Holiday end

Sequence

I have finished the last of the Poems in Holy Week, written an introduction and published a single copy as a chapbook!  It now exists electronically and in a single unique printed copy.  I used a rather abstract photograph I took from a hotel window of a wall, railings and frames which was the rather unlovely, but satisfyingly abstract view that I had.  Toni hated the picture and so I have replaced it with something which I think is more acceptably picturesque.

            If anyone would like an electronic copy of the poem sequence you only have to let me have your email address and I will send a copy to you.

            The poems, or versions of them are also available at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and, as I always say, I welcome comments either on the site or to me via email.

            I am still not quite sure what to make of what I have written, and I think that the poems will be further revised in the next few months.

            I have found writing them challenging and stimulating – and they have kept me away from my essay on body art which has to be completed in the next couple of weeks!

Easter Day

Apart from writing the final poem, there has been nothing about this day which makes it more distinctive than any other.  I think that tomorrow stands more chance of being festive, as we are going to Terrassa for a family meal in which we will consume the traditional cake or mona de Pascua which I hope has been made by Toni’s sister.

            If you are foolish enough to buy one of these constructions in the shops it can cost you ridiculous sums of money.  One edifice, cake hardly described the fantasy in chocolate and frippery, cost over €80!  And that was in a local shop just waiting for a buyer, as if people just popped in off the street and handed over the money.  Which they did!

            Our version will be home made and almost certainly having a theme of Barça.  I will attempt to remember to take a photograph before the kids get stuck into it and then try the even greater task of getting the damn thing on the site and the almost impossible effort of getting it to stay there.

            Still, Toni’s mum is an ex-cook and her meals are always worth eating.  It is just unfortunate that the whole of Spain seems to be going somewhere on Easter Monday so the roads are likely to be nightmares.

            One particular nightmare concerns our local motorway.  During periods of high volume, the police in this area have been known to cone off one lane on one side of the motorway and have traffic going against the flow of the other two lanes.

And yes, it is quite as horrific as it sounds!

            And the police will have been prised out of the bars that they frequent and will descend on roads main, side and motor to collect untold wealth in fines.  So one small glass of Cava is going to be my limit – with plenty of Earl Grey.

Exercise

I am not a great believer in exercise for the sake of exercise.  I quite enjoyed playing squash and badminton – but those were sports and competitive and therefore there was a point to them.  Swimming is OK because it uses a different medium and that makes the ‘exercise’ element a necessary part of an otherworldly experiment.  No, it’s the treadmill and gym stuff that I can’t stand.  And cycling.

            And therein lies the rub.  I have been cycling for the past few weeks because the car part in the leisure centre is being redone and is therefore closed.

            As it has gone from being a piece of tree shaded, gravel covered dirt to polished, drained concrete, you will appreciate that this is no afternoon with the lorries type of transformation.  The car park is out of commission for a month and since parking in the area is a nightmare the bike will have to do.

            But I have quite taken to it.  I have bought (always a good sign) a rather swish new helmet which is more comfortable, more adjustable and more stylish than the old one.  And, and this is the killer, it has a little red LED flashing light on the back as added protection against blind drivers in killer cars.  The dynamo on my bike has never really worked, as so I have bought a two-intensity front light and a cute red, programmable flashing LED light for the rear wheel.  I do not of course go out on the bike when it is dark or when it is raining, I am after all, no fanatic, but as the sun shines, so I ride.

            It seems more and more likely that, even when the car park reopens, I might continue to ride the bike.  As long as the sun shines.  And I feel so self-congratulatory as I lock the thing up after having navigated quite a nasty mountainous bridge over the motorway!

Exodus

Monday is a holiday and Tuesday should find most of the population of this country going back to work.  The Easter Holiday in Spain barely deserves the word as it is so short.  But on the positive side all of our visitors from Barcelona (which seems to come here en mass during any holiday) will go home and gather strength for the long haul of the summer.  And we have to prepare as well.

Holiday - almost

Appropriation

Well, my take on the meditative quality of Holy Week is almost at an end.  I have written the poem for Holy Saturday and that only leaves tomorrow’s Easter Day poem and the sequence (such as it is) is finished – or at least ready for further editing!  You can read what I have written so far at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/ and welcome any and all comments, either on the site or by email to me directly.

It is perhaps significant that the iPhone photo I took of the grotesque corpse lying on the altar of our local church appears to have been rejected by the blog site!  It was the only photo that I have attempted to add and it appeared to have been accepted, but, within a day the picture had become an empty blank square.  I wish I understood how these sites work and why they do what they do.

Or perhaps I don’t!

Food

With our small town overrun by visitors (thank god, that, after all is how the economy of this place survives) getting a meal in a restaurant at the weekend is difficult.  During a holiday is virtually impossible.  That is why we did just that.  After all, if you don’t know where to go when you live in the place it doesn’t really say very much about your native knowledge!

            The answer to our culinary question was my leisure centre!  As the restaurant is still establishing itself, it has only been open as a fully functioning eatery for a matter of weeks, it was still possible to walk in and get a table for two.

            The meal was exceptional – we even had a choice of four different kinds of bread!  Which just about sums up the quality of the meal.  Definitely worth going back.  Again!

Summer

As a well-known ‘winter denier’ I am notorious for wearing what Catalans regard as inappropriate clothing in the colder months of the year – which for those of a foreign persuasion is all the year with the exception of the months of June, July and August!

            Now that the weather is getting warmer I am discarding various layers of clothing.  I am now down to T-shirt and shorts and sandals.  And underpants of course, I am a well brought up boy!

