See it - don't eat it!

A mediocre day in terms of weather – but it took until the night for the thunder and lightning and torrential rain.  And then only for a moment.  I really shouldn’t complain about the weather in this country, but my sunshine standards are higher than they were and I get factious with any diminution in my daily intake of sunshine.

            The swimming pool is a structure with glass sides and it should be a temple of water and light.  But it wasn’t today.  The sullen weather seeped through the windows and made my swim sluggish.  I’m sure it wasn’t really, but I was sulking and I like to have a touch of the pathetic fallacy to keep me company!

            I went for my swim early because we were both going to Can Moncho to have fideua as a celebration for the completion of the long running roadworks outside the restaurant.  As the place is run by the husband of an ex-colleague I was able to mix pleasure with duty and go to have a free meal to support a friend.

            In the event, it turned out that we were there early and we saw a motley crew of aged people hoping for a free hand-out; the PP mayor looking arrogantly shifty like the rest of his benighted party; music blaring out; and three kids playing.  Traffic was of course flowing down the street (the street being open, after all!) and one felt that not all the health and safety implications had been well thought out.  Still, in what was poor weather, people looked as though they were having a sort of good time in the circumstances.

            We were given a couple or glasses of beer and assured that the fideua would be ready in ‘five’ minutes.  Having momentarily forgotten which country I was in, I believed this.  

          But, eventually, the fideua did arrive and was placed on a table outside the restaurant and small plastic plates of the stuff were started to be given out.  But the restaurant was still open and husband and wife team were needed in the shop and kitchen.  So what to do?

            We of course offered to serve the fideua and soon Toni and I were forming an efficient team and were distributing largesse as if it were our own and gratefully receiving the thanks of the inhabitants of the opened street.

            People came back for seconds, we ran out of forks momentarily and eventually all the fideua was distributed leaving precisely nothing for ourselves!  We, however, were feeling cosily smug having been official helpful and with a couple of glasses of beer we were satisfied and wandered off quite happily to have a menu del dia in another restaurant!

            To be fair, our friend’s restaurant is more of a take-away so we wouldn’t have had a full meal, more of a snack: so smug and replete!

I have now put three versions of the poem that was causing me problems on:

http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/

and I am sure that there will be a few more versions before I am satisfied, or I give up!

            The miserable weather has prompted me to make a series of notes and that is the next poem that I am hoping to write.  I have already written one from this morning that features a swimmer who had the impertinence to be faster in the water than I was.  That is also available on http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/

            As you can probably tell, I am trying to boost page views on the site because numbers have become a point of competition between Toni and myself.  Toni with his restaurant site at http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es/ but I stay loyal to my poetry site at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/ and I think this attempt to get viewers has now become squalid.  I will have to find another way to put http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es/ and http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/ in my writing without making is quite so obvious!

Listening is bad for your health

Why do I listen to the news?  On Radio 4, on my Internet radio?  Given the horrific nature of the Spanish torrent of corruption which daily emanates from our television screens, the calming voices of the presenters on the Today programme, even though they are talking about the horrors of life in the twenty-first century seem, by comparison, balmy.

          I always remember foreign holidays in the distant past as being a time when, not only was there unaccustomed sun, but also there was a true holiday from the news.  British newspapers were absurdly expensive; smart phones did not exist – indeed mobile phones did not exist – and the idea of phoning home was one fraught with problems and therefore did not happen.  So, for a week or more generally a fortnight there was a dislocation from normal life, a true holiday indeed!

            Of course, on one’s return to normality it was amazing how quickly one got up to speed again and the depression of knowledge settled firmly on the rapidly evaporating holiday euphoria.  But, and it is a big but, I always preferred to know, rather than not.  For me real depression comes from worrying about what I don’t know as I usually find that my imagination is far more apocalyptic than reality – however horrible!

            With some news items I can experience them in a sort of geographical stereo: for example, the failure of emergency departments in British NHS hospitals and the ‘parking’ of patients in corridors is matched by news from our local emergency hospital.  The television pictures look strangely familiar.  And depressing.

            What is worse is watching television pictures of families that cannot afford the mortgage payments being forced out of their homes by the banks who were rescued with OUR money when they were in trouble.  And, to make matters worse, having taken the home, the banks then take action to get the mortgage payments that they are owed.  So the banks sell the house and then demand that the people they have made homeless continue paying for something that the banks have already sold!

            The people are forced out of their homes by a judicial order from a system of justice that has been irremediably politicised by a corrupt government.  The order is enforced by masked police, who have been filmed clearing people with astonishing violence.  Which of course is the reason that this morally bankrupt government has made it an offence to film the police in situations where they are behaving with violence.  Unbelievable , but true.

I have been sent information about a forthcoming set of British stamps which are going to feature British bridges.  There are ten stamps in this set which will be issued in early March.  From the illustrations in the booklet that I have been sent by the Philatelic Bureau they look impressive but I do note that some of bridges have been featured before on British stamps.  Because of the ‘fairness’ of giving each of the countries that make up the United Kingdom a place in each set it is no surprise to see the Menai Suspension Bridge feature again, though another stamp for the Humber Bridge is a surprise.  

          One of the stamps features the Tarr Steps which, in a set of British bridges stamps issued in 1968, was described as Prehistoric, but in the forthcoming set is described as a 15^th or 16^th century gritstone clapper-bridge!  Interesting change!

