No more excuses - you've got to blame the people!

 

My full-time teaching career started with my going for interview in Kettering, a town in Northamptonshire of which I had not previously heard.  (As I was an aspiring English teacher, I do hope you appreciated my not ending the last sentence with a preposition.)  Anyway, I got the job in what was then Kettering Boys’ Grammar School, but which had become Kettering Boys’ School by the time I took up my post.  I spent a year and a bit there learning my craft and finding out that full-time teaching was a truly demanding job.

     I had long moved back to Cardiff when the Northampton that I knew went, I’m tempted to say pear-shaped, but that image is not grotesque enough for what actually happened to the political landscape.

     This link will take you to a lucid explanation of the appalling mismanagement of the council resulting in its bankruptcy: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-56488909

     In the recent elections, the electorate of the two new political entities that were formed from the rubble of what had been destroyed by the past administrations, saw fit to vote majorities to the Conservatives – the party which caused all the trouble in the first place.  The electorate have AGAIN voted for people who callously and viciously made their lives much, much worse through criminal mismanagement of public funds.

     Why?

   That plaintive question has been echoing through my mind as I have considered the decisions the electorate have made not only in Britain but also here in Spain.

     We have recently had elections for the council in Madrid and the electorate here have voted (in a record turnout) for a council which will be made up of PP and Vox.  The first of those, PP, is the most corrupt political party in Western Europe – and that is not my prejudice speaking, just type in  “PP in Spain corruption” and you will find a shockingly wide breadth of coverage of what is almost comical illegal behaviour.

     If you want to be more specific then you could search for “PP Corruption in Madrid” and you might come across something like, https://elpais.com/ccaa/2018/09/30/madrid/1538326069_865164.html

Where, even if you don’t understand Spanish, it doesn’t take much to make out what the headline “La década viciosa de Madrid” might mean, and you will be able to see some of the unsavoury characters who have defiled the city over the last ten years.

     And people voted for them!  Again!

     In a 71% turnout, 44.7% voted for PP!  The other party that the corrupt and corrupting PP will govern with is Vox.  Vox is usually described as a “far right” party, but it is simpler and more realistic to consider them as Franco supporting fascists.  Their pronouncements and policies are repugnant.  They are rabble rousing scum.  And they have pledged to support PP “to keep the left out”.  If you add the 9.1% of the electorate who voted for Vox  to the 44.7% who voted for PP, you have a clear majority of the voters choosing right wingers and fascists to form their government of choice!

     By way of comparison, in the Catalan parliament out of 41 representatives, only 2 members of PP were elected! 

     Catalonia truly is another country!

    

     Meanwhile in Britain, the third-rate incompetents, bullies and liars who comprise the ‘government’ of Johnson, the liar-in-chief, are gifted with gains.  Hartlepool, which has been a Labour voting constituency since its inception votes Conservative.  Admittedly, it was an area which overwhelmingly voted for Brexit and presumably, the voters have seen or heard nothing negative enough with the lies of Johnson, and the criminal mishandling of the Covid response, or the Brexit train-crash of financial and social disaster to make them doubt the positivity of voting for a shameless narcissist and his corrupt crew!

     If Johnson had been watching European politics (as if!) then he would probably be considering a snap General Election.  The Zombie leader of the PPs in Madrid has shown just how much an electorate can ignore when they are asked to put their cross next to a party which is corrupt, selfish, criminal, menial, duplicitous, mendacious, uncaring, and all the other insulting adjectives that come to mind in describing your typical Conservative, no matter whether it be in Spain on in the UK.

     God help us all!

 

Tomorrow is Toni’s birthday.  The Family will be arriving in instalments and we should have a good celebration.  Perhaps then I will be in a more mellow mood and my writing might reflect that.

     We’ll see!

 

 

    

Unclean! Unclean!

 

 

 

 

In the unfolding sleaze of Johnson’s incumbency at Number 10 (and the flat in Number 11) the suggestion that he tried to get a donor to pay for his childcare costs comes as nothing of a surprise. 

     I assume that he floated the idea of having some sort of By Prime Ministerial Appointment coat of arms that would be affixed to all those aspects of his sordid life that he could get someone else to pay for.  I imagine a coat of arms of Pig rampant on a Mount Or with motto Quod corruption vitae est; supporters: dexter, Tory Donor Lord with flowing cash; sinister, Red Wall Voter with vacant expression, beneath ribbon with motto Semper impune tuli!

