This is more like it!

Yesterday was a time of cultural overload.

With Suzanne as my indomitable guide to the cultural byways of Barcelona we embarked on an Odyssey which lasted all day.


Starting in La Caixa Madrid with a beautifully photographed exhibition of pollution. The photographs chart a sickening variety of the ways in which the planet has been polluted and the ways that people have to live off that pollution. The photos are impressive and almost because of their professional attractiveness unbearably sad. Children are shown sorting rubbish; whole populations literally living on rubbish, smoke pouring into the atmosphere from various polluting industries.


Some of the most touching photographs show the devastation which came with the disaster in Chernobyl. An ariel photo shows the ghost towns which have been abandoned because of the contamination.


There were also success stories: the cleanup of inner London and the improvement in the water quality of the Thames and the remarkable improvement in some Indian cities after only a decade of more sensitive environmental improvements.


One or two photos stood out because of the housing in the background – instantly recognizable as British; a little tug of emotional recognition dashed as the subject of the photos turned out to be the proximity of housing to toxic nuclear installations in Britain.


Altogether a thoughtful and provocative exhibition.


It was something of a relief to get out into the sunshine of Catalunya, the centre (albeit more polluted that the centre of London) of Barcelona.


One of the good things about going “culturing” with a diabetic is that the option to plough on regardless, ignoring the human demands of sustenance, is not an option.


I was therefore delighted to stop in a coffee and cake shop in the Ramblas which I had often passed and never patronized. Its quaintness appealed but the truly appalling service more than repelled.


Ignoring past experience I recklessly ordered tea.


The pot, when it eventually arrived was armed with a tea bag like a small bolster and, in spite of my urgent agitation of said object, I was unable to produce anything more than a truly insipid liquid which was instantly turned to ecru by the most modest addition of milk.


The cake, which took even longer to arrive and needed the attention of three waitresses, was duly consumed and thus fortified we progressed further down the Ramblas.


The ostensible reason for coming to Barcelona was to see the pictures that had been produced for Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Pat Andrea.

With a charcoal drawing of Alice with an elongated and twisted neck stretching from the ground floor flowing up the staircase wall to the exhibition on the first floor the visitor is given a taste of what is to come.


The pictures themselves are variously startling and languorously beautiful. He uses mixed media in his large canvasses with watercolour, pastel, charcoal and gold jostling on the surface with various stuck on additions of paper and card.

The portrayal of Alice is of a very knowing yet innocent girl whose overt sexuality reminds one of Balthas – with all the uncomfortable underage sexuality that the comparison implies!

This is a reinterpretation of the iconic Tenniel images, though perhaps not as radical in their differences as I might have expected.

The images are disturbing, funny, provocative and unsettling. The most painstakingly rendered and finished portrayal of flowers might be juxtaposed with a rough sketch like outline of a person. The vitality of the productions jumps from every canvass.

This was an exhibition which encouraged possessiveness and there were a few pictures that I would have liked to have taken away with me – especially one of Alice in a puddle of hair!

Then it was time for lunch.

As ever in Suzanne’s hands when it comes to places in Barcelona I was encouraged to try a meal in the restaurant of the Maritime museum at the very bottom of the Ramblas.

The setting is frankly startling as the Restaurant is situated in one of the vast glass and brick domed shipbuilding structures that make up the museum.

The meal was at the right level of pretentiousness that I enjoy: cold sandia and prawn curry soup, followed by pescaditos and ice-cream (though those last two served separately) with a glass of cold white wine to wash it all down.

Then, through the winding, stickily hot and terminally confusing streets of the gothic quarter, to the textile museum for another glass of white wine. Well deserved after our negotiating the labyrinth of odd passageways.


Liberlis is our wine of choice. It is very sweet, but served ice cold is an absolute delight. We discovered this wine in the winter and we have been faithful to it ever since!


Our teachers’ passes got us into the wallpaper exhibition where the most interesting wall covering also came with a hair dryer so that you could make the outer apparel of the muscular gentlemen posing on the wall disappear revealing muscular legs and fetching underpants. I think that we must have come towards the end of this particular exhibition as the clothes of the men were rather ghostly having been mostly warmed away!


I was not impressed with this display though I always pay lip service to the applied arts and am prepared to do my duty!


The other exhibition in the same building was of computer produced three dimensional objects. Film showed people “painting” with light pens and their “objects” then being made by computer. There were also objects produced by “printing” by computers. This was an exhibition where the possibilities of the technology were breathtaking though the objects produced so far less so.


Even going to Suzanne’s flat for “a little something” (and red wine this time) the culture did not stop. We watched with the true thrill of horror a terrifying short film entitled something like, “How to clean your office.”


It was, you will be unsurprised to learn, an American film with a very confident young man browbeating a shell-shocked lady head teacher as he encouraged her to denude her office of everything which made it an office.


His approach to her secretary’s office was just as Draconian and produced convulsive gulps of horror from the pair of us as we recognized all the signs in our own situations which were clear indicators of the lack of “impeccability” that was the aim of the Confident Young Man.


Watching a “TED” video about population growth (vividly illustrated with a series of IKEA plastic boxes) was positive light relief!


Home and a quick shower and it was time to ferry a couple of generations of The Family to the airport and then to go out for dinner with Irene.


A full day!

Cloud Landscape

We had lunch looking out over a positively autumnal sea which rippled through an unprepossessing series of colour changes from slate to a drained green. The beach was deserted and there was a windswept look to everything.


A couple of hours later and the sun has fought its way from behind banks of cloud to give a few brief reminders of what August should actually look and feel like. But it is without confidence and lacks all commitment.

On the plus side the printer is up and working and I have established a series of envelopes to try and keep some sort of track of the information, instructions and discs which seem to litter my workspace. As usual by form of organization is merely a form of self defence forced on me by the sheer force of circumstance.

I have now almost completed the details of my first lesson (out of 60) for the History of Art classes that I am supposed to be taking. Two hours a week for ten weeks is supposed to cover the history of art from the Cubists to the present day. I can see that I am going to have to return to the high pressured days of university revision when I “did” Jane Austen in the morning and Dickens in the afternoon! At least what I have done so far looks pretty!


Two other branches of the Family descended this morning so I had my work cut out trying to make sense of the conversation. Luckily three members of the group were happier in Spanish rather than Catalan so I had a fighting chance of keeping up with some of the themes in the chat. It is positively unnerving that, whenever you clear your throat, silence descends at once and everyone looks at you in respectful martyred expectation waiting for your knife wielding verbal attack on their language. They are very kind and ignore my lack of conjugated verbs, slide over my individualistic approach to gender, shudder at my attempts at adjectival embellishment and sigh with collective relief when I fade into silence. I have along way to go!



As this has been a day when my skin has been deprived of its supply of Vitamin D I am in a gently grumpy mood which I hope will be alleviated by lunch and culture tomorrow in Barcelona.
 It will probably rain.

Every search finds something - even if it is not what you are looking for!

Printer drivers are the curse of the untidy classes.



In the excitement of unpacking the printer and marvelling yet again at the way that the prices of this particular piece of equipment have spiralled downwards while their capabilities have spiralled upwards, the humble, undistinguished printer driver disc often gets overlooked at soon as it has made one of the computers produce something on the new machine.

Our present printer is supposed to be wireless and it is new. That means that the printer drivers are not established on all the machines and the disc is essential to their integration into the network.

And before you start, I am perfectly well aware that there are sites which give printer driver downloads so (in theory) it doesn’t matter if you have the disc that was packed with the machine or not. I do not live “in theory” and in the hard electronic world there always comes a point in the installation process when the dreaded “Now insert the disc” appears.

