It's only money!

A few years ago I had occasion to visit my local tax office in Llanishen in Cardiff.  Not by choice I might add.  This office was not some small, Heath-Robinson, out of the way, darkened room – rather it was a gigantic multi-storey in-your-face building whose intimidating outside said quite clearly that mere humans were not wanted.  Imagine my surprise therefore when speaking to the denizens of this anti-Utopia to find that they were approachable, helpful and polite.  They cut through my paperwork with exemplary consideration and sent me on my way with a happy smile!  And yes, I did write my appreciation in the visitors’ book.  It seemed the least that I could do.

            Now jump forward a few years and my tax affairs are now in the hands of Spain.  At which point, my mind drifts back a lot of years and to a fond memory of ‘The Revenge – A Ballad of the Fleet” by Tennyson in which the immortal line, “Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain” comes back to sum up the situation of having anything to do with the bureaucracy of the latter mentioned country.

            You can download your tax information from the Internet and the printout thus produced should give you a complete overview of you tax affairs and tell you how much you are going to get back from the tax people.  Everyone I know has a rebate at the end of the tax year.  Not me.  This time the tax authorities wanted over twelve hundred euros from me.  And I am not working!

            After a few jocular observations about tax, Spain, Satan and the power of Evil, during which the glass in the windows started to melt, I calmed down sufficiently to hear Toni say, “They do this to everyone!”  It turns out that the tax offices in Spain are in direct opposition to what the American Constitution describes as the right to ‘the pursuit of happiness’.  The tax office of Spain is, and always will be agin’ us.  It hates the people whose blood it sucks and, while the tax people themselves can claim tax back to the time of The Revenge, if you as a citizen do not claim what you think you might be owed immediately – tough!  Even if the tax office makes a mistake you will find out that it is still your fault.  You should have checked, all the responsibility is yours and none theirs.

            Therefore there are offices everywhere which offer an essential service of checking through your papers and giving advice.  When I was able to listen without the words vaporizing when they touched any part of my hearing apparatus, it seemed sensible to go to one of these people and hope.

            These people do not work for nothing, but in a few minutes the guy tapping away at a computer program with my details on it was able to halve my debt and to cut the payments into two interest free dollops of my cash.  So, although still paying out, I was paying out just under half as much as I feared.  Result.  And money to spend.  I know that is an illogical statement, but it has been one of my major lifelines in the way that I approach finance!

            Our trip to a nearby small, cheap restaurant suddenly transmogrified into a short car trip to a much higher class establishment where we were able to have a ‘gourmet’ meal on the Castelldefels passport.  This essentially means that a certain number of restaurants in the town offer a good three course meal with drink, bread and coffee for €25 per person.

            So sitting on the terrace of a restaurant perched on the hill above Castelldefels and with a panoramic view of the sea we had a starter of pica-pica which was a selection of tapas ranging from prawn in romescu sauce through a cheese, fruit and nut salad to Spanish ham and Catalan bread.  This was followed by a lobster and sea food rice stew, and completed with ice cream on apple jelly with lime soaked Granny Smith – all washed down with a more than drinkable Torres red and ending with iced coffee.  Delightful.  And I suppose I should give a twisted sort of thank-you to the tax people, because they sort-of made it possible.  At least to my way of thinking.

            I felt like a siesta after lunch and decided to take it on the beach.  And for the first time this year, I went into the sea.  The water was cold, but bearable and it was sort of refreshing.  I even managed to get through some of my latest Thomson film book, ‘The Big Screen: The story of the Movies and what they did to us.’  If you know the writing of David Thomson then I won’t have to do more; if you don’t know his writing then I urge you to try it out.  He has an effortless encyclopaedic knowledge of film and the ability to write about it in a way that gets your hooked at once.  His most famous book is The [New] Biographical Dictionary of Film, now in its sixth edition.  This is a must.  He is opinionated and refreshing and, like the Guinness Book of Records it is very, very difficult to look up what you started to look for without being beguiled along the way!  I would also recommend his ‘Have you seen . . . ?’  Even if you haven’t actually seen the films that he is talking about you will want to by the time you have read the page devoted to each and anyway the writing is of a quality to give pleasure even if you never actually get round to looking at them.  Thus ends this Public Service Announcement.

