LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 68 – Friday, 22nd May

It is difficult not to term the Conservative Government’s U-Turn on the migrant workers health surcharge ‘humiliating’, but I suppose it is better to consider it a ‘fitting’ recognition of the essential service that such workers do, often on minimum wage and to ‘welcome’ any sign from the discredited third-raters that form the cabinet of humanity.  One can only hope that such grace is now applied to the self-harm of Brexit!  Fond hope – and that two-word expression of despair doesn’t merit an exclamation mark, just a weary sigh.

     At every step in the management of this crisis the government has come up short.  They have blustered, prevaricated, lied – but why go on, I have been writing the same sort of verbs about the Tories for the last decade, why, especially after the catastrophic debacle of the Brexit vote and its on-going car crash implementation should I be surprised that an even worse tragedy produces a signature catalogue of crass ineptitude?

The more I think about the production of A Streetcar Named Desire last night, the less satisfied I am with it.  Although it did give me shivers and almost reduce me to tears, I am left feeling that the production was slightly superficial, I was using my knowledge of the piece to flesh out my response; part of my involvement was recognition of the revisiting of the most effective parts of the play and a remembered delight in the structure and emotional complexity of the action.

     I was also struck by the artificiality of much of the dialogue, especially from Stanley, where he says things, and in such a way that he seems to step outside of his character and become a too eloquent part of the Tragedy with a capital T rather than the rough character in a gritty drama.

     Blanche is a role to kill for: camp, grotesque, twisted, vicious and unbearably vulnerable.  Salacious lush she might be, but she has lines of almost unendurable pathos – and truth.  At the height of her self-pitying drunkenness she shows a self-awareness of the essential strength and worth of her character that takes the breath away.

     At the end of the play as Blanche is led away and the card game recommences and the old life goes on, we get the same feeling as at the end of Death of a Salesman when Linda says of her dead husband and failed salesman, “Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.”  But, it’s too late, that’s the tragedy; it’s always too late.

     Thursday nights at 8.00pm have become a fixture in my week, and I am grateful to the National Theatre for making their films of productions available to the public.  If you have not yet see the productions on Facebook then I do urge you to experience the productions – and donate to the organizations as well of course!

     The next production (free streaming on Facebook from the 28^th of May for one week) is This House by James Graham, set in the House of Commons in the period from the General Election of 1974 to the Vote of Confidence in James Callaghan in 1979.  The major political figures are characters off-stage while the main action of the play is centred on the Whips offices of the Labour and Conservative parties.

     This is one of those plays that I regretted not being able to see, so I am delighted to have the opportunity to experience it via Facebook.

There was little increase in the wearing of facemasks as far as I could see today, though they are not mandatory for exercise.

     On Monday of next week we move to level 1 from level 0 here in the province of Barcelona.  This means that restaurants will open with service on sparse terraces; churches with be open up to 30%; groups of no more than 10 and various other loosening’s of the regulations.  There seems to be a belief that the mere passing of days will mark progress towards the mastering of the virus.  This is a false assumption.  The only way to cope with the virus is through testing, contact tracing and lockdown.  None of this is securely in place, neither in Catalonia nor in the UK.   Everything about this virus and its management is worrying.  Frightening.

Just to make things that little bit more difficult, a filling fell out yesterday evening.  I have been punctilious about brushing and looking after my teeth exactly because of my fear of what dental treatment might be in lockdown.  It was therefore with a certain amount of trepidation that we contacted the dentist this morning.  I was delighted (well, you know what I mean in relation to dentists) to find that not only was the dentist open, but they were making appointments and amazingly, I was fitting in at lunchtime next Tuesday.  That is what I call service!

     I do feel a certain trepidation about the appointment; it is difficult to be physically distanced when you are sitting in a dentist’s chair!  Another experience to add to the lockdown life!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 19 – 3rd APRIL

I brush my teeth carefully and thoroughly each day and night.  With a damn sight more care than I have normally done, I might say.  I have a morbid (the right word I think) fear of getting toothache during lockdown.  Toothache is like headache – one of the debilitating, almost unbearable pains that can’t be ignored.  But, in these strange times, where would I go to have my teeth seen to? 

