. . . and other thing

  

 

 

A personal blog is somewhat akin to a home: it always has to let you in.  So, the ‘lost time’ since the last entry is forgiven and forgotten and we carry on where we left off.

Well, not quite.  The last entries were numbered, day by day, in relation to the virus that has changed our lives.  Eventually, as one piece of governmental incompetence and mendacity was replaced by culpability even more egregious, I found that there was a certain similarity in my ranting and, eventually, even I grew a little weary with my impotent rage.

So, where are we now?  In my native land and in my adopted one, there is a depressing similarity in the progress of the response to the virus.  We are now in the Second Wave or Second Spike, and the preventative messaging to a bemused population is just as confused and self-evidently self-contradictory as to make any informed response for survival aleatory, to say the least.  Never has the age-old adage of “To thine own self be distanced, hand washed and masked” been so apposite.  Given the number of mask-less machos and viral assassins (or children, as they are sometimes known) plaguing our public spaces the only reasonable assumption to make is that everyone is out to get you, and that means you have to take the precautions that they seem unable or unwilling to embrace.

It is a constant source of support for me that my partner is compellingly paranoid about Covid and is ever on hand to reinforce my sometimes-casual approach to the liberal application of alcohol sanitizer - which has now replaced as the holy water stoop as a reflex ‘saving’ ritual in public places.

Restrictions come and go, but they seem to have little effect in our general lives.  As most people are generally unsure about what the precise regulations are at any specific time, it is hardly surprising that the approach of most is casually approximate.  I would say that mask wearing is generally accepted in urban areas, although smokers are allowed to flout the rules to indulge their filthy habit.  Bike riders, electric scooter users and skateboarders seem to assume that they are exempt, as do many walkers on the paseo by the beach and virtually all joggers.

The rule of 6 is generally accepted, but restaurants and shops seem to call that rule into question.  The Liceu is due to start its programme of Operas on United Nations Day and, while I have read through their protocols for the safety of patrons, I do wonder about the practical application of rules for the numbers involved.  Still, my first opera is a month away and the potent combination of politics and pandemic has meant that a day is a ‘long time’ in our present existence, let alone a week – so who knows what the situation will be like in another thirty days or so!

Our daily routine is fairly unbroken: we exercise, shop and go out for meals.  True, there is no ‘turn up and swim’ option, so I have to book my place in the pool each day; we wear masks every time we go out (even to and from the beach); sanitizer and plastic gloves are necessary in shops, and I take my own pepper grinder with me when we eat out as shared cruets are a thing of the past, all condiments are in sachets, but our daily life goes on.

I know (and I really do appreciate) that my proximity to the sea is a godsend.  Not only does the paseo give me a long (and level!) expanse for accommodating cycling, but it also allows me to see the horizon, to see out.  I think of those, and there are many, who live in cramped urban flats (sometimes with viral assassins in their living space!) and I wonder how they survive mentally intact with the inevitable physical and psychological claustrophobia that living in small spaces with the wider threat of infection must force on them.  I am lucky that I have an open, healthy release from the encircling encroachment of the Virus.

But the sense of being ‘surrounded’ with a resourceful enemy probing to find the gap in the waggon train circle to kill you does have, if you will excuse the pun, a deadening effect on creativity.  For the last fortnight, for example, my swimming pool has been closed for annual maintenance so I have been denied my early morning swim.  Although in past years during this stop fortnight I have gone to the public pool in the next town, I did not feel inclined to chance my arm (and the rest of my being) to an administration that I do not know and so I have relied just on my cycle ride to provide the exercise that I need.  And what use have I made of the extra time gained from not swimming?  Have I gone through my notebooks and worked up the ideas that I write down each day?  I have not.  Instead, I have indulged myself with what can only be described as a ghoulish intensity of Guardian reading, lurching from Trump to Johnson to Brexit to Covid – appalled but unable to stop myself descending further and further into the depths of despond with every sentence.

Into the gloom, however, comes John Crace – the Guardian political sketch writer.  John is quite open about his own mental insecurity and yet the humour and biting wit that he uses to flay the idiocy of our leaders is life-givingly refreshing and mentally rejuvenating!  I hope it works for him too. 

One letter writer in the Guardian suggested that everyone deserves a holiday of some sort to mitigate the effects of the virus – except for John Crace: his writing is too important for the well-being of the rest of us for him to be allowed to stop! 

John has now reached the level once held by the cartoonist Giles, where the work is necessary for the benefit of all, and his writing should be part of our National Health System!

Tomorrow, the pool reopens after whatever it is that they do for fourteen days and so things will be back to what we like to call the New Normal again.  I have begun to think about what Christmas is going to look like this year – that is going to give the New Normal a particular twist, or perhaps I should have said peculiar.  Indeed, the New Peculiar seems to me to be a far better description of what we are now living.

Bring on tomorrow!