Dreams and reality

Suddenly things become just that little bit more real.

‘Real’ that is until you remember that you have no money and money is what you need to make a scholastic dream a reality.

This is a way of saying that I have seen a place which could be transformed into a school with only the injection of that commodity which in our case we have not got: money.

Even the mere fact of somewhere which might be useful is enough to give the reality filter another tweak. I shall continue to dream on!

Today is the sort of grudgingly overcast day which drags in enthusiasm and flattens it, in the same way in which the quality of the light drains colour and makes things appear much more two dimensional. It is perhaps a fitting counterpoint to my enthusiasm, the climatic equivalent of the person who rode behind Roman emperors during triumphal processions and whispered in their ears, “Remember man that thou art human!” though in my case it is more like, “Remember man that thou lack’st money!” Such an inconvenient truth!

Still, today is LWLD (Ladies Who Lunch Day) and my weekly dose of frivolous and otherwise conversation with Caroline until she gets her schedule of English teaching sorted out and reality comes back into force.

After lunch I am inclined to visit Barcelona and become a Friend of MNAC.

This didn’t happen.

But the meal, at an Italian restaurant was expensive and delicious: braised liver with fried pate de fois gras augmented with sweet sauce and pine nuts accompanied by salad with goat’s cheese and the finest chips I have eaten in Spain!

Ever since that man Heath imposed charges on national art galleries and museums I have been touchy about paying to go in to national repositories of culture. When the Tories were finally ousted one of the first things I did was to write to Number 10 and ask that museum charges be abolished. I had a very polite letter back informing me that, with many other tasks at hand, they would be looking at the charging as soon as possible.

Once the iniquitous charging was abolished (helped no doubt by the petition organized by the anti-charging campaign which I supported with enthusiasm!) I discovered that I had a new sensitivity to the whole question of museum charges.

MNAC on Montjuïc is a very fine museum which has an unrivalled collection of Catalan art which should be freely available to all Catalans as part of their national heritage and to non-Catalans to inform them of what the Catalan heritage in terms of art actually is. In either case, it should be free.

The location of the gallery is not in its favour. MNAC is in the Palau Nacional, a building which was put up for the 1929 International Exhibition. It is in an imposing position, situated high on Montjuïc and commanding impressive vistas of the whole of Barcelona. It is reached by walking along a long processional way lined by exhibition pavilions then up an impossibly extended series of open air escalators and stairways until you finally reach the apotheosis of art which is the cathedral like building on the summit of the hill and collapse gasping for oxygen at the final series of steps which take you in to the actual gallery.

This is not the gallery for you to ‘pop in’ and check out your favourite paintings. Merely to get there is an achievement so to ‘pop in’ for a few minutes shows a dedication to art which is surely beyond most of the visitors to the gallery. If you are there you ‘do it’ so you don’t have to make the ascent of the mountain again in a hurry!

I, however, am made of sterner stuff and so am determined to become an amic (friend) and thus gain access to the gallery whenever I want without charge (discounting the amount I pay to become an amic!) and thus bringing MNAC into the same relationship with my gallery visiting as the National Museum of Wales and all other national galleries in Great Britain.

When I said that I would write to the Generalitat to express my dissatisfaction with museum charges, my Catalan friends urged me to do just that, indicating that some aspects of British life could be usefully transferred to Catalonia!

Tomorrow culture!

Which Spain?

My continuing exploration of the Spanish psyche, albeit through the medium of British writers, has continued with my reading ‘¡Guerra!’ by Jason Webster.

Webster uses the chance discovery of an unmarked Spanish Civil War mass grave near his remote home to explore the questions raised by that conflict. He takes a very personal approach and uses his journeying around the country as the basis for his narrative and his political and social analysis.

His style can be summed by the opening paragraph:
“Begoña stood at the entrance to the house, leaning on her staff as her little mongrel, Rosco, panted nervously at her feet. A straw hat was tied under her chin with a dark-blue scarf, partly shading a worn, landscaped face, and eyes that shone like cinnamon stones from within layers of protecting skin.”

If you like that sort of thing then this is the book for you. I found myself thinking that certain sections of it could be used as fairly simple exercises for an A Level English Language class to analyse the use of language and the various narrative tricks that he employs. For me his ‘in your face descriptions’ and obtrusively writerly style get in the way of what he is trying to say about the discoveries that he made about the darker side of Spain. This is the Spain that both wants to sustain el pacto del olvido (the act of forgetting) and at the same time to know everything about what happened in reality in the dark days of the Civil War and the even darker ones which followed during the imposition and sustaining of the Dictatorship of Franco.

His insights, and there are some, are always muddied by his style which forces itself towards the reader in a most unbecoming manner. Webster seems not to have decided whether he wants to write a novel or a travel book with the end result that he writes neither.

Not a book that I can recommend.

Today I saw the outside (at least) of premises that might be suitable for a new school. Who knows? Tomorrow a meeting with a representative of the owner and a glimpse inside the walls and shuttered windows!

Also today something of a dream come true: cut price stationery in a shop which has decided to call it a day and close down. I have taken the opportunity to restock my depleted supplies of A4 coloured card, buy one or two sundries and also bought a fountain pen.

For me fountain pens fall into the same category as books, watches and indeed laptop computers: you can’t have too many of them. And when they are half price they are irresistible.

