The cruel sun

I would like to be able to say that as I lay on the beach this afternoon I was gently caressed by soft breezes and lulled into a comfortable state of mild contemplation by the plangent sound of curling waves. But I can’t.

The wind made smoothing out a towel on a sun bed the equivalent of wrestling with a more than usually fractious two year old child making a bid for freedom, while the wind borne sand particles seemed to have turned into a more than usually callous depilatory machine with thousands of tiny pin prick collisions of grain on skin. The Mediterranean is not the Atlantic and the usual waves are domestic to the point of subservience. Today they were like gauche teenagers ramping about the shore and generally showing off and creating more sound that is seemly.

I, however, positioned the sun bed so that the gently raised head of the bed acting as a windbreak and only a few sand particle augmented gusts managed to land on my unprotected limbs.

As an Old Campaigner who visited Gran Canaria in the winter months and therefore had to go to the beach whatever the weather to justify the vast cost, I was used to lying in what in other circumstances would be described as inclement weather. My motto was always ‘Maspalomas has a micro climate’ as I trudged my sullen way though the dunes towards my Mecca of sunshine I knew would be waiting for me at Kiosco Siete. Sometimes I would lie out in what can only be described as rain, but it was warm rain and I knew that my faith would ensure that the sun would return.

So Castelldefels is easy compared to my training in Gran Canaria. Ah, if only my colleagues knew how hard won that tan I sported in January was they would not have been so spiteful as I mocked their pallid new year skins!

Eventually even I could not longer regard lying in a position where I was being systematically flayed as in any way enjoyable so I raised myself and looked at the sea. I share with my father (and the rest of humanity if we believe old watsisname and power of archetypal images) an unending fascination with moving water. The waves are infinitely interesting and, if you are as myopic as I am, infinitely artistic in their expressionistic (with a touch of myopic impressionism) way.

As I gazed I also became aware of a new dimension to my life long love/hate response to that haunting painting showing a wave breaking and horses emerging from the foam. When I was very young I thought that it was art at its best; as a teenager I thought it kitsch at its worst – while now, of course, I have a gentle post-modernist ironic regard tinged with nostalgia for it. My perception however has been changed by myopia. The white horses of the waves are usually those waves that break directly in front of you and create a flamboyant excitement of foam; but the real horses are those that you see when a wave breaks in a continuous movement away from the observer parallel to the shore so that you follow a continuously breaking wave as it moves away from you. If you are myopic then it really does look like a prancing snorting steed. And all for nothing and not for long.

The wind has now died down and the sun is back out from behind the gauze of cloud and the table needs to be set for dinner on the balcony.

Ah me!

Uniform?

The School That Sacked Me is now trying to foster a sense of corporate identity by forcing male teachers to wear an official tie and female teachers to sport an official scarf. This is the equivalent of the designer of the Hindenburg airship worrying about the motif on the china while ignoring the fact that the gas that made the Hindenburg lighter than air was highly explosive hydrogen!

My facile guilt about the supposed return of the pupils should have been delayed until next Monday as that is the real starting point of their education for the next academic year. I therefore have time to work on a suitable literary analogy to complement my feelings!

‘Ghosts of Spain’ is the evocative title of a descriptive ‘travel’ book written by Hispanophile Giles Tremlett. It takes the form of a highly opinionated vision of Spain’s past linking Tremlett’s personal appreciation of what it means to be living in Spain at present and how aware we should be of the past. He touches on taboo subjects connected with the Civil War and the way in which Spaniards have dealt with the aftermath in a democratic society. Tremlett deals with a whole range of social, political and religious situations in modern Spain and (as befits the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent) is beguilingly liberal and articulate in his analysis.

I particularly liked his chapter on ‘How the Bikini Saved Spain’ – an amusing analysis of why the cheap tourist trade came and stayed in Spain rather than elsewhere in the Mediterranean. The underlying motivations of the central characters involved in the development of ‘what once was one of the most beautiful spots on the Spanish coast’ from a ‘modest beach-side village, a place of sailors, fishermen and farmers who patiently tended almond, olive, carob and citrus trees’ to place where the ‘burghers of Benidorm have rolled out a welcome carpet of concrete, tarmacadam and brick’ speaks volumes about how Spain has developed over the last fifty or so years.

This is a book which I can recommend as a compelling read but one which is badly proof read and a disgrace for something under the imprint of Faber and Faber and especially when the Epilogue states that the paperback edition has been revised to correct typographical errors!

Wrong!

But still worth a read.

Everything is in the choice

Who can resist a menu dish which describes itself as beef with ‘trumpets of death’?

I suppose that the truth is that many people would hesitate about a choice of food which has death as part of its title. Not I.

It turned out to be a particularly succulent piece of beef which one could cut with a fork in a rich gravy augmented with mushrooms. The fact that the listing was in Spanish made the meal all the more exotic – though the fact that I am in Spain makes it also sort of prosaic as well.

Anyway an excellent meal which started with baby broad beans cooked in the Catalan style. This is an excellent vegetable dish with the beans cooked with lumps of meat, black sausage, bacon, fennel seeds and (in spite of what one Catalan told me) mint. Simple, nourishing and tasty.

The Crema Catalana to end the meal was almost perfect – the custard base smooth and sweet while the caramelized topping was crisp and thick and with just that right degree of ‘burnt’ in the taste to counteract the cloying sweetness of the rest of the dessert.

Oh, and the wine was all part of the price. Just under nine quid. And people ask me why I moved to Spain! And it didn’t rain. Again.

All of that is contentment of course, but I did feel what can only be described as disquiet today. Mainly because I thought it was Monday rather than Sunday.

This Monday the kids are back in The School That Sacked Me and what I felt was a sort of guilt that I wasn’t there to be with them.

It didn’t last.

Just to be different

We are well used to visitors from Britain suddenly saying something like, “Oh my god! I’ve forgotten my toothpaste!” as though they are visiting a country where the trappings of civilization like Christianity and electricity might be in short supply! I sympathize with this attitude as it is one to which I have often found myself subject.

Ever since I first saw ‘Bonanza’ in Spanish

on the TV screens in Tossa de Mar back in the 1950s one feels a certain sense of wonder that the everyday things of life are also available in another language: when Colgate toothpaste is pronounced Kol-gar-tay and actually has foreign writing on it, nothing can be taken for granted!

