Lots done!

To my utter disgust the pool was packed with kids this morning and that was only after I had more trouble than usual finding a parking space.  Horror piled on horror!

But, true to form I was beckoned by the ever-helpful staff towards a lane kept free for humans and I was able to complete my twenty minutes in customary solitude.

I chose to sit in the sun for my cup of tea to make up for the gloom of yesterday and read my on-going novel on my mobile phone.  This is a science fiction story called “The sun dragon” or “Dragons of the sun” or some combination of sun and dragon that I have seen so often I have forgotten it!  I have been reading this bloody book for what seems like most of my adult life.  I only read it when I have forgotten to bring my Kindle to the pool – and I am pretty good at remembering it so this is one of the most extended readings I have ever done.

Eventually I will give in and settle down with the damn thing one evening and get the thing read.  I was never really one to wait and delayed gratification is more a theory that a way of life for me!

Part of the morning was taken up with my attempt to short circuit Spanish bureaucracy. 

This was, of course, irrational on my part and I was duly put in my place and told to go away and make an appointment via the Internet so that I could come back to the place that I was already in.  If you see what I mean.  It says something for the length of time that I have been in this country that I did not even consider asking if I could make an appointment face to face as it were.  I left with the web site name.  And the appointment is now made.  Simple.

After restocking the yogurt shelves in the fridge after a duty visit to the supermarket and gratefully eating a lunch cooked by Toni’s mum who seems to be enjoying her respite cure, I rushed off to Barcelona to catch the exhibition that Suzanne has been encouraging me to go and see in the Fundació Joan Miro.

“Projecció” is an exhibition by Mona Hatoum whose only piece of work that I can be positive that I have seen previously is “Paravent” which is a metal articulated screen made in the form of various linked food graters!  Good to see it again.

After a first viewing of the items in the exhibition and then sitting in the courtyard of the museum sipping an ice-cold glass of Cava I was grateful for Suzanne’s insistence.

By far the most thought-provoking item for me was “Cube 9x9x9” constructed out of thin mental rods with a nod towards barbed wire.  I found this unsettling and disorientating; elegant and sinister.

The construction was severely symmetrical so that the observer could constantly create planes where none existed by seeing linked sequences of rod lines.  The transparency of the object allows, or rather forces, the viewer to see the horizontals and verticals and the inclined planes that form and are changed in an instant by the slightest movement of the head.

There are also lines that don’t “fit” in the symmetry of the internal structure of the object.  They put me in mind of the seemingly extraneous lines that complement the obvious geometry of squares and rectangles in Mondrian paintings.  They add mystery, they are like grace notes in music – ornamentation but essential to a full understanding.

I was drawn back to this object again and again, both attracted and frustrated by the dancing dynamics that the lines formed.  I felt constrained by the object almost as if it was dictating its observation: who was watching whom?

The “barbs” twisted around the rods seemed to have been placed at random to confuse and complicate the severity of the essential structure.

I think that ideas of authority, repression and, paradoxically freedom are all contained in this apparently simple form.

The other piece which stood out was “+ and –“ which was a metal arm revolving in a circular container filled with light coloured sand.  On half of the arm was serrated and left grooves in the sand while the other half of the arm was flat and smoothed the sand back to flatness.

Fairly obvious ideas of creation and destruction; the ying and the yang, and any other opposites you might think of come to mind, but I was more interested in the fact that the smoothed sand was not left as a featureless plain.  There were patterns left in the sand – obliteration failed!

Presumably dirt, dust, skin particles or visitors, moisture and the impossibility of perfection must all paly a part in making the sand “individual” in each installation in which is it is placed.  Also the imperfection of engineering must play its part.

It is fascinating that what should be a symbol of futility actually becomes a paean of praise to individuality.  To hell with entropy!

To describe some of the other pieces would be to belittle them – this is an exhibition in which you have to be there to appreciate the dramatic success of some things which may appear to be wilfully mundane if described in mere words.

All I can say is that if you get the chance to experience the work of Mona Hatoum you should take it.

