The night draws on apace!

Sants railway station in the centre of Barcelona has been transformed into an eighteenth century vision of the grotesque and picturesque.

This underground cavern supported by vast concrete piles looking like sweptback slim-line funnels from some sleek yacht is undergoing what looks like a mixture of destruction and renovation. Solid shafts of sunlight penetrate the murky depths from jagged holes above illuminating well placed piles of rubble and discarded giant machines in such a dramatic way that one suspects that the whole thing has been set up for an artist like Piranesi to complete another set of etchings of the fantastic.

In every area in which I have been in Catalonia this week (God! Have I only been here a week? It’s certainly been an active one!) there seems to be a frenzy of building, rebuilding, restoration and casual destruction. Walk along virtually any street and you will suddenly encounter a gaping hole where an entire building has been ripped out leaving jagged masonry on either side to denote where the living inhabited limb used to be. In a rather touching act of architectural anthropomorphism Spaniards paint the newly exposed areas with an earthy ochre coloured paint almost as if they were applying a sort of iodine to the exposed flesh of the building!

Barcelona is a city of extraordinary casts.

I have never seen so many people proudly exhibiting such a bewilderingly large display of the doctor’s craft in swathing limbs and bits in plaster of Paris. I have seen so many people in neck braces that I was beginning to think that it must be a chic new fashion accessory. Legs, knees, arms all swaddled in medical white with sometimes a patch of material to give a collage like effect to the whole. One man had his hand swathed so completely that it became one white gigantic comma.

I think that there should be a new i-spy book of Plaster Casts because it would be a doddle to fill it in while walking around Barcelona and then I could claim my feather from Big Chief i-spy! For those of you who know what I’m talking about, did you ever meet anyone who actually got a feather from Big Chief i-spy? I tend to think that this was another of those comforting myths which kept me in place when I was young. Like milk tablets – that takes me back!

I have just been invited to join the family in their inexplicable activity of Scoobydo which appears to be a form of finger knitting which has struck this previously stable family unit like some sort of obsessive compulsive behaviour.

Toni has now given up after confirming his status as a non teacher by attempting to teach me how to do it. He is eating the strange mixture of nuts and seeds which keeps him noisly happy for hours. Carmen and Laura continue with their knotting like opressed labour in some Oriental sweat shop. Strange are the ways of the Catalans!

To day is St John’s Night Eve, the shortest night of the year when, as I recall from extensive listening to Mussorgsky’s “Night on a Bare (or Bald) Mountain” also known as St John’s Night (though I may have made that bit up) this is a time when witches are abroad and waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting.

I have been told that sleep tonight is bound to be interrupted with explosions and fire. The celebrations of the birth of St John are six months before the birth of Jesus, hence the 24th June. Festivities in Spain include the burning of bonfires over which people apparently jump to prove their courage and to rid themselves of sin and disease. I await with interest the revelations that will come when I go and see how Terrassa celebrates. As long as there are fireworks I will be satisfied.

The Spanish, or perhaps the Catalans, seem to have a predilection for fireworks in their most dangerous forms. There is a form of conjuring known as ‘street magic’ which is performed, as the name suggests, in the street and close to the punters. In Spain they have the same approach but with fireworks.

I have not yet recovered from my experiences in Sitges when a whole troupe of hessian coated, sinister hood wearing visions from a Bosch painting of Hell showered a screamingly delighted crowd with fountains of fire from dangerously hand held fireworks. What a fire officer in the UK would have made of it all beggars description; the courts would have been busy for months!

I have great hopes for this evening (already there are sporadic explosions although the sun is still shining) and I hope to have a thoroughly pyrotechnically intimidating night.

Witches beware!

It's not the arriving it's the journey!

Chaos is not the same in all countries.

In Britain, the fatalistic acceptance of failure and even the grudging admiration for systems operating properly (i.e. not working) allows the Brits to indulge in their well honed repertoire of moans, groans and sighs. I speak not as an outsider; I too have come to accept the relentless dissatisfaction which is the lot of any Briton trying to Get Things Done. “We will be there before 11 am” and casually arriving in the evening; “We will call you back within the hour,” and surely any comment here would be superfluous; “The cheque is in the post!” all the great lies that we have to live by and, as the papers constantly remind a generation that doesn’t know what the hell they are talking about, it brings out the ‘spirit of the blitz.’

I was supposed to go to Castelldefels today to sign papers and hand over vast sums of money to ensure the apartment is ours for a year or so. The trip to Barcelona was uneventful; it was only when I went to the station in Barcelona from which I was supposed to catch the train to Castelldefels that the unusual discommoded me. The station announcer seemed to be encouraging people to go to Sants in Barcelona to catch trains to destinations like Castelldefels. What was not explained, or was said too quickly for my Spanish, was that there had been a derailment and there were no trains to Castelldefels at all. This I eventually gleaned by fairly desperate questioning of a uniformed man wearing a badge with a big i on it.

A trip by bus from Sants to Gava and then a train to Castelldefels did nothing to lessen the tension of the day. In spite of everything I was on time for my meeting with the Estate Agent, he of course was late. The convoluted negotiations could not disguise the fact that he and his firm would be getting over a thousands pounds for doing virtually nothing, and not even doing that nothing well.

To call estate agents blood sucking vampires is to dignify a semi evolved life form with an insult steeped in literary history and made famous by Hammer Horror films. I would rather compare them with nematode worms, but nemotode worms, at least have a useful function in breaking down human ordure in sewerages whereas estate agents etc etc.

It was considerable disgust that I left the den of thieves and returned to the town for lunch.

I think the restaurant was called Club Lancaster and was poncy enough for Toni to prefer virtually any other restaurant in town but, as Toni was languishing at home with sickness, I felt free to indulge myself.

God, I love this country! What can you say when a waiter having inexpertly dropped red wine on table, knife and serviette leaves the rest of the bottle as a sort of apology. And, later, when the same waiter failed to respond to the request for another glass of wine opens a new bottle, plonks it on the table and doesn’t charge for it on the bill.

And the food was good too. The restaurants here are as good value for money as the estate agents are, well, not!

And I’ve bought a car too. I think. The conversation with the car salesman (which went on for two hours) was a sobering taste of what is to come if I try and survive in a country that doesn’t speak English as their first or even second language. The use of a computer to translate Spanish into English produced a sort of gobbledegook which, given the absurd flexibility of English, resulted in a laughably ungrammatical sentence which still made sense to an English speaker!

I wonder what I’ve actually put a deposit down on. I hope it isn’t pink or red. I’m almost sure that it is blue – but more than that I would not like to volunteer.

The journey back to Terrassa was, quite frankly, a nightmare. The eventual train from Castelldefels to Gava disgorged what seemed like half the population of Barcelona into a series of buses. And, if you’re still with me about the idea of national chaos being different depending in which country you are in then the behaviour of the Spanish and Catalans showed how unlike their British counterparts they were. There was very little grumbling and the arrangements of the buses were workman like and efficient.

