Optimism and other delusions!

 

 

 

 

The go-to-bed-for-a-few-hours-and-get-better approach to general feelings of cruddiness appears to have worked once again, and my swim this morning (Saturday) was conducted with the usual spirited resentfulness that characterises my approach to such mindless (but vital) exercise. 

     My 1500m were swum in my customary lane, but alas, not alone.  As the weekends have an opening time an hour later than usual, there tends to be something of a clash of ‘earlies’ and ‘laters’ which means that some lanes have three swimmers in them following a rough oblong pattern to ensure swimmer separation.

     As I swim in a lane next to the edge of the pool (with the steps jutting out a bit into the lane space) people are generally dissuaded from joining me, as there is the more than likely chance of hitting the steps on passing.  However, this does mean that if someone does join me then the swimming becomes a little more tense, as the swimmer nearer the side swerves out slightly to compensate for the obstruction of the steps and then stands a chance of hitting the arm of the swimmer going in the other direction.

     As I am something of a ‘fixture’ in the side lane early in the morning, I feel ever so slightly resentful if I am joined by someone.  Anyone.  But I tell myself, such vicissitudes are character enhancing – and it makes my eventual cup of tea and baguette even more of a just dessert.  Which prepares one for lunch.

     As we hadn’t been out for a few days (see: ill health above) we decided to go for a menu del dia in spite of the fact that the cost of these meals increases absurdly during the weekends.  One must attend to one’s little pleasures.

     My choices were: vino tinto y Casera, with ice and lemon, to drink; a first course of fideau with alioli, and a second course of galtas cooked with Cognac, the meal completed with lemon cream pie, and iced coffee – all for less than, well, even with the Euro at 86p (70p when I first came to Catalonia!) just under nineteen quid!  At the weekend!  And people ask me why I moved here!  Well, actually they don’t – and with what is going on with the so-called governance of the United Kingdom at the moment, that is hardly surprising!

     We ate outside, as the restaurant we ate in is situated at the bottom of parallel residential blocks, and that gives the paseo between them a very pleasant breeze.  The weather has changed somewhat over the last few days and the temperature is cooler – though we are still using the fans to make the temperature pleasant.  The seasons are changing, and we have been forecast to have tormentas this afternoon, though it is now going into the early evening and not a drop of rain, nor a sound of distant thunder so far!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday sees the first of the autumn season of hospital visits (as an outpatient I rush to add) and I expect little from this one, but much from the one next month.  However misplaced such hope might turn out to be!

Being rather than succeeding?

 

 

A most unsatisfactory swim today.  Not entirely my fault, because whatever Toni had yesterday that made him a little hors de combat, struck me as soon as I got up.  A slightly otherworldly feeling and a distinct disinclination to go through the necessary processes to get me to the pool for opening time.

     At first I though it could be a case of ‘sympathetic panic’ at the onset of the new school term.  Although VERY happily retired, I do share a sort of hysterical malaise at this time of the year.  Usually it passes, almost at the same time as I see active teachers going through the doors of their respective schools, but this feeling of being down took me into the morning darkness and towards my trusty bike.

     It only took a few metres, experiencing that sickening bumpiness on the back wheel, to realise that something was wrong.  A flat tyre.  And not on the front where it is easy to take the wheel off and get it repaired, but on the back wheel that has the gears and all sorts of other things that I do not mess about with.

     So, back home and putting the bike back under the tarp and going over to the car to get to the pool.  Even if not entirely well, I have a built-in rugged determination to have my daily swim!

     Which I did.  In a desultory and unconvincing way, with my even swimming extended periods of breaststroke, which is not a good sign for me as a dyed in the wool crawl swimmer.  I did do my time, if not the full number of lengths, but honour was satisfied and I drove home.  And promptly felt worse.

     Whenever I feel under the weather (giving it is glorious sunshine who isn’t under?) I take to my bed.  And I get better.  It never fails to enrage Toni, who has a much more expansive attitude to illness than I, as a few hours prone usually does the trick for me.

