The day before

A bright and sunny day though it has to be admitted that the sky is also overladen with pesky clouds too – but it is a day of no school so one should not be overly depressed by the potential overwhelming of the sun.

I should, I suppose, take back some of my anger expressed towards the saintly delivery company MRW yesterday.  Today, bright and early a cheery man drove up and actually delivered two items that I had purchased from Amazon and even as I type I am loading up one of the deliveries to iTunes.

All the major recording companies seem to be trying to wring the last few drops of money out of their old recordings so there are box sets at amazing prices to be had by those who read Amazon listings for fun. 

My latest acquisition is a 100-disc compilation entitled “The Masters of Music” as this compendium cost me less than forty quid one has to look for the catches in such a bargain.  And they are not difficult to find.  The disc that I am downloading at present is the “Symphonic Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in B Minor” by Wilhelm Furtwangler who is better known to me as one of the Great Masters of conducting rather than composition.  This will be the first time that I have (consciously) heard any of his music.  In this performance the orchestra is conducted by the composer – in 1939! And even in its re-mastered form it sounds like it! 

And many of the discs are from the 40s and 50s, and their contents do not stretch the format – many of the discs contain under 50 minutes of music.  Though, to take just one of the 100 recordings which is from the 50s and is under 50 minutes long: Glenn Gould with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Herbert von Karajan playing a Beethoven concerto – who can complain about that combination, especially at that price!  I suppose that one can always justify having historic recordings in your collection and certainly at under 50p a disc, especially as some of the offerings are from much later times it would be churlish to be ungrateful.

The other box sets that I have bought (all at bargain prices) from Philips, Decca, Mercury etc are startling in quality and price.  And although many of the pieces of music are popular classics the performances are well worth having as excellent extra versions in their own right.

Many of these discs I remember from my time in university and later when they were the expensive full-price versions that I couldn’t afford.  I relied on the wealth of cheap recordings that coincided with my adolescence to boost my collection, labels like Allegro, Hallmark, Marble Arch, Heliodor, Saga and of course, Music for Pleasure and Classics for Pleasure.  God bless them all!  They formed my musical taste – though often more by the quality of the cover art than anything else more musically respectable!

My first Nielsen and Mahler records were bought purely because I liked the pictures on the covers of the records: I had never heard of either of the composers!  In the case of Mahler’s symphonies I would say that I have not progressed very much beyond my initial liking of the 4^th and later adoration of the 1^st.  I have, of course listened to all of them (including the 0^th or 10^th) and heard most of them in concerts but Mahler is not to my taste whereas Nielsen has become one of my favourite composers and certainly the one to whom I listen most and I can, with certainty, trace my early knowledge of the composer to a chance purchase of a Heliodor record in the years when the world was young!  I would also say with more than reasonable confidence that my present collection of Nielsen recordings is unmatched in Castelldefels; surely to god there cannot be two of us with the same fixation!

Meanwhile, in the background, Furtwangler’s concerto plays through the speakers of my new iMac and it becomes clearer why this is the first time I have heard it.  However I will give it another chance, though the dead sound of this recording with the orchestra seemingly playing at the end of a corridor does it no favours!  And it’s over an hour long!  Though the second movement is growing on me!

All this typing is displacement activity, as I should be checking that I have white shirts which are capable of being worn in public – which means ironing, which in turn means misery.  I have never managed to find that imaginary point of enlightenment where ironing is anything other than a supremely irritating chore.  So I do very little of it and only iron, as it were in self-defence when it is impossible to avoid.  Teaching, however is one of those times when a wrinkled, curling collar is simply not acceptable.  Damn it!

We are now getting close to lunch time, but Toni is still far from well and has stayed in bed so we will have to cope at home and not go out to one of our chosen eateries – ah well, what better way to prepare for the harsh reality of teaching tomorrow!

Ill and everything

Toni is not better, indeed is worse, than he was yesterday, so the proposed trip to Terrassa has been cancelled and the day has been given over to not feeling well.

As usual, I feel fine.  Which doesn’t really help as I have to keep showing a face of concern for longer than is humanly possible when one also has to be worrying about the forthcoming beginning of term and whether one has sufficient clean white shirts to get one through one’s next bout of teaching.  Even if it is only proposed to be four days long.