Yes we did (even I did) cross the tracks to get to the exit to get to the buses, but the queues were relatively orderly with only the usual scumbags shamelessly pushing in. As with traffic, pushing in is a way of life in Spain so it is not marked with violent horn blowing or vociferous muttering. The queues were quickly directed into buses and we were soon on our way; and I managed to keep the seat next to me free by judicious placing of various bags. Result!

Sants in Barcelona was a nightmare; not because of heaving masses of humanity pushing, shoving and generally behaving badly, but rather because my single question to an information guide of “Terrassa?” with a stylish upward inflexion produced an immediate series of instruction on how to get to my train in faultless English! To my crestfallen question, “Do I really look so English!” he replied, “Sorry!” I’m not sure what to make of that exchange.

The train journey to the wrong Terrassa station (miles away from Toni’s home) seemed to last for eons and I was only mollified by the fact that my return was greeted with applause and a bowl of substantial chicken soup with Toni saying that he had seen me on TV as part of the downtrodden masses attempting to get home in spite of the traffic chaos. The last bit about being on TV was not strictly true, but I had been filmed in Gava as our tortuous procession of the dispossessed waiting for a purposeful train wended its weary way towards a bus.

Tomorrow has to be less stressful and much more peaceful.

Doesn’t it?

Weighed in the balance and found wanting - again!

When I first went to Greece I went with the best of intentions. I had studied and researched the museums and excavations that I wanted to visit; I had bemoaned the fact that one could only spend a mere morning or afternoon on the Greek sacred island of Ios or whatever. I arrived in Athens late determined to make an early cultural start.

But the sun was shining and I discovered that the Greeks actually produced Newcastle Brown looking bottles filled with Retsina for mere pence. I was instantly corrupted and this holiday marked the end of my ostentatiously artistic ventures abroad. From henceforward I searched for the sun and the warm waters of the Mediterranean in which to bathe.

A similar epiphany has taken place with regard to the house or flat in Spain. The overriding consideration in the quest for the appropriate domicile was a suitable repository for my books (and of course, naturally, somewhere visitors and family could be entertained so that they would realise just how unfortunate they were not to be living in Castelldefels!)

The first house that we saw today was almost perfect: adequate accommodation with an interesting arrangement of rooms and a large lower room which could take all my books. It had a small (very small) garden and a terrace. It had a parking space and a sun roof. Perfect. But in the wrong place, or, as we say in Castelldefels, on the other side of the motorway. The house was empty so everything in store would fit. But it was in the wrong place. The wrong bloody place!

The afternoon was given over to a mendacious estate agent (Gosh!) who took us to a truly horrible flat that we had not asked to see and none of the properties that we had asked to see. We were taken on a grand tour of locations where there might be properties but not to the sea front where we wanted to be. By the time that we were ready to go to our last port of call we were in a thoroughly bad mood, not made any better by the conflicting attitudes we were beginning to develop about exactly what it was we were looking for!

We had no great hopes from the last property and the estate agent who was supposed to be showing it to us was late. The generally poor mood continued and developed.

When we went to the flat we were show in detail and in a logical order the various attributes it possessed. It had a reasonably sized swimming pool and the block of flats had their own private entry directly to the beach. There was a parking space in a generously proportioned bay (I was told) and then we taken round the flat. The living area was generously proportioned and the terrace adequate with views of the pool and the beach and the sea. The main bedroom was adequate but the other rooms somewhat small. The kitchen had been refurbished and the bathroom and loo were adequate.

My carefully dispassionate description hides the glaring, incandescent and truly wonderful fact that it was directly on the beach!

So! To hell with the books! The flat is directly on the beach: from the pool, through the door and onto the beach.

Once again the lure of sun, sea and sand has conquered my dedication to academe. Sad really; but it is what I have been working towards for a number of years. I may not own it, but I’m going to be living in it.

So, tomorrow, back once again to Castelldefels to put down a deposit and try and explain how my complete lack of an income is no hindrance to my renting a flat for the foreseeable future. I’m not quite sure how that circle is going to be squared, but I’m sure that money will sort it out. I will be dealing with estate agents after all.

What is going to happen to all the stuff in store is anyone’s guess. This, as they say, is work in progress.

Meanwhile my continuing exploration of the Spanish psyche has delved into small spaces.

Although British people find toilet humour, well, humorous and laugh inordinately at references to toilets and attendant activities, they find personal discussion outside the realm of standup comedy intensely embarrassing.

Judging by the number of advertisements connected to one aspect of bodily evacuation, it is the horror of having anyone other than you realise that excreted matter might actually smell offensive! One masterly neurosis inducing advertisement asks the acutely psychologically penetrating question, “What do you loo say about you?” One is tempted to answer that it probably says that you are using the loo for the purpose for which it was invented – so much nicer than pooing in the sitting room!

I know that the advert is referring to the smell (or ‘stench’ as I’m sure Doctor Johnson would have preferred to have said) and judging again by the number of products that have been developed to counteract the smell of this particular bodily function they are onto a winner.

I particularly like the toilet blocks which also emphasise that they are antiseptic and disinfectant so it is hygienic rather than cosmetic to use one. And one what? We have been presented with bleach tablets, blue blocks, under rim attachments, in cistern slowly dissolving cellophane wrapped rings and in-an-out attachments. The last ones I bought for my ex-house I preparation for its new denizens, was an under rim strip which seemed to stretch half way round the bowl. The bewilderingly wide range of ‘fragrances’ that have been deemed suitable to mask the unpleasant odours of a particular part of the bathroom all have one thing in common: they emphasise the smell that isn’t there! The incongruity of young of pine forests or wild jasmine infused with rampant spring lavender bursting forth from the toilet bowl is always a little unsettling.

Having one toilet bloc is inadequate; having two is either boasting about the virulence of your bodily functions or proclaiming your unnatural nature when it comes to what goes naturally.

The well appointed and hygienically sound little toilet in the café in the plaza in front of the station in Castelldefels was not distinguishable or notable for its scent but rather for the design of its toilet block. This took the form of a little hollow canoe shaped boat on the deck of which was a hollow man in blue behind a hollow sail of green – all filled with de-odorising goo! I am sure that these elaborate constructions are well known to my reader, but to me, a toiletry innocent, they were a revelation!

If a man in a boat, why not a surfer riding a big wave; a lion attacking a water buffalo; Venus rising from a scallop shell; Margaret Thatcher fighting a bloated Edward Heath; the sinking of The Bismark; a working model of an artesian well . . .

. . . and I’m ready for my medication now nurse.

Enjoy!

Very hot today.

I suppose I could just leave it at that. ‘Very hot today’ is, after all, one of those phrases that I have moved country to be able to use! I am now sitting on the balcony in the cool of the evening with a strong cup of coffee with only the noise of the traffic and the whirr of the gimmicky (but effective) USB fan to keep me company.

