Worth remembering.

Four pieces of metal.

That’s all they are really. Now polished to a gleaming newness, recovering some of the effect they must have had when they were awarded over ninety years ago. These were the visible marks of the grateful country which did little to make real the Poison Dwarf’s platitude of making it a fit place for heroes.

My grandfather’s, Willy John’s, medals from The First World War now are properly presented. Framed so that they can travel to Spain safely and can be hung so that, together with the etching by Archie Griffiths, I can have strong reminders of my home.

Medals for war are like those neat, tasteful, carved tombstones that stand in serried ranks in the fields of France: acceptable tokens which make bearable the unbearable reality of what occurred in the rat infested muddy trenches and the unbelievably bloody battlefields which saw almost an entire generation of British humanity wiped out.

The anger that The First World War engenders is something almost visceral in someone like me, born thirty years after the armistice. What it must have been like for my grandfather who survived both Battles of the Somme, but saw his friends and comrades wiped out, is unthinkable. He carried his deafness from the sound of the guns as a physical memento from the conflict, but what he carried in his mind defies comprehension.

My father always described me as “the most belligerent pacifist I know” and argued constantly with me about such concepts as a “just war.” We never agreed, though I think that he would be wryly amused by how far my religious scepticism has come to match his own views! His version of Humanism has strongly influenced my own moral development, but my residual “Anglican Atheism” has always made a whole hearted commitment to Humanism difficult.

I share with Aunt Bet a – “love” isn’t the right word, perhaps “devotion” might be more appropriate – for the poetry of The First World War. In an anthology like “Men Who March Away” edited by Ian Parsons you can trace the changing attitudes of poets to the progress of the war and the bitter reality it forced some people to accept.

Perhaps poetry is the nearest that I can tolerate the human, emotional implications of an obscenity like The First World War. I could never, for example, bring myself to visit the war graves of the continent: I would find that unbearable. I know that for some it is a cathartic experience and it brings home to them the full horror of the conflict, but it is not for me.

My grandfather never talked to me about the war and rarely to my father. He never spoke of the apocalyptic horrors that he must have seen and he kept his stories at a ‘human’ level.

One incident he did tell my father was when my grandfather was sleeping in the trenches and he was forced awake because a rat was eating his finger. As my grandfather jerked his hand away, the rat came with it, his fangs embedded in his flesh. My father told me that, as my grandfather recounted this story, his look of horrified disgust made it seem as if the incident had just occurred.

For my father, as for me, this little tale of piquant disgust, has exemplified the unnatural horror of the whole conflict.

Whatever ambiguous feelings towards The First World War I may have, I recognise that my grandfather volunteered in 1914 and saw the whole bloody conflict through to the end. He survived against the odds and in spite of people like Haig.

His example is a good one to take to Spain, especially to Catalonia where people like my grandfather fought against the fascists.

An example to live by.

Does it last?

The traditional murk of May has driven me to the Body Shop.

One comes home to Wales from Gran Canaria full of optimism from the glut of vitamin D coursing round the bodily system from the excess of Spanish sunshine. One hopes that the supply of that essential ingredient for happiness will at least be partially availability in ones home country. Fond hope!

The early season tan won by selfless snoozing in unrelenting fine weather begins, visibly, to fade! Ohime! (As I think I once read in Monteverdi’s score for Orpheo as that unfortunate could not resist temptation and looked around.) What is to be done?

The only ethical cosmetic alternative was to throw myself on the mercy of the ruthlessly cosmeticised harridans of The Body Shop. There my whimpish bleatings about the diminution of the intensity of the tan were met with the instant offering of the Balm of Gideon, or to be more precise, Coconut Butter. This unguent was only offered after a sternly mascara eyed votress of the temple looked at me narrowly and asked if my tan was real! I didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or a foul insult! Was it, to her eyes, a tan of such profound depth that it could only have come from a bottle? In which case the hours spent risking skin cancer did seem to have been well spent!

I now waft my way around smelling faintly as if I had had one too many holiday cocktails utilizing a liqueur that I would shun to have in my drinks cabinet! The things one is prepared to do in the name of personal vanity!

Talking of vanity: now that I have had (in theory) one of the fastest CRB checks (11 days!) in the history of the world, why has no agency called me to work? Are they as shocked as I am? The story of my CRB check is rather like the argument of whether light is composed of waves or particles. It all depends on how you look at it.

I signed the application form on the 12th of March; it got on the CRB system (according to the CRB) on the 1st of May; my agency in Newport had been checking the progress of my CRB at various points before the 1st of May. Two assertions: mutually exclusive. Take your pick. I have my own prejudices.

And how!

I once again entered the realm of Specious Justification (last used for the purchase of the telephone internet gadget) to allow the splurging of money I can ill spare on a new set of telephones. I blame the near monopoly purchasing power of Tesco. Though thinking about it, that can’t be right, monopoly power usually means the increase in prices rather than making certain items juicily attractive. The set of four phones bought seems incredible value and I’m sure that the low price means that someone somewhere is being ruthlessly exploited. Though, of course, one hopes not. And one generally decides not to think too closely about it. Except for the nagging guilt which plays around the borders of one’s moral consciousness.

As if.

Bloom and Bust!

Few questions are troubling the gardening world more than that of the non flowering lobelia.

Young plants purchased more than a month ago are still refusing to bloom. In a gardening scenario reminiscent of ‘The Tin Drum’ they are refusing to mature and burst into their accustomed colour.

I feel cheated and degraded. It is almost as if I have been forced into a simulacrum of a ‘real’ gardener being obliged to wait for the colourful end results from the boring green plant.

My form of gardening is instant. If I buy a green plant it is because it is within days of blooming. This concept, which I believe is common in the gardening fraternity, of waiting for results is abhorrent to me.

The early purchase of lobelia was forced on us by the monochrome appearance of the garden at the beginning of the house selling season. Action had to be taken to turn a potentially colourful garden into an actual one and, from our experience, bedding plants like lobelia offered drifts of colour at reasonable cost. I took on trust that the tufts of vaguely herb-like growth masquerading as lobelia would actually turn into the flowering plant in double quick time. Even with all my vast gardening experience, how cruelly was I deceived!

The lobelia has grown, nay, flourished. Fronds reach eagerly for the sky in a green profusion. But that is not why they were bought; where, is the cry, where is the colour?

At times like this one brings to mind the resounding prayer of that notable African, Saint Augustine (the theologian, not the travelling chancer acting on the whim of a suspiciously Angle struck pope) who said, “O God I believe; help thou my unbelief!” If one of the major Father Theologians of the Church can find himself beset with doubt and come out the other end, then it behoves me to hold fast to the course of nature and believe that a profusion of flowers will burst forth from the unpropitious profusion of green which mocks expectation at the moment.

Talking of faith, I have also deadheaded the chrysanthemums in the fond hope that there will be a second growth. These chrysanthemums were the ones bought to replace the mini daffodils which bloomed for a cruelly short space of time. The flower heads of these chrysanthemums, which I’m sure were ‘forced’ gave a brave display for a few weeks and then seemed to rot on the stalk. Deadheading them was like squeezing blancmange and most unpleasant. I did notice one shy bud head showing a few tentative petals which seemed to bear no relation to the colour of the first display. Strange are the ways of commercial nurseries; I wouldn’t put it past them to spray colour onto flower heads or inject ink into the stems to obtain the colour they want. I will wait and see what the real nature of these over excited plants actually is.

