LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 67 – Thursday, 21st May

For the first time since we were allowed out in our allotted time slots to exercise, my bike ride was free of sightings of Child Viral Assassins forcing their purile way into our adult hours.

     The weather is getting progressively more summery and people are walking with a new jauntiness in their steps.  The building of summer structures on the beach carries on apace and there is increasing evidence of shops and restaurants getting ready for whatever the ‘New Normal’ Season is going to offer.

     Both Spain and the UK seem determined to get kids back to school before the end of the summer term, and I share the apprehension of teachers in wondering just how safe they and the kids are going to be.

     I read through the proposed precautions that one infants’ school was going to take and I was impressed by the thoroughness of the procedures, but also noted how much was dependant on the cooperation of parents in, for example, bringing pupils to school in timeslots and washing all of the pupil’s clothing at the end of the day.  Meals would be provided by the school, no packed lunches allowed; no school materials would come from home; no artefacts made in school would go home; kids would be taught by a dedicated teacher and they would associate only within their teaching group.  Are these rules general in the UK?  Do they follow governmental guidelines?  Are they any governmental guidelines?  There are too many questions about how all of this is going to operate, with the very real fear than any slip in the precautions will result in illness and death.

     Then there is the testing and contact tracing elements.  As the government has been much less than honest about their targets and have been creatively duplicitous about ‘meeting’ them, what faith can we have about their professed care for teachers and pupils?

     What is going to happen to a stretched system when the inevitable infection occurs?  Classes will not be able to be amalgamated.  If a class has a ‘dedicated’ teacher, what happens if that teacher is absent?  In fact, I will stop there because the questions are multiplying in my mind and the answers are not easy.  Or cheap.

     Some beaches in Barcelona have been opened up for sunbathing and recreation, though the TV pictures that we were shown indicate that physical distancing is an inhibition that seems to disappear with clothing.

     I do worry that a coastal resort like Castelldefels will become a hotspot for viral infection as we go further into the good weather and more people come to our beach.  As Barry Island was to Cardiff, so Castelldefels is to Barcelona – one of the seaside resorts for a day out, easily reachable by bike, car, bus and train.  And the beach is the place where inhibitions are loosened, where relaxation is part of the experience, and where irksome rules can be ignored. 

     It does not bode well.

The ‘live’ theatrical presentation this evening was A Streetcar Named Desire, a Young Vic production.  The action took place on a constantly turning revolve as it was a production in the round.  The filming was uncharacteristically inept, or you could say that the filming actually shared the interrupted sightlines of the live audience.  Whatever, I found the blocking out of the action from time to time irritating.

     I was not ‘with’ this production and found many of the characters under-acted, with Stanley being particular difficult for me to take.  Blanche was the clear ‘star’ of the production, but I felt that much of her performance was caricature rather than character study.

   Having said that, I enjoyed the production, though I would much rather have been in the audience!  The set was excellent and the production brought out the humour of the piece as well as the tragedy.  A thoroughly enjoyable depressing experience!

From today the wearing of facemasks is mandatory in public spaces where physical distancing is impossible.  Although their use in ‘sport’ is not required, I think that it will be necessary to carry one whenever I go on my bike rides just in case.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 43 – Monday, 27th APRIL

Why does it come as no shock whatsoever that the Conservative Government is going to release the figures for the total of tests at the end of the month not at the end of the month?  Can it be that the 100k total of tests on which Hancock staked his future are going to be more problematic than he thought when he thoughtlessly uttered the guarantee earlier in the crisis? 

     So, the ‘end of the month’ becomes something of a moveable feast for the Conservatives when it comes to protecting one of their own – never mind about the people who died as a result of their failure to boost testing when the WHO was urging countries to “Test! Test! Test!”

     If the 100k is going to be difficult to reach to save the hide of little Matt, then perhaps we should steel ourselves to any one of the following:

1.              The endless month of April, in the same way as MPs are used to some debates continuing on one particular named day even if that day has long since passed.

2.              The offering of the total number of tests available rather than the tests actually taken.

3.              ‘Discovering’ tests from previous days that have not been counted.

