The weather today has that sort of indeterminate quality which gives it the effect of belonging in a climatic waiting room while it decides what to do.

We have had gleams of sunlight but the clouds have settled in while giving glimpses of something more positive in the west – although thinking about it my sense of direction as I look towards the sea is based on my position in Cardiff rather than here in Catalonia – so I’m probably looking south at the signs of the better weather. My sense of direction was ever suspect!

My cycle riding has now come down to just €46 a jaunt and I am determined (if I write it down it seems more real) to make this sum even less.

I have to say that the pressing realities of cycling (even in my domesticated fashion) are to the forefront of my experiences. I do not consider myself to be exactly gaunt, I am, to put it mildly “well fleshed out” but that is not a protection against the exquisite discomfort of the saddle. How, in the name of the living god, to cyclists manage to complete hours in the saddle? Do they administer narcotics to their backsides? And what about their fertility? You cannot persuade me that their reproductive capabilities are not in some ways compromised by the activity of the lower body while cycling. I muse thus as someone forced to these considerations by the physical realities of cycling transportation.

While I have the car and physical capabilities to allow me to continue driving I will only ever regard cycling as a necessary evil. And even this I am prepared to re-examine in the light of any plausible evidence to the contrary!

I intended to cycle to a far distant (i.e. more than 10 minute walking time away) restaurant for lunch, but forgot to take the lockable chain with me. As someone who has had two bikes stolen some time ago I do not intend to chance fate with this one. The fact that there were few people about and the chances of something being taken are small does not convince me that it would be safe so I returned home and made myself one of my famed (at least by me) concoctions (always including beans of some sort) which are (more or less) healthy. And cheaper than even a menu del dia!

Today saw the appearance in my letter box of three new First Day Covers which are sent to me by the Philatelic Bureau to continue my collection started years ago in Britain.

I collect these for the philatelically inept reason that I find them aesthetically pleasing and I often think that the stamps that the Post Office issues are some of the best design to come out of Britain today.

I have simple demands for a successful stamp:
1 It must commemorate something significant. (Not the latest progeny; the tenacious grip on life of; some social incident in the life of some parasitic family which has nothing to do with a democratic state.)
2 It should exhibit artistic integrity.
3 It should have an immediate impact.
4 It should look significant on an envelope.
5 Artistic qualities should override the impact of 1. above.

For me, one of the most successful stamp issues which fulfilled all the conditions above was David Gentleman’s stamps issued in 1976 to commemorate social reformers. I can still remember my shocked admiration when I first saw these stamps which were not only individually exciting but were also interesting when seen on a sheet. A restrained use of colour but a sure touch of imaginative and design genius to choose an iconic image to encapsulate the essential features of the individual reformers. A triumph of a set!

The sets issued over the last year or so have been a mixed bunch from the sinister failure of the set for the Scout Centenary in July and the over fussy and disappointing set of UK Bird Species in Recovery in September to the partial success of Beside the Sea Side in May with some exceptional images.

2008 started with the fun if irrelevant issue of Ian Fleming’s James Bond book covers in January; the effective but aesthetically limited illustrations of the kings and queens of the houses of Lancaster and York in February to the most successful set in my view, the stamps issued to mark the Handover of the Olympic Flag from Beijing to London in August. These stamps are design at its best – striking images beautifully presented with an inspired choice of parallel images from London and Beijing.

My two favourite stamps from this year however were from the Air Displays issue in July: the 1st class stamp and the 56p stamp. The 1st class stamp is reminiscent of one of the Battle of Britain stamps with four planes in monochrome and the jets of trailing colour in bright red and blue. It works as a compelling abstract design as well as a clear pictorial representation.

The 56p stamp shows five Vulcan bombers again in monochrome and looking like alien craft high in the sky. The design has a stark beauty and equilibrium and is a powerful other worldly statement about the whole concept of flying.

The designs for the last few years for Remembrance Day are difficult for me to evaluate because of my fundamental difficulties with the whole concept of the idea of a Remembrance Day itself.

I do not for a moment ignore the horror and suffering that the First World War has come to represent and neither do I underestimate the human qualities of the men who were involved in that conflict. What I find difficult to accept is that Remembrance Day works. I am not sure that it does much more than allow a series of very moving but essentially empty gestures to take place – and then we carry on as if our participation in Remembrance Day itself was an end in itself. Where is the remembering on November 12th when the silence on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is lost in the normal noise of everyday life?

Artistically though (how hollow that sounds when you measure the dead from the futile battles on the Western Front) how do the stamps work?

2008 is the 90th Anniversary of the end of the First World War and brings to an end a three year series of issues to commemorate Remembrance Day which have used the design concept of the poppy as its basis.

The first stamp in 2006 showed seven poppies whose stems were make from barbed wire: stark stamps in black and red with the queen’s head in silver.

The stamp in 2007 showed a view of the open petals of the poppy taking up most of the stamp with what appeared to be the black seed centre of the flower actually a battlefield with small silhouette figures charging towards the observer. The same colour scheme was retained with red, black and white with a silver head.

This year’s stamp ends the series with a side view of the poppy, this time with a sliver of extra colour for the stem and the face of one of the killed as a faint ghost like suggestion on one of the petals.

These stamps are undoubtedly effective and I find them moving and poignant, but there is a guilt behind my appreciation. The beauty of the stamp images are like the regimented and beautifully kept crosses in the battlefield graveyards they become acceptable images of what was grotesque horror and wicked, wicked waste.

Look at the world today and repeat

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.

Then try and believe it’s true.

It seemed like a good idea at the time

I wonder how many of the slight oddities in life have been weakly explained away by a half hearted appeal to a vague feeling that somewhere along the line there was an attempt at logic and sense to justify action.

Now I think that I have do to very little to present my latest action in a good light.

I have bought a bike. Not only a bike, but a folding bike to boot. That ‘boot’ is well said as I expect to carry the bike in the car so that when I find a suitably flat piece of ground I can footle about with the minimum of exertion, but the maximum of visible apparent exercise potential.

The purchase of this machine has been prompted by the construction of a paseo or promenade of sorts on the margin of the beach just outside our block of flats. It promises to join up with an already existing promenade further up the resort and so provide a walk way at least down to the Club Nautic. Eventually this will provide a flat (!) hard surface for the neophyte bike rider which will stretch for kilometres from Castelldefels down to pseudo Sitges and up towards and indeed into Gava. This will ensure that, with the minimum of effort, I will be able to aver that however little distance I travel I have actually gone to another town on my little journeys.

