Flawless blue skies.

But to someone with my level of paranoia I sense a certain coolness in the breeze which accompanied the hours of sunshine. Autumn is lurking reading to strike and send me scuttling indoors to my prieu dieu begging for more vitamin D.



One of the many things that we overlooked when we first came to the house was the state of the en suite bathroom (a phrase about bathrooms I understand which is not used in France, a bit like our use of Art Nouveau which is not the term the French use) and especially the strip of wall under the shower head.


Something had been done in the past which required the removal of tiles and wall and it had been hastily plastered over and painted. The paint was peeling and some of the plaster rotting. There is an understandable reluctance on our part to do anything of a positive and permanent nature to the structure of the house. A few coats of paint are fine but anything more substantial than that is giving money to the people who take quite enough away from us as it is.


However, something had to be done and we eventually decided to check out how much a splashback would cost. Having discovered glass mosaic tiles set out on a cloth background at about €10 for a pack of ten we decided that it would be an expense we could stand.


Well, it only took us a couple of hours and some intemperate language to put up six tiles with fiddly bits to go round the taps. Six tiles are cemented to the wall and they haven’t fallen down yet. Tomorrow will see the grouting and the putting of the silicone around any and all areas that need it – then I may get my bathroom back!


As we get towards the end of August I foresee an influx of desperate people from Barcelona taking advantage of the last days of the holiday and making for our beaches and parking spaces!


Given the crisis I am not surprised that there appear to have been more tourists in our little town this year than last. I imagine that his is likely to continue for the next few years at least – or even longer if Spain actually recognizes just how serious the crisis really is and starts taking it with some degree of reality rather than the collective denial which appears to be the political response so far.


Meanwhile, while the sun continues to shine I shall also put my head in the national sand and tell myself that September is a long, long way away.

What is important in life?

Spending money (which I do not really possess) can only compensate for poor weather up to a point – and believe you me that point is quickly reached. There is only so much pleasure that can be gained from a new air conditioning machine and it does not cover the misery of listening to rain. It makes no difference to me that the rain was at night when even I do not expect the sun to shine in our particular hemisphere, but I resent it none the less.



This morning dawned clear and I swam until the sun rose above the trees surrounding the pool and the light forced me to do breaststroke on the return length.


The temperature of the water in the pool is almost at the level of “bracing” which is level next to” intolerable” where no matter how energetically you swim you do not get anything like warm or even comfortable.


I have told myself that I must investigate the alleged indoor pool which exists in Castelldefels, otherwise my regular swimming will cease abruptly until next summer!


Today has been by anyone’s standards a good sunny day and the sun had a sort of heat which seemed to be almost compensatory for the rain yesterday. The sun summoned me to the Third Floor and I tried out my new headphones which are supposed to be noise reducing. I am not really sure what this is supposed to mean but it does not (emphatically) drown out the sound of a passing plane!


With the usual juxtaposition of music which the i-pod encourages I listened to hits of the seventies and then to a selection of Russian classics terminating with the utterly wonderful “Russian Easter Overture” Opus 36 by Rimski-Korsakov. This is a masterpiece of orchestration as well as being a ravishing aural delight. It s one of those pieces of music which never fails to give me a shiver of delight every time I hear it. I don’t know whether such a piece of music gains anything by being heard after Meatloaf but it never lets me down whatever the context!


I really think that I have reached my ALB (acceptable level of brownness) as; no matter how long I lie in the sun I do not seem to gain a deeper shade. My paranoid belief that the chlorine in the pool is bleaching my skin is, I know, ridiculous; but it’s possible isn’t it!


“The Bear Nobody Wanted” by Janet and Allan Ahlberg is a truly delightful book. It is basically a variant on the “Journey of a sixpence” which I was taken to see in the ill-fated Sophia Gardens Pavilion in Cardiff when I was in Junior School. It was so long ago that I was a member of an audience of very young children who actually listened to the performance on stage! Those were the days. I loved the production and felt the touch of magic that is always there in a competent dramatic performance.