Forced plants pale into insignificance with my recent experience in the Jobcentre.

As part of the mandatory reassessment after six months of unemployment an interview with an adviser is a requirement.

Having missed one appointment I was able to make a replacement appointment for the next day, i.e. yesterday.

My arrival for the interview was delayed at the door by the security guards who could not find my name on their lists. Eventually they indicated that I should go to the first floor to the adviser.

My arrival on the first floor was also an occasion for delay because the security officer was engaged somewhere else and it is necessary to report to security before you actually meet anyone. (This emphasis on delay will become important soon, don’t worry!)

Eventually, I decided to find my adviser myself and approached an individual seated before the obligatory monitor and asked if he was my interviewer. He was, but then he said that, “As you are five minutes late you will have to fill in a form.”

I thought to myself that I had been dreading the bureaucratic legacy of a fascist state in Spain that I was to face when I moved, but here, on my own soil was bureaucracy gone mad!

I will not dwell on the unseemly behaviour provoked by what I regarded as the ludicrous behaviour of my ‘adviser’, but suffice it to say that I was asked to leave and escorted downstairs where I wrote a three page complaint about my treatment. I have to say that this was the only negative behaviour I have encountered in the Jobcentre and I trust it was remain as a uniquely unpleasant experience. In the poor guy’s defence, I suppose I join a very motley crew of unfortunates who have had their interviews terminated and been asked to leave.

Ah well, I suppose it’s another box to tick in the ‘1000 things not to do before you die’ book!

Music and fire!

After a day of unsurpassed and relentless depression (none of which was my fault for a change) it was a delightful relief to go to a concert of the popular Cardiff choir, Cantemus. Their concert was held in their traditional home, Tabernacl in The Hayes.

The programme was an adventurous one with items ranging from the composer who is virtually their patron saint, Bach, to the modern and trendy composer Arvo Pärt.

The concert opened with an electrifying call of “Komm!” the opening word of “Komm, Jesu Komm” by J S Bach which filled Tabornacl and made the most of the generous acoustic that the venue affords.

The choir is comfortable with Bach and they clearly enjoyed the almost playful antiphonal intricate nature of the piece. There was strength in depth throughout the music with the confident voices of the sectional choir responding and blending with musical satisfaction. This was a long testing piece which the choir took in its stride.

The first Arvo Pärt work was Solfeggio which Robert Court, the engagingly friendly conductor explained, was basically a C major chord fragmented and explored by the sections of the choir. The music had the languorous and expansive feel of Pärt’s popular symphony, but the ease of the piece is only achieved by the exposing the members of the choir who have to be spot on with each of the musical notes. And to a large extent they were: they were well advised to put this piece after they had had an opportunity to warm up with the Bach.

The other piece by Pärt was an enjoyable (and at times enjoyably ludicrous) musical setting for the boring genealogy that, as Robert Court pointed out, you skip in the reading of the bible. This setting, which at times reminded me of an American Black spiritual, was fascinatingly repetitive in the best traditions of Philip Glass!

The pieces by Heneghan and Lawson, settings of Shakespeare and Christina Rosetti respectively, suffered by their proximity of their more famous neighbours. They were slight, but pleasingly effective.

The second half of the programme opened with Elgar pieces written for choir competitions. They explored various techniques in vocal expression with tricky demands for the singers. Serenade was, for me, the most engaging of the four pieces and the choir responded with informed enthusiasm to them all.

The two pieces arranged by Robert Court brought us back to more familiar ground, and you could sense the relief of the audience at finding something they knew!

Dafydd y garreg wen gave an opportunity for the solo voice of David Leggett: his voice was mellow and soothing, though there was a nervy tremolo barely suppressed.

Court’s version of Wiegenlied was mellifluous and textured and he was not afraid to draw some assertive strength from his singers.

The Evening Hymn was something of a disappointment with Tabernacl’s wheezy organ accompanying an uninspired chunky piece of bog standard church singing.

This was a concert that deserved a full audience, from a choir that I have seen develop over the years so that now they are attempting things that would push a professional group. Long may their individual members have the unselfish commitment to continue a fine tradition.

Talking of fine traditions there is another one developing if you look for it.

Sullen eyed, slouched against a wall, radiating menace and threat they stand. On corners, in doorways, under arches they lurk. And ordinary people have to run the gauntlet as they go about their business, sensing the silent, resentful emanations as they shudder their way through that invisible barrier that surrounds those lonely individuals. They stay at their peripheral posts of rejection, clinging to the outer skin of buildings, seemingly unable (or unwilling) to enter, like claustrophobic vampires banished to their mural boundary. The smokers!

They are the new unclean; the lepers de nos jours; the outcasts; the Outsiders – literally. As you move around town you forget that all (all) enclosed public spaces are smoke free. What betting shops are like now beggars belief: do the punters now see clearly what a futile waste of space and time they have been subsidising?

Every few paces you see a surrealistic incongruous vignette as the inside is made the outside: the manager and the bank teller; the maitre d’ and the cleaner; the beauty consultant and the cashier – all forced into the sunlight to indulge their filthy habit, trying to look unconcerned, invisible and, above all, warm. Fat chance!

I’m beginning to find it quite threatening. These people really do look as they don’t belong and don’t want to belong to what’s going on around them. They seem like resentful aliens barely tolerating the lesser breeds without the law by whom they are surrounded.

My plan would be to have a Smoke Exclusion Zone around all the public buildings which fall within the new smoke free regulations. This Zone would be wide enough to include the whole of the pavement which runs along the shop fronts etc. This would eliminate the lonely cancer factories which obstruct entrances and exits.

¡No smokeran! as La Passionaria would have said!

Tempus fugit!

Anyone looking or poetry in a garden should try deadheading after a short holiday. That will soon cure them of romantic notions of the ‘lovesome thing’ sort.

What appeared to a thriving and healthily colourful garden was riddled with the decaying petals of exhausted blooms.

With trusty trug (not a phrase one uses every day of the week) near at hand I proceeded like the Great Flower Avenger wreaking havoc among the slowly blackening remains of once proud flowers.

I seriously think that Cardiff have instituted the regime of green bins to encourage floral hygiene in the gardens of the city.

Perhaps we are on our way to encouraging the evolution of a generation of gardeners who will have the specialised mutation of the thumb and index finger becoming the digital equivalent of secateurs.

Watch the hands!

The price of nothing!

I wish I loved the Human Race;

I wish I loved its silly face;

I wish I liked the way it walks;

I wish I liked the way it talks;

And when I’m introduced to one,

I wish I thought "What Jolly Fun!"

Sir Walter Raleigh

No, not that Sir Walter, the more modern one.

These immortal lines suggested themselves to me as I found my self intimately cheek by jowl with my fellow humans on a plane from Gran Canaria to Bristol this morning; very early this morning; very, very early this morning.

By their shufflings in their seats may ye know them! When you fly with Thomson you begin to appreciate the inches difference in seat separation in planes. Thomson seems to think that most of their passengers are emaciated dwarfs. I can now, from painful physical experience tell that benighted organization that this is simply not the case.