Talking of company; Carles has been exuding energy today. All day. And well into the night. If whatever is powering Carles could be bottled then the energy crisis would be at an end and we could finally treat the Saudis with the contempt that they more than richly deserve, after all the years of their treating the world as their personal playground in which they can do exactly as they please and buy their way out of the condemnation that ordinary mortals would have suffered just because of the monetary power of the rotting vegetable matter that has accumulated under their arid and bigoted country.

That’s better. There is something deeply therapeutic about a short rant (Though the Saudis deserve a much longer and more detailed one than I can give at the moment!)

The first attempt at house hunting was of limited effectiveness in spite of our attempts to set up viewings. After taking the train from Terrassa to Barcelona and then a walk to another station and a train to Castelldefels and then a walk to the centre we were rewarded with two viewings.

The first was excellently situated with direct views of the beach and sea and overlooking a small but adequate swimming pool. That is the positive and encouraging positive too, but the negative!

On his deathbed Saint Oscar’s memorable final words concerned the wallpaper. “The wallpaper is killing me,” he confided, “Either it goes or I do.” I felt exactly the same when contemplating the decoration; sorry I should have said ‘decoration’ which was seen in the bathroom and toilet. The tiles were of that ostentatious vulgarity which is only seen used by post modernist camp decorators on television trying to prove their virility by assuming that their mere word can make the unpalatable fashionable. The furniture was of a vulgarity and cheapness which would have been hard to match if you deliberately set out to produce the most vulgar display you could imagine. As it was let with furniture we would not have been able to change it, therefore it was impossible to consider. And the kitchen! Words fail me, but I would add that it had plastic curtains rather than kitchen unit doors. Ugh!

The second was a duplex of a much higher quality (and a much greater price.) There were two smallish rooms with a bathroom on one level and a much more reasonable sized en suite bedroom. The living room, dining room and kitchen were all open plan but at slightly different levels. The view of the sea was not direct but tangential, though it has to be said that the sea was very near. The advantage of a sun room was not lost on me, but neither of us felt that this was the perfect domicile.

I will pause at this point to sympathise with my reader who may be losing a certain patience with reading the carping criticism of someone trying to find just the right sort of sunny home by the sea in Spain when, as Maggie pointed out in her email from Cardiff, she, for example was just about to set off for a game of golf in the rain. But bear with me.

Oh yes, and I’ve tried out the sea in which I will be swimming. Not too bad for the time of year and it necessitated only a modicum of undignified squirming before happy acclimatisation was achieved. Much self indulgent wallowing and splashing and even a little real swimming. One couldn’t help the passing thought that this experience was part of the whole idea of coming to Catalonia in the first place!

Toni has lost all patience in the process of trying to find a new place to live and looks forward with real dread to the sequence of places that have been lined up for us tomorrow. On the other hand, tired and drained as I most certainly am, I feel theoretically invigorated by the prospect of being shocked by other people’s idea of gracious living!

As every teacher knows bus travel with kids is fraught with dangerous possibilities. I have had occasion to mention before the notorious trip which ended with one of my colleagues softly, but insistently swearing at a boy clutching a motorway red cone for the last thirty minutes of the journey home. That, believe you me, was one of the lighter moments of the Trip from Hell.

One axiom of bus travel with pupils is to recognize that anyone moving purposely towards the back seats should never be allowed to get there. Any disruptive or naughty pupil who makes it to the back seat will have his evil quotient exponentially increased to truly satanic proportions.

I was reminded of this simple truism when sitting in the back seat of a number 94 bus in Castelldefels. The scratched windows and black marker initials are par for the course on any form of public transport but the treatment of the grey plastic backs of the seats of the penultimate row were new and intriguing. At first I thought that they were merely the artistic swirls of a viciously stubbed out cigarette, but then I realised that they were more intentional than that. There were initials dragged – not incised – in the plastic. Pause for thought; and then a more flamboyant scorch mark indicated the answer. The back seat recidivists were obviously softening the plastic with their lighters and then inscribing their initials and other cabalistic insignia with matchsticks. Pausing, again, only to wonder why they would have both, I leaned back and contemplated the artistic scrawls that would have had an artist like Dubuffet in ecstasies. Not me though. I have never forgiven the dead Dubuffet for having an exhibition of his exorable ‘art’ covering the walls of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York the only time that I visited the place: all that winding space and nothing worth looking at!

I will be thinking of architecture tomorrow as I tick of the desirability of the apartments and houses that we are shown tomorrow.

Frank Lloyd Wright be with me!

Catalan thoughts

Barca failed to win the league.

Gloom and doom from Toni’s mum who greeted us at the airport with an earpiece firmly plugged in and her attention focussed on the two games of importance being played out in two stadiums. A win for Barca and a draw or loss for Real Madrid would have clinched the league for Barca. Although Barca won, so did Madrid and even though the points were equal for both teams, the deciding feature in Spanish football is the ‘head to head’ meetings – and Madrid had the advantage. Ironically, in the UK, I think that Barca would have won on goal difference; but this is Spain and so miserable defeat!

What surprised me as we drove towards Terrassa in the dark was the number of fireworks which exploded in the sky to mark the victory of Madrid. The struggle between Barca and Madrid is about much more than football, so the number of ostentatious displays of enthusiasm for Madrid was more of a political statement than joy at a team’s victory. Even in Terrassa there were the traditional displays of enthusiasm by drivers tooting their horns. Each exuberant noise was greeted with a scowl from Toni’s mum and a muttered imprecation.

I know on which side my sympathies lie and so I continue to live under Toni’s mum’s roof!

Added to the disappointment of Barca not winning the league was the even more disappointing sight of the televised highlights of a bull fight in Barcelona! There was a demonstration from a group of anti-bullfighting protestors, but it was decidedly depressing to see a full bull ring with, yet again, no human fatalities to even things up. The bull fighter was awarded both ears and, something which I had not seen before on television, proudly paraded around the ring holding two bleeding chunks of gristle in his hands.

Disgusting! I had thought that the bull ring in Barcelona was going to be redeveloped as a shopping centre and thus bull fighting consigned to the murky past of animal cruelty in Catalonia. I feel that this is going to encourage me to join my first Spanish pressure group! To hell with Hemmingway and his self deluding macho crap – anyway, look what happened to him.

I think that I am looking more critically at how life goes along in Spain now that I am here for good than with the previously more accepting holiday eyes. I am much looking forward to making sweeping generalisations about Spain and Spanish Life from my very limited experience. It has never stopped me in the past so I see no reason to suddenly start being reasonable when I am living in the proof of what I am saying – even if, statistically, it might be a little one sided!

I shall start my observations by stating unequivocally that the Spanish are much more interested in delicious bread and pastries than are the British. Today we had a coca; a decorated flat loaf shaped creation crisscrossed with lines of a sweet custard-like consistency and decorated with pine nuts and crystallized fruit with sugar scattered on top. The texture and taste of the ‘bread’ was like a hot cross bun and it was altogether pleasant.

