Haven't we been here before?

HERE WE GO AGAIN: DAY 1, New ‘Lockdown’, FRIDAY.

 

 

 

It’s just as well that I went to the Opera on my birthday as I have just been informed via email that the next opera performance due on the 24^th of November, has been ‘postponed’ – as it is a concert performance of a juvenile Mozart opera composed when he was 14, I cannot say that I am devastated by the delay!  I am prepared to do some YouTube musical ‘homework’ to make its three-and-a-half hours of straight singing tolerable, as I find that even a slight acquaintanceship with the music of operas, I don’t know gives me a partial key to their enjoyment in performance! 

     At least there are always tunes in Mozart, and I do remember that I had a much-played record of music by Mozart written when he was in London at the age of 12, and that was intimidatingly excellent, so an opera composed after two long years of extra maturity from that music does demand attention! 

     After all, given Mozart’s short life, a Mozartian Year must be very different from those lived by mere musical mortals who tum-ti-tum along to the tunes!   

     The State of Emergency in Spain has been extended into next year in Parliament, so we are now in the ‘New new-normal’ as the restrictions get more and different.  At present we are under curfew (10pm-6am) with bars and restaurants closed.  As of today, those restrictions stay in place, but other closures have been added which include larger stores, shopping centres, places of entertainment like Opera Houses, and gymnasia, which includes my swimming pool.  There are further restrictions on movement with heightened restrictions during the weekend.

     This morning, for example, I could not go for my usual swim, but I was able to go for my normal bike ride which extends the length of the paso along the coast of Castelldefels.  At the southern limit of the city it actually extends into the jurisdiction of Sitges.  There was no problem about that today, but on Saturday and Sunday I will be restricted from completing the final length as Sitges will be out of bounds. 

     We also live on the ‘border’ with Gava to the north and tomorrow the stretch of the paseo along the Gava coast will also be out of bounds.  In the previous lockdowns there were police stationed at the invisible borders of our town to enforce the ban. 

     There will also be police on the approach roads to the beach part of Castelldefels as the weekends are usually the time when people from Barcelona city come to visit.  Gava and Castelldefels are the coastal resorts of choice for the city dwellers and the police are going to have their work cut out if they are going to try and stop all of the visitors that we are likely to have.

     Obviously, all this inconvenience is designed to stop the spread of the virus, but all of the measures are going to be pointless if the general population doesn’t get behind the restrictions.

     Since February we have been subject to a bewildering array of instructions, some of which seem to be ‘arbitrary’ to put it mildly.  We are constantly told that proximity is the most important factor in the spread of Covid and yet schools are still open.  Buses are still running, as is the Metro and the train system.  Shops have limits, but most shops now do not have dedicated assistants restricting entry. 

     The “if this, then why not that” approach to instructions is making following them difficult, and the shameful dinner of 150 politicians and the assorted Good and Great, is a calculated spit in the face of the ordinary joe trying to follow the rules where for us gatherings of more than 6, and closed bars and restaurants are the norm.  The Minister for Health was one of the attendees at this rule-breaking gathering, giving yet another example of “One rule for us another for them” approach to governing.  And yet, with breath-taking hypocrisy these discredited chancer politicians still appear on the TV and in Parliament giving voice to rules that they do not follow themselves.

 

I’ve now been told, or rather I’ve been “I thinked” by Toni that my bike ride tomorrow on Saturday is OK because I am going to adjoining municipality and that is allowed.  But certainty?  None.  I will try it out tomorrow and when I am stopped by the police, I will know the limits to my activity.

     As I didn’t have a swim this morning, I went out on a second bike ride taking the Gava paseo as my route.  It was pleasantly empty with only a few hardy walkers and riders.  One even hardier gentleman was sunbathing on the beach.  The sun is out, but there is a sea breeze that tells you that you are in the month of October, and towards the end of that month as well.  But ‘Bravo!’ for a stronger determination that even I have to keep summer alive – my continued wearing of T-shirt, shorts and sandals seems positively overdressed compared to the nakedness of the beach devotee!

