LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 77 – Sunday, 31st May

I am more than ever convinced that my government has no real plan to exit the lockdown apart from a mystic belief in the ameliorative affect of the calendar, and hope.  I have seen no evidence that the political leaders have the slightest idea of what they are doing, why they are doing it and what they hope to achieve.

     It is fairly clear that the loosening of the lockdown restrictions were brought forward to try and combat the adverse publicity about the lockdown cheat Cummings.  The tracking effort seems stillborn given the information that we have had for those people who have been ‘trained’ so far.  The opening of schools in England seems motivated by politics rather than by health and education.  Every part of the crisis has been made worse by the way that it has been woefully mismanaged.  And people die because of the mistakes that this government makes, and they will go on dying until a more convincing/efficient/moral/realistic – well, add your own adjectives, I can think only of insulting ones for the bunch of incompetents that supposedly run the country.

     Here in Catalonia and in Castelldefels we are due to move to Phase 2 on Monday.  This unites all parts of the metropolitan area of Barcelona into one unit and that means that we are able to move about within the whole area.  In theory, we think, it means that Toni would be able to go to his home city of Terrassa and speak to his family, though he would still have to keep physical distancing when he speaks to them.  And I think that they could meet in an open space.  We are not absolutely clear about the rules.

     I have just come back from my evening bike ride and the area where we used to live when we were first in Castelldefels looked like a perfectly ordinary Sunday night in late May.  Families were out and there were groups of youngsters on bikes and wandering the streets.  The restaurants were doing a roaring trade and there were queues outside some.  The age range was from babies to pensioners so, as far as the good people of Castelldefels are concerned, the restrictions of Phase 1 are well and truly over.

     On Monday, if the weather is good, I confidently expect the beaches to be packed and we will then see if the discipline of physical distancing extends itself to the sand!

On the cultural front, lockdown has given me the opportunity via Netflix to watch an extended selection of episodes of “Family Guy” and it has taken over (almost) from my predilection for lauding “The Simpsons” as the best thing on our TV screens.  

     Admittedly my lack of access to past episodes of “The Simpsons” means that “Family Guy” has had something of a clear run in making me a fan, but just as there are episodes of “The Simpsons” that are stand-out amazing (I’m thinking of the episode when Bart is sent to France and finds that he is a slave in a vineyard; the one where Marge takes part in the musical version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” with a chorus number “You can always depend on the kindness of strangers” or the remake of “Of Mice and Men”) I have now seen an episode of “Family Guy” that stunned me.

     “Send in Stewie, Please” is focussed on just one character and is an extended episode that I understand was broadcast without commercial breaks.

     The action of the episode is centred on the obnoxiously precocious baby of the family, Stewie.  He has been sent to the child psychiatrist because, as we eventually find out, he has pushed another child downstairs.

     Stewie dominates this episode and through picking up clues in photographs and other things he is able to give a crushing description of the live and love of the psychiatrist (voiced brilliantly by Ian McKellen!) before breaking down himself and revealing The Truth about himself.  It is mesmerizing.  It is comic, without being funny and it is a very polished piece of writing.

     It was broadcast in March 2018 and I recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet.  Whether you will get the full flavour of the episode if you haven’t seen any other the others I am not sure, but it will still be a horrifyingly amusing sort of experience!

     “Family Guy” is a much more ‘adult’ animation than “The Simpsons” and uses tropes that you would never find in the latter.  It is also famous for its ‘cut aways’ and these often have ‘real’ film or ‘real’ characters in them.  Sexuality is a major theme, in a number of varieties, sometimes very uncomfortably!

     It’s all good stuff and I am thoroughly enjoying my belated introduction to a splendid series!

For Sunday lunch we had our traditional meal of chicken from the pollo a last where people are still maintaining adequate physical distancing and forming an orderly queue.  This Sunday the people tried to reinstate the ticket system where, having taken a paper ticket, you are informed that it is your turn by an electronic display.  For the last few weeks, because of the distanced queuing it was irrelevant and most of us had queued without taking a ticket.  This meant that, when the owner tired to call out a number there was instant rebellion from the queue and the system was dispensed with immediately.  Something to bear in mind for next week!

     Though, who knows how we will be behaving by next week!  Time now has the quick slowness or slow quickness that can easily catch you out!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 76 – Saturday, 30th May

I’m still furious about the fact that Cummings is still in his position after he has been shown to have broken the lockdown guidelines.  He formed the rules; he should resign or be sacked.

