Who are they?

 New Lockdown: Day 6, Wednesday

I admit it. I got up very early, in the darkness and, under the subterfuge of going to have a pee, I had a sneaky look at my mobile to find out the state of play in the American election.  What I read was not exactly comforting and my attempt to go back to bed and sleep until daybreak did not work.

     So, up before dawn and reading my Guardian app on the phone while listening to Radio 4, I had a consolatory cup of tea and pondered on the sheer unadulterated differentness of people.

     People like me are going to have to come to terms with the fact that Trump got more votes than he did in the election in 2016.  Whatever the outcome of the election, and, as I type nothing at all seems even remotely settled, over 50 million (probably nearer to 60 million by now) people watched Trump be ‘president’ for four years and still voted for him.  I will not recite Trump’s glaring faults – perhaps they trip too easily off liberal tongues, like mindless repetition of rosary prayers.  I am tempted to say that the repetition has the same empty efficacy, serving merely as sonic balm to hide the fact that they are merely words with no further function than mouthed sounds.

     I listened to a Trump supporter say that she had her doubts about the character of Trump but felt that she shared his ideas and values.  She obviously didn’t mean the repulsive ideas and values that I see in him, but presumably some hazy version of what being a Republican means.  She was affluent and had higher education, but she mentioned the disturbingly left-wing policies of Biden (!) and the fear that he would limit freedom in some undefined way as justifications for her instinctive rejection.

     Obviously, this woman was on camera, felt under an obligation to ‘justify’ her support of Trump and, as far as I could tell in the fairly unnatural position of a televised interview, she seemed sincere and content with her choices.  She seemed decent enough, but had obviously put aside, or perhaps rejected as False News, much of the negative (factual) coverage of this depressing presidency.

     It is certainly tempting, from my point of view to dismiss Trump supporters as self-deluding idiots, and some of the choices that non-American commentators make in their choice of Trump supporting interviewees seem to fit that category, but 60 million Americans (and counting) voted for this person, and they cannot all be idiots, and to continue to think so will ensure that the divide in the country will never be healed.

     Some of the Trump supporters are in it for the money and for the power, or are the immediate nepotistic-sweetened family, but that only covers a fraction of the voting electorate.

     The four years of Trump have led some people who seem to live fairly coherent lives to say that, “He is the best president we have ever had!”  To say, “He really understands people like us!” or, “He cares!”  They see his public speaking, which I see as cringe-makingly embarrassing, as “natural” and “welcoming”, that he is, “really speaking to us!”  His free association of incoherent and contradictory meanderings allow Trump supporters to see the wealth-inherited billionaire (he claims) as one of their own, chatting to them in a way no other ‘politician’ can - or would dare to.

     Even as I try and be fair-minded, I can feel my bitterness and contempt seep through into my writing.  But astonishment at his continued ‘success’ will do nothing to stem the toxic populism that he represents and fosters.

     People on the left have a duty to understand how it is that so many people reject what seem like age-old standards of human decency for a strident self-defeating national selfishness.  And where do we start?

     Only one of my friends has admitted (that is an important qualification) to voting for Brexit.  None of them admits to voting for the Conservatives.  I read The Guardian and study the History of Art and live in Catalonia, not the obvious background to a right-wing populist, or a background likely to bring me into contact with other populists.  But my point is, that if the numbers of those voting for Trump or Johnson can be taken as a guide to how widespread their ‘ideology’ is then I must know a fair number of people who vote for what I regard as the disturbingly right-wing, and they are the people I need to understand and interact with in the expectation of bettering not only my own understanding of what is making people tick at the moment, but also of bettering our national dialogue.

     The problem, of course, is what to do next.

     I reject the idea of living in a Trumpian world: virtually everything he does and says is anathema to me.  But how do you change what seems to be a perniciously attractive way of looking at the world and one’s place inside it to many whom I have been able to regard (and I mean in an observational sense) as ‘other’?