I remember a deep and meaningful conversation with the head of maths in my last British school (!) where we realized that both of us had shared a childhood delight in visiting Boots the Chemist. We had spent many happy periods in our young lives delighting in the sheer plenitude that inexpensive stationery afforded: sheets of paper; silver chains of paperclips; golden piles of drawing pins, sleek biros; different coloured inks; exercise books with alluring covers; pristine pencils and other riches too highly priced to be anything other than the objects of hopeless lust. Things like typewriters, office tape dispensers, long arms staplers!

Perhaps I have said too much, but stationephiles are much more common than you might think.

Is there one in your home?

For the sake of art?

It is good to see that Spanish officialdom is still alive and kicking.

Today I went into Barcelona to continue using my ArtCard which gives me access to six or seven cultural venues in the city for the bargain price of €20. As it was a Monday virtually everything was closed, but not the museum of contemporary art. Contemporary art; not Modern Art. MNAC – the temple of both the old and the relatively new in Catalan art was closed so contemporary art was the only thing left to me.

Now you have to realise that I have defended André’s bricks in The Tate with the sort of tigerish intensity which is only found in someone who argued vociferously against the return of the Elgin Marbles to the Greeks while drinking in a taverna in Athens. I have championed Claes Oldenburg while others scoffed at his soft typewriters and his giant lipsticks. I have defended all of these (hardly contemporary I admit) artistic causes, but if I am honest, then much of what passes for contemporary art in our major museums leaves me cold. And believe me that adjective is the mildest that I can think of.

My experiences in the museum today have not changed my attitude.

Barcelona is cursed by being the home of La Fundación Antoni Tàpies which exists to laud the art of Antoni Tàpies – an artist, in my view, of almost limitless fatuity, but who is de rigueur in any self respecting cutting edge artistic institution. And sure enough there was an award winning (sic) piece of pretentious rubbish by Tàpies: the usual things, a metal bed frame screwed to the wall, various poles draped with cloth, a collection of chairs screwed to a terrace; metal ribbon linking some of them and . . . I can’t be bothered to go on wasting words on an uninspiring and essentially depressing piece of self indulgence.

The building is striking: full of open space and clean white lines; extended sloping walkways and stark plate glass.

I can’t help thinking if you come out of an art gallery and start talking about the building, then the contents have failed in a fairly major way!

However, there is another and perhaps more convincing way of judging a gallery: what’s the food like.

And here Barcelona’s Museum of Contemporary Art suddenly became the place to visit. After a first course of spaghetti with marinated salmon mixed with black olives and sliced gherkins washed down with red wine laced with gaseosa, I was treated to a large and luscious fillet of cod with marmalade caramelised onions and peas. The meal was completed with ice cream topped with walnuts and honey and a cup of strong, bitter coffee. All for ten quid.

It made the art bearable.

Just.

But officialdom (you’ve forgotten the opening sentence haven’t you?) is what will remain with me from this gallery going experience.

Although the art did not merit a photograph, the building did. I took various shots of the outside and then took a few more inside. It was only when I was taking a shot through a downstairs window of the gallery of graffiti daubed building opposite that the heavy hand of curatorial displeasure descended.

A stern lady in an unflattering uniform gravely shook her finger at me and indicated by eloquent hand gestures that photography was forbidden. My plaintive justification that my shot was actually of another building outside merely earned me an extra scowl.

I was glad to leave.

Outside, in the sort of plaça in front of the building workmen were constructing the scaffolding for a stage being watched by a motley collection of exhausted skateboarders (ultra modern buildings usually provide a rich landscape for skateboarders) equally tired art gazers and a bewildering collection of vaguely disreputable passers-by. All were watching the efficient efforts of the construction workers as they assembled what looked like a giant mecano set for some unspecified performance. The men were mostly an undistinguished bunch with fags artfully placed in exactly the right corner of the mouth at precisely the most effective angle.

But one worker, stripped to the half, seemed to have stepped out of a canvas from a ‘real’ art gallery which had classically inspired Renaissance paintings of well built saints! At one point he helped support a prefabricated arch with a metal pole and he looked (apart from the clothing!) like a character from the brush of Michelangelo.

Then one of the people sitting next to me on the marble wall of the building lit up

so I left.

Home thoughts

Today is the last day before the kids go back to school.

Saturday some of the larger children celebrated by having a raucous party on the beach late into the night. We could see very little beyond the lights at the end of the pool but the howls of adolescent voices cut through the darkness. Let them, I thought, have their last moments of happiness because on Monday the day time will be reclaimed by those of us not in work and they will have too much homework to be able to go out in the nights!

This is the sort of September that every teacher works towards: when colleagues are doing the work and keeping the shops and streets free from apprentice people.

That’s what I call living!

And a whole world of photographs waiting to be taken!

Breathing sand and sunshine

Why is it that, with battery fully charged and visual senses hyped to the point of true creativity, that the weather conditions produce high winds and a sandstorm?

I am very much a ‘fine weather’ photographer and I am not prepared to put myself out very much to gain a shot; the possibility of sand grains inside the lens of a new camera sounds like altogether a bad idea. Far better to mess around with the images that I already have on the kiddie version of Microsoft Photo Premium that came with the laptop!

