Computer abuse

This is being written in electronic exile.

My internet connection is not working and it is amazing how isolated I feel. Something has happened to my computer and programs are not working properly. The most obvious reason for this situation is a virus: though I have to say (through clenched teeth) that I do have an up-and-running anti virus program. My frustration is now being expressed in a tight and sullen sort of resentment when, for no reason, the toys of my adulthood are suddenly taken away.

Just as suddenly as it happened: it has reversed itself. There was a certain amount of encouragement by listening to Toni and typing in ‘configsys’ at certain arcane spaces on the computer and limiting this and expanding that; but the most effective procedure which managed to get this cutting edge technology back onto the straight and narrow was actually turning it off and on again. This is actually quite encouraging, because that is the computer equivalent to giving the machine a little tap to get it going again! Nice to see that the old methods are still the most effective!

I’ve now completed reading “Winter in Madrid” by C J Sansom and I can recommend it as a compelling read. My reservations about the implausibility of the plot and the highly contrived twists in it are actually utilised with some subtlety as the action progresses. My further reservations about the use of the setting are also lessened as the story progresses.

There are genuine shocks as the tempo of the action increases. The central character represents a particular view of the typical non-political English man who tries to do the decent thing when placed in intolerable circumstances. That is why the historical and geographical location of the novel is so interesting: a non political approach to Spain at the end of the Civil War was impossible. I do, of course, realise that any ‘non-political’ stance is more presentation than reality. I spent a long time talking to teachers who thought that they could be non political just because they said so. It was always fun pointing out to those colleagues with limited intelligence the oxymoron that a ‘non political’ stance actually was in the profession of teaching! As it was always members of PAT (the professional association of teachers – what a misnomer that first word always was) who twittered on about their inability to take strike action ‘because of the pupils’ but who never failed to take their pay increases when they found their way into their pay packets after the actions of the NUT and NASWT!

The ending of the novel is probably the strongest part of the book, and I’m not totally convinced that the rest of the action matches the strength which is evident at the end. I do admire the fact that Sansom did not duck the issues which his setting provoked. His research is sometimes a little too much on parade and there is a certain amount of historical name dropping but it is woven into the fabric of his narrative.

Having said all that, I think that the most impressive part of the book is at the end of the novel when Sansom gives his references and especially his summary of the conflict in a section entitled ‘Historical Note’. I have not read a more compact, succinct and intelligent summary of the complex and frustrating conflict which was the Spanish Civil War. In three and a half pages he manages to concentrate the complex issues into a readable and understandable format.

Although I had not heard of Sansom before, I understand that his literary fame rests more on the fact that he has started producing a series of historical novels. I can’t say that I am encouraged to read those, even though you are given a chapter for free at the end of ‘Winter in Madrid’.

The photos promised yesterday did not materialise.

Tomorrow.

For sure.

Blow, blow thou winter wind!

Now that the howling winds have lessened in their intensity (well, stopped if I am to be strictly accurate) I can survey my demesne and take stock of the destruction wrecked. Three panels around the garden have been stricken. It is, of course, just my luck that the panels which need to be replaced are no longer made! I dread to think what resources of ingenuity will be called on from my limited stock to repair the seemingly destroyed fence. Two of the panels are now lying on the patio outside the front windows like some giant’s discarded jigsaw set and I have a vague but nagging feeling that a random scattering of nails knocked with enthusiasm in to various rotting pieces of sodden wood is not going to produce a convincing looking replacement section. Well, think what I like, it has to be done to be ready for the Selling Season for the house. I only hope that Cuprinol paint can cover a multitude of minor discrepancies in the surface of wooden panelling!

There is something to be said for viewing a gale from the centrally heated comfort of a secure home. Even though I have to say that the occasional ‘thunk!’ as yet another garden chair is levitated just enough to get itself thrown by the careless hand of the wind into the pond, where it remains, half submerged, like the aftermath of a normal pool party in Malaga, is a little disconcerting.

The wind also converted our street into an almost comical obstacle course because of the disorder brought to the road by the scattered bins which had been overturned. Driving was more of a slalom course, especially where the concentration of wheelie bins from the flats made the course even more perilous. Thank god for a good cup of tea and a decent book; the wind can do what it likes as long as there is literature to facilitate escape!

I am now well into ‘Winter in Madrid’ and I have distinctly mixed thoughts about the book. I am not convinced that the setting of the book adds that much to a rather contrived plot. I get the sense that the setting of immediate post Civil War Spain and the problems of keeping Spain out of the Second World War is more window dressing than an essential element in the effective presentation of the relationships of the major protagonists. Coincidence is playing far too large a part in the action of the novel and its obviousness is unsettling: it points up the mechanistic nature of the emotional ties which link the three school fellows.

I will wait until I have finished before I give a definitive evaluation of the novel – though I have to say the more I read this book the more I am looking forward to starting ‘Nicholas Nickleby’!

I am still looking for suggestions for the pieces of British orchestral music which qualify as ‘world famous’ – I’ve had one or two more suggestions but people are confusing ‘good’ British music with ‘world famous’ British music: not the same thing at all – though we might bemoan the fact that more British music is not known around the world, I’m looking for the reality of fame rather than the earnest expression of what ought to be famous.

Tomorrow: photos. I have neglected my camera, so I will set myself the task of producing a set of three or four decent shots to keep my level of involvement active.

We shall see.

Penury!

I am not one to dwell on imagined or real slights. I scorn to harp on about injustices that I have suffered. I shrug at hardship and adversity and much prefer to get on with the positive aspects of life.

Well, as an aspiration, the previous paragraph sounds OK; it’s just a pity that it doesn’t, even remotely, apply to me.

I am still reeling after paying £700 for my car yesterday: a service; MOT and replacement brakes. Except that the very efficient people in Nationwide Autocentre in North Road in Cardiff didn’t manage to include my new MOT certificate in the “Thank you for choosing . . .” guff that they gave me after ripping £700 from my shocked account. I only hope that they were a little more efficient in the way that they have treated my car!

I was, to put it mildly, pissed off because I had to return to North Road to collect my MOT before getting my tax disc. I have now spent the best part of £1,000 to keep my car on the road: and the insurance is due in a few months time! O tempera O mores!

[I have just moved my position to escape being oracularly involved in “’Celebrity’ Big Brother”. Some things ask too much of a relationship!]

Not that it is playing in my mind; but did your last service bill have separate charges for the disposal of oil, brake fluid and ‘other’ fluids? Did it? Liar! It is, surely, only the grasping mechanics of Nationwide Autocentre in North Road who charge for things like that (including, might I just add, a charge of £10.75 for adjusting the beam of the headlights!) I could weep! I really could!

Anyway, money is, after all, only money.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? It comes to something when I catch myself trying to give myself therapy by vacuous meaningless cliché! Things have reached a very pretty pass indeed when such attempts to soothe my moneyless state misuse words in this way. Let me turn to things real and more important.

Today was the housework day. I cannot pretend that I have found Zen contentment in the quotidian tasks of maintaining a normal household. Hoovering does not calm me; washing does not lave my spirit in balm; polishing does not soothe, and cleaning glass is just amazingly difficult and frustrating.

Indeed I think that cleaning glass and mirrors is the nearest that we come to experiencing a fifth dimension. I have tried using lint free cloths; ‘Windowlene’ impregnated disposable tissues; various unguents whose garish graphics clearly state that their whole raison d’etre is to clean glass; newspaper and a sponge – and none of them actually ‘do what it says on the tin.’ No matter how painstakingly you apply cream, lotion, spray, vinegar, soap, water: none of them leave the whole (that adjective is important) window or mirror clean.

