LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS – DAY 80 – Wednesday, 3rd June.

Iffy weather means easier cycling along the Paseo for me.  Although this morning was bright and clear there were clouds around, and it was markedly less warm than yesterday.  As I am virtually geared up to set off at a set time I am impervious to the weather (unless it is raining – there are limits) and so I get to see a sparser selection of the population on my little jaunts.

     I have made a decision that I will not get grumpy on my ride by noting all the people who are breaking some or all of the rules about exercise and the times when they are supposed to be doing it.  I now cycle along in what passes for Zen serenity, or as near as I can get to it with the .active supressing of my Victor Meldrew inclinations.

     All of the usual on-beach café/restaurants (chiringuitos) have now been constructed or are in the last stages of production and these seasonal edifices will soon be plying their trade – though with reduced numbers of clientele – at least in this stage of the lockdown.  I do wonder about the economic reality of these places, where their existence is only for the summer months and now with a reduced number of patrons, how are they going to make a profit?

     Over the next few weeks we are going to see more clearly which cafes and restaurants, and indeed small businesses have managed to survive the lockdown.  In my more cynical moments I wonder whether only those places which seem to be centres for money laundering are going to be able to survive – not that I am going to make any concrete accusations, I am merely putting it forward as a possible scenario.  Hypothetical, of course!

     We are still nowhere near getting back to anything resembling normality, and even when more shops and shopping centres open fully, it is going to be a damn sight later before the attitude of people get back to where it was.

     At least, it will be for those “of riper years” as the Book of Common Prayer has it.  Some of us who are retired and with one or more of the conditions that place us ever so firmly in the “at risk” category will need a vaccine or at least a convincing treatment to be readily available before we return to anything like pre-Covid behaviour.

     The same does not, emphatically not, go for youth.  Although many of the members of the 14-24 year old groupings wear their masks, they do not wear them with anything like sincerity.  Too often the mask is on the chin, or in the hand, or wrapped around the elbow or simply not in evidence at all, when groups of kids are socialising, and that socialising does not often respect physical distancing.

     Don’t get me wrong, I do understand their scepticism and I only wish I could share their obvious belief that any infection will be like an infant infection of chicken pox – over in a day or so with the ‘sufferer’ hardly noticing.  And, let’s face it, statistics are on their side: the vast majority of Covid infections are mild and only a tiny minority necessitate hospitalization.  But as a person who contracted chicken pox in his forties, rather when he was four months or four years old, I have never felt so utterly ill and sorry for myself!  Being now a couple of decades older, I do fear what an infection of Covid-19 might mean for me now.  And indeed for those with whom I may come into contact.  The lesson is clear, it is up to the individual to follow the rules for the benefit of all – but the Cummings Cop-out seems to be all too ready to be called on by all too many people in this crisis.

Here in Spain the government is asking for a final extension to the State of Alarm to keep the restrictions in place during our transition to a looser approach to the virus.  Spain’s economy was not in the strongest of positions before this crisis and it will be a damn sight weaker after it.  The summer is the tourist season and, considering that the Easter Holidays were a disaster, it will be catastrophic if something is not salvaged from the summer holidays.  Spain is allowing the opening of hotels (though not their common areas) at a limited occupancy rate and in another week or so even we in Catalonia will probably be allowed to swim in the sea.  It is tantalizing to have the Med at the bottom of the street and not be allowed to swim in it.  I can’t swim in my local swimming pool either, and I fear that the restrictions that will be placed on public swimming when finally is allowed will make the experience something of a chore rather than a pleasure, but it will be interesting to see how our swimming club interprets the rules!

Johnson’s irascibility at PMQs when Starmer had the audacity to question him, is a clear sight of his lazy lack of preparedness and yet another example of his assumed possession of entitledness.  His bumbling non-answers are embarrassing in the extreme, and the sooner he is dispatched from the dispatch box the better.  I will have to devise an acronym to express his supreme unfittedness to the post for which he is paid.  Perhaps NAPM (not a prime minister) or TOAMP (travesty of a prime minister) or BIAL (bumbling idiot and liar) – they ned some work.

The situation in the USA is horrific in virtually every aspect: morally, socially, politically, legally, criminally, judicially – the list could go on and on.  As a white man, I do not know what it is to walk in a black person’s shoes, but I do know that my wholesale support is for the Black Lives Matter movement and I hope that something real comes from the world wide revulsion to the poison of racism that limits the development of so many black lives, not only in the US but also the UK, Spain, Catalonia and the rest of the world.

My addiction to the news, no matter how depressing it is, is something that I have mentioned before, and I can’t fight it.  I get even more depressed if I think that there are news stories that I might have ignored merely because my fragile sensibility finds it difficult to take.  I have to have my fix of Johnson, Trump et al, but I find that it is easier to take if I take it through the vision of writers like John Crace, the Guardian political sketch writer.  His wry writing lets you know that there is a voice of reason, articulating your sense of contempt in writing, which is so much more intelligent and wittier, allowing a Voltarian smile to leaven the misery of current political events.

Yesterday, before I went out on to the terrace on the third floor, I grabbed a book at random from the shelf nearest the door of my ‘library’ and started reading.  My choice was Lucia in Wartime by Tom Holt, which is a ‘continuation’ of E F Benson’s series of ‘Mapp and Lucia’ novels the style of which one admirer described as being as if “the pens of Evelyn Waugh and Jane Austen had mated”.  The novels are studies in middle class mores and snobbery centred on the rivalry of Mapp and Lucia for pre-eminence in the small town of Tilling.