Spain is so much like Britain that minor differences show up all the more clearly. I suppose that I should be commenting on major social, political and religious peculiarities that I have noted, but something more pressing is engaging my attention at the moment.

Where are the scrapbooks in this country?

I have tried to find one in half a dozen supermarkets and various cheap shops and no luck. Perhaps the cutting out of ‘unconsidered trifles’ and sticking them in an album is a little too old fashioned for a country that prizes itself on its espousal of modernity. But I want to retain some of the apercus culled from my copies of The Week magazine (which I can recommend etc etc) together with other bits and pieces from Spanish newspapers which help my acquisition of language skills. Come to think of it I don’t even know the word for scrapbook in Spanish!

That last sentence encouraged me to be a little more pro-active and find out that there is no word, but a phrase: álbum de recortes, which is descriptive and is perhaps nearer to the English word ‘cuttings’ rather than scraps. Still, armed with this piece of vocabulary I feel emboldened to try further shops – when have I ever eschewed shopping for anything more intellectually satisfying!

My failure to find a scrapbook

continues with one shopkeeper sneeringly referring to my quest as positively old fashioned! I am now, more than ever determined to find one; I can see this becoming a quest to rival that of the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance! And probably with the same degree of success!

We may now have the chance of a house with extensive enough grounds to set up some portable classrooms: it is a possibility with interesting implications. Something to work on and to keep us going in our efforts to provide a reasonable alternative education for kids.

Though, for me, everything is going much too slowly: time ticks on and the kids are back in school tomorrow. We have to be able to offer a viable location and group of teachers before the end of December for a January start; effectively about twelve weeks for something real to present to parents.

It’s a short time!

Though I accept that time is relative - especially when my colleagues have just started the most important teaching term in the academic year and December seems an awfully long way away. Though for me at the moment it is galloping towards me at a frightening rate.



Thank you Einstein!

A little itch of possession

Just when you feel at peace with the world something comes along to disrupt and discommode.

Not for the first time Sony have discomforted me. I have managed, in the past, to frustrate the insidious attempts by Amazon to get me to indulge one of my weaknesses. I have put out of my mind the ‘spurious’ advantages of something which seems more and more obvious as an essential part of civilized life.

But now Sony with the completely unfair utilization of a bookshop, Waterstone’s, have combined to bring a new and altogether sleeker version of the e-book reader to a pathetically weak target audience – me! A chance reference on the front page of The Guardian forced me to buy the paper (€3) and read more. Up to 160 books contained in a slim electronic package with god knows how many extra books being able to be loaded onto SD cards and the like. It didn’t take long to convince me that this was a must-have gadget.

It is not available in Spain.

Sony UK only delivers to the mainland.

Waterstone’s web site seems to find it difficult to cope with someone from outside the UK.

Frustrated at every turn! I could of course, ask the boys to bring one over with them, but that would mean waiting until United Nations Day some forty days away.

Intolerable. Insupportable. Impossible to endure.

There must be another way. Short of not having one, I mean. My life is hard, beset with hard problems and constant frustrations!

Since Emma visited and we had a ‘friendly’ contest to see who could take better photographs (I wish to draw a discrete veil over my attempts at capturing fireworks!) I have been envious about the fact that her digital compact had a number of manual options which my camera (wonderful though it undoubtedly is) does not have. I have therefore been looking around for a camera which answers to more of my new demands.

The Canon powershot G9 seemed to be the ideal answer.

At this point I have to admit that technology and desire combined to give me what I wanted in spite of a real sense of denial that I was trying to cultivate. The camera was suggested by an advert sent to me sneakily by Amazon via email. I did my homework and looked up all the customer reviews of the camera and, in spite of some reservations I decided to look around this area before committing myself.

No one here had the model I wanted and the only shop that had heard of it offered it to me at a higher cost than the internet suggested. I returned to gaze at the image of the camera on the internet.

At this point I should mention ‘one click buying.’ My downfall.

As my information is firmly lodged on the Amazon website all I have to do to purchase something is ‘one click’ on a tempting little button and behold! money is drained from my account in Britain.

I did but flirt with pressing the button. I swear, Your Honour, and suddenly the thing was bought. Hardly my fault, I merely fell into an electronic trap.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Art at last!

Returning from Barcelona by bus was made just that little bit more intolerable by the raucous accompaniment of a vocal child. Attention Deficit Syndrome sprang to mind as the tiny urchin emitted a prolonged, deep, throaty howl which one assumed would abrade the vocal chords and bring on premature puberty thus enabling the child to be singing basso profondo by the end of the bus ride.

I restrained my natural impulse to leap from my seat and hurl the infant though an open (or indeed closed) window. At times like that you really can sympathize with that Roman emperor who swung a child by its feet and . . . well, thinking about it, you probably can’t sympathize at all – but I was annoyed!

The Munch-like creature gave an unwanted negative spin on what had been an otherwise excellent day.

My trip to Barcelona had been to revisit MNAC (Museu Nacional D’Art de Catalunya) a museum which seems to reform itself into a different institution every time I visit it!

This time there was an exhibition of works by Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia: interesting, but ultimately quaint rather than impressive. It was revealing to see early works by these three and amusing to see the readymades but apart from interesting historical footnotes to a particular aspect of art theory – who cares?

The permanent art collection, however, is another thing. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection ensures that MNAC has a collection which is of world importance and their collection of Catalan art is without equal.

I have been doing my homework on Catalan art and struggling my way through Castellano and Catalan art books to try and get a better understanding of Modern Catalan art and so the collection is becoming more and more fascinating. I must admit that I took the opportunity on this visit to get the English language version of the guide book which I have previously been struggling through in Castellano! I hope that I can begin to make links between the painters I like and understand their antecedents and influences with great ease now that the information is in a language I can read with ease!

I suppose that I have visited the museum about half a dozen times and my discovery this time was a rather fine portrait by Munch (hence the earlier reference) as well as a whole section on Modernista furniture and decoration. I have only given a fairly cursory look at the Romanesque and Gothic art for which the gallery is justly famous so I think that I am going to get full value from my six month Art Ticket (at the ridiculously low price of €20) which gives me access to six or seven of the major art galleries in Barcelona!

