Peel me a grape!

Well, it hasn’t rained – but by god it wants to.

We have had one of those humid or ‘close’ (as my mother would have described it) days which encourage little rivulets of sweat (sorry, perspiration – I was forgetting my ‘First Aid in English’!) to flow across the furrows of a brow wrinkled in disgust at the incessant crying of the infuriating small child which is gifted to every neighbourhood.

The Girls have gone and should now be back in Reading checking that the paddy fields of the city are still in working order after the generous supply of water that they have missed during their weekend when we were all galvanized into a strenuously inactive round of doing nothing. And very enjoyable it was too!

The Culture Club that I was invited to help found by the American art teacher in my school is going to illustrate the differences between state and private education.

Our original idea was to take small groups of students to various art events throughout the year and by pre and post event meetings with the students give them context for what they were going to experience and get a feedback of their reactions by encouraging discussion. We thought that two visits per term would be about right and, after a year we could assess the success or otherwise of the venture and take it further or give up!

The Good Idea had to be written up into a fairly formal proposal and then The Powers That Be had to make a decision. I couldn’t really see any problems apart from the obvious bureaucratic horrors of ‘risk assessment’ – and even that is not as highly advanced into the realms of inane stupidity as it is in the UK.

The Powers That Be have spoken and said that we will be ‘compensated’ for our joint efforts; the small group that we had in mind must be expanded to a larger one; a year’s programme must be submitted as soon as possible with all costs estimated; this could be a course for which a payment would be demanded from the parents . . . and at that point I knew that I was in a different teaching institution from the ones in which I have been up to now.

The art teacher and I will have a meeting in the first fortnight back (which is without children) and have to come up with something pretty concrete before the arrival of the pupils on the 14th or 15th of September. We have been told that opera does not meet with the full approval of whoever has considered our proposals and that any cinema going must be thoroughly vetted to see that there is nothing ‘inappropriate’ for the pupils’ viewing.

I shall wait for more information about the precise detail of what restraints there might be on our ideas but I have a suspicion that I am going to experience another, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” situation that sums up a lot of my response to some of the more odd ways of doing things that I have found in Catalonia.

Meanwhile I look forward to a series of cultural jaunts with intelligent and articulate students. And I will try and keep my pontificating to an absolute minimum!

The most pressing problem facing me at the moment (apart from my toothache and the lack of a dentist, let alone an English speaking one) is what to do with the bike. The new un-stolen one, that is.

At present our bikes (all three of them) are securely locked in the space under the first flight of stairs. This space has been made into a sort of lumber wedge with the door opening to the space under the house. The bikes are stacked together in a limited space and securely padlocked together behind a locked door.

This is wonderful security, but the sheer fuss of getting the bike out is certain to mean that I never (and I mean never) use it.

I have therefore looked at other possibilities. Clarrie and Mary have a bike ‘safe’ which seemed like an idea solution until I was told that it came flat-packed and fiddly and that its construction took an entire day and almost ruined a relationship. It also cost four hundred quid. I am therefore looking for an alternative solution.

I thought I had found one in a sort of plastic garden shed thing in Lidl’s until Toni poured scorn on the idea saying that the macho thieves in our area would merely carry out the whole caboodle and put it into the ‘van’ that Toni is convinced is prowling around waiting to scoop up expensive possessions.

My counterblast to luke-warm contempt is fatally weakened by not being able to find one of the five or six tape measures that we have to find out the dimensions of the bike and then compare those with the Lidl shed. As the shed costs €60 I am understandably keen on the idea.

Meanwhile, until a tape measure turns up, I will settle down and start reading Sarah Waters’ ‘The Little Stranger’ which was left with me by Clarrie so that I could (according to Clarrie) enjoy a writer whose work I have not read or (according to Mary) take a heavy book off Clarrie’s hands which would push her hand luggage over the limit!

In either case I have gained a book which is, as all right thinking people know, A Good Thing!

New Cycle Thefts!

Our next door neighbour has had his bike stolen and another two have gone from surrounding houses. Our faith in the police to do anything practical to regain our bikes is zero and so we have started to compile a file of information for ourselves.

Toni keeps breathing defiance and threats against our unknown thieves and I sincerely hope that that he never comes into close proximity with any of them: I have a strong personal disinclination to go visiting in a Spanish prison!

The pattern of thefts now makes it more likely that there is a gang operating in the area and relying on opportunistic thefts to keep them in business.

Our relaxed lifestyle continues with the most energetic things that we have done as a group is to prance around in the swimming pool bouncing an inflated plastic ball between us. I would imagine that there are a few groups of people who would relish photographs of our little athletic session, although I am sure that the use to which they would be put graphic images would not reflect well on our respective professional situations!

The tentative plan for this evening is to go into Sitges and watch the usually spectacular firework display which marks the progress of the annual festival. Our lethargy makes this a possible rather than a probable.

Since I wrote that last sentence we have indeed been to Sitges.

The fireworks in Sitges are justly famous and my timing to get a meal and be ready for the show at 11.00 pm was perhaps cutting it a little fine. Finding a parking space in the public car park was a little difficult and the antics of other drivers manoeuvring for space provoked a level of lively interest from the girls that got the necessary adrenaline surge into the system to appreciate the pyrotechnics.

Finding a table outside facing the sea was even more difficult, especially as the police had demanded that restaurants with seating outside the actual restaurants close down that area to allow more people into the best viewing sites.

We eventually found a French Restaurant (nobody tell Toni who was at home watching Barça romp home to a 5-1 win for their latest trophy) where, amazingly we sat outside in their ‘garden’ to have a meal.

The setting and the ambiance was a pastiche of a stereotype of a cliché for a certain type of restaurant in Sitges. We were taken to our seats by an impossibly slim waiter with tight fitting T shirt who was a damn sight older than he thought he looked. Our order was taken by a chunky transvestite wearing silver sequined dress which revealed good rugby player legs. The food however was delicious.

As the service was leisurely we watched the first part of the firework display from our table but, this being Sitges we were able to see the bulk of the show after we had paid the bill and rushed down to the sea front.

The show, as usual was fantastic and Mary transformed into a child with hands at her mouth watching countless thousands of Euros transform into burning light.

At the point when other firework displays would run out of money and end the one in Sitges found new strength and filled the dark night sky with colour and light.

The climax of this stunning show was a disorientating series of bright light explosions whose shock waves had a tangible physical effect on the watchers and ensured that they were whipped up into the right state of mind to whoop their appreciation as the last rocket ended the display.

We went to a bar on the main exit road for a drink to watch the people pass and to give the car park a chance to empty a little. The number of people with dogs was shocking to those of us brought up with the injunction every November the fifth to ‘Keep Pets Indoors’ – however the animals looked none the worse for their experiences.

The car park was (again) a nightmare. The only parking space that we could find when we arrived was right at the back of the park. Clarrie kept me company in the front while we inched forward every ten minutes or so. When we finally made it out of the confines of the parking area there was still a stalemate of selfish drivers jockeying for position to get out as well!

Perhaps, in some ways the misery of the parking experience allows my selectively Puritan soul to see a sort of balance between the utterly frivolous expenditure of vast sums of money on fireworks to see it all, literally go up in smoke and the harsher reality of being stuck in an unmoving gridlock in the parking. With pleasure must come pain!

Today is the day when Mary is going to fling herself upon the foaming deep (well, the gentle swell) and go windsurfing or possibly boating – depending on which is available for hire. This will mean that at least they will have visited the beach at least once!

I must get my camera ready!

Where have all the full days gone?

You always start with good intentions and then, like the proverbial morning dew (which you do not see) they all evaporate in the morning sun.

Not much of the morning remained when we were all assembled to decide what to do. So we decided to do very little and meander our way towards lunch.

