"The Heart of Darkness" & "Hatteras"

Old habits die hard. And a literary puzzle still has the power to concentrate my thoughts.

Reading through some short stories by AEW Mason (author of The Four Feathers and Fire Over London) I came across “Hatteras” - its form and content immediately reminded me of “Heart of Darkness” by Conrad.

Both stories are ‘stories within stories’ and both are told on ships at a time when “the air had grown chilly with the dusk, and the sea when it lost the sun took on a leaden and a dreary look.” (Hatteras) Both stories are set in Africa and both concern themselves with ‘civilized’ men becoming too concerned with aspects of native life. Both have elements of horror and both have the character that has ‘gone native’ dying.

I do not pretend that the two stories are of equal interest. “The Heart of Darkness” (sic) was the title of the serialized version of the story when it was published in three parts in Blackwood’s Magazine around March 1899 and as Conrad himself said, in what one biographer described as “one of the literary understatements of all time,” he felt that this story was similar to his “An Outpost of Youth” but was “a little wider” in its scope!

By contrast “Hatteras” by AEW Mason is much more limited. It was published in 1901 in a collection of short stories with the title of “Ensign Knightly” but I suspect, but do not know, that the story itself could have been published in magazine form before that. Black and White: A Weekly Illustrated Record and Review was a British illustrated weekly periodical established in 1891 was a magazine which published stories by AEW Mason and it could have appeared here or in one of the other literary magazines that flourished at the turn of the century.

“Hatteras” is not a common English name and in the 1890s it might have been linked in the literary mind with with Jules Verne who had published The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras) an adventure novel in two parts: The English at the North Pole (Les Anglais au pôle nord) and The desert of ice (Le Désert de glace).

In Verne’s novel the story of an expedition to the North Pole ends when Captain Hatteras and his crew find a volcano with the exact location of the Pole being in the centre of the crater. Hatteras throws himself in and dies. In a rewrite of the original version Hatteras survives but is made permanently insane by the intensity of the experience and loses his “soul” inside the crater. He is brought back to England and walks the streets around the asylum where he is placed but "Captain Hatteras forever marches northward".

The novel was published for the first time in 1864. The definitive version from 1866 was included into Voyages Extraordinaires series (The Extraordinary Voyages). These were successful and widely known, so AEW Mason may well have had the name of this explorer who ‘lost his soul’ in mind when he came to write his own story of a man who felt drawn to the darker aspects of native life in Africa.

By the end of the 1890s Conrad was fully involved in the literary life of Britain and a number of prominent visitors came to his house in Pent: Edward Garnett, Ford Madox Hueffer, Glasworthy, HG Wells, William Rothenstein and Stephen Crane. Not to mention visits to Henry James in Rye. It would seem to be highly likely that Conrad would read all the latest literary effusions from his colleagues and competitors.

I can find, with my limited literary resources, no evidence to suggest that Conrad and Mason were acquainted with each other, though it is more than likely that they knew each other’s work. I wonder who read whose story first!

“Hatteras” will never be more than a literary curiosity, though it does try to bring horror to the situation where a classically educated young man is forced by circumstances to go to Africa and there becomes fascinated by the life of the natives in the dark forest. He blacks himself up and with his fluent command of the native languages is able to immerse himself in the darker aspects of the native life. Hatteras says "It's not only the things you care about, old man, which tug at you; it's the things you hate as well. I hate this country. I hate these miles and miles of mangroves, and yet I am fascinated. I can't get the forest and the undergrowth out of my mind. I dream of them at nights. I dream that I am sinking into that black oily batter of mud. Listen," and he suddenly broke off with his head stretched forwards. "Doesn't it sound wicked?"

Jim Walker the ‘decent’ Englishman is appalled by what he hears from Hatteras and urges him to find a wife to give himself stability. Although Hatteras takes his advice it does not stop his nocturnal excursions and he eventually confesses that "It's like going down to Hell and coming up again and wanting to go down again. Oh, you'd want to go down again. You'd find the whole earth pale. You'd count the days until you went down again. Do you remember Orpheus? I think he looked back not to see if Eurydice was coming after him but because he knew it was the last glimpse he would get of Hell."

Which is all good stuff; but it is far from the suggestiveness that you find in Conrad’s story. Mason is too literal and the horror of his narrative is always contained with the institutions of the white man. At the end of “Hatteras” there is a terribly English public school sort of execution: "Good bye, Jim," said Hatteras, and he climbed up the bank until he stood in the light of the lantern. Twice Walker raised the rifle to his shoulder, twice he lowered it. Then he remembered that Hatteras and he had been at school together.
"Good bye, Dicky," he cried, and fired. Hatteras tumbled down to the boat-side.”

There is a tidiness in “Hatteras” that is not present in “Heart of Darkness” which is why “Hatteras” remains a horrid story set in Africa while “Heart of Darkness” becomes more of an allegory which transcends its African setting.

I also cannot find any linking of these two stories, but I find it difficult to believe that no one else has seen the similarities and commented on them. The internet while offering much has been more frustrating than informative and the chaos of my books has meant my looking more and more like some crazed bibliophile as I flit from shelf to shelf trying to find something to help my discoveries.

I think that the most that “Hatteras” can prompt me to do is re-read “Heart of Darkness”.

Which is a good thing.

In spite of what Chinua Achebe said in his famous (or infamous) talk: "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness” – though something to think about!

Real life?

Coincidence, in spite of its almost boring regularity, always catches us out. How many times do we find ourselves saying in a depreciatory sort of way, “You couldn’t put that in a novel!” at some piece of happenstance whose insignificance is only matched by the delight that it gives.

In my view coincidence is a reflection of observation: the more of which you take notice, the more you are likely to link – especially if your mind has been infected by the novels of people like Dickens and Smollett who had no restraint in making essential elements of the narrative entirely dependent on the most glaring coming together of unlikely events!

Going to work I listen to a Catalan classical music station and in the gloom of the early morning death defying joining of the motorway I was stimulated by hearing a piece of music which I hadn’t heard before. It sounded like a quasi-concerto for brass and the style of the music was clearly Romantic and Germanic, but I was still dithering about an attribution when the music ended and I managed to work out from the welter of Catalan that I had been listening to something by Schumann and set for four horns. It was the sort of music that you would like to hear again but you knew that you were not going to make that much of effort to find a disc.

Then my copy of the BBC Music Magazine arrived. I have taken this publication since it was launched and have greedily gobbled up the reviews that are included and sometimes even taken action and bought the discs that I thought looked interesting. The disc that comes with the magazine is worth the cost of the magazine alone so for me it is a win-win situation when the grey packaging is poking out of the post box.

This month (within a couple of days of my hearing the music) the disc has as the first tract “Konzertstück for Four Horns in F, OP 86” by Robert Schumann!

Also during this week I have been listening to a series of discs that had been given to me by one of Toni’s aunts. On one the unlikely coupling of Bartók and Beethoven had as its first work Bartók’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste” – a piece I had heard before and wondered vaguely what the motivation behind the combination of instrumentation was. Sure enough, again a few days later in the same wonderful magazine there, in an article about “Classical Connections” was a piece on Bartók’s “Concerto for Orchestra” and linked to it a description of the “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste!”

Such things are not vital to the health of nations, but they sure as hell give me pleasure when they happen. You get a completely irrational feeling that the world is turning in the right direction and there is some degree of sense out there.

Which is not the case in school. No, I am not going to moan about the predilection for examinations and tests which our school has with a junkie’s obsession, but rather about the children we teach. Well, one of them. Actually his parents.

