Times change

“Fifty Shades of Grey” – which of course I have not, and have no intention of reading, nevertheless seems like a good point of reference to explain the reason why I left the café outside the swimming pool early today.

I have to admit that I did forget my Kindle which meant that I couldn’t afford myself the luxury of wallowing in the concentrated human misery that reading the daily newspaper gives.  But, such are the times in which we live that anyone with a smartphone never needs to be without reading matter.  The number of books and short stories I have on my soon-to-be-replaced Samsung Galaxy (!) is truly astonishing and has kept me sane in many “waiting” situations.  So, as long as I have my phone and I have remembered to feed it during the night, I am never at a loss to indulge in my favourite addiction.

So, sitting in the morning sunshine just before ten today I was able to choose another story (the “Star Dragon” finally having been read) and go on to one of my many sci-fi drugs and start a new short story about a Chinese man in the future trying to cope with the gender imbalance brought on my tradition and Communist Party doctrine.  This is an interesting premise and I was well into the rather shocking drink and sex opening of the story when I decided to leave.

The number of “free-mums” – those women who, having deposited their children in school and used the car park in the sports centre, feel obligated to do something physical or at least have a chat and a cup of coffee in the grounds – was low so the chatter level was acceptable.

What was not acceptable was the booming amplified voice of the aerobics instructor screaming instructions to the women in front of her while mindless beat-dominated trashy music blared behind her berating voice.  Big Sister who sees all and broadcasts your every move is alive and well and living in Castelldefels in a mirror walled exercise space.

The voice is insistent, hectoring peremptory and imperative, yelling orders like some effeminate yet butched-up sergeant major.  And these people pay for the privilege of being abused.  These women are probably highly qualified professional people and yet they voluntarily subject themselves to the relentless, personality-destroying wall of sound which leaves them sweaty, weak and exhausted.

If this sort of thing does not explain the popularity of soft mummy-porn S&M I don’t know what does.

By contrast my twenty minutes of vigorous exercise is literally cushioned by being in an elements whose buoyancy removes the scope for bone-jarring destruction that aerobic stepping inevitably provides.  And I still feel that I deserve my cup of tea at the end of it.

My pool environment has also improved though, alas, that very improvement is a clear indication that summer is well past.

For the past few days the temperature of the water has been invigorating – or as most of my friends would call it, “cold”!   I have managed to delude myself that “cold” is actually “healthy” as brisk swimming should raise the body temperature and therefore colder water is the best complement to such exercise.

Yesterday my entry into the pool was one of delight rather than stoical acceptance: the water was warm!  I swam a couple of lazy breaststroke lengths revelling in the unaccustomed luxury of water caressing rather that cold abrading!

What this means of course is that the water temperature has been adjusted for autumn/winter and the halcyon days of wine, roses and sunshine are behind us.

In an act of defiance against the inexorable march of the seasons I popped into the Outlet Store of El Corte Ingles in Castelldefels and bought two pairs of shorts – one of light khaki and the other bright blue.  I will not give in to the dictatorship of the latter months of the year!

And I am gratified to note that there are still plenty of gentlemen of all ages still wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirts.  When I say “plenty” I probably mean “some”, but the point is that I am not a lone Brit walking with mad dogs in the midday coolness.  

Not yet anyway!

Patience!

OK, I didn’t have the receipt and that was a fault – but I did have my bank book and the exact date on which I purchased the multi-function printer which had refused to print and that should have been sufficient.

I remember with real horror and not a small amount of guilt that I was once shown on a PC World computer the horrific extent of my spending in the store over the years.  I had not realized (it was that long ago!) that firms keep a computer record of what individual customers spend so that they can do their commercial version of Big Brother and show remarkable perspicacity in the way that they target you.

Every purchase that I had made on my cash card was listed in terrible detail.  I therefore expected MediaMarkt to be able to do exactly the same especially when I was able to give the full date etc of the purchase to allow them to find the individual item on their computer system without any problems.

Foolish boy as I was!  I was told that I had to go to the bank and get a stamped authentication of the printed statement in my bank book.  Why?  What in the name of the living god would that add to the information which was already before them?  Nothing.

However, if nothing else, I have learned not to expect to succeed in trying to circumvent Spanish bureaucracy, even when it rears its ugly head in a mere commercial outlet.

I duly went to the bank and emerged much later with a dun coloured photocopy with a stamp and a signature on it – the sort of sheet which makes the little Jobsworths in this country positively wet themselves with administrative ecstasy.

The offending part of the printer is to be sent back to Epsom and god alone knows how long that it going to take.  I mean I have been told that it will take fifteen days, but fifteen days in commercial terms can mean absolutely anything.

On the positive side my first tranche of Olympic stamps first day covers has arrived.  The Philatelic Bureau has taken a certain number of shortcuts to ensure that they have produced the stamps and covers.

The inner stiffening cards of the fdc’s are all the same, they have not taken the opportunity to print details of the individual gold medal winners which was a pity as I had decided to exhibit those together with the fdcs.  However, given the ridiculous time restraints that they had given themselves by printing the stamps to be available the day after the medal had been won, I do understand that they couldn’t do much more.

There are no names on the envelopes and the stamp is not an individual one but a six-stamp miniature sheet which I am sure made it much easier to produce fdcs in bulk.

