Are you sitting comfortably?

 

 

 

Even though we are at the fag-end of the year, something happened today that will be the defining feature for me, and possibly for a few others too.

     My ‘creative space’ is not my brain, it is a ‘squalid corner’ of the third floor where my desk (cluttered) is hemmed in on one side by a sawn-off storage unit, a plastic segmented bookcase and a queeny printer; on the other by a series of CD box vaults, the back of an IKEA bookcase and an Anglepoise (knock-off not real) lamp; behind three low-rise bookshelves, a bewilderingly large number of plastic mini-shelved units and a lopsided arrangement of Things Too Large to Put Away Properly; in front is a low wall and the stair well.  And this altogether conducive-to-creation ensemble is finished by a high-backed office chair that is literally falling to bits, with the faux leather coming away in specks.

     Enough, I said to myself, I said, is enough!  A new chair is necessary and, furthermore, it will be something that can sweep up my Christmas and Name Day offerings into one coherent present.  The ‘Name Day’ thing is important in this part of the world and you ignore the recognition-through-presents at your own risk, it therefore follows (as the night the day) that reciprocation can work together for good.  As my Name Day is actually Boxing Day a seasonal personal present objective makes sense, so I thought a new chair would concentrate minds and contributions.

     Having tried a selection of chairs in all the main superstore outlets in the vicinity and found all of them lacking, Toni actually discovered a dedicated office furniture outlet with ‘sale’ prices in Cornella, a place a few towns along one of our motorways and a place passed through by me on my daily journey to the School on the Hill.

     Today was the day we visited the place.  I had (in mind and written in my notebook) a list of desirable attributes of the New Chair.  It had to have  i) a base of five wheeled feet  ii) a high back  iii) gas suspension  iv) be ergonomic  v) be made of leather  vi) have no arms or have removable arms  vii) look ‘the business’.  I did have a vague sort of idea of what sort of cost it might be, but I decided to be adventurous.

     The end result of much sitting and trying this and then trying that, was that the ergonomic trumped the leather.  The seat that I have decided on, and indeed ordered for delivery in January looks a bit more medical than office-like, but it is comfortable and virtually everything that can, adjusts.

     And the cost.

     Toni was and still is shell-shockedly stunned that any sentient life-form could even contemplate paying so much for what is, after all, at the end of the day, an office chair.  Well, I have.  Or at least I have paid a deposit.  And even the 20% deposit was large.  So, you can imagine that the whole thing (the other 80%) is, well, monstrous.

     In my defence, I would opine that my complete lack of smoking is a major factor in allowing sums of money which would have gone up in smoke and been ingested in tar to be used for something that is much more (much more) useful and necessary.  But is an awfully large sum of money.  For a chair.

     And, as its main material is a sort of mesh (to allow for air flow and healthiness) you don’t even get plush, buttoned leather for your money – in spite of the fact that the money you have paid could easily have allowed wheels to have been fitted to a handmade ottoman and still have had money left over.

     And I don’t care.  I have got (or at least will have) what I wanted.  And it is something that will be used.  And used constantly.  And, and I think I am trying to persuade myself here rather than any reader.  And so, I will stop.  But I (and that is the important pronoun) I, think that it is money well spent.  And I sincerely trust that I will be saying that in twenty years’ time (when I am still using the bloody thing) and then dividing the price I paid in 2020 by the number of years I have been using it and saying to myself, “It’s a bargain!” and “My back has never felt better!” and so on.

     I am further encouraged by the fact that the person selling me thing was actually using one of them as her own office chair.  And that has to be good.  Doesn’t it?  Yes?

     What the AOTC (Advent of the Chair) will necessitate is Doing Something to the chaos of the third floor.  Such a splendid beast must have space in which to dominate the surroundings.  The detritus behind me at the moment must go.  Where?  I know not, but somewhere not behind me.  The Chair will be brought unto me by the lackeys of the firm and they will Construct The Chair, presumably by bringing up the pieces to the third floor.  There is no room whatsoever to do any construction so, what years of nagging by Toni have failed to do, the AOTC will force me to do: create space where no space exists.

