Where there's a will, there's an injury!

 

 

 

As domestic accidents go, being impaled by an electric toothbrush seems to combine triviality with impossibility.  And yet it drew blood!

     How, you might well ask, did I manage to stab myself with what is a fairly blunt instrument, with the bristles being the sharpest element in the construction? 

     The answer lies in my refusal to pay the inflated prices for the replacement brushes sold by the big-name maker of the toothbrush.  The cheaper alternative that I bought on line did not attach to the vibrating metal spike (the retaining, moving, part of the brush) as securely as it should have done and so it came loose, fell away from the spike and the residual hand pressure brought the spike into my face and into the right hand nasolabial fold - and that is the first time that I have ever written those last two words knowing what they mean.

     Luckily (if that is the word) the colour of the blood merely darkened the shadow of the nasolabial fold (2^nd use) and made me look a tad more mysterious.  I like to think.

     Shaving the next day did not reopen old wounds and so, apart from giving one line on my face a more emphatic outline, no real harm has been done.  And, anyway, I dabbed a bit of TCP on the wound to do its stuff and one can’t really be expected to do very much more in terms of medical care.

 

The month of May is a sort of Family Nexus, where everyone appears to have a birthday or name day and each one of which has to be celebrated.  When I was teaching in Barcelona, this period reminded me of the start of the Autumn Term in the UK which coincided with the start of the WNO Opera Season with a consequent attendance at various performances of WNO in my triple guise of Clarrie’s Friend, Friends of the WNO ‘helper’, and Opera aficionado with an almost fatal deficiency in time allocated for school.  The start of term is the worst possible time to have a multi-tasking crisis, but it did mean that after the start of the season I was able to relax into the frenetic horror of new timetables and making ‘grouping’ work, with something approaching failed-Zen tranquillity.  It is truly amazing how much you can be powered by hysteria!

     Anyway, we have had two birthdays so far: the first in a well-aired living room with mask wearing; the second in a 50% occupancy restaurant with mask wearing and ostentatious hand washing with alcohol, and the third is about to take place tomorrow in the outside terrace of a restaurant in Terrassa.

     The last of those celebrations will not be dovetailed into the time before the curfew as that particular restriction has now been stopped, so in theory we could actually get back to Castelldefels after 10 pm rather than making sure that we did get back before 10 pm with a Toni High Speed Drive of Death, during which I kept most mousey quiet!  But we did get back before 10 pm.  And we did survive.

     The loosening of restrictions is a prickly subject.

     The End of Curfew was officially at midnight last Saturday – so you had the really odd situation that, on Saturday night at 10pm you were expected to be in your home obeying curfew, but two hours later you could, quite legally, go out again to enjoy exercising your “freedom”.

     It is significant that the right wing have framed the Covid restrictions as attacks on “freedoms” and the Zombie of Madrid actually had the temerity and barefaced audacity to run under a banner of “Freedom”.  And, in spite of the astonishing hypocrisy and mendacity – she won!

     But, having painted the relaxing of restrictions as regaining freedom, it was hardly surprising that the younger population of Madrid saw a justified opportunity for celebration, and dully swarmed into the centre of the city and partied as though it was New Year’s Eve.  They did not of course socially distance and many of them were not wearing masks, and a medical expert who witnessed these scenes of mass celebration in Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, and other major (and not so major) cities remarked, “We will have to look at the Covid figures in a fortnight” when the new cases of Covid that could result from the ignoring of the on-going pandemic might show themselves.

     At present Madrid has a high rate of occupancy of ICU beds; it has a reasonably high rate of infection – it is a bloody good place NOT to visit, though Parisians have flocked there because as they said, “We can do things and go to restaurants and clubs here that we would not be able to do in France!”  So, Madrid has been accepting visitors from a place with an even higher infection rate in order to boost tourism – but, as always, collateral human damage has never been a disincentive to commercial gain and political advantage for the right.

     Although we are constantly told that the vaccination rate in the country (Spain and Catalonia) is increasing, and the President of Spain was on television yesterday keeping to his assurance that 70% of the population would have had a first jab by the end of the summer, the fact remains that a small proportion of the population has actually been vaccinated and a very small percentage of the population has had the second jab.  I suppose that I am one of the lucky ones, given a late-surgery jab that just happened to be a single dose vaccination.

