A Stab to Start the Day

 

 New Lockdown, Day X, Tuesday

 

 

 

Not everyone starts their day by stabbing themselves with their electric toothbrush.  And I mean real stabbing.  With blood.

      Not an easy feat, but I managed it.  The head of the brush somehow or other came away from the main body of the brush and I then was distracted by the perception of distance and I brought the vibrating metal stalk forcibly into in the right-hand side of my mouth, just below the bottom lip!  It certain woke me up, and any lingering drowsiness was jabbed away in a concentrated moment of pain.

     Before you start thinking of wasting any sympathy on me and my injury, I would point out that the puncture is small and it looks more like a shaving nick than anything else – but still a wake-up call to the unwary to beware of seemingly domestic dental devices.

     When I checked the errant brush head, it did look a little worn and perhaps I should have replaced it earlier.

     Toothbrushes (and electric toothbrush heads) are in a category of simple things that could be easily and cheaply replaced but aren’t, until something happens.  This is a category they share with wooden kitchen spoons and spatulas; face flannels; tea towels and coffee mugs.

     Actually, the last item, the mug, is something that I will throw away as soon as I detect even the smallest chip or crack – some things are ingrained in your innermost soul by maternal edict that cannot, dare not be gainsaid.  My mother regarded a chip or crack in pottery and china as being as toxic as a vomiting fly, safe harbours for unmentionable and uncountable germs.  Discard instantly!  And I do.

     But the other things?  I have some wooden spoons (not thrown away) which look as though they were carved from a beam in the ark; tea towels that have only the faintest suggestion of pattern, others delicately threadbare.  Why?  They are so cheap to replace, and I am not known for my thriftiness – indeed, in certain respects I am an eager celebrant at the altar of planned obsolescence.  But you can almost read the history of our family in the tea towels that we use, whereas my purchases of watches or computers brings tears to the eyes of my bank manager, and untold you to manufacturers.

     I have known people (well, one person) who would refuse to go into a café for a cup of tea because of the mark-up on the cost of a cuppa compared with what he knew it cost at home.  He would actually wait outside the café while the rest of us imbibed in feckless luxury and then re-join us when we had finished our squander.  But for other things, he paid the price asked without question, even when the profit margin was just as substantial.  Ah well, one shouldn’t always look to logic to explain how humans work.

 

 

 

The radio in the kitchen is a Roberts and is Internet linked, so, in theory I should be able to get Radio 4 (without which civilized life is not even remotely possible) but the reception is unruly.  Toni has suggested a solution which involves turning the electrical wiring system into some 

 

sort of conduit for the Wi-Fi link to the internet.  All this involves is the purchase of a link from the router to the socket and then another link from the socket to the radio: one of those “plug and play” solutions.

       

     “Ho!  Ho!  Ho!” he laughed hollowly.  It didn’t work.

     The reason it didn’t work is that the link to the router has to be direct to the socket in the wall.  That, in this house is a problem.  Built in the days when a couple of sockets was more than enough for any home, the availability of power is an ongoing quest.  And an extensive use of extension leads.

     The router is in the living room and the radio is in the kitchen.  The area behind the television and almost hidden from view is a writhing mass of cabling for the basic electrical necessities of modern life.  There is no socket available for the frivolity of getting Radio 4 when so much else needs power.

     No problem.  We have another router on the third floor.  The house is built of concrete and is terrifyingly solid, wi-fi needs boosts to get all the computing machines to work, so all I had to do was find the socket on the third floor and we could try that.

     The third floor is my workroom.  It is also a comically unreal picture of cluttered chaos.  Bookshelves line the walls and extension plugs proliferate.

     Finding The Source of The Nile was one of the great stories of exploration and daring, but it pales into vapid insignificance when compared with the Search for the Socket on the Third Floor.

