Things change

 

 

I am not going to be coerced into making fatuous New Year Resolutions; I refuse to be dragooned into making a list of aspirations just because everyone else is doing it at the same time.

     Actually, I don’t think that many people actually do make such lists – they are more the preserve of desperate editors on the Today programme on Radio 4, looking for a cheap and easy vox pop to pad out some time.  As if the events of 2021 going into the equally bleak looking 2022 have any lack of ‘real’ news items to sober-up any English (remember all the other nations of the UK have imposed restrictions) revellers who might be thinking of a better way to be after the festivities on an untrammelled New Year’s Eve!

     So, I am merely going to knuckle down again to the task of writing.  I have been remiss for the past umpteen days and, while it is easy to put such indolence down to ‘Christmas Preparations’ it would be a ludicrous overstatement of the amount of time that we actually spent on thinking about the 25^th.

 

     My card writing is now consigned to a single Christmas donation to Oxfam, and Christmas presents are strictly Catalan Family, and usually proscribed by family members in advance, to make things easier.  Food is catered for by a restaurant meal.  All one has to do is turn up.

     Unless, that is, after the traditional Christmas Eve giving of presents (shat out of a log) [it’s a Catalan thing] and returning home to sleep before the Christmas Meal, you happen to have an email on Christmas Day informing you that a swimming friend with whom you had a cup of tea a few days previously had tested positive for Covid.

     Everything changed.

     I was still within the four-day period after ‘last contact with the positive subject’ and so I had to isolate myself.  The test I took was negative, but I would need to take another on the Monday after Christmas to make sure that I was securely negative.

     I therefore I had a solitary Christmas Meal, and I was similarly alone for my Saint’s Day - Boxing Day or Saint Stephen’s Day.  In Catalonia a Name Day is more of a deal than in the UK (where the concept doesn’t really exist) as it usually involves a special meal and presents.

     Before any sympathy is wasted on poor little me, I might point out that I was able to make myself a sumptuous and self-indulgent Christmas Feast and, anyway, I had books to read!

     My name day celebrations will probably be postponed until next weekend, when The Family will come down to Castelldefels and enjoy a walk along the beach.

     A walk, I imagine that will be seen as something as a luxury in the coming days and weeks, when the Super Spreader Events that characterize national fiestas nowadays will inevitably result in a startling (though entirely predictable) increase in Covid infection – and the belated imposition of more stringent limitations on our freedom of movement.

     Admittedly, Catalonia has already imposed a curfew from 1am to 6am and has emphasised the social distance rules and strengthened the public association regulations, but I fear that, as is natural for politicians, it is too little too late. 

     Which makes the lack of action in England all the more startling and worrying. 

     The Tousled Thug who masquerades as Prime Minister has, yet again, abdicated his primary responsibility, which is striving to keep the people of the UK safe.  His ‘masterly inaction’ which in his sick mind he probably thinks is modelled on the behaviour of the late Queen Elizabeth, is rather more reminiscent of the appeasement of Chamberlain as he waves a little piece of paper with his interpretation of “The Science” to justify a cowardly ‘doing nothing’ to keep the semi-evolved dregs of the Conservative back benches quiescent.

     In one respect the woeful responses of our political masters have ‘worked’, in so far as a reasonable number of people to whom I have spoken have a sort of fatalistic acceptance that, “We’re all bound to get Covid at some time or other” which means that more and more people have bought-into the ‘herd immunity’ approach to pandemic management, with a shoulder-shrug to the consequent deaths that this acceptance must entail.

 

As the more observant reader will have noticed, there is a sort of ‘wasn’t that in the past’ sort of vibe about the previous writing.  Which is fair, as it was written a week ago.  Or more.

     In the meantime, I have tested negative again and life of sorts can resume.  Except.

     There is always an except.  My questionable knees have now decided to make a statement about their physical well-being and have opted for the ‘pain and discomfort’ way forwards.

     In what has been a remarkably limited number of days, my right knee has gone from ‘something ought to be done soon’ to ‘basically, not working’.  This has meant that my progress up, down, and along is now only possible with the ostentatious use of Toni’s crutches (a bargain, 12 euros on the internet).  And our house is composed almost entirely of stairs.  Or at least it seems that way to me as I tap and hobble my way around with a complete lack of grace and agility.

     In less than a week we have gone from the ‘something ought to be done’ to the ‘something has to be done – now!’ in a matter of days.  In the middle of a pandemic.