     As it has done this time too.  I can’t pretend that I feel 100%, but I feel more than prepared to take on the normal stresses of life without whimpering for pity.

     As is also normal during these times of unwellness, I have little to no appetite, though even as I type those words, the ‘concept’ of food is appealing, which is only one step behind getting something to satisfy what should be a growing hunger. 

     Time will tell.

 

The start of the month also opens the way for the medical establishment of Catalonia to attend to my clinical needs.  There has been something of a hiatus during the summer, but now that the first of September has come and gone, there is a feeling of ‘let’s get going’ that seems to jolly up the whole country.  I am, of course, hoping that this positive attitude will be part of my treatment in the coming months.

     The first hospital appointment I have is a scheduled one (on a rough annual basis) that is more to do with my proving to the doctors that I am alive than having anything done to me.  I will go and have my appointment (usually with a doctor coming to the end of his employment) who will look at me, voice a few platitudes and then say, “See you next year!”  With any luck.  Though he will probably have retired by the time I go back.

     The more important appointment comes next month when I will see the fabled traumatologist for the first time.   

     I am building up a truly absurd amount of hope linked to this appointment.  I know that my knees are a lost cause and that for them to be made workable, an orthopaedic surgeon will have to take hammer and chisel to them and sculpt something artificial to take the place of the bone rubbing on bone that is my present case.  

      I am also more than well aware that such ‘routine’ operations are way down the pecking order to be completed, given the pressures that have been placed on the health service by the pandemic and other financial restraints.  I also realize that the likely waiting time for the first of the two operations that I need will likely be at least eighteen months or two years away at very best.  And that, is a daunting thought, to put it mildly.

     I understand that there are stop-gap measures of injecting something (any bloody thing!) into the space where there should be a membrane separating the end of the bone, that could give relief for a month at worst and months at best.

     At the moment I am not even near being put on a waiting list, so I am looking at getting my first operation in my mid-70s!  At which point I can hear a whole chorus of younger and needier people chanting, “Let him hobble!”  And one does have some sympathy.  But that is in the abstract, and the pain in my knees is in the very real and so I hope that Something Can Be Done.

     The Opera Season will just have started before that first appointment.  I wish I could find something apposite to say about arthrosis-ridden knees and Don Pasquale (the first opera of the season) but, apart from ridiculing old age, I can think of nothing! 

     At least Donizetti’s music is lively and that should buoy up my mood!

 

Up and at 'em!

 

It may not be officially Autumn yet, but as far as my pool is concerned, the first of September marks the change from August time to normality again, and the place opens at 7 am rather than 8 am.

     For someone like myself, getting up early (usually to have a swim before work) is something that I have always done, and retirement did not alter the internal clock.  I have never found it easy or enjoyable to have a ‘lie in’, though from time to time I did attempt one, on the faulty basis that something that most people like should appeal.  It didn’t, and I continued and continue to get up early.

     I also have a fairly reliable ‘internal’ alarm clock, so that if I know that I have to get up at a particular time, I usually wake up.

     Of course, what one has to ask oneself is, “Do you make use of the ‘gained’ time?”  With an early morning swim, the ‘smug’ factor is generally speaking, built in.  After all, by 8 am (normal time) I have swum my regulation 1500m and will have started on my knee exercises.  So, by the normal start of work time, I have not only done more exercise than the vast majority of the population, but I have also had a decent breakfast and written (alas, usually inconsequential) thoughts and ideas in my notebook.  And I cycle home from the pool, by taking a detour to the end of the paseo in Gavà just for luck!  Smug doesn’t cover it!

     During the months from now, until the Spring, I will set off for my swim in darkness.  I always think that makes my cycle ride more meritorious because it is clear that most people are not up and doing, and there I am ‘exercising’ before dawn!

