Revealing detail

It all, essentially, comes down to the cutlery basket.

The dishwasher is an extraordinary litmus paper for the human character. To dismiss it derisively as a mere ‘white good’ sounds grammatically unwieldy and suspiciously racist. In the kitchen it is the machine which holds the most prestigious of places and invites (through the sheer simplicity of the principles involved) all to participate in its glorification.

After all, what could be simpler than putting dishes and implements in the racks and baskets specifically designed for them? With the modern dishwasher tablets there is no measuring to be done; there is no mystique; simply place the tablet in the compartment, close the door and switch on. Job done!

Then people wonder why the dishes they placed in a machine specifically designed to clean them appear to come out the said machine dirtier than when they went in.

As the people who ensured that Ghandi lived a simple life always said, “Have you any idea how complex that simplicity is to achieve?” The Rietveld chair, that masterpiece of simple De Stijl design with no complicated joints, takes master craftsmen to build.

The only thing that is simple is idiocy: but there again look what a complex novel Dostoyevsky created to describe it!

I am sure that there is somewhere in the world where the water supply is so conducive to the process of cleaning that no matter how slipshod your approach to the dishwasher, the dishes emerge bright and shining.

Our water has so much calcium carbonate in it that I am amazed that it is liquid enough to come out of the taps. Each morning I expect to find the sink looking like a mini version of the caves in Cheddar and it proclaimed to be a World Heritage Site!

When the water does flow it creates domestic chaos inside all machines with which it comes into contact. The inside of the electric kettle looks as though some alchemist has been trying to find the philosopher’s stone though a series of messy experiments and the artificially short life of kitchen machines is limited even further by coatings of mineral fur.

In the soft water of South Wales the use of dishwasher salt is a redundant luxury and a danger for those with high blood pressure! In Catalonia is it an absolute necessity. Rinse agent, which to me always sounded like the ethical alternative to those vicious defoliants used by the Americans in Viet Nam, is the only way to eliminate those vaguely grubby hazes on glasses that come with the simple approach to the dishwasher in this part of Spain.

And the loading! 50% of The Boys of Herne Hill have (or rather ‘has’ – I’m talking about you Stewart!) learned that there is a ‘correct and acceptable’ way to load the dishwasher and a way which brings about the Apocalypse. I remember being horrified at one acquaintance whose approach to putting things in the dishwasher verged on the nihilistically anarchic. He seemed to regard the ‘helpful’ guides of spokes and compartments as mere artistic details whose presence merely added interest to an otherwise bland metallic interior. He scattered dishes and cutlery and pans in a random manner and built up a Heath-Robinson three dimensional jigsaws of detritus encrusted nastiness, then simply closed the door of the machine and turned it on!

Once, while staying in London, I experienced Andrew’s hissed early morning malediction when he discovered that I had placed a dirty coffee cup in the ‘wrong position’ in the machine. I had, heretofore, tended to regard the ‘appropriate’ filling of the machine as a sort of propitiation for the privilege of ownership. The casual construction of heterogeneous heaps in the machine seemed to me to be little short of sacrilege.

It is also salutary to discover how vicious the makers of pots and pans can be. They seem to target those who are too lazy to wash their products by hand and instead use the machine. However you position some pots and pans there is always some commodious nook or cranny which will retain its moisture how ever long and torrid the drying sequence in your machine might be. The water, usually hidden in some cavernous expanse in the handle only makes its presence known as you remove the pot. The water then magically appears and falls all over the dried dishes in the compartment below: wetting them.

But, as I started by saying, the cutlery basket is the key.

The cutlery basket is usually filled with bright and shining metal, sparkling with what looks like pristine newness. But as far as some people are concerned, it may as well not be there. For them it is camouflaged to invisibility. It is simply not there. Who among us has the moral fibre to take out the cutlery basket first and carefully put away all those fiddly little things? There is usually more work in the emptying of one cutlery basket than in emptying the whole of the rest of the machine; especially when you have to place all the pieces the same way around.

How much simpler would it have been in the times of the Old Testament when trying to find the ‘right’ people if instead of asking them to pronounce the word ‘shibboleth’ or watching the way they drank from a river they had simply asked, “What do you take from the dishwasher first?” Just think of the sea-green incorruptibles they would have had if they only chose those who emptied the cutlery basket first.

What an army of puritanical fanatics they could have commanded! Nothing would have stopped them!

Watch and ponder the ways of those close to you as they load and empty the dishwasher: their characters will be as clear as the glasses they retrieve.

Look hard!

Time Travel

However much I protest that I live in Castelldefels, Aunt Bet is convinced that I live in Terrassa.

This is not unreasonable as I had to pretend that I lived in Terrassa so that I could get a flat in Castelldefels. Spanish law will not allow you to live in Spain until you can prove that you live in Spain, but you can’t prove that until you can prove that you can. So to speak.

But the fact remains that, for over a year now, I have been living in Castelldefels. So communications from Aunt Bet are delayed until a member of the family in Terrassa comes down to the sea side, clutching a letter addressed in very familiar hand.

This morning as I was driving Carmen to one of the local supermarkets to get the ingredients for a fideuá she produced a letter from her handbag and gave it to me.

As only one person (ahem!) writes to me in Terrassa (where I don’t live) I knew who it was from, as well as Carmen adding as she passed it over, “Tu tia!”

The letter obviously contained a ‘little extra’ and I opened it as we walked from the underground car park towards the escalator to take us to the supermarket. I only mention the surroundings to give a sense of place and context.

The little enclosure was a tiny edition of ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’ which would be a charming gift in its own right, but this edition was given to my father in Rhodesia during the war and it was and remained one of his favourite poems throughout his life.

In an instant the underground car park in Catalonia was transformed in a subtle way with an overlay of sudden past knowledge and present emotion. There are quatrains in that poem that I know as well as my father because he repeated them so often that it was impossible not to pick them up. They came back to me as I walked towards the shopping centre, but as they replayed in my memory they were combined with another voice and another time.

It was a strange experience neither sad nor glad but rather comfortingly wistful. I suppose the little book worked in the way that an icon is supposed to operate; by concentrating attention towards the person rather than highlighting the object itself and giving a false value to a mere relic.

I think in some ways that the poem touched certain elements in the philosophy of my father. He had a sensitive appreciation of beauty, but his sensibility was nearer to the pantheism of Wordsworth than the self indulgence of an aesthete like Pater. Nature could move him like nothing else and the more Romantic the aspect the better. I remember discussing perfect houses with him once and his ideal was a cantilevered glass walled structure jutting our over rocks on which the sea constantly crashed!

The first quatrain of the Rubáiyát (in the First Edition, naturally) was often quoted:

Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultán’s Turret in a Noose of Light.

He particularly liked the image of a ‘Noose of Light’ and I remember his taking time to explain it to me. He delighted in the power of words – whatever combative charm I have, I have from him! – and cared about how they were used. His reading shaped his world and shaped the language he was able to use to describe and discover it. That, I think, is his greatest gift to me - apart of course from life!

His favourite quatrain, often spoken humorously, but I think with an edge of belief, was number XXIII:

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and – sans End!

My father’s view, which I have come to share, was nearer to existentialism than anything else. He saw nothing beyond this life and therefore not to make the most of the life that we had was, ipso facto, illogical.

Although widely read in English Literature he came to regard novels and imaginative writing as something of an indulgence and was much more interested in history and biography, in what he refered to as ‘the real.’ I know that there is a whole discussion about the degree of ‘reality’ in biography and history, but for my father I think that the non-fiction category fitted nicely into his sense of utility derived from the combination of Benthamism and critical humanism that dictated his approach to life. He was by no means a wishy-washy socialist and often sympathised with that quotation from ‘Waiting for Godot’ that “People are bloody ignorant apes.”

