Shades of the Prison House!

 

 

 

 

 

Swimming in my lane, trying to get used to the cut-off fins (the ones that ‘real’ swimmers use in swimming pools for reasons that elude me) I hear a voice from the next lane chant out a soulful, “One week!”  This was a teacher friend of mine counting down the days before she has to return to school.

     In this part of the world, at the start of term, there is a period when teachers are in school, and the kids are not.  A golden opportunity you would think for harassed members of the profession to get themselves and their classrooms sorted out; to check through class lists and timetables; check room allocation, and generally prepare themselves for the forthcoming fray.

     You might think that.  But if you do then the chances are that you have not taught in the Catalan or Spanish school system.  The Powers That Be consider time without kids to be the opportune time for meetings.  And more meetings.  And more.

     In my experience, and I have been to thousands of meetings, literally thousands – political, cultural, and educational, and what my mother would have described in a catch-all term of which she was very fond, “sundry”.  And I can truthfully say that the most soul destroying and quintessentially useless meetings that I have attended have been here in Catalonia.  I must make an honourable exception for Departmental meetings, but ‘whole school’ affairs have been viciously pointless.  And long.  Very long.

     In some educational administrative minds, The Meeting is an end in itself, and the content and participants’ response is secondary.  Even as I type I can begin to resurrect my feelings of almost homicidal hatred of the agenda-less meanders that took away hours of my life, without compensating me with anything even remotely educationally positive.

     A signal low point was a meeting on a Saturday morning (!) during which I was wearing my most pointedly casual clothes and throughout which I didn’t smile once.  Not once from the beginning of the pointless charade to the eventual will-sapped end. I spoke only when I was directly addressed, and my answers were clipped to the point of being marginally rude.  Not one smile.  And I left at the earliest point I could and went home, smouldering because the meeting had been (surprise!) pointless.

     But you are retired, I hear no one say.  You no longer go to meetings.  True.  I no longer go to meetings that I have to go to; I go to the meetings I choose to go to.

     The last meeting I went to was in our local city hall and was a gathering of individuals from the foreign communities, who had been invited by a general email to consider taking part.

     We gathered at the appointed time outside the City Hall and were ushered into the Council Chamber where we were seated, shown a short film, and then joined by the alcaldesa (the mayor) and encouraged to give our opinions about our city.  We were not a large group and we had widely differing proficiency in Spanish or Catalan, but we were listened to with courtesy and our points were considered and responded to.  At least verbally.

     One of the points that I made was about the state of the roads and especially those roads in the immediate vicinity of my house.  Some of the road surfaces are composed of what seems to be rafts of concrete and there has been some movement of these plates.  Round the corner from where I live one concrete plate in the road has risen so that there is a ledge lifted above the surface of the surrounding road.  As the ridge is so pronounced, it means that a car driven at a normal speed feels as though it is encountering a substantial step in the road with consequent jarring.  I had even taken a photograph of the ridge and was able to illustrate my point that the road was not only uncomfortable to drive on but also potentially dangerous. 

     I await further developments, and hope that it will not be the breaking of the axel of some unsuspecting car.

     To be fair I have not attempted any follow up and anyone who expects anything to be done in the month of August must be a very green newcomer to the country!

     The important thing is that a channel of communication has been opened with members of the foreign community and it is up to the individuals concerned in the initial meeting to make something of the opportunity offered by the City.

     We were not, in any way a representative grouping.  We had no mandate apart from our own interests.  We had an opportunity, and we were speaking directly to the political power brokers in our own area.

     We were listened to, and a group photograph was taken!  An overture has been made and it is up to us to find out if it can be taken further.

     I started this writing by concentrating on futility: the system grinding on, pointless and empty actions limiting expression. 

     But I end this piece with a new determination to make the channel of communication with the movers and shakers in my adopted city one that works for me and one that even might Get Something Done! 

     There is no point in being near levers if you don’t pull one or two occasionally and see what happens.

