'Tis almost time!

My imperfect health, encouraging feelings of justified resentment that this is all happening (and indeed has all happened) during a very important holiday before the long, long slog to the next period of escape, has now engendered in me a feeling of such overwhelming irritation that I am disinclined to continue this absurd state of affairs for a day longer!

I therefore let it me known that tomorrow, Sunday, has to be the last day of snuffles or any associated discomfort so that I can live the true irony of being perfectly well when I start the new term!

Having completed my reading of that perennial favourite beloved of so many, “Varney the Vampyre” I have turned to something a little different. 

“Fallen Angels” by Michael Flynn (and others) is a tale of the future in which the use of “inappropriate” technology is banned and the Greens have virtually destroyed the planet by terminal conservation, halting the natural greenhouse effect and thereby encouraging the advance of the glaciers of the next Ice Age.  The only centre of technology is found in the augmented space stations which now sent out spacecraft to scoop nitrogen from the atmosphere of earth to keep themselves going.

The action heats up (pun intended) when two pilots of an atmosphere skimming craft are shot down and land on a glacier.  The only people who can help them are those who still believe in science – old sci-fi fans.

There are some interesting takes on the disastrous effect of right thinking political attitudes, but the novel has settled down into a fairly run of the mill adventure story with the suspension of disbelief aspect of the story being an attempt to find and fire up a rocket to get the two Angels back to their station in space.

I really will have to read something of literary value next or I will soon have completely lost the hard won critical faculties that I thought I possessed that should be telling me to read something else! Though the simple, unalloyed delight one gets when reading trash is something difficulty to resist.  And, as it is the tail end of the holiday I think I have a right, if not a positive duty to indulge myself to the full.

Especially as the two-volume Modern Art book should arrive on Monday and I will take that as the start of my attempt to write a reference book for the course that I am teaching in art.  If nothing else it will give me the opportunity to justify looking at art books and buying more!

As if to add injury to illness I have now developed muscular pain in my right leg.  This is now bordering on absurdity!

I have done my best, but on a Sunday evening, half watching Barça play Español with a computer facilitated balanced English commentary and a highly biased in-house commentary, I find it impossible to ignore the fact that tomorrow is a Monday and one on which I will have to get up at some ungodly hour in the profound darkness and set off on an overcrowded main road full of disgruntled workers including teachers who will have faces full of woe as they finally go to their places of inadequate remuneration.

In short, tomorrow is the start of the next term and one which stretches on and on into the distant future of lighter mornings.

Day by day.

May I have my time back, please!

As holidays go (and this one has gone) I have to rate this one as something of a disaster.  I can truthfully say there has not been a single day on which I felt fully well.  Some days were better than others, but cough, cold, sneeze, headache, running eyes and gastric eventfulness have been my lot during the fag end of the year and the promise of the new.

As illnesses go mine have been generally low irritation but debilitating all the same.  I do not feel refreshed in any way, shape or form for the start of the new term which I am approaching with a lack of enthusiasm compared with which Toni is an avid supporter of Real Madrid!

The one achievement of this vacation is that “Varney the Vampyre” (over a thousand pages in my electronic version) is now read.  I think this is an achievement on a par with my reading of “Melmoth the Wanderer” about whose completion I am still wondering if that was the best outlay of academic time in University!  There was also “The Mysteries of Udolpho” which, on page eight hundred and odd says something like, “Reader, if I have been able to beguile a moment or two . . “ which certainly is understatement of a grand order!

“Varney” does not pretend to be anything more than an extended penny-dreadful with Gothic horror pilled on unlikely circumstance.  It doesn’t all fit together in a neat package and some characters die (or don’t) and their futures are not exactly clear.  Even the ending of the novel is somewhat equivocal and I suppose that we are meant to think that Varney has found another guise to continue his blasted existence.

There is nothing original in the story, which concerns a family which seems to be persecuted by a Vampyre (much more interesting spelling) – or is he?  The daughter of the family appears to have been bitten and the action of the novel (if it can be called one) is taken up with the efforts of the family to save her, get her happily married and confound the forces of evil.

