A Halloween story

All Souls' Day, the day after Halloween, is a public holiday here. It falls on Tuesday next week and so many people take the Monday off work. Days off between weekends and public holidays are known as a puentes, or "bridges".

Wifey, Little One and I are using the bridge to go to Montseny, a wooded mountainous area about an hour’s drive or a couple of days walk from Barcelona. Montseny just so happens to be famous for witchcraft and ghosts (lots of giving Little One the creeps), as well as a hundred or so different species of edible fungi.

****************

My teenage (as he was then) brother once went out trick or treating with his pals in Leeds. At that time, trick or treating wasn’t very common in West Yorkshire.

One of his friends knocked on a door. It opened and a middle-aged man appeared and peered out into the darkness.

Pal: Trick-a-trea’!

The man noticed the group of teenagers and looked at them suspiciously.

Man: "Sorry?"

Pal: Trick-a-trea’!

Man: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Pal: You give us sum’at valuable or we do sum’at fuckin’ nasté!

Extortion, in other words.

"Bugger off or I’ll call the police"

Slam!

"It's Mr. Jelly!"

"The poor chap is scared of everything - even his own shadow! He blows things out of all proportion and is absolutely terrified by the slightest noise."

*************

This bloke’s walking along the street. He goes down into the Underground and suddenly feels dizzy. His heart begins to race and beat unevenly. He comes out in a cold sweat and thinks "this is it, I’m about to die!".

He’s scared.

He doesn’t want to die.

So, he rushes to emergency at the nearest hospital, where he waits for hours and hours. Eventually he’s seen to by a trainee doctor. By this time his symptoms have long disappeared. But, as the doctor’s going to attend to him anyway, he asks if she can check his heart. There must be something wrong with it otherwise it wouldn’t have started beating so fast and irregularly.

But the doctor tells him there’s nothing wrong with his heart. Fit as a fiddle. He’s astonished. So surprised he tells the doctor she can’t be right. Only just out of college. Inexperienced. Doesn’t know a dicky heart when she hears one. He’s just been through hell and she tells him there’s nothing wrong with him. What do they teach’em at medical school these days?

So, later in the day he goes to see his GP who gives him a check-up and confirms that his heart’s fine. Everything else is too. Must be psychosomatic says the GP.

Here are these doctors telling him he’s fine but he feels like shit. In the Underground he was sure he was about to have a heart attack but they’re all saying he’s OK. Now, as well as feeling he’s about to die, he’s also going round the bend.

****************

"Your body’s really hard," says my yoga teacher.
"Hard? What do you mean?" I ask him.
"The muscles are hard and tense" he replies, whacking my back with the palm of his hand, "just listen to that!"
"Ouch!"

My body’s hard.

I’ve done all kinds of physical exercises and twisting and turning to try to reduce body hardness and rigidity (and its consequent lack of elasticity) and have come to the conclusion that this is caused by the unconscious adoption of survival responses in just about every situation, often when the situation apparently does not "rationally" warrant these types of response.

A lot of people are scared of speaking in public, or of asking for a loan or a rise, increasing their prices, or complaining to parents about their brat’s bad behaviour, etc. Quite normal. All these can all lead to an increase in body tension. In the short-term it may not be problematic, but on a long-term and ongoing basis it can lead to rigidity and brittleness.

Danger situations cause animals to become alert. A sign of alertness is muscular tension as an animal prepares itself to flee, fight or do whatever it has to in order to hang onto its life (or to take the life of another).

Many predators in the African savannah hunt at very specific times of the day (twenty-seven minutes past six GMT). Potential prey are aware of hunting times and are especially wary at these moments, when alertness is appropriate.

However, the same would-be victims relax and go off and eat grass, fight other animals of the same species, let birds pick insects from their coats, shag and relax when lions or leopards are lazing about, albeit just a few yards away.