Where you might ask is the disc? I have a vague recollection of “putting it away somewhere safe” but I also have an even vaguer feeling that where I chose was not the most immediately obvious place to put it – but, nevertheless it was protected and safe. And lost. For the moment.


What makes things even more galling is that I do have a loose leaf file which is specifically for program discs so that they will not be lost. That file, however, is full. It is full of programs for long defunct machines; programs which have been superseded many times over in the increasing pace of technological development and yet which have not been thrown away. Perhaps it is a sign of technofear: one day all the good gadgets that we have will suddenly fail to function and we will have to go back to the days of Windows 3.1 (shudder!) or even before. My little Psion will have to be resurrected and I will be regretting all the floppy discs that are no more. Then, all those carefully preserved programs will be worth their weight in gold!


Or it may just be inertia.


I was about to say, go to the home of anyone over the age of 40 and you will find a positive treasure trove of unused and unusable electronic gadgets which, because they cost so much when they were first purchased they are impossible to throw away. But ever mind a 40 year old, you could probably do the same thing with a 15 year old’s bedroom. How many mobile phones will a mere child have had by the time it leaves school?


Built-in obsolescence used to be counted in years when referring to washing machines and fridges and other white goods, but when it comes to children’s toys the period of time before they are discarded seems to be measured in hours. If you’re lucky.


Anyone of a mature outlook and a reasoned attitude towards life and, most importantly without children can have their repose shattered for ever by wandering around a “toy” shop and looking at the prices of the cheaply produced tat that kids expect (not hope for) even distant relatives to buy for them.


These toys all have batteries (not included) and they are welded into the packaging in a way that necessitates a blow torch and the shedding of blood to get them out.


When they are finally presented to the kid, it plays with it for seconds before something breaks and it is then summarily discarded. Parts of the toy may be seen later in the trail of debris that every small child seems to leave in its wake.


Talking of debris, I had a brainwave and thought to look at the bottom of the small military chest of drawers that sits on my desk. I did not find the disc but I did find a note of my mother’s for what looks like a Christmas list of small presents and a reminder to get some Aqua Libra – a drink I have not thought about for a number of years, though the sparkling taste of which took me back in memory just like the recluse in the cork lined room! There was also an old weekly shop receipt from Tesco for the fourth of February 1989. There are 73 items on the list and the total was £49.94! There is nothing like the price of food over twenty years ago to make you feel old!


Oh yes, and as I took each drawer out, the fifth one contained the disc. You see: safe and, as it happens within arm’s reach! Eventually. It is strange as I carefully checked all the drawers as part of my controlled panic search. It bears out the dictum of Mad Lewce that you have to look everywhere at least three times and take everything out before you can pronounce anything lost!


Today has been mixed as far as the weather was concerned: a sullen, begrudging start to the day which developed into a glorious afternoon which I spent on the third Floor rather than the winnowing sands of the beach.

The “nice” work for school (as opposed to the “necessary” work) continues apace with my choosing three pictures each for a variety of modern artists. I have to admit that sometimes my choice has been fairly heavily directed by availability rather than by my considered weighing up of the claims of various canvasses. I have found that if Google search for images doesn’t come up with what I want on the first few pages then I have set the wrong parameters, shrug and make do!


Now to install the driver. Wish me luck – I’ll need it based on the fuss that installing the driver caused in the last machine. What makes it worse is that the instructions are almost humiliatingly simple; it’s just that real life isn’t.


Let the struggle begin!

Lie on the beach and vegetate?

In future ages people will look back at the beginning of the twenty first century and laugh with incredulous contempt at the number, range and sinewy complexity of power leads with which we entwined ourselves to keep all our precious gadgets alive and kicking. Perhaps it will not be an age but a couple of years when technology, which at present allows suitably adjusted devices simply to rest on a power source to recharge their batteries, will have advanced so that the devices suck power out of the air.

I for one cannot wait for such a dawning.

I sit here in my little office on the third floor with my feet in a writhing mass of leads. Some are connected, some are not. Some I know and others I dare not pull out because I have been unable to trace their length to a source, or rather to a “spring”, the source after all is the plug and I can see that easily enough. I have a morbid fear that if I simply go about pulling things out then one broken connection will cause universal chaos and darkness will cover the face of the earth: or at least that part of it that I inhabit. And we all know that if you close down some gadgets without the necessary rituals and mystic pressing of knobs, keys and screens they may very well deign never to start again. We all know the value of backing things up, but I doubt that this knowledge has actually led to productive action.

Except of course in the case of photographs which, now existing in digital form seem to make their presence felt in every entity (the personification is intentional) that uses electricity. There must be a card reader slot on the hoover somewhere, but I don’t use it enough to have found out where it is precisely.

My concern with the leads is because I have started to do some work for the next year in school. The work I am doing of course is not the most pressing but is the most interesting – and that approach works for me!

I made the resolve to Start Work while being flayed alive by the on-shore, off-shore and long-shore drift winds which seemed to blow simultaneously from all possible directions on the compass. This did at least mean that there was an even build up of stand along all exposed parts of the body – and September being in sight it meant that I was afflicted with the particularly British syndrome of “end of holiday different colour desire”. It is almost as if the desperation which is natural state for any thinking teacher to be in when the start of school is less than a month away (which if you think about it means only a few days at the end of July and the beginning of August) will encourage the suns rays to act faster and more profoundly.

At least being sandpapered by the velocity of particles shot at the body allows the Puritan Conscience to take satisfaction in the fact that indolent lying on the beach is having its compensation in pain!

To be fair I was improving the shining hour by listening to Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony in G minor (The year 1905) on my i-pod. I think that the first movement is one of the most lyrically beautiful of any symphony I’ve heard – and if you can still think that while being sand blasted while people around you play football and shriek at their families while the waves crash on the shore then I think the music has got some quality!

The symphony develops into something which verges on (!) the bombastic and you can certainly tell, when listening to it that Shostakovich was an accomplished composer of film scores.

When the symphony finished I selected “Absolute Gold” as a suitable follow on and listened with great satisfaction to “Heaven for Everyone” by Queen, followed by “Because You Loved Me” by Celine Dion then “Missing” by Everything But the Girl and we decided to go when I had reached “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something.

It is at times like this that I wonder whether my liberality of musical taste is not merely uncritical sensationalism.  I hope.

I have just looked up the lyrics to the song "Breakfast at Tiffany's" to see what I had missed and there is a “discussion” from which my favourite comment was, “i think this song is a Classic song as it has some sort of meaning in our lives in one way or another.”

It is difficult to fault that sort of analysis!

After the rain

Although everything seems fresher it hardly seems justification for the chaos of the pools which has been caused by the storm last night.


One of the three pools which you can see from the balcony is already out of service with the perimeter of the pool picked out in police incident tape stopping swimmers. Though I have to say that the lurid green colour of the water is enough by itself to discourage immersion!


Our own pool now had a new level of fresh water after the deluge last night and a liberal addition of pine needles, leaves and other detritus from the surrounding trees. My morning swim was a combination of exercise and hoovering. At each stoke my hands would encounter something organic and at the end of each length I would jettison the rubbish and start a new sweep.


Being surrounded by the number of pine trees that we are each storm brings a shower of pine needles which are then cleared up by extremely noisy portable air blowers which are used at extremely early hours of the day. These save the operators having to lower their dignity by using a mere brush to gather up the pine needles. Actually, from personal experience, I can assure you that sweeping up recalcitrant strands of resinous matter is amazingly difficult to do competently. Thinking about it I might have lacked a little commitment in my attempts – one can`t help feeling that there will be more pine needles when you have swept up one lot and so, basically, what is the point!