     There was a superb Channel 4 television production of three of the novels in 1985 and 1986 with Prunella Scales as Mapp, Geraldine McEwan as Lucia, Denis Lill as Major Benjy Flint and Nigel Hawthorne as Georgie.  As someone said about the writing of James Thurber and his cartoons, “If you don’t find them funny – there is something wrong with you!”  I feel the same way about Lucia.  I urge you to sample any and all of EF Benson’s oeuvre and of Tom Holt too.

     It may seem perverse to single out a book about Mapp and Lucia which was not written by E F Benson, but rather by Tom Holt over forty years after Benson’s death, but the book is so well written and such a tribute to the power of Benson’s creation that it can be mentioned in the same breath as that of the master himself!

     I might add that my copy of Lucia in Wartime by Tom Holt was a 1986 Christmas present, inscribed by the two friends who gifted it to me, “An imitation Lucia, for an imitation Lucia” 

     How well they knew me!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 79 – Tuesday, 2nd June

It doesn’t help that my head is buzzing not only with the rules and regulations modified on the hoof in Spain and Catalonia, but also the nonsensical doublethink of Orwellian proportions that cover the gibberings of various ministers as they constantly try and square the political circle on various media outlets.

     No one really knows what is going on.  Forget for a moment the on-going series of lies, deceptions, mendacity and invention that are linked to the Unicorn figures regarding testing that Hancock delivers to a sullenly disbelieving audience; and set aside too, the fantasy that is rapidly growing up around the Track and Trace fiasco, what we are left with are a series of instructions/suggestions/laws/stimuli for the instinct/or whatever that are supposed to cover our actions during our daily life.

     I know that I can go out for exercise during certain times (distinctions that appear to be generally ignored in Castelldefels); I know that I can go to the shops to get essential goods whenever I like; I know that I can go to a restaurant and eat on the terrace of same, but I can’t go inside, or go to the loo; I know that I think that I can meet others outside in a park or a garden – but anything from this point onwards is just a bit hazy.

     It all reminds me of school.  But then most things do, it is difficult to be a teacher for thirty years and not use that experience as a sort of range of reference.  So, anyway, rules.  Every school that I have taught in or been in has a series of rules.  It might be an infant’s school, or a secondary school or the Open University, they all have rules.  And very necessary they are too, at their best they allow you to know where you are and they give you the satisfaction of knowing limits.  But.

     And there is always a ‘but’.  Take one school rule from my past: “When pupils have entered the school buildings, they must take their outdoor coats off.”  Let us, for a moment, forget about the raison d’etre for this rule, if indeed there ever was one.  Just consider the rule.  It is simple and easy to see if it is being obeyed.  As the pupils came into the school after break or the lunch hour, teachers were monitoring their entrance and could therefore urge the pupils to obey the rule.  Which I did.  In spite of the fact that I couldn’t see the point of the rule.  Take off coats in the classroom?  Yes, I could see the point there.  Take them off as soon as they entered the school buildings?  Why?  Still, I did my duty and asked hundreds of kids to “Take your coat off!” and carry it.

    In every staff meeting where rules were discussed I urged the abolition of what I saw as a completely pointless rule.  Every one!  But I got scant support.  Even from those members of staff whom I had seen (with my own eyes!) disobeying the instruction to tell the kiddiewinks to obey, but in front of the senior staff they all became rule enforcers, and to hell with reality.

     The rules of lockdown are there and people obviously can agree with them, because it for their own health and safety.  But in reality rules are always for others, or they are like Schrodinger’s Rules, they apply and they do not at the same time.  If other people break the rules then they become glaringly obvious and essential to maintain, whereas if you break then, then it’s . . .

    

Every day seems to bring evidence of the deliberate attempt of government to humiliate and denigrate the people that they are supposed to serve.  In Britain the latest idiocy of Rees-Mogg in forcing parliamentarians to come in person to the Palace of Westminster to vote was, after a three-line whip from Johnson, was passed.  This effectively disenfranchises those members who are over 70, with childcare issues and those with conditions that mean that they should shelter.  All that forced through to get Johnson some sort of crowd so that his glaring deficiencies are moderated by baying support from the rabid sheep of the Conservative party.

     In the USA, Trump’s forcing a cordon sanitaire through peacefully protesting demonstrators who were there because of the murder of George Floyd, just so the spiteful inadequate could have a photo op in front of a church holding a bible upside down, was low even for a semi evolved life form like Trump.  He never fails to find new depths of squalid self-referential unfeeling vulgarity. 

     Vile populist governments, demonstrating, with a sickening lack of regard, just how much they think of the people who misguidedly elected them, unite both sides of the Atlantic.

     God help us all!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 78 – Monday, 1st June

Well, no one actually knows exactly what the stage that we are in actually means.  As far as I can tell the actual difference is that the three medical regions of Barcelona have now been amalgamated and people within the metropolitan area of Barcelona can travel within the region.  We are still, as far as I can work out in Phase 1 for most things, so that the regimented times for exercise are the same as for Phase 0.

     Restaurants are open to 50% capacity and the tables should only be outside on the terraces and should maintain physical distances.  As far as I can understand from my reading of the rules, facemasks should be used in all public places where the physical distance cannot be maintained.

     If you had accompanied me on my cycle ride this evening you would have been very hard pressed to have seen too many adherents to any form of the rules.  People have obviously had enough of restrictions and they are eager to enjoy the summer, and bugger possible death, presumably?