The Ahlbergs’ book is the story of an “arrogant” teddy bear whose eye position and stitching of the mouth gave him a look of superiority and, as all thinking people know, that determines the character.


The novel charts the succession of owners and misfortunes that occur in the life of the bear and it lovingly charts the growing development of a feeling sensibility which illuminates the world of the bear.


The novel is set in the forties in the lead up to the outbreak of the Second World War. To all intents and purposes this is a coming of age novel for a kapok filled toy. It is both fascinating and moving and I have read novels with human characters which have been far less convincing that this tour de force. This is a story that is genuinely moving and profoundly enjoyable. Read it!


A duty visit to the town part of Castelldefels resulted in our gravitating towards a bar for a drink. The one we chose seemed to have difficulty in sending a waiter to our table and, the one thing you do not have to tolerate in a sea side town is poor service so we moved away to another.


The one we chose had blush seats and seemed to offer real beer. This turned out to be Irish beer; a bitter form of which under the title of Murphy’s Irish Red or some such designation. I have to admit it was one of the best pints that I have had in Spain. Mainly because it was one of the only real pints of bitter that I have had in this country.


A round of a pit of bitter and a pint of cider came to €11! I had a second pint and it cost €4.50 or about £3.60: nice for a change but not something which I would want to make into a habit – especially as the head was far from legal!


As we were already in town we decided to have dinner and went to a new restaurant which proved to be an excellent choice. The tortilla with cod was superb and the rest of the meal was well up to standard and finished with a wonderfully calorie filled white chocolate cheesecake. This was a restaurant which did not have a problem with providing a bottle of drinkable wine with the meal!


My only hope is that tomorrow is as sunshine filled as today.


Oh yes, and I have to do some work for school.


Allegedly.

Drip! Drip! Drip!

The tempests which swept through southern Spain yesterday have reached us as irritating rain storms. We did have some sunshine before the rains started in the late afternoon and now I am typing this to the steady drip of rain from the roof onto the terrace on the Third Floor. More and more the weather seems to presage the coming of autumn; even in the sunshine there is a shiver of coolness to remind one just how bad the summer has been.



And the winter wasn’t very good either.


Altogether a poor showing from the north eastern part of the peninsular to the compact that I thought existed between what powers there are and my poor sun starved self.


There is, of course, an element of protesting too much about all this as I can count the days of rain that I have had to endure on the finger of a relatively ordinary spider and I am likely to dismiss a day as poor and unacceptable which I might have welcomed with something approaching relief in the UK.


My friends, however, inform me that the weather has been “really quite good” in Britain and, apart from not really knowing what that phrase means, it makes me feel glad for my fellow countrymen but a bit resentful when I consider that I have travelled far to ensure a bronzed and god-like appearance – well, brown in bits!


I have been assured that fine weather will follow this unnatural wetness and I will be able to resume the supine governance of my Kingdom of the Third Floor.


In an excess of self-survival (and in direct defiance of the prevailing weather conditions) I have invested in a second air conditioning machine. I was prompted to this by an apparent bargain at the end of season sale in one of our local commercial sheds which sells things for the house. The reduction (whose amount I have already forgotten, for it is the principle involved in the idea of a reduction that influences me) seemed substantial, and I know that the chill comfort of more reasonable temperatures is still some way off, so it was wise in my view to strike when the prices were cooling!


It is only the excitement of a major purchase which can explain our choice for lunch.

As Toni took his first bite of his “Whopper” he said, “This reminds me of Cardiff!” I feel somehow depressed that the fine city of my upbringing should be a la Proust associated with a Burger King “Whopper”!


I must admit that after so much fine food, it is tempting to “rough it” with a burger from a fast food outlet – and anyway I did not pass beneath the double arches of you-know-where; I do have some pride.


Fast food, as usual was a gross misnomer. We had to wait to give our order and then wait again while it was cooked, or whatever they do to the food in those places.


