It's that time of the year!

“Risk of ice!”

This chilling message flashed up on the car computer, its ominous warning presaged by a little moue of disappointment from the vehicle in the form of a plaintive bleep, as if to sympathize with my horror.

Yesterday, during an otherwise pleasant and delicious lunch, Caroline informed me that it had, at one time, snowed in Castelldefels! Admittedly it had only been for one morning and her children had only been able to build a tiny snowman. But snow! In Castelldefels! My world has turned upside down and it is as if I can hear the cruel cackles of mocking laughter from my erstwhile friends trapped in the damp and frosty islands of the north.

Perhaps I am overreacting, and there is, after all, the rest of the day for Castelldefels to get its act together and produce the sunshine of which I know it is capable. The chair on the balcony is facing, optimistically, towards the east. I cast anxious glances through the window, trying to ignore the imprints of Carles’ hands still clearly visible since his visit last Sunday, searching for the first glimmerings of that liquid gold that tempted me to Spain.

Meanwhile I will have a nice cup of tea and that will warm me up!

God bless Castelldefels: by half past three it was warm enough to sit out on the balcony facing the heat from that star ninety three million miles away and wondering where the sun tan lotion was! In December! And its good to see that there are still flowers in the garden to act as subject matter for my new camera!
The Belén (The Crib - a traditional part of Catalan Christmas decoration) is provoking some domestic controversy. I have purchased a selection of what I regard as essential figures to complete the scene. These comprise a rather dowdy (I admit it) collection of workers. But I thought that they were more of a social comment: the flamboyant extravagance of the Wise Men contrasted with the sombre poverty of the real movers and shakers. A good socialist spin on what, without the metaphysical overtones, is really rather a squalid birth scene. Toni is not impressed by the dowdy colours and pointed out that the further figures that I have bought are actually of a different size to the others.

I have to admit that when I put the holy family in their stable there certainly wasn’t, to coin a phrase, much room at the inn, and the livestock were bulging out at the sides. The original family were therefore reinstalled and the usurping holy couple were relegated to the workers: Joseph to the shepherds and wood carriers and Mary to the water carriers. They do at least swell the crowd scenes.

The Magi are not very impressive with only a trace of glitter to distinguish them from the hoi polloi. At the moment the original Magi are lurking in the computer room in their entire vulgar colour and I’m not quite sure how to integrate them into the Belén without unsettling the careful stratification of society that I have engineered on what is now a very crowded drawer top!

God knows that the Pauls will make of it all!

Open damn you!

On my first and only trip to the US of A I was constantly frustrated by faucets.

Shops, hotels and restaurants seemed to be vying with each other in providing ‘facilities’ in their ‘rest rooms’ which defied ease of use. The conventional tap with its ergonomic lugs which fit the fingers so easily and give effortless leverage to produce water were discarded utterly in the dizzying pursuit of the cutting edge.

With one particularly recalcitrant tap I pushed it, pulled it, pressed it, squeezed it and tapped it in a meaningful gesture of impatience. When all that failed I waved my hands about in a vaguely prestidigitatorial sort of way in the hope that I would break a sensor beam somewhere and that I would be thought to be shaking water from my fingers if I was wrong. Nothing. It’s the sort of experience that could make grown men weep. And I was still developing.

I could, of course, have merely left. Without washing my hands. But if you had been brought up by a mother like mine, you would have no more thought of not washing your hands after going to the toilet than you would have been able to go to bed without brushing your teeth. Some things are simply unthinking and undoable.

I was eventually saved (from possible prosecution for lingering in a men’s restroom!) by a savvy gentleman using his foot to locate a discrete button located on the floor underneath the sinks. Face and purity saved I emerged with another battle honour to add to the ribbon rows denoting successful combats with exotic bathroom ware.

This incident came back to mind as I struggled with the latest fiendish three dimensional puzzle designed as a carton of milk. It was of a fairly conventional tetra pack design (as I think it is called and which made someone or other a billionaire) with what looked like a simple screw top. It wasn’t.

As far as I could tell, the screw top was linked to a membrane which protected the surface of the milk and by opening the top, tiny internal plastic ‘blades’ cut through the membrane and allowed the hapless purchaser to get at the precious, protected liquid. The amount of force that you needed to cut through by screwing was considerable. And much more than I found comfortable with a thumb newly sensitized by the accidental insertion of a sharp edge under the nail! Even without the added pain of a self inflicted injury the force was not inconsiderable.

And then I thought of the old and the incapacitated.

Modern life is becoming more and more ‘user friendly’ – no more use for an old fashioned can opener; cans are now self opening (with a little help from the user.)

It used to be that only some tins of salmon, some oddly shaped cooked hams and all tins of sardines were provided with a metal key to unlock the delicacies inside.

I still have the scar on my right thumb from a brush with the razor sharp side of a half opened tin of salmon. As the can bit into my flesh I jerked my hand away and a trail of blood travelled up my mother (who happened to be standing on my left) and across the ceiling as my injured hand described a quick arc.

Four stitches later, and my mother’s sobbing hysterics having subsided, I was able to watch my sufferings on television. This was because my laceration coincided with a cold snap and my treatment in the Royal Infirmary was much delayed by the number of broken limbs having to be set after their owners succumbed to the slippery lure of ice. So many broken limbs indeed that a television camera was dispatched to film us all waiting, where my slowly dripping thumb was an unexpected splash of colour among fractured bones hidden in flesh.

The ability to open a tin of ham without the key snapping or the roll of metal twisting on itself and breaking was a skill few ever learned with any degree of conviction. Sardine tins would open a fraction before eagerness caused the metal to sheer, leaving the fish tantalizingly open to view, but virtually impossible to extract. If the young and lusty were constantly stymied how did the elderly ever eat?

Today, in this throw away age, more and more packaging is self opening. Except of course, it isn’t. It still needs you. And a great deal of skill.

Tins now are ring pull, with the ring pull flush to the top of the tin. The insertion of a nail to raise the metal leaves the metal un-raised: except for the thickness of a nail - which remains behind!

When eventually prised up and opened, the metal disc now attached to a finger becomes, Ninja-like, a deadly weapon. Any vicious criminal armed with eight fingers’ worth of ring pulls would give Edward Scissor Hands a run for his money!

The only real use for a ring pull is to slice open the cellophane wrapping on CDs which seem to be attached to their host with a combination of vacuum pack, heat shrink and static electricity. The little cellophane ‘tapes’ which give ‘easy access’ are merely the cynical joke of a packaging sadist who likes to see people suffering my believing that there is an ‘easy way’ into CD packaging before the inevitable stabbing which accompanies any attempted opening by knife.

Even CD packaging appears to be ‘fall apart easy’ when compared with ‘blister’ packaging. This form of torture is often the preferred from of Tantalus-like punishment which accompanies the purchase electrical accessories. The sealed edges make side access impossible. Without scalpels the plastic blister is impervious. It is the perfect cocoon.

Scissors (that you are usually too lazy to go and get from the other room) are the surest way in, but they are dangerous. Not in themselves, oh no, but in what the scissors produce. You know from previous experience that cutting a small part of the edge and then tearing does nothing. Cutting off one edge creates an opening, but one not large enough to get the contents out. You have to cut more. Being lazy you cut all around the perimeter of the plastic casing only to be cut to pieces by the blade-like trimmings that slash at your hand as your twist the packaging around.

It is a wonder that we do not hear of many more unexplained deaths of the elderly, sitting at tables clutching unopened cans in well stocked houses, with cartons of congealed milk and unused electrical appliances.

