How to fill time when you are really trying

There was a time when, if I had to wait for something, I would have a book with me and I would read.  It’s not rocket science.  A simple activity with built in cultural kudos.  But now.  Now things are different.

Having forgotten about the service for my car once, I took extreme measures (well I set the alarm) to make sure that I took the thing this time.  A very discrete alarm did go off and I found myself up and doing with enough time not to complete the quick crossword in the Guardian.

And now, I am stuck in Gava for two and a half hours while my car is done.

Luckily, there is a major shopping centre within walking distance of the garage where my car is being done and you would have thought that somebody with the mother-shopping training that I have had would find it easy to wander around picking up spoons that I have not intention of buying and ogling the piece of technology that I have to stop myself buying.  But no, shops are not enough!

I never thought that the day would dawn when I said something like that last statement.  My mother must feel that all her schemes of getting me to like shopping as much as my father hated it – like always meeting me in the Wedgewood Room of Howells and then asking my opinion on various suites of glass and china – have come to nothing!  That a child of hers could possibly find shops boring, or at least inadequate!  The shame of it.

But I came prepared.  No books: but a smartphone, iPad and MacBook Air.  Now you might feel that there comes a point where one is a little over-technified for a wait which is of such a short duration.  But I have been sitting here for at least three hours and only 40 mins have gone by!  So I have decided to write.

I do feel a little ostentatious sitting in the walkway, promenade, paseo, concourse (I knew the word would come to me if I exhausted all the other synonyms) but not as ostentatious as I would have felt a few years ago.  After all, how long have portable computers, the laptop (an apt description at the moment because all I have is a chair and no table) been with us.  A frighteningly short period of time for the universal adoption.  Now it is an everyday sight to see people tapping away in all of the most odd places.  And so am I.

Yet more time has gone by and I am still more than an hour and a half away from the car being ready.  I know that I should be reading, but I feel like being a little more active and so I am typing.  Though whether this is a more productive activity is moot!

Talking of activity, I am now going through the oh-god-what-have-I-left-out-of-the-essayI-have-just-sent-in syndrome, which is normal and natural for all students of the Open University once the TMA has been thrown (electronically) at the tutor.

There is a sense of melancholy loss on the forums, where people who have been working at their degrees for umpteen years now realise that they have completed their last tutor essay and that in a matter of months their years of study will be at an end.  A degree certificate is poor recompense for the loss of the welcome stress that doing a degree at a distance gives you.  Rather than being gleeful that the end result is within reach, people are sad that one of the ways in which they have regulated their lives will be taken away.  As I have been ‘doing’ my degree since the 1970s (admittedly there is a thirty year gap in my study!) I am in a different sort of position, but I do agree that it is a very odd feeling.

And I have to start packing!

The day after tomorrow I am going to Cardiff.  An aunt of mine has died and I am going to the funeral.  It is a melancholy thought that, of all my uncles and aunts there is now only one left.  It does remind you that my generation is the next in line!  These occasions are virtually the only time that I get to see any members of my family – but that comes with living abroad.

I hate packing with a totally unreasonably high level of detestation.  This time I don’t even have to do that much, but, however small the effort – I resent it.  And the suit.  My all-purpose suit is not as smart as it once was and so as fitting, in all senses of the word.  I might attempt to buy a new suit when I am in the UK as clothing is usually cheaper there than it is here, but alas, I am no long an off-the-peg size and so I have to factor in adjustments and I’m sure that those can not be done in the limited time that I am there.  But, I have plans and it will be interesting to see if they come to anything like fruition! 

It’s at times like these that I think of Paul Squared who has probably already packed his case for his holiday in May.  Try as I might I can imagine no change to my essential character that would allow me even to consider doing something like that

There is now an hour to go before my car is supposed to be ready.  I wish I could believe that it will be waiting for me when I return to the garage, but past experience does not make me feel jocose.

Well time for a wander.  Tea, shops, lottery ticket and toilet.  That should take up some time!

It all comes back to education!

There are always choices to be made in writing.  One of them is ‘topic’.  What do you choose to write about?

