LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS – DAY 81 – Thursday, 4rd June.

Rain!  The fact that the word has an exclamation mark after it shows how rare it is, hindering me from taking my daily earlyish morning bike ride.  I mean, I am not fanatical about it and I have discovered that my lightweight coat is now (after lockdown girth-gain) somewhat snug to the point of constriction.  This means that my ‘small enough to be compressed to the size of a cricket ball’ coat is now not so useful and I will have to look around though my weather-wear to find something more suitable to carry with me on the bike as an emergency covering to cope with inclement weather.

     The rain held off for almost all of my ride, and even towards the end the rain was ‘only in the wind’ and I did not need to put on the jacket that I had packed into a small backpack.  The inclement weather encouraged most people to stay at home and so my ride was rather more spacious than usual and a damn sight more pleasant.

     As Catalan weather is not quite as spiteful as British weather, the rain did not really develop into something more damp and we even had some sunshine, though I was too tardy to take much advantage of it.

The cultural event of the day was the National Theatre free play from the Donmar Theatre of Coriolanus with Tom Hiddleston.  Again it was one of those filmed performances that you really wanted to experience in the theatre rather than on the screen, but it was a moving experience, and I am glad and grateful that I have had the opportunity to see it.

     I think of Coriolanus in the same way that I think about Madame Bovary: there is no one in the play or novel whom I really like, but I very much enjoy the moral dilemmas and quandaries that both throw up in their essentially chaotic lives. 

     The production of Coriolanus was complicated by the fact that Hiddleston has something of a mesmeric stage presence and, in spite of what he was saying it was almost impossible not to feel for him.  Both Coriolanus and Madame Bovary are both characters whose impossibly complicated lives seem to insist on death as the only reasonable solution to their situations!

I have now read (via Kindle) the second of Tom Holt’s novels using the characters created by EF Benson.  I think that I read it too soon after my re-reading of the first, with the result that the second, Lucia Triumphant, seems a little formulaic and self-indulgently picaresque – though, to be fair, that is quite like the style of the originals.  There were one or two points of real pleasure in the elegance of the writing and the cleverness of the situations engineered, but it did not satisfy as much as the first, possibly because the setting in the Second World War gave a more convincing overarching backdrop.  Nevertheless, worth reading.  And indeed, worth buying in Kindle.

     After talking to Irene, I have also downloaded at her suggestion a book of short stories by John Grisham called Ford County which I look forward to reading tomorrow.

The extension of the lockdown seems to be a formality here in Spain.  We seem to be heading for the next level in our lockdown by the weekend and who knows, it might even be possible to swim in the sea next week. 

     We take our pleasures as we are allowed to find them.

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS – DAY 80 – Wednesday, 3rd June.

Iffy weather means easier cycling along the Paseo for me.  Although this morning was bright and clear there were clouds around, and it was markedly less warm than yesterday.  As I am virtually geared up to set off at a set time I am impervious to the weather (unless it is raining – there are limits) and so I get to see a sparser selection of the population on my little jaunts.

     I have made a decision that I will not get grumpy on my ride by noting all the people who are breaking some or all of the rules about exercise and the times when they are supposed to be doing it.  I now cycle along in what passes for Zen serenity, or as near as I can get to it with the .active supressing of my Victor Meldrew inclinations.

     All of the usual on-beach café/restaurants (chiringuitos) have now been constructed or are in the last stages of production and these seasonal edifices will soon be plying their trade – though with reduced numbers of clientele – at least in this stage of the lockdown.  I do wonder about the economic reality of these places, where their existence is only for the summer months and now with a reduced number of patrons, how are they going to make a profit?

     Over the next few weeks we are going to see more clearly which cafes and restaurants, and indeed small businesses have managed to survive the lockdown.  In my more cynical moments I wonder whether only those places which seem to be centres for money laundering are going to be able to survive – not that I am going to make any concrete accusations, I am merely putting it forward as a possible scenario.  Hypothetical, of course!

     We are still nowhere near getting back to anything resembling normality, and even when more shops and shopping centres open fully, it is going to be a damn sight later before the attitude of people get back to where it was.

