In
one of those convoluted areas of jurisdiction that are more usual in Republican
Party gerrymandering, part of Sitges curves over the hills outside the tunnels
and engulfs the end of Castelldefels in the Port Ginesta area. As this is a continuous part of Castelldefels
most people actually forget that it is not part of our town. The police, however, do know. And this morning they were on the Paseo
looking pained as all we people from Castelldefels were walking (or cycling) along the
road. Toni told me later (as he had gone
for a walk in the opposite direction) that Gavá was also similarly policed and
‘isolated’.
This is not something that happens on a
regular daily basis and I think that it is confined to weekends when the
‘danger’ of outsiders infringing local boundaries is at its highest. To be fair; it’s a fair cop. We are, after all, supposed to be confined to
our localities – however artificial they actually are.
The news from the UK is not good in this
area where six weeks of lockdown are facing what could be a sunny Bank Holiday
weekend with police in London saying that they are losing the battle of the
parks with people flocking to them to sunbathe and drink, and gather in groups
not segregated by physical distancing.
As the weather here is not particularly sunny it will be interesting to
see how many people are out and about this evening at 8pm when my age group is
allowed to exercise.
On a
more festive note, today is Toni’s birthday and I filmed him opening his
presents (at a few minutes past midnight last night!) and put it online in the
Family site so they could see the presents that they had only seen in
photographs in Amazon! It is a strange
time with customs adapting to new circumstances.
I hope that the chocolate cream birthday
cake that I hid in the fridge has not yet been discovered so that it can make a
suitable impression when it makes its flaming way into the living room!
And it was delicious!
My
evening bike ride was taken a little later than usual, in the dark rather than
the twilight and it was, ironically, revealing.
Setting aside for a moment, my pet peeve of cyclists without lights, the
most glaring element I observed was the grouping of teenagers in ‘bike
gangs’. Obviously they have their mobile
phones to arrange the coordination of their exercise times and that gives them
the opportunity to meet up. As many of
them use their bikes as seats there is a sort of built-in physical distancing,
but they are more gang than individuals and there is little sense of
viral threat. Perhaps it is futile to expect
teenagers to be constantly on their guard against a virus that they think will
not single them out, but they must be made aware that they could easily be
asymptomatic and therefore they could be a real threat to their parents and
especially their grandparents.
Perhaps I was looking for evidence of
shirking the rules and therefore found it, but I do sense a feeling of
relaxation that I think will be even stronger on Monday after a weekend of
seeing television pictures of people exercising their ‘freedoms’. It is something that concerns me.
As it should!
