LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 56 – Sunday, 10th May

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain and the threat of the “thin end of the wedge” challenge to exercise: if you don’t go out for your bike ride because of a little dampness, then what will you do if the sky is merely overcast tomorrow?  Will that be excuse enough to defer effort?

     Admittedly, rainy days are in the minority in this country, and therefore the opportunities for indolence are fewer too, but the rot can set in at any moment, and the dust can settle on a machine that is meant for motion!

     I do have waterproof leggings and a lightweight rain jacket so it is perfectly possible (if unpleasant) to go for a bike ride and stay relatively dry.  On the other hand, it does make the ride more duty than pleasure.  On the other hand (making three, by my computation!) exercise is essential for the preservation of a healthy lifestyle under lockdown and so the (unpleasant) effort should probably be made.

     As you can imagine, I indulged in such pleasant prevarication, while reading my Daily Dose of Misery from the news section of the digital Guardian and doing the Quick Crossword and, of course, drinking my essential cup of tea.  Time well spent.  And dry too!

     Eventually, I decided to test the weather and, after extensive sampling of the climatic conditions (i.e. opening the kitchen window) I reasoned that, while it was still damp it was not actually raining so the ride could be taken in relative comfort.

     It was only when I was gloved and helmeted with the bike newly charged and ready to go, that I looked at my watch.  I had missed my age-specific designated time slot for exercise, so back upstairs for a cup of tea?

     In the eagerness to return to the comfort of the sitting room I conveniently forgot the possibility of the mind numbing circling of the communal pool as a substitute for the more open and interesting vistas of the Paseo.  It comes to something that I have to write about it before the possibility of doing something that I outlined in the previous sentence becomes an imperative.   Moppy (for it is she, god bless her mechanical revolving cleaning pads) is about her business on our tile floors and therefore the presence of my obstructing feet are an impediment to her efficiency and I should remove them to the pool.  So I will.  And service will be resumed after I have listened on another episode of ‘In Our Time’ on the hoof!

     Which was Mandeville’s ‘Fable of the Bees’ – a book I own and have never read, but now I will be able to bluff my way and make links with present economic and sociological thought.  That’s what ‘In Our Time’ is all about!  Learning with walking stick in one hand and umbrella in the other and weaving my way around sun loungers to make the circuits a little bit more interesting.

     As the weather is glum, there are few people about and I am sure that gatherings of the ‘bike gangs’ (that makes them sound so much more threatening than these al fresco bike mounted chat groups are) will be loath to form without the clemency of warm weather.

     As it is Sunday, I will make one of my commercial outings to the pollo a last to get our chicken meal.  As well as facilitating the provision of food it also gives an interesting view of how well physical distancing is enduring.  So far, the distancing has been exemplary, although rain does encourage grouping under awning, so it will test discipline!

     And I can now confirm that discipline was preserved and, apart from the kids who now seem not to wear mask as a matter of course.

Rather than listen to the Blond Buffoon who was speaking at 7 pm I went out in the rain on my bike rather than listen to his bluster.  The lead up to this talk (Why on a Sunday?  Why not in parliament?) was a master class in communication ineptitude as expectation was allowed to distort any possible message.  The new slogan “Stay alert” is confusing and dangerously ambiguous, it just adds to the general air of desperate ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ approach that has characterised the methodology of this government.

     Spain too is easing restrictions in a stepped approach.  You would have thought that any easing would only be in those areas where the virus had been shown to be limited, with extensive testing to verify any such limitation.  Why then has Madrid decided that it is one of the regions where restrictions can be relaxed when the number of deaths and new infections is still rife?

     In Spain and the UK, it would appear that the political is more important that public health, and unless that is reversed then we are going to pay for that in more and more deaths.

