LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 99 – Monday 22nd June

Day 1 of the New Normal in the swimming pool.  We still have to book our time, but more people are allowed during the hour.  How this is going to work out I’m not sure as, today, there were few enough people for one-per-lane as previously.  The difference was that we were given a key for a locker (whereas previously we had to pack our clothes and take them with us to the pool side) which we had to disinfect before use and after we had dressed at the end of our swim.  The showers were open for use.  I assume that, for the foreseeable future, this will be the way that we swim nowadays, with the major difference being that we have to book times rather than simply turn up.

     The weather was good today and there were plenty of people on the beach, but it was noticeably quieter than over the weekend.

     We are building up to tomorrow evening, the eve of San Juan when there will be bangers, drinking and picnics.  At least that was the case in all previous years, it remains to be seen how the pandemic and physical distancing will change the experience of the fiesta.

     There have been a number of explosions during the past few days, with the kids next door seeming to take teatime around 5pm as an excuse to cavort around the streets setting off the sort of fireworks which are sure to get a chorus of dogs barking in distress.  They are completely unsupervised by adults and every bone in my fussy pedagogic body aches to do something and my channelling of Victor Meldrew also aches to shout something admonitory out of the window!

     Tomorrow evening I may well draw down the shutters and retreat to my armchair with a good book, or alternatively I might mosey down the maritime road to see what people are doing!

     San Juan is one of those festivals where slightly rowdy behaviour is encouraged and the throwing of the Catalan equivalent of penny bangers is almost mandatory.  Kids usually equip themselves with what look like the old fashioned Smiths Crisps twists of salt, but in this case they are of gunpowder and they make a most satisfying ‘bang!’ when thrown on the pavement.  There doesn’t seem to be an age limit for this form of anti-social behaviour and parent and grandparents look on approvingly as their kids waltz about in a mist of explosives!  Each to his own!

     Usually the explosions go on for most of the night, there doesn’t seem to be a cut-off at 10 pm – which is the usual time for the stopping of noise making.  This fiesta encourages that petty decency to be ignored and loud explosions go on until the small and sometimes the larger hours!  I wonder, though, if it will be the same this year?  All things are different.

On Wednesday most places will be closed as it is a national holiday, but I intend to go for a swim, perhaps go for an exploratory bike ride to see what the beaches are like after the festivities of the night before and keep myself very much to myself.  I stocked up on food and essentials before the weekend and I don’t need to go out for anything until the end of this week.  Television will have to be my eye on the world – that and Radio 4 and the World Service of the BBC of course.

The tasks that I set myself for the last few days have been completed or compromised with varying degrees of satisfaction.  I rely, yet again on the old family wisdom of “Anything is better than nothing!”

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 97 - Saturday 20th June

[This entry is out of sequence because of the vagaries of my ‘vintage’ laptop where the program froze and nothing worked.  After forcing a ‘quit’ the day afterwards, I discovered that most of the entry had been lost when I eventually started the program up again and tried to find the writing that I had done.

I am going to leave this as I found it, as an example of the tyranny of locking your writing to a machine!]

The day was punctured by explosions as we are reminded that we are working our way towards San Juan when the setting off of petados is encouraged, with kiosks springing up along the paseo selling explosives.  This day and the days around it are the equivalent of Guy Fawkes Day, though with more loud noises than flamboyant fiery inscriptions in the sky.  It is, of course, a nightmare for dogs, though I am (callously) open to the more spindly-legged rat dogs suffering terminal shock as one way of stopping their endlessly squeaky pseudo-barks.

     In previous years the most worrying aspect of the festivities are kids setting off penny-bangers, the sort of things that have long been banned in the UK, but here are probably regarded as a hallowed tradition that some right-wingers will probably urge should be regarded as part of the Patrimony of Humanity – the sort of designation that PP wants connected to bull fighting and other grotesque practices.

     It will be revealing to see just how many people turn up on the beach of Castelldefels as there is a tradition of staying up all night drinking around a camp fire that has been progressively modified over the past few years.  It is now illegal to light fires on the beach and public drinking is always frowned upon in this country.  During a pandemic what sort of physical distancing should be taking place.  What will the police be doing during the festival?  How desperate are people to get back to what they know and love?  It all waits to be seen.

