Being rather than succeeding?

 

 

A most unsatisfactory swim today.  Not entirely my fault, because whatever Toni had yesterday that made him a little hors de combat, struck me as soon as I got up.  A slightly otherworldly feeling and a distinct disinclination to go through the necessary processes to get me to the pool for opening time.

     At first I though it could be a case of ‘sympathetic panic’ at the onset of the new school term.  Although VERY happily retired, I do share a sort of hysterical malaise at this time of the year.  Usually it passes, almost at the same time as I see active teachers going through the doors of their respective schools, but this feeling of being down took me into the morning darkness and towards my trusty bike.

     It only took a few metres, experiencing that sickening bumpiness on the back wheel, to realise that something was wrong.  A flat tyre.  And not on the front where it is easy to take the wheel off and get it repaired, but on the back wheel that has the gears and all sorts of other things that I do not mess about with.

     So, back home and putting the bike back under the tarp and going over to the car to get to the pool.  Even if not entirely well, I have a built-in rugged determination to have my daily swim!

     Which I did.  In a desultory and unconvincing way, with my even swimming extended periods of breaststroke, which is not a good sign for me as a dyed in the wool crawl swimmer.  I did do my time, if not the full number of lengths, but honour was satisfied and I drove home.  And promptly felt worse.

     Whenever I feel under the weather (giving it is glorious sunshine who isn’t under?) I take to my bed.  And I get better.  It never fails to enrage Toni, who has a much more expansive attitude to illness than I, as a few hours prone usually does the trick for me.

     As it has done this time too.  I can’t pretend that I feel 100%, but I feel more than prepared to take on the normal stresses of life without whimpering for pity.

     As is also normal during these times of unwellness, I have little to no appetite, though even as I type those words, the ‘concept’ of food is appealing, which is only one step behind getting something to satisfy what should be a growing hunger. 

     Time will tell.

 

The start of the month also opens the way for the medical establishment of Catalonia to attend to my clinical needs.  There has been something of a hiatus during the summer, but now that the first of September has come and gone, there is a feeling of ‘let’s get going’ that seems to jolly up the whole country.  I am, of course, hoping that this positive attitude will be part of my treatment in the coming months.

     The first hospital appointment I have is a scheduled one (on a rough annual basis) that is more to do with my proving to the doctors that I am alive than having anything done to me.  I will go and have my appointment (usually with a doctor coming to the end of his employment) who will look at me, voice a few platitudes and then say, “See you next year!”  With any luck.  Though he will probably have retired by the time I go back.

     The more important appointment comes next month when I will see the fabled traumatologist for the first time.   

     I am building up a truly absurd amount of hope linked to this appointment.  I know that my knees are a lost cause and that for them to be made workable, an orthopaedic surgeon will have to take hammer and chisel to them and sculpt something artificial to take the place of the bone rubbing on bone that is my present case.  

      I am also more than well aware that such ‘routine’ operations are way down the pecking order to be completed, given the pressures that have been placed on the health service by the pandemic and other financial restraints.  I also realize that the likely waiting time for the first of the two operations that I need will likely be at least eighteen months or two years away at very best.  And that, is a daunting thought, to put it mildly.

     I understand that there are stop-gap measures of injecting something (any bloody thing!) into the space where there should be a membrane separating the end of the bone, that could give relief for a month at worst and months at best.

     At the moment I am not even near being put on a waiting list, so I am looking at getting my first operation in my mid-70s!  At which point I can hear a whole chorus of younger and needier people chanting, “Let him hobble!”  And one does have some sympathy.  But that is in the abstract, and the pain in my knees is in the very real and so I hope that Something Can Be Done.

     The Opera Season will just have started before that first appointment.  I wish I could find something apposite to say about arthrosis-ridden knees and Don Pasquale (the first opera of the season) but, apart from ridiculing old age, I can think of nothing! 

     At least Donizetti’s music is lively and that should buoy up my mood!

 

All Brexit Eve

Loping towards the burning fires fuelled with the broken hopes of gullible voters, the knuckle dragging denizens of comfortable wealth look towards their warm future with undisguised relish as they realize that, once again, the people who could have made a difference have, once again, voted against their own interests and allowed the arrogant, the privileged, the entitled and the callous to do what they do best: gloat.

