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!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 60 – Thursday, 14th May

So, there will be border controls between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.  The obvious lie that they wouldn’t be needed parroted by the Brexit Barbarians is now crystal clear.  I read it in the Guardian, but I didn’t hear it anywhere else.  A key component of the fantasy agenda of the xenophobes now shown to be exactly that.  And what reaction has there been?  With Covid-19 in full fury we have different priorities and yet again, this Teflon Prime Minister and his discredited party will get away with it.

     Does anyone believe the government’s assertion that 100k test have regularly been given to actual people?  They have manipulated the figures by including multiple tests on the same individual and also including postal test sent out but not completed.  The basic trouble is that this government has a trust-worthy rating of precisely zero.  But, in the Trumpian times in which we live, what used to be generally accepted truth is now only one of a multitude of possibilities in a world of “alternative truths” or what used to be known as lies.

I went for my morning bike ride (no Plague Children for once) in light sunshine, but that was the best part of the day and I made an executive decision not to go for my evening jaunt and there was light rain and I am not fanatical about my cycling!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 57 – Monday, 11th May

The weather forecast for today was totally wrong and I therefore took advantage of what I understood to be freakish sunshine and went for my morning bike ride.  This time, I did not attempt to go into the Marina at Port Ginesta, being a law-abiding citizen of Castelldefels and not of Sitges, so I turned around at the end of the cycle lane on the Paseo and came home.

     After my dutifully disturbing read of the Guardian, it was then time for the sojourn to the shops.  Masked, and latex gloved I drove to Caprabo to get the ant traps and I attempted to do the rest of my shop there.  Not going to happen, so I slipped along to Lidl to finish off.

     In spite of the fact that Lidl did not have the 15-month mature Cheddar, I willingly settled for the soapier stuff and thought that Lidl is basically a better store than the small Caprabo that I frequent.  But, and there is always a but, there were things that I could get in Caprabo that are never available in Lidl; Lidl is never a one stop store, and that is a real disadvantage: when in lockdown you really do not want to visit multiple shops – you never know when you may come across a Plague Child or three!

     At the end of the shop, I was well and truly knackered, and not finding a parking space outside the house because of the bloody workers next door parking their various vans in OUR spaces was the final, energy sapping straw!

     I gave cursory help in unloading the car when it was parked in the front garden space, and then the heavy lifting, and the meticulous cleaning and putting away was done by Toni while I, literally, put my feet up!  [Are there too many commas in that sentence? Ed.]

It is almost lunchtime and we should be back in rain, if not thunderstorms, according to the weather forecast.  I wonder what the weather is like in the UK, and I wonder how people have reacted to the Blond Buffoon’s clear as mud instructions, suggestions, fugitive thoughts or whatever his broadcast was supposed to be.  It comes to something that, even after a scripted talk by the Buffoon, ministers have to be deployed at once to explain what he might have meant.  For example, who would have know that when the Buffoon uses the word ‘Monday’ he actually means ‘Wednesday’ – perhaps our Prime Minister (sic) is working to an Old Etonian (or Estonian, as my spellchecker wanted it) calendar where there is a languorous two-day difference from the Proles’ week to allow for an elite cushion of prevarication and indolence?

     My British friends and relations are not all of a type, but they are united in their contempt for the leaders who fail to take responsibility, fail to lead, fail to be imaginative, fail to save lives, and then treat us with condescension assuming that we have memories of the same capacity as the much maligned goldfish!  We have not!

     On a Catalan television station that had academics commenting on the Covid-19 Crisis, I noted one subtitle on a part of the discussion had something about the “extreme recklessness” of one group of nations in their approach to the virus.  Four states were listed: Mexico, Brazil, the United States of America – and the UK!  What exalted, socially responsible company to be in!  With equally delightful leaders!  God help us all, what have the Conservatives reduced us to?

     The fall out from the Sunday burbling meander to the nation continues with reactions of bafflement, amazement and disgust now augmented with further negative abstract nous being applied to the muddy exposition that was supposed to enlighten us this afternoon.

     When, by the way the Blond Buffoon going to accept responsibility for being Prime Minister?  He has a duty to appear before the press and answer questions; he has a duty to appear in Parliament and respond, he has a duty to justify his actions in a democratic society.