     When you hear of cancer treatment being delayed because of the medical demands of the virus, a mere toothache would appear to be of less than secondary importance.  Flossing has become a protection against the fear of future oral pain ignored!

     On one web site I saw warnings about those people in confinement being careful about how they approach any do-it-yourself projects suddenly started because of time on ones hands.  Home improvements always come at a cost and the number of accidents from the handling of unfamiliar tools, especially power tools, has ever been a significant way to injure yourself.  Now, the consequences of these accidents have very real costs in terms of the extra pressure on the health services and whether you would actually qualify for attention.

     I have no personal experience of what the medical services in Castelldefels are like at the moment and how those with chronic illnesses are being dealt with.  For example, my next scheduled appointment is in July in a local hospital and is part of the on-going treatment for my thrombosis and embolisms after a blood test in my local medical centre the week before.   

     I have been given no information about delay or cancellation, but I think it highly unlikely that the schedules that we sets six months ago are still going to be kept to.  Everything has changed, and my light touch supervision is more of a confirmation of progress rather than a necessary medical intervention – so my appointment is one that can easily be delayed.  It will be interesting to see exactly how our medical system copes, and I can take a reasonably disinterested view as my hospital visit is now more concerned with checking progress rather than active treatment.

     But one thing is certain; I have no wish to find out just how prepared our emergency services are to cope with any household domestic injuries or how medical centres and dentists are coping.  I want to live an uneventfully contained life in my home with occasional forays to the collective bins my only contact with the outside ‘outside’ world.

Last night I (and a quarter of a million others) watched a matinee performance of  ‘One man, two guvnors’ a reworking of the Goldoni original on the National Theatre Live Facebook site.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, but virtually every moment made me want to be in the audience seeing the performance live rather than looking at it on a computer screen!

     Filming ‘live’ plays produces an odd media type as its end result.  The actors have to play to a full theatre, so many of the exchanges between characters seem over emphatic; the actors are playing a ‘live’ real audience and we watchers are not part of that organic entity; this production had interaction between actors and audience which distanced we watchers even more; some of the stage business was complicated and could easily have gone wrong – all the things that make a live performance ‘dangerous’ were limited by our knowledge that this was a recorded performance.  The artificiality that we saw is something that I would have enthusiastically embraced if I had part of the actual audience.  But, I am grateful that I had an opportunity to see a performance that passed me by and I look forward to the other ‘performances’ over the next few Thursday evenings.

     Although I am grateful for the opportunity to see a much-appreciated performance, the lack of immediacy in a videoed version is more telling with theatre than it is for me with ballet or opera. 

     But, every little helps!

At least the sun came out today and I was able to ‘take’ it on the third floor terrace.   As the terrace is fairly sheltered, it lessened the effect of the breeze that would have made the sunbathing more gesture than pleasure – but for an hour or so I was able to laze around and think that summer was getting closer.

     Please!

O God The News!

 

Never let it be said that the bloody awful weather dictates my attitude towards life.  However, I am in a bloody awful mood to match!

The news from Britain as the shambolic ‘government’ of talentless Conservative (have you any idea how difficult it was for me to put a capital letter at the start of that word) lower than vermin, self-seeking, inept, traitorous, bastards descend lower and lower into the farce that is their approach to Brexit.

And my contempt for May grows.  And, no, I have no sympathy for her as she is savaged by the liars and cowards with whom she has surrounded herself.  Whenever I see her robotically defending the indefensible and fell a smidgeon of sympathy, I only have to remember her tenure at the Home Office and the heartless and ILLEGAL processes that she put in place to banish any fellow feeling for her ‘suffering’ now.  Her on-going failure at least gives a re-reading of the “all politicians’ careers end in failure” as hers has been failure in its more continuous manner.  To say nothing of her dancing.

It is a sign of desperation and picking through the dregs that Pixie Cheeks Gove has been asked to take on the barbed wire rimmed, poisoned chalice of Brexit Secretary.  But he will only accept if he is allowed to renegotiate!  What world are these people living in?  Are they so secure in the foreign investments that they can look on with equanimity as the rest (the large rest) of us suffer?

