LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 68 – Friday, 22nd May

It is difficult not to term the Conservative Government’s U-Turn on the migrant workers health surcharge ‘humiliating’, but I suppose it is better to consider it a ‘fitting’ recognition of the essential service that such workers do, often on minimum wage and to ‘welcome’ any sign from the discredited third-raters that form the cabinet of humanity.  One can only hope that such grace is now applied to the self-harm of Brexit!  Fond hope – and that two-word expression of despair doesn’t merit an exclamation mark, just a weary sigh.

     At every step in the management of this crisis the government has come up short.  They have blustered, prevaricated, lied – but why go on, I have been writing the same sort of verbs about the Tories for the last decade, why, especially after the catastrophic debacle of the Brexit vote and its on-going car crash implementation should I be surprised that an even worse tragedy produces a signature catalogue of crass ineptitude?

The more I think about the production of A Streetcar Named Desire last night, the less satisfied I am with it.  Although it did give me shivers and almost reduce me to tears, I am left feeling that the production was slightly superficial, I was using my knowledge of the piece to flesh out my response; part of my involvement was recognition of the revisiting of the most effective parts of the play and a remembered delight in the structure and emotional complexity of the action.

     I was also struck by the artificiality of much of the dialogue, especially from Stanley, where he says things, and in such a way that he seems to step outside of his character and become a too eloquent part of the Tragedy with a capital T rather than the rough character in a gritty drama.

     Blanche is a role to kill for: camp, grotesque, twisted, vicious and unbearably vulnerable.  Salacious lush she might be, but she has lines of almost unendurable pathos – and truth.  At the height of her self-pitying drunkenness she shows a self-awareness of the essential strength and worth of her character that takes the breath away.

     At the end of the play as Blanche is led away and the card game recommences and the old life goes on, we get the same feeling as at the end of Death of a Salesman when Linda says of her dead husband and failed salesman, “Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.”  But, it’s too late, that’s the tragedy; it’s always too late.

     Thursday nights at 8.00pm have become a fixture in my week, and I am grateful to the National Theatre for making their films of productions available to the public.  If you have not yet see the productions on Facebook then I do urge you to experience the productions – and donate to the organizations as well of course!

     The next production (free streaming on Facebook from the 28^th of May for one week) is This House by James Graham, set in the House of Commons in the period from the General Election of 1974 to the Vote of Confidence in James Callaghan in 1979.  The major political figures are characters off-stage while the main action of the play is centred on the Whips offices of the Labour and Conservative parties.

     This is one of those plays that I regretted not being able to see, so I am delighted to have the opportunity to experience it via Facebook.

There was little increase in the wearing of facemasks as far as I could see today, though they are not mandatory for exercise.

     On Monday of next week we move to level 1 from level 0 here in the province of Barcelona.  This means that restaurants will open with service on sparse terraces; churches with be open up to 30%; groups of no more than 10 and various other loosening’s of the regulations.  There seems to be a belief that the mere passing of days will mark progress towards the mastering of the virus.  This is a false assumption.  The only way to cope with the virus is through testing, contact tracing and lockdown.  None of this is securely in place, neither in Catalonia nor in the UK.   Everything about this virus and its management is worrying.  Frightening.

Just to make things that little bit more difficult, a filling fell out yesterday evening.  I have been punctilious about brushing and looking after my teeth exactly because of my fear of what dental treatment might be in lockdown.  It was therefore with a certain amount of trepidation that we contacted the dentist this morning.  I was delighted (well, you know what I mean in relation to dentists) to find that not only was the dentist open, but they were making appointments and amazingly, I was fitting in at lunchtime next Tuesday.  That is what I call service!

     I do feel a certain trepidation about the appointment; it is difficult to be physically distanced when you are sitting in a dentist’s chair!  Another experience to add to the lockdown life!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 67 – Thursday, 21st May

For the first time since we were allowed out in our allotted time slots to exercise, my bike ride was free of sightings of Child Viral Assassins forcing their purile way into our adult hours.

     The weather is getting progressively more summery and people are walking with a new jauntiness in their steps.  The building of summer structures on the beach carries on apace and there is increasing evidence of shops and restaurants getting ready for whatever the ‘New Normal’ Season is going to offer.

     Both Spain and the UK seem determined to get kids back to school before the end of the summer term, and I share the apprehension of teachers in wondering just how safe they and the kids are going to be.

     I read through the proposed precautions that one infants’ school was going to take and I was impressed by the thoroughness of the procedures, but also noted how much was dependant on the cooperation of parents in, for example, bringing pupils to school in timeslots and washing all of the pupil’s clothing at the end of the day.  Meals would be provided by the school, no packed lunches allowed; no school materials would come from home; no artefacts made in school would go home; kids would be taught by a dedicated teacher and they would associate only within their teaching group.  Are these rules general in the UK?  Do they follow governmental guidelines?  Are they any governmental guidelines?  There are too many questions about how all of this is going to operate, with the very real fear than any slip in the precautions will result in illness and death.