     We know that he cannot be trusted live to answer questions without there being an extensive amount of damage limitation after he has waffled his way through questions.  He was too frightened to be questioned by Andrew Neil; he fled into a fridge rather than be questioned by a television reporter; he has still not appeared before the Parliamentary Liaison Committee; he has missed PMQs; he prefers pre-submitted questions on Facebook to hard questioning from trained reporters; how often has he actually been in parliament – the parliament that he has tried so hard to limit, either by proroguing it for ILLEGAL lengths of time or by simply ignoring it?  Illness, holidays and cowardice – anything other than facing up to what he has done and is planning (if that is not too strong a word) to do, anything other than public accountability.

     And, in spite of the second highest death rate from Covid-19 IN THE WORLD; in spite of the obvious U turns, the evasions, the missed targets, the criminal lack of preparedness, he still has a reasonable amount of public support!

     I understand that, in times of crisis, there is an understandable “rallying around the flag” effect, to go with the authority that one knows to work together and get through this all, sort of thing – but with him and the motely crew that he has gathered about himself?  Really?  What, in any aspect of his past life, would encourage anyone to trust or rely on this proven liar and opportunist?

The rain-filled day has not materialized and so I will be able to go for my evening bike ride as well, making the culmination of an excitement-filled day – you have to take your pleasures where you find them in lockdown!

     But just to make sure that I do not become complacent in my joy, my computer upstairs has decided to half start.  I get the Apple logo and the little line underneath that gradually fills up to the half way point, and then it blacks out.  With all my years of experience of the wayward ways of computers (I will not frighten you with the nomenclature of the early version of Windows that made me the gibbering technological wretch that I am today) I have turned the computer off and will hope that turning it on again will make all things well.

     As far as computers are concerned, I am a simple, trusting, peasant soul when things go wrong.  And I comfort myself with the fact that I have two laptop computers (at least) that will keep me typing!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 45 – Wednesday, 29th APRIL

The Great Adventure! Or going to Lidl’s.  Such as the delights when you are in lockdown, you take your pleasures where you can define them!

     There are many more people around in Castelldefels, though as I passed over the motorway bridge the amount of traffic was small for the time of the day.

     Lidl was relatively full, though I didn’t have to wait before I entered the store to wash my hands in liquid alcohol and start shopping.  Most, but not all people inside the store were wearing masks, and I think that it is becoming a generational thing with the older shoppers being much more likely to be masked up rather than the young.

     As people are supposed to be alone when shopping, it does mean that there is a self regulating holdup when it comes to the checkout, and an infuriating lack of urgency by most when it comes to putting purchases inside bags to take away.

     I have to say that my trip to the shop was uneventful.  People were generally good in their distancing and there didn’t seem to be any shortages – apart form my 15 month mature Cheddar – luckily I stocked up during the last shop and so I still have a chunk left.

     I came back via the sea front to check on how people are working with the new regulations allowing a parent with up to three children to go for walks of less than 1km.  That was what most appeared to be doing as far as I could see, and there seemed to be fewer people on the beach, most were walking on the paseo.  It is still an oddly quiet and lonely activity to drive along the beach road, especially when the weather is encouraging people to come out and walk.

     As the weather steadily improves, it is going to be more and more difficult to keep people in their homes and I can’t help feeling that the government’s intention to allow adults to walk for exercise from this weekend is little more than following the feelings of the population rather than following the science.

     We do not have adequate testing in place in Catalonia and without testing then any successful and safe loosening of the restrictions is going to be a matter of luck rather than confident, evidence backed steps back to normality.  It is my fear that the increasing zest to get back to free movement is going to lead to an inevitable spike in infections and deaths in the autumn.

     For me, a sober assessment of my position would suggest that I fit a few of the criteria for ‘at-risk’ and I think that the onus of my continued existence is going to be squarely on what I think is an adequate approach to my own personal safety rather than going with the flow of governmental encouragement back to normality.

     There is much talk of the ‘new normality’, but too much of it is predicated on the basis that mere talk will make it true.  I do not think that many people have really come to terms with the length of time that there might realistically be before anything approaching previous levels of ordinary domestic intimacy will be back with us.  The double kiss of meeting is very much a thing of the past.  At the moment.  But old habits die hard and it doesn’t need much for people to forget that there was ever an interruption.

     Because we cannot see the virus, it takes an effort of the imagination to take danger seriously.  And it takes a steely determination to be constantly on guard; it is too easy to let your defences down momentarily, and that is all the virus needs to infect and threaten.

