Anticipated action

As I hurriedly switched off my kitchen Internet radio as soon as a certain Sunday morning regular was threatened, I reflected that this is the longest period in my life (apart from my very early years) that I have resisted the allure of The Archers.  I have heard and read scraps of tantalizing information about the radical and sensationalist nature of the present story lines.  I have half listened to horrified commentators discussing the possible move from Ambridge of part of the Archer family – but I have resisted the urge to leave the radio running when the seven o’clock news (8 pm for us) has ended.

            But, in the same way as I always describe myself as an Anglican Atheist, always recognizing the powerful temptation of that vacillating organization, perhaps I should describe myself as a lapsed Archers listener rather than a person who does not listen?  Even writing about them I sense a tingling in the forefinger of my right hand which just needs to snake its way behind my head and press the internet radio button in the living room for familiar (or now, I fear, complete strangers) will talk their way into my life.

            From past experience, when I have un-lapsed, I know that it will be days before I am back in the swim of rural, agricultural life and hooked once more.  So, I’ll carry on typing until the urge subsides.

            Yesterday evening was so cold (for us) that we went round rolling down the shutters on some of the windows.  Our windows are thinly glazed and much of the heat that we generate (from the most expensive energy providers in Europe!) is dissipated.  It does give our living space the appearance of an underground cavern, but it does make it warmer.

            At the moment the sun is on the back of my head and the skies are a peerless blue – but it’s still cold for we seashore dwellers.

            I have now reached 450,000 page views in this blog.  Which is frankly astonishing.  I am not sure that I can bring myself to believe that the number refers to actual fingers on keys and eyes on computer screens.  I feel that many of those hits must be electronic website crawlers snuffling their intrusive way into all aspects of our computerised lives.  Or perhaps I’m wrong and this diary of a relative nobody has had a real audience that I would describe as damned healthy!

            To whoever (and whatever) is reading this: my thanks.  You, the unseen audience, have encouraged me to keep writing and give me a conduit to the past.

            A few days ago I delved back into the early years of this blog and re-read the end of my time in The Worst School in the World in Sitges.  I was gripped, amused, depressed and relieved – and anything which can generate those emotions deserves to be read!

            I also realized the number of spelling mistakes, infelicities in expression, things left unsaid, lacunae, self-indulgence, incoherence, rabid meanderings, neologisms, simple mistakes, and so on.  But all of those gave the writing an immediacy and freshness that would disappear in a more polished format.

            I really do feel that I am now back in the flow of writing this blog and feel a new enthusiasm for its production.  There is also regret for the omission over the past year and a bit.  That perception of my life is now gone for that period and will never return with the immediacy that these pages give to my lived wonderings!

At the moment one of our neighbours has got an engine, a motorcycle engine I think it is, running in his back garden giving the effect of a medium sized plane stationary next to the swimming pool.  There is just enough variety in the monotony of the intrusive sound to capture attention but not enough to satisfy it.  It is the sort of sound that makes half past eleven on a Sunday morning just perfect!  What better time to irritate the maximum number of people relaxing after a week in work?  Why is it that flame throwers are never to hand when you need them most?

Toni is now reaching a high point of frustration about the non-appearance of the book for his course.  He has already expressed himself with exemplary volubility about the sudden imposition of charges for these essential pieces of equipment for his next two courses and, having paid for them, he is now equally fluent in his vituperation concerning the university and the delivery organization.  It will be ironic indeed if the books that I have ordered (for my course, of course, naturally) arrive before his!  I only hope that I am in the swimming pool when that happens and that Toni will have the self-control not to consign my reading matter there!

Time to sip the dregs, depart and make up for my lack of lengths yesterday!

see also: smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es 

Making up for a missed day

The sun is shining directly on the computer screen making it difficult to see the words.  That isn’t strictly true of course, I merely have to increase the light with the touch of a button and my screen is quite easy to read, but I simply like to spread the feeling of envy around a little especially to stir up my friends in Britain!  Though to be fair our television screens here in Spain have been filled with pictures of vast (for us) snow drifts and dire prognostications about the fearful diminution of liveable temperatures during this weekend.  Living by the sea we are generally insulated from the worst excesses of poor weather.  So, while it is cold, it is also bright and the temperature finds it difficult to get below about five degrees.  Which is cold, but it is minus 14 in other parts of the peninsular, or so we are told.  We here in Castelldefels tend to regard these as horror stories told to make us feel smug in our relative warmth.

