Having finally found somewhere reasonable to have our Christmas Meal, the conversation and concern has now veered towards the advisability of taking up the reservation and actually turning up there.
The description of the inexorable international advance of the Omicron Variant, and more especially the way in which the disturbing news is being treated in a frighteningly reasonable way, are true causes for concern.
Taking the Johnsonian and ‘10’-idian approach as being ipso facto wrong because it is emanating from such laughably untrustworthy sources, we can assume that the ‘Christmas as normal’ advice is profoundly and totally unacceptable. It therefore leaves reasonable people (i.e., those that didn’t vote for Brexit or the bloody Conservatives) debating the choices.
And what the choices are for Christmas, are by no means clear.
At one end of the operational scale there is the lockdown. A reversion to the restricted days of only emerging from house isolation for essential shopping. Or some version of ‘lockdown lite’ where there is freer movement, but the meeting of anyone outside your bubble is to be frowned on.
The Christmas Meal will involve extended family and close family: parents, aunts, cousins, and their children. But this will be in a setting where there are others from outside this tight little group in the Functions Hall of a restaurant.
Even with The Family we do not have a day-to-day physical proximity. All the adults have been (at least) double jabbed, but there are kids, some of whom are under the age of ten, and therefore presumably not injected. What does vaccine safety mean in those circumstances?
There are also the festivities of Christmas Eve (in Catalonia the traditional time to give out presents) and the traditional lunch of St Stephen’s Day, during which I expect to receive presents for my Name Day! No plans for either of these days has yet been shared with me, so what will happen then is just up to my lurid imagination!
The more the authorities do not give us anything like the full picture of what is actually going on in the world of the pandemic, the more I feel that we have to take pro-active steps to protect ourselves from what is probably happening that they are not telling us about.
But most of me believes that what will actually happen for the festive season is that we will speculate away before, during and after the event – and only with hindsight will we know if our masterly inaction was justified!
I have taken the first step in junking my socialist principles, by looking at a list of sites on the web that offer a consultation with a specialist for about 50€. I have worked out that I cannot reasonably wait about a year for a consultation and then another year before anything is done. With the way things are going that would mean that I would have to camp out under the house to avoid having to go up and down stairs all the time. This is something I am not going to do.
I have discovered that the ‘telephone consultation’ with my doctor that follows my recent blood test was not within a couple of days as I had thought when I was told that that the call would be on the 16th, but rather yes, the 16th, but of the next month. As I waited a week or so for the call to be made before going to the health centre to find out why it hadn’t happened, the gap between my first expectation and reality is considerably narrower, and I have to wait only two further weeks for it to occur.
I am going to have to try and find out what, reasonably, I can expect from the Health System and then work with what I have to find a solution that is physically acceptable.
Just to put things into some sort of perspective, I was speaking with a friend this morning who had had liver cancer and who had treatment not only here in Barcelona but also in America. The treatment in America cost 44k dollars. OK, the treatment was cutting edge and for cancer, whereas my operations will be orthopaedic, with more carpentry than anything else about them. But such a sum gives one pause for thought. And encourages an acceptable pause in treatment if it means that it can be done on the national health of Catalonia!
But I am flailing about in the financial unknown dark at the moment as I have no certain knowledge of what exactly is wrong with my knees, and secondly what exactly will have to be done in order to make them more acceptable. I have few illusions about them being transformed into good-as-new, but I will settle for less painful.
One thing I do know is that I will have to lose weight. This has been a perennial cry for medics and one that I will have to take incredibly seriously from now on. Which is depressing.
I have recently discovered (or should that be re-discovered) a book for recipes for diabetics. This could be a double advantage find, as it offers not only good wholesome recipes of limited calories, but also as it is written in Spanish, it can only aid and succour my present attempts to learn the language. Again.
Toni has managed to be first in each of the leagues in which he has been placed, while I have won one (you see, I used the word ‘won’ as if my language course was some sort of competition!) and been placed in the ‘Top 3’ in two others and finished in the promotion area in the rest.
Toni is thousands of points (literally) ahead of his presumptuous challenger in second place, whereas in my league the leaders are more equitably spaced so that there is a certain amount of jostling for the top three places. At the moment I am placed second, but with learners 3 and 4 within double figures places of me. All is to play (see, I’m using exactly the language the app wants me to use) for – with three days to go before the competitors in the Sapphire League see whether they have made it into the Ruby League!
As time goes on the league in which you find yourself is more and more likely to be composed of people who have made a concerted effort to be promoted (demotion is also a possibility if your work rate slows) so the pressure on you to strive is more and more pronounced. Even as I am sucked in, I can take a moment to admire the automated structure that electronically pushes my buttons!
Talking of pushing buttons, I must give a call out to the animated series on Netflix, Arcane. The nine episodes so far have been gripping. This is high quality animation with artwork of cinematographic sophistication.
The narrative is apparently backstory and origins of characters in some sort of arcade (are they still called that?) game of which, of course, I had not heard.
Although the conflicts that animate the narrative are tried and tested: magic/science; rich/poor; privilege/powerlessness; strength/weakness; morality/practicality; law/lawlessness; drugs/sobriety; politics/truth; war/peace; etc etc the progress of the story line uses strong characterisation and allows individuals to develop within a taut narrative.
Well worth watching.
