pun cheerfulness eccentric

Never being able to resist a pun I have to snap this lost sole by the wayside.

We have  as an acquaintance a lady of 80 or so who is always smartly dressed and still manages to be pretty. She is invariably cheerful despite debilitating illnesses which afflict both her and her husband. Today we see her coming towards us with two walking sticks shakier and slower than ever. She has added to her troubles by breaking a hip, which explains why we haven't seen her for some time.  "I don't like being cooped up, she says. Henry (that's her husband) is a good-time boy: he's got everything wrong with him." Not good news but there is a still a hint of laughter in her voice and you feel that a bright, attractive young woman, is still lurking somewhere within. Above all cheerfulness persists despite her problems.

A good laugh at the Compasses. Spud Taylor keeps us entertained with a flow of surreal humour. After he has left, someone says: "I saw him in a pub one evening. He  was wearing a dinner jacket and and a black tie on top and football shorts and wellies below. I said you can't come to a pub dressed like that. He said, yes I can, I'm wearing fancy dress. He's been married twice but not at the moment."

texture bare distinction

 Wall on building site in Sitges.

A woman emerges from her car bare foot and walks across the pavement to her front door. A sense of freedom.

In The Grove a Pekingese with bright eyes trots by. It is unfortunate enough to have a docked tail, which does not improve the view from behind. I like most animals  and in particular I suppose mammals,  except, that like human beings, they have arse holes, which some species have the habit of flaunting. Pity about the lost tail.

conversation wisdom small talk

 Conversation on the beach.

Quoted outside The Compasses: "We're not here for a long time. We're here for a good time." Another pint then.

Sometimes I can imagine how young people who give a service to the public are instructed in the difficult art of being friendly, making small talk, chatting cheerfully if vacantly. Instance: a young woman whom I barely know,  renewing my account in the building society, confirms my date
of birth. "You've just had your birthday then?" she says. "Did you have a good time?".

onward beading potatoes

Pointing shadow. 

There is a bead shop in Tunbridge Wells. It says, "bedazzle your friends" and advertises beading parties and a series of beading lectures on such subjects as "Twisted Crystal" and "Chains and embellishments". Inside the shop are beads. Oh brave new world!

Lifting the last of the potatoes and filling baskets with them. It still touches on the excitement which archeology of buried treasure, when you reveal a cluster of tubers even though it is no surprise.

dancing fluting laughing

 Dancing with shadows on the sea front at Sitges.

At the end of an abnormally warm summer day we look up to see six or seven starling on a neighbouring chimney stack. They emit contented fluting calls in the setting sun. There have been far fewer starlings around in recent years, perhaps this small group augers larger gatherings as winter approaches.

As I cross Berkeley Road I dodge a car going backwards. At the wheel is a woman on the telephone. She is laughing. "I've been driving around for about 4 hours," she says into her mobile. She still hasn't seen me trying to cross behind her .

shadows Mum swinging

Shadows walking in Sitges.

Man in 30s on mobile: "This is a temporary number." Pause " No a temporary number".  Pause  "Who else is going to  call you 'Mum'?"

A magpie in the afternoon sun perches on a TV aerial. I reach for my  camera and look again. It has flown. The aerial swings in the still air.

balcony designer pepper

Balcony in Sitges with shadow and wiring.

Magazines nowadays are packed with articles and advertisements about designer goods, items to which someone relatively famous has attached his or her name. Plutarch, not to be left out, proudly announces the first items from designer range: The Plutarch Safety Pin - it is made of simulated rust which will invariably attract attention if that is what you want; Plutarch chewing gum - the wad in rainbow colours will transform the street where you live in the event of your dropping  wads on to the pavement; The Plutarch hair brush for completely bald men - the bristles are soft enough not to scratch but hard enough to stimulate the flow of blood to the brain.  Watch this space for the Plutarch megaphone, which transforms the voice into a high pitched and enduring scream.

In the greenhouse, a green pepper, dark green almost black, beginning to turn red, a fruit which I have not grown before and which will shortly be incorporated in a ratatouille.

beer cucumbers pregnant

 Reflections in a glass of beer.  Memory of the first beer of our holiday now receding into the past.

Among the vegetables which I have not grown before or at least recently, are thick, prickly, ridge- cucumbers. They have been prolific this year and I have  been dispersing them to all and sundry. They are full of flavour and juice, nothing like greenhouse grown supermarket cucumbers.