Just don’t get me started on polystyrene! A friend wrote to me recently telling me that she asked a physicist friend of hers what use was her knowledge of how to solve a quadratic equation ( x equals minus b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4 ac ALL OVER 2a – never let it be said that I learned nothing in Cardiff High School for Boys!) The friend replied that if she had a sheet of cardboard she would be able to make a box of the maximum volume. I think that that sort of knowledge is used in packaging. If what you have purchased is encased in a three dimensional puzzle of hollowed out polystyrene then getting it out of the box is an almost impossible trick to pull off. It is usually such a tight fit that tearing is the only way out – thus dislodging the heavy duty staples which inevitably find their way into your flesh.

Now for the Belén.

O false apothecary! Thy drugs are slow!

There is a significant part of me that must like life made difficult.

My medication is running low.

I realise that sentence is more like an extract from a low budget horror film script in which the psycho is giving the first intimation that something truly gruesome is about to happen. It is also a simple indication that my little plastic daily boxes are not being filled with the requisite number of ill tasting pastilles.

After my experience of terminal bureaucracy mixed with colourful ineptitude which characterised my first dealings (and second, third, fourth and fifth dealings) with the medical services in my adopted country, I had thought that my vicissitudes had settled down into bearable irritation.

Not so.

In Catalonia when you get a regular prescription they give you two: one for the immediate needs and a second dated a month in the future.

My last (and first) brush with the Catalan pharmacists was when they gave me the wrong medication and then charged me extra when they changed it! But that is old history and has been quite forgotten. Never brought to mind. What gross medical incompetence? Impossible!

Since that first traumatic brush I have complicated matters by not using the second prescription as I had enough medication from Britain which, augmented with the first prescription’s worth of stuff was enough until the present day. So I thought that I would now use the second prescription which was dated the tenth of November. Wrong!

Prescriptions last for ten days after the written date. As I was informed by the triumphantly smug lady pharmacist. I could, at once, see that my usual method of ping ponging between various medical locations was going to proceed in enervating frustration as per bloody usual. With perhaps a visit to Gavá thrown in for good measure. It always seems to make sense to my medical practice anyway.

My return to the doctors’ was to find that the place where I get the new prescriptions had closed five minutes earlier. Four hours later armed with new prescriptions I was forty-five minutes too early for the early evening opening of the chemist. Never mind, I told myself with what can only be defined as insanely self deluding optimism, I will get it done in the large shopping centre in Sant Boi. No pharmacy. Not even for ready money.

But if you think that this story demonstrates how difficult it is to get something simple like a prescription filled, try finding an A5 envelope. Or better still: don’t. Just have a glass of wine and think mellow thoughts.

That is easy in Catalonia.

I am beginning to think that envelopes are only used by businesses and that personal use was proscribed by the Holy Inquisition some time ago and placed on an Index which is still in force today!
Meanwhile work on the Belén continues.

More expense in the name of cultural assimilation!

Drive and Marvel!

Driving Toni home this evening the sunset was one of such a quality that one automatically looked around for someone to pay for such a display!

The higher clouds had a fluffy underside of sparkling pinks and orange in a deep blue generally clear sky. Shards of lower cloud were highlighted in glowing orange and yellow with an intensity which blazed. Gossamer skeins of wispy cloud draped the lower sky which was suffused with the most delicate of rose colours. Sights like that make even the most tedious motorway driving an uplifting experience!

I have started looking more closely at the history of Catalan painting. This interest has been stimulated by the extraordinary gallery of donated art which makes the museum in the Monastery of Montserrat such an unexpectedly exhilarating experience. My knowledge of Spanish art is confined to the major world figures which fill the walls of El Prado. My familiarity with Catalan artists was confined to the Big Three of Dalí, Miró and Gaudí together with the artist whom Catalans stubbornly refuse to recognize was born in Malaga, Picasso.

I am now getting to know a whole series of names like Fortuny, Alsina, Gomez, Torrescassana, Vayreda, Romá Ribera, Brull, Ramon Casas and Rusiñol - of which only Rusiñol is familiar because of his connection with Sitges. You can hardly fail to notice Rusiñol he owned two of what now are museums in the town and there is a statue of him in case you had missed the point.

An added point of confusion for me is that the book (donated by Haydn to whom all praise!) which is the catalogue for the paintings in the museum in Montserrat is in Catalan; the guide to the Museu Nacional D’Art De Catalunya is in Castellano as is my History of Spanish Art. I am, therefore likely to be the only person in Castelldefels who learns Spanish by trying to translate pretentiously overblown descriptions of works of art by anorak wearing curators! It will make buying a loaf of bread interesting linguistically!

The tempests of last night gave way this morning to fresh breezes which in turn gave way to bright sunshine! There is none of that sense of personal vindictiveness in Castelldefels that characterizes so much of the weather in the United Kingdom. I was even able to sunbathe on the balcony after lunch!

Last night we watched ‘Ghost Rider’ (Mark Steven Johnson. USA: 2007) this dramatization of a Marvel comic hero had Nicolas Cage in the title role. It was absolute rubbish, but the sort of rubbish that I like. The cinematography was excellent, more suited to a better film and the acting, considering the players had to personate Mephistopheles, his son with attendant devils and a man who turned into a flaming skeleton at night was more than acceptable.

The Jesuitical morality of the piece ensured that there was a sort of a happy ending and, more importantly, gave scope for endless sequels.

To be fair to the film it did not really pretend to anything more than it was: well executed (sic.) justice with convincing special effects and fairly mindless watching.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Needs must be satisifed!

Man is an animal composed entirely of needs.

However we try and dress up our basic drives the atavistic animal hidden beneath the skin of reason will out. It is surely depressing to realise how thin the membrane of restraint is when temptation tickles the baser instincts.

A blog, almost by definition, has to be confessional.

This is mine. I do not seek to diminish my fault by pointing out that there are forces which actively encourage me in my actions. I do not look to avoid my own guilt by pointing out that what I do directly keeps people in employment. I articulate no justification in saying that my urges are in synch with the social, political and mercantile forces which determine our society.

I have bought another camera.

I know that I have written of my own astonishment about the number of cameras that emerged when I eventually moved house and had to get rid of a mass of ‘stuff.’ I could have founded an illustrated history of popular photography for the last forty years with my holdings. My cameras (together with those of my parents which, of course, I did not throw away) ranged from simple cameras which were a mere step up from the old Kodak Brownie through the almost forgotten disc cameras to early digital. Along the way were examples of ‘half frame’ cameras; early Russian SLR; compact cameras; mini cameras; cameras using 35mm and those using 110 cartridges. The various Polaroid cameras never seemed to survive long before they became bulky, empty plastic ornaments forever without film and eventually discarded.

The advent of digital cameras as well as being a gadget lover’s delight was also a way of addressing the basic problem with all cameras: you should have something to show for it in the form of photographs. Polaroid seemed to be the answer to all our prayers but the sheer expense more than anything made it impractical. With digital you could see your photo as soon as you had taken it and were able to recall it at a moment’s notice. Of course this led to another problem; that of never having any concrete example of the photos taken. They now exist in another form on computer hard disks, the memory of cameras and on the odd ipod.
Why, I hear you ask, have I bought yet another camera when I have been quoted as saying that my latest Casio is the best that I have ever had?

If you have to ask questions like that then you don’t understand the Lure of the Gadget!

‘Stuff’ magazine (which has a lot to answer for) was where I first saw something which whetted my materialistic and novelty seeking impulses. With my eyesight, small screens are a definite negative so a screen of more than 3” was interesting. Part of my discarding of past cameras was part of the Search for a Decent Sized Screen. That was my excuse anyway!

The real reason for buying this camera was that this large screen was actually touch sensitive. Not only a touch sensitive screen but also a camera which possessed the capability of applying special effects to pictures taken - in the camera itself! If that last exclamation mark seems to you to be inexplicable or overstated than I have to say that we move in very different worlds. So there!

Anyway, I have bought the thing and have already exhausted two battery worth’s of time in exploring the technical capabilities of the machine – or playing with it if you prefer.

