Food for belly and soul!

Out To Lunch – Again!

There is nothing better to end off a morning by going out to lunch.  We have now made this more of a way of life than a luxury – but I think that we are becoming better people because of such determination!

            Especially when we go to a place like Tast, which is a restaurant in the center-ish of town.  This is a relatively small place on a relatively obscure road (even if its name is C/ Major 16) which does not shout out that it is a place to go.  But go you should.  We have never had a bad meal there and certainly on the last few visits we have had a meal which we would have been happy to have had in a restaurant a few times the price that we paid.

            My meal comprised a cold vegetable soup called salmorejo which is served with crumbled hard-boiled egg and bits of Spanish ham.  This version came with dried fruit as well and was refreshingly delicious.

            The second course was a perfectly cooked fillet of salmon with a selection of al dente fried vegetables and my dessert was a mouthful selection of four of the normal postres that the restaurant served.  We accompanied the meal with a jug of Sangria and I ordered a second one for old time’s sake!

            The meal for two came to €36.20, and that included two coffees (well, a tea in my case) and that extra jug of Sangria.  Call it €40 and that means that the total cost was a tip and a bit under thirty quid!  Sing ho! for the hard old life!

Traitor!

Today, Wednesday is the day that I go to my Poetry Group in Barcelona, but a friend from The British School has told me about another group which meets in Sitges.  I have given my contact details and I am awaiting a contact from someone in that group.  This group meets on a different day and their concerns may well be different from the Barcelona group – but it will be interesting to find out what they offer.

            It terms of ‘getting there’ – it is a damn sight less stressful to go to Sitges than the centre of Barcelona and it will probably be cheaper too.  At present I park in a vastly expensive car park next to the Cathedral in the centre of Barcelona.  I am protected against the cost of the place by the fact that my car has a little gizmo which electronically passes me through barriers and automatically charges my bank account directly.  I neither see nor touch a ticket as I go into the car park and I have no idea about how much it has cost me as I leave.  Sometimes ignorance is best!

            One of the people from the Sitges group is going to contact me, so I await with some interest to see how this works out!

            I am not sure that I have the time or the space or the money to keep two groups going, so there may be a choice involved.  We shall see.

            This evening in the Barcelona group, I am going to distribute the first of the translations of my poems into Catalan and ask for comments to relay back to Hannah who has translated them.  I might add that this is with her permission, so it will be interesting to see the reactions and to take in the suggestions.

Flesh Can Be Bright

The master plan for this enterprise continues to worry me.  Things are moving, but not I think to my initial timetable.

            My publication date for the book is United Nations Day 2015, the 24^th October: time is rapidly running out and, at the moment, the five other collaborations that are necessary for my ideas to work are nowhere near complete, and one of them doesn’t exist!  Such things add to the gaiety of nations – or so I’m told!

            At the moment only Stage 1 of my idea looks certain to come to fruition.  Stage 2 is likely and Stage 3 is, shall we say, fluid!

            Such uncertainty is good fuel for creativity!

Time’s wingèd chariot

The buffer time that I amassed working my way through Book IV of our course in the history of art has now been dissipated in poetry writing and I find myself looking at the time left for my last essay and wondering if I have left enough to complete something which gives my marks a boost.

            I cannot pretend that the subject matter of this last essay is something which truly interests me and, as you can imagine, its relationship with what I regard as art is somewhat tenuous!  Still, it is all good for theoretical mumbo-jumbo and that should be something of a strong suit for me!

            I am in the comfortable position that I could ignore this essay completely and still pass this part of the course, but it is not the mere passing which concerns me, but the level of pass.  This course has been much more demanding that I previously imagined and it has stretched me, which, in some ways is a good thing, but it has also been something of a strain.

            This essay isn’t even the last putsch as there is the end of module mini-thesis after this essay is complete and, as I have not taken what my tutor has termed ‘exemplary’ artists as the basis of my work, I have made the task a lot more difficult.  But more interesting I think.

            Now, time to get down to the hard work of getting the essay written.  Or perhaps a little rest before I go off to Barcelona!

            Always choices!

When in doubt, read poetry!

The Way Ahead?

