Making waves - but little ones

Swimming on a regular basis you soon come to realize that some days are better than others as far as the actual stroke action is concerned.  This morning was one of those days in which the action seemed, if not effortless, then certainly achievable with less effort than normal.  I sometimes think that the difference is the other people swimming ‘with’ me.  Very often (always?) the other people have no idea that their progress is determining mine – unless of course they are like me and use other swimmers as markers.

The other swimmers this morning were a small child whose swimming was the sort of organized chaos which, even to my myopic eyes was irresistibly funny.  He looked as though he was worming his way through the water.  My other marker was a gentleman in the other lane who had a decent turn of speed but not quite as quick as me.  Both of them stopped from time to time after a couple of lengths, whereas I ploughed onwards without ever stopping.  This meant that I was constantly having a series of successes while my music pleasantly accompanied my achievements.  This went on until both of my markers and their replacements had left the pool and I thought that it was time to look at my watch.  And discovered that I had swum a full ten minutes more than my allocated half hour stint!

In the way that I figure these things, I have therefore decided that I can have the do it yourself risotto that has been languishing in its little plastic container for months as part of my 20% where I don’t have to worry about my diet.  In fact, giving how backsliding I was this week, I am amazed that I still managed to lose half a kilo, so whatever I am doing it is having the right effect.  At the moment, kilo by kilo.  Slow progress.

My writing continues, but the ten people in my tutor group seem to have writer’s cramp and neither post nor comment.  If this continues I shall neither post nor comment myself.  He said sulking.  It is early days yet, and there should, in theory be lots to read and comment on.  There better well bloody be!  Or I shall ask for my money back.  At least.

I fed my watch again today I the spate of sunshine that we had in the afternoon.  I did not, I have to admit, sit outside with it – that was going too far.  I am sure that the sun is just as hot as it was in the summer but it does seem a damn sight farther away from us than it was.  And while I am still wearing sandals as a last ditch rejection of the onset of winter, I am not prepared to be as skimpily dressed overall as I am in the feet area.

I have been reading cheap Kindle books of such awfulness that I am not even prepared to give the titles.  They were just the other side of being a guilty pleasure (like reading Agatha Christie) and more of a waste of time.  Still, I have also downloaded a couple of Kindle books of poetry.  I am sure that we are going to be overwhelmed with reprints of every poor trench dwelling soldier who was able to rhyme next year, but I am looking for bargains and wondering if they can be read in a Kindle format.  I have just bought one called, I think, Poems of War which goes back to the American Civil War and the Crimea rather than to Classical times.  Another anthology goes back to an English sailor writing to his love while fighting the Spanish in the sixteenth century.  This anthology traces the difference between the intellectual elite who write about warfare in the abstract and those soldiers who write about it from first hand.  As long as I can get used to the format, I am looking forward to increasing my knowledge of a whole range of poets of whom I have never heard!

Roll on next year when I think that I will be in the market for some of the books which are bound to be produced to mark the start of the conflict.  I still think that my old anthology called ‘Men Who March Away’ by Parsons is one of the best that I have come across.  I would be delighted to find out that a new one has been produced and will take over as my favourite!

Now, more writing on the forums and the vain hope of some sort of response!

Long time passing

Where is the blog?  Where is the writing?  I seem to have been doing little else, but it does not make it to these pages.  Week, almost a week of frantic tapping at the keyboard and nothing to show for it!  Shame on me.

As I now have the memory of a retarded goldfish I will not even attempt to make up for lost anecdotes but live of the moment and luxuriate in it.

The next watch has, today, entered the growing collection.  This one is a Casio (an old love, my first digital watches were Casio) though I note that the name only occurs on the watch face in tiny letters while the title of the watch ‘Edifice’ (sic) appears in gleaming script.

The USP of this one is that it is atomic.  Not glow in the dark atomic (though I trust that it does that in a safer way) but enslaved to an atomic clock somewhere in England and Germany.  I haven’t heard of the places in with either are in and so have promptly forgotten them.  At two o’clock in the morning, so ‘tis said, the atomic fairies come drifting down and make sure that the time is just-so, so that the waking purchaser can be absolutely certain that the time is The Time and there is even a little round window in which the seconds tick on in their numbered way so that the more nerdish wearers can check that The Time is right To The Second.  I know of no one in my immediate vicinity or even wider who needs time to the exact second, let alone my good, retired self, but once available it must be had.

In theory this watch will also compensate for travelling to other time zones and will automatically reset the time for summer and wintertime.  I will merely be happy if it tells me the right day and automatically changes for the month.  I have done nothing about putting the year into the machine and so I know nothing about leap years, but perhaps more assiduous reading of the hefty instruction booklet will empower me to delve a little more deeply than my present stance of being amazed that it arrived telling the right time with the right day, date and month.  If it ain’t broke don’t mend it is sage advice.

