Efforts and results

My car is now being seen to and the scratches on the door consigned to a distant memory by the ministrations of a painter, no, what do they call them body sprayers or something who has given me what one could call euphemistically a ‘courtesy’ car.

Never have I driven such a revolting thing.  It is dirty and smelly, the steering wheel grinds when you turn it, the gears are less than convincing and the power steering needs a firm hand – which if you think about it is a little contradictory– its suspension is, how can I put it, a little firm and you have to use a key to turn the engine on!  Such barbarism.  And people may have seen us as we used that so-called vehicle!  And another day of public horror tomorrow before my car, which I now think of a bloody Bentley compared with the jalopy that I am driving now!  And I do believe that use of ‘jalopy’ is the first time that I have ever written the word in anger!

My new watch has been returned to the shop!  Foiled again!  The design of the thing is fatally flawed.  The buttons which change the day, date and month are all far too prominent and any hand and wrist movement can change them easily – and did.  It was like living in a time capsule, you go to bed on one day in a particular month and you wake up half a dozen days later in another month and the wrong day.  

This clearly was unsettling.  

The date even changed while I was swimming, so the watch couldn’t possibly be the One for me.  Pity, I like the design, but at least the money is now safely back in my bank account.  For another watch to replace it, possibly?  But no, I am in a sulking mood and I will revert to one of my other watches as a sort of protest.

Which I have now done – but I fear that my sulk will go unnoticed.  Except by me.

Only one swim today because we had to get up at the crack of dawn to take the car to be done then we had coffee and I had a stupidly expensive cup of tea then it was suddenly the afternoon and the watch had to be returned and things and stuff had to be done and then it was dark and a bit too late and then it was too late and the day was done.  Of such is a retired person’s day made up!

My first piece of OU work for the new course has been returned and I am not entirely happy with my mark.  The tutor’s comments seem fair as, rather gratifyingly, she said that, ‘I have been a bit more pithy in feedback than I would usually be at this stage because I feel this is what you are looking for’ which, to be fair is exactly right.  

What I need to do is go through the feedback and highlight any comments that point towards future expectations.  One has to play the OU game as well as pursue education for its own sake and after all, I am looking for an improvement of just 3%+ in my mark to make me happy!  Oh yes, and improve my writing.

My repaired tooth is not behaving properly and I will have to make a return visit to the dentist.  I have, because I can, sent off for a water flosser from Amazon.  In theory this will improve my dental hygiene in those hard to reach back teeth and in any case it is a completely new type for gadget for me to experiment with.  This should arrive on Monday or Tuesday and I should have had my further check up by then so the future of my troublesome tooth should be well on the way to being settled then.  At least I hope so, because I would like to go back to the good old days when I was able to chew on both sides of my mouth!

Today I received by new book giving examples of five decades of cartoons form the pages of Private Eye.  I recognized some of them from my own reading of the rag and also from other books that I have on Private Eye.  To be truthful I laughed out loud on very few occasions, but there is the sort of quiet humour which is deeply satisfying.  The quality of cartoons in Private Eye is astonishing and in many cases the sheer artistry is not only of the highest quality but is audacious in its innovation.

Having said all of that, I have to admit that my favourite cartoonist is probably Glashan.  His style is distinctive, but one could not pretend that his artistic style is the most accomplished, though, like Thurber one would not like it to be more ‘artistic’.  I love the dark humour of which he is capable – though come to think about it, I don’t really know any lightly amusing Glashan cartoons.  I have the Penguin John Glashan and it is disturbingly funny.  His official website is at http://www.johnglashan.com/index.html and is worth looking at.

Now, some tidying with a purpose.  I have mislaid something which I am not yet prepared to admit publically.  At least not in this part of the world.  I shall think and work backwards and take Mad Lewce’s advice and look at things at least three times in my attempts to find it. 

I live in hope!

