(1999-2003) DIARIES (IÑAKI URIARTE)AND HOW SHORTSIGHTED PEOPLE COULD GET BY BEFORE OPTICS DEVELOPED.

It is true that people used to read aloud at that time or, at least, by moving their tongues. And it is also true that the first person known for reading silently was Saint Ambrose. We know that thanks to Saint Augustine in his “ Confessions”. I heard about that many years ago in an article by Borges, and this image was etched in my memory. It seemed wonderful to me that someone had invented silent reading suddenly and so late , especially because it implies something unbelievable: apparently neither Plato nor Seneca, for instance, had never known how to read in low voice. Somehow I did not really believe it. Seneca was said to have read all the books in Rome with a water-filled balloon. Since glasses did not exist, he used that gadget as lens. I do not think that he could even do it by reading aloud.

The first glasses did not seem to appear until around the 13th century . Before that, people used to get by quite well with home-made solutions, like -Seneca´s or the so-called “reading stones” which managed to magnify the size of the letters. In my view, the invention of glasses is, together with that of the toilet, one of the things that make us real civilized human beings.

THE SENSE OF AN ENDING (JULIAN BARNES) AND THE TIDAL BORE

 I don’t want to give the impression that all I did at Bristol was work and see Veronica. But few other memories come back to me. One that does – one single, distinct event – was the night I witnessed the Severn Bore. The local paper used to print a timetable, indicating where best to catch it and when. But the first occasion I tried, the water didn’t seem to be obeying its instructions. Then, one evening at Minsterworth, a group of us waited on the river bank until after midnight and were eventually rewarded. For an hour or two we observed the river flowing gently down to the sea as all good rivers do. The moon’s intermittent lighting was assisted by the occasional explorations of a few powerful torches. Then there was a whisper, and a craning of necks, and all thoughts of damp and cold vanished as the river simply seemed to change its mind, and a wave, two or three feet high, was heading towards us, the water breaking across its whole width, from bank to bank. This heaving swell came level with us, surged past, and curved off into the distance; some of my mates gave chase, shouting and cursing and falling over as it outpaced them; I stayed on the bank by myself. I don’t think I can properly convey the effect that moment had on me. It wasn’t like a tornado or an earthquake (not that I’d witnessed either) – nature being violent and destructive, putting us in our place. It was more unsettling because it looked and felt quietly wrong, as if some small lever of the universe had been pressed, and here, just for these minutes, nature was reversed, and time with it. And to see this phenomenon after dark made it the more mysterious, the more other-worldly.

Sergiomumo

The tidal wave is a curious phenomenon  and very appreciated by surfers, beause it gives a huge a regular wave. I lived for a summer in Bristol but I have never watched one. One day I saw how the Gualdalquivir river did something strange in Coria and also, in another occasion the Tajo river confused me while I was eating in Rana Verde Restaurant, but this the nearest I have been to a tidal wave.

Surfers must be attentive to the wave timetable because if they lose it, the next one will pass twelve hours later.

It´s a pity that in Spain there is no river in which this phenomenon appears, because I would pay money for doing surf under the Triana Bridge in Seville.