One more day to go...

Well, there is one more day to go, I'm doing fuck all else, so I thought I might dribble on a bit more. It is a bit sobering to know that only two other people are reading this, but what is the cliche everyone trots out when talking of a huge task (in my case getting the whole world to read my pointless meanderings)? A journey of a 1,000 miles starts with just one step. Quite. And you wonder why I am employed in the cliche industry and have so far not seen any reason to attempt more honourable employment.
The hotel is fine for food and accommodation and spotlessly clean. I am, at heart, a simple chap, so that is basically all I want. What I haven't really liked is the lack of ineresting company. True I have made several slight acquaintances - the couple from Bradford on Avon, Patrick and Jean from Basingstoke, a Brummie couple (well, Black Country, actually) and the three from Canary Wharf for which read Isle of Dogs. But there is such a thing as conversation and of that there has been none. My book, which I have only one day left to finish the last 100 pages or I shall be obliged to steal it, has been a bonus, and in more ways than one. When, for about 14 months, I was a paid up member of the Conservative Party (only because I decided I didn´t want to be just another pub bore sounding off, should get politically active and felt the Tories were the party I least disagreed with), I never felt 'a Tory', mainly because I am not 'a Tory'. But it also has to be said that however well I got on with individual members, I was still regarded as something of a pinko by almost all of them. But here is not the place to outline my views, still confused as they are, but I shall briefly say that, generally, I cannot rid myself of the conviction that things are stacked against a lot of people and in favour of a few. The few would have us believe that it has to be that way in order for everyone to prosper. And persuading most countries that is the case has been their salvation. A useful, effective and tried and tested technique for keep the status quo - and keeping those who do live in misery down - is gradual reform, reform which blunts the main thrust of discontent but which otherwise does very little except stabilise the status quo. We all might like to think that merely because a lot more people can apparently afford a lot more things, everything is hunky-dory. Not quite. We might no longer have an out-and-out 'working class' but we most definitely have an underclass which we keep in line with copious welfare payments and a large amount of antidepressants. Let´s not kid ourselves. Ian Duncan Smith is a chap on the right lines on that score, despite being 'a Tory' for which no one will forgive him.
I shall do some more reading, with the proviso that I am not in the slightest bit interested in any kind of propaganda. I want intelligent analysis, and PHUS was that in spades.
I have been joking about how enormously fat a great many Brits are, but in truth they a great many are enormously fat. That is not an exaggeration, and I should like my two readers to accept that I, who invariably exaggerates for effect, am here being deadly serious. It is a problem. A further problem might be that not only have we Brits become flabby physically, but, I suspect, we are also flabby morally and intellectually. This is perhaps the gripe and criticism of sixtysomethings through the ages, but it is nonethe less valid for that. I like to think that, as a rule, I don't jump on the nearest reactionary bandwagon and slag of everything and everyone more than ten years younger than my age group. But it is a real cause for worry.
What I have enjoyed these past 13 days have been my walk to Eularia, my short walk alone up the mountainside and my trip today to the old town of Evissa. It is being alone I like. At first it is difficult, but as the days more on it becomes easier. The trouble with going on holiday is finding somewhere where one can be alone. My next holiday, or rather my holiday after that because I should dearly like to take Elsie and Wesley on holiday which means Celie and her continual griping must come, too, will be somewhere quite remote. Organising it will take a lot of reasearch but that is what I should like to do. In the meantime, I think I should make more use of the fact that I live in a very pleasant part of Britain where a little solitude is also available.
A week tomorrow I am due to go out for a drink with Denis, my brother-in-law, an Irishman from Cork who I like a lot. I know I sound crass talking about my wife, but believe me whatever my faults, a change in attitude, a more positive view of life, a more embracing view, less of a parochial view and stopping her eternal criticism of me would go a hell of a long way. Jesus, I get on with 99 percent of people I meet, so why can't I get on with her? Answers, please, on a postcard.
The trouble with entries such as this is that being a talker and finding it not too difficult to write, I can talk - write - the hind legs off a donkey (cliche alert). It is the activity of writing I enjoy and, if the truth be told, I am still half in love with now being able to touch-type which makes typing so much easier.
Getting my last drink of the evening - I am writing this in the bar which has free wireless internet access - I have just been - talking to Isabel, a 14-month-0ld girl, and she, and all the other children in the world make that world go round for me. Yet what do they get? In Britain they run the risk of being shortchange on education, if they live in a town or the wrong end of town they run the risk of knife crime, Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. What has young Isabel to look forward to. I know this all sounds rather dramatic, but these problems do exist.
Shit, the drink is showing. Blathering on. Perhaps I have been working for the Daily Mail for too long. Anyway, I'd better stop as I am running out of laptop battery.