     Perhaps, as part of our ‘Family Wisdom’ has it, “Anything is better than nothing!”  Speaking, conversation, writing, participating in political life, sharing thoughts, ideas - who knows what might eventually help, but an awareness of the divisions within society and a sensitivity towards them must surely be a step forward.

     And, when I get up tomorrow, perhaps Biden might have garnered the requisite number of Electoral College votes to start the process of the reinvention of the New Normal Politics, and then we can work on the New Normal during/after Covid without worrying what the so-called Leader of the Free World might tweet off the top of his head!

 

Demand what you pay for!

 New Lockdown, Day 4, Tuesday

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My bike ride was conducted in that flat two-dimensional bleakness that a brightly-dull overcast early morning day can impose when the weather is cool if not fully cold.  The light was compromised enough for me to feel that it was necessary for me to switch on my lights.

     My rear light is built into the back-carrier frame and the front light is one that I have had to add as the front light/horn combo that MATE bikes provided gave up the ghost within the week of its being installed.  Given the appalling after sales service of MATE I didn’t even bother to claim another light as a fully justified replacement because any attempt to get the organization to act with anything approaching concern with their customers is just wasted time.  Which is a pity, as the bike itself is more than satisfactory.

     It took MATE two years to provide me with the throttle that I ordered and when they eventually sent the thing, it was to the wrong address, and . . . well, that has now been seen to and I am using the throttle and it makes my bike experience safer and more enjoyable.

 

To be fair to MATE, the light/horn combo has been a different experience; I have had evidence that my order has been ‘completed’ and I have been sent various emails.  But I haven’t been sent the light/horn.  Admittedly, the projected delivery date was in October and it is only the 3^rd today, but given past experience, any delay can stretch into the far, far future, so I have written a ‘gee-up’ letter asking for delivery information.

     If you are already a MATE customer, then the moans above will have a ready resonance, if you are not then you might be asking why you should be reading this guff about an accessory for an electric bike.

     I think that the point of complaints is not just to get satisfaction for the individual but to express a general point about the sort of service that we deserve when we pay out our money for something.  MATE started life as a Kickstarter project and got funding based on a prototype and concept and has grown into a substantial company with a range of products, what hasn’t kept pace is their customer service.  Even allowing for the vagaries of everyday life complicated by a pandemic, their lack of attention has been chaotic and depressing – but it has been paid for.  MATE has used customer money to make bikes and make profit while not being over concerned about what happens after the bikes have been delivered.  And that is something up with which we should not put.      

     MATE is well beyond the stage where it can plead that it is ‘a young company’, that it is surviving in the rough and tumble of Kickstarter: it is substantial and it has responsibilities.

     Customers are usually far too backward at coming forwards to demand they get what they have paid for – not only in terms of the object of their purchase, but also in terms of the care they can demand for that object’s quality and guarantee.

     For example, I fell into the ‘let it go’ category over the light which only lasted days before it ceased to function.  I factored in the lack of response that I would get from MATE and decided to purchase a light that would attach to the handlebars for a few euros and which could be lost, stolen or fail with impunity because it was so cheap.  In fact, of course, I also bought a much more expensive light which survived until it didn’t.  Anything merely attached to handlebars has a limited life when the bike is locked to a post rather than being contained.  Things walk, which is why the tiny lights with a sort of rubber band connection to the handlebars are so useful – those are so cheap it is almost easier to replace the light rather than replace the battery! 

And, as I usually cycle in urban situations there is rarely a time when I need the light for anything more than indicating that I am there, rather than lighting my way,  But the MATE light was connected to the electric system of the bike and was firmly screwed into the frame – and it looked better, so I feel its lack.

     And that is why I am making a fuss about a delay (so far) of three days in the appointed delivery time.  I will also write on the Facebook page of MATE customers to let others (and more particularly the company itself) know that things are still not going right!  Which is what all of us should do more often.  I want what I have paid for: quality and promptness. 

     If the delay in delivery continues past this week, I shall ‘open a file’ – and we all know what that means!