            Which does not stop it feeling cold and I type this wrapped in my black, furry blanket.  While still wearing sandals of course.  Some things cannot be changed merely because it is not the season!

For the first time ever I have returned from my swim without having swum.  In spite of circling the leisure centre like some sort of predatory shark, there were no parking spaces to be hand, not even for ready money!  There are of course always parking opportunities for those with no consideration and total belief that no policeman or warden will ever venture out over the weekend.  And indeed I did see one Pedralbes tractor (our equivalent of the Chelsea variety) bark over a whole grid of motorcycle spaces; another park at an almost perfect tangent to a rounded corner; another park on a zebra crossing, and numerous others double park.  But I am made of more law abiding stuff and spurn to descend to the parking contempt of Johnny Foreigner.  One has one’s standards.  Low they might be, but there are limits.

            I have told myself that there will be time for my swim after lunch.  We are expecting Irene to descend from the hills wherein she lives and join us for the repast.  She has had snow!  We sea-shore dwellers are hardly surprised by this as we tend to regard people who live above the third floor as having alpine tendencies and therefore prey to the white stuff.

            It all fairness it has to be admitted that the approaches to Irene’s home are vertiginous, and when we visit (in the days of warmth and sunshine) we often speculate on the chaos which a touch of frost must bring.  The idea of the white stuff on the roads is too awful to contemplate with any equanimity.  And Irene was duly trapped in her habitation by the fall that we had a few days ago.

            I was able to appreciate the aesthetic appeal of snow by gazing at the surrounding hills when I left the leisure centre.  Distant views of the stuff are more than sufficient for me.  I still have nightmares about my horror drive from the school on the hill during one storm.  By homeward journey took me nine times longer than normal, to say nothing of the psychological damage done to my nervous system by having to invent ever more colourful forms of abuse to lighten my progress and the structural damage done to the metallic integrity of the car by the sheer bombarding volume of that abuse.  Those who live and work in the hills must suffer the consequences!

Toni is still bleating on about the non-arrival of his books.  I am delighting in such moaning, relishing our moment of fellow feeling about shared deprivation.  Half jokingly Toni asserted that he would need one of the bookcases in the living room to accommodate his growing library.  Unfortunately I do not have space to spare and Toni’s suggestions about how to make space have been treated with the contempt that they richly deserve.  As Monty Python said, “Every book is sacred” or something like it, and I see no reason to change one of the guiding tenets of my life, discarding tomes merely because I may not have looked at a particular volume for a decade or so!  Heresy indeed!  What I say is, if you start to throw away books then you are on the vicious downward spiral ending up in voting Conservative.  And we all know where that will lead us.  Again.

Booking a room for Irene for the festivities in October was just a trifle bizarre.  Given that the Meal is in the restaurant near where we used to live, the little hostal behind the Most Expensive Supermarket in the World (the same supermarket away from which Toni’s horrified mum dragged me when I expressed the intention of buying tomatoes there) would obviously be the best bet for a cheap and convenient one night stop for Irene.  Some hope!

            When I parked, suspiciously easily, on the main road I should have realized that things were not going to be that simple.  The door to the hostal was closed but pushed open when I tried it and there was the Old Man hunched against the counter with his signature half-smoked cigar in his mouth.  He watched and listened as I outlined my needs and then, with a broad and totally uncharacteristic smile told me the hostal was closed; would be closed and would not have had been opened.  At all.  Ever.  Even for a room booked so far ahead as October.  Never. 

OK, I get the idea of the open hotel which is closed.  But why was he waiting behind the counter in the tiny reception area?  Waiting for what, for whom?  Perhaps it was to give the totally unhelpful suggestions of pricy alternatives to his non available accommodation.  Perhaps he is working on becoming a well-known eccentric – the only person in a hotel, walking through the empty rooms and looking for a hatchet to get into the bathroom.  Who knows?  Who cares?

