LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 91 - Sunday, 14th June

Cloudy, sun, breeze: not the perfect sun drenched Sunday that our visitors were hoping for, but still good enough to come out for.  Castelldefels was crowded today.

     Not as crowded as it could be, but certainly fuller than it has been for a while.  People are determined to have sunny fun by the sea.

     From the perspective of my bike rides, I am able to note the increase in traffic and the numbers of people doing what they do best in our long beach town: walk along the paseo to see and to be seen.

     Rules?  Well, most people are somewhat sketchy about what part of which set of rules is applying at any particular time, and the fragmentation of Spain into the regions and countries with their own system of lockdown and their own notation of phases and you have something purpose made for confusion.

     Catalonia has hot-spots of viral infection and those were kept back from the general loosening of restrictions.  We in Castelldefels are part of the Barcelona region, which is itself sub-divided into further parts each of which has its own set of rules and its own level of phasing.

     As far as we know we are now in Phase 2, but tomorrow, Monday, we will be in Phase 3.  The cafes and restaurants that have survived so far are desperate to open as much as they can and start making up for the disastrous season that they have had so far this year.  The loss of the Easter holiday period is going to be difficult to make up for and the fact that they will not be back to full occupancy is going to make future survival difficult.

     It will be interesting to go into town tomorrow and see exactly what is open and what is likely to open.  I have a need to get my mobile phone repaired as it is a complete, but working, shattered mess.  The phone is far too expensive to junk, and I am prepared to pay up to 20% of its cost new to get it back into something like its original condition.  I live, as always, on hope!

I have been told that I have ‘passed’ my Catalan course and I am entitled to a certificate to show my ‘ability’.  All I have to do is collect it from my ‘school’ when that institution opens its doors again.  Unfortunately, in collecting my certificate, I will have to speak the language in which I have obtained an alleged proficiency, and that is a daunting barrier.  Which tells you something about the worth of the piece of paper that I am debating whether to humiliate myself and get!  Choices, choices!

As we had chicken from the pollo a last yesterday, we did not have our traditional lunch today.  Instead we had the albondigas that I bought in case somebody didn’t want the chicken.  They are very good, and they come with a ‘home made’ sauce from the pollo a last place.  One portion is not quite sufficient to form a meal for two, so I augmented the sauce provided and cooked some pasta.  Toni was very impressed with the final result and demanded that I repeat the repast at some future date.  As the selection of ingredients for the augmentation was based more on inspiration than recipe I think that a repeat performance is going to be the other side of difficult, but I remember most of the ingredients (at least two of which Toni would demand excluded if he realized they were there) and it is likely to be edible even if it will have serious differences from the food that had his accolades.  I can’t help feeling that there is a wider metaphor lurking somewhere in those last sentences, together with life advice!

Next week sees the second ‘lesson’ with my friend in the pool and I am having fun thinking of topics to extend his vocabulary.  I have been unable to get an 8 am start for Monday or Tuesday, but I will probably meet him at the changeover tomorrow as one hour ends and the next starts and so I can find out if he is prepared to wait for me to have my swim and join me for a later breakfast chat, or other arrangements will have to be made.

Toni is determined to ‘sort out’ the garden and this needs some thought and preparation.  We should go to a garden centre and get some plants and compost.  Now that the pine trees have been cut back, our front garden actually gets some sunshine and for the first time in many years, weeds are actually able to push their heads above the pine needle carpet which, this year is not there!  We might think of a few garden boxes and get some instant colour.  If the plant places are open.

     This week will see a more determined approach to getting back to something approaching what used to be normal.  It remains to be seen if we have the determination to do so.

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS – DAY 80 – Wednesday, 3rd June.

Iffy weather means easier cycling along the Paseo for me.  Although this morning was bright and clear there were clouds around, and it was markedly less warm than yesterday.  As I am virtually geared up to set off at a set time I am impervious to the weather (unless it is raining – there are limits) and so I get to see a sparser selection of the population on my little jaunts.

     I have made a decision that I will not get grumpy on my ride by noting all the people who are breaking some or all of the rules about exercise and the times when they are supposed to be doing it.  I now cycle along in what passes for Zen serenity, or as near as I can get to it with the .active supressing of my Victor Meldrew inclinations.