     Much though I loathed and will continue to loathe Thatcher and all her god forsaken works, I would never accuse her of the moral vacuum that is the present Prime Minister natural milieu.  And to think that we have years of his corrupt and corrupting “rule” before we even get a chance to vote him to the oblivion that he richly deserves – though he won’t get it, because the Tory “faithful” will keep him in speaking engagements so that he will continue to make money out of his shamelessness.

     Talking of “faithful” brings to mind the description of Lancelot in Idylls of the King by Tennyson, “His honour rooted in dishonour stood, and faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”  The fact that illicit love was behind the phrase means that we get an almost perfect description of Johnson, a man whose basic character is so debased that any positive aspect he demonstrates merely means that we haven’t focussed properly on the real low and disreputable reasons for his actions.    

 

Meanwhile the weather is less than wonderful and I have heard no more about a real physical appointment for the vaccine.  But, in spite of our unvaccinated status (and of course, the unvaccinated status of most of the country) we are working towards a loosening of the restrictions.

     This loosening will first show itself in the fact that we can now celebrate birthdays and name days.   The rules governing the number of households and people in bubbles and the total numbers are so complex that it makes finding out the date of Easter each year look like childsplay (and should that word be two words, or be hyphenated and should it have an apostrophe?  I only ask in passing) and no one really knows the exact details.

     It does mean that we will go to Terrassa for a celebration meal during the week and perhaps Terrassa will come to us at the end of it to celebrate another anniversary.  That will be the first out of region event that we will have experienced for the last umpteen months.

     In circumstances where the numbers of vaccinations were high and the number of infections were low, this would be something to celebrate indeed – but as the situation does not seem to be substantially better than it has been for months, it does cause a little concern.  Still, I now walk around with a container of alcohol handwash and I am punctilious about my use of the mask, so, as long as I demand the same degree of protection demonstrated from those whom I am likely to come into contact with, I should be able to consider myself reasonably secure.

     I will feel a damn sight more secure when I have my first jab and Monday will see me taking a rather more pro-active approach to my injection than I have previously.  We will see how receptive the powers that be, will be to my importunities!

 

Meanwhile I continue my daily swim and daily bike ride.

     Last weekend I was stopped by the police on the paseo who informed me that it was illegal to cycle and to prove it showed me the screen of a police mobile phone with a bike symbol with a red line through it.

     I have seen no diminution in bike riding and have therefore made enquiries about the exact regulations for cycle riding.  As you would expect (at least, if you have lived in the country for any time you would expect) exact information about the regulations is opaque.  The Tourist Information Office (situated ON the paseo) knew nothing about any regulations and indeed there is a cycle rack to park your bike just outside the office itself.  Exploration of the council website gave no up to date information, though I did discover a few dated and worrying regulations which stated that no bike should be ridden at more than 10 kph.  As my bike is fitting with a (full colour) digital display, I was able to see just how slow 10 kph actually is, and I can report that not even very small kids travel at that speed!

     I did find references to other regulations that stated that the wide part of the paseo has different regulations from the narrower newer part, and the only place where cyclist could consider themselves totally fitted was in a special bike lane which was removed a few years ago.

     As I was stopped at the weekend, I have reasoned that regulations, if they actually exist, are only going to be enforced during peak visitor times on a sunny weekend and so I will use the road for those two days.  Even though today was somewhat dull, I still took the precaution of going to Gava rather than Port Ginester because there is a clear, marked bike lane for virtually the whole of the route.

     What is going to happened during the real part of the summer is something that I will have to play by ear – or call into the Tourist Information Office in the Centre of Town to find out a definitive answer.

     One does have to careful because the police are prone to high profile fining for infractions, and ignorance of the law is absolutely no excuse in this country, even if you can point to notices at entrances to the paseo which give specifically different sets of regulations to the ones that you have been accused of breaking.

     And breathe, and exhale!

 

What is worse?

 

 

Where is William Rees-Mogg?  What crypt have the Conservatives confined him in?  He is certainly safely far away from public view.