     At least, it will be for those “of riper years” as the Book of Common Prayer has it.  Some of us who are retired and with one or more of the conditions that place us ever so firmly in the “at risk” category will need a vaccine or at least a convincing treatment to be readily available before we return to anything like pre-Covid behaviour.

     The same does not, emphatically not, go for youth.  Although many of the members of the 14-24 year old groupings wear their masks, they do not wear them with anything like sincerity.  Too often the mask is on the chin, or in the hand, or wrapped around the elbow or simply not in evidence at all, when groups of kids are socialising, and that socialising does not often respect physical distancing.

     Don’t get me wrong, I do understand their scepticism and I only wish I could share their obvious belief that any infection will be like an infant infection of chicken pox – over in a day or so with the ‘sufferer’ hardly noticing.  And, let’s face it, statistics are on their side: the vast majority of Covid infections are mild and only a tiny minority necessitate hospitalization.  But as a person who contracted chicken pox in his forties, rather when he was four months or four years old, I have never felt so utterly ill and sorry for myself!  Being now a couple of decades older, I do fear what an infection of Covid-19 might mean for me now.  And indeed for those with whom I may come into contact.  The lesson is clear, it is up to the individual to follow the rules for the benefit of all – but the Cummings Cop-out seems to be all too ready to be called on by all too many people in this crisis.

Here in Spain the government is asking for a final extension to the State of Alarm to keep the restrictions in place during our transition to a looser approach to the virus.  Spain’s economy was not in the strongest of positions before this crisis and it will be a damn sight weaker after it.  The summer is the tourist season and, considering that the Easter Holidays were a disaster, it will be catastrophic if something is not salvaged from the summer holidays.  Spain is allowing the opening of hotels (though not their common areas) at a limited occupancy rate and in another week or so even we in Catalonia will probably be allowed to swim in the sea.  It is tantalizing to have the Med at the bottom of the street and not be allowed to swim in it.  I can’t swim in my local swimming pool either, and I fear that the restrictions that will be placed on public swimming when finally is allowed will make the experience something of a chore rather than a pleasure, but it will be interesting to see how our swimming club interprets the rules!

Johnson’s irascibility at PMQs when Starmer had the audacity to question him, is a clear sight of his lazy lack of preparedness and yet another example of his assumed possession of entitledness.  His bumbling non-answers are embarrassing in the extreme, and the sooner he is dispatched from the dispatch box the better.  I will have to devise an acronym to express his supreme unfittedness to the post for which he is paid.  Perhaps NAPM (not a prime minister) or TOAMP (travesty of a prime minister) or BIAL (bumbling idiot and liar) – they ned some work.

The situation in the USA is horrific in virtually every aspect: morally, socially, politically, legally, criminally, judicially – the list could go on and on.  As a white man, I do not know what it is to walk in a black person’s shoes, but I do know that my wholesale support is for the Black Lives Matter movement and I hope that something real comes from the world wide revulsion to the poison of racism that limits the development of so many black lives, not only in the US but also the UK, Spain, Catalonia and the rest of the world.

My addiction to the news, no matter how depressing it is, is something that I have mentioned before, and I can’t fight it.  I get even more depressed if I think that there are news stories that I might have ignored merely because my fragile sensibility finds it difficult to take.  I have to have my fix of Johnson, Trump et al, but I find that it is easier to take if I take it through the vision of writers like John Crace, the Guardian political sketch writer.  His wry writing lets you know that there is a voice of reason, articulating your sense of contempt in writing, which is so much more intelligent and wittier, allowing a Voltarian smile to leaven the misery of current political events.

Yesterday, before I went out on to the terrace on the third floor, I grabbed a book at random from the shelf nearest the door of my ‘library’ and started reading.  My choice was Lucia in Wartime by Tom Holt, which is a ‘continuation’ of E F Benson’s series of ‘Mapp and Lucia’ novels the style of which one admirer described as being as if “the pens of Evelyn Waugh and Jane Austen had mated”.  The novels are studies in middle class mores and snobbery centred on the rivalry of Mapp and Lucia for pre-eminence in the small town of Tilling.

