Cold research

New Lockdown, Third Week, Wednesday

 

It was cold this morning and even I questioned the wisdom of wearing T-shirt and shorts with open sandals on my earlyish morning bike ride.  Admittedly, I was wearing a windcheater, mask and helmet which added to the general warmth, but my hands were definitely less than warm.  I mention this because, even when my legs are cold to the touch I do not feel too much discomfort, therefore for me to complain of the cold means that it’s, well, cold.

     It did get better during the day and we were able to have the window of the living room open without too much discomfort, but the reality of the second half of November is beginning to make itself felt.  And that is depressing because we have months of non-summer to look forward (!) to.

     The good news is that the swimming pool should re-open on Monday with the same restrictions as previously, that is, only ten people allowed into the pool during any one hour, meaning that the pool will have to keep to a maximum of two people per lane and reserving your place is essential.

     I have just checked and the booking app has the activities for Monday 22^nd of November listed, but greyed out at the moment, so they should become active towards the end of this week.  I will have to check in daily to ensure a place as, believe it or not, the 7 am slot for swimming is quite popular!

     I have to admit that it will be relief to get back into the groove of early morning swimming, as I am not the world’s greatest bed-lazer.  Although the is an initial spasm of resentment when the alarm does off at 6.15 am, it soon passes and I knuckle down to demands of the day and I think that I am becoming more or a ‘morning person’ than a ‘late night denizen’ – especially as I usually go to bed at around 10 pm nowadays!

     And perhaps the early morning start will encourage me to start filling out my notebook again.  This, of course, depends on what the swimming pool café is allowed to do.  If they can serve a limited number of patrons who sit physically distanced then that is ideal for my creative exercise.  If not, I really will have to make time to start a tradition of filling in the thing at another period in the day.

 

My Catalogue Raisonné is taking shape, and, at the moment, I am bogged down in the detail of the thing.  Getting accurate measurements and remembering (which I think I have not in my notes) that height goes before width in the dimensions of paintings and prints is a trick I should have learned by now.

     Finding out more details about the Habitat prints is becoming very difficult.  In 1999, the Habitat store in the centre of Cardiff had a scheme whereby a number of their employees were given training and the opportunity to produce a limited-edition print.  I bought three of the prints, two of which I have, and the third got lost in the move from Cardiff to Catalonia (together with a raku plate depicting fish).  I cannot fully decipher the signatures and there appears to be no information on the web about the scheme or the artist printmakers.

     Just to give you some sort of idea about the quality of the sales assistants in Habitat at the time, one of the printmakers with whom I spoke was actually a fully trained architect, but he couldn’t get work as an architect and so working in Habitat was at least in or around some sort of cutting edge design.

     I have Googled what I think the names are but have had no luck yet.  I will print out their signatures and see if anyone out there recognizes the handwriting or the signatures.   

 

 

I would dearly like to find out more about the consequences (if any) of the scheme with what happened next in these young print maker's careers.  Do get in touch if any of what I’ve mentioned happening twenty years ago rings any bells.

     And, before you ask, I have tried to contact what is left of Habitat these days, and they are only taking queries about problems in sales and delivery owing to the pressures of Covid, so no luck there.   I am patient – up to a point and will be satisfied with eventual knowledge as long as it comes soon!

Here we go again!

From tomorrow evening all bars and restaurants in Catalonia will be closed until the end of the month.  The restaurants will be able to operate on a take-out basis but it is going to look awfully like the lockdown of the hard days of early spring.

     Gyms (and presumably swimming pools) will be open but capacity is cut to 30% - whatever that means.  At the moment swimming in our pool is restricted to pre-booking and ten swimmers per hour, so I am assuming that will stay the same.

     Although we have some information of the wider details of the restrictions, we are still not clear about what rules apply to transport, meeting people, shopping etc etc etc.

     At the height of the lockdown here in Catalonia we were not allowed out of our houses except for essential journeys to get food and medicines.  Exercise outside your home was only for those with dogs who were allowed to take them outside by no further than 100 metres or so.  I don’t want to go over any more of the restrictions because, with their severity, we thought we had done all that was necessary to get the virus under control.  Wishful thinking!