            With each new set of stamps I wonder about what I will do when the present Teutonic pretender to the so-called throne of Britain finally has the good grace to follow her mother and shuffle off.  I am disinclined to buy anything with Charles or George or whatever he is going to call himself finally ascends – and that goes for any of his offspring too.  I think that my collection of QEII will go up to her funeral, if they decide to mark it by an issue of stamps.  And no further.

            I have to admit that I might weaken.  And given the way that the present holder of the title is clinging on to life, I might have a long time to consider my course of action!

One of the restaurants along the paseo on the beachfront has burnt down.  This is the second time that this has happened to one of these restaurants.  It does make you wonder and if I was an insurance inspector I would be suspicious to put it mildly.  Though obviously, as I know nothing about the circumstances of this conflagration, I am not assuming wrongdoing.  I merely question.

            One of the surviving restaurants is offering a menu del dia for €10.90 and, in the interests of adding another entry to Toni’s blog at  http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es/

we should obviously try out this place, especially as the restaurant that was previously our favourite on the beachfront at our end of the town has fallen far short of our expectations in recent months.  It has changed hands and the standard has gone down and the prices have shot up.  It is unlikely to feature in Toni’s blog!

I have not yet had the strength to go back to the notes that I made last night towards my next poem.  There is something there, but it is not crystalizing at the moment.  I have the ideas but, at the moment, I have a series of oddly shaped jigsaw pieces and not a coherent picture.   But I have a hammer and the pieces will fit.  Eventually.  When they do you will be able to read the results in

http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/

And this time I hope that the link is ‘live’ and will get you there in one click.

Meals past, and meals yet to come!

In a shameless attempt to boost page-views in his blog Toni has decided to include a description of a visit to Can Roca from a couple of years ago.  To be fair, it is in Catalonia, in Gerona, but all the other restaurants in his blog are from our town of Castelldefels.  Still, it will be worth it, if only to try and re-live the taste sensation of that night!  

We still talk about some of the extraordinary examples of the culinary art they we were encouraged to experience.  To say we simply ‘ate’ them seems somehow sacrilegious!  I can’t remember now whether it was the first or second ‘best’ restaurant in the world, but I know that I will never forget the meal.  I’m not sure that I could stand eating like that on a regular basis, but as a one-off it was wonderful.  You can (if he has put up the information yet) read Toni’s description and see photos of some of the dishes here: http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es

And you would make him very happy if you left a comment!

The judicial shambles that Spain calls its system of justice has taken another turn further to the scandalously ridiculous by it being announced that crucial papers in the Barcenas Case have been ‘lost’!  No one believes this.  Everyone believes that it is a shameless governmental stitch-up by the criminals in PP to try and get away with the glaring crimes of theft that they have committed in the kleptocrasy that they have established during their time in power.  PP destroyed the hard drives of the computers in their illegally financed headquarters in Madrid shortly before a police raid to impound them.  They have lied about illegal payments made to members of the government; they have lied about payments made by big firms to the party; they have lied about their opponents; they have lied about police crimes and they have effectively brought the status of ‘politician’ down to a level where a drunken drug addict pimping his daughter would have a higher social standing than any minister in this disgusting government.

            But we are all punch drunk with the enormity and the relentlessness of the evidence of the pusillanimous mendacity of the government which is broadcast daily.  The Barcenas case rumbles on, but no one important (or indeed guilty) has been put in prison.

          I’ve given up counting the number of PP mayors who have been accused or convicted of theft and corruption.  Nothing has been done to the senator who used public money to fly to the Canary Islands to meet his lover and he is brazenly standing as the PP candidate for president of his region!  Bankers walk the streets – that is a metaphor because they wouldn’t dare walk the streets, they would be torn to pieces by the poor that they have created by their greed and the people whose money they have stolen.

            It is easy to feel depressed when thinking about the present situation and, in my darker moments I wonder if there really are enough people revolted by the present unacceptable situation in Spain to turn to the only party that I can see offering anything like a new vision for the country, Podemos.  I hope.

Anyway, enough of that, the sun is shining, we are about to go the ‘Bucket Place’ for lunch (see Toni’s blog tomorrow!) and I am about to make a concerted effort to get the TMA done.  I want it out of the way so that I can concentrate on the EMA which, at the moment is in a bit of a blocked state as none of the pieces of location information have yet come my way.  I do have various plans to cope with the information never appearing, but it would be nice, to say the least if everything was able to come together.

The poems continue, or at least the notes which eventually become poems with any luck continue.  The ‘Tree’ poems which seem to have become something of a speciality of mine, almost replacing the ‘Swimming Pool’ as my major source of inspiration, are waiting to be written – all it takes is turning the pages of my notebook back and getting on with it!  Simply said, not quite so simply done.  But at least the pencils are sharpened, the paper stacked and there is electricity to power the computer, so all systems can be go.

            My poems are found at: http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es 
in draft form, but at least they are there to be edited and that gives me the comfort of presence.

          The guests at the meal in October are beginning to sort themselves out and, although it is the best part of ten months away, I am looking forward to it immensely.  I only hope that ‘Flesh Can Be Bright’ lives up to my expectations.  
I am still looking for a third artist to add the art work to the ‘Autumn Trees’ poems, but, with any luck that is almost in hand.  It will then be a constant process of prodding to make sure that everything gets done in time for publication.  With just me and the printer there is enough worry, but when you add a further five collaborators then worry becomes exponential!  But life-enhancing!

The zest to go on holiday seems to be ebbing away, if zest can ebb, and I am disappointed.  I will try and re-stimulate interest and hope for the best.

Now, the TMA.  But, perhaps a spot of lunch first!