     There was a superb Channel 4 television production of three of the novels in 1985 and 1986 with Prunella Scales as Mapp, Geraldine McEwan as Lucia, Denis Lill as Major Benjy Flint and Nigel Hawthorne as Georgie.  As someone said about the writing of James Thurber and his cartoons, “If you don’t find them funny – there is something wrong with you!”  I feel the same way about Lucia.  I urge you to sample any and all of EF Benson’s oeuvre and of Tom Holt too.

     It may seem perverse to single out a book about Mapp and Lucia which was not written by E F Benson, but rather by Tom Holt over forty years after Benson’s death, but the book is so well written and such a tribute to the power of Benson’s creation that it can be mentioned in the same breath as that of the master himself!

     I might add that my copy of Lucia in Wartime by Tom Holt was a 1986 Christmas present, inscribed by the two friends who gifted it to me, “An imitation Lucia, for an imitation Lucia” 

     How well they knew me!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 79 – Tuesday, 2nd June

It doesn’t help that my head is buzzing not only with the rules and regulations modified on the hoof in Spain and Catalonia, but also the nonsensical doublethink of Orwellian proportions that cover the gibberings of various ministers as they constantly try and square the political circle on various media outlets.

     No one really knows what is going on.  Forget for a moment the on-going series of lies, deceptions, mendacity and invention that are linked to the Unicorn figures regarding testing that Hancock delivers to a sullenly disbelieving audience; and set aside too, the fantasy that is rapidly growing up around the Track and Trace fiasco, what we are left with are a series of instructions/suggestions/laws/stimuli for the instinct/or whatever that are supposed to cover our actions during our daily life.

     I know that I can go out for exercise during certain times (distinctions that appear to be generally ignored in Castelldefels); I know that I can go to the shops to get essential goods whenever I like; I know that I can go to a restaurant and eat on the terrace of same, but I can’t go inside, or go to the loo; I know that I think that I can meet others outside in a park or a garden – but anything from this point onwards is just a bit hazy.

     It all reminds me of school.  But then most things do, it is difficult to be a teacher for thirty years and not use that experience as a sort of range of reference.  So, anyway, rules.  Every school that I have taught in or been in has a series of rules.  It might be an infant’s school, or a secondary school or the Open University, they all have rules.  And very necessary they are too, at their best they allow you to know where you are and they give you the satisfaction of knowing limits.  But.

     And there is always a ‘but’.  Take one school rule from my past: “When pupils have entered the school buildings, they must take their outdoor coats off.”  Let us, for a moment, forget about the raison d’etre for this rule, if indeed there ever was one.  Just consider the rule.  It is simple and easy to see if it is being obeyed.  As the pupils came into the school after break or the lunch hour, teachers were monitoring their entrance and could therefore urge the pupils to obey the rule.  Which I did.  In spite of the fact that I couldn’t see the point of the rule.  Take off coats in the classroom?  Yes, I could see the point there.  Take them off as soon as they entered the school buildings?  Why?  Still, I did my duty and asked hundreds of kids to “Take your coat off!” and carry it.

    In every staff meeting where rules were discussed I urged the abolition of what I saw as a completely pointless rule.  Every one!  But I got scant support.  Even from those members of staff whom I had seen (with my own eyes!) disobeying the instruction to tell the kiddiewinks to obey, but in front of the senior staff they all became rule enforcers, and to hell with reality.

     The rules of lockdown are there and people obviously can agree with them, because it for their own health and safety.  But in reality rules are always for others, or they are like Schrodinger’s Rules, they apply and they do not at the same time.  If other people break the rules then they become glaringly obvious and essential to maintain, whereas if you break then, then it’s . . .

    

Every day seems to bring evidence of the deliberate attempt of government to humiliate and denigrate the people that they are supposed to serve.  In Britain the latest idiocy of Rees-Mogg in forcing parliamentarians to come in person to the Palace of Westminster to vote was, after a three-line whip from Johnson, was passed.  This effectively disenfranchises those members who are over 70, with childcare issues and those with conditions that mean that they should shelter.  All that forced through to get Johnson some sort of crowd so that his glaring deficiencies are moderated by baying support from the rabid sheep of the Conservative party.