Trump no longer deserves the title of President; he has forfeited any claim to that by his (even for him) unbelievable responses to the crisis of the death of George Floyd.  God knows, as one commentator noted, the bar for Trump’s attempts, as being presidential is set very, very low – but he failed even the lowest of expectations by his incendiary and frankly racist twitters.  When are we going to be rid of this unfeeling grotesquery?  The fact that he even has a ghost of a chance in November tells us a great deal about the American electorate!

For the second time, I went for my dental appointment to reconstruct the tooth that has a gaping hole in it as my filling fell out.  The first time I was a week early and this second time I was a day early.  Even though I wrote the bloody details down I still managed to get there a day early – so, in some senses I am getting better.  I might add that I managed to be early for both my faulty turn-ups!

     I would say, third time lucky, but that hardly seems to fit a visit to the dentist!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 77 – Sunday, 31st May

I am more than ever convinced that my government has no real plan to exit the lockdown apart from a mystic belief in the ameliorative affect of the calendar, and hope.  I have seen no evidence that the political leaders have the slightest idea of what they are doing, why they are doing it and what they hope to achieve.

     It is fairly clear that the loosening of the lockdown restrictions were brought forward to try and combat the adverse publicity about the lockdown cheat Cummings.  The tracking effort seems stillborn given the information that we have had for those people who have been ‘trained’ so far.  The opening of schools in England seems motivated by politics rather than by health and education.  Every part of the crisis has been made worse by the way that it has been woefully mismanaged.  And people die because of the mistakes that this government makes, and they will go on dying until a more convincing/efficient/moral/realistic – well, add your own adjectives, I can think only of insulting ones for the bunch of incompetents that supposedly run the country.

     Here in Catalonia and in Castelldefels we are due to move to Phase 2 on Monday.  This unites all parts of the metropolitan area of Barcelona into one unit and that means that we are able to move about within the whole area.  In theory, we think, it means that Toni would be able to go to his home city of Terrassa and speak to his family, though he would still have to keep physical distancing when he speaks to them.  And I think that they could meet in an open space.  We are not absolutely clear about the rules.

     I have just come back from my evening bike ride and the area where we used to live when we were first in Castelldefels looked like a perfectly ordinary Sunday night in late May.  Families were out and there were groups of youngsters on bikes and wandering the streets.  The restaurants were doing a roaring trade and there were queues outside some.  The age range was from babies to pensioners so, as far as the good people of Castelldefels are concerned, the restrictions of Phase 1 are well and truly over.

     On Monday, if the weather is good, I confidently expect the beaches to be packed and we will then see if the discipline of physical distancing extends itself to the sand!

On the cultural front, lockdown has given me the opportunity via Netflix to watch an extended selection of episodes of “Family Guy” and it has taken over (almost) from my predilection for lauding “The Simpsons” as the best thing on our TV screens.  

     Admittedly my lack of access to past episodes of “The Simpsons” means that “Family Guy” has had something of a clear run in making me a fan, but just as there are episodes of “The Simpsons” that are stand-out amazing (I’m thinking of the episode when Bart is sent to France and finds that he is a slave in a vineyard; the one where Marge takes part in the musical version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” with a chorus number “You can always depend on the kindness of strangers” or the remake of “Of Mice and Men”) I have now seen an episode of “Family Guy” that stunned me.

     “Send in Stewie, Please” is focussed on just one character and is an extended episode that I understand was broadcast without commercial breaks.

     The action of the episode is centred on the obnoxiously precocious baby of the family, Stewie.  He has been sent to the child psychiatrist because, as we eventually find out, he has pushed another child downstairs.

     Stewie dominates this episode and through picking up clues in photographs and other things he is able to give a crushing description of the live and love of the psychiatrist (voiced brilliantly by Ian McKellen!) before breaking down himself and revealing The Truth about himself.  It is mesmerizing.  It is comic, without being funny and it is a very polished piece of writing.

     It was broadcast in March 2018 and I recommend it if you haven’t seen it yet.  Whether you will get the full flavour of the episode if you haven’t seen any other the others I am not sure, but it will still be a horrifyingly amusing sort of experience!

     “Family Guy” is a much more ‘adult’ animation than “The Simpsons” and uses tropes that you would never find in the latter.  It is also famous for its ‘cut aways’ and these often have ‘real’ film or ‘real’ characters in them.  Sexuality is a major theme, in a number of varieties, sometimes very uncomfortably!

     It’s all good stuff and I am thoroughly enjoying my belated introduction to a splendid series!

For Sunday lunch we had our traditional meal of chicken from the pollo a last where people are still maintaining adequate physical distancing and forming an orderly queue.  This Sunday the people tried to reinstate the ticket system where, having taken a paper ticket, you are informed that it is your turn by an electronic display.  For the last few weeks, because of the distanced queuing it was irrelevant and most of us had queued without taking a ticket.  This meant that, when the owner tired to call out a number there was instant rebellion from the queue and the system was dispensed with immediately.  Something to bear in mind for next week!

     Though, who knows how we will be behaving by next week!  Time now has the quick slowness or slow quickness that can easily catch you out!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 76 – Saturday, 30th May

I’m still furious about the fact that Cummings is still in his position after he has been shown to have broken the lockdown guidelines.  He formed the rules; he should resign or be sacked.

     If I am furious about the fact that Cummings is holding on, I am sickened by the continuingly awful performance of the man who calls himself the Prime Minister. 