If you look a mirror clean in the face (so to speak) you can tell it is clean; but, move a fraction to one side and the smeary, smudgy, pock marked true surface of the material is cleanly apparent. Clean from that direction, until it is pristine and sparkling, then move back to your original position and, hey presto! everything is dirty again! What has changed? Only your ways of seeing. It reminds me of the Berger book which was so fashionable at once time, and was one of those worthy volumes spawned by the BBC which made you believe that you were an intellectual – I loved them! This is yet another volume safely packed away awaiting shipment in the walk-in wooden packing cases. I hope.

Tomorrow I want to read. I have read nothing today except what has been essential to keep the day going. Tomorrow I want to get further into ‘Winter in Madrid’ and relive the frustration of the Civil War in Spain.

I also, more importantly, have to repair two parts of the fence which have blown down recently. With Brian in Span we do not have access to the van to bring new sections to the house and so I will have to perform magic with what is left to produce something which looks in keeping with what is left. God help us all if I have to rely on my mechanical ingenuity to produce a seamless fence of matched sections. I could do before and after photographs so you could judge for yourselves. It’s an idea and an incentive rolled into one, together with the opportunity to exercise my artistic ability in taking tasteful photos of the destruction.

And its amazing transformation.

Perhaps.

We’ll see.

Bitterness continues!

“What I really miss,” I remarked to Paul Squared yesterday, “by not reading a decent newspaper on a regular basis, is that when a phenomenon like Jade re-entering the Big Brother House occurs, I do not have access to a pseudo sociological analysis by one of the politically correct hacks to keep me happy!”

No sooner said than, when buying The Independent this morning there, within the first few turns, a double page spread on that very topic. Nor only does this give me intellectual permission to indulge my fascination with so-called popular culture, but the article also asked the question, “WHAT does her success say about the cultural life of the nation?”

I just adore seemingly profound questions answered in a self indulgent, self aware, self justifying journalese with condescending, arch humour informing the analysis. I’m a sucker for snobbishness, especially when it’s displayed in such a self deprecating way. Articles like this allow me to indulge my sick fascination with the ignorant loud mouth; feel superior to her unbelievable lack of basic knowledge and feel guilty about all of the preceding. It’s the perfect literary treat for a wishy-washy liberal like me! (And with squirm making pictures too!)

I do not think I can, in all conscience, watch the benighted programme until The Abomination has been taken off. I have not taken to leaving the room (which I do when ‘Coronation Street’ comes on the box) but have satisfied my values by sitting at a table where I cannot see the television (although I can make out what is happening by looking at the reflection of the TV in the sliding glass doors onto the conservatory! My excuse is that the ground floor of my house is open plan, and so there is no separate room into which I can flounce when the programme is aired. And no, I am not sitting in the toilet for an hour!

It is perhaps a credit to the programme that I feel as strongly as I do, and the makers of the pap must have struck a responsive and lucrative chord in their potential audience: even I feel like voting to get The Abomination out of the house. Rest assured I shan’t, but it’s still telling that I feel that way!

I imagine that there isn’t a single section of society or the professions which hasn’t been subject of a reality show. Although, thinking about it, I’m not sure that there has been a show about undertakers. I’m sure that I am merely revealing my ignorance of the programmes broadcast recently that I have managed to miss a whole series devoted to stiffs and their disposal called ‘Body Be gone!’ or ‘Corpses R Us’ or ‘From Body to Bill’ or something equally tasteful, tracing the touching human story of how to get rid of granny at the least possible cost while maintaining some sort of decorum. It is an undisputable fact that people will do anything to get their fifteen minutes of fame on the TV even if it means making a public spectacle of a relative’s corpse. Ugh!

This all reminds me of ‘The Loved One’ the title of Evelyn Waugh’s nasty novel about morticians: a thoroughly good read, which makes you think that there is some scope for a programme. I remember reading Nancy Mitford’s book, ‘The American Way of Death’ which was a revealing and memorable read and, while I was repulsed by the incredible depths that people would go to get a corpse looking right (!) it was an un-put-down-able read!

I look forward to being given details of the series which I have missed which utilised all the aspects of my ruminations. Just to know that it exists will further reinforce my belief that we are living in the most decadent of decadent times.

Ho Hum!

Owning a car is a way of life; a via dolorosa; a Sisyphean burden; a Tartarean experience of misery filled depression; it is an imposition by a cruel god of unmitigated horror to blight your existence. And it is expensive. Very expensive.

Someone once said (probably my Dad) that if you sit down and work out the expenses then you will be able to prove that you cannot afford to run a car. When you are presented for a bill for seven hundred pounds (700 pounds sterling) [7 x £100] {jobseekers weekly allowance times fourteen} then you don’t need to work it out: you can’t afford it. It wasn’t as if the car wasn’t working; it wasn’t as if the engine had seized up; as if the tyres had been ripped to shreds; as if the metal of the bloody thing was riddled with what we ex Triumph Herald Estate owners knew as the reason for the decline of the British car industry: rust. I was always having to have “only a little bit of welding Stephen” before I could get my hands on an MOT certificate. But £700 was more (much more) than I paid for the whole car; in fact for the first series of cars that I owned. But it is best not to think about things like that; never translate from one age to another in terms of money, otherwise you will work out that you are paying 6/- for an apple and your world will collapse and you will have to assume a foetal position before you come to terms with the world again.

Anyway, how important are properly working brakes?


I hate cars.


True!

That Monday feeling!

It’s only the second official time, but I have to admit that it gets better each time. I learned in school that there was something called ‘economics’ and that within this exciting view of reality, there was something called ‘eventually diminishing returns.’ I also seem to remember that I understood what that meant and I was also able to think of examples to illustrate this phenomenon which was not a direct take on what Professor Nevin wrote in his explanatory text book.

My hazy recollection does extend to producing a paraphrase of something like, “the more you do something the less pleasure you get from it” which should mean that every time you experience something, repetition lessens your appreciation.

Doesn’t work like that with not going to school. Each time a term starts and I’m not there, the little thrill of pleasure warms you through. Talking with Hadyn (who said nice things about my photograph of the frost fringed rose) today he mentioned that, in spite of his extended divorce from the noble profession, on Sunday evening and Monday morning he felt a pang of panic. Though I suppose that little feeling of discomfort is more than compensated for by the realization that the reality does not have to be faced!

I have to admit, though, that the actual process of teaching is something that I do miss. Reading through the Dickens I did feel the need for a class with whom to discuss the work. I have always found that discussion is the most efficient method of developing my thought, especially when you can utilize the thoughts of others in a class, and through the processes of highlighting, selecting, paraphrasing, questioning and extrapolation, being able to extend meaning in and from a literary text. I suppose in some ways that it is a form of intellectual laziness that I have an expectation that my outline of meaning will be developed by the contributions of pupils: without their stimulus (especially their ‘stupid’ comments, which more often than not indicate a more positive line of thought for me) and their response. Their questioning often prompted me to a closer explanation of meaning than I had previously thought possible. Long live pupils teaching their teachers!

I have collected my copy of ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ from my very wonderful branch library in Rumney (to which all praise!) and am looking forward to revisiting all the characters, especially, following on from what I have not be doing today (ah pedagogy!) Mr Squeers: an example to us all!

Before I start on ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ I will finish the book which Aunt Bet sent to me for Christmas, C J Sansom’s ‘Winter in Madrid’. The ‘Daily Express’ (!) described the book as a mixture of Sebastian Faulks and Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It appears to be a sort of detective love story. It’s most interesting aspect (and I expect the reason that Aunt Bet bought it for me) is that, as the title suggests, it is set in Madrid and, more especially, during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

I have read the first 100 or so pages and the research for the novel is rather obvious with one or two too many telling details displayed for our delectation, but the narrative force of the novel is building up with the major characters being brought together to work out their childhood/adult frustrations and loves. It is the backdrop of a ravaged city which is of real interest and I have to say that Sansom has produced a compelling picture of the city so that it almost becomes like another character.