I have a couple of options.  The first would be the fact that I am, at present, eating my way through the most delicious raw cauliflower that I have ever tasted.  I bought it in Aldi, mainly I have to admit, because it was small and would therefore be consumed before I left for the UK on Wednesday.  I brought it home, cut off the stalks and broke the head down into bite-sized florets.  And I ate one.  A revelation!  I have always liked raw vegetables, but this lowly cauliflower took crudité to new levels of lusciousness.  And the cauliflower was something that I wouldn’t even consider eating when I was young.  Though that was always when it was cooked, after suffering the disgusting smell that accompanied its production.  And, though I don’t hold it against her (why should I, I never ate any of it) my mother boiled cauliflower until it was soft and always added a pinch of bicarb. to do . . . what?  Precisely?  Take away all of the vitamin content!  But even then, I loved to eat cauliflower raw.  For me, cooking al dente was perfection: an amalgam of the rawness that I loved with the fact that it was technically ‘cooked’!  Perfect.  Even my mum began to cook things al dente.  Who could ask for more?

Or I could talk about the article that I read in the digital edition of the Guardian that allowed survivors of religious extreme cults who had lost their faith to tell we readers how they now viewed the world – and the world that they had lost.  And that got me thinking about my own lost faith.

I don’t think, to be fair that ‘lapsed Anglican’ is ever going to raise enough interest to get the Guardian to open its pages to the searing stories of how, having lost their faith, the ex-Anglican were treated so very . . . um . . . reasonably by those who kept theirs!

Lapsed Anglicans do not write revealing fiction about how they trail guilt feelings instilled in them by fanatical Church in Wales preachers who . . . it simply isn’t like that.

One Anglican bishop to whom I explained that I was an “Anglican atheist” said, “Yes, well, there are a lot of you around!”  Not really the stuff that produces hard-hitting revelations about how the ingrained guilt of Anglicanism haunted me throughout my non-Anglican life!

Through Holy Week this year, I used the period as a time to write a poem for each day.  Not necessarily an overtly religious poem, but a poem, nevertheless, influenced in some ways by the week that I was in.  I did the same thing last year and I found the process strangely rewarding.

I have now published a very slim volume of nine poems: I count Holy Week as starting on Palm Sunday and I wrote two poems for Easter Sunday, hence the number.  The titles are: Assumption, Dress, Anticipation, Daddy Agonistes, Penultimate, Locked, Waiting, Set up and Offer.  There is a sort of poem in the succession of titles, but let it pass – I’ve ‘written’ two ‘found’ poems recently and that is more than enough!

My point, which I haven’t made, is that I get a great deal of satisfaction out of writing poems at such a time.  Whether there is the same satisfaction in reading them only time and an audience will tell!  But there is something produced and that gives me pleasure.

But there is an internal on-going conversation with myself about why I should find this week significant and why I should bother writing poetry during it.  The poems themselves, only go so far in getting towards an explanation.

There is a simple explanation of course, and that is that I am still basically an Anglican at heart, and the loose chains of a liberal faith are, in their way, even more difficult to break than those of a much more authoritarian one.  And that one day I will ‘return to the faith’ – indeed one of my friends tells me this with that voice of weary resignation that suggests that it is so obvious that it need not be stressed.  I think he’s wrong, but, time will tell.

So, on balance, I don’t think that I will write about cauliflower or faith – I will write about the Open University.

Today, I finished writing the last Tutor Marked Assignment that I needed to do in the last course of my degree.  Admittedly I now have to complete the long essay that accounts for 50% of the marks, but my last TMA has been written.

And perhaps I am still writing about cauliflowers and faith, because the Open University is an addictive sort of institution, with zealous (I use the word advisedly) adherents who suck knowledge out of courses with the same fanaticism with which I ate the vegetable.  Two people have already said to me, when I told them that I was getting towards the final end of my degree, “Of course, you’ll do another, won’t you?”

And, do you know, I just might!

Twilight and into the Next Day

Not a Ring Cycle to ‘keep’, I think.

I have just (well, yesterday, though it stretched into today by the time the curtain came down) sat through The Twilight of the Gods and thus have seen the whole of the Liceu’s present Ring Cycle.  I know when confronted with such a towering masterpiece of musical genius (though very much a flawed man) I should set forth my analysis and remember my academic pretentions and write something perceptive and appreciative.  Perhaps I will.  But another time.