While we were waiting for our tray to fill up some Argentinean chap standing next to us assumed that the tray was his and he pinched a chip! The waitress/cashier informed him sharply that they were not his chips and although he expressed some grunts of dismay it did not occur to him to say sorry. The waitress (sic) behaved with exemplary firmness and swept away the contaminated packet of chips and threw the thing away and gave us a fresh portion.


One of the good things about patronizing a fast food joint like this is when it comes to the beverages. I abhor Coke in all its manifestations and the Fanta they serve is so full of sugar that you have to be very careful when you drink it as the slightest tap and the whole thing solidifies. But this is not the UK and I was able to have a super sized or whatever plastic glass of beer. Admittedly it was beer as Johnny Foreigner knows it and therefore can be dismissed as lager, but it was still a damn sight better than the other offerings.


We ate our food well outside the interior of the “restaurant” and as far away as possible from the pretty plastic cage that contained the younger patrons of the establishment. Unfortunately the lack of triple glazing meant that the piercing shrieks and screams (not of pain unfortunately) of the children were particularly clear and encouraged us to finish our meal and pretend that we hadn’t been there.


As Toni said, “It reminds you how bad it is.” Fair point, but that doesn’t stop the urge to eat “dirty” from time to time!


With the rains comes the taking in of the cushions on the sun loungers, so that the Office on the Third Floor looks even more chaotic than usual. My desperate purchase of a number of plastic boxes as a defeatist gesture to tidying will probably backfire and the boxes will merely add their own particular dash of disorder to the already apocalyptic mess in which I work.


Talking of work, the books from the WJEC have not yet arrived and I really do need to see them before I start teaching! They are going to be the basis for a whole course so they better arrive soon so that I have at least a few days to photocopy and draft to make it look as though I have been working assiduously throughout the holiday period.


Meanwhile, as something of a contrast to the novels of E M Forster, I have been given “The bear nobody wanted” ISBN: 9780140348095 a novel by Allan Ahlberg with black and white drawings by Janet Ahlberg. I have only read poems by the Ahlbergs before with “Please, Mrs Butler” being the one that has saved many a lesson in schools up and down the country! I shall read this with interest.


Meanwhile the rain continues to fall with its melancholy sound only partially masked by the whirr of my new air conditioner!

This is more like it!

Yesterday was a time of cultural overload.

With Suzanne as my indomitable guide to the cultural byways of Barcelona we embarked on an Odyssey which lasted all day.


Starting in La Caixa Madrid with a beautifully photographed exhibition of pollution. The photographs chart a sickening variety of the ways in which the planet has been polluted and the ways that people have to live off that pollution. The photos are impressive and almost because of their professional attractiveness unbearably sad. Children are shown sorting rubbish; whole populations literally living on rubbish, smoke pouring into the atmosphere from various polluting industries.


Some of the most touching photographs show the devastation which came with the disaster in Chernobyl. An ariel photo shows the ghost towns which have been abandoned because of the contamination.


There were also success stories: the cleanup of inner London and the improvement in the water quality of the Thames and the remarkable improvement in some Indian cities after only a decade of more sensitive environmental improvements.


One or two photos stood out because of the housing in the background – instantly recognizable as British; a little tug of emotional recognition dashed as the subject of the photos turned out to be the proximity of housing to toxic nuclear installations in Britain.


Altogether a thoughtful and provocative exhibition.


It was something of a relief to get out into the sunshine of Catalunya, the centre (albeit more polluted that the centre of London) of Barcelona.


One of the good things about going “culturing” with a diabetic is that the option to plough on regardless, ignoring the human demands of sustenance, is not an option.


I was therefore delighted to stop in a coffee and cake shop in the Ramblas which I had often passed and never patronized. Its quaintness appealed but the truly appalling service more than repelled.


Ignoring past experience I recklessly ordered tea.


The pot, when it eventually arrived was armed with a tea bag like a small bolster and, in spite of my urgent agitation of said object, I was unable to produce anything more than a truly insipid liquid which was instantly turned to ecru by the most modest addition of milk.


