Bad start, got better

Extension of Restrictions, Day x++, Friday.

 

 

 

A catalogue of mishaps to start the day.

     Firstly, I forgot my mask and set off into the darkness, until the coldness across my lower face reminded me that something was missing.  Luckily I have masks secreted about my clothing and so was able to pull into the side of the road and garb myself up.

      There was a police check point set up just after the junction of the motorway exit and the road along the side of the Olympic Canal.  Luckily, as I was in the cycle lane I was not stopped and was able to get to the pool in good time.  To find that, as I started to change, I had left my bathing costume at home.  If I had thought for longer than a couple of seconds, I would have realized that the wet bathers from the day before were still in the compartment for used sporting clothing.  But I didn’t.

     To general hilarity from the centre staff, I left (almost) as soon as I arrived and plunged back into the darkness to go home.  Where, armed with dry bathers I returned to the pool, changed and got to the water much later than usual.

     Before I could plunge in, the lifeguard told me that the spaces for the next hour were fully booked and so I would need to quit the pool as the new folk arrived.

     As I was so late there was no clear lane for me to occupy and so I had to double up with a swimmer (five lanes, 10 swimmers, two to a lane swimming in parallel) and start my delayed efforts.

     As it turned out, not everyone turned up to claim their booked spaces and so, with a few judicious lane swaps, I was able to complete me full swim with the series of exercises that I do at the end of the official metric mile of overarm.

     After my cup of tea and bocadillo I usually set off on my bike ride to Port Ginesta and back, but the gage on my bike informed me that I was down to 20% power and, oddly, when I made my first attempt to come to the pool the screen actually registered 6%!  Only once have I attempted to ride the bike without any electrical assistance and it is an experience that I do not intend to repeat.  To give an equivalent example, without any electrical assistance, it is like driving a car without power steering, something I prefer not to do.

     It did not help that the weather was uncomfortably odd, the sky a funny colour and the temperature low.  I rode down to the paseo and as I met it, I made an executive decision to return home.  Being caught in a thunderstorm is another experience that I do not intend to repeat!

 

 

 

I now have a number of writing projects on which I am working, some of which require a little light research.  Some information is proving hard to find, but I know that it is only a matter of time before I find what is necessary.  Or not.  Sometimes the effort is all!

 

Tomorrow the restrictions on people travelling to other municipalities means that only Castelldefels people should be walking along the paseo.  It is very hard to believe that the strangers that we see are just fellow citizens who have kept themselves to themselves and have finally decided to come out to have a breather.

     We have had police checkpoints on entry points to Castelldefels (especially the beach area) to dissuade ‘outsiders’ from breaking the regulations, but it must be difficult for people close to us from not wanting to make a quick visit.

     The figures for Covid in Spain and Catalonia are not good.  The restrictions have been extended for a further 15 days here in Catalonia which virtually gets us up to the Christmas period.

     The loosening of the regulations and restrictions for Christmas seems to me to be fatal madness.  As experts constantly point out, the virus doesn’t recognize the Christmas period and will act accordingly.  We must expect an increase in deaths in the middle of January if people decide to meet up and try and experience anything but a shadow of what Christmas used to be like.

     As far as I can see, Christmas will be just the two of us.  There may be a way for Toni to meet up with some of his family, but I really do not see the point in taking such a risk when the vaccine is only a few months away.  We will see.

     At least in the New Year the Trumpian Nightmare will have his tiny hands forced away from the levers of power and we can hope for a boring presidency to take its place.

     Pity that the horror of Brexit in some sense or other will be filling the minds of people in Britain.  To think that we have years (o god, years) more of the bunch of viciously and fatally incompetent chancers governing us is depressing.

     And what is more depressing is the Dance of Death that the Conservative Party is doing with the EU in the lead up to some sort of agreement.  I do not see how Johnson is going to be able to spin anything that he manages to get in a positive way.  He truly (as are all the rest of us) in a no-win situation.  Any Brexit is going to be a disaster, it just depends how big a disaster.  Whatever agreement he manages to get, it is going to be construed as a betrayal by whole swathes of his own party and the rest of the country.  God alone knows what Northern Ireland is going to get out of that bumbling fool’s final idiocy.

     If he does manage to cobble together some sort of paper-thin agreement then my pension will go up.  When I arrived in Catalonia the euro was 70p now it’s 90p+, that translates into a 30% reduction in my pension as it is paid in pounds (tax deducted) and then transferred to Catalonia.  If there is any sort of agreement then the value of the pound will go up, I will get more euros for my money right up until the full impact of the idiocy of Brexit comes home to roost and the pound plunges down again.

     And a Happy Christmas to us all!

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.