     Then there is the testing and contact tracing elements.  As the government has been much less than honest about their targets and have been creatively duplicitous about ‘meeting’ them, what faith can we have about their professed care for teachers and pupils?

     What is going to happen to a stretched system when the inevitable infection occurs?  Classes will not be able to be amalgamated.  If a class has a ‘dedicated’ teacher, what happens if that teacher is absent?  In fact, I will stop there because the questions are multiplying in my mind and the answers are not easy.  Or cheap.

     Some beaches in Barcelona have been opened up for sunbathing and recreation, though the TV pictures that we were shown indicate that physical distancing is an inhibition that seems to disappear with clothing.

     I do worry that a coastal resort like Castelldefels will become a hotspot for viral infection as we go further into the good weather and more people come to our beach.  As Barry Island was to Cardiff, so Castelldefels is to Barcelona – one of the seaside resorts for a day out, easily reachable by bike, car, bus and train.  And the beach is the place where inhibitions are loosened, where relaxation is part of the experience, and where irksome rules can be ignored. 

     It does not bode well.

The ‘live’ theatrical presentation this evening was A Streetcar Named Desire, a Young Vic production.  The action took place on a constantly turning revolve as it was a production in the round.  The filming was uncharacteristically inept, or you could say that the filming actually shared the interrupted sightlines of the live audience.  Whatever, I found the blocking out of the action from time to time irritating.

     I was not ‘with’ this production and found many of the characters under-acted, with Stanley being particular difficult for me to take.  Blanche was the clear ‘star’ of the production, but I felt that much of her performance was caricature rather than character study.

   Having said that, I enjoyed the production, though I would much rather have been in the audience!  The set was excellent and the production brought out the humour of the piece as well as the tragedy.  A thoroughly enjoyable depressing experience!

From today the wearing of facemasks is mandatory in public spaces where physical distancing is impossible.  Although their use in ‘sport’ is not required, I think that it will be necessary to carry one whenever I go on my bike rides just in case.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 66 – Wednesday, 20th May

On the Port Ginesta side of the Paseo I noticed a police car awkwardly stopped in the middle of the road.  As I approached I saw that the police were speaking to a grandfather who had his small Viral Assassin with him, clearly out of the allotted time slot for such things.  Unfortunately, I did not see any movement on the part of the police to leave their car and give a multa to the offending adult.  Still, it was encouraging to see that they were not letting flagrant ignoring of restrictions pass.

     In fact on my bike ride this morning I saw more police cars than usual.  There were four or five on the Marine road, but none at the Gavà part of my ride, so I took advantage of the absence and added the Gavà loop to my cycle.  I felt very virtuous at the end of my ride, which is more than I can say for my bum.  I have not idea how the more dedicated cycle riders manage 50k or more.  They must either have buttocks like hardened steel or they are dyed in the wool masochists.

On a rather more elevated note, the Lyric Hammersmith is going to screen a version of A Doll’s House by Ibsen for today only.

     I was tricked into first reading Ibsen by the enticing title of his play Ghosts that I rather expected to live up to its Gothic promise.  I enjoyed reading the play, in spite of their being no ghosts of a variety that I could shiver to and I also entirely failed to pick up on the unstated, but essential component of the narrative of the play, syphilis.  Given the fact that the main plot of the play passed me by, I now wonder what it was that kept my interest!

     Ghosts is one of those plays that I have seen where different productions have given me entirely different views.  The first live production of Ghosts that I saw was played as a serious tragedy, while another that I went to see with my mother in the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff, was played as a comedy.  And both worked.

   The same thing happened with two productions of Death of a Salesman that I saw in relatively quick succession.  The first, again in The Sherman, left me feeling depressed and border suicidal, while the second in the West End left me with a happy smile on my face.  All four of the productions I should add were well produced and exceptionally well acted and I knew both plays well through academic study.

     The Lyric’s production of A Doll’s House is set in late C19th Calcutta (is it still ok to write the city like that?) and is listed as an adaptation of the text so it will be interesting to see how far the writer and director depart from the original.  But it got good reviews and this is an opportunity not to be missed.  It is only available from 2.30pm to midnight.

     I don’t know if this is true, but I was told that all West End productions lodge a ‘reference’ video of their productions with the National Theatre Museum and the videos or films are available for academic study.  Given that copies of play no longer have to be registered by law with the Lord Chamberlain’s office so that the Recorder of Plays can authorize them for public showings, it would be a criminal lack of intelligence to let the unparalleled collection of plays in Britain be wasted by not continuing some sort of archive.

