Alone, not lonely

 

 

 

A ¡Fiesta! on a Friday throws out my Day Reckoning, and I begin to believe that I am living in a succession of Sundays.

     ‘Sunday’ is my default setting if something seems slightly ‘off’ about the day: if the light is not right, or it’s too quiet, or the smell is different, or I feel odd.  The answer for all of those is, ‘It’s Sunday!’

     Sometimes I get a feeling that I used to have on Sundays in College – a sort of spacious loneliness because things were off-kilter and the routine of the week had been broken, with nothing as filling to take its place.  The strangeness of the feeling was all the more odd because I could feel it when I quite patently was not alone.

     A typical Sunday would start with breakfast in the hall canteen, which was always taken before 8.30 am (or you got nothing) followed by a Communion Service for Anglicans (as I was then) in one of the meeting rooms.  This was a quite cosy affair as there were not so many of us, and we were able to disport ourselves in chairs a lot more comfortable than hard wooden pews.  And the Chaplin always ensured that the communion wine was “decent” even though as a well-trained churchman, I never let the liquid do more than touch my lips.  Though even with that brushing acquaintance you could tell quality.  That experience did mean that in future non-University communion services I always felt that taking the wine was another symbol of self-abnegation rather than celebration given the vinous horror that some vicars deemed acceptable for the faithful!

     Lunch was not included in the catering for those of us in hall, we survived on breakfast and an evening meal, but Sundays were different and we had a sort of tea-meal to keep us going.

     The afternoons on a Sunday were sometimes taken up by concerts in the Arts Hall which were free, and sometimes excruciatingly boring, but improving and worth the experience even if it meant that you crossed off another composer from your general listening list.  And then the evenings were free, to prepare for the following week of academic work.  As if.

     But there was an emptiness about the day that went beyond the lack of the normal to and fro of a working day and, like Proust’s madeleine, the feelings come back to me in the strangest of circumstances where, for a moment, even in a crowd, I’d feel a certain sort of aloneness.

     It’s not even as if these feelings are negative, they are just other, and at odds with how I usually feel.  As an only child I have been used to being by myself, and I am happy to relate that I find myself jolly good company.  Usually.

     I value friendship and enjoy companionship.  I look forward to meeting people and talking is surely one of the great joys of being human!  I also appreciate space of my own and solitude. 

     Space to think, and to write.  Hence this!

 

Eat in Style!

 

 

The Christmas Meal conundrum has been solved.  We are going to eat in the middle of an Industrial Park!

     This is not quite so depressing as it sounds.  While my first statement is basically true and we are indeed going to be in an Industrial Area, the part we will be eating in is actually the site of a converted eleventh century hermitage, complete with outdoor crucifix, set in its own gardens with extensive foliage botting out the Industrial Units with which we will be surrounded.

     We have already sampled the culinary delights of the place, by going for a menu del dia yesterday, by way of evaluation.  Delicious meals were had by all, and we are much more jocose about the offerings on Christmas Day.  We have to choose a main course (the first course is a selection of shared tapas-like starters) and turkey does not figure at all – I am delighted to say.

     I rejoice in the opportunity to go to a restaurant for Christmas Meal as it means that no one in the family has to prepare the food and absolutely no one has to do the washing up afterwards!  And the price is not extortionate at all.

     To be strictly fair, although we had the menu del dia in the converted hermitage complete with stone floors and rough wooden beams, the Christmas Meal is going to be held in a rather more modern structure in the grounds that is obviously used for weddings and functions – we will however have views of the more architecturally interesting building while we eat in our more functional space.

     This is not the first time that I have been introduced to a hidden oasis of good food in something architecturally interesting as a while back Suzanne and I had a lunch in Barcelona in an unprepossessing part of the outskirts of the city, but the building cwtched away from the vulgarity of the main road was an absolute delight of semi-open air (it wasn’t winter!) with greenery and soft lighting and lovely (if expensive) food.

     Part of the joy of eating out is being surprised by quality – be it food, building or service.  Tasty memories!

     Although there will be a number of us eating, our party of eighteen is just one of many, I am hoping that the quality of the menu del dia will be strongly reflected in what we have to eat on The Day.

     After Christmas Day, the next problem is My Name Day, which is on the 26^th of December.  I think it would be presumptuous to urge everyone to go out for an equally expensive meal on the succeeding day to the excesses of the 25^th and, as the Name Day Person is supposed to pay for the meal for the family, I have no intention of spending hundreds of euros myself.  But the problem is where and with whom are we going to eat?

    As with all problems of this sort, it will be the payment of some of the cost of the final meal that will satisfy all!  I hope!

     Last Christmas didn’t really exist in any way linked to how the Day had been celebrated before.  This time round things are supposed to be a touch more normal.

     But, having said that, new rules have been announced that will require a Covid Vaccination Passport of some sort to be shown for entry into gyms, restaurants, bars etc.  If my understanding is correct this will be introduced from tonight and so tomorrow, I will have to show my vaccination information before I can have my swim.  I have had no information from my pool, and they are usually quick to keep us informed about the latest restrictions.  So, we will have to see what happens.

     I don’t want to travel into the Conspiracy Theorists territory, but I do worry about how much we are not being told about the full potential for disaster in this Pandemic.

     I have had my flu jab and my booster shot and so I am as protected as I reasonably can be, but the news that kids are now going to be vaccinated seems to indicate that we are nowhere near the end of this pandemic.

     And Christmas may pose problems, but the implications of people gathering together is something else.  I am wholeheartedly in support of passports and an insistence on the wearing of masks in all crowded places, but the stirrings of unrest about the ‘imposition’ of rules and regulations and the ‘taking away’ of individual freedom, are things that are going to make any easy resolution impossible.

 

Today my early morning swim was truncated because I had to go for a blood test – which meant queueing up (partly in the rain) while each health card was individually taken away, a sheet for the blood test results generated, and patients allowed in to wait their turn.

     It was all done relatively quickly, and it was certainly relatively painless, with only two test tubes of blood samples taken from me.  The interesting thing was when I attempted to make an appointment to have feedback on the results.

     I was not allowed to make an actual appointment, instead I was told that the doctor would contact me by phone on a particular day, “So keep the volume turned up!”

     Is this going to be the new normal?  No face-to-face appointments, with telephone links filling in.

     I know that in the UK there are plans to make telephone appointments, just that.  Your doctor will be available at the end of a line.  Given the number of ailments that have been supressed by patients during the pandemic, perhaps it is to be expected that medical staff are going to be under real pressure now that things appear to be loosening up.

     I think it is something to be concerned about.

 

 

I have been basking in the pleasure of a considerate gesture.   

     A lady who swims in the early morning with us is not well and she is confined to bed.  I was able to send her an sqb original card, and I included the famous quotation from The Three Musketeers, that she had used herself.  She was delighted with it and had the swimming pool give me her telephone number to express her thanks.

     As anyone learning a language will tell you, telephone calls in ‘foreign’ are taxing.  With my level of fluency in conversational Spanish, they are disaster areas.   

     Luckily, what was looked for in the telephone conversation that I eventually built up enough courage to make, was more conviviality and contact.  Her pleasure came over, as I stumbled my way through the requisite pleasantries.  It was good to speak to her and even better to know that in some small way my tiny gesture had helped.

     Soon may she reclaim her lane!

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow Irene arrives for a short stay.  As I have said before, friends who have moved away, or from whom you have moved, are missed – and oddly, they are missed even more after a meeting.  Their presence emphasises their absence!  But I am looking forward to drinking tea and chatting.  Those I do well!