Added to all this Aunt Bet had added a small photograph which she attached to the inside front cover. This shows my father aged 5 in the garden of my great-grandparents in Merthyr Vale clutching a cat in front of some railings. He looks as though he is wearing some sort of knitted construction with a rounded collar with dark trim. He is smiling, but I am not sure that I would entirely trust that expression – it is certainly not one of childish innocence!

The photo from Merthyr Vale is from 1924 and the little book from Rhodesia is from 1944 and now I am writing this in 2008 in Catalonia. 84 years contained in a very powerful little book.

Thanks, Aunt Bet!

Hooray for the future!

There is something truly exciting about founding a school.

The idea is taking a step closer to reality with our looking at suitable premises to start an ‘emergency’ school perhaps for September!

There are, as you can imagine, various problems connected with the establishment of a teaching institution with under twenty days to go before the start of term but anything to relieve these tedious days of lazing in the sun and listening to the ipod. One feels that one has to do something so why not help found a school?

Reality is obviously going to come and smash us in the face in the very near future, but until the assault actually happens we can go on making our plans.

Contacting parents is proving be to be the most difficult aspect of conveying information to the people who need to know it most. I do now kick myself for not taking telephone numbers when I had the opportunity. It will be much more difficult to establish good communications. I have thought of wandering around Sitges in a hopeful looking sort of way, but then I considered that I would probably be arrested for loitering with intent rather than being successful in finding our elusive parents!

At the moment all is mere speculation but the next few days should produce something of more moment.

AJ now seems determined to come to Castelldefels and should arrive the week after next all being well. And next week Emma should be installed. It will be excellent seeing them both again after a long absence.

I like any opportunity to go to Barcelona and expound on the glories and curiosities of the city.

And the meals of course!

The days pass . . .

I suppose there are many reasons why a school should be cut off from the telephone and the internet at this time of the year: no staff available; the place empty; nothing happening.

In a private school however there are people there, ever ready to sweep up the chunks of parental income necessary to keep the little ones in the educational style to which they have become accustomed. So cessation of communication takes on an altogether more interesting aspect.

Far be it from me to chortle with ill suppressed satisfaction at possible financial embarrassment for The School That Sacked Me but it obviously shows that Voodoo doesn’t only respond if you make the customary wax model and start sticking in the pins. All I did was tear up a piece of headed notepaper of the place! At least it shows a way forward for all my colleagues dreading the first of September. Just get tearing!

My next meeting with members of the Generalitat is on August the 20th, but gathering the solid factual evidence necessary to make this meeting a success has been difficult. I am sure that the people I need to reach are all on their various holidays, but I thought that Young People were never far from electronic communication and that checking their emails was as sacred a duty as the Islamic injunction to pray five times a day.

I suppose that I should keep on trying to amass the necessary financial details of irregularities to be able to present some sort of dossier for future action. The auguries are good: the almost dead cactus from The School That Sacked Me is now thriving and I no longer have to examine the growth with a magnifying glass to convince myself that there has been a remarkable resurrection. The shrivelled, desiccated apology for organic growth is now a thriving plant, spikes catching the sunlight and its bifurcated form giving a gratifyingly two fingered signal to the world!

The world wore a slightly morose look this morning as the skies were overcast and there was a stiff breeze.

For the Mediterranean the waves were large and forbidding and only a few hardy fools were daring to spurn the injunctions of the yellow flag and venture into the foaming brine. In Castelldefels the sea is very domestic and keeps to its defined limits even in the darker days of winter so even on the least inviting of occasions it is at worst pleasant. Even as I speak the skies are lightening and the patches of blue are growing, I confidently expect the weather to be tempting enough for me to laze next to the sea by the middle of the afternoon – and who knows, we might have another gold to contemplate by then!

I must also return to the short story that I promised to write for my English class. They may never get to see it, but it seems like a promise that I should fulfil. I have the structure of the thing in my mind, but the sheer effort of writing it all out is exhausting even to contemplate let alone execute. I think that I will make it my cultural task of the week to complete the story then I can get down to the things I like. By that I mean deciding on the typeface, getting the illustrations and designing the cover. Some things never change!

Our sojourn on the beach was defiant rather than enjoyable as the wind has picked up again and the clouds irritatingly and uselessly got in the way of the sunshine. I have told god on a number of occasions that I have no problems with the Pyrenees being regularly deluged by torrential down pouring of rain of biblical proportions allowing all reservoirs to be filled, but that moisture in Castelldefels should be restricted to the water pipes. I suppose that my basic mistake is being reasonable with a being which has allowed a perfectly appropriately designated ‘Marathon’ bar to be renamed ‘Snickers’ – a type of smutty chuckle! He sometimes seems to go out of his way to collect opprobrium.

Having stopped wearing contact lenses some time ago I wear glasses on the beach, but in a wind with breaking waves the surface of the lens soon gets covered in a mixture of sand carried in the air and droplets of salt water. This extra filter gives everything a rather sepia-like appearance. Wiping the lenses would grind the sand into the glass so I have to store them for tender washing later.

I therefore see the beach through eyes unassisted by glasses or lenses. It is sometimes a more interesting experience than the hard edged reality. Those surrealistic multi outlined ghosts shimmering along the amalgam of beach and sea; the arrangement of the crashing waves and coloured wrinkles of the ripples in the sea look to my unassisted eyes more than ever like a Nolde watercolour. Pretentious artistic twaddle aside, I’d rather have perfect eyesight!

The Nadal match has just finished and he made hard weather of it by losing a set and seeming to struggle with the conditions in which the match was being played. Both players looked comfortable and there were certainly more unforced errors on Nadal’s part than I am used to seeing.

The television production was the worst that I have ever seen for a world class tennis match. The use of replay seemed to be beyond the technical capabilities of the television director and was the cause of much frustration as some of the shots demanded to be seen again.

The stadium too looked less than ideal. The design for it appeared to have been taken from a folded piece of paper with a diamond shape cut out of it.

The paper was then unfolded and the resulting template taken as an architectural plan by the builder! Watch and see!

Meanwhile, where are our other golds?

The Welsh to the rescue!

Honour is restored.

And, as luck would have it, by a sportswoman from Wales! Britain’s first gold in the Olympics and now one can relax. Spain still has two medals to our one, but as long as we’ve continued our unique record as being the only country to have won at least one gold medal in every modern summer Olympics.

I suppose that the Olympics are positioned in this particular period of August because of the unreal quality which obtains during this time of the year. In Castelldefels, as it is a seaside resort everything is open and everyone everywhere is trying his best to extract whatever money may be lurking in purses and wallets of visitors.

But elsewhere in the real world things have come to an unconvincing stop.

It puts me in mind of Paris in August: the place works and there are plenty of people in restaurants and hotels and shops, but they all act as though they are there as a sort of punishment and the type of ‘service’ that they offer to the visitor is roughly on the level of amiability they grudgingly offer to a prison guard.

So the best place to be at this time of year is on the beach, taking an occasional dip in the sea and lying back listening to your ipod.

Which I did.

Perhaps a less indolent day tomorrow.

Who cares?

All that glisters . . .

It’s all very well talking about ‘adopted country’ and all that, but there is no disguising the tragedy.

Spain has a gold medal and we have none. Nothing. Of any sort or colour. Nothing.

Far be it from me to be ungracious, but it is difficult to live with what I can only describe as triumphalism as our lack of metal ware becomes ever more glaring as other obscure countries begin to rack up their haul and I am constantly asked how many medals our team has managed to win.

