A little late, but still near enough to the previously set deadline we set off for a walk.  I am not given to walks but, as the sun was sulking behind clouds, I decided to see what other people have said is, “nice.”

Walking through the dying waves was, for a few paces, quite pleasant.  It is, after all, the stuff of innumerable novels, plays, short stories and films.  And it is supposed to be good for the feet.  But it is a bit, well, samey.  And the water does not wash over one’s lower extremities with a constant force.  No indeed; one or two incontinent wavelets can easily give one the look of another meaning of that adjective and one is reduced to praying for the sun to come back out to evaporate the misleading dampness!

We walked down to the centre of the playa looking down for Our Purpose in Life, sea glass – and found very little.  The vagaries of tide and time seemed to have washed all the detritus from which gleaming examples of sea-smoothed broken bottles could be extracted from the tide line.  All was smooth shelving sand!

I do not think that all of this is natural.  Since living in Spain and going on holiday to Gran Canaria I have come to understand just how much very large machinery is involved in the simple phrase of “beach maintenance”.

 

I suppose my first practical example of how to make a beach look natural using unnatural means was in St Tropez when I slept on the beach (sic) with an Irishman (not in that sense) and was moved on by the police (shame!) so that the great sand sifting machines could rake and cleanse the sand for the richer people who went on the hygienic sands in the daytime.

That was not the first time that I had been moved on by the police.  The first time was when I was trying to sleep in a public park in Greece.  I was not alone there either.  This time I was sleeping with a horde of multi-national backpackers (still not in that sense) and I completely forget what I did after I was moved on.  Indeed I don’t think that I have thought about that particular incident for many a long year.  Trust me to remember St Trop in such detail and Greece so sketchily – such snobbery!  Plus ça change!

Once we were in the area in which we used to live, Toni went to waste his money on another futile ONCE lottery ticket (I am more than prepared to do a complete U-turn on this moral position as soon as he actually wins anything, of course) while I looked at the British newspapers and eventually decided to buy the Guardian.  As I always do – except for periodic lapses into The Independent.

And the paper did not let me down.  Quite apart from excellently informed “liberal” coverage of the riots it also, in the section “Reaction round the world” had the headline “Iran piles in as Britain’s woes are met with global schadenfreude”.  How well the Guardian knows its readership! 

When teaching English as a Foreign Language one also looks at things from a slightly different perspective, and I did wonder how much of that headline I would have to explain to my classes!

We walked back on the paseo and I think I walked a little too far as my knees are letting me know that I have done something out of the ordinary. 

The stairs are slightly problematic at the moment as my progress is a little less like Cinderella making a light-footed Grand Staircase entrance to the Ball than Blind Pew without the stick stumbling his way past the Admiral Benbow - and in this house that is a disaster because almost whatever you are doing you need to go up or down stairs to complete it!  I did say “almost”! 

In fact, that last simile took so much time to fabricate that I think that I have recovered full movement in all my joints!

As Dianne was a prime target for the mozzies, Toni has given the visitors’ room some extra protection.  It looks a little temporary and a little Heath-Robinson, but on the principle that “Anything is Better than Nothing” it should give the little critters something to think about as they try and get new blood!

Our visit to Gava allowed me to look at the end of summer range of loungers for the beach because one session of towel on beach was enough for me.  I do demand my creature comforts and the words “sand” and “relaxation” do not easily go together in my lexicon.

I have purchased a lounger which I sincerely hope is going to last a little longer than merely to the end of this season.  In my experience one should never assume that one’s lounger is going to last beyond the year in which it was bought. 

This year could (must) be an exception because there are only a few weeks left of the official summer I will have to remember to take the lounger in and store it inside rather than leave it to the vicissitudes of the weather to rot and decay.

Nothing done about the books today.

Signalling a new approach to life, Toni has voiced the aim of getting up each day at 8.30 am and going to the beach and walking for an hour.

Allowing for ablutions this actually took place today, starting at about 9.  I don’t of course “do” walking.  I feel that the good lord has gone out of his way to encourage his favourite creation to invent so many forms of transport which are so much easier than putting one foot in front of another that walking is actually a form of blasphemy.