The actuality of the purchase was fraught.

Buying the bike – at a bargain price thanks to the vicious exploitation of the downtrodden Chinese by heartless capitalists – was the least of the problems that I faced. Not only social guilt, but also the fear of inevitable failure in the construction of the bloody thing.

Folding bikes are an exercise in construction and de-construction. They obviously have to be constructed to enable use, but they also have to be constructively de-constructed to justify their ‘folding’ nature.

Taking an approach which I thought demonstrated intelligence and experience I took the cardboard box which contained the newly bought bike to an unfrequented part of the Carrefour car park and proceeded to put the pieces of the bike together.

Which was impossible.

The instructions (not unreasonably in Spanish) comprised a small folded piece of paper with a picture of the assembled bike and unhelpful vague gestures or suggestionsw which could only have been understood by the makers of the bike to be in any way helpful in the setting up of the machine. They were impossible for someone whose technical skills in three dimensional problem solving are not noted for their high success rate.

Putting the saddle in place was not difficult; even I could manage that part of the puzzle. Opening up the frame of the bike, it being rather obviously hinged was also simple. I managed to work out the spring loaded locating thingy which acted as a sort of lock as well. The handlebars were a little trickier as they were not of the traditional curved type beloved on such bikes as my Raleigh Star Rider of happy memory. These handlebars looked the same from the front and the back and even the location of the brakes was not such a give away as you might think. However they too were eventually in place, at the right height in another hinged part of the bike.

The real problem was that when the handlebars were in place they didn’t actually move the front wheel: they moved, but nothing else did. I couldn’t help feeling that this was going to be a major disadvantage even taking into account that my proposed journeys were only along a fairly straight seafront promenade.

I did try and work out this problem. The instruction leaflet was of no help whatsoever and I eventually gave in and made my (short) way back to the shop – I was, after all only in the car park.

The man in charge of the bike section urged me to return with the bike and he then proceeded to check, change and construct with a complexity and mechanical detail that would have been well beyond me, even if I had known what I was doing.

He used a variety of inexplicable tools to make adjustments of things that I had not even noticed and at one point he used a hammer and chisel to effect essential modifications while he castigated the factory for not doing its job at source.

He also, at my hysterical insistence, demonstrated how to fold and unfold the bike. Again, there were details of how to proceed which were unexplained in the ‘instructions’ and would not have been intuitive to any other brain than the totally bizarre from a different galaxy.

After some forty minutes of simple adjustments (!) I eventually left the shop to go back to my unsequestered part of the car park for part two of my master plan.

It has been a frighteningly large number of years since I owned a bike and, apart from a single horrific experience on a mountain bike in Mexico (in an excursion which was replete with other physically demanding experiences!) I have not ridden a bike in anger for longer than Mozart was alive!

It is however a known fact that riding a bike is like typewriting – you never forget how to do it. I intended to put the theory into practice by giving myself a wide and spacious area to experiment so that the necessity of making sharp turns (or indeed any turns) would be obviated.

Small wheeled bikes are less secure than large wheeled bikes and my wheels were only 20 inches. My first assay into wheeled transport in modern times was a bit like the first breath you take underwater with an aqualung – a bit panicky but almost instantly comfortable in an uneasy way.

I did not fall off and even managed to make a wide (very wide) turn. My confidence grew to the extent that I even wended my twisted way through empty car shelters. I was prepared!

My first trip into the real world was fragmented as I rode along the sections of the promenade that had been completed and then carried the bike over the uncompleted stretches. Once I got to the older section I rode all the way to the end of the cycle track. I will not say what distance that was; I will merely say that my rear end was metaphorically howling with outrage at the indignity of being perched on a bike saddle by the end of my journey!

With expenditure of this sort I have a time honoured way of reducing the initial outlay by dividing use into the purchase price – this ensures that virtually any extravagance can be made palatable and seem reasonable after a time. So far each journey on the bike has cost me €70 – which is even more than the Heathrow Underground Link and arguably even more uncomfortable! I am determined to bring the cost of the bike down to single figures within a reasonably short time.

As long as the sun continues to shine.

I am determined to be a fair weather cyclist!

The past has a false allure

Some towns do not immediately reveal their true character from a casual approach.

We went, en famille, to Súria to visit what was advertised as the VII Fira Medieval d’Oficis, Súria 2008. A medieval fair sounded like a good idea so off we went. We called into Terrassa because Súria is in deepest, darkest Catalonia. Picking up assorted relatives we eventually proceeded in two packed cars.

One of the advantages of approaching Súria from the direction that we did was that I had another and even more astonishing view of Montserrat.

I am used to mountains in various shapes and sizes but usually, as long as you are not in the Pyrenees or the Alps, they are fairly gently rounded with an abundance of tree orientated vegetation. On the road to Súria we were presented with hills and mountains of the regular sort directly in front of us – a perfectly normal vista. But there was something else.

Looming above what I might call the natural landscape was an outline of a range of hills drawn by an untalented child. The silhouette was bizarre with odd promontories, serrated, jagged outcrops and some configurations looking like Gothic cathedrals. What made the whole thing even more other worldly was the skein of diaphanous cloud was lurked just above the conventional hills making the Montserrat range look as though it was floating above the other hills. It was not difficult to imagine an extra-terrestrial race gently lowering an alien set of hills onto the native landscape.

Although unsettling the view of the two sets of hills was grotesquely picturesque. It had that absurd, almost tasteless beauty which depicted as a painting would be kitsch in the extreme, but which, when provided by the environment can be enjoyed with an almost guilty pleasure. That view made the whole trip worthwhile. Which, as you will see, is just as well!

The road into the town is horizontal; everything else is virtually vertical. The whole place seems to be built on a one in one slope. The streets might be atmospheric and cobbled and small and windy, but they are certainly not ideal for hobbling! Crowds pushed their way along constricted pathways and blocked access to stalls and sights.

The actual ‘fair’ or ‘fayre’ of ‘fira’ was not as impressive as I had envisaged and put me in mind of a slightly higher class Splott Market in Cardiff rather than an exotic, archaic re-enactment of aspects of Catalan cultural heritage.