The only swimming events that I watched Britain came in fourth and that was in a qualifying event. It all seemed sadly familiar. But perhaps I am merely indulging what is a national malaise which is the expectation of failure. I am beginning to think that the newspaper report that I read outlining the expectation of our greatest medal gains must have been a product of my over heated imagination.

I am missing the BBC, and of course, the British slant that national coverage gives. Here is Spain there is little coverage of British efforts in the Olympics apart from the small Union Flags that indicate that a competitor in one of the swimming lanes is British! There are also the adverts.

Spanish television ignores the international judgement against their constantly flouting the twelve minute limit for adverts in any one hour period. Some advert breaks are twenty minutes long! It cuts down on comment and indiscriminately cuts out important slices of live television action.

I suppose I shouldn’t give the wrong idea: unlike Aunt Bet I am not going to be glued to the television for the next fortnight indiscriminately devouring whatever sport the BBC deigns to present.

If the sun is shining I have to admit that the beach presents a more attractive option to watching the Newtonian Physics denying activities of gymnasts and athletes who are obviously practitioners of the dark arts, in league with the devil and not fully human in any way that I understand given the way that they can use their bodies.

We have just watched an American gymnast on the pommel horse doing things which should have broken his wrists, legs and knees. I remember my father watching the gymnastics on television and saying that the competitors would have been burned at the stake in his day as little better than witches!

At least Spanish television has driven me to the internet and searching out The Guardian. There I read a comment from Marina Hyde in Beijing who wrote, "These two appalling sets of old waxworks utterly deserve each other. China's state bullies and the International Olympic Committee have a lot in common. The Narcissus complex, for a start." That's the sort of stuff to keep me going! It's the necessary irony and contempt to bring me back to a right frame of mind to contemplate the Olympics with truly British tranquillity or contempt. Irony and abuse abound on The Guardian site and it makes me feel at home once more! I only hope that their sardonic point of view can sustain me through a fortnight without the comforting clink of the sound of gold falling into British hands!

The true obscenity of the opening ceremony is becoming clearer. The cost of the extravaganza was something like twenty five million pounds and took some seven years to plan. I assume that the astronomical cost does not include the cost of the planning and the costs which I am sure were lost in the administration of the abomination which is the government of China. I wonder how much the participants in the opening were paid or were they ‘volunteers’? Who suggested Sarah Brightman? And why?

But all this carping is just an expression of the very real fear that I have about the ‘eight minute segment’ of the closing ceremony which will see the Olympic flag handed over to the Blond Buffoon. This will be an indication of the design ideas that London has for their own opening ceremony. I understand a London Bus is involved. I have visions of this vehicle turning up, the BB getting off dressed as a London clippie, taking the flag, waving to the crowd and getting back on the bus and driving off.

I know that I will be proved wrong and the design flair and quirkiness which characterizes Britain will delight and astonish me.

Just like our medal total.

Sigh!

A Whole Fortnight?

It is a piquant part of the opening celebrations of the Olympic Games that one of the people who had a hand in the designing of ‘The Bird’s Nest Stadium’ one of the signature buildings of the Games has chosen not to attend.

If I have missed one thing during the build up to the Games it is the presence (at a reasonable price) of The Guardian. This is not because I need the reassurance of the ‘Opinion is free but facts are sacred’ motto of Randolph Scott, the lanky, laconic cowboy and one time owner of the paper, but because I have missed the doom laden opinion of the whole concept of the Olympic Games for which The Guardian is famous.

I think that the Tokyo Olympics was the final Games that I watched on the level of Baron Courbetin’s English-public-school-cricket-loving-it’s-the-taking-part ethos; every Games since I have enjoyed for the naked political cockpit of ruthless ambition that they clearly are. And the BBC music for the Tokyo Olympics was the best tune until Barcelona in 1992.

From the political corruption for the ‘election’ of the city for the Games; through the bitter recriminations about where to site them; the more mercenary corruption of the escalating costs; unfinished buildings with the usual strikes and panic; unfair distribution of tickets; hypodermics glinting in the sunlight as ‘athletes’ pump themselves full of substances; to few hotel rooms and at too high prices; a catastrophic transport system and so on.

Those are the aspects of the Games that I like most: the action of the Olympics is often a rather ordinary series of running, jumping and kicking. Oh yes, and the Brave British Boys (and Girls but they didn’t alliterate) as they fail to live up to the absurd hype. Thanks to our participation in the early Olympics of the Modern Era when plucky Englishmen joined in a race when they were on holiday and they happened to find out that the Olympics were taking part, took their top hats off and bally well ran for the old country, and got a gold by gad! Our position in the medal tables still reflects our medal tally from long ago when only a few countries actually took part. Now, of course, when we regularly find ourselves behind a country like The Galapagos Islands, the Games have become a time of national humiliation rather than celebration and they are greeted with dread rather than excited anticipation.

One newspaper prediction stated that we are in the best position to amass a reasonable haul of medals which could see us in the top ten. I can only assume that this particular journo was on the same drugs that fuel the endeavours of the athletes when it was written. God knows we are a pessimistic people, but past experience has shows that it is a good default position to take when it comes to British sporting prowess.

The example to justify all of this depression is of course the Lawn Tennis Association. The genteel corruption of the LTA makes the Mafia look like a charitable institution. The LTA founded the sport, they have led the world in setting the rules of the sport, they have had umpteen millions pass through their hands and we have not had a male Wimbledon Champion since Fred Perry in the last millennium. We are the fourth largest economy in the world and Sweden has more indoor tennis courts than we do.

Talking of corruption I do hope that all event winners and all medal winners will be drug tested – and not by scientists connected to the autocratic, corrupt, totalitarian, censorship loving regime of, yes, you’ve guessed it, the International Olympic Committee. The pious platitudes which drop from the mouth of Blatter (or whoever that corrupt organization has established as a mouthpiece) as he urges the brutish, repressive, secretive, oligarchic apology for a government of the Chinese to be more open and liberal is too sad even to be ironic.

So, the opening ceremony is now over.

The best thing was the size of the Olympic flame. I do like a flaming flame, something which represents the passion of the event, not the sedate, tasteful lapping flames that we have had in past Olympics.

The Spanish upped the ante by having the flame lit by an archer firing a lit arrow into the bowl of the Olympic flame. I have to admit that the Chinese produced something more astonishing with the torch bearer hoisted on high to mime running around the top of the stadium and lighting the flame. Majestic!

There were moments in this overlong ceremony which were, if I may quote myself from my shameful broadcast on The Cunning Little Vixen, “visually stunning.” The giant speckled light Olympic rings; the globe rising from the stage with runners impossibly running at different latitudes; the light suits; the Olympic flame.

But.

I thought that the final raising of the Olympic flag by a squad of goose stepping soldiers was grotesquely out of kilter with what the Olympic ethos should be. Just as the opening sequence and other throughout reminded me of those repellent Spartakiáda, or mass gymnastic displays http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartakiad beloved of Communist countries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_gymnastics I find them fascinating if disgusting. For me the subordination of the individual to the whole, the degredation of the single human to a mere piece of a jigsaw puzzle to make a moving pattern is the antithesis of what I believe is an acceptable image for a nation. And certainly for the Olympic Games.

Oh yes, and if you can still think back that far, I do know the difference between Randolph and CP Scott – but both ‘availing to good’ I think!

I am not alone!

A kindred spirit!