     There is no space.  For anything.  On the Third Floor.  If anything is moved, then something else must be moved to make a space for the thing that has been moved to a new location.  At the moment, when many, many things have been moved, the space looks like a vindictive labyrinth, and my progress from desk to stairs is in a slow undulating slink as I manoeuvre around insecure piles of stuff and am rewarded by sharp book corners biting into ankles and shins.

     Like some demented game, I followed power leads, trying to find their source – only to be frustrated by finding one trailing socket only led to another trailing socket, not to the true source of power.  Crouching, crawling, moving books to move bookcases, shining a torch behind pieces of furniture (and ofttimes being bewitched into reading volumes that I had not seen for some time, but then needed by immediate attention) I felt the full weight of despair.  Indeed, I began to doubt that that there was ‘a’ source of power – it (The Power) was numinous, it was ubiquitous, it was ‘there’ and not to be questioned or assumed to have a simple source: it simply Was.

     Well, that is fine and dandy thinking for Scholastic monks, but I needed the physicality of a plug.  Which I eventually found directly behind me.  A four-socket thing, with leads going off in all directions but, amazingly with one socket free.  End of story.

     No.  The lead supplied with the magic plug is too short to reach the router and the router cannot be moved.  So, in spite of all my misgivings about the pernicious influence of Amazon in the world today, necessity bent my principles (again) and a longer lead has been ordered and will be delivered to the door tomorrow.  When we will discover the next problem to cope with.  Plug and play indeed!

 

 

 

Tomorrow the Liceu is putting on a performance of an early Mozart Opera.  The original date of the performance has been changed twice.  The time of the performance has been brought forward by two hours, and the audience has been limited to 500 people.  Masked, we sit in a circle of empty seats – and are grateful that at least something is being done in the season.

     Because of the re-arrangement the cost of the ticket has been halved, and as I sit in an aisle seat in the front stalls, that is a considerable amount of cash!

     This is a concert version of the opera, which is never a truly satisfying way to see an opera, but it was always going to be a concert version so I have nothing to complain about there.  The countertenor in the piece has a wonderful voice and I only hope that it is enough to keep me interested in a less than convincing narrative – though there are powerful human passions behind those ordered notes!

     It will also give me an opportunity to see at least some of the Christmas Lights in Barcelona, and perhaps I will feel a little more of the spirit of the ‘festive’ time – though the only present that anyone really wants is a double dose of efficient vaccine!

 

The excavations on the Third Floor have revealed more items that will be added to my growing Catalogue Raisonné, including one thing that I had thought was long lost!  It is good to see that there is some gain from the pain of sorting out!

 

 

 

 

 

One does try to do the right thing. Honestly!

 

 

My fight against planned obsolescence has been lost.

     I did attempt to get the part of my cleaner that clearly wasn’t working properly repaired, but I was only offered replacement as an option.  As I am loath to throw away something that is ‘generally’ working I have opted to fork out a surprising amount of money for the so-called ‘power head’ of the machine (the bit with the revolving beaters that collect the dirt) to make it a fully functioning ‘up stairs’ cleaner. 

     God knows there is little enough floor space to be seen in the jumbled chaos of my ‘study’ on the third floor to tax the capabilities of even the weakest of suction hoovers, but even I am aware that the floor (however little of it is actually visible) should be cleaned from time to time.  It’s just the sheer fag of lunking a cleaner up three flights of stairs never really appeals – even when the cleaner is cordless.

     Well, now that I have expended money on the thing it has to be used to justify the price that I have paid to get it working again.  There is a logic there, though even I admit that it is tenuous.

 

 

 

The concern with the general concept of ‘tidiness’ (as opposed to cleanliness) is one of pressing import at the moment because Toni has embraced the life work of Cleaning The Kitchen. 

     Although this is a generally traumatic experience, I am spared the worst excesses of the process by being banished to the third floor because of my tendency to suggest that nothing that we possess is worth throwing away.  If the decluttering mantra of, “Only keep it if it brings you joy” were to be applied by Toni to the things that we possess then after his approach had been implemented I would be living in an echoing, empty tomb-like home, with only retro computers and their peripherals allowed to make it to a surface.

