A
lie-in today! A quick visit to the
bathroom at 7am and a return to bed and the next two and a half hours whisked
itself away in a series of complex and no doubt character revealing reveries on
that border land between sleep and wakefulness.
This did however mean that my window of legal exercise was somewhat
truncated.
One of the advantages of lockdown is the
economy of dressing because I am nowadays fully dressed in six items of
apparel: 2 sandals; 1 watch; 1 pair of glasses; 1 T-shirt; 1 pair of
shorts-type bathing costume. This means
that after a more than usually cursory wash, I was dressed in seconds. Pausing only to set Moppy off on her
vacuuming sequence I was out and off on the bike.
There were quite a few people around,
especially on the beach and I wondered how many of them were near their homes
as the seconds were ticking away before the next tranche of people were
entitled to claim the streets and beaches.
I cycled down as far as the end of the
beach Paseo and then returned on the coast road, passing well-spaced queues at
bakeries as I returned. For the last
part of my cycle home I re-joined the beach Paseo to check up on the people who
were there on my way down. My anticipation
of exasperation was somewhat stymied by the obvious diminution of numbers of
exercisers and the appreciable increase in the more obviously elderly section
of the population. In which, of course,
I do not place myself, as there are over five months before I can claim entry
into the most senior category!
I was a little over the limit by the time
I got back to the gate of my home, but I passed no police and, anyway, there
are richer pickings for them on the beach.
This evening, as long as the weather
holds, and there is bright sunlight at the moment, I will have to go for a more
substantial cycle to make up for my sloth in keeping to my bed this morning.
I am also lucky in that I can walk around
the communal pool at any time to augment my exercise regime, though it does get
somewhat tedious and I feel as I make circuit after circuit that I must look
like one of those nodding donkeys that Dickens described in Hard Times as it did the same thing
again and again, as being “in a state of melancholy madness”. This picture is not helped by listening to In Our Times on a Radio 4 podcast and
alternatively chuckling and giving a little grunt of satisfaction as another
element of knowledge is momentarily added to my store!
Each time I go out on my bike I am acutely
aware that it is a substitution for my pool swim, and not a satisfactory
substitution. Although I look forward to
the time when swimming is allowed again, I find it difficult to imagine how
they are going to make it safe. I know
that the authorities have said that normal disinfecting techniques in well
maintained pools should deal with the virus adequately, it is difficult to see
how physical distancing will be safely maintained, especially in the pool
itself.
Our pool has five lanes and with the usual
numbers of swimmers, lanes have to be shared.
It is difficult not to bump into your partner swimmer from time to time,
and even if you don’t you will be passing each other in close proximity each
time you complete a length.
I suppose that with five lanes, you could
have five swimmers and swimmers could book a time to swim? What about children? They do not keep to limits and anyway I do
not want to be anywhere near them. It is
a difficult problem and one that will not be solved easily I think. Though I can’t wait to see how the management
of the pool suggests a solution.
It is easy to say that we have not thought
the New Normal through – the government certainly has not – and I think that we
will be constantly surprised at how many of the aspects of our Old Lives will
have to be modified to take account of the virus.
The National Trust has said that in the
future all of its properties can only be visited by those who have a specific
ticket, the Old Normal of Just Turning Up is no longer something that you can
do.
My season ticket for the Liceu and the
opera season has now been cancelled. All
of the shows that I was due to see have been, at best, postponed. But, without a vaccine, how is the seating of
patrons going to be done? Will seats
have to be reallocated allowing an empty seat between patrons? How will the audience be brought in and
allowed out, without the usual crush?
Will we have to wear masks during the performance?
The average age of an opera going audience
is substantially older than the general profile of the population and therefore
the majority of patrons are in a much higher risk category – how is this going
to affect the future of opera?
Already the financial hit that the Liceu must
have taken has to be substantial and serious; given the other demands on state
coffers, how will the Liceu justify extra tax income to keep it alive? And theatre?
And orchestral concerts? And
ballet? And museums? And art galleries?
All of those companies must be in dire
financial straits! And what about the
corporate sponsors? They must be feeling
the financial pinch as well. It is a
perfect storm of threat for anything cultural.
The cultural future is bleak.
Meanwhile
on the technological front: my little cleansbot works, but the sensors which
tell it is falling off the mattress are not working and so it duly falls. I am prepared, at the moment to believe that
the fault lays in my reading of the instructions – or rather my skimming them
and hoping that a few presses of the on button will sort everything out.
I will obviously have to be a little more
careful in my application of haptic hope!
I
listened to the Minister for Education and even I was flabbergasted. He spoke as if the past didn’t exist. As if the way that the Conservatives have
treated teachers and education over the last decade was a completely different
sphere of reality. His mealy mouthed
concern for the under privileged was almost comical, his desperate sympathy for
kids who were at risk was ludicrous.
What the hell does he think that his government has been doing over the
past ten years? Has the way in which the
government has cut social services, education and everything that austerity was
used as an excuse to decimate resulting in the present state of the NHS, Care
Homes, and . . . it is really hard to express the level of disgust that I feel
when someone is speaking and expecting me to forget their destructive history
in the very area that they are taking credit for and trying to get me to be
sympathetic about their ‘supportive’ attitude!
Given the way that the Conservative
Government has mismanaged virtually everything about the virus so far one can
have absolutely not confidence whatsoever about their ability tao make the
return of kids to schools anything but a disaster.
The level of testing in the NHS is
inadequate, why should we expect it to be anything other than inadequate in
education. Why should teachers risk
their lives when there is little evidence to suggest that there will be little
more than empty words of support rather than actual pieces of PPE and availability
of sufficient testing? With the very
real threat of kids being asymptomatic there would have to be extensive testing
on a regular basis and efficient contact tracing before any reasonable return
to school could be contemplated.
Yet again, I have reason to rejoice in the fact that I am retired!