     In the USA, Trump’s forcing a cordon sanitaire through peacefully protesting demonstrators who were there because of the murder of George Floyd, just so the spiteful inadequate could have a photo op in front of a church holding a bible upside down, was low even for a semi evolved life form like Trump.  He never fails to find new depths of squalid self-referential unfeeling vulgarity. 

     Vile populist governments, demonstrating, with a sickening lack of regard, just how much they think of the people who misguidedly elected them, unite both sides of the Atlantic.

     God help us all!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 78 – Monday, 1st June

Well, no one actually knows exactly what the stage that we are in actually means.  As far as I can tell the actual difference is that the three medical regions of Barcelona have now been amalgamated and people within the metropolitan area of Barcelona can travel within the region.  We are still, as far as I can work out in Phase 1 for most things, so that the regimented times for exercise are the same as for Phase 0.

     Restaurants are open to 50% capacity and the tables should only be outside on the terraces and should maintain physical distances.  As far as I can understand from my reading of the rules, facemasks should be used in all public places where the physical distance cannot be maintained.

     If you had accompanied me on my cycle ride this evening you would have been very hard pressed to have seen too many adherents to any form of the rules.  People have obviously had enough of restrictions and they are eager to enjoy the summer, and bugger possible death, presumably?

Trump no longer deserves the title of President; he has forfeited any claim to that by his (even for him) unbelievable responses to the crisis of the death of George Floyd.  God knows, as one commentator noted, the bar for Trump’s attempts, as being presidential is set very, very low – but he failed even the lowest of expectations by his incendiary and frankly racist twitters.  When are we going to be rid of this unfeeling grotesquery?  The fact that he even has a ghost of a chance in November tells us a great deal about the American electorate!

For the second time, I went for my dental appointment to reconstruct the tooth that has a gaping hole in it as my filling fell out.  The first time I was a week early and this second time I was a day early.  Even though I wrote the bloody details down I still managed to get there a day early – so, in some senses I am getting better.  I might add that I managed to be early for both my faulty turn-ups!

     I would say, third time lucky, but that hardly seems to fit a visit to the dentist!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 77 – Sunday, 31st May

I am more than ever convinced that my government has no real plan to exit the lockdown apart from a mystic belief in the ameliorative affect of the calendar, and hope.  I have seen no evidence that the political leaders have the slightest idea of what they are doing, why they are doing it and what they hope to achieve.

     It is fairly clear that the loosening of the lockdown restrictions were brought forward to try and combat the adverse publicity about the lockdown cheat Cummings.  The tracking effort seems stillborn given the information that we have had for those people who have been ‘trained’ so far.  The opening of schools in England seems motivated by politics rather than by health and education.  Every part of the crisis has been made worse by the way that it has been woefully mismanaged.  And people die because of the mistakes that this government makes, and they will go on dying until a more convincing/efficient/moral/realistic – well, add your own adjectives, I can think only of insulting ones for the bunch of incompetents that supposedly run the country.

     Here in Catalonia and in Castelldefels we are due to move to Phase 2 on Monday.  This unites all parts of the metropolitan area of Barcelona into one unit and that means that we are able to move about within the whole area.  In theory, we think, it means that Toni would be able to go to his home city of Terrassa and speak to his family, though he would still have to keep physical distancing when he speaks to them.  And I think that they could meet in an open space.  We are not absolutely clear about the rules.

     I have just come back from my evening bike ride and the area where we used to live when we were first in Castelldefels looked like a perfectly ordinary Sunday night in late May.  Families were out and there were groups of youngsters on bikes and wandering the streets.  The restaurants were doing a roaring trade and there were queues outside some.  The age range was from babies to pensioners so, as far as the good people of Castelldefels are concerned, the restrictions of Phase 1 are well and truly over.

     On Monday, if the weather is good, I confidently expect the beaches to be packed and we will then see if the discipline of physical distancing extends itself to the sand!

On the cultural front, lockdown has given me the opportunity via Netflix to watch an extended selection of episodes of “Family Guy” and it has taken over (almost) from my predilection for lauding “The Simpsons” as the best thing on our TV screens.  