The pdf file for my chapbook, Coasts of Memory, is far too large to send via a simple email, and I have been looking to find ways to reduce the quality of the photos that are the major space takers.  I had thought that I would have to alter each of the photographic illustrations individually in some way or other, and then re-insert them into the document.  I tired to use one or two ideas and failed until I noticed that there was an option actually called ‘Reduce file size’ on the ‘File’ menu.  I wonder how many times I have opened that menu and simply not noticed that particularly helpful option!  I suppose it is better to have found it now rather than carry on with a series of futile half-arsed attempts at uninformed self-help!

     I have sent two copies of the file to Irene.  The first was a failure and there was no way that she was able to open it, I have sent the second and I have great hopes for that one.  I wait with trepidation!

     If the file is openable then I intend to send it out and ask recipients, if they feel so inclined, to contribute to NHS charities in their respective countries as payment. 

     This is an on-going enterprise!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 42 – Sunday, 26th APRIL

As I had to replenish my meds I visited the pharmacy this morning, giving me a representative view of the effects of the loosening of the lockdown in respect of children under 14.

   There were plenty of kids around and with the exception of one child none of them was wearing a mask and neither was the parent.  The kids were on scooters and bikes and in one incidence on a skateboard.  The paseo was fairly full and there were people on the beach.  The fact that this is notable in a seaside town speaks volumes for what we have been going through!

     Perhaps it is naive to suppose otherwise but the kids acted as though there was nothing wrong and that there had been nothing wrong.  If that totally understandable reaction of the kids is transferred to the parents, or even more disturbingly has come from the parents, then the virus results in a fortnight are going to give pause for thought.

     If things go according to the plan outlined by the Spanish government, then next week we may see a further loosening of the restrictions, and adults will be able to exercise outside too.  What exactly that might mean is not clear at the moment – but the idea of being able to go for a bike ride at least would be something to look forward to.

     Whatever happens in the immediate future, I think the idea of breaking down the in-house seclusion will gain an inevitable momentum that will be very difficult to reign in again.

     There are hundreds of people in Spain dying every day from Covid-19, the crisis is nowhere near over, but the mind set is looking towards some sort of conclusion.  And that is dangerous.

Meanwhile in Britain, tomorrow sees the return of the incompetent politician who went out of his way to get infected with Corvid-19 and who ‘leads’ a government that dithered at the start of the crisis ensuring the grotesque figures of infected and dead that we have now.

     One wonders how he will stage his return and then how he will divide his time between trying to explain what has gone on and working towards a no-deal Brexit.  I shudder for the future of my country.

     Talking of shuddering, Cummins the creepy power behind the empty throne is a participating member of what should be a purely scientific advisory committee.  The revelation in The Guardian about his membership over the weekend has sparked a controversy, but given the way that this government reacts to such things, I wonder just how much traction such a revelation will have.

The continuing story of printing out the final draft copy of The Coast of Memory has now reached epic proportions.  The problem is the ink.  God alone knows what sort of depraved electronic jiggery-pokery there is inside a printer that limits the usefulness of the ink in cartridges, but the woeful capacity of the replacements that I have used in the printing is beyond astonishing.  I suspect that there is some artificial limiting device that is able to override the obvious and audible reserves of ink in the cartridge and ensure that it is inoperable.  I refuse to give up, but the last printing was less than satisfactory.

     I might even end up going to a commercial outlet.  Except, of course, all of those are closed at the moment.  Ah, the travails of the would be publisher are never over!

And tomorrow is the next on line Catalan meeting!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 41 – Saturday, 25th APRIL

It has been a long time since I considered the implications of a word like sarcasm.  It was usually enough to remember the notable exchanges between Whistler and Wilde, especially the exchange of Oscar hearing Whistler say something clever and his then saying, “I wish I had said that!” and Whistler quipping, “You will, Oscar, you will!”  Now that is sarcasm at a high level: clever, witty and true!

     Which brings us to the ignoble piece of narcissistic trash that is the current president of the United States of America.  Even for him he has plumbed a new low in trying to pretend that his “Let them drink Dettol!” was an example of sarcasm, used as a form of ‘sarcasm’ to taunt the members of the press.  I watched that particular piece of the press conference and the idiot said it with what passes for sincerity with such an empathy-lacking sociopath such as himself to a member of his scientific advisory panel.  Trump is a crap actor in the same way as he is crap at all aspects of a life.  For what I saw to be sarcasm, Trump would have to be a sophisticated, articulate, Machiavellian, consummate thespian with high comedic skills.  Trump, that is not!

     I refuse to believe that Trump has any conception of irony or sarcasm, even though his entire existence and his present position exemplify the concepts!