I did a little light wallowing and listened to my Nano while taking the sun.

It is a fact (as noted by Ceri on one of his peregrinations) that early morning visitors to the beach tend to be of a “Senior” persuasion.  Groups of pensioners arrive, strip off and plunge gingerly into the welcoming sea.  Those not staunch enough in their approach to welcome the salutary effects of immersion walk the beach and do a form of beachcombing whose ends results are a little mystifying.

Shells are not difficult to find on our beach but our senior citizens seem to be looking for something more exotic than spending their time finding the two basic shell forms which we have in abundance.  They are looking for sea glass.

We now have a section of the coffee table devoted to this material and Toni has become a devotee of this form of Walking with a Purpose.  I too threw myself into this occupation by walking from my towel to the sea and picking up a few choice pieces (which were later rejected with contempt by Toni as inferior examples) on my walk back to resume my prone position.

Lunch was in an interesting new restaurant next to the Kafka whose name was a variant on the name of Castelldefels though I do not recall the exact form it took.  The meal was served by a very jolly man who apologised for the somewhat informal menu for which he endeavoured to compensate by tucking it expertly into the fold of my napkin in a post-modern cuisine sort of way!  At least he did it with a laugh which made his efforts acceptable.

Apart from a very ordinary pseudo-tiramisu to end the meal the other two courses were excellent and I would go again.

After the necessary siesta a little visit to Alcampo for things and stuff, but not the cut-price beach lounger that I was looking for.  Call me a self-indulgent aesthete, but a single towel on an uncomfortably undulating beach is not my idea of pleasure.  At all.

Horrifically, in Alcampo they are clearing the summer goods and putting out some things for Christmas!  I always think that it is bad enough when superstores start laying out the stationery in late July for school children for the September start of school, let alone bloody water features with snowmen!

As if we had willed it the Scumbags next-door kicked off on a monumental argument with the daughter (quelle surprise) screaming at her mother at the top of her voice and rapidly descending into noisy tearful imprecations.  The arrival of the Father promised more fireworks and he duly exploded with howls of rage but then, silence – rather than the throwing of items of domestic use which we have had in the past.  In the end it was a pale reflection of the cataclysmic pandemoniums that we have had in the past.

Tomorrow is Day 2 of the New Life of getting up at 8.30 am and swimming or walking.

We shall see.

New Day - New Week

There are only twenty short minutes left of Monday morning and all I have done since I got up (reasonably early) has been to drink two cups of tea and listen to Radio 4.

Listening to Radio 4 is the most exhausting sport in which I participate as it does take it out of you.  For example, this mornings there was the Today programme followed by the news which seems to get grimmer with each broadcast and Book of the Week was about a man’s struggle to define his Welshness.

As I am at present wearing a pair of Tesco (reduced) shorts emblazoned with the Welsh Dragon I feel that this is need to my concerns.  Don’t worry, the wearing of a shirt completely hides the mythological element and merely leaves me looking as though I was wearing a pair of bright green shorts.  Nevertheless the mere buying of such a nationalistic garment on my last foray, or rather pillage, of the clothing department of Tesco’s shows some concern for my ostensible national identity.

Although I remember nothing of my time there, I was born in Yorkshire – though my parents were impeccably Welsh (whatever that might mean) hailing from Merthyr Vale and Mountain Ash – names that sound much more attractive than the grim reality of the places themselves!

Brought up in Cardiff in an exclusively English language-speaking environment it came as a shock to me to find out that my paternal grandfather’s first language was Welsh.  He spoke not a word of it neither to me nor to my father nor any of his other children.  Actually my grandfather must have spoken some Welsh to me as my name for him was Du-cu a version of the Welsh Tad-cu (grandfather) which he must have used when I was a babe in arms. Similarly, my word for my English-speaking grandmother was Dando, which must also have been a lisping corruption of mam-gu – though I am not quite sure how I got there!  My names for my mother’s parents were Nana and Gramp – very straightforward!

