsided into blackness I was so disgruntled that I could not bring myself to join in with even a token clap to accompany the ringing applause from the character on my right.

During the interval I descended the few steps to the foyer as I have now decided that my traditional scorn for those members of the audience who frequent ‘the upper levels’ can be transferred to the Liceu and I have therefore decided to sit in the stalls this season. Finding a vacant seat I scribbled some insulting notes into my programme to vent my spleen and awaited the second half with dread.

I returned to the auditorium to find the stage occupied by a dozen stagehands busily covering and raking the stage with a layer of earth. This was preparation for the performance of ‘The Rite of Spring’ – at least, I thought, I will be able to listen to the music and if necessary close my eyes.

And everything I said about the first half now has to be turned on its head. The lack of coherence, pointless gesture, and meaningless repetition: all the negatives were transformed into as griping a dance performance as I have ever seen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXVuVQuMvgA&feature=related

It was the sort of experience which made the (remaining) hairs on my head stand up. The compelling narrative of ritual sacrifice was brilliantly presented by the girls wearing diaphanous costumes and the boys stripped to the half. In the course of the exuberant action the dancers became covered in the earth in which they danced, kicked, stamped, shuffled and rolled.


It may be an overworked word but the performance was electrifying with the vitality of the generally young dancers barely contained by the passion of their steps and movements.

The applause which greeted the exhausting final dance of the victim and the end of the production was tumultuous with some patrons actually ululating their appreciation.

Many members of the audience actually stood when Pina Bausch finally came on stage to accept the plaudits of the crazed audience.

As is well known, a British audience would hesitate about standing for The Second Coming, so the gentleman on my right and I stayed firmly in our seats.

It was good, but not that good!

The cruel sun

I would like to be able to say that as I lay on the beach this afternoon I was gently caressed by soft breezes and lulled into a comfortable state of mild contemplation by the plangent sound of curling waves. But I can’t.

The wind made smoothing out a towel on a sun bed the equivalent of wrestling with a more than usually fractious two year old child making a bid for freedom, while the wind borne sand particles seemed to have turned into a more than usually callous depilatory machine with thousands of tiny pin prick collisions of grain on skin. The Mediterranean is not the Atlantic and the usual waves are domestic to the point of subservience. Today they were like gauche teenagers ramping about the shore and generally showing off and creating more sound that is seemly.

I, however, positioned the sun bed so that the gently raised head of the bed acting as a windbreak and only a few sand particle augmented gusts managed to land on my unprotected limbs.

As an Old Campaigner who visited Gran Canaria in the winter months and therefore had to go to the beach whatever the weather to justify the vast cost, I was used to lying in what in other circumstances would be described as inclement weather. My motto was always ‘Maspalomas has a micro climate’ as I trudged my sullen way though the dunes towards my Mecca of sunshine I knew would be waiting for me at Kiosco Siete. Sometimes I would lie out in what can only be described as rain, but it was warm rain and I knew that my faith would ensure that the sun would return.

So Castelldefels is easy compared to my training in Gran Canaria. Ah, if only my colleagues knew how hard won that tan I sported in January was they would not have been so spiteful as I mocked their pallid new year skins!

Eventually even I could not longer regard lying in a position where I was being systematically flayed as in any way enjoyable so I raised myself and looked at the sea. I share with my father (and the rest of humanity if we believe old watsisname and power of archetypal images) an unending fascination with moving water. The waves are infinitely interesting and, if you are as myopic as I am, infinitely artistic in their expressionistic (with a touch of myopic impressionism) way.

As I gazed I also became aware of a new dimension to my life long love/hate response to that haunting painting showing a wave breaking and horses emerging from the foam. When I was very young I thought that it was art at its best; as a teenager I thought it kitsch at its worst – while now, of course, I have a gentle post-modernist ironic regard tinged with nostalgia for it. My perception however has been changed by myopia. The white horses of the waves are usually those waves that break directly in front of you and create a flamboyant excitement of foam; but the real horses are those that you see when a wave breaks in a continuous movement away from the observer parallel to the shore so that you follow a continuously breaking wave as it moves away from you. If you are myopic then it really does look like a prancing snorting steed. And all for nothing and not for long.

The wind has now died down and the sun is back out from behind the gauze of cloud and the table needs to be set for dinner on the balcony.

Ah me!

Uniform?

The School That Sacked Me is now trying to foster a sense of corporate identity by forcing male teachers to wear an official tie and female teachers to sport an official scarf. This is the equivalent of the designer of the Hindenburg airship worrying about the motif on the china while ignoring the fact that the gas that made the Hindenburg lighter than air was highly explosive hydrogen!

My facile guilt about the supposed return of the pupils should have been delayed until next Monday as that is the real starting point of their education for the next academic year. I therefore have time to work on a suitable literary analogy to complement my feelings!

‘Ghosts of Spain’ is the evocative title of a descriptive ‘travel’ book written by Hispanophile Giles Tremlett. It takes the form of a highly opinionated vision of Spain’s past linking Tremlett’s personal appreciation of what it means to be living in Spain at present and how aware we should be of the past. He touches on taboo subjects connected with the Civil War and the way in which Spaniards have dealt with the aftermath in a democratic society. Tremlett deals with a whole range of social, political and religious situations in modern Spain and (as befits the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent) is beguilingly liberal and articulate in his analysis.