I was hoping to go down to the edge of the sea and attempt to get some soft focus pictures of the waves as I think that I have worked out how to adjust the aperture and film speed manually. Unfortunately I think that there are ‘failsafe’ procedures built into the camera so that even when you have branched out on your own and started dictating your version of the correct exposure the brain inside the camera takes a paternal interest in what you are doing and tweaks your own attempts at unaided efforts! I completed a series of test photos of running water from the tap, but I'm not sure what I have proved by my end resuts! Apart, that is, from a series of pictures of a running tap.

I braved the beach in spite of the howling winds. Setting up my sun bed (a triumph of hope over observation) with hands occupied in wrestling with a lively towel, a particularly vicious gust of wind took off my glasses and whisked them away.

For most people this would be irritating; for me it was a disaster. My glasses are rimless with the arms a mere suggestion in the thinnest of titanium wisps. In other words almost invisible and light as a feather. Let us now remember why I was wearing the glasses in the first place: to remedy my myopia. So, almost invisible and light as a feather off they go in the wind into a sand fuelled gale into the out of focus world that exists a few feet from my unassisted eyes. Oh, and I think I failed to mention that the glasses were the most expensive pair I have ever owned.

Throwing the bloody towel to the ground a first peer discovered nothing of ophthalmic interest lying in the immediate vicinity. I had a sinking feeling that I was going to have to emulate the grovelling approach which had seen me (in my contact lens days) crawling about on my hand and knees like the most abject pilgrim approaching some idolatrous shrine in the hope finding salvation – or a small piece of fugitive plastic which had sprung from my eye.

The factor which saved me from this humiliation was the simple fact that my glasses, invisible and light as they were, had photo chromatic lenses, so even my blurred eyesight was able to distinguish two dark ovals lying on the sand.

After such emotionally draining excitement I felt that I deserved my restoratively bracing laze as the wind built up tiny dunes of fine sand against each individual hair on my legs. Breathing was a particularly mineral and gritty experience. Any movement released a part of the frisky towel which proceeded, in almost comic book fashion, to belabour me with a reiterated series of slaps. But we Brits are used to combative sun bathing and, while the sun shines (if only fitfully) it will take more than a mere gale to make us desist.

When the sun disappeared: I went. There are, after all, limits.

My experiments with the camera continue. I have now discovered how to adjust the shutter speed and the aperture manually – but I have yet to take a better picture with my tinkerings than the camera produces on the automatic setting!

I aspire!

Internet intensity

I blame living in a fairly small town bereft of normal access to the everyday gadgets that are the life blood of my imagination.

The internet is an over compensation for the lack of up to date electrical shops within a couple of minutes of the flat. But it is an irresistible one. Which is another way of saying that I have ordered the Sony e-book reader.

I have told myself that it is essential so that I have something to read on the plane when I go back to the UK for Aunt Betty’s birthday. Why, you may ask, can I not take a book on the plane with me? To ask the question shows that you would not understand the answer. After all why read a mere paperback which costs a couple of quid when you can at vastly increased cost read exactly the same thing electronically? If that is not a rhetorical question then I don’t know what is.

The new Canon G9 camera continues to impress, even if the complexity of the operation of the more esoteric features remains a closed book to me – even with the print out of the manual open in front of my unseeing eyes. According to this book of fairy tales I should be able to change the colour of a flower by the pressing of certain buttons. Leaving aside questions of why I might want to do that; I can’t. I have followed the steps painstakingly and nothing happens. Admittedly I am attempting to change the colour of the settee, but surely the principles are the same!

I have also found that every time I have left the security of the ‘auto’ setting on the camera the results have been uniformly bad. I am regarding this as the low base from which I will ascend, Snowdon-like, to the pinnacle of the mountain of photographic excellence. And let’s face it, if I am capable of puns like that, then nothing is beyond me!

I think that I will do what I did in Rumney and start taking photos of my immediate surroundings. I like taking pictures of flowers: they don’t move very much unless there is a wind; they have strong colour and they are unselfconscious about being photographed: perfect subjects!

With my other cameras the close up function on one is too limited to get decent shots and on the other it is ‘touch and go’ on its approach to focus. This camera should be substantially better and give me more leeway in choosing the effects of depth of field. I say ‘should’ advisedly as my initial experiments have been anything but satisfactory. I shall take as my motto the hit of Yazz and the Plastic Population and look heavenwards for my direction as far as my photography is concerned!

Incidentally, when I told Emma that her camera and photographic efforts in Catalonia were the immediate cause of my buying a new camera, she wrote, “You shouldn't feel any pixel envy just accept that I'm a better photographer than you.” Good phrase, wrong assumption. Or at least an assumption I am prepared to work at to prove wrong.

Let the clicking commence!

A full day!

Given the sacrosanct nature of bureaucracy in Spain, I suppose that I should be grateful that signing up for my Spanish classes only took just over an hour. During the complex series of manoeuvres where, like some form of ancient dance, movement, conversation and the offering of documents must be executed in the correct ritualistic style, in the time honoured order, one step following the other like an ancient Pavanne.

The payment of the exorbitant fee for the course of lessons which are twice a week from September to June could not, of course, be handed over to the person registering you. The frightening sum of €20 (!) had to be paid by your being given a bill which then had to be taken to a bank (the despised BBVA) where the actual money was paid, your receipt stamped, then you had to return to the centre and wait again for your receipt to be accepted.