In a way which would be shocking today, but then was an obvious course of action, my great-grandparents on my mother’s side decided to stop speaking Welsh (their first language) to the fourth and succeeding daughters and raised them exclusively in English.  The result was that my grandmother could not communicate with her elder sisters in what was their native language!  English was the way forward and, in my grandmother’s case it could be said to have worked as she married an English-speaking accountant who later became town treasurer.  If that is how you measure success!

On the radio the seeker after nationality has spoken with Bryn Terfal who is uncompromising in his definition of Welshness: it rests squarely in the ability to speak the language.  This is a key concept in the modern development of Wales and the approaches to the language define aspects of the on-going political narrative.  The clear implication is that without at least an attempt to learn the language your nationality is, at best, in a sort of cultural limbo.

The radio reader has also attempted to ride? sail? row? a coracle which, while interesting from an historical point of view, does not necessarily give much indication of the aspirations and inclinations of Welsh people today – or help in establishing a definition of nationality.

For me the single most interesting point made in the programme was that the name of Dover, that quintessentially English symbol of Nationality for our eastern neighbours is in fact derived from the Old Welsh for “water” and indicates clearly who was living in the island before the invasions of various groups of foreigners forced the inhabitants into the west and then called them “Welsh” which, with the irony for which the English are justly famous, means “foreigner”!

After an indifferent start to the day the skies are now flawless blue (apart from scattered cloud which is not over us) and the sun is beating down.  I cannot foresee a time when I will ever be tired of such days – there is even a gentle breeze!

Now out for lunch because, after all, there is little point in suddenly going cold turkey on the gastronomic delights that we had with Ceri and Dianne.

If the sun keeps up, I might even consider flinging myself into the foaming (well, gently waved) brine of the Med.  And I could try out Toni’s invention at the same time.

Apart from one or two characteristic outbursts our Scumbag Neighbours have been strangely quiescent.  Toni has only called the police once to complain about the boorish behaviour of the younger element and it is his suspicion that they actually heard him make the call because, no sooner had he replaced the phone than the rowdy element began to softly and silently vanish away!  We fear that they are building up to some sort of cataclysmic act of sonic selfishness. 

We wait in dread!

The only thing I did about The Books today was to read through old programmes from performances of King Lear that I had seen, together with their reviews from the Guardian.  I put them carefully in a large brown envelope labelled “King Lear”.  Better than nothing, I think!

Coffee and departures

There is always a pang of regret when you watch through the car window your recent visitors walking through the absurd revolving door, dragging their cases behind them and going in to suffer the humiliation of cramped seating on a budget airline.

The house seemed strangely empty and the feeling of mild desolation was not helped by starting the washing machine.

There is something unhealthily domestic about sorting and putting washing in the machine; I detest the challenge of opening the packet of two tablets of washing powder without swearing; I find the smell of sickly sweet oiliness of the fabric softener nauseating – and all of this is topped by the irritatingly jaunty tunes that my bloody washing machine plays to announce the fact that it has done some tedious mechanical task!

The tumble drier has chosen this moment to make some unsettling sounds which sounded (not that I know what I am talking about here) as if the bearings were worn.  Whatever it actually was, it sounded expensive.

When confronted by technical problems of this magnitude there is only approach that is tried and tested: ignore them and hope for the best.  This I did with enthusiasm and dedication with the result that it now sounds fine – and I feel free to imagine the money saved by not having to buy a new machine to be available for self-indulgent spending!

The weather this afternoon is brighter than I would have thought possible given the dull morning that we had.  It is still very humid and the heat is not pleasant and it would be pleasant to get back to the cleanly bright sunny days that have been the best of the summer so far.

 

The unreality of the Nespresso Saga continues to haunt us.  Although the exclusivity through limiting the supply is an interesting marketing idea the concept seems to have been taken to truly absurd lengths by the management of the product.  The whole “life-style” overlay relies on an illusory “value” being placed on a mere cup of coffee!  I can’t help admiring any process which makes people pay happily more for less!

The afternoon was taken up with a quick trip to Terrassa for an excellent lunch and to pick up Toni after his stay there for his nephew’s birthday.  Two boys aged three and, from yesterday, six.  There is, one might say, a certain friction between the two when it comes to possessions and attention which is enervating to observe and unimaginable to live with!  I return to what I have always believed: parents only sleep through sheer exhaustion!