While sitting at lunch with colleague one, with scant regard for my appetite, threw into the conversation that one of our kids was going to have an eighteenth birthday party. For this obviously momentous occasion his parents had hired a disc jockey for the night at a cost of €40,000! This is just under the total cost of two teacher’s annual salaries. For someone who puts records on a turntable for part of a night. Sigh!

On a more domestic level I have read a book this morning. Just as I used to do on a Saturday morning when I was living in the flat in Torrington Crescent (which was neither a crescent nor in the West Country) and just before I ventured out into Town for lunch and a little light shopping.

The book I chose to read really chose itself and it is one of those volumes which seem to accumulate on the tops of other books which are regimented carefully on a shelf and are therefore obviously asking to be read. I have ignored it for a couple of weeks, but this morning I gave it and, with a cup of tea started to read.

I know that I have read it, but as I read it I found that I could remember remarkably little about it. It was “Putting the boot in” by Dan Kavanagh and is concerned with the life of (as the front of the book puts it) “sharp, savvy and cynical, bisexual private eye Duffy.”

It is a witty, incisive and compelling read. Duffy is an ex-policeman and amateur goalkeeper and the storyline uses his experience in both areas to sustain interest.

It was first published in 1985 and the fear of AIDS informs much of Duffy’s inner life. He is constantly checking for the tell-tale signs of infection and I saw that I had marked page 63 of my Penguin edition of the novel as containing something of interest. This turned out to be a reference to “Bela Kaposi and his travelling sarcoma. Certificate X.” This is part of Duff’s continuing fear as he constantly searches for evidence of the disease showing itself in “Little brown irregular blotches, that was what he had read. Duffy shuddered. It had a nasty name, too. Kaposi’s sarcoma. That didn’t sound like something you got better from. Who the hell was this Kaposi guy? He had a name like one of those Hollywood movie stars. Bela Kaposi.” Worth a read.

The saga of The Catalan Wine Tasting continues with the next suggested date thrown out to our little group. I await the response with some concern as we seem to be ploughing further and further into the year with the wine waiting enticingly to be opened!

One wine that was tried by us (poor use of passive there, but it is examination time and we love setting the passive for the kids) in Barcelona last Saturday in a Chinese restaurant was Libilis. I have signally failed to find another bottle but this afternoon when I was visiting the area where I knew a cheese store lurked I also had pointed out to be an excellent wine shop. On my asking for Libilis in Spanish I was instantly answered in flawless English that they didn’t have a bottle but he could suggest something similar.

I believed him because the shop was a positive treasure trove of thousands of bottles of different wines (or at least it seemed like that number to my delighted eyes) set out in a Tardis-like shop which seemed to stretch on to vinous Paradise!

This shop was Celler Vallés in Avda. De la Constitución here in Castelldefels. The bottle that I purchased was a White wine from D.O. Penedés by Gramona called Gessamí. The grapes are a mixture of Muscat de Alejandría and Sauvignon. This is not quite the same mixture as Libilis but I am prepared to give it a try. I am also prepared to go back to the shop as the English speaking person who served me certainly seemed to know what he was talking about.

I have made a late January resolution to note my reactions to each new bottle of wine that I have so that I have some sort of record of all the money that has passed through my system so to speak.

Weary work and bountiful books

The mock examinations are barely finished (some still unmarked) and we are well into our next series of examinations. These are ones that we write ourselves and are therefore prone to small, yet significant mistakes.

The kids are hyper sensitive to anything included that they have not ‘studied.’ They may not know how to use the words that are legitimately on the exam paper but, by God, they recognize with no difficulty whatsoever anything extra to that which they know that they should have studied. I put the word ‘studied’ in inverted commas because their attitude to study is that they are prepared to set aside the night before the examination for that purpose: that night and no other!

Even the Sisyphean prospect of unending marking is not entirely suicide-inducing because the sun is shining in a flawless blue sky and you can kid yourself along that all is for the best in this best possible of all worlds – thank you Candide!

I am now in a position of sympathise with the difficulties of the Secretary General of UNO when he tries to set up a meeting with the disparate nations that comprise our very wonderful world community. The Catalan Wine Tasting is rapidly becoming an unwieldy organizational nightmare with it proving to be virtually impossible to get everyone together at the same time. Compromise is in the air!

This weekend is going to see me start on the mammoth task of at least attempting to do something visible in the shelving of my books. The third floor becomes more depressing each time I wend my sinuous way through the obstacle course which comprises boxes and other impedimenta which will have to be swept away or put in place.

Both alternatives seem equally bleak to me with the first necessitating a ruthlessness that I do not possess when it comes to printed material, while the second needs a degree of spatial organization which requires a placidity of mental outlook which a working teacher does not really gain until he is deep into the summer holiday.

And then, of course, there is the Tempting Snare. Whenever I deal with my books and pretend to have a rough professional approach I am constantly frustrated in my mechanistic approach to the ordering of them by their very existence.

I can remember when I got my books; which shop I bought them from; why I was in the mood to make such a purchase and when I did (or did not) read them. And that last bit does make sense: I can recall with bright clarity several occasions on which I made a definite decision not to read my copy of Don Quixote. I can sometimes remember how much I paid for them and what level of satisfaction I got from their acquisition.

A very small proportion were given or acquired in ways other than purchase. Some, it has to be said are lurking in my collection because of Indolent Theft. These are books which have washed up on the shores of my bookcases as the literary flotsam from various schools in the form of text books (!) and set texts and have settled comfortably into the dark niches of forgotten shelves crammed with those books whose purchase seemed like a good idea at the time and whose throwing away is of course unthinkable.

Some of the books are Old Friends and from their mere handling tendrils of reading desire seem to penetrate the hand and make it grasp the volume a little more firmly, while some nervous reaction prompts the other hand to reach over and begin to turn the pages. At this point addicts are lost and it is only aching legs that indicate to the dedicated reader that ‘book tidying’ stopped some time previously to be replaced by the much more satisfying ‘book reading’ which is why they are there in the first place.

I confidently expect to be delayed, hijacked, misled, delighted, mystified, involved and angered by what the books contain and what they are. Their physicality is both their strength and their almost impossible disadvantage: turning pages in reality can never be matched by their electronic substitute.

On my (new) e-book reader I brush my thumb along the bottom right hand foot of the ‘page’ to get to the next. This can never compete with the sheer delight of the touch of the middle finger or index finger on the fore edge of the book and the selection of the page by the inward hook of the digit, the gentle cupping of the hand to support the leaf and the leftward smooth of the page which is all part and parcel of ‘real’ turning over! Reading should be a sensual as well as an intellectual activity!

Which all explains why I do not expect to get much done!

The books win again!

There is always something better to do

In one of the most extreme examples of displacement activity in recent months I have just cleaned the bathroom; put clothes on hangers and put books (quite randomly) in any available spaces.

All this rather than finish off an examination paper that I am supposed to be writing.

No pressure: has to be photocopied tomorrow afternoon to be given to the kids on Friday.

Then there is another examination on Monday and . . . well, you get the idea of what motivates our school.

All is not misery. Today for the first time for three days the sun came out! Driving home early (after only eight solid hours in school) I was gratified to see the torn brilliance of sunshine saturating the fragmenting cloud spread out over my destination. The sense of spaciousness that one gets after being incarcerated in an educational institution (even one with panoramic views over Barcelona from the right windows) is truly breathtaking.

The landscape was slightly hazy with a sort of purple and orange gauze draped artistically over the slightly domestic hills which surround the narrow coastal plain. Most satisfying even to the jaded sight of a taught-out worker!

