LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 7

The first week completed; I would feel some sort of sense of achievement, if it wasn’t for the information that this is likely to be the first week of months of lockdown to come.

     We were first told that this Draconian form of self-isolation would last until the end of March.  My school said that lessons would probably resume on the 30^th of March.  People were geared up for a couple of weeks of ‘hardship’ before something approaching pre-virus normality was restored.  That now seems like a fond, self-deluding fantasy.  Some people have talked of a whole year of confinement!

     Although we have been told not to expect a vaccine for at least a year or more, we can look forward to some sort of treatment for the virus in a very much shorter time.  This may be metaphorically putting out the fire rather than ensuring that the fire never starts, but it is better than nothing.  If things go according to plan we ‘at risk’ group should be able to look forward to some sort of augmented flue jab by the autumn and some sort of treatment if we are actually infected and, who knows, perhaps a vaccine in short order too!

     But what will be the real costs of this pandemic extending through spring, summer and into the autumn?  Taking the worst of the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) group of countries first, what exactly is going to happen to Greece?  Economically Greece is the basket case of Europe, and it was before the virus, so where does that place it now?  And Italy?  After (and during) the extended disaster of the virus on the country what is going to be left on which to build?  Portugal was a frail economy, what adjective can describe it now?  All of Spain’s hotels are closed, the tourist trade is dead; restaurants, bars and shops closed: how are they going to recover? And when does the recovery process start?

     From a personal point of view, I am one of those lucky buggers to have been able to retire at an age when I could take full advantage of an income-linked pension.  Even when I started to draw my pension, the government was belatedly panicking about how to pay it in the future.  The raising of the pension age was a (belatedly) desperate decision to put off the day of reckoning when the sums finally would have to be worked out.  A shrinking working population supporting a growing population of pensioners simply doesn’t work.  What those ‘sums’ are going to be like when this crisis is finally over is not something which makes me feel confident about my future finances.

     ‘Confidence’ and ‘Fairness’ are two key words to bear in mind when thinking about the short and long term consequences of the virus.  As with payment of pensioners, there will be questions about payment of workers who, because of the self-isolation policy, not working.  The government will be paying out and not getting anything like enough coming in to pay for it all.  OK, the interest rates on available money are almost insultingly low, so governments can borrow at more than attractive rates – but that money eventually has to be paid back.  It will be hardly surprising if people start to question the apportioning of scarce wealth in the coming months, and difficult questions will be asked about those to whom the limited wealth is given.

     Our politicians are fond of using war imagery during crises, and in Britain there is often an appeal to some sort of mythical national characteristic that is at its best in times of threat.  The appeal to ‘The Spirit of the Blitz’, the cheerful resignation, the make do and mend, the we can take it syndrome that will see us ‘muddle though’ and allow us to look back on national catastrophes with a wry smile and a slightly disbelieving shake of the head.  That’s the fantasy.

     The reality is supermarket shelves stripped bare as the outward sign of the vicious selfishness that is a far clearer marker for ‘national character’ than any of the mythic positive qualities of the past.  The ignoring of government recommendations to stay at home, to close pubs and clubs, to avoid travel and all the other ‘suggestions’ that the Blond Buffoon’s government were too cowardly to make into instructions when they were needed.

     British people, we have been told, have flocked to the seaside, are still gathering in dangerous groups, a still having a drink are still, in other words, doing all those selfish things that ensure the spread of the virus.  Modern Britain is generally, a glaring reflection of the selfish negativity that gave us the Brexit vote.

     I know that this negativity does not apply to the whole population.  My cousin in London has said that she has been overwhelmed by the number of emails and offers of help that she has received, that her street has an active and positive on line group that ensures that people in the at-risk group are never alone.  There will always be good people doing the right thing, but with a virus, all it takes is a tiny minority of irresponsible people to create havoc – and the minorities are hard at work doing exactly that in Britain today.

My walk around the pool was a more social event than it has been over the last few days.  This time, there was a fellow walker – not I rush to add in the same area as I, but in the next door’s tennis court, safely apart from our pool.  A young lady, with earphones securely inserted walking with brisk purpose around the court, their pool and back again.  We gave each other a quick, smiled “¡Hola!” as we passed.  I was waved to by two of our neighbours who leaned out from first floor living room windows.  But, if more people follow my example and perambulate around the pool, then I will stop doing it, the risks will increase and I will be confined to the third floor terrace.  That should be no problem, as we have been informed that someone has run a full marathon on a 7m balcony!  Where there is a will there is a way.

     But I do not think that the will is that strong.  Already you can see signs of ‘fraying’ as people buck against the unnatural confinement.  People want out!  And who is going to stop them?  And that is where I see the real problems lie.

     Talking to a friend in Britain, he said, “There will be riots in three weeks, if this keeps up!”   People will not be confined, and it will take police and the armed forces to keep them in place.  I think that social unrest is almost inevitable.  I was shocked to learn that in northern Italy people are not keeping to the strict restraints of quarantine.  In northern Italy the most toxic centre of the virus in Europe!  50,000 people turned up to see the Olympic Flame in Japan!  What part of contagion do these people not understand?  If rules continue to be flouted what is left for government, but enforcement?  And then god help us all!

Well, having thoroughly depressed myself, I will now turn to something a little more uplifting.  Um . . . ur . . . um . . .

I joined the MOOC (Massive Open On-line Course) with a university in Madrid looking at a series of paintings from the Renaissance to the death of Goya. (European Paintings; from Leonardo to Rembrandt to Goya – Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)  Although the course is ‘free’ there is a massive attempt to get you to pay $50 to have an augmented experience and be able to do the multiple answer ‘exams’ and to get a certificate at the end of the course.  The course is in English and it comprises a series of short videos and an on-line forum.