            For me this Cycle was marked by a pleasing amount of real fire and a confusing amount of rubbish.  I mean the latter in no pejorative sense, but rather in a literal one.  The reforging of Northung, in a previous part of the cycle, was accomplished in a junkyard with the central prop being a dilapidated small caravan which exploded.  The Rhine Maidens moved their sinuous way through tyres, a bath and other oddments that I took to be rubbish thrown into the Rhine, until Siegfried seemed to be able to move about through it with equal ease.  The Norns appeared to be char ladies with mops with the ropes of destiny being looped around stacked furniture which looked as though it was in some depository, and so on.

            The production was subfusc with gods and demi gods wearing ordinary to the point of tedium clothes.  Seeing who was wearing heels and who was wearing flats and why became one of the more interesting design questions to ponder during the more tedious arias, because, let’s face it, it is very difficult to maintain full attention for hour after hour in what rapidly becomes and uncomfortable chair.

            But such concerns were forgotten when the transcendent chorus of the Liceu came on stage during the second and third acts of the opera.  Not that the orchestral playing before then was not of a superlative quality, but the wall of sound that the Liceu chorus produces sends shivers down the spine!

            It was Brünnhilde’s night and deservedly so; her ovation was well merited.  She had some opposition from the bass singing the role of Hagan, but the star of this performance of Götterdämmerung was Brünnhilde.  Perhaps, in another post, when I have more time I will give a more considered view and actually write in the names of the great and the guilty in this production!

I have been backsliding this week.  My diet has taken a hit because of the visit of Maggie.  I felt it would be churlish to insist on agua fria when they were buying a bottle of wine, so I did not and drank avidly.  But this is a new sort of avidity for me where one bottle was sufficient for three and at one notorious point in the early evening I put my hand over my glass to refuse a refill!  Self-denial can go little further.

            It was excellent seeing an old friend (and her friend, David) again, not only for the news that she had, but also for getting reacquainted with a conversational style that I have not heard for a frighteningly large number of years.

            We are both older, but we talk as we always did and it is the way that the talk is structured, the way that we pause and go off at tangents, the cadences in the voice that bring back so much more than mere information.  It was true time travel in the best way possible for me, via talking!

            

And Maggie bought a copy of my book, Flesh Can Be Bright, so I count the whole evening great success.  I look forward to keeping more closely in touch with her, but with her sort of event filled life, it might be difficult.  With golf, bridge, culture and travel she is constantly on the move and constantly ‘doing’ and I will have to run pretty hard to keep up with her.  But worth trying I think.

            One practical result of her visit has been to remind me that various arts organizations around the world now broadcast some of their live performances to cinemas.  The NT does, though I am not yet sure if they have an ‘outlet’ anywhere in Barcelona.  I know that there are ballet and opera opportunities, and I will keep my eyes open to try and expand my ‘live’ performance quota.  I used to go to orchestral performances in Barcelona until my opera going claimed my time and cash.  There is no reason why I cannot do both, especially as the Liceu is much more flexible about the changing of seats for their subscribers nowadays.  This really is a note to self and a call to action!

On the degree front, we are now all waiting for our pro-formas to be returned.  These are the OU approved ways of letting you tutor know what it is that you have decided to write your ‘long essay’ on for the last piece of work in the course.  I have chosen to study a painter called Lluís Dalmau whose most famous painting is called The Virgin of the Councillors and was painted 1443-1445.  

Virgin of the «Consellers», ca. 1443-1445, now in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.

This is one of only two works which are unequivocally by him: one in Barcelona and the other, down the road in St Boi.

            My pro-forma outlined my approach and cited works which I will use in the final essay.  The tutor will look at what I have written and make suggestions which I will then take on board by modifying my approach in response to her guidance and then write the essay.  All simple and straightforward.  Not.  You only have to read the forums for our course to see the panic which is setting in and the desperation which drips from some posts!  I maintain a lofty position of superiority at the moment because I have found lots of references and I am ahead of the reading requirements of the main course which is still going on.

            This will, of course all change as soon as I start writing the last normal essay of the course and start on the long essay.  I will probably not post on the forums, but I will walk up and down in my shockingly untidy ‘office’ on the third floor – and will look longingly at the terrace as soon as the sun comes out!

