I couldn’t wangle a decent seat on this flight so I am typing this on one of the rear seats in a free row, so at least I have ben able to put the other arm rest up and give myself a little more room.
The weekend is over and I am totally
wrecked. I need the rest of the week to
recover from the excesses of the past two days (and one night) which I spent in
Cardiff, but that is not to be and I will be teaching at 8.15 am tomorrow. Retribution is swift after indulgence!
Friday evening was almost civilized as I
arrived far too late and far too tired to do much more than drink a glass of
wine or three and go to bed.
Saturday, I was graciously informed, was
mine to do in as I wished. I therefore
decided to keep the appointment I had made to go to the optician in Tesco,
Culverhouse Cross. It was a very good
thing that I did so because the service there was exceptional. From the pre-tests to the choosing of frames
everything was done with a friendly courtesy and professional ease which was a
delight.
The optician even managed to fit in a
consultation for my contact lenses by checking appointments and making time.
The end result was I spent over five
hundred quid! So see what doing your job
gets you! And, even though that might
sound a little steep, it does include four pairs of glasses and a month’s
supply of a new type of contact lens for me to try.
I did voice my idea that the basic problem
with my eyes was that I have cross dominance.
In other words I am right handed by left eye dominant. At the moment my left eye is adjusted for
distance and my right for reading when I am wearing contact lenses. The brain is supposed to work out which eye
to use for which activity which it pointedly doesn’t when I wear them. My solution was to swap functions. The optician decided not to do that but
changed the prescription so that the difference between the two eyes if more
obvious and, he said this would make it easier for my brain to accept. I hope it does because I prefer to wear
contact lenses than glasses, though at the moment it is much easier for me to
wear glasses for the amount of reading and writing that I am doing. Hopefully after June when the schoolwork ends
I will be able to use my contact lenses more.
That is the plan anyway.
And going back to the five hundred quid
spend, I actually had a bit of a bargain there.
If you are not a glasses wearer that might seem to be impossible – but
if you are visually challenged then you will have grown up being regularly
being shafted by opticians. I have been
wearing glasses since I was about eight and contact lenses since I was
eighteen. So if you count up all the
money that I have spent and money which has been spent on my behalf – and have
every payment adjusted for 2013 prices I must have spent tens of thousands of
pounds on flimsy bits of metal, plastic and glass and consultations when you,
the customer, have to do most of the work to get the prescription right!
So with Tesco the consultation and
prescription were free. They also have a
buy one and get the second pair free.
Which is good value. Until you
realize that all the little extras are extra.
So I have the lenses thinned, I have varifocal made to my specific
prescription with a wider reading area and they are photo chromatic and they
are lightweight. All of that little lot
of extras add about one hundred and fifty quid!
And those extras are not “free”.
So I decided to have two pairs of glasses with everything and then two
“basic” pairs with no extras. And the
contacts lenses are daily disposable, but they work out at less than a quid a
day. And if you have been wondering at
my slumming by using colloquialisms like “quid” it is merely because I cannot
be bothered to find the pound sign on this Spanish keyboard, far too much
effort!
So my lunchtime on Saturday I had justified
the trip in purely financial terms, quite apart from seeing the Pauls. I did call in to see my Aunt Micky and was
horrified to see a picture of That Woman set out for contemplation and
adoration. But she is my aunt and so I
didn’t say exactly what I felt, but I did relate the story of my setting fire
to my candle of That Woman and her blue bouffant is now well and truly
burnt. I also told her that the film of
this act of fully justified post-mortem fiery revenge was freely available on
YouTube and that she should watch “Burning Thatcher” as something which would
be good for her soul. I regard my little
film as the equivalent of an act of devotion and a modern take on a chantry
where the evidence of my act of immolation will have some form of life immortal
in the electronic world!
I did call in to see Louise but she was out
and so I was denied my traditional cup of tea and a chat. Another time.
Uncle Eric too did not have a visit from me
this time around. Shame on me!
Saturday night was supposed to be the
opportunity for me to take the Pauls out for a meal. Our first, second and third choices were full
so we decided to patronize an old haunt, “Le Monde”. Our ill luck was to continue however as there
was a power cut in the recently reopened restaurant and while we waited for our
table a round of drinks was fourteen quid.
Not the place to stay and get drunk in.
Time crept on and we felt that there must be somewhere else in the
centre of Cardiff which could offer us a meal.
Our plan was therefore to go to one of the
restaurants that said it was full and take a chance.
This was a good plan because it
worked. Our meal in “Viva Brazil!” was
interesting and good. There is a
substantial buffet island with cold and hot food to load onto your plate. When you have regained your seat you have to
turn a beer mat which is green on one side and red on the other. Green means that you want one of the roving
waiters to bring something to your table.
The waiters wander round with a metal spike
on which is impaled meat of some sort and, with the large and menacing knife
that he also carries around be begins to carve off a slice which you pick up
(with what looks like a pair of sugar tongs) and transfer it to your
plate. A very nice idea and there was
plenty to eat. I think the trick of the
place is to ensure that your first selection of food will accompany what is
going to be brought to your table. I
chose various types of potato and fish – I do like surf and turf!
But it was expensive.
Sunday was The Day and it Went Well with
our eventually being upgraded to “White” armbands which meant that we were able
to walk through the crowds (rather than be part of them) into the area directly
in front of the stage on which the heroes of the team were to parade
themselves.
This achievement was preceded by a
beautiful meal in La Strada (if my memory serves me properly) in which I had
the best risotto, of the seafood variety, that I have ever eaten. It was washed down, however, by one hundred
and twenty quid’s worth of booze which made an al fresco meal into something of
a fiasco.
