Slipped chains, home thoughts and anticipation

Day 4 of Bike Riding

And the chain came off again!  I think the major problem is the way that I change gears.  I know the major problem is the way that I change the gears.  I do it badly.  Consistently badly.  And the chain comes off.  Something to work on.

            I am now getting used to riding the bike, but I am still not convinced that it is ever going to ‘take’ as far as I am concerned.

March poems

It is only right and proper that some of my poems should reflect the importance of this month to Wales.  And one of them does.  You can read it at: http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and with this one, more than some of the others, I would appreciate feedback.  But, I have to admit that I am content as long as at least one other human life form has read it!

            I think that the present poem could be the penultimate one to be included in ‘Flesh Can Be Bright’ (to be published in the autumn) and I can now, or at least in a few days time, get down to the onerous task of editing, redrafting and preparing the book for publication.  I have offers of proof reading for which I am very grateful and I only hope that the other aspects of the book which are outside my direct control all come together in the next few months.

            I am very much looking forward to this publishing event!  A small thing, but mine own!

Lunch

Another meal in the restaurant that we still refer to as The Card Place in spite of the fact that the free meal incentive card that they used has long since been discarded.

            More photos were taken to illustrate Toni’s blog and he is now well into double figures in the establishments that he has covered and illustrated.

Out and about

This evening I’m off to Barcelona for a meeting of the poetry group which I joined when I was taking A215 Creative Writing with the Open University.  I have kept on with this group because it is warm, friendly and productive.

            One of my friends there is thinking of taking the University of Iowa’s free on-line course in Creative Writing.  This is the course that I did just after the Open University module and I thoroughly recommend it.  It is the sort of course that I might re-take some time in the future, especially if I need the impetus to write more poetry.  I found it stimulating and supportive.

Hotels

For some reason which I find difficult to understand all the hotels in Barcelona are suddenly more expensive that they were a week ago.  The hotel I usually use is charging more than double the rate I paid two weeks ago!  There are no holidays as far as I can work out; I am at a loss to explain.

            The end result of this hike in prices is that I am going in my car.  Parking in the centre of Barcelona (and our little group meets within a stone’s throw of the Cathedral) is exorbitant, but it is a damn sight cheaper than staying in an inexplicably expensive room.

            As I am driving I am taking fruit juice with me for the ‘meal’ we have half way through the evening.  God alone knows what a totally sober poet produces!

Two firsts!

Day 3 of the bike riding.

At least the chain did not come off today, so I count that as a bit of a triumph.  I also cycled up the hill over the motorway which I really think must count for something!  I can’t truthfully say that I am ‘getting into’ cycling, but I am doing it with something approaching good grace.  Unless it rains.

Tree destruction

I continue to watch the levelling of the area where the trees used to be with some grief, mixed with fascination in watching the speed and efficiency with which the workmen are effacing all traces of what used to be there before.  I may not like what they have done, but they are doing it well!

            What will be a telling indication of the level of managerial competence is the way that they put the lines in the space that they have now created for parking.  In my experience few humans (including myself) have the spatial and organizational imagination to paint a sequence of parking lines that uses the available area to its full potential.  Indeed my experience is that the almost arbitrary spacing of the lines creates vindictive confusion and bitter recrimination.

            Perhaps this car park will buck the trend in this country and they will actually give a reasonable amount of space.  For once.

Critical lunch

Lunch was eaten selflessly as an expedition to discover the quality of food provided in the restaurant connected to the apart hotel that some of our guests in October will be using.

            In due course an illustrated account of our meal will appear in Toni’s blog at http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es where other of our joint eating ventures are to be found.

            The meal was delicious and the glass of vermouth to start the meal was a welcome touch.  Still, details on Toni’s blog.

The inspiration

Toni heard, saw, hunted and killed the first mosquito of the season.  How the hell the thing survives this early in the year is difficult to imagine – though the weather has been fine and sunny.  Indeed it has been so good that I have had my first official sunbathing attempt.  It didn’t last that long, but it did happen.  I trust that this will be first of many tanning sessions so that I can get rid of my pallid skin colour!  The hell with health, I need my vitamin D!

The Muse

Although I have a couple of poems which are refusing to come together in anything like a form that I can regard as finished, or even as things with a positive direction – my notes after my swim and during my cup of tea translated into a poem with a speed which left me breathless.  The finished poem may be found at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and is available for comment!

A month is a long time

Day 2 of the cycling.