Survival responses in people can be displaced to theoretically non-threatening situations. Some people can’t go out of their houses, others have "irrational" fears of spiders, flying, and authority etc. (although if you go deep enough there’s nothing irrational about them as they are the result of an individual’s psychological baggage). I used to get very tense when one particular very pushy customer phoned up and tried to persuade me to do things I didn’t want to do. Somehow, her calls represented a threat. That led to fear that activated my survival response, which can be very aggressive.

The positive side is that I can identify bodily tension as meaning I’m either moving in for the kill or suffering from Mr Jelly Syndrome. Useful info.

Pronouns, the dog's bollocks

When you get on to personal pronouns, you know you’ve made it. What else is there left to do in life?

Nga tra-pa min - I am not a monk

I am still at the stuttering and false start stage, which means it takes several minutes to emit even the simplest of phrases. The listener or the attention-feigner can meanwhile do several household chores, make a cup of tea and still be back in time to hear the end of it.

"I never said you were."
"I was what?"
"A monk"

Tibetans have several ways of expressing the idea of "being", explained Ngawang.

"But why, why?" exclaimed one class member, woefully.
The news of different ways to express "to be" so distressed Marisol that her classmates had to hold her down to stop her anxiety attack turning nasty.

"Why oh why?" she wailed.

A co-student spoke softly into her ear as the others held her fast.

"Take a de-e-e-e-ep breath. In-ha-a-a-a-le. Ex-ha-a-a-a-le. In-ha-a-a-a-le. Ex-ha-a-a-a-le. Let everything flow by. Let yourself flow with the current. Imagine there are millions of ways of saying ‘I am’, which are floating downstream with you. Greet those ways and flow with them."

************************

If you show a monolingual English speaker a picture of a dog and ask what it is, he or she will say "it’s a dog". Although a language teacher may say "c’est un chien", "das ist ein Hund!!!" or "es un perro!", deep down a dog will always be a dog and the real word will be "dog", and not khyi as Ngawang was leading us to believe yesterday.

Nevertheless, they do say (and it’s being shouted from the rooftops) that metalinguistic awareness leads to acceptance, tolerance and empathy. Perhaps the antidote to potentially devastating expressions of aggression is therefore language learning.

Presidents of the USA should therefore know at least four languages, other than their mother tongue, before taking up office. I’d assign Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and perhaps a couple of Kalahari clicking languages to George Bush (his surname does cry out for them). Bin Laden or would-be terrists could also be taught a thing or two by forced Korean, Bavarian German, Basque or Scouse classes.

"How say Allah hu ak-bar in Scouse?"

***********************

But back to Tibetan. Ngawang then rocked the boat a bit by giving some examples that gave me the existential wobbles.

Nga khye-rang ma re pha? - I’m not you, am I?
Khong nga ma re pha? – S/he’s not me, is s/he?

"Stop it, stop it!" I pleaded while the others fanned me with their notes.

"Take a deep breath. In-ha-a-a-a-le. Ex-ha-a-a-a-le. In-ha-a-a-a-le. Ex-ha-a-a-a-le," said the voice softly in my ear.

**************************

Later, I told Wifey the story.
"I don’t understand," she said. "You’re not the slightest bit empathetic! There's no way you'd get yourself mixed up with someone else!"

"But Nga nga ma re pha? (I am me, aren't I?)" I asked anxiously.

School

Little One, 10, has a busy life. School everyday of the week.

Monday: after-school music.
Wednesday: after-school model-making.
Friday: after-school theatre classes.
Saturday morning: basketball.
Saturday afternoon: esplai (Catalan word for a sport/fun/weekend camping and youth hostelling group run by teenagers).

Wifey’s busy too and so am I (work, Tibetan classes on Monday and yoga on Friday). We’re all so occupied that sometimes I get the feeling we hardly see anything of each other. No good old family singsongs around the piano every evening.

Just as well because none of us play the piano.

People have wallowed in nostalgia ever since they have been able to tell others what they recall or think they remember (and kid themselves others are listening). Things must therefore have been a lot better in 4,000 BC, despite life expectancy of 25 years, no antibiotics and uncomfortable underwear (or perhaps folk didn't wear underwear).

