LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 35 – Sunday, 19th APRIL

It’s raining. 

     I am disinclined to go on my circuits of the communal swimming pool in the pouring rain. 

     I am further depressed by the reading in the Guardian about Goblin Gove’s typically mealy-mouthed, unconvincing response to a series of allegations in The Sunday Times that the Convalescing Clot missed five consecutive emergency meetings of COBRA in the build up to the Covid-19 crisis and that the government shipped PPE to China in February. 

     That would have covered the period when our part-time Prime Minister was hidden away in Chequers, a prime minister who notoriously “didn’t work weekends” according to an unnamed senior adviser!  Once Bullingdon Club always Bullingdon Club: the lazy sense of entitlement of the rich and the privileged; let the lesser breeds without the law do the hard graft while the Johnson jonson sets about adding another child to the unnumbered brood.

     I am more than prepared to believe that the lingering poison of Brexit mixed with the euphoria of the Conservative right wing after the crushing electoral victory led the ‘government’ fatally to mismanage a coherent approach to the Covid-10 crisis. 

     The typical Tory inhumanity of the ‘herd immunity’ approach to dealing with the crisis, complacently accepting hefty deaths will be remembered, together with the astonishing U-Turn when it was suddenly abandoned in favour of approaches that more nearly matched virtually every other government in the world.

     The position of the Health Secretary is becoming more and more untenable – or at least it should be becoming more and more untenable as more and more avoidable deaths will be laid as a memorial to his incompetence.  Yes, efficient supply is difficult in times of crisis, especially in a cash and equipment and personnel starved institution like the NHS that is in its present state because of the cruel austerity practiced by the Tory government for the last decade. 

     The empty platitudes of support that Tory ministers mouth for Health Workers are cruelly ironic given their attitudes towards the NHS over the past years.  These are the same vile folk who cheered after a pay increase for Nurses was defeated in the House of Commons!  They disgust me.

     And, as I typed that last bitter sentence, the rain outside has grown appreciably heavier.  There is nothing like the Pathetic Fallacy to cement misery in place!

In an effort to escape the gnawing resentment contained in the paragraphs above, I have turned to something more creative.  My chapbook of poems written in Holy Week called Coasts of Memory.  I have been working on illustration and made a decision to use only photographs taken within the lockdown confines.  This means that the house, the garden, the communal pool and what I can see from the terrace and windows are all fair game for my camera!

     I spent yesterday evening playing around with the raw material that I had and started placing individual pictures in what I considered to be appropriate places in the chapbook.  I am constantly frustrated by petty mechanical problems with images and sometimes it is a case of printing what fits rather than fitting what I want to print!

     There is also the problem of he disappearing fonts.  I save what I do fairly religiously; I have been caught out too often and too painfully when documents develop a missing life of their own not to remember to save.  But I am often frustrated by the way in which complex documents do not always retain formatting. 

     The latest example of this concerns by choice of a fairly exotic fort used as a title.  This font did not transfer when I sent the document via email rather than copying it onto a memory stick - in spite of my avowal of the very latest in technology, I can be whimsically old-school from time to time!  The font is space greedy, so when it transfers as something altogether more prosaic it means that everything else on the page is out of place and that has a domino effect on all the pages afterwards.  As I was going to use that particular version of the book for detailed editing, it might turn out to be self-defeating if I have to redo everything with the ‘correct’ font in place in the final document.  Such things are sent to try me, and at least I can have a direct effect on what I do there, as opposed to whingeing on about what my government is doing or not doing in this crisis!

In the way in which the petty becomes important: Toni is going out to get bread!  An event for which he dresses up like an Inuit and wings the desolate abyss between our home and the bread shop that is a few streets away.  I enjoy the results of these little excursions as we usually have a little treat from the patisserie as well as mere bread – by which alone, one cannot live!

     This time, as well as the bread, Toni is going to attempt to get some chicken from the pollo a last, this will be our first ‘bought in’ meal since the lockin began.  However, if there is a queue, or there are too many people there then the meal will be called off and we will have to settle for the bread.  And treats.

There are increasing accounts in the media of the possibility of no vaccine being produced in the short term, or even ever.  We have the example of AIDS, where, in spite of extensive research over a number of years, we are still without a vaccine.  Treatment for the disease, yes; vaccine no.  That is a very sobering thought.  It means that we will be dealing with the virus as an ever-present threat well after this initial surge is over and it also means that for people in my age group the restrictions are going to last for the foreseeable future. 

     This is a more than depressing thought!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 34 – Saturday, 18th APRIL

 After ‘Moppy’ had done her work; the Guardian Quick Crossword had been completed; my blend of Earl Grey and English Breakfast tea drunk, it was time for my walk, accompanied by the comforting fatuousness of ‘Saturday Live’ on BBC Radio 4.  I also had a purpose other than gentle exercise.  I was looking for raw material to serve as ‘illustration’ for my PIHW Chapbook, Coasts of Memory.