The ordinary bread is much tastier than the British equivalent, especially when treated to the Catalan method of preparing bread: soaked with crushed tomato and drenched in olive oil. Delicious, almost a meal in itself!

I almost had heart failure when (with Toni’s less than informed help) I used my card to find out the balance in my Spanish bank account by using a cash machine. The amount which was printed on the receipt indicated that over 95% of my money had gone. It was only after heart massage and general comforting that Toni realised that he had encouraged me to find out my daily withdrawal amount rather than the total. I sometimes think he is trying to toughen me up to the realities of Catalan life!

I have bought a new mobile phone to use in Spain. The assistant in the Terrassa branch of the Carphone Warehouse had a more than competent command of English and it turned out he had spent about a year in London, though as he pointed out, the number of Spaniards in the capital significantly thwarted his attempts to master the English language! He merely confirmed what I have long suspected: the centre of London is a wholly owned colony of Spain – it’s only fair after our refusal to quit Gibraltar!

Carles, or Plague Boy as we prefer to call him, has now brought low his mother, father and aunt. His uncle (Toni) is showing incipient signs that he too is succumbing to the malaise that seems to be a trademark of his nephew, and I await my own diseased fate with weary resignation. Carles is showing his versatility, his power is not merely confined to the colder months of the winter; he is equally at home in the more torrid months of summer.

I am at present the recipient of a menagerie of plasticine animals which are being deposited next to the computer by Carles. I only hope that there is some sort of antiseptic effect from this child friendly goo, otherwise I will be joining his uncle in illness.

One of the prices you have to pay for the comforts of family life. I have escaped babies for a number of years, so I suppose it is only fair that I start to pay now.

It’s a hard old life.

Cutting loose!

AT LAST!

The title of the blog is now a reality. I am in Catalonia!

Considering the length of time that it took to sell the house (I was rapidly becoming known as ‘the teacher who tried to go to Spain to live’) the actual process as soon as contracts were being bandied about was relatively quick.

It was not, of course, without its attendant horrors, otherwise selling a house would not be ranked with divorce and death as one of the most stressful things that you experience!

Although a vast amount of what can only be described as ‘stuff’ was already residing in the depositories of Messrs. Pickford I seemed to have amassed another house worth of possessions to join the two pallets of the library and assorted items ready to wend their way to Spain.

Pickfords made the wrapping and packing of the house look like an elegant art: the packaging of the television created an art object worthy of entry into the Tate Modern as a Christo wrapped original. If I had my way I would leave it in its bubble wrap covered state for future generations to wonder at!

The eventual settlement in Altolusso was something of a relief; its position was wonderful, but we never really got used to the maniacal shriek of harsh metallic brakes on the passing trains. I do not see how anyone short of deafness could possibly live in those flats. It may be ‘location, location, location’ that sells accommodation, but surely there must be audio limits to what you are prepared to suffer!

The last days there were difficult to take as we had all but gone and were irritated by the fact that somehow, we were still there. When you are making such a life changing move; the decision made – the last thirty or forty hours are unbearable.
Luckily my inability to pack came to the fore to help me. Toni, of course, packed his possessions impeccably with elegant economy within a couple of hours. My ordeal would have had Saint John of the Cross rethinking his concept of the ‘dark night of the soul.’ In all packing experiences there comes a moment of truth when you know, beyond all doubt, that what you want to pack will not fit into what you are using to pack it in. This moment came early in the process and yet, and yet . . .

You can define most people by their approach to the definition of the CDW concept. This is the ‘Can’t Do Without’ appellation of certain items that have to go into the case. This CDW is widely interpreted. For some people going on holiday without a full mini library of chosen reading matter would be unthinkable; for others a selection of bathing costumes is essential; perfumes for morning, evening, afternoon and tea time would be the difference between civilization and barbarism; everyone, thank god is different.

I have found that the (I have to admit it) imperfections of my corporal state are space consuming – especially if you are moving country. Consider: faulty vision has to be corrected with glasses or contact lenses. In my case with a combination of both. If you have faulty long and short sight then the combination and number of glasses increases. You have varifocal glasses, reading glasses, sunglasses, contact lenses, glasses to read with contact lenses, tinted lenses with – well, you get the idea and with supermarkets producing cheap single strength reading glasses for a couple of quid the sheer number of pairs of glasses increased super exponentially. And they all take up room. Contact lenses, you would have thought, take up no room at all – unless you wear daily disposable contact lenses and then you have box after box of them. Especially, again, when you stock up to come to a foreign country.

My medication also takes up more space than you would think. There was a time when pills were put in a bottle to be shaken out when needed. Nowadays pharmaceutical companies like their consumers to think that everything they take has important magical qualities and so they pack all pills in day specific blister packs which are packed in boxes. Even aspirin! Less than a penny a pill and one firm packs them as if they were life saving panaceas and charges accordingly! Space, space, space! I think that anyone would agree that specs and medics were CDWs – doing without them could be fatal! And then you have to pack clothes! It’s just impossible.

And it was impossible. Various things had to be left behind. Including the car.

I wasn’t thinking of taking it with me, but I was hoping to sell it before I left and use the pitiful amount I could get to go towards a new car in Spain.

The idea of taking abroad and driving, with Catalans with the disadvantage of a right hand drive car in a benighted country of left hand drive fanatics on the road was not a starter. The experience of being flicked a vicious V sign by an ancient driver as he overtook me on a mountain hairpin bend descending from Montserrat and being harangued by his equally ancient wife, just because I was sticking to the speed limit on a clearly dangerous road, has stayed with me as an indelible memory!

That experience changed my driving expectations in Cataluña for ever. I need to be able to fight back and restricting your sight lines by a driving position on the wrong side of the car is not to be recommended anywhere, let alone in Spain!

I woke on the first day of my new life to the sound of rain.

I do not feel homesick yet, especially as Welsh weather appears to have followed me.

Today has been a time to check on how much I have in my Spanish bank account and to think about what I have left behind.

Without the Pauls and Ceri and Dianne the last day would have been a haze of horror as we tried to get too much done in too short a time; they made possible the impossible and it ment that our last day was a rush of action which left us no time to think.

How considerate life can be sometimes! With a little help from my friends!

This blog is from some time before the 17th of June, only posted now because of my inability to link to the internet!

I am now having withdrawal symptoms because of my internet deprivation.

Sad, but true.

Living a train filled life in the lower reaches of Altolusso with the temptation of a dust filled, shop enticing central Cardiff dominated by earth movers and shakers should be the stuff of dramatic blogs charting the raging emotions and depleting bank balances of a high octane existence. But it isn’t.

My computer reaches out its electronic tentacles and finds serried ranks of computer users all around me, their wireless links seductively encouraging, but the sternly repulsing ‘security enabled’ label dashing connection hopes.

