Where there's a will, there's an injury!

 

 

 

As domestic accidents go, being impaled by an electric toothbrush seems to combine triviality with impossibility.  And yet it drew blood!

     How, you might well ask, did I manage to stab myself with what is a fairly blunt instrument, with the bristles being the sharpest element in the construction? 

     The answer lies in my refusal to pay the inflated prices for the replacement brushes sold by the big-name maker of the toothbrush.  The cheaper alternative that I bought on line did not attach to the vibrating metal spike (the retaining, moving, part of the brush) as securely as it should have done and so it came loose, fell away from the spike and the residual hand pressure brought the spike into my face and into the right hand nasolabial fold - and that is the first time that I have ever written those last two words knowing what they mean.

     Luckily (if that is the word) the colour of the blood merely darkened the shadow of the nasolabial fold (2^nd use) and made me look a tad more mysterious.  I like to think.

     Shaving the next day did not reopen old wounds and so, apart from giving one line on my face a more emphatic outline, no real harm has been done.  And, anyway, I dabbed a bit of TCP on the wound to do its stuff and one can’t really be expected to do very much more in terms of medical care.

 

The month of May is a sort of Family Nexus, where everyone appears to have a birthday or name day and each one of which has to be celebrated.  When I was teaching in Barcelona, this period reminded me of the start of the Autumn Term in the UK which coincided with the start of the WNO Opera Season with a consequent attendance at various performances of WNO in my triple guise of Clarrie’s Friend, Friends of the WNO ‘helper’, and Opera aficionado with an almost fatal deficiency in time allocated for school.  The start of term is the worst possible time to have a multi-tasking crisis, but it did mean that after the start of the season I was able to relax into the frenetic horror of new timetables and making ‘grouping’ work, with something approaching failed-Zen tranquillity.  It is truly amazing how much you can be powered by hysteria!

     Anyway, we have had two birthdays so far: the first in a well-aired living room with mask wearing; the second in a 50% occupancy restaurant with mask wearing and ostentatious hand washing with alcohol, and the third is about to take place tomorrow in the outside terrace of a restaurant in Terrassa.

     The last of those celebrations will not be dovetailed into the time before the curfew as that particular restriction has now been stopped, so in theory we could actually get back to Castelldefels after 10 pm rather than making sure that we did get back before 10 pm with a Toni High Speed Drive of Death, during which I kept most mousey quiet!  But we did get back before 10 pm.  And we did survive.

     The loosening of restrictions is a prickly subject.

     The End of Curfew was officially at midnight last Saturday – so you had the really odd situation that, on Saturday night at 10pm you were expected to be in your home obeying curfew, but two hours later you could, quite legally, go out again to enjoy exercising your “freedom”.

     It is significant that the right wing have framed the Covid restrictions as attacks on “freedoms” and the Zombie of Madrid actually had the temerity and barefaced audacity to run under a banner of “Freedom”.  And, in spite of the astonishing hypocrisy and mendacity – she won!

     But, having painted the relaxing of restrictions as regaining freedom, it was hardly surprising that the younger population of Madrid saw a justified opportunity for celebration, and dully swarmed into the centre of the city and partied as though it was New Year’s Eve.  They did not of course socially distance and many of them were not wearing masks, and a medical expert who witnessed these scenes of mass celebration in Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, and other major (and not so major) cities remarked, “We will have to look at the Covid figures in a fortnight” when the new cases of Covid that could result from the ignoring of the on-going pandemic might show themselves.

     At present Madrid has a high rate of occupancy of ICU beds; it has a reasonably high rate of infection – it is a bloody good place NOT to visit, though Parisians have flocked there because as they said, “We can do things and go to restaurants and clubs here that we would not be able to do in France!”  So, Madrid has been accepting visitors from a place with an even higher infection rate in order to boost tourism – but, as always, collateral human damage has never been a disincentive to commercial gain and political advantage for the right.

     Although we are constantly told that the vaccination rate in the country (Spain and Catalonia) is increasing, and the President of Spain was on television yesterday keeping to his assurance that 70% of the population would have had a first jab by the end of the summer, the fact remains that a small proportion of the population has actually been vaccinated and a very small percentage of the population has had the second jab.  I suppose that I am one of the lucky ones, given a late-surgery jab that just happened to be a single dose vaccination.