The cake, which took even longer to arrive and needed the attention of three waitresses, was duly consumed and thus fortified we progressed further down the Ramblas.


The ostensible reason for coming to Barcelona was to see the pictures that had been produced for Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Pat Andrea.

With a charcoal drawing of Alice with an elongated and twisted neck stretching from the ground floor flowing up the staircase wall to the exhibition on the first floor the visitor is given a taste of what is to come.


The pictures themselves are variously startling and languorously beautiful. He uses mixed media in his large canvasses with watercolour, pastel, charcoal and gold jostling on the surface with various stuck on additions of paper and card.

The portrayal of Alice is of a very knowing yet innocent girl whose overt sexuality reminds one of Balthas – with all the uncomfortable underage sexuality that the comparison implies!

This is a reinterpretation of the iconic Tenniel images, though perhaps not as radical in their differences as I might have expected.

The images are disturbing, funny, provocative and unsettling. The most painstakingly rendered and finished portrayal of flowers might be juxtaposed with a rough sketch like outline of a person. The vitality of the productions jumps from every canvass.

This was an exhibition which encouraged possessiveness and there were a few pictures that I would have liked to have taken away with me – especially one of Alice in a puddle of hair!

Then it was time for lunch.

As ever in Suzanne’s hands when it comes to places in Barcelona I was encouraged to try a meal in the restaurant of the Maritime museum at the very bottom of the Ramblas.

The setting is frankly startling as the Restaurant is situated in one of the vast glass and brick domed shipbuilding structures that make up the museum.

The meal was at the right level of pretentiousness that I enjoy: cold sandia and prawn curry soup, followed by pescaditos and ice-cream (though those last two served separately) with a glass of cold white wine to wash it all down.

Then, through the winding, stickily hot and terminally confusing streets of the gothic quarter, to the textile museum for another glass of white wine. Well deserved after our negotiating the labyrinth of odd passageways.


Liberlis is our wine of choice. It is very sweet, but served ice cold is an absolute delight. We discovered this wine in the winter and we have been faithful to it ever since!


Our teachers’ passes got us into the wallpaper exhibition where the most interesting wall covering also came with a hair dryer so that you could make the outer apparel of the muscular gentlemen posing on the wall disappear revealing muscular legs and fetching underpants. I think that we must have come towards the end of this particular exhibition as the clothes of the men were rather ghostly having been mostly warmed away!


I was not impressed with this display though I always pay lip service to the applied arts and am prepared to do my duty!


The other exhibition in the same building was of computer produced three dimensional objects. Film showed people “painting” with light pens and their “objects” then being made by computer. There were also objects produced by “printing” by computers. This was an exhibition where the possibilities of the technology were breathtaking though the objects produced so far less so.


Even going to Suzanne’s flat for “a little something” (and red wine this time) the culture did not stop. We watched with the true thrill of horror a terrifying short film entitled something like, “How to clean your office.”


It was, you will be unsurprised to learn, an American film with a very confident young man browbeating a shell-shocked lady head teacher as he encouraged her to denude her office of everything which made it an office.


His approach to her secretary’s office was just as Draconian and produced convulsive gulps of horror from the pair of us as we recognized all the signs in our own situations which were clear indicators of the lack of “impeccability” that was the aim of the Confident Young Man.


Watching a “TED” video about population growth (vividly illustrated with a series of IKEA plastic boxes) was positive light relief!


Home and a quick shower and it was time to ferry a couple of generations of The Family to the airport and then to go out for dinner with Irene.


A full day!

Cloud Landscape

We had lunch looking out over a positively autumnal sea which rippled through an unprepossessing series of colour changes from slate to a drained green. The beach was deserted and there was a windswept look to everything.


A couple of hours later and the sun has fought its way from behind banks of cloud to give a few brief reminders of what August should actually look and feel like. But it is without confidence and lacks all commitment.