     My last and latest attempt to Clear Up the third floor comprised checking through long unopened files and junking and shredding irrelevant papers.  This created gratifying large bags of rubbish, but not any appreciable space as I had been excavating rather than bulldozing.  Something much more radical is called for, and to be frank, I am not sure that I can muster up enough iconoclastic zeal to do the necessary.  Toni has, bless him, offered to do the ‘tidying up’ for me, but I know that I would have to ‘dispose’ of him after the event when I realized what priceless pieces of ephemera he might have got rid of!

     So, the next few weeks are going to demand a positively Dominican level of material rejection from me if I am to make any impression on the cluttered chaos.  Wish me luck or wish me the equanimity to see the AOTC as setting a diamond in the dross of attic confusion!

     And yes, I am well aware that I have not actually told you the price of the thing.  And yes, I have no intention whatsoever of so doing.  I may be happy (if that is the word that I am looking for) with what I have done, but I think that I can only convince others by denying them specific totals.  Better to speculate with lurid imagination rather than condemn in black and white!  And you will have noticed that I chose a generic chair for illustration rather than something more identifiable.

 

 

 

 

And talking of the unjustifiable, Johnson is trying to have his cake and eat it: he fulfils his promise to allow us to celebrate Christmas but wants us not to do it because it will fuel the increase in Covid infection.  So, what this appalling man is actually doing is putting the onus on the British People.  He lacks the courage to admit that he was wrong to promise a variant on the “it will be all over by Christmas” (that always works out well!) and instead of imposing legally enforceable restrictions he is leaving it all up to us.  He will then, of course, wash his hands and say that it was made clear by the government that there were risks involved and people were warned, but people will be people and therefore you have only yourselves to blame!  He truly is repellent.

     Here in Catalonia and in Spain things do not appear to be much better.  Our prime minister has had to self-isolate because of his proximity to the French president and we all know that all hell is going to break out after the Christmas period.

     We have gone through a year when normal has been taken out roughed up, lightly killed, spat at, insulted, trampled on and general bad mouthed.  I think we know that we are in the final stretch, and I further think that we know that the final stretch is not going to be measured in weeks but rather in months.  And probably quite a few months.  I am telling myself that I will be lucky, very lucky, if I am vaccinated by April.  And since I tick a few of the ‘at risk’ boxes, I think it is going to be the end of the summer or the middle of the autumn until a majority of the country is close to having had the jab.

     Given those expectations, Christmas is neither here nor there, it is just an odd date in the unrelenting sequences that we have been subject to during this pandemic.

 

But my chair will be here in January.  Something concrete to look forward to.

A Cold Rant!

 

 

 

It may have been something to do with the cold, making me feel even more misanthropic than usual, or it may just be the way that my mind works, but I began to think of the Decline of Empires and how values are, well, devalued as a society sinks into the abyss.

     It is, after all, very easy to get into an apocalyptic way of thinking when a pandemic is raging around us and economic disaster is an everyday reality.  People talking of ‘The New Normal’ as if it is just a slight change in the weather, rather than a radical rethinking of the way that we have been doing things.  When you see a film on television and it shows crowds of people jostling their ways around a crowded city; when you see people flocking to stadia or theatres; when you see people greeting each other with a friendly kiss on either cheek – and you think, that is another world, you begin to realize just how massive a change in the way that we behave and the way that we think has taken place.  What we did this time last year was BC – before Covid.  A different world, another country, foreign, they did things differently there.  That is a bit of a mash-up of L P Hartley’s famous opening line of The Go-Between, but it expresses the sense of strangeness that passing time gives, or perhaps demands.

     The true strangeness of our times is that this revolution in our activity has taken place in months, not years.  Even with World War Two there was a sort of phoney war to get people used to the fact that there was a war on.  Yes, there was the air raid warning that went off soon after the declaration of war, but it was a false alarm, my Dad was in London at the time and remembered the sense of, “Bloody hell!  Here we go!” and the rueful anti-climax when no bombers swooped into sight.  London and the rest of the country soon learned the reality of all out total war.

