Holiday Hospital

Grey is the colour of health in Catalonia.

We are used to the particular shade of grey from our local health centre but yesterday we had the opportunity to experience it in other environments.

Paul Squared was complaining of swelling in his feet which appeared to be spreading slowly up his legs. We decided that he needed a medical opinion so we visited the health centre.

A suspiciously cheerful and even more suspiciously helpful receptionist took all the details and indicated that we should wait outside a particular door.

Paul was seen within 20 seconds which makes the Spanish system of Emergency Treatment something like 1,000 times faster than its equivalent in the UK – at least from my experience of sitting was wasted hours in soulless waiting rooms.

Paul was given a series of tests and then the doctor said that he would have to go to our nearest hospital emergency centre for further investigation. It was at this point that we made a fundamental mistake.

Given our excellent experience of speedy treatment in the local health centre we went straight to the hospital (courtesy of my eloquent and conversational GPS) and so began the long wait.

To be fair Paul was seen by a triage nurse within ten minutes but, when he went through that door with Toni as his interpreter, he did not return.

To keep the assorted fragments of humanity who were in stasis with us quiet the hospital had installed a high level television which ran a local government inspired programme which ran and ran on a tape loop. I personally never want to see the face of Carles Ruiz (the alcalde of Viledecans) ever again. A working television has a certain mesmeric quality even if you don’t want to look at it and I found myself drawn again and again to the colourful screen only to see the smiling face of the mayor beaming out at the disgruntled people praying for release.

Paul 1 and I had plenty of time to assess and dismiss the other prisoners in the waiting room. We were bemused at the turnover. Someone would appear, go through a door and reappear only to make a hurried exit through the main doors. A few minutes later the same person would turn up again and go through the same actions.

After the first hour we were no longer as impressed with the velocity of the Catalan health system. The second hour confirmed our suspicions that we were in familiar “you are only patients you can wait all night as far as we are concerned” territory.

And so time went on. After the third hour we were no longer concerned about Paul Squared’s health we were only concerned about our own sanity.

Perhaps a clue to our state of mind might be found in our reaction to the translation that I improvised from a Catalan health rights leaflet produced by the Departament de Salut for the Generalitat. Of the sentence, “Drets dells col·lectius més vulnerable davant d’actyuacions sanitàries especifiques,” I translated it as “You have the right to collect vulnerable deviants and auction them in specific toilets.”

This puerile attempt at humour at some ungodly hour of the morning reduced the pair of us to whimpering hysterics. God alone knows what the other walking wounded must have thought – but by that point we were beyond caring.

By the time we finally got home we were in a state in which sleep seemed like an impossible luxury.

But we slept – although today has been shall we say indolent.

The only definite thing we have done today is buy plastic shoes for the beach.

To which we have not yet been!

So it goes!

The tyranny of the young

It is gratifying to find that I can still be diverted by new experiences.

Last night I was peremptorily summoned by an imperious two year old to assist him in his bath.

When I arrived he took one glance at me and then started swimming movements in the water like some deranged frog. At the end of my slave duties I was drenched and had poured water from a watering can on all the indicated parts of his body. I had also used the shower attachment to give invigorating blasts of high pressure water to his head which was greeted with gurgles of delight and demands for more. I had engaged in unseemly and I thought suggestive link ups with various combinations of sponge animals all of which were derived from Bob the Sponge show.

His favourite activity was plunging his face into the soap suds and emerging like a very young Father Christmas. My duty on viewing this sight was to shriek with the same sort of laughter that Baby Christmas produced.

At the end of each sequence of bath accessory aided activity he would leap up and down in the water and then fall onto his tummy and attempt to swim through the end of the bath.

I dare say that all of this is tediously familiar to most but it was a startling discovery of yet another peril of parenthood for me! It is, of course a delight that such experiences of parenthood are only for a moment and then the real parents reappear and relieve me of the responsibility.

It was something of a relief for all of us to be called away from this water torture and visit Toni’s sister’s flat.

We were in Terrassa for a five year old’s birthday and I was luckily too far away from the Present Reception Centre and Paper Shredding Machine for me to feel the resentment that I have felt on viewing the plethora of presents that are deemed necessary for any growing child.

As I have mentioned before, at the rate and quality of present giving which obtains now he is five; by the time he is eighteen his parents – will have to give him the equivalent of an apartment in Manhattan to keep up the relentless progress that they have established for themselves while his hapless relatives will have to provide furnishings and fittings!

August days are beginning to settle down into a recognizable pattern of cloudy starts and sunny developments in the early afternoon. It may be my imagination but it seems somewhat cooler to me and that depresses me as it seems as if the autumn is rapidly approaching.

Our traditional visit to Sitges for a cheap menu del dia went as planned, but our usual restaurant wasn’t open and so we went to another where the food was not up to the standard that I expect.

What was good was sitting outside a bar and watching the world (or at least that particular section of the world that goes to Sitges) go by.

A dinner in and lighter drinking seems like a sensible plan for this evening.

Let’s see how it works out.

Way to go!

To my everlasting shame not only one but the second Paul was up before I had raised myself from my bed. To compensate for this sluggishness I immediately suggested a swim in the pool. I was eventually followed by all into the water, but not necessarily with enthusiasm!

Following a principle established in my sojourn in Valencia our first cooperative act was to find somewhere to have lunch. We decided on the Basque restaurant and had an excellent meal and then returned home for a strenuous siesta!

Refusing to be browbeaten into constructive activity we frittered away time in desultory shopping in Lidl and unequal preparations for the evening meal.

Today has been somewhat laid back and I hope that the days to come are equally self indulgent.

And there is the question of doing some work before the start of term. I am now in the dangerous stage of denial of the passing of time. There are still weeks left of the holiday and so there is plenty of space to complete the fairly simple tasks that I set myself at the beginning of the holiday period.

There are three weeks left. Three short weeks.

Plenty of time.

Probably.

The end and the start

My sleep yesterday night was interrupted only by the constant thump of a distant disco and the sound of finest quality Egyptian cotton sheets slurping up the moisture which sprang from every pore of my body.

It was a positive relief to reach a time in the morning when it wasn’t bizarre to creep out and immerse myself in the fresh temperature of the private pool. By the time that I was half way through my swim paranoia had driven Irene out of bed and into the shower so that she would have the requisite number of hours to get ready for our flight this afternoon.

We left more or less at the time which had been predetermined the previous night after a discussion which was lengthy and erred on the side of caution to an extent which I thought ridiculous but which was comforting for the driver and my companion.

After our stately drive to the airport during which h there were distinct drops of rain on the windscreen we arrived in enough time to waltz our way through the arrivals hall and for me to have my new bottle of sunscreen confiscated by the rugged looking lady who was staffing the x-ray machine.

After a sandwich whose ludicrous price mocked the whole concept of there being a financial crisis anywhere in the vicinity of an airport which could charge such astonishing amounts for well stuffed sandwiches!

From that point things got worse. There was no plane.

In airports there more you look a plane at the end of your sky-bridge (and believe you me in an airport you do nothing but look) the more there isn’t one there.

As Irene is not a comfortable air traveler and we made a reasonably thorough trawl of all the shops looking for we knew not what. We both emerged from the duty free shops smelling as though we had both spent some considerable time writing the definitive guide to brothels of the world.