I always find reading about The Spanish Civil War fascinatingly depressing. I think about what I could offer to the Republican side to give them an advantage against the vile apologies for human aspiration that the triple horrors of World War Two were: Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. For the sake of this argument I will leave my detestation of Winston Churchill to one side and agree that even his monstrousness is outweighed by the sheer inhumanity of the aforementioned trio!

Was there any information which could have made the Republican side more effective, have given them the edge in the inhumanly vicious fighting which characterised the conflict in Spain? From my reading any useful information which I could have given the Republican side would have been used as a football between the Communists and Anarchists. And I imagine that my one concrete suggestion or plea that the Republican Government send their gold supplies virtually anywhere (Mexico for choice) but to Russia would have me characterised as a fascist by the Communists or a bourgeois revisionist by everyone else: no matter what, I’d have been up against a wall and shot before I could explain a tenth of what, inevitably, was going to happen. As I say, it’s frustrating and the British response to what went on in Spain before, during and after the war was little short of disgusting. We were prepared to do virtually anything to ensure that Franco stayed out of the European War and his anti-communism suited us (or at least the Americans) at the end of the war and well into the Cold War. It is one of the great crimes of the second half of the twentieth century that we allowed El Caudillo to die in his bed: albeit bit by bit, amputated limb by limb, but it wasn’t enough. Not enough for that vicious dictator to ‘die a Christian’ encompassed by Mother Church. Sickening! But far more sickening was the attitude of the west that allowed that friend of dead dictators to survive into the seventies.

You can see the sort of attitude with which I am reading Sansom’s novel: ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ will be a positive relief!

Doing nothing!

A lazy Sunday.

It’s a concept that I have, of course, heard of – but rarely experienced. But today I am experiencing it. A long lie in and an eventual cup of tea or coffee. A television filled interval leading to a light lunch and a depth of nothing to fill in the time until evening.

Toni lying comatose on the sofa, now having developed a stomach upset and a thoroughly morose attitude to the world.

A few cups of tea later and I am now able to appreciate fully the true icing on the cake of a real lazy Sunday: the realisation that Monday (tomorrow) is just another day, and not the horror of the restart of work after a holiday!

The spring term (such a misnomer) is an odd one in school. The major learning term is the autumn, and for GCSE the bulk of course work needs to have been completed by Christmas. The early months of the year are wilfully erratic in terms of their length and usefulness: they give the impression of being far before the deadlines of anything, but in fact they are deceptively close to everything important.

The start of the school year, starting in September, makes it appear as though you are starting the struggle with only a few months until the natural break of Christmas and, therefore, it is bearable. It is by such self deception that the profession of teaching manages to survive!

The start of a new term in January is actually more intimidating than in September because you actually look forward to a whole, complete year ahead. The idea of Easter and summer holidays seem almost illusory and are certainly not real enough to keep your faith going strongly enough to make the future stretch of the timetable seem bearable.

All this is now not part of my paranoia for the beginning of the year. I know that some teachers who have retired from school feel a sharp pang of regret at the start of each term and feel a momentary hiccough of guilt that they are not participating in the general gloom before they face the fresh challenges that the year will present.

Actually, that’s not true. I don’t know any teacher who feels anything but hysterical relief at the thought of pupil free days!

If I see another ‘Move him into the sun’ type programme I think I shall scream. Toni has become one of the world’s experts on analysis of value-for-money houses in foreign lands (especially in Spain.) I think that it is his way to join a vicarious move back to his native land – and I can’t blame him. As the rain gently falls it is difficult not to think about drier climates. In some ways, you could actually see our move to Spain now taking place a year later than when we wanted to move: forget the number of months – it’s now 2007!

I’m looking forward to this new ‘term’ so that I can get on with setting out the house again for the selling season. There are a great number of ‘tareas’ to be completed if the house is to be presented in the way that I want it to. I think that I have lost a little of the urgency which I first had when the place was first on the market and that is something which I need to re-find as soon as possible!

The green, green grass of home.

When was it that the phrase, “Oh, but this country is so green!” lost its ability to make the spiteful rainfall we endure acceptable? It was the smiling observation that I used to make as, brown skinned, I was able to watch the cold precipitation gently settle on the verdant pastures of my native land as I returned from some foray to sunnier shores.

No more!

Each new day of rain seems personally directed towards me in a malicious, sneering, damp gesture of wet contempt. I can no longer endure the seemingly endless grey days of sun denied mediocrity; the featureless skies of vapid indistinctness which makes the sky appear to offer some sort of infinity of nowhereness. “Mother! Give me the sun!” [Note: I am just using the quotation here for what it says on the surface, and I do not want any assumptions to be made about the context; and certainly not the context in which Ibsen placed it!]

I’ve just looked out of the window again and have noted a white sky with a white cloud on it, almost as if the local climate was trying to emulate the wonderful description by Adams of the instrument panel on the stolen space craft taken when leaving the Restaurant at the End of the Universe which had black lights blinking black on a black dashboard! By such metaphors am I able to stand the personally directed campaign of moisture that Wales seems to have in store for me. Thank God for literature!

And the rain falls.

Enough!

Having finished the over-long novel ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ I am looking forward to taking it back to my excellent local library and collecting the next novel in the Dickens series ('Nicholas Nickleby') and losing myself in that loving description of education, not to be surpassed until Gradgrind's establishment is described in ‘Hard Times’. You don’t get a lot of ordinary teachers in literature do you? They are either life changing forces of nature, or evil, conniving child haters. The impossible paragon of pedagogic virtues exemplified in ‘Dead Poets Society’ (never mind the one mere fatality, it wasn’t really his fault, was it?) to the bitter caricature of the teacher in ‘How Green Was My Valley (but that also has a compensatory good one too). Seneca was Nero’s teacher: what does that say about philosopher teachers? Perhaps if Nero had not had such a prestigious tutor he might have been worse? Professor Snape in ‘Harry Potter’ is an ongoing problem: his youthful angst directed towards Harry’s father a cause of continuing problems in adulthood and his ‘ambiguous’ position viz a viz He Who Cannot be Named do not make him a likely candidate to replace Dr Arnold in ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ as the kindly understanding mentor! And so it goes on. Still searching for the ordinary!

Toni has decided on a process of replacement for the electronic items which were purloined on our arrival in Barcelona. We have spent an enjoyably unjustifiable amount of time browsing through page after page on the internet gazing in wistful adoration at more and more glitzy and technological attempts to prise money out of accounts by producing ever more luscious versions of the clunky mp3 players that we first bought.

As far as I am concerned the ipod is a design classic, and for once I own it – and not some ‘apparently better value clone’ which never fully lives up to expectations. The ipod is such a masterpiece of sleek miniaturisation that any criticism seems pettifogging and the onus would obviously lie on the shoulders of the consumer requiring him to adjust his life style and values to accommodate such a piece of exquisite electrical engineering rather than expect it to fit in with the requirements of a mere carping human. It reminds me of an aged Punch cartoon (aren’t they all) showing a fin de siecle couple gazing at a ‘modern’ teapot in transports of delight and the man asking his partner, “Dare we live up to it?” We have to fit in with Apple’s view of the world and we should be grateful that we are living at such times that Apple can play such a large part in it. I didn’t realise that when I had my first real computer (an apple mac) that I was making a life choice!

I will be interested to see if Apple responds to Microsoft’s incursion into its territory with the elusive Zune by producing its threatened all screen version of the video ipod with the ‘wheel’ as part of the touch screen. Now that would be something!

At the risk of tempting fate: I do feel somewhat better and I feel that my various infectrions and viral attacks are beginning to abate in their unrelenting hostility.

I think that I will be better by Monday; or at least better enough to be fully able to enjoy not going to school!

Fatal attraction!

Touch pitch, and you will be defiled.
and
The finger that touches rouge will be red.
and
Evil communications corrupt good manners.
and
A rotten apple injures its companions.