     I am not sure what sort of reality prevails at the moment.  We live a fairly enclosed life, with the occasional sally out for lunch or supplies, but we have not left our area for months, but I refuse to believe that the pelotons of cyclists that I passed on my morning ride along the paseo had dressed up in all their latex awfulness just to ride the few kilometres contained in our town - in spite of curfew being in force from 10 pm on Friday night to 6 am on Monday morning part of which demands that no one moves from their municipalities.

     People are cherry-picking the rules that they want to follow.  The number of cyclists, runners, dog walkers, and strollers who were not wearing masks is astonishingly high.  They want normality to be here now, and they are perhaps used to living in a society where instant gratification is the norm.  Covid breaks the norms, the trick is understanding that fact.

     But, back to the Decline of Empire and the Decadence that is its usual accompaniment.  Britain is a country where the time for sighing over lost empire is so far in the historical past that we should just shut up and get on with living with the status of a relatively rich but relatively uninfluential country.  Our ‘special relationship’ with the USA is a sad self-deluding joke and we belittle ourselves as we preen ourselves in the reflected glory of a richer and much more powerful friend and ally.

     Trump has tested the strength of American democracy and illustrated its weaknesses.  His sad continuing tantrum that reality does not bow to his own sick idea of reality would be pathetic and risible, if he was not the most powerful man in the world with truly frightening resources at his disposal.  This is where the cheap comparison with Hitler in his bunker falls down; Hitler was sending imaginary armies to fight against his inevitable defeat, Trump has at his disposal weapons that make the whole of the arsenal of the last world war look like fireworks.  Trump can send real armies into the abyss!

     Even though he has been defeated, even though he is a lame-duck president, even though the leaders of the world have congratulated Biden on his victory, the Orange Outrage still persists in his presidential petulance and every day he devalues his office a little (and some days a great deal) more.

     But what has really struck me about the grotesquery of Trump’s tenure in the White House is how brazen he has been in rewarding the people like himself, privileged white plutocrats (if he does actually have the money to entitle himself to that title).  He has cut tax for the very rich, he has reduced restrictions of manufacturing, he has opened up areas for mineral exploitation, he has degraded many of the agencies which protect our physical and financial environment.  He has worked (between golf rounds) on making sure that his friends, family and industrialists have all benefited.

     What is shocking is not that Trump has demonstrated no ethical standards in his government, who would have expected him to be anything outher than he turned out to be, but what is shocking is the extent to which he has been aided and abetted to stay in office by those around him.

     When a friend was working, very unhappily, in a school where the owner was making everybody’s’ lives unbearable, I had to tell her the simple truth about the owner, she simply did not care.  To the question which began, “But how can she . . . “ the answer was, “She doesn’t care!”   

     The Republicans in the Senate and in the House have shown that they simply, “do not care”.  As long as they get what they want they can allow the president to do little or nothing as a quarter of a million fellow Americans die of Covid; they can work to repeal the Affordable Care Act threatening to leave millions of poorer Americans without health insurance; they can stuff courts with ill-suited right-wing judges; they can lie; they can be proven hypocrites and they simply don’t care.

     The shocking thing is that it is all so plain to see.  They lie and cheat in plain sight.  They are caught out again, and again, and again.  But they simply don’t care.  Because the people that are suffering are not them.

     The Republicans have allowed a clearly unsuited person to be president.  They have supported him in the face of indisputable facts which disprove his position.  They have been venial and base – and they should be finished as a political party.

     Perhaps they are.  The sick nightmare of the Republican Party that has been formed in Trump’s image is perhaps something that will linger on longer than the one-term president who allowed the absurd parody of self-interest to stand for Republican American politics,

     The truly sad thing about the last days of the would-be despot is that he had the second highest number of votes ever cast for a presidential candidate and still people cling to his lies and delusions.  There are weeks to go before he finally leaves the White House and the trappings of power are taken from his tiny hands.  God alone knows what mischief he can do in that time.

     And he will be supported by Republicans in both houses, because they do not care.