In spite of our growing desperation to pass time by spending money neither of us bought a bloody thing. Our depression was made complete by the gate number disappearing from the screen of information about your flight and the message, “SNACK 1500”. I immediately assumed that SNACK was some form of Spanish abbreviation of which I had not heard referring to some sort of technical delay. The idea of an airline giving its delayed passengers anything in the form of refreshment would indicate a delay of such monumental proportions that getting home tomorrow would be a mere fond wish!

On enquiry it turned out that SNACK meant exactly what it said and, after more desultory window shopping, we eventually queued up and were given a glass of beer and a cheese and ham baguette – or in my case two glasses of beer and two cheese and ham baguettes.

After fearing the worst it turned out that, although the plane was late taking off, it was not as absurdly late as we feared it was going to be.

The Pauls arrived on time and we immediately retired to a restaurant for a well deserved meal.

Our major mistake was following a wine rich meal with more wine.

But then why change the habits of a lifetime.

To days dim with alcohol!

It’s a function of having gone to Paris in August once too often when the surly indifference of the average Frenchman is at its height and you feel the full weight and responsibility of over a thousand years of mutual hatred between our peoples that your attitude towards the French is fixed at one of irritated impatience at their sheer foreignness.

Each British traveller abroad knows that every French person is quite able to speak fluent English but, out of sheer perversity they choose not to. So our hapless fellow countrymen flounder about in a mish-mash of half remembered schoolboy French while the impassive eyes of the French person listening to this farrago of nonsense hide their cruel delight as Les Boeufs are reduced to stuttering imbecility.

Our long cherished and assiduously nurtured stereotype of the arrogant, unhelpful Frenchman was obliterated by the attitude of the charming, courteous, personable, unassuming and of coursed completely unbelievable Frenchman who ushered us into a ludicrously convenient parking space next to the sea front in Calpe yesterday.

Explaining that the space he was vacating was for the disabled he further went on to indicate that other members of his family were going to leave an adjacent space which would easily accommodate our car.

When this antithesis of the national stereotype finally drove away with my heartfelt “Merci beaucoup!” ringing in his ears we were able to stagger a few steps to an excellent restaurant where we had a reasonably priced menu del dia which started with carpaccio of salmon and got better!

In a gesture which earned him an extra tip the waiter when he brought my usual drinks order of vino tinto and gaseosa he also gave me a large jug filled with ice and with a slices of orange and lemon in it. He assumed that I was going to make my own form of Sangria and that was a good thought.

Calpe was all the more welcome as we had attempted to get a meal in Benidorm previously. We had gone down to La Nuria to look at a school that Jennifer thought could be a source of employment. The school is a new build in beautifully kept grounds at the top of a mountain and, on the surface; it looks like an excellent place in which to work.

After driving through the long urbanization of the place and buying a Christmas lottery ticket we headed for Benidorm as a source of plentiful restaurants for lunch.

It was horrific. High-rise hotel after high-rise hotel; chaotic roads and hordes of foreign tourists was bad enough, but the complete lack of parking spaces meant that we came in, drove around and drove out.

Calpe is altogether more relaxed with a dramatic chunk of mountain terminating the view at one end of the shallow bay on which it is built. By the time we had eaten our meal we had just about managed to forget the slow moving crane behind which we had dawdled on the one lane coast road getting to the place and we were sufficiently restored to face the journey home.

Where we faced another horror. Quite apart from the signs of barbarity in the streets which were prepared for the cruel ludicrousness of bull running (this is Valencia and not Catalonia after all) we decided to visit a pub which had John Smith bitter but also karaoke. At first the music was merely loud and since we were sitting in the street and not inside it did not affect us too much. Gradually as the pub began to fill up with all those British types whom one does not want to meet on holiday: the talentless kids who are encouraged to sing and do so determinedly out of tune; men wearing sleeveless vests and black cowboy hats; women of a certain age wearing relentless makeup; old men dancing like praying mantises and singing obscure karaoke songs too well; the inevitable bloke-type bloke wearing shorts with ENGLAND emblazoned on his bottom – it all got a bit too much.

A steady stream of clientele indicated that the barbarity in the centre of the town was at an end and so we were able to make our stately progress to a restaurant in the centre for the fiesta menu del dia.

Although we tried to ignore the detritus of bull running which was all around us, it was impossible not to feel contempt for people who relish the panic of a cornered animal. We tried to focus on the number of tables set outside houses on which was spread a meal which generations of families were seated. This was fiesta that was acceptable; the metal grills with poles wide enough for a person to squeeze through to get out of the way of a rampaging bull made furious by the sickening taunts of the depraved – this was fiesta which was totally unacceptable.

Today, I would say “refreshed by a good night’s sleep” but that would be a lie, we made our bleary way towards Denia.

Yet again we were ludicrously lucky in getting a parking space. As we were making our desolate way round a full car park for the second time, a group of English speakers passed us saying, “We should sell our parking space!” As we had the windows open and as we laughed the young men indicated that we could take their soon to be vacated space – and they even gave us the ticket that they had purchased which gave us time to after five in the afternoon if we cared to use it! I put such consideration down to the fact that I am travelling in a car with two blonds!

Denia at last saw me purchase the ONCE tickets for Friday which means that my tasks are now complete and I can relax and enjoy the rest of the holiday. That means that I have one evening left.

As we are in Valencia (home of the odious creep Camps who is the spiv-like president of this part of the world) we feel that it would not be taking the holiday seriously if we do not have paella. The dish is supposed to have originated in this area and I have been ordered so taste paella here so that I can say with experience that the paellas in Catalonia are better! So much of what I do seems to have an agenda to which I am only partly aware!

Although we have only been here a few days we have packed in a fair number of odd excursions and even odder meetings to make the experience memorable.

The only problem is that the extent of the alcohol abuse means that I am only partially able to contemplate the arrival of the Pauls tomorrow with anything approaching sobriety!

I think that I am going to have to rely on the “hair of the dog” to get me through!

I am now trying to avoid even thinking about packing for the afternoon flight tomorrow.

I wonder what I will forget.

News from the South

I’ll just pop in to the corner shop for a jar of Marmite, a packet of custard powder and a few Oxo cubes then we can have a drink with Howard and talk about Brains SA and Rumney over a pint and finally we can cross the road and have fish and chips.@

Where does all this take place, well, of course in Orba, Alicante!

It is slightly disturbing to have a chat with two South Walians who know that one brand of Cardiff’s most famous alchoholic drink is known as “Skull Attack!” Talking about streets in Rumney in an outside bar on a quiet street in inland village in southern spain is incongruous to say the least.

English voices are heard along the main street and a short drive away in the main shopping mall of this area there is an English book shop and generally shop signs have much more English in them than I am used to in Spain – at least the part I live in!

For lunch we had the choice of a tapas bar and a British run restaurant which served fish and chips. I was all for going to the tapas bar but I was overruled by the other two and, I have to admit that it was a good call.

The fish (hake) was delicate and delicious and cooked in a light and crispy beer batter. There was homemade tartar sauce which was creamy and the chips were perfection and although our first bottle of Cava was mediocre the second was dry, sharp and tasty.

The sweets were an outstanding success with my white chocolate cheese cake being delicious to the last scrape of the spoon on the china. The suggestion of the more than helpful waiter (a Scot) to my refusal of a cognac but acceptance of a port that he had some excellent blue cheese was the final touch of delight to an amazing meal. He provided two blue cheeses with the one we all liked being a queso azul picante – which we unfortunately failed to find the next day in the shop where he said he bought it.

So filled with beer, Cava, port and cognac we drove home and prepared for the evening meal!