     His inability to articulate a convincing argument in the briefings and the embarrassingly inept responses to questioning revealing his shocking lack of detail in his understanding of his briefs used to be the basis for the reasons that I detest this shallow apology of a concerned politician having anything to do with the levers of power – but now I think that his demeaning protection of Cummings has taken pride of place in my reasons to despise the man.

     It is clear that Cummings should be fired, he is a glaring example of the ‘one rule for us and another for the rest’, he is a self proclaimed populist and disruptor, but in the case of his lockdown misdemeanours he has behaved like a typical member of the elite and the establishment (with a small ‘e’) has come to his aid.

     The feeling of the public however does not match that of the sometime prime minister (who has now surely forfeited his right to capital letters for the office that he has so demeaned) and the way that he has slavishly protected his advisor.  Too many members of the public have done exactly as the guidelines suggested and have suffered the consequences for them to be anything like sympathetic to the so-called travails of an over privileged git.

     Even though I am resident in Catalonia, I feel personally slighted by the government.  I have abided by the rules for over ten weeks, not only for my own safety, but also for the safety of others: the simple logic of safety.  But that sort of logic is only for the little people of whom Cummings is not, of course, one.

     I do not think that the feeling of being cheated will go away and Johnson’s government (if we can call it that) will be forever tainted.  Unfortunately the British electorate doesn’t seem to have many scruples about accepting tainted goods and so my hopes for the future are few.

     Quite apart from the criminally inept mismanagement of the viral crisis, when I really want to depress myself, I start thinking about what mess they are going to make of Brexit.  Silly me, they have already made a mess of it, I wonder what sort of monumentally, catastrophic balls up they are going to make of it.

     Whatever else this crisis has illustrated, one thing is abundantly clear, the personnel that form the government is of woefully limited ability.

Castelldefels is getting ready for the tourist season.  Restaurants are partially open and when I passed the centre of the beach part of Castelldefels there were people queuing for places in the limited dining accommodation available.  To the untrained eye things looked like a normal late May Saturday evening.  There were few masks and little to no physical distancing – but there again, we are allowed to meet in groups of up to 10!

     Neither Toni nor I are clear about how the rules change on Monday, when we go from Level 1 to Level 2.  What new delights at playing at freedom will that allow us!

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 75 – Friday, 29th May

Disaster!  My mobile phone (in its case) slipped out of my pocket and managed to land on a tiled floor in such a way that it came out of its case and smashed the mirrored back.  So much for my Huawei P20 Pro.  It’s still working, with an artistically crazed back and a large cavernous gap between the front and the back.  I will have to investigate to find out if there is any way in which it can be salvaged – it is after all working perfectly well; it is only the case that is broken.  I am not confident, and I expect to be both disappointed and angry at the built-in obsolescence or intentional difficulty in repairing it.  But, at the moment I have done no investigation to find out what is possible.  Perhaps I will surprise myself.

My bike ride this morning was again relatively quiet with few people joining me in their period of exercise.  The evenings are much fuller and more crowded with an age-blind selection of people walking, running and cycling.  When I go out only adults aged 16? to 69 should be there – but cafes and restaurants along the sea front are open and the whole family, regardless of age, can go to those so the discipline of lockdown is being made slacker by the day.

     According to our government, we will progress to the next stage of loosened restriction on Monday.  The progression is measured by days and not my figures.  There seems to be an assumption that the virus will be subject to a daily reduction in a whole area in an almost sequential way.

     As far as I can observe people in Castelldefels have already moved to the next level in their behaviour, so Monday’s new regulations will only make official what they are already doing.

For the first time for over three months we went to one of our favourite bar/restaurants for tapas and a drink.  We were outside, as restaurants are still not using interiors.  Even though the tables were generously spaced, it still felt as though we were getting nearer to some sort of normality, some sort of New Normality.

LOCKDOWN [Phase 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 74 – Thursday, 28th May

Today felt the least like being in lockdown.  My morning bike ride was 'open', in the sense that the paseo was fairly sparsely populated, it was almost like a ‘normal’ ride, except for the number of people sporting medical masks – though not by any means the majority.

      The first part of my ride was into the centre of town to post a delayed letter of condolence to the wife of an ex-colleague of mine.  As I had included a card I was not sure of the weight/cost and so a trip to the post office was necessary, and partly explains the delay.  The post office was only open until 2.30 so I was there early.  Not early enough. 

     There were a couple of people outside and a counter assistant was letting in people one by one.  I was prepared to wait right up until I saw the length of the queue on the other side of the building, it was stretched the length of the street.  I did not wait.

     Previously I had used the Tabac to get stamps and to deposit letters, so I decided to find out if you could still do that.  The stamps were not a problem and the lady behind the counter seemed to be confident about the amount that was necessary to send it off, the only odd point about the transaction was her wielding a pritt stick to put the stamps on.  It was only after she had done it that I realized that no one nowadays is going to lick stamps, not in the present circumstances.  There are going to be all sorts of little instinctive reactions that will now be potentially deadly!

     For the first time for ten weeks we actually used one of the motorways to go to a shop that sold fencing.  The shop was open, though sections were portioned off and each section had an assistant who took the name of each person who went into the area.  People were keeping their distance as far as possible, though we were still too close for comfort.

     I met somebody that I knew from the swimming pool in the shop and for the first time I bumped elbows by way of greeting and had a muffled mask-wearing conversation.  The New Normal indeed!