Rainy ruminations

On this cold, wet, dismal day I have to admit that making an effort and coming to school was not in my Top 50 Things To Do. In fact it wasn’t in my top 1000, but let it pass.

The sodden roads with patches of standing water did not, of course, deter motorists from travelling at their normal speeds and cyclists of the motoring kind from performing their death inviting manoeuvres on slippery roads. I have now got into the mode of thinking where the motorcyclists only excite my fear that they will cause accidents and make me late; I am long past worrying about their lives!

It is very difficult to believe that only one week of term has passed as it now seems that I have been here for most of my natural life. United Nations Day is much less than a year away (well, nine months and a bit) but October seems impossibly distant at the moment and I’m not sure at what point you are allowed to go ‘stir-crazy’ at the thought of escape.

I understand that I will have to inform the pensions people that I intend to retire otherwise they will assume that I am quite happy to go on in genteel poverty while gnashing my teeth. This is something else that I will have to find out about and it will give me an opportunity to enquire about something ‘real’!

Unfortunately the other ‘real’ element in the general thankfulness about this United Nations Day is working out just how much I will get and whether it is sufficient to continue my hedonistic (!) life style that the untold riches (!) that I get from teaching in my present job has made me accustomed to.

Looking back on the financial arrangements that have obtained in my past life I realise that wealth (relative) or poverty (real) have had no real effect on the way that I live my life. Long, as they say, might it continue!

The first lesson in school is now over and the complete lack of enthusiasm which characterised my lackadaisical steps towards the classroom has not noticeably improved. It is one of those grey Monday days when all you can see is an unbroken succession of teaching days stretching ahead into the distant future. And that means a week. I have no adequate word to describe the seemingly endless period of time which remains to me in the profession.

I will have to take the term nice thing by nice thing!

With any luck the next wine tasting will be at the end of this month in a fortnight. I shall look forward to gleaning information about the districts whose produce we are going to taste and reproducing them for the group of gourmets (!) who will be making sophisticated notes on what hits their palettes!

Next month Ceri and Dianne are arriving and, although I will be teaching, they will be here over a weekend so I will have an opportunity to see them for an extended period and get down to the serious business of chatting.

That should get me through to March when the weather starts improving and I can look forward to the Easter holidays.

And then it is only a hop skip and a jump to start thinking about the summer.

Well, it’s a strategy and I only hope it works!

I am sure (but do not believe) that some people get real transcendental pleasure out of listening to rap music. Leaving aside the perhaps theological and logical implications of that statement I am continuing my exploration of the reading capabilities of my new Sony e-book reader and after a brisk cup of tea this morning, I settled down to read ‘Lucia in London’ by E F Benson.

Perhaps it is just racist, ageist, and something else-ist prejudice on my part but I cannot imagine many rap enthusiasts taking the same unalloyed pleasure in reading that novel as I got this earlier today. It is a continuing, guilty pleasure to read about the petty jealousies, rivalries, snobbishness and enthusiasms of the small group of privileged, moneyed middle class non entities that live their tiny lives in the backwater of Riseholme back in the early years of the twentieth century.

In ‘Queen Lucia’’ another of Benson’s novels that I read last week, Olga, a Diva opera singer says in sheer amazement about her interest in the life of Riseholme, “Oh it’s all so delicious! I never knew before how terribly interesting little things are. It’s all wildly exciting, and there are fifty things going on just as exciting. Is it all of you who take such a tremendous interest in them that makes them so absorbing, or is it that they are absorbing in themselves, and ordinary dull people, not Risenholmites, don’t see how exciting they are?”

Of course it is easy for Benson to introduce a character who stands outside the life of Riseholme and have her comment about what is happening on behalf of his incredulous readers; but it is notable that Olga herself, though able to evaluate the faults of the people there, is also totally drawn into the life of the place! Just, I would say, like the readers!

Not unlike ‘Madame Bovary’ there is no character in Benson’s Lucia novels that one can wholly admire, yet in spite of their glaring imperfections one is seduced by what Olga calls the “terribly interesting little things” which comprise the actions of those characters!

Self-indulgent? Possibly. Delightful? Certainly.

And not for rap artists.

Voyage of Discovery

No sooner had my passenger (a confirmed pedestrian) said, “You are sometimes lucky in this area” than I knew that we were doomed to that particular form of driving limbo where you creep along at a snail’s space past unending lines of parked cars like some form of perverted automotive car crawler looking for a quick fix from a shapely chassis.

Ten cars and two corners later I had resigned myself to an unconvincing curbing of my impatience and had settled for a slow tour for unlikely car-free space in the centre of Barcelona.

When a parking space is magically vacated just when you need it an overcrowded part of Barcelona you know that you are in for a good day.

Sometimes a simple walk along a few city streets can be an exploration and a revelation. I was lucky enough to wander through part of the old area of Barcelona in the company of a colleague who used to live in one of the streets who dropped little morsels of information into our peregrination which were a constant delight.

She also knew which of the stores and restaurants we passed to recommend to me as worthy of further attention when I had the time to explore.

A herb shop; a deep narrow store with an astonishing range of dried fruit and nuts; a coffee shop with an aroma you could almost touch; a tea shop with rows of numbered blue ceramic jars containing a bewildering range of teas; the first Basque tapas bar in Barcelona; a Cava bar which served wonderful anchovies; a wine bar near Santa Maria del Mar with a delicious cheese tapa and, the reason for our going into Barcelona, a remarkable wine shop.

This was to get the raw materials for the next wine tasting. The choice of wine is my responsibility this time, so I decided to have the theme of Catalan wines. One of my books has a page on the different wine regions of Catalonia and I thought it might be fun to have one bottle to taste from each of the regions.

We have ended up with 7 bottles of red and two of white with an extra bottle of special red. As the finest one is to be tasted last (in emulation of the story in the bible) it will be interesting to see if anyone notices!

The shop we went to, Vilaviniteca (http://www.vilaviniteca.es/) is a remarkable looking place where two floors of walls are lined with interesting looking bottles with stairs giving access to a mezzanine so that the bottle you need can be brought to your attention. We were served by a most accommodating gentleman who guided (and I use that word in its very strongest sense!) our choice. We have ended up with a very interesting series of bottles not one of which have I ever seen before. It is going to be a taste discovery!

Having got our major purchases out of the way relatively quickly we re-visited the wine shop and asked if they could recommend a place for lunch.

We were directed to the Big Fish which turned out to serve Japanese food. The sushi we had was astonishingly well presented and I was particularly impressed with the raw salmon scraps twisted together into a most convincing rose shape nestling on a bed of white ‘straws’.

The food was light and excellent but what really impressed us was the wine. Which wasn’t Japanese. The wine was ‘Libalis’ – yet another wine of which I hadn’t heard and it was cold and delicious. The wine was blended from various grapes Moscatel de grano menudo (Apianae) 90%, Viura 5%, Malvasía 5%. It was a perfect summer wine, which was also perfect, as it happened, in January. We are now on the lookout for this bottle to start storing it and cooling it for the months of the holiday!

The fascination with Ronaldo continues with news programmes, sports programmes and every other type of programme vying with one another to find an excuse to show the latest pictures of this very expensive young footballer in his underpants. The Spanish television stations have no shame and dwell longingly on Ronaldo’s crotch. The ‘photographs’ have obviously been heavily Paint Shopped and the final results, especially one picture of him laying on his side, make him look like a gay fantasy from the pen of Tom of Finland! It reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon showing two dogs having a conversation about a highly clipped poodle walking past, “He must be very sure of his masculinity!”

