Where's the sun?

The day has started with a grumpy sort of sullenness which is not the ideal incentive to gird loins and get to the swimming pool.  Nevertheless, my desire for physical exercise has the added inducement of displacement activity as I should now be penning a description of Coketown as outlined in the first five chapters of Hard Times.  This little exercise is more difficult that it should be because I have lost a book.  Lost electronically!

I last read Hard Times in an eBook format and experimented with highlighting and associating notes with the highlights in a more than adventurous manner.  All lost!  I have tried computer after Kindle and nowhere is the edition of the book that I used to be found.  I have bought a new edition (OU approved) but I cannot believe that this new version has written over the last one.  My book must be there, but lurking is some sort of obscure folder that I have not yet opened.

The ironic thing is that this is an electronic example of what is hidden behind closed doors of the IKEA Billy bookcases in the living room – chaos.  It is nice to see that electronic verisimilitude extends to mirroring human indolence and lack of organization in the so-called real world!

The weather, as is the way in this country, perked up a bit and we had a few scraps of sunshine, but then there was a half hearted attempt at rain and now we are back to “brightly dull” which is the default position of this climate when it is not sunny.

Chocolate Week, by popular demand, has been extended to an unprecedented Second Week and I have taken it upon myself to promise further chocolates made with my own fair hand.  I have been stymied in this laudable intention by a complete lack of suitable raw materials not provided by our local Carrefour.  I am yet to find a shop which actually sells marzipan for example!  Such barbarism!

I trust that I have learned from my last attempts and this batch (should I get the stuff) will be a marked improvement.  I shall attempt to make them substantially smaller and each to have a little less sweetness than the normal daily sugar intake of a family of six!

Perhaps we can go to St Boi and the hypermarket before we have our meal-  As it turned out it was after the meal that we went there – and no marzipan was to be had for love nor money.  But the meal itself was interesting.

When I first arrived in Castelldefels I used to go to a restaurant called Club Lancaster.  I thought it was the last thing in value for money and interesting food.  I still remember with warmth and appreciation the first leaving of a bottle of wine on my table.  Should I drink it or was it just left there as a forgetful gesture of a harassed waiter?  I thin I actually asked!  Much to the amusement of the waiter who urged me to drink.  And drink I did.  So this is living in Spain, I thought to myself.  How good can it get?

Well, with experience, a bloody sight better!  And now that restaurant has closed down and an brand new Indian restaurant has taken its place.  Admittedly only one of the chefs is actually Indian, all the rest are Pakistani – just like the so-called Indian restaurants in Britain – but the food was good.  Over-priced possibly, but good nevertheless.  Somewhere to take the Pauls when they come over!  And we were given two shots before we left – which is a positive invitation to come back!

I have failed to find any marzipan.  I will be driven to go on YouTube to find out just how it is made!

I do have glacé cherries so it is possible for me to make the super-calorie sweets that I mad previously though I do have some calorie reduced ingredients to help make them this time – and a little less calorifically explosive!

Tomorrow is a workday in which the horror of marking has to be leavened with the delights of writing about Dickens.

Roll on Monday!

Little to big!

Unless I am kidding myself, and that is more than possible, I think that at long last the mornings are getting a little lighter.  This makes the obscenity of getting up at half past six at night (I refuse to say morning) a little more bearable.

One of the worst things about dark mornings was opening the gate.  I have rationalised my keys into two bunches: the larger bunch comprises my home keys and the more metallic and clinky bunch signifies school. 

From the mass of home keys I have to select one of the smallest keys to open the lock of the gate.  In the darkness it was always a problem finding the tiny opener.  What made it worse was the fact that I had a key-ring light to make things easier – and it didn’t help.  But the fact that it should have helped made the fumbling for the right key all the more frustrating.

It has taken me the best part of a year to work out a solution.  The M&S trolley coin (which I bought in aid of something or other) came with its own little line and chain to link it to your key fob.  I have now dispensed with the “coin” - which didn’t even work in the UK – and put the two house keys on that.  The end result is that if I hold the car key electronic opener, the house keys fall below the rest of the keys and are easy to find, even in the dark.

Why is it that we put up with irritation when it can be solved so easily?  Well, I have tried to work this out and it is, in my view, the fortuitous concourse of minor inconveniences that preclude immediate action. 

For example, my key fob has a central ring that is very difficult to open to get the keys out to place them elsewhere.  To do it effectively you need something like a screwdriver.  And the keys are always somewhere else when you feel the need to do something about it. 

Yes, I know, it is hardly asking a lot to get up from the chair and find the coat which contains the keys, but somehow one just doesn’t do it and then one forgets about it, until one is reminded by using the keys again.  But when you are reminded about it, you are already off to the car to go somewhere and the work remains undone.  Prevarication is always an immediate comfort, whereas action seems too much of an effort!

