The End Day

Another delicious lie-in yesterday and then phoning to find out just how much the bonus-consuming incompetents have squandered of my hard gained savings.

I didn’t find out because phoning the unreachable sequestered fools was asking for far too much.  The telephone in the centre of the multi-billion pound empire built on my money was engaged.  All the time.

I was forced to go to the web site and forcing my memory to re-live many frustrating phone calls I eventually managed to find my way onto the site and saw that the savings had reduced since I last looked.

I will have to take a vow not to look at this disastrous investment until it has reached its laughable maturity or at least until I can take my money out of the grasping, avaricious hands of those who pay themselves out of the dwindling resources they are supposed to increase.  God rot them all!  They are wasting my future and making it more difficult for me to stay alive long enough to ensure that I get back every penny (with interest) that I have paid into my superannuation fund.

Today I went to the bank to find out what I was supposed to do with an investment which has actually made me money.  Not that I have seen any of it and I do not expect to.

Last year I invested some of my lump sum in the Generalitat as they were offering a competitive rate of interest because they were desperate for the cash.  I relied on the Generalitat trying to bribe me at the end of this year to leave my money where it was at an even higher rate.  This they have done and I went to the bank to keep the money out of my hot little hands for a further two years.

The only reason I was able to get to the bank was because this was a holiday.  Given my working day and the notorious humanity and consideration of banks, it is impossible for me to go to my bank except on some holidays.

As small branch banks now seem to be staffed by one suited teenager I was prepared for a long wait.  There were people in front of me and, as usual, the pair at the desk appeared to be doing the paperwork for the Greek National Debt and possible solutions thereof.  When the man left, the woman stayed as they had not been at the desk for the customary half and hour during which fifteen trees’ worth of paper was signed, stamped and photocopied.

The next person up was a young skater who, in a slapstick version of a person using a bank, produced coins from every pocket and orifice and piled all of the coins on the desk.  My high pitched scream of naked frustration was only mental but it must have reached the cerebral cortex of the suited child because he became officiously dismissive and demanded that the child count the coins himself and put them in containers which the slightly older child behind the desk provided.

Another member of the counter staff appeared as if my magic and rapidly disappeared with someone who had come into the bank after me.

When I finally got the head of the queue and explained why I was there I was told that I needed to see the man who now already engaged with the pusher-in.

The only light spot was provided by an importunate young man clutching a handful of five hundred euro notes who was given short shrift about whatever it was that he wanted to do and he reacted by walking about in all directions and radiating barely concealed fury.

When I finally got to the other worker there I simply had to sign my name a few times and I was done.  I then made the mistake of deciding to get my bankbook up to date.  These books can be fed into the hole in the wall and be updated while you wait.  With wait being the operative word.

The hole in the wall was being occupied by a young couple.  You know that things are gong to be long and involved when the gentleman of the pair starts rummaging around in his little handbag slung across his chest and taking out his mobile phone for guidance.

As the queue grew they inside the kiosk were lucky that they left just before we got the flaming torches and pitchforks!

A trip out to one of our local supermarkets was necessary to find the presents for the double name day on Friday when another trip up to Terrassa is called for.  But the presents are bought and wrapped with days to go so one element of panic has now been removed.

Lunch was in a little café outside the main shopping centre which seemed to be patronized by the workers rather than shoppers and was excellent value for money.  If rather lacking in the ponceness that I like in food.

Toni and I have invented a variation on an old theme for a new starter.  I am the only adult I know who likes arroz a la cubana which is basically rice, tomato sauce and a fried egg.  When Toni went to Cuba and asked the natives if they actually ate this combination he was told that they had no idea what he was talking about.  We decided to make the Cuban element more obvious and so a new recipe was born.

Real Cuban Rice: the quick way.

Ingredients (for two)

2 Microwave Rice Portions

1 packet of tomate frito (tomato sauce)

2 hard-boiled eggs

Flat leaf parsley

Chives

Rum

Salt and pepper to taste

Balsamic vinegar sauce

Method

Hard boil the eggs and let them cool.

When the eggs are cold, shell and mash them roughly with a fork and add chopped fresh parsley and reserve.

Heat the frito in a small saucepan gently, adding salt and pepper to taste and a dash of Tabasco if desired.  When simmering remove from the heat and allow to cool a little.  Stir in the rum to taste.

Cook the rice and empty onto a plate keeping its shape from the container.

