exercise, conversation, warm

Early morning 2.

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Conversation is alive, judging by the way groups of young people sit round in circles on the grass in the Grove. They may be smoking or drinking but they are also talking to one another, and that's the thing!

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A recent anthology of poetry edited by the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, called Out of Fashion is giving me great pleasure. Duffy has invited 50 contemporary poets to choose a poem from another time, which significantly concerns itself with dress or fashion. In her introduction Duffy says: " a poem if you like is the attire of feeling: the literary form where words seem tailor-made for memory or desire." I like that. And I like the broad range of poems which have been chosen, some of which were quite new to me. One anonymous poem from 8 th century Japan is Poem by a Frontier Guard:

"While the leaves of the bamboo rustle

On a cold and frosty night,

The seven layers of clobber I wear

Are not so warm, not so warm

As the body of wife."

The intensity of feeling comes fresh and raw from half round the world and through more than a millennium. Its palpable humanity resonates with the anonymous English poem written by another soldier eight centuries later, which express the same longing, but makes no mention of clothes:

"Western wind, when will thou blow

The small rain down can rain?

Christ, if my love were in my arms

And I in my bed again!

exercise, embarrassment, climbers

First thing in the morning.

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Embarrassment is a topic which comes up from time time in conversations with an old friend who often visits Best of Now. He used to admit to frequent embarrassment. I used to claim never to experience it. I can no longer make that claim. Embarrassment has caught up with me over the years.

A recent instance: I come across in the Oxfam second hand bookshop a book called Avec Marcel Proust by Jaques Benoit-Méchin. It sounds intriguing. The author met Proust as a very young man, when he asked to be allowed to translate A la Recherche du temps perdu into German. This was in 1922, and Proust, his great work just about complete, granted the young man's request and suggested that he write an essay on the novel into the bargain. Six months later Proust died and the book, which I have just acquired, is I find based on the essay which Benoist-Mechin would have written at the time, but did not publish until 1977. Its value is reinforced by a handwritten note to the previous owner on the frontispiece which says : "I have been told by those that have read it that it is quite marvellous."

I have as yet barely opened it myself, but curious about the author, I google for a minute or two to discover that the author was a well known Nazi collaborator and was imprisoned at the end of World War 2. It will not deter me from reading the book but I cannot help feeling, even if it as good as it sounds, that I will not enjoy it as much as I would have done, if I had remained ignorant of the author's inclinations. Embarrassed? Yes, a little because I was intially so pleased with my discovery.

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In the Grove, four or five teenage boys and girls climb into a tree and cluster among the branches. Now they hang upside down on the swinging boughs with their legs, now they

hug the trunk with their arms . As I watch them I see the arboreal animals from which we are all descended at play, and imagine that I hear the voice of David Attenborough, describing their antics.

Family holiday. They are fellow guests at the hotel. They speak Russian.

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In the playground in the Grove, a mother and a little girl sit side by side on swings. As the little girl swings backwards and forwards she looks around and chants: "Hello, cloud! Hello dog! Hello, sun! Hello tree !..." That's not a bad approach, I think to myself. It's probably what I do, but more quietly and with a world-weariness, which I would like to, but can't seem to lose.

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"Yes, Richard Hammond," says a woman into a telephone, "...yes, and she's got a picture on her phone to show you."

Richard Hammond? A celebrity of course, someone who appears on TV. But a picture on a phone, would you believe it? Truly we live in an age of marvels.

seaside snap, pushers, self-sown

Footsteps.

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At home. A common sight nowadays. Older women and older men pushing prams. You try to adjust. Then you realize that it is grandmas and and grandpas who are proudly (or sometimes, grim faced) pushing infants. But you have to adjust because, though they are older than mothers and fathers usually are, they are younger than my own generation.