     Admittedly my lack of access to past episodes of “The Simpsons” means that “Family Guy” has had something of a clear run in making me a fan, but just as there are episodes of “The Simpsons” that are stand-out amazing (I’m thinking of the episode when Bart is sent to France and finds that he is a slave in a vineyard; the one where Marge takes part in the musical version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” with a chorus number “You can always depend on the kindness of strangers” or the remake of “Of Mice and Men”) I have now seen an episode of “Family Guy” that stunned me.

     “Send in Stewie, Please” is focussed on just one character and is an extended episode that I understand was broadcast without commercial breaks.

     The action of the episode is centred on the obnoxiously precocious baby of the family, Stewie.  He has been sent to the child psychiatrist because, as we eventually find out, he has pushed another child downstairs.

     Stewie dominates this episode and through picking up clues in photographs and other things he is able to give a crushing description of the live and love of the psychiatrist (voiced brilliantly by Ian McKellen!) before breaking down himself and revealing The Truth about himself.  It is mesmerizing.  It is comic, without being funny and it is a very polished piece of writing.

     It was broadcast in March 2018 and I recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet.  Whether you will get the full flavour of the episode if you haven’t seen any other the others I am not sure, but it will still be a horrifyingly amusing sort of experience!

     “Family Guy” is a much more ‘adult’ animation than “The Simpsons” and uses tropes that you would never find in the latter.  It is also famous for its ‘cut aways’ and these often have ‘real’ film or ‘real’ characters in them.  Sexuality is a major theme, in a number of varieties, sometimes very uncomfortably!

     It’s all good stuff and I am thoroughly enjoying my belated introduction to a splendid series!

For Sunday lunch we had our traditional meal of chicken from the pollo a last where people are still maintaining adequate physical distancing and forming an orderly queue.  This Sunday the people tried to reinstate the ticket system where, having taken a paper ticket, you are informed that it is your turn by an electronic display.  For the last few weeks, because of the distanced queuing it was irrelevant and most of us had queued without taking a ticket.  This meant that, when the owner tired to call out a number there was instant rebellion from the queue and the system was dispensed with immediately.  Something to bear in mind for next week!

     Though, who knows how we will be behaving by next week!  Time now has the quick slowness or slow quickness that can easily catch you out!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 76 – Saturday, 30th May

I’m still furious about the fact that Cummings is still in his position after he has been shown to have broken the lockdown guidelines.  He formed the rules; he should resign or be sacked.

     If I am furious about the fact that Cummings is holding on, I am sickened by the continuingly awful performance of the man who calls himself the Prime Minister. 

     His inability to articulate a convincing argument in the briefings and the embarrassingly inept responses to questioning revealing his shocking lack of detail in his understanding of his briefs used to be the basis for the reasons that I detest this shallow apology of a concerned politician having anything to do with the levers of power – but now I think that his demeaning protection of Cummings has taken pride of place in my reasons to despise the man.

     It is clear that Cummings should be fired, he is a glaring example of the ‘one rule for us and another for the rest’, he is a self proclaimed populist and disruptor, but in the case of his lockdown misdemeanours he has behaved like a typical member of the elite and the establishment (with a small ‘e’) has come to his aid.

     The feeling of the public however does not match that of the sometime prime minister (who has now surely forfeited his right to capital letters for the office that he has so demeaned) and the way that he has slavishly protected his advisor.  Too many members of the public have done exactly as the guidelines suggested and have suffered the consequences for them to be anything like sympathetic to the so-called travails of an over privileged git.

     Even though I am resident in Catalonia, I feel personally slighted by the government.  I have abided by the rules for over ten weeks, not only for my own safety, but also for the safety of others: the simple logic of safety.  But that sort of logic is only for the little people of whom Cummings is not, of course, one.

     I do not think that the feeling of being cheated will go away and Johnson’s government (if we can call it that) will be forever tainted.  Unfortunately the British electorate doesn’t seem to have many scruples about accepting tainted goods and so my hopes for the future are few.

     Quite apart from the criminally inept mismanagement of the viral crisis, when I really want to depress myself, I start thinking about what mess they are going to make of Brexit.  Silly me, they have already made a mess of it, I wonder what sort of monumentally, catastrophic balls up they are going to make of it.