I have now had my new Sony e-reader for a few weeks and, while I do like the touch screen capabilities of it I have to conclude, regretfully, that it is a much weaker product that its non-touch screen ancestor.

The cost of the touch screen is that the screen is much more reflective and the brightness of the page is much diminished. Reading in anything but good, bright light is not the same as reading a page of a book. I will continue using it and see what my reactions are after a month or so.

Meanwhile the examination system has probably thrown up yet another set of papers for me to mark, but I made sure that I saw no one before I left for the weekend.

Sufficient unto Monday is the evil thereof.

Tick! Cross!

The head of English in our school was in full ‘Command Mode’ this morning to mark the beginning of examination hysteria. What was happening in our school was a grotesque parody of that section of the New Testament which talks about a decree going out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be, well, in this case ‘examined!’

With the exception of the first years, every other class I teach is sitting a mock examination which will be closely followed by the normal periodic tests that the hapless pupils are given on an appallingly regular basis. It is hardly surprising that our kids always ask whether it ‘has a mark’ whenever they are given a piece of work to do. For them, if it can’t be tested and given a mark it doesn’t exist!

I have marked today as if the examiners from Cambridge itself were panting at my elbow. On my part this is most assuredly not out of any enthusiasm or concern, but because I know that unless I make an effort at once I will inevitably descend into a slough of despond at the marking lurking somewhat waiting to make my life a misery. The only down side of getting rid of marking from examination as if ‘twere a rabid dog is that it does open you up to the possibility of having to give a hand to others who do not have the same hatred of marking and are therefore, paradoxically, more dilatory about the whole process.

So much was packed into this day that I have not had enough spare time to be suitably furious about the taking of my free period to cover an absence known in advance. To make matters worse it was an IT lesson in the computer room and the pupils were unable to access the work because we didn’t have the password to allow the kids to get to their sections of the hard disc where their files were stored.

It would be a lie to say that this increased my anger as I had never seriously imagined that realistic work had been set for an IT lesson – at least not work that could be monitored or taught by those who were not IT teachers.

I encouraged the kids to ‘get on with something using the internet.’ God alone knows what eleven and twelve year olds look at when given a free hand. I must admit that I relied on our school software to limit their access to any truly pernicious parts of the World Wide Web and I made the executive decision not to go among them and check what they were doing.

It was enough for me that they were relatively quiet and allowed me to get on with my manic marking. A true abnegation of professional responsibility – which of course could be said of an institution which expects its teachers to cover for a three day absence of a couple of colleagues whose absence on a course has been known in advance. Ahem!

Having stayed in school at the end of the day to finish off all marking which could possibly be laid at my pen I drove home with a more than usually self satisfied sense of selfless devotion than usual.

My way back on the motorway is almost due west and I see some truly spectacular sunsets before I get home. Today the skies were littered with fragments of cloud at various levels. The sky looked as though it has been hastily thrown together by an enthusiastic amateur trying out various cloud effects, but forgetting to paint over the bits that didn’t really fit.

The overall effect was one of grandiose casual chaos. And in spite of its ‘un-artistic’ lack of organization and harmony, meltingly beautiful. I probably would have rejected a painting of the sky as unrealistic and slipshod, but when it is all around you its mere existence seems to set its own rules of appreciation!

And we had salmon for lunch!

It's here, it's there, it's . . .

A bad case of “Centre Point Syndrome” hit me today almost immediately after school this afternoon.

The name of this particular syndrome is taken from the tall and iconic building situated on the Tottenham Court Road in London. It’s height is such that it can be seen from a number of vantage points as your drive towards it but, if you head for it using logic and reason sort then you will find yourself becoming more and more frustrated as any direct approach to this monolith is thwarted by dead ends, closed roads, one way streets and restricted turns. So near and yet impossible to reach.

My object today was the Hesperia Tower in Hospitalet to get a disc drive from the miniscule machine on which I am writing these words.

Having negotiated the motorway writhings which branch off the road I usually take home I soon found myself driving serenely past my destination on the wrong side of a six or seven lane motorway. Nothing fazed I drove on to a familiar exit (to IKEA) and using a frightening roundabout I was able to gain access to an ordinary side road which ran parallel to the motorway and in the direction of the shop.

I drove steadily towards the distinctive building, marvelling yet again at the flying saucer like construction which graced its summit. Then the road curved away from the shop and disclosed the barrier of a railway line.

Following the railway line I found myself on a sort of dual carriageway which was punctuated at irritatingly frequent intervals by sets of traffic lights.

In this sort of urban situation the Spanish put up traffic lights very much in the same way that entomologists set nets under trees in the Amazonian rain forest. As far as I can tell the only function of the lights is to see what sort of motorists they can catch. The lights go red. Everything stops. Nothing. Nothing moves. Nothing.

The light turn green. We all move forward to the next, clearly visible set of red lights, and we all stop again.

I only screamed once and got a rather started reaction from a woman wheeling a baby. Thank god the lights changed and I was able to make a quick getaway from her quizzical expression!

At least I got what I wanted – even if I did managed to leave my wallet in the car and had to retrieve it before I could pay for my purchase.

Now the long and inexplicable process of installing my new toy takes place with successive screens of questions to which I have no reasonable answers except to press the ‘next’ key and hope for the best!

Tomorrow I lose a free period because of the notorious ‘absence known in advance’ of two colleagues now in London. No attempt whatsoever has been made to find substitutes for these teachers; it is simply accepted that other colleagues will cover. Astonishing!

Some of colleagues have voiced the opinion that a union would be “a good idea” but no one seems keen to take up the post of Union Representative and someone said to me that, “You can’t do it. You wouldn’t be here next year!” How unlike the home life of our own dear NUT!

Although I am a member of a union, conversation about such things, although not banned is certainly frowned upon. The logic is that “nothing will be done so there is no point in doing anything.” 19% unemployed also concentrates and contracts the mind!

In spite of everything, as someone remarked today, Wednesday is the ‘hump’ of the week and once it is over then there is a decline to the weekend.

Roll on!

Prognostications

An infallible indication of being involved in a new school term is when a spectacular sunrise is merely taken as the prelude to a new day of unrewarding teaching rather than being taken as a magnificent affirmation of the majesty of god. Or something.

I even found myself muttering part of the ‘red sky’ weather lore and gloomily assuming that the day was going to degenerate into the sullen overcast stance taken by weather from my own country. Especially at the start of a term!

But, begone harsh thoughts! Last night saw two positive elements my the future life in Catalonia: the Tesco phones were made to work by Toni’s technical skill at changing the BT dedicated lead into something more Europe-friendly and I recorded my first telephone answering message in Spanish.

This was not a painless process as my pronunciation was dismissed with a pre-emptory “No!” on an embarrassing number of occasions and I am sure that the present message has only been allowed to stand because it gave Toni some sort of malicious pleasure to think of my British friends and acquaintances listening in mute horror to my semi literate efforts. My message is now in two languages and is short and to the point. No longer the individual and ironic delivery but basic and ordinary. Though I am sure that my impeccable accent will startle the native Spanish speakers too!

The setting up of the phone managed to get me out of my end of first day lethargy and, indeed, the house. Having to go to an electrical shop and ask not only for the small telephone plug but also for the machine to fix the wires into it was something of a triumph at my level of linguistic incompetence, but having the actual lead in my hands allowed a certain gestural fluency to aid my attempts!

