LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 98 - Sunday 21st June

Sitting on the spacious terrace of the third floor, warmed by the low summer sun of the early evening, drinking a cup of my brew of English Breakfast and Earl Grey and with a view of three swimming pools in the sort of open quadrangle formed by flats and houses – what could be more pleasant?

     The clue to disharmony is in the “three swimming pools”, no, not the swimming pools, it’s the conjunction of swimming pools and children that take away delight.

     Apart from lunchtime, where I had our communal pool to myself, and in which I was able to do “open water swimming” as the only setting that my watch recognizes the circles that I swim in a pool which is markedly smaller than the commercial pool that I use for my morning swims, these pools attract kids in the same way that lies attract Conservative cabinet ministers: they flock to them as if their very lives depend on them.

     This is all, you might say, very normal.  What child is not attracted to glittering water and in your own backyard?  Indeed, I welcome young people finding delight in the chlorinated waters of their pools, it is the noise that accompanies their delight that irritates.

     Today, for example, there seemed to be some sort of infernal timetable linking all three pools: screaming kids in one pool has no sooner gone than they were followed by shouting kids in another who augmented their lusty voices with explosives, and when their pyrotechnic noisiness eventually diminished their baton of cacophony was passed on to the third pool where very young kids shrieked while belabouring the water with those polystyrene spaghetti floats that make a penetrating slapping sound when applied to the pool’s surface.

     As if this is all not enough, there has been a resurgence of the moronically irritating game (sic) of Marco Polo.  This ‘game’ consists of one person (if children can be called such!) calling out ‘Marco!’ to which all the others reply (you’ve guessed it!) ‘Polo!’  This can go on for what seems like hours and I am convinced that any adult jury would acquit any mature act of infanticide if the ‘game’ had been played for longer than a couple of minutes.

     I think that it is important to have a ready crop of niggles such as the above during a pandemic as they take your mind away from the more pressing problems of life and death that our dear political leaders seem so incapable of managing.

      Here in Spain and Catalonia we have now officially come out of the State of Emergency and from Monday we will be living the New Normal.

     As I now rarely go to the shops and my sphere of geographical wandering is generally circumscribed by the shore to the south and my swimming pool to the north that my observation of humanity is necessarily compressed.  I see thousands of people along the beach as I go on my daily bike rides, but it is difficult to extrapolate from people sitting under parasols to the general population.  Yes, I watch the new on TV, but when did that ever give a balanced view of life!

     Monday will mean, for me, the opening up of the swimming pool.  More people will be allowed to swim and, O Joy!, we will be able to use the showers after we have completed our lengths.  You simply do not feel clean after swimming in a water-treated communal pool.  We will still have to wear masks when we are not 2m distancing, but there will be more of us around.  I think.  I wait to see what real differences there will be.

Today has been (generally) sunny and, as it is a weekend the beaches have been packed.  As far as I can tell, people are sitting in their domestic bubbles and are trying to leave some sort of space around themselves so that there is some physical distancing.

     The age groups that are least likely to practice distancing are also those who have been described as the most likely to be asymptomatic carriers – the age group 20-40, with the age group 20-30 being the most threatening to those who are sheltering or are in the age group that is the most vulnerable to infection.  Like mine!

     Spain has opened itself up for tourists – even for British ones, and that shows how desperate they are to try and salvage something from the ravished holiday period if they are prepared to take people from the European centre of viral mismanagement, infection and death: the UK!  Benidorm is desperate for the Brits to come and drink themselves into insensibility, and the bar owners and the hoteliers are prepared to risk death rather than have empty premises.

     And, to be fair, who can blame them?  Economic activity must restart, the whole of society depends on people earning money, spending money, and paying taxes.  As with so many things, it is a balancing of threats that will point to the way ahead.

     The trouble is that the British government, in spite of their oft repeated mantra of “We are following the Science!” gives the impression of making up their responses as they go along – mainly because that is exactly what they are doing.  The number of rubber-burning screeching U-turns show that they are basically clueless, and the ‘political’ and ‘populist’ are of supreme importance, and certainly of greater significance than the lip service they pay to experts and science.  And morality!

     Still, we are where we are, and we have to deal with what we have rather than what might have been if Johnson and his cabinet of third-raters had been even marginally competent.

     I am still waiting and willing to make a donation to the fund that will enable something like justice to take place so that Johnson and his cabinet are taken to court to face a charge of corporate manslaughter for the way in which the Covid-19 crisis has been mismanaged.

     And when is the Inquiry going to be established?  We need it now, so that the egregious mistakes that accompanied the primary outbreak are not repeated in the almost inevitable second peak.  Johnson and his crew have killed enough and too many, they must not be allowed to career onwards without the information from an exhaustive inquiry to guide them in the future.