So far I have ‘created’ ‘in camera’ ‘photographic masterpieces’ that have included a kaleidoscope image based on Toni’s nephew when he was still for a couple of seconds and an impressionist style abstract cross based on a massively ‘treated’ photograph of a section of the coffee table. Such inventiveness will, I am sure, end in artistic tears!

Tomorrow subjects new to reduce to pixels.

Be afraid Castelldefels!

And on the right you can see . . .

I am rapidly developing a propriatorial attitude towards Barcelona.

With Haydn as a visitor over the last few days I showed off Barcelona with a slightly concerned air of ownership; the sort of approach that one takes when one needs a visitor to like what he sees!

On a regularly running RENFE train (sic.) we made it into the centre and after gazing in appropriate adoration at the Casa Batlló marched down Garcia and promptly had a cup of coffee. This is the correct approach to sightseeing: overwhelming experience followed by refreshment!

A meander down La Rambla looking at a series of frankly disappointing ‘living statues’ - including one poor man dressed in a white sheet with a forlorn looking twisted twig in his hair and clutching a flapping piece of pseudo parchment. The fact that he had bare feet and was standing on an orange box gave his portrayal of a classical emperor a rather homely feel!

At some fairly arbitrary point we veered off La Rambla and headed towards what I thought was the Cathedral. After wending our way through a series of narrow and picturesque streets, which elicited coos of admiration from Haydn, we finally made it to a church, which was a basilica and not the one we wanted. As soon as we were inside Haydn gave a rather startling yelp which turned out to be his way of testing the acoustic. The acoustic was good, perhaps as a result of the inside of the basilica being fairly empty – a sparseness later accounted for by the justified conflagration of church property by outraged Republicans against the complicity of fascist clergy with the forces of repression. That last bit was my gloss on the situation, but the burning of much of the interior during the Civil War is fact.

Eventually we made it to the Cathedral after rejecting the wares of the stalls selling frankly substandard figures to populate Haydn’s proposed Belen. I had been relying on the profusion of kitsch to fulfil any expectation and was sadly disappointed.

The Cathedral was pronounced depressing filled as it was with all the aspects of Roman religion which Hadyn found the most revolting – though some of the medieval painted panels we both agreed were splendid.

Lunch was in a restaurant in a little square in the Gothic part of the city and was of reasonable standard though the waiter was obviously less than happy in his job and allowed this attitude to be visible the whole time he ‘served’ us. It was also fairly obvious that Spanish was not even his second language as his hissed insults towards the other waiter (interspersed with fairly vicious punches) were of a language a great deal further to the east.

The traipse to La Pedrera (Casa Milà) http://www.gaudiallgaudi.com/EA009.htm finally put paid to important muscles in tender parts of my anatomy and I began to feel like one of those crippled characters in black and white Westerns who you know is going to do something selflessly brave before dying. Well, my selfless act was not to shriek with horror at the thought of taking in La Sagrada Famillia http://www.gaudiallgaudi.com/EA011%20Escuelas%20S%20Familia.htm before we returned to Castelldefels! This visit is going to be left for his return to the flat.

This respite allowed me to revel in the extraordinary vigour of the building. The exhibition in the attic has been improved, the dressing of the apartment has been extended and the roof remains the unsettlingly exuberant experience it has always been. An excellent way to end the day and only a short walk to the railway station!

The other major trip that we went on was to Montserrat http://www.lodgephoto.com/galleries/spain/montserrat/ – a destination I never tire of visiting.

Our wait to see La Moreneta http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgen_de_Montserrat was considerably shorter than usual, though our progress was delayed by the family of Indians in front of us who had their photographs taken, individually and together, with every point of interest they passed. Although they reminded one of the worst excesses of typical Japanese tourists they also were the only people I’ve ever seen actually put money into the donations box held by the statue of a boy chorister on the way to the Moreneta!

The revelation of this visit was the museum. I had assumed that this was going to be the usual sort of thing in this environment: sparse pickings of marginally interesting artefacts connected to the monastery. I couldn’t have been further from the truth. I knew that there were one of two interesting paintings in the museum collection, but I was not prepared for the wealth and depth of the collection. I was so impressed that I bought the only catalogue they had – an expense that Haydn covered by a Grant Aid Donation as he left with some spurious explanation of his owning me money for meals! I will have to design a book plate to mark such munificence! He can come again!

All this high culture is just so much window dressing of course because the real reason that I was so delighted about this visit to Monserrat was that I was, at last, able to realise one of my dreams.

I now own a snow globe of the Moreneta! When I first saw the shop in Monserrat and the range of merchandise that was available in all shapes, sizes and tastes, I just knew that I ought to be able to find a snow globe. The fact that I couldn´t embittered me. Obviously the snow globe is a seasonal purchase and I am glad that Haydn's visit was in December!

The meals we had during Haydn’s visit were excellent with the high point probably being the sumptuous array of tapas in the Basque restaurant. Toni is now groaning on the sofa, his tummy not being able to take the richness of the diet we have had over the past few days.

Haydn phoned up when he had reached home after a flight that actually left early and said that in some ways the high spot of his visit was the walk on the beach in the morning of his last day in Castelldefels in the bright sunshine with the sea washing at his feet.

It was a little different when he reached Wales!

The best laid plans etc

In the cold light of day the tree looks even more restrained than I feared.

There is a law which states that however much you spend on Christmas tree decorations you will find that when they are on the tree there is an inverse relationship between expense and visibility.

Last year, in what I considered a well thought out campaign I scoured shops after Christmas snapping up unconsidered trifles to put on this year’s tree. (Actually, that is not strictly true as these were salted away at the beginning of the ‘house selling period’ {sic.} which meant they were for Christmas 2006!) It was therefore with a considerable amount of smug satisfaction that I finally unboxed my goodies and began putting them on the tree. The majority of the new ones were of the exotically twisted metal variety inset with beads and glass. They looked excellent in the pack and promptly disappeared when placed on the tree! If I had paid full price for them I would have been weeping. Copiously!

I don’t know why it comes as a revelation (but it does) that the most effective decorations set against a dark green background are white. I realise now of course that this simple fact is known to all window dressers who go for the simple and elegant and cost effective presentation of white on green.

The one good thing about this of course is that Angela’s Gift is seen in its full effectiveness. Angela is a past colleague of mine and a person I considered a friend. However. . . During one conversation she related that she had been on a therapeutic visit to Maskrey’s, Cardiff’s most elegant and priciest furniture and nice things store when she had noticed that there was a sale on. She has an unaccountable yearning for all things made by an eye wateringly expensive Italian designer, and as part of her therapy she tries to buy these things only in sales. While browsing through various kitchen items she saw boxed sets of porcelain snowflakes made by Rosenthal at a cut price she could not ignore so she bought the lot after one or two ineffectual attempts to resist.
“Did you,” I asked, “get some for me?”
“No.”
A short, shocking conversation which took me some time to get over. Forget? Never! Forgive? Well, when I was leaving my last school I was given a thin, elegant box by Angela and, inside, were four beautifully made Rosenthal snowflakes. They now grace the tree and are startlingly prominent in all their virgin, pristine whiteness. The only unfortunate thing is that they do make all the other decorations look somewhat tawdry.

But I can live with that!

I resume this blog with pacharan sodden fingers after an introductory night to Castelldefels for Hadyn (whose name incidentally I have been spelling wrongly for twenty years) who had the customary bottle of Cordinú Cava, followed by tapas at the Basque restaurant with surprising served wine, followed by the digestif of pacharan. And so to bed and coma.

Today by way of penance to Barcelona and Gaudi.

Culture washes all things clean.

Music! Lights! Vegetation!

Toni has bought a guitar. An electric guitar.