     Whatever else this crisis has illustrated, one thing is abundantly clear, the personnel that form the government is of woefully limited ability.

Castelldefels is getting ready for the tourist season.  Restaurants are partially open and when I passed the centre of the beach part of Castelldefels there were people queuing for places in the limited dining accommodation available.  To the untrained eye things looked like a normal late May Saturday evening.  There were few masks and little to no physical distancing – but there again, we are allowed to meet in groups of up to 10!

     Neither Toni nor I are clear about how the rules change on Monday, when we go from Level 1 to Level 2.  What new delights at playing at freedom will that allow us!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 75 – Friday, 29th May

Disaster!  My mobile phone (in its case) slipped out of my pocket and managed to land on a tiled floor in such a way that it came out of its case and smashed the mirrored back.  So much for my Huawei P20 Pro.  It’s still working, with an artistically crazed back and a large cavernous gap between the front and the back.  I will have to investigate to find out if there is any way in which it can be salvaged – it is after all working perfectly well; it is only the case that is broken.  I am not confident, and I expect to be both disappointed and angry at the built-in obsolescence or intentional difficulty in repairing it.  But, at the moment I have done no investigation to find out what is possible.  Perhaps I will surprise myself.

My bike ride this morning was again relatively quiet with few people joining me in their period of exercise.  The evenings are much fuller and more crowded with an age-blind selection of people walking, running and cycling.  When I go out only adults aged 16? to 69 should be there – but cafes and restaurants along the sea front are open and the whole family, regardless of age, can go to those so the discipline of lockdown is being made slacker by the day.

     According to our government, we will progress to the next stage of loosened restriction on Monday.  The progression is measured by days and not my figures.  There seems to be an assumption that the virus will be subject to a daily reduction in a whole area in an almost sequential way.

     As far as I can observe people in Castelldefels have already moved to the next level in their behaviour, so Monday’s new regulations will only make official what they are already doing.

For the first time for over three months we went to one of our favourite bar/restaurants for tapas and a drink.  We were outside, as restaurants are still not using interiors.  Even though the tables were generously spaced, it still felt as though we were getting nearer to some sort of normality, some sort of New Normality.

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 74 – Thursday, 28th May

Today felt the least like being in lockdown.  My morning bike ride was 'open', in the sense that the paseo was fairly sparsely populated, it was almost like a ‘normal’ ride, except for the number of people sporting medical masks – though not by any means the majority.

      The first part of my ride was into the centre of town to post a delayed letter of condolence to the wife of an ex-colleague of mine.  As I had included a card I was not sure of the weight/cost and so a trip to the post office was necessary, and partly explains the delay.  The post office was only open until 2.30 so I was there early.  Not early enough. 

     There were a couple of people outside and a counter assistant was letting in people one by one.  I was prepared to wait right up until I saw the length of the queue on the other side of the building, it was stretched the length of the street.  I did not wait.

     Previously I had used the Tabac to get stamps and to deposit letters, so I decided to find out if you could still do that.  The stamps were not a problem and the lady behind the counter seemed to be confident about the amount that was necessary to send it off, the only odd point about the transaction was her wielding a pritt stick to put the stamps on.  It was only after she had done it that I realized that no one nowadays is going to lick stamps, not in the present circumstances.  There are going to be all sorts of little instinctive reactions that will now be potentially deadly!

     For the first time for ten weeks we actually used one of the motorways to go to a shop that sold fencing.  The shop was open, though sections were portioned off and each section had an assistant who took the name of each person who went into the area.  People were keeping their distance as far as possible, though we were still too close for comfort.

     I met somebody that I knew from the swimming pool in the shop and for the first time I bumped elbows by way of greeting and had a muffled mask-wearing conversation.  The New Normal indeed!

     Lunch was patatas bravas with my attempt at a salsa to go with them that Toni discovered on the Internet.  There is a bewilderingly large number of ingredients that you have to add to the mayonnaise up to and including orange juice and zest.  An interesting experiment, and tasty too.

Johnson, the sometime prime minister of the UK, has said that we should “move on” from the fuss about the wrongdoing of Cummings.  We should not.