I know that I do not command a great deal of sympathy as I spend my retirement by the side of the Med here in Castelldefels – but my pension is paid in pounds sterling and when I first came to Catalonia a Euro was 70p; now a Euro is 87p which means that my pension has been reduced by 20%, a fifth of my buying power has been wiped out largely because of the stupidity of a discontented electorate listening to the lies of the Brexiteers and believing that those Brexiteer had access to whole herds of magic unicorns who would make all manner of things well!  Rubbish.  Just recite the names of the most prominent Brexiteer and then ask the age-old question, “Would you buy a used car” from any of them?  Of course, you wouldn’t, so why entrust the future of your country to the sick imaginations of these failures?

And that scum that has resigned . . . and I paused there because my dictatorial watch informed me that I had been sitting for too long and I needed to move about for a minute!   

Perhaps its is just as well I walked away from the keys.  What do I achieve by venting my spleen?  I suppose it could be considered cathartic, but apart from keeping my blood pressure within the green range, cui bono?

It is, however, ironic that the “onlie begetters” of Brexit are generally not in government any more and therefore are not dealing with the mess that they have made!  Nothing like denying responsibility, but I suppose they have the superb example of Cameron to take as their guide for thoroughly selfish irresponsibility!

And the back wheel of my bike has been punctured or something because it was thoroughly flat when I attempted to ride it to my Catalan lesson this morning.  And now I have to go and pick it up in the pouring rain.  Again.  Much as I like the bike, I have to admit that I have been singularly unlucky with the damn thing.  I have barely gone more than a fortnight riding the thing without some reason to take it back to my bike man.  The broken spokes have become a running joke and the suspension is suspect too.

I am now thoroughly regretting that I have ordered the updated, fat wheel version of the bike that I have.  It will have improved brakes and gears, with a sexy paint job (sigh!), a full colour display and a back pannier, or at least a framework to put one on, and the thing will have a sort of brake light as well.  As you can see, I am easily persuaded with the trivia and don’t really care about the important engineering of the thing!

The new bike should/might arrive in time for Christmas and will give me something to worry about, while not being able to ride the thing because of poor weather.  It is all in the anticipation and not the reality!

Anyway, to finish off a near perfect day, after I have collected my bike, I then have to return to the centre of town for a dental appointment.  If a day is going to be bad then it does make sense to concentrate all the badness so that you can enjoy it a schadenfreude sort of way.

To keep my sanity, I have not gone out of my way to find what new infantile lunacy the so-called Head of the Free World has been up to.  That can wait until I am stronger!

Resentment

 

A colleague from a school in Spain once told me that he had never built a pool in the grounds of his house because, “it would have encouraged my wife’s family to come too often and stay too long”!

Such shamefully un-familial sentiments.  And ones that I fully share, though not, obviously, in relation to my wife’s family!  As one of the houses built around a shared pool I pay a considerable sum in rent and in maintenance.  As part of the return for the vast outlay of precious euros we have access to what is described as a “private” pool, for the use of residents only.  And friends and family when they come to visit. 

The problem with our pool is that only a limited number of the sixteen or so houses that pay for it, have direct access via their back gates.  The other houses have access via a locked gate that fronts the road.  The description of the gate as “locked” is also problematic.  It has a lock and it should be locked after users have entered, but it often is not, and that gives access to non-residents and also raises a question of general security.

If I find the gate unlocked when I pass, for example on my way to have a swim, I lock it.  My reasoning is that if the pool is public, why the hell am I paying through the nose for what was described as a private facility?  We, the people paying for the pool’s upkeep, should be jealously guarding an expensive element for our enjoyment.

But, like so much else in life, the smooth working of ways of behaving depends on reasonableness.  Which is usually in very short supply.

In the summer months, our pool has (unsurprisingly) its heaviest use.  People swim, lounge around, chat and enjoy the body of water that for far too much of the year is a glimmering object rather than something to use.  Sometimes the pool is crowded with residents, their families and visitors and, as we overlook the pool we have the full stereophonic noise of people finding and celebrating their splashing identities!