The idea of the siesta was taken on board with alacrity by all concerned after a great lunch and suddenly, as far as I was concerned, it was seven in the evening! Astonishing!

A desultory swim and it was time for dinner! It’s a hard old life!

Far be it from me to let a day slip by without some musing and my thoughts today have been focused on Paul One who has now, at long last, bought his first original work of art from Ceri’s exhibition, the contents of which can be viewed at http://www.albanygallery.com/g2/current_exhibition.php?offset=0. The number of paintings sold in Ceri’s show is now well into double figures and is rapidly approaching twenty pictures sold.

The collecting urge is something deep inside the soul of all us descendents of hunter gatherers. I have long since stopped being surprised by what people consider worthy of being collected. Rather like outré sexual practices, whatever you can think of is actively being pursued and probably has a monthly magazine devoted to its finer details! Toothpaste, asphalt, fish posters, unintentionally burnt food

Some might find the collecting of stamps or first day covers (mea culpa!) or beer mats or matchboxes as strange but at http://www.neatorama.com/2008/05/14/neatoramas-guide-to-25-of-the-strangest-collections-on-the-web/ you can find things that defy logical thought. Who would collect toothpaste or asphalt or fish posters or unintentionally burn food? Yet there are sad souls who do just that.

My own collecting is now limited. My books are too numerous to be fitted into my present home and my predilection for gadgets is still unconfined but my spoon collection is now closed and my fcd collection (if you have to ask you wouldn’t understand) continues automatically.

Collecting paintings or other original works of art is a suspect, but highly satisfying activity. One the one hand there is the surely negative and exclusive aspect of owning a unique art object to the exclusion of everyone else; something which is an object which you Own with a capital ‘O’. On the other hand there is the satisfaction of having an authentic work of an individual artist to consider at first hand and to enjoy and discover.

One of my fantasies was created instantly when I heard of a couple of art collectors who bought a new house so that they could convert the attic space into an air conditioned storage space for their art collection. An art collection which was re-hung periodically so that each of their works of art had a fair chance of making it to the walls. That, truly, is the stuff of dreams!

I now have more pictures that I can hang without making our modest home look like an old fashioned museum where they used to hang paintings virtually from floor to ceiling: anything which fits in the jigsaw of canvases is on show syndrome.

Like my books, it is a strain not being able to show everything all the time, but I will have to learn to rotate my ‘collection’ and perhaps have an area where the paintings are packed in so that I can regard one area of the house as an on show storage area and raid that space to alternate paintings elsewhere in the house.

Paul has now become a collector and I hope that he will, over the years, acquire enough visual material to afford him the very satisfying problems of selection and positioning of the paintings, prints and objects that he loves the best.

Perhaps in the future we can arrange exchange loans!

Meet and eat!

Our next visitors have arrived and have now retired to bed exhausted with the splendour of the meal that they have had in our local restaurant. We started with a mariscada for two for four (if you see what I mean) followed by a paella for four for four. And numerous bottles of wine. If this seems a little excessive then spare a thought for Mary who got up at some ungodly hour this morning to catch a train at six in the morning in Nice to get to Barcelona at six at night.

This train marathon was to coincide with Clarrie who was catching a plane in London Gatwick to arrive in Barcelona at five thirty. This coincidence was to ensure that we were all able to go out to dinner at a reasonable hour. A good plan as good plans go and as good plans go it went. But went badly.

One and a half hours delay in Nice meant that all Mary’s connections were lost. In spite of the disaster that could have happened, with the help of the more than reasonable people in the railway system that she found along the way she ended up only a few hours late.

That meant that we were all able to go to our local restaurant and indulge ourselves fully.

That surely is what a holiday is all about!

They have to be told!

There are aspects of the behaviour of some children who do things wrongly or inappropriately because no one has told them that what they are doing is unacceptable. Take, for example the way that one should eat freshly cooked asparagus or the way one should eat one’s soup. There is still a delicious thrill of guilt that I have when I am using my fork “like a shovel” – I can hear the admonitions of my parents still! But some people make heinous errors simply because their mistakes have not been pointed out to them.

So it could be the case that our obstreperous neighbours are simply waiting for someone to tell them to behave with some consideration and everything will be fine.

Our neighbours are remarkable. They live their lives in the full glare of everyone else’s hearing. They have created a room outside and under their house with sofas, a table and, above all a television. This can be turned on at any point in the day or night and the tinny sound of empty Spanish broadcasting can be heard augmented by the assorted voices of the raucous family.

Their day starts late with the communal shout at The Daughter. She, I have to say is well worthy of anyone’s opprobrium as (according to the parental voices which carry throughout our neighbourhood) she is consorting with disreputable company; she is near to taking drugs again; she doesn’t get up; she doesn’t eat etc etc.

The daughter gives as good as she gets and I would not soil the electronic impulses of this blog by repeating what this dysfunctional family chooses to call itself.

Sometimes the “discussions” are accompanied by the sound of crashing crockery and, at one point, what we took to be a telephone. They are always accompanied by the robust slamming of doors which test even the remarkably solid concrete construction of the typical Spanish house.

The father of the household, himself a buffoon who sings fascist songs in the swimming pool, accompanies the women of his household as they scream imprecations against each other by acting like a Greek chorus chanting (in Spanish of course) “Every day! Every day! Every day!” He sometimes alternates between this and “Always! Always! Always!”

We are counting the days when these over-moneyed ignoramuses leave their ‘holiday home’ and return to plague another neighbourhood!

Our next visitors have now sorted out their separate travel arrangements (one is arriving from London the other from Nice) and they should both be in Castelldefels by about seven in the evening. Just in time for dinner!

Because of the extended nature of our moving in to the house, it has happened that each new set of visitors has seen a slightly different version of our living space. Although the major move was complete by the end of July, further refinements have been made throughout the month of August. On the working philosophy of “Every little helps” (Tesco) and “Anything is better than nothing” (Desperation) we strive towards a theoretical ‘completion’. Even if our visitors see no advance (it is after all their first visit) we can see what we have done and take pleasure in it!

The more mundane necessities of preparing the room for our next guests call and our more ambitious projects will have to wait until we have stocked up on milk and other necessities.

Oh, and by the way, if you are wondering whether we have done anything to ‘teach the children better behaviour’ Toni threatened to call the police when the girl and her cronies were left alone in the house and shouted their way into the small hours.

The ‘lesson’ hasn’t taken though. Pity.

Staying and going

The familiar feeling of soft melancholy when visitors are about to leave is mitigated by the fact they have actually stayed with us for them to be able to leave!

Our Bill’s “sweet sorrow” does give an idea of the mixed emotions that a visit from friends that you have not seen for some time gives. They stay for such a short time; you get used to them again after a long absence and then they are gone.

Still, it is far more positive than negative and, as I keep telling myself the UK is only a couple of hours away.

Talking of friends I have looked at the website which gives illustrations of all the paintings in the exhibition of Ceri’s new work which is at http://www.albanygallery.com/g2/news.php I was delighted to hear from Dianne that a couple of charcoal drawings have sold already and one or two of the tempera paintings too and this is before the Private View on the 21st of August. I am sure (I know!) that there is nothing more comforting to an artist than a scattering of red dots around a gallery on opening night!

When I bought a Ceri painting for my parents (the story of which present I will not go through again, but take it from me it was a stressful experience!) they were absolutely delighted with it and I can remember my father saying, “You must tell Ceri that if he ever needs the painting for an exhibition we are quite prepared to lend it.” At the time (oh, so long ago) that my father said that it was a sort of wistful aspiration, but as Ceri produces more and more work of exceptional quality a retrospective cannot be far away! And, like my father, I am quite prepared to loan the large charcoal which is opposite me as I type to any Ceri exhibition as long as the catalogue says “From a private collection in Castelldefels, Barcelona.”