The days since the Move Out have been filled by finding just how many ropes, threads, strings, manacles, chains, scaffolding, flying buttresses, shackles, cables, locks, and all other metaphorical impedimenta impeding the surgical cutting of the ties that contain a person’s movement from his home country. Not, I must add, that I want to sever those links, but the normal process of ‘housekeeping’ so as not to leave any loose ends is an enervating series of brushes with Automated Authority.

I have now heard every variation of the computer generated insults that are non human telephonic responses to a poor human trying to gain an organic ear to list to the poignant tale of separation that is inherent in emigration.

The present front runner for the Orwellian Big Brother Prize for Bewildering Choice in Telephonic Response is the DLVC. Make one wrong choice to the stultifying plethora of alternatives and you will find yourself in the dead end of a proffered telephone number: your alternatives have narrowed to one set response – and this after wending your weary way through a thoroughly unsatisfactory set of numbered choices.

The best of the Big Organizations so far has been Customs and Excise! This was in response to an enquiry about income tax which encouraged a thoroughly pleasant man to be helpful and coherent and offer to send any further information that I might need to Spain. Gosh! This is in marked contrast to some other businesses which made my move to Spain seem as though I were going to settle on one of the more obscure chunks of rock in the unfashionable end of the asteroid belt.

The only thing that makes telephoning faceless bureaucrats and officials bearable is the loudspeaker button on a telephone handset. This at least allows you to continue with your normal life until something approaching a human makes some sort of contact. Unfortunately, in my experience, this always occurs when your normal life has reached a potentially sonically embarrassing stage.

The last time that I was carrying around a noisy handset which was playing a suitably moronic and immediately unbearable tuneless note sequence that, unbelievably, someone in the organization had actually chosen, the human response came at a time when I had just started to eliminate a certain quantity of waste, as it were! When you have phoned as many organizations in the last few days as I have you take such inopportune human contact in your stride. Though thinking about it, ‘stride’ was possibly not the most appropriate word to describe my response. When you finally get through to a human operator you have to cherish and nourish this contact or you are condemned to repeat the via dolorosa of gaining information all over again.

And again.

Keep looking!

We are poor little lambs that have all gone astray: Baa! Baa! Baa!

There is nothing more alluring than finding yourself an outsider. You try and find your way into the special enclosure of those who are accepted in normal society and all the time you are pushed to the outside.

We poor fellows outside the law are trying to scratch ourselves into the circle of acceptability. And failing. That’s par for the course.

[SMR's note: This was supposed to be the introduction to a mildly ironic comment on something or other. The internet access was limited and I didn't get to finish it but, for reasons best left to history and red wine, I published what little I had written. The end result makes this blog entry read like the maudlin outpourings of a suicidally inclined loner! That was not, I have to emphasise, what it was supposed to be like. Here we have another example of the dangers of electronic publishing: all you have to do is press a button and it is public. I suppose that remains a danger and an advantage! Anyway I would like to reassure my reader that I have not stropped the razor and am now sitting by an open window in Terrassa and about to have a drink of the very excellent drink known as Sandevid Classic - a fizzy red wine concoction sold like Coke in plastic bottles and very much tastier. Try it!]

To see, or not to see!

Friday 8th June - as you can see access to the internet is a moveable feast!

Saint Bob Geldof once spurred me to precipitate action after appearing on television and telling the audience that buying the record ‘Do they know its Christmas’ was “a moral imperative.” I was so impressed with an apparently dissolute member of The Boomtown Rats using language like that, that I bought the disc immediately! And it had cover artwork by Peter Blake. Who could ask for more?

I was reminded of the phrase “moral imperative” as I underwent the continual shock as I perused the extortionately priced, flimsy scraps of metal that masquerade as spectacles in the modern world. And why does Jaguar make glasses frames? How does car technology influence the rather basic design of two bits of curved metal connected to two bits of glass? The narrowness of the arms of the specs only allows the most discrete printing of the expensive name of the product. You have to get up close and personal to see the affluence indicator: pathetic. I wonder if, with its newfound kudos, Skoda will soon be producing glasses frames with its badge of shame transformed into the sparkling adjunct of sophisticated living etched on the lenses to show everyone how fashionable cutting edge folk live.

For the past forty years I have been astonished at how much opticians charge for their services. Any group of professional who rely so much on the “is it better with this lens or that one?” to define the parameters of their analysis of eye correction have not really found the science of their calling. OK I do admit that they can search for infection and eye disorders, but for the normal sight correction they seem to rely far too heavily on the subjective perception of the individual ‘patient.’

When I was eleven each new pair of specs seemed to take ages to appear after the initial ‘consultation’ and was vastly expensive. With the opening up of the comfortable restrictive practice of ophthalmic theft of the 1960s, it was a revelation to see how quickly a pair of specs could be made. And to see how quickly every saleable brand name jumped on the band wagon to ensure that the inclusion of name and logo bumped up the eye watering profit to be made from tawdry metal and plastic strips supporting bits of glass.

So, my articulation of “moral imperative” would seem to be a Solomon Eagle evangelical, apocalyptic call for repentance to the dispensers of fashion dominated eye correction. But, strangely, it relates more to me than to them.

Because of the way that I have been alternating my wearing of contact lenses and glasses I have been able to return a number of boxes of lenses to the optician. These have a clear monetary value and can be used by other contact lens wearers. I am therefore, owed a sum of money by my optician which can be expended in extra glasses. So far so boring. Allied to this lens return is the fact that for a period of time I paid twice for a ‘sight plan’ service through a standing order and direct debit confusion. As soon (!) as this was discovered I was repaid. I now think that the refund that I have been given refers not to the lenses but to this overpayment. The difference between the two is marginal.

Now this is the moral dilemma: should I say anything. The (substantial) refund did not cover the cost of the new glasses and £150 extra has been spent by me to cover the total cost. Four people worked out the refund after much consultation. Who am I to question their deliberations? Especially as the new glasses are even more flimsy and insubstantial than any I have previously possessed. Or is that specious argument? Who cares?

The tidying up of loose ends continues apace with new obligations creeping into my consciousness with every waking second. There is a panicky realisation that I now have seven full days before I emigrate.

‘Emigrate’: I think that is the first time that I have used that word. ‘Living abroad’ seems much less final – more like an extended holiday than a final settlement in a foreign country.

But this is the moment for which I have been waiting for almost a year: the one way ticket to another life.

Makes you think!

Double Pleasure and More!

Thursday 7th of June

There is nothing as invigorating as when making significant telephone calls.

You can be anywhere; be wearing anything (or nothing); look bored or fascinated; can be eating, drinking or fantasising; be reading impressive files or consulting the back of an envelope; be moving vast sums of money or ensuring your philatelic bureau first day covers get to Spain – whoops! Bit too much detail on that last one; verisimilitude always has a habit of creeping up on you and, as it was, biting you in the arse.

