LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 91 - Sunday, 14th June

Cloudy, sun, breeze: not the perfect sun drenched Sunday that our visitors were hoping for, but still good enough to come out for.  Castelldefels was crowded today.

     Not as crowded as it could be, but certainly fuller than it has been for a while.  People are determined to have sunny fun by the sea.

     From the perspective of my bike rides, I am able to note the increase in traffic and the numbers of people doing what they do best in our long beach town: walk along the paseo to see and to be seen.

     Rules?  Well, most people are somewhat sketchy about what part of which set of rules is applying at any particular time, and the fragmentation of Spain into the regions and countries with their own system of lockdown and their own notation of phases and you have something purpose made for confusion.

     Catalonia has hot-spots of viral infection and those were kept back from the general loosening of restrictions.  We in Castelldefels are part of the Barcelona region, which is itself sub-divided into further parts each of which has its own set of rules and its own level of phasing.

     As far as we know we are now in Phase 2, but tomorrow, Monday, we will be in Phase 3.  The cafes and restaurants that have survived so far are desperate to open as much as they can and start making up for the disastrous season that they have had so far this year.  The loss of the Easter holiday period is going to be difficult to make up for and the fact that they will not be back to full occupancy is going to make future survival difficult.

     It will be interesting to go into town tomorrow and see exactly what is open and what is likely to open.  I have a need to get my mobile phone repaired as it is a complete, but working, shattered mess.  The phone is far too expensive to junk, and I am prepared to pay up to 20% of its cost new to get it back into something like its original condition.  I live, as always, on hope!

I have been told that I have ‘passed’ my Catalan course and I am entitled to a certificate to show my ‘ability’.  All I have to do is collect it from my ‘school’ when that institution opens its doors again.  Unfortunately, in collecting my certificate, I will have to speak the language in which I have obtained an alleged proficiency, and that is a daunting barrier.  Which tells you something about the worth of the piece of paper that I am debating whether to humiliate myself and get!  Choices, choices!

As we had chicken from the pollo a last yesterday, we did not have our traditional lunch today.  Instead we had the albondigas that I bought in case somebody didn’t want the chicken.  They are very good, and they come with a ‘home made’ sauce from the pollo a last place.  One portion is not quite sufficient to form a meal for two, so I augmented the sauce provided and cooked some pasta.  Toni was very impressed with the final result and demanded that I repeat the repast at some future date.  As the selection of ingredients for the augmentation was based more on inspiration than recipe I think that a repeat performance is going to be the other side of difficult, but I remember most of the ingredients (at least two of which Toni would demand excluded if he realized they were there) and it is likely to be edible even if it will have serious differences from the food that had his accolades.  I can’t help feeling that there is a wider metaphor lurking somewhere in those last sentences, together with life advice!

Next week sees the second ‘lesson’ with my friend in the pool and I am having fun thinking of topics to extend his vocabulary.  I have been unable to get an 8 am start for Monday or Tuesday, but I will probably meet him at the changeover tomorrow as one hour ends and the next starts and so I can find out if he is prepared to wait for me to have my swim and join me for a later breakfast chat, or other arrangements will have to be made.

Toni is determined to ‘sort out’ the garden and this needs some thought and preparation.  We should go to a garden centre and get some plants and compost.  Now that the pine trees have been cut back, our front garden actually gets some sunshine and for the first time in many years, weeds are actually able to push their heads above the pine needle carpet which, this year is not there!  We might think of a few garden boxes and get some instant colour.  If the plant places are open.

     This week will see a more determined approach to getting back to something approaching what used to be normal.  It remains to be seen if we have the determination to do so.

Reality Dawns. Again.

It used to be that ‘The Big C’ was the boogieman of illnesses but something else has taken its place for we non-smokers, but indulgent eaters.