Continuing the Cardiff comparisons, it was nothing as impressive as an ‘Open’ day in St Fagans – but I should imagine that St Fagans must be well on its way towards becoming a World Heritage Site these days given the quality and range of buildings now housed (ha!) there.

There were trades people there: I saw a potter; a stone mason; a glass worker and a very unconvincing weaver. The latter was sown up by the companion worker, a very convincing spinster who made the production of yarn look deceptively easy.

Here I know of what I speak: during a short but traumatic period I was instructed how to spin wool into thread. Not only did I not manage this, but I couldn’t even get the bloody wheel to spin in the right direction. There is nothing like being condescended to by a matronly woman dressed as a Welsh peasant smiling in an encouraging sort of way to the inept idiot who cannot work out which way is forward. At least I was not alone in my ineptitude!

With a child of three and another of three months you do not have a lot of opportunity to stand and stare. So we didn’t. Which rather spoiled the point of going to the fair in the first place.

The town is actually a mining community and for the first time for a long time I actually saw some winding gear.

Not coal here through, but salt. The spoil heaps are a little more aesthetically pleasing than coal, but they look unsightly and artificial.

A river (a real river with water) runs through the place and almost gives some picturesque views; but not quite.

And our lunch was very average there as well.

After struggling up to the top of the town to look at a nondescript ‘castle’ and an uninspiring church with a central idol of Mary our way down was via a vast number of painful, hip jarring steps.

On the via dolorosa of endless steps we passed a landing on which was pitched a Moroccan tent serving green tea with herbs; an archery range; various exhausted people making the upward journey and, most disturbingly a statue of what looked like the flayed outline of a man in some sort of metal.

By the time we passed this horror I was prepared to experience anything which would bring me nearer to a level road to the car.

When, eventually I reached the bottom I was beyond caring about medieval fairs in salt mines and I was ready for home.

Not an altogether successful jaunt and certainly one that I would not recommend. The next jolly foreign fair I go to will be on a surface on which the bubble of the spirit level will be dead in the centre of the little tube.

Or I will not be there!

Through the smoke darkly

When a colleague evinces a desire to eat a steak, it is surely not a bad idea to go to an Argentinean restaurant.

Wrong!

Right about the steak, wrong about the ambience. Everyone one seemed hell bent on smoking. I had forgotten just how disgusting cigarette smoke in a place where people are eating actually is. There were also children there and it is illegal to smoke when there are children present but, like so much else which is against the law in Spain, it is all in the enforcement.

Which in their case they have not got.

Not only did I feel nauseated in the restaurant, but also when I got home I put all my clothes which were stinking of cigarette smoke into the wash and I myself had a bath.

The law about smoking in public places is simply a joke in Spain. Places can choose whether or not to allow smoking; so it’s against the law to smoke in restaurants and bars unless you don’t want it to be. Ridiculous and insulting. I will never go back to that restaurant while this contemptible law does not protect the rights of the non smoker, or normal human being! And before anyone asks about the so called ‘rights’ of the smoker, we should remember that they have chosen to do something which is unsanitary, dangerous to themselves and others and offensive. It is their selfish choice and I do not feel that I should be called on to make space for them in my normal activity!

This also raises a point which I find difficult to explain. While I loath cigarette smoking in general, I find women smoking particularly offensive. I have tried to work out why this should be so and I wonder if it is an element of latent sexism in my outlook which is rising to the surface. Why women rather than men? Surely it is equally disgusting. Perhaps there is a stereotypical picture of a ‘caring female’ in my mind which is adversely affected by the sight of a cigarette in the hands of a woman. Perhaps it is a sort of latent resentment of women aping the habits of men where cigarette smoking as been seen (vide. The Marlboro Man etc.) as quintessentially masculine. Perhaps it is a disturbing blurring of the social boundaries of the sexes which is unsettling. Whatever actually explains my detestation of women smoking it is certainly something which disturbs and rattles me. There were women smoking this evening next to and opposite and around children. Disgusting.

It could also be that as I don’t smoke myself it is easy to adopt the high moral tone of a non addict and safely and witheringly denounce a habit which is safely beyond one’s present weaknesses! My self analysis goes no further in the interest of my own peace of mind!

The food (as far as one could tell through the miasmic smoke of filth being breathed out by the other inconsiderate patrons) was very good. But certainly not exceptional enough to risk a second visit.

I have to say, to be fair, that the service which we had from our rather camp waiter was entertainment in itself. The way he illustrated the location of the cut of meat we were interested in by hitching up his leg and giving his thigh a glancing blow worthy of any pantomime principal boy was little sort of theatrical magic! His giggling commendation of our choices from the menu seemed oddly at variance with the resolutely macho atmosphere by which we were surrounded. Good for him!

Going up to Terrassa and being rather pushed for time as I had left the flat late, I worked out where I would be by 1.00pm as a sort of median point to give me a rough guide to how long it would take me to get there and when I arrived at my guide point I was within less than a minute of my target time. I think I am getting too professional on this route!

The day ended with a useful discussion about our next moves to set up our school. Our theoretical talk has been engaging but produced no practical results. Slowly we do, however, seem to be getting a little nearer to finding out the practical elements which have to be considered before we can produce some sort of document which we can sow to prospective investors, parents and officials. It’s slow, but it does seem to be making some sort of progress. I would have to compare our ‘progress’ with the growth of the dead cactus brought from the School That Sacked Me and placed optimistically in the earth. Although apparently dead it did, eventually fill out and produce reasonable and visible growth. As I planted the cactus as a sort of visual metaphor for my progress I can only hope that the metaphor becomes a very real symbol for the progress we hope to make with the school.

Hope springs eternal!

Man or machine?

I would that I could remember how to apply the Turing Test.

This wish has been prompted by the service that I have recently received from Amazon. I saw, and was intrigued by reviews of David Starkey’s latest book on the youth of Henry VIII, “Henry, Virtuous Prince” and decided to buy.

Amazon has an evil little function that you can turn on when you visit the web site which gives you ‘one touch’ buying capability. To those who have shunned this invention of the Devil Incarnate, I must explain that, having put all your information into the clutches of Amazon, you can sign on and with a mere touch of the mouse purchase what you want. Nothing more to do! All the information is there, bank details, address, so within seconds you get a confirmatory email telling you that what a second before you clicked on is on its way!