4.              Making up the results.

5.              Lying.

6.              Redefining the concept of 100k

7.              Redefining the idea of a ‘test’

8.              Lying.

9.              Sacrificing Rees-Mogg to placate, well, everyone up to and including Tories.

10.          Lying.

And let’s deal with the, “this is no time to be replacing a key minister when we are in a crisis” as we are in the crisis we are in because of the key ministers that we have had to put up with.

     

     It’s about time that our political masters began to accept responsibility, and with that end in mind, I am glad that Johnson seems better, and he should now resign after his disgraceful lack of responsibility in going out of his way to put himself in harm’s way by rejecting advice to social distance.  If Beckett fails to get his 100k he should resign: he made it a key pledge, he should live or die by it.  And if we are presented (eventually) with 100k, then I would like the figures scrutinized by an independent body!

With the allowing of kids out and about, there is a definite sense of ‘emergence’ from the lockdown – even though this has just included one parent with up to thee kids, the pictures of something approaching normality in the streets has produce a real feeling of achievement and hope that the end of the crisis is in sight!

     People are beginning to think of what summer could be like if social distancing is still generally in place.  What are the beaches going to be looking like?  At the moment we are regaled with film on TV of groups on the beaches being moved on.  Perhaps by July we will have the beach filled with tight camps of families jealously guarding their ‘safe’ space.  One shudders to think about it too closely!

     From queuing for pollo and bread and meds, I think that people will still go on socially isolating almost like second nature nowadays, but the continued isolation in-house is the more difficult to take.  Especially is there is an element of age discrimination added to the mix!

The Catalan lesson on line was an unmitigated disaster.  My basic problem comes form the fact that in Google Meet my computer stubbornly refuses to recognize that my in-built microphone works.  In other programs of a meeting nature it has no problems but with Google Meet, although it allows my camera to work it does not extend that courtesy to my mic.

     I attempted to rectify the mic. problem by using my mobile phone as the audio component and my Mac as the screen.  This was a bad thing to do not only because I could not read the screen within a screen within a screen on the mobile phone as it was tiny, but also because electronically having both devices on produced the most appalling caterwauling interference.

     Then there was the attempt for all two of us in the class (sic) to try and open the pages that would give us the work that we had to complete before Friday.  We couldn’t find the bit to click on and eventually, after what could only be described as a painful attempt to get us all on the same page, we were sent a new link to get to the page.  That failed.  We were then sent via email the page in question with space for us to complete our homework.  That failed.

      I have done my homework, but I sent it as a separate file via email.  We will have to see how this develops!  At least we have a week to prepare for our next on line lesson.

     It will not be time enough!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 19 – 3rd APRIL

I brush my teeth carefully and thoroughly each day and night.  With a damn sight more care than I have normally done, I might say.  I have a morbid (the right word I think) fear of getting toothache during lockdown.  Toothache is like headache – one of the debilitating, almost unbearable pains that can’t be ignored.  But, in these strange times, where would I go to have my teeth seen to? 

     When you hear of cancer treatment being delayed because of the medical demands of the virus, a mere toothache would appear to be of less than secondary importance.  Flossing has become a protection against the fear of future oral pain ignored!

     On one web site I saw warnings about those people in confinement being careful about how they approach any do-it-yourself projects suddenly started because of time on ones hands.  Home improvements always come at a cost and the number of accidents from the handling of unfamiliar tools, especially power tools, has ever been a significant way to injure yourself.  Now, the consequences of these accidents have very real costs in terms of the extra pressure on the health services and whether you would actually qualify for attention.

     I have no personal experience of what the medical services in Castelldefels are like at the moment and how those with chronic illnesses are being dealt with.  For example, my next scheduled appointment is in July in a local hospital and is part of the on-going treatment for my thrombosis and embolisms after a blood test in my local medical centre the week before.   

     I have been given no information about delay or cancellation, but I think it highly unlikely that the schedules that we sets six months ago are still going to be kept to.  Everything has changed, and my light touch supervision is more of a confirmation of progress rather than a necessary medical intervention – so my appointment is one that can easily be delayed.  It will be interesting to see exactly how our medical system copes, and I can take a reasonably disinterested view as my hospital visit is now more concerned with checking progress rather than active treatment.