In the mornings I walk with Little One to her school. It takes about fifteen minutes. On some days we don’t say a lot and on others I test her on the tables up to 12. Sometimes I give her fatherly advice, which I know she’ll disregard (perhaps the secret of parental advice is to recommend exactly the opposite of what I think she should do). Anyway, Wifey’s the advice expert and I'm Mr Clumsy, which means I can take on a role of irresponsibility and fun.

Our morning walks to school are always special. Suddenly, all the nagging imperatives that have been flying around at home a few moments earlier (get dressed!, clean your teeth! comb your hair! make your bed! put your breakfast on! eat your shoes! etc. etc.") vanish and there we are on the street. Just the two of us and half a million other people on their busy ways to do whatever they have to do.

The traffic noise makes conversation impossible but this morning we have a few minutes to spare. We stop at a bar. Little One drinks an orange juice and I ask her about the day ahead of her. She hasn’t given it any thought of course. Stupid question. Kids don’t usually plan for anything. Masters of living for the moment (social, economic and/or psychological circumstances permitting).

Later, in adolescence, teenagers willingly or unwillingly assume adult notions of "responsibility" (and therefore the need to plan) yet do not benefit from adult rights. Hence, adolescent bolshiness and rebellion.

But there I go thinking ahead to Little One’s rejection of her reactionary, fascist Old Man. Better just enjoy her childhood while I can.

Water.

Pissing it down for 10 days now. We live on the top (seventh) floor of a crumbling old building. Rain hammers on the roof, threatening to pour in through the cracks in the ceiling.

Our cat-, people- and perhaps everything-hater neighbour, Monica, reaches the top of the shared stairway. Breathless, she shakes her umbrella and fumbles for her key.

"Joder!" she swears, breathlessly.

The lift’s broken.

*********************

I got home two hours earlier to find all the building’s residents standing outside on the street. There'd been a fire in the building. Everyone had been evacuated, just in case it spread. Fingers crossed.

Tomás (4th floor), a solitary, passive, defeated-looking man of around 50 was standing with his well-behaved dog. Lucky, Monica wasn’t there or she and the dog would have been squaring up to each other. Tomás nodded to me. I nodded back, West Yorkshire on a Monday morningly.

Montse (2nd floor), a lost-cause alcoholic slurred something into my face. As she was trying to speak she lost her balance and grabbed onto the arm of José, her blind husband. He tottered a little too. The blind leading the blind drunk.

The lift had been on fire. Inside, firemen were spraying water into what looked like a no-longer-on-fire lift. It did smell strongly of burning plastic. Spontaneous combustion? No. Water had got into the motor and somehow the lift had caught fire (Opinion of local and not of forensic expert). Anyway, something for the residents to talk about for months.

But where were Little One and Wifey? I dashed into the building to save them, pulling my underpants onto the outside of my sodden trousers. The firemen stopped me. Dangerous. Structural damage. The mobile rang. Wifey. They were on their way from the supermarket. Get the kettle on. No superhero stuff for me. Must be my day off.

So, seven flights of steps to get home. Lungs filled up with vapours from burning electrical cables.

********************

"Mierda!" Monica swears again. Her ceiling must be leaking.

Tibetan class No.4

Now I have the Tibetan alphabet off Postman, all I need is to know some words.

"Don’t you realise who I am?"

Perhaps all human interaction necessarily involves overt or covert agendas. Agendas are the result of what we identify with, who we believe ourselves to be and the need to sell this image in a social and psychological context. Individuals just can’t help selling the conscious and the unconscious image they have of themselves. It’s an inevitable part of and prerequisite to any relationship.

The agenda may be dormant or active. A dormant agenda is always there, total deconstruction notwithstanding, and is dormant when an individual does not feel a need to sell her or his identity or those things s/he identifies with. While it is dormant s/he interferes with no one. However, the more active it is, the greater the endorsement needed.