     The future, let’s face it, is murky to say the least.  Given how the world has changed in the last 12 weeks, it is difficult and frightening to think about what our world will be like in another 12.

     It is difficult to be depressed in a sunny seaside town where most of the people are having fun and relaxing.  But that last word is also dangerous, at a time like this true relaxation is dangerous and possibly fatal.  By all means enjoy the sunshine; swim, walk, cycle, eat and play – but be aware, be safe.

     ‘Relaxation’ from 12 weeks ago is an historical memory, we have to redefine the word and the world in terms of the New Normal so that it becomes ingrained, a way of life.  A way of Life!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 24 – Wednesday in Holy Week, 8th APRIL

 

I realise that, with all my bluff optimism, I have been affected by the lockdown!  In the poem that I wrote yesterday (smrnewpoems.blogspot.com) I actually questioned, even if rhetorically, the value of sunbathing!

     It is shocking to have to confront a possible breakdown in your worldview that can contemplate something as self-loathing as a negative approach to the appreciation of the nearest star!  It is certainly a wake up call to reassess my attitude and determine to be more positive in the future.  The idea of getting to June and July and behaving like a troglodyte is entirely unacceptable.

     If something as fundamental to my view of life is capable of mutability, then it makes me wonder what other, more subtle changes there have been in this period of self-isolation.  It would argue a self-deluding insensitivity to say that one can remain entirely stable when the world appears to be changing around you.

     The irony, of course, is that the micro world of self-isolation is unchanging and stable.  The continuing horrific catalogue of death and infection is all around us, but not part of the life that we are leading.  It is as if we are living in some sort of medieval fort with a water filled trench around us: part of our surroundings, but separated from them.

     Unlike some others, I have been entirely unable to wean myself from the news.  My addiction to the Internet radio, and more specifically Radio 4 is total.  It is at times like this that the Conservatives detestation of the BBC becomes not only partisan, but also self-defeating.  At times of National Crisis we united around the BBC as a voice of and to the Nation.  I certainly do not look towards the Conservatives and their slavish news lap dogs to give me a sense of what the Nation is thinking or feeling.

     And The Guardian.  As a life-long Guardian reader (with a brief fall from grace and adherence to The Independent) I now read it on my mobile phone with an intensity that goes beyond belief.  And may I make a specific call out for the writing of John Crace, a columnist of rare wit and perception.  His political sketches have been part of the reason that I have been able to maintain my sweetness and equilibrium during the past few years where Brexit and the bloody Conservatives have convinced me that I am living in a society where the dominant ideology is the death-wish!

My early morning routine is now becoming more and more established: set Moppy (don’t blame me, the app demands that you call your robot cleaner something) off on her hoovering circuit; make my cup of tea (English breakfast and Earl Grey) and have the World’s Most Expensive Augmented Muesli (at least I have stopped adding Smarties to it) with fat-free milk; do the Guardian Quick Crossword (with light cheating); change Moppy to her mopping sequence; go for my pool circuits.  And a chunk of the day is gone!  Which is a clear exemplification of the work expanding to match the time available!

     I do miss my daily early morning swim and I can’t wait to get back to that part of my routine, because that morning start include my first writing of the day when I sit in the café or outside having my post-swim cup of tea.  Ah!  How life used to be!

Just back from the open kitchen window where at 8.00 pm our time, we applaud the front-line workers who are keeping our society going.

     Talking of health workers and their battle against the virus: the British Prime Minister now in Intensive Care.  As I said yesterday, I wish him better health and strength to his family – and he should resign.  Now.  At once.

     The Prime Minister’s bravado a while ago where he was joking about his meeting Covid-19 positive people and shaking hands with them; his visible inability to maintain social distancing when his government was promoting it as essential, now appear to be a foolhardy, self-indulgent imposition on health services that are overstretched.   

     I might also add, that the Prime Minister’s inability to give clear indications of who actually has ultimate power in government is a dereliction of duty.   

     chocolate, retribution, judgement, ineptitude, Throughout his career he has been first and foremost a second-rate, shoddy, narcissistic, journalistic liar and, while I have sympathy for his present state of health, I have none for his political.  We deserve better than him.  Though with the cabinet of freaks that he has accumulated, god alone knows who (or in the case of Gove, what) might take his place.

     So far the Conservatives’ management of the Covid-19 crisis has been fatally inept.  How many unnecessary deaths is it going to take before the people of Britain demand the reckoning that should come sooner rather than later?

Determined not to end this post on a sour note, I can report that we were able to buy chocolate in the last shop and you can be assured that my writing has been sweetened by the confectionary. 

