No more excuses - you've got to blame the people!

 

My full-time teaching career started with my going for interview in Kettering, a town in Northamptonshire of which I had not previously heard.  (As I was an aspiring English teacher, I do hope you appreciated my not ending the last sentence with a preposition.)  Anyway, I got the job in what was then Kettering Boys’ Grammar School, but which had become Kettering Boys’ School by the time I took up my post.  I spent a year and a bit there learning my craft and finding out that full-time teaching was a truly demanding job.

     I had long moved back to Cardiff when the Northampton that I knew went, I’m tempted to say pear-shaped, but that image is not grotesque enough for what actually happened to the political landscape.

     This link will take you to a lucid explanation of the appalling mismanagement of the council resulting in its bankruptcy: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-56488909

     In the recent elections, the electorate of the two new political entities that were formed from the rubble of what had been destroyed by the past administrations, saw fit to vote majorities to the Conservatives – the party which caused all the trouble in the first place.  The electorate have AGAIN voted for people who callously and viciously made their lives much, much worse through criminal mismanagement of public funds.

     Why?

   That plaintive question has been echoing through my mind as I have considered the decisions the electorate have made not only in Britain but also here in Spain.

     We have recently had elections for the council in Madrid and the electorate here have voted (in a record turnout) for a council which will be made up of PP and Vox.  The first of those, PP, is the most corrupt political party in Western Europe – and that is not my prejudice speaking, just type in  “PP in Spain corruption” and you will find a shockingly wide breadth of coverage of what is almost comical illegal behaviour.

     If you want to be more specific then you could search for “PP Corruption in Madrid” and you might come across something like, https://elpais.com/ccaa/2018/09/30/madrid/1538326069_865164.html

Where, even if you don’t understand Spanish, it doesn’t take much to make out what the headline “La década viciosa de Madrid” might mean, and you will be able to see some of the unsavoury characters who have defiled the city over the last ten years.

     And people voted for them!  Again!

     In a 71% turnout, 44.7% voted for PP!  The other party that the corrupt and corrupting PP will govern with is Vox.  Vox is usually described as a “far right” party, but it is simpler and more realistic to consider them as Franco supporting fascists.  Their pronouncements and policies are repugnant.  They are rabble rousing scum.  And they have pledged to support PP “to keep the left out”.  If you add the 9.1% of the electorate who voted for Vox  to the 44.7% who voted for PP, you have a clear majority of the voters choosing right wingers and fascists to form their government of choice!

     By way of comparison, in the Catalan parliament out of 41 representatives, only 2 members of PP were elected! 

     Catalonia truly is another country!

    

     Meanwhile in Britain, the third-rate incompetents, bullies and liars who comprise the ‘government’ of Johnson, the liar-in-chief, are gifted with gains.  Hartlepool, which has been a Labour voting constituency since its inception votes Conservative.  Admittedly, it was an area which overwhelmingly voted for Brexit and presumably, the voters have seen or heard nothing negative enough with the lies of Johnson, and the criminal mishandling of the Covid response, or the Brexit train-crash of financial and social disaster to make them doubt the positivity of voting for a shameless narcissist and his corrupt crew!

     If Johnson had been watching European politics (as if!) then he would probably be considering a snap General Election.  The Zombie leader of the PPs in Madrid has shown just how much an electorate can ignore when they are asked to put their cross next to a party which is corrupt, selfish, criminal, menial, duplicitous, mendacious, uncaring, and all the other insulting adjectives that come to mind in describing your typical Conservative, no matter whether it be in Spain on in the UK.

     God help us all!

 

Tomorrow is Toni’s birthday.  The Family will be arriving in instalments and we should have a good celebration.  Perhaps then I will be in a more mellow mood and my writing might reflect that.

     We’ll see!

 

 

    

Get that arm ready!

 

 

 

Yet another case of not what you know but who you know. 

     This is in relation to getting the jab against Covid-19.  I am now in one of the groups that has been “called” to make an appointment to bet the jab, however when I got onto the appropriate page on the web, I discovered that all the “massive” vaccination centres were way outside my town.  I also know that my local CAP is a vaccination centre, but that didn’t figure in the list that I was able to access.

