Ways of speaking, ways of thinking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a decent early morning swim, a nicely surrealistic accompaniment to my post-swim cup of tea by sighting a man with a parrot on a collar and lead, arriving to have a coffee (the man and his lady companion, not the parrot) at an adjacent table.  The white parrot (cockatoo?) alternated his perch from the man’s shoulder to the top of a free chair, but was generally unobtrusive, and certainly quiet, though constantly disconcerting. 

     I think it was the collar and lead that discomforted the most but was not enough to distract me from answering Carles’ questions about English Usage, with which he assaults me most days.

     Yesterday, he wanted to know about expressions of surprise and, knowing his predilection for the archaic (he uses “spiffing” with relish!) I offered him “Goodness gracious me!” as something suitably outré in modern use!  He had forgotten it by today, though after a Herculean effort of memory he dredged up the “gracious me” part.  I wonder if it will make it to his RAM tomorrow!

     Today’s Word of the Day was “spoil” and its use with regard to children (specifically his grandchildren) and to things in general. 

     I enjoy our little chats because it keeps me in touch with my teaching side and, while I do not think that I have the same agility with explanations that I had when I was in the classroom, it does make me think to try and find the way to explain things that to a native English speaker need no explanation.

     I hasten to add that these little forays into education do not, even in the slightest, make me regret my “retired” status from the teaching profession. 

     Teachers have my admiration and sympathy, but not my emulation!

 

The weather is certainly on the change.  I have not only started wearing a short jacket when I set off in the early morning on my bike to the pool, but also when I go on my extended bike ride to the end of the Gavà Paseo after my swim.  The days of a t-shirt being adequate for both are now gone, as indeed are the nights without a sheet and with an open French door.

     Although somewhat overcast, there are intervals of sunshine, and I am still using a small electric fan to keep cool in my chaotic squalor on the third floor.  There are still times in the mid afternoon when the big fans are needed, but the weather is decidedly “fresher” which is our euphemism for colder.

     As with the UK, though not in such a squalidly chaotic way, Spain is dreading the winter with the increases in power and prices generally.  Although the winter is cold, it is not as bitter as the UK, though central heating and blankets with a couple of eiderdowns are necessary to get through the colder snaps.

     Castelldefels is a rich little town with a selection of Russian oligarchs and Barça players living here in multi-million-euro houses (as well, of course, as we, the genteel poor-ish) so the fear of what the winter can bring is somewhat modified by the fact that many here are well able to compensate for the hike in prices and still smile.  But, like any sizeable town, you need an army of lower paid people to keep the place running – and how are they going to survive?

     As part of my forced awareness, I am determined to find out how and what the council is planning to mitigate some of the deleterious effects of the coming financial hardship.

     From time to time, we have volunteers stationed at the check-outs of our local supermarkets asking for donations for Food Banks.  I have no idea where these are situated in our town, and I also don’t know how they are funded.  But I am going to find out.  And Do Something.

     With my not-fit-for-purpose knees there is a limit to what unskilled help I can give, but there must be something that I can do.  I am aware that, though I might “preach poverty” I am comfortably well off compared to many given my status as a Baby Boomer who got born at the right time for virtually everything!  So, even if we have to make some cutbacks in our expenditure to cover exorbitant fuel bills, there will still be something left over to help those who are really having to make the decision between buying food and staying warm.

     I suppose that I am writing this down as a way of forcing myself to do something more than just ruminate.  For example, I am sure that my pool would be more than prepared to collect food for the Food Banks, they have done it before, and perhaps they might be prepared to do it on a more regular basis during the winter months. 

     Before I ask anything of institutions and myself, I have to find out just how these things are organized in Castelldefels and then take it from there.

     Responsibility begins at home, and my home is here.

 

New Normal 3? 4? 5? – Who knows? Day 1, Monday.

 

 

 

The first swim for weeks!