I particularly liked his chapter on ‘How the Bikini Saved Spain’ – an amusing analysis of why the cheap tourist trade came and stayed in Spain rather than elsewhere in the Mediterranean. The underlying motivations of the central characters involved in the development of ‘what once was one of the most beautiful spots on the Spanish coast’ from a ‘modest beach-side village, a place of sailors, fishermen and farmers who patiently tended almond, olive, carob and citrus trees’ to place where the ‘burghers of Benidorm have rolled out a welcome carpet of concrete, tarmacadam and brick’ speaks volumes about how Spain has developed over the last fifty or so years.

This is a book which I can recommend as a compelling read but one which is badly proof read and a disgrace for something under the imprint of Faber and Faber and especially when the Epilogue states that the paperback edition has been revised to correct typographical errors!

Wrong!

But still worth a read.

Everything is in the choice

Who can resist a menu dish which describes itself as beef with ‘trumpets of death’?

I suppose that the truth is that many people would hesitate about a choice of food which has death as part of its title. Not I.

It turned out to be a particularly succulent piece of beef which one could cut with a fork in a rich gravy augmented with mushrooms. The fact that the listing was in Spanish made the meal all the more exotic – though the fact that I am in Spain makes it also sort of prosaic as well.

Anyway an excellent meal which started with baby broad beans cooked in the Catalan style. This is an excellent vegetable dish with the beans cooked with lumps of meat, black sausage, bacon, fennel seeds and (in spite of what one Catalan told me) mint. Simple, nourishing and tasty.

The Crema Catalana to end the meal was almost perfect – the custard base smooth and sweet while the caramelized topping was crisp and thick and with just that right degree of ‘burnt’ in the taste to counteract the cloying sweetness of the rest of the dessert.

Oh, and the wine was all part of the price. Just under nine quid. And people ask me why I moved to Spain! And it didn’t rain. Again.

All of that is contentment of course, but I did feel what can only be described as disquiet today. Mainly because I thought it was Monday rather than Sunday.

This Monday the kids are back in The School That Sacked Me and what I felt was a sort of guilt that I wasn’t there to be with them.

It didn’t last.

Just to be different

We are well used to visitors from Britain suddenly saying something like, “Oh my god! I’ve forgotten my toothpaste!” as though they are visiting a country where the trappings of civilization like Christianity and electricity might be in short supply! I sympathize with this attitude as it is one to which I have often found myself subject.

Ever since I first saw ‘Bonanza’ in Spanish

on the TV screens in Tossa de Mar back in the 1950s one feels a certain sense of wonder that the everyday things of life are also available in another language: when Colgate toothpaste is pronounced Kol-gar-tay and actually has foreign writing on it, nothing can be taken for granted!

Spain is so much like Britain that minor differences show up all the more clearly. I suppose that I should be commenting on major social, political and religious peculiarities that I have noted, but something more pressing is engaging my attention at the moment.

Where are the scrapbooks in this country?

I have tried to find one in half a dozen supermarkets and various cheap shops and no luck. Perhaps the cutting out of ‘unconsidered trifles’ and sticking them in an album is a little too old fashioned for a country that prizes itself on its espousal of modernity. But I want to retain some of the apercus culled from my copies of The Week magazine (which I can recommend etc etc) together with other bits and pieces from Spanish newspapers which help my acquisition of language skills. Come to think of it I don’t even know the word for scrapbook in Spanish!

That last sentence encouraged me to be a little more pro-active and find out that there is no word, but a phrase: álbum de recortes, which is descriptive and is perhaps nearer to the English word ‘cuttings’ rather than scraps. Still, armed with this piece of vocabulary I feel emboldened to try further shops – when have I ever eschewed shopping for anything more intellectually satisfying!

My failure to find a scrapbook

continues with one shopkeeper sneeringly referring to my quest as positively old fashioned! I am now, more than ever determined to find one; I can see this becoming a quest to rival that of the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance! And probably with the same degree of success!

We may now have the chance of a house with extensive enough grounds to set up some portable classrooms: it is a possibility with interesting implications. Something to work on and to keep us going in our efforts to provide a reasonable alternative education for kids.

Though, for me, everything is going much too slowly: time ticks on and the kids are back in school tomorrow. We have to be able to offer a viable location and group of teachers before the end of December for a January start; effectively about twelve weeks for something real to present to parents.

It’s a short time!

Though I accept that time is relative - especially when my colleagues have just started the most important teaching term in the academic year and December seems an awfully long way away. Though for me at the moment it is galloping towards me at a frightening rate.



Thank you Einstein!

A little itch of possession

Just when you feel at peace with the world something comes along to disrupt and discommode.

Not for the first time Sony have discomforted me. I have managed, in the past, to frustrate the insidious attempts by Amazon to get me to indulge one of my weaknesses. I have put out of my mind the ‘spurious’ advantages of something which seems more and more obvious as an essential part of civilized life.