It could have been worse: it could have been a violin. At least with the learning pangs of this instrument the notes are fairly pure as opposed to the unearthly torment that learners can get from the other more classical stringed instruments!

With conscious irony he has indulged himself in a retro, 50s red and white model; I only hope that he does not decide to go for an archaic ‘all bonnet and chrome’ gas guzzler from the same period – you’d never be able to park the thing in most of Spain!

I am, given Toni’s new found enthusiasm for melody, more than ever determined to splash out on a new keyboard with weighted keys. My life long ambition to play ‘Fur Elise’ at the correct tempo and with the appropriate dynamics will be realised. Possibly.

I did not realise that it was possible to be even more horrified with the television advertising of children’s toys – but I am.

The general principle seems to be if it doesn’t need a battery then it isn’t a toy. Wandering through the toys section supermarkets (tagged on, disconsolately to the rest of the family) I have been able to refresh my horror by seeing how much parents are going to have to spend to keep their offspring quiet for a few hours on Christmas Day. The truly horrific items are those which comprise a ‘setting’ and require you to purchase ‘characters’ and ‘objects’ to complete the toy. My favourite is a Roman Coliseum complete with chariots, horses, characters, emperor and laurel wreaths. The exact cost of what it would take to reproduce what is shown on television would probably exhaust the GNP of most African countries, but anything less than what is seen would appear to be unacceptable. My blessings and sympathy go out to families soon to be impoverished!

One of Carles’s toys in which he has invested a value-for-money amount of time and interest consists of outsize plastic ‘Leggo’ bricks. These come in various shapes and sizes with a few characters and a set of wheels! It is the sort of thing that a two year old puts together in any-old-way and then takes great pleasure in knocking down with a look on the face which seems to ask the question, “How on earth did that happen!” If you are Toni’s nephew this is accompanied by a look of such innocent outraged surprise that it takes your breath away.

I have noticed that when adults are near the Leggo rubble they almost unconsciously start putting the blocks together and trying to make something. Their frustrated architect persona is usually stymied by another adult noticing what they are doing, at which point the architect manqué then busily starts putting the blocks away. Not so Toni.

Ignoring the usual constraints of observant adult company he constructed a multi arch viaduct. The sort of thing that, if your child made it, you would back away from his smiling face waiting for the sinister chanting of demented monks to start. Luckily Toni is no child so I did not have to start searching for the triple numbers – and anyway he doesn’t have the hair to hide them! I took a photo to mark his achievement because I am sure that I will be able to use it against him at some point!

As yesterday was spent in Terrassa I did not get my tree and Belen ready.

Belen (Bethlehem) is word for the Nativity Scene that many Catalan homes set up for the Christmas season. To call them Nativity Scenes is usually to do them a gross disservice. The complexity of these scenes stretches (quite literally) well beyond the stable. There is a roaring trade in ‘extra’ figures which include a whole range of animals and fowl, workmen and vegetation.

The square in front of the Cathedral in Terrassa was filled with stalls selling all the basics and accessories to make your Belen a thing of wonder. I, however, being the eternal cheapskate purchased my Belen from the Chinese shop underneath Carmen’s flat which comprised: the Holy Family, the Three Kings, three animals with a fairly basic Stable and I bought an extra figure of an angel. A Catalan Nativity also has the figure of a caganer, which I bought in the local supermarket. If I had waited for the Terrassa stalls I could have had a vast choice of caganer from the President of Spain to an electric version with a hand clutching paper appearing and disappearing. If you don’t know what I am talking about then put ‘caganer’ into Google and see what you come up with!

The tree (artificial because of alleged allergy) has been adorned with three new sets of lights and a mass of new decorations augmented by some old favourites. Toni has pointed out that the colours of the lights actually create a Barça tree so he is happy! The overall result is not quite as vulgar as I had hoped because I find tasteful Christmas trees anathema. The whole concept of a tree at Christmas is pagan at best and a German import at worst. Vulgarity seems a reasonable approach!

Roll on the Christmas cards!

Music denied!

Part of the point of the short story by William Golding about a young boy taking piano lessons years ago in a small village was that his teacher thought that she was the standard by which good piano playing was to be measured, but already her young pupil was listening to world masters of the instrument on the radio. Appreciation and expectation had moved on. And keeps on moving on.

That is part of a real problem with concerts. You get to know a piece of music played by world class musicians and sung by the greatest the musical universe has to offer. Wherever you are, no matter how small and remote the community in which you are living, if you have a radio or a CD player you have instant access to the masters of classical music. And you can listen again and again to a note perfect, well balanced rendition with an ideal acoustic not interrupted by the hacking cough of some semi invalid who has forgotten to bring his muffling handerchief.

Then you go to a live concert with all the expectations of your CD collection and almost always are disappointed.

When Edward Heath (life-long hater of That Woman – his only positive feature) started conducting live orchestras the music got slower and slower. This was because he was used to conducting his record collection and following the beat of the orchestra. In real life, as the orchestra is usually behind the conductor’s beat, if you follow the living orchestra in front of you, they must get slower and slower as they assume that you are ahead of them. A nice Catch-22 scenario! Another danger of thinking recorded music is the same as live concerts.

Expectation and reality.

The concert I attended yesterday in the Palau de la Música in Barcelona had a programme which was, in many ways, a hostage to fortune: Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’, Pachelbel's ‘Canon’, the Adagio by Albinoni and you can guess the Bach they had! This is music that everyone knows in version after version; it is a musical vocabulary which is the equivalent of everyday speech. People will tolerate different accents in the music, but not different words! We know it and expect it to be a close equivalent of what we know.

The orchestra I heard last night (for the second and last time) were woefully inadequate to honour the expectations of the audience.

It seems irrelevant to separate the items that they played as all of them suffered from the same inadequacies. The ensemble playing was approximate; there were clear instances when some players were simply out of tune; the style of playing was more suited to Tchaikovsky than Vivaldi or Bach.


The Adagio by Albinoni was give a presentation which was positively funereal – a ponderous, deadly rhythm that robbed the music of its power and put you in mind of the cry of the composer who said of one performance of ‘Pavanne for a dead princess’ that it was the princess who was dead and not the music!

The ‘Four Seasons’ was little short of torture with a battle between the cello and the ‘soloist’ which made for rough listening.

At the end of the first half of the concert a man stood up and applauded. I hope, for the sake of his musical appreciation, that he was directly related to one of the players, because I can see no other justification.

I had other comments to make on this concert but they seem out of place: the concert was awful, the playing insensitive; the programme clichéd; the approach amateur – my money wasted.

Instead I will expiate on the qualities of the meal I had in the completely deserted restaurant of the Palau de la Música. I had about 50 minutes to eat a meal which appeared to be more complex in reality than I had expected. Firstly, the menu that I had thought that I was going to have was not available at that time of night and the menu that I chose instead had five courses.

I have to say that I didn’t really understand all of the courses and some were better than others but it was an interesting experience.

The Palau has been renovated and the as part of the renovation the façade of the concert hall has been given a glass front which effectively encloses that part of the building. A building incidentally which comprises a World Heritage Site and therefore has to be protected. I wonder if this is the way forward and those designated buildings are going to find themselves encase in a protective sheath of another building to help them survive. I think that I am with the Italian Futurists who wanted to pull down the buildings of each generation to give the next a chance to express itself, unhindered by the baggage of the past!

Because of the construction of the restaurant I was able to look through the glass roof at the façade of the Palau and admire its many eccentricities and enjoy the warm glow of the light passing through the stained glass window. From time to time, a member of the audience would come up the steps to the restaurant and then disappear back into the darkness.

My food was presented immaculately and with service that was faultless. It was cooked to bring out the flavour – something which other restaurants seem unable to do without the help of monosodium glutamate! The meat and mushroom risotto and the steak were particularly to be commended: it is so rare to find a restaurant actually take one at one’s word when one asks for a very rare piece of meat!