    On asking a swimming friend if he had been vaccinated and evincing some surprise when he answered in the affirmative, I was encouraged to ignore the web site that I had been directed towards and go instead to a telephone number for the Generalitat and “let them sort it all out”.

     As this was the first working day since his advice I, with Toni’s help, have done as he suggested and I have been assured that I will be contacted “today” with details of the centre that I can access.  I have faith that they will do as they say.  I can be touchingly innocent sometimes!  But we will see.

 

The weather, which has been particularly bloody for over a month, is generally better today, with the sun doing its best to convince doubters that the month is actually May and not November.

     I mark the start of Real Summer with my first immersion in the communal pool.  Although the young Viral Assassins of next door have thrown themselves into the glacial waters on a number of occasions, I do not think that authentic humans will follow them for some time – bearing in mind that there has to be hot weather for a week or so to allow the body of water in our pool to heat up a little and lose its more heart failure inducing qualities. 

     I am still uncertain about our foray to Terrassa the day after tomorrow for the first Family Occasion for over a year – the first time that the two of us will have been outside our area and visiting other people.

     This is a foretaste of the freedom (or should that be “freedom”) that will develop over the next few months.  I do share a desire to get back to normality, but

 

 

-       -   Dramatic break   -

 

Just had a telephone call and now have an appointment for 3pm on Saturday to have my first injection.  It is not here in Castelldefels, but in a Massive Vaccination Centre in Cornellà, which is one of the places that I passed through day after day when I was teaching in Barcelona.  It is now a case of finding out exactly where the centre is and being prepared to Make A Day Of It, to celebrate the start of my protection against Covid!

 

-       -   Dramatic break   -

 

No sooner had we had lunch than there was a phone call from my local CAP asking if I wanted to have the jab and could I make it to the CAP within 30 minutes.  Hysterically saying, “YES!” to everything, I got on my bike and sped off.

     Although I had thoughtfully brought my collapsible shooting stick with me, I had no time to use it as I was ushered, immediately I arrived in the CAP, into a deserted injection room and, barely had I got one arm out of my coat and my T-shirt rolled up, than a doctor appeared and I had the shot post haste.

     To my utter delight (apart from having the shot) it turned out that the vaccine that I had been given was the Johnson & Johnson Jenssen Jab – a single dose vaccine!  I’m done!

 

 

     Putting all the circumstances together: time; deserted rooms; instant reception; speed of delivery – it seems fairly clear that the telephone call I had was one that was part of a procedure to try and ensure that all available doses were used.  I suspect that my “instant” vaccination was using up an end-of-surgery dose: either it went into my arm or the bin. 

     But I don’t care.  I have, at long last, been vaccinated and I can now start counting the days to optimum protection – which is about a month. 

     And I don’t have the inconvenience of finding time for a second jab! 

     Hooray!

 

 

Unclean! Unclean!

 

 

 

 

In the unfolding sleaze of Johnson’s incumbency at Number 10 (and the flat in Number 11) the suggestion that he tried to get a donor to pay for his childcare costs comes as nothing of a surprise. 

     I assume that he floated the idea of having some sort of By Prime Ministerial Appointment coat of arms that would be affixed to all those aspects of his sordid life that he could get someone else to pay for.  I imagine a coat of arms of Pig rampant on a Mount Or with motto Quod corruption vitae est; supporters: dexter, Tory Donor Lord with flowing cash; sinister, Red Wall Voter with vacant expression, beneath ribbon with motto Semper impune tuli!

     Much though I loathed and will continue to loathe Thatcher and all her god forsaken works, I would never accuse her of the moral vacuum that is the present Prime Minister natural milieu.  And to think that we have years of his corrupt and corrupting “rule” before we even get a chance to vote him to the oblivion that he richly deserves – though he won’t get it, because the Tory “faithful” will keep him in speaking engagements so that he will continue to make money out of his shamelessness.