But now Sony with the completely unfair utilization of a bookshop, Waterstone’s, have combined to bring a new and altogether sleeker version of the e-book reader to a pathetically weak target audience – me! A chance reference on the front page of The Guardian forced me to buy the paper (€3) and read more. Up to 160 books contained in a slim electronic package with god knows how many extra books being able to be loaded onto SD cards and the like. It didn’t take long to convince me that this was a must-have gadget.

It is not available in Spain.

Sony UK only delivers to the mainland.

Waterstone’s web site seems to find it difficult to cope with someone from outside the UK.

Frustrated at every turn! I could of course, ask the boys to bring one over with them, but that would mean waiting until United Nations Day some forty days away.

Intolerable. Insupportable. Impossible to endure.

There must be another way. Short of not having one, I mean. My life is hard, beset with hard problems and constant frustrations!

Since Emma visited and we had a ‘friendly’ contest to see who could take better photographs (I wish to draw a discrete veil over my attempts at capturing fireworks!) I have been envious about the fact that her digital compact had a number of manual options which my camera (wonderful though it undoubtedly is) does not have. I have therefore been looking around for a camera which answers to more of my new demands.

The Canon powershot G9 seemed to be the ideal answer.

At this point I have to admit that technology and desire combined to give me what I wanted in spite of a real sense of denial that I was trying to cultivate. The camera was suggested by an advert sent to me sneakily by Amazon via email. I did my homework and looked up all the customer reviews of the camera and, in spite of some reservations I decided to look around this area before committing myself.

No one here had the model I wanted and the only shop that had heard of it offered it to me at a higher cost than the internet suggested. I returned to gaze at the image of the camera on the internet.

At this point I should mention ‘one click buying.’ My downfall.

As my information is firmly lodged on the Amazon website all I have to do to purchase something is ‘one click’ on a tempting little button and behold! money is drained from my account in Britain.

I did but flirt with pressing the button. I swear, Your Honour, and suddenly the thing was bought. Hardly my fault, I merely fell into an electronic trap.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Art at last!

Returning from Barcelona by bus was made just that little bit more intolerable by the raucous accompaniment of a vocal child. Attention Deficit Syndrome sprang to mind as the tiny urchin emitted a prolonged, deep, throaty howl which one assumed would abrade the vocal chords and bring on premature puberty thus enabling the child to be singing basso profondo by the end of the bus ride.

I restrained my natural impulse to leap from my seat and hurl the infant though an open (or indeed closed) window. At times like that you really can sympathize with that Roman emperor who swung a child by its feet and . . . well, thinking about it, you probably can’t sympathize at all – but I was annoyed!

The Munch-like creature gave an unwanted negative spin on what had been an otherwise excellent day.

My trip to Barcelona had been to revisit MNAC (Museu Nacional D’Art de Catalunya) a museum which seems to reform itself into a different institution every time I visit it!

This time there was an exhibition of works by Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia: interesting, but ultimately quaint rather than impressive. It was revealing to see early works by these three and amusing to see the readymades but apart from interesting historical footnotes to a particular aspect of art theory – who cares?

The permanent art collection, however, is another thing. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection ensures that MNAC has a collection which is of world importance and their collection of Catalan art is without equal.

I have been doing my homework on Catalan art and struggling my way through Castellano and Catalan art books to try and get a better understanding of Modern Catalan art and so the collection is becoming more and more fascinating. I must admit that I took the opportunity on this visit to get the English language version of the guide book which I have previously been struggling through in Castellano! I hope that I can begin to make links between the painters I like and understand their antecedents and influences with great ease now that the information is in a language I can read with ease!

I suppose that I have visited the museum about half a dozen times and my discovery this time was a rather fine portrait by Munch (hence the earlier reference) as well as a whole section on Modernista furniture and decoration. I have only given a fairly cursory look at the Romanesque and Gothic art for which the gallery is justly famous so I think that I am going to get full value from my six month Art Ticket (at the ridiculously low price of €20) which gives me access to six or seven of the major art galleries in Barcelona!

When not visiting art galleries and eating I am, of course, reading. At our Ladies Who Lunch meal yesterday Caroline gave me my birthday present from last United Nations Day: it may have been eleven months late, but who can even pretend to be annoyed when the present turns out to be an excellent little book called ‘In The Garlic’ by Valerie Collins and Theresa O’Shea ISBN-13: 978-84-89954-59-5. The title refers to the phrase ‘estar en el ajo’ which means to be clued up to know the score and the book takes the form of a dictionary with comments of essential information for someone learning about Spain.

For example, every country has a place (or another country) which is the butt of jokes because of the alleged stupidity of the inhabitants. I once did some research on prejudice for a lesson and found a book which listed the countries that were stigmatized as stupid with their stigmatizers – it was both astonishing and bewildering. In Spain the repository of odium is Lepe a village in the province of Huelva. The little book gives a joke: One day three men, from Catalonia, Madrid and Lepe are put through the lie detector. The Catalan says, “I think we Catalans aren’t as mean as we’re made out to be.” The machine bleeps. The Madrid fellow says, “I think we madrileños aren’t as cocky as people make out.” The machine bleeps. The guy from Lepe says, “I think . . .” The machine bleeps.