I finished my meal with three minutes to spare before the start of the concert which only left me a brief time to be amazed, yet again, by the sheer amount of fantastic (and I mean that word in its literal sense) imagination that has informed its construction.

Orchestras playing in such surroundings have to make something of a statement in their playing if they are to rise above their heightened artistic environment. This orchestra did not manage to do that.

Perhaps I should give them another chance: they are playing American composers on Sunday.

Or I could put up the tree and decorations.

Choices, choices.

Down Sir Cynic, down!

Watching ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ (Clint Eastwood, 1995) was like listening to a piece of self indulgent Philip Glass: immediately intriguing, but could have been more effective if it had been edited more thoroughly and reduced by at least a half.

The slow pace of most of the film allowed me to consider, yet again, my problems with Meryl Streep as an actor. Whenever I see her I think to myself, “Isn’t she a wonderful actor!” but I find myself admiring her technique rather than losing myself in the character she is supposed to be playing.

Her character in ‘Bridges’ allowed her the opportunity to show off her amazing proficiency with accents and portray, with the detail which has made her famous, the crushing tedium of totally predictable life in a farming community in Iowa. She is a ‘busy’ actor, forever using ‘business’ to create the person she is supposed to be. Her eyes, face, hand movements, tilt of her head – everything is considered and displayed for our admiration. What a craftsman! What observation! How ‘real’ it all is! At one point in the film a fly, trying for his fifteen minutes of fame, and ignoring the lese majesty involved, landed on Streep’s arm and she shrugged him off in character in a way that had me gasping with admiration!

So why do I always see a professional, accomplished and confident actor and never the farmer’s wife or fashion diva with Streep?

The nearest comparison in acting terms that I can think of is Alex Guinness – another accomplished, professional and immaculately detailed actor. But with Guinness, for me he was Swift in ‘Yahoo’ or Obi-Wan Kenobi or Smiley. He was a joy to watch because he brought the character to life – not the actor.

In ‘Bridges’ I thought that Clint Eastwood produced a remarkable performance in his role and almost made me believe that the instant love affair was believable – but then I’m a sucker for those people who quote Yeats and it knocks my critical appreciation!

The direction of the film was efficient but leisurely to the point of tedium and the ending (with love and respect breaking out all over) sentimental to the point of derision.

Some of the more wordily pretentious parts of the script could only have been salvaged by two competent British actors who could breathe believability into the most banal words – perhaps John Hurt and Judi Dench. Perhaps set the whole thing in Suffolk and have John Hurt taking pictures of groynes for the National Trust! Now that I would like to see!

I am just finishing off reading ‘Stupid White Men’ by Michael Moore and am wondering about the sense of humour of the San Francisco Chronicle which described I as ‘hysterically funny’ – and I thought that we Brits were only divided from the Americans by a shared language!

Tonight to a concert in the Palau of unbelievable popularity: I shall try and get a good seat and wallow in the sheer tunefulness of it all!

I am putting my trust in RENFE to get me there.

I always was a trusting soul.

Look around you!

I am not one to be intimidated by power and influence. I speak out fearlessly against the forces of repression and oppression.

As assiduous readers will know, many facets of the axis of evil have already been identified from Microsoft to BBVA and from That Woman to ‘Big Brother. But, there are other forces that I have decided need to be recognized for what they are: malign and deleterious to human happiness.

When I first came to Spain and Catalonia in 1958 the one thing that was impressed upon me as something absolutely essential was that I was, under no circumstances whatsoever, to drink the water. To me, on my first foreign holiday, this seemed very strange and, like the Spanish policemen with guns, it disturbed me.

I did not, I hasten to assure you, consider in an unbearably precocious way that the basic infrastructure of a country must be in a parlous state if something as essential as water was not available from the taps. Which, of course it was. I turned on the taps and water duly came forth. Cleaning of the teeth was fine with the stuff on tap, but drinking – no!

Part of me, I’m sure, merely accepted the obvious fact that I was in a foreign country and as H E Bates wrote about the past, “they do things differently there.” Like bull fights and squid and castanets and fans – things were different. Apart from a secret glass of tap water given to me by a sympathetic waiter (and never revealed to my mother) I was only allowed bottles of Vichy water con gas. To me it always tasted somewhat salty and it never really satisfied my thirst.

Probably, even then, every particle of my young soul was reaching out, inchoate but purposeful sensing that in Tossa de Mar I was tantalizingly close to Sant Sadurní d'Anoia the home of Codorníu and Cava – my drink of choice, after the via dolorosa alcoholic experimentation represented by the progression from cider to laager to port (!) to beer to sauterne to dry white to decent red to Cava. With, of course, a great deal of senseless, stupid self indulgent excess along the way!

Today in Castelldefels the water is something you clean your teeth with and not drink. The calcium level in the water makes it most unpleasant and, for someone used to drinking soft Welsh water from the tap and enjoying it, it is a salutary experience to find myself, willingly, buying bottled water.

The bottled water is generally cheaper than it is in the UK and is available everywhere but that, surely, is not the point. In a highly developed western European country it is simply unacceptable for the tap water to be unpalatable. It is not unsafe, just not drinkable.

The bottled water industry in this country is vast. I have yet to come across a family that would put a jug of tap water on the table at a meal. Everyone buys bottled water. Everyone! Imagine what that represents in money terms. And when you’ve thought about that, consider what numbers of people must be working in the industry. And not just in the industry but in all the ancillary trades and professions. A plumber will always say, “Water will find a way!” as the repair holds but water seeps out from somewhere else. Well, in Spain, water has found a way; a way in which, like the circulatory system in a body, it has become an essential self perpetuating conduit of money.

I think it is scandalous that people have to buy their water to drink. It is indefensible when it is necessary. If the empty headed rich want to pay pounds for a litre of water imported from Fiji or whatever, let them; but for an ordinary citizen to have to pay for drinking water is a crime.

One wonders what level of vested interest there is in this country to keep the situation as it is. I am sure that were there to be an investigation into the supply of water to homes it would make the squalid chaos of the present rail link to Barcelona look like a little local difficulty. And believe you me, you would have to be a very strong, confident and well armed person to admit that you worked for RENFE in this part of the world at the moment.

There should be no need for the use of bottled water except as a sure indication of mental deficiency on the part of the environment hating purchaser.

And then there are printers.

I don’t mean the human ones, though some of the so-called craftsmen who worked on the national press when it was situated in London should be remembered with contempt for their abuse of the trade union system with their cavalier contempt for truth and honour. I mean the home presses that we now have in the form of the ever decreasingly expensive gadgets called printers.

Those of us who grew up with the absolute magic (as we then thought it) of dot matrix printers are now aghast at the sleek multi purpose machines which sell for a fraction of what we paid for much, much less years ago. But the ink is a different matter.

We are now getting to the stage that it is cheaper to buy a new printer than pay for a new cartridge. The printer firms have responded by producing special ‘with printer’ cartridges which are more empty than full and run out in a depressingly short period. And it is a horrific experience to find the price of the replacement that you need.

It was thought at one time that the advent of the computer would produce a world which was ‘paperless’ – indeed the ‘paperless office’ was seriously talked about for some time. The opposite has been the case: the computer has destroyed more forests than a nation of scribes could ever have done. Spain, or at least the bits that I know, is a firm believer in the ‘print it out and then photocopy it’ school of bureaucracy. Think of the cost of the ink!

Once you have bought the machine you are hooked for the limited life of the bit of flimsy plastic that looked good in the shop. Nothing is compatible with anything else, even within the range of machines made by the same company, and everything costs the earth. In all sort of ways!