When not visiting art galleries and eating I am, of course, reading. At our Ladies Who Lunch meal yesterday Caroline gave me my birthday present from last United Nations Day: it may have been eleven months late, but who can even pretend to be annoyed when the present turns out to be an excellent little book called ‘In The Garlic’ by Valerie Collins and Theresa O’Shea ISBN-13: 978-84-89954-59-5. The title refers to the phrase ‘estar en el ajo’ which means to be clued up to know the score and the book takes the form of a dictionary with comments of essential information for someone learning about Spain.

For example, every country has a place (or another country) which is the butt of jokes because of the alleged stupidity of the inhabitants. I once did some research on prejudice for a lesson and found a book which listed the countries that were stigmatized as stupid with their stigmatizers – it was both astonishing and bewildering. In Spain the repository of odium is Lepe a village in the province of Huelva. The little book gives a joke: One day three men, from Catalonia, Madrid and Lepe are put through the lie detector. The Catalan says, “I think we Catalans aren’t as mean as we’re made out to be.” The machine bleeps. The Madrid fellow says, “I think we madrileños aren’t as cocky as people make out.” The machine bleeps. The guy from Lepe says, “I think . . .” The machine bleeps.

The places may change but the jokes don’t!

No further news about the School That Sacked Me – I find it incredible to think that they may have retained what is left of the staff for a whole day further!

Down boy!

Sun watch!

There is a fine line between satisfaction and gloating.

The pupils have not yet come back to The School That Sacked Me and one teacher has already resigned! It was perhaps a touch of the totalitarian than pushed the unfortunate professional over the edge. One wonders at a managerial style which seems overbearing even before the ‘customers’ have arrived to give the real test of the professionalism and patience of the practitioners.

Enough!

That carefully moderated expression reeks of out and out smug I-told-you-so-ism. I suppose it is ethically ok to rejoice at the continuing discomfiture of a failing institution when the kids are not yet directly involved in its immediate day to day self-destruction, but time if running out, and they will be returning soon. To what one wonders!

To Sitges again today for that ‘all over tan’ so important to superficial person such as I. The rough sea (for the Mediterranean) meant that many of the sun beds were coffin shaped islands in a gently lapping lake of sea water on what used to be a beach. And the sun showed an irritating proclivity to hide behind small clouds.

There is something almost unbearably provocative about a small cloud denying a confirmed sunbather his vitamin D. Luckily this is Catalonia and the weather does not have the personal vindictiveness of other northern countries I could name and the sun soon emerged to placate the restlessness of the worshipers.

At the termination of my roasting I phoned Toni (who is still suffering from the effects of a twisted ankle) and he asked me to bring back food for dinner.

This was no problem except for the fact that he wanted KFC and I still had memories of the excellent menu del dia I had with Caroline. I agreed to wander around Sitges looking for a fast food outlet, but at no time did I muster the bare faced audacity to ask anyone if they knew where such an establishment could be found. Sitges is not that big and stories of a once pretentious eater going that far down market can get back and poof! a reputation destroyed!

In the event we had to settle for Burger King and I am loath to admit that the things we ate were not that bad. I will put that down to hysteria and will not repeat the experiment.

The mental torture of looking for a place which is the antithesis of what food is generally like in this area was so testing that I had to find displacement activities to keep my character stable. Luckily there was a bookshop just a few steps away from the food outlet and after an initial panic when I realized that I wanted about twenty of the books (at a very reasonable price I might add) the thought of carting them around Sitges and then traipsing back to the car park managed to get me out of the shop without a isngle purchase.

The watch shop opposite was not so easy to resist and I now am the proud owner of a bright red analogue and digital watch, waterproof and luminous.

Well, everyone has weaknesses! It’s good and healthy to give in to them from time to time.

I think.

Paint and Talk

The mouse has taken the cheese!

Part One of my master plan to get Ceri to paint Monserrat has achieved its objective: the book giving vivid pictures of the geology of the area has been received and whetted the appetite of the artist. He even asked if it was possible to stay in the area for a few days to explore the effects of different light on the rocks! As soon has he experiences the astonishing changes that come over the stones through the different times of the day he will be hooked!

I will now begin work on the plan to enable me to steal his sketch books when he has completed his work!

A cursory glance at Ceri’s work in any of the following websites will demonstrate clearly why the landscape of Monserrat will be natural subject matter for his brush, pen and charcoal stick.

http://www.albanygallery.com/g2/artist.php?name=Auckland%20Davies,%20Ceri%20&content=artist&id=72

http://www.wales-pembs-art.com/system/index.html

http://www.newgraftongallery.co.uk/pages/exhibition/188.html

http://www.eggtempera.com/davies/davies.html

I await his representations of the area with a certain amount of impatience!

It is now 10 am and the mechanical voice from the beach has just informed the world that safety services are now in place for the benefit of swimmers –though the lifeguard’s chair is significantly empty.

The weather is that sort of bright cloudy nothingness which promises improvement and deterioration in equal measure. The beach has been reclaimed by the hardy elderly who are lounging about in a propriatorial way in the clement but unspectacular temperatures and relishing the paucity of other life forms which are now busily at work paying taxes to keep the non existent safety services in place!

One consequence of the lack of work for me and the returning to work for others is that my partner in the Ladies Who Lunch Club is now free for the school day from the responsibility of looking after her children and is consequently available for dining purposes. We have to strike quickly before she fills up her schedule with English classes so our first meal of the dining new year is for tomorrow and the natural topic of debate (among many others) will be where the next meal will be. Tough intellectual stuff!

Talking of intellectuality: I attempted to register for Spanish classes today. You will note the use of the word ‘attempted’ – it is well chosen.

Our town council sponsors Spanish classes for those who want to learn, even for those, like myself who do not actually want to learn but rather want to have learned and be able to speak Spanish fluently now. It is a tiresome necessity that one has to go to classes to acquire a language skill – when are they finally going to be able to inject knowledge with a hypodermic? It cannot come too soon for me!

I should have registered in June for these courses. However I was told to call back at the beginning of September to register. I did and was told to turn up to the course centre. I did. And was told to come back on the 10th of September. Why I could not have been told this when I phoned up I fail to understand. Though, thinking about it, the self important, arrogant, unhelpful people who were there telling us to stand in line so they could tell us to come back later might have explained the lack of the human touch. Does not bode well for the future.

