LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 61 – Friday, 15th May

For once we were not woken up by the wreckers from next-door executing their usual early morning rendition of Concerto Number Umpteen-and-One for drill, hammer and cement mixer.  I set off on my bike ride in relative silence and with thin sunshine.

     I now no longer even make the attempt to cycle all the way along the sea front to the Marina at Port Ginesta, even if the police are not there to enforce the unobtrusive border between Castelldefels and that part of the jurisdiction of Sitges that arches over the hills to take possession of the end of the bay.

     At the other end of Castelldefels the border with Gavà is blocked off with police tape and, while walkers and joggers duck beneath it and ignore it, I deign to flaunt authority in such a blatant manner and I dutifully turn around and come back home.  I have to admit that it really is not much of a burden to obey our locality restrictions, as I am able to cycle the entire length of Castelldefels and so complete a jaunt of 10k.  Which is quite enough for me.  Though I do miss my swim.

As I am an avid devotee of crowd funding sites and am ever beguiled by new technology, I am happy to report that I am now the proud possessor of a ‘cleansebot’.  As opposed to many of my purchases from Indigogo and the like, this particular innovation might actually be regarded as somewhat timely.

     The ‘cleansebot’ is a small side plate sized circular thick Frisbee-like object that incorporates UV light and wheels and is designed to crawl about one’s bed destroying bacteria and other wildlife haunting the savannah of the mattress and the cover sheet.  It can also be used as a hand-held destroyer and can then be utilized to ravage pillow cases, TV remotes, laptop keyboards, kitchen surfaces, light switches, etc.  Given the present concern about cleanliness this little machine could not have arrived at a better time and, more importantly, this is the only purchase of mine from crowd funding about which Toni has expressed approval – rather than throwing his eyes to heaven in exasperation at my ‘waste of money’!

     I have now retrieved the cleansebot from the bed after its sub-blanketian traverse of our sleeping quarters.  I believe that it has made a difference, because there is no way of actually seeing what it has or has not done!  But the real point is that I have another robot to complicate life just a little more, but cleaner, hopefully cleaner.

As the rain held off (and continues to do so) I was able to go on my evening bike ride.  There is a distinct air of determination to the way that people are walking, running and cycling during our period of allowed activity from 8pm.  Given the fact that it was a Friday (thinking of the past days when that actually meant something) there were more people on the Paseo than usual, especially when the weather was as dull as it was.  There were four or five illegal Plague Kids out of their time, but the most illustrative aspect that I note were the growing numbers of young teenage kids in bike gangs which, if you think about it, is as a good way of meeting your friends as any.  And, as long as you don’t get off your bikes, it’s a good way of keeping the necessary physical distancing that we have been advised to maintain.

     Although I joke about the concept of Plague Kids, I really do feel that every young person is a potential viral assassin!  And that attitude is going to take a long time or a quick vaccine to get rid of.

     When we talk about the New Normal, distancing must become the attitude of choice and of necessity.  I wonder how long the attitudes will last though?

In the UK the government is trying to rewrite the narrative of neglect that characterised the situation of Care Homes, it is doing this via nauseating expressions of present concern and a determination to change the approach of government, conveniently forgetting which government has been in power for the last decade!

On a lighter note, our next Catalan lesson is on Monday.  With any reasonable luck there will be more people in our virtual classroom than my good lone self.  We have had to do some homework and presumably that will be the basis of conversation (!) in our next class – assuming that it works.   
     I love technology, as I have mentioned above, but when it is linked to teaching it has an almost inevitable fail factor built in to the whole enterprise.   
     But, as always, I live in hope and positive expectations!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 60 – Thursday, 14th May

So, there will be border controls between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.  The obvious lie that they wouldn’t be needed parroted by the Brexit Barbarians is now crystal clear.  I read it in the Guardian, but I didn’t hear it anywhere else.  A key component of the fantasy agenda of the xenophobes now shown to be exactly that.  And what reaction has there been?  With Covid-19 in full fury we have different priorities and yet again, this Teflon Prime Minister and his discredited party will get away with it.