 

The situation in the UK appears to be getting even worse than it is here.  The piecemeal tiered approach is more geared to commercial concerns than human ones; the projections for British deaths over the winter is horrific; the government is a sick joke.  But perhaps I am being unfair.  My country of Wales seems to have taken difficult but hopefully effective drastic measures, as have the other constituent nations of the UK, with the signal exception of England.  I fear that Johnson and his third-raters in the Conservative Party put politics and survival of their ‘brand’ above the human cost of failed policies.  And just to make my cynical misery complete the fiscal here in Spain has archived or shelved any criminal action against the ex-king in relation to his shady dealing and less than honest behaviour.  It makes you weep.  That same disgraced ex-king once famously proclaimed that, “Justice is the same for everybody!”  How hollow that sounds today as he skulks away in some undemocratic eastern kingdom.  What a shower of shits our ‘ruling’ classes are!

 

Still, any day at the end of October in which anyone can even think about divesting themselves of clothing and sunbathing next to the Med, has to be positive. 

     Long live the sun!

Indifferent day, indifferent thoughts

         

An odd day today, it is not warm, but it certainly isn’t cold.  It is overcast and the Med has a North Sea look with waves that are much larger than usual, though there is no wind and few hits of a storm.  The sea is an almost monochrome grey-blue and when I was riding along the paseo there was a sea mist which blended horizon and water and where the cold white breaking waves looked almost theatrical in their contrast with the surrounding drabness.  It looked bleakly beautiful and there were isolated figures on the beach which gave a cinematographic look to my vistas from the saddle of the bike and it was easy to enjoy the visuals because there was no cold cost of being out in the bleakness, when it wasn’t really bleak!

     As the restaurants and cafes are closed the emptiness of the streets echoes the deserted beach.  On an inclement day one can imagine oneself back to the strict lockdown of March or April.  As I typed that a solitary magpie swooped over the trees that I can see from my desk on the third floor.  Is that an example of the pathetic fallacy: linking a harbinger of bad luck with lockdown?  Or does it always have to be the weather?  If it is the weather, then the slightly other-worldly climate at the moment is doing its bit!

 

Toni and I have been bewailing the lack of restaurants and the fact that we cannot go out for a menu del dia, I bring that up because of the vote by the Conservative Party in refusing to continue the provision of free school meals during the holidays.   

     I made the mistake of reading what some of the Nasty Party’s adherents said in justifying their decision and I was transported back to the unregenerate days of Dickensian blaming the poor for their situation and not wanting to mollycoddle them so that they would be too weak to make the effort to improve their position by their own efforts.

     I have never, ever been a Conservative voter, and the last member of that benighted party for whom I had even a scintilla of respect was Iain Macleod (hated by the even further right wing of the Conservative Party as being “too clever by half”) and he had the good grace to die a month into Heath’s government so that he wasn’t further tainted by the steady descent to contemptibility that had started with Home.  I think that my ‘respect’ for him was coloured by the fact that I was very young and he seemed like an intellectual threat to the comfortable leftish-wing politics that the young teenage me adopted.

    So, in 2020 there is no character in the present government with even a shadow of the moral, intellectual and political nous of the late Iain Macleod and everything that they do and say increases my contempt for them.  Where are the people with the moral standing (!) of a John Profumo (!) in this cabinet of Political Caligaris?  The third-rate chancers that make up the U-turning incompetents that govern the UK make me ashamed to be British. 

     The USA, UK, Brazil, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, as well as many others around the world are forming a distasteful group of countries that seem more and more distant from any ideals of democracy and decency that I understand to be motivators for decent political government.   

     At least the people of the USA have the opportunity to dump Trump and return to some sort of joined-up thinking, whereas we have YEARS of Johnson and his rabble before he can be cast into the infamy of history.

     How many people SO FAR have been killed by the incompetence of Johnson’s government?  Given the Conservatives’ atrocious handling of the pandemic, what chance is there that the looming disaster of Brexit is going to be overseen with compassion, understanding and efficiency? 

     How many more hungry children will it take for Conservatives to act with simple humanity?

       Look to the history of the Conservative Party for your answer.

Why can't life be as it was?

 

It is amazing how far the quality of an experience can be changed by the omission of a cup of tea.