Yet again, even though I was talking to someone in Spanish who spoke Spanish I have managed to convince a native speaker that I am actually more competent in the language than I really am. I think that this is one time where my easy plausibility will come back to haunt me during my very first lesson where my inability to decline the verb ‘to be’ will be my public downfall!

Lunch with Caroline seemed to be a fully deserved recompense for my travails in the morning and we managed to talk with fluency and interest about subjects great and small while consuming a very reasonably priced Japanese meal.

As we are looking around at other possibilities for renting I accompanied Caroline to look at the outside of a house for rent near her in the last urbanization of Castelldefels before The Tunnels on the slope of one of the hills that surround the town.

From the outside the place looked interesting and the shared pool certainly looked attractive but there was a series of steps down to the front door and the view was of houses and flats on the other side of the hill. Considering the price I think that this is one viewing which will not take place. As I sit here listening to the waves I think how hard it is going to be to leave the beach – even for the ‘Freeing of the Bluespace Thousands’ as my books are now generally known.

The gadget event of the day was the arrival of the new camera. This has arrived in record time and came with little extras like an ineffective tripod and a camera case that doesn’t fit that I didn’t expect.

The camera itself (a Canon powershot G9) looks a little bit retro but the pictures it takes are excellent. The x6 optical zoom and the 3” LCD viewer are both astonishing. The verticality of the viewed image is maintained even if you turn the camera – a feature which almost caused an accident when first discovered!

The instructions are dense to the point of opacity but I am told that there is a photography course on line which might help. Otherwise it is going to be a question of trial and error to find out how some of the features work.

The first results are pleasing though and I am looking forward to producing shots which can get me back to some of the pictures I took ‘on a roll’ during an unusually productive and successful couple of weeks back in Rumney.




There was only time to charge the battery before I had to be off to Barcelona for the first in the series of my visits to the Liceu.

Having left just over three hours to travel the 20 km to Barcelona, and finding the roads gratifyingly free of the usual traffic jams I was able to take a series of ‘artistic’ shots of various locales in the city within spitting distance of the Ramblas and have a quick meal.



Here I broke one of my cardinal rules and was duly punished for it. It is perfectly possible to eat on the Ramblas for a reasonable sum of money but, as they say in all the best fairy stories, stick to the path. In the case of eating in Barcelona this means: find a set cost meal and do not deviate from the menu provided.

My mistake was water. I had an excellent value meal of chicken, salad, spaghetti and chips on one enormous plate with bread and what I thought was a drink and sweet. Wrong. The drink of agua con gas was almost three quid! It was a large glass, but it was still water. And coffee was another quid. I have now, well and truly, learned my lesson.

Uncharacteristically the performance I had gone to Barcelona to see in the Liceu was of dance. I am subject to the ‘Banana Yogurt Effect’ in this art: I don’t ever choose it, but quite like it when I get it.

The company performing was Tanztheater Wuppertal under the direction of Pina Bausch. A person and company of whom I had never heard.



The first part of the programme was ´Café Müller’ which was a load of pretentious twaddle which reinforced my pre-existing prejudices about the value of Dance with a capital ‘D’. I was not best pleased when the start was delayed and then when the lights when down it was delayed further before the ‘action’ got started and one of the protagonists limped into action crashing into furniture on a stage littered with chairs and tables.

The ‘characters’ in this piece were loosely enough defined to accommodate any half baked psychological, social or political meaning a viewer cared to attach to the paucity of meaningful movements visible on stage. The music was not continuous, but when it did hiss into audibility at least there were a few good tunes from the extracts from ‘Dido and Aeneas’ by Henry Purcell.

According to an overheard conversation from the gentleman on my right who had one of those plumy, sonorous English accents that make me feel like a provincial clodhopper, ‘Café Müller’ was about ‘isolation.’ I suppose that was as good an explanation as anything.

So, the action: it was about isolation you know. The couple playing the lovers were competent enough as was Pina Bausch herself playing a sort of ghost at the feast. Other characters included a small stepping sort of fussy Women’s Institute character and a pony tailed man whose function seemed to be to smash a path through the furniture to allow other characters to thrash their way about the stage.

I really do not think that a series of vaguely interesting, unrelated movements gain in significance by inane repetition. I began to wonder if Pina Bausch was seeking to be the dance equivalent of the minimalist music of Philip Glass.

When this interminable pseudo intellectual crap finally subsided into blackness I was so disgruntled that I could not bring myself to join in with even a token clap to accompany the ringing applause from the character on my right.

During the interval I descended the few steps to the foyer as I have now decided that my traditional scorn for those members of the audience who frequent ‘the upper levels’ can be transferred to the Liceu and I have therefore decided to sit in the stalls this season. Finding a vacant seat I scribbled some insulting notes into my programme to vent my spleen and awaited the second half with dread.

I returned to the auditorium to find the stage occupied by a dozen stagehands busily covering and raking the stage with a layer of earth. This was preparation for the performance of ‘The Rite of Spring’ – at least, I thought, I will be able to listen to the music and if necessary close my eyes.

And everything I said about the first half now has to be turned on its head. The lack of coherence, pointless gesture, and meaningless repetition: all the negatives were transformed into as griping a dance performance as I have ever seen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXVuVQuMvgA&feature=related

It was the sort of experience which made the (remaining) hairs on my head stand up. The compelling narrative of ritual sacrifice was brilliantly presented by the girls wearing diaphanous costumes and the boys stripped to the half. In the course of the exuberant action the dancers became covered in the earth in which they danced, kicked, stamped, shuffled and rolled.