These little aphorisms all add up to something like the same thing; the lesson is unmistakable and, let’s face it, I think that it is true, you cannot watch ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ in a comfortably ironic way without getting drawn into the morass of public enthusiasm for this self referential pap.

Now I am prepared to admit that this series of ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ does seem to justify its first word because it does have people who even I recognise as well known. What the hell the eighty year old Ken Russell is doing there, God alone knows, but famous he certainly is. That bloke from the A Team, well I remember him from the series that used the greatest number of bullets to the least possible human destructive effect; the series that showed just how resilient the human being was! Leo Sayer: that tousled haired singer who always looked like some sort of trainee clown and bounced around as though he was just about to introduce a jolly educational programme for kids. From the Jackson Five I’ve only really heard of Janet and the white One, this hair conscious peacock is unknown to me.

The others? To be fair I have heard of the bands that two of the others are from, but celebrities? I think not. Well, not for me anyway.

The fact that the ‘twist’ in this Big Brother is that a monumentally stupid loser from a previous series is continuing her ‘fame’ by yet another foray into reality TV is almost too cynically manipulative for belief. Perhaps, for the general (or ‘Great’) British public this manufactured non entity actually represents the triumph of the ‘little’ person finding fame and fortune (which she certainly has) against the odds. Perhaps. But for me JG represents the ultimate triumph of uninspired, undemanding, degrading, mindless television.

Sometimes compulsive though, ain’t it? Pitch and defiled and all that.

This Friday has been a partial reminder of the good old days (or sad old days, depending on your definitions) when every Saturday I used to read a couple of books and listen to a slew of superb Radio 4 programmes.

At least this morning (and parts of the afternoon and evening) I did manage to read a book. Lauren Weisberger’s ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. A deeply unsatisfying novel which would have made a really good short story. It has moments of real humour, but is essentially repetitive and one dimensional. The writing effects are mechanical: lists of designer names used for their almost magical effects in the manner of Dickens or Dylan Thomas; contrasts in terms of characters and situations; the use of brand names; mechanical plot devices; lack of character development in the main interesting character.

That, I think is the main problem for me in the novel. The ‘Devil’ or Miranda is the single most interesting character and for the first few chapters we begin to understand her true monster status – and that’s it. All we get in succeeding chapters is repetition of her unfeeling traits. At the end of the novel she is unchanged: a mythic person, insulted in public once, but continuing as a hate figure and diminished as a literary creation.

I can see that the role of Miranda would appeal to someone like Meryl Streep and I shudder to think what sort of professional performance she turns in, especially as the character in the novel is an English Jewess who has obliterated all traces of her low origin and has become a doyen of the fashion world. How Streep will rejoice in this portrayal!

I can hardly wait not to see it.

Absence makes the . . . ?

What tells you that you have been absent from your home most poignantly? What item by its very appearance sighs absence when you return? What intimate part of your life decays without your presence?

Soap.

A bar of soap is a strange thing: you ignore it by casual familiarity. Daily use makes it almost invisible, especially when the colour is the hardly assertive white in a white bathroom.

But leave this inoffensive rectangle for a week or more and its transmogrification is bizarre. The smooth, pristine surface becomes filled with crevasses tinged with grime reminding you of those slabs of horror than used to lurk on the washbasins of public loos creating the ultimate oxymoron of dirty soap. Also creating moral disequilibrium in young minds when the parental injunction to ‘wash your hands’ leaves them dirtier than before when using public soap!

A process of melding also occurs when a process not unlike that of stalactite and stalagmite formation takes scraps of soap and creates new and exciting forms. It’s about the only time that you notice soap - when you are trying to get it back into the form that you can ignore again. I’m sure that there is a metaphor for something there, but I’m too cold infested to care.

Talking of caring: I wish to record a peon of praise to Cardiff City Libraries.

I am rereading the novels of Dickens and, having finished ‘Oliver Twist’, the next novel in line is ‘Nicholas Nickleby’. So, returning ‘Oliver’ to my local library and collecting ‘The Devil wears Prada’ (a little treat for myself) I put in an order for ‘Nicholas’ when I returned from taking Toni to work at 9.00 am. By half past three in the afternoon I had been contacted by Rumney Library, when a rather startled sounding librarian told me the book I wanted was ready for collection. Now, that is something that I call service!

I know it sounds a little curmudgeonly but the fact that my local library does not seem to possess the major works of Dickens does seem unpropitious. I suppose that I am still thinking of libraries as a centre for the repository of a central core of culture; and for me that culture means the printed word. I know that libraries are not merely concerned with the printed word. They are internet centres and computer access points; certainly the times that I have been inside my local branch the life of the place seems to be dominated by computer fixated kids with a sedate slow procession of people of the third age taking out their books!

The whole process of computer connection does mean that a book in one location is available to another. The inter library loan system of my youth does seem to be something which is more of a way of life nowadays rather than the exception as it was when I was young. I wonder what system they use to get the books from one location to another: that must be the weak spot in the system and the most expensive one.

‘The Devil Wears Prada’ appeared in the form of a tatty paperback with the word ‘donated’ on the sign out page. I wonder about the economics of that: a paperback has a very limited life in a library, but perhaps a momentary fashionable book-of-the-film book has a limited life anyway and a paperback life could see the whole rush of interest and its death, and then the book could be thrown with little real expense.

I would be fascinated to know a little more about the way that local libraries are run now; what their expectations are; what their mission statement is; what their book buying policy is; how they profile their areas; how they judge success. I may look into this a little more closely now that I am more reliant on their services as my library is currently stored tantalizingly close to me but infuriatingly untouchable in its stacked wooden cases near the steel works!

Now to get acquainted with the fashion super bitch!

Prada rules!

A century already!

There are basic lessons that are imprinted on certain middle class children by their concerned parents.

One of these lessons is contained in the information that policemen are our friends and are there to protect us. This is a very different lesson from that taught to the ruling and so-called working classes. It was only when I went to university that I heard what I thought were members of my peer group refer to policemen in very uncomplimentary ways referring to occasions on which they had been held by the throats up against a wall by these defenders of our liberties at the end of a Saturday night. I, of course, dismissed these tall stories as products of fevered imaginations. And continue, stoutly, to do so. Indeed!

Anyway, one of the lessons I was taught by my mummy was to be polite and helpful and to be gallant where ladies were concerned. Thinking about it; that is actually more than one lesson, but the import of the lesson (or lessons) was the same: be nice and helpful (especially to ladies.)

This came to mind, as it were, this afternoon in Barcelona Airport. After a more than mediocre meal we (Toni and I) were walking towards the embarkation gate for Bristol when our way was blocked by a stereotypical Spanish woman (right down to the dark, long dress and the hair done in a bun) in a state of mild hysterics. Although she was sobbing in Spanish, you will be astonished to learn that I found the detail of what she was saying a little difficult to put in English. Toni was spasmodically helpful here, indicating in hurried asides that she had gone to the toilet and had emerged from the loo to find her entire family had disappeared.

So our role was clear: show sympathy; be efficient; get her help; find her family; go on our way with a warm glow of self satisfaction.

Which we did; in a way. Except. Except, on our last visit to Barcelona Airport Toni had had his backpack containing all his electronic equipment (too painful to list) stolen by a two person thieving pair, one part of which was an old lady!

How sad is it that experiences like that changes your perception of reality to such an extent that an old Spanish lady in distress becomes a figure of some threat? Those thieves stole more than electronic equipment.

So back to Britain: damp, cold Britain. I am fed up with returning from a reasonable climate to the sick joke that is my reception back in my native land. When Toni came to live in Britain they couldn’t open the door of the plane because of the tumultuous storm attacking our frail aircraft. Just to make the joke a little more ironic this time round, the spiteful, lashing rain waited until we were the Welsh side of the bridge to unleash itself in its immeasurable wrath.