     I have looked at the first few videos for the course and, as far as they go, they are fine and dandy and aimed fairly squarely at those with little or no experience of art history: they are an engaging introduction and there is a standard choice of artists to consider.  I will ‘follow’ the course, but I’m not sure that I will learn a great deal, but there is much to be said for revision!  And I am looking at other courses that will be more stretching, and I have already found one on Modernism that looks promising!

A reminder that drafts of my new poems are available on my blog smrnewpoems.blogspot.com 

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 6

There is something almost poignant in cancelling an mobile phone alarm that had previously got me up at 6.10 am each day to get read for my early morning swim at 7.00 am in the local pool.  With the closure of the pool due to the virus the need to rise early was gone, but the continued sound of the 6.15 alarm was a reminder of my normality.  The cancelling was a delayed gesture and an acceptance of the situation as it is now, rather than the situation as it was then.  The new reality finally finding a sonic place in my daily routine!

     Today was the first silent awakening and I duly had a ‘real’ lie-in and didn’t get up until 9.45 am!  Three and a half hours later than usual!  I must admit that I felt thoroughly guilty by the time I staggered into the bathroom and started to get ready for the day.

     As I showered and shaved I wondered why I was bothering – not about the showering, personal hygiene is something that becomes even more important during a pandemic than in ordinary times, but rather in shaving and going through the rituals that structure a ‘normal’ day.

     There is a Somerset Maugham short story set in the Far East which centres on two colonial Englishmen, one a stickler for what he see as civilized English standards of correct behaviour and the other who considers such an attitude absurd when placed in the strange and foreign surroundings of a country totally unlike England.  One aspect of the Stickler’s behaviour I always remember: even though his copies of The Times were delivered in a batch to his remote location, he would only read them one a day in sequence in arrears, even if he was desperate to find out what had happened.  He would wait and steel himself to be patient!  The other man was not so patient and when the bundle arrived, he ripped it open and read the most recent first.  The story does not end well.

     Ritual can be comforting and give a pleasant sense of structure, but it can also be negative as those who have lived by ritual and structure find when these elements of scaffolding are taken away. 

     OK, I know that I started talking about cancelling an early alarm, and it’s only been a week since we have been in lockdown, but this lockdown is likely to last for a damn sight longer than the end of this month and small things in enclosed environments are likely to become more significant.  So, small changes can have disproportionate effects.  Perhaps writing about such things is a way of noting the variables and coping with them!

     And, I might add, I do not intend to stay in bed until quarter to ten each day during this crisis!  One has one’s standards!

I am getting progressively more worried about the attitude of people in the UK about how to react in this crisis.  People say that they know that it is serious, but then they say things that show that they are not fully conversant with the fatal seriousness of what might happen if their precautions are inadequate.

     As far as I can see, the attitude of the Generalitat in Catalonia is the right one: a lockdown, which really means lockdown.  We have increasing reports of the police stopping people who are two to a car and asking them why they are flouting the instruction that says that only one person is allowed outside the house at a time.  We have been told of people being warned about taking their dogs (a vaild reason for leaving the home) too far from the home itself.  They are supposed to be no more than a couple of hundred yards away.  People next door to us are making daily visits to continue the reformation, something which is simply stupid and dangerous.  People are still going for walks and runs and one friend has told me that something like 30,000 fines have been issued to people breaking the rules.

     As we saw from the guy who went to Italy then France and ended up in Britain, all it takes is one person to spread the virus with disastrous consequences.  And what Britain is allowing with this selective lockdown does not prevent the virus spreading.  The lackadaisical approach shown by the so-called government and the bumbling blond buffoon must translate itself into a similar attitude from the general population – and that mean more death.

     I simply do not believe that my fellow countrymen are hand-washing with the sort of manic intensity that we are in Catalonia.  I am not convinced that people are properly afraid, and are taking the seemingly neurotic precautions that are necessary to stem the advance of the virus.  And if they don’t then they are making a fatal mistake.  And they do not realize just how big and bad this pandemic can still get.  Easily.

I have been making some use of the third floor terrace.  There have been one or two days when you could kid yourself that it was sun-bathing weather.  And it doesn’t take a great deal to convince me of that.  We are lucky that we have a terrace that is big enough for a couple of loungers and a table and chairs, we have small gardens front and rear, and a communal pool. 

     What about those people who live in a small flat in the centre of Barcelona or another city?  Most Catalans live in compact flats, and if you have a couple of kids, then you soon begin to see why a great deal of normal life is conducted outside the home!

A friend has sent me a list of MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) about Art History and I am strangely drawn to trying one of them; especially as they are all free as well!

Always something to do!

And, if you want something else to read, might I suggest my new poetry blog at smrnewpoems.blogspot.com

 

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 5

How comforting instantly created routine can be!

     I have decided, after my exploratory ‘walk’ around the pool yesterday that my day will start with a ten-minute walk before breakfast.  Before I venture out I will set the robot hoover going and when I come back I will have my cup of tea, my bowl of muesli and sit down and complete the Guardian quick crossword on my mobile phone and, after that is complete, I will change the hoover to mop and send the robot on its way for the second part of the cleaning process.

     As a special domestic treat for myself today, I loaded the dishwasher with dishes that Toni had not put away and also loaded the dryer with clothes left from yesterday in the washing machine and then loaded up the washing machine for its next wash.

