Obey your technology!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My new watch even beeped at me to let me know that it thought that there would be rain later in the morning!   

     When you are stumbling around in the pre-dawn getting read to cycle for the morning swim, a beeping watch is the last thing that you need, as you mostly rely on automatic to get you through the quotidian rituals of getting the day going.

     I did however, glance at the watch and a terse message said, “Expect rain at 8 am” – even poetic in its way.  However, I decided to ignore such a warning and trust to the legendary positive weather conditions of Castelldefels.  Sometimes, even when the forecast for the town says rain, it seems to make an exception for the strip of the town along the beach and we often stay dry.

     Not this time.   

     It rained at 8. 

And as I ploughed my way up and down my gloriously empty lane in the local pool, I heard the tell-tale sound of globular moisture hitting the retractable roof and, with my surgically altered eyes, I could make out the running smears of water trickling down the glazing at the sides of the pool.

     Never mind, I told myself, after I’ve finished my swim there is always the extra time for my tea and sarnie in the cafe, which together with note writing  should ensure that by the time that I am ready to leave the weather will have cleared up.

     Not this time.   

     In a rather touching gesture of moderate futility, I drained the water from the cleft of the saddle and dabbed, mostly ineffectually, at the rest of the seat in the hope that first rump-contact would not be totally wet, but just unpleasantly damp.

     And so I made my way home through spiteful rain that, in spite of the fact that I modified my route back via tree canopied roads, seemed to find the spaces between the leaves to fall, not so gently, on me.   

     My coat is now hanging on the sheltered line downstairs to drip dry and my shorts have (bugger the expense!) been put into the tumble dryer in gloriously damp isolation.

     It is said that the amount of super-computing power that it devoted to forecasting the weather dwarfs all other uses.  But I still react to forecasts as if they were based on the “feeling of a bit of seaweed” approach of the “experts” of my youth, rather than the almost infinitely sophisticated approach of the present technological day. 

     I should believe the forecasts because they are really, generally, correct.  I think that what you might call 'forecasting faith' could be related to an age divide, where people of my baby-boomer generation are still sceptical, whereas those who have been brought up looking at ever smaller screens for their information now expect the info that they are given by the Almighty operating systems of their phones to be correct.

     As a matter of interest, I just asked Google what it based its weather forecasts on and the answer was that it, "takes radar data created by doppler radar stations" and by organizing this data into images and creating a time specific sequence is able to suggest what the weather will be.  So there!

     Just staying with temperature, I got to thinking about how much 'faith' I do have in flashing lights and digital information connected to various things that I possess actually telling me the truth.

     I have never independently verified the set temperature in the fridge for example.  I have taken as gospel the temperatures that the machine tells me that my dishes are washed at in the dishwasher; the time that the microwave cooks for; the length of the various washes in the washing machine.  Virtuallly the only time that I check my watch is when the BBC News starts, and even that is compromised by the fact that I listen to the BBC on the Internet and I have discovered that there are seconds lagging, between broadcast and my radio making absolute accuracy impossible.

     I remember, from my teaching days, one supremely irritating child in a 'bottom group' when such things existed (no, hardly a child he was 15 going on 7) who replied to everything I said for almost the whole of a lesson with the single word, "Why?"  

     I decided, in the way that you sometimes do, that, instead of losing my temper or ignoring the kid, I would attempt to answer him.  And I did.  The interchange (if you could call it that because the boy didn't think about any of his responses, which were always "Why?" or consider any of my increasingly philosophical responses) were obviously one-sided, but the rest of the small class appreciated the 'game' and eventually, they called time, to which the kid gave one final "Why?" and laughed.

     I recall this because it was an example of questioning, mindless questioning perhaps, but it did force me to think while I attempted to answer the continuous drill of "whys?" that was leading to a point of absurdity that I never quite gave into.

     If that experience was essentially arrid, perhaps it should make us think about the way that we too easily accept authority from electronic, inanimate machines functioning on a series of zeros and ones.

