Schrodinger's Fiesta!

 

 

 

 

 

An odd day today. An in-between sort of day.

     Although it is a fiesta in Barcelona, it’s not here in Castelldefels, though there is always a knock-on effect as we get an influx of day-trippers from the city to swell the areas around the beaches.

     There were fewer in the pool this morning when it opened, but more of the ‘day-release’ people turned up, just as I was completing my lengths and exercise.  The bike ride along the paseo of the beaches of Gavà were fuller than a normal Monday, so I was able to exhibit a bonus grumpiness as the usual suspects invaded the bike lane, in spite of their being a bike (mine) in it, with the headlight on!

     I have taken to using the Gavà paseo because the Castelldefels paseo is now banned to bikes and electric scooters.  There are signs informing people of this ban at the entrances to the beaches and there are signs repeating the information attached to lampposts along the paseo, and they are generally ignored.

     There are good, health & safety, logical reasons for banning bikes on the Castelldefels paseo.  There is no dedicated bike lane and cyclists invariably ignore the very low speed limit that is set (or used to be set) to use the place.  Some cyclists seem to take a perverse delight in refusing to slow down as they make their way along the paseo and avoid people by a circus-act-like display of weaving and jigging.  This is obviously dangerous.

     At a certain point the beach paseo narrows, and the danger to cyclists and pedestrians becomes even more pronounced.

     As we move further into autumn and winter the number of people using the paseo, especially at the time that I used to use it after my swim, drops.  And if there is empty space then cyclists and electric scooter riders will ignore the rules even more than the general flouting that happens at the moment.

     We have parking tickets for spaces on the sea front and other areas of the city, but the machines that dole out these tickets are closed down for the winter months and you can park wherever you like (except for high days and holidays) for free.  Some spaces in the centre of town are always paying spaces except for the afternoons, so we have a fairly complex system in place.

     My point would be, given that we are able to adapt to complex parking rules, why shouldn’t there be more flexible rules for bikes?  If we can cope with those rules, then we should surely be able to cope with time limited rules for bikes.

     On the narrower parts of the paseo, I do think that bikes should be banned totally, but on the other parts I think it is only sensible to have more reasonable rules.  As the rules stand at present, there is an obvious and blatant rejection, and there doesn’t seem to be any move to police the rules and make them stick.

     Yes, I do feel resentment as I see all the paseo bike users as I make my way along the (legal) road, but, if people don’t like the rules and they can see little real justification for them, then those rules are going to be broken.

     It makes me think of the decorative, picturesque council laid footpaths that wind around a grassy area, and the unofficial footpaths that actual feet make as they plot the most direct route.  People will do what they think is more logical, and to hell with routes that looked pretty when drawn on plans.

     I remember working, before I went to College, in the Planning Department of Cardiff City Council and seeing a map of the city centre showing ‘customer routes’ showing the reality of how people moved from point A to point B.  These maps showed streets, but they also showed routes through shops, ways of access that I had previously thought were individual ‘secret’ ways but were obvious when you needed to imagine a straight line with shops in the way!

     So, people will do what they think is reasonable.  That is until they are either shown that they are wrong in their assumptions, or that they will be punished if they do not follow the council’s stated rules.

     I am following the rules.  I await to see how the council responds to the breaking of those rules.          I’m watching!

Frustration and release

 

 

 

Most days I get up at 6.15 am to get ready for my morning swim at 7 am in the local pool.  As it is August, I have the luxury of a lie in until 7.15 am as the pool opens at 8 am for that month.

     I would like to say that I feel a sense of smug satisfaction for rising so early and taking physical exercise before many people have stirred from their beds - and I suppose I do.  But, the thing is that I find it difficult to stay in bed after my accustomed rising time.  When I was working I went for a swim before work started and I have sort of continued that regime.  If truth be told, I do not really ‘lie in’ with any degree of sincerity.  At the time that I need to get up, I get up and if I try and stay in bed I feel uncomfortable.  So, my soft, musical alarm on my mobile phone goes off and I get up.

     This morning, my arrival at the pool was greeted by what appeared to be a small meeting at the gate.  It turned out that the increasing murkiness of the water in the pool over the last couple of days had prompted the technical services to Do Something and thus “product” had been added to the water, but for the “product” to work, we swimmers had to be excluded.

