New start again

Emma left early on Friday morning and the house seems strangely empty.  However, that is not for long as Ceri and Dianne are arriving on Sunday and then the countdown to The Meal begins!

Meanwhile I try and keep myself calm by attempting to find out how to work my new(ish) replacement camera which, at the moment, is still working with the zoom in a fully functioning state.

Having printed out the whole of the operating manual (in full and glorious colour - by mistake) I feel that I ought at least to make some effort to read it as I am not of the generation where operating a sophisticated piece of electronic equipment is intuitive.

I have to admit that the screen on the camera does sometimes flash up helpful hints which give me some idea of what is going on – but there are other bits and pieces of information that you simply have to know otherwise you remain in blissful ignorance of the true capabilities of the machine.

The USP of the camera is its Wi-Fi link which should mean that it can send pictures direct to my email account or to a printer or even that the camera is able to be operated via my mobile phone.  Quite why one would want to do that I am not absolutely sure, but if it can be done then I would like to be able to do it – and the usefulness can be worked out later!

It is certainly a neat piece of kit and I think that I will enjoy getting to know what it can do.  Obviously, that last sentence is something like a written pledge to encourage myself to do what I should!

After our day of cloud and rain yesterday, today was fine and hot but with that measure of coolness that betokens the end of summer.  I am eagerly searching the faces of the young to find the signs of desperation that the start of the autumn term usually brings to the surface.  Some of the less imaginative children who get bored on holidays (!) may actually think that they are looking forward to starting school and being reunited with their friends – but a few days of the juggernaut of the timetable lurching into operation and they will look back wistfully to the halcyon days of the summer holidays.

Teachers are slightly different.  The only teacher who ever told me that he was bored and was actually looking forward to returning to school was Paul 1 – and even he has changed his tune now and denies that the youthful and offensively jejune version of himself ever existed!

As if it were fated, I met a teacher from a previous school in a supermarket today and we exchanged cards as I told her that I was no longer teaching in the school on the hill.  That is, we would have exchanged cards if I had had one – instead I meekly took hers and will send in my email address to keep her records up to date.  One never knows when a stretch of supply might come in handy.  One cannot afford to ignore any serendipitous meetings that might be to my advantage in some undefined future.

I am half watching Chelsea being destroyed by Athletico Madrid.  Chelsea’s ineptitude is made all the worse by the obscenity of the players’ salaries and the worse than mere obscenity of the more than questionable worth (in all senses) of their oligarch owner.

I suggest that, instead of wearing some meaningless numbers on their backs they have a figure which is more immediately appreciable to the hapless punters who pay their wages and gives clear and shocking information.

I suggest that the number on the back of their shirts should be based on the average annual pay of workers in the country in which they “play”.  Thus the number “1” on the back of a shirt would indicate that the selfish, foulmouthed, incompetent “sportsmen” [see recent court cases and FA judgements] will be earning the total average annual salary of an ordinary worker every single week.

Let’s assume that the average annual salary in Britain is 25K that would mean that the number on the back of a player like John Terry would be 4.4!  Almost four and a half times the average annual salary every week!  That would give people something to think about as they watch the ineffective performance of individual absurdly paid footballers fail to stop a real drubbing from a team which isn’t even at the top of the Spanish league!

I wonder how many of the louts we have to put up with parading their tattooed bodies and ridiculous hairstyles on national television would only have a single digit figure on their backs!

I am not very happy with the progress of Paralympic Team GB.  We have lost our position and are lagging far behind the Australians and indeed other nations which are too shaming to mention!  No doubt I will settle down as soon as we have won a few more golds.

This weekend is the end of the holidays and 31^st of August was the last day of my employment in the School on the Hill.

September 2012 (and for the rest of my life) a true pensioner!

Back again!

I plead the vicissitudes of keeping visitors happy as the transcendent reason for delaying all those key strikes that might have made my writing a little more exhaustive.

The intervening days between discourse and actual production can only be explained by the reliance on alcohol in one of its many forms and the necessity to make the most of conversation in my native tongue.  I feel the two aspects of delay mentioned there mayhap be linked in some way!

The Pauls now seem but a hazy memory with Emma being the second course.  We have eaten to satiety and sampled a couple of the “gourmet” meals that are advertised as Castelldefels makes its claim to be the Catalan version of Ludlow or Abergavenny.  [And it says much for the colonialist twist of the spellchecker on this machine that it recognized the first English jumped-up border town with no problem but baulked at a true Welsh place name.]

We have not done the touristy thing with our visitors this time round and haven’t been into Barcelona once!

Sunday sees the arrival of Ceri and Dianne and our expedition to Girona for our long-booked extraordinary meal in one of the great restaurants of this part of the world.

As a lead up to this gastronomic treat the meal that Emma and I had in the Don Jaime last night was more than acceptable.

