A collection of days gone!

The damp, sullen skies of southern England met my bleary eyes this morning.  Long trousers for today I think.

My room in Andrew and Stuart’s house is a cruel one: books everywhere – and I thought I was the only one with bizarre juxtapositioning of random volumes.  The range is astonishing with the faded backs of proven classics rubbing shoulders with the most modern paperbacks.  The “who-is-this-person-let’s-look-at-his-books” approach reveals some clear and other more subtle indications of personality and taste!  It is a room in which I could be most comfortably locked up in for a considerable period – and the bed is comfortable too!

Today is the first day to try out the latest prescription for my contact lenses and as the saintly Andrew is driving I need have no fears about worrying about their suitability for the motorist.  I do hope that these new lenses will finally be accepted by my brain and be the solution to the distance/reading conundrum that successions of opticians have been trying to sort out.  One can but hope.  And I do have six months supply (all paid for) which it would be something of a pity to waste!

It is now raining.  It started in that soft, lazy gossamer drizzle which soaks you to the skin within seconds and has now developed into a more straightforward downpour: assertive and depressing.  There is (what is often a deceptive) brightness in the complete cloud cover which, for those British born weather optimists, might betoken more inspiring weather later.

As a key component in the planning of Mary’s party involved The Garden it looks as though it may be more for contemplation and admiration rather than practical use.

I am at present drinking a cup brewed with a Yorkshire Tea teabag that I am informed by Andrew is designed specifically for use in hard water areas.  As the rugged aggressiveness of the water in Castelldefels makes everyone else’s water look like pure liquid sissy, it might be an idea to ask for a few bags and try them out at home.  Admittedly I have partially got round the problem of the water (safe but undrinkable from the tap) by making my cuppa with bottled stuff but a teabag which wages a taste war with calcium might be a cheaper eventual solution.

It has now stopped raining, but still looks as though it is: a particularly British form of climatic irritation.

That illusion soon gave way to the harsh reality of sheeting layers of water belting down on the car as it crawled through the traffic misery that is driving in London.

My dogged, and no doubt irritating assertion that was “brighter in the west” was belied by the soul-sapping drenching that we were getting as we made our delayed way to Reading.

However my irrational optimism was justified by the rains almost ceasing as we got stuck in our final traffic jam inside Reading itself.

The party was a great success.  Mary was overwhelmed by the gifts that she had and most importantly she loved the Ceri print of Venice that I chose for her from the selection that I was shown.  I also checked from Clarrie (who loved it instantly, made a decision about the frame and where it should be hung within two seconds of seeing it) that Mary was being sincere and not merely polite, so everything was most satisfactory.

 

Our own gifts to Mary included a pendant and perfume (both hostages to fortune when deciding for another person) went down well so I was then able to get on with the socializing that such an occasion offers.

Apart from Andrew, Stuart, Mary and Clarrie the gusts were those whom I had never met before or people who I hadn’t seen for years; some for many years!

Conversation was compulsive and, as often happens in parties in which I want to speak to everyone; I had to remind myself to eat.  Especially as I had no trouble in reminding my self to drink the Champagne!

The food was exactly what one would have expected from Clarrie in its variety and presentation.  The beef en croute was spectacular and I never did get to try the chicken terrine, but the prawns (thank you Clarrie) and the salmon were eventually tasted and approved of.

The cake (with an inscription in Irish) was bought it, but the other sweets were made by Andrew: a bitter chocolate tart for adults and a truly wonderful Summer Pudding with luscious fruit and a mesmerizing taste.  I suggested that we steal the remains of this noble dessert but such boorish behaviour was dismissed by the boys.

By the time the Champagne had run out, the Cava had been drunk and we were reduced to drinking Jacob’s Creek fizzy it was obviously time to go.

Slumped in the back seat in a somnolent haze the first part of the return journey past swiftly and I only came back to my senses fully when we hit the Hammersmith flyover.

On our return Stuart took to his bed for a nap and Andrew continued the Russel Meyer Summer School for Stephen which started the day before yesterday with an enforced viewing of “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill”: a film of which I was aware but had not heretofore seen.

 

The film’s awfulness has to be seen to be believed and, while I can well believe that it has a fanatical cult following its blend of low budget ineptitude, wooden acting, pitiful script, big boobs and crass moralizing meant that I watched much of it with open mouthed amazement.

To be fair there are moments of camp humour, some of the cinematography is stagey but interesting and the female star looks like the creation from the combined brains of Bram Stoker, Edvard Munch and Hugh Hefner.  She uses car, cleavage and karate to create chaos – but never fear all-American(ish) values triumph in the end.

As an extra I was made to watch an interview with the women in the film who now look, amazingly, even more sluttish than they did when “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill” was made.

Yesterday’s lesson too the form of a viewing of “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” – a film whose virulent critical response I can still remember even though I am thinking of notices from forty years ago!  Although I had no intention of going to a cinema to watch such gratuitous trash, I think that I indulged in a News-of-the-World type of censorious prurience in reading about the filth that I was never going to see!

The film has high production values and is in vivid Eastman colour but it comes as no surprise to discover that the script was made up day by day so the revelation that the Svengali-like male homosexual is actually a woman “seemed like a good idea” to the scriptwriter and was duly shot with no back story to give such a twist any credibility.