            In reality, I suspect that it isn’t quite the time to be so emphatically summery.  But I do like to encourage the seasons where I can, and anyway the cycle ride this morning was acceptable in such skimpy attire, so that means that it is official.

A little Bach for the weekend

I have not had my traditional session of listening to The Saint Matthew Passion during Holy Week.  I usually do this on Good Friday (I remember one Good Friday when I listened through headphones lying on a sunbed in Gran Canaria) but the sight of the ‘visual aid’ on the altar of the church I visited, put music right out of my mind.  Still, there is always tomorrow and it is Easter Sunday, almost as good as Friday!

And there is the essay, of course – and the visit to the UK is approaching with almost indecent haste.  Quite a lot to keep me occupied!

Not in front of the children

Habit or ritual?

Good Friday is the day when I go to church.  Not, as when I was young, to the three-hour service, but for some other reason which is not always clear to me.

            I do not have to go inside for very long, but I do like to make the effort and sit in a pew for some moments and be quiet and think.

            I have had to put up with some scepticism about this little quirk, especially as I am not a professing Christian any more!  Whatever.  I have visited a church wherever I am on this day and I did the same thing today.

            I do not go very far out of my way to accomplish this little visit and today I went to the church in the entre of Castelldefels.

            Our church is odd in that the main body of the church has no windows.  Where the windows should be there are instead massive paintings of scenes from the Life of Christ.  They are something of an artistic feature of the town and are well worth a view.

            I went into the church after an interesting lunch in a new restaurant (see Toni’s blog: http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es ) – finding a place was not easy given that today is a Bank Holiday. One of our favourite places to eat is in a hotel restaurant – which was closed for the Easter holidays, a situation which by its sheer illogicality seemed odd to say the least, but we have given up expecting logic to dictate actions in this part of the world!

            The body of the church was empty, with a few women in the side chapel.  In the gloom of the church the one thing that stood out was the high altar.  That had been stripped back to show some icon-like paintings on the side, but it was what was on the top which shocked me.

            Across the length of the altar was a gleamingly realistic loincloth-wearing cadaver whose injured head was resting on a pillow.  It was horrific and frankly repulsive.  I know that you could make the point that what happened to Jesus was repulsive and we should not prettify his death, but there was something grotesquely unpleasant about such a realistically flamboyant display of death.

            I found it impossible to concentrate and the experience was anything other than conducive to meditation.  A thoroughly unpleasant experience!

            And I feel cheated of my annual indulgence.

          My poem based on this experience may be seen at: http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/ as part of my sequence of poems, Poems in Holy Week.

The little things in life

The smallest room

I do not usually feel drawn to disquisitions on toilets but my recent visit to Barcelona makes such a discussion inevitable.

            I usually stay, when in the city, in a dated hotel near the Liceu and just off the Ramblas.  Its cell-like rooms are basic, but as far as value for money is concerned for a city-centre hotel it is unbeatable.  And breakfast is included!

            As he days of roughing it are well and truly over for me, however basic the accommodation I do insist on en suite.  And the rooms in his hotel are.

            I have now stayed in a variety of the rooms that they offer and my quibbles are usually with the showers.  Either the fittings are unreliable or the availability of warm water is only available if you have the precision of a micrometre adjuster in your fingertips.

            With the room last night it was the toilet.  It is obvious (you only have to look at the ceiling mouldings) to see that the present arrangements of rooms have been cobbled together by cannibalising the originals.  In the case of the room in which I stayed last night the chief victim of the savaging of the original floor plan was found in the bathroom.

            Firstly it wasn’t a room, it was more of a raised wedge-ledge from the bedroom separated from it by a curtain!  The shower filled one end of the wedge (there was no door) and immediately next to it and virtually touching the wall was the toilet.

            One does not want to be indelicate, but there was not way that the toilet could be used by a sitting customer if any form of clothing was still about their person.  It was also necessary to do a form of seated splits with one foot in the shower tray.  No conducive to, um, anything really!

            But I will go back.  Hotel Peninsular offers a unique experience at an unbeatable price – and anyway, restaurants have loos!

Things poetic

The Holy Week poetry sequence has now stalled and there is a build up of notes and no finished results of complete poems.  I am confident that I can complete one of them tonight, but that still leaves me a day behind.  Never mind, I am sure that they will be worth the effort when they are finally done.  Hopefully.

Easter

The great question taking my wallet at the moment is whether or not to give in to commercialism and buy an Easter Egg or not.

            A number of consumer programmes that have told us that Easter Eggs are nothing more than a rip off are too many to ignore, but buying anything else always seems a bit mean.

            I think that I will probably do what I do best in situations like this, wander from shop to shop in a vain attempt to gauge value, and end up doing something entirely different.

Shopping – you know it makes sense!

I went into Lidl to buy a tub of their excellent Greek yogurt and came out with a gel cover for my bike seat, lights for back and front and a new helmet (with built in rear, detachable, flashing light) as I am now, much to Toni’s amused contempt, a born again bicycle rider.

            Necessity, in the form of the reconstruction of the parking area in the swimming pool and the complete lack of parking spaces, prompted me to get the bike out of retirement and use, over the last few weeks has changed me mind.  As the weather gets warmer, it becomes more of a pleasure to ride.  At least until the end of the summer, I am toying with the idea of using the bike even when I do not need to.

            Toying.  Not a final decision, you understand.  Not by any means.  Yet.

Flesh Can Be Bright

The book takes another step nearer completion, with one or two of the plans in place to cope with other plans possibly not working are now not needed as the plans which weren’t working might be operational once more.  

          As you probably don’t understand.