Decisions!

 

Having finally found somewhere reasonable to have our Christmas Meal, the conversation and concern has now veered towards the advisability of taking up the reservation and actually turning up there.

     The description of the inexorable international advance of the Omicron Variant, and more especially the way in which the disturbing news is being treated in a frighteningly reasonable way, are true causes for concern.

 

      

 

     Taking the Johnsonian and ‘10’-idian approach as being ipso facto wrong because it is emanating from such laughably untrustworthy sources, we can assume that the ‘Christmas as normal’ advice is profoundly and totally unacceptable.  It therefore leaves reasonable people (i.e., those that didn’t vote for Brexit or the bloody Conservatives) debating the choices.

     And what the choices are for Christmas, are by no means clear.

     At one end of the operational scale there is the lockdown.  A reversion to the restricted days of only emerging from house isolation for essential shopping.  Or some version of ‘lockdown lite’ where there is freer movement, but the meeting of anyone outside your bubble is to be frowned on.

     The Christmas Meal will involve extended family and close family: parents, aunts, cousins, and their children.  But this will be in a setting where there are others from outside this tight little group in the Functions Hall of a restaurant.

     Even with The Family we do not have a day-to-day physical proximity.  All the adults have been (at least) double jabbed, but there are kids, some of whom are under the age of ten, and therefore presumably not injected.  What does vaccine safety mean in those circumstances?

     There are also the festivities of Christmas Eve (in Catalonia the traditional time to give out presents) and the traditional lunch of St Stephen’s Day, during which I expect to receive presents for my Name Day!  No plans for either of these days has yet been shared with me, so what will happen then is just up to my lurid imagination!

     The more the authorities do not give us anything like the full picture of what is actually going on in the world of the pandemic, the more I feel that we have to take pro-active steps to protect ourselves from what is probably happening that they are not telling us about.

     But most of me believes that what will actually happen for the festive season is that we will speculate away before, during and after the event – and only with hindsight will we know if our masterly inaction was justified!

 

 

I have taken the first step in junking my socialist principles, by looking at a list of sites on the web that offer a consultation with a specialist for about 50€.  I have worked out that I cannot reasonably wait about a year for a consultation and then another year before anything is done.  With the way things are going that would mean that I would have to camp out under the house to avoid having to go up and down stairs all the time.  This is something I am not going to do.

     I have discovered that the ‘telephone consultation’ with my doctor that follows my recent blood test was not within a couple of days as I had thought when I was told that that the call would be on the 16th, but rather yes, the 16th, but of the next month.  As I waited a week or so for the call to be made before going to the health centre to find out why it hadn’t happened, the gap between my first expectation and reality is considerably narrower, and I have to wait only two further weeks for it to occur.

     I am going to have to try and find out what, reasonably, I can expect from the Health System and then work with what I have to find a solution that is physically acceptable.

     Just to put things into some sort of perspective, I was speaking with a friend this morning who had had liver cancer and who had treatment not only here in Barcelona but also in America.  The treatment in America cost 44k dollars.  OK, the treatment was cutting edge and for cancer, whereas my operations will be orthopaedic, with more carpentry than anything else about them.  But such a sum gives one pause for thought.  And encourages an acceptable pause in treatment if it means that it can be done on the national health of Catalonia!

     But I am flailing about in the financial unknown dark at the moment as I have no certain knowledge of what exactly is wrong with my knees, and secondly what exactly will have to be done in order to make them more acceptable.  I have few illusions about them being transformed into good-as-new, but I will settle for less painful.

     One thing I do know is that I will have to lose weight.  This has been a perennial cry for medics and one that I will have to take incredibly seriously from now on.  Which is depressing.

     I have recently discovered (or should that be re-discovered) a book for recipes for diabetics.  This could be a double advantage find, as it offers not only good wholesome recipes of limited calories, but also as it is written in Spanish, it can only aid and succour my present attempts to learn the language.  Again.

 

In spite of my distain for the wiles of electronic apps in drawing you in, I have become infected by Toni’s paranoia about where in the league you end up at the termination of the number of days it lasts.

     Toni has managed to be first in each of the leagues in which he has been placed, while I have won one (you see, I used the word ‘won’ as if my language course was some sort of competition!) and been placed in the ‘Top 3’ in two others and finished in the promotion area in the rest.

     Toni is thousands of points (literally) ahead of his presumptuous challenger in second place, whereas in my league the leaders are more equitably spaced so that there is a certain amount of jostling for the top three places.  At the moment I am placed second, but with learners 3 and 4 within double figures places of me.  All is to play (see, I’m using exactly the language the app wants me to use) for – with three days to go before the competitors in the Sapphire League see whether they have made it into the Ruby League!

     As time goes on the league in which you find yourself is more and more likely to be composed of people who have made a concerted effort to be promoted (demotion is also a possibility if your work rate slows) so the pressure on you to strive is more and more pronounced.  Even as I am sucked in, I can take a moment to admire the automated structure that electronically pushes my buttons!