            Tomorrow a meeting with Suzanne, a few art exhibitions and a menu del dia in MNAC – overpriced, but worth it!

Not knowing is the worst!

I have no idea what’s happening!  No, really!  I know that the world hasn’t ended because I am still here.  And, thanks to the wonders of the internet radio and (praise be!) Radio 4 I know that the Blond Buffoon has made his first Brexit speech in which he managed to do a very convincing vocal impersonation of The Donald by using sentences composed entirely of unrelated phrases and dismissive waffle.  What a repugnant, self-seeking, condescending apology for a politician he is!

           

            The Donald has some sort of reason for his putrid existence, as he is the logical outcome of the Republican excoriation of every breath that Obama has taken, irrespective of any logic or ideology – apart that is, from the pandering to the lowest possible common denominator of prejudice that they could find.  I am not sure that the previous sentence went any logical way itself, but in its own befuddled way it does at least express my sadness at what the party of Lincoln (whose speed of rotation in his monument must be approaching the speed of light at the moment) has created.

            But The Blond Buffoon is an entirely different creature.  I assume that his hair is natural (at least in its colour) but the buffoonery is entirely intentional on his part.  He is no fool.  He is capable of writing a mean sentence.  He has a sense of humour.  And he wants, oh how he wants, to be Prime Minister.  I don’t for a single solitary second believe that he went through anything even remotely approaching ‘heart searching’ to determine what position he should take on the question of Britain remaining in the EU.  The only thought, no, the main thought in his nasty tousled head was what would bring him closer to his main goal in life.  He has reasoned, because unlike The Donald he is capable of that, that opposition to British membership of the EU is likely to play best with the voters in the Conservative Party whether or not the UK votes in or out.  He has calculated that even if the vote goes against him, he can take the wishes of his discredited party towards his ultimate goal.

            The Capering Clot’s jovial mask slipped when it turned out that he (oh, sorry, not him, just one of his most trusted advisors) told senior officials in the London Mayor’s Office that they had to support his point of view or shut up!  It was, of course, a “cock-up” as he described it later, when the instruction had been discovered, using what he thinks of as the language of the common man, the man in the street (not the woman of course, they are only good for bedding and betraying) to show how blusteringly funny and out of character it all was.  Not a bit of it!  That is the man.  The privileged autocrat with the excruciating fractured conversational line of filler-filled marshmallow ideology to deflect opprobrium.

            You may wonder why this vitriol towards The Beast of Boris.  The answer is prosaic: Toni is visiting his family and I have not turned the TV on.  I am not sure that I know how.  I mean I know how to turn the television on, but not to get the programme that I want.  There is also a way of getting the language into English, but the complex button pressing to get that to occur is beyond my thumbs.  The end result is I have no idea what Spain is up to.

            You rarely hear anything about Spain on the national news on Radio 4, though I think the recent occasion of the Infanta (the sister of the present so-called king) being cross examined in court and, in answer to the questions that she deigned to answer, lying her head off – I think that made the news, and I think that Brits actually got to see pictures of her in court looking uncomfortable.  

As she should.  

But, apart from the more garish and outlandish elements in our news, the day-to-day corruption and the fact that we do not have a government are not deemed newsworthy.

            I can’t really blame the news outlets, because saying, “Oh, the Spanish Popular Party (Conservative) seems to have another case of corruption where their politicians have been stealing from the public purse!” is rather like saying, “Oh, IDS has told another corpse that it is fit for work!”  They are both so common that they are hardly noteworthy.

            But, there is a gleam of hope for Spain.  The right ‘lost’ the election and the ‘left’ won.  But the parties on the ‘left’ still have not agreed to pact – and time is running out before the so-called king has to declare another general election.

            There is a simple solution, and one in which a start could be made to try and rectify the terrible damage that PP has done to the country during their time in power.  But the two parties cannot agree and so, day by sad day, we march on to the unpredictability of a second general election.

            Even my OU studies are not helping, because I have now arrived at that part of the course where our thoughts have turned to Renaissance Art and Death.  Looking at various representations of the Danse Macabre, I feel like photocopying a few of them and sending them to the politicians who I feel are hindering the formation of a new leftist government.  Time is fleeting!  Get on with it!