Active agendas are also the result of self-assertion: I want something and to get that something, I need your participation and therefore your endorsement of my agenda. Without active agendas, things would not get done. There would be no roads, hospitals, government, money, getting out of bed in the morning/evening, etc.

Problems arise when people seek endorsement of their identity from me ("Don’t you realise who I am/I want you to believe or accept that ..... please sign on the dotted line") and, for whatever reason, I don’t want to give it.

There are probably a lot of reasons why a dormant agenda turns into an active one. An active agenda can arise from a desire to survive, or to belong or to be loved. It may be the result of a threat or perceived threat (for example, "It wasn’t me, honest it wasn’t!" or the need to floor the thesis or hypothesis, however ridiculous or unsubstantial, of another person and prove one’s own superiority).

They can also arise in power games when approval from a third party means monumental/ absolute support for the person’s active agenda (and consequent identity and right to exist). An example could be an argument in which Mummy, a judge/boss is required to pass indisputable judgement and this prove the rightness of an individual’s active agenda and their resulting superior right to exist! (Now you realise who I am you bastard!).

Fulfilment of an active agenda means getting other people to accept the agenda or to believe they have accepted it. Thereafter, comes temporary respite until a new situation arises in which there is a need to assert the agenda.

************

Conflict of active agendas at some time is inevitable.

It's easy enough to get rid of door-to-door encyclopaedia salespeople or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Just set the real or imaginary Doberpeople on them.

For most people the real difficulty and challenge lies in close relationships (i.e. those people you sometimes want and sometimes don’t want in your face or who sometimes want and sometimes don’t want you in theirs) when agendas clash or the seller cannot accept failure in the sale. This leads to arguments, bickering, reproaches, manipulation, frustration, fresh and perhaps more desperate attempts to sell, pestering, irritation, charges against, defence, prosecution, persecution and violence.

In many conflictive personal or group relationships perhaps a lot of anguish could be avoided simply by accepting that the other rightly or wrongly feels grieved, rather than interpreting the expression of that anguish as a sign to trigger off one’s own personal defence system and to force an agenda on the other party. It is therefore how one reacts to the clash of agendas rather than to the fact that someone else's agenda is different that influences whether the situation ends in a solution or ends up becoming a lost cause.

But that requires concentration, meta-awareness of psychosocial dynamics and a willingness to accept that one’s survival may not be threatened by another’s expression of pain or anger (although in cases of domestic abuse, for example, it probably is).

Smart-arse type entry

Today is a public holiday. October 12. El Día de la Hispanidad. Day of Hispanicness/Hispanicity/Hispanicship. Apparently, October 12 is not only a holiday in Spain, but also in a number of Latin American countries where it is dubiously known as Día de la Raza in some and more politically correctly as Día de la Resistencia Indígena in Venezuela.

It was on this day in 1492 that Columbus is said to have arrived in America (“Hello, we’re here!”) with his band of merry would-be colonists. The highlight of the voyage had been the seafarers’ rousing renditions of Who’s afraid of a big flat world, a big flat world, a big flat world to a cuckoo-clock tune, which preceded the union of the Spanish and the Habsburg thrones by twenty-seven years. Musical jollities thus made up for the effects of the Atlantic swell and the crew’s pre-GPS inability to pinpoint where they were exactly because of inaccurate longitude calculations. (“This isn’t Majorca! Where’s the disco? The beer’s all funny!”, etc.).

Although colonialism gets a bad press nowadays, the arrival of Columbus and co. did not only bring rape, pillage, plunder, and divide-and-rule. Recently, historians have concentrated on the taking and overlooked the giving. However, colonists both offered local caciques sophisticated Old World weaponry and generously gifted the indigenous population with the real God (accompained by the Kid and Spooky, with nativity plays thrown in), Catholic guilt complexes and several strains of cold virus .

*****

Here, the Catalans don’t feel Hispanic. Still, they take the holiday, unlike many Basques. Me too, I’m in the office, not because I don’t feel Hispanic but because of an unturndownable job that came in yesterday as I was playing with a piece of Plasticine and some paper clips.