If you are six foot or over then travelling by charter airline is little short of the United Nations’ definition of torture.

For people of height, the airlines rely on the hardy nature of the patella to make travel possible. Every shudder of the aircraft is transmitted through the back of the seat in front via the knee; this, in itself is uncomfortable – if the seat in front is occupied then the pain level begins to rise.

In a modern, cost conscious aeroplane people are squeezed together in a way that makes the normal sardine tin look like club class fish packing. This unnatural proximity of flesh with hard plastic demands a certain restraint on the part of the sitter towards his kneemate.

Some people seem to think that they exist in an exclusive comfort zone on a plane, independent of other people’s sufferings. They develop a particularly unthinking form of Saint Vitas’ dance where their selfish writhings are translated into levels of physical discomfort not usually found outside the wearing of cheap sandals (ah the voice of experience!) for the poor sufferers behind them.

A few of the truly godless utilize the Armageddon button on their seats and activate the recline mode. Here the ‘normal’ pain of abrasive knocks is augmented by the crushing force of a backwardly mobile seat.

The two women in front of me for the trip to Gran Canaria (May they rot in the most hideous pit of hell!) seemed to take a ghoulish delight is seeing how deeply they could bruise my lower extremities, positively bouncing their leprous bodies against the back of their pestilential seats. The only form of defence is attack and this can only take the form of smashing the top of the seat in front back to an upward position (very difficult to accomplish without making it look like an open declaration of war) to using the knees to stop further incursions into your space (very difficult to accomplish without making the knee cap look like a rickets riddled wreck.)

The only solution is consideration, and, believe you me, that adjective was not one which sprang to mind when surveying the passengers of the flight that I was on. The behaviour of a group of repulsive females will have to wait for a later blog when I have recovered my self sufficiency and irony!

So, the delayed flight was a nightmare with no possibility of even a light snooze with the jitterbugging cretin in front of me. The horror reached its apogee with the announcement from the captain as we were reaching Bristol that there was a possibility that poor visibility would necessitate our landing in Cardiff. The irony of that, with our car in the Silver Car Park in Bristol, is too poignant to go into!

Luckily a safe Bristol landing and an uneventful (if tiring) drive to Cardiff; unpacking, washing started, a quick bath and bed for a few hours, soon made life worth living again. You’ll notice that I have not made any snide remarks about the twenty three degree difference in temperature between Gran Canaria and Bristol.

Some things are beyond irony!

Wot larks Pip Old Chap!

How neatly a cynic might look at a hotel buffet as a symbol for life: a seeming profusion of exciting elements soon reduced to tasteless monotony by familiarity.

Perhaps that is being a little harsh on the Hotel Neptuno buffet, but neither Toni nor I could distinguish by sight or taste the chopped fruit displayed so appetisingly to our view yesterday. We have begun, after a very few days, to pass slighting comments about the quality of the food. If we had been here for a fortnight then I am sure that we would have been eating in surrounding restaurants.

That about sums up our approach to the hotel in general: it promised more than it delivered, and it takes somewhat less than a week to discover this.

Last night we, eventually, went to the Yumbo Centre and had a glimpse of the entertainment on the centre stage. It did not look to be of the quality which would have made us regret our late arrival. We were just in time to hear a long legged nonentity sing a Madonna song badly. The seated audience were suitably restrained in their acknowledgement of her slightly desperate attempts to stir them into frantic expressions of delight.

We reeled away to have a drink in ‘Hummel Hummel’ which actually had people in it! From our previous visits (for silly old nostalgic reasons) we had spent our time consuming the drinks and wondering how the hell the place made a profit, and if it didn’t then just what was going on. We are ever of a suspicious turn of mind. But, that evening – full of people. When I say ‘people’ I mean that the tables were filled by what looked like a convention of ageing (perhaps retired) bank managers and accountants. I wonder what they told the folk back home about their holidays. The stared at their drinks and at each other in faint surprise which increased when they noticed the fairly unaccountant-like picture show at the back of the bar!

Our wander around after the first drink led us to a serene Liam, resplendent in a sheer blue gown outside ‘La Belles’. Our continuing circumperambulation of the Yumbo discovered to our bemused view all sorts and manner of folk. I wonder if their mummies knew what they were all up to. Hmm!

Indolence took away my determination to complete the blog yesterday and bed seemed the much more enticing possibility. And so it was.

Our morning cooking session was enlivened by Toni throwing himself into the foaming brine for the third (3rd) time this holiday, something of a record given the low temperature of the water! I shall say nothing of the lack of immediate facilities which prompt so many reluctant swimmers to embrace the waves!

Another excellent lunch which always throws into relief the rather lacklustre meals waiting for us at the hotel. This valedictory lunch was made especially poignant because of the location: a perfect view of the beach and the rolling waves and the sun, mother, the sun. I wondered why my usual depression at this stage of a holiday, to wit, the last day, was not so intense as usual. Then Toni said those immortal words that I have waited so long to hear, “At least you don’t have to go to work when you get back!” How right he is.

What I do have to go back to is the continuing situation with the house which does not get any better. I also have the never ending problem of my CRB. But with the CRB at least I have opened a file, which is a sure sign of things resolving themselves in my favour [see also: HSBC; Starlight Blinds; Insurance Companies; and other too numerous to mention] or at least giving me a moral victory.

When we finally arrived back at the hotel, we were just in time to see the Gay Pride Street Parade. This was scheduled to have finished at least an hour earlier, but you can just imagine the prissy fussiness of determined Queens at the start of the parade!

Well, it certainly didn’t give Rio a run for its money but there were a few moments of high camp visual fun. I was on a balcony three storeys up so my photos all have a slightly detached feeling but I’ll post some of them anyway. Never let it be said that cultural pursuits were ever far from my heart!

The fact that we have had an extra day in the hotel to compensate for the departure time of two o’clock in the morning has made all the difference. We have not had to leave the hotel by midday. We are at the moment shouting abuse at the television while watching the travesty of natural justice that is the Eurovision Song Contest. The Balkans and the unreal countries of Eastern Europe have hijacked the competition so that any country west of Austria will find it impossible to win. At present the poor old United Kingdom has obtained null points. We should, as a point of high policy at once leave this cosy little Eastern enclave of racial voting and establish a Eurovision Song Contest of the Real Countries where, with any real luck, someone will vote for us!

Such bitterness over something as pointless as a song contest is rather sad but I really do think that there is some sort of lesson to be drawn from this farrago of nonsense, but I am too depressed to bring it into print.

Roll on a two hour wait in the airport!

But one doesn't do that!

I have reverted to childhood. I am peeling. How shaming. This is because of the British predilection to throw oneself at the sun at every opportunity. For too long, too soon. I fear that copious amounts of the magical Boots lotion for we devotees of helial overdose will prove to be ineffectual in this late state of epidermical abuse! Ah well, I will learn my lesson as I walk and slowly shed showers of dry skin in my wake. This is one time that we should listen to Australians. You don’t see that sentence printed very often do you?

The meal in Oscar’s was a chequered affair. The meal was substantial international cuisine and while I rather enjoyed the heavy handed approach to food, it wasn’t entirely to Toni’s taste. We made the fundamental mistake of assuming that the selection of starters would be fairly traditional; they weren’t. This was fine for me, but the extensive use of cheese meant that I had a rather liberal meal before my main course! It’s an ill wind etc.

