Jabs and jinks

 NEW LOCKDOWN Day 13? 14? Thursday

 

 

 

 

I am now fully flu-jabbed.

     After a little confusion about where to get into the place, I was ushered to one of two nurses who in a matter of seconds ticked off my name and gave me my injection.  By the time I got home, I was still within a minute of my original appointment time, having been seen to as soon as I arrived.

     Although this date is a little later than usual for my jab, I am glad that it is now out of the way and presumably my body will be in the right state to accept the Covid vaccine when it is available.  And I would like to make one thing abundantly clear, whenever it is available I am ready and willing to have it pumped into my arm.  All those conspiracy theorist idiots merely make it earlier in its availability for me!

     Though, I am acutely aware that the idea of raising up some sort of metaphorical inoculation drawbridge is false because, we are all in this together and until we are all inoculated none of us is safe.  Still, I will feel much more secure when I have some antibodies coursing around my veins!

 

As my appointment was for 6.16pm (yes, I too wondered if we were all separated by minute intervals to be done) and as parking in the centre of town is problematic at the best of times, I decided to go on my bike.

      I set off fairly early because I needed to call in to the pharmacist to get restocked with the pills that I take each day.  I was also acutely aware that the last time that I went to the pharmacist I overbalanced dismounting from my bike and I still have the pale new skin on my left knee, together with what I can only describe as a stubborn scab on the fleshy front part of the knee, so I was a damn sight more circumspect getting off the bike this time around.  And no accidents.

     At around 5.15pm when I set off we were just about in the period of our quick twilight.  The lingering gradations of encroaching darkness, much beloved of poets, in Britain is much more transient in Catalonia.  And as bikes seem to be generally invisible to pedestrians and to motorists it is always advisable to use lights whenever you suspect that they might be necessary.

     Now that I (finally) have my replacement front light for the bike it is easy to get a bright forward-facing light to warn people of my immanent arrival.  I also get to the centre of town using the safest, bike-friendly route via the paseo, then a cycle lane, through the university (which is generally sparsely populated), via another cycle lane and finally a main road.  As I was cycling during the rush hour as well, it added a sense of impending threat as the darkness grew.

     I know, as a motorist, I hate cyclists.  Generally speaking, they are inconsiderate, don’t indicate, ignore traffic flow and signs, and court death.  They do not attempt to endear themselves to other road users, and other road users know it.

     I am different.  I indicate – I even have a little light attached to the rear basket holder which acts as a flashing indicator.  The back light lights up when I apply the brakes.  I use hand signals; I respect other traffic users.  But motorists rarely make exceptions for riders who do not fulfil their lowest expectations, and merely assume that we are using some sort of low cunning to frustrate them.

     The one (low) life form that unites drivers and cyclists in a sacred bond of hatred is, of course, the scooter driver – both in the electric scooter type vehicle and the Vesponic versions.  These drivers are the true homicidal-suicidal-expletives based on body parts maniacs, who weave, jink, brake, speed and do just what the hell they like, and are the true spawn of Satan.

     However, even though there were one- or two-characters tempting fate on crowded, traffic light stopped road, they were not the objects of my loathing during my journey back.

     The worst (by a long chalk) road users are, and always have been, pedestrians: walking, jogging, running or simply standing, they are the ones who always leave me breathless – usually literally as I have had to execute some desperate manoeuvre to extricate myself from incipient pedestrionic disaster.

     I cycle, as far as I am able, in cycle lanes.  Cycle lanes are for cycles, there are even painted stencils of bicycles on the cycle lanes for those who find the concept difficult to understand.

     On the paseo I never ‘beep’ walkers out of my way.  We are equal users and I try and keep to the right (it’s foreign remember) and if there are groups of people I slowly make my way through, often helped by people who recognize a bike and make way when they see one.  If not, not.  I am not in a rush; I have better things to get upset about.

     Like pedestrians who walk or run in a bike lane.  Evil personified!  My horn is a piercing electronic sort of thing and has a peremptory sort of sound and usually does the trick.  Cycle lanes are for my kind, not the two footed.

     There is a supremely irritating sort of pedestrian who walks the border line, literally, between bike lane and pedestrian space: I make no effort to move away and usually am able to intimidate such impertinent walkers back to their domain.

     At night it is worse.

     I truly and sincerely fail to understand why cycle riders do not have lights on their bikes at night.  Let us be fair, some do, but the majority seem to think that lights are unnecessary.  This evening, for example, I passed one cyclist who was in darkness and he had a light on his handlebar.  He simply did not turn it on. 

     I suppose that we have now become inured to the appropriation of aspects of male life from the lifesaving to the superficially political.  One thinks (though one would like not to) of Trump and his absurd macho dismissal of mask wearing as not being his thing.  In the same way the majority of bike riders seem to think that having a light is some form of absurd frippery.

