Surviving Time

 

 

 

During one University vacation, I was in my parents’ house and debating what to do about getting some extra cash.  In talking with my parents, I said that other students had suggested going to the Labour Exchange, (Job Centre) failing to find a job and then claiming some sort of social security money.  My father said that was tantamount to theft.  If there was a job I should take it and not try and “work the system”.

     So, off I went for the first time in my life and entered a Labour Exchange.  I cannot pretend that my reception was anything less than frosty, but one question they asked was revealing, “Do you actually want a job?”  Which suggested that they usually processed vacationing students with the minimum of delay, assuming all students were workshy and looking for a handout!  I protested that I did actually want a job.  They said that they would let me know.

     By the time that I got home, the Labour Exchange had phoned up, and my father told me that I would be working in a bakery, and that my shift started at 10 pm that night! 

     I had never previously worked in a bakery or in any sort of factory, and I had never done a night shift.  It was a baptism of fire.

     I was put on a bread production line, and I did the sort of mechanical job that one assumed would be better done by a machine: I picked up pre-cut slabs of dough and put them in tins.  That was it.  After a couple of minutes instruction, I was doing the ‘job’ as competently as someone who had worked there for twenty years.  It was intensely boring, but you couldn’t lose concentration because the convey belt production of dough was inexorable and you had to dela with it.

     The best part of my shift was towards the end of it (surprise!) when instead of dolloping dough I helped stack the bread tins and was able to talk to a young under-manager.  This was the highpoint of my work and the time I looked forward to!  Which is sad on a number of levels.

     However, we are taking of the days when low paid jobs were numerous and it was possible to leave one and go into another with no real fear of being jobless for an extended period of time – even for we students who were only looking for a few weeks’ employment.

     Because we were there for a relatively short time, it did mean that you could stand just about anything because you knew it was time limited: This Too Will Pass, was the every ready motto to keep frustrated students focussed on the pay-packet, and not the intellectual worth of what they were doing to get it.

     Only one vacation job was impossible to continue, and if I tell you that the most interesting and satisfying element of this open-office vicious tedium-inducing torture was going through thousands of receipts and taking out all the ones with a small asterisk in the right corner, it will perhaps give you a sense of the bone-crushing awfulness of the work.

     I can’t say that I enjoyed any of my vacation jobs, though there were sometimes episodes or moments that were good, and, after all, all experience is valuable – even if it’s negative.

     The job that paid the best (with paid overtime as well!) was when I was employed as a platelayer on the internal railway inside East Moors Steel Works, in Cardiff.  A job, I might add, for which I was almost entire unfitted, but did my best.

     This job came back to me because we are now in the early days of September and I have been watching the return of teachers who troop through the café next to the swimming pool to get their coffees before turning the corner and walking towards the school where they teach.

     It is the start of a new school year and there a spring in their steps and an unalloyed enthusiasm as they greet colleagues that they have not seen for the duration of the summer holidays, that will barely last a day before the reality of the hard slog to Christmas forces itself on the consciousness.

     There has been much talk in the news about the retirement age and how the number of years before a full pension is awarded seem to be creeping upward.  Figures like 65 – 66 – 67 are quoted before a pension is paid!  Being a classroom teacher until you are 67 or older!  That is tantamount to a death sentence!

     As has been said, “Teaching has the peculiar problem that the pupils stubbornly remain the same age while the teacher doesn’t.”  Raising pension ages makes actuarial sense when people live longer, but it doesn’t follow that every occupation remains equally sustainable at 65-67.

     The trouble with teaching is that classroom teaching is classroom teaching, with all the stresses and strains that dealing with large classes bring.  There is no real shortcut to being a professional teacher.

     But, it seems to me that making a teacher work until the age of 67 or, God forbid, even older is not fair either on the teacher, nor on the pupils.

    What are the possibilities for teachers outside the classroom?  Administration is allowed for with an extra allocation of free periods within a teaching timetable.  Pastoral Care, being a head of year or similar, again there may be more free periods, but most heads of year also have a teaching timetable as well.  Senior Management Team – apart from the headteacher, most have a teaching timetable.

