Not in front of the children

Habit or ritual?

Good Friday is the day when I go to church.  Not, as when I was young, to the three-hour service, but for some other reason which is not always clear to me.

            I do not have to go inside for very long, but I do like to make the effort and sit in a pew for some moments and be quiet and think.

            I have had to put up with some scepticism about this little quirk, especially as I am not a professing Christian any more!  Whatever.  I have visited a church wherever I am on this day and I did the same thing today.

            I do not go very far out of my way to accomplish this little visit and today I went to the church in the entre of Castelldefels.

            Our church is odd in that the main body of the church has no windows.  Where the windows should be there are instead massive paintings of scenes from the Life of Christ.  They are something of an artistic feature of the town and are well worth a view.

            I went into the church after an interesting lunch in a new restaurant (see Toni’s blog: http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es ) – finding a place was not easy given that today is a Bank Holiday. One of our favourite places to eat is in a hotel restaurant – which was closed for the Easter holidays, a situation which by its sheer illogicality seemed odd to say the least, but we have given up expecting logic to dictate actions in this part of the world!

            The body of the church was empty, with a few women in the side chapel.  In the gloom of the church the one thing that stood out was the high altar.  That had been stripped back to show some icon-like paintings on the side, but it was what was on the top which shocked me.

            Across the length of the altar was a gleamingly realistic loincloth-wearing cadaver whose injured head was resting on a pillow.  It was horrific and frankly repulsive.  I know that you could make the point that what happened to Jesus was repulsive and we should not prettify his death, but there was something grotesquely unpleasant about such a realistically flamboyant display of death.

            I found it impossible to concentrate and the experience was anything other than conducive to meditation.  A thoroughly unpleasant experience!

            And I feel cheated of my annual indulgence.

          My poem based on this experience may be seen at: http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/ as part of my sequence of poems, Poems in Holy Week.

The little things in life

The smallest room

I do not usually feel drawn to disquisitions on toilets but my recent visit to Barcelona makes such a discussion inevitable.

            I usually stay, when in the city, in a dated hotel near the Liceu and just off the Ramblas.  Its cell-like rooms are basic, but as far as value for money is concerned for a city-centre hotel it is unbeatable.  And breakfast is included!

            As he days of roughing it are well and truly over for me, however basic the accommodation I do insist on en suite.  And the rooms in his hotel are.

            I have now stayed in a variety of the rooms that they offer and my quibbles are usually with the showers.  Either the fittings are unreliable or the availability of warm water is only available if you have the precision of a micrometre adjuster in your fingertips.

            With the room last night it was the toilet.  It is obvious (you only have to look at the ceiling mouldings) to see that the present arrangements of rooms have been cobbled together by cannibalising the originals.  In the case of the room in which I stayed last night the chief victim of the savaging of the original floor plan was found in the bathroom.

            Firstly it wasn’t a room, it was more of a raised wedge-ledge from the bedroom separated from it by a curtain!  The shower filled one end of the wedge (there was no door) and immediately next to it and virtually touching the wall was the toilet.

            One does not want to be indelicate, but there was not way that the toilet could be used by a sitting customer if any form of clothing was still about their person.  It was also necessary to do a form of seated splits with one foot in the shower tray.  No conducive to, um, anything really!

            But I will go back.  Hotel Peninsular offers a unique experience at an unbeatable price – and anyway, restaurants have loos!

Things poetic

The Holy Week poetry sequence has now stalled and there is a build up of notes and no finished results of complete poems.  I am confident that I can complete one of them tonight, but that still leaves me a day behind.  Never mind, I am sure that they will be worth the effort when they are finally done.  Hopefully.

Easter

The great question taking my wallet at the moment is whether or not to give in to commercialism and buy an Easter Egg or not.

            A number of consumer programmes that have told us that Easter Eggs are nothing more than a rip off are too many to ignore, but buying anything else always seems a bit mean.

            I think that I will probably do what I do best in situations like this, wander from shop to shop in a vain attempt to gauge value, and end up doing something entirely different.

Shopping – you know it makes sense!