I have kept up my new swimming regime for a grand total of two consecutive days; something of which to be proud!  It is, oddly easier to keep up my swimming on teaching days than when I have more time.  Yet another of the odd paradoxes which define our species!

I called into Lidl before my swim to get tonic water for Toni who is not eating properly and wants what he wants.  I took the opportunity while I was there to buy a Rascon because today is the day to eat it.  This round, loaf-like cake has a hole in the middle and what is left forms a cream sandwich in which is secreted a series of small toys of which the most important is the King.  The person who finds the king in the slice of cake that they have is the one who, in theory, is supposed to buy the cake the next year.

This is no small responsibility – a casual look at the price of these damn things, which can easily reach twenty quid, quickly disabuses you of their triviality.  Which is why I was in Lidl.  Even if Toni is too ill to eat it, we have two further (non-traditional) days to get it eaten and even if neither of us actually wants to eat it the Lidl cost makes it easier to throw away!

On another cultural tack I have been benefitting from the largess of Amazon in the seasonal price reduction in a series of Kindle books.  I have bought a few to store up on my over-used machine.

The book that I am reading at present is based on the television programme hosted by Stephen Fry called “IQ” which takes a series of well known assumptions and explores their falsity.  It is full of those sorts of facts that I greedily treasure.  I mean, surely it is important to know that one of my favourite animals is also the one which dreams the most of any creature in the world.  My brain is now filled with little tit-bits of knowledge to be sprung on unsuspecting people during otherwise innocuous conversations!  And the book is barely a third of its way read!  This book possesses the same hypnotic quality as the Guinness Book of Records for those of susceptible propensities.  And god knows, I am one!

I have not yet seamlessly integrated my important gadgets but I am getting there.  At the moment I am exploring the possibility of putting all my iTunes library on the Cloud.  This will give me 26,000 “songs” (as iTunes quaintly puts it) on the Cloud which can be accessed on any of my devices.  I am not absolutely sure, but I think that will be insufficient for my library, and the service costs something like €25 a year – if it is available in Spain.  It is worth thinking about and it would solve the problem of creating an index for my collection.

The world’s greatest non-delivering delivery service aka MRW has yet again shown its quality by not delivering yet another Amazon package.  The time was that this dysfunctional organization used to leave a note telling you that it had failed to deliver something (whether or not you had happened to be in when they (ostensibly) were outside (ostensibly) trying to deliver a package.  They don’t even bother to do that now, merely send an email letting you know that they hadn’t managed to deliver it.  They rely on customers visiting the shop/depot in the centre of Castelldefels, so that we do their jobs for them.  And yes, I am bitter.

The last time I visited the depot, after the firm had sent me a mobile phone message letting me know that my package had (what a surprise) failed to be delivered, they denied all knowledge of it when I actually turned up.

Tomorrow, therefore I intend to be fully armed with a copy of the email with all available reference numbers so that they will not be able to deny it!

And that is the delight of this Sunday.  Whereas all my colleagues in the UK are feeling sick at heart and the thought of the long slog towards Easter and the first Monday of term, I and my Spanish colleagues are relaxed about the extra day of freedom that Monday brings and, while it is a school holiday, it is not a Bank Holiday and so all the shops should be open.  As if.

Still, it is a joy to have a whole day to prepare for the next assault on the walls of ignorance!

The horror to come!

In a shameful reflection of the indolence of the holiday period today was the first time that I went to have my daily swim this year.  On the positive side, I suppose that the date wasn’t actually in double figures!  Now to keep up the determination to go there each day.

Next week I, with the rest of the profession will return to school for a few days supply.  It is difficult to know whether to be pleased or depressed by the fact that yet another term start sees me in harness.  Four days – though it’s just round the corner rather than in Barcelona and it finishes an hour earlier than the School on the Hill.  It’s a win-win situation – apart of course from the teaching element of the experience.

The wonderful thing about my teaching nowadays is that it is for a limited period; I am looking towards four days of teaching and then and end to it.  Unless the head of secondary has other more extended ideas!  My idea was to do a couple of days a month, but if the first week of term is anything to go by, there might be more work than I suspected.  Or feared!

However, I will put my dark fears to one side and see what happens in this New Year.