     Lunch was patatas bravas with my attempt at a salsa to go with them that Toni discovered on the Internet.  There is a bewilderingly large number of ingredients that you have to add to the mayonnaise up to and including orange juice and zest.  An interesting experiment, and tasty too.

Johnson, the sometime prime minister of the UK, has said that we should “move on” from the fuss about the wrongdoing of Cummings.  We should not.

LOCKDOWN [Level 1] CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 73 – Wednesday, 27th May

Yesterday, the second day of our being on Level 1 of Lockdown rather than being at Level 0, we had our first Menu del dia for ten weeks!  We sat outside the restaurant on well-spaced tables in bright sunshine (Toni in the shade of course) with a gentle brisk breeze to keep things pleasant.  The food was good (apart from the mediocre melon for postre) but the ambience was wonderful, the freedom of someone else making the meal and being surrounded (though not too closely) by other people.  An absolute delight!

    

Before lunch we both went to the Chinese supermarket to get wire and netting to repair our broken fences.  It was the second time that I had been to the supermarket as I had cycled into town to go to my dental appointment.  Except I was a week early!  Rather than waste the effort I went further into town and got myself some money.  Getting money was related to my first visit to the Chinese Supermarket where, after I had collected the materials that Toni needed to put the fence up I was informed that the card machine was not working and they only accepted cash.  I have not used cash for two and a half months and had none.  I rather resented having to return to grubby, virus laded notes!

     As we were out and about in the car we called into our medical centre because I have lost my prescription and I needed to replenish my stocks.

     We were able to park outside the centre – which was unusual – but the locked metal doors of the centre indicated why.  A notice on the door informed me that the centre was permanently closed and urged those who needed attention to go to another centre.

      Now we get to the part of the story that is specifically for my friend Squidge.  She is the sort of person who always gets served last in any restaurant grouping; she is the one whose choice is “off”; she is the one whose eventual meal is not what she ordered – you get the idea.  Whereas good things (usually) happen to me!

     Anyway, the door to the medical centre was firmly closed.  But, as I stood there, a window opened and, lo and behold! my doctor magically appeared and asked, “Stephen what are you doing here?  I was going to ignore you, but then I saw it was you!”  Needless to say I got my prescription, printed out then and there!  When I got back to the car I began to explain what had happened, but I didn’t get far before Toni’s expressions of exasperated recognition of my typical good fortune made us both laugh, though Toni’s laugh was a trifle more wistful than mine!

The Cummings fiasco continues.  There are many elements of this farce that are comment worthy, but I will choose just one.

     Out of the baying pack of fanatics than have chosen to junk their morals and support the upside down logic of breaking the rules not being breaking the rules I would like to highlight one sparking example of Conservative doublespeak: Robert Edward Jenrick, presently drawing a salary as a Member of Parliament and serving as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.   

     You may recall his 2014 Newark by-election that was mired in accusations of overspending with the Electoral Commission judging that the accusations were valid.  Or perhaps you recall more recently that Jenrick was against Brexit, until his career demanded he think otherwise. Or perhaps we should look back no further than April of this year where during lockdown he travelled 150 miles to his second home and then 40 miles to visit his parents AFTER going on television and urging people to obey the rules and not even visit their mothers on Mother’s Day.  And to bring us bang up to date with his career, the scandal of a timely planning permission that appears to have been given to a major Conservative donor saving the developer millions!  And this is the sort of hypocrite asking us to excuse Cummings!  Why should we even be remotely surprised!

As I have not fully recovered from the double brain-numbing whammy of Johnson’s defence and Cummings’ defiant ‘explanation’ in the Rose Garden of No 10, I couldn’t face listening to Johnson’s performance in the liaison committee and, as John Crace’s excellent parliamentary sketch in today’s Guardian adequately shows, I didn’t miss much.

     What is abundantly clear is that this appalling government appears to have reformed part of the ‘law’ around the arrogant reinterpretation of a governmental aide.  Johnson has junked his reputation and the authority of his government to save Cummings. 

     God help us all!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 72 – Tuesday, 26th May

My favourite part of the ‘lie-abetter for Brexit’ Cummings’ Rose Garden Explanation was his justification for going to local beauty spot Barnard Castle on his wife’s birthday: to test his eyes!  Now, even though he is the chief advisor to the dyed in the wool liar Johnson, I think it is perhaps unreasonable to call that little fantasy a lie.  The justification has obviously been studiously nurtured over the weeks when Cummings and No 10 steadfastly refused to give any details about Cummings whereabouts in the period he has now so splendidly ‘shared’ with we plebs.

     The ‘eye testing’ element is a tour-de-force in the ‘with a mighty leap he was free’ approach to difficult situations in the old Saturday Matinee serials from which there appeared to be no escape.  I also liked the Tom Lehrer, “We’ll all go together when we go” approach of loading the car with wife and young child to ensure totality of extinction if an ophthalmic accident happened.

     I listened to almost all the Rose Garden ‘Confession’ and was most struck by the fact that Cummings did not apologise.  At any time.  He went out of his way to assert that he considered that he had done nothing wrong.

     But, the simple fact is, he did do something wrong.  He did break the lockdown.  He did break the rule that says that you should not go on unnecessary journeys.  As one Guardian commentator, Owen, said, the central reality of what Cummings did shows that he broke the guidelines, “everything else is just noise”.

