LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 24 – Wednesday in Holy Week, 8th APRIL

 

I realise that, with all my bluff optimism, I have been affected by the lockdown!  In the poem that I wrote yesterday (smrnewpoems.blogspot.com) I actually questioned, even if rhetorically, the value of sunbathing!

     It is shocking to have to confront a possible breakdown in your worldview that can contemplate something as self-loathing as a negative approach to the appreciation of the nearest star!  It is certainly a wake up call to reassess my attitude and determine to be more positive in the future.  The idea of getting to June and July and behaving like a troglodyte is entirely unacceptable.

     If something as fundamental to my view of life is capable of mutability, then it makes me wonder what other, more subtle changes there have been in this period of self-isolation.  It would argue a self-deluding insensitivity to say that one can remain entirely stable when the world appears to be changing around you.

     The irony, of course, is that the micro world of self-isolation is unchanging and stable.  The continuing horrific catalogue of death and infection is all around us, but not part of the life that we are leading.  It is as if we are living in some sort of medieval fort with a water filled trench around us: part of our surroundings, but separated from them.

     Unlike some others, I have been entirely unable to wean myself from the news.  My addiction to the Internet radio, and more specifically Radio 4 is total.  It is at times like this that the Conservatives detestation of the BBC becomes not only partisan, but also self-defeating.  At times of National Crisis we united around the BBC as a voice of and to the Nation.  I certainly do not look towards the Conservatives and their slavish news lap dogs to give me a sense of what the Nation is thinking or feeling.

     And The Guardian.  As a life-long Guardian reader (with a brief fall from grace and adherence to The Independent) I now read it on my mobile phone with an intensity that goes beyond belief.  And may I make a specific call out for the writing of John Crace, a columnist of rare wit and perception.  His political sketches have been part of the reason that I have been able to maintain my sweetness and equilibrium during the past few years where Brexit and the bloody Conservatives have convinced me that I am living in a society where the dominant ideology is the death-wish!

My early morning routine is now becoming more and more established: set Moppy (don’t blame me, the app demands that you call your robot cleaner something) off on her hoovering circuit; make my cup of tea (English breakfast and Earl Grey) and have the World’s Most Expensive Augmented Muesli (at least I have stopped adding Smarties to it) with fat-free milk; do the Guardian Quick Crossword (with light cheating); change Moppy to her mopping sequence; go for my pool circuits.  And a chunk of the day is gone!  Which is a clear exemplification of the work expanding to match the time available!

     I do miss my daily early morning swim and I can’t wait to get back to that part of my routine, because that morning start include my first writing of the day when I sit in the café or outside having my post-swim cup of tea.  Ah!  How life used to be!

Just back from the open kitchen window where at 8.00 pm our time, we applaud the front-line workers who are keeping our society going.

     Talking of health workers and their battle against the virus: the British Prime Minister now in Intensive Care.  As I said yesterday, I wish him better health and strength to his family – and he should resign.  Now.  At once.

     The Prime Minister’s bravado a while ago where he was joking about his meeting Covid-19 positive people and shaking hands with them; his visible inability to maintain social distancing when his government was promoting it as essential, now appear to be a foolhardy, self-indulgent imposition on health services that are overstretched.   

     I might also add, that the Prime Minister’s inability to give clear indications of who actually has ultimate power in government is a dereliction of duty.   

     chocolate, retribution, judgement, ineptitude, Throughout his career he has been first and foremost a second-rate, shoddy, narcissistic, journalistic liar and, while I have sympathy for his present state of health, I have none for his political.  We deserve better than him.  Though with the cabinet of freaks that he has accumulated, god alone knows who (or in the case of Gove, what) might take his place.

     So far the Conservatives’ management of the Covid-19 crisis has been fatally inept.  How many unnecessary deaths is it going to take before the people of Britain demand the reckoning that should come sooner rather than later?

Determined not to end this post on a sour note, I can report that we were able to buy chocolate in the last shop and you can be assured that my writing has been sweetened by the confectionary. 

