Is there any normality left around?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gradually, but only gradually News is creeping up the screen on my Guardian mobile app, so that my initial shudder as I am forced to consider (and relish) the length of the queue to see the coffin of the late Queen is gradually being superseded by things of somewhat more immediate import, like how we are going to survive the winter without shedloads of debt.

     I realise that Monday will however be a day swamped by full and exhausting coverage of the Funeral, and I am sure that I will not be exempt from a full-scale broadcast here in Catalonia.  When I fled the UK in the summer of 1981 to escape the supine coverage of The (first) Marriage of the present King Charles III, I made the mistake of going to the US of A where, believe it or not, there was greater coverage of The Marriage in NY than there was in London!  I spent my time telling those gushing Americans who congratulated (!) me on being British and therefore having a special relationship with that doomed marital relationship that I was a Republican – thought not, I hastened to add, a Republican in the American sense!

     I sincerely hope that after Monday, things will get back to some sort of normality where the destructive and vicious policies (if they are worthy of that epithet) of the Conservative government can be considered and shown to be the worthless pieces of selfishness that they so clearly are, to anyone outside the Cult of Neoliberalism!

     If the astonishing dedication of certain parts of the British population in standing in line for umpteen hours can be defined as in any way positive, then I suppose I would have to hope that something of the same dedication is given to the more pressing problems facing the population than the death of the unelected head of state.

     Talking of American Republicans, one commentator pointed out that the fixation with trying to ban abortion shown by many on the right demonstrates a concern for the unborn baby right up until it is actually born, then the anti-abortionists demonstrate not a jot of concern for the health of mother or baby.  Pro-life seems to be concerned with the unborn, as soon as there is a live and kicking human being in the world, the concern of those fanatics seems to fade away.

     I only hope that the dedication and respect that people have clearly shown to a corpse, can be extended to the living after the Queen has been laid to rest in Windsor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     The number of food banks that a wealthy and developed country like Great Britain has is a disgrace.  Charities that run these food banks have pointed out that with rising prices they are not going to be able to cope with rising demand.  The Tory government has systematically de-funded social services, so that the winter of 2022-2023 is going to be one of deprivation and distress.  I hope that the spirit that drove so many people to give up their time to wait in a queue will recognize that there is another pressing reason for them to devote themselves to a higher and living cause.

 

     Support your local food bank or volunteer if you can! 

     If everyone gave the time that they spent queueing or gave the equivalent amount that their time was worth in a donation to the food banks, then I would commend their concern.

The slippery eel waddles away!

 

Try as I might, I find myself unable to resist trawling the Guardian for news about the charlatan who is masquerading as the First Lord of the Treasury in the United (ha!) Kingdom.

     As I have made abundantly clear to anyone who will listen to me, I am prepared to pay ready money to anybody who takes the clown to court and presses charges of Corporate Manslaughter against him and his motley crew of degenerate inadequates who make up the Cabinet.

As an integral part of the evidence against the idiot, it would be good to have the crushing conclusions of an independent commission of some sort to bring into court.       The dolt has said that the process of looking into the National Disaster of Covid Unpreparedness will start during this session of Parliament.  And the gibbering loon has further been on the radio and through the usual morass of gibberish he has intimated that the process will actually start in the Spring of next year.  The World At One on BBC Radio 4 managed to find an expert who said that, given the wide-ranging nature of the inquiry it would be unlikely that the final report would be issued for a couple of years.  So, the final report will likely be published, if the corrupt money hoover actually is forced to do so, in 2024/5!  And, of course, as the commission or inquiry or whatever takes its course, the shock-haired charlatan will regard the whole question as ‘parked’ and when the report is finally issued, the nepotistic ethics vacuum will regard the whole question as “past history” – just as he has successfully managed to evade responsibility for the actions of previous Conservative governments over the last decade of which he has been part.

     I am horrified to think that he might actually get away with it – just as he has all the other misdemeanours that have littered his so-called career, both political and personal.

     The results of the council elections show that as long as you keep a straight, or in his case an “engagingly” twinkly eyed face, the electorate will swallow any old rubbish and will, in their droves act like virus voting for vaccine – a truly bad analogy as there the ‘bad’ will be destroyed by their own ignorance . . . oh, wait a minute, the so-called Red Wall voting because they believe the proven liar’s assurances; because they believe that Conservatives actually care for anything north of Watford – perhaps the analogy holds!