 

The indifferent and sullen weather conditions mentioned at the start of this piece have now mellowed into a hazy though sunny afternoon, methinks a short lounge on the terrace is called for!

Tomorrow: the end or the beginning?

 New Lockdown Day 4, Monday

 

 

The interminable American election campaign is drawing to a not-end.  After all, who actually believes that the decision will be made on the night itself?   I still remember the infamous “hanging chads” fiasco in Florida in 2000 where the result of the election eventually depended on the decision of the Supreme Court.  To an outsider, the eventual judgement seemed (!) politically biased and was, surely, essentially undemocratic - but the Democratic candidate accepted the court’s decision and gave the presidency to a Republican.  It is just about possible to imagine that ‘acceptance’ of a contrary judgement by Bush if the tables had been reversed; it is totally impossible to imagine it happening with the Orange Outrage that presently occupies the White House.

     The most compelling forecast for the 3^rd of November as the in-person votes are being counted is for the O.O. to claim victory before the postal votes have been counted and then try and litigate his way back to power and he motivates the wilder factions in his base to take direct action.

     The fact that staid journalistic media are talking seriously about the fragility of democracy in the United States and the possibility of somehing approaching Civil War, should be astonishing, but is anything but.

     I sincerely hope that we will look back on this particular period of a Trump Presidency as a fascinating aberration in the functioning of the body politic, and the fears of democrats as wildly overstated, but today, the day before the election, I see no real cause for complacency.  Although Trump is almost certain to lose the popular vote (again), given the vagaries of the Electoral College there is always a way to power for him based on a small number of swing states and small numbers of voters.  The shockingly blatant attempts by various Republicans to supress voting may be enough to tip the balance towards the incumbent, and because the balance in the Supreme Court has already been tipped, he is in a good position to use Conservative Trump-appointed judges to retain his hold on power.

     In reality, I find it incredible that anyone could possibly vote for a person so lacking in basic humanity.  If you are only concerned about power, then that would explain the vile enablers in the Senate, but they will be forever tainted by their ‘association’ with Trump, unless, of course, you are a member of the ‘base’.  But even with that sludge of humanity, it is white and ageing and will eventually dissipate.  Unless the Republican Party re-invents itself then it will be subject to the oblivion of entropy.

     Enough speculation: sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and that can wait another day or so, or so, or so!

    

Um, if I have entered myself into a self-denying ordinance not to mention the USA Presidential Election, what else is there to talk about?  He said during a time of Covid-19; financial breakdown; immanent Brexit; social unrest; closed culture; lockdown, and sunshine.

 

Perhaps one thing that I can mention (again) is a recent book purchase called, “What Great Paintings Say” – fairly fatuous title, but an excellent book, and at present cheap on Amazon, I paid 15 euros for a hardback version!  This YouTube clip gives you some idea of the format and the contents:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyAgOuQhUNM

Well worth buying.

Same old . . .

 New Lockdown: Day 3, Sunday

I gave up counting the number of people I passed on the paseo who were not wearing a mask, and the crowds of people suggest that we are having the usual number of domingueros in spite of governmental recommendations.  Castelldefels is in an invidious position: we need people to come to the city to spend to keep the place alive and we also need people not to come so that we can stay alive!  Like every place reliant on tourist money, our survival comes with a deadly cost.

     Still, what appeared to be an overcast early morning has now settled down into sunny day and with the sun, my “all is well in the world” approach returns.  The base line for my happiness is a lack of rain in Castelldefels.  I obviously welcome rain in the vicinity of our reservoirs and in all the hilly areas that feed the rivers, but around me all I want is sunshine.  Please!  I am more than prepared to tolerate, nay, welcome cold weather as long as it is not accompanied by rain: a crisp sunny autumn day is a delight and I can link it to my memory of the summer and I am content.

 

I can’t help myself.  I have ordered another watch.  That statement is not, in itself, surprising.  Given my predilection for timepieces and for Kickstarter-type blandishments, I am often in a state of pre-order/order/waiting for delivery.