The Vampyre of the title is a re-vivified criminal who has been hanged for his misdemeanours and is given an extended life span by the experimental ministrations of an eager doctor.  The Vampyre is most concerned to regain possession of a fortune lost, and then taken back by murder most foul, and then lost again by a confederate inconsiderately killing himself just before revealing where the money has been stashed for safety.  As the whole of the narrative is on this level it is hardly worth reciting the details.

The characters are cardboard and even take in a la Smollett an amusing deus ex machina retired Admiral and a drunken ex-seafarer companion.

The Gothic elements are interestingly handled with the reader being given enough information to believe in the supernatural while consequent events seem to suggest that there is a more realistic explanation for the action.  This does not, however cover all the action of the novel and the author seems to want his cake and eat it as far as realism is concerned.

The credulity of the common people is constantly ridiculed yet the form and content of this piece constantly draws on the popular fascination that the living dead has.  The Mob is constantly shown as deluded, fickle and very dangerous and the book is not without episodes of gruesome death and almost casual slaughter.

Historically this book is interesting for bringing together all the aspects which would appeal of popular prejudice and giving them an overlay of reason.  It panders to an audience who like to see virtue and steadfastness triumph, but with the triumph being achieved only at considerable cost.

For me one of the most interesting aspects of the novel is how money is treated.  A decent family brought low by the gambling debts of a wastrel father find nothing wrong in digging up the hidden corpse of the successful gambler killed by the father to take the deeds to a “modest” property that they thought that they had lost but which, by great good luck, were still on the person of the murdered player.  Having got the deeds they then carefully rebury the victim and presumably sleep easy in their beds.  Their discussion about the lost winnings taken back by murder are also interesting in that they are very easily convinced that there is no real crime involved in their using the money should they find it.

In the even the money goes back to the Vampyre probably which allows him (if he is a him and not some supernatural being) to start yet another new life.

The very end of the novel contrasts the skulduggery of the fabulous creature of the title with the honest virtue of the daughter of the oppressed family.  So that’s all right then.

Whatever I actually think about the literary value of the story, I did enjoy the (lengthy) read and it has encouraged me to look at other examples of the genre with perhaps a little more merit.  Or I could do some real work.  Perhaps.

Or indeed not.  I am finding that the various forms of non-healthy inconvenience, the low grade not wellness that has characterised the holiday is actually pretty much a full time occupation.  Even reading is difficult as my eyes are watering from the strain of something or other.

But begone self-pity: the Easter holidays will be here almost before we know it!

Strange Days Go On

Never let it be said that god (aka God) does not have a sense of humour.  During the celebrations of his (His) birth on a day on which he almost certainly was not born I came into contact with my Catalan "family".

And as certainly as Catalans do not drink enough alcohol, so I just as certainly contracted an illness from Toni’s family.  It is traditional for at least one of the family to be ill for Christmas Day and this year is was Toni’s brother-in-law’s turn.  I seemed to have escaped the lurgi during the actual festivities but a visit in the New Year, with the illness now having transferred itself to Toni’s brother-in-law’s wife (aka his sister) and obviously having gone up a notch in virulence – the very next day I succumbed.

Although I got up at the crack of dawn to take Toni for his blood test, on my return I adopted my patented approach to all types of illness and took to my bed for a day.  Don’t knock it, it worked.  Apart from a few alarms and excursions (over which I will draw the discreet mist of air freshener) I spent about 15 hours in bed.  And felt better.

I suspect that the illness was lurking biding its time towards victory during my time in the opera – but, thankfully, apart from a certain tightness around the tum I was able to get through the three hours of the music.


The opera was “Linda di Chamounix” by Gaetano Donizetti – what a glorious load of rubbish it all was!

As the last opera I went to in the Liceu was La Grande Macabre the sheer tunefulness was like balm on an abused ear!

To my mind this was the most satisfactory ensemble piece that I have seen in the theatre.  There was not a duff voice among the cast with the possible exception of  Carlo (Juan Diego Flórez) who I felt lacked the power and authority necessary for the role.  I might add that I was obviously in a very small minority as was made obvious by the storm of appreciation that greeted his star arias.  Decent tenors are as rare as a musical opera by Ligetti and perhaps I was just annoyed that Flórez was no Domingo (which I readily admit is unfair) and I was able to enjoy his voice as well!

