Down we go!

Feeling worse, but revised better.  

Go figure!

I am now putting total faith in the couple of “puffers” that I have to do the job and get rid of the irritating illness which has now been in the vicinity for far, far longer than I am used to.  A day feeling unwell I can cope with; a second week seems like malicious victimization and I want none of it!

Toni keeps asking if I feel better and I am giving in to the relentless expectation of improvement and am almost convincing myself that I do feel, perhaps, maybe a bit better.  The mornings and evenings are not good time, but there is a middle period in which I can enter into the self-deception with something like enthusiasm.

I am now on the third and last volume of information that has to be at my fingertips for the examination.  Our tutor has, at last managed to sort our the terminal problems with the IT in her house and is now back in contact with us and is supplying the sort of information about the exam which creates panic and despair in students!  No, it is all good stuff, though if you read between the lines of the good, solid suggestions there are little hits which suggest that you should have done much more than you actually have!  It is the demand for specifics rather than the General Picture which strikes a chill into my heart!  However, if all goes well and the “puffers” do their stuff then I will be able to deliver on what they are going ask.  Probably.

The tutor for the next course has been in touch and we are obviously going to hit the ground running, as soon as the tutor forum is open for business.  And the sooner the better to my mind – though the revision and illness does make it more than a little problematical!

Though the one clear thought which always comes to mind to see me through occasions like this is the simple fact that I am doing all this “because I want to” – and that makes all the difference!

Coughing is the spice of life!

Enough!  

I am thoroughly bored by my bout of bronchitis – it now is glorified by having a name of a known illness and by my having not one, but two puffers to do something to it.  My coughing is still at competition level, especially in the mornings and evenings and I am thoroughly put out.

I do not do illness very well.  I am more than prepared to have a day in bed from time to time to acknowledge that the human frame is prone to illness, but my tolerance does not really extend further than that.  And when the symptoms extend themselves to ten days then my patience is just about exhausted.

Today was one of those days when anything more than listless reading was impossible and after a light-ish lunch I took to my bed for an extended snooze.  I think that this was really quite a sensible idea and I felt both guilty and refreshed at the end of it.  I have convinced myself that this little jaunt to the land of Nod was necessary payment to get over the hump and work my way towards full health.

By way of acceptable displacement activity I have reorganized the spice jars.

When you see that sentence in a paragraph by itself the full fatuous emptiness of my activity is glaringly obvious.  However, I maintain (stoutly) that such activity is of proven worth.

My spice rack is a three-rack affair which is not in any way freestanding and therefore rests (the wrong way round) against a piece of kitchen wall next to the gas stove.  The spice jars have been a constant cause of irritation ever since I found some perfect ones in a local shop, decided to change everything with the immediate result of the shop instantly ceasing to stock them - and they have never stocked them since.  I did try a different jar with a metal clasp closure on them which were tiny and inefficient.  The time to change was obviously forcing itself upon me.

The trigger for the change was the opening of yet another Chinese Supermarket in our little town.  This was more of a hypermarket with furniture, umbrellas, electronics, plastic, artificial flowers and everything else that you could possibly think of.  You have to understand that in crisis struck Spain the Chinese are making their move to take over the entire commercial life of the country.  Today, Chinese shops are a byword for the places you go to find the thing that you can’t find anywhere else.  You may not get quality, but you do get “it”.

Amazingly I had no small stickers to go on the jars (which I previously bought from a distinctly “Chinese” everything-for-1€ section in Carrefour) and so was forced to go and shop.  The selection was not great but I did get the stickers and found a metallic something-or-other which I hoped could work as a spice rack.

It didn’t.  But Toni used a highly honed intelligence and made it work by adding a delightfully Heath-Robinson dongle to give it stability.  I have now made executive decisions about which spices have pride of place and which are condemned to life in a plastic box.  The area is now neat and cleared.

This is yet another example of a relatively small change making a huge difference in look and activity.  It is like changing the furniture, or just changing the furniture around which can give a whole new approach to living!

At the same shop as that which provided the jars I have also got my new notebooks for the new course.  The idea of making do with a small quarto book was simply not sufficient to allow the exercises that the OU demands and so I have had to get a couple of A4 plain paper books to give opportunity to keep up with what needs to be done and to have some central area for reference when the OU asks you to refer to the notebooks to justify you productions.  I am sure that it will all make sense in time.

There are now seven days to go to the examination and the past couple of days have not helped my plans for revision.  Today I have done very little (well, none) but I have done some writing for the next course.  I have completed my daily haiku; I have done some Freewriting and I have also used the clustering technique to get ideas flowing.  I am sure that this will soon become a habit, but it does seem a little artificial at the moment.  Still, artifice is what it is all about.

Tomorrow, phlegm permitting, I will crack on the end of the second book and start the third.  There is still plenty of time for me to give more than adequate attention to all the areas which I will have to explain in the exam and be able to do some work on the new course.  Saturday is the official start of A215 Creative Writing and Sunday will see us in the delayed meal in Irene’s.

We have to visit her soon as our collection of plastic bottle tops has now outgrown our plastic bottle top container!  The collection of these things is part of an effort to get help to a young child who is suffering from meningitis.  I have to say that I have been horrified by the number of plastic bottles of whatever that we use during a couple of weeks.  Collecting the tops does however give us a sense of usefulness and there is never anything wrong with hugging that warm feeling of smugness that we are “doing the right thing”!

