LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 63 – Sunday, 17th May

Today is, apparently, the last day of the daily ritual of applauding the front line workers at 8pm.  Is this a significant moment?  Why are we stopping?  The virus is still killing and infecting and, while the numbers are decreasing, there is no real end in sight for Covid-19 in Spain.

     I can understand the need for progress and also the need to give confidence and assurance to a population that is truly fed up with the lockdown.  But, and it’s a big but, the virus is not confined by borders or political pronouncements.  Reactions to the virus can be spun, but the reality of infection and death transcend spin – as I fear we will discover in a couple of weeks time when the full effects of the loosening of the restrictions become clear.

     As the weather gets steadily warmer people are becoming more relaxed about the dangers of the virus.  Youngsters are acting as if they are immune and the very young, usually with their parents, are rarely masked.  I think that there is a real problem with the basic knowledge of transmission.  There was a very revealing piece of film where a group of people went to a buffet with one of the group having a small amount of colourless fluorescent paint cupped in his hand.  The group had their meal and then they were checked with a UV light to see how many had evidence of the paint.  It was everywhere: hands, faces, tables, glasses, clothes, everywhere!  If kids are asymptomatic you cannot expect them to behave in a way that is going to limit infection.  And without testing we are running on a prayer anyway.

I took my part in the last 8pm clap for the front line workers.  It may be my sentimentality, but I thought that there were more of us this evening than usual.  I wonder if our little neighbourhood will take any notice of the ‘last’ element of the clap and just go on doing it regardless.  After all, the thanks are still due because the situation is still there.  And even if we didn’t have the bloody Covid-19, health workers are worth applauding anyway!

Tomorrow is the penultimate video lesson of the Catalan course that has been interrupted by the virus.  I cannot, with the best will in the world, say that the lessons have been a success and I think that most learners and teachers have written off the rest of this year.  As our little school is for adult education I think that many of the ‘students’ are apprehensive about social distancing and they have written off the year already.

      We have been offered (as far as I can tell) free access to the course for next year, except were we to want to progress, our school does not offer the next level in Catalan so we would have to go to another centre.  Don’t get me wrong, my level of Catalan is nowhere near the level that we are ‘doing’ this year, never mind about going up a level.

     Tomorrow is conversation!  I hope to go that there is at least one other student joining the class to take some of the pressure off me.  You see, even though I am ritually humiliated in these classes, I do not stop going.  There is a part of the fellow teacher feeling for our tutor, one has to give one’s support even if it is not exactly what one wants to do.

     Let the linguistic mispronunciation fall where it will, I will soldier on.  Or I could try and do a bit of work and a generous amount of revision? 

     Nah!  Wing it!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 25 – Maundy Thursday in Holy Week, 9th APRIL

Yesterday I was shown disturbing pictures of the build up of traffic in Madrid suggesting that numbers of people were taking advantage (how appropriate that word now sounds) of the ‘holiday’ period to escape from the city to the coast and to second homes.  While I can fully understand the need to find something more congenial than the cramped inside of a city during a pandemic, as someone living in a costal resort, exactly the sort of place that city dwellers target during holidays, I have to pray that Barcelona does not follow the lead of Madrid!

     To be fair, Barcelona does not appear to have followed other parts of Spain, and the indications of traffic flow are markedly lower in Catalonia than in other parts of the country.  But tomorrow, with the Bank Holiday of Good Friday and the whole Easter weekend and Easter Monday, the temptation to get out and take the sun in the freedom of a coastal resort might be too much to resist.  I sincerely hope that Barcelona has not looked at the slackness of Madrid and thought what the hell, what’s good for the goose etc. and determined to come and visit us tomorrow.

     I read this morning that the head of the National Trust in Britain has issued a statement reinforcing the advice of not visiting either the buildings in the Trust or the open spaces.  I wait to see if this advice will be followed.

     Again, I do know that we are privileged in terms of space: Toni can be working on his remote distance learning course on the computer in the living room, whereas I can be working on my computer on the third floor- two distinct spheres of influence!  How many other couples are so fortunate!  The lure of the coast and the sea is strong, and it is tantalizingly near, I can see a scrap of sea (if I try hard) from the terrace, but has been resisted – but we are not cramped together in a small flat.