Melodramatic rubbish Linda di Chamounix might be but the director (Emilio Sagi) has made the most of the scenic opportunities that the story offers.  The set (Daniel Blanco) is basically a box with curved sides with three entrances on each side with a di Chirico perspective effect. 

Up-stage is raked to provide a hill/slope which provides a startling background to the action and provides the basis for some breath-taking backlit, silhouette set pieces.  I particularly like the use of the chorus to “plant” the slope with flowers and also the use of cyclists to give a certain dynamism to the space.

The set ends downstage at the proscenium in a black glittering and reflective thrust.  I spent most of the opera wondering if this shining surface was there intentionally and if so what function it was supposed to have.  My ideas became so involved and pretentious that they imploded and I simply gave myself to the music.

Although simple the set was an excellent backdrop and Act II saw the introduction of a grand staircase which was stunning.

Act III used the simple expedient of linked tables lit like a great white way for the dramatic entrance of Linda for her finale.

The cast are clad mostly in khaki, light browns and deep creams and look terminally tasteful with the comic villain, the Marqués de Boisfleury, in black.  His snail-like entrance in the slowest electrically driven black limousine that I have seen in opera was almost a coup de theatre, but not quite.

But the music.  The music was wonderful, sometimes with the comforting predictability which keeps you warm and cosy and sometimes with shock as the orchestra attempted (very successfully) to mimic the sound of a hurdy-gurdy.

But enough already, the title of the opera has the character Linda in it and on her performance makes or breaks this piece and this Linda (Diana Damrau) was a triumph.  She made the sometimes-absurd coloratura (is that a tautology?) seem dramatically convincing.  Her mad scene was not as flamboyant as that in Lucia, but she made the most of it and received the extended applause that she deserved.

The orchestra under Marco Armillato was excellent though there were places where the singers were drowned out and there were the usual problems with wayward horns!  But a fantastic sound ably augmented with the chorus directed by José Luis Basso.

I liked the modern implications of migrant workers; patronising hypocrisy on the part of the rich; knowing acceptance on the part of the poor.  Perhaps if you worked hard you could update this rickety narrative and make it politically appropriate.

The story of the opera is weak, very weak – but I did take note of certain aspects of the opera which were though provoking.  The chorus are going to Paris to get money to send back to families at home, while the lord of the manor goes to the same city for frolics – and all the workers know exactly what he is up to.  

The end of the opera was also interesting.  The inevitable and totally unconvincing re-establishment of sanity and the uniting of the lovers was not as facile as I expected it to be.  Linda’s response to Carlo’s fervid assertion that he loved her was, “If you loved me you would not have made me unhappy.”  Fair point!  The eventual breakthrough in Linda’s journey from melodramatic madness to loving sanity was actually made to seem reasonable!  Quite an achievement!

Overall a wonderful evening’s entertainment – enlivened by the two ladies who spoke to me in the interval as we swapped stories of opera visits!

And time to get on and start preparations for the next opera whose title and composer I had never heard of before the start of my opera subscription.  Such is education!

About which, of course my mind is increasingly brooding about as the date gets nearer to the dreaded 9^th of January.

It would be absurd to allow dwelling on the awful future to infect the pleasant present – so just tell me how you do that without using Grade A drugs!

This afternoon we went to Sitges and, because our tried and tested restaurant was closed we tried a new place.  This was a little further away but gave the sort of poncey food that I like.  Pasta with Rochefort cheese sauce and woodland fruit topped with Parmesan; rice with prawns, cod and egg; biscotti with chocolate sauce and washed down with sangria.  Excellent value at €12·50.  A place to go back to.

I took the usual pictures with my newish camera in Sitges and I will have to see if I have produced anything which is in any way a little different from the many pictures of the church in Sitges, the solitary palm tree or the sculpture on the roundabout that have been my traditional subjects.  I live in hope!

Tick tock!

The old year is drawing to its close and for some this is a time for reassessment and the making of resolutions for the New Year.  Bugger that!  For me to start making resolutions now when I have been signally reticent from doing so for all the other years of my life would smack of desperation.

No, I shall merely do what I have done ever since I started working in the field of education (and how apt that metaphor really is, especially with regard to the preparation of the ground) and that is to look upon the arrival of the New Year as the countdown to the start of a new term and finding our “clients” insufferably refreshed from the holiday, while we, however . . .