But an excellent day which prepared me in
no way whatsoever for the next “illegal” day off school.
Monday started on a somewhat delicate note
because of the alcoholic orchestration of the previous day but I was determined
to use all the time to the full so I went to Tesco and spent, because that is
what I do. Well.
There was also time to visit Hadyn (yes I
know that it isn’t spelled like that, but I have spelled it like that for as
long as I have known him and I am simply not prepared to change now) and sit,
in glorious sunshine, in his back garden.
Somewhat unexpectedly I was also able to help him repair the fence. Never let it be said that I was not prepared
to earn my cups of tea!
The exact time of my departure was a bit
hazy for me and so it was only when I was galvanized into activity by Paul 1
who said that I needed to make a move that I did. Through a complicated piece of key exchange I
had to leave the Pauls in a pub go and pack and then return to key to the Pauls
and go on my way.
The packing, amazingly, took longer than it
should have done and, with all my little purchases stuffed into the walk-on
luggage the damn thing would hardly close.
As it was I have to carry my computer and hope that they would not
insist, as I have seem Them do, that I put it in my suitcase for the passing of
the control. Shutting the case with a
computer in it would have broken the thing in two.
I left the Pauls (at least the Pub) with a
vague feeling that I could make the flight with enough time, but I did not have
the confidence to check that this was so.
In the event this che sara, sara approach
worked and I got petrol and to the airport in plenty of time. I must try that attitude again!
I failed to pass the security check and was
patted down and my shoes checked. My
case failed the security check and various things had to be dug out of the congealed
mass of commodities and dirty clothes.
The Sudafed didn’t make it and my mobile phone was checked for traces of
explosive. I asked.
I think that my idiotic purchase of
sparklers and Roman Candle type decorations for Toni’s birthday cake may have
been the cause of this as I plonked the sparklers and candles into my case
before I realized the impossibility of actually getting them out of the
country! Can it be that their machinery
is so sensitive that it can pick up decorative gunpowder, still wrapped after
having been left in a case for a day or so?
If so, so impressive!
I eventually got through and settled down
to while away the stretched time that exists in every airport terminal in the
world. In the event it was not too bad
and the flight was called at the time that they said it would be.
Bristol Airport is now one of the most
unfriendly places I have ever been to.
If you are flying EasyJet the walk from the plane and to the plane is of
almost comic length. Indeed they have
put up notices to tell you that you are still on course and I have seen more
than one able-bodied traveller eye the wheelchairs provided at strategic points
throughout the Long Trek with what can only be described as longing!
The flight was full and generally
uneventful and, although I didn’t get an emergency exit seat I was allowed to
move to the back where there were free rows so I was able to spread out. I will pass over the collection of returning
Spanish schoolchildren in silence, which is certainly not what they did!
An 8.15 start the next day dampened the
spirits when I finally got home in a much more expensive taxi than usual and so
I drifted off to sleep eventually, I was that tired that sleep was not easy,
with the dread of an examination marking packed week ahead.
And that it what it was, with OU work being
a distant memory.
In spite of the crap in school I did, at
the end of the week I managed to write my “object driven” and “object centred”
approach to the Festival of Britain Crown that I chose as my object for the
first exercise on the Tutor Group Forum.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this introduction to the course and I am
finding the comments on the National Forum even more stimulating. I am not as securely in my comfort zone with
this course material and I think that is a very good thing.
I did make the mistake of looking at some
post connected with “A150 Exam Results” which was a foolish and masochistic
thing to do. Hysteria is, after all,
catching!
So to the end of this week and The Wedding.
This was held in a Masia in the
countryside, down a winding dirt track and was excellent.
The actual ceremony was held outside with
white draped seat a la Americana with real rose and flower petals strewn along
the sides of the path leading to the “stage”.
All very pretty, but when we arrived we were not given a drink. And we went on not being given a drink (apart
from a table with bottles of water on it!) for longer than was strictly
necessary!
Once the ceremony was over we were ushered
to a canopied area where, to my horror, we were offered a drink composed of
tropical fruits! My aghast face must
have spoken volumes as glasses of Cava soon appeared.
The yucca crisps were a nice touch and they
prepared us for an entrance to the courtyard area of the Masia where, passing
by the kids who had been issued with soap mixture to create a curtain of
bubbles we came to the tapas. These
were, without exception, exceptional!
From sushi with cream cheese (!) to jamon
iberico everything was tasty, beautifully presented and interesting.
The highlight for me was a mini scallop
gratinated on its shell. Toni’s mum and
I regarded these as our rightful property and consumed a plate of them before
we were dragged away clawing for more!
Some of these tapas were presented on
plastic spoons, the disposable equivalent of Chinese soupspoons but with an
arched stem. I believe that the
traditional adjective to use for such elegant constructions of food is
exquisite – and they were.
The Cava was on tap, as it were and with
hot tapas following the cold together with plates of risotto we had had our
meal before the meal started!
Food, food and more food. And we were even threatened (I thought it was
a joke) with yet more food after the dancing.
It was not a joke and I refused to push another morsel through my mouth!
The distribution of gifts meant that I am
now the proud possessor of a mini bottle of Cava and a Cuban cigar!
At the moment we are preparing to go out to
lunch after which I think the next time that I will need to eat will be
sometime in the distant summer. You will
note that I used the word “need” in the last sentence. That gives me, as they say, “wriggle room”!
And I still have to get back to
Castelldefels to prepare for the week which is getting closer all the time.
