A range of rants

 

 

A double vaccinated member of my Catalan family has now contracted Covid and will have to self-isolate, emerging from this on the 22^nd of December, just in time for the Christmas Celebrations.  At the moment he has flu-like symptoms, and we are hoping that they do not develop any further, relying on the expectation that the vaccination will limit any serious consequences.

     What it does do is emphasise that the pandemic is nowhere near over, and we are still very much in the dark as far as any coherent view about what post-pandemic life may be, and when we might be experiencing it.

     At this moment in time, all our planned celebrations for the three days from Christmas Eve are still in place, though these same plans become more brittle with each passing day.

     In spite of the growing fears about the Omicron variant, there does not seem to be a great deal of concern about the progress of the pandemic, and the rules that are already in place do not seem to be widely followed. 

     For example, we are now supposed to show Covid vaccination certificates in restaurants, bars, gyms etc – the policy is, shall we say, being loosely applied.  Today in a restaurant we were not asked for our certificate, and I saw no one who came into the restaurant asked.

     If this laxity is indicative of the approach here, then it is only a matter of time before the pressing need for more taxing restrictions are brought in because of an exponential rise in infection.

     I count myself partly to blame because, until Toni mentioned it this evening, it didn’t even cross my mind that the regulations had not been followed.  Life goes on as normal, and one is easily seduced into forgetting the reality with which one is surrounded.

     I know that it is wrong for the government to expect members of the public to act as their surrogates in getting policy delivered, but it is in all our interests that the very reasonable precautions that should be taken, are taken.

     I resolve to show my certificate even if I am not asked for it, and that might provoke the right behaviour.  I shall be more vigilant in future.  In a future that looks increasingly bleak as the news of the spread of the Omicron variation looks unstoppable.

 

 

Yet again I ask myself what the Conservative Party has to do to get people to stop voting and supporting them!

     It is an exhausting job merely listing the scandals that Johnson and his rag bag government have racked up.

     Just in the last week or so we have had the revelations about the last year Christmas parties that were held (or not held) in 10 Downing Street, with Johnsons categorical (eventual) denials having all the force of the ‘do not tumble dry’ instruction on clothes (image courtesy of John Crace or Marina Hyde in the Guardian).  Basically, if Johnson says something it is a fairly secure rule of thumb that the exact opposite is true.  So, while the rest of the country was obeying the strict lockdown rules, No 10 was flouting them.  And now lying about them.

     Coupled with this is the “apology” for failings in the Grenville Tower disaster in the administration of building regulations.  Tell that to the dead.

     Today we heard graphic descriptions of the disorganized chaos in the Foreign Office with the deadhead Raab presiding over a dysfunctional and deadly, inefficient, badly led, disaster of a department.

     And the final and grotesque garnish to the vileness of the government is the revealing of the lies that Johnson and No 10 have talked about the evacuation of pets before people.  I am a staunch believer in the fact that people who do not care about animals, will care little for humans as well.  But people must come before pets, and if resources were diverted to help a pet sanctuary rather than help the people who aided the mission in Afghanistan AND that Johnson lied about his involvement, then surely disgust and repugnance is the only appropriate attitude to have towards him and the low life that supports him.

     And that lot is only what has been brought to us today!  It is exhausting despising the worthless chancers who rule us.  With Thatcher (whom I hated and continue to hate) I didn’t feel this drained and depleted by my loathing.  Thatcher was a person and not a cult.  Johnson is a populist with, as far as I can tell, not a shred of ‘ethos’ motivating his actions apart from his narcissistic self-regard.  He demeans the country, politics, and himself.  He is a disgrace – but he will not and indeed cannot see that.  To recognize his own fatal limitations will mean his instant evaporation.

     It will be instructive to see what happens to the Conservative majority in the next by-election.  If the Conservative Party senses that he has or will become a liability, they will be ruthless in their elimination of an obstacle to their continued grip on power.

     I can look forward to Johnson’s fall from grace (though he certainly did that a long, long time ago) but I shudder at the ‘slimy things with legs’ that will slither their way out of the sewer of sleaze and corruption that is the Conservative Party at the moment and try and shin their way up the greasy Tory donor money painted pole to power.

     God help us all!

Who pays for nice?

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You can tell that holidays in earnest have started in this part of the world because there were delightfully fewer people in the swimming pool today. 