     So, if you are a subject teacher, and you want to survive until you reach retirement age and enjoy some sort of life after the magic date, what can you do?  Your options are limited and there is no clear progression from a demanding teaching timetable in the classroom to something that allows you to remain in the profession but to thrive and develop outside the classroom.

     Back to my plate laying days in the steel works.  There was one guy who was well advanced in years, but he was still part of the team that laid track, transported it, used drills and hammers to do hard physical work, but there was an understanding that he would not be asked to do certain things and some of his duties involved oiling the points in the rails that meant that he carried a pot of oil and a long brush and make sure that things were lubricated properly.  From time to time, he did do physical work, but I noted that he used the minimum amount of effort in a masterclass of conservation of energy, in stark comparison to the younger and their more gung-ho physicality.  He bobbed along, playing his part, but not doing the hardest of graft, but justifying his position.

     In teaching we need the equivalent of “oiling the points” so that older colleagues can survive and thrive.

 

Telling Trivia

 

 

 

It’s the little things in life that keep you grounded.  Those objects, habits, sounds and tastes that are significant to you, and let you know the you, you think you are, is still the you that is.

     Grounded, yes.  But also, those little unimportant things can be a threat and a restraint if jolted from their accustomed places by being denied.

     Take, for example, the shower in the changing room of a swimming pool.  When I first started using the swimming pool that I go to for my early morning swim each day, the changing room was not very different from the changing room I used when, for one afternoon a week, I had to traipse from my school in Cardiff to the sports ground that we used - a long walk, or a short bus ride away. 

      We used The Harlequins Ground, as my secondary school was set in concrete and had no playing fields,  The Quins had been opened in 1892, it was one of the first multi-sport facilities in Cardiff, serving the residents of the eastern side of the city and situated on the northern side of the Newport Road, and to the south of the suburb of Roath.  This is where my school played Rugby in the winter, and Cricket in the summer.

     I have no fond memories of this place at all.  As a tall boy, I was placed in the second row in rugby at the age of eleven, and there I stayed for all of my time in the school – hating every game that I played.  The fact that my father was, in his day, an excellent rugby player and even played for the Possibles against the Probables for inclusion in the Welsh National Side, made my loathing of participation so much worse, and an on-going guilty secret.

     I’m not sure that I ever did enough during the games themselves to make a shower a justified ending to the torture, but just scrumming down was exhausting for me, and so a shower was at least relaxing and painless.

     The showers were communal and usually hot, so we didn’t have to experience the bracing denial of comfort via icy showers, that seemed to be an essential ingredient in all those public-school stories that were popular at the time.  And since my school, although a state secondary, had a timetabled session on a Saturday morning – we had pretentions in that direction!

     So, the showers of my youth and those of the pool here in Castelldefels were similar with the exception of the water flow.  In my youth you turned the shower on, waited for the water to get warm, showered, and then turned it off.  In Castelldefels the showers were time limited.  You pressed a button in, adjusted the water mixture and showered, while re-pressing the button as necessary to complete your ablutions.

     The trick in communal showers was choosing the shower with the longest water flow, as each of the showers had its own peculiarities.

     Given that I had an early swim, it usually meant that when I decided to leave the water, I would enter a generally empty changing room and therefore the choice of shower was mine to make.  I cannot remember now if it was the second from the left or the third from the right that was the ‘sweet spot’ of watery abundance, but I can still retexture my frustration if somebody else had got to ‘my’ shower before me.  And it took all of the calming power of my post-swim cup of tea to bring my anger level back to containability.

     The communal showers are long gone.  Our changing room underwent a radical make-over and it is hard to remember what the ur-changing rooms looked like.  Our little sauna (closed during the Covid outbreak) never really reopened and was lost in the reworking.  We had swish looking lockers installed, stylish lighting, new loos, and a series of individual cubicle shower stalls.

     In theory all of these stalls are identical, but they are not.  Because of the physical demands of the space, not all the stalls are of the same size and shape, though they look identical from the outside.  The shower heads are of the circular ‘rainfall’ type, the temperature of the water is centrally controlled, and the water flow is regulated by a push button.  There is a shower soap dispenser in each cubicle.