If we are oppressed and angry about the machinations of bottled water and ink cartridge manufacturers when they are self evidently in the wrong and taking us all for a ride- just imagine what must be going on in the pharmaceutical and oil industries.

Or don’t; and get a good night’s rest instead.

One has to eat!

A sea side town out of season is an ambiguous place.

Everything is the same and different.

Some places have closed and others have opened. There is a feeling of impermanence and transition.

The people you see around the streets near our flat are usually locals – outsiders confined to the weekends.

It is still very tempting to mark the middle of the day with a menu del dia – these meals are still being served for the benefit of workers and residents rather than passing visitor trade.

Some things, however, have changed. It is significant that, all things being equal, it is now an advantage to sit in the autumn sun for your meal rather than search out the more traditional Catalan shade.

My favourite restaurant on the corner of our street now recognizes me as a regular and almost puts my choice of drink on the table before I’ve unfolded the napkin (vino tinto y Casera, since you ask!) I usually eat my meal as the sole non-Catalan in the place and feel both a sense of belonging and of difference.

The whole problem revolves around where to sit.

There are plenty of tables outside the open bar which are protected by an awning, but are still open to most of the elements and the odd cutting breeze. As I still maintain summer wear with increasing defiance, I should sit outside, but as the restaurant is in shade it is too bloody cold and, bearing in mind what my dad always said (“Only a fool or a pauper is cold”) I prefer to seek the more balmy areas inside.

This too is a problem. There are various types of inside. I could sit at the bar, but there I should eat tapas rather than the excellent value afforded by the menu del dia. That leaves the tables. There are two sets of tables inside: those with tablecloths and those without. I tend to go for the napery rather than bare metal because I feel that the basic table is almost a sign of chummy familiarity – a stage I have not yet reached!

If you are eating alone, then it is surely bad manners to sit at a table for four or even worse, at two tables placed together. You sit down and all other places are cleared away. You are in solitary splendour then other people arrive and have nowhere to sit because of your selfishness. It is difficult to digest food when you gullet is constricted with unjustifiable embarrassment as your food turns to dust in your mouth under the relentless glare of exiled diners. Well, to be fair, it’s not quite like that, but decisions have to be made and sat with!

There is also the problem of the television. Catalans live with the TV. In every Catalan house that I have been into the TV is on and remains on whether there people are watching it or not. And that’s the problem. I find TV difficult to ignore. Whether I want to watch or not, my gaze is drawn to the moving pictures. In restaurants too the ubiquitous screen shines its beguiling rubbish while you eat.

So it was quite easy for me to follow the Etiquette necessary to find a seat: a table for two; inside; table cloth; away from the TV; facing towards the street. Success at last!

The only problem was that it was next to the loo.

The Nile Revisited

Grand Opera should not be viewed from the Gods.

There was no higher or further back from my seat last night. The fifth tier of seating was against the back wall and on intimate terms with the busily ornate ceiling. From my vertiginous height all the characters looked foreshortened, and with opera singers this is not a good thing! This was my second visit to the Gran Teatre del Liceu and the opera was ‘Aida.’

A strange backward-looking production with trompe l’oeil perspective painted flats looking as if they had been taken from nineteenth century watercolours of the antiquities of Egypt. As far as I can tell from the programme (in Spanish) the original designs were by Josep Mestres Cabanes (1898-1990) and have been restored and adapted by Jordi Castells. The set gave the appearance of one of those cut-out toy theatres and was an appropriate setting for the melodramatic production. They were atmospheric even if they were archaic.

The singers were a mixed bunch with Aida (Hasmik Papian) easily the most fluid and compelling voice. She produced a riveting performance, easily rising to the demands of her part and clearly taking the audience with her. Her Radamès (Piero Giulliacci) was a very different proposition. Rotund and unprepossessing he looked distinctly uncomfortable in gold lamé and his tucked costume gave him what appeared to be a large sporran! His singing was lacklustre and underpowered. The luke warm reception for Celeste Aida gave a clear indication of what we could expect for the rest of the opera and he did not disappoint low expectations. His notes were forced and he was clearly ill at ease in the upper register. His appearance, especially when wearing a little cloak and a plumed helmet, made him look like a caricature of an archaic opera tenor.

Stefano Palatchi as the King was underpowered and anything but commanding and he was out sung by Giorgio Giueseppini as Ramfis.

The appearance of Alberto Mastromarino as Amonasro lifted the singing and his duet with Hasmik Papian as Aida – father and daughter was professional and thrilling: if only the rest of the cast had been able to match these two!

The great disappointment of the evening was the singing of Larissa Diadkova as Amneris who put me in mind of the worst excesses of Rita Hunter. A thoroughly unpleasant voice; nasal, guttural and adenoidal all at the same time – she used the full resources of the back of her head to produce those harsh, jarring notes. The orchestra (conducted by Daniele Callegari) was authoritative throughout and rose splendidly to the occasion during the Grand March when three musos, looking thoroughly uncomfortable and resentful came on stage in full costume to add the necessary brazen touch full at the audience. The chorus were magnificent with depth and colour in all their singing and showed effortless efficiency in their movement around the stage. This was especially clear in the Grand March when the cast of thousands (well, over a hundred anyway!) were marshalled with great visual effect.

The ballet was provided by Companyia Metros (Choreography by Ramon Olier) who produced a stylized and stylish amalgam of modern dance and representations of traditional bas relief gestures to give a visual equivalent to the music. It reminded me of the Mark Morris approach in ENO’s double bill of ‘Dido’ and ‘Four Saints’ back in June 2000.

It is difficult not to enjoy ‘Aida’ (and even Larissa Diadkova as Amneris came into her own in the last act) and there was much that was good and interesting in this production. But I am still waiting for a production which matches the setting of the Liceu.

Who knows, perhaps ‘La Cenerentola’ in January will be the one!

Barcelona has lit its Christmas lights. La Rambla is done out with a gathered curtain of light; very tasteful - but I don't like 'tasteful' at Christmas. Christmas is a time for vulgarity, the more garish the better. I hate all those 'tasteful' Christmas trees which are done out in two colours (or even worse in black) as if something which is basically and deliciously pagan and dangerous can be made tame and safe.

Christmas today is Pagan Capitalism writ large and shameless; it is surely better to celebrate the truth rather than coyly pretend to have neutered a dark tradition of Jungan complexity with a few well placed ornaments!

My Christmas tree will be vulgar and garish!

Ripped off!

It’s amazing what a restaurant at the sea front of Sitges can get away with in terms of value for money.

We had a meal today sitting outside in the sunshine watching the waves breaking over rocks and the spray being caught by the breeze. Very nice. Not something which could have been said for the food. At a cost of €21+ IVA and extra bread one could expect more than very ordinary muscles in cold sauce with a small plate of calimares and a cold unexceptional crema catalana.

Thoroughly disillusioned we came back and hired two films. We know how to compensate ourselves for a poor experience.

Toni’s choice was 'Turistas' (John Stockwell, 2007.) This turned out to be a hackneyed story with unsurprising elements that have surely now passed their sell-by date. Foreign tourists find themselves facing horrors after an accident leaves them stranded in a strange culture. The stage for the drama was set in the Brazilian jungle with a depressingly two dimensional ‘baddie’ ripping out vital organs from a dwindling band of unwilling donors.

The second half of the film loses its way in a weak story line and a totally confusing sequence underwater when I defy anyone to work out exactly what is happening and to whom, though by that point you have ceased to care.

The gory action is effectively handled with a few moments of stomach churning horror, but the flaccid plot line takes away too much to make the gratuitous elements more than fairly interesting episodes of Grand Guignol.