 

T

 

 

Talking of pushing buttons, I must give a call out to the animated series on Netflix, Arcane.  The nine episodes so far have been gripping.  This is high quality animation with artwork of cinematographic sophistication.

     The narrative is apparently backstory and origins of characters in some sort of arcade (are they still called that?) game of which, of course, I had not heard.

     Although the conflicts that animate the narrative are tried and tested: magic/science; rich/poor; privilege/powerlessness; strength/weakness; morality/practicality; law/lawlessness; drugs/sobriety; politics/truth; war/peace; etc etc the progress of the story line uses strong characterisation and allows individuals to develop within a taut narrative.

     Well worth watching.

 

 

YOUR life in YOUR hands

 

New Normal or lockdown or whatever, Second Week, Sunday

 

 

 

 

As far as I am aware the restrictions about moving from one location to another during the weekend is still in force, though it was difficult to believe that as I threaded my wobbly way past the masses of people who were thronging the paseo this morning.

     In many ways, it is difficult to blame people wanting what seems like a fairly innocent and safe pastime: wandering in time honoured fashion along the side of the sea.  On the other hand, I also regard every stranger as a possible enemy, and a deadly one at that.

     It is the fatal nature of the disease for many and the lingering serious complaints that are now being registered after surviving the virus for some, that make me question the absurd optimism of so many who live and act as though they do not really need a vaccine because they are so obviously immune.  And they are not.

     On my daily bike ride, I can judge just how seriously people take the fact that we are in the middle of the second wave of infection, and that we may yet see the totals for the first wave overtaken.  Most runners on the paseo do not wear masks.  A minority of cycle riders wear masks.  Some recreational walkers and dog walkers do not wear masks.  Some ‘regulars’ I pass every day have never worn masks, and some of those regulars are obvious OAPs and therefore in one of the most vulnerable categories.

     I have to say that a greater proportion overall of the people I pass now do wear masks, probably (but not unequivocally) a bare majority.  I have no idea what news broadcasts or newspapers these people glean their information from, but they are obviously very different from the ones that I see and read!

     Virtually everything that I hear about the virus frightens me.  Obviously you can’t live a life in perpetual terror, it’s too bloody wearing, but concern (to put it mildly) is never far from the surface: “hands, face and distance” is a sort of mental mantra by which I live my life!

     It looks as though one of the vaccines is likely to be rolled out within the next week or so.  This will be reserved for front line staff and those in immediate contact with virus infected people, but the rest of the vaccines should be available for the rest of us within weeks, though it will obviously take months for the population to be vaccinated.

     As soon as any of the vaccines start being used in the country, I think that will signal one of the most dangerous times in the pandemic, as people take from the application of a vaccine very different messages.

     From what I understand the vaccine will be delivered in two shots some time apart and, when an individual has been vaccinated they will be expected to continue the mask wearing, hand washing and physical distancing that they should have been observing up to the point of their vaccination.  This is going to be a hard ask when people are looking forward to the “freedom” that a vaccination is supposed to give.

     Even after the second shot, defences should not be lowered.  I wish the publicity campaigns that will be flooding our media outlets the best of luck, because they are going to need it.

     Why are we making an exception for the Christian festival of Christmas when we signally did not for festivals of other religions?  The relaxation of the rules for the Christmas period is a political decision and one that will cost lives.  That, together with the woeful approach of Johnson and his no-talent cabinet to tackling the pandemic lends further weight to my insistence that Johnson and co are charged with corporate manslaughter.  The blustering incompetent cannot put off the inquiry for ever, and when it starts taking evidence and delivers its report, then is the time for criminal prosecution to take place.

     In my adolescence, it took “thirteen years of Tory misrule” to show the corrupt, unfeeling incompetence of Conservative contempt for the ruled: it has taken Johnson far less than eighteen months to produce a ‘government’ mired in cronyism, corruption, arrogance, incompetence, dogmatic blindness, viciousness, petty mindedness and mendacity.  I am ashamed that my country is led by such a witless pack – and they should not be allowed to get away with it.  For once in his worthless life, Johnson must face up to his responsibilities, and if he is ‘disinclined’ to do so he must be forced to.

     And when you consider that in little over a month, this bunch of feckless liars are going to take us into the unicorn-filled lands of plenty of Brexit, the only realistic reaction is to weep!

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, my research about the war service of my grandfather progresses slowly.  I have discovered that he was a member of the Royal Field Artillery, in C Battery in the 173^rd Brigade.  What is more difficult is finding out exactly where he would have fought.  My grandfather did not have an easy war and was in some of the most bloody of the conflicts in France and Flanders.  I will persevere and find locations to add to the records that I have at the moment.

     As well as the horrors of being a combatant in The First World War, my grandfather also had to cope with the pandemic too, the Spanish Flu outbreak, which he survived.  We may have a rough year in 2020, but he had a succession of horrors for year after year!  We should be grateful!

 

Having now thoroughly depressed myself, I will turn to Netflix for some mindless amelioration! 

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!