LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 49 – Sunday, 3rd May

 

The enthusiasm for the outdoors early in the morning! 

     Well, the general enthusiasm had markedly diminished by the time I got onto the Paseo at just after 7 am!  The First Day zest had cooled as I rode down a sparsely populated sea front.  Don’t get me wrong, there were more people there than usual (I mean the usual of more than six weeks ago) but given the masses who were relishing their new found freedom yesterday, their staying power was something of a squib!

     I did my stint from the house to Port Ginesta beach that is at the far end of the gentle arc of the bay that ends with the train tunnels that eventually lead to Sitges.  This journey I saw nobody whom I knew and my trip was personally uneventful.

     What was interesting was the positioning of the police at the roundabout at the end of the Marina, guarding the road that leads into the beach part of Castelldefels.  This was obviously there as a deterrent to any ‘visitors’ to the beach, as we all should be exercising near or rather ‘near’ our homes.  The positioning of the police links up with what Toni told me yesterday when he noticed the police stationed on the part of the beach road that links Castelldefels with Gavà.  Toni also mentioned that the end of his walk was getting closer to the cut off time for our age group of 10 am, and the police are not hesitant in dishing out fines to those who break the regulations.

     I am just over five months away from being cast into another age group when my times for exercise will differ from those of Toni – but who really has the slightest inkling of what will really happen in those countries which have suffered (and go on suffering) the most from the virus in five long months.  Given the speed of the news cycle nowadays we may not be able to recognize the world as we knew it as having any real relationship with the way that we will be living then!

     The incubation period for the virus is two weeks or thereabouts, so we should be checking the infection statistics on May 16^th to see if the relaxation has had any numerical results.  I hope to god not, but given the way that people are responding to the fine weather and the new freedom, I fear the worst.

At the moment Toni’s family is having a joint ‘meal’ via the Internet to celebrate Mother’s Day.  Unfortunately Toni’s mum does not know how to join the videoconference and so she is present in thought only!  Though now she is being contacted by phone in the hope that it can be converted into some sort of joint effort.  I do not hold out any lively hopes.

     I suppose that what we are stuttering out way through at the moment could become the fabulous New Normal that everyone is talking about and no one knows how to make real practical sense of it.  If physical distancing continues for the foreseeable future and travel between towns is banned, then the videoconference is the only way of giving a form of immediacy with sound and vision.  Like so much else, what is now new and unusual will become the everyday.  Mobile phones and smart phones are a case in point, who now does not own one and, more importantly, know how to operate it at a level of sophistication that would shock the selves of just five years ago!

     If this does become more usual then I am sure that there will be something like a curated service that will guarantee HD quality sound and picture and give a firm electronic link – and there will be plenty of people who would be prepared to pay for something a few shades of sharpness better than that you get for grainy nothing!

After the 8pm clap for health workers I made my second bike ride of the day along the beach path to Gavà, and it was fairly full.  I only saw two illegal kids who should have been indoors at the time that I was there, but it was the other people who made me wonder about how this is going to turn out.  There was little evidence of physical distancing and, when I returned I went in the opposite direction on the Paseo towards Port Ginesta, there was even less.  As far as I could see, the people on the Paseo looked and behaved as if it was a normal Sunday evening.  And that is worrying!

My collection of poetry, Coasts of Memory, continues to frustrate.  I am satisfied with the general editing; it is more the practical production of a printed version that is causing me heartache!  The Brother printer that I have was bought specifically for its ability to print booklets.  I make problems for myself by adding colour photographs to the mix that have vast implications for the memory.  Even with cutting the size of the file it is too unwieldy to sent via email.  I therefore took the decision to reformat the colour photographs and ‘transform’ them into artistic black and white productions. 

     There were yet more printing difficulties and the photos had to be redone.  Again.  But, at last, I managed to get something printed with which I am almost satisfied.  I think that I will have to see if I can get a professional to give me a quotation for the printing of the chapbook in colour.  Otherwise, the black and white will have to do!  And I have to admit that the final product does look quite elegant.

     Now, on with my plan to distribute it via email and ask for a donation to the NHS charity of a country of choice!  Onward and upward!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 35 – Sunday, 19th APRIL

It’s raining. 

