First, catch your metaphor!

 

The Internet is sometimes like an over eager and terminally earnest student scientist friend who tries to answer seriously and comprehensively a casual question like, “So, how do neutron bombs actually work then?”  And fails to notice the growing hysteria in his listeners as they realize that they are stuck in a comprehensively incomprehensible monologue.  And I speak from experience!

So, I was thinking about my activity in our outside pool.  Our pool is surrounded by trees, including the pine trees that give their name to our district and, although these trees are evergreen they also discard their needles throughout the year – and a fair quantity of them fall into our pool.  We do pay for our community pool to be cleaned and serviced, but the constant rain of pine needles and cones is a problem on a daily basis and our pool persons are not that frequent visitors.

If you are a regular swimmer you will know how unsettlingly irritating a single strand of free-floating hair can be, so imagine the shock of a series of sharp pointed pine needles can be – especially if you have just come from our stretch of the Med where for the past week or so we have been dealing with an outbreak of medusas (jellyfish) that do sting, so the instinctive reaction to anything sharp in water is to fear future pain.

My major swim is in our local pool (medusa free) where I generally swim a metric mile and feel quite smug about it, so our community pool is more relaxed semi-swimming.  And this is where the thoughts at the beginning of this writing come in.

As I dislike being pricked by pine needles, I of course, assume that no one else likes it either.  I have therefore taken, in my community pool swims, to skim the surface collecting the pine needles and throwing them out of the water.

From time to time I perform (what I consider to be) an elegant surface dive to retrieve and discard the seed cases and fractured cones that litter the floor of the pool.  So, in my mind, after the mindless lengths that I do in the swimming pool, I feel that I have a sort of purpose in our community pool.  Just like those fish that are kept in aquaria solely to clean the place up.

And I should have left it at that. 

But no, I decided to examine my image in a little more detail and typed a fateful enquiry into the box and got sucked in to a whole wealth of information in the same way that I did every time I ever ventured to look inside the Guinness Book of Records.  But the digression with the Book of Records is of a different nature to that in the Internet.  I have started off trying to find out the size of the largest uncut diamond ever found and ended up being fascinated by the wing span of birds.  With the Internet you tend to go deeper into the same thing in a profoundly superficial way!

I now know more about sand sifting stars, gobies, Cory doras, freshwater catfish, bluestreak cleaner wrass, grandpa snails, suckermouth catfish and Nerite snails, than is strictly necessary for a quiet life.  I have also discovered an intense community of fish lovers who are truly preoccupied with the problems of aquarium cleaning.  I mean really, truly, preoccupied!

 Think that I have realized a valuable life lesson: metaphors and similes are approximations and, unless you are a Shakespeare, the depth of your metaphor only reaches down a single level of association and the further you research your initial thought the further, like the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella - so to speak.

Not quite my scene

Our evening meal was taken outside a bar in the centre of town just by the railway station.  Considering its central position, as Laura noted, it was airy and tranquil, with the pots of sturdy greenery giving an illusion of a stunted dell.  Perhaps Laura’s comment was a hostage to fortune as almost immediately a deranged looking man staggering along the street with a plastic beaker full of what looked like liquid mud, lurched up to the entrance of the bar and asked the Chinese waiter if he could have a fill up of water.

The good-natured waiter complied with the request and the man went on his way muttering to himself and spilling quantities of his evil looking concoction and lurched his way into the open square space in front of the station.

Then the dogs started barking.  And went on barking.  And then there were sounds of an altercation with raised voices above the threnody of yelps.

Like the aristos in ‘Dr Zhivago’ looking out at the protesters in the snow from their warm and secure privileged position behind falsely secure windows, we, in our leafy bower watched developments, while I sipped my end of meal cup of tea.

Sirens heralded the arrival of the first police car and as the ‘trouble’ veered towards the pedestrian underpass through to the station car

parks someone shouted out to the emerging policemen, “He’s got a knife.”  From behind the safety of a couple of pot plants, we felt the thrill of proximity to danger and were determined to make our post-prandial beverages last the distance!

More police cars arrived, their flashing lights giving not only a suitably lurid setting for the excitement, but also marking a similarity to the ‘festa major’ fair that had been established at the far end of the car park - I do like an element of the serendipitous in my evenings out!