     My watch measures and charts my movement and lack of it, my activity, my sleep, my heartbeat and lord alone knows what else.  When I go for a bike ride, I can with a few taps bring up a map and trace the route that I have taken, the time it took me to complete it and even the elevation above sea level and the inclines and declines that I navigated.

     My watch and the app that is linked to it have more information about me and the way that my body works and where that body has been, than anyone else in the world - apart of course from the people who can link into the watch or the app and download whatever.

     What prompted these thoughts was that my watch was right about the rain and I was wrong.  

     Perhaps, in the future should I be more willing to listen to the information that, although presented on one, small, round watchscreen, is actually the visible and tangible sign of an unthinkably powerful information superhighway to which I am linked?

     I am no conspiracy theorist, but asking "Why?" might be the really human thing to do.

Schrodinger's Fiesta!

 

 

 

 

 

An odd day today. An in-between sort of day.

     Although it is a fiesta in Barcelona, it’s not here in Castelldefels, though there is always a knock-on effect as we get an influx of day-trippers from the city to swell the areas around the beaches.

     There were fewer in the pool this morning when it opened, but more of the ‘day-release’ people turned up, just as I was completing my lengths and exercise.  The bike ride along the paseo of the beaches of Gavà were fuller than a normal Monday, so I was able to exhibit a bonus grumpiness as the usual suspects invaded the bike lane, in spite of their being a bike (mine) in it, with the headlight on!

     I have taken to using the Gavà paseo because the Castelldefels paseo is now banned to bikes and electric scooters.  There are signs informing people of this ban at the entrances to the beaches and there are signs repeating the information attached to lampposts along the paseo, and they are generally ignored.

     There are good, health & safety, logical reasons for banning bikes on the Castelldefels paseo.  There is no dedicated bike lane and cyclists invariably ignore the very low speed limit that is set (or used to be set) to use the place.  Some cyclists seem to take a perverse delight in refusing to slow down as they make their way along the paseo and avoid people by a circus-act-like display of weaving and jigging.  This is obviously dangerous.

     At a certain point the beach paseo narrows, and the danger to cyclists and pedestrians becomes even more pronounced.

     As we move further into autumn and winter the number of people using the paseo, especially at the time that I used to use it after my swim, drops.  And if there is empty space then cyclists and electric scooter riders will ignore the rules even more than the general flouting that happens at the moment.

     We have parking tickets for spaces on the sea front and other areas of the city, but the machines that dole out these tickets are closed down for the winter months and you can park wherever you like (except for high days and holidays) for free.  Some spaces in the centre of town are always paying spaces except for the afternoons, so we have a fairly complex system in place.

     My point would be, given that we are able to adapt to complex parking rules, why shouldn’t there be more flexible rules for bikes?  If we can cope with those rules, then we should surely be able to cope with time limited rules for bikes.

     On the narrower parts of the paseo, I do think that bikes should be banned totally, but on the other parts I think it is only sensible to have more reasonable rules.  As the rules stand at present, there is an obvious and blatant rejection, and there doesn’t seem to be any move to police the rules and make them stick.

     Yes, I do feel resentment as I see all the paseo bike users as I make my way along the (legal) road, but, if people don’t like the rules and they can see little real justification for them, then those rules are going to be broken.

     It makes me think of the decorative, picturesque council laid footpaths that wind around a grassy area, and the unofficial footpaths that actual feet make as they plot the most direct route.  People will do what they think is more logical, and to hell with routes that looked pretty when drawn on plans.

     I remember working, before I went to College, in the Planning Department of Cardiff City Council and seeing a map of the city centre showing ‘customer routes’ showing the reality of how people moved from point A to point B.  These maps showed streets, but they also showed routes through shops, ways of access that I had previously thought were individual ‘secret’ ways but were obvious when you needed to imagine a straight line with shops in the way!

     So, people will do what they think is reasonable.  That is until they are either shown that they are wrong in their assumptions, or that they will be punished if they do not follow the council’s stated rules.