     The fact remains that we are not prepared for an influx of tourists.  We do not have the virus “under control” and we are in the fourth wave of the pandemic.  The emergence of a new “difficult” variant of the virus would be disastrous as most people are (in spite of evidence to the contrary) looking towards old normality and assuming that the virus is all but beaten.  This is a very dangerous attitude.  And we will pay for it.

 

Although with my single dose vaccination, I should be gaining daily immunity, I am taking no chances.  I still wear my mask at all times that I am out of the house and I continue to wash my hands with Uriah Heep regularity, but with real alcohol soap rather than false sanctimoniousness!  I am very wary when in groups and keep my distance.  I take to heart, “No one is safe, until everyone is safe” and hope that others are as fervent in that belief as I am.

     Not that safety is entirely risk free.

     Today we went out to lunch as we usually do on a Tuesday and, although we deemed it still just a fraction too inclement to eat on the terrace, we were happy enough to eat inside in a reduced capacity restaurant.  Toni is punctilious about hand washing with the ubiquitous 70% alcohol hand wash which is good, but the alcohol soap while disinfecting the hands also gives them a certain slipperiness which was disadvantageous when attempting to move a cup of Coke.  The glass certainly moved, but the contents of the cup moved even quicker and flowed along the tabletop from Toni and into my lap, my meal and my legs.

     Our waiter was one of the old school Spanish waiters (though Indian) and was effortlessly efficient in clearing the table and mopping up.  My meal was taken away, and I was given an extra portion of Catalan tomato and garlic bread to keep me happy while my meal was re-plated.

     The one good thing to come of this is that I will have to wash my shorts.  The shorts are new, and red - so the Coke did not stain, or not visibly at least.  They are also too big, and that brings me to our late PM Mrs May.  During her sad Brexit-fuelled decline, as the more rabid parts of her party turned on her in an orgy of self-delusion and lies, she was described by John Crace in the Guardian (and if it were not he, then it is something he certainly could have said) as having the same authority as the “Do not tumble dry” instruction on a garment.

     If clothes cannot be tumble-dried then they should be thrown out.  I therefore buy T shirts and shorts deliberately large on the expectation of shrinkage when they ARE tumble-dried.  So, if my super plan is correct, the Coke defiling will ensure that the clean shorts are a snugger fit.

     Never let it be said that I cannot find something positive in the most trivially negative irritations!

Baby steps to almost safety!

 

Well, it’s a step forward.

     Today I had an SMS from the health authorities informing me that I am part of one of the groups called to be vaccinated against Covid-19 and urging me to request my appointment to get vaccinated.  Which I of course did, except (isn’t there always an ‘except’?) in all the centres that I selected I was told that there were no appointments available.

     So.  How am I supposed to take this? 

     I have previously been told that I will be ‘called up’ in exactly the same way that I have been when I get my winter flu jab in, or under the supervision of my local CAP (Health Centre), through the receipt of an SMS.  Perhaps this pro-active approach is just to keep us quiet as we try (and fail) to get an appointment, but to make us think that “at least we are on the system, and that is a good first step, eh?”

     Let it pass that ALL my friends of a similar age in the UK (and those a damn sight younger) have ALL had their first jabs, and I do not even have a firm date for my vaccination. 

     Still, the centres’ vaccine availability is updated weekly, so first thing on Monday morning (after my swim and cup of tea) I will be re-entering all my information to try my luck at another round of Vaccine Jackpot!

     In a nice reversal of blame, it now becomes my fault that I have not been vaccinated, as the onus has been placed on me to find a centre.  To be fair, I have only tried those centres that are within a reasonable (however you define that word in relation to a pandemic) distance from my home.  And you could always argue that were I to be truly serious about getting vaccinated, then I wouldn’t be so parochial and I would willingly venture into parts of Catalonia that I have only heretofore seen on maps!

     Or I could wait for my CAP to call me.  I think that will allow another week of querulous prevarication!

     And at least I am on the system, and that has to be positive, doesn’t it?

 

 

 

While I had my swim (and cup of tea) Toni was able to meet up with his sisters and his two nephews.  This meeting took place at our almost-local Outlet, full of logo heavy shops selling still overpriced items to an ever-credulous public.  In which of course I place myself.  But, as I was occupied in ploughing my watery way up and down the 25-metre lane of the swimming pool, I was unable to join them.

     I am not averse to visiting the Outlet, in spite of the fact that it does not have a Wedgewood Shop – but, there again, where does nowadays – where I can vicariously indulge my mother-inspired love of china, glass and cutlery.  But there are limits to the shopping masochism to which I will willingly lend myself: to go to an Outlet with one determined woman shopper might be regarded as foolhardy, to go with two smacks of the sort of extremism that destroys empires!  And two adolescent boys! 