My attempt to have a late siesta was frustrated by the entire band of damned neighbouring dogs who seemed to have entered into a dedicated pact of general howling, screaming, yapping and barking hysteria simply to keep me awake.

I was driven to get up and consume the remains of Dianne’s pizza which she failed to eat in the restaurant we went to on Saturday – delicious!

The new week must be matched by a new determination to Do Something About the Books.  To be fair I have made something of a start, but it is not clearly visible.  Decisions have to be made and there is a time limitation as the next visitors are due on the 14^th of the month!

The clock is ticking!

Life and its funny ways

Ceri shocked us all by actually getting up first and going for a walk on the beach.  This seems to me to be tantamount to a rejection of everything a holiday stands for but, everyone to his own!

There is nothing I like more than seeing others possessed by the devil which so often drives me: lust for a gadget.  The gadget concerned was a coffee machine and our visitors have been impressed by the quality of the coffee produced by ours and so they want one.

I was more than pleased to drive them to St Boi to one of the superstores that line the edges of the motorway so that they could indulge their appetites and we could buy a birthday present for Toni’s nephew.  Having gone to Gava yesterday and been almost overwhelmed by the acumen of the selling display of an earnest young Nespresso salesperson we knew what the base price and offer was and we were prepared to buy!

We did actually leave without purchase but extensive exploration of the Internet showed clearly that the price in MediaMarkt was (allowing for the value – I use the term loosely - of the pound and the offer of €50 worth of capsules) was exceptionally good.

Back to Gava and purchase.  Brought home and extracted from its box the DeLongui Nespresso machine gleamed in all its “60s White” retro splendour.  The splendid assistant in Gava also gave us a bag full of capsules, some stylish plastic cups and a leaflet which outlined the way in which we could claim our €50 worth of extra capsules.

During the course of a wonderful mariscada in the Maratimo later that night it was decided that the next morning would see us venture into Barcelona and the new shopping centre in the old bull ring to claim our rightful prize.

One problem we encountered was finding a place in the UK which actually sold the capsules.  The marketing strategy of Nespresso is to make the machines readily available but the selling of capsules limited to a few so-called boutiques or “Temples” as I prefer to call them.  It was impossible from using the web sites of various important stores to discover if they actually sold the capsules as well as the machines.

We eventually decided that Cardiff was bound to have a few shops which sold them and that anyway they would surely be available from the Internet.

Available – yes.  But only if you were a member of the Club of Nespresso users!  You have the idiotic situation of a store selling the machine, yet not selling the capsules which go into it and make the machine worth buying in the first place.  There might be other make capsules available; but the real thing - no!

The faux-exclusivity of deliberately restricting supply while charging people for the inconvenience seem to be to be a marvellous piece of marketing: though slightly unreal at the same time because people will surely realize that they are being taken for a ride by smoothly operating, ruthless commercial robbers!

We, however, were firmly determined to go on our Pilgrimage of Grace to the fount of all true capsules in Barcelona.

At our predetermined time we gathered to make our final plans and to ensure that we had all the necessary information to ensure the easy acceptance of the Nespresso people of our right to extra free capsules.

Armed with a photocopy of the receipt, the offer form and the actual bar-code self-adhesive slip from the drip tray of the machine we set out by bus to gain our lawful prize.

Perhaps we should have been forewarned by the fact that neither of the generously offered T-10s from Ceri and Dianne worked in the bus and that we had to stand all the way to the centre of Barcelona.

The shop in the bullring is less a Temple than a well-appointed chapel for the worship of the coffee capsule.

Form, photocopy of receipt and bar-code were all offered up and peremptorily rejected.  We had the wrong barcode number.  Our offer to phone up Toni and get him to read out the correct one was also rejected: only the true cardboard would be accepted – no simulacrum would be tolerated.  Our bleatings about having come all the way from the UK and then from Castelldefels fell on deaf ears and we faced the prospect of a return journey.