     I do have an appointment for ‘rehabilitation’ – but, at we don’t really know where my knees have been (so to speak) there is little for the medical staff to go on.  We are hoping that my obvious discomfort will prompt the people there to demand a scan, be appalled at what they see, and put me on a list for something.  Anything.  To make what is a fairly intolerable position slightly more acceptable.

     The waiting times for surgery that have been suggested to me, not necessarily from doctors, but from surprisingly well-informed casual acquaintances, has been at the far end of eight or nine months.  And I think, given the backlog thanks to Covid, that is a dewy-eyed optimistic prediction. 

     However.  At present, I have more pain than information, and I am looking forward to the Catalan health service coming forward, scalpel advanced, to my aid.  I have to say from previous experience with the medical services of this country, I have been more than impressed, and I will throw myself on their mercy – before I swallow whatever socialist principles are left to me and go private!

 

On the more positive side of life, the Family did come down to Castelldefels for my postponed Name Day and a good meal was had by all. 

     And it’s not raining. 

     One takes one’s positives where one finds them.

Christmas? No problem!

 

 

 

 

 A plastic bag that has been lying around the third-floor slum that I call my study turned out to have the midget Christmas Tree in it.   

     Midget it may well be, but it fits almost comically perfectly on the shelf that Toni constructed to take the fan to blow away the noxious ciggie smoke from the “departed” neighbour who used to sit in her open window and waft her filth towards us.

     Now the little shelf looks purpose built to take the tree.  And with its raising we have Christmasified ourselves completely.  With the single Christmas card from Andrew and the plugging in of the annual (well, we don’t ever take it down) Christmas star in the kitchen window, there is little more that we can do to become completed festivified.  And we have spent virtually no time whatsoever in getting to this stage of entering into the spirt of the season!  A win-win situation.

     My mother had a habit (that I have enthusiastically adopted) of declaring certain of her purchases (especially those of questionable value) as officially “Best Buys”. 

     This designation sought to imbue the purchase with the sort of cachet which made it “good value for money” and therefore justifiable, and (further therefore) well beyond the carping criticism of a confirmed anti-shopper like my father.  She was also well aware that she could always call on my unbiased, enthusiastic support for the mere act of purchasing, let alone giving her approbation for the actual object itself.

     My mother was the inventor of the clothing doctrine: “If it fits and is comfortable, buy it in all available colours.” 

     I remember being with her once when she put this into operation.  My mother and I share what may be described as “fussy” feet, where the cheap, cheerful, and totally acceptable ordinary shoe does nothing for our feet.  Indeed, mere expense is no guide to comfort and finding the right shoe for us made Prince Charming’s quest look slipshod!

     My mother found a court shoe that fitted, was comfortable and utilitarian.  She bought a single pair to try and pronounced them fine and, with me in toe, she went back to the shop and did as she believed, and literally bought a pair in every colour they made.  My mother, being my mother, explained what she was doing to a completely indifferent salesperson, and we both returned home triumphant and slightly hysterical.

     As the numerous pairs of shoes were laid out for inspection, my father merely sighed a little and lit his pipe.

     A similar process obtains with cutlery and crockery.  As a boy who was made aware of the differences between different grades of china at an early age and was taught to weigh and balance cutlery in hand to evaluation its worth, plates, spoons, glasses, and suchlike have an important place in my life.

     I like things to match and so the purchase of a ‘life’ canteen of china is something not lightly entered into.

     I had no way of knowing that life, the universe, and everything would bring about the downfall of a potter like Wedgewood.  For goodness’ sake, William Blake did drawings for the early publicity of the firm! 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a business founded in righteousness and destined to see us all out.  The choosing of a pattern in Wedgewood was therefore something that would last, if not forever, at least for a reasonable lifetime.

     The transience of things thought to be permanent, would have been more of a problem if I had not followed my mother’s other dictum related to china, “Buy at least 12 of everything” so even with inevitable breakages, I am still able to set a decent table.

     When I bought the Wedgewood Aztec patterned service from Debenhams 

 

 

(a store also gone the way of all flesh) I bought so much (see my mother’s advice above) that it came with a “free breakages replacement” guarantee for a year!  During the first year only one plate was broken (by Helen who stood on it) and the pieces were carefully kept because, if you did not claim on the insurance, you were given a whole single place setting free at the end of the year.  At the end of the year, my not having claimed, I was sent not one, but two place settings free.  And that insurance offer was terminated soon after they arrived!  What sensible advice my mother gave!

     On the basis of direct descendance, I now claim the right to designate things “Best Buys” and the few years old tree and the more than a few years old star qualify for that title.  And their reuse gives green credentials to the activity and the carbon footprint is low because the lights on the tree and the star are low power led.

     Christmas done and dusted!