     Talking of “faithful” brings to mind the description of Lancelot in Idylls of the King by Tennyson, “His honour rooted in dishonour stood, and faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”  The fact that illicit love was behind the phrase means that we get an almost perfect description of Johnson, a man whose basic character is so debased that any positive aspect he demonstrates merely means that we haven’t focussed properly on the real low and disreputable reasons for his actions.    

 

Meanwhile the weather is less than wonderful and I have heard no more about a real physical appointment for the vaccine.  But, in spite of our unvaccinated status (and of course, the unvaccinated status of most of the country) we are working towards a loosening of the restrictions.

     This loosening will first show itself in the fact that we can now celebrate birthdays and name days.   The rules governing the number of households and people in bubbles and the total numbers are so complex that it makes finding out the date of Easter each year look like childsplay (and should that word be two words, or be hyphenated and should it have an apostrophe?  I only ask in passing) and no one really knows the exact details.

     It does mean that we will go to Terrassa for a celebration meal during the week and perhaps Terrassa will come to us at the end of it to celebrate another anniversary.  That will be the first out of region event that we will have experienced for the last umpteen months.

     In circumstances where the numbers of vaccinations were high and the number of infections were low, this would be something to celebrate indeed – but as the situation does not seem to be substantially better than it has been for months, it does cause a little concern.  Still, I now walk around with a container of alcohol handwash and I am punctilious about my use of the mask, so, as long as I demand the same degree of protection demonstrated from those whom I am likely to come into contact with, I should be able to consider myself reasonably secure.

     I will feel a damn sight more secure when I have my first jab and Monday will see me taking a rather more pro-active approach to my injection than I have previously.  We will see how receptive the powers that be, will be to my importunities!

 

Meanwhile I continue my daily swim and daily bike ride.

     Last weekend I was stopped by the police on the paseo who informed me that it was illegal to cycle and to prove it showed me the screen of a police mobile phone with a bike symbol with a red line through it.

     I have seen no diminution in bike riding and have therefore made enquiries about the exact regulations for cycle riding.  As you would expect (at least, if you have lived in the country for any time you would expect) exact information about the regulations is opaque.  The Tourist Information Office (situated ON the paseo) knew nothing about any regulations and indeed there is a cycle rack to park your bike just outside the office itself.  Exploration of the council website gave no up to date information, though I did discover a few dated and worrying regulations which stated that no bike should be ridden at more than 10 kph.  As my bike is fitting with a (full colour) digital display, I was able to see just how slow 10 kph actually is, and I can report that not even very small kids travel at that speed!

     I did find references to other regulations that stated that the wide part of the paseo has different regulations from the narrower newer part, and the only place where cyclist could consider themselves totally fitted was in a special bike lane which was removed a few years ago.

     As I was stopped at the weekend, I have reasoned that regulations, if they actually exist, are only going to be enforced during peak visitor times on a sunny weekend and so I will use the road for those two days.  Even though today was somewhat dull, I still took the precaution of going to Gava rather than Port Ginester because there is a clear, marked bike lane for virtually the whole of the route.

     What is going to happened during the real part of the summer is something that I will have to play by ear – or call into the Tourist Information Office in the Centre of Town to find out a definitive answer.

     One does have to careful because the police are prone to high profile fining for infractions, and ignorance of the law is absolutely no excuse in this country, even if you can point to notices at entrances to the paseo which give specifically different sets of regulations to the ones that you have been accused of breaking.

     And breathe, and exhale!

 

How to keep your sanity in world that is too right-wing for, well, sanity!

 

 

 

 

For the past few years, when the political situations in Catalonia, Spain and the UK got too much to bear, I turned to the antics of Trump and the Republican party to demonstrate that there were depths that this side of the Atlantic had not yet plumbed.  Now that Trump is more of a distant malign emanation from the depths of swampy Florida rather than an ever-present daily horror show in the newspapers, one has to rely on the pathetic, yet entirely disgusting, cavorting (I can’t think of any other word to describe what should be a serious political party) of the Trumpian Republicans in Congress and the Senate to set against whatever depressing failures one sees around the political sites in Spain and the UK.