     If I am furious about the fact that Cummings is holding on, I am sickened by the continuingly awful performance of the man who calls himself the Prime Minister. 

     His inability to articulate a convincing argument in the briefings and the embarrassingly inept responses to questioning revealing his shocking lack of detail in his understanding of his briefs used to be the basis for the reasons that I detest this shallow apology of a concerned politician having anything to do with the levers of power – but now I think that his demeaning protection of Cummings has taken pride of place in my reasons to despise the man.

     It is clear that Cummings should be fired, he is a glaring example of the ‘one rule for us and another for the rest’, he is a self proclaimed populist and disruptor, but in the case of his lockdown misdemeanours he has behaved like a typical member of the elite and the establishment (with a small ‘e’) has come to his aid.

     The feeling of the public however does not match that of the sometime prime minister (who has now surely forfeited his right to capital letters for the office that he has so demeaned) and the way that he has slavishly protected his advisor.  Too many members of the public have done exactly as the guidelines suggested and have suffered the consequences for them to be anything like sympathetic to the so-called travails of an over privileged git.

     Even though I am resident in Catalonia, I feel personally slighted by the government.  I have abided by the rules for over ten weeks, not only for my own safety, but also for the safety of others: the simple logic of safety.  But that sort of logic is only for the little people of whom Cummings is not, of course, one.

     I do not think that the feeling of being cheated will go away and Johnson’s government (if we can call it that) will be forever tainted.  Unfortunately the British electorate doesn’t seem to have many scruples about accepting tainted goods and so my hopes for the future are few.

     Quite apart from the criminally inept mismanagement of the viral crisis, when I really want to depress myself, I start thinking about what mess they are going to make of Brexit.  Silly me, they have already made a mess of it, I wonder what sort of monumentally, catastrophic balls up they are going to make of it.

     Whatever else this crisis has illustrated, one thing is abundantly clear, the personnel that form the government is of woefully limited ability.

Castelldefels is getting ready for the tourist season.  Restaurants are partially open and when I passed the centre of the beach part of Castelldefels there were people queuing for places in the limited dining accommodation available.  To the untrained eye things looked like a normal late May Saturday evening.  There were few masks and little to no physical distancing – but there again, we are allowed to meet in groups of up to 10!

     Neither Toni nor I are clear about how the rules change on Monday, when we go from Level 1 to Level 2.  What new delights at playing at freedom will that allow us!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 75 – Friday, 29th May

Disaster!  My mobile phone (in its case) slipped out of my pocket and managed to land on a tiled floor in such a way that it came out of its case and smashed the mirrored back.  So much for my Huawei P20 Pro.  It’s still working, with an artistically crazed back and a large cavernous gap between the front and the back.  I will have to investigate to find out if there is any way in which it can be salvaged – it is after all working perfectly well; it is only the case that is broken.  I am not confident, and I expect to be both disappointed and angry at the built-in obsolescence or intentional difficulty in repairing it.  But, at the moment I have done no investigation to find out what is possible.  Perhaps I will surprise myself.

My bike ride this morning was again relatively quiet with few people joining me in their period of exercise.  The evenings are much fuller and more crowded with an age-blind selection of people walking, running and cycling.  When I go out only adults aged 16? to 69 should be there – but cafes and restaurants along the sea front are open and the whole family, regardless of age, can go to those so the discipline of lockdown is being made slacker by the day.

     According to our government, we will progress to the next stage of loosened restriction on Monday.  The progression is measured by days and not my figures.  There seems to be an assumption that the virus will be subject to a daily reduction in a whole area in an almost sequential way.

     As far as I can observe people in Castelldefels have already moved to the next level in their behaviour, so Monday’s new regulations will only make official what they are already doing.

For the first time for over three months we went to one of our favourite bar/restaurants for tapas and a drink.  We were outside, as restaurants are still not using interiors.  Even though the tables were generously spaced, it still felt as though we were getting nearer to some sort of normality, some sort of New Normality.

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 74 – Thursday, 28th May

Today felt the least like being in lockdown.  My morning bike ride was 'open', in the sense that the paseo was fairly sparsely populated, it was almost like a ‘normal’ ride, except for the number of people sporting medical masks – though not by any means the majority.

