Years
ago, when I was a volunteer on Cardiff AIDS Helpline, part of the duties of the
volunteer was to staff the phones so that you could answer questions on the
disease from members of the public who were able to ask for information in a
safe environment where their anonymity was guaranteed. It was very rewarding and volunteers were
only allowed to take phone calls when they had undergone a fairly rigorous
period of training.
I remember, in one of the training
sessions where we were being presented with simulations of calls one of the
trainers, after listening to my responses said, “A little judgemental there,
Stephen!” I put it down to my being a
teacher where there is an obvious overarching sense of direction and intent in
the pedagogic approach. But, with the
Helpline, it was all about the caller: whatever the caller said and whatever
the caller talked about, the volunteer had to go with it and suspend
judgement. I found it refreshing! Whatever the caller had done, was doing or
thought about doing, I was only there to give unbiased explanations and to give
advice if asked. I heard some shocking
things but I learned not to judge only to supply facts to give the callers the
information they needed to answer their questions and to give them clarity in
the direction that best suited them.
In the early days of the AIDS epidemic
ignorance was the great killer. In spite
of the eventual mass advertising campaigns, the sometimes-gnomic approach was
not direct enough for the basic information to get to the bulk of the
population and some of the questions asked showed a shocking lack of
understanding.
One caller asked if it was possible for,
“Me to give myself AIDS if I cut myself?”
While another when being told that the AIDS virus could be killed with a
weak solution of bleach asked, “Couldn’t you inject that into somebody to kill
the virus in them?”
I was reminded of my time with the
Helpline when reading and listening to Trump in one of his latest deranged
pronouncements where he seems to be urging the use of internal UV treatment and the
ingestion of bleach as a way of combating the Covid-19 virus! 30 years later and still the same level of
ignorance, and this time not a random anonymous caller from Cardiff but the
so-called leader of the free world who, from the time of his inauguration has spoken,
“some weird shit” as Bush put it.
At one time you could smile at the antics
of the Orange Grotesquery, but it has become increasingly apparent that his
mangled language simply kills.
The
second attempt at Google Meet for our language classes was not an entire
success. The sound quality was variable,
to say the least and the pictures confusing.
Having seen Zoom conferences of neatly aligned video feeds and
exceptional audio, this experience was a little less than overwhelming. I do not even think that I managed to get the
basic information from our little gathering, but I will persevere and see what
happens.
Our Catalan group is about five or six on
a good day, but I was the only one there and will have to relay imperfectly
understood information in the hope of getting some sort of on line lesson up
and running. As far as I can tell, the
only good thing coming out of the crisis is that we will not have any
examinations; for which much thanks! But
it does call into question any certificate that we might be given at the end of
the year! What little Catalan I did have
before the advent of Covid-19 has now altogether disappeared. Every time I open my textbook, it is as
thought I am starting from scratch.
To justify our continued places in the virtual
classes we have to do a certain number of ‘tasks’ and submit on line for
assessment. Having looked at the first
one, I am even more confused than I was before the meeting, but no doubt, I
will cobble something or other together and stagger on in the way that has
become second nature to me when it comes to the study of languages!
We
have just had a loudspeaker car come around the streets telling us that the
normal municipal Friday collection of garden clippings and pine needles has been
suspended until further notice. You may
not consider this much of a hardship, until you realize that the constant
dropping of pine needles (in an area called after the pine trees) is a major
problem. This is not because of any
unsightliness, but rather because of the threat that the accumulation of pine
needles poses to the efficient working of our drainage system. The pine needles block drains and cause
floods unless they are cleared from gutters on a fairly regular basis. Everything is interconnected and ignoring one
part of the system will lead in a fairly short time to its collapse. One wonders what other services have been
dispensed with during this crisis and when the end results of this neglect will
start showing itself.
We are now two days away from the release
of the Plague Kids into the streets on Sunday.
The rules (as far as anyone really knows them) say that a youngster can
be taken out on a short walk
accompanied by a single parent. I simply do not believe that this is going to
happen and we certainly do not have the number of police available to make sure
that the rules are followed. But,
perhaps I am being cynical.
The
sun is out and the sky is cloudless and all is well with the world. At least, all is well with the world when it
is concentrated on the third floor terrace, my private bit of the ‘outside’!