I went into Lidl to buy a tub of their excellent Greek yogurt and came out with a gel cover for my bike seat, lights for back and front and a new helmet (with built in rear, detachable, flashing light) as I am now, much to Toni’s amused contempt, a born again bicycle rider.

            Necessity, in the form of the reconstruction of the parking area in the swimming pool and the complete lack of parking spaces, prompted me to get the bike out of retirement and use, over the last few weeks has changed me mind.  As the weather gets warmer, it becomes more of a pleasure to ride.  At least until the end of the summer, I am toying with the idea of using the bike even when I do not need to.

            Toying.  Not a final decision, you understand.  Not by any means.  Yet.

Flesh Can Be Bright

The book takes another step nearer completion, with one or two of the plans in place to cope with other plans possibly not working are now not needed as the plans which weren’t working might be operational once more.  

          As you probably don’t understand.

Here & There

Weather

The glorious sunshine that I seem to remember that we were promised for the Easter holidays does not seem to be much in evidence at the moment.  OK, I was able to do a tad of light sunbathing yesterday, but the weather today is as near to rain as it can get without actual precipitation.

            And with a true sense of irony, just as I finished typing the word ‘precipitation’ the sun came out.  I swear that the irony of real life leaves the contrived irony of literature standing!  And with that the sun has disappeared again!

            As long as it is dry for my trip to the pool (to get wet, yes, irony again) I will be happy.

Family

Yesterday saw the Family descend and our routine was jolted out of place by two young children.  Being a retired teacher (ah, savour those words in the mouth like a fine wine!) children have become something of a novelty for me and I find myself observing them like some exotic species of insect.

            This time I particularly noticed their attitudes.  Not, I hasten to add, their ethical standpoints and moral positions, but rather the physical ones that they adopt naturally.

            Milton wrote of Samson that he was ‘carelessly diffused’ (if I remember rightly) encapsulating a sort of casual sprawl in a wonderful phrase.  I watched the younger brother, Marc, as he sat at the table and I fail to see how his half crouch lunged squat could have been in any way comfortable – but he seemed ridiculously at ease in what would have been excruciatingly uncomfortable for me.

            Still, I remember years ago when in secondary school, in an idle moment of speculation, I wondered if I was still able to do the ‘crab’ and move around with my arms on the floor behind my head and my body arched.  The answer was a resounding ‘No!’ and I am glad that I tried to assume the position slowly and not snap into it, as the only snapping would have been my spine if I had managed to do it!  A certain pliability is lost with age!

            I can now feel joints in a way that is entirely different from my youth when joints did not intrude upon my concern.  Those happy days when the body is just one lithe totality rather than, extremely obviously nowadays for me, composed of jointed parts.

Poems in Holy Week

This writing is obviously displacement activity as a form of writing exercise to get me into the mood to try and find a topic for the next poem in the sequence.  I am trying a mixture of casual thought and oblique contemplation to bring the subject matter to the fore.

            I have to admit that there is no easy way to write and I find the harder I work the more ‘inspiration’ I find.  At least my faithful notebook is always near to catch a fleeting perception.  Though I also have to admit that my notebook is fuller of the blindingly obvious rather than the intriguingly provocative.  But, as I pointedly observed in a previous blog about ‘Family Wisdom’, ‘anything is better than nothing’ – and I am constantly surprised by what I am able to mine from extremely unprepossessing obviousness!

            I trust that the next poem in the sequence will find its way onto http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/ before the end of the day.  With any luck the material produced in my Poetry Group this evening may even be useful for this project.  I live, as always, in hope!

United Nations Day 2015

The travel arrangements and preparations for this event are assuming a complexity which makes the actual UNO meetings in New York look simple in comparison.  I have decided to take a loft and distant approach to these things and concentrate on the ‘looking forward’ aspect of it all.

            My most pressing concern is to ensure that Flesh Can Be Bright is ready for its publication day.  At least I know that my Catalan translator has started on the task of producing a version of Autumn Trees, which is more than I can say for my Spanish translator.

            It is now April and I set a deadline for completion of the writing by the end of May.  I have written the poems and, although I still have to do the editing and the indexes, the introduction and design, I know that the really hard bits that I have to do are done.  How far my grandiose plan for the realisation of this project survives to publication will be interesting to see.  I am fairly determined, but I do have fallback plans.  Lots of them.

