Deprivation!

Yet another reason to hate the French. 

Their bloody supermarket, which dominates this part of the world, sells something which purports to be cottage cheese, but in reality it appears to be a particularly pernicious form of yogurt.  I have used this concoction in my cooking this evening – which, incidentally used some out of date meatballs which Toni steadfastly refused to eat. 

I am not sure now whether the date was a ‘use by’ (devised by Al Capone: I really must look that up, I have been stating it as a fact and it would nice to know that there is some basis for my assertion) or ‘sell by’ (or was it this one that dear old Al invented, sounds more convincing this way round) – anyway, whatever, I refuse to be intimidated by the fear of food poisoning and so I cooked them all with a sauce of mine own inventing, low calorie of course.  Though, thinking about it, that didn’t go for the meatballs which were and are probably packed with the most evil of fats.  Ah well, I must have some pleasure in what I eat – if only as compensation for returning to the tasteless horrors of cottage cheese in its truly awful foreign forms!

I downloaded a free book from the Internet for my Kindle about fallacies concerned with slimming.  The book has a naff cover and a faux matey style of delivery, but the content is shockingly sensible and realistic!  The writer of this disturbingly uncharacteristic book is one Mirsad Hasic (a sometime footballer) and the title ‘Why Can’t I lose Weight Like Others’.  For nothing it is a real bargain!  It takes the form of 40 short chapters about how to avoid the ‘biggest pitfalls’ in dieting.  Well worth reading and even getting if you have a Kindle.  I think that my response was so positive because much of what he suggests I am already doing or know is the right thing to do.  Not quite the same things!

I posted my writing about the ‘split’ personality of Soldier/Innocent that I generated by looking at photographs of strangers on the Internet and I have discovered that I now have picked up a personal nemesis on the course – a lady who praises my writing and then ever so slightly kicks me in the balls.  This time round it was a quibble about the differences between innocent and naïf (though she didn’t spell it like that, of course) and then a descent to ‘clueless’ about my carefully crafted soldier.  I was particularly proud of the battle honours that I was able to list, questionable the lot of them, including the battle in which Earl (sic) Douglas Haig (sick) tried to kill my grandfather and failed – twice.  Irony can go no further.  The portrait is one of my finer works of cynicism!

Now is the time of year when I used publically to moan about the proliferation of Christmas decorations in the shops before December, and privately looked at all of them and wanted the lot!  Every year I buy one or two new decorations, even if I don’t get to put them on the tree that I also sometimes don’t get to put up.  This buying was originally to compensate for Rhys and Gwen choosing a decoration each from my big tree.  Every year I tried to get them to take something major so that I could buy something to replace it, but they were (are) always well bred enough to go for something modest!  This year I have a Plan A and Plan B.

Plan A is to put the full tree up in all its splendour with new lights.  Though where exactly we put it is something to discuss.  Plan B is to use the mini light tree (bought from the What! Shop on Newport Road) that has been on the specially constructed shelf since last year and deck it out with white decorations - three new ones bought this evening.  There is of course a possibility of Plan C – do both!

There is also the question of the Belen (the Nativity Scene) replete with a virtual town of characters, which takes ages to unwrap and set up, though I do remember that I have a set of battery operated blue lights that could add a note of necessary extra naffness to the whole affair!

Although I have seen superb examples of tasteful Christmas decorations and wonderfully decorated trees, that is not really my style.  I like excess and the essential vulgarity that is surely nearer to the historical festivities at this time in December than the prettified legend of the overblown birth of some obscure Palestinian that was grafted on to an much, much older celebration!

Unfortunately the over-kill of decoration availability is not yet quite as well developed as in the UK and some of the prices for really quite ordinary decorations are eye-wateringly easy to reject.  I will, however, be assiduous in my search for reasonably priced essentially white decorations to complete successfully my vision of Plan B.  At least.

The story of my car crash gets more involved.  This was a driver stationary behind a vehicle trying to park and then, on a whim and with no indication, turning into me as I passed.  She was very apologetic and admitted liability in a way in which we are all urged not to do under any circumstances.  Her husband is German and the car is not registered in Spain and you could see her worried mind working overtime as there was very little damage to my car, but clearly noticeable damage to hers.