Most of the population is either planning for or actually taking their annual holidays.  Amazingly, this also applies to restaurateurs in this holiday seaside resort!  You would have thought that the one time that people in Castelldefels connected to the tourist trade would not take their holidays was in August, or high season as we call it.  You would be wrong!  I am astonished at the number of locales that take their holidays in August.  I suppose if they have kids then they do not have over many options, but August would seem to me to be the one time when they would not, under any circumstances turn away trade.  But then, I am a teacher and not a small shopkeeper, so what do I know about the real illogicality of commerce?

My local swimming pool has a contract with a local garden centre to beautify the outdoor area with a profusion of plants.  The children’s playground and café area perimeter have been marked out with a collection of greenery that certainly adds to the quality of the place, but other areas are demarcated with large planters.  These have been planted with plants that thrive (or at least are supposed to thrive) in the semi-arid conditions that are the norm of these parts.  The plants chosen are the succulent (?) fat leafed varieties related to the cactus (I think) the sort of plants that thrive on neglect and can grow and develop with a lack of water as well as the occasional downpour.  I am sure that was the theory, but in practice the plants have yet (generally) to climb above the confines of their boxes.  As I have observed form my seat in the sun, they also have to contend with the occasional flicked fag end and the finger poking obtrusive attention of passing kids.

Today an employee of the garden centre has been turfing out and digging in, replacing the old abused and neglected with the burgeoning pot cosseted new.  As I watch the changing greenery I wonder about the economics of it all.  Does the pool have a monthly contract?  Did they pay a one-off fee?  Is it on an ‘if and when’ basis?  How much are they paying for what is, basically, ignored decoration?  Though, I hasten to add, not ignored by me!

I think that anything that makes my aesthetic experience more enjoyable has my vote.  I like the fact that many roundabouts hereabouts have ‘art’ in some shape or form in their centres.  Not always to my taste, but something which takes away from the monotony of a regular traffic moderator.  The (usually) metallic sculptural forms hark back to a period when austerity was not the only guiding economic power, though one does wonder about the detail of the commissioning of these municipal excrescences.  Given that corruption is the spice that heightens the appreciation of life in these parts, I do wonder how a thorough audit might change the point of view of a casual observer.  After all, most people glance at the ‘sculptures’ and either ignore them or wonder what on earth they ‘mean’ as they drive towards the beach.  Their perceptions might be appreciably different if they knew exactly how much they cost and how they came to be made.

 

Two cases of ‘public’ art come to mind.  Castelldefels was gifted an imposing circular metal sculpture of grasped hands by Lorenzo Quinn, but there was an almighty row about how much it actually cost to install it in its present location next to the beach.    

 

The other piece of art that intrigues me is the mural decoration in our local central church.  Who paid for it?  And who, while we are at it, paid for the hideous stage-scenery artificial looking façade on the church to replace the structure rightfully destroyed during the Spanish Civil War?  I have to admit were I Catalan I would never forgive the Roman Church for its hysterically enthusiastic support of the fascists and its bloodcurdling condemnation of the democratic government. 

I suspect that the rebuilding of the burnt church and the painting of the series of murals on the windowless east and west walls (the church faces north) was paid for by the government.  At the moment, I do not know the truth, but I have discovered that there is some sort of publication about the murals available from the Parochial Church House and I am more than prepared to spend 20 euros to find out a little more.  The only history of Castelldefels that I have is in Catalan, so that makes each paragraph painful linguistic deciphering - but this is an on going project, and now that there is a sort-of museum of Castelldefels opened in the centre, there may well be other sources of information now available.

Public art is always problematical.  Complex medical machinery is always pushed next to any street art object in the popular press with the implied suggestion that the money could have been better and more profitably spent.  How, goes the argument, could a twisted free-standing ribbon of metal possibly compare with a kidney dialysis machine?  How could a kidney dialysis machine possibly compare with the helicopter rescue of people on a sinking ship?  How could a helicopter rescue of people on a sinking ship possibly compare with emergency food aid to a population of starving people in sub-Saharan Africa?  And so on ad absurdum.

Someone once pointed out that there was no logical limit to the amount of money that you could pay into the NHS: whatever you give, the NHS could use more.  But there are not unlimited funds and so decisions have to be made, and decisions go on being made up and down the line of finance which mean that absolute judgements about ‘worth’ in spending are virtually impossible to make - but are made every moment of every day.

Erecting crash barriers along a road to restrain crowds wanting to see their successful football team parade the cup that they have won costs money.  That money is from a finite pot, and while the expense might well be necessary and useful it will, of course mean that money for something else will be limited.

I have a season ticket for the opera in the Liceu.  I pay a lot of money for my (frankly) very good seat, but I am aware that each performance I go to, my payment for the ticket is not the real price of the production.  I know that, as opera is such an expensive art form, my seat has been subsidised by a government grant.