     It is now almost time for my next little ‘walklet’ around the pool as I am determined to get in half an hour of mild exercise a day.  And then there is the writing.

     My main blog is up and running again, and I am beginning to feed my poetry blog (smrnewpoems) with description and individual works.  There is also my young adult novel with the working title of The Standings, that has not progressed very far beyond a few notes and scraps of writing, but this incarceration is the ideal time to ‘get a move on’ and put something more substantial down on paper.

     And then there is the Catalan.  I have convinced myself that it is unlikely that my class in Catalan will start up again before September and therefore I have done nothing to compensate for time lost or in the process of being lost.  This is not a logical attitude and Toni’s casual question, “How much Catalan have you done?” yesterday was a needful prod.  I have done something, but not enough to register: you can hardly count passing glances at work completed as actual study!  This would be the perfect time to do the graft that I find so hard with languages except my own!

     And the lino printing.  Apart from the fact that none of Toni’s family knows what I am talking about when I witter on about lino printing, I did, fifty (sic.) years ago find reasonable satisfaction in cutting and printing and I do now have the material to get going again.  And I will.  And furthermore I will post a reproduction of what I produce to show that I have done more than merely write about actions!  I can see that what I am doing here is what I do in my notebook, that is, write little notes to myself to get action rather than words.  We shall see whether it works.

I have now been for my second ‘walklet’ and feel smug and superior – which is good going for a total so far of twenty odd minutes of slow walking, but, following the Rees motto, “Anything is better than nothing.”

To our horror, our noisy reconstructing neighbours returned to the worksite (or the house adjoined to us) and did a few exploratory thumps on wall, ceiling or floor just to let us know that enforced isolation can be made even worse by inconsiderate hammer wielders! 

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS – DAY 4

It has taken a pandemic to shut our bloody neighbours’ noisy reconstruction efforts.  The silence of their absence is absolutely delightful, though it doesn’t compensate for the intolerable thumpings that have characterised their reformations.

     In fact, we now have a silent cordon sanitaire as the neighbours on one side only use their house for the summer holidays and on the other side, the reformations make it unliveable for the owners while the work is going on and the lockdown restrictions make it inaccessible.  If we could only cause the terminal laryngitis of the bloody rat dog of another neighbour, we could even be sort of content.

     Traffic that passes us on the main road is at a minimum and there are few planes overhead.  For Spain, our surroundings are disturbingly silent – not for Britain perhaps, but for us, certainly!

I am missing my daily swim and am getting progressively more worried about the lack of exercise that I am taking.  Normally I would use my bike to get to my swim and back and then use the bike for a few shopping trips or whatever, so this enforced inaction is grating.  This afternoon I was driven to Take Measures.  I ventured out to the communal swimming pool and made a number of stately circuits of the pool leaning on my walking-stick.  I was alone with only the sound of a howling kid to keep me company.  Not literally, this one was in a flat next to our houses and I dread to think what his parents must be going through, his being too young fully to understand why his little life has been so suddenly cramped!  Good luck to them.  I did manage to get to my step goal according to my watch, so I must be very unsettled around the house!

     I will have to make circling of the pool a daily chore because it doesn’t look as though the relaxation of the restrictions on our movement are going to be any time soon.

     If the UK is going to shut the schools and cancel end of year examinations, it doesn’t really look too positive that our little class in Catalan is going to be restarted before Easter.  In theory our class could restart on the 30^th of this month, but that looks remote.  I think that it is unlikely that our class will restart this academic year, but who knows what will actually occur.

The PP and PSOE King (he was created by an agreement between the two political parties and nothing was put to the people) made a broadcast last night.  He said nothing about the continuing scandal that engulfs him and his elephant shooting father about off-shore accounts and kickbacks.  But his shameless broadcast did give the opportunity for right thinking people to show their disgust at the corruption by banging our saucepans.  It is wonderful how much penetrating sound is created by the simple application of wooden spoon to saucepan bottom!  The drive for an independent enquiry into the behaviour of the so-called king and his even more so-called emeritus king father continues.  The first call for an enquiry has been rejected on what I think are obviously spurious legal trickery grounds, but the parties of the real left are not letting a single obstacle stand in their way and are trying again.

     I think that the royal family in Spain has lost a great deal of popular support.  The antics of the king ‘emeritus’ towards the end of his reign before he was forced, by a surge of public disgust, to abdicate really did damage the prestige of the family.  The scandals that have involved other members of the family with consequent jail time have not helped.  I am sure that politicians will not put the continuation of the royal family to a public vote, but if they did, I think that the royal family would loose.  I think it is also getting closer and closer with the British version too, and when QE2 finally dies, the sobering prospect of Charles III will concentrate the minds of a large number of erstwhile monarchists towards the republican cause.  I hope.

I have started putting drafts of my most recent poems on smrnewpoems and that gives me the incentive to write more.  That came out as seeming to be more of a threat than an invitation to read!  But I assure you it is the former.

Toni is getting a trifle stir crazy with not going out, and it has only been four days!  Well, that four days is my computation.  Toni says that last weekend of Saturday and Sunday is actually counted in the lockdown, but I assumed that the lockdown was from Monday of this week.  Toni was with his mother on the Saturday and he came back to Castelldefels on Sunday afternoon, so his time in lockdown is questionable.  I am feeling quite chipper about my enforced detention at home, and I have done a quantity of writing: if nothing else confinement does concentrate the writing impulse. 

