Ways to stay sane

NEW LOCKDOWN: Day 7, Thursday

 

Covid, the American election, lack of direct sunlight: when reality becomes too much I retreat to the discrete and the manageable.

     For my last birthday I was sent a stylish Scriveiner rollerball pen, which works just fine.  But that is not the point about the pen, nor its understated elegance.  No, it’s the totally satisfying thunk-click the top makes when it is pressed home, down over the nib.  It has a depth and a solidity and a crisp finality demands that you do it again.  And again.  I do realise that it is the sort of pen that can only be used in isolation: what is satisfaction for one is incitement to murder for another!

 

My new watch has arrived!  I wonder just how many times I have said, or could have said, that.  Having found mechanical watches that fit virtually all of my prerequisites, I have long gone on to smart watches – which of course give a whole new meaning to the search and to the cost.

     To be fair to me, I have never bought a really expensive watch, something like a Tag Heuer or Rolex Oyster Perpetual or whatever, I have been drawn instead to ‘good value’ inexpensive watches.  And sometimes to downright holiday rip-offs.  In the long run, of course, I have possibly (!) spent more than I would have if I had purchased a single heirloom-type conventional timepiece. 

     But I would not have had anything like the fun.  From where I am sitting, I can see two briefcase sized containers that hold (most) of my watch collection.  Each of them brings back memories, sometimes specific places, while others are the triggers to regret, missed opportunities or miss-steps.  It is sad that most if not all of my Cassio Period (early digital) acquisitions are lost, destroyed or discarded.  Though, come to think about it, if all my watch purchases were brought together in one place, I fear that even I would be a little shocked at just how much I had squandered!

      However, to get back to the immediate present, the timepiece that I have on my wrist I bought prompted by a pop-up ad on my mobile phone.  My (extensive) researches into acceptable smart watches have led me to Amazfit.  In my view the battery life, swimability, bikability, and function meet my basic needs.  So, I have bought one or possibly two-ish of them, and generally been fairly pleased – but there is always a niggling doubt about one or another aspect of the device that brings me back to the marketplace to waste (Toni’s word) more of my money.

     The latest version of the Amazfit watch on my wrist is the GTR2 and so I have reverted to the traditional round shape for the watch face instead of the curved strip of the X.  The advantage of the GTR2 is that it does allow you to have a basic always-on face, though this does drain the battery, by just how much time will tell.  And who knows when I will have the opportunity to test it in the pool?  Rather disturbingly, our pool/leisure centre has sent us details of commercially available on-line fitness classes that we can take as part of our subscription – which doesn’t bode well for when they think we will finally be allowed back for our swims in actual water!

     But until then, there is a period where I can luxuriate in the purchase before the novelty wears off and I subject it to a more rigorous utility analysis to see how well it truly performs given my demands.  So far; so good!

 

How much time do you have to spend watching Netflix before it becomes an official medical complaint?  With me, I don’t think it is the amount of time spent in front of the screen that is a problem, rather it is the inability to finish watching what you have started looking at.  I don’t mean that I turn on Netflix and watch relentlessly until I fall into bed, it is rather the fact that I seem to have the temporal toleration of full-strength Coked-up (please note the capital letter) kid with ADT.  My critical systems do a full analysis within the first ten minutes of a film or half the first episode of a series and I’m back to the home screen and searching for something new, or reverting to my default viewing position of an episode of Family Guy or The Big Bang Theory, neither of which seems susceptible to my dismissive critique.  And before you know it a couple of hours have gone by without your noticing.  Or is this just a function of Covid and the consequent lockdown?

     To answer my own questions, I don’t really know, but I am not doing as much writing as I feel I should be doing.  And, I put that down to the fact that my use of my notebook has shrunk to almost nothing because I do not swim.

     As I have mentioned before, my habit is to write something (anything) in my notebook after I have completed by daily swim and while I am having my cup of tea.  Now that swimming is forbidden, at least in the indoor pool that I use, and I have zero intention of throwing myself into the sea, in spite of the fact that my watch will accommodate ‘free swimming’ as easily as pool lengths, do not write anything on the pristine notebook pages.  I do not seem to be able to shift my notebook writing to any other period and adapt to other circumstances.  Odd.

    

I have often wondered about the power of habit. 

     I have realised over time that I have particular ways of packing and setting out my clothes when I change for my swim.  I use a certain number of pegs and I divest myself of clothing in a particular order.  If I change the order then something goes wrong: I forget to take my swimming goggles or I leave something out.  I think it is because there are a whole range of activities for which you do not really think; you are on automatic pilot and as long as things are regular everything works well.  I always us the example of touch typing: the more you think about where the letters are the more mistakes you make, you just have to go with what your fingers know they know and everything will be fine.  This is why, if someone talks to you while you are getting changed, you forget to put your ear plugs in or something.

