I continue to be frustrated by the Catalan approach to
time.
I have
given up trying to work out exactly the logic behind the opening and closing of
shops and the continuation of some restaurants in staying open in spite of
their cavalier attitude towards economics is mystifying to say the least, but I
did think that I had the opening times of my swimming pool securely in my mind.
Obviously
during the more severe stages of the lockdown the pool was not open, and in the
transition period from when it was open to the relative freedom of Phase
Whatever The Hell We Are In Now there was a certain ad hoc nature of the time
when we were let in for our regulated swims.
But the time did settle down to 8 am – the time, in the Old Days BC
(before Covid) for the weekend opening times, the normal weekday opening time
being 7 am.
When we
reached the present phase the opening time reverted to 7 pm, the showers were
available for use and things appeared to be shaping up to be an acceptable New
Normal. Until San Juan. As a recognized festival, this meant that
opening time would be later, delayed until the weekend opening i.e. 8 am.
Today,
therefore, I had the luxury of a lie-in, or at least I would have if my
built-in clock had not demanded that I wake up at my accustomed time, and I
organized myself by setting off the robots to do the cleaning, making my cup of
tea and doing a few of the clues in the Guardian Quick Crossword. I made good time on my bike and I was at the
gate to the pool by just before 8 am.
Unlike everyone else. I was
alone.
OK, I
thought, I will give them a few minutes to open up on the hour by going off on
a little bike ride, making sure this time that I remembered to tell my watch
that I was doing part of my exercise.
Too often I set off without pressing the right buttons to inform my
watch to check my progress. A little
jaunt down the road and back again. And
nobody.
I therefore
made the executive decision that the time-honoured time for festive opening had
somehow been delayed by an hour and so I would do my post swim bike ride,
pre. Which I did and made good time to
get back to the pool just before 9 am.
And there
was nobody there.
But at
least this time, the gate was open and there were a couple of people sitting
around the outside tables of the café.
But there were no people in reception and the café was closed.
Eventually
the shutters of the café opened, and Mario emerged to inform us that the
opening time was 10 am for the pool.
As I had my
phone and my notebook (and asked Mario to bring me a cup of tea) a wait of an
hour was as nothing and I finished the crossword and wrote a number of pages of
quotidian rubbish in my notebook.
My swim
over, I had a second cup of tea and wrote further pages in my notebook and felt
well satisfied and smug. I declined to
go on a further bike ride as the battery level on my bike had progressed to the
single digit red number and I had no intention of being caught far from home
with only pedal power to get me back!
It has been a beautiful day with only the screaming
children lessening its beauty. I truly
think that kids have become even more feral with their extended absence from
the calming discipline of school to contain their vocal exuberance. If it were possible for kids to converse in
anything less than a scream and shout I think I could become inured to their
existence, but as it is, their obstreperous assertion of simply being makes them
something Not Wanted on the Voyage of Life.
I’m afraid.
Our communal pool has become its usual magnet for
those freeloaders who are not actually people who live in the houses for whom
the pool is intended. Just as the
swallows come back to Britain in the summer, so various foreign fixtures take
up their positions around the pool.
Shameless!
Tomorrow Toni returns, and I wait to see if he has
been able to find any mature Cheddar. He
might have forgotten that he mentioned that he might look out for some, but I
most certainly have not!
There are still a few laggard explosions, but as a
slept through the ‘Main Battle’ last night, a few bangs are not going to keep
me awake. So to speak.
A pair of rather fearsome black reusable masks have
arrived that I ordered via the Internet oodles of time ago. They are not entirely comfortable to wear,
but they do look the business and they have a satisfying seriousness to
them. They look the sort of thing to
wear during shopping jaunts.
The
everyday masks are those that are shoved into pockets, and brought out and used
because they are obligatory in Reception and the Café. I am not sure what power they still retain as
they have been overused, but I maintain the force of the family wisdom of,
“Anything is better than Nothing.” And so they act as a barrier, no matter how
flimsy.
Mask
wearing is the only visible element in most people’s approach to the
virus. Yes, we do obey (usually) the
strips placed on the floor and there is some attempt at physical distancing
with people that you do not know, but the fear of the virus is very much “over
there” where “there” is very definitely not anywhere near our here.
The virus
news form around the world is uniformly depressing and there are spikes of
infection in all countries. I agree with
Faucci (?) who said we should not look for second spikes of infection because
we are still very much in the grip of the first spike. I also agree with the director of the WHO who
said that we are not safe until everyone is safe – and that means that we
should all be very worried because there are too many leaders who are acting
from economic and political standpoints and not human health standpoints.
I have written to my MP in Britain and urged him to
consider aiding a movement to get Johnson and his cabinet charged with
Corporate Manslaughter.
I watched
part of PMQs and was, yet again, ashamed by the way that Johnson failed to
answer questions and became agitated when his failings were highlighted. If he had a shred of common decency and
humility and admitted the disastrous failures that his government has clearly
owned, then I think he would have a certain amount of sympathy from the British
people, and they would encourage the government to look at what has gone wrong
and prepare for the worst in a more professional way than they have so
far. The government’s concern should be
the welfare of the people and not how they look. Each failure to acknowledge mistakes leads to
further deaths.
