I do remember that the plant on the dining
table used to have flowers. They were
not wholesome British-type flowers with visible centre bits and radiating
petals of a bracing and straightforward colour.
No, this plant was more of the cheaper end of the orchid-like plants;
possibly a weed from one of the more exotic locations where temperature
encouraged growth and depressed wages.
Who knows. I chose it because it
was vertical, cheap and had interestingly linen-white flowers of simple
convolution.
But the flowers are very much a thing of
the past and the leaves of the plant are of that evergreen-looking stasis
variety where it is difficult to tell if they are alive or dead. I do however push a few drops of water (and
the odd cup of cold tea) its way from time to time to show that I care.
There is a drooping, crinkled offshoot of a
more virulent green - part of which looks as though it is literally unfolding –
which would seem to suggest that there is something botanical stirring which
might be worth tying to the slender stick which keeps the main part upright.
I do remember that Ingrid always had the
knack of making any plant that I took down to Devon have a life well beyond the
expectations of the shops in which I bought them! One orchid I bought her became more of a
hardy perennial than the delicately elusive whiff of strange beauty that is was
for others.
I am inclined to think that the plant is
merely taunting me with non-death rather than suggesting that it can bloom
again. But I will persevere and who
knows, in the near future I may be using my Grown Up Camera to record its
splendour! Floreat flower!
Toni is now in Terrassa watching, so I am
informed, his five-year-old nephew play his first game of club football as a
striker. I am in Castelldefels. There are some things that . . . And watching
five year olds play football is one of them.
Lunch was a sort of bolognaise with fresh
pasta with what felt like chicken paste but which cooked up into something
approaching mince. Very nice it was too,
through there was far too much of it and I felt that I had done a Paul or a
Clarrie and cooked for too many people who were not there. In a fit of economic intelligence I have
saved the remains and will add curry powder and rice to make an entirely
different meal tomorrow! And I will add
garlic, which I now realise I ignored completely in my gastronomic spurt!
Revision is not progressing with anything
like the rigor which exists in my mind.
I think the basic trouble is two-fold: firstly, I am far too interested
in what I am supposed to learn and find myself getting carried away in the reading
of it rather than the learning; and secondly with the Disaster of the Third
Essay I am now unable to gain the highest grade for the course. I didn’t fail you understand, I was 33%
higher than a fail mark, but I was 6% away from getting the grade I wanted for
the writing. And if you don’t get equal
excellence in writing and examination then you merely “pass” the course. Ah well, it is not as if these first level
courses count for the final class of degree, so there is time to get my mind
back into the OU groove and follow the instructions in the way that I know that
I should have done.
And revise thoroughly.
I am sure that it is in “The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe” that kids get sent to a house owned by a
professor/relative and guarded by a protective Housekeeper who tells the
children that they need to be quite because a Grown Up is working. When I read this (only child, always reading)
I felt that this was totally unfair to children who, obviously, did not make
that much noise and the “seen but not heard” slur was totally unjustified.
I am British. I now live in Spain. I am that Grown Up. And the purchase of a high-powered rifle with
telescopic sights seems more and more attractive as the howling, wailing
Banshees who live in the houses two pools away cry aloud for destruction! As they are Spanish children they all follow
their national stereotypes and scream at each other simultaneously. What their parents do, apart from fill their
ears with liquid wax and weep, I do not know – but they certainly to do not
restrict the decibels in any way, shape or form.
God rot them!
Though they have now, it being dark, gone
in – and the silence is wonderful. Isn’t
there a heresy that posits that good must be counterbalanced by evil and that
as they are co-eternal and co-created one cannot be assumed to be better than
the other, in the sense that evil needs to exist so that we can appreciate
good? Probably the ever-loving Roman
church preached a crusade and extirpated such heresy with sword and fire, but
only in the name of love. Perhaps those
revoltingly obtrusive kids were necessary to make me appreciate the finer
delights of silence. It is the concept
of necessary evil!
Tomorrow Toni stays in Terrassa and that is
supposed to be the ideal opportunity for me to get Iconoclasm nailed, so to
speak. I fully intend to write an answer
on this theme as long as I can get the spelling of the fourth reformer (i.e.
not Luther, Calvin or Zwingli, but the one beginning with M) firmly in my
memory. And did I know that Calvin was
French? Always learning!
And now I think I shall have recourse to my
iPad not only to download the new operating system which I like on my iPhone,
but also to indulge a little in the BBC programmes that are available at the
monthly subscription that we distant Brits have to pay.
One should always try and get one’s money’s
worth!