Balseros, a film made in 2002 by Carlos Bosch (director) for Televisió de Catalunya, was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary in 2004.

It starts by showing the lives of seven young Cubans in the days leading up to their attempts to sail to the coast of Florida in a flimsy raft. The film also follows their families and depicts the economic hardship and lack of freedom and opportunity in Old Beardy's Cuba.

The balseros set off from Havana and are shipwrecked somewhere in the Straits of Florida, where they are picked up by the US Navy and taken to Guantánamo Bay. After spending a year in a refugee camp there, they are granted permission to travel on to the USA (I don't really understand why they are not repatriated - it's only a short walk - but that's not what happens).

The film then jumps another seven years to show what has become of them. This is probably one of its saddest parts. Although five have work and earn enough money to live, only one seems to be happy or optimistic. Quite a few have lost touch with their families back in Cuba* and most are disillusioned with life in the States.

One thing six of the Cubans seem to share is a sense of uprootedness and displacement. The third level of d-needs in Maslow’s hierarchy is a need for love/belonging. OK, Maslow was only presenting an abstract model so perhaps this need for love/belonging could have been better defined as an individual’s need to feel he or she belongs to a social structure. This would explain how, within that structure, he/she may have the role of sorting the family sewage by hand, yet once deprived of that role the individual is smitten by Weltschmerz. Hence, nostalgia for some horribly psychologically destructive social situations.

Anyway, getting off the point.

The Cubans chose between poverty and the opportunity/material "wellbeing" they would supposedly find in the States: this, at the expense of/with the result of breaking their social ties in Cuba. In the seven years that passed in the States, only one Cuban seemed to have a sense of belonging. He was a father who, upon arrival in the US, got papers for his wife and daughter to join him. They then established a small self-contained family; his little Cuba.

People have always moved from one place to another in search of water, food, work, or the spoils of war. Personally, unlike the Cubans in the film, I never went abroad in search of material wellbeing nor felt much sense of belonging as a child or teenager. As a young adult, farewells at stations and airports always involved watching other people’s families and lovers waving goodbye. So, when I left the UK I didn’t feel as if I was being uprooted; it was a relief and not imposed by material need.

Now, thankfully, I belong more than ever.

*The story of one of the Cubans reminded me of Guy de Maupassant’s Mon Oncle Jules (1884), a short tale of a man who squanders a family inheritance and goes off to seek his fortune in America. Back in France the rest of the family constantly drone on about how, one day, Jules will return, wealthy and successful. But on a trip to the Normandy coast the family come across the spitting image of Jules (and is in fact Jules) yet conclude that that it can’t possible be him because he’s rummaging about in a dustbin and is dressed like a tramp.

Bike accident (II) and sex work

Wifey called me. She was at home.

I’m desperate for a shag she says so I obligingly nip off home on my bike. Home's uphill. I arrive all sweaty.

Shag, lunch, back to office.

I whizz along the cycle lane, past the computer shops on the Ronda Sant Antoni. Near the office now, across the Plaça del Pes de la Palla (Hay/Straw Weighing Square), just round the corner. After 11 in the morning the square fills up with teenage Rumanian and Russian sex workers (slaves). Their pimps sit lazily among the pensioners on the benches of the square and control their girls from a few yards away. Globalisation. The Eastern Europeans started appearing about three years ago. Prior to that this was the territory of local women. Those who are still around are now getting on for retirement age. One, a platinum blonde of around 60 or so, sits on a bench reading an Agatha Christie novel and waiting for regulars.

"Tssssssssssssst. ¿Quieres follar?" (Want a fuck?) hisses one of the Rumanians. She’s obviously blond but her hair is dyed black. Maybe that’s what your middle-aged wine and carajillo(black coffee with spirits)-stupefied punter prefers. What I’m supposed to do with my bike I don’t know.