One of the people I have been writing to actually lives in Sitges and has been following the history of the School That Sacked Me from a parent’s point of view. I feel that at last I am pushing on an open door and that here is an official voice that will welcome more information to the detriment of that dreadful institution. It is a very pleasing period when I actually think that people are listening. Action, however, is the key to my efforts and that will take until the end of the month to show any indication of its presence. I do hope that Spanish bureaucracy is like the mills of god: the slowness is something which is endemic to all governmental departments – it is the ‘grinding exceeding fine’ that I am hoping for!

(And, by the way, who knew that the saying,
“Der gelbe Kern der Erde, das Gold, hat alle Macht,Daß alles sonst für ihme wie Schalen wird geacht.”
The famous part of which can be translated as something like “The mills of god grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine” or some such variation was by (Baron) Friedrich von Logau?

And should I have heard of him? Or indeed of his pseudonym Salomon von Golaw? Have you ever hear of him? Truthfully?)

Toni has now succumbed to the suspected virus from the menu del dia and has taken to his bed, not, I might add without having devoured chicken and chips for lunch bleating, “If I don’t eat I will fall over!” My body is much more organized: at the first signs of gastric trouble my brain instructs the body to go to bed when it then closes down all unnecessary functions and goes about phighting phagocytes or whatever corpuscles are supposed to do. When I wake up, usually after a rough day, I am better. Thus it has been and long may it continue!

Sometimes it is just as satisfactory to find that you have discovered nothing new in undergoing an experience but rather have substantiated your prejudices. A man without prejudices is not someone I would like to have a drink with. Prejudice is surely a natural part of life; as natural as lying. If you are capable of forming an opinion or expressing a point of view then you must be acquainted with prejudice.
After all it is perfectly possible to enumerate a convincing list of reasons why it is better to support Barça than Español, but the Barça supporters who I know do not bother to try and convince those who do not share the faith, they merely state what they believe to be true: that support for Barça is a natural state of being - it needs no justification; it merely is.

So the party for the three year old fulfilled all my direst expectations. I was not; it has to be said, at my fittest having spent the entire day lounging in torpor on the bed. This was not merely indolence but an enforced inactivity due to the previous day's menu del dia: the meat balls and cuttlefish in a tomato sauce in particular. We have come to this conclusion as this is the only food which we both ate yesterday and both of us have had gastric consequences.

So it was with the pale strained face of the martyr (Stephen by name, Stephen by nature) that I set off on the trip to Terrassa.

We were the first to arrive and so I was able to claim my corner with no trouble at all and so was partially able to contemplate the future horror with something approaching equanimity.

Presents are a major problem in the modern middle class household with a young child. The concept of 'spoiled' has moved on somewhat since I was the age of Toni's nephew.

The way that I was trained to accept presents from adults no matter what the quality – of adults or presents – is vastly different from that which can be adopted by the modern child. Indifference, boredom or outright rejection are all accepted by adults with an almost apologetic, self depreciatory grin. I would have been whipped until the blood flowed if I had dared express any emotion other than ecstasy on receipt of a gift.

That, I have to say, is not strictly true. My parents were not followers of the Jeroboam school of parenting the, “My father has chastised you with sticks, but I shall chastise you with scorpions” approach. What I got after each and every social interaction was my mother turning to me in the car as we departed and prefacing her comments about my behaviour with, “I was ashamed when you . . .” Now you have to understand that my public behaviour was such that parents today would go down on their bended knees and thank god for such a well mannered child. My politeness frightened people.

When I was still a schoolchild walking down the street in our area a man in a car stopped and asked me for directions. I gave him the necessary directions and he went on his way. The rest of the story I know because he ended up in the house of a friend of my parents where he gibbered out some account of stopping a kid on the road only to be met by an attitude and voice which convinced him he was a clodhopping peasant from another world. In tones of wonder (or using four letter words) he pondered who this paragon of good breeding could be. His description convinced my father’s friend that he knew the child and so they all came to our house where the directed gentleman complimented me on my behaviour but in a way which managed to express his disturbance at the same time!

So I would never have brushed aside a proffered present as Carles did. But, there again, he did have some justification because he was presented with a mountain of presents.

Virtually all of them requiring batteries. He had Mickey Mouse’s House (it’s a modern cartoon thing, nothing to do with the traditional series); Mickey Mouse’s Hand Balloon (see above) and Minnie Mouse from us. He had a dishwasher with lights, sounds and little plates and cups etc. He had a boom box for his mp3s and DVDs. And he is three. I rest my case.

What the hell are they going to give him when he is six? Let alone when he is eighteen!

Time to be rich!

Toni is busily using a program that he has downloaded from the internet to design his perfect house. He has to get his skates on because it will need to be ready for the 17th of August.

On this date my ticket will be drawn and I will win 20,000,000€. We will then waste no time in setting about our new lives.

10,000,000€ each is a sizable chunk of money. I have, in spite of Toni’s vehement protestations to the contrary, decided to give 10% to Oxfam and thus, with my conscience provided for I can indulge myself thoroughly.

Of course, with my taste in Art (with a capital ‘A’) 9,000,000€ does not even get me into the auction room with any real chance of success. Think about it: ‘The Marriage of Don Arnolfini’ is firmly in the National Gallery and even a fairly ordinary portrait by Van Eyck (should there be any left in private hands) would be a bit of a snip at the money that I could afford. I would probably have to settle for some sort of lesser pupil of a Master who once had a cup of tea with a nephew of Van Eyck or something.

Strange isn’t it that having vast wealth will only take you into the next level of deprivation when you realise that though the next Ferrari is not a problem buying even a fairly small Van Gogh is.

I am sure that there are some among you who will say, “But how many tickets for the summer draw in Spain do you have?” I would answer you do not need quantity when you have the winning ticket! By such self deception do I lead my life!

All things, as they say, are relative.

And talking of relatives we have to go to Terrassa for the Third Birthday of The Chosen One. Now in many ways (or more probably all ways) I am dreading this event. It is very difficult to see any positive aspects to the occasion. It is going to be full of small, hyperactive, selfish, screaming, developing human beings; the predominant language is not going to be English; too many of the drinks are going to be fizzy sugar based rather than fizzy grape based; The Chosen One is going to have more presents and at far greater cost than I had when I was three.

I will never forget a Christmas in Gilfach when one grandchild simply got bored with opening the mountain of Christmas presents she had! Every Puritan nerve in my body twanged as I observed a level of being spoiled which made my fairly generous upbringing look like the equivalent of being incarcerated in the Château d'If on bread and water with thin gruel as a treat for Christmas!

In The Chosen One’s house there is a small corner by a window which is an ideal hiding place. Obviously the flat is too small to hide in reality, but this corner is perfect for apparently making you part of the festivities, yet, at the same time putting you on the periphery. The window also allows a stream of fresh air to oxygenate the brain cells so that my characteristic form of Fractured Spanish can be called into action and facilitate what passes for conversation with my language skills!

Nicola, Nigel and the girls are off back to Britain today. They have taken the usual ghoulish delight in phoning home to listen to the fall of rain and they have been fortunate in the amount of sunshine they have been able to focus onto Pale Parts. I am sure that Nicola’s legs will turn a very fetching shade of brown as soon as the flaming red has been quenched!

Nigel bewailed the lack of a balcony in the hotel in which they are staying and it is a major minus. There is something slightly sordid sitting on the edge of the bed in a room sipping ice cold laager from a can, whereas there is something altogether civilized and suave in doing exactly the same thing on a balcony watching the setting sun fizzle its way into the sea. I think that they have already selected an hotel which can fulfil this function for their next visit.

Meanwhile Emma, the two Pauls and my cousin Judith have all confirmed their flights and their arrival dates have been added to the calendar. I don’t have much time to polish my language skills before the arrival of Emma, but by the time the others arrive I should have started my lessons in Castelldefels.