     I had hoped that my latest acquisition, the Amazfit X, my lust would have been temporarily assuaged.  The “X” is a narrow band-like watch whose USP is that the screen is curved to the wrist.  It has no visible buttons and the information is set out on an excellent quality full colour display that is activated by the tilt of the wrist – and therein lies my dissatisfaction.

      From the time of my first purchase of a Pebble wristwatch (on Kickstarter) I have been used to an always-on display as well as decent battery life.  The Pebble was a brilliant little watch and did virtually everything that I expected from a smart watch, including the essential element of being swim proof.  Of course, as with all excellent items of this sort, they stopped making it, and they stopped supporting it with updated software.

     My hunt for a Pebble replacement spent its way through a number of watches, none of which truly replaced it.  Eventually, however, I ended up with the Amazfit which, in a number of its iterations seemed to be more than satisfactory.  Even as I type I am wearing the Amazfit watch that I discarded in favour of the “X”.

     The “X” does not have an always-on display.  I am sure that if I had realized that before my pre-purchase I would not have gone through with its acquisition.  I have made always-on a prerequisite for purchase (and as a way of limiting my spending) because otherwise excellent watches fall down at this step.  And, even if smartwatches do have the always-on facility, it means that the battery life becomes something of a joke.

     So, the pop-up advert for the new Amazfit GTR 2, hit home.  It is a sleeker version of previous Amazfit watches and it does have the facility to be always-on.  It also comes with a variety of features, many of which I frankly do not understand, but that does not mean that I do not desire them.  Obviously.  And I have bought it.  Which is not the same thing as saying that I have it in my hot little hands. 

     I really do feel that I have to trot out the “I do not smoke, therefore there is spare money to cover such things” justification as the old watch that I am now wearing does actually do everything that I need – but, see above for all those “extra features” and curved watch face cover glass, or something.  There is enough stuff that’s new to make its purchase essential.

 

Earlier this morning I read the paper sent to me by the site Academia.edu (free and excellent) by Louise Marshall entitled, “Getting Out of Jail Free, or, Purgatory and How to Escape it in Spanish Art” an essay that “analyses a number of early Spanish representations of purgatory, focusing on the devotional and intercessory concerns of makers and viewers.”  A thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating read that introduced me to two new words, or rather one new word and one new form of a word: psychopomp and salvific.  The first means “guide of souls” and the second you can work out, but it really doesn’t look quite right, and my word checking program didn’t even underline it, or indeed the other, which just shows how lacking my general vocabulary is!

     But on a serious note Academia.edu is worth checking out.  If only for two of my essays which are on file there!

 

My intention to have a Birthweek rather than Birthday this Covid ravaged year, was justified by a telephone call this afternoon, a week after the event perhaps, but welcome none the less!

     I will only end by saying that the phone had to be brought up to me on the third floor because Toni was unable to get me to respond because I was out on the terrace taking the late afternoon sun. 

     And people still ask me why I moved to Catalonia!

 

Lockdown lite? Really?

 NEW LOCKDOWN Day 2, Saturday

 

 Bit of an anti-climax, my bike ride, this morning.  There was I expecting to be stopped at the border by masked police as I dared venture into the ‘Sitges’ part of Castelldefels – and, nothing.  No even the sight of a police car.  Instead, joggers, cyclists and walkers (with and without dogs) and the vast majority of them without masks.

     Yet again, I wonder at what news broadcasts these people are watching, as the ones that I see add incrementally to the supressed terror with which I regard ordinary life in the Time of Covid – whereas, for those mask-less people they either have secret supplies of the Moscow vaccine or they are living in a fools’ paradise, in which infection only happens to other people.  On my bike ride I counted (because I do) 150 people who were not wearing masks, in an area where we have a new lockdown and where there is a curfew.  Logic seems to be in short supply.

     But enough of the constant bewailing of the idiocy of the general population; the sun is shining and I know that the real blame should be laid on those who have the PAID RESPONSIBILITY to consider our safety and to encourage us to abide by clear instructions for our SURVIVAL.

