All
my life (except for one brief flirtation with the showy radical charms of The
Independent) I have been a Guardian reader.
I know that, in many ways, I am a typical Guardian aficionado: wishy-washy-left-wingy-middle-classy
what have you. Every morning I do the
Quick Crossword and read (nowadays) virtually everything.
And that is the problem.
After twenty minutes of headlines and
leading articles I have virtually lost the will to live. The unrelentingly negative news about the
duplicity and mendacity of our political leaders; the ravages of Covid-19 and
its increasing devastation in the Developing World; Brexit; Trump; the Spanish
and Catalan economies and the continuing disaster of the lockdown; the building
work next door; the closure of the Liceu; the continuation of my Catalan
lessons. Everything works together to
depress.
But, as one astute friends remarked, “You
are almost enjoying this, aren’t you?”
And, yes, apart from the inability to go for my daily swim, the forcing
myself on my own resources is not something that I dislike! Obviously the reasons for the change in life
style are appalling and I am horrified by the loss of life and the descent into
poverty for so many in the world as their life line of occupation is modified
or taken away – but I am able to count my blessings, and my personal
circumstances are so much better than many.
What is difficult is balancing my present
‘fortunate’ position with the more than negative circumstances of so many
others. Reducing myself to misery
reading about the privations of others, mixed with sharp guilt because I am not
‘suffering’ like so many, is essentially an arid waste of limited joie de
vivre.
Why
as the Health Secretary not resigned?
Touchy little Matt who was offended by the ‘tone’ of a shadow
spokesperson’s pertinent question about his and his government’s shortcomings obviously
lied about achieving 100k tests by laughably inflating the testing figures and for
the last three days the total has fallen below his self-set target. If he had an ounce of decency he would go;
but one has to remember that he joined Johnson’s government in spite of what he
had said previously, so he has no decency.
What I find most objectionable is that ministers
behave as though they are playing a game of ‘deflect the blame’, using words to
hide the yawning gaps in health care provision and what they do not seem to
understand is that people, actual, real people, are dying because of their
actions, inactions and wordiness.
Every day brings new scandals, new
statistics, new depths to which the government effortlessly sinks.
I
went out for a bike ride this evening in ‘our’ time slot and noticed only one
obviously illegal Plague Kid out and about, together with a number of marginal
looking ‘kids’ who if they are supposed to be 14 plus to be in our group were
marginal to say the least.
I enjoy my jaunt up to the end of the
coastal road in Gavá, because I always end up feeling pleasantly, resentfully
irritated by the entirely predictable poor behaviour of pedestrians and their
encroachment on our cycling lanes. These
lanes are clearly marked with white lines and little logos of bikes and
pedestrians should stay out. But they
don’t.
The really irritating ones are those that
walk deliberately on the outside white line of our double lanes and look pained
when you don’t deviate from your painted path and force them (usually) to give
way.
People walk backwards into the lanes,
allow their dogs to meander on absurdly long leads, let kids go on toy cycles
and scooters, have conversations in the middle of the lanes and on and on.
The worst offenders are of course
runners. It is a bike lane and not a
runner’s lane – but runners seem to believe that they are in a different moral
universe to the rest of us.
In the interests of fairness and truth, I
have to admit that some cyclists are just as obnoxious, showing little to no
concern for pedestrians and ostentatiously riding in the pedestrian part of the
road. Alas! If we were all judged by our total behaviour,
who would ‘scape whipping!
But I find that, factoring in the
irritation, it is an excellent and not too long ride with plenty to see and, as
I pride myself on being a considerate cyclist, I end up slightly tired with a
warm sense of superiority at the end of my journey. And, and this is the key difference between
myself and most of the other bike riders, I use my lights!
Sigh!