After Oscar’s we went to Hollywood in the Yumbo Centre and had copious amount of alcohol which helped us to cope with the procession of humanity that minced, flounced, paraded, walked, ran, limped, sashayed, tottered, glared, argued, drank, minced and processed across our shocked vision. There is something about a gay of a certain age and the slightly too young clothes that he affects to wear that is infinitely almost depressing. But gentle ludicrousness adds to the joy of nations and it was a pleasant (sort of) time as the pasado passed.

This evening has the first of a series of free concerts in The Yumbo: one hopes for the worst!

Well, the concert has been dismissed in favour of ‘resting’ after a strenuous meal. We are beginning to perfect the practical ways to ‘rest.’ No holiday is complete without filling in your ‘I-spy’ book of resting. We have rested in hotels, cafes, swimming pools, pubs, beaches, the sea, restaurants and in our imaginations – we can do little more!

The story of the house continues to depress. I have virtually given up the real expectation that the present buyers will go through to completion. I suppose it is good for one to get the ‘dark night of the soul’ experience in house selling over and done with so that one may move on!

One can hardly wait to get back!

Bring on the bling!

At last I have succumbed to the prevailing cultural imperatives in Olde England (or at least Weary Wales) and decided to dip my elegant psyche in the dominant mode of dress of the majority of my fellow citizens and ‘bring on the bling.’

It is my accustomed pleasure to indulge one of my many passions by buying a ‘holiday watch.’ As the name suggests, this entails my spending a relatively small sum of money on a relatively vulgar timepiece, the outré nature of which is only allowable by the appellation of ‘holiday’ to it.

This vacation has been plagued with a veritable plethora of vulgarity in the form of watches that even I, in holiday mode, have baulked at the releasing of sums (however small) on the mind numbingly inept design which passes for fashion in the watch world nowadays.

Swatch (god bless it) has always produced a watch which passes all the tests that I apply to a possible candidate for purchase. They tick all the right boxes: luminous, second hand, numbers, day, and date, waterproof. This tick list can be thrown to the four winds if something of elegance and flair catches my fancy. Nothing, however, has rustled the money in my wallet, until today.

Our usual (late) departure for the playa was made even later by the hurried preparations for Toni’s birthday.

While he was in the shower I wrote his two cards, packed his smaller present and blew up a colourful selection of balloons emblazoned with the inscription of ‘Happy Birthday.’ I also placed two numerical candles of his age (ah! breathe it not in Garth!) on his pillow. My idea of having a cake brought into the restaurant with the two candles blazing flamboyantly on top of a birthday cake was just too over the top for my reticent Toni!

As usual, Toni had failed to put money on his mobile so that the massed family of Catalonia would not be able to get in touch with him on his special day. The failure of his mobile was only really apparent when we had taken a taxi to Maspalomas, and by this time the bling had been seen and seized by my good self, so I was in what might be described as a ‘mellow’ mood, so I was not averse to hunting through the telephone shops of the area to refresh the penurious state of his mobile. Which we did.

My bling however, refers to a watch. A watch of transcendent vulgarity - in a way. It is indeed a trusted Swatch, but a Swatch with leanings towards the gaudy. I see it as a metaphor for the way that modern day Switzerland is going. To the dogs I hope and trust, ‘cos, as is well known, you can never like or trust a neutral, especially a neutral with the chequered past of that unscrupulous country.

The watch is gold with a golden strap and a golden face. The golden face is set with sparkling diamond cut plastic at the hours and there are the usual three small dials that indicate figures which mean nothing to anybody. The hands are large and luminous and there is a sweep second hand. To counteract the voluptuous nature of this gleam of gold the watch itself is set in translucent plastic – just to keep the wearer in touch with reality!

It is large, vulgar fun and just the thing for a holiday timepiece. Toni is consumed with jealousy and barely content with his presents!

Tonight to Puerto Rico and Oscar’s for what I hope will be a suitably opulent meal for Toni’s birthday night.

With Jonathan as part of the party it is highly unlikely that my fingers will be dextrous enough to add further to this daily record, so make do with what you’ve got!

I’ll drink to your health! Salud!

Sun, Sand and Gadgets!

[This is actually the blog for Monday the 7th May – practicalities of technology made accurate posting impossible.]

My snobbery level is now reaching critical mass.

Travelling with my fellow citizens from Bristol to Las Palmas tested my love of humanity (in the abstract) by forcing my attitude to be tested by practicalities of sitting behind a be-ringed, metallic yellow haired, stick thin, flesh showing laced leather trousers wearing seat lowerer. In a Thomson plane (aka ‘Sardine Travel’) the correct approach to transportation in the airborne cattle trucks is never (NEVER) recline your seat.

The lack of space for the passenger behind you in the upright seat position means that any deviation from the vertical delivers swift physical pain on important extremities of the unfortunate traveller behind you. The bleached bitch in front of me ignored this basic precept of international travel and attempted to deviate from the upright. She reckoned without my stalwart knees, which, in spite of severe punishment restrained her deviational activity and hopefully ruined her expected expansive pleasure based on the misery of the Forgotten One behind her.

I dwell on length on this ageing (no ageism implied) brazen bully because she was a representative of the folk travelling to Las Palmas. The bejewelled, ¾ length trouser wearing brigade (just that bit too old to get away with their clothing) were out in force and, instead of lurking in the shadows and shunning the gaze of reputable humans, they confronted respectability with their shrieking encomiums to drink. The female of the species, with the sort of smooth, flawless complexion which is not achieved without industrial depths of concrete like make up and cantilevered eyelashes which defy all known laws of physics, behaved with the vulgar abandon usually confined to the more ruthless gangs of hen party terrorists.

In spite of having been given numbered seats for the flight, as soon as the departure gate was announced the vulgar herd jumped to the gate like the French and waited in line to wait to board a but to wait to depart to wait to enter the plane to wait to get to their seats to wait for departure.

Were one a politician, then looking at experienced travellers acting like brainless lemmings might encourage policies which predicated a complete lack of belief in the intelligence of the electorate. Wait a minute, now hat I look aback over the last ten years I do believe that I can see something which . . . let it pass, let it pass!

As this was a flight to Las Palmas it would not have been complete without its quota of queens. There they were, pastiches of stereotypes with their skin tight tee shirts, plane enveloping attitudes and a playful disregard to the boringly straight rules of in-board behaviour.

Add to this melange of chav and queen a sprinkling of school age kids extracted from their schools to join their squalling baby siblings for a cheap family holiday and you have the ingredients for three and a half hours of simmering hell.

It was, therefore, no surprise that although we had an entire small coach to take us to the hotel the requested repast in our room after our epic flight was not there.

There is, however, a real advantage to having a hotel room next to the Yumbo Centre: food at all hours! We ventured out past fornicating couples to find a perfectly acceptable café inhabited only by two policemen with charmingly camp companions which served much needed sustenance to we weary travellers.

We did not get to bed much before five am but we were up with the (latish) larks to get down to the beach.

Kiosco siete seems to have migrated nearer to the lighthouse, which is a good thing, but my feet still hurt from the amount of walking that we have done today.

