LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 34 – Saturday, 18th APRIL

 After ‘Moppy’ had done her work; the Guardian Quick Crossword had been completed; my blend of Earl Grey and English Breakfast tea drunk, it was time for my walk, accompanied by the comforting fatuousness of ‘Saturday Live’ on BBC Radio 4.  I also had a purpose other than gentle exercise.  I was looking for raw material to serve as ‘illustration’ for my PIHW Chapbook, Coasts of Memory.

     As I have often bewailed in the past, I have little technical ability in drawing or painting and so I have to rely on photography to get me out of illustrative predicaments.  The situation is made somewhat worse because of the lockdown that obviously restricts my range of subject matter.  I have therefore taken the ‘pleasure in small things’ approach and told myself that I am perfectly capable of finding variety in restriction: from the terrace on the third floor to the far wall of the communal swimming pool, my area of activity might be limited, but it is (I tell myself) rich in illustrative possibilities.  I have therefore taken photos and they await my ruthless editing!

The one shining light of Trump’s ‘Presidency’ is that he is terrified of being a ‘one term’ holder of that office; every other thinking person’s terror is that he should be anything else, after all it is going to be difficult enough to sort out the human, reputational, financial, moral, institutional, legislative, aesthetic and political morass that he will have left after a single term, let alone the horror of his being allowed to play with the USA for an extra four years!

     It is obvious that Trump has decided to stop at absolutely nothing in his aim to retain power and the latest horrific indication of the depths to which he is prepared to sink is evidenced by his encouraging demonstrations against some states’ lockdown restrictions. 

     Trump’s base ‘base’ is essentially rural rather than urban and with his encouragement of the grouping of extreme right sets opposing health and science predicated lockdown, he is hoping for a conflict that he thinks might show him to be the champion of the voice of freedom against those (Democratic) governors who are seeking to repress the true liberties of right thinking Americans to court death and carry guns – and you can scatter as many quotation marks around in that last sentence as your liberal sensibilities dictate!

     That in a time of a catastrophic pandemic the Presidential Egoist can think of fostering something like Civil Disobedience if not Civil War would be unbelievable if it were not Trump.

     On an incidental note: if (please god) Trump is a one-term President, can you see him attending the inauguration of the new Democratic President?  Can you see him visibly handing over power?  What excuse will he make not to attend?  How will he even be able to get through the transition period when he should meet his successor?  If you think back to the intensely embarrassing meetings with Obama when he looked like a naughty schoolboy with a stupidly long tie, what are the ones going to be like with the person who beat him?  My mind finds it difficult to place Trump in any meetings that emphasise his failure to hold on to office.  How can anyone as thinly narcissistic as he bare it?  The thought is something that keeps me warm at nights!

     Talking of narcissists, how long is it going to be that our airwaves are going to be free of the bumbling banter of the virus courter?  He has signally failed to resign because of his dereliction of duty in wilfully becoming infected and I dread to think of the fawning adulation of the gutter press when he bumbles into view, bravely leading our country to destitution and ignominy, after the searing affliction of his virtually self-inflicted illness.

     Meanwhile we have the political chancer, Matt Beckett, the ethic-free (give us a job!) pitiful holder of the Secretary of State for Health portfolio refusing to give straight answers to the almost criminal shortages of PPE for our front line health workers, or indeed anything else of crucial interest to the remaining virus free part of the population of the UK.  I wonder how he is going to convince us that there are 100K tests by the end of the month?  We can dispense with truth, that has never bothered him in the past as he has changed his principles as often as his underwear, so how is he going to square the circle so that he can keep his comfy job.  His past record shows that he is capable of the most egregious U-turns, so I await his contortions.  Resignation will never come easy to one who has swallowed so many of his scruples to get where he is at present.  In some ways it could almost be funny to watch his antics, but people will die because of his incompetence, so smiles will be inappropriate.  Perhaps they might be allowed as long as they are sardonic!

