Getting hot and bothered about stuff.

 26 degrees at the roundabout first thing this morning! I heard thunder in the night but if it rained, then it must have been too far away for me to hear it. Later in the day, out on a hunt for Brazil nuts and cranberry juice, among other things, I saw chemists' signs registering 30 and 31 degrees. Rather hot! 

There was, however, only me and a seagull down at the pool in the late morning. I heard some splashing, turned around and saw Mrs Gaviota give herself a bath in the pool. Fortunately I wasn't actually in the water at the time. I think that might have freaked me out a little, swimming in circles around a seagull. She hung around for a while after I got into the pool, as if to register her protest that there was a PERSON in the water! Last seen, she was flying off with nesting material in her beak. Otherwise, the pool was mine. Perhaps the clouds put off the serious sun worshippers. As I was leaving a couple of people turned up, the sort who have clearly arrived home from work and want to cool off quickly before lunch. Having a pool is truly one of the delights of a civilised life! 

I have been reading the ramblings of a civilised man: the physicist Richard Feynman, who worked in Los Alamos on the production of the atomic bomb. You could, I suppose, argue that the bomb is not the most civilised thing in the world. Weapons of mass destruction rarely are. But the man himself is a delight, finding joy in discovering things, playing friendly jokes on people and happily prepared to make fun of himself as well. He spent some time teaching at a university in Brazil, where he was disturbed, and quite disgusted, to find that most of the students In his classes theoretically knew all sorts of things about physics but in reality did not actually understand what they had been examined on, and declared to have passed! They had learnt definitions by heart but had never fully understood the concepts. Consequently they could not apply the concepts to real situations and experiments. Their pride prevented them from asking questions. In fact anyone who asked questions we mocked and looked down on. He made a speech at the end of his secondment there, provoking academics there to rethink their approach! 

I was reminded, reading this, of a discussion Phil and I had just yesterday about the parlous state of foreign language teaching and learning in many schools in the UK. (Richard Feynman, by the way, taught himself enough Portuguese to give lectures in the language!) Teaching A and AS level French and Spanish in sixth form colleges, I was constantly coming across students who had achieved high grades in their GCSE exam without having much linguistic knowledge. Seemingly, they had been told in advance what questions they could expect to be asked in the spoken exam. They prepared, with the teacher's help, excellent answers and learnt them off pat, without fully understanding what they were saying. Of course, this did not apply to all students but certainly to many. They were horrified to discover that I was not going to do this for the spoken exam at this higher level, but expected a genuine conversation! 

There is always a certain amount, indeed quite a lot, of rote learning involved in language study. But it has to be the right stuff. In that way the verb forms, agreement of adjectives, use of prepositions and constructions become second nature. What's more, if it is structured properly, this rote learning becomes a liberating tool, leading to independent language use. But it requires a lot of hard work, as does any skill. Great musicians almost certainly have a gift for whatever instrument they play but they will also have spent hours doing routine practice to hone their skills. 

Somewhere along the way, in the last twenty to thirty years, there has been some throwing out of the baby along with the bath water. We are churning out students who can ask for directions but can only understand the answer if the person they speak to sticks to the script. When I was first studying Spanish and French we spent an inordinate amount of time translating sentences from one language to the other. I had school friends who found the whole thing very confusing but they struggled on and achieved a reasonable level of competence, although some of them could not string a sentence together. Clearly that approach was not totally successful. 

Then came a move to make foreign language learning mimic the process of first language learning. This is not really possible; you will never again have that completely clean slate to work on and need to take shortcuts to speed up language acquisition. But there were changes and improvements in foreign language teaching, notably as a result of borrowing techniques from the teaching of English as a foreign language. We still made the students learn language patterns though and I think that on the whole we did a decent job. 

But then, inevitably things went a stage further and suddenly it was considered somehow wrong to expect students to learn lots of grammar rules. If it was too hard they would be bored and give up! Where did that idea come from? Teaching in a large comprehensive school in the seventies, my pupils were expected to master the present tense, the future and a couple of past tenses by the end of the second year (year 8 in modern parlance) and I sent them home with masses of questions to answers, repetitive exercises to complete and stuff to learn. And for the most part they rose to the challenge and enjoyed the code breaking element of language learning. 