That is the sort of accolade that we poor white middle class poseurs dream of. A previous fantasy was realized some time ago in Wales when through greed or circumstances I went to two exceptional restaurants in one day and in both I was greeted by name by each maître d’ – I almost sang the nunc dimitis!

We have now all been to the beach and all of us with the exception of Paul Squared and swum. The definition of swimming in this instance is that the whole of the body including the head must be submerged for at least some of the time. Once again the intrusive nature of sand constantly makes you think of the more civilized surroundings of the pool and the availability of proper toilets which describes perfectly the surroundings and offices in the house! The ‘romance’ of beach and sand sometimes blinds us to the realities of the gritty experience that ‘going to the beach can be’ – though I have to say that the lesson is never really learned and each trip to the side of the sea is filled with expectation and the brain is lulled to soporific by the heat of the sun. In Spain at least!

Were I Sherlock Holmes, I wouldn’t have gone to the beach to lie around doing nothing, but if the Great Man had been persuaded by Doctor Watson to take it easy for a bit then I think that Holmes would have left the beach determined to write ‘a short monograph’ on the subject of beach towels.

I am often startled to see what towel each person has decided to lie upon. Sometimes the difference between the subject matter and the human body lying on it is so startling that one suspects an elaborate joke of some sort.

I have seen raddled hags (of both sexes) lying on beach towels depicting nubile youths in a state of undress that makes the conjunction of bodies something of a grotesque charade. That may sound ageist, but there are limits and there is such a thing as decency and taste.

I have seen grandmothers lying on garish towels that seem to shimmer on the sand, and not because of the heat. Children lying on graphic depictions of carnage (admittedly in cartoon form, but nonetheless!) that ought to give the poor things nightmares for life.

The souvenir-type towel is almost the saddest. These have names of exclusive resorts emblazoned across them and they remind me of the ‘my other car is a Porsche’ bumper stickers. Sad and vulgar!

There are other aspirational towels with what used to be high end designer names but which now merely show the sad nature of the sun worshipper.

Colours clash with a harshness that shows that many of the so called West would be buying the sort of African fabrics which only look right in the appropriate continent.

I once saw a man who looked like one of those cartoon figures into whose faces hunks on the beach were always kicking sand, lying on a towel which showed the full length, full size figure of a bodybuilder! The motivations behind that one, added to the fact that he was doing it in full view of the public leave one breathless with horror!

Why do people whose taste one knows and admires suddenly throw caution to the wind and purchase some woven example of crazy tints which looks as though it was produced by colour blind Fauves with a dash of the Vorticists thrown in? One suspects that it is a variant of ‘going native’ which ends when the suspect material is rolled up and placed inside the beach bag for the return trip home!

There is so much more to say on the subject, I feel that I have only worried free a stray thread, but it would be cheap of me to deny the originality of the thesis of some desperate PhD student in sociology to spoil his area of research and so I will rein in my enthusiasm and pigeon hole this subject until a particularly vibrant example of beach fabric takes my fancy.

When, by the way do people buy beach towels? The one you use is always one ‘you bought before’ at a time that you can`t quite remember. Another fruitful area of research I think!

Almost time for the Pauls to go home and the neurosis of Paul Squared to Be On Time (and I suspect a little extra time to drink in the heady atmosphere of an airport) has started to kick in.

We will be on time.

Looking without seeing

After much discussion about the apparently aimless (as if that was a bad thing) direction of the holiday that the Pauls were having we decided to do something and go somewhere.

The choice was Sitges – a wild leap of the vaccational imagination! We arrived had lunch and came home and then lay in the sun. To be fair to us, we did actually go into the pool and move about a bit. A day well spent I should say.

Dinner was a little more problematic than our restaurant going excursions of previous days as everywhere we went to get a take away was closed. Thank god for Lidl!

A very mediocre pizza later I feel slighted, though the wine from the same store more than justifies the trip!

The wine will be much needed as the relentless posturing of overpaid, pampered, arrogant, bad tempered, testosterone fuelled kickball players will dominate the forthcoming months as the league and all the other competitions clog up the television channels and drive me to something akin to despair.

As at least two people in the house were glued to the television set watching a championship game I asked what I thought would be a fairly easy question to answer: what was the central circle on the pitch and the semi circle on the front of the penalty area and the other box inside the penalty area for?

Not I am sure that you will agree something that should be difficult for a so-called ‘fan’ to explain. After all when I played squash or badminton I knew what all of the lines signified. Answer, most pointedly, came there none from the aficionados of the game who were making comments on match. Their opinions I feel are somewhat lessened when they have no idea what the basic outlines on the pitch that they watch week after week mean! Shame on them!

We still have not been to the beach. Tomorrow we are going to make a real effort to walk to the end of the street and get a few grains between our toes and sample the slightly murky delights of the Med.

They only have one more day: how can people come to the sea-side and not go into the sea? It’s not natural!

Anything to wash?

As someone well used to the completion of mindless repetition of lengths of the pool when swimming I might be expected to have at least some degree of sympathy for most other forms of pointless (in the true sense of that word) exercise.

This is not so.

Who is so weak of intellect that he cannot sneer at what passes for jogging as ageing people who look as though they are in the last stages of zombification lurch (no, that is too active a word for how they perambulate) towards the unwary passer-by looking in their lycra and iPods like an updated Grim Reaper.

In-line skating is only for the very thin and very good looking where their appearance and expertise seems oddly linked to their masking mirror shades producing a sort of high profile rejection of the normal world. Everybody else, as they stagger their way unsteadily along whatever public right of way they find looks like a character auditioning for one of the grotesques in a Breughel village painting. Not only is the exercise questionable, but it is physically demeaning.

I do not like exercise which takes your normal environment and worsens it by placing you in undignified and unnatural positions or attaching unnecessary and pointless articles to your body or adding rules and regulations to increase the difficulty of some activity.

Swimming is the one liberator. It gives you a different world; eradicates gravity; changes your universe. You don’t need skates to glide, a parachute to float or an aircraft executing a parabolic curve to be weightless. You don’t dress up to partake; you dress down. It is democratic: sea, lake, river, pool – all can be used to experience the thrill of ‘other’ which is what water gives. And dress is optional.

What prompted these musings was a bike jaunt this morning. Paul Squared (on folding bike); Toni (on hydraulic new purchase) and I (on new silver Old Man’s Bike) went on a sedate trip into Gavá along the paseo. A trip that became even more sedate when a peddle on Paul Squared’s bike fell off and he had to walk it home. I discovered that it is much more difficult to ride a bike slowly than at what passes for full speed with me.

As we were (when we were) cycling along a fairly level pathway at the side of the sea it could be said to be sightseeing rather than exercise. For the first time we went beyond the natural barrier (or at least I have taken it to be natural barrier) of the ‘river’ in Gavá.

A short ride along a main road to skirt the ‘river’ and back onto the cycle track discovered to view a whole new range of expensive homes and yet more stretches of the beach filled with lazing bodies.

Apart from making me commit one of the seven deadly sins as I see elegant sea-side plate glass fronted mansions which have sea views, this jaunt could be considered exercise. When I used the folding bike with small wheels to glide my way along the paseo it felt like hard work. On my Old Man’s Bike with very much larger wheels and its ‘plush’ seat (augmented I have to admit with a pair of deviational cycling shorts that I have been persuaded to purchase by Toni) the journey was one almost akin to pleasure. Almost.

I still find swimming the one form of exercise which is personal, individual, and coherent.

But it must be done with some degree of circumspection.

Paul One in an uncharacteristic impulse of physical abandon threw himself into the swimming pool ignoring the fact that he had his wallet in his pocket. With all his money, credit cards and other impedimenta of civilized life.