     The fact remains that we are not prepared for an influx of tourists.  We do not have the virus “under control” and we are in the fourth wave of the pandemic.  The emergence of a new “difficult” variant of the virus would be disastrous as most people are (in spite of evidence to the contrary) looking towards old normality and assuming that the virus is all but beaten.  This is a very dangerous attitude.  And we will pay for it.

 

Although with my single dose vaccination, I should be gaining daily immunity, I am taking no chances.  I still wear my mask at all times that I am out of the house and I continue to wash my hands with Uriah Heep regularity, but with real alcohol soap rather than false sanctimoniousness!  I am very wary when in groups and keep my distance.  I take to heart, “No one is safe, until everyone is safe” and hope that others are as fervent in that belief as I am.

     Not that safety is entirely risk free.

     Today we went out to lunch as we usually do on a Tuesday and, although we deemed it still just a fraction too inclement to eat on the terrace, we were happy enough to eat inside in a reduced capacity restaurant.  Toni is punctilious about hand washing with the ubiquitous 70% alcohol hand wash which is good, but the alcohol soap while disinfecting the hands also gives them a certain slipperiness which was disadvantageous when attempting to move a cup of Coke.  The glass certainly moved, but the contents of the cup moved even quicker and flowed along the tabletop from Toni and into my lap, my meal and my legs.

     Our waiter was one of the old school Spanish waiters (though Indian) and was effortlessly efficient in clearing the table and mopping up.  My meal was taken away, and I was given an extra portion of Catalan tomato and garlic bread to keep me happy while my meal was re-plated.

     The one good thing to come of this is that I will have to wash my shorts.  The shorts are new, and red - so the Coke did not stain, or not visibly at least.  They are also too big, and that brings me to our late PM Mrs May.  During her sad Brexit-fuelled decline, as the more rabid parts of her party turned on her in an orgy of self-delusion and lies, she was described by John Crace in the Guardian (and if it were not he, then it is something he certainly could have said) as having the same authority as the “Do not tumble dry” instruction on a garment.

     If clothes cannot be tumble-dried then they should be thrown out.  I therefore buy T shirts and shorts deliberately large on the expectation of shrinkage when they ARE tumble-dried.  So, if my super plan is correct, the Coke defiling will ensure that the clean shorts are a snugger fit.

     Never let it be said that I cannot find something positive in the most trivially negative irritations!

No more excuses - you've got to blame the people!

 

My full-time teaching career started with my going for interview in Kettering, a town in Northamptonshire of which I had not previously heard.  (As I was an aspiring English teacher, I do hope you appreciated my not ending the last sentence with a preposition.)  Anyway, I got the job in what was then Kettering Boys’ Grammar School, but which had become Kettering Boys’ School by the time I took up my post.  I spent a year and a bit there learning my craft and finding out that full-time teaching was a truly demanding job.

     I had long moved back to Cardiff when the Northampton that I knew went, I’m tempted to say pear-shaped, but that image is not grotesque enough for what actually happened to the political landscape.

     This link will take you to a lucid explanation of the appalling mismanagement of the council resulting in its bankruptcy: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-56488909

     In the recent elections, the electorate of the two new political entities that were formed from the rubble of what had been destroyed by the past administrations, saw fit to vote majorities to the Conservatives – the party which caused all the trouble in the first place.  The electorate have AGAIN voted for people who callously and viciously made their lives much, much worse through criminal mismanagement of public funds.

     Why?

   That plaintive question has been echoing through my mind as I have considered the decisions the electorate have made not only in Britain but also here in Spain.

     We have recently had elections for the council in Madrid and the electorate here have voted (in a record turnout) for a council which will be made up of PP and Vox.  The first of those, PP, is the most corrupt political party in Western Europe – and that is not my prejudice speaking, just type in  “PP in Spain corruption” and you will find a shockingly wide breadth of coverage of what is almost comical illegal behaviour.

     If you want to be more specific then you could search for “PP Corruption in Madrid” and you might come across something like, https://elpais.com/ccaa/2018/09/30/madrid/1538326069_865164.html

Where, even if you don’t understand Spanish, it doesn’t take much to make out what the headline “La década viciosa de Madrid” might mean, and you will be able to see some of the unsavoury characters who have defiled the city over the last ten years.