     Does anyone believe the government’s assertion that 100k test have regularly been given to actual people?  They have manipulated the figures by including multiple tests on the same individual and also including postal test sent out but not completed.  The basic trouble is that this government has a trust-worthy rating of precisely zero.  But, in the Trumpian times in which we live, what used to be generally accepted truth is now only one of a multitude of possibilities in a world of “alternative truths” or what used to be known as lies.

I went for my morning bike ride (no Plague Children for once) in light sunshine, but that was the best part of the day and I made an executive decision not to go for my evening jaunt and there was light rain and I am not fanatical about my cycling!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 58 – Tuesday, 12th May

I slept the sleep of the dead after my exertions yesterday.  Though thinking about it, that metaphor could have been better chosen.  In fact, it is a wonder I ever get to sleep given my insatiable appetite for the depressingly predictable latest escapades of Orangeblond a portmanteau word I will now use to refer to the sad populist narcissistic twins of the USA and UK, as they vie with each other to show which one cares less about the population they pretend to ‘serve’.

     Try as I might, I cannot wean myself from the heady narcotic cocktail of BBC news and The Guardian, with a dash of Spanish and Catalan televisualisation to add an exotic spice to my neurosis.  Though, thinking about it, wouldn’t an absence of neurosis in these times argue a disassociation from what is actually going on that would be a compelling basis for a text book definition of mental illness?

     No one in Britain (including [especially?] the government) appears to have the slightest idea about what has been ““decided”” – and the double inverted commas there appear to be far too subtle to give a clear idea of the tenuous nature of the word as it is applied to government policy.

     Yesterday/today/tomorrow is when the population should/should not go to work by foot/bike/Star trek beam if possible and not by public transport unless you have to  .  .  .  and one could go on, but this government defies irony and sarcasm.

     600 deaths today, three thousand new cases – how is this a situation in which it is sensible to ease the lockdown.  The testing target was missed AGAIN yesterday – and without adequate testing, anything that the government says is nugatory.  So no surprise there then!

My bike ride this morning was fairly early, but there were many people around, with bikes outnumbering cars and the same thing on my bike ride in the evening.  The evening ride should be Plague Kid Free as their time to roam around ends at 7pm – except of course for those parents who don’t want to stick by the rules.  There were over twenty Plague Kids joining the adults on the paseo; and yes, I counted, just as I counted the number of cyclists who had lights on when I made my way back from the far end of Castelldefels (23 out of 127, if you are interested) and thought to myself, if people are not prepared to do something as simple as switching lights on in the darkness, what hope do we have for something more sophisticated and difficult when connected to the requirements for a successful lockdown?

     Not good!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 51 – Tuesday, 5th May

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

     And that is the problem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     Sigh!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 43 – Monday, 27th APRIL

Why does it come as no shock whatsoever that the Conservative Government is going to release the figures for the total of tests at the end of the month not at the end of the month?  Can it be that the 100k total of tests on which Hancock staked his future are going to be more problematic than he thought when he thoughtlessly uttered the guarantee earlier in the crisis? 

     So, the ‘end of the month’ becomes something of a moveable feast for the Conservatives when it comes to protecting one of their own – never mind about the people who died as a result of their failure to boost testing when the WHO was urging countries to “Test! Test! Test!”

     If the 100k is going to be difficult to reach to save the hide of little Matt, then perhaps we should steel ourselves to any one of the following:

1.              The endless month of April, in the same way as MPs are used to some debates continuing on one particular named day even if that day has long since passed.

2.              The offering of the total number of tests available rather than the tests actually taken.

3.              ‘Discovering’ tests from previous days that have not been counted.

4.              Making up the results.

5.              Lying.

6.              Redefining the concept of 100k

7.              Redefining the idea of a ‘test’

8.              Lying.

9.              Sacrificing Rees-Mogg to placate, well, everyone up to and including Tories.

10.          Lying.

And let’s deal with the, “this is no time to be replacing a key minister when we are in a crisis” as we are in the crisis we are in because of the key ministers that we have had to put up with.

     

     It’s about time that our political masters began to accept responsibility, and with that end in mind, I am glad that Johnson seems better, and he should now resign after his disgraceful lack of responsibility in going out of his way to put himself in harm’s way by rejecting advice to social distance.  If Beckett fails to get his 100k he should resign: he made it a key pledge, he should live or die by it.  And if we are presented (eventually) with 100k, then I would like the figures scrutinized by an independent body!

