Post op day one

I thought I'd drop off to sleep naturally last night, tired after a long and eventual day, but I lay in bed wide awake, quite relaxed, enjoying being comfortable and warm, listening to the quiet music of the wind and rain outside. After three hours, I switched on my tablet, wrote emails reporting the op to a few people I'd not got around to sending last night. Some time after four I dropped off and slept until a quarter to eight, in time for Thought for the Day. 

Jasbir Singh was talking about cultural vandalism of historic buildings associated with their religion in the Sikh homeland, due to modernisation which wasn't conservation minded. Co-incidentally last night I read an article on the Spain's 'Politico' news blog, that was a withering attack on the long standing Alcalde de Malaga, alleged responsible for the destruction of 18th-19th century streets and buildings over his nineteen years in office, in the name of modernisation and redevelopment. 

Spain still suffers greatly for municipal corruption, but in the past half century of tourism has grown from a poor, rather decrepit historic city into an expanding place of welcome to international travellers, dominated by hotel and holiday apartments and suffering from a decline in urban native population as citizens move out into the suburbs and travel in to work and play. 

It's a familiar pattern in other parts of Europe and other parts of the the world, where redevelopment ambition clashes with social and architectural conservation. A hundred thousand people may take part in forthcoming Semana Santa activities, but ten times that number will visit the city to watch, creating huge challenges for transport, both public and private, disrupting regular activity. There may be a net benefit to the city's economy, but this begs questions about quality of life, and there are varying opinions as to what this consists of. Slower, more considered controlled growth, would make a difference, but the temptation to make bigger profits has a tendency to hinder this. 

We've seen the same in Cardiff too, where parts of the Victorian street plan and buildings have been obliterated not once but twice since the Luftwaffe's wartime raids. We have conserved some of the facades but lost interesting interiors when buildings have been gutted for internal modernisation. The great Post Office building on Westgate Street has been unused for many years, and is now to be turned into an hotel. Only its imposing entrance hall is scheduled for conservation, the entire internal layout is likely to be gutted apart from this, I learned from my recent chat with Ashley. I wonder when that work is due to start?

My clinic visit was mid afternoon and by that time the schedule was running half an hour late, not that I minded waiting, with not much else to do, and not that uncomfortable after yesterday's op, and not really so tired after a night with so little sleep, but I made an effort to rest. Finally I got around to finishing the Gabriel Garcia Marques novela 'Crónica de un muerte anunciada' which I received from Kath on 10th January. The Latin American vocabulary and literary style made it hard work but mainly worth the effort. It describes in detail the same set of tragic events as experienced by each of the people who were in some way connected to them, circling around the core of this story of an honour killing in a small rural tropical riverside town. Having to pick over the detailed vocabulary to get the richness of the storytelling was slow, and towards the end a bit tedious, but I go there in the end. I'll pick something a bit easier for my next excursion into Spanish literature, I think.