At a table outside The Tunbridge Wells Bar and Grill, a young woman, who moves a chair to another table responds to an older woman's admonition "you mustn't carry anything," "I'm pregnant. I'm not ill."

evening fuse lifting

 Sea shore Sitges in evening sun.

Behind me in the street an angry voice charges the air with spurious energy. A man is marching forward while talking loudly into his mobile. "I've sent email after email," he says, "can you please respond. Because I haven't had any response." "Calm down, sir, calm down," I want to say. But I enjoy the edge of  the drama as he strides round the corner, still in full voice.

What could be more rewarding than lifting Picasso potatoes (now my preferred variety of main crop even over King Edwards), on an Autumn morning with the mist just  beginning to dissolve in the sun.

shadow Indian hotwater bottle

 Shadow of a cyclist.

After the warmth of Spain and with memories of a grey and damp July and August, how welcome is this Indian Summer with temperatures of 25 deg forecast, which greets us on our return. In the garden: abundance. Seldom can mellow fruitfulness have been so mellow.

In the window of the charity bookshop a displays of items found inside donated books. |Among them a note which reads: "Be careful hotwater bottle in your bed."

cloud goose lighter

 Although in my memory our holiday was cloudless there was one afternoon when the weather became interesting and cloud formations built up to be photographed.

Bill tells us outside the pub how one day walking with his wife on a beach in Spain he saw some geese penned up behind chicken wire on the edge of the sand. For some reason the notice in English pinned to the wire remained in his mind: "Do not food the goose."

Geoff has a Zippo lighter which reminds me of distant days when I used to smoke and possessed one myself. Examining it I realize that it is one of those  simple objects of which the design seems impossible to better. Rectangular in shape it has not changed for decades,  replacing its wadding, flints and wick as ever part of the pleasure of using it. It doesn't blow out in the wind and there is invariably the smell of petrol when click it into flame, for some a disadvantage, for others part of the charm. It is still made in Bradford, Pennsylvania, where the company was launched in 1932.

cemetary hunting ripeness

 Now for more holiday snaps. They will appear here in the next few days as I continue to go through them. Here is another dove this time resting on a tomb in the cemetery at Sitges.

From the balcony I set about reviving the series of photographs of shadows which occurred almost by chance last year when I reversed shots I had taken of people walking on the beach or  sea front so that the shadow assumed more significance than the substance. Pedestrians and dogs there are in plenty passing below, but I am looking for a cyclist and his shadow. I hang on in the same way I suppose that  a wild life photographer hopes for a particular animal to come to a watering hole where he lies in wait.

At the Farmers' Market this morning I buy some apples from a stall, where I young man offers me apples. I ask for the crispest. "Cox's," he says. " I tell him that local farms in the old days would not think of picking Cox's until until October and preferably until there had been a frost. "When I was a child," I say, " they used to shake Cox's to see if they rattled and only then, would they be regarded as ripe." "Funny," he says, "there was a man here the other day who said that when they rattled they weren't eating." It occurs to me that the young man at the stall and his previous interlocutor will almost certainly never have bitten into a Cox's apple that has ripened on the tree, and tasted as the juice spurts out, its magical blend of musty sweetness and acidity.

collared gum skate

 Before leaving for Sitges I photographed these collared doves (top picture) in The Grove. In Sitges collared doves live in the date palms outside our window. Here is one of them.  With their soft, browny grey feathers, they are among the prettiest of birds. So different from their coarse pigeon cousins.

According to the Keep Britain Tidy Campaign, 20 million people in the UK chew more than 935 million packs of gum every year. Such a fact if it is true could come in useful.

The sea front in Sitges is still in my mind. A young man on a skate board appears to be pulled along by the Alsatian dog that he holds on a lead. If the dog is not pulling him he has only to gently with one foot at rare intervals even as the slope of the promenade begins to become steeper.

boots parakeets garden

For my birthday I receive a pair of boots of which the soles are made with the same material as Pirelli rubber tyres. When I come to wear them I will know what it is like to be a car.

From the balcony I hear and see parakeets flashing past among the palm fronds.

