What a legacy!

 

What people say can live after them.  From the self-consciously orotund phrases (with a cynical ear to history) of the odious Churchill to the simple quotidian statement of General Patton, there are words that sum up a personality and proclaim that character to the ages.

     I hadn’t realised that my own deathless claim to verbal immortality had already been established.  This was made clear to me by the giving of two cellophane wrapped assemblages given to me yesterday as part of my birthday presents from The Family.

     The first illustrated my response to being asked what I would like to drink when we go out for a meal, “Una cerveza sin alcohol, gaseosa, y un vaso grande para mezclar, por favor.”  (“A non-alcoholic beer with Gaseosa and a large glass to mix them in, please.”)  Gaseosa is a sugar-free, sweetish, fizzy drink used by itself and as a mixer.  So, the first assemblage had a chunky ‘real’ looking beer glass, a can of 0% beer and a plastic bottle of Gaseosa.

     The second assemblage illustrated my end of meal instructions: “Un té negro, con dos bolsitas, 

y un poco de leche fría aparte, por favor.  (“A black tea, with two teabags and a little cold milk apart, 

please.”)  Beneath the cellophane I could see an impressive mug (with lid) at the side of which two 

teabag ends could be seen and a small jar of milk (with instruction not to drink it because it had 

not been in the fridge for some time!).

     So, that is me, summed up in two phrases.  I should have expected something like this because 

Toni’s two nephews look forward to my opening my mouth and then chorus my requests with me.

     And so, my birthday (a ‘significant’ one, if you care about such things) with only a visit to the 

Opera in the Liceu in Barcelona to see a lack-lustre production of Don Giovanni with Christopher 

Maltman in the evening to make the day even remotely significant.

     The experience was out of the ordinary of course, because of all the precautions that the theatre 

had taken to make our visit ‘safe’.  The number of audience members was restricted to 50% of the 

possible seats available and we were seated in a little island of isolation with adjacent seats vacant.  

 We had to wear masks for the duration of the performance; there were no refreshments, no 

paper programmes – and scene changes were done with the safety curtain not brought down, 

partly to encourage us not to leave our seats during the interval!

     I wish that I could say that the music transcended all the safety distractions – but it didn’t.  

 The production failed to engage with me, it seemed static and under sung.  I really wanted to enjoy 

it because it is all too likely that the increasing stringency of the measures to limit the spread of 

Covid will impact on the rest of the season – a season I might add with a late start.

     We are now under curfew (10pm to 6am) and there is talk of limiting people to their 

municipalities.  Although I live in the province of Barcelona, I do not live in the city and so 

restrictions will make it impossible to travel to the Opera House.  Still, it hasn’t happened yet 

and given the contradictory confusion of the stream of instructions that we have had so far, it 

might well be that oddities like opera-going will survive and I will have a ‘safe corridor’ to culture.

Spain has now had its ‘Callous Cummings’ moment where a dinner party for 150 people was held 

in Madrid hosted by the rich for the politicians and the corruptible.  Given that we mere mortals 

cannot go to closed restaurants and bars; cannot gather in groups of more than 6; have to be home 

by 10pm, you can take your choice of hypocrisies that the Great and The Good have illustrated by 

their ostentatious cavalier behaviour which, of course, spits in our collective faces.

     The reactions have been predictable: the government supporting press (right and left) failed to 

carry any information about this disgraceful event.  It was left to social media to spread the news 

and force the criminals to respond.  Will we get any more than platitudes?  Doubtful.  Justice in 

Spain is politicised and mere innocence will fail to get you freedom if you are perceived by the 

governing elite to be threatening their positions; glaring guilt will fail to get you convicted if you 

are part of that elite.

     To my knowledge none of the trough-swillers at that event has attempted a variation on the “I 

was testing my eyesight” by trying to read the menu card in the artificial light of the crystal 

chandeliers!  But give them time and they will come up with something equally blatant and insulting.

      Meanwhile, of course, our errant ex-king is still skulking in the shadows hoping that paternity 

and corruption cases will fade into the background – much like his son-in-law who is allegedly in 

a women’s prison (sic.) for his thieving.  Every other high and mighty fallen on hard times dweller 

in pokey also has to deal with photographic evidence of the degradation showing them in prison 

fatigues playing cards or something equally banal, but not with this particular prisoner.   

Not even a hint of evidence that he actually is in prison.  Makes you think.