The same goes for so-called “housework” too. I keep remembering Quentin Crisp’s dictum that “the dust doesn’t get any thicker after six months” and feel that I am doing well with the desultory approach to cleaning public areas that I have developed. In effect that means leaving it to somebody else. And why not!


The weather today has not markedly improved and my response has been to start (at least) the work that I am supposed to be doing for the start of the new school year. How those last three words chill one’s very soul.


In what I take to be characteristic approach to the unsavoury I have started my efforts by spending money. After an exhaustive search I have found a copy of the art book which has been recommended to me by Suzanne and I have ordered two Media Studies books from the good old Welsh Joint Education Committee. As the publishers of my only “book” I feel that I can do little else but support their educational efforts!


I am trying (probably vainly) to resist the temptation to send for a copy of “The Longest Journey” by E M Forster which, if I am absolutely honest (as when am I not) I am not completely sure that I had heard of. It raises not a scintilla of memory and, what makes it worse, is that it is the book which Lionel Trilling described as “perhaps the most brilliant, the most dramatic, and the most passionate of his works.” I wonder how much it is on Amazon.


But back to work. Or do I hear The Family returning from their walk along the paseo. I must descend and have a cup of tea.


One must always keep a sense of proportion.

The Tasks Begin!

The library is now cleared of the drifts of clothes which have accumulated after a few disgorgements from the washing machine and the books are lying open to view and in the wrong order. It is an invitation for me to start the process of getting the volumes organized so that like is with like. At the moment each shelf is a treasure trove of odd juxtapositions which, while interesting to browse, is a disaster when actually looking for something specific.

Meanwhile the books available to view are being read, especially the novels of E M Forster. If “Howards End” was a revelation, “Where Angels Fear to Tread” was something of a light relief, all too melodramatic and slight for my taste and reminded me of a whole slew of novels that I read in collage which had unsuspecting people (usually from northern countries including the USA) arriving in Italy and having their lives changed – not always for the better!

I have also re-read “Maurice” – mainly because I didn’t feel like re-reading “A Passage to India” and I don’t have a copy of the fifth novel whose title I always forget.

This reading made me feel that I had been too harsh in my assessment of the novel when it came out in the 1970s. Set in the first decade of the twentieth century its description of life seems amazingly dated (as Forster himself pointed out in an afterword) and the treatment of homosexuality which seems so laboured, tentative and determinedly unexplicit has to be seen in terms of its period when it was written.

I found the story oddly persuasive and it fits neatly into Forster’s oeuvre where one feels that “Only Connect” should be written as a running title across all the pages!

The happy ending, about which Forster was adamant, seems contrived and totally unconvincing and I agree with Lytton Strachey who gave the relationship between Maurice and Scudder a matter of weeks before its inevitable end!

By way of contrast I have watched, with growing disbelief, a recent DVD from our woefully under stocked video club: “Crank” (2006) directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor.

It stars Jason Statham as the “heatless” hero who has an hour to get back his stolen heart after he had it taken out after falling from a helicopter. Although it has some moments of dark humour the film is a disgraceful mess not quite knowing which genre it is supposed to be guying. It lacks the visual perception of “Sin City” and the over the top cartoon visuals of “300” It was very much a film in search of a style and not finding it. It was depressing to see the last moments of the film setting the scene for a continuation and it was even more depressing to find out that it was duly made – though at least to a less than enthusiastic critical reaction. Would that I had known that before I pressed the button to get it out of the machine in the shop.

A generally sunny and cloudy day has ended in a dramatic thunder and lightning storm with rolls of thunder which are even now shaking the walls!

At least it is cooler.

But it better be sunny tomorrow!

Holiday!

In a disappointing reversal of usual expectations the two Pauls went out last night and actually returned unscathed.

They revisited the notorious Elvis Bar which in past years has emptied their bank accounts by the simple expedient of offering them a “tab” – this year was different, they managed to resist the offer and left after a single, expensive, drink.

Their peregrinations took them through a selection of clubs and bars and eventually landed them up on the beach in the darkness with a heterogeneous selection of humanity – at which point they decided to return.

My own repose was not broken until some time in the morning when (watchless) I decided that it was morning. My swim was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Paul 2 who (astonishingly) entered the pool with every intention of having a swim himself. As I had not expected him to emerge until some time in the early (or late) afternoon so this sudden morning apparition was unsettling to put it mildly.

An uneventful morning was only enlivened by the luminous quality of my new bathing costume which is not noted for its restraint. Its USP is supposed to be the material allowing 80% of the sunshine to go through to the skin thus eliminating those irritating and hopelessly vulgar white tidemarks where the sun has not been able to turn the skin into the requisite shade of brown. On first use, even though I am expecting too much, there seems to be little evidence that the material is working; but perhaps this is a long term process and one’s expectations should be somewhat lowered.

The Pauls are determined to “catch the rays” so that they can return to the UK with the heads held high and their skin bravely exposed to the British world to excite their envy and contempt!

Once again the day has seemed to be noticeably cooler than I think it ought to be for this time in the year, with insolent clouds making their obtrusive presence felt.

Our obnoxious summer neighbours are making their presence felt in their usual inconsiderate ways, though it has to be said that they have had fewer screaming arguments; they have not thrown things at each other that we have heard; they have not had as many late night parties and the television they have installed outside (yes, outside) their house is not turned on at full volume for quite so many hours.

But they are there and act as if they owned everything within sight. Their “popular” daughter has many (male) admirers and she collects and arranges them decorously around the pool so that someone wishing to swim has to brave the gauntlet of svelte, smoking, self satisfied, smirking youth. As I am myopic I find them very easy to ignore and my obsessive up and down approach to swimming cramps their propriatorial attitude to pool use.

Days appear to have passed in indolence and alcohol and it is a crying shame that the weather has not been as sun-filled as I would have liked; but the Pauls return home a different colour! Not necessarily brown you understand, but different.

Holiday Hospital

Grey is the colour of health in Catalonia.

We are used to the particular shade of grey from our local health centre but yesterday we had the opportunity to experience it in other environments.

Paul Squared was complaining of swelling in his feet which appeared to be spreading slowly up his legs. We decided that he needed a medical opinion so we visited the health centre.

A suspiciously cheerful and even more suspiciously helpful receptionist took all the details and indicated that we should wait outside a particular door.

Paul was seen within 20 seconds which makes the Spanish system of Emergency Treatment something like 1,000 times faster than its equivalent in the UK – at least from my experience of sitting was wasted hours in soulless waiting rooms.

Paul was given a series of tests and then the doctor said that he would have to go to our nearest hospital emergency centre for further investigation. It was at this point that we made a fundamental mistake.

Given our excellent experience of speedy treatment in the local health centre we went straight to the hospital (courtesy of my eloquent and conversational GPS) and so began the long wait.

To be fair Paul was seen by a triage nurse within ten minutes but, when he went through that door with Toni as his interpreter, he did not return.

To keep the assorted fragments of humanity who were in stasis with us quiet the hospital had installed a high level television which ran a local government inspired programme which ran and ran on a tape loop. I personally never want to see the face of Carles Ruiz (the alcalde of Viledecans) ever again. A working television has a certain mesmeric quality even if you don’t want to look at it and I found myself drawn again and again to the colourful screen only to see the smiling face of the mayor beaming out at the disgruntled people praying for release.

