Reality check?

Say what you like about the Spanish education system, but they do like a good test.

            The use of that last adjective is an interesting one.  For the first time for a considerable time, I have had to do a test.  And I have not done at all well.  Not at all.

            The real problem is that I was not playing to my strengths, as this test was the first of what I am sure is going to be a continuing series of tests in my Spanish course in Castelldefels.

In most situations in my present country of choice I find that my Tarzan-like approach to Spanish (heavy on nouns, adjectives and expressive hand gestures, but low on verbs and grammatical forms) usually gets me out of most situations in which I have blithely entered into.  I have ‘spoken Spanish’ in all types of situations, formal and informal and, usually, astonishingly, I have managed to survive.  This impressionistic approach to language use while it is certainly a way of surviving is not the way of the Spanish educational test.  In such tests the lack of an accent is fully and totally wrong and no matter how you might have got away with saying the word, if you write it incorrectly, it is simply wrong            

            And tests like things like verbs and the correct use of prepositions.  Such things are not my strengths!

            I spent last night in an increasingly desperate write-it-out-until-you-remember-it attempt to push a vast amount of specific grammatical information into a brain that seems to be wired not to accept such things as in any way important.

            My humiliation (to be revealed next Tuesday in the next lesson) has had one positive result: I am now ‘officially’ panicking and am determined to do something about it.  That last phrase has more than a touch of the defeatist optimism of King Lear, but I do believe that at least part of my mind is available to accept morsels of information linked to what might get me an eventual pass in the examination that I need to pass if I am to be qualified to become a Spanish citizen.  As an example I have (you might well say “at last”) understood the difference between the use of the verb ‘gustar’ related to singular and plural associations.  This is fairly basic stuff, but lots of basic bits put together equals proficiency!  At least I hope so.

            I suppose the real lesson to be drawn from the sorry tale of low marks is that it is not going to be easy.  Although I might be able to bluff my way through an easy conversation in Spanish – easy, conversational Spanish is not the sort of language that is going to get you marks in a Spanish examination.  I am reminded of my third year tutor in university who did not allow me to get away with any airy-fairy ‘interesting’ comments about literary texts: he wanted specific, text supported, page numbered evidence to back up anything I said.  I would do well to bear in mind his attitude to inform my response to my future studies!  Who knows, I might actually progress!

Only I could place all my gadget hopes in possessing a state-of-the-art mobile phone, the flagship machine of a world leader in communications, only to discover that it also had an exploding battery!

           I paid for this phone (in full) in August, proudly pre-ordering something that was obviously going to be the cynosure of all phone users’ eyes.  Each delivery date I was given, stretched my patience to breaking point and beyond.  And then Samsung (yes, it was a Note 7) announced that it was suspending production of the machine and instituted a worldwide recall.  Disaster.  And it was, in the brilliant advertising phrase used by Stella Artois, “reassuringly expensive!”  Well, not for me the glorious moment of ostentatiously using something that other people have not got.  With new tech. it is not enough to own something, other people must be without it!

            The seriousness of the situation was indicated by the fact that not only did I ‘open a file’ on the Affaire Samsung, but it also had its own box file to contain it!

            A phone call got me my money paid back into my account, and a quick check on the Internet checked that it was actually there.  Then Toni got to work.

            After the years that Toni has spent on his IT course, it is nice to get something back.  He set off on an Internet trawl to find the next best phone for me.  I have to say that he does not go for the obvious.  His previous suggestion was for a Yota phone, a Russian double-faced device – the only ones that I have seen have been mine.  I use the plural as the first Yotaphone was stolen and the second accompanied me into our pool and died.  Being far too expensive to replace a third time, I downscaled to a Huawei.  This was also on advice from Toni who had explored possibilities in the phone world when suggesting a phone for his sister’s birthday.

            I have been satisfied with the phone, but, as I rarely use the thing as an actual phone, it has not been ideal.  Therefore, again on Toni’s advice I have decided to go phablet and have ordered some sort of monster mobile phone from China.  And it is less than half the price of what the Samsung was going to cost me.