The first couple of time you use it there is a sense of exhilaration as you realize that the world of consumerism is only a click away! The need to think about what you are doing is, dangerously, taken away from you and there is a sudden feeling that any purchase is possible and indeed desirable and it’s all so easy. So easy! Thank god that some sort of residual mental financial safety switch cuts in to stop me from indulging as I would wish.

Having bought the book in my ‘one click’ way I was informed that I could be eligible for ‘express’ delivery; I investigated this option and before I knew where I was I found that, somehow or ever, I had purchased an express delivery option for a vast sum of money. The delivery charge was now four pounds more expensive than the bloody book! Hoist by my own eager fingers!

The attempts I made to cancel the purchase were ineffectual. The order was being processed within seconds and therefore unable to be rescinded. Within those same few seconds I also received a confirmation email from Amazon telling me that my order was prepared and on its way!

I felt very sulky and not really in the position to appreciate Starkey’s prose with so much superfluous money expended on getting it to me!

So I wrote a letter. An email from Outraged of Castelldefels! It took me a while to find any email address that actually wanted to receive an email, but I eventually sent it and got a reply within a suspiciously short time.

This is how we get back to the Turing test. Who or what actually answered my email? The response was very positive with the whole of my postage being refunded and a little bit more, but who was there. It was far too quick to have been decided by a human, I suspect that it was a machine – but how can you tell?

I sent a reply email to Amazon to thank them for their prompt and generous reply and got a ‘thank you’ note which was just this side of literate, written (surely) not by a human. But how can you tell?

I am left wondering how far we have gone down the machine/human line of confusion.

Turing should be here to help!

Almost gone!

The tail end of a cough and cold is, in a way, worse than the actual full blown affliction.

You have spent your time sniffling and hacking; drinking strange draughts and sucking suspicious pastilles and leaving a disgusting trail of paper handkerchiefs behind you (though thinking about it, that is probably me, sorry) and generally feeling sorry for yourself.

Then the bright day dawns when you can breath through your nose again, you sound less and less like Elieen Stritch when she burst an office where I was ‘helping’ out in a charity gala and announced to no one in particular in a voice which sounded as though ossified by rust and packed in gravel that there was ‘something wrong with my fucking voice!” When she sang that evening, I did not noticeably register a difference from the voice of the outburst.

Anyway, you regain your voice and sound less like some articulate bear. Life, it would seem, is getting better.

But the malady doesn’t go away completely: mucus still succumbs to gravity; the tonsil fairies continue to wave their feathered wands absentmindedly at sensitive parts of the throat and subterranean lung gremlins occasionally rumble their way along the tubes. You think for a few glorious moments that all these ill omened creatures have been banished only to reappear (usually at the most inopportune moments) with feverish force. But you are conscious that this animosity is of a rear guard nature and not the out and out attack that you are conscious you have survived.

My voice lacks its usual smooth gravitas while certain rough strands of barbed wire have insinuated their way around my vocal chords making my voice sound different (startlingly different on the phone) and, as I stubbornly maintain, sexy.

I shall work steadily to re-enter the human race when friends and family will be able to kiss me rather than treat me like an ambient leper!



The cheaper alternative to the stratospherically priced Brompton Folding Bike is found in Carrefour for about 15% of the price. This is an altogether more basic bike and it doesn’t fold into such a small space but, 15% for goodness sake! To my infinite shame I attempted to wobble a few yards in the supermarket and felt, well, uncomfortable.


Not only uncomfortable but decidedly unsafe. I am now rethinking my idea of placidly cycling down the newly constructed walkway on the beach and returning to walking sedately. I might try and borrow a bike to find out if one of the fundamental credos of the human species that ‘once you can ride a bike you never forget how to’ is true in my case. Perhaps the architecture of my inner ear has changed over the years and my sense of equilibrium is differently balanced.

Or it might be the Rioja.

Days well spent!

The last two days have been reminiscent of the worst excesses of my student days.

Not, I hasten to add, for the consumption of Small Sweet Sherries (for which I was notorious in University) but rather for the multiplicity of experiences packed into a 48 hour period. I well remember the occasion when a group of university friends and I descended on the vulnerable city of London and they urged me, as a habitual London visitor, to take them around. We set off on my punishing cultural hovering up of experiences and, during the day, they all fell by the wayside until I, alone, was still resolutely opening the catalogue for the next exhibition.

Although not quite in that exhausting league I think for sheer variety I do come close to those energy fuelled food denying days.

I started with the Caixa (my new best friend) sponsored exhibition in the Caixa Forum (just down, as you now know, from MNAC) and free, gratis and for nothing.

This exhibition was ‘El Pa Dels Àngels’ (The bread of Angels) was a collection of paintings for the collections of the Uffizi in Florence illustrating the theme of the ‘mystery’ of ‘transubstantiation’ - as a good Anglican atheist you will understand why I feel the need for quotation marks! Such an exhibition does raise expectations given the wealth of masterpieces in the Uffizi’s collections.

I cannot pretend that this exhibition lived up to its poster which boasted a real Botticelli. There were big names here as the subtitle to the exhibition explained, “de Botticelli a Luca Giordano” and there were paintings by Pisano, Parmigianino, Signorelli and Veronese as well – but the feeling from the paintings on view is that the Uffizi has emptied some of its vaults to give an airing to paintings not generally seen. Even the works of the most famous artists do not seem to be important examples of the artists’ brushes.

This is, perhaps, being ungenerous to a most welcome exhibition in Barcelona to complement the meagre holdings of paintings from this period in the city collections.

The overall impression was of second rate art chosen to illustrate a theme rather than paintings which could stand in their own right.

The most interesting picture for me was of a Deposition, a copy of Federico Barocci (1582) which looked as though it could have come fresh from the brush of a Victorian pre-Raphaelite! The details of the painting recall specific British paintings and I am tempted to put this character (of whom I have never heard) into Google to see if any British painters knew him.

The meal in Laie the CaixaForum café restaurant was excellent as usual and it gave me the opportunity to try and bluff my way through the catalogue which was printed in Spanish and Catalan.

A meal in Vilanova in the evening was extraordinary. We were the only people in the restaurant for the whole of the evening, yet the food that we had for a meal under twenty pounds was exceptional. An appetizer of a selection of French cheeses with a glass of Cava followed by a selection of tapas including salad with anchovies, clams with white beans and a selection of cold meats. The main course was paella, followed by a selection of desserts. And coffee. And useful conversation. Productive even!