The British total of dead from Covid-19 has now gone over the 20,000 that the scientific advisors said would be a limit that would indicate that we had done well to contain the disease.  So, we have done badly, because not only are we over the total of 20k but also the figures that we have at the present give only an indication of what the true numbers are and will be.

     Yet again the testing put in place by the government has failed as the testing opportunities have crashed for the second day running, one wonders how the government is going to spin that disaster in the sequence of disasters that have marked their management of the crisis.

Tomorrow in Spain is the release of the Plague Kids into society.  No one seems entirely sure of the exact rules for the release of the kids, but it will be interesting to see how the general population interpret them – at least from our limited viewpoint defined by the house!

     I will watch the news with a great deal of interest to see how the rules apply generally.

Today has been one of those days that simply seem to slip by and one wonders what one has done to justify the gift of 24 hours.  To be fair to me, I have (I think) come to a final draft for the chapbook, The Coast of Memory.  Tomorrow a final print out and checking and then, as far as I am concerned, it is done!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 29 – Easter Monday, 13th APRIL

In the best traditions of British Bank Holiday Mondays, it is pouring with rain here in Catalonia.  The one difference, I have always maintained, is the lack of spitefulness in holiday weather in Catalonia so that there is always a possibility of seeing some sunshine during the day – it may not be much, but it will be there.

     Today is the damp calm before the invisible storm as the majority of the working population in designated but non-essential jobs are urged to go back to work, taking what ever microbes they have with them into the crowded metros and buses and trains as they commute. 

     The fatal proof of this economic pudding will be in a couple of weeks time when the mortality figures for Covid-19 will be examined to see whether this ill-thought out initiative has been as deadly as feared.

     It is a salutary experience to discover that in purely economic terms, we citizens are merely collateral damage, acceptable wastage, the angels’ share, surplus to requirements or any other mealy mouthed form of words to cover up the judicial execution that such a policy is going to mean.

     ‘Mean’ is a key word for something linked to the crisis that I hope is fake news, but have been told is actual fact.  In Catalan history the year 1714 is a key one.  On the 11^th of September 1714 Catalonia surrendered to the Bourbon King Philip V after supporting the Hapsburg Charles in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714): Catalonia lost its distinctive independence as it was subsumed into the Bourbon Crown; Catalan was demoted as the language of government; the walls of Barcelona were destroyed; Catalan territories over the Pyrenees were lost.  And all round disaster; but, in the typically Catalan way, 11^th September became the National Day of Catalonia and 1714 a date which is constantly seen, I have a hoodie with the year on the back and the Catalan flag on the front!

     It is therefore pushing coincidences a little that the National Government of Spain sent Catalonia exactly 1,714 thousand masks to be used in the present Crisis!

     There is no love lost between Madrid and Barcelona and the measures that are going to come into place tomorrow have met with stiff opposition from Catalonia and the Basque Country, with the Catalan President asking Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, to send him the documentation of the scientific advice on which he based the decision to allow people to return to work.  Catalonia is in favour of a continuation of the strict lockdown, and I have to say that I think that is the more persuasive approach.

     Politicians should be increasingly nervous about the inevitable Public Inquiries that are going to take place when this crisis is over.  Their mismanagement is killing people and they should be held responsible.  And please, do not accuse me of pre-judging: hospitals without equipment are a simple fact; hospitals continuing to be poorly supplied with PPE are a simple fact; people dying are a simple fact.  The Conservatives have been in power for a decade: the fault lies with them – and they must pay.

The Poems In Holy Week (PIHW) period is now over and I have managed to write drafts of poems for each of the days, all of which can be found at smrnewpoems.blogspot.com  This year has been obviously different as we have been under strict lockdown and the ‘holiday’ aspect of the period has been a little ‘abstract’ to say the least.  It is a continuingly odd time as we are surrounded by literally deadly danger, yet continue to lead ordinary, safe, if isolated lives.  It is not like the Second World War where even my childhood home in Cathays in Cardiff was graced so I was told, with one (unexploded) German bomb: something tangible from the air raids.  But for us in Catalonia, at least where we are, it is like a continuing Phoney War; we go on with our restricted lives, and the medical horror is taking place elsewhere, out of sight, though vividly alive on television screens.  I think the unreality of it all is what is most obvious.  Yes, I know that the virus is real and the deaths and illness are actual, but our direct experience is limited to our own little inconveniences, not to a mortal struggle.  It’s odd and, as I’ve said, something where the actuality is difficult to take in.