     I have realised that I simply can’t do it anymore, by which I mean reading about Republicans with the semi-detached amazement at the jaw-droppingly callous human distain that they display on a daily basis.  I can no longer pretend that the grotesque views that Republican espouse were a function of The Orange Small Handed Horror.  Whatever the Republican Party might have been in the past, what it is now is a morass of ante-diluvian viciousness: the anti-abortion, election “rigging”, voter suppression, homophobia, etc etc etc – all the tropes of the far right coming home to roost (if they ever left) in the comfortable prejudices of an apology for a political party.  What is happening today is that the repressive idiocies of the Republicans and the super-charged language of political hatred and contempt that they use against their opponents is all too present in the life of politics here in Europe.

     The ‘comical’ lies of Trump are more than matched by the serial mendacity of Johnson.  Johnson now is a flagrant liar because he makes no attempt to correct the record when he has been found out.  And still the Conservatives are ahead in the polls.  Why should a liar change his deceit when he doesn’t seem to be penalized for the lies he tells?

     England and the USA are cursed with a two-party system: Conservative and Labour; Republican and Democrat.  Where do the votes go for those voters who look with something approaching horror at the way that they right wing parties are heading? 

     In the USA, the rhetoric of the right means that even the mildest of the Democrats is branded as extreme left wing or “Socialist”, whereas here in Europe they would be seen as just left of centre.  Old fashioned Tories must shudder to see what the party has become under the “leadership” of the third-rate chancers who now control the Conservatives, but their escape route of the Lib Dems has long since been shown to be a wasted vote and they probably will never bring themselves to vote for Labour, even with that nice Mr Starmer as leader.

     The situation is different in Catalonia, where the national conservative part PP has a derisory following and the so-called “centre right” of C’s has also been rejected at the polls.  The “”Socialist”” party PSOE and a variety of Independence and left-wing parties hold sway here, but we have no government as the parties have found it impossible to work together to get some sort of coalition off the ground.  As the days go by with a government “in functions” the frustration of the voters becomes more and more palpable.

     In a way in which I have never felt so strongly before, governments are simply not working; justice is becoming a by-word for partisanship; inequality is becoming more and more pronounced; corruption is rampant and the ordinary voter is made to feel more and more irrelevant as the tiny percentage of the rich and the powerful continue to act with absolute impunity.

     The word “Democracy” has become devalued as politicians mouth the word but ignore the concept in the ways in which they behave.

     Biden is trying to make a difference.  In spite of the torrents of abuse that he has to take as he tries to redress some of the worst excesses of his predecessor’s reign of terror, he is a beacon of hope.  But what is going on in the red states of America in the almost comical attempts to gerrymander the political situation to benefit the right is a worry.  Biden does not have his full term to make a difference.  His majority in the Senate is on a knife edge and if that is taken away by Senate elections next year then we have seen previously that a hypocritical Republican Party will be much more than willing to sacrifice country to the demands of the Party and stymie any bipartisan legislation and wait for 2024 to Bring Back Trump to win again!

     The election in Madrid will be an indication here of how the political situation is working.  The leader of Madrid at the moment is an unprepossessing Zombie of PP who has made the most remarkable pronouncements in the lead up to the voting.  We have an extreme right-wing party which is openly Fascist and revers the late Fascist dictator Franco.  The level of political debate is debased.  Threats and counter threats depress.

     It is very difficult not to be depressed at the prospects for a positive outcome to the election in the febrile atmosphere where everything seems to be tainted by Covid.

     But I remain an optimist.  

   And as long as I stop reading about red-neck, red-state Republicans and concentrate on things like the medical personnel who have worked tirelessly to vaccinate and medicate, then I can always look forward to a communal recognition that unselfish caring is also positive self-regard.

Baby steps to almost safety!

 

Well, it’s a step forward.

     Today I had an SMS from the health authorities informing me that I am part of one of the groups called to be vaccinated against Covid-19 and urging me to request my appointment to get vaccinated.  Which I of course did, except (isn’t there always an ‘except’?) in all the centres that I selected I was told that there were no appointments available.

     So.  How am I supposed to take this? 