It may be an overworked word but the performance was electrifying with the vitality of the generally young dancers barely contained by the passion of their steps and movements.

The applause which greeted the exhausting final dance of the victim and the end of the production was tumultuous with some patrons actually ululating their appreciation.

Many members of the audience actually stood when Pina Bausch finally came on stage to accept the plaudits of the crazed audience.

As is well known, a British audience would hesitate about standing for The Second Coming, so the gentleman on my right and I stayed firmly in our seats.

It was good, but not that good!

The cruel sun

I would like to be able to say that as I lay on the beach this afternoon I was gently caressed by soft breezes and lulled into a comfortable state of mild contemplation by the plangent sound of curling waves. But I can’t.

The wind made smoothing out a towel on a sun bed the equivalent of wrestling with a more than usually fractious two year old child making a bid for freedom, while the wind borne sand particles seemed to have turned into a more than usually callous depilatory machine with thousands of tiny pin prick collisions of grain on skin. The Mediterranean is not the Atlantic and the usual waves are domestic to the point of subservience. Today they were like gauche teenagers ramping about the shore and generally showing off and creating more sound that is seemly.

I, however, positioned the sun bed so that the gently raised head of the bed acting as a windbreak and only a few sand particle augmented gusts managed to land on my unprotected limbs.

As an Old Campaigner who visited Gran Canaria in the winter months and therefore had to go to the beach whatever the weather to justify the vast cost, I was used to lying in what in other circumstances would be described as inclement weather. My motto was always ‘Maspalomas has a micro climate’ as I trudged my sullen way though the dunes towards my Mecca of sunshine I knew would be waiting for me at Kiosco Siete. Sometimes I would lie out in what can only be described as rain, but it was warm rain and I knew that my faith would ensure that the sun would return.

So Castelldefels is easy compared to my training in Gran Canaria. Ah, if only my colleagues knew how hard won that tan I sported in January was they would not have been so spiteful as I mocked their pallid new year skins!

Eventually even I could not longer regard lying in a position where I was being systematically flayed as in any way enjoyable so I raised myself and looked at the sea. I share with my father (and the rest of humanity if we believe old watsisname and power of archetypal images) an unending fascination with moving water. The waves are infinitely interesting and, if you are as myopic as I am, infinitely artistic in their expressionistic (with a touch of myopic impressionism) way.

As I gazed I also became aware of a new dimension to my life long love/hate response to that haunting painting showing a wave breaking and horses emerging from the foam. When I was very young I thought that it was art at its best; as a teenager I thought it kitsch at its worst – while now, of course, I have a gentle post-modernist ironic regard tinged with nostalgia for it. My perception however has been changed by myopia. The white horses of the waves are usually those waves that break directly in front of you and create a flamboyant excitement of foam; but the real horses are those that you see when a wave breaks in a continuous movement away from the observer parallel to the shore so that you follow a continuously breaking wave as it moves away from you. If you are myopic then it really does look like a prancing snorting steed. And all for nothing and not for long.

The wind has now died down and the sun is back out from behind the gauze of cloud and the table needs to be set for dinner on the balcony.

Ah me!

Uniform?

The School That Sacked Me is now trying to foster a sense of corporate identity by forcing male teachers to wear an official tie and female teachers to sport an official scarf. This is the equivalent of the designer of the Hindenburg airship worrying about the motif on the china while ignoring the fact that the gas that made the Hindenburg lighter than air was highly explosive hydrogen!

My facile guilt about the supposed return of the pupils should have been delayed until next Monday as that is the real starting point of their education for the next academic year. I therefore have time to work on a suitable literary analogy to complement my feelings!

‘Ghosts of Spain’ is the evocative title of a descriptive ‘travel’ book written by Hispanophile Giles Tremlett. It takes the form of a highly opinionated vision of Spain’s past linking Tremlett’s personal appreciation of what it means to be living in Spain at present and how aware we should be of the past. He touches on taboo subjects connected with the Civil War and the way in which Spaniards have dealt with the aftermath in a democratic society. Tremlett deals with a whole range of social, political and religious situations in modern Spain and (as befits the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent) is beguilingly liberal and articulate in his analysis.

I particularly liked his chapter on ‘How the Bikini Saved Spain’ – an amusing analysis of why the cheap tourist trade came and stayed in Spain rather than elsewhere in the Mediterranean. The underlying motivations of the central characters involved in the development of ‘what once was one of the most beautiful spots on the Spanish coast’ from a ‘modest beach-side village, a place of sailors, fishermen and farmers who patiently tended almond, olive, carob and citrus trees’ to place where the ‘burghers of Benidorm have rolled out a welcome carpet of concrete, tarmacadam and brick’ speaks volumes about how Spain has developed over the last fifty or so years.

This is a book which I can recommend as a compelling read but one which is badly proof read and a disgrace for something under the imprint of Faber and Faber and especially when the Epilogue states that the paperback edition has been revised to correct typographical errors!

Wrong!

But still worth a read.

Everything is in the choice

Who can resist a menu dish which describes itself as beef with ‘trumpets of death’?

I suppose that the truth is that many people would hesitate about a choice of food which has death as part of its title. Not I.