It is difficult to know where to start in a critical response to the turgid morass of half-baked acting and ideas that “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” comprises.  John Waters has called this “the best film ever made and will ever be made” and it features in the best 100 films of all time in The Village Voice, but for me it remains what I suspected it would be, a woeful piece of sexploitation.

There is clearly some attempt at parody and the use of music is part of this self awareness of the medium but I don’t think that the film is good enough to be ironic; its humour seems to be sloppiness rather than observation.

An interview of Meyer by Ross brought out the auteur’s interest in women from the waist upwards but said little more about what he brings to the cinema.

I remain a rather sceptical student in this Summer School and will take much more convincing before I become a devotee of the film of Mr Meyer!

Sunday was notable for the gentle introduction to the day that the boys insist on and a later visit (in the rain) to the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

This unprepossessing building houses not only a rather surprising above ground crypt in the middle of the gallery but also a very impressive collection of art.

The special exhibition was of the art of Poussin and the recently deceased Cy Twombly.  Anyone who knows anything about these two artists might suspect that they have little real in common and that would be a point of view which the exhibition does little to alter.

 

Twombly’s work is a series of daubed scrawlings and Poussin is an acknowledged master of Classical order.  The fact that Twombly went and lived in Italy – just like Poussin - does not make for a convincing comparison of shared artistic achievements!

Monday did see me make a halfhearted effort to indulge in some culture.  The weather was miserable and I was conscious that I only had thin shirts and no coat – it being July and all!

I eventually set off on the train to Victoria and then the underground to Embankment which I (wrongly) thought would be within a light step of Tate Modern.  Many, many steps later and in light drizzle I finally made it to see The Money Hanging on the Wall – or Picasso’s “The Dream” as it is called which is at present the most expensive painting in the world to be sold at auction.

 

Of course to see this painting you have to pass a lot of other art most of which is excellent and some of which is the sort of gratuitous rubbish that gives modern art a bad name.  To my horror I saw a selection of empty gestural scrawls of my current bête noir Twombly “gracing” the walls of one gallery.  I won’t even waste my time by describing the vacuous ineptitude masquerading as art that he perpetrated in the canvases that were but a hiatus in seeing something better!

And better there certainly was.  The whole of my Making Sense of Modern Art course for next year was hanging on the walls!

I made an executive decision to go to the National Gallery as well to check up on my two paintings – the Terborch and the Van Eyck.

It is impossible to see these paintings in a limited time without ignoring some of the finest art in the world which, with siren calls, tries to deflect me from my purposes.  And indeed succeeded to some extent.  You have to made of stronger stuff than I to ignore Holbein’s Ambassadors, for example.  Anyway, I just managed to get to the Van Eyck before the stern guardians of the galleries started herding us to the exits.

Dinner was in a local restaurant in Herne Hill and (tempting fate) tapas!  They were delicious, though I think that we might be able to duplicate some of them here in a slightly different form for slightly less!

Packing was the usual nightmare although the expansion of the suitcase did provide a lot of extra space but it was virtually impossible to move when it was filled.

The journey to the airport was circuitous as my GPS decided to avoid “heavy traffic ahead” and so I saw much of the suburbs of south London before I finally ended up in an interminable traffic jam as the powers that be decided to replace a gas main on the approach road to the M23.

I had, however left enough time to compensate for delays and hot and bothered as I was there was plenty of time to check in and wait for the call.

As usual the best value in the airport was the meal deal in Boots at £3.79 and I thoroughly enjoyed my British sandwiches before settling down to the tedium of travel.

The numerical ordering of the gates is designed to confuse those who have never been to the airport before flying with EasyJet.  Suffice to say that I walked confidently in the wrong direction because I understood Gate 57 to be included in Gate numbers 50 odd to 60 odd.  Wrong.  Elusive Gate 57 was alone with a plethora of alphabetical adjuncts, the important one (mine) I could not find.  But I went with the flow and found myself at the end of a very long queue.

It seemed as though my chances of finding a seat with adequate legroom were stymied by my lack of Gatwick experience, but I always have hope when I travel alone as a spare seat is sometimes available as a couple bag two of the three seats.

I stepped inside the plane and imagine my delight when I saw the evidence of lost hope: two men sitting either side of the seats at the entrance with a book, newspaper and pen resting on the seat in the middle.  I almost laughed as I asked innocently if the seat was taken.  Their combined looks of pure hatred could have felled lumbering rhinos, but I merely took the seat and fitted my Nano to fill the ferocious silence from the gentlemen on either side!

The flight was only 90 minutes long and that was almost the time it took the baggage handlers in Barcelona to get our luggage onto the carousel.  When it eventually emerged it was greeted by an ironically ragged cheer.

We went out for tapas almost as soon as I was in the house and an early shower and bed was my welcome home.

Today, after the light tidying of the rubbish I have brought home we went out to our local restaurant for a menu del dia in the bright sunshine.

An excellent two-centre holiday with exemplary hospitality and much buying of clothes for the next year.

Now the reception of guests for the summer is about to begin!

Please let there be sun for my friends!

London is afar!

Sitting by the open French windows and cooled by the gentle cigarette-flavoured breeze from the incessant smoke of Paul Squared, I am waiting for the call from my optician which will prompt me to start the actions of the day.

Assuming that my new contact lenses come into Cardiff on time and further assuming that the obligatory visit to Paul’s sister’s new kitchen will be completed in double quick time I will then be able to set off on the journey to London.