Our friend, Artur tells us that the garden of his house where we dined recently, though by no means extensive, in the days when it belonged to his grandparents, housed a pig and some chickens and was used to cultivate a variety of vegetables. A contrast with the raked gravel and bubbling pool which we enjoyed in his company the other day.

e-reader, closure, laughter

It is no almost a year since I have owned a Kindle e-reader. When using it, as I do nearly every day, I miss the substance of a book, a book´s texture  and specific weight, the presence of it distinctive cover and of the various inscriptions permanently present on the cover. Above all I miss the sense of a book´s size in relation to its content.  On the other hand, the Kindle renders book marks unneccessary; it opens where you left off reading. It allows you to highlight passages, and mark pages and provides facilities to take notes. Notes and highlights are listed, can be found easily and you can move easily from these to the original place in the text. And, as I am just about to discover you can transfer documents - an entire novel for example written by a friend an submitted for inspection - on to it from your computer.

Somebody has removed the shirt and pair of shoes which I referred to yesterday from its ominous position at the edge of the sea. It must have been there for at least 36 hours. Perhaps the owner returned for them. Perhaps the men who sweep the beach took them away. The mystery remains. The story has no ending. I will not use the word  "closure" so widely used nowadays. There is no closure. There never is.

As I have done now for the last few years I am using the computer which is here,fo r the use of hotel guests, on the reception desk. It can be distracting but it also informative, as the constant coming and going of guests and would-be visitors keeps me up to date with the state of the hotel´s affairs. Today there is a conference in progress in one of the two conference rooms off the lobby. It reminds me, with no sense of nostalgia whatsoever, of conferences I used to have to attend in the distant days when I worked for a living. Just now a burst of laughter, followed after a pause, by another, recalls the release of  energy afforded by a welcome break in the tedium. Oh that tedium, the longing to be out at play!

mystery gliding preparation

Last year we saw a girl lying face down on the sand a couple of feet from the edge of the sea. Her handbag lay beside her and her chestnut hair was spread about her head. She seemed to be alive but there was something worrying or perhaps tragic about the way she lay. After an hour or more we drew her to the attention of the pharmacist whose shop faces the beach. He called the police, who we saw in conversation with the girl on the promenade a few minutes later. She seemed in good shape in voluble conversation using her hands expressively. We later came to realize that she was completely deaf and that she was lying on the beach to capture through their vibration the sound of the waves.
Yesterday we notice first thing in the morning a check shirt and a pair of men´s sandals almost precisely in the same spot, just above the tide line. There is nearly always one or two people swimming at this early hour. So, although we can make no connection between this apparel and a specific person in the water, we are not concerned. The sea is completely calm. What is disturbing is that the pile remains there all day, all night and so far all of today. Its position is clearly such that it arouses no suspicion until  you note the length of time that it is there. Will it remain there until a higher tide washes the clothes and shoes away? You would have thought that someone other than ourselves would have noticed.  I must now tell someone.

Tonight beyond the table where we are dining skateboarders glide past profiled agains the dark of the sea and the sky, lit only by the light from the restaurant. The paving stones are smooth; the sound of the boards seem no more than a murmur. Illuminated shadows.

A pleasure to watch local people getting ready for the day. There is a woman who sets out sun beds on the beach for those who want to grill themselves; the men who sweep the sand; the restaurateurs who arrange their tables and lay them for breakfast. We are part of a working community, and help as we can by consuming rolls and coffee after our swim.

freedom, gardener, routine

Early this morning there is no one on the beach other than a couple, not too conspicuously but conspicuously enough, making love. A blanket is at any rate, conspicuously, an inadequate shelter for their activities. The man, tall and thin, has his hair tinted with blond highlights; the woman is slight with longish hair. Both are modestly tatooed if tatoos can be modest. But there is nothing modest about the man´s accessories which consist of one large ear ring and two nipple rings. There are bands on his wrist which look as though they are made from used car tyres.
After a while they move into the sea and they are still there in a corner of the shore when we go down to swim. That might be the end of the story except that when we go for our second swim before lunch they appear again. Both this time are wearing bikinis, the lower part that is. They are in the shallow water and are caressing enthusiastically, she with her legs wrapped about him. It is in this state that he carries her from the water.
The beach is now crowded, it being Sunday, and the couple are lost to sight among seated, mostly family groups. When we return to our towels we find that they have settled a few feet from where we are sitting. But there is a surprise. The towel, which they have spread on the sand, is shared with a boy, aged perhaps 10 or 11. Most surprising is that, where as the couple are tanned beneath their tatoos, the boy is pale in colour and apparently unexposed to the sun. Beside him on the sand is a Barcelona FC cap, the shape of cap which English schoolboys used to wear when I was his age. He seems quite happy and clearly belongs to one of the lovers. But in what capacity it is hard to discern. The man is almost too young to be his father and the woman would have been be young indeed to have been his mother. They are so absorbed in one another that you get the feeling, whatever is relationship, the boy is de trop.
That too might be the end of the story. Except that later they turn up at the restaurant outside of which we are lunching. The boy is seated with them. Soon a party of Chinese, (the now prosperous Chinese which we are beginning to see in Europe), arrange themselves on two tables next to the lovers (as we now call them) and the boy. The Chinese are happy sharing a "Spanish". They have a Barcelona FC beach ball, which after a while, they present to the lovers and the boy. The want a photograph of them with the boy holding the ball. They all exchange high fives. They take their photos and before leaving  present the ball to the boy.  Before long the lovers and the boy are playing with the ball beside their table punching it into the air, agile and enthusiastic about the sport as earlier the lovers were about osculation. . The boy if he was bored before is no longer bored.  We decide that we like them as much as we enjoy the theater. And there we must leave them several questions unanswered. At least for the moment

