The writing has moved on!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It looks as though I have lost/mislaid my current notebook.  This is a bad thing.

     It is a bad thing because the notebook represents, in however scrappy a form, my thoughts and ideas over a period of months.  It is also a bad thing because I am fairly free with my thoughts and ideas in it.  True, there are mundane comments about the weather and whether or not I had a lane to myself for my morning swim, but my thoughts can be more wide-ranging and much more personal than that!

     The only built-in security system, that virtually encrypts the notes themselves is the almost illegible scrawl in which they are written.  I have to admit that I sometimes, no quite often, find myself puzzling over certain extravagant calligraphic patterns and wondering if they have any relation whatsoever to English orthography.  This ‘difficulty’ does give a certain freshness to a perusal when undertaken long after the words were written.

     I have hunted around all the spots in the house where the small, pocket-sized, notebook could have been discarded or lodged.  I have checked pockets in a range of clothing.  I have checked down the side of the armchair that I use.  I have checked the car seats.  I have looked everywhere reasonable that could be a place where the notebook could be.  I have even looked in places where, where it to be there, I would spend the rest of my life wondering how it possibly got there.  But in places reasonable and unreasonable, the more I look, the more (as they say) it isn’t there.

     The only place left is the swimming pool.  At the end of my morning swim, as I have my expertly made cup of tea, I write.  I write something, anything, just to keep the process going.  Sometimes I am less than convinced by what I produce, but at other times the notes seem to write themselves and there is a sort of genuine excitement in the hastily scribbled lines.

     In some ways, I am hesitant to ask in the pool, because if they say that nothing has been handed in or found, then I am left with irreconcilable loss.

     Though, having said that, I have taken the cellophane off a notebook-in-waiting, and I jotted down my thoughts for the day.  Tomorrow will be the test, and if nothing is put aside waiting for the owner to turn up, then I will accept the fact that The White Notebook is no more, and I will get on with the new red one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a couple of days hiatus, my doctor phoned me in response to my asking for an appointment to see him with a view to Getting Something Done about my knees.

     I suppose that prior telephone conversation is the new normal for medical appointments nowadays, almost like a telephonic triage to see by electronic conversation whether further consultation of a more immediate and personal nature is necessary.

     As my knees have never been the same after a few tumbles form my bike, an x-ray was deemed necessary and I was given the time of a possible face-to-face appointment, as long as the x-rays had been taken before hand.

     I was phoned with the date and time of an appointment for an x-ray examination in short measure, and I was (or at least the knee part of me) was snapped from various angles and I was sent on my way.  This means that the x-rays are already in the possession of the doctor and my appointment on Monday of next week will be the next step in outlining the possible courses of action.

     It is at this point that I am reminded of an old tennis injury – well, not so much from the actual game itself, but rather from not quite jumping over the net to celebrate my victory, and landing on my elbow.  I split the bone and the bone has never been quite the same.  Some years after the initial injury, I had major problems with fluid collecting around the joint and then with persistent pain.

     The fluid was drained off, but the pain in my elbow and the arm did not give in so easily.

     After a failed process of sports massage (horrific!) and more conventional remedial massage failed to do the trick, I was sent back to the doctor, and I was given a (fairly gruesome) series of cortisone (I think) injections.  The term ‘series’ gives the impression of a number of injections stretching over an extended period of time.  It was not like that.  What I had was a single injection but administered in a sort-of internal jabbing sort of way.

     Whatever!  When I left the doctor’s surgery at the end of the jabbing, I had no pain.  It was positively magical.  And the problem has not (touch wood!) recurred.

     I am hoping that there is some sort of similar ‘magical’ injection that will do its stuff with my knees.  But my more fatalistic reality check suggests that the ‘answer’ will probably be an operation or two.

     My house is almost comically unfit for a person to recuperate who does not have full use of his limbs: the living room is on the first floor and the loo is on the second and my computer and printer is on the third.  There are lots of stairs and there is no lift.  Toni’s suggestion that there would be no problem as I could live in the bedroom, with an invalid table and a laptop, is not to be considered without hysteria.

     Monday may well turn out to be a defining moment in my time in Catalonia.

     Or, given the backlog in routine operations, any medical intervention may be years in the future.  And that too, is rather a depressing thought.

     But I am running ahead of myself.  Sufficient unto the day is the imagining thereof!   

     Let’s wait for something a little more concrete than frantic supposition!

You can't get away from what is going to be.

There is a real temptation to talk about the fact that today was hot enough for me to sunbathe on the terrace of the third floor; or bemoan the narrowness of parking spaces in our local shopping centre; or the fact that imitation Post-It notes do not stick as well as the real thing, or any damn thing other than the one thing that I should be writing about - the situation in Catalonia.

