Life is difficult

It gets you down!

I have discovered that reams of paper are the new CDs.  And by that I mean, in terms of packaging.

            I know that CDs are rapidly becoming the things of the past, bought only by poor sods like me who reasons that buying all the expensive recordings that I couldn’t afford when in University at bargain prices on reissued CDs is, well, a bargain.

            And yes, more than one person has looked at me with condescending pity as I relay my excitement at owning Archiv recordings at a fraction of the price of the original LPs, by saying, “You only buy them because you do not know where to look on the Web to get them for nothing!”

            Perhaps, but I am still the sort of person who wants the physical evidence that I own something and I cannot be doing with music in the cloud.  Though, of course, I do have most of my music somewhere there.  Don’t blame me for being paradoxical, it comes with the personality!

            Anyway.  Packaging.  Anyone who remembers CDs (look them up on Google) will also remember the physical impossibility of removing the cellophane covering of the discs.  An especially cruel feature of the packaging was some sort of numinous ghostly line around the outside which was allegedly an ‘easy opening’ feature.  I spurn such inhumanity and remember my tears of frustration as I broke nails trying to gain access.

            Eventually, of course, one took to the knife or the scissors and then gouged chunks of the plastic cover in increasingly frenzied attempts to get the blood plastic off.

            What, I remember, was especially galling was getting a ‘bit’ of the plastic to give.  This ‘bit’ gave you a completely false expectation that the rest would peel away like thick rind from a juicy orange.  Not a bit of it!  All you would have is a finger scratching area of the inside case to feel and the rest of the plastic covering would preserve its doughty integrity.  Until the knife.  And it was always the knife in the end.  Apart from really cheap discs which had no covering.

            Ah, happy days!  And now those memories have returned with a vengeance at you attempt to gain access to 500 sheets of paper.

            One of our local supermarkets has the packaging of paper down to a fine art of infuriating, teeth chattering futility.

            Ironically, the paper is wrapped in plastic.  This plastic is snugly wrapped and the seams of the packaging are, I assume heat-sealed.  This means that you can feel the edge of the packaging, but no nail is thin enough or sharp enough to gain entry.

            The knife!  I hear you cry.  The knife indeed comes into play.  But, if you only cut a bit, it only gives a bit – and certainly not enough to allow you to remove any paper.

            I would have thought that only Zen Buddhists would be able to open (or indeed ‘not open’) reams of paper and still have the equanimity to smile at humanity afterwards.

            Whatever happened to the ‘sensible packaging for humans’ campaign, and why has it been suspended for paper?

Poetic dispersion

I have sent off a few copies of Clocks of Dust to a very few selected readers with an injunction to comment.  If they look at the postage on the outside of the envelope then they should feel duty bound to repay the postage with at least a few well-chosen words!

            So far, three people have given me feedback of varying complexity and length.  I am not proud, I will take comments from where I can get them and I truly welcome any and all responses.  Please, visit smrnewpoems.blogspot.es and, more importantly, leave a message/comments on what you read there.  I promise to reply to each and every one!

Food

 

To my leisure centre for the €10.90 lunch.  Excellent!  We were tempted to go there by one of the starters which was the Catalan take on bubble and squeak.  In this version it is served with black pudding and laced (if you are sensible) with olive oil.

            I never thought that the day would come where I would have defeated my childhood detestation of cooked cabbage (I ate raw cabbage with relish) and actually go out of my way to choose a starter like the above!

            As far as I can tell, it is only callos (tripe) which still defeats my omnivorous appetite.  The Spanish version of this odious dish (which is also the signature dish of Madrid, say no more!) is no better than the truly disgusting version cooked with milky water that my mother enjoyed.  Neither my father nor I joined her in this uncharacteristic faux pas of taste!

Weather

 

Although you can kid yourself that summer is really here during the day, the sunless evening and night soon dispels this idea – then it is cool to cold.  But we are counting the days.

            Already the minions of the powers that be are busily painting the different coloured parking lines ready for the summer season when the colour of lines between which you are parked will determine the amount you have to pay to stay there.  We residents of the beach side of Castelldefels have special passes which allow us to park free of charge between green lines, but even we have to pay if we go one street nearer to the sea and find ourselves between blue lines!

            Parking will soon assume its official summer status of “nightmare” and we will be increasingly grateful that, if we bother to open the gates we do actually have a couple of parking spaces in front of the house!

Essay

The OU essay is now becoming something of a Dark Cloud as I am writing more poetry than thinking about body art.  Although I do not technically have to complete this essay, I would be stupid indeed to allow the rest of the work I have done to go for nothing.  So, this weekend is the Big Push to get the rest of the reading done and the start of the cobbling together of half understood artistic pronouncements to get the academic ball rolling!

Tragedy!

