Memory lasts

A short visit from old friends gives living meaning to the term oxymoron.  You slip back easily into the old routines of ritually shared responses and memories and the comfortable intimacy of lazy allusion – and then it is all snatched away as the plane takes off.  Bitter sweet, indeed!  And the telephone is no compensation!

Still, August will see them back and a longer stay will soften the blow of departure!

The sun has come out again to emphasise what Brits are missing and even the blustery wind of the past few days has died.  As indeed, as each quiet morning reminds us, has the dog next door.

The trauma of seeing the little body in the pool has not lessened, though the unreality of it all has tempered the emotion.  We should feel some guilt as we have been praying for the death of the yapping monstrosity on a daily basis.  If you had been irritated for as long as we had by its moronic baying then even its crippled state would have failed to move you when gazing at its watery tranquillity.  And it is that tranquillity, that precious silence that we now savour.  This morning it was the alarm that woke us up not the serial irritation of a doggy dawn chorus!  And that is something for which we have been longing for years!  Obviously we regret the manner of the dog’s death – but the fact of it is something that continues to delight us.  Silence is indeed golden!

Toni has done some cleaning and it is as if the Pauls have never been here – which makes the opening sentiments feel all the more poignant.  There is a tasty reminder in the fridge however: the remains of the Spanish Chicken.  This was a success (though not, according to Paul 1 as much of a success as when it was made in Britain) and packed a hefty spicy punch to go with meat falling from the bone.  That’s our lunch taken care of!  Well, as it turned out, my lunch taken care of

Tomorrow lunch is in Terrassa, then a pre-school day and a mid-week start.  And then it is all downhill to June.  Which seems in the far distance.  And indeed is!

Lunch today, Monday, was excellent with home made meatballs and disgraceful cakes of unlimited calories.  The Cava seemed positively frugal compared with the displays of ostentatious confection with which we were surrounded.

The kids had demanded and got their custom made Easter monas by their long suffering aunt painstakingly making cartoon figures of each of the kids holding a football trophy – and all edible.

They had other chocolate constructions of which the most flamboyant was dedicated to FC Barça and, given that a pathetic piece of chocolate with an unconvincing mini image of Messi was €20 in Carrefour, the one the kids were given must have cost three figures!  It looked impressive with conventional cup, football ground, Barça badge etc, but it was just as well that I wasn’t told the price because I want to go to sleep this evening and not spend the night brooding about how deprived a childhood I had!

There is something soul numbingly horrific about a family getting out photo albums when that family is not really yours, with photos relating to a time when you didn’t know a single member of it.  Even with the safety net of a smart phone with readable books on it, it's a fragile sort of patience that one holds on to.

The wedding video was an added extra about which I want to say little, except that it was interesting seeing people who are no longer part of the family playing an integral part in the festivities.

The camera work was individualistic held by one who had apparently recently been informed of the invention of a process which could take likenesses of things.  The main intent of the camera person seemed to take out of focus images of people who were not the main participants.  By that criteria it was a resounding success!

The journey home was strangely quiet as I suppose that the bulk of people had already arrived home as most people are back in work on Tuesday.  We have an extra day (which I was informed was illegal by Toni’s brother in law – sour grapes!) that will be used to get clothes ready and tell the agents about the dead dog.

And where are my glasses?  I hate the ones that I am wearing at the moment, they feel like lead after the lightness of the optical example of “less is more” – much, much more that my old glasses represent in their wispy costliness!

And, further and, I have not had my last OU TMA sent back and it was promised for the weekend.

Just one damn thing after another!

Tell us how to do it?

The sun slunk out this afternoon to show the Pauls what the weather could do if it felt like it!  Although there was a brisk wind it was hot and very un-British.

Today it is Paul Squared’s opportunity to cook for us.  We had a more than satisfactory lunch in St Boi but the real event is to be “Spanish Chicken” cooked by Paul.

You have to admire someone who comes to a country and then vaunts his culinary prowess by asserting that he can cook an eponymous national dish!

The ingredients were collected by Paul and myself from the Carrefour in Prat and we were beguiled by items other than the ones that we had come for and it was only with a real effort that we remembered that we needed chicken for the dish!

The real problem was the paprika in its smoked variety.  The first person I asked for paprika in the supermarket reacted as if I had suggested I hook up with her mother in some sleazy threesome rather than asking for a fairly run-of-the-mill spice!  I eventually got the help of an eager little old man to help me in my search.  Unfortunately his enthusiasm was only matched by the fatuity of our efforts.  Nevertheless, other spices were bought and they will do.  Probably.

My enthusiasm about the improving weather and the prospect of a delicious meal is limited because of the terrible realization that I have to go back to school not on Monday the 8^th of April – but rather on Wednesday of this week.  In a mere three and a bit days’ time; let’s be precise, from this exact moment in time I am 84 hours from having to get up to go to school!  Holiday virtually over!

Still, June the twenty-somethingth is getting nearer by the day when blessed release will be granted!

I don’t suppose that I should, but I am very tempted to count the number of weeks left!

But I won’t.