Tomorrow is our weekly shop, something I look forward to with pathetic excitement!  There is an added delight this time, as I have to find some ant traps to combat a mild infestation upstairs.  Always something to make like just that little bit more interesting!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 51 – Tuesday, 5th May

All my life (except for one brief flirtation with the showy radical charms of The Independent) I have been a Guardian reader.  I know that, in many ways, I am a typical Guardian aficionado: wishy-washy-left-wingy-middle-classy what have you.  Every morning I do the Quick Crossword and read (nowadays) virtually everything.

     And that is the problem.

     After twenty minutes of headlines and leading articles I have virtually lost the will to live.  The unrelentingly negative news about the duplicity and mendacity of our political leaders; the ravages of Covid-19 and its increasing devastation in the Developing World; Brexit; Trump; the Spanish and Catalan economies and the continuing disaster of the lockdown; the building work next door; the closure of the Liceu; the continuation of my Catalan lessons.  Everything works together to depress.

     But, as one astute friends remarked, “You are almost enjoying this, aren’t you?”  And, yes, apart from the inability to go for my daily swim, the forcing myself on my own resources is not something that I dislike!  Obviously the reasons for the change in life style are appalling and I am horrified by the loss of life and the descent into poverty for so many in the world as their life line of occupation is modified or taken away – but I am able to count my blessings, and my personal circumstances are so much better than many.

     What is difficult is balancing my present ‘fortunate’ position with the more than negative circumstances of so many others.  Reducing myself to misery reading about the privations of others, mixed with sharp guilt because I am not ‘suffering’ like so many, is essentially an arid waste of limited joie de vivre.

Why as the Health Secretary not resigned?  Touchy little Matt who was offended by the ‘tone’ of a shadow spokesperson’s pertinent question about his and his government’s shortcomings obviously lied about achieving 100k tests by laughably inflating the testing figures and for the last three days the total has fallen below his self-set target.  If he had an ounce of decency he would go; but one has to remember that he joined Johnson’s government in spite of what he had said previously, so he has no decency.

     What I find most objectionable is that ministers behave as though they are playing a game of ‘deflect the blame’, using words to hide the yawning gaps in health care provision and what they do not seem to understand is that people, actual, real people, are dying because of their actions, inactions and wordiness.

     Every day brings new scandals, new statistics, new depths to which the government effortlessly sinks.

I went out for a bike ride this evening in ‘our’ time slot and noticed only one obviously illegal Plague Kid out and about, together with a number of marginal looking ‘kids’ who if they are supposed to be 14 plus to be in our group were marginal to say the least.

     I enjoy my jaunt up to the end of the coastal road in Gavá, because I always end up feeling pleasantly, resentfully irritated by the entirely predictable poor behaviour of pedestrians and their encroachment on our cycling lanes.  These lanes are clearly marked with white lines and little logos of bikes and pedestrians should stay out.  But they don’t.

     The really irritating ones are those that walk deliberately on the outside white line of our double lanes and look pained when you don’t deviate from your painted path and force them (usually) to give way.

     People walk backwards into the lanes, allow their dogs to meander on absurdly long leads, let kids go on toy cycles and scooters, have conversations in the middle of the lanes and on and on.

     The worst offenders are of course runners.  It is a bike lane and not a runner’s lane – but runners seem to believe that they are in a different moral universe to the rest of us.

     In the interests of fairness and truth, I have to admit that some cyclists are just as obnoxious, showing little to no concern for pedestrians and ostentatiously riding in the pedestrian part of the road.  Alas!  If we were all judged by our total behaviour, who would ‘scape whipping!

     But I find that, factoring in the irritation, it is an excellent and not too long ride with plenty to see and, as I pride myself on being a considerate cyclist, I end up slightly tired with a warm sense of superiority at the end of my journey.  And, and this is the key difference between myself and most of the other bike riders, I use my lights!

     Sigh!

Sunday start

A lazy day today, I didn’t get up until 8.15 am!  I decided to give swimming a miss and will compensate by having an extended bike ride on the way to and from getting lunch in the local chicken place.