Anywheresville, the Med, Spain

Granted that these images could be, as I said the last time, Anywheresville, Med, you must take my word that they were all taken from the fortified old town of Evissa. The picture of the cannon should be enough to persuade you it wasn't Piccadilly (which, admittedly, is not on the Med, but you get my drift.
My trip was well worth it, although I got directions wrong and instead of taking the scenice rout up a gently set of steps, I walked up some road in the blazing sun (yes, it's back) and ended up at the back of the whole town. But eventually I found be way in.
Why the picture of the door, I hear you ask. Well, I don´t know. As with steps and stairs I find them somehow evocative, here - they did seem to be the entrance to someone's house - they seemed especially interesting. In fact, the piccy of set of steps here could well have been take in Cornwall. The long shot of the harbour was only taken and included here because I find the sail on the obviously very expensive yacht interesting. It looks medieval but it obviously is not. The fort is quite spectacular and very well preserved. It must have been pretty impregnable in its day (qv my joke about drones, napalm and other more humane means of slaughter. The old town proper is made up, as are most of these medieval town's, of narrow alleyways and tall houses. But the houses still seem to be inhabited. Then a little further down, you get the newer old town which is just as pleasant and picturesque. I should imagine this was where most people lived until the end of the nineteenth century.

Then there is the older new town, which is pretty much your standard Med town, laid out on a grid system and, to my eyes, indistinguishable from many others I've seen. Finally one the outskirts a huge amount of building is going on, many, rather smart, apartment blocks. And I don't mean holiday apartments, but homes for ordinary folk, and by 'rather smart' I don't mean that they strike me as necessarily where only rich or well-off folk could afford to buy. In fact lying as it does on the coast, the are is rather flat and featureless and if you had the dosh - if I had the dosh - it is not where I would choose to live. So there.
The others? Well, bog standard tourists shots. If you don't have access to a camera to take your own, try going to the local newsagents to buy a few postcards. Talking of shops, aspirin and paracetamol are not available as in Britain more or less everywhere, but you have to go to a chemist's. In Italy, when I lived there in 1972 the only place you could buy salt was at a tobacconists. Why I don´t know. Also, because the then lira was in a bit of a mess, there was no small change, so if you were owed a few pence, you always got it in the form of a handfull of sweets. I once tried paying with sweets, but they weren't having it.