     Perhaps in the future, theatres will make a video of their productions to augment their takings from on-line views.  Some Opera Houses and theatres have productions live streamed to cinemas around the world, but on-line could be (perhaps given the virus ‘must be’) one of the financial ways forward to keep, oddly, live theatre alive!

     I know that plays do not translate directly to film and a play in a theatre is altogether different from a film but, as my father was fond of saying, “anything is better than nothing” and a theatre audience, even given a long run, is in total tiny compared with a single showing on line.  Perhaps this virus will prompt a whole new generation of ‘theatre goers’ who take their pleasure on line!

The confusion, disinformation, misdirection and outright lying continue to confuse the ‘back to school’ impetus of governments in Spain and in the UK.  It does seem to me that without adequate testing and contact tracing there can be no safe way of returning to school.

     Blair did make the point that the children of the rich and privileged will have been ‘educated’ during the lockdown and the missed school for the underprivileged not only in terms of education but also in nutrition cannot and should not be ignored.  However, the solution to the problem of inequality is not to put teachers in the firing line and allow them to die.  I do realize that the ancestors of the public school boys who run the country probably had no qualms as they drew up their plans for the battles of The First World War, but one rather hoped that we had progressed somewhat during the last century!

     I do not trust the government in England to have due care and attention when it comes to restarting schools.  The politicians who run the government are in place because they subscribed to the self-harm of Brexit in spite of the overwhelming evidence that such an action would be disastrous.  We should always remember Cummings “Let them die!” as the modus operandi of the Conservatives.  “Money above lives” always has, and always will be their mantra.

     I am sure that there are ways in which schools can be opened with a liberal application of the fruits of the money tree that the Conservatives found to combat the virus – vegetation that was signally absent during the years of austerity and which made the present situation so much worse than it needed to be.  Smaller classes; more teachers; more school building; better facilities – all the things that teacher unions have been asking for, pleading for, for years!

     Let us never forget that this government has deaths on its ‘conscience’ and they must be held accountable.  I do not want to see the mortality total swollen with avoidable deaths of colleagues.

More and more people seem to be taking advantage of exercise time, especially more and more cyclists, but you get the sense that the people who are out are getting progressively freer in the way that they are treating the virus.  On the beach the construction of various kiosks has begun, though I think these are for the renting of sunbeds rather than the beach cafes that we have each summer – but they are a sign that Castelldefels is gearing up for the influx of visitors on which the town depends.

      I do not think that there is convincing evidence that the warmer weather will kill off the virus, so I really fear about what is going to happen in the future and the way that things are going and the general attitude of people a second spike in numbers of people infected buy the virus is almost unavoidable.

The free performance of A Doll’s House in the Lyric Hammersmith was very much an archive performance and lacked the polish of the NT Thursday performances, but the artistic director made the type of filmed performance clear in her introduction.  It is still very much worth watching and, at the time of writing, you have three and a half hours left to watch it for free.  You should!

     Tomorrow A Streetcar Named Desire.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 65 – Tuesday, 19th May

The Tuesday People Syndrome was in full operation this morning as I took my bike ride.  I first observed this phenomenon in my local swimming pool and had my suspicions confirmed by the lifeguard: more people turn up to exercise on a Tuesday morning than on any other day of the week.

     I have considered, like Holmes, writing a ‘short monograph on the subject’ but will content myself with a few fugitive thoughts here.  Although weeks are no longer normal in the same way that they were pre-virus, many of the assumptions made about the qualities of individual days still persist, in spite of living in different times.

     Even without the Boomtown Rats, Mondays are dread days, being as they are not only the first working day of a normal week, but also the bummer of a day after the relative freedom of the weekend. 

     The weekend itself is actually composed of two days, but not Saturday and Sunday.  Friday after work is the first part of the weekend and the whole of Saturday may be regarded as absolute weekend, but Sunday evening has to be considered part of the working week as that is the time that you worry about the things you did not do during the weekend that you have said to yourself before the start you would absolutely complete and you are consequently unable to enjoy the latter part of Sunday in a true ‘weekend’ way.  Early Monday morning is consequently a later part of the working week than its nomenclature would suggest and the resentment at having started the working week the night before makes one disinclined to exercise.

     Wednesday is mid-week and therefore is the tipping point towards the weekend and freedom.  Thursday is the ‘going out in the evening because it will be too crowded on Friday’ and, even if you don’t actually go out, the fact that you could have gone out is enough to make the day bearable.

     TGIF speaks for itself and it is difficult to make the day bad, though some have tried.  I am vividly reminded of one glorious year where I had a free period last period on a Friday!  How better to end the week?  I lost that free period on a regular basis to give cover for other classes.  For the entire year!  That illusory free period and the morning checking of the cover list to see that, yet again, the period had gone actually made the day a misery. 