Today was the sort of day when, to be perfect, you should have a little list of easily ticked off tasks to complete. There is something altogether satisfying in obliterating, relentlessly, one easily fulfilled objective after another. It is especially satisfying when a disinterested observer suggests other easily completed struggles that can be dismissed with a minimum of effort. In a time period of less than an hour I managed (what an achievement!) to inform the Cardiff City Council, Amnesty International, the NUT, Tesco, Sainsbury, SWALEC, Welsh Water, the Co-Operative Bank and Uncle Tom Cobley and, indeed, all.

Thank God that Paul Squared was there to provide the disciplined incentive through directed invective that a naturally indolent sybarite needs in order to do those things that are inimical to his character. I suppose that the ‘Virtual Parent’ approach to recalcitrant sluggards is the only thing that I understand!

The mail has been redirected and the interim period between the activation of the period of redirection has been covered by the sorting office keeping my mail until I call for it. The necessity of having some strategy which excludes the present recipients of my erstwhile communications should have been obvious from the preceding posts. I would be more relaxed if I could be certain that any stray letters were destined for certain destruction, but, in this vale of tears, we can be certain of nothing!

With a funeral looming, my lack of clothing is becoming something of a liability. My hurried packing of my case meant that I now have certain items of clothing, but not enough items to make, as it were, a full assemblage which will convince a congregation. Though there is a certain style to turning up to a funeral dressed in shorts and a seersucker shirt with white socks and Velcro fastened, distressed sports shoes – I choose not to do so. I have to admit that Tuesday (the day of funeral) is looming ever closer and all I have acquired are two leather belts and a nondescript pair of trousers; I still have to find a convincing alternative to the seersucker shirt!

I refuse to be sad at this funeral: Ray was not a person who would have wanted anyone to be sad, unless of course he could have worked some sort of carnal satisfaction from the vulnerability of sorrow! What a man he was: overblown, oversexed, and overall a Good Thing. For him I am prepared even to undergo the Rags of Popery ritual of a Requiem Mass! A good man, a phrase often in his mouth, as indeed were various other things of which we must needs be silent! For Ray the injunction to rest in peace doesn’t seem to have been in his repertoire while alive, so I can only wish him enjoyable unrest in the afterlife and a virile stream of ‘gentleman callers’ – and never were inverted commas more necessary!

Tomorrow, the search for clothes continues – otherwise questions about how I dress will not be answered with a simple direction.

A suite, a suite, my money for a suite!Ignore the actual date - go by the date on the page!

TUESDAY 5TH JUNE

Two days for the price of one!

'The Prince' is a book much cited but rarely read. Those who emulate the eponymous ‘hero’ and imagine themselves to be the personification of the popularly recognised Machiavellian tendencies of the heir apparent to the seat of power rarely have the requisite qualities to justify their fond belief that they, and they alone have the power to dissimulate with panache and easy superiority.

I am careful not to link my opening comments to any actual persons, but I have experienced a woeful example of the shallow mendacity that some lewd fellows take for cleverness. Playing both ends against the middle asks the putative manipulator to show guile and cunning, and, above all to ensure that the ‘ends’ don’t meet and have a cosy conference, whose compelling topic is the manipulator himself.

God knows I count myself as (when the occasion demands) a mean hand at hypocrisy, but I am but an amateur when I compare myself with someone who can profess unending bonhomie to your face and then rant a forceful diatribe of vitriolic condemnation down the safe end of a telephone to a third party.

A meeting of the alpha and the omega of house purchase and selling, with a furious mediator vouchsafing extra shocking information produced a remarkably unanimous group whose ringing condemnation of the hapless perpetrator of mendacity would have penetrated even his brazen carapace of effrontery.

Clearing a house preparatory to selling is a mind crampingly stress exacerbatingly horrendous experience. What to keep? What to sell? What the hell? All normal approaches to material things become problematic. The cost of an article is in direct inverse proportion to its portability; its utility is of minor importance.

In all house clearances there is a ‘tipping point’ where a rational approach to the value of things suddenly is replaced by a complete exasperation with everything that you can handle and the only reasonable solution is found within the commodiously accepting maw of a skip. “Put in everything!” you scream, ignoring the effort and expense you went to in order to acquire the objects under consideration. There is something invigoratingly clean about throwing something away. Through to a dedicated shopper like me ‘discard’ is only a step away from ‘acquire.’

The best thing about today (ignoring the physical discomfort, the intermittent mendacity and simple gnawing hunger) was . . . well, thinking about it, there were a few good points.

Pickfords were, as usual, professional and excellent, showing once and for all that packing is a true art. The wrapping of the television in international quality smooth sided bubble wrap demonstrated a mastery of technique which was breathtaking.

Paul Squared was a tower of help and was directed and workmanlike when I was pacing about in an agony of something rapidly approaching panic and despair.

We have moved into a flat in Altolusso which has severely limited view from the mighty heights of the third floor, giving detailed views of various railway lines. The iconic building, on the site of New College, now serves a useful purpose (who knows what the teaching was like) as train drivers know that as soon as they draw parallel with the pile of overpriced dwellings they need to apply the brakes; brakes which screech with the fury of frustrated incarcerated commuters expressed courtesy of a class conscious class war warrior.

Another highlight was going to Porto’s restaurant for a gargantuan sea food platter. I preceded it with dressed crab on the grounds that it was not included in the platter! A bottle of oddly tasty rosé wine complemented the meal perfectly. Although Toni would have preferred the fish grilled rather than served in a sauce, I think we can count the meal a success.

So, all in all, a more than satisfactory day which takes me a major step nearer to a life in Catalonia. I speak as a homeless orphan looking for security or at least the sun.

The internet connection is proving to be something less than satisfactory so tomorrow will see me wending my (pedestrian) way as a dedicated city centre resident to Vodafone for elucidation of my internet denial.

I hope the assistant speak down to me - I might understand the technological double speak then!

Pity me.

WEDNESDAY 6TH JUNE

It is gratifying to see that a notorious money launderer like Toni finds it so difficult to take his hard earned money back to Spain!

We spent over three quarters of an hour arranging for Toni’s pounds to be sent to his mother’s account so he can open a bank account in Spain when he returns.

The bank account that he did have was summarily terminated when he did not use the account for six months. There was, apparently money in the account, but that did not stop it being closed with no reference to Toni!

Banking is such a caring system!

Talking of caring, our exit from the bank was enlivened by yet another phone call from a bemused estate agent who was acting on behalf of my estate agent. The details of the call are not the important aspect: the illustration it provided of the shameless nature of some people who are prepared to rewrite history to their own advantage was, however, startling.

In spite of my ostensible carapace of cynicism, I realise that (at heart) I am an eternal optimist. I always believe that people are (at heart) reasonable. I clutch at shards of decency in otherwise contemptible folk, devoutly believing that these fragments show the hidden character. Alas, too often the shards merely cut rather than indicating something of worth.

Today another mask fell from a pleasantly engaging face and the hard lines of conceited self interest glinted in the sunlight indicating, yet again, that my positive take on humankind is more self delusion than sympathy.