     But one thing is certain; I have no wish to find out just how prepared our emergency services are to cope with any household domestic injuries or how medical centres and dentists are coping.  I want to live an uneventfully contained life in my home with occasional forays to the collective bins my only contact with the outside ‘outside’ world.

Last night I (and a quarter of a million others) watched a matinee performance of  ‘One man, two guvnors’ a reworking of the Goldoni original on the National Theatre Live Facebook site.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, but virtually every moment made me want to be in the audience seeing the performance live rather than looking at it on a computer screen!

     Filming ‘live’ plays produces an odd media type as its end result.  The actors have to play to a full theatre, so many of the exchanges between characters seem over emphatic; the actors are playing a ‘live’ real audience and we watchers are not part of that organic entity; this production had interaction between actors and audience which distanced we watchers even more; some of the stage business was complicated and could easily have gone wrong – all the things that make a live performance ‘dangerous’ were limited by our knowledge that this was a recorded performance.  The artificiality that we saw is something that I would have enthusiastically embraced if I had part of the actual audience.  But, I am grateful that I had an opportunity to see a performance that passed me by and I look forward to the other ‘performances’ over the next few Thursday evenings.

     Although I am grateful for the opportunity to see a much-appreciated performance, the lack of immediacy in a videoed version is more telling with theatre than it is for me with ballet or opera. 

     But, every little helps!

At least the sun came out today and I was able to ‘take’ it on the third floor terrace.   As the terrace is fairly sheltered, it lessened the effect of the breeze that would have made the sunbathing more gesture than pleasure – but for an hour or so I was able to laze around and think that summer was getting closer.

     Please!

To tan is to be!

Summer?

The weather continues to confuse.  One moment it is sunny, then cloudy, then hazy, a sudden downpour, humid, cool. 

No, I’m lying. 

We have had some changeable weather that Toni has described as ‘awful’, but all I have to do is translate it into British terms of weather and I find that I am more than satisfied with what we are getting.  Yes, to be fair, it is not entirely cloudless skies and unmitigated sunshine, but I have to realize that I have been driven indoors because I am glistening with sweat and it is perhaps a little too hot.  The third floor study is relatively cooler and, even if the fan doesn’t create cool air, it at least moves it around a little.

Art passes

The ‘unsettled’ weather has also destroyed The Stain.  I had great hopes that the slash of fading red from the broken bottle of cheap wine would be something that could have lasted through the rest of the summer, but two sharp torrential downpours seem to have consigned my gestural piece of land art to evaporation and the gutter. 

The next time I pass on my newly charged electric bike, I must pause and see if there is anything left.  I do feel somewhat self conscious taking photographs of nondescript parts of a pavement, but it would be somehow ‘satisfying’ to find some tinted remnant lurking.  Given the amount of time that I have spent being confounded by various manifestos of the artistically self obsessed, it is the least I can do to drag out the last pieces of aesthetic significance from a chance event deemed art-worthy!  And I have to say that it was more interesting than some of the stuff that I have been studying over the last couple of years via the course in the Open University.  Though, there again, I defend maligned Modern Art with a vengeance when provoked by those who cannot find an upturned and signed urinal to be provocatively original!  Though with Duchamp I sometimes wonder, as with Warhol, how much of his ‘art’ was clever and how much taking the piss - and if the difference between the two is real, or indeed matters!

Anyway, I am sad that The Stain has gone, but also recognize that one particular part of the pavement in Castelldefels will be forever different (at least to me) because of what it once contained.  And with Modern Art, who can ask for more?

The ghost of past hurt

I follow my father in the way that I take the sun.  My mother was fair skinned, blond haired and blue eyed - and so was I when I was a pre-toddler.  But after a few years my father’s genes asserted themselves and my eyes went hazel and my hair (O tempora! O mores!) a very dark, almost black-brown, and in the summer I went a more than acceptable shade of not white.  When the summers were kind enough to have a reasonable quantity of sun.  Of course in my childish memories, all summers were sunny, as were all visits (and there were many) to Barry Island.  In Barry my excavations were frenzied and extensive, all my efforts devoted to building a castle mound surrounded by a wall that would resist the sea, so that eventually I would be sitting surrounded by the incoming tide.

The real joy of course, was the even more frenzied activity to repair breaches in the wall to obtain the “island” objective.  Sand was plundered from the castle mound to rebuild sea-washed defences and eventual, and usually quick and complete failure was guaranteed.  But once, and once only, did I achieve sufficient repulsion of the sea to be surrounded.  It was only momentary, but it remains an achievement that I treasure!

Here in Castelldefels we have no tides.  Technically, I am told, we do, but they are not aquatic events that you would recognize sitting by the side of the sea.  Certainly, if you are more used to the tidal range of the Bristol Chanel then Med. tides can be ignored!

So, castle building does not have the same allure - and it is some sixty years too late to hold the same attraction.  Admittedly, there was a spate of civil engineering in the sand when I was in university in Swansea when streams on the beach (ask not of what the water was composed!) lured me back to the sort of hand digging where you paid the price through the sand impacted under the fingernails.  Extensive systems of canals and dams were built with Robert perfecting his technique of dripped sand buildings with fantastic towers that rivalled the architecture of Gaudi.

I find that I am not drawn to constructions and I also find that my ability to lie in the sun has also lessened.  Time was when a Christmas holiday trip to Gran Canaria would seem me outstretched for hours.  On one particular day lying on my hamaca in Maspalmoas it started to rain!  I and the other northern Europeans who had paid and arm and a leg to stay on the island in high season simply ignored the adverse weather conditions and waited for the weather to get better.  And it did.  Or at least it got good enough to lie there with out shuddering and we could continue to rely on the penetration of the UV rays through the cloud cover to do what we had expensively paid for.  And anyway, it was always worth it, greeting colleagues in cold Cardiff in January, and watching their eyes take in my bronzed skin!

Nowadays, I use factor 20 cream - rather than the perfumed cooking oil that I used to buy to get that “deep down tan”.  It never worked and I always dreaded the day when I would finally start to peel and then I would worry about the fact that I could be going home even whiter than when I arrived!

Nowadays I do not have to rely on two sunny weeks in foreign parts to get my tan done.  I live in foreign parts and they do have a disproportionate number of sunny days - even in December and January - when our nearest star can be enjoyed.

But I also notice now that, as I brown, elements of my history show up on my skin.  For example, just above the second knuckle of my middle finger of my right hand, there is now a faint outline of a small, three-sided rectangle.  It must related to what must have been a fairly serious cut or graze, where a flap of skin was ripped out of my flesh.  It must have hurt, there must have been quantities of blood and, given where it is positioned, the flexing of my hand and finger must have pulled and broken the scab.  On the right hand, as well, it must have constantly been rubbed and knocked.  It must have been an extended and thorough nuisance.  And what with the natural propensity to pick and worry at healing scars it must have been a feature of my life for ages.

And I have absolutely no memory of the injury at all.  The ghostly outline is almost like a accusation form my body.  Look, it seems to be saying, this happened, it was an event and you care so little that you have consigned it to forgetfulness!

Other scars have a back-story that I remember well.  The ball of the right-hand thumb and the slicing of an open salmon tin; my right elbow and the tip over the tennis net during my victory leap; my inner thigh where the rotten tree stump entered and broke off; my chin and the collapse of friends on top of me in junior school; my lip and something on the building site that bit back; my foot and a piece of rubble on the Asia side of Istanbul - and all those scabs of childhood on knees and legs and arms that would have to be layered in three-dimensional ghostliness to show the succession of minor cuts and abrasions that is part of growing up.

I have always found the expression “like the back of my hand” as a picture of familiarity to be woefully inappropriate - I challenge you to describe yours without looking at it!  And, in my opinion, apart from our faces (and let’s face it, we mostly recognize ourselves from reflections in mirrors and that is absolutely NOT how we appear to other people!) what parts of our bodies do we actually know?

It is usually only when something is going wrong that we start to explore the substances of which we are made.  Which is why I am grateful for my ghosts of past hurts.  They make me think and they encourage me to remember and with the absolute pleasure that comes with confused recollection, although specifics might be inaccurate the experience can be retextured to my own individual attitudes and prejudices.  I can remember about the cut on my finger, even if the unique circumstances are lost.  I know how I am and what I’m like, so I can place the cut and call it mine.

I Don't Believe It! Again

The prime function of a school is to separate children from human beings.  As any teacher will tell you, the inclusion of children in the designation of ‘human’ is as absurd as linking Conservatism with “strong and stable” government.  During the greater part of the year, with the exception of those pernicious periods when children are allowed, nay encouraged, to flaunt their otherness in public manifestations at Christmas and Easter, we denizens of the human world are able to live reasoned and reasonable lives.  It is the summer that is the most trying part of the year.  In Britain the so-called summer is mercifully confined to a few bright days, while the rest of this season is usually the sort of rain-sodden dullness that encourages children to stay indoors under the supervision of their keepers and plug themselves in to various electronic devices.

Spain is different.  As various people have pointed out: Spain and Britain both have seasons, but it is only in Britain that all four of them can (and do) occur on the same day.  You could say that summer in Spain extends from May to October - obviously there are rainy and dull days, but it is rare indeed that a whole day passes during these months without the sun at least showing itself for a brief moment.  Eating outside, sunbathing, visiting the beach or just promenading are all actions that our sunny months encourage.  Unfortunately, for two of the key months of July and August (with almost two weeks of June) these are the same months of schools failing in their duty of containing the childish hordes from being unleashed on the human population.  Swarming, as my grandmother would say, like “black pats” (on reflection I think that I will try and ignore the double racism suggested by that oft heard dismissal) children spill onto the streets, the beaches, the shops and my leisure centre.

That last one is interesting.  As a child of two teacher parents, holidays were never the problem that most of the non-teacher-parent population must have.  My childhood holidays coincided with my parents’ holidays.  The only disruption that I can remember was when I made the transition from Primary to Secondary school, when one holiday was slightly different.  That problem was solved by accompanying my father to his school and bouncing for most of the day on a trampet!  [I note, by the way, that the word ‘trampet’ has been underlined by Word, but I have never referred to the small angled mini-trampoline used by those foolish enough to vault over a horse as anything else.  Have I been wrong for the last fifty plus years of my life?  You will also note that I have been too lazy to look it up on line - though, oddly enough I did make the effort to look it up in my massive Encarta dictionary!  And it wasn’t there.]  We also lived with my paternal grandparents when I was younger and so there were babysitters at hand.  Upstairs.  So, it is perhaps a little disingenuous of me to harrumph about how some children are treated during the long holidays.  But it will not stop me.

As soon as the holidays (any holidays) start my local leisure centre springs into action with Summer School or Easter School or Holiday School.  As far as I can see, these estimable organized activities exist for one (or perhaps two) reasons.  The first and most obvious is that of commercial necessity: the leisure centre makes money out of the invading armies of kids that are contained by activity after activity to fill the day.  The second is, of course, to get rid of the kids.  The Spanish are a tactile people and leaving your child in the leisure centre is accompanied by much hugging and kissing and fond waving of goodbyes.  But I have seen the faces of the parents as they finally turn from their progeny and walk (or skip) towards their cars.  That look of delighted relief is one that I recognize.  And, another thing, I have seen parents leave their children at times when it would be difficult to imagine the workplace missing them.  In other words, I think that parents go back to something other than work when they leave their kids in the centre.  Those smiles are not of delighted expectation of what their profession might offer to fill the rest of their day!

And this is where things get difficult.  Not for them (parents and kids) but for me.  I go to the leisure centre from my swim each day.  I swim a metric mile.  I feel smug and exercised.  But now that schools have abrogated their incarceration duties their escaped inmates impinge on my life.  Because of the swarms of parents hurling their kids with shrieks of delight towards the welcoming doors of the swimming pool my swimming has become cabined, cribbed and confined - to quote a poet of my acquaintance.  Probably wrongly.

There are five lanes in our 25m pool and nowa-summer-days by 9.30 am four of the lanes are given over to the young pretenders to leisure time.  This morning, for example, there were three of us in a single lane.