The latest piece of idiocy in Catalonia concerns the Guardia Civil (the police guys with funny hats and guns) where there have been 20 arrests connected with the demonstrations and the financial organization thereof in support of our president Puigdemont who is at present in exile in Belgium.  This is a serious matter, but the general appearance of this operation (given the name “Volhov” by the Guardia Civil, referring to a battle during the Second World War by the División Azul which comprised Spanish soldiers fighting for the Nazis!  Such sensitivity!) has descended into farce by the claims of involvement of Putin and the threat of Russian soldiers being made available to Puigdemont and so on, into the realms of fantasy, QAnon and the delusions of dedicated conspiracy theorists.  Twitter and the social media are awash with spoofs and derisive comments on the latest putsch against Catalonia.

     Spain is not averse to looking ridiculous in the international court of public opinion, as witness their hapless defence of police brutality over the referendum of the 1^st October 2017 and the imprisonment of the organizers, some of whom are STILL IN PRISON.  For organizing a referendum.  In which millions of Catalans participated.

 

Such is the fluidity of the situation at the moment that the restrictions that I alluded to above are no longer a full description of what we are expected to observe.  It seems as if the government is trying to get as near as possible to a full lockdown without actually having one. 

     This is the sort of thing that the mendacious Conservative government tried with the situation in Northern Ireland and the attempts to convince us that there was a way to have some sort of Brexit and not to have a land border or a border somewhere: trying to convince people about something that was an impossibility, but faffing around to try and find the right linguistic display to make a contradiction appear smooth and joined-up.

     It is yet another variation of the “Delete all and insert” approach to debate that I remember from my days in General Body Student Meetings in University.  Even when agreement on some weasel formulation was found, it invariably came to pieces when confronted with practical reality.  It was a valuable Life Lesson to see specious agreement in action and to watch it later fail.  In ordinary life, instead of saying “Delete all and insert” the ‘compromise’ is usually preceded by, “What about if we” – but the end results (agreement/failure) are the same.

     We are still not sure about the exact details but, we are now expected to say within our municipalities during the weekends, so if the coastal resort of Castelldefels is packed on Saturday and Sunday with people from god knows where – what precisely are we supposed to do?  Our 10pm to 6am curfew continues.  Large stores are to be closed, and so on tinkering around the edges of what is actually necessary.

     While encourage not to make ‘unnecessary’ journeys, we are not banned from going where we like, within our province and within our municipality.  Mostly.  My swimming pool appears to be open for the foreseeable future (about three days in Covid terms!) and I can continue to take my bike rides, though the end part of my usual route, which is technically in Sitges, may be out of bounds during the weekends.

     As usual we are presented with yet more new rules about which we have a sketchy understanding at best – at a time when mistakes can and will be deadly!

 

Still, I have a new art book, and I have an active imagination, so no lockdown is going to contain me!

Know me and die!

Mao Zedong, he of the rotting teeth, lice infested body, venereal diseases and mass murders, had a succession of young women for sex and he regarded their infection as a sort of honour bestowed by his sick wonton largesse. 

I thought back to that disgusting dictator when Covid-riddled Trump appeared on the veranda of The White House and took off his mask so that he could infect those in his immediate vicinity who had not already fallen prey to his super spreader tendencies and who, alas, would not have access to the experimental, rare and expensive medical treatment that his 750 dollars of annual tax would come nowhere near to covering.

It is astonishing, humbling and terrifying, to watch a dedicated narcissist doing what he does best: thinking solely of himself in the glorious exclusion of everyone around him.  There is a sort of Neronic magnificence to his almost complete lack of empathy, humanity and consideration.

As I watched him gibbering away in his debased form of English, he also made me think of Samuel Butler’s strange anti-Utopian novel Erewhon (1872) where illness is considered a crime and where crime is treated as an illness.  This, almost perfectly, fits the world view of Trump where for him illness is just for ‘losers’ and crime (as illustrated by so many characters in the harlequinade of depravity that constitute his entourage) is regarded as something that should be treated with leniency and understanding and is easily excused and even pardoned.

Trump’s brush (as he would like us to consider it) with Covid merely shows that all you need is strength of character to defeat the virus.  The 210,000 (and growing) dead Americans were weaklings.  And didn’t have helicopter access to the 24/7 state-of-the-art medical attention that Trump had.  But that is a minor point compared to the element of confidence that is so much more effective against viral infections than any mere medication.