The places may change but the jokes don’t!

No further news about the School That Sacked Me – I find it incredible to think that they may have retained what is left of the staff for a whole day further!

Down boy!

Sun watch!

There is a fine line between satisfaction and gloating.

The pupils have not yet come back to The School That Sacked Me and one teacher has already resigned! It was perhaps a touch of the totalitarian than pushed the unfortunate professional over the edge. One wonders at a managerial style which seems overbearing even before the ‘customers’ have arrived to give the real test of the professionalism and patience of the practitioners.

Enough!

That carefully moderated expression reeks of out and out smug I-told-you-so-ism. I suppose it is ethically ok to rejoice at the continuing discomfiture of a failing institution when the kids are not yet directly involved in its immediate day to day self-destruction, but time if running out, and they will be returning soon. To what one wonders!

To Sitges again today for that ‘all over tan’ so important to superficial person such as I. The rough sea (for the Mediterranean) meant that many of the sun beds were coffin shaped islands in a gently lapping lake of sea water on what used to be a beach. And the sun showed an irritating proclivity to hide behind small clouds.

There is something almost unbearably provocative about a small cloud denying a confirmed sunbather his vitamin D. Luckily this is Catalonia and the weather does not have the personal vindictiveness of other northern countries I could name and the sun soon emerged to placate the restlessness of the worshipers.

At the termination of my roasting I phoned Toni (who is still suffering from the effects of a twisted ankle) and he asked me to bring back food for dinner.

This was no problem except for the fact that he wanted KFC and I still had memories of the excellent menu del dia I had with Caroline. I agreed to wander around Sitges looking for a fast food outlet, but at no time did I muster the bare faced audacity to ask anyone if they knew where such an establishment could be found. Sitges is not that big and stories of a once pretentious eater going that far down market can get back and poof! a reputation destroyed!

In the event we had to settle for Burger King and I am loath to admit that the things we ate were not that bad. I will put that down to hysteria and will not repeat the experiment.

The mental torture of looking for a place which is the antithesis of what food is generally like in this area was so testing that I had to find displacement activities to keep my character stable. Luckily there was a bookshop just a few steps away from the food outlet and after an initial panic when I realized that I wanted about twenty of the books (at a very reasonable price I might add) the thought of carting them around Sitges and then traipsing back to the car park managed to get me out of the shop without a isngle purchase.

The watch shop opposite was not so easy to resist and I now am the proud owner of a bright red analogue and digital watch, waterproof and luminous.

Well, everyone has weaknesses! It’s good and healthy to give in to them from time to time.

I think.

Paint and Talk

The mouse has taken the cheese!

Part One of my master plan to get Ceri to paint Monserrat has achieved its objective: the book giving vivid pictures of the geology of the area has been received and whetted the appetite of the artist. He even asked if it was possible to stay in the area for a few days to explore the effects of different light on the rocks! As soon has he experiences the astonishing changes that come over the stones through the different times of the day he will be hooked!

I will now begin work on the plan to enable me to steal his sketch books when he has completed his work!

A cursory glance at Ceri’s work in any of the following websites will demonstrate clearly why the landscape of Monserrat will be natural subject matter for his brush, pen and charcoal stick.

http://www.albanygallery.com/g2/artist.php?name=Auckland%20Davies,%20Ceri%20&content=artist&id=72

http://www.wales-pembs-art.com/system/index.html

http://www.newgraftongallery.co.uk/pages/exhibition/188.html

http://www.eggtempera.com/davies/davies.html

I await his representations of the area with a certain amount of impatience!

It is now 10 am and the mechanical voice from the beach has just informed the world that safety services are now in place for the benefit of swimmers –though the lifeguard’s chair is significantly empty.

The weather is that sort of bright cloudy nothingness which promises improvement and deterioration in equal measure. The beach has been reclaimed by the hardy elderly who are lounging about in a propriatorial way in the clement but unspectacular temperatures and relishing the paucity of other life forms which are now busily at work paying taxes to keep the non existent safety services in place!

One consequence of the lack of work for me and the returning to work for others is that my partner in the Ladies Who Lunch Club is now free for the school day from the responsibility of looking after her children and is consequently available for dining purposes. We have to strike quickly before she fills up her schedule with English classes so our first meal of the dining new year is for tomorrow and the natural topic of debate (among many others) will be where the next meal will be. Tough intellectual stuff!

Talking of intellectuality: I attempted to register for Spanish classes today. You will note the use of the word ‘attempted’ – it is well chosen.

Our town council sponsors Spanish classes for those who want to learn, even for those, like myself who do not actually want to learn but rather want to have learned and be able to speak Spanish fluently now. It is a tiresome necessity that one has to go to classes to acquire a language skill – when are they finally going to be able to inject knowledge with a hypodermic? It cannot come too soon for me!