My Spanish language skills are disgraceful - even if I can give the impression of greater fluency than I actually possess, even when talking with native Spanish speakers. This I do not really understand. Do they think that I am deliberately talking like a brain damaged anteater through a natural sense of linguistic modesty?

I sometimes wonder.

Is this date significant?

Ploughing my lonely furrow in the pool as length succeeded length my thoughts turned to the vacuity of my morning’s activity: prone, passive, inert. What achievement? None! Is this the level, I thought to myself, to which I have sunk? Is this going to be the sum total of my intellectual striving?

Now wasn’t that a kinder start to this piece of writing than brazenly stating that on the first day of term (for everybody else) I lay on the beach in glorious sunshine and then returned to the pool for a brief swim before going for a fantastic menu del dia comprising a shellfish starter, fish main course with a sweet of music tart (if you have to ask about that ‘music’ then you haven’t been to Catalonia!)

In the afternoon I went to a beach in Sitges (site of The School That Sacked Me) and lounged about until the evening. I was surrounded on this beach by my fellow countrymen, the colour, it has to be said, of my bottom! If nothing else they were a living reminder of the weather that I have left behind! According to Emma and the Pauls it has been a miserable summer; they are hoping for a better autumn. As I am returning to the UK at the end of November I am hoping for one too!

Our school project received a welcome boost in the form of a telephone call from a prospective parent asking how far we had got. That is a significant question. We have sufficient staff to form the basis of a group of teachers; the ethos that the parents want and the enthusiasm to get going. We do not have the cash or the premises – minor problems!

Our innocent idealism is not concrete enough for parents to make a financial commitment and our window of opportunity to make our pitch for the possibility of providing a convincing educational alternative in January is shrinking by the day, but hope springs eternal.

Does anyone know a friendly bank?

That is no beach for young men!

As god does his usual pathetic fallacy thing at the end of the holiday season by providing lowering clouds and that colour-draining light which makes a beach look desolate, the crowds have forsaken their redundant sun beds and decided to lie in this Sunday morning and shun the drab delights of the littoral.

Their absence gives the beach back into the hands of its autumn and winter denizens: the old. Sprightly septuagenarians skip towards the uninviting waves or stand gazing out to sea, legs akimbo, with a propriatorial air. Old ladies in geriatric pairs ‘run’ where the arms and legs mimic the actions of a racer, yet, like the animated mannequins in sports shops they do appear to be going anywhere.

The silence is only broken by the roar of the sand sifters as they go about essential cleansing work on a tideless beach.

In this light the sea looks like a steel blue wall unravelling at the base where the waves break. The beach has the appearance of khaki snow its virgin, sifted smoothness only spoilt by the first sea gazers marching resolutely to the water’s edge. A solitary yacht sailing on the top of the wall of the sea has a glowingly white sail indicating that the sun is trying to force its way towards us.

Now, on my third cup of tea of the morning, families have begun to supplant the old and the darker clouds begin their drift towards the mountains changing the colour of everything and giving back to the sea its accustomed wrinkled flatness.

I am conscious that I am beginning to sound like a poor man’s Dylan Thomas. Whatever else it might be, Castelldefels is no Llaregeb – or perhaps I just don’t know it well enough yet!

Tomorrow the School That Sacked Me opens its doors for the unsuspecting new batch of teachers to discover jest what they have let themselves in for.

The proposed rearrangement of classes for this year makes nonsense of ALL the work done by the previous year’s teachers and the present unit head of primary had been trying to square the circle by devising a syllabus for the new term. She should be informed that, to my knowledge, the circle cannot be squared (as proved in 1882 by the Lindermann-Weierstrass theorem which proves that pi (π) is a transcendental rather than algebraic irrational number; that is, it is not the root of any polymominal with rational coefficients. The consequences of that will be obvious even to those of the most limited intelligence) so the year will start with self contradiction and develop from there in the usual downward spiral into chaos.

At the moment, some of those of us who are enthusiastic about the founding a new school are, because of professional conflicts of interest, unable to speak openly: this limits the effectiveness of capitalizing on the anguish that parents are going to feel at the start of yet another year with what amounts to a new staff.

The next few weeks are of crucial importance in the establishment of our credentials as plausible alternative educators for the children of wavering parents in the School That Sacked Me.

We are living in the Chinese cliché of interesting times.


Long may they continue!

Stand not upon the order of your going - but go at once!

There is a palpable sense of ‘ending’ when you live in a seaside resort at the end of August. The resentful clang of shutting grilles and the vicious bringing down of shutters punctuate the course of the days as our short term neighbours leave the littoral.

We look forward to the peace and quiet that characterises our block during the ‘stringent’ autumn and winter months; we will reclaim the swimming pool which during the month of August had had as many as six or seven people in it; we will be able to sit on the balcony without the raucous accompaniment of conversation which is not our own; the children will go – believe me there is nothing like living in a block of flats to bring out the misanthrope in an otherwise gentle and civilized character!

Talking of civilization and tuning in to radio 4 this morning (surely that is an example of tautology!) I heard, for the first time, about the proposed ‘sale’ by the Duke of Sutherland to the Nation of two Titians; the first of which is going to cost £50m.

During Thatcher’s War I remember being told by one of our more reputable newspapers (surely that is an example of oxymoron!) that each Exocet missile cost £¼m.

Just as the broadsheets tend to measure the costs of controversial aspects of culture in terms of kidney machines and hospitals, I have always measure such things in terms of Exocets. 200 death dealing missiles or an outstanding example of one of the masters of Western art: seems like a no-brainer to me. I am talking of course as a person who helped save the Leonardo cartoon for the Nation: one fibre of that artistic production is mine!

The debate about buying of ‘Great Works of Art’ for the Nation has much in common with that on abortion: facts are ignored; prejudice comes to the fore, and no one really listens to the other side. Fifty million quid is a lot of money and no amount of mealy mouthed talk about how much of a ‘bargain’ the painting is will disguise that fact.

Sewell used a version of the ‘Exocet’ defence by pointing out that the money which could be used to buy the painting is squandered again and again, day by day in the costly wars in which the country is involved.

This argument is going to run and run! But I do hope the paintings win, they are far too good to lose to what might be the Getty Museum in Malibu – they are always looking for real paintings to bolster up their collection. After all, for a relatively new museum looking for world importance it is actually very difficult to get a representative collection of Great Art because most of the output of some of the greatest artists is now ‘safely’ in national collections and not available for private sale: where does an institution with however many millions get a Leonardo, or Michelangelo sculpture, or Vermeer or . . . and so the list goes on.