     I am following the rules.  I await to see how the council responds to the breaking of those rules.          I’m watching!

This & That

 

 

 

 In the compensatory way of Catalan weather, it is now gloriously sunny and raining!  I managed to get my tempest-delayed bike ride from this stormy morning in, just before the lashing rain thoroughly soaked me – and that last bit can be read in both ways, and both are right!

     In this part of the world, thunder sounds as if it is being ‘played’ by an over enthusiastic ASM in some ropey rep.  It grumbles away in the background until you suddenly feel as though you are in the front line in WW1 as a cataclysmic clap of thunder sounds as if it has taken over all of your immediate surroundings.

     As I have been typing, the rain has stopped and a sunny dampness has settled around the blissfully quiet pool, devoid as it is of persons of limited age.  It won’t be long before the determined sunshine chimes in with their youthful energy and the (imagined) solitude is rudely broken.  Again.

 

 We are approaching the two-week period when our local pool is closed for essential maintenance, or whatever.  This means that each year I have to decide about where I go to maintain my daily exercise.

     Let me be clear, only the pool is closed, all other aspects and facilities of the centre are available.  My knees preclude padel, so the only other alternative is To Go To The Gym.

     When I first came to join this centre, I was given the guided tour by one of the managers who asked, “Would you like to see the gym?”  To which I replied, “No.”  I was there for the covered 25m pool and nothing else.

     I am not going to the other main pool in Castelldefels because I have bad (and expensive) memories of using the place, so my choice in past years has been to go to the municipal pool in the neighbouring town of Gavà (Gavá, in Spanish) which means that I have to use my bike to wing the desolate abyss (an unlighted link road) between Castelldefels and my destination pool, with frankly rather frightening traffic obviously resenting my presence on the tarmac!

     This year, however, I am seriously considering To Go To The Gym in the pool with a much shorter bike ride, and most of it on an actual bike lane!  My reasoning is, that if I can find a gym instructor who lacks that sadistic side that seems a common factor in so many of their approaches to exercise regimes, and someone who actually appreciates the bone-on-bone reality of arthrosis, then I could profitably do some exercises to strengthen by leg muscles to show willing by the time I (finally) get to the traumatologist where something might be done.  I have to admit, I am not entirely convinced by that reasoning, and I am telling myself that the early morning cycle ride to Gavà in the dark was frighteningly exhilarating and availing to good.

     The internal debate can continue until the 5^th of September (when I have a delayed routine hospital appointment in the morning) but by the 6^th I will have to have decided.  Probably before then, because the days of just popping into a pool and being able to have a swim, post pandemic simply do not exist.  So, some planning needs to be done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I sit in the sunshine drinking my tea and adding pepper to my tortilla francesa baguette I am often regaled by music that is entirely unknown to me, piped to the outside sitting area by who knows who inside.  Most of it washes over me, but occasionally I perk up a little and take notice.

     Yesterday was one such day because part of the lyrics of one of the songs sounded odd to me.  The song (I have since discovered) was a “collaboration” between Yves V, INNA & Janieck.  How it took that many to write the deathless lyrics or the equally deathless tune, is somewhat beyond me, but one particular line stuck out, “You haunt me like a déjà vu” (written without the accents in the original, but let it pass, let it pass – and I might add that they were added automatically by Word when I typed them and not with my fingers.) 

     And I realized that I have never seen the phrase used like that.  Yes déjà vu is a noun, but I had never seen, or indeed heard the phrase with only an indefinite article to keep it company “a déjà vu.” One hears things like, a sense of déjà vu; it is déjà vu; it was déjà vu; a feeling of déjà vu, but never, “a déjà vu.”  In the chorus of the song the first line uses “a déjà vu” but the repeat is “You haunt me like déjà vu” which is how I would use it.

     Obviously, using the indefinite article is not in any sense wrong, but it is odd that it is generally not done.

     I am now wondering if I should find an opportunity and try out the song’s way of using the phrase and see how it sits with my way of expression.

          

                    Words, I love them!