     And people voted for them!  Again!

     In a 71% turnout, 44.7% voted for PP!  The other party that the corrupt and corrupting PP will govern with is Vox.  Vox is usually described as a “far right” party, but it is simpler and more realistic to consider them as Franco supporting fascists.  Their pronouncements and policies are repugnant.  They are rabble rousing scum.  And they have pledged to support PP “to keep the left out”.  If you add the 9.1% of the electorate who voted for Vox  to the 44.7% who voted for PP, you have a clear majority of the voters choosing right wingers and fascists to form their government of choice!

     By way of comparison, in the Catalan parliament out of 41 representatives, only 2 members of PP were elected! 

     Catalonia truly is another country!

    

     Meanwhile in Britain, the third-rate incompetents, bullies and liars who comprise the ‘government’ of Johnson, the liar-in-chief, are gifted with gains.  Hartlepool, which has been a Labour voting constituency since its inception votes Conservative.  Admittedly, it was an area which overwhelmingly voted for Brexit and presumably, the voters have seen or heard nothing negative enough with the lies of Johnson, and the criminal mishandling of the Covid response, or the Brexit train-crash of financial and social disaster to make them doubt the positivity of voting for a shameless narcissist and his corrupt crew!

     If Johnson had been watching European politics (as if!) then he would probably be considering a snap General Election.  The Zombie leader of the PPs in Madrid has shown just how much an electorate can ignore when they are asked to put their cross next to a party which is corrupt, selfish, criminal, menial, duplicitous, mendacious, uncaring, and all the other insulting adjectives that come to mind in describing your typical Conservative, no matter whether it be in Spain on in the UK.

     God help us all!

 

Tomorrow is Toni’s birthday.  The Family will be arriving in instalments and we should have a good celebration.  Perhaps then I will be in a more mellow mood and my writing might reflect that.

     We’ll see!

 

 

    

How to keep your sanity in world that is too right-wing for, well, sanity!

 

 

 

 

For the past few years, when the political situations in Catalonia, Spain and the UK got too much to bear, I turned to the antics of Trump and the Republican party to demonstrate that there were depths that this side of the Atlantic had not yet plumbed.  Now that Trump is more of a distant malign emanation from the depths of swampy Florida rather than an ever-present daily horror show in the newspapers, one has to rely on the pathetic, yet entirely disgusting, cavorting (I can’t think of any other word to describe what should be a serious political party) of the Trumpian Republicans in Congress and the Senate to set against whatever depressing failures one sees around the political sites in Spain and the UK.

     I have realised that I simply can’t do it anymore, by which I mean reading about Republicans with the semi-detached amazement at the jaw-droppingly callous human distain that they display on a daily basis.  I can no longer pretend that the grotesque views that Republican espouse were a function of The Orange Small Handed Horror.  Whatever the Republican Party might have been in the past, what it is now is a morass of ante-diluvian viciousness: the anti-abortion, election “rigging”, voter suppression, homophobia, etc etc etc – all the tropes of the far right coming home to roost (if they ever left) in the comfortable prejudices of an apology for a political party.  What is happening today is that the repressive idiocies of the Republicans and the super-charged language of political hatred and contempt that they use against their opponents is all too present in the life of politics here in Europe.

     The ‘comical’ lies of Trump are more than matched by the serial mendacity of Johnson.  Johnson now is a flagrant liar because he makes no attempt to correct the record when he has been found out.  And still the Conservatives are ahead in the polls.  Why should a liar change his deceit when he doesn’t seem to be penalized for the lies he tells?

     England and the USA are cursed with a two-party system: Conservative and Labour; Republican and Democrat.  Where do the votes go for those voters who look with something approaching horror at the way that they right wing parties are heading? 

     In the USA, the rhetoric of the right means that even the mildest of the Democrats is branded as extreme left wing or “Socialist”, whereas here in Europe they would be seen as just left of centre.  Old fashioned Tories must shudder to see what the party has become under the “leadership” of the third-rate chancers who now control the Conservatives, but their escape route of the Lib Dems has long since been shown to be a wasted vote and they probably will never bring themselves to vote for Labour, even with that nice Mr Starmer as leader.