 

The robot hoover has given up the ghost.  It first developed a sort of limp and then it descended into a state of melancholy madness by pirouetting on the spot and going nowhere.

            The brush on one side has disintegrated, the ‘bumper’ on the front has cracked; the treat has come off one wheel and the wiring is beginning to spill out form the insides.  It is knackered.  And I want my (not a lot of) money back.  This was, supposedly, a bargain and I was delighted at how it was working but it is yet another example of paying for what you get.

            I have not given up on the concept.  I will however go for a more sophisticated example of the genre the next time I throw money in a cleaning direction.

Food for body and mind

Food by the kilo

I have been in quality restaurants where the meat and fish was fresh and waiting to be selected by the customer form a cold display and then cooked to order.  For that sort of service, the meat or fish is sometimes weighed and the cost of your meal depends on the weight of the main ingredient.

            Never before have I been in a restaurant where your whole dish (including the plate) was weighed and a sticky ticket affixed to your bill! 

            Picking up Toni from his mother’s in Terrassa at lunchtime, the three of us went to lunch in the entertainment centre in the city.  This monstrosity is the usual collection of cinemas, restaurants, shops and other money extracting establishments set in a series of building which look as though they have been constructed for a cheap film set.

            Everything about the place is ‘faux’ and that included the rustic modern restaurant that we patronized where my favourite pieces of kitsch were the signs for the toilets.  Each of the toilets was designated by means of a ceramic tile in the style of C18th naïf figures.  There was even one for the disabled toilet showing a knickerbocker wearing person in an archaic wheelchair!  Priceless!

            Around the stone cladding and wooden beams in the particular part of the concrete barn where the restaurant was situated there was a non-functional fireplace replete with churns, cereal stalks and three-legged stools.

            The food, however, was fine.  It was served in a buffet style and when you had loaded you plate to your satisfaction you took it to the desk where it was put on a weighing scales, a button pressed and sticky price emerged to be stuck on your bill.

            The basic cost for everything was 14€ per kilo.  An interesting concept and one which, going by the numbers of people there, appears to work.

Publication!

My poem sequence, now entitled Clocks of Dust has been printed and it looks very fine indeed.  I would print a photograph of the main cover, but this site appears not to like the format that I use and so I will have to try something else.

            The final appearance of the booklet owes a lot to Toni who helped with the design of the logo and of the front cover.  It is by far the most professional looking of the ‘books’ that I have written and is something of which I am inordinately proud.

            Indeed to celebrate its publication we went to La Fusta and had a jar of sangria and a selection of tapas.  A photograph was taken showing me with book and glass and, when I am stronger, I will attempt to load it here!

            I have downloaded the print version (so called because none of the graphics were accepted by the site) http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and readers will be able to see the small but I think significant changes that I have made to the originals of the poems which are also on the site.

            A very limited edition of 12 copies has been produced in a print version and anyone else who is interested will have to make do with the electronic version.  And I will have to ask Toni’s advice about how to ensure that the graphics say with the print when I send them off!

            I am pleased with the final version, though this version too may be changed by the time it is published in book form, which I estimate will be in October 2016.

            I hope that there will be other ‘sequences’ which I can publish in Chapbook form before then, but the 2016 date is one which I think is ‘doable’ after Flesh Can Be Bright is published this October.

            What I am really looking forward to is the reaction of the Poetry Group in Barcelona; last week the group organizer said that we should consider publishing chapbooks of poems that we thought worthy of wider attention.  This week, voila!  And with a good cover too!

Seasonal Demands

I have nailed my seasonal colours to the mast, so to speak, and bought my first bottle of suntan lotion.  This is my clean indication to the weather powers that be, that I consider summer to have started and demand that the weather follow my whim.

            I have taken note of the welter of well meaning information that is available on the Internet and have decided to ignore the highly publicised blandishments of high profile and high cost lotions and go for the Lidl alternative.  I already use the Lidl aftersun lotion, and have done for some time, as it is an excellent moisturiser and I use it on the understanding, as Tesco’s so cleverly put it, that ‘every little helps.’  It can’t do any harm and ageing skin can take all the help it can get.  It’s not that cheap any more, but I am faithful to something that doesn’t do me hurt!

            The bike riding is beginning to tan my legs and arms now that I have decided that it is warm enough to cycle in a t-shirt.  Sometimes that decision is more determination than pleasure, but, as the Labour Party so memorably put it, ‘things can only get better’ – at least in sunshine terms.

Politics

I truly don’t know which country, Spain or Britain, has more of my contempt when it comes to voting intentions.  The odious conservative party in Spain, PP, has lost all credibility and respect – and yet people vote for them.  Lots of people.  They remind me of one of my old lapel badges, which, astonishingly enough for me had “Vote Tory!” in big letters in the middle.  That certainly got people who knew me giving the badge a double take.  It was only when they came closer to check that what they had seen was real that they were able to read the writing around the circumference of the badge, which asked: “Young and stupid?  Old and selfish?”  Then the central “Vote Tory!” made sense.  I see no reason to change that badge for either country!