     As I have often bewailed in the past, I have little technical ability in drawing or painting and so I have to rely on photography to get me out of illustrative predicaments.  The situation is made somewhat worse because of the lockdown that obviously restricts my range of subject matter.  I have therefore taken the ‘pleasure in small things’ approach and told myself that I am perfectly capable of finding variety in restriction: from the terrace on the third floor to the far wall of the communal swimming pool, my area of activity might be limited, but it is (I tell myself) rich in illustrative possibilities.  I have therefore taken photos and they await my ruthless editing!

The one shining light of Trump’s ‘Presidency’ is that he is terrified of being a ‘one term’ holder of that office; every other thinking person’s terror is that he should be anything else, after all it is going to be difficult enough to sort out the human, reputational, financial, moral, institutional, legislative, aesthetic and political morass that he will have left after a single term, let alone the horror of his being allowed to play with the USA for an extra four years!

     It is obvious that Trump has decided to stop at absolutely nothing in his aim to retain power and the latest horrific indication of the depths to which he is prepared to sink is evidenced by his encouraging demonstrations against some states’ lockdown restrictions. 

     Trump’s base ‘base’ is essentially rural rather than urban and with his encouragement of the grouping of extreme right sets opposing health and science predicated lockdown, he is hoping for a conflict that he thinks might show him to be the champion of the voice of freedom against those (Democratic) governors who are seeking to repress the true liberties of right thinking Americans to court death and carry guns – and you can scatter as many quotation marks around in that last sentence as your liberal sensibilities dictate!

     That in a time of a catastrophic pandemic the Presidential Egoist can think of fostering something like Civil Disobedience if not Civil War would be unbelievable if it were not Trump.

     On an incidental note: if (please god) Trump is a one-term President, can you see him attending the inauguration of the new Democratic President?  Can you see him visibly handing over power?  What excuse will he make not to attend?  How will he even be able to get through the transition period when he should meet his successor?  If you think back to the intensely embarrassing meetings with Obama when he looked like a naughty schoolboy with a stupidly long tie, what are the ones going to be like with the person who beat him?  My mind finds it difficult to place Trump in any meetings that emphasise his failure to hold on to office.  How can anyone as thinly narcissistic as he bare it?  The thought is something that keeps me warm at nights!

     Talking of narcissists, how long is it going to be that our airwaves are going to be free of the bumbling banter of the virus courter?  He has signally failed to resign because of his dereliction of duty in wilfully becoming infected and I dread to think of the fawning adulation of the gutter press when he bumbles into view, bravely leading our country to destitution and ignominy, after the searing affliction of his virtually self-inflicted illness.

     Meanwhile we have the political chancer, Matt Beckett, the ethic-free (give us a job!) pitiful holder of the Secretary of State for Health portfolio refusing to give straight answers to the almost criminal shortages of PPE for our front line health workers, or indeed anything else of crucial interest to the remaining virus free part of the population of the UK.  I wonder how he is going to convince us that there are 100K tests by the end of the month?  We can dispense with truth, that has never bothered him in the past as he has changed his principles as often as his underwear, so how is he going to square the circle so that he can keep his comfy job.  His past record shows that he is capable of the most egregious U-turns, so I await his contortions.  Resignation will never come easy to one who has swallowed so many of his scruples to get where he is at present.  In some ways it could almost be funny to watch his antics, but people will die because of his incompetence, so smiles will be inappropriate.  Perhaps they might be allowed as long as they are sardonic!

After a fairly glum start to the day there are brief periods now when sunshine is squeezing out from behind the clouds.  There are distinct patches of blue and that bodes well for a sunny later afternoon.  I live in hope.

The PPE situation now seems desperate in the UK.  The weekend is the time when certain medical institutions will run out.  This is an utter disgrace and if it does happen then the Health Minister must resign immediately and the rest of the tossers in the so-called bloody government.  And the fact that worthless trash like IDS and the unutterable David Davis are pontificating about the present crisis after their assiduous cheerleading into the last one over Brexit is more than depressing.

     I am very well aware that trying to get anything like efficiency and normality in a crisis situation is difficult and there has to be leeway for the unexpected, but the necessity for basic supplies is fundamental and that is where this so-called government has failed so signally.  Why are our deaths so high?  Why did we wait so long before instituting the lockdown?  Why are basic materials in short supply?  So many questions to which our political leaders have no real answers.

     Why do we tolerate them?

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 33 – Friday, 17th APRIL

After all my mocking denigration of hapless teachers who fail to come to grips with modern technology, I was hoist by my own arrogant petard.

     This afternoon was the on-line meeting of the ‘delegates’ from our cancelled language classes in Spanish and Catalan.  I don’t really know why I was dragged into this in the first place as I am not a ‘delegate’ but, ever the willing drudge I accepted my responsibilities and offered to join in.