      The first part of my ride was into the centre of town to post a delayed letter of condolence to the wife of an ex-colleague of mine.  As I had included a card I was not sure of the weight/cost and so a trip to the post office was necessary, and partly explains the delay.  The post office was only open until 2.30 so I was there early.  Not early enough. 

     There were a couple of people outside and a counter assistant was letting in people one by one.  I was prepared to wait right up until I saw the length of the queue on the other side of the building, it was stretched the length of the street.  I did not wait.

     Previously I had used the Tabac to get stamps and to deposit letters, so I decided to find out if you could still do that.  The stamps were not a problem and the lady behind the counter seemed to be confident about the amount that was necessary to send it off, the only odd point about the transaction was her wielding a pritt stick to put the stamps on.  It was only after she had done it that I realized that no one nowadays is going to lick stamps, not in the present circumstances.  There are going to be all sorts of little instinctive reactions that will now be potentially deadly!

     For the first time for ten weeks we actually used one of the motorways to go to a shop that sold fencing.  The shop was open, though sections were portioned off and each section had an assistant who took the name of each person who went into the area.  People were keeping their distance as far as possible, though we were still too close for comfort.

     I met somebody that I knew from the swimming pool in the shop and for the first time I bumped elbows by way of greeting and had a muffled mask-wearing conversation.  The New Normal indeed!

     Lunch was patatas bravas with my attempt at a salsa to go with them that Toni discovered on the Internet.  There is a bewilderingly large number of ingredients that you have to add to the mayonnaise up to and including orange juice and zest.  An interesting experiment, and tasty too.

Johnson, the sometime prime minister of the UK, has said that we should “move on” from the fuss about the wrongdoing of Cummings.  We should not.

LOCKDOWN [Level 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 73 – Wednesday, 27th May

Yesterday, the second day of our being on Level 1 of Lockdown rather than being at Level 0, we had our first Menu del dia for ten weeks!  We sat outside the restaurant on well-spaced tables in bright sunshine (Toni in the shade of course) with a gentle brisk breeze to keep things pleasant.  The food was good (apart from the mediocre melon for postre) but the ambience was wonderful, the freedom of someone else making the meal and being surrounded (though not too closely) by other people.  An absolute delight!

    

Before lunch we both went to the Chinese supermarket to get wire and netting to repair our broken fences.  It was the second time that I had been to the supermarket as I had cycled into town to go to my dental appointment.  Except I was a week early!  Rather than waste the effort I went further into town and got myself some money.  Getting money was related to my first visit to the Chinese Supermarket where, after I had collected the materials that Toni needed to put the fence up I was informed that the card machine was not working and they only accepted cash.  I have not used cash for two and a half months and had none.  I rather resented having to return to grubby, virus laded notes!

     As we were out and about in the car we called into our medical centre because I have lost my prescription and I needed to replenish my stocks.

     We were able to park outside the centre – which was unusual – but the locked metal doors of the centre indicated why.  A notice on the door informed me that the centre was permanently closed and urged those who needed attention to go to another centre.

      Now we get to the part of the story that is specifically for my friend Squidge.  She is the sort of person who always gets served last in any restaurant grouping; she is the one whose choice is “off”; she is the one whose eventual meal is not what she ordered – you get the idea.  Whereas good things (usually) happen to me!

     Anyway, the door to the medical centre was firmly closed.  But, as I stood there, a window opened and, lo and behold! my doctor magically appeared and asked, “Stephen what are you doing here?  I was going to ignore you, but then I saw it was you!”  Needless to say I got my prescription, printed out then and there!  When I got back to the car I began to explain what had happened, but I didn’t get far before Toni’s expressions of exasperated recognition of my typical good fortune made us both laugh, though Toni’s laugh was a trifle more wistful than mine!

The Cummings fiasco continues.  There are many elements of this farce that are comment worthy, but I will choose just one.

     Out of the baying pack of fanatics than have chosen to junk their morals and support the upside down logic of breaking the rules not being breaking the rules I would like to highlight one sparking example of Conservative doublespeak: Robert Edward Jenrick, presently drawing a salary as a Member of Parliament and serving as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.   

     You may recall his 2014 Newark by-election that was mired in accusations of overspending with the Electoral Commission judging that the accusations were valid.  Or perhaps you recall more recently that Jenrick was against Brexit, until his career demanded he think otherwise. Or perhaps we should look back no further than April of this year where during lockdown he travelled 150 miles to his second home and then 40 miles to visit his parents AFTER going on television and urging people to obey the rules and not even visit their mothers on Mother’s Day.  And to bring us bang up to date with his career, the scandal of a timely planning permission that appears to have been given to a major Conservative donor saving the developer millions!  And this is the sort of hypocrite asking us to excuse Cummings!  Why should we even be remotely surprised!