     As the focus is now ridiculously on him, other snippets of duplicity are coming out.  Today we have been told about a doctored blog where his tinkering allows him to present himself as prescient.  Editing past blogs is not a crime – but if you make reference to the doctored blog to substantiate a claim, it is at least an academic crime, and reflects nothing on your character.  He is the Mekon not Doctor Who, the only way he can travel in time is to alter the records and then pretend.

     The numbers of times I have said in the past, “I do not see how he/she/it can continue, with honour, in post,” have been uttered with tired exasperation because ‘honour’ usually has nothing whatsoever to do with it.  Whatever ‘it’ was or is, and the defective character defiantly brazens out the storm and continues in place.  Johnson is a perfect example.  He has been caught out lying, cheating, misrepresenting and philandering, to name just a few of the –ing words that spring to mind in his case.  He is selfish, disloyal, cowardly, hypocritical, mendacious, lazy, ill prepared, loutish, vulgar, dishevelled, conceited, arrogant, complacent, narcissistic and smug.  And he is the Prime Minister.  In spite of everything.

     Well, Johnson got his wish, he is in post and is making a true hash of things.  Like a number of people I have known throughout my life, he is a prime (ha!) example of somebody wanting something, but thinking little about what achieving that goal will mean.  He is Prime Minister, but he gives little impression either of enjoying his position or knowing what to do while he is there.  The demands of the pandemic show up all his failings.  He is not the leader to bring the UK together.  He does not engender trust.  He does not give the impression that he has the slightest idea of how to take the country forward.  As I fear that we will continue to see with the whole Brexit project, he fronted a campaign laced with lies, deception and half-truth; he has ‘achieved’ Brexit, but knows little about how to make it anything approaching a useful reality.  The major claims of the campaign are all turning out to be fantasy: the money for the NHS; the lack of a border in the Irish Sea; the ease with which an agreement could be done and so on.  His fantasies have cost us billions already as we stumble towards the hardest of hard exits and his lack of management and determination have cost us lives.  Tens of thousands of lives.

     I am sure that Johnson feels that he has been hard done by.  He did not want to become Prime Minister in a time of cholera, or worse.  He wanted to be the blond haired poster boy leading a flag waving pack of baying mindless Brexiteers towards the sunny uplands of whatever their deranged imaginations thought was better than we had.  He wanted to be delivering pseudo-intellectual speeches, full of blokey forthrightness laced with the soupcon of Classical Learning to impress what he regards as the Great Unwashed.  And it has all unravelled because of what Mac the Knife called, “Events, dear boy, events!”

     Johnson is a diminished man, politician and Prime Minister.  His inability to gauge the feeling of the nation in their disgust at what Cummings has done will, I think, be something of a turning point in his frankly disgraceful career.

     Or not, of course.  To Cummings and Johnson, what we think is fairly irrelevant.  We are not the wielders of power, we are not the ones ‘born to lead’.  We, at a very basic level, do not matter to them.  We are the goldfish, throw us some titbits of salacious news and our five-second memories will wash away recent events and return us to the quiescent subservience that they think is their due.

     I only hope that the groundswell of revulsion at Cummings is too big and too powerful to be relegated to the ‘other country’ of the past and that simple justice might prevail and a man whose arrogance has become too big for the country to stand is torn away from the front stage of politics.

     It’s time for the toddler Johnson to come out of his Cummings style Pampers and wear his own grown up underpants with clean confidence!

     As if!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 71 – Monday, 25th May

I am still shaken by just how poor a defence Johnson mounted to justify the high-handedness of his arrogant aide.  When even the Daily Mail asks, “What planet do they think they are on!” as a reference to the incredible (literally!) insulting justification for Cummings’ rule breaking, joined with the sickeningly unedifying spectacle of supine ministers docilely toeing the Save The Dom cabinet line, you realize that you are witnessing a government imploding.

     Perhaps I should have said ‘seemingly imploding’ because I do not underestimate the ability of the Conservative Party to survive ‘fatal’ mistakes and misjudgements.  It is undeniable that Johnson is a lessened leader, I don’t say ‘character’ because that is clearly impossible, and if it becomes clear to him that his status is diminished then he will do what any narcissist does when self-worth is threatened: lash out and to hell with the collateral damage.

     Let us never forget that Johnson’s espousal of Brexit was quintessentially narcissistic: he was convinced by his own rhetoric, comparing and contrasting two pieces of his own writing to see which one would afford him greater possibilities for self-advancement.  I don’t know what the opposite of a Damascene Conversion would be to cover his case, but there was no blinding light from an all-powerful deity, but rather a greedy acceptance of his own perceived omnipotence fuelling his ludicrously inflated ego and presented as reason and logic and, god help duty, dedication and us!

     The front pages of the newspapers cannot make easy reading for Johnson, but they don’t make easy reading for the rest of the Conservative Party either.  Most MPs are concerned about their seats; anything that looses them public support is not to be tolerated – and these MPs postbags must be filled with howls of outrage about the preferential treatment of a member of the establishment as opposed to the PBI, or rather Plebs as they think of us.

     You can take the over-entitled git out of the Bullingdon Club, but the sense of them-and-us never leaves.  Johnson is a perfect example of the born into privilege and milking it for all it’s worth with the minimum of effort sort of the undeserving rich.  He is also a bully, a liar, malicious and, as the ‘defence’ of Cummings has clearly shown, a coward.  And cowards in power are dangerous.  As we are finding out every day.

     Unless Johnson takes visible control of the government then even his comfortable majority will not be enough to protect him from the Men in Suits whose only raison d’etre is to preserve power, and to whom Johnson is only a momentary blip on the time line of their sequestration of political dominance.