I am having yet another attempt at getting my eyes to accept a compromise in the contact lens department.  Fine-tuning now has been done and I have six months’ supply of new lenses to see me through the summer and well into the cold days of January.

The trip along the dull lanes of the M4 was as tedious as ever, the only point of interest being a fleeting glimpse of Windsor Castle with a flag flying which simply is insufficient to justify the misery of hours of featureless landscape along the way.

London itself was a little more interesting as I navigated most of the city trying to find the bloody River Thames and head south to Herne Hill.  If nothing else (and believe me it was nothing else) it gave me the opportunity to listen to all the programmes that Radio 4 had hastily slammed into the schedule to cover the gaps caused by the strike of the journalists’ union.

The Radio 4 play was one of those fugitive pieces which while engaging the mind while it was going on didn’t say enough to make you think.  Perfect driving drivel!

Few people could have expressed more delight upon seeing the mundane outline of uninteresting shops in Brixton with more delight than I as I at least then knew where I was.  I was able to put the fruitless searching for a major river behind me and promptly miss the turning for Herne Hill.

To be fair to me it wasn’t a real road as the entrance to the carriageway was tiled with fashion bricks making it look like a pedestrianized area.  It wasn’t as I rapidly found out when the main road that I intended to take to Herne Hill turned out to be one-way.  Now I am used to these little setbacks as Spanish road planners take fiendish delight in changing road layouts almost as you watch.  I merely turned (eventually) into a familiar street and passed with a swift flick of the eyes Clarrie’s old flat.  My approach for the second time was more measured and with only one other false turning I made it to my final destination in this two-centre holiday!

Sitting in the sun, sheltered by trees and drinking a decent cup of tea is little short of real, deep pleasure and time became lazy and elastic as chat eventually prompted us to a cool bottle of wine and thoughts of the morrow.

A short walk to Sainsbury (was it always there, I think not) allowed the purchase of wine for this evening a generous selection of nibbles and a decent bottle of Cava for the party tomorrow.

It is a delight to be back in Herne Hill and to be with two friends who go back more years than it would be decent to recount.  I also have to be on my best behaviour with them as they have photographs which in part explain why I have never attempted a career in politics!

There is wine at my knee on the occasional table in front of me and books and music wherever I look so why the hell am I typing!

Good question.  I’ll have a glass of white!

Same view - different sense

It is odd when you see close friends who you haven’t seen for some time.  Attitudes snap back in place and everything is almost as it was the last time you were together.  Almost - not exactly.  There is a whole history which has not been shared in the way that experiences in the past were common currency between us.  And children are bigger.  Much bigger!

The talk flowed as did the . . . yes, I’m sure that you have filled in the second part of that sentence: but you would be wrong.  I took of bottle of alcohol-free Sainsbury red wine.  Usually these things are immediately disgusting, but this one was subtler.  There was a faint memory of what wine might have tasted like if all the active and interesting ingredients had been taken out.  It didn’t, of course stop me drinking it.  But it will be a long time until I drink more of it.  Paying for a taxi at least preserves one’s dignity!

Today I go back to the optician to see how the new lenses are settling on my eyes.  I think that there is an appreciable difference in the reading quality of the correction, but it is not the magic solution to my prescription.  I have no idea how much the new toric lenses cost and I am preparing myself for a nasty shock – still, it’s always better than wearing glasses.  Which I hate, have hated and will continue to hate.

Lunch is going to be with an old ex-colleague and then there is the packing.  At least, thanks to Ceri’s demand that I turn up with background music for the dinner last Monday, I do have my newly downloaded Gretry so that I can, in part, re-live my musical experience of packing in University to the insanely jolly music.  It is just a pity that I cannot find a download of the original Gluck/Gretry combination that was the actual music that I used to keep my sanity in times of departure!  I will continue to look.

While waiting for my appointment in the optician’s reception area and old man hobbled into sight whom I immediately recognized as a colleague from the first Cardiff school in which I worked.  He didn’t recognize me at first but we were soon chatting about mutual acquaintances.  It took him no more than twenty seconds before he alluded to his age, and indeed that of his wife, who was also a colleague in the same school.

Each elderly person I have met has told me his age.  But, there again, when trying to book a concert for the BBC National Orchestra of Wales I mentioned to Paul Squared that I had been following that orchestra for over forty years!  I suppose that I have reached the penultimate stage just before I too start adding my age to all conversations!

My contact lens prescription has been changed yet again and I now have to wait until tomorrow for the next six months supply to come into the opticians.  This could mean delaying my set off time for London, but the lenses will be worth it.  I hope!

My restraint is legendary: it took me until today to down my first pint of SA!  Brains Brewery must have looked askance at my continuing presence in Cardiff without my consumption of a single pint of the delectable liquid that is so foreign to the bar pumps of Spain, where the childish larger holds total sway over the degraded palettes of sodden Spanish tipplers.

I had only a very hazy idea of where The Cottage was.  I knew of a bar in town with that name but this one was in the wilds of an affluent suburb of northern Cardiff.  I refused to take the easy way out and look at Google Maps to give me direction and set off in a very determined manner to where I thought it might be.

I took the “back way” from Llanrumney to Lisvane and then made my way uncertainly towards the station and Cefn Onn Park.  This park is justly famed for its overwhelming display of rhododendrons in season and the park entrance is next to a pub whose name is now emblazoned in incomprehensible Welsh.  Luckily there was a roundabout within a few yards and a second pass of the place revealed that it was The Old Cottage (this time in English) and that seemed close enough for me to risk stopping.