Meanwhile, in the corner of the square Northern European tourists (lots of Brits) burdened with luggage arrive at the Hotel Ronda by taxi. Some argue with the taxi drivers, thinking they’ve been overcharged for the 20-minute journey from the airport. Easy targets for local pickpockets, who form orderly queues (honour among thieves?) to get their hands on the visitors’ cash. The taxi drivers do try to warn the tourists but ......... too late.

A Russian girl whisks a punter away from the square. She doesn’t hang around. She doesn’t want to be spotted. Plain clothes cops sometimes come to the square in the hope of bagging a big fish. But they seldom do. Big fish don't come here and the women are still around. She takes her client to the video shop/sexpoint, two doors down the street from my office. The door of the next building is covered in tape. "Precintat pel ajuntament" (Closed by the council) read the words on the tape. The video shop/sexpoint will soon be shut down too but then there’s always the nearby phoney radio station or the "beauty salon".

I want to get back to work. It’s Friday. If I finish the job I’m doing today, I can take Little One to see the Wallace & Gromit film tomorrow. But I’m not looking where I’m going. The Agatha Christie reader is about to cross the road and steps out from behind an inconveniently-on-purpose-placed bin next to the traffic lights. I swerve and miss her but run into a parked car. Face on the tarmack.

Agatha Christie is standing over me; platinum hair, bright red lipstick and make-up thickly plastered over the cracks of her face .

"¿Estas bien?" she asks. The Good Samaritan.

"I think so" I reply, getting to my feet and not really knowing whether I am. She helps me up.

"You should look where you're going?"

"Thanks" I say again and pick up the bike. Its front wheel is buckled. I limp off to the office.

The plane landed smoothly and I reached for the black leather attaché case, my only item of luggage. The bag contained the contract that had been negotiated by my agent. I was now heading for a meeting with him to smooth out the finer details of my forthcoming star role in the big-screen adaptation of Mr Topsyturvy.

All lies, of course. Now the truth and nothing but it.

Little One and I landed at Leeds/Bradford airport, bound for an action-packed visit to my Mum and Dad (Little One’s grandparents). We were greeted at the airport with a familiar smell of malt vinegar and stale beer. Bizarre advertisements decorated the airport walls: "Welcome to Leeds, Athens of the North... (it could have been Machu Picchu, Samarkand – I can’t remember) blah blah.... a whole host of retail opportunities!". Strange though, the couple next to me on the plane from Spain had told me they had been to Barcelona on a shopping trip (information offered willingly, requiring no wheedling). Why bother, when the airport ad openly asserted that fruit and veg were readily available in West Yorkshire? True, four months had passed since my last visit and things could have changed in that time.

The visit went swimmingly. I remember every tick of the clock on the mantelpiece above what once had been a fireplace and was now occupied with a true-to-life gas heating unit. Somehow, the time passed without me being aware of it going by. I often get the feeling that I’m a spectator of life and that somehow even my own existence doesn’t involve me very much. This leads to quite a bit of existential strife, the psychological causes of which I have explored with my shrink and won’t go into here.

On the return flight I sat next to a friendly but uptight couple who were selling their two-up, two-down house in Beeston. Instead of spending their capital gains on a swankier box in a posher suburb of Leeds they thought they might invest the money in a villa with a Meadowhall shopping complex-like design, complete with flunkies, somewhere in Britsville on sunny Spain’s Costa Daurada.

He was eager to buy immediately and get out on the golf course. He showed me a brochure that featured computer-simulated pics of properties (meaning they hadn’t been built yet) next to a sun-basked golf course on which tanned, happy-looking older people in red Lacoste jerseys and checked trousers were whacking tiny white balls about with long sticks.

She, however, was more cautious. They didn’t speak Spanish (I pointed out they wouldn’t need to. If a foreign language was required it would be German). She was also worried that Mexican sombrero-wearing, bandit-type latin estate agents would rip them off mercilessly. She voiced this concern several times until I pointed out they could always just give the money away. I suggested a well-building project in Meribara, a small village near Kadugli in Sudan, where villagers with an average life span of 45 years suffer from a host of waterborne diseases, many of which could be combated with the construction of the wells.

