What time of the year is it?

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas is trying its best not to be.  There is a forced quality about any celebratory approach to the time that makes it all the more unreal.

     I have not, physically in a hands-on sense, bought any presents – apart of course from my ruinously expensive office chair, and with only a deposit paid and its not being available until January, I’m not sure that it counts.  So, the Family’s presents have virtually all been bought and sent via Amazon; the Christmas cards will be (with few exceptions) virtual via email with a donation to Oxfam; the Christmas meal will be just the two of us with a possible Zoom element making everything just that little bit more embarrassing and uneasy!

     Happy Covid Christmas and a Vaccinated New Year!

     Of course, the best Christmas present this year is being around to be able to moan about the limitations of the festivities: there are plenty of Catalans and Welsh people who are unable to do so, and unless our respective governments approach the pandemic with something that is more appreciative about the risks involved, then potentially, hundreds of thousands more will die in the cause of political window dressing.

     We have been told that half a million people in the UK have had the first dose of the vaccine.  It’s a small start given the population, but at least it is something.  Spain, together with the rest of the EU are not going to start the programme of vaccination until the 27^th of December so lord alone knows when the programme will finally get to us in Castelldefels.

     A friend in Istanbul wrote that he looked forward to travelling more freely by April.  I think he is being charmingly optimistic.  I do not think that there will be anything like free movement until the end of the summer next year, and in my mind I have virtually written off 2021 as a sort of year in abeyance.  I think that 2022 will be the year in which things generally get back to normal, or what we will have accepted as normal by then.

 

 

 

I sense a real weariness about the restrictions from a lot of people that I see around me, and that quality of being fed up expresses its visible self in the laxity of many with the wearing of masks.  In the centre of town people are generally (and legally) obliged to wear the masks and they do, but on the paseo and the nearer you get to the sand, the slacker the attitude is.  To my mind, it doesn’t really matter if you are walking, running, dog walking, skateboarding, skating or whatever: you should wear a mask.  I find the allowance made for smokers to wander about in peopled spaces without a mask because of their addiction to be frankly astonishing.  Where is the logic in energetic exercise where the individual sweats and breathes more deeply and expels air more forcibly being exempt from mask wearing?  It simply doesn’t make sense.  At least to me.  And to logic!

     Johnson is coming under pressure to impose another strict lockdown.  It is not something than anyone wants, but it is surely necessary to prevent horrendous loss of life. 

     I was going to say that there is nothing special about Christmas – and I could defend that statement theologically, socially, numerically, historically, culturally with lots of other -ly words thrown into the debate – but clearly the Day itself is, not only in Christian terms but also in Family terms significant.  People want to be together.  People want to be with their families.  That is easily understandable.  But, with a vaccine being rolled out throughout Europe in a few days’ time, even if individual know that they are not going to be in the first tranche of vaccinations, they will know that within months they will start to gain the protection that they need to visit their loved ones and, more importantly, not kill them by visiting.

     It is asking a lot for people to be patient month after month and to see blatant unfairness, incompetence, corruption, lying and deceit – but the vaccines exist and, in time they will be given to everyone and we will then all have a degree of protection that will allow life as we knew it to become life as we know it.  And for the restrictions to become a way of life or a bitter memory.

 

We went out for lunch today and ate inside the restaurant at spaced tables.  When we go to restaurants Toni remembers to bring the bottle of soapless alcohol handwash and I remember to bring the pepper grinder.  Nowadays communal cruets are a thing of the past and oil and vinegar come in one-use little individual bottles; ketchup and mayonnaise are in sachets and salt and pepper are in little paper containers.  Pepper is the problem: while salt is always there, pepper is a wayward addition and I cannot rely on its availability, so I take my own.

     A couple of times in the past I have had to rescue my pepper mill from clearing waiters’ hands and remind them that does not belong to them – but nowadays the appearance of my own condiment raises no eyebrows!

 

So, Johnson has had to U-turn on yet another of his empty reassurances and Christmas had had to be to all intents and purposes cancelled.  We are not in such a Draconian lockdown in Catalonia, but I do not think for a moment that things are going to get better during the holiday period.  We are all waiting for the vaccine.