Paul 1 and I had plenty of time to assess and dismiss the other prisoners in the waiting room. We were bemused at the turnover. Someone would appear, go through a door and reappear only to make a hurried exit through the main doors. A few minutes later the same person would turn up again and go through the same actions.

After the first hour we were no longer as impressed with the velocity of the Catalan health system. The second hour confirmed our suspicions that we were in familiar “you are only patients you can wait all night as far as we are concerned” territory.

And so time went on. After the third hour we were no longer concerned about Paul Squared’s health we were only concerned about our own sanity.

Perhaps a clue to our state of mind might be found in our reaction to the translation that I improvised from a Catalan health rights leaflet produced by the Departament de Salut for the Generalitat. Of the sentence, “Drets dells col·lectius més vulnerable davant d’actyuacions sanitàries especifiques,” I translated it as “You have the right to collect vulnerable deviants and auction them in specific toilets.”

This puerile attempt at humour at some ungodly hour of the morning reduced the pair of us to whimpering hysterics. God alone knows what the other walking wounded must have thought – but by that point we were beyond caring.

By the time we finally got home we were in a state in which sleep seemed like an impossible luxury.

But we slept – although today has been shall we say indolent.

The only definite thing we have done today is buy plastic shoes for the beach.

To which we have not yet been!

So it goes!

The tyranny of the young

It is gratifying to find that I can still be diverted by new experiences.

Last night I was peremptorily summoned by an imperious two year old to assist him in his bath.

When I arrived he took one glance at me and then started swimming movements in the water like some deranged frog. At the end of my slave duties I was drenched and had poured water from a watering can on all the indicated parts of his body. I had also used the shower attachment to give invigorating blasts of high pressure water to his head which was greeted with gurgles of delight and demands for more. I had engaged in unseemly and I thought suggestive link ups with various combinations of sponge animals all of which were derived from Bob the Sponge show.

His favourite activity was plunging his face into the soap suds and emerging like a very young Father Christmas. My duty on viewing this sight was to shriek with the same sort of laughter that Baby Christmas produced.

At the end of each sequence of bath accessory aided activity he would leap up and down in the water and then fall onto his tummy and attempt to swim through the end of the bath.

I dare say that all of this is tediously familiar to most but it was a startling discovery of yet another peril of parenthood for me! It is, of course a delight that such experiences of parenthood are only for a moment and then the real parents reappear and relieve me of the responsibility.

It was something of a relief for all of us to be called away from this water torture and visit Toni’s sister’s flat.

We were in Terrassa for a five year old’s birthday and I was luckily too far away from the Present Reception Centre and Paper Shredding Machine for me to feel the resentment that I have felt on viewing the plethora of presents that are deemed necessary for any growing child.

As I have mentioned before, at the rate and quality of present giving which obtains now he is five; by the time he is eighteen his parents – will have to give him the equivalent of an apartment in Manhattan to keep up the relentless progress that they have established for themselves while his hapless relatives will have to provide furnishings and fittings!

August days are beginning to settle down into a recognizable pattern of cloudy starts and sunny developments in the early afternoon. It may be my imagination but it seems somewhat cooler to me and that depresses me as it seems as if the autumn is rapidly approaching.

Our traditional visit to Sitges for a cheap menu del dia went as planned, but our usual restaurant wasn’t open and so we went to another where the food was not up to the standard that I expect.

What was good was sitting outside a bar and watching the world (or at least that particular section of the world that goes to Sitges) go by.

A dinner in and lighter drinking seems like a sensible plan for this evening.

Let’s see how it works out.

Way to go!

To my everlasting shame not only one but the second Paul was up before I had raised myself from my bed. To compensate for this sluggishness I immediately suggested a swim in the pool. I was eventually followed by all into the water, but not necessarily with enthusiasm!

Following a principle established in my sojourn in Valencia our first cooperative act was to find somewhere to have lunch. We decided on the Basque restaurant and had an excellent meal and then returned home for a strenuous siesta!

Refusing to be browbeaten into constructive activity we frittered away time in desultory shopping in Lidl and unequal preparations for the evening meal.

Today has been somewhat laid back and I hope that the days to come are equally self indulgent.

And there is the question of doing some work before the start of term. I am now in the dangerous stage of denial of the passing of time. There are still weeks left of the holiday and so there is plenty of space to complete the fairly simple tasks that I set myself at the beginning of the holiday period.

There are three weeks left. Three short weeks.

Plenty of time.

Probably.

The end and the start

My sleep yesterday night was interrupted only by the constant thump of a distant disco and the sound of finest quality Egyptian cotton sheets slurping up the moisture which sprang from every pore of my body.

It was a positive relief to reach a time in the morning when it wasn’t bizarre to creep out and immerse myself in the fresh temperature of the private pool. By the time that I was half way through my swim paranoia had driven Irene out of bed and into the shower so that she would have the requisite number of hours to get ready for our flight this afternoon.

We left more or less at the time which had been predetermined the previous night after a discussion which was lengthy and erred on the side of caution to an extent which I thought ridiculous but which was comforting for the driver and my companion.

After our stately drive to the airport during which h there were distinct drops of rain on the windscreen we arrived in enough time to waltz our way through the arrivals hall and for me to have my new bottle of sunscreen confiscated by the rugged looking lady who was staffing the x-ray machine.

After a sandwich whose ludicrous price mocked the whole concept of there being a financial crisis anywhere in the vicinity of an airport which could charge such astonishing amounts for well stuffed sandwiches!

From that point things got worse. There was no plane.

In airports there more you look a plane at the end of your sky-bridge (and believe you me in an airport you do nothing but look) the more there isn’t one there.

As Irene is not a comfortable air traveler and we made a reasonably thorough trawl of all the shops looking for we knew not what. We both emerged from the duty free shops smelling as though we had both spent some considerable time writing the definitive guide to brothels of the world.

In spite of our growing desperation to pass time by spending money neither of us bought a bloody thing. Our depression was made complete by the gate number disappearing from the screen of information about your flight and the message, “SNACK 1500”. I immediately assumed that SNACK was some form of Spanish abbreviation of which I had not heard referring to some sort of technical delay. The idea of an airline giving its delayed passengers anything in the form of refreshment would indicate a delay of such monumental proportions that getting home tomorrow would be a mere fond wish!

On enquiry it turned out that SNACK meant exactly what it said and, after more desultory window shopping, we eventually queued up and were given a glass of beer and a cheese and ham baguette – or in my case two glasses of beer and two cheese and ham baguettes.

After fearing the worst it turned out that, although the plane was late taking off, it was not as absurdly late as we feared it was going to be.

The Pauls arrived on time and we immediately retired to a restaurant for a well deserved meal.

Our major mistake was following a wine rich meal with more wine.

But then why change the habits of a lifetime.

To days dim with alcohol!

It’s a function of having gone to Paris in August once too often when the surly indifference of the average Frenchman is at its height and you feel the full weight and responsibility of over a thousand years of mutual hatred between our peoples that your attitude towards the French is fixed at one of irritated impatience at their sheer foreignness.

Each British traveller abroad knows that every French person is quite able to speak fluent English but, out of sheer perversity they choose not to. So our hapless fellow countrymen flounder about in a mish-mash of half remembered schoolboy French while the impassive eyes of the French person listening to this farrago of nonsense hide their cruel delight as Les Boeufs are reduced to stuttering imbecility.

Our long cherished and assiduously nurtured stereotype of the arrogant, unhelpful Frenchman was obliterated by the attitude of the charming, courteous, personable, unassuming and of coursed completely unbelievable Frenchman who ushered us into a ludicrously convenient parking space next to the sea front in Calpe yesterday.