     It was only after I had jumped in that I realized how much I had missed this particular form of daily exercise.  There is something about the enveloping support of lukewarm water that is immensely satisfying.  Even my rudimentary warm-up exercises seemed to bring neglected muscles back into play, and the swim itself was ‘easy’ – not without effort you understand, but comfortable and known.  I swam 1600 metres and could have swum more, but the temptation of a café made cup of tea and bocadillo were irresistible and so I had my just reward for early morning effort and sufficient ‘fuel’ for the bike ride to Port Ginesta and back.

     There are changes to what used to be the changed routine of pre-this-lockdown.  Although the numbers for swimming are the same (maximum of ten pre-booked people per hour spread over five lanes) we are now no longer allowed to put our clothes in the lockers provided, we have to take them with us to the pool side.  We are no longer allowed to shower after the swim.  We can use the poolside showers immediately before and after the swim, but an extended shower with soap in the changing room is no longer acceptable.

     In the café attached to the pool, the door is constantly open to facilitate a greater flow of air; part of the seating area has been taped off to keep within the 30% capacity and the tables that are in use have been more widely spaced out.  The terrace space can be fully utilized, but although bright and sunny, this is no weather for sitting outside.

     Masks must be worn in all areas of the centre except when eating and drinking.  This does not apply to smokers for reasons that I cannot fathom.  Why should leeway we allowed to those with a filthy and dangerous habit?  In a centre dedicated to health and exercise!

     I have to admit that I felt mildly exhilarated after my bike ride – exercise – swim – exercise - tea and bocadillo - bike ride!  I think it was more to do with getting back into an almost forgotten regime than the beneficial effect of more effort than usual over the past few weeks.

     I even managed to scribble down a few comments and ideas in my notebook, though I think that their more than usual mundanity means that they have little chance of being worked up into something more substantial.  But at least notes were made!

     Carles (the man who swims in the lane next to me and is a keen learner of English) was keen to find out different ways of expressing ‘death’, so I compiled a list of expressions off the top of my head ranging from “snuffed it” to “shuffled off this mortal coil”, though Carles was more interested in “passed away” and “taken by god” as being more relatable to Catalan/Spanish and using English words with which he was familiar.  I also gave him “kicked the bucket” to think about, which took a great deal of explaining and made me wonder just where the expression came from and why.

     And of course, I could not resist and I have just looked up the possible derivations and now possess more information than is usefully necessary in connection with the expression.  For the sake of brevity, I will go with the suggestion that the bucket was something kicked away from under the feet of a person about to be hanged.  But there is much more if you care to look!

 

 

 Not only is today the first time for weeks that I have been able to have a swim in the local pool, it will also be the first time that we will be able to go to a restaurant and have a menu del dia.  Replete with masks and tubes of hygienic, alcohol-heavy hand wash, we will venture into the centre of town and re-patronize one of our favourite restaurants Olave.

     While the food is generally good to excellent, the usp for me is the fact that they provide Catalan bread, i.e. toasted bread with ripe tomatoes and garlic to squeeze and scrape.  Sometimes this bread is the best part of the meal!

     To be frank, we are so eager to get back into the habit of eating out, that virtually anything will be a treat!  Though, I have to say that it is relatively easy to find a more-than-acceptable meal at a reasonable cost in Castelldefels.  While that is true, I also have to admit that my standards have risen appreciably since I have lived here.  When I first arrived, the delight I felt at virtually anything that was put in front of me meant that my critical gastronomic abilities were somewhat deadened.  Now, I am more demanding – much to Toni’s satisfaction, as he feels that I am getting more and more attuned to what is best in Catalan cooking.  Though sincerely liking the lumpen, solid fat of fuet is still a major stumbling block to my wholesale acceptance of Catalan cooking and food as the ideal!

Why can't life be as it was?

 

It is amazing how far the quality of an experience can be changed by the omission of a cup of tea.

     I realize that the British obsession with our national hot beverage (not a leaf of which, with the exception of the botanical gardens in Kew, is grown in the country) is somewhat difficult for those not of a British persuasion to understand. 

     It is further complicated by our insistence that the milk be cold not boiling when added to the brew.  “Why,” my foreign friends ask, “would you do that?”  To ask such a question, almost by definition, defies an answer.  Where, one asks oneself, does one start when confronted by such levels of Philistinism?