Because I forgot the bread on my way back from my swim we went out for lunch in one of two new restaurants that we have discovered opposite Lidl’s.  In the one we went to today we were issued with a small loyalty card which will give a free meal for every ten that we eat there.  So, in a couple of month’s time we will be enjoying a 9€ meal for nothing.  Except the coffee of course.  That adds a Euro.  Excellent value and good food too.

There is much more that I should be writing about but I have written three exercises for the course today (not counting my Morning Pages) and edited them – a process to which I have an almost pathological aversion – so I am just about written out.

Tomorrow I shall explore options for refilling my disposable fountain pens.  I have been led to believe that this is a worthwhile and profitable enterprise because I am innocent to believe what I see on YouTube.  So the buying of ink and the general catastrophe of Ink Everywhere is immanent.

But I live in hope.  As always.  And the watch is working well so far.

Grumpy!

A fair amount of writing done today.  Some good, some very ordinary, but all competent.  I think.  The major trouble, as far as I can see is that our tutor is more absent than present.  She may well be reading everything, but her touch is light and I think that we need guidance and in your face evaluation and that is what we are not getting on a week-by-week basis.  We are doing all the work in tutorials, but there is little to no tutor guidance.  I am getting a little miffed and I am finding myself acting like a teacher and doing the evaluation myself, when what I need is informed evaluation for me!  This moan is in the process of development and I will work on it for the next few days – and then probably decide to do nothing.

The answer is probably to write more and be more methodical about the way that I evaluate my own work.  That means going through my notebooks in a more rigorous way and perhaps finding a way of taking the stuff worth saving and finding a way to make is more accessible for use in future writing.  I have to be more methodically professional about this or I am not going to gain as much as I need to from this course.

The more I write, the more I feel myself drawn to script writing rather than the other forms of literary creation.  I have always considered myself a poet manqué but perhaps I have been deluding myself by following the paradigm promulgated by Aristotle in looking at the arts.  Poetry and tragedy are only deemed the highest literary structures because we have lost what the Master said about the others!  This is still relatively early days in the course and I will wait to see what develops – but I am dissatisfied at the moment and feel that we are working in some sort of vacuum. 

Toni has now brought his blanket which is a clear indication that Winter is truly here.  In January we both sit around like monks shrouded in blankets to keep the warmth in.  Dark days ahead.  Or we could put the central heating on, but that seems like such a denial of the advantages of living in a country like Spain in the first place.  We still have not put the central heating on.  Defiantly.

My Great Achievement of today is the removal of the resin from the car.  God alone knows what damage I have done to my lungs with the inhalation of so much acetone, but the majority of what was previously immovable has now gone.  There is nothing like giving yourself a spurious sense of value than doing a simple mindless task and getting a disproportionate amount of pleasure from the simple removal of stains.  It remains to be seen if I have removed a layer of paint or varnish.  Nothing stays the same.

Tomorrow is a writing day in which I have to work my way through a whole range of exercises that my colleagues on the Forums seem to have ignored.  I’m harking back on the same theme – this is arid so I should stop and go to bed.

Winter Wear

I am wearing jeans – it must be winter.

My sad abandonment of shorts is a reflection of the reality of the falling temperatures and a reaction to some funny looks that I was getting.  Now, much to Toni’s disgust, I am only continuing to wear my sandals as a nod in the direction of hotter weather.

We have had a radiator on for the last few days in the living room and the bed has steadily increased its weighting by having Nana’s embroidered quilt and the winter duvet added to the summer duvet.  No doubt the central heating will be the next thing to go on – though the ancient and rundown system that hasn’t been renewed for umpteen years is hardly the most efficient way of heating a home that is built for the summer.  Which seems unending months of coldness away.

My swim this morning was in a crowded pool, which for swimmers means that all the lanes were taken, though the right hand side of the pool is un-laned and therefore available for general frisking.  This is the first time that the pool has been so ‘full’ since I started swimming.  I have previously had to share an extended lane which means that swimmers have to keep to one side or the other or alternatively adopt a clockwise or anti-clockwise system to keep everyone happy.  I am invariably not happy with this arrangement because it means that there is a greater risk of hitting your hand on the ropes (which are surprisingly unyielding to my lane just for me, and usually that is what I get.

I am certainly swimming for longer and adopting a stronger stroke and of course the moral worth that you get from exercising like that is considerable.  As always the fact that a school in which I have taught being adjacent to the pool and clearly visible at one end while swimming is a constant source of delight for me.  There is nothing quite so stimulating as taking exercise when you can relate the time being thus spent to an old timetable.  It allows one to savour every moment and every bubble.

Having my cup of tea outside after my swim was an act of defiance rather than pleasure.  Whereas dinner this evening, in the pitch black of a night where 8 pm seems like midnight, was delightful.  We had it inside our favourite (soon to lose that appellation) restaurant La Fusta.  The meal was frankly disappointing; every aspect of it can be bettered elsewhere.  Though the Sangria was excellent and will have to be put down to the 20% leeway that my diet can take each week!

And now back to the forums to find out if anyone has responded to my latest piece of writing. 

It’s all go in the OU!