     So just imagine what it would have been like without!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 6

There is something almost poignant in cancelling an mobile phone alarm that had previously got me up at 6.10 am each day to get read for my early morning swim at 7.00 am in the local pool.  With the closure of the pool due to the virus the need to rise early was gone, but the continued sound of the 6.15 alarm was a reminder of my normality.  The cancelling was a delayed gesture and an acceptance of the situation as it is now, rather than the situation as it was then.  The new reality finally finding a sonic place in my daily routine!

     Today was the first silent awakening and I duly had a ‘real’ lie-in and didn’t get up until 9.45 am!  Three and a half hours later than usual!  I must admit that I felt thoroughly guilty by the time I staggered into the bathroom and started to get ready for the day.

     As I showered and shaved I wondered why I was bothering – not about the showering, personal hygiene is something that becomes even more important during a pandemic than in ordinary times, but rather in shaving and going through the rituals that structure a ‘normal’ day.

     There is a Somerset Maugham short story set in the Far East which centres on two colonial Englishmen, one a stickler for what he see as civilized English standards of correct behaviour and the other who considers such an attitude absurd when placed in the strange and foreign surroundings of a country totally unlike England.  One aspect of the Stickler’s behaviour I always remember: even though his copies of The Times were delivered in a batch to his remote location, he would only read them one a day in sequence in arrears, even if he was desperate to find out what had happened.  He would wait and steel himself to be patient!  The other man was not so patient and when the bundle arrived, he ripped it open and read the most recent first.  The story does not end well.

     Ritual can be comforting and give a pleasant sense of structure, but it can also be negative as those who have lived by ritual and structure find when these elements of scaffolding are taken away. 

     OK, I know that I started talking about cancelling an early alarm, and it’s only been a week since we have been in lockdown, but this lockdown is likely to last for a damn sight longer than the end of this month and small things in enclosed environments are likely to become more significant.  So, small changes can have disproportionate effects.  Perhaps writing about such things is a way of noting the variables and coping with them!

     And, I might add, I do not intend to stay in bed until quarter to ten each day during this crisis!  One has one’s standards!

I am getting progressively more worried about the attitude of people in the UK about how to react in this crisis.  People say that they know that it is serious, but then they say things that show that they are not fully conversant with the fatal seriousness of what might happen if their precautions are inadequate.

     As far as I can see, the attitude of the Generalitat in Catalonia is the right one: a lockdown, which really means lockdown.  We have increasing reports of the police stopping people who are two to a car and asking them why they are flouting the instruction that says that only one person is allowed outside the house at a time.  We have been told of people being warned about taking their dogs (a vaild reason for leaving the home) too far from the home itself.  They are supposed to be no more than a couple of hundred yards away.  People next door to us are making daily visits to continue the reformation, something which is simply stupid and dangerous.  People are still going for walks and runs and one friend has told me that something like 30,000 fines have been issued to people breaking the rules.

     As we saw from the guy who went to Italy then France and ended up in Britain, all it takes is one person to spread the virus with disastrous consequences.  And what Britain is allowing with this selective lockdown does not prevent the virus spreading.  The lackadaisical approach shown by the so-called government and the bumbling blond buffoon must translate itself into a similar attitude from the general population – and that mean more death.

     I simply do not believe that my fellow countrymen are hand-washing with the sort of manic intensity that we are in Catalonia.  I am not convinced that people are properly afraid, and are taking the seemingly neurotic precautions that are necessary to stem the advance of the virus.  And if they don’t then they are making a fatal mistake.  And they do not realize just how big and bad this pandemic can still get.  Easily.

I have been making some use of the third floor terrace.  There have been one or two days when you could kid yourself that it was sun-bathing weather.  And it doesn’t take a great deal to convince me of that.  We are lucky that we have a terrace that is big enough for a couple of loungers and a table and chairs, we have small gardens front and rear, and a communal pool. 

     What about those people who live in a small flat in the centre of Barcelona or another city?  Most Catalans live in compact flats, and if you have a couple of kids, then you soon begin to see why a great deal of normal life is conducted outside the home!

A friend has sent me a list of MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) about Art History and I am strangely drawn to trying one of them; especially as they are all free as well!

Always something to do!