After a fairly glum start to the day there are brief periods now when sunshine is squeezing out from behind the clouds.  There are distinct patches of blue and that bodes well for a sunny later afternoon.  I live in hope.

The PPE situation now seems desperate in the UK.  The weekend is the time when certain medical institutions will run out.  This is an utter disgrace and if it does happen then the Health Minister must resign immediately and the rest of the tossers in the so-called bloody government.  And the fact that worthless trash like IDS and the unutterable David Davis are pontificating about the present crisis after their assiduous cheerleading into the last one over Brexit is more than depressing.

     I am very well aware that trying to get anything like efficiency and normality in a crisis situation is difficult and there has to be leeway for the unexpected, but the necessity for basic supplies is fundamental and that is where this so-called government has failed so signally.  Why are our deaths so high?  Why did we wait so long before instituting the lockdown?  Why are basic materials in short supply?  So many questions to which our political leaders have no real answers.

     Why do we tolerate them?

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 29 – Easter Monday, 13th APRIL

In the best traditions of British Bank Holiday Mondays, it is pouring with rain here in Catalonia.  The one difference, I have always maintained, is the lack of spitefulness in holiday weather in Catalonia so that there is always a possibility of seeing some sunshine during the day – it may not be much, but it will be there.

     Today is the damp calm before the invisible storm as the majority of the working population in designated but non-essential jobs are urged to go back to work, taking what ever microbes they have with them into the crowded metros and buses and trains as they commute. 

     The fatal proof of this economic pudding will be in a couple of weeks time when the mortality figures for Covid-19 will be examined to see whether this ill-thought out initiative has been as deadly as feared.

     It is a salutary experience to discover that in purely economic terms, we citizens are merely collateral damage, acceptable wastage, the angels’ share, surplus to requirements or any other mealy mouthed form of words to cover up the judicial execution that such a policy is going to mean.

     ‘Mean’ is a key word for something linked to the crisis that I hope is fake news, but have been told is actual fact.  In Catalan history the year 1714 is a key one.  On the 11^th of September 1714 Catalonia surrendered to the Bourbon King Philip V after supporting the Hapsburg Charles in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714): Catalonia lost its distinctive independence as it was subsumed into the Bourbon Crown; Catalan was demoted as the language of government; the walls of Barcelona were destroyed; Catalan territories over the Pyrenees were lost.  And all round disaster; but, in the typically Catalan way, 11^th September became the National Day of Catalonia and 1714 a date which is constantly seen, I have a hoodie with the year on the back and the Catalan flag on the front!

     It is therefore pushing coincidences a little that the National Government of Spain sent Catalonia exactly 1,714 thousand masks to be used in the present Crisis!

     There is no love lost between Madrid and Barcelona and the measures that are going to come into place tomorrow have met with stiff opposition from Catalonia and the Basque Country, with the Catalan President asking Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, to send him the documentation of the scientific advice on which he based the decision to allow people to return to work.  Catalonia is in favour of a continuation of the strict lockdown, and I have to say that I think that is the more persuasive approach.

     Politicians should be increasingly nervous about the inevitable Public Inquiries that are going to take place when this crisis is over.  Their mismanagement is killing people and they should be held responsible.  And please, do not accuse me of pre-judging: hospitals without equipment are a simple fact; hospitals continuing to be poorly supplied with PPE are a simple fact; people dying are a simple fact.  The Conservatives have been in power for a decade: the fault lies with them – and they must pay.