It is at times like this that the lesson from a contemporary of my parents (my aunt Bet) contained on a postcard serves to put things in perspective:
“OK, so our trains may not run on time,
Our National Health Service is feeling the pressure,
Our schools don’t always get top marks,
But at least we still make
The Best Cup of Tea in the World!”

As philosophies go; or even as statements of national aspiration go, it doesn’t seem to me to be too bad.

On the other hand, I’m not well, I haven’t slept properly in over a week and it’s raining. I don’t think you should expect profundity from a cold ravaged, bitter returnee to these cold shores!

Tomorrow, however, as many have remarked, even thinking it profound, is another day.

Roll on! As indeed is this blog: one hundred 'issues' old today! Gosh! Until you think that, if this is a daily blog (as it mostly is) then you get to your century when you are just over three months old!

Everything is speeding up today!

Dies irae!

The only thing which compensates for a truly awful night of suffocation and mucus was the fact that I had finished ‘Oliver Twist’ and could spend my forced waking hours thinking about the novel.

To my mind the reactions of Sikes and Fagin are the most spectacular in their uncomfortable observation; the first when he has killed Nancy and is responding by living in a sort of pathetic fallacy where everything seems to remind him of his crime; the second in his reactions when in court and listening and observing everything around him. The complete destruction of his sanity also has within its degradation a terrible logic in the way in which he views the world.

The view that the novel gives of the family is a very interesting one. There is no real example of the nuclear family with husband, wife and 2.3 children. There are plenty of grotesque caricatures of the family characteristics: from Mrs Mann the uncaring keeper of the branch-workhouse, he name emphasising the denial of the female, motherly, caring aspects of her character to the Bumbles whose cavalier disregard for the welfare of their charges eventually ends in their sharing their fate: becoming paupers in their own workhouse.

The surrogate families abound: Fagin with his ‘boys’ provides a grotesque parental figure dedicated to his charges degradation yet at the same time providing a sort of stability. Mr Brownlow significantly, is reading at the time of his first meeting with Oliver – not engaged in the world but in an intellectual version, a sanitised version, of it. His household comprises the comfortable Mrs Bedwin (a widow); the irascible Mr Grimwig and himself as confirmed bachelors. The partnership between Grimwig and Brownlow is more on the basis of a marriage than a conventional friendship – the one complementing the other. The Maylies also present a picture of unfulfilment: two women in a household with widowed servants; no stability or normality. Secrets, shames and obstacles to normality abound, and it is significant that the only eventual normality is found in the last chapter of the book when all the loose ends are neatly (!) tied up in a description of a sort of family life which includes virtually all the positive characters in the novel who survive living together or within easy reach of each other. The collection of incomplete figures finds completion in an extended family where all their eccentricities are able to be accommodated literally and figuratively!

There is even a sort of reference of Milton’s version of The Fall in the way that Harry Maylie accepts a low station in life (as a country clergyman) so that the advantages which he could have had are laid at the feet of Rose as part of his renunciation of his future as the price for his love and his attempt to ensure that they stay together: the man choosing to stay with the female even at the price of his prospects.

It is again significant that this chapter does not form part of the action of the novel, but is more of a tidying up process so that a sort of equilibrium is restored and the name of Oliver’s mother is the last item to be mentioned so that the whole of the novel could be seen as a sort of regeneration of the reputation of a woman who, wronged and wronging is able to find salvation through the fortuitous concourse of Dickensian coincidence.

Carmen has come back from shopping with a collection of medicaments which I have been enthusiastically trying.

After moping around in the house for most of the day we finally went out for a promenade on the Ramblas in Terrassa. The full Christmas thing: traditional roast chestnuts; a fair in full luminosity; the Christmas decorations being decorous; people milling around buying things for The Kings; bands playing - and me coughing my way along like an ailing Scrooge. As long as I'm well enough to get on the plane I will delay the full Christmas and New Year spirit until I am back in Blighty.

No doubt in the rain (a climatic condition which has been singularly absent during my time in Catalonia) will do its best in Wales to make me feel instantly at home!

What's new?

There is nothing quite as artificial as a room the morning after the night before: especially if the night before happened to have been New Year’s Eve. The bottles, the confetti, the streamers, the plates, the decaying food and the flat booze – it all seems so contrived; as if the room were a set waiting for the filmic action to occur.

Such a room greeted me when I finally gave in to suffocation and got up rather than lying trying to pretend that not being able to breathe in a horizontal position was better than breathing in a vertical one. There is nothing more satisfying than clearing up easy rubbish: the confetti, bottles etc. were easy to clear away and I kept thinking about the brownie points that I was accruing by selflessly being a mummies’ boy! I have to say that my calculations were a little out, and the clearing took a little more effort than I anticipated but, as a bonus, I was interrupted by Carmen when about my duties and so gained immeasurably by not only being the only person up, but also by being the only person working.

So the day started well and I felt more than justified in settling down with ‘Oliver Twist’ and enjoying sinking into the morass of melodrama which is that novel. Luckily (because I don’t care a jot for the eponymous hero) Oliver seems to have taken something of a back seat and lots of other people are reacting to his existence rather than requiring his mewling character to be part of the action.

The murder of Nancy is much better than I remember and Sikes reactions afterwards so much more vivid and convincing than I probably appreciated in college: Sikes haunting and his attempts to thwart his guilty conscience smack of reality, and a contemporary reality at that. The psychological detail is deeply satisfying and the touch of the tinker offering to take away the stain that he sees on Sikes’ clothes is genius!

Although the leaden dynamics of the plot are well into their Dickensian realm of unreality, with coincidence taken to that height of fantasy that needs a drug induced level of suspension of disbelief to work; I am so much involved in the writing that I will accept anything as long as the situation is resolved. This is also in spite of the fact that I actually know what is going to happen having read the novel before. That, surely, is a sign of the quality of Dickens’ writing that I am still caught up in the relentless flow of his narrative as I read his words. You experience the same sort of participatory awe when reading certain passages in the bible or re-reading favourite poems and experiencing again the thrill of a first reading.

Nancy is a thoroughly convincing character: not so much for her devotion to the idea of Oliver, but more for her devotion to the thoroughly unworthy Sikes. She understands why she should leave and abhor her ‘protector’ but she can no more leave him than desert her idea of honour which is found in the ideal which Oliver represents. Her dual moral system fits perfectly with a modern schizophrenia and the end products are clear.

‘Oliver Twist’ is a novel which disconcerts as much by its thoroughly modern take on human relationships as by its sickening predilection for truly repellent melodrama. Who can ask for more from a novel from a distant time? And if that sounds condescending, then I’ve given the wrong impression!

Suddenly to be informed that we were going out to lunch, threw me into a frenzy of preparation, so that, showered, cologned and dressed in super short time I was not really prepared to take in much on the journey to the place where we were going to lunch.

The destination turned out to be the same place as last year: the place which was so poor as far as service and food was concerned!

I have to say that the meal and service was better this year; but I would not consider going back next year. The salad was tasteless; the botifarra uninspiring and the chips poor. I had to ask for my wine to accompany my music (you have to be Catalan to understand that reference) and the patcharan was watered down. Still, at twenty five euros per person, where else are we going to get so cheap? On New Year’s Day? And I got a few photos out of the location!

Toni has now gone out with his friends, who he has not seen for some time.

Roll on the end of ‘Oliver Twist’!

Cold, cold my lord!

Up, as they say, betimes; because vertical is better than horizontal: at least I can breathe sitting down, which is more than can be said for lying in bed! So, the Holiday Horror continues and, by my calculation, at least one other member of the family should be struck down by illness today; just to keep up the averages!