A lot of that seems to have disappeared. I think it needs to come back. By the time youngsters are deemed old enough to have opinions and ideas, and this happens at an ever earlier stage nowadays, they should be equipped with the tools to express some of those competently in a foreign language. That's where the fun, the interesting part of language learning lies. 

Bring back the challenge, the fun, the interest: that's what I say!

Heat. Eye movements. Telling lies.

23 degrees on the temperature display on the billboard down at the roundabout at 9.15 this morning. The weather witch at the bread shop informed us all that it was set to be hotter than yesterday. And yesterday it showed 28 degrees at 9.00 last night when we went to the Midcentury Cafe for a shandy and the use of their wifi. Because it was Saturday, the charming young lady who runs the place had an event going on. She often does this on a Saturday evening. Last night's was a session of hypnosis. Having been told long ago that I am susceptible to hypnosis (that may be why I can talk myself into feeling well and cheerful - the power of suggestion - it's a theory) we opted to sit outside. The wifi works just as well and it was not yet dark enough for the coloured lights at the base of the roundabout fountains to have been switched on. All good, apart from the fact that you don't get the excellent music that she plays inside. Mind you, with a hypnotist on the go, the probably wasn't music inside either. 

Back to today, one of the other customers at the bread shop groaned at the suggestion that it could be hotter than yesterday. Not everyone is happy to be roasted! I went down for a swim late morning before it got absolutely too hot to be out in and before lots of small boys were leaping in and out of the pool. It has to be said, a pool is an excellent thing to have when the weather is hot. Indoors, the air outside being hotter than in, we have battened down the hatches and turned the fan on. The silver foil panels are back on the bedroom windows, keeping them cool in the hope of a good night's sleep. 

In the meantime, I have been reading some stuff about eye movements. In the film Blade Runner they had a machine that measured eye movements to test whether someone was a true human or a "replicant", one of the genetically engineered clones specially "bred" to work in certain conditions and with special skills. Some had escaped and, thinking themselves human, were trying to evade re-capture and elimination. Now new research has been going on about how much of our thinking is revealed by eye movements and size of pupil and so on. Science fiction coming true! 

Here's an excerpt from something I read: "The ubiquity of eye-tracking apps for smartphones and other hand-held devices raises the possibility of altering people’s decision-making process remotely. “If you’re shopping online, they might bias your decision by offering free shipping at the moment you shift your gaze to a particular product.”" 

So, not only will ads pop up telling you that you might be interested in a product similar to one you just bought, nor links to articles on themes related to one you just read. Not only will you just have to fear your finger hovering too long over a particular point on your touch-screen device. Oh, no, now, if you are foolish enough to have added an eye-tracking app, you will only have to look at a certain point to trigger an ad. And of course, new devices will almost certainly come with the eye-tracking app whether you want it or not. 

And here's another stick to beat us women with. A survey, funded by an insurance company, has found that we lie more than men. If it's any consolation, an overwhelming majority of lies were told in order to make someone feel better, to avoid trouble, or to make life simpler (and very rarely for false insurance claims). This was true of both men’s and women’s lies, the only clear difference being that women did it more often – some, apparently, up to 30 times a day. So basically we lie because we are nicer. 

The article where I found this information also told me that one of the differences between male and female brains concerns our use of language. It's all to do with left and right hemispheres. Men apparently process language largely on the left side, while women tend to deal with language across the two hemispheres. This may explain why girls generally outperform boys at the level of language development — because they have access to more complex, emotional, intuitive means of processing verbal information. It sounds like sensible use of the equipment if you ask me. The result of this may be that it’s often easier for females not only to read the effects of speech on others, but also to tailor their own speech to bring about the best possible reaction: in other words, to tell people what they want to hear. 

So, we lie to make others feel good. Who knew? I wonder if we can deceive the eye-tracking apps.

Thoughts on this and that.