I have always felt that many institutions should buy the work of relatively unknown artists and find more and more interesting ways to get people to see the work: galleries in department stores, shopping malls, schools, factories, government buildings, libraries, firms, stations – anywhere, in fact, where people can see paintings, drawings, videos, installations and sculptures. I know there are problems of security and insurance, but all of the above have hosted works of art on an ad hoc basis, I think it should be artistic policy to do these things. National collections should have masterpieces, but I for one would rather have a first class example of a relatively unknown artist rather than a third rate example of a Dalí.

There will always be disasters when people are blinded by the possibility of owning the work of a Great Name – like the costly disaster of the Rubens ‘are they/aren’t they’ Cartoons in the National Museum of Wales,

whereas the provenance of lesser works can be more secure and their display give almost as much pleasure as the artistic output of the first division artists.

Galleries can also follow the example of the BBC and the Natural History Unit located in Bristol: that film making unit has achieved world wide recognition and success not only by employing great talent, but also by specialising. I am sure there is a lesson for some of the struggling galleries trying to vie with galleries who can cope with the vast prices that works of art now command.

On the other hand I don’t want to look at rubbish, the little better than amateur daubs created by a local artist – the geographical location being the raison d’etre for inclusion.

Reading through the preceding paragraphs I am reminded of the comment on one of my History of Art essays in university where the tutor remarked that he was not convinced that my conclusion actually followed from what went before.

Story of my life!

As I type this on the balcony looking out to sea the sky is now divided into three sections. Just above the cold, gleaming grey-green of the sea there is a band of light purple cloud tinged with pink which leads into a band of light orange fading to pale blue which has wispy fish-like clouds trailing diaphanous fins across the sky. The last band which stretches overhead is of darker purple veined with bright dusty orange.

I shall end on a pompous note (and why not!) and observe that the real art gallery is all around us if we care to see it.

The amount we are paying for the flat, a decent light show at the end of the day is the least that we should expect!

A holiday within a holiday!

The Costa Brava

Wednesday 27th of August 2008

As I am now in the wilds of the Costa Brava and in a masia

I will have no access to a network and so will, consequently, write a day by day thought and paste them all together when I get back to Castelldefels.

It was sad to see Emma go on Tuesday from Reus, but at least we now know the way to another airport in the Barcelona area. If AJ manages to find a flight to Girona we will have a Catalan set! Though I fear that there are other airports that we will discover in time through experience and panic!

The journey from Castelldefels to Santa Cristina was largely uneventful because most of it was on motorway. The only problems arrived when we arrived. It is an increasingly common feature that the electronic direction finders in cars are wonderful at getting you almost to your destination, but that disarming voice does have a tendency to assure you that you car is now next to where you want to be when it quite clearly is not so!

To be fair to my machine, I have to say that its failure was due to a new road system which was not built into its maps. And, on that subject, it appears to be cheaper to buy a new machine to get the latest maps than to download an update to your present configuration.

The destination finder thus enters a select (but growing) group of products where to buy new is a cheaper alternative than to repair or update; mobile phones being offered for repair only merit a sneering smirk from the thumb savvy sales assistants; digital cameras are so quickly superseded that offering a machine more than a year old for repair incurs the same costs as painstaking historical reconstruction; computer printers are now so cheap it is more economical to buy a new machine than to buy a new print cartridge, and white goods, well, white goods have always been something of a game of Russian roulette – you buy them and hope that yours is not the Friday afternoon one.

The masia is an impressive old place with a stone lintel with 1686

on it and impressive wooden beams throughout but, like the dustman’s brush, one suspects that all of the constituent parts of the building have been replaced at one time or another. The stairs are steep, the lights are on the outside walls of rooms and there is only one bathroom but it is well sited with a location next to a truly ancient looking basilica type church in what appears to be a very select neighbourhood.

Since we arrived at lunch time it was duly served.

What is the recipe for success in a barbecue?

I think my answer would be ‘the nearness of alternative cooking facilities.'

Carlos made Herculean efforts with a small domestic barbecue and produced grilled sardines and prawns. They were delicious with a true smoky flavour from the coals and a hint of the flavour of the firelighters intermingled to bring a synthesis of the natural and the industrial in one mouthful!

Our trip to the sea side was to Tossa de Mar: the first place that I visited in Spain fifty years ago!

Our epic journey to get there all those years ago seemed to take for ever as it was train from Cardiff to London; boat train from London to Dover; boat from Dover to Calais; train from Calais to Paris; coach tour of Paris; train from Paris to the Spanish border; change train to Barcelona; coach tour of Barcelona; coach from Barcelona to Tossa. And no sleeping compartments.

It was one of the best holidays that I ever had and is a large part of the reason that I am now living in Spain and especially in Catalonia – though, God knows there are other reasons too!

It was interesting to be back in that resort which was the first taste of Spain for so many package tourists in the late 1950s and emotional for me as I thought of the quintet of my parents, Uncle Eric, Aunty Ray and me enjoying what was then the experience of very few – a foreign holiday. In my class of 40 in my primary school, I was the only person to have gone abroad. How times have changed!

My bed is a severe single with a metal spring base and an absurdly spongy mattress.

I confidently expect curvature of the spine when I wake up!


Thursday 28th of August 2008

After a fairly sluggish start we eventually made it to a local beach. This was fine and dandy but in the night something had stolen away my swimming trunks!

As I was wearing then when we came back from the beach they have to be in the masia somewhere; but they have eluded careful search and have softly and suddenly vanished away. (And you get a bonus mark if you recognize the quotation there, and if you did then you should have spoken the line which comes immediately after that one.)

The place we went to struck me as sunnier version of Barry Island with a similar difficulty about parking.

After finding spaces a short walk took me to some shops where I was able to purchase a vastly more expensive version of the Matalan swimming trunks that have disappeared. Almost as soon as the trunks had been baptized it was time to return to the masia for lunch.

The fridge here seems to be altogether more efficient than the sorry apology for cold that we have in the flat and the result is that bottles put into the freezer for a quick cool get cold and then frozen.

The alcoholic slush puppies we had were most refreshing and were an admirable way of draining the potent parts of the drink from the mere water!

