It's all in the stroke

The swimming pool this morning was a mass of humanity (in it’s widest sense) swarming with kids and a bizarre class of more aged water leisure practitioners who were standing in the pool in lines while waving those tubular flotation thingies presumably for the benefit of their health, or possibly merely to frighten the unwary.  Even though the pool looked full a swimming lane was clear and so I was able to plough my furrow with impunity.

            My fairly newly developed extended stroke is coming into its own and I am fairly powering my way down the pool.  My new technique is to break my traditional rhythm of breathing on my left arm stroke by adding three extra strokes before the breath.  This means that my head is down for longer and the speed is increased with very little extra effort.  The breathing, retaining the breath until after the second left arm stroke and then exhaling the breath over the next three strokes until the next breath, is still something for which I am counting.  Eventually it will become second nature and I can begin to think about whether I really ought to find someone to teach me the tumble turn.

            The fluency of my swimming is obviously interrupted by the fact that I touch the end of the lane and turn myself round and then set off again.  This is hardly efficient, but I have made little effort to develop anything more sophisticated.  There is a gentleman of, shall we say, late middle age who does the most inefficiently cumbersomely magnificent tumble turns that my clumsy turns seem polished professionalism by contrast!  However, he is at least making an effort and I still hesitate to humiliate myself by turning and finding my feet are nowhere near the wall of the pool.  This I have already done on various occasions when the spirit moves me to assume a higher professional profile and got a mouthful of water as an added bonus for my effort as well.  Perhaps I could leave that as a task for the summer.  And for a teacher.

            Perhaps I could ask one of the lifeguards to give me a few hints, though trying to understand Spanish or Catalan for such a technical effort might be effort that I am not prepared to make.

            I am prepared to put the effort in for the Magnum Opus Poeticus.  More work was done on this today, though most of it, nay all of it was more in the way of preparation than anything else.  I am getting nearer to what the poems (I have decided on a sequence of seven) should contain, but that need polishing and then the real hard work of getting the content starts.

            At the moment I am beset by cliché and all my original ideas seem more tired the more I think about them.  The process of refinement should produce something of more interest and I am keeping my powder dry to get me through the Day School which looms.

            Diane, who has been with me through three OU courses, now, seems prepared to make arrangements of our evening meals for the two nights that we are likely to be in Geneva.  God bless her!

            It will be illuminating to meet my fellow students.  The last time I met students on OU courses was in the eighties, and in Britain.  I wonder how the present crop of students will be different.  Or indeed be the same.  Instructive is the word that comes to mind.

            I will have to pack tomorrow, as I have to be at the airport by 10 in the morning for a half past twelve flight.  I will also have to print out some maps and information about Geneva.  Not that I will have much time for sightseeing.

Back again!

Although I am still not convinced by the shrinkage of various unimportant, indeed superfluous parts of my body, I am conscious that hitherto unwearable pieces of clothing are now able to contain the said body.  Belts, new belts bought and never used because the holes were not in the right places, are now, magically able to take a buckle – even when around my waist!  Something must be happening.  But not fast or obvious enough for me!

            
          The poetry section of the OU course is now in full swing and indeed the Day School in Geneva (no less) is almost upon us.  As indeed is the next tutor marked assignment; which asks for a large number of lines of poetry.

            I have planned out the framework of a sequence of shortish poems.  All that remains is to think of a subject and then to write them!  No sweat!

            
          Last night I went to the next in the sequence of operas as part of my season ticket.  This one was Bellini and The Sleepwalker.  The story is of utter inanity, but the music glorious.  In this production the contest was won by the tenor who got a well-deserved ovation after one of his Big Numbers.  I’ve just realized that I have left the cast list in the shirt pocket of a garment that I have put ready to be washed and therefore can not give names to roles.

            The sopranos had their usual battle over the love a totally unworthy male and, in my view, the loser (in the battle of love) had my vote.  To be fair it was easier to portray a thoroughly selfish, unprincipled vamp, than a weak, mewling sleepwalker, but still the music was on the side of the wimp and she does win the unworthy male in the end.

            My particular experience of the opera was made even better by the fact that the gentleman sitting in front of me, did not return for the second half and therefore my view of the stage was superb.  Indeed there was a partial cordon sanitaire around me as I was sitting next to the aisle, the seat to my immediate right was also unoccupied and I was able to place my coat there rather than on the floor.  I understand that there was an actual theatrical patron sitting behind me!

The great achievement in my life over this past month has nothing to do with my academic life, but rather with the simple problem of living within a limited space – and I don’t mean my body.

Over the period that Toni was in Terrassa visiting his mother I attempted to bring some order to the library.  As this doubles as my so-called dressing room the two aspects of my life-style do not co-exist easily and the room as been described by one anonymous observer as ‘a disaster area’.  While this is a totally unjust appellation, to quote our revered Prime Minister (and walking joke) Rajoy, “It is totally untrue except for some bits.”  The some bits were getting out of hand and so I determined to give Toni a surprise on his return and bring order to chaos.

            It took five days or unremitting labour of trying on clothes, rejecting clothes, bagging clothes, throwing out some clothes and generally finding myself totally fed up to the back teeth with the numerous items of garmentry that passed before my eyes.  And even now the ‘job’ is not entirely done.  But I am able to walk to all my books in the ‘library’ and the next stage in the mythical ‘Ordering Of The Books’ comes a step closer.  At least I am able to get to them now.

            One result of the Grand Clearing is that, for the first time in forty years, I now possess but one, solitary suit – an all-purpose weddings-and-funerals number.  I have one half of a Nehru suit, which I am now able to get into!  Pity the other half of the suit is nowhere to be found.  Still, even this problem will allegedly be solved with the buying of the new some time in late spring or early summer.

I remain sceptical about my weight loss, but we will have to see what comes of my present approach and hope for the best.

Meanwhile my search for subject and content for my poetry sequence weighs on my mind.  Lightly, to be sure, but the load is significant.  I am looking forward to the struggle to creation!

It will be interesting to see if the Day School adds anything to the process.  Given the cost of going there, I sincerely hope that it does!  If not, well, at least it is a visit to Switzerland, which previously had only figured in my limited journeying as an unscheduled or at least unexpected stop in Zurich airport by the ever reliably-unreliable Tarom Airways when Romania was still in the evil grip of Ceausescu and I was supposed to be going to London.  Airports, as every seasoned traveller knows, don’t count.  But a Day School by a Lake (with a capital L) does.

Another experience to add to the list!

The Long Road to Lightness

Half a kilo may not be much, but given that it was a week that included the New Year celebrations, I think that I can be satisfied.  I am not sure that I am still on track to meet one of my spurious targets by April but I have survived the festivities and there is less of me now than there was.  Result.

            The fact that I am resorting to half kilos is significant in itself.  I cannot believe that I have got rid of all the easy stuff and the rest is going to be hard slog and denial.  I suppose that the wine with the meal is the next thing to go, but I firmly believe in the health-giving properties of red wine and playing with the conflicting concepts of indulgence and health. 

I have just discovered my ‘ideal’ weight and, even at the most generous estimate from the friendliest formula I would have to be in comestible refusal for another umpteen months.  Assuming a steady weight loss I would be looking at next autumn before I was anywhere near!  Finding this out was something I should not have done!  I will therefore do a brainwash and revert to my arbitrary goal which is reachable by April.  Then (and if) I am anywhere near what I am aiming at, I will look again at the Forbidden Numbers!

            How can one be a symbol of rectitude when visitors and meals and celebrations and Other Events will combine to divert me from my chosen path?  The April thing is doable, I think, and that is the one that I am going to stay with and aim for and congratulate myself mightily if I get anywhere near it.

            Today, apart from my swim, has been a lazy day. 

My swimming is getting better; my strokes are more powerful and my energy level is rising.  I do not, however, stay in the water for longer than half an hour, so I stand the chance of becoming the best 30-minute swimmer in Castelldefels. 

I am not pushing myself further because although I enjoy swimming, I also find the sort of swimming that I do intensely boring.  For half an hour I can stand it – even like it – but for longer and I am counting the seconds. 

I know perfectly well that, to gain the most from the exercise you have to go that little bit further each time.  I know it and that is as far as the knowledge goes, it does not influence action.  The only times (in the distant past) when I have actually trained for swimming I was almost crying with boredom and fatigue at the end of each session.  Even rugby training (and I hated that with a vengeance) wasn’t as boring as swimming with some dry Fascist holding a stopwatch.  So what I do is what I am going to continue to do and I shall comfort myself with the knowledge that it is more than most will have done!

            The OU story is getting no further.  The bones of the bloody thing are in place, or rather in places – they do not add up to a full skeleton as yet and there is no putting flesh on it until the bones make some sort of sense.  At least I have the title.  What I don’t have is too much time left to get it all done.  I must knuckle (I wonder where that particular bone is on my structure at the moment) down and get on with it and submit something on time.  I really do not want to ask for an extension – though I am sure that many of my fellow students will be asking for exactly that.

            What I really need to do is get my Kings card done.  I have the photograph and I could easily email it to those kind people who sent me a Christmas card.  I suppose it would make me feel just a tinge less guilty – although I have not sunk to the depths of one of my friends who sent me a Christmas card with a British second-class stamp on it.  Now that is what I call optimism! 

Interestingly the card did arrive with a large printed sticky label on the back from the British Post Office informing me that the postage was insufficient and therefore the card had been delivered by an alternative service which may have taken a little more time! 

