LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 34 – Saturday, 18th APRIL

 After ‘Moppy’ had done her work; the Guardian Quick Crossword had been completed; my blend of Earl Grey and English Breakfast tea drunk, it was time for my walk, accompanied by the comforting fatuousness of ‘Saturday Live’ on BBC Radio 4.  I also had a purpose other than gentle exercise.  I was looking for raw material to serve as ‘illustration’ for my PIHW Chapbook, Coasts of Memory.

     As I have often bewailed in the past, I have little technical ability in drawing or painting and so I have to rely on photography to get me out of illustrative predicaments.  The situation is made somewhat worse because of the lockdown that obviously restricts my range of subject matter.  I have therefore taken the ‘pleasure in small things’ approach and told myself that I am perfectly capable of finding variety in restriction: from the terrace on the third floor to the far wall of the communal swimming pool, my area of activity might be limited, but it is (I tell myself) rich in illustrative possibilities.  I have therefore taken photos and they await my ruthless editing!

The one shining light of Trump’s ‘Presidency’ is that he is terrified of being a ‘one term’ holder of that office; every other thinking person’s terror is that he should be anything else, after all it is going to be difficult enough to sort out the human, reputational, financial, moral, institutional, legislative, aesthetic and political morass that he will have left after a single term, let alone the horror of his being allowed to play with the USA for an extra four years!

     It is obvious that Trump has decided to stop at absolutely nothing in his aim to retain power and the latest horrific indication of the depths to which he is prepared to sink is evidenced by his encouraging demonstrations against some states’ lockdown restrictions. 

     Trump’s base ‘base’ is essentially rural rather than urban and with his encouragement of the grouping of extreme right sets opposing health and science predicated lockdown, he is hoping for a conflict that he thinks might show him to be the champion of the voice of freedom against those (Democratic) governors who are seeking to repress the true liberties of right thinking Americans to court death and carry guns – and you can scatter as many quotation marks around in that last sentence as your liberal sensibilities dictate!

     That in a time of a catastrophic pandemic the Presidential Egoist can think of fostering something like Civil Disobedience if not Civil War would be unbelievable if it were not Trump.

     On an incidental note: if (please god) Trump is a one-term President, can you see him attending the inauguration of the new Democratic President?  Can you see him visibly handing over power?  What excuse will he make not to attend?  How will he even be able to get through the transition period when he should meet his successor?  If you think back to the intensely embarrassing meetings with Obama when he looked like a naughty schoolboy with a stupidly long tie, what are the ones going to be like with the person who beat him?  My mind finds it difficult to place Trump in any meetings that emphasise his failure to hold on to office.  How can anyone as thinly narcissistic as he bare it?  The thought is something that keeps me warm at nights!

     Talking of narcissists, how long is it going to be that our airwaves are going to be free of the bumbling banter of the virus courter?  He has signally failed to resign because of his dereliction of duty in wilfully becoming infected and I dread to think of the fawning adulation of the gutter press when he bumbles into view, bravely leading our country to destitution and ignominy, after the searing affliction of his virtually self-inflicted illness.

     Meanwhile we have the political chancer, Matt Beckett, the ethic-free (give us a job!) pitiful holder of the Secretary of State for Health portfolio refusing to give straight answers to the almost criminal shortages of PPE for our front line health workers, or indeed anything else of crucial interest to the remaining virus free part of the population of the UK.  I wonder how he is going to convince us that there are 100K tests by the end of the month?  We can dispense with truth, that has never bothered him in the past as he has changed his principles as often as his underwear, so how is he going to square the circle so that he can keep his comfy job.  His past record shows that he is capable of the most egregious U-turns, so I await his contortions.  Resignation will never come easy to one who has swallowed so many of his scruples to get where he is at present.  In some ways it could almost be funny to watch his antics, but people will die because of his incompetence, so smiles will be inappropriate.  Perhaps they might be allowed as long as they are sardonic!

After a fairly glum start to the day there are brief periods now when sunshine is squeezing out from behind the clouds.  There are distinct patches of blue and that bodes well for a sunny later afternoon.  I live in hope.

The PPE situation now seems desperate in the UK.  The weekend is the time when certain medical institutions will run out.  This is an utter disgrace and if it does happen then the Health Minister must resign immediately and the rest of the tossers in the so-called bloody government.  And the fact that worthless trash like IDS and the unutterable David Davis are pontificating about the present crisis after their assiduous cheerleading into the last one over Brexit is more than depressing.