The relentless wave of injustice and blatant lying continues in this country.  The next election is going to be crucial in the modern development of Spain.  I am no expert, but it seems to me that the democratic process has not been under such sustained threat since the fall of Franco.

            The present government is a total disgrace, that 20% of the population can still express an intention to vote for the bunch of self seeking contemptible liars is absolutely astonishing.

            With the rise of the C’s party, which to be seems like a crypto-PP excuse for a political organization, there is a very real threat that tactical voting and plain ignorance could lead to PP uniting with the C’s and forming another government!

            People should realise that a vote for the C’s is a vote for PP and continued corruption and denial of fundamental human rights.  Already PP has pushed through education reforms with NO other party’s support.  They have altered basic citizen rights on protest and organization with NO other party’s support.  They put politics, their own politics, before the law, the police, and the citizens of this country.  They are a continuing shame to anyone who supports concepts of justice, equality and fairness – and they should have resigned years ago! 

Let’s hope that Spain has the informed self-interest to get rid of them in the General Election.

Another tongue!

The first three poems in my Autumn Trees sequence have now been translated into Catalan and are printed ready to be ‘looked at’ by Catalan speaking members of the Poetry Group tomorrow.  This is an important step forward in making the idea in Flesh Can Be Bright a reality!

            The other parts of the project are slowly taking shape, though what I thought was a more than generous time scale, seems to be getting tighter by the day!  I have plans to deal with most permutations of what might finally occur, but I would be more than gratified to have everything work out as originally planned.

            There are a couple of poems on the go at the moment; one is largely worked out, but the ending is proving tricky.  The other is plodding along an is the sort of thing that will come together with concentrated effort as many of the creative bits have been done and it is ‘just’ a matter of putting it all together.

            Well, something should be done in the next couple of days and, tomorrow,  Wednesday is also the day of my Poetry Group and that is usually the opportunity to respond to a stimulating theme and start the germ of another idea.

            Things are going well as far as The Eloquence of Broken Things is concerned, which is scheduled to be published in October 2016.  The only dangerous thing is to give myself the luxury of thinking that it is well over a year away and there is time to do as much as I like!  This is where time melts away and everything is eventually done in a rush.  I do not intend to be caught out!

Reader’s Card

I have now been given an ‘extension’ to be British Library Reader’s Card.  This is slightly odd as the last time that I used my card must be over thirty years ago!  Still, rather like the OU system, with the British Library, if you are on the system once you tend to stay there until, presumably, you are “Destroyed by enemy bombing during the war” (which I once had for a book published in the 1960s not being delivered to my desk in the Old Reading Room!)

            I have visited the new British Library, but my visit in May will be the first time that I will have used it as a library.  I will have to be canny about its use as I will only be there for a few days and the number of books that you can order is limited.  I will have to use the rules of book ordering to its full if I am to get the full benefit. 

I am looking forward to the experience and am very impressed by the on line catalogue actually giving you how long the book will take to get to you! 

It will be interesting to see how this all works out in practice.

Browning

The continued and more hysterical the warnings about the dangers of sunbathing become, the more they are tucked securely away in the corner of the mind marked ‘non used on voyage’.

            I have always favoured my father’s skin colouring rather than my mother’s and tend to tan relatively easily.

            There was a time when I used to shed skin with the facility of a snake – the tell-tale itch on the back generally leading to sheets of skin peeling away leaving me looking like a piebald creature.  Those days seem to be over, though I think that it has more to do with a born-again approach to moisturising than anything else.

            I also think that the change of sun tan lotion might have something to do with it also.  The family cream was Boots own Cooltan which I chiefly remember as a white cream which stubbornly refused to be rubbed into the skin and being protected (by one’s mother, of course) was a lengthy tactile experience!  And it didn’t really work, as skin fell away in chunks – though one always regarded that as a prelude to brownness as once the outer layers were stripped away it revealed the eventual tan underneath.  Though as I recall it the skin was always white underneath and it was the brown skin which fell to earth!

            Ironically, the brownest I have ever been was after a holiday to Scandinavia, and more especially Finland!  No accounting for sunshine!

