Transparent?

One likes to think that one’s persona is something that has been carefully cultivated over the years and is, if one may use an image, approaching the status of a long matured single malt: rich, sonorous with hidden depths. One imagines oneself as projecting a friendly yet wry character; one tinged with irony yet open to absurdities of life. A complex, enigmatic, subtle and informed person whose epigrammatic utterances delight and mystify.

I say this because I have bought a bike. It is what I call an ‘Old Man’s’ bike: it has an elegant curved frame to allow easy mounting and dismounting and a basket in front with a metal contraption on the rear wheel to take some sort of bag. There are guards on the back wheels and a guard to stop your socks from getting dirty on the chain. It looks old-fashioned in a distinctly modern sort of way. And is nothing like the mountain bike that Toni bought.

The seat on Toni’s bike looks like the skull of a wasted stork while mine looks like a puffin’s skull with enlarged frontal lobes. Not for nothing is the trade mark of my seat called ‘Plush’ (sic)!

Toni’s comment on my purchase (well, one of them) was, “You’ve only bought that bike because of those French films.” This is disturbingly near the truth. I did have visions of getting provisions on a sunny morning, meandering my way through some sleepy foreign village on a sit-up-and-beg-bike. I have to admit that some of my inclination towards such a bike was fostered by images of the redoubtable Margaret Rutherford playing Miss Marple and coping with murder most foul while perambulating in the bike of my dreams.

My real question is how the hell Toni knew all this. It is hardly the thing that comes up in general conversation. And it can’t be that I am so easy to read. Can it? No, of course not. There must be some other explanation. Like mind reading.

Our bikes (made necessary by our relative isolation in the new house – very relative, I have to say) were collected with the assistance of Toni’s sister in her family car. Needless to say Toni’s mountain bike was at a bargain price with an extra amount taken off by the use of a card with accessories at cut price. Mine was three times the price with a free gift of a security chain which Toni informs me is useless. Story of my life!

My first trip on the new bike was to buy bread - so one of my fantasies came true as I peddled along with three baguettes sticking out of the front pannier of the bike! The negative aspect of this trip was that it was to get bread for the rest of the Family who had converged on our house for the celebration of the name day of all Carmens. We have two, one of whom has two small children. One of them didn’t stop shouting and the other didn’t stop moving. I swear that, were they in my sole charge for a whole day I do not think that they would survive. Either that or I wouldn’t survive!

Well, it may be 11.30 pm but we are going for a swim in the pool. That is what living in Catalonia is all about!

Who needs money?

Forget about holidays, rest and tranquillity: all I ask from life is a single day when I do not end up spending a horrifying large sum of money.

Today was not that day. My purchases today included a Bosch electric cutter (?); a long plastic rod; some artificial grass and a remote controlled fan. My life gets ever more surreal.

Talking of unlikely juxtapositions, I think that my good self and electric DIY is a good equivalent of the fish on the bicycle and the sewing machine on the operating table. Nevertheless the Book Room with its six largely empty bookcases now boasts an extendable light at the top of each of the shelves fixed there with my own fair hands. Not only do they stay where they are supposed to be, but also they work. Not only do they work, but they also spring into luminescence at the touch of a button on a remote. Putting books on such a technological marvel seems something of an anti climax but today has been momentous.

Today the process of taking the books out of storage in Bluespace has begun. Although the books were supposed to have been packed in shelf order the first box offer a grotesquely heterogeneous selection of volumes. If the rest of the books are as confused in their packing as these first tomes then I am going to spend the months up to Christmas sorting them all out into some sort of order. As my books are now on two floors there is going to be a considerable amount of walking or, alternatively a great deal of intellectual compromise as I invent cogent and convincing reasons why some books should inhabit the same shelves rather than being with the immediate and more convincing neighbours on another floor!

The house is becoming more and more a home. It remains to get all the paintings from Bluespace and start making some executive decisions about which pictures make it to the Spiral Gallery and public display.

My preference tends towards the effect that you can see in Zoffany’s painting of the interior of the Uffizi – every available space filled by a painting; while Toni’s taste is towards the more selective and sparse. Compromise seems difficult, but we will find some sort of common ground. Somewhere. Possibly.

Meanwhile preparations have to be made for the Carmen Name Day which is tomorrow. At least the Family is coming to us so we may make it to the beach.

It is a sad fact that we have been living in the House for over two weeks. The beach is at the end of the road. We have not set a single foot on the sand or been anywhere near the sea except to view it from our local restaurant.

Roll on normality!

Everyday nearer

It is very comforting to have received messages from friends telling me that they have boxes waiting to be unpacked years after the actual move that they made. I think that it is because we are settling in during the summer holidays that we want everything done at once.

In the normal course of event with working taking over the greater part of the day what we have done in a couple of weeks would have taken months of grudging time put in over many evenings.

We can be very pleased with what we have achieved and to be even thinking about what to do with our scrap of garden is truly remarkable.

Today was the search of my chair. Toni has colonized the sofa and regards me with active e hostility every time I presume to sit on it. My ideal is a swivel chair which will allow me to turn away from the baleful glare of the television and look out towards the swimming pool.

Although we have more room in the house than we had in the flat it is not always in the places that we most need it. Our living room is smaller than the one in the flat, and it is not made any bigger by the presence of a large number of bookcases which line one wall! Toni’s sofa takes up a chunk of space and that leaves only a small window of opportunity for my chair. The window bit is quite literal as it will be next to the tall windows which open onto a ledge rather than a balcony.

T5he single chairs in IKEA are singularly uncomfortable and actively discourage a good reading posture. It was therefore with a heavy heart that we started our search in Castelldefels.

The first shop we went into had a ‘Maskrey’s-like’ feel to it and a distinctly Maskrey’s-like series of prices! There was an old-fashioned thing covered in a most lurid fabric and the usual selection of chairs with outlandish price tags.

And then there was a cream leather chair looking rather like a pared down version of a dentist’s chair – with the same ability to extend into a semi prone formation which was very relaxing. And it swivelled. So I bought it. What are the chances of finding something in the first shop into which you venture! What with the return of the aval, the deposit and the building of the bookcases the fortunate finding of a chair seemed all of a piece with the good things which come with the new house.

I have made, of course, the customary trip to IKEA today to pick up the final extension for the last bookcase and to see if Toni’s bedside cabinet was back in stock.

And then there were the lights: little extendable things which fix to the top of the bookcases and look impressive. And give light. I couldn’t resist and, what is more, I have fitted them myself. And what is a great deal more, they work. My plan now is to install three more lights on the remaining bookcases and then connect them to the newly discovered remote plugs so that with one click I will be able to bathe my newly rescued books in light.

Toni is convinced that the six new bookcases will easily contain what is at present in Bluspace. I haven’t the heart to disillusion him, especially as I am working out where I can put the others without Toni noticing!

Tomorrow after the lights are fixed I will make the first of many, many trips to the depository and bring back the first of the captives and put them back on the shelves.

Spanish television is awful, but at present there is one programme which has real merit. This has been made by ‘3’ which is a Catalan station and it is an attempt to find out which part of Catalonia is the ‘favourite’ of the audience. It has been a spectacular series of breathtaking photography and it has demonstrated just how amazingly photogenic Catalonia is. Mountains, deltas, cities and towns have all been lovingly shot and introduced by Catalan personalities of whom I have never heard.

To my utter astonishment my personal favourite, the rocky mountain of Montserrat did not make it to the final four. The Costa Brava, Tarragona, Sant Maurici and the Ebro Delta did. I have been to three of these and probably flown over Sant Maurici which is in the Pyrenees. Of the ones I know the contest would come down to the coast line of the Costa Brava and the incredible Roman richness of Tarragona.

In the end, if only for personal, emotional reasons, the Costa Brava would have to win. This was my first taste of Spain and it remains one of the happiest holiday memories that I have.