The central bad character, a variant on the mad doctor, could have made a fascinating element in this film. I like the idea of a Brazilian fed up with the historical ‘rape’ of his country by the old colonial powers and the modern rape by America. His way of redressing the balance is of extracting the liver and kidneys of the gringos and helicoptering them to a peoples’ hospital in a poor part of Brazil. There was some mileage in developing this character, but it didn’t occur and he remained an uninteresting and flat projection of crazed nastiness.

My choice was ‘Blood Diamond’ (Edward Zwick, 2006.) a film which appealed to all my small l liberal notions of what a concerned film should be about showing the corruption of western society and the devastating effect of our greed on Africa etc etc etc. Just what a reader of Third World First should be looking at!

Well, there were some pretty pictures and the start of an interesting story but it soon degenerated into a script which highlighted certain aspects of the story and then took loving care to make quite literal the metaphors outlined earlier in the script.

The basic story line could have been made into a Western with very few changes except for losing the High Moral Tone which was unsuccessfully grafted on to this limp account of trafficking in diamonds.

The film seemed to assume that graphic violence set in Africa would in some way compensate for the relentlessly romantic outcome that could be envisaged early in the film.

Di Caprio is wasted in the role of the Rhodesian diamond smuggler and his look of boyish innocence (enhanced by his neat beard) looking nothing near the thirty-one he claims in the film to be detracts from the character of hardened soldier of fortune. Looking like that, of course we expect him to do the right things like give up the diamond and die honourably while speaking to his girlfriend that never was on the phone; mixing his blood with the earth of Africa and holding off a mercenary army! Easy-peasy for nice boy next door Leo.

The dead heart of the film is connected to the son of the black fisherman. This boy is taken from his mother and brutalized by the Rebels who indoctrinate him in the ethos of bloody warfare. As soon as the boy is taken, and his father is not killed by the rebels but forced to work in the diamond mine, you start praying that the inevitable confrontation between father and son will end with some degree of realism.

That is not the forte of this film and it cannot resist the sickly sentimentality which robs it of any claim to be considered a fitting comment on the horrors of a disgusting set of circumstances and a consequently inhuman series of atrocities.

The neat (and sartorially tidy) ending in some wood panelled and book lined lecture theatre in London and our black fisherman/diamond miner given a standing ovation as he prepares to relate his harrowing experiences, leaves one with a sour taste of betrayal and a nagging doubt about what happened to the two million pounds!

This is an old-fashioned film with a cynical veneer of social comment. It satisfies neither as entertainment nor as social documentary: a good idea wasted.

Return or Not

Taking things back is one of the great indicators of character that exists.

The world divides into ‘those that do’ and ‘those that don’t’ – we will ignore for the purpose of this discussion ‘those who do when it’s M&S’ because that is the ‘taking it back’ equivalent of shooting fish in a bucket. In Spain the equivalent is taking something back to El Corte Inglés: no problem perhaps; no achievement certainly!

Some people make a distinction between returning those products which don’t work and those products they don’t want. I know too many people who regard poorly functioning products as the way of the world and the price we have to pay for original sin! Poor service, poor food, poor timekeeping – all are met by some with a defeatist shrug of the shoulders.

My mother was of the ‘don’t make a fuss’ school while my father was of the ‘sort it out now!’ persuasion. They were also RhA- and RhA+ in terms of blood and if blood has anything to do with temperament then it showed in their respective attitudes! They have to take the blame for me, and the shyly assertive person I have become!

I will take back anything and everything and, as I always assume that the people listening to me are as reasonable as I am, I usually get what I want. I don’t abuse the system so, with or without receipts people behave well for me. As one should expect. Shops offer a service which we pay for, it’s up to them to keep us happy.

None of this, obviously, applies to banks. Especially BBVA. They couldn’t give a, um, I suppose I ought to leave out what I was going to say here; so I’ll just say that my experience of banks is not very positive and Spain has added whole new facets of hatefulness to the banking experience.

Toni is not one to take things back. And we had two things to take back yesterday: a Nordica (which is the word for a duvet cover) and three pairs of socks. The socks were my fault: I misread the label on them and thought that one number referred to . . . well, the details are not important. It was just a matter of a simple exchange. The Nordica was the wrong size. The wrong size that is until we got back to the shop and we discovered that the size that I thought was wrong referred to the bed size and not the size of the Nordica. We actually had the right size. Toni was mortified that we had to go back to the assistant and take back what we had brought in to exchange. It’s a difference in attitude. One that I can appreciate but not understand.

This mortification was compounded by the exchanges at the bank. Normally I would go alone and after a white knuckle ride of language abuse I would generally come to some sort of final agreement about what was being talked about. And do something. Usually sign a vast number of dingy copies of documents I didn’t understand and give my passport to be copied.

That last phrase almost has the same cadences as the passage in Corinthians (?) about Charity and “even though I give my body to be burned” etc. I must say that copying my passport does seem to have some sort of ritualistic importance which transcends the information that it contains. The bank, for example, has photocopied my passport on numerous occasions. Given that the copies of the passport are printed on sheets which look like they have been made of recycled third world toilet paper, I doubt that they are doing a roaring trade in pirated versions of my national identity! Though, of course with banks, anything shady and disreputable you can imagine is probably happening in marble clad, superficially respectable, imposingly false branches of banks throughout the world.

Anyway, as Toni was with me he was able to give an explanation of why we were there. Unfortunately the conversation he was having did not relate to the right exchange that we had had. So, after a few moments of total confusion, he had to give another version to the bank assistant. For Toni this was not an understandable incident of linguistically crossed wires, but rather of personal humiliation. Compounded, of course, by my somewhat serendipitous approach to language accretion. Or laziness as it is sometimes called!

Next week, he said yet again, I must find somewhere to start (Shame! Shame!) my language lessons in Castelldefels.

Promise!

Surely not!

I want you to cast your memories back (if they go back that far) to the halcyon days of British television.

Have you done that?

OK. Now I want you to think about ‘Terry and June’.

A shabby trick I admit. Sorry for the kaleidoscope of things best forgotten that has now come into your mind. But, in spite of everything, I want you think about one particular episode. One, I think, where Terry was in an episode of his own; it took place in a very posh health farm.

There must be someone out there who, from this information, is now thinking and remembering that very episode. Surely? No?

Anyway, apart from the humorous depiction of the illicit trade in chocolate and high carbs operated by staff in the institution for the benefit of inmates and the enrichment of their own corrupt pockets, one incident I remember well, and it has had a deep influence on my behaviour ever since.

Terry had come into the dining room for his first evening meal and was smirking with satisfaction at the opulence and complexity of napery and cutlery which surrounded his place at table and his ability to cope with élan. A waiter appeared and put a filled bowl before him. Terry looked at it and then ostentatiously with the smug satisfaction that he was behaving properly, washed his fingers.

It turned out, of course, that this was the soup course.

What crime can the bourgeoisie commit more heinous than impropriety in public dining? In my provincial, suburban, middle class, snobbish way I watched this amiable buffoon’s antics with fascinated terror. Was it funny? Don’t know. Could it happen to you? Horrific possibility!

Bearing that lot in mind, now come with me across half a century or so.

A meal in the centre of Castelldefels.

Restaurants having been rejected because the food was wrong; the price was wrong; the seating was wrong; the restaurant was closed – at last an Argentinean restaurant seemed to pose no insurmountable culinary problems.

Toni chose roast chicken while I decided to try their tagliatelli with salmon. The meals duly arrived and seemed fine. I was offered and gleefully accepted parmesan cheese. The bread was hot and the beer was big. Everything seemed to be fine. The one thing lacking was ground black pepper – I spice of which I am inordinately fond.

A cursory glance around our table would only spot two glasses, two napkins, cutlery, and a small circular pot of black glass with contents of black and white grains. Obviously a mixture of pepper and salt. And, just as obviously, I sprinkled it generously on my food.

Whatever that mixture was, it was not a mixture of pepper and salt. Each mouthful of food now had an exciting and tooth cracking crunch to it!