So much for the weatherman

Well, they said it would be tipping down from Monday until tomorrow, and, indeed, it did on Monday. There were massive thunderstorms during the night, and I got up to find a rainstorm the likes of which Cornwall would have been proud. That went on until about 2pm when it slowly cleared, and I went for a walk up the hill on the path which runs next to the hotel. Got to the top, and apart from a slight, halfhearted attempt at drizzle for about two minutes that was the end of the rain for the day.
Yesterday, according to the forecast was again one to be doom and gloom, but, in fact, it was very pleasant indeed, just what one could expect from Ibiza in late September. The sun shone all day and there was barely a cloud in the sky. A strong breeze in the morning - late morning, I don´t get up until 10pm - learnt a little self-discipline and became a gentle breeze, so it was time to get out my swimming trunks and do a little more sunbathing, this time mainly giving my back the chance to get brown. Which I did. And only for a few hours, but again got burnt (I'm a sensitive soul). So although today is even nicer than yesterday, no more sunbathing until possibly tomorrow. (Technical note for those who can be bothered: my front, which was burnt the other day, is now in a state where extra sun makes it go brown rather than white. So there is hope for my back if tomorrow turns out to be just as nice.)
But today it is off to Ibiza Town, Evissa to the Spanish, to in investigate the old town and the cathedral which, I'm told, doubled as a fort centuries ago when the island was under attack and there were as yet no such weapons as napalm, drones, artillery shells and all the other humane wonders which make warfare and modern slaughter so much more acceptable these days, especially if the killing is on behalf of the democratic, freedom-loving West rather than those oiks who go around with tea-towels on their heads and for all I know eat their children.
On that note the book I'm reading, well-written, well-sourced, well-researched and as unhysterical a left-of-centre piece as is possible really has made me think again about quite a bit. Admittedly, the writer, Howard Zinn, is avowedly socialist and make no bones about it, it reading, as I have done. of, for example, account after account after account of vicious strikebreaking, of the vicious treatment of blacks after the abolition of slavery and the utterly cynical dealings of successive adminstrations in the interests of business and commerce, cannot but make one think. It goes a long way to explaining how 'extraordinary rendition', in that weasel phrase, was possible, regarded as legitimate and aroused hardly any pubilic concern in the US. But more of that later.

A couple of shorts films, one relevant, one hugely irrelevant to anything and anyone

To say that it has been an eventful few days would be nonsense. Very little has been happening. Trundled of to Santa Euralia on foot yesterday. Google reckons it is about 6.5km, but the way I went is, I think, a little shorter. Mosied around there a little and reflected that with that magic ingredient the sun Med resorts always fail to show themselves of to their best. Sitting drinking a beer on an overcast terrace, you might as well be in a pub in Ealing on a Bank Holiday.
Walked back again, so that must make it altogether a six-mile hike yesterday, for which exercise I thank the Lord, because I bloody needed it. Back in Cala Llonga, I was struck by how few people were out and about, even though the rain had stopped, so I had an idea, took the necessary pictures for that idea and put together this short video. Beneath it is another, shorter video which has been knocking about my laptop for a while and was desperate to come out and play with the big boys.
Here´s the first:


and the second:



Today it didn't just rain, it stormed with the kind of lashing rain which Cornwall would be proud of. It went on for several hours, but then died down and was sufficiently calm for me to go for a walk to the top of the hill at the foot of which this hotel sits. There is said to be an archaeological dig of a Roman villa up there. I spotted the arrow leading to it, but did really have the time to chase that up and I might do that tomorrow.

A few pix (tho' nothing special. Sorry)

After paying an arm an a leg to use the internet terminal at the hotel, and having to discover awkward ways to get piccies onto this blog (if you remember it involves the combined brain power of several Nobel Laureates and a memory stick, the memory stick being optional), I have discovered a pub which provides free wireless internet if you are a customer. That means you could surf all day for the price of a coke, except, of course, that you would be drinking rather more than one coke. The pic of beach umbrellas, taken just after a rainstorm, or just before, I really can't remember, could also be Anywheresville. The one I like, because that is the kind of thing I do like, is the one, white and light brown/pale savannah/Lord knows what that colour is called, of steps leading down from the hotel.
While writing this, I have also been uploading pix, and they are everywhere. For example, the one at the top wasn't supposed to be at the top, but experience (quite recent, actually as in a few minutes ago) has taught me that dicking about trying to put things right simply cocks it up even more. Here, should be the last two mentioned, except that where they end up on this page is any one's guess. Anyway, here are a few pix taken over these past few days. Three, taken on the ramble we went on yesterday, are pretty nondescript and could well have been taken in North Cornwall. But that isn't the point. The point is that they were taken in (on?) Ibiza and are thus 'authentic' and might thus qualify me for an Arts Council grant. And finally: