LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS . Day 89 - Friday 12th June

LOCKDOWN [Phase 2] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 80 – Friday, 12^th June

Going to have my swim an hour later than normal jolts my sense of the rhythm of the day, not enough to dislocate me too much, but still unsettling.

     As we only shop once a week, our lives are basically centred on the house – with one or two lunches out a week.

     This pattern is about to be suddenly changed.  Tomorrow is Toni’s Name Day and The Family is going to make a joint visit to celebrate with him.  This will be the first time that we have had someone other than ourselves in the house for around three months.  We have not seen friends or family in that time as well.

     True, I have seen people I know in the streets from time to time, but just in passing.  The only conversations that I have had have been with people in the sports centre.  I suppose that I have had a more social experience of the lockdown than Toni has had, so this visit will be a real difference.

     We are not sure about the protocol for the visit.  At least two of us will be in the most at-risk category and none of the people meeting together have been tested.  We can eat outside on the terrace of a restaurant and maintain physical distance?  We can touch elbows?  We can wear masks?  It may well turn out to be one of the oddest Name Day celebrations that we have experienced.

     This weekend will be the end of this particular phase of the lockdown and we should be in Phase 3 on Monday.  Whatever that means.  We get nearer and nearer to the old normality but I don’t think that many consider that the sort of life that we will be living will be anything like what we almost remember from February and earlier.  How little it took to change our lives and our expectations!

     The weather has not been wonderful over the last few days, but it is getting more and more summery and people will want to go on to the beach and swim in the sea.  I think from Monday, we will be allowed to do that.

     The beach cafes have now all been constructed.  Restaurants are allowing people to eat inside as well as on the terraces.  More shops are opening.

     The end of this month is when the ‘normal’ school holidays in this country would usually start.  Spain has decided that students will not return to school until September at the earliest.  Teachers I know have been trying to deliver at least some of the curriculum via the Internet and there is every likelihood that at least part of the curriculum will still be delivered via the Internet using Zoom or Goggle.

     In the UK the government has talked about summer school catch up sessions but there has been no discernable efforts to make those a reality, and god alone knows who the government expects to teach these kids. What extra teachers are going to be in place for September to teach the extra classes that are going to have to be created to deal with physical separation?  But, there again, why should we expect forethought from this bunch of Brexit blinded trash?

     The next couple of week should be very revealing and will define the eventual success of the response to the virus.

    

CASTELLDEFELS LOCKDOWN - Day 88 - Thursday 11th June

The urge not to obey the alarm this morning was quite strong, and for a few rebellious seconds I resisted the urge to get up.  But get up I did and went through the necessary rituals to get me ready for my swim.

     I was slightly late for the 8 am start as I took the car, the weather being inclement or at least threatening to be so, but a free laconversation lesson, ne was waiting for me as previously booked.

     At some point this system is going to break down, probably not the early slots which have been booked by the fanatics (including myself) but at other times, someone is just going to say that they can’t be bothered and simply not turn up.  I wonder what the consequences, if any, there will be for that sort of inconsideration?  I have been able to book the first few days without a problem, but tomorrow I failed to get a place and so my swim will take place at 9 am rather than an hour earlier.  That could actually work to my advantage as people leave before the end of their allotted time, so I could get some extra swimming lengths for my money!

     The end of my swim saw the start of my ‘lesson’ with MLF and we had a generally wide ranging conversation which started off with politics and took in a variety of subject ‘ere it came to an end.  He has asked if he can have ‘lessons’ once a week for a month or so and I have agreed.

     One piece of information from our chat emerged so that I now realise that I was taught how to play padel by his son!  It’s a small world, and other clichés of that sort!

Today has been a tiring day.  We haven’t done that much apart from some superficial tidying up of the garden and putting out the organic rubbish to be collected on Friday morning.  We need some sand and some compost, but we simply didn’t feel like making the effort to go out on one of our trips into the wider world to get it.

The Thursday NT Live production was a filmed version of the Nottingham Playhouse production of The Madness of King George the Third with Gattis in the title role.  It was thoroughly and guiltily enjoyable.

     It was the sort of episodic theatrical production with an efficient set and snappy scene changes that made you long to be part of the audience.  Bennet’s writing was pithy and engrossing and Gattis commanded the stage with a physical and emotional performance.

     Although set, obviously, in the time of George III, there were constant links to modern politics and up to the moment concerns; the play spoke to an audience in 2020 as age old themes and tropes bumped into any complacent historical restrictions.

     I now want to see the film, that I am ashamed to admit that I still have not seen, in spite of specific and pointed recommendations.  I wonder if it is on Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Where have the comments on Covid gone?  What mention have I made of the virus and its changes.  What of the statistics?  It seems, more and more to be like ‘yesterday’s news’ something you read about (if you can be bothered) not something that makes a real difference in your life.

     Yes, I wear my mask when I go out, and it is mandatory if you are in a situation where you cannot guarantee physical distancing, but for exercise masks are not necessary and have been largely dispensed with.

     Something that has concentrated my mind is that The Family might pay us a visit on Saturday.  I don’t know the exact composition of The Family, but my first reaction was one of lazy panic.  What are the exact rules for meeting members from another household?  Where do you meet them?  Saturday is Toni’s Name Day and a gathering of the clan would not be inappropriate, especially as Toni has seen no member of his family for almost two months.