 

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 24 – Wednesday in Holy Week, 8th APRIL

 

I realise that, with all my bluff optimism, I have been affected by the lockdown!  In the poem that I wrote yesterday (smrnewpoems.blogspot.com) I actually questioned, even if rhetorically, the value of sunbathing!

     It is shocking to have to confront a possible breakdown in your worldview that can contemplate something as self-loathing as a negative approach to the appreciation of the nearest star!  It is certainly a wake up call to reassess my attitude and determine to be more positive in the future.  The idea of getting to June and July and behaving like a troglodyte is entirely unacceptable.

     If something as fundamental to my view of life is capable of mutability, then it makes me wonder what other, more subtle changes there have been in this period of self-isolation.  It would argue a self-deluding insensitivity to say that one can remain entirely stable when the world appears to be changing around you.

     The irony, of course, is that the micro world of self-isolation is unchanging and stable.  The continuing horrific catalogue of death and infection is all around us, but not part of the life that we are leading.  It is as if we are living in some sort of medieval fort with a water filled trench around us: part of our surroundings, but separated from them.

     Unlike some others, I have been entirely unable to wean myself from the news.  My addiction to the Internet radio, and more specifically Radio 4 is total.  It is at times like this that the Conservatives detestation of the BBC becomes not only partisan, but also self-defeating.  At times of National Crisis we united around the BBC as a voice of and to the Nation.  I certainly do not look towards the Conservatives and their slavish news lap dogs to give me a sense of what the Nation is thinking or feeling.

     And The Guardian.  As a life-long Guardian reader (with a brief fall from grace and adherence to The Independent) I now read it on my mobile phone with an intensity that goes beyond belief.  And may I make a specific call out for the writing of John Crace, a columnist of rare wit and perception.  His political sketches have been part of the reason that I have been able to maintain my sweetness and equilibrium during the past few years where Brexit and the bloody Conservatives have convinced me that I am living in a society where the dominant ideology is the death-wish!

My early morning routine is now becoming more and more established: set Moppy (don’t blame me, the app demands that you call your robot cleaner something) off on her hoovering circuit; make my cup of tea (English breakfast and Earl Grey) and have the World’s Most Expensive Augmented Muesli (at least I have stopped adding Smarties to it) with fat-free milk; do the Guardian Quick Crossword (with light cheating); change Moppy to her mopping sequence; go for my pool circuits.  And a chunk of the day is gone!  Which is a clear exemplification of the work expanding to match the time available!

     I do miss my daily early morning swim and I can’t wait to get back to that part of my routine, because that morning start include my first writing of the day when I sit in the café or outside having my post-swim cup of tea.  Ah!  How life used to be!

Just back from the open kitchen window where at 8.00 pm our time, we applaud the front-line workers who are keeping our society going.

     Talking of health workers and their battle against the virus: the British Prime Minister now in Intensive Care.  As I said yesterday, I wish him better health and strength to his family – and he should resign.  Now.  At once.

     The Prime Minister’s bravado a while ago where he was joking about his meeting Covid-19 positive people and shaking hands with them; his visible inability to maintain social distancing when his government was promoting it as essential, now appear to be a foolhardy, self-indulgent imposition on health services that are overstretched.   

     I might also add, that the Prime Minister’s inability to give clear indications of who actually has ultimate power in government is a dereliction of duty.   

     chocolate, retribution, judgement, ineptitude, Throughout his career he has been first and foremost a second-rate, shoddy, narcissistic, journalistic liar and, while I have sympathy for his present state of health, I have none for his political.  We deserve better than him.  Though with the cabinet of freaks that he has accumulated, god alone knows who (or in the case of Gove, what) might take his place.

     So far the Conservatives’ management of the Covid-19 crisis has been fatally inept.  How many unnecessary deaths is it going to take before the people of Britain demand the reckoning that should come sooner rather than later?

Determined not to end this post on a sour note, I can report that we were able to buy chocolate in the last shop and you can be assured that my writing has been sweetened by the confectionary. 

     So just imagine what it would have been like without!