There should be a word for the bone-deep tiredness which comes after the first day of teaching in a new term. It is that particular level of despair mixed with the realization that there is a whole term ahead – in Spain unmitigated by the hope of a half-term holiday. We are here for the long slog to Easter. I suppose it will give us a very real appreciation of the suffering necessary in a guilt ridden Catholic country to appreciate The Passion!

The timetable for the exams before the exams has been drawn up and we are all proceeding in a state of ill concealed hysteria – and it is only the second day back!

People are already talking about the holidays for next year in February 2011 when it has been proposed and supinely accepted by the spineless unions that a week be gifted to us in February which will be gathered up in the first week of July. Sounds like an altogether bad plan – though from a purely selfish point of view I could see how it could benefit me, were I to soldier on to the end of next year.

As I am feeling at the moment there is as much likelihood of that happening as staging an “All Is Forgiven Party” for That Woman rather than burning the long treasured candle I have of her when she finally loosens her claw-like grip on life.

At the moment living is Spain is very expensive, especially with the pound in its present etiolated condition, and our present habitation is well beyond our reasonable means. With 19% unemployed in this country the situation is unlikely to get substantially better, though you would have thought that the poor rich would be begging homeless people like myself to come in live in their palatial spreads for very little money. Such, sadly, appears not to be the case.

Still, with a newly working telephone and tottering piles of unsorted books who can be unsatisfied.

Rhetorical.

For ever new, for ever old.

The inexorable horror of the cold realization that another term has started has its basis in the Pathetic Fallacy in our staff room where the heating has make no appreciable dent in the tomb like quality of the room.

I passed a girl student on the stairs who, crouched in the semi gloom of a dull morning whimpered, “Stephen, I want to sleep!” This at least gave me the opportunity to snap back, “There will be none of that until Easter!” Start, I always say, as you mean (and that is such an appropriate word) to go on!

In Spanish schools there is the additional terror that there is no half term, so the next holiday is Easter. In the depths of January (which officially start on the first of the month) desolate despair is the only phrase which can descry be the relentless vista of teaching which seems to stretch into futurity. Thank god for weekends!

Now the first lesson is over and, as a visible and tangible sign of my bitterness of being returned unto the fray, I made the class learn the passive tense and do exercises. This was a risky strategy as there are some forms of active sentences which only take the passive with that form of extreme effort that I am rarely encouraged to make in the boggy field of grammar!
I now have a free period in which to have a weak cup of tea and strengthen myself for the solid slog of the rest of the day in which I see all of my other classes. O joy!

The lunch provided by the school was less than enticing and my classes in the afternoon were bloody. Nothing changes!

The examination system which is a Cruel God in our school is about to start waving its many arms seeking victims Kali-like to fill its insatiable maw with the innocents who have to sit the evil things and the PBI teachers who have to mark the damned scripts. Our season commences at the end of this week and then staggers its bloody way through the rest of the year like a demented paper juggernaut.

I prefer to rest my tattered self esteem on a project more tractable than educating over-privileged pupils – I therefore begun to plan strategies for getting my books into something approaching order.

As anyone who has had too many book to fit on available shelf space will know, the desire to get the books in century, theme, subject, height or whatever system is satisfactory for the book owner is a continuing urge. Which is usually frustrated by purely practical problems. To sort books you need space and when space is something which you have not got then the urge to sort remains at the irritating level rather than the practical.

What I intend to do (ah! fond hope!) is to map my books so that I know book case by bookcase what is where – and how many centimetres there are of what there is. Then I can try and ‘bring it all together’. I have made a partial start and the centuries jostle each other on confused shelves. I’m not sure that I’m getting very far very quickly but it’s fun and I’m finding a whole slew of interesting volumes!

Meanwhile tomorrow beckons!

The Old Order changeth . . .

My last lie-in on my last day of freedom is over and I am sitting in the sunshine watching my cup of tea go cold.

Usually I could fortify myself with comparing my situation with that of my colleagues in Britain. Certainly the temperature here in Castelldefels is nothing like the grotesque temperatures recorded in certain parts of the United Kingdom, but those odd bitterly cold temperatures have ironically turned my extended holiday to ashes. What is the point of having an extra long holiday if it is to be matched by my British colleagues through school closure!

I must admit that it was good that both my hosts were there for all of my stay, but that pleasure is also tinged with resentment at their escaping the full horrors of the start of term. It even looks as if this ‘holiday’ will continue into next week with ice and snow flurries ensuring that safe schooling is (allegedly) impossible. It will be interesting to see if the Local Authorities try and find some way to claw back what they have lost: I foresee gigantic rows ahead and I am sure that the unions are girding themselves up for the future frays.

I do have some marking to do, though I find myself disinclined to do it as I am surrounded by a multitude of displacement activities ranging from mopping the floors (only joking!) to reading and relishing a fresh page in my new visual dictionary. Anyway, I have to prepare myself for the excitement of a late lunch.

This will take place in a house outside Sitges and is yet another meeting about the foundation of a new school in the area.

Ever since I arrived in Catalonia and had the educative misfortune to teach in The School That Sacked Me I have been a party to various schemes to establish a school in which something approaching real education can take place. People have come and gone (mostly gone) but the idea remains either a strongly burning light in the Stygian gloom of teaching through English in the Sitges area or as a dangerous Chimera. I have yet to decide which is the more apposite image!

I am looking forward to this meeting because I will get an opportunity to meet the architect and also get to hear about the latest governmental communications which really do make what we are up to now something with at least fragments of substance.

The most frustrating element in our struggle is that there is an obvious and growing need for the sort of school that we propose to establish. All we have to do is get the money. And the use of the word ‘all’ in the previous sentence may well be the most ironic use of that particular word in 2010!

2010 is, of course, an iconic year for me and a phone call from Paul Squared yesterday was encouraging about my party for United Nations Day. At the moment October seems an impossibly distant month, but I know that if anyone is planning to come over from Blighty for the event then they have to be quick off the mark when the autumn fares on easyJet are published. I can sense that this distant jollification will be something towards which I look with increasing hysteria the more the school year creaks its way onwards towards the Happy Hiatus of the two month summer break.

With sunlight streaming through the windows of the living room the temperature is gradually rising (even without the central heating on) to an acceptable level – though my ankles still feel cold. The hire car that I had when I went over to Wales was so basic that it had neither central locking nor a temperature gauge. I found it easy to slip back into the door locking habit, which after all accounts for most of my driving experience, but not having a temperature gauge was something which was a constant irritation. I realized by its absence how often I note the number of degrees. I think it has something to do with the fact that I listen to Radio 4 on my internet radio in the kitchen and so I always have a point of comparison when I get into the car to go to work. It means that every day I have a little reminder of why I am in Castelldefels and not Cardiff – at least in terms of temperature!

I am still picking over the memories of my visit to Cardiff. I packed a lot into my time there and so much of what I did was bitter-sweet. I now find myself repeating what I have said so often to people in Britain “I’m only a couple of hours away!” as the sense of loss struck me more forcibly this visit than at any time in the past. Something which I am sure will be the basis for a great deal of musing in the future!

Meanwhile I have had to change position on the sofa as the sun was too strong! I shall now have to go out for bread and I will find exactly how much difference there is between sun through a window pane and sun in a ‘bracing’ environment in the great outside.

And the displacement activity on which I have decided rather than mark is: dusting! You can see the level of desperation!

A little bit of Britain?

Although damp and miserable, the weather was not of major importance. Unless you were inland and up a bit.

Yesterday I sheltered a waif from the storm; or rather the steep, slippery, snow covered slopes which a friend would have to negotiate if she was to get home to her house in the mountains. Catalonia is a hilly area and the coastal plain only really exists if you are within spitting distance of the sea. As soon as you have completed a short walk inwards you will find yourself going inexorably upwards.

