Equilibrium?

Life truly is a series of ups and downs!

            On the one hand I am fighting off a sore throat and a bubbling cold and I am using up paper handkerchiefs as if I had not a care in the world about the vanishing forests; on the other hand I picked up a cheap pair of reading glasses to my prescription with built in mini lights!  They look chunky and reasonably hideous, but they do work and they have built in mini lights!  And owning them gives me a pleasure out of all proportion to the few euros they cost.  It doesn’t stop my nose running of course, but it gives me something else to think about.

            And, of course, I am using the glasses to play around with my new mobile phone.  This Chinese model, a Mi Max made by the international company Xiami – which I had never heard of until Toni discovered it as part of his survey to find a replacement for the exploding Note 7 that I had pre-ordered.  Trust me to pin my techhie hopes on a device which became world famous for exploding via its battery!  My new phone is more of a phablet than a mobile, but I have got used to the new size and, more importantly, it fits in my pocket.

            I am not convinced that I have managed to transfer all of my aps and files and photos and music; at least with Kindle all my books are in a library that can be accessed via the app.  The transfer of the contacts was a nightmare, mainly because I had not saved the things to my sim card.  I have no idea how the contacts finally got onto my new phone, I went to bed early to nurse my cold and sulk because things were not working out and, as usual, Toni then Did His Thing and managed to find the contacts, pack them up (electronically) and rehouse them in my new phone.

            Music has been transferred somehow.  Why does iTunes made it so difficult to enjoy what is yours!  Individual tracks are now on the machine, but they do not seem to exist in albums and asking the program to list them via artist caused the phone to go into an interminable period of ‘wait a sec’ which is the irritatingly false message for ‘nothing is going to happen’ on this phone.  However, I am enjoying the process of rediscovering elements of my past mobile phone and making them new, or at least given them a new context.  It is surprising how unsettling slight differences in the typeface or presentation of what were familiar apps can be.  Something to get used to.

            I feel like adding, ‘before I get bored with it and lust after another one.  At present, having owned my new phone for a period of less than a week, the candidate to supplant it in my affections looks like being the new Kodak phone.  It is perhaps ironic that Kodak (the company than invented digital photo taking) is returning to the fray with a phone that looks like a squashed version of a dated ‘real’ phone – I rather like the post-modern take and it is supposed to be the photographers phone.  It has been displayed, but not yet issued.  I shall be keeping a wary eye on the reviews – and wondering how to convince Toni that the extra expense can, in any way, be worth it!

            When, I ask myself, has any expense on tech ever been truly wasted.  I am also ignoring the hours of futile exasperation spent in front of an unresponsive computer screen or typed on a keyboard that stubbornly refused to recognise any of my increasingly desperate key thumps.  If nothing else frustration nowadays is at a higher level of technological achievement!

Technology bites back!

For a person who has been in the forefront of technology, when it comes to gadgets, all of his spending life, I am surprisingly opaque when it comes to the hardware.  As I type I am surrounded by a positive Bolognese of wires and an obsolescence of machines, but I am still a fingers-on-the-keys and bugger the mechanics of what I am using sort of person.  I still have a touching faith in the belief that makers of computers are on my side and that they are and have been doing everything that they can do to make my computing experience as joyful as possible.  Self-delusion of course, but it keeps me sane.

            Which is all a way of building up to the fact that things are not working as well as they should be.  Various arcane messages have been flashing up on my computer screen that, I think, indicate that things are not working at an optimum level.  As I have no idea what to do in response to these messages I have, of course, ignored them.

            This was a Bad Idea and I have paid the price as the machine has slowly but inevitably ground down to impotence.  That infuriating little circular symbol of many colours, which is an indication that the computer is thinking, and is going to ignore your commands, has become a more permanent icon on my bright screen.

            Eventually, of course, I had to follow the implacable advice of Toni and go to YouTube and discover What To Do.

            Eighteen pages of advice later I was more in a cold sweat panic than surveying the possibilities of restoring my machine to working order.