     All of the usual on-beach café/restaurants (chiringuitos) have now been constructed or are in the last stages of production and these seasonal edifices will soon be plying their trade – though with reduced numbers of clientele – at least in this stage of the lockdown.  I do wonder about the economic reality of these places, where their existence is only for the summer months and now with a reduced number of patrons, how are they going to make a profit?

     Over the next few weeks we are going to see more clearly which cafes and restaurants, and indeed small businesses have managed to survive the lockdown.  In my more cynical moments I wonder whether only those places which seem to be centres for money laundering are going to be able to survive – not that I am going to make any concrete accusations, I am merely putting it forward as a possible scenario.  Hypothetical, of course!

     We are still nowhere near getting back to anything resembling normality, and even when more shops and shopping centres open fully, it is going to be a damn sight later before the attitude of people get back to where it was.

     At least, it will be for those “of riper years” as the Book of Common Prayer has it.  Some of us who are retired and with one or more of the conditions that place us ever so firmly in the “at risk” category will need a vaccine or at least a convincing treatment to be readily available before we return to anything like pre-Covid behaviour.

     The same does not, emphatically not, go for youth.  Although many of the members of the 14-24 year old groupings wear their masks, they do not wear them with anything like sincerity.  Too often the mask is on the chin, or in the hand, or wrapped around the elbow or simply not in evidence at all, when groups of kids are socialising, and that socialising does not often respect physical distancing.

     Don’t get me wrong, I do understand their scepticism and I only wish I could share their obvious belief that any infection will be like an infant infection of chicken pox – over in a day or so with the ‘sufferer’ hardly noticing.  And, let’s face it, statistics are on their side: the vast majority of Covid infections are mild and only a tiny minority necessitate hospitalization.  But as a person who contracted chicken pox in his forties, rather when he was four months or four years old, I have never felt so utterly ill and sorry for myself!  Being now a couple of decades older, I do fear what an infection of Covid-19 might mean for me now.  And indeed for those with whom I may come into contact.  The lesson is clear, it is up to the individual to follow the rules for the benefit of all – but the Cummings Cop-out seems to be all too ready to be called on by all too many people in this crisis.

Here in Spain the government is asking for a final extension to the State of Alarm to keep the restrictions in place during our transition to a looser approach to the virus.  Spain’s economy was not in the strongest of positions before this crisis and it will be a damn sight weaker after it.  The summer is the tourist season and, considering that the Easter Holidays were a disaster, it will be catastrophic if something is not salvaged from the summer holidays.  Spain is allowing the opening of hotels (though not their common areas) at a limited occupancy rate and in another week or so even we in Catalonia will probably be allowed to swim in the sea.  It is tantalizing to have the Med at the bottom of the street and not be allowed to swim in it.  I can’t swim in my local swimming pool either, and I fear that the restrictions that will be placed on public swimming when finally is allowed will make the experience something of a chore rather than a pleasure, but it will be interesting to see how our swimming club interprets the rules!

Johnson’s irascibility at PMQs when Starmer had the audacity to question him, is a clear sight of his lazy lack of preparedness and yet another example of his assumed possession of entitledness.  His bumbling non-answers are embarrassing in the extreme, and the sooner he is dispatched from the dispatch box the better.  I will have to devise an acronym to express his supreme unfittedness to the post for which he is paid.  Perhaps NAPM (not a prime minister) or TOAMP (travesty of a prime minister) or BIAL (bumbling idiot and liar) – they ned some work.

The situation in the USA is horrific in virtually every aspect: morally, socially, politically, legally, criminally, judicially – the list could go on and on.  As a white man, I do not know what it is to walk in a black person’s shoes, but I do know that my wholesale support is for the Black Lives Matter movement and I hope that something real comes from the world wide revulsion to the poison of racism that limits the development of so many black lives, not only in the US but also the UK, Spain, Catalonia and the rest of the world.

My addiction to the news, no matter how depressing it is, is something that I have mentioned before, and I can’t fight it.  I get even more depressed if I think that there are news stories that I might have ignored merely because my fragile sensibility finds it difficult to take.  I have to have my fix of Johnson, Trump et al, but I find that it is easier to take if I take it through the vision of writers like John Crace, the Guardian political sketch writer.  His wry writing lets you know that there is a voice of reason, articulating your sense of contempt in writing, which is so much more intelligent and wittier, allowing a Voltarian smile to leaven the misery of current political events.

