From Death to Patatas Bravas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How do you like your eggs scrambled?  An easy question, but the answers are always revealing.  At least to me.  I am dismissing, because, yes, of course, those who do not like eggs.  I know that such people exist.  Just as I know that there are people who do not like cheese.  Knowing is not the same as believing.  What beggared lives these people must lead!  Anyway, back to scrambled eggs.

     The right answer to the question is, of course, that you like them moist but not runny, so that they can be dolloped on freshly made bread that has been slathered with butter and devoured with utter relish and a twist of freshly ground pepper.

     There are those who bring health matters into play and aver that scrambled eggs have to be “well cooked” so that the egg is reduced to a sort of rubble that bounces if you drop it.  This is not the “right answer” (see above) but any scrambled egg is better than no scrambled egg, so it still has my vote.

 

 

 

     In a modern novel that I read and whose title and author I have not been able to recall, there was a stand-out passage that stated that the egg was proof of the existence of god, in so far as that there were so many ways (and all of them delicious) to cook the things that there had to be some sort of divinity behind their existence.  I, much later, was in a bookshop and idly picked up a Dictionary of Modern Quotations and found exactly the paragraph that had struck me on my first reading!  Stupidly (and most uncharacteristically) I did not immediately buy the book and the reference has since been lost to me.  If any reader is able to fill in the author and title I would be immensely grateful and somewhat relieved!

     The method of making scrambled eggs is simplicity itself, but the ‘acceptable’ end result is far more problematical.

     Which brings us to Death.  It has been reasonably said that Death is the Great Simplification.  At least for the dead, if not for the surviving living.  But philosophical questions about what death or Death does or doesn’t actually do were not what was on my mind when the title of this piece came to me.

     I was thinking about an ex-college who is dead, and dead before his time – if that actually means anything nowadays.  I was getting changed after my swim and something about the changing room brought back a memory of him.  He was a sporty person and, although that is not how I would ever characterise myself, we did play sport together, usually squash (in which his superior hand-eye coordination and fitness usually beat me) and badminton (in which my superior knowledge of the rules and basic tactics beat him) and I had also seen him play other sports, as well as a never-to-be-forgotten water skiing (and beer drinking) outing.  He was active, always doing, up for anything.  And now he’s dead and the whole concept doesn’t sit well with my memories of him.

     Just after I was informed of his death, I wrote to his widow expressing my condolences, but in the immediate aftermath of loss, words in a letter are not read by the bereaved much more than appreciation that the writer has said something to show that they share the loss.

     Time has passed and the jolt of memory that I had made me think of writing again.  A simple act of community, of fellow feeling.  Or not.  Whatever I thought that I was doing, would it necessarily be seen in the same way by the person who had lost the most?  Would my letter be received as comfort or as a re-opening of wounds?  A simple impulse could be anything but.

     My mind is like a kaleidoscope, but without the symmetry that the mirror at 45° that makes the pretty patterns, it is lots of little disparate pieces of information and opinion forming an almost-picture, but nevertheless one that satisfies me.

     I have (I know) actually read books like Zadig, The Voyage to the End of the Night and The Red Room and I have zero memory of them.  Presumably in some distant and rarely visited section of my mind, some vestige of the effort I put into turning the pages (it was that long ago!) must still exist.  The first of these must be where I first heard the word Serendipity, though in my mind it is more linked to Horace Walpole than Voltaire and I have vague recollections of reading a version of The Three Princes of Serendip – my point is, that my mind exists on half forgotten (sometimes fully forgotten) snippets from here and there sometimes linking up in fortuitous correspondences.  Or not.  You could say that my mind wanders rather than links and that the line of ‘reasoning’ is tenuous, but satisfying.  At least to me.

     So, we finally get to patatas bravas (literally, savage or wild potatoes) form my pondering on the propriety of writing a further letter to a bereaved friend.  The simplicity of the action is replete with complexity.

     Like patatas bravas.  Patatas bravas is a staple tapa, and most restaurants have a version of it.  It is a simple dish: fried potatoes, topped with a spicy mayonnaise sauce.  Anyone can make it: fry your potatoes, add a dash of tomato ketchup and Tabasco to your mayonnaise and you are away.  Except what you actually get served as patatas bravas will be as various as the restaurants that serve them.  A simple dish that few can agree on.  Complexity, and sometimes-delicious complexity, writ large!

     I suppose it is a truism that the simple things are always difficult to get right.  I was told that when Ghandi was staying in London, all he required was a place where he could do his spinning, sitting cross legged at his basic loom wearing the loin cloth that became one of his most recognizable attributes.  When one person remarked to a member of Ghandi’s staff how touching such simplicity was, the man replied, “Do you have any idea how expensive such simplicity is to create here in Central London?”

