What holiday?

The comic opera that is the government of Spain continues, with an impunity that takes the breath away, to cavort across the nation with barely a nod towards what even the most debased would consider the barest moral niceties.  The proven corruption of what appears to be the majority of the government, the continual stream of stories which show the contempt that those in power have towards the people who elected them, the cosy to the point of live-in partners that this joke party has with the major firms in Spain – pointless to go on.  The more financial and power manipulation disgrace comes to light the more the government carries on in its own defiantly corrupt way.

            The latest horror from this bunch of freaks has been a Draconian set of laws which try to ensure that there will be fantastically punitive fines for those who protest, take photos of police abuse, stop the banks repossessing the homes of those that the banks themselves have impoverished – enabled to do that by the use of our money to stay in business.

            Spain, these days, is a cynic’s delight!  Take your pick of the political character, the political party, the firm, the public character and there will be disgrace aplenty to keep your bile duct operating at full strength.

            In Catalonia we have the sad picture of an ex-president, together with his Mafia-like family clan being taken to court for industrial hoovering of cash from his time in public office.  Toni feels personally let down by this traitor as he believed in him and voted for him.  The amount of money that this piece of filth and his equally dirty family has salted away in a variety of foreign banks is so vast as to be in the realms of fantasy.

            A further irony about this Catalan case is that the prosecution is proceeding at a very speedy pace – as opposed to the multitude of cases outstanding which point to the wholesale corruption of the governing party.  This, of course merely boosts the (already gigantic) Catalan sense of persecution by the Spanish state.  Every day that the living joke that parades around as President of this country is a day when yet more Catalan separatists are made.

           

Still, my poetry is going well – they do say that the arts flourish in difficult times.  If that really is the case then we should be seeing a Renaissance taking place in Spain.  I have yet to see the fruits, except of course in the case of my poems!

            Plans for the next book are well advanced and I have been to the publishers to check that they can do what I want.  All I have to do now is write the poems to put in it.  A minor point!  I am determined that this book is going to be somewhat different to the last ones as I intend to give it a stronger structure than in the last ones.  And that is more difficult than I thought it was going to be.  I’ve tried a draft structure with what I’ve written at the moment and that was hard going.  I am well aware that next year is a bloody sight nearer than the date suggests.  There is always a feeling that January is a long way away, even when it is just around the corner!  However, I have given myself a deadline of the summer to get the content of the book ready and to have it ready for publication for a significant date in October of next year.  That seems like an expansive timetable, but I am acutely aware that time slips away with gathering speed!

           

            I am now in the midst of writing the next tutor marked assignment for the Open University course and have the delights of an on-line tutorial this evening to look forward to.  The writing has to be submitted by the 8^th of January which seems in the far distance, but, and especially during the Christmas period, that distance has a way of becoming illusory.

           

The part of the holiday period spent away from home in Terrassa will probably be from Christmas Eve to My Name Day – that should both of us enough time to get down to the details of our studies.  Toni has examinations in January, so those are concentrating his mind wonderfully at the moment to the exclusion of more festive thoughts.

            As we are going to have a domestic Christmas meal the food is going to be provided by the participants.  I’m buggered if I am going to make anything so I am getting the booze.  This is far less intimidating for a group of Catalans than it would be for a similar British occasion.  I took the opportunity to go to the little wine shop that I have discovered in Castelldefels and from which I got a truly excellent Cava from a little family winery.  I have taken all of the recommendations from the little man in the shop and have two bottles of white, two bottles of red and two bottles of Cava.  I will probably be the only person in the meal who will be able to give an opinion about all of those.  Not because they will all be too drunk to articulate, but because I will be the only person to sample them all!  There are advantages to having a surrogate Catalan family at times like this!

            I have also bought an interesting bottle of some sort of liqueur that will be an exploration for all of us.  My intention is to get a set of disposable plastic shot glasses and force the rest of the family to sample it.  Wish me luck because I will probably end up necking it for shame’s sake!

            We have bought no presents.  None.  At all.  I am not panicking because all of the presents that we need to buy are for Toni’s family.  They will have bought for us and so we have a moral obligation to get something.  But I am not panicking.  Not at all.  There is plenty of time.  Plenty.  I mean, it’s only the 18^th.  Christmas Eve is a week away.  No sweat.