I am hoping, with no real evidence, that this time round I will ‘take’ to the lessons and all the new parts of the language that the lessons outline will magically be hard wired into my spoken conversation in Spanish. I also promise to take ‘501 Spanish Verbs’ out of the bookcase and begin to use it properly.

Verbs are pretty important in all languages, but they are the key to Spanish. This is unfortunate as my chosen form of foreign communication is via nouns linked with slurred verb memories. This makes me sound like some form of articulate drunk where listeners have to take the nouns which are pronounced as well as I can make them and guess the context and tense from the mumbled connectives. At least it is a start and when linked to my professional use of the word ‘si’ almost passes for conversation!

Almost.

Always ask

There are many ways in which a non native in Catalonia is at a disadvantage. Take, for example, trying to get a repeat prescription.

In Catalonia, or in our medical centre anyway, when you have a long term medication on prescription then you are given two months’ worth of prescriptions. In Britain this would be two scraps of paper to show for this. Not so in Spain.

In this country owing to their inordinate desire for pieces of paper for every transaction (and what would appear to be a deeply ingrained belief that everyone is on the make) there is a full A4 sheet of paper for each and every medication. Times two of course. It is only when you go to the pharmacist you see why the separate sheets are necessary. For every medicine you are given the bar code is cut off the box and then sellotaped onto the A4 sheet of the same medication!

Before you get to the stage of actually having pills in your hot little hand you do have to get the prescriptions.

As long as you have a medical card and a number all things are possible. It merely takes a swipe of the card and the medicine that you need comes up on the computer and the printer then starts churning out the paper work.

In our bright and modern medical centre the prescription person is in a room at the end of the consulting rooms in the section of the centre designated the ‘infirmary.’

There are groups of linked bent wood chairs linked in a sort of bench affair and set out in facing lines at right angles to the windows which run the length of the corridor. I am explaining all this so you can appreciate the problem that faces a non native when entering this area.

You walk down the corridor past sets of seats and take your place in the seats nearest the door for the prescriptions. Not unreasonable you might think considering the other doors were consulting rooms for patients to see their doctors.

Wrong!

I took a seat and waited for the next person to go into the room. The person who did was not from the people amongst whom I was sitting.

A woman who joined our happy crew asked who was the ‘ultimo’ and I realized that my assumption of proximity was completely wrong. I moved my place to be near the woman so that I at least had a guide to when I could enter. The next person to arrive merely stood near the door. His arrival caused suspicious glances and suppressed irritation.

Sure enough as the next person came out he attempted to go in. General indignation! High powered conversation with an edge of real animosity took place. At one point I was dragged into this discussion and my only contribution was to mutter something about ‘machines with numbers’ to my neighbour who later used this solution in a more general conversation later!

It turned out that everybody in the area was waiting for prescriptions, but the impetuous man completely changed the dynamic of the place and everyone became a little more paranoid. A few people from further down the corridor started queuing with a defiantly propriatorial air.

Eventually the situation reached the point of farce as each new person in waiting had to find his place in the order of being seen and a complex dumb show took place as each in a series of jerking hand movements to show the sequence.

I was eventually seen and given the multitudinous pieces of paper. This achieved I was ready to go on to my next queuing experience.

I have written previously about the horror which is the post office in Castelldefels. This particular circle of hell has a ticket machine which gives you a number. From previous experience I knew which of the five buttons to press – which was just as well as only two of the buttons had a description next to them, but it you didn’t get the right ticket to go with the right postal activity you had to start again with a new tickets. Firm but just!

There is a sort of coma which I can now induce at will to cope with the stasis which is the post office. So, although the wait was verging on the intolerable, it didn’t actually get there.

Then there was the wait at the pharmacists to get the medicine. The lady (I use the term with a degree of flexibility) before me was one of those people with a ‘little list’ and who had a discussion about each item on it with everyone in the store – except the tall man waiting behind her with the fixed smile on his lips.

This too passed.

And as I finally escaped to regain my home and sanity, I realised that I had left my medical card in the pharmacist.

If it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger!

They say.

Holiday Times are Hard Work

Our block of flats is now a living hell!

August = Holiday = Family = Togetherness.

As the smallest of these flats (i.e. ours) is three bedrooms you can imagine that three or four generations of noisy, baby producing, dog owning, smoking and pool using people are now comfortably infesting our previously sedate immediate neighbourhood.

The only way to counter this influx of foreign (in all senses of the word) bodies is to attack. I now officially consider virtually everyone I know as family and cordially invite them to stay with us in the flat and to speak loudly on the balcony in the King of Tongues so that the parvenu usurpers to proprietorship can be put in their place.

When the best that Spanish Literature can do to boost the status of their language to counter the massive kudos of Shakespeare is to roll out Lope de Vega as Big Bill’s opponent then you know that you are onto a winner. Take it from one who has read Lope de Vega that he is a playwright you only read if you have to. Various modern productions have tried to make his plays relevant and trendy, but they are giving better directorial ideas than he deserves!

I am typing this on the balcony crouching in a sliver of shadow from the fierce heat of the sun. The beach is as packed as a very long beach (which could probably take the entire population of Catalonia if it had to) can be. Professional beach goers have virtually created small towns out of connected beach umbrellas, tables, loungers and collapsible chairs and tables. They have boats and floats and god knows what else and you half expect them to start building palisades and mount forays against near beach denizens to take over their space!

Talking of space have you noticed (if you do not have a baby) just how much the ‘essential’ impedimenta space for an inchoate, incontinent and incoherent human being actually takes up?

At lunch yesterday there was a family party of mother, father, doting aunt and grandmother centred on a nappy wearing child whose greatest achievement (met of course with whoops of delight) was thrusting a bread crust in the general direction of the mouth of her father. This was accompanied, of course, by disgusting gurgles and shrieks which would have had anyone else shown the door immediately. When they finally did leave, each one of the adults was burdened with an enormous bag which contained ‘things for the baby.’ And they had a pram packed above and below with yet more ‘stuff’!

It used to be that going to the sea side was in itself an adventure and something which of itself was exciting enough to keep any life form interested for the visit. Now unless the hapless family travels with the equivalent of a cinema, restaurant and clothes factory as well as a small construction company to allow the child to ‘build’ a sandcastle there will be tantrums and guaranteed misery for all.

In a revealing piece in The Week (which I recommend unreservedly etc etc) extracted from The Weekly Standard, Joseph Epstein writes that “America has become a ‘kindergarchy,’ children have moved, “from background to foreground figures in domestic life, with more and more attention centred on them, their upbringing, their small accomplishments.” He continues that he once told his mother that he was bored, she suggested that he bang his head against a wall to take his mind off it. “I never mentioned boredom again. My generation was just left to get on with. Visit friends today, however, and you find children’s toys strew everywhere, their drawings on the fridge, TV sets tuned to their shows. Parents seem little more than indentured servants.”

I wonder if that strikes a chord with anyone!

Of course this could just be the resentment of an only child thinking back and working out just how much he didn’t have when the opportunity was there. Where was my towel with ‘Muffin the Mule’ on it? Where was my mini backpack with ‘Captain Pugwash’ emblazoned on the back? When didn’t my parents allow me to watch DVDs in the car on my personal player?

The answer to the last one was that they weren’t invented for another swathe of years that, in the interests of delicacy I will not enumerate!

Time for tea! Well, dinner.

Sizzle!

