The past is music to my ears!

For the truly sad, there is always YouTube. 

Not that I’m knocking YouTube.  I wouldn’t dare with Toni so close.  His answer to virtually any question is, “Look on YouTube,” and to be fair, he has a point.  You can ask virtually anything and numerous videos will suddenly appear (usually made by teenagers from Minnesota) addressing, if not answering your query.  I am sure that if I typed in “What is the square root of minus one” or “Why chameleons?” there would be answers – or something approaching them in all the dazzling frightfulness of human possibility unchained!

But that is not what I am on about.  What I am concerned with is packing.  An activity that I, and every right thinking person, surely hates.  I was once beguiled by a ‘Top 10 packing tips’ electronic siren-picture in a side bar when I was supposed to be doing something else on the computer and I lost a couple of hours wandering through video mazes where human ingenuity had been concentrated on how to pack an entire wardrobe plus electronic equipment into a small case you could take on board a plane and still have space for souvenirs to bring home with you!

I cannot say, truthfully, that I retain much, except to realise that the principle of the Russian matrioshka doll (i.e. one doll inside another inside another and so on) had been taken to another level where electric leads inside socks inside shoes inside bags inside god knows what, was something that every thinking traveller had to do.  I also remember that shirts had to be rolled and not folded and that one of those perfumed tumble dryer tissues should be placed in the case to make the clothes smell sweet and not musty when you finally got to your destination.

I still hate packing.  And I have hated packing ever since I can remember.  I lack that let’s-treat-this-as-a-3D-jigsaw-puzzle approach that separates the anal from whatever the opposite of that is.  This hatred rose anew in me while listening to the CD player in the car.

As they are now so cheap I have become addicted to buying box sets of classical music that record companies are issuing to suckers like myself who still do not realise that all this music is available from somewhere else for nothing.  I must be the only person in the western world whose electronic music library can be directly sourced to CDs that I own.  Leaving that sad fact to one side for the moment, return with me to just before the motorway turnoff towards Terrassa and the first chords of an instantly recognisable tune.

It was the sort of music that comes with baggage.  It was jolly and upbeat, but there was also a sense of melancholy connected with it as well.  It took me a few minutes to realise that it was music from my college days, and music that was played at a specific time.

My first years in college were spent in Hall in Neuadd Lewis Jones (now demolished), one of three Halls of Residence on the campus of Swansea University: bed, desk and chair, rug, armchair and views over Singleton Park; breakfast and evening meal and a sort of full board at the weekends.  During the holidays the halls were needed for conferences and the like so, while we could store some stuff in a lockable part of the wardrobe, we had to clear out.  And that is where the packing came into play and my consequent misery. 

I found that the only way in which I could counteract my fatalistic torpor when it came to packing was to play music of a sort of compulsively jolly sort.  The very music was found on a sale price disk that I probably bought from one of the sales in Duck, Son and Pinker that I haunted.  This record was of ballet music by Gluck and Grétry.  Wonderful.  That disk saved my sanity on more than one occasion when the utter misery of how to pack so much in to so little seemed more than any arts students should be asked to contemplate.

It was a moment of horror when a speaker from my (first) Boot’s “stereo” record player gave the sacred disk a glancing blow during one of my epic packing stints.  This did not stop my playing the record, it just meant that at a certain point I had to brace myself for the needle to start skipping through a positively Stockhausian racket until the needle found the grove again and the happiness continued.

I had not looked at the contents of the boxed set that I was playing my way through in the car to Terrassa, it was merely the next disk, number 21 that went into the slot and the Straussian waltzes that came out of the speakers were more than acceptable, and the music matched the way Spanish drivers regard a three lane motorway as a sort of open dance floor to sashay their way around, sometimes with flickering lights to mark where they have been.

It was well into the CD when the music suddenly changed and the unmistakable tunes of Christoph Willibald Gluck came through the speakers and I started humming.  The orchestration was hopelessly wrong for the eighteenth century, but by god, it was music and orchestration I knew!  And then tune after tune in a sequence that I knew unfolded until the real gem of this collection started, the ballet suite arranged by Constant Lambert from various ballets of André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry.  Let me not for a minute pretend that I knew the full first names of these two musicians; I am copying from the notes!  But the music was second nature to me.