     The other case was in my last school in Catalonia, where the powers that be decided to call a weekly staff meeting every Friday after the end of the school day!  Luckily this horrific piece of inconsideration was instituted after I had left, but if I had been forced to attend, it would have precipitated my leaving anyway.  Those of you who have not endured the purgatory, no, infernal hell of educational staff meetings in Spanish schools can only guess at the empty soul-destroying horror that involvement inflicts.  For me it would have poisoned the whole weekend.

     And, while we are at it, that same school called a staff meeting for a Saturday morning!  Saturday morning!  I did not immediately resign, though I made my feelings patently clear.  As I told anyone who would listen, if the meeting was so important that it had to be held on a Saturday morning, then it should have been important enough to have it during the school day with the pupils being sent home early to make it possible!  During the whole pointless meeting, I did not smile once or contribute unless directly asked a question.  I fumed for the entire three hours (!) that it took and left immediately when it ended without speaking to anyone.  Just typing about it, I can re-texture my fury, not only at the meeting taking place at all, but also at the attitude of my colleagues that allowed it to go ahead without armed insurrection.

     Which brings us to Tuesday.  Tuesday is a day whose distinction is that it is not Monday and therefore not tainted with the misery of first day of the week.  It is far enough for the weekend for that period of happiness to be a vague memory and it is not yet at the tipping point of the week either.  It is a day when Things Can Be Done, when the depression of Monday has been shaken off, the weight of the week has not yet fallen on frail shoulders and there is still an illusory strength to encourage activity.  So, it is a Tuesday when the resolution to exercise is at its strongest and when intention is likely to result in action.  Therefore, the number of people in the pool and, even in these odd times, the number of people on the Paseo.

     We will see if the numbers are the same tomorrow, or whether the reality (or suggestion for the Barcelona Metropolitan Area) have come back into play and the best of intentions get lost once again in the grind of the week!

Today is Catalan homework day.  I know that if I put it off for more than one day from the time that it is set, then I am likely to leave doing the work until the day it has to be sent in and that will be a panic rather than the mere chore that I am able to tolerate.  And I am writing about it here as a physical impetus to my intent!  Sad that I have to do such things to motivate myself, but it is the way I work.  I am not writing in my notebook so regularly at the moment during lockdown because the routine of swim/tea/write has been broken, and I have even stopped carrying my notebook in my pocket.  This is because I am wearing swimming shorts during the lockdown because they are more comfortable and easier to don, but weight in the pockets (that are decorative rather than functional) tends to drag the garment down – and I am not one for such impropriety!  Perhaps I should carry something lighter, it’s a thought – though as I am mostly indoors, at home, I am never far from writing materials.

Never let it be said that a mere lockdown stood in the way of my creative culinary genius.  Today at lunchtime I treated myself to pollo picado con papa en cubitos, perejil y curry de tienda de papas fritas that, being translated is, chopped chicken with parsley and diced potatoes in a chip-shop curry.  The latter ingredient was courtesy of my ‘Red Cross parcel’ from Poundshop, who knew you could get instant chip-shop curry granules?  Well, I do now.  I hesitate to use the word ‘delicious’, more ‘different’ and ‘interesting’ apply.

Now a little light sunbathing and then the dreaded Catalan homework!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 64 – Monday, 18th May

One of the key moments in the day is no more: our applause for the health and front line workers has now been terminated.  It changed the dynamic of the day, or at least the ‘start’ of the evening and, instead of departing immediately after the couple of minutes clap I set off a little later for my bike ride.

     The number of bikes seems to be increasing and we obviously outnumber the number of car drivers.  Who knows if this enthusiasm for the bike will last?  At the moment there is no real prospect for an early return to anything like normality, so the reign of the bike looks to continue for some months yet.

     As we are now in the majority it is easier to evaluate the behaviour of bike riders now that our numbers have increased so markedly.  Pedestrians are the worst road users by far and show a shocking lack of consideration, but cyclists are a close second.

     I suppose that the way in which cycles are ridden are functions of the fact that you do not need any licence to ride a bike and you have immediate access to busy roads with no training or knowledge – and it shows!

     ‘Professional’ bikers, i.e. those with the unflattering clothing, are the least likely to stop for pedestrians on zebra crossings or obey traffic lights if they think they can get away with it.

     But the key irritation is those bikers who ignore bike lanes, as though bike lanes are for the lesser breeds.  This is especially irritating when there are two bike lanes separated from a pedestrian path and yet some bike riders insist on weaving their way among the pedestrians.  Of course, the same thing is just as irritating when the pedestrians decide to invade the bike lanes!

     My pet peeve with cycles though, is the use of lights.  On cycling home this evening out of over 160 bikes that passed me, only 8 had lights on, whereas all the cars had their lights on.

There were only two Viral Assassins (kids) blatantly out of their time zone, but many more bike gangs of teenagers who must be desperate after weeks of isolation to get back to the usual social intercourse of youth!

