COVID? NHS? EDUCATION? BREXIT? TRUTH?

 

 

SHIP OF FOOLS DREGS

 

 

LIARS FOOLS CHARLATONS DECEIVERS CHEATS CON-ARTISTS DOUBLE-CROSSERS DISSEMBLERS FAKERS FRAUDS HOAXERS HUCKSTERS HYPOCRITES MOUNTEBANKS PERJURERS PHONEYS PROFITEERS SCAMMERS SCHEMERS SERPENTS SWINDLERS TRAITORS TRICKSTERS TURNCOATS BLUFFERS FIBBERS HUMBUGS MISINFORMERS DOUBLE-TALKERS MENDACIOUS SOPHISTS BAMBOOZLERS DELUDERS HOODWINKERS  SHAMEFUL DEGRADED DISHONOURED DISCREDITED SHAMED FALLEN SHUNNED SHOCKING OUTRAGEOUS SCANDALOUS DISCREDITABLE REPREHENSIBLE APPALLING DREADFUL TARNISHED VILE RODENT DISGUSTING ABHORRENT LOATHSOME REVOLTING AWFUL ABONIMABLE HATEFUL DESPICABLE CONTEMPTIBLE LOW HORRID HORRIBLE REPULSIVE NASTY REPELLENT TERRIBLE DISREPUTABLE SHABBY UNWORTHY BAD INFERIOR DEFICIENT FLAWED FAULTY DEFECTIVE SUBSTANDEARD IMPERFECT ABYSMAL WICKED CORRUPT WAYWARD CRIMINAL DELINQUENT DAMAGING INJURIOUS RUINOUS DANGEROUS PREJUDICIAL HARMFUL PUTRID STALE RANCID SHOCKING GHASTLY UNPLEASANT INCOMPETENT USELESS BUNGLING UNSKILLED INEFFECTUAL HOPELESS UNAPT UNABLE INCAPABLE SHAMELESS BRAZEN BAREFACED UNABASHED BLATENT UNASHAMED SHALLOW LIGHT SUPERFICIAL INSUBSTANTIAL PETTY SILLY DISTASTEFUL REPUGNANT OFFENSIVE OBJECTIONABLE OBNOXIOUS ODIOUS SPITEFUL MEAN MALICIOUS VICIOUS CRUEL MALEVOLENT WICKED FOUL INDECENT INHUMAN VULGAR CRUDE SUPERCILIOUS PROUD SNOOTY STUCK-UP ARROGANT CONCEITED CONDESCENDING INSINCERE DUPLICITOUS PRETENTIOUS UNFEELING UNSYMPATHETIC HARDHEARTED CALLOUS HEARTLESS PITILESS COLD INSENSITIVE UNCARING INHUMAN THICK-SKINNED ALOOF DISTAINFUL BIGOTED DOGMATIC UNBENDING OPINIONATED INTOLERANT NARROW-MINDED CHAUVINISTIC BIASED SLANTED TWISTED WARPED PERVERSE SICK AWRY INADEQUATE SUPERFICIAL SHALLOW DERISORY LAUGHABLE POOR FAILED BOTCHED DISASTROUS FUTILE ABORTIVE INCOHERENT CONFUSED JUMBLED RAMABLING ILLOGICAL INARTICULATE UNINTELLIGIBLE INCOMPREHENSIBLE GARBLED MERCILESS MERCENARY SHODDY CARELESS SLAPDASH SLOPPY TRASHY LOUSY UNKIND DISGRACEFUL COWARDLY DEADBEATS DITHERERS LIGHTWEIGHTS LOSERS LOWLIFE PARASITES PARIAHS SCROUNGERS SHIRKERS SKIVERS SLACKERS SPONGERS TWITS WASTERS WASTRELS WRETCHES BRAGGARTS CHAUVINISTS EGOTISTS JINGOISTS LOUDMOUTHS MEGALOMANIACS NARCISSISTS BOOTLICKERS CHAMELEONS LAPDOGS LEECHES OPPORTUNISTS POSEURS SHARKS SKUNKS SNOBS SYCHOPHANTS TOADS BLOODSUCKERS BULLIES  DISSEMBLERS PRETENDERS DISSIMULATERS OBSCURANTISTS DOUBLE-CROSSERS BETRAYERS DISLOYAL UNFAITHFUL DUPLICITOUS TREACHEROUS PERFIDIOUS FALSE SMUG SELF-SATISFIED COMPLACENT DEADLY CRASS TACTLESS GROSS ASININE VULPINE PIG-HEADED SPECIOUS INCONSTANT CONTRADICTORY UNSCIENTIFIC UNSOUND HAPLESS INAUSPICIOUS ABUSIVE BLOCK-HEADED UNATTRACTIVE REPULSIVE HORRIBLE ANTIPATHETIC MALICIOUS UNLAWFUL DEBILITATING INTOLERANT REACTIONARY PAROCHIAL PROSCRIPTIVE PARSIMONIOUS MISERLY TIGHTFISTED STINGY ILLEGITIMATE INJUDICIOUS CARELESS ILL-CONSIDERED ILL-CONCEIVED HOSTILE ANTAGONISTIC INGLORIOUS UNDISTINGUISHED BITTER DUBIOUS SHADY GROPING LOUTISH STUMBLING DISORIENTATED BEWILDERED ASTRAY HELPLESS DISTANT CULPABLE INSUFFICIENT WANTING VERMINOUS  