And, if you want something else to read, might I suggest my new poetry blog at smrnewpoems.blogspot.com

 

The little rituals of life

No matter how early I make it to the pool for its opening, my little friend with his cigarette is there before me and trips off to the pool from the changing room to bag his accustomed end lane.  It is a wise choice because the last lane is rarely doubled swum so to speak.  If you are in it then the people who come after you choose one of the other lanes.  I had to make do with lane 4, a good choice this morning as I had it to myself, and I was able to pace myself against my little friend.

     MLF can swim crawl, and he swims the first length using this stroke, but his succeeding lengths are steady breaststroke – steady, but relatively slow.  My pacing him therefore is lapping him.  I set myself to lap him ten times before he leaves the pool.  When he leaves the pool, it is time for me to do my ‘endgame’: six lengths, of which the last two are, respectively, an assessment lane as to how I think I have swum, and during the last length I try and estimate my total distance.  My aim is to complete 1,500 m and it usually takes me about 40-45 minutes.  If at the end of my last six lengths I have completed my fifteen hundred (my smartwatch tells me exactly) then I do one length as quickly as I can and then a leisurely length of sedate breaststroke.  I then have a series of stretching and cool down exercises at the far end of the pool and my last length is a high stepping walk to a final series of twenty knee bends and out.

     Usually I go to the pool café when I have completed my swim, but today was one of the two days when I have an early class in Catalan.   

     Today’s lesson was taken up with the searing film of a young girl’s experience of growing up in Afghanistan as the school contribution to activity associated with the Week of the Woman.

     The film was called Osama and it produced one of those experiences that leave you feeling weak with impotent fury about how humans treat each other.  Admittedly the Taliban does not have a very positive public image and most of us feel an instinctive revulsion against the whole ethos of what the Taliban stands for.  Like Apartheid in South Africa, the Taliban is something that can be rejected with something approaching complacency as their attitudes towards women are simply totally wrong.  No excuses, wrong!  To say nothing of their attitudes to culture and expression.

     Because the subject matter of the film is so appalling and so transfixing, it is difficult to evaluate the film as a film.  There were shots of great beauty and the director was not afraid to extend some shots and consciously dwell on squalor artistically viewed – but the story of a family of women forced to dress the child as a boy to allow them to go outside after the Taliban refused to let women work and be outside of their homes without the presence of a man or boy is gripping.

     There is a meeting next week in school that I may attend which builds on the momentum from the film - but it depends on how the Catalan revision is going!  The meeting, after all, will be in Spanish – which is not in the test!

First into the pool this morning (i.e. the day after the opening paragraphs) and safely within the untouchable watery embrace of lane number 5!  And I kept it until the end of my swim: alone, inviolate!  And as a bonus, during my after-swim tea (outside, though the weather was at the limit of outsidedness) I thought of a word that I had searched for in vain last night when I was doing more work on the memory poem: validation.  And that can be used easily in phrases to lessen its awkwardness.  Each small step towards completion is gratefully accepted.

     

     Today a lunch date with Irene and the opportunity for more cups of tea and word in conversation.

         

     My revision for Catalan has taken a backward step because the set of vocabulary cards that I wrote have disappeared and I am loath to make another set.  A clear case of prevarication – and the exam is now five clear days away!  O god! O Montreal!

     And now to go upstairs and do some real Catalan work.  And hope, against hope that it will result in some sort of residence in my memory.

Swimming while Rome burns!

     

Although I am still getting up in the dark, the light is appreciably sooner in making its appearance than it has done recently.  We are at the stage where you can kid yourself that summer is just around the corner.  Though I have to admit that I sat inside the café to have my post-swim cup of tea rather than sitting on a damp chair in the cold outside, no matter than a weak sun was doing its best to spread a little cheeriness.

     I’d also forgotten my notebook, and further forgot to ask at reception for a sheet of A4 so that I could write out my fugitive thoughts before they seeped away.  I was reduced to ripping off the back cover of a real estate advertisers’ booklet to use instead.  To be fair to me, the reason that I didn’t have my trusty notebook in my pocket was because I was working on a poem last night and using my (almost) indecipherable scrawl to encourage me to work on the ideas that I had.  I’ve now started the poem twice and I am not even remotely satisfied with the direction that it is going in.  This is par for the course and I confidently expect that later today I will find a more satisfactory format to try and tease out a satisfactory structure!