As I have not fully recovered from the double brain-numbing whammy of Johnson’s defence and Cummings’ defiant ‘explanation’ in the Rose Garden of No 10, I couldn’t face listening to Johnson’s performance in the liaison committee and, as John Crace’s excellent parliamentary sketch in today’s Guardian adequately shows, I didn’t miss much.

     What is abundantly clear is that this appalling government appears to have reformed part of the ‘law’ around the arrogant reinterpretation of a governmental aide.  Johnson has junked his reputation and the authority of his government to save Cummings. 

     God help us all!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 72 – Tuesday, 26th May

My favourite part of the ‘lie-abetter for Brexit’ Cummings’ Rose Garden Explanation was his justification for going to local beauty spot Barnard Castle on his wife’s birthday: to test his eyes!  Now, even though he is the chief advisor to the dyed in the wool liar Johnson, I think it is perhaps unreasonable to call that little fantasy a lie.  The justification has obviously been studiously nurtured over the weeks when Cummings and No 10 steadfastly refused to give any details about Cummings whereabouts in the period he has now so splendidly ‘shared’ with we plebs.

     The ‘eye testing’ element is a tour-de-force in the ‘with a mighty leap he was free’ approach to difficult situations in the old Saturday Matinee serials from which there appeared to be no escape.  I also liked the Tom Lehrer, “We’ll all go together when we go” approach of loading the car with wife and young child to ensure totality of extinction if an ophthalmic accident happened.

     I listened to almost all the Rose Garden ‘Confession’ and was most struck by the fact that Cummings did not apologise.  At any time.  He went out of his way to assert that he considered that he had done nothing wrong.

     But, the simple fact is, he did do something wrong.  He did break the lockdown.  He did break the rule that says that you should not go on unnecessary journeys.  As one Guardian commentator, Owen, said, the central reality of what Cummings did shows that he broke the guidelines, “everything else is just noise”.

     As the focus is now ridiculously on him, other snippets of duplicity are coming out.  Today we have been told about a doctored blog where his tinkering allows him to present himself as prescient.  Editing past blogs is not a crime – but if you make reference to the doctored blog to substantiate a claim, it is at least an academic crime, and reflects nothing on your character.  He is the Mekon not Doctor Who, the only way he can travel in time is to alter the records and then pretend.

     The numbers of times I have said in the past, “I do not see how he/she/it can continue, with honour, in post,” have been uttered with tired exasperation because ‘honour’ usually has nothing whatsoever to do with it.  Whatever ‘it’ was or is, and the defective character defiantly brazens out the storm and continues in place.  Johnson is a perfect example.  He has been caught out lying, cheating, misrepresenting and philandering, to name just a few of the –ing words that spring to mind in his case.  He is selfish, disloyal, cowardly, hypocritical, mendacious, lazy, ill prepared, loutish, vulgar, dishevelled, conceited, arrogant, complacent, narcissistic and smug.  And he is the Prime Minister.  In spite of everything.

     Well, Johnson got his wish, he is in post and is making a true hash of things.  Like a number of people I have known throughout my life, he is a prime (ha!) example of somebody wanting something, but thinking little about what achieving that goal will mean.  He is Prime Minister, but he gives little impression either of enjoying his position or knowing what to do while he is there.  The demands of the pandemic show up all his failings.  He is not the leader to bring the UK together.  He does not engender trust.  He does not give the impression that he has the slightest idea of how to take the country forward.  As I fear that we will continue to see with the whole Brexit project, he fronted a campaign laced with lies, deception and half-truth; he has ‘achieved’ Brexit, but knows little about how to make it anything approaching a useful reality.  The major claims of the campaign are all turning out to be fantasy: the money for the NHS; the lack of a border in the Irish Sea; the ease with which an agreement could be done and so on.  His fantasies have cost us billions already as we stumble towards the hardest of hard exits and his lack of management and determination have cost us lives.  Tens of thousands of lives.