It turned out to be a particularly succulent piece of beef which one could cut with a fork in a rich gravy augmented with mushrooms. The fact that the listing was in Spanish made the meal all the more exotic – though the fact that I am in Spain makes it also sort of prosaic as well.

Anyway an excellent meal which started with baby broad beans cooked in the Catalan style. This is an excellent vegetable dish with the beans cooked with lumps of meat, black sausage, bacon, fennel seeds and (in spite of what one Catalan told me) mint. Simple, nourishing and tasty.

The Crema Catalana to end the meal was almost perfect – the custard base smooth and sweet while the caramelized topping was crisp and thick and with just that right degree of ‘burnt’ in the taste to counteract the cloying sweetness of the rest of the dessert.

Oh, and the wine was all part of the price. Just under nine quid. And people ask me why I moved to Spain! And it didn’t rain. Again.

All of that is contentment of course, but I did feel what can only be described as disquiet today. Mainly because I thought it was Monday rather than Sunday.

This Monday the kids are back in The School That Sacked Me and what I felt was a sort of guilt that I wasn’t there to be with them.

It didn’t last.

Just to be different

We are well used to visitors from Britain suddenly saying something like, “Oh my god! I’ve forgotten my toothpaste!” as though they are visiting a country where the trappings of civilization like Christianity and electricity might be in short supply! I sympathize with this attitude as it is one to which I have often found myself subject.

Ever since I first saw ‘Bonanza’ in Spanish

on the TV screens in Tossa de Mar back in the 1950s one feels a certain sense of wonder that the everyday things of life are also available in another language: when Colgate toothpaste is pronounced Kol-gar-tay and actually has foreign writing on it, nothing can be taken for granted!

Spain is so much like Britain that minor differences show up all the more clearly. I suppose that I should be commenting on major social, political and religious peculiarities that I have noted, but something more pressing is engaging my attention at the moment.

Where are the scrapbooks in this country?

I have tried to find one in half a dozen supermarkets and various cheap shops and no luck. Perhaps the cutting out of ‘unconsidered trifles’ and sticking them in an album is a little too old fashioned for a country that prizes itself on its espousal of modernity. But I want to retain some of the apercus culled from my copies of The Week magazine (which I can recommend etc etc) together with other bits and pieces from Spanish newspapers which help my acquisition of language skills. Come to think of it I don’t even know the word for scrapbook in Spanish!

That last sentence encouraged me to be a little more pro-active and find out that there is no word, but a phrase: álbum de recortes, which is descriptive and is perhaps nearer to the English word ‘cuttings’ rather than scraps. Still, armed with this piece of vocabulary I feel emboldened to try further shops – when have I ever eschewed shopping for anything more intellectually satisfying!

My failure to find a scrapbook

continues with one shopkeeper sneeringly referring to my quest as positively old fashioned! I am now, more than ever determined to find one; I can see this becoming a quest to rival that of the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance! And probably with the same degree of success!

We may now have the chance of a house with extensive enough grounds to set up some portable classrooms: it is a possibility with interesting implications. Something to work on and to keep us going in our efforts to provide a reasonable alternative education for kids.

Though, for me, everything is going much too slowly: time ticks on and the kids are back in school tomorrow. We have to be able to offer a viable location and group of teachers before the end of December for a January start; effectively about twelve weeks for something real to present to parents.

It’s a short time!

Though I accept that time is relative - especially when my colleagues have just started the most important teaching term in the academic year and December seems an awfully long way away. Though for me at the moment it is galloping towards me at a frightening rate.



Thank you Einstein!

A little itch of possession

Just when you feel at peace with the world something comes along to disrupt and discommode.

Not for the first time Sony have discomforted me. I have managed, in the past, to frustrate the insidious attempts by Amazon to get me to indulge one of my weaknesses. I have put out of my mind the ‘spurious’ advantages of something which seems more and more obvious as an essential part of civilized life.

But now Sony with the completely unfair utilization of a bookshop, Waterstone’s, have combined to bring a new and altogether sleeker version of the e-book reader to a pathetically weak target audience – me! A chance reference on the front page of The Guardian forced me to buy the paper (€3) and read more. Up to 160 books contained in a slim electronic package with god knows how many extra books being able to be loaded onto SD cards and the like. It didn’t take long to convince me that this was a must-have gadget.

It is not available in Spain.

Sony UK only delivers to the mainland.

Waterstone’s web site seems to find it difficult to cope with someone from outside the UK.

Frustrated at every turn! I could of course, ask the boys to bring one over with them, but that would mean waiting until United Nations Day some forty days away.

Intolerable. Insupportable. Impossible to endure.

There must be another way. Short of not having one, I mean. My life is hard, beset with hard problems and constant frustrations!

Since Emma visited and we had a ‘friendly’ contest to see who could take better photographs (I wish to draw a discrete veil over my attempts at capturing fireworks!) I have been envious about the fact that her digital compact had a number of manual options which my camera (wonderful though it undoubtedly is) does not have. I have therefore been looking around for a camera which answers to more of my new demands.

The Canon powershot G9 seemed to be the ideal answer.

At this point I have to admit that technology and desire combined to give me what I wanted in spite of a real sense of denial that I was trying to cultivate. The camera was suggested by an advert sent to me sneakily by Amazon via email. I did my homework and looked up all the customer reviews of the camera and, in spite of some reservations I decided to look around this area before committing myself.

