Obey your technology!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My new watch even beeped at me to let me know that it thought that there would be rain later in the morning!   

     When you are stumbling around in the pre-dawn getting read to cycle for the morning swim, a beeping watch is the last thing that you need, as you mostly rely on automatic to get you through the quotidian rituals of getting the day going.

     I did however, glance at the watch and a terse message said, “Expect rain at 8 am” – even poetic in its way.  However, I decided to ignore such a warning and trust to the legendary positive weather conditions of Castelldefels.  Sometimes, even when the forecast for the town says rain, it seems to make an exception for the strip of the town along the beach and we often stay dry.

     Not this time.   

     It rained at 8. 

And as I ploughed my way up and down my gloriously empty lane in the local pool, I heard the tell-tale sound of globular moisture hitting the retractable roof and, with my surgically altered eyes, I could make out the running smears of water trickling down the glazing at the sides of the pool.

     Never mind, I told myself, after I’ve finished my swim there is always the extra time for my tea and sarnie in the cafe, which together with note writing  should ensure that by the time that I am ready to leave the weather will have cleared up.

     Not this time.   

     In a rather touching gesture of moderate futility, I drained the water from the cleft of the saddle and dabbed, mostly ineffectually, at the rest of the seat in the hope that first rump-contact would not be totally wet, but just unpleasantly damp.

     And so I made my way home through spiteful rain that, in spite of the fact that I modified my route back via tree canopied roads, seemed to find the spaces between the leaves to fall, not so gently, on me.   

     My coat is now hanging on the sheltered line downstairs to drip dry and my shorts have (bugger the expense!) been put into the tumble dryer in gloriously damp isolation.

     It is said that the amount of super-computing power that it devoted to forecasting the weather dwarfs all other uses.  But I still react to forecasts as if they were based on the “feeling of a bit of seaweed” approach of the “experts” of my youth, rather than the almost infinitely sophisticated approach of the present technological day. 

     I should believe the forecasts because they are really, generally, correct.  I think that what you might call 'forecasting faith' could be related to an age divide, where people of my baby-boomer generation are still sceptical, whereas those who have been brought up looking at ever smaller screens for their information now expect the info that they are given by the Almighty operating systems of their phones to be correct.

     As a matter of interest, I just asked Google what it based its weather forecasts on and the answer was that it, "takes radar data created by doppler radar stations" and by organizing this data into images and creating a time specific sequence is able to suggest what the weather will be.  So there!

     Just staying with temperature, I got to thinking about how much 'faith' I do have in flashing lights and digital information connected to various things that I possess actually telling me the truth.

     I have never independently verified the set temperature in the fridge for example.  I have taken as gospel the temperatures that the machine tells me that my dishes are washed at in the dishwasher; the time that the microwave cooks for; the length of the various washes in the washing machine.  Virtuallly the only time that I check my watch is when the BBC News starts, and even that is compromised by the fact that I listen to the BBC on the Internet and I have discovered that there are seconds lagging, between broadcast and my radio making absolute accuracy impossible.

     I remember, from my teaching days, one supremely irritating child in a 'bottom group' when such things existed (no, hardly a child he was 15 going on 7) who replied to everything I said for almost the whole of a lesson with the single word, "Why?"  

     I decided, in the way that you sometimes do, that, instead of losing my temper or ignoring the kid, I would attempt to answer him.  And I did.  The interchange (if you could call it that because the boy didn't think about any of his responses, which were always "Why?" or consider any of my increasingly philosophical responses) were obviously one-sided, but the rest of the small class appreciated the 'game' and eventually, they called time, to which the kid gave one final "Why?" and laughed.

     I recall this because it was an example of questioning, mindless questioning perhaps, but it did force me to think while I attempted to answer the continuous drill of "whys?" that was leading to a point of absurdity that I never quite gave into.

     If that experience was essentially arrid, perhaps it should make us think about the way that we too easily accept authority from electronic, inanimate machines functioning on a series of zeros and ones.