To be fair to us the meal was very late and eaten in almost total darkness outside by the pool. The darkness was a result of our increasingly desperate attempts to keep candles alight in the blissfully fresh breeze which mitigated the effects of the heat. And anyway poached salmon with caviar and prawns accompanied by new potatoes and orange salad was a relatively light meal. Unlike the consumption of alcohol which continued apace with champagne cocktails, red wine, Cava (of course) and amaretto. I think the last was possibly a mistake and I think that its consumption explains why I did not go to sleep when I went to bed rather than fall into a comfortable coma. Thank god that I had the sense to drink at least some of the water that Jennifer had thoughtfully placed on the bedside table before unconsciousness claimed me!

This morning we were the walking wounded and could do little more than stagger round a shopping mall and calling into various shops to get the sort of supplies that will be necessary to sustain the three of us in the next few days.

Jennifer has a house in an urbanization outside the main village. Her view looks across a sort of valley to a series of hills rising to bleak majestic mountains. And it’s quiet after the general noise which accompanies my living in Castelldefels. There are no dogs (apart from a Great Dane who lives with Jennifer) whose barking drives one frantic with their monotonous yowlings while Jennifer’s Great Dane is placid to the point of indifference; even wagging her tail takes a little more energy than she is prepared to spend on mere humans.

Jennifer’s garden is well established with various succulent looking exotic plants and some hardy green leaf plants which thrive in the sheltered, warm protection of the street facing walls which surround her property. The garden has a private pool shaped like a Greek letter ‘B’in which I have already done hundreds of lengths!

To my credit I even did a number of lengths before I went to bed, though I should, perhaps have taken a little more notice of Jennifer’s plaintive, “Stephen, don’t drown!” and merely have drunk more water than indulging in a flamboyant demonstration of athletic determination.

We have discovered that the next few days are going to be the annual festival of Orba and one of the events which mark the celebrations is ‘bull running’ through the main streets. Pamplona this place is not, but the general format is the same: bulls are let loose in the street and idiots run in front of them. I understand that, in a grotesque refinement of this pointless (ha!) entertainment, the bulls will have flaming torches attached to their horns at night. Although there are ‘strict’ instructions that people are not to touch the bulls or goad them with sticks this is generally ignored in the barbaric delights of terrifying and panicking a bull. I am half tempted to go and see what happens on the flimsy pretext of taking photographs - but the outraged responses of my companions brought me back to my senses and I shall remain aloof and disgusted!

Where is my sun!

There is no stasis like “waiting for the van.”

My injured camera - it does so much to call it merely “damaged” seems an insult to its capacity – is awaiting a van driver to collect it and take it who knows where for who knows whom to do who knows what to it.

I feel as if I am in a Beckett play with time suspended and nothing able to happen as I am Waiting for the Van. It does not come. Time passes.

When you are told that the package will be picked up between 10 am and 1 pm the cynic voice at the back of your mind tells you that it will actually take place more towards 2.30 pm than 10 am. Unless, of course, you go out when the van will then immediately appear, ring and disappear, never to appear again.

As it is now 12.05 pm the cynical voice has become a chorus of mocking figures sneering at my inactivity and urging me to have the courage of my cynicism and go and do the shopping that needs to be done and then reappear just before 2.30 tapping one foot elegantly indicative of the justified irritation that one can feel for a wasted morning. A wasted sunny morning!

Time is ticking away. The van has ten minutes to get here to make it in the three hour slot that I was given! This sort of existential time keeping is one thing which is common to all advanced societies in which the White Van Culture has been allowed to develop!

The White Van (Surprise! Surprise!) is late – and to think that I hurriedly packed the camera just after my early morning swim so that it would be ready to be collected if the van were to arrive exactly at 10 am. It is that sort of misplaced faith that keeps society going!

It just goes to show how one can delude oneself that I actually believed that the delay would only be an hour or so! It is now 4.35 pm and there is a likelihood that the bloody camera will not be picked up until 6.30 pm. That would only be five and a half hours late! Home from home!

The van (yes, it was white) finally arrived at twenty to seven. The poor man who took the brunt of my fury had only been told about the pick-up a half an hour or so before he arrived! The organization which is supposed to be an efficient communications concern is woefully inept and I wonder where my camera is going. At least I have a receipt so I know at least when it went!

I cannot pretend that time-slots were anything more than a hazy indication of possible intent rather than a contractual assurance of prompt timekeeping in Britain so this is not something particular to Spain or Catalonia. But it is irritating. Infuriating. And lots of other words ending in –ing!

A frustrating day, but not a time to sulk as tomorrow sees preparations for the Journey South!

I have my rights

The major irritants in any normal swimming pool are the humans; other humans. If those other humans are children so much the worse.

I am a confirmed “up and down” user of swimming pools and if there are lanes marked then I feel (know) that I have a Divine Right to swim up and down and to hell with those lesser life forms who think that side to side or diagonally is in any way acceptable.

Sometimes, even when swimming lanes are clearly separated from the rest of the lesser breed by floats and ropes idiots (or children as they are commonly known) attach themselves to the ropes and swing their puny little legs into the swimmers’ way. I have always found that the breast stroke with a particularly vigorous frog-like kick in passing usually sorted them out. For the rest who get in the direct way I rely on nails standing a little proud of the skin cutting through flesh.

Unfortunately in our pool there are no lines, it therefore qualifies as a ‘bathing’ rather than ‘swimming’ pool. This does not stop me swimming in my straight lines and I am usually able to intimidate all (save children) from getting in my way – and even kids eventually get the message after a few ‘gentle’ nudges.

The use of our pool is limited by most users to a few high usage periods of the day and not usually when I immerse myself and so I usually swim in solitary splendour.

So my niggles are not with people in the pool but another aspect of nature. After the kiss of the Medusa in the sea I have become somewhat sensitive to the sting of anything. Our pool is partially surrounded by pine trees and their detritus finds its way into the pool – at least I hope that some of the bits and pieces that I have scooped out of the pool are arboreal in nature. One of the great advantages of myopia is that it blunts the clarity of some things that are better left blurred.

There are many types of pine tree and our trees shed pine needles in the general shape of beginners chopsticks (joined at one end) they have a thinned elegance which might make them unusable for Chinese food but in the pool they become perilous.

They are so light that the slightest current from a swim stroke will drag them underwater and there they lurk waiting for an unsuspecting limb which, if in the right position, will have a double prick from the sharp ends of the pine needles.

Your mind, of course, does not immediately think of pine needles but of some stubborn malicious life form which has been able to adapt itself to the chlorine rich waters, and if it can live in chlorine what the hell is it doing to my leg! Etc. You calm down however. Eventually.

Stewart is linked to both books I read today. Yesterday I read “Andorra” by Max Frisch and today he wrote that he had taken part in the Afterpiece to “The Fire Raisers”. As I hadn’t read “The Fire Raisers” either (bought second hand, previously owned by Michael Horton ’74) it is irresistible to read a play in which a friend has performed. In the original British performance in the Royal Court Theatre in 1961 Stewart’s character was played by John Thaw who was the Doctor of Philosophy.

In the Afterpiece the Doctor of Philosophy has been transformed into a long tailed monkey in hell complaining about the quality of person entering the infernal regions. I wonder how Stewart said, “Once again nothing but middle-class people! The Devil will be furious. Once again nothing but teenagers! I scarcely dare tell the Devil. Again not a single public figure! Not a single cabinet minister, not a single field-marshal.”