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In the vegetable garden, a self sown broad bean, anticipating spring, among the self sown nasturtiums, which every autumn take over one of the vegetable beds, an invasion which I do nothing to repel.

memory, the young, Dodgeball

Holiday memories will continue for some time. ...And Heidi stole an hibiscus for my birthday - from the swimming pool, and presented it in a tooth mug.

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The proprietor of the convenience store says he is short of staff: "Holidays and illness, silly things like that" he says. " Youngsters don't work like we used to. They've got too much going for them. The want a pair of shoes; see a pair in the shop for £100 and then buy it. It comes too easy." I had thought of him as an amiable young man. But, perhaps, encouraged, a little mischievously by me, he is making grumpy, old man's conversation. It catches up with all of us I suppose.

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Trying catch up with magazines and the like, I note an article by Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. He is describing a visit to New York to promote London. He says that while in New York, he is asked for his views on our National Health Service. "My strong instinct, " he writes, "is to swerve. As the man says in Dodgeball - the world's greatest ever film - dodge, dip, duck, dive and dodge." That's what politician's do isn't? How neatly expressed! I haven't seen Dodgeball, but I think I'll ask for it at the video shop, even if it doesn't turn out to be the world's greatest film

Rusinol, stealing, routine

Santiago Rusinol (1861 -1961) writer and painter, at the foot of whose memorial stray cats (see yesterday's post), for whom kind people regularly provide bowls of food, set up home.

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I steal, for Heidi the deep red, (blue when first in bloom), flower of a hydrangea, which protrudes over the front garden fence of a house in Mount Sion. Seen close to, the burgundy florets are tinged with green, and calming to contemplate.

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Routine is something that applies to children and old people and is intended to shelter them from shocks and surprises. So I prefer to talk about patterns of behaviour when it concerns me and others of my age. There is no doubt that at home and on holiday our days follow certain patterns. Looking back on our holiday I like to dwell on our schedule if that is not too inflated a word. First thing: Raise the Persian blind to see what the sky and sea are doing. Spend a few minutes breathing in the salt air and watching early risers walking beside the sea or performing exercises on the sand.Item 2 Go down two flights of stairs to the swimming pool, which invariably we have to ourselves. Item3 Breakfast on the sea front from the hotel's generous buffet, including its first class coffee. Item 3 Walk to the shops for a paper (International Herald Tibune for Heidi, El Pais for me). Stop for a coffee or, latterly a frshly squeezed orange juice at a bar. Item 4 Return to hotel, change for the beach. Swim again, walk up and down, watch people and the waves running up the sand. Item 4 Go for lunch at one of two bars where tapas are served. Watch the sea while picking at such delicacies as pescaditos (whitebait) and almejas (clams), return to the hotel for siesta and reading. Item 5 Coffee or tea and then back to the beach for another swim and the pleasure of the afternoon and evening light. Item 6 Back to the hotel for more reading. Item 6 Dinner at one of two restaurants where the fish and crustacea are fresh and usually grilled on the plancha. No culture, note. Just a few days of self-indulgence to remember.

cats, storms, on time

Apart from surrounding the statue of the painter and writer, Santiago Rusinol , a little garden opposite the sea, has become a refuge for cats. Generally they are the sort of cats, which people would not choose to keep as pets. Nevertheless cat lovers are happy to leave bowls of food and water, which suffice to keep the cats comfortable. However the demands on space in this garden are substantially reduced by competing cat lovers. Some people, who own holiday apartments at the other end of the sea front, are cat lovers before all else, and have at any one time, as many as 40 cats on their premises. So much do they love cats that they admit, that on once occasion they flew an old cat of theirs to Switzerland for medical treatment at a cost of £25 000.

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"You must have had terrible weather," says a neighbour, whose son has just returned from holiday in Majorca, which is not very far south off Sitges and Barcelona . He is complaining of constant storms. We say that we saw the storms at sea and on the horizon, but rarely if ever felt their effects. We saw the play but did not take part in it.