This is a series which screams for a book to show off the richness of the region and I am amazed that one is not being touted in the show. The BBC would have ensured that the rights had already been sold around the world and that it was a choice of Book of the Week in Book Clubs in the UK and abroad. If the produces see sense and publish one I will certainly buy it and use it as a guide to what I have yet to see in this remarkable region.

And with that advert for my adopted country I think I will go to bed!

Is the world a nice place again?

Out of all the scenarios that we had considered the one which was obviously something to ignore was that our past estate agents would behave with honesty and give us our deposits back.

With a few deductions for gas, electricity, water and the ironic leaking tap (which totaled about 120€) we were given back our deposits in full.

Our money (€2,600) was still sealed in the envelope in which it was placed two years ago when we first signed the contract for the flat. So the money has been doing nothing for two years: what a waste! We are however relieved to have got the money back and are determined to go out and celebrate by having a mixed sea food extravaganza in a local restaurant!

Toni is going to celebrate by buying a replacement bicycle. His original bicycle was been ‘looked after’ by his uncle while he was in Wales and it has since been ‘stolen’ from the garage in which it was being kept. This has led to much family debate in which I carefully take no part.

I will join Toni in his celebrations and buy an ‘Old Man’s Bike’; this is a proper looking bike with a guard over the chain and basket in the front and a comfortable looking seat. A bike is essential because we are not within walking distance of a shop. We could go back to where we used to live where there are plenty of shops – but no parking spaces. When I last went back to get some food from one of the takeaways that we used to use I spent fifteen minutes or more trying to find a parking space!

I have taken the first steps in moving from the Worst Bank in the World (BBVA) to another which cannot be worse. My choice is a bank called La Caixa which is a Catalan bank and it has my vote because it finances something called La Caixa Forum which is a cultural organization. The part I use is found at the foot of Monjuïc where in a converted Modernista factory there are a series of galleries one of which hosts major art exhibitions.

This is in marked contrast to The Worst Bank in the World which finances La Liga one of whose teams has paid the exceptionally disgusting sum of over €90,000,000 for the services of a talented, but arrogant kickball player!

My account is up and running and has some of the money from the returned deposit in it to start it off. The service was friendly and the person dealing with me attempted to speak English while I attempted to speak Spanish. Luckily Toni was there to ensure that our linguistic gymnastics did not get too physical!

We even got a little gift (at my prompting) to mark the opening of the account! The problem now is to get a full transfer of my account without BBVA grasping their usual cripplingly high ‘bank charges’ for every bloody thing that they do.

I have (we have) built all the white Billy bookcases which now grace the walls of ‘The Library’ – or perhaps I should call it The Book Room which sounds slightly less pretentious. Why I should be worrying about pretention at this stage in my life, god alone knows, it has never concerned me in the past!

Tomorrow the search for a swivel chair for the living room for me begins!

Never a dull moment!

You know it makes sense, really . . .

I know that they have been around for some time, but I have always assumed that they were a good idea which would always be let down by the hardware.

When you have been the proud possessor of a Sinclair QL then you know the hard reality of the difference between stated potential and reality. Those QL programs (Quill word processor, Abacus spreadsheet, Archive database, Easel business graphics – ah memories, memories) promised much but were constantly let down by glitches and the notorious micro-drives.

So when for a mere €20 I saw three plug-in programmable remote switches for things like lights I bought them while trying to suppress QL-type memories from telling me that I was wasting money.

Wasting money I might probably have been doing, but work they undoubtedly do. Thanks to Clarrie outbidding Martin Shaw at the termination of a West End run of a play, I am now (and have been for some years) the owner of two elegant up-lighters that graced the set of the production in which Mr Shaw starred. They have followed me from home to home from Cardiff to Spain and have looked good even if they were rarely called on to give forth light.

The shameful reason for this was that the switches for them were at floor level on a little switch on the cable which was often hidden behind furniture and in spite of the memory of Malvolio’s words “if it be worth stooping for, there it lies in your eye” I rarely stooped and so the lights remained elegant but dim.

Now everything is changed (including their British 3 pin plugs to the unconvincing continental 2 pin variety) and they are connected to plugs which respond to a remote, so that with one click of a button both up-lighters up their light. With another click of the remote the fan comes one and with a third click two occasional lamps become bright.

I have bought another set of devices for the studio and, as another of Our Bill’s creations once said,
I will plug such things -- What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be Subject to the remotes in Catalonia.

Such things please me.

Sections of the Family arrived today and Toni’s sister promptly started being practical by fitting shelves; cutting door coverings and building bookcases – while looking after two small children. I sat near and tried to take an intelligent interest in what was going on. I even looked after the smallest of the children (he was sleeping after all, but he still drained all of my nervous energy!) and made ineffectual attempts to help with the bookcases.

Three of the six new ones are now partially built and the empty spaces are crying out for released books from Bluspace. I am determined not to bring a single book from the prison where they are languishing until I have fully fitted out the room which is supposed to take them. I think that I will be able to fit another two bookcases in the centre of the room making a total of eight new storage spaces of double extended bookcases. It still is not going to be enough but I will worry about that lack when I still have boxes left in storage.

When do the holidays start?

I am prepared to be serenaded by my new musical washing machine and blinded by the light inside the new fridge, but I refuse to be intimidated by the new dishwasher.

This stark Germanic machine with disconcertingly few buttons and knobs repulses my attempts to get it to work and I have, at length, resorted to the instruction booklet. This admission of defeat was forced upon me by my complete inability to get the detergent compartment to close. I was so cowed by the utilitarian severity of the machine that I assumed that the compartment only closed when the machine was closed – on much the same principle that one believes that the light in the fridge goes out when you close the door.

This belief concerning the washing tablet was disproved by the simple expedient of attempting to close the door and watching the tablet slip out of the compartment. The defeat became abject when I asked Toni to translate the instructions for me in case there was some subtlety that I was missing in my rough and ready interpretation. Toni merely confirmed that what I was doing was what the instructions asked for.

He came with me to the machine and as I said “You see, it doesn’t close!” it closed. The machine then proceeded to wash the dishes. You have to remember that for the last couple of years I have been using a machine made by Taurus (a brand to avoid liked the plague) so my present machine seems like a visitor for another cleaning universe! And it went through the whole cycle without having to be prompted to the next section of the wash cycle. Truly, one can find essential happiness in small things!

Today has not been as frantic as previous days and after an extended lie in the only ‘house orientated’ activity until late afternoon was visiting a garden centre and marvelling at the high prices.

Due to popular demand we have decided to change the beds that guests have had to endure. What finally decided us was our having to sleep in them ourselves when we first arrived in the house! Toni’s mum who, now that we have working television is prepared to contemplate a visit, will be the first person to try out the new beds. I hope that they are comfortable because they are here to stay. They do look more substantial and they appear to be beds which will afford some support to Paul Squared when he arrives in his Miami neck brace after his operation!

Tomorrow the Grand Construction of the Billy Bookcases in preparation for the release of the Bluspace Thousands. At least the books that I have not seen for three years will again grace accessible shelf space! My fear is that the shelf space that this house is going to afford is not going to be sufficient to cope with all my books.

As I say so often; we shall see!

Time to think

Happiness is being asked for something in the kitchen and not only knowing where it is, but also being able to find it without moving boxes.

This means of course that we are getting there. Wherever there is: some fabled country where people live in their homes without having to construct something at every moment; where they can move from room to room without having to thread their way through a potentially lethal box walled pathway; without fearing that every foot tread is going to destroy something which cost a substantial sum of money to place in your way. At the moment it is still a dream – but it is a dream which is partially fulfilled on the first floor of the house.

The living room and the kitchen are now reasonably presentable. They lack finishing touches and the chaos carefully hidden behind doors is work for the future – but here and now they are places which will excite interest rather than repulsion.

The same cannot be said for the rest of the house with the third floor being a place of horror – but with a view of the sea!

