LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 31 – Wednesday, 15th APRIL

A sign of the times: I went out for my walk around the pool, no sooner had I started by circuits when the pool person appeared to clean the pine needles and add chemicals to the water.  I did not have my mask (he did) so I went back into the house.  Even though social distancing would have been easy, I did not take the chance.  I can tell myself that it was practical, he is using one of those blower things to sweep up the pine needles and you are likely to get a blast of needle-air if you walk anywhere near – but the real motivation for returning home was justified paranoia!

     I feel that I am on the verge of turning into one of those comedic older persons who takes every opportunity to bring in age in the conversation.  As a member of the generation that is now officially ‘at risk’ during the pandemic, my age has become something of a distinguishing mark, perhaps the next step would be to oblige us all to wear a badge so that crowds part in front of us and a respectful distance is maintained by all the Plague Children who frolic with the virus rather than succumb!

I have attempted, and failed, to get a space to have a home delivery from one of our larger supermarkets.  I am registered and I note that a few years ago I actually did have a home delivery: the delivery and the items that I bought are still there for me to see on my account site.  It makes you wonder about the total amount of information that supermarkets actually have on individuals - so much raw material! Countless billions of bits of information about our buying habits!  Best not to think about it too closely.  Anyway, no matter how sophisticated the collection of data might be, the practical problems of getting a timed space to have a delivery means that the likelihood of not having to risk my physical presence in a shop is small.  God alone knows how you actually get a space, but I will persevere, as I much prefer to do our weekly shop remotely than personally!

My Catalan classes have been stopped since the lockdown (just before we were scheduled to have an examination!) and there seemed to be no real prospect of their continuation before the end of the term, both Easter and Summer, but I have had communications that suggest that some form of remote learning could take place.

     There is to be a meeting of ‘delegates’ in a day or so’s time via Google Meet when the arrangements for the Summer Term are presumably going to be considered.  I do not think that I will be interested in any physical meeting or actual classes until the start of the Autumn Term, and I am not convinced that there will be real gains in any virtual classes in the remainder of this year.  But I wait to be persuaded.

     Our classes are highly subsidised and therefore the financial loss is negligible and can be written off easily.  We had to buy two books for the course: we have completed the exercises in one of them and there are still a number of units to be completed in the other.

     It will be interesting to see what the school offers.  I suppose that the teachers will have to offer something to justify their continued salaries, but remote learning is an entirely different form of teaching from the one to which they are accustomed and for it to be achieved successfully there will be a disproportionate amount of work for the teachers to do as well as coping with the inevitable frustration that comes with new technology.

     In the rough and tumble of an ordinary school the most sophisticated piece of technology that has a reasonable chance of survival in a well-used classroom is the Over Head Projector (OHP) – virtually any time that anything more sophisticated is used it leads to frustrated disaster!  There is much to be said for ‘Chalk and Talk’ as the main way of getting a message across!

Life goes on.  This morning I had notification by the Royal Mail of the new issue of stamps on 7^th of April celebrating The Romantic Poets.  Usually the publicity is some time before the date of issue rather than a week afterwards, but it is encouraging to find that the new stamp issues are going ahead.  It is probably a reflection of the amount of automation in the production that we are allowed to get the stamps.  I collect first day covers and I am sure that no human hand actually touches the stamps, envelope and insert until it is actually put through my letterbox!

     The designs by Linda Farquharson are based on linocuts with an extract from a selection of Romantic poets, including John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, Walter Scott, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Mary Robinson, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, John Keats and Lord Byron.  They form an elegant set and each individual stamp is interesting in its own right – and they look right.  Too often, in my opinion, British stamps try and get too much in what is a tiny space.  I like stamps that make an instant impression and still look like something worth seeing even at a distance when the detail is not clear: these stamps work on both criteria.

     I wonder how many people will actually get to see one of these stamps.  Even in what used to be ‘normal’ times most letters were franked rather than having stamps.  Now, in these ‘abnormal’ times the issuing of a new set of stamps looks like spirited defiance rather than utility.

     Perhaps we should have a special Covid-19 issue with a part of the price going to the NHS.  I will write to the Philatelic Bureau and suggest it.  I wonder if they will reply!

The treatment of old people in Care Homes is rapidly gaining traction in the scandal stakes as the numbers of residents and care workers seem to increase with insufficient care and attention from the government or rather governments as the problem seems to be a common one for Britain and Catalonia.  As usual the cliché that you can judge a society by the way its treats those who are the most at risk seems, yet again, to give our way of life low marks!

     On the other hand I have just returned from my daily trip to the open window of the kitchen to show my appreciation to the front-line staff in the health system and essential services and it is heartening to be part of a chorus of applause!

It appears that Bromo (my name for the PP corrupt ex President of Spain Rajoy) has habitually been breaking lockdown and going for his habitual ‘quick walking’ odd hobby sport outside the house whenever he feels like it.  He has been reported by his neighbours.  Fine the bastard, at least that way we can get some of the money back that his corrupt party stole from us during his disgraceful time in power.