The app for booking my swim seems to have gone a little haywire.  A previous booking for tomorrow has disappeared though the booking procedures for next week still seem to be in place, but with double or even more places available, but I was told that all restrictions had been removed.  This does not seem to be the case, but I am sure that things will be made a little plainer when I go to my swim in the morning.  Or not of course!

Today has not been as productive a day as yesterday and I even found myself dozing off after lunch!  But I have managed to get some of the more basic tasks done, even though the place is still looking a little dishevelled as I have not tidied up my tidying up, if you see what I mean.

I am re-reading some of Steven Saylor’s Mysteries of Ancient Rome on my Kindle and thoroughly enjoying them.

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!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 96 -Friday 19th June

Early morning swim today and I’ve booked another early morning swim for Saturday!  I am getting back into the groove – just in time to be told that the system will be changing on Monday!

     On Monday the pool will revert to the normal opening time of 7 am and the app-based system of booking will end.  You just turn up.  The showers which have been taped off will be open again and this will be the club getting to the New Normal.

     As far as I am aware we will still have to wear masks when we come into the reception, and our temperature will be taken with the non-contact forehead thermometers.  Presumably we will be back to multi-occupancy of the swimming lanes.

     That will be the single largest step towards how this particular aspect of my ‘sporting’ life will be continued in the phaseless future.

     On Monday we will be in Phase 4 probably and that is only a step away from no phase at all.  Statistics still tell us that the number of cases of infection are growing every day and that people are still dying of Covid-19 – but in an age (because every week feels like one) where German tourists have arrived in a holiday resort and where there will be a general opening up of the country to foreign tourists, it is hard not to believe that we are out of the other end of the pandemic.

     I know that we are not and I will continue to take every precaution – unfortunately it is not only the precautions taken by the wary, but also those of the heedless fickle people who believe that they are immortal that will decide how the final results of this pandemic pan out.

     Most of me is looking forward to a more open approach to living, but I have a deep underlying concern about the evidence for the progression that we are living through.

     It seems almost unbelievable that the change in our lives has been concentrated (so far) in about 16 weeks.  Life at Christmas time is nothing like it is now.

     This afternoon there was a large children’s party in one of the houses opposite.  As I type this evening I can hear a large group of adults talking into the night and laughing together.  In a few days time it will San Juan when it is traditional for fireworks, drinking and parties on the beach to take place.  Catalans are a convivial people and they love getting together.  And who can blame them?

     But these days of sunshine and festival are going to be testing.  Asymptomatic people walk among us and opportunities are going to come thick and fast for the spreaders to infect a whole chunk of the population.

     There have not been obvious attempts to take a critical account of what has gone on so far in the approach to the spread of the virus and its treatment.  We are ill-prepared to cope with a second spike in infection any better than we have done with the original outbreak.

     This is a phoney war after the initial disaster and things do not bode well.

Toni has gone to Terrassa to visit his family and I have given myself a list of tasks to fill his absence – those tasks that always seem able to wait for a better time to be completed.  Large and small I have listed them in my notebook and I have made a decent start for a Friday evening.  We will see how far I get before inertia and distaste limit my achievement!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 95 - Thursday 18th June

My day was defined by the late nature of my swim.  It seems really petty, but when you are used to a routine, any deviation from it is irritating – especially when your general living is determined by the dictates of a pandemic.

     We are now in Phase 3 of the measures that we are supposed to be taking.  No one really knows what they are exactly, but we feel that we are getting closer to the New Normal, which in turn means that we are freer to do what we used to do, but we are also more worried by the fact that the progression towards this New Normal is being driven by economics and not by an reasoned, scientific rationale.

     There are still deaths and new people being infected.  We have not real idea of the true extent of the virus in the population and we do not have adequate test and trace measures, but, what the hell, the sun is shining (generally) and people need a little vitamin D to bolster their immunity levels so, so, so.

     In the UK the latest U-turn of a government prone to reversals (in all senses of the word) concerns the mobile app that that man Johnson told us would be “world beating” or some equally meaningless burble that is about all he can manage these days.  The app has now been rejected as if it had never existed.  The app that was an essential part of the uniquely English way of dealing with the virus is no longer apt.  It is a dead app.  It has never been.  And of course, people continue to die!

