Too much weather again.

Woken by thunder. 

Sounds like the title of a book, but it was literally true, as the sort of thunder you hear in films and not in real life rolled across our audial horizon.  Once awake, even though still tired, I knew that I was not going to get back to sleep again and so I got up and did those little tasks that satisfy by their very mundanity – which, by the way appears to be a word that does not exist.  Well it should.

Early rising meant that I was able to check on my meeting with Suzanne.  Which is tomorrow.  I knew that.  Find the little pin-thingie that allows one to get at the mini sim in the phone and change it back to the Spanish one - after I had been tricked into buying a UK one that will languish into uselessness with unused money evaporating into the coffers of EE.  A company of which I had not previously heard but which now, apparently owns Orange or is owned by it.  Who cares, I simply put the money wasted down to Capitalistic experience!

An early visit to the Post Office, usually a fairly traumatic experience, was fairly ordinary at that time in the morning and a copy of “Poems – off course” is now limping its way to Lisvane.  And I recharged my phone.  In Spain it is done by the person to whom you pay your money, not by using a scrap of paper to send a text and god knows what in the UK.  Which didn’t work for me and which took the combined efforts of five people in Phones4U to get some credit on my squandered mobile.

But such things are in the past and tomorrow is Suzanne and then a birthday in Terrassa.

My work on the History of Art is stymied by the expansive forum hinterland of the new MOOC Creative Writing that I am doing.  I am rapidly becoming a sort of Saint Francis-Proust as I trawl the forum looking for poor souls who have posted their poems and have had not a single response.  I am a latter day Laddie of the Line, bestowing a kind phrase of encouragement on the rejected!

As the forum is on the Internet you can follow your contributions and it was astonishing how many ‘contributions’ you can make by nimble clicking of the mouse.

I have to admit that I am thoroughly enjoying it of course, and I have made my single poetic contribution go a fairly long way.  As there are so many people taking this course and the forum is for all of them, you can be fairly sure of getting some sort of response some time or other and there is always new material to evaluate.  There is instant gratification from a tutorial group of some thousands as opposed to the dilatory participation of students in a group of 19.  I know that people have jobs and families and holidays and illnesses, but it still makes the necessary silence difficult to take.  There is only noise on a MOOC!

The days tick by towards our results when we can put the course ‘to bed’ and really concentrate on the next.  My degree should be just two years away – and I have to admit that I think that I might well go off to Versailles - where we European students are given our degrees.

The rain has started again and the woman next door is obviously sitting by the window of her sitting room and smoking a cigarette because the stench of her vile habit streams through the open windows of our living room and the Third Floor too.  May she rot.  As she probably is.

Holiday?

No Group Meal can ever really be called a success if there has been no major argument over the bill.  Usually, it has to be said this usually takes the form of I-didn’t-have-any-wine-so-I-am-not-paying-an-equal-share sort of thing.  On Saturday there was certainly an element of that but the major upset was the presentation of a bill for over eight hundred quid for a very ordinary meal, lubricated by extraordinarily expensive bottles of booze.

We will not be returning to The Meating Place (sic) at the bottom end of St Marys Street.  To make the evening complete even after Angela had, as usual taken financial control of a situation that was spiralling out of control, one foolish member of the grasping staff came out on to the street demanding more money!  Our response was not one of outraged indignation, merely that of tired drunken boredom and total ignoring.  A most satisfying end to a Grand Meeting of Friends.

The week was one of almost continuous Doing Something.  We visited Maesteg, Port Talbot, Llandaff, The Millennium Centre, Le Monde, Boots, Matalan, The Rumney Pottery, Tesco in all its variations, Ceri and Dianne’s, M&S, every shoe shop in Cardiff, Hadyn’s, my Uncle Eric, my Aunt Micky, the National Museum of Wales, Professor Wynn Thomas, MacArthur Glen, Boots, and – you get the idea.  Not exactly relaxing, but definitely enjoyable.

We seemed to eat fairly continuously with some excellent meals.  Didn’t do much of the work that I had set myself, but I did manage to read Wynn’s book (R.S. Thomas – Serial Obsessive) before I met him.  Which I told him gesturing for him to take in the fact that I had the book with me for our meeting.  ‘Have you read it?’ he asked.  And when I replied in the affirmative, he responded by asking, ‘Twice?’  The next time I get the better of that gentleman will be the first time as well.

My chapbook is now well and truly distributed and I am awaiting comments.  Comments about this one ensure the delivery of the next – though, thinking about it I am not sure if that is incentive or warning!

A most stimulating time was had by all and now we have time to relax!

The MOOC Creative Writing course has started and I have been deep into the forums reading a frankly bewilderingly various collection of poetry.  I have written one myself and look forward to the production of many more during the six-week (I think) course.

One member of the last course is also on this one and I have yet to make contact with her.  The Closed Forum from the last course seems to be a little dead at the moment, but I have every confidence that things will spring back into life when our results have finally been given to us.  Another twelve days and then we can truly start concentrating on the next academic year starting in October.