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In the period of my life when I had staff to manage, I hit on the idea, tongue in cheek, of setting the time of meetings to the minute but not on the hour or quarters of an hour. Now I find that I have an appointment at the doctor's surgery for a flue jab at precisely 4.39 pm. It's a good idea because it gives the impression of urgency and of a busy schedule; and perhaps ensures that feckless patients remember to show up.

preparations, ET, bay

Before the fiesta.

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I read today that there is an international agreement, which prevents scientists from replying to an extra-terrestrial signal, unless they agree that to respond is a good idea. This is apparently the work of an organisation called SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence). Science fiction has flooded us with stories of extra-terrestrial invasions by usually sinister aliens. So such precautions are understandable. On the other hand, curiosity combined with a profound longing not to be alone in the universe, would be hard to overcome in the event of a signal being detected. But, where would the possibility of intelligent connections lead? World politics are bad enough. Imagine, as science fiction already has, the reality of inter-terrestrial politics. The only benefit of some sort of threat might be that the raggle-taggle human race might be persuaded to forget its squabbles and disagreements, and unite in defence of the Earth or what's left of it that is worth saving. For myself, I have always been on the look out for a signal and always will be.

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The bay tree which we cut down in May is fighting back. The tree surgeons promised to poison the stump but forgot, and I was reluctant to remind them. But on returning from holiday we find the shoots at the side of the stump are threatening to become a bush and, before long, a light-excluding tree, so I set to work with the secateurs. There is no shortage of bay leaves. The aroma is heady and makes me think of casseroles.

edge, carnations, coincidence

Nothing spectacular about the jetsam at the edge of the sea at the moment, but one shell where the tide leaves it, suffices as a statement and a memory.

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Alberto Bigaire, the proprietor of the Costa Dorada restaurant, where we often eat, sits at a table by the door, where he has a good view of the tables outside the restaurant. He says, unlike some of the other bar owners and restaurateurs affected, that the the new traffic-free sea-front has meant more business. I point out that he seems to be alone in believing this. Others have said that especially at lunch time, business has been down. "I have better food and better waiters, " he says. I believe him, and when, on our last day, he asks me to telephone a carnation nursery in England to confirm an order - he is a keen gardener, and arranges flowers from his garden on the lunch tables every day - I interpret with some satisfaction, though not a lot of skill. I like being involved even in small way with a restaurant in a town which we have become fond of over the years.

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On the plane going home, I strike up a conversation with a man with an Australian accent who is sitting next to me. He and his wife are on their way, as part of a five week visit to Europe, to spend some time in the South east of England. "Where I ask will you make for first?" "A little place called Tunbridge Wells, "he says. "You don't live there?" he adds, when I laugh with pleasure at the quality of his choice.

storm clouds, consuming, rosemary

The days are for the most part fine, and forecasts of thunder storms are proved correct only as a frequent spectacle enacted over the sea.

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From the swimming pool, swimming slowly on my back, I watch through the foliage a man eating and drinking. on a balcony. All I can see is his hand and his face. I watch as he raises his hand with something to eat and then raise some sort of cup to his lips. Suddenly eating, that most common of activities, seems a curious one, and I watch fascinated as if I were seeing it for the first time.

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On the sea front are two gardeners who have the pleasant job of planting rosemary round the base of date palms. At least I think it is rosemary and bend down to pinch a spray, which as I smell the aromatic leaves, I know for certain that it is.

Santa Tecla, fireworks, poor,

During the Fiesta of the local patron saint, Santa Tecla, on September 24, figures of "the King and Queen" and other characters are brought out of the town hall. There is dancing and raucous music, fire cracker explosions and a big parade through the town.

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The previous night at 11 pm there is a fireworks display outside the church of Santa Tecla and Saint Bartolomew. We watch from our balcony as rockets turn into giant palms, which slowly unfold and collapse, the sky drenched in showers of golden seeds. The bell tower of the church stands out against a sky, which glows brightly from time to time like slow lightening, and fades in wreathes of smoke. To the sound of harmless but ear-shattering explosions, we think of that terrible phrase, "shock and awe".