The upshot of this escapade was that not only was I able to bring into use one of my many unused wallets, but also I was able to see a metaphor made manifest. Paul had to hang out his money notes on the line which we usually use for the towels. So, for a brief period of time I was able to see Euros and pounds fluttering in the breeze watched like a hawk by Paul.

Our evening meal was going to be in a puzzlingly popular restaurant on the paseo. We arrived to find the waiters engaged in a friendly conversation which they were disinclined to stop merely because customers had appeared. When we were eventually shown to our table it took an unconscionable time for the menus to appear then we were ignored for another period when we should have been asked what we wanted to drink. On my suggestion we upped and left never to return.

It does seem that the restaurants of the paseo rely on the fact that they have a constant passing trade and do not feel that they have to make the same effort as other, less well positioned places.

In the event we returned (almost instinctively) to the Club Marítimo and had an excellent meal. Again.

Our visitors are struggling towards off white in their attempts to show the folks back home that they have been to the sun. By judicious comparison of adjacent skin areas it is possible to demonstrate that the sun has had some effect – though in Paul’s case his most convincing ‘tan’ is the bruise on his arm where he tripped and fell a week or so ago!

Never mind there are two full tanning days left and I am sure that they will be used to the full extent that factor 20 will allow!

Relax!

A truly lazy day.

Let me just revel in that statement. Lying on my disintegrating sun bed which is now sagging alarmingly and waiting for the distant star to do its stuff and provide a reasonable colour to see me through the days of diminished sunshine that so disfigure late autumn and most of winter.

My native British dread of the death of the sun for most of the year is showing itself in my actions in what is left of the summer in spite of the fact that the weather is generally more clement than that of my native land.

The difference has not made me any less desperate in my attempts to tint my skin and my natural pessimism about the weather always tells me that the skin colouration which is not in place by the end of August will not improve until the following summer.

Today, Sunday, is usually the day on which we have to defend our gate and prevent day trippers parking on the pavement and obstructing our way out of the drive. Because this is August the number of visitors is remarkably limited. We are not a resort for extended holidays in an hotel; rather we are the resort of choice for people in Barcelona who are looking for R&R on a local beach. We should be relatively free of selfish parkers until next year and by then I hope that the necessary bureaucracy will have plodded its way along and provided us with the little sign to ensure that our gateway is always car free.

No need for a car on our short walk to the Maritime Restaurant where we had a stupendous mariscada which, in spite of its size, was polished off by the four of us.

Now we are watching Barça playing for a cup which, in theory, they have already won. This trophy is played for between the winners of La Liga and the winners of the Copa del Rey. This year the winner of both was – Barça! However, to decide the future home of the trophy Barça is engaged in a re-run of the final so they are playing Athletico Bilbao.

At this stage of the game, after about half an hour, there is no score but Barça have had three goal opportunities and the Bilbao goalkeeper has had some spectacular saves.

The Pauls still have not been to the beach though they are slowly changing colour. Paul One is definitely a different shade from the one he was hiding when he arrived, but it would take the trained eye of the professional colourist to describe where on the continuum of beige his skin would fit.

Barça are now one goal down in this two match trophy and Toni is not at all happy.

Never mind, the sun will shine tomorrow and all will appear to be right with the world!

What's a little fire between friends?

Perhaps there is nothing which shows up the differences in a culture as the approach to the health and safety concerns which come to the fore when there is a public event.

Today we ventured into the centre of Castelldefels for one of the celebrations for the Major Festival of our little town. This particular event was one concerned with the parading of dragons of Castelldefels and some of the surrounding towns which were preceded by drum bands and surrounded by ‘Devils’ who pranced around and let off fireworks some of which were directed as the crowds which had come to see this part of the festivities.

The Pauls were horrified by the seemingly indiscriminate spraying of red hot material towards vulnerable people which included little children. Exactly my attitude when I first experienced this pyrotechnic chaos a few years ago.
The likelihood of this sort of event taking place in the United Kingdom is so laughably remote that experiencing it in Catalonia gives one a true guilty pleasure and a feeling of having escaped the Nanny State for a couple of hours.

The Pauls were happier with their firework explosions happening some distance away when we were sitting in the restaurant a few days ago watching the start of our town’s festivities which commenced with a spectacular firework display on the beach.

I have attempted (yet again) to take a decent photograph of fireworks and am beginning to believe that it is impossible without a tripod.

Similar problems confront the would-be photographer when attempting to take a decent photo of the fiery dragons and their attendant devils.

But these are small problems when confronted with the Pauls’ determination to get a tan before they go back to Britain. They remind me of my own steely determination which governed my behaviour when I used to visit Gran Canaria out of season so that I could return to Wales with an unseasonable tan in January. Every daylight moment in Gran Canaria was spent lying prone on a sun bed (whatever the actual weather) casting accusing eyes at the sky and praying to all known deities that the sun would shine. Now that I live in a sunny country I can smile with benign condescension at those dwellers in more northern climes.

The Pauls still haven’t visited the beach and thrown themselves in to the Med.

This must be remedied tomorrow.

The obstacle of water

The poor old Pauls are stuck in Bristol airport, though now they should be in the air, scheduled to arrive in Barcelona two and a half hours late.

My response to their suffering was to go for a swim in the dark and to muse as I ploughed my way up and down was to wonder when I first used goggles.

A mask is easy. My first swimming mask was purchased for me in Tossa de Mar when I was seven on my first (and certainly one of my best) foreign holidays. The mask was one which covered virtually all of my face and allowed me to view with utter delight the fish which seemed to ignore humans and swim quite cheerfully close to the shore.

But that mask was not the sort of thing that one wore when swimming in a pool. Chorine reddened eyes was the natural gift of ‘safe’ public swimming pools as one happily cried one’s way back home!

I’m sure that goggles as opposed to masks were available when I was in school but I never had the courage to wear one in the good old Empire Pool of happy memory. It all looked too professional for anyone other than a ‘proper’ swimmer.

The first goggles that I used on a regular basis were in university. As I recall they were like two transparent thimbles with a hard plastic surround which dug into the skin around the eyes with a pressure that stopped the natural flow of the blood.

The straps were an even more problematic aspect of the goggles. They seemed to have been designed to dissolve on contact with chlorinated water; to perish if left in air and to break if tightened to stop water entering. At least it gave me an early and informative experience of planned obsolescence.

It was always a struggle to keep the water at bay. I often swam with goggles which gradually filled with water and seemed to sting the eyes even more viciously than if one had not been wearing goggles at all.

I eventually found a pair which suited my eyes which had a sort of foam surround which I used until they stopped making them. While other people managed to make a pair of goggles last virtually a lifetime I changed mine almost with the regularity of my socks. I think that I made them honorary gadgets and each new shape, shade and new material seemed to deserve my hard earned cash. Rather like the number of cameras that I had (pre move) with which I could easily have established a new gallery in the Victoria and Albert tracing the modern development of the camera from Kodak Brownie through disc and cassette via miniature and compact to early digital, I could have gifted a similar gallery on the development of the swimming goggle in the twentieth century.

Even after the winnowing of possessions that moving necessitates I am still finding goggles in unexpected places.

I do think it significant that I found my optically adjusted goggles in the chaos of boxes which characterized our early stay in the house before we found the phones! Somewhere I think there still exists a pair with my specific prescription. These were ridiculously expensive and I therefore mislaid them at the soonest opportunity! The next ‘prescription’ goggles were ‘off the shelf’ and approximated to my eyes, but were better than clear glass or plastic. The ones I use now are plastic lenses but they only stay clear for a matter of seconds before they cloud over. I might have to buy some new ones!

Talking of buying: Toni is attempting to replace his bike. The one that was stolen has been relegated to history and extensive use of the internet has produced results which mean that we now have to go to every Carrefour superstore in Catalonia to find the model on which he has decided. I must admit that, from the pictures of it, it looks a fearsome beast with aluminium frame and 21 gears. My bike has seven gears and that seems to me to be something of a genteel sufficiency. Bearing in mind my previous bikes had three it would appear to be more than enough for me to cope with!