Unsurprisingly she wants the damage to be repaired privately and that is no problem, as long as it is done properly and I have a car for any time that mine is being done.  She is going to phone me tomorrow.  We will see what progress she has made.  This could run and run!  She sounded very harassed on the phone this evening pleading many things on her mind and kids as reasons for her not phoning.  A sexual expletive comes to mind.  Learn to drive if you don’t want problems!  Harsh but true.

Tomorrow the doctor for Toni for the results of his scheduled blood test and me on Thursday to the dentist for the fitting of my grind guard.  Talk about getting your money’s worth.  Though some autonomous regions are finding it increasingly difficult to pay their pharmacists, so god knows what is going to happen in the near future, let alone the distant!

Meanwhile music plays in my ears through remote headphones while Juventus and Real Madrid appear to be playing to a draw in the cup league.  Though in the last few minutes it is traditional for Real Madrid to score, though a penalty if necessary!  Three minutes left plus injury time and Juventus are using their final sub, I think.  Though what do I know!  What I do know is that my new CDs should be arriving tomorrow, although this is via the infamous non-delivery service that Amazon favours in this part of the world.  I live in hope.

And tomorrow I have to decide with all the meatballs that I couldn’t eat this evening.  And with what?  Pasta, rice and potatoes all banned!  I will have to try and find more of the lumpy cottage cheese – where all prospects pleases, and only man is vile.  Or something.

At least I am eating more fruit!

Now for a cup of relaxing tea composed of god knows what scrapings and weeds.  God knows what that unholy brew will do with the solid weight of meat balls firmly encamped in my stomach.  This is one case where it is very true to say, time will tell!

How long, O God!

Thing have reached a pretty pass when I actually make an effort to find out what cottage cheese is in Catalan!  This was prompted by the fact that I put one kilo back on last week.  Cottage cheese is simply not very nice, has not been very nice and will never be very nice – but it is better than nothing.  And I have spices, they have to make some sort of difference, for the better I trust!  I have bought an exploratory tub of something white and lumpy and will experiment with it.  A rapid sprinkling of my bottle of spices for tomatoes (it exists, I have bought it) and it became not very nice but with some sort of taste.  Presumably that is what I have to look forward to for the foreseeable future.  Happy days!

Tomorrow or the day after should see the arrival of my new boxes of CDs, forward to which I am certainly looking.  You really have to be of my generation and to have been interested in classical music, been at college and not been able to afford the records that you wanted to fully appreciate the delight in now owning all the unobtainable, of our your range, music.  And at a bargain cost.  For a couple of euros, no less, and in a format which is a damn sight more rugged than the original discs!

We have just come back from Terrassa where we went to celebrate a joint Name Day.  We had the ‘celebration’ in a local café and I had one bottle of fizzy Vichy water and a cup of coffee with ice to drink.  I am beginning to ask myself if what I am now living is in any way linked to what might loosely be called a ‘life’!  A whole bloody year of deprivation and it still won’t be enough!  I am not sure if my strength of will is up to a campaign which is going to last a whole year.  Though there again, the alternatives are less than acceptable if I am to have any chance of emulating my Uncle Eric.

Meanwhile the waiting for examination results and the return of the first TMA continues.  We have been told that our tutor will return all the assignments at the end of the marking period, in other words she will take the full ten working days, which actually means that the time can be over two weeks.  We have been told to concentrate on the chapter in The Big Red Book and do the exercises written there.

The present problem in writing concerns the asymmetrical nature of the human face.  We have been told to look at faces and make an assessment about each side of the face and give a description for each.  So, for example, after looking at a series of random faces on the Internet I have come up with a whole series of linkings such as, Judge/Whore; Murderer/Hostess and the one that I am working on at the moment Soldier/Innocent.  In keeping with the impulses of the course, I have done a certain amount of research and now know more about the basic issue gun of the British Army and the history of the Royal Welsh Regiment (or any variants of Royal Welsh, Welsh, Welch etc) than I have ever known before.  Did you know for example that the goat mascot was given by the Queen, had a surname of Windsor and had an official rank in the Army?  Just think how your life has been enriched by such knowledge!

Anyway I have written a monologue, which I have wisely left for revision tomorrow, which purports to be by a character who is both a soldier and an innocent.  I will have to read it again and more critically to discover if this is actually conveyed by the writing.  And there are more splits for me to give words to.  Much more writing to do!