     I realize that the British obsession with our national hot beverage (not a leaf of which, with the exception of the botanical gardens in Kew, is grown in the country) is somewhat difficult for those not of a British persuasion to understand. 

     It is further complicated by our insistence that the milk be cold not boiling when added to the brew.  “Why,” my foreign friends ask, “would you do that?”  To ask such a question, almost by definition, defies an answer.  Where, one asks oneself, does one start when confronted by such levels of Philistinism?

     Anyway, at the end of my morning swim I am accustomed to make my way to the outside seating of the adjoining café and have a cup of tea and one made to my exacting standards of a mixture of Earl Gray and English Breakfast, and a brew that, when the milk is added the resultant colour is of a depth that my father would have found acceptable – though for him to be enthusiastic about a cup of tea it would have to be one of such strength that, “the tea spoon could stand up in it!”  My normal cup of tea does not aspire to such flavoursome heights, but it does emphatically not look like the usual anaemic liquids served opening masquerading as tea in this country.

     I swim a metric mile, that is sixty lengths of our 25m pool.  I go up and down, and up and down, accompanied only by the sound of my exhaled breath bubbling against my stoppered ears and seeing very little in the myopic blur in which I swim – having recently given up wearing contact lenses because they irritated me.  So, in the monotony of length swimming, the idea of a nice cup of tea waiting as a reward for early morning exertion is something to keep you going.

     But for the next fortnight, the café is closed except for ‘take-away’ and the idea of drinking my tea from a paper cup standing next to my bike is not something that appeals.  So, swim finished, dressed, straight out onto bike for the ride down to Port Ginesta and back. 

     It all seems a little earnest without the frivolity of tea, and it is, furthermore, while sipping my tea that I jot down ideas in my notebook.  I could, of course, jot down notes at any time, but the time just seems to melt away when you are breaking routine to get something done.  Notes are for post-swim tea drinking, not sitting in the comfort of an armchair later in the day.  And, after all, it’s only for a fortnight.

     And therein lies the rub.  I do not think that this closing of bars and restaurants is going to be sufficient to deal with the upsurge in number of infections.  I think that this partial lockdown is more a function of political cowardice and real fear over the financial consequences rather than a science-based solution.  It seems to me that this is just a softening-up of an already tired and fed up electorate before something more drastic will be forced to take its place.

     Although we are informed that there are over 170 trials of possible vaccines in operation and that by the end of the year there should be clear indications of likely candidate vaccines to roll out for the general population by early January, the more convincing voices has warned that the simple logistics of the immunization exercise make it unlikely that the PBI will get protection before the summer of 2012.  Given what we have packed into the past months of 2020, the summer of 2021 seems a hell of a long way away, and our political leadership has been shaky to put it at its mildest!

     Still, life goes on defiantly with people eagerly accepting ever changing versions of what New Normal might mean.

     One example of this might be the new way to celebrate distanced occasions.  Today is the Name Day of Toni’s sister and she has suggested that we have a distanced meal with her paying for a delivery of a menu del dia from one of our chosen restaurants here in Castelldefels because we are unable to go up to Terrassa and, anyway there would be more than six of us celebrating.  I will let you know how this works out, but it is only a development of on-line presents where, with Amazon Prime, it is cheaper to send something via Amazon than buy it yourself and send it yourself.

      Noticed on television last night that there were adverts for one of our largest Department Stores, El Corte Ingles, where they were saying that an on-line purchase could be delivered free of charge (?) within a couple of hours!  This is throwing down the gauntlet to Amazon and it will be interesting to see how it all works out. 

     For shops here in Castelldefels, unless they get themselves organized via the web to do deliveries they are going to go out of business.  The smaller shops will need help, perhaps via a sort of city version of a localized Amazon system, but unless something dramatic is done the whole commercial basis of city shopping is going to implode.

 

One of the lead items on the Catalan News was the fact that Wales has decided to impose a new/old stringent lockdown.  It may be the first in Western Europe to do so, but I do fear that it will not be the last.