Buildings take time

 

 

 

Another tortuous milestone in the construction of the Sagrada Família has been reached with the placing of the star light on the top of the Virgin Mary Tower and, this evening, blessing and lighting it.  This is the first of the two filial lights to be achieved, the second will top the central and largest tower in the basilica – the one which will mark the completion of the project and the one on which building has been delayed because of Covid.

     There was an ambitious plan to have the building complete for the centenary of Gaudí’s death in 2026, but this is looking more and more unlikely.

     In spite of living in Barcelona (the province and metropolitan district) I have visited the Basilica only once, in the summer of 1958 when my father dragged me off the bus tour of the city that we were on and took me to what I understood to be a series of ruins but was informed that I was standing in the unfinished part of an on-going masterpiece by the Catalan architect Gaudi.  I was, generally, unimpressed – though that attitude changed as I found out more about the architect and his buildings.

     Why, you might ask, have I not visited the building again, especially as it now has a roof, and the interior is complete?

     Gaudi is constantly associated with natural forms and the Basilica looks like a growing thing, something more vegetable than stone. 

     Gaudi ‘lived’ his buildings, he was intimately involved in their evolution from design to structure and he was capable of making on-site adjustments to his plans, so that the word ‘evolution’ associated with his buildings is something which is real – that is what happened.  The plans were a starting point and Gaudi was the guide to their development.

     The great cathedrals of the past were always works in progress, and sometimes that progress was glacially slow, as buildings emerged over decades and sometimes centuries.  Gaudi lived on site towards the end of his life, and he was dedicated to seeing his concept of the building rise.  And that’s the point: a Gaudi building needs Gaudi to see it through to completion.  Without Gaudi, the building is something else.  Not worthless and not necessarily inferior, but definitely something else.

     Gaudi was killed in a traffic accident, but his plans survived.  Well, they survived until the Spanish Civil War when they were burnt, but enough survived for projections to be made about what the final form of the building should take.

     Every great building is, of necessity, a collaboration – it is how far that the collaboration should ‘develop’ from the original idea that is in question about the ‘finishing’ of Gaudi’s masterpiece.

     I used to say that I would have preferred to have had some sort of encompassing structure placed around the parts of the Basilica that Gaudi had completed and say, this is what we have, we can imagine the rest.  A building without Gaudi throughout is not a Gaudi building.

     Perhaps that is a little too purist and I have vowed that if and when the building is finished (in my lifetime) I will visit.

     Those visitors from the UK who have visited the Basilica have come away singing its praises.  I have been content to view it from a distance and enjoy the silhouette rather than look too closely at the detail!

     The quick-sketch outline drawing of the Sagrada Família shares a place with similar sketches of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and The Sydney Opera House as being something that is instantly recognized from a few quick lines.

     As I visit Barcelona on a fairly regular basis, I have of course, seen the Sagrada Família close-up from the car and I have to admit that it is an imposing pile, I hope that things come together, and I will be able to visit!

Johnson is a liar.  He is liar who is found out in his lies on a regular basis.  He treats the truth with the same contempt that he reserves for his past wives.  And yet, he preserves his popularity with the voting public.

     Perhaps, the Christmas Party of Christmas Past will be the ghost that drags him down.  With scandal piling onto scandal in the traditional way of Conservative rule over any period of time, it seemed as if each new disgrace was something that could be wafted away with an airy phrase or some cod Latin.

     The joking contempt that his personal spokesperson displayed in laughing about how to deflect difficult questions about a Christmas party held during the height of Covid restrictions might be the thing that finally (finally!) cuts through to the general population and brings about, if not his downfall, then at least some sort of change in the way that we are governed.

     Johnson has tired his usual tactic of smooth sincerity and the sacrifice of an underling to turn away the rightful wrath that should be meted out on his head.  His lies have finally caught up with him and there is a growing groundswell of opinion that he should resign.

     Although I personally think that he should have been sacked rather than given the chance to resign a long time ago, I am still not convinced that the Tory Faithful will give up what they see as an electoral advantage (i.e., Johnson’s skills (!) in campaigning) for any airy concept of honesty or probity.

     This evening, Covid Plan B has been announced by Johnson (in a press conference NOT in The House of Commons) as a necessary part of the regulations to try and keep the Omicron variant in check – but also, and far more importantly from Johnson’s point of view as a “dead cat on the table” distraction to keep prying noses out of the detail of exactly what when on in the Christmas Party Fiasco of last year.

     Why should anyone do anything Johnson says, when he so signally doesn’t feel himself to be bound by the rules that he stipulates for others?