     From what we understand so far, in that foggy confusion that has become a staple of governmental information during this pandemic, we are going to have to go through a sort of lockdown-lite with only memories of our previous experiences to keep us happy that the restrictions are not that bad!

     The one great difference this time round is the date.  We were in lockdown in the spring and now it is autumn.  Last night it rained and this morning was dark and damp.  Admittedly, it did get somewhat better during the day and we had some sunshine but the immediate forecast is not encouraging and there is something dire about being restricted in drizzle!

     As far as I can tell I will be able to continue my bike rides each morning and, as my route takes me along the side of the beach I am able to see the horizon – and that is good for the soul. 

     And I think over the next few months we are going to have a pressing need to find things that feed our souls and keep us safe.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 56 – Sunday, 10th May

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain and the threat of the “thin end of the wedge” challenge to exercise: if you don’t go out for your bike ride because of a little dampness, then what will you do if the sky is merely overcast tomorrow?  Will that be excuse enough to defer effort?

     Admittedly, rainy days are in the minority in this country, and therefore the opportunities for indolence are fewer too, but the rot can set in at any moment, and the dust can settle on a machine that is meant for motion!

     I do have waterproof leggings and a lightweight rain jacket so it is perfectly possible (if unpleasant) to go for a bike ride and stay relatively dry.  On the other hand, it does make the ride more duty than pleasure.  On the other hand (making three, by my computation!) exercise is essential for the preservation of a healthy lifestyle under lockdown and so the (unpleasant) effort should probably be made.

     As you can imagine, I indulged in such pleasant prevarication, while reading my Daily Dose of Misery from the news section of the digital Guardian and doing the Quick Crossword and, of course, drinking my essential cup of tea.  Time well spent.  And dry too!

     Eventually, I decided to test the weather and, after extensive sampling of the climatic conditions (i.e. opening the kitchen window) I reasoned that, while it was still damp it was not actually raining so the ride could be taken in relative comfort.

     It was only when I was gloved and helmeted with the bike newly charged and ready to go, that I looked at my watch.  I had missed my age-specific designated time slot for exercise, so back upstairs for a cup of tea?

     In the eagerness to return to the comfort of the sitting room I conveniently forgot the possibility of the mind numbing circling of the communal pool as a substitute for the more open and interesting vistas of the Paseo.  It comes to something that I have to write about it before the possibility of doing something that I outlined in the previous sentence becomes an imperative.   Moppy (for it is she, god bless her mechanical revolving cleaning pads) is about her business on our tile floors and therefore the presence of my obstructing feet are an impediment to her efficiency and I should remove them to the pool.  So I will.  And service will be resumed after I have listened on another episode of ‘In Our Time’ on the hoof!

     Which was Mandeville’s ‘Fable of the Bees’ – a book I own and have never read, but now I will be able to bluff my way and make links with present economic and sociological thought.  That’s what ‘In Our Time’ is all about!  Learning with walking stick in one hand and umbrella in the other and weaving my way around sun loungers to make the circuits a little bit more interesting.

     As the weather is glum, there are few people about and I am sure that gatherings of the ‘bike gangs’ (that makes them sound so much more threatening than these al fresco bike mounted chat groups are) will be loath to form without the clemency of warm weather.

     As it is Sunday, I will make one of my commercial outings to the pollo a last to get our chicken meal.  As well as facilitating the provision of food it also gives an interesting view of how well physical distancing is enduring.  So far, the distancing has been exemplary, although rain does encourage grouping under awning, so it will test discipline!

     And I can now confirm that discipline was preserved and, apart from the kids who now seem not to wear mask as a matter of course.

Rather than listen to the Blond Buffoon who was speaking at 7 pm I went out in the rain on my bike rather than listen to his bluster.  The lead up to this talk (Why on a Sunday?  Why not in parliament?) was a master class in communication ineptitude as expectation was allowed to distort any possible message.  The new slogan “Stay alert” is confusing and dangerously ambiguous, it just adds to the general air of desperate ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ approach that has characterised the methodology of this government.

     Spain too is easing restrictions in a stepped approach.  You would have thought that any easing would only be in those areas where the virus had been shown to be limited, with extensive testing to verify any such limitation.  Why then has Madrid decided that it is one of the regions where restrictions can be relaxed when the number of deaths and new infections is still rife?