The Poems In Holy Week (PIHW) period is now over and I have managed to write drafts of poems for each of the days, all of which can be found at smrnewpoems.blogspot.com  This year has been obviously different as we have been under strict lockdown and the ‘holiday’ aspect of the period has been a little ‘abstract’ to say the least.  It is a continuingly odd time as we are surrounded by literally deadly danger, yet continue to lead ordinary, safe, if isolated lives.  It is not like the Second World War where even my childhood home in Cathays in Cardiff was graced so I was told, with one (unexploded) German bomb: something tangible from the air raids.  But for us in Catalonia, at least where we are, it is like a continuing Phoney War; we go on with our restricted lives, and the medical horror is taking place elsewhere, out of sight, though vividly alive on television screens.  I think the unreality of it all is what is most obvious.  Yes, I know that the virus is real and the deaths and illness are actual, but our direct experience is limited to our own little inconveniences, not to a mortal struggle.  It’s odd and, as I’ve said, something where the actuality is difficult to take in.

     I have now printed out a draft booklet of the Poems in Holy Week and have done a few edits to get me going on the revision that they all have to undergo before publication.

     I have not yet decided on a title, but I’m working on it!  The most difficult part, I find, is writing an introduction for the collection – it forces me to look at the collection as an entity and write something that makes sense of the totality rather than individual poems.

     I also have to think about illustrations and that is always challenging.  Still, if nothing else, I do have time to consider these challenges!

The police in Spain have said that the ‘return to work’ for non-essential workers when off normally.  An interesting choice of word for anything but normal times where, surely, normality is not the way to respond to the extraordinary!

My faith in Catalonia took a knock today.  The poor weather lasted the entire day and I was not graced with even a moment of proper sunshine.  I am prepared to extend my faith to tomorrow – but anything after that and I will slip into heresy!

Sunshine after rain

No sooner had I started for my Catalan lesson on my trusty bike than the skies opened and lashing rain assaulted me.  I had to wait for the protection of a bridge before I could dismount and rootle around in my backpack for the bike rain trousers (there must be a single word for them, surely, that phrase is just so unwieldy – leggings perhaps) and go on my less damp in the nether regions way, conscious at the same time of the amount of static electricity I had to be generating from the swathes of waterproof nylon in which I was now encased.

     God alone know what impression I made as I eventually dripped my sodden, baggy way into the class – though one member of the group was delighted that she had finally seen me in a pair of long trousers, albeit of a strictly utilitarian persuasion!  I divested myself of various wet garments and eventually I was able to sit in remarkable dryness given the ferocity of the storm.

One of the reasons that I love this country is that, at the end of the class, I went out to ride home in blustery sunshine.  There is none of the spitefulness of the lingering rain syndrome so common in British weather.  In Catalonia it can be raining, misty, cloudy, cold, blowing a gale – but you can virtually guarantee some sunshine at some point in the day.  It is a rare occurrence indeed when the sun stays away for an entire twenty-four hours.  Delightfully rare!

The waterproofs (that’s the word!) were bought during my last visit to Wales and haven’t been used since I returned, so I will have to ensure that they are thoroughly dried before they are put away, because it might well me months before they are needed again and I do not want to withdraw a moldy garment from its packaging when occasion calls.  In the UK you can put them away in their damp state because they will be called into use far sooner than any mold could form!  Or at least, I like to think so, it makes me jocose when the weather here is not as equitable as I would wish it to be!

The fear of the upcoming examination in Catalan is developing.  One of the participants in the class asked for clarification of what exactly was going to be in the test (a much more comforting and less intimidating word) the week after next, no, at the end of next week I now realize.  We have done two pieces of writing (that have been corrected) that will be models for what we will have to complete in the test and we have been given pretty clear indications of what sort of vocab we will need to be conversant (exactly!) with.

In the description of my house that was one of the topics, I tried to explain that of the three stories that comprise the dwelling, the ground floor is taken up with the entry and the staircase, the living quarters start on the first floor with the living room/dining room and the kitchen.  The problems came in the way that I translated ‘living quarters’.  I went for a literal translation from English to Catalan “els quarts d’estar” which I suppose would be something like “quarters of being” – perhaps unsurprisingly this stumped the teacher who demanded to know what I meant.  My explanation ranged over three languages and was not easily resolved.  There is a Catalan phrase for “living room” which is “sala d’estar” – the ‘room of being’, so I think that my attempt is more than reasonable.  But it didn’t pass muster, and I was offered the complex alternative of “l’allotjament” or the much simpler “l’habitatge”.  The ore astute among you will have realized that my typing all of this is merely a device to try and fix the words in my mind so that they can be used to great effect in the examination.  Anything is worth a try, to get a foreign word to stay in my mind!

