I am not going to be coerced into making fatuous New Year Resolutions; I refuse to be dragooned into making a list of aspirations just because everyone else is doing it at the same time.
Actually, I don’t think that many people actually do make such lists – they are more the preserve of desperate editors on the Today programme on Radio 4, looking for a cheap and easy vox pop to pad out some time. As if the events of 2021 going into the equally bleak looking 2022 have any lack of ‘real’ news items to sober-up any English (remember all the other nations of the UK have imposed restrictions) revellers who might be thinking of a better way to be after the festivities on an untrammelled New Year’s Eve!
So, I am merely going to knuckle down again to the task of writing. I have been remiss for the past umpteen days and, while it is easy to put such indolence down to ‘Christmas Preparations’ it would be a ludicrous overstatement of the amount of time that we actually spent on thinking about the 25th.
My card writing is now consigned to a single Christmas donation to Oxfam, and Christmas presents are strictly Catalan Family, and usually proscribed by family members in advance, to make things easier. Food is catered for by a restaurant meal. All one has to do is turn up.
Unless, that is, after the traditional Christmas Eve giving of presents (shat out of a log) [it’s a Catalan thing] and returning home to sleep before the Christmas Meal, you happen to have an email on Christmas Day informing you that a swimming friend with whom you had a cup of tea a few days previously had tested positive for Covid.
Everything changed.
I was still within the four-day period after ‘last contact with the positive subject’ and so I had to isolate myself. The test I took was negative, but I would need to take another on the Monday after Christmas to make sure that I was securely negative.
I therefore I had a solitary Christmas Meal, and I was similarly alone for my Saint’s Day - Boxing Day or Saint Stephen’s Day. In Catalonia a Name Day is more of a deal than in the UK (where the concept doesn’t really exist) as it usually involves a special meal and presents.
Before any sympathy is wasted on poor little me, I might point out that I was able to make myself a sumptuous and self-indulgent Christmas Feast and, anyway, I had books to read!
My name day celebrations will probably be postponed until next weekend, when The Family will come down to Castelldefels and enjoy a walk along the beach.
A walk, I imagine that will be seen as something as a luxury in the coming days and weeks, when the Super Spreader Events that characterize national fiestas nowadays will inevitably result in a startling (though entirely predictable) increase in Covid infection – and the belated imposition of more stringent limitations on our freedom of movement.
Admittedly, Catalonia has already imposed a curfew from 1am to 6am and has emphasised the social distance rules and strengthened the public association regulations, but I fear that, as is natural for politicians, it is too little too late.
Which makes the lack of action in England all the more startling and worrying.
The Tousled Thug who masquerades as Prime Minister has, yet again, abdicated his primary responsibility, which is striving to keep the people of the UK safe. His ‘masterly inaction’ which in his sick mind he probably thinks is modelled on the behaviour of the late Queen Elizabeth, is rather more reminiscent of the appeasement of Chamberlain as he waves a little piece of paper with his interpretation of “The Science” to justify a cowardly ‘doing nothing’ to keep the semi-evolved dregs of the Conservative back benches quiescent.
In one respect the woeful responses of our political masters have ‘worked’, in so far as a reasonable number of people to whom I have spoken have a sort of fatalistic acceptance that, “We’re all bound to get Covid at some time or other” which means that more and more people have bought-into the ‘herd immunity’ approach to pandemic management, with a shoulder-shrug to the consequent deaths that this acceptance must entail.
As the more observant reader will have noticed, there is a sort of ‘wasn’t that in the past’ sort of vibe about the previous writing. Which is fair, as it was written a week ago. Or more.
In the meantime, I have tested negative again and life of sorts can resume. Except.
There is always an except. My questionable knees have now decided to make a statement about their physical well-being and have opted for the ‘pain and discomfort’ way forwards.
In what has been a remarkably limited number of days, my right knee has gone from ‘something ought to be done soon’ to ‘basically, not working’. This has meant that my progress up, down, and along is now only possible with the ostentatious use of Toni’s crutches (a bargain, 12 euros on the internet). And our house is composed almost entirely of stairs. Or at least it seems that way to me as I tap and hobble my way around with a complete lack of grace and agility.
In less than a week we have gone from the ‘something ought to be done’ to the ‘something has to be done – now!’ in a matter of days. In the middle of a pandemic.
I do have an appointment for ‘rehabilitation’ – but, at we don’t really know where my knees have been (so to speak) there is little for the medical staff to go on. We are hoping that my obvious discomfort will prompt the people there to demand a scan, be appalled at what they see, and put me on a list for something. Anything. To make what is a fairly intolerable position slightly more acceptable.
The waiting times for surgery that have been suggested to me, not necessarily from doctors, but from surprisingly well-informed casual acquaintances, has been at the far end of eight or nine months. And I think, given the backlog thanks to Covid, that is a dewy-eyed optimistic prediction.
However. At present, I have more pain than information, and I am looking forward to the Catalan health service coming forward, scalpel advanced, to my aid. I have to say from previous experience with the medical services of this country, I have been more than impressed, and I will throw myself on their mercy – before I swallow whatever socialist principles are left to me and go private!
On the more positive side of life, the Family did come down to Castelldefels for my postponed Name Day and a good meal was had by all.
And it’s not raining.
One takes one’s positives where one finds them.