On the plus side the printer is up and working and I have established a series of envelopes to try and keep some sort of track of the information, instructions and discs which seem to litter my workspace. As usual by form of organization is merely a form of self defence forced on me by the sheer force of circumstance.

I have now almost completed the details of my first lesson (out of 60) for the History of Art classes that I am supposed to be taking. Two hours a week for ten weeks is supposed to cover the history of art from the Cubists to the present day. I can see that I am going to have to return to the high pressured days of university revision when I “did” Jane Austen in the morning and Dickens in the afternoon! At least what I have done so far looks pretty!


Two other branches of the Family descended this morning so I had my work cut out trying to make sense of the conversation. Luckily three members of the group were happier in Spanish rather than Catalan so I had a fighting chance of keeping up with some of the themes in the chat. It is positively unnerving that, whenever you clear your throat, silence descends at once and everyone looks at you in respectful martyred expectation waiting for your knife wielding verbal attack on their language. They are very kind and ignore my lack of conjugated verbs, slide over my individualistic approach to gender, shudder at my attempts at adjectival embellishment and sigh with collective relief when I fade into silence. I have along way to go!



As this has been a day when my skin has been deprived of its supply of Vitamin D I am in a gently grumpy mood which I hope will be alleviated by lunch and culture tomorrow in Barcelona.
 It will probably rain.

Every search finds something - even if it is not what you are looking for!

Printer drivers are the curse of the untidy classes.



In the excitement of unpacking the printer and marvelling yet again at the way that the prices of this particular piece of equipment have spiralled downwards while their capabilities have spiralled upwards, the humble, undistinguished printer driver disc often gets overlooked at soon as it has made one of the computers produce something on the new machine.

Our present printer is supposed to be wireless and it is new. That means that the printer drivers are not established on all the machines and the disc is essential to their integration into the network.

And before you start, I am perfectly well aware that there are sites which give printer driver downloads so (in theory) it doesn’t matter if you have the disc that was packed with the machine or not. I do not live “in theory” and in the hard electronic world there always comes a point in the installation process when the dreaded “Now insert the disc” appears.

Where you might ask is the disc? I have a vague recollection of “putting it away somewhere safe” but I also have an even vaguer feeling that where I chose was not the most immediately obvious place to put it – but, nevertheless it was protected and safe. And lost. For the moment.


What makes things even more galling is that I do have a loose leaf file which is specifically for program discs so that they will not be lost. That file, however, is full. It is full of programs for long defunct machines; programs which have been superseded many times over in the increasing pace of technological development and yet which have not been thrown away. Perhaps it is a sign of technofear: one day all the good gadgets that we have will suddenly fail to function and we will have to go back to the days of Windows 3.1 (shudder!) or even before. My little Psion will have to be resurrected and I will be regretting all the floppy discs that are no more. Then, all those carefully preserved programs will be worth their weight in gold!


Or it may just be inertia.


I was about to say, go to the home of anyone over the age of 40 and you will find a positive treasure trove of unused and unusable electronic gadgets which, because they cost so much when they were first purchased they are impossible to throw away. But ever mind a 40 year old, you could probably do the same thing with a 15 year old’s bedroom. How many mobile phones will a mere child have had by the time it leaves school?


Built-in obsolescence used to be counted in years when referring to washing machines and fridges and other white goods, but when it comes to children’s toys the period of time before they are discarded seems to be measured in hours. If you’re lucky.


Anyone of a mature outlook and a reasoned attitude towards life and, most importantly without children can have their repose shattered for ever by wandering around a “toy” shop and looking at the prices of the cheaply produced tat that kids expect (not hope for) even distant relatives to buy for them.


These toys all have batteries (not included) and they are welded into the packaging in a way that necessitates a blow torch and the shedding of blood to get them out.


When they are finally presented to the kid, it plays with it for seconds before something breaks and it is then summarily discarded. Parts of the toy may be seen later in the trail of debris that every small child seems to leave in its wake.