     The tiered approach in England looks and sounds like an unsatisfactory compromise and the dump of documentation from SAGE telling the politicos that a short sharp shock was needed makes the shambolic behaviour of this totally discredited Conservative ‘government’ look even more mendacious that we already knew it to be.

     Johnson is quite prepared to sacrifice lives rather than face up to his political responsibilities.  He, and his cabinet of all the talentless, are despicable.  And once again I make the plea for someone, anyone, to bring a charge of Corporate Manslaughter against him and his Brexiteer accomplices as they continue their ‘systematic’ attacks on the people and institutions of the United Kingdom.

    

Blood should be on the inside!

 

When the event in your life that you are looking forward to is the inauguration of a new container for your daily pills, then I might suggest that your standard for a new experience is Lockdown Limited. 

     We have become used to accepting the more quotidian in place of the exceptional, because what we used to take for granted: visiting new places, meeting friends and family, eating out – all have become more problematical with the see-sawing restrictions that we have had to live with for the last eight months or so.

     But my day was about to become more eventful, though not intentionally so. 

I had to get a new supply of my pills from our local pharmacist and I incorporated that chore as the finale in my morning exercise.

     Having completed my morning swim, I emerged into the morning sunshine to find that the outside seating area of the café part of the pool had been converted into one large ‘crime scene’, with the striped plastic tape making sure that all the tables and chairs were out of commission. 

     The café is now a take-away establishment only and, as one regular said, “What am I supposed to do?  Buy a take-away coffee and walk around the block drinking it, before I get back into my car?”

     So, bereft of my bocadillo and cup of tea (a mixture of Earl Grey and English Breakfast, they know how I like it) I set out on my bike ride down to Port Ginesta intending to call in to the pharmacy near our house on my return.

     It was cold.  Although I am still wearing T-shirt and shorts with the essential sandals, I am getting to the stage where long sleeved shirts and gloves are going to be a necessity.

     I arrived at a fairly deserted pharmacy that is part of a commercial development that includes garage, shops and restaurants – that, given the new lockdown regulations, were not generally open.

     I attempted to dismount from my bike, but after a 15km ride (well, it’s a lot for me!) and what with the cold, I was a little stiff and I unbalanced and brought the bike down on myself.

     As I have previously had occasion to explain my bike is fat wheeled and heavy, so trapped by gravity and a solid metal frame I hurtled to the ground!

     I was more shocked than in pain – though there was pain as well – and, as there were no people around I sprawled on the ground, trapped by the bike and weighed down by my backpack and felt truly helpless!

     I eventually disengaged myself and dragged by bloody way into the pharmacy, bleeding from both knees, my left elbow and, oddly, right foot.  The pharmacist noticed nothing and so, somewhat shocked with bloody track lines streaking down my legs, I collected my pills.  And cycled home – easier than wheeling the bike.

     My arrival back in the house was dramatic as the amount of blood on legs and feet made the wounds look much more dramatic than they were.  Dabbing away the excess revealed the cuts’ actual extent and emergency treatment with TCP commenced at once.

     The impressive bruise on the side of my knee has now deflated and I am left with seeping and pain.  In my usual way of dealing with infirmity of any sort, I took to my bed for a few hours to allow my body to do whatever it is that it does in times of stress.  And now it is time for another cup of tea and some light reading.

     I have decided to give the pool a miss for the weekend to allow the scabs to form and, anyway, I think my fellow swimmers might be a little disconcerted in the time of a pandemic to see me wandering around with open wounds!  Well, open-ish, and more like cuts to be absolutely truthful, but I am prepared to milk whatever sympathy I can get.

      Meanwhile I fully intend to be ‘palely loitering’ for the duration of the weekend and emerge revivified on Monday!

    

Here we go again!

From tomorrow evening all bars and restaurants in Catalonia will be closed until the end of the month.  The restaurants will be able to operate on a take-out basis but it is going to look awfully like the lockdown of the hard days of early spring.

     Gyms (and presumably swimming pools) will be open but capacity is cut to 30% - whatever that means.  At the moment swimming in our pool is restricted to pre-booking and ten swimmers per hour, so I am assuming that will stay the same.

     Although we have some information of the wider details of the restrictions, we are still not clear about what rules apply to transport, meeting people, shopping etc etc etc.