I should have registered in June for these courses. However I was told to call back at the beginning of September to register. I did and was told to turn up to the course centre. I did. And was told to come back on the 10th of September. Why I could not have been told this when I phoned up I fail to understand. Though, thinking about it, the self important, arrogant, unhelpful people who were there telling us to stand in line so they could tell us to come back later might have explained the lack of the human touch. Does not bode well for the future.

My Spanish language skills are disgraceful - even if I can give the impression of greater fluency than I actually possess, even when talking with native Spanish speakers. This I do not really understand. Do they think that I am deliberately talking like a brain damaged anteater through a natural sense of linguistic modesty?

I sometimes wonder.

Is this date significant?

Ploughing my lonely furrow in the pool as length succeeded length my thoughts turned to the vacuity of my morning’s activity: prone, passive, inert. What achievement? None! Is this the level, I thought to myself, to which I have sunk? Is this going to be the sum total of my intellectual striving?

Now wasn’t that a kinder start to this piece of writing than brazenly stating that on the first day of term (for everybody else) I lay on the beach in glorious sunshine and then returned to the pool for a brief swim before going for a fantastic menu del dia comprising a shellfish starter, fish main course with a sweet of music tart (if you have to ask about that ‘music’ then you haven’t been to Catalonia!)

In the afternoon I went to a beach in Sitges (site of The School That Sacked Me) and lounged about until the evening. I was surrounded on this beach by my fellow countrymen, the colour, it has to be said, of my bottom! If nothing else they were a living reminder of the weather that I have left behind! According to Emma and the Pauls it has been a miserable summer; they are hoping for a better autumn. As I am returning to the UK at the end of November I am hoping for one too!

Our school project received a welcome boost in the form of a telephone call from a prospective parent asking how far we had got. That is a significant question. We have sufficient staff to form the basis of a group of teachers; the ethos that the parents want and the enthusiasm to get going. We do not have the cash or the premises – minor problems!

Our innocent idealism is not concrete enough for parents to make a financial commitment and our window of opportunity to make our pitch for the possibility of providing a convincing educational alternative in January is shrinking by the day, but hope springs eternal.

Does anyone know a friendly bank?

That is no beach for young men!

As god does his usual pathetic fallacy thing at the end of the holiday season by providing lowering clouds and that colour-draining light which makes a beach look desolate, the crowds have forsaken their redundant sun beds and decided to lie in this Sunday morning and shun the drab delights of the littoral.

Their absence gives the beach back into the hands of its autumn and winter denizens: the old. Sprightly septuagenarians skip towards the uninviting waves or stand gazing out to sea, legs akimbo, with a propriatorial air. Old ladies in geriatric pairs ‘run’ where the arms and legs mimic the actions of a racer, yet, like the animated mannequins in sports shops they do appear to be going anywhere.

The silence is only broken by the roar of the sand sifters as they go about essential cleansing work on a tideless beach.

In this light the sea looks like a steel blue wall unravelling at the base where the waves break. The beach has the appearance of khaki snow its virgin, sifted smoothness only spoilt by the first sea gazers marching resolutely to the water’s edge. A solitary yacht sailing on the top of the wall of the sea has a glowingly white sail indicating that the sun is trying to force its way towards us.

Now, on my third cup of tea of the morning, families have begun to supplant the old and the darker clouds begin their drift towards the mountains changing the colour of everything and giving back to the sea its accustomed wrinkled flatness.

I am conscious that I am beginning to sound like a poor man’s Dylan Thomas. Whatever else it might be, Castelldefels is no Llaregeb – or perhaps I just don’t know it well enough yet!

Tomorrow the School That Sacked Me opens its doors for the unsuspecting new batch of teachers to discover jest what they have let themselves in for.

The proposed rearrangement of classes for this year makes nonsense of ALL the work done by the previous year’s teachers and the present unit head of primary had been trying to square the circle by devising a syllabus for the new term. She should be informed that, to my knowledge, the circle cannot be squared (as proved in 1882 by the Lindermann-Weierstrass theorem which proves that pi (π) is a transcendental rather than algebraic irrational number; that is, it is not the root of any polymominal with rational coefficients. The consequences of that will be obvious even to those of the most limited intelligence) so the year will start with self contradiction and develop from there in the usual downward spiral into chaos.

At the moment, some of those of us who are enthusiastic about the founding a new school are, because of professional conflicts of interest, unable to speak openly: this limits the effectiveness of capitalizing on the anguish that parents are going to feel at the start of yet another year with what amounts to a new staff.

The next few weeks are of crucial importance in the establishment of our credentials as plausible alternative educators for the children of wavering parents in the School That Sacked Me.

We are living in the Chinese cliché of interesting times.


Long may they continue!

Stand not upon the order of your going - but go at once!

There is a palpable sense of ‘ending’ when you live in a seaside resort at the end of August. The resentful clang of shutting grilles and the vicious bringing down of shutters punctuate the course of the days as our short term neighbours leave the littoral.

We look forward to the peace and quiet that characterises our block during the ‘stringent’ autumn and winter months; we will reclaim the swimming pool which during the month of August had had as many as six or seven people in it; we will be able to sit on the balcony without the raucous accompaniment of conversation which is not our own; the children will go – believe me there is nothing like living in a block of flats to bring out the misanthrope in an otherwise gentle and civilized character!

