Lord! See how virtuous I am!

My Secondary School was a bus ride away from my home, and I can remember that the schoolboy cost of a ticket (one-way) was 1½d or 1.5 pennies or three ha’pence or just over half of one modern new penny.  The cost now seems derisory, and it wasn’t a great deal even then, but it was worth collecting by a real, live ticket conductor and there was always a chance (remote but real) of your ticket being demanded to be seen by a ticket inspector.

     As my bus travelling was at peak time, ticket conductors were not always keen to visit the seething zoos on the top deck and were sometimes somewhat cursory in their collecting of the three ha’pences for the fares.

 

     

 

  

     At the bottom of the stairs there was, attached to the metal structure of the bus, a little locked ‘honesty box’ where uncollected fares could be placed.

     I have to admit that I scorned to be called a thief for three ha’pence, and always put my penny ha’penny into the box.  Indeed, there were times that, unless I was asked for the fare directly, I kept the money in my hot little hand until I could place it in the honesty box.

     I now realize that my actions had little to do with honesty and more with what is now called ‘virtue signalling’ where the public act of honesty outweighs the quality of honesty.  I was doing the right thing, but I wanted to be seen to be doing the right thing, and therefore parading my honesty rather than merely (as I saw it) being honest.

     This juvenile act of selfish pride came back to me when considering the Pandemic.

      Last night I went to the Liceu for the ballet (of which more anon) and, as I was walking down the crowded Ramblas from the excruciatingly expensive car parking, crunching my exquisitely painful knees, I was forced to consider the disparity between older folk who were almost invariably wearing masks and those people aged about 25 and younger who weren’t.

     The rules (ha!) for what you can and can’t or what you are supposed to and not supposed to do have always been somewhat fluid (no matter how they were presented by the authorities), and I think (who knows?) that the wearing of masks outside is now permitted, but they should still be worn in crowded outdoor situations (I think).  I would consider the most famous street in Barcelona, Las Ramblas, packed as it always is with tourists and natives, to be a crowded public place under the meaning of the rules.  Well, they (the youngsters) weren’t masked, and they were not observing social distancing.

     I have had my flu jab and my Covid booster, so I can consider myself fairly well protected – but I always wear my mask, I am positively Pilateian (the word may not exist, but we need some sort of expressive adjective, though the adverb may be too clumsy to use) in my compulsive hand washing, and I keep my distance.  Why can’t others?

     But this zeal for protection extends itself to my locker in the pool.  In our pool you can hire a locker and have it as your personal storage space on a permanent basis.  Not only does it mean that you can store some of the essentials on site and not have to carry them to the pool each day, but also you can be assured of its not being used by anyone else and therefore you can be assured of its cleanliness as well.

     However, after I have changed, I clean the outside door and the interior of my locker with the disinfectant provided by the centre, using sheets from one of those giant rolls of absorbent paper also provided.  I have my own spray of disinfectant that I keep in my locker, and I spray and clean the pegs and the sitting area of bench that I have used.

     We are constantly told that Covid is transmitted through the air and that the chances of transmission via surfaces is limited.  Limited by not non-existent.  I am aware when I am cleaning that I am doing something that virtually everyone else ignores.  Most people regard the wearing of a mask (which the centre demands in all inside areas, except the showers) as sufficient.  And perhaps they are right, and I am just virtue signalling again, revisiting the childhood pride of ‘honest’ bus riding.

     Having said that, I do feel some degree safer after my cleaning and I enjoy that sort of selflessness that comes with knowing that at least the bits that I used are now clean for others.

     I think that the simple reality is that any amount of virtue signalling is to be encouraged when you are dealing with a pandemic that has killed millions and incapacitated millions more.  I will continue to clean!

 

 

The review of my Liceu evening can wait for another time!

    

Another date filled

 

Well, the one good thing is that I have only missed one meeting or appointment - and I thought that I might have missed three.  But no, blood test and concert are still in the safe future, it is only the student representative meeting that has slipped me by, and the teacher concerned seemed far more concerned about my new pressure stocking than the meeting.  The lack of my attendance at the meeting apparently could be solved, or at least mitigated, by a short chat with one of the teachers.