My limited forays into student drama included playing Professor Corona Radiator; a bastard; The Prologue; a Roman soldier; an American; King Claudius (no, not in “Hamlet) and a Padre. Before University I played King Solomon, after University I played King Herod: that’s what education does for you!

The second book I read, next to “The Fire Raisers” on the shelf, was “Noises Off” by Michael Frayn. This, guided by Andrew and Stewart, was the choice that I made for a Year 11 Drama Trip to London. These were not the educational cream and even the location of the theatre next to The Savoy was replete with horrific possibilities as the kids watched with amused hostility the succession of sleek expensive motors deposit the sleek expensive clients at the door of the hotel.

The play (of which I knew nothing) opened with a set that was clichéd farce fodder and the opening lines were banal and uninspiring. When someone from the audience got up and started arguing with the actress on stage I was on the point of hysteria as I was surrounded by kids who had no idea what was going on.

It was only when I recognized the man in the audience as Paul Eddington that I began to get the idea of what was happening. “Noises Off” is actually the story of the fortunes of a play called “Nothing On” which in Act I is being rehearsed; in Act II is on tour and we see backstage as the play is being performed and Act III is the play being performed at the end of its tour. Apart from the fact that I had to keep up a running commentary about what was happening to the kids nearest to me so that they could convey the information to the rest of the rows I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Act II is one of the cleverest pieces of farce I think that I have ever seen and Act III is chaos where everything is going wrong and which I laughed out loud simply reading in the sunshine!

Carry On Holidaying!

Never a day without dolour

Tragedy!

I have dropped my new camera and reduced it from a compact, cutting edge miracle of miniaturization to something akin to a Kodak box camera from the 1950 able to take pictures and little more. Gone is the telephoto; the menu of possibilities; most of the features. It is now a point and click. A very expensive point and click!

I have arranged to have it collected in a couple of days as it is still well under warranty, but I am sure that dropping the things negates everything – I live in hope! If it can be repaired then I am more than willing to pay as the camera, a Canon Power Shot SX 210IS is one of the most remarkable cameras I have ever owned. Every day and in every way I get poorer and poorer!

My new bathing costume has arrived and appears to be little more than a holey wisp of material which, I am assured, will allow (because of its revolutionary material) most of the sunshine to flow through and therefore get rid of the ‘white bits’ – this remains to be seen.

As irony is my middle name, I confidently expect the sun to disappear for the summer which would suggest that a bathing costume nearer to the woollen (sic) construction that I was photographed in when I was a toddler on the beach at Barry Island would be more in keeping than the suggestion of decency that I have just bought.

“Homo Faber” has at last resurfaced, but not soon enough to stop me reading “Andorra” by the same author. Although acclaimed as one of the most significant German plays to be produced since the, well, you fill in the event that satisfies, I found the play, which is not about Andorra to be an unsatisfying amalgam of half digested Brecht, a little bit of Arden and a dollop of Brenton. The morality and ethos was easy and unthreatening.

The only aspect that I really liked was the opening and ending of the play where one of the central characters was whitewashing: in the beginning in honour of St George and at the end – you’ve probably guessed the difference, but I think that dramatically it could be very effective.

Another glorious day, though with more clouds than I usually tolerate but more than satisfactory. A chunk of the day was taken up with trying to find the way to send the camera back to see if it can be repaired. I still have not lost the sense of panic that comes with the shunning of the sun while other important actions have to be taken. This is a specifically British thing which relates to holidays abroad when every bright moment had to be focused on turning the skin a shade that would normally be impossible in our damper climate! I still, and don’t think I will ever stop, look fearfully out of the bathroom window every morning to see if the distant trees are topped with sunlight.

I must learn that the sunny spaciousness of a summer holiday in Spain does allow you to do those things which are impossible during the crammed time of term and there will be sunshine enough to spare when they are all complete.

Happy days!

And the reading goes on!

I still can’t find “Homo Faber” and so finished off the bitterly ironic “Penguin Island” – which, also ironically cost two shillings in 1948 and cost me 10p or two old shillings when I bought it second hand – and picked up another book by Claude Cockburn called “Bestseller” subtitled, The books Everyone Read 1900-1939”

To my shame (or is it really?) I had only read two of the books that he discussed “The Blue Lagoon” by H de Vere Stacpoole and “The Riddle of the Sands” by the ‘traitor’ Erskine Childers. I also have to admit that I own a copy of “The Green Hat” by Michael Arlen but have only dipped into it and I truly cannot remember if I have read “Beau Geste” by P C Wren. I am drawn to read “When It Was Dark” by Guy Thorne because it was the book which that odious little man Montgomery read and declared it was a turning point in his life!

This book is relatively short and does not pretend to be exhaustive and further is highly selective, but it is an enjoyable read as Cockburn attempts to find reasons for the popularity of various books from “The Garden of Allah” by Robert Hitchens to “Precious Bane” by Mary Webb.

I think that the introduction is probably the best part, thought the details and extracts of the books are interesting it’s probably better to read the best bits and not have to read the entire novels themselves!

We suspect that the placing of the posts is part of a larger plan of our local council to get visitors to use parking which has to be paid for.

The Spanish will not pay for a parking space unless it is very much the last option.

If the council implements its plan to charge for the parking spaces along the sea front we will have people putting their cars on top of each other in streets a block away from the sea!

Back to summer normality tomorrow when only the ordinary tourists are in town rather than the influx we get at the weekends.

Tricky transport

Two exceptional meals: last night with Irene in a restaurant called ‘Kafka’ (at which point I know I should make some sort of knowing joke about insects, or great walls or giant moles or something but I’m too stuffed) and the second in the Basque restaurant in the centre of town.

The first was the poncier of the two with a tapa of watermelon gazpacho, followed by fish pate with curried mayonnaise with Roquefort topped succulent hamburger (!) With lattice crisps and salad a main course. The sweet was homemade truffles with a marmalade sauce. It was all delicious.

The second was more homely with a surtido of salads as a starter after a couple of proper Basque tapas followed by shank of lamb. We were given two Basque sweets one was a sort of cheese cake while the other was a curd confection topped by honey.

Half way through “Homo Faber” I have mislaid the novel and have picked up “Penguin Island” by Anatole France. This is a thinly veiled ironic history of France from the earliest times. In its references and its faux seriousness it reminds me of the work of Borges, but this volume was originally published in 1908 (although the Penguin edition that I am reading at present was published in 1948, and yes it is the old orange cover and it cost two shillings) and it is a game to think about what scandals and political events are actually being mocked. The section on the imprisonment of Pyrot (Drefus) is particularly biting in its sardonic description of the specious reasoning that all sides in the dispute take to justify their actions or inactions!

In spite of its age the style of the novel means that the central concerns have just as much relevance today as they did in 1908 or 1948. What is giving me pause for thought is why Penguin should think it worth publishing three years after the Second World War in the height of The Age of Austerity. Perhaps such a period was exactly one to appreciate such a fully worked example of historical irony.

The Trip to the South took on another dimension today when, after having booked the train tickets on the internet, I was informed that the destination that we had been informed was the nearest to our friend was, in fact, wrong.

This morning was spent trying to work out how to change or cancel the train tickets. Eventually we have decided to go to Alicante by plane and then find a bus to get to the small town which is our ultimate destination.

Nothing is ever simple.

The ironic eye

If we are to believe the logic of The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (and what thinking person does not) then what has happened today either clearly shows the existence of a sardonic god, or else proves that he doesn’t exist.