I have no problem with this.  What I object to are those people who think that they have some sort of right to use our pool based on a complete lack of shame.

Three generations of an ex-resident’s family now use the pool on a regular basis, on an almost daily basis: they are noisy and obtrusive and completely shameless.  If they were occasional visitors I would have no objection, but they are more regular users than most residents!  And they are not exactly on the breadline; you only have to look at their transport to see that!  They take more than they give, which, as they give nothing is not difficult to achieve!

I surprise myself by how much resentment I feel, yet, because I am British, I say nothing.  I confine myself to locking the gate, which in our little community says a lot and fuming as I look out of my window!

So far this month we have had (for us) unsettled weather.  Perhaps I ought to explain what that means in a Catalan context.  It does not mean that we have had days of rain, no indeed, but we have not had days of unbroken sunshine.  And it is those days of unbroken sunshine that are the daily currency of my life in this country.  We have had sun-showers and overcast days.  I have returned to the typewriter (well, computer) to escape one such ‘sun-shower’ that lasted approximately twelve seconds and had about thirty drops of rain.  The sun is now back out again.  But the fact that we have had sun-showers at all is something that is not part of my expectations at this time in the year.

I have just been speaking to my cousin in South Wales and she told me that while it wasn’t cold, it was wet - and I don’t think that she was referring to thirty drops of rain!  So, I shouldn’t complain.  But I do.  And will.

Tomorrow the final opera of the season: Il Trovatore - something to hum along to and for which I do not need to do any listening homework!  Next season promises to be more taxing, though I like the idea of adding new operas to my Liceu experience.  This production is one that uses Goya and inspiration from his etchings of The Horrors of War in some ways, so seeing how this interesting take is integrated with the music and action will be something to look out for.  After all, as with so many operas, the actual story line is not entirely, or even slightly convincing!  The final twist of the that-corpse-was-your-long-lost-brother is something only Dickens could get away with.  But I speak as a reader who cried real tears while reading the pathetic death of the little road sweeper in Bleak House, even as I realized how emotionally manipulated by the author I was being!  In Il Trovatore, the music makes even the crassest piece of action resonate!

And the day after this high point of culture, a delayed visit to the dentist.   

Never let it be said that I was afraid of a sensational life!

Only connect, if you can be bothered.

There is something unacceptably cruel about an unexpectedly delayed dental appointment.

I turned up at midday, on my bike, to be met by blank incomprehension about my check-up that had been arranged almost a year ago.  Eventually my name rang a bell in the receptionist’s mind and she wittered on about not having my telephone number to let me know that circumstances had changed and that my new appointment was for Tuesday of next week.  They do have my telephone number, indeed they have both of them and my address, and my full name and probably my NIA as well - so they could have used the telephone directory or looked me up online.

But people don’t do that nowadays.  If your mobile number or email (which they also have, come to think of it) is not immediately to hand then contact is impossible.  I call it The Full Dishwasher Syndrome.

The FDS is when you cannot fit anything else into the dishwasher and you find that you have one cup left over?  What does one do?  From experience you know that the higgledy-piggaldy approach to randomly piling things together will result in imperfectly washed items that will also have retained water because they have not been placed in their correct, drain-ready position.  Better to leave the extra item to one side so that it can be added to the next load.

Or you could (as you used to) wash and dry it by hand.  A squirt of washing liquid (or a mere drop of the more expensive stuff), some reasonably hot water, a quick brush over, rinse and a fresh tea towel to dry.  But that doesn’t enter one’s mind.  FDS obliterates the idea that washing dishes can be done by hand: the lone, dirty cup becomes A Problem.  “My dishes,” so runs the mantra, “are more hygienically dealt with by the dishwasher.”  The machine is more thorough, it works at higher temperatures than your hands can stand, it produces cleaner results - even as it washes off some decoration and leaves streaks on glasses and fails to remove some stubborn stains.  No matter - dishes are washed in the dishwasher.  It’s a fact.