            Eventually, of course, I bought a program to do what I am sure Toni would have done at no cost whatsoever.  As the dreaded little circle of colours has reappeared during the typing of this missive, I am not sure that the payment of money has had any real effect, or indeed affect – I am still not sure about the correct use of those words.

            However, in the world of real facts, I am able to type without total frustration and that, in itself, is something.  We will have to see what happens when I try and add the Internet to the mixture – that usually does something more interesting and unexpected.

            I think that my basic point is that as a dedicated user of computers and so forth, I really do think that they should be just a tad more responsive and, dare I use the word, kind.

            However, they are not, and I constantly feel like throwing whatever device I am using away from me with extreme force.

            At which time, of course, I need to remember that I am of the generation where schools had only one BBC B computer to their names and counted themselves lucky.  I am of the generation that used an early version of Windows where the sacrifice of a full-blooded cockerel was sine quo non for anything to work.  I am of the generation when things simply didn’t work.

            But I thought that things had changed.  I put this down to the fact that I had a Mac at a fairly early stage of my computer development and got used to an operating system that seemed to be user friendly.  And when Windows stole the operating system that Apple had already stolen in their turn I thought that things had finally got to a stage where you could relax: the computer was on your side.

            Well, that didn’t really happen, and, in spite of the developed sophistication and complexity of the computers, they still have the unerring capability of reducing you to stuttering imbecility at a single keystroke.  But I wouldn’t be without them.

            So, it is with increasing excitement and ill concealed impatience that I await my latest gadget.  I am not sure what “between 3 and 5 working days” to get it to me actually means to the distant Chinese factory producing the mobile phone that I have ordered (apart, of course, of it not being “between 3 and 5 working days”) but, in spite of the fact that I rarely use the phone as a phone, I cannot wait for the gleaming (golden) outsized piece of bling to arrive and for me to get down to the serious business of not understanding its most basic capabilities!

If I want to frighten myself, I just sit down and try and work out how much my parents and I have paid over the years for my poor sight.  Admittedly in the early years of my sight deterioration I had a pair of round NHS black wire rimmed curly ear ended things that made me look, as my father so caringly pointed out like, “the Owl of the Remove”!

            My glasses became a little more presentable over the years, but the price and the delay in getting them made – as well as the sheer discomfort of wearing the bloody things made them a Necessary Object of Dislike.  I am sure that there is another blog post of a disquisition on the number of NODs that one has in one’s life, but this is not the time.

            As soon as it became a practical possibility I turned to contact lenses.  I was so keen to have them that I even paid part of the cost out of my own money!  I think it was this measure that persuaded my parents that I was in deadly earnest and they ponied up for the rest.

            I still remember my first fitting for lenses.  They were eventually placed on my eyes and, as they were made of hard plastic, the eye did its best to get rid of them.  It was impossible to raise one’s eyes from the downcast position because of the extreme pain.  Having got the things in, I was then sent from Windsor Place in Cardiff where my optician was situated, to wander around town for an extended period of time to allow the oxygen (in the centre of a city!) to do its stuff and see if my eyes would accept the lenses.

            I stumbled back into the opticians after having looked like a self-effacing picture of modesty, emitting yelps of pain when I forgot and raised my eyes.  I persevered and became a confirmed contact lens wearer.

            Recently I have gone back to my glasses, but fickle as ever, I have now decided to return to the lenses.

            And how much easier is it when they are daily lenses and made out of accommodating plastic.

            My problem of being short sighted and long sighted at the same time has attempted to be coped with by a variety of contact lens prescriptions – none of which has worked.  I have therefore decided to go with a contact lens prescription for normal seeing and using magnetic glasses for reading.

            The magnetic glasses are hideous and I am not sure how you are supposed to transport them.  I know that the fact that they ‘break’ means that you should wear them around your neck, but how does that work when you are driving?

            Something else to complicate my life.

Well this writing has seeped on over days and I am going to post it to get it out of the way and allow something new to take its place.

Thoughts after lunch

A decent lunch always puts me in the right frame of mind to start writing.  Or to have a light nap and think pure, literary thoughts.  Today, it has been a case of eat, coffee and write.  And it is always so much better when someone else is cooking!