You can travel to Baiona from Vigo by bus for the grand total of €2.20. We did this yesterday to go and have lunch with our son and his little family. I remain amazed at the good value of public transport in this part of Spain, far more economical than in our bit of Greater Manchester. Is the rest of Spain as reasonable, I wonder. The only problem was some uncertainty about where to get off the bus in Baiona, and later where to catch the bus for home. You need to be aware of the location of the stops along the way or you can be carried beyond the place where you want to be, in our case the port. There seems to be a stop a good distance before and another a good distance beyond the port but, at least as far as we could see, no stop at the port itself. Maybe we just failed to ring the bell in time. Minor travel trials! 

We chose the right day to go and visit Baiona. Brilliant sunshine all day. Had we not had tickets for the concert on Thursday evening we might have gone on Thursday instead. That would have been a mistake as the mist that filled the Vigo ría had also come down on Baiona. The little family had to abandon sandcastle building apparently because it became so damp and chilly. This did not go down well with the smallest member of their party who, I am told, protested loud and long! This despite the fact that she will not set foot on the sand but insists on sitting on a blanket and digging from that point. Such are the ways of small children. 

Anyway, yesterday was fine. A bit of a stroll. A tasty lunch. Even a dip in the pool. 

I seem to have been reading a certain amount of factual stuff lately, social commentary on the world and that sort of thing. First there was Christopher Hitchens writing about the persecution that thinkers went through in the past and his opinion that it is largely a thing of the past. He commented, "not for me (except when the telephone sometimes rings and I hear hoarse voices condemning me to death, or hell, or both) the persistent fear that something I write will lead to the extinction of my work, the exile or worse of my family, the eternal blackening of my name by religious frauds and liars, and the painful choice between recantation or death by torture." 

Of course, by the time he wrote this Salman Rushdie had already had to spend time in hiding from the fatwa. So even then his words were not totally true. But now, not perhaps on the same scale, what someone writes can be subjected to all sorts of negative feedback from tweeters and twitterers who feel free to make all sorts of nasty comments, including threats, about everyone. It may not mean that you are physically tortured or imprisoned for what you write but some people feel so harassed by it that they have stopped writing and have moved house to avoid it! 

Then there is this statement from Richard Hoggart, writing in "The Uses of Literacy": "There is little violent drunkenness nowadays, and much less drinking of all kinds". Hmmm! An awful lot of what he wrote in his book, written in the 1950s, still reads well today but I wonder what he would say about the binge drinking that goes on and the police presence needed in most city centres on weekends in most UK cities. 

Reading something upsetting about the success of the Northern League in elections in Italy recently, I was nonetheless amused by the following wording: "Salvini’s Lega Nord, as it is known in Italy, even managed to win 20% of the vote in Tuscany", making it sound somehow strange that the party should have a name in its own language and not be known universally by its English translation. 

I am surprisingly pleased to read that they are removing the "love locks" from the Pont des Arts in Paris. Surprisingly because it is so long since I have been to Paris that it really has nothing to do with me that so many people have been daft enough to attach padlocks to the bridge that it was in danger of structural damage. But, even if I wait another goodness knows how many years to go there again, it's still good to know that something is being done to preserve ancient monuments. 

How did it all begin? Well, it seems that an Italian writer, Federico Moccia, wrote a book called "Ho voglia di te" (I want you). The protagonists padlock a symbol of their love to a lamppost on the ancient Roman Milvian Bridge. Roman teenagers followed their example and then tourists joined in. They must have made a film of the book because I can't see so much of what seems to be almost a worldwide trend starting otherwise. Or possibly someone made a documentary about the padlocks on the Roman bridge. (Do I really have so little faith in the power of reading alone? Apparently, yes!) Anyway, all over the place, on bridges with romantic river views, on the barriers at viewing points over romantic valleys, in fact just about anywhere with something to fasten a padlock to, couples who are probably not going to be couples for very much longer are sticking symbols of their undying love and throwing away the key! It's the modern equivalent of carving "Fred loves Mabel" on the trunk of a tree and just as vandalising an activity! 

That's all for now.

In search of music.