Yesterday, before I went out on to the terrace on the third floor, I grabbed a book at random from the shelf nearest the door of my ‘library’ and started reading.  My choice was Lucia in Wartime by Tom Holt, which is a ‘continuation’ of E F Benson’s series of ‘Mapp and Lucia’ novels the style of which one admirer described as being as if “the pens of Evelyn Waugh and Jane Austen had mated”.  The novels are studies in middle class mores and snobbery centred on the rivalry of Mapp and Lucia for pre-eminence in the small town of Tilling.

     There was a superb Channel 4 television production of three of the novels in 1985 and 1986 with Prunella Scales as Mapp, Geraldine McEwan as Lucia, Denis Lill as Major Benjy Flint and Nigel Hawthorne as Georgie.  As someone said about the writing of James Thurber and his cartoons, “If you don’t find them funny – there is something wrong with you!”  I feel the same way about Lucia.  I urge you to sample any and all of EF Benson’s oeuvre and of Tom Holt too.

     It may seem perverse to single out a book about Mapp and Lucia which was not written by E F Benson, but rather by Tom Holt over forty years after Benson’s death, but the book is so well written and such a tribute to the power of Benson’s creation that it can be mentioned in the same breath as that of the master himself!

     I might add that my copy of Lucia in Wartime by Tom Holt was a 1986 Christmas present, inscribed by the two friends who gifted it to me, “An imitation Lucia, for an imitation Lucia” 

     How well they knew me!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 76 – Saturday, 30th May

I’m still furious about the fact that Cummings is still in his position after he has been shown to have broken the lockdown guidelines.  He formed the rules; he should resign or be sacked.

     If I am furious about the fact that Cummings is holding on, I am sickened by the continuingly awful performance of the man who calls himself the Prime Minister. 

     His inability to articulate a convincing argument in the briefings and the embarrassingly inept responses to questioning revealing his shocking lack of detail in his understanding of his briefs used to be the basis for the reasons that I detest this shallow apology of a concerned politician having anything to do with the levers of power – but now I think that his demeaning protection of Cummings has taken pride of place in my reasons to despise the man.

     It is clear that Cummings should be fired, he is a glaring example of the ‘one rule for us and another for the rest’, he is a self proclaimed populist and disruptor, but in the case of his lockdown misdemeanours he has behaved like a typical member of the elite and the establishment (with a small ‘e’) has come to his aid.

     The feeling of the public however does not match that of the sometime prime minister (who has now surely forfeited his right to capital letters for the office that he has so demeaned) and the way that he has slavishly protected his advisor.  Too many members of the public have done exactly as the guidelines suggested and have suffered the consequences for them to be anything like sympathetic to the so-called travails of an over privileged git.

     Even though I am resident in Catalonia, I feel personally slighted by the government.  I have abided by the rules for over ten weeks, not only for my own safety, but also for the safety of others: the simple logic of safety.  But that sort of logic is only for the little people of whom Cummings is not, of course, one.

     I do not think that the feeling of being cheated will go away and Johnson’s government (if we can call it that) will be forever tainted.  Unfortunately the British electorate doesn’t seem to have many scruples about accepting tainted goods and so my hopes for the future are few.

     Quite apart from the criminally inept mismanagement of the viral crisis, when I really want to depress myself, I start thinking about what mess they are going to make of Brexit.  Silly me, they have already made a mess of it, I wonder what sort of monumentally, catastrophic balls up they are going to make of it.

     Whatever else this crisis has illustrated, one thing is abundantly clear, the personnel that form the government is of woefully limited ability.

Castelldefels is getting ready for the tourist season.  Restaurants are partially open and when I passed the centre of the beach part of Castelldefels there were people queuing for places in the limited dining accommodation available.  To the untrained eye things looked like a normal late May Saturday evening.  There were few masks and little to no physical distancing – but there again, we are allowed to meet in groups of up to 10!

     Neither Toni nor I are clear about how the rules change on Monday, when we go from Level 1 to Level 2.  What new delights at playing at freedom will that allow us!

Abnormal normality

“The curious incident of the dog in the night time” came to mind as we made our way to work, or rather I drove Toni to his work at our regular ungodly time in the morning so that he could start his travails at 7.00 am promptly.  Except in this case it was the traffic that was notable by its absence rather than the bark of a dog.