     Now admittedly, our kitchen cabinets were designed by a person who had obviously never worked in a kitchen before, or indeed been told its function, so that we have corner cupboards that mock attempts to use them as such.  They become kitchen black holes, anything that goes in, does not easily come out again.  This means that there is much in those Escher-like containers that has not seen the light of day for many a long year.  And I am not one given to exhaustive searches, as I find the ‘buy another one’ much more efficient and satisfying.  But such an approach does lead to duplication and considerable embarrassment when and excavation, such as the one that Toni is currently undertaking, brings to the surface and within the sight of a quizzical eye many inexplicable extravagances.

     Space has been created in the kitchen because much of my glass has been consigned to kitchen towel and plastic tubs now found in the cwtch under the stairs, and that new space has been given over to order and “everything in his place” which is an unsettling dispensation for those of my more cluttered ilk.  Still, I can always retreat from the regimented order of living room and kitchen and come to the comforting chaos of the third floor, and the tranquillity of the jumbled blunts the edges of rectitude.

 

 Set off for my pool swim on my bike at 6.45 am to be ready to enter the pool by 7.00 am and in the water by a quarter past.  It is still dark at that time of the morning and for the last few days it has been unquestionably cold.  Although I wear a T-shirt and shorts, I also wear a short coat for the journey to the pool and for my longer bike ride after my swim.  It is not quite cold enough to start wearing gloves for the morning ride, but that is not far away and then I will know that the summer (that I keep alive as long as possible) is truly over.

      I have always regarded Winter as a personal enemy and this year there has been a positively Medieval fear about a hard Autumn and Winter that we have to survive!  Usually, my distaste for Winter is linked to the sun and its limitations in the colder months, this year the personification of the seasons has taken on a mortal tone as I have had conversations with friends about how to survive, given that the Virus, like the Devil, is seen to be prowling around seeking whom he may devour .

     If I wasn’t real life, the present chaos in the White House as the results of idiotic macho libertarianism show that the greatest and the lowest are equally susceptible to an indifferent virus, would be farcically amusing.  But actual fear for survival is around in a way that it hasn’t been in my lifetime since the worst parts of the Cold War.

    

     Still, life must go on and I have the delivery of a Hoover spare part to look forward to!

Lies, Dates and Vacuums!

 

It was just as well that I got my Conspiracy Theory about the Trumpian Virus in quickly as the newspapers and the internet are awash with the assumption that there is more to this than meets the eye.  Trump of course (of course, naturally) fuels uncertainty by doing things like having pictures staged in his hospital presidential suite where he is signing bank pieces of paper: The King of Lies Lying Again!

     The fact that there is even the remotest chance of that vile anthesis getting anywhere near a chance of staying on in the White House is beyond astonishing. 

     After a series of inappropriate sexual liaisons between staff and students coming to light in my university and nothing being done about it, I asked one of my lecturers what someone would have to do to be sacked.  “Well,” he replied, “I think buggering the Dean in the Quad might do the trick!” 

     What would Trump have to do?  The mind cringes at the grotesque extent of depravity that he would have to show before his ‘base’ Base would turn on him.  Though, thinking about it, I would like to hear some of the terminally deluded MAGA supporters try and explain away Trump doing what my lecturer suggested might be a terminal sexual escapade!

     But, enough of such trivial problems when there is the tragedy of my Significant Birthday Party being cancelled.  United Nations Day will now be just one day among many – though at least the two of us can go out and celebrate.

 

I will have reached the age at which, I have been told, getting travel insurance becomes a little more problematical.  As travel is not on the cards at the moment and is unlikely to be for the next six months, or nine months, or?  It is not a pressing problem, but it is one of those niggling tasks that you set yourself and then forget about until you are about to travel and you suddenly discover that the cost of immediate insurance is more than the cost of your holiday.