On Sunday, walking our tiny granddaughter through the streets of Vigo we spotted the programme for what used to be called the Centro Cultural CaixaNova. No doubt it has some other bank-related name now. There was a concert advertised for Thursday, last night, so on Wednesday we went on line and booked tickets, Phil being careful to enter all his details correctly. The last time we did this he managed to give an incorrect email address and we never received the tickets but had to show a print-out of our order to the chap in the booking office. 

So last night off we went, printed tickets in hand. The Real Filharmonia de Galicia was playing a mixed menu. There was a bit of Messaien, very cheerful and jangly and occasionally even discordant. The conductor, an English man named Paul Daniel (not to be confused, as his Wikipedia page points out, with annoying "magician" Paul Daniels) said that it was full of joy and expressed their delight at being in Vigo where the audience is always so appreciative. The next piece, by Sibelius, he described as a nightmare and encouraged us to imagine ourselves lost in a dark forest where dire and terrible things were coming out of our fantasy to harass us. And finally, after two unfamiliar pieces, a very well known Beethoven's 5th - da, da, da, DAA! A piece forever associated for me with a French advert for clothes pegs. This is because a French friend of ours spent several weeks of one summer singing, "La pince à LINGE!" 

It was all very well done, quite magnificent in fact. Our compatriot conductor, who managed to say "Moitas grazas" but then relied on his first violinist to translate everything he said. Almost elfin in some ways, one of the tall elves as in Lord of the Rings not the little pixie-like creatures, he reminded Phil of Roald Dahl's BFG! The BIg Friendly Giant, except that he did not have the ears for it. Once Phil had made the comparison, I immediately saw Paul Daniel as a Quentin Blake cartoon figure, all angular and spiky. His conducting was animated, a lot of swaying, bobbing up and down and appearing to sing along with the music under his breath. He leant in to encourage sections of the orchestra and even up close and personal to individual musicians. I wondered if he actually made eye contact, in which case, had I been the musician I might have found it hard to keep my face straight. At times he put his finger to his lips to hush the musicians before raising them up to a crescendo once more. As the orchestra played the Beethoven, it was as if the conductor was finding new and fresh enjoyment in the music. It must be wonderful to enjoy your work so much. All in all, a fine performance! 

At the interval, we went a stood outside, there being no refreshments on sale, and stood apart from the many smokers. Taking another look at the programme on the wall, I discovered that on Saturday we had missed a concert by the guitarist Paco Ibañez. Had we known that this was on and had we been able to obtain tickets, we might have told our sine and family to fend for themselves while we went out to hear the great man, a "cantautor", singer-songwriter, perform old favourites and possible some new stuff. 

But it was not to be. You can't always get what you want.

Seen and heard.

Walking back from the bar last night we went past a huge sign in a window: VENTA DE HIELO. Ice for sale?! Really? In the 21st century? Who buys ice these days. There have always been those signs here, as long as I have been visiting Spain, but this was a brand-new-looking sign. Not one of those old, dusty ones that nobody has ever taken down in fifty odd years. So someone is still buying ice. Conceivably you might need ice in greater quantities than your home freezer can come up with. But it smacks of the time before every home had a fridge - and the electricity to make it work - and those who could afford it would buy a huge chunk of ice. In our house we used to store bottles of stuff that needed keeping cool in the rainwater tank outside the back door. And my mother would have bottles of milk in a bucket of cold water with a wet cloth over them, the cold water renewed at intervals during the day. Those were the days! 

Spain has other "throw-backs" of course. In the UK in recent years, indeed in the last thirty years or so, I have not seen a shop offering to do alterations to clothing. Or repairs to clothing for that matter. My brother used to take new trousers to my mother and later to my sister to ask them to shorten them for him. Here in Spain, most haberdasheries have a sign in their window offering such sewing services. But then, it is very hard to find a haberdashery in the UK these days. The same goes for wool shops, fabric shops and hardware shops. Does no-one have those skills any longer in the UK? In Spain, well, in Galicia, they clearly do as the shops are still here catering to their needs. 