     In Spain and the UK, it would appear that the political is more important that public health, and unless that is reversed then we are going to pay for that in more and more deaths.

Tomorrow is our weekly shop, something I look forward to with pathetic excitement!  There is an added delight this time, as I have to find some ant traps to combat a mild infestation upstairs.  Always something to make like just that little bit more interesting!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 14

The latest figures for the dead in Spain from Covid-19 in a twenty-four hour period are 832.  This is the highest figure of for a day’s deaths in Spain.  This is a catastrophe, and a catastrophe that people here are saying is partially of the government’s making.

   Last night the Prime Minister of Spain went on television and informed the country that there were going to be far more stringent restrictions from next Monday.  For a two-week period taking in Holy Week there will be a total ban on all non-essential travel and all non-essential premises will be shut down.

     It remains to be seen whether the renovators next door who have been (and are as I type) working normally and entering and leaving the workplace as if there was no crisis, will finally knuckle under and obey the restrictions.  These people are perhaps symptomatic of the problem, where some consider themselves outside the range of restrictions that are in place already. 

     The advice is simple: stay in your homes and wash your hands.  And it is frustrating when some people ignore it so openly.

Every evening at 8.00 pm there is the opportunity to show our appreciation for the Health Workers.  I open the kitchen window and clap into the darkness and hear others clapping too.  It is a moment of collective assertion of thanks and a poignant moment of community when we isolates are linked by a small but sincere gesture of thanks for the incredible job that our health workers are doing in circumstances that are less than ideal.

     I am still haunted by pictures of ill patients in Madrid hospitals laying on blankets in corridors; blankets! not even trolleys.  We have been told that many front-line health workers have not been tested; they do not have masks or the appropriate equipment to protect themselves from the virus; some are making their own protective clothing out of plastic bags; the hospitals in Madrid are overwhelmed; there are insufficient ventilators, and so on, and on.  Numbers of health workers have died and more will unless they are properly looked after.

     The government is accused of doing too little too late and is playing catch-up to the situation rather than managing it with any efficiency, and each mismanaged day brings new death, directly attributable to political mismanagement.

     I am not so naïf as to think that a crisis can be managed with anything approaching perfection, “events, dear boy, events” will always frustrate the most meticulous of plans, but some things are inexcusable.  The signalling of the future lockdown of Madrid, giving plenty of time for comfortably off Madrileños to decamp to their costal summer homes and spread the virus was unforgiveable.   And I hope that last word ‘unforgiveable’ becomes the major impetus when the inquiry into the crisis is started, when the virus has been finally vanquished.

Two weeks.  Just two weeks.

     It hardly seems credible that we have been locked in for only a fortnight.  The world where social distancing (a wonderfully evocative phrase) did not exist seems like another era of history, some exotic maelstrom of conviviality where people actually touched and kissed each other, some rumbustious Restoration frivolity, viewed with nostalgia from our Puritan isolationism!

     I suppose that I should be grateful that time, which seemed to be speeding up for me as birthday after birthday flashed by, has slowed down again.  I wonder how many weeks it will take, before this becomes the new normal and time regains its usual velocity!

The days are beginning to lose their character: weekdays are no different from weekends; what is the essential difference between a Tuesday and a Thursday when you are stuck at home? 

     If there seems a sort of stasis in one’s perception of the distinct individuality of the days of the week, there will be a ‘real’ difference in the individual hours, because today is the day when we change the clocks and get an extra hour in bed.  This, of course, is only possible if you are still indulging yourself by keeping to a mythical ‘working day’ timetable giving a façade of normality to the structure of your enclosed temporal existence.

    

I have to say that I truly regret the indisposition of Johnson as it gives an opportunity for the Grotesque Goblin Gove to speak to the nation.  The man truly makes my flesh crawl as his mendacious sincerity constantly deflects questions into a fog of verbiage that comes nowhere close to a specific answer.  I loathe his master, too, of course, naturally, but the Blond Buffoon’s shaggy, unconstructed showiness when it comes to English expression is easier to dismiss.  There is something adhesively repulsive about Gove’s loquacity that is more difficult to brush away.  It needs to be flushed.  And then disinfected.  And then bleached.