Talking of debris, I had a brainwave and thought to look at the bottom of the small military chest of drawers that sits on my desk. I did not find the disc but I did find a note of my mother’s for what looks like a Christmas list of small presents and a reminder to get some Aqua Libra – a drink I have not thought about for a number of years, though the sparkling taste of which took me back in memory just like the recluse in the cork lined room! There was also an old weekly shop receipt from Tesco for the fourth of February 1989. There are 73 items on the list and the total was £49.94! There is nothing like the price of food over twenty years ago to make you feel old!


Oh yes, and as I took each drawer out, the fifth one contained the disc. You see: safe and, as it happens within arm’s reach! Eventually. It is strange as I carefully checked all the drawers as part of my controlled panic search. It bears out the dictum of Mad Lewce that you have to look everywhere at least three times and take everything out before you can pronounce anything lost!


Today has been mixed as far as the weather was concerned: a sullen, begrudging start to the day which developed into a glorious afternoon which I spent on the third Floor rather than the winnowing sands of the beach.

The “nice” work for school (as opposed to the “necessary” work) continues apace with my choosing three pictures each for a variety of modern artists. I have to admit that sometimes my choice has been fairly heavily directed by availability rather than by my considered weighing up of the claims of various canvasses. I have found that if Google search for images doesn’t come up with what I want on the first few pages then I have set the wrong parameters, shrug and make do!


Now to install the driver. Wish me luck – I’ll need it based on the fuss that installing the driver caused in the last machine. What makes it worse is that the instructions are almost humiliatingly simple; it’s just that real life isn’t.


Let the struggle begin!

Lie on the beach and vegetate?

In future ages people will look back at the beginning of the twenty first century and laugh with incredulous contempt at the number, range and sinewy complexity of power leads with which we entwined ourselves to keep all our precious gadgets alive and kicking. Perhaps it will not be an age but a couple of years when technology, which at present allows suitably adjusted devices simply to rest on a power source to recharge their batteries, will have advanced so that the devices suck power out of the air.

I for one cannot wait for such a dawning.

I sit here in my little office on the third floor with my feet in a writhing mass of leads. Some are connected, some are not. Some I know and others I dare not pull out because I have been unable to trace their length to a source, or rather to a “spring”, the source after all is the plug and I can see that easily enough. I have a morbid fear that if I simply go about pulling things out then one broken connection will cause universal chaos and darkness will cover the face of the earth: or at least that part of it that I inhabit. And we all know that if you close down some gadgets without the necessary rituals and mystic pressing of knobs, keys and screens they may very well deign never to start again. We all know the value of backing things up, but I doubt that this knowledge has actually led to productive action.

Except of course in the case of photographs which, now existing in digital form seem to make their presence felt in every entity (the personification is intentional) that uses electricity. There must be a card reader slot on the hoover somewhere, but I don’t use it enough to have found out where it is precisely.

My concern with the leads is because I have started to do some work for the next year in school. The work I am doing of course is not the most pressing but is the most interesting – and that approach works for me!

I made the resolve to Start Work while being flayed alive by the on-shore, off-shore and long-shore drift winds which seemed to blow simultaneously from all possible directions on the compass. This did at least mean that there was an even build up of stand along all exposed parts of the body – and September being in sight it meant that I was afflicted with the particularly British syndrome of “end of holiday different colour desire”. It is almost as if the desperation which is natural state for any thinking teacher to be in when the start of school is less than a month away (which if you think about it means only a few days at the end of July and the beginning of August) will encourage the suns rays to act faster and more profoundly.

At least being sandpapered by the velocity of particles shot at the body allows the Puritan Conscience to take satisfaction in the fact that indolent lying on the beach is having its compensation in pain!

To be fair I was improving the shining hour by listening to Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony in G minor (The year 1905) on my i-pod. I think that the first movement is one of the most lyrically beautiful of any symphony I’ve heard – and if you can still think that while being sand blasted while people around you play football and shriek at their families while the waves crash on the shore then I think the music has got some quality!