The whole place has been done out and, as my colleague seemed to be nowhere in sight I decided to have a cold pint.  SA or “Skull Attack” as it is affectionately known in the lower reaches of Cardiff is a delicious pint brewed locally and, sitting in the glorious sunshine (!) I was able to appreciate the sheer beauty of sitting outside and in the warm with a cold pint inside!

My trusty phone offered me my interminable book and when I looked up at the end of a chapter I saw two colleagues walking sedately towards me.  A delight!  The colleague I was originally expecting arrived shortly after and we got down to the serious business of catching up on any shreds of gossip that might serve to keep the conversation alive.

The menu was, to put it mildly, startling in its offer of haute cuisine delights and the daily menu at £12·95 for two courses looked delicious.  Goats’ cheese on a bed of interesting salad with rustic bread, olives and oil and balsamic vinegar (the last bits were extra), followed by spiced fillet of pickled herring with new potatoes and salad augmented with fruit.  It was all delicious and a chilled glass of white wine made it perfect.

The conversation flowed easily and it was pleasantly engaging to play a part in something which seemed organic, natural and stimulating.  I was still smiling when I arrived home some time later after wistful goodbyes had been said.

I called into PC World with added Currys because it would have been churlish not to.  The ex-colleague working there left two years ago I was informed so I looked at cameras – which have the same hypnotic effect on me as watches.  There is a new Olympus camera with a x24 zoom, but it luckily does not give the operator manual override so my Canon is still a good buy and “this one would be a waste of money” the salesperson told me.

I have to say that this sort of sensible advice has not necessarily stopped me from spending in the past, but this time it did seem to strike a responsive chord in the non-spendthrift part of my brain and I was able to leave the store clutching only a new loudspeaker dock for my Nano.  A lucky and relatively inexpensive escape!

Today is going to be the only day so far completely without rain.  Sitting outdoors in the relative cool of the early evening would be perfect if it were not for the slightly too intrusive breeze – but as a rainless day I am prepared to forgive it.

This evening I plan to have a take-away Indian meal out of which I was cheated last night by the ridiculously early closing of the fast food restaurants in the area!

And packing!

A full day with some forgetfulness!

You win some; you lose some.

In the never-ending story of My Life With Contact Lenses, yet another chapter has been opened.

With all the zest of the most bigoted ex-pat I have used part of my time in the Mother Country (it is impossible to type that without irony, I feel) to go to the doctor and all the other professional personal maintenance managers that I can fit in.

Yesterday was the turn of the optician.

Even though I am and have been living in a foreign country for some time, as far as doctor, dentist and optician are concerned I am still very much resident in Rumney.  As my doctor said when I saw him after a considerable lapse since I last visited, “Ah, a seamless patient attendance record!”  My optician is still under the impression that I am a honest-to-god paying patient of their contact lens scheme.  And I am not about to disabuse them.

My eye test was exhaustive and I was glad to see that the obnoxious puffer test had been made a little more sophisticated.  For those of you lucky sods with perfect vision, one of the little tortures invented by opticians is to put your head in a sort of iron brace and then have a shot of compressed air directly onto your eyeball.  It goes against every instinct in the human body to keep an eye open when you know that something is going to hit it and the shock does not diminish with experience.  This time I was given a much gentler treatment using a hand-held oblong with two short protrusions on it one of which was placed near my eye and a sort of faint tickling of the eyeball ensued: unpleasant but no shock.

My eyes have deteriorated - subtly but just about on the bounds of noticeability.

As is usual when I visit to have my contact lenses checked, yet another optician makes yet another attempt to find the compromise that will allow me to wear contact lenses for distance and reading.  This time (yet another) new lens on the market which compensates for the astigmatism in my right eye has been tried and I go back on Thursday to see how things work out.  I have to say that although reading is not easy with my contact lenses it is better with the new one.  Or there again it might just be wishful thinking and the optician’s version of the placebo effect.  Who cares as long at it “works”!

My eventual emergence from the vaults of the optician galvanized me into a series of visits which I had promised myself.

The first was to Ceri’s studio where I was able to see work in progress.  There is a beautifully finished charcoal of a waterfall where the seemingly effortless depiction of falling water would send Toni into paroxysms of envy.  As the charcoals are studies for the tempera paintings I think that this one is going to be truly spectacular.  I think that I will have to get my pennies together and treat myself to that one.  And yes, Dianne, that is not a casual statement slurred out through drink – which was my expression of interest in the first Ceri painting that I bought!

There were a couple of small pen drawings which I noticed: one of water running over rocks and the other of a landscape with rather scary brambles in the foreground which are going to look wonderful when framed up ready for sale.  I think that they will fly out of the gallery and I hope that Ceri does more of them.

However I was not there to snoop around taking photographs for Toni (though I did do that as well!) but rather to get something for delivery elsewhere!

That waterfall is going to look good.  It really is.  Perhaps I should phone now and not wait.

Then to Tesco, not, this time for myself, but rather so that I could buy flowers for the aunts.

My next visit was however to Rookwood Hospital and the spinal section where a friend was eagerly waiting to go home to the adapted garage which, even as we speak, is being completed for his residence with the inclusion of facilities and the raising of the floor to make it wheelchair accessible.  For a man who was paralysed from the neck down, he has made remarkable progress and can now get himself into a wheelchair!  He was looking (as far as the truly depressing surroundings of a condemned hospital can allow) healthy and happy – and early next month should see him out of the place.