As with virtually all aspects of Brexit, the idea that today is the eve of something tangible is actually as diaphanous as the reality that the Liars’ Liar paraded during the election campaign.  There will be no real Brexit tomorrow.  Things will go on going on and little will actually be settled.  The only actualite will be the issuing of a “celebratory” 50p piece (without the Oxford comma) which at least gives we Remainers something concrete to spurn!

Meanwhile, whatever the tousled-haired tosser says, the interminably sad saga of Brexit goes on.  And on.  And on.  He might be able to ban the word itself from the discourse of government, but Brexit is yet to be achieved.

Amazingly (or not, if you have been following the tortuous and torturing progress of the Conservative Party throwing the country under the bus [the one with 350m quid on its side] to persevere its existence) we still do not actually know what has really been decided and we still have no confidence that we will depart with a comprehensive deal.

At least in Spain we Brits think that we have some sort of deal which allows us to sleep at night, with pension and healthcare taken care of – unless things fall apart, and we do eventually crash out finally and catastrophically.  For we people, Brits living in Europe (or rather The Rest of Europe as Britain has decided that it is not part of the continent on whose shelf it is perched) we have another eleven months of uncertainty as we see our futures in the hands of the third-rate chancers that now govern us, being used as bargaining chips in what will surely turn out to be a depressingly one sided negotiation.

I don’t want this to turn into yet another Moan from somebody who has still not come to terms with the result – though it is difficult (if not impossible) to get the sense of unreality out of one’s mind.  The British electorate have done what they have done, for whatever reasons and we have to accept that the system by which we are governed allows this travesty to happen.

It would be easy to roam around Cassandra-like bemoaning the horrible reality, but one has to try and fine something positive to take from the debacle.

I once asked my mother whether she had considered that Britain could have lost when she was living through World War Two and she replied that she never, for one moment, ever considered the prospect of defeat.  I pointed out that there were times when the situation of Britain looked dire and the German military machine looked unstoppable.  She accepted that there had been bad times, but, as she put it, “I always knew that we would muddle through!  Eventually.”

You could, of course look at that sort of attitude as one of self-delusion – but she was right.

I have often thought about my mother’s attitude during the bleaker times of the on-going process of Brexit and thought that the British do seem to have a sort of ability to “muddle through” and “make the best of it” no matter how negative things look.

I do not wish my country ill.  I want the country to prosper.  I want a decent NHS and education and transport.  I want full employment and so on.  I have absolutely no desire to see my country come to harm just so that I can point towards the architects of the chaos and say, “I told you so!”  That petty triumph will mean the defeat of so many who are less able to defend themselves than the comfortable hypocrites of the Conservative Party as they carefully move their wealth off-shore or to EU states so that they can buttress themselves against the storm that the self-inflicted harm of Brexit could bring.

We might have made things more difficult for ourselves, but those are the obstacles that we have to surmount.  And I am sure that we will.  We will find a way to play our part in the continent of which we are, self-evidently, a crucial part.  But, just like Universal Credit, a reasonable idea badly administered will have casualties.  People will die, as they have done as a result of IDS’s botched fiasco.  But the casualties need to be limited.

I feel resentment and anger about what is going to be done in my name.  But resentment and anger are negative and the division that has and will rip the country apart must, somehow be overcome if we all are to prosper.

I will be nauseated by any celebration of the dark day that Brexit signifies, but more important than my disgust is my willingness to work to mitigate the effects of the policy and to remember that a country is composed of more than Guardian readers. And listeners to Radio 4. 

And that is something that I will have to accept.  All societies are plural and diverse.  Let us hope that the obvious talent and enterprise of our country can show a way to bring us together.

I wait to be convinced.

Reality Dawns. Again.

It used to be that ‘The Big C’ was the boogieman of illnesses but something else has taken its place for we non-smokers, but indulgent eaters.