Talking of civilization and tuning in to radio 4 this morning (surely that is an example of tautology!) I heard, for the first time, about the proposed ‘sale’ by the Duke of Sutherland to the Nation of two Titians; the first of which is going to cost £50m.

During Thatcher’s War I remember being told by one of our more reputable newspapers (surely that is an example of oxymoron!) that each Exocet missile cost £¼m.

Just as the broadsheets tend to measure the costs of controversial aspects of culture in terms of kidney machines and hospitals, I have always measure such things in terms of Exocets. 200 death dealing missiles or an outstanding example of one of the masters of Western art: seems like a no-brainer to me. I am talking of course as a person who helped save the Leonardo cartoon for the Nation: one fibre of that artistic production is mine!

The debate about buying of ‘Great Works of Art’ for the Nation has much in common with that on abortion: facts are ignored; prejudice comes to the fore, and no one really listens to the other side. Fifty million quid is a lot of money and no amount of mealy mouthed talk about how much of a ‘bargain’ the painting is will disguise that fact.

Sewell used a version of the ‘Exocet’ defence by pointing out that the money which could be used to buy the painting is squandered again and again, day by day in the costly wars in which the country is involved.

This argument is going to run and run! But I do hope the paintings win, they are far too good to lose to what might be the Getty Museum in Malibu – they are always looking for real paintings to bolster up their collection. After all, for a relatively new museum looking for world importance it is actually very difficult to get a representative collection of Great Art because most of the output of some of the greatest artists is now ‘safely’ in national collections and not available for private sale: where does an institution with however many millions get a Leonardo, or Michelangelo sculpture, or Vermeer or . . . and so the list goes on.

I have always felt that many institutions should buy the work of relatively unknown artists and find more and more interesting ways to get people to see the work: galleries in department stores, shopping malls, schools, factories, government buildings, libraries, firms, stations – anywhere, in fact, where people can see paintings, drawings, videos, installations and sculptures. I know there are problems of security and insurance, but all of the above have hosted works of art on an ad hoc basis, I think it should be artistic policy to do these things. National collections should have masterpieces, but I for one would rather have a first class example of a relatively unknown artist rather than a third rate example of a Dalí.

There will always be disasters when people are blinded by the possibility of owning the work of a Great Name – like the costly disaster of the Rubens ‘are they/aren’t they’ Cartoons in the National Museum of Wales,

whereas the provenance of lesser works can be more secure and their display give almost as much pleasure as the artistic output of the first division artists.

Galleries can also follow the example of the BBC and the Natural History Unit located in Bristol: that film making unit has achieved world wide recognition and success not only by employing great talent, but also by specialising. I am sure there is a lesson for some of the struggling galleries trying to vie with galleries who can cope with the vast prices that works of art now command.

On the other hand I don’t want to look at rubbish, the little better than amateur daubs created by a local artist – the geographical location being the raison d’etre for inclusion.

Reading through the preceding paragraphs I am reminded of the comment on one of my History of Art essays in university where the tutor remarked that he was not convinced that my conclusion actually followed from what went before.

Story of my life!

As I type this on the balcony looking out to sea the sky is now divided into three sections. Just above the cold, gleaming grey-green of the sea there is a band of light purple cloud tinged with pink which leads into a band of light orange fading to pale blue which has wispy fish-like clouds trailing diaphanous fins across the sky. The last band which stretches overhead is of darker purple veined with bright dusty orange.

I shall end on a pompous note (and why not!) and observe that the real art gallery is all around us if we care to see it.

The amount we are paying for the flat, a decent light show at the end of the day is the least that we should expect!

A holiday within a holiday!

The Costa Brava

Wednesday 27th of August 2008

As I am now in the wilds of the Costa Brava and in a masia

I will have no access to a network and so will, consequently, write a day by day thought and paste them all together when I get back to Castelldefels.

It was sad to see Emma go on Tuesday from Reus, but at least we now know the way to another airport in the Barcelona area. If AJ manages to find a flight to Girona we will have a Catalan set! Though I fear that there are other airports that we will discover in time through experience and panic!

The journey from Castelldefels to Santa Cristina was largely uneventful because most of it was on motorway. The only problems arrived when we arrived. It is an increasingly common feature that the electronic direction finders in cars are wonderful at getting you almost to your destination, but that disarming voice does have a tendency to assure you that you car is now next to where you want to be when it quite clearly is not so!

To be fair to my machine, I have to say that its failure was due to a new road system which was not built into its maps. And, on that subject, it appears to be cheaper to buy a new machine to get the latest maps than to download an update to your present configuration.

The destination finder thus enters a select (but growing) group of products where to buy new is a cheaper alternative than to repair or update; mobile phones being offered for repair only merit a sneering smirk from the thumb savvy sales assistants; digital cameras are so quickly superseded that offering a machine more than a year old for repair incurs the same costs as painstaking historical reconstruction; computer printers are now so cheap it is more economical to buy a new machine than to buy a new print cartridge, and white goods, well, white goods have always been something of a game of Russian roulette – you buy them and hope that yours is not the Friday afternoon one.

