Ways to stay sane

NEW LOCKDOWN: Day 7, Thursday

 

Covid, the American election, lack of direct sunlight: when reality becomes too much I retreat to the discrete and the manageable.

     For my last birthday I was sent a stylish Scriveiner rollerball pen, which works just fine.  But that is not the point about the pen, nor its understated elegance.  No, it’s the totally satisfying thunk-click the top makes when it is pressed home, down over the nib.  It has a depth and a solidity and a crisp finality demands that you do it again.  And again.  I do realise that it is the sort of pen that can only be used in isolation: what is satisfaction for one is incitement to murder for another!

 

My new watch has arrived!  I wonder just how many times I have said, or could have said, that.  Having found mechanical watches that fit virtually all of my prerequisites, I have long gone on to smart watches – which of course give a whole new meaning to the search and to the cost.

     To be fair to me, I have never bought a really expensive watch, something like a Tag Heuer or Rolex Oyster Perpetual or whatever, I have been drawn instead to ‘good value’ inexpensive watches.  And sometimes to downright holiday rip-offs.  In the long run, of course, I have possibly (!) spent more than I would have if I had purchased a single heirloom-type conventional timepiece. 

     But I would not have had anything like the fun.  From where I am sitting, I can see two briefcase sized containers that hold (most) of my watch collection.  Each of them brings back memories, sometimes specific places, while others are the triggers to regret, missed opportunities or miss-steps.  It is sad that most if not all of my Cassio Period (early digital) acquisitions are lost, destroyed or discarded.  Though, come to think about it, if all my watch purchases were brought together in one place, I fear that even I would be a little shocked at just how much I had squandered!

      However, to get back to the immediate present, the timepiece that I have on my wrist I bought prompted by a pop-up ad on my mobile phone.  My (extensive) researches into acceptable smart watches have led me to Amazfit.  In my view the battery life, swimability, bikability, and function meet my basic needs.  So, I have bought one or possibly two-ish of them, and generally been fairly pleased – but there is always a niggling doubt about one or another aspect of the device that brings me back to the marketplace to waste (Toni’s word) more of my money.

     The latest version of the Amazfit watch on my wrist is the GTR2 and so I have reverted to the traditional round shape for the watch face instead of the curved strip of the X.  The advantage of the GTR2 is that it does allow you to have a basic always-on face, though this does drain the battery, by just how much time will tell.  And who knows when I will have the opportunity to test it in the pool?  Rather disturbingly, our pool/leisure centre has sent us details of commercially available on-line fitness classes that we can take as part of our subscription – which doesn’t bode well for when they think we will finally be allowed back for our swims in actual water!

     But until then, there is a period where I can luxuriate in the purchase before the novelty wears off and I subject it to a more rigorous utility analysis to see how well it truly performs given my demands.  So far; so good!

 

How much time do you have to spend watching Netflix before it becomes an official medical complaint?  With me, I don’t think it is the amount of time spent in front of the screen that is a problem, rather it is the inability to finish watching what you have started looking at.  I don’t mean that I turn on Netflix and watch relentlessly until I fall into bed, it is rather the fact that I seem to have the temporal toleration of full-strength Coked-up (please note the capital letter) kid with ADT.  My critical systems do a full analysis within the first ten minutes of a film or half the first episode of a series and I’m back to the home screen and searching for something new, or reverting to my default viewing position of an episode of Family Guy or The Big Bang Theory, neither of which seems susceptible to my dismissive critique.  And before you know it a couple of hours have gone by without your noticing.  Or is this just a function of Covid and the consequent lockdown?

     To answer my own questions, I don’t really know, but I am not doing as much writing as I feel I should be doing.  And, I put that down to the fact that my use of my notebook has shrunk to almost nothing because I do not swim.

     As I have mentioned before, my habit is to write something (anything) in my notebook after I have completed by daily swim and while I am having my cup of tea.  Now that swimming is forbidden, at least in the indoor pool that I use, and I have zero intention of throwing myself into the sea, in spite of the fact that my watch will accommodate ‘free swimming’ as easily as pool lengths, do not write anything on the pristine notebook pages.  I do not seem to be able to shift my notebook writing to any other period and adapt to other circumstances.  Odd.

    

I have often wondered about the power of habit. 