     It will be interesting to see what the media say about all of this, especially as there were pointed questions about the hypocrisy of Johnson and his misfits in the press conference announcing the measures.

     The best Christmas present that we could all have, is that Johnson resigns instantly.  God knows I loathe the deadbeat candidates that are likely to take over, but they (with the possible exception of Goblin Gove) are almost bound to be better and to have at least a shred of something approaching an ethic.   

Please!

 

A range of rants

 

 

A double vaccinated member of my Catalan family has now contracted Covid and will have to self-isolate, emerging from this on the 22^nd of December, just in time for the Christmas Celebrations.  At the moment he has flu-like symptoms, and we are hoping that they do not develop any further, relying on the expectation that the vaccination will limit any serious consequences.

     What it does do is emphasise that the pandemic is nowhere near over, and we are still very much in the dark as far as any coherent view about what post-pandemic life may be, and when we might be experiencing it.

     At this moment in time, all our planned celebrations for the three days from Christmas Eve are still in place, though these same plans become more brittle with each passing day.

     In spite of the growing fears about the Omicron variant, there does not seem to be a great deal of concern about the progress of the pandemic, and the rules that are already in place do not seem to be widely followed. 

     For example, we are now supposed to show Covid vaccination certificates in restaurants, bars, gyms etc – the policy is, shall we say, being loosely applied.  Today in a restaurant we were not asked for our certificate, and I saw no one who came into the restaurant asked.

     If this laxity is indicative of the approach here, then it is only a matter of time before the pressing need for more taxing restrictions are brought in because of an exponential rise in infection.

     I count myself partly to blame because, until Toni mentioned it this evening, it didn’t even cross my mind that the regulations had not been followed.  Life goes on as normal, and one is easily seduced into forgetting the reality with which one is surrounded.

     I know that it is wrong for the government to expect members of the public to act as their surrogates in getting policy delivered, but it is in all our interests that the very reasonable precautions that should be taken, are taken.

     I resolve to show my certificate even if I am not asked for it, and that might provoke the right behaviour.  I shall be more vigilant in future.  In a future that looks increasingly bleak as the news of the spread of the Omicron variation looks unstoppable.

 

 

Yet again I ask myself what the Conservative Party has to do to get people to stop voting and supporting them!

     It is an exhausting job merely listing the scandals that Johnson and his rag bag government have racked up.

     Just in the last week or so we have had the revelations about the last year Christmas parties that were held (or not held) in 10 Downing Street, with Johnsons categorical (eventual) denials having all the force of the ‘do not tumble dry’ instruction on clothes (image courtesy of John Crace or Marina Hyde in the Guardian).  Basically, if Johnson says something it is a fairly secure rule of thumb that the exact opposite is true.  So, while the rest of the country was obeying the strict lockdown rules, No 10 was flouting them.  And now lying about them.

     Coupled with this is the “apology” for failings in the Grenville Tower disaster in the administration of building regulations.  Tell that to the dead.

     Today we heard graphic descriptions of the disorganized chaos in the Foreign Office with the deadhead Raab presiding over a dysfunctional and deadly, inefficient, badly led, disaster of a department.

     And the final and grotesque garnish to the vileness of the government is the revealing of the lies that Johnson and No 10 have talked about the evacuation of pets before people.  I am a staunch believer in the fact that people who do not care about animals, will care little for humans as well.  But people must come before pets, and if resources were diverted to help a pet sanctuary rather than help the people who aided the mission in Afghanistan AND that Johnson lied about his involvement, then surely disgust and repugnance is the only appropriate attitude to have towards him and the low life that supports him.

     And that lot is only what has been brought to us today!  It is exhausting despising the worthless chancers who rule us.  With Thatcher (whom I hated and continue to hate) I didn’t feel this drained and depleted by my loathing.  Thatcher was a person and not a cult.  Johnson is a populist with, as far as I can tell, not a shred of ‘ethos’ motivating his actions apart from his narcissistic self-regard.  He demeans the country, politics, and himself.  He is a disgrace – but he will not and indeed cannot see that.  To recognize his own fatal limitations will mean his instant evaporation.

     It will be instructive to see what happens to the Conservative majority in the next by-election.  If the Conservative Party senses that he has or will become a liability, they will be ruthless in their elimination of an obstacle to their continued grip on power.

     I can look forward to Johnson’s fall from grace (though he certainly did that a long, long time ago) but I shudder at the ‘slimy things with legs’ that will slither their way out of the sewer of sleaze and corruption that is the Conservative Party at the moment and try and shin their way up the greasy Tory donor money painted pole to power.

     God help us all!