My reading of “Varney the Vampyre” (originally published as a Victorian “penny dreadful” and which, but for electronic publishing would have been justly forgotten) continues apace.  It is indeed awful and gives new meaning to the word “hack”, but I find it strangely compelling.  Not only because of the dreadfully bathetic title, but also because the writing is of so low a character that one can confidently read it as though it was written by oneself on an off day!  Delight!

Lunch was in a vast restaurant in Gava which was advertising places for the New Year’s Eve bash at a mere €65 per person.  Our meal was a more civilized €11·50 with drink and coffee; more than acceptable.

The visit to the doctor was most encouraging as he has pronounced my lungs “perfect” and I can stop taking the inhalers at once – which might also have some effect on my voice as they might have been making my vocal chords raspy.

As a purely psychological reaction I have begun to cough more and later this evening I will probably do a reasonable vocal impersonation of Louis Armstrong – but I expect to be better by tomorrow.  I have had enough and more than enough of not feeling fully well.  I want to enjoy the rest of my short holiday.

Tomorrow we will be going to Terrassa for lunch and then the evening celebrations the high point of which is eating twelve grapes each one to the sound of the bell tolling the hours at midnight. 

Traditionally the clock that is shown on television is one in the centre of Madrid but I expect that we will be tuning in to the Catalan television version and so will see a clock tower is some god-forsaken part of deepest darkest Catalonia where a small village will have its Warhol fifteen minutes of fame - or rather just over twelve seconds of fame before it lapses back into obscurity, the lighted clock tower sinking back into the pre-television lights darkness.

The charging tray has been a great success and all I need now is one of those fine nib permanent markers to write which gadgets will work with which leads on the thoughtfully provided labels.  At the moment it would seem that a strange wave of logicality has swept through the electronics industry and the lead with the little boat like configuration is able to power a whole range of things.  I must admit that I have a healthy scepticism about any “logic” that the makers of sleek metallic containers of flashing lights might use on their products and I suspect that I am doing irreparable harm to the delicate electronic insides of my favourite things.

So far, and using only four of the myriad available leads I have been able to charge camera, phone, Kindle (two types), Nano and iPod.  I might actually have bought something which is more than a mere gadget and is actually worth the money.  I shall savour this unusual experience!

I have to admit that some of the connectors on the leads that I am not using look positively medical in their complexity and I shudder to think what is actually powered by them.  Presumably they relate to some of the vast array of chargers that narrow-minded mobile phone makers made sure could only power their own products until some sense was beaten into them.  It never ceases to shock me that, despite the historical fact of the VHS/Betamax debacle manufacturers have been allowed to get away with spurious attempts at commercial exclusivity.

Now it is only Apple who spurns industry standards and demand their own.  It cannot be too long before the iPad falls to the ubiquity of the USB and the mighty citadel of Apple purity falls!  After all there are USB ports on my MacBook Air so the logic would suggest that the iPad should not be exempt.

I note that Channel 4 is going to give Stephen Fry some indulgence space to nurture his verbosity on his 100 favourite gadgets.  I think that we (Toni) will have to set the Machine to record this, as we will be in Terrassa at the time of the broadcast.

Something to look forward to.

Time goes on

One has entered that delicious phase which is common just after Christmas Day during which one is not really sure of what day it is.  

It matters little that one has the day indicated on one’s watch face as one has begun to disbelieve such transitory and circumstantial evidence and the only way you can work out the day with any degree of assurance is to work forwards from the day when one didn’t have to go to school.  As that day was a Thursday and Christmas Day was on a Sunday it is all very difficult.

However I do know that tomorrow I go back to the doctor for a further check up.  The cough is still there but nothing like so severe as it has been over the last few weeks and what is more disturbing now is the rough quality of my voice which is not getting better. 

I have taken the ultimate step on the road to recovery and bought two new jars of honey which, together with freshly squeezed lemons and boiling water is my sure-fire recipe for my usual smooth velvet tones to return!

Today was the day of buying the bits and pieces for the pica-pica that we are supposed to take as our contribution to the New Year’s Eve meal in Terrassa. 

I sometimes think that I should be given some form of medal to going shopping with a devout and dedicated non-shopper. 