     I am sure that Johnson feels that he has been hard done by.  He did not want to become Prime Minister in a time of cholera, or worse.  He wanted to be the blond haired poster boy leading a flag waving pack of baying mindless Brexiteers towards the sunny uplands of whatever their deranged imaginations thought was better than we had.  He wanted to be delivering pseudo-intellectual speeches, full of blokey forthrightness laced with the soupcon of Classical Learning to impress what he regards as the Great Unwashed.  And it has all unravelled because of what Mac the Knife called, “Events, dear boy, events!”

     Johnson is a diminished man, politician and Prime Minister.  His inability to gauge the feeling of the nation in their disgust at what Cummings has done will, I think, be something of a turning point in his frankly disgraceful career.

     Or not, of course.  To Cummings and Johnson, what we think is fairly irrelevant.  We are not the wielders of power, we are not the ones ‘born to lead’.  We, at a very basic level, do not matter to them.  We are the goldfish, throw us some titbits of salacious news and our five-second memories will wash away recent events and return us to the quiescent subservience that they think is their due.

     I only hope that the groundswell of revulsion at Cummings is too big and too powerful to be relegated to the ‘other country’ of the past and that simple justice might prevail and a man whose arrogance has become too big for the country to stand is torn away from the front stage of politics.

     It’s time for the toddler Johnson to come out of his Cummings style Pampers and wear his own grown up underpants with clean confidence!

     As if!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 71 – Monday, 25th May

I am still shaken by just how poor a defence Johnson mounted to justify the high-handedness of his arrogant aide.  When even the Daily Mail asks, “What planet do they think they are on!” as a reference to the incredible (literally!) insulting justification for Cummings’ rule breaking, joined with the sickeningly unedifying spectacle of supine ministers docilely toeing the Save The Dom cabinet line, you realize that you are witnessing a government imploding.

     Perhaps I should have said ‘seemingly imploding’ because I do not underestimate the ability of the Conservative Party to survive ‘fatal’ mistakes and misjudgements.  It is undeniable that Johnson is a lessened leader, I don’t say ‘character’ because that is clearly impossible, and if it becomes clear to him that his status is diminished then he will do what any narcissist does when self-worth is threatened: lash out and to hell with the collateral damage.

     Let us never forget that Johnson’s espousal of Brexit was quintessentially narcissistic: he was convinced by his own rhetoric, comparing and contrasting two pieces of his own writing to see which one would afford him greater possibilities for self-advancement.  I don’t know what the opposite of a Damascene Conversion would be to cover his case, but there was no blinding light from an all-powerful deity, but rather a greedy acceptance of his own perceived omnipotence fuelling his ludicrously inflated ego and presented as reason and logic and, god help duty, dedication and us!

     The front pages of the newspapers cannot make easy reading for Johnson, but they don’t make easy reading for the rest of the Conservative Party either.  Most MPs are concerned about their seats; anything that looses them public support is not to be tolerated – and these MPs postbags must be filled with howls of outrage about the preferential treatment of a member of the establishment as opposed to the PBI, or rather Plebs as they think of us.

     You can take the over-entitled git out of the Bullingdon Club, but the sense of them-and-us never leaves.  Johnson is a perfect example of the born into privilege and milking it for all it’s worth with the minimum of effort sort of the undeserving rich.  He is also a bully, a liar, malicious and, as the ‘defence’ of Cummings has clearly shown, a coward.  And cowards in power are dangerous.  As we are finding out every day.

     Unless Johnson takes visible control of the government then even his comfortable majority will not be enough to protect him from the Men in Suits whose only raison d’etre is to preserve power, and to whom Johnson is only a momentary blip on the time line of their sequestration of political dominance.

The fall out from the pathetic defence of Cummings, where we are expected to believe in a sort of Schrodinger’s Lockdown that does and does not allow free movement at the same time, continues.  Johnson’s cringe-makingly inept performance has had the surprising result of uniting all sections of society and all political parties in fully justified revulsion.  Except of course for the ‘usual suspects’ of Brexit insanity, though even some members of the ERG have called for Cummings’ head!  We truly live in strange times!

     As a last resort, Cummings himself is to make a public statement and take questions.  I suppose if Cummings can supress his natural revulsion for the carping criticism of the ‘lesser breeds without the law’ by whom he thinks he is surrounded, then a person of his obvious intelligence and manipulative skills would be the sort of man to carry it off.  But he really will have to out-Houdini Houdini to get away with it and I hope The Daily Mirror and The Guardian hacks have got their linguistic scalpels out and ready to dissect everything that l’éminence désordonée has to say. 