     My watch measures and charts my movement and lack of it, my activity, my sleep, my heartbeat and lord alone knows what else.  When I go for a bike ride, I can with a few taps bring up a map and trace the route that I have taken, the time it took me to complete it and even the elevation above sea level and the inclines and declines that I navigated.

     My watch and the app that is linked to it have more information about me and the way that my body works and where that body has been, than anyone else in the world - apart of course from the people who can link into the watch or the app and download whatever.

     What prompted these thoughts was that my watch was right about the rain and I was wrong.  

     Perhaps, in the future should I be more willing to listen to the information that, although presented on one, small, round watchscreen, is actually the visible and tangible sign of an unthinkably powerful information superhighway to which I am linked?

     I am no conspiracy theorist, but asking "Why?" might be the really human thing to do.

Ways of speaking, ways of thinking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a decent early morning swim, a nicely surrealistic accompaniment to my post-swim cup of tea by sighting a man with a parrot on a collar and lead, arriving to have a coffee (the man and his lady companion, not the parrot) at an adjacent table.  The white parrot (cockatoo?) alternated his perch from the man’s shoulder to the top of a free chair, but was generally unobtrusive, and certainly quiet, though constantly disconcerting. 

     I think it was the collar and lead that discomforted the most but was not enough to distract me from answering Carles’ questions about English Usage, with which he assaults me most days.

     Yesterday, he wanted to know about expressions of surprise and, knowing his predilection for the archaic (he uses “spiffing” with relish!) I offered him “Goodness gracious me!” as something suitably outré in modern use!  He had forgotten it by today, though after a Herculean effort of memory he dredged up the “gracious me” part.  I wonder if it will make it to his RAM tomorrow!

     Today’s Word of the Day was “spoil” and its use with regard to children (specifically his grandchildren) and to things in general. 

     I enjoy our little chats because it keeps me in touch with my teaching side and, while I do not think that I have the same agility with explanations that I had when I was in the classroom, it does make me think to try and find the way to explain things that to a native English speaker need no explanation.

     I hasten to add that these little forays into education do not, even in the slightest, make me regret my “retired” status from the teaching profession. 

     Teachers have my admiration and sympathy, but not my emulation!

 

The weather is certainly on the change.  I have not only started wearing a short jacket when I set off in the early morning on my bike to the pool, but also when I go on my extended bike ride to the end of the Gavà Paseo after my swim.  The days of a t-shirt being adequate for both are now gone, as indeed are the nights without a sheet and with an open French door.

     Although somewhat overcast, there are intervals of sunshine, and I am still using a small electric fan to keep cool in my chaotic squalor on the third floor.  There are still times in the mid afternoon when the big fans are needed, but the weather is decidedly “fresher” which is our euphemism for colder.

     As with the UK, though not in such a squalidly chaotic way, Spain is dreading the winter with the increases in power and prices generally.  Although the winter is cold, it is not as bitter as the UK, though central heating and blankets with a couple of eiderdowns are necessary to get through the colder snaps.

     Castelldefels is a rich little town with a selection of Russian oligarchs and Barça players living here in multi-million-euro houses (as well, of course, as we, the genteel poor-ish) so the fear of what the winter can bring is somewhat modified by the fact that many here are well able to compensate for the hike in prices and still smile.  But, like any sizeable town, you need an army of lower paid people to keep the place running – and how are they going to survive?

     As part of my forced awareness, I am determined to find out how and what the council is planning to mitigate some of the deleterious effects of the coming financial hardship.

     From time to time, we have volunteers stationed at the check-outs of our local supermarkets asking for donations for Food Banks.  I have no idea where these are situated in our town, and I also don’t know how they are funded.  But I am going to find out.  And Do Something.