     The meeting was held in Google Meeting and was by invitation, a click on the link and you are there, sort of thing.  That bit went fine, it was when I tried to speak that there were problems, well, one problem: it didn’t work.  My Firefox thingie was apparently obstructing its working and, try as I might, and even by going on to the systems part, I still failed to transmit my voice.

     As the others seemed more than happy to speak in reasonable Spanish I felt that my enforced muteness was something of an advantage for the preservation of my reputation, even if it did little to develop my language skills.

     The end result of this one sided meeting was that we are going to be offered a lesson a week on line, with tasks to complete and if we complete the tasks then we will be able to get our certificates at the end of the course.

     Meanwhile I have to do a little administration in getting our classmates together, explaining and getting information to the teacher.  It will be interesting to see how this all works out, and if I am able to get my microphone working!

The various scandals of the virus continue to frighten.  Now we are told that many hospitals are going to run out of PPE by the weekend in the UK.  The number of tests being carried out are still in the teens of thousands and we are expected to believe that 100k will be carried out in the UK by the end of the month.  The daily press conference in the UK is a time of almost unmitigated depression as politicians steadfastly fail to answer questions of ultimate importance.

     I do not feel that any of the politicians in power are telling us the truth about the real length of the crisis and the real consequences of what is happening now.  It is disturbing, no, not disturbing, more frightening that the UK does not appear to have an exit strategy from the crisis.

     The longer this crisis continues the more disturbed I get about the way that it is being managed.  I do not think a day has gone by when I have felt confident about the people who are making life and death decisions about our future.

     And talking of the future, it can only be a matter of weeks before the Blond Trumpian Mini-Me bumbles his way back into national life and the idiocy of Brexit is added to our woes!

Ah, me!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 32 – Thursday, 16th APRIL

 

Trump, in times of crisis, has his uses.

     It is immensely comforting to know that, at the click of a few buttons one can get the latest up-to-date news concerning the present President of the United States.  And one can also assume that whatever one is likely to read about what the President has done, and certainly about what he has said, it will be something that, with all one’s liberal sensibility, one can reject utterly.  He is (in more telling ways that I had considered before I thought of the comparison) the Apartheid de nos jours.  He is, in his actions, his thoughts and in his speech utterly, bigly, rejectionable.  He is the secular anathema of our times.  He is what we are not.  Simples.

     The most effective showing up of Apartheid was when opponents said to the then South African government, “If you think that Apartheid is the right system; then just follow your own rules!”  The point being, that Apartheid as a corrupt and corrupting system could only work if the rules were bent.  The system was build on lies and therefore it only ‘worked’ by corruption.  It was the same sort of approach that workers used against unreasonable bosses when they ‘worked to rule’, obeying all the petty restrictions that grow up in workplaces and are usually ignored in the service of efficiency and ‘reasonableness’!

     Trump really believes that he has achieved what his little-me British impersonator wanted as a kid, to become ‘King of the World’ and he speaks and acts as though his thoughts are fiats. 

     How well are Americans living in the Trumpian vision of America that he is forging?  Ask the dead.  Ask the jobless.  Ask the hungry.  Ask the sick.  Ask the disenfranchised.  Ask the victims.  Ask the women.  Ask the blacks.  Ask the refugees.  Ask the undocumented.

     Of course you would get a very different picture if you asked billionaires, CEOs, polluters and fascists.

     When is the Republican Party going to recognize that Trump is a dangerous embarrassment and that the stench of their support for a man clearly unsuited to high office will cling to them for the rest of their lives?  Dump him and his pernicious party – as if Trump has any clear idea of what the wider Republican Party was, is, or even stands for!

     But for liberals he is the standard against which they can be measured.  Every day, every bloody day, he says or does something that is quite clearly wrong, and junky-like, every day I am drawn to that section of my on-line Guardian that lets me see and hear his latest outrages against truth, the WHO, China, the EU, decency, the English Language, morality, history, NATO, UNO, postal voting, or whatever else Fox News brings to his attention.

     But Trump has achieved immortality.  His (please god) one term presidency will be written about for the foreseeable future.  As a leading candidate for the worst president ever to be elected (by a minority of the popular vote) his car crash of a presidency will fascinate and appal forever.  His Trump Presidential Library (leave aside the sick irony of that concept) will be packed with books detailing his lies and narcissism and his fatal mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis.  His presidency has rocked the very foundations of The Republic and virtually obliterated the moral force of the USA in the world.  It will be a very long road back from the damage that he has done.  And that road back will be in the aftermath of the virus, and clearly he has none of the qualities necessary to unite and rebuild the country.  His campaign slogan rings hollow and every day it gets more hollow and fatal.

From our tiny section of Castelldefels that we see and hear on a ‘normal’ day, i.e. one during which we do not make any excursions, it is difficult to judge exactly what is going on around us.  But, I suppose that we have become accustomed to picking up smaller details in the repetitive daily life that we have and we use those to flesh out a wide picture of the general response to our continued lockdown.

     To me it seems as if there is greater movement around us, as you might expect when the government has said that construction workers and other non-essential workers can go back to work.