     After a period of research, trying a different stall each day, searching for the elusive ‘extra seconds’ of water from a single push, I settled on the third cubicle on the right (they are divided into two groups of five) and was content.

     It was with something of a shock that I turned into ‘my’ cubicle one day to find that a digital display thermometer had been added to the stem of the shower pipe just above the shower head.  From a slow start the temperature went upwards, changing colour as it did so, until it reached a satisfactory warmth and turned green – the thermometer read out, not the water.

     As I was the only one in the showers at the time, I checked the other stalls, and ‘my’ shower was the only one with a thermometer.

     I have since worked out some sort of reason for this.  People are paranoid about the temperature of water.  Not only of the showers, but also of the pool – and most of the time those who care about these things do not believe the ‘official’ temperature, which for the water is posted in daily reports on the stairs up to the pool.  There are also complaints about the warmth of the showers, and I think that the installation of a single thermometer was to give proof positive that the temperature was as was stated.

     Which is not to say that all the water flow, duration and temperature are the same in all of the cubicles.  Again, after a lengthy period of research I can report that the fifth cubicle on the left (the one nearest to the external pipes) is the one with the greatest flow of water and the highest temperature.  The time limit is not great, but I have developed the technique of showering with a fairly constant pressure applied on the button to ensure maximum coverage and comfort!

     And woe betide any user who dares to usurp my rights of proprietorship over it!  That is the sort of small thing that, usurped by somebody else, can ruin my day!

 

Do we get what we pay for? Do we?

 

 

 

Mondays and Fridays are the going-out-for-lunch days for us.  A sacred ritual.  And usually, an enjoyable one.

     Castelldefels is a seaside tourist resort that partially sells itself on being a centre of gastronomy.  We even have a school of gastronomy, though the alumni of that institution do not often seem to find work in Castelldefels given the people that we see cooking and waiting in the restaurants that we patronise - but that is another whole kettle of social, political and economic fish, so to speak, and I have no intention of getting into the minutiae of how the commercial logic of providing food works out in this place!  We have often tried to understand the logic behind the way that many of the restaurants operate in Castelldefels and have given up at the obvious levels of more-than-Byzantine complexity that seem to govern how and when they open and what and how much they charge for what they provide.

     We have our favourites, but we also have a strict system of punishments ready to be applied to restaurants that we feel fall short of what we, as paying customers, have a right to expect.

     We are not unreasonable, and we know that everywhere has the occasional off-day and we are prepared to accommodate a sub-par meal and put it down to experience, but two or three strikes – and out!

     The holiday season is particularly difficult as personnel take their annual leave and sometimes that has a drastic effect on the quality of the food being dished up, as well as the level of service.  We make allowances, but there is a limit and that limit has been reached by a few of the restaurants to which we used to go regularly and now are punishing, by striking them off our list of Acceptable Establishments.

     A recent case in point: one restaurant that was a regular haunt of ours, we went to fairly late in the lunch service, as I had picked up Toni from his work experience in Terrassa and driven back to Castelldefels.  Yes, we were late, and the lunch service was almost (almost) over, but that did not excuse the quality of the meal that we were given.  I can (famously) eat anything and suffer few consequences from indulgence; Toni’s tum is a different creature altogether and, where I felt a little uncomfortable after the meal, having said that the food tasted “a little odd”, Toni was positively ill, and not just for one day.

     We have never, and will never, go back.

     When I first arrived in this country I thought that the menu del dia was one of the greatest inventions on earth.  The price was exceptional, and the range of food that was offered, constantly delighted me.

     Times have changed.  My tastes are much more educated in what certain dishes could taste like, so what I would have thought wonderful some years ago is now met with disappointment.  Don’t get me wrong, I still think that the menu del dia is a good deal (though the price has crept and jumped up over the years) and, at the price, with wine, it is almost impossible to match anywhere in my native land.  But . . .