I have just completed my umpteenth re-reading of “The Lord of the Rings”.  I enjoyed it (as ever) but I am getting more analytical about my responses.  In the Fantasy World Tolkien is a safe pair of hands and he writes effortlessly in a timelessly classic style which at times is a little too effortless and becomes an end in itself. 

It is probably crass to accuse a work like “The Lord of the Rings” of self-indulgence when you could just as well call it a labour of love and there is something delightfully excessive in the detail of language and lore that Tolkien gives to the reader.  You shouldn’t fight it; just let it wash over you.  And if some of lovingly detailed descriptions add little or nothing to the narrative, who cares?

In this reading I found the story quite slow in parts where the writing demands its own solemn, self-important place and where ridges, mountains, ghyls and other geographical elements are lingeringly described.  But I wouldn’t have it otherwise!

I find the last moments of the ring moving and the recognition of the Hobbits’ part in the installation of the King emotionally powerful.  The description of the Dead Marshes seemed shorter than I remembered it, when it made a deep impression on me during my first readings, but feelings change and one’s view of writing changes depending on the forces around one.  Reading of the defeat of the Dark Lord just before the start of terms is always a good idea!

I have still not made my mind up about the performance of Rusalka that I saw recently and I have not done my homework after the event in looking up the director’s reasons for setting the opera in the way that he did.  Work in progress.

I am supposed to be meeting Suzanne tomorrow but communication seems to have broken down somewhat and the arrangements have not been finalized, but we shall see.

I also have to make sure that I have enough clothing for school washed and ready.  Four days!

Where have the meal free days gone!

Family festivities do not leave much time for escape with a computer and self-indulgent typed reflection.  The most you can do is surreptitiously read a Kindle or at least an iPhone and lose yourself in another world.  A better world!

The visiting season is now over.  Well, almost.  One more meal to go and then escape to Castelldefels.  Given the number and extent of the meals with which I have been faced, it is impossible to leave the table without the bare necessity of eating something and politeness means that I have been stuffed for the last week!

Roll on the days of austerity when we are back to something approaching normality – around which a new enthusiasm for swimming must manifest itself!

Far be it form me to make New Year Resolutions, it is, after all a little late in the day for me to kid myself that such things ever have any chance of becoming anything more than fatuous puffs of idle breath – but, I have recently seen exactly how much I pay for my membership of the swimming pool and I have realized that I should be there every day and for most of the day to get my money back!

I suppose this is the time to voice a half-breathed desire to get to know how to play padel and actually to try it as well.  I am after all paying not play it at the moment!  This hybrid of squash and tennis looks quite interesting and is something that I am sure that I could get into – if I haven’t left my active participation in racket sports too far behind me!

I am getting to know my new phone.  I have given in and purchased an iPhone.  I did manage to stop myself purchasing the most expensive version, but it was still ridiculously expensive.  After my latest jaunt in the sticky arms of education I felt that I deserved a new gadget or three.

I am now fully Mac-ed; from stand-alone to Nano I am all Mac.  Toni did ask me to lay out in front of him my full holdings of Apple manufacture but I was far too ashamed to do that.  If you count up the various versions of the iPod that I have bought over the years I shudder to think just how many months of taxed work are represented in well-designed thin metallic cases.  With what I have spent they could afford to replace the lost bite from the logo!

However, I have to bend my mind to the next task which is to link seamlessly all my different devices in the way in which Apple shows in the advertisements is possible.  Unbelievable, but allegedly possible!

I have managed to convince myself that the purchase of the new iMac is essential because for my OU work.  The MacBook Air was because I needed something portable for school; the iPad was because . . . um . . . because I wanted something to take on holidays and the iPhone . . .  because I wanted one, so there!

If I stop and think for a moment about the total memory storage and computing power I now possess compared with what was available when I was a boy then I suppose I could have controlled the world were I able to go back with what I have now.  And what do I use this power for?  Basically ensuring that I always have a book at hand to read!  And to think we got to the moon with the computing power that was less than that generally found in a Smart Phone today! 

What a glorious waste of resources my electronic holdings do represent! 

I remain unrepentant.

Now back in Castelldefels and as tired as if we had both been running Marathons (or should that be Marathi?) rather than dragging ourselves from one meal to another!  There must be a better way to celebrate Christmas and the New Year than this. 

And in a hotter climate too!