    

     Long may it continue.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 3

OK, I admit it.  It only took me until Day 2 of the Lockdown to binge watch episodes of The Good Place on Netflix.  So much for strength of character and finding more culturally respectable resources to keep me occupied.  I have, however, given myself a little cultural leeway in my watching by asserting that the whole series is predicated on John Paul Sartre’s observation that “Hell is other people” and therefore I feel morally justified in watching.

     For those of you who don’t know about this series (even though I am now on Season 4!), it stars Ted Hanson and its central idea is that four people die and go to what they assumed is Heaven, but in fact it is a truly devilish new torment where they have actually been chosen to inflict torment on each other in what they think are perfect surroundings, their own discomfort at not being entirely satisfied in what they believe is heaven is another part of their torture.  It is a comedy and it ranges from slapstick to fairly sophisticated verbal humour, and I am slightly addicted.  Ever so slightly.  I wonder what other well established series I will ‘discover’ during this immolation!

I very much appreciate the messages from friends and relatives who have responded to the international news of the Catalan lockdown by sending us their concern.  I think that it will not be long before we in Catalonia are sending similar messages of support to those countries that are just starting the process that will inevitably lead to their own particular lockdowns. 

     Who really knows how effective the measure put in place are actually going to be?  We really are in a situation where we in the so-called developed world have not been since the Spanish Flu of just over a century ago.  That pandemic was characterised by lies and disinformation – how unlike our present times, and yes, I am being ironic, and yes, I am looking at you Trump!  Spain was one of the few countries to be open about the infection and consequently got the country labelled with the virus, though it is certain that Spain was not the country in which the virus originated.  Well, it is still relatively early days; we wait to see how the situation will develop.

I wrote another poem yesterday and I must start putting my new poems on my other blog [smrnewpoems.blogspot.com] together with a commentary about their genesis – I do, after all, have time to do it!

     After a moment of brief panic this morning, I found the notes that I had made for the poem on memory that has taken so much time.  There have been a few false starts with this one and one major re-think, but I am still convinced that there is a central idea worth working on and so I will continue to scribble my way through a few more sheets before I let the concept go.  When I have a draft approaching reasonableness, I will put it on the smrnewpoems site as well.  If nothing else, I intend to make this enforced isolation an opportunity for as much writing as possible!

     With other chapbooks that I have produced, I have always tried to add illustrations to them.  Sometimes this has been via the kind collaboration of friends and sometimes alone.  I enjoy photography and I have sometimes added photos to the poetic mix.  Being confined to a single house poses its own challenges when considering illustration, but it is one that I hope I can rise to.  I think this is a time to find those telling details to be the subject matter of my lens – there isn’t another option, so again it will be interesting to see how that idea develops through the weeks.

I’ve now watched the whole of The Good Place, some 40 episodes, but without advertising intervals and the introductions you get through then fairly quickly.  I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed them, though the concept was getting a little thin by the end and the eventual conclusion was welcome.

SM el Rey was making a speech to the nation in response to the allegations of financial corruption by his father and himself regarding illegal kickbacks and the foundation of offshore accounts.  At 9 pm when the Bourbon was making his statement people around Spain, and certainly here in Catalonia opened their windows and banged wooden spoons against saucepans as a (traditional) noisy sign of their disgust at the grubby machinations of the royal family.  It will be interesting to the see the response of our attenuated government and the usually slavishly loyal press in Spain.

Viva la Republica!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 2 (First forray)

One of those characteristically Castelldefels brightly-dull days where the sun has not appeared, but it is certainly near or thereabouts.  At least it isn’t raining, so we can put the continuation of the Pathetic Fallacy behind us.

     On the positive side, the poem about wasps has developed into something approaching a working draft, so there is something to be said for toiling at home when escape is not an option.  Now comes the really hard work of looking through the draft and being as critical as possible about what works and what doesn’t.  I find the structure of a poem the most taxing.  After all it is easy for the person who has written it to sense the scaffolding of sense that produced it, but it is much more problematical for those who only read the finished poem to sense all of the underlying thought that has been stripped away!  I will give it a couple of days and then try and read it with new eyes.

As I have given a title of ‘Day 2’ to this post, I am obviously trying to emulate my experiences while being in hospital and producing something approaching a Diary or commentary of my experiences. 

     But, and it’s a bit ‘but’ – my experiences in hospital were extraordinary: I was in a new environment; the experiences were unique for me; I was quite seriously ill; I underwent a whole series of medical interventions etc., Each day was a revelation as new things were done to me, using a variety of exotically technological machinery with a variety of medical personnel in different locations.  There were the reactions of friends and relations, the way in which my life was suddenly taken out of the ordinary and catapulted into the extraordinary: it was a life-changing experience.

     Is being in lockdown in your own house an equivalent?  The whole point of the experience is that I will not be meeting new people, going to new places, or experiencing technology that is new and foreign.  Everything will be domestic in the true sense of the word, because what is in my house now is what I will be utilizing to keep myself (and Toni) sane during the period of my incarceration.

     As the Emperor of Digression, I have never found that the lack of ostensible material has hindered me from discourse.  I am reminded of a piece of wisdom from my father, “No holiday has ever been too long for me!” where my dad was intimating that only a person with little innate intelligence would be bored by of the offer of free time.  In the same way, the imposition of House Arrest in the interest of health could be viewed in the same way.  Material to engage an active mind is always all around you, so fifteen days of only having to rely on an extensive physical library, free access to the Internet and Social Media, gardens back and front and a south facing terrace can hardly be described as hardship.