The symphony develops into something which verges on (!) the bombastic and you can certainly tell, when listening to it that Shostakovich was an accomplished composer of film scores.

When the symphony finished I selected “Absolute Gold” as a suitable follow on and listened with great satisfaction to “Heaven for Everyone” by Queen, followed by “Because You Loved Me” by Celine Dion then “Missing” by Everything But the Girl and we decided to go when I had reached “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something.

It is at times like this that I wonder whether my liberality of musical taste is not merely uncritical sensationalism.  I hope.

I have just looked up the lyrics to the song "Breakfast at Tiffany's" to see what I had missed and there is a “discussion” from which my favourite comment was, “i think this song is a Classic song as it has some sort of meaning in our lives in one way or another.”

It is difficult to fault that sort of analysis!

After the rain

Although everything seems fresher it hardly seems justification for the chaos of the pools which has been caused by the storm last night.


One of the three pools which you can see from the balcony is already out of service with the perimeter of the pool picked out in police incident tape stopping swimmers. Though I have to say that the lurid green colour of the water is enough by itself to discourage immersion!


Our own pool now had a new level of fresh water after the deluge last night and a liberal addition of pine needles, leaves and other detritus from the surrounding trees. My morning swim was a combination of exercise and hoovering. At each stoke my hands would encounter something organic and at the end of each length I would jettison the rubbish and start a new sweep.


Being surrounded by the number of pine trees that we are each storm brings a shower of pine needles which are then cleared up by extremely noisy portable air blowers which are used at extremely early hours of the day. These save the operators having to lower their dignity by using a mere brush to gather up the pine needles. Actually, from personal experience, I can assure you that sweeping up recalcitrant strands of resinous matter is amazingly difficult to do competently. Thinking about it I might have lacked a little commitment in my attempts – one can`t help feeling that there will be more pine needles when you have swept up one lot and so, basically, what is the point!


The same goes for so-called “housework” too. I keep remembering Quentin Crisp’s dictum that “the dust doesn’t get any thicker after six months” and feel that I am doing well with the desultory approach to cleaning public areas that I have developed. In effect that means leaving it to somebody else. And why not!


The weather today has not markedly improved and my response has been to start (at least) the work that I am supposed to be doing for the start of the new school year. How those last three words chill one’s very soul.


In what I take to be characteristic approach to the unsavoury I have started my efforts by spending money. After an exhaustive search I have found a copy of the art book which has been recommended to me by Suzanne and I have ordered two Media Studies books from the good old Welsh Joint Education Committee. As the publishers of my only “book” I feel that I can do little else but support their educational efforts!


I am trying (probably vainly) to resist the temptation to send for a copy of “The Longest Journey” by E M Forster which, if I am absolutely honest (as when am I not) I am not completely sure that I had heard of. It raises not a scintilla of memory and, what makes it worse, is that it is the book which Lionel Trilling described as “perhaps the most brilliant, the most dramatic, and the most passionate of his works.” I wonder how much it is on Amazon.


But back to work. Or do I hear The Family returning from their walk along the paseo. I must descend and have a cup of tea.


One must always keep a sense of proportion.

The Tasks Begin!

The library is now cleared of the drifts of clothes which have accumulated after a few disgorgements from the washing machine and the books are lying open to view and in the wrong order. It is an invitation for me to start the process of getting the volumes organized so that like is with like. At the moment each shelf is a treasure trove of odd juxtapositions which, while interesting to browse, is a disaster when actually looking for something specific.

Meanwhile the books available to view are being read, especially the novels of E M Forster. If “Howards End” was a revelation, “Where Angels Fear to Tread” was something of a light relief, all too melodramatic and slight for my taste and reminded me of a whole slew of novels that I read in collage which had unsuspecting people (usually from northern countries including the USA) arriving in Italy and having their lives changed – not always for the better!