Spoon the frito over the rice so that it runs down and surrounds the mound.

Place the egg over the sauce.

Decorate with artistic swirls of balsamic sauce, a sprig of parsley and two deftly placed stalks of chive.

Delicious.

It makes an excellent hot starter.

I am sure that there must be a wickedly appropriate follow up to that last line, but what the hell, I’m on holiday. 

For the next few hours anyway.

Who cares about tomorrow!

Let’s hear it for the weather forecasters!  They got it right.  At least at the moment. It is Sunday morning and the weather is fine: a bright sun in a flawless blue sky.  And it’s a Sunday with Monday and Tuesday “off”.  Apart from wanting more days, what could be better!

Saturday was one of those lazy days when by staying in bed until 9.30 am I actually had a three hour lie-in when compared to my normal time of getting up!  Such a luxury!

Lunch was in the centre of town and, wearing shirt and shorts we sat outside and I, at least had an excellent lunch.  I know that most Spaniards regard my liking for arroz a la cubana (rice with tomato sauce and fried egg) as unmentionably juvenile but I love the stuff and this time there was an imponderable extra something in the dish that made it simply delicious.  Toni’s choice of meat balls (four in number) padded out with more of the fried potato squares that he had for his starter of patatas bravas with alioi were not such a success.

I had grilled salmon with caliu for my main course and it was just right for lunch.  That was followed by white chocolate cheesecake and thing rounded off with a coffee with ice.  The red wine with the meal was drinkable and for about ten quid all-in I think it would be churlish to expect more!

The choice of “free” e-book available for download seems, at first glance to be amazingly extensive, but when you get down to the things that you would actually like to read the choice is a little more restricted.  There are great classics there which would form the backbone for any Eng-Lit University course, but -  And perhaps I should stop there and think about exactly what does constitute an Eng-Lit course in our modern universities.

Swansea University, or University College Swansea, of the University of Swansea of whatever it is calling itself these days had a severely historical approach to English Literature.  We started with the barely readable pre-Chaucerian poems made our way to Chaucer, then wandered through the arid wastelands of literature between Chaucer and Shakespeare and then got stuck into the seventeenth century and we were away.  The course was relentless and impossible: the number brick-like books that we were expected to read during the part of the course devoted to the nineteenth century was simply impossible and books like “Vanity Fair” were only read by my good self many years after leaving college.  To my shame it must be admitted.

But I had read all the works of Shakespeare and Marlowe.  Most of Milton apart from Paradise Regained; all of the poems of Pope and Swift in English and swathes of the Great Poets of the nineteenth century and at least a chunk of the wall that you can make from nineteenth century novels.  The twentieth century was my special paper and we read monumental novels from Dostoyevsky to David Storey, taking in along the way the only novel to make me ill “The Magic Mountain” by Thomas Mann – not I hasten to add because I hated it, but because I became more and more involved with the central character of Hans Castorp.  One of my friends came to call on me while I was going through the novel and fell back aghast at the ashen faced and sinisterly shrunken figure hunched in the chair reading under the light of a single lamp – me!  A great book, though when I tried to re-read it I found that it had lost some of its, well, magic for me.  Something for my retirement perhaps.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time on just one part of the teaching that I am supposed to be doing in school – the history of art, or at least the part that I am supposed to be involved in, Making Sense of Modern Art or MSOMA as Suzanne and I termed it making the course sound as trendy as some of the major galleries in the world which are known by initials like MMOMA or MNAC.  I use the excuse of a school course to justify the buying of any number of books vaguely connected with any aspect of what I am or even might be teaching.

Admittedly it is difficult to fit Holbein into the period that I am teaching which stretches from the Fauves to Pop Art (with notable gaps in between) though I suppose I could make a case for the skull in “The Ambassadors” as influencing a charlatan like Dalí; or perhaps “The Dead Christ” being a clear guide for the more bleak art of the Expressionists and one can always link his obsessive detail with the Surrealists because you can link whatever you like to that particular group – almost as a critical reflex action!

Two of my latest purchases  “El siglo XIV” and “El siglo XX Vanguardias” published by “Los Siglos del Arte” by Electa books can be justified as leading up and containing the period I need to teach, but the third “Arte de la A a la Z – Los mejores y más famosos artistas del mundo y sus obras” by Nicola Hodge and Libby Ansonis less easy to explain.