The tiny job is now done and the difference in stress levels as the keys virtually fall into place each time I need them makes one question what other tiny interventions could have a further disproportionate positive effect!  But indolent indifference will preclude my discovering just what I can change!

We are working our way towards the centre of the dark realm of Serious Examinations and (yet again) we have decided to change the “platform” that we use to put the Sacred Results in an electronic form.  Meetings are threatened in the near future to explain this new system and then meetings about the results and then meetings about . . .  and so on.  I intend to be unobtrusive to the point of absence for all of them.  It just depends if I am allowed to emulate the character in The Hunting of the Snark!

The retirement of The Painted Whore of the Seven Hills (if I may be permitted to quote one of the more outspoken Protestant critics of the dictatorial reign of a past jumped-up Bishop of Rome) could be lauded if it represented the head of that corrupted and corrupting religion finally taking responsibility for the multitude of disgraceful scandals which have blighted his leadership. 

But no, like the most blatant of bankers there is no word of apology for his destructively intolerant “ideology”, his illiberal attitude and his mendacious cover-up of illegal activities. 

He shouldn’t have been allowed to retire – he should have been sacked!

Although compared with some of his illustrious predecessors he is as a lamb!

Chocolate Week continues with a few bumps along the way with one horrendous day when the Chocolate Box in Building 4 had to be opened to the public to forestall armed rebellion when the chocolate offering of the day did not appear!  Insurrection was thus frustrated.  Today there is a delay as the chosen teacher for the provision of chocolate is doing something of less importance in another school.  I am assured however that the chocolate will appear at a later point in the day – though by then I will be in another building and not able to partake of the goodies! 

But no, just as I typed that, who should appear but the teacher in question, bearing gifts of milk and white chocolate chip cookies.  Life is good again!  Thank god for teachers who have their priorities right and ensure that their colleagues are fully chocolated before they go and do their duty elsewhere!

In spite of the fact that my iPhone’s connected to my . . .  iPad and my iPad’s connected to my . . .  iMac and my iMac’s connected to me – I still manage to miss messages.  I have so many platforms to jump into communications that my electronic life is like an over-fussy Olympic diving board array and messages still pass me by.  In my own defence I feel that some messages prefer individual platforms and not all my messages go everywhere.  I am sure that is not true but it is a way of saving face when furious people ask me why I have bothered to fully-Mac myself if it does not lead to a greater sense of connectedness.

Of course, I would maintain, in the best Satchmo traditions, that anyone who asks a question like that would not understand the answer!

Tomorrow lunch with Irene and a session of moaning, groaning and putting the world to rights, with a side dish of financial discussion.  

Who are we kidding!

Up top!

A refugee from basketball, I have ascended two floors to escape the inane jumping of freaks and taken refuge in the more soothing exertions of intellectual exercise, reading through my OU materials on nineteenth century Manchester in the company of Engels, Faucher and the notable Irish Chartist, Ross.  I have availed myself of the full range of methods the OU uses including text book, CD, DVD and website and am just about to start on a re-reading of Hard Times, which is our set book for this part of the course.

As I failed to find the prescribed edition of Hard Times when I was in Britain, I have decided to buy a copy for the Kindle.  There are two problems associated with this purchase.  The first is that I will not be able to make page references when I quote – and that is something that the OU is very strict about.  I only hope that they will accept a location because that is the only thing that I can see which identifies the actual page.  I am sure that there is a way of finding the page for the paper edition but I don’t know how to get it.  The second problem is that I cannot find a way to get the computer to print out all the highlighted passages that I have identified.  It gives me a list but only of the first few words.  This is something that I will have to work on with the able help of YouTube.

Tomorrow is the first day of Chocolate Week.  So far it has been fairly subdued – mainly because I am laying low on a fairly constant basis when I am in school and flitting between buildings in a way that can only be described as fundamentally deceptive.  That means that my dynamic character is not there to egg on the participants to more and more chocolaty excesses.  But, I remain confident that we will have a truly calorie filled week ahead.

My reading of Game of Thrones by George R R Martin has now taken me through four hefty volumes and the saga looks nowhere near complete.  In his oeuvre the baddies are by far the most interesting characters and when they are not being manipulative and duplicitous the narrative slows to a shuddering halt.  He shares with his other R R counterpart the delight in creating generations of characters with (for him) fascinating back stories and never stops himself from filling pages with lengthy descriptions of genealogy, giving loving space to the detailing of heraldic devices and always giving characters their full knightly names.

When there is action Martin is worth reading, but his longueurs can be mind numbingly self-indulgent.

All that having been said, I have bought the next volume in the series because too many of the baddies are still alive and they did not play too significant a part in the concluding part of the last volume.  And he has written the next too, but I think I might well have reached saturation point by the end of this one.  And anyway they are all on the Kindle so they do not take up any further shelf space.  And that is something!