Tomorrow is our final shop for Christmas.  We still have not finally settled what it is we want to eat during our Christmas meal – but it is certainly not going to be turkey with all the trimmings!  Toni has suggested prawns and that seems like something with which I can work, especially as I intend to have salmon scrambled eggs to start off Christmas Day in the right style!  Alas!  I will not be having a glass of Cava to accompany it.  How many YEARS is it since I last had an alcoholic drink!  I don’t miss it.  Much.  Though there are a few times with a good meal when a glass of decent red would go down a treat.  According to my doctor I am “allowed” one small glass of red wine a day.  It just simply does not sound like me.  So, I am prepared to do without.  And I make do with non-alcoholic beer.  Which, to be fair, is much better than it was when I first tried it years ago!  Even if it is really larger and not real bitter beer.

     Still, the Christmas Meal will look good and I have bought a few little things to make the festive board look appetizing!

     We will see how it goes and we will certainly take a photograph to remind us of the end of a truly awful year!

We are all in this together. Really!

 New Lockdown, Day 15?, Friday

 

I thought of entitling this piece ‘Selfish Disaster’ because we have been told in Catalonia that the closure of bars, restaurants, gyms, theatres, opera houses and SWIMMING POOLS etc is to be extended for at least another ten days.  Another ten days without my early morning swim!

     And then I thought that, in the scheme of things, going without a swim for a couple of weeks more is hardly to be compared with the ravages of Covid 19 and the people who are in hospital or are recovering from so-called ‘long Covid’.

     And then I thought again and realized that another ten days could well be the tipping point in the survival of some businesses and, as businesses fail so they set off a sort of chain reaction, dragging in both direct suppliers and those suppliers who are indirectly connected with the enterprises.  In an inter-connected world when one suffers, we all suffer – though I do of course recognize that not taking part in a particular activity (swimming, eating out, watching opera, shopping) is not the same as not keeping your business going.  I don’t swim, I am repaid my monthly membership fee or fraction thereof – the club has something like 2,000 members: it’s a lot of money to pay out and get nothing back, while keeping the buildings and installations in good condition.  The Club is well run and seems to be financially stable, even with the financial blows that Covid gives, but for how long can this continue?  And what is happening to the employees?  And the suppliers?

     Just as Covid respects no boundaries, the financial, social, educational, structural damage being done is not discrete: everything joins to everything else.  My missed swim is inconvenience to me, is a livelihood threatened to others.

     On the other hand, avoiding death is worth a little inconvenience, indeed it is worth a great deal of inconvenience – and one only hopes that we have governments considerate enough to understand that interdependence means generous finance.

 

 

 

My greatest worry (after the destructive effects of Covid) is about the condition of the Heath Service.

     In Catalonia, as I can personally attest from hospitalized personal experience, our Health Service is excellent.  I was lucky enough to have my condition diagnosed and my superb treatment given at a time when the health services were not being overstretched by a pandemic.  I am sure that if I went through what I did a couple of years ago, now – would I be treated in the same way?

     I was taken to hospital in an ambulance that arrived before my consultation with the doctor had actually ended.  I was seen immediately in hospital.  I was treated and given a place on a ward where my treatment continued.  I spent eight days (and longer nights) in hospital.  My aftercare has been exemplary.  Even then I spent some time on a bed in what was a corridor in emergency before I got a bed in a ward.

     Since the Covid pandemic has been in Catalonia, I have had a scheduled appointment for blood extraction and a consultation with the doctor that I have seen throughout my treatment – and my next one is in six months’ time.  I have no complaints.

     But my extraction and consultation were over in minutes, there were no complications, no expensive treatments that needed medical intervention.  What, I ask myself, is happening to those who need more intrusive medical assistance?  For those who need minor operations or who need continuing cancer treatment?

     The answer is perhaps illustrated on television, by the number of adverts that we are now subjected to which urge us to take out private medical insurance.  Even the threat of delay is enough to frighten some into paying now in the hope that they will be able to queue jump some time in the future.

    

In the UK the Conservative ‘government’ has underfunded the NHS and privatized those parts of the organization that it thinks it can get away with.  The Tories disgraceful outsourcing of the Test and Trace shows their dedication to the private sector and their hope that Brexit will merely accelerate the transition from the lie of “The NHS is safe in our hands” to “The NHS is mostly there for those who can’t pay” - and they will get what they do not pay for.  Covid has a fair chance of destroying a meaningful health service free at the point of need with the bunch of self-seeking incompetents that we have in charge.