     As far as I can understand the latest instructions of the government, many parts of the country will be advanced to Level 1 from Level Zero, but Barcelona will still stay at Level 0.  It is my understanding that it covers not only the city of Barcelona, but also the province of Barcelona, in which case my city of Castelldefels will also be included in the highest state of lockdown.

     The President is trying to get an extension of the State of Alarm for another month when this one comes to an end.  As is usual, the PP and the fascist party are trying to get it truncated.  It will be interesting to see what happens – though I am prepared to do my own sensible thing if I feel that my safety is not being considered (when has it ever) by government!

The Catalan video lesson was ok, with one or two problems with the picture freezing, but I was the only student in the class again.  I have told the other members of the class about these video lessons, but the response has not been there.  I have been given homework and the next lesson is next week.  Who knows how long this term is going to last?  But I think that the next lesson might well be the last.

     We shall see!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 63 – Sunday, 17th May

Today is, apparently, the last day of the daily ritual of applauding the front line workers at 8pm.  Is this a significant moment?  Why are we stopping?  The virus is still killing and infecting and, while the numbers are decreasing, there is no real end in sight for Covid-19 in Spain.

     I can understand the need for progress and also the need to give confidence and assurance to a population that is truly fed up with the lockdown.  But, and it’s a big but, the virus is not confined by borders or political pronouncements.  Reactions to the virus can be spun, but the reality of infection and death transcend spin – as I fear we will discover in a couple of weeks time when the full effects of the loosening of the restrictions become clear.

     As the weather gets steadily warmer people are becoming more relaxed about the dangers of the virus.  Youngsters are acting as if they are immune and the very young, usually with their parents, are rarely masked.  I think that there is a real problem with the basic knowledge of transmission.  There was a very revealing piece of film where a group of people went to a buffet with one of the group having a small amount of colourless fluorescent paint cupped in his hand.  The group had their meal and then they were checked with a UV light to see how many had evidence of the paint.  It was everywhere: hands, faces, tables, glasses, clothes, everywhere!  If kids are asymptomatic you cannot expect them to behave in a way that is going to limit infection.  And without testing we are running on a prayer anyway.

I took my part in the last 8pm clap for the front line workers.  It may be my sentimentality, but I thought that there were more of us this evening than usual.  I wonder if our little neighbourhood will take any notice of the ‘last’ element of the clap and just go on doing it regardless.  After all, the thanks are still due because the situation is still there.  And even if we didn’t have the bloody Covid-19, health workers are worth applauding anyway!

Tomorrow is the penultimate video lesson of the Catalan course that has been interrupted by the virus.  I cannot, with the best will in the world, say that the lessons have been a success and I think that most learners and teachers have written off the rest of this year.  As our little school is for adult education I think that many of the ‘students’ are apprehensive about social distancing and they have written off the year already.

      We have been offered (as far as I can tell) free access to the course for next year, except were we to want to progress, our school does not offer the next level in Catalan so we would have to go to another centre.  Don’t get me wrong, my level of Catalan is nowhere near the level that we are ‘doing’ this year, never mind about going up a level.

     Tomorrow is conversation!  I hope to go that there is at least one other student joining the class to take some of the pressure off me.  You see, even though I am ritually humiliated in these classes, I do not stop going.  There is a part of the fellow teacher feeling for our tutor, one has to give one’s support even if it is not exactly what one wants to do.

     Let the linguistic mispronunciation fall where it will, I will soldier on.  Or I could try and do a bit of work and a generous amount of revision? 

     Nah!  Wing it!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 62 – Saturday, 16th May

A lie-in today!  A quick visit to the bathroom at 7am and a return to bed and the next two and a half hours whisked itself away in a series of complex and no doubt character revealing reveries on that border land between sleep and wakefulness.  This did however mean that my window of legal exercise was somewhat truncated.

     One of the advantages of lockdown is the economy of dressing because I am nowadays fully dressed in six items of apparel: 2 sandals; 1 watch; 1 pair of glasses; 1 T-shirt; 1 pair of shorts-type bathing costume.  This means that after a more than usually cursory wash, I was dressed in seconds.  Pausing only to set Moppy off on her vacuuming sequence I was out and off on the bike.

    There were quite a few people around, especially on the beach and I wondered how many of them were near their homes as the seconds were ticking away before the next tranche of people were entitled to claim the streets and beaches.

     I cycled down as far as the end of the beach Paseo and then returned on the coast road, passing well-spaced queues at bakeries as I returned.  For the last part of my cycle home I re-joined the beach Paseo to check up on the people who were there on my way down.  My anticipation of exasperation was somewhat stymied by the obvious diminution of numbers of exercisers and the appreciable increase in the more obviously elderly section of the population.  In which, of course, I do not place myself, as there are over five months before I can claim entry into the most senior category!