I might, and do say that opera is a vital art form, it is a living sign of the cultural health of a city and country; I might say that life would be infinitely poorer without this art form, that a thriving opera scene in Barcelona is good not only for opera, music and the Liceu, but also for a host of people whose work is directly involved in the production, staging and managing of opera.  I might say that the tourist destination of Barcelona is made richer (literally and figuratively) by the fact that its opera house is one of the most important in Europe; I might say that although the majority of people in Barcelona do not get to see the productions, the economic, social and cultural effects of the shows directly support many more.

A few times a year, here in Castelldefels, we have public firework displays.  I love them and have spend many fruitless years trying to get a decent photo of them.  Now I just watch, open mouthed, and enjoy.  How can they be justified as a public expense?

I could go through a number of possible justifications from supporting local industry (we have a firework factory just up the road) to a necessary tourist attraction in a resort that relies on tourists - but, really I truly believe that fireworks add to the jollity of nations and that is justification enough!

Learning is reading is seeing!

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It is gradually dawning on me that we are already in the month of July.  Which means that there is only one full month between today and the start of September.  So much, so obvious.  The reason why this is a disconcerting fact is that in September I start a new course in Spanish III.

Although I have lived in Spain for almost a decade, I am shamefully, and woefully inadequate when it comes to expressing myself in Spanish.  I mean, I get by.  No matter what the situation, be it garage, government, restaurant, optician, library, art gallery, theatre, opera house, museum, bus, train, bike shop, etc etc etc - I get by.  But I am always conscious that when I compare what I am able to say in English with how I express myself in Spanish, the different is, to put it mildly, glaring. I have Taken Steps to rectify my inarticulacy and this year I have taken an OU course in Spanish Beginners and a course in Castelldefels in Spanish 2.  This sort of overkill approach has had mixed results.

On the positive side I have passed my Spanish 2 course and am now officially certified as having a proficiency of A2 - I have documentary proof of this, and that is something which I look at from time to time as I am not entirely convinced that my ability matches the printed description.  Still, I have done the exams and got the paper. 

The OU course has been interesting, but my approach to it has been less than wholeheartedly enthusiastic.  My marks for the OU course have been among the highest that I have managed to get, with my lowest mark being 94%!  But perhaps those marks have more to do with the fact that I now know how the OU works and I am able to push them exactly what they want.  And this is not false modesty on my part, I know what I do not know, and I do know that the marks do not reflect my proficiency and ability.  Bumbling by in a confident ungrammatical style is not competence.

 

So, the start of Spanish III in September is a truly daunting prospect.  There is no way that I can get through this year by relying on quick wits and a smattering of half remembered vocabulary.  Spanish III is serious - that’s why I have written the number in Roman numerals rather than the more prosaic Arabic alternative.  [And just as a casual thought, how might I have translated that last sentence?  Pause.  Although I have no intention of showing you my version, I did put my Spanish attempt in Google translate and something vaguely similar came out the other end in English!]  I will have to take a more serious and studious approach if I am not to be humiliated by the experience.

I have determined an approach that might help, but it does need constant effort and a seriousness that I have not shown heretofore.  With the OU course I left out great chunks of the material, decided that other bits were stuff I knew, and concentrated on the tutor marked assignments and the computer marked multiple-choice questions.  I worked to the final result and the final result will therefore reflect my ability to understand the mechanism of the institution rather than show exactly how much I have learned and I know.

But I know that if my approach had been slightly different and I had been more methodical towards all the course and not just to those bits that had a final mark attached to them, I would have benefitted immeasurably.  The material is well thought out and leads you gently (generally) to proficiency.  It is a sign of the realism of the Open University that access to the studenthome website for the course is available to students for three years after the course has finished.  I think that I will need that to go over just what it is that I am supposed to have learned.

And then there is the course that I have just completed in Castelldefels.  We have a course book for this, complete with CD.  The lessons are generally more conversational than overly didactic so much of the hard graft learning is left to the students.  I cannot, in conscience say that I kept up my end of the bargain and too often the next time that I opened the books after the previous lesson was in the next lesson.  This does not work.  And it will not work in Spanish III.  So things will have to change.  I live in hope.

-oO0Oo-

As part of our “Summer is the Time to Explore” approach to life, we have been to a new/old restaurant in Castelldefels.  OK, it’s not exactly sailing up the Zambezi in a canoe made of matchsticks, but it is adventurous according to our lights.

We chose to go to an old haunt further down the beach road, where previously we had got a fairly basic menu del dia for about €10.  The food was not spectacular but it was good value for money. 

