Wet!

Thunder, lightning and lashing rain.  And for the next three days.  The misery of trying to pretend that summer is not done and getting over wet because you are still wearing sandals and shorts.  We Winter Deniers are members of a shrinking group, but we still, doggedly, exist.

Most of the car park in the swimming pool was under water.  ‘Car Park’ is a term that glorifies the area that is roughly covered with chippings and has no visible means of drainage except into Mother Earth, so puddles are not unknown after the most cursory of showers.  I had to park the car and then do a sort of tightrope walk along a curbstone to preserve some decorum so that I could still be dry before I got wet in the pool.  Of such contradictions is life made up.

The pool itself was relatively empty (‘We [Catalans] do not swim in weather like this!’ Toni.) though there were the convulsive steppers engaged in their sad and hysterical rituals in the building opposite, clearly visible but shamelessly continuing their painful gyrations in spite of my censorious (though myopic) gaze.

The swim itself was more strenuous than usual because I paced myself against some innocent but competent swimmer in the next lane.  What I thought would be some relatively easy ‘catch-up’ swim on my part did not turn out to be so, and pride came into play to boost my stroke rate so that by the time that I had driven myself to parity I was exhausted.  Luckily for my heart my unwitting opponent decided to have a little rest that allowed my stroke to return to normal and my heart to become less Alpine in its trajectory.  As this little effort was in the middle of my swim I was more than prepared for the session to come to a close.  Though, as I keep telling myself, I do feel better for it.  And I am sure that one gets bonus points for going for a swim in foul weather.

I called into our local Lidl on my way home and the checkout assistant is a very friendly girl who calls me by some foreign inflected version of my name and who assumes on very little evidence except for my unnatural confidence that I speak fluent Spanish.  While it is pleasant to be recognized it is unnerving to have to guess-respond to questions where an aimlessly vacuous smile will simply not do.  Luckily there is always a queue and so one can gratefully give way to the pushiness of a following customer and that, in itself limits the depth of conversation.

The continuing rain is an irritation not only because it is depressing and wet, but also because it stops me from showing that I (with a little help) have Solved a Problem.

Living in an area which actually uses the name of the trees with which we are surrounded to distinguish itself form other areas of Castelldefels has its problems and well as its aesthetic pleasures.  The name of the problem is resin.  The pine trees drip it constantly and, as there are pine trees everywhere it is impossible to avoid.  At least it is impossible for your car to avoid it unless you have a garage.  We could park the car under the house but that would mean opening the gate and that is far too much trouble.  So my car has been disfigured by unsightly blotches of very sticky resin.

This resin is impervious to all types of car shampoo and it is so adhesive that you would need to scrape it off with a force which would damage the paintwork.  I have tried using my nails and that only works to a certain extent.  It doesn’t take the resin off completely and no mater how much you wash your hands afterwards there is a certain time that you have to spend wandering around smelling like a refreshed toilet.  And your fingers tend to stick together.

Before the damaged door of the car was re-sprayed I went to a local garage (the same one which had helped me out to change the wheel – for nothing) and used the local machine and hand wash (by someone else, of course) at vast cost.  But, and this is the positive thing about having a menial job done by a person rather than a machine, when I asked the lad about the problem of resin he explained that he used acetone and he demonstrated and the stuff came off a treat.  I now have a bottle of the chemical but no dry opportunity to cleanse the car to get it back to its pre-resin, display room pristine state.  I am vaguely worried that the acetone will take off whatever layer there is on the paint to keep it safe as I fear that acetone is used in the paint process itself – but I shall experiment and, if successful it will have been well worth going to a shamelessly expensive car wash.

And still the rain hammers down.  There is something vindictive about it all and for the first time this year I actually put the heating on in the car.  I suppose it says something that I had forgotten how to do it.  But 11 degrees is not what I want to read out from the dashboard at any time of the year.

Down to the last dozen or so of the discs to be loaded into the computer which now has about 150 more albums that it did a couple of weeks ago!  That’s over a week of listening to music 24/7 and it has taken me long enough just to put the stuff on the hard disk.

I have downloaded an Autobiography to my Kindle after reading a Guardian review which not only lauded the literacy of the enterprise but also said how miserable it was and how the subject seemed to hate virtually everybody – that should tell you exactly whose autobiography it is and just why it is irresistible!

Clichés Are Always Right!

The Last Chance Saloon for my missing item has been described and now it is only time that will tell whether the LCS lives up to its name.  Because I am bloody sure that the sodding thing isn’t anywhere else!  All my hopes in one location!  And stop using exclamation marks!  Please!

Cold but fine; this is going to be the last reasonable day until well into next week according to the forecast.  The rain symbol, with no coy sun peeping behind it, is in the ascendant for the foreseeable future.  And my mood will plummet, as I now seem to live by Ruskin’s Pathetic Fallacy.  That is one reason that life in the UK does seem impossible at the moment, or an indeed at any moment in the future unless global warming becomes much more dramatic than it is at the moment.