Toni is now a great deal more tranquil as (unfortunately from my point of view) he has managed to make the bloody television work. This also means that his mother will now contemplate being our first guest. She departed with the rest of the family earlier in the week vowing she would stay nowhere where she was unable to watch her favourite programme, which is about Barça and consists of people shouting at each other. You can see why these last days have been such bliss for me. Hard work indeed, but at least without the soul destroying awfulness which is Spanish television at its best. At its worst there is no simile of sufficient strength to give an accurate flavour of its deep worthlessness.

On the decorative side it has been an interesting experience to regress to one’s student days with the purchase of the expanding paper IKEA light shades to cover the bare bulbs. Some things, I tell myself, are design classics and never go out of fashion. And they are cheap, easy to construct and simplicity to fit. How many people have put them up as a stop-gap measure and then watched them (if they noticed them at all) become that fetching shade of cream which is a sign of maturity and a measure of how far they have become a part of the house and it would be a pointless extravagance to change them.

We are beginning to think of what paintings to put up and my idea of using the stairs as a sort of gallery is one way in which we can show rather more of our collection than we were able to do in the flat.

I love the use of the word ‘collection’ it gives gravitas to the unplanned accretion of art that I have accumulated over the years. I am proud to announce to the world that I have the largest collection of paintings, charcoals and drawings by Ceri Auckland Davies on the European mainland, and being a person cognizant of his responsibilities I am prepared to consider requests for loans to exhibitions so that I can read, “Private collection, Barcelona” in the catalogue!

I have been buying art works for over thirty years: from a wonderful ink drawing while in University through pottery ‘landscape pots’ while I was in Kettering to Ceri’s tempera paintings. I wish I had bought more. There are exhibitions that I have been to where for example the delicate painting of a bird’s wing; the portrait of a little girl: the original of a national newspaper cartoon serial; an eerie representation of a crowd; a delicate geometrical abstract and a large ‘metallic’ pottery plate – all tempted me and I didn’t have the cash or I hesitated too long. Those few missed opportunities came to mind very easily and if I gave it a little more though I am sure that others would rise up in my visual memory to taunt me with making the wrong choice in allowing them to go to different homes!

I always have before me the Missed Hockney. I saw a reproduction of A Bigger Splash in a newspaper and liked it immediately. It cost a lot, but I could have got the money together somehow if I had been really serious about the piece. But I wasn’t and I didn’t. The amount that the picture would be worth today keeps me awake nights! The further realization that I am missing equal ‘bargains’ (just as my grandparents didn’t buy Van Goghs) also causes me some unease!

The crisis in world banking (I blame BBVA) has shown just how fatuous the concept of saving is when almost half of what you have ‘put away’ is wiped out by the criminal ineptitude of avaricious, callous bastards. No, the ‘eat, drink and be merry’ (we will leave out the ‘et in Arcadia ego’ sentiment in the concluding phrase of the aphorism) is the only way to live.

So buy more art and be happy.

Sounds good to me!

White and gleaming!

I have cleaned and mopped the floor of the kitchen.

That statement in itself would be notable, but the fact that there is visible floor to be cleaned is even more remarkable.

The days have begun to merge one into another and yet the perspicacious might discern a barely perceptible format. The normal day starts with one or other of us (i.e. me) going to a bank or estate agent to demand the return of money. Money being refused the acceptable form of tension release is to go to IKEA. Something will then be constructed with consequent nervous tension and subsequent complete prostration.

Today the attempt was made to get back the deposits, which amount to two months’ rent. The estate agent, as I fully expected did not furnish me with crisp Euro notes of pleasingly high denominations but instead informed me that the issuing of money was dependent on the finalization of a bill for the ironic tap. You may remember said sardonic piece of plumbing decided to malfunction within minutes of the arrival of the Owner for the final visit of inspection before we left the flat. At most this is going to amount to €100 (though with our ex-Owner and the bunch of thieves with an estate agents sign over their door who knows what they might be able to fabricate) so they are withholding €2,600 for some paltry sum of money!

I have studied the headed notepaper of the ‘estate agents’ with some attention as I would like to write a revealing letter to their professional body; astonishingly they do not seem to belong to one! Who would have imagined!

The pitiful state of the kitchen, which has necessitated our eating out most nights as it is impossible to prepare food in the three-dimensional jig-saw of a food preparation area that is masquerading as a junk room.

Because of the lack of shelves in the kitchen units (!) {About which I have been told by Toni not to make a fuss} our storage capacity is severely limited and there is also a woeful lack of drawer space. These two negative aspects precipitated our decision to get another unit for the kitchen.

My first choice of what looked like fairly basic but elegant metal shelving turned out to be horrifically expensive so I plumped for a cabinet sized version of the system which includes our wine rack augmented by a variety of handy IKEA plastic storage solutions. I also bought a selection of the wire accessories which ‘go with’ the shelving. I am not sure that I actually need them but they are fun and they were easy to install. After what seems like eons of screwdriving and painstaking interpretation of minute details in broadly drawn diagrams ease of construction is something to value!

And things are put away. Or, to put it more truthfully, are not on view. There are clear surfaces. Behind the doors of cupboards there are Heath-Robinson constructions of tins and packets and gadgets and cartons; but unless you look you wouldn’t know that there were there. All you see is a clean and featureless white door.

Toni is taking a siesta and, when the snoring subsides and he descends to see my hard work he will, with logic and innate efficiency explain to me why the places in which I have put things are the wrong places in which things have been put.

But at least there will be an initial gasp at the glory of white tiles revealed in all their bleached glory.

One lives for such moments!

Endings?

The Aval is mine!

Not without a fight. After assurances that the money would be paid into my account on Tuesday I was a little surprised to find that it had not been placed there. The woman who I have dealt with before whose banking statements are either fatuous or deliberately misleading or both was waiting to listen to my catalogue of complaints and plaintive (yet searching) questions.

Eventually after I had railed at her in an unusually fluent adrenalin fuelled tirade of Spanish I stormed out of the bank leaving her with a parting sally telling her that the services BBVA offered its customers were a joke.

Unfortunately because of my idiosyncratic Spanish it may have been understood as a complaint about the toilets! Gives them something to think about and there was no way that they could have misinterpreted my mood!

By way of calming myself down I went to IKEA. Again. IKEA stores are constructed on the Roman military principle that wherever you are in the world they are all the same so you know exactly where to go in the serpentine labyrinth that they construct to force you to look at everything they sell before you can get out. Our ‘local’ store is being refitted and, rather than close they are doing the store bit by bit. This means that if you go to the store on a daily basis (as I assure you I have) there are subtle differences as one section closes another opens. It is rather like being in the furnishing equivalent of the film ‘The Cube’ as interconnected elements in the installation constantly change and move.

At least in IKEA you are not squirted with acid or cut with fine wires or incinerated as in the film though I would maintain that there are certainly lethal elements lurking among the more metallic and disconcerting constructions on sale!

Calmed by the spending of money I returned to Castelldefels, deposited my purchased with Toni and, armed with my photocopied aval I returned to the bank.

My money was still not in my account and I asked The Woman to do something about it. She did, in whispered conversations in rapid Spanish which she hoped I would not understand. Some of it was technical, but I did understand that she was urging the people to whom she was speaking not to try and get me to return to Terrassa to get my money. This was a wise move on her part, because any suggestion that I would have had to do anything more than sit in front of her to get my money would have been met with a physically demonstrative expression of my disinclination to do anything more.

Eventually the money was in my account and I then asked for a full listed statement of the account. I lost my temper with the woman as she tried to convince me that the massive bank charges that had been ripped from my current account to finance the ‘risk’ element in my aval were reasonable. Reasonable! I give MY money to the bank who charge me 300€ to set up an account of MY money and then charge be a quarterly charge of 117€ for doing nothing with MY money and pay me a miserly 1.5% which they find other ways not to pay me.

It really does seem to me that the aval is a form of legalized theft and is nothing more than a cynical money making scheme in which is there is absolutely not risk whatsoever for the bank who, if the worst came to the worst, would only have to pay someone else’s money out of the gaping maw of their evilly amassed riches. God rot them.

