Commercial & Cultural

You are never safe in a capitalist society!

Just when you think that you have got the safely-living-in-a-consumer-society thing sorted, Pebble asks for money. 

To those benighted Luddites that have no response to the word Pebble with a capital letter, other than thinking of important stones on the sea shore, I must inform you that the company of Pebble was originally a Kick-starter company which an early developer the workable concept of a reasonably priced smart watch.  I bought one.  No surprise there I suppose, but I did resist until the watch worked with Mac products and it was waterproof enough to go swimming in.  Oh, yes and it was made in metal because I didn’t like the early plastic versions that they had.

            The watch was worth the money I paid.  Not because it is the best watch that I have ever owned or the most elegant – or indeed is it the watch that I am wearing at the moment.  And that final comment is one of the major drawbacks of the whole enterprise.

The battery life of the Pebble Metal (which I think is the name of the model that I have) is about five days.  The watch I am wearing at the moment is powered by the sun and by the actual action of wearing it.  The watch I am wearing gives time, date, etc. it has digital and analogue and checks itself every day with some sort of atomic clock which sends out a radio wave.  In other words, it’s magic.

But.  And it’s a big ‘but’ – my smart watch has a large and informative watch face and it also informs me when I am called on my phone.  I virtually never turn the sound of my phone on so, as far as Toni is concerned, for this aspect alone, the watch is worth what I paid for it.  In my particular set of circumstances, given the way I use my phone, a smart watch works.

And there the expense could have rested.  I have my watch.  Other non-Pebble companies have produced their versions and I have carefully checked them out and they usually fail on battery life or compatibility with Mac or, more usually than not, on being waterproof.  It seemed that I was safe.

And then Pebble started a new Kick-starter appeal with a new watch that does something or other and is waterproof.  And, out of a misplaced concept of commercial loyalty I have joined the countless thousands of people who have probably been Mac-trained and therefore have developed an instinctive gadget loyalty hardwired into their wallets – and bought a new watch.  Which hasn’t been made yet and for which I will have to wait months.

But it might be engraved on the back saying that I helped ‘Kick-start’ – so that’s all right then, isn’t it?  Oh and its plastic – and that means that I will have to buy the metal version when it is produced.  And.  And I don’t care.

Poems against arboreal outrage!

Priceless artefacts are being smashed by religious fanatics; corruption stalks the land; the situation in Ukraine worsens; nuclear proliferation threatens world peace and the Israeli Prime Minister is sinisterly terrifying – yet I get worked up about cut trees.

            The car park continues to be closed as the final remains of the twenty trees await their final destination.  Workmen are walking around, sometimes with bits of paper and looking at where the trees used to be with intense concentration.

            A lone workman is doing something with a pneumatic hammer and is possibly tracing out the course of a future drain.  Things have changed.

            And I sit inside the café (all the chairs outside have been taken away for some reason) forcing the hopelessly addicted smokers to stand around looking even more shifty than usual, while I sip and note, sip and note.

            I now have pages (admittedly small pages) of comments and notes about what I see, delightedly, as an outrage against the trees.

There is something determinedly small-minded about cutting down a single tree - cutting down twenty smacks of inhumanity.  Except of course, it’s not.  There are many more important crimes in the world, but this ‘crime’ is here and now and is a substantial part of my world.

Like one of the cultural and moral vultures that I denigrate, I am now using my feelings about the ‘slaughtered’ trees to provoke a poem.  I have written one (see yesterday’s post) and I fully intend to write at least one more.  In a reworking of a famous French phrase: ‘What I have I use!’  It can always be edited into oblivion, or at least a sort of oblivion, at a later date.

I am aware that anything that I post has a sort of illusory permanence.  Though my blog is a ‘hosted’ one which means that Google can stop or destroy it at any time they choose for any reason they choose.  Which is a sobering thought.  But I am not sure that I am prepared to pay a monthly fee to own my site. 

I need to take advice on this.  Not sure from whom though.  In the same way that I expect someone to come to the house, knock on the door and hand me a winning Lottery tickets that have been bought on my behalf, I also hope that advice about what to do in Blog terms will simply happen.  I should take note that, in spite of my patience in waiting, no one has actually offered me a ticket and therefore I need to be a little pro-active.  Writing about being pro-active is stage one.