     I have now printed out a draft booklet of the Poems in Holy Week and have done a few edits to get me going on the revision that they all have to undergo before publication.

     I have not yet decided on a title, but I’m working on it!  The most difficult part, I find, is writing an introduction for the collection – it forces me to look at the collection as an entity and write something that makes sense of the totality rather than individual poems.

     I also have to think about illustrations and that is always challenging.  Still, if nothing else, I do have time to consider these challenges!

The police in Spain have said that the ‘return to work’ for non-essential workers when off normally.  An interesting choice of word for anything but normal times where, surely, normality is not the way to respond to the extraordinary!

My faith in Catalonia took a knock today.  The poor weather lasted the entire day and I was not graced with even a moment of proper sunshine.  I am prepared to extend my faith to tomorrow – but anything after that and I will slip into heresy!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 13

Get your recriminations in early, list them, remember them and throw them at the guilty when the crisis is over and they are brought to justice.  As if!

     The latest piece of absurdity to surface here in Spain is that 650,000 Covid-19 test kits have been ordered that are not fit for purpose, it even says as much on the side of the packs!  They were ordered from China from a supplier not approved by the Chinese authorities who had previously provided a list of recommended suppliers - ignored by the Spanish health officials.

     A plane left Barcelona airport for Malaga packed with people who were not the regulation distance apart – how was this allowed?

     Couples are walking dogs together.  People are coming and going (using the back entrance) of the house next door as if there is no crisis to limit their actions in continuing the building work.

     There is no uniformity about travel and keeping a distance.  We have death figures higher than China and many of us fear that the commitment to total lockdown as the only solution to rising numbers is not entirely accepted by the government.  We MUST remember and hold them all to account.

Listening to The Now Show on Radio 4 last night, we were left in no doubt that the participants had all followed guidelines and were broadcasting the show from their respective homes.   

     As it was radio we do not know just how they were dressed and consideration of that factor is perhaps best left to imaginations more prurient than mine, but the major difference between the normal show and the crisis show was the lack of a live audience.  With humour this can be something of a disadvantage when the listener sometimes needs to hear the audience give a more audible response to the inward chuckle.  But it was a good show, with a few wry digs and a competent set of comedians.

     Other shows are also being broadcast where the participants are not in studio but are at home and if the show is for television, that is where the Crisis (capital ‘C’) comes into play.  News broadcasts now regularly feature experts and politicians who are ostentatiously following the rules and self-isolating, but such exposure presents them with a real problem: what, in a Crisis, to have in the background.

     For most people who wish to present a professional vision (literally!) of themselves, the problem is solved by having a background of books.  Books add gravitas, they show knowledge, they are Culture.  But.

     If I had an HD television and a recorder and had a way of enlarging the background, I feel it would be very interesting to see exactly what books these people have chosen to put themselves in front of.  There is a post-crisis PhD thesis there!

     Perhaps ‘chosen’ is the wrong word to use for some of them, in so far as they are perhaps sitting at their desks in their home ‘office’ and the bookcase is the one that happens to be behind them.  Or is it?

     There is a low-ish bookcase behind me as I type and I’ve just turned around to look at it.  It is not the background that I would choose to be televised against.  There is an unsightly collection of mismatched books on the top shelf (together with a garish money box inscribed “Para mi gran viaje”) and the other shelves are filled with a variety of tatty box files with hand written titles and a sellotaped piece of paper reminding me that Palm Sunday is on the 5^th of April this year.  This last is because I write a poem-a-day during Holy Week.  Because I do.

     To my right is another bookcase, one shelf of which is filled with reference books.  Now these are far more photogenic: not only are they solid looking hardbacks, but also one of them has the word IDEAS in big capital letters along the spine.  Importantly, the word is large enough to be read by an appreciative watching television audience, or one that might be subliminally impressed!

     The problem with these books is that they are all too new looking, a little too superficial.  You need older books to make it appear that the shelves' contents have been read; that the books are old companions, not window dressing.

     I have a lot of books and, although I have tried, I have failed to get all of them into a coherent order on my shelves.  Most of my shelves are a voyage of discovery rather than a pattern for the Dewey Decimal System.  There are unexpected juxtapositions so that (and I have just reached up for a couple of books from another bookcase) The Nations of Wales 1890-1914 by M. Wynn Thomas is next to Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia and The Garden of Cyrus by Sir Thomas Browne, both of which are worth reading in their different ways and whose proximity is pleasing.  Give me time and I will work out why they deserve to be together!  But my point is that for most people with a large book collection the organizing principle is chaos not order.  Or perhaps that is only true in the Arts rather than the Sciences.  Or perhaps it’s just me.

