Cracked Time

 

This morning, while swimming back down the pool, my left hand inadvertently hit the side of the pool, not hard enough to hurt myself, but hard enough to find the sweet spot of my smart watch’s screen and crack the face and take a small but essential chunk out of the strengthened glass.  To be fair to the timepiece, it is still telling the time, but the touch sensitive quality of the broken screen is not irreparably lost.

     To someone like myself, a noted relojophile (I think the combination of Spanish and Greek in that neologism is more than satisfying) a broken watch is not a disaster, it is far more an opportunity.

     I could, of course, go to my boxed collection of older watches and choose one (or twenty!) to attach to my wrist, and there might even be a few rejected smart watches to choose. 

I could also, as I am at the moment, revert to and wear my ‘emergency’ watch, a Seiko that almost comically ticks almost all of the boxes for a perfect watch.  The model is a Seiko ‘Rail Road Approved’ smallish white face, with Arabic numbers, day/date, sweep second hand, luminous hour and minute hands, waterproof for swimming, and solar charging.  I leave it out on a sunny shelf and it is constantly ready to head wristward should anything untoward happen to my smart watch of choice: the Amazfit GTR.

     As I said, I do have choices, many choices, to replace the broken watch, and the replacement was on sale in Amazon and other outlets for a more than reasonable prime considering what the watch can actually do.  But, as I also said, I see destruction as a chance to try and better what I had.

     As with smart watches, so with mobile phones, we seem to have reached a stage in their development where we are asked to pay more and more for what I seem to remember from painful A Level economics classes is “eventually diminishing” returns.  The so-called ‘flagship’ phones of all the major brands (including those who used to be considered budget but excellent value for money) are absurdly expensive, and if you go to the extent of getting a foldable phone, astronomically expensive!  And, of all the much-vaunted attributes of the machine, how many are actually used by the individual purchaser?  Like computers and the programs that we use on them, we (well, I) barely scrape the surface of what they can do.

     If I am truthful about my smart watch use, I need the thing to tell the time with an always-on display and count my lengths while I swim and the distance I go for my morning bike ride after my swim.  And that’s just about it.  My simple demands do not, of course, stop me from pouring over the almost unending list of things that my watch could do if I understood how to get it to do it.  I find it difficult enough to get my watch to evaluate my exercise before my swim and then to switch to counting my lengths – something to do with moisture on the touch sensitive screen, and it’s always touch and go about whether I can make the thing work.

     Informing me about the receipt of emails and messages, linking to Alexa, storing music, remotely answering my mobile phone and all the other things that the watch allegedly finds simplicity itself, become much more complicated when I get my hands on the thing and the functioning of all these add-ons becomes much more problematical.

     But, with watches, I am an eternal optimist.  I believe in the incrementally commercially inexorable movement towards horological perfection and that what I experienced only imperfectly in one iteration of the watch will become sublime in a later one.

     I suppose that all of the above is going a long way round the houses to say that instead of using one or other of my numerous watches to fill the gap left by my broken (but still time telling) one, I decided after a Nano second’s hesitation to buy new.

     And not only new, but also falling into the patently obvious manufacturer’s trap of a so-called ‘limited edition’ version of something I could have got cheaper in its un-limited form. 

     But, I am ashamed (and yet defiant) to admit, that I was seduced by a bit of bling (it is gold coloured) and by the fact that it comes in a much nicer and more sophisticated box than the common or garden version!

     Sometimes I surprise even myself by how gullible I am when confronted by blatant ego flattering commercialism, but, as I am sure Truss the Heartless Far Right Zealot would assure me, my purchase is doing its bit to ensure the ‘trickle down’ of wealth!

     For some strange reason that thought does not  comfort me.  At all.

Result? Misery!

 

 

 

The chiringuitos (the pop-up bars and restaurants on the beach) are being dismantled: the sign that summer is truly over.  We may get an unobstructed view of the sea again, but, that sea will gradually take on the appearance of a more northerly stretch of water rather than the twinkling blueness of the Med.

     The sun however, continues to shine, though I have now taken to wearing a short jacket when I go for my early morning swim (defiantly un-zippered) but I do not need it (yet) for the return home.  Day by day, the temperatures get lower, but not low enough for us to dispense with the fans that have been godsends through the hot summer months.

     I dislike late autumn and winter because I feel more comfortable in t-shirts and shorts and I prefer the heat.  I do not ‘fear’ the winter, as so many of my fellow citizens both here in Catalonia and Spain and in my home country of Wales and the UK. 