     I am convinced that the incandescent ineptitude shown by the governing classes will finally have allowed the status of politicians even to sink beneath the previously accepted nadir of human activity, estate agency. 

      

Trump (Dump him!  Dump him!) used to be an outlier for idiotic mendacity but, alas, he is now seen as more of a patron saint by bumbling politicos throughout the world.  Those sad imitators must be terrified by the prospect of Trump’s political demise, as they will no longer have the shield of his in-post awfulness to make their deficiencies seem moderate by comparison.  I wonder how Johnson is contemplating being called the British Bolsonaro?  Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it does it?

     Taking of U-Turn Johnson, it seems as if it is likely that there will be a pronouncement early next week that England will have a stringent lockdown, a firebreak, to contain the appalling increase in infection.  Perhaps Johnson should also U-Turn on the provision of free school meals at the same time in the hope that the reaction lockdown will cover any (further) fall-out. 

     I wonder what Brain Box Cummings (the Master of Forecasting) will have advised.  Cummings’ past performance puts him on a par with a pop ‘clairvoyant’ in one of the trashier teenage magazines and let’s face it, he only manages to preserve his ‘reputation’ for being far-sighted by retrospectively doctoring his past posts.

 

I have delayed posting this until after The Blond Buffoon spoke (eventually) to the British Public in his waffling, bumbling, ‘ur’-heavy delivery, and looking all the time as though he would rather be somewhere, anywhere else.  This is his umpteenth U-turn - is anyone keeping count?  Like Trump’s lies we need to have a Radio 4 programme like ‘More or Less’ keeping tabs on Johnson’s vacillation, and calling it out as such as yet another glaring example comes out of his mendacious mouth.

     As an example of speaking to the public it was an inept performance; as a way of rallying the troops and explaining clearly and carefully what we need to do and why we need to do it – well, Johnson has never been any good at that sort of thing.  And frankly, after Cummings’ various jaunts in defiance of the rules, it is very hard to take anything Johnson says as having even the faintest stamp of moral authority.

     In other words, we were treated to yet another public embarrassment of stuttering ineptitude by a public servant (sic!) who looks bored by the effort of having to do what he feels he has to do to keep the rule-following population that elected him quiet, or at least,  quiescent.

     For how much longer is anyone’s guess: and that covers not only Johnson’s position, where the people in suits are prowling around seeking whom they might kick out, but also the attitude of the British/English people, and their ability to keep from open rebellion against a distant elite that seems daily more remote from their concerns.

 

Today was sunny in Castelldefels and the paseo was crowded.  In theory all the people I passed on my bike ride today should have been from Castelldefels, but I very much doubt that that was true.  Every weekend we get an influx of people from the surrounding area and today was no exception.  I saw no evidence of an increase police presence checking family-filled cars coming into the coastal part of the town – and without that visible presence (going on the experience of the last lockdown) people will behave as if irksome rules are not for them.

     I await further developments in our fortnight (as planned at the moment) of restrictions to see how the situation develops.

 

Haven't we been here before?

HERE WE GO AGAIN: DAY 1, New ‘Lockdown’, FRIDAY.

 

 

 

It’s just as well that I went to the Opera on my birthday as I have just been informed via email that the next opera performance due on the 24^th of November, has been ‘postponed’ – as it is a concert performance of a juvenile Mozart opera composed when he was 14, I cannot say that I am devastated by the delay!  I am prepared to do some YouTube musical ‘homework’ to make its three-and-a-half hours of straight singing tolerable, as I find that even a slight acquaintanceship with the music of operas, I don’t know gives me a partial key to their enjoyment in performance! 

     At least there are always tunes in Mozart, and I do remember that I had a much-played record of music by Mozart written when he was in London at the age of 12, and that was intimidatingly excellent, so an opera composed after two long years of extra maturity from that music does demand attention! 

     After all, given Mozart’s short life, a Mozartian Year must be very different from those lived by mere musical mortals who tum-ti-tum along to the tunes!   