     Although I think that politics in England (I stress ‘England’) are rapidly approaching a Through the Looking Glass unreality as logic is divorced from proven actuality, there is always the good old US of A, to show that things could be even worse.  Republicans in Red States are behaving like unsupervised spoilt children wreaking havoc on other children’s sandcastles, except real people are being hurt by the Republicans denial of truth, and the baleful influence of the Floridian Oz is making the Republican Party simply not serious enough to take on the mantle of government.

     Any self-respecting Conservative will (or should) find it impossible to continue supporting a party motivated by a demonstrable lie.  The purging of the party to ensure that all elected party officials are True Believers in the coup inspiring and voter denying Trump means that the choice that Conservative have to make is clear.  If they do not make it, then they will be tainted by association and should be called out and condemned.

     The acceptance and adoption of “illegality” by the British Conservatives in their attempts to preserve power is not something that should comfort democrats (with a small ‘d’) in Britain.  Just as I passionately believe (based on past proof) that the NHS is NOT SAFE in Conservative hands, so I equally passionately believe that the present bunch of unprincipled Conservatives have not and will not be bound by common decency and they will use all the power of their positions to twist, distort and subvert norms and institutions to keep the party in power.

     I think that we are at a pivotal point in the history of the UK: the structure of the country is fracturing and we have a government that essentially couldn’t care less about anywhere other than England.  The small-minded nationalism and the very large lies which fostered the disaster of Brexit are going to be used to justified to change and wreck what we thought might have been solid.  The next few years are going to be a very rough ride!

 

Meanwhile, off to Terrassa for another birthday in the festive orgy of commemoration that is the first part of May!

What is worse?

 

 

Where is William Rees-Mogg?  What crypt have the Conservatives confined him in?  He is certainly safely far away from public view.

     You must understand that I do not enquire about his whereabout through any concern on my part about his welfare, but my mind has turned towards him as I have read through the Guardian reports about the latest shenanigans in the on-going horror story of corruption and sleaze, incompetence and arrogance, callous disregard and breath-taking audacity that mark each new day in the life of the United Kingdom’s so-called Conservative government.

   Why, you would have every reason to ask, does my mind turn towards Rees-Mogg during these testing times?  Why dwell, even for a moment, on the Slytherin Dark Prince of Pure Brexit?

     Well, the truth of the matter is that the Liars’ Liar, Pile-‘em-High Johnson, has descended so far into the miasmic pit of deceit and corruption that, by comparison, his satanic highness Rees-Mogg looks more and more like a reasonable chappie.

     And that assertion tells you that British Conservative Politics has reached a level of awfulness that all previous language and concepts designed to express disgust are clearly inadequate.  If Who-Knows-How-Many-Children Johnson is now an even less attractive option than Rees-Mogg, then we truly have reached the End Times.

     But, just when you despair, Gove comes to mind, to remind you that there are depths that even the blundering loquacity of Johnson and the diamond distain of Rees-Mogg have yet to plumb.

     The gut-wrenching awfulness of Gove’s appearance in the Commons to justify/explain/excuse the criminal train wreck of a government led by a serial liar was a master class in repulsive Jesuitical casuistry.  Gove is no fool and he chooses his words with a care which is entirely lost on the average baying hooray henry of his party. 

     Every ‘speech’ by Gove should be analysed by a group of hand-picked pedants to find out exactly what he said, rather than what he gave the impression of having said.  Or perhaps his ‘speeches’ should be analysed by a group of insurance policy underwriters who are well used to finding ways out of fulfilling their obligations.  They are the ones who can look at a statement like, “I did not hear him say that when I was in the room,” and explain that ambiguity allows, “I was outside the room when I heard him say it,” to be true without making the first statement a lie.

     I always feel sullied when I hear Gove speak; his words are the equivalents of smuts – to hear is to be defiled.

     Johnson, in so far as he has penetrated the consciousness of the people around me who are not British, is regarded as an absurd figure of fun, he is treated with common contempt and is summed up in the public’s mind by the before-and-after pictures of his first post-lockdown haircut, where the universal response was, “Did he pay actual money for that!”

     I am ashamed of the government of the United Kingdom, and I am deeply ashamed that so many of my fellow countrymen continue to support a Prime Minister who, in my view, should be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter.

 

Other things in Life

NEW LOCKDOWN, Day 11, Monday.