Tomorrow a theoretical lie in, but I am sure that my ‘absolute’ body clock will get me up at the usual time, for Day 15 and the start of the third week of Lockdown.

Oh, for the great outdoors!

I am beginning to forget what it is like to have the unmediated sun on my skin and feel the wind where my hair used to be!

I am not yet at the stir-crazy point of my enforced house holiday, but I am getting near.

I do realise that thrombosis in the leg and embolisms in the lungs with an effected heart demands certain restrictions if there is to be a realistic hope of recuperation, so I am trying to keep to the outline of what I should be doing and, more particularly, not doing.

Ideally, I should spend my days sitting in my armchair and being waited on hand and foot.  Not bad, you might think – but even slavish attention to one’s needs pales after a while.  Or a week in my case.  Not that I am not entirely grateful to Toni for butlering about in a most professional manner and providing me with sugar, fat and salt free dishes for my delectation.  I truly am grateful.  But I cannot walk very far (I mean, I can, but I mustn’t) and I can’t drive and I can’t swim and I can’t ride my bike and I can’t go to the opera.  Whoops, that last bit of self-denial makes me appear more bourgeois than I care to appear, however accurate it may be in reality. 

The point is, although I am working well in my enforced sedentary period of acclimatising myself to a New Way of Life, I am constantly frustrated by having to ask somebody else (aka Toni) to do the most trivial things for me if they require any physical effort.

At least this initial period of ‘rest’ should only take up the first two weeks, and already I have sat my way staunchly through one half of the time.  One week to go and I will be ale to go for a short walk.  Outside!

As someone who has been driving since he was able to drive – that, I now realize,  is half a century – it is much more difficult to adapt to not being able to get up and go whenever I like.  When you can’t, you realise just how much you use the car (or bike) for all those little things that are just out of reach, but no problem when you can slip into the car and get it done in no time at all.

I am sure that this experience will be a valuable life experience for me: I can’t really afford for it to be anything else!  And I am sure that not being able to do so much (if only for a strictly limited period) will (must) make me appreciate what I will be able to do soon enough.

As my existence has been circumscribed to contain only the living room and bedroom (with excursions to the bathroom) I have had time to read the Guardian in depth.  With a short period where I deviated towards the Independent, I have been a staunch Guardianista (and indeed in the style of that newspaper I actually reversed the ‘a’ and ‘r’ in the word!) and feel comfortable with the way that the news is reported and the articles that sum up the quirkiness and essential intelligence of the paper.

But it is also depressing as you surely feel yourself part of the minority/majority (who knows?) that thinks Brexit is an act of national self-harm unparalleled in our life times.  But this feeling of being on the right but losing side means that every opportunity to read about Brexit is compulsive – and the Guardian provides many opportunities to do exactly that.  It is the same with 45 in America where we (the Guardianistas) loathe and despise the man, but cannot stop ourselves from reading about him as if we were all suffering from some sort of addiction.

The only respite from my misery is that the coverage of Catalonia is hardly as exhaustive as the other two and therefore I do not sigh so much in that respect – but television here more than makes up for that lack as the Spanish government would rather talk about Catalonia than any of the corruption and disasters that comprises their contemptible administration.

Meanwhile, I am getting on with the poems drawn from the notes I made while in hospital.  I have to admit that my hospital diary stretches only over eight days.  And did I suffer!  Well, the only pain that I felt over that period was from the injections that I was given; the obtrusive inflation of an automatic blood pressure cuff – this actually caused sores; discomfort from an unyielding bed and a vigorously flesh pressing radiography nurse.  Hardly the stuff of great drama.  I didn’t feel truly ill when I went into hospital and I felt much the same when I came out.  There is no harrowing story of suffering and no real learning or change of situation or comprehension at the end of it.

There is, of course, the realization of just how lucky I have been: if this condition had not been discovered at the time it was then it probably wouldn’t have been discovered until it was too late!  That is something worth thinking about.  But my poetry has ever been the stuff of unexceptional observation and so my observations throughout the week should play to my strength.

At least that is my story and I’m sticking to it.