            And, as far as money is concerned, I have just had, coincidentally, back payment of my small Spanish state pension fragment that covers the cost.  And then some.  Though not much more.  So, to my way of thinking, the phone is actually free.  That sort of economic thinking developed in college and has stayed with me ever since.  And, as I do not smoke, I have always considered that the money I have not spent on a disgusting habit exists in some sort of financial ‘cloud’ to be called on when a mad moment of expenditure calls.

            I am not sure how the next piece of information fits into my money thoughts, but I had a phone call from the police yesterday informing me that my sports bag which disappeared from the back of my bike in the couple of hundred yards from the Correos to the optician had turned up and was waiting for me to collect.  Which I did and found that absolutely nothing was missing.  From earplugs to a small packet of mixed nuts for emergency energy and all the towels, bathing costumes and goggles that I stuff into the interior, everything was there.

            In the days after the bag disappeared I remembered all the things that I had forgotten were there: a case of bike tools; a mini tyre pump; a packable raincoat and cash.  Unfortunately, the return of the case was not timely enough to stop my buying replacements, but on the bright side it is always good to have spares!

            I now await my new phone.  With impatience.

Little and often!

I've worked out that, when I finally get my Spanish “pension” (it really is so small that it doesn't deserve to be allowed to exist without quotation marks) it will be the equivalent of getting a fiver every day for breakfast – perhaps a bit more, but I'm allowing for inflation and Brexit! Which is much better, as I always say, than having to pay a fiver a day before breakfast! And I get it just for being alive!

     I expect that this delight will wear off and I will get back to the more grimy realities of life rather than spending my time rhapsodising about something which is boringly predictable, and for which I have paid throughout my working life. But, I have to come back to the point that pensions are magical when they happen. Magical that is, as long as you have been fortunate enough to gain access to a scheme which gives you a living return. And of course where you are still living to enjoy it.

     However, enough of that (though I cannot guarantee that I will not wax lyrical when I actually feel the putative money in my hot little hands) and on to more serious things.

     The political situation in the UK is depressing to put it mildly. Not only are Conservative stalking the corridors of power under the delusion that they have coherent policies to govern the country, but also an unelected PM is gibbering about education as if she has been caught in a 1950s time loop! In desperation I look towards my adopted country to show signs of sanity.

      Fat chance of that.

     After two inconclusive General Elections, Spain is still umpteen months into trying to form a government. Meanwhile we have a government in functions to continue the outward appearance of competence. Unfortunately this is being attempted by PP, the Conservative Party of Spain which is, to any reasonable viewer, totally and irremediably corrupt. And brazen about it too. I urge you to put “PP” and “corruption” into Google and see what you come up with.

     The sheer number of cases of corruption involving PP is astonishing. Don't get me wrong, other political parties on the left and centre as well as the right are corrupt, but they are nothing compared with the epic corruption shown by the party of 'government'!

     And what of the left, the opposition? In the Way of the Left they are at each other's throats. The major opposition party, PSOE has not gained enough seats in either election to form an alternative government of the left. To be the government they would have to pact with another party or ask for abstentions from other parties when the election of a President occurs.

     In the first election PSOE could have pacted with Podemos (a new party of the left) and they would have had an overall majority. Instead, after the election, Podemos was filled with elation and suggested a pact in which they would become partners in government and stipulated which ministries they wanted all the while waving a positive book of legislation that they wanted to get through in double quick time! PSOE (especially the so/called Barons or leaders of the party) were horrified at what they saw as the presumption of a bunch of Johnny come lately leftie extremists.

Podemos was also in favour of giving Catalonia a referendum on independence and therefore this was an added, and for many in PSOE a clinching reason for retreating from any agreement with what in politics counts as alacrity.

     Instead PSOE pacted with C's, another new party of the right. This 'brilliant' strategy did not give the combined parties an overall majority and the C's were anathema to Podemos and so in the Presidential election in parliament both PP and Podemos voted against. Stalemate. New elections.