Today started with my Spanish lesson, but little did I know that in my absence last week (when entertaining my guests) the rampant collection of foreigners learning Spanish with me combined in an unholy alliance to do down the Brit. Our language school has twisted ideas of representation and asks for ‘student’ reps from the hapless learners. What amounts to a full blown conspiracy was hatched in my absence so that when the ‘voting’ for a representative was held I found myself elected to represent my fellow students. So, they now have a fluent monoglot English speaker to communicate with the Spanish and Catalan speaking management. It must make sense to them, but I’m buggered if it does to me.

Fresh from my election I hied me away and dressed in my finest to go to a school in the heights of Barcelona for a ‘talk’ with the head of English. There was no job in the school but this was an exploratory visit on both sides to see if there was a possibility of a job in the future whether I could (or would want to) fill it.

My GPS got me there, but I couldn’t stop or park. The area is full of schools and universities and hospitals and reeks of money. I eventually parked the car in the hospital underground car park where the cost is reckoned in periods of five minutes!

With my fabled sense of direction I was lost within feet of leaving the hospital car park and by the time my (hand held) GPS had indicated my destination I was hot and tired and angry.

I walked into the school (after walking into what was probably a private house on my first attempt!) stopped by no one. I wandered around until I chose a door at random and found a desk with a man talking into the telephone in Spanish. He completely ignored me and continued talking on the phone and turned his back on me. I did the grown up thing and stalked out and chose another entrance.

This one was more productive and I met up with the voice on the telephone. As there was no job this could not be looked on as an interview, but our conversation was extensive and detailed. We agreed about many things and she painted a picture of the school that was realistic. We will have to see if anything comes of this.

After this professional conversation there was just time for me to re programme the GPS to go to a new part of Barcelona. The journey, leading up to rush hour was horrendous with the usual Catalan distain for the common courtesies of road etiquette together with major roadworks adding to the general joy of driving in the Catalan capital.

However I did find my destination and thereby learned the horrible truth about Brompton folding bikes. At more than 900 euros they are not a casual buy. Or, indeed, any sort of buy! I had visions of riding my sedate way along the new prom which has recently been constructed outside our beach gate. I think that a slow walk is more likely now!

Leaving the over priced bike shop I managed to struggle through fully rush hour traffic to the centre of Barcelona and especially work my way from one side of a five lane road to another for one turn and managed to park to join my union demonstration.

The negotiations for 2008’s pay award has stalled with the employers expecting a wholesale diminution of working conditions in return for a rate of inflation increase in wages. Nothing changes!

The ‘demonstration’ was indeed in the centre of Barcelona in the Plaça de Catalunya but was not something to stop the traffic. Our union and affiliates were restricted to a small side street down one side of The Hard Rock Café. My union rep was there sporting a white tabard with the union name on it and holding a long thin banner (reminiscent of Japanese medieval Samurai films) with a less than convincing air. I was issued with a Catalan flag on a stick with the union initials emblazoned on it and a small plastic whistle. Our demonstration consisted of making a devil of a racket and waving our flags vigorously.

At one point I heard a police siren and looked forward to something interesting happening. I was less than pleased when a man wheeling a pram appeared with a howling machine in it. That incident was the most interesting thing that happened. My photo taking was limited by being one handed – the other one being occupied with waving the flag.

This did not hinder a young lady with a camera sporting a ridiculously elongated lens from taking a series of pictures of me flag waving and blowing my whistle with sublime indifference to her intrusive activities. I feel that my suit and tie might have had something to do with the composition of her photo as I was still dressed from my non interview in the school up the hill.

Eventually the noise subsided; we rolled up the flags and departed with, presumably, a job well done.

Returning home with a take-away was, understandably, something of an anti climax.

I can live with.

Plus ça change!

Committee meetings have a flavour all of their own.

It makes no difference that they are in imposing buildings on one of the most imposing streets in Barcelona, just a stone’s throw from the Cathedral.

The fact that the introduction to the meeting was in a language almost totally incomprehensible and that I was sitting directly opposite the speaker was as nothing. I have developed a particular stance and expression when confronted by conversational speed Catalan which is best expressed as ‘non committal interest’ and has seen me through many difficult situations successfully – as long as they don’t ask questions.

This was a union meeting complete with ‘interesting’ cup of coffee. There, sitting at the front were the world-weary union officials smiling in a pitying way at the evil of the employers as I struggle to make sense of the disconnected words which sometimes emerged from the waves of language which swept over me.

The second part of the meeting was thankfully in English and we were told exactly what the employers had suggested as a suitable settlement for 2008 in the unregulated sector of education. I will not sully the computer screen with the contemptible ‘offer’, I can only assume that they are playing an infantile game of the ‘silly offer so when we give them a little they think they will have succeeded’ type.

There is a demonstration on Thursday in Barcelona to which I have said that I will go. I think I will take my camera as well.

Such larks!

Having OD’d on a deceptively innocuous pink cough mixture with a thoroughly unpleasant itchy aftertaste, I have now graduated to the lemon and honey and hot water to try and re-establish my erstwhile mellow voice to charm the hapless denizens of the school that I am visiting before I go to the demonstration.

Never a dull moment!

Cough, and you cough alone!

Lilian Baylis is credited with the immortal words, “In desperation I turned to Shakespeare.”

Far be it from me to equate my present condition with that of the indomitable founder of the basis for the National Theatre, but I do share her solace in the classics.

My continuing cough-in marathon is debilitating demanding as it does the whole of one’s concentration and precluding normal social intercourse. Conversation is punctuated by plosive outbursts which broadcast germs wholesale which does not encourage talking.

My refuge has been following the progress of Miss Eyre, governess, as she comes to terms with the new experiences that life is throwing at her. Reading for my own pleasure rather than scanning a text for teaching opportunities means that I can appreciate the fluid structure of the narrative and positively wallow in the complexity of the layered narrative. Always at the back of my mind is the triumphant chapter opening, “Reader, I married him.” But it is easy to forget this ‘happy ending’ as you suffer with Jane as she presents, with painful honesty, the vicissitudes of her far from easy life.