An ambulance then arrived, shortly followed by a second.  And we settled in for a suitably gory finale to the evening’s entertainment.

As we were finishing our meal it had the temerity to start raining, not convincingly admittedly, but still water falling from on high in August!

This soon stopped, as indeed did the drama as, one by one the police cars and ambulances drove off with nary a corpse or villain in sight.

The rest of the family were frankly sceptical about my explanation of the whole event being part of a street happening as part of the ‘festa major’ of our town – though Toni’s sister did applaud me politely at the end of the little drama and congratulate me (because surely I had something to do with it?) for finding a way to pass the time to the next event on the horizon.

This was a free concert.   

Now I have been to a totally memorable free concert next to the beach here in Castelldefels that featured the student orchestra of the University of Southampton playing a spirited performance of Sibelius’s second symphony, this concert, however, was not like that.

The entertainment, that had started by the time we got there, was of a Catalan group who sang, very loudly, in Catalan.  There were no seats.  But I soon discovered a fringe group of the elderly and infirm and the opportunistic who had found a limited number of metal chairs from somewhere.  I soon found the somewhere and Carmen and I were soon part of the group.

The disadvantage of our position (seated, with the rest of the audience standing) did mean that our view was, to put it mildly, limited.  But the very professional light show that accompanied the singing, together with a liberal amount of stage smoke, did ensure that the lighting effects were clearly visible ell beyond the confines of the stage.

I did attempt to take some photographs, where my mobile phone (disconcertingly) recognized that I was taking pictures of a ‘musical event’!  How did it know?  [I really wanted to use an interrobang at the end of the last sentence, but I don’t know how to print one.]  The end results were patchy, but taking pictures at night at x5 zoom on a handheld phone, I am not sure what I expected to get!

A long (for me) walk back to the car, bidding ‘bye’ to our second set of visitors and bed.  I slept as though drugged and snoozed more on the beach this morning!

It’s a hard old life, but someone has to live it!

Tomorrow Barcelona, and the start of my serious research in the library of MNAC to find out more, much more about the life and times of Adam Elsheimer.

Questing continues!

Eating is difficult

Real August weather (he wrote bitterly): warm to hot, muggy, overcast, but in the tradition of off-days in Catalonia, brightly dull.  Were this Britain, I would write off the day – but Catalonia isn’t and therefore I expect better things weather-wise later.  Please.

Meanwhile there is the prospect of lunch.  And, more importantly, the new Thai restaurant in town.  Catalonia is not noted for the quality of local Indian or Asian restaurants.  The problem is that people here are not given to spicy foods.  Yes, there are types of local cold sausage that are piquant, but nothing like the solid fire of an after-drinking ‘Indian’ in any typical British late-night restaurant.  I am still trying process Toni’s sister saying that her first British Indian meal in Rumney in Cardiff was too hot for her – and she was attempting to eat a chicken korma!  With that in mind, it is hardly surprising that the blander ‘commercial’ Chinese food found in virtually any moderately priced Chinese restaurant is much more acceptable to the Catalan palate.

I have checked out the new restaurant and there is no indication that they have a menu del dia.  The a la carte offerings look to be quite expensive for this area and I am not prepared to pay evening meal prices for a light lunch, but it is worth trying to find somewhere that can give me an ironic ‘taste of Britain’!

As it is the height of summer many menus offer the cold soup of salmorejo.  This is a very simple soup to make, but its very simplicity means that each person’s take on it is distinctively different.  It is usually very thick and is a different colour from the more recognizable cold soup of gazpacho.  Salmorejo usually has cold chopped egg mixed with bits of Spanish ham as an (essential) garnish and is delicious.  Here is a recipe to try!

Ingredients

Ingredients for 4 people: 1 kg tomatoes, 1 clove of garlic, 200 g bread (preferably a day old), 100 g extra virgin olive oil, 10 g salt. Optional: egg and ham.

Method

Wash the tomatoes, blend them and strain them to remove the skin and seeds. Add the bread (before this, leave to soak in water or in the blended tomatoes), extra virgin olive oil, garlic and salt, and blend again.

Presentation

Serve in individual bowls and garnish with chopped hard-boiled egg and bits of ham.