     When I used to play squash and you were warming up the ball with your opponent before the match, some players would ask, “Which side would you like to start on?” and I made a conscious effort not to care and to be equally at home with left or right just in case I got used to one side more than another to start off and then if that was denied it would have an effect on the game.  If you are used to starting on the right, then it can be unsettling to be made to start on the left.  Gamesmanship is not made up of cheating (though I have known a fair number of shameless cheats in squash) but of little niggles that have a disproportionate claim on your sporting ability.

     As with the warmup in squash so it is in so many trivial aspects of everyday life; from brushing one’s teeth to going around the supermarket for food, there are too many rituals that are so second nature that they don’t register until they are disrupted!

     And lockdown is the perfect opportunity for self-disruption!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 77 – Sunday, 31st May

I am more than ever convinced that my government has no real plan to exit the lockdown apart from a mystic belief in the ameliorative affect of the calendar, and hope.  I have seen no evidence that the political leaders have the slightest idea of what they are doing, why they are doing it and what they hope to achieve.

     It is fairly clear that the loosening of the lockdown restrictions were brought forward to try and combat the adverse publicity about the lockdown cheat Cummings.  The tracking effort seems stillborn given the information that we have had for those people who have been ‘trained’ so far.  The opening of schools in England seems motivated by politics rather than by health and education.  Every part of the crisis has been made worse by the way that it has been woefully mismanaged.  And people die because of the mistakes that this government makes, and they will go on dying until a more convincing/efficient/moral/realistic – well, add your own adjectives, I can think only of insulting ones for the bunch of incompetents that supposedly run the country.

     Here in Catalonia and in Castelldefels we are due to move to Phase 2 on Monday.  This unites all parts of the metropolitan area of Barcelona into one unit and that means that we are able to move about within the whole area.  In theory, we think, it means that Toni would be able to go to his home city of Terrassa and speak to his family, though he would still have to keep physical distancing when he speaks to them.  And I think that they could meet in an open space.  We are not absolutely clear about the rules.

     I have just come back from my evening bike ride and the area where we used to live when we were first in Castelldefels looked like a perfectly ordinary Sunday night in late May.  Families were out and there were groups of youngsters on bikes and wandering the streets.  The restaurants were doing a roaring trade and there were queues outside some.  The age range was from babies to pensioners so, as far as the good people of Castelldefels are concerned, the restrictions of Phase 1 are well and truly over.

     On Monday, if the weather is good, I confidently expect the beaches to be packed and we will then see if the discipline of physical distancing extends itself to the sand!

On the cultural front, lockdown has given me the opportunity via Netflix to watch an extended selection of episodes of “Family Guy” and it has taken over (almost) from my predilection for lauding “The Simpsons” as the best thing on our TV screens.  

     Admittedly my lack of access to past episodes of “The Simpsons” means that “Family Guy” has had something of a clear run in making me a fan, but just as there are episodes of “The Simpsons” that are stand-out amazing (I’m thinking of the episode when Bart is sent to France and finds that he is a slave in a vineyard; the one where Marge takes part in the musical version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” with a chorus number “You can always depend on the kindness of strangers” or the remake of “Of Mice and Men”) I have now seen an episode of “Family Guy” that stunned me.

     “Send in Stewie, Please” is focussed on just one character and is an extended episode that I understand was broadcast without commercial breaks.

     The action of the episode is centred on the obnoxiously precocious baby of the family, Stewie.  He has been sent to the child psychiatrist because, as we eventually find out, he has pushed another child downstairs.

     Stewie dominates this episode and through picking up clues in photographs and other things he is able to give a crushing description of the live and love of the psychiatrist (voiced brilliantly by Ian McKellen!) before breaking down himself and revealing The Truth about himself.  It is mesmerizing.  It is comic, without being funny and it is a very polished piece of writing.

     It was broadcast in March 2018 and I recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet.  Whether you will get the full flavour of the episode if you haven’t seen any other the others I am not sure, but it will still be a horrifyingly amusing sort of experience!

     “Family Guy” is a much more ‘adult’ animation than “The Simpsons” and uses tropes that you would never find in the latter.  It is also famous for its ‘cut aways’ and these often have ‘real’ film or ‘real’ characters in them.  Sexuality is a major theme, in a number of varieties, sometimes very uncomfortably!

     It’s all good stuff and I am thoroughly enjoying my belated introduction to a splendid series!

For Sunday lunch we had our traditional meal of chicken from the pollo a last where people are still maintaining adequate physical distancing and forming an orderly queue.  This Sunday the people tried to reinstate the ticket system where, having taken a paper ticket, you are informed that it is your turn by an electronic display.  For the last few weeks, because of the distanced queuing it was irrelevant and most of us had queued without taking a ticket.  This meant that, when the owner tired to call out a number there was instant rebellion from the queue and the system was dispensed with immediately.  Something to bear in mind for next week!

     Though, who knows how we will be behaving by next week!  Time now has the quick slowness or slow quickness that can easily catch you out!