     The original idea of the menu del dia was something devised to meet the burgeoning tourist trade in the Costa Brava in the late 50’s and early 60’s.  For a reasonable price tourists could get a lunch which comprised, a local soup, a meat or fish course, and a piece of seasonal fruit.  A three-course meal for not a lot of money, perfect for the cheap holidays that were being sold on the British market – hence my uncle, aunt, mother, father and I, having a fortnight’s holiday in Tossa de Mar on the Costa Brava in 1958.  The concept was popular, not only with tourists, but also with the local population and the meals developed into an institution enjoyed by all.

     The ‘problem’ with the menu del dia is what is provided, and who the caterers think is going to eat it.  There are ‘simple’ local dishes that have been served for generations that are inexpensive and, if done properly, with fresh ingredients, delicious.  Too often such simplicity is lost in an attempt to produce showy food at a low price, that may look good in the inexplicable photos that people take of food but does not taste good in the mouth – which is surely the important bit.

     Cheap cuts of meat can be delicious.  Sheep’s jaw and cheek, doesn’t sound appetising (especially when served with visible teeth still in the jaw) but it is a revelation of sweet, tender meat when you eat it.  Nowadays the recognizable parts of the jaw are removed and all you get is an everyday-looking bone with meat that falls from it.  Cheap, excellent and usually my choice for a main meal if offered.

     In a time of rising prices and stagnant wages, I can understand the need to be economic in the food choices that a restaurant offers for its menu del dia, but there are many Catalan choices that are not offered because the chefs are not local, or they can’t be bothered to adopt the 0Km philosophy and stick with locally produced meat and veg.

     We are usually satisfied with what we are offered, but I would much rather be impressed by a clever use of local produce and decent cooking!

    

 

Stay in your lane!

 

 

 

Last night was not a good one.

     Incipient back ache developed during the night into one of those pains that while it wasn’t truly bad, it was bad enough to preclude the possibility of sleep.  And whatever position you choose, it is never the right one for any length of time.

     It reminded me of the horror (there really is no other word that captures it) that comes with trying to sleep in a horizontal position after having a complete knee replacement.  At its worst, my ‘sleep’ was limited to ten minutes from the time of hitting the mattress – not that’s not the right word, getting onto the bed was a tortuously slow process, as was getting up again – and giving up.

     Salvation during that period came from the reclining chair in the living room.  Although the foot rest part of the reclining process was never long enough to accommodate my height, it did allow me to adopt a three-quarter’s prone position that allowed at least fitful sleep – the sort that only occurs through exhaustion.

     What worked once for knees was pressed (literally with the reclining switch) into service for the back.  And to be fair, it did, sort of work.  The pain was still there, but it was almost like a ‘noises off’ effect and it allowed something approaching unconsciousness – a state I would not equate with real sleep.

     Because I go for a swim every morning during the week at 6.30 am, I am programmed to wake early and, even though the pool does not open until 8.00 am on the weekends, my internal body alarm does not differentiate, and I wake up at 5.45 am.

     Which I did this morning, and that gave me one and a half hours to debate with myself whether or not it might be a good thing to go for a swim or simply to stay at home, as, after a few tentative stretches it demonstrated that the pain in my back was still there.

     Eventually, I decided to go, as I reasoned that the water is supportive and I could adapt, tailor and truncate my pool activity to fit my pain threshold.

     The reality when I got into the pool showed that my decision not to skip a session was correct.  Not one of the exercise or stokes was so painful that it could not be done, and so I ended up completing a fairly normal session, with one or two of my exercises extended as I felt that the stretching might be beneficial.

     I cannot say that my swim has helped lessen the pain, which vividly reminds me of its presence when I move in certain ways, but I tell myself that I have exercised, and I have done my stretches, and so, even if I cannot feel the benefits immediately, it will help in the long run.  And in the short run there is the ever-present help of Paracetamol and pungent smelling unguent.  And looking at those two words ‘pungent’ and ‘unguent’ there must be some sort of linguistic link, that I am far too lazy to look up.

     Anyway, none of the above is the point that I set out to write about.  If you are in pain and the drugs and creams have had little effect, then you search for other ways to lessen the affliction.  And the swimming pool offers many.