I have ordered a swimming garment from a company called “Nomasculsblanco” (which I will not translate) and god knows what is says about my own personal psychosis that I have bought, or at least ordered, this garment. Its material has a series of micro holes that allow most of the sun’s rays to colour that skin which is usually hidden from public view.

And that is where the irony comes in. The arrival of a slip from the Post Office announcing that a hard working member of staff had attempted to deliver a packet but that no one was at home was the usual indication that something was waiting for me in the depot. I have been understandably sceptical about such communications since I once picked up a note informing me of an unsuccessful attempt to deliver a package long before the time written on the note informing me that the attempt had been made!

The trip to the post office to get the garment was accompanied by the only fully overcast gray skies that we have had for weeks. The one thing that isn’t getting through to the Third Floor is the sun. Which makes the whole ethos behind the purchase fairly nugatory. But we are still in the days of July and there is the whole of the month of August ahead to try out the efficacy of the new trunks.

The further irony was that what was waiting for me was not my trunks, but Sitges sending me a parking ticket for so-called illegal parking in a street which no longer exists: an historical throwback! I ripped it up and threw it away! Such a rebel!

In a yet further touch of irony to add to the information re. the existence of god, the weather cleared up and by lunchtime we had a hot, sunny and blustery day. One just can’t win sometimes!

The long process of working out how to get to Jennifer has taken another step forward with Toni bearding the RENFE information service. He said the woman on the other end of the line sounded dead to the world, but we did manage to get some sort of timetable sorted for the trains that are going to take us south: it looks like a fairly epic journey which for me is going to be three trains and a car!

I am now waiting for Irene so that we can talk about The School (as always); The Revenge (as always) and The Journey (to come) – during a meal of course!

Sublime and Odd

The sky is difficult to read this morning: layers of cloud, smears of grey enlivened by occasional wedges of a bluer grey; where the sun should be there is a whiter shade of glowing pale; there is a brisk breeze, but it is still warm enough for me to be typing this in my swimming trunks on the terrace of the Third Floor.

My early morning swim was perhaps a degree more bracing that usual but it took little fortitude to immerse myself and do my statutory lengths. There is no better feeling of complacency than that which comes with swimming in the open air when all around you is the silence of indolence!

One becomes habituated to the gentle push (remember the arthritis) from the side every few seconds in a pool as small as ours, and I know that were I to attempt to swim lengths in a proper 25 or 50 metre pool I would be exhausted in spite of the fact that I can swim for half an hour in our communal pool and feel positively refreshed when I get out!

Today is the second lesson of the week for My Pupil and I intend to go in early to Barcelona and make the pilgrimage up the escalators to MNAC and finally (after over a year) change the address they have so that the information sent to Friends of MNAC can actually get to me directly rather than my having to cull it from the post box of my previous flat. I will also call into La Caixa and get the proper catalogue for the Barceló exhibition for which I only have the free handout at present.

I am now reading “Homo Faber” by Max Frisch, useful because of the unusual wait for the train this morning going to Barcelona: still better than going by bus!

The long pilgrimage from the metro to the portals of MNAC with some of the elevators stopped because of what appears to be preparations for some sort of show around the magic fountain took even longer than usual. I managed to speak to the lady-of-a-certain-age who was behind the Friends of MNAC desk to change the address to which advance information about forthcoming events is sent.

The lady painstakingly took down the information in what can only be described as a hesitant manner and then she asked me if I was going to visit the gallery. When I replied in the enthusiastic affirmative she raised a hand and made her stately way towards a desk opposite where the admission tickets were being bought and got a special ticket for me. Nothing like feeding my flagging self esteem to make me appreciate works of art more!

Although something of a hurried visit I did manage to see the companion piece of the famous wall painting of Casas and a friend on the tandem that has almost become a sort of artistic symbol of Barcelona to match the Gaudí church! I was also enabled to check again the MNAC’s holdings of Joaquim Sunyer who is the subject of the latest art book I bought from a cheapo book stall in the concourse of Sants railway station. My Spanish/Catalan collection of painters that few Brits of heard of grows apace!

The lesson with My Pupil was even more bizarre than usual with the hot topic of conversation being the educational and community programmes of publically funded arts organizations. I explained things in English and then My Pupil said, “And now in Spanish?” As usual I found myself way out of my linguistic depth – not that this stopped my flow of conversation in any way!

It appears that My Pupil after a more than usually stressful few weeks has decided to take a holiday so that my trips to Barcelona will cease for a few weeks. This is just as well as the trip to The South has to be planned.

This is the few days which are going to be spent somewhere in the south in the house of the previous headteacher of the School That Sacked Me. We are planning to go by train, but this is proving to be a little more problematical than might have been supposed as we don’t really know exactly where we are going. One can hardly take “somewhere in the south” as a real destination!

We are working on it!

The trip back from Barcelona, although in air conditioned comfort, was a trip of particular horror.

In the rush for seats in Sants I sat, I later discovered facing two ladies. One was of unexampled innocuousness while the other wasn’t.

There are few things more disgusting than watching someone eat, when you are not. The lady opposite me was wearing one of those unflattering, slightly flounced, crimpelene looking creations in folksy brown incongruities. She had a skull like face with bulging eyes and she placed sunflower seed after sunflower seed into her wrinkled mouth, cracked it, sucked out the seed and then placed the husk in a small plastic bag.

I tried to read but if I wasn’t being revolted by cracking and sucking sounds, I was being revolted by the expectation of cracking and sucking sounds. She kept up a non-stop diet of the bloody things all the way to Castelldefels.

I stayed in my seat as an exercise in Zen calm.

It didn’t work.

Action and connections

A Noise Abatement Society flourishing in this part of Catalonia is as likely as thriving vegetarianism in Argentina.

Our Dawn Chorus today was not the usual heady mixture of doves, dogs and damn children but we were woken by the rough music of the pneumatic drill!

It would appear that our local council has decided to do something about the chaotic parking during the summer and has started to put metal posts on the edge of the pavements to stop cars parking there. I have a feeling this will merely concentrate the attempts to park on our driveways! We shall see.

“Howards End” was a revelation. I think that I must have read the other Forster novels at too early an age because I cannot remember reading “A Passage to India” or “Room with a view” with the same sort of amazed enthusiasm. Even the wonderful collection of short stories, “The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories” (in Penguin Modern Classics with a cover by David Gentleman) pales when placed beside the sheer pleasure that I got from reading “Howards End.”

I read it as I would a detective story – which I suppose it is to some extent – turning over the pages with gathering speed as the story gathered pace.

I could have said the story “such as it is” because, in spite of the fact that very serious things happen in it, the real delight is in the ordinary made extraordinary. Minor comments, minor accidents, minor observations all carry a charge which is out of all proportion to the seeming triviality of the occasion. One is reminded, again and again of Jane Austen, but a Jane Austen who takes more risks. Yes, we are presented with the comfortable middle class with a smattering of servants who play bit parts and one major character who strives after gentility and intellectuality but is hampered by his lack of money.

This is the novel from which the phrase “only connect” comes (and I thought it came from “Two Cheers for Democracy”) and the context makes it clear what store Forster set by the phrase.

