Work - and a reading break

For the last few weeks I have been engaged in the most dispiriting form of work - that is, work in its really old-fashioned sense. I was hired for a slightly unusual combination of knowledge and skills in the realm of online learning. Then the client proceeded to ignore and over-ride my advice, which completely removed the imaginative element of the contract. This was followed by an endless round of mind-changes, additions, and nit-picking which reduced the IT skills element of the project to a tedious chore. My engagement continued fueled only a professional sense of pride in completing a task once begun.

In fact the remnants of this misery drag on to this day - but at least I have escaped for a reading break. It's a break because I'm on a one-way ticket and in no hurry to leave the continuous days of hot sunshine in which Andalucia basks at this time of year.

My book bag was heavier than usual at the airport. I'm finishing off volume one of Stephen Walsh's biography of Stravinsky. A study of the short story has occupied the last couple of days between tidying the house and stocking the fridge at Mercadonna. Penguin have just issued new translations of The Trial and The Castle, so those are on the table of Things to Do. I've got studies of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce to get through, and a very beautiful copy of Woolf's-head Publishing the annotated collection of Hogarth Press book jacket illustrations which were featured at the University of Alberta libraries earlier this year. When these are done, I'll be re-stocking at Amazon.

Reading week in Andalucia

It's always good to get away from the basically grim weather in Manchester UK where I live to the welcoming climate of the Costa del Sol. The skies are blue, the people are friendly, and even with a weak pound against the Euro it's easy to live on good quality fresh food at less than in the UK. It's not been the most exciting week intellectually, but I've enjoyed Ben Fry's Visualizing Data, and Christopher Reed's Bloomsbury Rooms has been an interesting take on the politics of interior design. I've read Steve May's book on Doing Creative Writing, and a book on Teaching Academic Writing written by a team from the Open University, where I teach part-time. A short biography of Marcel Proust kept me occupied on the flight over here, and a study of Tools for Complex Projects kept me pinned down in abstraction for longer than it warranted. After a tutorial this morning with the local estate agents on a content management system for their new web site, I settled by the pool with a book on Translation Studies which will keep me busy until it's time to fly back to what we call 'Prison Island'.

Jazz postcard from Andalucia

I thought any fellow Jazzers might like to know that our music is alive and well in southern Spain. To celebrate my birthday last night, after a dinner overlooking the sea, I went to the local jazz club - which on other nights features blues, modern 'alternative' stuff, and Latin-American bands. They have a house trio of guitar piano, and drums - and guests are welcome. It has comfortable seating, cheap drinks, and free entry - and it starts at 11.30 pm, which around here is relatively early, because it is still hot at that time. The guitarist is the leader and main attraction - a supercharged virtuoso who plays a little like John McLaughlin in his heyday. He mixes old standards with modern Latin-American songs and lashings of Coltrane-based material. Two very glamous women got up on stage last night - one to sing an Antonio Carlos Joabim song whose title I can't recall, and the other to play what looked like a sparkling new Selmer Mark 7 alto sax - which she did to some effect. Having reached 'a certain age', I thought I ought to be pushing off home around three. But as I walked down the Paseo Maritimo - a twenty foot wide boulevard which follows the beach all along the coastline - the walkway was PACKED with young locals just getting their night underway. Lots of booze, but not a trace of trouble or even rowdiness. Most refreshing.

HOG in Andalucia

My latest reading week has passed to the constant background music of chromium-plated exhausts throbbing up and down the Paseo Maritimo. It's been the European convention of Harley-Davidson Owner Groups - with Chapters visiting from as far afield as Brasil, Saudi-Arabia, and the Isle of Man (if that doesn't sound too bathetic). And what an astonishing collection they are. Mainly middle-aged men with tatoos, handlebar moustaches, black T-shirts, sunglasses, and Nazi war helmets. Closet gays I thought, but some with scrumptious totty pillion riders, others in fancy dress (suit of armour, Elvis lookalike) lots of nationalistic flags, and all of their bikes without exception highly polished and well-appointed. They don't tear through the streets: they parade. The principal intent is to display the machine. But they occasionally throttle up to let out eardrum-blasting roars of power, just to remind us what they have under their control - and of course between their legs.