What next indeed.

Today is the first clear day of the CO (Course Over) era.  This part of my OU course is done.  All the TMAs have been written, marked and returned.  The EMA has been drafted, written, revised and further revised.  I have completed the Commentary incorporating every aspect of OU demanded features and I have sent the thing off.  Two weeks early.  As recommended by the OU to ensure that any problems with computers and the Internet and Random Acts of God are all taken into account.  It is done.  And presumably some time in June I will be informed of the result.  And another part of this long, long degree will have been completed.

            So far it has taken me over thirty years!  To be fair, I had thought that the handful of courses that I had taken in the 80s were now ‘out of date’ and would not be counted and had started anew, taking a couple of level 1 courses to get myself back into the swing of things.  I had entered into negotiations to try and get myself excused from having to do AA101 (the Foundation Arts Course) and was prepared to do a higher-level course to compensate.  Then everything changed when out of the blue I had a phone call which told me that everything I had done would be ‘counted’ as long as I completed my degree before 2019.  I even discovered that I had some bonus points which I could use instead of doing a couple of courses.  This means that I have another two years of study (Modern Art and then the Renaissance) and I will be able to call myself BA² – I am aware that, in the scheme of things this is a dubious distinction, especially as I have completed my career.  But it does keep me off the streets and has allowed me to produce a slim volume of verse.

            So, the sun shines and the wind blows and I am keeping out of Toni’s way as he counts down the last week to his next exams.  I have been assured by him that when this selection of examinations has been completed he will return to his fully human personality.  At least for the duration of the summer period until he starts his next course of studies in September.

            I will have an extra period of grace until early October before my own studies start, but I have already bought the books necessary for the course - and since one of them is over fifteen hundred pages long (and without pictures!) I think that my time will be fully occupied in getting ahead of the deluge of reading that will be an essential aspect of the module.  I have made a start on the smaller and altogether more reader friendly book that has been written specifically to accompany the course.  I fail to understand why this book has not been provided with the four volumes that cover the course as part of the supplied course materials – but that might be someone speaking from the perspective of the 1980s when the courses were over twenty times cheaper.  Even allowing for inflation it means that the OU is no longer a gloriously inexpensive way to get a university education.

            So, next October I will be struggling to follow the artistic manifestos of various writers, artists and critics whose first duty seems not to be to clarity of expression in the simplest possible language.  To put it mildly.  I fear that I might be near to being out-pretentiousnessed.  Which could be something worth watching.

Still here!

Sitting in yet another hotel in Barcelona: basic, utilitarian – but en suite (I have my limits.)  This time it is in preparation for a performance of Tosca.  Now that my time is my own, I have adopted the luxury of getting myself a room in the city so that I do not have to traipse off into the midnight traffic at the end of the opera.  This room could hardly be better situated: it is within yards of the Liceu, hence its name Hostal Operaramblas.  It may only be two stars and there is no TV in my room, but location, location, location!  I might even book for the next one while I am here.

            And that is another thing.  As The Rough from Reading will be descending on the exact date of my next opera performance I have had to change my ticket.  Pre-crisis this would have meant a payment of some sort, but not today.  Today the Liceu is pathetically grateful for any and all opera patrons, especially ones like myself who have paid for the most inclusive ticket at the start of the season.  For we ‘royalty’ of the opera world, nothing is too much.  So my ticket was changed with no charge.  Some things are better during a crisis.  But not many.

            I am relaxed about getting to the opera even though it is quarter past seven and I have not had a shower.  I need a shower because of the bus journey.  I had to stand most of the way and the seats (when I finally got one) seem to be designed to destroy the bones in your spine.  Even as I type I am aware of a sharp ache courtesy of Barcelona transport.  And that is before I get to my seat and have an overlay of further pain from the design of the sitting device that seems to be common in most places of public entertainment.  At least I will not have to stumble far to get to a bed and relax.

            I could, of course go to the appalling Indian restaurant which is opposite the Liceu at the end of the performance, but I have been there before and to say that the food is disappointing is to be too generous.  Anyway I had an excellent lunch which put me in mind of the sorts of bargains in the food line that I used to get when I first arrived in Spain.  The meal of appetiser, salad, paella, round fishy things (the word for which has temporarily escaped my mind, but will return), a sort of cheese dessert, bread, wine and Casera – all for €8.50!  Astonishing.  And it was Toni’s turn to pay for the tea and coffee in the shopping centre so, all in all an excellent meal.  I am sure that it will last for Tosca and a bit beyond.

            Now a shower and to get ready, or put a shirt and tie on and onwards and upwards to melodrama and music which can reduce me to tears.

Breathe again!

It has been some time since I felt the throat constricting fear that comes with an indication that one’s intellectual worth is about to be tested. 

This is another way of saying that, checking my emails I noted that there was a communication from the Open University informing me that my latest tutor marked assignment was marked and available to be checked.  As a favourable result of this assignment was going to be an indication of the way forward (aka The Way Forward) for the rest of the course it was important.

            The throat constriction thing was also accompanied by an indrawn breath and a tightening of the chest.  I was disappointed to discover that I was so hackneyed.  It was, therefore, with a certain degree of trepidation that I went through the unbearably slow process of logging onto the OU website and waiting for the result to appear.

            This writing is not so confessional that I would have gone on to explain to all and sundry that the result was not the one that I wanted, so the more perceptive among you will have worked out that things, as it were, worked out.  Not entirely satisfactorily as I was four percentage points away from my ‘smug’ result, but well within the ‘generally complacent’ area.  This result means that my vague plans for the future assignments in the course can now be firmed up and the direction of my writing is now assured.  Or at least as assured as it can be given the hard fact that I haven’t actually done any of it yet.

            I have one poem on the go and the bones of the thing are there and I should get at least a first draft of it by the end of the day.  The finished article then may or may not form one part of the extended work for the next assignment.  The work is still all to do, but the direction is relatively clear.  And that is all I need to get on with it.

On an altogether more prosaic, yet more important front, the central heating system – if our ‘system’ deserves such an appellation – is leaking big time.  Given the quaint rules of renting in this god-forsaken country, everything in the house appears to be our responsibility.  No matter how antiquated the stuff in the house is, its working is firmly the responsibility of the tenants.  I do not know what rights we tenants have, but they are as nothing compared to the Rolls Royce rights of our British equivalents!  Toni will have to phone up and find out if the blood sucking bastards who own this place are prepared to do anything to justify the vast sums that we pay them every month.  I do not hold out any positive hope.  But summer is not yet with us and some form of heating is essential.

            Perhaps this latest in our stand-offs with the renting agency will be the straw that breaks etc. as we do have to think about somewhere cheaper and ideally on one level in the not too distant future.

            I must say that the idea of moving fills me with absolute depression as it has taken me all this time to get what is left of my books into something like order.  The thought of mixing up the books again and setting them out is more than I can contemplate with anything approaching equanimity.  But the time will come when we have to consider the unthinkable and find somewhere else.

My mind turns from such awful realities to the delights of Sci-Fi.  I have been watching the 4^th series of ‘Torchwood’ where ten programmes formed a high budget drama ‘Miracle Day’ set largely in America.  No matter how absurd the story I am always taken by the ideas in Sci-Fi and the central conceit of this one – that people stop dying – was an interesting one to say the least.  A strong cast produced an enjoyable romp which also allowed Russell T Davies to indulge the gay aspects of his main character Captain Jack Harkness to a rather more explicit level than in previous episodes of this Doctor Who spinoff that I have seen.  Some of the action seemed to me to be gratuitous, but it was Sci-Fi and I am more than forgiving in this genre. 

As a bonus at the end of the series, I discovered a hitherto unwatched episode of David Tennant in ‘Doctor Who’ on my iPlayer.  Who can ask for more?

Time weighs heavy on me!

As the minutes tick on to the fateful weighing time, I can feel the confidence of lightness deserting me.  This week has been a catalogue of weakness in the field of calories and I feel the sins of accretion weighing heavily on me.  The scales will point the finger of scorn at me and I will have to rethink my approach, as the fateful first of April approaches and my target feel somewhat distant.  In effect I have 29 days to lose an unfeasible number of kilos and I have absolutely no intention of starving myself to achieve an arbitrary target.

            That last paragraph is an almost perfect example of self-justification as I accept the consequences of my future actions which apparently are impossible to change by any actions I might take.  I’m good at things like that: presenting the future as a fait accompli to accommodate my lack of will power!

            So far, I think it is true to say that I have not gone through a single week without a glass of wine.  Hardly the confession of a person with a drink problem, but significant when one considers that there is always the non-calorific alternative of water in its natural or fizzy form.  But that takes us into the argument about the relative differences between living and existing!

            There are now twenty minutes left until the fateful hour of eleven-thirty when my bare feet (shoes weigh) make contact with the cold metal of hard reality and the wheel spins to the stark truth of failure.  Last week the weight loss was 100gms.  This week I would be happy with one, but . . .

            Now I feel better, having written up the approaching debacle so that it appears to have a literary significance tinged with theoretical musing and real fear.  It is no longer failure, but rather an emotional event!

            Fifteen minutes to go.  The last sips of my milk-less Chinese tea and then the long climb up the stairs, making a call into the bathroom because, as Tesco keeps telling us, ‘Every little helps’ – looking at that slogan now it appears to be completely lopsided and illogical, but that’s marketing for you.

            Well.  400gms.  Loss!  I have absolutely no idea how that happened.  I must be doing something right, although I am realistic that I am not going to make my target at this paltry rate of weight loss.

            Tomorrow the pool should (should) be open again for me to do my lengths, although I am not optimistic.  Why should the lady on the counter have given me a card and told me to phone before I turned up, if she was certain that the work on the filtration system would have been completed by the stated time?  This is the third delay and I have no reason to suppose that it will be the last.  I would very much prefer that the filtration system is perfect and wait for that to happen than come down with typhoid!  Or worse!

            So the easy weight loss days are over and we are now into the stubborn fat which is taking its time to go.  I will persevere and hope for the best while eating more and more cottage cheese!

This week should see the return of my tutor marked assignment and its mark will determine my future strategy.  I have made some rough notes about the content of the future assignments and I hope that they will be used.  If the mark is poor then I will rethink.  But I am getting tired of the speculation and would prefer the real thing to aid my decisions!

There is an exhibition in France that I wouldn’t mind seeing.  It is in the Monet museum and is of rarely seen Impressionist paintings in private collections.  It probably is worth going to see if I can get a flight at the right price.  Worth looking into.  And Irene will come as well if I can find flights which allow her to do her classes.  I think that the way to approach this is to think of a maximum price that I am prepared to pay and then go from there.

            Culture calls!