The other topic we had to complete was an email to a friend.  Given a free hand to write what we liked, I always tend to veer towards my own interests, so exhibitions in art galleries or operas in the Liceu tend to be my stock in trade for such pieces of writing.  I told my friend that I had been to an excellent exhibition in MNAC and I was then able to list the Catalan artists whose work was featured in this fabricated show.  Outside of Catalonia how many of the following artists would be known: Ramon Casas, Joaquim Mir, Joaquim Sunyer, Modest Urgell, Joan Brull, Ramon Alsina?  The Catalan artists with world recognition are probably Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró – and Picasso, of course.  Yes, I do know that he wasn’t Catalan, but Pablo himself said that he had the soul of a Catalan and so he is counted!

It is one of the delights of living near MNAC in Barcelona that I have been able to get to know a whole range of Catalan artists of whom I had never heard before I lived here.  All of the names above now mean something to me and I can link specific works of art to the names.  Of all of the artists that I have come to appreciate living in Catalonia and being able to see their paintings relatively easily, the artist whom I most admire is Ramon Casas – a draftsman and painter whose charcoal sketches of the good and the famous in Barcelona (his sketch of a young Picasso is constantly reproduced) are astonishing.  Yes, perhaps his art did not develop in a way that influenced world painting, but he remains a remarkable second or third order artist and one who deserves a wider audience for his work.

Not long after I first arrived in this country a local newspaper produced a whole series of books featuring Catalan artists, all of which I bought and which provided a firm foundation for me to begin to build my knowledge of a whole new school of art.

Always learning!

Beach pimples!

 

Weather trumped work - at least the academic sort – and we spent the morning on the beach.  The weather varied from scorching sunshine to cloud filtered mugginess.  The other two set off on a long hour duration walk while I slumped in my chair, occasionally braving dead jellyfish to dip myself in the sea.

This year has seen a marked increase in the number of jellyfishes rolling through the surf to die in the shallows.  At least we think they are dead, once they are out of the water and stranded on drying sand they look inoffensively inert.

Legend has it that jellyfish are still poisonous even in death, with the chandelier-like stingers able to inflict wounds on vulnerable flesh even when the malign force driving the living creature is no more.

This morning, there were three glistening ‘pimples’ with easy reach, occasionally washed by more adventurous waves, but anchored on the littoral.  They were viewed with interest by the passing pedestrians promenading along the water line, but it took a couple of young lads to do something about it.

It is obvious that the younger generation of beach dwellers have been deeply influenced by “Finding Nemo”, especially in the sequence where his dad and the truly wonderful Dory met the jellyfish when the dark (but safe) canyon is rejected in favour of the lighter, higher (but fatal) shallower water.  They know that the dangling stings are painful, but they also know from having seen it in the film that the rounded tops of the jellyfish are harmless.  So, the lads made their hands into crane-like grabs and lifted the blobs from their occasional sea-washed dampness to the fatal embrace of the perennially dry soft sand.

I have to say that the visible reminders of possible pain did not deter swimmers, including myself, from going into the briny.  I did “look about me” to check if there were any obvious transparent dangers, but satisfied myself that the odds of safety were on my side.  And, indeed, they have been so far this year as I have been signally un-stung.  Though I am aware that last statement is a hostage to fortune, especially given the prevalence of ghostly retribution swimming about in the waves around us.  But I have faith.

Tomorrow, with a rare sense of occasion, we have been invited out to a barbecue on the only day in recent weeks that is scheduled to have thunderstorms. 

Sometimes the irony of life is too obvious to be funny.