The characters in the book are fascinating evoking memories of “To the Lighthouse” and of course Jane Austen in “Sense and Sensibility”. The novel was published in 1910 so the wars that are in the memory of the characters are presumably the Franco-Prussian wars. The belief in stocks and shares and the value of living on the interest from one’s “secure” investments is very much a pre-war world and there is an innocence about life where the real fear was the encroachment of London on a way of life rather than the shattering reality of an unthinkable conflict which was only four short years later.

The novel has twists and turns where the long arm of Dickensian coincidence is invited to twitch the narrative along from time to time; but I found myself wishing for the sort of Smollett-like coincidence where loose ends at the beginning are firmly tied knots by the end. This novel is not like that and, though you do have to stretch your imagination to believe in some motivations and the happenstance of some events, its pace drags you along as the characters play out their little lives in front of you.

The style of writing is anecdotal (who is the narrator of this story?) and epigrammatic, but without the arch showiness of something like “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” where the very cleverness is rather exhausting. Forster writes to explain and there is an urgency in his explanations that is belied in the gentleness in which they are garbed.

In days gone by I used to be much more meticulous in marking those passages that I thought significant in some way or other; these days there has to be something of real moment to make my search for a pen. I did mark two passages. I particularly like the description, “The air was white, and when they alighted it tasted like cold pennies.” There is an uncanny accuracy about this that means I can evoke an experience to match. I also was taken by one character’s description of a landscape which prompted her to say, “It isn’t size that counts so much as the way things are arranged.”

I realize reading through that last quotation again that it covers more than landscape!

I feel positively invigorated by reading “Howards End” and, at the risk of being sneered at by those who have read the novel long ago, I urge people to try it.

My “Summer watch” has been something of a disaster with it losing time. I took it back today and it was exchanged without demure. When I got it home and baptized it in the pool I noticed that one of the screws securing the front plate was missing. I am sure (this is not an expensive watch!) the screws are far more decorative than useful but the small, yet gaping water filled hole looked as though the watch was doomed.

Back I went to the shop and with Toni clearly intimating that the replacement watch that I had been given was a repaired one and not a new replacement. They have given me a third watch and that hopefully will get me through the summer.

I do have one or two (ahem!) other watches to replace any further faulty timepieces. But then what civilized gentleman does not have enough watches to be able to wear a different watch for each day of the week.

For some weeks.

Another festivity in Terrassa, so the car now has merely to be pointed in the right direction and it gets us there!

A trip to the city

OK I couldn’t find a parking space in the actual station car park but I did find a space outside a school within easy walking distance. The train arrived almost at once and I made the trip to Barcelona in air conditioned comfort. Much, much better than the horrors of the bus!

I stopped off in Sants and took the metro to España so that I could go to an exhibition in one of the galleries of Fundación “la Caixa”. To get to the gallery I had to walk up Av. Reina Maria Cristina which a long and wide approach road to the series of elevators which eventually take you up to MNAC. The road is flanked on both sides by a series of fountains which lead up to the famous dancing fountain which I have never, ever seen work. Indeed today they had two heavy duty cranes raising parts of it for maintenance.

As part of the celebrations for the winning of the World Cup this same avenue was a grand gathering place for thousands of people to congregate and give voice to their delight at the victory. At least most of them were there to celebrate. It was also seen as a prime opportunity for those who are in favour of an independent Catalonia to demonstrate their disgust with the whole concept of Spain. There were ugly scenes and the burning of two of the trees which line the route. That was a few days ago; today new trees are strapped to their supporting posts in newly watered pits. All evidence of burning has been removed. Quick work! Though I suppose you have to remember that this avenue houses the major pavilions for the international fairs that bring so much revenue to the city. Things have to look good for the present and future punters!

The gallery, when I got there, was infested with swarms of small persons being chaperoned by harassed looking adults after having seen some performance in the theatre. Cutting my way through the tiny throng I managed to get to the gallery and, as I had to ensure I left enough time to get to My Pupil, I restricted myself to one show.

“Miquel Barceló 1983-2009 La solitude organisative” He is a Spanish artist born in Majorca in 1957.

The works are in a variety of media ranging from water colour to sculpture and all are characterized by a delicacy of execution which might seem an odd word to use when looking at some of the almost grotesque depth of impasto in some of the paintings.

Some of his “paintings” defy the two dimensionality that is suggested by the word. To me they seemed forced, facile and generally unsatisfying – obvious and crass; though a few of his marks brought some sort of order into the undulating chaos!

For me, one of the most effective works was a very simple brush study of a few reeds, little more than a few lines and circles but beautifully arranged and effortlessly executed. A zebra with a similar economy of line was equally successful and equally monochrome.

Colour was used to great effect in the series of watercolours that he completed from his stays in Mali. The bleeding of one colour into another and the almost literal explosions of colour in some works recalled the work of Nolde, though Barceló was more likely to produce an isolated image and use the white of the paper to isolate and emphasise his images.

The series of watercolours that Barceló produced seemed at first glance to be both gauche and simplistic but as with other of his works they repaid greater attention and rewarded the viewer with the almost overlooked detail that they possessed.

His notebooks from which there were some pages on display and electronically available on a screen which realistically “turned a page” with the sweep of a finger, were genuinely exciting with their exhibition of fluid line and an assurance of simple outline which is not so obvious in the more “worked” paintings.

He painted a series of sand paintings which depict a generally flat area of land seen from a slightly raised perspective. At their most successful these paintings resemble Tanguy and the more representational they become the less effective they are. Much of Barceló’s work is representational with a strong inclination to abstraction and although I think his more abstract works are more satisfying it is the representational element which gives them the structure.

A work on gouged cardboard was very effective with the absence of media clearly suggesting presence.

His sculpture was instantly forgettable as far as I was concerned and added little to the exhibition.

I came away from the exhibition having not bought the €25 catalogue – which I will however do on a revisit that I think this exhibition deserves.

The return trip (after a very satisfying lunch with My Pupil which included a strawberry gazpacho) was in a train carriage with excellent air con which made the arrival back in Castelldefels (a name the pension people seem unable to transcribe with any accuracy) seem like the entry into a sauna.

And back to “Howards End.”

Why do more?

My day is defined by swimming and lazing. Isn’t that the definition of a holiday?

I can remember when my holiday days were filled with frantic culture, packing in as many museums, art galleries, concert halls and anything else that could count as Culture. I remember a string quartet in Santorini with billowing net curtains; a concert in the church next to the church of the Holy Wisdom in Byzantium; the Messiah sung apparently in English in a church outside St Tropez; a concert in a courtyard of a sculptor in Oslo which took three days to complete because it had to be postponed after each item because it was so cold the violinists couldn’t feel the strings – in August!; a harpsichord recital in Rotterdam where the seats were high backed aircraft type seats – an open invitation to repose; a balalaika orchestra in Moscow – I lasted until the interval and then fled; a performance by the Orchestra of the Mediterranean of the Organ Symphony with a portable organ!; a wonderful performance of the Kullervo Symphony by Sibelius in the Proms on my return from a visit to Scandinavia in which I didn’t hear a single piece of Scandinavian music; a free concert in Central Park in which the sound of the music was not good, but the antics of the listeners made up for it and in the cramped confines of a painter’s house/museum in Sitges a performance of a Lorca reciting Flamenco dancer who gave me a carnation.

And nowadays I lie in the sun. Now say that there hasn’t been a dumbing down in modern society!

My swimming is progressing nicely as I follow my watery groove up and down our tiny pool. I generally manage to intimidate people out of my way, but I am sharpening my nails so that anyone who does have the impertinence to obstruct my passage will have a reminder to encourage better behaviour in the future.