     You must understand that I do not enquire about his whereabout through any concern on my part about his welfare, but my mind has turned towards him as I have read through the Guardian reports about the latest shenanigans in the on-going horror story of corruption and sleaze, incompetence and arrogance, callous disregard and breath-taking audacity that mark each new day in the life of the United Kingdom’s so-called Conservative government.

   Why, you would have every reason to ask, does my mind turn towards Rees-Mogg during these testing times?  Why dwell, even for a moment, on the Slytherin Dark Prince of Pure Brexit?

     Well, the truth of the matter is that the Liars’ Liar, Pile-‘em-High Johnson, has descended so far into the miasmic pit of deceit and corruption that, by comparison, his satanic highness Rees-Mogg looks more and more like a reasonable chappie.

     And that assertion tells you that British Conservative Politics has reached a level of awfulness that all previous language and concepts designed to express disgust are clearly inadequate.  If Who-Knows-How-Many-Children Johnson is now an even less attractive option than Rees-Mogg, then we truly have reached the End Times.

     But, just when you despair, Gove comes to mind, to remind you that there are depths that even the blundering loquacity of Johnson and the diamond distain of Rees-Mogg have yet to plumb.

     The gut-wrenching awfulness of Gove’s appearance in the Commons to justify/explain/excuse the criminal train wreck of a government led by a serial liar was a master class in repulsive Jesuitical casuistry.  Gove is no fool and he chooses his words with a care which is entirely lost on the average baying hooray henry of his party. 

     Every ‘speech’ by Gove should be analysed by a group of hand-picked pedants to find out exactly what he said, rather than what he gave the impression of having said.  Or perhaps his ‘speeches’ should be analysed by a group of insurance policy underwriters who are well used to finding ways out of fulfilling their obligations.  They are the ones who can look at a statement like, “I did not hear him say that when I was in the room,” and explain that ambiguity allows, “I was outside the room when I heard him say it,” to be true without making the first statement a lie.

     I always feel sullied when I hear Gove speak; his words are the equivalents of smuts – to hear is to be defiled.

     Johnson, in so far as he has penetrated the consciousness of the people around me who are not British, is regarded as an absurd figure of fun, he is treated with common contempt and is summed up in the public’s mind by the before-and-after pictures of his first post-lockdown haircut, where the universal response was, “Did he pay actual money for that!”

     I am ashamed of the government of the United Kingdom, and I am deeply ashamed that so many of my fellow countrymen continue to support a Prime Minister who, in my view, should be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter.

 

 New Lockdown, Week 3, Thursday

 

Was it really six months ago that I had my last dental treatment?  I know that the perception of time has been different during the various periods of various types of lockdown, but still!  Six months from November going backwards would take us back to May.  What that when one of my teeth broke?  Time really is tricky nowadays; normal life is like participating in an episode of The Twilight Zone where some clever Sci-Fi writer plays around with the temporal concepts that we take for granted.  Or you could assume that my reaction is one which is quite normal when anyone thinks about going to the dentist.

 

     Talking of which, I managed not to miss the last part of Hostel III.  Try as I undoubtedly did, by ostentatiously ignoring the screen and reading my mobile phone instead, I was drawn to look at the passing action – and was drawn in by the violence porn that makes up the franchise.

     The premiss is that there are very rich people who will pay vast sums of money to spectate at what are live snuff spectacles where, while being served drinks by fetishly clad waitresses (looking, I have to admit like live versions of something from the soft-porn imagination of artist Allen Jones) they place bets on how and how long the death-throws of the unfortunate victims, safely separated from the rich voyeurs by floor to ceiling plate glass – no blood splatters on them!

     Amid the bloodletting, the gratuitous bloodletting, I might add – I did begin to wonder about the attraction of this sort of slasher movie, and especially the elite group with the money to pay to watch such things.

     It reminded me of The Purge where the bloodletting there was to secure the regime of another wealthy (white) group dedicated to the ritual destruction of those deemed surplus to requirements.  It was the emphasis of a wealthy elite travelling in darkened windowed limos, that made me link it to the ‘customers’ in Hostel III, another wealthy elite, rich and depraved.  And that brings us to QAnon, the ultimate absurdity of conspiracy theories with the same emphasis on a seemingly untouchable elite doing unspeakably nasty things.  These films and this conspiracy theory obviously touch some sort of emotional dark fairy tale need in some people who believe that the horrors of the world must be linked to some directed malevolent force.