     The situation is different in Catalonia, where the national conservative part PP has a derisory following and the so-called “centre right” of C’s has also been rejected at the polls.  The “”Socialist”” party PSOE and a variety of Independence and left-wing parties hold sway here, but we have no government as the parties have found it impossible to work together to get some sort of coalition off the ground.  As the days go by with a government “in functions” the frustration of the voters becomes more and more palpable.

     In a way in which I have never felt so strongly before, governments are simply not working; justice is becoming a by-word for partisanship; inequality is becoming more and more pronounced; corruption is rampant and the ordinary voter is made to feel more and more irrelevant as the tiny percentage of the rich and the powerful continue to act with absolute impunity.

     The word “Democracy” has become devalued as politicians mouth the word but ignore the concept in the ways in which they behave.

     Biden is trying to make a difference.  In spite of the torrents of abuse that he has to take as he tries to redress some of the worst excesses of his predecessor’s reign of terror, he is a beacon of hope.  But what is going on in the red states of America in the almost comical attempts to gerrymander the political situation to benefit the right is a worry.  Biden does not have his full term to make a difference.  His majority in the Senate is on a knife edge and if that is taken away by Senate elections next year then we have seen previously that a hypocritical Republican Party will be much more than willing to sacrifice country to the demands of the Party and stymie any bipartisan legislation and wait for 2024 to Bring Back Trump to win again!

     The election in Madrid will be an indication here of how the political situation is working.  The leader of Madrid at the moment is an unprepossessing Zombie of PP who has made the most remarkable pronouncements in the lead up to the voting.  We have an extreme right-wing party which is openly Fascist and revers the late Fascist dictator Franco.  The level of political debate is debased.  Threats and counter threats depress.

     It is very difficult not to be depressed at the prospects for a positive outcome to the election in the febrile atmosphere where everything seems to be tainted by Covid.

     But I remain an optimist.  

   And as long as I stop reading about red-neck, red-state Republicans and concentrate on things like the medical personnel who have worked tirelessly to vaccinate and medicate, then I can always look forward to a communal recognition that unselfish caring is also positive self-regard.

What a legacy!

 

What people say can live after them.  From the self-consciously orotund phrases (with a cynical ear to history) of the odious Churchill to the simple quotidian statement of General Patton, there are words that sum up a personality and proclaim that character to the ages.

     I hadn’t realised that my own deathless claim to verbal immortality had already been established.  This was made clear to me by the giving of two cellophane wrapped assemblages given to me yesterday as part of my birthday presents from The Family.

     The first illustrated my response to being asked what I would like to drink when we go out for a meal, “Una cerveza sin alcohol, gaseosa, y un vaso grande para mezclar, por favor.”  (“A non-alcoholic beer with Gaseosa and a large glass to mix them in, please.”)  Gaseosa is a sugar-free, sweetish, fizzy drink used by itself and as a mixer.  So, the first assemblage had a chunky ‘real’ looking beer glass, a can of 0% beer and a plastic bottle of Gaseosa.

     The second assemblage illustrated my end of meal instructions: “Un té negro, con dos bolsitas, 

y un poco de leche fría aparte, por favor.  (“A black tea, with two teabags and a little cold milk apart, 

please.”)  Beneath the cellophane I could see an impressive mug (with lid) at the side of which two 

teabag ends could be seen and a small jar of milk (with instruction not to drink it because it had 

not been in the fridge for some time!).

     So, that is me, summed up in two phrases.  I should have expected something like this because 

Toni’s two nephews look forward to my opening my mouth and then chorus my requests with me.

     And so, my birthday (a ‘significant’ one, if you care about such things) with only a visit to the 

Opera in the Liceu in Barcelona to see a lack-lustre production of Don Giovanni with Christopher 

Maltman in the evening to make the day even remotely significant.

     The experience was out of the ordinary of course, because of all the precautions that the theatre 

had taken to make our visit ‘safe’.  The number of audience members was restricted to 50% of the 

possible seats available and we were seated in a little island of isolation with adjacent seats vacant.  

 We had to wear masks for the duration of the performance; there were no refreshments, no 

paper programmes – and scene changes were done with the safety curtain not brought down, 

partly to encourage us not to leave our seats during the interval!