     With my not-fit-for-purpose knees there is a limit to what unskilled help I can give, but there must be something that I can do.  I am aware that, though I might “preach poverty” I am comfortably well off compared to many given my status as a Baby Boomer who got born at the right time for virtually everything!  So, even if we have to make some cutbacks in our expenditure to cover exorbitant fuel bills, there will still be something left over to help those who are really having to make the decision between buying food and staying warm.

     I suppose that I am writing this down as a way of forcing myself to do something more than just ruminate.  For example, I am sure that my pool would be more than prepared to collect food for the Food Banks, they have done it before, and perhaps they might be prepared to do it on a more regular basis during the winter months. 

     Before I ask anything of institutions and myself, I have to find out just how these things are organized in Castelldefels and then take it from there.

     Responsibility begins at home, and my home is here.

 

No more excuses - you've got to blame the people!

 

My full-time teaching career started with my going for interview in Kettering, a town in Northamptonshire of which I had not previously heard.  (As I was an aspiring English teacher, I do hope you appreciated my not ending the last sentence with a preposition.)  Anyway, I got the job in what was then Kettering Boys’ Grammar School, but which had become Kettering Boys’ School by the time I took up my post.  I spent a year and a bit there learning my craft and finding out that full-time teaching was a truly demanding job.

     I had long moved back to Cardiff when the Northampton that I knew went, I’m tempted to say pear-shaped, but that image is not grotesque enough for what actually happened to the political landscape.

     This link will take you to a lucid explanation of the appalling mismanagement of the council resulting in its bankruptcy: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-56488909

     In the recent elections, the electorate of the two new political entities that were formed from the rubble of what had been destroyed by the past administrations, saw fit to vote majorities to the Conservatives – the party which caused all the trouble in the first place.  The electorate have AGAIN voted for people who callously and viciously made their lives much, much worse through criminal mismanagement of public funds.

     Why?

   That plaintive question has been echoing through my mind as I have considered the decisions the electorate have made not only in Britain but also here in Spain.

     We have recently had elections for the council in Madrid and the electorate here have voted (in a record turnout) for a council which will be made up of PP and Vox.  The first of those, PP, is the most corrupt political party in Western Europe – and that is not my prejudice speaking, just type in  “PP in Spain corruption” and you will find a shockingly wide breadth of coverage of what is almost comical illegal behaviour.

     If you want to be more specific then you could search for “PP Corruption in Madrid” and you might come across something like, https://elpais.com/ccaa/2018/09/30/madrid/1538326069_865164.html

Where, even if you don’t understand Spanish, it doesn’t take much to make out what the headline “La década viciosa de Madrid” might mean, and you will be able to see some of the unsavoury characters who have defiled the city over the last ten years.

     And people voted for them!  Again!

     In a 71% turnout, 44.7% voted for PP!  The other party that the corrupt and corrupting PP will govern with is Vox.  Vox is usually described as a “far right” party, but it is simpler and more realistic to consider them as Franco supporting fascists.  Their pronouncements and policies are repugnant.  They are rabble rousing scum.  And they have pledged to support PP “to keep the left out”.  If you add the 9.1% of the electorate who voted for Vox  to the 44.7% who voted for PP, you have a clear majority of the voters choosing right wingers and fascists to form their government of choice!

     By way of comparison, in the Catalan parliament out of 41 representatives, only 2 members of PP were elected! 

     Catalonia truly is another country!

    

     Meanwhile in Britain, the third-rate incompetents, bullies and liars who comprise the ‘government’ of Johnson, the liar-in-chief, are gifted with gains.  Hartlepool, which has been a Labour voting constituency since its inception votes Conservative.  Admittedly, it was an area which overwhelmingly voted for Brexit and presumably, the voters have seen or heard nothing negative enough with the lies of Johnson, and the criminal mishandling of the Covid response, or the Brexit train-crash of financial and social disaster to make them doubt the positivity of voting for a shameless narcissist and his corrupt crew!