 

 

What Covid has shown is how weak our public services are after years of Conservative ‘austerity’ and the post-Covid new-normal must be one where those public services are brought up to pre-Covid levels and more autonomy must return to local councils, so people can live.

     There is, of course, an element of hypocrisy in all this: my swimming pool is private, a private club run for profit.  The municipal pool is at the other end of town and up a steep hill which, even with an electric bike, I am not enthusiastic to climb.  I made a choice because I can afford to make that choice and I have gone for the pool nearest my home (leaving aside for the moment the sea which is at the end of the road) and the most convenient.  I have disposable income that I choose to spend on a well-appointed pool and in a cheerful café, I can even say that it is good value: I go there every day to swim and I end up paying about 50p for the privilege.  Money well spent I say!

     The US of A shows us that private medical health care is a nightmare and where a broken leg could be ruinous. 

     I am a fit and well chronically ill person!  I enjoy life but have to take pills every day and periodically go for consultations to check my progress.  It is no hardship; more mild inconvenience, and I know that I am being looked after well and I have no worries about the quality of my care.

     The New Normal is going to be different.  We have a duty to remind the government where its priorities should lie.

Eating together apart

 

 

Last night we were bought a meal by Toni’s sister to celebrate her Name Day: she was in Terrassa, and we in Castelldefels.  So, we ordered a meal from our Saturday regular restaurant and she paid for it via Bizum.

     How shaming is it to admit that before yesterday I had never heard of Bizum as a way of getting payments from one person to another without revealing your bank details?  As far as I am aware Bizum is located in Spain, or at least it is connected with Spanish banks – or is this just a further example of my electronic ignorance and Bizum is worldwide and it has just happened to pass me by?

     Whatever, that was used to pay for our meal, or at least to re-imburse us for our using hard cash to give to the motorcycle driver who delivered (the wrong) meal.

     It does seem strange this far into a lockdown, or restrictions, that a system that is administratively computer driven with clear print outs to attach to each bag of food to be delivered should be so faulty.  Correct labelling should be second nature at this stage of the struggle of a food supplier to stay afloat.  And the restaurant is foremost a delivery service rather than the other way around.  Still, wrong the meal was, but a quick telephone call and within a couple of minutes the bike rider reappeared and, speaking perfect English (years in London) gave us our ordered meal.

     If we are looking towards the summer of next year to get the vaccine down to our level of user, then ordering meals is likely to become something of a rule rather than exception.  I have noticed that restaurants are offering a take-out service now when they have never done it previously.

     My birthday is going to be another opportunity to find out how good our systems are as we were going to go to a restaurant for lunch – but all the restaurants are closed so take-away (or do it yourself) is the only option.  As my birthday is on a Saturday, there is not the chance of a menu del dia – but the restaurant that failed in the order yesterday, does do a reasonably priced (and usually tasty) version.  So, we will have to consider our options.  And wallets!

 

We have another White Goods Crisis.  I turned on the microwave and the lights went out.  Something is wrong.  But, talking of opportunity, it does give me yet another excuse to spend money!

But no.   

False alarm.  The fault was not in the microwave, but in the plug.  So that is one expense that I will not be incurring.

     In the old, unregenerate financial days, I have to admit that my reasoning would have gone along the “that saved expense ‘frees’ money to be spent on something else” – but I’m more grown up now and I merely feel a sense of relief and get on with my life.  Although I did buy (from the on-line shop) the catalogue to a new exhibition in El Prado that I thought was interesting.  Not quite the price of a microwave but still reassuringly expensive – and full colour illustrations too!

Life must go on!

 

My second day of unaccustomed lie-ins, and frankly, I’ve had enough.  The idea of getting up early is so engrained in me that any lingering in bed is effort not easement.  So, I will be up and about by 6.15 am tomorrow and be getting ready for my swim.

     Assuming that it is not raining, I will be using my bike to get to the pool.  Apart from immediately after the spill, the only bike ride I have had was this morning when I went out in bright sunshine to have an exploratory jaunt – not geographically (my route is set) but to see how my legs held out.