     At the height of the lockdown here in Catalonia we were not allowed out of our houses except for essential journeys to get food and medicines.  Exercise outside your home was only for those with dogs who were allowed to take them outside by no further than 100 metres or so.  I don’t want to go over any more of the restrictions because, with their severity, we thought we had done all that was necessary to get the virus under control.  Wishful thinking!

     From what we understand so far, in that foggy confusion that has become a staple of governmental information during this pandemic, we are going to have to go through a sort of lockdown-lite with only memories of our previous experiences to keep us happy that the restrictions are not that bad!

     The one great difference this time round is the date.  We were in lockdown in the spring and now it is autumn.  Last night it rained and this morning was dark and damp.  Admittedly, it did get somewhat better during the day and we had some sunshine but the immediate forecast is not encouraging and there is something dire about being restricted in drizzle!

     As far as I can tell I will be able to continue my bike rides each morning and, as my route takes me along the side of the beach I am able to see the horizon – and that is good for the soul. 

     And I think over the next few months we are going to have a pressing need to find things that feed our souls and keep us safe.

Autumn exercise

 

 

Not only was I able to have a pot of tea on the terrace of the third floor, but I was also able to have it stripped to the half, luxuriating in the sunshine and even feeling that slight skin-prickle that suggests that you might be overdoing the exposure!  And that after a night of quite unnecessarily demonstrative rain.

Our rain water drainage in Castelldefels is woefully inadequate and so we have to navigate (a quite apt word) sudden finger lakes stretching the length of gutters.  Other low-lying areas have more considerable expanses of water, but a regular cyclist with well worn routes, I know the danger areas and I am more than prepared and now that I have (at long, long last) my throttle attachment for my bike I am able to whisk my way to relative dryness while avoiding on-coming cars.

The only real problem is the section of the cycle lane along the front that is technically in Sitges.  Given the rather odd geography of the Sitges region it does mean that the ostensible ‘end’ of Castelldefels to the south is not actually in Castelldefels, but administratively it is in Sitges which is, in reality about twenty-minute drive away through tunnels.  Anyway, for cyclists who want a level surface and a view of the sea Castelldefels allows us to cycle along the Paseo next to the beach, until at the end of one section of the resort, the Paseo moves out to run parallel with the Maritime road.  On this particular section of the Paseo we cyclists have a dedicated cycle lane.

Having a dedicated cycle lane does not mean that all cyclists use it and keep the paseo free for pedestrians.  I must admit that when I am cycling (in the dedicated cycling lane) I share the irritation of pedestrians who have to put up with sometimes recklessly rapid cyclists weaving their way through people rather than using a relatively empty cycle lane.  This particular section of the cycle lane is in Castelldefels and is smooth and well maintained.

When you get to ‘Sitges’ the story is rather different.  During the full lockdown of the earlier part of the year the number of cyclists expanded exponentially.  Cars were infrequent and cyclists came into their own.  The dedicated cycle lane ran out at the end section of Castelldefels/Sitges and so you were forced on to the Paseo until you got to Port Ginester and the end of the bay.

The municipal solution was to create a cycle lane by using the car parking strip on the left side of the road next to the paseo as a sudden bike lane.  This was done by putting a line of rubber bumps on the outside of the lane, painting a middle line for two-way traffic and cementing the gutter area to make it sort-of level.  This means that the part of the lane next to the Paseo is ‘a bit bumpy’ to put it mildly and, although a few drains have been left in situ they are woefully inadequate and they form disconcerting obstacles.  This means, of course, that after rain there are thin gutter lakes to negotiate.  What this means in practice is that everyone uses the outside lane next to the traffic and only veers into the gutter lane if they absolutely have to.

Sometimes it takes very steady nerves and a firm belief in your right, to maintain your position when one of those so-called professional bike riders comes hurtling towards you in ‘your’ lane.  You are relying on their ability to swerve into rectitude and regain their proper lane before they hit you.