     As we are on a sometime used flight path for Barcelona airport, it is usual for us to have the sound of planes from time to time: we have had none, even though, as far as I know, the airport is still open for some flights.

     We are not on a main road in terms of though traffic so our immediate neighbours own most of the cars that we see.  The most traffic we get is pedestrians walking their dogs, usually illegally as they are far too far from their homes.  There is greater noise of kids, who must be getting beyond stir crazy in their enforced incarceration.

I cannot see any real changing of the lockdown well into June.  And that is a sobering thought.

    

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 31 – Wednesday, 15th APRIL

A sign of the times: I went out for my walk around the pool, no sooner had I started by circuits when the pool person appeared to clean the pine needles and add chemicals to the water.  I did not have my mask (he did) so I went back into the house.  Even though social distancing would have been easy, I did not take the chance.  I can tell myself that it was practical, he is using one of those blower things to sweep up the pine needles and you are likely to get a blast of needle-air if you walk anywhere near – but the real motivation for returning home was justified paranoia!

     I feel that I am on the verge of turning into one of those comedic older persons who takes every opportunity to bring in age in the conversation.  As a member of the generation that is now officially ‘at risk’ during the pandemic, my age has become something of a distinguishing mark, perhaps the next step would be to oblige us all to wear a badge so that crowds part in front of us and a respectful distance is maintained by all the Plague Children who frolic with the virus rather than succumb!

I have attempted, and failed, to get a space to have a home delivery from one of our larger supermarkets.  I am registered and I note that a few years ago I actually did have a home delivery: the delivery and the items that I bought are still there for me to see on my account site.  It makes you wonder about the total amount of information that supermarkets actually have on individuals - so much raw material! Countless billions of bits of information about our buying habits!  Best not to think about it too closely.  Anyway, no matter how sophisticated the collection of data might be, the practical problems of getting a timed space to have a delivery means that the likelihood of not having to risk my physical presence in a shop is small.  God alone knows how you actually get a space, but I will persevere, as I much prefer to do our weekly shop remotely than personally!

My Catalan classes have been stopped since the lockdown (just before we were scheduled to have an examination!) and there seemed to be no real prospect of their continuation before the end of the term, both Easter and Summer, but I have had communications that suggest that some form of remote learning could take place.

     There is to be a meeting of ‘delegates’ in a day or so’s time via Google Meet when the arrangements for the Summer Term are presumably going to be considered.  I do not think that I will be interested in any physical meeting or actual classes until the start of the Autumn Term, and I am not convinced that there will be real gains in any virtual classes in the remainder of this year.  But I wait to be persuaded.

     Our classes are highly subsidised and therefore the financial loss is negligible and can be written off easily.  We had to buy two books for the course: we have completed the exercises in one of them and there are still a number of units to be completed in the other.

     It will be interesting to see what the school offers.  I suppose that the teachers will have to offer something to justify their continued salaries, but remote learning is an entirely different form of teaching from the one to which they are accustomed and for it to be achieved successfully there will be a disproportionate amount of work for the teachers to do as well as coping with the inevitable frustration that comes with new technology.

     In the rough and tumble of an ordinary school the most sophisticated piece of technology that has a reasonable chance of survival in a well-used classroom is the Over Head Projector (OHP) – virtually any time that anything more sophisticated is used it leads to frustrated disaster!  There is much to be said for ‘Chalk and Talk’ as the main way of getting a message across!

Life goes on.  This morning I had notification by the Royal Mail of the new issue of stamps on 7^th of April celebrating The Romantic Poets.  Usually the publicity is some time before the date of issue rather than a week afterwards, but it is encouraging to find that the new stamp issues are going ahead.  It is probably a reflection of the amount of automation in the production that we are allowed to get the stamps.  I collect first day covers and I am sure that no human hand actually touches the stamps, envelope and insert until it is actually put through my letterbox!

     The designs by Linda Farquharson are based on linocuts with an extract from a selection of Romantic poets, including John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, Walter Scott, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Mary Robinson, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, John Keats and Lord Byron.  They form an elegant set and each individual stamp is interesting in its own right – and they look right.  Too often, in my opinion, British stamps try and get too much in what is a tiny space.  I like stamps that make an instant impression and still look like something worth seeing even at a distance when the detail is not clear: these stamps work on both criteria.

     I wonder how many people will actually get to see one of these stamps.  Even in what used to be ‘normal’ times most letters were franked rather than having stamps.  Now, in these ‘abnormal’ times the issuing of a new set of stamps looks like spirited defiance rather than utility.

     Perhaps we should have a special Covid-19 issue with a part of the price going to the NHS.  I will write to the Philatelic Bureau and suggest it.  I wonder if they will reply!

The treatment of old people in Care Homes is rapidly gaining traction in the scandal stakes as the numbers of residents and care workers seem to increase with insufficient care and attention from the government or rather governments as the problem seems to be a common one for Britain and Catalonia.  As usual the cliché that you can judge a society by the way its treats those who are the most at risk seems, yet again, to give our way of life low marks!