     And while I am on a ‘fair to me’ jaunt, I am happy to say that I have actually done my homework for Catalan and a bit of revision too.  Our teaching this year has been somewhat fractured with an array of teachers and, while our main teacher has attempted to keep things together, there are gaps in our sacred texts where they have not been filled in.  We are now in the process of going back to horribly grammatical lacunae and pencilling in our responses.  Luckily, one of the books has the ‘answers’ in the back, so that you are able to check your answers and make suitable adjustments. 

     This is not cheating; this is just practical.  Catalan has rules, but it also has exceptions and, unless you know those exceptions then you are going to make mistakes, and, if we are on our own for some of the time, we have to get our accurate information from somewhere. 

     Some of our exercises are structured on the same principles of the maths exercises that I remember with fear and dread from my O Level torture: rule – example – another example following the rule – then, all hell breaks loose and you are on your own!  And Catalan has accents which go in all directions on any unsuspecting vowel, and it has the funny C and a double L with a floating full stop. 

     Unfortunately, our next examination will take note of where and how one adds the accents and This Time It Is Important.  So, we have been given a vocabulary list riven with accents and we will have to learn them.  Or rather I should have phrased it, “should have learned them by now” as the examination is a week tomorrow!  I have always found it amazing just how much one can cram into the last few days with fear fuelling one’s ability!  At least I hope that is still the case for me.

The house next door is being fully (and I emphasise the word ‘fully’) renovated and, for the last three months we have been subject to hundreds of thousands of hammer blows to the fabric of the house.  As we live in conjoined dwellings, a blow to a wall in one is a blow to the wall in all.  Given the number of blows that we have experienced, I cannot believe that there is a single square millimetre of the next door flat (floors, ceilings and walls) that have not been battered – and each one of those blows echoes through our house.  At times the sound has been unbearable with the vibrations having a physicality that stops thought.  And they are at it seven days a week, all day, and sometimes well into the evening.

     It is difficult to know what to do.  Renovation, when you are removing floor tiles, wall tiles, replacing the electrics, adding air con, restructuring, it all takes effort and a great deal of noise – but that is what renovation is, mess and noise.  It would have been nice if the neighbours who own the house (they are not here for the renovation, only the workmen are there) had had the common courtesy to let us know that our lives were going to be a daily misery for months before they put the first hammer to the first wall.  But that didn’t happen.  So there.

     Given the amount of noise and the dislocation that it provokes, I had occasion to look up the word for ‘nightmare’ in Spanish so that I could throw it into conversation to explain how we have felt about the sheer noise.  The Spanish word for ‘nightmare’ is pesadilla (pes-ah-dee-ah) while the Catalan word for it is malson.  I don’t know which one I prefer.  I do like the ‘mal’ part of the Catalan, but the workers and the neighbours speak Spanish not Catalan so malson will be lost on them.  Oh, and by the way don’t be taken in by the seemingly effortless transition between the two languages; it’s all theoretical not ingrained!

     I am praying that the major construction work is over and that the most that we will be subject to in the coming months is the altogether quieter application of paint on plaster!  Though, by that time the family will be in residence and we will have to see how they behave.  We got used to have people free dwellings on either side of us, so anything is going to be more negative than that.  And then in the summer the neighbours on the other side of us return for the holiday period.  So it goes.

Coronavirus in Spain appears to be taking a stronger hold.  Catalonia appears to have the second greatest concentration of cases in Spain, but the total numbers are still relatively small, but there is always a possibility of an exponential increase.  More and more news of prohibitions is getting on to the television.  Nothing has much of an effect on us yet, but the measures taken in Italy are an indication of what can happen in a very short period of time, and certainly the constantly repeated information that we are getting via the media seems to be preparing us for a real disruption to our normal way of life.

     The sun has reappeared, the wind has dropped and all is momentarily well with the world!