Today a sea breeze made joining the human joints cooking on the beach just a little more enjoyable. The sea is of a temperature where not even the most sensitive need gasp as they venture in. There was a space next to the sea in an almost direct line from the little gate onto the beach from the flat so we didn’t have to wander about on ‘our’ beach before we settled.

In defiance of the universal lethargy which surrounded me I actually made use of my time on the beach and read The Week. This invaluable publication (which I recommend without reservation to all and sundry) gives you a fascinating digest of what has been happening in all the most obvious areas of life as seen from the British perspective. It is, of necessity, highly selective but seductive at the same time: so many titbits of politics, the arts, sport and business etc. that you end up wanting more, yet perversely glad that there isn’t any. If you see what I mean!

Lunch was, eventually – given Toni’s fastidiousness – in a restaurant a little further down the road than we usually go and I thought was excellent.

A tropical salad with fruit, sea food and a caviar sauce followed by a leg of turkey with half roast potatoes in their skins with a rosemary and cheese stuffed tomato. The dessert was my favourite of Tarta Santiago dressed with cream, chocolate sauce and kiwi fruit. A café con hielo to finish a truly satisfying meal.

Toni was unimpressed (he had to be his going to this restaurant was a grudging compromise) and grumbled about his lamb. This was a large lump of succulent meat with bones sticking out at artistic angles. I know it was succulent because he offloaded some of it on to me. Toni likes slivers of pork or beef or lamb so chunky excess leaves him cold. I think that I have had my full intake of meat for the next week or two as my turkey leg was not one from a bird that had ever considered flight!

My continuing education into the Catalan arts has now reached the musician Ferran Sor. This disk comes in the series of book/CD presentations linked to the centenary of the Palau Musica Catalana and courtesy of La Vangardia (at a price!)

Ferran Sor (1778-1839) was a composer and guitarist who is described as one of the most important composers and musicians in the formation of Catalan culture in terms of music. I have never heard of him- though I am attempting to force my memory into a belief that I have heard of a French composer with a name something like that. But then I would, wouldn’t I!

I have not found anything in the music of Catalonia (in my view) to match the wealth of talent in painting. Some of the music has been interesting, especially one piece which to my ears sounded like something that Vaughan Williams might have written, but nothing so arresting as the visual arts offer in Catalonia.

I wonder if, in five or six years time when I might look back on that last paragraph I will twitch with embarrassment at my lack of perception, or simply smile wryly at my pretension. I am prepared to wait and see.

I have had a frightening letter which begins:

“Dear Customer,
You already enjoy the services provided to you by your BBVA branch in Spain, but did you know that BBVA also have branches in the U.K?”

Quite part from the fact that I object to BBVA referring to me a ‘Dear’ anything, I found the first part of the sentence in the letter a downright lie and the second part a terrifying threat. Talk about the enemy within; it is hardly surprising that the exchange rate between the pound and the euro is at an all time low with that bunch of blundering incompetents actually having insinuated their way into the British banking system.

As soon as it is possible I will escape from the parasitic, thieving clutches of BBVA and the chilling thought of putting a single British penny near their grasping money grubbing fingers is enough to drive one to drink – which, as the sun must now be over whatever mast one has to consider before imbibing, seems like a damn good idea. Such thrillingly sinister thoughts about the creeping evil which is my bank deserve a chilled glass of Rioja on the balcony while I regain my equilibrium!

Cheers!

The wind strings

Pendine in West Wales in the middle to late ‘50’s of the last century. (God that makes me feel old!)

That resort of early motor car speed records and record attempts came to mind as we determinedly lay in the sun while being gradually sand blasted by the sand laden wind which whipped along the beach. Usually we are gifted with a fresh breeze from the sea which makes lying on the beach a pleasure. A slight deviation in direction and you are in the position where you can actually feel your nostrils begin to fill with small hard particles.

When a child we sometimes took holidays in Pendine. We stayed in a caravan with gas lights with very fragile mantles. This I discovered when I touched one and found that it was more friable than a butterfly’s wing. I told no one and hoped that it would be put down to natural forces. I had a great belief in ‘natural forces’ in those days. I believed, fondly as it usually turned out, that any deleterious actions occasioned by my innocent frolicking or by my ‘questing’ mind might simply be dismissed as ‘one of those things.’

I always found the difference between the ‘trivial’ assessment by a child and the ‘serious’ assessment by an adult a thing of constant surprise. ‘Not important’ almost inevitably became redefined as ‘essential to the continuance of Western Civilization.’

So the eating of rice pudding; not biting one’s nails; brushing one’s shoes; walking on the outside of the pavement when with a lady; pronouncing ‘trait’ in its correct manner; using the butter knife and always referring to ‘an hotel’ without pronouncing the ‘h’ became the basis of the way of life that would get you where you should be. Don’t knock it – that list seems to me to be going in the right direction!

The ‘natural forces’ that I experience in Pendine were mostly those of nature. I can remember walking back up the beach to the caravan and almost being on the verge of tears because the force of the wind driven sand against my young legs was like a million tiny knives being sunk into my flesh.

I can also remember the virtual impossibility of removing the patina of sand which had, particle by particle, wedged itself into every tiny pore in my body and made the lower part of my body look as though I had made it up to look like some sort of Medieval Golem!

Castelldefels did not have the cutting vindictiveness of Pendine but it did make lying in the sun an effort of will rather than the denial of will to do anything else. The other sturdy sunbathers had a look of rugged determination rather than sybaritic enjoyment of sun worshipers.

Luckily we were stopped in our masochistic ‘pleasures’ by the telephoned arrival of Toni’s family. We were then able to retire from the beach with some sort of dignity and retire to the sedate pleasures of the pool.

We are now officially in the Month of the Holiday of Everyone and the proof of that is that virtually all the flats are occupied. We (Toni and I) are used to most of these expensive residences being owned by the sort of rich people who do not have to rent out their flats to proles like us and keep them empty (but periodically cleaned) except for the few weeks in the summer that they deign to use them.

We like these rich people to stay away because when they arrive they act as if they own the place. Which in fact they do. But we do not like to be reminded of this odious fact. They also bring other life forms with them to share their flats.

These life forms may be young grandchildren who are extra dutiful to grandparents who just happen to have a flat on the beach at Castelldefels. They also include various forms of rat dogs.

Rat dogs are, in many respects, worse than cats. At least cats go out from time to time whereas rat dogs simply whimper or yap their way from seat to sun to shade to food. They are also propriatorial and assume that the entire block of flats is their territory and bark at all movement real and imaginary. God rot them all!

Roll on the colder and neighbourless days of the end of the summer!

Fight the good fight

The RACC has now taken over the management of my speeding charge. On the advice of Toni’s sister I phoned my motoring organization (the last C is for Catalonia, in the rest of Spain it has a final E for España) and they said that they would check all the documentation and see if there was any way out.

For once an official organization did not ask for a photocopy of my passport (which is now distinctly faded because of its constant exposure to bright light) but instead asked for my NIE. This is my official paper which shows that I exist and have a numerical existence in Spain. The number is preceded by an ‘X’ which indicates that I am ‘extranjero’ – foreign! As I keep explaining to the indigenous inhabitants of the Peninsular I am never foreign, I am always British. For some reason this always produces a sort of semi incoherent fury and then a torrent of language of abuse. Strange are the ways of Johnny Foreigner! But you can’t help liking their quaint ways!

So the RACC is going to pursue the cads who dared give me a ticket and try and discover anomalies in their documentation. God knows, given the sheer weight of documentation that the simplest activity generates in this country there is enough scope for some sort of error to get me off.

It had seemed to me that the offence having been committed on the 3rd of March and the letter of accusation not having reached me until late July that some sort of statue of limitations ought to operate making the ticket null and void.