My pressure stockings are another factor.  These are stylish (for pressure stockings anyway) free gifts from China.  I only had to pay the postage (and that wasn’t very much) and I got three pairs!  It reminded me of the trip that Toni and I made to stay in Catalonia where the flight cost us nothing – except for the landing charges.  I do not understand the economic logic of giving away a flight for nothing, but I gratefully received the largess.  God knows we have paid back that free gift many times over given the amount of travel that we have run up over the years since.  But I do remain grateful for the inexplicable gift!

The pressure stockings are perhaps easier to explain as a sprat to catch a mackerel and the assumption must surely have been that I find out that the link with the supplier is real and you stand a chance of getting what you hoped for, and you buy much more stuff - and god knows, China is the home of stuff nowadays.  Was it enough for the Chinese supplier merely to get hold of my email and start sending me information, to get me on a mailing list, that they could write off the merchandise. 

 

And again, I insist that the postage was so small that I could afford to speculate and give it a go not really worrying about losing the pittance that they had asked to get the stuff to me.  They have since asked me to comment on my purchase, but I assume this is merely a device to ensure that I am still a live customer and that any giving of stars will unleash a whole catalogue of offers too good to miss!

Give my predilection to submit myself to the blandishments of the capitalist system and buy stuff for the mere sake of it, I have steeled myself to be rude enough not to reply – even though I am wearing one of the said stockings even as I type this.

The net two months should prove to be revealing, with the possibility that I will not need to wear the bloody stockings any more.  The function of them is to increase the blood flow in my right calf so that the thrombosis will be dissolved away.  To that end, my diet (low salt, low fat, no alcohol, decaffeinated tea and coffee) added to the half a tablet of rat poison that I take daily should all be working together to get rid of the thrombosis in a gradual way.  Over the next couple of months, I am scheduled to have various tests and appointments that should enable my doctors to determine the extent or otherwise of the offending clot and adjust my treatment accordingly.

I had thought that I would be taking the rat poison for life, but one doctor seemed surprised by this assumption on my part and assured me that there was a possibility that it would be discontinued in a few months’ time.

I continue to be impressed with my treatment and the thorough way in which I have made a Grand Tour of most of the hospitals in the area for consultations and tests.  The important ultra-sound scan will be in January, so I won’t have a Christmas present of my treatment being ended, but I will settle for a late gift!  At least by the New Year I should be in a better position to know how my appointments calendar will look for the rest of the year!

Meanwhile, my book “Stephen’s Health” continues to grow as each new sheet of information, results and appointments is added to the plastic pockets.  I take it with me whenever I go to see a doctor as a sort of visible token of my active participation in my treatment.  I can also refer to any of the information about my case (downloaded from the secure Internet link) to encourage those doctors battling with their ageing computers.  In one or two instances it has been very useful to point to relevant information to help the consultation along!

I feel fine, though I am not able to walk as far or as fast as I used to.  My shooting stick has been invaluable and I am now back to my normal swim and bike ride quota for each day.

My replacement watch for my Pebble, the Amazfit takes a dictatorial view of my activity and gives me reams of information that I totally ignore.  It tells me where I have cycled and how – though I am not sure that it realizes that my bike is electric; it analyses my swim, using acronyms that I do not know; it noted my ‘run’ that I did not do – and I am still wondering about that; it measures my sleep and its depth; it takes my heartbeat; it tells me (and nags me) about sitting down for too long.  And it also tells the time.  Its battery life is nothing near the longevity of the Pebble, but it is at least four or five days between charges and I can live with that.  The text it uses is too small for me to read without my reading glasses, but I am used to making sense of the out of focus – I have been doing in for as long as I can remember – so that is not something that worries me.

I now use my Matrix watch (the one that runs by making electricity out of the difference between your body heat and the ambient temperature of the watch case!) as a backup when the Amazfit is charging.  I good, if expensive, compromise about their use!

The major problem I have is making sure that the alarms on any and all of my pieces of wearable electronics do not go off as inopportune times.  I take my half of rat poison at 8.00 pm.  That is the time of the start of the operas to which I go.  The trouble is that merely switching off the phone (which I do when I go to performances) does not always stop the bloody alarm and once or twice I have fumbled with the phone during the applause for the conductor in a frantic effort to silence the thing before the music starts.  My watch merely trembles and that can easily be turned off by jabbing at the screen.  The anticipation that an audience feels at the start of the performance is given an added layer of fear by the threat of my electronic alarm orchestra playing an unwelcome additional melodic line.