     Anyway, I didn’t go and given my lack of a vaccine (see above) I am sort-of relieved.  Both the boys and their mother have had Covid – and I’m not sure if that makes them more or less worrying for an unvaccinated person.  As with so many impulses during this pandemic, isolationism and a sturdy stance of anti-society isolationism is the better bet!

     But we have now had more than a year where the normal interaction in the family has been stopped, the celebrations of Name Days and Birthdays have been via Zoom and, I have to admit, thoroughly unsatisfactory.  The joint visits to the beach have not taken place during the last summer and, given the rate of vaccination in Catalonia it looks more than likely that they will not take place during this summer (when we finally get to it) as well.

     Spain has said that they are thinking of delaying the second jab follow up to the AZ vaccine to 16 weeks after the first jab: that means 4 months.  Given that tomorrow is May Day, that means that given the delay and the time necessary for the two jabs to come to full strength, it is going to be well into September until this tranche of people is fully vaccinated. 

     I am in Group 5C and it is only today that I had the invitation (not an appointment) to try for the vaccine – so, if I had the injection tomorrow on May Day, it would the beginning of August before I was fully vaccinated.  And I am not getting the vaccine tomorrow!

     The projected timetable for full (70%) vaccination for herd immunity here in Catalonia looks ever more optimistic!  And are we seriously going to be welcoming tourists into our Covid hot spots during the summer?   

     Commerce is driving out sense!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 102 - Thursday 25th June

The highlight of today was at the end of it, when I tuned in to YouTube to watch the NT Live production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream an experience I urge you emulate by going to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Punzss5sHto

and enjoying a free production.  Though the hope is that you will have enjoyed the production enough to contribute at the end of it.  These productions are only possible because everyone involved has waived their fees and allowed the performance to be freely available for a week.

     Every Thursday that these productions have been available I have joined a virtual audience and enjoyed some superb performances.  Yes, watching on a screen is not the same as being in the theatre, but it is a privilege to be able to see productions that I missed when they were first produced and only experienced through reviews!

     One of the USPs of this production is the playing of Oberon and Titania where Oberon has his eyes anointed with the magic flower and he falls in love with Bottom’s ass (so to speak) rather than Titania.

     Puck is an amazing actor and dominates the stage when he has the opportunity, and he has many opportunities!

     This is a performance ‘in the round’ and it must have been an immersive experience if you were a member of the audience near the stage.

     An excellent, thought provoking, energetic, funny, delight of a performance.

Another beautiful day of sunny weather and heat.  Toni is back from visiting his parents and so to celebrate we went out to one of our favourite restaurants and, as it was Thursday, we had paella.

     We watch people in town and worry about a general laxity about the wearing of masks.  In this country it is an offence not to wear a mask in situations where physical distancing is not possible, and it is mandatory on public transport and in shops.

     There have been localized hot spots on infection and, although we seem set on a trajectory of determined progress to the New Normal, we are constantly worried by the ever growing numbers of infections and deaths throughout the world.

     Spain is set to welcome foreign visitors, and it seems prepared to accept visitors from places like the UK where the virus is nothing like under control.  Ironically, if tourists from the UK come to Spain they will find that they have freer movement in Spain than they do in the UK!

     I do understand that people are desperate to salvage something from the summer as far as tourism is concerned, but I do wonder at the cost that the economic activity will demand.

     All we can do is behave according to the rules and hope for the best.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 98 - Sunday 21st June

Sitting on the spacious terrace of the third floor, warmed by the low summer sun of the early evening, drinking a cup of my brew of English Breakfast and Earl Grey and with a view of three swimming pools in the sort of open quadrangle formed by flats and houses – what could be more pleasant?

     The clue to disharmony is in the “three swimming pools”, no, not the swimming pools, it’s the conjunction of swimming pools and children that take away delight.

     Apart from lunchtime, where I had our communal pool to myself, and in which I was able to do “open water swimming” as the only setting that my watch recognizes the circles that I swim in a pool which is markedly smaller than the commercial pool that I use for my morning swims, these pools attract kids in the same way that lies attract Conservative cabinet ministers: they flock to them as if their very lives depend on them.

     This is all, you might say, very normal.  What child is not attracted to glittering water and in your own backyard?  Indeed, I welcome young people finding delight in the chlorinated waters of their pools, it is the noise that accompanies their delight that irritates.