As I type highlights from Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo are playing in the background conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt with the Concentus musicus Wien and Berberian, Hansmann, Kozma, Van Egmond with other nymphs, shepherds and the Capella antiqua München on a Das Alte Werk disc that would have been beyond my purse before the internet destroyed recording.  I am having the time of my life in indulging my slightest tastes in music as the whole edifice of the music industry comes crashing down in a proliferation of impossible-to-resist box sets of scrumptious harmony.

For Proust it was a bit of cake and tea, but for me it is usually music which instantly transports me to a time and place where I first heard it or where I heard it significantly.  L’Orfeo will always be associated with Room 816, Neuadd Lewis Jones, Singleton Park, Swansea when Jim, a bearded, breast stroke swimming, flute playing student asked if he could play a record he needed to listen to for one of his courses.  I complied and then immediately confiscated the record.  Once you listen to the Toccata it is imprinted on your mind.  I loved it and since, I have heard various versions – there is no definitive score to help musicologists, or rather the lack of score is god’s gift to musicologists who can make a career by suggesting various scores of their devising as the ‘authentic’ version that Monteverdi might have had in mind when he wrote this proto-opera.

Since I was in college there has been an explosion of interest in so-called Early Music.  We have seen the rise of the counter-tenor, the development of modern original instruments, the increasing sophistication of musicology associated with Early Music and the truly stunning sound which we now expect when we listen to it.  You listen to some early recordings of Early Music and you will astonished by the roughness of the rendition.  The music may be great but the performance was usually more worthy than polished.

I sometimes wonder if the musical sound that you get in Catalonia when people are building their human castles is more akin to what would have been heard in Britain in the church orchestras that used to accompany the singing.  The sound is raucous, not without a certain uncompromising energy, but you can also see why some members of the clergy would have looked towards the organ as a far more civilized way of providing music rather than the undisciplined gang screeching

away, drowning out the congregation and sometime the clergy as well!

I am just grateful that I can appreciate the advances in recording technique as well as technology that allow me to have an almost unparalleled musical experience.  A far fuller one than the generations of musicians that actually produced most of the music!

I wonder if anyone has done a study about the differences in ‘learning’ music nowadays compared with those brought up with the record player?  My generation of listeners will still probably still know ‘side 1’ of a given piece of music better than the remaining movements.  The inertia of failing to turn the record over to get the rest is something that was real.  Now the whole of the disc plays without your having to do anything except listen!  And listen without clicks, hiss and jumps.  Truly, I live in a very different musical world from the one in which I gleefully accepted my first classical records and got to know The Nutcracker, Peer Gynt, The Planets, The Polovtsian Dances, The Ritual Fire Music and what was contained on Immortal Melodies.  If I try I can even remember some of the record labels: Golden Guinea, Ace of Clubs – and the artwork on the covers even better.  Now all gone and I have multiple versions in much high quality sound, though possibly not in better versions!  My musical memory is nowhere near good enough to remember the personality of the music!

It is now much later in the night.  This writing started in the afternoon when my hopes were all pinned on Toni’s recollection (I gave in and admitted that I had lost something) of where it might be.  It was not a location (at that time) in Castelldefels – and perhaps the phrase in parenthesis gives you some idea of where the actual location might have been.  So, it was well after six before we got there.

Our setting off was fraught.  My TomTom had run out of battery and the other Garmin that I had (come on, you didn’t seriously think that I had only a single GPS did you?) was flat and the bloody lighter socket in the so-called courtesy car did not work.  We relied on memory to get to the garage in a distant town in the dark.  Toni likes to know where he is going, he is not one to relish the unexpected and rely on luck to get himself through.  So two failed GPS and a broken socket did not set, shall we say, a soothing atmosphere for our jaunt.

In a silence broken only by recriminations we finally got to the re-spray place – on a fairly direct route as it turned out and sank with luxurious delight into the palatial, safe comfort of our car.  The SCCC (so-called courtesy car) was relinquished with unseemly haste and we were off back to civilization while riding in civilization.  The smooth silence of the ride was in marked contrast to the opposite of all that we arrived in.

And eventually that which was lost was duly found.  So if anything happens in the UK I will now be able to travel there without the panic of having to find the British Consulate and arrange emergency papers to replace my passport.  You can see why I was a trifle worried; but, as with books, wallets, computers (but not pens) things come back to me.  Generally.

To celebrate the return of decent transport and important papers we went to La Fusta and had our usual tapas and I had a small jug of sangria.  It seemed the least we could do.

I am continuing to load up my computer with my new discs and marvelling at some of the delights I have in store.  Out of sequence, but irresistible, was a piece by Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656) called, ‘A Sad Pavan for these Distracted Times’ played on the virginal.  If he had lived for another decade he would have had even more reason to write such a thing!