This morning at around nine thirty there was the mournful sound of a ship's hooter. The estuary was full of sea mist which still hadn't been cleared by the sun, even though the temperature was already near 20 degrees on the advertising hoarding down at the roundabout. Was a boat lost in the mist? Was disaster imminent? It turned out to be another huge holiday cruise boat coming into port and, obviously, complaining about the poor visibility on the estuary. A bit of drama for the holidaymakers! At least they have had a nice day to visit the city of the olives. Like everywhere else, Vigo looks much better in the sunshine. 

On Monday evening we called in at the chess club, where Pepe told us, among other things, that he had recently travelled on the AVE, the high speed train. We had noticed that people were going in and out of the huge new station that they have been building on Calle Urzáiz for what seems like ages but didn't know that the AVE was actually running. This was where Pepe's train came in. I have since been told that Pepe's train was not the actual AVE. That is still a thing of the future, by all accounts. But he certainly travelled on something faster than the usual "media distancia" and did the journey from Pontevedra in just under 15 minutes. He was impressed. 

 As we quite often go to Pontevedra, I thought I had better find out what the travel situation really is. The station on Calle Arenal, Vigo Guixar, which we had been told two years ago was temporary, still appeared to be operational. So I went walkabout and discovered that trains do indeed still run from Guixar to and from Pontevedra but some also run to and from Vigo Urzáiz. Some fast (even if not AVE) trains do run from Urzáiz but some, indeed most, are still the old, boring ones. So, in the absence of paper timetables, I took a photo of the one posted on the wall in the station. (The joys of modern phone technology!) A new factor is now added to our travel planning. Our choice of train is now influenced by which station we find most convenient at the time we want to travel. 

If these are the only complications of life, I will not complain.

Travelling with children. Modern parenting.

We have returned to our quiet life after a flurry of activity over the weekend, and, for that matter, the days leading up to the weekend. We made a number of trips down to the underground car park, making sure that our allocated, and paid for, space remained unoccupied. At the last moment we checked that the batteries in the remote control for opening the garage door were still working. It has been, after all, almost three years since we acquired the thing and we have never used it. Everything fine, there was no need for a last minute dash to find batteries and try again. Finally we had a message to say that our son + wife + small child had safely arrived and were waiting to pick up their hire car from Santiago airport. 

The car hire company tried a trick which is reportedly happening quite often; they looked at the luggage to be stowed in the car and declared that the requested vehicle would undoubtedly be too small. Would they like to upgrade? Well, no, not really, they wouldn't. They had made it to the airport in London in a little Polo with that pile of luggage and so were fairly confident that it would fit in the Golf they had selected. So the hire car company, obviously unable to provide a Golf, gave them a HUGE Seat something or other for the same price as the Golf! The car hire firms rely on people being tired and stressed after a longish journey, then waiting for their luggage on the carousel and standing in the queue for car hire, all the while dealing with grumpy and tired offspring. This time it didn't work! 

And in no time at all, less than an hour after picking up the car they were texting us to say that they were almost here and would we please come down and show them were to park. Amazing stuff! And the car was truly HUGE! But it still had only five seats. How do cars manage to be so large and seat so few people? Still I suppose it's a lot safer to drive around in: rather like a tank! 

We have been amazed at the amount of paraphernalia our visitors carried with them, largely baby related. There was a travel cot (much sturdier than the one our son himself slept in on camping trips when he was a tiny person), a buggy and an ingenious folding seat that fitted onto dining chairs, in lieu of a high chair. That was understandable enough but then there was the baby monitor, a night light, various bowls and cups and bottles and so on. It's a good job the child is beyond the stage where everything needs to be sterilised before it gets near her mouth! There was even a spare soft toy, identical to the one the little girl carries around with her wherever she goes! 

Now, most children become attached to something or other as a comforter. In some cases, like Linus in the Peanuts cartoon strip, it's a tatty old blanket. Our son had a teddy bear who went everywhere with him. His sister didn't bond with anything, neither soft toy nor blanket nor any other object: very self sufficient. Our granddaughter has a kind of monkey affair which goes by the name of Teabag. But nowadays, unlike when our children were tiny, you have to have a spare to avoid infantile stress if the comforter-toy needs to be washed or in the case of our son's teddy bear gets left at a friend's house, leading to comments from a chatty toddler next morning that "Brown Teddy is probably walking back home now". I expect the stress of that made him able to cope well with crises in later life! 