            Yesterday was one of those lost-ish days when, for a plurality of reasons I didn’t actually have my swim.  I could have, you understand, but when the optimum time to have a kid-free immersion had passed I somehow lose the energy to make the necessary effort.  And there always are plenty of other things to do to fill the time.

            One of which was to attempt to come to some sort of conclusion with a poem that I thought would ‘write itself’.  I have discovered that the ‘write itself’ sorts of poems are almost always the ones that demand unreasonable numbers of drafts.  The present poem fits neatly into this work-heavy scenario.  I have, so far, notched up something like 14 drafts and I am not convinced that I am totally satisfied with the ‘final’ result.

            I do try and make my poetry as accessible as possible and I have finally (and regretfully) said ‘good-bye’ to my initial approach to poetry, which was to be as elusive and opaque as possible, with the result that, after a few months, even I did not know what I was talking about!  There is a sort of fear in that sort of poetry writing that does not appeal to me now.  There are some (thank you Paul!) who still aver that my poetry is not at the satisfyingly Janet and John level and is deliberately obscure.  Well, that may well be, but it is not the end result that I am aiming for: I am inclined to say that what I write is as clear as I can make it given the resources of language that are available to me!  Or it may just be that my arrangements of words need yet more arranging!

            Anyway, my attempts are sometimes, thought not always, put on smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es where I also attempt to give some sort of context to what I write.  Please check it out; and I welcome any and all comments.

The anthology of poetry produced my members of the Barcelona Poetry Workshop is getting nearer to publication.  The printer has been informed and work is progressing on the cover and associated details of the book.  We get ever closer to publication.  My own book of poems is scheduled to be published in the Spring of next year, and, although that seems a decent stretch of time away, I am acutely aware that there is precious little time for everything that I want to be in the book to be produced in time.  But I remain ridiculously optimistic and believe that I am living in the best of all possible worlds.  Up to a point.

I am still basking in the warm glow of delight not only at receiving my miniscule Spanish pension, but also by getting it backdated – so it appears to be a healthy sum!  And has paid for my new phone.  I regard the ‘money back’ on the exploding Samsung as ‘free’ money to splurge out on something of no practical value at all.  And believe you me, in my retail dream world; there is always something that I ‘need’!  Money is there to be spent.  In the present environment with the plunging pound, it is positively sensible and, indeed, essential that you spend what you get as soon as possible before it looses even more of its value.  Thanks to the foot-shooting Brexiteers, I now find myself 33% poorer than I was before the turkey voters of the UK voted for Christmas.  Thank you very much for absolutely nothing, and indeed less than nothing!

            It is with something approaching disgust that I read and see an increasing amount of xenophobia, which is, of course, the fancy word for racism.  The traitors in the Brexit campaign who are now in government (!) have a lot to answer for, though given their own personal wealth and position they never, ever will.

            Please do not assume that my default position is to consider all those who voted the opposite way from me in the Brexit campaign as idiots.  The EU is hardly a model of efficient democracy.  Let’s face it, the Common Market was set up by the French to give a financial boost to inefficient French peasant farmers, which is why the Common Agricultural Policy was and is an absurdity.  The traitor Boris made his career by writing disinformation about the EU, which exacerbated the perceived idiocy of the institution, and we are now reaping the whirlwind of callous self-interest painted as conviction.  Such attitudes by our so-called elite have worsened the reputation and authority of the governing classes and distanced them ever further from the voter.

            

     Brexit is the apotheosis of disenchantment, the inevitable result of distance that voters feel when they no longer believe that those who are ‘placed in authority over them’ have any concern or idea about how they live.  Perception is all.  Forget about reality.  What people ‘feel’ is more important than facts.  But when facts are more ‘facts’ with the way that the media presents them it is hardly surprising that sense becomes rather more relative than it should be and, as a way of showing independence from a hierarchy that doesn’t seem to represent people (however you define that term) any more, then the counter-intuitive becomes the new norm.