     I am on the cusp of the age where it is advised that one should emulate the actions of Simon Stylites but without the expansiveness of an open column top to live out your existence.  And, depending on which authorities you take as your guide, the exclusion will last for anything up to three or four months – which, according to my calculations would give you a free month of summer sunshine to enjoy before the re-emergence of the reinvigorated virus in the autumn sweeps you away.  But what do I know about such things! 

      Whatever, it does appear that we are going to be forced on to our own resources, though as I have indicated above, that means something rather different from the circumstances that were faced by fourteenth century folk trying to escape the plague, or indeed seventeenth century people trying to flee the Black Death or any of the later scourges inflicted on mankind.  Modern technological folk have the resources of almost infinite knowledge to draw on, libraries of digital books and concert after concert of whatever music takes your fancy.  Although I do not participate myself, I should imagine that half the world is, even as I type, engaged in some form of armed conflict via their computers, and I am sure that the makers of Fortnite and their like must be raking it in!

Our group of houses has a communal pool and I have just noticed that the pool person from the firm engaged to service the things is at present using the long stemmed net to clear the water of the organic debris that has been floating on the surface.  The middle of March for an open-air pool is not a key time for use, and keeping an unused item ready for use during a national emergency does not seem to me to be a priority.  But it does make me thing about the workers who are doing the skimming.

     I am sure that pool cleaners are not the highest paid workers in the area and I wonder what sort of provision for enforced non-working their employers have made?  Are these workers in the position that they have to work because staying at home without any money coming in is not an option for them and their families?  And if that is true for this particular section of the economy, just how many other workers are in a similar position.

     It has been put forward that the Blond Buffoon only “suggested” that large-scale entertainments and pubs and clubs close down rather than have “ordered” them to have closed down is because with a governmental order, businesses affected could then sue the government for compensation.  In Spain and in Catalonia the government has ordered sequestration and, given the usually precarious economies of bars and restaurants and especially seasonal businesses that we get here in the sea side resort of Castelldefels, there must be a frightening number of enterprises that are looking at financial ruin is this state of emergency goes on for a long time.  Governments have talked about financial help, but I expect that the only real, efficient and quick financial help will be given to big business and the banks and the smaller folk will have to do the best they can.

     It is hardly surprising if small businesses look at how governments have acted in the past and decided that they only chance for survival is to work as long as possible – hence the slow pole dipping of the pool person I can see from where I type.

As if to make my life just a little more enjoyable, last Saturday the house intercom squawked into life and I was informed that a package was due for delivery.  This turned out to be an imposing gadget and something that I had ordered from Kickstarter or the like ages ago.  I am now the proud possessor of a Narwal robot hoover and mop!  The gleaming white machine lives in what looks like a squat clinical white plastic bin with a rectangular opening at the base for the machine to recharge and clean itself.  The USP of this particular form of multi-cleaner is that during the ‘mopping’ stage the thing regularly comes back to base to clean itself and then go charging off again.

     As we have tile floors throughout this machine is ideal for our needs – and my particular need not to do hoovering and mopping!

     Toni has been out to get bread and some food and found the roads strangely empty and the queues in the supermarket not as large as he had expected.  We are now well stocked; the only things that we lack are facemasks.  I have ordered some, but they are not expected until early next month!

     The sun is now making a weak attempt to shine and so I think that I will go out onto the terrace on the third floor and take some unaccustomed fresh air (air made a damn sight fresher by the lack of traffic on the roads) and a little sunshine.

      This is the life?

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 1 (and it rained too!)

LOCKDOWN – DAY 1

A miserable day to start our two week sojourn in the house!  The Pathetic Fallacy is alive and well and living in the Castelldefels climate today!

     We have not been outside once, which is hardly surprising for the first day.  Come back in a week or so and find out how well we are doing then!  That’s four sentences so far, and I’ve used exclamation mark in 75% of them; if I am using them up as such a prodigal rate on the first day of our incarceration then what on earth am I going to be using as punctuation by the end of the fortnight?

     As is to be expected we have been glued to the news broadcasts and we have watched them with different degrees of exasperation.  What does the term ‘lockdown’ actually mean?  As far as the metro in Madrid is concerned then it appears to mean nothing, nothing at all.  We have been shown pictures of crowded trains filled with people ostentatiously not the regulation metre apart: each person should be (ideally) in an empty circle of two metres diameter, or (even more ideally) not travelling at all.

     We have also seen pictures of factories in industrial areas seeming working perfectly normally.  Normally in anything by normal circumstances.  It is, however, difficult to take restrictions with anything approaching seriousness when shops that have been exempt form closure include tobacco shops, hairdressers and lottery outlets!  I will look further into that, as I am more than willing to be shown to be wrong in such muddleheaded exclusions.

     Apart from the noise from the (illegal?) renovations in the house next door, the passing traffic, um, hasn’t.  Planes have not been passing overhead.  People have not been over-keen to play around in their gardens.  It’s too cold for even the hardiest swimmer to venture into the open air pools.  We have felt almost isolated, except of course, with television you are never alone, you are always plugged into the wide, wide world, which brings us to the Internet and Social Media. 

     In the Sixties and the Age of the Telephone, it was only love-sick teenagers who were in constant communication with each other, and that was usually a single two-way link.  Now with the ease of Twitter, and emails and all the other forms of wordiness that are available to a tech-savvy isolate, you need never feel alone.  Be alone?  Yes.  But never lack the comforting little sounds that your mobile phone makes to let you know that you are the recipient of yet another breathless, quasi-aphoristic, random thought that lets you know that Others are there.  Not here, but certainly there.