     On my way back from my flu jab (perhaps having that jab just shows how effeminate I am, rather than bullishly scorning flu as something that will 'just go away') I had to contend, in my bike lane, with dog walkers who allowed their animals to wander onto the lane on those absurdly long leads on plastic ratchets; runners appropriating the on-coming lane; pedestrians wandering about; cyclists without lights on the wrong side of the lanes; people not getting out of the way and ignoring repeated beeps, and so on.

     I had a strong front light and people still appeared to be surprised that a bike was using a lane specifically constructed for bikes.  Eventually I put on a second light (my trust in the quality of equipment sold by MATE is not so high that I do not have a backup) and still a runner almost ran into me!  Two lights!  At least the brightness allowed me to savour the look of panic on his face as a collision was narrowly averted!

     As the first MATE light on my bike lasted just over a week before it gave up the ghost, I was waiting for a reasonable period to elapse before I took off the extra light from my overcrowded handlebars.  I now have no intention whatsoever of relying on one light to keep me safe.

     The one good thing about the eventful ride home is that the excitement and raised adrenaline levels and heart beats, the quick intakes of breath and the exasperated exhalations will have caused the antibodies in the vaccine to go around my blood stream all the more quickly.

     There is always something positive, if you look hard enough!

Is faith dead?

Some people think that the title is merely rhetorical, as the answer is most obviously and resoundingly, “Yes!”  But that ignores the evidence of simple, everyday observation.

Admittedly, in this Roman priest ridden, yet strangely non-church going country, faith in a caring (or indeed malign) divinity is largely absent, yet simple acts of faith are plain to see.

Especially where zebra crossings are involved.

I am constantly amazed, as a driver, at what blind belief pedestrians display in the power of painted black and white lines on a road.  They stride onto the crossing as if there were adamantine walls along the edges of the passing to save them from the most determined of massive lorries – of course without looking to see if any juggernaut is coming their way.  They know, in a way which demonstrates their complete belief, that as soon, nay! before their foot has touched the black or white, they are protected from anything up to and including tactical nuclear weapons.

We may not see the devout walking across roads telling the beads of their rosaries nowadays, but we certainly see the modern equivalent which is the ‘telling’ of the elements of social media interactions on their mobile phones, with their eyes glued to the small glowing rectangles (in portrait mode) and their ears plugged in (wirelessly or otherwise) to the relentless musification of Spotify.  Completely involved in the mobile word they have, they believe, complete immunity from the slings and arrows of outrageous driving that as a pedestrian terrifies me on a

daily basis too.

It is a known fact (that I once looked up on the Internet and so it must be true and not fake news) that Spanish drivers are more dangerous than the French.  OK, we are not talking about the suicidal/homicidal driving of nations like the Greek or Turkish (I am still having counselling to mitigate the deleterious effects of a traumatic taxi trip from the centre of Istanbul to the Airport many years ago) but the standard of driving here is abysmally low.  And since most pedestrians are drivers, they know how little concern those drivers have for those not in cars when they are in them – so to speak.  And yes, the transcendental equanimity, or crass stupidity, with which they stride onto a busy road putting their trust in fading paint is astonishing.

And strangely humbling, of course.

Would that I had could share their faith in anything to the same degree of absolute trust that those walkers display each time they ignore the possible (fatal) consequences of uniting for a brief moment with a fast-moving large metal ram on wheels secure in the fact that they are protected by a painted series of road mounted post-modernist glyphs at their feet!

How wonderful to live in a world in which opportunities for the affirmation of faith are to be found along every road, where devotion is as painless as a few seconds of walking.  No need for the Camino de Santiago with its length and privations to show belief, all you have to do is cross the road: if you survive you will have demonstrated the Truth of your Faith; if you do not, then you will have been taken in an Act of Faith and will therefore, assuredly, go to your reward.

However, belief does not equal truth, and in the reasonable world it would be more advantageous for everyone if crossings were not regarded as challenges.  If zebra crossings could be regarded as courteous requests for passage rather than opportunities to exercise unalienable rights; where stopped cars could be invariably thanked for their allowing passage, I can’t help thinking that we would live in a happier, safer and richer world.

I should be congratulated by not using the dreaded word that haunts my waking hours and depletes my pound-paid pension – but it is not difficult to see the approach to the zebra crossing (albeit via a non-British population) as a clear metaphor for the March-approaching act of self-harm that my ‘government’ seems hell-bent (sic.) on inflicting on us in another act of unreasonable ‘faith’.

I enter 2019 with no great feelings of positive progression on a national scale, but I reassure myself that the personal possibility is always hopeful.   

Please!