     If I think back to the daily commute that I made, both here in Catalonia and in Cardiff, then I am acutely aware that sometimes I arrived at my destination of work or home and had no recollection of the journey.  I didn’t crash, so some part of my brain must have been in control, but not, I fear all of it.  So, I am aware that a lone cyclist on a darkened road pre-full-on rush hour is somewhat vulnerable.

     I do, of course, wear a helmet and, rather like the feeling of going to bed without brushing your teeth, not wearing it makes me uncomfortable enough to realise that something is wrong and, it is usually only one cycle of the pedal before I return to get it.  (Or get back up and brush my teeth.) 

     My helmet also has a white light on the front and two red lights on the back; the bike has a built-in set of two LED lights, and I have added a red rear light.  There is also a further light attached to the handlebars that I sometimes use if I think the illuminated circus that is my night-time bike is not gaudy enough.  That further light was actually for another bike, but waste not want not!

     So, I can be seen.  Whether people take notice, is another question.

 

 

     

 

 

 

 On the paseo to Gavà, which is wide and well surfaced, there is a two-lane cycleway marked out with a continuous white line and stencilled bikes painted onto the road.  There is, however, no physical division apart from the miniscule layer of paint that comprises the white line.  That is very often a problem.

     I always turn on my light when I use the cycleway because it appears that a large man on a black metallic structure with big wheels is far too inconspicuous an object looming towards pedestrians to encourage the clearance of a way clearly marked for cycles.

     There is a particular sort of ‘runner’ – poor technique, inappropriate clothing, earphones and sweat – that runs exactly on the line of the cycleway, no matter that flailing arms mean that the cyclist have to swerve into the other lane to avoid the on-line runner.

     Parents with toddlers seem to think that an impenetrable shield protects their wandering young from bike riders, riding their bikes in their specific bike lanes.

     Even worse are those parents who think that their children who are too young to walk properly are more than qualified to use those sort of hobby-horse self-propelled bikes in the same lane as adult cyclists, presumably on the half-arsed half-understood principle of a Gertrude Stein approach of “a bike is a bike is a bike” and “we are all equal in the bike lane” or some such rubbish.

     Some dog owners seem to be vindictively stupid.  I mean those who have their creatures on the end of the infinitely extendable leads so that where the owner is and where the dog is sometimes seems to be more random than anything else, and yards of lax lead is an ever-present problem.

     I am more than prepared to admit that cyclists are not perfect in the way they use the roads, and their use and abuse of the cycle lane is also something to be condemned as they weave in and out, invade pedestrian space, turn without warning, and stop and chat in the middle of the bikeway.

     I suppose if you are a cyclist, you do realise that the inconsideration of car drivers, while irritating can also, easily, be fatal! 

     So, I keep my lights on when, as with the paseo, cyclists and pedestrians are in close contact. 

     I take to heart the words of the great superstore philosopher, and wear a helmet, cycle with consideration, and use my lights, because “Every Little Helps” and I like life.

This & That

 

 

 

 In the compensatory way of Catalan weather, it is now gloriously sunny and raining!  I managed to get my tempest-delayed bike ride from this stormy morning in, just before the lashing rain thoroughly soaked me – and that last bit can be read in both ways, and both are right!

     In this part of the world, thunder sounds as if it is being ‘played’ by an over enthusiastic ASM in some ropey rep.  It grumbles away in the background until you suddenly feel as though you are in the front line in WW1 as a cataclysmic clap of thunder sounds as if it has taken over all of your immediate surroundings.

     As I have been typing, the rain has stopped and a sunny dampness has settled around the blissfully quiet pool, devoid as it is of persons of limited age.  It won’t be long before the determined sunshine chimes in with their youthful energy and the (imagined) solitude is rudely broken.  Again.

 

 We are approaching the two-week period when our local pool is closed for essential maintenance, or whatever.  This means that each year I have to decide about where I go to maintain my daily exercise.