The weather is glorious, but the water glacial. It is my personal belief that the Gulf Stream has indeed stopped or reversed itself. I was forcibly reminded of a youthful holiday when, on a blazingly hot August day I flung myself into Lake Windermere and had the exhilarating (if life threatening) experience of having all the air punched out of your body by the sheer inhumanly impossible coldness of British water. If the water does not warm up by a factor of ten, then Toni is not going near the H2O for the rest of the holiday!

First reaction to the buffet in the hotel is positive, which is more than can be said for the sub standard of the furnishing of the rooms. However, far be it from me to be impetuous in my judgements! Let bile simmer and mature so that the killing blow is all the more gruesomely fatal!

It’s not much of a philosophy, but it works for me!

[This is the actual point at which the blog for Tuesday 8th May actually starts – blame the hotel for not having a hot spot.]

Service is restored! To all my unique reader I say do not loose faith when all it takes is vast sums of money to compensate for the cheap hotel’s lack of a ‘hot spot’ to find an entry to the internet.

I am, as you know, the last person in the world to resent having to lay out more than a fortnight’s largess when a Jobseeker just to stay in touch!

However the money is nothing when compared with the unending delight of being close to all of human knowledge via the net.

For example, when cooking on the beach this afternoon and reading with increasing disbelief ‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov, I was searching for the apposite word to describe Nabokov’s style and could only come up with the phrase ‘jewel like’ when I knew that there was a single word which I should have been thinking of. Kiosco Siete on Maspalomas beach has what one might refer to as distractions, but thank god for myopia which renders all surroundings pastel blurs and only the printed page remains in focus when in close proximity to the eyes. I was therefore able to concentrate with some intensity and muse, as the word did not ‘come’ on the difficulties ahead of me when trying to form a vocabulary in Spanish!

I tried the old trick of explaining my predicament to Toni in an attempt to force my memory to come up with the appropriate word. All that achieved was an ‘old fashioned’ look from the aforesaid person and no word emerging from the neurons in the grey matter.

Reading recommenced and the irritation of not remembering the bloody word highlighted each sentence and my irritation increased with the frustration of fading memory. So I gave up. And, by magic, the word ‘lapidary’ sprang, as ‘twere unbidden to my mind. And I think that means ‘jewel like’ and if it doesn’t then there is no hope for my learning another language if I can’t bring to mind such quotidian words as ‘lapidary.’

Anyway to the hotel is hand.

The Neptuno is supposed to be a four star hotel. The room is barely acceptable with air conditioning but no facilities for making tea and coffee! The balcony does look out over the pool but tangentially and we have a much better view of passers by in the Yumbo Centre staring at the loonies who would willingly patronise a hotel with such a view!

The food is good. The breakfast fare predictable but plentiful with the tea undrinkable. The selection of flavoured teas is inexplicably wide until you notice the vast number of Germans partaking of the unpalatable liquid horror that constitutes that heavenly beverage known as tea. I have yet to partake of a ‘commercial’ cup of tea worthy of the name. There is a certain about of missionary work to be done when I arrive!

I think it fair to leave a final judgement on the hotel until the end of the holiday.

Though I can feel my mind closing, even as I type.

Packing as an Art

There is only one way to start packing for a holiday. Utilising the power of Panic!

I find that the adrenaline packed potential which comes with the realisation that time is running out and the passport is not in the place you thought it was – is unmatchable. The less time you spend packing, the more acceptable it is to find out that you have forgotten something! It’s that simple.

I have tried to find my prescription swimming goggles, but that really was a hope beyond expectation. I’m sure that I have seen them some time in the past few years, but the sightings have never coincided with the timing of a holiday. But I live in hope – it’s the only way.

This is the Year of Green. As a previous blog noted I have purchased a solar powered unit which should ensure that I travel light (the pun is intended) to Gran Canaria without the heavy electronic baggage of transformers for the various gadgets without which no holiday could be considered tolerable.

In spite of the continual advice of Toni, I still have not managed to match his ability to pack the minimum required. I do not think that I have been on a single holiday without bringing back some item of pristine clothing. Minimum packing is an untaught skill which should be part of the national curriculum. After all, we all need to be aware of our carbon debt and the lighter we travel the less our debt is. You know it makes sense.

There is a particular flavour to the day before you go on holiday. It is one of those times where time itself is flexible (and not in a good way) which at least prepares you for the ever intriguing ‘time’ which governs the temporal aspects of departure lounges of airports.

This is a shorter than normal blog to allow an early night so that the panic of packing tomorrow can be done with bright eyed attention to detail.

Some hope!

I want my money back!

The concert that never was.

This was the night that I didn’t see The Zombies.
I think that this is the first time that I have got my money back for a concert I didn’t; experience. Though, thinking about it, there have been many occasions when I should have been given my money back!

After the indifferent support band had completed their set: the support singer just that irritatingly slightly out of tune and the guitarist stage right strumming away as if his mind was in a different place. The keyboard player too often resorted to the charmingly archaic percussive displacement activity of maracas and tambourine which added to the odd sound that they produced. To me they sounded like a strange mixture of The Shadows and The Beach Boys – tuneful but dated.

The end of their set was characterised by the ending: they started packing away before the last note had finished reverberating. Not only did it look messy but it was insufferably impolite! Having said all that, I did like one of their songs, a rhythmically tuneful number which pushed a number of Baby Boomer buttons!

The announcement at the end of the set that the van containing the equipment and group members of the main act had broken down on the M4. Twice. Was not welcome news.

Later information showed that the group could only arrive and set up by (at best) eleven pm, with a two hour set that meant that the end of the concert could only be at one o’clock, and getting home something like half past one. For me that was fine, but for Alison with a full teaching day this was not really ideal. So, end of evening. At least we had a good chat lubricated by a liberal amount of alcohol!

It was an evening also enlivened by the company we met in the first bar that we went to before the support act was even on. It is not often that you expect to see your ex-head teacher in a louche bar in the docks attending the same concert of an almost forgotten band. Talk about coincidences!

So an evening which also gave me time to write this blog. Not what the plan was but you must go with the flow.

Good experience!

Of course - not!

When the best part of a course is escaping for a few minutes to buy five copies of The Echo, then perhaps, just perhaps something is not going quite as the course leaders hoped.

I learned little or nothing on the course, but then I didn’t really expect to. Self fulfilling prophecy.

This was a tired course with uninspiring printed material which failed to distinguish itself either as text book for later reading or as interactive pages to ignite discussion. It is a sure sign of a course that needs to be ditched when the course leaders mock and sneer at some of the statements. They showed no ownership of this course. They should have rewritten it some time ago or ditched it altogether.

This third day was completely lacking in dynamism: extended breaks; broken promises; rubbishing of course content; disaffected course members; early finish. It all mounts up to a course which really is not delivering. At the end of the course you wondered about the finances and weather it was all worth it.

The venue got steadily worse with noisy comings and goings. At times I felt as though I was being taught in a station waiting room! The flimsy course completion certificate seemed to be a suitable metaphor for the whole experience.

A whole new saga of my CRB is developing. Someone somewhere is not telling me the strict truth.

The story so far includes the usual disbelief at the length of time that the powers that be take to provide a certificate but complicated by the conflicting stories of the main players.