The masia is an impressive old place with a stone lintel with 1686

on it and impressive wooden beams throughout but, like the dustman’s brush, one suspects that all of the constituent parts of the building have been replaced at one time or another. The stairs are steep, the lights are on the outside walls of rooms and there is only one bathroom but it is well sited with a location next to a truly ancient looking basilica type church in what appears to be a very select neighbourhood.

Since we arrived at lunch time it was duly served.

What is the recipe for success in a barbecue?

I think my answer would be ‘the nearness of alternative cooking facilities.'

Carlos made Herculean efforts with a small domestic barbecue and produced grilled sardines and prawns. They were delicious with a true smoky flavour from the coals and a hint of the flavour of the firelighters intermingled to bring a synthesis of the natural and the industrial in one mouthful!

Our trip to the sea side was to Tossa de Mar: the first place that I visited in Spain fifty years ago!

Our epic journey to get there all those years ago seemed to take for ever as it was train from Cardiff to London; boat train from London to Dover; boat from Dover to Calais; train from Calais to Paris; coach tour of Paris; train from Paris to the Spanish border; change train to Barcelona; coach tour of Barcelona; coach from Barcelona to Tossa. And no sleeping compartments.

It was one of the best holidays that I ever had and is a large part of the reason that I am now living in Spain and especially in Catalonia – though, God knows there are other reasons too!

It was interesting to be back in that resort which was the first taste of Spain for so many package tourists in the late 1950s and emotional for me as I thought of the quintet of my parents, Uncle Eric, Aunty Ray and me enjoying what was then the experience of very few – a foreign holiday. In my class of 40 in my primary school, I was the only person to have gone abroad. How times have changed!

My bed is a severe single with a metal spring base and an absurdly spongy mattress.

I confidently expect curvature of the spine when I wake up!


Thursday 28th of August 2008

After a fairly sluggish start we eventually made it to a local beach. This was fine and dandy but in the night something had stolen away my swimming trunks!

As I was wearing then when we came back from the beach they have to be in the masia somewhere; but they have eluded careful search and have softly and suddenly vanished away. (And you get a bonus mark if you recognize the quotation there, and if you did then you should have spoken the line which comes immediately after that one.)

The place we went to struck me as sunnier version of Barry Island with a similar difficulty about parking.

After finding spaces a short walk took me to some shops where I was able to purchase a vastly more expensive version of the Matalan swimming trunks that have disappeared. Almost as soon as the trunks had been baptized it was time to return to the masia for lunch.

The fridge here seems to be altogether more efficient than the sorry apology for cold that we have in the flat and the result is that bottles put into the freezer for a quick cool get cold and then frozen.

The alcoholic slush puppies we had were most refreshing and were an admirable way of draining the potent parts of the drink from the mere water!

Our second visit to the beach was to a completely ersatz place where nothing seemed real. The beach seemed to have been constructed solely for the benefit of the hideous flats which fringed it. It was mechanistic and ruthlessly modern – but it did have parking spaces which is more than could probably be said for the rather more attractive old town that we could see further down the coast from where we were.

My previously unscarred body is now the feeding place for swarms of biting insects. Toni remarked that the mosquitoes of this region have been waiting a long time for a return feast and my blood flavour must have lived on in mosquito folk memory because they all seem to want a bit of me now!

I look towards one of the many proprietary insect repellents that glows fitfully in the one and only electricity socket in the room and wonder at the cupidity of man in believing in these things. What a mosquito wants a mosquito gets.

Mt blood group is Group A Rh positive in case I look pale and interesting in the morning!

Friday 29th of August 2008

The beds in this masia are designed for dwarfs and I have had to change my sleeping choice from a bed with large wooden end pieces to a bed which at least allowed my feet to project over the ends.

I am not sure if my unsupported ankles are the reason but my legs have been aching since I’ve been in the Costa Brava – though I think the candyfloss mattress might have something to do with it as well!

The beach we went today had a rather British feel as the edge of the beach was fringed with multicoloured beach huts

and equally colourful showers with signs warning ordinary folks with no access to one of the huts to stay away as the water gushing out of the shower heads was private.

It was fairly obvious that there was an attempt to make the beach select and exclusive. I however had other information from one who knows who stated that no Spanish beach was private so we flaunted our presence there with what can only be described as impunity.

And so back to Castelldefels and some sort of reality.

The beginning of term is also a time for me to consider what I should be doing in terms of work. It is not enough to enrol for Spanish classes; I need to be thinking about what I am going to do for the next few years.

There is so much potential in the next few months for so much to happen that I am somewhat intimidated by expectation.

Bring it on!

Unaccounted days!

The fountains of Barcelona may be dry because of the incipient drought but we were provided by an impromptu aqueous display to compensate for this lack of sparkling plumes in the civic arena.

As we travelled by bus through Hospitalet we stopped at a set of traffic lights and to our astonishment observed a young man with wild eyes and waving hands liberally attempting, in a very personal way, to restore the water flow in public areas. As far as we bemused observers could tell the gushing appendage was a part of some obscure protest and, considering his complete lack of attention to his flow he was certainly adept at ensuring the water hit the pavement and road rather than his trousers.