Toni is now well into his course and is constantly “doing things” on his computer which are all counting towards his first assessment.  Mine is next month when the long essay on Hard Times will have to be handed in and then the month after is the exam and the month after that the next course starts which will take me up to October when the next is due to kick off.  It’s a full life in the OU, you never have a problem about what to do with any spare time that comes to hand.

All this self, self, self stuff is partially mitigated by the fact that we have made an executive decision to become more ecological.  At least as far as rubbish is concerned.

Having seen a rather fine multi-compartment bin in one of the supermarkets and purchased it our throwing away of stuff has become fraught with discussion and debate.  Toni has printed out, and I have plasticised, a whole series of mini-posters which should give us definitive information about what to put where.  Unfortunately it is no exhaustive and we are constantly wandering about with a woeful expression and a small piece of detritus trying to find a suitably coloured receptacle to receive it.  Some of our “discussions” have reached 3.7 on the IKEA Furniture Building Scale of Argument but they have calmed down now that we have instituted another bin simply for “rubbish” – which is where we place all the questionable items now.  Harmony is restored.

In my bones I feel that the school is planning one of their infamous “Meetings” – I put the word in inverted commas because it bears no relationship to any even with that designation to which I have been previously subjected.  And they last such a ridiculously long time too that I sometimes find myself thinking back with a certain degree of longing to the Curriculum Meetings of yore when the only thing that kept some of my colleagues going was watching me to see if this was going to be the meeting in which I finally broke down and wept with sheer horror at what man could inflict on man!

I have to keep reminding myself that I am in the School on the Hill by mine own choice (you can see the effect that Game of Thrones is having on my writing style) and I can walk away at any moment.  Though I also have to admit that would be a positively caddish thing to do.  Think of the children as that character in The Simpsons keeps calling.

The most important new thing that I have discovered today has been how to print out highlights from Kindle eBooks.  As usual, YouTube was invaluable in pointing me in what appears to be the right direction.  It turns out that there is a web site called Kindle.Amazon.com where all your highlights are stored in the Cloud and from which it appears possible to copy and paste and have printed out all the hard work that goes into reading and annotating a book.  Disconcertingly, I have already done this on another edition of Hard Times, but that one does not seem to make it into the airy reaches of stored material.  I will have to investigate further to see if those highlights and notes can be rescued somehow.

In some sort of magical way all of my computing devices should be linked up so that I can get to anything on one by using another.  This is not quite working yet, but I am sure that it will eventually yield even to my inept keystrokes!

So much is technical and things happen at an electrical rate which is both exciting and totally disconcerting.

But I am attempting to ride the wave and I do, after all, have grandiose and expensive gear with which to do it!

Chocolate Week Approaches!

I am not sure that my first attempt at so-called “home-made” chocolates has been a total success.  But I am sure that my colleagues will devour them during next week’s Third Annual Chocolate Week.

My first use of the chocolate moulds did produce professional looking delicacies – even down to the white chocolate drizzling; though I am yet to eat one of them.  The chocolates looked good, they fulfilled my contribution to Chocolate Week, they were fine.  I should have left it there, with my work done – but that is not in my nature.

With all the arrogance that comes with an almost complete lack of experience and having something of a success under my belt, I of course, decided to do more.

YouTube is an evil organization.  It gives you an easy incentive to click on some video or other and then take inspiration from the seductive advice offered there to parachute yourself into situations where you need the maker of the video on hand to help you through the inevitable difficult moments.

The first video I watched was of some implacable German matron urging her viewers to attempt liqueur chocolates.  From the very first instruction, which was to make your own wooden tray to fit in the oven, I felt that this form of chocolate delight was not going to be for me.  The fact that you also had to construct your own moulds and wait for days for the bloody things to work also made me disinclined to follow this particular teacher.

The next video seemed much more to my taste and much more immediate.  I therefore decided to follow the advice of a more homely American lady and make chocolate creams.

Finding the ingredients in the supermarket was not as easy as the advice from the video but, with Toni resentfully following at my heels, the raw materials were eventually purchased.

The amounts of each ingredient were given in American with cups and ounces but were deliberately (I can only assume) vague.  I used the same free approach when it came to making the filling for my chocolates and found myself adding an inordinate amount of sugar to try and get the dough-like consistency that was effortlessly achieved by the lady in the video.  This did not happen.

You can imagine the scene with me scooping out a wodge of gooey condensed sweetened milk, icing sugar and melted butter and trying to wrap it round a disconcertingly green cherry.  The mixture stuck to anything it touched and my final “sweets” were craggy, shapeless chunks of pure calories.  Dipping them in dark chocolate softened some of the sharp edges but they remain intimidatingly massive and solid.  There are, however some of the smaller chocolates with only a nut pressed into the mould which look far less intimidating to eat.  I think that I should make more of the smaller ones as they look much more professional and indeed edible!

I have been very remiss with my writing, but I shall leave my thoughts on Les Contes de Hoffmann – my last opera, to another day.