     I know that for some people the addition of danger adds a piquancy to experience and the idea that something is forbidden adds a kick of anti-establishment adrenaline, but going against the Covid-19 restrictions is more surely akin to drunk driving: you put yourself in danger but you also endanger others.  Like the tag line on the safety belt adverts in cars, “You know it makes sense!”  And, it isn’t for ever.

     But just how long will it be for people of my age?  We Baby Boomers have been speculating how long our isolation may reasonably last and the general consensus is that we will be well into the summer before restrictions are relaxed.  That is a more than sobering thought.

     In a town like Castelldefels, where our USP is a long beach, bars, restaurants and hotels, to lose Easter and a chunk or even the whole of the summer is disastrous.  I wonder just how many restaurants will re-open when they are allowed to reopen.  A few had well established take-away services before the crisis, but the rest will have had to think on their feet and find customers at a time when advertising is difficult.  Even in the best of times, the ownership of restaurants is, to put it mildly, fluid; in times of crisis?  Who knows?

     Our major shopping centre Anec Blau, was undergoing a major restructuring of a mystifying thoroughness.  Most of the shops had had to close causing economic chaos.  Construction has been postponed, the centre is not ready to reopen any time soon and the crisis must have added complications that we can only guess at.

     Castelldefels is not poor.  We have inhabitants who are very, very rich and some who are world famous e.g. Messi – but reconstruction of a thriving seaside resort will take time, effort and imagination.  And money.  Lots of money.  I shudder to think how all of that is going to be managed.

     Still, one has to be optimistic.  The most positive element in this crisis is the way that we have all rallied round the efforts of the services that are working to keep us going and to keep us healthy.  It would be a disaster beyond the crisis if that fellowship is squandered in the remaking of normality after the crisis is over.  Though, it would be wise to remember never to underestimate the stupid selfishness that a population is capable of – just look at the political trash that have been elected!

Today is National Theatre Premiere Day, or rather evening.  This evening the NT At Home is showing their production of Jane Eyre https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/whats-on at 7.00pm UK time and 8.00pm for us and it will be available for the next week, until the next production to be aired.

     I am really looking forward to this production because it seems to be in the tradition of Nicholas Nickleby that I saw in a RSC production in London: an ensemble production which used clever theatrical devices, that only work in the theatre.  It will be interesting to gauge my reaction to genre specific techniques in another media type.  I remember a production of Macbeth with McKellen and Dench which transferred from The Other Place to the much larger venue of the Main Theatre in Stratford: it didn’t work, it needed the intimacy of a smaller venue.  But when the acclaimed production was televised, it worked again because the closeness of the camera restored the lost intimacy.

 The production was excellent, theatrical in the best sense of the word.  A small musical ensemble and a versatile company utilizing the open multi-level simple staging.  The best thing you can say about a theatrical production of a novel is, at the end of the performance, you feel like reading the novel itself.  I urge you to go to the website and see the production for yourself.  And don’t forget to leave a donation at the end of the performance if you have enjoyed it!

Today’s poem is in a half finished state, but what I have was ‘easier’ than the poem yesterday which I cant help feeling is going to be hacked around in the next stage of editing!  But that is half the fun.  If I manage to get something on the poetry blog tonight then it will be on smrnewpoems.blogspot.com

Tomorrow, Good Friday, when in all past years I have made my annual visit to a church.  Not this year.  This year is indeed, different.  So different.

Relief?

Today is the Day of the Catalan Examination!

After some laconically frenetic revising last night, I felt that I was reasonably confident about being able to flannel my way through yet another examination.  My piece of (memorized) writing (suitable for all examinable occasions) was almost in my personal brain RAM; my knowledge of accents was insecurely in place; my ability to translate was its usual rocky self – in other words, I was prepared!

     I eschewed my customary early morning swim in favour of some desultory looking over my notes (and completing the Guardian quick crossword, because, yes) and resentfully and fearfully girding my cycling loins (almost literally, the cross bar on my bike is set intimidatingly high) and setting forth to be examined.