Sometimes these things just slip out; like a flasher’s willy.

A prolonged silence followed. I became aware of my own hypocrisy and the pointlessness of guilt trips. If I had the money, I’m sure I would look after myself, Wifey and Little One first.

However, poverty does involve everyone. It’s not just an issue for Bob Geldof to wheel out every ten years or for western government figureheads to solve, even though they are in a position to wield much greater influence than your average punter. Governments are voted in on economic policies that benefit the population's pockets (if not, shirtiness ensueth); policies that enable a lot of westerners to get cheap stuff on the basis of economic systems that are detrimental to much of the world’s population.

So, if I was a happy-looking golfer, I could opt for a cheaper, Crocodylida-less jersey and do something useful with the unspent difference.

Way the by, tomorrow see you.

Not enough time to post today (this isn't a feeble excuse for being short of ideas, which I would never acknowledge). A scintillating job on deluxe, exclusive, quality, choice, unaffordable properties has unfortunately kept me from Internet-oriented time-wasting. However, the job must be finished and sent, otherwise I don’t get paid. Forgoing my recompense for translating this drivel is not something I would relish.

Then a parents’ evening at Little One’s school awaits.

The cult of self-improvement

It’s autumn, which means it’s once again time to embark on my ongoing training policy (or pursuit of personal excellence, if you will), the sole motive of which is to provide made-to-measure service that satisfies the needs of even the most demanding customers.

I have therefore decided to learn Tibetan, a language which nobody with an eye on success can really afford to be without. Class No. 2 took place yesterday evening. The Tibetan alphabet only contains 30 basic consonants and 4 vowels, which I just about have off Postman (Pat). However, distinguishing the differences between consonant sounds is another kettle of cold-blooded vertebrates with gills and fins. Although these differences are glaringly obvious to our teacher, Ngawang, they are beyond me (for now).

As Ngawang seems to teach most of the class in Spanish, it will probably take me until I’m 150 to be able to say "It wasn’t me, honest it wasn’t". Still, the time will pass anyway and teachers of Tibetan are few and far between in Barcelona. I should therefore count my fortunate celestial bodies

Nothing lasts/you can’t always get what you want

I just came across an undeleted e-mail that Little One sent to me while she was staying at her grandparents’ house during the summer holidays and I was slaving over a hot computer in the office. "I miss you Dad," it went. How touched I was then. She missed me. I swelled to fill the universe.

A far cry from yesterday’s shouting match in which she was practising the use of emotional blackmail in an attempt to wangle a DVD on dance from me, claiming that I loved her much less than her friend Maria’s parents loved Maria because they had bought the disk for their little darling. Fortunately, Little One’s tactics were the unsubtle workings of a ten year-old (although when I’m off my guard emotional coercion can lead to ego-swelling of cosmic proportions).

"You’re just like your mother," I replied provocatively, knowing that Wifey was in earshot and would rise to the bait (vengeful response to an earlier unfinished bout of quarrelling).

Enter Wifey

"What do you mean she’s like her mother? It’s you who spoils her senselessly. It’s you who she treats like a servant. She can get you to do anything she wants. No wonder she behaves like a spoilt brat!"

We then got stuck in a pantomime oh no I don’t/oh yes you do Möbius loop of assertion and counter-assertion/negation that Little One thankfully wrenched undone by ordering us to stop bickering.

The angst produced in Little One by the two squabbling animals from which she was derived outweighed her desire for the DVD, which she promptly forgot about. She ran off to her room to sulk and stand on her head.

She doesn’t do a true Shirshasana (because she leans her legs against the wall) but getting into an upside-down position is a curious way to respond to conflict.

"Why do you always stand on your head when you get in a strop? I asked.

"I’m not talking to you!" she snarled, yet talking to me nevertheless.

Missing me didn’t last long, but neither did the stroppiness.

I wonder if I'd see a thirty-year stretch in jail in the same way?