Our second visit to the beach was to a completely ersatz place where nothing seemed real. The beach seemed to have been constructed solely for the benefit of the hideous flats which fringed it. It was mechanistic and ruthlessly modern – but it did have parking spaces which is more than could probably be said for the rather more attractive old town that we could see further down the coast from where we were.

My previously unscarred body is now the feeding place for swarms of biting insects. Toni remarked that the mosquitoes of this region have been waiting a long time for a return feast and my blood flavour must have lived on in mosquito folk memory because they all seem to want a bit of me now!

I look towards one of the many proprietary insect repellents that glows fitfully in the one and only electricity socket in the room and wonder at the cupidity of man in believing in these things. What a mosquito wants a mosquito gets.

Mt blood group is Group A Rh positive in case I look pale and interesting in the morning!

Friday 29th of August 2008

The beds in this masia are designed for dwarfs and I have had to change my sleeping choice from a bed with large wooden end pieces to a bed which at least allowed my feet to project over the ends.

I am not sure if my unsupported ankles are the reason but my legs have been aching since I’ve been in the Costa Brava – though I think the candyfloss mattress might have something to do with it as well!

The beach we went today had a rather British feel as the edge of the beach was fringed with multicoloured beach huts

and equally colourful showers with signs warning ordinary folks with no access to one of the huts to stay away as the water gushing out of the shower heads was private.

It was fairly obvious that there was an attempt to make the beach select and exclusive. I however had other information from one who knows who stated that no Spanish beach was private so we flaunted our presence there with what can only be described as impunity.

And so back to Castelldefels and some sort of reality.

The beginning of term is also a time for me to consider what I should be doing in terms of work. It is not enough to enrol for Spanish classes; I need to be thinking about what I am going to do for the next few years.

There is so much potential in the next few months for so much to happen that I am somewhat intimidated by expectation.

Bring it on!

Unaccounted days!

The fountains of Barcelona may be dry because of the incipient drought but we were provided by an impromptu aqueous display to compensate for this lack of sparkling plumes in the civic arena.

As we travelled by bus through Hospitalet we stopped at a set of traffic lights and to our astonishment observed a young man with wild eyes and waving hands liberally attempting, in a very personal way, to restore the water flow in public areas. As far as we bemused observers could tell the gushing appendage was a part of some obscure protest and, considering his complete lack of attention to his flow he was certainly adept at ensuring the water hit the pavement and road rather than his trousers.

Given that Emma had already observed an ancient lady looking sultry in a balcony overlooking the Ramblas clad only in a wizened smile, this latest piece of exhibitionism seemed an interesting part of the Catalan way of life.

It was only when the watery young man lurched towards the bus that the passengers flinched suddenly realising that what was an intriguing spectacle could actually impinge on actual lives. Luckily we were saved from the social and, indeed, hygienic consequences of proximity by the lights changing and the bus pulling away leaving our erstwhile companion gesturing in his very own puddle!

Perhaps not the most congenial way of preparing ourselves for the cultural feast which is MNAC and contains some of the most interesting and stimulating examples of Catalan art. In the event we needn’t have worried, as the culmination of our climb from the Plaça d’España to the gallery was reward by our finding out that the place was closed! Just on Mondays of course.

All was not lost. The reconstruction of the Barcelona Pavilion from the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition was awaiting our inspection.

The only ‘function’ the building had to accommodate was the signing by the King and Queen of Spain of the equivalent of the visitors’ book. The building was the exhibit – and it still is an exquisite example of modernism at its best.
Sitting in a 'Barcelona Chair' seemed the most appropriate form of behaviour when one was in such an architectual signature piece as the pavilion and we duly sat. Until, of course, we were shooed off our chairs as we sitting on the originals and therefore arts objects!

This leads me to confess that I have now sat on three illegal chairs. All art objects. The catalogue of criminal activity starts with my sitting on one example of the Rietveld Chair, followed by a quick settle on a spectacular Mackintosh ladder back chair and finally the Barcelona Chair. I have to say that the last was the least comfortable - though it did look as though a fair number of rear ends had plonked themselves on that white leather before further indignity was stopped by curators guarding its artistic status!

Our cultural exhaustion at the end of this visit, especially as I attempted to take an artistic photograph by getting a submerged leaf in the water filled shallow ‘lake’ into the most appropriate position on the reflected anatomy of a nude statue, was such that we fled to Barcelonetta for lunch!

With Emma we have eaten to satiety and beyond. Not her fault, but it seemed like a good idea at the time!

We have visited books shops; world famous buildings from Modernism to Modernista; beaches in sunshine and testing breezes; cafés, restaurants and bars – with and without the cigarette smoke which is not yet banned in public places; art shops, shoe shops, stalls and shopping malls – with and without sufficient money to satisfy our whims; we have walked and talked and travelled: and had a good time!

It has been oddly unsettling to have such a close past colleague talk about a place in which I spent an inordinate percentage of my working life and for me to realise that the personnel of the institution is now changed beyond belief. Many of the remaining ‘Old guard’ have been ‘encouraged’ to retire early so the established faces have now gone.

But life, as they say, goes on. The new term in Britain approaches and here in Catalonia, the school that sacked me has now greeted (should that be ‘greeted’?) its new intake of teachers ahead of the start of the new year. I would imagine that the problems have already shown themselves and, in a purely personal, smug, self satisfied and pandering to my own self interest sort of way, I wish the school the very worst of luck – as long as it doesn’t affect the kids. The sooner the place closes or The Owner is forced to sell or turn her hand to something less humanly damaging the better.

There is always (well, might be) something better to replace it on the horizon!

“Expectation,” as I once announced to a bemused audience while dressed as an officer in the First World War, “tickling skittish spirits,” makes me feel a ghoulish sort of pleasurable expectation for the approaching term.

I only hope it’s productive!

Calm before!

A generally lazy day today so I can catch up with my writing. Although it takes an effort to find the time to do it.

Another visit to Montserrat and yet again I was struck with the basic unreality of the mountains. They really do look as though they have been dumped there by a geological accident of some sort.

For me it is impossible to visit the monastery and the surrounding area without experiencing something akin to the spiritual uplift that those who come for moral reasons obviously find there. I suppose at some level the two emotions could be considered to be indistinguishable and certainly the grubby commercialism of the place seems to be as compelling a reason for the people being there as a recognition of the central position of the monastery and its imposing iconic statuette in the ethical life of Catalonia.