The next week seems rather dismal as far as the weather is concerned so at least I will be able to get back up to date with my various courses.

Day of Shame!

Our anti-monarchical flag has been flying defiantly throughout the day and I have refused to look at any scenes of the lanky Bourbon pretending that his new ‘position’ is anything other than a crushing denial of the democratic pretentions of a politically bankrupt nation.  To say nothing of the obscene amount of money spent on this ridiculous sham at a time of national crisis.

            Of course the expulsion of Spain from the World Cup has been (and indeed, is) of more significance than a member of the moneyed classes dressing up in strange clothes and laughing at the peasants in the ruling party of PP fawning on his accession.

            I do recognize that the status of the Germanic dwarf in the UK would probably be confirmed if her position was ever opened to real public discussion, and I have to admit that (little thanks to her) there is much more transparency about the ludicrous costs of the so-called royal family than there is in Spain, where the information made available to the public is laughable.  Still, Spain did have an opportunity to take the discussion to another level and they bottled out. 

Perhaps when the GD finally has the good grace to shuffle of this moral coil and the public are faced with the awful reality of her appalling son ascending the throne they might actually think about the way in which they are governed for once, and finally decide that the Royal House of Wettin (which is what the laughable House of Windsor should truly be known as) is finally consigned to history where it so richly deserves to languish.

            It is true that the governing (sic!) PP party are the ultimate practitioners of the bread-and-circuses approach to deflecting serious discussion about anything of importance.  What is the world cup but the ultimate mask for the rich, powerful and unscrupulous to do what they do best and screw the rest of us!

            This bile could go on spilling for pages, but I should try and regulate my rants.  If only for the benefit of my health!

            I am much looking forward to our visit to the UK and especially to the meal on the Saturday night that looks as though it is going to be attended by a goodly group of friends.

            My revised chapbook of poems from the OU course that I have just taken has taken a step nearer to reality as, after extensive excavations in the storage area under the eves, I have rediscovered the long-armed stapler - without which the production of semi-professional booklets is impossible.  Indeed the number of pages in the booklet means that its realization is at the outer limits of the technology that I have at my disposal.  However publication of some sort is immanent.

            I have now brought the flag inside, it is after sunset after all, and the point has been made – and I am not at all convinced by the case for Catalan independence  - and anyway, I would have been much happier with a Spanish Republican flag.  Which I am determined to buy and use at a later date.

            Tomorrow the viewing of a flat.  There is no way that I can afford to buy one, but it is interesting to see what is on offer.  And I can’t wait for the laughable offers of finance that they might offer to a person of my age!

            Another experience to look forward to.  And something to write about of course.

           

           

            

A missed opportunity!

Try as I might (and I did) I cannot get hold of a Spanish republican flag.  Castelldefels is not a hotbed of radical political activity and the best I could come up with was a Catalan independence flag.  Bought from a Chinese shop.  The irony is too cruel to be articulated!

            The reason I need a flag of some sort is because tonight at midnight the discredited Bourbon who has flounced about fornicating and killing elephants will be officially not-king-but-king.  This idiotic situation was obviously fabricated by the supinely Papist government (remember the police medal was awarded to The Virgin Mary by a minister) to reflect the situation of the double popes we (they) now have.  But at least Pope Francis was elected.  Which is more than can be said for Philip VI who will be acclaimed king in some ornate ceremony in parliament, at an expense which mocks The Crisis; the unemployment figures; the risible minimum wage, and the feeling in the country, in which a majority wants a referendum about the monarchy.

            So when the pomp and circumstance of this piece of anti-democratic window dressing for the corrupt regime using our money to pay for it all it going on, I intend to show my displeasure by having the Catalan independence flag flying, which by implication is against the monarchy.  I will check with my friends and find a republican flag which I will fly at every occasion when this new parasite does anything of national irrelevance – which after all is his ‘job’.

            And to top all of this, Spain has just been knocked out of the World Cup.  I would like to think that this is a fully justified response to the almost terminal corruption of FIFA – but the truth is that in the two games that I have seen they have played as if their bodies were drones being controlled by neophyte American pizza delivery boys who only had a sketchy idea of what was going on and were drunk.  Toni has just informed me that Spain now has the more than dubious honour of being the first team out of the World Cup.  After winning the bloody thing the last time.  This will be seen as a national disgrace.  A fitting accompaniment to the country’s acceptance of an unelected hereditary monarch as their head of state.

            In the last world cup, after the disgraceful behaviour of the French team, when they were kicked out they were flown home steerage to emphasise the anger that people felt about their petulance.  Toni’s suggestion is that the Spanish team be sent home by bus.  A good suggestion I think, especially if the link between Alaska and Russia is not iced over.  After all global warming has not been helped by the ostentatious cars that the overpaid footballers parade themselves in; it is only fair that they should suffer from the global warming that they, with their careless lifestyle have helped exacerbate.

            I, by the way, am perfect and without spot.  And I drive a hybrid car.  So there.