     Perhaps in previous times this belief could have been directed towards the Devil and Hell – but even there you could say that the creation of the devil and hell were part of the ways in which the previous religious elite cemented their hold over the fearful imaginations of the paying customers in their churches and their religious wealth allowed them to do unspeakable things – one only has to look at the history of the papacy to see corruption and depravity at its hypocritical worst.

     Financial inequality in the world means that real wealth is concentrated in the hands of the very, very few – and that minority has and will always try and behave with the impunity that they believe their money entitles them to.  During the Covid crisis the super-rich have become richer and the inequality is getting gallopingly worse. 

     The poster boy for wealth without responsibility or concern is of course Trump.  He clearly thinks that laws, the constitution and social norms are, as Leona Helmsley said in 1989, “only for the little people.”  And then she was convicted of income tax evasion.  Helmsley’s comeuppance was over thirty years ago, and since then we have had more of the super-rich brought down by sex scandals than by their everyday theft.  Trump paid 750 dollars in taxes last year in the USA and he boasted about sexual molestation.  When is he going to get his comeuppance?  Losing the election is not enough, he must lose money as well, and a prison term would do him no harm!

     QAnon is ridiculous and intellectually insulting, but there is a tiny elite manipulating the levers of government for their own advantage, but they do it in full sight.  Trump promised to “drain the swamp” but stuffed his cabinet with the super-rich and made them richer by his tax ‘reforms’.  He put wildly inappropriate people in government agencies and encouraged them to foster big business, fossil fuels, banks and all the other agencies of everyday life and profit for the few.

     Charles Wilson said in a senate hearing when Eisenhower wanted him to be Secretary of Defense, “What is good for General Motors is good for the country” – and he had millions of dollars in stock in the company.  It is perhaps unfair that that quotation is the only thing that most people remember about Wilson, and it has come to represent a particular view of capitalism in society.  But Trump has tried his best to make the ethos of that disturbing belief true in his so-called government.

     70 odd million Americans voted for Trump, the second largest pool of any presidential candidate – but Trump has never governed for the American people, only for those who are rich, no, only for the very rich.

     QAnon is the ‘bread and circuses’ distraction for those who believe that they are being manipulated by a tiny minority of perverts, so they do not see the Big Money that really does the dirty work.

     The sooner the obscenity of Trump and his shameless supporters are consigned to history the better.  Whatever Biden may be, he has shown himself to be a fundamentally decent sort of human – and I will settle for that for the next four years as a way of recovering from the disaster of the last four years.

Troubles in store

 NEW LOCKDOWN: Day 10, Sunday

 

 

 

The counting goes on.  And on.  And on.  But Biden has won and so we can put that worry to rest.

     And speculate about what old One-Term is going to do in the almost two months of lingering shame that he is going to have to suffer as, every single day, he is reminded that he has been voted out of office and from the 2^nd of January he will no longer be the President.

     We do have some evidence with which to speculate.  As Trump has shown himself to be ruthlessly concerned with money and his own status before everything else, we can expect him to continue placing his wealth and his public face in the forefront of his concerns.

     Prison is not a good look for anyone other than a Nelson Mandela and, with the best will in the world, even his most dedicated Swamp Base would not equate The Orange Monster with a South African Freedom Fighter.  If Trump is prosecuted for a fraction of the crimes that he is alleged to have committed during his time in the White House then he will be put away for a long, long time.  Misuse of public funds, nepotism, cronyism, bribery, simple corruption, tax avoidance, tax evasion, lying about virtually everything, justice – where to start with his trashing of the justice system? -  and so on ad infinitum. To say nothing of various dodgy financial pigeons coming home to roost to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

     So, one of Trump’s first concerns is going to be how to stay out of prison.  Because as soon as he is no longer the president and protected by the office various court cases are going to be reactivated.  

      The great question is, “Can Trump pardon himself”?  As far as I know, no president (even Tricky Dickie) didn’t stoop to self-pardon.  But just because something hasn’t been done before, it doesn’t mean that No Shame Trump won’t try it.   

     A more likely scenario is one that I have mapped out before which is, Trump resigns, Pence becomes president, pardons Trump, Trump becomes president again and hands over his trashed office a free man.   