Years of parental training (maternal not paternal) thrown away when the person you are shopping with can only say, “Right, let’s go!” as soon as the most basic purchases have been made. 

Where is the appreciation of the more stately aspects of the noble art of consumerism when every pause and deviation is questioned by someone whose idea of shopping is to get what is needed and then get out.  I pity such a beggared vision of what shopping is really like.

I have done nothing about getting my teeth seen to.  A perfectly natural aversion to having my teeth seen to by anyone other than Mr Hamilton, the dentist of my childhood.  Every dentist since has been a pale reflection of the memory of the man in whom I put total faith.  I don’t think that I have ever fully forgiven him for dying and forcing me to go to someone other than himself.  It was only then that I understood the fear and loathing that other people usual displayed towards their dentists.

And now I have to go to someone who doesn’t even speak my language.  Though come to think about it Mr Hamilton’s Irish accent was usually impenetrable to me, so not much change there!

It will have to be done.  And soon.

Mobile money

My bank account is considerably lighter, but I do have a car that goes.  Which is a good thing I suppose.

I did not allow my features to crack into anything approaching a smile when I paid over the money.  All that money.  Money gone.  All of it.

But it’s only money after all.  Money that could have been spent on things made of metal with flashing lights.  But spent instead on something as mundane as a bloody clutch.

Then it was off to one of the worst medical facilities that it has been our misfortune to patronise with our ailments, or at least with Toni’s ailments.  They way that his knee has been seen to, or rather not seen to.  For physiotherapy the most helpful person who saw to him was a lab technician rather than a trained physio.

The information given to him has been sketchy and, in spite of their inability to diagnose what was happening from an x-ray they delayed giving him a magnetic resonance scan until god knows what other damage had been done.

Today was the getting of the copy of the scan on a CD.  Needless to say there was neither a parking space nor a CD when we got there.  When Toni asked for his disk he was given some unreasonable excuse why it wasn’t ready and was asked to give them an extra 15 minutes to make the disk.  Meanwhile I prowled around the parking area circulating in my newly repaired car like a motorized stalker.

When we finally got a parking space with Toni standing sentinel over the gap and then went for a rather frosty coffee – the atmosphere, not the drink.  Fifteen minutes up Toni stomped back and, sure enough, the woman he was supposed to see was not only not there but also had left the telephone off the hook.

Frost became glacial.

The woman reappeared and ignored Toni’s greeting and proceeded to shout into the off-hooked phone until she hung up with a wry smile.

Amazingly she got Toni’s CD and handed it to him without a word and we left hurriedly before anything else could go wrong.

A certain triumphal thaw continued through lunch which we had in a celebratory sort of way in our favourite (and cheap) restaurant in the centre of the town.

With the newly mobile car we called into Lidl after lunch and stocked up with the heavier good which immobility had denied us: milk and water.  And a few other bits and pieces – including a sonic cleaner, a watch display case and a multi-charger tray, and some food.  And yes, I did remember the milk and water.

I have made a halfhearted attempt to try (yet again) to bring some sense of order into the welter of serpentine horror that comprises my expanding collection of gadget power leads.  I am hoping that the new “tray” which is not one of those new-fangled things that recharges the device merely by resting on a special surface but rather a fairly basic container with DC outlets for five or six leads to be permanently connected but hidden out of sight until needed.  There is even a label you can use to identify each one.  Nothing really new about the device, but the combination of things will be useful I think.

Meanwhile the trip to the dentist beckons.

Terrible transport

Cars are hateful bloody things.  They are a thorough nuisance when you are without one, especially if you are used to one and therefore have conditioned yourself to be particularly helpless when motorised transport is denied you.  They are also vile when they are working as they constantly ask to be fed with increasingly expensive liquid and finding somewhere suitable to leave them is becoming virtually impossible.

It was therefore with ill concealed fury that, having woken up at an ungodly hour to get my car to the garage for 8.30 am I had to wait while people arrived at the garage before I could walk home.

That anger was as nothing when I heard that the trouble was the clutch which had to be replaced at a vast and fabulous cost!  So much for the season of goodwill.  The clutch costs as much as a mobile phone that one would not be ashamed to use in technologically literate company!  What a waste of money, when it could be spent too much more advantage on flashily showy gadgets.