It is one of the great wonders of Wales that a pint of SA and a mediocre lasagne can restore good humour and a more genial outlook on our sadly corrupt world.

I realise that the comments above make it seem as if I had undergone a life shatteringly negative experience – and that is not strictly (or laxly) true, but it does knock misplaced faith in ones fellow creatures. But, as the old saying goes, the money is in the bank! And, although money cannot buy happiness, in sufficient quantities it certainly lays the foundations for uneasy content – and that is as much as we should expect!

Living in a flat (though I’m sure that the builders of Altolusso would want us to call them apartments) has brought back some of the advantages and irritations of single storey living.

There is nothing more limiting on any tendency to overspend than the realisation that all the bags have to be taken from the car to the flat – across the parking area; using the electronic fob to opening the access door; calling the lift; entering the lift; pressing the floor button; exiting the lift; opening the corridor door which opens outward; getting through; opening the flat door; putting the stuff away. You’ll only want to make one trip. And your hand and fingers return to normal after a few hours: the ridges of compressed flesh gouged into your hands by the cruel knife of compressed plastic handles of carrier bags are not, I’m told, permanent.

The proximity to the railway line is an important factor in living in these benighted rooms. The railway noise is a relentlessly omnipresent irritation, though I think I would probably get used to finding that parts of radio programmes etc are simply lost by the noise of the passing traffic. Perhaps it’s all good training for the omnipresent plane noise in Castelldefels!

See, it’s me being optimistic again.

Bless!

Exchange!

There is something apt and poetic about getting the news that contracts have (at last) been exchanged and that the sale of the house is now official and legal in Cardiff’s take on a Spanish bodega at the bottom end of Saint Mary’s Street.

After all the shenanigans of the past few days and weeks, it was an anticlimax to find that everything for the sale of the house has been completed. I feel relief; but not enough relief to justify the tension in getting to this stage. What is it that people say about the most stressful events in a person’s life? To think that they have the temerity to place bereavement, giving birth and breaking a nail on a par with the raw horror that characterises the sequence of events which constitute buying or selling a house!

Now the endgame starts. The house is still full of things that I remember one broadcaster describing as ‘itemries’: things that shouldn’t be thrown away, but have a marginal utility and limited chance of being included in the boxes which will join the rest of our equipment lurking in the warehouse of Pickfords before its transportation to Spain.

The selling of the garden continues apace and we are making good progress towards the total which I considered to be the minimum to save face!

I have watched years of growth sold off for a fraction of their real cost but also I suppose I have a grudging realization that they will be cared for elsewhere. I wonder if employees in garden centres feel the same way as their plants walk off in all directions. I suppose that mine carry a little more personal hope than the anonymous serried ranks of industrially produced plants, but, at the end of the day they are only plants, and the money is more than welcome. Though, of course, as a dedicated gardener I merely use the money to further my horticultural aspirations. Ahem,

We have been blithely assuming that the hiring of a flat or apartment for the month that Toni will have to take to work out his notice will, in this city of rented accommodation, be a complete synch (?) [Have I ever written that word before? Is it the right spelling?] Anyway our expectations are rapidly being revised in the light of the experience that lettings are usually for six months not for one. An interesting predicament, given that there are three days before we have to find somewhere else to live – when I will be a homeless orphan.

Sob!

Petty comforts: major irritations

No matter the pressure. No matter how pressing the circumstances. When something has to be done: I can find something else to do.

For example: the house. Selling? Not selling? Packing to complete? Flights to be booked? Finances to be sorted out?
Probably. To be done now? Definitely.

But on the other hand: what was the name of the artist who painted ‘Fallen Idol’? Perhaps not Victorian. Later? What’s the point in having the internet if it can’t tell you the things you want to know? However long it takes.

Past tense. Took. Never let it be said that I idled when a minor point of information was eluding me. So. Problem solved. The painter’s name was John Collins 1859 – 1934 http://www.victorianartinbritain.co.uk/biog/collier.htm for more information - though thinking about it, who on earth would want to know any more about him? However, finding the artist was the easy bit: every piece of information about him mentioned his painting ‘Fallen Idol’ but none of them illustrated it. Nothing daunted I eventually found a copy of the painting in a book on ‘Standard Copying Techniques for Artworks’ – and I used to think that trying to find something in the Guinness Book of World Records was the ultimate Odyssey in digressions! I now realise that youthful addiction to that cornucopia of essential trivia was but proper preparation for the mind boggling expanse of the irrelevant that the internet represents.

God bless it!

The illustration is not quite up to standard, it is, after all just an illustration to show how to photograph an oil painting, but it’s the only one I can find. By the way I didn’t realise that Collins was the artist of the rather haunting painting of Hudson after he had been set adrift with his son by mutineers. That painting is in the same class as The Childhood of Raleigh – and I mean that quite literally as those paintings together with ‘When Did You Last See Your Father’ were the sort of art which hung in our classrooms and corridors when I was a kid. Ah yes, in those halcyon days when I still had some sympathy with the Royalists as opposed to the Roundheads and could read ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ and think that Sir Percy was quite right in rescuing the oppressed aristocrats from the clutches of the revolutionary rabble. How times have changed and the ‘right but repulsive’ have won out against the ‘wrong but romantic’ brigade! I put it all down to reading ‘1066 And All That’ at an impressionable age.

It is now well into the afternoon and my solicitor is proving to be very elusive in confirming the date for completion. The rain is hammering down (so the Pathetic Fallacy is at full strength) I have just come back from visiting Ray who looks as though he is at the end of his life and am feeling thoroughly miserable. Brown Pickfords’ boxes sit Warhol-like by the window and I am subdued into inactivity when there is so much (So Much!) waiting to be done. All it takes is one small phone call which stubbornly refuses to brighten up my day.

Patience is not one of the virtues which characterises my approach to life and is something which I am used to encountering in allegorical paintings and soppily moralistic poems rather than exemplifying in quotidian action. This typing is a form of displacement activity masquerading as patience and it is wearing a little thin.

Something, as a notably selfish and dead Prince of Wales so helpfully used to say, must be done!

The evening now and a most unsatisfactory end to the day: no one called I had to do the phoning to find out that very little had happened. That’s not the point: the point is that I should have been told that nothing was happening.

I have taken the plunge and booked Pickfords to come and get the rest of the stuff on Tuesday. The house should be denuded by midday and ready for the buyers to take possession and for us to . . . uh . . . find somewhere to live!

Such larks!

Reality is nibbling at my feet and when completion becomes a fact I fear that it will start gobbling down my psyche whole!

We’ll see.

Creeping forward

Stress, they say, is inevitable when you are selling your house. I am beginning to see that this is an understatement.

As we get nearer to some sort of conclusion we also, paradoxically, seem to get further away. Perhaps the proximity of completion is so tantalising that the rush to the money is frustrating to the nth degree when there is the slightest delay. A new date for completion has been suggested and within hours changed. Everything is waiting to be finalized; all sorts of people are waiting for the ‘go’ signal to be given; boxes are waiting to be filled; forms waiting to be signed; flights booked and final checks (and cheques) completed.

