Speak out!

 

I think that Toni and I are both now officially addicts to Duolingo, the language learning app.  Not content with Italian and French as his chosen languages, he branched out today on a series of lessons in German.

     I am sticking, one might say severely sticking, to ‘only Spanish’ in an increasingly desperate attempt to get the rudiments of the language to stick, somewhere, in my brain.  Considering that I am a retired language teacher, English admittedly and usually Literature, but a language none the less, it is astonishing how little I have assimilated of either of the languages from the multitudes of native speakers who surround me.

     Don’t get me wrong.  I can find my way around and usually I am able to talk and bluff my way through most situations ranging from official business with the city hall and the notorious Iberian paper-pushers that inhabit them, to getting my car seen to by technicians who defiantly do not speak English.

     Still, my fluency in English is a constant accusation against my enforced Trappist approach to general conversation in Spanish.  Somehow or other Spanish is simply not ‘taking’ with me, and it is constantly frustrating.  There is only so much that a slight smile and a depreciating hand gesture can convey: communication needs words placed in a firm grammatical structure.  And that is something that I am still working on.

     Though, come to think of it, although I have been to Spanish (and indeed Catalan) lessons, there are still basic piece of linguistic information that slips through my brain with the accomplished ease of a Johnsonian lie.  I have not been truly serious about learning the language, and perhaps Duolingo is the sort of mechanical relentlessly repetitive emphasis on the essentials is the thing that I need to get me truly started (after all of my time in Catalonia) in acquiring proficiency in a foreign tongue.

     Both of us are well and truly caught up in the striving towards the next level and competing against named but unknown people arbitrarily placed with us in our respective leagues.

     Absurd that it might be, I was inordinately proud to have come first in the 'starting' Bronze league and to have been promoted to the Silver league where, coming in the top three I was then promoted to the Gold league.  Apart from being told that such progress is found in a fraction of the percentage of learners in the app there do not appear to be any tangible gains from such exertions, except for the kudos of being at the top.  But, by golly, Toni and I are putting in the lesson time to gain points so that we can stay in the upper reaches of our respective leagues.  So, however futile the status, there is a real gain in the amount of time put into the hard slog of repetitious learning.

     It is far too soon to know if we are going to keep the effort up.  But I have to admit that I have done more work on my Spanish over the past ten days that I have done in the past embarrassingly large number of months!

     We are both still very much in the present tense of our languages, and I like to think that I am capable of attempting past and future tenses in Spanish if the mood takes me, but there is a sort of grounded satisfaction in regressing to simplicity and convincing yourself that ‘this time things are being done thoroughly’ and ‘every little helps’ and ‘anything is better than nothing’ so that in Ruskin’s words I will be able to see whether my efforts are ‘availing to good’ – whatever that means

 

The Saga of The Christmas Meal continues, with The Family finding out that many of the suggestions that they have come up with are all fully booked!  To the surprise of no one.  However, in spite of it being late (far too late) to find anywhere decent, we (or rather they) have found a place which has dropped like Manna from Heaven, or via a cancellation and another venue has been found.

     This Wednesday, we two are going up to Terrassa to have a menu del dia to find out the worth of the place, but in late November, we do not have the luxury of being able to be picky about the place that we finally decide on.  And what can one really judge from a normal menu del dia compared with what they might offer for a significant meal like the Christmas Repast.  Still, I maintain my rigid optimism and look forward to being pleasantly surprised next week.

Next week is also my blood test as part of the preparatory work for Doing Something About My Knees.  I am not sure how much further forward knowing about the composition of my blood will advance repairing the bone of the knees, but I await medical enlightenment, that might come the week after next.

     Since Christmas is horrifyingly near, it is obvious that nothing of any import will happen until the New Year and my hobbling will have to suffice until more specific descriptions of what can be done and how long it might take.  Something, neither the waiting nor the actualité, that I consider with anything approaching equanimity.

     But, there again, all personal conflict has to be seen as grist to my literary mill.

     If nothing is done, I shall write.    

   And if something is done, I shall write.   

     Hardship is a double-edged sword to someone who writes!   

And I’m not sure that that image works.  And I do know that I don’t care.

Sacrilege!

 

Hobbling my weary way, with the tapping stick (the only jaunty thing about my walk) from the underground car park to our rendezvous for lunch in Terrassa, we walked along a couple of streets that were littered with torn pages.

     At first, I took the pages for advertising, but then noted that the print was more book like and academic.  I then thought that they could be examination papers as the text looked suspiciously question-like and I thought that I could just about make out some equations.  I didn’t stop walking, as we were perilously near being late, and I certainly did not think picking one of the pages up seemed like a good idea.  So, I kept on walking and let my mind drift.