I have opened a file and intend to ask my union for advice on how I can get my money back from the grasping fingers of the avaricious incompetents who have brought western society to its knees by their intemperate and self aggrandizingly selfish approach to their so-called profession.

But enough of the forays to come in the world of Spanish banking. What of today?

Today has seen the arrival of fridge, washing machine and dishwasher. At last we have re-entered the realm of what I regard as something approaching civilization.

The fridge is enormous and has an internal light whose power drove me backwards when I first opened the machine with the power on! It is also the right way round; so no more stooping for the milk in the vulgar little fridge that The Owner provided.

The washing machine, disconcertingly, plays little tunes at various stages in its washing sequence which at the moment charm with their novelty but I am sure will infuriate in the near future.

The dishwasher is stolid and Germanic and is gradually filling up.

The Family also arrived to celebrate Carme’s birthday. I realize with some trepidation that of all the members of The Family we now are the ones with the most available space for events! I foresee that our popularity is set to rise at the same rate as a seat for the next Real Madrid v. Barcelona match!

We also had the workers of our estate agent arrive. They came to repair the shower, toilet and gate. So, while The Family were eating the delicious cream birthday cake we were treated to an impromptu fireworks display as men ground the metal gate in showers of sparks and then added to the pyrotechnical display with a touch of spot welding. The youngest member of The Family stood wobbilly transfixed by the unaccustomed display.

No sooner had the workmen left than a colleague arrived and in the cool breeze underneath the house we sat and chatted about the evils of Mankind as they are evinced in the educational life of Catalonia. Most enjoyable.

Tomorrow another battle royal.

We have been told by our worthless previous estate agents that we should have our substantial deposits returned this week. As tomorrow will be Thursday and as the week is running out we are visiting our debtors and demanding the cash. Toni is working himself up into frenzy where only the full amount proffered on a cushion of crushed velvet is going to satisfy him.

I look forward to verbal fireworks. Especially if they try and retain any part of the two months’ deposit by trying to argue the toss about the condition of the flat.

Watch this space!

It does strike twice

There is a play by Gogol called ‘The Lower Depths’ which I know I have read some time back in my even more pretentious youth, probably set in a Silesian Salt Mine – the play I mean, not my youth. The title somehow dredged itself out of my memory (or should that be evaporated from the saline of my recollection) when I was confronted with something today.

Moving, as I am sure my more experienced reader will know, haemorrhages money at a degree which makes a slashed aorta look like a minor scratched knee. It was while I was paying by card for another tranche of money in excess of a thousand Euros payable to IKEA that I was informed that the amount had been refused by my bank.

As you know my bank is BBVA – the worst bank in the world – and I have taken every opportunity to rail against its stupidity, cupidity, mendacity, rapacity and other adjectives too vitriolic to commit to type. I has sent me, like some latter day dweller in biblical times to return to the place of the issuing of the aval to get my money back; it has charged me hugely for services which defy ironic condemnation; it has changed opening hours to ensure that I can never get to it; it has security doors which limit egress to one person at a time through a secure corridor – in short it is the sort of financial institution which was dreamed up by one of the ice locked traitors in the frozen lake in the lower circles of hell as envisaged by Dante.

Today was The Buying of the Electrical Domestics. These three essentials come to what my parents would have described as ‘a tidy sum’ and so; being prudent I decided to confirm that my use of my bank card would ensure a worry free purchase.

After the usual inordinate wait while the single cashier (do you know the profits that BBVA made last year!) slowly made her way through the increasingly frustrated line of BBVA clients (or ‘worthless scum’ as they are know my customer services in that worthy bank) until it came to my turn.

Of course, I was in the ‘wrong’ queue and had another hatred inducing wait for the single customer representative to be free.

When she was free she was all smiles and reassurance. This was partly because she vividly remembered by response when she told me that I would have to return to Terrassa to get my aval sorted out – even though it was in a branch of BBVA and the money was to be paid to me, a customer of BBVA etc etc. There was, I was told, no limit to the amount which I could use on my card as long as there were funds to cover the amount I wanted to spend.

I think that there more intelligent of you will have worked out where this little tale is heading.

It didn’t bloody work.

After waiting (again) for the insane amount of paperwork to be completed in the shop for the purchase of the three kitchen machines and after having shown an amount of paperwork which would have got Hitler into Heaven my card was refused as the bank (BBVA in case the name of the evil bastards’ organization had slipped from your memory) denied my request.

It just so happened that I had withdrawn 600€ in hard cash for little things like curtain rods when I left the bank so I was able to put in cash and then pay the rest by card. As ‘the rest’ was just under a thousand Euros it didn’t take a mathematic genius to work out that my limit (which doesn’t exist) was 1000€.

I have to return to that institution (which is to banking what David Beckam is to particle physics) to get the full account of my aval and to ask, ever so gently, why I was lied to today.

I relish the future conflict.

I am going to write to whatever consumer organizations exist in Spain to denounce this travesty of financial rectitude and have already ‘opened a file’ so that the list of misdemeanours can be correctly itemized and flung in their corporate face.

During a day in which, in spite of everything, we have done quite a lot there has been little time for contemplation. Dinner this evening was, however one of those times.

We went back to our favourite restaurant and had a meal of sea-food tapas and for the first time in the day we were able to relax a little. The television was building up to event of the week: The Presentation to the People. This is a time honoured subject in biblical painting which involves Jesus and usually has the Latin title of ‘Ecce Homo’ – Behold the Man! The gory representations of Jesus were given a more modern and positive turn in the television presentation as this was the occasion when Cristiano Ronaldo was paraded before the baying hordes of Real Madrid fans.

Amid the suited dignitaries and disinterred past players the slim figure of Ronaldo dressed in the white strip of Madrid looked strangely incongruous and somewhat vulnerable. There was no visible panty line, but was rather homely to see the end of the shirt showing through the sheer white of his shorts, I was reminded of the Roman custom of having someone behind a successful general as the Great Man acknowledged the plaudits of the crowd on his Victory Parade repeating in the general’s ear, ‘Remember man that thou art mortal!’ I hope that there is someone for Cristiano because the idolization he is currently being given would turn the head of most people let alone an arrogant show off like him!

But such things did not concern me. Let it pass! What did occupy my thoughts was an observation that I realize that I have been making unconsciously for a long time.

People rarely look happy as they come from the beach.

It’s true. They trudge away looking as though they have completed an onerous task, as though some duty has been ticked off.

It is not hard to see why. The beach is an almost absurdly inconvenient place. The one that I am talking about is full of people who have shrieking children and/or noisy dogs. If they have neither of these requisites then they can compensate by playing radios tuned to hideous ‘music’ stations at levels which separate sand grains and see their music systems turned into a sort of sonic drill.

Drink rapidly becomes luke-warm and food attracts sand so that eating becomes a grinding experience. The sea, needless to say is too cold, too full of jelly fish, too crossed by currents, too dirty to be enjoyed. The wind picks up and sandpapers those tender areas when hands have failed to put lotion.

Waves of beach vendors sweep across the sands like the barbaric hordes from history and quiet is constantly shattered by announcements in Spanish, Catalan, execrable English and funny French.

The shrine of Saint James in Compostella is notable for the number of pilgrims who deliberately take the most arduous way to the Cathedral. Some complete the last stages of the Camino on their knees leaving a trail of blood behind them. Perhaps the Spanish share with the British the quiet satisfaction of turning pleasure into hard work when it comes to the enjoyment of the coastline!

We have been working so hard that we have forgotten what the beach looks like.

Just as a spur to our efforts, Toni’s sister and all members of the family have decided to hold said sister’s birthday in our extensive demesne.

So two days to get it all together.

God help!

The sun will shine tomorrow!

I have experienced many lifetimes since I last took finger print to key. I feel like some Buddhist illuminates who knows that he has died and been reborn in ever lower guises in the course of history.