            Tomorrow, Terrassa for another birthday.  And we haven’t bought the present yet.  Sigh.

Me? Cynical?

At my most cynical, I could say that the present situation in the World Cup (which FIFA has trademarked) means that, with any luck both England and Spain could be out by the end of the Group Stages and there would be no further point in watching the month-long tedium of this most corrupt of sports.

            Although that is a moot point.  Cricket has shown itself to be ideal for match fixing and the Third World (or the Developing World as we are now supposed to say, though I don't think that any less condescending) has managed to make umpteen billions out of crooked betting on mind-bendingly boring matches.  That does, you have to admit, add a certain zing of the forbidden to an otherwise arcane-like (that was the only adjectival alternative that Word allowed, though 'arcane' is an adjective already - oh dear, caught by my own ignorance) piece of self-indulgence.  F1 racing need not make us pause for a moment: anything which has that repulsive white-haired dwarf in charge is obviously terminally corrupt.  Baseball is still haunted by the fixing of the World Series in nineteen-hundred and something – and so we can go on for all the sports.

            You only have to look at the governing bodies of sports to realise that any thoughts of sport for sport’s sake is a remote possibility.  In a charmingly sexist moment in one of his novels, Dickens refers to ‘old women of both sexes’; in a similar vein I would characterise the faces of sport government as ‘old, white, middle-aged, middle class men’ of all races, classes, sexes and ages.  Corrupt to their very finger tips: if not in terms of money and raw power then certainly in terms of perceived status and self importance.

            FIFA is, of course pre-eminent in terms of barefaced arrogance and illegality.  The only reason that such a rotten organization based itself in Switzerland was that there was no bribery law in operation until relatively recently – though laws, of course do not hinder the machinations of this body which makes the Mafia look like a WI Knitting Circle.

            The only decent course open to World Football is for every national sports’ organization to withdraw their membership and look towards founding another organization which has some sort of reasonable ethos behind its charter.  Blatter is a petty dictator who gains ‘friends’ and ‘influence’ by spending other people’s money to ensure that the “”good and the great”” (double inverted commas seems somehow inadequate to highlight the twisted definitions that FIFA uses in its lofty pronouncements) keep to the status quo, their stipends and the swamp of illegality that makes the organization the hated symbol of self-promotion that it is today.

            Brazilian police have arrested high profile demonstrators who have been working against the promotion of the completely false façade that FIFA and the Brazilian government has tried to drape over the chaotic and corrupt preparations for the World Cup.  Why was it that the England-Italy game was allowed to proceed when not one, NOT ONE, of the trial events to test the security and preparedness of the stadium demanded by FIFA actually took place?  Why is a high-handed non-tax paying self-justifying band of criminals allowed to get away with this?

            The answer is always money of course.  And with The Crisis showing no real signs of letting up the usual hidden, chummy corruption of the moneyed classes has burst out into the open and the political classes are scurrying about trying to hide the blatant evidence of their own wrongdoing.

            Take, for example, the ex-king of Spain – the widely despised King Juan Carlos (serial philanderer, elephant killer, hypocrite and blood sucker).  His private life is scandalous; his financial doings questionable; his attitude towards ‘his’ people contemptible; his attitude towards ‘justice is the same for everyone’ laughable; his hands ever open to take what he does not earn. 

            At the moment his just desserts are in abeyance because he is titular head of state and therefore ‘beyond’ justice.  As an abdicated king, he would be open to prosecution and quite a few mothers asking for him to take responsibility for his alleged children.  So what does our ‘government’ do?  Well, the two main political parties can see their easy ‘governance’ of Spain slipping from their corrupt little fingers, so the PP (a laughably right-wing bunch of crooks) and PSOE (an even more laughable bunch of so-called socialists) come together and stitch up a new law which keeps a king in place and gives the old discredited king the status of ‘king’ which allows him to continue to be above the law which he himself (in a much repeated piece of film) said was the same for everyone, but of course, he meant for ‘every one of you and not for me and my family.’

