It
is getting progressively more difficult to tell that there is a pandemic still
raging in this country. A couple of days
into whatever stage we have reached so far and people are behaving, for the
most part, perfectly normally.
People generally wear masks in town,
though along the paseo they are very much in a minority. The tables on the terraces of the restaurants
are more generously spaced out and now there are tables inside the restaurants
as well.
It is still difficult to tell how many of
the smaller shops are going to open after the virus has finally been dealt with. The supermarket that I went to yesterday and
which is closing down has been failing for some time and most of us are amazed
that it has managed to last this long.
My
early morning swim is now part of a regime again, it doesn’t take long to slip
back into sometime established ways, though it might be difficult to get the
same slot in which to swim each day. We
are only allowed to book up to 2 activities at a time and as there are only
five lanes in the pool and one person to a lane, it is going to be difficult to
bag a spot at the same time each day. So
far, I have been lucky and I am OK until Thursday, but I think that I am going
to have to get used to using the kitchen calendar more noting the different
times when I have been able to get into the pool.
I met two teachers from the British School
just before my swim and they told me that the lessons have been on line for
some time and that they will not be going back until September at the earliest.
In the UK the bunch of inadequate wankers
that make up the government have done yet another U-turn about their insistence
of kids returning to school in England before the end of the summer. They have, at last, done the special sum of
cutting class size and finding physical space to put double the number of
classes in the space that previously accommodated half the number. To say nothing of the extra teachers that are
needed to make this happen.
In education we are, of course, used to
politicians telling us to do something and then ignoring the advice of experts
saying why what these ideological purists want is simply not possible. The real problem is that, with the cabinet of
no-talents that Johnson has formed around himself, every department is failing
and as chaotic as education, to say nothing of the writhing incompetence that
the Home Office has come to personify.
It is intensely depressing to think that the immediate future of my
country is in such inept hands.
And then there’s Brexit. Dear god!