     Now some people are chaotic in their organization and some have chaos thrust upon them and some others play at chaos: the casually strewn and oddly placed as artful indicator of the eccentric genius.

     The Book Backgrounds have ranged from the pitifully eked out shelves to the deep alcove floor to ceiling plenitude, but I just wonder how contrived it all is, and how long the ‘players’ in the television game have thought about how to present themselves.

     Now you might well say that I must have too much time on my hands to be concerned about such things, but what an individual places behind themself is a clearer indication of how they want to be perceived than anything they might have to say.  I think.

On television this evening there was a snatch of an interview with a solitary walker who was accosted and asked why he was breaking the regulations and his response was that he did not know that there were any regulations to break!  Not only have we have the Spanish Government paying for ads on the television, we have had the Generalitat in Catalonia and various advertisers who have tailored their messages to include reinforcement of the restrictions on behaviour.  How could the man have missed everything?  If, of course, he was telling the truth about his ‘ignorance’!  All it needs is a man like that who is also infected to cause another spike, and kill people.  Inconsideration is fatal, not funny.

As we come to the end of the second week of isolation, it is sobering to think that we may well have only passed one seventh of the time necessary for the sequestration to work on the virus.  One hopes that is a pessimistic forecast, but I fear it is a realistic one. 

     What are we going to be like by the end of this time?  One friend in the UK says that we are headed for civil unrest and riots; a friend in Catalonia says that the restrictions are too lenient and if they are not tightened then the situation will get much worse.  As time goes one and people who are not sick think that the restraints are too irksome, will they become freer in their actions, and will people who see others breaking the rules feel entitled to follow them?  And then . . .

     The real problem for us is that this situation is unparalleled and we are winging it, following advice from deeply flawed politicians, with failure illustrating their lack of forthrightness.

     One of the free MOOC courses that I am following at the moment is using some of the writing of Kant and I am sure that he would say that the restrictions on our behaviour and actions that are the most satisfactory are those that we would impose on ourselves if we had the freedom to do so.  Are the restrictions the sort of restrictions that we would think necessary in the circumstances?  I will stick to the rules come what may because Kant tells me to!  And I have managed to prevent myself from making a jocose comment using the name and adding an apostrophe and changing the K to a C.   

     Such restraint in the time of Corona!

    

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 11

I am, as I never tire of telling people, a Labrador person: yellow, bitch to be precise.  It therefore comes as something of a personal insult that people (even flat dwellers with limited space) can contemplate providing living area for the various species of rat dogs (goggle-eyed, spindly-legged, yappily-voiced) that abound in this area.  One such grotesquery lives near us, and its emasculated barks cut through the air with the irritation of a domesticated buzz saw.  It is the sort of sound that is intolerable at its first utterance; continuation is torture.

     When I started my solitary walk this morning on the first of many circuits of our communal pool, I was accompanied by the cringe-making sound of the damned dog-insult-creature.  And then I saw why it was making the sound.  Sitting in the lane that runs behind the creature’s house was an entirely unconcerned cat, studiously ignoring the high-pitched hysteria of the so-called dog.

     I am no lover of cats.  While I can admire the liquid beauty of the larger beasts of the category, I find the domestic variety repellent.  I think it’s the tiny teeth and the lazy contempt that I find so uncongenial.  To say the least.  
      I am not entirely negative: some cats are sleek and refined, but that is the sort of thing that you can admire in pictures, not in reality.  Anyway, this cat was obviously glorying in the commotion that it was causing and by unconcernedly licking itself and showing its undying contempt (which I share) for the noisy scrap of canine vulgarity.  However, that same attitude was extended to me when the cat noticed that I was walking about.  I changed my direction at once and made towards it.  Lazily, with that elegant lassitude that only cats can show, it moved away to its ‘home’ and the dog-scrap immediately shut up.  Mission accomplished!

     That was the only point of interest, as I wandered around and around with only the sound of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time programme on George and Robert Stephenson and the birth of the railways filling my ears.  As usual one comes away from programmes like that with snippets of knowledge to keep one sane: did I really know that it was Robert who did the work designing The Rocket and not George? 

     I also picked up on the panel’s championing of the Stephensons as opposed to the showier grandstanding of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (surely one of the few engineers who most people know by his full name) with some withering comments on Brunel’s engineering skills being somewhat partial as opposed to the comprehensive nature of the Stephensons’ skills taking in both the civil and mechanical aspects. 

