LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 8

To absolutely no one’s surprise the government is going to ask parliament to extend the period of lockdown, or the extension of the state of the emergency until the 11^th of April, so we have at least another weeks of restriction.   

     I wonder if this piecemeal approach to the lockdown is because the government is not prepared to let us know how long they really think it is going to be – especially for people of my age and generation as we slip neatly into the most at risk category, and therefore we can double or triple the ‘safe’ period for us to be at home?

     As someone who is restricted to a house and a quick circuit of the communal swimming pool, and television in a foreign language it is difficult to get a sense of proportion about the wider implications of an extension to the period of confinement.  But, of course, that is not going to stop me!

     The front of the house looks onto a important road that runs virtually the whole length of the beach part of Castelldefels; the back of the house looks onto the pool and the other houses of our type, together with houses on the first line of the sea and to our left, a block of flats along the main road. 

     So, based on that vastly exhaustive sample of Castelldefels and Catalonia I am now ready to extrapolate from my observed experience from the three floors of our house and pontificate about the future direction of the country.

     The number of people breaking the rules: walking in pairs; using the dog as an excuse to go further from the house than has been suggested; families with kids pushing the boundaries of where they can ‘exercise’; people walking without purpose; people rapidly reaching their tethers’ ends cooped up with kids – the afternoon especially are punctuated with childish howls.  All this is leading to a pressure point where people will rebel against restriction.  We are not supposed to leave our homes except for essential outings and that basically means buying food or seeking medical care and attention.  That is not how people are living their enclosed lives, and it will get worse over time.

    In Spain the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 is now 28,572 and the official death toll is 1,720, which, according to my calculations gives a mortality rate of 6%!  Of course this does not take into account the number of undiagnosed cases of Covid-19 there are in Spain, so the real percentage must be (surely) much lower than 6%? 

     This is the sort of disaster than strains the resources of any health service, even one as good as the Spanish.  We are going into uncharted territory and something will have to give.

On the personal front we are doing well, we have plenty of food, the baker is not far away, Toni is well into his on-line course and I have sighed up for two MOOC courses on Modernism and European Painting. 

     The painting course will be a delight with easy appreciation, while the second is rather more challenging with the readings for the first week of the course including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Kant!  In translation, thank god!

Yesterday was Sunday, but you would have been hard pressed to have discerned any palpable difference from any other during our samey days ‘inside’.

It has been raining heavily this morning, and Toni ventured out to get the supplies that had been running low.  In spite of the adverse weather, Toni tells me that there were more people in the supermarket and that the experience was made worse because of some people’s inability to obey the restrictions about personal space and distancing.  It must make these social occasions dangerous.  Toni has returned in what I would describe as a disgruntled mood, failing to understand lack of adhesion to simple rules designed for personal safety against death!  But that’s people for you!  In all senses!

Much to my horror, our Catalan teacher from school has contacted me with a proposal to set up an on-line system where we can continue our studies.  I must admit that I was fully prepared to let my school time fade into the general chaos of a society in meltdown, but this (admittedly positive) offer is something that I will not, in all conscience, be able to ignore and consequently the Catalan lessons will be up and running again in some form, and “lo, my fit is come again!”

     As far as I understand the proposal, this will be based on a written form of social messaging system rather than a live face-to-screen experience, but who knows how this will develop?  I will have to knuckle down and get our merry band together and see where we go!

On another cultural tack: I have just finished reading an on-line essay called “The Fabric of History.  Power and Piety in the Pellegrinaio of Santa Maria della Scala” on the Academia website that offers a wide range of papers to read free, gratis and for nothing – though, as ever, there is a premium service that you can access by paying a fee.  I have downloaded two of my own papers on Art History to the site and have read numerous interesting (and sometimes impenetrable) papers in return.  I recommend it without reservation.

     This particular paper refers to a Renaissance hospital building in Sienna that is decorated with a series of murals that reward further study.  This paper takes an historical approach and there is something delightful in having your memory jogged, as one of the essays on a previous OU course that I took concerned one of the panels of this very fresco.  The rivalry between Florence and Sienna; popes and anti-popes; humanism and religion; piety and profit; charity and war; status and death – all are there in the backstory to the frescos.

     It was interesting that I read the paper with an eye that was constantly looking for ideas and quotations that I could use in my own essay.  This would have been very, very useful when I was doing my own work on the frescos and would have made my final mark higher I think!  As it is, I can read through with remembered scholarship and relax.  The paper is worth reading and the frescos are readily available to view on line. 