No one here had the model I wanted and the only shop that had heard of it offered it to me at a higher cost than the internet suggested. I returned to gaze at the image of the camera on the internet.

At this point I should mention ‘one click buying.’ My downfall.

As my information is firmly lodged on the Amazon website all I have to do to purchase something is ‘one click’ on a tempting little button and behold! money is drained from my account in Britain.

I did but flirt with pressing the button. I swear, Your Honour, and suddenly the thing was bought. Hardly my fault, I merely fell into an electronic trap.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Art at last!

Returning from Barcelona by bus was made just that little bit more intolerable by the raucous accompaniment of a vocal child. Attention Deficit Syndrome sprang to mind as the tiny urchin emitted a prolonged, deep, throaty howl which one assumed would abrade the vocal chords and bring on premature puberty thus enabling the child to be singing basso profondo by the end of the bus ride.

I restrained my natural impulse to leap from my seat and hurl the infant though an open (or indeed closed) window. At times like that you really can sympathize with that Roman emperor who swung a child by its feet and . . . well, thinking about it, you probably can’t sympathize at all – but I was annoyed!

The Munch-like creature gave an unwanted negative spin on what had been an otherwise excellent day.

My trip to Barcelona had been to revisit MNAC (Museu Nacional D’Art de Catalunya) a museum which seems to reform itself into a different institution every time I visit it!

This time there was an exhibition of works by Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia: interesting, but ultimately quaint rather than impressive. It was revealing to see early works by these three and amusing to see the readymades but apart from interesting historical footnotes to a particular aspect of art theory – who cares?

The permanent art collection, however, is another thing. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection ensures that MNAC has a collection which is of world importance and their collection of Catalan art is without equal.

I have been doing my homework on Catalan art and struggling my way through Castellano and Catalan art books to try and get a better understanding of Modern Catalan art and so the collection is becoming more and more fascinating. I must admit that I took the opportunity on this visit to get the English language version of the guide book which I have previously been struggling through in Castellano! I hope that I can begin to make links between the painters I like and understand their antecedents and influences with great ease now that the information is in a language I can read with ease!

I suppose that I have visited the museum about half a dozen times and my discovery this time was a rather fine portrait by Munch (hence the earlier reference) as well as a whole section on Modernista furniture and decoration. I have only given a fairly cursory look at the Romanesque and Gothic art for which the gallery is justly famous so I think that I am going to get full value from my six month Art Ticket (at the ridiculously low price of €20) which gives me access to six or seven of the major art galleries in Barcelona!

When not visiting art galleries and eating I am, of course, reading. At our Ladies Who Lunch meal yesterday Caroline gave me my birthday present from last United Nations Day: it may have been eleven months late, but who can even pretend to be annoyed when the present turns out to be an excellent little book called ‘In The Garlic’ by Valerie Collins and Theresa O’Shea ISBN-13: 978-84-89954-59-5. The title refers to the phrase ‘estar en el ajo’ which means to be clued up to know the score and the book takes the form of a dictionary with comments of essential information for someone learning about Spain.

For example, every country has a place (or another country) which is the butt of jokes because of the alleged stupidity of the inhabitants. I once did some research on prejudice for a lesson and found a book which listed the countries that were stigmatized as stupid with their stigmatizers – it was both astonishing and bewildering. In Spain the repository of odium is Lepe a village in the province of Huelva. The little book gives a joke: One day three men, from Catalonia, Madrid and Lepe are put through the lie detector. The Catalan says, “I think we Catalans aren’t as mean as we’re made out to be.” The machine bleeps. The Madrid fellow says, “I think we madrileños aren’t as cocky as people make out.” The machine bleeps. The guy from Lepe says, “I think . . .” The machine bleeps.

The places may change but the jokes don’t!

No further news about the School That Sacked Me – I find it incredible to think that they may have retained what is left of the staff for a whole day further!

Down boy!

Sun watch!

There is a fine line between satisfaction and gloating.

The pupils have not yet come back to The School That Sacked Me and one teacher has already resigned! It was perhaps a touch of the totalitarian than pushed the unfortunate professional over the edge. One wonders at a managerial style which seems overbearing even before the ‘customers’ have arrived to give the real test of the professionalism and patience of the practitioners.

Enough!

That carefully moderated expression reeks of out and out smug I-told-you-so-ism. I suppose it is ethically ok to rejoice at the continuing discomfiture of a failing institution when the kids are not yet directly involved in its immediate day to day self-destruction, but time if running out, and they will be returning soon. To what one wonders!

To Sitges again today for that ‘all over tan’ so important to superficial person such as I. The rough sea (for the Mediterranean) meant that many of the sun beds were coffin shaped islands in a gently lapping lake of sea water on what used to be a beach. And the sun showed an irritating proclivity to hide behind small clouds.

There is something almost unbearably provocative about a small cloud denying a confirmed sunbather his vitamin D. Luckily this is Catalonia and the weather does not have the personal vindictiveness of other northern countries I could name and the sun soon emerged to placate the restlessness of the worshipers.

At the termination of my roasting I phoned Toni (who is still suffering from the effects of a twisted ankle) and he asked me to bring back food for dinner.