You call that art?

Conceptual art does not usually bring out the best in people.  Especially when you try and defend it.

            The Open University course is creeping closer to the end of the twentieth century and trying to chart a way through all the excesses of Post Modernism – a difficult task when there is not really a settled definition of what the term means!

            Still, flicking through the final volume in our course material I can see that there is a fairly extensive concentration of Louise Bourgeois, an artist I like and admire.  I think that we will be concentrating on her more challenging pieces so that they can link with concepts of race, gender, identity and everything else that the OU finds important.

            As far as I can see, there is a lot of work in a limited amount of time.  I have therefore decided to be a little more anal in the way that I approach this assignment and study to the essay.  I think it is the only way.  Then my ‘release’ will be the work that I do on the mini-thesis that ends the course.

Getting my money’s worth

Walking in to the new British Library as a full ‘reader’ is something that I am looking forward to.

            According to a telephone call with the British Library, now in Kings Cross and not the Reading Room of the British Library, I will be able to renew my much lapsed Reader’s Card and pre-order books to be looked at when I am staying, coincidentally in Kings Cross, when I go to London for the Study Day. 

            In the British Library I always find that I am drawn to the fact that they have a copy of everything ever printed in Britain and a great deal more besides.  I therefore I have to resist the temptation to order things that have nothing to do with what I am supposed to be studying!

            My worst literary digression in the old Reading Room was ordering, on the most spurious of grounds, a first edition of ‘Noddy Goes to Toytown’.  I have rarely read a more sexist and racist book and I couldn’t remember it being quite so bad when I first read it.  Mind you there was a considerable number of years between my readings - and on my first reading I was the proud and passionate owner of a grandmother-made golliwog! 

Is one allowed to use such vocabulary these days, even in a memory!

Stay wet!

If the important research that I have done is correct then I should be within walking distance of a swimming pool when I am staying in the hotel in London.  I wonder if you have to wear flip-flops and a swimming hat in London pools?

            Perhaps I am thinking in the same way as British visitors to Spain think when they worry about forgetting the toothpaste, as if such things are not available here!

            It is second nature for me to think to myself that I could always buy what I do not have. 

When in doubt shop!

Trees, food and poetry - in any order!

I think that I was misled by the word: webinar.  The excitement of coming into contact with a useful neologism got me up at the crack of dawn to participate in a web-based discussion called, you’ve guessed it, a ‘webinar’.

            As this was being hosted in America the time was in EST, which I duly translated into Madrid time.  And was twelve hours out in my calculations!  A mistake anyone can make, though the six hours difference should have been added rather than taken away from their starting time.  If I had thought about it for longer than a Nano second I might have worked out that the USA is to the west of us and that the sun rises in the east and . . . well, there is no excuse really.

            And when, twelve hours later, I finally joined the webinar (having decided that this mixture of web and seminar was not really so clever) I discovered that the whole enterprise was actually a selling opportunity for the couple of hosts who were taking the webinar.  I have to admit that they did give some good advice and I did have the muted thrill of hearing the title of my forthcoming book, ‘Flesh Can Be Bright’ read out by the female host, so a few hundred people have heard the title, which is the first stage, I suppose, towards buying the thing!

The shock of the day was finding out, when I attempted to park in the leisure centre, that all the trees had been cut down!  I never like seeing trees destroyed, but this seemed worse somehow as these trees have been my on-going inspiration for a whole series of poems and are the basis for a continuing series of poems.  I did, of course make copious notes as I sipped my tea and watched the workmen operating the grab and scooping up the remains of the shattered vegetation.  This is the poem I wrote:

Winter Trees

ii.   Gone

The blossom headed grab

picks up what’s left of

twenty trees.

When this year’s growth

was not cut back,

I should have known

that something was afoot.

And now these winter-winnowed

twigs protrude from that

closed metal sphere

like so much wayward hair.

Spaced equally, the twenty

shallow pits share emptiness

concave, not deep.

How easy to remove. 

And cut. 

Fresh, pungent stumps

that flaunt their age

in death.

Those trees were never huggable.

The rough, stained, ulcered bark

defied caress.  And yet.