             

C  O  N  S  E  R  V  A  T  I  V  E  S

 

What time of the year is it?

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas is trying its best not to be.  There is a forced quality about any celebratory approach to the time that makes it all the more unreal.

     I have not, physically in a hands-on sense, bought any presents – apart of course from my ruinously expensive office chair, and with only a deposit paid and its not being available until January, I’m not sure that it counts.  So, the Family’s presents have virtually all been bought and sent via Amazon; the Christmas cards will be (with few exceptions) virtual via email with a donation to Oxfam; the Christmas meal will be just the two of us with a possible Zoom element making everything just that little bit more embarrassing and uneasy!

     Happy Covid Christmas and a Vaccinated New Year!

     Of course, the best Christmas present this year is being around to be able to moan about the limitations of the festivities: there are plenty of Catalans and Welsh people who are unable to do so, and unless our respective governments approach the pandemic with something that is more appreciative about the risks involved, then potentially, hundreds of thousands more will die in the cause of political window dressing.

     We have been told that half a million people in the UK have had the first dose of the vaccine.  It’s a small start given the population, but at least it is something.  Spain, together with the rest of the EU are not going to start the programme of vaccination until the 27^th of December so lord alone knows when the programme will finally get to us in Castelldefels.

     A friend in Istanbul wrote that he looked forward to travelling more freely by April.  I think he is being charmingly optimistic.  I do not think that there will be anything like free movement until the end of the summer next year, and in my mind I have virtually written off 2021 as a sort of year in abeyance.  I think that 2022 will be the year in which things generally get back to normal, or what we will have accepted as normal by then.

 

 

 

I sense a real weariness about the restrictions from a lot of people that I see around me, and that quality of being fed up expresses its visible self in the laxity of many with the wearing of masks.  In the centre of town people are generally (and legally) obliged to wear the masks and they do, but on the paseo and the nearer you get to the sand, the slacker the attitude is.  To my mind, it doesn’t really matter if you are walking, running, dog walking, skateboarding, skating or whatever: you should wear a mask.  I find the allowance made for smokers to wander about in peopled spaces without a mask because of their addiction to be frankly astonishing.  Where is the logic in energetic exercise where the individual sweats and breathes more deeply and expels air more forcibly being exempt from mask wearing?  It simply doesn’t make sense.  At least to me.  And to logic!

     Johnson is coming under pressure to impose another strict lockdown.  It is not something than anyone wants, but it is surely necessary to prevent horrendous loss of life. 

     I was going to say that there is nothing special about Christmas – and I could defend that statement theologically, socially, numerically, historically, culturally with lots of other -ly words thrown into the debate – but clearly the Day itself is, not only in Christian terms but also in Family terms significant.  People want to be together.  People want to be with their families.  That is easily understandable.  But, with a vaccine being rolled out throughout Europe in a few days’ time, even if individual know that they are not going to be in the first tranche of vaccinations, they will know that within months they will start to gain the protection that they need to visit their loved ones and, more importantly, not kill them by visiting.

     It is asking a lot for people to be patient month after month and to see blatant unfairness, incompetence, corruption, lying and deceit – but the vaccines exist and, in time they will be given to everyone and we will then all have a degree of protection that will allow life as we knew it to become life as we know it.  And for the restrictions to become a way of life or a bitter memory.

 

We went out for lunch today and ate inside the restaurant at spaced tables.  When we go to restaurants Toni remembers to bring the bottle of soapless alcohol handwash and I remember to bring the pepper grinder.  Nowadays communal cruets are a thing of the past and oil and vinegar come in one-use little individual bottles; ketchup and mayonnaise are in sachets and salt and pepper are in little paper containers.  Pepper is the problem: while salt is always there, pepper is a wayward addition and I cannot rely on its availability, so I take my own.

     A couple of times in the past I have had to rescue my pepper mill from clearing waiters’ hands and remind them that does not belong to them – but nowadays the appearance of my own condiment raises no eyebrows!