     Ever since Covid our 25m swimming pool has been roped off into five lanes, and there is a booking system so that the lanes do not get overfull.  In theory each lane can take three swimmers as long as they swim in circles, or rather squashed ellipses.  This system depends on the three swimmers understanding the speed of the people sharing the lane and make due allowances, for example, allowing a stronger swimmer to overtake from time to time.  In theory this system works well.  In theory.

     In practice lanes are jealously guarded and any perfectly reasonable sharing is regarded more as an invasion.

     For example, I swim in lane 1, or lane 5, depending on how you look at it.  I have chosen (!) this lane because there is a hydraulic chair which lowers me into the water and the ladder that accompanies the equipment is particularly difficult to use.  With my two wonky knees I feel that I am more than entitled to use this ingress and egress, and I further feel that such a flamboyant entry surely entitles me to enjoy the lane in splendid isolation – and anyone sharing the lane will have to contend with the steps that jut out into the water and make a straight line difficult to keep.

     Although the basic stokes of swimming are well known, you only must compare two people swimming say crawl to see that their approach to the stroke is different.  In some cases, it is difficult to say with any confidence what particular official version of the common crawl or breaststroke that they are using.  The position of the hands, the length of the stroke, the turn of the head, the time underwater, the breathing, and the use of the legs and feet make an individual’s technique just that, individual.

     And then there is the amount of space that a person takes up when executing their brand of stroke.  The lanes are delimited by floats, they are, by definition, floating.  There is no separation vertically from the floats to the floor of the pool, only observation and consideration keep flailing hands, arms and feet inside the imaginary boundaries of an individual’s lane.

     Crawl is usually (just about) contained within the body’s width – though I have seen some versions of crawl where it is impossible to tell the difference between that and energetic drowning.  Breaststroke goes well outside the body’s width and if you are swimming your squashed ellipse in a lane with three swimmers and are near the floats then your hands and feet are almost certainly going to make your swimming into a contact sport.

     And then there is butterfly.  The sine qua non of selfishness in communal swimming – apart from one extraordinary occurrence I witnessed of a person swimming a width of backstroke when everyone else was swimming lengths!

     So, to lessen the paint of my backache I observed the tensions, the threats and the resentments that are inevitable when people seek to join an already crowded pool.

     As I start and end my session with a series of exercises based on the instructions from the physio who saw me through the first awful weeks after my operation, I have the opportunity to watch various dramas unfold with the barely concealed distate of people who think they are being hard done by.

     And it works.  I was more concerned about the human drama swimming around me than the pain tickling my back!

 

Cutting the tape

    

 

 

Next month will see me going to Barcelona for an allegedly ‘free’ appointment that I had to pay 100€ to get, as all normal attempts to get one on line are next to impossible. 

     The appointment is to renew my NIA my Número de Identificación de Extranjero is a very important card with my unique identification number.  I show this card when I leave the country and, most importantly, when I return, as that means that my passport is not stamped, as I have a permanent right to reside in Spain.  The number, if not the actual physical card, is often asked for, for example when packages arrive.  And I haveofficaldome, padrón, tea,  used it so often in Spanish, that I consciously have to translate the numbers into English when I need to use them myself on forms.

     Spanish bureaucracy is notoriously photocopy-heavy: officials like you to have copies of everything and anything to give them, and they reciprocate by giving you a wodge of photocopies in return, usually on odd coloured recycled paper, which gives the impression that they are always thinking of the environment.  You never, of course, look at these photocopies ever again, and they have no function but to exist.

     So, as I was doing my morning write, after my well-deserved post-swim cup of tea, I mused to myself about what I should take to the appointment.  You are obviously told what to bring, documents like the old card and your passport, but they do not tell you that they might require lasting proof that they had seen them – you’ve guessed it, a photocopy of the documents.

     One time, with one official department I was dealing with, I was told that I needed to supply photocopies of the documents that I had bought, and I told them that I didn’t have photocopies, perhaps they could make them if they needed them.  “We are not a photocopy shop!”  I was told.  I had to leave the office and my appointment, for which I had queued for over half an hour.  Find a photocopy shop.  Get the photocopies done, return and queue again to continue the appointment.  The second wait was not as long as the first, but the seething rage that I barely controlled made it seem like an eternity.

