LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 65 – Tuesday, 19th May

The Tuesday People Syndrome was in full operation this morning as I took my bike ride.  I first observed this phenomenon in my local swimming pool and had my suspicions confirmed by the lifeguard: more people turn up to exercise on a Tuesday morning than on any other day of the week.

     I have considered, like Holmes, writing a ‘short monograph on the subject’ but will content myself with a few fugitive thoughts here.  Although weeks are no longer normal in the same way that they were pre-virus, many of the assumptions made about the qualities of individual days still persist, in spite of living in different times.

     Even without the Boomtown Rats, Mondays are dread days, being as they are not only the first working day of a normal week, but also the bummer of a day after the relative freedom of the weekend. 

     The weekend itself is actually composed of two days, but not Saturday and Sunday.  Friday after work is the first part of the weekend and the whole of Saturday may be regarded as absolute weekend, but Sunday evening has to be considered part of the working week as that is the time that you worry about the things you did not do during the weekend that you have said to yourself before the start you would absolutely complete and you are consequently unable to enjoy the latter part of Sunday in a true ‘weekend’ way.  Early Monday morning is consequently a later part of the working week than its nomenclature would suggest and the resentment at having started the working week the night before makes one disinclined to exercise.

     Wednesday is mid-week and therefore is the tipping point towards the weekend and freedom.  Thursday is the ‘going out in the evening because it will be too crowded on Friday’ and, even if you don’t actually go out, the fact that you could have gone out is enough to make the day bearable.

     TGIF speaks for itself and it is difficult to make the day bad, though some have tried.  I am vividly reminded of one glorious year where I had a free period last period on a Friday!  How better to end the week?  I lost that free period on a regular basis to give cover for other classes.  For the entire year!  That illusory free period and the morning checking of the cover list to see that, yet again, the period had gone actually made the day a misery. 

     The other case was in my last school in Catalonia, where the powers that be decided to call a weekly staff meeting every Friday after the end of the school day!  Luckily this horrific piece of inconsideration was instituted after I had left, but if I had been forced to attend, it would have precipitated my leaving anyway.  Those of you who have not endured the purgatory, no, infernal hell of educational staff meetings in Spanish schools can only guess at the empty soul-destroying horror that involvement inflicts.  For me it would have poisoned the whole weekend.

     And, while we are at it, that same school called a staff meeting for a Saturday morning!  Saturday morning!  I did not immediately resign, though I made my feelings patently clear.  As I told anyone who would listen, if the meeting was so important that it had to be held on a Saturday morning, then it should have been important enough to have it during the school day with the pupils being sent home early to make it possible!  During the whole pointless meeting, I did not smile once or contribute unless directly asked a question.  I fumed for the entire three hours (!) that it took and left immediately when it ended without speaking to anyone.  Just typing about it, I can re-texture my fury, not only at the meeting taking place at all, but also at the attitude of my colleagues that allowed it to go ahead without armed insurrection.

     Which brings us to Tuesday.  Tuesday is a day whose distinction is that it is not Monday and therefore not tainted with the misery of first day of the week.  It is far enough for the weekend for that period of happiness to be a vague memory and it is not yet at the tipping point of the week either.  It is a day when Things Can Be Done, when the depression of Monday has been shaken off, the weight of the week has not yet fallen on frail shoulders and there is still an illusory strength to encourage activity.  So, it is a Tuesday when the resolution to exercise is at its strongest and when intention is likely to result in action.  Therefore, the number of people in the pool and, even in these odd times, the number of people on the Paseo.

     We will see if the numbers are the same tomorrow, or whether the reality (or suggestion for the Barcelona Metropolitan Area) have come back into play and the best of intentions get lost once again in the grind of the week!

Today is Catalan homework day.  I know that if I put it off for more than one day from the time that it is set, then I am likely to leave doing the work until the day it has to be sent in and that will be a panic rather than the mere chore that I am able to tolerate.  And I am writing about it here as a physical impetus to my intent!  Sad that I have to do such things to motivate myself, but it is the way I work.  I am not writing in my notebook so regularly at the moment during lockdown because the routine of swim/tea/write has been broken, and I have even stopped carrying my notebook in my pocket.  This is because I am wearing swimming shorts during the lockdown because they are more comfortable and easier to don, but weight in the pockets (that are decorative rather than functional) tends to drag the garment down – and I am not one for such impropriety!  Perhaps I should carry something lighter, it’s a thought – though as I am mostly indoors, at home, I am never far from writing materials.