     Today, for example, there seemed to be some sort of infernal timetable linking all three pools: screaming kids in one pool has no sooner gone than they were followed by shouting kids in another who augmented their lusty voices with explosives, and when their pyrotechnic noisiness eventually diminished their baton of cacophony was passed on to the third pool where very young kids shrieked while belabouring the water with those polystyrene spaghetti floats that make a penetrating slapping sound when applied to the pool’s surface.

     As if this is all not enough, there has been a resurgence of the moronically irritating game (sic) of Marco Polo.  This ‘game’ consists of one person (if children can be called such!) calling out ‘Marco!’ to which all the others reply (you’ve guessed it!) ‘Polo!’  This can go on for what seems like hours and I am convinced that any adult jury would acquit any mature act of infanticide if the ‘game’ had been played for longer than a couple of minutes.

     I think that it is important to have a ready crop of niggles such as the above during a pandemic as they take your mind away from the more pressing problems of life and death that our dear political leaders seem so incapable of managing.

      Here in Spain and Catalonia we have now officially come out of the State of Emergency and from Monday we will be living the New Normal.

     As I now rarely go to the shops and my sphere of geographical wandering is generally circumscribed by the shore to the south and my swimming pool to the north that my observation of humanity is necessarily compressed.  I see thousands of people along the beach as I go on my daily bike rides, but it is difficult to extrapolate from people sitting under parasols to the general population.  Yes, I watch the new on TV, but when did that ever give a balanced view of life!

     Monday will mean, for me, the opening up of the swimming pool.  More people will be allowed to swim and, O Joy!, we will be able to use the showers after we have completed our lengths.  You simply do not feel clean after swimming in a water-treated communal pool.  We will still have to wear masks when we are not 2m distancing, but there will be more of us around.  I think.  I wait to see what real differences there will be.

Today has been (generally) sunny and, as it is a weekend the beaches have been packed.  As far as I can tell, people are sitting in their domestic bubbles and are trying to leave some sort of space around themselves so that there is some physical distancing.

     The age groups that are least likely to practice distancing are also those who have been described as the most likely to be asymptomatic carriers – the age group 20-40, with the age group 20-30 being the most threatening to those who are sheltering or are in the age group that is the most vulnerable to infection.  Like mine!

     Spain has opened itself up for tourists – even for British ones, and that shows how desperate they are to try and salvage something from the ravished holiday period if they are prepared to take people from the European centre of viral mismanagement, infection and death: the UK!  Benidorm is desperate for the Brits to come and drink themselves into insensibility, and the bar owners and the hoteliers are prepared to risk death rather than have empty premises.

     And, to be fair, who can blame them?  Economic activity must restart, the whole of society depends on people earning money, spending money, and paying taxes.  As with so many things, it is a balancing of threats that will point to the way ahead.

     The trouble is that the British government, in spite of their oft repeated mantra of “We are following the Science!” gives the impression of making up their responses as they go along – mainly because that is exactly what they are doing.  The number of rubber-burning screeching U-turns show that they are basically clueless, and the ‘political’ and ‘populist’ are of supreme importance, and certainly of greater significance than the lip service they pay to experts and science.  And morality!

     Still, we are where we are, and we have to deal with what we have rather than what might have been if Johnson and his cabinet of third-raters had been even marginally competent.

     I am still waiting and willing to make a donation to the fund that will enable something like justice to take place so that Johnson and his cabinet are taken to court to face a charge of corporate manslaughter for the way in which the Covid-19 crisis has been mismanaged.

     And when is the Inquiry going to be established?  We need it now, so that the egregious mistakes that accompanied the primary outbreak are not repeated in the almost inevitable second peak.  Johnson and his crew have killed enough and too many, they must not be allowed to career onwards without the information from an exhaustive inquiry to guide them in the future.

     The future, let’s face it, is murky to say the least.  Given how the world has changed in the last 12 weeks, it is difficult and frightening to think about what our world will be like in another 12.

     It is difficult to be depressed in a sunny seaside town where most of the people are having fun and relaxing.  But that last word is also dangerous, at a time like this true relaxation is dangerous and possibly fatal.  By all means enjoy the sunshine; swim, walk, cycle, eat and play – but be aware, be safe.

     ‘Relaxation’ from 12 weeks ago is an historical memory, we have to redefine the word and the world in terms of the New Normal so that it becomes ingrained, a way of life.  A way of Life!