I blame the quality of food in Catalonia for the fact, and it is a heavy one, that I need to lose weight.  Again.  My weight loss the last time was prompted (a euphemism if ever I heard one) by the results of a blood test and an out-and-out warning from my doctor.  Now that warning has been uttered to Toni and I am scurrying along in the penumbra of fear from that threat.

The warning was stark.  Lose weight or be set down as a Type 2 Diabetes patient with the consequent repercussions on life style and the lifetime taking of medication intravenously.

So, this lunchtime, the condemned man (he has until the end of the month to get the asterisks off his blood test results) ate anything but a hearty meal: salad, fish fillet, followed by nothing but a cup of coffee with saccharine!  As his blood-sugar level is too high he has been told to stay off fruit as an in-between-meals filler and instead drink some sort of tea, the name of which he has, in self defence, already forgotten.  Now, everything is going to be checked for sugar and I fear that we are going to find that sugar is second only to salt in its omnipresence in food, both prepared and natural.  We will probably both end up on a diet of water!

To be fair, this is only Day 1 of the New Regime, and I am hoping that sense, compromise and sheer indolence and tiredness might make the road to an asterisk-free life a little less bumpy.

My own situation is barely better than his.  I weighed myself this morning and discovered to my horror that I am some 16 kilograms over my ideal (or skeletal) weight.  If I actually lost that amount of weight I would look gaunt to the point of concern, so I have decided that a more reasonably horrific target is 10 kilograms.  That is a lot.  But there are ways.

At lunch today I had cool, still, H₂O to accompany my food.  Gone was the red wine and Casera that is my usual tipple.  Water.  Pure and simple.  And, I have decided, this is not just for today, but rather for the number of todays it takes to get me down to my ‘target’ weight.  I have made an executive decision to make an exception for Cava Brut.  The grounds for this exception are that Cava is a white, and therefore less calorie challenged drink; and also that the Brut nature of the Cava I drink means that it has even fewer calories than the other types.  I can therefore drink toasts with a clear conscience.

I am also cutting down on nuts.  One of my friends told me that when she was slimming she ate nuts: she allowed herself half a walnut every other day.  This is not, I have to tell you, how I eat nuts.  I take the generally accepted ‘healthy’ and ‘protein’ aspects of them and let that cover the fact that my consumption is markedly more than half a nut every other day!  That will stop.  Nuts and dried fruit will be added to the all-bran/Special K mixture that comprises my breakfast cereal.  And that’s it.  Honestly!

As I do not eat that much chocolate I am not too disturbed by its prohibition.  Added to that is the fact that I went into the fridge and threw out any chocolate I could find, just to give my self-restraint that extra edge of protection.  And I now quicken my step when the excellent selection of chocolate in supermarkets is near.

Bread is not too much of a problem either.  I love bread, but I can resist and I have restricted myself to pre-packaged 99 calorie multi-grain ‘bread’ that I pretend is good for me.  Whenever I feel like complaining, I merely have to remember one of my mother’s diet Energen Rolls (?) a form of what I could only describe as what ‘whipped bread’ might have tasted like.  That actually tasted like nothing at all, and offensively so as well!  At least my ‘bread’ is better than those were.

My problems are rice and pasta, and indeed potatoes – and any other form of carbohydrate that you care to mention.  I have been told on a previous occasion that these forbidden pleasure could be allowed as long as they form no more than a third of the plate, to which I respond by saying how high can you build?  To which the response was that I wasn’t thinking along the right lines and that suggestions have to be followed within the spirit of the advice as well as the word.  That doesn’t get you the calories you need, he whimpered quietly to himself.

Anyway the meal austerity has started and we are both thoroughly miserable.  Which is a bad way to start because I have also been told that no eating programme is going to work that does not have your enthusiasm behind it. 

That might well be true up to a point, but having fear as a driving force behind the need to lose weight is also a strong incentive and it might well do.

I will keep you informed about my weight loss or (tell it not in Gath) gain.  This is my desperate attempt to engage a wider observation of my efforts in order to ensure success.

I hope!

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Little and often!

I've worked out that, when I finally get my Spanish “pension” (it really is so small that it doesn't deserve to be allowed to exist without quotation marks) it will be the equivalent of getting a fiver every day for breakfast – perhaps a bit more, but I'm allowing for inflation and Brexit! Which is much better, as I always say, than having to pay a fiver a day before breakfast! And I get it just for being alive!