     Anyway, at the end of my morning swim I am accustomed to make my way to the outside seating of the adjoining café and have a cup of tea and one made to my exacting standards of a mixture of Earl Gray and English Breakfast, and a brew that, when the milk is added the resultant colour is of a depth that my father would have found acceptable – though for him to be enthusiastic about a cup of tea it would have to be one of such strength that, “the tea spoon could stand up in it!”  My normal cup of tea does not aspire to such flavoursome heights, but it does emphatically not look like the usual anaemic liquids served opening masquerading as tea in this country.

     I swim a metric mile, that is sixty lengths of our 25m pool.  I go up and down, and up and down, accompanied only by the sound of my exhaled breath bubbling against my stoppered ears and seeing very little in the myopic blur in which I swim – having recently given up wearing contact lenses because they irritated me.  So, in the monotony of length swimming, the idea of a nice cup of tea waiting as a reward for early morning exertion is something to keep you going.

     But for the next fortnight, the café is closed except for ‘take-away’ and the idea of drinking my tea from a paper cup standing next to my bike is not something that appeals.  So, swim finished, dressed, straight out onto bike for the ride down to Port Ginesta and back. 

     It all seems a little earnest without the frivolity of tea, and it is, furthermore, while sipping my tea that I jot down ideas in my notebook.  I could, of course, jot down notes at any time, but the time just seems to melt away when you are breaking routine to get something done.  Notes are for post-swim tea drinking, not sitting in the comfort of an armchair later in the day.  And, after all, it’s only for a fortnight.

     And therein lies the rub.  I do not think that this closing of bars and restaurants is going to be sufficient to deal with the upsurge in number of infections.  I think that this partial lockdown is more a function of political cowardice and real fear over the financial consequences rather than a science-based solution.  It seems to me that this is just a softening-up of an already tired and fed up electorate before something more drastic will be forced to take its place.

     Although we are informed that there are over 170 trials of possible vaccines in operation and that by the end of the year there should be clear indications of likely candidate vaccines to roll out for the general population by early January, the more convincing voices has warned that the simple logistics of the immunization exercise make it unlikely that the PBI will get protection before the summer of 2012.  Given what we have packed into the past months of 2020, the summer of 2021 seems a hell of a long way away, and our political leadership has been shaky to put it at its mildest!

     Still, life goes on defiantly with people eagerly accepting ever changing versions of what New Normal might mean.

     One example of this might be the new way to celebrate distanced occasions.  Today is the Name Day of Toni’s sister and she has suggested that we have a distanced meal with her paying for a delivery of a menu del dia from one of our chosen restaurants here in Castelldefels because we are unable to go up to Terrassa and, anyway there would be more than six of us celebrating.  I will let you know how this works out, but it is only a development of on-line presents where, with Amazon Prime, it is cheaper to send something via Amazon than buy it yourself and send it yourself.

      Noticed on television last night that there were adverts for one of our largest Department Stores, El Corte Ingles, where they were saying that an on-line purchase could be delivered free of charge (?) within a couple of hours!  This is throwing down the gauntlet to Amazon and it will be interesting to see how it all works out. 

     For shops here in Castelldefels, unless they get themselves organized via the web to do deliveries they are going to go out of business.  The smaller shops will need help, perhaps via a sort of city version of a localized Amazon system, but unless something dramatic is done the whole commercial basis of city shopping is going to implode.

 

One of the lead items on the Catalan News was the fact that Wales has decided to impose a new/old stringent lockdown.  It may be the first in Western Europe to do so, but I do fear that it will not be the last.

     The tiered approach in England looks and sounds like an unsatisfactory compromise and the dump of documentation from SAGE telling the politicos that a short sharp shock was needed makes the shambolic behaviour of this totally discredited Conservative ‘government’ look even more mendacious that we already knew it to be.

     Johnson is quite prepared to sacrifice lives rather than face up to his political responsibilities.  He, and his cabinet of all the talentless, are despicable.  And once again I make the plea for someone, anyone, to bring a charge of Corporate Manslaughter against him and his Brexiteer accomplices as they continue their ‘systematic’ attacks on the people and institutions of the United Kingdom.