Early morning swim today and I’ve booked another early
morning swim for Saturday! I am getting
back into the groove – just in time to be told that the system will be changing
on Monday!
On Monday
the pool will revert to the normal opening time of 7 am and the app-based
system of booking will end. You just
turn up. The showers which have been
taped off will be open again and this will be the club getting to the New
Normal.
As far as I
am aware we will still have to wear masks when we come into the reception, and
our temperature will be taken with the non-contact forehead thermometers. Presumably we will be back to multi-occupancy
of the swimming lanes.
That will
be the single largest step towards how this particular aspect of my ‘sporting’ life
will be continued in the phaseless future.
On Monday
we will be in Phase 4 probably and that is only a step away from no phase at
all. Statistics still tell us that the
number of cases of infection are growing every day and that people are still
dying of Covid-19 – but in an age (because every week feels like one) where
German tourists have arrived in a holiday resort and where there will be a
general opening up of the country to foreign tourists, it is hard not to
believe that we are out of the other end of the pandemic.
I know that
we are not and I will continue to take every precaution – unfortunately it is
not only the precautions taken by the wary, but also those of the heedless
fickle people who believe that they are immortal that will decide how the final
results of this pandemic pan out.
Most of me
is looking forward to a more open approach to living, but I have a deep
underlying concern about the evidence for the progression that we are living
through.
It seems
almost unbelievable that the change in our lives has been concentrated (so far)
in about 16 weeks. Life at Christmas
time is nothing like it is now.
This
afternoon there was a large children’s party in one of the houses
opposite. As I type this evening I can
hear a large group of adults talking into the night and laughing together. In a few days time it will San Juan when it
is traditional for fireworks, drinking and parties on the beach to take place. Catalans are a convivial people and they love
getting together. And who can blame
them?
But these
days of sunshine and festival are going to be testing. Asymptomatic people walk among us and
opportunities are going to come thick and fast for the spreaders to infect a
whole chunk of the population.
There have
not been obvious attempts to take a critical account of what has gone on so far
in the approach to the spread of the virus and its treatment. We are ill-prepared to cope with a second
spike in infection any better than we have done with the original outbreak.
This is a
phoney war after the initial disaster and things do not bode well.
Toni has gone to Terrassa to visit his family and I
have given myself a list of tasks to fill his absence – those tasks that always
seem able to wait for a better time to be completed. Large and small I have listed them in my
notebook and I have made a decent start for a Friday evening. We will see how far I get before inertia and
distaste limit my achievement!