We went out to our favourite restaurant this evening to have the tapas that they do so well.  We were able to eat inside, indeed we were able to eat at ‘our’ table, but the feeling was not quite as it was.  A selection of tables around us were bedecked with striped tape to ensure that the tables ‘un-taped’ were the regulation distance apart.  It made the interior of the restaurant look more like a crime scene than an elegant place to eat.  But the food was well up to standard and if you didn’t look too closely you were able to kid yourself that this was just another evening meal in a decent restaurant.

     We even went to a fairly newly established ice cream shop where we always have a good conversation with the owner.  He is now trying to make a going concern of a place that is trying to make economic sense from an Easter and Summer season compressed into two short months.  The ice cream was excellent, and I enjoyed it while I could!

The NT Live production this evening was Small Island adapted by Helen Edmundson from the novel by Andrea Levy.  The direction by Rufus Norris using the set by Katrina Lindsay was elegantly seductive.  The movement around the set and the unpretentious coups de theatre were a joy.  The use of film, music and actors was a delight to watch.  There was a tautness about the dynamics on stage which constantly delighted.

     From time to time I found myself wondering about the basic narrative and there was an element of the over-contrived in the way that disparate elements were linked.  It was stagey in a completely satisfying way, but I sometimes found the very slickness of the narrative a tad condescending.

     The acting was excellent and there was a real sense of ensemble in the performance.

     Although the play deals with harsh reality and some sickening prejudice, it is at heart a feel-good production and, although ‘loved’ is the final word of the play, there is also a sense in which the ‘solution’ to the various strands of the story line of the play are not so easily explained or coped with by a single positive emotion. 

     But, perhaps that is the point that the play is making: the play is historical and the attitudes it portrays are not those of 2020.  Yes, racism is still a glaring element in our daily news with the resonance of “I can’t breathe” reverberating around the world.

     The Black Lives Matter movement is not looking for the ‘salvation’ of a single person, it is arguing that systemic prejudice must be tackled by systemic change: causes need our attention, not merely ameliorating the problems on the end results.

     An engaging play which certainly worked with the live audience and gave some pause for thought for the viewers too.

     I urge you to watch it for free while you have the chance!

Tomorrow another odd start for my swim, I must remember to check when I have to get up before (that is the key) I let my head touch my pillow!

CASTELLDEFELS LOCKDOWN - Day 94 - Wednesday 17th June

Today, this evening, our first trip outside Castelldefels proper for months – to Terrassa (still in the province area of Barcelona and therefore legal) for the Name Day of one of Toni’s nephews.

     We have been on one of the motorways to the local superstores but they are within a couple of minutes of where we live.  This will be well outside our usual routes.  Not, of course, that the journey is not something that we haven’t done many, many times – but the experience will be different this time.

     Just a quick note before we go, perhaps I’ll add to it later.

We don't actually know where, specifically, we are going as the restaurants in Terrassa are not taking bookings and so I am not entirely sure how our final location is going to be worked out.  Adds to the excitement of the journey. 
     And the weather looks threatening.  After an indifferent start to the day, it gradually brightened up and, apart from a fairly still breeze, the day was one during which you could have gone to the beach and expected to tan - the sort of day, in short that inexperienced visitors from duller shores such as Britain would assume would be an ideal 'starter day' to work on the tan.  And they would have been flayed by the time of their evening shower.  Though, there again, as one of my friends used to say, "If your first shower after sunbathing doesn't hurt, you haven't been sunbathing properly." [N.B. This advice and comment does not meet the requirements for safe sunning and should not be taken as a recommendation.]
     I suppose that it is often true that, depending on the direction in which you are looking, you could make radically different predictions about the weather.  I have often noted in Castelldefels that observing the climactic conditions from the cardinal points of the compass gives one views which are often diametrically opposed - whereas, in Britain one was often surrounded by a unity of weather in which ever direction you cared to glance!