            UKIP is beneath contempt.  But that will not stop people voting for a ‘chap’ who rejects the hypocrisy of the other established parties and who gives voters heartfelt common sense from a ‘reasonable bloke.’  Any one who believes that he actually is ‘one of them’ will have to be the same public school educated, upper class banker (and that last word was not the one that I wanted to type but it does rhyme with it) who hates foreigners yet has a German wife and whose policies make Toytown seem like Oxbridge sort of person themselves.  Which most of the people who are going to vote for him and his joke of a party are clearly not.

            If nothing else, no one can pretend that there is not something to vote for in the elections this year.  Each vote counts.  God help us!

Holiday end

Sequence

I have finished the last of the Poems in Holy Week, written an introduction and published a single copy as a chapbook!  It now exists electronically and in a single unique printed copy.  I used a rather abstract photograph I took from a hotel window of a wall, railings and frames which was the rather unlovely, but satisfyingly abstract view that I had.  Toni hated the picture and so I have replaced it with something which I think is more acceptably picturesque.

            If anyone would like an electronic copy of the poem sequence you only have to let me have your email address and I will send a copy to you.

            The poems, or versions of them are also available at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and, as I always say, I welcome comments either on the site or to me via email.

            I am still not quite sure what to make of what I have written, and I think that the poems will be further revised in the next few months.

            I have found writing them challenging and stimulating – and they have kept me away from my essay on body art which has to be completed in the next couple of weeks!

Easter Day

Apart from writing the final poem, there has been nothing about this day which makes it more distinctive than any other.  I think that tomorrow stands more chance of being festive, as we are going to Terrassa for a family meal in which we will consume the traditional cake or mona de Pascua which I hope has been made by Toni’s sister.

            If you are foolish enough to buy one of these constructions in the shops it can cost you ridiculous sums of money.  One edifice, cake hardly described the fantasy in chocolate and frippery, cost over €80!  And that was in a local shop just waiting for a buyer, as if people just popped in off the street and handed over the money.  Which they did!

            Our version will be home made and almost certainly having a theme of Barça.  I will attempt to remember to take a photograph before the kids get stuck into it and then try the even greater task of getting the damn thing on the site and the almost impossible effort of getting it to stay there.

            Still, Toni’s mum is an ex-cook and her meals are always worth eating.  It is just unfortunate that the whole of Spain seems to be going somewhere on Easter Monday so the roads are likely to be nightmares.

            One particular nightmare concerns our local motorway.  During periods of high volume, the police in this area have been known to cone off one lane on one side of the motorway and have traffic going against the flow of the other two lanes.

And yes, it is quite as horrific as it sounds!

            And the police will have been prised out of the bars that they frequent and will descend on roads main, side and motor to collect untold wealth in fines.  So one small glass of Cava is going to be my limit – with plenty of Earl Grey.

Exercise

I am not a great believer in exercise for the sake of exercise.  I quite enjoyed playing squash and badminton – but those were sports and competitive and therefore there was a point to them.  Swimming is OK because it uses a different medium and that makes the ‘exercise’ element a necessary part of an otherworldly experiment.  No, it’s the treadmill and gym stuff that I can’t stand.  And cycling.

            And therein lies the rub.  I have been cycling for the past few weeks because the car part in the leisure centre is being redone and is therefore closed.

            As it has gone from being a piece of tree shaded, gravel covered dirt to polished, drained concrete, you will appreciate that this is no afternoon with the lorries type of transformation.  The car park is out of commission for a month and since parking in the area is a nightmare the bike will have to do.

            But I have quite taken to it.  I have bought (always a good sign) a rather swish new helmet which is more comfortable, more adjustable and more stylish than the old one.  And, and this is the killer, it has a little red LED flashing light on the back as added protection against blind drivers in killer cars.  The dynamo on my bike has never really worked, as so I have bought a two-intensity front light and a cute red, programmable flashing LED light for the rear wheel.  I do not of course go out on the bike when it is dark or when it is raining, I am after all, no fanatic, but as the sun shines, so I ride.

            It seems more and more likely that, even when the car park reopens, I might continue to ride the bike.  As long as the sun shines.  And I feel so self-congratulatory as I lock the thing up after having navigated quite a nasty mountainous bridge over the motorway!

Exodus

Monday is a holiday and Tuesday should find most of the population of this country going back to work.  The Easter Holiday in Spain barely deserves the word as it is so short.  But on the positive side all of our visitors from Barcelona (which seems to come here en mass during any holiday) will go home and gather strength for the long haul of the summer.  And we have to prepare as well.