Elated by my first visit I progressed to the first of my aunts, who had herself been to Rookwood for treatment and can barely allude to it without a shudder.  However we had a chat and I put the flowers into a vase so, for a time, all was well with the world.

As my aunt is in her eighties she is finding that she is gradually being isolated in her generation as all her friends and relatives die.  She does have family of children and grandchildren but she (as indeed do I) miss her brothers and sister.

My next visit was to another aunt who, though 95! Is bright, sharp, active and intelligent.  The female line in her family is renowned for its longevity, so my single cousin on that side of the family can be assured of a long life ahead!

It has, to my shame, been a considerable time since I last saw my aunt and when she opened the door she stared blankly at the large man holding flowers until I said, “In your own time, aunt!” when she immediately said my name!

Our conversation was sparkling and it was an oddly rejuvenating experience to talk with (not to, as she more than held her own!) her.

All of this visiting completely wiped from my mind the fact that I had promised a friend that I would go and visit the museum and the new gallery and then have lunch.  My blithe ignoring of this appointment meant that telephone calls zinged their way from person to person so that eventually an international element was added when Toni was informed that I hadn’t kept an appointment and there was no contacting me.

Part of my telephonic isolation was because my phone still thinks that it is in Spain and so the international code for that country has to be applied to get to me and I have to use the international code for the UK when I phone anyone here.

When I was eventually contacted the memory of the appointment, made it must be admitted in a wash of red wine, came flooding back and I later had to make a grovelling apology.  Sigh!

Now it is time to visit my uncle in Maesteg.  But before that is the traditional Getting Paul Squared Out of Bed ritual.  His slumber is truly a little death and I feel positively Christ-like as I command him to rise and walk!

My Uncle Eric (a mere child compared with my Aunt from yesterday) was a little slower and a bit more arthritic but he too made me a cup of tea (a nephew’s prerogative) and our chat was as interesting and topical as ever.  There comes a point in a nephew’s life when he realizes that perhaps he should have spent more time talking to his relatives – ah well!

By way of penance I went to Llandaff Cathedral and asked to speak to the verger.  I was escorted to his room by a very obliging person from the gift shop area and was then a little bemused by his attitude of beratation (a word which does not exist but should) while he abused me roundly much to the bemusement of the lady who eventually asked, “Do you two go back a long way?” before going about her duties.

This unexpected visit (on the part of the verger) may have bought me some credit to help expunge (fat chance) from his mind my unforgiveable forgetting of my luncheon appointment!

By way of contrast I went to a Chinese restaurant on Llandaff High Street in a period cottage and sampled, or at least tried to sample the two-course meal for just under nine quid.

I was shown to my table and given the menus.  When the lady appeared I had not decided and asked for a little more time.  And was then ignored.  I thought that I was being punished for having the effrontery to demand extra time, so I took out my mobile and continued reading the obscure Conan Doyle novel which I only read in snatches when I am delayed or at a loose end.

Eventually another Chinese woman saw me and asked if everything was alright and having given her my order I then heard peals of Chinese laughter as my isolation was discussed.  The original girl herself came around the screen giggling hysterically and sort-of apologized.  It was very difficult to be angry in the face of such hilarity so I just settled down to enjoy my food.

Spicy spare ribs and spicy chicken with egg-fried rice were well served and tasty – but I didn’t feel full in the approved way that is natural for Chinese food and I kept thinking about the similarly priced menus del dia that I could get at home.  With wine!  I was steely in my resolve not to add anything to my menu so left wondering if the half a Belgian Chocolate Cookie from Tesco was still in the fridge at the Pauls’.  

But it wasn’t.  Which makes my resolve even more praiseworthy.  Or something.  

I did notice the mature Cheddar in the fridge that I bought still pristine and inviting!

Play Hard!

When I eventually found a parking space near the museum, in front of the old part of the University, I clumped my way towards the intimidating flight of steps topped by the stout columns behind which the unrelenting stone of the façade was enlivened by a studded bronze door – which was firmly closed.

Mondays are not the days which you use to visit our National Museum.  I clumped my way back to the car and was relieved to see that I had not been clamped as I had blithely assumed that parking such a distance from the Museum would have to be free.  I had not noticed the elegantly spaced payment machines and the discrete signs warning any drivers that payment was essential to park in these isolated positions.

Although culture was denied, it did allow me to progress seamlessly to the centre of the city to indulge in a little light shopping.  My aim was to find a shop in the Capital City of Wales which might be able to provide me with a copy of some of the ballet music from Gretry’s oeuvre as I though that appropriate music by which to dine.  What I hadn’t realized was that the email to me asking me to bring along such music was also supposed to extend to the other people attending the dinner at Ceri and Dianne’s house.

No CDs were to be had, even for ready money and I had cause to bemoan the closure of the Virgin Superstore and the small but select Classical Music Department hidden away from the vulgarity of all those styles of which I know nothing.  I can imagine “Lounge” or “Kitchen” or “Parlour” or even “Bathroom” music – but I do draw the line at “Garage” and other musics appertaining to extraneous parts of a dwelling.