     Though, to have a pardon is actually to admit that there is a wrong, so by pardoning himself, Trump will be admitting that he is a criminal.  But that won’t worry him, not with what is already on his grubby, grubby little hands!

     What scope does Trump have to Sharpie-sign yet more Executive Orders, because whatever mischief he can get up to like the spoilt child that he is, he will.  Bolstered by 70 million of his fellow citizens who voted for him, he will feel that he has a popular authority to do as he likes to make Biden’s accession as difficult and as messy as possible.

     Can anyone seriously imagine Trump graciously hosting Biden in the White House?   

     It is equally difficult to imagine Trump attending the inauguration, and one commentator has suggested that it is more likely that Trump holds a rally at the same time, so there will be a split screen of Biden and Trump and their various crowds.  Though that might mean that Trump will not do it because he will be terrified that his crowd could be smaller than Biden’s.  Though, even if it was, that would merely be an “alternative fact” which could be brushed away by the Mendacious Monster.

     This is surely one time when the “oxygen of publicity” should be denied to Trump (and yes, I am well aware of the source of that phrase and the poisoned outcome of its practical use) but if Trump continues to peddle lies he should not be given a worldwide media platform to repeat them.  But I also recognize the freedom of speech and freedom of information elements that have to be considered.   But  . . .

     I am sure that we are going to have a damn sight more than two months of pathetic interference in the political situation by Trump and his minions, but with any luck they can be swept into the dustbin of history.  Fond hope!

 

I am missing my swims.  I check the booking app that we were encouraged to download to book ourselves in for our activities to see if they are accepting reservations and the first day that there appears to be bookings waiting is for the end of this week – but they are not yet open to be made real, so I will wait a while to see if reality matches appearance.

     To compensate for my missed swim I am extending my daily (electric)bike ride and so now I cycle the entire length of Castelldefels and Gava Mar and while it is an impressively  long distance for me, my fitness app tells me that my journey is almost entirely on the level which, as it is beside the sea is logical.

 

We have started talking about Christmas and I am determined to put up my Belen (Christmas stable scene, with added people) this year as well as having a small Christmas tree.  The tree will be decorated with baubles made by SQB – just as soon as the parcel containing them gets here!

     The Christmas meal is altogether more problematical.  Toni will be devastated if he can’t see his family over the festive period and I think that we will have to make a trip up to Terrassa even if it is only a fleeting visit to bump elbows and then back again.  But time will tell just what we allowed to do.

     Amazon is going to make a fortune, sorry, an even bigger fortune this Christmas as everybody in the world decides (especially if they have Amazon Prime) that it is worth getting the presents from Amazon if only for the fact that postage will be free!  But we will worry about that much, much later.

     In a bout of what might be described as Gourmet Porn, I slathered my way through pictures of M&S hampers and noted with something approaching wistful regret that many of the high price items in some of the more expensive hampers are alcohol related.  As I now do not drink alcohol (I say for medical reasons, but what my doctor actually said was, “You can allow yourself one small glass of red wine a day” – as if that was possible! Better to recognize weakness in self-control and give it up entirely!) bottles of Champagne and Vintage Port do not attract.  Well, they do, but as I am not going to drink them, it would be fairly pointless to buy them and just look at them, or even worse, sniff them and retexture what they taste could be like from past experience of drinking.  And if that sounds like something I have indeed done, then you would be right in so thinking.

 

My new watch continues to please, though I have adjusted the always-on element of the watch face to turn off for the hours of deepest darkness.  My watch also startled me, by suddenly playing music, not a ring tone, real music.  It took me a while to work out where the sound was coming from.  If you had been watching me then you would have seen me taking out my mobile and being confused by the fact the more I tried to hear the music from it the more it wasn’t coming from it, and yet the music was tantalizingly near.  I am sure that my confusion only lasted a couple of seconds but it was deeply disturbing.  And frankly even more so when I found it emanated from my watch as I had done absolutely nothing to encourage it.  Honestly.

     It turns out I have one tune on my phone and I have little idea about how to put more there.  I will leave downloading the full manual for a sunnier day when I am feeling gadget strong.