Set on a hill overlooking the town and sea we sat in an outside terrace and had a meal for which the final payment seemed something of an insult.  The waiters were attentive without being intrusive and the Cava was well chilled.

My meal comprised an exquisite “cep” risotto, followed by steak with truffle and sherry sauce.  The steak was extraordinarily tender, but I must not let this exception encourage me to rely on the buying policy of most eating places where the meat may truly described as “sole food” – something which is more akin to the bottom of the shoe than the bottom of the stomach!

My sweet was a series of little cakes which were pure indulgence.  Forty quid for a meal for two like that in a setting like that seems like charity.  Almost.

It does encourage me to try out some of the other €25 offers in the Gastronomic Passport and, unlike the Ruta de Tapa which seems to have finished, this set of meals is available until the start of December.

Yesterday was the worst day of the holiday as far as weather was concerned but the adverse conditions were of little moment as I spent my time ferrying people to doctors and chemists for most of the day.  Nothing was too serious (I hope) but there is a different concept of time when waiting for medical personnel to do their stuff – especially as we were tricked into complacency by the first visit of the day when we were seen almost at once.  We did of course make up for that later in the day when the bloody-minded unhelpfulness of a particular member of the reception staff in our local medical centre ensure the waste of at least an hour of pointless inactivity.  Toni was incandescent with fury, and I was reminded of the line in Julius Caesar “Thus with a prick I damn him” as another traitor has a depression in the wax next to his name signifying his death.  I would not like to be that particular gentleman when someone like Toni is gunning for you!

The Paralympics has (have?) started and we have had the “relaxation gold” which means that I can stop worrying – but the target of 103 medals from umpteen different sports does seem a little ambitious as a target.  I fear that we can no longer rely on our having invented these games to ensure a flow of gold.  It is very disturbing to note that, at present, we lie in third play behind Australia and of course China.

It is frustrating that we can get none of the extras from British broadcasting stations on the net and I am getting tired of reading “Not available in your country” whenever I try to access some of the goodies on display on the web pages.

I do however have the official web page which lists the medal totals and that, after all is the important bit.

All is wanting

Amazon is so quintessentially middle class because it offers something modern and old fashioned at the same time.  It offers you the immediate satisfaction of purchasing something (which is close to the Now Generation which demands instant gratification) and then you have to wait for the item to appear which means that it ticks the Delayed Gratification which is part of the sterner approach which characterizes the more “Puritan” aspects of the ways in which my generation was brought up.

I do not wish to give the impression that I was subject to a childhood of callous deprivation, no indeed.  I have to admit that, as long as what I wanted was reasonable, I generally got what I wanted – but not necessarily when I wanted it.  Only my birthday and Christmas, the tenth and twelfth months of the year were those capable of producing money and goodies.  Easter meant an Easter egg while the occasional visits to Grandparents might produce half a crown.  Things had to be planned.

But then I was of the generation when a six part series on the television (which we eventually got when I was ten) could last a month and a half – and not be over in a week as seems to be the case nowadays.  We were used to waiting.  The kids today with their mobile phones would not believe how long my parents had to wait for a phone line to be put into our home and then it was a party line!

My tennis shoes were Dunlop Red Flash; my bike was a Raleigh Star Rider.  As far as I remember the Dunlops were the only choice because no one could be expected to play tennis in daps.  They were the wrong colour for a start.  Choice was limited.  The other choice for the bike was a Raleigh Palm Beach – but that didn’t have a three-speed and, after all, I did pass the 11+!

For one birthday (well before I had reached double digits) I actually asked for a stapler.  I still have it.  But what child today would have such a reasonable request.  Though thinking about it, I am not sure that many kids of my age would have asked for such a thing then.  Though the Head of Maths in my last British school would have understood as she had a stationery fetish even more pronounced that I.

Leaving such things to one side I am quivering with excitement because a whole series of returns and purchases should trickle through over the next week or so.

My new camera has lasted less than 60 days with the zoom refusing to function so it has been sent back to Amazon who assure me that a replacement is on its way.  My FDC albums should be arriving soon as well as the Olympic FDCs to fit inside them.  My push for ecology in the tea department should have its energy saving device in place before the month is out and a lone book should be with us soon.  All to come.

I now have taken to using the Kindle store and have started purchasing books to add to my collection of volumes “in the Cloud” and therefore safe and sound.  I know how it all works but it still amazes me that I can, for example, read about an Argentinian book recently translated into English in my Kindle version of The Guardian, click into the Amazon store and have the volume downloaded and paid for within twenty seconds.  It is probably just as well that such a thing was not available for me when I was younger!

So, not only does our next visitor arrive tomorrow, but also the delight of her presence will be enhanced by various deliveries throughout her stay.  And the sun is shining and the holiday mood continues.

Happy Days!

Variety is the clue!