This was no problem except for the fact that he wanted KFC and I still had memories of the excellent menu del dia I had with Caroline. I agreed to wander around Sitges looking for a fast food outlet, but at no time did I muster the bare faced audacity to ask anyone if they knew where such an establishment could be found. Sitges is not that big and stories of a once pretentious eater going that far down market can get back and poof! a reputation destroyed!

In the event we had to settle for Burger King and I am loath to admit that the things we ate were not that bad. I will put that down to hysteria and will not repeat the experiment.

The mental torture of looking for a place which is the antithesis of what food is generally like in this area was so testing that I had to find displacement activities to keep my character stable. Luckily there was a bookshop just a few steps away from the food outlet and after an initial panic when I realized that I wanted about twenty of the books (at a very reasonable price I might add) the thought of carting them around Sitges and then traipsing back to the car park managed to get me out of the shop without a isngle purchase.

The watch shop opposite was not so easy to resist and I now am the proud owner of a bright red analogue and digital watch, waterproof and luminous.

Well, everyone has weaknesses! It’s good and healthy to give in to them from time to time.

I think.

Paint and Talk

The mouse has taken the cheese!

Part One of my master plan to get Ceri to paint Monserrat has achieved its objective: the book giving vivid pictures of the geology of the area has been received and whetted the appetite of the artist. He even asked if it was possible to stay in the area for a few days to explore the effects of different light on the rocks! As soon has he experiences the astonishing changes that come over the stones through the different times of the day he will be hooked!

I will now begin work on the plan to enable me to steal his sketch books when he has completed his work!

A cursory glance at Ceri’s work in any of the following websites will demonstrate clearly why the landscape of Monserrat will be natural subject matter for his brush, pen and charcoal stick.

http://www.albanygallery.com/g2/artist.php?name=Auckland%20Davies,%20Ceri%20&content=artist&id=72

http://www.wales-pembs-art.com/system/index.html

http://www.newgraftongallery.co.uk/pages/exhibition/188.html

http://www.eggtempera.com/davies/davies.html

I await his representations of the area with a certain amount of impatience!

It is now 10 am and the mechanical voice from the beach has just informed the world that safety services are now in place for the benefit of swimmers –though the lifeguard’s chair is significantly empty.

The weather is that sort of bright cloudy nothingness which promises improvement and deterioration in equal measure. The beach has been reclaimed by the hardy elderly who are lounging about in a propriatorial way in the clement but unspectacular temperatures and relishing the paucity of other life forms which are now busily at work paying taxes to keep the non existent safety services in place!

One consequence of the lack of work for me and the returning to work for others is that my partner in the Ladies Who Lunch Club is now free for the school day from the responsibility of looking after her children and is consequently available for dining purposes. We have to strike quickly before she fills up her schedule with English classes so our first meal of the dining new year is for tomorrow and the natural topic of debate (among many others) will be where the next meal will be. Tough intellectual stuff!

Talking of intellectuality: I attempted to register for Spanish classes today. You will note the use of the word ‘attempted’ – it is well chosen.

Our town council sponsors Spanish classes for those who want to learn, even for those, like myself who do not actually want to learn but rather want to have learned and be able to speak Spanish fluently now. It is a tiresome necessity that one has to go to classes to acquire a language skill – when are they finally going to be able to inject knowledge with a hypodermic? It cannot come too soon for me!

I should have registered in June for these courses. However I was told to call back at the beginning of September to register. I did and was told to turn up to the course centre. I did. And was told to come back on the 10th of September. Why I could not have been told this when I phoned up I fail to understand. Though, thinking about it, the self important, arrogant, unhelpful people who were there telling us to stand in line so they could tell us to come back later might have explained the lack of the human touch. Does not bode well for the future.

My Spanish language skills are disgraceful - even if I can give the impression of greater fluency than I actually possess, even when talking with native Spanish speakers. This I do not really understand. Do they think that I am deliberately talking like a brain damaged anteater through a natural sense of linguistic modesty?

I sometimes wonder.

Is this date significant?

Ploughing my lonely furrow in the pool as length succeeded length my thoughts turned to the vacuity of my morning’s activity: prone, passive, inert. What achievement? None! Is this the level, I thought to myself, to which I have sunk? Is this going to be the sum total of my intellectual striving?

Now wasn’t that a kinder start to this piece of writing than brazenly stating that on the first day of term (for everybody else) I lay on the beach in glorious sunshine and then returned to the pool for a brief swim before going for a fantastic menu del dia comprising a shellfish starter, fish main course with a sweet of music tart (if you have to ask about that ‘music’ then you haven’t been to Catalonia!)

In the afternoon I went to a beach in Sitges (site of The School That Sacked Me) and lounged about until the evening. I was surrounded on this beach by my fellow countrymen, the colour, it has to be said, of my bottom! If nothing else they were a living reminder of the weather that I have left behind! According to Emma and the Pauls it has been a miserable summer; they are hoping for a better autumn. As I am returning to the UK at the end of November I am hoping for one too!

Our school project received a welcome boost in the form of a telephone call from a prospective parent asking how far we had got. That is a significant question. We have sufficient staff to form the basis of a group of teachers; the ethos that the parents want and the enthusiasm to get going. We do not have the cash or the premises – minor problems!

Our innocent idealism is not concrete enough for parents to make a financial commitment and our window of opportunity to make our pitch for the possibility of providing a convincing educational alternative in January is shrinking by the day, but hope springs eternal.

Does anyone know a friendly bank?