I am ashamed (in so far as I understand that word at all) that one of the reasons that I bought an almost exact (apart from the colour) replacement of my bike was the saddle. Who can resist the appeal of naming a bike saddle ‘plush’? I for one certainly cannot.

My bike is specifically for short journeys and I hope that this aspect is reflected in the comfort of the ride. On my folding bike I only assayed one journey over a hill when I was getting the car after its service. I was emotionally and physically exhausted after the experience. Spanish drivers are not the most ‘giving’ of road users when confronted by an uncomfortable looking cyclist.

I intend to confine myself to stately progressions up and down the paseo which now graces the length of the beach in Castelldefels. I fully intend to ignore the prohibition on cyclists on the new part of the paseo; just like every other cyclist in Castelldefels!

Meanwhile the Pauls get ever nearer. Their plane, though late appears to be on time, even if the ‘time’ is delayed. We are prepared to feed them, but I am sure that the refreshment that they will ask for will be liquid!

Time to go.

Ssssssh!

We tell people that we now live in a quiet residential area as opposed to the tourist ‘centre’ of Castelldefels in which we lived previously.

As far as it goes that is indeed correct, but it leaves out all those elements which make living here a much more complex audio experience than living in an overtly noisy area.

Here it is amazing just how noisy doves can be. Their incessant cooing is enough to drive anyone to wakefulness and, as there are trees directly outside the bedroom their perches mean that we have a reliable alarm clock. The monotony of their call is only soothing for a matter of seconds before it gets irritating.

The trees on which these obstreperous doves hang out are pines. Pines have pine needles. Needles which fall and create a springy layer of vegetation – a layer I understand which was the surface on which the original Scandinavian joggers ran, the cushioned effect counteracting the deleterious action on the knees of that unnatural form of running. And no, it has not given me any ideas for emulating our northern neighbours.

Fallen pine needles look rather picturesque to me but they are obviously anathema to others around us. This is because we are in a ‘high pool density’ area and pine needles do not go well with gentle exercise in the chlorinated pool. They therefore have to be cleared up. Most people in this area pay a community charge to ensure that the pool person also clears the extraneous needles. They do this not by the restful swish of an old fashioned brush but rather by using a hand held wind machine which blows all the needles into piles so that they can be collected easily. The noise that this machine produces makes the silence when it is turned off eerily unnatural and creates an almost unbearable tension as you wait for the noise to restart.

Then there are the circular saws. At some point during the early morning someone somewhere will start up one of those intrusive machines. By the length of time that it is used and the shrieking of metal on metal one has to assume that the reconstruction of a whole dwelling place is being attempted. But again the silence at the eventual end of the operation is something to savour.

Traffic is traffic and apart from those Neanderthals who remove the silencers from their motorbike exhausts it is reasonable. The refuse collection in the early hours of the morning however is not. These lorries are specially designed to wake up even the most profound of sleepers. And, if you can sleep through the throaty roar of the machine itself then the accompanying bangs as the refuse containers are hoisted into position to deposit their rubbish and the health thwack of the containers against the lorry designed to remove the last vestiges of filth from the inside will ensure that as they depart you are fully awake.

The gates in the immediate vicinity of our house are specially designed in two parts so that there is a necessity to give a forceful push to release the gate from the rest of the structure to facility your egress. This gives movement to the other part of the gate which emits metallic clunks as it sways from side to side.

The clunking sounds usually stir to action the barking instincts in the ‘dogs’ by which (my choice of pronoun) we are surrounded. You have to understand that the noble genus canus has found its most degraded forms in our vicinity. The deranged nightmares which masquerade as pets in this area are worthy denizens of some of the more extreme paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. The stick limbs barely supporting a virtually hairless body surmounted by a goggle eyed head flanked with ragged bat ears (which is a fairly common description for most of the beasts which are lovingly carried by doting owners in this area) make a mockery of their shared derivation from the wolf! And their ‘barks.’

The monotonous baying of some sort of hound or the full throated bark of a real dog would be a positive delight compared to the various forms of emasculated squeal that pass for dogs’ warnings in this part of Castelldefels. Two dogs at the end of our street scream when other dogs pass; a solitary creature yaps for minutes on end for no particular reasons and there is some life-form near us which reacts with a sort of abbreviated dog cough to any extraneous sound.

Sometimes I can even believe the Disney fantasy of dogs talking to each other across the city when one emasculated ‘bark’ triggers of another and so on until we have an unholy chorus of the damned. And who can blame them if they ever get a chance to see themselves and realize that they are the denizens of the Island of Doctor Moreau come to horrible life. I would slaughter the lot of them – and probably the owners too for choosing to perpetuate the debased race of rat dogs by buying these monstrosities and encouraging breeders to produce ever more grotesque ‘flat-friendly’ noisy monsters to infest our streets. And don’t get me started on their tiny but disgusting poos which litter our streets!

But it is the humans who provide most of the intrusive noise in this area. I know that humans are the ones opening gates and operating chain saws and driving trucks and molly-coddling rat-dogs but it is the way that they communicate that irritates me.

Spanish people, as I have mentioned before in what must seem like a racist generalization, do not listen. This means that when they speak they are not listening to anyone else so they see no need to modify their contributions by creating an area of silence for a reply. So everyone speaks at once. Television chat shows are oral anarchy and are best avoided. As no one listens to anyone else and as everyone is trying to speak above everybody else as well you can imagine the level of pure noise which is generated.

What goes for a game show goes for domestic ‘conversation’ as well, so very often it is difficult to tell is having a pleasant conversation or arguing to the death: very confusing for the well brought up Briton to tolerate.

In the summer, given the heat many families like to transfer their domestic living to the outside. In houses this is fine as there is space to have a summer kitchen, barbecue and chairs. In flats it is a little more diffi8cult but balconies can be fitted out quite satisfactorily with the requirements for refined living outside the house. The only thing which is not catered for is the noise which is produced.

Our neighbours on the left (as opposed to the discrete Frenchman on the right) obviously think themselves and the heart and soul of our area and celebrate nightly with raucous delight in the area under their house. Here they have installed a television and the area is enhanced by sofas so the whole family can ignore an over-loud television while trying to impose their voices in a cacophony of competing contributions. The daughter of the house is a ‘popular’ girl and has a large coterie of devoted pimply admirers. She does not seem to have many girl friends. Her voice is heard well into the small hours and she sleeps late as we can clearly hear her loud voiced parents (whom she treats with undisguised contempt) pleading with her to get up in the early afternoon. Their friends, relatives and acquaintances are as noisy as the nuclear family so the only thing that is keeping us going is the scrap of information they have given us that they only live here for a few months of the year. Roll on their return to the city of Barcelona!

I have bought a bike. Again. I have reasoned that it is pointless to harbour boiling homicidal resentment against those avaricious, selfish, criminal bastards that stole my last bike so I forked out another 300€ for another bike exactly like the one which was stolen by people who I hope have been crushed into the asphalt by lorries of many axels leaving only a shapeless mess on the road they were defiling with my stolen wheels. But I credit myself with not wasting time by feeling bitter towards the mindless, opportunistic low-life that imperilled their immortal souls by taking that which was not theirs. No, I remain serene only regretting that I do not follow the path of The Prophet which might have given me the opportunity to issue a fatwa against them or to proclaim jihad against the larcenous youth of Castelldefels.

So, the new bike is of gleaming silver (Hi! Ho! Away!) and this time I have noted any number which looks remotely significant so that I have solid documentary evidence to convict the filth that dares to take this one.

On a more practical note I am also going to get household insurance – something I was meaning to do but, alas, left it too late to be effective.

There is a lesson there.

What is time!