Will asphalt fill the cavities

where roots once were?

And cars park easily

on obstacle free ground?

And memory forget

that there were ever trees?

This poem is the second that I have written about Winter trees and I hope, eventually, it will be a continuation of the series that I have already written on Autumn trees.  My latest poems can be found at: http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/  I am thinking about this series as forming part of my next but one book of poems!  There is nothing like thinking ahead.  I would like this series to be accompanied by original drawings, just as I hope the ‘Autumn trees’ series will be in ‘Flesh Can Be Bright’ to be published this September.  That all sounds so professional, I can almost believe it!

Lunch today was spectacular, one of the best that we have had in Castelldefels.  I had a started of Carpaccio of beef that I last had in Paris.  This was substantially better, and a bloody sight cheaper!  My whole meal cost about ten quid, including a class of Cava and coffee with ice.  The homemade tiramisu was something that my friend Paul would have killed for.  You can see photos of most of the dishes in http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es/ You will not see photos of the postres because we both started eating them before I thought of using the camera!  Again! 

Toni’s blog is growing nicely and the photos are a vivid reminder of the excellence of the eating experience that Castelldefels offers at such a reasonable cost.

Our eventual hope is that the blog will eventually be recognized as one of the formative eating guides and we will be fed for nothing where ’ere we go!  Fond hope.  But the blog is looking good and it is a clear guide about where to go for a good meal at more than reasonable cost.

And the next please!

My gleeful euphoria (is that tautology?) at the final completion of the latest essay for my Open University course was linked to the fact that the remaining part of the course was to be devoted to the mini thesis that I have planned for the end of module assessment, linking the paintings of Alvaro Guevara and David Hockney.

As the essay winged its electronic way to the North of England and my tutor I was able, with an easy conscience and a light heart, to suggest to Toni that we try another restaurant so that he could add another of our favourites to his blog on http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es/ and we could have a celebratory meal.

We did and we had a selection of tapas of the highest quality in a pica-pica menu; all of which have been photographed and which will, in the next couple of days be posted.  We sat outside for this meal because the inside tables were all taken.  It was not too bad, but I didn’t take my outside jacket off and when the sun moved away from our table it was time for us to move away too!

On our return, after a little light mocking of Toni as he settled down to try and understand what he has to do with his next assignment on the computer technology course that he is taking, I went upstairs to get on with all those little tasks that simply cannot get done when you are retired - because of lack of time.

Now, now, don’t get nasty!  What you have heard is true – every retired person I know regularly, especially when non-retired people are present, sighs and says a variant of, “I have absolutely no idea how I ever managed to fit a job into my life!”  This is usually said with a wry smile and an upward movement of the head and a raising of the eyebrows.  And it always works!  People’s expressions are priceless and worth every minute of the decades that you were actually in work.  That last sentence might not be absolutely true.  At all.

Anyway, I settled down to get my tasks completed and thought, as part of my general life housekeeping that I would check up on the pro-forma that we have to use to submit an outline proposal for the end of course module.  It was while I was worrying my way through the administration that is necessary to get this done that I noticed that there was one more essay serial number than there should have been.

The horrible realization dawned on me that I had not factored-in an essay related to the content of the last volume of the course that we are taking.  There is another essay to be done.  And this one is on Body Art.  And if you think that just means tattooing then you don’t know much about modern art as it is understood by the Open University!

So, from a feeling of tranquillity I now realise that the workload is actually heavier than I ever dreamed possible.  That is an overstatement of course, but one has to get over the feeling of being cheated by one’s own inability to study the assessment procedures with the clarity that I have always accused other OU students of lacking!  Touché!

However, I am not going to let this essay creep up on me in the same way as the last one (and the one before that) I will be prepared and get it done in good time.  Even though this essay is on a single title and not divided into two parts like the others, I think that it is more straightforward.  Those may be foolish words that I will look back on with an ironic laugh, but I am relying on them to be true because we have the end of module assessment to think about as well.

I think that there will be useful approaches in this last volume which may well feed into the EMA, especially in relation to sexual politics and sexual identity as Alvaro Guevara was bi-sexual and Hockney, well, Hockney is Hockney!  I only hope that I can trawl through our mighty bible-length book of artistic theory and find some pretentious piece of near gibberish twaddle that links my two artists.