     Amazingly, in the new elections, PP (The Putrid Party) after a series of revelations which showed the systemic nature of corruption at all levels in the party, actually gained votes! People, ordinary people, always have the capacity to astonish. C's lost some votes and Podemos gained some but, and this is why we are still without a government, there is still difficulty in forming a government with an overall majority.

     PP (sic!) have the largest number of votes but no overall majority. The C's (the political sluts of Spain) having pacted with PSOE on the left, now switched to the right and voted with PP for the old President. Everybody else voted against and therefore we had no new government.

     The left, i.e. PSOE and Podemos now no longer can combine and form an overall majority, they would need the abstention of the C-s sluts or the active support of other small independence parties.     A big no no for PSOE.

     The situation, as it draws itself out, grows more complicated. Recent elections in Galicia and the Basque Country did not work out well for PSOE and so, over the last few days some senior members of the party have resigned from the executive committee trying to cause the resignation of the current party leader. Other members of PSOE have been murmuring about abstaining during the next presidential vote. Everything seems to suggest that Rajoy and PP will form the next government. The left seems incapable of seeing the big picture, that a continuing government of Rajoy and PP will be an out and out disaster for Spain and they need to bury differences and work something out which keeps Rajoy out too.

 

     I have no confidence that people will see sense. I think that party loyalty is something which is far too important to far too many people, and the fate of the country runs a very unconvincing second best to party|personal gain. It is a depressing realisation, but I think it is all too accurate.

But the sun is shining and I was able to do a little light sunbathing. So, at the moment, not everything is ill in the world!

Pay-back time?

I never really know whether to be jubilant or deeply suspicious when Official Government Bureaucracy works in your favour. 

            The fact that I was able to park immediately opposite the front door of the Social Security Office in Gava was unsettling in itself, and I actually drove past the parking space at first because, obviously, it couldn’t possibly exist – it was far, far too convenient to be true.  But I backed into the space like a guilty thing and marched with a determined step towards the fray.

            I didn’t even get through the door.  The queue snaked out into the sunshine and a glimpse of the inside showed a serried rank of glum looking petitioners sitting waiting for a free official.

            I had come to the office to find out what an inscrutable official (stamped) letter meant.  It was important because it concerned my state pension – of which more anon.

            To make things simpler there is a machine at the entrance to the office that takes you identity number, links it to an appointment and spews out a numbered ticket.  You take it and wait, staring at an LED notice board watching for something approximating to your ticket.

            The machine was surrounded by a vociferous crush of people who were treating the ticket dispenser as if it were the sort of electronics that required a PhD at least to make it work.  I mean, I have to say it’s not rocket science: you press a button, type in your number, push another button and take your ticket.  Old women of all possible sexes were looking at the instructions on the machine as if they were written in Glagolitic and were building themselves up into a frenzy of incomprehension.

            My own situation was a trifle more complex as I had come on spec. as it were, in the vague hope that “just a little information” would not necessitate the making of an official appointment.  I was, in other words, trying to short-circuit the sacrosanct procedures of a Government Office!

            As the harassed woman from the information desk made her way back from trying to sort out the chaos by the number machine I waylaid her and in impeccably bad Spanish, but with an irresistibly winning smile!

            What followed is, I have to admit, a refutation of the mythic stories of unhelpful officials.  She explained what the document I was waving at her actually meant; she took me to a computer station; she sat me down, brought up my details and explained further; she printed out a new document for me and, most importantly, stamped it.

            It seems that I am entitled to a Pension in Spain!  This was completely unexpected and I could hardly contain my enthusiasm.  She was delighted at my delight and told me that usually people were pissed off with how much they were going to get.  As I had expected nothing, anything was a triumph.

            It’s not much, a couple of hundred euros a month, but, coming in is much better than going out and even after tax, it will pay for a few lunches a week.

