Out & About

The heat continues and people wander about with bemused expressions on their faces and the haunted eyes of those that know that this cannot last.  The Heat Wave has now surpassed previous torrid times and is officially a record of some sort.  They should try living in Spain where such heat is an everyday occurrence, though as I have mentioned previously the Spanish talk about their weather even more than we do!

Dulled by alcohol from last night I was able to find comatose relief on the quivering mixture of jelly and marshmallow that is my bed.  This was after the funeral which went as well as such things are able to go.

The range and depth of colleagues both currently teaching and also those beatified by retirement was remarkable and although the chats were short they were gratifying.

Lucy was visibly encouraged by being surrounded by friends and family and she was able to get through the day with resilience and courage.

I was roundly berated by my godson for my lack of presence in his life and the fact of my not even being there for his christening where I was represented by a proxy.  As my godson is thinking of entering the ranks of the clergy I have to say that the absence of my cynicism and cruel questioning of the tenets of religion has allowed him to “grow up in the faith” – so job well done, say I!

I took Paul back to Port Talbot and left him with the stern injunction to find his way back to Cardiff in the very near future.  That way lays his best hope, as the chances of finding a job in Port Talbot are not bright.  Still, he is going to come out to us in August and Toni and I can work on him then so that he returns to Wales determined to succeed and with a clear plan of action in his mind.

Today has been a return visit to the Culverhouse Cross Tesco where, as the last time I went to the in-store Optician last May the staff were efficient, helpful and courteous.  My eyes have changed and I might have to revisit the doctor in Spain and ask him what he is dong about my diabetes which is part of the reason for the fluctuations in seeing.  However, for the present the prescription is going to be made up, the glasses changed and everything sent to Paul 1 for him to send on to me.

From Culverhouse Cross to Maesteg via the old A48 rather than the motorway thanks to a wrong turning out of Tesco and a nostalgic yearning to re-drive the old route to my grandparents.  It is, it has to be said, a thoroughly pleasant drive and it is easy to see the progressive gentrification of The Vale of Glamorgan as what I remember as slightly tatty, but imposing houses are now restored and augmented.  Even the little valley towns and villages, shorn of industrialization and mines, look quaint and pleasant – though god knows what the level of unemployment is in these towns shorn of their economic purpose.

Uncle Eric was as responsive as ever and regaled me with stories of his chaotic ramblings through northern France and Belgium as a member of the PBI, subject to the vagaries of clueless officers and the usual mystifications during war.  His tale of the peregrinations from Abbeville and back again trying to avoid being killed by the Germans and living on half a tin of bully and two squares of chocolate and going without food for three days and trying to stop tanks with training ammunition and low powered rifles made for fascinating listening!

Eric is now the last surviving member of his 1926 primary school class and when I said that I would see him again the next time I was in the country he intimated that our next meeting would be of an entirely different nature.  I chivvied him with my expectation that he would make triple figures, but his expression of disgust suggests something else.  Still, I value my chats with my uncle and I do hope that they continue for some years yet.

Back to Cardiff and Llandaff to see my aunt and a thoroughly snide and catty conversation.  Her description of not attending a Memory Clinic was refreshingly irreverent and although she is tied to a broken body her mind is as sharp and scathing as ever!

I am now waiting for the next part of my stay in the UK when Diane will come calling to carry me off to Cyncoed for talk and table delights!

Here we go again!

The opening bid of a thirty-minute delay in my flight has been announced.  Thirty minutes is not enough to drive people to despair, indeed it has been accepted with barely a whimper. 

I fear that thirty-minutes is only the start and we will be presented with incremental increases so that there is not armed rebellion.  Far more of an incitement to violence is being near a curly haired man who has ostentatiously spoken on his mobile phone for over an hour without speaking into the phone itself but rather into some ethereal microphone giving the appearance of melancholy madness and talking only to himself.  The only thing that has now stopped him is the fact that he has to get on a plane.  Whereas I am doomed to look around at the sad remnants of humanity stuck here for even longer than we feared possible!

I am at present watching the queue for the flight to Belfast which is almost comical in its stereotypical ethnic appearance with skin either defiantly untouched by the sun’s rays or rosy from reckless exposure – contrast with the few obvious Iberians travelling with them.  Actually, with more people arriving the stereotype has been shattered and my previous comments smack of prejudice.  Ah well, anything to fill a line and keep my fingers occupied – and my mind - so that I don’t keep thinking that there is at least (at least) another hour to wait before we take off at the most optimistic expectation.

Yet again the two-hour leeway that airlines ask for passenger arrival seems ludicrously vicious!

Although I didn’t manage to get a seat with leg room a very accommodating young man with shaped eyebrows told me that there was an empty row at the back of the plane and I was therefore able to spread out and have a reasonable experience during the long, long flight.  It was also made more tolerable by my purloining of a rejected copy of The Independent which, with difficulty, I managed to use my origami skills to make into some sort of shape which could be read in the cramped confines of a budget airline seat.