     Radio 4 and The Guardian are the mainstays of my sanity in a time of confinement. 

     God bless them both!

We have been informed that this week that the number of cases of Covid-19 may peak.  The numbers certainly give no cause for complacency as Spain has now surged past China in the number of people with the virus.   
     One town in Catalonia has been put on total lockdown with people banned from coming in and out of the place.  This is because of a spike in the numbers infected.  Catalonia seems to be taking things extremely seriously and there appears to be growing animosity between Madrid and Barcelona, as Madrid appears to be much more lax than Barcelona – with a consequent surge in numbers of infected.

     We are also hearing of incidents of absolute stupidity.  The police stopped one car with five people in it (including one person in the boot!) who were going to visit a family!  Another couple of guys were found in a bar having a drink, claiming that it was a business meeting: that did not impress the police who promptly arrested them!

     The renovations in the house next door have ramped up again.  There are now two vans on the road outside and a variety of people working inside.  The people seem to be taking no precautions at all: no masks, no separation – and nothing happens.

     Toni is very cynical about what is going on and says that the stories that we actually get to hear of people not taking the virus seriously are just the tip of the iceberg and that things are going to get much worse as our period of lockdown continues for the next couple of months.

     As I have not been outside the front gate for ten days now, it is difficult for me to gain any real perspective from a first hand point of view; everything is via the television and the Internet.

     People are becoming lazy in assuming that the only fatalities are going to be the old or those with underlying conditions, but the death of a 21 year-old with no underlying conditions should be a wake up call to those who think that they are not vulnerable.

     We are all at risk, and I am more than prepared to put up with these restrictions if it is a matter of life and death – and it is a matter of life and death!

Last night I was ‘doing’ part of my new course on paintings and watched a series of videoed lectures on Van Eyck and Van de Weyden and, as I watched I could not help feeling a certain sense of dislocation between what was happening in the wider world and my attempting to rationalise my position of normality by studying Art History: when in doubt look at a painting! 

     That hardly seems to be practical advice – but that isn’t the point is it?  At times of instability and upheaval you find whatever ‘still point’ works for you to give the equilibrium you need, and if that is found in daubs of oil on canvas, then so be it.

     It is easy to rationalize turning to Art (capital A) in any of its forms to find placidity.  You are tapping in to a version of western culture, something that has lasted, stood the test of time, something that is generally regarded as important, something which seems to stand for the achievement of humanity that is larger than a single work or a single person, it links to into a continuum, into a story of progressive achievement that welcomes your passive contemplation and encourages your active participation.  Or something.

Toni has resurrected his electric guitar from the chaos that is the third floor and with notepad, Internet and a badly tuned instrument is attempting to drive me upstairs to get away from the more than slightly-off cacophony that learners engender.  This adds a new dimension of horror to our containment!

We have had a talk about how long we really think this form of confinement is going to last and we have come to the conclusion that things are not likely to get back to anything resembling normality until June or July.  God help the US if the man-child governing the country decides that “everyone back to work by Easter and with full churches” is the way forward.  I only hope that our political leaders have a tad more responsibility than that ignorant person (and that last word was my fifth choice!) when it comes to recognizing that a situation has returned to normal. 

     I am sure that there is someone somewhere who is calculating just how many people died to fit in with a political rather than a national methodology when it came to dealing with the virus. 

     CEOs and other executives of businesses can now be accused of Corporate Manslaughter if it can be shown that people have died because of the actions of individual firms. 

     It is not enough that our political leaders can be ‘voted out’ at the next general election; they should be held judicially culpable for the mortality of their political choices.  And I look towards the Civil Service to ensure that the paper proof of decisions by the politicians survive to be considered by the inevitable commission of enquiry that will take place when we are finally out of this crisis.

The weather has been cold and blustery with some periods of sunshine – not really the weather to laze out on the third floor terrace, but each day brings us nearer to the period of unrelenting sunshine that will make the time go more pleasantly.  Please.

Meanwhile, we try and not get too upset at the seemingly deliberate idiocy on the part of those charged with our safety.  Time after time, it seems that the only real safety is in our own hands and the intelligence and patience with which we approach the demands of this situation.

And I miss ice cream!  I really do!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 8

To absolutely no one’s surprise the government is going to ask parliament to extend the period of lockdown, or the extension of the state of the emergency until the 11^th of April, so we have at least another weeks of restriction.   