     During the Great Snows of 1963-64 in Cardiff when even traffic on the Newport Road was stopped, we did feel trapped.  We did have neighbours, and there was the landline phone, but we were forced on our own resources.  I can remember that it was then that we frantically retuned the radio to a local station to find out exactly what was going on in our own location.  There was no sense of danger, just of pleasurable otherness in the uniform whiteness of deep, deep snow.

     Today is different, today is not the same: the roads are clear, if wet.  There is nothing to see.  We have to take on trust that we are in danger, that people are dying, that the threat is all around us.

     People are generally well stocked with necessary supplies, indeed with the jealously horded stash of toilet rolls that each inhabitant must surely possess, we could pass the time of our lockdown by pooing our time away!  People seem to have lost the concept of how much of anything is needed for a two week survival IN YOUR OWN HOME and catered (if that is the word) for a season’s roughing it in an excavated hole in the garden.  When we were doing Tudor History in school, we were constantly being acquainted with the phrase “The King should live of his own” in other words be self-sufficient and not ask for the imposition of taxes.  Given the contents of fridge, freezer and cupboard, I think that most people could “live of their own” for a time longer than the projected two weeks that we will be in lockdown.  But, the panic buying has emptied shelves and I wonder just how well supplied the supermarkets will be when we finally venture out to get essentials.

     I have stocked up on individually wrapped, calorie reduced, grain enhanced break squares that appear to have a shelf life of god alone knows how long, but it isn’t really bread under the meaning of the act.  If we want fresh break then, logically, we have to go and get it on a daily basis, but I am not sure that we want to do that.  And if we don’t do it, we can survive.  And that goes for a lot else too.

     I wonder when we will go out.  How long we will be able to remain cloistered and allegedly ‘safe’?

     Time will tell.

     And time has brought the rain to an end, but it’s now night and no chance of sitting out on the balcony and taking in the non-existent sun.

     If today has given me opportunity to reflect then I have to say that none of cogitations are in any way positive.  In both my countries, Catalonia and Britain, the situation seems to be getting worse and the pronouncements regarding my age group seem to be verging on the catastrophic.  The suggestion is, depending on how you define the age at which people become ‘most at risk’, that people over 65 should consider putting themselves in isolation for something like three to four months!  It would appear than my missed Catalan examination is going to be the ‘one that got away’!

     I fail to see that a mere two weeks is going to see the Covid-19 peaking in Catalonia, and even if it did ‘peak’ there would still be danger from the tail of the infection.  I think that those experts who say that we have to be in a protective situation ‘for the long run’ are probably correct and that this outbreak is going to have a society changing impact.

     And then there’s Brexit!  What a stupid, self-harming irrelevance that foolish piece of nostalgic nationalism now seems!

     Well Day 1 (or Day 2 or 3 by Toni’s reckoning) is now over and bed beckons.  One of the many good things about the way I go to bed is that, whatever concerns I have waking, when I put my head on the pillow, I sleep.  I might wake in the morning with a crystal clarity of understanding of why my sleep should have been disturbed, but when I sleep, I sleep.  So, oblivion and forgetfulness call! 

     Good night!

The New World

After much debate with myself, I finally forced myself from my seductive bed and started the preparations for my early morning swim.  These preparations take the form of preparing for very little: a quick rinse and a brushing of my teeth and then off to the pool where a later shower and shave can be done after the swim.

     As this was the weekend (the day after my non-examination for Catalan) the pool opens an hour later, so I do have what amounts to a technical lie-in.  Bike to pool and the gates still locked.  This is nothing new, as the gates are opened on the dot of the hour rather than before.  What was more disturbing was that the lights in the café were not on.  And there were no other early swimmers waiting.  Ominous.

     Suspecting the reason for this situation, I decided to continue my bike ride down the road for a little jaunt and then see what was happening on my return when the appointed hour for the opening would have passed.

     Nothing!  Obviously the place was not opening.  Nothing daunted I decided to make a virtue of necessity and go home via one of my ‘bike rides’ to Gavá.  Not only does this ride have the advantage of a bike lane virtually all the way, but it is also next to the sea.

     On my return home I texted Toni (who is in Terrassa for the weekend) telling him the news that the pool was closed.

     Last night Toni had texted me saying that we needed to stock up on food and essential supplies, but as he had the car the re-provision was up to him.  What we both did not fully comprehend was that the situation here in Catalonia had taken a more serious turn.

     This morning after checking various news outlets and seeing an explanation of the Generalitat’s new orders, I realized that Catalonia has taken Draconian measures to combat Covid-19.

     Shops (apart from food shops and medical supplies shops) are now closed, as are gyms, pools, theatres, museums, clubs, day centres, bars restaurants, libraries, schools, colleges, universities, cinemas, sporting events.  Travel is not recommended.  Basically we are confined to our homes except for essential purchases.  For the next two weeks (at least) life in Catalonia is going to be very different and the Internet is awash with lists of films, books, and TV series to read and watch to keep some form of sanity during our incarceration!

     On the other hand, yesterday saw the arrival of another of my ‘presents’ from Kickstarter.  The wonderful thing about these start-up sites is that if you support them you have paid for what you are going to receive so far in advance that when the object of your purchase finally arrives it seems to be sort-of ‘free’!  Don’t know it, this is the sort of logic that has kept me level(ish) for most of my life!

     My latest acquisition is going to drive Toni up the wall.  It is a combined robot cleaner that can do the normal Hoovering, but this little beauty can also mop!  To enable this it has a sort of home station that looks like a clinical waste bin and contains the charging station and the reservoir of water and the ‘dirty water’ tank.  And it works!  The only thing that doesn’t seem to be operational is the app that stubbornly refuses to open for me.