The amount of clear swimming that I have been able to do is now reaching disturbing proportions so that I am beginning to suspect that I am part of a Truman style show where some omniscient director orders less fortunate swimmers out of my lane so that I can swim my twenty minutes in an uncluttered fashion.

Perhaps I am going to be subject to the irony of free lanes during the height of the summer and hordes of people emerging during the autumn.  I sincerely hope not as my resolve to swim on a daily basis is tested in inverse proportion to the quantity of sun, warmth and people that are available to sustain my determination!

Talking of determination I have (at last) opened the handbook to the car and attempted to change the date so that the calendar on the dashboard does not read 2032.  This took me some twenty minutes to rectify because the instructions were almost precise enough to achieve something straight away, but only almost – which is why a certain amount of trial and error was necessary.

In “Look Back in Anger” one of the characters asks, “Do the Sunday newspapers make you feel ignorant?”  With the general dumbing down that there has been over the last fifty years (let’s give it some sort of perspective) it is not newspapers that have a humbling effect but instruction books.  They are written so clearly and with such unambiguous line drawings that not to be instantly successful is to have Failed in Life.

This does not, obviously, refer to IKEA instructions where one often has to build the item that one has purchased before one can understand the directions to construct the thing in the first place.  Any couple who can build an IKEA cupboard together and still be a couple at the end of the endeavour has what I call a strong relationship!

One of the many, many dictionaries that I bought had, rather ostentatiously a series of blank pages at the end of the volume which were for words or phrases that one heard during the time after the book had been bought.  The idea was that the purchaser would listen more assiduously to the radio, television and the people who one moved among and write down any possible neologisms.

I got as far as “ambient food” before I lapsed in my newfound enthusiasm for actually writing down discoveries rather than hearing them, rejoicing in the vitality of the language and then forgetting them.  

Oh yes, "ambient food" is food that is sold which does not have to be heated or chilled - like crisps or peanuts for example.

I was reminded of this shameful lack of application when I heard someone use the phrase “a life intermediary” on the radio and felt that I should write it down.  Where did I hear this?  Radio 4, obviously, on one of my Internet radios.  

My confusion was shared by the interviewer who asked the interviewee who was talking about coffee shops what he meant.  He explained that a life intermediary was anything which made life more enjoyable and fulfilling.  Therefore the provision of over priced “artisanal” coffee in high street shops where one could get a good latte was a "life intermediary."

I must admit I liked both the phrase and the obvious embarrassment of the interviewee when he had to put his words into something we could understand.

I began to think that the mere phrase by itself was a little lonely and I wanted to experiment with the addition of significant adjectives like, indeed, “significant”: “a significant life intermediary” sounds like a close friend given to marriage guidance.

Try adding your own adjectives - as well as considering additions like “essential”, “serendipitous”, “arbitraged”, “real” and “red.”  Hours of innocent fun!  When I should really be getting down to my Summer Tasks.

Some tasks have formed themselves during the summer months and have resolved themselves with a minimum of intellectual and emotional effort.

I have, for example changed the ink cartridges in the new printer.  I have fearlessly ordered various essentials from FDC Albums to a One Cup Water Boiler.  And let me tell you buying things is not as easy as it looks.

Take for instance the replacement freezer drawer.

Firstly to get the damn thing replaced I had to find the instructions for the fridge-freezer which gave me the all important random numbers and letters that made up the model designation. 

We then had to phone the distributor to find out how to get a replacement.  That number gave us another number that in turn directed us to another. 

We then had to find out the serial number that was not on any visible part of the machine. 

Going back to the supplier we were told that the nearest distributor to us was closed for holidays.  If we wanted to purchase the item we had to send all the information via e-mail to the supplier which was still open and they would tell us price and availability. 

Having got the price we then had to go to a bank and pay in the amount via a bank draft to the account of the firm and then fax that we had done it so that they could order the part.  [That bit I still don’t believe]  And now, only four emails later I have been told that I have the opportunity to drive 40 minutes outside Castelldefels and pick it up.  Simple?  Not!

The amazing end to this saga, which necessitated a trip to parts of Sabadell that I have previously not visited, was that the freezer drawer replacement was actually the right one and it fitted!  I just love happy endings.

There is only one problem.

The drawer itself was presented to us in a large cardboard box to keep the fragile (obviously) plastic item safe and sound.  What actually kept it safe and sound was a wide range of bubble wrap – both large and also small.  The problem, of course is what to do with it.

The temptation is to keep it on the “you never know when it comes in handy” basis, but this summer is supposed to see me make an effort in downsizing and bubble wrap by its very nature is not (at least not in the quantities in which I now have salvaged it) unobtrusive as it were.  It does take up space.

So, the cardboard box complete with shattered front and useless body of the broken drawer, covered in woefully tempting bubble wrap is now waiting at the top of the stairs for me to decide what to do with it: the bin in keeping with the new minimalist regime or cwtching it away to be used at some unspecified time in the cluttered future.

Always hard decisions.