The trip to Terrassa had an odd feel to it as this was, for us, a major jaunt - the furthest that we have travelled from our house in months.  We thought that there was less traffic than usual, but we were driving after 8 pm so the usual rush hour traffic (whatever that term means nowadays) had died down.
     There was a sense of freedom, or at least of some sort of normality about our trip that was satisfying . as though another part of Old Normality was adding to whatever New Normality is going to be.
     The Name Day celebrations were held in a restaurant chain called Viena (sic) which is a take on a fast food burger place, but with a slightly higher quality of food.  The design and uniform of the staff has an odd dirdle vibe with some odd Austrian Tyrol embroidery thrown in for what appears to be no good reason! 
     My 'meal' was chicken fillets with some strange and messy sauce whose selling point was that it was supposedly picant - perhaps for the Catalans, not really for me, but the end result was messily delicious - as opposed to the '0% alcohol' beer which was disgusting, do not drink Heineken alcohol-free beer in cans!
     Because of faulty crossed-lines of communication, we ended up walking far too far to the eventual restaurant and I tripled my steps target for the day.  Even linking that to swimming 1,500m and going on two bike rides of over 20k, my smart watch still rated my 'exercise capacity' as 'Low' for the day!  What else do I have to do!

The excesses and corruption of the Bourbon de Bourbon family i.e. the so-called royal family of Spain, are being splashed across the newspapers in the European press - not so much in the Spanish press.  The debased political parties of PSOE and PP have joined together to kill-off any attempt by the authorities in this country to investigate the mounting evidence of theft and corruption of the family.
     In spite of the fact that the thief-in-chief (aka the so-called king emerito, the one who was forced to abdicate to try and control the mounting rumours and overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing; the one who went on television to vaunt the 'fact' in Spain that, "Justice is the same for everyone" but obviously did not include himself or his family in the category of "everyone" and has, so far, escaped judicial punishment while the powers-that-be here have ignored the evidence of his skimming-off contracts to boost his finances.
     One of the latest exposés is in the Times, in one of their supplements entitled, "Sex, lies and Swiss bank accounts"!  You can read that here:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sex-lies-and-swiss-bank-accounts-the-allegations-against-spains-ex-king-that-are-rocking-his-sons-reign-0sgw99c2b

because you can't read it in Spain!

My next swim is at 12 mid day tomorrow.  My slots get worse and worse!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS – Day 92 – Monday 15th June

So, I was wrong about our moving phases today; we are still in Phase 2, I think that there will be another week before we move to a more relaxed point in this never ending saga of the virus.

     I did not manage to get my slot either today or tomorrow for my early morning swim and my slot for Wednesday is at 11 am to mid day.  This is playing havoc with the arrangements for my ‘lesson’ with my friend in the pool who wants to improve his English by having conversation classes with me.  Still, I think that the classes are worth continuing, with benefits for us both!

We went out to lunch to one of our previous (i.e. pre-Covid) haunts.  The seating in the restaurant had been adjusted to reflect the reduction in allowed capacity and, as we were quite late getting to the place, we had a pick of the empty tables.

     We chose one in the same approximate place where we usually sit and then we observed the service.  The wearing of masks by the serving staff was patchy.  They seemed to take every opportunity to remove them or to push them down to their chins.  Even when they were being worn, some of the staff only covered their mouths and not their noses.

     The restaurant also has a thriving delivery service which utilises scooter riders to deliver the food.  When the riders came up to the counter to collect the next order (a counter which is also the bar for the place) they were not wearing masks.

     I can well imagine that wearing masks when doing your job in a restaurant is an irritating annoyance – but it is also the legal requirement.  Toni actually asked the girl who brought us the menu (shouldn’t it have been a one page disposable thing?) to wear her mask – she did, but she shouldn’t have needed to have been asked. 

     Toni became more uncomfortable as the meal progressed and we saw further casual attitudes towards the clinical necessity of wearing masks.  I do not think that we will be going back, in spite of the quality and value for money of the food.

     Nothing in the general attitude of people that we see around us gives us any confidence that this pandemic is going to trail off into memory.  Yes, people are eager to find the freedom that comes with summer.  They want to go to the beach, take a dip and sunbathe, enjoy a drink, socialise with friends.  But if the crowded beach scenes that I observed last weekend become the norm then we should expect a resurgence of the virus in a few weeks’ time.

Tomorrow we are going to Terrassa for a Name Day of one of Toni’s nephews.  This will be the longest trip that we have made for months.  We got the presents in a large supermarket and, apart from the fact that everybody was wearing a mask, it was like a normal day.  And we are nowhere near normality at all.  We are kidding ourselves that each day brings us nearer to the end of the crisis and a few good, sunny days will knock the virus out of our lives for good.