     So, this time, you consider not only what they have asked for, but also what they might ask for.  There was a television sketch show here in Spain where one skit showed someone waiting in a queue to get some official business done:  He eventually reached the window and the official asked for identity card, passport, then asked for blood group, followed by favourite film – all of which needed documentation and, in the case of the film a VHS Cassette of it, and so it went one, with ever more bizarre demands, with the guy showing that he had anticipated all of these outré requests.  At the point where he appeared to have satisfied all demands, the official informed him that he was in the wrong queue and the window that he needed had closed.  I may have made up the ending to the skit, but the guy did not get what he wanted!

     To most Spaniards the skit is not comedy but documentary as everyone will have stories of bureaucracy gone mad – or normality as it is more generally known.

     I have decided to pay a visit to the local city hall and get an updated copy of my padrón, which is a certificate that shows my address is registered with the local authority.  It is not necessary, but it is official and officials like adding it to the bundle of papers that make their lives worth living.  And it costs nothing.

     The key concept is Be Prepared – or at least as prepared as you possibly can be.  And that two word phrase made me think of the organization with which is it most usually associated, The Scouts.

     I am a failed Scout.  I was a Wolf Cub and even carried the flag in our official processions through our local streets when we went to attend Church once a month, but in the move from Cathays to Rumney to a new area, I did not continue my participation in the Cubs, and therefore never became a Boy Scout.

     “Be prepared” was the motto of the scout organization, but we had an oath that we recited at the start of each of our meetings.  “I promise to do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen, to keep the Law of the Wolf Cub Pack, and to do a good turn for somebody every day.”  My mind then wondered if that oath had changed over the years.  So, I looked it up.  The ‘Oath’ is now called ‘The Cub Promise’: “I promise that I will do my best, to do my duty to God and to The King, to help other people and to keep the Cub Scout Law.”  There are versions for Cubs who are Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Humanist, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and for Atheist or of no faith background.

     Rather like the Anglican Creed, that I found myself not saying parts of as I grew older, feeling that the truth of what it contained needed to be rather more nuanced to accommodate my changing beliefs, so with the Oath or Promise. 

     When I was a Cub I was a Christian, so the ‘duty to God’ would not have been a problem, but as a life-long, and I mean for as long as I can remember, I have been a republican, so ‘my duty to the Queen’ would have been problematical even for the child that I was.  There again, both God and The Queen seemed to be somewhat above my paygrade, and as we had never been personally introduced, I knew about them only via intermediaries,  The immediacy was so slight that the actual ‘duty’ could be taken as read, if one kept to the rest of the oath.

     Then my drifting mind turned to the National Anthem.  Obviously, we in Wales have our own anthem, and we tend to regard God Save the King (how odd it feels to be typing that as someone who has grown up with the Queen as the central figure) as the English national anthem.  Just as the Union Flag has no part of it representing Wales, so we feel that God Save the King is, at best, ‘other’.

      And then I ran through the lyrics in my head.  You must understand that I never sing God Save the King.  Never.  And haven’t done for years.  I stand when the so-called National Anthem is played and I show respect, but frankly I feel none to the subject of the song.  But strangely, as I sang through the lyric in my head. I got stuck at line 4.  And the line would not come.  No matter how hard I tried. 

     I knew the words of the second verse (unlike so many members of that performative group of idiots in Reform) as a direct result of being in the Cubs, we had to learn the second verse as part of some badge or other.  But that line that I had heard, god knows how many times, remained hidden. 

     Although I am writing about it, and checking all the verses of the national anthem is but a click away, I prefer to remain in darkness.  After all, even if it does come back to me, I have zero intention of ever singing it!

     I thought that this piece of writing was going to be how different the Oath that I took and the Promise that modern Cubs take were.  But they are basically the same, and there is something rather splendid in the simple and direct injunction to “help other people”.

     Isn’t all human decency encapsulated in that phrase?