     On the other hand I have just returned from my daily trip to the open window of the kitchen to show my appreciation to the front-line staff in the health system and essential services and it is heartening to be part of a chorus of applause!

It appears that Bromo (my name for the PP corrupt ex President of Spain Rajoy) has habitually been breaking lockdown and going for his habitual ‘quick walking’ odd hobby sport outside the house whenever he feels like it.  He has been reported by his neighbours.  Fine the bastard, at least that way we can get some of the money back that his corrupt party stole from us during his disgraceful time in power.

Always a good thing to end with a rant!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 30 – Tuesday, 14th APRIL

We may be in uncharted territory now, where the rigid restrictions on lockdown have been eased for certain businesses to open even though we are still in the crisis with significant deaths and increases in the numbers of the infected.  How this policy is meant to work in curbing the virus’ spread I do not understand.

     The Government maintains that the lockdown is still in operation; but businesses are open today: how are these two compatible?  How are they going to explain the increase in deaths?  Sanchez, the Spanish President, does not have the mindlessly fanatical following of the Orange Outrage in the US.  Sanchez has a minority government, his so-called Socialist party bolstered by other minority left wing parties – who are going to be electorally tainted by participation in what is an unfolding disaster – and he cannot afford to act without a weather eye on the threat of yet another election in our chronically divided country.

     In a frightening development in the US in an even more jaw-droppingly awful public performance, Trump has claimed Absolute Authority – perhaps the logical extension for an unfixed populist demagogue.  Virtually everything that Trump has done has pushed at the limits of what The Founders feared when they wrote the Constitution.  The very federalist foundations of the US state are being tested and we know which way Trump would have voted when the title of ‘King’ was considered for the leader of the new American state!

     The fascist roots of the “America First” slogan are revealing and limiting; just as the petty-minded Brexiteers with their “Britain First” ideology underpinning their xenophobic, nationalistic, narrow-mindedness have led to Britain not participating in an EU led attempt to use their clout to purchase PPE at advantageous rates.  Virus does not respect national boundaries, I would much rather be part of the widest effort supra-nationally to combat a common danger than to be apart and weaker.  How many times must it be reiterated that nationalism and narrow, insular politics will lead to unnecessary death?

My second trip to the shop.  Singular, it is only one, we don’t go to a few, just the one and then home.  What isn’t there we don’t have.  Simple.

     I truly hate wearing the masks and the wearing of glasses seems to add to the irritation of the experience.  In deference to Toni’s stern strictures of not touching the face once one is out of the safety of the house, I was considering some form of elastication to keep them from slipping down my nose, but then I remembered lenses.  So, for the first time for a long time, I put my lenses in.  I do like the range of focus that lenses give as opposed to glasses, but I have bifocal needs for my eyes and therefore I need reading glasses with lenses – though I can usually make do if the print is not too small.  I am used to living in a variously out of focus world, so I can accept clarity that is approximate for most of the time!

     Given the fact of Sanchez’ loosening of the lockdown, though he claims he hasn’t - in the face of the facts, there was appreciably more traffic on the way to Lidl and more I could see when the road crossed over the motorway.  But still, markedly down on a normal (whatever that means nowadays) Tuesday.

     Lidl’s too was fuller than on my last visit, but that might have been because I was later in the morning than my previous jaunt.  Most people were wearing masks, and I have to say that those who were not were, how shall I put it, obviously noticed by the other people in the shop.  People are, quite clearly, wary of each other.

     Social distancing, where possible, was observed, though passing in aisles was sometimes more intimate than one would have liked.  The Checkouts were well done with distances pasted on the floor to keep us a reasonable distance apart.

     Most of the stuff that we wanted was there, though this time I didn’t even look for radishes, so who knows if they are now back on the shelves.

     Most importantly for me, the 15 month matured Cheddar cheese was there and so I bought a few extra to freeze.  I know that defrosted cheese is not quite the same as the natural type, but it is a bloody sight better than nothing.

     In the way that irony happens, as soon as I got home and Toni started unpacking and wiping the purchases before putting them away, there was a buzz on the doorbell and the 2kg of award-winning local cheese was deposited on the wall for me to collect.  Well, as I, though indubitably not Toni, would say, one cannot have too much cheese!

     So, apart from fresh bread, we are now set for another week of isolation.  At least today, the depressing rain of yesterday has vanished (though not entirely evaporated) and the sun is shining down.

My ‘Poems in Holy Week’ chapbook, now entitled Coasts of Memory, is taking shape, with a number of fairly substantial edits in the drafts that you can find on my poetry blog: smrnewpoems.blogspot.com   

     As usual, the technical layout aspects taking up an inordinate amount of time, but as Toni says, “You love it!” and there is something deeply satisfying is seeing a book (albeit a fairly short one) take professional shape.  Or at least as professional a shape as I can make it!