     The situation in the Republican states in America; the re-imposition of lockdown of parts of Peking; the situation in Brazil; the increase in cases in India; the on-going chaos of the UK; Argentina, Peru, Africa – wherever you look there is evidence that we have not managed this virus with any degree of authority. 

     I shudder for what the next few months might bring.

     Obviously I hope that we find a vaccine or at least a treatment; I hope that measures put in place around the world lessen the impact of the virus; I hope that the fatal demagogues in positions of power finally begin to listen to reason; I hope that governments take compassionate measures to protect the less fortunate and at-risk members of society including the old, the ill and schoolkids.

     The disruption of the virus does give an opportunity for an inventive and empathetic government to re-think priorities and concentrate attention on the power-less, rather than the oligarchs throughout the capitalist world who are urging their ‘puppet’ politicians to maintain the status quo which has given the rich even more during this time of crisis.

     The real plague is not Covid-19, it is the power structure that allow a disaster to become a revenue generator for those who already have too much.

     In the ‘good old days’ when Theatre In Education groups came and performed in schools, I was able to welcome one company to my last Cardiff school, it was called the 7:84 Company, because seven percent of the population of the United Kingdom owned eighty-four percent of the wealth.  Do the sums, that means that for ninety-three percent of the population that left just sixteen percent of the wealth to be distributed among them all.  The only thing that has changed is that now, the disproportions are even greater.

     And what about the under-privileged?  One newspaper reported that about 2 million kids in lockdown in the UK have done little or no school work during this period.  You can bet your bottom dollar that the privileged have been working assiduously – so the gaps between those who have and those who have not will become greater.  There will be a whole generation of kids who will be playing catch-up with little or no technology to allow them to access on-line material.

     The government has already stated that the coupon or voucher system which allows poorer kids to have a school meal, will end with the end of term.  How much has this government poured into the hands of million and billion -aire owners of firms and industries?  But they are not going to feed the most vulnerable in our society.

     It is a damning condemnation of our society that in the 300 years since the publication of Swift’s Modest Proposal, there hasn’t been a time when it is more apt than now.  For those of you who haven’t read it, it is readily available on line.  It is a fairly short work, but the punch that it packs is out of all proportion to its brevity, and it is sickening because it still describes the reality of the way that we are.

     Some governments have come or are coming out of this crisis with their reputations improved; some are still in a slough of their own making. 

     What has happened and is going on happening in the UK should be the moment when the people stand up to be counted and say, “No more!”  There has to be a better way than allowing the hollow man Johnson to kill even more than he and his cabinet lightweight misfits have already done.

     The decade of Conservative rule has cheapened, humiliated, divided, impoverished and coarsened, we deserve better!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 91 - Sunday, 14th June

Cloudy, sun, breeze: not the perfect sun drenched Sunday that our visitors were hoping for, but still good enough to come out for.  Castelldefels was crowded today.

     Not as crowded as it could be, but certainly fuller than it has been for a while.  People are determined to have sunny fun by the sea.

     From the perspective of my bike rides, I am able to note the increase in traffic and the numbers of people doing what they do best in our long beach town: walk along the paseo to see and to be seen.

     Rules?  Well, most people are somewhat sketchy about what part of which set of rules is applying at any particular time, and the fragmentation of Spain into the regions and countries with their own system of lockdown and their own notation of phases and you have something purpose made for confusion.

     Catalonia has hot-spots of viral infection and those were kept back from the general loosening of restrictions.  We in Castelldefels are part of the Barcelona region, which is itself sub-divided into further parts each of which has its own set of rules and its own level of phasing.

     As far as we know we are now in Phase 2, but tomorrow, Monday, we will be in Phase 3.  The cafes and restaurants that have survived so far are desperate to open as much as they can and start making up for the disastrous season that they have had so far this year.  The loss of the Easter holiday period is going to be difficult to make up for and the fact that they will not be back to full occupancy is going to make future survival difficult.

     It will be interesting to go into town tomorrow and see exactly what is open and what is likely to open.  I have a need to get my mobile phone repaired as it is a complete, but working, shattered mess.  The phone is far too expensive to junk, and I am prepared to pay up to 20% of its cost new to get it back into something like its original condition.  I live, as always, on hope!