     I expect that this delight will wear off and I will get back to the more grimy realities of life rather than spending my time rhapsodising about something which is boringly predictable, and for which I have paid throughout my working life. But, I have to come back to the point that pensions are magical when they happen. Magical that is, as long as you have been fortunate enough to gain access to a scheme which gives you a living return. And of course where you are still living to enjoy it.

     However, enough of that (though I cannot guarantee that I will not wax lyrical when I actually feel the putative money in my hot little hands) and on to more serious things.

     The political situation in the UK is depressing to put it mildly. Not only are Conservative stalking the corridors of power under the delusion that they have coherent policies to govern the country, but also an unelected PM is gibbering about education as if she has been caught in a 1950s time loop! In desperation I look towards my adopted country to show signs of sanity.

      Fat chance of that.

     After two inconclusive General Elections, Spain is still umpteen months into trying to form a government. Meanwhile we have a government in functions to continue the outward appearance of competence. Unfortunately this is being attempted by PP, the Conservative Party of Spain which is, to any reasonable viewer, totally and irremediably corrupt. And brazen about it too. I urge you to put “PP” and “corruption” into Google and see what you come up with.

     The sheer number of cases of corruption involving PP is astonishing. Don't get me wrong, other political parties on the left and centre as well as the right are corrupt, but they are nothing compared with the epic corruption shown by the party of 'government'!

     And what of the left, the opposition? In the Way of the Left they are at each other's throats. The major opposition party, PSOE has not gained enough seats in either election to form an alternative government of the left. To be the government they would have to pact with another party or ask for abstentions from other parties when the election of a President occurs.

     In the first election PSOE could have pacted with Podemos (a new party of the left) and they would have had an overall majority. Instead, after the election, Podemos was filled with elation and suggested a pact in which they would become partners in government and stipulated which ministries they wanted all the while waving a positive book of legislation that they wanted to get through in double quick time! PSOE (especially the so/called Barons or leaders of the party) were horrified at what they saw as the presumption of a bunch of Johnny come lately leftie extremists.

Podemos was also in favour of giving Catalonia a referendum on independence and therefore this was an added, and for many in PSOE a clinching reason for retreating from any agreement with what in politics counts as alacrity.

     Instead PSOE pacted with C's, another new party of the right. This 'brilliant' strategy did not give the combined parties an overall majority and the C's were anathema to Podemos and so in the Presidential election in parliament both PP and Podemos voted against. Stalemate. New elections.

     Amazingly, in the new elections, PP (The Putrid Party) after a series of revelations which showed the systemic nature of corruption at all levels in the party, actually gained votes! People, ordinary people, always have the capacity to astonish. C's lost some votes and Podemos gained some but, and this is why we are still without a government, there is still difficulty in forming a government with an overall majority.

     PP (sic!) have the largest number of votes but no overall majority. The C's (the political sluts of Spain) having pacted with PSOE on the left, now switched to the right and voted with PP for the old President. Everybody else voted against and therefore we had no new government.

     The left, i.e. PSOE and Podemos now no longer can combine and form an overall majority, they would need the abstention of the C-s sluts or the active support of other small independence parties.     A big no no for PSOE.

     The situation, as it draws itself out, grows more complicated. Recent elections in Galicia and the Basque Country did not work out well for PSOE and so, over the last few days some senior members of the party have resigned from the executive committee trying to cause the resignation of the current party leader. Other members of PSOE have been murmuring about abstaining during the next presidential vote. Everything seems to suggest that Rajoy and PP will form the next government. The left seems incapable of seeing the big picture, that a continuing government of Rajoy and PP will be an out and out disaster for Spain and they need to bury differences and work something out which keeps Rajoy out too.

 

     I have no confidence that people will see sense. I think that party loyalty is something which is far too important to far too many people, and the fate of the country runs a very unconvincing second best to party|personal gain. It is a depressing realisation, but I think it is all too accurate.

But the sun is shining and I was able to do a little light sunbathing. So, at the moment, not everything is ill in the world!