 

I have downloaded an app or something called The Fussy Librarian which is supposed to provide a series of free or bargain downloads of books that you can read on Kindle.  My first choice of a Sci-Fi novel turned out to be short story length and to be part 1 of 7, and I can’t find the other six.  I fear that yet again, what appears too good to be true, is too good to be true.  Though I will continue to investigate and report back later.

 

Meanwhile the writing, apart from this blog, is not going well.  And the fact that some of the letters on the keyboard are misbehaving is irritating.  And the fact that one of the worst behaving letters is the ‘e’ is even more unbearable.

     Cotton buds and wet wipes must be called into play, because the cost of a replacement Apple keyboard is not to be thought about this close to Christmas.

Who are they?

 New Lockdown: Day 6, Wednesday

I admit it. I got up very early, in the darkness and, under the subterfuge of going to have a pee, I had a sneaky look at my mobile to find out the state of play in the American election.  What I read was not exactly comforting and my attempt to go back to bed and sleep until daybreak did not work.

     So, up before dawn and reading my Guardian app on the phone while listening to Radio 4, I had a consolatory cup of tea and pondered on the sheer unadulterated differentness of people.

     People like me are going to have to come to terms with the fact that Trump got more votes than he did in the election in 2016.  Whatever the outcome of the election, and, as I type nothing at all seems even remotely settled, over 50 million (probably nearer to 60 million by now) people watched Trump be ‘president’ for four years and still voted for him.  I will not recite Trump’s glaring faults – perhaps they trip too easily off liberal tongues, like mindless repetition of rosary prayers.  I am tempted to say that the repetition has the same empty efficacy, serving merely as sonic balm to hide the fact that they are merely words with no further function than mouthed sounds.

     I listened to a Trump supporter say that she had her doubts about the character of Trump but felt that she shared his ideas and values.  She obviously didn’t mean the repulsive ideas and values that I see in him, but presumably some hazy version of what being a Republican means.  She was affluent and had higher education, but she mentioned the disturbingly left-wing policies of Biden (!) and the fear that he would limit freedom in some undefined way as justifications for her instinctive rejection.

     Obviously, this woman was on camera, felt under an obligation to ‘justify’ her support of Trump and, as far as I could tell in the fairly unnatural position of a televised interview, she seemed sincere and content with her choices.  She seemed decent enough, but had obviously put aside, or perhaps rejected as False News, much of the negative (factual) coverage of this depressing presidency.

     It is certainly tempting, from my point of view to dismiss Trump supporters as self-deluding idiots, and some of the choices that non-American commentators make in their choice of Trump supporting interviewees seem to fit that category, but 60 million Americans (and counting) voted for this person, and they cannot all be idiots, and to continue to think so will ensure that the divide in the country will never be healed.

     Some of the Trump supporters are in it for the money and for the power, or are the immediate nepotistic-sweetened family, but that only covers a fraction of the voting electorate.

     The four years of Trump have led some people who seem to live fairly coherent lives to say that, “He is the best president we have ever had!”  To say, “He really understands people like us!” or, “He cares!”  They see his public speaking, which I see as cringe-makingly embarrassing, as “natural” and “welcoming”, that he is, “really speaking to us!”  His free association of incoherent and contradictory meanderings allow Trump supporters to see the wealth-inherited billionaire (he claims) as one of their own, chatting to them in a way no other ‘politician’ can - or would dare to.

     Even as I try and be fair-minded, I can feel my bitterness and contempt seep through into my writing.  But astonishment at his continued ‘success’ will do nothing to stem the toxic populism that he represents and fosters.

     People on the left have a duty to understand how it is that so many people reject what seem like age-old standards of human decency for a strident self-defeating national selfishness.  And where do we start?

     Only one of my friends has admitted (that is an important qualification) to voting for Brexit.  None of them admits to voting for the Conservatives.  I read The Guardian and study the History of Art and live in Catalonia, not the obvious background to a right-wing populist, or a background likely to bring me into contact with other populists.  But my point is, that if the numbers of those voting for Trump or Johnson can be taken as a guide to how widespread their ‘ideology’ is then I must know a fair number of people who vote for what I regard as the disturbingly right-wing, and they are the people I need to understand and interact with in the expectation of bettering not only my own understanding of what is making people tick at the moment, but also of bettering our national dialogue.

     The problem, of course, is what to do next.