And I am looking forward to this performance: Janacek, Katya Kabanova.  Let’s see just how well my ‘education’ in the works of Janacek by WNO and Richard Armstrong with the voice of, among others, Elizabeth Söderström, will be in my appreciation of the performance tonight.  I am all anticipation.

And now to get ready.  As a point of principle, I wear casual clothes to the Opera, in spite or rather because of the fact that I will be surrounded by those who ostentatiously dress up.  I am still wearing shorts and sandals (for me Summer Never Dies) but I might wear jeans tonight.  Not because of the cold, you understand, but rather because getting out of the Liceu and walking up the Ramblas late at night can be a dispiriting experience, and if you look ostentatiously like a tourist then you might well be the target for one or more sex workers to come up to you with blatant offers of gratification!   

Better to be taken for, if not a native, then at least a resident, and hobble (in my case) my stick-assisted way towards my expensively parked car!

Hard slog works

Poems in Holy Week

With the third poem written, I think that I can claim that there is a sequence growing along this particular theme.  I like the discipline of having to produce a poem a day I further like the self-imposed necessity of trying to develop a sense of questioning that I think the Week itself demands.

            The latest poem called Life (there’s a title as a hostage to fortune!) can be found at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es and I welcome comments on the poem itself and on the developing theme – if there is one!

            Thanks to Ceri for his comments via email: I found them challenging, encouraging and stimulating.  Who can ask for more?  Me.

            I both dread and welcome tomorrow, as I am duty bound to write another poem.  At this moment I have no idea about what I might write – which is exactly the state of worried anticipation that I like!

Sun

I was able to lie out in the sun for a few short minutes.  It was probably longer than that, but the greed with which I view the sun also means that I worry about each ‘wasted’ minute that I am not out in it.  I am always trying to gain minutes to hold in reserve against those ‘brightly dull’ days that I find so antagonizing.

            It cannot be gainsaid that we are moving towards summer.  This is an article of faith for me and I echo the fatal words at the end of Ibsen’s Ghosts, ‘Mother, give me the sun!’ though I hasten to add that I say them in an altogether happier state of mind than the unfortunate young man in Scandinavia!

            I am, at present, a sickly pale colour (for me) and I look forward with glee to increasing my supply of vitamin D!

Logic

This is a week of holiday.  I know that not everyone, or even the majority of the population is able to down tools and enjoy, but it is an official holiday period.  People, as it were, go on holiday.  They visit cities, world famous cities, like, for example Barcelona.

            Then, why is it that the rate for a room just off the Ramblas in the centre of the city of Barcelona costs less than it has done for the last six months?  Where, pray, is the logic in that price?

            When, as far as I could tell, little or nothing was going on to bring people to the city, the price of the room that I usually have for the opera suddenly shot up to over sixty euros!  Now, it is twenty-five – including breakfast!

            In a similar way, when I cycled back from my swim (see Poems in Holy Week above) I had to thread my way through a system of cones which blocked roads to the beach because today, during a week of holidays when people might thing about coming to the beach, the powers that be decided to refresh the paint on the road markings.  Today?  Why today and not last week, when there were no, for example, holidays to complicate traffic flow?

            And finally and most crushingly, why do people vote for PP in Spain when it has been shown that they are demonstrably corrupt and criminal and inept?

            Perhaps the answers to these conundrums are to be found in the fact that mere logic is not enough and that we need poets to explain the world to the world!

Food, reasonably priced food!

At long last we have tried the menu del dia in my local swimming pool restaurant.  I am not sure that Toni has added it to his blog yet, but it will be there in the next few days.  Visit http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es as Toni is constantly updating his blog and making it more and more exhaustive.  We still have a long, long was to go before we eat our way through the restaurants of Castelldefels, but we are enjoying doing the fieldwork.

            We are also looking forward to the ruta de tapa, when 40 or more restaurants compete to produce the best tapa in the city.  For a cost of about €3 you get the tapa and a drink of your choice.  We will have to plan this eatathon with military precision if we are to visit all the establishments.

Barcelona

Tomorrow another horrible bus ride to the city to make the meeting with my fellow members of the Barcelona Poetry Group all the more pleasant.  I must remember to take my computer with me if I am to keep up my poem-a-day approach to this week.