LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 83 - Saturday 7th June

Evening, early June, Castelldefels. 

     There should perhaps have been a fourth part to that opening sentence, something like, “during a Covid-19 pandemic”, but there again, why should I add that? 

     From what I could see as I cycled along, it was a normal, a perfectly normal Saturday evening in a seaside resort. Traffic jams with parking spaces all filled.  The early days of lockdown where the air quality took on a surrealistically pure smell and look is now a thing of the past.  All the old aggression of an overcrowded resort surfaced, even down to drivers losing patience at being held in a queue and abruptly turning off the main road in a savage breakaway from the barely moving line of cars and neatly knocking down a pedestrian on a crossing.  How to ruin a Saturday night!

     I would estimate that about 5% of the people I saw were wearing masks and there was little obvious physical distancing.  There was no observance of the timed slots for different age groups, they were all there metaphorically (and in some cases literally) rubbing shoulders with each other.

     What this attitude does suggest is that the dreaded “Second Wave” of the virus is almost certain to strike, and the social, political and moral fall-out is going to be severe the second time around.

     The USA at present shows what happens when you are hit by a pandemic and, in the middle of that you are faced by a fully justified howl of outrage at yet another killing of a black individual at the hands of the police – and all while you have a person who is supremely unfitted to be the President in the time of crisis.  From the black (if you will pardon the use of the word) farce of his inaugural speech, through the first lies (of the 18,000 or so that have been noted so far in his ‘presidency’) about the size of his crowds to his appalling references to George Floyd, Trump has made me search for new ways to describe the depths that he has plumbed in his degradation of the office of the presidency: however low our expectations, he manages to fall to depths previously unexpected or indeed dreaded.

     I now look back at my fears about Barry Goldwater running for the presidency in 1964, as little more than hysterical scaremongering on the part of my fourteen-year-old self!  Compared to Trump, Goldwater was a bloody statesman and I feel slightly ashamed that I was scared about the prospect of his winning.  Look at the terrible reality of 2020 and the unfeeling charlatan who now holds the office!

     Still there is some evidence that even parts of Trump's fanatical base are now responding to the reality of his complete mismanagement of virtually everything and the sobering fact that with his response to the virus and how to treat it, he is in a very real sense, trying to kill them off!

     The same goes for the imitation Trump that we have as our prime minister.  A friend phoned me today and said, “One of things that I don’t understand is why the wearing of face masks on public transport is going to be made compulsory on the 15^th of this month!  Why not now, if it is a necessary measure?”  And that, is unanswerable, like so many of the normal, sensible questions that government ministers are asked every day.  Unanswerable.  And people continue to die and be infected.

     The one sensible thing that I read today is that the Inquiry into the management of the crisis should be completed as quickly as possible so that we are prepared if there should be a second wave.  We do not want to make the same mistakes again.  Not with over 40,000 dead – so far.  And the ‘real’ number is well over 50,000, and counting!

     In the same telephone conversation with my friend, I mentioned again that there should be a charge of Corporate Manslaughter against Johnson and his cabinet over their mishandling of the crisis, to which my friend replied, “No!  A charge of murder.  Pure and simple.  Murder!”  And I tend to agree.

    

I am looking forward to my first swim in months with almost child-like enthusiasm.  I am sure that my legs are in fairly good order with all the cycling that I have done, but my arms have not had the same workout and, having booked for an hour, it would be shameful to stop before my allotted time!

     I usually take about 40 minutes to do my 1,500m or sixty lengths of the pool.  We will have to see if my performance is still up to standard.  Monday will tell.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 82, Friday 5th June

Lunch in the centre of town and then a visit to the doctor as Toni isn’t feeling well and hasn’t been for the past week.  He does not have the symptoms of the virus, so there is not the panic than would accompany that diagnosis, but he is feeling unwell enough to necessitate further treatment.

     This is not a visit which is being undertaken lightly, but Toni is a person who takes advice seriously and he will not take any risks and will abide by all the rules and regulations.  The visit was swift and the result of the consultation is that we are going to cut down and out all of the sugar in our diet.  Well, who hasn’t put on a little weight in the sedentary paradise of lockdown?

 

My evening bike ride was transferred to the doctor’s to pick up something for Toni and I called into the sports club on my way back as I had noticed quite a number of cars in the car park on my way there.

     It turns out that swimming will recommence on Monday.  But not as normal.  All swimming must be booked in advance and there will only be five swimmers allowed each hour.  This makes sense as our pool has five lanes.  We will be allowed to use the changing rooms, but the only showers to be used will be those at the edge of the pool itself and the showers in the changing room are off limits.

     The café in the club will be fully opened on Monday, whatever that means.  As far as I can work out, the terrace will be operational and up to 50% of the interior can be used with well-spaced tables.

     The entrance has the counter behind screens and there is a bottle of alcohol soap to use as soon as you are inside.  There are the regulation adhesive strips on the floor to mark out the necessary distances, but there is also a sort of determination on the part of the staff to make the place be as normal as possible.  And, I’m sure that we will be abiding by the new rules as if they have been in place for ages in no time at all.

  So, on Monday at 8 am I will go for my first swim for months.  I wonder what lane I will be in.  I have not been able to book further ahead than two days in the new app that we have had to download to access the new booking system.  We will have to see how this all works out.

 

The situation in the UK does not seem to be getting any better with the number of deaths now reaching 40,000 – double the number that the chief scientific advisor said would have been a good result.  This is, by definition, a disaster.  And a continuing disaster, as the government seems to be flying by the seat of their collective pants and reacting to situations in a tardy and fatal way rather than being proactive.

     The UK progresses to the next stages of loosening the lockdown with nothing like a solid programme of tracking and testing in place.  Indeed, we have been told that a fully functioning system will not be operational until September!  You couldn’t make up their uselessness.

 

Tomorrow is Saturday, a weekend in the days before our movement to the next stage in the freeing of restrictions.  It will be an interesting indication of how things will progress and how seriously people are going to take the crisis as we get further into the summer months and the number of cases and deaths fall. 

     Every day as we go through the summer gets us nearer to the autumn and the traditional flu season and, unless something dramatic happens in terms of treatment or vaccine, who knows what September to January is going to look like.

     As long as I am around to watch!

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.