     So just imagine what it would have been like without!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 15 – 30th MARCH

A thoroughly miserable start to the two weeks of ‘extreme’ lockdown imposed by the Spanish Government. Presumably what we had before was a ‘Lockdown Lite’ and what we have now is a ‘Lockdown Intense!” – complete with exclamation mark. 

     This attempt to be more stringent is a belated response to the truly horrific figures of the dead and the infected that will haunt this government forever.

     The steady rain is a depressing backdrop to a growing realization that this period of two weeks is more than likely to be followed by another, and another, and another.  The Guardian reports one medical expert saying that the lockdown in some form or other could last as long as a year.  I resisted the need to put an exclamation mark at the end of that last sentence because, truly, it would not come as any sort of surprise.

     At the end of World War II in Britain, it took until 1954 for rationing to end: nine years after the end of a conflict that we ‘won’.  It seems unlikely that the number of deaths from this pandemic will come anywhere near the totals of the World War, but the dislocation is perhaps more truly worldwide than that conflict.  And if it took nine years to get back to sub-normal, how long is it going to take this time?

     This time around no infrastructure has been destroyed, the networks of transportation are running albeit in a reduced form and, most importantly, there is not the international conflict that makes communal unity impossible – apart, of course from the various populists around the world who are finding fascist rhetoric is of no use in fighting a real virus.  Countries are generally sharing vital information; people are working together to find solutions.  It will be the micro political divisions that kill us, working against the macro attempts to save us.

Toni, in his hunter/gatherer mode has been venturing out into this new world of increased restrictions to get some food.  We did not indulge in the panic buying frenzy at the start of this madness, so we do routinely need to stock up. 

     We are fortunate that in Castelldefels there is one area where there are five large supermarkets within walking distance of each other, so choice is not a problem.  The only real fear is peoples’ lax social distancing habits when in the confined spaces of shops.

     We had a fairly large list of needs and most of them have been satisfied.  We have made it policy that only one supermarket will be visited and if you can’t get what you want there then it will have to wait for another time.  Our decision to have a few ‘treats’ came to nothing, as the chosen store (Aldi) had no chocolate or ice cream (overtones of “No more mushrooms!” there) but the other items on the list were obtained, more or less.

     The only things that we had actually run out of were eggs and milk; and Toni forgot the eggs (but remembered the milk) and I suspect that he simply missed the chocolate (he lacks my professionalism when it comes to shopping) and everything else he failed to find, but we do have all the essentials. 

     Being without milk, even for a number of hours rather than days, was a pain.  On the principle that it is better to be petty minded over slight inconveniences rather than freak out over major crises: I have to say that missing a late afternoon cup of my tea (50/50 English Breakfast and Earl Grey) was a real loss.      It threw my sense of new routine into chaos and unsettled me.  How, I reasoned, is civilized life to continue without a stabilizing cup of tea? 

     In spite of the horror all around us, we live in a sort of easy stasis where the day starts with the comforting rumble of the robot hoover and a cup of tea, and ends with the computer monitor going black.  During the time in between there are the little domestic things that have taken the place of engagement in the wider physical world, or at least engagement physically in the wider world.  Any disruption there is to the Important Little Things That Keep You Sane – well, the clue is in the last capitalized phrase!

     As befits the gravity of the situation that dictates our lives, I have taken to drinking only camomile tea in the late evenings: look on it as my way of saving milk, and indulging in a gentle quasi-protestant-self-denial.  I cannot really pretend that I like the taste of camomile tea, but I have rapidly got used to it, so that I am able to kid myself that the taste is at least ‘interesting’ and a ‘dis-flavoursome contrast’ to the beverages I usually drink.

     That is the sort of ‘re-branding’ that characterizes a great deal of what we are doing when locked down: a spiritual form of ‘make do and mend’, using what you have to make the most of what you want!

And talking of Protestantism, as I sort-of was in the last but one paragraph, the ‘treats’ that we had from Toni’s shopping expedition were almost perfect examples of the faith: two tone biscuits: Marie biscuit one side and a thin layer of chocolate covering (and overhanging) the other.  Marie biscuits are surely the most uninspiring biscuits in commercial production and delicious chocolate should never be thin. 

     Incidentally, when I explained to Toni the correct way to eat these biscuits: by nibbling away the overhang of chocolate round the edges, while trying to prise it away from the biscuit base to see how much of the covered biscuit you could uncover when you had nibbled away at the four sides, he had swallowed his whole.  And there you see the consumer differences between a Lapsed Catholic and an Anglican Atheist!

     And in a most un-Catalan like way, it is still raining and we have not had our customary glimpse of the sun. 

     It’s just one damn thing after another.