This voice of reason has been ignored. I suspect that, in a nation so given to the comfort of producing sheet after sheet of printing to accompany day to day life there must be extra time allowed to the authorities to amass all the necessary documentation sufficient for bureaucratic satisfaction.

I live in hope of faulty typing! We shall see.

Today I have booked the tickets to ensure that I will be in the UK for Aunt Bet’s birthday in November. It will be interesting to see if my body has adapted to a more gentle climate than that of Britain – I wonder if I will feel the cold! Come to think of it I’m not sure that I actually have a warm jacket anymore!

As I am only taking hand luggage I have to be careful about what I buy when I am back in Britain: EasyJet is notorious for the punitive burden they place on hapless travellers who indulge in shopping too much and have brought back things a few kilos over their limit. Another reason to stick with hand luggage is that the whole of Terrassa will ask me to return with the bulk of the merchandise on sale in Matalan if I even suggest that I have a case with a sliver of room in it!

Toni is looking into the possibility of going to Andorra for a couple of nights. It all seems suspiciously cheap, even if the high season for this mountainous country is the winter for the skiing. I particularly like the possibility of indulging myself (that will be a first!) in the much vaunted spa which has a very inviting web site.

But, before then lunch with Irene, another survivor of The Owner. No doubt the talk will hinge on our never ceasing quest to find an interesting job with excellent emoluments. Far chance in this area!

After splurging out on a whole raft of expensive opera seats I had a comforting talk with Phil about the health of my finances. To my horror he said that he was thinking of retiring next year. Next year only takes us into 2009 and not to the magic year of 2010 and October of that year when all things will be well and my pension and lump sum will be paid.

Phil’s shocked reaction to my money plans before I came to Catalonia will remain in my memory. He had been adopting a meticulously Platonic Dialogue approach to finance, seemingly allowing me to make the decisions while his quiet questioning led me further down the paths of financial rectitude.

His reaction to my gleeful anticipation of Breaking Into Capital and Spending It had to be seen to be believed. I think that it was only with a great effort of will that he stopped himself from reacting like Ananias after Paul had likened him to a whitened wall and smiting me on the mouth! Such monetary blasphemy!

I will instead have to go delving into my British bank account and untimely rip some money to Catalonia. This is not as easy as it seems because I have to do this via the internet and that means remembering my password. I foresee hours of innocent and frustrating fun while I try and relive my thought processes when I decided on the form of the word.

Wish me luck!

Who knows?

A day without a denunciation is a day lost.

Well, my communication from my Union today gave me details of what I will have to do in the future to ensure the destruction of The Owner – or at least cause her minor discomfort.

At present, it being the last day of July, our efforts are being frustrated by the looming month of stasis. August is not a good month to try and do anything in Britain; it Spain it is futile as trying to get a donation to Amnesty International from Radovan Karadzic.

The next date for official action is later in this dead month when allegedly an advisor will be available to make suggestions for my next step. Steve, my exceptional CCOO Union representative has given me suggestions for future action and the names and addresses that I need to make things happen. If things go according to plan The Owner is going to have a start of term that she will not forget!

Culturally, I have now finished my official gloat over the little pile of Liceu tickets for the next season and I have taken a more extensive look into the two (expensive) Catalan art books purchased yesterday. When I say “look” that is exactly what I mean. One is in Spanish, the other in Catalan and while I can make general sense (generally) of what is being said, some important details and sentences pass me by. Looking at the many illustrations is less linguistically taxing!

At the moment I am trying to discover more about an intriguing sculptural piece called ‘Degenerates’ which depicts two roughly shaped figures with distorted limbs and heads slumped in dejection. I have read a little about this piece which only whets my appetite to know more.

This may sound a little precious, but there is a wealth of Catalan talent in terms of art which, as far as I know, is little known outside Catalonia and Spain. From my ‘reading’ and visiting a few galleries this seems to be a sad ignoring of major artists who, for all I know, may lie ignored in the vaults of The Tate and other British galleries. It may also be that I have wilfully ignored the paintings of Casas,

Rusiñol, Fortuny, Guinovart, Amat, Meifrèn, Urgell, Mir, Anglada-Camarasa, Gimeno, Nonell and Vayreda in non Spanish art galleries – but I don’t think so.

I have now read ‘History of Catalonia’ by Jaume Sobrequés i Callicó and I feel that the translator, Neil Charlton, deserves a mention for the sheer ineptitude of his work.

There are various infelicities of expression as well as words like ‘habilitated’ used in “Franco habilitated numerous prisons to accommodate a large prison population” – what does that mean?

One of my favourite sentences in ‘History of Catalonia’ is: “Despite CiU being a markedly nationalist coalition, its policy of integrating into the new project of the country the board human sectors from Spanish immigration consolidated the idea that Catalonia, respecting diversity, is a single people advancing as such, within its ideological plurality, towards a modern society and fully integrated into Europe.” Really makes you want to read on, doesn’t it?

Professor Jaume Sobrequés i Callicó has an impressive CV and I suspect that his style in Catalan and Spanish is a little more lucid than this brief history suggests.

The narrative of Catalonia’s history is completed in just over 130 pages of big writing and it only conveys a flavour of the fascinating sequence of events which led to the country in which I live today. A short history obviously gives rise to more questions that it answers, but this one does stimulate the intention to find out more. And that surely is valuable.

From this highly partisan view of Catalan history you come away with the impression that Catalonia has been badly treated since the Catalans chose the wrong side in the War of the Spanish Succession in the eighteenth century!

I think that Wales can claim a much longer period of bad treatment! But the sun has been shining today and I am not one to hold grudges with a glass of Rioja in my hand!
Cheers!

The finger points!

‘Denunciation’ is so much more evocative than ‘accusation’ don’t you think?

Whatever. The official process has now taken a step forward and I (with the Union’s invaluable help) have written out our case against The Owner and her nefarious practices and submitted it to the government for their consideration in organizing an inspection of the school. With any reasonable luck the officers should arrive just at the time when the remaining senior staff arrive for the start of term in August!

And there are other agencies which can trigger their own inspections. They will be informed!

The letter writing has also only just started. What after all is a poor teacher recently sacked from his job supposed to do if not to spread the good news around to those who might have a passing interest in education?

Today also saw another considerable achievement: I finally managed to purchase my tickets for the Liceu for the next season. This has not been a simple as one might have thought. OK, I am prepared to admit that the prime problem lies squarely at my door. The complexity of the subscription book that I was sent together with the fact that no package as far as I could see offered all the operas I wanted to see, did defeat me. I had to purchase my tickets singly.

Then there is a rule that one could purchase no more than six individual tickets via a telephone line with a credit card (?) True I’m afraid, a rule of the Liceu. And the tickets are not sent to you – they have to be collected by you in person and . . . the box office opened at odd hours. Then not at all. And never on a Sunday. All these things conspired to frustrate my increasingly desperate attempts to spend money. And to spend money a year or more in advance for performances stretching well into next year.

The box office was open today, but not until the afternoon. Even though the Liceu was open for business.

What this did do was to afford me the luxury of wandering around the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona and go into book shops. My perennial quest for a general book on modern Catalan art was, as usual, a failure. This time, however, the girl in the bookshop on the Ramblas described a larger more specialized art bookshop in another street off the Ramblas. I dutifully trotted off in the direction indicated and promptly got lost. A rather nice History, Philosophy and Design bookshop later I had been redirected to the correct location and a very fine shop it was too.

One distinctive feature in this shop (La Central situated in Elisabets, 6) was that near one of the information desks was a glass square set into the floor allowing you to see a disquietingly vertiginous view of the floor beneath!