     If Johnson had been watching European politics (as if!) then he would probably be considering a snap General Election.  The Zombie leader of the PPs in Madrid has shown just how much an electorate can ignore when they are asked to put their cross next to a party which is corrupt, selfish, criminal, menial, duplicitous, mendacious, uncaring, and all the other insulting adjectives that come to mind in describing your typical Conservative, no matter whether it be in Spain on in the UK.

     God help us all!

 

Tomorrow is Toni’s birthday.  The Family will be arriving in instalments and we should have a good celebration.  Perhaps then I will be in a more mellow mood and my writing might reflect that.

     We’ll see!

 

 

    

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS – DAY 4

It has taken a pandemic to shut our bloody neighbours’ noisy reconstruction efforts.  The silence of their absence is absolutely delightful, though it doesn’t compensate for the intolerable thumpings that have characterised their reformations.

     In fact, we now have a silent cordon sanitaire as the neighbours on one side only use their house for the summer holidays and on the other side, the reformations make it unliveable for the owners while the work is going on and the lockdown restrictions make it inaccessible.  If we could only cause the terminal laryngitis of the bloody rat dog of another neighbour, we could even be sort of content.

     Traffic that passes us on the main road is at a minimum and there are few planes overhead.  For Spain, our surroundings are disturbingly silent – not for Britain perhaps, but for us, certainly!

I am missing my daily swim and am getting progressively more worried about the lack of exercise that I am taking.  Normally I would use my bike to get to my swim and back and then use the bike for a few shopping trips or whatever, so this enforced inaction is grating.  This afternoon I was driven to Take Measures.  I ventured out to the communal swimming pool and made a number of stately circuits of the pool leaning on my walking-stick.  I was alone with only the sound of a howling kid to keep me company.  Not literally, this one was in a flat next to our houses and I dread to think what his parents must be going through, his being too young fully to understand why his little life has been so suddenly cramped!  Good luck to them.  I did manage to get to my step goal according to my watch, so I must be very unsettled around the house!

     I will have to make circling of the pool a daily chore because it doesn’t look as though the relaxation of the restrictions on our movement are going to be any time soon.

     If the UK is going to shut the schools and cancel end of year examinations, it doesn’t really look too positive that our little class in Catalan is going to be restarted before Easter.  In theory our class could restart on the 30^th of this month, but that looks remote.  I think that it is unlikely that our class will restart this academic year, but who knows what will actually occur.

The PP and PSOE King (he was created by an agreement between the two political parties and nothing was put to the people) made a broadcast last night.  He said nothing about the continuing scandal that engulfs him and his elephant shooting father about off-shore accounts and kickbacks.  But his shameless broadcast did give the opportunity for right thinking people to show their disgust at the corruption by banging our saucepans.  It is wonderful how much penetrating sound is created by the simple application of wooden spoon to saucepan bottom!  The drive for an independent enquiry into the behaviour of the so-called king and his even more so-called emeritus king father continues.  The first call for an enquiry has been rejected on what I think are obviously spurious legal trickery grounds, but the parties of the real left are not letting a single obstacle stand in their way and are trying again.

     I think that the royal family in Spain has lost a great deal of popular support.  The antics of the king ‘emeritus’ towards the end of his reign before he was forced, by a surge of public disgust, to abdicate really did damage the prestige of the family.  The scandals that have involved other members of the family with consequent jail time have not helped.  I am sure that politicians will not put the continuation of the royal family to a public vote, but if they did, I think that the royal family would loose.  I think it is also getting closer and closer with the British version too, and when QE2 finally dies, the sobering prospect of Charles III will concentrate the minds of a large number of erstwhile monarchists towards the republican cause.  I hope.

I have started putting drafts of my most recent poems on smrnewpoems and that gives me the incentive to write more.  That came out as seeming to be more of a threat than an invitation to read!  But I assure you it is the former.