I signed the application form on the 12th of March and assumed that it would be countersigned and sent off immediately. This, I am assured by the agency which gave me the paperwork, is exactly what happened. From time to time I have contacted the agency to find out what was happening to my application. I have been assured that the CRB has been phoned and progress checked.

It was with angry astonishment that when I finally phoned the CRB myself on May 1st, I was told that my application had arrived in the building on the 30th of April and the process had been started on the very day on which I was phoning. My enquiry about the number of times that anyone had phoned about my application drew the response, “None.” I was assured (this time by the CRB) that any enquiries would have been added to my file.

The agency’s response has been more bluster than anything else and the confidently, reassuringly silky voice of the agency manager produced exactly the opposite effect from that which she intended. After her oily dismissal of the CRB and her gloatingly smug declaration that the CRB had accepted blame and my claim had been accelerated, I felt unaccountably uncomfortable. How to explain the inexplicable? According to the manager, my application must have spent some time on the desk of someone in the CRB. They are like that, she intimated.

That prompted me to phone the CRB again and put to them what had just been put to me. They were not, it might be said, happy with the version of events the manager relayed. Neither, it must be said, am I. This story will run and run!

Our thoughts are turning more and more to Gran Canaria – though not to the exclusion of worries about the lack of movement on the house.

Sigh!

I have a little list

Memories of the ‘novel’ that I wrote in response to the iniquitous ‘Communication Course’ rise unbidden to mind as I complete Day 2 of the three day mandatory course for we folk who have been out of work for over six months.

When a teacher has another person (i.e. adult) in their class while teaching then the pedagogic style changes and consciously or unconsciously the teacher being ‘observed’ puts on more of a show. It always happens. Always in my experience at least. It is therefore instructive that the two course leaders don’t seem to be following the well trodden path of exhibitionism. Or at least I hope they aren’t. That would be too sad.

There has been little attempt to differentiate teaching material to suit the wide range of needs of the small group. One member has obvious hearing difficulties which were highlighted in the first session and nothing has been done to accommodate his needs. Requests about mobile phones, though reiterated are not enforced. An unscheduled staff meeting eats into course time. A lack of focus characterises all the sessions; the delivery is meandering and points are lost in reminiscence. Grammar (Does this matter? Yes it does.) is poor. Handouts are uninspired. Chart work is tattered and from another course. Supplementary material is not forthcoming. This feels like a tired course delivered by leaders who are ‘experienced’ though not inspiring.

The man who spoke to us about a possible £200 credit to ‘buy’ courses was astonishingly inept in his delivery: he had little information and little skill in conveying what he had. The fact that he looked unnervingly like one of the characters from the Muppets, Statler, the heckler in the balcony, was distracting. He focused on me to a disturbing extent; I am rather dreading the sessions tomorrow – fixed smiles all round.

My colleagues continue to develop as characters and I am pleased to announce that one of the younger members of the group actually took is coat off today, but the other resolutely kept his on and juggled the batteries from his two mobile phones while keeping one powered up because he had brought his mains charger with him! What sort of person brings a mains unit to a course? There’s still a day to go; who knows what revelations can yet ensue?

A disturbing phone call from the estate agent who mistakenly phoned me and assumed I was the buyer. The agent was ‘chasing up’ the survey. This is an unsettling development: a mortgage is not issued until the survey has been done, so why delay? Something else about which to worry.

Still, tomorrow is another day, my dear and why should I give a damn. So to speak.

Are we sitting comfortably?

I would not like to have me as a pupil in my class.

Day 1 of the course for those people who have been out of work for six months.

The course members are a group of men from very different backgrounds. It is interesting to speculate on the different reasons for our little group to be unemployed for so long. It was notable that the differences showed themselves most clearly in the attitudes to their situations that the men had. I obviously include myself here, though perhaps I should disqualify myself purely on the basis of completed application forms sent off for jobs. Everyone else had applied for between forty and sixty jobs. I had applied for none!

My requirements are, to put it mildly, niche. In fact, they are niche in niche. And rightly so!

I suppose that I am in a different position from most of the others because when my CRB arrives it will be but a step to unlimited casual wealth. Ho! Ho!

The anger of some of the members of the group is real and unsettling. They feel that so-called advisors have done nothing related to their title. I feel from listening to them that this course is the first time that anyone has really listened to them and been prepared to give good practical advice. This is not good. If these people have been out of work and have been more than prepared to move heaven and earth to get a job, then they must feel properly cheated!

I have sat as a member of a small group for a whole day and I have watched and analysed. The group leaders have been vigorously defensive, acutely aware that their audience is not there by choice. One of the course leaders blusters and is too often floundering around in the safety of her anecdotal experience masquerading as solid advice rather than following the course programme.

I always think it a bad sign when someone says about a printed page which the course members have in front of them and announces, “I’m not going to read it out,” and then does exactly that. We’ve all done it; it passes time and almost seems like real teaching – but it isn’t.

I suppose if you write off the first day as a ‘getting to know you’ experience then the course may well have worked – but day two will have to be extra intensive to make the first day worth it.

It will be interesting to see how it develops and how the characters show themselves.

We will see.

Got to pick a pocket or two!

Everyone (or is it just the people I know) has his own list of the Three Great Lies. The only one which is common, and by the way the only one which is decent, is “The cheque is in the post.” The other two are usually racist, sexist and/or obscene; if you’re lucky!

In a similar way the injunction, “You should try everything once except for [add examples],” usually includes Morris Dancing (for obvious reasons) and some unnatural sexual deviation from the present norms. For reasons which will soon become apparent I would now include ‘car boot sales’ as the equal of Morris Dancing.

Today was the day when, with packed car, I ventured into Bessemer Road Market for my first brush with open air retail marketing.

I think that the most positive things that I can say about the experience was that when the official came around to take the entry fee of six pounds he castigated my neighbours for encroaching on the ‘common ground.’ This was the area along which the denizens of the area complete their passeo occasionally interrupting their peregrinations to bestow a few coins on the hopeful peasants lining their route with tables full of quaint rubbish for their delectation. My tables’ positioning was pronounced by the official to be “perfect.” One takes compliments where one can find them!

All human life was there. From eight in the morning to one o’clock in the afternoon I staffed my tables and watched the Cardiffian procession wander by. By their reactions, so may ye know them.

One of the object d’art that I set out alluringly on my tables was a more than usually hideous green, bulbous glass vase with a narrow, squat neck. People without number (well, lots) noticed this vase, picked it up and turned it upside down to glean what knowledge they could get from the little sticker on its base. I think that they have been watching too many ‘antiques’ programmes, but I bet that they don’t know what they are looking for. Presumably the ‘made for Habitat’ logo did not persuade them as the article remained unsold.

The parsimony that one and all displayed was breathtaking. Value for money took on a new meaning when trying to get filthy lucre out of that lot!

My conversations with customers ranged from frank mutual incomprehension, via a short interlude in fractured French, to a learned discussion about the auditory excitement of using an old Zenith SLR. But, these moments of interest were interspersed with long periods of waiting for customer involvement with the riches on display. Throughout my time ‘selling’ there was a raucous accompaniment from the butcher who was stationed on the periphery of the cars and was augmented with an unreliable microphone. His tedious, unfunny, homophobic, just plain rude and uninteresting commentary on life luckily became an ignorable irritation rather than an offensive screed. At once point he said that he had been at the market for twenty eight years and one shuddered inwardly for the weekly torment that must have meant for everyone within earshot.