Some things never change

Toni has turned from the theoretical to the practical and is repairing his old computer for his mother with much drilling, solder and other things about which I have no desire to know.  It is touching the way that he assumes that I have even a passing interest in actually knowing how these things are done!  As long as he’s there to know, why should I burden my mind with such knowledge!  Anyway, to be on the safe side I try and show a polite interest and make the appropriate cooing noises when I am shown something that is, apparently, interesting.

Writing my Morning Pages on the computer is nothing like the same as using a pen and having written two days on the computer I am ready to buy another book and get writing again.  It is more of a physical effort to write rather than to type and the extra effort is, I think, an element without which I cannot do.  The computer is fine if you have done all the preparatory work and all you are doing is just writing out a draft.  I then need hard paper copy to edit and then back to the screen where editing is simple, again as long as you know what you are doing.

There is nothing more delightful than moving a paragraph around on a computer – because you can.  When I was using a real typewriter then a paragraph out of sync. was a disaster and it simply had to stay.  Unless, of course you had a home photocopier and you could cut and paste!  And of course I did have a home photocopier, until printers made them obsolete – but by that time the Word programs were good enough for you to start real editing without fearing the loss of you document or other things that early versions of Windows did with impunity!

Why is it that the little obvious jobs take so much time to do?  Why do we (I) put off a simple case of minimal reorganization for so long?  Or is it just I – or do you do the same?

It all, as is to so often the case, comes down to tea.  Of late I have eschewed normal tea and have given myself to the exotic.  Which is tautological, or pleonastic or self-contradictory, or is it only me noticing such things?  Anyway I am not drinking the floor sweepings put into little bags but am branching out into whole other areas of dried left taste experience.  

One bag from Lidl’s says it is Mediterranean tea which seems to mean oranges and lemons with flowers.  An interesting taste and one that I think corresponds to the Barcelona Tea that I was told about on Sunday, but I will delve deeper into this and get some of the ‘real’ stuff when I go into town for my next opera.  I understand that it may be purchased in the ‘Tea Shop’, which is just inside the Triangle next to the Café Zurich.  Which in itself is next to FNAC and – but that is another story and I am working on the next ‘chapter’ of that saga, and it can wait to be told if there is a satisfactory outcome!

Tomorrow the car goes to have the door repaired in the garage next to the pharmaceutical company in which the wrecker works.  I will have to get the car cleaned so that the appearance of the repaired door can be seen clearly in comparison with the old.  More money to be spent!

My swim this morning was in the afternoon, though only just in the afternoon and it went well.  Though I was bereft because of the untoward behaviour of my swimming device.  I had recharged it and now all it will do is show the battery full sign and nothing else.  I assume that I have over charged it somehow (I have a shrewd idea) and I will have to wait in patience (and silence while I swim) for the thing to run down and become more amenable to conversation with the computer. 

I sincerely hope that nothing bad has happened because this will be the third or fourth time that I have had to send this machine back.  Why persist, I hear you ask.  Well, it is the only one which does the job, all the others are less impressive and I am prepared to take the rough with the smooth and hope for the best and all other clichés in my continuing use of it.  Roll on the hours for the thing to run down and then I will start praying. 

If I do have to send it back I will order another at the same time.  Stupid, eh?  But that’s the way I work!

How does my next topic link to the last, well, I can see a way of seguing from one to the other!  I am currently reading a book (on my new Kindle, though to be fair I was also reading it on my old one) on The Borgias by Christopher Hibbert and in the narrative of blatant self-interest, nepotism, outrageous lying, re-writing history, coercion, rigged voting, bribery, violence, the love of money, ostentatious display and so on, I couldn’t help thinking of our own dear government.  British?  Yes!  Spanish?  Absolutely!

In the latest twist about the carnival of freaks that make up the Spanish Cabinet, the minister of education (who is universally loathed) has been called ‘rubbish’ by a British spokesman for the European Parliament.  The look on the Spanish cretin’s face when an eager journalist told him what he had been called was priceless and, in theory, I would buy a mug emblazoned with his face at that moment and a suitably insulting inscription!  This was only the highlight of days of many ‘What the fuck did he say?’ type incredulous conversations that have been going on conducted by various journalists and by Spanish students around Europe. 