     Why, you may well ask, do you need an app. to hoover and mop?  But, there again, to ask such a question indicates that the last ten years have passed you by.  What doesn’t need an app these days?  And, I understand that the machine is able to map the rooms to facilitate optimum cleaning, and I further understand that the app will allow me to order the machine to do all sorts of things that I will probably never be competent enough to understand let alone operate!  But if it exists, then I want it.

     The only thing about the machine that I do not like is the fact that I have to change the brushes to the mops manually.  This is not a difficult operation, it takes seconds, but the fact that I have to do it somehow lessens the robotic delight in the whole enterprise!  But only a bit.

     It strikes me, as I sit here in the living room typing this, that I am delighting in yet another Kickstarter purchase as I write.

     As I was having my post bike ride cup of tea and while checking through my emails and deleting those of no interest, I noted that Amazon has sent me a message the aim of which was to make me feel better about being a paid up member of Amazon Prime, by reminding me that umpteen pieces of music were mine for the hearing at no extra cost to that which I had already paid.

     Whenever I go on a music website or music streaming site or whatever, my test of its worth is to check how many pieces by Carl Nielsen it has.  So, having duly put in Nielsen’s name I looked at the selection it produced – and was reasonably impressed.  I think it is more than likely that in Castelldefels I have the most extensive collection of Nielsen’s music – I fear there would not be that many competitors – so I can look at offerings from sites with an informed eye!

     I could not of course resist listening to a selection and rapidly became irritated with the excellent, but limited reception offered by my phone so I decided to get a loudspeaker.  But not just any old wi-fi loudspeaker (and I have a mini Bose, amongst others) but the most recent purchase from Kickstarter (at least in audio, my mop is the most recent) and that is a pair of headphones.  Wi-fi of course, but the USP of these is that the earpieces of the headphones can be twisted outwards and they transform into speakers!  Turn them back inwards, into their more conventional configuration and they become headphones – and are thus able to counteract the noise from the noisy transformation of the house next door!

     Ah excessive technology, what would I do without you!

Relief?

Today is the Day of the Catalan Examination!

After some laconically frenetic revising last night, I felt that I was reasonably confident about being able to flannel my way through yet another examination.  My piece of (memorized) writing (suitable for all examinable occasions) was almost in my personal brain RAM; my knowledge of accents was insecurely in place; my ability to translate was its usual rocky self – in other words, I was prepared!

     I eschewed my customary early morning swim in favour of some desultory looking over my notes (and completing the Guardian quick crossword, because, yes) and resentfully and fearfully girding my cycling loins (almost literally, the cross bar on my bike is set intimidatingly high) and setting forth to be examined.

     And the school was closed because of Corvid-19.  Irony, which is ever my companion in arms, strikes again!  To be fair, I am not sure whether I am relieved or annoyed.  Admittedly, I did not want to take the exam because of the almost inevitable ignominy that awaited me on the handing back of the papers; yet, on the other hand the exam is merely delayed and, frankly, I do not see myself getting stuck-in to more revision just because one of The Horsemen has gifted me a little more time.  My indolence in such things extends to encompass any temporal largesse!

     The Generalitat (the government of Catalonia) had issued statements to the effect that schools would be closed, but when I phoned my particular institution yesterday I was told that they simply didn’t really know.  Yes, they would be shut from Monday of next week, but tomorrow, who could say?  Well, say they didn’t, and it was left to me and my trusty cycle to make a fruitless journey through strangely unpopulated streets to my deserted place of education.  The silence was even more pronounced because the infants and junior school that adjoins our establishment was also closed – and believe you me, that place is never, ever silent.  Not even close to it, whatever time of the day you pass by! 

     My arrival there reminded me of the time I emerged from Westminster tube and instantly felt that something was wrong, but couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was.  Then it struck me: I was looking at the Houses of Parliament in silence.  No traffic, no sound.  A moment later a policeman approached me and suggested that I return whence I came, immediately, down the steps and away.  There had been a bomb scare and the environs of parliament had been cleared.  It remains in my memory as a deeply unsettling memory, as does the memory of scuttling away down the steps and getting on the next tube out and away!

     This time there was sound and there were people, just fewer than usual.  As a Brit you sometimes get suckered by the fact that many shops open at 10.00 am and not at the more usual earlier hours of the UK.  As my class starts at 9.00 am ordinarily closed shops can look more sinister than they actually are.  And did!

     But, the important point is that my linguistic reputation gets to survive for a little longer, though I am aware that reality will catch up with me eventually!

The house next door continues to be the source of sound with roller blinds being installed and the threat of building blocks in the front garden waiting as a concrete reminder (see what I did there!) of sonic tension to come.  They have been working on the house since before Christmas and there is no end in sight!

Talking of ‘ends in sight’, I don’t know if it is tempting fate to say it, but some of the containment measures taken by governments appear to be working.  The outbreak in China might be in the process of being contained; Korea has had a drop in cases, it might be working!  Britain has been criticized as doing too little too late, but with Conservatives (especially the current toxic breed) presently in power, what can you expect?

     There has been, we have been told, no case of Covid-19 in Castelldefels, and the precautions that are currently being taken will limit our exposure.  It is a pity that the leader of the free world and the leader of the UK are both characters without integrity and scruple, but we have to work with what we have.  One can help thinking that the chant “LBJ! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today!” that haunted (rightly) the warmongering president will resurface after this crisis develops and people start looking for people to blame.  In a way Trump has forestalled this process in his shocking (for reasonable people) address to the American people when he referred to a ‘foreign virus’ and started blaming the EU, while at the same time lauding his own financial ‘policy’.  He truly is repulsive!