     Let me be clear, only the pool is closed, all other aspects and facilities of the centre are available.  My knees preclude padel, so the only other alternative is To Go To The Gym.

     When I first came to join this centre, I was given the guided tour by one of the managers who asked, “Would you like to see the gym?”  To which I replied, “No.”  I was there for the covered 25m pool and nothing else.

     I am not going to the other main pool in Castelldefels because I have bad (and expensive) memories of using the place, so my choice in past years has been to go to the municipal pool in the neighbouring town of Gavà (Gavá, in Spanish) which means that I have to use my bike to wing the desolate abyss (an unlighted link road) between Castelldefels and my destination pool, with frankly rather frightening traffic obviously resenting my presence on the tarmac!

     This year, however, I am seriously considering To Go To The Gym in the pool with a much shorter bike ride, and most of it on an actual bike lane!  My reasoning is, that if I can find a gym instructor who lacks that sadistic side that seems a common factor in so many of their approaches to exercise regimes, and someone who actually appreciates the bone-on-bone reality of arthrosis, then I could profitably do some exercises to strengthen by leg muscles to show willing by the time I (finally) get to the traumatologist where something might be done.  I have to admit, I am not entirely convinced by that reasoning, and I am telling myself that the early morning cycle ride to Gavà in the dark was frighteningly exhilarating and availing to good.

     The internal debate can continue until the 5^th of September (when I have a delayed routine hospital appointment in the morning) but by the 6^th I will have to have decided.  Probably before then, because the days of just popping into a pool and being able to have a swim, post pandemic simply do not exist.  So, some planning needs to be done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I sit in the sunshine drinking my tea and adding pepper to my tortilla francesa baguette I am often regaled by music that is entirely unknown to me, piped to the outside sitting area by who knows who inside.  Most of it washes over me, but occasionally I perk up a little and take notice.

     Yesterday was one such day because part of the lyrics of one of the songs sounded odd to me.  The song (I have since discovered) was a “collaboration” between Yves V, INNA & Janieck.  How it took that many to write the deathless lyrics or the equally deathless tune, is somewhat beyond me, but one particular line stuck out, “You haunt me like a déjà vu” (written without the accents in the original, but let it pass, let it pass – and I might add that they were added automatically by Word when I typed them and not with my fingers.) 

     And I realized that I have never seen the phrase used like that.  Yes déjà vu is a noun, but I had never seen, or indeed heard the phrase with only an indefinite article to keep it company “a déjà vu.” One hears things like, a sense of déjà vu; it is déjà vu; it was déjà vu; a feeling of déjà vu, but never, “a déjà vu.”  In the chorus of the song the first line uses “a déjà vu” but the repeat is “You haunt me like déjà vu” which is how I would use it.

     Obviously, using the indefinite article is not in any sense wrong, but it is odd that it is generally not done.

     I am now wondering if I should find an opportunity and try out the song’s way of using the phrase and see how it sits with my way of expression.

          

                    Words, I love them!

 

 

Judgement!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Retribution was swift.

     It took less than five minutes from a viciously casual remark to a teacher friend about to start school tomorrow, “When you go through the gates, I want you to know that there is a retired teacher smiling!” to trapping my little finger’s pad in the pre-swim shower button and producing a momentarily, intensely painful blood blister that my grandmother of unregenerate, pre-woke days, referred to as “a blackman’s pinch”!

     I can’t remember the last time that I had one of those, but it must have been in my distant youth, and I did now what I did then, and bit through the skin to allow the blood to escape.  So, I sat in the hydraulic chair (my ceremonial and arthrosis-friendly way into the pool) looking like some barely sated vampire.

     I judged, almost certainly wrongly, that the various chemicals in the pool (as opposed to the various substances in the pool that necessitate those chemicals) would be beneficial for my small wound and that, in any case, I knew that I had a bottle of TCP at home, so all would be medically well.  Eventually.