Clearly, he should resign and, if he had a shred of decency, go on national television bow to the population and then disembowel himself with a blunt stick. 

Unfortunately, owning to the shameless (and shameless is far too mild a word to express it) nature of the so-called Spanish Government, the Walking Joke (Rajoy aka the Stumbling Idiot) has expressed full confidence in the piece of mediocrity.  As well he might, because the antics of the clowns he has surrounded himself with deflect some of the attention from the shady dealings that he is involved in.  When denounced he angrily defended himself and said that everything was untrue ‘except for some things’!  It really defies contempt!

The last box of new discs is waiting to be fed into the computer, though with the device temporarily (I hope and trust) out of action I will have to enjoy my new acquisitions by listening to them in the aleatory system that governs what I hear when I turn on iTunes!

Now back to the Third Floor to get stuck in to more writing and feed in more discs.  And prepare myself for my second swim of the day without my trusty music!

I shrug off hardship and face the travails of my existence with a wary smile!

Time for what?

I tell you I don’t care!  What people think is of no significance to me!  What do they know about the so-called ‘right’ number of watches to own?  Eh?  What do they know?  Nothing!  That’s what they know!  Nothing!

So, now that is sorted I can share with you that I have bought another watch.  And no, I have no intention whatsoever of giving this one a number.  Not to have watches in double figures shows a callous disregard of the work of generations of watchmakers who have struggled over hundreds of years to bring the measurement of time within the grasp of the ordinary citizen.  I spurn people who say of the watch that they were given at 21 (or in recent times at 18) is for life!  For life is fine as a concept as long as it is not alone in that life!

The new watch is an automatic (how post-modern of me!) and has the usual essentials, to wit – waterproof, luminous, day, month, numbers, sweep second hand and it even tells the time!  The USP of this one (as if it needed one) is that  part of the face has been taken away and so it is possible to see some of the internal workings of the watch, uh, working!  It is fairly chunky and has some encouragingly prominent buttons to press sooner or later and a leather strap – but I’ve had leather straps before and they are fine even with swimming.

And swimming is something that I have done twice today.  Getting back to the old days when I had a swim before and after school.  I must say that the second swim was more to test the waterproof qualities of the watch, but I found it, let me search for the right word here, satisfying.  And swimming is something which always makes you feel good, or if not good, then at least virtuous!

And my new Kindle was delivered.  There is a touch of the watch syndrome about this new arrival as well.  You cannot hide with Kindle.  The new machine arrives and you put your details into it and it tells you exactly how far you have been sucked into the whole Kindle experience.  ‘Stephen’s fourth Kindle’ is says very clearly in their Paperwhite technology, so its there in black and white.  How the hell have I managed to acquire four of these machines each of which is able to hold a thousand or so books?  Well, if you have to ask the question, you obviously don’t know me!

The new version is, quite frankly, brilliant!  It is for reading books.  Simple.  And it provides an environment for doing just that very well indeed.  It is not a tablet, it doesn’t have any fancy extras – though the people at Kindle have tried their best to make the limited functions that the machine has seem bright and new.  I love it!  Buy one.  Even the touch screen technology on this version is much better than the Sony ebook reader that I had a few years ago.  I celebrate progress and am prepared to put my money where my weakness is!

Now the real struggle starts with my deciding whether or not to ‘replace’ something which is working perfectly well, but is a little tatty at the corners.  I don’t know why I write this because this ‘debate’ is already over as far as I am concerned, the only question is when.

There is a slow trickle of comments on the forum about my writing among others, but it is slow and I would like to have a more rapid turnaround of work and comments, but I will have to make do with what is emerging and make the most of it.

Our writing tasks are becoming more complex and we are being asked to work our notes and our techniques into more sophisticated pieces of work.  This is definite progression that is both encouraging and somewhat frightening at the same time! 

That’s education!

Never here - always there!