     Exactly.

     Simplicity is a concept like any other.  Defining it is the problem!

     And have I decided to do the simple action than produced all this thought.  Not really.  But there again, I haven’t decided against it either.  I just jiggle the kaleidoscope a little more and see what happens.

The Point Of It All

 

 

 

 

“Is it important that I can’t swim?”

     In the scheme of the things, the answer to that question could be along the lines that swimming is a vital physical ability and a more then useful life skill.  But when you have joined a day excursion cruise whose sole purpose is to go skin diving with an aqualung then the question becomes more an indication of insanity.

     In a way, I can understand the woman’s thought processes.  After all, swimming is a conscious process of propelling yourself though a foreign medium while attempting not to drown and finding a syncopated way to breathe in air to survive, whereas with an aqualung, breathing is done for you with your own air supply therefore swimming doesn’t really matter. 

     Yes.  I’m not convinced by that either.  And the woman was wearing an aqualung and in the water before she vouchsafed the information about her lack of swimming ability!

     This was in Ibiza, I think, or possibly not, but it was with a large group of people and our individual swims (if you could call them that) were limited, to put it mildly.

     Our ‘training’ for our swim was minimal and the distance under the water was as limited as the length of time that we were submerged, but there was that moment when you were under water, and you could breathe.  That moment of delicious panic when something that was counter intuitive actually happened.  It was a glorious moment and one that I wanted to repeat, but with the number of people waiting for their ‘turn’ (and, to be fair, the fairly small amount of money that we had paid for the cruise, swim and drink) that wasn’t going to happen.

     It was during a later holiday when the lure of the aqualung got to me and I had two lessons, the second one an ‘individual’ dive, where my instructor was behind me allowing me to swim on ‘alone’ giving the illusion that I was by myself.

     In the first dive I was so excited that I used up all my oxygen in a very short time, but in the second swim I was more measured and I was able to dive down to a wreck and explore – and disturb an octopus!  My instructor’s partner was annoyed by the time we finally emerged form the water and made it back to the shore office, as I had apparently had a lesson well beyond the allotted time.

     The warm waters of the Med and the clarity of the water encourage easy and interesting swims, so I didn’t continue the process when I returned to the colder and murkier waters of the Bristol Channel.

     Given the fact that I have never, ever stopped swimming during my life, the development of my interest in aqualung swimming might have been something of a natural development, but it never appealed beyond a holiday jaunt and it is not something that interests me now even though I am living by the Med.

     I think that the beauty of swimming is that it really needs so little: a bathing costume (or not!) swimming goggles and a body of water in which to disport.

     I know that some people nowadays come to the pool with a whole bag full of equipment for hands, feet, eyes and head, as well as floats and polystyrene of all shapes and sizes AND a bottle of water – which always strikes me as a trifle ironic – but, basically swimming is a simple sport, in so far as what you actually need to participate is so minimal.

     Skin diving, and especially aqualung use is much fussier and needs much more preparation and, let’s face it, when an activity like swimming is pared down to its essentials, like a normal swim, then the answer to the lady’s question at the start of this piece is, “Yes, because that is the whole point!”

NOT The Charge of the Light Brigade

 

 

In a desperate attempt to get my mind some way away from the interminable “None Of The Above” election of a right-wing dingbat to head up what used to be The Conservative Party and therefore the Brexit Failure that is Britain, I turn to Art.

     Admittedly I can find plenty of examples of works that would reflect what is going on in Britain at the moment, with perhaps Goya’s etching of “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”, or perhaps Bosch with “The Ship of Fools” or even Lady Butler’s “Charge of The Light Brigade” (and yes, I do know that the title is wrong, the brigade is wrong, the war is wrong, the enemy is wrong, and the outcome is wrong for the original painting) but in the popular imagination (and we are, after all in the right-wing world of alternative facts) the painting shows the valiant and deeply stupid charge of horses against artillery, an exercise in Crimean futility and therefore all the more applicable to ‘modern’ Conservatism as exemplified by None of the Above.

     But I want to get away from all that.  I want escape from the realities of life and find solace in Art.

     Except, the more I study art, the less I find that I can use it to exist in that illusory world of appreciation that I thought that my studies would let me access.

     If you study Art History or Art Appreciation nowadays, the one thing that art courses force you to do is to link the art to its time and its society.  The Great Artist concept of creation where a supremely gifted Man (women have only relatively recently made it into the pantheon of greatness!) produces a Work of Art that transcends time and space and lives in a sort of artistic void where It alone exists and where the viewer can truly contemplate it as a separate entity, a calling of soul to soul.

     The concept of the artist as a lonely genius, existing only for their art and starving in a garret if necessary, rather than compromising integrity by bowing to the dictates of mere commercialism, is a tempting fantasy.