     I keep checking in with The Guardian on my phone to find out the time because I do not want to miss a word.  I have just found out that his statement will take place at 4pm UK time, 5pm my time.  I will be there, don’t let me down Radio 4!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 70 – Sunday, 24th May

Firstly, may I urge you all to sign the petition on change.org calling for the resignation of Dominic Cummings?  Of course, he shouldn’t be given the opportunity to resign, he should be fired, but the person who would have to act with alacrity, authority and some moral force is the Blond Buffoon, so no luck there.

     It does seem rather like indulging in an unsavoury blood sport to attack Matt gi’ us a job Beckett, the man whose moral compass can be turned between meals without ruining your appetite, who after attacking the randy professor for breaking the distancing rules to welcome his mistress to his house had to do a 180 degree turn and justify Cummings breaking of the rules. 

     Cummings we should remind ourselves had symptoms of Covid-19, whereas the Randy Prof was symptom free, and the Prof’s tryst did not involve a 600 mile round trip, with stops, to spread the infection.

     The press-ganged ministers forced to humiliate themselves (except for Gove, of course, who probably ‘means’ what he says, which speaks volumes for his despicable character) by enthusiastic professions of support for someone they probably hate and fear were just as predictably weasel-wordedly vile as you would have predicted – though, from an English teacher’s viewpoint, transcripts of their ‘support’ would make a fascinating portfolio for the student of linguistics, social linguistics, politics, morality, truth, doublespeak and so on.

     As a kid I used to wonder at the articulacy of politicians who, after a second’s thought when faced with a poser of a question were able to speak in connected sentences, give a rounded performance, ending in a burst of applause and have said nothing at all!

     I was obviously a good student because, during one public meeting I was called on to give an answer to a question that, had I been forthright would have condemned the person sitting next to me.  I got to my feet, I spoke and, when I had finished I was thanked for my explanation.  An explanation that very carefully gave no useful information at all – and I had my round of applause!

     Having done it oneself, it is easier to discern in others and indeed, bemoan the inexpert way in which most politicians now fail to master the technique.  To be fair, questioning is not as reverential as it was in my youth, but ministers do have aids who prep them for the obvious questions that they are likely to encounter though as with for example, the Blond Buffoon, preparation is only as good as it is thorough and the Buffoon, as is known, is not famous for his application!

     The Goblin Gove is a ‘person’ who seems to thrive on difficult questioning, but this is only because he is able to disassociate himself completely from past history, truth and accountability in his answers.  The latitude of what might laughingly be referred to, as his moral compass must afford him the smug luxury of expansiveness in his fluently empty rhetoric.

     As Sunday morning progresses, so we are finding more people condemning Cummings’ breaking of the lockdown and even Conservative MPs are calling for his resignation – though I still think he should be sacked, by the Blond Buffoon who needs to get more acclimatized to U-Turns, especially as we get nearer and nearer to a no-deal, hard Brexit!

     As the day wears on the situation with Cummings appears a little clearer.  Only 7 conservative MPs have thrown their careers in the party down the loo by coming out against Cummings and urging his sacking, while over 50 Conservative MPs have expressed support.  As one commentator pointed out although Cummings obviously did something wrong and against the rules that he helped frame, the ministers who tried to explain away his crime are even worse as they have jettisoned, or at least called into question, the whole governmental strategy for the saving of lives by concentrating on saving a single career.  As another commentator pointed out, this ministerial circling of the waggons is also an expensive squandering of governmental authority.

     My concern is hardly dispassionate as I regard this government as a travesty, but at a time of national crisis I am also acutely aware (as the government signally isn’t) that any mismanagement will result in even more deaths.  I sincerely hope that Cummings is consigned to the scrapheap, but while his political demise would be a bright spot in the darkness of the rule of The Blond Buffoon and his Cabinet of No Talents, I am much more concerned about the efficient management of the Covid virus and eliminating it.

     But a little political blood is acceptable!

I have just watched the Blond Buffoon’s performance in the daily press conference and I feel slightly sick.  Johnson was asked questions that he could not, or chose not to answer.  He asserted that Cummings behaved honourably, but was unable to draw any clear distinction between similar cases where individuals, at great personal cost, had followed governmental guidelines unlike Cummings.

     Johnson provided us with a shoddy performance.  It was unconvincing and positively degrading to watch.  He insulted the intelligence of his audience and he devalued the government that he leads.