     One of the questionable ‘truths’ that we were fed in school was about academic progress.  The range of subjects (between 8 – 10) that we took for examination at what was then called O Level at the age of 16, would we cut down to only three at A Level, and then cut down to one at University.  We were also told that this ‘cutting down’ would allow us to focus on those, and then that, subject in which we were most interested.

     In my case, that was certainly true, as I ended up studying English Literature in University where I was academically forced to do, what I had always done – that is, read books.

     Not everything that I studied in University had my approbation: some of the pre-Chaucerian poetry that we had to study, written in Early Middle English, can still bring a sneer to my mouth and, although I answered a question in my finals where I pretended that I had actually fully read sir Gawan and Þe grene knyȝt  

 

and had something coherent to say about it.  For those who have not read this, here are the ‘famous’ opening lines:

Passus I

SIÞEN þe sege and þe assaut watz sesed at Troye,

Þe borȝ brittened and brent to brondeȝ and askez,

Þe tulk þat þe trammes of tresoun þer wroȝt

Watz tried for his tricherie, þe trewest on erthe:

 

So, you will perhaps be a little more sympathetic when I tell you that I concentrated a little more on what I could actually read with some fluency, than deciphering a poem more than 600 years old, like wallowing in the prolixity of nineteenth century novels and worrying about what I was missing in the Modern Literature course that I took for two years!

     All in all, I relished what we studied, even if it was logistically impossible to keep up with the relentlessness of an historical approach to literature which gave reading lists that were unfeasibly vast.  It is not an exaggeration to say that I have spent all the years since my undergraduate course trying to fill in the gaps that our majestic sweep through literature left!

     So, to see a book, any book ripped apart and scattered to the winds, is something I find difficult to take.  I have, in my time, to be truthful, perpetrated violence against a book.  While reading Jude the Obscure by Hardy, I became so exasperated by the sheer vapidity of Jude that I threw the book against the wall of my room in my Hall of Residence.  But I also have to say, that I picked the bloody thing up and continued to read the thing to the end.  And I kept the book in my library.  But have NEVER re-read it!

 

     I’ve just remembered.  I have actually burned a book!  I bought a second-hand copy of The Naked Lunch after reading about its notoriety and read it in a sort of state of horrified delight.  I could not believe that something so depraved could have been printed.  Though I didn’t stop reading it to cast it away, until I had read every word.  I then debated what to do with such a potent piece of pornography.  As I was still living at home at the time, I could not of course put it on the open shelves of my growing library – what if my parents were to see it!  With the amazing double standards of projected innocence, I was more worried about what such stuff would do to my parents, who were obviously not as worldly wise as their young son!

     And I burnt the thing!  To protect my parents!  As if!

     It now has a place (a new copy not the burn remnants of the first purchase) on my shelves as an example of an experimental way of writing whose effects are still being worked out in literature today.

     So, good, bad, and mediocre, books now moulder (some, quite literally) on my shelves, waiting for my inclination or the current of taste to change to bring them back into my hands to be read.

     But I also know that the academic progression, refining its way to your personal point of delight, is not always true.

     One guy I knew in College was a mechanical engineer, I was friendly with him, something that did not usually occur between Engineering and The Arts as the two groups seemed to have diametrically opposed viewpoints on virtually everything. 

     Anyway, we finished our degrees at the same time and, as soon as he had finished his last exam, he piled all his engineering books in a heap and set fire to the lot!  And, as he watched the flames mount, he expressed his determination that he would never open another engineering book and that he intended to go into accountancy.  Which he did.

     I cannot imagine doing anything like that.  Three years of a degree (and he got a IIi) in which he did well, and then at the end of it, total rejection.

     Perhaps those pages on a Terrassa street were from a similar disillusioned academic – though mid-November is not the time of an academic ending.  Perhaps the student (if student it was) had simply had enough and freedom was a paperchase of white page academia on a pavement.

     I wouldn’t, couldn’t do that, not even with a Jeffrey Archer novel!

 

 

 

 

 

Page turning pleasure

 

Would I recommend it?  That is the question that I am asking myself after finishing the last page and plonking the weighty tome on the coffee table.  Origin is the fourth (I think) novel by Dan Browne that I have read – though, now I come to think of it, I haven’t actually bought one of them.  All loaned.  And gratefully received.