To be fair the shops are not as vapid as one could suspect from an institution cashing in on an important religious artefact – even if I did eventually find the Madonna in a snowstorm that I was looking for!

After visiting La Moreneta I managed to inveigle our little party to visit the gallery. This under-visited place contains an astonishing collection of world class paintings as well as a more than representative collection of Catalan Art including some truly iconic paintings.

We also visited the restaurant which is located temptingly opposite the self service outlet. The real restaurant offers spectacular views into the valley and also provided a very decent meal at a more than reasonable price. Especially so as Emma took care of the bill!

While in the shop I bought an illustrated book as an inducement to Ceri to come with camera and sketch book and take an artistic interest in the scenery around the mountain. I think that the colour, shape and texture of the area are perfect subject matter for his brush. This is a long term strategy which may take some time to come to artistic fruition, but I am confident of success!

Emma has extended her holiday here so that today was able to be a ‘take your breath’ day so that we can find energy for more cultural activities tomorrow.

Gaudí calls!

Ah! The Old Country!

As soon as Emma had been initiated into the mysteries of Rioja and gaseosa it was through the little door behind the pool, onto the beach and into the sea.

I know it is childish and beneath me, and I have been talked to very seriously by Dianne, but I can still take a keen pleasure in finding out that it is, to quote Emma’s mum, “tipping down” back in the UK.

As we sipped our cocktails in the Brazilian bar after tapas in the Basque restaurant, sitting serenely in the balmy open air it wasn’t only the alcohol that I eagerly drank up. Horror stories of the typical awfulness of the August weather in Britain were a piquant an accompaniment to the drinks as the dish of dry roasted nuts.

However, enough of this gloating or I will suffer the consequences of the Wrath of Dianne. So!

We talked through the night until an irascible, curmudgeonly and plain rude old duffer from the adjacent flat intimated in bleating tones of astonished outrage that it was late and he was an invalid and so on. He is the sort of person who goes out of his way to find something to complain about and his shouted conversations on his mobile phone encourage one to think in ironic terms about his intolerance of normal speech!

Emma has not yet emerged into the (overcast) light of day, but hark, even as I type, a vision of loveliness hoves into sight and asks (with an edge) how I am feeling. The day has started.

For me of course, the day starts with my now customary visit to the BBC website and the Channel 4 medal table to see how much gloating is in order. 16 gold, 10 silver and 10 bronze is an awesome haul and our third position is astonishing but, being British I also note that there are some days to go before the end of the Olympics and I think that the shiny metallic days that we have rapidly become used to are at an end. I would love to be proved wrong, but I think the flow of precious metal is at an end. We will see.

Today to Barcelona and a grey day it is too. There are patches of blue and the more determined beach dwellers have set up their patches but no one is venturing into the sea and the number of people on the beach is sparse. A perfect day, in short, for visiting a city!

If we go to MNAC it will give me the opportunity to buy the English version of the guide that I have at present. Although I can stagger my way through most of the descriptions it is hard work and I need to get to know the artists and their influences and keep bobbing back and fore to increase my knowledge. At the moment the fluency of my navigation of the book is severely limited by my stumbling efforts at translation!

It will be interesting for me to have someone else who is interested in art looking at the Catalan artists that I think are unjustly undervalued by the Western (American) Art Establishment. I think that many of the Catalan artists I have looked at deserve a might higher profile in the history of modern art than they have at present.

Fortified by culture we will then be strong enough to journey south to attend a meeting which could be part of the solution to my future professional life in Catalonia.

Well, we didn’t get to any museum, but we did have a very fine meal and I managed to buy book in the Museos del Mundo series. This one was of MNAC – the very gallery we didn’t actually get to see. I got the book by the simple, yet effective procedure of urging our merry little group to go to a restaurant which had a second hand bookshop on the way!

The ways of the bibliophile are many and devious!

Show you care!

Where is the missing gold?

I may sound like a character from The Ring but while returning to the BBC Olympic website, which has been my default action during any spare moment since the games began, I am sure I saw that we had reached the number of 13 golds. A short while later it had changed to 12. Where has our missing gold gone?

There does appear to be a real possibility of building on the Golden Twelve and even stretching our golden haul to match or even exceed that of some fabulously distant period in our history when we managed to gain 14 golds in one Olympics!

I’m not really sure why I care.

Who and what can we blame for the Olympics? Some arrogant French nobleman with a misplaced belief in the moral worth of the English public school system!

What are they today? In Beijing they are a blatant political statement by a ruthless, totalitarian and repressive regime which has misused scarce funds to produce one of the most expensive and misleading advertisements in the history of uncaring governmental excess.

But I still care.

I am firmly behind our cyclists as they participate in some oddly named and totally incomprehensible version of bike riding. I have become passionately interested in versions of boats I did not know existed before the start of last week. I have not sniggered at people dressed as if they were going to a formal dinner party, sitting rigidly with a fixed expression as if trying to ignore the fact that they are on a horse prancing sideways in some sort of camp equestrian skipping motion. I have held up my crucifix and flicked holy water at the TV screen when the gymnasts have defied all natural laws with their impossible cavortings. I have been mystified at the inverse relationship there seems to be in rowing between the increasingly chunky physique of the rowers and the decreasingly small pieces of material they choose to row in!

And I do care. I care passionately that we ‘do well.’ If that means that we get medals in minority sports where virtually no one knows what’s going on that merely shows how clever we have been in concentrating resources where we can get the best returns.

The bronze in the pommel horse shows a disturbingly expensive area of future squandering of cash in an arena in which we have had little success in the past. My god! If we can win a medal in gymnastics then we might start winning in track and field and get amongst what one commentator described as the ‘Formula 1’ medals!

Meanwhile only another week to get through and this torture will be over leaving only four whole years to worry about what sort of attempt we make of this Pyrrhic honour!

I wonder who will be Prime Minister in 2012. Whoever is Prime Minister I am absolutely sure that one small ageing relic will still be smiling her tight little smile as, in non estuarine English, she declares the games open.

Who knows, I might actually have had the opportunity to burn the candle (which even now has its face to the wall in my living room) of the other ageing woman.

What a nasty and yet strangely comforting thought!

Floreat Beeb!