    

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 29 – Easter Monday, 13th APRIL

In the best traditions of British Bank Holiday Mondays, it is pouring with rain here in Catalonia.  The one difference, I have always maintained, is the lack of spitefulness in holiday weather in Catalonia so that there is always a possibility of seeing some sunshine during the day – it may not be much, but it will be there.

     Today is the damp calm before the invisible storm as the majority of the working population in designated but non-essential jobs are urged to go back to work, taking what ever microbes they have with them into the crowded metros and buses and trains as they commute. 

     The fatal proof of this economic pudding will be in a couple of weeks time when the mortality figures for Covid-19 will be examined to see whether this ill-thought out initiative has been as deadly as feared.

     It is a salutary experience to discover that in purely economic terms, we citizens are merely collateral damage, acceptable wastage, the angels’ share, surplus to requirements or any other mealy mouthed form of words to cover up the judicial execution that such a policy is going to mean.

     ‘Mean’ is a key word for something linked to the crisis that I hope is fake news, but have been told is actual fact.  In Catalan history the year 1714 is a key one.  On the 11^th of September 1714 Catalonia surrendered to the Bourbon King Philip V after supporting the Hapsburg Charles in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714): Catalonia lost its distinctive independence as it was subsumed into the Bourbon Crown; Catalan was demoted as the language of government; the walls of Barcelona were destroyed; Catalan territories over the Pyrenees were lost.  And all round disaster; but, in the typically Catalan way, 11^th September became the National Day of Catalonia and 1714 a date which is constantly seen, I have a hoodie with the year on the back and the Catalan flag on the front!

     It is therefore pushing coincidences a little that the National Government of Spain sent Catalonia exactly 1,714 thousand masks to be used in the present Crisis!

     There is no love lost between Madrid and Barcelona and the measures that are going to come into place tomorrow have met with stiff opposition from Catalonia and the Basque Country, with the Catalan President asking Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, to send him the documentation of the scientific advice on which he based the decision to allow people to return to work.  Catalonia is in favour of a continuation of the strict lockdown, and I have to say that I think that is the more persuasive approach.

     Politicians should be increasingly nervous about the inevitable Public Inquiries that are going to take place when this crisis is over.  Their mismanagement is killing people and they should be held responsible.  And please, do not accuse me of pre-judging: hospitals without equipment are a simple fact; hospitals continuing to be poorly supplied with PPE are a simple fact; people dying are a simple fact.  The Conservatives have been in power for a decade: the fault lies with them – and they must pay.

The Poems In Holy Week (PIHW) period is now over and I have managed to write drafts of poems for each of the days, all of which can be found at smrnewpoems.blogspot.com  This year has been obviously different as we have been under strict lockdown and the ‘holiday’ aspect of the period has been a little ‘abstract’ to say the least.  It is a continuingly odd time as we are surrounded by literally deadly danger, yet continue to lead ordinary, safe, if isolated lives.  It is not like the Second World War where even my childhood home in Cathays in Cardiff was graced so I was told, with one (unexploded) German bomb: something tangible from the air raids.  But for us in Catalonia, at least where we are, it is like a continuing Phoney War; we go on with our restricted lives, and the medical horror is taking place elsewhere, out of sight, though vividly alive on television screens.  I think the unreality of it all is what is most obvious.  Yes, I know that the virus is real and the deaths and illness are actual, but our direct experience is limited to our own little inconveniences, not to a mortal struggle.  It’s odd and, as I’ve said, something where the actuality is difficult to take in.

     I have now printed out a draft booklet of the Poems in Holy Week and have done a few edits to get me going on the revision that they all have to undergo before publication.

     I have not yet decided on a title, but I’m working on it!  The most difficult part, I find, is writing an introduction for the collection – it forces me to look at the collection as an entity and write something that makes sense of the totality rather than individual poems.

     I also have to think about illustrations and that is always challenging.  Still, if nothing else, I do have time to consider these challenges!

The police in Spain have said that the ‘return to work’ for non-essential workers when off normally.  An interesting choice of word for anything but normal times where, surely, normality is not the way to respond to the extraordinary!

My faith in Catalonia took a knock today.  The poor weather lasted the entire day and I was not graced with even a moment of proper sunshine.  I am prepared to extend my faith to tomorrow – but anything after that and I will slip into heresy!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 28 – Easter Sunday in Holy Week, 12th APRIL

1.              I am glad that the Prime Minister Boris Johnson is out of Intensive Care and is recuperating.

2.              The Prime Minister Boris Johnson should resign immediately for his dereliction of duty in wilfully ignoring his own government’s restrictions for social distancing and becoming infected.

Glad that I have got that out of my system.  Again.  I am still recovering from a few hagiographical pieces that described Johnson’s visit to hospital in existentially catastrophic terms, right down to the “indrawn gasp of horror” at the news.  Get real!  It tells you something about my low expectations from the bunch of deadbeats with which Johnson has stuffed the cabinet that I was actually relieved that the trashy Brexit fanatic Raab turned out to be the deputy for the incapacitated Johnson rather than somebody (sic) of the dubious quality of the Goblin Gove, the pernicious Patel or the unspeakable Rees-Mogg.  Just the bunch you need at a time of crisis!