Just like clothes are washed in the washing machine and dust and loose dirt is picked up by the Hoover and getting to places is by car and . . .

It is only when you consider how your life is lived that you realise that it is very different from the way that your parents lived.

In no way do I consider myself to have had anything other than a comfortable and privileged upbringing, but we did not have an electric record player until I was 10; we didn’t have a fridge until I was 12, which was around the same time as we got our first television; we had an outside loo; our first automatic washing machine was when I started secondary school; dishes were washed by hand; our first telephone had a ‘shared line’; our first motorised transport was a Bonmini three-wheeler. 

 

But this was all in the 1950s where I was the only person in my year in school to have gone on a foreign holiday.  I could safely roller skate down the road because most people did not have any motorised transport of any sort and photographs of the time (B&W) show me in an empty road, with few cars parked.  So-called white goods were only starting to become affordable.  It was the time when you had to apply for a telephone and you had Hobson’s Choice about what you got.  There were just two channels on the television, BBC and ITV. My grandparents’ television had a tiny screen and took an age to ‘warm up’ and faded to a single bright spot when you turned it off - and of course it was black & white, not colour.  I still remember my first viewing of a mobile phone: a large wooden box with a normal handset and rest used by a telephone engineer.

Things have obviously changed and we have many more ‘things’ than we ever used to have.  But our ways of doing things have also changed: our expectations and our approaches.

Which brings me back to my dental appointment.  One way of contacting me failed and, instead of trying another (in this over connected world) they gave up.  Because we do things this way and not in other ways.  After all, they could have written - but when was the last time that you had that sort of communication for a previously arranged appointment.  If you can’t Message it, it is not going to happen.   

O brave new world that has such full stops in it!

Water wondering wariness

Technology always wins

I spoke too soon about the prowess of my smartwatch and its ability to track my swimming.  It probably does do exactly that, but it doesn’t vouchsafe the information to me, the mere user.  The last time I used the thing for a swim it told me how long I had been swimming, but kept the length of my swim secret.  I am convinced that there must be a way of finding out this information, but it eludes me.

            And that goes for most of the electronic equipment that I use.  It does its job and I am sort-of satisfied with it – but I know that there is much more that I could be getting out of it.

            Take, for example, the example of the smartphone.  I use mine for reading books.  Occasionally, just occasionally I actually use it to phone someone.  And that is it.  Other people, like Caroline for example, use their phones like an extension of their bodies.  There is seamless movement and the phone bends (metaphorically) to her will and information spills out, photos are sent, videos made, voices recorded – well, you get what I am saying.  Her phone does so much more than my small library assistant.  And I have an iPhone!  Cutting edge and all that.

            But, the same thing with the computer: I use mine as a glorified typewriter.  A very expensive typewriter, and one which needs a bulky, expensive to feed machine to produce the end result of the typing.  Which perhaps points up the problem.  For people like Caroline, there is not the same necessity for a hard copy of something.  Her poems are written electronically, retrieved electronically, read electronically and shown electronically.  Me?  I have to have the A4 100 mgs sheets before I believe in the reality of my writing!  Perhaps that attitude is something of my generation and not something that I will ever get rid of.

            My watch, having started well by letting me know that I had swum 1,300 m a few days ago has stubbornly resisted all my best efforts to tell me know how far I have swum since on any occasion.  Press what buttons I please; I can’t get what happened naturally to happen again. 

I could, I hear you say, try reading the instructions and stop trying to prove that I am of a later generation which doesn’t need to read the things.  I do.  And I should give in gracefully.  And who knows?  I might actually have a constant stream of irrelevant information about my swimming technique that I can ignore. 

             I will have to search for instructions on line because there is nothing in what I have at the moment on watch or phone which gives me any idea at all about what I should be doing.  My fear, of course, is that even with the instructions (written in god knows what language) I will still be confused about how to make the damn thing work.

Prejudice justified!

Prejudice has to have an element of unthinking assertion not backed up by evidence.  If there is evidence for what you are saying that it becomes a reasoned point of view.

            So, to those of my fellow citizens who hail from North Wales.