     The State of Emergency in Spain has been extended into next year in Parliament, so we are now in the ‘New new-normal’ as the restrictions get more and different.  At present we are under curfew (10pm-6am) with bars and restaurants closed.  As of today, those restrictions stay in place, but other closures have been added which include larger stores, shopping centres, places of entertainment like Opera Houses, and gymnasia, which includes my swimming pool.  There are further restrictions on movement with heightened restrictions during the weekend.

     This morning, for example, I could not go for my usual swim, but I was able to go for my normal bike ride which extends the length of the paso along the coast of Castelldefels.  At the southern limit of the city it actually extends into the jurisdiction of Sitges.  There was no problem about that today, but on Saturday and Sunday I will be restricted from completing the final length as Sitges will be out of bounds. 

     We also live on the ‘border’ with Gava to the north and tomorrow the stretch of the paseo along the Gava coast will also be out of bounds.  In the previous lockdowns there were police stationed at the invisible borders of our town to enforce the ban. 

     There will also be police on the approach roads to the beach part of Castelldefels as the weekends are usually the time when people from Barcelona city come to visit.  Gava and Castelldefels are the coastal resorts of choice for the city dwellers and the police are going to have their work cut out if they are going to try and stop all of the visitors that we are likely to have.

     Obviously, all this inconvenience is designed to stop the spread of the virus, but all of the measures are going to be pointless if the general population doesn’t get behind the restrictions.

     Since February we have been subject to a bewildering array of instructions, some of which seem to be ‘arbitrary’ to put it mildly.  We are constantly told that proximity is the most important factor in the spread of Covid and yet schools are still open.  Buses are still running, as is the Metro and the train system.  Shops have limits, but most shops now do not have dedicated assistants restricting entry. 

     The “if this, then why not that” approach to instructions is making following them difficult, and the shameful dinner of 150 politicians and the assorted Good and Great, is a calculated spit in the face of the ordinary joe trying to follow the rules where for us gatherings of more than 6, and closed bars and restaurants are the norm.  The Minister for Health was one of the attendees at this rule-breaking gathering, giving yet another example of “One rule for us another for them” approach to governing.  And yet, with breath-taking hypocrisy these discredited chancer politicians still appear on the TV and in Parliament giving voice to rules that they do not follow themselves.

 

I’ve now been told, or rather I’ve been “I thinked” by Toni that my bike ride tomorrow on Saturday is OK because I am going to adjoining municipality and that is allowed.  But certainty?  None.  I will try it out tomorrow and when I am stopped by the police, I will know the limits to my activity.

     As I didn’t have a swim this morning, I went out on a second bike ride taking the Gava paseo as my route.  It was pleasantly empty with only a few hardy walkers and riders.  One even hardier gentleman was sunbathing on the beach.  The sun is out, but there is a sea breeze that tells you that you are in the month of October, and towards the end of that month as well.  But ‘Bravo!’ for a stronger determination that even I have to keep summer alive – my continued wearing of T-shirt, shorts and sandals seems positively overdressed compared to the nakedness of the beach devotee!

 

The situation in the UK appears to be getting even worse than it is here.  The piecemeal tiered approach is more geared to commercial concerns than human ones; the projections for British deaths over the winter is horrific; the government is a sick joke.  But perhaps I am being unfair.  My country of Wales seems to have taken difficult but hopefully effective drastic measures, as have the other constituent nations of the UK, with the signal exception of England.  I fear that Johnson and his third-raters in the Conservative Party put politics and survival of their ‘brand’ above the human cost of failed policies.  And just to make my cynical misery complete the fiscal here in Spain has archived or shelved any criminal action against the ex-king in relation to his shady dealing and less than honest behaviour.  It makes you weep.  That same disgraced ex-king once famously proclaimed that, “Justice is the same for everybody!”  How hollow that sounds today as he skulks away in some undemocratic eastern kingdom.  What a shower of shits our ‘ruling’ classes are!

 

Still, any day at the end of October in which anyone can even think about divesting themselves of clothing and sunbathing next to the Med, has to be positive. 

     Long live the sun!