I have been looking for this recording for years.  My original record was ‘sold to Cardiff market’ by Paul when the floor of the attic in which my record collection was stored started to give way under the weight!  I never found a copy and now, unlooked for, I have it again!

I wonder if this is a sign that I will be moving again soon?

I sincerely hope not.  I prefer to listen and enjoy the jollity and remember the misery in the tranquillity of memory!

Tick-Tock!

The blustery weather of the morning has settled down to a sunny afternoon with breeze enough to move the topmost branches of the trees.  The actual weather may be settling down, but the political climate in Spain is reaching tornado force!

            



          As was obvious from the start of the ill-fated pact between the PSOE party (roughly Labour) and the new C’s party (right wing nationalist) as they did not have an overall majority between them, they failed to win the vote in parliament yesterday as everyone else (with one abstention) voted against them.  So we are now on for a revote on Friday when, unless something dramatic happens in the next few hours is likely to be a repeat of the last vote and therefore be the start of a new election campaign as the country is asked to vote again.

            The sticking point for PSOE, and what stops them being the government is a combination of old party arrogance; ‘barons’ in PSOE heartlands saying no; vested interests; fear of the break up of Spain, and hatred of Catalonia.

            PSOE could have won the vote on Wednesday if they had pacted with Podemos which is a left wing, recently formed party which is looking for a new way of doing politics in the country.  A country, I might add that, since the glorious death of the dictator Franco has gifted more power than it ought to have to the political parties as a way of ensuring the survival and growth of democracy.  However good the initial idea was, the reality over the past decades has seen the major political parties get too much power and begin to abuse it.

            

Spain has been rocked by corruption scandal after corruption scandal - every day something new and breath taking!

            Although PP (Conservatives) seem to be systemically corrupt with laughable proportions of the party being accused of what looks like clear corruption, the other parties are not immune from dipping their greedy fingers into the public till.  It was this morass of corruption that gave birth to Podemos and the C’s – both in their own ways suggesting a way forward.

            PP (amazingly, given all the negative publicity they have had) has the largest number of seats of all the parties, but no overall majority.  Even with their natural allies, the right wing C’s they could not form an overall majority.  So they, through their so-called leader refused the King’s invitation to try and form a government.  There has been a risible offer of some sort of government of national unity with the present leader continuing as president, but that was dismissed by all the other parties.

            PSOE and Podemos would have an overall majority if they pacted, and the leader of PSOE would then become president.  But, the power of vested interests and what looked like pretty inept political footwork on the part of PSOE and Podemos meant that PSOE pacted with the C’s – with all the consequent problems.

            Now that PSOE and the C’s have failed, there needs to be a new approach.

            Podemos (quite rightly in my view) will not pact with the C’s – they have little in common with them and they believe that the C’s are just PP in another guise.  Podemos are still prepared to pact with PSOE and then they will form the government.

            The presenting problem (if not the real one) is that Podemos is a blanket term for a number of politicians who are separatist.  So, for PSOE to become the government, it would have to pact with parties whose avowed intent is to break away from Spain.  This is a difficulty.  Podemos have also offered Catalonia a referendum about independence.  PSOE will have nothing to do with that and say that the whole of Spain would have to vote on any region opting out.

            There are real problems about the present organization of Spain into regions.  Most of which are to do with money.  Catalonia says that for far too long it has paid far too much into the coffers of Spain to bail out other regions and has not had the development money that it deserves for itself.  This seems to me to be a fair point, though as soon as any discussion gets on to the topic then sensible debate is lost in simultaneous shouting!  Then there is the Basque Country!

            So, there are problems about PSOE and Podemos getting together.  But that is why we have politicians.  It is their job to get what should happen to happen.

            The only way PSOE is going to be the government is with Podemos.  So what do they have to do to make that possible?