My Way the Only Way! Or Else!

 

 

 

 

“I’ll thcream and thcream ‘till I’m thick!”

     So threatened Violet Elizabeth Bott, the utterly spoiled rich kid of a nouveau riche millionaire in Richmal Crompton’s “Just William” books.  A phrase trotted out by her whenever she was not getting her way, and one used to threaten the lovable rogue William who was the unlikely scion of an impeccably middle-class family in a country village in southern England.   

     The eleven year old William (he does not age in, spite of the fact that the Just William series of books was published over a period of almost fifty years from 1922 to 1970) is a loveable rogue and leader of his gang of the Outlaws (with his mongrel dog, Jumble) who, while constantly trying to do what he sees as good, is just as constantly frustrated, or misunderstood.

     These characters came to mind when I was reading the news this morning and saw what the latest antics of the Lying Sex Pest involved.

     Whatever trouble William ended up in, he was never vicious in what he was about.  William and his Outlaws saw themselves as positively knightly, seeking to do good and right wrongs.  The fact that few others saw them in that light was the reason the stories were so enjoyable.  William was fundamentally decent, and not mean minded.

     Trump, however, is the antithesis of Just William, and the comparison in the stories is not the ‘heroic’ and the oh-so-misunderstood William, but the spoilt brat Violet Elizabeth Bott.

     Like her, Trump’s whole existence and development is based on the wealth of his father.  Apart from his wholesale corruption as President, his previous entrepreneurship was one series of disasters after another, with his failures being compensated for by his father’s cash.  Trump is the epitome of small-minded selfishness that characterises the whole breed of entitled nepo babies who actually believe that they got to their positions by merit alone!

     Trump, god help us, is the single most powerful person on earth, the President of the United States of America, but he behaves like the most insecure non-entity, needing constant reinforcement and being totally unable to take contradiction or denigration – though like all bullies, he is supremely at ease in dishing it out.

     He is no William, but he is a perfect Violet Elizabeth Bott, who will threaten tantrums unless she gets her way.

     I would say that the latest revealing incident of Trumps pettiness is the re-naming of Lake Ontario as Lake America.  But what is left to ‘reveal’ about this apology for a president that we haven’t seen so many times before.

     The charade of the re-naming ceremony was at a press conference in the Oval Office of the White House.  What was an elegant workplace is now so festooned with the gaudy gilt of gold, that it makes Trump look like some sort of bloated makeup-plastered caricature of a Madame of a sleezy brothel.  With a squeaky Sharpie, this grubby monstrosity, draws his oversized signature and displays it to his cult members for the customary adulation.

     The pettiness of his actions in a world of disasters (some of which are of his own making) that should be claiming his attention, is breathtaking – if we hadn’t seen so many instances of his unparalleled childishness and spite in the past.  We are getting numbed through repetition so that we merely shrug at his antics, rather condemn and urge those who could, to force his resignation.

     But those who could and should, don’t. 

     And so Violet Elizabeth Bott-Trump continues to bully and, of course, to get things wrong. 

     Did anyone tell the very stable genius Trump, as he crossed out Ontario and inserted America on one of the Great Lakes, that America is the name of a Continent and NOT a country.  The United States of America is part of America but is not America. 

     So, in his ignorant spitefulness, he has actually renamed a lake for the whole of a continent and not for a mere country – how woke is that!

 

 

 

 

 

Degrees of Separation

   

 

The film of the catastrophic flash flood in Nepal is horrific, and the likely casualty rate is likely to be high, so many people are still unaccounted for.  The immediacy of the films brings home the casual brutality of Nature, and the ease with which a whole way of life can be brushed aside in moments.  But this is a disaster in Nepal, a far distant country from my placid residence next to the Med in Castelldefels.

     That ‘distance’ was obliterated when I greeted a friend after completing my morning swim.  I asked after his ‘aches and pains’ as he has been having muscular trouble, but he rejected my questions and asked if I had seen the film of the flood.  I told him I had and he then told me that this was a place he knew.  He had worked there, he knew people who lived there, he had seen pictures of a building that had been his administrative centre being destroyed in images that he had been sent which had not been seen on TV.