The assistant found the books I required in a few seconds. Two volumes of Catalan Art from the 1890’s to almost the present day. Fantastic! I told myself that I would willingly pay €20 for a meal so I should be prepared to pay at least that amount for a durable volume whose content was exactly what I was looking for.

The cost of the two volumes was €180!

I did not buy them. But I still wanted them.

The ever helpful sequence of assistants continued with the young lady from the expensive bookshop telling me about a second hand book shop in Carrer Canuda where I might expect to find an excellent selection of art books.

And I did and bought one of the volumes I was looking for (though in Catalan and not Castilliano) and another book (in Castilliano) which I wasn’t. The prices were quite steep for second hand books, but cheap when compared to the actual prices. I keep telling myself. I hope.

All in all a good day!

It's all wrong!

One thing about having to go into Barcelona for an opera which starts at 5.00 pm on a Sunday is that you don’t have to cope with what I thought were inevitable traffic jams getting to the Ramblas.

I left less time than I usually allow getting to the Liceu and still had enough time to get my tickets for the next season.

In theory.

In practice of course BBVA (surely the undisputed holder of the title ‘Worst Bank in the Universe’) ensured that things were not simple. I have a new bank book. This useful (hollow laugh!) item allows you to get a hardcopy update of any movements in your account by inserting it into a slot in the hole in the wall machines: it automatically updates. Except, of course, naturally, it doesn’t. Not mine. Nothing.

So I couldn’t check what tickets had been paid for by the woefully inadequate agency which I used to try and build up my visits to the Liceu. But, as luck would have it, the Liceu added their own little piece of unhelpfulness and wouldn’t allow me to buy any tickets for the next season anyway. Well, it was a Sunday so it would have been unreasonable to expect to buy any ticket except for the performance on that day.

A thoroughly unsatisfactory start to what turned out to be a thoroughly satisfactory performance.

This production of ‘Don Giovanni’ was one I saw on its first night some time ago London when it was roundly booed on its conclusion!

This experience was rather different.

The opening sequences demonstrate just how dark an opera ‘Don Giovanni’ is. The presentation of the morality of the piece in this production delights in ambiguity. Trying to work out the location of the moral centre of the opera is difficult. The set, a series of angled posts with a cluster of lights at the top and the thrusting in of a long bar suggested a modern setting and the dissolute action of the characters suggested the drunken culture of the pleasure seekers Mediterranean resort!

The Don (Simon Keenlyside) and Leporello (Kyle Ketelsen) gave very physical performances with Ketelsen being a typical English yob complete with trackkies, shaven head and holdall full of cans. The English connection was emphasised by the Union Flag being used by Leporello in one scene to mask his amorous activities! The performances of the pair were excellent to the extent that I was sometimes surprised that they could sing as well! Both singers were strong but not outstanding; the fact that they could actually sing anything after the amount of leaping around they had to do was amazing.

The Don is at the centre of a vortex of gleeful amorality where, in his philosophy, anything goes and responsibility is a series of evasions or redefinitions. The tawdry showiness of much of the action and the props emphasise the empty moral values of not only the Don but also everyone else in the opera. As the action progressed I began to wonder if this opera was the musical equivalent of ‘Madame Bovery’ where the entire cast had lost any sympathy from the observer.

The sudden appearance of a pair of headlights towards the end of the overture and the slow appearance of the rest of the car was a coup de theatre and the boot of the vehicle was a suitable place to put the body of the Commendatore (well sung by Günther Groissböck) but also a point of controversy when his ‘corpse’ emerges from the same boot before being unceremoniously being re-deposited there leaving a pair of legs hanging over the side! This body was a detail that had not been thought out in sufficient detail for it to be a convincing part of the narrative. The speaking statue of the Commendatore being a bottle of whisky I could take, but his rising from the dead was one step too far.

The ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ ending of the opera where everyone took a stab (quite literally) at the Don as he was strapped and gagged in a chair down stage was more effective this time because the joint murder summed up the corrupted morality which informed the action of the whole of the opera from the viewpoint of the director Calixto Bieito.

The floor of the stage was a cluttered mess at the end of the production and the curtain call was conducted with a certain fastidiousness as soloists had to ensure that they did not go flying in the mixture of balloons, streamers, orange juice, cereal and other bits and pieces which were strewn around.

The reception of the piece was enthusiastic and it was a production which thoroughly deserved it.

Only connect!

Our telephone is suffering from Weekend Failure Syndrome.

For two weeks running the advent of Friday evening produced only fuzzy interference from the phone; that mist of sound that used to accompany the inadvertent switching on of a TV set back in the Bad Old Days when broadcasts were only made in the hours that Aunty Beeb decided were suitable for well regulated families. Bring back ‘The Potter’s Wheel’ say I!

This time however we decided to take action. Toni’s preferred form of attack is via the Internet.

This is an institution in which Toni has much faith. I think it is on the basis that any organization which can create a mystique of infinite sagacity linked to ubiquity yet retain aspects of inscrutability and callous indifference is as near as damn it to a religion.

The Internet also has the playful ‘wanton boys’ approach of a callous god to its adherents. Sometimes a prayer (or information request) will be answered with exactly what the initiate is looking for, yet at other times the ‘answers’ offered rival the Delphic Oracle in their incoherent impenetrability.

There are also different sects on the Internet where the disciple’s simple plea for information will be answered in a number of pleasing formats where all look convincing and yet their answers are widely different in detail and fact.

Beware! For your adversary the teenage computer nerd prowls around creating convincing looking websites seeking whom he may devour!

Good and Evil constantly battle on the Internet. The Archangels McAfee and Norton are in an eternal battle with Demon Hackers and we all know that the wages of Internet sin, gazing upon lurid pornography, is retribution in the form of computer death by virus.

In spite of this Toni perseveres in his belief in the Internet, though he often echoes the cry of Saint Augustine, “O God I believe; help thou my unbelief!” His initial attempts to inform our telephone supplier that their supply wasn’t were via the Internet. The information needed was detailed and fiddly and eventually ineffectual. We had to phone the land line supplier using a mobile phone. This is nicely ironic but also vastly expensive as you go through the, “Please choose from one of the following twenty five options” etc before you actually get to a human being.

When Toni finally got to a human (”He was a South American,” he said darkly) he was told to “Wait a moment.” And was promptly cut off. The second human threatened vast fees if any technician had to do anything and gave vague assurances that something might be done. The simple checking of the line via a computer seemed to be far beyond the technical ability of the person (wherever he physically was) to do. I seem to remember in my Trimphone™ phoning the operator and she was able to check the line in a few seconds.

Such is the march of progress!

Today I have to compile the List of Shame: an enumeration of the sins of omission and commission committed by The School That Sacked Me. Toni also has a part to play in this denunciation as it has to be translated into Catalan. It will be sent to the Union for comment and then on Tuesday I will go into Barcelona and meet my union representative and have the list discussed and edited. Then it will be transferred to the official form and sent to the Inspectorate as an inducement for them to inspect the school. This is one of the ways that the various unprofessional ways in which the school conducts its business may be made more public.

The letter I have had from COBIS is an odd one informing me that no inspection is planned for the school until 2011! This is not what we were told: what has happened to the October inspection of 2008 not 2011? I think that I will check to see if there is some sort of code of conduct for those schools linked to the COBIS marque. If there is, whatever it is, the school must have offended against it!

I also think that it is time for a follow up letter to The British Council who should, by this time, have at least acknowledged the receipt of my missive.

The wheels turn – but slowly.

All of my ‘action’ is turning into an exercise in patience!