     I have realised over time that I have particular ways of packing and setting out my clothes when I change for my swim.  I use a certain number of pegs and I divest myself of clothing in a particular order.  If I change the order then something goes wrong: I forget to take my swimming goggles or I leave something out.  I think it is because there are a whole range of activities for which you do not really think; you are on automatic pilot and as long as things are regular everything works well.  I always us the example of touch typing: the more you think about where the letters are the more mistakes you make, you just have to go with what your fingers know they know and everything will be fine.  This is why, if someone talks to you while you are getting changed, you forget to put your ear plugs in or something.

     When I used to play squash and you were warming up the ball with your opponent before the match, some players would ask, “Which side would you like to start on?” and I made a conscious effort not to care and to be equally at home with left or right just in case I got used to one side more than another to start off and then if that was denied it would have an effect on the game.  If you are used to starting on the right, then it can be unsettling to be made to start on the left.  Gamesmanship is not made up of cheating (though I have known a fair number of shameless cheats in squash) but of little niggles that have a disproportionate claim on your sporting ability.

     As with the warmup in squash so it is in so many trivial aspects of everyday life; from brushing one’s teeth to going around the supermarket for food, there are too many rituals that are so second nature that they don’t register until they are disrupted!

     And lockdown is the perfect opportunity for self-disruption!

How ill do you have to be before you can look at what is happening and Catalonia and accept it?

-->

I am not good at being ill.

There are certain people who seem only to thrive when they are not well.  Rude heath for them would be exactly that, vulgar and unnatural.  As a teacher you know that the one way to get a class to talk is to ask if anyone has suffered any gory injury.  Even reticent kids will tumble over themselves to relate gruesome tales of hacked flesh, broken limbs and unsightly diseases.  Detail piles on detail as each bloody fragment is lovingly recalled.  Ask those same kids to explain in as vivid language any of their positive achievements and all you will get is a smirkingly smug enumeration of the unlikely level of Candy Crush that has been gained though abuse of opposable thumbs.

One of my great aunts made, as far as I can work out, an entire life out of having a ‘delicate heart’ and therefore had to be cossetted and due attention to her frailty had to be given to preserve her life.  Her very, very, very long life.  I think she outlived all of her sisters who had rather more sturdy hearts!  But they hadn’t worked at ill health in the single-minded way that she had.

Anyway, some accept illness, some fight illness and some have illness gifted upon them.  My compact with god was that I would be a blood donor as long as I was kept out of hospital and never had to use any of my own liquid contributions, or indeed those of anyone else.  As a sub-section of this divine agreement there was an acceptance that one-day’s incapacitating illness a year would be acceptable as long as the medicine to get better was a few hours bed rest.

Generally speaking this agreement has worked well.  I do have a couple of chronic conditions, but those don’t really count as they tend to go on and do their thing as a sort of subtle counterbalance to glowing health and are dealt with my daily pill taking, in the same way that my eyesight is ameliorated by the wearing of contact lenses.  So a day’s illness every other year or so; taking to one’s bed; getting better has been the general run of health in my life.

Now that I Am Of An Age I get a yearly flu jab and that then tends to limit my seasonal discomfort to a few sniffles and an occasional little cough.

It does not account for the generosity of partners, whose cough, runny nose, sore throat and irritating headache over the left ear is a gift that I have been trying to get rid of for the past week.

I got better (as I do) and even had an extended telephone conversation with Dianne with neither a sniff nor a liquid cough as a sure sign that the mucus had dried out when, uniquely in my experience, I had a relapse during the night and woke up much worse that I had been!  Unprecedented.  Since then I have had to cancel my Spanish lesson and start wandering around with a toilet roll to mop up what seems to be the effluent from some sort of factory in my nose.   

I have abused the reality that you can get massive (1g) painkillers over the counter in this country and then had only patchy pain free results. 

I have slept in!

That last admission is shocking and a clear indication that Something Is Wrong.

Having said all that, I do think that I am now getting better.  But it has been a salutary reminder of the fact that next United Nations Day I will of an age where virtually all the movers and shakers of the past had long gone to their graves.  With the signal exception of the painter Titian who, it is said, and who am I to disagree, did not complete his finest work until he was in his eighties.  I have no intention of searching my mind to unearth (perhaps the wrong word) more octogenarians (though Shirley Bassey and The Pope spring to mind, but let it go, let it go) to encourage me to consider that there are decades of useful life ahead of me - I am much more concerned that the life that is left is not filled with snot and snorts.