Parking

The epic restructuring of the leisure centre car park continues with a second (unused) entrance now being opened up with consequent access road being created to link this entrance with the main road.  So far, every thing that the workmen do seems to create several other ‘things’ that have to be done before the new and improved, all-concrete, electronic-access car park gets back to use for the paying members!

            I think that most of us have now accepted that, in effect, there is no car park and have adapted accordingly.  In my case, as long as it doesn’t rain.  I am sort-of enjoying biking it, but this will change a the first sign of dampness.  Or winter as it is sometimes known!

            I have not yet had the opportunity to cycle when the car park is open, so that testing time is still ahead.

            Sad to say, I am looking forward to having a drink with my friend Caroline.  The sadness is nothing to do with her, I am looking forward to catching up on her news as we have not seen each other for a time, but sad because part of my excitement of seeing her is that I will be meeting her in a bar on the beach and it will be dark when we end our talk and then, gasp! I will have the opportunity not only to use my new lights on the bike, but also the flashing LED lights set into a niche on the back of my helmet!

            As I do not intend to go on any roads to get home, but to stick entirely to the paseo, this might seem like something of illuminated over-kill, but it makes me happy!  And biking home after drinking (not too much you understand) is all the justification that you need!

Whitman

Now to hunt through my poetry books to find the extract from Leaves of Grass that we are going to discuss tomorrow.  This is the nearest that I get to homework, as I don’t look at the work that I have to do for the OU course in the same way!

Poetry calls!

Realization

Apple – The Great Satan

I think that I am moving into my apostate stage in my relationship with Apple.

You must understand that this is being written on a MacBook Air, that there is an iMac upstairs, the iPad is on my left and my iPhone is in my pocket.  If I had to find an analogy for my situation I would suggest that it is like a Spaniard living in Spain.  This is a Roman Catholic country in which the church has an unfortunate political and social influence; where people cross themselves without a second thought – but where most Spaniards do not go to church and have what I regard as a healthy loathing of the institution.  So, while I am surrounded by Apple stuff I feel myself more and more distanced from it – even as I continue to use it.

And, of course, it really has to do with money.  Which at the moment is trumping aesthetics.

The Great Turning Point for me was the latest iPhone.  A beautiful thing with some interesting features – but the price!  The price is, I think, disgusting.  It is Apple at their grasping worst, confidently expecting to exploit, fully, their dedicated customer base.

And the Apple Watch!  I have followed the development of this item with all the avidity that one would expect from a person who was converted to Mac when the Windows experience was one of continued frustration.  My Mac (in those long lost days of customer consideration) was a friendly machine which usually did things that I expected it to and when I wanted something to happen I could follow simple logic and it usually worked.  Programs didn’t of course.  How cruel those words “Also works with Mac” were on most products.  It encouraged you to buy and then to cry and the things refused to work the way they did on Microsoft.  But that was then and this is now.

To me, the Apple watch looks like a thing of beauty – a rather big thing of beauty to strap to your wrist admittedly, but something you might (ha!) want.  Especially if you were an Apple aficionado com yo!

The first, and for me, crucial flaw in the Apple Watch enterprise was that it was not waterproof.  They produce a sports version of the watch and it isn’t waterproof!  Go figure!  The second was the absurd battery life.  They tried to take credit for it lasting a whole day!  Which means that you have to charge it each night and so the apps which monitor sleep are impossible with this watch.  The third was the fact that the watch came to life when you lifted your wrist, not in other words with a permanent display.

The more information that came out, no matter how well presented it was (and it was) just added to the disquiet.

And then there was the price.  Quite apart from the obscenity of the solid gold version of the watch, the regular price is high.  We are being asked to pay for a fashion item which is going to be out of date and sneered at in a year.  Few people look at television via the cathode ray tube anymore and, with the increased pace of fashion technology obsolescence wearing a first generation Apple Watch is going to be a faux pas in months!

I am no Savonarola, I have no intention of jettisoning the vast amount of money invested in my Mac stuff, just to make a point.  And, my MacBook Air was, and remains, a thing of beauty and elegance.  But my next computer is not going to be a Mac.  I now recognize that I can get a damn sight more bang for my buck by turning towards the dark side of PC, Microsoft, Windows and Android than I can ever expect from the profit generator that is Apple.