Never let it be said that a mere lockdown stood in the way of my creative culinary genius.  Today at lunchtime I treated myself to pollo picado con papa en cubitos, perejil y curry de tienda de papas fritas that, being translated is, chopped chicken with parsley and diced potatoes in a chip-shop curry.  The latter ingredient was courtesy of my ‘Red Cross parcel’ from Poundshop, who knew you could get instant chip-shop curry granules?  Well, I do now.  I hesitate to use the word ‘delicious’, more ‘different’ and ‘interesting’ apply.

Now a little light sunbathing and then the dreaded Catalan homework!

Sunday start

A lazy day today, I didn’t get up until 8.15 am!  I decided to give swimming a miss and will compensate by having an extended bike ride on the way to and from getting lunch in the local chicken place.

     I’ve completed the quick Guardian crossword, though it was a little more taxing than usual and I am sometimes stuck by the brevity of the clues that give a slanted version of the necessary word’s definition, so I often get the word before I realize its link to the clue!  Still, it’s done and that gives the start of the day a sort of achievement to add to the impetus of filling time with something useful.  Not that I have to search around for things to do as each day ends with my only having completed a part of my ‘to do’ list.  At the moment, for example, Catalan homework is handing over me and this writing is, yet again, displacement activity to compensate for my not doing it!

     There is a whip to get me in line with the work that I need to do for Catalan, as the examination for this section of the course will take place on the 13^th of this month.  We have been given fair warning, have been told what sort of vocabulary is going to be tested and have been given direct and clear indications of what sort of writing we will need to complete.  With such clear directions it is perverse and churlish not to get stuck in to the work and start the process of learning.  But I haven’t yet got round to starting this.  In my notebook that is supposed to be for my ideas for poems, I often find myself writing encouraging or admonitory notes to myself about work that needs to be done.  This writing too is another way of my communicating with myself to get geared up to start the hard work of learning.

     I find learning new words difficult; I discover a new, often useful word in Catalan, look at it, try and memorize it, write it down a few times – and then it’s gone.  The amount of effort needed to set the words in my memory seems disproportionate and I therefore tend to enter my learning zone with negativity washing around my mind.  I try and reason with myself: I live in Catalonia, I am surrounded by the language, learning it is merely a matter of common courtesy as well as increasing my understanding and so on and so on – but whatever psychological boosts I give myself, the simple inability to retain new vocab. Is a settled fact.  This in turn means that the examination will be another depressing indication of inability as I stagger my illiterate way towards the end of the scholastic year!

     In my own language, however, I continue to thrive.  The latest work on the ‘recalcitrant’ poem is producing good results.  Even though I may not have written a single line of poetry, the ideas and some phrases are steadily coalescing and the structure is beginning to emerge from all my pencilled scribbles.  I know for past experience that the present discrete idea elements scattered throughout the pages that I have already written will, eventually come together into a (hopefully) coherent poem.  Even if it doesn’t, the process is one that is enjoyable if demanding!

 

Today is Saint David’s Day and I have hunted around (as I do each year) to find the little artificial daffodil (purchased in aid of the Marie Curie Foundation) to wear for my National Day.  And, each time I wear it, it focuses my attention on my nationality.  In my next book, The eloquence of broken things, there is a section that brings together poems I have written that consider my nationality and what it mean to me.  For a numerically small nation, identity is a constant preoccupation and with the swamping proximity of England and the overwhelming use of English as the language of Wales the relationship between Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom is a critical element in the national sense of identity.  Each St David’s Day has become an opportunity for me to indulge (and I think that is the right word) in a particular form of introspection that rarely affects me on other days of the year – which is significant in itself!

     Only once has anyone commented on my wearing of a daffodil on St David’s Day and I assume that it will go generally unnoticed today as well.  Though there is a slightly different dimension because daffodils are yellow. 

     Let me explain.  I wear a metal pin of a yellow ribbon to show my support for the Catalans who are still in prison or restricted in their public lives because of the Spanish justice system in the aftermath of the referendum for Catalan independence.  Putting the question of independence aside for a moment, I consider the jailing of so many Catalan politicians to be reprehensible and perhaps an indication of the politicisation of the Spanish justice system. 

     The reaction of the Spanish to the Catalans has sometimes been little short of paranoid, with some instances of the banning of the colour yellow e.g. football supporters wearing yellow t-shirts or scarves having to give up pieces of yellow clothing before they were allowed into the games!  So a yellow daffodil could be seen as a statement of support for the prisoners and Catalan independence.

     In my case as I am wearing it next to the yellow ribbon, obviously for aesthetic rather than political reasons, the link is more obvious!

No time for 'work'!

Well, if nothing else I have done my Catalan homework.  To an outsider, I must have looked like some casually dressed general planning an invasion as I consulted double page spreads of grammatical explanations and examples, thumbed my way through my totally inadequate “easy learning” dictionary, and resorted from time to time to Google Translate on my mobile phone.  