Moving, as is well known, is one of the top five Most Stressful Experiences. Our move has been well within the tightest parameter of the top of the top five.

It is difficult to know where to start to illustrate the sheer horror of the whole catastrophic sequence of events, so I won’t bother. I will merely take you back to the day of the inspection by the owner.

Toni and I had sweated blood to get the flat looking as fine as it possibly could so that there could be no reason for The Owner (this time with a capital O for Ogre) denying us our full deposits back and, much more importantly, returning me my aval which amounts to six months’ rent.

We had cleaned in a way which would have delighted my mother’s father who was painstaking in the extreme in these matters (probably something to do with his having been an accountant and town treasurer) and even he would have found it difficult to have discovered any slight faults in our cleaning. We had plied bleach as if it was free, we had used every other cleaning agent on woods, glass, plastic, laminate, veneer, tile, fabric, steel, and several other more difficult to spell surfaces. We had painted ceilings to mask the growth of mould and Toni had siliconned every joint in the bathroom with specially bought, extremely cheap white stuff – and we were winning.

Every time we cleared away, something else would appear to take its place. Car load after car load of bits and pieces gradually revealed the full majesty of the tile floors which were sparkling with sweat!

We worked right up to the deadline which was the appearance of the Owner and the representative from our awful estate agents. Toni went out to take a last load of rubbish to the skip and I did yet another inspection of the property to ensure that we were leaving nothing.

Fifteen minutes to go and the inspections were, by now, mere confirmation that we had done our stuff.

My cursory glance into the utility area was satisfying: everything as it should be. Next door, or upstairs was taking a shower, but what cared I for neighbours who were soon to be ex-neighbours! The sound of the shower sounded oddly close. Too close.

With the sort of sick apprehension that is usually described in the more obvious detective stories, I opened the door of the utility cupboard and saw that the noise of the shower was actually that of a water pipe that had sprung a leak!

I heard Toni coming back up the steps to the door and, in the immortal words of Tom Hanks (the well-known non-actor) “Toni, we have a problem!”

It was the sort of ironic timing that only happens in books and not in real life, but however hard I tried to write the problem off to literary ineptitude, the hissing of the water kept reminding me that there was indeed something wetly wrong.

We had to turn the water off and, as we did so, the Owner turned up.

He was accompanied by a serious, officious looking young man who immediately read the utilities and started taking an inordinate number of photographs of all aspects of the flat. Walls, windows, lights, fittings, anything that looked significant and lots of things which looked amazingly insignificant were focused on and shot. I became increasingly suspicious and annoyed, as it looked like a clear prelude to a whole series of reasons for keeping the deposit.

The Owner however was supremely indifferent to everything going on and engaged in an animated conversation with Toni on the evil of our Argentinean neighbours in the flat below. Their crimes against humanity are too numerous to explain here, but their having seven dogs in a flat did not endear them to me. Toni actually used the conversation to say that their general attitude was the major reason for our leaving. This is nowhere near the truth but it did help our campaign for the return of the aval.

Formalities concluded we left for the house.

Our arrival was the point at which our lives, as we had known them, came to an abrupt end.

I have worked harder than I want to remember of any time in the past. I have gone through mere tiredness into the realm of hyper-fatigue where the world gradually appears to be more akin to the conception of Dalí than, say, Constable.

Gradually the house is beginning to have the appearance of a home. No room is without that transitory appearance which is the hallmark of the recently occupied house. There are boxes in every room and chaos peers round every corner, but there is an outline of what might be to come.

Everyone has his own story to chill the heart of the most optimistic mover and I have to say that I can top most of them with the experiences that we have had over the last six days!

Tiredness has become a way of life for us and we now accept it as a normal part of life, so I should concentrate on the house itself.

No one is interested in mundane facts about bedrooms, though I could tell you stories about the b ringing up of the new mattress that would make your toes curl.

We at last have an en suite bathroom which has been designated mine by Toni who has commandeered the guest bathroom as his.

My bathroom suffers from the taste of past times. The bath, sink and bidet are coloured in a tint which may be best described as ‘excreta light’ which is offset by a glaze of green tiles with tasteful stylized flower as a design motif! The light is a bulb hanging by a single wire on the glass. The mixer tap doesn’t really work and the toilet leaks.

The painting of the house is in poor order; there are no shelves in the kitchen cabinets; the glass is falling out of the studio glass door; the front gate is on its last legs; wood is rotting and so on and so forth – and we love it.

There is no comparison between the flat and the house. I don’t miss the beach view and rejoice in the space and the different levels.

I am typing this on the third floor balcony while Toni is looking through the telescope I bought him for his birthday a couple of years ago and cooing with delight as he inspects the craters on the moon.

It will take time for the idiosyncrasies of the place to become clear but we already realize that we have catapulted ourselves into a voyeuristic contemplation of a frenzied domestic situation which is being played out next door.

The family seems to live its life outdoors sitting round a table placed in the space under the house, shouting at each other while the television blares unnoticed – except of course by us! It appears that the adolescent girl of the household had made friends with various undesirable kids whom the mother denounced as ‘drug addicts’ and you can guess the rest of that scenario. I am sure that this particular soap opera will play itself out over the next couple of months.

As the kitchen has been a truly depressing space with few actual spaces between the boxes we have been eating out. Our most local restaurant is in the Maritime Club of Castelldefels and I have been impressed with the quality of food there. I have had the best pizza in my life there, though god knows the last time that I actually ate one!

We are yet to get a fridge, washing machine and dishwasher, but at least I have a little more cash now as my school has Done the Right Thing and paid me a double pay for June as would be traditional for all full time teachers and, much more importantly, I have had my aval back.

This means that I now possess the sacred bit of paper that is worth six months’ rent. As soon as I had it I went to The Most Hated Bank in the World (BBVA) and demanded the money be paid into my current account.

The woman in my bank in Castelldefels took one look at the form and said, “You have to go to Terrassa because that is where the aval was issued.” At the time that the aval was taken out I did indeed have my account in Terrassa but it was moved to Castelldefels. The aval is from BBVA paid for with money from my account. The money is to be paid into a BBVA account from BBVA. But I had to go to Terrassa!
When I got there they took the aval, photocopied it (of course) and handed me back a stamped photocopy and told me that the money would be paid to me on Monday, oh no, not Monday because it is a Bank Holiday in Terrassa, Tuesday then.

Just to remind you: the money in BBVA is to be paid to an account in BBVA, but it would take four days to complete. A few key strokes on a computer are far too technical a concept for that bunch of incompetent thieves to contemplate.

I intend to make a formal complaint about the breathtakingly appalling service (I’m not even going to put that word in inverted commas as their laughable approach to customers is beyond irony) and I am waiting for a full itemized list of the charges that those comedians have extorted from me for keeping my money for their use before I change my bank.

Tomorrow more work and a possible deadline for finishing the kitchen. The studio is almost complete and at least there is a comfortable bed in the bedroom. By the time Gwen and Dianne arrive there might even be reasonably comfortable beds in the guest room.

But that is too far into the future to be taken seriously, especially as there are boxes to be opened and essential items for the house to be found.

Bed seems both inviting and terminal.

And I don’t think that I can face another IKEA screw.

Until tomorrow! Until tomorrow!

As if to drive in the knife of viciousness a little deeper into the depths of my unreal tiredness the road to work today was one continuous traffic jam enlivened only by the death defying (unfortunately) antics of supercilious motorcycle drivers.

I had intended to get my ‘job’ for the morning out of the way before anyone arrived, but the traffic ensured that my arrival was only just inside the normal starting time.

The ‘job’ was photocopying ‘Holiday Homework’ for those miscreants who had failed their examinations. The work had already been decided and all I had to do was re-type the front page and use the originals to produce X numbers of copies.

I have always been amazed at the sheer ineptitude of people using the photocopier. The basic principles of use involved are surely easy to grasp, but it is a never failing source of self satisfied gloating to observe the antics of colleagues as they try and obtain the elusive copy that they want. Notice I said the ‘copy that they want’ which is very often not the copy that they get. They look askance at the results of their attempts and sometimes even shake the paper a little as if their failure were a mere wrinkle in the system that, with a little flick they can sort out.