I did, for old times’ sake, buy a few things from the shop that was taking up the premises of the old Virgin Store – and so began the inevitable slide into the wanton distribution of liquid assets to those around me.

As it is a hard and fast tradition with me to buy a new watch every time I go on holiday I was strangely drawn towards all shop windows (and there were many) which made a feature of beguiling displays of timepieces.

Suffice to say that a combination of classical severity of design with the impetus of a half price offer soon made me part with far more money that I had really intended and sport a new watch on my wrist.  Of the six essentials that I need for the perfect watch, the new one had five so I was satisfied – and it is a damn sight lighter than its predecessor.

By this point in my progress through the fantasia of shopping centres that make up the centre of the city I had bags within bags within bags: the sign of a real shopper.

I do feel it is a clear and potent sign of the coming Armageddon and the Fall of Civilization as we know it that you can get your feet nibbled by voracious fish for a tenner in a quite ordinary shopping arcade.

As I seem to grow hard skin as easily as other people misspell “Charades” I felt that it would be no more than an act of gastronomic kindness to let the finny fangs of famished fish feast on my feet – especially the heels.

It was a strangely unsettling feeling to have ones ankles begird with a fringe of chomping exclamation marks making me look like a sort of Piscean Morris Dancer!

The tickling sensation was not unpleasant, but neither was is calming and, at the end of the session I observed that it wasn’t particularly effective either.

As I was having culture denial symptoms I decided to visit the fairly newly opened Cardiff Experience Centre which gave a kids-orientated but still fascinating glimpse at aspects of the city.  This exhibition utilizes part of the old Central Library building and takes my oft-stated idea that the whole of the Central Library should be turned into a “taster” annexe of the National Museum of Wales a step further to realization.

By the end of my meander through the exhibits here it was time for lunch and I ventured under Saint David’s Hall to have the two-course lunch for just under a tenner.  This was excellent value and its quantity made me wonder if I had overdone it considering that I was going out to dinner in some six hours.

I managed to go for a swim in the Eastern Leisure Centre where I had swum every day before school before I deserted it for the more refined setting of the David Lloyd Centre.

Refreshed and exhausted by my swim I felt ready to go to dinner.

Which was wonderful. 

The creamy yet surprisingly light prawn soup was followed by a spectacular marinated lamb (which melted in the mouth) with couscous and piquant vegetables.  The sweet was a chocolate roulade with fruit and cream which was light yet did not deny the calorie-laden delight which made it so tasty.

Food is only one part of a good dinner so it was the conversation and company which provided the extra ingredient which made it memorable!

And so to bed replete and happy.

Talk and Tranquility

It is amazing what sort of sumptuous spread you can produce if you go to Tesco with an open mind and never closed wallet and buy nibbles for an exciting evening meal.  I was determined that Paul Squared would not have to cook anything for the get-together of our friends and this I managed to achieve.

The only cooked item on the menu was a collection of chicken legs which were something of a centrepiece of meat for an other wise largely vegetarian array of interesting dips and constructed savouries. 

By the time we had finished setting the table the results looked more than delectable. 

Part of the effect was made by defrosting a large packet of smoked salmon and augmenting its appearance with various forms of cooked prawns. 

The cheese board looked particularly inviting, especially with the artfully positioned grapes, which I have been long taught are essential component of any real cheeseboard lurked on the periphery of the gleaming wedges.

The number of people who arrived in the evening together with their “variety” was a perfect combination.  It was a delight to see people who I have not seen for a couple of years and to see again those who have been over to Castelldefels in the more recent past.

One can tell the success of any social gathering in which I am involved by the length of time it takes me to get some food into my mouth.  Everyone had eaten something and the table was beginning to look like Miss Haversham’s wedding feast (without the cobwebs, but with the destruction of the food) before I picked up my plate.  A success!

Toni would have been proud of my abstinence, though from a Catalan point of view I lived up to my British heritage!  I even remembered to drink some water before we finally went to bed in the early hours of the morning.

My lie-in this morning had the advantage that I missed the rain, so that my depression with the climactic vagaries of my country did not get into gear until I was told that the unenviable record of dampness had extended itself for another day.

The Cardiff Festival of Food in The Bay was our destination for the afternoon.  This annual extravaganza takes over the space in front of the Millennium Centre with a series of tents showcasing local and national producers of various types of food.

It was packed and it was difficult to fight your way through the crowds to get the miniscule free samples on offer.  We eventually gave in and bought a lamb burger to save off a hunger which had no right to be there after the Tesco flavoured excesses of the night before!  However, the single burger was largely insufficient (though delicious) and it was joined later by another bap containing most of the ingredients of an English breakfast.  This too was delicious – though the combination of the two did mean that I took to my bed for a little rest when I came home.

However the main even in our version of the festival was to see Angela Gray demonstrate her cookery skills in the John Lewis Partnership supported super tent.  It was brilliant to see the other half of the partnership, as her husband had been in the party last night.  She, we were told, was comatose with weariness on the sofa after two solid days of demonstration.

She made a seafood starter, followed by marinated Welsh lamb with salad, finishing with a sort of cream/fruit indulgence that she had made for some French countess when she was a teenager. 

As usual everything was delicious and she knew that she was playing to my weakness when she handed me a sample of the butter-drenched delight that was the starter!  I did attempt to get the recipe but they had all been grabbed during the previous days demonstration and I will have to go on the Internet to find out how to try and emulate her effortless expertise. 