LOCKDOWN [Level 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 73 – Wednesday, 27th May

Yesterday, the second day of our being on Level 1 of Lockdown rather than being at Level 0, we had our first Menu del dia for ten weeks!  We sat outside the restaurant on well-spaced tables in bright sunshine (Toni in the shade of course) with a gentle brisk breeze to keep things pleasant.  The food was good (apart from the mediocre melon for postre) but the ambience was wonderful, the freedom of someone else making the meal and being surrounded (though not too closely) by other people.  An absolute delight!

    

Before lunch we both went to the Chinese supermarket to get wire and netting to repair our broken fences.  It was the second time that I had been to the supermarket as I had cycled into town to go to my dental appointment.  Except I was a week early!  Rather than waste the effort I went further into town and got myself some money.  Getting money was related to my first visit to the Chinese Supermarket where, after I had collected the materials that Toni needed to put the fence up I was informed that the card machine was not working and they only accepted cash.  I have not used cash for two and a half months and had none.  I rather resented having to return to grubby, virus laded notes!

     As we were out and about in the car we called into our medical centre because I have lost my prescription and I needed to replenish my stocks.

     We were able to park outside the centre – which was unusual – but the locked metal doors of the centre indicated why.  A notice on the door informed me that the centre was permanently closed and urged those who needed attention to go to another centre.

      Now we get to the part of the story that is specifically for my friend Squidge.  She is the sort of person who always gets served last in any restaurant grouping; she is the one whose choice is “off”; she is the one whose eventual meal is not what she ordered – you get the idea.  Whereas good things (usually) happen to me!

     Anyway, the door to the medical centre was firmly closed.  But, as I stood there, a window opened and, lo and behold! my doctor magically appeared and asked, “Stephen what are you doing here?  I was going to ignore you, but then I saw it was you!”  Needless to say I got my prescription, printed out then and there!  When I got back to the car I began to explain what had happened, but I didn’t get far before Toni’s expressions of exasperated recognition of my typical good fortune made us both laugh, though Toni’s laugh was a trifle more wistful than mine!

The Cummings fiasco continues.  There are many elements of this farce that are comment worthy, but I will choose just one.

     Out of the baying pack of fanatics than have chosen to junk their morals and support the upside down logic of breaking the rules not being breaking the rules I would like to highlight one sparking example of Conservative doublespeak: Robert Edward Jenrick, presently drawing a salary as a Member of Parliament and serving as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.   

     You may recall his 2014 Newark by-election that was mired in accusations of overspending with the Electoral Commission judging that the accusations were valid.  Or perhaps you recall more recently that Jenrick was against Brexit, until his career demanded he think otherwise. Or perhaps we should look back no further than April of this year where during lockdown he travelled 150 miles to his second home and then 40 miles to visit his parents AFTER going on television and urging people to obey the rules and not even visit their mothers on Mother’s Day.  And to bring us bang up to date with his career, the scandal of a timely planning permission that appears to have been given to a major Conservative donor saving the developer millions!  And this is the sort of hypocrite asking us to excuse Cummings!  Why should we even be remotely surprised!

As I have not fully recovered from the double brain-numbing whammy of Johnson’s defence and Cummings’ defiant ‘explanation’ in the Rose Garden of No 10, I couldn’t face listening to Johnson’s performance in the liaison committee and, as John Crace’s excellent parliamentary sketch in today’s Guardian adequately shows, I didn’t miss much.

     What is abundantly clear is that this appalling government appears to have reformed part of the ‘law’ around the arrogant reinterpretation of a governmental aide.  Johnson has junked his reputation and the authority of his government to save Cummings. 

     God help us all!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 72 – Tuesday, 26th May

My favourite part of the ‘lie-abetter for Brexit’ Cummings’ Rose Garden Explanation was his justification for going to local beauty spot Barnard Castle on his wife’s birthday: to test his eyes!  Now, even though he is the chief advisor to the dyed in the wool liar Johnson, I think it is perhaps unreasonable to call that little fantasy a lie.  The justification has obviously been studiously nurtured over the weeks when Cummings and No 10 steadfastly refused to give any details about Cummings whereabouts in the period he has now so splendidly ‘shared’ with we plebs.