I still feel a bit of heel saying it though!

2001 – A Blog Odyssey

My stats tell me that this is my 2,001st blog entry!

            It’s difficult to know where to go after an opening sentence like that – though having written a couple of thousand blog entries it really shouldn’t be that difficult.  I do, after all, have something of a back catalogue to draw on!

            It is daunting though – as much for my readers as for anyone – that the sheer number of words generated means that I have probably written the equivalent of the books in the Old Testament!  Though I now realise that the comparison I have made is a little sweeping, almost as if I am claiming the same profundity – which I am not, by the way!

            I have never pretended that this blog is anything more than an opinionated, prejudice filled, occasional diary, dedicated to the oddities that I find around my day to day life – but it is also a time capsule, like any diary, and I can read certain parts of this ‘journal’ with the same sense of discovery of a stranger!

            Sometimes reading parts of this extended reflection does not necessarily bring back my specific memories, but it does generate responses and some humour, almost as if I were another me reading what the former me was thinking and doing.

            It is amazing that these words are read around the world and it is humbling at the same time.  Quite what people make of them is also part of the pleasure of writing.  And as long as I have a single reader other than myself, I will continue to add to this quotidian saga!

            And to my readers: a heartfelt thanks!

What next?

 

Toni, as a steadfast non-reader of my poems, is constantly appalled at my choice of subject matter.  On being told that one of my latest poems was about a car park (Car Park Country at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/) he asked when I was going to write a poem about underpants!

            Which I think is a fair point and, given the range of subject matter that I find appropriate for my muse, I feel it is only a matter of time!

            Meanwhile I am hoping to have sight of the first few poems of Autumn Trees translated into Catalan.  If my plan comes to fruition they will form part of the complex centrepiece of my forthcoming book Flesh Can Be Bright which, as I say as a sort of mantra in the hope that it will be true, will be published on United Nations Day, the 24^th of October, 2015. (DV)

Pillow talk

There are many hardships that I am prepared to undergo with silence and dignity, but uncomfortable pillows are not one of them.

            For me the pillow is the central feature of the bed and where I lay my head is central to the experience of rest.

            At the moment the experience is not restful.  Which is not to say that I do not go to sleep.  That is one thing that I do with expedition and profundity – but it is the lead up to oblivion that is taxing me at the moment.

            I prefer feather pillows and always have.  I know that there are authorities (there always are) that tell me that feathers are nowhere near the healthiest option you can choose, but that has never been an overriding constraint on my behaviour.

            The most comfortable pillow I have ever discovered was in El Corte Ingles and I was all for buying it, when I was told the price.  I can no longer remember exactly how much it (it was only one) cost because of the psychological counselling that I have had, but the sum was vast!  And more!  And even I have my limits for self-indulgence!

            I have been searching for a reasonably priced alternative ever since.  I thought that I had found a perfect compromise between composition and commodification (I wanted to say ‘price’ there, but it didn’t start with a ‘C’) in a local supermarket.  I thought that I have found the perfect pillow for price and performance (see, I got the word in!) until I needed to change the pillow and found that the store did not stock that particular type any more.

            I bought a feather alternative and it is like sleeping on rock.  Every time I put my head down I grumble.  Silently, just before unconsciousness.  Toni maintains that my entry to the Land of Nod is synonymous with my head touching the pillow – but that is not true and the ‘grumble period’ is becoming more irritating and therefore Something Must Be Done.

            I have geared myself up to sally forth after my swim and take in the shops (never a hardship for me) in pursuit of the perfect pillow.  Again.

The British Library

After a number of years I am going to re-join the British Library – or at least get a Readers’ Card (one feels that it deserves capital letters) so that I can use the facilities when I visit London at the end of the month.

            In theory, I have been told over the phone by a very nice lady form the membership department, I will be able to get a temporary Readers’ Card and order books which will be ready for me to read when I am in London.  I should also have full access to the digital catalogue.  All of this in theory.

            Today I intend to put the theory to the test and find out if such access is real.

            The best part about it will be to watch Toni’s irritation as I am prepared to bet that such a thing will be totally impossible with the National Library in Spain.  We shall see.  And, as always, I live in hope!