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Out friend Artur tells us about a mutual acquaintance, a Swiss man who married a local girl. He has lived in Sitges for a long time. Apparently when he was first married he complained that his wife's father, a prosperous man, rode about the town in ragged clothes in order to give the impression of being poor. Now many years later he himself is seen riding an old bicycle and looking as though he is barely above the poverty line, though we know that his wife owns a great swathe of property facing the sea.

models, walkers, shower

In the late afternoon someone is taking publicity shots of some models at the edge of the sea. There are two models - a young man and a young woman. The man wears white trousers and the girl a long white dress. The man is up to his knees in shallow water, the girl is lying in the water. The photographer assisted by a girl with note pad calls for different postures. The girl is soaked and there is wet sand all over her dress. An hour later, having adopted various poses, hand in hand or embracing, they are still at it. The sun is getting lower. The models must be getting cold. I find myself hoping that they are paid well.

Three dog walkers stop to talk to one one another. Their little dogs strain at their leashes in different directions. Sometimes they bark at one another. Sometimes they bark at other dogs walking past, who are lucky enough to be led by more active humans.
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We have chosen the right table although we did not anticipate rain. Before the torrential shower arrives, the sea changes colour and white horses appear within only a few minutes. Then down comes the rain and suddenly everyone is running for shelter including a group of school children on a school outing. We are dry under an awning but the children have to cluster like cackling chickens under the umbrellas intended to keep off the sun rather than downpours. They gnaw their picnic lunches while we pick at our tapas. It is a piece of theatre we don´t expect but which adds depth to the pleasures of a full day.Uniform weather would be boring. Soon the sun is out again and we stroll back to the hotel in its warmth while the waves break on the sand beside us.

birthdays, old love, free

Suddenly everyone seems to have or be about to have a birthday. Yesterday, in the little supermarket round the corner, one of the owners announces that it is her birhday. Embrazos all round even with strangers such as ourselves. Today I read that Marja-Leena´s daughter has been celebrating her birthday on the 19th. My grandaughter, too, has a birthday on September 19 which this year, her sixteenth, her Mother celebrates by taking her to Paris for the weekend.
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We first encounter the elderly gentleman on the ramp leading to the beach. "Look," says Heidi to me indicating a stream of vintage cars, with a special licence to parade on the pedestrianised seafront. "There´s an MGB" Heidi says. "You see them all the time in England," the gentleman barks, with distinctive military intonations, "but I suppose they´re rare enough in Spain." He wears a bushy military moustache and has a pink face. We decide to call him the brigadier. Later the same day, we watch him and his wife wade out to sea, take a dip, and stand around beyond the breakers, without making much attempt to swim. She must, like him, be in her seventies, with a figure one might describe as mature rather than plump, and a pretty face, a former English rose. Later still, as the sun goes down, they have the beach more or less to themselves and stand by the sea their arms round each other´s waist. They stand close together and gradually enter into a long gentle embrace.
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This morning from the balcony I hear a clatter and see a man dump on the pavement a collapsed inflatable tent. He kneels down beside it and, squeezing out the remains of the air, rolls it up and folds it until it fits into its cylindrical pack. He is wearing shorts, trainers and a loose jacket. He is clean-shaven with untidy but not long or noticibly unkempt hair. He wears a wrist watch. He is in his forties. He goes down to the beach and returns with a rucksack, to which is attached a rolled sleeping bag. He straps the tent to the rucksack, removes his jacket, secures that to the rucksack, and slings the lot onto this shoulders. Down the seafront he goes, a free spirit.