Barça are playing a bottom of the table team and only drawing.  They are playing dreadfully and the poor goalkeeper had to save two successive shots one from his own team and the other from the opposition!  At least they are equal starting the second half.  I trust that they have had a pep talk and will do very much better than during the first depressing forty minutes!

Nothing from the OU Tutor today, hopefully I will have my work returned tomorrow and then the revision work via our Tutor Forum starts.  I must admit that I am looking forward to the exercises to stimulate me to something more interestingly productive than tired re-reading and trying to spot key OU-ish words to use in the exam!

The Pauls are off back to the UK tomorrow after a truly flying visit.  Still, they are coming over during August for longer and we will hopefully have more sultry weather to encourage them to visit the beach and even throw themselves in the sea!

Monday will see us revisit Terrassa to see the Monas made by Toni’s sister and to watch the kids demolish them.

I must also remember that I have little eggs to give the assembled boys tomorrow morning.  Such vicious fun!  And I am already practising my very best guilelessly innocent tone of voice asking, “And where is mine?” and then the pathetic, whipped dog face when it appears that nobody has thought to get me anything. 

I love it!

What?

“There’s a dead dog in your swimming pool,” is the sort of statement that people say that they have found in a foreign phrase book.  When will you ever use such a phrase?  Never.  Or, in my case, this evening.  Not by me, admittedly, but by a bemused Paul.

I treated the comment as mildly humorous and went to the Third Floor more as an unthinking response rather than in lively expectation.  And there was nothing there.  But a little movement to one side and emerging from the shadow of the tree, there it was looking more like a slightly twisted doll than anything else, but unmistakably a dead dog doll.  In the swimming pool.

Investigation was called for and I hot footed it down from the Third Floor to Ground Zero to be met by two rattled friends still reeling from attempting to get a closer view and being attacked by a ferocious dog launching himself towards them only being repulsed by our flimsy bamboo fence.  Toni moved away quickly and Paul fell backwards – luckily onto our gloriously artificial grass and was no more than shaken.

All was made clear.  Obviously the ferocious cur that attacked Paul Squared and Toni was crazed with fear that his heinous crime of offing the poor crippled dog (I jest not) moving gently at the bottom of the pool had been discovered!  Guilt screamed from every leap!

It is easy to reconstruct the events. 

The dogs having been left (yet again) respond by escaping from their pens.  The gate to the pool is flimsy and the plastic “fencing” recently propped against the gate totally insufficient to prevent a large, determined dog from getting out. 

Having made his egress the smaller dog, crippled in both back legs is well able to follow.  Once at the side of the pool any movement with the unsettling weight of dead legs could have caused the dog to topple in.  Or perhaps a boisterous bit of play by the larger could have pushed the smaller in. 

Whatever happened, once the small, old, crippled dog was in the water there was no way that he would be able to get out again.  It was only a matter time before the inevitable. 

And I hope all of the preceding works in the mind of the owner!

When I approached the fence the hysterical barking and the accompanying wailing from Paul and Toni dissuaded me from venturing beyond the limits of my demesne.  However, the sight of the cadaver from a more advantageous viewpoint emphasised the reality of the fact that there was indeed a dead dog in the swimming pool and that was not something which could be tolerated.  Even if I had no desire or intention of doing anything to remove it.

My first impulse was to phone the RSPCA and get them involved with the express intention of bringing home the guilt for the death to the inadequacy of the measures to keep the dogs safely within the garden of our neighbours.  Dogs will be dogs and their human owners need to take responsibility, and when they don’t then they must be made to pay.  And pay heavily.

I am quite sure that the telephone call from the police that our neighbour received informing her of the death was deeply upsetting and her grief is sincere but I do hope that she realizes that her own negligence is the cause and she must live with it.

Meanwhile the little realities of the event meant that I actually spoke to our neighbours on the other side and had a conversation longer than anything I have had with them over the last few years!

I am not sure what we can do to match or surpass this little tragi-comedy for the next day of the Pauls’ stay, but we are now going out to eat and that should be a much calmer experience!

First Day

Any day which allows me to lie out in the sun and have to use sun cream has my vote.  Today was such a day.  Lying down on a little used sun lounger and listening to my mobile phone’s music relayed through one of those little round expandable speakers with the prospect of lunch with Irene – what could be better.

Lunch was excellent and conversation better.  Though my fears about the scheme which I have been told about with three or four per cent interest on your deposit each month at compound interest seems to be a little less real now that depositors have been told that access to their money is delayed until a second audit has been completed.  Ponzi Scheme screams out it warning and my sympathy goes out to those who invested – although there is still time for my fears to be proved groundless.  I hope, for the sake of some of my friends, my fears really do prove to be groundless!

I have now completed all the set work of the first of my OU courses and from here on in it is revision all the way.  I am hoping that our Tutor Forum will now spring back into life with some tutor led suggestions for the finer points of our revision.  That at least will sooth tattered nerves as they develop over the next few weeks!

With any reasonable luck the weather should hold for the next few days with sun and high cloud – at any rate it should be markedly better for the Pauls than in Britain.

Tomorrow, Opera – Madame Butterfly. 

I must remember to take the tissues!