Are you sitting comfortably?

 

 

 

Even though we are at the fag-end of the year, something happened today that will be the defining feature for me, and possibly for a few others too.

     My ‘creative space’ is not my brain, it is a ‘squalid corner’ of the third floor where my desk (cluttered) is hemmed in on one side by a sawn-off storage unit, a plastic segmented bookcase and a queeny printer; on the other by a series of CD box vaults, the back of an IKEA bookcase and an Anglepoise (knock-off not real) lamp; behind three low-rise bookshelves, a bewilderingly large number of plastic mini-shelved units and a lopsided arrangement of Things Too Large to Put Away Properly; in front is a low wall and the stair well.  And this altogether conducive-to-creation ensemble is finished by a high-backed office chair that is literally falling to bits, with the faux leather coming away in specks.

     Enough, I said to myself, I said, is enough!  A new chair is necessary and, furthermore, it will be something that can sweep up my Christmas and Name Day offerings into one coherent present.  The ‘Name Day’ thing is important in this part of the world and you ignore the recognition-through-presents at your own risk, it therefore follows (as the night the day) that reciprocation can work together for good.  As my Name Day is actually Boxing Day a seasonal personal present objective makes sense, so I thought a new chair would concentrate minds and contributions.

     Having tried a selection of chairs in all the main superstore outlets in the vicinity and found all of them lacking, Toni actually discovered a dedicated office furniture outlet with ‘sale’ prices in Cornella, a place a few towns along one of our motorways and a place passed through by me on my daily journey to the School on the Hill.

     Today was the day we visited the place.  I had (in mind and written in my notebook) a list of desirable attributes of the New Chair.  It had to have  i) a base of five wheeled feet  ii) a high back  iii) gas suspension  iv) be ergonomic  v) be made of leather  vi) have no arms or have removable arms  vii) look ‘the business’.  I did have a vague sort of idea of what sort of cost it might be, but I decided to be adventurous.

     The end result of much sitting and trying this and then trying that, was that the ergonomic trumped the leather.  The seat that I have decided on, and indeed ordered for delivery in January looks a bit more medical than office-like, but it is comfortable and virtually everything that can, adjusts.

     And the cost.

     Toni was and still is shell-shockedly stunned that any sentient life-form could even contemplate paying so much for what is, after all, at the end of the day, an office chair.  Well, I have.  Or at least I have paid a deposit.  And even the 20% deposit was large.  So, you can imagine that the whole thing (the other 80%) is, well, monstrous.

     In my defence, I would opine that my complete lack of smoking is a major factor in allowing sums of money which would have gone up in smoke and been ingested in tar to be used for something that is much more (much more) useful and necessary.  But is an awfully large sum of money.  For a chair.

     And, as its main material is a sort of mesh (to allow for air flow and healthiness) you don’t even get plush, buttoned leather for your money – in spite of the fact that the money you have paid could easily have allowed wheels to have been fitted to a handmade ottoman and still have had money left over.

     And I don’t care.  I have got (or at least will have) what I wanted.  And it is something that will be used.  And used constantly.  And, and I think I am trying to persuade myself here rather than any reader.  And so, I will stop.  But I (and that is the important pronoun) I, think that it is money well spent.  And I sincerely trust that I will be saying that in twenty years’ time (when I am still using the bloody thing) and then dividing the price I paid in 2020 by the number of years I have been using it and saying to myself, “It’s a bargain!” and “My back has never felt better!” and so on.

     I am further encouraged by the fact that the person selling me thing was actually using one of them as her own office chair.  And that has to be good.  Doesn’t it?  Yes?

     What the AOTC (Advent of the Chair) will necessitate is Doing Something to the chaos of the third floor.  Such a splendid beast must have space in which to dominate the surroundings.  The detritus behind me at the moment must go.  Where?  I know not, but somewhere not behind me.  The Chair will be brought unto me by the lackeys of the firm and they will Construct The Chair, presumably by bringing up the pieces to the third floor.  There is no room whatsoever to do any construction so, what years of nagging by Toni have failed to do, the AOTC will force me to do: create space where no space exists.

     My last and latest attempt to Clear Up the third floor comprised checking through long unopened files and junking and shredding irrelevant papers.  This created gratifying large bags of rubbish, but not any appreciable space as I had been excavating rather than bulldozing.  Something much more radical is called for, and to be frank, I am not sure that I can muster up enough iconoclastic zeal to do the necessary.  Toni has, bless him, offered to do the ‘tidying up’ for me, but I know that I would have to ‘dispose’ of him after the event when I realized what priceless pieces of ephemera he might have got rid of!

     So, the next few weeks are going to demand a positively Dominican level of material rejection from me if I am to make any impression on the cluttered chaos.  Wish me luck or wish me the equanimity to see the AOTC as setting a diamond in the dross of attic confusion!