And the chain came off the gears!  Luckily it happened when I was within easy walking distance of the house, but it was a disturbing moment and, although I was sure that it could be repaired, or replaced without too much effort.  I did not intend to find out.  I fell into Toni’s arms, tearing a small, cambric handkerchief and having a fit of the vapours.  Metaphorically.  It did the trick and, eventually, Toni agreed to show me how to put the bloody thing back.

            The good thing about this lesson is that I obviously need to do more shopping.  I seem to remember that in the dim and distant past there used to be a mini satchel attached to the back of the seat holding essential tools for on-road repairs.  I have no intention whatsoever of doing anything more technical that undoing the three screws that hold the chain guard in place, but I like the idea of further purchases.  And after all, a month is a long time when you don’t really like cycling but have no other way (I’m NOT walking) to find a parking space in the building site that is the leisure centre at the moment.

            I know I make my cycling journey sound like something epic, and in fact the leisure centre is not that far from the house, but it is an unusual form of transport of a confirmed driver like myself and so it gives a whole new view of the world.

            I now hate drivers.  They are all inconsiderate bastards and they care nothing for non-polluting cyclists who are trying to save the world.  Damn them all to hell!

            The truly amazing thing is how cyclists seem to grow horns and tails when seen from behind the windscreen of a car!

Back to almost normal

Toni’s tummy is now functioning properly and so we were able to go out and celebrate with a menu del dia in one of our favourite restaurants with an uninterrupted view of the sea: La Rincon de Lola.  We had our favourite circular table in the window and the meal was as good as usual, though the service was a little slow.

            The place is undergoing refashioning and each new improvement makes us worry about their taking advantage and upping the price.  At the moment everything is the same – and recommendably excellent value!  We are just hoping that their improvements are to increase their seating area and to increase their prices!  We shall see.

OU meltdown!

A new volume of descriptions of Conceptual art is threatening us; an outline of our project has to be handed in and a further essay is required.  There are CDs to listen to and DVDs to watch.  This particular point seems like a crisis point in our learning.  I’m loving it!

            My last essay’s mark will be a bit of a low point, as I expect little from my chatty but hardly academic ramble through some ‘difficult’ art, but, as long as I get something for my work it should tip my marks into the acceptable zone and I can relax a little about the last essay.  Not that I intend to, because I like the challenge which the outer reaches of Conceptual (however you define it) Art flings in the face or ear or mouth of the spectator.  This is the sort of art that I love defending just to push people to the final, foaming scream of uncomprehending rejection.

            So far, and this is only in the opening pages of the section we have been asked to look at a notice saying that someone had sprayed an entire can of paint directly on the floor; to think about a series of photographs taken at random that we were not shown; and . . . but I don’t want to add fuel to the howls of outrage that have accompanied the progress of our course, sometimes from the participants!

            This essay will be the last one we have to complete before we turn our entire attention to the long essay or mini thesis that we have to write to complete the course.  

Bring it on!

And my poems, which are not going so well at the moment, may be found at: 
http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/ 

Health by force!

Some things you never forget

The riding of a bike to the leisure centre should not be a big thing.  And it wasn’t.  But it wasn’t nothing either.

            I have studiously ignored my bike for well over a year and, tucked away as it was, it was easy to overlook.  I did wonder about the waste of money that the thing as turning out to be – but that was easier than riding the damn thing.

            The fiasco of tree cutting and car park shutting that now defines the leisure centre necessitated the, for me, extreme action of cleaning the bike and blowing up the tyres with a view to using it.

            Apart from some corrosion on the chrome, it cleaned up fairly easily and even getting the tyres to something like the right pressure was not quite as onerous as I remembered it.  So, with weak determination and a sinking heart I set off this rather dull morning and wobbled my way towards a main road.

            Although I felt somewhat self-conscious in the absurd hat that one is required to wear these days, I got back to my past level of uncertain incompetence on the machine is short order.

            I spurned the hills and walked them – a direct result of following my father’s wisdom of, “If it’s easier to walk you bike than ride – walk!”  So I did.  When I told Toni of this strategy of mine his response was, “What hills?”  We obviously have very different inbuilt gyroscopes!

            When I got to the centre there was all the palaver of putting the bike in its metal thingies, then using the lock to secure it (remembering this time to turn the numbers on the combination!) getting the bag from the back of the bike – I know it all sounds really petty, but when you are used to pointing a bit of plastic at the car and having it lock while simply picking up the sports bag, it does seem unnecessary.

            Well, I got everything sorted and found the helmet thing a nuisance as well, as it didn’t fit easily in the bag and then it was too large for . . . perhaps I am making too much about this, but it was different and it broke the routine.  I didn’t like it.