     In future press conferences it would be more seemly for Mr Cummings to take the podium, as he is clearly the person in charge and not the buffoon who fronted today’s fiasco.

     Johnson drew distinctions that did not exist and he asked us to exonerate Cummings behaviour by repeating his perceptions of its moral worth rather than giving any concrete explanations about how what was allowable for Cummings should not be taken as a general rule.  If the ‘guidance has not changed’ how can Cummings’ selfish behaviour possibly be right.

     I now feel that the resignation of Cummings is almost irrelevant.  Johnson is the one who should be considering his position because, as a prime minister he now has, in a phrase that I loved when used about the much missed prime minister May, having “about as much authority as the 'Do not tumble dry' instruction on clothes”.

     R.I.P Premiership: Johnson, May, 2020.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 69 – Saturday, 23rd May

So, “Let them die! Cummings” is now shown to have broken the lockdown rules that he helped frame, by driving 250 miles from London when he was positive with the Covid-19 virus to self-isolate in his parents’ house – a flagrant flouting of the rules.  If we look to the immediate past, other high profile flouters have resigned.  So should he.

     He won’t of course.  The Blond Buffoon would be lost, directionless, gibbering – sorry, even more lost, directionless and gibbering, without him.  And where would Hardest of All Hard Brexits be unless driven (ha!) by the Manic Mekon of Maliciousness!

     I look forward to the puerile mendacity of third-rate cabinet ministers (are there any others?) as they (yet again) defend the defenceless.  I do hope that the Guardian manages to get an appropriately evil photograph of the Bald Bastard (I can say that as I share his follicle challenge) to illustrate the mealy mouthed explanations for his ‘entitled’ flouting.  If, of course, anyone deigns to give an explanation.  It remains to be seen if there are sufficient Tory MPs to force The Blond Buffoon into another U-Turn, and if there is a feeling in the country that Cummings’ position is untenable.  One can only hope!

     This comes at the same time as the fall-out from the self-quarantine for visitors to the UK controversy; the continued failure of track and test; the chaos and division on the school return plans; the continuing horror of the mismanagement of Covid-19 in Care Homes; the total number of deaths and infections; the release of SAGE advice showing just how political the decisions have been; confusion of intentions about how, when and where we can holiday, and on and on. 

     Our present government is exactly the wrong group of politicians in position at exactly the wrong time.  And there is a proposed trip for the Blond Buffoon to the Orange Monster as if the link of shared shittiness was not close and dirty enough even with an ocean between them, they have to get together to share the shame!

My bike ride this morning was through a positive throng of people walking, running and cycling on the Paseo, the most crowded that I have experienced.  The beach was also fairly densely populated with some people swimming – it just shows you what odd times we are living in that such a comment seems remarkable!  Given that Monday marks a further loosening of the restrictions, I confidently expect there to be an exponential rise in people along the front.  We will be open to visits from people in the whole Barcelona metropolitan area, though I am not sure that overnight stays are yet allowed.  There are numbers of second homes in Castelldefels so there must be people itching to get to the seaside for the traditional stay.  Sigh!

     This means that our summer neighbours are likely to arrive as soon as they are given permission, and then they will be here until at least the middle of September.  Usually they arrive just after the schools close, though this year that date is something of a moveable feast to say the least, more conjectural than calendrical!  [ look it up, it exists!]

     My sports club can reopen on Monday as well, though I am not sure that the pool will be open yet.  The web site does not give information about sports apart from some 1 to 1 activities in padel and pilates.  Nothing about swimming.  As my membership of the Club has been temporarily suspended during the virus crisis I suppose that I will know that things are getting back to normal when the bank starts taking money again!  I am looking forward to my first lengths.

     I assume that when swimming eventually resumes it will be in a ‘timed’ slot and that changing facilities and showering facilities will not be provided. 

     We may well have to turn up in our bathing costumes and that means I will have to delve into my wardrobe and see if I can find a tracksuit.  That still fits!  I fear that most of the bits and pieces of past tracksuits are nylon based and therefore efficient producers of static electricity.  As someone who has ‘fallen upwards’ after crossing the carpet of the National Theatre and placing a hand on the exposed metal stair rail and shocking myself from side to side as I instinctively flinched away with one shocked hand and then grabbed for support with the other to be shocked in turn, and so on – I am prone to crackling displays of painful personal electric discharges.  I dread the return to nylonic [that doesn’t exist, but I like the sound] Faradaean [that doesn’t either, ditto] excesses!  But, there again, no pain – no gain!