     I’ve completed the quick Guardian crossword, though it was a little more taxing than usual and I am sometimes stuck by the brevity of the clues that give a slanted version of the necessary word’s definition, so I often get the word before I realize its link to the clue!  Still, it’s done and that gives the start of the day a sort of achievement to add to the impetus of filling time with something useful.  Not that I have to search around for things to do as each day ends with my only having completed a part of my ‘to do’ list.  At the moment, for example, Catalan homework is handing over me and this writing is, yet again, displacement activity to compensate for my not doing it!

     There is a whip to get me in line with the work that I need to do for Catalan, as the examination for this section of the course will take place on the 13^th of this month.  We have been given fair warning, have been told what sort of vocabulary is going to be tested and have been given direct and clear indications of what sort of writing we will need to complete.  With such clear directions it is perverse and churlish not to get stuck in to the work and start the process of learning.  But I haven’t yet got round to starting this.  In my notebook that is supposed to be for my ideas for poems, I often find myself writing encouraging or admonitory notes to myself about work that needs to be done.  This writing too is another way of my communicating with myself to get geared up to start the hard work of learning.

     I find learning new words difficult; I discover a new, often useful word in Catalan, look at it, try and memorize it, write it down a few times – and then it’s gone.  The amount of effort needed to set the words in my memory seems disproportionate and I therefore tend to enter my learning zone with negativity washing around my mind.  I try and reason with myself: I live in Catalonia, I am surrounded by the language, learning it is merely a matter of common courtesy as well as increasing my understanding and so on and so on – but whatever psychological boosts I give myself, the simple inability to retain new vocab. Is a settled fact.  This in turn means that the examination will be another depressing indication of inability as I stagger my illiterate way towards the end of the scholastic year!

     In my own language, however, I continue to thrive.  The latest work on the ‘recalcitrant’ poem is producing good results.  Even though I may not have written a single line of poetry, the ideas and some phrases are steadily coalescing and the structure is beginning to emerge from all my pencilled scribbles.  I know for past experience that the present discrete idea elements scattered throughout the pages that I have already written will, eventually come together into a (hopefully) coherent poem.  Even if it doesn’t, the process is one that is enjoyable if demanding!

 

Today is Saint David’s Day and I have hunted around (as I do each year) to find the little artificial daffodil (purchased in aid of the Marie Curie Foundation) to wear for my National Day.  And, each time I wear it, it focuses my attention on my nationality.  In my next book, The eloquence of broken things, there is a section that brings together poems I have written that consider my nationality and what it mean to me.  For a numerically small nation, identity is a constant preoccupation and with the swamping proximity of England and the overwhelming use of English as the language of Wales the relationship between Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom is a critical element in the national sense of identity.  Each St David’s Day has become an opportunity for me to indulge (and I think that is the right word) in a particular form of introspection that rarely affects me on other days of the year – which is significant in itself!

     Only once has anyone commented on my wearing of a daffodil on St David’s Day and I assume that it will go generally unnoticed today as well.  Though there is a slightly different dimension because daffodils are yellow. 

     Let me explain.  I wear a metal pin of a yellow ribbon to show my support for the Catalans who are still in prison or restricted in their public lives because of the Spanish justice system in the aftermath of the referendum for Catalan independence.  Putting the question of independence aside for a moment, I consider the jailing of so many Catalan politicians to be reprehensible and perhaps an indication of the politicisation of the Spanish justice system. 

     The reaction of the Spanish to the Catalans has sometimes been little short of paranoid, with some instances of the banning of the colour yellow e.g. football supporters wearing yellow t-shirts or scarves having to give up pieces of yellow clothing before they were allowed into the games!  So a yellow daffodil could be seen as a statement of support for the prisoners and Catalan independence.

     In my case as I am wearing it next to the yellow ribbon, obviously for aesthetic rather than political reasons, the link is more obvious!