     I was a little over the limit by the time I got back to the gate of my home, but I passed no police and, anyway, there are richer pickings for them on the beach.

     This evening, as long as the weather holds, and there is bright sunlight at the moment, I will have to go for a more substantial cycle to make up for my sloth in keeping to my bed this morning.

     I am also lucky in that I can walk around the communal pool at any time to augment my exercise regime, though it does get somewhat tedious and I feel as I make circuit after circuit that I must look like one of those nodding donkeys that Dickens described in Hard Times as it did the same thing again and again, as being “in a state of melancholy madness”.  This picture is not helped by listening to In Our Times on a Radio 4 podcast and alternatively chuckling and giving a little grunt of satisfaction as another element of knowledge is momentarily added to my store!

     Each time I go out on my bike I am acutely aware that it is a substitution for my pool swim, and not a satisfactory substitution.  Although I look forward to the time when swimming is allowed again, I find it difficult to imagine how they are going to make it safe.  I know that the authorities have said that normal disinfecting techniques in well maintained pools should deal with the virus adequately, it is difficult to see how physical distancing will be safely maintained, especially in the pool itself.

     Our pool has five lanes and with the usual numbers of swimmers, lanes have to be shared.  It is difficult not to bump into your partner swimmer from time to time, and even if you don’t you will be passing each other in close proximity each time you complete a length.

     I suppose that with five lanes, you could have five swimmers and swimmers could book a time to swim?  What about children?  They do not keep to limits and anyway I do not want to be anywhere near them.  It is a difficult problem and one that will not be solved easily I think.  Though I can’t wait to see how the management of the pool suggests a solution.

     It is easy to say that we have not thought the New Normal through – the government certainly has not – and I think that we will be constantly surprised at how many of the aspects of our Old Lives will have to be modified to take account of the virus.

     The National Trust has said that in the future all of its properties can only be visited by those who have a specific ticket, the Old Normal of Just Turning Up is no longer something that you can do.

     My season ticket for the Liceu and the opera season has now been cancelled.  All of the shows that I was due to see have been, at best, postponed.  But, without a vaccine, how is the seating of patrons going to be done?  Will seats have to be reallocated allowing an empty seat between patrons?  How will the audience be brought in and allowed out, without the usual crush?  Will we have to wear masks during the performance? 

     The average age of an opera going audience is substantially older than the general profile of the population and therefore the majority of patrons are in a much higher risk category – how is this going to affect the future of opera?      

     Already the financial hit that the Liceu must have taken has to be substantial and serious; given the other demands on state coffers, how will the Liceu justify extra tax income to keep it alive?  And theatre?  And orchestral concerts?  And ballet?  And museums?  And art galleries? 

     All of those companies must be in dire financial straits!  And what about the corporate sponsors?  They must be feeling the financial pinch as well.  It is a perfect storm of threat for anything cultural. 

     The cultural future is bleak.

Meanwhile on the technological front: my little cleansbot works, but the sensors which tell it is falling off the mattress are not working and so it duly falls.  I am prepared, at the moment to believe that the fault lays in my reading of the instructions – or rather my skimming them and hoping that a few presses of the on button will sort everything out.

     I will obviously have to be a little more careful in my application of haptic hope!

I listened to the Minister for Education and even I was flabbergasted.  He spoke as if the past didn’t exist.  As if the way that the Conservatives have treated teachers and education over the last decade was a completely different sphere of reality.  His mealy mouthed concern for the under privileged was almost comical, his desperate sympathy for kids who were at risk was ludicrous.  What the hell does he think that his government has been doing over the past ten years?  Has the way in which the government has cut social services, education and everything that austerity was used as an excuse to decimate resulting in the present state of the NHS, Care Homes, and . . . it is really hard to express the level of disgust that I feel when someone is speaking and expecting me to forget their destructive history in the very area that they are taking credit for and trying to get me to be sympathetic about their ‘supportive’ attitude!

     Given the way that the Conservative Government has mismanaged virtually everything about the virus so far one can have absolutely not confidence whatsoever about their ability tao make the return of kids to schools anything but a disaster.

     The level of testing in the NHS is inadequate, why should we expect it to be anything other than inadequate in education.  Why should teachers risk their lives when there is little evidence to suggest that there will be little more than empty words of support rather than actual pieces of PPE and availability of sufficient testing?  With the very real threat of kids being asymptomatic there would have to be extensive testing on a regular basis and efficient contact tracing before any reasonable return to school could be contemplated.

     Yet again, I have reason to rejoice in the fact that I am retired!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 61 – Friday, 15th May

For once we were not woken up by the wreckers from next-door executing their usual early morning rendition of Concerto Number Umpteen-and-One for drill, hammer and cement mixer.  I set off on my bike ride in relative silence and with thin sunshine.