Explaining that the space he was vacating was for the disabled he further went on to indicate that other members of his family were going to leave an adjacent space which would easily accommodate our car.

When this antithesis of the national stereotype finally drove away with my heartfelt “Merci beaucoup!” ringing in his ears we were able to stagger a few steps to an excellent restaurant where we had a reasonably priced menu del dia which started with carpaccio of salmon and got better!

In a gesture which earned him an extra tip the waiter when he brought my usual drinks order of vino tinto and gaseosa he also gave me a large jug filled with ice and with a slices of orange and lemon in it. He assumed that I was going to make my own form of Sangria and that was a good thought.

Calpe was all the more welcome as we had attempted to get a meal in Benidorm previously. We had gone down to La Nuria to look at a school that Jennifer thought could be a source of employment. The school is a new build in beautifully kept grounds at the top of a mountain and, on the surface; it looks like an excellent place in which to work.

After driving through the long urbanization of the place and buying a Christmas lottery ticket we headed for Benidorm as a source of plentiful restaurants for lunch.

It was horrific. High-rise hotel after high-rise hotel; chaotic roads and hordes of foreign tourists was bad enough, but the complete lack of parking spaces meant that we came in, drove around and drove out.

Calpe is altogether more relaxed with a dramatic chunk of mountain terminating the view at one end of the shallow bay on which it is built. By the time we had eaten our meal we had just about managed to forget the slow moving crane behind which we had dawdled on the one lane coast road getting to the place and we were sufficiently restored to face the journey home.

Where we faced another horror. Quite apart from the signs of barbarity in the streets which were prepared for the cruel ludicrousness of bull running (this is Valencia and not Catalonia after all) we decided to visit a pub which had John Smith bitter but also karaoke. At first the music was merely loud and since we were sitting in the street and not inside it did not affect us too much. Gradually as the pub began to fill up with all those British types whom one does not want to meet on holiday: the talentless kids who are encouraged to sing and do so determinedly out of tune; men wearing sleeveless vests and black cowboy hats; women of a certain age wearing relentless makeup; old men dancing like praying mantises and singing obscure karaoke songs too well; the inevitable bloke-type bloke wearing shorts with ENGLAND emblazoned on his bottom – it all got a bit too much.

A steady stream of clientele indicated that the barbarity in the centre of the town was at an end and so we were able to make our stately progress to a restaurant in the centre for the fiesta menu del dia.

Although we tried to ignore the detritus of bull running which was all around us, it was impossible not to feel contempt for people who relish the panic of a cornered animal. We tried to focus on the number of tables set outside houses on which was spread a meal which generations of families were seated. This was fiesta that was acceptable; the metal grills with poles wide enough for a person to squeeze through to get out of the way of a rampaging bull made furious by the sickening taunts of the depraved – this was fiesta which was totally unacceptable.

Today, I would say “refreshed by a good night’s sleep” but that would be a lie, we made our bleary way towards Denia.

Yet again we were ludicrously lucky in getting a parking space. As we were making our desolate way round a full car park for the second time, a group of English speakers passed us saying, “We should sell our parking space!” As we had the windows open and as we laughed the young men indicated that we could take their soon to be vacated space – and they even gave us the ticket that they had purchased which gave us time to after five in the afternoon if we cared to use it! I put such consideration down to the fact that I am travelling in a car with two blonds!

Denia at last saw me purchase the ONCE tickets for Friday which means that my tasks are now complete and I can relax and enjoy the rest of the holiday. That means that I have one evening left.

As we are in Valencia (home of the odious creep Camps who is the spiv-like president of this part of the world) we feel that it would not be taking the holiday seriously if we do not have paella. The dish is supposed to have originated in this area and I have been ordered so taste paella here so that I can say with experience that the paellas in Catalonia are better! So much of what I do seems to have an agenda to which I am only partly aware!

Although we have only been here a few days we have packed in a fair number of odd excursions and even odder meetings to make the experience memorable.

The only problem is that the extent of the alcohol abuse means that I am only partially able to contemplate the arrival of the Pauls tomorrow with anything approaching sobriety!

I think that I am going to have to rely on the “hair of the dog” to get me through!

I am now trying to avoid even thinking about packing for the afternoon flight tomorrow.

I wonder what I will forget.

News from the South

I’ll just pop in to the corner shop for a jar of Marmite, a packet of custard powder and a few Oxo cubes then we can have a drink with Howard and talk about Brains SA and Rumney over a pint and finally we can cross the road and have fish and chips.@

Where does all this take place, well, of course in Orba, Alicante!

It is slightly disturbing to have a chat with two South Walians who know that one brand of Cardiff’s most famous alchoholic drink is known as “Skull Attack!” Talking about streets in Rumney in an outside bar on a quiet street in inland village in southern spain is incongruous to say the least.

English voices are heard along the main street and a short drive away in the main shopping mall of this area there is an English book shop and generally shop signs have much more English in them than I am used to in Spain – at least the part I live in!

For lunch we had the choice of a tapas bar and a British run restaurant which served fish and chips. I was all for going to the tapas bar but I was overruled by the other two and, I have to admit that it was a good call.

The fish (hake) was delicate and delicious and cooked in a light and crispy beer batter. There was homemade tartar sauce which was creamy and the chips were perfection and although our first bottle of Cava was mediocre the second was dry, sharp and tasty.

The sweets were an outstanding success with my white chocolate cheese cake being delicious to the last scrape of the spoon on the china. The suggestion of the more than helpful waiter (a Scot) to my refusal of a cognac but acceptance of a port that he had some excellent blue cheese was the final touch of delight to an amazing meal. He provided two blue cheeses with the one we all liked being a queso azul picante – which we unfortunately failed to find the next day in the shop where he said he bought it.

So filled with beer, Cava, port and cognac we drove home and prepared for the evening meal!

To be fair to us the meal was very late and eaten in almost total darkness outside by the pool. The darkness was a result of our increasingly desperate attempts to keep candles alight in the blissfully fresh breeze which mitigated the effects of the heat. And anyway poached salmon with caviar and prawns accompanied by new potatoes and orange salad was a relatively light meal. Unlike the consumption of alcohol which continued apace with champagne cocktails, red wine, Cava (of course) and amaretto. I think the last was possibly a mistake and I think that its consumption explains why I did not go to sleep when I went to bed rather than fall into a comfortable coma. Thank god that I had the sense to drink at least some of the water that Jennifer had thoughtfully placed on the bedside table before unconsciousness claimed me!

This morning we were the walking wounded and could do little more than stagger round a shopping mall and calling into various shops to get the sort of supplies that will be necessary to sustain the three of us in the next few days.

Jennifer has a house in an urbanization outside the main village. Her view looks across a sort of valley to a series of hills rising to bleak majestic mountains. And it’s quiet after the general noise which accompanies my living in Castelldefels. There are no dogs (apart from a Great Dane who lives with Jennifer) whose barking drives one frantic with their monotonous yowlings while Jennifer’s Great Dane is placid to the point of indifference; even wagging her tail takes a little more energy than she is prepared to spend on mere humans.

Jennifer’s garden is well established with various succulent looking exotic plants and some hardy green leaf plants which thrive in the sheltered, warm protection of the street facing walls which surround her property. The garden has a private pool shaped like a Greek letter ‘B’in which I have already done hundreds of lengths!

To my credit I even did a number of lengths before I went to bed, though I should, perhaps have taken a little more notice of Jennifer’s plaintive, “Stephen, don’t drown!” and merely have drunk more water than indulging in a flamboyant demonstration of athletic determination.