     In the tranquillity of my own living room, with the sun shining through the windows and the comfortingly domestic sound of the washing machine from the kitchen, it is easy to think the coronavirus crisis (should those words have capital letters?) as far away as the other plagues, rather than something on our doorsteps waiting for entry.  The measures being taken are unprecedented in my experience, and they give a weighty pause for thought.  Though, having said that, I cannot say that the crisis has changed the way I live yet: the cancelled lessons are the first ‘real’ effect.  The Liceu has a new production of Lohengrin, and with the new restrictions on large gatherings they had said that the first few performances would be cancelled, however the performance I am scheduled to attend is at the end of March, just after the ban comes to an end.  I thought that my luck was in, but an announcement yesterday informed us that all performances had been cancelled.  Museums, art galleries, theatres and sporting events have been cancelled, or games will have to be played behind closed gates.  So I am affected by the restrictions, but can continue to live in virtually normality.  It remains to be seen whether or not the present restrictions will be sufficient to contain the virus, one hopes so!

    

    Meanwhile, time gained must be put to good use.  I am now drafting out two poems: the memory poem continues to be elusive and it has been joined by a poem about wasps – well, I thought I would branch out a bit from flies!

Flight to the library!

Having flounced out of the house because of the intolerable noise of the renovations next door I made my way (by bike) to the town library – an imposing modern building with desks (and an electricity supply) for those wanting to work.

     Finding the socket was the first problem when I had found a desk heartbreakingly close to the library’s collection of books on painting.  This is usually the kiss of death for any work that I might do as the lure of the lavishly illustrated books is usually an irresistible temptation for me.  I have however found the fortitude to stay my eyes from the luxury of paint and have stuck to some sort of travail.

     Admittedly, I have not (yet) done any of the work that ostensibly brought me to the library in the first place, but work of a sort has been done.  I have written three stanzas for the memory poem and generally considered that the rest of the writing that I have done for it is woefully inadequate and simply un-poetic.  The ideas might be interesting, but the way in which I have written them is too prosaic for my taste – and it doesn’t sound right when I say the lines!

     I have, therefore decided to rest that particular effort and turn to my languishing blog.  For someone who professes to be a writer, I sometimes evince a totally reprehensible disinclination to practice my art. 

     However, when it comes to displacement activity, I am truly one of the Greats.  Hence, my fingers pattering along the keyboard of my trusty MacBook Air.  This has become the machine that I take to public places where it might be stolen, because my Dell is simply too expensive to be put into a position of possible pilferation and so stays largely unused at home.  That logic is not entirely convincing, but it will have to remain as the explanation for my actions.

     In the way that irony follows me around, no sooner had I sat down and plugged myself into the power supply and typed the first words, than a whole horrendousness of children broke into their atavistic caterwauling outside the library and a group of public street drummers started playing their instruments.  But that sound was muted through plate glass and concrete and, anyway, the sound of rhythmic beats and young humans in full yell is nothing like so debilitating as the bone reverberating sound of workmen mindlessly (to the listener) hammering a party wall that amplifies and encourages sonic augmentation.

   Well, the sounds soon stopped and I only had to contend with the incessant conversation of the librarians at reception whose conversations fill the ample open stairways in the centre of the building.  On the other hand they add a touch of humanity to a space that can sound funereal in the total absence of human talk.  And silence can be distracting too!

Now on to the reason for my being here in the first place: the looming Catalan examination.  I should leave that sentence as a sort of gateway to learning, and stop typing and get on with the hard work of forcing Catalan concepts into my antagonistically resilient brain.  So I will.  After I have been to the loo.

    Back at my machine and, if you are wondering why I have not got down to the real work that I am supposed to be doing, then I will just say that when I went to the loo, I actually left my MacBook Air (open and on) at my desk.  Unattended.  Such is one of the advantages of being in a civilized place like Castelldefels.  I merely followed the example of the gentleman at the end of our row of desks who did the same.  Perhaps I should not be saying this in my blog, it is surely an open invitation to opportunistic thieves who prowl about seeking whom they might devour.  But now, work, Catalan!

And I actually did do some vocabulary work.  I am still confused by the accents which, as I have said before, go in all directions and attach themselves to more letters than I have heretofore encountered.  Still, some letters only have the accents going in one direction, so that should make my work easier.  As long as I can remember which letters they are.  And, of course, the direction!  Well, I have two and a half days left.  Think what can be achieved!  Even by me.

     Now I am going on to the more problematic element in the exam: the writing.  We know that we have a choice of two topics: one connected to our homes and the other an email to a friend.  As you can get away with more lists in the ‘home’ option (thereby mitigating the need for over many verbs, adjectives and adverbs) I think I might give that one a go.  I have recently learned the Catalan word for ‘nightmare’ which is ‘malson’ and I am bloody determined to work that in somewhere to describe the work going on next door.

      I have to admit that I am adept at constructing pieces of writing in translation which are heavy on the use of all and any language reference books that I can get my hands on, and yet make the final piece of writing sound like a convincing attempt by an enthusiastic, if inept, learner!  It’s a sort of skill – but not one much called for.

     The trick I need for next Friday and the exam, is to have a store of key phrases that will lift my ‘listy’ vocab-heavy stodge into something a little more interesting and lively.  All I am looking for is a pass.  Just a pass.  Please.