Alberto Bigairre, the propietor  of Costa d´Oro, our favourite restaurant here, is in his eighties. He grows exotic flowers like strelitzia and hibiscus  in his garden, and arranges them in vases on the tables outside the restaurant. Today, pride of place goes to something called mano de deo, hand of God. It looks like a plastic utensil, a large white basin, inside which resides a stamen a bit like a bottle brush. This plant, as well as others, has its photograph on one of the walls of the restaurant, as other restaurants may hang photos of film stars, which they claim among their clientele. Tomorrow I ahve promised to help Alberto order  by telephone some rare carnations from an English nursery in Sussex.

waving, puppet, treasure

Among the regular walkers by the edge of the sea this morning is a woman in a swimsuit and a straw hat. Everyday it is the same. To and fro from one end of the gently curving, sandy beach to the other - 350 meters perhaps - the walkers perform their daily ritual, to which they often add personal variations. This woman, plump but not fat, wobbling no more beneath her costume than the accretions of years, allow for, walks without affectation except that every few steps she shoots one arm up in the air bringing her hand down on to the crown of her hat, then a few steps later does the same with the other arm. She might be waving to somebody or to several people except that her eyes are fixed directly in front of her. I count the number of steps she takes between arm movements, and from their irregular variations conclude that she is no manic obsessive, though I can´t help wondering if, for taking the trouble to count, perhaps I am.

Again this morning before breakfast  the sun makes a golden path in the sea which I follow as I swim. I turn and swim on my back kicking up golden sparks leaving the sun´s path behind me.  I feel as the song used to go, like a puppet on a string.

After the beach cleaners this morning comes a man with a metal detector searching for buried treasure or lost coins or perhaps memories.

early Zen repetition

Before breakfast the sea is calm, the sun low in the cloudless sky. The water is tranparent. Where I am swimming there is a golden track leading east to west by which to navigate. For a brief moment an arc of silver sparks rises out of the sea and descends again like a dolphin;  it is a school of small fishes, just a few feet away from me.

Last night  we dine with friends in their garden. They are Catalan but the language of the garden is Japanese, Zen to be precise. The gravel is raked daily and a small fountain bubbles with a tranquil sound. In the still air two candles flicker. We discuss haiku, haiku in English and French. "Here", he says, "haiku is translated from the Japanese into English or French rather that directly into Spanish". Artur is an archer as well as a painter and sculptor.

From the balcony I watch different  people walking from one end of the little beach called La Playa de San Sebastian, and back. And some which I recognise from last year. There is a woman standing up to her ankles in the sea. She stands perfectly still but sways from the waist and moves her arms according to the rules of what must be an oriental exercise system. At times her arms are raised directly above her head as though in an act of worship.  Another long-legged health addict uses the elegant, stainless steel railings above the beach as an exercise bar. She places one leg on top leaning towards her foot, and repeats the routine with the other leg. For a moment it is like a ballet school.

accepted swallows clinging

Three rejections in a row  in the last year or so from Qarrtsiluni, the internet arts magazine, confirmed my respect for its standards. All the more intense, then, my satisfaction when I receive today an email accepting my latest contribution on the current broad theme of worship.

Standing up to my waist in the calm sea in perfect weather I remember on a previous occasion on the same beach, at the same time of year, watching swallows swoop low over the water around me. Where are they today? I ask myself. And suddenly, as if in response to my thoughts, swallows arrive out of the blue.

In Tunbridge Wells in recent weeks we have invariably crossed the road to find the sun and a little warmth.  Here we cross the road and cling to the shade to keep cool, on the shady side of the street.