Lockdown has put me in mind of Wendell Urth – a fictional ‘extra-terrologist’ created by Isaac Asimov in a few of his detective sci-fi stories.  Urth is regarded as the world’s foremost expert on distant worlds, but he has a morbid fear of leaving his own rooms, so while his mind is universe wide, his living space is enclosed.

     It doesn’t take a very dramatic shift to think about our own limiting conditions under lockdown with its radical lessening of our personal spaces, while at the same time encouraging our compulsive fascination with an election half a world away! 

    

Perhaps the American Election is the modern day equivalent of ‘Bread and Circuses’ for the Enclosed Folk of Lockdown: it keeps us off the streets; gives us something to concentrate our minds; allows us to be safely (domestically) judgemental about all those Republican idiots without masks; deflects attention from the situation at home; is a soap opera that never seems to end; it has a moral (of sorts); it has clearly defined Goodies and Baddies, and so on.

     I am almost tempted to say that if there had not been something like the American Election to fill our newspapers and TV screens then something would have had to have been invented.  And I don’t mean a new series of Celebrity Big Brother.  Which I wouldn’t have watched.

     What Biden needs to do is make American politics competent and boring.  A time when each day does not need to start with a convulsive clutching of the mobile phone to find out what new horror The Orange Outcast has leashed upon the world.  Biden is decent, politically savvy, a born compromiser – if he is allowed to do his job then things will settle down and be predictively tedious.  Please.

     This morning I clicked on a link which took me to Biden’s Transition Blog or webpage or whatever and there was a section to be filled out which invited the reader to join and be the recipient of regular updates.  I filled it out, but the thing needed a further registration or forgotten password, or something.  And I just let it go.  And that is surely right.  We have now come to a stage where we need to be weaned away from an easy reliance of the Orange Antics of Small Handed Narcissists and we should not seek to place the onus of entertainment on plodding dependable Biden.

     Let’s face it, although the thrill got less with each unparalleled outburst, Trump was entertaining.  As long as you forgot that he was the most powerful man in the world and leader of the Free World etc.  He was pure, totally sullied, entertainment.  He just wasn’t a politician.  Or decent human.  But, like the witches in Salem, he provided not only spectacle, but also a Manichean boost for leftie liberals, where Trump’s mere existence showed that they had to be right because they were opposite.  I’m not sure that the comparison works, as I seem to be equating witch-burning bigots with the left, which is not my intention at all.  A more responsible writer would cut the whole of this paragraph and either re-work the idea or scrap it; but that ain’t me! 

     Liber scriptus es, as they say, though thinking about it again, that quote can get me into more trouble and be even more confusing and confused. 

     Well, on to the next topic.

 

 

Which is, the algorithm that Netflix uses to keep its patrons (!) secure is getting more blatant in its ensnaring of me.  Today, as I popped in for a little light comedic fare from my usual pushers at The Big Bang Theory, I was presented with a childish, garish advertisement for what was obviously a juvenile animation called Wonder Park, the figures were cartoonish rather than draftsman drawn and the appearance was rigidly commercial.  Something to pass by, to ignore, to find something a little more amusing and a little more intellectually stimulating.

     It reduced me to tears.  OK, I fully admit that, rather like my mother, some Andrex adverts have been enough to make me emotionally wobbly, but they used unfair tactics like Yellow Labrador puppies, and who can then resist?

  I double-clicked and I was hooked.  And once involved in something like fantasy/Sci-Fi/animation, I can always find an intellectual, literary, cultural reference to justify my continued attention.

     In most of the big company animations today where money has been spent on a decent script and the process, there is usually a sequence or some witty (adult referenced, to keep them interested) dialogue to make a moment and to give pleasure.  And there were more than a few such moments in this feel-good movie.  Yes, you could tell and list the animation films that they were shamelessly ripping off, but they did it with some style and so I am prepare to allow them to count as ‘influences’ or homage!

     I’m not entirely sure that I would recommend it as something for everyone, but a competent piece of animation, it is a delight.

 

And now, to complete the evening, some reading.  Or rather, some reading which is not about the American election in the Guardian.  A real book, well, a freebie downloaded to my Kindle, but it all counts!

 

 

 

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 35 – Sunday, 19th APRIL

It’s raining. 

     I am disinclined to go on my circuits of the communal swimming pool in the pouring rain. 