     Suddenly, a distant disaster was humanized and localized, I was speaking to someone who had knowledge of and a stake in what had been lost.

     Life goes on.  He was, after all, preparing to have a swim, as he does most days, but his mind was not centred on getting a good lane in the pool to himself.  It was a long way away.

     This event has forced my mind back to something more local, the Valencia DANA (Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos), an isolated high-impact depression, which is a meteorological phenomenon characterized by extreme weather events, particularly in regions like the Mediterranean Sea basin.

     An abstract from a report by members of the University of Valencia sums up the disaster:

 

The unprecedented DANA floods that struck Valencia, Spain on October 29, 2024, caused catastrophic human, economic, and ecological damages, resulting in 223 fatalities, the displacement of 15,000 residents, and long-term health and environmental consequences and incurred financial losses estimated over 50 billion euros. Vulnerabilities in urban planning, ambiguous command and control oversight, delayed warnings, and insufficient preparedness underscored systemic gaps in the flood preparedness and management.

 

     The key concepts are found in the last sentence, and the apportioning of blame is ongoing.  The President of Valencia, Carlos Mazón, was widely condemned for his lack of urgency in the early stages of the disaster, but he took over a year ignoring repeated calls for him to go, for him finally to resign.

     In the immediate aftermath of a disaster attention is rightly focussed on rescue and reconstruction.  But almost as important are the efforts made to understand exactly what occurred, and how the disaster was dealt with, in other words, looking for lessons to try and ensure that the disaster is not repeated.

     In the case of the DANA in Valencia, politics and self-interest have complicated the issues.  In extraordinary scenes on November 3^rd, a few days after the tragedy, the King and Queen of Spain, accompanied by high-ranking officials were pelted with mud and met with cries of “Murderers!” when they visited Paiporta, one of the municipalities worst affected by the floods.

     In May in 2025 a delegation of family member victims of the DANA went to the EU in Brussels to demand truth, justice and accountability as they felt that the response of the administration in Valencia and in Madrid had been wholly inadequate.  They stressed that they were there, “not for revenge, but for truth and justice.”  One of their leaders said, “We are not here out of pity.  We are here because we have the right to know why our children, parents, siblings died, and to know who had the duty to protect them and failed.”

     In the Grenfell tower disaster, I am reminded of Conservative peer, Lord Pickles, who, when he was Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, his department was directly responsible for housing policy, building regulation and fire safety guidance.  In Cameron’s government, Pickles enthusiastically championed a “one in, one out” (and later “one in, two out”) rule to slash building regulations and bureaucracy, thus compromising officials from tightening laws on combustible building materials.

     While he was being questioned, giving evidence in the Inquiry, he suggested that the Inquiry’s senior counsel should speed up his questioning because had had important afternoon meetings planned.  An astonishing piece of disrespect, though a revealing insight into his assumed importance.

     The final report of the inquiry he was heavily criticized.  He is still a member of the House of Lords and The Conservative Party.

     Too often there is no real end to a disaster.  Lives are lost, destruction is widespread and things are never really the same again.  And to make matters worse, the follow up in trying to understand what happened and why is too often muddied by politics, money and self-interest.

     The probable cause of the flash flood in Nepal was the lower part of a Himalayan glacier breaking off and crashing hundreds of meters onto the valley floor.  The massive impact generated ground energy equivalent to a 5.2-magnitude earthquake.  As the giant cascade of ice, mud, and rock raced down the steep valley, friction heating melted large volumes of the ice into water.  The debris temporarily blocked local rivers creating an intense buildup of water and sediment that catastrophically burst downstream as a high-speed flash flood.

     Why this happened may well include the fact that the event coincided with the monsoon season, meaning surrounding sediment and soil were already waterlogged and easily swept up.  Climate change means that the rising temperatures in the Himalayan region can destabilize glaciers and weaken mountain rock, leading to such extreme ice avalanches.

     Explanation.  Reconstruction.  Prevention.  Easy words to type, it remains to be seen how the authorities and the world respond.