And all of that was for a relatively easy grammatical exercise!  God help us all when we get to the rest of the declensions of the verbs!

 

Still, it gives me a sense of satisfaction to think that I am at least starting from the very depths of ignorance and any accretion of knowledge will be a bonus.  And, I have to say, that the odd words are getting through to me when I watch the Catalan television station.  Bit by bit.

This all sounds very commendable until you realize that there are students in my class who are learning Catalan after being in the country for fewer weeks than I have been here years.  And the most that I could use the language for was to ask for a cup of iced coffee!  That is, at least, in the process of changing.

-oOo-

I have had a letter from yet another hospital summoning me to yet another appointment.  Don’t get me wrong, I am more than appreciative about the way in which my thrombosis, embolisms and dicky heart have been treated – after all, I did manage to produce a chapbook based on my stay in hospital – and I am more than prepared to turn up promptly and wait while another doctor reads my details for the first time and makes a pronouncement.

This time the hospital I have to visit is in the third town away from Castelldefels along the motorway towards Barcelona, in St Boi.  We usually go to St Boi to visit the supermarkets (or ‘Sheds’ as we used to call all those large stores on Rumney Common in Cardiff along the Newport Road) and very little else.  It is, it has to be said, an unlovely place, and it is further hated by motorist commuters who have to go through a bottleneck there to change motorways.

 

For as long as I have lived in Castelldefels there have been roadworks in St Boi as the slowest road construction in the world eventually will (please god) transmogrify itself into a motorway interchange and cut out the need to navigate ever-changing temporary roads whose ineffable structure is presumably there to facilitate the building of the big new quick roads that will make the daily commute just a little less miserable.

But this deliverance is in the unknowable future, like Tantalus’s sustenance, just out of reach.  To be fair, a decade’s worth of roadworks has accomplished the moving of the traffic jams little further along the motorway, so that is something.  Not much, but you really have to experience the bone grinding futility of parts of the network of roads feeding Barcelona to be able to appreciate even the smallest amelioration.

In my darker moments (like, for example, at 6.30 am taking Toni to work because there is no public transport to get him to there for 7.00 am when he starts) I fear that I will see the completion of the Sagrada Familia before this bloody road is opened.  What makes things worse is that you can see pylons stretching emptily towards the skies that should be carrying a road bridge – they have been there so long that they are now covered with graffiti; you can gaze at empty stretches of multi-lane highway running parallel to our inefficiently winding road; you can see machines, lorries, equipment – but no people actually working on the bloody thing.

In my lighter, and therefore far more pretentious, moments, I have assumed that these ‘roadworks’ are nothing of the sort and are actually a vast piece of performance art/installation piece and as such I should be grateful that I have been able to appreciate its developing complexity over the years.

Talking of complexity, tomorrow morning should be an example of the sort of life that can only be lived by the very fortunate - or the retired.  The day starts with my staggering out of bed well before half past six, and having a cursory wash before taking Toni to work.  Returning to Castelldefels, I get to the swimming pool just as it opens at 7.00 am and have my 1,500 m swim.  By the time I am done, having had a shave and completed more thorough ablutions, the café is open so that I can have MY special cup of tea and do a little desultory writing in my ever-present note book.  

I then go directly from the pool café to Bellvitge hospital in Hospitalet de Llobregat for my monthly Control where a single drop of blood, from the tip of the middle finger of my right hand, is tested to see that the viscosity of my blood is within the limits set to encourage the disappearance (the gradual disappearance) of the thrombosis.  I am then given my schedule of rat poison (because that is what I am taking in reality, dress it up with scientific names as they might) for the next month.

Once I am released from the hospital I then make my way back to Castelldefels to go to my first Catalan lesson of the week.  At 12.30, my lesson ended, I make my way into the centre of Castelldefels to go to the framers to discuss how best to bring to concrete fruition a little idea for a ‘picture’ that I have devised.   

Its realization all depends on how much the framer’s bits and pieces that are essential to make it work, cost.  And I should have a price in my mind beyond which I will not go.  There again, ‘should’ is not ‘will’!

The afternoon can be given up to writing.  My publications are lagging behind schedule and I need to get them back on course.

-oOo-

Being up so early, I heard a healthy chunk of the Today programme on Radio 4 and therefore caught the ‘puff’ for Melvyn Bragg and the new book celebrating the twentieth anniversary of ‘In Our Time’.  I made the serious mistake of looking it up in Amazon and bought it at once!  In hardback!  It looks exactly the sort of thing that I like – with pictures!   

 I will review it in a later blog, as soon as it arrives!