We almost pettishly refused a proffered cup of coffee to provide some small compensation for a wasted journey, almost but not quite and we were soon seated grumpily around a table under a translucently rodded light construction sipping our favourite tipples.

Having decided to go home and return we walked out towards the bus top and broke into various unconvincing attempts at running to get what looked like a 94 to get back home most expeditiously.

We stood all the way back too and were able to ponder the futile efforts of man when faced with the almost insuperable task of getting a Nespresso machine up and running!

In Castelldefels other possibilities presented themselves.  Rather than presenting ourselves as miserable supplicants for the largess which had already been denied at the haughty store in Barcelona why not kill two birds with one stone and go, rather, to the shop in Terrassa where Toni had to be for the birthday of his nephew.

Galvanized by new hope based on the fact that we phone the central headquarters of Nespresso to find out if the offer could be realized in other shops in the area we sturdy four set out with pleasurable anticipation for the town of Toni’s birth.

Our arrival in the centre of the city was sombre because of the number of shops that were closed for the traditional lunchtime hours.  As we walked through eerily quiet Saturday afternoon streets we became a little depressed at the thought that this journey too was going to be a wasted one.

But no!  The shop was open and the rows of capsule filled boxes arranged with suffocatingly minimalist style quickened our expectations.

The salesperson had never heard of the offer of €50 worth of capsules with a new machine.  The manager had never heard of the offer of €50 worth of capsules with a new machine.  He would check.

Check done we were told that he would accept all our various bits of paper and cardboard and send them on to the relevant authorities and in due course we would probably get something.

This was not satisfactory.  We showed clearly that this was not satisfactory.  We were offered a cup of coffee.  When in doubt, give them a coffee seems to be the Nespresso way of defusing any potentially embarrassing situation.

As Toni harangued the poor manager (a mere boy! And yes policemen do look too young to do their jobs) I refused the proffered coffee because I was dangerously near the “incandescent” setting on my personal anger-meter.  Such a refusal is tantamount to spitting on the true cross in a Nespresso Chapel and caused a ripple of unease among the carefully dressed assistants.

Much later after more detailed discussions with the hierarchy of the movers and shakers in the upper echelons of Nespresso España there was a breakthrough and we were allowed to choose our selection of tubes.

I, for reasons I didn’t fully follow, was inducted into the Secret Society of the Nespresso Club and give a Socio number and a card.  This allows me to buy capsules in the stores.  I repeat, now that I am a member of the club I am graciously allowed to spend my money and buy the capsules without which the machine doesn’t work!

To cap it all we were then told that just because you were a member in Spain did not mean that you were a member worldwide.  No, when Ceri and Dianne return to the UK they must strive to become members of the Club in the UK so that they are allowed the privilege of buying overpriced capsules of coffee from Nespresso!  This marketing gone mad and having an on-going nervous breakdown.

All too soon (certainly after the excitement of actually getting our hands on coffee capsules) it is time to go out for the last evening meal before Ceri and Dianne go back home.  It has only been a few short days, but it might be possible to go over to Cardiff for Ceri’s Private View, so not too long to see each other again. 

Hello and Welcome!

No sooner arrived than fed.  Our first action was to have a menu del dia as soon as possible to refresh the hardy travellers.  And the Maratime did not disappoint as starters of mussels were devoured with relish and Ceri was able to have his much anticipated rabbit as a main course.

The short walk along the beach paddling our way past the hordes of holiday makers was one of the rare times that I actually got sea water on my body.

The real irritation was that the print of Venice was not hanging in place to greet Ceri and Dianne.  To rub salt into the wound Mary phoned up to say that her print had come back from the framers and was looking splendid!  With one of those touches of irony that almost never happen outside of the pages of badly constructed novels my framer phoned up almost immediately afterwards and we two went post haste to get it.

Ceri approves of the frame (which is a relief!) and it now hangs in the living room – directly opposite the large charcoal of the cleft in the rocks.  Most satisfactory!

Our late dinner was in the Argentine restaurant after a frustrating period of trying to find a taxi.  We went through the entire (six entries) list of taxis in Castelldefels before we found one firm that was prepared to answer, let alone provide a vehicle.