     And the school was closed because of Corvid-19.  Irony, which is ever my companion in arms, strikes again!  To be fair, I am not sure whether I am relieved or annoyed.  Admittedly, I did not want to take the exam because of the almost inevitable ignominy that awaited me on the handing back of the papers; yet, on the other hand the exam is merely delayed and, frankly, I do not see myself getting stuck-in to more revision just because one of The Horsemen has gifted me a little more time.  My indolence in such things extends to encompass any temporal largesse!

     The Generalitat (the government of Catalonia) had issued statements to the effect that schools would be closed, but when I phoned my particular institution yesterday I was told that they simply didn’t really know.  Yes, they would be shut from Monday of next week, but tomorrow, who could say?  Well, say they didn’t, and it was left to me and my trusty cycle to make a fruitless journey through strangely unpopulated streets to my deserted place of education.  The silence was even more pronounced because the infants and junior school that adjoins our establishment was also closed – and believe you me, that place is never, ever silent.  Not even close to it, whatever time of the day you pass by! 

     My arrival there reminded me of the time I emerged from Westminster tube and instantly felt that something was wrong, but couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was.  Then it struck me: I was looking at the Houses of Parliament in silence.  No traffic, no sound.  A moment later a policeman approached me and suggested that I return whence I came, immediately, down the steps and away.  There had been a bomb scare and the environs of parliament had been cleared.  It remains in my memory as a deeply unsettling memory, as does the memory of scuttling away down the steps and getting on the next tube out and away!

     This time there was sound and there were people, just fewer than usual.  As a Brit you sometimes get suckered by the fact that many shops open at 10.00 am and not at the more usual earlier hours of the UK.  As my class starts at 9.00 am ordinarily closed shops can look more sinister than they actually are.  And did!

     But, the important point is that my linguistic reputation gets to survive for a little longer, though I am aware that reality will catch up with me eventually!

The house next door continues to be the source of sound with roller blinds being installed and the threat of building blocks in the front garden waiting as a concrete reminder (see what I did there!) of sonic tension to come.  They have been working on the house since before Christmas and there is no end in sight!

Talking of ‘ends in sight’, I don’t know if it is tempting fate to say it, but some of the containment measures taken by governments appear to be working.  The outbreak in China might be in the process of being contained; Korea has had a drop in cases, it might be working!  Britain has been criticized as doing too little too late, but with Conservatives (especially the current toxic breed) presently in power, what can you expect?

     There has been, we have been told, no case of Covid-19 in Castelldefels, and the precautions that are currently being taken will limit our exposure.  It is a pity that the leader of the free world and the leader of the UK are both characters without integrity and scruple, but we have to work with what we have.  One can help thinking that the chant “LBJ! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today!” that haunted (rightly) the warmongering president will resurface after this crisis develops and people start looking for people to blame.  In a way Trump has forestalled this process in his shocking (for reasonable people) address to the American people when he referred to a ‘foreign virus’ and started blaming the EU, while at the same time lauding his own financial ‘policy’.  He truly is repulsive!

     In the tranquillity of my own living room, with the sun shining through the windows and the comfortingly domestic sound of the washing machine from the kitchen, it is easy to think the coronavirus crisis (should those words have capital letters?) as far away as the other plagues, rather than something on our doorsteps waiting for entry.  The measures being taken are unprecedented in my experience, and they give a weighty pause for thought.  Though, having said that, I cannot say that the crisis has changed the way I live yet: the cancelled lessons are the first ‘real’ effect.  The Liceu has a new production of Lohengrin, and with the new restrictions on large gatherings they had said that the first few performances would be cancelled, however the performance I am scheduled to attend is at the end of March, just after the ban comes to an end.  I thought that my luck was in, but an announcement yesterday informed us that all performances had been cancelled.  Museums, art galleries, theatres and sporting events have been cancelled, or games will have to be played behind closed gates.  So I am affected by the restrictions, but can continue to live in virtually normality.  It remains to be seen whether or not the present restrictions will be sufficient to contain the virus, one hopes so!

    

    Meanwhile, time gained must be put to good use.  I am now drafting out two poems: the memory poem continues to be elusive and it has been joined by a poem about wasps – well, I thought I would branch out a bit from flies!