     I am disinclined to go on my circuits of the communal swimming pool in the pouring rain. 

     I am further depressed by the reading in the Guardian about Goblin Gove’s typically mealy-mouthed, unconvincing response to a series of allegations in The Sunday Times that the Convalescing Clot missed five consecutive emergency meetings of COBRA in the build up to the Covid-19 crisis and that the government shipped PPE to China in February. 

     That would have covered the period when our part-time Prime Minister was hidden away in Chequers, a prime minister who notoriously “didn’t work weekends” according to an unnamed senior adviser!  Once Bullingdon Club always Bullingdon Club: the lazy sense of entitlement of the rich and the privileged; let the lesser breeds without the law do the hard graft while the Johnson jonson sets about adding another child to the unnumbered brood.

     I am more than prepared to believe that the lingering poison of Brexit mixed with the euphoria of the Conservative right wing after the crushing electoral victory led the ‘government’ fatally to mismanage a coherent approach to the Covid-10 crisis. 

     The typical Tory inhumanity of the ‘herd immunity’ approach to dealing with the crisis, complacently accepting hefty deaths will be remembered, together with the astonishing U-Turn when it was suddenly abandoned in favour of approaches that more nearly matched virtually every other government in the world.

     The position of the Health Secretary is becoming more and more untenable – or at least it should be becoming more and more untenable as more and more avoidable deaths will be laid as a memorial to his incompetence.  Yes, efficient supply is difficult in times of crisis, especially in a cash and equipment and personnel starved institution like the NHS that is in its present state because of the cruel austerity practiced by the Tory government for the last decade. 

     The empty platitudes of support that Tory ministers mouth for Health Workers are cruelly ironic given their attitudes towards the NHS over the past years.  These are the same vile folk who cheered after a pay increase for Nurses was defeated in the House of Commons!  They disgust me.

     And, as I typed that last bitter sentence, the rain outside has grown appreciably heavier.  There is nothing like the Pathetic Fallacy to cement misery in place!

In an effort to escape the gnawing resentment contained in the paragraphs above, I have turned to something more creative.  My chapbook of poems written in Holy Week called Coasts of Memory.  I have been working on illustration and made a decision to use only photographs taken within the lockdown confines.  This means that the house, the garden, the communal pool and what I can see from the terrace and windows are all fair game for my camera!

     I spent yesterday evening playing around with the raw material that I had and started placing individual pictures in what I considered to be appropriate places in the chapbook.  I am constantly frustrated by petty mechanical problems with images and sometimes it is a case of printing what fits rather than fitting what I want to print!

     There is also the problem of he disappearing fonts.  I save what I do fairly religiously; I have been caught out too often and too painfully when documents develop a missing life of their own not to remember to save.  But I am often frustrated by the way in which complex documents do not always retain formatting. 

     The latest example of this concerns by choice of a fairly exotic fort used as a title.  This font did not transfer when I sent the document via email rather than copying it onto a memory stick - in spite of my avowal of the very latest in technology, I can be whimsically old-school from time to time!  The font is space greedy, so when it transfers as something altogether more prosaic it means that everything else on the page is out of place and that has a domino effect on all the pages afterwards.  As I was going to use that particular version of the book for detailed editing, it might turn out to be self-defeating if I have to redo everything with the ‘correct’ font in place in the final document.  Such things are sent to try me, and at least I can have a direct effect on what I do there, as opposed to whingeing on about what my government is doing or not doing in this crisis!

In the way in which the petty becomes important: Toni is going out to get bread!  An event for which he dresses up like an Inuit and wings the desolate abyss between our home and the bread shop that is a few streets away.  I enjoy the results of these little excursions as we usually have a little treat from the patisserie as well as mere bread – by which alone, one cannot live!

     This time, as well as the bread, Toni is going to attempt to get some chicken from the pollo a last, this will be our first ‘bought in’ meal since the lockin began.  However, if there is a queue, or there are too many people there then the meal will be called off and we will have to settle for the bread.  And treats.