The cultural diversity of Cardiff was clearly on display with the sort of cosmopolitan feel which in times past was only visible in central London.

I almost made triple figures from the takings for the morning’s work, but when I think about how much the original prices of the objects ‘given away’ were, I could weep!

However, I contented myself with counting the money!

Fortuitous accidents?

Serendipity.

I like words which have their origins in Literature (with a capital L) like the positive dictionary of neologisms ostensibly ‘invented’ by Shakespeare.

There are, of course, quibbles about Shakespeare’s sole authorship of words which cannot be traced to an earlier attribution, but, what the hell, give the guy his due, to have invented one word is more than most people ever achieve in their lifetimes to be credited with so many is something else! Say only 10% are his actual coinage, still impressive! You can check out the full list at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_invented_by_Shakespeare While Shakespeare has given us some wonderful words like ‘incarnadine.’ This is a word which I am still waiting for to use in conversation: there are disgracefully few opportunities for regicide nowadays in our over regulated society!

He has also given us ‘accommodation’ which is difficult to forgive. The word, I grant you, is a very useful one – and for that Shakespeare should have all credit. But, given that Shakespeare himself spelled his name in a variety of ways, even on the same document, I very much doubt that he was consistent in his orthography.

When I was younger I was very much in the same camp as Owl [WOL] in Winnie the Pooh of whom it was said, “He could spell his own name WOL, and he could spell Tuesday so that you knew it wasn't Wednesday but his spelling goes all to pieces over delicate words like measles and buttered toast.” For me, the idea that one day I would be academic enough to spell ‘cauliflower’ with confidence and without blind terror seemed (like marriage) to be a consummation a few steps beyond possibility. 50% isn’t bad! Words [I just typed ‘words’ as ‘wrods’ but Word just corrected it for me – if only I had had a spelling program built into my young head!] like ‘accommodation’ seemed designed solely to be used against me by the arch villain, the hated nemesis of my early years Fred Schonell.

His Essential Spelling List (now available from Amazon from 15p – puts him in his place) blighted my life. I grew to hate the nondescript colour covered little book which haunted me throughout primary school. It was from that hated book that we were given lists of words to learn. Every Friday a test and a feeling of failure to take into the weekend!

In the last two years of primary school I was taught by an old friend of my father’s, a man I knew as Uncle Eric. Before I entered his class I was given a firm lecture by my parents that under no circumstances whatsoever should I make any reference to my relationship with him. I was to refer to him always as Mr Morgan and he would treat me like any other pupil.

To be fair to me, as a child brought up with two teachers as parents, you get used to parents talking and then suddenly turning on you with the injunction that, “You must not say anything of this to anyone else!” As a child growing up listening to things like this, you spend the whole of your youth wondering just who you could possibly tell who might be even remotely interested in the school ‘gossip’ you have just ignored.

With Mr Morgan, I only once make the mistake of referring about him as Uncle Eric and I was able to pass that off as a joke with my fellow school mates. And, by the way, you would have been hard pressed to see any favouritism in the way that I was treated. In the spelling tests on a Friday I was castigated as roundly as anyone else if my performance did not get up to standard. Indeed on one notorious Friday my performance was so poor that I was slapped around the legs as punishment! It later transpired that the list of words on which we were tested was a different one from the list that we had been given to learn. Such unfairness!

This incident gave rise to the most belligerent apology that I have ever had! It was, obviously, my fault that I didn’t point out to the teacher that the list was different. I probably deserved the smacks for other crimes undiscovered but, in the interests of justice I had a punishment credit to be used to cover further indiscretions. That credit did not last long! It was ‘spent’ within a few days.

I have much to thank Uncle Eric for. The somewhat laissez faire teaching of my first primary school teacher gave me an abiding interest in the fascinating digression and ‘unconsidered trifles’ in the world of knowledge, but it was Uncle Eric who focussed my attention on the basic necessities which got me through the 11+ examination and into the rarefied academic purlieus of The Cardiff High School for Boys on The Newport Road – and the rest, as they say, is history.

I would merely point out that my mother once said of Cardiff High, “That school has taught you nothing but arrogance.”

Trust your mother for the truth!

But back to serendipity. You’d forgotten about that hadn’t you? Words from literature? Like ‘chortle’?

I was wondering if it fitted the world of discovery which came with the Great Sorting of possessions which has been prompted by the immanent dispossession of the house which contains them. Things not only lost but also forgotten leapt back into my world as finger pried deeper and deeper into the morass of wires, trinkets and papers which constitute ‘storage’ for me. Many electronic devices starved for so long of their nourishment have now been reunited with the lifelines and electricity has surged anew through their famished circuits.

Can it be serendipity if you start off wanting to find things to fill a few boxes and be paraded for the vulgar view with an end of monetary gain? Does the intention take away from the basic serendipity?

Such questions exercise me. Especially as I didn’t have a swim this morning.

One of my favourite words!

The power of words! A single word. In the right context it can mean so much!

I know (in my head) that the mere word ‘sold’ on the agent’s board for the house means very little. Given the vagaries of the system which this country has for the selling of a house, anything can happen before I get my hands on the modest sum of money that is supposed to keep me in refined poverty for the rest of my life!

I have delved even more deeply into the essential possessions which I have cunningly kept behind from storage to ensure that our lives are at the basic level of acceptable civilization. I seem to have kept behind an inordinate amount of material, all of which will have to be sorted, weighed in the balance and I hope mostly found wanting, because I don’t want to take too much to Spain!

Once again the cleansing power of shredding has sustained me through a day which has drained me as a bewilderingly disparate selection of dated objects, which were once objects of casual desire, were paraded before me for judgement.

The option of a car boot sale is still something which has a sort of sick fascination for me. Richard has said that he is going to Bessmer Road to try and get rid of some of his stuff and it is an incentive for me to emulate him with the saleable elements from my depleted home.

I merely wonder at the motley collection that I will be able to amass. I suppose that the trick is not trying to remember exactly how much you paid for the stuff that you are selling for an embarrassingly small percentage of the original price.

I will have to remember that any further delving into the soon to be emptied cupboards and drawers must be self contained. The horror which greeted the chaos of emptied containers littering the floor before their final destination had been decided was a reaction that I do not want to observe again. Toni is a tidy person and the happy chaos which I can endure in the cause of eventual order is not something he can stand: in the interests of harmony I must tidy up the chaos at the end of the day before he returns from work – no matter what subterfuge I use to give the impression of superficial order.

The establishment of cleared surfaces and the presentation of tidied areas by the hurried hiding of extraneous articles which might hinder the appreciation of a potential buyer are second nature to me now!

I should remember my recent training!

Frail paper?

My past is in tatters and shreds.

Quite literally.

I am sure that there is supposed to be something cathartic about the cleansing which accompanies a sorting through of old papers, but it does take determination to start the process and see it through.

Assuming that the selling of the house is progressing satisfactorily (a dangerous assumption I know, but one that I want to make) it has become necessary to start one of the final processes: the sorting and destruction of Those Things Not Needed in Catalonia.