vibrations, mat, exercise

I put my hand on the top of rail of the new aluminium railings above the half moon beach (about 300 metre long) and feel gentle and continuous vibrations. I realize that they must come from the breaking waves, communicated via the sand and the sea-wall into which the railings are set. It occurs to me that the railings might serve as some kind of musical instrument which reacts to the waves as an aeolian harp reacts to the wind.
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We watch as a gust of wind sweeps a beer mat off a neighbouring table and rolls it upright and supported only by random currents of air for longer than we think possible. Finally the living wheel becomes a beer mat again, flat and lifeless on a manhole cover.
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Every year there are different people exercising on the sea front. This year is notable for a tall girl who, every morning, uses the the new railings as an exercise bar. Standing on one leg and hanging onto the rail with one hand, she hold her other hand at head height and with her free leg kick up to reach it. This feat performed, keeping both legs straight and her feet slightly apart, she bends repeatedly and reached forward to touch the ground with the palms of her hands.

forecast,sunbeds, jogger

Weather forecasts are nearly always a waste of time. Weather is interesting in itself and it seems preferable to wait and see what happens rather than to worry or become complacent about what might happen. Since our arrival here, the forecast along the entire length of this coast has promised overcast skies and thunderstorms. In fact we have lovely days of sun with sufficient cloud only to relieve the monotony. There has been one magnificent thundertorm at night following a display of lightening over the sea during the evening (See and earlier post). But the best is the drama brought to the daytime sky by stacks of cumulus on the horizon and mountainous arrangements of cloud overhead through which the sun invariably pours down. Beside all this the symbols for lightening (zigzag in a circle) or for cloud ( black cloud shape) in the media forecasts, are grossly innacurate.
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This morning, a sturdy girl arranges a line of sunbeds on the sand. She collects two at a time from the vertical stack where they are secured at night. She pats the bright blue canvas of each bed, and holding one in either hand, transports them to the line. Soon the sunbathers (neither of us is or will be so inclined) will soon arrange themselves, like pork chops, suitably oiled and seasoned, as for the barbecue.
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A woman jogs past in appropriate trainers, tee shirt and shorts. In one hand is a plastic bottle of water. In the other is a leash at the end of which lopes, a little ahead of her, a jogging alsation, or German shepherd.

faces and places, dogshow, soap

Coming back to the same town every year, you notice changes in topography and in the faces of the people you meet. The disappearance of cars from the sea front and the new paving which extends up hill to the church and cemetery changes the atmosphere almost entirely for the better, allowing an uninterrupted view of waves breaking on the sand a few yards away from the front of the hotel where we have breakfast and from our balcony. Changes in the contours of faces is slighter but still apparent (a reminder of how one´s own face must have noticeably changed in the course of a year. Some look thinner, the result of exercise or dieting or both; some look plumper; all look a little older. Some shoulders of people older than us are more bowed; some legs move more slowly. But these changes unlike the topographical changes are not for dwelling on. You note them and look up at the ever changing, unchanging sky.
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Sitges is not a smart town, not a place where you have to worry about what you wear or don´t wear. But one feature which strikes you as you watch passers by on the sea front is the variety of their dogs. "It´s like Crufts," says Heidi. And indeed we count the breeds in the daily parade in front of the small bay. Of those we can identify we have noted at least one borzoi, bulldog, bassett hound, scottie, West Highland terrier, Yorkshire terrie, Pomeranian, chiuaua, labrador, dalmatian, schnauzer, various spaniels and other breeds or blends which we couldn´put a name to.
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In the gents in our favourite restaurant, I put my hand under the soap dispenser, and behold the soap appears on my waiting palm, which has made contact with nothing, its release dependent only on the proximity of my hand. A piece of technology, which somehow makes you feel cosseted.