     The helpful message from management that the pool was closed was sent to members of the leisure centre via email at 10.10 am today, that is some two hours after we arrived to start our swim.  Sigh!

     I made the best of a bad job and decided to go for an extended bike ride from the pool to Port Ginesta, so that I could tell myself that I had kept up my morning exercise.

     Admittedly the effort of cycling those kilometres was somewhat mitigated by the fact that I have an electric bike and I make full (full!) use of its electric capabilities, but it is still exercise under the meaning of the act and as such it is duly recorded by my Smartwatch and adds to my daily PAI rating (whatever that is) – one of those acronyms linked to health and exercise that, in spite of its meaning being ambiguous (or even unknown) is something I take semi-seriously and try and maintain a rating of 100 or as near as I can get.  Because, yes.

     Not only did I go all the way to the beach in Port Ginesta, but I also went as far as the Gavà bike lane could take me in the opposite direction, which amounts to a total of 17.85 km which, even on an electric bike (for me) is quite a lot.

     Not that the electric bike is my only form of ‘personal’ transport.  The electric scooter was taken out of the boot of the car AGAIN yesterday and I used it to get to our favourite ice cream shop as a jaunt to get out of the house.

     I am not a natural bike rider, but I am semi-professional compared with my shaky progress on the scooter.  On the scooter, like a highly-strung thoroughbred horse, I am spooked by: anything other than a completely level surface, traffic, people, turns, crossings, pavements, other scooter users, hills, slopes and the state of the world.  I do not, I have to admit, exude confidence when I am a-wheel, but it is the only way that I can match Toni’s walking without having to pay the price in pain for days afterwards!

     So far, my two trips on the scooter means that I have paid 150 euros per trip, given the total cost of the purchase.  A sobering thought.

 

 

The weather is a little cooler, I think, but that doesn’t make me particularly happy.  Yes, the sort of heat that we have been experiencing has been of a different quality than in previous years, but I’d still prefer that to the cold of winter – that any diminution of heat now makes me far is almost upon us!  But that is only may paranoia speaking.  I hope.

New skills?

 

The electric scooter has been used as it was intended to be used: a way to get me from A to B without having to walk too much.  Result!

     I cannot pretend that I am the most confident user of this mode of transport, but I am a user.  And that surely is a start.  Maybe a shaky start, but start nevertheless.

     My unsteady progress is mocked by the number of teenagers (and there are many) who ride the damn things as thought they were born on them.  I am going to rely on the expectation that continued use will banish my rank amateurism. Possibly.  I live, as always, in hope.

 

The water in our local pool this morning was murky.  It crossed my mind that I had not idea how to translate that into Spanish.  I thought that perhaps ‘oscuro’ might work, but I wasn’t convinced.  I bowed to the inevitable and opened the Google translate on my phone and saw their suggestion, and immediately recognized that I should have known the word.

     There is a sort of Galician wine that, before you serve it, you turn the bottle upside down and tap the bottom.  The wine is called ‘turbio’ and is a reference to the fact that such a procedure mixed up the sediment in the wine and makes it murky.  It is not, as you might have expected an expensive wine, but in the days when I used to drink more convincingly that I do at present I found it a refreshing and inexpensive drink.  It was also a wine that used to disconcert the visiting British wine snobs who looked on askance at the barbaric pre-drink ritual.

 

I am ‘watching’ the opening game of Barça, the first game in the new La Liga season, though I would be hard pressed to say just when the season actually ended as the summer seems to have been filled with football.

     I have decided to make a stand against the obvious corruption of the World Cup being in Dubai.  The absurdity of having the World Cup in a location where the weather is obviously so disadvantageous to the safe playing of the game and where the rights of the foreign workers constructing the stadia and the hotels have been so flagrantly abused is enough to make the celebration of that corrupt state’s holding of a major world competition something to be ashamed of.

     I do not know how realistic a boycott of TV watching is going to be possible in a household where one half of the relationship is looking forward to an orgy of blanket football watching.  I think there has to be a finite limit to the number of times one can flounce out of the living room with one’s moral integrity intact.

     There is also the very real possibility that I might find myself being drawn into the jingoistic fever of supporting the Home Nations that are in the competition.  As Wales has made it to the World Cup for the first time in almost living memory I do feel duty bound to show at least some support, so I am qualifying my disgust well before the kick off, and I am confident that I will succumb to the saturation coverage.