We sat at a table for four – the only available table for four – and were able to watch others turn up and find nothing.  Considering we did not book we took a certain risk but our luck held.

Which is more than can be said for the venue.  I have been here twice before the first time with Irene when our appreciation of the food was limited by the amount of cigarette smoke.  We appeared to be the only people in the place not to indulge.  We vowed never to go there again.  And that vow would have stood but for the enlightened legislation in Spain which banned smoking in enclosed places.  We ate our next meal exultantly, secretly sneering at those around us as we imagined their frustration at being unable to blow their noxious fumes about!

Imagine my horror when I noticed an ashtray on the table!

The restaurant has responded to the legislation by opening up the entire roof!  The material had been concertinaed to one side and therefore the restaurant was officially outside and consequently smoking was permitted.

I think that their action frustrates the intention of the act and makes a mockery of the legislation.  Luckily only a few inconsiderate people smoked, but I will still be disinclined to go back there.

After some discussion of the advisability of having starters we decided to go straight on to the main meal.  I have to say that it was a bloody good thing that we did so.  Certainly in my case.

For the first time for years I ordered veal (putting firmly out of my mind the way in which it was produced) covered in breadcrumbs and then further covered by layers of ham and cheese.

When the dish finally arrived I was flabbergasted.  I am tired of hearing people describe the largesse with which they have been treated in restaurants one has never been to.  We are told that an expansive feast awaits us as they describe the amount of food that they were given with all the enthusiasm of a mendacious angler.

I now find myself in that position.  Ceri and Dianne had steaks in a creamy sauce and Toni had ribs.  When they arrived they were positioned on the plates and they looked appetizing and fully edible.  When my dish arrived it was impossible to see the plate as the meat extended from one side of the plate to the other and then overlapped the sides.  It was impossible to carry the plate other than by putting the fingers underneath.

For the first few moments I merely stared at the food and gazed at the sheer expanse of cheese covered ham.  In the space where there might have been a space it was actually filled with chips.

For almost the first time in my life I was unable to finish my meal and was grateful for Toni taking all the chips which were not “tainted” with cheese and Ceri for eventually finishing off what would be a normal portion of the meat in any other restaurant which I was unable to eat!  A truly extraordinary meal.

It reminded me of the sort of meal which you can get in some restaurants where if you can eat all of the meal you can have it for nothing.  I would have paid!

After the taxi ride home we were ready for bed and Ceri informed us that we should not be worried if he woke early and went for a walk along the sea front.  He told us that he often woke as early as 4.30 am and could never get back to sleep.  We explained the keys to use to get out and went to bed.

I put it down to the combination of white, red and Cava that Ceri did not leap up to greet the dawn and made a sheepish entrance at some advanced hour of the morning!

As Ceri is looking forward to a “gastronomic experience” the day started with fresh coffee from the Nespresso and much discussion about whether to purchase one to take back to Cardiff.

We visited (I need little encouragement) our local branch of MediaMarkt and looked at the various machines available.  The girl in charge of the section turned out to be an English speaker and directed us to a Nespresso bar where they were giving away a “free” drink.  As I tried to emphasise to Dianne as she looked impressed at the gentleman in front of the sleek commercial enterprise with elegant backdrop and Modernist décor that was distribution centre for the coffee, to buy a Nespresso coffee machine was to buy into a life style not just a drink maker.

Having visited the Temple of Coffee in Barcelona which is the marble clad sanctum of Nespresso I can vouch for the fact that drinking coffee is perceived as an exciting life-affirming event nowadays not just imbibing a hot dark liquid for a quick boost!

Lunch (life does seem to be a series of meals now) was in the new Basque restaurant.  Drinking in the middle of the day does demand a siesta.  Which I had and much enjoyed – almost as much as the meal!

Our dedication to the Ruta de las Tapas only resulted in one extra tapa stamp being entered on Irene’s sheet – we went to La Fusta and had our usual round of “proper” tapas and had a thoroughly satisfying meal.

At some time or other I will have to do something other than wake up and then start eating – no matter how delicious the temptation may be.  To say nothing of drinking too!

