O God The News!

 

Never let it be said that the bloody awful weather dictates my attitude towards life.  However, I am in a bloody awful mood to match!

The news from Britain as the shambolic ‘government’ of talentless Conservative (have you any idea how difficult it was for me to put a capital letter at the start of that word) lower than vermin, self-seeking, inept, traitorous, bastards descend lower and lower into the farce that is their approach to Brexit.

And my contempt for May grows.  And, no, I have no sympathy for her as she is savaged by the liars and cowards with whom she has surrounded herself.  Whenever I see her robotically defending the indefensible and fell a smidgeon of sympathy, I only have to remember her tenure at the Home Office and the heartless and ILLEGAL processes that she put in place to banish any fellow feeling for her ‘suffering’ now.  Her on-going failure at least gives a re-reading of the “all politicians’ careers end in failure” as hers has been failure in its more continuous manner.  To say nothing of her dancing.

It is a sign of desperation and picking through the dregs that Pixie Cheeks Gove has been asked to take on the barbed wire rimmed, poisoned chalice of Brexit Secretary.  But he will only accept if he is allowed to renegotiate!  What world are these people living in?  Are they so secure in the foreign investments that they can look on with equanimity as the rest (the large rest) of us suffer?

I know that I do not command a great deal of sympathy as I spend my retirement by the side of the Med here in Castelldefels – but my pension is paid in pounds sterling and when I first came to Catalonia a Euro was 70p; now a Euro is 87p which means that my pension has been reduced by 20%, a fifth of my buying power has been wiped out largely because of the stupidity of a discontented electorate listening to the lies of the Brexiteers and believing that those Brexiteer had access to whole herds of magic unicorns who would make all manner of things well!  Rubbish.  Just recite the names of the most prominent Brexiteer and then ask the age-old question, “Would you buy a used car” from any of them?  Of course, you wouldn’t, so why entrust the future of your country to the sick imaginations of these failures?

And that scum that has resigned . . . and I paused there because my dictatorial watch informed me that I had been sitting for too long and I needed to move about for a minute!   

Perhaps its is just as well I walked away from the keys.  What do I achieve by venting my spleen?  I suppose it could be considered cathartic, but apart from keeping my blood pressure within the green range, cui bono?

It is, however, ironic that the “onlie begetters” of Brexit are generally not in government any more and therefore are not dealing with the mess that they have made!  Nothing like denying responsibility, but I suppose they have the superb example of Cameron to take as their guide for thoroughly selfish irresponsibility!

And the back wheel of my bike has been punctured or something because it was thoroughly flat when I attempted to ride it to my Catalan lesson this morning.  And now I have to go and pick it up in the pouring rain.  Again.  Much as I like the bike, I have to admit that I have been singularly unlucky with the damn thing.  I have barely gone more than a fortnight riding the thing without some reason to take it back to my bike man.  The broken spokes have become a running joke and the suspension is suspect too.

I am now thoroughly regretting that I have ordered the updated, fat wheel version of the bike that I have.  It will have improved brakes and gears, with a sexy paint job (sigh!), a full colour display and a back pannier, or at least a framework to put one on, and the thing will have a sort of brake light as well.  As you can see, I am easily persuaded with the trivia and don’t really care about the important engineering of the thing!

The new bike should/might arrive in time for Christmas and will give me something to worry about, while not being able to ride the thing because of poor weather.  It is all in the anticipation and not the reality!

Anyway, to finish off a near perfect day, after I have collected my bike, I then have to return to the centre of town for a dental appointment.  If a day is going to be bad then it does make sense to concentrate all the badness so that you can enjoy it a schadenfreude sort of way.

To keep my sanity, I have not gone out of my way to find what new infantile lunacy the so-called Head of the Free World has been up to.  That can wait until I am stronger!

This & That

 

Just Speak

It’s a simple injunction - though not quite so easy when you have to do it in a language that you do not, to all intents and purposes speak!

Our relief Catalan teacher takes a very different approach to the learning of the language than our previous teacher, who at present is ill and cannot take us.  Our previous teacher has a methodical, textbook-led methodology that works through language via the grammar and selected vocabulary.  As we are all beginners we lack grammar and vocabulary so conversation is not a realistic option.  This does not stop our present teacher urging us to talk, talk, talk!