     I have already sort-of forgotten the pain of the original accident and I am more concentrated on the sharp reminders that come every time I get up and start walking, when the scab-mending skin on my knees stretches.

     It is easy to imagine while cycling that the tugging irritation of the scabs is going to result in cracks and on your return, you will have to mop up the rivulets of blood from opened wounds.  There was nothing like that, and so I am going to assume that the repairs to my epidermis are progressing well, and certainly well enough to take a little light swimming tomorrow morning.

     We shall see.

     Our Sunday lunch usually comes from the local pollo a last and today was no exception.  The only difference was that I went to get the food at midday because we reasoned, with the lack of food outlets open thanks to the new lockdown regulations, other people would be thinking of the quality take-away that is normally popular in less trying times.

     In the PC (Pre-Covid) days, you had to take a printed number and wait your turn.  That process has been dispensed with and now we have to queue, in masks with social distancing.  When I got there, very early for lunch, there were only three people ahead of me.  By the time I left the queue was considerably longer.  I had arrived at the tipping point of the queue and just made it before the masses descended!

     Given the fact that we have been in some sort of lockdown for eight or nine months we have to think about what used to be ‘normal’ when we go about our daily lives.  We do not expect to go out as much, to meet as many people to do the ordinary things that used to be part of a way of life.

     It is easy to live near the sea in what is a seaside town and see people doing what they have always done.  People walk and cycle and take the dog out.  Over the weekends, in spite of forceful recommendations, we know that we have many more than the locals walking along the paseo by the side of the beach and the sea.  We have the runners and the walkers and the families.  Many of them are local, I recognize them daily as I go on my bike ride along the paseo the length of Castelldefels, but many are strangers who have come (as they have always come) to one of the visitor friendly beach resorts near Barcelona.

     I am still shocked at the number of people who, walking along the paseo, don’t wear masks or wear them under their noses.  Some wear them on their elbows on hold them in a hand and some show no evidence of any mask at all.  It is at this point that I wonder about what these people think is happening around them, what do they think the word ‘pandemic’ means?  What do they think that their individual place in society demands?  As it is all I do is mutter “Covidiota!” under my breath and cycle on.

     Tomorrow, Monday, is the first day that the new restrictions will hit home, with parts of Castelldefels being fairly desolate places without the people and movement that come with thriving (even at 30% - 50% occupancy) of bars and restaurants.

     Tomorrow is the Name Day of Toni’s sister.  We would normally make the trip up to Terrassa for an evening meal and the distribution of presents.  Now everything has to be put on hold as I have no intention of moving outside my little Castelldefels bubble, and that disinclination has state approval.

     It does make me wonder about the sense of going to the opera.  On the one hand I do want to support the arts and t has been a long time since I was last in the Opera House in Barcelona – the last season was delayed and then cancelled.  My birthday is the date of the first opera of the new season.  But how can such a gathering be justified when bars and restaurants are closed?  How can the Liceu do better than small, more easily managed venues?  I have to admit that I am still in two minds about the safety of the forthcoming experience.

     We have been told that tickets for the performance will be sent to us via email; it is now six days away and I have had nothing.  I assume that Monday will be the day that we get final information about where we are sitting and our allotted seats have been changed in the interests of safety.  This is one experience that I am still debating taking.

 

Although my birthday celebrations have shrunk somewhat, I am already looking forward to greeting guests to the celebrations for the Completion of My Seventieth Year in October 2021.  DV.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 101 . Wednesday 24th June

I continue to be frustrated by the Catalan approach to time.

     I have given up trying to work out exactly the logic behind the opening and closing of shops and the continuation of some restaurants in staying open in spite of their cavalier attitude towards economics is mystifying to say the least, but I did think that I had the opening times of my swimming pool securely in my mind.

     Obviously during the more severe stages of the lockdown the pool was not open, and in the transition period from when it was open to the relative freedom of Phase Whatever The Hell We Are In Now there was a certain ad hoc nature of the time when we were let in for our regulated swims.  But the time did settle down to 8 am – the time, in the Old Days BC (before Covid) for the weekend opening times, the normal weekday opening time being 7 am.

     When we reached the present phase the opening time reverted to 7 pm, the showers were available for use and things appeared to be shaping up to be an acceptable New Normal.  Until San Juan.  As a recognized festival, this meant that opening time would be later, delayed until the weekend opening i.e. 8 am.