YOUR life in YOUR hands

 

New Normal or lockdown or whatever, Second Week, Sunday

 

 

 

 

As far as I am aware the restrictions about moving from one location to another during the weekend is still in force, though it was difficult to believe that as I threaded my wobbly way past the masses of people who were thronging the paseo this morning.

     In many ways, it is difficult to blame people wanting what seems like a fairly innocent and safe pastime: wandering in time honoured fashion along the side of the sea.  On the other hand, I also regard every stranger as a possible enemy, and a deadly one at that.

     It is the fatal nature of the disease for many and the lingering serious complaints that are now being registered after surviving the virus for some, that make me question the absurd optimism of so many who live and act as though they do not really need a vaccine because they are so obviously immune.  And they are not.

     On my daily bike ride, I can judge just how seriously people take the fact that we are in the middle of the second wave of infection, and that we may yet see the totals for the first wave overtaken.  Most runners on the paseo do not wear masks.  A minority of cycle riders wear masks.  Some recreational walkers and dog walkers do not wear masks.  Some ‘regulars’ I pass every day have never worn masks, and some of those regulars are obvious OAPs and therefore in one of the most vulnerable categories.

     I have to say that a greater proportion overall of the people I pass now do wear masks, probably (but not unequivocally) a bare majority.  I have no idea what news broadcasts or newspapers these people glean their information from, but they are obviously very different from the ones that I see and read!

     Virtually everything that I hear about the virus frightens me.  Obviously you can’t live a life in perpetual terror, it’s too bloody wearing, but concern (to put it mildly) is never far from the surface: “hands, face and distance” is a sort of mental mantra by which I live my life!

     It looks as though one of the vaccines is likely to be rolled out within the next week or so.  This will be reserved for front line staff and those in immediate contact with virus infected people, but the rest of the vaccines should be available for the rest of us within weeks, though it will obviously take months for the population to be vaccinated.

     As soon as any of the vaccines start being used in the country, I think that will signal one of the most dangerous times in the pandemic, as people take from the application of a vaccine very different messages.

     From what I understand the vaccine will be delivered in two shots some time apart and, when an individual has been vaccinated they will be expected to continue the mask wearing, hand washing and physical distancing that they should have been observing up to the point of their vaccination.  This is going to be a hard ask when people are looking forward to the “freedom” that a vaccination is supposed to give.

     Even after the second shot, defences should not be lowered.  I wish the publicity campaigns that will be flooding our media outlets the best of luck, because they are going to need it.

     Why are we making an exception for the Christian festival of Christmas when we signally did not for festivals of other religions?  The relaxation of the rules for the Christmas period is a political decision and one that will cost lives.  That, together with the woeful approach of Johnson and his no-talent cabinet to tackling the pandemic lends further weight to my insistence that Johnson and co are charged with corporate manslaughter.  The blustering incompetent cannot put off the inquiry for ever, and when it starts taking evidence and delivers its report, then is the time for criminal prosecution to take place.

     In my adolescence, it took “thirteen years of Tory misrule” to show the corrupt, unfeeling incompetence of Conservative contempt for the ruled: it has taken Johnson far less than eighteen months to produce a ‘government’ mired in cronyism, corruption, arrogance, incompetence, dogmatic blindness, viciousness, petty mindedness and mendacity.  I am ashamed that my country is led by such a witless pack – and they should not be allowed to get away with it.  For once in his worthless life, Johnson must face up to his responsibilities, and if he is ‘disinclined’ to do so he must be forced to.

     And when you consider that in little over a month, this bunch of feckless liars are going to take us into the unicorn-filled lands of plenty of Brexit, the only realistic reaction is to weep!

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, my research about the war service of my grandfather progresses slowly.  I have discovered that he was a member of the Royal Field Artillery, in C Battery in the 173^rd Brigade.  What is more difficult is finding out exactly where he would have fought.  My grandfather did not have an easy war and was in some of the most bloody of the conflicts in France and Flanders.  I will persevere and find locations to add to the records that I have at the moment.

     As well as the horrors of being a combatant in The First World War, my grandfather also had to cope with the pandemic too, the Spanish Flu outbreak, which he survived.  We may have a rough year in 2020, but he had a succession of horrors for year after year!  We should be grateful!

