Sunshine!

Cut from the roof/attic space, the third floor terrace is an ideal spot for a little unseasonal sunbathing.

There is a breeze, and if that touches your skin you are aware that it is latish October, but in the tranquil sunshine (and wearing a T-shirt and shorts of course) you can almost believe that summer is still with you.  And I really do want to believe that. 

I hang on to the idea of summer well beyond what is considered reasonable to the good folk of Castelldefels, and the late date wearing of shorts is little short of scandalous to my fellow citizens who wear clothes strictly according to the seasons and the months.  No matter if it is sunny: if it is November it is wintry and clothing should (nay, must) reflect the established winter dress code, even if the thermometer tells a different story.

In Castelldefels, you can tell that the summer has officially ended, because they have locked up the street, car parking ticketing machines.  And, believe you me; in a seaside town as commercially minded as Castelldefels, the only reason to stop reaping the financial benefits from those rapacious machines is money.  Out of season, people need every inducement to visit our beaches and our town and free parking is essential to get the footfall to keep us going.  But over the last few days, yes, we have had torrential rain, but we have also had temperatures in the mid twenties - and those are warm enough (even with the ‘touch of seasonal reality’ breezes) to make a walk along our extensive beaches a true pleasure.  Or, in my case, cycle.  Electrically.

We had lunch outside too, today.  A new restaurant with a reasonably priced, at least for the weekend, menu del dia (14.90 Euros) including as they always do, a three-course meal (for me: Lacón - this is dried pork shoulder, cut into slices and served hot with sliced potatoes garnished with pimentón picante; salmon with battered vegetables; fruit) with bread and a drink.  We also had some mini empanadas as an aperitif. 

Because of the positioning of the spaces and the buildings around the restaurant, there was a fairly continuous breeze that was just this side of acceptable to me, and coat-wearingly acceptable for Toni.  All in all a decent meal, with the only exception being the fruit.  Given the medical strictures that surround our eating habits now, fruit is the only reasonable choice.  Toni chose the last mandarins and I had to make do with an orange.  When these arrived they looked wizened and old, and tasted like they looked.  There is no excuse for serving a poor orange in Spain, none at all - but, as Toni pointed out, finding decent tasty fruit is becoming more and more difficult.

And that, always brings me back to the dearth of Cox’s Orange Pippins.  I cannot remember the last date on which I had one of those apples, but I certainly do remember the taste: sweetness in depth with a complexity of flavour that matched a decent glass of wine.  Why are they not widely available?  And why do we, today, have to make do with a variety like Pink Lady?  The relationship between a Pink Lady and a Cox’s Orange Pippin is like that between fat-free milk and Devon clotted cream: they are both from the same family, but galaxies apart!

It does sometimes seem churlish to moan about some things, when I am typing this with the door to the terrace open, the sun is shining and a garish kite-surfing canopy is floating, spectrally, above the trees that block my view of the sea.  There!  A perfect example of unjustified dissatisfaction!  I am so near the sea that I can hear the waves and the clink of the tackle against the masts of the boats dragged up on to the beach, but I cannot see the sea.  At least not from my seat.  Even when I leave my seat it takes a little bit of contortion to get a glimpse of the big blue!  But it is within a couple of minutes walk.  And, quite frankly, that should be enough.  Though it never is.  Satisfaction is stultification.  To progress is to be greedy.  And other ‘thoughts for the day’ that go the way of all flesh!

Talking of progress, I have to create a WhatsApp group for the students in our Catalan class, as I am now one of the two student representatives of our class.  And, no, I did not volunteer, but I will approach the first meeting of the representatives with the clear thought in my head that it cannot possibly be worse than any of the staff meetings in The School on the Hill. 

And, fortified by that consoling thought, I will set about making the new WhatsApp group a reality. 

Never let it be said that my weekends were anything other than creative!

The sweet smell of 'failure'

Sometimes it is an achievement to know that you cannot succeed in your stated aim.  It does save time and emotion to find out that the situation is not resolvable.  An example of this happened this morning.

The present for the Name Day needs to be in hand for the meal this evening.  We did have an idea of the present that would be acceptable: a particular perfume in a gaudy bottle.  We couldn’t find this perfume in our go-to perfume store (I have, for some reason that I do not fully comprehend, a loyalty card for this store!) or in our second and third choice of emporium.

The end result was that it was left to me to ‘sort it out’ by this evening.  My first plan of retail attack was to shop my way along the motorway and call in the various supermarkets enticingly scattered along the margins of the road.  This would have been a very expensive approach as, very much like my mother, I find it very difficult to go to shops and not buy something.  Anything.

Plan B was to go to El Corte Ingles, the shop that I passed on my way to The School on the Hill each day in a display of restraint that still astonishes!  This is a true one-stop store and each time I go there (in whatever location it is found) I feel as if I am back in Cardiff in Howell’s, as it has some of the old-world charm of that august institution.  I also knew that their perfume department was vast and if anywhere would have the elusive bottle then it would be there.

When I got there, relatively early, after my even earlier swim it was relatively empty.  And that applied to the various counters too.  When I eventually found one occupied by a lady of a certain age (my favourite choice of assistant) I had the sort of experience that, if it was general throughout shops in the area would empty my wallet!

The cheerful, chatty, informed help that I got at the Boss/Calvin Klein counter was exemplary. And it also follows that I spent much, much more than I intended, but what the hell, it’s a present and I am sure that it will be appreciated, and that is the main thing.  Isn’t it?  And it looks good in the box too!