The ‘easiest’ part of this process is based on paper. Old documents, tax returns, letters and other codices – piled one on another like geological strata of my personal history. To use another geological term, there are also ‘erratics’ odd documents or photographs which are seemingly misplaced in their drift of documents and by their incongruity they create disconcerting juxtapositions.

I shredded programmes and information from my university days: memories of odd dramatic entertainments in which I played characters ranging from a surrealistic professor to an American father by way of a King. I can still remember the barely stifled mirth of my so-called friends as I assayed an American accent: some humiliation lives on long after the event! There were plaintive letters to the tax man asking for tax relief for a typewriter I bought. Refused. Books I bought. Partially accepted. Early attempts at well meaning work sheets reflecting hours of work and limited pupil effectiveness. Letters from organizations, bodies, associations, committees, firms, shops, friends, colleagues, unions and councils. All shredded.

Not all of those sheets of A4 were of equal importance, or of equal emotional force. It really is odd to look at something which refers to something important and deeply personal, yet it doesn’t make it to the storage container to go to Spain. There is something audacious and strangely liberating in destroying ‘unimportant’ aspects of a life; transient and fragile as a piece of paper, yet containing a key to memory as strong and immediate as a jolt of electricity.

And before anyone thinks that I have been cavalier with the past; I have destroyed nothing which is not contained in another, stronger document which is safe in the cardboard box of Catalan essentials!

As the days pass I will have to delve deeper and deeper into the intimidating mass of ‘stuff’ which still remains in Cardiff. Having just had yet another communication from the solicitors asking me all sorts of questions; one of which needed my response that I would leave the house cleared and tidy, there is a ‘moral imperative’ [Bob Geldof] that I start clearing now!

I have always found teaching advertisements interesting. Although many of them are militantly worthless and defiantly bland one or two of them have real intelligence or take presentation a step forward by producing something which is a little masterpiece of concentrated information. Two of the Barclay’s adverts which use the hapless youth with exploding machinery and interesting at each viewing, while the animation on the Citroen advert is extraordinary in its attention to detail in the presentation of the car as skater.

The advert which has occupied a few idle moments is neither of these, but the Gillette advert. Quite apart from the glorious inanity of the pseudo nuclear imagery of a sort of bicoloured particle accelerator to give added pizzazz to a very ordinary multi-blade razor, I do wonder at their choice of men as models.

Gillette seems to have a positive policy in using ostensibly handsome clean cut American men with zero sex appeal. I don’t really know how they do it; but time after time they people the screen with testosterone fuelled ciphers which seem to have no real existence outside the bright lights of the Gillette Universe. This is a good thing as, were the world to be populated with Gillette men, it would gradually lose its population as these chisel chinned, neutered pieces of superficiality would surely have ‘difficulty’ in producing progeny.

BT man seems to have a more convincing chanced to reproduce – and he would never make it to the gallery of gallants of Gillette. Thank god

Saint Cecilia Satisfied?

As a person who is never knowingly under gadgeted and, following the moral precepts of my mother with regard to retail imperatives, I have found something else on which to squander my money. Which in my case I have not got – to paraphrase Reed!

Part of the (admittedly specious) reasoning behind the purchase of the all-singing all-dancing laptop on which this blog is being composed was that I could put all my 900+ CDs on its hard drive. Which I have done. The physical bodies of the CDs are now residing, zombie like, in the twilight world which is the Pickford’s storage facility, while their virtual souls flit easily among the electrons on this elegant piece of hardware playing carelessly in the ensnaring arms of i-tunes.

From Abba to Albeniz, Bach to Bette Midler, and Cher to Charles Ives – well, you begin to see the point; there is a wide selection of music contained in my collection. I obviously have pretensions to a liberal appreciation of music, but surely I must aspire to more than merely a parasitic leaching of the vitality of music as a passive listener; what about the creative act of music.

So, I’ve bought a roll up piano.

I have not, am not and probably will not be a piano player. The greatest musical height that I have scaled (ho! ho!) is a painful playing of Fur Elise. The opening played with winning legato while the more complex parts (requiring chords and other such extravagances) played in a most funereal lento.

Alas, I fear that my most accomplished performance was many years ago under the tutelage of Miss Cowley when I finally mastered the complex fingering of ‘Hunting the hare.’ This was a piece of fiendish complexity requiring the playing of as many as three notes together to render its haunting melody. Indeed its cadences were so much part of my being that my mother once looked in at my diligent practising and found a story book propped up on the piano music stand while my unconscious hands played ‘Hunting the hare’ ad infinitum!

The inability to play has not, however, blocked my wanting to play and the lack of a keyboard (locked with the zombie CDs deep in the heart of Pickfords) has occasioned considerable frustration.

Maplin – that store of unusually incomprehensible, yet strangely desirable electronic gadgetry, seemed to offer a painless solution when they advertised roll up pianos. At a reasonable price. They were, of course, good sellers (sic.) and of course soon went. When I finally decided that it was just the thing for me the cupboard was bare.

I have spent the last few months idly trying to find a roll up piano whose price did not stray into three figures. Maplin, while agreeing that they had sold them, adopted the when-it’s-gone-it’s-gone approach and virtually resurrected the old car mechanic’s low whistle of disbelief when asked to give an estimate of when they might be back in the catalogue.

When dealing with electronic goods you have to adapt the usual way of choosing an assistant to help you. It is my invariable practise to veer towards ‘women of a certain age’ in shops as they are more likely to know the stock, answer questions in a meaningful way and know when to ask others for help. This is not a method which avails you anything in a shop of electronics. Here the approach is to choose a youth, a boy, the more callow the better. They, after all, are part of the generation that do not need to refer to the instruction manuals for any electronic equipment. Or indeed for anything else, ask their teachers!

On each visit to Maplin I asked a different assistant and from each one I had a different answer. From ‘they are just seasonal’ through ‘they are out of stock and we don’t know when we will have more’ to ‘they have some at head office and they are available by post.’ There is something to be said for perseverance.

It has now arrived and it is a very odd beast indeed. Smelling strongly of the rubber of which it is made and four octaves to play with, the keys seem to be larger than those of an ordinary piano – I know that I find it difficult to stretch an octave, but perhaps I am out of practise.

Nothing loath to push myself to the limit, I have taken ‘My first recorder book’ out of the library and will ruthlessly attempt to emulate the six year olds that this book is aimed at and will pick out the single line of music on my rubbery keys.

I will do this, however, in the privacy of an empty house when Toni is at work. I feel that my creative genius needs nurturing gently with the ambiance that only solitude can bring, not being punctured by cruelly ironic remarks.

Well, I have attempted to play my signature pieced (the easy bit of Fur Elise) and it’s bloody hard on a piece of extended rubber. Chords (ha!) are especially difficult, but it is especially pleasant to pick out tunes and try and get back to level of mediocrity which I can live with!

An excellent lunch with Richard in the Bali in Caroline Street. I am getting used to being the only customer in an establishment, but I didn’t have a programme to read this time, so ordered a bottle of red wine instead: how fleeting is the attraction of culture! The fried potato cake as a starter was just that and, even with the fairly tasty dipping sauce, forgettable. The Singapore Noodles which followed was excellent making a very creditable meal for however much it cost.

The powers that be are being very quiet about the house. Paul Squared’s repeated assurances that no news is good news is not something which I find comforting.

I will continue to wait and worry!