My thoughts about the success or otherwise of this enterprise can wait until tomorrow as I am still evaluating the individual items.

I am now looking forward to the arrival of the Paralympic stamps which should not be too long in getting here.

As there is no real information in the filler cards I will probably put all the Olympic and Paralympic stamps together in one album.  We shall see.  I have considered getting information from the Internet and making up little biogs of the gold medal winners myself but that may be one geeky effort too far!

It was warm enough for me to lie out a little on the Third Floor this afternoon without feeling that I was doing something extraordinary.  I have noticed however that I am the only man (of my age) still wearing short-sleeved shirts, shorts and sandals!

Toni continues with his racking cough and I await the inevitable transmission of the virus to me.  With the vicious gloating of the ill, Toni snaps his head towards me every time I clear my throat and asks with the faux sympathy which never fails to irritate, “Cough?  Cold?  Sore throat?”

Given one of the symptoms of this perverse virus I feel like echoing the French knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail and farting in his general direction!

Tomorrow a little whimsy of mine should be ready for collection.  Something that the visitors next year might wonder about if I can place it somewhere innocuous yet eventually noticeable.

The employment situation is getting more interesting by the minute with more people being involved and consultations taking place at the highest levels.  That is not strictly true but things are getting more, structured, shall I say and that is something which can have unexpected developments.  Watch this space.

My swim this morning was take with one other swimmer, a lady who has a determined crawl, but I am slightly quicker and so I am able to pace myself by giving myself a certain number of lengths to lap her.  There is another lady swimmer who sometimes is in the pool and I have to work like buggery to stop her lapping me.  And still she does.

My instinctive revulsion towards inchoate humans was in evidence yet again as my departure from the pool exactly coincided with the arrival of small noisy persons.  This is getting quite creepy as I do not get out of the pool at a set time because my arrival is not a fixed event.

The most disturbing aspect of swimming in the pool is the parking beneath the trees in the pseudo-car park which exists only during the working week.  Most of the spaces are fairly tightly constrained by the trees and the sometimes slightly inconsiderate parking of other people.  And yes that is meant to be ironic.

The lure of the Open University is beginning to beguile me again, especially as Toni will be doing an IT course in the New Year and I think that we could support each other in an attitude sense during our respective studies.

I have been thwarted in the exact course that I want to do, but there are other standalone courses that I can do while I wait for the one that I want.

Tomorrow I phone up again and find out if I can do a second level course as a stand alone, and if I can I will.

Education continues in one way or another.

Reading is right!

Literature beat exercise today when, rising earlyish this morning, I made an executive decision and set myself down with a cup of tea and made a determined assault on my Kindle novel.

So “The Islands” is now fully read. 

A true phantasmagoria of a novel (an adjective which is emblazoned on the front cover of my copy of Catch-22) a mixture of fantasy, stream of consciousness, literary reference, detective story, political comment and a whole list of other approaches which instead of being a confusing mess actually produces a compelling narrative – even if the narrative is not strictly linear, sequential or indeed sensical!  But enjoyable.

It was interesting to read the author’s thoughts on the publication of the English translation of his original.  Carlos Gamerro noted that the original was one hundred pages shorter than the English translation.  He put down some of the explanation that he put in the Spanish which were entirely unnecessary for the later English version.  He also has been involved in a stage play version of “The Islands” and felt that some of the dramatic innovations were worthy of being incorporated into the English version. 

I like the idea of a constantly evolving novel.  Perhaps I will be able to read the novel again in another ten years on the fortieth anniversary of the loss of Las Malvinas.  Any writer who reminds me of Borges has my vote!

Toni has had a significant day and after an interview it seems that there is a chance of employment – but final decisions are delayed until much later this month.  So fingers crossed for the next three weeks!

A Sunday without fear!

The sunshine today was almost sufficient to dry out the sun lounger cushion that I inadvertently left out in the lashing rain yesterday.  Almost, but not quite.

I suppose that we should be grateful that the vans came around on Saturday and picked up the mounds of pine needles which have accumulated on the streets given the time of the year.  If those had still be on the pavements and in the gutters the rain would have had an even more devastating effect as they block drains and cause more standing water to remain for longer.

The only time that I ventured out on Saturday was to buy something in the late evening and the rain was exacerbated by the fact that some sections of the roads were without street lighting – making driving in driving rain a much more exciting prospect, especially as I was surrounded by people who appeared to driving in bright sunshine.  Very frightening – and I was glad to get home and make my self a comforting cup of tea and settle down with my Kindle!

I was alone, yet again, as I ploughed my lonely furrow in the pool this morning – which is fine by me, but does make me wonder about the financial viability of the centre if things are so poorly supported.  Though as we pay a monthly rate I don’t suppose it matters if people do not get their money’s worth!  I do!

I am now over half way through my Kindle book “The Islands” – it mixes sex, Surrealism and social comment in equal measures and links everything together in a detective story format.  I intend to cut this typing short and get back to it.

Toni has an important day tomorrow and he has to get shot of his present illness in double quick time to ensure that he is at his best.

His rip to Terrassa was to see his nephew play football but the lashing rain meant that the match was cancelled and all her has brought back is a present from sister and nephew in the form of a virus whose symptoms are a sore throat and flatulence.  Ex Africa semper aliquid novi – as someone said in different circumstances!