This is the first time that this has happened and it is a direct encouragement to be mean with the postage, underpay and let it be delivered a few weeks late.  I wonder what the alternative delivery system actually was.  There was no indication that it was anything other than the Spanish postal service, so one is left to speculate.  Does this mean that there is a human side to the postal system that we had never previously suspected?  Or is this something which only occurs at Christmas?

Tomorrow Christmas will be officially over – though it turns out that Twelfth Night and the taking down of the decorations was a Victorian invention to encourage workers to get back into the right frame of mind to start working again.  In days gone by decorations might have been left up for a month or three, thereby adding a touch of warmth and festivity to the cold and bleak months of winter.  However, the Christmas cards (our only concession to the festive season) will be taken down when I get up tomorrow and that will be over for another year.

Next year I am determined to put the Christmas tree up.  I actually bought some new decorations from Lidl (!), put them in a cupboard and have done nothing with them.  Next year they will come out with all the delight of something new and strange.  Yes, next year the tree will be there – even if Christmas Humbug is much more to my taste.

Next week my next box set should arrive.  This time it is a bargain box of ballet music which would be ideal to put on my swimming mp3 player.  Unfortunately my computer refuses to recognize the thing as a hard drive and so I can do nothing with it.  Luckily it is full (and I mean full to the last atom) with music and it will take me a considerable time to have exhausted the possibilities of the number of tracks that are contained in it.  Though I have to admit that some parts of ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ do seem to come round with suspicious regularity, together with ‘Hit me with your rhythm stick.’  The one thing you can say about my choice in music is that it is inclusive – with the exception of Rap obviously.

Now I have to decide: card or story?  Choices!

Knowing me, probably neither.

The important things in Life

It is always difficult to work out how significant one’s life actually is in what ever scheme one believes one is in, but when finding one’s swimming lane free is the most important element in a normal day, then one can’t help feeling that something is way out of kilter in the way that one is living one’s life.

But hey, you know, such things are important.  The feeling of anguished frustration when the three swimming lanes are occupied by other people, well, swimming has to be experienced to be believed.  It is just as well that one is, to all intents and purposes naked and therefore unable to pack a gun that those selfish people disporting themselves in water that should be left for me, are still alive and kicking.

Imagine my incensed chagrin when I found one of the occupied lanes taken up with a mother and her child.  The child, to add insult to injury, was splashing about on a polystyrene tube and therefore not swimming according to the Act.  I glared at them with the intensity that only a myopic person who is mostly guessing what is going on in the distance can muster and clumped my dispirited self to the ‘open’ section of the pool there to swim with the damned souls who do not plough their way up and down and up and down like we regulated monomaniacs who refer to ourselves as ‘proper’ swimmers.

I let myself into the water after kicking off my regulation slip-on plastic shoes (alas, the days of doing a racing dive into the pool are long gone) and started the ritual of getting ready for my swim.  At one time all I needed was a swimming costume and myself and I was good to go.  Now, in Catalonia you have to wear slip-on shoes to get to the pool from the changing rooms and then in the pool wear a swimming cap.  For me, in my hursuitly challenged state, a swimming cap is like a studied insult – but, let it pass, let is pass.

            Shoes and cap are regulation for the pool.  I add checking that my ear plugs are in place and secure and then fit my goggles to which I fit my mp3 player which attaches to the strap at the back of my head with the ‘loudspeakers’ pressed into my cheeks so that the music is actually transmitted to my ears via bones.  Ah, the wonders of modern science.

            By the time I was ready to go, one of the friendly lifeguards had noticed mother and child taking ‘my’ lane and sternly ordered them out so that I could swim.  The lovely man even picked up my shoes and put them firmly at the head of the lane so that it was officially booked.  As mother and child moved to the ‘open’ section of the pool (where they should have been in the first place) I smiled what I hoped was a mixture of apologetic regret mixed with a tinge of don’t do it again – I sometime expect a lot from my facial expressions!

            My swim then continued in the tranquil seclusion of my roped off universe and the whole day was made good and fine.

And that’s my point.  If I can write 500 words about getting a lane for my daily swim – then perhaps I should rethink my priorities.  Or not, of course.

Tomorrow is my weigh-in day and I fear that the almost inexorable downward slide of my weight will have been arrested by my flexible approach to the 20% rule (you can eat what you like as long as it’s only a fifth of your intake and you don’t go mad) and what might be called my flouting of it.  Still, I have always lived in unreasonable hope and I will continue to do so.  Therefore, self-delusion will reign supreme at some time during the morning tomorrow and I only hope that gravity will not be so stubborn as to deny me a light pleasure.

The wind and the rain are unsettling me now and I feel the need for one of my virtually tasteless cups of Oolong tea; the pleasure is found in the ‘almost’, you have to work to get your enjoyment from the more subtle brews!

And tomorrow the finishing off of the short story and the preparation of the constructive lying about what went into producing it.  Of the two pieces of work the ‘reflection’ is always the more imaginative!