It
is amazing how far the quality of an experience can be changed by the omission
of a cup of tea.
I realize that the British obsession with
our national hot beverage (not a leaf of which, with the exception of the
botanical gardens in Kew, is grown in the country) is somewhat difficult for
those not of a British persuasion to understand.
It is further complicated by our
insistence that the milk be cold not boiling when added to the brew. “Why,” my foreign friends ask, “would you do
that?” To ask such a question, almost by
definition, defies an answer. Where, one
asks oneself, does one start when confronted by such levels of Philistinism?
Anyway, at the end of my morning swim I am
accustomed to make my way to the outside seating of the adjoining café and have
a cup of tea and one made to my exacting standards of a mixture of Earl Gray
and English Breakfast, and a brew that, when the milk is added the resultant
colour is of a depth that my father would have found acceptable – though for
him to be enthusiastic about a cup of tea it would have to be one of such
strength that, “the tea spoon could stand up in it!” My normal cup of tea does not aspire to such
flavoursome heights, but it does emphatically not look like the usual anaemic
liquids served opening masquerading as tea in this country.
I swim a metric mile, that is sixty lengths
of our 25m pool. I go up and down, and
up and down, accompanied only by the sound of my exhaled breath bubbling
against my stoppered ears and seeing very little in the myopic blur in which I
swim – having recently given up wearing contact lenses because they irritated
me. So, in the monotony of length
swimming, the idea of a nice cup of tea waiting as a reward for early morning
exertion is something to keep you going.
But for the next fortnight, the café is
closed except for ‘take-away’ and the idea of drinking my tea from a paper cup
standing next to my bike is not something that appeals. So, swim finished, dressed, straight out onto
bike for the ride down to Port Ginesta and back.
It all seems a little earnest without the
frivolity of tea, and it is, furthermore, while sipping my tea that I jot down
ideas in my notebook. I could, of
course, jot down notes at any time, but the time just seems to melt away when
you are breaking routine to get something done.
Notes are for post-swim tea drinking, not sitting in the comfort of an
armchair later in the day. And, after
all, it’s only for a fortnight.
And therein lies the rub. I do not think that this closing of bars and
restaurants is going to be sufficient to deal with the upsurge in number of
infections. I think that this partial
lockdown is more a function of political cowardice and real fear over the
financial consequences rather than a science-based solution. It seems to me that this is just a
softening-up of an already tired and fed up electorate before something more
drastic will be forced to take its place.
Although we are informed that there are
over 170 trials of possible vaccines in operation and that by the end of the
year there should be clear indications of likely candidate vaccines to roll out
for the general population by early January, the more convincing voices has
warned that the simple logistics of the immunization exercise make it unlikely
that the PBI will get protection before the summer of 2012. Given what we have packed into the past
months of 2020, the summer of 2021 seems a hell of a long way away, and our
political leadership has been shaky to put it at its mildest!
Still, life goes on defiantly with people
eagerly accepting ever changing versions of what New Normal might mean.
One example of this might be the new way
to celebrate distanced occasions. Today
is the Name Day of Toni’s sister and she has suggested that we have a distanced
meal with her paying for a delivery of a menu del dia from one of our
chosen restaurants here in Castelldefels because we are unable to go up to
Terrassa and, anyway there would be more than six of us celebrating. I will let you know how this works out, but
it is only a development of on-line presents where, with Amazon Prime, it is
cheaper to send something via Amazon than buy it yourself and send it yourself.
Noticed on television last night that
there were adverts for one of our largest Department Stores, El Corte Ingles,
where they were saying that an on-line purchase could be delivered free of
charge (?) within a couple of hours!
This is throwing down the gauntlet to Amazon and it will be interesting
to see how it all works out.
For shops here in Castelldefels, unless
they get themselves organized via the web to do deliveries they are going to go
out of business. The smaller shops will
need help, perhaps via a sort of city version of a localized Amazon system, but
unless something dramatic is done the whole commercial basis of city shopping
is going to implode.
One
of the lead items on the Catalan News was the fact that Wales has decided to
impose a new/old stringent lockdown. It
may be the first in Western Europe to do so, but I do fear that it will not be
the last.
The tiered approach in England looks and
sounds like an unsatisfactory compromise and the dump of documentation from
SAGE telling the politicos that a short sharp shock was needed makes the
shambolic behaviour of this totally discredited Conservative ‘government’ look
even more mendacious that we already knew it to be.
Johnson is quite prepared to sacrifice
lives rather than face up to his political responsibilities. He, and his cabinet of all the talentless, are
despicable. And once again I make the
plea for someone, anyone, to bring a charge of Corporate Manslaughter against
him and his Brexiteer accomplices as they continue their ‘systematic’ attacks
on the people and institutions of the United Kingdom.