I’ve read some books!

Not in itself something which is generally worthy of note, but given the strange eating up of time by moving into the new house, having enough time to sit down and concentrate for enough time to plough my way though a new tome!

“In Pale Battalions” by Robert Goddard has a back cover studded with reviews which all seem to pick on the storytelling quality of Goddard’s style as the most impressive quality of the novel. It takes the character of a woman who has recently lost her husband and who is going on a holiday to France with her daughter. This is the setting for a Russian Doll type of narrative where the opening story lead on to another and then in turn leads on etc etc.

The graphic on the cover of a field of poppies with a white cross and the use of the quotation in the title encouraged me to think that the story might be about the First World War and part of it was, but the main thrust of the narrative is the working out of a complicated love story stretching through the generations.

The story telling in this novel is competent and the complexity of the narrative is handled well, but what is not truly satisfying is the narrative voice of each of the people telling the story. Admittedly the story is recalled by a central character, but I found the lack of a series of distinctive voices frustrating.

The novel was compelling and I read it with enthusiasm. It was a good old fashioned read, well constructed and crafted.

The second was more interesting but less of a page turner. Lucia Graves’ “A Woman Unknown: stories from a Spanish life” traces the life of a woman who although with British parents grew up mainly in Spain and in Catalonia learning Spanish and Catalan yet sensing that she was not fully part of any of the cultures that she was experiencing.

Her narrative (which is made more interesting to me because she is the daughter of the writer Robert Graves) seeks to understand her life in terms of the cultural understanding she has gained through the years and through the experiences of her life. Her description of being a Protestant girl of agnostic parents in a Roman Catholic school at the time of Franco is fascinating.

She traces her thoughts and emotions through various noteworthy experiences in her life and through the process of studying Spanish in Oxford; marriage to a Catalan and the death of her father.

She is constantly interesting and to those who now the areas that she is describing it is a constant source of fascination. She links her experience of dislocation with the historical mistreatment of the Jews of Girona – another instance of a people with real links with Spain yet not allowed to be of Spain. A book well worth a read.

Whether the same can be said for Simon Sebag Montefiore’s “Monsters: History’s most evil men and women” you will have to decide for yourself. You have to understand that this is a book which is written for me! It has a wide historical sweep, it is bitty, none of the entries are longer than a few pages and it has little boxed inserts which I find compulsive. The range of people or ‘monsters’ is intriguing and it is impossible not to check the index to see if your own personal favourites are included amongst the human trash included.

All of the obvious ones are there but their lives are so shortened that some of the simplifications that are necessary to create an enjoyable minute’s read make you wonder about the intellectual rigour of the writing.

One disturbing effect of reading about so much horror is that some of the most famous and iconic names fade into insignificance when you realize that they haven’t killed (in disgusting ways) more than a million of their fellow men! As Stalin or Lenin or another mass murderer said killing over a certain number of people is just a statistic.

I myself have written to the son of one of the people in the book. I wrote a very polite letter addressing the man by his official title and asking a few well phrased questions (without mentioning torture as instructed by Amnesty International) and Baby Doc Duvallier didn’t deign to reply. Come to think of it, none of the murdering bastards holding high positions in their respective countries ever did reply to my letters. I only hope that the number of politely worded middle class missives had some effect on raising the profile of some of the prisoners of conscience held by the powerful scum around the world.

I said to Emma that ‘Monsters’ was basically a toilet book and, having reading profile after profile in a depressing catalogue of depravity, I am more than ever convinced that my original assessment was correct So if you have a spare shelf in your bathroom, you know what to buy!

Tomorrow – the Pauls!

Life is hard in its details

Some things are worth suffering in the short term so that you can luxuriate in the delight of their not happening in the long term. For most people.

Toothache, earache and headache are all nasty experiences which show you the true bliss of an ordinary existence without them. Someone once remarked that that with microbes, viruses and other nasties lurking all around us it was not surprising that we had occasional illnesses but it was truly remarkable that we were ever well!

Swimming pools are repositories of all sorts of unhealthiness on which is it not pleasant to dwell but one must place one’s trust in the right quantity of chlorine being placed in the water and one remembers to shower at the end of the swimming experience. In that way one is generally safe; or at least safe-ish.

Over the last few years I have taken to wearing ear plugs and have therefore saved myself another irritation. Yesterday however, in the rush to the person-less pool I omitted this simple precaution and plunged in with ears open to the elements.

The result was a water filled ear.

This usually responds to the ‘wet dog’ treatment whereby a vigorous shaking of the head (alas, not accompanied by a Timotei like ballet of wet hair in my case) usually clears out the excess water. This didn’t work. Neither did the ‘plunger’ technique of the index finger.

The time honoured way of the water is of course to wait for that delightful moment when a warm trickle from the ear presages the return of sharp hearing.

I have now been waiting for a day and that pop of audio clarity has been denied me. From time to time as I make a sudden movement there is that click of something happening in the ear which is just short of the water leaving it.

I think I shall have a small celebration when the water finally evaporates or gushes forth!

And yet again a normal life will be celebrated by the absence of minor irritation.

Now if only our irritating neighbours could go back to wherever their main (god how that grates) house is we would be fine!

A confusion of days

Tempted by Emma to luxuriate on the beach has necessitated the liberal application of After Sun. And I thought that I had acclimatized so well to Catalonia that such unguents were no longer necessary.

As further balm we went to see the pictures in MNAC that Emma didn’t see during the last visit.

The earlier paintings in the collection were rejected outright by Toni because they were contemptuously dismissed as ‘church’ pictures, and he watched with growing impatience as Emma and I bounced or way from wall to wall through the galleries.

It was only when we came to the nineteenth century and landscapes that he relaxed.

The one artistic experience that we all agreed on was the exhibition of the paintings of Vlaminck in one of the galleries of La Caixa Forum – one of the times that you don’t mind your money being used to the greater glorification of a bank! I still have to transfer the rest of my money from the Worst Bank in the World aka BBVA to La Caixa. This has to be done in a certain way so that I do not pay transfer fees to BBVA. The kind gentleman in La Caixa pointed out to me the various ways in which BBVA would try and squeeze the final cents out of me if I dared to change!

Today to Sitges. If I ever need to hear my native language then all I have to do is walk down any street in old Sitges and I can hear English – possibly with a particular lilt, but nevertheless English.

We had a lunch of a selection of tapas in a chiringuito next to the beach and we were royally ripped off for the privilege. Our meal later in the night in a restaurant in Castelldefels was much better quality and 50% cheaper and that included the excellent sangria that we quaffed.

Sitges is making the exploitation of tourists rather obvious but it has improved the appearance of some of the smaller beaches dramatically with increased pedestrianisazion of the areas behind the beach. Very impressive!

But it was still a relief to get back to the quieter pace of life in Castelldefels.

A walk along the paseo back to the area in which we used to live showed that the flat is still not being rented. The owner is going to be very fortunate to find people prepared to rent out the flat at the same rate that we were paying. Because we had a contract we were guaranteed our tenancy but we were also subject to a government limited rise in the rent each year. The owner will now have to start this process again, and, given the financial crisis he is unlikely to get the same rate. His refusal to return my aval has cost him dear – I hope!

Emma’s last night (difficult to follow the time scale of this blog sometimes isn’t it?) so we had paella followed by an internet search for the weather for Cardiff for the next week or so. This was a mistake.

A big, wet and cloudy mistake.

It's quite simple really!

I have been taught many things in my life. And I am deeply grateful for the knowledge that I have gained.

I have been taught to tell the time; it took a combination of school, my parents and the Cubs to drum the principles into my brain but it did eventually happen. I was taught the highway code; this knowledge did not prevent my being knocked down by a car the first time I went to Sunday school by myself, but then cars were supposed to be “all clear” at some point and the stream of vehicles seemed unending so I made a dash for it. At least I knew that I had not obeyed the code which I should have been following and the spectacular bruise that I developed helped instil the knowledge of the code into something which had to be obeyed – even if the cars did not seem to be playing their fair part.