If indeed explanation for buying a book were needed!  It is worth the money on two counts: firstly because it forces me to use my Spanish to find out what the hell is going in the paintings and secondly the alphabetical arrangement makes for stimulating juxtapositionings like Duccio and Duchamp; Dalí and Daumier; Léger and Leighton; Mondrian and Monet; Palmer and Paolozzi; Turner and Twombly; Guardi and Guston.  The more you look at the side-by-sides the more implied comment is made by the choice of images.

In the Degas and Delacroix for example the Degas is a typically rugged oil of a washerwoman whereas by contrast the Delacroix is “Liberty leading the people” – a contrast if ever there was one between myth and reality; humility and the epic; sketch-like and finished; anonymity and representation; degradation and elevation – and then there are the similarities in terms of choice of central character, nationality, tonal choice, even the trust of the pictures which is with a central character off-centre and the movement in a left to right up and down manner with both finding a certain stasis within action.

The more I look at this book the more I find links both playful and insightful.  The Mondrian/Monet connection produces a double page spread of astonishing beauty while the Turner/Twombly link merely shows up the utter vapidity of the latter.  I recommend this book as a pure delight.  The original English edition was entitled “The A-Z of Art” and was published by Carlton Books Limited.

On television there are the final stages of the F1 Grand Prix in India and here, more than many other venues in the world, the true obscenity of this thoroughly unjustifiable sport is shown up.  Quite apart from the inherent unfairness in the fact that the cars are clearly not equal, the essential mind-bogglingly astronomical sums of money expended on this excuse for excess in all its aspects when compared with the general standards of living of ordinary Indians makes this even less acceptable.  It puts me in mind of the grandiose displays that Communist regimes put on to convince the rest of the world that the system was working.  I’m sure that the millions of homeless poor in India will take courage and faith from this disgusting display of ostentatious waste and, as they look forward to their early deaths die happy that their country has joined the upper echelons of the super wasters of scarce resources.

And I don’t like the way that the winners spray giant magnums of Champagne over each other rather than drinking them.  Idiots!

Now is the traditional time (tea time on Sunday afternoon) for “tristitia magistri” or the “sorrow of teachers” to hit with the realization that tomorrow is Monday and a school day but, you know what, this is not true for tomorrow, not yet for the day following!  And yet I am paid (admittedly a lowly wage) for them.  Life is goodish.

This evening we are going up to Terrassa for an evening meal to celebrate All Saints.  The Bank Holiday is actually on Tuesday but many organizations have made Monday an Occasional Day to give workers a long weekend so the police are going to be out in force and, as always in Castelldefels.  The number of times I have returned from Terrassa to find a road block before you hit the beach part of my town is well, almost without number and at times of fiesta it is simply not worth even taking the risk of an alcoholic drink. 

Which makes Terrassa the only place where I drink Fanta. 

Ugh!

Culture 'aiint cheap!

“I’ve been defrauded!”

Not everyone would recognize that from an English translation of the libretto of The Makropulos Case by Janacek, but the phrase came to mind yesterday in the Liceu as the soloists came on to the stage after a few very final sounding chords and took their bows.  The orchestra rose and was applauded as were the choirs that made up the singing forces for the performance of “Scenes from Goethe’s Faust” by Robert Schumann last night.

I was left thinking that they hadn’t played it all and while Faust was undoubtedly dead he certainly hadn’t been transfigured.  I was bemused and a little angry and made my way down to the foyer and saw hordes of people donning their coasts and making their way into the rain of a thoroughly depressing wet Barcelona night.  After only an hour and a quarter.  There was nothing in the programme to indicate that there was an interval.

I sat down on a seat in the foyer of the theatre and took stock of my situation.  Where was the rest of the concert?

My bemusement took me to the Liceu shop so that I could look for the next work that I had to get to know.  I was somewhat comforted by the fact that the more experienced looking opera goers (believe me you can tell them) looked as though they were still there and waiting.  I began to relax.

After buying a grossly expensive version of  “Le Grand Macabre” as the next on the list of operas in the continuing education tprogramme hat this season is going to be, I made my way back to my seat.  As many other people signally did not for the start and enjoyment of the second half!  I was able to lounge luxuriously across two seats to enjoy some of my favourite music in the opera, or music with singing or oratorio or whatever you want to call it, out of which I was not cheated - unlike those others who did not know the music as well as I did!

The piece did not start well when the Orquestra Simfònica del Gran Teatre del Liceu under the baton of Josep Pons gave a pedestrian performance of the Overture and the dead acoustic promised a dreary evening of music.