Always a good thing to end with a rant!

Fight the good fight!

In my own language, I am an articulate, responsive and witty speaker.  In Spanish I am enthusiastic early Tarzan and in Catalan epsilon semi-moron.  As someone who loves language and the speaking thereof, my inability in any other tongue than mine own is baffling.

     Of course, you could point to the fact that, apart from the lessons, I do virtually no other work.  My expectation that language will work by osmosis, though patently not working in my case, is still firmly a methodology to which I adhere with monomaniac fixation.  Well, it beats methodical working and revision!

     Even though I am something of a past master in blagging my way through Spanish, I have even less basic linguistic information with which to work in Catalan.  And we are now getting close to a crunch time as, in the middle of next month (which, horror of horrors, starts tomorrow) I have an examination.

     It makes no difference how many times our present teacher assures us in his class than the examination, nay, not examination, more of a test, really, is simple beyond belief – I still know that with my level of ability ANY bloody casual (let alone searching) examination of my knowledge will lead to hot-faced humiliation.

     At this point, the more incisive reader might wonder about my typing about these concerns, rather than actually doing something about them.  If so, you haven’t read the previous short paragraphs where I freely admit my lack of effort in acquiring or attempting to acquire another language.

     The one positive point about this next ‘test’ seems to be that it is vocabulary heavy with an unnatural concentration on the direction and existence of accents on individual words and, in any choice between the two, ‘vocab’ is an easier option than ‘grammar’.  So, you never know, if I play to my strengths of being able to cram discrete points of information for the duration of an exam I might even be able to scrape through.

     Though, I do admit that scraping-through in the language of the country in which I actually live is not a very inspiring (or indeed worthwhile) goal, but it is what I am working towards. 

     And you never know, now that the date of the examination has been set, it might (just might) encourage me to make a start on the tedium of vocab learning this very weekend.  There is, after all, nothing quite so self-satisfying in doing a minimal amount of work sufficient to engender the feeling of complacency in knuckling-down to something worthwhile.  Obviously.

It’s all about the far end lane.  Of the swimming pool I mean.  Of those hardy folk (or nutters depending on your point of view) who turn up at 7.00 am when the pool opens, the one thing motivating their early appearance is the claiming of an empty lane for your lonely furrow.

     There are five lanes in our pool, and they fill up quickly.  Lane one is usually taken by a sedate looking retired lady who makes stately progress up and down the pool.  Lane three or sometimes four is taken up by two ‘youngsters’ whom I call the twins who are dedicated and athletic and look as though they are training for a triathlon.  Lane four is taken up by a recent arrival to the family of a snorkeler who rushes into the pool to try and get the Crown Jewel of lanes: lane five.

     Lane five is the lane to get.  Why?  Because it is slightly obstructed by the metal access ladders.  The way the ladders slightly jut out into the pool space means that two swimmers in a lane is somewhat awkward.  Therefore people go to double-up in the other lanes before trying the end lanes.  Lane one is for the slower swimmers and the periodic exercisers; they rarely go to lane five.  So, if you bag lane five early enough you are almost guaranteed to have it to yourself for the whole duration of your swim.

     The problem with this is, no matter how early I get to the pool, even if it is before the pool has officially opened, one man, the same man, always seems to get there before me.  So I am reduced to going to one of the other three lanes (remember lane one is given over to slower others) and hoping that it remains uncluttered with extraneous swimmers for my metric mile.

     If you are an early morning swimmer then the intensity of possession in the highly charged first hour of opening is something that will not need to be explained to you; if you have not experienced the rush of claiming a lane and swimming in a savagely elegant style to keep it to yourself, then I would suggest you think about the last time you went on a train or a bus and looked for a double seat for yourself and the looks and hopes that kept people away from you as a guide to how we feel.

     This morning, for example, I was, yet again beaten to the fifth lane by my friend, but I managed to claim the fourth lane and keep it to myself until almost the end of my swim when I had to share it with another swimmer for a few lengths until my friend left the fifth lane and indicated to the other person in my lane that he could take over the vacated fifth lane.  Now that is courtesy and civility of a high order!

 

I am working on a poem at the moment which grew out of notes that I made in my pocket notebook: two days’ work; five unsatisfactory lines, no, four and a bit lines now I look at it.  I mapped out the ideas behind what I want to write in annotations of the transcription of my notes, but the working-up is taking longer than I expected

Some poems write themselves, in so far as the structure is concerned, the skeleton is roughly assembled and then the hard slog of fleshing-out takes up the real time.  In the present instance, I only have fragments of bone, meaning that my construction of meaning in my writing is more palaeontology than poetry, but it is getting there, or more accurately it will get somewhere sometime.  And there is no title yet, either.  Working on it, working on it.