            It did give me the opportunity to wander about and ask about spending other people’s money.  Ceri and Dianne’s flats were a little pricey.  The Playafels was equally expensive.  Paul Squared’s putative dwelling was reasonable however at around €40 around thirty quid.  That is not for an apartment, just a room and without sea view, but affordable – and with parking.  Though, thinking about it, there is not likely to be that much of a problem in the autumn.  Still, nice to make assurance double sure.

We will probably have lunch in Isla de Cuba in the centre – though I am not sure that that is the correct spelling.  This is one of the few restaurants that keeps the price of the weekend menu del dia at the same price.

            That restaurant was exactly where we went.  The place was crowded and we were eventually given a place not noted for its salubriousness – directly in front of the entrance to the toilets!  In spite of that the meal was good, though Toni had to have his meal taken away and the correct form of lomo given to him.  A small price to pay for a more than decent meal and at a weekend cost which is virtually unbeatable.

            I am still conscious that I haven’t gone for my swim and that time is slipping away and there could, oh the horror of it all, be a day when I had not immersed myself in the lightly salted waters of my local pool.

Thanks to Irene we have been struggling with the addition of a new program to our computer systems: Picasa – which is a photo program to add to the others which we have. 

I am prepared to go with this one as it offers the possibility of my making something of the photographs that I have taken for my ‘Trees’ poem sequence.  My way of thinking is that if I can make it look arty enough then I might be able to get away with using my own work rather than that of other people.  I will see.  There can be no harm in trying something new in the hope that I can get something productive out of it.

I am missing my swim.  If that is the most appropriate tense to use.  Who knows.

Don’t forget the new poems at smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es

Politics is not enough!

I think that the time has come to resurrect my “Kill a Conservative for Christ” button campaign formed in my mind during the torrid hate-filled days when That Woman focussed my political loathing.

            The walking joke that calls itself the president of Spain yesterday talked of his ‘justified pride’ in what he has done to this country.  Words almost fail me when I consider what is going on here and the way in which this laughably corrupt government spins its take on the domestic and financial chaos that they and their friends have forced on us.

            The news today is filled with stories of demonstrators who have been handed prison sentences of up to eleven years - while the bankers and bribe taking politicians not only parade their freedom with impunity but also berate the poor and dispossessed for any expression of justified disgust against the elected dictatorship that governs this country at the moment solely by the blatant and anti-democratic use of its absolute majority in parliament.  ( . . . and breathe . . . )

            My loathing of That Woman was at least directed towards an evil cow who was worthy of my active hatred.  The bunch of comic-character intellectual pygmies who dress themselves up with the trappings of government and work exclusively for themselves are not even contemptible enough to merit a fraction of the pure white heat of hatred that warmed my days while That Woman was in power!  However, I am prepared to berate them with gusto because they are working themselves up into a positive frenzy of disinformation and character assassination as they try and deal with the very real threat of Podemos.

            As far as I can tell, Podemos is the only hope of disturbing the careful stranglehold that the bipartisan death-grip of PP and PSOE have on the handles of power in this country.  There are basic faults that need to be addressed which Podemos promises to tackle and which I think could be pressed through parliament with the help of other parties which would find it very difficult to block policies that are self evidently for the benefit of the majority of the population rather than the narrow concerns of PP, bankers, businesspeople and other corrupt sections of society.  Podemos – the force is in the word itself!  

And, by the way, I do apologise for the breathless and unending sentences above, but the fingers got carried away with themselves when I tried to express the frustrated anger that I feel whenever I watch television and hear news of the latest piece of disgusting theft or breathtaking mendacity that our government obviously sees as 'business as usual' in their ransacking of Spain.

The poems progress.  Yesterday I attempted to draft out a poem based on looking through the new floor to ceiling windows in El Rincon de Lola while we were having lunch.  The view of the foaming sea was exhilarating and the effect of shadow on sand was striking.  The only problem was trying to find something to say that was not a cliché!  I’m not sure that I have succeeded, but at least I have produced something which I can return to in a few weeks time and worry about a little more and perhaps dare to change or comma or two!  The blog which has copies of the poems is smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es - I think.  Though smrnewpoems should get you to the poems if you use Google.  If you want to read them of course!