     I am further depressed by the reading in the Guardian about Goblin Gove’s typically mealy-mouthed, unconvincing response to a series of allegations in The Sunday Times that the Convalescing Clot missed five consecutive emergency meetings of COBRA in the build up to the Covid-19 crisis and that the government shipped PPE to China in February. 

     That would have covered the period when our part-time Prime Minister was hidden away in Chequers, a prime minister who notoriously “didn’t work weekends” according to an unnamed senior adviser!  Once Bullingdon Club always Bullingdon Club: the lazy sense of entitlement of the rich and the privileged; let the lesser breeds without the law do the hard graft while the Johnson jonson sets about adding another child to the unnumbered brood.

     I am more than prepared to believe that the lingering poison of Brexit mixed with the euphoria of the Conservative right wing after the crushing electoral victory led the ‘government’ fatally to mismanage a coherent approach to the Covid-10 crisis. 

     The typical Tory inhumanity of the ‘herd immunity’ approach to dealing with the crisis, complacently accepting hefty deaths will be remembered, together with the astonishing U-Turn when it was suddenly abandoned in favour of approaches that more nearly matched virtually every other government in the world.

     The position of the Health Secretary is becoming more and more untenable – or at least it should be becoming more and more untenable as more and more avoidable deaths will be laid as a memorial to his incompetence.  Yes, efficient supply is difficult in times of crisis, especially in a cash and equipment and personnel starved institution like the NHS that is in its present state because of the cruel austerity practiced by the Tory government for the last decade. 

     The empty platitudes of support that Tory ministers mouth for Health Workers are cruelly ironic given their attitudes towards the NHS over the past years.  These are the same vile folk who cheered after a pay increase for Nurses was defeated in the House of Commons!  They disgust me.

     And, as I typed that last bitter sentence, the rain outside has grown appreciably heavier.  There is nothing like the Pathetic Fallacy to cement misery in place!

In an effort to escape the gnawing resentment contained in the paragraphs above, I have turned to something more creative.  My chapbook of poems written in Holy Week called Coasts of Memory.  I have been working on illustration and made a decision to use only photographs taken within the lockdown confines.  This means that the house, the garden, the communal pool and what I can see from the terrace and windows are all fair game for my camera!

     I spent yesterday evening playing around with the raw material that I had and started placing individual pictures in what I considered to be appropriate places in the chapbook.  I am constantly frustrated by petty mechanical problems with images and sometimes it is a case of printing what fits rather than fitting what I want to print!

     There is also the problem of he disappearing fonts.  I save what I do fairly religiously; I have been caught out too often and too painfully when documents develop a missing life of their own not to remember to save.  But I am often frustrated by the way in which complex documents do not always retain formatting. 

     The latest example of this concerns by choice of a fairly exotic fort used as a title.  This font did not transfer when I sent the document via email rather than copying it onto a memory stick - in spite of my avowal of the very latest in technology, I can be whimsically old-school from time to time!  The font is space greedy, so when it transfers as something altogether more prosaic it means that everything else on the page is out of place and that has a domino effect on all the pages afterwards.  As I was going to use that particular version of the book for detailed editing, it might turn out to be self-defeating if I have to redo everything with the ‘correct’ font in place in the final document.  Such things are sent to try me, and at least I can have a direct effect on what I do there, as opposed to whingeing on about what my government is doing or not doing in this crisis!

In the way in which the petty becomes important: Toni is going out to get bread!  An event for which he dresses up like an Inuit and wings the desolate abyss between our home and the bread shop that is a few streets away.  I enjoy the results of these little excursions as we usually have a little treat from the patisserie as well as mere bread – by which alone, one cannot live!

     This time, as well as the bread, Toni is going to attempt to get some chicken from the pollo a last, this will be our first ‘bought in’ meal since the lockin began.  However, if there is a queue, or there are too many people there then the meal will be called off and we will have to settle for the bread.  And treats.

There are increasing accounts in the media of the possibility of no vaccine being produced in the short term, or even ever.  We have the example of AIDS, where, in spite of extensive research over a number of years, we are still without a vaccine.  Treatment for the disease, yes; vaccine no.  That is a very sobering thought.  It means that we will be dealing with the virus as an ever-present threat well after this initial surge is over and it also means that for people in my age group the restrictions are going to last for the foreseeable future. 

     This is a more than depressing thought!