I blame the quality of food in Catalonia for the fact, and it is a heavy one, that I need to lose weight.  Again.  My weight loss the last time was prompted (a euphemism if ever I heard one) by the results of a blood test and an out-and-out warning from my doctor.  Now that warning has been uttered to Toni and I am scurrying along in the penumbra of fear from that threat.

The warning was stark.  Lose weight or be set down as a Type 2 Diabetes patient with the consequent repercussions on life style and the lifetime taking of medication intravenously.

So, this lunchtime, the condemned man (he has until the end of the month to get the asterisks off his blood test results) ate anything but a hearty meal: salad, fish fillet, followed by nothing but a cup of coffee with saccharine!  As his blood-sugar level is too high he has been told to stay off fruit as an in-between-meals filler and instead drink some sort of tea, the name of which he has, in self defence, already forgotten.  Now, everything is going to be checked for sugar and I fear that we are going to find that sugar is second only to salt in its omnipresence in food, both prepared and natural.  We will probably both end up on a diet of water!

To be fair, this is only Day 1 of the New Regime, and I am hoping that sense, compromise and sheer indolence and tiredness might make the road to an asterisk-free life a little less bumpy.

My own situation is barely better than his.  I weighed myself this morning and discovered to my horror that I am some 16 kilograms over my ideal (or skeletal) weight.  If I actually lost that amount of weight I would look gaunt to the point of concern, so I have decided that a more reasonably horrific target is 10 kilograms.  That is a lot.  But there are ways.

At lunch today I had cool, still, H₂O to accompany my food.  Gone was the red wine and Casera that is my usual tipple.  Water.  Pure and simple.  And, I have decided, this is not just for today, but rather for the number of todays it takes to get me down to my ‘target’ weight.  I have made an executive decision to make an exception for Cava Brut.  The grounds for this exception are that Cava is a white, and therefore less calorie challenged drink; and also that the Brut nature of the Cava I drink means that it has even fewer calories than the other types.  I can therefore drink toasts with a clear conscience.

I am also cutting down on nuts.  One of my friends told me that when she was slimming she ate nuts: she allowed herself half a walnut every other day.  This is not, I have to tell you, how I eat nuts.  I take the generally accepted ‘healthy’ and ‘protein’ aspects of them and let that cover the fact that my consumption is markedly more than half a nut every other day!  That will stop.  Nuts and dried fruit will be added to the all-bran/Special K mixture that comprises my breakfast cereal.  And that’s it.  Honestly!

As I do not eat that much chocolate I am not too disturbed by its prohibition.  Added to that is the fact that I went into the fridge and threw out any chocolate I could find, just to give my self-restraint that extra edge of protection.  And I now quicken my step when the excellent selection of chocolate in supermarkets is near.

Bread is not too much of a problem either.  I love bread, but I can resist and I have restricted myself to pre-packaged 99 calorie multi-grain ‘bread’ that I pretend is good for me.  Whenever I feel like complaining, I merely have to remember one of my mother’s diet Energen Rolls (?) a form of what I could only describe as what ‘whipped bread’ might have tasted like.  That actually tasted like nothing at all, and offensively so as well!  At least my ‘bread’ is better than those were.

My problems are rice and pasta, and indeed potatoes – and any other form of carbohydrate that you care to mention.  I have been told on a previous occasion that these forbidden pleasure could be allowed as long as they form no more than a third of the plate, to which I respond by saying how high can you build?  To which the response was that I wasn’t thinking along the right lines and that suggestions have to be followed within the spirit of the advice as well as the word.  That doesn’t get you the calories you need, he whimpered quietly to himself.

Anyway the meal austerity has started and we are both thoroughly miserable.  Which is a bad way to start because I have also been told that no eating programme is going to work that does not have your enthusiasm behind it. 

That might well be true up to a point, but having fear as a driving force behind the need to lose weight is also a strong incentive and it might well do.

I will keep you informed about my weight loss or (tell it not in Gath) gain.  This is my desperate attempt to engage a wider observation of my efforts in order to ensure success.

I hope!

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