We have discovered that the next few days are going to be the annual festival of Orba and one of the events which mark the celebrations is ‘bull running’ through the main streets. Pamplona this place is not, but the general format is the same: bulls are let loose in the street and idiots run in front of them. I understand that, in a grotesque refinement of this pointless (ha!) entertainment, the bulls will have flaming torches attached to their horns at night. Although there are ‘strict’ instructions that people are not to touch the bulls or goad them with sticks this is generally ignored in the barbaric delights of terrifying and panicking a bull. I am half tempted to go and see what happens on the flimsy pretext of taking photographs - but the outraged responses of my companions brought me back to my senses and I shall remain aloof and disgusted!

Where is my sun!

There is no stasis like “waiting for the van.”

My injured camera - it does so much to call it merely “damaged” seems an insult to its capacity – is awaiting a van driver to collect it and take it who knows where for who knows whom to do who knows what to it.

I feel as if I am in a Beckett play with time suspended and nothing able to happen as I am Waiting for the Van. It does not come. Time passes.

When you are told that the package will be picked up between 10 am and 1 pm the cynic voice at the back of your mind tells you that it will actually take place more towards 2.30 pm than 10 am. Unless, of course, you go out when the van will then immediately appear, ring and disappear, never to appear again.

As it is now 12.05 pm the cynical voice has become a chorus of mocking figures sneering at my inactivity and urging me to have the courage of my cynicism and go and do the shopping that needs to be done and then reappear just before 2.30 tapping one foot elegantly indicative of the justified irritation that one can feel for a wasted morning. A wasted sunny morning!

Time is ticking away. The van has ten minutes to get here to make it in the three hour slot that I was given! This sort of existential time keeping is one thing which is common to all advanced societies in which the White Van Culture has been allowed to develop!

The White Van (Surprise! Surprise!) is late – and to think that I hurriedly packed the camera just after my early morning swim so that it would be ready to be collected if the van were to arrive exactly at 10 am. It is that sort of misplaced faith that keeps society going!

It just goes to show how one can delude oneself that I actually believed that the delay would only be an hour or so! It is now 4.35 pm and there is a likelihood that the bloody camera will not be picked up until 6.30 pm. That would only be five and a half hours late! Home from home!

The van (yes, it was white) finally arrived at twenty to seven. The poor man who took the brunt of my fury had only been told about the pick-up a half an hour or so before he arrived! The organization which is supposed to be an efficient communications concern is woefully inept and I wonder where my camera is going. At least I have a receipt so I know at least when it went!

I cannot pretend that time-slots were anything more than a hazy indication of possible intent rather than a contractual assurance of prompt timekeeping in Britain so this is not something particular to Spain or Catalonia. But it is irritating. Infuriating. And lots of other words ending in –ing!

A frustrating day, but not a time to sulk as tomorrow sees preparations for the Journey South!

I have my rights

The major irritants in any normal swimming pool are the humans; other humans. If those other humans are children so much the worse.

I am a confirmed “up and down” user of swimming pools and if there are lanes marked then I feel (know) that I have a Divine Right to swim up and down and to hell with those lesser life forms who think that side to side or diagonally is in any way acceptable.

Sometimes, even when swimming lanes are clearly separated from the rest of the lesser breed by floats and ropes idiots (or children as they are commonly known) attach themselves to the ropes and swing their puny little legs into the swimmers’ way. I have always found that the breast stroke with a particularly vigorous frog-like kick in passing usually sorted them out. For the rest who get in the direct way I rely on nails standing a little proud of the skin cutting through flesh.

Unfortunately in our pool there are no lines, it therefore qualifies as a ‘bathing’ rather than ‘swimming’ pool. This does not stop me swimming in my straight lines and I am usually able to intimidate all (save children) from getting in my way – and even kids eventually get the message after a few ‘gentle’ nudges.

The use of our pool is limited by most users to a few high usage periods of the day and not usually when I immerse myself and so I usually swim in solitary splendour.

So my niggles are not with people in the pool but another aspect of nature. After the kiss of the Medusa in the sea I have become somewhat sensitive to the sting of anything. Our pool is partially surrounded by pine trees and their detritus finds its way into the pool – at least I hope that some of the bits and pieces that I have scooped out of the pool are arboreal in nature. One of the great advantages of myopia is that it blunts the clarity of some things that are better left blurred.

There are many types of pine tree and our trees shed pine needles in the general shape of beginners chopsticks (joined at one end) they have a thinned elegance which might make them unusable for Chinese food but in the pool they become perilous.

They are so light that the slightest current from a swim stroke will drag them underwater and there they lurk waiting for an unsuspecting limb which, if in the right position, will have a double prick from the sharp ends of the pine needles.

Your mind, of course, does not immediately think of pine needles but of some stubborn malicious life form which has been able to adapt itself to the chlorine rich waters, and if it can live in chlorine what the hell is it doing to my leg! Etc. You calm down however. Eventually.

Stewart is linked to both books I read today. Yesterday I read “Andorra” by Max Frisch and today he wrote that he had taken part in the Afterpiece to “The Fire Raisers”. As I hadn’t read “The Fire Raisers” either (bought second hand, previously owned by Michael Horton ’74) it is irresistible to read a play in which a friend has performed. In the original British performance in the Royal Court Theatre in 1961 Stewart’s character was played by John Thaw who was the Doctor of Philosophy.

In the Afterpiece the Doctor of Philosophy has been transformed into a long tailed monkey in hell complaining about the quality of person entering the infernal regions. I wonder how Stewart said, “Once again nothing but middle-class people! The Devil will be furious. Once again nothing but teenagers! I scarcely dare tell the Devil. Again not a single public figure! Not a single cabinet minister, not a single field-marshal.”

My limited forays into student drama included playing Professor Corona Radiator; a bastard; The Prologue; a Roman soldier; an American; King Claudius (no, not in “Hamlet) and a Padre. Before University I played King Solomon, after University I played King Herod: that’s what education does for you!

The second book I read, next to “The Fire Raisers” on the shelf, was “Noises Off” by Michael Frayn. This, guided by Andrew and Stewart, was the choice that I made for a Year 11 Drama Trip to London. These were not the educational cream and even the location of the theatre next to The Savoy was replete with horrific possibilities as the kids watched with amused hostility the succession of sleek expensive motors deposit the sleek expensive clients at the door of the hotel.

The play (of which I knew nothing) opened with a set that was clichéd farce fodder and the opening lines were banal and uninspiring. When someone from the audience got up and started arguing with the actress on stage I was on the point of hysteria as I was surrounded by kids who had no idea what was going on.

It was only when I recognized the man in the audience as Paul Eddington that I began to get the idea of what was happening. “Noises Off” is actually the story of the fortunes of a play called “Nothing On” which in Act I is being rehearsed; in Act II is on tour and we see backstage as the play is being performed and Act III is the play being performed at the end of its tour. Apart from the fact that I had to keep up a running commentary about what was happening to the kids nearest to me so that they could convey the information to the rest of the rows I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Act II is one of the cleverest pieces of farce I think that I have ever seen and Act III is chaos where everything is going wrong and which I laughed out loud simply reading in the sunshine!

Carry On Holidaying!

Never a day without dolour

Tragedy!

I have dropped my new camera and reduced it from a compact, cutting edge miracle of miniaturization to something akin to a Kodak box camera from the 1950 able to take pictures and little more. Gone is the telephoto; the menu of possibilities; most of the features. It is now a point and click. A very expensive point and click!