I have taken no pictures of the Christmas decorations in Terrassa this year as the Generalitat seems to have opted for the tasteful rather than the in-your-face approach. The main design feature is the string light effect: a combination of a number of hanging strips of small lights which form a rectangle which is suspended above the middle of the street. It seems altogether more muted than usual and lacks impact. The lights themselves are boring and only achieve any effect by repetition, and the fact that the hanging strip of lights has become a shopping mall cliché doesn’t help the civic impression.

The expectations from Christmas lights are changing (except in Cardiff where annual disappointment over the lack of effort for a capital city is an unchanging assumption) and, it seems to me, the local authorities are taking little effort to respond to this enhanced expectation.

When I was very young, the highlight (!) of the illuminations in Cardiff was, I remember, an animated depiction provided by W A Brain: a galloping horse with the body of a barrel of beer. I also remember one year’s Christmas class party in Glan yr Avon Primary School where Brains were the main sponsors with particularly large balloons and other impedimenta with the company logo inscribed on them. What politically correct local authorities would think now about providing young impressionable minds with early years advertising by a brewery, I shudder to think! How times have changed!

As British society continues in its dogged determination sluggishly to traipse after the worst elements in American popular culture: from their God awful food; their sinister take on Halloween, with its open invitation to infantile extortion; to their contemptible taste in sport (if you can call over-oiled, testosterone pumped, camp caricatures of macho man wrestlers sport) and finally including their approach to Christmas.

It is not enough for Americans that they have caused the traditional colour of Father Christmas to change from green to red to accommodate the company colour of the ubiquitous coca-cola corporation [I refuse to afford them the courtesy of capital letters] but they have also exported to us their vulgar taste for domestic illumination. I understand (and there is a current film which uses this as its raison d’etre) that Christmas in America is not only a time for rampant consumerism to assume its rightful mantle of the godhead; for the suicide rate to rise to epidemic levels and for theft to become de rigueur, but also for the tasteless domestic display of garden illuminations.

Aunt Bet tells me from her visits to affluent American suburbia, that Christmas was a time to tour the neighbourhood and marvel at the extravagance of public luminosity that free use of dollars could give. Translated into British this means seeing an endlessly unfunny series of illuminated Santas climbing up bizarrely truncated ladders past cheap scab-like plastic squares of meaningless lights like childish hieroglyphics which must have caused more road traffic accidents by drivers bemusedly trying to decipher them than those caused by black ice.

One house in Rumney has a rash of these glinting cartouches ‘decorating’ its road visible walls making the building pullulate with bad taste. Another house on North Road in Cardiff has become something of an institution by a sort of overkill in domestic lighting which transcends bad taste and goes into another universe by the sheer horror of its conception and the vast number of individual lights which are used. It is the Christmas equivalent of that house with a shark in its roof: an early Damien Hurst? Something which makes people stop and question: if only to ask, “Why?”

It is now half past nine: no one is up except for my good self. I am beginning to be able to breathe again, sometimes through my nose. Perhaps the world is not too bad after all.

This evening to Toni’s aunt for New Year’s Eve celebrations with small child and yapping dog and plenty of opportunities for cross infection! I am, of course, looking forward to the prawn mayonnaise loaf which is a feature of the New Year for me.

You can always trust food!

If it's not one thing it's another!

In the midst of life we are in chocolate steeped in so far returning were as tedious as go o’er.

Let’s start with the positive: yesterday I was introduced to a new perversion called chocolate suis amb merlindos. Let’s face it; any beverage which you have to drink with a spoon has got to have something going for it. This ‘drink’ is made of thick, sweet, gelatinous chocolate (suis) topped by a conical cap of whipped cream and eaten with light sponge fingers (merlindos). An utter delight and more than welcome after a considerable period spent in various Terrassa shops successfully finding what I was looking for as a certain number of bemused friends will find out on my return to Wales!

Now to the real: Toni continues to be ill and has spent most of the morning comatose on the sofa in the living room. I am rapidly joining him in his enjoyment of the full range of cold symptoms. Both Toni and I took to our respective beds in the afternoon and were dead to all for a recuperative period. This is the illness which has been handed to Toni by his mother and from Toni to me; as opposed to the illness handed from Carles to Carmen to me. Ah the joys of family infection!

The only advantage gained from an uneasy sleep last night was the compensatory vividness of the surrealistic dozing dreams which accompanied my intermittent coughing. None of the details of which, I’m sure you are relieved to know, will I impart without copious amounts of alcohol and a written guarantee never to repeat the import of my subconscious to anyone!

In Catalonia the spending has gathered pace in preparation for the Kings. Shops are full of people buying the sort of things which in Britain we buy before Christmas. We will, yet again, be back in Britain before this festival and one of things that I am looking forward to when in Spain permanently, is the fact that we will be able to see the procession of the Kings in Barcelona as they appear from the sea and they make their way through the city.

The television has been advertising, ad nauseum, and a whole series of new magazines all of which, for me, have an almost magnetic appeal: especially in their first issues – which is almost always half price with a special offer!

The one which has particularly caught my eye is a photography magazine which promises to give a selection of the work of world famous photographers. The first in the series was devoted to Robert Capa with a large reproduction of his picture of Picasso on the beach. There was also an introduction to Magnum. This first issue was marketed on an unfeasibly large piece of cardboard which had to be deconstructed into its component parts before it was possible to walk around the shops.

As is almost always the case, the analysis of the material bought was disappointing. The production of the magazine was perfectly bound and therefore guaranteed to fall apart after a few perusals. The selection of photos was limited and left you wanting much more. Some of the more famous pictures were there but it was nothing more than a taster and thoroughly unsatisfactory. This production has all the characteristics of a rip off where a previously published book has been cut up and republished in a more lucrative form as a magazine. I seem to remember the format which the publication uses in a book on ‘Magnum’ with similar design details right down to the ‘picture index’ at the end of this issue.

I remember that ‘Which?’ did an expose on part publications which counted up the cost of actually making something month by month (for example making a model of The Victory) and estimated what a ruinous cost it was compared with buying the kit all at the same time.

The most recent part publication advertised widely on Catalan television is for making a model of a T Rex. Given the month on month cost, it would probably be cheaper to build a time machine and go back to prehistoric times and steal an egg!

I am now well into ‘Oliver Twist’ and am struck by how much humour there is in it. I don’t think that I remember the amount of bitter irony which informs so much of the social comment: there is a self consciousness in the writing which invited the active participation of the reader. One part in particular is almost like one of the introductory chapters to the reader in Fielding’s ‘Tom Jones’ which by its confiding artlessness seeks to make the reader complicit in a weary resignation about the obvious techniques of the melodramatic writer while Dickens makes every use of them with an over stretched writer’s impunity!

There is a very unpleasant assumption of Dickens’ part which assumes that gentility will out whatever the circumstances. So, although Oliver’s mother has ‘done wrong’ she showed strength of character in making it to the workhouse at all and her upbringing shows itself in the presentation of Oliver. This is a boy who has been treated with all possible brutality and where the comforts of Christianity are seen as punishments rather than solace, yet he presents as an artlessly innocent saint like character who, when circumstances change at once adapts to the assumed position of his pre-lapsarian mother!

Oliver is not really a likable character, and one has a guilty respect for those who lash out at him with frustration at his sheer inability to sense his true surroundings. He is more like Frank Spencer in his almost comic beliefs and actions; unconsciously causing problem after problem by his irritating innocence.

The constant reference to Fagin as ‘the Jew’ is disturbing to a twenty first century reader and reeks of anti Semitism, but he is obviously not alone in being a repulsive character in this novel and other Christian characters are condemned in as round a manner as that of Fagin.

The emphasis on the abuse of children is also very strong in this novel with their abuse centred on the perverse role models afforded by the responsible adults by whom they are surrounded.