     I wish that I could say that the music transcended all the safety distractions – but it didn’t.  

 The production failed to engage with me, it seemed static and under sung.  I really wanted to enjoy 

it because it is all too likely that the increasing stringency of the measures to limit the spread of 

Covid will impact on the rest of the season – a season I might add with a late start.

     We are now under curfew (10pm to 6am) and there is talk of limiting people to their 

municipalities.  Although I live in the province of Barcelona, I do not live in the city and so 

restrictions will make it impossible to travel to the Opera House.  Still, it hasn’t happened yet 

and given the contradictory confusion of the stream of instructions that we have had so far, it 

might well be that oddities like opera-going will survive and I will have a ‘safe corridor’ to culture.

Spain has now had its ‘Callous Cummings’ moment where a dinner party for 150 people was held 

in Madrid hosted by the rich for the politicians and the corruptible.  Given that we mere mortals 

cannot go to closed restaurants and bars; cannot gather in groups of more than 6; have to be home 

by 10pm, you can take your choice of hypocrisies that the Great and The Good have illustrated by 

their ostentatious cavalier behaviour which, of course, spits in our collective faces.

     The reactions have been predictable: the government supporting press (right and left) failed to 

carry any information about this disgraceful event.  It was left to social media to spread the news 

and force the criminals to respond.  Will we get any more than platitudes?  Doubtful.  Justice in 

Spain is politicised and mere innocence will fail to get you freedom if you are perceived by the 

governing elite to be threatening their positions; glaring guilt will fail to get you convicted if you 

are part of that elite.

     To my knowledge none of the trough-swillers at that event has attempted a variation on the “I 

was testing my eyesight” by trying to read the menu card in the artificial light of the crystal 

chandeliers!  But give them time and they will come up with something equally blatant and insulting.

      Meanwhile, of course, our errant ex-king is still skulking in the shadows hoping that paternity 

and corruption cases will fade into the background – much like his son-in-law who is allegedly in 

a women’s prison (sic.) for his thieving.  Every other high and mighty fallen on hard times dweller 

in pokey also has to deal with photographic evidence of the degradation showing them in prison 

fatigues playing cards or something equally banal, but not with this particular prisoner.   

Not even a hint of evidence that he actually is in prison.  Makes you think.

The latest piece of idiocy in Catalonia concerns the Guardia Civil (the police guys with funny hats and guns) where there have been 20 arrests connected with the demonstrations and the financial organization thereof in support of our president Puigdemont who is at present in exile in Belgium.  This is a serious matter, but the general appearance of this operation (given the name “Volhov” by the Guardia Civil, referring to a battle during the Second World War by the División Azul which comprised Spanish soldiers fighting for the Nazis!  Such sensitivity!) has descended into farce by the claims of involvement of Putin and the threat of Russian soldiers being made available to Puigdemont and so on, into the realms of fantasy, QAnon and the delusions of dedicated conspiracy theorists.  Twitter and the social media are awash with spoofs and derisive comments on the latest putsch against Catalonia.

     Spain is not averse to looking ridiculous in the international court of public opinion, as witness their hapless defence of police brutality over the referendum of the 1^st October 2017 and the imprisonment of the organizers, some of whom are STILL IN PRISON.  For organizing a referendum.  In which millions of Catalans participated.

 

Such is the fluidity of the situation at the moment that the restrictions that I alluded to above are no longer a full description of what we are expected to observe.  It seems as if the government is trying to get as near as possible to a full lockdown without actually having one. 

     This is the sort of thing that the mendacious Conservative government tried with the situation in Northern Ireland and the attempts to convince us that there was a way to have some sort of Brexit and not to have a land border or a border somewhere: trying to convince people about something that was an impossibility, but faffing around to try and find the right linguistic display to make a contradiction appear smooth and joined-up.

     It is yet another variation of the “Delete all and insert” approach to debate that I remember from my days in General Body Student Meetings in University.  Even when agreement on some weasel formulation was found, it invariably came to pieces when confronted with practical reality.  It was a valuable Life Lesson to see specious agreement in action and to watch it later fail.  In ordinary life, instead of saying “Delete all and insert” the ‘compromise’ is usually preceded by, “What about if we” – but the end results (agreement/failure) are the same.