He does not really care if we substitute English or Spanish for words that we do not know, as long as we are making an effort to use what Catalan we do!  As he is quite keen on making us take turns standing in front of the class to stutter out our illiteracies, this becomes a terrifyingly exhilarating experience!

Our learning is not made any easier by the fact that the composition of our class is something of a moveable feast with hard-core regulars numbering about 7 or 8, out of an initial membership of over twenty.  The classes start at 11.00 am but students drift in until almost 11.30 am.  I realize that this is a class of adults and there may be a whole range of problems and situations that make prompt arrival difficult - but still!  I would be incandescent if it were my class!

The conversational approach will only be for the next couple of lessons as our normal teacher should return next week, but our supply teacher has certainly made an impression and, as will all temporary replacement teachers, he will be used as a measuring stick against whom all future and past teachers will be assessed.

-oOo-

Tomorrow I am going to a meeting of the Barcelona Poetry Group.  This will be a special meeting as the organizer, now resident in the US of A, will be making a ‘guest’ appearance and hosting a meeting where the topic will be ‘Memory’.

I used to go regularly to these meetings, but when the locations changed to more difficult to get to places, I let my attendance slip.  With my present physical circumstances, the number of floors that I would have to ascend (without a lift) in one or two of the locations would make my appearance difficult if not terminal!  But this meeting is in the centre of Barcelona near the Cathedral and I not only know how to get there without fear, but I also know that there is parking (expensive parking to be sure, but parking nevertheless) within easy walking distance of the flat where the meeting will be held.

I will not have seen many of the people there for some time, so there will be a certain amount of catching up to do - as well as a certain amount of writing, as there is a practical aspect to the meeting as well.

I shall wear one of my lurid pressure stockings.  If nothing else it will be a focus of shocked attention and disbelief, giving me the opportunity to recite my well-practised tale of hospitalization and life change!

It will also be an opportunity to find out how changed the others’ lives have been by the passing of the years.  Perhaps I can take some copies of Together Apart to share and distribute!  Though, thinking about it, all the poets represented in that book need to have equal treatment, so perhaps just a few copies to show what the Group has achieved in concrete written form!

-oOo-

The young girls from the family next door have thrown themselves, with much screaming, into the waters of our communal open-air pool.  Indeed it is not cold, but it is certainly not the weather in which I would ever consider immersing myself in any water that has not been artificially heated to something approaching blood temperature!  Well, perhaps a few degrees less.  I admire their determination, though worry about the noise levels: if they are prepared to face the elements in the middle of November, when exactly will the waters of the pool be off limits, so to speak.  Are we condemned to hearing high-pitched enthusiasm for the whole of the year?

I did go into the sea in December, Christmas Eve to be precise, in Sitges.  It was a beautifully warm day with bright sunshine.  That temperature had not transferred itself to the water, which I entered gingerly and exited expeditiously.  Nevertheless, I did ‘swim’ in the sea on Christmas Eve.  And that is an achievement of sorts.

-oOo-

I am at present writing a poem based on observations written in my notebook from this morning.  There is an amazing backlog of ‘notes towards poems’ waiting to be written up and, with my imminent visit to Barcelona and the Poetry Group, now seemed a good time to get back into the swing of things and start drafting.

As is usual for me, I have written the body of the poem and have come up against a blank sheet of paper for the ending.  I sort-of know what it is I want to say, but the ways in which I have phrased it so far are depressingly trite or mawkish.  That is why I am typing this, as displacement activity to rest the part of my brain that isn’t finding the appropriate ending, in the hope that I can trick out a suitable phraseology when I go back down stairs and try again!

-oOo-

I have been doing my musical homework and my knowledge of Katya by Janacek has now reached the level when I am identifying tunes and indeed am humming along in certain parts.  Admittedly those are the parts most closely related to Janacek’s use of folk tunes, but it is progress.

I don’t know what language Katya is going to be sung in at the Liceu, though I doubt that it is in the original language, especially given the nationality of the soloists, still that will be something to weigh up when I get to the theatre and start enjoying the performance, there are always sur-titles to keep me on track and I have read the libretto in English and see productions of the opera as well.

Now back to the poem and the hope that the ending has sorted itself out in the depths of my mind.  Time to go fishing!