The lure of a further gadget is getting to be almost irresistible, but my indolence has done nothing about getting the money together to buy it so it remains tantalizingly out of reach.  I am hoping that time will blunt my purpose and I will be able to look at adverts without convulsively looking for a shop.  The Shop.  Lurking at the corner of Plaça de Cataluña.  I know where it is and I know that to enter that beautifully designed place of consumerism and planned obsolescence is to fall.

For only the second time since my final retirement, I wore jeans and socks and trainers.  Most unpleasant, but even I cannot go on pretending that the weather has not changed.  It is autumn and there is no getting away from it.  Much though I would like to.

Tomorrow chores as well as writing.

Always writing

My Morning Pages today were only just; I blame The Guardian and a nice hot cup of tea, though the tea was a cup of hot water with squeezed orange and lemon with a spoon full of honey.  So, it was only fifteen minutes before midday that I started writing.  I am being fairly religious about this aspect of my writing course and I have thought of a way to make some use of it while I am waiting to integrate it into my writing.

I have painstakingly gone through my daily scrawl and have identified phrases and sentences that I think might be worth developing later.  I intend to put a small selection of these on our forum and then ask other students to do the same while asking for ways in which they could be used to develop ideas for other work.

Some people have already shown themselves ready to comment and contribute and those must be encouraged because they are going to be the backbone of the course.  I do my bit, but I need other people to respond.  For me the tutorial was always more useful than the lecture.  That may be obvious, but I really need to talk something out if it is to say in my mind and develop into a useful idea.

Irene phoned today and we have arranged to go out for dinner tomorrow.  This is another example of our both needing to talk – as well as eat!  We have been collecting various bits of electronic hardware for Irene for her to cope with her bad back courtesy of Lidl.  She deserves to be cossetted, especially during the winter considering the altitude at which she lives!

My swimming continues at what I now realise is a leisurely pace.  Towards the end of my swim, during which I had been pacing myself against a man in the next lane who looked while swimming a form of crawl as though he was about to die, I decided to beat him more convincingly and discovered that I had a considerable amount of power in reserve and cut through the water with commendable dispatch!  Which means I suppose that I should use some of that power before I feel the urge to stop because my allotted time is up.

But now some extra writing demanded by chapter 5 of the Big Red Book – our course bible – imagining a character that possess or makes use of a list of ten items. 

It’s like being back in school. 

But better!

The horror past!

It hurt!  

I like to be asked if I want an injection, so that I get the kudos of refusing and showing how macho I really am.  I want given the choice and he went straight in and drilled away to make the hole bigger to make it smaller.  Such things do not make that much sense to me, but it produces Mercs for dentists so it must make sense at a higher level.

The gap is now filled and the ragged edges are no longer cutting the inside of my mouth.  I cannot bite on it fully yet, but I am sure that it will settle down.

The rest of my teeth (how long is it since I last went to a dentist!) are fine – which sort of supports my self interest of dentists as opposed to the health of patients theory, but let it pass, let it pass.  It would appear that I grind my teeth, obviously my response to my inability to make the world more in my image!  I have now had an impression of my top set of teeth taken in the dental clay that I remember from my visit to a specialist in Cathedral Road over fifty years ago.  It is funny how the taste came back to me at once.  The clay will be used to make a plastic mould that I will have to place on my teeth each night.  I suppose that one should take every opportunity to preserve the natural teeth that one has.

The last dentist I truly trusted told me that with reasonable care I should have my teeth for the whole of my life.  The stiff price for a piece of soft plastic seems a fair price to pay for continuation of the battered enamel that I still sport!  So, back to the dentist on Thursday to get the rest of my money’s worth.

Considering how much I have heard people pay to their dentists, to get away with only (!) €265 for a visit that I feared would lead to the reconstruction of a tooth which would have been at a cost well into four figures.  And if you divide the figure by the number of years that I have waited for this forced visit, it is virtually nothing.  And I get a piece of individualized plastic!

I have now had comments on my poem and it is heartening to find out firstly that some people like it, and secondly that they have made a real effort to understand it.  With a response like that it is not difficult to reciprocate.

Tomorrow is the first day in Spain when I could buy a little object of desire.  There is, of course no justification for its purchase whatsoever, but I am going to find it virtually impossible to resist.  Quite impossible.  Though it may take a slight readjustment of my finances to afford it. 

That is surely not too much to ask? 

It is, after all, essential for my peace of mind. 

And school were I only going there!