Accommodation in the Campanile Hotel is both better and worse than I expected.  The room is more than acceptable with large bed and en suite; however any use of water anywhere in the edifice produces an irritating lift-like whine which is something up with which I will have to put.  At least there is Wi-Fi, a kettle and coffee and tea.  The rooms are on the American Motel model with access from an external balcony and they are spacious and adequate.

The meal (be fair I had had nothing since a bowl of muesli for breakfast) was less than spectacular but three courses for sixteen quid: carrot soup; summer chicken bake with slow something or other rice and an ice cream with caramel topping and a cup of coffee you were supposed to sip at the same time.  I also had two pints of bitter – the first of which didn’t touch the sides.  Now that is something I do miss.

Which is also what happened with Louise who, for the second time in two visits by my good self was out!  To be out on one of my State Visits might be regarded as unfortunate; to be out on two smacks of carefully planned cutting.  An art that I thought was dead and gone in this debased age!

Ceri and Rhys were in however, as was Heidi the dog – though I have to say that the first two greeted me immediately and it took Heidi an hour to make her way towards me and demand the sort of scratching that she has had on every other previous occasion that I have visited.  I am going back for dinner on Saturday and it will take another hour for Heidi to realize that I am the same sucker that finds her itching point so exactly.

The great achievement of this holiday is a part justification of the latest in the long line of timepieces that I have, perfectly justifiably, bought.  The one I have at the moment is, for me, an old watch: my Citizen Eco-Drive Perpetual.  The last time I came to the UK I merely turned the watch back to get the UK time.  This played merry hell with the timepiece and it took ages to get it back to some sort of date/day/time coordination.  This time I programmed the thing and I have actually got the watch working on Local Time – and it is still showing the right day!  Result!

Of course there are some beggared imaginations that would intimate that a much simpler watch would only need a small turn of the knurled knob to set the time back and forward.  I spurn such simplistic defeatism!  What is the point of buying a gadget-filled watch of enormous complexity (which compensates for leap years!) if you do not have to study a manual of more than Byzantine sophistication to get a straightforward adjustment facilitated!  Some people!

It works and I am justified!

However this achievement may rate in annals of gadgetry, I have a more pressing and domestic problem: the ironing of the suit.  Having bought a case which complies with the ever more stringent demands of budget airlines I have (well, Toni has to be exact) shoehorned suit, shoes, tie, cufflinks (thought I don’t know where they are at the moment) and all the other necessities for a decorous appearance at the funeral tomorrow into a space which, while certainly not nutshell-like is near enough to it to be known to the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  What I drew out of the tiny container looked like Barbara Cartland before the plaster.  Everything is wrinkled.

The solution is an iron which has been given to me by the man at the reception/bar/restaurant, together with a dinky little table mountable ironing board.  And when I find the plug I am really going to do something about the crumpled appearance of my formal wear.

The only thing which looks good is my tie.  This is a tromp l’oeil confection of what looks like a series of slanting, undulating, black and grey metallic ribbons.  I also have a black tie if I think the final appearance is a little too gaudy.  But the cufflinks (if I can find them) do match, so surely that makes it tasteful.

To work.  To iron.  To be ready.

And then to sleep!

Do you win sometimes?

 What would you think if you decided to embrace technology and make an appointment with the local office of one of the arms of the Spanish government and were given a time and a ticket number for a particular day?  The time was 10.56 am and the ticket number was B28.  What would you think?

The unwary would consider the time and not note that it was just a little too precise; and doesn’t the B28 sound like a 1960s American bomber rather than a workaday number like those you get at the deli counter in a supermarket?

The office, when we got to it was packed with an unmoving queue of UN composition waiting to get on to the system so that they could be ignored.  People with appointments and numbers looked around with a superior sneering pity at the queue unless, like us, you were experienced in such things and knew that appointment time and ticket number were just concepts not entitlements.

I waited in the queue and eventually got another ticket number (A29) which allowed me to sit down and watch other people gradually realize that the letters and numbers which they clutched unto themselves (sometimes, quaintly, on a computer printout) had no currency in the hard world of governmental bureaucracy.  Their weary head shaking resignation on finding out the truth was no more than acceptance of their allotted fate as a citizens of Spain.  Fooled again!

After a period when every letter in the alphabet and every number combination except mine was flashed up on the electronic display board and enunciated in the dulcet tones of an exclusively Catalan lady my number was at last voiced.

I was dealt with by a man who gave no impression whatsoever of actually knowing what he was doing.  Which probably accounts for his sitting next to a finger restricted gentleman to whom all others came to ask the sort of arcane questions that paper pushing encourages.  A few pointed indications and within a long time I was on my way with every promise of the Spanish State actually considering paying me back some of the lavish gifts that I have given to the black hole of government grasping! 

I should mention that all of my payments during the time that I have worked in this country connected with pensions have been on a strictly non-beneficial basis, as you have to work for fifteen years before anyone considers that you have made a significant enough contribution to get any return.

Next month will show if things have worked out when I check through my bank account and see an amount not preceded by a minus sign!

On the strength of putative success we went out for a celebratory meal in our newly discovered tapas restaurant hidden away in a residential area and it neither disappointed in terms of taste or value for money.  A real find!