     I reject the idea of living in a Trumpian world: virtually everything he does and says is anathema to me.  But how do you change what seems to be a perniciously attractive way of looking at the world and one’s place inside it to many whom I have been able to regard (and I mean in an observational sense) as ‘other’?

     Perhaps, as part of our ‘Family Wisdom’ has it, “Anything is better than nothing!”  Speaking, conversation, writing, participating in political life, sharing thoughts, ideas - who knows what might eventually help, but an awareness of the divisions within society and a sensitivity towards them must surely be a step forward.

     And, when I get up tomorrow, perhaps Biden might have garnered the requisite number of Electoral College votes to start the process of the reinvention of the New Normal Politics, and then we can work on the New Normal during/after Covid without worrying what the so-called Leader of the Free World might tweet off the top of his head!

 

CASTELLDEFELS LOCKDOWN - Day 94 - Wednesday 17th June

Today, this evening, our first trip outside Castelldefels proper for months – to Terrassa (still in the province area of Barcelona and therefore legal) for the Name Day of one of Toni’s nephews.

     We have been on one of the motorways to the local superstores but they are within a couple of minutes of where we live.  This will be well outside our usual routes.  Not, of course, that the journey is not something that we haven’t done many, many times – but the experience will be different this time.

     Just a quick note before we go, perhaps I’ll add to it later.

We don't actually know where, specifically, we are going as the restaurants in Terrassa are not taking bookings and so I am not entirely sure how our final location is going to be worked out.  Adds to the excitement of the journey. 
     And the weather looks threatening.  After an indifferent start to the day, it gradually brightened up and, apart from a fairly still breeze, the day was one during which you could have gone to the beach and expected to tan - the sort of day, in short that inexperienced visitors from duller shores such as Britain would assume would be an ideal 'starter day' to work on the tan.  And they would have been flayed by the time of their evening shower.  Though, there again, as one of my friends used to say, "If your first shower after sunbathing doesn't hurt, you haven't been sunbathing properly." [N.B. This advice and comment does not meet the requirements for safe sunning and should not be taken as a recommendation.]
     I suppose that it is often true that, depending on the direction in which you are looking, you could make radically different predictions about the weather.  I have often noted in Castelldefels that observing the climactic conditions from the cardinal points of the compass gives one views which are often diametrically opposed - whereas, in Britain one was often surrounded by a unity of weather in which ever direction you cared to glance!

The trip to Terrassa had an odd feel to it as this was, for us, a major jaunt - the furthest that we have travelled from our house in months.  We thought that there was less traffic than usual, but we were driving after 8 pm so the usual rush hour traffic (whatever that term means nowadays) had died down.
     There was a sense of freedom, or at least of some sort of normality about our trip that was satisfying . as though another part of Old Normality was adding to whatever New Normality is going to be.
     The Name Day celebrations were held in a restaurant chain called Viena (sic) which is a take on a fast food burger place, but with a slightly higher quality of food.  The design and uniform of the staff has an odd dirdle vibe with some odd Austrian Tyrol embroidery thrown in for what appears to be no good reason! 
     My 'meal' was chicken fillets with some strange and messy sauce whose selling point was that it was supposedly picant - perhaps for the Catalans, not really for me, but the end result was messily delicious - as opposed to the '0% alcohol' beer which was disgusting, do not drink Heineken alcohol-free beer in cans!
     Because of faulty crossed-lines of communication, we ended up walking far too far to the eventual restaurant and I tripled my steps target for the day.  Even linking that to swimming 1,500m and going on two bike rides of over 20k, my smart watch still rated my 'exercise capacity' as 'Low' for the day!  What else do I have to do!

The excesses and corruption of the Bourbon de Bourbon family i.e. the so-called royal family of Spain, are being splashed across the newspapers in the European press - not so much in the Spanish press.  The debased political parties of PSOE and PP have joined together to kill-off any attempt by the authorities in this country to investigate the mounting evidence of theft and corruption of the family.
     In spite of the fact that the thief-in-chief (aka the so-called king emerito, the one who was forced to abdicate to try and control the mounting rumours and overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing; the one who went on television to vaunt the 'fact' in Spain that, "Justice is the same for everyone" but obviously did not include himself or his family in the category of "everyone" and has, so far, escaped judicial punishment while the powers-that-be here have ignored the evidence of his skimming-off contracts to boost his finances.
     One of the latest exposés is in the Times, in one of their supplements entitled, "Sex, lies and Swiss bank accounts"!  You can read that here:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sex-lies-and-swiss-bank-accounts-the-allegations-against-spains-ex-king-that-are-rocking-his-sons-reign-0sgw99c2b

because you can't read it in Spain!

