One
of those characteristically Castelldefels brightly-dull days where the sun has
not appeared, but it is certainly near or thereabouts. At least it isn’t raining, so we can put the
continuation of the Pathetic Fallacy behind us.
On the positive side, the poem about wasps
has developed into something approaching a working draft, so there is something
to be said for toiling at home when escape is not an option. Now comes the really hard work of looking
through the draft and being as critical as possible about what works and what
doesn’t. I find the structure of a poem
the most taxing. After all it is easy
for the person who has written it to sense the scaffolding of sense that
produced it, but it is much more problematical for those who only read the
finished poem to sense all of the underlying thought that has been stripped
away! I will give it a couple of days
and then try and read it with new eyes.
As I
have given a title of ‘Day 2’ to this post, I am obviously trying to emulate my
experiences while being in hospital and producing something approaching a Diary
or commentary of my experiences.
But, and it’s a bit ‘but’ – my experiences
in hospital were extraordinary: I was in a new environment; the experiences
were unique for me; I was quite seriously ill; I underwent a whole series of
medical interventions etc., Each day was a revelation as new things were done
to me, using a variety of exotically technological machinery with a variety of
medical personnel in different locations.
There were the reactions of friends and relations, the way in which my
life was suddenly taken out of the ordinary and catapulted into the
extraordinary: it was a life-changing experience.
Is being in lockdown in your own house an
equivalent? The whole point of the
experience is that I will not be meeting new people, going to new places, or
experiencing technology that is new and foreign. Everything will be domestic in the true sense
of the word, because what is in my house now is what I will be utilizing to
keep myself (and Toni) sane during the period of my incarceration.
As the Emperor of Digression, I have never
found that the lack of ostensible material has hindered me from discourse. I am reminded of a piece of wisdom from my
father, “No holiday has ever been too long for me!” where my dad was intimating
that only a person with little innate intelligence would be bored by of the
offer of free time. In the same way, the
imposition of House Arrest in the interest of health could be viewed in the
same way. Material to engage an active
mind is always all around you, so fifteen days of only having to rely on an
extensive physical library, free access to the Internet and Social Media,
gardens back and front and a south facing terrace can hardly be described as
hardship.
I am on the cusp of the age where it is
advised that one should emulate the actions of Simon Stylites but without the
expansiveness of an open column top to live out your existence. And, depending on which authorities you take
as your guide, the exclusion will last for anything up to three or four months
– which, according to my calculations would give you a free month of summer
sunshine to enjoy before the re-emergence of the reinvigorated virus in the
autumn sweeps you away. But what do I
know about such things!
Whatever, it does appear that we are
going to be forced on to our own resources, though as I have indicated above,
that means something rather different from the circumstances that were faced by
fourteenth century folk trying to escape the plague, or indeed seventeenth
century people trying to flee the Black Death or any of the later scourges
inflicted on mankind. Modern
technological folk have the resources of almost infinite knowledge to draw on,
libraries of digital books and concert after concert of whatever music takes
your fancy. Although I do not
participate myself, I should imagine that half the world is, even as I type,
engaged in some form of armed conflict via their computers, and I am sure that
the makers of Fortnite and their like must be raking it in!
Our
group of houses has a communal pool and I have just noticed that the pool
person from the firm engaged to service the things is at present using the long
stemmed net to clear the water of the organic debris that has been floating on
the surface. The middle of March for an open-air
pool is not a key time for use, and keeping an unused item ready for use during
a national emergency does not seem to me to be a priority. But it does make me thing about the workers
who are doing the skimming.
I am sure that pool cleaners are not the
highest paid workers in the area and I wonder what sort of provision for
enforced non-working their employers have made?
Are these workers in the position that they have to work because staying
at home without any money coming in is not an option for them and their
families? And if that is true for this
particular section of the economy, just how many other workers are in a similar
position.
It has been put forward that the Blond
Buffoon only “suggested” that large-scale entertainments and pubs and clubs
close down rather than have “ordered” them to have closed down is because with
a governmental order, businesses affected could then sue the government for
compensation. In Spain and in Catalonia
the government has ordered sequestration and, given the usually precarious
economies of bars and restaurants and especially seasonal businesses that we
get here in the sea side resort of Castelldefels, there must be a frightening
number of enterprises that are looking at financial ruin is this state of
emergency goes on for a long time.
Governments have talked about financial help, but I expect that the only
real, efficient and quick financial help will be given to big business and the
banks and the smaller folk will have to do the best they can.
It is hardly surprising if small
businesses look at how governments have acted in the past and decided that they
only chance for survival is to work as long as possible – hence the slow pole
dipping of the pool person I can see from where I type.
As
if to make my life just a little more enjoyable, last Saturday the house
intercom squawked into life and I was informed that a package was due for
delivery. This turned out to be an
imposing gadget and something that I had ordered from Kickstarter or the like
ages ago. I am now the proud possessor
of a Narwal robot hoover and mop! The
gleaming white machine lives in what looks like a squat clinical white plastic
bin with a rectangular opening at the base for the machine to recharge and
clean itself. The USP of this particular
form of multi-cleaner is that during the ‘mopping’ stage the thing regularly
comes back to base to clean itself and then go charging off again.
As we have tile floors throughout this
machine is ideal for our needs – and my particular need not to do hoovering and mopping!
Toni has been out to get bread and some
food and found the roads strangely empty and the queues in the supermarket not
as large as he had expected. We are now
well stocked; the only things that we lack are facemasks. I have ordered some, but they are not
expected until early next month!
The sun is now making a weak attempt to
shine and so I think that I will go out onto the terrace on the third floor and
take some unaccustomed fresh air (air made a damn sight fresher by the lack of
traffic on the roads) and a little sunshine.
This is the life?