With the allowing of kids out and about, there is a definite sense of ‘emergence’ from the lockdown – even though this has just included one parent with up to thee kids, the pictures of something approaching normality in the streets has produce a real feeling of achievement and hope that the end of the crisis is in sight!

     People are beginning to think of what summer could be like if social distancing is still generally in place.  What are the beaches going to be looking like?  At the moment we are regaled with film on TV of groups on the beaches being moved on.  Perhaps by July we will have the beach filled with tight camps of families jealously guarding their ‘safe’ space.  One shudders to think about it too closely!

     From queuing for pollo and bread and meds, I think that people will still go on socially isolating almost like second nature nowadays, but the continued isolation in-house is the more difficult to take.  Especially is there is an element of age discrimination added to the mix!

The Catalan lesson on line was an unmitigated disaster.  My basic problem comes form the fact that in Google Meet my computer stubbornly refuses to recognize that my in-built microphone works.  In other programs of a meeting nature it has no problems but with Google Meet, although it allows my camera to work it does not extend that courtesy to my mic.

     I attempted to rectify the mic. problem by using my mobile phone as the audio component and my Mac as the screen.  This was a bad thing to do not only because I could not read the screen within a screen within a screen on the mobile phone as it was tiny, but also because electronically having both devices on produced the most appalling caterwauling interference.

     Then there was the attempt for all two of us in the class (sic) to try and open the pages that would give us the work that we had to complete before Friday.  We couldn’t find the bit to click on and eventually, after what could only be described as a painful attempt to get us all on the same page, we were sent a new link to get to the page.  That failed.  We were then sent via email the page in question with space for us to complete our homework.  That failed.

      I have done my homework, but I sent it as a separate file via email.  We will have to see how this develops!  At least we have a week to prepare for our next on line lesson.

     It will not be time enough!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 41 – Saturday, 25th APRIL

It has been a long time since I considered the implications of a word like sarcasm.  It was usually enough to remember the notable exchanges between Whistler and Wilde, especially the exchange of Oscar hearing Whistler say something clever and his then saying, “I wish I had said that!” and Whistler quipping, “You will, Oscar, you will!”  Now that is sarcasm at a high level: clever, witty and true!

     Which brings us to the ignoble piece of narcissistic trash that is the current president of the United States of America.  Even for him he has plumbed a new low in trying to pretend that his “Let them drink Dettol!” was an example of sarcasm, used as a form of ‘sarcasm’ to taunt the members of the press.  I watched that particular piece of the press conference and the idiot said it with what passes for sincerity with such an empathy-lacking sociopath such as himself to a member of his scientific advisory panel.  Trump is a crap actor in the same way as he is crap at all aspects of a life.  For what I saw to be sarcasm, Trump would have to be a sophisticated, articulate, Machiavellian, consummate thespian with high comedic skills.  Trump, that is not!

     I refuse to believe that Trump has any conception of irony or sarcasm, even though his entire existence and his present position exemplify the concepts!

The British total of dead from Covid-19 has now gone over the 20,000 that the scientific advisors said would be a limit that would indicate that we had done well to contain the disease.  So, we have done badly, because not only are we over the total of 20k but also the figures that we have at the present give only an indication of what the true numbers are and will be.

     Yet again the testing put in place by the government has failed as the testing opportunities have crashed for the second day running, one wonders how the government is going to spin that disaster in the sequence of disasters that have marked their management of the crisis.

Tomorrow in Spain is the release of the Plague Kids into society.  No one seems entirely sure of the exact rules for the release of the kids, but it will be interesting to see how the general population interpret them – at least from our limited viewpoint defined by the house!

     I will watch the news with a great deal of interest to see how the rules apply generally.