            The Republican Party in the US has reaped its own whirlwind from the denigration of intelligence, experts and statistics; in just the same way that the Brexit campaign pushed out-and-out lies as truth and pushed ‘feelings’ as the new reality.

            I find myself needing to believe in what I have called the ‘teacher effect’ to make something positive out of Brexit.  Generations of teachers have had to put up with uninformed, non-experts (ministers of education) deciding the way that schools operate.  No matter how ideologically impractical some of the ‘educational’ ideas were, teachers had to make them work because they were dealing with pupils’ lives.  Whatever idiocy had been deemed the political flavour of the month, teachers made sure that pupils got the most that they could out of a bad situation which was none of the teachers’ fault.  I have to hope that the same effort will be made with Brexit and, in spite of the clear negativity of the process, people (including the politicians that got us into this mess) will find a way to make it work to our advantage.  I am not holding my breath.  As someone living in Spain with a pension from Britain paid in pounds and therefore worth 33% less than it did before the vote, I have paid and am paying a price for a policy for which I didn’t vote and, horror of horrors, we haven’t even left the EU yet.  If this is what it is like with the future threat of our leaving, what the hell is the financial reality of actually being out of the EU going to be like?

            The one good thing of course is that each percentage point that the pound loses increases the (relative) value of my tiny Spanish pension.  And that word ‘relative’ is the key, after all whatever value in pounds might be; I live in Spain where the value of the euro is constant.  Sort of.  After all, my euros would only be of more value if I was able to spend them in the UK.  Where I do not live.  Ah well, that’s international living for you!

I have decided to go back to contact lenses.  I have hated and continue to hate wearing glasses but, with the selfishness inclusiveness of an only child I now find myself both short sighted (as I always have been) and now also long sighted (as an added aspect of the riches of ageing) and have not got on with attempts to use contact lenses to compensate for both elements of my seeing.  The one eye for reading the other for distance, simply did not work for me and so now I have decided to go with the everyday contacts with magnetic glasses (well, there has to be some aspect of a gadget to keep me happy) for reading.  Never let it be said that I was averse to new experiences!

            My optician was going to provide me with monthly lenses but, from past experience, I know that I am only suited to daily lenses – then I do not have to go through the procedures of actually looking after them.

            I will have to see if I can get back into the habit of wearing lenses.  At least these days they are soft and not the hard bits of plastic that took my eighteen-year-old eyes weeks to get used to.

            I am hoping that the ‘broken’ glasses worn around the neck will make me look more intellectual and that look might transfer itself to my efforts to learn a more grammatically and orthographically correct form of Spanish!

            Because, if perception works for Brexiteers over reality, then perhaps it might work for me in the linguistic wasteland in which I am struggling!

Reality check?

Say what you like about the Spanish education system, but they do like a good test.

            The use of that last adjective is an interesting one.  For the first time for a considerable time, I have had to do a test.  And I have not done at all well.  Not at all.

            The real problem is that I was not playing to my strengths, as this test was the first of what I am sure is going to be a continuing series of tests in my Spanish course in Castelldefels.

In most situations in my present country of choice I find that my Tarzan-like approach to Spanish (heavy on nouns, adjectives and expressive hand gestures, but low on verbs and grammatical forms) usually gets me out of most situations in which I have blithely entered into.  I have ‘spoken Spanish’ in all types of situations, formal and informal and, usually, astonishingly, I have managed to survive.  This impressionistic approach to language use while it is certainly a way of surviving is not the way of the Spanish educational test.  In such tests the lack of an accent is fully and totally wrong and no matter how you might have got away with saying the word, if you write it incorrectly, it is simply wrong            

            And tests like things like verbs and the correct use of prepositions.  Such things are not my strengths!

            I spent last night in an increasingly desperate write-it-out-until-you-remember-it attempt to push a vast amount of specific grammatical information into a brain that seems to be wired not to accept such things as in any way important.