I have also re-read “Maurice” – mainly because I didn’t feel like re-reading “A Passage to India” and I don’t have a copy of the fifth novel whose title I always forget.

This reading made me feel that I had been too harsh in my assessment of the novel when it came out in the 1970s. Set in the first decade of the twentieth century its description of life seems amazingly dated (as Forster himself pointed out in an afterword) and the treatment of homosexuality which seems so laboured, tentative and determinedly unexplicit has to be seen in terms of its period when it was written.

I found the story oddly persuasive and it fits neatly into Forster’s oeuvre where one feels that “Only Connect” should be written as a running title across all the pages!

The happy ending, about which Forster was adamant, seems contrived and totally unconvincing and I agree with Lytton Strachey who gave the relationship between Maurice and Scudder a matter of weeks before its inevitable end!

By way of contrast I have watched, with growing disbelief, a recent DVD from our woefully under stocked video club: “Crank” (2006) directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor.

It stars Jason Statham as the “heatless” hero who has an hour to get back his stolen heart after he had it taken out after falling from a helicopter. Although it has some moments of dark humour the film is a disgraceful mess not quite knowing which genre it is supposed to be guying. It lacks the visual perception of “Sin City” and the over the top cartoon visuals of “300” It was very much a film in search of a style and not finding it. It was depressing to see the last moments of the film setting the scene for a continuation and it was even more depressing to find out that it was duly made – though at least to a less than enthusiastic critical reaction. Would that I had known that before I pressed the button to get it out of the machine in the shop.

A generally sunny and cloudy day has ended in a dramatic thunder and lightning storm with rolls of thunder which are even now shaking the walls!

At least it is cooler.

But it better be sunny tomorrow!

Holiday!

In a disappointing reversal of usual expectations the two Pauls went out last night and actually returned unscathed.

They revisited the notorious Elvis Bar which in past years has emptied their bank accounts by the simple expedient of offering them a “tab” – this year was different, they managed to resist the offer and left after a single, expensive, drink.

Their peregrinations took them through a selection of clubs and bars and eventually landed them up on the beach in the darkness with a heterogeneous selection of humanity – at which point they decided to return.

My own repose was not broken until some time in the morning when (watchless) I decided that it was morning. My swim was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Paul 2 who (astonishingly) entered the pool with every intention of having a swim himself. As I had not expected him to emerge until some time in the early (or late) afternoon so this sudden morning apparition was unsettling to put it mildly.

An uneventful morning was only enlivened by the luminous quality of my new bathing costume which is not noted for its restraint. Its USP is supposed to be the material allowing 80% of the sunshine to go through to the skin thus eliminating those irritating and hopelessly vulgar white tidemarks where the sun has not been able to turn the skin into the requisite shade of brown. On first use, even though I am expecting too much, there seems to be little evidence that the material is working; but perhaps this is a long term process and one’s expectations should be somewhat lowered.

The Pauls are determined to “catch the rays” so that they can return to the UK with the heads held high and their skin bravely exposed to the British world to excite their envy and contempt!

Once again the day has seemed to be noticeably cooler than I think it ought to be for this time in the year, with insolent clouds making their obtrusive presence felt.

Our obnoxious summer neighbours are making their presence felt in their usual inconsiderate ways, though it has to be said that they have had fewer screaming arguments; they have not thrown things at each other that we have heard; they have not had as many late night parties and the television they have installed outside (yes, outside) their house is not turned on at full volume for quite so many hours.

But they are there and act as if they owned everything within sight. Their “popular” daughter has many (male) admirers and she collects and arranges them decorously around the pool so that someone wishing to swim has to brave the gauntlet of svelte, smoking, self satisfied, smirking youth. As I am myopic I find them very easy to ignore and my obsessive up and down approach to swimming cramps their propriatorial attitude to pool use.

Days appear to have passed in indolence and alcohol and it is a crying shame that the weather has not been as sun-filled as I would have liked; but the Pauls return home a different colour! Not necessarily brown you understand, but different.

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!