Thank god for the BBC!

Here in Spain it would be perfectly easy to assume that Great Britain was taking no part in the present Olympic Games. Indeed it was only when a yacht with a large sail composed of the Union Flag loomed out of the driving rain and mist to form the picturesque background to a Spanish boat that I had physical proof that my country was actually there.

Spain has won five golds so far with Nadal taking the most well deserved one in an exciting tennis final. This match was doubly exciting for me because I had assumed that this was a three set contest and so worked myself up into a frenzy on the second set tie break as I thought it was for the gold. I then had to reset my hysteria and worry through another set!

Looking at the third position for GB in the Olympic Medal Table is a rather intoxicating experience. Leaving aside the US of A, such a high position usually means that your ‘government’ is a callous, publicity seeking, and totalitarian one hell bent on squandering on sport money which should have been spent on social services and the poor. Just for the sake of a few gilded trinkets!

That could hardly be true of the lumbering administration of Mr Gordon Brown as he carefully conserves our limited resources to provide a true ‘value for money’ no frills Olympics in 2012. Budgets will be strictly adhered to and I am sure that there is every eventuality that the Games will eventually come in under budget and provide a profit. That is what democracy can do!

Meanwhile, talking of Democracy, it is interesting to see where our medals are being won.

On the BBC Olympic website there is a ‘Live Action’ rolling news and comment section. One contributor, James Jones, started a mini discussion by texting, “Can't help noticing the success to date has come from the posh sports.” Rowing, Sailing and Equestrian events do seem to be the backbone of our golden achievement, but cycling can hardly be said to be ‘posh’ it is almost the symbol of egalitarianism. Admittedly Jones does dismiss the sport as ‘minority’ in his provocative email but, as Gertrude Stein would obviously have commented, “A gold is a gold is a gold!”

It all puts me in mind of ‘Jeux sans frontieres’ which became ‘It’s a Knockout’ in Britain with commentary by Eddie ‘up and under’ Waring. Such mindless fun, I, of course, despised. Yet in the same way that boxing could mesmerise me if I watched it for any period, I found that ‘It’s a Knockout’ could force my anguished emotional participation. I watched entranced as Nantwich or Norwich fielded a team dressed as sandwiches which failed to carry sufficient buckets of jelly on stepping stones of live human mushrooms to flush the giant toilet on their opponents or whatever other vapid metaphor was being enacted.

I can remember the key to success (apart from the complete lack of shame that was a sine qua non of participation) was the playing of the Joker. This outsize card, if played properly could double your top score and make your lead unassailable by the other kitchen utensils or however the other team was dressed.

The ‘trick’ with the Olympics seems to be a version of playing your Joker. Find a sport which naturally limits world wide participation (like rough water kayaking blindfold while eating eels – never popular in sub Saharan Africa) and make it your national sport. On second thoughts that might have been yet another ‘amusing’ game from ‘It’s a Knockout!’ in which Cumbernauld played its Joker in a masterly fashion and laid low the pretensions of Barrow in Furness.

I suppose that there is a natural limitation with yachting with the costs involved and the need at some point to be able to get to the sea. Similarly with horses, I seem to remember some of the eastern communist nations used to manage the expense by having their equestrian competitors all being in the army!

East Germany and the old USSR must look back to those halcyon days when drug taking and child abuse were not quite the hot topics that they are today, with some sort of nostalgia. Their athletes might have changed sex during training and child gymnasts looked like old women by the time they got to their mid twenties – but the golds kept pouring in!

Meanwhile we have eleven golds with the realistic expectation of more!

I say play the Joker now!

Reading is life!

I am a greedy reader.

There are those that read and then re-read as they go along savouring intriguing passages and relishing felicitous turns of phrase. They are the ones who painstakingly highlight passages for further study and methodically make notes for later consideration. These are the people who are able to put aside the volume that they are perusing and over a leisurely cup of tea ponder the narrative thrust and analyse the writer’s style.

I, alas, am not one of those readers: once a book is started it has to be finished and in as quick a time as possible. Time is indeed at its most relative when I am immersed in the pages of a book! On a number of occasions I have been shocked and momentarily confused as I have been summoned from my seductive literary world by an impertinent telephone call or an intrusive comment. I lurch from the page to the present momentarily wrong footed by the demands of a different universe!

So it was with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’: after a false start which only got the first 100 pages read, yesterday saw a few hundred other pages follow those and the drug of another literary world was working in my system.

This coming of age novel is set in Brooklyn at the start of the twentieth century and follows the fortunes of Francie as her life is charted in a poor if interesting family.

I’m not sure if it is a compliment but throughout the novel I thought what a good text it would make for English Literature: an interesting background; different stylistic devices; clear characters and an easy to follow narrative style. The links with books like ‘The Catcher in the Rye’; ‘Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve’; ‘A Boy’s Own Story’; ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘Cider with Rosie’ are instructive. It was interesting to discover that the book is a class favourite in the USA but not as well known on this side of the pond I think.

There is a film version from 1945, only a few years after the publication of the book. It starred Peggy Ann Garner as Francie Nolan and Joan Blondell as Sissy,

Francie’s scandalous aunt. It was one of Elia Kazan’s first films and has had generous reviews.

The film ends shortly after the death of Francie’s handsome and talented but drunken father and therefore leaves out the real development of the central character.

As a picture of a long lost time the book is a valuable evocation of an essential part of the American myth of hard work and determination linked to extraordinary character eventually providing the essential ingredients to ensure the social progression and financial escape from the dead hand of decadent European repression.

The central character of Francie is an interesting one, but to my mind there are too many times when the omniscient narrator informs us that Francie and her mother have accurately read each other’s thoughts, again!

That carping criticism aside the book is an engaging read and it is not hard to see why it was so instantly popular and why it has remained so.

Francie is a strong force in the novel and her experiences exemplify the outsider who, by virtue of her extraordinary strength gained from her background is able to arrive at a position where her future is assured, even if the novel does leave a certain ambiguity about the eventual outcome of her eventual settled state.

The weather has been unhelpful to those of a tanning inclination. My dip in the sea this afternoon was defiant rather than delightful and the forecast for tomorrow is worse with even a prediction for rain. The sky this evening was reassuringly roseate which should mean that tomorrow is fine and delightful.

We will see whether folk law holds firm.

Or not as the case may be.