What I had taken at first glance for grit. Was, in fact, grit.

A little more thought and my skittish brain worked out that one of the reasons that a stylish jar of grit might be on the table was to allow customers to knock their ash off their cigarettes. This line of thought was too unbearable to continue so I have decided to assume the grit was calcified salt and ossified pepper.

And anyway I am sure that grit will be good for the digestion.

As Baldwin always said, “Wait and see!”

Forbidden words

‘Finance’ is a word which causes unease in the calmest person. Though I suspect that the word ‘budgeting’ strikes positive fear of a poignard-directly-into-the-heart kind in even the most hardy and careful spenders.

I seem to have frittered my way through this year and next years’ financial reserves already. God knows where the money has gone. I mean apart from buying a car, dishwasher, tumble dryer, book cases, pots and pans, iron, fan, beach chairs, shower curtains, net curtains, sofa covers, portable computers, lights, bedding, kettle, toaster, swing bin, peddle bin, wastepaper bins, mobile phone, electric toothbrush, nail brushes, cleaning materials, clothing, suit, shoes, telephone land line, broadband, electric, gas, water, petrol, holiday, shavers, cleaning materials and of course, wine and food. I ask you: where does the money go?

So, it would appear that I should be (gulp!) budgeting.

In spite of what I have said, I do know what this word means and, even more importantly, how to implement the concept.

So my first action under the new regime will be to buy a new keyboard. The one I have is showing signs of wear and age (!) and I want an 88 note keyboard with weighted keys and a harpsichord mode. I have to admit that I have never played anything which has utilized all eighty eight keys, but I live in hope of an extended stave. Again, to be truthful, anything much beyond either stave necessitates a few minutes pause, after which it is pretty much a wing and a prayer for my trembling fingers to get the right notes. But surely with a nice new keyboard I will be enthused to try a piece of music which does not have a juvenile drawing on the page to encourage the young pianist! My greatest achievement still has to be a remarkably hesitant version of ‘Für Elise’ where the middle section was taken at lento in extremis if such a musical designation exists. But, as Yazz and the Plastic Population so eloquently put it, ‘the only way is up’ – presumably all the way to the dusty, finger ignored keys at the unexplored right end of the keyboard!

And a refrigerator. The one which is provided in the flat is clearly inadequate for our needs. It is more suited to summer visitors who are only in the flat for a fortnight.

Good thing I got the money over from the UK to Spain isn’t it?

That’s budgeting you see

Goal!

Today I worked on a lesson plan for poetry.

Friday I am due to see the doctor. Perhaps it is just in time!

Rather than dwell on worksheets being prepared for non existent classes I would rather return to a bête noir of mine – football.

Since I have met Toni I have increased my observation of that sport by an astonishing percentage. I have even, on odd occasions found myself actually concerned about the outcome of a match. I can now recognize and sometimes even name members of the Barça team. I know what position Barça holds in the league. I have even, when surrounded by people who do not know me, had a conversation about football!

I therefore consider it a right, if not a duty, to proffer my suggestions for the improvement of the game.

Firstly all the British home nations should be amalgamated into one national team. Even with my lack of real concern I am constantly appalled at the achievements of the representatives of the country that invented the bloody game. My ‘dual’ nationality is never sufficient to ward off the feelings of total alienation that surge to the surface each time one of the home nations fails yet again to pass through to the next round or onto the next stage or into the final twelve or whatever would give us a fighting chance of winning something for a change.

My next idea is to abolish the off side rule. My reasons for this are many and complex. As no one apart from non playing dedicated fans know what the rule actually is. The referees especially seem very hazy about the details of the rule. One only has to listen to the reaction of the crowds to realise this. If they don’t know about it, who does?

Abolition of the off side rule should also deal with one of the problems which keep football out of the USA: lack of goals and a result. The abolition should ensure a plethora of goals for virtually everyone on the field and thereby reduce the concentration of attention and totally underserved money in the vulgar grip of so-called strikers.

Payment by results is a concept which is generally accepted. This should be applied to football players with extreme prejudice. Every football player who has a yearly salary of more than that of a fully qualified teacher should be subject to a rigid assessment of his performance week by week. The assessors are no problem: they will be the people who pay for season tickets and who knew about the off side rule. Ten of them can be picked at random each week for each player and their assessment at the end of the match would determine the entitlement of each player’s remuneration.

For the national team members, their performance would determine whether their favourite car would stay in their multi car garage or be converted into a crushed square of metal which would be placed in the middle of their driveways.

The rest of my ideas for the improvement of the game are concerned with behaviour on the pitch.

Any player seen ‘diving’ should have his salary stopped at once and not paid until he had performed a medium difficulty dive from the top board of an Olympic quality pool and achieved at least an entry level score for participation in the Olympic games as judged by an international panel.

Any player who goes onto the pitch touching the grass, crossing himself and kissing his hand should immediately be given a yellow card and sin binned (another innovation I intend to make) for thirty minutes. This will be punishment for hypocrisy and blasphemy and for making a public statement of their inadequacy by not relying on their professional ability without metaphysical aid.

Kissing of the club badge after scoring a goal should merit an instant yellow card and fifteen minutes in the sin bin. It is totally offensive that the player give the impression that he is with the club for anything other than the vast sums of money that he is being paid. Anything else, suggesting that they are there because of personal commitment is anathema.

I am sure that you agree that these few trifling changes will benefit the spectator, the game and even the money blinded players.

One likes to help if one can.

The tyrrany of the printed word!

My books delight and depress me.

Today has been given over to a more serious sort out than the unsatisfactory tinkerings that I have attempted up till now. My aim was to bring some sort of order to my poetry collection and start on the Herculean task of sorting out the reference section.

The more I sort, the more I realize that I do not have. Whole sections of my books are languishing in storage, including some volumes that I thought I had managed to unpack. However, it is pointless in winging abut the volumes in exile, especially as the storage space is packed to the gunwales with boxes so it is not as if I have the luxury of sifting through with any degree of ease.

I know that I should be grateful for the books that I have and their restricted number should allow me to concentrate on those that I have and make interesting discoveries in books which have been overlooked for years in Rumney as they languished on the extensive shelves of yesteryear!

The rearrangement of the books has meant that I have been forced to work out new sections to accommodate the various subjects that my books cover.

The non fiction and reference section has been the most interesting to work through. These books are a combination of specific works of reference like dictionaries to more descriptive works like ‘100 years of science fiction’ and ‘The Faber Book of Vice!’

The most interesting juxtapositioning occurred when I noticed that Ray Tannerhill´s book on cannibalism was next to the Faber Book of Conservatism (with a cartoon of That Woman on the cover) which was in turn next to a book on crime, which in turn was next to a description of the Devil in popular culture. I can’t help feeling that there is a political comment to be made there, but I can’t for the life of me think what it might be!

I must truncate this writing so that I can get back to my book shuffling while Toni sleeps the uneasy sleep of the not very well.

He has struggled into work for the last two days while feeling very much under the weather while I have frittered my days away in loose living and cups of tea.

I have been reading a collection of British plays from the nineteenth century. The selection is an interesting one: ‘London Assurance’ by Dion Bouccicault; ‘The Bells’ by Leopold Lewis; ‘Patience’ by W S Gilbert; ‘The Second Mrs Tanqueray’ by Arthur Wing Pinero; ‘Arms and the Man’ by George Bernard Shaw and finally, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ by Oscar Wilde.

I’m now reading a book on Melodrama and I will keep my comments until I have thought a little more about them.

When I first read through ‘The Second Mrs Tanqueray’ I thought that it was an Important Play dealing with Real Life. Rereading it it seems to be a pale reflection of Ibsen.

Ah well, that is the sort of price you have to pay when you grow up!