The end result justifies a little effort though.

Tomorrow I shall mix a little art with an ECG – although thinking about it that sounds like the sort of thing that one of the galleries in Barcelona would regard as a bread-and-butter exhibition uniting the two cultures.

The National Museum of Wales has opened a new gallery and I need to see it.  The Welsh Proms are also on and I am inclined to patronize them – in all senses of the word.

I am fighting against the tendency of all travellers to limit their activities when they find themselves in a place for an extended time.  It is the old idea that if you are in a place for a day or so you get to see everything; whereas if you are somewhere for a week you start thinking that “I can do that tomorrow” and you end up doing little.  I have to attempt a judicious mixture of the laid back and the driven to enjoy my time in the UK!

I will evaluate (I have to get used to the word with what is going to happen in the beginning of the next term) my success at the end of tomorrow.

Which is another day.

The rain it raineth every day - true!

One does not, of course, wish to labour the point – but I have been here since Wednesday the 6^th of July and on Wednesday the 6^th of July, Thursday the 7^th of July, Friday the 8^th of July and Saturday the 9^th of July it has rained.  Rained spitefully, viciously and coldly.  And it is July.  As I might have mentioned.  In passing.

Friday (in spite of the rain) was the sort of day during which I heard the siren call of the shops. 

I felt that I had to go with Paul Squared on a mission of mercy to release commodities from their imprisonment on the other side of the counter; but he was still firmly held in the half-nelson of Morpheus and we were expecting Hadyn at some point in the morning. 

Consequently I was reduced to reading one of Conon Doyle’s novels on my phone tangentially featuring the fearsome Professor Challenger and explicitly justifying a more liberal approach towards Spiritualism and the contacting of the dead.

And drinking cups of tea made with pure Welsh Water!

I had forgotten just how pleasant it is to drink water straight from the tap without having to remind oneself that however disgusting the liquid tastes, it is, allegedly safe.  The amount of calcium in the water in Castelldefels makes one astonished that it is actually flows out of the tap in liquid form rather than cascading out in chunks. 

One only has to look at the amount of chalky residue in the kettle to make one wonder just how furred up the pipes leading to dishwasher, shower, and washing machine must be.  In the Barcelona area you have to add the financial burden of replacing water-using machinery on a fairly regular basis to your assessment of the cost of living!

I have now made appointments with the doctor and optician as a sensible part of my time in the UK.  My dentist is unobtainable until August and I was told that he doesn’t work on a Friday so that bit of my Master Plan to Get Everything Done will not be working out. 

The rain has now changed from “shower mode” into “driving mode” and is making my venturing out less agreeable by the minute.

Clarrie has phoned up to check that the arrangements are all in place for the celebrations on the 16^th when I will have left Wales for London and Reading.  My timetable is sorting itself out.

 

“Well,” said the lady in Tesco at the checkout, “I do hope that no one else of your size comes into the shop today because they are not going to get very much are they!”

I must admit that I have behaved like women in M&S at Christmas time when I have observed the female of the species at its most indiscriminately materialistic, sweeping swathes of substances from shelves and into trollies as if everything were free, gratis and for nothing.

I too have been liberal in my acquisitiveness and my largely empty suitcase is now over the limit and I may have to battle my way through the EasyJet website to buy a larger allowance!  But my clothing needs are now satisfied for another season - though I still won’t have very much to wear in winter: another trip perhaps?

The appointment with the doctor (I am still firmly on the system there) was as much social as medical.  I have a great deal of respect for my doctor in Cardiff and will be everlastingly impressed by the way that he got a professor in the Heath to see me individually and not on his usual consulting day during the progress of dealing with my high blood pressure!

 

My blood pressure is a little high, but as I have a highly developed “White Coast Syndrome” I will have to wait and check the readings at home rather than with a doctor watching to get some sort of accurate reading.

I pitied the people whose appointments were later than mine languishing in the waiting room as our talk in the consulting room ranged from the wonders of the British Museum to the life and works of Mervyn Peake with much laughter and a little medical attention along the way as well.  Things appear to be generally satisfactory but I am going back for a scan so that he can have more information to add to my file.

Toni will be appalled, but not surprised to learn that I have bought a couple of books (though remember I bought nothing in London in spite of great temptations) one of which is a series of lists of the “10 most and greatest” so that we had a pleasantly raucous charades aided quiz of the ten most popular pop hits of the 70s and 80s where the amusement felt by all might have had something to do with the amount of alcohol consumed.  I drank the least and confined my imbibing to a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape because I could.

I am now typing in an eerily quite house as I am downstairs and the others are snoring behind closed doors.

Tonight is a little get together of a few old friends so at some time when the sleepers under the hill have finally roused themselves we will have to go back (once again) to Tesco to get the food and drink.

Sunday will probably be a visit to Cardiff Bay because there is a Festival of Food and Drink there and Angela has a part in the proceedings demonstrating her cooking.  And you never know, we might even have some sunshine to tempt me out and about!

London or bust!

Our basic thinking was on the right lines.  Early July; kids would still be in school; holidays would not have started; mid week was a quiet time – the visit to the British Museum would be accomplished with minimal fuss and in the spaciousness of empty galleries.