Some people find the mere process of obtaining a single copy challenging but when you get to horizontal format double sided copying then whole forests are sacrificed in futile attempts to get a reasonable outcome.

The ‘originals’ that I was given were of the ‘forests wasted’ variety with pages printed upside down. In spite of my tiredness I made an executive decision to ‘make things good’. This was a mistake. The photocopier ran out of paper almost immediately and my re-arranging and re-photocopying of selected faulty pages soon developed into an epic race against time to get them done.

But done they eventually were, with the expenditure of reams of paper and all of my remaining nervous energy. I used to be able to tell how much I had drunk by the exact level of disintegration of my level of squash playing. Now that my knees seem to be packed with gravel I have another indicator: the number of typing errors that I make.

Even the untiring efforts of the irritating Microsoft typing corrector are insufficient to cope with the level of random letter insertion that my insensate fingers are producing.

I have asked if I can slope off early and help Toni in the final (please god!) efforts of the packing and the commencement (dear god!) of the Cleaning of the Flat in Preparation for the Arrival of the Owner and the Returning of the Money.

Toni and I are still talking. Just. There was a period during some late night (or perhaps it just seemed late) transferring of ‘stuff’ from flat to house when we went through a quietly spoken, extra polite phase which was mutually terrifying. One sense that, should the veneer of civilization peel away for a moment then it would be carving knives at dawn! But we survived. Just.

This afternoon has to see the final move completed and the Great Clean Up begin. House cleaning is not my forte. I would prefer to adopt the ‘leaving the money in the envelope for the cleaning lady’ approach, but I have not been allowed to pursue this course in Catalonia.

I am a little perturbed that we will be moving to a place with three (count them) flights of tile stairs and an extra room. I feel that something must be done.

But not by me.

I was allowed out early so was able to catch Toni cleaning my bathroom. Because mine does not have an outside window it is prone to damp and mould and we have taken extraordinary measures to ensure that the place looks even better than when it was given to us. We are trying to eliminate all the potential reasons for the Owner to quibble about how much of our money he pays us back. We are looking for 100% which, in Spain, is a truly ambitious expectation!

We have now made a further three visits to the house taking an inordinate amount of further ‘stuff’ which has apparently been breeding overnight!

We have still not moved everything, but, by later this evening we should have transported the overwhelming bulk of what we have to move.

Further cleaning today and tomorrow and then the fateful Visit of Inspection!

Tomorrow our phones and all other forms of communication will be cut, supposedly to be restored to our new accommodation in a couple of days time. I am not sanguine about the assertions of our internet provider and therfore this will probably be the last of my entries in the blog for some time!

Perhaps I am being unduly negative.

Or realistic.

Who knows!

Time has stopped

Two and a half days of moving and it is still not over. We haven’t even begun to clean the flat to ensure that the Owner has not justification for keeping the money that he controls as our evilly enormous deposit of many, many Euros.

So I am not really in the mood to reject as mere fairy story the latest conspiracy theory that I am developing. Toni’s fanaticism has meant that I have been a grudging spectator to the latest series of football matches devoted to some sort of cup.

This one is FIFA inspired and therefore tinged (to say the least) with the corruption which is the life blood of that thoroughly discredited institution. This one is allegedly inter-continental so we should be seeing the best national teams on the planet.

It is my lifelong belief that the whole purpose of FIFA has come down to trying to get The United States of America interested in real football and to that end they have worked assiduously to try and get the Americans a trophy of some sort. The final in this ludicrous competition is between the USA (shock, horror!) and Brazil. For three quarters of the game the USA has been in the lead but now Old Football has reasserted itself and Brazil have equalized. Quarter of an hour to go and I fancy the Brazilians to make it safe. But there again, what the hell do I know about football? Or indeed care!

But I still think that things are fixed.

We have discovered that there is much more to transport after our M&V move than we had ever feared in our worst nightmares. We have been back and fore for what seems like most of our lives and there is still a mass of ‘stuff’ which seems glued to the flat and, no matter how much we move, more ‘stuff’ appears asking politely for an IKEA cardboard box and smirking at our naïve belief that we are ‘making real progress.’

My tiredness has now reached epic proportions and I have no idea how I am going to readjust to ‘school mode’ tomorrow. At least we can go home after lunch so I can help Toni in the ‘Final Cleaning’ of our (hopefully) empty flat.

Such interesting days ahead!

Would that this would end!

Anyone who says mid way through a move that, “the worst is over” is not only tempting fate but also showing a shocking lack of experience in the soul searing process of rearranging accommodation.
Uneasy dreams of multifarious disasters (all surprisingly connected with various aspects of moving) were finally interrupted by the sound of my mobile alarm at whose notes I am programmed to lurch into some similitude of wakefulness.

My first worried duty was to check that the unbroken line of cars outside our flat had dissipated enough to allow a van to park by the flat’s main gate. There was a space so I immediately got the car from the underground garage and plonked it in the middle of a two car space thus ensuring that no other car could take it.

Our moving team when it finally arrived (it was only a few minutes late but to a mind sick with worry about what might happen it seemed like hours) they leapt into action after a few horrified glances at the number of boxes there were to carry. Toni, crucified with embarrassment at the sheer scale of the ‘stuff’ to be moved actually volunteered to ‘help’ the men with the move. I felt that this was ‘bad form’ and made little attempt to follow his lead.

Their muscular help ensured that the major part of the move was completed in two trips by the troop of South Americans leaving our new house looking completely chaotic.

Toni’s sister came to help and was followed by the rest of the family. Our meal at the corner restaurant was excellent and helped compensate for the horror of the morning. Even my ‘hands off arm’s length’ approach was exhausting.

We at least stand a chance of getting all the ‘stuff’ to the new place by midday tomorrow.

And then the cleaning starts.

I am almost looking forward to going back to school on Monday.

Almost.

Sign!

Ah the happy hunting of the elusive ISBN number! The stalking of texts through the rough undergrowth of badly organized web sites! Another rite for the end of term!

Helping the head of English complete the book order for next September was a revisiting of old duties, but on a much smaller scale.

Another marathon meeting with an agenda which was more of an indication of what might be talked about rather than an actual sequential list of items to be discussed.

At one point I realized that they were talking about the innovation of ‘House Points’ and various people were giving their views on the ethos behind the scheme. House Points are like bicycle sheds in the famous Parkinson’s Law book which explains that there are some things that nobody knows about and other things about which everyone has an opinion. Those are the things that people speak about. And by god did they speak.

Other more important questions that we had to face were dismissed, but everybody had something to say about House Points. It came to the point where I said to one colleague who was sitting on my left that I was within five minutes of walking out. They shut up about House Points with two minutes to spare!

And so back home to the contract signing for the renting of the new house. It is a salutary experience to hand over €4,020 in cash (because the idiot estate agents don’t have the facility for cards!) and realize that the money only contains one month’s rent among the various forms of deposit that estate agents seem adept in finding essential.

So we now have the keys of the new place and have taken some items there and been truly exhausted.

I shall hardly have the energy to type tomorrow.

A day without pupils is like . . . .

Arrived an hour early for school which does not start until 9.00 am. The (very civilized) time table for the rest of the term has now appeared and we can go home after lunch.

I assume that most of the school in Catalonia are now closed for students as driving to work this morning was a delight – allowing, of course for manic motorcyclists. I now look back at my hatred of cyclists in the UK with something amounting to fondness when I compare it with my detestation of the kamikaze motorcyclists of Catalonia!

I have been driven to type because I am surrounded by people who are working. I assume that they are form teachers and they are preparing for the meetings which are going to take place today to consider those miscreants who have failed their examinations and have further failed their ‘recuperation’ exams. As far as I can work out a great deal of detailed work is being done which can, for pure expediency, be discarded in a moment. The concepts of ‘pass’ and ‘fail’ are fairly flexible in this school and are dependent on a number of factors which do not seem to have any relationship with what might be termed ‘education’ – even in its widest definition!