I have discovered, yet again, that philosophy is not my strong suit.  I do enjoy reading about it, just as I enjoy some art theory, but it is hard to retain.  

I have recently read two books by Nigel Warburton.  The first is ‘Philosophy – the basics’ a short and approachable introduction to philosophy which is simple without being insulting. 

The second is a brilliant book, ‘A Little History of Philosophy’.  It is the sort of book which an intelligent and interested young person could read, and is exactly the sort of book that an adult thanks god exists because he can understand it as well.  I recommend this book without reservation.  Warburton makes a narrative out of the history of Philosophy by linking his chosen series of philosophers in a sort of Hegelian dialectic (which he also explains) and probably doesn’t fit what I have just said, but who, after all is going to contradict me! 

These are book worth buying and they form a growing part of my library as a sort of first aid in philosophical understanding.  These books really do speak to the reader is an unthreatening way, in just the way that the ironically titled ‘Wittgenstein made easy’ in the notorious ‘made easy’ series by Fontana did not!  Perhaps, after reading the two Warburton books, I should go back to the ‘easy’ explanation of Wittgenstein and see if anything Warburton wrote has lubricated the rusty philosophical synapses in my brain.

I wonder what justification the president of the Spanish congress is thinking up to explain away the fact that she was playing Candy Crush while her party leader and president was delivering a State of the Nation speech to introduce a crucial debate.  Admittedly Bromo (my ‘pet’ name for the walking joke that calls itself president) is contemptible, a liar and terminally corrupt, but he is her contemptible, lying, corrupt joke.  The least she could have done is preserve at least a paper thin veneer of regard (especially with television cameras around) for the pathetic farce that is the leader of this discredited government of bribe taking blatant criminals, as he was giving a key note speech and attempting to defend that which is impossible to defend if you have any regard for the fundamentals of morality and logic.

            Perhaps we should rejoice that the has demonstrated in the most public of ways the contempt that she feels for her party and her leader.  There is, after all, more joy in heaven over one right-wing scumbag PP member who recognizes the worthlessness of her party than over ninety and nine who unthinkingly toe the party line and don’t play with their IPads.

            It turns out that she wasn’t actually playing Candy Crush but some sort of ice game called Cold Fall or something like that.  Careful viewing of the blurred television pictures clearly show the opening sequence of the game.

            She should of course resign.  Of course she won’t.  This is Spain and PP has an absolute majority and they can do and do do exactly what they like.  The iPad, game-playing president of the congress did have the good grace to ignore all questions about her playing and she carefully took a different way out of the chamber to avoid the press, almost as if she was concerned at the gross lack of respect that she had displayed.  That was a nice gesture, but she doesn’t really need to worry, all she has to do is follow the behaviour of the man she doesn’t listen to and ignore the press: they can’t sack her and she is hardly likely to be sacked by a group which has more ignored denunciations against it than a certain dictator-led Spanish government of some fifty years ago.

            I think that we are near to a breakdown in civil society, with a government which is becoming more and more authoritarian by the day. 

There is a very real chance that this bunch of chancers will be thrown out in the next general election and I am convinced that we have seen nothing yet of what they are prepared to do to retain power.  I truly believe that this government has no moral depth whatsoever and they are capable of anything.  God help us all!

            With concerns like this a daily terror in Spain, it is little wonder that I turn to the more grotesque extremes of cutting edge modern art to take my mind of the even more grotesque artistic disaster that the government of Spain is becoming.

Another form of escape is actually a sort of double negative because my concentration on my poems is really a intensification of thought which is at its best an exclusion of anything else.  At least for a moment! 

My recent poems can be seen at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/

Time to breathe again?

The fatalistic philosophy of David from The School on the Hill has proved its worth yet again.  Like a modern day Candide, his supremely irritating assertion that, in spite of all the factors hindering completion of any action in academic life, “It will get done!” has been shown to be true once more.  And, although the even more irritating and fiddly work of referencing is not complete,  a useable draft of my essay exists.  This writing has almost gone to the wire but, dare I say it, I have two days in hand and the thing (for thing it is) is largely complete.