 

So, Johnson has had to U-turn on yet another of his empty reassurances and Christmas had had to be to all intents and purposes cancelled.  We are not in such a Draconian lockdown in Catalonia, but I do not think for a moment that things are going to get better during the holiday period.  We are all waiting for the vaccine.

Tomorrow is our final shop for Christmas.  We still have not finally settled what it is we want to eat during our Christmas meal – but it is certainly not going to be turkey with all the trimmings!  Toni has suggested prawns and that seems like something with which I can work, especially as I intend to have salmon scrambled eggs to start off Christmas Day in the right style!  Alas!  I will not be having a glass of Cava to accompany it.  How many YEARS is it since I last had an alcoholic drink!  I don’t miss it.  Much.  Though there are a few times with a good meal when a glass of decent red would go down a treat.  According to my doctor I am “allowed” one small glass of red wine a day.  It just simply does not sound like me.  So, I am prepared to do without.  And I make do with non-alcoholic beer.  Which, to be fair, is much better than it was when I first tried it years ago!  Even if it is really larger and not real bitter beer.

     Still, the Christmas Meal will look good and I have bought a few little things to make the festive board look appetizing!

     We will see how it goes and we will certainly take a photograph to remind us of the end of a truly awful year!

Present depression; future hope!

 

 

“He looks like a homeless person,” my friend in the swimming pool said this morning before we started our swim, “With a tie!”  Perhaps it doesn’t need me to tell you which English political character he was taking about, given the international publicity that shuffling lummox has had over his latest U-turn.

     If it wasn’t for the unnecessary deaths that his ineptitude and indolence have caused, it would be rollickingly funny.  But it isn’t.  It’s a national humiliation as each new catastrophic missed opportunity or slipshod execution pushes the figures even further beyond the “optimistic” projected number of 20,000 dead by the end of the pandemic that was voiced with some belief in the early stages of the infection! 

     I hope that the increasing dead haunt Johnson’s every waking thought because it is his ‘”leadership’” that has pushed the figures into the national disgrace that they have become.  I think that the charges of “corporate manslaughter” that Johnson and his cabinet should face are becoming more and more of a necessity if the thousands of excess deaths are ever going to be properly laid at the feet of the architect of the political chaos that helped make them.  Indeed, I think that the term “manslaughter” is far, far too mild for what he and his low-life ministers have actually done.

 

However bitter my thoughts and how eager I am to see Johnson brought to justice; I know that my writing is just so much bile.  Even if Johnson were to read it he wouldn’t recognize the application to himself; he is so much of a narcissist that he would ‘naturally’ push the blame off on to someone else.  Responsibility has never been one of his strong points, well, not even a point really, so he would brush off any criticism as ‘inapplicable’ and carry on in the way that he has lived all of his life: falling upwards and ignoring negative opinions. 

     The only problem that I foresee is that his final comeuppance will come, but at a price that will involve the whole of the United Kingdom (for as long as that concept is going to survive his governance) in taking the hit for his failures, and he will gambol away (possibly humming a merry tune like Cameron) as he disappears into the lucrative lecture circuit and shallow book writing future that he has mapped out for himself.

     But wait, I was forgetting, as a past holder of his present post he will be entitled (?) to a peerage, Lord Boris of Bullshit, floridly resplendent in his (probably borrowed) robes, so that he can continue fleecing the country with his lordly per diems!

 

Enough!  We have only hours (or days, or weeks, or months, or years) left before the latest deadline for a Brexit agreement.  Has anyone bothered to count up the number of deadlines that have come and gone?  I do hope that someone has kept track of what we were offered and what we could have got at all the times in the past when an agreement was in the offing.  I am more than sure that what (if anything) we end up with will be a pale reflection of what we could have had if we had etc etc etc, and specifically if self-harming opposition of people like the Odious Rees-Mogg and the Unthinkable IDS had not been invented.  I have to admit that one finds it hard to imagine that those two (together with the unmentionables in the rabid Brexit gang) ever being ‘born’ in the normal human way.

With a lurch, I will try to stop foaming at the mouth with justifiable resentment and anger and become a trifle more composed.

     This evening I am going to a carol concert in Wales.  Not in reality of course, but virtually via Zoom.  The Cardiff Ardwyn Singers are presenting a Christmas Concert of carols dedicated to the memory of Gaynor Wilkins, wife of John, both of whom were connected with the Choir. 

     Money raised via the link below will go to the Haematology Unit for Cardiff and Vale Health Charity in recognition of the care that they showed in the treatment of Gaynor’s rare form of blood cancer Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS)

www.justgiving.com/fundraising/rhiannon-wilkins

Something real.