     I wonder if this piecemeal approach to the lockdown is because the government is not prepared to let us know how long they really think it is going to be – especially for people of my age and generation as we slip neatly into the most at risk category, and therefore we can double or triple the ‘safe’ period for us to be at home?

     As someone who is restricted to a house and a quick circuit of the communal swimming pool, and television in a foreign language it is difficult to get a sense of proportion about the wider implications of an extension to the period of confinement.  But, of course, that is not going to stop me!

     The front of the house looks onto a important road that runs virtually the whole length of the beach part of Castelldefels; the back of the house looks onto the pool and the other houses of our type, together with houses on the first line of the sea and to our left, a block of flats along the main road. 

     So, based on that vastly exhaustive sample of Castelldefels and Catalonia I am now ready to extrapolate from my observed experience from the three floors of our house and pontificate about the future direction of the country.

     The number of people breaking the rules: walking in pairs; using the dog as an excuse to go further from the house than has been suggested; families with kids pushing the boundaries of where they can ‘exercise’; people walking without purpose; people rapidly reaching their tethers’ ends cooped up with kids – the afternoon especially are punctuated with childish howls.  All this is leading to a pressure point where people will rebel against restriction.  We are not supposed to leave our homes except for essential outings and that basically means buying food or seeking medical care and attention.  That is not how people are living their enclosed lives, and it will get worse over time.

    In Spain the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 is now 28,572 and the official death toll is 1,720, which, according to my calculations gives a mortality rate of 6%!  Of course this does not take into account the number of undiagnosed cases of Covid-19 there are in Spain, so the real percentage must be (surely) much lower than 6%? 

     This is the sort of disaster than strains the resources of any health service, even one as good as the Spanish.  We are going into uncharted territory and something will have to give.

On the personal front we are doing well, we have plenty of food, the baker is not far away, Toni is well into his on-line course and I have sighed up for two MOOC courses on Modernism and European Painting. 

     The painting course will be a delight with easy appreciation, while the second is rather more challenging with the readings for the first week of the course including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Kant!  In translation, thank god!

Yesterday was Sunday, but you would have been hard pressed to have discerned any palpable difference from any other during our samey days ‘inside’.

It has been raining heavily this morning, and Toni ventured out to get the supplies that had been running low.  In spite of the adverse weather, Toni tells me that there were more people in the supermarket and that the experience was made worse because of some people’s inability to obey the restrictions about personal space and distancing.  It must make these social occasions dangerous.  Toni has returned in what I would describe as a disgruntled mood, failing to understand lack of adhesion to simple rules designed for personal safety against death!  But that’s people for you!  In all senses!

Much to my horror, our Catalan teacher from school has contacted me with a proposal to set up an on-line system where we can continue our studies.  I must admit that I was fully prepared to let my school time fade into the general chaos of a society in meltdown, but this (admittedly positive) offer is something that I will not, in all conscience, be able to ignore and consequently the Catalan lessons will be up and running again in some form, and “lo, my fit is come again!”

     As far as I understand the proposal, this will be based on a written form of social messaging system rather than a live face-to-screen experience, but who knows how this will develop?  I will have to knuckle down and get our merry band together and see where we go!

On another cultural tack: I have just finished reading an on-line essay called “The Fabric of History.  Power and Piety in the Pellegrinaio of Santa Maria della Scala” on the Academia website that offers a wide range of papers to read free, gratis and for nothing – though, as ever, there is a premium service that you can access by paying a fee.  I have downloaded two of my own papers on Art History to the site and have read numerous interesting (and sometimes impenetrable) papers in return.  I recommend it without reservation.

     This particular paper refers to a Renaissance hospital building in Sienna that is decorated with a series of murals that reward further study.  This paper takes an historical approach and there is something delightful in having your memory jogged, as one of the essays on a previous OU course that I took concerned one of the panels of this very fresco.  The rivalry between Florence and Sienna; popes and anti-popes; humanism and religion; piety and profit; charity and war; status and death – all are there in the backstory to the frescos.

     It was interesting that I read the paper with an eye that was constantly looking for ideas and quotations that I could use in my own essay.  This would have been very, very useful when I was doing my own work on the frescos and would have made my final mark higher I think!  As it is, I can read through with remembered scholarship and relax.  The paper is worth reading and the frescos are readily available to view on line. 

     And if you have never heard of the place and don’t know the frescos, then I would humbly suggest that given our home-bound existence at the moment, you could profitably spend some time reading and looking!

Don't forget to visit my 'new' poetry blog at smrnewpoetry.blogspot.com