Body Art

I have been methodical in my note making for the next essay (and last) in the OU course.  As soon as this is completed I can concentrate on the End of Module Assessment which is a mini thesis.

            The art I am studying at the moment is what I think most people would call ‘challenging’ – and the theoretical justifications even more so!

            As befits a module on modern art, we are now at the ‘cutting edge’ of what can be considered art and while sometimes I think that it has not progressed much beyond Duchamp, there are other aspects which demand an intellectual commitment that I am sometimes not prepared to make.

            Still, it is something which is beyond my comfort zone and therefore it makes me question my perceptions and who can ask for more than that from a learning experience.

            I will soon have to start putting finger to key and actually write something about what I understand rather than wondering what the hell to make of it all.

Hard slog works

Poems in Holy Week

With the third poem written, I think that I can claim that there is a sequence growing along this particular theme.  I like the discipline of having to produce a poem a day I further like the self-imposed necessity of trying to develop a sense of questioning that I think the Week itself demands.

            The latest poem called Life (there’s a title as a hostage to fortune!) can be found at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and I welcome comments on the poem itself and on the developing theme – if there is one!

            Thanks to Ceri for his comments via email: I found them challenging, encouraging and stimulating.  Who can ask for more?  Me.

            I both dread and welcome tomorrow, as I am duty bound to write another poem.  At this moment I have no idea about what I might write – which is exactly the state of worried anticipation that I like!

Sun

I was able to lie out in the sun for a few short minutes.  It was probably longer than that, but the greed with which I view the sun also means that I worry about each ‘wasted’ minute that I am not out in it.  I am always trying to gain minutes to hold in reserve against those ‘brightly dull’ days that I find so antagonizing.

            It cannot be gainsaid that we are moving towards summer.  This is an article of faith for me and I echo the fatal words at the end of Ibsen’s Ghosts, ‘Mother, give me the sun!’ though I hasten to add that I say them in an altogether happier state of mind than the unfortunate young man in Scandinavia!

            I am, at present, a sickly pale colour (for me) and I look forward with glee to increasing my supply of vitamin D!

Logic

This is a week of holiday.  I know that not everyone, or even the majority of the population is able to down tools and enjoy, but it is an official holiday period.  People, as it were, go on holiday.  They visit cities, world famous cities, like, for example Barcelona.

            Then, why is it that the rate for a room just off the Ramblas in the centre of the city of Barcelona costs less than it has done for the last six months?  Where, pray, is the logic in that price?

            When, as far as I could tell, little or nothing was going on to bring people to the city, the price of the room that I usually have for the opera suddenly shot up to over sixty euros!  Now, it is twenty-five – including breakfast!

            In a similar way, when I cycled back from my swim (see Poems in Holy Week above) I had to thread my way through a system of cones which blocked roads to the beach because today, during a week of holidays when people might thing about coming to the beach, the powers that be decided to refresh the paint on the road markings.  Today?  Why today and not last week, when there were no, for example, holidays to complicate traffic flow?

            And finally and most crushingly, why do people vote for PP in Spain when it has been shown that they are demonstrably corrupt and criminal and inept?

            Perhaps the answers to these conundrums are to be found in the fact that mere logic is not enough and that we need poets to explain the world to the world!

Food, reasonably priced food!

At long last we have tried the menu del dia in my local swimming pool restaurant.  I am not sure that Toni has added it to his blog yet, but it will be there in the next few days.  Visit http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es as Toni is constantly updating his blog and making it more and more exhaustive.  We still have a long, long was to go before we eat our way through the restaurants of Castelldefels, but we are enjoying doing the fieldwork.

            We are also looking forward to the ruta de tapa, when 40 or more restaurants compete to produce the best tapa in the city.  For a cost of about €3 you get the tapa and a drink of your choice.  We will have to plan this eatathon with military precision if we are to visit all the establishments.

Barcelona

Tomorrow another horrible bus ride to the city to make the meeting with my fellow members of the Barcelona Poetry Group all the more pleasant.  I must remember to take my computer with me if I am to keep up my poem-a-day approach to this week.