     I now no longer even make the attempt to cycle all the way along the sea front to the Marina at Port Ginesta, even if the police are not there to enforce the unobtrusive border between Castelldefels and that part of the jurisdiction of Sitges that arches over the hills to take possession of the end of the bay.

     At the other end of Castelldefels the border with Gavà is blocked off with police tape and, while walkers and joggers duck beneath it and ignore it, I deign to flaunt authority in such a blatant manner and I dutifully turn around and come back home.  I have to admit that it really is not much of a burden to obey our locality restrictions, as I am able to cycle the entire length of Castelldefels and so complete a jaunt of 10k.  Which is quite enough for me.  Though I do miss my swim.

As I am an avid devotee of crowd funding sites and am ever beguiled by new technology, I am happy to report that I am now the proud possessor of a ‘cleansebot’.  As opposed to many of my purchases from Indigogo and the like, this particular innovation might actually be regarded as somewhat timely.

     The ‘cleansebot’ is a small side plate sized circular thick Frisbee-like object that incorporates UV light and wheels and is designed to crawl about one’s bed destroying bacteria and other wildlife haunting the savannah of the mattress and the cover sheet.  It can also be used as a hand-held destroyer and can then be utilized to ravage pillow cases, TV remotes, laptop keyboards, kitchen surfaces, light switches, etc.  Given the present concern about cleanliness this little machine could not have arrived at a better time and, more importantly, this is the only purchase of mine from crowd funding about which Toni has expressed approval – rather than throwing his eyes to heaven in exasperation at my ‘waste of money’!

     I have now retrieved the cleansebot from the bed after its sub-blanketian traverse of our sleeping quarters.  I believe that it has made a difference, because there is no way of actually seeing what it has or has not done!  But the real point is that I have another robot to complicate life just a little more, but cleaner, hopefully cleaner.

As the rain held off (and continues to do so) I was able to go on my evening bike ride.  There is a distinct air of determination to the way that people are walking, running and cycling during our period of allowed activity from 8pm.  Given the fact that it was a Friday (thinking of the past days when that actually meant something) there were more people on the Paseo than usual, especially when the weather was as dull as it was.  There were four or five illegal Plague Kids out of their time, but the most illustrative aspect that I note were the growing numbers of young teenage kids in bike gangs which, if you think about it, is as a good way of meeting your friends as any.  And, as long as you don’t get off your bikes, it’s a good way of keeping the necessary physical distancing that we have been advised to maintain.

     Although I joke about the concept of Plague Kids, I really do feel that every young person is a potential viral assassin!  And that attitude is going to take a long time or a quick vaccine to get rid of.

     When we talk about the New Normal, distancing must become the attitude of choice and of necessity.  I wonder how long the attitudes will last though?

In the UK the government is trying to rewrite the narrative of neglect that characterised the situation of Care Homes, it is doing this via nauseating expressions of present concern and a determination to change the approach of government, conveniently forgetting which government has been in power for the last decade!

On a lighter note, our next Catalan lesson is on Monday.  With any reasonable luck there will be more people in our virtual classroom than my good lone self.  We have had to do some homework and presumably that will be the basis of conversation (!) in our next class – assuming that it works.   
     I love technology, as I have mentioned above, but when it is linked to teaching it has an almost inevitable fail factor built in to the whole enterprise.   
     But, as always, I live in hope and positive expectations!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 60 – Thursday, 14th May

So, there will be border controls between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.  The obvious lie that they wouldn’t be needed parroted by the Brexit Barbarians is now crystal clear.  I read it in the Guardian, but I didn’t hear it anywhere else.  A key component of the fantasy agenda of the xenophobes now shown to be exactly that.  And what reaction has there been?  With Covid-19 in full fury we have different priorities and yet again, this Teflon Prime Minister and his discredited party will get away with it.

     Does anyone believe the government’s assertion that 100k test have regularly been given to actual people?  They have manipulated the figures by including multiple tests on the same individual and also including postal test sent out but not completed.  The basic trouble is that this government has a trust-worthy rating of precisely zero.  But, in the Trumpian times in which we live, what used to be generally accepted truth is now only one of a multitude of possibilities in a world of “alternative truths” or what used to be known as lies.

I went for my morning bike ride (no Plague Children for once) in light sunshine, but that was the best part of the day and I made an executive decision not to go for my evening jaunt and there was light rain and I am not fanatical about my cycling!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 59 – Wednesday, 13th May

Though the wind is brisk, the sun is out and I am typing on the terrace of the third floor al fresco. The screen brightness is set at maximum and the type size is 16 point, so I can actually see the screen. What I type is somewhat irrelevant at the moment, because the real joy is being outside and, stripped to the half (a description I have always found unsettlingly erotic) pretending to myself that I am actually doing some work.