 

Having now thoroughly depressed myself, I will turn to Netflix for some mindless amelioration! 

New Normal 3? 4? 5? – Who knows? Day 1, Monday.

 

 

 

The first swim for weeks!

     It was only after I had jumped in that I realized how much I had missed this particular form of daily exercise.  There is something about the enveloping support of lukewarm water that is immensely satisfying.  Even my rudimentary warm-up exercises seemed to bring neglected muscles back into play, and the swim itself was ‘easy’ – not without effort you understand, but comfortable and known.  I swam 1600 metres and could have swum more, but the temptation of a café made cup of tea and bocadillo were irresistible and so I had my just reward for early morning effort and sufficient ‘fuel’ for the bike ride to Port Ginesta and back.

     There are changes to what used to be the changed routine of pre-this-lockdown.  Although the numbers for swimming are the same (maximum of ten pre-booked people per hour spread over five lanes) we are now no longer allowed to put our clothes in the lockers provided, we have to take them with us to the pool side.  We are no longer allowed to shower after the swim.  We can use the poolside showers immediately before and after the swim, but an extended shower with soap in the changing room is no longer acceptable.

     In the café attached to the pool, the door is constantly open to facilitate a greater flow of air; part of the seating area has been taped off to keep within the 30% capacity and the tables that are in use have been more widely spaced out.  The terrace space can be fully utilized, but although bright and sunny, this is no weather for sitting outside.

     Masks must be worn in all areas of the centre except when eating and drinking.  This does not apply to smokers for reasons that I cannot fathom.  Why should leeway we allowed to those with a filthy and dangerous habit?  In a centre dedicated to health and exercise!

     I have to admit that I felt mildly exhilarated after my bike ride – exercise – swim – exercise - tea and bocadillo - bike ride!  I think it was more to do with getting back into an almost forgotten regime than the beneficial effect of more effort than usual over the past few weeks.

     I even managed to scribble down a few comments and ideas in my notebook, though I think that their more than usual mundanity means that they have little chance of being worked up into something more substantial.  But at least notes were made!

     Carles (the man who swims in the lane next to me and is a keen learner of English) was keen to find out different ways of expressing ‘death’, so I compiled a list of expressions off the top of my head ranging from “snuffed it” to “shuffled off this mortal coil”, though Carles was more interested in “passed away” and “taken by god” as being more relatable to Catalan/Spanish and using English words with which he was familiar.  I also gave him “kicked the bucket” to think about, which took a great deal of explaining and made me wonder just where the expression came from and why.

     And of course, I could not resist and I have just looked up the possible derivations and now possess more information than is usefully necessary in connection with the expression.  For the sake of brevity, I will go with the suggestion that the bucket was something kicked away from under the feet of a person about to be hanged.  But there is much more if you care to look!

 

 

 Not only is today the first time for weeks that I have been able to have a swim in the local pool, it will also be the first time that we will be able to go to a restaurant and have a menu del dia.  Replete with masks and tubes of hygienic, alcohol-heavy hand wash, we will venture into the centre of town and re-patronize one of our favourite restaurants Olave.

     While the food is generally good to excellent, the usp for me is the fact that they provide Catalan bread, i.e. toasted bread with ripe tomatoes and garlic to squeeze and scrape.  Sometimes this bread is the best part of the meal!

     To be frank, we are so eager to get back into the habit of eating out, that virtually anything will be a treat!  Though, I have to say that it is relatively easy to find a more-than-acceptable meal at a reasonable cost in Castelldefels.  While that is true, I also have to admit that my standards have risen appreciably since I have lived here.  When I first arrived, the delight I felt at virtually anything that was put in front of me meant that my critical gastronomic abilities were somewhat deadened.  Now, I am more demanding – much to Toni’s satisfaction, as he feels that I am getting more and more attuned to what is best in Catalan cooking.  Though sincerely liking the lumpen, solid fat of fuet is still a major stumbling block to my wholesale acceptance of Catalan cooking and food as the ideal!