Every reading of this extraordinary novel offers a different perspective for each reading. The present reading encourages me to focus on the moral and religious basis for Jane’s actions and to try and work out what she retains from her upbringing and how she evaluates her experiences to develop her ethics. She is a complex character especially as the reader can only understand her development through the perspective of the older Jane looking back on her early life.

I have now reached the point at which Rochester has hoodwinked the ladies in his party when dressed up as a fortune telling gypsy and when he finishes with Jane we are presented with an emotional outpouring worthy of any romantic melodramatic novel – except that everything which is said will have direct relevance to the action which develops.

Literature for ever!

The world gone mad!

Am I the only person in the world who really and truly doesn’t give a damn about who wins in the Brazilian Grand Prix?

And before anyone accuses me of losing my national identity by not supporting Hamilton, am I the only one to find the whole concept of Formula 1 racing obscene at worst and boringly irrelevant at best?

This ‘sport’ is the best example we have of the ‘bread and circuses’ approach to public entertainment. At a time of national and international crisis the unbelievable amounts of money expended on car and driver seem, at least, insensitive. It was hardly a surprise at a time when we are all supposed to be concerned about our carbon footprints that the gratuitous expenditure of energy that is a grand prix race was held at night time so ensuring an even greater expenditure of pointless energy!

The whole concept of this form of motor racing reeks of conspicuous expenditure: the mind bendingly large sums spent on the development and building of the cars to the equally eye wateringly large amounts spent on ‘entertainment’ for the punters.

It is also a truly inhuman sport. The human element has been progressively encased in the motor car until the only part of the driver readily visible is the helmet with its visor looking like a single eye: man and machine truly at one. As the corporate sponsors sip their Champagne they are able to look benignly at the little insects scurrying their noisy way round and round the track and congratulate themselves such an insanely energy wasting event which still has public support.

Well, not mine!

I am convinced in years to come people will look back on this intensely boring inhumanly mechanical display of wastefulness and display the same shocked approach as we would now reserve for bull baiting, cock fighting and voting for the Conservative Party.

I suppose the thing which sticks in my craw more than anything, as a lover of the bubbly stuff, is what the winners of this farrago of wastefulness do when they have been given their trophies. I regard the waste of even a cheap Cava as little worse than sacrilege therefore the wholesale dumping of quality Champagne on mere racing drivers smacks of the worst excesses of disestablishmentarianism - and we all know what that led to!

My jaundiced attitude towards this event may, in part, be ascribed to the fact that I have spent the greater part of the day ensconced in my bed grumpily trying to get rid of the cough and cold which has assailed me.

The Pathetic Fallacy continues with the weather mirroring my lack of comfort but producing, for the Mediterranean, quite spectacular waves with the wind whipping back the spray in the best traditions of the picturesque.

Alas! I could only gaze out of the window and look rather than venture out and try my continuing best to photograph some of the beauty which is a daily occurrence looking at the every changing sea. The evening sky was astonishing with a band of bright orange looking as though someone had painted it in a most unconvincing manner – but to stunning effect.

I have just listened (thanks to the wonder of my internet radio) to a programme on Radio 4 called ‘Beanz Meanz Rimez’ – a discussion of the use of poetry in advertising. It was almost ‘perfect’ Radio 4 fare exactly attuned to their target audience. By way of illustrating the sort of poetry used they cited various slogans, “some going back fifty years” and I knew them all!

Many of those slogans have been resting quietly in my deep memory for many years. When was the last time that I heard, “This is luxury you can afford with Cyril Lord” or “You’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent” and heard the music behind them? Spain (and I suspect the rest of the world) has little of offer by way of competition on a daily basis with the quality of product that Radio 4 turns out. The sad thing is that most of the population of the UK do not realise what a treasure they have lurking in the radio waves around them and rarely tune in. A real loss.

My internet radio should allow me easy access to the BBC but it is a sensitive little machine and dislikes being moved from place to place. There are also areas of sulkiness where the radio refuses to work. It has a radio link with the internet and you would suppose that wherever the laptops work then the radio will work too, but this is sadly not the case and it has a quirky coquettish refusal rate which is infuriating, especially when you are just being offered a typically quixotic piece of essential information much beloved by a typical Radio 4 listener.

In spite of self pitying illness, I am not so infirm that I am unable to claim my share of the 'panellets' which are customary for All Saints Day. These are traditional sweets which are composed of marzipan and various other additions to get the taste buds tingling. One of the most delicious is a ball of marzipan covered with glazed pine nuts. They come in a variety of shapes and flavours and for me they actually look better than they taste.

This is another one of the traditions of Catalonia which is at risk because of the progressive Americanization of the world. The vulgarity of ‘trick or treat’ has even penetrated Catalonia much to the disgust of traditionalists who regard such foreign imports as diluting the culture of an already much threatened region.

Talking of culture I have started re-reading ‘Jane Eyre’ – a by product of having my Sony e book reader filled with classic (out of copyright) novels and short stories. I merely wanted to look again at the opening as the weather outside reminded me of the conditions that prevented Jane from taking her walk, but a few paragraphs and I was hooked again.

Jane’s exchanges with her aunt are among my favourite passages in literature. Who is not on her side as she speaks her mind and the only response that Mrs Reed can give is, “What more have you to say?” in a “tone in which a person might address an opponent of adult age than such as is ordinarily used to a child.”

At that point Jane was not a child who needed more encouragement and thrill that a young reader gets from the defiance of her continued condemnation of her aunt is only matched by the adult reader who can perhaps understand her frustration more closely.

“I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will ever come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.”

There is not even an exclamation mark at the end of that statement because, as Jane herself says, “it is the truth.” That at least is in italics and is to be a strength and a cross for Jane for the rest of her life.

It is wonderful stuff and its complexity is, paradoxically, one of its great strengths. What some modern readers find prolix is nothing of the sort; Bronte only uses the words she needs.

Like an early Giles cartoon there is always something new to be found in the books one loves.

Including the ones that one has forgotten!

The truly great thing about loving reading is that your drug is inexhaustible and unlike the other more destructive forms of addition you can reuse your ‘drug’ time and time again – and the purest form of drug does not suffer from that economic concept of ‘eventually diminishing returns’ but almost renews itself with each use transforming itself in accordance with your life experience.

A true delight!

What day is it?