Toni is getting a trifle stir crazy with not going out, and it has only been four days!  Well, that four days is my computation.  Toni says that last weekend of Saturday and Sunday is actually counted in the lockdown, but I assumed that the lockdown was from Monday of this week.  Toni was with his mother on the Saturday and he came back to Castelldefels on Sunday afternoon, so his time in lockdown is questionable.  I am feeling quite chipper about my enforced detention at home, and I have done a quantity of writing: if nothing else confinement does concentrate the writing impulse. 

    

     Long may it continue.

Work and play

 

The ‘A4 blank sheet of paper approach’ to the writing tasks that I still need to complete has been effective.  So far.  The individual sheets forced me to break down the tasks into their component parts and I have been able to produce notes towards a draft that now look quite impressive.  I keep telling myself that, "The most important thing about a draft is that it has to exist"!

I think that my inaction was a function of having too much to do and therefore doing little or nothing because I couldn’t decide where to start!  This is a common problem and is sometimes used to justify laziness rather than anything else!  Yes, there are some problems in the completion of my work that are beyond my individual reach and I am getting frustrated waiting for a response from particularly unresponsive colleagues, but that is only one small part and should not really have caused me to do anything other than write speculatively and wait for back dated permission!

I feel energized by the amount of work that I have done in the last couple of days and the trick, as ever, if continuing the momentum in producing drafts of the individual elements that will be going into the next book.  The next book that I intend to publish has just “growed” (like Topsy) from its initial conception to become something altogether more ambitious, though, as there are photographs and illustrations, I am not sure about the economic reality of its actual publication – perhaps it will end up as a more substantial form of chapbook.  Who knows!

But I am positive about the production and I am raring to go as far as the last pieces of writing are concerned.

There is something exhilarating about having three separate books ‘on the go’ and I am hoping that the overkill of creativity will spur me on to completion!

-oOo-

Our last lesson in Catalan was something of a waste of time.  We all arrived – some of us on time – and then just sat around wondering where the teacher was.  Eventually I went to the office to enquire and discovered that our tutor was ill and that there might be a cover teacher for us.  Work had been set, but no one was found for us so we dispersed to our homes – not before a few of us had a chat and a cup of coffee (tea) to make the morning more civilized!

But what I take from that ‘wasted’ morning was something that used to be so ordinary for me.  When I found out what was going on, I marched up to the teacher’s desk on my return from the office, put the books that I had been carrying down on it and spoke to the class, informing them of what was going on and what work they had to do.  And, as I was doing it, I realized that this was the first time that I had been ‘in front of a class’ for a long, long time.  Never mind the fact that this class was not mine, and that I was delivering information in broken Spanish and English, it was still a ‘class’ and, even in the short period of time that I was out the front, a period of time that could be counted in seconds rather than minutes, I felt the old teacher in me stir, and I could swear that my tone of voice changed the pedagogue of old shook off retirement for a brief moment!

Not an experience, you understand, to tempt me back to the reality of teaching.  Just an interesting brush with the concept!

And now for the Catalan homework, it behoves me to make the effort as I was the one who told the rest of the class about it!

-oOo-

Before I go: I wonder how my watch dealt with my swim this morning.  

After my slow warm-up length and gentle warm-up exercises, I now set my new watch to monitor my achievement and progress.  For the last two days I have clicked on the ‘swimming pool’ icon and later tried to make sense of the bewilderingly complete information about my efforts.   

Today however, I made things a little more difficult because of my faulty eyesight.  With my contact lenses I can see distance, but reading is more of a challenge.  A challenge that is almost impossible when I am trying to read a small moisture covered watch face.

I clicked on what I thought was the right icon, and was passingly concerned at the lack of the 3-2-1 countdown that usually appears (with vibrations) before I start, but thought nothing of it as the watch face looked suitably complicated.  It turned out that I had pressed the wrong icon and the watch thought that I was actually running rather than swimming.

I am assuming that action is action and the watch will have registered something, but it will be interesting to see just how the watch processes it!

I have now realized (with my reading glasses on) that the ‘running’ and ‘swimming’ icons are actually different colours and that is something that I will have to remember tomorrow morning!