            The referendum for Catalonia can wait.  If PSOE forms the government (with Podemos) then it could reform the present system for the regions and eventually present Catalonia with a fairer system of finance and representation.  If they did this and then give the region (sorry, country) a referendum then I think that the majority of the population would vote to stay in Spain and in the EU.

            The other objections to Podemos are mirrors and smoke and the reality of power would show just how insubstantial those were.

            If PSOE want power they have to pact, and pact with Podemos.  Simple.  The rest is details worked out by the wonks of both parties who like that sort of thing.  The entire name calling and blustering of the past few days is no more than that; the reality of power is worth compromising for.

            But will they?

            If logic ruled the voters then no one in their right mind would vote for PP.  It has been shown to be systemically corrupt and arrogant about its guilt.  No one resigns in this benighted country, no matter how clear their guilt is.  But logic is not the force you can put your faith in.  30% seems to be the bedrock of PP votes.  30% of this electorate will vote for PP even if they started slaughtering children on live television.  And if they use the key words and phrases like: ‘break up of Spain’, ‘soft on terrorism’, ‘economic strength’, ‘Venezuela’, ‘ETA ‘, ‘Catalonia’, ‘stability’, ‘Cuba’ and the rest of the language of the right then they could actually improve their position.

            The C’s have shown themselves prepared to pact with ‘socialists’ (though of course PSOE are nothing of the sort) and their base voters (and yes, I do mean that to be a pun) might feel that they have been betrayed by the pact that their photogenic leader agreed to in his lust for power.  Perhaps the voters, who saw the C’s as a breath of fresh right wing air, might now return to their previous masters in PP.

            PSOE are in the most difficult position of all.  They have made a pact with right-wingers and it has failed.  So far.  Although the leader of PSOE has tried to appear statesmanlike, without the reality of power it is just posturing.  He has pacted with natural enemies, in the hope that he would be able to get Podemos on board (or at least abstaining) with a raft of policies that he felt that Podemos would have to support.

            Ideally, PSOE would have wanted the C’s and Podemos together with themselves forming a progressive, reforming party with PSOE playing the C’s off against Podemos so that they could get what they liked.  That hasn’t (yet) worked.

            In the next general election who knows what would happen to the PSOE vote.  The leader would have been shown to have failed, and if he doesn’t pact with Podemos, there might well be an unholy alliance of PP and the C’s which might in the next election have sufficient seats to give the present government the extension they want.

            The situation is, to put it mildly, difficult.  No party can really trust what might happen in another general election – but my instinct is that the right will come out better than the left and that we will have another PP led government.  Which will be an absolute disgrace and an insult to decent Spaniards.

            PSOE will have to swallow hard and do the right thing.  They need power to clean up after PP.  Podemos is the only way that they are going to get that power.  QED.

            Do I think that PSOE and Podemos will pact?  My instinct says no.  And that makes me very sad.  Unfortunately I do not have a vote in the general election in this country, but I am prepared to give my time and effort to help Podemos make a difference.

Random thoughts

The sunshine has forced me into desperate measures for my being able to read what is on the computer monitor. A combination of reflections and finger mark smudges (there are disadvantages to having a touch sensitive screen) mean that ordinary twelve point print is unreadable and I have had to boost the size to a level which is near to those wonderful large print books that there used to be in public libraries and which I loved to read because of the speed with which you could turn the pages! I also liked to think of myself in the position of a medieval monk turning over the pages of a vellum codex as each massive page gave way to the next. That probably says more about me than I should reveal!

Anyway, the end result is that, even with obtrusive reflections, I can actually read what I am typing. There was another obvious way of dealing with the difficulty by turning my chair – but that seemed far too much like hard work when the difference could be made by finger tapping rather than major physical activity.

Another reason for my lethargy is that I have those sneaking signs of an incipient cold: the vague rumours of harshness in the throat; the slight abrasion at the back of the nose, and a cough with repercussions. As a precautionary measure I have decided against my daily swim and have cancelled my poetry meeting this evening. This will not, of course, stop us from going out to lunch – I look on that experience as positively medicinal.