Given that Emma had already observed an ancient lady looking sultry in a balcony overlooking the Ramblas clad only in a wizened smile, this latest piece of exhibitionism seemed an interesting part of the Catalan way of life.

It was only when the watery young man lurched towards the bus that the passengers flinched suddenly realising that what was an intriguing spectacle could actually impinge on actual lives. Luckily we were saved from the social and, indeed, hygienic consequences of proximity by the lights changing and the bus pulling away leaving our erstwhile companion gesturing in his very own puddle!

Perhaps not the most congenial way of preparing ourselves for the cultural feast which is MNAC and contains some of the most interesting and stimulating examples of Catalan art. In the event we needn’t have worried, as the culmination of our climb from the Plaça d’España to the gallery was reward by our finding out that the place was closed! Just on Mondays of course.

All was not lost. The reconstruction of the Barcelona Pavilion from the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition was awaiting our inspection.

The only ‘function’ the building had to accommodate was the signing by the King and Queen of Spain of the equivalent of the visitors’ book. The building was the exhibit – and it still is an exquisite example of modernism at its best.
Sitting in a 'Barcelona Chair' seemed the most appropriate form of behaviour when one was in such an architectual signature piece as the pavilion and we duly sat. Until, of course, we were shooed off our chairs as we sitting on the originals and therefore arts objects!

This leads me to confess that I have now sat on three illegal chairs. All art objects. The catalogue of criminal activity starts with my sitting on one example of the Rietveld Chair, followed by a quick settle on a spectacular Mackintosh ladder back chair and finally the Barcelona Chair. I have to say that the last was the least comfortable - though it did look as though a fair number of rear ends had plonked themselves on that white leather before further indignity was stopped by curators guarding its artistic status!

Our cultural exhaustion at the end of this visit, especially as I attempted to take an artistic photograph by getting a submerged leaf in the water filled shallow ‘lake’ into the most appropriate position on the reflected anatomy of a nude statue, was such that we fled to Barcelonetta for lunch!

With Emma we have eaten to satiety and beyond. Not her fault, but it seemed like a good idea at the time!

We have visited books shops; world famous buildings from Modernism to Modernista; beaches in sunshine and testing breezes; cafés, restaurants and bars – with and without the cigarette smoke which is not yet banned in public places; art shops, shoe shops, stalls and shopping malls – with and without sufficient money to satisfy our whims; we have walked and talked and travelled: and had a good time!

It has been oddly unsettling to have such a close past colleague talk about a place in which I spent an inordinate percentage of my working life and for me to realise that the personnel of the institution is now changed beyond belief. Many of the remaining ‘Old guard’ have been ‘encouraged’ to retire early so the established faces have now gone.

But life, as they say, goes on. The new term in Britain approaches and here in Catalonia, the school that sacked me has now greeted (should that be ‘greeted’?) its new intake of teachers ahead of the start of the new year. I would imagine that the problems have already shown themselves and, in a purely personal, smug, self satisfied and pandering to my own self interest sort of way, I wish the school the very worst of luck – as long as it doesn’t affect the kids. The sooner the place closes or The Owner is forced to sell or turn her hand to something less humanly damaging the better.

There is always (well, might be) something better to replace it on the horizon!

“Expectation,” as I once announced to a bemused audience while dressed as an officer in the First World War, “tickling skittish spirits,” makes me feel a ghoulish sort of pleasurable expectation for the approaching term.

I only hope it’s productive!

Calm before!

A generally lazy day today so I can catch up with my writing. Although it takes an effort to find the time to do it.

Another visit to Montserrat and yet again I was struck with the basic unreality of the mountains. They really do look as though they have been dumped there by a geological accident of some sort.

For me it is impossible to visit the monastery and the surrounding area without experiencing something akin to the spiritual uplift that those who come for moral reasons obviously find there. I suppose at some level the two emotions could be considered to be indistinguishable and certainly the grubby commercialism of the place seems to be as compelling a reason for the people being there as a recognition of the central position of the monastery and its imposing iconic statuette in the ethical life of Catalonia.

To be fair the shops are not as vapid as one could suspect from an institution cashing in on an important religious artefact – even if I did eventually find the Madonna in a snowstorm that I was looking for!

After visiting La Moreneta I managed to inveigle our little party to visit the gallery. This under-visited place contains an astonishing collection of world class paintings as well as a more than representative collection of Catalan Art including some truly iconic paintings.

We also visited the restaurant which is located temptingly opposite the self service outlet. The real restaurant offers spectacular views into the valley and also provided a very decent meal at a more than reasonable price. Especially so as Emma took care of the bill!

While in the shop I bought an illustrated book as an inducement to Ceri to come with camera and sketch book and take an artistic interest in the scenery around the mountain. I think that the colour, shape and texture of the area are perfect subject matter for his brush. This is a long term strategy which may take some time to come to artistic fruition, but I am confident of success!

Emma has extended her holiday here so that today was able to be a ‘take your breath’ day so that we can find energy for more cultural activities tomorrow.

Gaudí calls!