Our estate agents have been galvanized (a heavily ironic word there) into some sort of action which is, obviously, encouraging as we propose to move in a couple of days! Although one side is expecting us to leave and is asking for keys the other side does not seem to show the same enthusiasm for ensuring that we actually get into the house that we assume is going to be our home from the first of July.

I am now in a permanent state of tension and am beginning to understand why moving house is in the top five stressful activities in which the human being can indulge. This state of tension is not helped by a totally incomprehensible email message I have just been sent by Toni. I think I’ll buy a mini fridge on the way home to calm my nerves! Retail Therapy is the one type of ameliorative activity which actually works!

The meeting about the failed pupils was as mind-bendingly boring as I feared – and then some! It reminded me of the worst excesses of a combination of LHS Curriculum Meetings and Regional Meetings of the NUT. Everyone gave their five penn’orth of irrelevant, repetitive noise prolonging the meeting way beyond its worth and interest. When most of the meeting is in Catalan (not even Spanish) then there is an added level of insane tedium that stretches even my wide ranging acceptance of educational moonshine!

It eventually ended and then we were fed.

By the time I got home (after buying the small fridge) I was exhausted and in no fit condition to go to the opera.

But, with the cost of the ticket slapping me around the face, go I did.

I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the production of ‘Salome’ that I saw.

Musically it was a triumph. The Orquestra Simfonica del Gran Teatre del Liceu was on great form and was ably conducted by Michael Boder, but the production directed by Guy Joosten (this is a co-production with La Monnaie-De Munt in Brussells) was a shocking mess.

The whole thing was updated and performed in modern dress. Jochanaan was well sung by Mark Delavan and was dressed like a rather seedy university lecturer of the old school. His nemesis was brilliantly sung by Nina Stemme as Salome – and at that point I become a little harsh about the general level of singing of the rest of the cast. Strauss may not always be the most sympathetic of accompanists for the tentative singer, but many of the singers lost the battle with the orchestra.

It is difficult to know where to start on my destruction of the production, there are so many infelicities in the mish-mash of ideas which bump around, each striving to provide a key to the ‘Concept’ motivating the production.

I have nothing against the up-dating of the production and the dressing of the soldiers as armed security personnel was a good one, but their posturing with guns soon became irritating rather than effective. The accidental shooting of Narraboth by Salome (sic) was worked into the production well and gave a new slant to the narrative.

The character of Jochanaan was, in my opinion, cheapened from his first appearance when instead of emerging from his cistern via the ladder he ‘magically’ walked downstage to general amazement. Jochanaan was unable to be confined in his prison and sang from various parts of the stage whenever he felt like it. He was presented as a sort of Superman who transcended the normal boundaries of human capability.

This was confirmed in what the director must have thought would be a coup de theatre when, after Salome has kissed the Prophet’s dead, bloody lips and she had been condemned to death by Herodes, Jochanaan suddenly appeared, frightened off Herodes and walked significantly towards a revived Salome. I actually emitted a little groan of horror at this point!

Talking of Herodes his presentation was as a comic character taking the centre of a table tediously reminiscent of the last supper. Herodias was a substantial lady (Jane Henschel) in a red sequined dress who was drunk and had scenes crawling on the floor. The banquet scene was more slapstick than anything else and the Dance of the Seven Veils was a sort of home video projected onto a sheet to the general embarrassment of Herodes and to the fury of his wife.

The Jews were religious gun carrying zealots and there was a bishop and . . . I really can’t be bothered to carry on.

I hated this production (which was greeted at its conclusion with screams of approbation from a dangerously Strauss-fixated audience) and I felt that it diminished the whole opera.

Having said all that, I do concede that the story, no matter its biblical basis, is an absurd one and there is certainly scope for bizarre humour. Oscar Wilde’s involvement does give a certain louche quality to the whole enterprise! This production however, is not the ‘funny’ one I am looking for.

Tomorrow we sign for the house and start moving things in. Like the little fridge.

I fear that sleep will be beyond me!

The day after the night before

After a combination of red wine, cava and sangria, together with high velocity rockets and sundry explosions I took to my bed at a relatively early hour of this morning.

Apart from desultory bangs the district has lapsed into a funereal silence and only the rubbish strewn beach with assorted bodies lying or staggering about tells the Holmesian eye that business has been afoot.

The firecrackers, whooshes and explosions went on throughout the night accompanied by the drunken (sic.) sounds of Catalans having a bit of a time. It’s only one day in the year and it was not as cataclysmic as last year.

I think that the construction of the paseo which obliterated the low dunes in front of our flats has given a sort of air of propriety to the whole beach and made the sands more open and less ‘secluded’ as people no longer have to trudge through sand to make their progress along the playa.

The flat is a depressing place in which to live at the moment as, according to Toni’s Master Plan, all the packed boxes are lowering in the living room. This forces us to live in a space which looks as though it is the set for a scene from a 50’s play by an Angry Young Man.

As everywhere and everything will be closed today (with the obvious exception of our restaurants) I fear that today will be a somewhat lackadaisical one. It might give me time to adjust to the fact that I am going to have to go to school tomorrow and it’s a Thursday. But it’s going to feel like a Monday.

Having seen its enticing cover through the glass of one of the gigantic cupboards in the staff room, I extracted ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho. In spite of the fact that it had the depressing words ‘The International Bestseller’ along the bottom I started reading it.

The cupboard is the exclusive preserve of our science teacher and I guessed that she had bought the book for some trifling amount of money from one of the stalls in our Fiesta.

By the time she caught me guiltily reading the purloined volume I was well into it and with a little persuasion and an assurance that I would finish it before the end of term (!) I was allowed to take it and devour it.

It is a relatively short book with big writing and wide margins. Its faux folk/fairy tale style is supposed to encapsulate heart-warming ‘philosophy’ about listening to the self same calorific organ and tuning into the ‘Language of the World’ and omens and other rubbish of that sort.

It reminded me of nothing more profound than Jonathan Livingstone Seagull or the adventures of Grasshopper in the Kung Fu television series which were always accompanied by Chinese cracker philosophy.

This edition of the books comes with a Preface which I first assumed was an elegant joke after the manner of Borges, but I now realize is actually pompously serious. It is filled with ludicrous assertions and writing of the “hand of God is firm, but infinitively generous” type accompanied by descriptions of “My Teacher” (his capitals) and a cosy little anecdote about the Baby Jesus.


The book itself is described as “symbolic” as if this is something the unwary reader might miss, whereas its symbolism is so obvious that it makes the Monty Python ‘Fish Dance’ look like a restrained model of subtle choreography.

His story of “Andalusian shepherd goes on journey to find treasure near the Pyramids but actually it is back home where he started” is derivative nonsense and luxuriates in its Significant Story style and makes Grand Statements as if this justifies a basically weak narrative.

The critic of The Express said, “Coelho’s writing is beautifully poetic, but his message is what counts . . . He gives me hope and puts a smile on my face.” ‘Nuff said!

I actually think that this sort of book is pernicious, but I am going to lie about it as it came highly recommended by a colleague in the English Department and the science teacher is going to find it profound. What price intellectual honesty when weighed against professional harmony! And please forgive the arrogance that reeks from that last sentence!

The Little Men have still not arrived t5o clean up the beach which looks revolting. People are still sunbathing amid the rubble from last night, but last year the clean-up had already started – perhaps it is a function El Crisis that the usual cleaning process is so delayed.

The lethargy which was overpowering at the start of the day has now become habitual now that we are at the middle of the day. I have not packed a single solitary extra item today. We have run out of boxes and, as it is San Juan there is no likelihood of any box selling outlet being open. Stalemate. Until tomorrow when I will suddenly realize that I am going to sign the new contract the next day and I will be galvanized into frantic action.