When the sun is shining

Another glorious day albeit with scattered cloud: perfect for swimming and lazing and reading.

All of which seem like better alternatives than getting down to the messy and barbaric work of going through my book collection. 

I make the fundamental mistake of looking into each of the books over which I intone, “Thus with a spot I damn it!” - misquoting as usual, but near enough to Julius Caesar to make it lugubriously pretentiously appropriate. 

Each time I actually read part of the condemned book I seem to find something in it that is worth saving.  One book, “The Oranging of America and other stories” by Max Apple was about to be consigned to oblivion when I opened it, read a paragraph and then read the whole book.  Vastly enjoyable a series of eerily perceptive satires on American life with moments of real humour and some pathos.  And to think that I was about to get rid of it!  What other crimes are waiting to be perpetrated by my callous hands!

But I must be strong.  Some books are thick with dust (a slight exaggeration there) where they have stood un-consulted since they were placed on the shelf.  But that is not the point.  I might not look at a book for years and then suddenly need to find it.  And just knowing that it is there on the shelves, somewhere, is a comfort in itself.

 

But the somewhere is the problematic point.  Where is my “Stalky and Co” and “Froth on the Day Dream” and “Knots”?  I know that I have them all, but where the hell are they?  Sometimes finding a book like “The Oranging of America” is insufficient to make up for a chaotic collection.  So what I am doing now (or largely failing to do) is, in the long run going to add to the value of all my books by making their position in my collection more coherent.

As you can tell all of the above is merely a sort of displacement activity and a exhortation to myself to get a move on and do something irrevocable.

Perhaps not at this precise moment as I have to get ready to meet Irene and talk to her Proficiency student to gauge his level of competence ahead of his taking the oral examination – and then after he has been returned to his house a further exploration of the world of tapas in our local Ruta!

So tomorrow definitely something will be done.  But what about the visitors and the final preparations for their arrival!

Thank god for prevarication.  Probably.

Consideration

SUNDAY 31st AUGUST 2011

Smoking is a great comfort to me.

Not of course that I smoke myself: disgusting habit.  No, it is because of my revulsion and rejection that it is a comfort. 

One of the major sources of addiction; ill health; poverty and rapidly increasing social exclusion – and I am free of it! 

I spend not a penny on this justly reviled compulsion – which means of course, that I can justify the spending of money on other and less noxious things.

All of this is by way of preparing the way for the appearance of another camera to be delivered courtesy of Amazon, possibly tomorrow.  Yet another camera.

Toni has never really recovered from seeing the unbelievable number of cameras that I was able to produce before I left the UK.  I gathered them all together in a sort of pile and stood guard Fafner-like over them all. 

A whole history of the camera from the 1950s was there with each new fad or system represented by one, and sometimes more, machine or machines.  Disk cameras, cassette cameras, Polaroid cameras, box cameras, SLR, instamatics – you name it, they were there!

Most of them were sold in Splott Market in Cardiff before I left for what were risibly small sums of money - but money nevertheless.  I ended up with Dad’s SLR – which was Camera of the Year in the days before the invention of the laptop – and a couple of serviceable cameras which were unspectacular but, most importantly, small.

As long as it fits in a pocket I will use it; if it doesn’t (like Dad’s SLR) I admire it and never use it.  Anyway, who buys actual 35 mm film nowadays!

I like Canon cameras and have two excellent ones including one with a x14 optical zoom with reasonable manual control which fits into my shirt pocket!  But for the new one I have returned to an old love – Olympus.

In the days of 35mm film I had an Olympus Pen-EE which took half-frame photographs (there’s a concept from the past!) thereby giving you 70+ exposures from an ordinary film cartridge.  It was an excellent camera but it went the way of all flesh when digital came into favour.

The new camera is digital (or course) with a x24 optical zoom and other bits and pieces which sound like fun.  To me.

It is going to be difficult to justify – but there again, I don’t smoke do I, so . . 

This morning is glorious with azure skies and wispy clouds for decoration rather than obstruction.  We shall see what the afternoon brings in the topsy-turvy conditions that we have been treated to recently.