The illness that has laid me low is the sort that precludes intellectual activity, so I have been watching marathon sessions of continuous episodes of The Big Bang Theory - and I still can’t sing along with the opening ditty!  I have very much enjoyed the experience, but as I get better, I find the need for more of that particular drug lessening.  It is always a good thing to find a self-weaning comedy programme!

From time to time as the programmes came and went I did manage to drag my consciousness from its mucus filled nasally blocked dungeon to make some interestingly perceptive apercus about what I was watching - but alas, those pithy observations are now in the same place as the recipients of my nasal discharge.

As I have convinced myself that I am getting better, I have advanced to watching Westworld, the major delight of which is watching the acting and more particularly listening to the enunciation of Anthony Hopkins.  He is one of those British character actors who can make the most banal piece of dialogue sound profound.  His vocal mannerisms may be, uh, mannered, but by god they make you listen.  An unexpected pause, a slight slur, and in-drawn breath, a half look and an impeccable sense of timing - continuous pleasure.

As opposed to the political situation in Catalonia and Spain.

We have had a sort of apology for the brutality of the Spanish police by the senior representative of the Spanish Government in Catalonia.  Not from the central government you understand, where our clueless President still refuses to concede the need for dialogue and compromise.

The latest piece in the browbeating of Catalonia is the action of a couple of very big banks that have threatened to move their headquarters outside Catalonia so that they are still in the EU if the government declares UDI.

And that last paragraph gives the wrong impression.  As far as I can tell, the banks are threatening to move their registered offices out of Catalonia.  Not quite the same thing - as any two-bit shady organization hoping for a bigger return on their capital will tell you.  We can hardly look to the banks as paragons of ethical steadfastness: they go with the money and wherever their financial lawyers say they can get the best deal.  So this form of financial blackmailing is hardly new and it would be interesting to see the real outcome of moving a registered office rather than an entire organization with all its real estate.

The propaganda war is hotting up in Spain and the ‘interpretations’ of reality that we are presented with on television would gladden the heart of a nit-picking pedant like Saint Augustine.  Jesting Pilate would have a field day with the varieties of truthfulness on daily display.

The Socialist party of Catalonia is opposed to independence and they asked their followers to take no part in the referendum.  They have now asked a judicial court to block the proposed sitting of the Catalan parliament on Monday where the results of the referendum were going to be put to the representatives and where a possible UDI could be declared.

I do have some sympathy with those political parties like PP, PSOE and Cs (and their Catalan counterparts) who opposed the referendum and played no part in it.  This is a perfectly good position to take.  But.  And the big ‘but’ here is that when the referendum looked as though it was actually going to happen, everyone should have piled in and either forced the minority right-wing PP government to come to some sort of settlement with the possibility of a fully legal referendum at a future date in Catalonia, or voted ‘no’ in the referendum.  As it is now, we had over two million people defy the central government and, in spite of appalling police brutality and obstruction cast their votes.

The other parties have been wrong footed.  The vote could never have taken place if the political parties had done some politics.  But they didn’t.  And they suddenly have to deal with a disastrous/farcical situation where they fulminate about the grotesque obscenity of people casting a democratic vote.

OK, you can debate ‘legality’ and ‘illegality’ and ‘democracy’ and ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ and all those other high sounding words - but the reality of the situation is that a vote has been held, votes have been counted and a president is poised to declare UDI from Spain.  The posturing of the opposing political parties seems woefully inadequate and the ‘solutions’ that the government of Spain has suggested are ultimata rather than bargaining positions.

Does the Spanish government really want to send the ‘police’ in again?  Augmented by troops?  Do they really want to invoke article 155 of the Constitution and take over the government of Catalonia?  Do they really want to stick to their inflexible standpoint of absolutely no negotiation about a binding referendum some time in the future?

From the outside it must seem, especially about the disastrous pictures of police brutality, that something must give.  Some reason must prevail.  To which I say, live in Spain for a few years and see exactly how this minority PP government acts and reacts and then you will consider that anything is possible.

God help Catalonia!