     And yes, I am well aware that I have not actually told you the price of the thing.  And yes, I have no intention whatsoever of so doing.  I may be happy (if that is the word that I am looking for) with what I have done, but I think that I can only convince others by denying them specific totals.  Better to speculate with lurid imagination rather than condemn in black and white!  And you will have noticed that I chose a generic chair for illustration rather than something more identifiable.

 

 

 

 

And talking of the unjustifiable, Johnson is trying to have his cake and eat it: he fulfils his promise to allow us to celebrate Christmas but wants us not to do it because it will fuel the increase in Covid infection.  So, what this appalling man is actually doing is putting the onus on the British People.  He lacks the courage to admit that he was wrong to promise a variant on the “it will be all over by Christmas” (that always works out well!) and instead of imposing legally enforceable restrictions he is leaving it all up to us.  He will then, of course, wash his hands and say that it was made clear by the government that there were risks involved and people were warned, but people will be people and therefore you have only yourselves to blame!  He truly is repellent.

     Here in Catalonia and in Spain things do not appear to be much better.  Our prime minister has had to self-isolate because of his proximity to the French president and we all know that all hell is going to break out after the Christmas period.

     We have gone through a year when normal has been taken out roughed up, lightly killed, spat at, insulted, trampled on and general bad mouthed.  I think we know that we are in the final stretch, and I further think that we know that the final stretch is not going to be measured in weeks but rather in months.  And probably quite a few months.  I am telling myself that I will be lucky, very lucky, if I am vaccinated by April.  And since I tick a few of the ‘at risk’ boxes, I think it is going to be the end of the summer or the middle of the autumn until a majority of the country is close to having had the jab.

     Given those expectations, Christmas is neither here nor there, it is just an odd date in the unrelenting sequences that we have been subject to during this pandemic.

 

But my chair will be here in January.  Something concrete to look forward to.

Rule breaker - rule suggester!

 

 We are building up to yet another Johnsonian U-Turn, in which department he is something of an expert!  And he is being aided and abetted in his Ballet of Deception by the President of the EC who keeps to the script of “some progress” and “real differences” so that the final agreement (at the last possible moment) makes it appear as if Johnson has actually mastered his way to something real and acceptable.

     Let’s face it, any agreement will be better than none.  But when the final Johnson scrap of paper makes its appearance, I will be looking to informed commentators to explain when in the last four years we could have had something similar, or exactly the same or better! 

     In truth Johnson is no negotiator: he lacks the patience, application, wisdom, detail, ethos and everything else that a true champion of British interests needs. 

     Yes, he can trumpet meaningless three-word slogans and he can jumble metaphor and simile in a lurid word salad; but do the hard, detailed work for complex negotiations?  Not a chance. 

     And his opposite numbers in the EU know him for what he is (a lazy chancer and liar) and know that they have to act as stooges to his stand-up to get anything done.

     The professionals in the EU must shrug with weary resignation as they accept yet another session of baby minding as the nappy-wearing infant wiffles into view tousling his hair as he goes.  They can’t treat him with the contempt that he deserves because they recognize (as he can’t) that there is more at stake in the negotiations than individual reputations. 

     It is indeed sad to realize that the only people with the interests of the United Kingdom at heart are the people that the Brexiteers have caricatured and rejected!

     Ah well, I hope that the adults in the room are able to convince the baby that an agreement is there for the taking, by giving the crowd-pleaser enough belief that he has managed to achieve something of moment that will keep the rabid sections of his carnivorous party away from his all too solid flesh!

     It is obvious from the latest news broadcast that this farce of negotiation is going to be drawn out until we are all bored with it and won’t look too closely at what Johnson will actually have achieved. 

     Well, on with the comedy, I’m still waiting for my first laugh!

 

 

 

On a more positive literary note, Tim Harford’s new book now shares a place with my first Peter Gabriel record.  I heard a snatch of Jeux sans frontieres on the radio years ago and immediately went into town and bought the Gabriel LP; a couple of days ago I heard a snatch of Tim Harford reading his book and immediately went to my computer and ordered a copy from Amazon – which arrived the next day. 

     I am sure that there is an historical lesson to be learned from the different approaches of the two purchases which are 40 years apart!

     Tim Harford is the presenter of the quintessentially Radio 4 programme, More or Less, a programme that studies and discusses the statistics and other assorted mathematical claims made in the media and gives a reasoned evaluation of the value of the numbers and how they have been arrived at.  His voice has an undemonstrative yet compelling quality to it, as witness my immediate order for his book  The book I purchased is called How to Make the World Add Up and is subtitled Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers.  His style is conversational, authoritative with being preachy; it’s full of examples and reads like a novel.

     The title might suggest a top-down sort of approach, but Harford writes as if he genuinely wants to inform and facilitate.  He is fair and gently provocative and uses his considerable experience to explain and expand.

     This is a book worth buying, not just reading!  I recommend it without hesitation!

     It is, by the way, exactly the sort of book that those in government should be forced to read and then be made to sign that they have done so and promise to let the Ten Rules guide their thinking!  We would live in a much better world if they did!

Gusty times ahead!