            All of this is happening during the aftermath of the European elections, while the world cup is going on, and while everyone is looking forward to the summer holidays.  There are five more days with the students in schools and then the customary days when the teachers should be able to prepare for the coming term in September, but will in fact be condemned to completely pointless ‘meetings’ which sap life and give you a clear view of what a Jean Paul Sartre hell might be like.

            Relentless negativity is wearing, isn’t it?  But it keeps me sane.

            The weather is not wonderful, but it isn’t raining.  I have just had an excellent pasta for lunch and I still have plenty of reading material to keep me going until our ‘holiday’ in the UK.

            Life may not be ‘good’ in all (or indeed any) political respects, but it keeps me happy!

Books, my rock!

The Month-Long Horror of the World Cup has begun.  Although I have to admit that the own goal by Brazil (and a Real Madrid player at that) has added a certain piquancy to the opening game which until this point has never been lost by the host nation.

            There are two Barça players in the Brazil side.  And we might pause here and wonder at the fact that I know things like this.  And pause again because Neymar has scored to equalize for the home side.  Croatia will now collapse and the game will become part of boring World Cup history.

            It is a nasty thing to say, but I rather think that I want Brazil to lose and play badly so that the fully justified opposition to the rampant corruption of FIFA and the Brazilian government can be held up to the scrutiny that it deserves.  There were disturbances in Sao Paulo but they have been overshadowed by the frankly embarrassing opening ceremony and the excitement of the opening game.  A lot can happen in a month, but I fear that the vested interests that sucked the country dry with their extortion will be able to enjoy the fruits of their illicit machinations without too many explicit condemnations.

            The odious Blatter has sashayed his way through a congress of FIFA with a sick political finesse which comes with complacency, corruption and money, lots of money.  He has promised each member nation a total of 750,000 dollars of extra funding after the world cup.  For the smaller non-EUFA nations this is a lot of money and Blatter must be like a Father Christmas to them liberally distributing other peoples’ money.  Blatter’s extraordinary organization (which modelled their conference room on the War Room in Doctor Strangelove) has so-called ‘reserves’ of over a billion dollars!  They pay no tax in Brazil during the World Cup; they have forced the Brazilians to enact a special Budweiser Law to overturn the ban on beer in Brazilian stadia because that company is a sponsor – they are, to all intents and purposes an amoral organization which is not, and hasn’t been for some time, fit for purpose.

            Which brings me on to the tax people in Spain – who have demanded an extraordinary amount of money from me for not working.  A situation which defies logical thought and conventional computation.  But this is Spain where only the relatively poor pay taxes and the corruption of the good and the great makes even FIFA look like some sort of easy touch charity.

            Whatever my tax situation the real scandal in the country at present is the forthcoming acclimation of the new parasite to take over the discredited throne of Spain.  The present holder of the office has made the brand so toxic that he is not even going to the proclamation of his tall son.

            One survey suggests that over sixty per cent of the population would welcome a referendum about the continuation of the so-called royal family.  Our government of worthless, time serving yes-men, corrupt from top to bottom have rushed through legislation (easy given that the demented population was deluded enough to give them an absolute majority in parliament) and we will see the worthless Bourbon dynasty given a continued mandate emphasising the anti-meritocratic approach that characterises every innovation of the PP governing junta.

            To set against this unending picture of corruption and self-seeking arrogance in the face of justifiable condemnation there are books.

            My box of delights from the student suggested book list for the next course on Modern Art arrived in a large and heavy brown cardboard Amazon box.  My delight was such that I immediately improvised a song:

                        Libros, libros, libros, libros,

                        Libros para me,

                        Libros, libros, libros, libros,

                        He, he, he, he, he!

Now say that two and a half grand for a course on Creative Writing was wasted!  More disturbingly we have been singing this for the past couple of days and Toni has gone so far as to create a series of gestures to accompany these deathless lyrics.  One suspects that Eurovision cannot be far away!

            Although I wanted to read all of the books at once and at the same time, I managed to rationalize my desires into a more sequential form and started with ‘Philosophy, the basics’ by Nigel Warburton, published by Routledge.  I have not read that many philosophy books – at least not all the way through – but this one is easily the best that I have attempted.  It is lucidly written in chunk size passages and the whole thing is organized around Big Questions.  It is an engaging read and is going to be a philosophy book I read the whole way through.  And that surely is a recommendation in itself!