     I was much more worried by the recently discovered chocolate stains on the front of my shorts that I noticed only when I was getting changed.  And before minds whirl away on the wings of vile speculation, let me hasten to explain how they got there.

     Chocolate is one of the banned substances in my so-called diet, and I find it hard to remember when I last had a ‘real’ piece of that confectionary.  Everything is low fat and sugar free, and calorie reduced – and generally flavourless.  But a summer without ice cream is unthinkable, and so alternatives to the desired-forbidden have to be found.

     There are ice creams that proclaim themselves to be created with “No Added Sugar” and I have learned to be not too scrupulous in discovering exactly what that phrase might mean.  What I take it to mean is that the substances so described are ‘allowable’ for me to eat.  As with low-fat, sugar-free yogurt, you can enjoy such things as long as you do not, ever, eat the full-fat, sugar-filled, real alternatives.

     I still remember a period years ago when I had got used to the anaemic yogurts that were allegedly ‘healthy’ and I called into my parents, where my mother offered me an M&S “rich and creamy” yogurt to try.  Which I did, and almost fainted with the sheer pleasure and sensory overload that the deliciousness of “rich and creamy” was.  It was only with a supreme effort of will that I managed to stagger back to my home and NOT instantly throw away the cartoned crappiness that I had been suffering to enter my mouth and replace them all with “rich and creamy”.  But I resisted, though I never again (ever) ate a ‘healthy’ yogurt with anything less than resentment.  And I still do.

     Anyway, back to chocolate.  It is possible to kid yourself that 80% cocoa content is OK and that there is far less sugar in such things as the acme of real chocolate deliciousness (at least if you are British) of Cadbury Dairy Milk - the chocolate that had (has?) so little cocoa in it that it was deemed by the EU to be a mere ‘confection’ rather than actual chocolate! 

     But most of the chocolate that we eat is full of sugar, so given my diet, a big no-no – except there is some sort of brown covering which is able to be called chocolate and does not have the vast number of calories that usually accompany taste!

     We had discovered (and rejected) a whole range of chocolates (or ‘chocolates’) when we hit upon a whole series of ice creams in mini choc-ice form that seemed to combine the look of the real thing with about 40% of the ‘real’ taste – percentages we could live with!  And they were mini size!

     This discovery has kept us going through the summer with a taste of a traditional accompaniment to the heat.  What went wrong is that I didn’t read the packaging well enough.

 

 

 

 

     Yes, it has the equivocal banner, “No added sugars!” but what I hadn’t noticed was this particular box also had the words “Protein bar!” also inscribed.  Added goodness, one might think.  That’s as maybe, but what the ‘protein’ bit did was alter the consistency of the ice cream.

     Taking them out of the freezer they looked the same, but the differences became apparent when one took a bite.  The ‘chocolate’ (or whatever) looked and tasted the same, but the ice cream interior was hard and unyielding.  This meant that, when biting into the choc-ice the chocolate shattered and the ice cream interior remained unbroken, producing a welter of instantly melting stain makers and rebuffed teeth.

     Toni was all for throwing them away as unfit for purpose, but I was determined to thwart such ice-cream complexity and find a way to consume them.

     I have resorted to childhood (yet again) and the way that one sometimes ate Penguin biscuits, by nibbling away at the chocolate covering revealing the biscuit beneath.  This is only partially effective because such nibbling can, even with the most cautious canines, produce a catastrophic shedding of the chocolate coating that even the most nubile tongue is unable to deal with.  I have therefore resorted to the use of a bowl under my chin to catch any shards that my nibbling produces.  Ungainly, but effective.

     Luckily there are only a few more mini choc-ices of the protein variety left and I will be able to resort to the normal manner of eating these delights and not have the fear of staining.

     If I draw anything from this piece of writing it might be: always be kind to teachers, and always read the packaging. 

     Valuable life lessons!

Shades of the Prison House!