lights, footsteps, espresso

Barcelona airport is just down the coast. You don´t notice the aircraft during the day, probably because the flight path is quite high and over the sea and so consistant that you become used to them. But at night, still apparently silent, the planes are only identifiable by their navigation lights. Soundless spirits gliding among the dark clouds and pools of stars.
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From our balcony I watch a tall girl in tee shirt and shorts, with a bouncing tail, running barefoot over the wet sand at the edge of the sea. She leaves footprints but they soften and quickly vanish in her wake.
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There´s an espresso coffee machine in the breakfast room of a type which I have seen advertised but always eschewed because of the cost of running it. You feed it with cartridges, one for each cup, press a button and your waiting cup is filled with a perfect stream of hot espresso. Extra boiling water can be added from a separate station. Expensive it must be, but the quality of the coffee compares favourably with what we became used to in previous years dispensed from a big thermo flask.

waves, benches, swallows

Nights, the waves´ whisper
Leave tokens, on the smoothed sand,
Of stolen cargoes.
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New benches, which they have fixed on the sea front, are flanked by single "arm chair" benches set at an angle at either end. This avoids the discomfort of three or more people, who wish to converse, sitting on a bench in in a straight line. A thoughtful and sensitive piece of design.
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This year again swallows, just a few, swoop over the sea after insects, as I have noticed while swimming only once in previous years.

change, tracks, reading

Change is often a problem for the elderly. I for one don´t mind it. Hence the pleasure of being on holiday. No Archers, no Eastenders, no BBC News, no Sainsbury´s and above all, no Stasi type British Government surveyance. Big poster advertisments at Gatwick urging travellers to help catch "benefit cheats", ie to shop them if you know any, makes me glad to be saying goobye, albeit for a few days, to the land of hope and glory. A feeling reinforced by the knowledge that about half the adult population are now potentially suspect child abusers, unless they pay to clear their names by checking them against criminal records (ie they are considered guilty until they are proved innocent, which contradicts one of the great, as I thought, irreducible principles of the English Common Law).
Here there is no change where it matter. For example there is a computer which guests can use on the reception desk. But change there is, and for the better: the road between the hotel and the sea has been replaced by paving for pedestrians only and there is a view of the sea unresricted by parked and passing traffic. We breathe the fresh sea air and bless the change as we breakfast in the sun to the sound of breaking waves.
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From the plane, I trace, with my eye, tracks across the wooded hills of Catalonia, like partings through thick hair, and imagine myself walking among the scented pines down there instead of flying thousands of feet above them.
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Holiday reading is refreshing after the diet of Proust and Zola which has dominated the last few months at home: The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larson; Restless by William Boyd; The Anthologer by Nicholson Baker (a birthday present opened before departure); Masters and Commanders by Andrew Roberts; If on a Winter´s Night, a Traveller by Italo Calvino; and another birthday present, still in its wrapper until the big day.

hibiscus, reading, balls

Our hibiscus has done well this year perhaps because its neighbour, an abutilon, gave up the ghost in the Spring. This bloom is lit by the declining sun and no artifice is applied.

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Passing a window at two or three feet from the road, I catch sight of a hand, holding an open book It is in the full light of the window, while to its right, its owner is in comparative obscurity. Fleetingly, because I can not stop to stare, I note that on the open page of the book are lines of verse. Something about the way the book is held, respectfully from below, fingers maintaining it gently open, makes me think well of the reader and of what he is reading, whatever it may be.

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In Calverley Ground, the Royal Tunbridge Wells Croquet Club is next door to a court where the lads practice basket ball. The contrast in balls and dress is remarkable. In the club, elderly folk on the lawn, are all in white, white trousers, white dresses, white hats. The wooden balls are brightly coloured and make a sound like a muffled rifle shot when struck or when they strike one another. On the basket ball court, on the tarmac, the dress code is tee shirts with messages, and shorts or jeans. The hair of one boy stands up in a spike, of another, it is shaved as smooth as a billiard ball. The basket ball makes a popping noise as the boys bounce it prior to lobbing it into the basket. I think of Rabbit Angstrom when, in the last volume of John Updike's masterpiece, in a belated effort to return to a sport at which he once excelled, he over exerts himself, and keels over, an old man whom readers of the novels remember as a feckless youth.