After
much debate with myself, I finally forced myself from my seductive bed and
started the preparations for my early morning swim. These preparations take the form of preparing
for very little: a quick rinse and a brushing of my teeth and then off to the
pool where a later shower and shave can be done after the swim.
As this was the weekend (the day after my
non-examination for Catalan) the pool opens an hour later, so I do have what
amounts to a technical lie-in. Bike to
pool and the gates still locked. This is
nothing new, as the gates are opened on the dot of the hour rather than
before. What was more disturbing was
that the lights in the café were not on.
And there were no other early swimmers waiting. Ominous.
Suspecting the reason for this situation,
I decided to continue my bike ride down the road for a little jaunt and then
see what was happening on my return when the appointed hour for the opening
would have passed.
Nothing!
Obviously the place was not opening.
Nothing daunted I decided to make a virtue of necessity and go home via
one of my ‘bike rides’ to Gavá. Not only
does this ride have the advantage of a bike lane virtually all the way, but it
is also next to the sea.
On my return home I texted Toni (who is in
Terrassa for the weekend) telling him the news that the pool was closed.
Last night Toni had texted me saying that
we needed to stock up on food and essential supplies, but as he had the car the
re-provision was up to him. What we both
did not fully comprehend was that the situation here in Catalonia had taken a
more serious turn.
This morning after checking various news
outlets and seeing an explanation of the Generalitat’s new orders, I realized
that Catalonia has taken Draconian measures to combat Covid-19.
Shops (apart from food shops and medical
supplies shops) are now closed, as are gyms, pools, theatres, museums, clubs,
day centres, bars restaurants, libraries, schools, colleges, universities,
cinemas, sporting events. Travel is not
recommended. Basically we are confined
to our homes except for essential purchases.
For the next two weeks (at least) life in Catalonia is going to be very
different and the Internet is awash with lists of films, books, and TV series
to read and watch to keep some form of sanity during our incarceration!
On the other hand, yesterday saw the
arrival of another of my ‘presents’ from Kickstarter. The wonderful thing about these start-up
sites is that if you support them you have paid for what you are going to
receive so far in advance that when the object of your purchase finally arrives
it seems to be sort-of ‘free’! Don’t
know it, this is the sort of logic that has kept me level(ish) for most of my
life!
My latest acquisition is going to drive
Toni up the wall. It is a combined robot
cleaner that can do the normal Hoovering, but this little beauty can also
mop! To enable this it has a sort of
home station that looks like a clinical waste bin and contains the charging
station and the reservoir of water and the ‘dirty water’ tank. And it works!
The only thing that doesn’t seem to be operational is the app that
stubbornly refuses to open for me.
Why, you may well ask, do you need an app.
to hoover and mop? But, there again, to
ask such a question indicates that the last ten years have passed you by. What doesn’t need an app these days? And, I understand that the machine is able to
map the rooms to facilitate optimum cleaning, and I further understand that the
app will allow me to order the machine to do all sorts of things that I will
probably never be competent enough to understand let alone operate! But if it exists, then I want it.
The only thing about the machine that I do
not like is the fact that I have to change the brushes to the mops
manually. This is not a difficult
operation, it takes seconds, but the fact that I have to do it somehow lessens
the robotic delight in the whole enterprise!
But only a bit.
It strikes me, as I sit here in the living
room typing this, that I am delighting in yet another Kickstarter purchase as I
write.
As I was having my post bike ride cup of
tea and while checking through my emails and deleting those of no interest, I
noted that Amazon has sent me a message the aim of which was to make me feel
better about being a paid up member of Amazon Prime, by reminding me that
umpteen pieces of music were mine for the hearing at no extra cost to that
which I had already paid.
Whenever I go on a music website or music
streaming site or whatever, my test of its worth is to check how many pieces by
Carl Nielsen it has. So, having duly put
in Nielsen’s name I looked at the selection it produced – and was reasonably
impressed. I think it is more than
likely that in Castelldefels I have the most extensive collection of Nielsen’s
music – I fear there would not be that many competitors – so I can look at
offerings from sites with an informed eye!
I could not of course resist listening to
a selection and rapidly became irritated with the excellent, but limited
reception offered by my phone so I decided to get a loudspeaker. But not just any old wi-fi loudspeaker (and I
have a mini Bose, amongst others) but the most recent purchase from Kickstarter
(at least in audio, my mop is the most recent) and that is a pair of
headphones. Wi-fi of course, but the USP
of these is that the earpieces of the headphones can be twisted outwards and
they transform into speakers! Turn them
back inwards, into their more conventional configuration and they become headphones
– and are thus able to counteract the noise from the noisy transformation of
the house next door!
Ah excessive technology, what would I do
without you!