     Van Gogh we are told sold no paintings (or just a couple) in his lifetime, but he went on painting.  And he also went on being supported by his brother, Theo, so Vincent could go on producing the paintings that had so little (literal) currency while he was alive, and we also have the letters that the brothers sent to each other which are well worth reading.

     Artists have to live and they need money.  Blake did drawings for Wedgewood for a catalogue of china; Turner churned out popular prints for commercial exploitation when he was younger; atheists painted religious art for wealthy church patrons; portraitists flattered their sitters; Warhol, well, Warhol exploited exploitation and made Art out of artfulness, or something!

     I suppose that, for me, the ideal ‘absolute’ painting would be one of Monet’s water Lilly canvasses.  Living and being brought up in Cardiff and having access to the National Museum in Cathays Park meant that I could go (for free, except for the imposition of museum charges by the Conservative government under Heath of evil memory) and see the Davies Sisters’ Bequest to the museum.

     The Davies sisters were the daughters of coal owners who had an interest in art, knew Vollard the art dealer and bought extensively and then bequeathed their artistic riches to the nation.  In what I often take pride in describing as the greatest collection of Impressionist paintings outside London, I was able to enjoy Renoir, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Sisley, and more (and yes, I do know that not all of those painters are comfortably contained by the term Impressionist) at my leisure and pleasure.

     The paintings I always came back to were the three water lily paintings by Monet, with my favourite being the most abstract.  When I was younger, I used to think when I looked at it that it was a sort of solemn communion between the painting and my callow self.  Nothing else existed.

     Except, of course, things did.  And do.

      Quite apart from where the Davies sisters got their money and how it was made, there is the whole question of why they bought Monet when they did.  How did Monet get to be famous and his paintings collectable?  And why collect paintings at all?  What does a painting really show what does it really represent?

     Before we get bogged down in the philosophical questions about the production, sale and display of art, let’s just consider a simple, practical element in the mythology of Impressionism.

     In the series of paintings that Monet completed he chose subjects like the façade of Rouen Cathedral, haystacks, and lilies in one specific pond, trees.  He painted thee subject multiple times at different times of the day and with different viewpoints.  As opposed to the previously highly finished canvasses of the previous century and of many of his contemporaries his canvases often looked more like sketches, his brush strokes were large and obvious and there was rapidity to his work that made it look almost spontaneous.

     Previous artist had usually made sketches of details or scenes en plein air that they would work up later in the studio.  There could be pencil sketches, charcoal or pastel or watercolour, but oils were something that needed more effort as colours needed to be made when you needed them, the pigment being mixed with oil.  The sketching then was limited by medium.  It was the production of ready mixed oil paint in tubes that made it possible for artists to take oil paint with them into the countryside and produced oil paintings in the open air away from the studio.  Renoir is reported to have said, that without the invention of tubes of ready mixed oil paint, Impressionism would never have happened!

     So the sketch-like spontaneity of Impressionist canvasses is a direct result of the industrialization of oil colour production – the mechanical and prosaic having a direct effect on the artistic and rarefied!

    

And I have already typed myself into a calmer frame of mind.  Art wins again!

 

The Worst Is Yet To Come!

 

 

 

 

Johnson’s “government” has been described as a zombie government because of their almost complete lack of interest in what is going on in the real world where the mass of the population is not taking one holiday after another as a way of forgetting about the various disasters and their pernicious legacy that twelve years of Tory misrule have inflicted on Britain.

     However, the metaphor applied to the non-existent phantom “government” of the liar Johnson is about to become reality as Trivial Truss has, according to newspaper reports, threatened to bring the “real” living dead into government by giving roles to such luminaries (in the same way that rotting meat becomes luminescent) as IDS and Redwood.  I was going to end that sentence with an exclamation mark, but after twelve years of the unthinkable becoming the ordinary it really doesn’t deserve it.

     BBC Wales never tired of showing a short clip of Redwood (they couldn’t find any real Welsh Conservatives of sufficient “presence” [sic.]) when he was Welsh Secretary, trying to sing the Welsh National Anthem.  You can see it here, with other delights of National Anthem disasters:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2015/sep/16/when-national-anthems-go-wrong-video

 

I am quite prepared to believe that the hapless Welsh Secretary was “ambushed” by the anthem, somebody (anybody) should have told him that the anthem was a possibility and given him a cheat sheet with the words written out phonetically.  I myself have had “a person of power” hiss at me, “Stand in front of me and sing!” when he didn’t know the words when on stage and the anthem was about to start!

     Redwood could have stood and, in spite of his habitual look of crazed alien mania, maintained a stoic stance of motionless respect but, no, the loon had to produce a performance that summed up his character, his policies and his standing in Wales and beyond!