The fall out from the pathetic defence of Cummings, where we are expected to believe in a sort of Schrodinger’s Lockdown that does and does not allow free movement at the same time, continues.  Johnson’s cringe-makingly inept performance has had the surprising result of uniting all sections of society and all political parties in fully justified revulsion.  Except of course for the ‘usual suspects’ of Brexit insanity, though even some members of the ERG have called for Cummings’ head!  We truly live in strange times!

     As a last resort, Cummings himself is to make a public statement and take questions.  I suppose if Cummings can supress his natural revulsion for the carping criticism of the ‘lesser breeds without the law’ by whom he thinks he is surrounded, then a person of his obvious intelligence and manipulative skills would be the sort of man to carry it off.  But he really will have to out-Houdini Houdini to get away with it and I hope The Daily Mirror and The Guardian hacks have got their linguistic scalpels out and ready to dissect everything that l’éminence désordonée has to say. 

     I keep checking in with The Guardian on my phone to find out the time because I do not want to miss a word.  I have just found out that his statement will take place at 4pm UK time, 5pm my time.  I will be there, don’t let me down Radio 4!

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 70 – Sunday, 24th May

Firstly, may I urge you all to sign the petition on change.org calling for the resignation of Dominic Cummings?  Of course, he shouldn’t be given the opportunity to resign, he should be fired, but the person who would have to act with alacrity, authority and some moral force is the Blond Buffoon, so no luck there.

     It does seem rather like indulging in an unsavoury blood sport to attack Matt gi’ us a job Beckett, the man whose moral compass can be turned between meals without ruining your appetite, who after attacking the randy professor for breaking the distancing rules to welcome his mistress to his house had to do a 180 degree turn and justify Cummings breaking of the rules. 

     Cummings we should remind ourselves had symptoms of Covid-19, whereas the Randy Prof was symptom free, and the Prof’s tryst did not involve a 600 mile round trip, with stops, to spread the infection.

     The press-ganged ministers forced to humiliate themselves (except for Gove, of course, who probably ‘means’ what he says, which speaks volumes for his despicable character) by enthusiastic professions of support for someone they probably hate and fear were just as predictably weasel-wordedly vile as you would have predicted – though, from an English teacher’s viewpoint, transcripts of their ‘support’ would make a fascinating portfolio for the student of linguistics, social linguistics, politics, morality, truth, doublespeak and so on.

     As a kid I used to wonder at the articulacy of politicians who, after a second’s thought when faced with a poser of a question were able to speak in connected sentences, give a rounded performance, ending in a burst of applause and have said nothing at all!

     I was obviously a good student because, during one public meeting I was called on to give an answer to a question that, had I been forthright would have condemned the person sitting next to me.  I got to my feet, I spoke and, when I had finished I was thanked for my explanation.  An explanation that very carefully gave no useful information at all – and I had my round of applause!

     Having done it oneself, it is easier to discern in others and indeed, bemoan the inexpert way in which most politicians now fail to master the technique.  To be fair, questioning is not as reverential as it was in my youth, but ministers do have aids who prep them for the obvious questions that they are likely to encounter though as with for example, the Blond Buffoon, preparation is only as good as it is thorough and the Buffoon, as is known, is not famous for his application!

     The Goblin Gove is a ‘person’ who seems to thrive on difficult questioning, but this is only because he is able to disassociate himself completely from past history, truth and accountability in his answers.  The latitude of what might laughingly be referred to, as his moral compass must afford him the smug luxury of expansiveness in his fluently empty rhetoric.

     As Sunday morning progresses, so we are finding more people condemning Cummings’ breaking of the lockdown and even Conservative MPs are calling for his resignation – though I still think he should be sacked, by the Blond Buffoon who needs to get more acclimatized to U-Turns, especially as we get nearer and nearer to a no-deal, hard Brexit!

     As the day wears on the situation with Cummings appears a little clearer.  Only 7 conservative MPs have thrown their careers in the party down the loo by coming out against Cummings and urging his sacking, while over 50 Conservative MPs have expressed support.  As one commentator pointed out although Cummings obviously did something wrong and against the rules that he helped frame, the ministers who tried to explain away his crime are even worse as they have jettisoned, or at least called into question, the whole governmental strategy for the saving of lives by concentrating on saving a single career.  As another commentator pointed out, this ministerial circling of the waggons is also an expensive squandering of governmental authority.

     My concern is hardly dispassionate as I regard this government as a travesty, but at a time of national crisis I am also acutely aware (as the government signally isn’t) that any mismanagement will result in even more deaths.  I sincerely hope that Cummings is consigned to the scrapheap, but while his political demise would be a bright spot in the darkness of the rule of The Blond Buffoon and his Cabinet of No Talents, I am much more concerned about the efficient management of the Covid virus and eliminating it.

     But a little political blood is acceptable!

I have just watched the Blond Buffoon’s performance in the daily press conference and I feel slightly sick.  Johnson was asked questions that he could not, or chose not to answer.  He asserted that Cummings behaved honourably, but was unable to draw any clear distinction between similar cases where individuals, at great personal cost, had followed governmental guidelines unlike Cummings.

     Johnson provided us with a shoddy performance.  It was unconvincing and positively degrading to watch.  He insulted the intelligence of his audience and he devalued the government that he leads.