On every count we were wrong.  The entire youth population of Spain was thronging its way through all the galleries we visited.  British school kids were visiting in phalanxes as an end of term treat.  “Thursdays,” as one taxi driver commented, “are some of our busiest days!”  We couldn’t get a table for lunch.  We couldn’t get anywhere near the Rosetta Stone.  The Egyptian Mummy Room was a nightmare – and I am not referring to the decomposing dead but to the all to lively living who stuck to the glass cases like Amazonian tree frogs!

But in spite of everything it was a successful day.  After misgivings about the willingness of the rail system to accommodate the disabled we were treated with care and consideration not only in Cardiff but also by the incomparable staff in Paddington.  Ramps were provided and porters pushed Louise up them.  In overcrowded trains our seats were, with an imperious flick of a guard’s finger vacated.  Thoroughly tiring but very satisfying sums up the day.

We did not get to see everything that was on the list, but we had a damn good stab at completion and saw a few extras, which were not on the official schedule.

The meal in the museum restaurant was, to say the least, leisurely – it took over two hours for two courses to be served!  But we managed to chat our way through this lacuna and managed to consume a bottle of wine as well.  Louise’s eyelid drooped visibly even when encourage to gloat over the possession of the Elgin Marbles, saved from the hands of the feckless Greeks.  After all, if they can’t run a viable economy they are certainly not to be trusted with some of the greatest cultural artefacts from the Classical World!

Sutton Hoo, the Lion Hunt and various pieces of silverware, not forgetting the Ram in the Thicket and other treasures seen passing through galleries to find the items on our list meant that at the end of the day we were both physically and culturally exhausted.

The taxi drive back from the BM to Paddington was made all the more circuitous because of the road closures to ensure the success of the premiere of the last (positively the last) part of a schoolboy’s adventures in wizardry.

I could have done with a little bit of magic when I was faced with getting all my gadgets fed.  Leads are snaking all over the room as the essential accessories to any attempt at sophisticated living demand their allowances of electricity.

Any nocturnal wanderings will be fraught with peril as I myopically try and negotiate the 3D labyrinth of random wires which would give an athletic bat problems!

But now sleep.  Sleep.  Sleep.

Procrastination, thy name is packing!

I have, scornfully, thrown a few scraps of clothing into a large case and considered the major part of this loathsome occupation done.

The more interesting packing of all those gadgets without which civilized life is impossible still awaits and the depressing pile of uniformly black leads and plugs demands attention.  Which I will delay until the last moment.

My packing is a prime example of “the book for the bath syndrome.”  I sometimes take an age to choose the appropriate book to read in the bath, sometimes taking more time over the choice than the time that I am going to spend in the bath.  Once chosen the book usually remains unread: but it is there “in case”.  The stuff I take is quite literally “in case” usually festering away in the bottom of the luggage and not used at any point in the trip.  But I would not like to be without it.  It is a comforter; a dummy; a pacifier!

Now I really do need to make a move and pack the remaining items.  It will then give me a chance to sit down and suddenly remember an essential that I have forgotten.  Like my spare pair of glasses or the contact lenses that I always vow I will wear instead.

In the airport.  I have just has as gratuitous a revolting meal as I have ever had to suffer in an airport in Britain.  The meal deal in the café in the maelstrom of a holding area for all the paupers travelling with EasyJet was disgusting.

The “caliente” bocadillo of cheese and bacon was made “not cold” (anything more would be a grave misappropriation of any words to do with “heat”) in a filthy piece of equipment which looked as if it has been once an essential part of the persuasive equipment of some particularly vicious Spanish Inquisitor.  After a few (more than two and less than four) seconds this item of the culinary art of Catalonia was deemed ready for consumption.

The tastiest parts of this abortion were the charred remains of previous disasters.  At least the cold lager in the cheap plastic cup was acceptable as was the small packet of crisps that made up this meal deal.  At €8.95 this has to be the worst value that I have had so far in my time in Barcelona.

This holding area is full of grotesque caricatures of British low-life abroad.  Shaven headed thugs in sports shirts and trakkie bottoms abound.  As my seat is en route to the toilets I have seen whole families, none of whose members look as though they could aspire to what Huxley in “Brave New World” termed epsilon semi morons.

One particularly repulsive plump scion was a shaven headed ginger dwarf-like oikish child dressed in cut off sleeve Estoril sports shirt with a (surely not!) tattoo of a dog going to the toilet on his left arm.  His leprously freckled face was almost hidden by what appeared to be a large plastic bomb from which he was drinking via the fuse!  Some things you just can’t make up!

As I am next to the escalator I can view new batches of freaks that are constantly arriving to boost the number of characters which are rapidly forming something worthy of the combine brushes of Bosch and Brueghel at their most nightmarish.

The grotesques have now all lined up to board a plane, I have just discovered, for Belfast.  I rest my case.

It is about now that I go to the board and check my flight and then retire to my seat in cold fury as I find that it has been delayed and I have to sit on the specially designed pieces of discomfort for yet longer!

The plane left on timeish.  And we got into the UK in the scattered rain on timeish.  Even the entry into the UK was not too bad, as the usually sullen faced denizens of the checking of the passports seemed unusually receptive and human.

The drive from Bristol was fraught with fear as I passed each of the recognized stop points at each of the traditional points in the road where stoppages were expected.  Even the horror point of Newport (that vile “city”) was passed with relative ease.

Apart from the completely unnecessary intrusion of rain into my re-introduction to my native land, I have had a more than pleasant evening in Wales.

Now bed so that I can be bright and fresh for the journey to London tomorrow.