     Writing about it makes it Something To Be Done and, in my world, the word makes things more real so it is now lodged in my mind as a concept that must be dealt with.  Like the vacuum cleaner.

     I have recently become the proud possessor of a new cordless vacuum cleaner – it’s the three flights of stairs that make a cordless machine essential and I am therefore faced with the problem of what to do with the old one.

     To be fair the old one works intermittently, which in many ways is the worst form of fault.  If the thing is dead it can be thrown out.  But if it sort-of works then there is something deeply uncomfortable with jettisoning a machine that is sort-of useable.

     The problem could be a connection in the floor cleaning (i.e. the most important part) of the hoover.  The thing still has suction, but unless the little blue light comes on you can push the machine around but the brushes are not turning and the efficiency of the thing is low.

     So, I am going to take it to a repair shop.  God alone knows how I am going to eke out my Spanish to explain what I think is wrong; but it is an exciting prospect!  I have passed even more difficult linguistic challenges with the aid of handy Spanish nouns and hysteria with a dash of Marcel Marceau thrown into the exciting performance that comprises my attempt at communicating in a foreign language.

     Unfortunately, my past dealings with the repair shop have not been of the most fruitful, as the last time I brought something in for repair they dismissed my concerns and told me to buy new.  I called (via email and telephone) on the ‘authorities’ of two countries to refute their claims and they had, ignominiously, to admit defeat and replace the defective item.

     I suspect that the fault in the hoover is a simple mechanical or electrical one, but one constantly has to deal with the grasping tendrils of planned obsolescence, the lack of technical ability and a built-in disinclination to repair rather than replace that frustrate a desire to make do and mend.

     You might be asking, “But, you have already bought a new replacement for your ‘broken’ machine, so why not simply get rid of it and make full use of the new?”  A good question, but one that doesn’t really work with the way that I buy things.  My logic is not the sort that says that I have to use a brush and pan while the old machine is repaired.  Buying is an end in itself.  And “argue not the need” (or “reason not the need” as Shakespeare might insist he actually wrote) as sufficient unto the day is the purchase thereof.  So, to speak.

How much have I spent!

 

 

If people took as much time to research their partners as they do to buy a smartwatch then the world will be, um, a different place. I suppose that I will now have to hurriedly bring in a whole series of disclaimers that this is not about me and mine, it is just a casual thought.  A casual thought, brought on however, by my own experience.  And I will stop there as I appear to be adding to the depth of the hole!

I have been researching watches for some time.  I need little impetus to do so as watches and their purchase are a ‘thing’ of mine.  Ever since my first Ingersoll (8 jewels, or was it even more?) that was my first real timepiece – discounting the red plastic with yellow moveable arms thing on which I learned to tell the time – and the start of a life-long casual (but serious) affair with watches.

I have never been a fan of the upper range of absurdly expensive watches for much the same reason that I shun expensive fountain pens: I am drawn to both, but know that my less than serious approach to things material will mean that they will go the way of all flesh before I have had my money’s worth out of them.

I have always maintained that my favourite Madge song is “I am a material girl”.  I adore things, philosophically and materially, but I do not look after them in the way that I should.  I was brought up with grandparents and parents who were firmly in the ‘make do and mend’ generations, but they produced someone who, even though he had a cub badge which represented the fact that he had proved himself not to be a spendthrift (for a stipulated period of time) has yet to learn the true value of money and via that the value of things.

Far from the ‘make do and mend’ approach to life, I have always veered (quite directly) towards the ‘buy new’ approach to the capitalist society.  The evil fiends behind the planned obsolescence that drives our society must regard me as some sort of patron saint.  Cameras, computers, mobile phones and, above all, watches litter my life as I eagerly embrace each new fad, app and gadget.

As far as the watches are concerned, I had thought that I had found the smartwatch of my dreams in the Pebble.  This excellent watch was funded on Kickstarter or similar and produced a smartwatch with an always-on display, waterproof for swimming, a large face with digits easy enough for me to read, metal construction with metal band and all at a reasonable cost!  Job done!  And it was, until the firm produced a further watch, a development from the original (that I backed) and I waited for another great watch.