Two decent swimmers in a single lane is easy, as it is quite possible to swim expansively and safely in parallel.  A third person necessitates swimming in a clockwise or anti-clockwise way.  This is fine if all three swimmers are evenly matched, but if one swimmer is substantially faster than the other two there are problems.  None of which are insurmountable with the application of Basic Lane Discipline.  BLD is the thing that keeps chaos at bay, but it is a fragile concept and swimming (just like driving) does not generally bring out the best in people - especially if they are, or consider themselves to be, Serious Swimmers.

Suffice to say that, of the three of us, I was the slowest (and indeed the oldest, now I come to think of it) swimmer.  There was a lady swimmer who was punctilious in her adoption of BLD and was content to swim in circles and adapt her swimming to compensate for speed differences, e.g. using a breaststroke or a backstroke from time to time rather than her speedy crawl.  There was however, a gentleman swimmer.  With a goatee beard. 

I have an unreasoning prejudice against this hairy excrescence and was therefore prepared to think the worst of my fellow lane sharer.  And his actions more than justified my concern.  For him, BLD was as a foreign language and he committed the signal swimming crime of overtaking at a crowded end.  Let me explain.  If you are a powerful swimmer and you are stuck in a lane with two slower plodders then BLD dictates that you can overtake a slower swimmer as long as you can get in front of your target swimmer without impeding the third swimmer.  There is also another approach that involves judging things nicely and then reversing course mid length into open space.  This swimmer did neither but swam parallel with another swimmer so that he could push off from the side first and thereby bumping in to the swimmer finishing his (yes, reader, ‘twas I) length.  Very bad form.

My mood was not improved by noticing that one swimmer from the aquacize class was given a created restricted lane to himself!  Not happy - in spite of the fact that I have had exactly the same thing done for me on some occasions.  It wasn’t on this occasion and therefore I felt aggrieved!  And on either side of us, occupying four lanes (or rather three and a half allowing for the restricted lane) the children continued to bray and howl and generally gloat in their exuberant there-ness.

And another thing.

We have a communal pool for the sixteen or so houses that form our little community.  Access to this private pool is via a garden door for about half of us, and a lockable gate from the street for the rest.  Imagine my disquiet on my return from the pool to find the silence of the afternoon - usually only broken by the sound of the sea and the various building work which seems to go on for ever accompanied as always by the howling banshees of the electric leaf blowers - augmented by the shouting of Strange Children.  These were leaping in and out of the pool with their towels and then whupping the wet towels on the pool surround to produce a deep, resonant and supremely irritating sound.  Then these imps rushed towards the gate that they found locked and proceeded to scramble over it.  One boy (they were all boys) indeed re-scrambled over the gate to have one last plunge and thwack before he left!

I must admit to my shame that the use of superglue and broken glass did flit into my mind before the word ‘curmudgeonly’ suggested itself to cover everything that I was thinking, and indeed everything that I have written.

But there is a serious point (ish) to this musing.  Since retirement I have been delighted at the spaciousness that having the whole of a day to do something allows.  No longer trying to get things done in a break-time or during lunchtime, or after 4 pm.  I can go (and park) easily and if something needs more time for it to be completed, then more time I have.  And it’s the empty shops, especially supermarkets that are the delights.  I sometimes forget and get to a shop at 5pm (when most shops re-open after the afternoon closure) and am horrified at the number or children-clutching parents who get in my way!

When I was with my parents, we rarely went anywhere on Bank Holidays, my parents rightly suggesting that the roads would be clogged and places crowded and, anyway, we had other holiday days to use and we shouldn’t make things even worse by adding ourselves when we had other opportunities.  I well remember, for reasons that I forget, going to Weston-Super-Mare on a bank holiday and being scarred by the whole experience.  I am well prepared to admit that I am hopelessly prejudiced against that ‘seaside’ (sic.) resort, and, to be fair, Burnham-on-sea on a wet Sunday was an even worse experience, but I was not prepared for the horrific tackiness and unpleasantness that Weston offered.  And the people, my dear!  And didn’t the odious ex-Chairman of the Conservative party and hack, Archer take his title (has he still got it?) from the bloody place.  ‘Nuff said.

I will now go out on to the terrace and take the sun and allow the golden rays to sooth me to better thoughts!