     The ‘eye testing’ element is a tour-de-force in the ‘with a mighty leap he was free’ approach to difficult situations in the old Saturday Matinee serials from which there appeared to be no escape.  I also liked the Tom Lehrer, “We’ll all go together when we go” approach of loading the car with wife and young child to ensure totality of extinction if an ophthalmic accident happened.

     I listened to almost all the Rose Garden ‘Confession’ and was most struck by the fact that Cummings did not apologise.  At any time.  He went out of his way to assert that he considered that he had done nothing wrong.

     But, the simple fact is, he did do something wrong.  He did break the lockdown.  He did break the rule that says that you should not go on unnecessary journeys.  As one Guardian commentator, Owen, said, the central reality of what Cummings did shows that he broke the guidelines, “everything else is just noise”.

     As the focus is now ridiculously on him, other snippets of duplicity are coming out.  Today we have been told about a doctored blog where his tinkering allows him to present himself as prescient.  Editing past blogs is not a crime – but if you make reference to the doctored blog to substantiate a claim, it is at least an academic crime, and reflects nothing on your character.  He is the Mekon not Doctor Who, the only way he can travel in time is to alter the records and then pretend.

     The numbers of times I have said in the past, “I do not see how he/she/it can continue, with honour, in post,” have been uttered with tired exasperation because ‘honour’ usually has nothing whatsoever to do with it.  Whatever ‘it’ was or is, and the defective character defiantly brazens out the storm and continues in place.  Johnson is a perfect example.  He has been caught out lying, cheating, misrepresenting and philandering, to name just a few of the –ing words that spring to mind in his case.  He is selfish, disloyal, cowardly, hypocritical, mendacious, lazy, ill prepared, loutish, vulgar, dishevelled, conceited, arrogant, complacent, narcissistic and smug.  And he is the Prime Minister.  In spite of everything.

     Well, Johnson got his wish, he is in post and is making a true hash of things.  Like a number of people I have known throughout my life, he is a prime (ha!) example of somebody wanting something, but thinking little about what achieving that goal will mean.  He is Prime Minister, but he gives little impression either of enjoying his position or knowing what to do while he is there.  The demands of the pandemic show up all his failings.  He is not the leader to bring the UK together.  He does not engender trust.  He does not give the impression that he has the slightest idea of how to take the country forward.  As I fear that we will continue to see with the whole Brexit project, he fronted a campaign laced with lies, deception and half-truth; he has ‘achieved’ Brexit, but knows little about how to make it anything approaching a useful reality.  The major claims of the campaign are all turning out to be fantasy: the money for the NHS; the lack of a border in the Irish Sea; the ease with which an agreement could be done and so on.  His fantasies have cost us billions already as we stumble towards the hardest of hard exits and his lack of management and determination have cost us lives.  Tens of thousands of lives.

     I am sure that Johnson feels that he has been hard done by.  He did not want to become Prime Minister in a time of cholera, or worse.  He wanted to be the blond haired poster boy leading a flag waving pack of baying mindless Brexiteers towards the sunny uplands of whatever their deranged imaginations thought was better than we had.  He wanted to be delivering pseudo-intellectual speeches, full of blokey forthrightness laced with the soupcon of Classical Learning to impress what he regards as the Great Unwashed.  And it has all unravelled because of what Mac the Knife called, “Events, dear boy, events!”

     Johnson is a diminished man, politician and Prime Minister.  His inability to gauge the feeling of the nation in their disgust at what Cummings has done will, I think, be something of a turning point in his frankly disgraceful career.

     Or not, of course.  To Cummings and Johnson, what we think is fairly irrelevant.  We are not the wielders of power, we are not the ones ‘born to lead’.  We, at a very basic level, do not matter to them.  We are the goldfish, throw us some titbits of salacious news and our five-second memories will wash away recent events and return us to the quiescent subservience that they think is their due.

     I only hope that the groundswell of revulsion at Cummings is too big and too powerful to be relegated to the ‘other country’ of the past and that simple justice might prevail and a man whose arrogance has become too big for the country to stand is torn away from the front stage of politics.

     It’s time for the toddler Johnson to come out of his Cummings style Pampers and wear his own grown up underpants with clean confidence!

     As if!