I have finished the Shulman book on television and I share his concerns about the belittling effects of the medium and I am almost convinced about some sort of connection between TV violence and behaviour in the real world. The book has encouraged me to find something more modern but just as polemical.

I solved the problem of what to read after a book on television by picking up my copy of “Howards End” and looking at the spine and wondering if I had ever read it.

The word is divided into spine breakers and smooth spiners: I am a breaker. I like flat pages and cannot imagine how people can abide reading sideways. I was loaned a book which had a perfect spine and looked as though it was unread. It was a perfect misery to read as I felt that I couldn’t do what I normally do and crack it in four places before I started reading. I was glad to give it back!

I was wrong about my lesson; it is tomorrow. I will take the car to the station and go in my train as I have no desire to repeat the horror of bus travel.

I really should try and visit MNAC or another gallery to catch up on the exhibitions that I am missing.

We’ll see.

Don't stop the sun!

A green sea and overcast skies give cause for alarm as the day descends into evening but I take hope from the vague patches of blue which, I think, bode well for the morrow.

The only intellectual thing that I have even attempted today is to start reading Milton Shulman’s “The Ravenous Eye – The Impact of the Fifth Factor” his critique of the uses and abuses of television first published in the early seventies and revised and updated for the 1975 edition that I have conspicuously failed to read for 35 years!

I am about half way through and although I do responded to Shulman’s reasoned approach for taking television seriously rather than dismissing the medium as an arm of the entertainment industry, the book now has to be read as an interesting historical document rather than a cutting edge contribution to the discussion.

For example, I have reached pages 148 and 149 and there are the references to “On the Braden Beat”; “This Week”, “Panorama”; “Man Alive”; the Ronan Point flats; “The Frost Programme”, Dr. Emil Savundra; Dr John Petro and “Midweek.” At least two of that list will be known by many, but how old do you have to be to know the lot!

As Shulman develops his argument you begin to realize just how far we have come with the development of the internet; downloading; time delay; mp3; facebook; e-mails; twitter; mobile phones; cable; satellite and the rest of the communications and entertainment developments which have changed the media world out of all recognition from the environment in which Shulman was writing. But his concerns are still valid and challenging.

But it is the historical bit that gets me. My family had been watching The Harry Worth Show when a special announcement came on the television, “The BBC regrets to announce the death of President Kennedy (gasp!) He was assassinated (double gasp!) . . .” Politicians are mentioned: Joe Haines; Quintin Hogg; Richard Crossman; Duncan Sandys; Alec Douglas-Home, and George Brown!

Shulman reminded me of one of George Brown’s worst television performances when he gave his maudlin assessment of JFK just after his assassination. I always assumed that he was drunk – it was easier than assuming that he was like that normally!

Memories, memories – and these are only the British personalities!

Tomorrow Barcelona and The Pupil.

Spend? Spend? Spend?

It is half way through the first month of the holiday and time for me to make a humiliating admission.

In spite of buying a conversational GPS; a collection of hardback art books; a mobile air conditioning unit; a watch for the summer; a hi-fi unit for the i-pod and a selection of summer clothes, I have dismally failed to spend the “extra pay” that is given to workers in the summer.

I have no real excuses. God knows my mother spent years trying (with some success, I might add) to counteract my father’s “Go/Buy/Leave” attitude towards shopping. I have inherited her uncanny ability to select from an array of similar items the one which costs the most. I have a positively Pavlovian reaction to quality glassware, crockery and cutlery. I can shop till I drop and yet living within a 70c bus ride of one of the great cities of Europe I have failed to spend to the limit.

The true explanation is probably I have omitted some of the things that I have bought because, in another character trait that I have inherited and cultivated, I am very good, once the excitement of the purchase is over of consigning the mere monetary transaction to distant history – however recent the actual releasing of the filthy lucre might have been!

Now that I think about it, there is indeed something else: a special piece of clothing which has had to be ordered and has not yet arrived. But of that, more anon.

Wispy cloud is smudging the perfect blue of the sky and, much more importantly is getting in the way of the sun. The clouds are quite spectacular and look like a sort of monochrome aurora borealis. No matter how attractive, I sincerely hope that the growing power of the sun will burn away these clouds so the mid morning bake can begin!

Seeing the dance company in the National Theatre of Catalonia has made me itchy for more culture. Sitges has a summer programme of events which a couple of years ago I attended and thoroughly enjoyed because of their heterogeneity and the historic locations in which the performances took place.

Friday was the name day of all Carmens, so we went to the local restaurant and had a mariscado: a metal serving dish piled high with seafood. A feast! I had a surtido of trufas which consisted of five fruit chocolate truffles on a mountain of whipped cream. Well, it is the summer holidays after all!
The Rosé Wine Tasting wasn’t.

That is to say that there was rosé wine and we drank it but apart from some cursory efforts to make a comment about nose and flavour we simply drank it.

The ‘tasting’ was set in the courtyard of an old house in a village just outside Sitges around a table set with delicate flowers and herbs and lit by large fragrant candles. Just to limit the romanticism of the scene the flowers, herbs and candles were all there to dissuade mosquitoes from joining the party and having their own feast.

We started the evening by toasting ourselves with a glass of Tattinger which had the effect of making everything else we drank seem a little second class, but we struggled on!

The wine was from some French vineyard or other (you see how little the niceties of proper tasting were being observed) and it was notable for not having the candy pink colour that I at least expect from rosés. Both of the first two bottles were from the same French vineyard and had been sent to us (inexplicably) from Majorca. The first one was awful and even I (tell it not in Garth) threw it into the geraniums while the second was palatable but not, I think, worth the cost of transportation. There was some beautifully bottled lurid Spanish rosé which we drank so that the hostess could later use the bottle for herb flavoured olive oil!

Our meal was of mussels cooked in a delicious sauce with butter – the taste of which was a real treat as I have not bought butter since I made some Welsh Cakes on St David’s Day in the School That Sacked Me.

We also had a generous selection of oozing, liquefying pungent French cheeses which were washed down with other bottles of wine from here and there.

Although one of our number did his best to keep the conversation on things vinous his greatest achievement was in eliciting the arch comment from Jane that “I have never considered the drinking of Champagne to be seasonal!”

A thoroughly enjoyable evening which I did my best to compensate for by a slow if determined swim this morning after driving back.

The day has largely been taken up by my lying in a suitably prone position, the prostration being disguised as sun bathing with occasional periods of hydration.

The Pauls have found flights and will be over on the 4th of August so we will have some summer visitors after all!

There is always one book that you possess that, for some reason, you never get round to reading. In spite of the book bobbing up periodically like some form of literary flotsam and in spite of reading a few pages it soon submerges and is forgotten.

The particular volume in my case is Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi” which I bought, not because it won the Man Booker Prize but rather because I thought it was one of those well meaning books which seek to bring mathematics nearer to the ordinary person by making abstruse concepts understandable.

Martel’s book is not that sort of book. It is a tricky novel – in the sense that it plays with concepts of narrative and plays games with the reader. There are multiple narrators and enough casual information about zoos and zoo keeping to keep a dilettante like me happy but, at the end of the novel – yes I did get through it after the last surfacing because, after all, this is the summer and I have the time and the inclination – I was left wondering about its basic worth.

It has 100 chapters, all of which are relatively short and the central conceit is interesting enough: how do you survive in a lifeboat with a 450 pound Royal Bengal tiger after the ship in which you have been travelling with your family and the remains of a sold off zoo mysteriously sinks.