Talking of worthless political chancers brings us to the situation here in Spain.  Our Prime Minister/President has sent mixed messages to the population that the lockdown should be extended to the 26^th of this month, but that non-essential workers should return to work on Tuesday!  Masks will be provided for those using public transport.  Apparently.

     The figures for deaths and infections are still horrifically high and the President thinks that it will be safe – not, that can’t be true.  He thinks that it will be economically beneficial to open up the economy again.  As usual, the poor bloody infantry of the ordinary citizens can be seen as collateral damage.

     OAPs have been told that they, nay, we will have to isolate ourselves for an unspecified number of months to be safe. 

     This cannot be the way to go.  Where is the testing that we have been told about?  Our ‘free’ facemasks are allegedly available from Tuesday.  If nothing is done, then Tuesday is going to be chaos with people doing whatever they feel like.  Any gains that the past period of lockdown have given us are likely to be swept away by a surge in fatalities.  The logic of the position of our government is lost on me.

     And don’t get me started on the madness of Trump’s America where demagoguery is equated with scientific fact and logic.  We live in mad times with mad men dictating the interpretation of events!  Reality will eventually catch up – but what will be the eventual cost in terms of human lives before the lies are rejected?  If they ever are rejected.

What an Easter!  I can’t pretend that the ‘festival’ has ever been something that I have celebrated, apart from my earlier years of faith when I would go to church for communion.

     Here in Catalonia it is very easy to forget that this is a festival at all, let alone a Christian one.  Most of the people I know who might go to church, don’t.  If you see what I mean.  Catalonia is a Roman Catholic country, but the Catholics are generally of the non-church attending, anti-clerical sort that doesn’t go out of its way to show adherence to a particular theology.

     The only celebration was pounding music from neighbours on rooftops in a near street.  It was our version of the balcony concerts and musical episodes that other places had experienced.  It was not really convincing, but I found it quite uplifting it its way.

I think we are going to need many more uplifting moments in the coming weeks!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 27 – Holy Saturday in Holy Week, 11th APRIL

We are waiting to hear what the traffic flow is like.  Spain and the UK have both emphasised that no one (except of course for Conservative Ministers) should travel during the Easter weekend.  We should all stay at home.  So far a large number of fines have been imposed on those who attempted to make the journey to second homes or to the beach.  The story of a group of people form the UK attempting to go on holiday to France via private jet both shocks and also doesn’t surprise: the rich assuming that rules are only for the poor.  Again.

     As I keep saying, I do realise that I am in a fortunate position being in a spacious home with access to a communal pool for my solitary walk – though today there was an entire family of parents and little girl in the tennis court next to our pool: on parent walking while the other played with the kid.  We even said, ¡Hola! to each other.  At a safe distance.  Such is community: you best show community spirit by shunning it!

The number of deaths reported in the UK continues to horrify and I have little faith in the ability of the government to organize themselves with sufficient efficacy to limit the growth in the numbers.  The distribution of masks and other PPE seems limited and the testing is little short of scandalous.

     In Catalonia we are entitled to a free mask, allegedly waiting for us in our local pharmacy, with the option to buy another mask.  Toni will have to find out if this is true by calling in to the pharmacy when he gets fresh bread.  It will at least be a small step in the right direction in coming to terms with the reality of the virus.

     Some firms in Spain are asking their workers to come back to work after the Easter Bank Holiday.  This is essential for the recovery of the economy, but I do not see how this can be done with any real degree of safety without adequate testing in place.  Some workplaces are simply not conducive to social separation and, with the best will in the world, people forget to be paranoid all the time and allow recently learned essential behaviour to slip.  Wearing a facemask is unpleasant and wearing it with glasses is clumsy and therefore all too likely to be pushed down or up rather than used constantly.

     You can sense, even in isolation, that people have a natural wish to ‘return to normality’ but if that totally understandable wish is allowed too soon, the end results will be deadly.  And, why should we expect or even want previous ‘normality’? 

     This virus and its progress and particularly the way that it has been dealt with by the politicians would seem to me to indicate in a blazingly obvious way that things must not be the same after this crisis.  The measures, financial, social and political that have been brought into play to cope with the crisis illustrate as clearly as possible the inadequacy of the previous financial, social and political measures.  Why should we return to proven, failed ways of life?