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

The opening of ‘The Day of the Triffids’ always comes to mind when the days do not appear to be following their true diurnal characters and your sense of time is being taken down a different part.

If asked I would have sworn that today was Sunday. The less than encouraging weather meant that the tourists were not out in force so all the restaurants and cafes had a forlorn, abandoned look and

the traffic was sparse.

What is even more surprising is that we can now get a menu del dia at the weekends as well as during the week. Although this is normal elsewhere, it doesn’t usually obtain in Castelldefels. It is another sure sign that the season is truly at an end.

More intriguing is the attitude of one of the larger restaurants near us. Last year this restaurant was barely open and when it was it had few customers. Its erratic opening hours and poor quality of food ensured that it never had many customers.

This year the place has undergone a transformation. It has been renamed and a stylist restaurant part established. The site of the restaurant occupies a busy corner and can accommodate more than 100 covers as well as people at the bar. They must have lost money every week they have been open. The food is expensive and they refused to countenance a menu del dia – in spite of the fact that every restaurant around them did and they might have drawn one or two lessons form the fact that the restaurants had customers and they didn’t. Throughout the summer and the high season they continued with their financially disastrous programme of giving customers what they obviously didn’t want.

Now that autumn is well and truly here, today, they have decided to start a menu del dia. With their usual disregard of reality, they have pitched the price 5€ higher then the very successful restaurant next door!

The recent ‘unpleasantness’ in the financial markets shows that powerful, experienced, well respected and obscenely well paid bankers, the demi-gods of capitalism, have absolutely no idea at all about what they are doing; why then should we expect a mere restaurateur know any better?

Where finance is concerned the counter intuitive seems to be the best bet. The simple Puritan ethics which also seemed to be part and parcel of a basically Protestant ideology (is that the right word?) no longer work in the mad world we now inhabit. Who was it said that taxes were only for poor people to pay? They obviously lived in the real world: the world in which only the stupid live within their means and save!

The poor weather has abated somewhat and we were able to go out to lunch and to sit outside to eat it which says something for this climate on the first of November!

Following advice I have ventured out onto the beach to walk about to ease my hip and loosen my knees. The effects of the stormy weather of the past few days has altered the profile of the beach and deposited a certain amount of vegetation on the sand. My slow progress down the beach was punctuated by desultory photographing of waves.

This is an on-going project to produce one (just one) good picture off the coast of Castelldefels.

I have been prompted to new efforts by the sight of one of my neighbour’s efforts. He did point out that his image was actually a composite of five separate photographs magicked together with the power of Photoshop – a program costing only six or seven hundred pounds! I have to achieve the same results by catching exactly the right moment. Thank god for digital cameras and the costless ability to make mistakes!

I go on trying.

Wasted day?

My enforced domestic sojourn today has been as a result of cough, cold and sore throat courtesy of you-know-who who has only just emerged from his own days of illness. An illness I suspect has its origins in his taking up baby sitting services with his new nephew!

The petty malady of a cold merely encourages a pleasant self satisfaction born of the complacency which comes with mild self pity. The realization that the negative health aspects of the condition are only temporary means that you have to get your sympathetic responses in quickly otherwise they will be lost in the process of recovery.

My extended morning in bed did not, I fear, lead to any philosophical insights as I used the opportunity to go to sleep with a Strepsil dissolving efficaciously in my mouth. Mucus can become the guiding feature of my existence and I look forward eagerly to a future period of aridity!

In a poignant exemplification of the Pathetic Fallacy the weather has exhibited a clear tendency to share my unsettled condition and, whipped up by strong winds, our little domestic waves are now crashing down onto our depleted sands.

In spite of the weather and my less than 100% fitness I have ventured onto the balcony to view the progress of the promenade which is being constructed on the beach in front of the flats. This project has been ongoing for a considerable length of time and it is only in the last week that we have viewed real progress as a pathway of sorts stretches along the beach.

Its eventual size and sophistication can, at the moment, only be guessed at. By way of a joke, Dave suggested that the powers that be might be thinking of building on the sea side of the structure and obstructing our view. I did not find it funny. Here, anything is possible – negative laws do not necessarily restrict development.

I have to say that any extraneous structures in our direct line to the sea will necessitate instant decamping!

The ability for people to parade along just the other side of the wall which separates the beach and the pool will change the dynamic of our lives. At the moment, because of two large globular lights which illuminate the end of the pool and shed their light indiscriminatingly over part of the beach as well, it has created a small haven of gloom for the younger elements of Castelldefels society to gather and partake of various intoxicating liquors which encourage raucous enjoyment. If the new promenade is illuminated then there will a whole stretch of beach which will, by spill over, become available for nocturnal frolicking!

The motto of Castelldefels is ‘More than a beach.’ That might well be true in the minds of the town fathers, but without a beach Castelldefels is nothing; its raison d’etre would disappear. Because numerous blocks of flats have been built on the first line of the sea there is not the same opportunity for a promenade as there is in other coast resorts in the area. Castelldefels are rather late in trying to improve the ‘people friendly’ approach to the beach and the sea. It will be interesting to see what they do with the obstacle of the Boat Club which is a little further down the beach from our place which will be a real obstacle for the continuation of the promenade.

It’s always a pleasure watching others work!

Normal Service Resumed

The sun (if not the required temperature) has returned.

The workmen are busily driving large vehicles up and down the beach in an important sort of way. Drivers are parking on roundabouts and zebra crossings. In short, all is approximately well with the world.

The last day of the Pauls’ visit was lazy with only a generally abortive visit to the large Carrefor to count as a jaunt. We were hunting for a digital box to increase the range of programmes available. Spanish television is of an awfulness that those who have not visited the country can only guess.

The number and length of advertising breaks in Spanish television is not so much a breaking of the law which limits the total advertising time in an hour to twelve minutes as a complete ignoring of it. During one advertising break I had a shower, then made dinner and a pot of tea and the break had still not finished.

Films shown on Spanish television last for hours as advertising break follows break with the last break using placed just a few minutes before the end of the film! Usually bed is a more attractive prospect than prolonging the agony by watching a film slowly unwind in an advertisement extended period of teeth grinding frustration in front of the television screen.

Anyone who questions the value of the television licence fee should spend some time watching the rubbish which foreign stations offer! The ultimate horror in televisual tedium is of course found in the United States of America where ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ was regarded as high class educational programming on the public service channel!