I am not a confident bike rider.  I am, I think quite reasonably, apprehensive when on the road.  I am acutely aware that all it takes is the slightest touch from a larger vehicle to unsettle me and then you discover just how unprotected the normal bike rider is.  Obviously, I wear a helmet and I am punctilious about using lights when necessary, but riding is precarious and I have a lively understanding of what might happen if another road user is unwary.  I also, as a car user, know just how loathed we bike riders are.

The first question asked in the old Highway Code was, “For whom is the Highway Code written?” to which the answer was, “For all road users, motorists, cyclists, pedestrians etc.”  The worst road users are, without doubt, pedestrians.  They are reckless, inconsiderate, suicidal, idiotic and most of the time they don’t actually realize that they are road users at all.  Then in descending order of awfulness come electric scooters, motor scooters, motorbikes and bicycles.  Everyone hates skateboards.  And rightly so.

There are, of course, different types of cyclists.  I am one of the sit-up-and-beg cyclists, back straight looking like a superannuated clergy man from the 1950s.  I wear a T-shirt when the weather is hot and a wind cheater with hood when it isn’t.  My bike is a MATE X 250, and is coloured what they describe as ‘burn orange’ and I describe as red.  It is electric and has ‘fat’ wheels, eight gears and hydraulic brakes.  It looks impressive and, in spite of MATE’s god-awful customer service, I like it.  I travel at a sedate power-assisted rate and thoroughly enjoy my daily 11 kilometers or so along pleasantly level and fairly safe routes.  I am not a ‘real’ cyclist.

‘Real’ cyclists are inconsiderate bastards.  They wear wildly inappropriate, unflattering clothing as if none of them have significant others to tell them that Lycra does nothing for them.  They also look diseased as they affect those skin-tight shirts with various hidden pockets where they can secrete the impedimenta necessary for their progress on their thin, thin wheels.  They also wear ‘serious’ helmets which make them look as though they have inexplicably attached a row of sausages to their heads in the name of safety.

And talking of safety, these ‘professional’ riders scorn the word.  They weave in and out at high speed insinuating their way into spaces that don’t exist to the ‘unprofessional’ eye.  They ignore traffic lights, ‘no entry’ signs and ‘one way’ prohibitions, they over-take or under-take with no warning and with no indication that they might be followed by hundreds of other bikes.  They pass too close and far too quickly, their lane discipline is non-existent and they assume that no other traffic exists.

I know that the preceding is grotesque generalization and the majority of riders are considerate and fair.  But that is not how it seems when you are actually cycling.  It is only in the calm after the ride that reason takes over again!

So, back to the gutter-lakes.

The ‘Sitges’ section of the bike lane is long and straight, you can see a long way ahead and plan accordingly.  When I am making my way back home from Port Ginester (in the wrong part of the lane because of the bumpy concrete apology of a surface) I can see any cyclists making towards me, I can check the proximity of gutter-lakes and plan my speed to avoid splashing my way through.  Normally, this works out fairly well a gentle increase or decrease in speed means that the passing is without incident.  Not everyone has my consideration and I have experienced those who think that the onus in on me to get out of the way in my lane to give more space to the cyclists who think that they have a god given right to pull out, when what they should actually do is stop.

As motorists, you will also have experienced this: motorists pulling out behind stopped buses and gong into the other lane in spite of the fact that they can see you approaching in the other direction.  They should just bloody well wait!  What are they doing that is so important that it requires them to risk injury to gain a few seconds that they will lose at the next set of traffic lights?  But then logic has never been the driving feature of, well, driving!

Part of my problem, of course, is that the sedate speed that I adopt allows me time to observe my surroundings and my fellow road users and, let’s face it, observation is often condemnation.  At least for me it is!

 

I finished off the Suzanne Collins prequel to The Hunger Games and I think that it will make an excellent film - surely it was written with that in mind?  The ending was clever and allowed the reader of The Hunger Games to tick a few more boxes of the pre-knowledge details that makes any prequel engaging.  I would recommend The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.  I think that the actual ending of the novel might divide opinion, but I thought it was an interesting and appropriate culmination of what is a very long novel.  And don’t we always, sometimes secretly, like the baddies in literature rather than the heroes and heroines?  And Snow has legs, and Collins make the most of them!