Part of Toni’s way to work is along the C-something or other, one of the main motorways into Barcelona from the west of the city.  Even at 6.30am the traffic is heavy and, at St. Boi we take a slip road off the main motorway which winds its circuitous way around the road works for a new section of motorway that have been going on for as long as I have been in Catalonia - and still no new road.  We branch out at the notorious St Boi roundabout to a link road that takes us into Cornella and then a few side streets (along which major busses go!) to his place of work.

As with all attempts to use urban motorways to get places in the morning, timing is everything.  If we leave at 6.30 am promptly, although the traffic is heavy and marginally suicidal, we get there with enough time to spare for Toni to have a quick coffee in the café at the end of the street a few steps away from his work, should he chose to do so.

The traffic this morning was eerily sparse and by way of equilibrium for the spaciousness of the roads we were stuck behind two large slow moving lorries on the slip road that slowed us down.  But, lo! As we passed the usual bottleneck where the slip road has its own slip road to join another motorway - there was nothing.  Not a single car. 

To give you an idea of normality, I sometimes count the number of seconds that it takes to get to the end of the queue I observe on the opposite side of the road as I return to Castelldefels on the largely empty side of the road that it not going in to Barcelona or other major cities: my longest count has been twenty-seven seconds of tail back, counted while travelling at 80 kph!  Nothing.  Not a single angry driver keeping as close as possible to the driver in front to ensure that no chancer tries to cut in to save a few seconds.

In the couple of minutes that it takes to deposit Toni and make my way back onto the major road system and pass the link road, a small queue had built up and was visibly growing by the second.  You see what I mean about timing!

We realized that the paucity was due to (or is it “owing to”?  I can never remember the rule that I learned imperfectly back in form 4 of Cardiff High) the fact that most people have not yet returned to work.  Schools are back on the 7^th of the month, I think, and our Catalan class recommences on the 8^th.  So, next Monday we will find the entire motorway fuming with resentful workers still half asleep, dreading the day ahead and spoiling for a traffic jam to make their return to work complete in its awfulness.

Today, however it meant that I got back to Castelldefels in good time and turned into the Swimming Pool car park just as the gate was being unlocked.  Timing again!

It further meant that I was one of the first to get changed, but no matter how precisely I make it for the opening time of 7.00 am I am never the first in the pool, there must be people who have secret ways into the complex to allow them to bag a lane!

But when I got to the pool, some of the usual suspects were not in place.  I am there early because I have to be, but there are a couple of obviously retired ladies who do slow mysterious strokes who seem to monopolise the outside lanes.  Why are they there so early? 

There are ‘serious’ swimmers who move through the water as if they are being chased by piranha and you can almost hear them clucking with annoyance if anyone dares to join their lane when there isn’t another option. 

 

These are the swimmers who will do butterfly in a crowded lane which, “as any fule kno” is the height of bad swimming manners.  It is wrong for a variety of reasons; first and foremost, because I can’t do the stroke for more than a few seconds, so I take it as a personal affront; secondly, because it takes up the entire lane; thirdly because it is very splashy, and for reasons that I do not fully understand I abhor being splashed when I swim.  In water!  Fourthly because it is a vulgar display of offensive physicality and small-minded showing off. 

Mind you, I have to say that I feel the same for any stroke other than crawl.  In a crowded lane, crawl is the only stroke where your efforts stay (roughly) within the width of your body and you do not encroach on another swimmer’s space.

I managed to complete my swim in a lane that I had largely to myself, so I have little to complain about.  And the cup of tea in the café afterwards was not accompanied by the Camino of parents-with-children using the car park to leave the car and then march the kids through the café to the school.  It was oddly tranquil, and far too early for even the most resolute of parents (who in this part of the world seem to spend - and I mean spend - a lot of time, effort and money to getting someone/anyone else to look after the kids when they are on holiday) looking to take their charges for a quick or even a long swim.

Our pool/sports centre usually has a sort of sports camp where parents deposit their kids in the morning and pick them up in the evening, the centre will have amused and fed them during the day.  This must be a very profitable part of their activity and they have ‘camps’ for all the major holidays.

So this week will be one of non-normality with routine being re-established on Monday of next week.  When the city will be back in the safe hands of the retired.  Again.