Toni might be going to watch his nephew play in a nearby location tomorrow, so I will devote the day, or at least the morning to getting on with the next stage in my writing course.  We have now reached the writing of ‘Setting’ and it was no surprise that the first writer to be mentioned in this chapter of the Big Red Book was Thomas Hardy and his creation of Egdon Heath – though I am glad to say that the monumental of the character-like landscape which Hardy can write is not necessarily held out as a good example to follow for us.  Thank god.

Now to load up another disc to burden the hard drive of this over-worked computer.  Let music un-tune the sky!

Efforts and results

My car is now being seen to and the scratches on the door consigned to a distant memory by the ministrations of a painter, no, what do they call them body sprayers or something who has given me what one could call euphemistically a ‘courtesy’ car.

Never have I driven such a revolting thing.  It is dirty and smelly, the steering wheel grinds when you turn it, the gears are less than convincing and the power steering needs a firm hand – which if you think about it is a little contradictory– its suspension is, how can I put it, a little firm and you have to use a key to turn the engine on!  Such barbarism.  And people may have seen us as we used that so-called vehicle!  And another day of public horror tomorrow before my car, which I now think of a bloody Bentley compared with the jalopy that I am driving now!  And I do believe that use of ‘jalopy’ is the first time that I have ever written the word in anger!

My new watch has been returned to the shop!  Foiled again!  The design of the thing is fatally flawed.  The buttons which change the day, date and month are all far too prominent and any hand and wrist movement can change them easily – and did.  It was like living in a time capsule, you go to bed on one day in a particular month and you wake up half a dozen days later in another month and the wrong day.  

This clearly was unsettling.  

The date even changed while I was swimming, so the watch couldn’t possibly be the One for me.  Pity, I like the design, but at least the money is now safely back in my bank account.  For another watch to replace it, possibly?  But no, I am in a sulking mood and I will revert to one of my other watches as a sort of protest.

Which I have now done – but I fear that my sulk will go unnoticed.  Except by me.

Only one swim today because we had to get up at the crack of dawn to take the car to be done then we had coffee and I had a stupidly expensive cup of tea then it was suddenly the afternoon and the watch had to be returned and things and stuff had to be done and then it was dark and a bit too late and then it was too late and the day was done.  Of such is a retired person’s day made up!

My first piece of OU work for the new course has been returned and I am not entirely happy with my mark.  The tutor’s comments seem fair as, rather gratifyingly, she said that, ‘I have been a bit more pithy in feedback than I would usually be at this stage because I feel this is what you are looking for’ which, to be fair is exactly right.  

What I need to do is go through the feedback and highlight any comments that point towards future expectations.  One has to play the OU game as well as pursue education for its own sake and after all, I am looking for an improvement of just 3%+ in my mark to make me happy!  Oh yes, and improve my writing.

My repaired tooth is not behaving properly and I will have to make a return visit to the dentist.  I have, because I can, sent off for a water flosser from Amazon.  In theory this will improve my dental hygiene in those hard to reach back teeth and in any case it is a completely new type for gadget for me to experiment with.  This should arrive on Monday or Tuesday and I should have had my further check up by then so the future of my troublesome tooth should be well on the way to being settled then.  At least I hope so, because I would like to go back to the good old days when I was able to chew on both sides of my mouth!

Today I received by new book giving examples of five decades of cartoons form the pages of Private Eye.  I recognized some of them from my own reading of the rag and also from other books that I have on Private Eye.  To be truthful I laughed out loud on very few occasions, but there is the sort of quiet humour which is deeply satisfying.  The quality of cartoons in Private Eye is astonishing and in many cases the sheer artistry is not only of the highest quality but is audacious in its innovation.

Having said all of that, I have to admit that my favourite cartoonist is probably Glashan.  His style is distinctive, but one could not pretend that his artistic style is the most accomplished, though, like Thurber one would not like it to be more ‘artistic’.  I love the dark humour of which he is capable – though come to think about it, I don’t really know any lightly amusing Glashan cartoons.  I have the Penguin John Glashan and it is disturbingly funny.  His official website is at http://www.johnglashan.com/index.html and is worth looking at.

Now, some tidying with a purpose.  I have mislaid something which I am not yet prepared to admit publically.  At least not in this part of the world.  I shall think and work backwards and take Mad Lewce’s advice and look at things at least three times in my attempts to find it. 

I live in hope!

Some things never change

Toni has turned from the theoretical to the practical and is repairing his old computer for his mother with much drilling, solder and other things about which I have no desire to know.  It is touching the way that he assumes that I have even a passing interest in actually knowing how these things are done!  As long as he’s there to know, why should I burden my mind with such knowledge!  Anyway, to be on the safe side I try and show a polite interest and make the appropriate cooing noises when I am shown something that is, apparently, interesting.