So, no going home for my friend and a rapid checking that the bed in the spare bedroom was constructed and had clean linen on it.

When she arrived we settled down to the civilized thing of life: conversation, red wine and a selection of cheeses. Civilization did not extend as far as providing a warm environment. Personally I trust that my welcome was as warm as would be expected, but the temperature was certainly a little on the low side.

Our house does have central heating powered by a gas boiler that is, shall we say, idiosyncratic.

It does heat the hopelessly inadequate radiators, or at least most of them and it provides the impetus to a fascinating sound track for the heating process as the radiators emit dripping, gurgling and churning noises. The boiler is a ‘combi’ and therefore provides us with hot water: but not upstairs in the bathroom when the central heating is on. If you persist in expecting warm water to come out of a tap then the whole system shuts itself down in disgust. This, surely, is not right.

In the kitchen sink, next to the boiler as it happens, you sometimes get hot water when the central heating system is operational but not on any reliable basis. Obviously a call to the agency is in order and I think Toni can do that as my Castilliano will glide gently into the panic zone when I think of the vocabulary that I will need to explain things.

This brings me to one of my forbidden purchases: a Spanish dictionary. Now I buy Spanish dictionaries in much the same way that so-called uncivilized tribes use sympathetic magic. My reasoning is that the more dictionaries I buy the more likely I am to gain a knowledge of the language. To many that will not seem like sympathetic magic but more like pure logic. But you see, I buy the books but rarely open them. For me the mere buying of the dictionary is the learning act. So far this has not worked. I do not however blame myself for this lack of progress; I blame the books. The dictionaries that I have previously bought (and I have bought many) are obviously not the ‘right’ dictionaries for me.

My latest purchase (from W H Smith’s in Bristol Airport) is a fairly small paperback Spanish/English Visual Dictionary. The key element in the purchase is the publisher: Dorling Kindersley. Any bibliophile will tell you that DK as a publisher guarantees top quality illustration – and this book is no exception. Each page has a selection of well chosen illustrations linked together by theme or place or situation. And I have learned new things, for example I now know that ‘el retrato robot’ is the Spanish for photofit. And were that not enough, on the same page I now know that ‘criminal record’ is translated by the wonderfully vowel heavy ‘los antecedentes.’ It is a truly beautiful book (ISBN 978-1-4053-1106-9) with some pages having an understated elegance which is breathtaking. Or perhaps it’s just me!

I have just looked up central heating (not there) and boiler (there, page 61) and discovered an elegant cut-away drawing of a boiler comprehensively labelled, but it is not enough to encourage me to phone and explain!

The new school term is looming and I fear that the welcome blanket of snow which has closed schools up and down the United Kingdom is unlikely to extend my holiday in Barcelona.

Justice! Justice and my bond!

Thoughts abroad

Reading E F Benson’s preciously oblique prose in the plane prepares one for what is for me (for everyone?) a life involved in irony.

I leave sunny Bristol and emerge from Barcelona airport to lashing rain; my first meal in Castelldefels is, of course, Japanese; magpies seem drawn to the house; this Friday is obviously a Sunday; there are more green plastic bits from the artificial Christmas tree lying on the floor than when I cleaned and hovered thoroughly after putting the damn thing away before I went to Britain. And so on.

I thoroughly enjoyed my return to Britain: friends, family, shops, drink, Television, Radio 4 (at the right time!), snow, driving on the proper side of the road, Tesco’s, Indian food, English spoken everywhere, newspapers, friends again, soft water you can drink from the tap and real money.

Although I don’t actually wear them myself, I can appreciate the apposite nature of the image of a glove to express familiarity. There are some situations and places where they are simply right and accustomed. For the first time it made Catalonia seem almost ‘foreign’ and distant. My old life wrapped around me and obstructed my view! The very weather seemed to be conspiring to keep me in Wales as the snow fell and the life of the country ground to the usual halt in the typical way that we respond to weather conditions which are described in the never-to-be-forgotten and constantly used phrase of British Rail: “wrong sort”. It was first used (notoriously) to explain the failure of the rail system to cope when the “wrong sort of leaves” fell on the line. The adjectival phrase has now been used to describe virtually every type of natural form of material caught in the forces of gravity and which has descended on road, rail, sea and air routes.

Everything coalesced to distort my sense of where, what and who I was. It was as if I had stepped out of normality into reality and that a return to Spain would be truly odd. Which is where I suppose the irony comes in? No sooner had I had a conversation with the taxi driver taking me back to Castelldefels about the unseasonal ‘British’ rain than I felt that what I had just left in Wales was “another country” where they “do things differently”.

Which is another way of saying that I am glad to be back?

But that I recognize that there is a certain something which is only available when I am there in Wales – just as my life here in Catalonia is also distinct. I may be the common factor, but the experience of living my life is certainly not the same in both countries.

Of course they are different countries, Catalonia and Wales – but my responses are both more obvious and more subtle than can be explained by the glaringly geographically different. Perhaps I should, as if often do, go to the words of Milton and (taken out of context as they often are) say to myself, “Not equal they, as they not equal seemed” and enjoy the difference.

School on Monday.

Sigh!

O that this cold, cold would . . .

I’m looking out on a vista of snow covered roofs and watching the rifts in the cloud cover and trying to decide if the gleams of colour are light puce or slate grey or even a subdued rosy gleam. My reliance on ancient weather superstitions is because my flight back to Barcelona is at 10.30 tomorrow morning and Bristol airport has been closed for most of the day.

The easyJet website is extraordinarily unhelpful in giving any useful information about whether or not a plane might be on stand midmorning for the Catalan bound passengers to embark.

I will delay panic until much later tonight (and possibly very early tomorrow morning) or simply resign myself to a wasted day of airport waiting before I regain the house.

Apart from failing to get the key stage 3 and 4 text books in geography and history for a colleague in school I have done virtually everything that I set out to do on this holiday. With the exception of Aunt Bet (who is marooned with daughter in the wilds of deepest darkest England in the cosy comfort of a remote house) most relatives have been visited.

From the self-indulgent buying of a new telephone for the house to having a most satisfying Indian meal all the odd little tasks that I set myself have been (mostly) completed. Clothes have been swept into my case from various shops which purport to have prices which cannot be beaten. The armoury of my case has been augmented by the purchase of various knives to replace the misused vegetable knife of the splayed serrations. I have even emulated the behaviour of J R Hartley in the advertisement where he earnestly enquires after a copy of a book on fly fishing. Not that I have developed an interest in things Piscean, rather have I stooped to purchasing my own monograph on Dylan Thomas during our visit to the WJEC this wintry morning!

The real question which faces me now is about the weight of stuff that I am taking back to Spain. The Pauls have recently been given a handy luggage-weigher which I have already pressed into service so that I do not lurch into the murky financial depths of ‘extra baggage’ charges in easyJet‘s tight fisted attempts to squeeze every last penny from hapless travellers.

While I gnaw my fingernails to the quick I can look back on a most satisfying trip to the UK where even the weather has done its best to keep me amused.

Cardiff’s transformation has been extraordinary. The centre of the city, especially in The Hayes is almost unrecognizable. I particularly like the fact that the new, new library (the second adjective refers to the fact that the city actually built a new temporary building to house the library while the peregrinating books were forced from pillar to post by the exigencies of allowing the complete commercial exploitation of valuable real estate in the centre of the city) dominates the pedestrian area in The Hayes and terminates the view down from the Old Central Library. For a bibliophile like me the primary of the building of the book in the jostling demands for attention from seductive shop windows is a positive delight!