Talking of food, my meal yesterday was almost completely 'foreign' in the right sense of the word. My main course was chopped cuttlefish and peas, while my starter was a couple of eggs and vegetables in a sort of sauce cooked in a mini paella metal dish. These two plates were made even more delicious by the addition of 'My Sauce' which is a unique feature of one particular restaurant and has a savage power. I love it. My sweet was a piece of eggy bread with syrup. And of course a bottle of red wine with the sugarless fizzy water that makes it drinkable – and all for less than ten Euros! Ah, the joy of living in Catalonia!

The political situation in Spain and Catalonia continues to be compulsive viewing as the various political parties and politicians jockey for position and power. The look of Congress is certainly different with the old guard of ties and suits look out of step with the more casual new members who have just entered parliament for the first time – they truly bring some oxygen of reality to the previous bunch of Mafiosi who dominated past gatherings.

Bromo, our present president en funciones (in other words the president until someone other than that walking joke is elected) and leader of the largest group in Parliament, but unable to form a majority government, must be feeling increasingly desperate as time goes on and there is no intention of anyone with a shred of social credibility (I exclude the C's party from that) of joining with his bunch of corrupt goons to form a new government. The Left is fragmenting in the way that it always does and the possibility of a new election is gaining support. In an opinion poll today 71% said that they would prefer a new election to any pact! God alone knows what might happen in new elections.

As far as I can see, PP (the totally systemically corrupt conservative party here in Spain) has a core vote of something like 29% and it doesn't appear to matter how many corruption scandals there are directly involving PP (and they are legion!), these 'faithful' will vote for them. The new C's party, which is right wing, has a young and photogenic leader who seems solely concerned with his personal acquisition of power and will obviously support PP while paying lip service to anti-corruption. At the moment these two parties have insufficient seats to form a government. Already PP have started accusing the left wing parties of being soft on terrorism and refugees in anticipation of reaping a right wing surge of support against the left which will give them a majority. They have already milked the 'breaking up of Spain' and blaming Catalonia promoting themselves are the only true defenders of a united Spain. Scaremongering always works for the right and, with the overwhelmingly right wing press and television services it could work for them again and give PP a shock overall majority in a re-fought election. I hope to god not, but it is a real possibility.

And that is pause for thought!

More of the same!

I may not live in Britain these days, but I do hope that the vile Conservative government has not taken a leaf out of the viler PP government in Spain and refused free medical treatment to their citizens working abroad who have returned for the Christmas holidays to see their families in Spain.

I am sure if the mean-minded and pettily vicious IDS had anything to do with it then he will have lost no opportunity to urge David Cameron (assuming DC has managed to drag himself and half the Cabinet away from the Christmas Festivities provided by his friend the vile Rupert Murdock - though I have to admit that mere derogatory adjectives fail to capture the true rotten flavour of that octogenarian 'American' – to persecute (you still with me on this epic sentence?) those in a less fortunate situation than his affluent self!

How has Cameron's attendance at the court of one of the most unpleasant media oligarchs in the world today, especially after Murdock's recent court cases and evidence to parliamentary committees, gone down with the British public? Has he been taken to task for openly consorting with such an unsavoury character? Has he been asked why he thinks he can treat the public (who have been misled, lied to and ripped off by this ogre of the airways) with such cavalier contempt that he can ignore the disgust that we feel to see him (even him) in such low company? It is truly amazing what an overall majority can do for your view of the poor bloody infantry that actually put votes in the ballot boxes, as opposed to the rich and unscrupulous who couldn't give a shit about us, but have plenty of money to put into party coffers.

I relish a story told to me by the late Dave Phillips who related the experience of a hapless Conservative candidate canvassing in a Labour stronghold in Wales. He knocked on a door and told the man who answered that he represented the Conservative Party. The man looked at him and asked him to wait for a moment while he fetched his son. He reappeared with his son and then spat at the Conservative and said to his son, “That's how you treat all Conservatives!”

