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Showing posts with label crowded. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crowded. Show all posts

Saturday, May 02, 2020

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 48 – Saturday, 2nd May



Two good, long bike rides!  By me!  After six weeks this is something to write about!  Literally!
     Enough with the exclamation marks.  It was not as liberating as I thought it would be.  I got up at 7.00am and was out of the house in double quick time, adopting the normal swimming pool technique of brushing teeth, quick wash and shower after the ride.
     There were far more people around than normal.  There were the usual unhappy looking runners of all ages; couples taking a walk; dog walkers; people walking on the beach; surfers and we cyclists.  It will be interesting to see if the same numbers of people are around tomorrow after the delight of pseudo-freedom has worn off and the unaccustomed aches in parts of the body that have been ‘resting’ for the last number of weeks are a little more real!
     We have seen pictures of television where the numbers of people who came out onto the streets made physical distancing very difficult, and my perception is that people are disinclined to continue the restrictions.  This does not bode well.
     As an example, as I am typing, a group of (noisy) people have made a little party around and in the communal pool.  The composition of the group includes parents, children and rat dogs – with dogs being specifically banned from the pool area.  In some ways I suppose it is good that they are able to act as though there was no Covid-19 crisis at all.  Good luck to them, one might say.  But the one thing that has demonstrated itself with crystal clarity is that the virus does not fall back in baffled frustration when confronted with people who do not take infection seriously, it feeds on such irresponsibility and thrives and does not restrict itself.  And kills.  Over a third of those who are ill enough with the virus to go to hospital do not leave it alive.  That puts silly sociability into proportion!
     Castelldefels is a seaside town, where walking the Paseo is an essential part of living!  As we move into the clear summer months and more and more people (quite understandably) want to be by the sea, and it is going to be more and more difficult to sustain anything approaching the requisite distancing that shows the necessary respect to reject the fatality of slackness.  I think that previous sentences is stupidly complex and involved, but I’m too lazy to strike it out.  People are going to become more and more easy going, as the weather gets hotter.  And we are not going to take things seriously until there is another spike in the virus deaths and then it will be too late.  For some.
     Perhaps people are seriously thinking in percentages and thinking that it is probable if they are young(ish) and healthy(ish) that in percentage terms that they are likely to survive.  And they are, of course, likely to be right.  Unless they are wrong.
     But I did go out for a ride.  I should look on the positive side, and go out for another one when our next authorized period starts.  I can go out just after the daily 8pm clap for the health and essential workers.

In my third ride of the day on my bike I actually saw two people whom I knew, but didn’t stop to talk.  There were still lots of people about (and three illegal kids – NOT their time to be out) with many groups and people talking and interacting with an ease that suggests that they consider that the crisis is just about over.  Which it most assuredly is not.