     You think of measures like guaranteeing a working wage; of housing the homeless; of supporting the NHS; of protecting people with disabilities – all the things that our austerity government previously said were unaffordable: now funded.  Failing railways renationalized; small businesses supported – no Socialist idea rejected!  If it can be done now, it could have been done then.  If it can be done now, it can go on being done.  If we pay money to keep airlines alive, then we own them.  We have already had the obscenity of Tesco receiving a governmental emergency handout and then paying a dividend to their shareowners.  How long do we go on encouraging with our money (and though I live in Catalonia I pay British taxes too) those who boost the inequalities in our society, giving ever more money to those who already have?  It seems to me that the message of one of the badges that I used to wear god knows how many years ago of “Eat the rich!” is more relevant now than it was then!  And what a condemnation of our political ‘progress’ that is.

     We cannot allow the billionaires and the big companies to pretend that they have nothing to do with the situation in which we find ourselves, not obviously in the making of the virus (though in my more paranoid conspiracy theory moments, I have my doubts!) but in the way that the government was equipped to deal with it.  Private Enterprise does not, essentially, care for us.  It is driven by profit and not by concern.  In times of crisis, it fails and allows government to ride to the rescue, and then, when things are better, it goes back to doing what it does best: exploit!

There is cloud cover, but intermittent sunshine – I’m not sure what this encourages on a population that really wants to get out and about.  Perhaps if it was blazing sunshine it would be more of a temptation, this neither one thing nor the other encourages people to go back indoors and watch something else on Netflix.  Probably.

Well, back to my daily poem.  I have an idea, its now just the working it up to be something that I can call a draft.  Check out what I have already written this Holy Week on smrnewpoems.blogspot.com

    

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 26 – Good Friday in Holy Week, 10th APRIL

As an Anglican atheist it may come as a surprise that it is today that the restrictions on movement have hit me most.  I do not go out of my way to visit churches during the year, but Good Friday (for reasons about which I am not entirely sure, see above re. atheism) is one of the day on which I make every effort to visit a church, to go inside, to sit down for a few moments and think.

     Toni has given up trying to understand my attitude and now merely shrugs with something approaching disdain when I voice my predilections.  For whatever reasons I want to visit a church today and I can’t.  And I miss it.

     I have tried the idea of the virtual tour, but that does not even remotely touch the spot in my psyche that demands a touch of the ecclesiastic, because it is not just the look of the place to which I respond.

     Although the sort of Anglican atheism that I espouse is ‘Low Church’ my background in St Augustine’s Church in Rumney was ‘High Church’ in its ceremonial.  Ceremonial, I might add in which I participated as a lowly server, cassocked and surplice as an acolyte, boat boy, thurifer, book boy and eventually MC – and people wondered why I chose a Cardinal as my fancy dress when going to a party in college! 

      The point is, that my experience of churches is an olfactory one as well – there is something very distinctive about the smell of old incense lingering among the pews.  And then there is the sound.

     I favour older churches with high-beamed ancient roofs (probably extensively mucked about with in Victorian times) where there is a distinct echoing resonance when the place is empty.  In the days when churches used to be left unlocked, I would visit new and interesting examples on holidays and, if they were empty, I would go to the lectern and read a section of the bible out loud to hear the acoustic.  So for me there is a distinct sonic quality that I treasure in churches.  Even in modern examples of the architecture there is something to take out of the experience of visiting.

     I do not find most churches welcoming places, I mean I like being inside them, but people are usually a bit stand offish.  I will never forget going to early morning communion in a parish church in Edgbaston where I felt like a modern day peasant among the well-heeled congregation (you only had to look at the cars parked) and I was comprehensively ignored by priest and congregation alike.  Ho hum!  But there is something about the atmosphere and the hardness of the pews that encourages introspection.

     And I like the restraint.  At least the restraint that I find in churches in the UK.  Good Friday in the UK is a bleak time to be inside a church where images are shrouded, the altar is stripped and there are no flowers.  In Catalan churches there is the same shrouding, but there is a concentration on the gory so there is often a horrifically realistic corpse somewhere around to focus the mind: the suffering of Christ with blood and wounds is very much to the fore.

     Well, this year I’m at home and there is not even a soaring spire above the trees to be observed from the third floor.  No bells have rung, or not within the hearing of our house.  This is a day like every other in isolation.  Like every other day in Holy Week.  Identity is attached to the days, they possess none themselves.

     So, what will my poem today describe?  How will its usual identity change?  At the moment I have no idea, but, by the end of the day a draft will have been added to the Holy Week collection at smrnewpoems.blogspot.com  I hope.

Well, I’ve written a draft that is now in the blog above.

I spoke to Irene on the telephone and we are both getting progressively more worried by the attitude of our political masters who seem to be far more concerned with the economic situation of the country than with the health and life of the citizens.

     The key will be what happens after Easter.  Easter Monday is a Bank Holiday (if we are still concerned by such things) and the National Government seems to be concerned to get people back to work.  Any diminution in the stringency of the lockdown will have a disproportionate effect and will weaken the overall population’s dedication to the lockdown and there will be a progressive disinclination to behave properly.  And then an increase in death.

     Perhaps I am being unduly pessimistic, but the next couple of weeks are going to be crucial to the way the crisis develops and I lack faith in the politics of it all!