Now, as a wishy-washy liberal, I cannot possibly condone spitting, not only is it a form of violence, but it is also unhygienic! But, god knows, I do understand the vehemence of the response to the generality of Conservatives (with some honourable exceptions who escape my mind for the moment) especially during times of crisis and real human need when it is all too easy to illustrate the complacent attitude of those in power in the Conservative Party (in whatever country) and with money, with those outside who have little or none.

The political situation within Catalonia is just as complicated as that in Spain. The present President did not have a majority in the election to retain his majority and so will have to pact with another party if he is to be re-elected. The problem is although Mas (the President) is plausible, he is also an old school politician whose past includes his being very, very close to an ex-President who is now being prosecuted for fraud and deception. The sort of fraud and deception that the political parties at the time knew about, indeed there is even a piece of film where one politician warns him that his 3% 'commission' that he took would come back to haunt him. Now it has (and the rest of his mafia-like family too) and Mas must have known about it and said nothing. At this stage in the development of Catalonia to have a president who is likely to be charged with something in the near future is not something which we need to be landed with. A left wing party has stated that they would oppose his establishment as president and they have held strong up till now and resolutely refused to back him. The result of this is we in Catalonia do not have a president, in the same way that Spain is without one too.

CUP (the party which opposes Mas) has had a convention today in which some 3,000 members of the party have voted three times on whether to support Mas. The first two votes were 'No', and the third was an exact tie! It all sounds fishy to me, but there you are! We are living in more than interesting times!

Tomorrow the old President of Spain (who remains in office until a successor is elected) is having talks with C's and Podemos. It will be interesting to see what comes out of that and what the leaders of both parties have to say at the end of their meetings with Bromo. We can months of meetings and suggestions before the limit runs out and we have to have another election. I still do not trust either of the main political parties, PP and PSOE, not to sink their differences and unit to preserve their status as the 'power' in Spain in a desperate attempt to keep alive the phantom that bipartisan politics is still a possibility. They are both corrupt and have a lot to lose if their stranglehold on the country is weakened and from their shameless activity in the past they show quite clearly that they are prepared to do anything they possibly can to keep their parasitic suckers deep in the public purse. Anything is possible.

Meanwhile, I might chance a swim tomorrow if my coughing gets less, even if it doesn't it might be a good idea. The only horror is that the kids are going to be swarming around and, even more horrifically until the 11^th of January! Now that I am no longer in school, I can't wait for the kids to return and get off the streets and out of the shops and into a secure environment where they do not interfere with normal human life!

And I've finished a draft of my latest poem, Standing on thin ice, which can be read (and commented on) at

http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/

Any comments will get a reply!

Tea at last!

Back home and my first decent cup of tea in what seems like weeks, but was actually just over two days!

And there is, as everyone must admit, that other great aspect of being at home, because there is nothing quite like sleeping in your own bed – especially when you are studiously trying to ignore the fact that various malignant microbes are infesting your bronchial tracts and trying to create colonies in other sensitive parts of your body and make their presence noisily evident.

This Sunday needs me to be doing something mindlessly empty. And my task of choice is putting all my new Christmas CDs from Toni, the 50 CD Deutsche Harmonia Mundi box set of a selection of Baroque and Ancient Music from the label on the hard disc of my computer. I am aware that, in spite of my well-known love of electrical gadgets of all kinds, this might appear as something more Luddite-like than I would like to admit. I have recently (I know, I know) downloaded Spotify and found out that they have a stupefying collection of classical music at various clicks of the fingers. So why, you might ask, am I going through the archaic, and to some of my friends, the insultingly unintelligent approach of actually 'buying'? CDs and then making the situation much worse by laboriously downloading the music on to the hard disc of my computer?