Back to situation normal and the non-delivery-delivery-people failed to deliver, or to be more exact they delivered a sheet of paper informing me that they were unable to deliver.  My pursuit into town got the package, but it wasn’t the one that I wanted to have.  I will have to wait another day for my new Kindle to be delivered, though, disturbingly (or ‘normally’ as I would say or ‘unsurprisingly’ as I might also say) they had no warning of the immanent arrival of a package, while I have been given quite specific information informing me that the Kindle will be in Castelldefels by tomorrow.  I wait with no expectation whatsoever.

And talking of expectation, our tutor is now getting to the end of the time allowed by the OU for her to complete the marking.  She is allowed ten working days and, allowing for empty weekends she should only have a couple of days left to get everything done and sent back to us.  We will see.  In my experience both staff and students are quite cute when it comes to making the most of the time available when it is there for the taking!

As this is a full 60-credit course I need to find out what priorities the tutor has because she is going to be sole arbiter of my mark.  There is no examination; everything is going to be done by assignment, so knowing what makes such a person tick is pretty important.  To be fair the OU does give a vast amount of information about how the stuff is going to be assessed, but however proscriptive the description there is always wiggle-room for personal interpretation.  And anyway this is all about personal interpretation.  There is only so much that can be give for accuracy and following the rules, this is, after all Creative Writing and therefore there must be a certain amount of latitude for personal taste to influence the final mark.

I suppose that writing is fairly close to my heart and I value the skill that I think that I have.  As a teacher I am well able to evaluate a piece of writing I have, after all been doing that for all of my professional career, I also know that I am much more than competent in dashing off a response to a limited exercise which can impress with its flashy imagination and facile style.  It is taking it a step further, which is what I want this course to do for me, that is the worrying part.  The importance is not linked to some sort of paper qualification but to something which is rather more central to my life – my belief in my ability to self-evaluate.  Perhaps teachers are the worst of all students in needing the comfort of peer group evaluation!  Doesn’t make it any easier!

My swim today was exceptional and I went beyond what I have done recently!  Though admittedly in a sort of low-key way.  I have no idea what sportsmen and women are talking about when they say that they are able to break through the pain barrier.  Does it actually mean anything at all?  Pain is nature’s way of telling you to stop.  We should always listen to pain because it always has the possibility of using the weapon of the ultimate silence to those who will not hear!  Do these mythical sportspeople have a gene which allows them to self-medicate?  Rubbish, they are simple masochists.  Pure and simple.

My ‘pain barrier’ is finding a rhythm and feeling that, if I wanted to I could swim for ever.  Now in reality I have no intention of going over my self-imposed limit of 30 minutes and it is only the continuation of a particularly interesting track humming its way through my cheekbones that ever takes me over that limit.  But that steady, many would say monotonous, churning of the water with strong, methodical, almost effort free strokes is a pleasant mode to be in.  It does take effort and I am well aware of that at all times, but in my own small way it is a technique of going beyond.

Toni is now obsessed by his course and it drives him relentlessly.  He complains about the work and the lack of response from some of his tutors, but the maniacal gleam in his eyes tells you that this is what his life has been leading up to!  In a way I feel that about my course too, though the fear of what I am supposed to create by the end of it is something which I find intimidating all these months before.  I know that at the turn of the year the speech towards the end of the course will increase and I will join in the hysteria of all the other students who begin to wail their inadequacies to the moon!  Though that is an accepted perk of doing distance learning, I understand!

Since the clocks have gone back the nights have drawn in with a terrifying velocity and its now only half past six but it is black.  I am already beginning to long for the expansive days of summer!  Greed has always been one of my besetting sins!

I am now almost through the second box of new CDs which are being put into the computer, only the box of Das Alte Werk to go and I will have added 150 discs to my system!  Amazing, and all of them quality.  Not quality for Toni perhaps but for me yes!  There is a lot on these discs with which I am not familiar and so I could start another learning curve and get some obscure music under my belt and into my ears – or I could just wait for the ‘random’ program to give it to me eventually.  Which seems a much use of my time.  I am listening to selected discs, but purely on the basis of absolute self-indulgence!

Tomorrow my new Kindle (!) and more deep thinking about the unfairly attractive watch in the local shopping centre!