            

Libros! Libros! Libros! Libros para me!

My books have arrived!  Four beautifully produced, fully illustrated volumes with their accompanying Study Guides and CDs and DVDs.  O Joy!  And the bloody Post Office failed to deliver Toni’s computer, in spite of the fact that it is in Castelldefels.  The one thing that modern internet tracking gives you are perfect justification for losing your temper when things are not delivered.  There is no excuse because you can see, plainly, in computer pixels the information about where the package is and indeed where it has been for the whole of its journey, together with times of when it has moved on to the next stage.

            Because of this informational overload I was able to watch my books move from Wellinborough, a small town no far from my first teaching appointment in Kettering in the middle of England; move on to Birmingham; fly to somewhere in Germany, get transported to Barcelona and thence to Castelldefels.  Wonderful.  And the guy who delivered them to my door actually tried to speak a few words in English.  Who could ask for more.

            My other course, a MOOC with the University of Southampton, has now started and I was able to do the first week of work in a couple of hours.  As this one is geared towards helping me work through the problems associated with an end of course assignment, it should become more relevant the further I get into the work on my major course which still has a couple of weeks before it starts.  I fully intend to get a head start there so that all the unforeseen but totally predictable problems to learning have at least some sort of buffer of time to allow the line to be held!

            Sunday will see me on a demonstration or march protesting about Global Warming; later in the week there is a link up with friends in Sitges; Ceri and Dianne are due soon; the opera season is about to start and I have to do something about keeping up my poetry writing.

            My last poem has winged its way to teachers and their sympathizers in a start of school present from me.  I will look forward to the feedback, though I fear there might be some scepticism as my use of some unconvincing emotional language in the final ‘verse’ – we shall see.

            The swimming pool next to the BSB is closed for routine annual cleaning and repairs and so for the next week I am going to have to brave the less than clement waters of our community pool.  This morning it was not too cold, but as we had a furious storm last night I found myself swimming through a range of assorted vegetation.  Never one to waste an opportunity, I found myself thinking of lines and phrases, words and images to use in my next poem.  I have been somewhat lax and it is only as I wrote the last sentence that I realized that I had not (as I assure you I fully intended) written my thoughts down in the little red book which I keep in a pocket for just such moments.  I will do it (I swear) as soon as this entry is complete.  Probably.

            I hope to god that Toni’s computer, which has been bought at bargain rate on the internet turns up tomorrow as I, rather than the totally culpable Post Office will bear the brunt of his irritation.

            And I need the sun to continue to shine so that my suntan can get me through to December!

Free at last!

There is something authentically disgusting about the mental state of a person who deliberately sits at an open window in her house so that the smoke from her pestilential carcinogenic weed floats effortlessly into a neighbour’s house.  My house!

            Well, the vile smoker has, at last left and gone with her brood back to where she can irritate other saintly adjuncts.  I’m not sure that even makes sense, but it does express something that I feel.  And something that has happened.

            We have just had a glass of Cava (two and three quarters mini bottles for me and a mere taste for himself) to celebrate the fact that now we will be able to sit at on open window without a large fan attempting to blow the noxious fumes away.

            Today is the day before various starts.  Firstly and most importantly, from a purely malicious point of view, tomorrow is the start of term for Spanish and Catalan kids.  And my erstwhile colleagues.  Secondly, from a purely academic point of view, tomorrow is the re-start of the next phase of Toni’s qualifications and the start of a FutureLearn course for me. 

My course proper starts on the 4^th October, by which time I hope to have received the replacement books which have had to be re-sent because the Spanish Post Office lost (again) the original consignment – they now have a 50% failure rate for my course material.  Not good.  But, with any luck, the books will be here tomorrow and I will be happily looking through the pictures which, in a history of art course are, surely, even in an OU course, the most important element!

So, just back from going out to dinner, paid for by me because Toni was right about the date and time of the departure of our loathsome temporary neighbours.  A less than convincing meal with tapas which were severely ordinary and nothing to encourage a return visit.  Still, what can be bad when such a negative has been removed!

This is the first of a new generation of writing to mark the start of a new academic year.  I only hope that I get into literary gear soon enough to sustain my interest!

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.