At long last Cardiff now has the largest John Lewis Partnership outside London as well as a wealth of other shops in the extended Shopping Mall which links Queen Street with the start of Bute Street. Although the extension of shopping opportunities at first sight appears bewildering I do not think it would take me longer than a couple more visits before I had orientated myself and sorted out ‘my’ shopping centre. I do follow my mother in being able to assimilate shops with remarkable ease!

Now that Christmas decorations have come down I am more nearly in Old Haunts as far as my accommodation is concerned. ‘My’ chair, over which I have slung my leg in a long accustomed slouch; the people; the sights are all familiar – and Catalonia seems a long way away!

My flight is no more than sixteen hours away but neither the web site of Bristol Airport nor the site of easyJet have deigned to give any indication about whether the flight that I propose to take is likely to take off either at the state time or with the passengers that planned to fly in it.

I will now go to pack (and more importantly weigh) my case, with no lively expectation that I will be stepping into Barcelona Airport at something approaching lunch time tomorrow.

Have faith!

News from the Charnel House!

Life is moving at the rate of the slowest camel.

The fluctuating state of Toni’s health is the clock which determines our movements. I have only left the house to get essential supplies, so as a holiday I do not think that Christmas 2009 is going to go down in the annals of my festive life as one of the high points!

Never let it be said that I couldn’t scrape significance out of misery. Yesterday was a day in history. I now have all my books within easy reach. Not individual volumes you understand; the chaotic order in which they have been placed on the shelves is almost a work of art that the long lamented ERNIE – that wonder random number generator – would have been proud to claim as its own!

To say nothing of the books which remain in boxes OUTSIDE. Poor things, braving the elements because there was not room at the inn. Before I depart I will have to ensure that they are slightly more protected, even if they cannot be unpacked.

The books inside fare little better than their climate hardened brothers. I now have constructed two rickety piles of books which look as though they have been set up for some sort of Heath Robinson drawing – and the Twin Piles are not going to be the only book orientated construction that is going to be a future feature of the house.

There is one space which could harbour another bookcase which could make a semi-significant difference, but I will have to work on Toni to countenance yet another bibliophilic intrusion into the living room!

The most obvious things which occasion panic just before departure I have dealt with. I have found my passport (valid until 2015) and have printed out the ticket. I have found my UK wallet stuffed with little cash but multitudes of store cards. Even Toni (bless him!) has urged me to add John Lewis Partnership to the deck!

This will be my third trip back to the UK since I moved to Spain: one trip for what turned out to be a death and one for a momentous birthday. This visit is just for me and I am looking forward to it immensely.

As usual my typing is displacement activity: those boxes of books are really heavy and they have to be carried to the third floor.

And there is washing to do!

I shall spend the rest of the time in Castelldefels lazily remembering (r trying to remember) those essential things which one shouldn’t forget for a holiday to be a success.

The one thing that I am determined to remember is to try and find a little serrated edge Kitchen Devil knife. Everyone who uses a kitchen has his own favourite item. For the effete it may be one of the latest capsule coffee machines. For those who can`t be bothered to buy them ready peeled it might be that ancestral yellow plastic peeler, which, in spite of buying newer and more expensive versions still remains the one best suited to purpose (if you haven`t mislaid it as I have) or there may be those neophyte culinary professionals who know that the ‘useful’ knife is the true measure of the person who is at home in the food producing room.

I name no names and I cast no aspersions, but The Knife, my favourite tool (please! Leave those sorts of jokes to Woody Allen!) has been used for more industrial purposes as witness the dented and misaligned serrations. Its replacement is my Quest during my time in Britain. And if I find one then I am going to follow the advice and practice of my mother and buy six. And that is only because even I feel that buying twelve is excessive!

Meanwhile to work!

When in doubt: chicken!

The emergency chicken (with home-made stuffing, bay leaves, garlic and jamon) has now served for three meals –very tasty it was too. But enough chicken already!

Spain appears to be following Britain in starting the January sales on Boxing Day in spite of the possibilities of extended sales with the giving of presents for Kings on the 6th of January. They must be desperate!

I am looking forward to real sales in Britain in the new shops in the centre of Cardiff. I feel the urge to demonstrate clearly that I am my mother’s son and trawl shops in the determined and thorough way that she did. I will clutch my British cheque book (as long as the rapacious bankers allow us to own one) firmly in my hand, make sure my credit card is within reach and get some real cash from a hole in the wall. I will then be fully prepared to ‘go shopping’ in my mother’s sense of the word.

For my mother, buying something was not the be-all and end-all of shopping – the ability to buy something was. She would have regarded going ‘down town’ with no spendable money as an offence against decency: who knows when the un-passable bargain might present itself?

I grew up with the story of the Wedgewood Venetian coffee set which could have been bought for some trifling sum but which had to be spurned because of lack of cash. This was in the days before the carrying of cards was second nature and in the days when a cheque book was kept at home.

The ‘loss’ of this unnecessary but desirable coffee set was held up as an example of the horror that might befall an unprepared shopper. In the shopping area this image keeps me on the straight and narrow and often the comforting presence of money in my pocket ensures that I buy nothing with an easy conscience!

Toni is not a shopper. He is more a “Need something - Find it - Buy it - Home” sort of person. The only things he looks at in shops are the things he wants to buy! For me such people are like those who do not enjoy reading; I know they exist and I have a sort of intellectual sympathy for their condition – but understand? Never!

We now seem to be in a flip-flop weather situation where a day of rain is compensated for by a day of sun. Today is sunny – and hot as long as you are not in the breeze. Through a copse of trees I can see the golden glint of the sparkling sea and tomorrow I do not have to go in to school. Who could seriously ask for more?

I am now gradually being forced to look at my book collection and start reading those books which I have ignored up until now. I used to say that I would read at least one world famous text (that I had previously pretended to have read) each year. As I am in Spain it would surely be appropriate for me to read Don Quixote. This would be a good idea but the edition I have is on thin paper, has tiny print and is a paperback. I think I will wait until I get a two volume hardback edition on good quality paper and with good size print.

Perhaps I might find one in a bookshop in Britain – at least it gives me an excuse to go into bookshops to look for something specific.

And in English.

Back to the rain

My name day was marked with a bottle of Pierre’s latest fragrance and two hysterical telephone calls to wish me felicitations on my Santo. The phone calls were only hysterical on my part as they were conducted in Spanish and without the linguistic reinforcement of Toni who was languishing in bed at the time!

The bloody rain has returned and Castelldefels is brightly dull.

I am continuing to read Gombritch’s “A little history of the world” which has been loaned to me by one of my colleagues. This is a “child’s” history and is written with all the inclusiveness of Gombritch’s much more famous “Story of Art.”

This is in every way a popular history and I am beginning to see the assumptions which underpin the ethos behind the story telling.

The most intimidating aspect of the reading is the physical nature of the book itself. My colleague has read it, but the spine is pristine, unbroken, unnatural.

The world is divided into three: those people who read a paperback and don’t break the spine; those people who attempt not to break the spine, but leave the book looking as though it has been read – and those like me who break the spine of the book deliberately to ensure that the pages lie flat.

It seems both impossible and deliberately perverse not to break the spine. Unbroken spines in books make them into clips waiting to close; makes reading into a chore rather than a pleasure. All the time I am reading my colleague’s book I have to remember not to spread out the pages. As I read on and the angle at which I am reading gets ever more sharp the more the temptation there is to snap!