I learned to read; taught by my father who held my writhing body in something approaching a full nelson to keep me on his lap and prompt my tearful responses to the pointing finger on the hateful pieces of card detailing the mundane adventures of Janet and John.

I was even taught how to solve quadratic equations by the graph method, completing the square and by the formula method. This knowledge is admittedly mostly lost by fragments of knowledge tremble at the tip of my pencil when I invigilate a maths exam and I am tempted to actually try one of the problems for myself. I do at least know the formula for the ‘formula method’ and thanks to Catkin Llama I now parrot the “ALL over 2a” when I come to the end.

I( have been taught and I have learned enough Spanish to tell a teenage ruffian friend of a very social underage neighbour that he and the rest of his and her crew are making too much noise again this late at night.

But in spite of my range of dilettante facts about a bewildering array of subjects I still feel that my education has been cruelly neglected.

This lack has been highlighted by a simple problem: how do you make crushed ice?

My solution of course, is to buy a gadget of some sort to do the job ‘properly.’ This seems a particularly attractive proposition when other methods have been tried and have failed.

The first attempt usually takes its inspiration from the name of the commodity that you are trying to create. One feels that there must be some sort of clue in the adjective ‘crushed.’

Inspiration leads inevitably to a hammer. One has a simple sequence in mind: hammer plus ice plus force equals crushed ice.

Wrong.

Using a hammer on a plastic bag full of large ice ‘cubes’ does not produce crushed ice but produces ice shards which fly through the plastic bag which has been punctured by the application of a hammer. The ice shards immediately start to melt so you have a room full of damp spots.

Varying the method by taking the ice out of the plastic bag and putting it in a tea towel and smashing it with a hammer while it is lying on the floor is neither effective nor hygienic.

Other methods become progressively more desperate and disproportionately humiliating as each successive attempt to break frozen water into smaller particles seems more and more unlikely.

Eventually, of course you resort of having chunks of ice in the drink (ah! I’ve now admitted the sybaritic reason for the demolition) and saying that it is fine.

Which it is certainly not.

So, anyway I bought a machine which had a little power pad of buttons each one of which was identified by a clear graphic. One graphic was of ice cubes and was clearly identified as the ice crusher.

And it didn’t work.

What possible use is an education system which does not give you the necessary knowledge to use a bloody machine to make crushed ice?

Risking a dislocated wrist I prodded the recalcitrant chunks of ice towards the whirling, pulsating blades to little or no avail. Toni was crushing the limes and adding the sugar and had the bottle unscrewed and all he needed was the crushed ice. Which in my case I did not have.

Much frantic improvisation and increasingly dangerous use of a wooden spoon later I was able to excavate a humiliatingly small amount of the hard won ice and deposit the same in the waiting glass.

But, as Toni took the opportunity to point out to me in case I had not noticed, “It doesn’t work.”

I didn’t of course read the instructions. What, I argued, was the need when the button had a little drawing on it!

What didn’t work would work because whatever else I had not been taught, I had been taught to think. And so I worked out a possible solution (there is a pun there!) put it to the test and got what I wanted.

I have now read the instructions and they read as follows: “To crush ice-cubes, place them inside the jug and fit the lid on. . . . Switch on by pressing the [ice graphic] button.”

This does not work.

The more astute of you will have seen that I have inserted the old three dots device to indicate something missed out. And what was missed out would have given me the clue a little earlier of to how to get crushed ice - if I had bothered to read it.

The missing sentence reads: “There is no need to add any liquid.” This is a lie. All you need to do (as indeed I did) is to do the opposite and you get crushed ice.

A cup of water added to the cubes and a press of the “programmed impulse speed” button of the ice graphic and there it was. Admittedly it had to be scooped out of the surrounding water fairly quickly but I did get a more than satisfactory drink at the end.

There is a good reason why it is never advisable to read instructions as the warm glow which paradoxically comes from my two crushed ice drinks clearly indicates.

Cheers!

It's a beach of a life!

This is the sort of weather that flays.

Bright sunshine with a brisk breeze little short of a wind. The beach (god, lying next to the sea is a potent, habit forming drug!) was fullish, but not with the whitened sepulchres of British bodies, but rather Iberian folk who were already sporting a more than respectable tan. Although this is common in Spain, Catalans are a varied bunch and do not always (or even usually) follow the dark, swarthy stereotype which forms in the mind of a Brit when asked to think of a Spaniard.

Castelldefels is the resort of choice of the day tripping Barcelona dweller so, although I am assured that there is a sizeable British contingent in Castelldefels, they rarely make their presence felt and the beach is the preserve of Spanish and Catalan.

I am sure that in the more cosmopolitan setting of Sitges just a little way down the coast there are going to be a generous amount of fried skin whimpering under cold showers this evening!

My concern with the weather is not just to give myself the opportunity to have a cheap gloat at the expense of my fellow countrymen still resident in my fellow country, but rather to worry about what weather Emma is going to have during her stay with us. For the last couple of days with Dianne and Gwen the weather was cloudy with occasional sunny periods. I am sure that would be acceptable given the vicious weather that August has seen fit to visit upon the British, but I am hoping for better.

At the moment I am looking out of the window at flawless blue skies with the harmony of the moment only shattered by the incredible inconsideration of our neighbours. They have a sizeable portion of the ‘Owner Syndrome’ which affected some of our fellow dwellers in the flat.

This syndrome (well attested in the medical literature) has symptoms which are easily visible. If a person owns (rather than rents) their accommodation they have to show that ownership in what has been described as ‘Ownership Behaviour.’

This takes the form of talking loudly at all times of the day and night; having a television blaring during the day which has been set up outside the house; colonizing areas of the swimming pool; having a daughter who . . . but there I shall draw a discrete veil. It is the typical behaviour of the obnoxious nouveau riche who has to let everyone know that they have made it.

I do realize that the preceding comments may appear to be almost unbearably, well, snobbish. But, I should care!

Emma has arrived and we have eaten and drunk. Isn’t that what a holiday is about?

'Read' the books!

Our preparation for our next British visitor has been relaxed not to say complacent. We are already feeling like a professional accommodation agency!

The danger is that Emma will be arriving in Barcelona at twenty to six in the evening, so we feel that we have the entire day to ensure that everything is in place. This, as any teacher with “the entire weekend ahead” will know, gives an entirely false sense of what time is available to complete essential tasks.

The bed coverings are all washed, but not yet on the bed. The boxes of books have been cleared away and the books placed on shelves, but the emptied boxes are still littering the garden. We have bought goods, but a few commodities are still waiting to be purchased. Nothing is going to take too much time, but we are going to leave it until there is not time to complete everything – in time!

I don’t think that being fully prepared for guests is actually playing the game. Too professional an approach to guests is surely a form of arrogance. Part of the pleasure of a visit is that your regimen is disrupted and you have to accommodate disruption to normal routine. Which all sounds like a justification for inaction and blind panic when you realize that time has in fact run out!

The boxes that I have opened today have revealed new treasures: the Somerset Maugham volume of short stories that I was looking for last term; catalogues from art galleries when I was in my relentless ‘doing art in Europe’ period; a box of my gloriously melancholy poems; ‘Lord of the Rings’ in my well thumbed three volume paperback set; programmes from significant and thoroughly witless productions; my volume of Charles Rennie Macintosh as a Designer of Chairs (which at one time I thought was my most esoteric purchase, and I bought it long enough ago for it to be so!) and on and on. How can I throw any of these away? Every book has a history; for many of them I can remember where I bought them and what bargains they were. I can remember the book sales; the plundering of various second hand book shops in Cardiff and Swansea and Kettering and London; the remainder book shops; the expensive ones; the unexpected ones; the gifts; the acquisitions – and some of them for which I have no memory whatsoever.