            My humiliation (to be revealed next Tuesday in the next lesson) has had one positive result: I am now ‘officially’ panicking and am determined to do something about it.  That last phrase has more than a touch of the defeatist optimism of King Lear, but I do believe that at least part of my mind is available to accept morsels of information linked to what might get me an eventual pass in the examination that I need to pass if I am to be qualified to become a Spanish citizen.  As an example I have (you might well say “at last”) understood the difference between the use of the verb ‘gustar’ related to singular and plural associations.  This is fairly basic stuff, but lots of basic bits put together equals proficiency!  At least I hope so.

            I suppose the real lesson to be drawn from the sorry tale of low marks is that it is not going to be easy.  Although I might be able to bluff my way through an easy conversation in Spanish – easy, conversational Spanish is not the sort of language that is going to get you marks in a Spanish examination.  I am reminded of my third year tutor in university who did not allow me to get away with any airy-fairy ‘interesting’ comments about literary texts: he wanted specific, text supported, page numbered evidence to back up anything I said.  I would do well to bear in mind his attitude to inform my response to my future studies!  Who knows, I might actually progress!

Only I could place all my gadget hopes in possessing a state-of-the-art mobile phone, the flagship machine of a world leader in communications, only to discover that it also had an exploding battery!

           I paid for this phone (in full) in August, proudly pre-ordering something that was obviously going to be the cynosure of all phone users’ eyes.  Each delivery date I was given, stretched my patience to breaking point and beyond.  And then Samsung (yes, it was a Note 7) announced that it was suspending production of the machine and instituted a worldwide recall.  Disaster.  And it was, in the brilliant advertising phrase used by Stella Artois, “reassuringly expensive!”  Well, not for me the glorious moment of ostentatiously using something that other people have not got.  With new tech. it is not enough to own something, other people must be without it!

            The seriousness of the situation was indicated by the fact that not only did I ‘open a file’ on the Affaire Samsung, but it also had its own box file to contain it!

            A phone call got me my money paid back into my account, and a quick check on the Internet checked that it was actually there.  Then Toni got to work.

            After the years that Toni has spent on his IT course, it is nice to get something back.  He set off on an Internet trawl to find the next best phone for me.  I have to say that he does not go for the obvious.  His previous suggestion was for a Yota phone, a Russian double-faced device – the only ones that I have seen have been mine.  I use the plural as the first Yotaphone was stolen and the second accompanied me into our pool and died.  Being far too expensive to replace a third time, I downscaled to a Huawei.  This was also on advice from Toni who had explored possibilities in the phone world when suggesting a phone for his sister’s birthday.

            I have been satisfied with the phone, but, as I rarely use the thing as an actual phone, it has not been ideal.  Therefore, again on Toni’s advice I have decided to go phablet and have ordered some sort of monster mobile phone from China.  And it is less than half the price of what the Samsung was going to cost me.

            And, as far as money is concerned, I have just had, coincidentally, back payment of my small Spanish state pension fragment that covers the cost.  And then some.  Though not much more.  So, to my way of thinking, the phone is actually free.  That sort of economic thinking developed in college and has stayed with me ever since.  And, as I do not smoke, I have always considered that the money I have not spent on a disgusting habit exists in some sort of financial ‘cloud’ to be called on when a mad moment of expenditure calls.

            I am not sure how the next piece of information fits into my money thoughts, but I had a phone call from the police yesterday informing me that my sports bag which disappeared from the back of my bike in the couple of hundred yards from the Correos to the optician had turned up and was waiting for me to collect.  Which I did and found that absolutely nothing was missing.  From earplugs to a small packet of mixed nuts for emergency energy and all the towels, bathing costumes and goggles that I stuff into the interior, everything was there.

            In the days after the bag disappeared I remembered all the things that I had forgotten were there: a case of bike tools; a mini tyre pump; a packable raincoat and cash.  Unfortunately, the return of the case was not timely enough to stop my buying replacements, but on the bright side it is always good to have spares!

            I now await my new phone.  With impatience.

Little and often!

I've worked out that, when I finally get my Spanish “pension” (it really is so small that it doesn't deserve to be allowed to exist without quotation marks) it will be the equivalent of getting a fiver every day for breakfast – perhaps a bit more, but I'm allowing for inflation and Brexit! Which is much better, as I always say, than having to pay a fiver a day before breakfast! And I get it just for being alive!