Just watched 1917.  Superb!  I am usually quite squeamish about films concerning the First World War, partly I think because I feel that I have an emotional investment in the things as my grandfather was a volunteer at the start of the war and he was someone who survived, though not without scars – both literal and mental.  He was wounded during one ‘battle’ (if you can call the ill planned slaughter by upper class idiots a ‘battle?) and was seriously enough wounded to be sent back to Britain to recuperate.  When he returned to his point in the line, nothing had changed except the whole of his company had been killed.  Everyone.

     Every time that I have walked past the statue of Earl (!) Douglas Haig in London, I have felt a personal affront on behalf of my grandfather.  A man who fought in the Somme.  Ah well, let it go, but I am not neutral when I see soldiers in the trenches.  1917 was a worthy addition to the sorry story of the senseless slaughter in France and Belgium – that should never be forgotten.  There are too many easy parallels of the waste of human life in our present time for the excesses of 1914-1918 to be ignored.  Though it would be difficult to say that the lesson has been learned.

     A film worth watching.

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 67 – Thursday, 21st May

For the first time since we were allowed out in our allotted time slots to exercise, my bike ride was free of sightings of Child Viral Assassins forcing their purile way into our adult hours.

     The weather is getting progressively more summery and people are walking with a new jauntiness in their steps.  The building of summer structures on the beach carries on apace and there is increasing evidence of shops and restaurants getting ready for whatever the ‘New Normal’ Season is going to offer.

     Both Spain and the UK seem determined to get kids back to school before the end of the summer term, and I share the apprehension of teachers in wondering just how safe they and the kids are going to be.

     I read through the proposed precautions that one infants’ school was going to take and I was impressed by the thoroughness of the procedures, but also noted how much was dependant on the cooperation of parents in, for example, bringing pupils to school in timeslots and washing all of the pupil’s clothing at the end of the day.  Meals would be provided by the school, no packed lunches allowed; no school materials would come from home; no artefacts made in school would go home; kids would be taught by a dedicated teacher and they would associate only within their teaching group.  Are these rules general in the UK?  Do they follow governmental guidelines?  Are they any governmental guidelines?  There are too many questions about how all of this is going to operate, with the very real fear than any slip in the precautions will result in illness and death.

     Then there is the testing and contact tracing elements.  As the government has been much less than honest about their targets and have been creatively duplicitous about ‘meeting’ them, what faith can we have about their professed care for teachers and pupils?

     What is going to happen to a stretched system when the inevitable infection occurs?  Classes will not be able to be amalgamated.  If a class has a ‘dedicated’ teacher, what happens if that teacher is absent?  In fact, I will stop there because the questions are multiplying in my mind and the answers are not easy.  Or cheap.

     Some beaches in Barcelona have been opened up for sunbathing and recreation, though the TV pictures that we were shown indicate that physical distancing is an inhibition that seems to disappear with clothing.

     I do worry that a coastal resort like Castelldefels will become a hotspot for viral infection as we go further into the good weather and more people come to our beach.  As Barry Island was to Cardiff, so Castelldefels is to Barcelona – one of the seaside resorts for a day out, easily reachable by bike, car, bus and train.  And the beach is the place where inhibitions are loosened, where relaxation is part of the experience, and where irksome rules can be ignored. 

     It does not bode well.

The ‘live’ theatrical presentation this evening was A Streetcar Named Desire, a Young Vic production.  The action took place on a constantly turning revolve as it was a production in the round.  The filming was uncharacteristically inept, or you could say that the filming actually shared the interrupted sightlines of the live audience.  Whatever, I found the blocking out of the action from time to time irritating.

     I was not ‘with’ this production and found many of the characters under-acted, with Stanley being particular difficult for me to take.  Blanche was the clear ‘star’ of the production, but I felt that much of her performance was caricature rather than character study.

   Having said that, I enjoyed the production, though I would much rather have been in the audience!  The set was excellent and the production brought out the humour of the piece as well as the tragedy.  A thoroughly enjoyable depressing experience!

From today the wearing of facemasks is mandatory in public spaces where physical distancing is impossible.  Although their use in ‘sport’ is not required, I think that it will be necessary to carry one whenever I go on my bike rides just in case.