Judgement!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Retribution was swift.

     It took less than five minutes from a viciously casual remark to a teacher friend about to start school tomorrow, “When you go through the gates, I want you to know that there is a retired teacher smiling!” to trapping my little finger’s pad in the pre-swim shower button and producing a momentarily, intensely painful blood blister that my grandmother of unregenerate, pre-woke days, referred to as “a blackman’s pinch”!

     I can’t remember the last time that I had one of those, but it must have been in my distant youth, and I did now what I did then, and bit through the skin to allow the blood to escape.  So, I sat in the hydraulic chair (my ceremonial and arthrosis-friendly way into the pool) looking like some barely sated vampire.

     I judged, almost certainly wrongly, that the various chemicals in the pool (as opposed to the various substances in the pool that necessitate those chemicals) would be beneficial for my small wound and that, in any case, I knew that I had a bottle of TCP at home, so all would be medically well.  Eventually.

     I was much more worried by the recently discovered chocolate stains on the front of my shorts that I noticed only when I was getting changed.  And before minds whirl away on the wings of vile speculation, let me hasten to explain how they got there.

     Chocolate is one of the banned substances in my so-called diet, and I find it hard to remember when I last had a ‘real’ piece of that confectionary.  Everything is low fat and sugar free, and calorie reduced – and generally flavourless.  But a summer without ice cream is unthinkable, and so alternatives to the desired-forbidden have to be found.

     There are ice creams that proclaim themselves to be created with “No Added Sugar” and I have learned to be not too scrupulous in discovering exactly what that phrase might mean.  What I take it to mean is that the substances so described are ‘allowable’ for me to eat.  As with low-fat, sugar-free yogurt, you can enjoy such things as long as you do not, ever, eat the full-fat, sugar-filled, real alternatives.

     I still remember a period years ago when I had got used to the anaemic yogurts that were allegedly ‘healthy’ and I called into my parents, where my mother offered me an M&S “rich and creamy” yogurt to try.  Which I did, and almost fainted with the sheer pleasure and sensory overload that the deliciousness of “rich and creamy” was.  It was only with a supreme effort of will that I managed to stagger back to my home and NOT instantly throw away the cartoned crappiness that I had been suffering to enter my mouth and replace them all with “rich and creamy”.  But I resisted, though I never again (ever) ate a ‘healthy’ yogurt with anything less than resentment.  And I still do.

     Anyway, back to chocolate.  It is possible to kid yourself that 80% cocoa content is OK and that there is far less sugar in such things as the acme of real chocolate deliciousness (at least if you are British) of Cadbury Dairy Milk - the chocolate that had (has?) so little cocoa in it that it was deemed by the EU to be a mere ‘confection’ rather than actual chocolate! 

     But most of the chocolate that we eat is full of sugar, so given my diet, a big no-no – except there is some sort of brown covering which is able to be called chocolate and does not have the vast number of calories that usually accompany taste!

     We had discovered (and rejected) a whole range of chocolates (or ‘chocolates’) when we hit upon a whole series of ice creams in mini choc-ice form that seemed to combine the look of the real thing with about 40% of the ‘real’ taste – percentages we could live with!  And they were mini size!

     This discovery has kept us going through the summer with a taste of a traditional accompaniment to the heat.  What went wrong is that I didn’t read the packaging well enough.

 

 

 

 

     Yes, it has the equivocal banner, “No added sugars!” but what I hadn’t noticed was this particular box also had the words “Protein bar!” also inscribed.  Added goodness, one might think.  That’s as maybe, but what the ‘protein’ bit did was alter the consistency of the ice cream.

     Taking them out of the freezer they looked the same, but the differences became apparent when one took a bite.  The ‘chocolate’ (or whatever) looked and tasted the same, but the ice cream interior was hard and unyielding.  This meant that, when biting into the choc-ice the chocolate shattered and the ice cream interior remained unbroken, producing a welter of instantly melting stain makers and rebuffed teeth.

     Toni was all for throwing them away as unfit for purpose, but I was determined to thwart such ice-cream complexity and find a way to consume them.

     I have resorted to childhood (yet again) and the way that one sometimes ate Penguin biscuits, by nibbling away at the chocolate covering revealing the biscuit beneath.  This is only partially effective because such nibbling can, even with the most cautious canines, produce a catastrophic shedding of the chocolate coating that even the most nubile tongue is unable to deal with.  I have therefore resorted to the use of a bowl under my chin to catch any shards that my nibbling produces.  Ungainly, but effective.

     Luckily there are only a few more mini choc-ices of the protein variety left and I will be able to resort to the normal manner of eating these delights and not have the fear of staining.

     If I draw anything from this piece of writing it might be: always be kind to teachers, and always read the packaging. 

