Up and at 'em!

 

It may not be officially Autumn yet, but as far as my pool is concerned, the first of September marks the change from August time to normality again, and the place opens at 7 am rather than 8 am.

     For someone like myself, getting up early (usually to have a swim before work) is something that I have always done, and retirement did not alter the internal clock.  I have never found it easy or enjoyable to have a ‘lie in’, though from time to time I did attempt one, on the faulty basis that something that most people like should appeal.  It didn’t, and I continued and continue to get up early.

     I also have a fairly reliable ‘internal’ alarm clock, so that if I know that I have to get up at a particular time, I usually wake up.

     Of course, what one has to ask oneself is, “Do you make use of the ‘gained’ time?”  With an early morning swim, the ‘smug’ factor is generally speaking, built in.  After all, by 8 am (normal time) I have swum my regulation 1500m and will have started on my knee exercises.  So, by the normal start of work time, I have not only done more exercise than the vast majority of the population, but I have also had a decent breakfast and written (alas, usually inconsequential) thoughts and ideas in my notebook.  And I cycle home from the pool, by taking a detour to the end of the paseo in Gavà just for luck!  Smug doesn’t cover it!

     During the months from now, until the Spring, I will set off for my swim in darkness.  I always think that makes my cycle ride more meritorious because it is clear that most people are not up and doing, and there I am ‘exercising’ before dawn!

     If I think back to the daily commute that I made, both here in Catalonia and in Cardiff, then I am acutely aware that sometimes I arrived at my destination of work or home and had no recollection of the journey.  I didn’t crash, so some part of my brain must have been in control, but not, I fear all of it.  So, I am aware that a lone cyclist on a darkened road pre-full-on rush hour is somewhat vulnerable.

     I do, of course, wear a helmet and, rather like the feeling of going to bed without brushing your teeth, not wearing it makes me uncomfortable enough to realise that something is wrong and, it is usually only one cycle of the pedal before I return to get it.  (Or get back up and brush my teeth.) 

     My helmet also has a white light on the front and two red lights on the back; the bike has a built-in set of two LED lights, and I have added a red rear light.  There is also a further light attached to the handlebars that I sometimes use if I think the illuminated circus that is my night-time bike is not gaudy enough.  That further light was actually for another bike, but waste not want not!

     So, I can be seen.  Whether people take notice, is another question.

 

 

     

 

 

 

 On the paseo to Gavà, which is wide and well surfaced, there is a two-lane cycleway marked out with a continuous white line and stencilled bikes painted onto the road.  There is, however, no physical division apart from the miniscule layer of paint that comprises the white line.  That is very often a problem.

     I always turn on my light when I use the cycleway because it appears that a large man on a black metallic structure with big wheels is far too inconspicuous an object looming towards pedestrians to encourage the clearance of a way clearly marked for cycles.

     There is a particular sort of ‘runner’ – poor technique, inappropriate clothing, earphones and sweat – that runs exactly on the line of the cycleway, no matter that flailing arms mean that the cyclist have to swerve into the other lane to avoid the on-line runner.

     Parents with toddlers seem to think that an impenetrable shield protects their wandering young from bike riders, riding their bikes in their specific bike lanes.

     Even worse are those parents who think that their children who are too young to walk properly are more than qualified to use those sort of hobby-horse self-propelled bikes in the same lane as adult cyclists, presumably on the half-arsed half-understood principle of a Gertrude Stein approach of “a bike is a bike is a bike” and “we are all equal in the bike lane” or some such rubbish.

     Some dog owners seem to be vindictively stupid.  I mean those who have their creatures on the end of the infinitely extendable leads so that where the owner is and where the dog is sometimes seems to be more random than anything else, and yards of lax lead is an ever-present problem.

     I am more than prepared to admit that cyclists are not perfect in the way they use the roads, and their use and abuse of the cycle lane is also something to be condemned as they weave in and out, invade pedestrian space, turn without warning, and stop and chat in the middle of the bikeway.

     I suppose if you are a cyclist, you do realise that the inconsideration of car drivers, while irritating can also, easily, be fatal! 

     So, I keep my lights on when, as with the paseo, cyclists and pedestrians are in close contact. 