     I have previously been told that I will be ‘called up’ in exactly the same way that I have been when I get my winter flu jab in, or under the supervision of my local CAP (Health Centre), through the receipt of an SMS.  Perhaps this pro-active approach is just to keep us quiet as we try (and fail) to get an appointment, but to make us think that “at least we are on the system, and that is a good first step, eh?”

     Let it pass that ALL my friends of a similar age in the UK (and those a damn sight younger) have ALL had their first jabs, and I do not even have a firm date for my vaccination. 

     Still, the centres’ vaccine availability is updated weekly, so first thing on Monday morning (after my swim and cup of tea) I will be re-entering all my information to try my luck at another round of Vaccine Jackpot!

     In a nice reversal of blame, it now becomes my fault that I have not been vaccinated, as the onus has been placed on me to find a centre.  To be fair, I have only tried those centres that are within a reasonable (however you define that word in relation to a pandemic) distance from my home.  And you could always argue that were I to be truly serious about getting vaccinated, then I wouldn’t be so parochial and I would willingly venture into parts of Catalonia that I have only heretofore seen on maps!

     Or I could wait for my CAP to call me.  I think that will allow another week of querulous prevarication!

     And at least I am on the system, and that has to be positive, doesn’t it?

 

 

 

While I had my swim (and cup of tea) Toni was able to meet up with his sisters and his two nephews.  This meeting took place at our almost-local Outlet, full of logo heavy shops selling still overpriced items to an ever-credulous public.  In which of course I place myself.  But, as I was occupied in ploughing my watery way up and down the 25-metre lane of the swimming pool, I was unable to join them.

     I am not averse to visiting the Outlet, in spite of the fact that it does not have a Wedgewood Shop – but, there again, where does nowadays – where I can vicariously indulge my mother-inspired love of china, glass and cutlery.  But there are limits to the shopping masochism to which I will willingly lend myself: to go to an Outlet with one determined woman shopper might be regarded as foolhardy, to go with two smacks of the sort of extremism that destroys empires!  And two adolescent boys! 

     Anyway, I didn’t go and given my lack of a vaccine (see above) I am sort-of relieved.  Both the boys and their mother have had Covid – and I’m not sure if that makes them more or less worrying for an unvaccinated person.  As with so many impulses during this pandemic, isolationism and a sturdy stance of anti-society isolationism is the better bet!

     But we have now had more than a year where the normal interaction in the family has been stopped, the celebrations of Name Days and Birthdays have been via Zoom and, I have to admit, thoroughly unsatisfactory.  The joint visits to the beach have not taken place during the last summer and, given the rate of vaccination in Catalonia it looks more than likely that they will not take place during this summer (when we finally get to it) as well.

     Spain has said that they are thinking of delaying the second jab follow up to the AZ vaccine to 16 weeks after the first jab: that means 4 months.  Given that tomorrow is May Day, that means that given the delay and the time necessary for the two jabs to come to full strength, it is going to be well into September until this tranche of people is fully vaccinated. 

     I am in Group 5C and it is only today that I had the invitation (not an appointment) to try for the vaccine – so, if I had the injection tomorrow on May Day, it would the beginning of August before I was fully vaccinated.  And I am not getting the vaccine tomorrow!

     The projected timetable for full (70%) vaccination for herd immunity here in Catalonia looks ever more optimistic!  And are we seriously going to be welcoming tourists into our Covid hot spots during the summer?   

     Commerce is driving out sense!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's character building!

 

Man, and boy, I have worshipped at the shrine of The Gadget .

What luck is has been that I am someone who has seen the advent of the True Electronic Age with the invention of the transistor and its dissemination through society and useful (and otherwise) machines.

Sitting at my desk and without moving things out of the way, I can see a plethora of machines and gadgets.  Let me confine myself merely to the surface of the desk.

The so-called Old School gadgets: stapler, Sellotape dispenser, stapler remover, pens, pencils, markers, scissors, paperclips, rubbers, etc

Electronic: digital web radio; Mac Computer,  Bluetooth keyboard, ditto mouse, Bose mini Bluetooth speaker, studio microphone, digital led lamp with USB connections, telephone, new smartwatch for a present, electronic flashlight, cables, connectors, batteries, battery charger, power points and plugs galore, printer, removable hard drives and on and on.  And I’ve left some of the things out because such a mass of things becomes rather embarrassing when you list them!