And it didn’t happen.  Because the firm was bought by the larger watch maker Fitbit and that was the last that we heard of the Pebble.  Except, of course, thousands of customers actually own them and have continued to use them.  But the apps that we use to make the most of the smart capabilities are gradually being un-supported and if anything goes wrong with the watch there is no real system to repair it.  The Pebble community does what it can, but our watches are gallopingly obsolescent.  One of the buttons on my watch is not now working.  It still tells the time, but that is a far cry from what it should be able to do.  So, I decided to search for a replacement.

The internet is awash with ‘reduced’ cost smartwatches costing between 20 and 100 euros, with the median price being just under 50.  What these watches offer is astonishing: they play music, take photos, locate you, tell you the weather, height above sea level – and tell the time.  Just as with modern phones, their primary function, the fact that they allow people to speak to each other seems to be the least of their capabilities!

But these ‘bargains’ were rarely waterproof, or if they were, they were not equipped with an always-on screen.  As soon as I had found a watch that seemed like a reasonable replacement for my Pebble, a more searching examination of the attributes of the watch would reveal that it actually had “everyday waterproof” status which mean that you could wash dishes carefully in it, or it would take a few drops of rain.  Or, more revealingly, it would say nothing about its waterproof status and so you would buy at your own risk.

I must have looked at scores of watches and rejected the lot.  Well, that is not strictly true.  I have ‘fallen’ for one or two too-good-to-be-true offers that have turned out to be exactly that.  I now own one watch that actually plays stored music on its tiny loudspeakers!  This was supposed to be waterproof, but the back of that particular watch is very easy to dislodge and is anything but waterproof.  There is another watch that I helped fund on Kickstarter that is powered by body heat and will never need a battery, and it is also waterproof.  But the most important aspect of this wonder watch is that it doesn’t yet exist!  Or at least its production seems impossibly delayed.

So, I have taken commercial action and bought a watch: the Amazfit Stratos.  It seems to tick most of my ‘must have’ attributes: easily readable watch face, good battery life, waterproof for swimming.  The proof of course will become clear in the next few weeks through use – but I live in hope.  And it will, after all, be the end result of many hours of pleasurable imaginary spending.

Later.

I have now been struck by the ‘waiting for a bus syndrome’ – in the sense that you wait and wait for the one you want and then two come along at the same time.  As with buses so with watches.  No sooner had a bought the Amazfit than the watch that I supported on Kickstarter, indeed the one I referred to above, suddenly became a reality and, after a hefty import duty paid to the delivery driver, I now have a Matrix that I could put on my wrist!

This too is waterproof and never needs a battery (in theory) because of its ability to extract energy from the difference between body temperature and ambient temperature.  I shall put the technology for this in the same category as the oscillating crystals that tell the time in watches!

Apart from the difficulty of pairing the Matrix with my phone – and that was solved by reference to the Matrix website and the FAQs – I now have two working watches, two NEW working watches, to replace my fading Pebble!

As it happens, I am wearing the Amazfit today.  Having made an executive decision last night after weighing up the attributes of both.  I can’t pretend that I have been scientific or even fair with the products, but a decision has been made.

The reasons: the Amazfit has a dedicated ‘swimming’ app that gives lots of information that I am sure will come in useful some time or other; it is easy to use; it has the bigger number size when telling the time; it looks better than the Matrix and it is lighter.  I think that they are roughly comparable in price and both have an always-on display on which I insist.  I could probably recommend either, but at the moment the Amazfit has taken pride of place with the Matrix being a reserve watch.

I don’t think that I have ordered any more watches in the deep past that are suddenly going to pop over the fence into my time reality – but I really am a sucker for a well designed face, so to speak and I cannot positively rule out the fact that I backslid some time ago and there is a timepiece with my name on it making its way to Castelldefels from China!

I await the next post.