Pushing the boundaries again!

 

 

 

The graph of the usefulness of my knees would look like the inside of a shark’s mouth as the pointed tips of relative pain-free mobility are swamped by the depths of gum deep shitiness.  A rather laboured simile to emphasise that the utility of my knees as working points of articulation in the furtherance of locomotion, is basically low.  I find that I am limiting the length of my walking more and more, and the little that I do is with the aid of a stick.

     Which leads to the question of what I am going to have to do about it.  The obvious solution is to get new kneecaps but, with the backlog of clinical cases given the underfunding of the health service and the horrific demands of Covid something being done in the immediate future seems remote.

     When I finally went to the doctor after the periods of lockdown that we suffered, I was greeted by his saying that the x-rays that he had looked at giving a graphic picture of the state of my knees were among the worst that he had seen.  Nice to see you again too!

     Various (legal!) subterfuges were used to get me on to some sort of list to be seen and I was eventually told that my first visit to a traumatologist would be almost a year in the future!

     To cut a long story short, that “year” is now almost up, and in October I will have my first face-to-face meeting with someone who has the power to do something radical to reduce the pain and to make me fully (?) mobile again.

     Because the state of my knees is so variable, I have, over the last number of months resorted to crutches, sticks, pain killers and highly expensive off-the-shelf powders to bring some sort of relief.  In so far as I am no longer using crutches to move about, I would have to admit that I have made progress.  In so far as I am still in pain and can walk only limited distances, there is much further to go.  So to speak!

     Things were brought to some sort of head when we accompanied my cousin and friend to Sitges for a meal in a restaurant that is situated over the shallows of the sea.  And you can see real fish!

     Our usual parking place in Sitges is far too far for me to walk to get to the sea and so we decided to use the car park under an hotel on the sea front, thereby giving me a fairly flat walk to the restaurant.

     It took me the best part of a week to recover from the walking that I had to do – and the meal was ordinary, over-priced and badly served!  Something had to be done.

     The solution, of sorts involved buying something.  As I am never averse to spending money, especially on gadgets, I was all-in for Toni’s suggestion that the answer may be the purchase of an electric scooter.

     I am well aware that the average age of an electric scooter user is a mere 25% of mine – or less – but I am inured to expressions that look askance at me and what I am doing, so that the only question that arose in my mind was would I be able to balance on it.  And more pressingly, would it fit in the back of the car, as I had absolutely no intention of making it my prime mode of urban transport.

     A further energy depleting walk, and I was ready to buy.

     Although I am given (wholeheartedly) to the concept of the ‘impulse buy’ which my support of various good (and not so good) purchases from sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo can vividly demonstrate, I had to be somewhat circumspect about this purchase as it had to take account of my weight and height and also be something that was not dependent on being sent back to China in case something went wrong.

     Eventually, after yet another bad experience of overestimating how far I could walk, I bought one and awaited its arrival.

     It arrived (via Amazon) very quickly and it was waiting to be unboxed after I returned from my morning swim.

     The amount of construction involved in its formulation was minimal – four screws to keep the handlebars on the stem – but, without Toni it would have been, for me, insurmountable.  Three of the screws went in.  Eventually.  But one was stubborn and now matter how I (or indeed Toni) tried, it would not ‘go home’.

     Far from being downcast (as I was) Toni was jubilant, as this particular problem gave him the opportunity to try out something that he had bought because, “It would come in useful” – a screw thread re-doer.  The thread was re-done and it worked perfectly.

     The machine was charged up and all it then needed was for me to use it.

     At this point, I should point out that I did indeed own a mechanical scooter when I was a single digit child, but I had not tried one since that time.  Over sixty (60) years previously!

     It was therefore with some considerable trepidation that I ventured out onto the road and put foot to platen and pushed myself off.

     While I would not describe myself as a confident, or indeed competent, rider of the scooter, I did not fall off and I managed to return to the house after a trip of a couple of kilometres, with machine and myself undamaged.

     Result!

     The next thing to do is to try and fit it into the boot of the car and then to actually use the thing for the purpose for which it was bought.

     I am trepidatiously confident.

     Future blog entries should show whether such hope was justified or not!