     We are still not sure about the exact details but, we are now expected to say within our municipalities during the weekends, so if the coastal resort of Castelldefels is packed on Saturday and Sunday with people from god knows where – what precisely are we supposed to do?  Our 10pm to 6am curfew continues.  Large stores are to be closed, and so on tinkering around the edges of what is actually necessary.

     While encourage not to make ‘unnecessary’ journeys, we are not banned from going where we like, within our province and within our municipality.  Mostly.  My swimming pool appears to be open for the foreseeable future (about three days in Covid terms!) and I can continue to take my bike rides, though the end part of my usual route, which is technically in Sitges, may be out of bounds during the weekends.

     As usual we are presented with yet more new rules about which we have a sketchy understanding at best – at a time when mistakes can and will be deadly!

 

Still, I have a new art book, and I have an active imagination, so no lockdown is going to contain me!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 29 – Easter Monday, 13th APRIL

In the best traditions of British Bank Holiday Mondays, it is pouring with rain here in Catalonia.  The one difference, I have always maintained, is the lack of spitefulness in holiday weather in Catalonia so that there is always a possibility of seeing some sunshine during the day – it may not be much, but it will be there.

     Today is the damp calm before the invisible storm as the majority of the working population in designated but non-essential jobs are urged to go back to work, taking what ever microbes they have with them into the crowded metros and buses and trains as they commute. 

     The fatal proof of this economic pudding will be in a couple of weeks time when the mortality figures for Covid-19 will be examined to see whether this ill-thought out initiative has been as deadly as feared.

     It is a salutary experience to discover that in purely economic terms, we citizens are merely collateral damage, acceptable wastage, the angels’ share, surplus to requirements or any other mealy mouthed form of words to cover up the judicial execution that such a policy is going to mean.

     ‘Mean’ is a key word for something linked to the crisis that I hope is fake news, but have been told is actual fact.  In Catalan history the year 1714 is a key one.  On the 11^th of September 1714 Catalonia surrendered to the Bourbon King Philip V after supporting the Hapsburg Charles in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714): Catalonia lost its distinctive independence as it was subsumed into the Bourbon Crown; Catalan was demoted as the language of government; the walls of Barcelona were destroyed; Catalan territories over the Pyrenees were lost.  And all round disaster; but, in the typically Catalan way, 11^th September became the National Day of Catalonia and 1714 a date which is constantly seen, I have a hoodie with the year on the back and the Catalan flag on the front!

     It is therefore pushing coincidences a little that the National Government of Spain sent Catalonia exactly 1,714 thousand masks to be used in the present Crisis!

     There is no love lost between Madrid and Barcelona and the measures that are going to come into place tomorrow have met with stiff opposition from Catalonia and the Basque Country, with the Catalan President asking Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, to send him the documentation of the scientific advice on which he based the decision to allow people to return to work.  Catalonia is in favour of a continuation of the strict lockdown, and I have to say that I think that is the more persuasive approach.

     Politicians should be increasingly nervous about the inevitable Public Inquiries that are going to take place when this crisis is over.  Their mismanagement is killing people and they should be held responsible.  And please, do not accuse me of pre-judging: hospitals without equipment are a simple fact; hospitals continuing to be poorly supplied with PPE are a simple fact; people dying are a simple fact.  The Conservatives have been in power for a decade: the fault lies with them – and they must pay.

The Poems In Holy Week (PIHW) period is now over and I have managed to write drafts of poems for each of the days, all of which can be found at smrnewpoems.blogspot.com  This year has been obviously different as we have been under strict lockdown and the ‘holiday’ aspect of the period has been a little ‘abstract’ to say the least.  It is a continuingly odd time as we are surrounded by literally deadly danger, yet continue to lead ordinary, safe, if isolated lives.  It is not like the Second World War where even my childhood home in Cathays in Cardiff was graced so I was told, with one (unexploded) German bomb: something tangible from the air raids.  But for us in Catalonia, at least where we are, it is like a continuing Phoney War; we go on with our restricted lives, and the medical horror is taking place elsewhere, out of sight, though vividly alive on television screens.  I think the unreality of it all is what is most obvious.  Yes, I know that the virus is real and the deaths and illness are actual, but our direct experience is limited to our own little inconveniences, not to a mortal struggle.  It’s odd and, as I’ve said, something where the actuality is difficult to take in.