     And if you have never heard of the place and don’t know the frescos, then I would humbly suggest that given our home-bound existence at the moment, you could profitably spend some time reading and looking!

Don't forget to visit my 'new' poetry blog at smrnewpoetry.blogspot.com 

Flight to the library!

Having flounced out of the house because of the intolerable noise of the renovations next door I made my way (by bike) to the town library – an imposing modern building with desks (and an electricity supply) for those wanting to work.

     Finding the socket was the first problem when I had found a desk heartbreakingly close to the library’s collection of books on painting.  This is usually the kiss of death for any work that I might do as the lure of the lavishly illustrated books is usually an irresistible temptation for me.  I have however found the fortitude to stay my eyes from the luxury of paint and have stuck to some sort of travail.

     Admittedly, I have not (yet) done any of the work that ostensibly brought me to the library in the first place, but work of a sort has been done.  I have written three stanzas for the memory poem and generally considered that the rest of the writing that I have done for it is woefully inadequate and simply un-poetic.  The ideas might be interesting, but the way in which I have written them is too prosaic for my taste – and it doesn’t sound right when I say the lines!

     I have, therefore decided to rest that particular effort and turn to my languishing blog.  For someone who professes to be a writer, I sometimes evince a totally reprehensible disinclination to practice my art. 

     However, when it comes to displacement activity, I am truly one of the Greats.  Hence, my fingers pattering along the keyboard of my trusty MacBook Air.  This has become the machine that I take to public places where it might be stolen, because my Dell is simply too expensive to be put into a position of possible pilferation and so stays largely unused at home.  That logic is not entirely convincing, but it will have to remain as the explanation for my actions.

     In the way that irony follows me around, no sooner had I sat down and plugged myself into the power supply and typed the first words, than a whole horrendousness of children broke into their atavistic caterwauling outside the library and a group of public street drummers started playing their instruments.  But that sound was muted through plate glass and concrete and, anyway, the sound of rhythmic beats and young humans in full yell is nothing like so debilitating as the bone reverberating sound of workmen mindlessly (to the listener) hammering a party wall that amplifies and encourages sonic augmentation.

   Well, the sounds soon stopped and I only had to contend with the incessant conversation of the librarians at reception whose conversations fill the ample open stairways in the centre of the building.  On the other hand they add a touch of humanity to a space that can sound funereal in the total absence of human talk.  And silence can be distracting too!

Now on to the reason for my being here in the first place: the looming Catalan examination.  I should leave that sentence as a sort of gateway to learning, and stop typing and get on with the hard work of forcing Catalan concepts into my antagonistically resilient brain.  So I will.  After I have been to the loo.

    Back at my machine and, if you are wondering why I have not got down to the real work that I am supposed to be doing, then I will just say that when I went to the loo, I actually left my MacBook Air (open and on) at my desk.  Unattended.  Such is one of the advantages of being in a civilized place like Castelldefels.  I merely followed the example of the gentleman at the end of our row of desks who did the same.  Perhaps I should not be saying this in my blog, it is surely an open invitation to opportunistic thieves who prowl about seeking whom they might devour.  But now, work, Catalan!

And I actually did do some vocabulary work.  I am still confused by the accents which, as I have said before, go in all directions and attach themselves to more letters than I have heretofore encountered.  Still, some letters only have the accents going in one direction, so that should make my work easier.  As long as I can remember which letters they are.  And, of course, the direction!  Well, I have two and a half days left.  Think what can be achieved!  Even by me.

     Now I am going on to the more problematic element in the exam: the writing.  We know that we have a choice of two topics: one connected to our homes and the other an email to a friend.  As you can get away with more lists in the ‘home’ option (thereby mitigating the need for over many verbs, adjectives and adverbs) I think I might give that one a go.  I have recently learned the Catalan word for ‘nightmare’ which is ‘malson’ and I am bloody determined to work that in somewhere to describe the work going on next door.

      I have to admit that I am adept at constructing pieces of writing in translation which are heavy on the use of all and any language reference books that I can get my hands on, and yet make the final piece of writing sound like a convincing attempt by an enthusiastic, if inept, learner!  It’s a sort of skill – but not one much called for.

     The trick I need for next Friday and the exam, is to have a store of key phrases that will lift my ‘listy’ vocab-heavy stodge into something a little more interesting and lively.  All I am looking for is a pass.  Just a pass.  Please.