It is possibly a sign of the times that I feel the need to praise what is, in effect, an example of competent, professional selling.  This should be the norm and not the notable exception.  It brings to mind the legendary experience I had one Saturday morning in town in Cardiff where every shop I went into provided service of the highest possible standard.  I was so overcome with delight that I started going into shops at random and making spurious enquiries to test whether the magic of the shopping experience could be extended.  And it was, wherever I went I was gifted polite, concerned, attention.  It was wonderful and it left me a little breathless and disbelieving.  I was so shocked that I spent nothing, just revelled in the ‘rightness’ of it all. 

But that shock would have worn off and the serious business of spending would have come upon me like a madness.  Except.  Except, of course, the next week, things were back to normal with morose unhelpfulness the norm, with the only exceptions being in those shops where I personally knew the assistants or owners.

In the course of persuading me to buy more than I thought that I would, the lady assistant’s conversation ranged pretty widely taking in politics, geography, food, foreigners, Brexit, Holland, and the composition of The United Kingdom.  My whining about price must have had some effect as she also game me handfuls of samples to lessen the financial blow!

Now, well, almost now, out to lunch as the start of the weekend!

Life is often not very fair

Schadenfreude.

 

That is one of those complicated looking German words that one really ought to know, apparently, like Aufklärung and Verfremdungseffekt – and be prepared to use them in context.

 

I can remember using Aufklärung in my history essays for ‘A’ level (after painstakingly learning the spelling) more for the effect of throwing in an unaccustomed umlaut and making my rather mundane understanding of European history and the Enlightenment seem just a little more sophisticated. 

 

Although I read a lot about Verfremdungseffekt in my extensive reading of Brecht, having decided that he was one of the easier alternatives as a ‘banker’ question in my Drama Paper in my finals – though I have to be truthful, I have looked up the spelling of the word and in my critical writing I always used the easier term of ‘alienation’ – which was also easier to spell. 

Incidentally, I always consider my greatest two achievements in my finals papers was spelling Houyhnhnms (the intelligent and logical horses in Gulliver’s bitter, misanthropic IVth Voyage) correctly, and quoting four lines of C17th French poetry in my response to Sir Thomas Browne.  I also quoted freely from one of Brecht’s more obscure plays, which my tutor said summed up my response!

Anyway, Schadenfreude came to mind as I left my Catalan lesson in the centre of Castelldefels to unlock my bike and make my way home.  In the pouring rain.

I have never wilfully ignored an opportunity to remind my British friends that I like by the side of the Mediterranean, constantly bathed in sunlight, with good food and cheap wine.

Now the cheap wine is forbidden; my food should be low fat and salt free – and it bloody rained.  How more Schadenfreude could it be?

Well, yesterday I got a registered letter, for which I had to sign, that informed me that I had been ‘imaged’ speeding along the road that runs alongside the Olympic Canal and that I had been fined €300 and two points!

Is this injustice?  My speed was not excessive (in my mind) for this road and (you can hear the whine in my voice) everybody else in the entire world that uses the road goes at the same speed.  So, does this mean that virtually the entire population of Castelldefels has also been signing for a letter that informs that they have been excessive and please to pay the money into the city coffers?

I do think that the totally unrealistic speed limits are there to ensure that the cash cow can be milked at any moment that the city needs a cash injection.

It is also significant that the date of the infringement was a month ago, and on a Saturday.  Since that date the city has installed or constructed or imposed two zebra crossing ramps (that I am convinced are higher than the legal regulations allow – but let it pass, let it pass) that make going at even a snail’s pace difficult.  Add to that the existence of those thoroughly irritating rubber strips at regular intervals along the same road, then it seems as if the municipality is waging an active war against the suspension systems of all motor cars within the city.

And then there is paying the extortion.  The single sheet of the demand came with a bar code that should mean it is possible to pay at a cash machine because they have a little window that reads bar codes.   

And while we are angry (as we are) those cash machines only exist because the banks are viciously mean and hate their customers so much that they reduce all opportunities to interact with them in person.  And then they dress up this glaring lack of concern by telling us that these machines exist for our convenience!  Huh!  As if.  When was the last time that a bank, any bank, did anything altruistic that was not directly linked to their own essential well-being!  And the machine did not read the code and gave a brusque message that basically nothing could be done, so find another way to pay, not specified by the machine.

So, for me at the moment, the old feelings of Schadenfreude are in the ascendant.  This too will pass, but, even though it is negative, it should be possible to find a sort of twisted enjoyment in the negative.  Perhaps the momentary nature of misery should be appreciated as well as that of pleasure – which, after all, is just as fleeting.

And, owning a tumble drier, it is hardly a problem to strip off wet clothes and throw them all in the drier for a few minutes to get them warmly dry again.  Which I did, down to and including my underpants.  And then the door buzzer sounded and it was the post-lady with a package for us.  So, dressed fetchingly in a hastily grabbed pair of summer swimming trunks and a hooded rain jacket, I wetly opened the front gate to get the stuff and returned even more wetly thinking to myself that Schadenfreude really doesn’t give up!

And (again), the book that I ordered on Amazon with what I understood would be a one-day delivery promise, will actually arrive at the end of the month.  Underlining the point, I think!

Looking forward to the end of the week when we are scheduled to go to Name Day celebrations, a lunch in Terrassa, and Friday is a half day for Toni and so we can have lunch together to celebrate the start of the weekend properly!