There are increasing accounts in the media of the possibility of no vaccine being produced in the short term, or even ever.  We have the example of AIDS, where, in spite of extensive research over a number of years, we are still without a vaccine.  Treatment for the disease, yes; vaccine no.  That is a very sobering thought.  It means that we will be dealing with the virus as an ever-present threat well after this initial surge is over and it also means that for people in my age group the restrictions are going to last for the foreseeable future. 

     This is a more than depressing thought!

This and that

. . . and stretch!

If pain at the back of the legs indicates dedication to cycling, then I am dedicated.  I am beginning to think that all this much-vaunted belief in the positive power of exercise is much over rated.

            My knee joints, it must be admitted are not the finest articulating things in the world, but they did work without feeling as though someone has wrapped clumsy weights around them.  Now, after a week of cycling, this is not the case.  The pain, such as it is, is a ‘surround’ discomfort and I am working on the basis that this is merely muscle, rather like the alien I have just been watching in a most unsatisfactory film, suddenly called into action after a considerable time being quiescent. 

            Having been called into more stringent duty that they had heretofore been expected to complete, my muscles are rebelling.  And something must be done.

            I have therefore decided to revert to what I always (usually) [sometimes] did before playing squash or badminton – I will stretch my muscles before I put foot to pedal.  This will be, I am sure, the panacea and all manner of things will be well.

            And anyway, there are only a few more weeks to go and I will be able to sink behind the wheel once more!  At least just before and after I have my swim!

Rebellion!

There are some things you do because you have always done them.  Unthinkingly and with a sense that this is how life should be led.  They are the basics which make up the ethos that propels you through life.  Things that you can sink back on in times of trouble and feel that this, at least, is right.

            So it is troubling, to say the least, that I find myself – after a lifetime – going back on something which I have never even had cause to question.

            As far back as I can remember – and this I know because somewhere I still have evidence of my childish faith in books which I slavishly kept – I drank PG Tips.  It was the tea of choice, there was no other.

            In Spain, one of the first things that I did was search out a place where this need could find the raw material to be satisfied.  And I found it – albeit in a French supermarket chain, but I found a supply of tea bags with the requisite trademark.

            It has taken me some time, but I now realise that I have been denying the truth, the truth that I actually prefer Ty-phoo tea.  How can this have happened?

            I have rationalised it of course, it must, I have told myself be something to do with the quality of water.  I am used to the softness of Welsh water, whereas here in Catalonia, as I am fond of saying, I don’t know how something so full of calcium actually makes it out of the taps.  To say our water is hard is . . . and fit in simile or image of your choice . . . and to be frank it is the same for Ty-phoo as it is from PG Tips, but, there it is, after all these years a change of taste.

            Something I will have to learn to live with as I spit my traitorous cuppa!

Open-ended

The writing of the pro forma for the outline of the work that I intend to do for the end of course module which takes the place of the examination in the Open University for my art course is proving to be a damn sight more tricky that I thought it would be.

            Some things, like my bibliography, seem to have taken on a monstrous life of their own, but the actual title and the fiddly little details are tantalizingly out of reach.

            They will have to come to reach in the next 24 hours as the thing has to be handed in and I have to go to Barcelona on Wednesday.  So, the whip is being metaphorically applied and, as usual, in spite of moaning, I will probably manage to get something winging its electronic way.

            This is a real opportunity for my tutor to come up trumps.  She does know much more than I, and she can make or break my long essay by her suggestions.  She seems to be ‘fairly’ on board at the moment and I only hope that the sense of fellow travelling will extend itself to fairly concrete suggestions for the ‘bits’ in my proposal that I have somewhat glossed over!

            In a strange sort of way I am looking forward to this project becoming reality and words actually making it to the screen, because I am interested to see what the end result will be.  Because I don’t have a clear idea at the moment.  And that, I think, is a good thing.  I hope.

Editing

I am at the stage in my book where I am thinking of the order in which the poems should be published.  Thinking is not doing, and I am justifying my laziness by telling myself that I have more pressing academic problems.  How easy it is to write about problems rather than doing something about them.  It was ever thus and, as I have made that a way of life, don’t knock it!