I have arranged to have it collected in a couple of days as it is still well under warranty, but I am sure that dropping the things negates everything – I live in hope! If it can be repaired then I am more than willing to pay as the camera, a Canon Power Shot SX 210IS is one of the most remarkable cameras I have ever owned. Every day and in every way I get poorer and poorer!

My new bathing costume has arrived and appears to be little more than a holey wisp of material which, I am assured, will allow (because of its revolutionary material) most of the sunshine to flow through and therefore get rid of the ‘white bits’ – this remains to be seen.

As irony is my middle name, I confidently expect the sun to disappear for the summer which would suggest that a bathing costume nearer to the woollen (sic) construction that I was photographed in when I was a toddler on the beach at Barry Island would be more in keeping than the suggestion of decency that I have just bought.

“Homo Faber” has at last resurfaced, but not soon enough to stop me reading “Andorra” by the same author. Although acclaimed as one of the most significant German plays to be produced since the, well, you fill in the event that satisfies, I found the play, which is not about Andorra to be an unsatisfying amalgam of half digested Brecht, a little bit of Arden and a dollop of Brenton. The morality and ethos was easy and unthreatening.

The only aspect that I really liked was the opening and ending of the play where one of the central characters was whitewashing: in the beginning in honour of St George and at the end – you’ve probably guessed the difference, but I think that dramatically it could be very effective.

Another glorious day, though with more clouds than I usually tolerate but more than satisfactory. A chunk of the day was taken up with trying to find the way to send the camera back to see if it can be repaired. I still have not lost the sense of panic that comes with the shunning of the sun while other important actions have to be taken. This is a specifically British thing which relates to holidays abroad when every bright moment had to be focused on turning the skin a shade that would normally be impossible in our damper climate! I still, and don’t think I will ever stop, look fearfully out of the bathroom window every morning to see if the distant trees are topped with sunlight.

I must learn that the sunny spaciousness of a summer holiday in Spain does allow you to do those things which are impossible during the crammed time of term and there will be sunshine enough to spare when they are all complete.

Happy days!

And the reading goes on!

I still can’t find “Homo Faber” and so finished off the bitterly ironic “Penguin Island” – which, also ironically cost two shillings in 1948 and cost me 10p or two old shillings when I bought it second hand – and picked up another book by Claude Cockburn called “Bestseller” subtitled, The books Everyone Read 1900-1939”

To my shame (or is it really?) I had only read two of the books that he discussed “The Blue Lagoon” by H de Vere Stacpoole and “The Riddle of the Sands” by the ‘traitor’ Erskine Childers. I also have to admit that I own a copy of “The Green Hat” by Michael Arlen but have only dipped into it and I truly cannot remember if I have read “Beau Geste” by P C Wren. I am drawn to read “When It Was Dark” by Guy Thorne because it was the book which that odious little man Montgomery read and declared it was a turning point in his life!

This book is relatively short and does not pretend to be exhaustive and further is highly selective, but it is an enjoyable read as Cockburn attempts to find reasons for the popularity of various books from “The Garden of Allah” by Robert Hitchens to “Precious Bane” by Mary Webb.

I think that the introduction is probably the best part, thought the details and extracts of the books are interesting it’s probably better to read the best bits and not have to read the entire novels themselves!

We suspect that the placing of the posts is part of a larger plan of our local council to get visitors to use parking which has to be paid for.

The Spanish will not pay for a parking space unless it is very much the last option.

If the council implements its plan to charge for the parking spaces along the sea front we will have people putting their cars on top of each other in streets a block away from the sea!

Back to summer normality tomorrow when only the ordinary tourists are in town rather than the influx we get at the weekends.

Tricky transport

Two exceptional meals: last night with Irene in a restaurant called ‘Kafka’ (at which point I know I should make some sort of knowing joke about insects, or great walls or giant moles or something but I’m too stuffed) and the second in the Basque restaurant in the centre of town.

The first was the poncier of the two with a tapa of watermelon gazpacho, followed by fish pate with curried mayonnaise with Roquefort topped succulent hamburger (!) With lattice crisps and salad a main course. The sweet was homemade truffles with a marmalade sauce. It was all delicious.

The second was more homely with a surtido of salads as a starter after a couple of proper Basque tapas followed by shank of lamb. We were given two Basque sweets one was a sort of cheese cake while the other was a curd confection topped by honey.

Half way through “Homo Faber” I have mislaid the novel and have picked up “Penguin Island” by Anatole France. This is a thinly veiled ironic history of France from the earliest times. In its references and its faux seriousness it reminds me of the work of Borges, but this volume was originally published in 1908 (although the Penguin edition that I am reading at present was published in 1948, and yes it is the old orange cover and it cost two shillings) and it is a game to think about what scandals and political events are actually being mocked. The section on the imprisonment of Pyrot (Drefus) is particularly biting in its sardonic description of the specious reasoning that all sides in the dispute take to justify their actions or inactions!

In spite of its age the style of the novel means that the central concerns have just as much relevance today as they did in 1908 or 1948. What is giving me pause for thought is why Penguin should think it worth publishing three years after the Second World War in the height of The Age of Austerity. Perhaps such a period was exactly one to appreciate such a fully worked example of historical irony.

The Trip to the South took on another dimension today when, after having booked the train tickets on the internet, I was informed that the destination that we had been informed was the nearest to our friend was, in fact, wrong.

This morning was spent trying to work out how to change or cancel the train tickets. Eventually we have decided to go to Alicante by plane and then find a bus to get to the small town which is our ultimate destination.

Nothing is ever simple.

The ironic eye

If we are to believe the logic of The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (and what thinking person does not) then what has happened today either clearly shows the existence of a sardonic god, or else proves that he doesn’t exist.

I have ordered a swimming garment from a company called “Nomasculsblanco” (which I will not translate) and god knows what is says about my own personal psychosis that I have bought, or at least ordered, this garment. Its material has a series of micro holes that allow most of the sun’s rays to colour that skin which is usually hidden from public view.

And that is where the irony comes in. The arrival of a slip from the Post Office announcing that a hard working member of staff had attempted to deliver a packet but that no one was at home was the usual indication that something was waiting for me in the depot. I have been understandably sceptical about such communications since I once picked up a note informing me of an unsuccessful attempt to deliver a package long before the time written on the note informing me that the attempt had been made!

The trip to the post office to get the garment was accompanied by the only fully overcast gray skies that we have had for weeks. The one thing that isn’t getting through to the Third Floor is the sun. Which makes the whole ethos behind the purchase fairly nugatory. But we are still in the days of July and there is the whole of the month of August ahead to try out the efficacy of the new trunks.

The further irony was that what was waiting for me was not my trunks, but Sitges sending me a parking ticket for so-called illegal parking in a street which no longer exists: an historical throwback! I ripped it up and threw it away! Such a rebel!

In a yet further touch of irony to add to the information re. the existence of god, the weather cleared up and by lunchtime we had a hot, sunny and blustery day. One just can’t win sometimes!

The long process of working out how to get to Jennifer has taken another step forward with Toni bearding the RENFE information service. He said the woman on the other end of the line sounded dead to the world, but we did manage to get some sort of timetable sorted for the trains that are going to take us south: it looks like a fairly epic journey which for me is going to be three trains and a car!

I am now waiting for Irene so that we can talk about The School (as always); The Revenge (as always) and The Journey (to come) – during a meal of course!

Sublime and Odd

The sky is difficult to read this morning: layers of cloud, smears of grey enlivened by occasional wedges of a bluer grey; where the sun should be there is a whiter shade of glowing pale; there is a brisk breeze, but it is still warm enough for me to be typing this in my swimming trunks on the terrace of the Third Floor.