     I take to heart the words of the great superstore philosopher, and wear a helmet, cycle with consideration, and use my lights, because “Every Little Helps” and I like life.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 46 – Thursday, 30th APRIL

The fact that I refer to 9.00am, when the builders reforming next door begin unlocking the gates to get to the next stage of their noisy work, as “bright and early” is a sign of how things have changed.  Pre-Covid my normal time of rising was 6.30am so that I could get to the swimming pool by the time that it opened at 7.00am!  What different days those now seem.

     The work on the house next door has meant that we have been subjected to almost constant noise almost every day of the week for months, literally months!  The people re-doing the house have treated the house as a normal building site rather than as one house joined to a terrace of others where ever hammer blow is seamlessly transferred to all the other dwellings.

     They have now started on the replacement of the garden fences with a breezeblock wall.  We have had to be nimble on our feet to go and question (wearing our masks) where exactly they think the borderline between our houses lies.  Of such stuff is the most acrimonious argument made!  To be realistic, given how tatty the previous fences were, virtually any replacement is bound to be a positive, but still one’s land is one’s own – even if the property is rented!

     The only positive aspect of this resurgence in building activity by our neighbours’ workers is that the waste sacks that have been lying in the car parking spaces opposite our houses for the last six weeks are, at last, being taken away – thought I wonder if they will take all four of them or leave a couple there just to mark out the territory as it were!

     As new neighbours, one has to say that they have taken no trouble whatsoever to keep the families that live on either side of them appraised of what they are going to do and the inconvenience that results from their building activities.  Not a good start to the prospects for convivial cohabitation in the future when this bloody house is (eventually) complete.  We will then find out if the family we have seen from time to time taking a proprietorial interest is residential or speculative!

In Catalonia we are waiting to find out the details of the adult exercise that we will be allowed to take this weekend.  It appears that there is going to be some sort of timetable for exercise depending on the group to which you belong.  I look forward to details that will allow me to use my bike once more!

     Talking of bikes.  My electric bike is a Mate – that is the name of the manufacturer, not an anthropomorphic designation by me – and generally speaking I am pleased with it.  In spite of the supply delays of the ‘Classic’ version of the bike, I was sufficiently enthused to purchase an ‘improved’ fat wheel version of the bike when it was suggested.

     With the basic bike I bought a back rack, a front light and born, mudguards and, most importantly, a throttle.

     The light and horn arrived before the bike and when fitted the light worked for less than a week.  You can’t replace the light because it is of a unique designed.  You can’t replace the light because the service from Mate is less than useless.  The throttle did not and has not arrived.  It is paid for and should have been delivered last August.  And that delivery date was one that had been delayed itself!  I have written, I have pleaded and the end result is nothing.

     In an astonishing piece of effrontery Mate have actually had the gall to announce a Special Limited Edition of the bike!  They haven’t supplied customers who have paid for items over a year ago, but they can, apparently tool up to produce a new bike!  I am more angry than I can adequately express.  But I am sure that I will give it a go in future posts!

PRIME MINISTER JOHNSON SHOULD RESIGN AT ONCE.

I am glad that Johnson has survived Covid-19 and I congratulate his partner and him on the birth of a son.  But, he should resign for his criminal irresponsibility not only for the grotesque mishandling of the early stages of the crisis, but also for his deliberate flirting with Covid-19 in visits and the Twickenham match.

MATT BECKETT SHOULD RESIGN AT ONCE.

Beckett made the 100k actual tests per day by the end of the month (not the potential for tests) a cast iron policy for which he took full ownership.  He has failed and he must resign.

Johnson’s performance at the press conference showed an almost surrealistic disregard for the actual hard facts of infection and death in the UK.  That his bloody government can actually talk about “success” for anything that they have done is beneath contempt.

RESIGN NOW!

Take it easy!

I dutifully got up at my accustomed time of 6.30 am, responding to the intense irritation of the ‘music’ of my phone alarm, sat on the edge of the bed, then had a pee (in the bathroom!) and promptly returned to bed.  Sometimes, you have to do what you want rather than what you think that you should do.  It makes you a better person.  I think.

     And even if it doesn’t, I am not going to beat myself up about missing an early morning swim once in a while.  It does mean that I get the Guardian Quick Crossword done and dusted and have a leisurely cup of tea and am able to face the rest of the world with something approaching equanimity – even if lacking the smug self-satisfaction than early morning exercise gives you.