      It also makes a change to get away, if only for a sun-drenched moment, from the pressing concerns of the virus ridden world!

     My view from where I am sitting takes in the tops of the pine trees for which my neighbourhood is famous, the pool of a neighbouring collection of houses and a part of the street. I can hear the sea but alas, I cannot see it unless I crouch down and look through the top branches of the trees (see above) and I get a small triangle of what could be water. If I stand, then I get another triangular view of distant water with he third side being the horizon. If the trees that surround the neighbours’ pool were cut down, l would have an uninterrupted view of the sea, or at least part of it – though I do not expect to gain much sympathy from my moans.

     I am typing outdoors because Toni is (hopefully) working his technological magic on my non-starting Apple, and past experience dictates that my helpful hovering does not lead to a productive working environment. It is, after all, a wise couple that knows their mutual working limitations.

     Though, having said that, we have survived the constructivist horrors of mantling various pieces in the IKEA “Broken Relationships” range (i.e. anything) and a couple who survive building a bed with built-in drawers with instructions that looked more like a cheaply printed Mayan calendar gets to sleep in it. Literally.  So, Toni is doing his ‘thing’ while I do mine: writing.

     Toni has just appeared and asked me about a ‘restore’ date to which I have agreed and will now type with my fingers firmly crossed, so please forgive any typing errors.

     I remember on earlier Mac machines I would, from time to time, get a pixelated drawing of a round black bomb with a fizzing fuse with the alarming information that a ‘Fatal System Error’ was about to take place. I invariably panicked and then ignored it because there was always nothing that I could do about it, so I just soldiered on and hoped that a few random key presses would placate whatever anarchistic longings were inside the machine and that it would return to jocosity and placidity ‘because I wanted it to.’ And to be fair, it usually did.

     As opposed, for example, for the numerous Windows machines into contact with which I came.  In the early days when I had acquired a ‘real’ computer that used floppy discs of the smaller variety, my predilection for Mac computers was at odds with the educational establishment’s slavish following of the false gods of Microsoft.  The incompatibility problems (and there were always incompatibility problems) were constantly frustrating, with programs distributed by the school or the local education authority only working convincingly in Microsoft Windows environments and causing pain and anger for people like myself with a Mac.  On the other hand, I constantly found my Mac environment to be much more user friendly than Windows!

Toni has been successful in repairing my computer and it is working properly.  Though Netflix said that it could not load up and advised me to check that I had the latest version of Firefox.  I checked, I did, and Netflix worked.  Why?  The ways of electronic acceptance are strange.

     As far as I can see all my files are in place and they are all backed up in theory anyway.  In theory.

I have decided that this day’s blog is not going to even mention you-know-what for a single glorious day.

     Tomorrow normal sarcasm and bitterness will be resumed!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 58 – Tuesday, 12th May

I slept the sleep of the dead after my exertions yesterday.  Though thinking about it, that metaphor could have been better chosen.  In fact, it is a wonder I ever get to sleep given my insatiable appetite for the depressingly predictable latest escapades of Orangeblond a portmanteau word I will now use to refer to the sad populist narcissistic twins of the USA and UK, as they vie with each other to show which one cares less about the population they pretend to ‘serve’.

     Try as I might, I cannot wean myself from the heady narcotic cocktail of BBC news and The Guardian, with a dash of Spanish and Catalan televisualisation to add an exotic spice to my neurosis.  Though, thinking about it, wouldn’t an absence of neurosis in these times argue a disassociation from what is actually going on that would be a compelling basis for a text book definition of mental illness?

     No one in Britain (including [especially?] the government) appears to have the slightest idea about what has been ““decided”” – and the double inverted commas there appear to be far too subtle to give a clear idea of the tenuous nature of the word as it is applied to government policy.

     Yesterday/today/tomorrow is when the population should/should not go to work by foot/bike/Star trek beam if possible and not by public transport unless you have to  .  .  .  and one could go on, but this government defies irony and sarcasm.

     600 deaths today, three thousand new cases – how is this a situation in which it is sensible to ease the lockdown.  The testing target was missed AGAIN yesterday – and without adequate testing, anything that the government says is nugatory.  So no surprise there then!

My bike ride this morning was fairly early, but there were many people around, with bikes outnumbering cars and the same thing on my bike ride in the evening.  The evening ride should be Plague Kid Free as their time to roam around ends at 7pm – except of course for those parents who don’t want to stick by the rules.  There were over twenty Plague Kids joining the adults on the paseo; and yes, I counted, just as I counted the number of cyclists who had lights on when I made my way back from the far end of Castelldefels (23 out of 127, if you are interested) and thought to myself, if people are not prepared to do something as simple as switching lights on in the darkness, what hope do we have for something more sophisticated and difficult when connected to the requirements for a successful lockdown?

     Not good!