A glorious day spoilt only by the number of people enjoying it!

Lunch was from our local chicken place and was as tasty as usual.  I am sure that Ceri will be expecting rabbit from the same place as he enjoyed so much the last time.

It looks as though Clarrie and Mary will not be able to come out this summer as Clarrie now has two meetings in the days when she said that she might be able to visit: and to think that I had bought replacements for the “drinking Champagne” goblets one of which was broken in the party.  Not by me, I might add!

I have bought a book (surprise!) which purports to teach you basic Spanish in 30 days.  I have decided to work my way through it religiously so that I revise the things which I am supposed to know already.

It is the sort of book, produced by an official branch of the literary establishment and fairly obviously demands a degree of previous knowledge of the language if it is to be successful.  So it might be just right for me.  And I am working on the “Anything is better than nothing” basis for progress!

I am now trying to persuade Toni to come out on the Ruta de las Tapas so that I can cross off more of my 24 remaining tapas before I can submit my form for the competition!

MONDAY 1st AUGUST 2011

Riddle: When is the morning not the morning?

Answer: When you are a Catalan plumber.

It was not with a great deal of surprise that we failed to greet the promised plumber before the magic hour of twelve.  We were assured that the gentleman would appear in the “morning”; the morning having gone we phoned to find out why he had not appeared.

The morning, we were told, stretches until 2.00 pm.  Now there is a clue in the use of “pm” which might, to the educated, indicate that it is, to all intents and purposes, the afternoon.  But the learning of plumbers obviously works at a much deeper level of Old Time than that which governs the rest of us!  It is now a quarter past twelve in the afternoon (!), which means that there are one and three-quarter hours of “morning” left for plumbers!

 

On a much more interesting note my new camera, the Olympus SZ-M30, has arrived: thrown over the fence by the oh-so-considerate delivery service without so much as a touch on the bell to let the recipients know that it had come.  I heard the arrival of a van and then the characteristic thump of careful delivery while lying in bed and was able to put one and one together and search out the brown parcel lying on the pine needles - which hopefully softened the fall of the piece of delicate machinery!

Considering how much the new camera does it is very light and compact.  It sits in the hand better than most small digitals and the screen looks brighter and easier to see in sunlight.  There is, alas, no viewfinder – but I have given up hope of finding my ideal camera in much the same way that my watches always have to be compromises.

The x24 optical zoom looks excellent and, more importantly, the image stabilization system that comes with it looks as though it copes with mere humans holding the camera at those sorts of magnifications rather than tripods and gives more than reasonable results.

The gimmicky shots named “magic” on the menu seem less enchantment and more of a waste of time – though it is fair to say that I have hardly tried out the system very much so these are initial judgements rather than exhaustive analyses.

There is a “3D” shot option – though god knows how these can be shown and the “landscape” feature will take some getting used to.  There are prompts when you change the shot options but they contain just enough information to be thoroughly frustrating – at the moment!

The basic (how strange that word seems when compared with the instamatics of one’s youth) camera looks very decent indeed and I am looking forward to using it throughout the month to capture shots of The Visitors for inclusion in a book at the end of the month – and indeed part of the next so that The London Boys of September can be included!

With a tenacity unheard of in my approaches to foreign language learning I have made it to lesson 2 in my new book!  This means that at the end of today I will be 1/15^th of my way through it with complete fluency awaiting me at the end of this month!

On a serious note the book does seem to be purpose-made for me because it assumes all the scraps of Spanish that I already have are just about in place.  It combines the insulting with the realistic which may just have a marked effect on my level of competence!  I live in hope.

The plumber now has just over an hour of the morning left to make his promised appearance.  I think I will start lunch as such nervous tension demands food!

30 minutes left.  Toni has pointed out that all the plumbers are the same so that my idea of cancelling the present one at precisely 2.00 pm (the “end of the morning”) will achieve nothing, except to transfer the same level of nervous tension to a new set of layabouts!  He might be right, but it is frustrating to be held captive in your house by arrogant, uninformative workers who seem unable to use the mobile phones which make communication so bloody easy. 

Where are all the Polish plumbers when you need them?