     And now this relic from another age is seriously being considered for any position of power?  As a prominent member of the BFG (Brexit Fascists Group) aka the so-called European Research Group (where every word in their appellation is ironic or a downright lie) that in itself should preclude his admission to any responsibility more onerous than as a part-time Greeter in a failing Wal-Mart in an insalubrious district of downtown Sleezeville.  In government!  It would be a joke if it weren’t a serious possibility.

      I could go through the other putative Truss choices, but that would be far too depressing.  I will just allow one to stand for all.  Coffey is being considered for a “senior role” in the “new” (12 years of Tory Misrule So Far) government. God help us all.  I have yet to see a television interview with that person where she emerges as coherent, articulate and thoughtful.  Or indeed displaying any one of those elements.  If she is the best that we have got in the hundreds of Tory misruling MPs then we are at a depth where the term “scraping of the barrel” doesn’t give any impression of depth of shallowness that is being trawled!

 

Does anyone remember a time when the present Tory Party (TYofTM) hustings for the next leader of their discredited party was not going on?  The joke has long worn thin, and it is fairly obvious that the real title of the interminable race to confirm the downward spiral since Cameron (that titan of political acumen) should really be known as The Battle of None of the Above.  Who (even in the Conservative (TYofTM) Party actually wants either of the shameless unicorn chasers to win?

     It shows up the goldfish-like memory of Conservative (TYofTM) voters, that giving a straight choice between either of the None of the Above and the Tousled Twat, that they would prefer the lying criminal narcissist.  Says something about the lot of them.

 

 

Having spewed the bile from my body, I can report that the sun is shining, there is a cooling breeze from the fan, I have just had a refreshingly icy drink of tinto de verano and I am prepared to Do My Spanish Lesson!

The Coming Storm

 

 

          

 

 

 

 

 

Are people in denial?  Do they really think that the winter is going to be just another season?  Why isn’t there much more outrage at the threat of heat/food/accommodation poverty that IS going to take out a chunk of the population not only in the UK but also here in Catalonia?

     It is easy in an affluent seaside resort like one in which I live to see little evidence of deprivation.  The shops are open and seem to be doing well, people are coming in their drove to the beaches and exclusive new development along part of the beachfront is full steam ahead.

     And I suppose that is part of the point.  If you have money then much of the hand to mouth poverty is going to pass you by. 

     Am I going to stop plonking my bum on my expensive opera seat for the next season?  No.  Not yet. 

     But do I notice that even casual spends in the supermarket now always seem to be 100 euros and above? 

     Yes.  50 euros used to be enough to fill my tank, now it comes nowhere near.     My rent will be increased by the cost of living rise in percentage terms; my income will not.  If I wish to continue my present standard of living, then my pension will have to be augmented by dipping into my savings.  I tell myself, that savings are there to be used not to be mindlessly horded – as if I have ever had wallet that didn’t have scorch marks on it from the money burning its way through!

     I am by no means rich, but I also do not want to plead poverty.  I am aware of the increasing costs of everything and acutely aware of the diminution in the adequate provision of those social services that I have paid for throughout my life through taxes etc.

     My expectations (as a complacent Baby Boomer) are for my path through life to be relatively smooth (free education up to university level; job for life; pension; health care etc.) and I have little to complain about when I look back.  But the future is different.  Fixed income and rising costs are not good companions – and as I am reliant on my pension, government talking about the difficulties of maintaining the present levels of payment and then talk of different rates and speculation about not keeping to past rules are all things that concentrate the mind.

     The crisis of Covid was, while it was going on (and as long as you were careful, and lucky!) a fairly placid disaster.  Stuck at home, washing your hands like a fully conscious Lady Macbeth, finding ways to stay sane and waiting for things to get better.  The worry was not paying for things, but rather getting your hands on them.  It was almost as if time and the economy were in abeyance.  It was a period of waiting and hoping for something not to happen.

     That was then and this is now.  The idiocy of Brexit and its inevitable deleterious consequences; the catastrophe of the pointless invasion of Ukraine; the failure of normal politics; the lingering after-shock of Covid; the stuttering and virtual collapse of social services – a catalogue of horror and despair. 

     Yet the sun is shining and people are on the beach and in the cafes having a good time.  Because now, during the holidays, the summer holidays, is not the time to be thinking about the harsh realities that are going to hit, hard, in the autumn.

      In T S Eliot’s much quoted (and more often misquoted) “Human kind cannot bear very much reality” from The Four Quartets, he accurately summarises the tendency for us all to avoid those things that are difficult to take in or accept.  We like our dystopias and Armageddons to be narrative devices in stories or films rather than what’s going to happen in the next few months.

     We are going to have to bear it!