As usual the society which perpetuates this abuse is shown to be corrupt and vicious, but no alternative is suggested except for individual acts of personal kindness: the system frustrated in individual cases but nothing to change or threaten the system itself.

Tomorrow (today!) is New Year’s Eve – cava and grapes.

Hooray!

"Work!" Discuss.

Pity me as I sit here in the front room in Terrassa, like Blanche Dubois, depending on the kindness of strangers’ networks to get me onto the internet. Or like Dives waiting patiently at the rich man’s server for some crumb of the web to fall into my computer. It’s a sad old life as an electronic beggar!

Toni meanwhile has departed for Part II of the transit of hell which is Spanish (as opposed to Catalan) bureaucracy: this time for his diving licence. I declined to accompany him as I felt that my experience of street waiting for his Identity Card was sufficient to give me the feel of what is in store for me when I become a resident in Spain. Sufficient unto the day, and all that.

Ah, I see that the rich man has condescended to scatter a few electronic waves in my direction and I am now connected with a signal strength designated as ‘very low’ – which sounds exactly like some minor Dickensian character building up to the big death scene of some much loved, vapid, put upon heroine!

This reminds me, I should be reading ‘Oliver Twist’ which is the next novel in the historical sequence in my version of the rereading which is being completed by my aunt and myself. I think we both have been a little lax in our efforts recently, but I’m sure that there will be a big putsch in the New Year. At least with ‘Oliver Twist’ this will be a true ‘rereading’ unlike ‘The Pickwick Papers’ which for me was a first reading! The shame of such an admission!

There is something deeply satisfying to type inconsequentialities while someone else is ironing: I am with the hero of Jerome K. Jerome (‘The K is for Klapka’ – the title of a never forgotten Radio 4 afternoon play) who said “I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” And when it is as well done as Carmen is now doing it, it is even more satisfying. Why? Because she irons with a sheer professionalism that does not invite emulation.

We are now building up to the preparations for the New Year. There are not as many strange traditions here as you might expect given the coprophiliac tendencies of the Christmas celebrations in Catalonia. The only strange custom concerns grapes. It is traditional to have twelve grapes ready on New Year’s Eve so that when the clock in the centre of Madrid (or wherever else the television companies have decided to centre their evening’s ‘entertainment’) begins to strike twelve, for each stroke a grape must be eaten. The ability to eat a grape a stroke is sure to ensure good luck throughout the year.

What is astonishing is the way that this custom has been commercialised. You would have thought in a country which produces a fair number of grapes it would be impossible to make an easy buck from selling one of the agricultural staples, but they manage it! You can buy twelve (count them) grapes in specially packed presentation containers. Plastic bags in the same shape as the old fashioned sweet bags, with a ribbon on the top. As an extreme example, the advertising of tiny tins of twelve (count them) grapes have begun: what a masterpiece of commercialism! In a country where grapes are as cheap as chips, the spirit of profit has found a way to take away the horror of having to count out twelve grapes from a bunch and only for x times the cost of the original uncounted articles!

I look forward to being in Spain for the celebration of The Kings. God alone knows what arcane mysteries have to be performed for this major celebration. Having seen the suicidal and homicidal firework displays which accompany the festivities which each town and city feels necessary to provide the correct amount of danger to match the importance of their festive day, I shudder to think what must happen during The Kings – human sacrifice? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Talk about coincidences: Clarrie has just phoned and, as soon as I was passed to The Good Doctor, the battery on the phone conked out. I’ve just put the bloody thing to charge but, and here’s the coincidence, when I returned to the computer the program which chooses pictures at random from my Pictures folder was showing Clarrie and The Good Doctor! I’m sure it’s a sign of something!

Meanwhile life goes on. This is another way of saying that Carmen having finished the ironing is now starting on the next stage of her Sisyphus-like existence and starting the preparations for the next meal. She may have a large rock to push, but it’s a very tasty one.

So to speak.

Patience! Patience!

Thursday 28th December 2006 - Catalonia

BUREAUCRACY, Spanish: first brush with;

I can now begin to write the definition which follows this encyclopaedia type entry. Toni has started on his Via Dolorosa to replace his documentation (with much, much else) that was stolen from outside Barcelona Airport. Today was the devoted to the replacement of the Identity Card.

Toni and I have a difference of opinion about this particular item. As he has had an identity card for the whole of his life he doesn’t understand my loathing of the whole concept of the thing. This is in spite of the fact that do I have in my possession a folded piece of card which has ‘National Registration Identity Card’ on the front and the possessor, whose name is written in fountain pen ink inside, is down as ‘Baby Rees’ i.e. me! When I was born food rationing still had four years to run, so the issuing of a card was of some importance so that you could ensure that you had your full ration. This, however, was within a decade of the end of the Second World War – and I would maintain (ignoring some of the more hysterical outpourings of the government to the contrary) that we are not living in such a state of emergency today.

I deny the right of any government to make me prove who I am just because I am. If they, or any of their representatives such as the police, have a just cause to demand my identification then I submit with good grace; but the mere idea of having to produce some sort of easily duplicated document or card as a proof of my existence as a necessary adjunct to any due process of law or bureaucracy is abhorrent to me. Presumably, for these so-called identity cards to be in any way effective, the force of law will have to be applied to their being carried at all times; so the mere fact of lack of possession of a card will be an offence – therefore your identity is, in effect, no longer your own, but is rather dependent on the production of an official piece of laminated card. I reject it and all it represents and a Labour government should be totally ashamed to be pushing this repugnant legislation on a population which I trust will reject with contempt this irrelevant piece of governmental short cutting.

Anyway, the reality of Spanish bureaucracy was having to wait, in the first instance, outside the police building which contained the officials who would deal with the issuing of a new identity card. The queue we were in did not move. People went into the police station and came out of the police station. The queue we were in did not move. I found this vaguely disturbing: something was happening, people were being processed: why no movement? Twenty five minutes of complete stasis. The only movement was cosmetic and psychological with people in the queue ‘bunching up’ from time to time to give the impression of progress.

To keep sane I went and looked at a new building which was opposite the police station and which put me in mind of one of the calmly sinister architectural landscapes of de Chirico. The perspectives were defined by a series of arched alcove-like sections to the building, while a row of spaced black poles running roughly parallel to the building offered a sort of counter perspective. While pleasing to view, it was not so easy to photograph, but I tried anyway. It was, after all, better than queuing!

Eventually with much suppressed excitement, the queue started moving towards the door, where a severely cropped police man issued numbered tickets. This now meant that we were able to wait in a second queue but, indoors and with seats! Our number was 97 and the number being dealt with was 71. And on number 71 is stayed for a depressingly long time, giving us a fear that it would be well into the afternoon before we were even seen!

Time passed. I’m sure that that is a quote from something, but I can’t for the life of me remember from what. I expect that I will suddenly remember later today and jerk into some sort of expression and then have to explain myself. I know that it’s close to TS Eliot, but not exact. Beckett? Who knows? Thinking about it; isn’t it a misquotation from TS Eliot’s ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ which is about Thomas a Becket? The internet (which I am currently stealing from god knows who in this building) is down, so I can’t check. Or is it Dylan Thomas and ‘Under Milk Wood’? That seems more convincing. It’s wonderful how you can think yourself through to some sort of literary certainty just by typing fluently!

Eventually we were seen; a print out of the last identity card Toni had was produced (God how young he was!) one of the many passport sized photos attached to the form; forms filled out; fingerprints taken; slip issued for later collection of new card, and everything done and dusted in about seven minutes, completed in unsmiling efficiency by a lady obviously bored with her job.

An hour and a half: and we were thankful that it was not more. The refreshments we had afterwards seemed well deserved: even if they were not alcoholic!