Writing my Morning Pages on the computer is nothing like the same as using a pen and having written two days on the computer I am ready to buy another book and get writing again.  It is more of a physical effort to write rather than to type and the extra effort is, I think, an element without which I cannot do.  The computer is fine if you have done all the preparatory work and all you are doing is just writing out a draft.  I then need hard paper copy to edit and then back to the screen where editing is simple, again as long as you know what you are doing.

There is nothing more delightful than moving a paragraph around on a computer – because you can.  When I was using a real typewriter then a paragraph out of sync. was a disaster and it simply had to stay.  Unless, of course you had a home photocopier and you could cut and paste!  And of course I did have a home photocopier, until printers made them obsolete – but by that time the Word programs were good enough for you to start real editing without fearing the loss of you document or other things that early versions of Windows did with impunity!

Why is it that the little obvious jobs take so much time to do?  Why do we (I) put off a simple case of minimal reorganization for so long?  Or is it just I – or do you do the same?

It all, as is to so often the case, comes down to tea.  Of late I have eschewed normal tea and have given myself to the exotic.  Which is tautological, or pleonastic or self-contradictory, or is it only me noticing such things?  Anyway I am not drinking the floor sweepings put into little bags but am branching out into whole other areas of dried left taste experience.  

One bag from Lidl’s says it is Mediterranean tea which seems to mean oranges and lemons with flowers.  An interesting taste and one that I think corresponds to the Barcelona Tea that I was told about on Sunday, but I will delve deeper into this and get some of the ‘real’ stuff when I go into town for my next opera.  I understand that it may be purchased in the ‘Tea Shop’, which is just inside the Triangle next to the Café Zurich.  Which in itself is next to FNAC and – but that is another story and I am working on the next ‘chapter’ of that saga, and it can wait to be told if there is a satisfactory outcome!

Tomorrow the car goes to have the door repaired in the garage next to the pharmaceutical company in which the wrecker works.  I will have to get the car cleaned so that the appearance of the repaired door can be seen clearly in comparison with the old.  More money to be spent!

My swim this morning was in the afternoon, though only just in the afternoon and it went well.  Though I was bereft because of the untoward behaviour of my swimming device.  I had recharged it and now all it will do is show the battery full sign and nothing else.  I assume that I have over charged it somehow (I have a shrewd idea) and I will have to wait in patience (and silence while I swim) for the thing to run down and become more amenable to conversation with the computer. 

I sincerely hope that nothing bad has happened because this will be the third or fourth time that I have had to send this machine back.  Why persist, I hear you ask.  Well, it is the only one which does the job, all the others are less impressive and I am prepared to take the rough with the smooth and hope for the best and all other clichés in my continuing use of it.  Roll on the hours for the thing to run down and then I will start praying. 

If I do have to send it back I will order another at the same time.  Stupid, eh?  But that’s the way I work!

How does my next topic link to the last, well, I can see a way of seguing from one to the other!  I am currently reading a book (on my new Kindle, though to be fair I was also reading it on my old one) on The Borgias by Christopher Hibbert and in the narrative of blatant self-interest, nepotism, outrageous lying, re-writing history, coercion, rigged voting, bribery, violence, the love of money, ostentatious display and so on, I couldn’t help thinking of our own dear government.  British?  Yes!  Spanish?  Absolutely!

In the latest twist about the carnival of freaks that make up the Spanish Cabinet, the minister of education (who is universally loathed) has been called ‘rubbish’ by a British spokesman for the European Parliament.  The look on the Spanish cretin’s face when an eager journalist told him what he had been called was priceless and, in theory, I would buy a mug emblazoned with his face at that moment and a suitably insulting inscription!  This was only the highlight of days of many ‘What the fuck did he say?’ type incredulous conversations that have been going on conducted by various journalists and by Spanish students around Europe. 

Clearly, he should resign and, if he had a shred of decency, go on national television bow to the population and then disembowel himself with a blunt stick. 

Unfortunately, owning to the shameless (and shameless is far too mild a word to express it) nature of the so-called Spanish Government, the Walking Joke (Rajoy aka the Stumbling Idiot) has expressed full confidence in the piece of mediocrity.  As well he might, because the antics of the clowns he has surrounded himself with deflect some of the attention from the shady dealings that he is involved in.  When denounced he angrily defended himself and said that everything was untrue ‘except for some things’!  It really defies contempt!

The last box of new discs is waiting to be fed into the computer, though with the device temporarily (I hope and trust) out of action I will have to enjoy my new acquisitions by listening to them in the aleatory system that governs what I hear when I turn on iTunes!

Now back to the Third Floor to get stuck in to more writing and feed in more discs.  And prepare myself for my second swim of the day without my trusty music!

I shrug off hardship and face the travails of my existence with a wary smile!