The daily crash-bang-wallop of reformation in the house next door continues unabated and is now producing a steady stream of rubble which is filling bags which are taking up parking spaces on the road.  One of the (industrial sized) rubbish bags has been in situ for over two weeks.  This is not satisfactory and ‘steps will be taken’.  I have already asked about them and the workmen have shifted the blame on to the company that should have picked them up.  As I recall, there are usually by-laws about leaving household rubble on the street and on Monday I will make a trip to the city hall after my Catalan class and find out the legal situation.  I will also take photographs (they like photos) to illustrate their wicked deeds.  Our city hall is generally helpful, and I look forward to being armed with the Regulations of the Righteous to smite the rubble makers hip and thigh – if necessary with the jaw-bone of an ass.  And I wonder how many people nowadays will pick up that reference!

So, lots to do this weekend: planning, scheming, writing and lino-cutting – never a dull moment.

Seconds count!

I had not planned to start my day so early in the morning, but needs must when public transport fails.  On a daily basis.

 

When the job starts at 7.00 am in Cornellá, and you live in Castelldefels then public transport will simply not get you there on time and so “needs must when the devil drives” comes into operation and I have to turn into a chauffeur.   

So, washed and tooth brushed, but un-showered and unshaven I face the day in the profound dark and make my way along an overcrowded motorway full of motorists who don’t seem to take their continuing life at all seriously and positively ‘last trip’ kamikaze motorbike riders.  Luckily the horror aspect of the driving is only on the going there, the coming back is much more relaxing, especially when viewing the growing tail-backs on the other side of the road.

But, to get back to the cruel start of the day.  To get to Cornellá before 7.00 am we must leave at the latest by half past six; given the special physics of over-used motorways into big cities, it is a given that every minute after 6.30 am that you leave the house will mean, in a fairly complex, inverse ratio sort of thing, that there is an exponential chance of delay or hold up of some kind – and, of course, domestic misery!

This means that Toni’s alarm goes off at 6.00 am and he gets ready to go.  I get up a vital 10 minutes later.

Those ten minutes are a delight.  A delight out of all proportion to the actual length of six hundred seconds!I hear the alarm and so, at 6.00 am, I am awake – but then I have the delight of literally turning over and not quite resuming my slumber, but allowing the shreds of almost lost dreams to pleasurably confuse is a real pleasure. 

 

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me my body seems to know when the glorious ten minutes are up and a shake of the wrist (it is that sort of watch) my Pebble confirms that it is 6.10 and time for me to get up.

I get up willingly, but only because of those precious ten extra minutes, a sort of gift to start the day.  Although there are few who will see it that way unless they have to share my early rising!

As we were held up yesterday and Toni was a few minutes late for work (unavoidable given the accident that was in our way) we left a little earlier this morning and I returned a little earlier as well.  This meant that I was actually waiting outside the locked gate of the swimming pool for the place to open!  There seems to be an element of desperation about that, until you realize that this early start is not exactly my unforced choice!

I will say that I am getting used to the early start and am trying to make the most of the ‘extra’ hours that I have ‘gained’.  Trying.  There is a nice ambiguity in that word!

-oOo-

In our Catalan classes, we have now just about finished the first unit in our text books.  We are still firmly in the present tense, and only the first three persons (I, you, he/she/it), but we have also been introduced to a variety of verbs and tricky words that change with person and number.  It may only be a single unit, but there is a frightening amount of new information to take in and, more horrifically, apply – and we know that there is an examination at the end of the second unit.   

And that is something that I am trying hard not to think about too much.  Or even at all, on the “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” sort of thing.  I know that I need to up my game substantially if the examination, when it happens, is not to be something of a condemnation of my learning ability!

-oOo-

Something that is deflecting me from my linguistic travails has been the arrival of the Melvyn Bragg & Simon Tillotson book celebrating twenty years of In Our Time.  The book is a self-indulgent (for me) pleasure with a stimulatingly bewildering variety of subject matter that reflects the range of the programme itself.  From bird migration to The Salem Witch Trials; from The Death of Elizabeth I to Kant’s Categorical Imperative; from Zoroastrianism to Absolute Zero – each topic is compressed into seven or eight pages with illustrations with a variety of responses from the academics collected to discuss each individual concept. 

The book is very like a drug and is compulsive and thoroughly interesting, even on those topics that you might think would not be engrossing.  They all are, and I have had to limit my reading to try to stretch out the pleasure.  It’s not really working and I am already half way through.  I think that the programme has published an earlier book and I may be forced to buy a copy of that one as well to satisfy my greed!  For knowledge that is, of course.

This book is an elegant hard back volume of over 400 pages with a range of colour and black and white illustrations.  The text is generously spaced with contributors’ names in bold capitals.  I presume the unjustified lines are to give, what is a book of an unscripted live radio programme, a more informal look.

The only thing I don’t like is the dust jacket.  The look is good, a sort of restrained confident professionalism with a sans serif capital title in embossed gold that is flaking off.  It’s not the look, it is more the feel.  The paper has a slight suede-like touch that I find quite unpleasant, but other might think adds a touch of luxury.  A slight point, and not one to dissuade any future reader.  This is a book worth buying.  Buy it!

Remember the Ruskin quotation that has been a guiding light for me since I was a schoolboy: “If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.” 

For me, that is a simple (if expensive) truth!