 

 

 

 

 

Swimming in my lane, trying to get used to the cut-off fins (the ones that ‘real’ swimmers use in swimming pools for reasons that elude me) I hear a voice from the next lane chant out a soulful, “One week!”  This was a teacher friend of mine counting down the days before she has to return to school.

     In this part of the world, at the start of term, there is a period when teachers are in school, and the kids are not.  A golden opportunity you would think for harassed members of the profession to get themselves and their classrooms sorted out; to check through class lists and timetables; check room allocation, and generally prepare themselves for the forthcoming fray.

     You might think that.  But if you do then the chances are that you have not taught in the Catalan or Spanish school system.  The Powers That Be consider time without kids to be the opportune time for meetings.  And more meetings.  And more.

     In my experience, and I have been to thousands of meetings, literally thousands – political, cultural, and educational, and what my mother would have described in a catch-all term of which she was very fond, “sundry”.  And I can truthfully say that the most soul destroying and quintessentially useless meetings that I have attended have been here in Catalonia.  I must make an honourable exception for Departmental meetings, but ‘whole school’ affairs have been viciously pointless.  And long.  Very long.

     In some educational administrative minds, The Meeting is an end in itself, and the content and participants’ response is secondary.  Even as I type I can begin to resurrect my feelings of almost homicidal hatred of the agenda-less meanders that took away hours of my life, without compensating me with anything even remotely educationally positive.

     A signal low point was a meeting on a Saturday morning (!) during which I was wearing my most pointedly casual clothes and throughout which I didn’t smile once.  Not once from the beginning of the pointless charade to the eventual will-sapped end. I spoke only when I was directly addressed, and my answers were clipped to the point of being marginally rude.  Not one smile.  And I left at the earliest point I could and went home, smouldering because the meeting had been (surprise!) pointless.

     But you are retired, I hear no one say.  You no longer go to meetings.  True.  I no longer go to meetings that I have to go to; I go to the meetings I choose to go to.

     The last meeting I went to was in our local city hall and was a gathering of individuals from the foreign communities, who had been invited by a general email to consider taking part.

     We gathered at the appointed time outside the City Hall and were ushered into the Council Chamber where we were seated, shown a short film, and then joined by the alcaldesa (the mayor) and encouraged to give our opinions about our city.  We were not a large group and we had widely differing proficiency in Spanish or Catalan, but we were listened to with courtesy and our points were considered and responded to.  At least verbally.

     One of the points that I made was about the state of the roads and especially those roads in the immediate vicinity of my house.  Some of the road surfaces are composed of what seems to be rafts of concrete and there has been some movement of these plates.  Round the corner from where I live one concrete plate in the road has risen so that there is a ledge lifted above the surface of the surrounding road.  As the ridge is so pronounced, it means that a car driven at a normal speed feels as though it is encountering a substantial step in the road with consequent jarring.  I had even taken a photograph of the ridge and was able to illustrate my point that the road was not only uncomfortable to drive on but also potentially dangerous. 

     I await further developments, and hope that it will not be the breaking of the axel of some unsuspecting car.

     To be fair I have not attempted any follow up and anyone who expects anything to be done in the month of August must be a very green newcomer to the country!

     The important thing is that a channel of communication has been opened with members of the foreign community and it is up to the individuals concerned in the initial meeting to make something of the opportunity offered by the City.

     We were not, in any way a representative grouping.  We had no mandate apart from our own interests.  We had an opportunity, and we were speaking directly to the political power brokers in our own area.

     We were listened to, and a group photograph was taken!  An overture has been made and it is up to us to find out if it can be taken further.

     I started this writing by concentrating on futility: the system grinding on, pointless and empty actions limiting expression. 

     But I end this piece with a new determination to make the channel of communication with the movers and shakers in my adopted city one that works for me and one that even might Get Something Done! 

     There is no point in being near levers if you don’t pull one or two occasionally and see what happens.