            The post-swim offered me a choice.  I could go home and then take the car to get the lunch, or I could cycle to the centre of Castelldefels and bring the lunch home on the bike.

            After a moment’s hesitation I decided to throw caution to the wind and espouse the cause of exercise and bike it!

            It was a bloody sight further than I thought and I am now possessed of a homicidal zeal against pedestrians who walk in cycle lanes.  I am thinking of fitting Boudicca-like blades to the hubs of my wheels for cleansing purposes!

            I don’t know, perhaps it’s all psychological, but I fancy that lunch tasted better because I inched fractionally nearer the hunter/gatherer idea of food providing rather than simply going to get it by car!

            The euphoria of unaccustomed exercise lasted right up until I realized that I would have to do the same thing tomorrow and for the next month.

            And before anyone suggests it, I do not think for a moment that I am going to be the sort of person who, after a month of using the bike will say that he couldn’t imagine reverting to the car again and that it had been a life changing experience.  No chance.

Why are poems never easy!

The poems, if not the note taking, have degenerated to doodles on otherwise perfectly nice pieces of paper, or more positively of lines of nothing approaching verse being scribbled out.  I am convinced that I have some good ideas, but the words are not working at the moment.

            With that glowing testimony to my poetic ability, I urge you to see what I have written recently at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and I hope that there will be something more added to that collection by the end of the week.

United Nations Day 2015

A few phone calls today about The Meal & Celebrations.  It’s only March and preparations are being made.  I think that I am going to have months of pleasure out of the arrangements for United Nations Day this year; what with visitors, menu planning and publication of the book.

            I am already looking forward to the collection of friends who will be here in Castelldefels this year and I am determined to give them as good a time as it is possible to imagine.

            One particular piece of planning also calls for the design of labels, but after lengthy discussions between Toni and myself we have decided on two important words to be printed on them!  This is one piece of travelling to Castelldefels that I can guarantee that my visitors will not be expecting!

            When I tried to discuss the menu with the owner of the restaurant where we will be going he evinced a particularly Spanish aversion to forward planning on the time scale to which I was working!  We have had to relax and believe that everything will only come together well in this country if you leave things until almost the last minute.  I have no intention whatsoever of doing that and will start a stealth planning campaign to keep my sanity!

Green transport is ecological quid pro quo

The cutting down of trees in the car park of the swimming pool means that I have had to resurrect my bike.  Or at least take it out from its partial hibernation.

            Destroying twenty trees was obviously not enough for the heartless people in the leisure centre.  No, they want to efface the evidence of their destruction and have closed the car park for the next month.  The leisure centre is in a residential area with lots of on-road parking.  Unfortunately next to the leisure centre is a school.  And that changes everything.

            Children go to schools.  A very good thing too, it keeps them off the streets when we retired people can wander about without the screams and general awfulness of the youngest generations spoiling our well deserved time away from work.  But probably the worst thing about children and schools?  Parents.

            In the general run of things I have nothing against parents, after all my entire existence is thanks to them, but my parents allowed me to catch a bus to school.  They did not see the need to take me to the school gates, drop me off and then wait around imagining me making my way through the yard towards my form room.  While being themselves double or triple parked, on a pavement or on the zebra crossing, across an entrance, at an angle, on a corner or any damn where they pleased with little or no consideration for any other non-parent-of-their-child whatsoever.

            So, now, added to the insanity of parents dropping off their kids, residents parking their cars, visitors needing a parking space we will have people going to the leisure centre, finding the car park closed and then trying to park within a maximum of ten paces away from the door.

            It is going to be chaos.  And nasty chaos as well!

            Having given this some thought, I imagine that one of the more unbearable aspects of this month-long torture is going to be car drivers stopping in the middle of the road trying to spot a non-existent parking space and effectively blocking the road for all other road users. 

Luckily, in this country, we are blessed with some of the most tolerant road users in Europe who never mind waiting and who show no impatience at any road user impeding their progress!  So that’s all right then.

As if!

This morning I had to park three streets away from the centre and half way down the street as well.  Things can only get worse, and I do not intend to emulate the Flying Dutchman endlessly roaming the area searching for a parking space!  The bike is the answer.  Possibly.

It is well over a year since I’ve ridden the thing and I have had to hack the dust off it.  Toni has oiled the bits that need oiling and I have attempted to make the dynamo work.  Not that I have any intention of riding the thing in the dark, you understand, but I do like to think that I could if I wanted to.

It will be interesting to see how I adapt to this new regime.