Faust (Michael Volle) was a commanding presence and his mature voice gave gravitas and a genuine musicality to the evening.

The opening scenes of the piece are not my favourites and when the whingeing Gretchen has her long and uninteresting solo my attention began to wander.  Ofèlia Sala has a voice which is harsh and forced for me and lacked the power and subtlety that I would have preferred.

For me the evening came alive when the Cor del Gran Teatre del Liceu under the direction of José Luis Basso started their participation.  The wall of sound that they produced was exciting and suddenly the acoustic didn’t matter!

The children’s choir, Cor Vivaldi-Petits Cantors de Catalunya, under the direction of Òscar Boada were impeccable in their performance and added the dimension that only a well-trained young chorus can give.

All the soloists, with the exception of the principal tenor who was simply not up to the demands of the part, were more than acceptable.

The orchestra warmed to the music throughout the evening and my applause was heartfelt at the end of the performance.

More importantly for the future, my seat is fine with good sight lines and, although further away from the stage than I like, is an acceptable distance for the price I paid!

Bring on the next opera.

The evening started well with my finding the centre of the city without too much effort and then finding out that El Corte Ingles had a 50% reduction on some of their opera sets.  I bought.  I then went to the “bargain” book shop and bought again.  Some things are simply too good to leave on the shelves.  A large silk bound book of paintings by Holbein with a disc of music contemporary to the paintings was reduced because of a slightly ripped dust cover and was snapped up by my good self.

Dinner was in a place just off Las Ramblas and good value for money and tasty with it.  The glass of wine was drinkable and generous.

The crowning glory was found in misery.  I have always popped into PC City (the Catalan version of PC World) on the Ramblas, but some time ago was devastated to find that the place had, unaccountably, closed.  Imagine my delight to find that the site has now been taken over by - a book shop!

I virtually leapt through the doors and was delighted to find that they had a reasonable selection of books in English, but more importantly a small bargain section of art reference books which had to be bought.  So I did.  I did not buy them all, but I think that this was false restraint and I should go back and buy the rest during this extensive holiday which we are calling the long weekend ahead of us. 

Especially as I was given a stamped card which entitles me to a further reduction! 

Nothing like feeding a habit!

Sophistication Starts! Later.

There is something to be said for a day when, just before the second lesson of the day a colleague presses a bar of chocolate into your hands!

This offering was by way of an apology as it represented the failure of a quest.  Some months ago I went into a supermarket that I do not usually support and found an unlikely bar of white chocolate with rhubarb!  It was so unexpected that I bought it, even though I do not like white chocolate.

It was astonishingly delicious.

Ever since that time I have attempted to find this fabulous (in both senses of the word) bar and have signally failed to do so.  One of my colleagues who is a fanatic for chocolate offered to continue the Quest as if anyone could dedicate time and effort to such a worthwhile cause, it was she.

The bar I have been given is white chocolate with a hint of vanilla.  Failure, but the chocolate is by Lindt so, gracious failure.

A quick check on the Internet does not reveal any white chocolate and rhubarb bar at all – the nearest is a white chocolate and strawberry rhubarb melange which was certainly not what I found.  The search goes on.

This evening when the teaching is finally done there is the opera.  I have re-read the libretto such as it is – which may seem a little dismissive as the words are by the Immortal Goethe, but in translation they appear, well, naff – and I am not sure that I am fully sympathetic with the ending with its glorification of the “Eternal Feminine” in quite that way that Goethe means it.  But, there again, I am reading the libretto in English which must take away something of the magic of the original.

After all my work on this particular piece of Schumann I am looking forward to hearing the music even though I will be half dead with exhaustion.  It is not really practical for me to go home and then trek out to the Liceu and trains and busses become problematic at the time of night when I have to return, so I park in the centre and try and steel myself not to pass out when I come back to the car park and pay the astonishingly exorbitant charges for leaving my car there.

The next piece of music to learn is Ligetti’s “Le Grand Macabre” and I am hoping that the Liceu will have the CDs in the theatre shop so that I don’t have to download them from the Internet.  I will, however check the price of the downloadable versions to make sure that I am not being ripped off by the Opera company!  There is just so much that I am prepared to pay for prettily printed discs and a thin, poorly illustrated booklet!

I shall comfort myself by finding a decent hotel and having a good meal and leisurely cup of tea or coffee to while away the hours that I have before the music starts at 8.00 pm.