It is too easy to ignore the big bad world when you live in a seaside resort where you can see the horizon.  How many city dwellers actually get to see a real horizon, a natural horizon, rather than the artificiality of the barrier of construction?  And life goes on.  After all, people come here, have a walk, have a meal and then go home to real life.  Real life, for them is elsewhere - not here, by the side of the sea.

Barça are playing Athletico Madrid and are one down.  At the moment that seems more real and more important than all the crucial decisions and actions that are going to inform the development of Catalonia over the next few days.

And it is days.  The day after tomorrow the Catalan government can issue the already signed declaration of independence.  In five days time the Spanish government could declare that section 155 of the constitution has been brought into play and the government of Catalonia is now in the hands of the government of Madrid.

Or they could declare any one of a number of ‘states’ from ‘alarm’ to ‘emergency; or they could declare martial law; or impose curfews; or bring back the Guardia Civil and the Spanish national police onto the streets.  There could be further (one has happened already) roundups of political opponents; there could be jailings; there could be an all-out national disaster.

And, although the EU is still sticking to the idea that the Catalan Crisis is a ‘local’ problem for the Spanish government, anything really bad that happens in Catalonia will impact directly on Spain and then indirectly and directly on Europe and the EU.  The value of the Euro will respond to the situation in Catalonia and that will have a direct affect on the 27 other nations.  Instability is catching, and there is a price to be paid for it.

Political debate in Spain at the moment is only a little step below racism.  We are watching ultra right wing demonstrations with Franco versions of the Spanish flag, with fascist salutes, with hate slogans taking place.  We are hearing political debate reduced to simplistic nationalistic slogans.  We are seeing sides forming.

In my heart and in my head, I know that I prefer to see unity rather than division.  With all its faults I celebrate the reality of the EU as a way of bringing something like community to one of the most powerfully dysfunctional continents in the world.  We tut-tut about the multiple failures of Africa; we shake our heads at the rampant corruption of South America; we throw our hands in the air at the inability of the Middle East to sort itself out; we chide Asia for its misuse of power; we sigh at the ignorant boorishness of the present POTUS and yet, if we look carefully at what our oh-so-civilized continent is doing and not doing we should be ashamed at our inability to subscribe to a coherent system of fair government.

I am reminded of a film in which an American hangdog comic character plays a millionaire (I’ve just remembered his name, Walter Mathieu) who has lost all his money.  His bank manager explains to him that he is poor and there is nothing in the bank.  Mathieu listens patiently and then asks the manager why he has not cashed his check.  It is a variation on the TV sketch about a British soldier lost in the jungle and, after years of hiding, not being able to understand that the war was over.  It is the perennial problem of not being able to see what is in front of one’s eyes.

Mismanagement, corruption, theft and lies have been the stock in trade of politicians throughout the years as Spain has made the transition from dictatorship to democracy.  We are now living in a country where the fundamentals of decent government have been tarnished and subverted.  The fact that after years of unrelentingly appalling revelations about the criminality of PP, the minority right wing governing party, the fact that 30% of the voting population of the country would still vote for them tomorrow is, to put it mildly, depressing.  In spite of literally hundreds of members of the party and their supporters being indicted for criminal behaviour that the country still votes for them and makes them the party with the largest share of seats in parliament is astonishing.  But significant.

If the torrent of accusations, the clarity of the corruption and the arrogance of their defence is still not enough to get their base to turn away from them to a more congenially democratic and law abiding party, what will?  We are looking at a Spain that threatens to be governed in perpetuity by a party that thinks only of itself and nothing for the gullible who vote for them.  For people who look for hope for a better system to the present main political parties of PP, PSOE and Cs, I have to say that they are deluding themselves and ignoring the immediate past history of their political activity.

Spain desperately needs a radical rethink about the way that it governs itself.  Not one of the parties mentioned in the last paragraph seem to me to offer the slightest shred of evidence that they are up to the job of rewriting the constitution and producing a society that is more equal and lawful.

Catalonia is not without its own problems.  Corruption cases have to be sorted out.  The past president with his 3% and his mafia like family all have to be dealt with.  Everyone knew about the 3% and those who condoned this abuse must be rooted out of the political life of the country.  But, perhaps, with independence Catalonia might have a chance to achieve a more equal society.  Linked with the poisonous corruption of mainstream Spanish political life, it has no chance.

Perhaps Catalans are prepared for the financial, social and political problems that will be their if they call for an independence that is going to be resisted with all means possible by the central government.  Perhaps they are prepared to fight for their ‘freedom’ in spite of the economic and social cost involved.

The next seven days could be decisive in the way the country or region goes forwards or slumps.

Keep watching.