Especially if you go to an exhibition in Barcelona on Mercé the specific day of fiesta for the city when entrance to museums is free!

Waiting

A depressingly overcast day – though, being Spain, a few fragments of sunshine were thrown in our direction in the late afternoon.  For which I was appropriately grateful.

My swim in a pool, whose retractable roof was firmly extended to keep the weather out, was accompanied only by the distant (blurred) vision of the lifeguard sitting down waiting for an active body to give her job reason.

I was a little later at getting to the pool today, and still I was the only person in the water.  I am getting a little concerned about the lack of swimmers.  I know that swimming pools are amazingly expensive to upkeep and I do not want the place closed through lack of customers.

I am now getting to the stage where I can gauge my twenty-minute limit without reference to my watch.  I also think that another instinctive response came into play which is an integral part of the survival weaponry of teachers: I stopped swimming at exactly the point at which a father and two small children walked through the doors to splash about.  Some responses are in-built!

Tomorrow with any luck I will catch the tail end of a recommended exhibition in Barcelona.

Culture, Construction & Cleaning

As Lewis Carroll used to say, “I mark this day with a white stone” – any day in the middle of September on which I can sunbathe has got my vote.  The weather is undeniably cooling down and a dip in the pool would be too close to masochism for any degree of pleasure, but it is not raining and visits to the Third Floor are still possible!

I intend to wear shorts until my knees freeze.  I reckon that I might well be able to get to Christmas with exposed legs.  Hypothermia certainly, but my determination to extract every minute of almost fine weather until I am forced to concede that winter is upon us.  It is my main form of occupation!

I have just finished reading “101 Sonnets” Edited by Don Paterson and published by Faber and Faber which I bought in a small book shop in Herne Hill when I went to the UK to attend Stewart’s funeral.

This is an extraordinary collection and selection with old favourites juxtaposed with poets who are not quite as famous as Blake, Shakespeare and Coleridge.  Indeed looking at the index of names of poets at the back of the book I was almost up to double figures of the “unknowns” before I had left the C’s!

Trying to select a single poem which sums up the sense of discovery that the book gives is impossible – there is too much which is thought provoking, disturbing, shocking and unbelievably lovely.  And I am not ashamed of using the last word in the last sentence.

Paterson contributes an informative and stimulating introduction as well as highly personal and opinionated comments on each of the poems tucked away at the back of the book – who, for example, knew that Thomas Hood was “perhaps the only man ever to have been sent to Dundee to improve his health”.  It is impossible to resist information like that!

The “101 Sonnets” cover the history of literature in English and reading them is a true voyage of discovery.  I wholeheartedly recommend this book – and I think that this is one of those books that need to be bought as a real book and not downloaded to an e-reader.  A true delight.

The earlier part of the day was taken up with ferrying Toni to Terrassa to watch his nephew play in a match against Gava (a town which, technically, starts at the end of our road) and then returning to Castelldefels to bring some sense of order to the area around the recent construction works.

By using a combination of various noxious cleaning agents and wire wool I was able to get beneath the sheen of ingrained filth that has been a natural coating of the sink since we arrived.  I have been bitten to buggery and back again by coordinated hordes of mosquitos attempting to retain their murky living quarters but the cleanliness is apparent and even the tap how has a few metallic glints as I have burrowed beneath the patina of rust and residue to reveal the original material.

Some “stuff” has been earmarked for destruction – or at least to be put out in the rubbish where irregular bin persons then come with their bags and hooked sticks and see what is worth salvaging.

At the moment the scavengers are fairly obviously not Spanish; given the embarrassing antics of our government under the inept leadership of Rajoy who seems far more interested in semantics than economic reality, I think that we will see more native-born wandering from bin to bin in the near future.

That winning smile!

My greatest triumph in terms of charm concerned a certain irascible member of the catering staff in my university.  Living in Neuadd Lewis Jones (Lewis Jones Hall) on campus meant that we could have breakfast in College House as long as we arrived to eat it before half past eight in the morning.