Memory - Remembering

I will never visit the War Graves of the First World War.  It is not because no members of my immediate family are buried there

My paternal grandfather was a member of the armed forces throughout the duration of the war from the start until the end. He was wounded and sent back to ‘Blighty’ (after refusing an ‘offer of a fiver’ for his wound by a passing Scots soldier!) and was returned after his recuperation to the same point in the line that his company had occupied before he was hit.  The only difference on his return was that the whole of his company had been killed.

His description (second hand via my dad) of waking up in the trenches because he was being eaten by a rat, had a thrill of primal horror about it.  He told my father that as he jerked his hand away, as a rat was eating his finger, the rat did not release its grip and followed the trajectory of his hand.

I have read fairly widely about the First World War, not only in terms of history books but also in the literature of the period.  The poetry of the period is at once searing and compulsive.  From the poetry of Owen and Sassoon to the prose of Graves, I have sensed the horror, frustration, inhumanity, bitter irony and humour of the War to End Wars.  I have seen the photos, watched films and visited museums.  I have feasted full on the horrors of an almost unimaginable reality, that, as the real experience of the soldiers was allowed to be shared in an almost unexpurgated form was unparalleled until the truly unimaginable inhumanity that was the Second World War.

As a life-long (belligerent) pacifist I have always had problems with the glorification or normalization of War: our family outing to the Edinburgh Tattoo was a fraught moral conundrum for me.  And, just in case you are wondering about my ethical purity, I swallowed my reservations and went.  And I was moved and stirred by what I saw and heard!

In the same way, I cannot wear a poppy.  I pay money to the collectors, but I do not wear the flower.  I don’t know whether they still do, but the black plastic centre of the artificial flowers used to have the words “Haig Fund” embossed on them, and I simply couldn’t wear the name of the military commander who tried to kill my grandfather with his suicidal plans of attack (for the PBI, not of course for him) with any degree of equitability. 

And yes, I did dry-spit every time I passed his equestrian statue in the centre of London.

So, what did I do, here in Castelldefels to mark the Centenary of the Armistice?

I have my grandfather’s medals form WW1 and I have had them framed.  I may not have joined up as my grandfather did, and we obviously have differing views on the military, but I respect and value his dedication.  He was most proud of his 1914-1915 star, showing that he was one of the first to be involved in the war before conscription was needed to keep the numbers up as the disastrous swathes of destruction - ugh!  Attempting alliteration about deaths in that war is a grotesque literary trope!

Whatever I feel about the war, I respect my grandfather’s period in the Killing Fields of France and he is my real link to the conflict: not a slab of elegantly carved stone in a garden of carefully tended grass. 

I do not denigrate the cemeteries with their immaculate rows of white, but I know that I would not be able to take them.  I know that I would feel truly miserable and depressed rather than educated by such a spectacle.  I fully recognize that, for some, visiting these graves can be a valuable and emotional experience.  It is not one that I want to put myself through.

But the man, my grandfather, is worthy of thought and consideration and to that end I made some notes and jotted down thoughts to get me started on a new poem.  Work in progress.  And my grandfather’s medals will stay on the wall where I can see them as I type for the future. 

 

And perhaps those last four words should be something of a moral for me!

-oOo-

I have now, officially, taken more time trying to find a document about two Catalan artists in Word that I wrote some time ago than giving up and doing it all over again.  Well, not quite doing everything again.  I have managed to find a copy of the original document, so I will not need to do the research, I could just copy the couple of pages that I have found, and this time create a file and put it somewhere where I will remember putting it.  

And before you start thinking that if I have found a copy of the original document all I need do is look at the document’s directory or copy and paste, I might add that I have found a ‘printed’ copy of the original not an electronic one.  I do not have the program that can take a page of print and scan it into a Word document.  I understand from cursory search-glancing at the stuff on the Internet that OneNote used to have OCR capability, but no longer.  Or not if you look elsewhere on the Internet.  The end result, after attempting to take an image of the writing, download it from my phone as a PDF file and then attempting to save it to something else in the hope that the something else would recognize that the image had words in it and treat it as something that could be edited in Word. 

Didn’t work.

I re-typed it.  It doesn’t sound much, a couple of pages, but it was a couple of pages with accents, right left and centre with the odd umlaut.  And Word trying to foil my typing of foreign names with distracting underlining!  Still, it is done, and I know where to find it again!

And that is something more than nothing!