            Another book that I have already read is more directly related to the Modern Art course and is ‘What are you looking at?  150 years of Modern Art in the blink of an eye’ by Will Gompertz, published by Penguin.  This book is a delight and it has pictures.  Poor black and white ones and a selection of full colour plates.  As I was reading it I tried to imagine how it would read if you were coming to Modern Art for the first time.  There are lots of names, but Gompertz weaves them into a compelling narrative of art which is written in a chatty and unintimidating style which keeps you in because Gompertz wears his scholarship lightly.  I learned a lot from this book, especially about those little, seemingly unimportant facts that other books do not give you.  I recommend it wholeheartedly.

            The one thing I would suggest about it though, is to have an iPad next to you when reading it so that you can look up illustrations of those paintings which Gompertz does not illustrate.

            As someone who thought he knew something about the history of Modern Art, I was disconcerted by the number of ‘key’ artefacts cited by Gompertz about which I knew little or nothing.  That, I suppose is what education is all about, roll on next October and finding out even more!

            In the same series as the philosophy book, I have ‘Art History, the basics’ by Grant Pooke and Diana Newall.  This looks a little more intimidating and is altogether chunkier – but it does have pictures!  This book is closer to my course than the Gompertz as it is concerned with the ideas of Art History rather than with a description of paintings – this is one that I need to get to terms with as a clear start to the theoretical work that is necessary in the course next October.

            And when I am reading and learning I am not thinking about the rampant corruption which washes over everything

John Uzzell Edwards

Going back to May 1974, the English Department of Swansea University published the first issue of a literary magazine called Prospect.  In that first issue, on the front cover and on a few pages inside there were illustrations of drawings and paintings generously contributed by John Uzzell Edwards. 

            I like to think that the most satisfying aspect of my membership of the editorial board of that magazine was pressing for the inclusion of ‘pictures’ as well as the written word and especially of being able to view and select work from John Uzzell Edwards’ home studio.  It was an utter delight to be allowed to trawl through a whole body of work and have John’s enthusiastic encouragement to take what I liked for inclusion.

            The work that I liked the most was a drawing of a stone gate in Merthyr and the reproduction was placed on page 7 of the magazine just after a new poem by Duncan Bush called Gothic Cathedral where, although the gate is no Cathedral, yet the power of the bamboo ink drawing does echo some of the sentiments in Duncan’s lines,

                                   The round-shouldered stone

                                   cuniforms

                                   that held the arc

                                   bowed down by

                                   weight, unhooped and lifted

                                   to acuteness;

                                   growing tall, they earthed mass.

                                   The load

                                   passed into the ground

                                   like electricity

The whole poem is worth reading, as indeed are Duncan’s many other poems and novels that he has written since the 70s.

            I loved John’s drawing of Gate and after we had had it photographed and published I raised with John the idea that I might actually like to purchase it.  I was, you can tell, a student with pretentions!

            It took months for John to agree to take my money.  He told me that he had rather forgotten about the drawing until I unearthed it again and that he thought it was rather good.  But agree to sell it he eventually did and it now hangs on the staircase on the third floor and I see it every day.  

            It is a picture which divides people and they end up with very decided opinions about it.  Some, like me, regard it as a remarkable piece of work fluent, assured showing a sure line and being a striking image.  Some regard it with distaste telling me that they find it sinister.  True the ground through the gate and leading to buildings in the background is a mass of swirling lines which some have seen as resembling a weeping woman, but I tend to see it as satisfyingly calligraphic making the rounded rectangular empty distance have as much vitality as the drawing itself.  Remarkable and deeply satisfying.  I love it.

            The reason that I am writing about this masterly drawing is that I read in the Guardian today that John has died at the age of 79.

            The mild mannered, accommodating, understated and absurdly talented man is gone.  I remember him with affection and I think with sympathy of his wife and family.  

            He was a good man with a real gift and I am privileged to have a wonderful example of his art as part of his living memorial.