Perhaps the greatest culinary news for me this month occurred in Aldi.  Our local store has undergone a refit to accommodate an in-house bakery and a reorganization of the aisles.  Considering the way in which retail management has now become one of the dark sciences I don’t know whether the creation of bottlenecks at various points in the store, together with the narrowing of some of the aisles to make the passing of shopping trollies difficult is engineering or incompetence, but I am prepared to overlook those because I have discovered that Aldi is selling Taramosalata and Tzatziki in little plastic tubs.

I have tried, in a desultory way through the years, to find Taramosalata in Castelldefels and did indeed find it (or something like it) in a so-called Greek restaurant – though they looked at me blankly when I called they called the ‘salsa rosa’ Taramosalata.  The taste was near enough for me to kid myself that if not back in Greece on the beach in Mykonos, I was at least back in Wales where it was easy enough to get!  After a few visits to the restaurant, the staff there began to deny that they had ever had the stuff and my weary search continued.

In the way of the taste of Catalonia, humus is easy enough to get – in my view the least tasty of the trinity of Taramosalata, Tzanziki and Humus – because it is the blandest of the three.  Admittedly you can now get a piquant version which raises the taste level by a notch or two, but by itself, it is insufficient.  At least for me.

I am tempering my delight in finding these delicacies by my belief that with Aldi nothing lasts.  Buy it when you see it because tomorrow it will be gone is a commercial necessity with the discount stores.

I certainly did my bit when humus was introduced by buying quantities of it to try and ensure that it became a staple.  And I am now doing the same with the neophyte tara and tzanziki.  I am relying on the fact that there are substantial numbers of my fellow countryfolk in this area to make their retention a retail fact.

Not (as Toni continually reminds me) that I should be eating any of the above.  The fat and salt content is way beyond my limits, but I have convinced myself that the psychological satisfaction I can get from their consumption outweighs (a moot word) the deleterious effects on my physical health.

Talking of which I am steadily working my half-pill-a-day (except for Sundays when it is three-quarters) way to my next Control on the 21^st.  If my results are within the limits then the next Control could be in Castelldefels rather than in a more distant hospital.  It will be cheaper (you have to pay for parking in the hospital), quicker because I can use my bike for the short cycle of my health centre, and a damn sight less wearing.  The rat poison that I am taking is supposed to ‘thin’ my blood making coagulation less effective – this means that the clot in my right leg will thus be gradually dissipated and things will be well!

The key to my continued health is in getting the thinning component in my blood to register between 2 and 3, that is, my blood is between two and three times less likely to coagulate than normal.  This sounds dramatic (and I hope it is for the thrombosis in my right leg) but has little effect on normal life.  The advice from my doctor was, “Don’t fall over.  Don’t cut yourself!  Don’t run for the bus!”

Before you think that I have become the living incarnation of the Tsarevich looking for a modern-day Rasputin, my condition is nothing like as dramatic and I have indeed cut myself (accidentally) and did not bleed to death!  Or indeed, in my view, bleed any more dramatically than normal.  After all, I tell myself, they do prick me for a spot of blood for my Control and that in itself must tell you something!

So, as part of my regimen I am now off for my metric-mile swim.  On my bike.  Even though my bike is electric and has five levels of motor support for my pedalling, the battery level is very low and (horror of horrors!) I might actually have to rely purely on pedal power to get me to the pool.  As we are on the coastal plain, I do not worry too much, but the bridge over the motorway is officially classed as a hill in my book and is an obstacle to be overcome.

But, at my father was fond of repeating: “If it is easier to walk with the bike then pedal, then walk.”  It took me a long time to work out that the advice was not purely for the bike, but was more generally a view of life.  Making pointless effort because of peer pressure or how something looked was, well, pointless.  It links with Occom’s Razor and gives the sort of obvious direction that we frail humans are often too loath to take.

Which, philosophical musing aside, will get me to the pool somehow.  1 ,500 meters here I come!

Well, the swim took place, but the restaurant was a washout.  It turns out that the restaurant has suspended the menu del dia for the month of August.  So, we looked elsewhere for sustenance.  Unfortunately, we settled on an establishment that provided us with a sub-standard set of tapas.  Not a place to go back to.  But I am too lazy to find the receipt to give a name to the guilty.  Perhaps I can edit it in later.

A stint on the beach after Irene left and the threat of a concert at eleven thirty at night of non-classical music will bring an eventful day to an end.

Roll on tomorrow.