     Prices are rising steadily and in some cases radically and people must, in their own words and their own languages be echoing the truism of William Micawber, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.”

     So many (all!) the politicians in Westminster are at least comfortable in their financial states (unless they have, like Mr Micawber been feckless beyond) and they can look forward to the coming months with something approaching complacency – at least as far as their own personal circumstances are concerned.   

     They have no conception of the true horror of having no money, or being in debt and having no realistic way of paying essential bills to keep themselves fed and warm.

     This winter could see obscene numbers of people experiencing real ‘misery’, of seeing no way out of a situation that is financially impossible.  And, at the same time seeing the number of millionaires and billionaires expanding exponentially as circumstances which are crippling middle and lower earners bring a sense of real desperation to the working of the body politic.

     The last twelve years of vicious Tory mismanagement have seen a hollowing out of the functions of a caring state, with yawning gaps in essential provision failing to be filled by the charitable and voluntary sector.  We have food banks saying that they are not only running out of food to give to those who are needy, but also they are going to find it difficult or impossible to continue their work with the ever escalating costs of power, let alone anything else.

     The announcement of The Fiscal Event of the Tory government to be foisted on us on Friday, reminds me strongly of Putin’s cruelly euphemistic description of the bloody War in Ukraine (the largest war in Europe since the end of the Second World War) as a so-called "special military operation." 

     Semantics matter. 

     For Truss calling the mini or emergency or timely or desperate budget, a "Fiscal Event" allows the government to do without an up-to-date report from the Office for Budget Responsibility (a parliamentary committee with a Conservative majority) which would have given an assessment of the economic consequences of the proposals outlined in it.  As apparently, the Fiscal Event is not a budget, it allows her to escape scrutiny.  Again.

      Truss is developing something of a reputation for being what That Woman referred to as “frit” when it comes to putting herself forward to have her views examined.  She evaded a full scale, in-depth interview during her interminable campaign to get the genteel knuckle dragging Tories of the South East to vote for her, and she seems to be following that obscurantist trait in her first days in Number 10.  She has been a stalwart member of the "Hide & Silence" brigade and her disreputably repressive government seems eager to continue on its suppressive way, as far as possible out of the glare of any hostile scrutiny.

     Truss, it cannot be emphasised too much, has a conflicted mandate.  She has no mandate from the public and she was not selected by a majority of Tory MPs.  If Johnson drew his cabinet from the dregs of what was left after he had purged the government of any ‘reasonable’ one-nation Conservatives, I struggle to find the word for the strained dregs that Truss used to form hers!

     Look at the holders of the four great offices of state and weep!

 

The horror!

 

Ideologue n. An ideologist, especially a particularly zealous or doctrinaire supporter of an ideology.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     Truss frightens me in a way that her recent disgraced and failed predecessors did not.  Even the liar and narcissist Johnson was selfishly pragmatic.  But Truss, is cut from an altogether bleaker and colder material.  She is driven by a belief that “Growth At All Costs” is something she is willing to be “unpopular” for.  Her central article of faith is that giving those who have, even more, will encourage them to spread their wealth around so that the poorer in society will ultimately benefit.

     The fact that she appears to have a single, solitary economist to back her up in her steely, gimlet-eyed concentration, means nothing.  The fact that the President of The United States went out of his way to Twitter that ‘trickle-down economics has never worked’ means nothing.  Her ‘higher’ truth is The Truth, and It Will Work.  The red meat that she threw to the ravening wolves on the Conservative far right during her interminable election campaign, was not her politicking and out manoeuvring Rish¡, it was what she really believed, and now she is going to make it all happen.  Allegedly.

     Leading her cabinet, the Truss-faithful few of the vitiated lees of the Tory Party, she, like some ranting eschatologist, will lead her people up the mountain of Growth! Growth! Growth! and await The Rapture of unicorn economics, where all manner of things will be well, and growth and prosperity will come to all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

     She is, quite clearly, demented, and the twelve-year Tory catalogue of corrupt disasters will continue, and accelerate – with the taxpayer, as usual, picking up the Tory tab, and the Labour Party having to sort out the Conservative Crap

     I can now begin to understand something of the gibbering horror that Tory voters felt when they considered that someone like Corbyn (many of whose policies I wholeheartedly supported) might actually become PM, as opposed to a disgusting chancer like Johnson!