            It turns out, according to recent research and publicised by the BBC that people in North Wales are genetically different from those in South Wales!  It also points out that there is no genetic evidence to show that the Celts are a linked distinct genetic group!  This interesting stuff is to be found at http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31905764 and give at least some genetic justification to the animosity which sometimes exists between the North and South in Wales!  As the report puts it, “it also finds that people in North and South Wales are more different from each other than the English are from the Scots” – which will come as no surprise to neither North nor South.

            I must admit that I can see more compelling reasons for the perceived differences between North and South based on inequality, politics, history, the Industrial Revolution, the Welsh language, religion, communications, road building, railways, tourism and politics again rather than genetic evidence – but it is interesting none the less.  And worth reading!

Thank goodness there was nothing wrong

A trip to the dentist.  Never one of my favorite appointments, but necessary!

            I will never understand why people, sometimes educated and intelligent people with some understanding of the world, assume that my stuttering attempts at Spanish mean that I will understand fluently what I can’t say.  My dentist was a case in point.

            She spoke with a speed and a passion that did her credit and, to be fair, I did follow a fair amount (I think, but what can I possibly know!) of what she said, she certainly didn’t have that mystified and pitying look that my responses to swift conversations used to have!

            After what I thought was an inordinate amount of socializing, and considering the wear and tear on my nerves having to keep up my end of the conversation (about being warm in cold countries, if you must know) I was almost relieved to sink back into the depths of the dentist’s chair and think calming thoughts about the person who had sharp spiked instruments in my mouth.

            All she did was scrape and clean, but you know how it is when a dentist pokes around in your mouth, it sounds as if they are casually, yet determinedly destroying every scrap of enamel you have left.

            When I unclenched my hands (a typical dentist technique for me) I scrambled to an upright position preparatory to running away and was held back only my the dentist’s laughter as she watched my frantic attempts to escape and as she urged me to calmness.

            €44 that little clean up cost – as I said at the start, thank goodness there wasn’t anything ‘real’ to do!

What’s going on!

A disturbing email from the tutor in the OU urging those people who had not sent in their completed pro-forma giving details of the proposed end of module subject to contact her.  This is disturbing because it was an open email to everyone and this is a week after the deadline for handing it in.  Extensions are easily available in the OU, all you have to do is ask – but this email suggested that people had not handed in their work and not asked for an extension.

            You can imagine that the years of guilt-laden upbringing immediately sprang into play and I assumed that I was one of the people being castigated.  Why I should have thought this I do not know as I know (surely I didn’t dream it) that I sent off my work early!

            That belief meant nothing of course.  I immediately went back to the OU web site, I checked that my list of assignments had registered that I had sent something in.  I checked my past emails and found the notification from the OU that something had been received.  I noted down the reference number of the receipt (we have such things in the OU) and went back to check the reference number on the . . .  You get the idea.  Full out panic.

            The only thing that I have stopped myself doing is downloading a copy of what I have sent.  Which I did when I first sent it just to check that it was what I thought it was.  So, something, which I have checked and for which I have an official OU receipt has been sent.  I am safe.  I think.

            I am still unsettled by the fact that it was an open email.  How many pieces of work has she not had?  Although the pro-forma is unmarked and used mainly as a way of the tutor responding and advising about the work that you propose to do, you fail the course if you do not submit!  What are people doing?

            The great thing, the one technique that you have to learn about distance learning is not to let everyone else panic you.  It is very easily done, and the fact that we students in the North of England Group (Europe) are scattered all over the continent and we, or only a section of us, are only going to come together for the Study Day in May at which point we should all be working on the material, the outline for which we should already have sent in!

            You can see, just as I type the words, they are getting just that little bit frazzled, I am responding to worry and letting my imagination work overtime!

            Be calm, unruly student soul!

            Wait for the tutor’s words, which cannot be far away.  Some people have had the comments on their pro-forma back already.  Which in itself is disturbing but . . . calm!  Get on with the reading of the textbook, do a little light writing and all will be well with the world.  Probably.

            I am sure that I can find more disturbing things to worry about.  Easily!