The ideal would be to have BBC Gold

which is the mainstay of most of the Brits that I know, but we have a problem in our block of flats as the street has not had cable laid so we have been reduced to the appalling fare that comes with a simple aerial pulling down the terrestrial rubbish that is broadcast as Spain’s contribution to the televisual arts.

Something must be done!

The Matthews Family has come and gone. They have had a very wet couple of days in which to wander through the city. At least Castelldefels did its bit and produce the first sun that they had seen during their holiday in Catalonia!

Their gift of Welsh Cakes was surprising and most welcome. I had produced a recipe from the internet for the Welsh Week in The School That Sacked Me, but I had not gone to the extreme reality of actually making any! It will be a delight to indluge in eating them as a form of remembering the Old Country!

Having now been passed the illness of my partner I look forward to a relaxing couple of days lounging in bed and being waited on hand and foot.

I was ever an optimist!

Wot no sun!

Two days of rain!

That horrible familiar oppressive grey which characterises autumn in my memory has come back to haunt me in Catalonia!

The rain has that personal touch of vindictiveness which is usually absent from the clement weather of the peninsular. Luckily the Pauls have adopted their usual ‘holiday mode’ which means that half the day is lost in the arms of Morpheus which allows me time to get the hard domestic slog of loading the dishwasher out of the way! The detritus of the previous evening lying like the dressing of a film set for the morning afterwards waiting for a tender conscience to clear it all away!

What finally drove me to bed last night was fleeing from the interminable programme which is devoted to the Spanish version of Gran Hermano (Big Brother) which seems to last for hours.

This is not merely a case of my healthy loathing making any broadcast length of this pernicious programme seem unbearable but it also has the uncanny quality which distorts your perception of time. Watching it reminds me of my experience of that ponderous and gelatinous dimension in which Henry James thrived to produce his more geologically dense novels

The bloody thing extends through the evening in a never ending parade of trivial, inconsequential horror – and in a foreign language. That did not stop the Pauls watching it with unfeigned interest, their enthusiasm being kept up to speed with snippets of translation from our native Spanish speaker. This was the Halloween Special with the contestants having to traverse a corridor of fake webs, skeletons and grasping hands that would have been shamed by the most casual efforts of a poor primary class without their teachers. It reminded me of what I have heard of one of those Saturday morning TV programmes in which ‘gunking’ was an essential element. Ugh! One does not need the level of pretension that I possess to despise the whole affair and abominate the whole concept. I have and I do! Let’s face it; ‘Big Brother’ is no ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ – now that is classic television!

For the second time in two visits to one of the homes of the Bubbles of Happiness; it rained.

Obviously, one of the reasons for living in Catalonia is that it is the home of Cava, the champagne you can drink without ruining your bank balance. After being an enthusiastic devotee of the drink and of the correct pronunciation of the name in Rumney it seemed only fitting that I should go on my own Caminio de Sant Sadurní d’Anoia and pay homage in the home town of that sparkling beverage.

The first damp experience was en famille and was exhilerating, not only for the excitement of being in physical proximity to some one hundred million botttles of the right stuff,

but also because the basic winery buildings comprised another materpiece of Josep Puig i Cadafalch – the architect whose works are studded throughout Barcelona and the region. He should be as famous as Gaudí, and certainly within Catalonia he is highly regarded, but his world fame lags behind the builder of the Sagrada Famillia.

The second trip, this time with the Pauls (a different sort of family!) was again accompanied by downpours of completely superfluous amounts of rain water. This deluge did not appreciably add to the general lightness of spirit that accompanied our continued failure to find the winery when we had found Sant Sadurní d’Anoia. Our proximity merely encourage feelings of despair as its location continued to evade us. On the horns of such a dilemma and taking the bull between the teeth so to speak, I asked two workmen for directions and we eventually found ourselves in more encouraging surroundings as we drove through serried lines of damp grapes.

Our arrival (without booking) was sternly rebuked and we were told to return for the next English language trip an hour or so later.

Our hunger drove us to a nearby establishment rejoicing in the name of Café Rosa and packed with locals eating and drinking and smoking. The propriatoress assumed control of our bedraggled selves and we were soon seated at a long table jigsawing ourselves into the locals’ places!

Our request for water to accompany the meal was brushed aside by the propriatoress with brusque contempt and we were thus able to sample the local red vinegar! The meal was excellent, both in taste and value and gave us the necessary strength for the ensuing visit to Codorníu.

Because of the rain the view of the Josep Puig i Cadafalch architecture was lost as we took the lift directly to the cellars without passing through the garden with the views of the Modernista buildings.

The well remembered smell of slightly sweet dry rot assailed the nose as we plunged deeper and deeper into the astonishing caves of the Codorníu family. Dust dulled bottle bottoms stretched implausibly far into seemingly endless corridors of liquid wealth as our little electric train bumped us through dimly lit low arched vaults. Each vault was named in ceramic tiles and we were duly rewarded by seeing ‘Londres’ on one. Given the amount of the drink that I helped consume in my city it would be only fitting is any new extension to the 30km of tunnels is called ‘Cardiff!’

The journey home was in the gathering gloom and torrential rain. Given the wayward attitude to the continuation of life that is the keynote to Catalan driving I was grateful that the bulk of the journey home was via motorway. The Spanish drivers regard adverse weather conditions in the same way as a junkie regards a fix – something to calm you down so you can perform better! For a non drug taking Brit this makes driving in a biblical deluge on a Catalan road a thing of true horror!

Our evening meal, a signature hamburger from the restaurant on the corner, was washed down with an exquisite Cava, recently purchased by myself and a case of which had been carried to the car by Paul with me hobbling in front to open the boot so that he wouldn’t be drowned before entering the comfortable dryness of the car.

This Cava is a development of the previous delight that I bought on my last visit and managed to retain for special occasions.

The present impressive vintage is called Gran Plus Ultra, a Brut Nature which is not yet available for export. Each bottle of this delightful liquor comes complete in its own impressive box and tastes utterly delicious. I feel it is the sort of drink that Dianne (“I can only drink the best Champagne all the others make me ill”) might be able to sample without ill effects. We will see in the early part of next year when they come for their visit!

It is now well into the afternoon and only half the visitors and half the residents are up and doing.

I blame the rain!