            Like my official state pension from the UK, the actual amount is nothing to write home about, but my pleasure at receiving it is out of all proportion to how much it actually is!

            I have not, you understand, got a single solitary penny of either pension yet, so I am writing in a state of pleasurable anticipation.  This will last for a couple of months when something should be paid into my account.  The satisfaction will last for a few months more, right up until I find out exactly how much tax will have to be paid, then black depression will descend as I see exactly how much the states (Spain and the UK) think I can live on!  At least I know what to expect and so I can put aside a sum to pay the taxman in the New Year.

            My state pension from the UK is tax free as I don’t live in the country, but I understand that Spain will claim the right to rake in the cash – and don’t worry about my writing this and “letting them know” the UK and Spain have already contacted each other and my status is known by both countries.  No escape, in other words.

            Still, a Spanish Pension!  I was so delighted I wrote a poem, which I print below.

Pension bonding?

To those so young,

and dreading years ahead,

where work dictates the Moments of a Life,

or it apparently does so,                 

I might say               

                       there is

a rite of passage,

not anticipated ‘til,

it’s inadvertently revealed.

And it is this.

There will, I promise, come a time

when, out with friends, or at a meal,

you’ll chat, and when goodbyes are said

you will discover that there’s been

just one, sole, topic taking up your breath.

Some years ahead, for you, maybe,

but talked about with passion

or with pride – or fear.

A life-target that,

so long as you’re alive,

you’ll make.

I’ve reached the age where

what was said some

“not-so-many-years-ago”

is now a near enough reality.

And I observe

a process that involves

a bouncing to and fro

between two states

that claim me both.

I’ve always said I lead a double life,

as here in Spain, what is in Britain

just a letter placed between the

‘fore’ and ‘sur’ of my two names,

becomes a patronymic force and

Señor Morgan suddenly exists!

And I found out today,

(I have the printed sheet

and the official stamp)

that ageing Brit’s entitled to

a small (but welcome) sum,

paid monthly, right into his bank.

That illustrates more surely

than my bad Spanish can,

that one belongs, one is a part.

For nothing is more real

than the cement of governmental cash.

For those who are interested my latest drafts of poems can be read at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and I will be happy to respond to any comments you might make.

Meanwhile I continue to get up early to go and have my swim, though I will have to do more if I am to lose the extra weight that the nurse demands I do.  And today a good swim was not matched by a good and restrained food intake.  And next week there are visitors and it will be churlish not to respond to their desire to eat well.  Perhaps I can limit the “drink well” part and feel smug and justified – though the scales are impartial and glacial when it comes to their view of reality!

Work continues on the anthology “Together Apart” with discussions continuing with the printer about what, exactly we can afford.  I think I see a resolution and I will have to contact my fellow poets to keep them in the loop.  I hope that publication will still be towards the end of next month.  I am, in spite of the darkness of some of my poetry, essentially an optimistic person.

Honestly!

Swim to forget?

It is a reflection of the uniformly depressing nature of the ‘news’ nowadays that gaining an empty lane in my swimming pool for the whole of the duration of my metric mile crawl is enough to make me feel that not everything is ill with the world!

            I am still trying to get my head around the fact that Galicia, for the umpteenth year in succession, has elected a majority government of the criminally corrupt PP (Spanish Conservative) party!

Given the welter of adverse publicity showing clear maladministration throughout the PP organization it takes a particularly strong peg to block the nose from the stench of corruption to actually vote for such an undeserving bunch.  But vote they did and they have thereby promoted their president to be the most likely person to take over from the walking joke that is the acting president of Spain.  God help us all!

            The Basque country voted as it always does for parties who loathe the politicians in Madrid, and we get ever closer to the break-up of Spain.

            Enough.  Disgust with the present political situation is becoming an idée fixe with me and I am aware that I am repeating myself, and powerless fury becomes boring after a while.  Although I can vote in local elections, I have no say in national ones and I can not take a direct part in the changes that are essential if Spain is to develop from its long post-transition malaise.  Frustration does not even begin to cover what I feel.