After four years of not believing the degradation and mendacity that have been keynotes in the dystopian presidency of Trump I am exhausted by disgust.  I find it hard to keep up the level of contempt that Trump so richly deserves as yet another parody of leadership is beamed into our homes. 

The lies, the contradictions, the weasel words, the insults, the corruption, the vulgarity, the sheer worthlessness of the whole Trump enterprise with the loathsome Republican reptilian political power junkies that acquiesce in his continuing pollution of his role are all draining.  I know that four more years of this buffoon will be insupportable and I sincerely hope that Biden and Harris manage the landslide that they, that anyone other than Trump and his discredited troop of filth, deserve.

The trouble with the Dumping of Trump (please god) will be that all the attention, at least from my point of view, will then be focused on the end of the year and Brexit and our own home-grown liar and narcissist trying to spin it as anything other than a disaster.

Trump and Johnson are united by their lust for power and attention and by their complete lack of something coherent to do with it.  Neither has an ideology, apart from the glorification of themselves, they don’t really know what to do.  This is why Cummings is so important to Johnson because he can supply a mirage of possibilities that Johnson assumes (he is far too lazy to question and understand) will give enough direction to focus his pitifully short attention span and make him look as though he has vision.

Johnson’s linking of the present dangerous times to the post war Labour government’s belief in making a New Jerusalem is an insult to the cross-party endeavour that looked beyond the end of the war as the time to put brave plans into operation. 

Johnson has read a speech.  He hasn’t thought about what society he wants at the end of this pandemic.  He hasn’t worked on ideas, sat down with experts, felt the enthusiasm that something better must emerge from a time of struggle and danger.  Johnson uses words like thin glue on a fragile house of cards: he knows nothing and believes nothing to make plans realities.

Trump and Johnson were presented with a disaster.  Their job as leaders was to keep people safe.  They have both failed.  Failed spectacularly.  Hundreds of thousands of people have died because two empty chancers have not cared enough to give time, thought and determination to do the basic parts of their jobs.

Mao killed millions.  The only thing stopping Trump and Johnson from doing the same is opportunity.  Unchecked, shoddy populists like them will whittle away at our freedoms, will act with growing autocratic assumption and will destroy.  They have already been devastating in their negativity.  At least with Trump there is the opportunity to dump him and to start the process of normalization, with Johnson he has years and an 80 majority and Brexit. 

I weep for my country and pray that our institutions are hardy enough to withstand the onslaught that the political griffon of Johnsummings is likely to wreak on everything that I thought was secure and good.

 

I really can write myself into an apocalyptic frame of mind, typing fingers dance to depression.  So, let me lurch out from the darkness and find something lighter on which to end – whoops, there is a negative word if ever there was one.

I was phoned today by a very pleasant lady from the Liceu who gave me some details of how the new opera season is going to happen.  We have previously been told that there will not be as many people in the theatre and that we will not have to sit next to anyone and we cannot be guaranteed ‘our’ normal seats. 

It will be like joining the audience for a little-known ‘difficult’ modern opera where most people vote with their feet and reject any attempt to experience anything about the more esoteric and atonal music of the present day. 

There is always an audience when I go to the opera because I have a season ticket and therefore all the other holders of Torn A are in their seats whatever the opera actually is.  The first opera (actually on my birthday) is not obscure at all, it is Don Giovani and therefore it would normally have a full house.  It will be odd sitting in a performance of so famous an opera with Christopher Maltman as the Don with a sparse audience, it will be interesting to see if the ‘spaciousness’ affects the experience.

I cannot say that I am entirely jocose about going to the theatre at all.  The cases of Covid in Spain and Catalonia are, frankly, terrifying and I find it difficult to imagine how the Liceu is going to organize things so that they are even marginally ‘safe’.

To take a single example: the average age of opera goers is high and that puts us in the ‘at risk’ category and, most importantly, we also need to pee.  The toilets for our particular section of the Liceu are small and are usually crowded during the period before the performance and during the intervals.  Quite how this is going to be regulated without increasing the risk of infection (and middle-class violence) is going to be fascinating to observe!

As we will have to wear our masks during the performance, it will be important to chose a mask that is comfortable to wear for long periods of time and one that doesn’t steam up my glasses too much!

But these are problems that have a gloriously musical ending, so I don’t care too much, and look forward with what positivity I can muster to enjoy myself.