     Origin is one of those books which you can read as if it’s a screenplay, so many of the set piece descriptions seem purpose written for the cinema.  It makes much of its setting in Spain and Barcelona and, as someone living in Catalonia within easy distance of Barcelona, I cannot deny the little frissons of delighted recognition as major architectural landmarks like the Casa Milà (La Pedrera), La Sagrada Familia, and even a mention of the small airport in Sabadell that we sometimes pass when going to Terrassa are described.

     Brown is a master at grafting further meaning onto the already significant, and he makes the most of the architectural backgrounds that he uses.

     To say that his novel’s narrative structure is contrived, says little – of course it is, that is part of the reason that his work sells so much and so widely.  We expect high tension action in his work, and part of the delight is seeing how he fabricates the excitement around settings and buildings that millions of people have visited.  He finds a way to make your memory of the guided tour just a little more high-octane by sprinkling his narrative magic of mysterious codes and signs to be deciphered to make the ordinary, deeply fascinating.

     Brown shares with Bryson the ability to make what appears to be complex understandable to the general reader.  He is careful to give information so that we are not left behind so, for example, philosophers or painters or mathematicians may be cited in the text, but there will always be a little extra information so that the reader can place them, almost as if they are wearing a descriptive name tab.  This is done unobtrusively, but constantly, so that you start noticing the ‘helping informative hand’ that you are given.

     Did I enjoy the book?  I have to say I did.  Will I ever read it again?  I have to say I won’t.  But Brown as a safe pair of story-telling hands producing a rollicking tale, Origin works.

 

 

Where are we going to eat for Christmas?

     In the UK, this time in November is too late to think about getting somewhere in a restaurant.  All the spaces will be gone.  And at a price that makes you wonder if it’s worth it just not to have to do the washing up!

     Here in Catalonia, you can consider going out to a restaurant on Christmas Day for a decent meal, without paying a fortune.  But even here, where you can leave booking fairly late, it is advisable to book early.

     Family discussions have at least started and tomorrow we are going to try out a restaurant that has been suggested to see what the food is like.  I have not seen the Christmas Menu but going out for Sunday Lunch seems like a good idea, and I am all for trying before eating – at least this lunch will not be as expensive as the Christmas meal.

     I suppose we expect to pay something like 45 to 50 euros for the Christmas lunch and that will probably include wine and Cava and coffee.  Not that the inclusion of alcohol means anything to me, as I am still true to my determination to drink nothing, if the only ‘something’ that my doctor allows me is “one small glass of red wine a day”.  I would like to see any self-respecting Welshman stick to that!

     And I am now, after a number of YEARS of alcohol denial, more and more convinced that cold, pure, water is unbeatable as an all-round drink.  Honestly!

 

 

What guilty pleasure?

 

There are some things that you do that you know are questionable, but you do them all the same.  Because sometimes you simply want to fall, or should that be Fall?  We are, after all, only human.

     Perhaps I am making too much of my current weakness, but I do feel that it is a guilty pleasure.

     The source of my self-indulgent unease is a book.  Not a book that I have bought (for once) but I book that I have been loaned.  It is a substantial book, with a rather fine cover featuring an overview of the city of Barcelona with the instantly recognizable structure of La Sagrada Familia taking centre stage. though in my reading so far, the action has taken place in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

 

 

 

The title of the book is Origin, and the author is Dan Brown, he of The Da Vinci Code, and it is Book 5 in the series featuring his academic enigma solving professor Robert Langdon.  And should I be reading it?

     The fact that I am even asking myself the question is significant.  Why shouldn’t I read something that has sold, with his other books, over 200 million copies?  Or is it because he has sold over 200 million copies that I should shun his work as being far too popular for my fastidious taste?

     There is a sort of snobbery over best-sellers that posits that if the appeal is so wide-ranging then it must perforce be somewhat infra dig to be seen paddling in such muddy overcrowded waters!

 

      

 

 

     One of my favourite quotations is taken from Len Deighton’s Billion Dollar Brain and concerns someone sneering at another character whom he accuses of talking in clichés, the response from the accused is, “I got nothing against clichés, son. It’s the quickest method of communication yet invented, but I get you.”  Which nicely puts the supposed superiority of the sneerer in place, and yet at the same time recognizes that while the efficiency of the communication via cliché might be unparalleled, there is an element of style that is lacking.

 

 

 

     I have only just started reading Origin and I am already hooked.  Yes, I can see that the structure of the novel is formulaic and yes Brown is serving up all the old tropes from religion, secrets, codes and mystery that has served him well, not well, most handsomely in his previous books, but if you are wheeling out Robert Langdon (again) then you just about know what to expect in terms of subject matter (just as you do with James Bond) but the delight is finding out how the old tune has been jazzed up to keep you reading.