     I have now printed out a draft booklet of the Poems in Holy Week and have done a few edits to get me going on the revision that they all have to undergo before publication.

     I have not yet decided on a title, but I’m working on it!  The most difficult part, I find, is writing an introduction for the collection – it forces me to look at the collection as an entity and write something that makes sense of the totality rather than individual poems.

     I also have to think about illustrations and that is always challenging.  Still, if nothing else, I do have time to consider these challenges!

The police in Spain have said that the ‘return to work’ for non-essential workers when off normally.  An interesting choice of word for anything but normal times where, surely, normality is not the way to respond to the extraordinary!

My faith in Catalonia took a knock today.  The poor weather lasted the entire day and I was not graced with even a moment of proper sunshine.  I am prepared to extend my faith to tomorrow – but anything after that and I will slip into heresy!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 25 – Maundy Thursday in Holy Week, 9th APRIL

Yesterday I was shown disturbing pictures of the build up of traffic in Madrid suggesting that numbers of people were taking advantage (how appropriate that word now sounds) of the ‘holiday’ period to escape from the city to the coast and to second homes.  While I can fully understand the need to find something more congenial than the cramped inside of a city during a pandemic, as someone living in a costal resort, exactly the sort of place that city dwellers target during holidays, I have to pray that Barcelona does not follow the lead of Madrid!

     To be fair, Barcelona does not appear to have followed other parts of Spain, and the indications of traffic flow are markedly lower in Catalonia than in other parts of the country.  But tomorrow, with the Bank Holiday of Good Friday and the whole Easter weekend and Easter Monday, the temptation to get out and take the sun in the freedom of a coastal resort might be too much to resist.  I sincerely hope that Barcelona has not looked at the slackness of Madrid and thought what the hell, what’s good for the goose etc. and determined to come and visit us tomorrow.

     I read this morning that the head of the National Trust in Britain has issued a statement reinforcing the advice of not visiting either the buildings in the Trust or the open spaces.  I wait to see if this advice will be followed.

     Again, I do know that we are privileged in terms of space: Toni can be working on his remote distance learning course on the computer in the living room, whereas I can be working on my computer on the third floor- two distinct spheres of influence!  How many other couples are so fortunate!  The lure of the coast and the sea is strong, and it is tantalizingly near, I can see a scrap of sea (if I try hard) from the terrace, but has been resisted – but we are not cramped together in a small flat.

     I know that for some people the addition of danger adds a piquancy to experience and the idea that something is forbidden adds a kick of anti-establishment adrenaline, but going against the Covid-19 restrictions is more surely akin to drunk driving: you put yourself in danger but you also endanger others.  Like the tag line on the safety belt adverts in cars, “You know it makes sense!”  And, it isn’t for ever.

     But just how long will it be for people of my age?  We Baby Boomers have been speculating how long our isolation may reasonably last and the general consensus is that we will be well into the summer before restrictions are relaxed.  That is a more than sobering thought.

     In a town like Castelldefels, where our USP is a long beach, bars, restaurants and hotels, to lose Easter and a chunk or even the whole of the summer is disastrous.  I wonder just how many restaurants will re-open when they are allowed to reopen.  A few had well established take-away services before the crisis, but the rest will have had to think on their feet and find customers at a time when advertising is difficult.  Even in the best of times, the ownership of restaurants is, to put it mildly, fluid; in times of crisis?  Who knows?

     Our major shopping centre Anec Blau, was undergoing a major restructuring of a mystifying thoroughness.  Most of the shops had had to close causing economic chaos.  Construction has been postponed, the centre is not ready to reopen any time soon and the crisis must have added complications that we can only guess at.

     Castelldefels is not poor.  We have inhabitants who are very, very rich and some who are world famous e.g. Messi – but reconstruction of a thriving seaside resort will take time, effort and imagination.  And money.  Lots of money.  I shudder to think how all of that is going to be managed.

     Still, one has to be optimistic.  The most positive element in this crisis is the way that we have all rallied round the efforts of the services that are working to keep us going and to keep us healthy.  It would be a disaster beyond the crisis if that fellowship is squandered in the remaking of normality after the crisis is over.  Though, it would be wise to remember never to underestimate the stupid selfishness that a population is capable of – just look at the political trash that have been elected!