It must be over a year or so since we last went there.  At this point you have to understand that time in a seaside resort is not the same as in the rest of the world.  A single year in resort is equivalent to at least five in the normal time frame.  In our world shops come and go; restaurants rise and fall; banks close; hotels rise up like Lego constructions; car parks become flats - nothing stays the same for long.  So, you could say that we were somewhat naive in expecting to get the same experience from something so far back in resort time.

And things had certainly changed.  Rough and ready had now become canvas backed chic; tables and chairs had been redone, and there was air conditioning inside.  And the price was now €16, a 60% increase.  And that was without drink!

Service was poor and slow.  The starters were OK, but the main course was far too salty.  The piss-poor wine was €12 and the bottle of gaseosa was €2.50.  We had to pay €2 for parking because the service was so slow.  The final bill (after the beer that we didn’t have had been deducted!) was over €50.  We could have had better for €20 elsewhere.

You could say that I should name and shame - and the fact that I didn’t leave a tip shows how dissatisfied I was - but, how many of my readers are going to turn up looking for a cheap lunch any time in the next decade?  As a one off experience it was not good, but thinking about what I was prepared to accept when I first came to Spain, I would have been quite happy with the meal.  In those days I would have been impressed by the ‘free’ olives and even more by the thimble full of cheap vermouth with a speared olive in it.  But that was then and this is now and my standards are a little higher than they were.

This is a seaside town and summer is the traditional time to rip off those tourists who are so green that they look to have a meal with a sea view.  I should have known better, so I will let the restaurant hide behind my gifted anonymity and let them rack up the Euros while the sun shines!

-oO0Oo-

My eyes have never been the strongest part of my anatomy, and recently they have been more irritating than usual.

I can usually cope with the sheer frustration of short sightedness, and even the addition in later life of longsighted-ness to go with that: varifocal glasses are worth their weight in gold - just as soon as you have worked out how to walk down stairs in them!  I have been wearing contact lenses since I was seventeen and I have attempted to get used to a multitude of different forms of plastic pressed against my eyeballs.

Only those who have had hard contact lenses and then got a spec of grit behind one can truly understand the meaning of the oxymoronic “exquisite pain”!  The development of soft contact lenses and the further development of ‘daily’ soft contact lenses where, at last, you could throw them away at the end of the day, rather than pretending that you cleaned them properly and put them in fresh solution for the night rather than popping them in your mouth and sucking them to get them clean.  I pause here for opticians to have their fit of the vapours - which emphatically occurred when I first admitted to my optician that was my usual treatment.  From there I (like all other hard contact lens users) I lied.

Anyway.  Even with soft, daily contact lenses there will come a time when your eyeballs have had enough of plastic already, and demand that you dig out your old specs and wear those for a while.  My eyes have been getting ‘tired’ recently and my eyesight has become somewhat blurred, so I have gone back to glasses,

My glasses are lightweight, thinned, photochromatic, varifocal and laser and computer fabricated.  They have lightweight frameless frames made of matt platinum (going by the price) and are altogether things of loveliness - if you like that sort of thing.  I hate them, and only use them when my eyes scream for relief.

This time the respite that glasses is supposed to give to contact lens-abused eyes, has not worked out.  I am still getting blurred vision, and it is as if a tiny piece of translucent gauze has been stuck on my left eyeball.  And I am worried.

Worried in two ways.  I have an optician appointment at 6 this evening (this is Spain and not Britain you understand) and my first worry is trying to translate a phrase like “tiny piece of translucent gauze” into Spanish.  My second and more real worry is that what I am experiencing is related to diabetes.  I have been borderline diabetes 2 for some time and, although my last blood test was triumphantly negative for diabetes, I fear that I may have backslid.  So to speak.

Although it is the summer I have a lot of bookwork to do.  Not only re-reading the Spanish course that I didn’t read the first time around, but also working on my latest book of poems.  Although the poems are written, the introduction, the editing and the proof reading are all to come.  I need my glasses or lens assisted sight for some fairly intense work over the next few months.

Although I try and make light of it, I am worried.  There are too many nasty things that the “tiny piece of translucent gauze” might suggest.

However there is a whole hour before my appointment and I am not going to spend it in fruitless, frightened speculation.  I will write a poem instead.  Or at least draft one out.

My drafts of poems can be seen at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/ that you are welcome to visit or ignore as your pleasure dictates.

58 more minutes to the appointment.  Not that I am counting or anything, you understand.  No indeed.  Indeed not.

Pace increases

Day 5 of Bike Riding.