I have been told that I have ‘passed’ my Catalan course and I am entitled to a certificate to show my ‘ability’.  All I have to do is collect it from my ‘school’ when that institution opens its doors again.  Unfortunately, in collecting my certificate, I will have to speak the language in which I have obtained an alleged proficiency, and that is a daunting barrier.  Which tells you something about the worth of the piece of paper that I am debating whether to humiliate myself and get!  Choices, choices!

As we had chicken from the pollo a last yesterday, we did not have our traditional lunch today.  Instead we had the albondigas that I bought in case somebody didn’t want the chicken.  They are very good, and they come with a ‘home made’ sauce from the pollo a last place.  One portion is not quite sufficient to form a meal for two, so I augmented the sauce provided and cooked some pasta.  Toni was very impressed with the final result and demanded that I repeat the repast at some future date.  As the selection of ingredients for the augmentation was based more on inspiration than recipe I think that a repeat performance is going to be the other side of difficult, but I remember most of the ingredients (at least two of which Toni would demand excluded if he realized they were there) and it is likely to be edible even if it will have serious differences from the food that had his accolades.  I can’t help feeling that there is a wider metaphor lurking somewhere in those last sentences, together with life advice!

Next week sees the second ‘lesson’ with my friend in the pool and I am having fun thinking of topics to extend his vocabulary.  I have been unable to get an 8 am start for Monday or Tuesday, but I will probably meet him at the changeover tomorrow as one hour ends and the next starts and so I can find out if he is prepared to wait for me to have my swim and join me for a later breakfast chat, or other arrangements will have to be made.

Toni is determined to ‘sort out’ the garden and this needs some thought and preparation.  We should go to a garden centre and get some plants and compost.  Now that the pine trees have been cut back, our front garden actually gets some sunshine and for the first time in many years, weeds are actually able to push their heads above the pine needle carpet which, this year is not there!  We might think of a few garden boxes and get some instant colour.  If the plant places are open.

     This week will see a more determined approach to getting back to something approaching what used to be normal.  It remains to be seen if we have the determination to do so.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - Day 90 - Saturday 13th June

Toni’s Name Day and the first time that somebody other than ourselves has been inside the house.  The Family came down and, as we were unable to go out to our restaurant of choice, we had a meal from the pollo a last and so we had eight of us to lunch – the first time in well over ninety days that we have had more than the two of us to a meal in the house.  And we touched elbows.  Family members and we touched elbows!  For a tactile people like the Catalans this restraint is more than foreign!

     As my present world is quite small I tend to look at the ordinary things around me and extrapolate from those to the general feelings of the population.  So, while waiting for my turn in the queue for the chicken I had time (a lot of time, the place is very popular) to watch the way in which people queued.  As the trip to the pollo a last is a weekly event I can see weekly change in the way that people queue.

     This week the queue was closer packed.  Yes, we were all wearing masks (and I had a pair of latex gloves!) but the proximity suggests a further diminishing of the fear that the virus has over us.  This suggests that on Monday most people are going to assume that to all intents and purposes, the pandemic is over.

     The progress in Catalonia might be real; it might be self-delusion, we don’t really know because the amount of testing is still limited.  The government can say what it likes and point to diminishing figures to support its case, but the fundamental testing that might give us a more real picture has not happened.  We are still largely in the dark about the true extent of the virus.  And those of us who think that we in in one of the groups at risk are going to have to look after ourselves.

     Although cooler today with patchy sunshine, it was still summery and there were lots of visitors on the beach and they were not physically distancing in the accepted manner.  This is still at the start of our delayed summer and with people probably not taking foreign holidays there is even more likelihood of extra visitors and even more likelihood of further breakdowns in the already loosening system.

     If I am concerned about the situation here in Catalonia and in the UK, the news from South America is much more disturbing.  Brazil is already a disaster the loss of life by the virus made worse by the political viciousness of the demented president.  A radio programme suggested that 50% of the population of Argentina might be officially classified as “in poverty” in the very near future.  Other South American nations are near financial collapse and so it goes on.

     Trump seems to have decided to ignore the numbers connected with the virus and is only truly concerned with the numbers that he is likely to get in his idiotic rallies.  He is only concerned with his re-election everything else, including the welfare of the country of which he is the titular head.  Populism is no way to deal with the real problems of racism and viral infection and that is what we have been cursed with at the present time.

At least I got some work done today, the next book is developing nicely, though it is one of those ‘publications’ that might never see the light of a pair of covers, but I am enjoying working on it!

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!