     Brown is a safe pair of narrative hands, and the action fairly bounces along.  I am not expecting to find the equivalent of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann in his pages, but I am expecting to be intrigued.  It also helps that the locations in Spain that he has chosen for the action so far are all ones that I have visited, and therefore feel a personal link with them.

     And, anyway, I should point out that I am a person who has read ALL the space adventure Lucky Starr novels written by Isaac Asimov under a different name (Paul French) purely for money.  They are awful, and I devoured them.  To be fair, these novels were written for a juvenile audience, and there was a hope that the series would be picked up by a television company and produced, but they never were.  To give a flavour of the book, I could cite just one of the snappy titles, Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids, and the writing matches the banality of the title.  And remember, I’ve read it, and the rest of them.

     I justified to myself the reading of the Lucky Starr series because I was on a sort of project to read all the sci-fi stories and novels that Asimov had ever written, so I had to read the Lucky Starr novels to achieve completion.  Did they have the profundity of Nightfall or The Foundation Trilogy?  No, of course they didn’t, but they were not attempting to match those.  And I enjoyed them.  All of them.

     Brown was quoted as saying of The da Vinci Code that he hoped it would be “an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate” and from what I have read in Origin so far, he could claim with some justification that same statement as a tag line for the novel.

     And what, after all, is wrong with “an entertaining story” at any time!

 

 

 

Have phone: will learn!

 

In a desperate attempt to improve my Spanish, Toni has introduced me to the addictive delights of Duolingo, the free (though it tries its insistent best to make you part with money) app to improve your chosen language skills.

     Toni, of course, is using the app to learn French and Italian, to add to the three other languages that he already speaks, and his frenetic efforts are stimulating mine in a more structured way than heretofore.

     The basic structure of the app is fairly simple, relying as it does, on repetition and short chunks of aided learning to consolidate the lessons as you listen, write, and speak to get your way through.

     The clever bit is found in the structure around the lessons.

 

     

 

 

     As you start off you have a number (5) of hearts which are your lives.  You lose a life if you answer or respond in a faulty way, and if your lives run out, the lesson ends unless you buy (with real money) replacement lives or, you do a practice lesson which will give you a ‘free’ life and you can get another ‘free’ life if you watch an advert.

    If you want unlimited lives or advert free learning, then you can upgrade your experience of the app by paying for such delights.

     But it is constantly emphasised that you are part of a learning community, with Spanish there are (according to the app around 450,000 other learners working along with you.

     You are placed in a group and your progress as you gain crowns and gems, and points is to try and get to the top of your league so that you can be promoted to another division.  You start in Bronze, and I have worked my way up to the Silver Division and, if I keep up my work level, in the next few days, as long as I am in the top 15 people in the league, I can be promoted to the Gold Division.

     Along the way as you accrue points, or learn new words, or come top of your league, you are given bonuses, so there is a constant sense of achievement and of competition.

     I have to say that it is well worked out and, even as I recognize that I am being manipulated, I am willingly and enthusiastically accepting the stimulants that the app provides.

     There is also a certain amount of ‘heart’ in the attitude of the assessment of right and wrong, as sometimes you will be given the benefit of the doubt and be marked correct, when you have a ‘typo’ in your answer.  And, at the moment, the app does not mark you down for omitting accents, though they do point out when they are missing, and I fear that such indulgence will not last for very much longer.

     However cynical I am about the essential expectation that eventually the learner will tire of adverts and losing lives because of slip ups with tired thumbs and writing ‘an’ instead of ‘the’ in a translation, I have found myself spending more time working on my Spanish than I have in the past.

     Goodness knows how long such dedication will last, but this first free week has been, if not exactly pleasant, then at least acceptable, and the work rate in terms of time and accessibility, has been acceptable.

     I will bow before the power of one of our family sayings and agree that “Anything is better than nothing” and carry on!

 

 

“The Ten Books That Everyone Should Read” as a civilizing concept outlined by Suzanne, continues to reverberate in my mind, and I have asked a multi-lingual polymath of my acquaintance to try and write his own list of ten books.   

     I think I might extend the request to a wider group of friends and see what they come up with.  If nothing else, it could suggest a range of writers that might be worth exploring!

 

 

My poetry has stalled.  I have a number of attempts that are looking wan and broken on their sheets of A4, and it is about time that I revisited them and decided if they are worth salvaging in some way or other, or whether they should be ‘filed’ under ‘oblivion’.  Though I do find it hard to actually throw away anything on which I have spent a reasonable amount of time.  I am a great believer is the ‘there must be something lurking of worth somewhere’ in what I write, even if it doesn’t quite work out!