At last an uneventful day with the chain staying firmly on the cogs.  The wind, however, was another story.  And it was against me all the way there, even drawing water from my eyes.  There is nothing like discomfort to make you believe that you are really doing something major.  It allowed me to ignore the pathetically small distance that I actually travel each day to get to my swim.  Small enough to be manageable but long enough for me to feel that I have accomplished something when it is done.

            The aquacise or whatever they call it when a group of aging people stand in the pool and vaguely follow the gyrations of a raucous teacher shouting against pounding music.  A pair of earplugs and head under water modifies the noise level and anyway, I am usually thinking profound thoughts as I mindlessly make my way up and down.  Well, not necessarily profound but deep, deep as the pool.  And as this is a modern double shallow end pool and child friendly, you can tell exactly how probing those thoughts are!

            I am reminded of my time in university when I used to go for a swim in the pool next to Singleton Hospital every day.  The swim was a form of exercise and of relaxation too.  I thought, I am always thinking, but the level of thought was not quite so focussed, it became more wide-ranging and less serious, almost like a waking dream.  Sometimes I take a single part of a thought and worry it like a bone and let it go where it will.  The great thing about swimming is that if you don’t keep at least part of your mind on what you are doing, you drown.  So there is a dual control thing going on which is so different from normal living that it can little less than a form of escape.  Or at least that is what I tell myself.  Anyway, by the time all the half thoughts, the vague ideas, the necessary exercise and little distractions of other human bodies have played themselves to some sort of climax, it is time to end the swim.  And it can all start again tomorrow!

Support Toni’s Blog

Lunch now has become a duty.  We only eat to add another restaurant to the growing number contained in Toni’s Blog http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es/ this time going to a place that we haven’t been to for some time.

            The décor had been partially changed but the ambience of the place was just about the same, or rather it was a bit lopsided as if they hadn’t really made a final decision about how the almost revamped place should look.

            The food was fine with my main dish of wok fried chicken and vegetables being really rather good.  But look at the blog to see what we ate.

            I like the idea of each eating out experience being captured and blogified.  Over a year or so we should have a substantial number of entries and have a bewilderingly luscious selection of what Castelldefels can offer.

            I wonder if what Toni writes will develop more of a bite and be more destructive, or constructively critical as time goes on.  This is still very early days for the site and so there are all sorts of ways in which it can go.

The next book

Considering the actual ‘next’ book has not actually been produced yet, to be planning one for 2016 is either an example of exceptional forward planning, or a shining example of hope trumping reality.

            However, I have a working title, ‘Structured Sense’ and I have added the first poem to its pages and I am already thinking about ideas for the few sequences that I think I would like to include.  One of my favourite quotations concerns ‘vaulting ambition’ – though I have always considered that it only applied to murdering Scottish pretenders than to my good self.

            ‘Flesh Can Be Bright’ continues to progress and, as far as I am concerned, my poems for that book are done.  I am now waiting on the work of others – but I also have a plan B to cope with any and all failures of contributions.  Though I am quietly confident that everything will work out in the end.

            I am now editing and redrafting and I reckon that will take me well up to May and then final decisions will have to be taken about the final appearance of the book.  You would think that self-publishing makes things a damn sight easier – and that self-delusion is what I am working on.  And I like the ambiguity of that statement!

OU hysteria

Even when, or perhaps especially when, we are a separated group of studiers, hysteria has a way of uniting us in one howling band of paranoia.  This is partly because the next few weeks are ones of concentrated work production with two pieces of tutor work having to be sent in.

            We have just had an on-line tutorial.  I do not know what some of my fellow students use as microphones, but some of them do not seem to have the same quality of reproduction of a tin with a piece of stretched string.  One of them sounded as though he was in a cardboard box surrounded by cotton wool.  And people don’t read the instructions and the information that they are given and, I am sounding like a teacher.  So I will stop.

            At least my tutor seems not only sympathetic to my general choice of topic for my mini thesis, but also sympathetic to my bending the rules a little to further my ideas.  This is positive.  I will reserve my relief until I get back my academic pro-forma and see exactly what comments my tutor makes for the next stage.

            I am lucky in being able (in theory) to see both of my paintings in London.  One, the Hockney, I will have check that it will be on display when I am able to get to the Tate.  I bloody well hope it is as I have built my ideas around seeing it again as a central part of my thesis.  The other painting is in a private collection and the owner has, very kindly, invited me to view the paintings when I am in London.  This could all work out very well, and I still have in mind the development of the ideas to link up with the exhibition in Leeds.  That would be a major achievement.  But that is for the future.  The immediate future is the writing of an outline of what I think I might be able to do.