Today has been one of those days that simply seem to slip by and one wonders what one has done to justify the gift of 24 hours.  To be fair to me, I have (I think) come to a final draft for the chapbook, The Coast of Memory.  Tomorrow a final print out and checking and then, as far as I am concerned, it is done!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 40 – Friday, 24rd APRIL

Years ago, when I was a volunteer on Cardiff AIDS Helpline, part of the duties of the volunteer was to staff the phones so that you could answer questions on the disease from members of the public who were able to ask for information in a safe environment where their anonymity was guaranteed.  It was very rewarding and volunteers were only allowed to take phone calls when they had undergone a fairly rigorous period of training.

     I remember, in one of the training sessions where we were being presented with simulations of calls one of the trainers, after listening to my responses said, “A little judgemental there, Stephen!”  I put it down to my being a teacher where there is an obvious overarching sense of direction and intent in the pedagogic approach.  But, with the Helpline, it was all about the caller: whatever the caller said and whatever the caller talked about, the volunteer had to go with it and suspend judgement.  I found it refreshing!  Whatever the caller had done, was doing or thought about doing, I was only there to give unbiased explanations and to give advice if asked.  I heard some shocking things but I learned not to judge only to supply facts to give the callers the information they needed to answer their questions and to give them clarity in the direction that best suited them.

     In the early days of the AIDS epidemic ignorance was the great killer.  In spite of the eventual mass advertising campaigns, the sometimes-gnomic approach was not direct enough for the basic information to get to the bulk of the population and some of the questions asked showed a shocking lack of understanding.

     One caller asked if it was possible for, “Me to give myself AIDS if I cut myself?”  While another when being told that the AIDS virus could be killed with a weak solution of bleach asked, “Couldn’t you inject that into somebody to kill the virus in them?”

     I was reminded of my time with the Helpline when reading and listening to Trump in one of his latest deranged pronouncements where he seems to be urging the use of internal UV treatment and the ingestion of bleach as a way of combating the Covid-19 virus!  30 years later and still the same level of ignorance, and this time not a random anonymous caller from Cardiff but the so-called leader of the free world who, from the time of his inauguration has spoken, “some weird shit” as Bush put it.

     At one time you could smile at the antics of the Orange Grotesquery, but it has become increasingly apparent that his mangled language simply kills.

The second attempt at Google Meet for our language classes was not an entire success.  The sound quality was variable, to say the least and the pictures confusing.  Having seen Zoom conferences of neatly aligned video feeds and exceptional audio, this experience was a little less than overwhelming.  I do not even think that I managed to get the basic information from our little gathering, but I will persevere and see what happens.

     Our Catalan group is about five or six on a good day, but I was the only one there and will have to relay imperfectly understood information in the hope of getting some sort of on line lesson up and running.  As far as I can tell, the only good thing coming out of the crisis is that we will not have any examinations; for which much thanks!  But it does call into question any certificate that we might be given at the end of the year!  What little Catalan I did have before the advent of Covid-19 has now altogether disappeared.  Every time I open my textbook, it is as thought I am starting from scratch.

     To justify our continued places in the virtual classes we have to do a certain number of ‘tasks’ and submit on line for assessment.  Having looked at the first one, I am even more confused than I was before the meeting, but no doubt, I will cobble something or other together and stagger on in the way that has become second nature to me when it comes to the study of languages!

We have just had a loudspeaker car come around the streets telling us that the normal municipal Friday collection of garden clippings and pine needles has been suspended until further notice.  You may not consider this much of a hardship, until you realize that the constant dropping of pine needles (in an area called after the pine trees) is a major problem.  This is not because of any unsightliness, but rather because of the threat that the accumulation of pine needles poses to the efficient working of our drainage system.  The pine needles block drains and cause floods unless they are cleared from gutters on a fairly regular basis.  Everything is interconnected and ignoring one part of the system will lead in a fairly short time to its collapse.  One wonders what other services have been dispensed with during this crisis and when the end results of this neglect will start showing itself.

     We are now two days away from the release of the Plague Kids into the streets on Sunday.  The rules (as far as anyone really knows them) say that a youngster can be taken out on a short walk accompanied by a single parent.  I simply do not believe that this is going to happen and we certainly do not have the number of police available to make sure that the rules are followed.  But, perhaps I am being cynical.

The sun is out and the sky is cloudless and all is well with the world.  At least, all is well with the world when it is concentrated on the third floor terrace, my private bit of the ‘outside’!