The hotel in Benidorm is now cancelled and so the unlikely triangle of visitation from Castelldefels to Terrassa to Benidorm to Cardiff has now settled down into the much more prosaic Catalonia to Cardiff and back again!

Well, time to start planning Toni’s next sandwich – a real test of my culinary skills!

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Let’s start with the positive.

Today was sunny. Cold, but sunny.

Toni’s Christmas meal was an orange and two ham sandwiches: one Spanish and the other York.

Determined not to share this Spartan, utilitarian fare (and not being ill) I stuffed the emergency chicken that I bought yesterday with home-made stuffing; put slices of garlic into the flesh; laid bay leaves on the skin and lay slices of Spanish ham over the bird. I didn’t add the trimmings that I had also purchased as it seemed a little unfeeling to the prone character on the sofa!

I accompanied the unaccompanied chicken with a glass of dark Dutch beer. Not quite the meal that we had been expecting but needs must when the flu bug drives!

I have decided not to go to Benidorm: visiting Brian will have to wait for a more auspicious and healthy time.

Something that I have enjoyed doing today is finishing off “The Children’s Book” by A S Byatt. In many ways this is an intimidating book. The confidence with which Byatt creates the world of the second half of the nineteenth century is remarkable, and her grasp of the family saga she has chosen to tell up to the end of the First World War is not only intriguing as history but also is fascinating in the way in which she has chosen to concentrate on certain aspects of life: pottery, The Victoria and Albert Museum; Fabianism; the Women’s Movement. She has the Dickensian technique of recognizing the power of lists; from pottery glazes to artifacts in the museum to types of cloth she weaves a picture which is truly seductive.

This story of interconnected families is as fascinating in its detail as it is sometimes frustrating in its use of coincidence.

One of the central elements of this story is the making of a series of individual stories for her children by one of the central characters. Everything is an inspiration for a story and it is through story that she comes to terms with (or avoids) life. The use of a writer as a character also gives Byatt the opportunity to write what the writer writes. This conceit gives a multi-layered texture to the novel. The facility with which she writes is astonishing and it is a privilege to read a book like this.

The ‘gained’ days in Castelldefels will have to be spent doing something about the books that I am at present liberating from their storage. The basic problems is that there is no room to put them in the house and I am having to double stack shelves and let gravity defying stacks of books accumulate in all odd corners and alcoves. And still there are boxes of books in storage and three boxes lurking outside the front door.

It is something of a curse being a bibliophile. But I’m prepared to put up with it!

Bring it on!

There is nothing more irritating than someone with a gaping head wound pulling rank and jumping the queue when you have been waiting patiently to see the doctor.

Not me waiting, you understand, but Toni sitting beside me wearing a surgical mask and looking very sorry for himself. When eventually he was seen, the doctor confirmed that he had some sort of flu. If it gets any worse, then his microbes will be interrogated to see if he has the porcine variety.

And the rain continues its relentless falling.

Terrassa has been cancelled. No beating the log for it to shit your presents (Don’t ask; it’s Catalan and traditional and it wears a little hat) and no Christmas meal at the restaurant. It makes a change for Toni to be ill rather than my good self. I was building up a sort of tradition of being ill on Christmas Day, but all good things come to an end and I was in rude health last year. Perhaps Toni is starting a tradition all of his own.

This illness has meant that I have had to do a certain amount of panic buying for Noche buena and Navidad even if much of the food is going to be for myself. Christmas will be Christmas no matter how ad hoc the preparations!

Toni’s illness has also put a question mark over our proposed visit to Benidorm to visit a warmer part of Spain and to catch up with Brian.

At long last I have sent off the e-mail Christmas card. Taking the photograph proved to be the easiest part of the enterprise and I had to go no further than our garden for the augmented plant. Putting the photograph on a page which was capable of being opened as a file on an email was altogether more difficult and that took three attempts. And I’m still not sure why it worked the third time and not the first – but that, of course, is one of the joys of working with computers. Allegedly.

Dinner was two sandwiches: Spanish ham for Toni and smoked salmon for me. I must start planning the Christmas lunch now.

What have I got in the fridge?

Countdown continues

Only those unfortunates who get up at a quarter past six in the morning can really appreciate a lie in until nine o’clock: two and three-quarters hours of oblivion. Or rather an extended period of vivid dreams - a legacy, I think of the lingering effects of the medication to make sure that my single day off school remained as a single day!

The only thing that made the last two useless days of school supportable was the knowledge that today I was going to Barcelona to search for interesting wines to tickle the taste-buds of our little group of wine snobs (unfair!) in Stages in the New Year.

As the colleague who was going to accompany me had to go to hospital for emergency treatment at the weekend it seemed that she would be unable to wander about in Barcelona. Luckily the two ridiculous school days were so obnoxious that we were both determined to wash the memory away with a day out as soon as the term was ended.

We met, as is traditional for me, outside Habitat and, as if on cue, the rains started. What should have been a pleasant ramble around the elegant streets of Barcelona turned into a damp grumble, dodging puddles. This weather is most uncharacteristic and should have the good grace to bugger off to a country where it is more typical.

However depressing the conditions, we did not allow ourselves to be depressed: we were, after all, free on a Wednesday!

One of our first stops was in a superb chocolate shop where the elegant displays of boxed delights were almost too much to resist – until you noticed the price! I was much taken with a box of thirty-six chocolates set out in regulated lines and the top of each chocolate was decorated with a design composed of repeated numbers. The chocolates were grouped into nine batches of four and their flavours were, to say the least, experimental including such delights as curry chocolate and stout chocolate!

As I was looking for a present I had to tell myself that my somewhat eclectic taste might not be shared by the recipient, so I played (fairly) safe and chose more conventional confections.

This shop also has a coffee/chocolate shop and so we were able to have a flavoursome cup of rich, dark coffee and we also chose a single chocolate (packed in its own little box) to accompany the drink.

Thus refreshed we ventured out into the gallery area of Barcelona and saw the usual mixture of the urbane and the insulting. One ‘exhibition’ comprised the wall of the gallery being roughly painted in strips of colour with the paint pots lying around and a fringe of sports’ newspapers at the bottom of the walls to catch the drips. We almost didn’t go in because we couldn’t tell from a casual look if the gallery was being prepared for an exhibition or if it was the exhibition itself!

We looked at Greek classical sculpture; Egyptian artefacts; child-like coloured scribbles; prints by Victor Vaserely (a name from the past); an amazingly various collection of generally figurative artists; spectacularly well taken photographs; a childish take-off of something that Roy Lichtenstein did better and last, but certainly not least an exhibition of Ramon Casas.

We were on our way to lunch when through torrential rain I saw the unmistakable style of the artist that I regard as the finest that Catalonia has produced.

The exhibition was small and had pieces of dubious quality including some fugitive pieces that should surely be in a museum for experts to study and not stuck in some sort of totally inappropriate ornate frame simply because of the same. However, there was a Casas portrait sketch which stood out from everything else for me. And it was for sale. And therefore could be mine!

For only €45,000!

I will have to wait for El Niño and hope that I am successful in that draw.

Though if anyone has forty-five thousand lying around doing nothing . . .

Lunch was a chatty delight with mushroom risotto and a beautiful piece of salmon, followed by pear in chocolate sauce – and a bottle of wine. This, surely, is how all Wednesdays should be spent – apart from the rain of course!

Toni has returned from the frozen wastes of Terrassa, chilled to the bone and with the start of a cold. He is urging me to pile on the clothing when we go up to participate in the seasonal celebrations!

And I still haven’t wrapped the presents!