My next swim is at 12 mid day tomorrow.  My slots get worse and worse!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS – DAY 4

It has taken a pandemic to shut our bloody neighbours’ noisy reconstruction efforts.  The silence of their absence is absolutely delightful, though it doesn’t compensate for the intolerable thumpings that have characterised their reformations.

     In fact, we now have a silent cordon sanitaire as the neighbours on one side only use their house for the summer holidays and on the other side, the reformations make it unliveable for the owners while the work is going on and the lockdown restrictions make it inaccessible.  If we could only cause the terminal laryngitis of the bloody rat dog of another neighbour, we could even be sort of content.

     Traffic that passes us on the main road is at a minimum and there are few planes overhead.  For Spain, our surroundings are disturbingly silent – not for Britain perhaps, but for us, certainly!

I am missing my daily swim and am getting progressively more worried about the lack of exercise that I am taking.  Normally I would use my bike to get to my swim and back and then use the bike for a few shopping trips or whatever, so this enforced inaction is grating.  This afternoon I was driven to Take Measures.  I ventured out to the communal swimming pool and made a number of stately circuits of the pool leaning on my walking-stick.  I was alone with only the sound of a howling kid to keep me company.  Not literally, this one was in a flat next to our houses and I dread to think what his parents must be going through, his being too young fully to understand why his little life has been so suddenly cramped!  Good luck to them.  I did manage to get to my step goal according to my watch, so I must be very unsettled around the house!

     I will have to make circling of the pool a daily chore because it doesn’t look as though the relaxation of the restrictions on our movement are going to be any time soon.

     If the UK is going to shut the schools and cancel end of year examinations, it doesn’t really look too positive that our little class in Catalan is going to be restarted before Easter.  In theory our class could restart on the 30^th of this month, but that looks remote.  I think that it is unlikely that our class will restart this academic year, but who knows what will actually occur.

The PP and PSOE King (he was created by an agreement between the two political parties and nothing was put to the people) made a broadcast last night.  He said nothing about the continuing scandal that engulfs him and his elephant shooting father about off-shore accounts and kickbacks.  But his shameless broadcast did give the opportunity for right thinking people to show their disgust at the corruption by banging our saucepans.  It is wonderful how much penetrating sound is created by the simple application of wooden spoon to saucepan bottom!  The drive for an independent enquiry into the behaviour of the so-called king and his even more so-called emeritus king father continues.  The first call for an enquiry has been rejected on what I think are obviously spurious legal trickery grounds, but the parties of the real left are not letting a single obstacle stand in their way and are trying again.

     I think that the royal family in Spain has lost a great deal of popular support.  The antics of the king ‘emeritus’ towards the end of his reign before he was forced, by a surge of public disgust, to abdicate really did damage the prestige of the family.  The scandals that have involved other members of the family with consequent jail time have not helped.  I am sure that politicians will not put the continuation of the royal family to a public vote, but if they did, I think that the royal family would loose.  I think it is also getting closer and closer with the British version too, and when QE2 finally dies, the sobering prospect of Charles III will concentrate the minds of a large number of erstwhile monarchists towards the republican cause.  I hope.

I have started putting drafts of my most recent poems on smrnewpoems and that gives me the incentive to write more.  That came out as seeming to be more of a threat than an invitation to read!  But I assure you it is the former.

Toni is getting a trifle stir crazy with not going out, and it has only been four days!  Well, that four days is my computation.  Toni says that last weekend of Saturday and Sunday is actually counted in the lockdown, but I assumed that the lockdown was from Monday of this week.  Toni was with his mother on the Saturday and he came back to Castelldefels on Sunday afternoon, so his time in lockdown is questionable.  I am feeling quite chipper about my enforced detention at home, and I have done a quantity of writing: if nothing else confinement does concentrate the writing impulse. 

    

     Long may it continue.