But Truss, is something different.  Something very different.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

 

 

 

 

 

The thought was there!

 

 

Yesterday evening, I hung out the flag of the Spanish Republic from the kitchen window fronting the street and felt that I was prepared for the events of the morrow.

     Today, I watched it.  The Funeral I mean.  In spite of all my protestations about totally ignoring it. I watched it.

     I tried to tell myself that I was watching it for the music – not an unreasonable excuse – but, alas, not the right one.  Yes, the music was glorious; the hymns rousing, the older musical items satisfying and the newer ones stimulating, especially the last choir contribution.  But I watched more than would have been justified by an interest in music.

     Yes, I could tell myself that I did do my Duolingo Spanish lessons on my mobile phone during the longueurs (the archbishop’s mini sermon), and I was (I’m ashamed to admit it) mildly surprised that the new Prime Minister With No Popular Mandate, did not make a complete pig’s ear of her contribution.  I may be hopelessly prejudiced (no, wait a minute, ‘prejudice’ is for an attitude not based on reason and evidence) against her, but she always looks as though she is sporting a permanent sneer on her ashy face, and nothing she said in the scriptures appeared to have any bearing on her actual politics or ‘morality’ as well – but, even I had to admit that she got through her words – and then was seen no more.

     It was well done.  God knows they have had enough time to prepare for virtually any eventuality, but it still went almost like clockwork. 

     There is a sort of internal logic for ceremonial that seems to take away rational thought by the observers, and it becomes an end in itself, and the more you watch the less you think about the reasons for doing something in the absurdly elaborate way in which it is realized.

 

     I loved the way that the coffin was handled.  The Bearers Party, looking like Chocolate Soldiers, doing those little steps and shuffles to ensure that the coffin was safely transported and placed.  It its own way it was exquisite – something so mechanically complex for something so basically simple.  It was Baroque (no, Rococo!) rather than De Stijl!

     Like the 142 naval ratings drawing Queen Victoria’s gun carriage: so many questions!  Why 142?  Why were they there?  Why were they dressed in the way they were?  And their little turns and sidesteps, perfectly co-ordinated and choreographed a military Busby Berkeley!

     And ‘choreography’ is the key word, it all becomes like a sort of dance, with some participants, like the fitter members of the armed forces able to do the niftier, complex,  numbers, but it also about trying to make allowances for the whole ensemble that included the old, the older, the infirm, the foreign, the young, the younger, and many precious (in all senses of the word) individuals, many of whom were not wearing clothing suitable for easy movement!

     It went well, and I am glad that I used the music as an excuse to allow my ‘precious’ self to enjoy a performance well executed.

     Of course, that ‘enjoyment’ has nothing to do with my attitude to the monarchy and my belief that it has no place in a modern democracy where the key word should be ‘meritocracy’, not ‘hereditary’ and ‘privilege’.

     Tomorrow, so called normal life resumes and politics rears its very ugly Conservative head spewing ill-begotten policies that will have little immediate effect on the real problems of the majority of the population in the short term, but given another two years of the Tory poison, is likely to damage our reputation and standard of living for generations to come.

 

Today was the first day back to the local pool and to celebrate I swam 2K.  I must admit this was not entirely my celebratory intention.  I take my cue from a lady who swims in lane 1 on the opposite side of the pool from me.  When she does her spaghetti-float exercise, I know that she is getting to the end of her pool activity and, when she leaves, I swim an extra six lengths and that usually brings me up to my accustomed 1.5K – which is enough.

     I’m not sure if she was making up for lost time over the last fortnight, but she swam on for longer than usual and hence I did a third more than usual.  It just made the cup of tea and baguette in the café afterwards feel all the more merited.

     As I get up at 6.15 am, it means that I set off in the darkness and dawn comes up nowadays round about 800m or so and, as it is getting cooler by the day, it also means that the extendible roof remains closed and therefore we have to wear swimming caps.

     I am not totally convinced about the need for caps, apart from the obvious advantage of keeping hair (from those that have any) from floating free – and there is little more disturbingly disgusting than having a loose strand from someone else’s head wrap itself around hand, face, or most disgustingly mouth!  I did once ask why they were mandatory and was given some sort of explanation about the concentration of chemicals in an enclosed pool reacting with hair in some way – a reaction apparently not to be feared in a pool open to the elements.