     Valuable life lessons!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 15 – 30th MARCH

A thoroughly miserable start to the two weeks of ‘extreme’ lockdown imposed by the Spanish Government. Presumably what we had before was a ‘Lockdown Lite’ and what we have now is a ‘Lockdown Intense!” – complete with exclamation mark. 

     This attempt to be more stringent is a belated response to the truly horrific figures of the dead and the infected that will haunt this government forever.

     The steady rain is a depressing backdrop to a growing realization that this period of two weeks is more than likely to be followed by another, and another, and another.  The Guardian reports one medical expert saying that the lockdown in some form or other could last as long as a year.  I resisted the need to put an exclamation mark at the end of that last sentence because, truly, it would not come as any sort of surprise.

     At the end of World War II in Britain, it took until 1954 for rationing to end: nine years after the end of a conflict that we ‘won’.  It seems unlikely that the number of deaths from this pandemic will come anywhere near the totals of the World War, but the dislocation is perhaps more truly worldwide than that conflict.  And if it took nine years to get back to sub-normal, how long is it going to take this time?

     This time around no infrastructure has been destroyed, the networks of transportation are running albeit in a reduced form and, most importantly, there is not the international conflict that makes communal unity impossible – apart, of course from the various populists around the world who are finding fascist rhetoric is of no use in fighting a real virus.  Countries are generally sharing vital information; people are working together to find solutions.  It will be the micro political divisions that kill us, working against the macro attempts to save us.

Toni, in his hunter/gatherer mode has been venturing out into this new world of increased restrictions to get some food.  We did not indulge in the panic buying frenzy at the start of this madness, so we do routinely need to stock up. 

     We are fortunate that in Castelldefels there is one area where there are five large supermarkets within walking distance of each other, so choice is not a problem.  The only real fear is peoples’ lax social distancing habits when in the confined spaces of shops.

     We had a fairly large list of needs and most of them have been satisfied.  We have made it policy that only one supermarket will be visited and if you can’t get what you want there then it will have to wait for another time.  Our decision to have a few ‘treats’ came to nothing, as the chosen store (Aldi) had no chocolate or ice cream (overtones of “No more mushrooms!” there) but the other items on the list were obtained, more or less.

     The only things that we had actually run out of were eggs and milk; and Toni forgot the eggs (but remembered the milk) and I suspect that he simply missed the chocolate (he lacks my professionalism when it comes to shopping) and everything else he failed to find, but we do have all the essentials. 

     Being without milk, even for a number of hours rather than days, was a pain.  On the principle that it is better to be petty minded over slight inconveniences rather than freak out over major crises: I have to say that missing a late afternoon cup of my tea (50/50 English Breakfast and Earl Grey) was a real loss.      It threw my sense of new routine into chaos and unsettled me.  How, I reasoned, is civilized life to continue without a stabilizing cup of tea? 

     In spite of the horror all around us, we live in a sort of easy stasis where the day starts with the comforting rumble of the robot hoover and a cup of tea, and ends with the computer monitor going black.  During the time in between there are the little domestic things that have taken the place of engagement in the wider physical world, or at least engagement physically in the wider world.  Any disruption there is to the Important Little Things That Keep You Sane – well, the clue is in the last capitalized phrase!

     As befits the gravity of the situation that dictates our lives, I have taken to drinking only camomile tea in the late evenings: look on it as my way of saving milk, and indulging in a gentle quasi-protestant-self-denial.  I cannot really pretend that I like the taste of camomile tea, but I have rapidly got used to it, so that I am able to kid myself that the taste is at least ‘interesting’ and a ‘dis-flavoursome contrast’ to the beverages I usually drink.

     That is the sort of ‘re-branding’ that characterizes a great deal of what we are doing when locked down: a spiritual form of ‘make do and mend’, using what you have to make the most of what you want!

And talking of Protestantism, as I sort-of was in the last but one paragraph, the ‘treats’ that we had from Toni’s shopping expedition were almost perfect examples of the faith: two tone biscuits: Marie biscuit one side and a thin layer of chocolate covering (and overhanging) the other.  Marie biscuits are surely the most uninspiring biscuits in commercial production and delicious chocolate should never be thin. 

     Incidentally, when I explained to Toni the correct way to eat these biscuits: by nibbling away the overhang of chocolate round the edges, while trying to prise it away from the biscuit base to see how much of the covered biscuit you could uncover when you had nibbled away at the four sides, he had swallowed his whole.  And there you see the consumer differences between a Lapsed Catholic and an Anglican Atheist!

     And in a most un-Catalan like way, it is still raining and we have not had our customary glimpse of the sun. 

     It’s just one damn thing after another.