     Today, therefore, I had the luxury of a lie-in, or at least I would have if my built-in clock had not demanded that I wake up at my accustomed time, and I organized myself by setting off the robots to do the cleaning, making my cup of tea and doing a few of the clues in the Guardian Quick Crossword.  I made good time on my bike and I was at the gate to the pool by just before 8 am.  Unlike everyone else.  I was alone.

    OK, I thought, I will give them a few minutes to open up on the hour by going off on a little bike ride, making sure this time that I remembered to tell my watch that I was doing part of my exercise.  Too often I set off without pressing the right buttons to inform my watch to check my progress.  A little jaunt down the road and back again.  And nobody.

     I therefore made the executive decision that the time-honoured time for festive opening had somehow been delayed by an hour and so I would do my post swim bike ride, pre.  Which I did and made good time to get back to the pool just before 9 am.

     And there was nobody there.

     But at least this time, the gate was open and there were a couple of people sitting around the outside tables of the café.  But there were no people in reception and the café was closed.

     Eventually the shutters of the café opened, and Mario emerged to inform us that the opening time was 10 am for the pool.

     As I had my phone and my notebook (and asked Mario to bring me a cup of tea) a wait of an hour was as nothing and I finished the crossword and wrote a number of pages of quotidian rubbish in my notebook.

     My swim over, I had a second cup of tea and wrote further pages in my notebook and felt well satisfied and smug.  I declined to go on a further bike ride as the battery level on my bike had progressed to the single digit red number and I had no intention of being caught far from home with only pedal power to get me back!

It has been a beautiful day with only the screaming children lessening its beauty.  I truly think that kids have become even more feral with their extended absence from the calming discipline of school to contain their vocal exuberance.  If it were possible for kids to converse in anything less than a scream and shout I think I could become inured to their existence, but as it is, their obstreperous assertion of simply being makes them something Not Wanted on the Voyage of Life.  I’m afraid.

Our communal pool has become its usual magnet for those freeloaders who are not actually people who live in the houses for whom the pool is intended.  Just as the swallows come back to Britain in the summer, so various foreign fixtures take up their positions around the pool.  Shameless!

Tomorrow Toni returns, and I wait to see if he has been able to find any mature Cheddar.  He might have forgotten that he mentioned that he might look out for some, but I most certainly have not!

There are still a few laggard explosions, but as a slept through the ‘Main Battle’ last night, a few bangs are not going to keep me awake.  So to speak.

A pair of rather fearsome black reusable masks have arrived that I ordered via the Internet oodles of time ago.  They are not entirely comfortable to wear, but they do look the business and they have a satisfying seriousness to them.  They look the sort of thing to wear during shopping jaunts.

     The everyday masks are those that are shoved into pockets, and brought out and used because they are obligatory in Reception and the Café.  I am not sure what power they still retain as they have been overused, but I maintain the force of the family wisdom of, “Anything is better than Nothing.” And so they act as a barrier, no matter how flimsy.

     Mask wearing is the only visible element in most people’s approach to the virus.  Yes, we do obey (usually) the strips placed on the floor and there is some attempt at physical distancing with people that you do not know, but the fear of the virus is very much “over there” where “there” is very definitely not anywhere near our here.

     The virus news form around the world is uniformly depressing and there are spikes of infection in all countries.  I agree with Faucci (?) who said we should not look for second spikes of infection because we are still very much in the grip of the first spike.  I also agree with the director of the WHO who said that we are not safe until everyone is safe – and that means that we should all be very worried because there are too many leaders who are acting from economic and political standpoints and not human health standpoints.

I have written to my MP in Britain and urged him to consider aiding a movement to get Johnson and his cabinet charged with Corporate Manslaughter.

     I watched part of PMQs and was, yet again, ashamed by the way that Johnson failed to answer questions and became agitated when his failings were highlighted.  If he had a shred of common decency and humility and admitted the disastrous failures that his government has clearly owned, then I think he would have a certain amount of sympathy from the British people, and they would encourage the government to look at what has gone wrong and prepare for the worst in a more professional way than they have so far.  The government’s concern should be the welfare of the people and not how they look.  Each failure to acknowledge mistakes leads to further deaths.