I’ve been listening to my new collection of the complete works of Mecano (eat your hearts out Alison and Emily) and still ‘Laika’ remains my favourite. They really do seem to occupy the niche in Spain that Abba occupies in Britain. Their music is very easy listening; melodic and rhythmic. The lyrics are idiosyncratic and intriguing (as far as I can translate them!) and I’ve now got lots and lots of tracks to listen to!

I do believe that (Surprise! Surprise!) another meal is in the offing and I must prepare myself. Again.

Paella – you can’t beat it!

A lost art needs doctorates!

What might be called the terminal moraine of education always leaves you with interesting morsels, even if the main thrust of what was being taught to you has long since faded into anonymity in the spongier grey areas of your brain. Sometimes you are left with interesting facts; sometimes with interesting words and sometimes with interesting names.

Michael Palæologus is such a name for me. I know that one of him (there were lots of Michaels in the Imperial line) was connected with the last years of the last dynasty when Byzantium was interesting and therefore he must have been an emperor at a time of wonderful decadence – at least if you were an emperor.

It’s the concept of decadence and self indulgence and sheer pleasure that strangely interests me. We have so many people dealing with the Big Things of Life like Global Warming; the Problems of the Middle East and Why That Woman Is Still Surviving, that the small essential things just get ignored.

A case in point is The Art of Scratching; and thus we return to old Michael Palæologus. I’m sure that in the (what’s the word for the shining luminescence of rotting fish?) – using what I said in parenthesis as an adjective – terminal decadence of the Byzantine Empire there must have been a whole sub culture devoted to The Art of Scratching. Well, there would be in my version of Decline and Fall!

Just consider, for most people who stop to consider, the term ‘scratching’ will refer to the DJ technique which used to use the method of hand manipulating of a vinyl disc to obtain odd musical rhythmic sounds (they now use digital) in shady night clubs rather than the noble art of giving (human) digital (keratin enhanced) pleasure by the gentle raking of the skin.

There are so many different types of scratching: the scratch direct which is a full five nailed downward travel; the scratch particular which targets a know area of scratch need; the scratch composite where the scratching can incorporate some massage; the scratch inventive which can utilize the different qualities of harness found in calloused and hard skin; the scratch light which is barely perceptible yet highly valued by the cognoscenti of the scratching fraternity. You can see the vast possibilities and you can imagine the even more vast literature which must exist.

There must have been Byzantine enamels which commemorated the lives of special slaves who had shown the emperor special attention in the scratching department; murals which must have placed Imperial Scratchers in positions of importance on the right hand of the imperial personage; illuminated manuscripts which detailed the techniques of scratching with jewel-like representations of scratchers at work. Perhaps all these treasures were lost when the Library at Alexandria went up in flames in the most libracidal disaster in the history of the world. What lost tomes of scratching lore and technique might have been lost? Ah well, when we finally discover the Library of Lost Books (in which all true bibliophiles believe as an act of faith) all will be revealed and a new liberated age of rediscovered scratching will benefit the world.

I realise that this must seem one too self indulgent digression too far, but what the hell!

On slightly more level intellectual terms I have, at long last, joined the select ranks of those who, in the United Kingdom, actually own real Mecano CDs. I bought the complete works on eight CDs of which seven work: the eighth being the one bloody one in the pack that doesn’t work, and of course, also continuing the run of Bad Things Happening, which also includes the fact that Carmen Snr is ill today and mere words cannot describe the wait that I had while purchasing the above mentioned discs. (The poxy cashier actually used the phone ten times (10!) because, as far as I could tell, one poxy digit did not match on the mass of paperwork that the two ladies just in front of me in the queue presented.

I am told such things are good for the soul, but, as I do not believe that I have one, such pathetic, maundering, sententious, mendacious sayings rather pass me by.

I will retain my justified resentment at the vicissitudes of this unjust world.

Though, at the moment, the food is quite good!

My Name Day – Catalonia – 2006

The catalogue of catastrophe continues: the coffee machine is broken and the family plunged into horrific compromises: they have to drink instant! I’m not sure that Catalans are allowed to celebrate Christmas and the days following without the necessary number of cups of that caffeine laden beverage coursing around their systems.

For me, this is fortuitous as I had already decided to forgo the usual cup that drugs as a special concession to my stomach. It is at times like these that one wishes one were in France: that is a country that really knows how to devote conversation to the ailments and treatment of various parts of the human anatomy, but especially the stomach.

I also have to say that the Spanish are not far behind the ratio of chemists to people that France has achieved. These races must feel very exposed to the ailments of mankind when they come to Britain with its positive dearth of places of medicaments when compared with the plenty of those Mediterranean strongholds of imagined and real illnesses.

26th December 2006

I have been trying, for two days, to remember the word hypochondria (hence the previous phrase “imagined and real illnesses” as a sort of paraphrase) and I suppose that that is some sort of cause for concern. It is bad enough for my Aunt Bet to tell me that she is concerned about lapses in her memory: a memory that was once photographic, but alas, is now reduced to a memory than any normal person would be proud to own as their own! I fail to see the problem when all birthdays of family, friends and casual acquaintances are on instant recall to her and family trees (unto the third and fourth generation) are easily accessible to her storytelling! I don’t think that I ever had a memory as good and efficient as the one that she is decrying today!

It is a little worrying that, if I cannot remember everyday words in English, then what chance have I got for remembering the same words in Spanish, let alone Catalan? In my favour, of course, is the quality of a word like ‘hypochondria’ which, to be fair, is not necessarily perfectly defined by ‘everyday.’ I suppose, when I was teaching, that it would be a word that I would explain as being not an everyday word but one which I would expect any educated person to know. It is going to be very difficult – and I think that I will leave that sentiment open ended.

Yesterday the fattening up process continued with another excellent meal, this time in Toni’s aunt’s apartment. I had got it wrong: Boxing Day (My Name Day) was not the time for the prawn and mayonnaise loaf cake – that day is New Year’s Day. Something to look forward to!

The meal started with a selection of tapas: cockles (from Wales!!) mussels, squid, olives, lettuce, salad, asparagus etc. The second course was giant prawns and crayfish. The third course was stuffed chicken and roast duck with fruit. The postre was Macedonia made freshly. The meal was accompanied by Turbio and Cava. Coffee was served in antique, delicate Czech lustre ware china cups decorated with decorous lovers: given the presence of a ubiquitous small dog and an uncontained 16 month boy child, the drinking of the coffee was a fraught experience.

It was interesting to see the interaction between a very small, much loved resident dog and the incursive behaviour of a small child. Each expected to be the centre of attention and in this circle of life there could not be two centres.

Carles’ approaches to the dog showed little fear and his total confidence seemed to unnerve the poor dog, whose only recourse was to emit shrill barks. The dog’s attention was also divided by the need to be the centre of attention while at the same time keeping some sort of control over the meal table, especially seeking out advantages when the serviettes could be purloined and destroyed. I’m not sure whether it would have been easier with two dogs or two kids, but the combination of kid and dog was not the one which was most productive of peace and tranquillity!

The evening meal was of the take-out sort from a fast-food outlet. Now, as is well known, the existence of McDonalds throughout the world is proof of the existence of God. The reasoning is as follows: if such spectacular evil is allowed to flourish then it must postulate the existence of some force which is the equal and opposite of it, ergo, God.

I would rather eat worms (or drive a Ford) than willingly eat anything from McDonalds, but Catalonia has its own alternative called, oddly, ‘Viena’ (with one ‘n’) this provides the usual sort of fare, but the burgers taste of meat and are made on the premises; the bread used tastes bread and is fresh and crisp. It also serves alcohol. Its architecture is vaguely Swiss or Bavarian with exposed beams and a chalet like appearance; there are Germanic motifs on the blue and white tiles that they use; the counters and metal work are suggestive of Vienna – it’s sort of inexplicable in Catalonia, but the food that they provide is much better than that in the American inspired garbage dispensers you find in the UK.

Now it’s time for feeding again.

C’est la vie!