            I should be working on the ‘Winter Trees’ sequence as the next logical development from the 'Autumn Trees' sequence which has already been written – though I don’t like the title and I think that people (including my good self) will be fed up to the back teeth with trees by the time I get to summer!  Some inventive, or more likely obscure writing is called for.

Toni is on tenterhooks waiting for books.  I should film this denial of his usual personality as it has even taken in my ‘libros’ song (copyright pending) sung by me in the height of delight as excessive purchases of art books arrived to whet my appetite for my present course.  Which should be reminder enough for me to get on with the next of my essays.  Should be, but probably won’t be because the stuff that I have to write about doesn’t necessarily interest me.  Still, when this one is out of the way I will be able to concentrate on the EMA and Guevara and Hockney.

            Although I now have an agreement with the owner of at least four Guevaras to view them, a specific time and location have not yet been shared which rather takes away from the achievement of finding out about their existence in the first place.  Still, I am not in London until May, so there is time for things to be worked out.  I trust.

            Meanwhile the bibliography, if not the content of my artistic work, grows apace.  Which is, of course, something.

Displacement writing?

And now wet!  Together with the cold, this is not what I signed up for when I came to live in Catalonia.  Roll on Grand Canaria and the holiday which never seems to get any nearer.

The OU course seems to have ground to a halt again.  I am resting in the smugness of having got ahead of myself by a week or so and I am reluctant to start reading about that Great Fraud, Andy Warhol.  To be fair, there is some of his stuff which I quite like and, of course, I can see his importance in the development of Pop Art and in inaugurating the surge of gullible buyers who have allowed the likes of Jeff Koons to command eye wateringly stupid prices for his work these days. 

One of the best things about Warhol is that however negative you feel like being about his work, you will probably find that the man himself has beaten you to your position and already voiced your own caveats about the art with that dismissive tongue in cheek honesty that is so infuriating when you are trying to lose your temper about something you find inauthentic.  From his hair to his ‘superstars’ to the Factory and his Polaroid’s his is the apotheosis of the inauthentic!  And there is something wonderful about that!

My research into Guevara progresses, albeit slowly.  At least I have the prospect of actually seeing some of the work in the flesh.  Though the painting I would really like to see, ‘Little Splash’ is infuriatingly difficult to trace.  I have not given up.  My latest wheeze is to contact the Rothschild Foundation and find out if their records for the Guevara exhibition of 1974 exist and they have a buyer for that particular painting, or if it wasn’t for sale an owner.

Guevara has taken up all my time and I have done no work at all on Hockney.  The problem with him is that there is too much information available and at least I know that I will be able to see the painting that I am going to discuss when I go to London for the study day in May.

I am now uncomfortably aware that we are in February and May is disconcertingly near – but such proximity usually galvanizes me into action and keeps the juices flowing.

The one item that I constantly forget to buy when I go to the shops is a box of tea bags.  This has meant that I have been drinking various mixtures of teas as my usually morning (and afternoon and evening) beverage.  These mixtures are much more potent than the insipid offerings from Typhoo and Brooke Bond, but it does mean that I have been hard lining on caffeine-heavy leaves and I think that my furred tongue and clogged veins need a bit of a holiday that commercial tea would give.  Sometimes all you want is the unstructured taste of obviousness rather than the complexity of reality!

            The one thing that I have not been able to get recently is my red Early Gray.  This potent blend was available from the most expensive coffee shop in the world, just by the car park in the centre of town.  For some reason (I suspect because I was the only person who bought it) they have stopped carrying this product and I have had to make do with the black.  This is nothing like as potent and as aromatic and is very much a second best.

            Another tea, coffee and spice shop has opened up (at the side of the same car park) and I have been buying my Darjeeling and Te Ingles from them.  I have done my best to persuade them to get some Earl Grey and they have (eventually) responded by buying some black and assuring me that they will try and get some of the hard stuff.  As far as I can work out from the enthusiastic Spanish of the lady owner there have been problems with the supplier and they require them to take delivery of far too great a quantity of tea to make it worthwhile for them to stock.  I will persevere and see what I can get them to do!

            Meanwhile a holiday of tea inspididity would not come amiss.

See also: smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es