The number of computers that I have owned is little short of astonishing in all their forms from handheld, through portable to desktop.  I have loved them all and have willing accepted the cruel price that dedication to the computer has demanded in terms of lost time in front of an unresponsive screen when programs simply didn’t work or went wrong at exactly the wrong time, in spite of the pleading that all of us have done to the harsh masters of plastic and glass when they decided not to cooperate.

I am not afraid to admit that I have wept tears of pure unalloyed frustration in front of dead computer screens, when I had put all of my digital eggs in one fickle electronic basket.  But I have kept on, keeping on.

And let’s be fair, modern computing is nothing like it was in the Dark Ages of thirty years ago.  Things generally go well.  Delays are minimal.  When you consider that with one of my early computers, the Sinclair QL, I had to wait up to a minute for the machine to save one A4 page of typing – and you could do nothing but wait while it saved – the microseconds that you wait for small documents to save nowadays is little sort of miraculous.  And programs (generally) work and there is a logic behind operations that you are (usually) more than capable of working out.  Life working with computers is (generally) good.

Which brings me to today.

And banks.

I am in the process of buying a new bike and, for reasons too complicated and irritating to go into, I had to pay for the bike by getting my bank to send the money in US dollars to Hong Kong.

The money was sent off.  And eventually the bike makers plaintively asked where it was.  The money had been sent god know where, but my bank did not see fit to let me know that the payment had been unsuccessful. 

When I went to the bank a second time to find out what had gone on, I was informed that the money had been returned and would I like to try again to send the money to the manufacturer.  As the manufacturer had, by this time, sent me a photograph of my bike packed up with my name on it waiting to be shipped, I said that would be a good idea.

So, the money was sent off and successfully reached its destination.

 

But.

 

I was charged 22 Euros for the original sending of the money.

I was then charged 22 Euros for the money to be returned.

I was then charged 22 Euros for the money to be resent.

66 Euros for payment of a printed invoice!

This is an on-going case!

 

However, I had another bill to pay, this time to a firm in Barcelona and I was determined that I would not be caught in the 22 Euro trap of getting a bank teller to do the transfer of funds – I would use the digital aspect of my bank to do it myself.

It took half the morning and a fair part of the afternoon to get things organized.  I could, without too much difficulty, get into my account online.  I even managed to input all the details necessary to pay the debt, it was just the final part of the transaction that let me down.

It was not enough to use all the security to get into the account to make things safe, there was also a mobile phone app that acted as a sort of digital signature.

I am not, for the sake of my sanity, going to itemize the number of times that I went back and fro, from computer to phone, copying and pasting various security numbers (“Only valid for 5 minutes!”) to get some sort of mystical authorization so the bloody money could be paid.

In the course of trying to get things done, I utilized the menu help, the automated digital assistant and anything else that I could click on.  Nothing worked and I found myself in a Circle of Authorization of the Damned, repeating various SMS routines and getting precisely nowhere.

I eventually, through a process of elimination, clicked on a link to a named individual who was apparently my Personal Banker.  I asked for help and nothing happened and so I gave up.

And then the phone rang and, to cut a long story short, after a confusing conversation I was given Another Way to try and it worked.

 

My point is that things were difficult when they should have been easy.  In spite of my dedication to things gadgetful, I was still left hanging.  And re-living the frustration of years ago.

If I think about it, years ago I would have written a cheque and put it in the post.  Job done.  When is the last time you wrote a cheque?  You are not given a cheque book in Spain.  If you need a cheque you have to get the bank manager to sign one and they cost a fortune!

So, although on my digital account I can see every payment and get details of when and how much has been taken from my account; I can see pretty graphs of my expenditure; I can sort and search, it is just all there to compensate me for the fact that some things were easy and are now complicated.

But, and this is the real lesson that one takes from the digital experiences that bloody one; the next time it will be easier and I will be able to take advantage of the glorious possibilities that digital banking offers.

Such self-delusion is the way that we keep sane.