Our hate figure was a wizened harridan called Nicky whose grating cry of “Iz gorn ar past eight!” greeted anyone daring to turn up and expect to be fed after the magic time.  I loathed her just like everyone else until she had some sort of Road to Damascus experience – but only concerning my good self!  She would hurl abuse at the other late arrivals but turn to me with a frightening fawning face and (for her) ask me sweetly if I wanted a glass of milk.

To this day I do not know what caused the change in her abrasive personality towards me.  I would like to think that it was because of my irresistible magnetic commanding personality – indeed in latter years I have come to believe this almost as an article of faith.

Nicky remained my single greatest triumph – until today.

Our local bakery boasts an assistant who is to customer service what Tesco is to self-effacement.  She has never been known to smile; she never indulges in small talk and she serves with the sort of resentment that is usually reserved for customers daring to use ticket windows in theatres in the West End.

Even when she was with people she knew, the same sullen expression set her face in its customary humanity free style.  Until today.

Today when I went in to the shop to get the bread I made a little joke and was rewarded not only with a smile but also a positive laugh!  And conversation!  Dialogue rather than silence!  Not that I understood all of it or course, but the tenor was unmistakable. 

Now the key moment will be the next time I go there.  Will there be a remembrance of times past and a cheeky grin play around her set face or will her expression revert to the times before the laugh?

With Nicky the change was absolute and irrevocable; only time will tell if the Unsmiling Baker has responded to the touch of personality changing magic that I have now convinced myself is mine to bestow!

The weather continues resentfully dull with rain in the wind and threatening clouds masking the hills around the town.  The sea is that deep dirty green which is dramatic but depressing.

And I have been bitten again!

I am obviously something which appeals to the autumn mosquito and they wait for the cooler damper weather before filling themselves with the russet fluid they relish.

I am also running out of the “magic” cream that I have discovered this season which does do, for once, what it says on the tube - soothe and heal.  Pity is cannot be applied in industrial quantities to most areas of the world that qualify for a mention in the almost infinitely depressing world news with which I start my day!  Though I wouldn’t do without the news of course: better to know and be downcast than not to know and speculate about Armageddon!

The Eight Bricks (I feel such a structure deserves capitalization, and indeed the definite article) are now partially covered with plaster and the whole structure has been painted.  Tomorrow (Day 5!) might see the sink actually placed on said bricks.  Comment is superfluous.

Today I received information from the Philatelic Bureau about the cost of the first day covers for the Paralympics’ gold winners.

The Post Office was caught out during the Olympics by the success of the whole enterprise.  The idea of issuing a special stamp for each gold medal winner in the Olympics was a good idea.  Painting a pillar-box gold in the winner’s home town or city was positively inspired – and camp!  But did no one in the Philatelic Bureau think about the knock-on demand for stamps for Paralympian gold medal winners too would be overwhelming?

Their initial idea was to produce a couple of sets of special stamps to commemorate the Paralympic Games – a first in philatelic terms as no other country has issued Paralympic stamps – and that would suffice.

Although I missed out on the furore about the Paralympic athletes being treated as second class by not having their own stamps, the Post Office responded by saying that they would issue stamps in exactly the same way as for the Olympians.

This provided the Post Office with a problem.  The 29 gold medal winners, each with their own special issue mean that 2012 is by far the most productive year for new commemorative stamps ever.  With the addition of 34 stamps for the Paralympians you have the equivalent of about eight years of normal issues in a couple of weeks.

Then there is the cost.  As a collector of first day covers I had already signed up to receive as many first day covers as we won golds.  This was, as you can imagine, a major cost then, to keep the collection complete, came the news that there were to be even more issues.

I think that the Post Office solved the cost problem fairly well as it has announced that anyone who bought the whole set of Olympic gold winners via the Philatelic Bureau could have the complete set of Paralympic stamps at a twenty pound discount.  Each discounted set matching the number of sets of Olympic stamps ordered.

For reasons which are not entirely clear, the cost of each first day cover is actually less for overseas customers than it is for collectors living in the United Kingdom. 

As I have had to buy new albums to contain the covers every little helps.