My early morning swim was perhaps a degree more bracing that usual but it took little fortitude to immerse myself and do my statutory lengths. There is no better feeling of complacency than that which comes with swimming in the open air when all around you is the silence of indolence!

One becomes habituated to the gentle push (remember the arthritis) from the side every few seconds in a pool as small as ours, and I know that were I to attempt to swim lengths in a proper 25 or 50 metre pool I would be exhausted in spite of the fact that I can swim for half an hour in our communal pool and feel positively refreshed when I get out!

Today is the second lesson of the week for My Pupil and I intend to go in early to Barcelona and make the pilgrimage up the escalators to MNAC and finally (after over a year) change the address they have so that the information sent to Friends of MNAC can actually get to me directly rather than my having to cull it from the post box of my previous flat. I will also call into La Caixa and get the proper catalogue for the Barceló exhibition for which I only have the free handout at present.

I am now reading “Homo Faber” by Max Frisch, useful because of the unusual wait for the train this morning going to Barcelona: still better than going by bus!

The long pilgrimage from the metro to the portals of MNAC with some of the elevators stopped because of what appears to be preparations for some sort of show around the magic fountain took even longer than usual. I managed to speak to the lady-of-a-certain-age who was behind the Friends of MNAC desk to change the address to which advance information about forthcoming events is sent.

The lady painstakingly took down the information in what can only be described as a hesitant manner and then she asked me if I was going to visit the gallery. When I replied in the enthusiastic affirmative she raised a hand and made her stately way towards a desk opposite where the admission tickets were being bought and got a special ticket for me. Nothing like feeding my flagging self esteem to make me appreciate works of art more!

Although something of a hurried visit I did manage to see the companion piece of the famous wall painting of Casas and a friend on the tandem that has almost become a sort of artistic symbol of Barcelona to match the Gaudí church! I was also enabled to check again the MNAC’s holdings of Joaquim Sunyer who is the subject of the latest art book I bought from a cheapo book stall in the concourse of Sants railway station. My Spanish/Catalan collection of painters that few Brits of heard of grows apace!

The lesson with My Pupil was even more bizarre than usual with the hot topic of conversation being the educational and community programmes of publically funded arts organizations. I explained things in English and then My Pupil said, “And now in Spanish?” As usual I found myself way out of my linguistic depth – not that this stopped my flow of conversation in any way!

It appears that My Pupil after a more than usually stressful few weeks has decided to take a holiday so that my trips to Barcelona will cease for a few weeks. This is just as well as the trip to The South has to be planned.

This is the few days which are going to be spent somewhere in the south in the house of the previous headteacher of the School That Sacked Me. We are planning to go by train, but this is proving to be a little more problematical than might have been supposed as we don’t really know exactly where we are going. One can hardly take “somewhere in the south” as a real destination!

We are working on it!

The trip back from Barcelona, although in air conditioned comfort, was a trip of particular horror.

In the rush for seats in Sants I sat, I later discovered facing two ladies. One was of unexampled innocuousness while the other wasn’t.

There are few things more disgusting than watching someone eat, when you are not. The lady opposite me was wearing one of those unflattering, slightly flounced, crimpelene looking creations in folksy brown incongruities. She had a skull like face with bulging eyes and she placed sunflower seed after sunflower seed into her wrinkled mouth, cracked it, sucked out the seed and then placed the husk in a small plastic bag.

I tried to read but if I wasn’t being revolted by cracking and sucking sounds, I was being revolted by the expectation of cracking and sucking sounds. She kept up a non-stop diet of the bloody things all the way to Castelldefels.

I stayed in my seat as an exercise in Zen calm.

It didn’t work.

Action and connections

A Noise Abatement Society flourishing in this part of Catalonia is as likely as thriving vegetarianism in Argentina.

Our Dawn Chorus today was not the usual heady mixture of doves, dogs and damn children but we were woken by the rough music of the pneumatic drill!

It would appear that our local council has decided to do something about the chaotic parking during the summer and has started to put metal posts on the edge of the pavements to stop cars parking there. I have a feeling this will merely concentrate the attempts to park on our driveways! We shall see.

“Howards End” was a revelation. I think that I must have read the other Forster novels at too early an age because I cannot remember reading “A Passage to India” or “Room with a view” with the same sort of amazed enthusiasm. Even the wonderful collection of short stories, “The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories” (in Penguin Modern Classics with a cover by David Gentleman) pales when placed beside the sheer pleasure that I got from reading “Howards End.”

I read it as I would a detective story – which I suppose it is to some extent – turning over the pages with gathering speed as the story gathered pace.

I could have said the story “such as it is” because, in spite of the fact that very serious things happen in it, the real delight is in the ordinary made extraordinary. Minor comments, minor accidents, minor observations all carry a charge which is out of all proportion to the seeming triviality of the occasion. One is reminded, again and again of Jane Austen, but a Jane Austen who takes more risks. Yes, we are presented with the comfortable middle class with a smattering of servants who play bit parts and one major character who strives after gentility and intellectuality but is hampered by his lack of money.

This is the novel from which the phrase “only connect” comes (and I thought it came from “Two Cheers for Democracy”) and the context makes it clear what store Forster set by the phrase.

The characters in the book are fascinating evoking memories of “To the Lighthouse” and of course Jane Austen in “Sense and Sensibility”. The novel was published in 1910 so the wars that are in the memory of the characters are presumably the Franco-Prussian wars. The belief in stocks and shares and the value of living on the interest from one’s “secure” investments is very much a pre-war world and there is an innocence about life where the real fear was the encroachment of London on a way of life rather than the shattering reality of an unthinkable conflict which was only four short years later.

The novel has twists and turns where the long arm of Dickensian coincidence is invited to twitch the narrative along from time to time; but I found myself wishing for the sort of Smollett-like coincidence where loose ends at the beginning are firmly tied knots by the end. This novel is not like that and, though you do have to stretch your imagination to believe in some motivations and the happenstance of some events, its pace drags you along as the characters play out their little lives in front of you.

The style of writing is anecdotal (who is the narrator of this story?) and epigrammatic, but without the arch showiness of something like “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” where the very cleverness is rather exhausting. Forster writes to explain and there is an urgency in his explanations that is belied in the gentleness in which they are garbed.

In days gone by I used to be much more meticulous in marking those passages that I thought significant in some way or other; these days there has to be something of real moment to make my search for a pen. I did mark two passages. I particularly like the description, “The air was white, and when they alighted it tasted like cold pennies.” There is an uncanny accuracy about this that means I can evoke an experience to match. I also was taken by one character’s description of a landscape which prompted her to say, “It isn’t size that counts so much as the way things are arranged.”

I realize reading through that last quotation again that it covers more than landscape!

I feel positively invigorated by reading “Howards End” and, at the risk of being sneered at by those who have read the novel long ago, I urge people to try it.

My “Summer watch” has been something of a disaster with it losing time. I took it back today and it was exchanged without demure. When I got it home and baptized it in the pool I noticed that one of the screws securing the front plate was missing. I am sure (this is not an expensive watch!) the screws are far more decorative than useful but the small, yet gaping water filled hole looked as though the watch was doomed.

Back I went to the shop and with Toni clearly intimating that the replacement watch that I had been given was a repaired one and not a new replacement. They have given me a third watch and that hopefully will get me through the summer.

I do have one or two (ahem!) other watches to replace any further faulty timepieces. But then what civilized gentleman does not have enough watches to be able to wear a different watch for each day of the week.

For some weeks.

Another festivity in Terrassa, so the car now has merely to be pointed in the right direction and it gets us there!