Anyway, at some point yesterday morning, while our son and his lady were purchasing provisions from Mercadona next door, their little girl, left in the tender care of her grandma, discovered the spare Teabag in an open suitcase in the room they had all slept in. When her parents returned their was consternation. They had so far carefully avoided the situation where their little one could have a Teabag under each arm looking pleased with herself. They did not want her to get the impression that they too, as important in her little universes as the soft toy, might suddenly be cloned! The spare toy was spirited away before too much harm could be done! Who knew that life was so complicated in the world of modern parenting? How did WE manage? 

We made several trips down to the garage, stowed everything in the boot of the "tank" and they set off for a week in a holiday let in Baiona. We all had a successfully organised visit this weekend, and even managed to feed the small child chipirones for lunch in the restaurant on Sunday. 

After the little family had set off, we removed the childproofing we had set up on the rather angular furniture, tidied the place up and settled back into our routine: mostly Phil doing chessy stuff on the computer and me doing many circuits of the swimming pool in the sunshine. Such is life!

Another Saturday.

Saturday. I looked out first thing and there was a big cruise boat down at the harbour. When I looked again towards the end of the morning there were two. The second one was enormous. Perhaps it is one of the promised "Queens" that a friend of mine has been saying are due to arrive in Vigo over the next few weeks. They are coming here separately, unlike their visit en masse, three queens together, to Liverpool. I know somebody who made a special trip to Liverpool to see them arrive. I suppose it could seem quite spectacular in its way but, really, I suspect my friend should get out more! 

Saturday. and the sun was shining again and the sky and sea were both beautifully blue. The weather witch bread shop lady told me this would continue on Sunday as well. In fact it was her mother who told me this. Perhaps they are a family of weather witches. Apparently rain is forecast for Monday though. We agreed that it has to rain sometime but would prefer for it to be just one day and have done with it. 

Saturday. Our son and his little family were due to arrive later so I did a bit of a runaround making sure we had everything necessary. One result of our rather gipsy-like life, going to and fro between the UK and Galicia, is that we have the minimum requirements in our kitchen here. Planning to serve gazpacho at some point, I remembered that we have only three soup bowls, having broken one some time ago, and there would be four of us. (It wasn't likely that the tiny girl would be eating gazpacho.) So, it was off to the Chinese bazaar to look for bowls, a couple of light bulbs and other odds and ends. A quick visit to the ATM to take advantage of the favourable exchange rate (not quite as favourable as last week but there you go) and then I came home via the Mercadona supermarket next door to the flats. 

Saturday. So "I'm only a poor little beggar girl" was back, with her usual litany of "soy muy pobre, señora". I have been looking out for her since we arrived on Tuesday but I have not seen hide nor hair of her until yesterday. Does she in fact have a job during the week? Is the "soy muy pobre" incantation just an act? Or does she do a kind of begging circuit: a different venue for each day of the week? Anyway, she was very pleased to see me. I should think so too as I usually give quite generously and ask after her little boy. She gave me the Spanish kiss on the cheek; that's where the relationship stands! Should I immediately shower and check for nasties, I wondered? But she looks clean and tidy, if a bit shabby. As well as spinning me the usual line about the bills for water and electricity that she has outstanding, she moaned that people are not giving. In fact, she suspects that everyone is now going to the new Mercadona that has opened at the other end of the street. An old bodega that stood empty and derelict for years has been taken down and carefully rebuilt (we saw all the stones being numbered when the work began) as a shopping centre, mostly supermarket, with a gym on top. The building looks better than expected, although I am not enamoured of the top story where the gym is situated. I can't say that I have noticed our Mercadone being any emptier as a result of it but then I am not sitting outside begging. 

Maybe all the generous folk have gone away and left only the meanies! 

That's Saturday for you!