     In future press conferences it would be more seemly for Mr Cummings to take the podium, as he is clearly the person in charge and not the buffoon who fronted today’s fiasco.

     Johnson drew distinctions that did not exist and he asked us to exonerate Cummings behaviour by repeating his perceptions of its moral worth rather than giving any concrete explanations about how what was allowable for Cummings should not be taken as a general rule.  If the ‘guidance has not changed’ how can Cummings’ selfish behaviour possibly be right.

     I now feel that the resignation of Cummings is almost irrelevant.  Johnson is the one who should be considering his position because, as a prime minister he now has, in a phrase that I loved when used about the much missed prime minister May, having “about as much authority as the 'Do not tumble dry' instruction on clothes”.

     R.I.P Premiership: Johnson, May, 2020.

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFELS - DAY 69 – Saturday, 23rd May

So, “Let them die! Cummings” is now shown to have broken the lockdown rules that he helped frame, by driving 250 miles from London when he was positive with the Covid-19 virus to self-isolate in his parents’ house – a flagrant flouting of the rules.  If we look to the immediate past, other high profile flouters have resigned.  So should he.

     He won’t of course.  The Blond Buffoon would be lost, directionless, gibbering – sorry, even more lost, directionless and gibbering, without him.  And where would Hardest of All Hard Brexits be unless driven (ha!) by the Manic Mekon of Maliciousness!

     I look forward to the puerile mendacity of third-rate cabinet ministers (are there any others?) as they (yet again) defend the defenceless.  I do hope that the Guardian manages to get an appropriately evil photograph of the Bald Bastard (I can say that as I share his follicle challenge) to illustrate the mealy mouthed explanations for his ‘entitled’ flouting.  If, of course, anyone deigns to give an explanation.  It remains to be seen if there are sufficient Tory MPs to force The Blond Buffoon into another U-Turn, and if there is a feeling in the country that Cummings’ position is untenable.  One can only hope!

     This comes at the same time as the fall-out from the self-quarantine for visitors to the UK controversy; the continued failure of track and test; the chaos and division on the school return plans; the continuing horror of the mismanagement of Covid-19 in Care Homes; the total number of deaths and infections; the release of SAGE advice showing just how political the decisions have been; confusion of intentions about how, when and where we can holiday, and on and on. 

     Our present government is exactly the wrong group of politicians in position at exactly the wrong time.  And there is a proposed trip for the Blond Buffoon to the Orange Monster as if the link of shared shittiness was not close and dirty enough even with an ocean between them, they have to get together to share the shame!

My bike ride this morning was through a positive throng of people walking, running and cycling on the Paseo, the most crowded that I have experienced.  The beach was also fairly densely populated with some people swimming – it just shows you what odd times we are living in that such a comment seems remarkable!  Given that Monday marks a further loosening of the restrictions, I confidently expect there to be an exponential rise in people along the front.  We will be open to visits from people in the whole Barcelona metropolitan area, though I am not sure that overnight stays are yet allowed.  There are numbers of second homes in Castelldefels so there must be people itching to get to the seaside for the traditional stay.  Sigh!

     This means that our summer neighbours are likely to arrive as soon as they are given permission, and then they will be here until at least the middle of September.  Usually they arrive just after the schools close, though this year that date is something of a moveable feast to say the least, more conjectural than calendrical!  [ look it up, it exists!]

     My sports club can reopen on Monday as well, though I am not sure that the pool will be open yet.  The web site does not give information about sports apart from some 1 to 1 activities in padel and pilates.  Nothing about swimming.  As my membership of the Club has been temporarily suspended during the virus crisis I suppose that I will know that things are getting back to normal when the bank starts taking money again!  I am looking forward to my first lengths.

     I assume that when swimming eventually resumes it will be in a ‘timed’ slot and that changing facilities and showering facilities will not be provided. 

     We may well have to turn up in our bathing costumes and that means I will have to delve into my wardrobe and see if I can find a tracksuit.  That still fits!  I fear that most of the bits and pieces of past tracksuits are nylon based and therefore efficient producers of static electricity.  As someone who has ‘fallen upwards’ after crossing the carpet of the National Theatre and placing a hand on the exposed metal stair rail and shocking myself from side to side as I instinctively flinched away with one shocked hand and then grabbed for support with the other to be shocked in turn, and so on – I am prone to crackling displays of painful personal electric discharges.  I dread the return to nylonic [that doesn’t exist, but I like the sound] Faradaean [that doesn’t either, ditto] excesses!  But, there again, no pain – no gain!

Just watched 1917.  Superb!  I am usually quite squeamish about films concerning the First World War, partly I think because I feel that I have an emotional investment in the things as my grandfather was a volunteer at the start of the war and he was someone who survived, though not without scars – both literal and mental.  He was wounded during one ‘battle’ (if you can call the ill planned slaughter by upper class idiots a ‘battle?) and was seriously enough wounded to be sent back to Britain to recuperate.  When he returned to his point in the line, nothing had changed except the whole of his company had been killed.  Everyone.

     Every time that I have walked past the statue of Earl (!) Douglas Haig in London, I have felt a personal affront on behalf of my grandfather.  A man who fought in the Somme.  Ah well, let it go, but I am not neutral when I see soldiers in the trenches.  1917 was a worthy addition to the sorry story of the senseless slaughter in France and Belgium – that should never be forgotten.  There are too many easy parallels of the waste of human life in our present time for the excesses of 1914-1918 to be ignored.  Though it would be difficult to say that the lesson has been learned.

     A film worth watching.