My swimming is still being enlivened by my waterproof cheekbone transmitting music thingies.  I am ashamed to admit that the very first track that accompanied by inaugural swim was “The Green Berets” – hardly very flattering to my musical pretentions, but that’s life.  Just when you purchase a whole series of operas for the next season in the Liceu, some musical lapse comes up on you unexpectedly and brings you down to earth!

The noise from our neighbours today has been almost unbearable and the only way to escape is to go to the beach and put up with a different sort of noise and there is the extra delight of swimming in a sea which does not attempt to kill you with its icy clutch.

The OU situation is now becoming critical and I have to address the issues that have arisen with some dispatch.  On the other hand I have had more encouraging news about my Grown Up Camera which has now been released from customs in Great retain and is now somewhere between the UK and Barcelona.  I am supposed to be sent an email when the thing is about to be delivered and I am waiting with barely concealed impatience.

Bring on the toys!

Back again!

It is always sad to record the death of a friend after a long illness because, although one had become accustomed to the possibility of death, when it comes there is always the shock of deprivation and loss.

Being a few countries apart adds that element of frustration that distance from what has gone on gives and also that inevitable sense of guilt that lack of actual contact encourages.

John had a distinct outlook on life and his insights were direct and no-nonsense.  He spoke what he thought and his comments were both astringent and approachable.  He will be missed.

The news of his death came when Alison was staying with us for the first time for almost three years.  The shock of that realization gave a vivid impression of the passing of time, a process which inevitably takes a human toll as John’s death showed.

I am positive that John would not have liked depression to take the place of the pleasure which the visit gave, but it was impossible to compartmentalise the loss, but we did try and celebrate life rather than bewail its absence.

In the determined way that Alison has we “did” new things on our trip to Barcelona and for the first time I visited Palau Guell; went up in the cable cars to the castle in Monjuic and last, but certainly not least, a lady gave up her seat to me on public transport! 

Over the last few years I have developed a hardened attitude when travelling on buses and trains and feel that with my arthritis I am entitled to keep my seat unless there is a pressing case in front of me and EVERYBODY else seated around me obviously outranks me in the give-up-your-seat stakes. 

If there is a youngster (of whatever sex) then I feel that my early years of springing to my feet with an alacrity that even my mother cannot have failed to approve have given me the right to stare pointedly at the child and will it to do the decent thing.  And if they don’t well, times being what they are . . .

Fussy Eaters (i.e. anyone other than myself) are not the people to take on a Ruta de Tapas.  What with Toni’s aversion to cheese and Alison’s allergy to milk products added to her simple dislike of “squishy” things like eggs with runny yolks, oysters and most forms of shell fish and body organs, choosing a restaurant to visit was not without its problems.  Added to which when a decision was finally made and the map was eventually worked out and we triumphantly arrived – more often than not we found the bloody place closed and recriminations are rarely fair and never nice!

We settled for one of our favourite restaurants and had a set meal from an extensive range which satisfied us all.  And gave me another opportunity to sample the white chocolate cheesecake of which I am inordinately fond.  Success all round!

A week has gone by in which I have been here and there, bought this and that and done various things.

Reality, which I usually assiduously avoid as being unnecessarily gritty, will hit tomorrow when Part XIV of the Financial Master Plan is put into operation by the visiting of the local Labour Exchange to find out if my selfless giving of myself to the dictates of education and lavishly endowing the state with largess in the form of pension, taxes and other monies ill spared from my meagre earnings with redound to my favour in some small emolument (on a monthly basis) while the said office vainly (I trust) attempts to find me a job to fill up the empty years until I am 67 or whatever other fantastic age the government has stipulated as being needed to be filled with gainful employment. 

Even if I work every second of every day left I will still not get anywhere near the 15 years you need in this country before a pension is dangled above your empty wallet!  So keep your fingers crossed that there might be Other Ways to get what Winnie the Pooh called “a little something” from the State.  I have, I must admit, no healthy expectation of success, but if you don’t try you don’t get, so it’s worth a short trip to Gava to find out.

I will probably be back in Britain next week, assuming that the funeral is gong to be held then, so I really need to knuckle down to my OU work and make sure that I am ahead of the game.

Toni’s mother is also scheduled to make an appearance for her Annual Holiday Without the Kids next week and then Emma will arrive soon after the end of the British term.  We are still waiting to see what the Pauls have worked out now that they are separated – but we are hoping for one variety at least in the middle of August!

The truth of Sartre’s dictum that “Hell is other people” is nowhere shown more true by the unutterable variety of folk that is attracted by our swimming pool.  Shouting, laughing, screaming, crying, laughing (again) and jabbering – they pile up towards the end of the day and drive us to thoughts of wholesale slaughter!

To lessen the impact of their objectionable presence I have purchased a swim-proof mpd player with earphones which are pads which relay the music to your ear through your cheekbones!  I know this system works as I had an early form of it years ago, but it is only with my Finis Neptune system that I have found the sound to be anything more than barely acceptable.  This system works even when the head is out of the water, so I am very satisfied.  Time, however, will surely tell whether my enthusiasm is justified.