The day after tomorrow after 5.30 pm we will have signed the contract and can start moving the items we are most concerned about. And perhaps as soon as the reality takes over I can find something else to obsess about!

A day nearer!

Plastic flags of all nations on a string are not the same as their cloth equivalents. There is something silted about the ‘flap’ of a plastic flag which is deeply unsatisfying.

The school is bedecked with bunting for our ‘fiesta’ where all sorts of unexplained things are going to happen. Apparently. I, of course, have been told very little so that the surprise of the event is fresh and exciting for me.

I am part of a little group of teachers which has been put in charge (or ‘charge’ I think that ought to be) of a variety of events or stall which include, according to my Spanish, hairdressing!

Parents (the collective anti-Christ of any school) are likely to be milling around looking to see how their money is being spent and our duty, as teachers and professionals, is to ensure that we have as little contact with them as possible.

The head of English was trying to explain to me yesterday the degree of parental involvement in the educational and cultural life of the school. I discovered that it could be summed up in one word: none. They pays their money and they expects their chances to be worked out for them by their paid servants – the teachers. The willing giving of time and effort to the educational institution which is developing their children is something which is very foreign to the parents.

Teachers are now beginning to arrive and various workmen are doing whatever is necessary around the school and I am no clearer about what is going on than I was when I arrived. Presumably this will all become clear as the day progresses towards the climax of our celebration of San Juan which is of course the slap up meal which we will have when all the kids are gone!

My intended supervision was lost when the drama teacher asked for my help with the plays that our first year secondary kids had put on. These are little plays that I have helped with before and these performances were to be for the parents.

School plays go as school plays go and the only point of interest was my trying to combat the appalling grasp of being on time that our parents have. The plays started at their stated times and I had the strength of my grip tested as tardy parents thought that they could waltz in at whatever time they pleased.

The plays took place in the Audiotori, a purpose built cinema/drama space that has been constructed in one of the basement levels of Building 3 in our school. This space has about 100 cinema type tip up seats; a stage and projection facilities. The door, however, is near the front of the stage and so it is impossible for people to slip in unobtrusively. This worries the Spanish not at all: but I’m not Spanish and it worried me!

The meal was spectacular – though I would rather have a decent salary than gestures; however tasty they turn out to be!

The journey home, which I had been told would be horrific with the entire population of Barcelona making for the coasts, turned out to be little more horrific than the usual return. Though I have to say that if I had been travelling in the opposite direction I would probably still have been in a traffic jam now!

The beach has been slow to fill up but now it is dotted with lights and fires as Catalans celebrate San Juan. There is a constant barrage of noisy fireworks and I am sure that we will see a selection of pissed bodies lying on the sands in the morning.

As I have a day off tomorrow it gives us an opportunity to try and finalize all the things that we can do before the major move is completed on Saturday.

Fond hope!

Illusions shattered

The new watch is not waterproof.

Yet again my innocent credulity has been cruelly abused and this disappointment makes it round about exactly 100% of the watches that I have bought from suspect gentlemen who prowl around moneyed (!) denizens of seaside which have not lived up to expectations.

Some might say that there is a lesson to be learned from such consistent experience, but I fear that its message may well pass me by. Entirely.

On another level of disappointment the cheeseparing attitude of the school in not giving me a permanent contract before the start of the next academic year has affected the status of my credit agreement with my store of choice, El Corte Ingles. They have now phoned up and told me that because of the time that I have spent with the school which is less than six months and because I do not have that fabled contract they cannot extend to me the credit that I have signed for. So now it is 50% down and the rest on 12 months interest free credit.

I can’t help thinking of Paul’s sister who would be horrified at any thought of ‘credit’ and would not sleep nights with worry about ‘money owed.’ Perhaps it is her Puritan spirit which has wafted its way across the miles and weak though it is has managed to give me this sign of 50% down in the hope that I will read the message correctly and pay the rest immediately. I don’t know whether to be more irritated with El Corte Ingles or with the school. On balance I think that the school is the major culprit and I can explain away the actions of El Corte Ingles as financial prudence. Probably.

This morning was the f** run (even my liberal sensibilities do not allow me to put those two words together in full) during which I was a Control. This meant that I was deposited half way up a very expensive hillside clinging to which were obscenely expensive schools, colleges and homes. I was positioned at a junction and my function was to point running or walking children down the hill and into the heavy traffic that was supposed to be stopped by the police.

The irritation of the well heeled inhabitants of the upper regions in which our kids were running had obviously not been informed that their movements were going to be restricted. The animosity which was directed my way was fairly futile as I had the resource of two armed policemen to help me on my crossing duty so anger was usually confined to hard looks rather than anything else.

The race finished early and there is some sort of a timetable for the rest of the day, but it is very unconvincing and I await the rolling chaos which will inevitably result from well-meaning out ill thought out plans.

Hey ho!

I have just discovered that we have an extra day holiday during or because of the festivities for San Juan. This is the summer holiday when the population of Spain goes mildly mad.

Last year the beach outside our flats was colonized by what seemed like thousands of people who stayed well into the night and lit illegal bonfires. To those of us standing on the balcony and looking out into the dark before the sea it looked as though some sort of medieval army was encamped around us. All that could be seen were innumerable small camp fires and shadowy figures moving from light to penumbra. Just in case you have some sort of picture which is a combination of Georges de la Tour and Joseph Wright of Derby I might add that the noise was intolerable.

The ‘penny banger’ is not illegal in Spain and the festival of San Juan is the time to let them off, together with things which cost a damn sight more than a few cents and make a bang which is equivalent to a sizable quantity of TNT – indeed, for all I know, it might actually be TNT. And the singing!

The Spanish are not known for their drunkenness and their sobriety is a constant source of annoyance to me as I take a second glass of wine (gasp!) However, on the night of San Juan or possibly San Juan Eve their behaviour would shame a Union Flag T Shirt wearing Brit!

Last year the morning after the night before was astonishing. Bodies everywhere on the beach, still drinking! I was appalled by it all and almost had a drink to calm me down!

The rubbish was strewn around in a disgusting manner and all of it had gone by the afternoon. A little group of ‘workies’ efficiently cleared everything up and by the early evening it was as if nothing had taken place the previous night. It was quite amazing to watch, as watch I did, and proved the truth of Jerome K Jerome´s dictum that “I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

Alas! Another episode for that continuing series ‘Fallen Idol.’

After a little consideration I judged that it would be logical to accede to the financial demands of El Corte Ingles and pay the €500 deposit that they suggested and have the rest on interest free credit.

I duly left school after a very odd talk with the head of English about the final assembly with the first and second forms about House Points. I will not go into details but the presentation was not done in the way that I would have thought most appropriate and I was content to sit on the sidelines and watch the way that form teachers did not deal with the truly awful behaviour of their classes. Thank all the gods that I am not going to be a form teacher next year!

I called into El Corte Ingles and made my way along the well worn path to the Customer Information point to pay my deposit. The girl on the desk knew nothing about my particular case (not unreasonable!) and she had to phone the finance office and then told me that I had to pay €720 immediately and I could have the rest on credit.

This sort of behaviour is not what I would expect from El Corte Ingles and I cancelled the whole order. Time to open a file! I am regally pissed off with such behaviour. I spoke to an English speaking person on the phone from El Corte Ingles and I repeated the amount that I was supposed to pay and she confirmed that it was €500. It is unreasonable to have a sudden 50% hike in the deposit. I am not a happy bunny.

The summer sales will soon be upon us and it might just work out in my favour if I delay purchases until then. I suppose it all hinges on how long we can manage without a fridge. It is perhaps slightly ironic that the only white good that we take with us (in the height of the summer!) is a tumble dryer!

Meanwhile I make my daily pilgrimage to the bank’s hole in the wall to extract the daily maximum to get up to the full amount of the deposit for Friday. Bloody absurd that the estate agent doesn’t have a card facility and my evil bank does not trust me with cheques!

What it is to be in a foreign country.