And the call hasn’t come.

The final invigorating injection of adrenaline which comes with the prospect of the single ticket to Spain getting closer is being denied me! The contracts were supposed to have been exchanged today, but the mortgage company obviously wasn’t able to guarantee the money which is needed a day earlier because of the change in the completion date. I am assured by my solicitor that this delay is nothing to worry about, but I come from a tradition of reading swathes of the corpus of English Literature, and solicitors get (arguably) the worst write up of any group of professionals in the pages of novels and short stories. But, to quote someone or other, I defy augury. I believe in solicitors’ integrity and I know that there is a reasonable excuse of her not phoning me and that tomorrow everything will be sorted out and the timetable for departure will be finally settled.

Enough already!

Now that things appear to be moving towards their monetary conclusion, my attitude towards the house has changed.

I remember when I moved from my flat to this house that the acceptance of a new way of living was immediate. I was no longer a flat dweller; I was suddenly a fully fledged member of three bedroom semi suburbia. Now, in my mind, I have left this house and am living somewhere else in another country. The practical obstacles to this belief (i.e. I am still in my house in Wales) are mere irritations: I want the reality now!

The final packing is taking place and the problems of moving out and away, rather than out and in, are beginning to show themselves. All the little things that you merely transfer to the new house, perhaps putting them in the car, in my case are generally not worth packing. Take, for instance, cleaning materials; tea towels; rubbish bins; bottles of wine; brushes and pots; fridge magnets and all the little things that make a house into a home. What am I going to do with them all?

I suppose that I should resist the temptation to pack everything and sort it all out when I get to Catalonia. I have gone through the ordeal of sorting and putting in storage and there should be very little to pack now. Anyone who thinks that has wilfully chosen to ignore my magpie tendencies to amass. Just that, ‘amass.’

In theory we have one week to get ready to get everything ready and out. This is a sobering thought.

By tomorrow I will be more jocose and serene.

Or not.

Country Art

Jane is a deceitful liar.

My apologies to all those called Jane – I do not mean the first comment as a generic condemnation of all those called Jane, but my faith in technology has taken a serious knock.

As Dianne and I set off (eventually) to get to the ‘New Beginnings’ exhibition of art being held in Mill House, Whitebrook, Monmouth we (eventually) got the TomTom to accept a route and felt we were in the safe hands of the TomTom voice of ‘Jane.’ [Not the best metaphor I’ve ever used!]

We were sadly abused and became aware of this fact when the narrow, grass rutted, single car width lane petered out into verdant nothingness! The Voice then had the impertinence to tell us (after much reversing in small spaces) that we were at our destination when we patently and obviously were not.

The post code was re-entered and the machine promptly told us we were three miles away from our objective. This seemed strangely encouraging because the place we were in, half way up a hill side, seemed the wrong place for a water powered ex-paper mill.

Our arrival at the right location provided many opportunities for untrammelled envy. The house itself is superb and a wonderful background for the paintings – which are in every room (including the loo!) The rooms themselves are generally, and in detail, well presented and desirable living spaces. The kitchen is the sort of place that only exists in fashion magazines and . . . I really should be speaking abut the art.

Ceri’s paintings, quite rightly, have a good position and are shown to advantage. The range of paintings on show is wide, but with an emphasis on representational art. The variety is wide and the quality of the exhibits is not always consistent, but there is enough here to satisfy most artistic appetites. The prices range from a couple of hundred pounds to six thousand and above. A fair range and it was good to see some of David Carpanini’s etchings on the walls – good to see one of the artists some of whose work I own, making every effort to increase his popularity!

By the time we had drunk our tea and coffee and I had consumed two pieces of cake we were ready for lunch. Following suggestions we eschewed eating in Monmouth and followed half remembered directions to The Stone Mill Restaurant and in no time at all we found ourselves in England. This was wrong. Very wrong.

Our importunate return to Monmouth and a revived faith in the geographical omniscience of Jane speaking through the beating of the tom toms led to our driving steadily towards England again! We took dramatic decisions and ignored the Voice and followed the signs for the village in which the restaurant was located. Allegedly.

It was only when we were both (well, I was) on the brink of turning around and going back that we saw the restaurant. Its location is absurdly picturesque surrounded by picture book houses with impossibly pretty gardens.

The food was excellent and reasonably priced. Certainly good enough to irritate both Ceri and Toni when we regaled them with stories of culinary delights!

No good news about the house but a ‘Good luck’ card from the putative buyers. It seems that the completion date of the first of June is now not a realistic date.

We wait and wonder.

A dull day!

There ought to be a system whereby, if one has to deal with illness during a Bank Holiday, there is a voucher issued which one can cash in for an equivalent experience at a later date.

Poor old Toni Took To His Bed to sleep off the effects of a lingering bout of cough/cold/sore throatitis.

I took the opportunity to read the Ryszard Kapuściński book in the Great Journeys series. As usual his writing was engaging and eminently readable even though (as usual) his subject matter was less than easy. His writing on Africa spanned a long period and seemed to be an unending sequence of discomfort, malaria and dictators! But witty and piquantly amusing.

It was with real shock and disbelief that I then read in the Indy on Sunday that Kapuściński had been denounced (posthumously) as an informer for the Polish communist regime. This is something which his widow vehemently denied and, I have to admit, after years of reading (and teaching!) his writing I want to agree with her. His writing shows such a sympathy and intelligent critique of the human condition that it is difficult to believe that the liberal attitude that personified his writing was all an act.

I shall reserve judgement and hope that clarification of his involvement with the Secret Police will reveal that his involvement was limited to the bureaucratic necessity for a foreign correspondent to visit the Secret Police before a visa was granted.

I hope.

There is a Victorian painting which my grandmother had called “Fallen Idol.” I remember it as a rather dull painting of a couple who didn’t seem to be very happy. It was a painting which fell far short of what one could expect from the title. My ideas of idols were real rather than metaphorical, built on the more lurid stories in the bible (the Old Testament of course) where idols were connected with considerable naughtiness and even more considerable retribution by the good old vengeful god of the best stories. The painting (I think) showed a distraught man and a contrite or guilty woman; though thinking about it, I suppose it could have been the other way around, but now Kapuściński is part of that sad narrative. Thinking about it, I think that there was a companion piece to that picture so that they formed a short of very short story, but I can’t remember it. Another case of having to ask Aunt Betty if she can remember.

I don’t think either of them had the quality of Awakening Conscience by William Holman Hunt, and I wonder if the two paintings were later than Victorian: I must have a little hunt on Google to see if I recognize anything! If nothing else I can meander happily through what Google thinks are moralistic paintings: you always get a few unexpected treats from a computer’s idea of culture!

Tomorrow I go to Monmouth and a glimpse of Ceri’s paintings in a very elegant setting.

And a decent meal with Dianne I trust!