There is something depressingly quotidian about mere transport which, in spite of its necessity, leaves me quite cold.

So the so-called “extra” pay (which because of the crisis I have not actually been paid, and even when it is it is no all of it) will be lavished on a bloody clutch!

The long walk back from the garage was cold and depressing and convinced me that, however much the clutch cost, it was worth it!

Car-less, we ate locally and tried out a new locale by walking over the blue pedestrian bridge to a motorway café which I have long longed to try.

The menu came in three sorts and we chose the cheapest of the menus at some off price of just under €7·50 which, with tax and coffee came to just under €9. 

For this princely sum I had a starter of spaghetti “mar y montaña” (the Catalan version of “surf and turf” which they claim to have originated) which comprised spaghetti, small bivalve shells, salty mushrooms and some unidentified bits of meat-like substances, all in a vaguely tomatoesque sauce.  It could have done with some grated cheese which I was too shocked to ask for, but it was reasonably good.

The second course was fatty meat (delicious, a guilty pleasure, but delicious) with woodchip like chips.  The sweet was Crema Catalana which was the best of the three courses and home made.  The wine was a very, very young and untamed Rioja made palatable by Casera.  I am sure that this was the sort of meal that, when I first came to this country I would have been bowled over by.

Although relatively cheap and relatively tasty, I am no longer so easily impressed and I think that I would have preferred to have paid a few euros more and had a much better meal.  It was just as well that I heard about the cost of repairing the car after lunch because my jaundiced mood would have made my reception of the meal even less positive!

I have just read one of Rider Haggard’s books after a very long period since I read the last one.  “King Solomon’s Mines” was something of a favourite with me when I was younger and the character of Gagool has remained with me.  I also seem to recall some expressive line drawings in the Puffin edition.

I loved “King Solomon’s Mines” but my reading of the most recent book makes me think that Haggard is something of a pernicious writer.

I know it is very easy from this historically distant standpoint to read someone writing about Africa in 1908 and take a snooty attitude towards the condescension and racism that, even if it is not plainly evident, must be there. 

Haggard goes out of his way to show the nobility of the natives and makes a number of snide remarks about the morality of the colonial whites.  The main character’s father is depicted as a bigoted and dangerously selfish clergyman devoted to the idea of martyrdom at the expense of his family.  The villain of the piece (one of many) is a renegade white “gentleman” who is demonstrated to be a coward who also hits women and has native “wives”.  Need more be said!

The plot is one of the sort which uses elements common to many of the novels of his I have read.  There is a more than generous ladling of magic and fantasy; there is a noble and self-sacrificing native; the main character is a fey, yet goddess-like white woman who rules over the imagination of the natives; there is war and struggle; death and redemption all leading to the affirmation of the power of love.

I read it compulsively as I am sure his readers did in the first decade of the twentieth century!

Now to bed to try and gain the right frame of mind to pay out the vast sums of money this are necessary to get my car back into service tomorrow.

It’s only money.

Catch Up

Today, Boxing Day – or more importantly my Saint’s Day – was notable for lots of things, but, to my mind the most engaging thing was when I looked into the heavens just before I got to Toni’s sister’s flat and only saw the suggestion of clouds out of the corner of my eye.  A sky that flawless this late in December deserves some respect!

Christmas Eve had its own special flavour with the hitting of the log to shit presents with my own excreted gifts including a USB heated drink coaster; a X frame for tablet computers and a very large bottle of aftershave.

My name day saw our having a meal of fideua followed by an experimental chocolate fountain.  My Saint’s Day’s gifts included a book of world architecture; a couple of bottles of Cava and some spa body wash.  All in all a good haul.

What hasn’t been good has been my total inability to get an email plus specially taken photograph to act as a Christmas message to those I should be in contact with.  Each one of the select number of Christmas cards that I have received has been a vicious prod in the area where my guilt complex should reside.  To those who did send a card, I should inform then that they form a neat row under the television and on the printer – and very nice they look too. 

Next year.  Without fail.  Cards of some sort will be sent.  Honestly.

Or not, of course.

Now back in Castelldefels, tomorrow the car has to be taken to the garage, as acceleration seems to be a thing of the past.  My teeth need attention and my cough is still with me.

Roll on the rest of the holiday!