            It will be a relief to get this essay out of the way, to allow concentration on the end of module assignment.  Quite what happens to Book 4 of our course which is now ahead of us with no essay or examination to force concentration, I do not know. But that is for the future and I am not looking forward with any discriminating clarity until the essay is winging its electronic way to my tutor and her fully justified condemnation!

Toni is working with what I can only describe as compressed smugness.  He is enjoying the thrill of horrified anticipation about the depth and width of the work that he will have to complete in the new courses that he has just started, but that is because he is no believer in the fear-fuelled production process that I espouse.  He looks back to his time in school as largely wasted and therefore the makeshift and lackadaisical approach that he had then is anathema to him now.  He works with oodles of time in hand and ensures that all his assignments are finished well within the limits allowed.  I do not think that he could exist in the digressive world that I inhabit!

            I am supposed to be writing an abstract of my ‘research’ so that its inclusion in some form or other might be considered for an exhibition on Guevara in Leeds University!  I am not sure that people outside the course A318 in the Open University have any real idea of what I am doing or what I am proposing to do and at what level – but I am enjoying the frisson of thinking that my work may extend out of the narrow tutor/student environment and gain further readers.  
          Yet again, as with my autumn book, all I have to do is write the thing so that there is some there to share!

Toni is using his blog (at: http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es/ ) as part of his course as he is able to try out the various technological techniques to which he has been introduced.  
          The number of restaurants that he has commented on has now reached double figures and I rather enjoy the fact that our eating out has now been given a sort of authority and vindication by the inclusion of each of our meals as raw material (though rather delicious and usually cooked!) for their critical inclusion in his blog - with photos!

            I think the best part of the blog is the illustration of the food, and for the photographs I have resurrected my old Canon G9 – probably the favourite of all my cameras.  This is a flexible and compact piece of kit, feels good in the hand and does not have the bulky ostentation of a bridge camera or full SLR.  I am inclined to take it with me to London for the photographing of the Guevaras when I finally get to see them in Chelsea.

            It will be interesting to see how Toni’s blog develops, especially when the Ruta de Tapa is in full swing as each offering will have an entry of its own and Toni has indicated that we could do one-a-day then the number of entries will be considerably boosted.  
          The only unfortunate thing is that these tapas are only produced for the limited period of the Ruta and therefore will be of only historical interest as people will not be able to sample them after the Ruta closes.  
          But I think that they will be interesting to look back on and, if Toni continues the blog for the next few years then he could show how restaurants respond to the Ruta by adding the new tapa to the old and linking this to the general meal entry.  
          Already we have revisited one restaurant and we have added photos of the ‘new’ meals so that the range of food available in at least one place has been demonstrated.

            Eventually this blog will be a fascinating pictorial record of the food that we have eaten over a period and also a way of keeping track of how restaurants keep up their standards.

            
          In my blog, the one that you are reading now, I am still mystified by the fact that one particular entry has had and continues to have a large and regular readership.  
          I have re-read this entry myself and I would like to think that it is because of the witty and insightful writing that it has such a continued popularity – but I don’t see it myself.  
          The ways of the blogosphere are weird and wonderful and I suppose that one just has to accept rather than analyse.

            My poetry blog (at: http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/ ) is altogether more rarefied and the readership is, shall we say, more select.  I would welcome ways in which to extend the readership, but I don’t know how.  I can hear Toni’s injunction to “Go on YouTube!” as the answer to all of life’s questions.            I don’t know why philosophy is still taught in universities because now all you have to do is “Go on YouTube”.  What is reality?  Why does pain exist?  Is there a God?  What?  All the answers to these and more questions are waiting to be experienced in a three minute barely articulate video made by some spotty teenager in Wisconsin.  It is such comfort to know that Knowing with a capital K is just a few clicks away!

Now for my swim, and then the fiddly bits of the essay – together, of course with my flamboyantly academic yet paradoxically popularist bibliography, all carefully double-spaced.  
          If nothing else, and sometimes my essays are exactly that, they look professional and polished.  Pity about the content – though there is sometimes an elegance of expression which almost makes up for the paucity of apposite perception!  Almost!

And let’s face it, sometimes that is enough.