     Something to concentrate the mind!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 86 - 10th June

It is getting progressively more difficult to tell that there is a pandemic still raging in this country.  A couple of days into whatever stage we have reached so far and people are behaving, for the most part, perfectly normally.

     People generally wear masks in town, though along the paseo they are very much in a minority.  The tables on the terraces of the restaurants are more generously spaced out and now there are tables inside the restaurants as well.

     It is still difficult to tell how many of the smaller shops are going to open after the virus has finally been dealt with.  The supermarket that I went to yesterday and which is closing down has been failing for some time and most of us are amazed that it has managed to last this long.

My early morning swim is now part of a regime again, it doesn’t take long to slip back into sometime established ways, though it might be difficult to get the same slot in which to swim each day.  We are only allowed to book up to 2 activities at a time and as there are only five lanes in the pool and one person to a lane, it is going to be difficult to bag a spot at the same time each day.  So far, I have been lucky and I am OK until Thursday, but I think that I am going to have to get used to using the kitchen calendar more noting the different times when I have been able to get into the pool.

     I met two teachers from the British School just before my swim and they told me that the lessons have been on line for some time and that they will not be going back until September at the earliest.

     In the UK the bunch of inadequate wankers that make up the government have done yet another U-turn about their insistence of kids returning to school in England before the end of the summer.  They have, at last, done the special sum of cutting class size and finding physical space to put double the number of classes in the space that previously accommodated half the number.  To say nothing of the extra teachers that are needed to make this happen.

     In education we are, of course, used to politicians telling us to do something and then ignoring the advice of experts saying why what these ideological purists want is simply not possible.  The real problem is that, with the cabinet of no-talents that Johnson has formed around himself, every department is failing and as chaotic as education, to say nothing of the writhing incompetence that the Home Office has come to personify.  It is intensely depressing to think that the immediate future of my country is in such inept hands.

     And then there’s Brexit.  Dear god!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEDFELS - DAY 85 - 9th May

Up at 7 am for my first swim in the local pool for months.

     It was well arranged.  At the desk we were met by a man with one of those hand-held thermometers that are pointed at your forehead.  We were allowed to use the changing rooms, but whole areas including the showers were taped off with what looked like police tape.

     In the pool itself, we were urged to wash our hands with the alcohol soap and shower.  We had to place our clothes that we had packed into our backpacks in the changing rooms, on plastic chairs spaced out along the side of the pool.

     There were five of us, one to a lane and we were told that we had fifty minutes until the next group of swimmers came in to take our places.

     I had previously been told by one of my swimming friends (the five of us were regulars) that the pool temperature was far too cold and that I should make a complaint about it – but when I jumped in I found the water pleasantly cool, just the right temperature for vigorous swimming.

     I did my 1.5k and a few hundred metres more because I stayed until the people to replace us arrived.

   We had to shower in the pool, so there was no soap used and then we had to exit the pool on a different route from the one we used to get in.  For the first time I used the stairs at the front of the pool that go down to the children’s’ changing rooms.  Obviously, there were no kids there so we had to change there and then use another exit door to leave.  All in all, it was a very professional exercise which kept us apart and obeyed the dictates of lockdown.

     The café is now open again and I was able to have my tea and bocadillo de tortilla francesa, as well as a welcome gossipy conversation with an ex-fellow student of a Spanish class of a year ago.  Apart from our masks and the fact that we bumped elbows and kept our distance, it was almost ‘normal’.

     By the time I got back, had another cup of tea and completed the Guardian Quick Crossword, it was time for my bike ride (this time with a waterproof coat backed into one of my many backpacks) down to the Sitges part of Castelldefels and back.  The new bike lane was further closed off as workmen were installing a version of our ill-fated ‘armadillos’ to separate the lane from the rest of the road.  They had coned-off the outside lane, so only the crappy gutter lane was available for bumpy riding.

     As the weather was not of the most congenial it was difficult to tell the composition of the people wandering around given that we have now passed into another phase of the loosening of lockdown.  Apart from the times reserved for our older citizens, we are now free (I think) to take exercise when we want.  I have not been into town to see how the reopening of various shops is going.

     One shop, a supermarket next to another (and better one) is in the process of liquidation with much of the stuff that was left on rapidly emptying shelves with 40% off.  My ‘discount’ at the end of my hurried shop (I was there at the tail end of the day and the last person to be served) was over 40 euros!  I panic bought pepper and Earl Grey tea because, you never know.  I actually went there for bottled water for Toni and came back with three bags full!  Some things are instinctive for a mother-trained shopper like myself!

     Tomorrow I have booked my place in the pool for another 8 am start.  Wednesday is more problematic as all the 8 am places are gone and it took me a while to find the other timed places in the app that we have to use to book our times, but this will become second nature in time.

     And talking of time, how much longer is all this going to continue?  How long is this system going to be in place?  I think that our original thoughts were that this would all be over sometime during the summer and, if things had been properly arranged then we would avoid a Second Spike in the autumn.  Who knows what is going to happen?  Our governments certainly do not!