I suppose my attitude is a hang-over from the early days of my computer ownership when I must have been one of the few people in the computer owning universe to have the discs for all the programs on my machine, including, of course, a growing pile of squashed cardboard boxes. My music collection was similarly backed up by CDs, at least it was as soon as CDs became the music system of choice. If I am brutally honest I have to admit that my purchase of an early Philips portable cassette player/recorder did allow me to add a tape version of Beethoven's First and Eighth Symphonies to my collection of LPs, but cassettes were always a fairly noisy alternative to a decent LP and anything I recorded from the radio was merely the excuse to find a budget LP version to replace it. So, although it might take some searching, there is a physical backup for everything (mostly, I am not absolutely perfect) that should have been bought.

Toni's IT course encourages the students to find free-source versions of everything that they need in IT terms and he has passed on his practical knowledge to me – or at least I allow him to load up free-source programs on the machine on which I am typing this.

There are disadvantages, as I have found out. My years of using a Mac when everyone else was using a PC have come back to me, when all the programs which were supposed to work on both machines, did – but only worked perfectly (at least for the state of computers at the time) on PCs. Those days have now come again as the free versions of programs do almost everything that the paid-for versions do. Almost. And that 'almost' is the area of heartbreak and wasted time! Still, I solider on and I have found 'ways' of using the free programs and not quite losing out!

I wonder if it is just coincidence, or vicious intent that so many simple finger moves on the mouse pad on one system are slightly different or the opposite on the other? As I am using both PC and Apple at the moment, it is constantly frustrating to assume that something is going woefully wrong until you realise that you are using four Apple fingers to do something when you should be using three PC ones, and Apple's up is PC's down!

So, I will continue merrily to load up my CDs – especially as this computer has a hard disc of 2TB, so I can load on and up with impunity and not take away valuable space from other things.

I have now completed by re-reading of The Portrait of Dorian Gray – there is so much to be said for carrying a complete library with you on your smart phone when dealing with family get-togethers. And looking at a smart phone screen is so much more socially acceptable in company than reading a book! Even if that is what you are actually doing rather than checking your messages – and why, by the way, should checking your messages be any more acceptable than reading? I thank god for the lack of logic that allows me to read in any and all situations. And long may such rudeness continue.

I have done no work on my poem today, but the ones on my blog might be worth reading at

http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/

Give them a try and let me know what you think.

When the eating had to stop

What will stay with me from Christmas Day this year?

Well, the meal was excellent.  Excessive but excellent, and I frightened myself by my positively Catalan approach to drink this year.  Though I have to admit that there is still the meal for my Name Day, today, Boxing Day to drink myself to stupefaction!  Though I probably won’t.  Sadly.

            So, what was there to remember?  The element which is going to stay with us all was the introduction of a new feature at the end of the meal of the Most Hated Present Distribution.  The idea was that everyone would choose something they had been given which they still had but really wanted to throw out; wrap it beautifully and bring it to the meal.  Each person would be given a ticket with a number on it and, starting with the highest number they could make a free choice of any of the wrapped gifts.  The interesting part was that each person could demand a swap with the gift that any person who had already chosen – so you can see the importance of getting a low number.

            The gifts, with one signal exception, were awful and I must admit that I rather deliberately left mine in the house where we had the meal! 

Perhaps the best way to give a flavour of the experience is to explain that Toni was delighted with his final gift, as he was able to swap two dreadful candles in faux bamboo for a pair of underpants!  I think that says it all!

            More presents today – thought I hope the ones directed towards my grasping fingers have a modicum more thought behind their purchase than the horrors we saw on Christmas Day!

            The poem on which I have been working for the past few days is called Standing on thin ice, and I have only managed to get a very rough structure in place so far.  The images are still not working as I want them and the whole thing is still too fragmented but, and this is always encouraging, it is better than yesterday’s version!  Having said that, there is always a possibility that all my work will come to nothing as sometimes I decide that the compositional problems that I have been working on are not capable of the solution that will satisfy and all the work is shelved.  Hopefully not with this one.

            You can check the poems that made it as far as my new poetry blog at

http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/

where you can read through what I have written and find some explanatory information about the inspiration and setting for some of the later examples.  Anyone reading my poems is more than welcome to comment on them, and I will respond to any thoughts.