     The ostensible reason for my indolence was to give myself more time to study for the Catalan examination that is going to take place on the 13^th of this month.  Given the format of the exam, and the extensive explanation about the content that we have been given, there is a reasonable chance of actually passing it.  But and this is where the rejection of swimming comes in, only if the time gained is actually used in revision (or something nearer to learning in my case) and the hard slog on forcing foreign words to at least have a temporary residence in my memory.  As far as I can work out the major emphasis in this exam is on the ability of, we candidates to demonstrate that we have retained the accurate orthography of the more cunningly accented words in Catalan.  The area we have to consider is one which is limited, but the use of the correct accents will be a crucial factor in gaining marks.  This means that the old look-cover-write-check technique needs to come into play.  Repeatedly.

     As it happens, I am still much more drawn to working on the pages of notes that I have for my latest poem, than I am for the hard slog of learning.  I know that one should never reject opportunities for learning, especially after the ‘official’ period of education has passed!  But it is much harder to force new information into my brain than it ever used to be.

     And yet.  Take this morning.  I was checking through my emails and I noted that Academia.edu site had suggested an art history paper that I might have found interesting.  This paper turned out to be part of a substantial book which offered a more than readable overview of a section of art history.  The extract on Cezanne got me interested and I jumped my way through to Chicago skyscrapers and the honorary Welshman Frank Lloyd Wright and then onto Picasso and abstraction and at that point I realized that I was in the grip of the you-may-as-we—finish-it syndrome and so I stopped.  Ostensibly to check on the publishing details of the book which were somewhat vague on the site.  This got me into the Baltimore Museum of Art and I was starting to flick through the site when I realized (again) that I was being taken further and further from what I had started out doing when I opened the computer.

     The point of that last paragraph (in case you were wondering) was to illustrate not only the ease with which I get side-tracked, but also the fact that I was gleefully hoovering up small facts about the artists and movements that I was reading about.  I am conversant enough with mainstream western modern art history that passing comments about how Seurat got the colour theory wrong, or than curtain walls allowed skyscrapers to have more glass, or that Synthetic Cubism literally emphasised the presentation of painterly element on the canvas, almost like a dish – that fascinated me.  Ever the snapper up of unconsidered trifles (is that quotation accurate?) I felt the drug-like pull of the writing, and I thought that I could buy the book (the very substantial book) from which the writing was taken.  But, so far, I have been unable to find it.  But I will.

It is one of those books (should it actually exist) that always seem to me to need to exist before it can be written.  The range and depth of knowledge it contains is the sort of book that would have been consulted to write it – if you see what I mean!  I have a History of Art book by Meyers (I think, I’m too laze to get up and look for it to make sure) that thoroughly intimidated me when I was younger because of its ease of flow from earliest times to the present.  You can’t be interested or know about it all.  Surely!

     It takes a while before you realize just how much of scholarship is built on the work of others: synthesis is what keeps you sane!  Over the past few years I have found, when searching for some fairly obscure information that, certainly on line, you find that there is often a core of Ur-information that has been ruthlessly plagiarised (without attribution) as the basis for what appears to be original research.  And, very often, searching backwards, you often find that confident assertions of fact are based on the flimsiest of factual evidence: suggestion develops into statement.  How often have I wished that there were footnotes so that I could find out just what the quality of evidence for the assertion had!  But even with what appears to be scholarly footnotes, you often find that ‘evidence’ is ‘personal’ book based and not on primary sources.

     In the Open University students are encouraged not to cite Wikipedia as it is not a ‘clean’ source of information, because it is able to be edited without the care that academy demands.  We OU students still use it of course, it is far too useful to ignore, but we look for another source to cite to give credibility.  This has meant that for one of my references for a particularly useful comments by Sir Laurence Olivier, I cited (in the correct manner!) a dubious website that I found.  That reference went through my tutor on the nod, but a Wikipedia citation would have been frowned upon.

     But, lurching back to what I was taking about some time ago, the book seems to me to be something worth looking for.  I have a possible author’s name, I know that it is connected with the Baltimore Museum of Art, and I suspect that it is also linked to The Cone Collection in the same institution.  So, you can rest assured, that when I should be learning and revising my Catalan vocabulary, I will be searching for yet another art history book to add to my collection!

Wish me luck!