     I expect that this delight will wear off and I will get back to the more grimy realities of life rather than spending my time rhapsodising about something which is boringly predictable, and for which I have paid throughout my working life. But, I have to come back to the point that pensions are magical when they happen. Magical that is, as long as you have been fortunate enough to gain access to a scheme which gives you a living return. And of course where you are still living to enjoy it.

     However, enough of that (though I cannot guarantee that I will not wax lyrical when I actually feel the putative money in my hot little hands) and on to more serious things.

     The political situation in the UK is depressing to put it mildly. Not only are Conservative stalking the corridors of power under the delusion that they have coherent policies to govern the country, but also an unelected PM is gibbering about education as if she has been caught in a 1950s time loop! In desperation I look towards my adopted country to show signs of sanity.

      Fat chance of that.

     After two inconclusive General Elections, Spain is still umpteen months into trying to form a government. Meanwhile we have a government in functions to continue the outward appearance of competence. Unfortunately this is being attempted by PP, the Conservative Party of Spain which is, to any reasonable viewer, totally and irremediably corrupt. And brazen about it too. I urge you to put “PP” and “corruption” into Google and see what you come up with.

     The sheer number of cases of corruption involving PP is astonishing. Don't get me wrong, other political parties on the left and centre as well as the right are corrupt, but they are nothing compared with the epic corruption shown by the party of 'government'!

     And what of the left, the opposition? In the Way of the Left they are at each other's throats. The major opposition party, PSOE has not gained enough seats in either election to form an alternative government of the left. To be the government they would have to pact with another party or ask for abstentions from other parties when the election of a President occurs.

     In the first election PSOE could have pacted with Podemos (a new party of the left) and they would have had an overall majority. Instead, after the election, Podemos was filled with elation and suggested a pact in which they would become partners in government and stipulated which ministries they wanted all the while waving a positive book of legislation that they wanted to get through in double quick time! PSOE (especially the so/called Barons or leaders of the party) were horrified at what they saw as the presumption of a bunch of Johnny come lately leftie extremists.

Podemos was also in favour of giving Catalonia a referendum on independence and therefore this was an added, and for many in PSOE a clinching reason for retreating from any agreement with what in politics counts as alacrity.

     Instead PSOE pacted with C's, another new party of the right. This 'brilliant' strategy did not give the combined parties an overall majority and the C's were anathema to Podemos and so in the Presidential election in parliament both PP and Podemos voted against. Stalemate. New elections.

     Amazingly, in the new elections, PP (The Putrid Party) after a series of revelations which showed the systemic nature of corruption at all levels in the party, actually gained votes! People, ordinary people, always have the capacity to astonish. C's lost some votes and Podemos gained some but, and this is why we are still without a government, there is still difficulty in forming a government with an overall majority.

     PP (sic!) have the largest number of votes but no overall majority. The C's (the political sluts of Spain) having pacted with PSOE on the left, now switched to the right and voted with PP for the old President. Everybody else voted against and therefore we had no new government.

     The left, i.e. PSOE and Podemos now no longer can combine and form an overall majority, they would need the abstention of the C-s sluts or the active support of other small independence parties.     A big no no for PSOE.

     The situation, as it draws itself out, grows more complicated. Recent elections in Galicia and the Basque Country did not work out well for PSOE and so, over the last few days some senior members of the party have resigned from the executive committee trying to cause the resignation of the current party leader. Other members of PSOE have been murmuring about abstaining during the next presidential vote. Everything seems to suggest that Rajoy and PP will form the next government. The left seems incapable of seeing the big picture, that a continuing government of Rajoy and PP will be an out and out disaster for Spain and they need to bury differences and work something out which keeps Rajoy out too.

 

     I have no confidence that people will see sense. I think that party loyalty is something which is far too important to far too many people, and the fate of the country runs a very unconvincing second best to party|personal gain. It is a depressing realisation, but I think it is all too accurate.

But the sun is shining and I was able to do a little light sunbathing. So, at the moment, not everything is ill in the world!