Today is National Theatre Premiere Day, or rather evening.  This evening the NT At Home is showing their production of Jane Eyre https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/whats-on at 7.00pm UK time and 8.00pm for us and it will be available for the next week, until the next production to be aired.

     I am really looking forward to this production because it seems to be in the tradition of Nicholas Nickleby that I saw in a RSC production in London: an ensemble production which used clever theatrical devices, that only work in the theatre.  It will be interesting to gauge my reaction to genre specific techniques in another media type.  I remember a production of Macbeth with McKellen and Dench which transferred from The Other Place to the much larger venue of the Main Theatre in Stratford: it didn’t work, it needed the intimacy of a smaller venue.  But when the acclaimed production was televised, it worked again because the closeness of the camera restored the lost intimacy.

 The production was excellent, theatrical in the best sense of the word.  A small musical ensemble and a versatile company utilizing the open multi-level simple staging.  The best thing you can say about a theatrical production of a novel is, at the end of the performance, you feel like reading the novel itself.  I urge you to go to the website and see the production for yourself.  And don’t forget to leave a donation at the end of the performance if you have enjoyed it!

Today’s poem is in a half finished state, but what I have was ‘easier’ than the poem yesterday which I cant help feeling is going to be hacked around in the next stage of editing!  But that is half the fun.  If I manage to get something on the poetry blog tonight then it will be on smrnewpoems.blogspot.com

Tomorrow, Good Friday, when in all past years I have made my annual visit to a church.  Not this year.  This year is indeed, different.  So different.

Where are they now and what have they done?

As Noel Coward never wrote, “It’s extraordinary how potent cheap cardboard is!”

This seemingly nonsensical perversion of the original quotation was in my mind because Toni is clearing out boxes of things that he has not looked at for years.  As I was typing on the third floor I could hear little squeaks of pleasure from a floor below as each old-new item was brought into the light.

Lots of them were tickets: a ticket to a Wales v Italy game in Cardiff; a ticket to “We Will Rock You; another to The Tower of London; an entry to an ‘adventure’ park in Mexico; a ground plan of the Prado in Madrid; a year book showing me with 11D, my last form; a stand ticket to Cardiff City; a ticket for the Mecano musical in Madrid – these ageing pieces of card, some from almost twenty years ago were not just reminders of places visited, but also with whom, and the development of a relationship.

The speed with which plan, followed ticket, followed photograph was a breathless cavort through a couple of decades of life past and a consequent focus on life present.

This ripping open of memories actually chimed in with a piece of writing that I was attempting to start that centered on somebody musing about where his schoolfriends were now.  As I wanted to portray a retired person (like myself) I was thinking about how many of my schoolfriends I knew about.  They are now all of retirement age, so how many have I kept track of?

And the answer is very few.  

With confidence I can only claim to know one friend form my schools and he I have now known for fifty-six years.  

Of my class from Primary school I now know no one.  The lives of the two classmates that came with me to the same high school are closed books now.  One classmate from my area of the city I know about because he is a national figure.  Just two people out of thirteen years of education!

My secondary school produced professionals, so the probability is that the majority of my fellow students became doctors, teachers, researchers, engineers, academics, managers, businessmen, media sorts, thriving in their chosen professions, becoming well known within their own circles, but not achieving break out international fame.

I wonder if, like those pieces of card unearthed from an ignored plastic case, there would be a similar breathlessness, if all the grown up kids that I have been educated with could be brought together and what we have (or haven't) achieved through the years would amount to.

Speculation, but interesting speculation.  What difference have we made.  Though talking about a 'we' when it is merely a concept as there is nothing 'real' to link us all, apart from the happenstance that we shared teachers at some times in our lives and well before we had started out on our chosen professions.

My father always said that he never went to reunions because, "You send the first five minutes saying what you are doing now and then you get down to the real purpose of these affairs, drinking!"  And my father was no great drinker!

Perhaps speculation is best safely left to subject matter in literature - or even what I might write!

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If you would like to read drafts of my recent poems please go to:                                                smrnewpoems.blogspot.com