Self-interest is always more refreshing!  I have had a message on my phone telling me that my state pension has achieved a “resulta favorablemente” and that I will soon be getting something by post telling me the “resolucion”.  I am not sure what this means as my pension is going to be paid by the UK and the few years that I worked in Spain are not going to make that much difference to how much I get.

            The whole process of getting my state pension has been interesting one.  The initial application form for people claiming from overseas was horrific in its demanding detail.  A panicked phone call to the UK revealed that, if you have worked in Spain, you have to apply via the Spanish social security system and not via the UK.  Given the propensity for revelling in pointless bureaucracy in this country I was, to put it mildly daunted.  The reality was a delight!  It took about five minutes with a bloke in the local social security office and the administration was done!  Unbelievable!  I dully received a notification for Newcastle that things had been processed and I am now waiting for the cash!  I will be interested to see what the Spanish system has to say as I had assumed that everything was done and dusted.  As far as I am able to work out, I think that the work that I did in Spain gives me an extra quid a week: not much, but I’d rather get it than pay it.

            I fear that the lurking missive from the Spanish state is more likely to be about taking money rather than giving it.  If you live abroad then your state pension is paid to you in toto with no tax deductions.  At this point the omnipotent hacienda or Spanish tax people take an unhealthy interest and demand that it be taxed by them: not unreasonable as I do actually live here!  

          I will try and empty my mind of the numerous graphic instances in the recent past (vide The Panama Papers) where many of the rich and famous in Spain have taken to heart the notorious words of Leona Helmsley who said, “We don’t pay taxes.  Only the little people pay taxes” and have done everything in their power to ensure that none of their hard earned cash (!) goes to the taxman.  As a teacher who has been ‘taxed at source’ for the whole of his working career I feel that I occupy the moral high ground when it comes to the payment of taxes, and certainly on a higher plane than the new Duke of Westminster who has paid a laughable amount in death duties and I am sure will continue (legally) to pay the absolute minimum of tax, resulting in a retired teacher (e.g. moi!) paying a higher proportion of his income in tax than a man who owns Belgravia – among other choice chunks of London!

            Ah well, one mustn’t be bitter as it only shortens one’s life and affords merriment to those, like His Grace, above!

My new phone (complete with un-exploding battery I trust) is now set to be delivered in the first week of October.  I have bought a charging station; a case, and extra memory for it already and so, quite apart from the horrendous price of the thing, I am now left with a further investment that will be nullified if I decide that I have waited long enough and cancel the order.

            To look at my frustration from another point of view, I could retexture this enforced period of waiting as a Zen-like meditative interlude of delayed gratification.  Which is good for the soul and is, of course, entirely foreign to modern expectations – and therefore I will be practising a dying skill.

At this time of the year, the weather can be gauged by the degree to which the foam cushions on the sunbed have dried out.  Although we have not had a great deal of rain during the day, we have had theatrical OTT storms during the nights, and the intensity of the sun during the day is sometimes insufficient thoroughly to dry out the material to the intensity of ‘bone’.  Today, for example, I have had to turn the mattress upside down on the terrace to allow the sun to do its work.  I was confined to plastic chair to lounge about a bit.  In fact I have just checked and the mattress is almost dry: it should be perfect for a little light sunbathing this afternoon!  There are advantages to living this close to the Med!

Tomorrow I go to the third of my classes in Spanish here in Castelldefels.  I am, it has to be said, dreading the experience as I fear that I will be way out of my depth given the extent of the knowledge of all the other people in the class: they seem to approach the use of verbs with delight while I am like some medieval cartographer inscribing “Here there be dragons” over those parts of a sentence which allow it to make sense!

            I shall, however, give it a go and see if I can survive and, as one friend has already pointed out, it will be an invigorating experience for me to be the inarticulate one in a language class for once in my life!  I only hope that there are revealing pictures in the textbook that we are due to be given tomorrow!

Life really does have a relentless quality that is both exciting and intimidating at the same time!