 

 

High winds meant that I declined to use my bike and took the car instead – and everyone else appeared to have made the same decision and so the car park was relatively full within a couple of minutes of the opening of the centre.

     As the pool is enclosed with a retractable roof (I am not insane!) we are fairly well protected from the surrounding weather, but I noted as I gained the end of my first length that a door to the outside world had been opened and one could experience the cool gusts of a thoroughly unpleasant wind.

     It was only at the end of the swim when you have to go from the pool area via a short flight of steps and a linking corridor to the changing rooms that you see the weather clearly.  Not pleasant, and I was grateful to have a hot cup of tea and sturdy plate glass to give me an acceptable climate.

     But, by the time I came to leave, the wind had dropped and the sky was showing a little more blue.  In the afternoon we had sunshine, but not enough sunshine to tempt me to go on the bike ride that is the usual end of my morning of exercise.

     As ever, another cup of tea and my mobile phone with The Guardian were enough to keep me stationary in my armchair until it was time for lunch.

     From my reading of the actions of what one might laughingly refer to as ‘my government’ in the UK, it really does look as though, after four years of the bloody Conservatives saying that a deal was easy and oven-ready and all the other lying descriptions given, we are headed for a no-deal Brexit.

 

      

 

     The latest piece of ill-judged, crass, idiocy by Johnson is to flaunt four Royal Navy gunboats to patrol our fishing waters in the event of a no-deal Brexit and foreigners attempting to do what they have been doing for the past umpteen years.  Four ships for the entire coastal waters of Britain, that’s about 11,000 miles, divided by four, that means that each of the Royal Navy ships will have to patrol about 2,700 miles of coast each.  And what is the speed of these ships?

     So, the threat of these ships is purely, but not entirely, cosmetic, harking back to Britannia Rules the Waves and all that.  In other words, an empty gesture, that the EU must have been expecting from the empty vessel that they have had to deal with.  For years.  And years.

     I am still hoping that Johnson is going to have some appreciation of what he is about to do and realize that he will have to take a hit (however he spins it) in the interest of the nation.  As the seconds tick away, my hope is getting more and more hysterical, especially when I remember that no matter how cataclysmically stupid a decision appears to be, people still make it.  Brexit did win the referendum and the USA elected Trump.  However stupid and unthinkable, it could happen.

     But I will relax into the remaining hours of the weekend, yea! even unto the last minute to midnight on Sunday in the weary hope of sanity (at least partial) governing our 'government'.

 

Meanwhile to get my mind away from events that I cannot influence, we had a decent menu del dia in our usual Saturday restaurant and even felt buoyed up enough to do a little light domestic shopping.

     On the cultural front, I have re-discovered my tidied-up notebook and am working on the structure and content.  I am reasonably confident that the concept is workable, but the rest of this weekend should give me a clearer idea of the direction and, more importantly, whether that direction is worth taking!

Who counts the cost?

 

Just when you thought that Trump could not sink any lower in the human degradation scale, he is now, a lame duck president rushing to kill judicially as many death row inmates as his federal powers allow him.  The fact that no lame duck president has sanctioned judicial killing for over a century is of course not a deterrent to this sick joke of an incumbent.  Trump knows (I assume, though that is an assumption which credits Trump with a little too much knowledge or interest) that Biden is an abolitionist as far as capital punishment is concerned and so he is deliberately taunting the president-elect with a fatally childish display of time-limited residual power.

     I had thought that I was inured to shock from the antics of the most powerful man in the world, but as always, Trump confounds what you thought were the profoundest depths of his depravity.  In a way there is a certain consistency in his approach; his mismanagement of the response to the Covid catastrophe in the USA though his light touch indolence was at the expense of the death of Others, and his display of judicial slaughter is also at the expense of Others.  His presidency has been marked by misery and death, but he has survived and prospered, and that of course shows that he has been right all along.

     To use lethal injection or whatever barbaric means capital punishment is administered in the USA as a sign of your own power is disgusting and is a travesty of justice.  I do feel for the victims of the actions of those on Death Row, but judicial murder can never compensate for another death.

 

     Meanwhile our own pale reflection of Trump parades on the international stage as if he has a shred of credibility.  Marina Hyde summed it up beautifully in today’s Guardian:

 

“Received wisdom seems to be that this is all theatre – designed to show that the UK, which has rapidly ceased to be a serious country, is serious about its threats. If there is a flaw to this plan – and really, it’s such a tiny cavil – it’s that our prime minister is a liar of international repute. Possibly even intergalactic. For Boris Johnson, lying is not second nature: it is nature. Even on the occasions he wants to tell the truth – a rarity, but imagine it momentarily aligning with his self-interest – he has to make a vast, almost physical effort to override his psychiatric biology. It’s like watching a cat try to bring up a six-kilo hairball.”

 

Do read the rest of her piece in The Guardian, and indeed anything else she writes, it is one way to stay sane!  The link is here:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/11/boris-johnson-charm-prime-minister-england-dover

 

And it rained today as well.  It’s just one damn thing after another!