And the right thing for tomorrow is getting stuck in to the work that needs to be done thoroughly before the 10^th!

Cough drink, revise!

A new level of sophistication achieved today when, after a day of coughing and revision we went out to have a few tapas and I had Vermouth with my meal.

I did not realise how hidebound the drinking of the damn thing was until I had made a number of faux pas.  I ate the olive immediately, used my fingers to squeeze out the lemon and then used the cocktail stick to bob my ice cube around to get the right level of coldness.  Toni watched my loutish provincialism with undisguised contempt and, if it wasn’t for the quality of the food, there might only have been one insulting topic of conversation!

I can only put my boorish behaviour down to illness.  I have now coughed my way through a week and a couple of days and Toni has come to the end of his tether and demanded that He phone the doctor!  I lay back and let him attempt to say my name in a suitably Catalan way to the automatic system.  Didn’t work and he was eventually put through to a real human and I had an appointment in little over an hour’s time!

I was seen and dismissed with prescriptions for two “puffers” within two minutes of my appointed time!  I now fully expect to be back to full working order well before I have to heft the pen for my three essays for the final of A151.

In an attempt to get myself well situated for the start of the course on the 5^th of this month I have read through the first week’s work and have grasped the exercises that I am expected to do and have done first drafts of all of them, so I will have something to say when the forum for my tutor group is up and running.  Even though I will be in the final days of revision!

My feelings of contempt grow ever stronger in relation to our so-called government.  Rajoy had an interview in America (safely on the other side of the Atlantic) in which a plucky (or ordinary) interviewer asked the be-whiskered buffoon certain questions relating to El Caso Barcenes; the use of illegal money and the destruction of evidence.  His response was much, much less than convincing with his greatest defence being that “nothing could be proved” rather than everything was lies.  The complete tosspot even tried to get his non-answers censored in this country!  And failed.  But nothing happens and everyone in this toxic government acts as if nothing can touch them.  And the sad thing is that they are probably right!

My belief in the concept of “justice” is this country is, you might say, getting more and more attenuated as each day passes and the lousily guilty are allowed to parade themselves on the television screens flaunting their continued freedom.

If justice was allowed to take its course then I think that, from the King downwards a whole layer of the ruling criminal confederacy would be inside.  But nobody expects justice to be done.  Justice is a joke.

However, the sun continues to shine and therefore all is good with the world.

Though the academic future that I was expecting could be modified a little because there are changes to the MA in Art History which is my eventual aim with the OU.  I have sent for information and I will have to work out how the changes in the course will affect my plans for the next few years.

Next weekend I expect to be well enough to go and have our delayed Arabic meal with Irene.

And the middle of next month Andrew is arriving for a long weekend.  Which is enough to concentrate our minds to decide which are the most impressive restaurants to which to take him!  Decisions, decisions!

Never too old or too lazy to learn!

One book down; two to go!

Revision continues with my chosen method of re-reading all three books with a trusty highlighter to hand!  In the World of the OU having the right vocabulary, using key words with impunity is the key to passing!

One of my favourite words from this course (which I forgot but I have rediscovered it by assiduous use of the internet) is “skeuomorphic”. 

I came across this word in relation to ancient Greek vases (or “pots” as we experts usually call them!) and a discussion about how valuable they were, rather than are now.  Some experts maintain that people with money used metal vessels while the poorer classes were reduced to using ceramic versions.  However, the ceramic versions mimicked some elements of the more expensive gold or silver pots.  When cheaper things mimic the more expensive they are referred to as “skeuomorphic” items.  Now you too can add this invaluable word to your vocabulary.  Let me know if you find an opportunity to use it!

We are almost at the end of September - and I have to admit that it has been an exceptional month as far as the weather has been concerned.  And therefore not conducive to intensive revision!  Like all the best vampires I am concentrating my intellectual effort after the sun has set.

There are some thirteen days left to the exam, and eight before my next course starts.  I am well on schedule and I will be glad when the exam is over and done with and I can concentrate on my writing.  The keenies on the course are all writing as though words are going to be rationed and to give themselves an added advantage in “getting going” before the course actually starts so they will be semi-hysterical by the time that they are actually asked to do something!

I know the OU students of old.  Thirty years ago (!) I did a history of art course, one of the requirements for which was a week-long residential school in Westfield College in London.  This was a delightful oasis of academe behind some grubby main road, but after getting there and meeting my fellow students I lost my nerve and demanded that Clarrie, Andrew and Stewart come and get me and take me away from them all!  They did come and they did take me away and ply me with drink and then, in an act of calculated cruelty they took me back!

The thing about summer schools in the OU is that whatever your initial impression and misgivings might be, you are sucked into a strange communal life and you cannot imagine anything better!

Now with the computer and forums the sense of isolation is not so central to the experience and anyway, summer schools have become optional extras nowadays so a particular edge has been taken off the whole experience.  Thank god!

Now that the subsidies that helped me thirty years ago are a thing of the long past, anything which reduces the substantial costs of studying with the OU seems to be to be a good thing.  There are no OU tutors in Europe outside the UK and my tutor group will be mainly composed of students from the North of England which includes the rest of Europe in its remit!

From the 10^th of October I will be adding some of my writing exercises to these pages as a way of getting the habit of writing uppermost in my mind.

Even though I am revising, I have written my haiku for today – devised I might add while swimming!

Tomorrow book two – a probably a different colour highlighter!