I am finding books that I have always told myself that I would read (like ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ which I have now read) and other books that I feel I should read but probably won’t.

On Wren’s tomb it says (in Latin) something like for my memorial look around you. I suppose that I could change that a little and say for my autobiography look at my books.

Everything is there. Jumbled up with little sense of order. But everything that is important in my life is reflected in volumes brash, cheap, disturbing, classic, thoughtful, challenging, religious, tawdry, expansive, fantastic – and whole range of other adjectives that would have to be used to encapsulate a life.

I suppose one good thing about the fractured jigsaw that forms my book room is that the sheer incoherence of the array allows virtually any interpretation of what I am like.

A safe ambiguity!

The problems of paper

A cloudy start to the day.

One has to have faith (based on experience!) to believe that the sun will make an appearance. I don’t mind it being a little overcast as long as our nearest star is shining gloriously on Wednesday for the appearance of Emma – our next British visitor.

Already the new washing machine is (quietly) preparing the sheets to be laid and perhaps this time we might get round to splashing a bit of paint around.

Before Dianne and Gwen arrived I was determined to touch up the more glaring examples of grubbiness that we were presented with when we took over the house. The state in which we left the flat could not have been more marked when compared with the condition of the paintwork in the house.

Toni has attempted to repair some of the ravages (by a dog we suspect) to the doors which lead out onto the balcony on the third floor. The paste which he was using to restore the woodwork was probably more suitable for filling in cracks than replacing generous chunks of the framework: still, I am relying on the magic that ‘a lick of paint’ will do. To adopt what seems like a fairly racist slogan, “If it’s white, it’s alright!” It is, I suppose, an advantage that the interior of the house has been painted a uniform white making reparations (supposedly) easy.

Our good intentions to spruce up the living room came to nothing when I couldn’t find the paint brush. We know they exist because we packed them. We are unpacked. They are therefore somewhere in the house: the only problem is finding them. Situations like this can aid inaction for months. I hope!

Today, whatever else happens, I am going to get more boxes from Bluespace. Ten more boxes will probably fill all the remaining shelves in what I shall refer to henceforth as The Book Room. With bookcases along two walls and four bookcases forming an island in the centre of the room it has the look of a professional stack. The lights along the top of the wall based bookcases (installed by me!) are still working at a click of the remote – which still gives me a child-like pleasure each time I use it!

¨The far less pleasant task that I have to look forward to is the winnowing of the books now in place. I have decided that the number of bookcases already in place have reached the reasonable limit of what the house can take. You will note that I used the word ‘reasonable’ – this is to differentiate this house from the one in Cardiff where virtually every available empty vertical plane had a bookshelf of some sort against it.

Hard decisions will have to be made and I foresee a considerable amount of heartache as ‘84 Charing Cross Road’ meets ‘Fahrenheit 451.’

Still life is about hard decisions. Allegedly.

Bon voyage!

Our first British visitors take their leave with clouds rather spoiling the sunshine but perhaps preparing them for the weather of their native land. Though to be fair we have had a message that today has been one without rain in my native land. Lies of course!

Our minds should now be on our next guest but are more focussed on security and the question of when we get our new bikes and how we foil the rascally thieves which obviously infest this area!

Toni continues his one man efforts to convert our living space into an impregnable fortress. I can see myself in the near future weeping tears of frustration as I frantically search for the requisite key to let myself in, out or around our estate!

One of our present concerns is the temperature inside the house. The threat of mosquitoes is enough to close windows, but there is a corresponding rise in the thermometer which is not conducive to sweet repose during the nights. Our first response was to buy a remotely controlled (of course, this is me we are talking about) tower fan. This was suspiciously reasonably priced and has revealed the secret of its tempting pricing by breaking down twice. Unfortunately we had already bought two of them so we still have one on our hands.

The other fan was rejected by us and a new and more interesting (i.e. expensive) one was purchased.

This fan (allegedly) delivers cool air which has been charged with negative (or possible positive) ions. To achieve this, the machine has to be charged with water, ice packs and (although we have not done this) actual ice cubes. There seems to be a fairly heavy handed clue there about how the low temperature is achieved!

Although unimpressed with the first night’s cooling propensities we are going to give it another chance; charge it with ice cubes; pack it with frozen ice packs, and put it on full strength. We’ll probably end up with frostbite.

Tomorrow we have to prepare for our next visitor and, more importantly, I have to get more of the boxes from Bluespace.

One has to get one’s priorities right.

Every day and in every way I am getting poorer and poorer!

Our bikes are stolen!

I take is as a sign from whatever debased deity might be chuckling about the affairs of human kind that I am too young for an Old Man’s bike.

Our visit to the police station today was the usual farce of paperwork taking the place of action. Our bikes are well and truly gone.

I had not realized just how much I have become suddenly sensitised to foot propelled transport when I found myself eying with deep suspicion a young boy who was using a foot propelled scooter. Every bike which passes us is checked to see if it, in any way, bears the slightest resemblance to what has been stolen.

My bike is (sorry, was) so distinctive that if I see it, it is probably mine!

We are undoubtedly at fault in that we did not put them well away from covetous eyes which pass on the road. It must have been the work of a moment for the miscreants (two of them we suspect as they only took two of the three bikes which were there) to walk in from the street and take them through an open (sigh! I know) gate and away into the night.

I have decided to be upbeat about this incident, though it has fed the latent paranoia which Toni only suppresses with effort and we now live in what is rapidly become something of a fortress. Doors are being firmly locked and fencing is being reinforced. I can look forward to a growing insistence that anything which can be closed should be.

I am determined to buy another bike, though a cursory glance in the shop in which I bought the first showed me that its exact replacement is not there. The windows of the shop are festooned with signs saying that there are substantial reductions throughout the store. Everything is cut price. Except of course for the bike I want to buy.

One has to search for any positive lessons to take from this admittedly pretty poor experience. Apart from increasing the security in which we live and attempting to get reasonable insurance for the contents as well as the building, I take comfort from the fact that I liked the bike and found it (relatively) comfortable.

The crucial aspect which will be an improvement is that the bike that they have in stock is silver and therefore a little more distinguished than the black model that I had previously! A rather high price to pay for a different colour.

To add to the misery of the day I have not been feeling well. Again searching for the positive in the startlingly negative I would say that the pulsating ear ache from which I have been suffering is one of those maladies which are worth having so that you can appreciate their absence.

Allegedly.

I look forward to a more positive day tomorrow.

And another thing . . .

Today is the last day on which we can make a list of faults that we have found with the house. Given the odd dictates of our contract, after 30 days any faults that we find are our own concern and not those of the owner – whoever he she or it is. We have accepted that there are many aspects of ‘decoration’ in the house that we are going to have to rectify (including re-puttying windows) but some really do seem to be the responsibility of the owner and his agents. We will have to see how the agents respond. Our experience of these creatures is not good, but you never know, we might have found the only reasonable firm among the lot of them. And yes, that was an example of irony.

Our guests have settled in, though they didn’t find the fan in their room until this morning and so had a hot and sticky night.

I have, at last, actually got around to starting reading a book from the multitudes now exposed on my shelves. My choice lit on one which I have been meaning to read for some time: ‘Confederacy of Dunces’ by John Kennedy Toole published a decade after the author’s death by suicide. It is disturbingly funny and quirkily compulsive. I am enjoying it immensely – and I have a lot of reading to do if I am to complete my normal quota for this holiday!

With Dianne and Gwen we have discovered a new restaurant which provided a selection of tapas which were of outstanding quality – a place to which we will return.

Tomorrow, Barcelona: shopping for the girls and guilty wandering in bookshops for me!