 

After much internal debate, and writing little notes to myself in my notebook, I have taken the plunge and bought a season ticket for 14 Saturday afternoon concerts in the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona.  The building is a Modernista masterpiece, and the central glass bulge is remarkable – but the thing is, I miss purely orchestral concerts.

     Years ago, I was a season ticket holder, but then I migrated to the Liceu, and opera and the clashes of dates (and the money) meant that I had to make a decision and I opted for Opera.

     I have rather less money than I had years ago, but my thinking was more along the lines of “why the hell not” rather than financial rectitude, and I also told myself that a Saturday (6.30 pm) series of concerts would never coincide with Opera, which is never, ever on a Saturday for my season ticket there.

     And the first of the concerts is an all-Dvorak programme that I can mentally hum along with.   

       What’s not to like?

And the next thing?

 

 

 

  

It says something for my state of underwhelmed-ness about the new Amazon Prime Series The Rings of Power, that I have not bothered to watch the latest episode, which was released last Friday.  The idea of my ignoring something that plays to all my sci-fi fantasy weaknesses, does not say a lot for its impact!

     I am more even more disappointed because I read previews by trusted critics like Bradshaw in The Guardian which were so enthusiastic that I watched the pedestrian opening episode with an avidity that was soon rapidly dwindling to disinterest, bordering on boredom.  I’ve now reached episode three and I am still not engaged, in the way that the books or films of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit captured my reading and watching dedication.

     The Silmarillion on which the new series is loosely based, I found unreadable in its book form, and regarded it as a piece of donnish self-indulgence – as indeed is the series, if you think about it in terms of the commercial hopes of Amazon who made it!

     Yes, of course the look of the series is spectacular, the landscapes are staggeringly beautiful, and the set piece grandeur of fantastic civilizations amazing, but then it should look good given how much cash has been expended on it.

     I find little ‘new’ in the series, and the clunking reveal of ‘random human who turns out to be an unrecognized king” etc tedious, and a weak re-run (pre-run?) of Aragorn/Strider.  I do recognize that the series is a prequel and that there is a sort of satisfaction in seeing the ancient pre-history of the more interestingly critical moments in Tolkien’s created world that far better known, but it does take the sting out of what might happen as we do know how things eventually turn out, and this series does not have the ‘wow’ factor that the films had.  We have assimilated director Peter Jackson’s epic visual conception of Tolkien’s world and we now take for granted visual effects that would once have blown us away.

     I will, of course, watch the whole of the series.  And I will maintain my hope that there will be moments that justify the time I spend watching and the money burnt to make it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have completed my open-air-early-morning-swims.  The fortnight of local pool closure for maintenance is over today, and I have already checked that the pool will open at the normal times for normal use from Monday.  I have been relatively lucky with the weather so that I have not had to swim in challenging circumstances – or cold water, but I still do feel a sense of Mission Accomplished that I have swum all fourteen days in our community pool.

     One of my lecturers used to swim, every day of the year, in Swansea Bay.  I am not made of such stern stuff, though I can say that I swam on Christmas Eve off a beach in Sitges.  When I say swam, that is something of an exaggeration: I immersed myself in the water and immediately exited the sea.  The sunshine that was streaming down, did not, as I vividly recall seem to have any part in heating the icy wavelets.  There is a fine line between resolution and stupidity and staying in the water for any longer than I did would clearly have been an illustration of the latter!

     The pool-absence period has jinxed my writing by changing my routine, and I have only scribbled ‘thoughts’ in my notebook on a couple of occasions, whereas I always write in it when I am taking my cup of tea and baguette in the pool café.  Have jotted down a few phrases and ideas, but it remains to be seen if they are actually worth working up into something real.  There again, even ‘failures’ are interesting, and it is rare that I can’t salvage something from the wreckage of a poem ‘gone wrong’!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Opera Season is almost upon us, and I still haven’t decided if I should take out a ‘Saturday Afternoon Subscription’ to a series of orchestral concerts in Barcelona.  This is an odd hesitation on my part because I am essentially an orchestral music sort of person, with my going to Opera being something of an indulgence for me.

     As is usual with any subscription series, there are some concerts that don’t really appeal, though from past experience, the concerts with low expectations very often surprise with unexpected delights.  At least that is what I keep telling myself.  And afternoon concerts mean a Barcelona exit at a reasonable time!  Worth considering.  And going.  Perhaps I will buy a subscription.  There you are a decision made in under one hundred keystrokes!  If only the other things in life were so easy!