     I am very well aware that trying to get anything like efficiency and normality in a crisis situation is difficult and there has to be leeway for the unexpected, but the necessity for basic supplies is fundamental and that is where this so-called government has failed so signally.  Why are our deaths so high?  Why did we wait so long before instituting the lockdown?  Why are basic materials in short supply?  So many questions to which our political leaders have no real answers.

     Why do we tolerate them?

Lean times?

 

 

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I do admire a country where it has the good grace to rain during the night.  This morning, bright sunlight and a brisk 14C to stimulate the circulation of the blood.

Although wittering on about the weather is enticing, it is not really apropos to what I should be talking about.  Viz. The Great Diet.  Again.

Although it feels as if we have been under the Self-Denying Ordinance for most of our lives, it is in fact, merely five days that we have been watching what we have been eating.  Five bloody days!  And this is supposed to go on months!

While the horror of that last statement has time to settle, snake-like, on the tenderer parts of my brain, the other parts of my brain which are not dedicated to thinking of food and drink wondered about my use of the phrase Self-Denying Ordinance and where I first heard it and what it meant, rather than what I have made it mean in my little universe.  When I use the phrase I take it indicate a signal piece of self restraint: like buying a stalls seat for the Opera rather than the front of the Dress Circle or buying the paperback version of an Art Exhibition catalogue rather than the hardback.  You know, pulling back from excess until it hurts!

I remember that the phrase is somehow connected to the Civil War and must surely be something that the Roundheads invented, as it lacks the self-indulgence of the Cavaliers, as they were not noted for the self-denying aspects of life.  I assumed that it was to do with Religion (with a capital ‘R’) and therefore Oliver Cromwell and one or all of the Puritans, Levellers, Ranters, Anabaptists, Quakers and my favourite of the sects, the Muggletonians.  I’m sure that I have missed some of the groups out that contributed to The World Turned Upside Down, but I am impressed with what I can dredge (albeit without much further detail) from my memory when I really try!

So, as a sort of knowledge is ever but a few brief clicks away, I Googled the phrase and found out (reminded myself?) that the Self-Denying Ordinance of 1645 was originally a bill which stated that no Member of Parliament (The House of Commons or The House of Lords) could hold any command in the army or navy.  Thus, neatly stopping inept (and King supporting) nobles from continuing command of any military force.  Unsurprisingly the House of Lords, composed as it was entirely of nobles, rejected the bill and a compromise bill was written which stated that parliamentarians from both houses who were military commanders would resign from their commissions, but could be reappointed.  This winnowing of the command of the military facilitated the eventual formation of the New Model Army.

Which is all very interesting (at least to me) but apart from the few minutes Googling, did not take my mind off what else there was to eat.

Don’t get me wrong, it is not as if we have done without lunch.  We went to our local restaurant, the one with the un-paralleled views of the Med and had a three-course meal!

My starter was a salad (good!) of quinoia (good?) green leaves, carrot and cherry tomato  (very good!) with feta cheese (baddish!)  I restrained myself from adding oil and ate no bread.  My second course was prawn and spinach stuffed sea bass (good! good! good!) and the drink that accompanied it was cold water (superb!)  No wine, no bread, no extra oil!  A positively saintly meal, at least in calorie terms.

And yet, I hear a faint clearing of the throat, as if the unasked question about the desert were hanging in the air.  Ah, yes, the desert.

OK, to be absolutely truthful I happened to catch a glimpse of the tart of the day that was based on Ferrero Rocher (extraordinarily bad!), and I was hooked.  And I did eat.  But, as a sort of culinary justification I did also eat half a slice of melon and, surely that must count for something in my over-weight defence?

I accompanied the meal with a 1.5L bottle of water and I drank the lot.  I am sure that this is excellent, but perhaps we should not have gone straight from the meal to the shops as Toni wanted to buy an auger.  And I am prepared to bet that that is the first time that I have used that word in an ordinary piece of writing.  I think that the only other time that I have found a use for such a word was in a distant crossword, where I can remember (with the skeleton of two letters already in place) thinking to myself that I knew what the word was and then feeling very smug with myself for so doing!  Anyway, the search for the auger was also matched by my more urgent search for a toilet.  There is a lesson to be learned there, I think.

As the daylight fades and twilight steals up on the dieter, the temptations of the night approach.  I don’t know why it is that darkness encourages hunger, but it does, and sometimes, no often, no always, a piece of raw cauliflower or carrot does not send the demons of hi-carb desires back into the shadows.

I am sure that Toni is not going to let me forget my desert backsliding, and it is right that he does so.  I am hitching my lack of sliming motivation to the more Puritan regimen that Toni has adopted.

Here’s a drink (of water) to the world turned upside down and self-denying ordinance!

Cheers!

-o0O0o-

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