I think that the extract from the Financial Times review is one which sums up my response to the novel: “Absurd, macabre, unreliable and sad, deeply sensual in its evoking of smells and sights, the whole trip and the narrator’s insanely curious voice suggest Joseph Conrad and Salman Rusahdie hallucinating together over the meaning of “The Old Man and the Sea” and “Gulliver’s Travels.” I would only add that Golding’s “Pincher Martin” should be somewhere in that mix and you have a good guide to the novel.

Whether this novel is any more than a dazzling jeu d’esprit I am not convinced, but at least I am glad that I have got this particular irritation out of the way and the novel safely read!

On a more practical level Stewart has asked me to give him the recipe for Toni’s Mum’s Gazpacho Soup for 4 persons, so here it is:

Ingredients
2 peeled cucumbers
1 red pepper
½ green pepper
½ onion
2 cloves of garlic
4 ripe tomatoes
4 slices of bread
Salt (a little to taste)
Olive oil (a little to taste)
Vinegar (to taste)
A tumbler of water

Method
Chop all the ingredients and place in a liquidizer. Liquidize. The addition of salt, olive oil and vinegar should be sparing and keep checking by taste that the mixture is as you want it. Remember (as Toni told me to add) you can always add more salt etc you can’t take it away. He also added in a phrase which I now regret having introduced him to, “Less is more!” The soup should be served very cold with ice cubes floating in the serving dish.

I had this soup this lunchtime and it was utterly delicious and there is still some left for dinner!

After a cloudy start to the morning it developed into one of those energy draining days where the only thing you want to do is sip ice cold gazpacho!

Tomorrow my education in actually appreciating Rose wine begins with a meeting of the Sitges Wine Tasting Group. I am going to take decent bottles of red and white just in case!

Vaulting ambition again!

My first visit to the Theatre Nacional de Catalynya was almost frustrated by generous numbers of road works; an accident involving a motorcycle and general misplaced confidence. The first is par for the course; the second an everyday occurrence to which you rapidly get hardened given the suicidal approach to motoring in the cycle community and the third was a belief that money would be equal to results.

It was all the fault of my new (expensive) GPS.

I assumed that finding the National Theatre would be possible in a number of ways for which I didn’t need an exact address. A recently found guide to Barcelona was also in the car and that, assuredly would give me the information I required should I require it; which I didn’t expect to require.

The guide to Barcelona gave me a small picture of the façade of the theatre and the information that it was near Plaça de les Glòries but not exactly in it. For a GPS exactitude is everything, but I merely told (ah!) the machine to go to the Plaça de les Glòries and I assumed that I would be able to use the machine to find the nearest theatre when I got a little closer and, hey presto! I would be there.

Such assumptions are dangerous.

I made worse assumptions. I asked (ah!) the machine to give me a list of theatres and I assumed that the name of one I was given was near enough to the one I wanted and I told (ah!) the machine to navigate me there. I was wrong. I therefore told (ah!) the machine to take me to my orginal destination and then while stopped at traffic lights within sight of the facade I told (ah!) the machine to find the nearest parking. Which it did and I arrived. Early.

The parking to which I was directed only cost five euros (and believe you me, only five euros in Barcelona is virtually a gift) and I could have stayed there all night! The fact that I was at the theatre an hour and more early so I could give My Pupil his lesson is the only explanation I can find for being able to park in so exemplary a space!

The building itself is in the form of a post-modernist classical temple with rather squat modified Doric columns and the walls made of glass. It is a building made to impress with marble and classical structures but it does not invite. Yet again architects have produced a shrine or Mauseuleam whose imposing structure repulses the very people who should be attracted. Still the miniscule cheese roll in wholemeal bread with herb olive oil I had there was delicious

Any dance production that starts with a deafening roll of thunder in the darkness, uses music from The Saint Matthew Passion and ends with whale song is either hitching a ride on easy significant association or is very confident of its purpose to cope with cliché. The production I saw last night in the Theatre Nacional de Catalunya of “La Venus de Willendorf” directed by Iago Pericot had elements of both.

The eight strong company of four male and four female dancers was augmented by a living naked embodiment of the Venus of Willendorf who had the generous curves of the original stone figure and was a stage presence throughout the performance acting as a silent comment on the action of the dancers and finally the audience itself.

The performance opened with the dancers in twisted foetal positions in the darkness downstage. The back of the stage opened and in the growing light the Venus character slowly advanced and, as she passed along the line of figures they began to find themselves within their bodies. They slowly evolved into sentient creatures who explored their limbs and actions and their interaction with others. Two large table-like structures with a mirrored surface allowed a playfulness to motivate the characters while the mirror give them further opportunities to realize their development as they saw themselves.

Personal movement in space became a series of impingements on the space of others. I found the opening of the production dominated by gesture rather than dance with an amusing variety of movements which combined flowing figures with the jaunty break dance-like staccato hand gestures and body movement. The dancers used percussive effects by striking their own bodies and each other’s and by using growls and shouts.

The narrative of the piece developed into a series of power plays echoing the themes embodied in the music; rejection, isolation, conflict. The isolation of one of the female dancers allowed a powerful piece of concentrated mockery by the other dancers who also formed themselves into melded creatures that recalled the fantastic creatures of Bosch or Breughal. I found the look of the piece to be very much influenced by paintings, especially Flemish religious art where Northern Renaissance depictions of scenes of The Passion found their reflections in the movement of the dancers.
One effective episode suggested a form of The Last Supper where the two mirrored tables were set up end to end up stage and a Christ-like dictatorial character flanked by the rest of the dancers forced a series of mimetic movements and which ended up with his elation finding expression in a phallus formed by one of the female dancers’ arms thrust between his legs. His exclamation of “Espana!” at that moment seemed both comic and crass!

The reflections of ideas in the music worked throughout the piece so that loyalty, belonging, rejection, society, authority were all part of the rich melange of concepts informing the movement. A tie could represent society, clan, group and the action indicated the momentum of acceptance and expulsion.

Throughout the work the Venus figure made her stately and powerful presence felt as with hands of pendulous breasts she walked through the squabbling dancers combining power and grace as she progressed.

The climax of the piece came when the dancers emerged dressed in conventional modern clothes after the tights and t-shirts of their previous performances and, after a fashion walk into position facing each other we saw couples attracting and responding to their partners: gay, lesbian and straight they seduced each other discarding clothing in the process so that by the time that they reached and touched each other they were naked.

The disconcerting element in this display is that no matter how lascivious the glances, gestures and couplings of the characters there is a clear indication in the case of males of the extent of their arousal. It was therefore clear that the men although ostensibly enamoured by their partners remained passionately untouched!

I am well aware that this is a professional company performing a choreographed text, but if you go to the extent of full nudity then the flaccidity has to be taken as an intended comment on the act itself. And to me it made no sense.

The “love making” ended by one of each couple killing the other and then retreating from the murdered body. This could, I suppose be seen as a comment on the whole concept of the crucifixion and the clear juxtaposition of love and death. The Venus character walked slowly in front of the audience (the house lights up) and by her hard stare involving all of us in the perversion of what she stood for. And at that point she slowly walked up stage through the dead and the murderers and disappeared back into the light.

This was a production full of ideas many of which worked, but to me it looked like a work in progress with the need for the director to excise some of the more self-indulgent aspects and make the experience more muscular and focussed.

I enjoyed the piece and I look forward to more from this clearly talented company.